Kazuto visits Egil, who explains that the photo he sent came from ALfheim Online, an MMO where players take the role of fairies capable of flight. He goes on to explain that the figure resembling Asuna was spotted somewhere on the game's World Tree. Noticing Sugou's company is behind the game, Kazuto decides to once again don his Nervegear and take up his role as Kirito in ALfheim Online. Upon selecting his character race as a Spriggan and diving in, he enters a strange warphole which leads him to a forest, where he finds to his surprise that his stats are identical to his SAO avatar's. He also discovers that he still has the SAO in-game item containing Yui's data, which he activates to bring Yui into ALfheim as a Navigation Pixie. Yui deduces that the game is made using a copy of SAO's servers, which was why all common skills and stats from SAO had been carried over to Kirito's ALfheim avatar. As Kirito gets used to his flight controls, a couple of players named Lyfa and Recon are seen fighting against some enemies. As Recon is defeated and Lyfa is outnumbered, Kirito crash lands before her and steps in to help defeat the assailants.
In the near future, a Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online has been released where players control their avatars with their bodies using a piece of technology called Nerve Gear. One day, players discover they cannot log out, as the game creator is holding them captive unless they reach the 100th floor of the game's tower and defeat the final boss. However, if they die in the game, they die in real life. Their struggle for survival starts now...