About the players:
While the players are trapped inside Sword Art Online, their real-life bodies are comatose, and their survival depends entirely on external care (hospitalization).
— I —
[Third Person's POV]
November 7, 2022 — 05:12
Shared Room, Horunka's Inn, 1st Floor
Almost twelve hours.
That was how long it had been since Kayaba Akihiko turned a game into a prison.
Mito lay on the inn bed, eyes fixed on the wooden ceiling beams rendered in perfect detail by the Cardinal System. Asuna breathed slowly to her left. Lisbeth to her right. Their rhythm had settled hours ago into the even cadence of exhausted sleep, the kind the body enforces when willpower finally runs out.
Sleep hadn't come for Tozawa Misumi.
I brought her here.
The thought circled, patient and unrelenting.
Asuna's in this death game because of me.
Her fingers tightened against the thin blanket.
The memory surfaced without invitation. Asuna's face during that first combat encounter – the raw terror in her eyes when the mob's jaws closed on her shoulder. The way she'd locked up when the wolves swarmed her during the desperate push through the pack. That terrible fraction of a moment when Asuna had collapsed, and Mito had thought–
She shut her eyes. The image stayed.
Her avatar shattering. The silence that followed. Those minutes where Misumi had been certain she'd watched her best friend die, and couldn't do anything to stop it.
Knowing it had been a disconnection didn't remove the guilt. It sat in her chest like something dense and unmovable – a quiet accusation her own mind wouldn't release.
The promise she'd made Asuna on the road felt less like a resolve with every hour that passed, and more like a dam. Something built to hold back the remorse, just long enough to keep functioning.
They'd managed some lightness the night before, after leaving Neo in the dust (rightfully so). A little shared laughter about "how men deluded themselves with any depraved opportunity."
Now, in the pale silence before another day, there was nothing left but the facts.
The probability that this was a prank – or something they'd wake from – shrank with every passing minute. The reality that each battle from here on was one they had to win settled on her slowly, the way sunrise comes after night: steady and inevitable.
And it can only get heavier.
What can I do?
A glitch. That was worth thinking about. Some flaw in the Cardinal System that hadn't been patched, some backdoor Kayaba had left unsealed. Or maybe the death game itself was the test – find the hidden exit before the other players, and that was the real condition. That would make sense, wouldn't it?
Because the alternative made none: Reach and defeat the 100th Floor Boss.
Beta testers had barely scraped to reach the 10th in a full month. Did Kayaba genuinely expect them to grind for years, bleeding down one by one until whoever lasted the longest could call it a victory?
It was like being told to survive alone in a desert by yourself. EZ GAME.
Neo was somebody worth talking to about this. She hadn't known him long, but he thought past surface answers, and had the skills to back whatever he intended to do. Finding a way might not be far.
His methods needed tempering, though. She'd already seen that much.
As the night died, the stone in her chest didn't go anywhere.
There was no choice.
Lift and fight. Lift and protect. Lift and survive.
Every day, the stone's weight would grow.
Until the day she can fulfill her promise.
…
Sleep never returned. The others stirred before long.
She hadn't been the only restless one.
They were up before the sun had fully cleared the horizon. When they stepped out of the inn, the first gold light of the new day met them all at once.
"I messaged him. He's coming now," Lisbeth said.
Seconds later, a familiar silhouette emerged.
"Good morning, ladies." Neo's gaze moved across the group before settling briefly on Lisbeth. "Ready for the next challenge?"
Three nods.
Any hard feelings from the night before had been set aside…
FOR NOW.
"Very well." He turned. "With me."
…
The only tavern in Horunka was exactly what the settlement suggested it would be; wooden construction throughout, a handful of round tables, and a bartender behind a counter worn smooth from use. Smaller than anything in the Town of Beginnings by a noticeable margin.
No other players. That tracked — it was barely the second day, and most of the people who'd pushed this far should be running solo. Nobody had thought past their own survival yet.
/ "Bartender" Davis \
"Welcome, adventurers. How may I help?"
"Excuse us, Master." Neo's tone shifted to something almost formal. "We're looking for something STRONG."
"Strong, huh." The bartender's brow furrowed in thought. "Let me see what I have." He bent behind the counter.
A dull thud from the other side.
"I'll be right back." The voice came without a face, and then footsteps descended somewhere below.
"W—" Mito blinked. "What happened?"
They leaned over the counter together. Where the bartender had been standing, a narrow staircase cut straight down into the dark.
"I found this during the Beta," Neo said, already moving around to the other side. He crouched at the entrance, studying it. "Asking for something STRONG is the trigger. The bartender opens the basement."
"So, we wait?" Asuna asked.
"We follow," he started down. "Last time I didn't care enough to go past this point."
"Seems risky," Mito inspected the staircase. "It barely fits a person."
"We're inside the village." Neo's voice carried up from below. "No danger. And this is a good opportunity."
"For what?" Lisbeth followed right after.
"To get a profitable quest."