Sword Art Online: Enhanced - Chapter 2.2 (Patreon)

You made your way to the weapon shop first of all. And you dropped a hundred col to buy ten iron ingots. Then, you payed the weapon smith shop clerk to upgrade your weapon.

It went through easily, and the strength of your Anneal Blade grew two before your eyes. Then, you decided to go full in and dump both of your Wolf Fangs into it to upgrade your weapon again.

And to your glee, it worked. And your weapon gained another plus two to its overall bonuses. But that was not all. From the Wolf Fang's, it gained an ability.

[Anneal Blade - Claymore]

[Weight - 25]
[Damage - 10+1]
[Level - 3]
[Upgrade Slots - 6]
[Ability Slots - 2]
[Ability 1 - Lupine Slayer: Deals 25% extra damage to canine monsters. +1 extra Damage.]

"Badass." you grinned, replacing the the Claymore on your back with the Anneal Blade.

You dropped a total of two hundred Col on that, but damn was it worth it! You mentally patted yourself on the back.

Then, just as you were about to decide on what to do next, a mass of blue light circling around your forms and your eyes widened in shock. "Is this a forced teleport?" you gaped.

A moment later, the blue light overcame you, and suddenly, you were no longer in Hotonka Village. But surrounded by people on all sides, back at the centre of the Town of Beginnings.

...And the sky was a deep, ominous red for some weird reason. "..The fuck?"

The massive sound of a bell just bordering the central square drowned out the general noise of the mass of players surrounding you. As it died down, you stuck a pinky in your ear with a growl, "Wit a fuckin' pain in the arse."

At the rise of your ire, Cu who had been brought along for the ride let loose a snarl of his own. A couple people around you yelped at the sight of the large wolf and hastily moved away from you. You reached out and calmed him down with a soft pet on the head and the Dire Wolf obediently and happily plonked down on his rear end, loyally sitting at your side.

"Impressive," a deep, rich and baritone voice spoke from your right, the opposite side of Cu. You turned your head to see the speaker was a very tall and heavily built black man, "I heard the Beast Tamer Skill was really hard to get, yet you've already gotten it in just the first few opening hours." the man praised. You noted, he was wearing a half iron heavy chest plate and had a large iron battleaxe sheathed on his back.

It was a bit too, un-pretty of a look to be a custom character avatar. So, did this guy go with his in real life look like you did? You were all for getting invested in the roleplaying aspect of the games, but you didn't see the point in full out trying to become someone else, so you just went with your in real life look.

"It was a lucky coincidence," you shrugged, slipping back into 'polite speech' patterns, "First thing I did when I logged in was rush for a quest I wanted to get done before it gets swarmed later, and I just happened to run into some wolves along the way and get lucky. The skill is easier to get when you deal with multiple monsters at once."

The man nodded, "Good to know. I'll keep it in mind for later, my wife Tiffany will definitely want to know about it when she gets the chance to play," he replied. He held out one of his thickly muscled arms, "Names Andrew, but you can call me Agil in here." he introduced himself.

You took his offered hand and shook it with your own, "Caelan," you introduced yourself, "But my gamer tame is Tavish Finnegan Degroot."

Agil arced an eyebrow at you and smiled lightly, "The guy from Team Fortress?" he asked with a deep chuckle.

"That's the one." you smirked.

He shook his head, the smile never leaving his face, "I'll just call you Groot then, much easier on the mouth," he replied, and you shrugged, it didn't bother you anyway, you only picked it because you couldn't really come up with any cool gamer tag you would be fine being addressed by and just went with the first random thing that came to mind, "So listen, Groot, from how you talk, I get the feeling you were a Beta Tester. Feel like giving me some pointers?"

You shrugged, "Aye, alright," you replied, it was no skin off your nose. You pulled open your menu and formed a party, sending an invite to the player 'Agil.', "Will probably be quicker if you join my party for the first little bit though."

"Reasonable," Agil nodded, and accepted your invitation. A moment later, you saw his name appear in the party chat, and besides his name, Level 2. Huh, not a beta tester and this guy was quite on the ball already. Agil blinked as he looked at his menu, "...Heh, both you and your pet wolf are three levels higher than me and way higher levelled than anyone I've seen since I started. Highest I saw was level 2 just like me."

You smirked, "Since I already knew about some of the stuff going on, I just went for what I wanted done. This sword is limited, so I wanted it done nice and quick," you replied, tapping the hilt of your claymore over your shoulder, "You look to be doing alright, but first things first, what kinda stat build you going-"

You were cut off the a loud, ominous dripping sound coming from the sky. IT wasn't like the drip, drip of water hitting a hard surface. But, rather, the sound of a slurping, sludge like noise oozing down.

The entire central square of the Town of Beginnings went entirely and eerily quiet and you looked up at the dark red sky, just in time to see thick waterfalls of blood ooze out of the sky downward and form into a massive crimson hooded form.

"That ain't a comforting look at all." Agil commented, crossing his arms.

You snorted, copying his motion, "Looks like a mod trying to look cool," you agreed, nodding your head, "Just makes him look like a stupid gonk though."

Agil raised an eyebrow, "Gonk?" he asked.

"Aye," you nodded, "Slang, generally means someone stupid looking and awkward."

Agil chuckled, "Fitting."

"Attention players," a loud, echoing voice came from the hooded avatar. It rose its arms up, spreading them wide into the air grandiosely, "Welcome to my world."

You rose an eyebrow. so this was Kayaba Akihiko then? What a fucking plonker.

"My name is Kayaba Akihiko," he continued, "And I currently am the only one who controls this entire world you find yourselves within."

You rolled your eyes. How riveting, fucking not. Mate, you already know this cunt created the game, you'd have to be living under a rock not to know about this cunt and be playing this game.

There was a flurry of gossip and talk between the players all around you and you rolled your eyes.

"I'm sure that you've already noticed," Kayaba droned on, pulling up a massive menu in front of his robed avatar, "The log out button has been removed from the menu. This is by no means, a mistake."

Wait...'Fuckin' WIT!?' you gaped mentally. Quickly you brought up your own menu as he continued on, and there it was, the log out option, it was entirely blanked out with nothing there. "This is not a mistake I repeat, but a feature of Sword Art Online."

You hadn't even realised about the log out button. You'd been too invested in getting shit done quickly. You'd made sure to plan in advance and take care of your lessons and shit out of school early so you could devote the entire first day outside of eating and the like to getting as far as you could on the first day of the game release.

"You all are unable to log out of SAO," Kayaba continued and now his voice sound much more menacing to you. Still a fucking gonk of a plonker though, "And nobody in the real world can remove the NerveGear from any of you and log you out. Should it be attempted, a powerful burst of microwave radiation emitted from the NerveGear transmitter will fry your brain and kill you."

Huh.....well...huh. Alright then. You listened in with only a half ear, trying to process what was going on around you. Five hundred people had already been killed by people attempting to pull the NerveGear off of players and wake them up? Well..okay. Video feed proof of live news networks all around the world? Well, wasn't he morbidly thorough.

Players all around began panicking hard. Screams and tears abound, many collapsing from their legs.

Oh, and apparently that wasn't the worst of it. You only had one life in the game now. If you died at all, the transmitter would fry your brain just as if someone tried to pull off the NerveGear.

"There is only one condition you must meet to regain your freedom," Kayaba revealed finally, "You must defeat all one hundred floors, and clear the game!"

'Aye, n that isn'y hard at aw is it ya daft cunt?' you snarked mentally. The Beta Testers had only made it to floor nine after three months, and that was with the ability to full on suicide happily against bosses to wear them down when required.

"Lastly I've prepared a present for you all, it should be within your inventories." Kayaba added finally.

On autopilot, you opened your inventory and found another item you don't remember putting in there. A mirror. You pulled it out, the same as many around you.

And looked into it. Suddenly, blue light swarmed around you and everyone else. So much of it, it was blinding. When it died down a few moments later...you just stared into your reflection, nothing had changed.

Yeah, nothing had changed. You were still you. It was just some cunt was a threat to your life now. Now exactly the excitement you were looking for with SAO. But, it triggered that rage that was so familiar to you when your blood got hot.

You tossed the mirror aside with a snarl, Cu leaped to his feet at your rising ire, his lips pulling back and mirroring you with a snarl of his own. All around you, people had changed appearances. One girl had turned into a fat guy, now dressed in a pink skirt and halter top.

"Goodbye players, and good lu-" Kayaba went to bid everyone goodbye and leave you all.

But you were not fucking having it, "HERE YOU YA BAAAAWBAGGG!" you roared as loud as you could. You saw Agil jump in shock at your sudden and very, very loud outburst, "WEN AH GIT OOT AH HERE! AM GONNAE FUCKIN' SMASH YER FUCKIN WEE GONK HEID IN!"

At your outburst, many eyes turned towards you, but you ignored them, glaring up the shadowy hooded face of Kayaba. The massive hooded head zeroed in on you and a light chuckle left the giant avatar, "Well then, player - Tavish Finnegan Degroot, I welcome you to try." he goaded, and then quite suddenly, his avatar collapsed inwards, becoming a ball of dripping blood before disappearing altogether, the sky

There was silence for all of a moment, while you breathed deeply and loudly, your hands clenched so hard into fists they were shaking.

Then, the screams began as nearly one hundred thousand people began panicking all at once. It was probably a good thing that outside of duels, people couldn't attack each other in towns or cities.

You ignored it though. You could only focus on one thing.

'That fuckin' cunt joos fuckin taunted meh fore ey fucked off!' you were so pissed you wanted to grab his face and smash it in with your fucking kneecap then curb stomp his fuckin ugly wee geeky face into a curb and smash it up.

A large hand grabbed your shoulder and you were broken from your thoughts. You looked to to your side to see a pale faced Agil looking at you worriedly, "...So about those tips, I think I'm gonna need them...badly."