Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 1 - Chapter 1.01

1 
JUST ONCE, I SAW AN ACTUAL SHOOTING STAR. 
It wasn’t on a camping trip under the stars, but from my bedroom window. This wouldn’t be such a rare thing to those who live in places with clear skies or that are properly dark at night, but my home of fourteen years, Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture, was neither of those things. Even on a clear night, you could only see the brightest of stars with the naked eye. 
But one midwinter night, I just so happened to glance out of the window and caught a glimpse of a momentary brilliance falling vertically through a starless night sky pale with the light of the city. I was in fourth or fifth grade at the time, and in my innocent youth, I decided to make a wish … only to squander it on the most pointless thing imaginable: “I wish the next monster would drop a rare item.” I was in the middle of grinding for a level-up in my favorite MMORPG at the time. 
I saw another shooting star of the same color and speed three (or perhaps four) years later. 
But this was not with the naked eye, and it did not flash against the gray night sky. It happened within the murky depths of a labyrinth created by the NerveGear—the world’s first full-sensory immersive VR interface. 
The way the fencer fought brought the word “possessed” to mind. 
He darted out of the way of the level-6 Ruin Kobold Trooper’s crude axe so tightly, I felt a chill run down my back. After three successful evasions, the kobold’s balance was entirely lost, and he unleashed a full-power sword skill into the helpless beast. 
He used Linear, a simple thrust that was the first attack anyone learned in the Rapier category. It was a very ordinary attack, a twisting thrust straight forward from a centered position, but his speed was astonishing. It was clearly not just the game’s motion-assistance system at work, but rather the product of his own athletic skill. 
I’d seen party members and enemy monsters use the same skill countless times during the beta test, but all I could catch this time was the visual effect of the sword’s trajectory, and not a glimpse of the blade itself. The sudden flash of pure light in the midst of the dim dungeon brought the memory of that shooting star to my mind. 
After three repetitions of the same pattern of dodging the kobold’s combo and responding with Linear, the fencer had dispatched the armed creature—one of the toughest in the dungeon—without taking a scratch. But it was not a lazy, easy battle. Once the final thrust had ripped through the kobold’s chest and sent it bursting into empty polygonal shards, he stumbled back and thudded against the wall, as though the creature’s disintegration had pushed him backward. The man slid down the wall until he sat on the floor, breathing heavily. 
He hadn’t noticed me standing at a tunnel intersection about fifteen yards away. 
My normal activity at this point would be to silently slink away and find my own prey to hunt. Ever since I’d made the decision one month ago to work as a self-interested solo player, I had never gone out of my way to approach another person. The only exception would be if I saw someone battling and in mortal danger, but the fencer had never dipped below full health. At the very least, he didn’t seem to need anyone barging in and offering to help. 
But still … 
I hesitated for five seconds, then made up my mind and strode forward in the direction of the sitting player. 
He was skinny and undersized, wearing a light bronze breastplate over a deep red leather tunic, tight-fitting leather pants, and knee-high boots. His face was hidden beneath the hooded cape that hung from head to waist. Everything aside from the cape was proper light armor for a nimble fencer, but it was also similar to my swordsman’s wear. My beloved Anneal Blade, a reward for a high-level quest, was so heavy that I needed to cut down on bulky equipment to keep my moves sharp—I didn’t wear anything heavier than a dark gray leather coat and a small breastplate. 
The fencer flinched when he heard my footsteps but didn’t move farther. He would have seen the green color of my cursor to reassure him that I was no monster. His head stayed hung between his upturned knees, a clear sign that he wanted me to keep walking past, but I stopped a few feet away. 
“A little bit overkill, if you ask me.” 
The slender shoulders under the thick cape shrugged again. The hood shifted back just an inch or two, and I saw two sharp eyes glaring out at me. All I could see were two light brown irises; the contours of his face were still shadowed. 
After several seconds of a glare just as piercing as those rapier thrusts, he tilted his head slightly to the side. It seemed to suggest that he didn’t understand what I meant. 
Inwardly, I heaved a sigh of resignation. There was one massive itch in the back of my mind that kept me from continuing on my solitary way. 
The fencer’s Linear was chillingly perfect. Not only were the pre- and post-motions extremely brief, the attack itself was faster than I could see. I’d never been in the presence of such a terrifying and beautiful sword skill before. 
At first, I assumed he must have been another former beta tester. That speed had to have come from plenty of experience gained before this world had plunged into its current deadly state. 
But when I saw that Linear a second time, I began to question my assumption. In comparison to the excellence of his attack, the fencer’s battle flow was downright perilous. Yes, the defensive strategy of dodging enemy strikes with a minimum of movement led to quicker counterstrikes than blocking or parrying, as well as saving wear and tear on equipment. But the consequences of failure far outweighed those positives. In a worst-case scenario, a successful hit by the enemy might be treated as a counterattack that included a brief stun effect. For a solo fighter, getting stunned was a kiss of death. 
It didn’t add up—brilliant swordplay combined with downright reckless strategy. I wanted to know why, so I approached and wondered out loud if it might be overkill. 
But he didn’t even understand that extremely common online term. The fencer sitting on the floor here could not be a beta tester. He might not have even been an MMO player before coming to this game. 
I took a quick breath and launched into an explanation. 
“Overkill is a term used when you do way too much damage for the amount of health the monster has left. After your second Linear, that kobold was nearly dead. It only had two or three pixels left on its HP bar. You could have finished it off easily with a light attack, rather than going for a full sword skill.” 
How many days had it been since I’d said so many words at once? How many weeks? For being a poor Japanese student, my explanation was as elegant as an essay, but the fencer showed no response for a full ten seconds. Finally, a soft voice muttered from the depths of the hood. 
“Is there a problem with doing too much damage?” 

Finally, at long last, I realized that the squatting fencer was the rarest of encounters in this entire world, to say nothing of deep in a dungeon—not a male player, but a woman. 
The world’s first VRMMORPG, Sword Art Online, had opened its virtual doors nearly a month before. 
In your average MMO, players would be hitting the initial level cap and the entire game world would have been thoroughly explored from end to end. But here in SAO, even the best players in the game were barely around level 10—and no one knew what the cap was. Barely a few percent of the game’s setting, the floating castle Aincrad, had been mapped out. 
SAO was not quite a game anymore. It was more of a prison. Logging out was impossible, and the death of the player’s avatar resulted in the death of the player’s body, period. Under those stark circumstances, few people dared risk the danger of a dungeon’s monsters and traps. 
On top of that, the game master forced every player’s avatar into their real-life gender, which meant there was a massive shortage of females in the game. I’d assumed that most of them were still camped out in the safe haven of the Town of Beginnings. I’d only spotted women two or three times in this massive dungeon—the first-floor labyrinth—and they were all in the midst of large adventuring parties. 
Thus it never occurred to me that this solitary fencer at the edge of the unexplored territory deep in the dungeon might actually be a woman. 
I briefly considered mumbling an apology and leaving in haste. I wasn’t on a crusade against the men who always made it a point to talk to any female player they saw without hesitation, but I most definitely did not want to be identified as one of them. 
If she’d responded with a “mind your own beeswax” or “I can do what I want,” I’d have no choice but to agree and move along. But the fencer’s response seemed to be an honest question, so I stopped and tried to come up with a proper explanation. 
“Well … there’s no penalty in the game for overkilling—it’s just inefficient. Sword skills take a lot of concentration, so the more you use them, the more exhausted you get. I mean, you’ve still got to get back home, right? You should try to conserve more energy.” 
“… Get back home?” the voice from the hood questioned again. It was a ragged monotone, seemingly exhausted, but I thought it was beautiful. I didn’t say that out loud, of course. Instead, I tried to elaborate. 
“Yeah. It’s going to take a good hour to get out of the labyrinth from this spot, and even the closest town is another thirty minutes from there, right? You’ll make more mistakes when you’re tired. You look like a solo player to me; those mistakes can easily turn fatal.” 
As I spoke, I wondered to myself why I was lecturing her so earnestly. It wasn’t because she was a girl, I thought. I’d started this conversation before realizing her gender. 
If the roles were reversed and someone was haughtily lecturing me about what I should do, I’d certainly tell them to go to Hell. Once I realized how contradictory my actions were to my personality, the fencer finally reacted. 
“In that case, there’s no problem. I’m not going home.” 
“Huh? You’re not … going back to town? But what about refilling on potions, repairing equipment, getting sleep …?” I asked, incredulous. She shrugged briefly. 
“Don’t need potions if I don’t take damage, and I bought five of the same sword. If I need sleep, I just get it at the nearby safe area,” she said hoarsely. I had no response. 
The safe area was a small room located inside the dungeon that was never in danger of spawning any monsters. It was easily distinguished by its colored torches in each corner of the room. They were useful as a foothold when hunting or mapping out a dungeon, but they weren’t meant for more than an hour-long nap. The rooms had no beds, only hard stone floors, and the open doorway didn’t keep out the incessant sounds of monstrous footsteps and growling in the corridor outside. Even the stoutest of adventurers couldn’t get honest sleep under such conditions. 
But if I was to take her statement at face value, she was using that cramped stone chamber as a replacement for a proper inn room in order to camp out permanently inside the dungeon. Could that possibly be right? 
“Um… how many hours have you been in here?” I asked, afraid to know the answer. 
She exhaled slowly. “ Three days … maybe four. Are you done? The next monster’s going to spawn soon, so I need to get moving.” 
She put a fragile, gloved hand against the dungeon wall and unsteadily climbed to her feet. With the rapier dangling from her hand as heavily as a two-handed sword, she turned her back to me. 
As she walked forward, I saw ragged tears in the cape that spoke to its poor condition. In fact, it was a miracle that after four days of camping out in a dungeon, the flimsy cloth was intact at all. Perhaps her statement about not taking any damage wasn’t an idle boast … 
Even I didn’t expect the words that tumbled out of my mouth at her receding back. 
“If you keep fighting like this, you’re gonna die.” 
She stopped still and let her right shoulder rest against the wall before turning around. The eyes I’d thought were hazel under that hood now seemed to flash a pale, piercing red. 
“…We’re all going to die anyway.” 
Her hoarse, cracking voice seemed to deepen the chill of the dungeon air. 
“Two thousand people died in a single month. And we haven’t even finished the first floor. There’s no way to beat this game. The only difference is when and where you die, sooner … or later …” 
The longest and most emotional statement she’d uttered so far passed her lips and hung in the air. 
I instinctively took a step forward, then watched as she quietly crashed to the floor, as though hit by an invisible paralysis.