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List of Volumes
List of Episodes
- "The World of Swords"
- "Beater"
- "Red Nosed Reindeer"
- "The Black Swordsman"
- "A Crime Within the Walls"
- "Illusionary Avenger"
- "The Temperature of the Heart"
- "The Sword Dance of White And Black"
- "The Blue-Eyed Demon"
- "Crimson Killing Intent"
- "The Girl of Morning Dew"
- "Yui's Heart"
- "Edge of Hell's Abyss"
- "The End of the World"
Plot Summary
On November 6, 2022, a virtual reality MMORPG, Sword Art Online, was released to the public for use on NerveGear VR headsets. On this day, a young man named Kazuto Kirigaya, better known as "Kirito", was among the ten thousand players who logged in. After making friends with another player named Klein, however, they notice something bizarre; the option to log out of the game was conspicuously missing.The players of the game are forcibly transported to the Town of Beginnings, where the game's lead developer, Akihiko Kayaba, announces that the inability to log out of the game was not the result of a programming bug, but an intentional feature. The only way players could hope to escape from the game, which had become a virtual prison, was to fight their way through all 100 floors of Aincrad and defeat the final boss. Furthermore, dying in the game, or being disconnected from the game, would result in the NerveGear's microwave emitters destroying the player's brain, killing them in the real world as well. To further raise the steaks of the game, Kayaba also forces all of the players to assume the same body and face as in the real world.
Kirito, not wanting to drag others down, takes to being a solo player. After defeating the first floor's boss, he gains a reputation as a "beater" ("beta tester" + "cheater") for being a beta tester who used foreknowledge of the game to his advantage, an epithet he adopts to prevent other beta testers from being scorned. He joins a guild called the "Midnight Black Cats", but after watching them die during an ill-fated attempt to grind on a high-level dungeon, isolates himself from the rest of the playerbase to prevent another such tragedy.
As a solo player, Kirito makes several friends, including Silica, a young but spirited beast-tamer; Lisbeth, a talented if sarcastic blacksmith; and Asuna, a player who helped him against the first floor boss who goes on to be the second-in-command of the game's biggest guild, KoB. In that time, Kirito's skills as a player and swordfigher grows exponentially, eventually leading to him unlocking a hidden "dual wielding" ability that let him fight with two swords at once.
Over time, Kirito and Asuna become closer with one another. After Kirito is forced to join KoB after losing a duel to the guild's leader, Heathcliff, Kirito and Asuna enter into a relationship, marrying one another and moving into a cabin. They eventually meet a young girl named Yui, who at first appears to have no memories and stays with Kirito and Asuna, regarding them as her parents. It is soon revealed that Yui is actually an artificial intelligence created by the game to counsel players suffering from stress, but had been locked away when the game launched until she discovered Kirito and Asuna and reached out to them. Since she had acted outside of her programming limitations, the game's central AI would consider her a glitch and delete her. Kirito manages to save her, however, by converting her data into an in-game item and storing it on his NerveGear's local memory.
Eventually, the players make their way to the 75th floor's dungeon and defeat its boss, but at heavy loss. Kirito comes to a harrowing realization after the raid, however; Heathcliff, the leader of KoB, was actually Akihiko Kayaba, who logged into the game himself in order to weave a narrative of his own design in the game. Heathcliff congratulates Kirito on his discovery by offering him the chance to fight him as the final boss right away; if Kirito won, the game would end and the surviving players would be allowed to log out. Kirito accepts the challenge, but is quickly outclassed. Asuna intercepts a sword blow meant for Kirito, sacrificing her life in the process. Kirito loses the will to fight for a while after, but just as his HP hits zero, his determination renews and he uses Asuna's rapier to land the finishing blow on Heathcliff, defeating him and clearing the game.
Kirito and Asuna, who survived her in-game death, meet in the sky above Aincrad as it collapses due to its data being deleted. Kayaba also appears, explaining that the surviving players had been logged out, but those who died would stay dead. He reveals that he created the game to pursue his dream of finding a castle in the sky before departing.
Once the game ends, Kirito awakens in his hospital room. Weak though his body had become, he uses what strength he has to rise from his sickbed and search for Asuna.
