

Asuna's venture eventually leads to her encounter with Kirito, one of 1,000 beta testers for SAO. Dying inside of the game or having their NerveGear forcibly removed from their head will cause them to have their brains destroyed by the NerveGear, thus killing them in real life as well.Īsuna, who has logged into the game with her friend Mito, intially struggles to cope with her new reality of being trapped inside the game. Kayaba reveals himself to tell the players that they must beat all 100 floors of Aincrad, the enormous steel castle that is the setting of SAO if they want to escape the game. On November 6, 2022, 10,000 players log into SAO for the first time, only to discover that they are unable to log out of the game. It is later revealed that attempting to remove the NerveGear will cause it to destroy your brain using powerful microwaves. It has its own battery source, as well as a high-frequency electromagnetic microwave transmitter. It controls the player's consciousness by redirecting the brain's signals to the NerveGear, such that they can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds without any physical movement. It has a single interface that covers the player's entire head. As depicted in the first volume of the Sword Art Online: Progressive light novel series, the NerveGear is a 2nd generation FullDive device developed by a company named Argus, with Kayaba as its creator. In 2022, Akihiko Kayaba creates a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (VRMMORPG) named Sword Art Online ( SAO).
