Kazuto meets with Andrew Gilbert Mills, also known as "Agil", at his bar to ask about the picture of Asuna he received in his email. Agil explains that the screenshot came from ALfheim Online, a VRMMO successor to Sword Art Online. Unlike SAO, ALfheim Online, or "ALO", was a more combat-oriented MMO that encouraged player-vs-player combat and eschewed Character Levels for a combat system based on raw skill. The big draw of ALO, however, was the ability for players to fly through the air using wings on their avatar.
In ALO, players choose from one of nine different fairy races and compete against the other races in order to reach the top of the World Tree. One team of players attempted to reach the top by launching off of each other's backs like a multi-stage rocket. They failed, but the last player managed to get close enough to take the screenshot of Asuna. Since then, the game was patched so that an invisible ceiling prevented players from attempting the same trick again.
Kazuto is curious about ALO's connection to Asuna. He finds his answer on the game's cover: ALO was developed by RECT Progress, the same company Sugou is a chief developer for. With this information, Kazuto rushes back home to enter the game and save Asuna.
Upon logging into the game, Kirito chooses to play as a Spriggan, thanks to their predominantly black color scheme. He is then sent into the air over the Spriggan capital, but ends up falling into a glitch and crash-landing in a forest. After confirming that the option to log out of the game was present, Kirito looks at his skills and finds them to be strangely high for a new character, a biproduct of transferring character data from SAO (albeit with his "Dual Blades" skill corrupted due to incompatibility with ALO). More importantly, an item carried over from SAO that materialized as "Yui's Heart", thus allowing Yui, Kirito's foster artificially intelligent daughter, to return, thanks largely to ALO being run on the same infrastructure as SAO. The outdated Cardinal System didn't recognize Yui as an abnormal AI, but as an in-game "Navigation Pixie", allowing her to remain in the game to help Kirito.
Kirito then inquires how to fly. With the use of a "flight controller", Kirito could fly for as long as his wings shined; once they lost their shine, he would be unable to fly for a while. He makes way for a town, but finds a pair of Sylph players, Leafa and Recon, under attack by Salamanders players. Recon is taken out, leaving Leafa to fend for herself against three Salamanders...until Kirito joins the fray and fights in her defense.
