AN (From the Wiki): in the web version of the story, 50,000 players were trapped in the game. This number was reduced to 10,000 in the published novel.
The Black Friar Guild (SAO FIC)
Sword Art Online.
The principal release of the game came for the Japanese servers alone, but already since the beta, hard-cracked copies with beta-patches and translations circled around the circles of the internet, both Light and Dark, in order to get into what was acclaimed as the next-gen in the gaming industry.
It was to no surprise that when the game actually went online, Kayaba had planned for it. The game allowed only English letters to be used for names, and came with a fully built English translation. Thus, although the servers were in Japan, the actual number of players sky-rocketed worldwide, especially when the copies went on sale in an international surprise event.
This is the story of those players.
This is the story of fifty thousand souls stuck in the slow-grinding mechanism of despair and death that began as a MMORPG known as 'Sword Art Online', and the day to day lives of those who tried to survive into it, following the jaded months of suicide-driven escape from such a reality.
Only Thirty-Thousand three hundred seventy-five players would leave Aincrad.
Some would leave it unscathed. Some would leave it jaded. Some would leave it shocked and silent.
Some...some would carry the weight of their sins and the trauma of their experiences beyond their game, and into their life forever after.
But we are not here to narrate the stories of those players.
We are here, for the history of the Black Friar Guild.
And as our stories begin, they begin not with a bang, but with a soft whimper.
"You leave him alone!" a few players exclaimed, rushing to the side of their fellow guild-mate. Now, if only their fellow guild-mate hadn't been the one to backhand Gertrude, then maybe they would have been right in being incensed. But the raven-haired and dark-eyed girl had been backhanded by one of them, and thus he had been back-mauled into submission by a very pissed off man with hazel hair.
The man in question wouldn't have, of course, normally resorted to such means, but half of his guild was running a grinding and tedious quest to bring up the skills needed to reach a higher floor and get better loot and equipment, while the other half was stuck there 'holding down the fort' and generally going through the procedures of grinding up the 'support skills' needed to improve the equipment.
In Dungeons and Dragons, people usually scoff at spells like 'Guide' that give a meager plus one and require a round to be cast.
In Sword Art Online, giving the sword just at tiny, small edge of one more damage was more than enough to warrant grinding for components until you could no longer stand on your feet.
To think he hadn't planned on playing more than a couple of hours and then getting ready for University the next day.
He would never have thought he'd end up teaching a group of Hormone-Driven kids that backhanding a girl was not okay, especially not with a large maul and a pissed off look. He was usually demure and quiet in public. Yet, this place was liberating. Enough practicing, and even the largest of hammers moved like the lightest of feathers. Not his, of course. He was slow, and he needed time, and while the damage was oh-so-worth-it he still remained open to attacks when he did that.
That was why Gertrude was with him and Ferdinand.
Together, they were the second half of the Guild known as 'The Black Friar Guild'.
They had been long time friends, long time acquaintances, and long time players of nearly everything under the sun that could be called a 'game'.
Thankfully, in the safe zones, attacking an enemy player didn't result in the Orange marker.
"He started it," he supplied carefully, "Take him and leave. This is your only warning."
Gertrude was still massaging her stinging cheek -although it was more of a reflex, since pain in Sword Art Online wasn't at the same level as reality.
Gertrude was actually their support-only teammate. She was a scaredy-cat, and thus did most of the Support Skills grinding that she could. Drug Mixing, First Aid, Blacksmithing and whatnot. She had them all. She trained them all.
She was the very precious only gamer girl, and that alone qualified each and every one of us as The Protector. And she was also Jean-Claude's sister, meaning that if things went down, it would soon turn into a bloodbath.
Names notwithstanding -they were nicknames, after all. Gertrude wasn't German, and Jean-Claude wasn't French. They were united as a Guild.
The trio actually left with a sour look and little words, but the inkling in the back of His mind told him they might just come back. Too much paranoia playing games, too little trust in humanity's future and the knowledge of what being a hormone-driven teenager meant back in the days.
"You all right?" he asked, a hand offered and accepted to bring Gertrude back up.
"Yes, Richard," Gertrude said.
His name was Richard Lionheart, member of the Black Friar guild. He was level twenty-seven.
He had never played at a Multiplayer Online Game for longer than a few days.
And now he was stuck in one until it was cleared.
"Why did he hit you?" Richard asked, eyes on the doors of the inn closing behind the retreating backs of the trio.
"He insisted I join their guild," Gertrude replied. "I refused. He insisted some more. I refused more. He grabbed my wrist. I threw beer on his face. He hit me. You mauled him."
It was a bad situation all around. The more members a guild had, the better they could work on the support skills grinding, and the more the support did its job, the better the 'Grinders' did theirs out in the field. While they had been lucky to start with six members already, the small guilds had understood that only large teams would be able to ascend the higher floors.
Floor Eleven was their home base, specifically in the city of Taft. Mostly because resting at an inn worked better to organize the plans, and because other players couldn't enter privately owned rooms.
Slow and steady wins the race, or so the saying went.
Unfortunately, Richard couldn't help but have the sinking gut-feeling that something wrong had happened to the others, because-
"And we are back!" the other half of the Black Friar Guild said, returning with bright grins and smiles. "We did the quest for the umpteenth time and earned our keep! Look forward to a new shiny maul, Richard, and a stronger armor for you, Gertrude!"
The bright and glorious leader of the Black Friar Guild, 'Tuck' stepped inside with a laugh that would have woken the very sleeping stones -and made them laugh together with him.
He was the always optimist.
He was built like a woodworker -and worked as a mechanic- and he held the toughest and meanest armor they managed to build for him.
The honor of being a front-line warrior was his, or so he had said with his tanned skin, burly arms, and short red hair.
Tuck, Gertrude, Jean-Claude with his permanently spiked blond hair because he loved comparing to Cloud Strife, Tovarich -who didn't come from Russia but liked to fake the accent and had platinum dyed hair, and John Smith -because he liked anonymity, as if the NSA would really be on his tail just because he downloaded music illegally- formed, together with Richard Lionheart, the core members of the Black Friar Guild.
Neither Clearers nor 'Beaters', just...normal people, trying to survive.
But would they?
AN2: The stats are taken from the official wiki, but powered up since the starter number increased. I also considered Internationality because 'why not, if we can have virtual reality then instant translation is a Thing too'
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