Sword Art Online – Progressive

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One month after Akihiko Kayaba’s game of death began, the death toll continues to rise, two thousand players having already lost their lives to the ultra-difficult VRMMO world of Sword Art Online. On the day of the strategy meeting to plan out the first-floor boss battle, Kirito, a solo player who vows to fight alone to get stronger, runs into a rare, high-level female player. She gracefully dispatches powerful monsters with a single rapier that flashes like a shooting star in the night…This volume contains three stories, including “Aria of a Starless Night,” which details how Kirito came to be called the Black Swordsman, and “Rondo of a Fragile Blade,” the tragic tale of a young blacksmith that takes place before the second-floor boss fight.

Associated Names
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Sword Art Online: Progressive
ソードアート・オンライン プログレッシブ
Related Series
Sword Art Online (Adapted From)
Sword Art Online – Hopeful Chant (Side Story)
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Latest Release

Date Group Release
03/09/21 Dreadful Decoding v7 afterword
07/29/18 Dreadful Decoding part4.2
06/29/18 Dreadful Decoding part4.1
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4 Reviews sorted by


Azur Lazuli
Azur Lazuli rated it
May 20, 2016
Status: v3
The best. The long-awaited, the missed, aircrad arc is now here! The story tells Kirito's and Asuna's journey throughout every floor in aincrad. I've always waited for this and I can't believe it came out. I've bought all 3 volumes already and I'm now waiting for the 4th one to coke out. The story is well paced and is very interesting. You won't regret buying it. And the art have significantly improved from the original SAO. The character designs are simply amazing
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DooMWhite
DooMWhite rated it
August 13, 2019
Status: Volume 5
This is the Aincrad-only novel, if you liked the first arc of SAO just a little bit, then I would 100% recommend you this novel.

First of all, yeah, I know, it's fricking SAO, except that this one removed every bad element of the main-series (I even dropped the main-series at this point), I'm gonna give you a list of things that are different and upgrades:

  • The balance between the ladies and the guys is really thigher, basically for each woman introduced, there's also a lad with equal importance in the story being introduced as well, this makes the story feel really more natural, unlike the main-series, where we have like 5 girls per guy.
  • The care for the details, the story even has a tone of mystery (Mostly on volume 4 and 5), basically every detail introduced in the story will be used, ESPECIALLY in the quests, this fifth volume was the pinnacle of that.
  • The development of the characters, it seems like every characters (important to the arc) develops a little, even Kibaou (Yeah, that "annoying" guy with the spiky hair), the Asuna from the first volume is completely different from the Asuna we have now, she went throught 2 phases of personality.
  • The RPG mechanics, if you are a fan of RPGs, you will love this work, every novel that I read that tries to talk about those mechanics make it so boring (And most of the time they don't even remember about those mechanics later in the work)... The author makes an interesting theorycrafting with those RPG mechanics, I'm sure that he loses a good time thinking about on how to use it, cuz every single mechanic that was introduced was also used, most of them I would dream to have on an actual RPG/MMO.
  • The Worldbuilding of Aincrad makes you really interested in the lore of that world, we have so much conflicts in the NPCs that it even represents the players, I can't say much more about the worldbuilding besides the fact that each floor is a whole new experience, you need to read to understand, but it will be fun, mainly and especially with the Quests being so well-made and interesting.
  • The story is so well paced that I even lost my stop at the bus and skipped some classes to read it (cuz of my bus, but I loved that experience and regret nothing).
  • The Boss fights, if there's one thing that I really like in the novel are these, the boss of the 4th Volume has to be one of the most creative bosses I've ever seen (I have played A LOT of RPGs), most of the bosses have something unique about them, and oh boi, it's always something really unexpected and terrifying.
  • Bonus: The novel shows you many sides of the characters in SAO and their motives (I'm not talking about the harem, which doesn't exists in this novel).
Well, you might say "But I already know the ending", actually,... more>> it could be true, but the story has heavily diverged from the main-series at this point, therefore you basically know only 0.1% of what's gonna happen in the novel, I even consider it a parallel world. The only cons that I can find is that there's not "Big ass plot" besides the Kayaba Akihiko stuff and that there's a bit of fanservice (The absolute majority of it is Kirito/Asuna tho).

I think that the series is getting better with each volume, so the first volume would be the "worst" one by now, if you have any question about the novel, you can send me a message.

This is my favorite fantasy novel off all time. <<less
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Tasear
Dream Seeker rated it
May 19, 2016
Status: --
Wasn't the first arc your favorite? This novel gives of story of how that progressed to getting out of the game. The other one was memorable and this what is quite the same.
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Hosh
Hosh rated it
June 27, 2023
Status: v5
Basic SAO's Aincrad arc. The author just went into more detail unlike the OG SAO, which the author merely did as a passion project before it blew up and it shows. It's basically better than the OG SAO by leagues and miles in every possible way. Not gonna go into too much detail since DooMWhite's review basically already stated all the pros of this novel.

Just telling y'all not to judge this purely off of the fact that the OG SAO was bad. A shame they made it into a set... more>> of movies. I would've loved a series of this. <<less
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