The timeline is 2022.

The major event was the technological breakthrough of the electromechanical manufacturer "ARGUS", which successfully developed "NERvGear" -

It is a head-mounted machine that controls the human brain to connect to the virtual world, and its inner side is buried with countless signal components, and the helmet is directly connected to the user's brain through the complex electric fields generated by these components.

Users don't need to use their actual eyes and ears, because the machine directly gives the brain information about the visual cortex and auditory cortex, so that the user can see and hear.

In fact, in addition to hearing and sight, even the senses of touch, taste, and smell – the so-called five senses – can all be read by "NERvGear".

Thereupon......

Humans have finally realized a completely virtual reality, and the electronic machine manufacturer "ARGUS" has called "complete stealth" the imaginary space that connects human consciousness to the imaginary space it has created.

This is a very realistic name, because once the connection is made, the user's mind is really completely isolated from the real world.

The user's brain sends commands to his body are also blocked and retracted. This is mainly to allow gamers to run and fight heartily in the game world, and at the same time, they will not let the real world body move together.

Otherwise, after just going through a hard battle in the game, full of a sense of accomplishment and exhaustion, I found that it seemed that during my launch, Erha entered my room......

That's not good...... Besides, this is to put it mildly.

The more serious ones are the kind of unlucky guys who have just come off the line, and as soon as they open their eyes, they find themselves lying in the intensive care unit of the hospital, covered in bandages like mummies, with plaster casts on their hands and feet, and unable to move.

- This is the real tragedy.

Therefore, in order to prevent such a situation, the imaginary space of "complete stealth" is absolutely necessary, but it is ...... There are pros and cons to everything, and it is absolutely impossible to say that there are only good sides.

Probably because the hardware is so advanced that the software development is a little unable to keep up...... "NERvGear" can create a real imaginary world, but the vast majority of game practitioners are still limited by the previous types and ideas.

It wasn't that long ago that a truly next-gen game finally came to the fore.

Sword Art Online, which claims to be the world's first game genre, is a virtual reality online game.

The stage of the game is a huge floating castle with a hundred floors.

Each floor contains grasslands, forests, streets, and even towns, and players can only rely on their weapons to make their way through these floors, find the stairs to the upper floors, and defeat powerful bosses to make their way to the top floor of the castle.

Moreover, the game boldly excludes the "magic" that has always been considered a necessary element in fantasy adventure online games, and replaces it with "sword skills", which is set to be a near-infinite number of special moves.

It is said that it is intended to allow players to use their own bodies and fight with their own weapons, so that players can experience the maximum charm of a completely stealth environment.

In addition to combat skills, there are also various skills such as smelting, leather crafting, tailoring, and daily skills such as fishing, cooking, and music......

Players not only have adventures in the vast area, but also "live" in it, as the text describes......

All in all, it's like creating another world, with an unimaginable degree of freedom.

This information has triggered a frenzy among players, and if it weren't for the limited number of sales of the first batch of game equipment, I'm afraid that the server will be overwhelmed on the first day of service.

But even so, the number of online users instantly exceeded 9,500 as soon as the server was launched, and the number is increasing every moment!

This would have been a good thing, but it wasn't until the players who entered the game noticed that the logout option was gone, and things slowly started to go wrong, and the suspenseful atmosphere was forced to move to the starting location of the game at the same time for all players -

The central plaza of the "Beginning Town" reached its climax.

However, it didn't work, they couldn't jump up and hit the culprit in the knee, and they could only listen in horror, anger or trepidation as they made the other party's announcement of a terrorist's kidnapping.

Whether they want it or not, whether they accept it or not.

The in-game administrator unilaterally announced a frightening announcement to them, which was the official announcement of the game's operations.

……

……

"I think you've all noticed that the logout option disappears from the main menu. But that's not to say anything wrong with the game, I'll repeat it again. It's not a problem with the game, it's the original version of Sword Art Online......"

The red-cloaked giant who called himself Akihiko Kayaba said slowly, rightfully condescendingly facing the thousands of players in the square below.

Sword Art Online ...... The original version?

Everyone's faces were very complicated, and they couldn't understand what this meant.

Kayaba Akihiko is the name they have basically heard of, after all, the people who were able to enter the game on the first day of the server and grabbed the limited edition game equipment are estimated to be few who are not veteran players.

For a game fan, Akihiko Kayaba may not be an object of admiration, and interviews with him are very rare, but this name is something that you will hear about anyway.

Because he is the developer and producer of the game "Sword Art Online", and is also the basic designer of the "NERvGear" set.

A few years ago, ARGUS itself was just one of a handful of small game development companies, but today it has grown into what is known as the largest game development company in the industry......

The impetus came from this talented young game designer and quantum physicist.

It's just that he has always been just behind the scenes, trying to avoid appearing in the media - why would he do such a thing now?

"From now on, you won't be able to log out of the game on your own until you reach the top of this castle."

The red-cloaked giant who called himself Akihiko Kayaba continued to talk to himself.

And the crowd in the square subconsciously looked around, after all, they didn't see where the castle was, how could there be any castle here?

But in the next moment, they all seemed to understand.

The castle does not mean that there are any castles in this town, but that it refers to the whole of Ayn Grant? They were now on the first floor at the bottom, and there were ninety-nine floors above the huge floating castle that was constantly floating in the air?

“…… Besides, there's no way to stop or disable NERvGear from someone outside, and if anyone tries to do that—"

Akihiko Ashiba paused slightly, and there was a hint of cruelty in her words.

"The microwaves emitted by the signaling components of the NERvGear will destroy your brains and stop your life activities. More specifically, the external power supply is cut off for more than 10 minutes, the network is disconnected for more than 2 hours, and attempts to damage the NERvGear body or remove the fixed lock - only under these conditions will the brain destruction program be executed. ”

"And these conditions have been published in the outside world through the company and the media. By the way, at this point in time, there are already many players whose family and friends have ignored our warnings and tried to forcibly dismiss NERvGear, and the result is ......"

"There are currently two hundred and thirteen players who have retired from the real world and Ain Grandrie forever."

“……”

“……”

The crowd that understood the meaning of these words began to stir up from various places, but the movement was not too great for the time being, after all, when people are faced with such things, their first reaction is often to deny reality.

Their subconscious minds don't believe it, and they refuse to believe it, unless at least two or three days later, they find that they still can't get out, and there is no news from the outside world, and no one can come to save them.

Most people will really despair and gradually accept reality.

As for now, everyone was only angry and unwilling to believe it, although their bodies were already trembling with fear.

But Kayaba Jinghiko didn't care about this, he just simply announced this matter unilaterally, and the players only needed to be notified and then do it, and there was no right to choose whether to do it or not.

So, just to give the crowd a few seconds to digest, his solemn voice came from the blood-red sky again—

"There is only one condition that can liberate you from this game, and that is that I just mentioned, reach the highest level of Ayn Grant, which is the hundredth layer, and then defeat the final demon king waiting there......"

……

……

"The list of dead players has been updated, and the current number is two hundred and thirteen...... Is it? Hey, isn't that a bit embarrassing? ”

In the silver-white space with a sense of science fiction, sitting cross-legged on a mercury-like plane, Mo Chen is intercepting the latest data stream and analyzing the information in it.

"Did more than 200 people die one after another in ten minutes? Is the difficulty of this game too low, or is the game not hot enough and not enough people online? ”

Because the flow of information is too large, it is impossible for him to completely analyze all the data at once, so he is only slowly analyzing the fragmented data for a while.

And from the meaning that he analyzed, he pieced together the appearance of this virtual world.

It's just that this is a bit troublesome, it's like a puzzle, Mo Chen hasn't even put out a corner at the moment, and he hasn't found any more meaningful information. In addition, he didn't know what the internal information was until he unpacked the data.

So, puzzle repetition is also a frequent thing.

For example, he's been intercepting a lot of repetitive data, often about the player's stat panel or the battle report, and by extension, it has to deal with it......

This includes the role that each attribute plays in battle, the effect of each skill, and the extent to which it is used......

And so on and so forth.

At first, he was still analyzing it carefully, but later found out that this kind of report was completely garbage data, and it was useless after that, except for making himself more aware of the game's various attributes and abilities.

In the silvery white space, everything seems to have changed abruptly.

It's just that the seeds of the nightmare have been sown and the malice has begun to flow...... Chaos is quietly dormant, waiting for the time to come.