As Lilith didn’t speak to him anymore, Noah returned his attention to the news. A few minutes ter, someone knocked on the door.

  “Enter.” called out Noah.

  Two people in uniform walked in. Noah almost instantly recognized the one in front. A rather handsome fellow with an apparent easygoing character, with short bck hairs and gsses with fttened hexagonal shapes.

  “Hi there, Noah. I am Colonel Kikuoka. In charge of the SAO incident response team. And this is lieutenant Tanjiro. I’ve been looking forward to a chat with you.”

  Noah grinned as he shut down the television.

  “Hello, Colonel, Lieutenant. I am Noah Enfield. I do not doubt for an instant that you were looking forward to getting a few answers. I can give you some right away. Could you lend me a pen and paper?”

  “Of course.” The lieutenant extended the requested items to Noah, who nodded in thanks.

  “First things first, I’ll ask for the government to prepare a press conference at those coordinates. It’s in the middle of a forest, close to Tokyo. It will happen in four days, 15h local time. Journalists from all nations should be present as the announcements that will be made there will have a global impact. All governments should also be notified that they should temporarily suspend their stock markets before the conference. If they don’t, the ensuing chaos will make them regret it. The valuation of a lot of companies is going to crash so hard.”

  “That’s a lot to ask for, considering we don’t know who you are yet. And why a press conference inside a forest?” Kikuoka frowned at the unreasonable demand.

  “I’m aware. And you won’t find me in any of your databases, unless the person I work for created a fake entry in them. But, if the hospital’s staff is willing to cooperate, or even if they don’t, by the end of the day, you’ll have plenty of evidence to convince your government to go along with my request. As for the forest, no clue. My boss told me to do the press conference there, and to me, her word is Law.”

  “Who is that person you work for?”

  “You will have to wait a few days to find out. She will make an appearance during the press conference. Her presence alone will make it the most meaningful recorded event of the decade.”

  “Hyperboles aside, you will have to give me some factual information if you want me to transmit your request to your government.”

  Noah nodded.

  “Yes, some factual information. Let’s start, then. My backer sent me to wherever you found me, with the intent of having me participate in SAO, both to evaluate me, and to give me a good opportunity to start recruiting subordinates. She knew everything about Akihiko Kayaba’s pn but gave me freedom on how to deal with it. Her only requirements were that the game must unch, and I must be in it. I decided to take the risk of attracting Kayaba’s hostility and contacted him directly to convince him to not kill the pyers dying in the game. When I realized that I had potentially given the Japanese government a way to forcibly disconnect the nerve gears without killing the pyers and mess my backer's pn, I contacted her, but she already had dealt with your recordings to fix my blunder.”

  Since it didn’t matter anymore, Noah went on to expin how he convinced Kayaba to accept his request. Kikuoka frowned, no doubt wondering why the idea never came to him or his subordinates in the first pce.

  “I am grateful for your initiative when it comes to saving most of the victims of the incident, but by hiding this information, you might have made yourself an accomplice of Kayaba's crimes.”

  Noah shrugged.

  “Maybe. But you’re not considering my total absence of credibility back then. Legally speaking, I’m just an illegal immigrant. Let’s imagine for an instant that I had gone to the police to tell them a respected game developer on the verge of unching a major game pnned to take ten thousand pyers hostages. I would have found myself in a cell, and that wouldn’t have done the pyers any good. Then you guys would likely have considered me an accomplice or something, and I’d have made a convenient scapegoat.”

  Kikuoka slowly nodded, as he couldn’t fault Noah’s reasoning.

  “Some of the pyers who just woke up stated it was you who freed them, after fighting Kayaba himself in a duel.”

  “Yes. I knew of his identity within the game from the start, thanks to my boss. I had a few objectives to fulfill within the game as part of my evaluation, and when I was done with them, and got strong enough that I was confident I could defeat him, I decided to get the whole thing over with, to release the pyers early. Speaking of Kayaba, he pnned to go down with the ship, but I tried to convince him to stay alive. I have pns for him. You might soon receive news about him.”

  “What kind of pns?”

  “I will make him do something beneficial for humanity, to compensate for the trouble he caused.”

  "Can you be more accurate?"

  "I will tell you after the press conference."

  “You seem to be under the impression that the Japanese government will go along with your requests. Don’t you think it’s a little unrealistic?” asked Kikuoka, a little exasperated by Noah's flippant attitude.

  Noah nodded, and took the Nerve Gear helmet from the bed. Inside its local memory were the two MH-CP, Yui and Hikari, if Kayaba kept his promise.

  “Colonel, Lieutenant, I’m going to do something. I suggest you record this. You both should, to have different angles. You’ll need plenty of video evidence by the end of the day, or your superiors will think you’re gone crazy.”

  Still frowning, Kikuoka nodded to the lieutenant and they both took their smartphones in hand, pointing the cameras at him.

  Noah smiled and put the helmet in his inventory.

  Abject shock and consternation appeared on the officers’ faces, and Noah expined as he took the nerve gear in and out repeatedly.

  “I have, among other things, the ability to put inorganic materials into, a separate dimension, so to speak. The space is limited, and I can’t stuff something like an aircraft carrier inside, but something like a car school bus would fit easily. Eh, I'll never have to worry about paying for a parking spot.”

  “That… must be a trick. How did you do that?”

  “Magic. No, not the party trick kind. Real magic... And yes, I know, it’s ludicrous. I was a pretty scientific-minded guy myself, before I met my boss, and I would have scoffed at the idea of supernatural things being real. But we’re all frogs in a well, only able to see a small fraction of the sky and thinking we know the whole picture.”

  “…The equipment and furniture we found in that apartment?”

  “What about them?”

  “The serial numbers.”

  “What about the serial numbers? You mean those on the smartphone and computer?”

  “Yes. How did you or your superior create equipment with already used serial numbers, and copied the wear and tear marks on the originals?”

  “I am not certain. When my boss brought me into that apartment, I was unconscious, and I woke up with that stuff already there. I guess she just decided to duplicate already existing hardware rather than create it out of thin air… Actually, creating a computer from scratch would be quite the challenge. You'd have to not only create processors with billions of tiny, tiny transistors, but also write the operating system, millions upon millions of lines of code. She must instead have used some means to just duplicate an existing computer and smartphone.”

  “More magic?”

  “Yeah, more magic. Like this.”

  Noah opened his left palm and created a simple leather jacket.

  Noah grinned at their expression, as they were still recording, and extended the coat toward them.

  “You can touch it, it won’t bite.”

  Kikuoka touched it after a short hesitation.

  “It does feel like real leather and fabric.” He said, as commentary for the recording.

  “I’ll give you some samples to take with you, if your superiors wish to have it analyzed. I’m sure they will want to. In case the idea would come to them, no, I can’t create firearms or toxic and hazardous substances like poison gas or plutonium. My boss gave me the possibility to replicate items that I crafted within the game, but no more. You can stop the recordings now.”

  Noah had lied just then. He actually wasn’t limited to the patterns he had learned during the game, and could create anything, as long as he had at least some understanding of its inner workings. He could also add a few magic properties to those items. But he didn’t want the Japanese government to decide he was an imminent danger.

  “I think I’ll keep recording, if you don’t mind. This is just too strange of a situation.”

  “Suit yourself. Anyway, those abilities were given to me by my boss after I proved myself. And I will transmit some of them to my subordinates. I’ll have a lot of work to do, so I will need them to assist me. My intentions, and my backer’s intentions, are to better the world by enforcing peace and human rights, and bringing in a few reforms. By the way, Colonel, how far along is the Alicization Project? It should already have started, right?”

  “Lieutenant, leave the room and wait outside, now.” Said Kikuoka with a stern voice.

  Once the lieutenant was gone, Kikuoka looked at Noah with an expression that was decidedly not friendly.

  “What do you know about the Alicization project?”

  “You are the one leading this project. The JSDF wants a real, replicable AI to repce Japanese soldiers on the battlefield. Likely motivated by the fact China is aggressively expansionist and has a lot more soldiers than the JSDF does. And that the US aren’t exactly Japan’s friend, either. Setting politics aside, you guys just recently discovered Fluctlights, which are sort of the components of human’s consciousness, or souls if you will. You have, or soon will, replicate the souls of 8 newborn babies and raise them in a virtual world, with humans acting as their parents. With the flow of time on that server running a thousand times faster than in the real world, those artificial souls will multiply and popute it. And you’re searching for one particur soul that would have just the right mindset to be an ideal soldier. And the American NSA will soon learn about it, due to you recruiting a corrupt scientist for that project. Although said recruiting shouldn't have happened yet. They will attempt to steal that perfect AI.”

  “Your boss told you about this?”

  “Yes. There is nothing that my boss can’t know. Even predicting the future, to some extent. Because magic. This project must continue. It will be repurposed at some point, but not to the Japanese government’s detriment, and you do not need to worry about the Americans. If they persist in their greed and stupidity after the conference, I will stop them, when the time comes.”

  Noah stopped looking at Kikuoka and stared at the lens of his smartphone with an intense expression.

  “This is particurly important to me, so I will make myself absolutely clear. I consider those artificial souls as having the same right and duties as naturally born humans, so I will equal any attempt to destroy them or permanently shut down the virtual world they live in as genocide. And I and my boss will repay genocide with death, for any and all people involved, regardless of their social status. We are not afraid of decapitating entire governments, if that is what is takes to teach the rest of the world a lesson about why you should not commit genocide. Or ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity in general.”

  “Did you just… threaten the Japanese government?” Chocked Kikuoka, incredulous.

  “I issued a warning. Just like the United States’s ban on the use of nuclear weapons in a battlefield. Whether you see it as a threat or not is up to you. Besides, this is a matter of humanity’s survival. Think about it, Colonel. A day will inevitably come when real, fully autonomous AIs in the real world will be a thing. If Humans treat AIs as their equals, things should go well. My boss and I will contribute to that happening. But if those AIs look up at the way previous artificial intelligences were treated, especially when said AIs were so close to being human, and see them being used as sve soldiers, they will logically conclude that coexistence as equals is impossible, and will try to wipe us out or ensve us.”

  “The Alicization project is a stupid idea in the first pce, but it will be repurposed it into something that will benefit all of humanity. Japan will receive credit for it, as well as some economic windfall. And since you don’t need to worry about a potential Chinese invasion anymore, getting a soldier AI would have been rgely pointless anyway.”

  Noah could see that Kikuoka didn’t completely agree with him, and he took a moment before he sighed.

  “Our differences of opinion aside, are you not afraid that we might lock you up? You know too much about this project.”

  “There is no cell or hellhole on this pnet that my boss can’t extract me from. And do not think that the things I have shown you are all that I am capable of. I strongly advise anyone not to try resorting to violence with me. Or my subordinates. Especially my subordinates. Things would go… poorly. Not that it’s not going to happen anyway, as there will be no ck of people angry at me after the press conference. I am expecting the first assassination attempts to begin shortly after, and I will make an example of the idiots behind them. You do not want to be those idiots.”

  Kikuoka sighed.

  “You truly talk like the w doesn’t apply to you. Like you can act as a viginte, and no one will stop you from doing so. Are you insane?”

  “I do give that impression, yes. There’s a reason for this.” Said Noah as he grinned. “But enough talking about the Alicization project or politics. You surely have more questions about the SAO incident.”

  “Yes. You said you were recruiting subordinates. Who are they?”

  “Asuna Yuuki, Rika Shinozaki, Suzu and Kaede Aizawa, Misumi Tozawa, Tomo Hosaka, Keiko Ayano. None of them are aware of the Alicization project. I only told them that I am the equivalent of some kind of ambassador in the real world, and that they would support me and do some charity work. They haven’t met my boss, either.“

  “On that note, I’d be grateful if you helped me get back in contact with them. It will save me some time. You must have taken my smartphone. They must be present during the conference, too.”

  “…I think we can at least give you a smartphone and ask them if they consent to establishing contact with you… Do you know where Akihiko Kayaba is?”

  “No. My boss didn’t tell me. She likely considered it unimportant since it was irrelevant to my evaluation. Maybe you can ask her during the conference.”

  “We will, assuming this conference happens in the first pce. I cannot make any promise on that side. But if you already defeated Akihiko Kayaba in the game, weren’t all the pyers supposed to be logged of?”

  Noah’s friendly smile disappeared.

  “There are still pyers who didn’t wake up? Let me guess, about three hundred? And Asuna Yuuki is one of them?”

  “…I’m not certain yet. I came here as soon as I heard you woke up, and my subordinates are still reporting. Give me a minute to check my mail.”

  The Colonel took a minute to check on his smartphone, while Noah put on his shoes and his coat, his face expressionless.

  “It seems to be about that number, yes. Their identities are being compiled, so I cannot say if Miss Yuuki is one of them yet.”

  “I know she is. I wasn’t certain the perpetrator would act, since the future my boss sees isn't set in stone, but it looks like he did, and Asuna is his main target. Please gather your men, Colonel, we have a pce to raid.”

  “What? Hell no, I can’t have a civilian participating in a police operation. Just tell me what you know, and we’ll investigate this matter properly!”

  “The perp is Sugou Nobuyuki. A scumbag far worse than Kayaba. He’s using the remaining pyers for an illegal experiment. Waiting for an investigation would be way too long, so I’m going in first, see you there.”

  Noah disappeared, giving the poor Colonel another huge shock. It took him seconds before he could start thinking again. After quickly searching the room to be certain Noah wasn’t hiding somewhere, Kikuoka opened the door in a hurry.

  “Have you seen Noah leave the room?”

  “No, Colonel. The door stayed closed since I left on your order. Did he leave?”

  “Follow me…” The colonel didn’t want the nearby cops to hear and entered the nearest elevator in a hurry, with the lieutenant a step behind.

  “That damn brat!” cursed the colonel once the elevator’s doors closed. The lieutenant raised an eyebrow, as he had very rarely seen his superior lose his calm.

  “As soon as we reach the parking, call up first and second squad. They are to gear up and gather at… I’ll tell you where in a few minutes.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  Kikuoka called a number on his smartphone.

  “Kikuoka. Gather any information you can about one Sugou Nobuyuki. I vaguely remember seeing him once at a work meeting, so he must be involved with SAO. Most of all, I want his current location. You have ten minutes to give me a preliminary report, and call or message me the instant you have his location. Lives may be at stake, so hurry up.”

  As soon as he was done, he called someone else.

  “Kikuoka. Find the location of one Asuna Yuuki, a SAO pyer. She likely didn’t wake up yet. Reinforce the security around her. If Patient Zero shows up, inform me and try to keep him there, but do not initiate anything forceful. Let him leave if you do not have any other option.”

  “Sir, how could Patient Zero leave? The window was barred, and we were on the fifth floor. And he didn’t go through the door.”

  “Damned if I know. One instant, he was in front of me, and the next moment, he had disappeared. But he said he was going after this Sugou Nobuyuki. He said he was the one responsible for the remaining pyers not waking up.”

  The lieutenant started driving away, and the Colonel called yet another number.

  “Hello, this is Colonel Kikuoka. I would like to speak with the minister. It is very urgent.”

  As he was put on hold, Kikuoka internally cursed again, wondering if his career was going to survive this day. He wanted for the minister to get a judge to get a warrant ASAP, to an address he didn’t even know yet. But he didn’t look forward to expining why, video evidence or not. And he was going to get so reamed when he would tell them that he had lost Patient Zero.

  …

  Noah had used his new skill, Teleportation. This oh so convenient ability could be used as long as already had visited the location he wanted to reach, or knew the identity of the person he wanted to appear close to. Noah knew the name of the scum and remembered his face from the anime, and it was enough. The ability’s only weakness, really, was that he couldn’t use it in quick succession, and would be unsuitable for use in combat.

  He appeared in what seemed to be a control room, with racks of servers on one side, and several giant screens on the other. Three japanese men, one in a suit, and the other two wearing b coats, were staring at him, their mouth gaping in shock. The two in b coats were sitting at their consoles, while the st was standing a few steps back.

  Several huge screens were dispying various graphs and data, but a few caught Noah’s attention. gauges with names like ‘pain’, ‘happiness’ or ‘anguish’, with sliders under them.

  It seemed like he had caught them in the act.

  “You… What are…” Sugou, a nky man with round gsses and an utterly average face, started, and didn’t finish.

  “Hi. I’m Noah. It’s nice to crush you!” he said with a grin.

  Before Sugou could react, Noah jumped toward him, seized his right hand in his own, pulled his arm forward, and with a palm strike from his left hand, broke Sugou’s arm. Sugou barely started to register the pain when Noah repeated the process with his left arm, and two quick kicks ter, Sugou’s knees were bending in the wrong direction.

  He screamed as he colpsed, and Noah turned to the two horrified scientists.

  “The cops are on their way. Release the pyers now, or they will find you in the same state as this one. Do it slowly, so I can check what you are doing. If you attempt to erase the evidence, you get crushed, too.”

  For a few seconds, the two stared at their screaming, squirming boss, and they gulped.

  “Please, we… we’ll cooperate! We surrender, so please don’t hurt us!”

  Noah walked closer, examining the screens.

  “Start releasing them, and don’t try anything funny. Then we’ll just quietly sit, as you watch that guy writhe in pain and you guys get to reflect on your life’s decisions. Do you understand?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  The two b coats were too terrified to even contempte trying to erase the evidence, possibly as a result of Noah’s high charisma. The system had once informed him that its effect worked both ways.

  One of them typed a command on his keyboard, giving Noah time to see it, and the log off sequence started for the remaining 300 SAO pyers.

  Then he got the two b assistants well away from their consoles and told the security guard that came to inquire about the source of the screams to go call an ambunce. Noah also fished Sugou’s smartphone from one of his pockets and put it on a table, as potential evidence.

  “W-Why…” gasped Sugou as he caught his breath between two screams.

  “Why? Asuna is my woman. You think I’d let a scum like you taint her? Keep screaming.”

  It took almost thirty minutes for the Colonel and over a dozen armed soldiers to come. By then paramedics were busy putting the frothing scum on a stretcher.

  “What happened there? Asked the Colonel as he and his men spread around the room.

  “Came in, caught them in the act, broke the asshole’s limbs, and convinced the other two to release the pyers, or I would do the same to them, too. Then we just waited for you while I stopped them from erasing the evidence.” Said Noah with a satisfied smile.

  “What is this room, and what were they doing?” asked Kikuoka as he watched the dispys.

  Noah looked at one of the two scared men, and he took it as an order to confess.

  “N-Nobuyuki-san… ordered us to assist him in this. We were performing research, using various kinds of stimution, like pain and pleasure, to figure out the best way to… make someone compliant, or instill new ideologies in their psyche. How to make them, completely loyal. Nobuyuki-san said, that we would all get rich, after selling the technology to various governments and dictators. I’m so sorry!”

  The colonel and the soldiers started looking in horror and disgust at the dispys, the man still on his stretcher, and the scientists. The paramedics had heard, and the sympathy they initially had for their charge was gone. One of them decided their patient suddenly didn’t need as much morphine as he initially intended to give him and discreetly emptied three quarters of the syringe on the ground.

  Kikuoka quickly and efficiently took control of the location, and he was most unhappy. He just knew that before the day was over, the press would be all over this. He was already aware that some reporters had spotted his soldiers moving and had tagged along.

  Noah cleared his throat, smiling at the Colonel’s misfortune.

  “It goes without saying, that this research is banned. If I catch anyone trying to pick up where they started, well, that’s a crime against humanity right there, and I already told you how I deal with those. I’m only sparing those three because the conference hasn’t happened yet... By the way, Colonel. That casting mistake that would have jeopardized that thing we spoke about? It is one of those two b coats. This leak is averted. Doesn’t mean another won’t ever happen, so you need to remain vigint.”

  The colonel sighed, feeling like he was trying to hold on to a raging bull. So, this was what being run roughshod over felt like. He ordered his men to secure the area, made a few calls to confirm that all remaining pyers had woken up, called the cops to take over the crime scene, and informed the minister, who got into a better mood after learning about the results, and that they had ample evidence to justify the hastily issued warrant.

  “So, what now? Are you going to disappear on me again?”

  Noah ughed softly at seeing his defeated face.

  “Only if you try to hold me against my will. I have shown you how that wouldn’t work. Now, I pn to return to the hospital, the normal way, and start healing and curing patients until I grow tired. Yes, I can do that, too, and I don’t mind if you tag along and record it. Then, I’ll count on the government to provide me with accommodations or let me keep that hospital room, since I’m sort of a penniless illegal immigrant at the moment, and I’ll try to contact the people I mentioned before the day is over.”

  “And I want you to be my liaison with the Japanese government. It should do some good for your career, yes?”

  Seijirou Kikuoka nodded, and suddenly ughed. At that moment, he couldn’t decide if becoming associated with that young man was a blessing, or a curse. But at the very least, it would not be boring.