Fanfic / Monstrous Compendium Online

A crossover between Sword Art Online and Eberron by Vathara.

On Opening Day, when Kayaba tells the players they are all trapped, he does not do so gently or even calmly. He does so by unleashing lycanthropic terrors, forcing the players to confront their new reality as their friends are torn apart around them. As the players advance and discover more of Aincrad's story, they find that they can be adopted by the youkai clans, transforming into more powerful monstrous forms. The only problem is, the new bodies come with new sensations and more instincts than should be possible. And those youkai adopting the players seem far more intelligent than simple AIs...

What if Sword Art Online wasn't a madman's vision? What if there was another world, one that needed soldiers skilled in magic and blade? What if the best way to produce new soldiers was by transforming human children?

What if Akihiko Kayaba was an ancient red dragon, caring for nothing but making sure his prophecy comes to pass?

Can be found here.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• Adaptation Species Change: Most of the cast ends up becoming yokai in the game via either lycanthropy or the below method of adoption and this becomes a permanent change when they go to the real Aincrad. Recon is also not human, but a swanmay who came to earth.
• Adaptational Villainy: Kayaba is much worse than in canon, because instead of a human game designer with a bizarre dream for another world, he's an ancient dragon with a very specific goal to fulfill a prophecy. It's noted several times that the only reason the game is technically fair is because it has to be, in order for his plan to work, and Kirito forces him into the final duel by trapping him with the boss mechanics. Kayaba would have left without a care in the world if he had been capable.
• Ascended Extra: Fuurinkazan features much more prominently, to the point that they (along with Argo) are effectively the secondary cast.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Most youkai races can reproduce via the use of a "bloodstone", adopting a human into their clan and changing them into a new member of their species. Most of the front-line SAO players end up doing this to gain a boost in their combat prowess, with Kirito being one of the few holdouts. They can also reproduce the traditional way, but many youkai clans have been reduced to the point where that's no longer an option.
• Child Soldiers: One of many problems the youkai lords have with Beniryuu's plan is that he is forcing twenty thousand mostly-children to train for a war they know nothing about.
• Curse:
  • Early on, the biggest threat the players face is lycanthropy. It takes them a long time to even confirm it can be cured, and longer still before they can do so reliably. Technically, it's two separate afflictions; one attacks the body (and once you get used to it is basically just a cool shapeshifting power), while the other attacks the soul (turning you into a ravening monster).
  • The entire SAO deathgame is a curse ritual building up to forcing the players into Eberron to fight for the real Aincrad. It's pointed out that even for an ancient dragon, cursing twenty thousand people takes a lot of power, which is why the game is fair. Beniryuu had to use every trick he can in order to lower the cost of the curse.
• Curse Escape Clause: Putting an escape clause into a curse makes it significantly easier to cast, and putting in an escape clause that the victim knows about makes it ten times easier on top of that. The Win to Exit challenge was the escape clause; Kayaba told the players about it, but knew they'd never be able to take advantage because the curse would be completed immediately before the win condition activated.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Kirito is able to trick Kayaba/Beniryuu, a powerful dragon, into thinking that he'd become a medusa, allowing him to outmaneuver him.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: In addition to Kirito's canon Zero-Approval Gambit with the whole "Beater" thing, he becomes mildly famous for appearing in ALO before SAO was cleared. While there, he killed a number of players threatening his sister. Once SAO is cleared, people begin grumbling that maybe he's murdered people for real before.
• Inter Species Romance: Due to Recon being a swanmay, not human his and Suguha's relationship is effectively this.
• Last of Their Kind: Stheno and Euryale are supposedly the last medusas left, and they only survived because they're both immortal. This is why multiple people are shocked that Stheno isn't trying to pressure Kirito into accepting a bloodstone. People with the aptitude to be transformed into medusas are rare, and her species needs them. Yui is a young medusa refugee from Riedra; no one is sure how she survived. Argo eventually takes a bloodstone.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Kirito and Argo are good at these, finding loopholes and exploits in the game rules — and, though they don't realize it, in the rules of real magic. Stheno is shocked at some of the things they manage to pull off. Eventually she realizes she can give Kirito a quest to send him to his sister through the Astral Plane: he appears in ALO and gives her one of his grafted feathers.
  • Kirito also implies he's found a number of ways of killing hostile players (both lycanthropes and PKers) without getting an orange marker. Such as cutting them down to near-death and then throwing them into a monster nest.
  • When it comes time to travel to Eberron for real, Kirito's parents first make younger avatars in ALO. When they cross over, anyone who has played ALO becomes their ALO avatar, meaning they're suddenly several decades younger. Stheno notes that it's clear where Kirito got it from.
• Magitek: SAO is a combination of draconic magic and human virtual reality technology in this universe.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game:
  • Part of the deal the youkai lords made with the ancient dragon Beniryuu was that the kidnapped players would not be in real danger. Beniryuu promised that if they died in the game, they would be returned to their proper world. After the players are trapped, the lords realize that "returned to their proper world" doesn't necessarily mean returned alive. Tae Mistfeather, secretly a youkai who managed to get in the game as a player, says her father refuses to tell her one way or another.
    Stheno: Dragons lie with truth. And it is lies, all the same. They may be truly dead.
  • Once the players get out, they discover that if a player fought for their life until the very end, they were logged out normally; if they didn't, they were killed. Roughly fifty percent of the killed players survived. Unfortunately, that leads to a growing popular dissatisfaction with those who got lucky and lived when their friends and family didn't.
• No Place for Me There: A good many of the players who became Youkai, or at least magically attuned in the game feel this way about Earth since the magic left them permanently changed, even allowing them limited access to their power. However, a combination of personal reasons (like Yui for Kirito and Asuna), pressure from the Japanese government to join black ops groups, the public backlash due to the above, and feeling out of place due to the lack of natural magic means many choose to move permanently to the real Aincrad.
• Pride: Kirito realizes that an ancient dragon would never hide away in a cave when he could be inside the game, where he can sneer down at all the players.
• Saying Too Much: Lady Stheno says, "We are trapped," which confirms for Kirito that she isn't just an AI.
• Tomato Surprise: Of the twenty thousand players trapped in SAO, two thousand are youkai from Eberron. Their avatars were human on Opening Day, and then they transformed back into youkai at the first opportunity.
• Transformation Horror: Many of the still-human players, including Kirito, are very worried about how the transformed players act. It certainly doesn't help that they were first introduced to the concept by the worst examples of the lycanthropic curse.

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