Half a day had passed...
Sword Art Online, based on the civilian NerveGear terminal, had been running smoothly for several hours. Many of the players who had logged into the game were still immersed in this new, unprecedented large-scale VRMMO stealth game developed with advanced technology, and found it hard to tear themselves away!
Though it was already dusk in both the game and the real world, most people were still enthralled by the gorgeous scenery of this new "world," the beautiful sunset, the novel combat styles, their handsome or beautiful new friends, and all kinds of wondrous ways to interact. They had no idea what awaited the ten thousand lucky players and the thousand "pioneers" from the beta test.
Boom... boom... boom...
At last, the bell in the tower of the starting town rang out, its toll spreading across the whole city. Then the system instantly teleported everyone back to the enormous plaza where they had first logged in. Only then did the players come to their senses:
So all of this really was just a game—and while they'd been caught up in it, so much time had already passed?
Then...
Once they'd recovered, they quickly discovered that they couldn't log out of the game!
Just as they were growing confused and uneasy, with more than ten thousand people crowding the plaza and talking over one another, unsure what to do, the sky suddenly turned bloodred. A dome made of lines of code completely covered the plaza overhead. Then blood dripped from the sky, and a giant figure resembling a GM appeared high above them.
Instinctively, most people assumed it was some kind of presentation from the developers, which was why they'd disabled the log-out option and forcibly teleported everyone back to town.
Of course, some thought the game