Klein and I jumped to our feet, startled by a sudden ringing sound, blaring like an alarm at full volume.
“Wha…?”
“What’s that?”
We shouted simultaneously, then noticed each other’s bodies, our eyes wide.
Both Klein and I were enveloped in pillars of brilliant blue light. The scenery of the fields faded out behind the colored film.
I’d experienced this phenomenon multiple times during the beta test. It was the teleport effect that took place when you used an item to travel instantaneously across the game. But I didn’t have the right item, nor had I given the system any such command. If it was a system-side forced teleportation, why was it happening without any announcement?
As my mind raced, the light surrounding me pulsed stronger, blocking my vision.
The blue light faded, and the environment returned but was no longer the evening field in which we had been standing. I was greeted by wide paving stones, trees lining the street, and a cleanly elegant medieval town. In the far distance straight ahead, a massive palace gleamed darkly.
I recognized it instantly as the central square of the Town of Beginnings, the game’s starting point. I turned to face Klein next to me, his mouth agape. We stared out at the sea of humanity pressed in around us.
It was a teeming mass of beautiful men and women, a clash of bristling equipment and hair in every color of the rainbow. These were all fellow SAO players. There had to be several thousand people here—nearly ten thousand, in fact. It seemed likely that every single player who was logged in to the game had been forcibly teleported to this square.
For a few seconds, there was a tense silence as everyone took in their surroundings. Mutters and murmurs broke out everywhere, steadily rising in volume. Shards of conversation could be made out above the din.
“What’s going on?”
“Can we log out now?”
“Hurry it up!”
The murmuring took on a distinct tone of anger and frustration, raised voices demanding the GMs come out to explain themselves.
Abruptly, someone screamed, cutting through the noise.
“Hey…look up!!”
Klein and I instinctively raised our eyes, which were met with an unnatural sight.
The bottom of the second floor hanging a hundred yards above us was bathed in a red checkerboard pattern. Looking closer, I could see that the pattern was made of two pieces of English text. I could make out WARNING and SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT in the red font.
After my fleeting initial shock, the tension in my shoulders relaxed. Finally, the developers were going to give us an explanation. The roar in the square died down as the crowd strained its ears.
But what happened next was nothing like what I expected.
The center of the crimson pattern that covered the entire sky above suddenly sagged in the middle, pooling like an enormous drop of blood. The viscous drop slowly extended downward, but rather than breaking off and falling, it abruptly changed shape in midair.
What emerged was the form of a giant person at least sixty feet tall, clad in a robe with a crimson hood.
But this wasn’t quite correct. We were staring up at it from the ground, at an angle that should have given us a glimpse underneath the hood—but there was no face. It was an empty space, the underside of the hood and the stitching of the seam clearly visible. The long, dangling sleeves also contained nothing but a faint darkness.
I recognized the shape of that robe. It was the signature outfit of official Argus GMs during the beta test. But at the time, the male GMs were depicted as elderly magicians with long white beards, and female GMs were bespectacled young women. Perhaps some technical issue had prevented them from creating an avatar, with the robe being the best that could be managed, but the sight of that empty void beneath the hood filled me with a wordless dread.
The mass of players around me must have shared that apprehension. Mutters of confusion arose in waves: “Is that a GM? Why doesn’t he have a face?”
As if to quiet the murmuring, the right arm of the enormous robe suddenly shifted. A white glove peeked out of the pendulous sleeve, but once again, there was a stark separation between robe and glove with no flesh to be seen connecting them.
Now the other sleeve rose in turn. The empty white gloves spread apart, looming over ten thousand heads, and the faceless being opened an invisible mouth—or so it seemed. From above the crowd, a man’s calm, deep voice cut through the din.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Welcome to my world, dear players.”
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
I didn’t immediately register his meaning.
My world? The red GM robe meant that he possessed the ability to manipulate the world as he saw fit. If he was already a god, why the need to announce it to everyone?
As Klein and I stared at each other in disbelief, the robed figure lowered its arms and continued speaking.
“My name is Akihiko Kayaba. As of this moment, I am the only human being alive with control over this world.”