SAO Remastered (Closed for Lucian_Devine)

[Poprockz]

At first Parsley had thought it was a scam when she got the call. Apparently she had won the sweepstakes she had entered into on a whim while going to the arcade recently. She hadn’t thought she would win the grand prize- maybe just the wireless earbuds consolation prize at best. After all, luck had never really been her strong suit.

So naturally when she got the call she had treated it with the utmost skepticism despite the flutter in her heart. That is, until they requested that she come back to that arcade to pick up her prize. They weren’t “requiring only a shipping fee” like a lot of scams would have. It could have been a prank or a bait and switch, but on the off-chance it was legitimate she went to the arcade. There, she stood utterly shocked as they shook her hand and then had her sign a few forms. At the end of It, she left with the equipment, console, and a pre-order of the hottest new game on the market. More jarring still was the fact that it was among the first 100 to be pre-ordered which meant that she would have access to special perks.

There wasn’t much to look forward to in her life, being that she was a 24 year old cashier without a college degree. There were no skills that would help her into a higher paying job, and she wasn’t sure what she would even do if she were able to scrounge up the funds needed to do so. Simply put, she had no direction. She was treading water in a still lake that offered no solutions, nor sign of shore. Still, she found relief by occasionally hanging out with her friend Jenny, spending time with her cat Jangles, and going to the arcade when she had time. The shooter games were second-nature to her now, and her claw-machine technique was exemplary. She didn’t really need any stuffed animals or anything, so she had been saving up her tickets for a high prize. When the sweepstakes was announced, she figured it might be worth a shot.

When she reached her apartment and the shock wore off, she couldn’t help but feel excited. This was the most exciting thing to ever happen to her, and she knew she was in for quite a treat.

….

1 Month later (6 days after the release of the game)

“BBBBBBRRRRR!” The city horn blew loud and ominous, the vibration reverberating throughout the streets. The NPC’s started to scream and scramble to their homes, shouting that “they’re back! They’ve come to raid the city!”

“THEY HAVE A TROLL!” Someone hollered from the wall. “They’re coming! We need archers and spell casters above, and combat fighters below!”

“We can’t do this! We’re too low-level! We have to run o-or hide!” A spear-wielding man whimpered, holding an axe in trembling hands.

There were murmurs of agreement from the other fighters, but one glared at them and stood their ground. He was a tall man with a knight armor set, a traditional sword and shield in hand. “We’re the highest-level fighters this city has! If we don’t fight, that raiding party is going to slaughter all the beginners! And then what? We’ll have less people to fight with us in the future. And in case you haven’t forgotten, people DIE when their HP gets to zero. We have a responsibility to defend this city and its people! You’ve fought goblins before- where’s your courage?!”

“They have a fucking TROLL, man! We’ll never make it!” One of the women hissed back.

“We will make it, or we’ll put everything we have into making sure that as few of them get past us as possible!” The knight stood his ground. He then turned towards the drawbridge and said quietly, “we have to.”

The drawbridge was lowered and beyond it they could see the goblin raiding party hooting and hollering, a large troll lumbering slowly forward with a giant club in-hand.

Thwick.

One of the goblin shamans fell to the ground, the others not noticing for the moment.

Thwick.

The second goblin shaman dropped, and this time both the soldiers and the goblin party noticed that something was happening. With the shamans down, it would make it a lot safer for archers to be on the wall.

Thwick.

The troll roared as an arrow pierced its thick hide, hitting it right in the chest. The party could see its HP go down by a fifth, their eyes widening. There was a higher-level archer somewhere supporting them! Both fear and excitement settled on the group as they continued to wait with baited breath. An archer was bound to take some heat after the shots they made, and currently the entirety of the goblin party was available to focus their attention on that person.

However… it never happened.

The goblins looked around, confused as the arrows continued to come. One. Two. Three. Four! The troll groaned as it fell forward to the ground, dead and defeated. And still, the arrows continued to come.

“Come on! The troll is down and all that’s left is run-of-the-mill goblins! We can do this! We can win this raid!” The knight held up his sword and the group shouted with renewed vigor. The group charged out of the gate, other emboldened archers and spell casters settling on the wall and joining the fight. What might have been a massacre ended up being a victory, yet no one could say who the mystery archer was. When questioned, the other archers said they hadn’t seen anyone else on their part of the wall, but that one of them saw arrows coming from a part of one of the forward towers that was inaccessible to their knowledge.

Some speculated that it was a ghost of the city, or perhaps some sort of machinery set to activate when hostile forces approached. However, the arrows themselves looked to be ones recently purchased from one of the fletchers of the city. A rumor started going around that there was an invisible player within the walls.

The most valuable item from the raid was offered to whoever could come forward and prove that they were the archer, but no one was able to do so and the mystery person didn’t accept the reward.

7 Days later (13 days after the start of the game)

“Will he come?” One of the fighters murmured to their friend as the horn went off once more. The two traded nervous looks as the group waited to see what the watcher on the wall reported.

“We’ve got another goblin raiding party with… THEY’VE GOT TWO WARGS THIS TIME!”

The men and women paled at the news. Trolls were big and hit hard, but they were slow. Wargs were vicious and fairly quick. Once again they went back and forth on whether or not they wanted to stand and fight, but ultimately they decided to wait and see, hoping that the archer on high would assist them again.

They were not disappointed.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

They squinted, not having seen anyone in the goblin’s party having gone down. However, something soon streaked through the air and hit the ground, igniting the bottles of oil that had splattered all over the ground in front of the goblin’s path. The wargs balked, whimpering at the sight of fire, much to the frustration of the goblins.

Thwick! Thwick! Thwick!

Fire arrows started whizzing through the night air, hitting warg and goblin alike until both of the wargs were down and several goblins were screaming and on fire. The fire only lasted for so long though, and soon the path was open to the goblins once more. Either the archer had run out of fire arrows or was trying to conserve them, as normal arrows were now sniping goblins from afar.

“The Ballista is with us! Come on! Let’s do our part!” The knight roared in encouragement, the group surging out once more to defeat their attackers. Only two people were lost during the two raids, which was surprising given the statistics of the other cities.

Once more, people tried to figure out who the person was, mostly by staking out the fletcher to see who bought arrows. No one bought an exorbitant amount of arrows though, so the person escaped notice again.

…

The next day (14 days after release of the game)

Parsley bought plain oatmeal without add-ons, which got her the normal side-eye.

“You sure you don’t want some butter, hun? Maybe a little cream or fruit? It’s only a few coppers extra,” the cook offered, gesturing at the items in question with her ladle.

Though her mouth watered, Parsley shook her head and replied quietly with a polite, “no thank you.”

“Alright, suit yourself. I’m just sayin’- we’re stuck in this game with nothin’ to do but wait for when they figure out a tech fix. Might as well take the extras while we wait, huh?”

She shrugged and took her plate back to her table to eat alone. Blueberries, strawberries, butter, cream… those things sounded really good right now, but she needed to conserve every copper she could. The fletcher had a bow one could purchase with really good damage and scaling on it, and she wanted it badly. The raids were only going to get worse, so she wanted to do everything she could to keep up with the difficulty, come what may.

Another fun little thing the game had done besides making the place a death-trap was restore everyone’s presets so that they looked like whatever they did in real life. Though the caveat to that was that any aesthetic changes to their hair or skin remained the same. Thus, if one had given themselves pink hair and piercings, that would still reflect on their character designs. For her own character’s looks, she had opted to have short, curly turquoise hair but had not gone for any of the tattoos or piercings.

It was likely going to be another day of going out beyond the walls and grinding on low-level monsters to get coin and exp. That sort of thing got boring fast, but the fear of her possible demise was a good motivator to keep her on track.

 

[Lucian_Devine]

Zayne let out a soft sigh as he opened his eyes, coming out of another short and restless sleep. Unlike most people when they weren't able to sleep though, he knew damn well what was causing it, and a simple turn towards his nightstand was all it took for him to confirm what day today was. He moved his arm across his body to grab the marker he kept by it for this purpose and put an X through another day. His eyes scanned the 14 X's and the words printed between the top lines of the first one, "SAO release date". With another soft sigh, he pushed himself into a sitting position and cradled his head in his hands. He knew what he was thinking was stupid, utterly stupid, but deep down, he knew that he didn't have a choice.

There was a fair bit of stuff that Zayne had to do to pack and get ready for what he was about to do. So he turned on the TV, turned it to the news channel, and started packing. He knew that he wouldn't be able to pack his entire apartment in a single bag, but he at least hoped to get the few things that he truly cared about, pictures of him and his sister, no parents to be seen in any of them, a small stuffed elephant that he stroked lovingly for a few seconds before packing, and as many sets of clothes as he could get to fit. Yes, he naturally wanted to bring more, but he knew that he was going to be a burden as it was, and didn't want to be any more of a burden than he absolutely had to be. He let the news play on as he ate breakfast, and it confirmed that everything was as it had been last night, the last night he'd said he'd give the players in SAO. They hadn't completed a single floor, and as far as anybody could tell, they hadn't even figured out the puzzle that would lead them to the right tower with the boss in it, and all of this just on floor 1. He could only imagine how hard things were going to be as they got higher up.

It was because of the news, and what it was covering, that Zayne was packing his things. He'd been a gamer for as long as he could remember, loving RPG's and especially the puzzles within them. He just had a knack for them, even though he wasn't a savant or anything like that.

The only new information on the news today, was them actually figuring out what had happened within the game, or more specifically why it had happened. Though plenty of people had helped create the game, it was mostly the brainchild of 2 people, Akihiko and Kayaba, though you wouldn't know it from all of the print about the game recently and the financial statements of the company. Akihiko had screwed Kayaba out of his half of the project, and Kayaba was doing this as revenge. Just before the game launched, he snuck a patch in that made it so that the players would go from feeling none of the pain their character felt to all of it. This wouldn't harm their physical bodies, with the system just making the nerve endings fire as though the hits were real. The problem came when the character died...The brain could only take so much stimulation, and character death caused an overload in the system, making it effectively fry the brain of the player. This in and of itself was bad, but it was ESPECIALLY bad when you consider that hundreds of thousands of players had access to it on day one. News of the "glitch" spread fast, but there was no way of knowing just how many people were trapped, because removing the headset while the game was on had the same effect. It was for those people that Zayne was doing what he was doing, stepping in to help, despite the risks. He knew that his parents, neglectful as they were, would never understand. His friends, his coworkers, nobody would understand why he was doing this, except his twin sister.

Zayne turned off the news as he pulled into his sister's driveway. Her house was small but homely, big enough for her needs, which was all that mattered. He parked his car, grabbed his bag and the box that contained the Nervegear and the SAO game, and rang the bell. He took a long and slow breath as he heard movement inside the house, and he offered up a small smile to Zyra when she opened the door. She did the same, but her smile disappeared when she saw what he was carrying. He saw her take a hard swallow before her gaze lifted back up to meet his, a gaze so very much like his own. Still she didn't say anything. She just nodded her head and stepped aside so that he could enter, which he did.

"I don't suppose I can talk you out of it?" Zyra asked with her back to him as she led him through the house to the guest bedroom, where she once again stepped aside, but this time so that he could enter the room first.

Zayne stepped into the room, slung set the boxes on the bed, and slung the bag off of his shoulder. He didn't start setting things up right away, but rather sat on the bed and lifted his gaze to meet Zyra's. "It's hundreds of thousands of people Zy..." He said softly, bowing his head once more. He let his eyes drift closed as his hands lifted to cradle his head once more. What he didn't see or hear though, was Zyra approaching him with that soft step of hers, not until he felt her arms close around him.

"I know...but I had to try..." She said softly to him before taking a step back, moving a hand beneath his chin, and guiding it up to look at her. "Zeke Durran's going to have his hands full this time isn't he?" She asked, a bit more life in her voice this time, and a small smile on her lips. Her words pulled a soft chuckle from Zayne. She knew him so well.

"Heh, he sure does Zy...He sure does." Zayne said, agreeing with his sister about what he intended to name his avatar, a name from their past that had helped them through some rough times. He pushed himself to his feet then, closing the distance, hugging her close, and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead before stepping back once more. "Thank you for this Zy, truly. Nobody else would understand." She simply nodded then, the smile still on her face as she turned around to leave. She didn't want him to see her cry, lest it make him change his mind. She of course closed the door behind her, giving her brother privacy.

Zayne was quick with his preparations then, stripping down to comfortable clothes as he opened the Nervegear box and physically set up the system, complete with plugging it into the wall. It had a backup battery if needed, but he wanted it to be fully charged if the power ever went out, or if his body had to be moved. The last thing he did before putting the Nervegear on and turning the game on, was putting that little stuffed elephant next to his head, for luck.

 

[Lucian_Devine]

(14 days after release of the game)

Zayne breezed through the early calibrations of the Nervegear, but naturally slowed down when it came time for the actual character creation. The first thing he got to pick was his name, which he'd already decided, and of course his Zyra had deduced, Zeke Durran. After he picked his name, it was time to pick the skills. He read every single skill, even though he already knew what kind of character he was going to make. He might not have done so if it weren't for the rumors of players killing other players. He couldn't do anything about the infinite number of unique skills that had been advertised, but he could at least be prepared against the abilities that players had at the start of the game.

Once Zayne was as prepared as he felt he was going to be, he set about actually picking his own skills. There were 4 primary stats, strength, stamina, agility, and intelligence, as well as a variety of sub-stats. He picked stamina as his main stat of interest, because MMORPG's almost always had a shortage of tanks and healers, which was almost certainly going to be the case here, with the majority of people picking their initial character specs before they knew it was a death game. He, thankfully, knew what he was getting himself into, and made his decisions accordingly. For his special bonus, he chose the one that gave him higher health regeneration when his health was low. He was already 14 days behind the people that were going to min-max their stats, which might not sound like a lot, but was. Thankfully though, tanks were an archetype that could do more with less. As long as he had enough health to not get 1-shotted, he could try and avoid taking damage while his heath regenerated. It would naturally slow down as he got closer to full health, but that was when he didn't need it as much.

Once he was done selecting the tank-specific aspects of his character, Zayne moved on to what could be called the profession portion of character creation, more specifically the crafting professions. Now that he'd decided to be a tank, he had to figure out what kind of armor he wanted to wear. Plate armor naturally offered the best protection, but it also only allowed you up to 50% of your max agility while you were wearing it. Scale mail offered less protection, but up to 75% of your max agility, with leather/hide and cloth armor offering the least amount of protection, but allowing you every bit of your agility in return. It made sense of course, the more cumbersome the armor, the better the protection, the less nimble you were, and vice versa. He chose to specialize in scale mail, because of what he saw in the crafting section. When you leveled up your armor crafting skill enough, you could specialize in making one type of armor. The stat bonus you get for wearing your own crafted armor increased, but what he was more excited about was the removal of the agility cap. Well, it actually just increased it by 25%, making plate have the same cap as scale, and scale having no cap like leather/hide and cloth armor. He chose blacksmithing as well, for the ability to make his own weapons. They came with the same stat increase for wielding weapons you made yourself that armor crafting did, and the choice to specialize in a type of weapon that would then let you embed one more gem in it. Most people tended to focus on just one type of crafting, so that they could put all of their time and effort into it, and of course the gathering/mining that you had to do if you wanted to collect your own materials rather than buy them, but with so many lives at stake, this was definitely more of a marathon than a sprint, and he was happy to work harder if it meant more rewards. He'd have to skin animals and mine ore like his life depended on it.

With his skills and professions all sorted out, Zayne was just about done with character creation. The last thing was the appearance of his avatar. It would look like it always did when he made him in a game, short black hair and deep blue eyes, but more importantly, it wasn't going to be the same modest 5'6'' height that he was, or have the wiry, barely noticeable muscles that he had. No, Zeke Durran was 6'6'' tall, broad-shouldered, and had a body that was layered with muscles.

When Zayne's character was finally done, and he loaded into the Town of Beginnings, he looked around before taking his first steps as Zeke. His head swam a bit as he took his first few steps, his brain not used to standing and walking with that extra foot of height. He took the time to admire his hands, once again bigger than he was used to. The best part though, was when he closed those giant hands into fists and could literally FEEL the muscles rippling just beneath the skin. He smiled at that, his blue gaze flicking upwards as he set off at a sprint. He didn't get far though before something strange happened. The first time he passed a reflective surface, the windows of a nearby shop, and saw himself, his character model started to glow with a blue light. It was faint at first, stopping him in his tracks, but when it got to a near-blinding brightness, he had to close his eyes against it. What he saw when he looked into the glass once more surprised him even more. It was...him...the longer black hair that was always getting in his eyes, the light brown eyes, and even the pointy chin. He saddened at the sight though, until he realized what was missing, his glasses. He hadn't been wearing his glasses for the scan, but he could see perfectly now. He couldn't remember the last time he'd truly seen himself without his glasses. Then, as he was looking at himself, he saw what else was different. He looked like him, but he had Zeke's body, the height, the muscles, all of it. He knew that it had to be a bug, that the feature was likely designed for the people who were here on day one, and that it likely didn't know what to do with somebody logging in afterwards, but he wasn't about to complain. Even breathing felt different. He looked confident as he lifted his head, took a breath, and started on his way, and it was then that he decided that he was no longer Zayne, not here anyway. Here, he would be Zeke. He knew how it would sound, but if he was going to accomplish what he'd set out to do, he was going to need to be confident. People wouldn't listen to 5'6'' Zayne, but they'd listen to Zeke.

The first few days were...experimental to say the least, with Zeke trying different weapons, different shield sizes, and of course getting used to the feeling of hitting things and being hit. He'd prepared himself for a lot of things, but you couldn't really prepare yourself for the feeling of a wolf biting into your arm for the first time, the goring tusks of a boar, or the claws of a lioness. Still, he did the best he could, while always making sure to keep an eye on his health bar and making sure to have health potions on hand and keeping an eye out for other players, especially those with an orange icon.

Of all the things that Zayne had expected when he first made Zeke, it was ultimately his weapon choice that surprised him, or rather weapons. Yes, he was a tank, but he found that he was incredibly clumsy with a shield, both in terms of blocking incoming attacks, and attacking while he held one. He loved the feel of a weapon in his hand though. So wielding two of them came more naturally to him than he expected. There were of course things a shield could do that a second weapon couldn't, but he pushed forward all the same. Hell, it would even make specializing in weapon crafting later that much more efficient!

With his gear choices sorted out, Zeke's next choice was how to allocate his stats and what kind of bonuses he was looking for on his weapons and armor. He decided early on that he was going to be putting the fewest points in intelligence. He didn't hate the sword skills, quite the opposite really. They certainly had their uses, but he also didn't like being locked into an attack pattern that he couldn't change until the skill was complete. He'd ended up timing things badly more than once early on, and gotten hit as a result. So with less reliance on sword skills, he didn't need the larger MP pool and MP regeneration that came with intelligence. All three of the other skills were useful though, and he found himself splitting his stat points between them equally. Yes, he wanted to do damage, but you can't do damage when you're dead, and you can't do damage if you're moving too damn slow in your armor. He even doubled down on looking for gear that gave all three stats, even though it gave less points to each stat than if he chose gear that only had one or two stats. Again, he'd never have the highest strength, stamina, or agility among the players, but that wasn't his goal. He was trying to be well-rounded, just in case. He even bypassed the opportunity to take pieces that had all four stats, trading that to other players in exchange for what he was looking for. Yes, he was trading down, but he was making friends along the way, and it was those friends that he told the solution to the first boss puzzle, hoping that eventually word would spread to the people preparing to fight it.

 

[Lucian_Devine]

Zeke grinded like a madman those first two weeks, getting more and more frustrated that the boss still hadn't been defeated, or even attempted. He was leveling up fast, and found himself happy with the choices he'd made during character creation, including the 2 crafting professions. If he ever found a player skinning the animals he wanted to skin, he just switched to mining ore, and vice-versa when there was another miner around. Sometimes he even followed players around, with their permission, skinning the animals they killed and giving them the loot from it. He cared less about the loot than he did about leveling up his skinning, and if he could help out another player along the way, all the better. It was another player to rely on if an orange player showed up, and if you can't cooperate in a death game, you don't stand a chance anyway. Still his frustrations over the boss situation continued to grow. He knew from the news reports back in the real world that hundreds had already died day 1, and over a thousand in the first week. Every day they took meant that another person might die.

It was with the idea of stopping the deaths of these innocent players that Zeke found himself in a particular town instead of grinding out experience or crafting materials. The word had finally gone out that somebody had FINALLY solved the puzzle, and that they were organizing a meeting and raid party to take down the boss room after the next round of city attacks. He hated that they were waiting, but he couldn't really fault them for it. The city attacks were one of the most consistent ways to level up, since the attacking mobs were scaled to the average player level of the floor. So, the stronger players got, the stronger they'd become, making them good for experience points, loot, skinning, etc. There was something special about this town though. Every town had casualties, but there was something about this town that was different. It had a lower average casualty rate than the other towns, and everyone here seemed to attribute it to somebody called "The Ballista". The catch was that nobody knew who that person was, or if they were even a real person or just a random NPC that protected this town in particular. So Zeke camped out...and waited. After all, what was a mystery but another kind of puzzle?

Zeke tried not to make himself look too obvious, which thankfully wasn't too hard in his brown drakescale armor and modest bronze swords. Being 14 days behind everyone else had it's advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you were doing. He camped out at a bar across from the fletcher, a mug of ale always in his hand, his mouth always moving as he talked to people who asked him questions, the barkeep and barmaid, who were real people instead of NPC's. He found it interesting that people navigated themselves towards what they'd done in the real world, those that couldn't or wouldn't fight to clear the game anyway, if only to help alleviate the monotony of life here. After all, if you weren't fighting to clear the game, what else did you have but time? As he sat, drank, and talked, he noticed some things, not so much people, but things. You could tell a lot by a person from the gear they chose, how they decorated it, the food they ate, and so on. What he noticed, was a bunch of people going about their day, a bunch of people standing out, a bunch of people trying to figure out who "The Ballista" was, and a girl. She walked with a purpose, shopped with a purpose, and even ate with a purpose, modest as it was. In a world full of people making the most of every meal, trying to stand out among their peers, and going about their daily lives, she seemed to be deliberately trying to avoid drawing attention.

After he was done with his beer, Zeke stood up, determined to follow the freckle-faced girl, keeping his distance, trying to seem busy, but never losing sight of her, even if it was out of the corner of his eye. He of course let her walk around corners, waited a bit, and followed her, and it was on one of these occasions that he lost her. He wouldn't have thought much of it, but it was awfully close to where people suspected "The Ballista" hung out, but nobody could ever find an entrance that led up to towers, and climbing had proven to be similarly useless. So, with nothing else to do, he waited, stepped back around the corner he'd been around before, ensuring that he was out of sight, keeping his ears perked.