AN: Just read through the Ordinal Scale translations for the mini-novel and watched the movie. I loved it, I may as well make a little story. It will be awhile until I get the motivation to update my other stories and I do have work and other works to update so this is another one of my side projects that I will continue for now. Still, [The Gamer] is pretty useless in a world where only your mind can exist in. Ordinal Scale spoilers, and yes, this actually takes place in the world where the Abyss exists. You can guess what's the next arc by now.

Kinda Lucky Gamer?

There were a few of things I expected to wake up to after a well-deserved 5-6 hours of sleep.

The one that tops the list is the sound of my air conditional leaking water onto my floor in a '*Drip Drip*' sound effect, pretty much wakes me up as well as an alarm clock would.

That was pretty much an indication that it's been about 8 hours since I turned it on… and the fact I should really get it fixed by now.

The second one would be the 'official' wakeup call from my digital alarm clock.

Followed by the third thing I would expect, my several back-up alarms set in my phone.

None of those involved BGM music that included ominous, *cough*, I mean, 'happy' latin chanting with a rustic fantasy tune to it.

It's as if I was in a theatre with a surround sound system playing this song… except I wasn't in a theatre, I certainly wasn't in my bed, nor was I in the clothes I was sleeping in and I certainly do not remember having a FUCKING REAL SWORD in my hand.

And first of all, why the fuck am I in an open plains with lots of nice green grass and some random wild boar in the distance?

… This is either a dream or an Isekai adventure with typical fantasy RPG elements or 'I'm stuck in some random self-insert adventure'…

I wonder why am I not panicking?

Then again, I wasn't the overly emotional sort. If I had to give myself a level in empathy I would rank mine at around 11/100.

Sure my parents, friends and peers would classify me as the 'nice' guy, kinder and politer than most people… but most of it was borne out of partial laziness and indifference.

Well, I tend to be more lax around my family but even in the strangest and dangerous situations I ended up in on those rare occasions I still never really shouted in frustration as far as I can remember.

So… I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that I am not 'panicking' like a 'normal' person.

Wait a second, what the hell am I doing being introspective again?

I thought I got over that after my stint in nihilism.

"Guess not… ah well, whatever."

I said to myself, ah, I always did point out the fact that my mother talks to herself when my father and I can't be bothered to listen but I did share that habit with her.

Heh, and everyone says I'm my father's son… please, I have my mother's dark brown hair and… uh, nothing else I guess.

I look down at my new clothes and begin to wonder why it looks so fucking familiar, and so typical like low-level gear from those MMORPG's.

"Come to think of it, what do they call this type of armour again? Wish I had an Equipment screen now."

A light-blue semi-transparent window appeared in front of me, showing a shadow version of my body and some designations for what I was wearing.

…I know where this is going.

I had written one or two Gamer fanfics before and was a huge fan of the Manhwa until the MC just got retarded at some point.

Not to mention I read like… tons of Gamer fanfictions and quests before.

"Skills."

Skills list

[Gamer's Mind] – Passive –

Description: Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through in most circumstances. Allows a peaceful state of mind .Immunity to psychological and mental status effects.

[Gamer's Body] (Default) – Passive – (PARTIAL FUNCTIONALITY)

Description: Grant's a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game. Pain from damage does not last after a few seconds. Sleeping restores HP, MP and heals all temporary statues effects. The above effects are locked and replaced with [Gamer's Body] (SAO) until you free from the virtual world. [Gamer's Body] (SAO) grants ?, Imports SAO stats when released from the limits of the game.

Welp, that worked out and isn't this a carbon copy of what I've written at some poi-

Wait, what? SAO?

…well shit, I immediately regretted not following the Progressive novels now, along with all the video game stories… at least I saw the movie trailers and a bit of spoilers for Ordinal Scale, right?

Nah, I'm so fucked.

"Status"

Please don't insult me status screen-chan!

Name: NickLZH Age: 22

LVL: 1 EXP: 0/15

Title: Seeker of Purpose Affiliation: THE FAMILY

Race: Human/Spirit

HP: 100/100 Regen: 1 per hour

MP: 50/50 Regen: 1 per minute

STR: 4

END: 5

AGI: 4

INT: 18

WIS: 25

LUK: 30

Points: 0

Col: 0

Cash: None, deal with it

Okay, I know I'm a fucking 'privileged' ordinary citizen but I think it's overstating my LUK by a lot.

Let's see… elaboration?

LVL: Level, a basic measure of experience and an estimate of strength. When you get enough EXP you will level up and gain some status points.

HP: A representation of your life force and health. When your HP reaches zero you die. This is separate from your SAO HP Pool.

MP: A representation of your magic energy. Used to perform Magic. Only Mind related spells can affect your SAP avatar in a limited fashion.

STR: Governs brute force. The higher your strength the higher your physical output will be, be it in attacks, movement or defence. Upgrades do not carry over to the virtual world.

END: Governs physical endurance. The greater your endurance the greater your stamina and defence will be. Increases HP capacity. Upgrades do not carry over to the virtual world.

AGI: Governs reflexes, agility, coordination, speed and accuracy. The higher it is, the higher your speed, critical rate, dodge rate and accuracy will be. Upgrades to perception and co-ordination will be applied to the virtual world.

INT: Governs the ability to process and store information, increases your mana pool, control and efficiency. Increases magic damage, magic not usuable

WIS: Governs sensibility, perceptiveness, willpower and the ability to make information useful. Increases mana regen. Also increases dodge, critical rates and accuracy by a bit. Higher Wisdom allows the creation of greater spells.

LUK: Luck controls how much events will be in your favour, and governs the quality and frequency of favourable opportunities. Increases drop rates, chance for critical hits and favourability of events. Overrides any LUK stat in other worlds? Somehow...

All right, an altered version of what I written once in my life and-

… Well shit, over half of these stats are useless and-

Did I just get the most redundant and useless would-be overpowered ability?

After looking around carefully I can finally see the SAO HUD, opening it, I can see my stats in STR, AGI, and VIT listed out. All of them have a '5' beside them.

Damn, this is going to get complicated with two separate menu's.

"Hmm? This reminds me of Fate/Extra and… oh shieettt…"

I said 'Oh shit' in the same way I remembered the Ghost House video series voice actor does it.

"What if I am a virtual ghost? Does that make this whole trek up Aincrad pointless then? It's pretty fucking obvious I'm in SAO and… no, don't do this to yourself Nick, you know that angst never gets anywhere."

Huh, perhaps this is one of the infamous benefits of [Gamer's Mind]!

Yeah, fuck angst.

I was pretty sure that my lack of empathy and calm disposition in most of my life played a good part in giving a false impression of being 'above' certain degrees of angst… although it was definitely mostly due to the fact I didn't form that many close relationships outside a small group of friends and family.

"Ok… now, where am I in the SAO timeline?... Date? Time?" I asked, prompting an electronic display from a menu to pop up.

Novermer 6th 2022, the first day of SAO.

Okay, okay, I still have a few hours before the eventual announcement so I may as well use this time to git gud.

I went to taunt that Wild Boar to come to me.

"Hey, Mr. Boar! Get over here so that I can marinate your skin, turn your flesh into minced meat and flatten it to make my Chinese meat snacks! I will take your marinated skin and roast it slowly over a fire, your body will be fucking skewered through a large pole and I will feast on your corpse like a proper Asian by sucking everything until only your bones are left behind. You know what I will fucking do with your bones? I will feed it to my fluffy Mini-Schnauzer."

You have created two skills through a special action!

[Villain Threat] skill has been created!

[Taunt] skill has been created!

Okay, that was the crappiest nonsense I had ever said but what works, works I guess.

The boar charged at me, and surprisingly, I wasn't an entire scrub like Lvl 1 Klein.

I sidestepped and made a horizontal slash across it's running torso.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to activate any Sword Skills so that was pretty damn sad.

The AI was stupid and repeated the action twice.

It was dead when I simply finished the same action three times.

Victory!

10 EXP gained! 15 Col Gained!

1 X Wild Boar Meat gained!

Funnily enough, the EXP gauges were different for both character status menus but the things I gained were in an absolute value.

This was good in getting my first level up for my [The Gamer] powers but will probably stall my EXP curve in the long run as it probably followed the old Maplestory EXP curve judging by the 15 EXP needed to level up in the first level… I still needed to kill 9 more Wild Boars to level up my SAO avatar at this rate.

1 hour later…

[1-Handed Sword Mastery] – Passive – Lvl.1/100 EXP: 73%

Description: A skill that allows the user to freely wield one-handed swords. 1-Handed Sword Mastery is obtained through continuous usage of swords.

Increase in damage when using swords by 10%, locked due to SAO avatar, progression imitates SAO system

Let's see… I put a point into Agility for my SAO avatar bring it to STR:5, AGI:6, and VIT: 5.

Also, I placed 10 points into LUK from my two level-up's for my [The Gamer] stats.

Hey, I did get quite a lot of critical hits and starting level Loot from the Wild Boars thanks to my LUK stat!

I may as well go full lucky bastard, am I right?

Abuse the RNG! ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH!

In any event, I got a slightly better beginner Iron Sword with a 'Rare' rarity with a hairy hilt, [Wild Boar's Bane], a sword that deals extra damage to [Boar] monsters.

I also got this Ukulele for some reason.

Man, if my drop rates are this good then I have nothing to complain about.

I look around to see if anyone's looking at me… nope, I am pretty far out of town after all.

"Inventory"

I tried putting my virtual beginner's blade into [The Gamer]'s inventory and it fucking worked!

Hey, this might not be so bad after all!

But I sure hope that the Cardinal system doesn't find out about this exploit…

No Yui! Don't delete me!

I began heading back to town, planning to kill some monsters and-

Oh look! Another player!

Hmmm, "Observe"

Fortunately, the skill did work.

Unfortunately, it didn't show anything more than the SAO avatar's status and name.

Sigh, ah well…

I walk up to the player and notice that it was a female avatar with long white hair, with a braid at the side. She had red eyes and was wearing a light blue beginner's armour ensemble.

Psh! Yeah right, I bet 'she' is actually a 'guy'.

The female population is like, what, 15-20% in SAO or something?

Anyways, doesn't hurt to me polite and say 'hello'!

… Wait a second, do I even know Japanese?

"Good afternoon? You look a bit lost, need any help?" I offer as I walked up to the 'female' player.

I see her name, and note that it looked like the Japanese word for 'song' using my limited knowledge of Japanese… what? I watched enough anime to know that 'Uta' means 'song'.

Must be a music fan!

I wonder if 'she' plays the piano like I do?

"Oh! Nice to meet you! And eh? I guess I'm a little bit lost. I accidentally turned off the map and I don't know how to turn it back on, teehee!"

She scratched the back of her head before making the typical 'teehee' pose.

I am torn between wanting to see his face when I spread the knowledge of a guy doing such pose … and of the very fact some 'guy' is legitimately doing something like this.

"Well, here's how you turn it back on-"

As per usual, it doesn't hurt to help a stranger.

At least, not until the PK guilds and scams start picking up… more than likely, it's 'nice guys' that end up getting shanked by bitches like Rosalia.

If anything, I did confirm that she was speaking Japanese and I was somehow automatically speaking it despite my English proficiency still intact.

Glad to know [The Gamer] did not delete my language skills.

"Thank you so much! I ended up walking out of town, chased by three wild boars and ended up lost. Ah, I'm no good at video games. This is actually my first game you know! My daddy got me the NervGear since he helped Kayaka Akihiko work on it. He's a professor at Totou Technology university and-"

Uhh, too much information.

After she finished giving more explanations I smiled and chuckled a bit.

'She' looked rather embarrassed; he's probably just one of those socially awkward guys that picked up a video game for the first time.

"Uuoh, sorry for talking so much. I just felt like telling someone and well… hehe!"

My mental image of a guy going 'hehe' is poisoning my brain.

Still, I kept the false 'interested' look on my face that I learnt through surviving university with and said it was no trouble at all.

"It's fine. I actually talk too much myself. But, a piece of advice. In games like these you shouldn't be giving out your real-life information like that. Not all people are trustworthy and friendly. A drastic change of circumstances can lead to people doing extreme things so you should be careful with that kind of info… people could hurt you with it." It was honestly some earnest advice since I'm not the most careful person with information myself.

"O-oh! Thank you for your concern. Guess I really shouldn't be talking about my father and where he works."

Especially if he knows Kayaba Akihiko, literally everyone will pester her and… considering there was rape in the original web novels of Alicization I don't really want to think of what could happen to 'her', whether he's a guy or girl.

"No biggie. Hey, want to party up?" I offer, may as well keep someone that is slightly 'plot relevant' considering such a connection exists between 'her' and Kayaba indirectly.

"Really? You want to party up with me?!" 'She' looked at me with gratefulness… shit, I sure hope he's not a 'trap' or I'll be sexually confused for life.

"Why not? I'm just glad I could help out."

Yeah, sometimes it makes me feel as if I made an impact in the world.

Quest Alert! (Optional)

Title: Get Uta-chan to Level 2!

Objectives: Exactly what the title says! Time limit: 3 hours

Completion reward: 100 EXP, Friend request guaranteed accept! Increased ? gauge with Uta/?

Failure penalty : None

Challenge accepted!

I invited her to the party and instructed her on how to use the basic Sword Skill, [Horizontal].

After that, my Luck had somehow had us find a bunch of Wild Boars and catch them off guard one-by-one.

I finished the quest 2 hours later.

Level 5! (for THE GAMER)

Put everything in LUK and…

Name: NickLZH Age: 22

LVL: 5 EXP: 30/135

Title: Seeker of Purpose Affiliation: THE FAMILY

Race: Human/Spirit

HP: 200/200 Regen: 1 per hour

MP: 100/100 Regen: 1 per minute

STR: 4

END: 5

AGI: 4

INT: 18

WIS: 25

LUK: 50

Points: 0

Col: 225

[A Gamer's Needs] – Passive – Lvl. Max

Description: High Increase in Item Drops, Finding Random Nice Stuff, and scoring LUK increases. (50 Base LUK bonus)

Whoo! LUK Bonus perk Getto!

"Yahoo! Uta-chan has levelled up!" Uta jumped up in the girliest way possible, kind of what I would expect of an "It's the Sea!" moment for an upcoming beach episode.

Now I'm just praying she's not actually a guy or I will have to bleach my brain.

Bleach it hard… just like Kubo did to his manga.

She began humming a melodic theme in happiness.

"You really good at humming, aren't you? Do you like to sing?"

"Yep! I love to sing! I've been singing since kindergarten and my dream is to sing in front of a stadium wide audience!"

"Really? You must be great at it then! I can't sing for shit. Tone deaf, only went to Karaoke twice."

"I'm alright, I think…. Although, I can teach you how to 'sing' if you want!"

"I'm cool for now. Speaking of music, I do play the piano."

"Really? I play the guitar and the Ukelele! I know! We can start like, SAO's first band!"

"Haha, maybe." I said, genuinely excited due to her enthusiasm.

Actually, that would be kind of fun.

"Hey, close your eyes for 5 seconds. No peeking. I got a present for you."

"Okayyyy…" She dragged out melodiously.

I quickly took out the Ukelele I found and held it in front of her.

"*Gasp* No way!"

"Yes way. Found it on my 4th boar, lucky eh?"

I opened a trade request to transfer the instrument to her.

She immediately began playing it with tremendous skill… o-oh? Is she replicating the BGM of the First Town?

"Wow… as expected of someone naming her character 'Song' (Uta)."

"Ehehe! I wouldn't name my character anything else… but, just asking, what does NickLZH stand for?"

"Oh… those are my initials for my name. Nick is my Nickname. I know it sounds like 'meat' as in 'Niku' in Japanese so please try not to butcher it too much." I explained.

"Niiku, Nikkk…eh, Niiccc, Nick?"

"You got it!"

"Ah, but if I add the –kun prefix then it still becomes Nick-kun, Niku."

"Gah!"

She giggled before accepting my request to just call me Nick, as I was used to.

She also accepted my friend request easily enough, and we both walked back to town together.

I didn't manage to catch sight of Klein and Kirito… or any other 'main characters' so I guess I'm not that lucky.

Well, the whole teleportation and Kayaba speech happened.

I was 'fortunate' to be right next to Uta, who was shocked and terrified at the announcement… she despondently activated the item to change her appearance back to her original one and-

-She was actually a girl.

She was about 5 feet 5 inches tall, had shoulder length brown hair and a single braid at the side. Her eyes matched her hair and she was only slightly shorter than her avatar. Other than that, she was really cute.

Oh thank you Lord, no brain bleach needed!

I also activated the item, resulting in literally no change from my 5 feet 11 inches, dark brown hair and light complexion that I had before.

Well, my features were slightly plainer, thankfully not anymore Asian because my eyes were pretty moderately sized to my liking and-

-Eh, I just noticed that I hadn't had my glasses the entire time.

Shit, what am I doing spacing out while everyone is panicking as if they aren't Kirito… oh wait…

I better take care of Uta.

Making a wise decision has increased your Wisdom by 1!

Fuck you game!

"Uta-chan? Are you… no, let's go somewhere else." She followed me as I dragged her to a blacksmith's shop, and allowed her to cry and scream in an alleyway nearby.

"No…nono, this can't be happening. Papa! Papa will save me. He will, he helped made the NervGear he… Papa will definitely…"

Ooh shiieettt… how do I help a crying girl again?

I wished this shitty game had a Charisma stat!

Then again I really should had added wisdom instead of Luck.

Solomon did ask for wisdom instead of wealth, after all.

Learning about the true value of Wisdom has increased your Wisdom by 1!

… Yeah, rub it in.

I ended up sitting next to her, covering her with a random coat I found from a Wild Boar, I merely rambled off some comforting words my mother would say to my sister (edited) whenever she would cry.

As much as I wanted to go full Kirito and get that Anneal Blade, I actually had no idea where it was as I barely read the progressive novels and I can't fucking remember the first few chapters of volume 1.

Well, I could always fix up my weapons and armour later… right now, I brought her to an inn and booked a room for the both of us. Something tells me that leaving her alone would be the last thing I should do.

Name: NickLZH Age: 22

LVL: 5 EXP: 30/135

Title: Seeker of Purpose Affiliation: THE FAMILY

Race: Human/Spirit

HP: 200/200 Regen: 2 per hour

MP: 100/100 Regen: 2 per minute

STR: 4

END: 5

AGI: 4

INT: 18

WIS: 27

LUK: 50

Points: 0

Col: 225