Phenomenon's Path (Sword Art Online x Male Reader)

The year is 2022. 

The concept of a video-game was created a long, long time ago, and decades later, games have now advanced to unprecedented levels. Going from horrible graphics, terrible game designs and lack of genuine passion to games that practically mirrored the reality everybody lived in. Of course, across the years, there were games that stood out among the rest, and hidden gems that only fortunate people discovered.

Technology has advanced much more than expected, and as a result, a certain game has been created.

Sword Art Onli—

"Someone actually spent time and got paid writing this repetitive promotional stuff out? Talk about easy money," a certain boy thought as he scrolled down an online advertisement of the game Sword Art Online, containing an absurd amount of paragraphs. "Who wants to see the same stuff being explained to you over and over? Kinda boring..."

Y/N L/N placed his phone gently down on his desk next to his laptop, then stretched in his room, while glancing at the clock mounted on the wall above his door. It was 12:49PM on Sunday, November 6th 2022. It was probably impossible to forget this date, since not a single hour went by without someone hyping up the release date of Sword Art Online.

At least that would come to a long-awaited end in about ten minutes and thirty-two seconds.

Y/N picked up his NerveGear headset, the contraption that would allow him and 9,999 other people to play the most hyped up game of all time. 1PM marked the date it would officially be live to the public, but almost all of the people fortunate enough to get the game were probably already logged in and waiting. 

"I worked my ass off to even get the NerveGear, and that says a lot since I'm in middle school... Such a pain in the ass to get a job, and when you do, it's like you're earning nothing at all with how little they're allowed to pay you!" he grumbled as he ranted in his head and slouched down depressingly. "And I somehow managed to get a copy of the game... even though I was threatened several times to 'back off'."

Unfortunately, the other gamers, who were just as crazy as he was, failed to understand that pouring such an absurd amount of his youth into working just to grind enough money to afford an expensive headset and game because his parents refused to lend not even a singular yen to help him out naturally motivated a guy to do the opposite.

"But it'll be all worth it in the end. First VR game, and it's SAO, the game that got praised to death by all the beta testers... I'm not gonna log off for a good seven or so hours," he stated determinedly in his head. "...Unless I get forced out. Can I get forced out?" He hummed to himself, before deciding to search it up online. "Nope, the only way to log out is through the actual button, or through one of the devs using the system to log you out themselves. Lucky me."

He laid down on his bed, then placed on his headset. "Oh wait... I was meant to do the daily exercise thing..." he recalled all of a sudden, but sighed. "Nah, too much work to get out of bed now, I'll just do it after." 

He hummed again. "What do I say again? Oh right... Link start!"

One minute to spare, too.

"Okay, time to play," he said to himself in his head as he bore witness to a few seconds of tunnel-vision colours. He then had to wait an additional few seconds as the system checked that all five of his senses were successfully connected, before a language-select screen appeared to him. Of course, he chose the right language, which prompted a log-in screen to appear. "Uh... Wait, I still need to sign up."