The familiar beeping of machinery and the smell of antiseptic filled the air of Yukimura's hospital room as the sickly-looking young man in question lay in bed with the most bored expression on his face. His appointment a few minutes earlier had gone swimmingly, though as usual he was required to stay for an hour or two just in case of negative reactions to his treatments and other such things. He took his gaze off the TV playing a news report about a certain VRMMO game and glanced to the very bland-looking clock.
'T-minus 5 minutes 23 seconds until S.A.O. launch...'
The tension was practically killing him. As one of the 1000 <<Beta Testers>>, Yukimura had already gotten a taste of the vast, beautiful world of Sword Art Online. And, of course, learned his fair share of tricks. Fortunately he'd brought the NerveGear with him in his school bag... Wouldn't want to be left out of all the fun, after all.
'T-minus 2 minutes 12 seconds.'
Yukimura reached for his bag and removed the helmet before beginning the necessary preparations. The doctors wouldn't mind, and besides, his body would be rendered inert, so if they did need to do surgery and stuff, he'd be fine. He'd done it before, no big deal really.
'T-minus 10 seconds.'
Mentally ticking off the seconds, Yukimura placed the helmet upon his head and grinned. Sure, the devs usually changed things up after beta, but there was one fact that he knew for sure: this was going to be awesome.
"<<Link Start>>!"
Starting City and its surrounding areas were grand as ever. He moved his avatar's limbs to reorient himself. Even if they had the same body, the whole process was a tad disorienting. His avatar looked equally like and unlike himself at the same time. He was the same height and body type to improve compatibility (okay, so maybe he had added some more bulk here and there, but nobody could blame him for a bit of wish fulfillment), but the aesthetic appearance was quite different. Different and longer hairstyle, different eye color, so on so forth.
***
First item on the list: Level grinding. If you wanted to get anything done, you needed numbers, and to get numbers, you needed numbers. Specifically a different sort of number entirely, whether it be from equipment or levels. Killing off boars and wolves was fine, but the good stuff was in the outlying villages. Besides, the nearby areas would be hunted dry by the <<Newbies>>, so getting a head-start on the better areas would be necessary. He'd received a level up or two, and had been at the task for the past... ...What time was it?
"Hmm... Maybe I should check back at how I'm doing," the white-haired swordsman mumbled, sifting through his menu after seeing the time. "...What." It seemed that there was a distinct lack of a 'Log Off' button where it was supposed to be. "...Bug?" A bug wouldn't be unexpected, as it was day one and all, but the lack of a log off was probably something on the start of the list of 'shit to be fixed'.
"...Doctors won't mind, probably," Yukimura shrugged before unsheathing his blade and staring threateningly at a nearby beast, "More fun for me, at least."
