Death Game Begins!

"What the hell has that animal Seiya been eating?

It would've been one thing if he were just talented at kendo, but even his Learning ability is this ridiculous?"

In the original blade-to-blade fight, Kirito had held a certain advantage. Judging by the rate at which their HP Bars were dropping, he should have been the one to win in the end.

But that had been the situation two minutes ago. When only one minute remained, Kirito discovered that Seiya, whose movements had initially been stiff, had somehow begun to move with flexibility.

At first, he hadn't even known how to use skills other than sword skills, yet just now he had used Dash to close in on him.

He had even copied the Connecting Diagonal Slash Kirito had used at the start, sending him flying with a single blow!

That bastard wasn't merely talented—his Learning ability was practically monstrous.

Kirito could see it now. If Seiya were allowed to continue adapting and grasp the rhythm of the fight, then no matter how fast Kirito's reactions were, he would be the one to lose.

Having realized that, Kirito understood that he had to end this quickly. The longer he dragged it out, the lower his chances of winning would become.

Knocked away by Seiya's Dash and Diagonal Slash, Kirito slid across the ground. But after quickly steadying himself, he picked up a stone and used the Throwing Sword skill.

This wasn't underhanded. This wasn't a proper kendo match, and in a game PvP, every skill was part of one's combat power.

The Throwing Sword skill was also a character skill, so it wasn't against the rules.

Though it looked like a throwing skill, it was actually a kind of sword skill. After all, the skill was called Throwing Sword—he was merely using a stone as a sword.

"Clang—!"

Faced with the stone shooting toward him, Seiya instinctively raised his sword and slashed it apart.

At the instant Seiya split the stone, Kirito's Dash skill's cooldown CD ended as well.

Gripping the rusty longsword in his hand, he shot forward again like a cannonball.

Since Seiya had just used his longsword to slash apart the stone Kirito had thrown, his body was still in a stiff recovery state.

If Kirito's sword struck Seiya cleanly, even if it did not hit a vital spot, it would still be enough to shave off a lot of HP.

But just as Kirito's longsword was about to touch Seiya's body, a wall that seemed invisible suddenly appeared before Seiya, displaying the words "Unable to Attack."

The reason was simple: the three-minute PvP time limit had expired. If Kirito attacked Seiya again, it would count as malicious PK.

As for the final result, though it was astonishingly unbelievable, both Seiya and Kirito fell silent when they saw the word "Draw" appear before them.

"I won that PvP. Even if there had been one more second, my attack would have hit you."

Kirito was naturally quite unwilling to accept the final draw.

One of the reasons he had invited Seiya to play Sword Art Online was to vent some of his usual resentment and stomp that damned normie player into the ground.

But he had never expected Seiya to be even more absurd than he had imagined. Despite holding every advantage, he had still failed to take Seiya down.

"Not necessarily. How do you know I didn't have some last-resort trick ready for that final moment?

If you really can't accept this result, we can do it again.

It's only three minutes either way. What do you think, Kirito?"

After hesitating for a moment in response to Seiya's proposal, Kirito ultimately chose to refuse.

The reason was simple. Seiya had not even fully gotten the hang of Sword Art Online before, yet he had already been able to fight him evenly.

At the end of their battle just now, Seiya's movements had clearly become much more agile than before.

If they really had another PvP, Kirito was almost certain that he would be the one to lose.

Though the draw left him somewhat dissatisfied, it was definitely better than getting stomped by Seiya.

"You two, could you please spare a thought for an ordinary player like me?

After watching your PvP, I honestly feel like we aren't even playing the same game, okay?

Kirito is one thing—he was a beta tester—But Seiya, man, you..."

Before Klein could finish speaking, he quickly noticed something strange happening to his body. His lower half was disappearing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

And he wasn't the only one experiencing it. Seiya and Kirito, standing in front of him, were in the same condition.

"Is this Forced Teleport? But there shouldn't be any mechanisms or traps like this nearby. What the hell is—"

Kirito had not even finished speaking when his body, along with Seiya and Klein beside him, vanished from where they stood.

When they came to their senses again, they had appeared in a massive plaza.

As the bells throughout the town continued ringing, quite a few players who had evidently experienced the same thing were also teleported into the enormous plaza.

Seeing so many people, just like them, being teleported into the plaza with confused expressions, Klein—still unaware of the severity of the situation—said excitedly, "I get it, this is that thing, right?

You know, the kind of opening ceremony some games deliberately prepare to build up the atmosphere."

But unlike the optimistic Klein, Kirito felt a growing sense of unease as he looked at the unbelievable scene before him.

There had been no such plot or event during the beta test.

And if this really was the opening ceremony Klein mentioned, there should have been a game announcement, shouldn't there?

Unlike the optimistic Klein and the grim-faced Kirito, Seiya directly opened the game menu and looked at the missing logout button.

Wearing an expression that said he had expected as much, he said, "Haven't you noticed? The logout button seems to be gone."

Seiya did not deliberately lower his voice, and the crowd density in the plaza was indeed quite high.

So when Seiya said that, not only did Kirito and Klein hear him, but the other players nearby heard him as well.

The players who had truly believed this was some sort of opening event opened their own game menus. Once they discovered that the logout button really was gone, just as Seiya had said, panic began to spread among them!

This was a fully immersive virtual game. If they could not log out, how were they supposed to wake up from the game?

"Are we going to be trapped in the game forever?"

People tended to follow the crowd. Once the first anxious remark burst forth, fear spread through the crowd at an astonishing speed, continuing to grow...