Sword Art Online Volume 17 – Alicization Awakening Chapter 20 - Each of their Battles 12 “The only way to log out is to ‘die’ inside. But that brings me to the second problem. In Underworld… there’s no Pain Absorber. If you take heavy damage that reduces your HP to zero, you should feel rather severe pain.” The uproar grew even louder. Pain isolation was a compulsory feature of any modern VR server. In virtual worlds without this function, getting slashed by a sword or burnt with fire would hurt as intensely as it would in the real world. Depending on the circumstances, bruises might even appear on one’s physical skin. Yet there was a far more severe problem that came with this dive. Waiting until the disturbance subsided slightly, Lisbeth then informed the players of the third and greatest sacrifice. “— One more. Underworld servers are currently in a state where even the developers can’t operate them. Which means… we can’t guarantee that everyone’s character data can be converted back to their original games… In some situations, the characters themselves might even be lost.” After a short pause — Terrifyingly loud roars of fury flooded the vast dome. Lisbeth, Klein, Silica and Agil lined up in the middle of the floor, with Yui standing on Klein’s shoulder in her tiny pixie form; standing silently, their bodies endured the wave of voices that lashed at them from all directions. This reaction was exactly what they had expected. The 3,000 top players had spent inordinate amounts of time and effort raising their characters. For ALO, they had spent hours furiously slaying monsters that yielded only one experience point; it was repeating the mundane task of emptying a lake with a bucket, day after day.