Sword Art Online Light Novel Volume 01

Prologue
A huge castle made of stone and steel floating in an endless sky.

That was all this world was.

It took a vagarious group of craftsmen one month to survey the place; the diameter of the base floor was about 10 kilometers — large enough to fit the entirety of Setagaya-ku within. Above, there were 100 floors stacking straight upwards; its sheer size was unbelievable. It was impossible to even guess how much data it consisted of.

Inside, there were a couple of large cities along with countless small scale towns and villages, forests and plains, and even lakes. Only one stairway linked each floor to another, and the stairways existed in dungeons where large numbers of monsters roamed; so discovering and getting through was no easy matter. However, once someone made a breakthrough and arrived at a city of the upper floor, the «Teleport Gates» there and of every cities in the lower floors would be connected making it possible for anyone to move freely through these levels.

With these conditions, the huge castle had been steadily conquered for two years. The current front line is the 74th floor.

The name of the castle was «Aincrad», a world of battles with swords that continued floating and had engulfed approximately six thousand people. Otherwise known as...

«Sword Art Online»

Chapter 1
Kirito, after fighting a Level 82 «Lizardman Lord», recollects what happened two years ago.

Chapter 2
Cline asks for Kirito's guidance after he realizes that Kirito was one of the one thousand participants of the «Sword Art Online Closed Beta». After Clines successfully defeats a «Frenzy Boar», says that he has to log out because he ordered pizza. Failing to find the logout button, Kirito and Cline discuss the implications of the "unable to logout bug".

Chapter 3
Without warning, they were both teleported to the central plaza of «Starting City». The GM Kayaba Akihiko informs them that the only way to logout is by clearing all one hundreed floors of the floating city of «Aincrad», and that death in-game means death in real life.

Kirito, realizing that there will be shortage of monsters near «Starting City», urges Cline to leave the village along with him. Cline asks Kirito whether they can take his friends along. Kirito, unable to bear the heavy burden of Cline and his friends' lives, wordlessly disagrees. They separate after Cline decides to help his real life friends.

Chapter 4
Almost a year into the game 2000 people died. The remaining players are divided into four groups.