8 Chapter 08

"Well sure. Since it's a bug,*" the redhead replied calmly with a negligent shrug of the shoulders.

"It's not just a stupid bug," Harry yelled; the nine year old suddenly and unreasonably angry that the man could be so cavalier about the glitch that spelled the end of Harry's entire world. "A stupid bug would have been fixed hours ago!"

"Huh? What was that?" the redhead asked in confusion as he spun around to glance at Harry.

"What do you mean, 'hours ago'?" the brunette demanded with a frown at the same time; both men thankfully speaking English in response to Harry's use of the language (making it easier for the nine year old to understand their questions).

"I've been trying to log out for…" Harry started to reply only for the rest of his words to be cut off when the loud ringing of a bell cut through the entire field. Shortly after the ringing echoes faded, he was engulfed in the blue light of a forced teleportation and he half feared and half hoped that that meant that the glitch had been discovered by the support staff and the GMs were forcefully ejecting everyone out of the game so that the error could be fixed and the servers rebooted.

No such luck.

The moment the light cleared, Harry found himself back in Hajimari no Machi, standing in the middle of the large stone courtyard where he'd first appeared when he'd logged into the game four and a half hours earlier alongside hundreds of other Players. On the opposite side of the courtyard from him, two more pillars of blue light deposited the two men he'd been talking to just a few minutes earlier at the same time as Harry checked his Player Menu to see if the log out function had been fixed; it hadn't.

As Harry closed his Menu again, thousands more pillars of blue light deposited other individuals in the area until Harry imagined that every single Player in the game had been forcefully brought to the large area. When the last transport glow faded, the sky turned red as hundreds of flashing tags blocked out the sky as they declared that a system announcement was about to take place. Shortly after the last patch of blue sky vanished behind one of the tags, a figure poured out of the cracks between the flashing tags to tower over the gathered Players. The moment it was fully formed it began speaking.

The next twenty minutes would irrevocably change the lives of every single Player in the game.

Harry didn't understand most of what was being said by the intimidating, larger-than-life figure hovering in the sky above the plaza; he was not using any of the common phrases that Harry had learned and the muttering going on all around him made it harder to concentrate. He knew it must be bad though, because he could see a number of the Players all around him starting to panic or grow angry and more than a few people started screaming what sounded like threats or curses at the figure in the sky.

His confusion over the current situation only grew when he noticed everyone around him suddenly open up their Inventories and take out identical mirrors in response to something the figure had said. He was just considering looking in his Inventory to see if he had one of the mirrors as well when white pillars of light began engulfing the other Players. Uncertain about what was happening now, Harry watched as the flashes of white light transformed each Player; some completely changing (a few young girls even turning into old men) while others just received minor changes to their Avatars.

When no pillar of light encompassed him, Harry suspected that the light was somehow connected to the mirrors (because the Players weren't engulfed in the strange light until they were touching the mirrors) and he closed out his Menu without even looking inside of his Inventory because it appeared that the change was painful given the higher number of people that were now yelling and panicking.

The apparition in the sky spoke one last time at that point before it melted back into the flashing background of the warning tags and the crowd began panicking once again.

Harry carefully made his way clear of the crowd that was growing rowdier by the second and hid behind a stack of crates in a nearby alley as he tried to figure out what had just happened. He was just contemplating whether or not he should ask another Player about what had just happened when a brunette teen wearing an outfit similar to the brunette man he'd spoken to earlier dragged an older, scruffy looking man with spiky brown hair (who was wearing the same clothes as the redhead from earlier) into the alley.

The nine year old held his breath and canted his head to the side to activate his Listening Skill as the pair held a short conversation. Any hopes he had of getting a better understanding of the situation were dashed when the conversation just served to confuse Harry further since he only managed to understand one in three words spoken before the teen vanished and the man returned to the courtyard.

It would take Harry two days of eavesdropping in the various market places to learn that Kayaba Akihiko had trapped ten thousand people inside of the game and that the mirrors every one had taken out of their Inventory had stripped all of the Players of their artificial Avatars, forcing them to appear in the game much as they did in real life. It was another three days before he learned that an in game death equated to death in real life and that there were no second chances within the game; if you died, you were dead and nothing was going to bring you back.

By the end of the first week, Harry had learned that over four hundred people had supposedly died but most people weren't taking the deaths seriously because they still thought it was all some big joke. When the truth of their situation finally sank in alongside the realization that they were really well and truly trapped, many people gave into their despair.

Not Harry though.

Once Harry learned that he'd never have to leave Aincrad (at least not until someone cleared the final level), all of his worries and fears faded away.

He was home and no one could make him leave.

At first, he worried that his aunt and uncle would forcibly remove the Nerve Gear, killing him in the process, but soon realized they would have already done so if they'd been able to. That, or they'd already killed his body and his soul would live on indefinitely within the game until his Avatar was killed.

Harry didn't care.

All that mattered now was that he was home and he was free.

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