SAO

Chastain Grey, who was spending time at her family's house in BSV, watched the broadcast announcing the opening of the Altissia zoo and the release of Sword Art Online and accompanying NerveGear.

After considering it for a while, while understanding that she had quite a bit of time left before her reentry into Raven's Multiverse, she decided to go IRL and purchase the equipment to try his latest invention.

Although it's a large time sink considering there is no time-dilation, simply taking a look will not affect much. Plus, it should be fun...she'll place an order for the equipment and then spend time in Altissia or Dome City after reentry while waiting for the NerveGear to arrive at her house in real life.

.....(Scene Break).....

Time passed and the months flew by in the virtual world, and many people across Blue Star received their NerveGear and lay down on their beds ready for activation.

Chastain is currently adorned in the NerveGear, an excited gleam in her eyes.

"Link Start!!!" following the instructions, she said the passphrase, and her vision blurred before colors flowed together, forming typical introduction information coupled with a Terms of Service prompt.

After she finished all of the formalities and entered the SAO game, she found herself in a large city square. Numerous flashes of light appeared all around her which receded to show fellow players, people entering SAO just like her.

'Well, this won't be the death worlds I'm used to but it should still be fun....based on the instructions, it's like we're living in a game and not real life...' she thought while swiping her right hand downward, causing a personal menu to appear where she could see her personal layout and settings.

"Welp, time to play some games like in the Altissia arcade I suppose. Let's go kill some monsters..." the woman whispered to herself.

Our heroine started the day off in the beautiful grasslands filled to the brim with low-level monsters. She's been testing the combat mechanics all day and she has to say, it's very different from the real-life combat she's used to, but her combat experience will definitely translate well.

'Sh]t...' she thought, coming to some sort of realization.

'If my experience in Raven's Multiverse translates well to this world, then the experiences here must translate to his multiverse well also....which means that those who play this will be Traveler-trainees in a sense...' the more she thought about it, the more she was sure.

"Raven, you sneaky guy...." she had to admit though, it's a great way to combat the slander campaign being levied by the higher echelons. Getting young people addicted to this sort of lifestyle thereby shifts their mentality subtly.

Before she could analyze more, she was engulfed in a bright light. She reappeared in her starting place with the rest of the players, in the starting city's square.

"Hey, what's going on!??..." one person asked.

".....why did we come back here? Is this some sort of glitch?..... I thought this Oscars man was supposed to be great at making games?" many dissatisfied voices rang through the square, but they all stopped when a mass of blood-like liquid appeared in the sky.

The liquid mass grew and deformed until it finally became a large-robed individual whose face couldn't be seen under the hood. However, a deep voice rang out through the black void which many in the square are very familiar with...