Episode 4

Behind the friendly teasing, I understood Klein’s euphoria. With my extra two months of experience and leveling, I’d been singlehandedly responsible for all of our battles so far, making this the first time Klein had truly tasted the pleasure of dispatching a foe with his own sword.

As if to practice his lesson, Klein repeated the same skill several times, hooting and cackling, while I turned to survey our surroundings.

The field around us was brilliantly illuminated by sunlight just beginning to take on a tinge of red. Far to the north lay the silhouette of a forest, while a lake sparkled to the south, and the walls of a town could be faintly glimpsed to the east. To the west was nothing but endless sky and golden clouds.

We were standing in a field to the west of the Town of Beginnings, the starting area at the south edge of the very first floor of Aincrad. Countless other players were no doubt fighting monsters of their own in our vicinity, but the scale of this space was so vast that none were within eyeshot.

Finally satisfied, Klein returned the cutlass to the scabbard on his waist and approached, scanning the horizon with me.

“Man…no matter how many times I see this, I just can’t bring myself to believe that it’s all inside a game.”

“Just because we’re ‘inside’ it doesn’t mean the game world has absorbed our souls or whatever. All our brains are doing is bypassing our eyes and ears, taking in the information directly through the NerveGear.” I spoke through pursed lips like a pouting child, my shoulders hunched.

“Yeah, well, you’re already used to it. This is my first full dive into the game! It’s unbelievable. What a time to be alive!!”

“You act like it’s such a big deal.”

I laughed it off but secretly agreed.

NerveGear.

The name of the hardware that runs Sword Art Online, this VRMMORPG—a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. But this machine is fundamentally different from the home TV gaming consoles of the past.

Unlike previous hardware featuring two points of man-machine interface on a flat monitor and a handheld controller, the NerveGear has just a single interface: a streamlined piece of headgear that entirely covers the head and face.

Countless transmitters embedded within the unit generate a multilayer electric field that connects directly to the user’s brain. Information is sent not to the eyes and ears but to the visual and auditory centers of the brain itself. And not just vision and hearing. Touch, taste, smell—the NerveGear is capable of accessing all the senses.

With the headgear on and the chinarm locked in place, a simple “link start” spoken command instantly causes all external noise to fade out and plunges your vision into darkness. Pass through a floating rainbow ring materializing out of the emptiness, and you’re in a different world composed entirely of digital data.

In other words, this machine, released to the public in May of 2022, finally succeeded in creating a perfect virtual reality. The major electronics manufacturer that developed the NerveGear coined the term “full dive” to describe the act of connecting to the VR world.

It was an all-encompassing isolation from reality, more than worthy of the term.

After all, the machine didn’t just provide virtual stimuli to all five senses; it also intercepted and collected the brain’s commands to the body.

This was a vital function in providing full control within the virtual world. In other words, if your mental commands to your real body were allowed to pass, you might run within the virtual world during a full dive, but your real body would quickly slam into the wall of your room.

It was only because the NerveGear intercepted the signals from the spine to the body and converted them to digital information that Klein and I could race around the virtual battlefield, swinging our swords with abandon.