October 2024

A full year has passed ever since the promise made between Kayaba and Yuuki, a full year filled to the brim with intensive studies, trial and errors and, perhaps most importantly, espionage regarding the servers currently maintained by RECT. For now, outside one of the many hospitals of Tokyo waited patiently a raven haired boy, Kayaba Saruhiko, watching masses of people go in and out, some sighing in relief, while others crying without stop. In this past year, the rate at which people would die inside SAO has dwindled, a sing that those trapped were fighting their own battles for survival, clinging to the hope that they can finally leave once they conquer the floating castle. All the more reason to stick to this absurd mission of hacking into the game from outside, but there's nothing to lose either in their endeavor.

"You sure you don't want to come in?", the boy's thoughts were disrupted by the soft voice of his partner in crime, Yuuki Misaki, who came to visit and hear further details about his sister's condition and much more.

He's been adamant that his friend has no need to wait outside all the time, simply due to what his brother has caused, but Saruhiko wouldn't budge on it. Not until he knew for certain this whole nightmare was over.

"We had this talk before, Misaki. Knock it off."

"Hardheaded as always, huh. Fine. Let's get going then."

The raven stood up from his bench and caught up to his pale blond fellow, noticing his relatively calm demeanor.

"I take it Asuna's condition is well."

"Yes. She's stable with no complication in recent history. I still wish I knew what she was doing inside there, but I'm not looking to dive into SAO, even if it was possible.", he scoffed at this idea, being thankful his dad's company restricted further log ins from happening. "Anyway, there's things I want to discuss with you. Last night I was successful in reass-"

"Not here.", Saruhiko stopped his friend from spilling out more details. "Let's discuss at our usual Hideout.", the boy was dead set on this whole operation to remain a secret at least until they know for certain they succeeded.

"I, too, have things to tell you."

Initially, their base of operation has been Saruhiko's tiny apartment, but as the things they had to learn and experiment on grew in scope and number, that was no longer a viable option. At first, they divided Akihiko's notebooks between themselves, so that Misaki can research the nerve gear while Saruhiko refreshes his memory on the notes regarding the game itself. A year later, there's still pieces that don't really fall into place as easily, but lucky for them, they seem to concern other projects, besides Sword Art Online. The one place they settled into as their base of operation was a small business left behind by Saruhiko's parents before they moved to the countryside, a net cafe. The business was later written under his mother's maiden name, as Kayaba had too much negative attention surrounding it. Fortunately, the cafe was still staying afloat, with Saruhiko managing the place with the help of other employees, some close to his parents. As an added bonus, whenever they'd need a break from work, the refreshments and recreation activities such as PC games were just a staircase away.

"I never get tired of watching this place.", the blond teen confessed, reminiscent of the first time he was shown the cafe, reminiscent of the envy felt towards his friend for having all this to himself. It was cozy, that can't be overstated.

"You say that every time we come here.", the owner silently saluted the other employees, signing them they're going to the second floor, as usual. This is where the whole operation is taking place.

At the end of the staircase was a single wooden door, that once opened, revealed a spacious room with a corner desk large enough to fit 2 people at the same time with 3 monitors atop it and the computer itself below it, a sofa facing a TV on a stand and 2 tall bookshelves with 2 cushion seats near them and a big cabinet in-between. One was filled with game cases for various platforms and the other, with the journals of the perpetrator of this whole fiasco. This was a place made before SAO was launched, a place where Saruhiko used to spent time with his older brother, but those times are long gone by now. In fact, the duo has tried to sort those journals into software and hardware, to make it easier on them to search for what they need when they need it, but there were many notebooks entirely on subjects such as Soul Translator or Fluctlight. They have gone through each of those pages carefully and while they understood the principles behind them and what they are, they still had no idea how do they relate to SAO, if they're supposed to at all. Alas, a puzzle to solve for another time.

"As big as my house is, it doesn't beat this room.", Misaki plunged onto the sofa, satisfied with being allowed to enter this space. In fact, one of his favorite things to do was go past the sliding door at the vert end of the room and stare into space off the balcony. But first, work is due.

"Not for sale, if you thought of that.", Saruhiko indulged in his friend's selfishness, only to crumble it away. "For now, let's continue where we left off. Go on.", he took a seat in one of the desk chairs besides the computer, something dubbed the software corner by the blond, to hear the details. The space near the aforementioned cabinet is Misaki's own corner, where he usually tinkers with electronics. You'd be correct to assume said cabinet contains various tools as well as electronics to modify, such as the platforms for the games put on display right next to them.

"Right. First, look at this.", the blond reached inside the backpack he's been carrying around the whole day and took out a NerveGear he's been experimenting on. "Last night I finally managed to put it back together after disassembling it again and again. No left out part this time.", he puffed his chest.

"If you're here to tell me you used it to dive into ALO, I swear I-"

"No. No. I am not stupid. I made sure to use your VRS to login into Alfheim."

Alfheim Online, the game launched 11 months ago for the AmuSphere has gained traction after a rocky start due to the stigma surrounding VRMMO after SAO. In fact, 3 months after launch, both Misaki and Saruhiko have logged in in hopes to grasp how a proper VR experiences feels like on the inside as well. To see how inputs from within are registered outside. Of course, it also served as a good recreational activity when they needed a break.

The VRS, however, Virtual Reality Simulator, is something Saruhiko has come up with, a virtual machine kind of program for VR games, that uses the processor of the computer as opposed to the brain of a person. Saruhiko made it during 5 months of playing ALO and tested it first on the AmuSphere. And while performence is a slight issue, he's managed to adapt most of the controls to a controller or mouse and keyboard. It is significantly harder to play like this, but they don't do this for fun either.

"I configured it mostly for the AmuSphere so I expect a lot of errors for the NerveGear.", although hopeful, the raven kept his enthusiasm in check.

"Well, there was significantly more ghosting on the NerveGear, that I can tell you without a doubt. But along with the ALO in VRS, I also frequently checked the electrical and radiation output of the NerveGear...especially during the times when my character was being killed."

Normally, if this was SAO, the character dying would also mean the player's brain being fried. And the only way you could possibly do that from inside the game was through the only thing connecting the player to the game to begin with, the VR headset.

Saruhiko remained silent, eager to hear the findings of his friend's experiment, its conclusion possibly leading in 2 different directions.

"While the NerveGear does indeed have a a higher output on average, the difference is negligible. At the very least, it would maybe leave the player with mild headaches after logging out, but-"

"It wouldn't be enough to fry the brain, by any means."

"...Exactly."

Kayaba sulk deeper into his sit, contemplating what he's just been told and crossing it over with his own research for the past month. The conclusion?

"With what you've told me, I think it's safe to assume it's not the NerveGear alone that kills the player. Assuming you haven't found any pieces of it that would work for that specific purpose."

"I haven't. Both in the notes and the pieces themselves are standard components. Most of them are in the AmuSphere as well, actually. So I think we can rule the hardware off."

But the raven wasn't yet as convinced. Sure, the NerveGear functioned normally with ALO, a safe game. But SAO wasn't such a game. It was a Death Trap.

"You think there's something else?", the blond inquired, sensing his partner lack of certitude.

"Well, kind of. Remember the SSD hard drive you gave me?"

"The 100TB one? Don't sweat it. My father gifted it to me, but I don't need one that big anyway. 20 TB suits me fine."

"Well, if you say so. But I didn't mean the capacity of them. I connected it to the PC here and put both ALO and SAO on it."

"But you can't log into SAO anymore. The access is restricted."

"True.", the raven turned towards one of the 3 monitors, where his file browser was opened inside the VRS. "But the game files are still installed even if you can't dive in."

With the VRS connected to Saruhiko's AmuSphere displayed on the center screen, he opened 2 big folders. The left screen displayed the ALO files, while the right - SAO.

"Woah. You've managed to get to the source code? Don't you need to do debugging? I thought that required-?

"To run the game and compare saves made at different interval. Yes. But that's only if you plan on modifying the data, or in other words, mod the game. What I did was compare the files between the 2 games."

Misaki left behind the NerveGear and joined his friend at the desk to take a look for himself.

"ALO's files are significantly bigger in quantity."

"Looking across the board, that's probably due to the fact it has a race system and each race entity would require additional files regarding their specific attributes like designs or abilities. But that's besides the point."

"How long did it take you to run through everything?"

"...2 months...", Saruhiko responded, keeping his eyes glued to the screen. "But here's the real kicker. You said the NerveGear works pretty close to the AmuSphere in ALO, where players respawn upon death."

"Yes. Albeit it does get heated a bit more in the process as it's cooling is a generation behind the AmuSphere. And?"

"Well, what if you ran a VRS simulation on the NerveGear, but the game had no respawn function coded into it...?"

"What!?", the blond's voice erupted in surprise and bewilderment. "What shitty game does not allow a respa-... a death trap of a game wouldn't allow it."

"...Precisely."

Misaki ran his fingers through his pale blond hair a couple of times, recapping the entire conversation up till now in his head. It may have took a year, but they made a step forward. They pinpointed the problem.

"So then how is the brain fried? Does it have a specific line of code that makes the NerveGear go haywire when you die in SAO specifically? Like how MediaTek cheated with their benchmarks on chips a few years ago with their high performance mode that almost fries the CPU?"

"While I can't rule it out, it seems too roundabout to be true.", Saruhiko leaned back in his chair. "But it's either this or... maybe it's a bug created through the lack of a respawn function?"

"A bug?! It's a bug that kills people!"

"And that's maybe why it was never solved... because SAO would be turned into a Death Game."

"But...there was a beta for the game, wasn't it? No one died during the beta."

"...which makes it all the more likely that the bug wasn't just an accident-"

"And that the respawn function was deliberately taken out of the full version, because they knew what the end result would be... Motherfuckers..."

Silence enveloped the room for once, as this new discovery served to cement 2 things. The first, that whatever sliver of hope that maybe this wasn't intentional and just an accident, a misstep on Kayaba Akihiko's part was ultimately erased. And second, that this is precisely why no one foresaw this tragedy happening, since anyone who has seen the game prior saw the beta, that worked just fine.

But they entered this mess expecting grim results. So it's no use cursing those that can't even hear you. No. What it was time for was actions.

"Okay, Saruhiko. I get where we stand now. Where do we go next with this?", the blond cracked his fingers to relieve the pressure, ready to proceed to the next phase of this 2 men operation.

"With numbers of death close to 4000 by now, even if we can't log out the players soon, we can at least make sure no one else's brain gets fried. So our next step should be hacking into the SAO servers themselves."

"...I am not good with coding, like I told you."

"That's my problem to take care of. What we first need is an initial access point. I could theoretically hack further in from here, but I'd first need to establish a backdoor, which can only be done from the source in our circumstances.

Misaki's eyes lit up, his intuition putting the puzzle pieces into place.

"Ah. I see where you're going with this. Leave it to me."

"Won't your father get in the way?"

"He doesn't need to know, right? Besides, if it helps my sister in any way, I am sure he'll gloss over it when it does come up to light. I can get to the servers pretty easily, but I'll count on you to guide me from there."

"Then it's decided.", the raven stood up, followed suit by his blond fellow, both eager to get to the bottom of this shitty game.

"It's time to infiltrate SAO."

And just like that, another month flew by...