15Author's Note
This is largely conceived after reading a story I missed the initial release of. Somebody else tried their hand at gender-bending Kirito, though he didn't decide to go down the yuri path – yet, though I hope he eventually does if he continues.
I'm talking about "ALfheim Online: Hard Mode" by Insert New Name Here, along with a few of his other stories. The name gave me the idea for this premise, and some of his other works and how they handled dual-wielding gave me the idea for how to make my female Kirito dual-wield right away.
The general idea this story is based on is the slight alteration of game mechanics in regards to weapon styles (wielding two weapons simultaneously is an option for everyone right at the start, but is understandably hard to pull off effectively, and there are no skills exclusively for multi-weapon builds). Also, and this is the main thing, the considerable increase in difficulty that SAO would have undergone if the AIs of all NPCs and monsters alike were on par with human intellect.
Warnings for this story:
Female Kirito. Obviously, because I don't do stories with male leads. Ever.
OP main character. Not so noticeable right away, but it will be in the future.
Smart main character. Because you have to be really smart in order to survive here, and canon Kirito was smart anyway. Still a warning because I'm making this gender-bend quite a bit smarter than canon Kirito.
Yuri. Because, you know, I just can't write hetero romance at this point.
Lots and lots of character death. After all, anyone who isn't known for their intellect, such as Kibaou, would be slaughtered mercilessly in this AU. So yeah, one thorn out of Kiriko's side.
That's it. This author note is getting too long, but most of that needed to be said. I'll let you read now.
Sword Art Online: Hard Mode
Prologue: Moral Questions
If you don't fight with your head, you'll be massacred. That's the creed I lived by for the past two months. It took more than learning powerful skills to beat these monsters. Much more. It was a constant struggle to outwit your opponents into losing their HP, because wildly swinging your sword around wouldn't do anything but get you stunned from your foe's parry.
If it were a normal game, this kind of challenge would be exciting to face. But this game, the world's first VRMMO, Sword Art Online, lost any hope of being normal on the day its official service began. With the creator's own proclamation, everything changed. It stopped being a fun, challenging game that took away your attention and time from the real world, and instead became a prison that trapped a hundred thousand players in its grand stage against their will.
With real death as the penalty for losing all your HP, this prison stole away our hopes. The only way to escape was to clear the game, which only worsened morale. Some committed suicide out of disbelief or despair. Some went out to challenge the game, only to die to the lowest-tier mobs because they underestimated the incredibly high-level AI programs that ran everything in the game.
But… there were those who survived those first mobs. There were players strong and smart enough to brave the danger and move forward. Determined enough to persevere through the mountainous obstacles and attempt to clear the impossible death trap this world had become.
This is the story of those players, told by one of them. I am Kirigaya Kimiko, in-game name Kiriko, and this is the story of my struggles as one of the clearers of «Aincrad».
A dull, gray, rusted sword closed in on my left shoulder, right below the baseline of my neck. I blocked with my left sword effortlessly, redirecting the blow upwards as my right blade came in for a counterattack.
With a satisfying slight resistance, I tore my right sword through the wide open chest of my opponent, knocking it back a few centimeters as its HP dropped considerably. My foe released a blood-curdling scream upon its loss of life as a red damage line appeared in the wake of my blade.
The AI monster in front of me, a level-eight humanoid mob known as a «Kobold Knight», was one of the stronger mobs in the first floor. It used an arming sword in its right hand, and the level-nine ones a level of the labyrinth up would carry shields in their left hands. For that reason, I decided to stay on this level, right up until the EXP gain from killing them passed its peak. The shield-using kobolds on the next level were not only of a higher level, but also had a slightly more intelligent AI that made them incredibly hard to kill with just a solo player, even after their higher stats stopped being threatening. Simply put, they knew how to use their shields better than most players did at this point, and that put a dual-wielder like me at a slight disadvantage.
"You'll pay for that, intruder fiend! You won't get past me!" the kobold shouted at me through its long, wolf-like muzzle, though over half its HP was already depleted from my constant strikes and counters.
He made himself sound like he was fighting for a noble cause – to defend the castle of his master, the boss of the first floor, from a foreign invader. In reality, he was an opposing force whose mere presence stood in the way of the escape of several tens of thousands of players. His words just now were pre-programmed to be uttered when his health dipped below the halfway mark, but before the yellowed bar dipped into the red, or the quarter mark, and his attack patterns changed. They didn't mean much other than that.
Or at least, that's what I told myself so I didn't feel bad about slaughtering an intelligent existence. Besides, even when I killed this one, another would spawn in due time to take its place. It wouldn't be missed, or even have its existence acknowledged by anyone other than the one girl who defeated it.
But at the same time, this one would be different from the one that took its place. This kobold's artificial intelligence program had learned a lot about my moves in the short time we had exchanged blows with each other. And because it learned about them, it also learned ways to counter each of them, forcing me to change my fighting style constantly in order to outmatch it.
But the data that this kobold gathered from my moves would not be transferred to its successor. It would be discarded, as if to prove that this kobold had its own unique existence in this world, this virtual reality setting. The beast-man that would take this one's place and position would be a "clean" AI, one that had never fought another being in its short lifespan, until someone else who braved the labyrinth came to challenge it.
Which posed the question: were my actions against this kobold, a living, intelligent existence in this world, unjust? Was I committing a crime by inflicting harm on another intelligent being? Though my cursor remained green after attacking this humanoid monster, there were some things that the system alone couldn't quite comprehend.
But no, that wasn't quite right. Based on the creator's own message to all the players at the start of the game, we had to face these intelligent beings and kill them in order to move on and eventually free ourselves from this cruel prison. So by virtue of the creator of this world, there was nothing wrong with slaying these things to grow stronger, so that I stood a chance against the boss of floor one.
With that thought at the front of my mind, I put my left sword atop my shoulder, setting it into the position necessary to activate a kind of attack unique to the fights of this world – a sword skill. In less than a second, I released the starter skill, «Slant», and my white-shimmering sword tore diagonally into my enemy's torso.
While my right arm remained relatively unaffected by the system assist of the skill, I moved my other blade into a position centimeters above my right shoulder. As my left foot moved back, the skill motion for my «Slant» stopped, and I almost fell victim to a short, involuntary pause in movement – called a «Post-Motion Delay».
But just before the delay began, my right sword began to glow a bright blue, signifying the startup animation of another skill – this time another starter, «Vertical». This was the reason I chose to use two swords. This technique that cancelled out the post-motion delay of sword skills by chaining them into new ones had saved me from defeat many times since I conceived it long ago.
My right blade came down hard on the defenseless kobold's head, ripping through it and depleting the last of its HP. Just before it died, the beast-man whispered one last thing for only me to hear.
"Curse you, intruder…!"
With such a hate-filled parting message, the unnamed Kobold Knight shattered into a rainbow of polygonal fragments that blew away in the slight draft of the labyrinth.
It's… over. I survived again.
I panted lightly as I sheathed my two blades in their scabbards tied to my waist. They slid in effortlessly with a nice, clean sound effect. One completely different from the sound effect generated by my blades cutting through virtual flesh.
I knew I would probably have to head back in a few hours. I had already been in the labyrinth for at least twelve hours, having gotten up incredibly early due to nightmares. I'd probably fight two or three more Kobolds, individually of course, then make my way back down to the bottom of the labyrinth and head for the closest town.
As my concentration on the current situation wandered, I began wondering how the friend I made on day one was doing. An older male by the in-game name of Klein. I wondered if he and his friends were safe. I hoped that they were, but I couldn't help but speculate that one or two of them had died in the two months we had been trapped here.
Klein… please, keep living. Even if it's just you.
As I walked over to a small room to catch my breath, I began reminiscing. I thought back to the day all of this began, before the wonderfully-knit fantasy of deception fell apart at the seams.
Author's Note
Unlike Insert and his ALO: Hard Mode, I'm going to continue this if it kills me. The idea came to me like lightning and only got hotter from there. Plus, anything past chapter one of this counts as an update, not a new story, which makes me safe in that regard.
So, what do you guys think so far? Granted, you haven't seen very much of just how terrifyingly lifelike the NPCs and mobs of this game can be yet, since I started from floor one. Trust me, it only gets harder from here.
By the way, anybody notice how I eliminated the possibility of the large time-skips that were inevitable in my claim to fame, GGO: The Swordswoman? By starting the narration pre-flashback at an earlier point, I closed the incredible gap that threatened the continuity of my first work. That was intentional, trust me.
Anyway, I'd love to hear some thoughts on this prologue. Yes, I know it's short, but it's only the beginning, so I figured it would be fine as long as I made chapter one (and possibly two) top four-thousand words. And trust me, they will. Easily.
Well, if you have time, please review this piece. I think it was decent, not quite on the level of its inspiration, but not that bad, either. But what do you think? I've love to know.
I should be off soon. I suppose I'll see some of you next chapter!
