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Summary

Sword Art Online Progressive, or "Progressive" for short, is a light novel and manga series written by Kawahara Reki that is a reboot of the original SAO series. The manga continues into Sword Art Online - Progressive Barcarolle of Froth.

Chronology

Volume 001

Rondo of a Fragile Blade (Continued)

Kirito has beaten Floor 1 and is known as Beater now, so he lays low. He finds a marketplace where someone is complaining about a failed sword upgrade. Then he finds Asuna who needs her rapier upgraded, too, and agrees to join her on the material grinding run.

On December 8, Asuna needs to kill a hundred Windwasps. She and Kirito bet a dinner on who kills 50 first. Asuna shows her uncanny ability to connect critical hits, forcing Kirito to use his once-secret Martial Arts skill to catch up, but he loses to Asuna by one monster.

Asuna chooses an eatery in Urbus, and has Kirito order the most expensive dish in the game there, a creamy sponge cake that they go eat together. Kirito is worried if everyone in the town smiles because they found the bad Beater, but Asuna explains it is simply because he finally opened the passage for them, and spurred hopes that the death game will end one day.
After an awkward discussion, the cake arrives and grants the two a short-lasting luck bonus. Kirito offers to maybe increase the chances of her rapier upgrade to +5 going well in the smithy since she is the rapier's owner.

Asuna gives Nezha the blacksmith her Wind Fleuret +4 and the materials the two had collected earlier. Asuna catches Kirito's finger to try and borrow his luck as well, but the blacksmith botches it in a way that nobody knew existed. Asuna is really shaken, as her rapier earlier suggested by Kirito felt like a relative to her. She goes to an inn for the night.

Kirito suspects foul play and follows Nezha in hopes of learning something. Nezha goes to a bar where in his banter with a group of fighters who talk suspicious business with him and then check the door, forcing Kirito to hide as he starts putting the pieces together. He rushes to Asuna's inn and into her room, racing against time, and makes her use "Materialize All Items", He finds the Wind Fleuret +4 in the heap.

Kirito explains the scam based on weapon snatching, ownership tied to the player's empty right hand for 3600 seconds, and the furnace illusion. They think Nezha's hand was forced and decide to come back to it later.

The duo goes to the field, encountering the Floor 1 raid members in several parties. One party lands in trouble, and Kirito and Asuna helped them then entered the dungeon to collect treasure.

On another meet-up with Argo, Kirito requests an investigation on the Legend Braves' player names backstory, and Asuna learns that a weapon only breaks during an upgrade if there were no more attempts remaining.

They find Nezha performing another scam, and he seemed to stand apart from the guild name-wise, but Argo's report tells Kirito his real name, Nataku, and gives a hint to the trick.

On December 11, Kirito has grinded enough to master his own Quick Change mod and honeytraps Nezha, busting his foul play. Asuna cuts off Nezha's escape, and he comes clean saying his FullDrive Non-conformity prevents him from using swords, that a hooded stranger wearing poncho taught him to cheat and treat SAO as just a game, and that he did not really want to either smith or scam. Kirito thinks he knows how to get Nezha back to the front lines.

Kirito sends Nezha on the Martial Arts quest. On December 14, a raid party is gathered, and Kirito learns not many even remember he was a beta cheater; in fact, Agil's crew named him the Man in Black or Blackie (Kuro). Kibaō suddenly requests Kirito's opinion on the boss strategy, and his and Lind's guilds decide to take Kirito's advice and follow upon it.

References

• SAO Progressive Volume 1 - Fan Wiki
• SAO Progressive Volume 1 - Yen Press