Sword Art Online Volume 23 preview summary

Several days ago, a preview of volume 23's content was released on BookWalker ahead of the book's official release on the 10th. I wasn't sure whether I was going to summarise this volume or not, but since I was pleasantly surprised by one of my readers, I decided to at least do the preview. The preview is pretty long too (60 pages, which is about 1/5 of the book), so enjoy. The preview only covers (part of) Sinon's adventures... or more like misadventures, seeing as she seemed to be on a roll in making poor decisions.

Notice: This is a summary, not a proper translation. Even if I ended up making it more like a full-blown retelling than an actual summary.

-Gsimenas

Chapter 1

Volume 23 begins with... Sinon describing how much it sucks to be thirsty in UR. The sense of dehydration is so realistic that Sinon honestly wonders whether her real body hasn't dehydrated.

At this point, the grace period has already expired and Sinon is aware that she would lose her account if she died, so she chooses to continue playing UR... in search of water in a barren wasteland.

"To think that I, of all people, would be driven into a corner like this......", she says as she recalls her mistakes.

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Six hours ago - 4:50 PM on 27 September, 2026. Sinon was logged into GGO and farming machine mobs in a high difficulty dungeon for rare metal drops.

Although Sinon has been spending more time in ALO, she had no intention of giving up her GGO account, feeling that her Hecate II was a part of her. That's why she was soloing a dungeon for mats to customise her rifle for the next BoB that she wants to win.

Just when she only needed one more piece of metal that had a drop rate of 3%, the floor started shaking violently and her vision was dyed in a rainbow light, forcefully transporting her aboveground.

Sinon found herself in the corner of an unfamiliar city with no one around. Instead of concrete, the buildings were made out of stone, while the roads were made out of bricks rather than asphalt. A sharp contrast from the usual GGO cities.

More GGO players started flowing in soon afterwards, but all of them were dumbfounded by what was going on and she didn't see any familiar faces among them. Not liking the prospect of being surrounded by unfamiliar men, Sinon sneaked into a two-storey building nearby.

The players began looking at the menu and some decided to log out and contact the administrators or look up community sites for posts about the issue, but Sinon had a bad feeling about things and refrained from logging out.

And to Sinon's surprise, the ten players that logged out... had their avatars remain on the spot. So, this wasn't a safe "town", but rather a field map... or more like ruins, since no NPCs were around.

Just then, multiple 80 cm long mishmashes of a centipede and an earwig entered the scene. Although they didn't look like a tough monster... all the GGO players were sitting ducks... She reflexively went for her MP7... but stopped at the last moment. Can't risk drawing in even more of them, in case the five she's seeing aren't the only ones around.

Her MP7 did have a suppressor... but she had stored it away into her storage to reduce the weight of her equipment. Meanwhile, the monsters started eating peoples' napes.

Sinon was expecting the players to last awhile, since the monsters were smallfry while the men were equipped with high-class gear... but they started dying out in just ten seconds.

At that point, Sinon instantly opened up her menu to look at her stats. Gulping when she noticed that she was level 1 with only 200 HP. Stats reset. Not to mention MP, TP, SP bars that weren't present in GGO.

Sinon finally took out her MP7 to save the five players still alive. After a detailed description of how she prepared her MP7 for firing, Sinon realised that the Bullet Circle system wasn't functioning.

Since there were apparently monsters that could jam Bullet Circles, Sinon didn't pay much attention to that and fired out two bursts at one of the monsters, easily killing it. Though it didn't burst into fragments like they usually would in GGO.

At that point, the remaining four monsters began targeting Sinon. Trying to stay calm, Sinon took out a second one, while the remaining three started climbing the wall.

Switching to full-auto, Sinon killed the third one, followed by the fourth. But the fifth one reached the window and attacked with its huge jaw and tail pincer. So, Sinon kicked off from the window and fired again, killing the last monster. 【Sinon reached level 2】.
P.S., Sinon had reached level 107 in GGO just three days ago, so level 2 was a bit disappointing.

Sinon then poked the monster with her MP7's muzzle, before tapping on it with her finger when she was sure it was dead. This brought up the property window: 【Akahara Hasami-mukade (Red-bellied pincer-centipede) carcass　Material　Weight 5.82】.

Sinon returned her MP7 to its holster to take out her knife... but her beloved survival knife was nowhere to be found... so she picked up a kitchen knife she found in the building. Not much use in a fight, but enough to dissect a carcass. Sinon nearly threw away the knife in horror when she began the dissection, but luckily for her, the game finished the dissection for her. 【Dissection Skill Aquired. Proficiency Reached 1】.

For her troubles, Sinon got several 【Low Quality Centipede Shells】 and 2 x 【Low Quality Centipede Pincers】. Sinon didn't what she could do with them, but decided to store them away anyway, before stepping outside.

Since the remaining players hadn't returned yet, Sinon dissected the other centipedes... before noticing blackish bags where the fice players had died. When she touched one of them, she got a notification that she acquired an AK74M and a Tactical Vest.

Feeling that looting the drops wasn't ethical, Sinon was about to return the items back... but then thought that the players would respawn somewhere and come looking for their items... however, items left lying on the ground would disappear after awhile. So, she decided to pick up the other stuff to give it back later.

Sinon was worried about her storage space after storing all that stuff, but her storage was only 20% full. So, she investigated her inventory and found that all she had in it were the ten items she retrieved from the players and the centipede materials. None of her GGO stuff was there.

Just as Sinon thought how she should keep her Hecate II and MP7 safe until a rollback returned her stuff... she realised that all her ammo was gone too. So, she only had 7 Hecate bullets in her sniper's magazine and about forty MP7 bullets in her spare magazine on her belt.

Thinking that it would be best to team up with the five players against any monsters in the area, Sinon waited for the players to log back in. However, when the first one came back three minutes later, shouting that everyone needed to gather at the center of the ruins... and learnt that his buddies were dead, he accused Sinon of being a PKer before she could explain that they were attacked by monsters. Only then did she realise that her "They're dead, too bad." phrase could be taken as the words of some guy doing an assassin roleplay... whoops... doesn't help that she's currently armed with her MP7.

Sinon tries to tell the guy that she saved them from centipedes, but since she already dissected all of the carcasses, the player doesn't believe her. She wanted to take out the mats as proof, but the player mistook that action for hostility and pointed his rifle at her. Just as Sinon was considering her options to avoid losing her Hecate, a second guy came back with news that GGO wasn't the only game affected... when he noticed the hostile situation and was told that Sinon "murdered" five sitting ducks in an underhanded manner, so he took out his revolver.

While Sinon desperately looked for a way out of the situation, the three remaining players came back. Just as Sinon prayed that at least one of them was calm enough to hold a conversation, Sinon noticed that the centipedes had respawned. But the men hadn't noticed them over the first guy's incessant shouting.

Sinon thus tried to warn them to look behind, but the players just took it for a hackneyed trick... until some shouting from the other players finally clued him in to the more than ten centipedes coming at them. When the five men jumped back in surprise, Sinon decided to use this chance to escape, seeing as the men wouldn't take long to handle the smallfry mobs.

Since the first player shouted about gathering at the center of the ruins when he logged back in, Sinon assumed that there should be a safe zone there... but since she was accused of being a PKer... going to a large gathering of players wasn't the best idea, so she considered going outside the city. But first, she had to lose the overreactive players. So, she found a side road where she could get out of sight and hid herself behind some boxes she found there.

Several moments later, the players caught up to her enough that she could hear them talking about wanting to get their hands on her sniper rifle. On the one hand, Sinon didn't want to lose her Hecate to some lowlifes who abbreviate the word "sniper rifle" to "snarai", on the other hand, Sinon didn't want to become an actual PKer. As she prayed that the guys wouldn't come to her alley... they stopped at her alley.

Sinon kept her hand on the Hecate's bolt handle so she could quickly load it if she had to fight back... but just then, one of the guys shot at one of the boxes with a submachine gun, grazing her hair and combat suit. Sinon just barely restrained herself from reflexively jumping out... and that ended up saving her, as the men concluded she wasn't there, since nobody reacted to their shooting.

After barely getting out of the situation alive, Sinon whispered in her mind that the men would come to regret wasting their ammo like that soon enough, before continuing on deeper into the alley.

-----

And so Sinon made her way out of the city. She encountered more centipedes, spiders and scorpions, but to conserve her ammo, she just avoided them by running away. At this point, she cursed that she didn't switch from an MP7 to a photon sword.

After more than twenty minutes, she reached a tall stone wall. It was a rampart that surrounded the town and it was impossible to climb it. So, Sinon used a stone throw to decided which direction to go in next. In less than a minute, she found a large gate. Before crossing the gate, Sinon weighed whether her choice to leave the town was correct, but all she concluded was that she couldn't go near any other GGO players until the PK misunderstanding was resolved.

Sinon's goal now was to find a safe place to log out. Since the city was crawling with monsters, she had no choice but to seek refuge outside of it. Beyond the rampart, Sinon was surprised by the scope of the field that awaited her. Although GGO boasted large maps itself (the wasteland surrounding SBC Glocken needed five hours to cross on foot, for example), but UR's map was also off-the-charts HD. She was surprised by how clear even the dry land in the horizon and the mountains beyond it looked. A world on the scale of Underworld.

Growing even more interested in logging out to find out what was going on, she surveyed the area (that looks like the Sonoran Desert in Mexico) and realised that she could also use her Hecate's scope to zoom in and look for a safe spot. And thus she spotted a cave near the top of a rocky mountain around 700-800 metres away.

So, she began running towards the mountain, avoiding monsters along the way and safely arrived at her destination. There, she planned out her climbing route and began climbing the ~15 m tall mountain. The trick to climbing in VRMMOs was to climb up fast before a state of exhaustion was incurred by the system. At the 5 m point, she got the message: 【Climbing (登攀) Skill Acquired. Profficiency reached 1】... the abruptness of which caused Sinon to lose her hold. Luckily, she grabbed on to a gap before she could fall down entirely. Even a level 1 skill made it easier for her to climb up the rest of the way safely.

Sinon went deeper inside the cave with her MP7's flashlight to ensure there wasn't a monster nest inside. The cave was 1.5 metres high and 3 metres deep. While there were no monsters inside, she did find a wooden box. Sinon approached it, thinking that it was possibly a treasure chest. But it had a keyhole. Sinon's attempts to open it were in vain.
P.S. Treasure chests in GGO are called "Treasure Boxes" (トレジャーボックス) and can have either digital or physical locks. The former can be opened with a Hacking skill, while the latter with a Picking skill. The latter could also be brute forced by shooting the lock, though it rarely succeeded and either ended up making it impossible to open the chest at all, or destroying its contents.

After some hesitation while looking at her MP7, Sinon decided not to take the risk with a brute force option. She did at least want to try picking the lock, but her lockpicking toolset was gone and instead all she had were the men's guns and centipede mats... and that's when she had an idea. She took out one of the Low Quality Centipede Pincers... with sharp tips. She stuffed one of the tips into the keyhole. While not as good as her locking tools, the pincer was sufficient for fiddling with the lock. As she did so, 【Lockpicking (解錠) Skill Acquired. Proficiency reached 1】.

After three minutes of fiddling, Sinon raised her lockpicking proficiency to 2 just as he heard a snap in the lock... and her pincer exhausted its durability. Inside she found: a handful of coins, a worn leather bag, and a blue, rusty key. She picked up the only silver coin in the bunch and investigated it. Didn't seem like GGO's credits or ALO's Yrd. The number 100 was written on one side, and two tree leaves on the back side. When she tapped on it, she saw the property window: 【100 El Silver Coin　Coin　Weight 0.1】.

Sinon stored the coins into her storage and then picked up the rusty key with a flower engraving on the handle. Sinon tried gaining info from its property window: 【Bronze Key　Tool　Weight 0.72】, but nothing of use in it. She stashed the key and then investigated the leather bag. Since it was rather heavy, Sinon got her expectations up for some gold coins or a magic item, but what she found was... a pachinko ball-sized, black lead sphere that didn't seem to have any value... and the bag was full of them. When she tapped on one of them: 【Crude Musket Bullet　Weapon/Bullet　Attack:Piercing 28.42　Weight 3.67】.

Just as she was about to throw away the bullets in disappointment... she suddenly recalled that she had never heard of such a gun category in GGO. And in GGO's setting, NPC could only make optical guns, as they lost the knowledge on creating live ammo guns, so those could only be salvaged from ruins. But even the oldest guns that have been salvaged from city ruins were at least from the 20th century. Not to mention that muskets have to be reloaded for each shot, so they'd be hardly useful even against the weakest monsters.

After deciding to store away the bullets after all, Sinon leaned against the wall. It was now 6:00 PM. She wanted to log out and find out what was going on since there were no monsters in the cave. But first, she decided to rest up. While thinking about what she'd eat when she logged out, Sinon.... fell asleep...

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Sinon was awakened by a noise that sounded like countless bells ringing in the distance. After a moment of confusion, she realised that she fell asleep in-game.... and the time was now 9:55 PM... so she had slept for slightly over THREE hours. Since she didn't awake in her own bed, Sinon concluded that the sleep logout function wasn't working here... though she also concluded that she would have slept for an entire eight hours if she had been in her own bed, so she was at least a bit lucky.

When she stepped outside to investigate the sound that awoke her... and found an aurora... and then heard a voice that sounded like it belonged to an innocent girl... and a wise sage at the same time, say the following phrase from v21: [The seeds have sprouted, the branches and leaves have spread, forming a ring gate. Those of you summoned to the land of dying hopes, protect your single life to the end. To the first one to endure the many hardships, survive multiple predicaments, and arrive at the land indicated by the aurora, I/we (?) shall grant thee everything].

Just as Sinon was about to investigate where the aurora was pointing exactly... but she couldn't manage to finish doing so, as the moment the aurora suddenly disappeared, the was assailed by a great weight on her back... and Sinon realised that the weight came from her MP7 that seemed like a kitten in weight a mere second ago... but now felt like a lion was trampling her. But it didn't end there. Even when she removed the MP7, the weight didn't disappear. She realised that her favourite combat suit (officially named 《Sniper's Jacket》 (スナイパーズジャケット)) was exceeding her weight limit as well. After stashing away the jacket, as well as her boots and muffler, finally felt lighter.

So now, Sinon was only in her underwear. Since she couldn't use her gear anymore, she stashed them away into her storage. By then, Sinon that she was feeling thirsty. And her small water flask was missing, just like her survival knife. For a moment, Sinon thought that it was no big deal and she could just rough it out like in any other game, but then she noticed that her TP meter was decreasing (her SP bar was also decreasing, but not as quickly), so Sinon quickly realised what TP stood for. The bar was decreasing at a speed of 1% per minute.

Sinon had to find some water... in a pretty barren wasteland. What's more, all she had on her was her underwear and a belt... as well as the rusty kitchen knife she picked up in the city.... but she did have something else in her storage. She found five entries in her inventory with bag icons: 【Elkamyno's Mementos】, 【Stocks's Mementos】, 【練練 (Renren)'s Mementos】, 【Mishoka's Mementos】, and 【増岡一郎 (Masuoka Ichirou)'s Mementos】.

Sinon was repulsed by the idea of touching items she had picked up just to hold on for the players, but her concerns about that couldn't win against the throat-stabbing sensation of her thirst. So, she went through them looking for stuff even a level 2 could equip. While the five players had looked pretty well-equipped, she hoped that at least one of them was an AGI build player... and she found one. The player named Stocks's bundle included a weapon called 《Belatrix SL2》 (laser gun) and a set of armour called 《Weasel Suit》 (yellowish-brown combat suit), both of which just barely fit under her weight limit. While Sinon did have concerns about how much the Weasel Suit exposed and optical guns weren't to her liking, it was better than running around in her underwear with a kitchen knife. Also, bullet count isn't displayed on the player's UI in UR, so she had to inspect the energy gauge on the gun itself (63% charged).

And so, Sinon set out in search for water.

-------


End of Flashback

Back in the present - past 10 PM that same day. In that one hour, Sinon had no luck finding any water. Her TP bar was below 20% now and it was already hard to bear. And so, Sinon concluded that she had made three great mistakes: 1) taking the items of the centipede victims out of merch; 2) falling asleep in the cave, rather than logging out; 3) deciding to go further away from the ruins instead of returning to them when she left the cave. By the time she realised that there should be a well or something in the ruins where she could stock up on water, her TP bar was already below 50%, so it was impossible to turn back.

Although she had acquired something of a 《Night Vision》 skill, with only the stars giving light, she couldn't make out stuff in the shadows, so she had to take great detours around rocks where monsters could be hiding.

But just when she was only a hundred meters away from the rocky mountain she was aiming for... her eyes and ears caught sight/sound of something and she immediately bent over. She saw a tiny light at the base of the mountain. Something was reflecting the light of the stars... which was likely a water source. While her ears caught a thunder-like roar. The kind of sound that cliched large monsters... or even field boss-class monsters would make.

All she had to use as a weapon was the Belatrix SL2 handgun... but her TP bar was nearly at the 10% mark, so she no longer had the time to find a different water source. So, her options were to either to die from dehydration... or take her chances with what lay beyond the mountain. And she remembered a line she once told Dyne in GGO: "At least in-game, have the guts to die facing a muzzle." So, if she was doomed to die either way, she decided to die fighting, rather than dehydrate to death.

In order to at least see what the monster looked like, Sinon took out her MP7's flashlight and equipped it on her handgun... and she basically used up the remainder of her weight capacity for it. Since the light couldn't reach an entire hundred metres away, Sinon carefully closed in around the rock. When she was only 50 metres away from the rock, she noticed water running down along it... which only made her sensation of thirst worse. Her TP bar was only at 8% by now.

At that point, she found the source of the roar. A large shadow was going counter-clockwise along the base of the rock. As if protecting its turf. She had to do something if she wanted to drink some of that water. Sinon considered opening fire on it to draw the monster away from the water for at least a minute, so she could at least get a bit to drink.

Thinking that she wanted to see Kirito and co's faces when she told them how she managed to solve at least some of her problems here, Sinon resolved to survive and took her handgun into both hands. Meanwhile, a large monster appeared from beyond the rock. Sinon planned to light up her flashlight, find some good place to shoot in three seconds, and fire...

But just before she could hit the switch for the flashlight, she heard a large-caliber live ammo gun firing. The monster now roared in anger. Straining her eyes, Sinon noticed blood-like damage effects on various spots of the monster's body. Then Sinon noticed several orange flashes from a slightly high hill to her right. A moment later, the light effect of the monster's left flank being hit lit it up, allowing Sinon to see what it looked like: a dinosaur.

Apparently, Sinon lives in Bunkyō Ward, Yushima, 4-chome (文京区湯島四丁目) and she goes to a nearby art gallery and museum at times. At the museum, she happened to see a dinosaur exposition, even if she had no real interest in them. The Deinocheirus from that exposition looked just like the monster she faced now. But unlike the dinosaur at the exposition, this one didn't have feathers. Instead, it had armour-like skin. 5 metres tall, 10 metres long.

The dinosaur faced its attackers and rushed off after them, causing tremors each time it kicked off the ground. The attackers were protected by a rather steep cliff, making it hard to run up, but the people on the hill quieted down for some reason, instead of unleashing a third or fourth simultaneous volley. As Sinon looked on bewildered, the dinosaur rammed the cliff with its head, creating radial cracks in it. Then it went back a bit and rammed again. At this point, the third volley finally came, but it seemed its back was well-armoured, so the monster didn't stagger this time.

The dinosaur roared as it kicked off the ground and slammed the cliff again with great force. The cracks reached all the way up to the top of the cliff, causing a lump of it to fall down.

Sinon strained her eyes at the 10 metre high slope, noticing that a guy was falling along with the lump. At that point, Sinon gave up on her plan to sneak up to the spring during the commotion and jumped out of her hideout. While she didn't know who the guys were, she concluded that cooperating with them was her best chance of getting rid of the dinosaur to get some water.

She approached the cliff from the south. The players atop the cliff fired a fourth volley, but they were apparently running low on ammo. The dinosaur paid them no heed as it swung to slash the falling player with its claws. So, Sinon drew its attention with a shout and her flashlight. As the dinosaur was momentarily stunned by the light, she fired at its yellow eyes with her handgun. The yellow laser pierced its right eye, causing it to let out a shrill roar as it crashed into the slope. More of the earth and bolders fell down as a red cursor appeared above the dinosaur's head that looked like something between a crocodile and a bird, but Sinon didn't have the time to read its name.

Having turned off her light, Sinon rushed over to the collapsed player, pushing away a large boulder that had fallen on his left leg with a bodyslam. Just as Sinon extended her hand to the guy... her eyes flew open in surprise. For that "player" wasn't even a human. While it could be considered humanoid, GGO didn't have avatars like that. On the ground there was a 《birdman》 with brown feathers all over its body and a bird of prey head. More birdlike than even ALO's harpy monsters. But it was wearing armour made out of cloth and leather... and held an unrefined rifle in its right hand. Sinon guessed that it was neither a player, nor a monster... but an NPC.

Although Sinon had been about to draw her hand back, she thrust it out again, convinced that a fellow gunman would understand the gesture, even if it was 70% bird. The hawk-like birdman blinked once, before grasping Sinon's hand, who then pulled him up. The birdman was about five centimetres shorter than Sinon. She then tried asking if the birdman could run, but the NPC just responded ℵℵℵℵ in the weird NPC language.

Sinon couldn't understand what it said, but didn't have the time to ask again and began running to the back of the hill, with the birdman following suit. The hill was thirty metres wide and fifteen metres tall, circle-shaped. Sinon was running along it, searching for a way to climb up, when she heard the birdman shouting... and pointing to the cliff with its talons. Sinon couldn't see it all that clearly, but it seemd to be a ladder, so she jumped onto it. The ladder was made on a foundation of stakes, so it wasn't a temporary one, meaning that the birdmen didn't just happen to aim for the dinosaur today, but rather had been attempting attacking it from the hill for awhile now.

Atop the hill, all she saw were small trees, rocks, and sand. Not even a bit of water. And her TP bar was at 4%, assailing her with such a sensation of thirst that she fell to her knees. A moment later, the birdman climbed up as well, so Sinon tried asking it for water out of desperation. But the birdman didn't understand her, nor did it seem to be carrying any flasks... and NPCs didn't have any storage, so all she saw was all it had. So, if Sinon didn't kill the dinosaur in 3 minutes and 10 seconds, she'd die.

Refusing to die, Sinon stood up and ran over to the western side, where she found several more birdmen with their back to her as they aimed their rifles down the cliff, planning a fifth volley. However, Sinon saw that the dinosaur's HP bar was still close to 80%, so a single volley didn't take more than 10% out of it. While the birdmen avoided direct attacks from the dinosaur from the hill, they had to resort to aiming for its armoured back, so they couldn't deal much damage. And looking at their bags, they didn't seem to have much ammo either.

At that moment, Sinon suddenly shouted at the birdmen to wait, startling them. The birdmen suddenly turned around, pointing their guns at her, as they shouted something in their language. Sinon desperately attempted to talk to them that she wanted to help, but it didn't seem any of them were able to understand her. Her TP bar was at 3%.

Just as Sinon was about to give up, the dinosaur slammed the cliff again, causing some of it to crumble again, while the birdmen jumped back. The birdmen shouting brought back Sinon's fighting spirit, as she thought to herself: ""I'll have all the time in the world for despair AFTER I die. For as long as I have even a pixel of TP, I'll continue struggling to live. I will convey my will to the birdmen and defeat the dinosaur with their help. There has to be a way to do that".

At that point, Sinon woudered what would Kirito do. She thought that he wouldn't rely on words at a time like this. He always relied on actions— the brilliance of his sword, filled with his overwhelming willpower, to encourage everyone. Sinon didn't have a sword, but she did have a partner. And she was the only one Sinon could rely on. So, she took out her beloved gun from her storage.

The birdmen were surprised upon seeing her gun. Sinon tried to get them to help her support her gun, but they didn't understand her, tilting their heads in a birdlike manner that almost caused her to laugh. She tried again to get them to help her kill the dinosaur, but the birdmen didn't move. Finally, on her third attempt, the birdman she had rescued jumped in from behind her, placing Hecate's barrel on its right shoulder. [Preview ends here mid-sentence]