Echoes of the Wild: Tales of a Beast Tamer - Chapter 13: Skill

In the year 2022, gamers rejoice as Sword Art Online-a VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) like no other-opens its virtual doors, allowing players to take full advantage of the ultimate in gaming technology: NerveGear, a system that allows users to completely immerse themselves in the game world by manipulating their brain waves to create a wholly realistic gaming experience.

But when the game goes live, the elation of the players quickly turns to horror as they discover that, for all its amazing features, SAO is missing one of the most basic functions of any MMORPG-a log-out button.

Now trapped in the virtual world of Aincrad, their bodies held captive by NerveGear in the real world, users are issued a chilling ultimatum: conquer all one hundred floors of Aincrad to regain your freedom. But in the warped world of SAO, “game over” means certain death-both virtual and real…

He kept her by his side, never letting go! “Please, can you let me go?” “Impossible,” he said, “unless you're no longer my only one.” After they fell in love, he declared possessively, “I want to keep you by my side, to make you belong only to me. You can only love me too, your mind, your world, must be filled with only me.” Yet his domineering love sent a chill through her.

The “S-rank Hero Factory” that raised 1,000 S-rank heroes.

The graduates’ manufacturing machine.

The strongest support.

These are all words that refer to me. But could this actually be the world of that game?

Jeon Eun-woo has lived for almost thirteen years in isolation in a cell at the Blackwood Research Center.He doesn't remember who he is, he doesn't know who locked him up, and he doesn't know why he's still alive.The apparent calm with which he has lived is shattered when he is assigned a cellmate.Rhys, a young man with invisible scars, appears in Eun-woo's cell with one goal: to kill him.Because Eun-woo is not just any person.He’s the last living Esper.But upon coming into contact with Eun-woo, Rhys unexpectedly bonds with him, something that shouldn't be possible because Rhys isn't a Guide.Or is it?