"It was exactly 4:00 p.m. on November 7, Aincrad Time. The game had been cleared."
The battle with Sugou Nobuyuki had delayed things somewhat—but it didn't matter.
There was no need to worry about Feng Chen becoming a Red-named Player and turning into one of the game's regrets. He had GM privileges, after all. He could simply change it back.
The players, on the other hand, had only barely managed to sort things out during the final thirty seconds, and had no chance to learn the real truth.
"I'm sure everyone is wondering why I fought him, right?"
It wasn't hard to understand how Feng Chen knew. The whole process had happened far too quickly. From their perspective, only ten seconds had passed between Sugou Nobuyuki's announcement about the game's final thirty seconds and his defeat.
The notification had been sent out early because Feng Chen had used his privileges.
After hearing "The game had been cleared," not only the players at the scene but also those on the lower floors were extremely shocked.
"None of this is difficult to understand." Feng Chen took out the orb of light. "This contains decades of Kayaba Akihiko's life's work. This is what Sugou Nobuyuki actually wanted. And..."
More things inside it were displayed by Feng Chen—
They were all records of human experiments conducted on players wearing the game devices. At some point, Kayaba Akihiko had discovered that Sugou Nobuyuki was conducting these horrifying experiments. He wanted to imprison the players' consciousnesses, forcing them to remain active in the virtual world without being able to leave.
This was unquestionably human experimentation. If the outside world learned about it, Sugou Nobuyuki would probably spend the rest of his life in prison.
Next came a list of names.
"This... this is?!"
Asuna's shocked reaction