Sword Art Online Alternative: Spell Blade Online

Sword Art Online Alternative: Spell Blade Online is a light novel series written by Yasuda Izumi.

Overview
The 『』incident.

The great professor,, has created a breakthrough in the world of VR with his new invention of the. However, his plan was truly a dark one. Using his power as the game moderator, he proceeded to lock the 10,000 players who had logged into the SAO servers within the game, charging them with the impossible task of clearing all 100 floors of the castle of Aincrad.

Enter. A normal boy but an extraordinary man in the world of virtual reality. His leadership and raw skill as a player granted the players of SAO the courage to continue playing the death game, even after two years of being trapped inside. Yet, his devil's luck would not last. After discovering the identity of the Knights of the Blood Oath commander, Heathcliff, uncovering him to be Akihiko Kayaba himself, Kazuto would challenge the professor to a duel. However, in so doing, he failed to defeat the professor, losing his life in the process. Without the leader that was Kazuto Kirigaya, the spirit of the SAO players were broken.

Professor Akihiko proceeded to be arrested upon the government finally cracking down on the SAO project, shutting down all the servers and logging out the remaining players. However, even with this, the industry of VR would be halted. The two projects known as 『』and 『』were both stopped, in the fear that they would eventually turn out to be another SAO.

In the year 2025, the ambitious company,, decided to take up the project of 『ALfheim Online』with the intention of remaking it into a revolutionary new VR game. With the new and improved, the project was renamed to 『Spell Blade Online』and under extremely close supervision by the government, the game's closed beta was released for a lucky 3,000 players to test out. It proved to be a major success and the government gave the project the "OK" to be fully released. The official servers of 『Spell Blade Online』opened on December 1st, 2025.

Protagonists

 * Ayanami Shiratsuyu