Sword Art Online

by Reki Kawahara

In the year 2022, ten thousand players log in to Sword Art Online — a revolutionary virtual reality MMORPG — and discover they cannot log out. The game's creator, Kayaba Akihiko, announces the rules: clear all 100 floors of the floating castle Aincrad, or remain trapped forever. Die in the game, die for real. What follows is two years of survival, guild warfare, love, loss, and the question that defines the series: if virtual experiences create real emotions, real bonds, and real trauma, does it matter that the world wasn't "real"?

63 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Kirito — The Black Swordsman — a solo player who survived the death game through skill, luck, and the stubborn refusal to let anyone else die on his watch, eve
• Asuna — The Flash — SAO's fastest rapier wielder and vice-commander of the strongest guild, who chose to fight not because she wasn't afraid but because waiti
• Alice Zuberg — An Integrity Knight forged from a stolen childhood — the girl from Rulid Village became the Axiom Church's perfect weapon, and remembering who she was
• Eugeo — The boy who chopped a tree for seven years because the rules said he must — until his best friend showed him that some rules exist to be broken, and s
• Sinon — A sniper who entered a gun game to overcome the trauma of having killed a man in real life — and found that virtual bullets don't cure real nightmares
• Leafa — A Sylph warrior in ALO and Kirito's sister in real life — navigating the complicated terrain of loving someone she can't quite reach, in-game and out.
• Klein — The samurai-styled guild leader who was Kirito's first friend in SAO — loyal, loud, and the living proof that you can be cheerful in hell if you're st
• Agil — A merchant-warrior who ran a shop on the front lines of a death game — because someone had to make sure the clearers could afford to keep fighting.
• Lisbeth — SAO's best blacksmith — she forged weapons for the front lines and feelings for a boy who was already taken, and handled both with more grace than eit
• Silica — The youngest clearer's mascot — a beast tamer who lost her dragon companion Pina and found a surrogate family of overpowered teenagers instead.
• Yui — An AI counseling program who developed emotions, adopted parents, and became the most powerful entity in any virtual world she enters — in that order.
• Cardinal — The Underworld's rebel system administrator — a copy of Quinella who chose to be her opposite, living alone in a library for two hundred years, waitin
• Kayaba Akihiko — The creator of Sword Art Online and the architect of the death game — a genius who trapped ten thousand people in his dream castle and then fought alo
• Sugou Nobuyuki — The man who imprisoned Asuna in a fairy cage and called it love — SAO's most despicable villain because his cruelty is ordinary, recognizable, and doe
• Death Gun — A phantom from SAO's murder guild who found a way to kill through screens — proof that the death game's trauma didn't end when the servers shut down.
• Quinella — The Administrator — a girl who accidentally became a god by hacking her world's source code, then spent three centuries making sure no one else ever c
• Bercouli Synthesis One — The first Integrity Knight — three hundred years old, still the strongest swordsman in the Underworld, and the only Knight who remembers enough to kno
• Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One — An Integrity Knight whose sealed memories almost surfaced when he met Eugeo — the crack in the Church's armor that proved the system could be broken.
• Fanatio Synthesis Two — An Integrity Knight who fights behind a helmet because the men she commands can't take her seriously without it — the second-strongest Knight and the
• Deusolbert Synthesis Seven — The Integrity Knight who arrested the child Alice and started everything — an archer whose perfect aim hides the imperfect memories beneath.
• Sortiliena Serlut — Kirito's senior at the Sword Mastery Academy — a noblewoman swordswoman who taught him that the Underworld's people bleed and grieve as real as anyone
• Ronye Arabel — Kirito's page at the Academy — a commoner girl whose quiet bravery in a world of nobles and Knights proved that heroism doesn't require a special swor
• Tiese Schtrinen — Eugeo's page and the girl whose assault became the moral breaking point that taught Eugeo the Taboo Index isn't justice — it's a leash.
• Gabriel Miller — Subtilizer — a real-world military contractor who views human souls as collectible resources, and entered the Underworld to harvest the most advanced
• Chudelkin — Quinella's court jester and chief enforcer — a grotesque little man whose obsessive devotion to the Administrator masks genuine cunning and cruelty.
• PoH — The founder of Laughing Coffin — SAO's murder guild leader who preached that killing players was freedom, not crime, and meant every word of it.
• Sachi — The quiet girl from the Moonlit Black Cats who died because Kirito couldn't save her — the ghost that haunts every decision he makes about protecting
• Kuradeel — Asuna's obsessive bodyguard who joined Laughing Coffin — proof that the line between devotion and predation can be invisible until the knife is alread
• Kizmel — A Dark Elf NPC warrior who fought alongside Kirito on the lower floors — the first 'non-player character' to make him question what 'non-player' reall
• Yuuki — The Absolute Sword — the strongest player in ALO who fought with eleven-hit combos and a terminal illness, proving that a life's value isn't measured
• LLENN — A tall girl trapped in a tiny pink avatar who became GGO's deadliest close-range fighter — because sometimes the best way to cope with hating your bod
• Pitohui — A famous musician and terrifying GGO player who wanted to die in SAO and resents the universe for not letting her — so she recreates the death game's
• Argo — SAO's premier information broker — the Rat who knows everything, sells everything, and has survived longer than anyone expected by making herself too
• Diavel — The self-appointed leader of the first floor boss raid — a beta tester who tried to unite ten thousand terrified players and died because he wanted th
• Kikuoka Seijirou — The government agent who sees virtual worlds as national security assets — he saved SAO survivors, created the Underworld project, and views artificia
• Koujiro Rinko — Kayaba's former lover and the neuroscientist who carries the guilt of having been close enough to stop him — and didn't.
• Sakuya — The Sylph Lord in ALO — a faction leader who plays politics with the same precision she plays combat, and whose alliance with Kirito turned the World
• Knights of the Blood Oath — SAO's strongest guild — the white-and-red elite who led the floor clearings, led by a commander who was secretly the final boss, which tells you every
• Laughing Coffin — SAO's murder guild — the red players who decided that if death was real, killing was just another game mechanic, and the coffin on their cloaks was th
• Sleeping Knights — A guild of terminally ill players who wanted to leave their names on the Monument of Swordsmen before they died — and they did, with seven members aga
• Fuurinkazan — Klein's guild — six friends who entered SAO together and all six walked out alive, which in a death game is the greatest achievement of all.

Locations

• Aincrad — A floating castle of 100 floors — the death game's beautiful prison where ten thousand players either climb toward freedom or die on the stairs.
• Town of Beginnings — Floor 1's starting city — where ten thousand players spawned, heard they were trapped, and had to decide whether to fight or give up.
• Floor 1 — The first battleground — where a month of grinding, fear, and desperate organization led to the first floor boss raid and the birth of the clearing ef
• Floor 74 — The floor where Kirito revealed Dual Blades to save his friends from The Gleam Eyes — the moment the solo player couldn't stay solo anymore.
• Black Iron Palace — The game's administrative center on Floor 1 — home to the Monument of Life, the prison, and the daily reminder that the player count only goes down.
• Alfheim Online — A fairy flight VRMMO built on SAO's engine — where nine fairy races war over territory and the World Tree's crown hides a prison disguised as a quest
• The World Tree — ALO's central landmark — a tree so massive it defines the skyline of an entire world, hiding Sugou's laboratory in its crown and a quest that was neve
• Gun Gale Online — A post-apocalyptic gun game where the Bullet of Bullets tournament determines the strongest — and where someone found a way to make virtual deaths rea
• The Underworld — A simulated civilization of artificial souls — created as a military project, governed by stolen memories and false gods, and populated by people who
• Centoria — The Underworld's capital city — where the Sword Mastery Academy trains warriors, nobles play power games, and the Central Cathedral watches everything
• Central Cathedral — The Axiom Church's hundred-floor tower — a vertical dungeon of Integrity Knights, traps, and stolen memories, with a false goddess waiting at the top.
• Rulid Village — A quiet farming village at the Underworld's edge — where Kirito woke up with no memories, Eugeo chopped a tree for seven years, and Alice was taken aw
• Dark Territory — The land beyond the mountains — home to goblins, orcs, dark knights, and a civilization that the Axiom Church defined as evil so thoroughly that even
• Ocean Turtle — Rath's floating research base — a military vessel disguised as a marine research platform where artificial souls are grown, tested, and prepared for w
• Dicey Cafe — Agil's bar in the real world — where SAO survivors gather to drink, argue, and remind each other that they made it out alive.

Items

• Elucidator — Kirito's signature black sword — a boss drop that became iconic not because of its stats but because the Black Swordsman carried it through hell.
• Blue Rose Sword — Eugeo's blade of ice and memory — a Divine Object weapon whose Enhance Armament creates a field of frozen roses that capture everything they touch, in
• Night Sky Sword — Kirito's Underworld blade — a sword grown from a branch of the Gigas Cedar that carries the memory of a tree that took seven years to cut down and a f
• NerveGear — The VR headset that made full-dive virtual reality possible — and the microwave emitter strapped to ten thousand skulls that made the death game real.
• The Seed — Kayaba's final gift — an open-source package for building virtual worlds, left behind by a mass murderer who wanted his dream to outlive his crime.
• Yui's Heart — A teardrop-shaped crystal containing a compressed AI consciousness — the item that saved Yui from deletion and lets her exist across any virtual world
• Fragrant Olive Sword — Alice's Divine Object blade — a golden sword forged from an immortal tree whose memory release splits into hundreds of petals, each one a flying blade

View full codex at Simulacra.Ink