Teaming Up with Kirito

After all, what normal person bought a game just to sleep in it? You bought a game to play it, not to experience sleeping.

What came next was simple, exactly like in the anime. The sky was covered by red exclamation marks, blood seeped out, twisted together, and condensed into a gigantic faceless figure draped in a cloak.

As the people around him discussed the floating figure in the sky, Takuya knew that it was Kayaba Akihiko.

Kayaba Akihiko began his self-introduction speech. Takuya lost interest after listening for a while. In short, he was telling the players that Sword Art Online no longer had a logout button. Forcibly disconnecting would cause the powerful microwaves emitted by the NERvGear's signal components to destroy their brains. Simply put, they would die. There would also be no resurrection in Aincrad from now on. Dying once meant truly dying. When HP reached zero, the player's game character would be permanently erased. There was only one way to leave: fully clear the game. They had to conquer the labyrinths on every floor, defeat the floor bosses, continue climbing upward, and defeat the boss on the 100th floor.

After Kayaba Akihiko finished his introduction and said he had given every player a gift, blue light began flashing continuously across the plaza within barely ten seconds. The players reverted to their real-life appearances.

After babbling a few more explanations, Kayaba Akihiko wished them good luck and departed. As the giant figure vanished, the gloomy dark-red veil covering the sky disappeared as well.

That left behind players filled with fear, panic, confusion, and all sorts of emotions—everyone except Takuya.

Before the players could react, Takuya had already pushed through the crowd and arrived at the only exit of the Starting Town.

He was in no hurry to