When Noah opened his eyes, he saw a pin, white ceiling he didn’t recognize. He wasn’t in his own home. Suddenly more alert, he sat up and looked around. He was lying on a bed, inside a room of average size. The furniture was modern, but the decoration felt impersonal. Not that there was much of it. Minimalism was clearly the theme here. On his left was a desk, and a desktop computer.

  "So it wasn't a weird dream." He muttered aloud. Listening to his own words, he realized that he had spoken in Japanese, despite only knowing a few words of it.

  [Greetings, User.] A feminine but distinctly synthetic voice suddenly interrupted him. Noah didn’t look around to try to locate the source of this voice, as it appeared directly in his head.

  "Uh, hello?" he said tentatively.

  [User can communicate with the System mentally and doesn't need to speak out.]

  […hum, okay? Do you hear me?] Noah tried to imagine himself talking to the System, and it seemed to do the trick.

  [Affirmative. I am the support interface for the Yin-Yang System, that has been designed by Lilith for her Champions. User input is needed to complete the System’s integration.]

  […Do you have a name?] wondered Noah. He might as well be polite from the start, since his life might depend on cooperating with this being.

  [Negative. User can assign me a name if User wishes so, but I am not a person, and will not evolve to become one. I do not feel emotions and am indifferent to the perspective of death. User should only think of me as an evolved search engine and notification feature for the system’s functions.]

  [I understand. What kind of input do you require?]

  [The Yin-Yang System is modelled after human nature, being both Good and Evil. User needs to choose a Yin Path, and a Yang Path. The chosen Path will alter the way User can gain abilities, as well as the starting and peak abilities. User should also be aware that the Yin-Yang System is meant to complement the different methods to become stronger that User will find in various worlds, and is not exclusive to them.]

  [You mean that using this System will not, as an example, prevent me from becoming a cultivator in a world based on a Chinese novel.]

  [This is correct.]

  A rge blue window appeared in Noah's vision, showing him several options.

  "Yin Path of the Healer: Cure and Heal the ill and injured to earn Yin points. Starting ability: Lesser Heal."

  "Yin path of the Guardian: Save and protect people to earn Yin points. Starting ability: Switch Position."

  "Yin path of the Avenger: Capture or kill evildoers to earn Yin points. The target must at least be a violent criminal, or someone having done significant evil to provide any reward. Starting ability: Hide Presence."

  "Yang path of the Murderer: Kill people to earn Yang points. Killing notable people will give a higher reward. Starting Ability: Hide Corpse."

  "Yang path of the Incubus: Ensve people and dominate them to earn Yang points. Ensving notable people will give a higher reward. Starting ability: Hands of Nirvana."

  "Yang Path of the Puppeteer: Manipute people for your own benefits to earn Yang points. Using notable people will give a higher reward. Starting ability: Enhanced Charisma."

  Noah could barely believe his eyes when he read some of those options. The Puppeteer and Murderer ones, in particur, sounded like the por opposite of what Lilith might look for in a representative. The mental image of Admiral Ackbar popped into his mind.

  […System, what are notable people?]

  [Notable people are individuals who py a role in the fiction's original work, be it protagonists, side characters, or antagonists. User should be aware that while this world is rgely inspired from the human fiction used as source material, it may not be strictly identical, as Lilith may have decided to change a few things.]

  [Okay…]

  Noah suddenly noticed a white cardboard box of average size near the feet of the desk, just behind the computer. But what caught his attention was the item dispyed on the box’s surface. A dark gray helmet, with a high-tech design. He suddenly knew what this world was about, but he might as well confirm it.

  [System, can you tell me where I am right now?]

  [User is located in Tokyo, Japan, Sword Art Online world. The game Sword Art Online will officially unch tomorrow at 14:00 pm.]

  He nodded to himself. He was obviously expected to participate, despite knowing that it would turn out to be a death game. But from his memories, “only” four thousand of the ten thousand who had been trapped inside had died during the two years or so it had taken the protagonist to defeat the crazy game developer behind it, and they didn’t have a System to help them, so it shouldn’t be too bad… Unless Lilith made things more difficult for him.

  [For the yang part, I'll choose the Path of the Incubus. It's not really a choice anyway, considering the deity I represent. I’m supposed to be her champion, after all. For the Yin Path, I am hesitating between the Avenger and the Healer. Can you provide me with more details on those two? For example, how strong can the Healer's abilities get?]

  Noah was particurly interested in this one, as he figured that other worlds wouldn’t ck ways to increase his combat ability. Gaining ways to heal himself and others would presumably be much harder to come by. Of course, that was also something to be said about specialization and compounding multiple sources of power.

  [All the Low, Mid and High tier skills of each Path are avaible in the Yin-Yang store, and only the Peak tier skills are exclusive to each Path. Low tier skill of the Path of the Healer would allow User to heal any moderate injury in seconds, deal with natural toxins, and cure normal deceases. Mid-tier abilities include the purge of low to mid-tier curses, parasites, and supernatural diseases, as well as regenerating lost limbs and curing cancer. High tier abilities would bestow User with immunity to abnormal states, deal with high tier curses, and use low and mid abilities on a rger scale. The peak tier skill of this path would give User the possibility to revive the dead, for a cost in Yin points.]

  Noah’s eyes widened as the system dropped a bomb like it was commenting on the weather.

  [Revive the dead? What are the conditions for this? Does this work only a few minutes after death, or if you have a body in decent shape or something?]

  [User must be stronger than the being User wants to revive. User only needs to mentally designate an individual by name, appearance, or family connection, and the resurrection process will fetch or generate the soul, in accordance with the world's settings, and build a new body to host it.]

  Noah squinted his eyes as he considered the possibilities. Depending on how it was used… He didn’t even need to know about the peak skills of the other Paths.

  He nodded to himself with a sly grin.

  [I'll take the Path of the Healer.]

  [Acknowledged. Resuming System integration… Integration completed.]

  [The Status window is avaible. The Quest window is avaible. The Inventory window is avaible. The Yin-Yang store is avaible.]

  [Skills unlocked: Transtion, Lesser Heal, Hands of Nirvana.]

  Noah wasted no time, and mentally said ‘Status’. Another blue window opened.

  Name: Noah Enfield

  Age: 17

  Level: 1

  Exp: 0/1000

  STR: 10

  AGI: 10

  END: 10

  MAG: 10

  CHA: 10

  Unattributed: 0

  Skills: Automated Transtion, Lesser Healing, Hands of Nirvana

  Sves: 0

  Yin Points: 0

  Yang Points: 0

  [Wait, why is my age seventeen? I’m a grown man!]

  [User’s physical age has been changed to better fit this world, as a default. User is able to change his own physiological age at will, and will never die from old age. A few more changes have been made by Lilith as a gift, in addition to the Hands of Nirvana skill.]

  […Ah?]

  In a hurry, Noah left the bed, and started exploring what was outside of the bedroom, searching for a mirror. He quickly found the bathroom, and stared at his reflection. He was… different…

  Aside from looking like a te teen, his features had been refined. Quite a bit. He still had enough of his old face that he recognized himself, but his slightly above average looks were now definitely very handsome, and the few moles and skin imperfections were gone. His short bck hairs somehow seemed even more profound. Only his gray eyes were the same.

  […I could get used to this…] Noah finally decided. Then a thought stuck him, and he looked down, lowering his pants and his boxer. He had been respectable before, but there was definitely an improvement down there as well. He would have to test ter to get a feel of how much that had been improved, but he guessed it would be quite impressive.

  After covering himself, he searched what was, presumably, his new home. It turned out to be an apartment of moderate size, on the second floor of a building. The furniture was, again, minimalist, but that could be fixed ter.

  [System, how do those attributes values work?]

  [10 is the default value, and act as a multiplier of your natural attributes. You will gain one Attribute point with each level. One point corresponds to ten percent. To take concrete examples, if you raise your Strength attribute to 20, you will be twice as strong both in this world and within the Sword Art Online game, and if you go cultivate in another world, you will also be two times as strong as another average cultivator of the same realm.]

  [So… Strength, Agility, Endurance, Magic, and Charisma?]

  [This is correct. Strength will increase the power of your attacks, and reduce the strain on your body and stamina as you perform physically demanding actions. Agility will increase your movement and reaction speed, as well as your accuracy. Endurance will increase your resistance to damage and reduce the effect of ailments. Magic increase both the potency of your non-physical skills and reduce their drain on your spirit. Charisma will make others view you in a more favorable way.]

  [It does sounds like this system is more than a little overpowered. Not that I’ll compin…] mused Noah, as he rubbed his chin in contemption.

  [User does not need to worry about that. Attribute points won’t be that easy to earn with the quests, and gaining levels in the Yin-Yang System will be a much longer process than in Sword Art Online].

  [Oh...]

  Noah opened the Quest window, and saw he already had some homework to do.

  “Quest 1: Participate in the SAO game and create a character.

  Reward: The relevant Japanese authorities will be alerted of your situation and move your body to the nearest hospital.”

  “Quest 2: Increase your level in the SAO game.

  Reward: 1 attribute point per 5 level.”

  “Quest 3: Save notable characters who were fated to die.

  Reward: Yin points.”

  “Quest 4: Increase your proficiency with in-game skills.

  Reward: 1 attribute point per 250 proficiency points.”

  “Quest 5: Defeat the lv75 floor boss, the Skull Reaper, by yourself, and defeat the final boss in a duel.

  Reward: The tutorial will end shortly after the conclusion of the Aincrad Arc, and the world will be put into stasis. That stasis will end when you return to that world, at a ter stage of the Great Game or after your retirement.”

  [As you said, Attribute points don't seem that easy to earn. It seems it will take me a while to grow attributes into the three digits…]

  Noah whistled to himself as he read again the details of the st quest. He had a vivid memory of the Skull Reaper, that gigantic skeleton centipede whose main weapons were two huge bony scythes that could kill a man in heavy armor in a single hit. That boss was fast, had a long reach, and it had taken a group of nearly fifty pyers a long time to bring it down.

  If he had to face that abomination alone, the Yin-Yang system suddenly didn’t feel all that powerful. He really could not face something like this with half-assed preparations.

  The hidden final boss, the game developer himself, would also be tricky as hell, as he would perfectly know every weapon skill in the game, and would mercilessly punish their use by exploiting the gaps in those techniques.

  Thinking about that man, an idea occurred to him. He kept it at the back of his mind as he opened the fridge in the kitchen. It was only a third full, but it shouldn’t be an issue, either. There was no beer, maybe because his body was that of a minor, but he still found a few cans of coke. He took a can of the carbonated poison and returned to his room, starting the computer. He needed to learn as much as he could about the game.

  Noah opened his Inventory. It was a cubic, empty space with a volume of two cubic meters.

  [The internal volume will increase with User’s level.] pointed out the System. [User can also modify the default cubic shape of the inventory if needed, as the only constraint is the total volume.]

  [That’s good to know. Thanks.]

  The st part of the System, the Yin-Yang store, was a catalog of skills, using Yin or Yang points as currencies. A few skills needed both. And there didn’t seem to be any way to convert one type into the other, so he couldn’t cheat the system this way. And cheating would probably be dangerous in the first pce, as he doubted that he could hide it from a bunch of deities that would without a doubt watch him like hawks.

  One thing in the store, in particur, attracted Noah's attention.

  "Lilith's Boon. Cost: 10000 Yin Points, 500 Yang Points. A skill or item chosen by Lilith to help the User."

  Noah wasn't very comfortable with the notion of having someone else decide what he would get, but he wanted to try it at least once.

  The computer finished booting and was ready to use, but Noah didn’t start his research immediately. He sat motionless for a few minutes. He was thinking about the idea he had earlier, trying to estimate its risks and consequences.

  He took the Nerve Gear Helmet from its box and examined the back part of it. It didn’t surprise him that most of it was sealed shut, without any screw or other easy way to see what was inside. But no system could truly be temper-proof.

  Finally, he decided to run with his idea. Opening a browser, he searched not for information about the game, but for Akihiko Kayaba’s phone number, the evil genius behind it all. Without much surprise, he didn’t find it. But he did, however, find the number of one Rinko Koujiro, his lover and reluctant accomplice. Although the crazy guy went as far as to surgically impnt a small bomb near her heart to give her an alibi, for when the Japanese FBI would eventually find his hidey hole and kick his door down.

  [System, I suppose this smartphone here is mine. Can you give me its phone number?]

  [04-410-401]

  [Thanks]

  The phone was fully charged, and Noah used it to call the number he had found, crossing his fingers. He put the smartphone on the desk and activated the speaker function.

  “Hello, Rinko Koujiro speaking.” A pleasant but stern-sounding voice came from the speaker.

  “Hello, miss Koujiro. It’s nice to speak with you. My name is… well, my identity doesn’t matter currently. Please inform that crazy genius that I wish to speak to him, now. He can call me back. If he doesn’t, I’ll show him that his scheme isn’t nearly as foolproof as he seems to think, and I’ll make sure the Sword Art Online server is completely empty within weeks of its unch.”

  “…I don’t know what you’re talking about. What scheme?” She answered, a slight tension in her voice.

  “You don’t need to worry. I don’t intend to stop him or alert the authorities. I just want a little change made. It would probably only take a few lines of code. I look forward to meeting you in person, in a few years. Bye.”

  Noah ended the call, and started his research on the information the thousand beta testers of the game had made public. He didn’t have to wait long, as less than five minutes ter, his phone rang.

  “Hello. Is this Mister Kayaba?”

  “Yes. You are?”

  “I’m a fan of yours. Creating the Nerve Gear, the Aincrad castle, Cardinal, and the Seed are tremendous achievements. You’re going to propel the way people experience virtual reality into a new age. I’m a lot less thrilled about your pn to kill thousands of pyers, however, and I want to do something about it. Something that would not actually conflict with your goals. If you decline my request, I’ll give the various hospitals two ways to stop the Nerve Gear from killing its users.”

  “…Hypothetically speaking, and assuming that I would have such designs, what are you suggesting? And what would you do to stop this supposed pn of mine?”

  “The nerve Gear is a nice piece of hardware. You have sealed its electronics, and you may even had added some anti-tamper measures to discourage any attempt to gain access to them. I didn’t bother trying. But it is physically impossible to seal every single component, and the cables powering the microwave electrodes can simply be cut. It might require some people to create the tools for it, since accessing them wouldn’t be that easy when the inside of the helmet is filled with a human head, but there would be plenty of very motivated people to come up with them.”

  “Assuming this fail, the Nerve Gear would require at least a few seconds to fry the pyer’s brain with microwaves, and doctors could simply slip a flexible metallic yer between the helmet and the pyer’s head. Microwaves are absorbed by metals. Those metals quickly heat up as a result, but using this method would still give doctors enough time to remove the nerve gear before it could cause injuries.”

  If he was being honest, his ideas to disarm the Nerve Gears weren’t exactly revolutionary. It was just basic physics. The only reason Kayaba, and ter that piece of excrement Sugou, got away with keeping pyers hostages for so long in the novel, was because of the almighty power of Plot Armor.

  In a real world situation, all it would take for a competent electrician with suitable tools at his disposal would be to be given an empty Nerve Gear helmet to study, and he would find ways to mess with it. If directly cutting the power to the microwave emitters didn’t work, he could for example make a bypass that would make the current go through a circuit breaker. That would stop dangerous amounts of power, while not being detected by the electronics.

  Or even simpler, the technician could disconnect the internal batteries, and the helmet would instantly become inert. There was so many ways to stop the Nerve Gears from killing their users, but then again, Plot Armor.

  “…You still haven’t said what you want.” Said Kayaba after a while. Noah smiled, as he considered his attempt to change the subject as an admission that at least one of those methods would be effective. And since the Nerve Gears were already in the hands of the pyers, it wasn’t the kind of fws that he’d be able to fix with a unch-day update.

  “I want Sword Art Online to unch as pnned, but I also want to minimize the number of pyers who will die. What you really want is a pyer base that is unable to log out, can’t be forcibly logged out by a third party, and is convinced that they need to complete the game to be freed. And that any death in-game would also kill them in real life. Because you want the pyers to act in a realistic way. You don’t want to kill them for the sake of it, as you’re not a sadist. Just completely devoid of empathy. Am I correct?”

  “Hypothetically speaking.”

  Noah snorted.

  “Yes, yes, we’re speaking hypothetically there, I know. Still, as long as the pyers believe those things, they do not need to actually be true. What I wish for you to do is simple. I want you to set things so that when pyers die within the game, they either are transferred to a separate instance of the server, where they would be unable to communicate with their friends and comrades to tell them that they’re not actually dead after all. Or, for you to log them off upon death so they could resume their life in the real world. You could easily stop them from logging back in, so they would still be unable to communicate with the pyers inside, and your little utopia would remain intact.”

  “In the end, the only people you would really end up killing would be those whose families will attempt to forcibly free from their Nerve Gear.”

  Noah crossed his fingers. he had just drawn a big target on his back. He had no doubt that Kayaba would find him in the game pretty quickly. And that he might make things more difficult for him. He might even choose to outright kill him using his administrator rights. But Noah didn’t remember Kayaba to be the vengeful or petty type, and it was worth the risk. And Rinko would likely argue in favor of his proposal, as she wasn’t a monster. Just madly in love with a monster. There was a possibility to save a lot of people there, and even if they had just been artificially created, and probably didn’t exist until a few days ago, didn’t mean that their lives didn’t have value. Plus, it might be an easy way to fulfill his third quest and gain some Yin points.

  The silence sted for some time, and Noah imagined Kayaba arguing with Rinko. Then he finally got his answer.

  “…I must say you made a convincing argument. The pyers who die in the game will be released.”

  “Thank you for listening to my request.” Noah breathed out in relief.

  “Will you be one of the pyers?”

  “Yes. I want to experience living in this world. I expect I’ll end up standing out quite a bit, so you won’t have any problem finding me.”

  “I look forward to meeting you in the future, then.”

  “Same here. Goodbye.”

  Kayaba ended the call. Noah leaned back in his chair, quite satisfied with himself. He couldn’t stop smiling. With two phone calls, he might have just saved thousands of innocent people.

  Japan’s police would likely take a very keen interest in him soon, as he had no doubt that they would pull out Kayaba’s phone records. They would want to know why a random civilian contacted the decade’s greatest Japanese criminal. They might think him an accomplice. But he would deal with that ter.

  And he froze in shock, as he suddenly thought about a serious fw in his idea. If the Japanese government learned about the exact content of his call, they might get inspiration from his ideas to try to release the pyers ahead of time.

  [Uh, System? I may have messed up big time. Is there a chance the Japanese government will use my ideas to try to free the pyers early?]

  To his surprise, it wasn’t the synthetic voice of the system that answered, but another he never would be able to forget. One that sent shivers of pleasure up his spine.

  [I have scrambled their recording of that particur part. I am not very pleased that I had to intervene to prevent the main event from being cancelled, my champion. Not even one hour into the tutorial world, and you’re already making me clean up after you. This better not become a habit. At the same time, I am pleased by your thinking out of the box, and by your guts. Most other champions would simply have waited for the game to start before doing anything of note. And preventing meaningless bloodshed is always nice, so I’ll forgive you. Work hard.]

  [Yes, my Lady. Thank you.] Noah sighed in relief again, and got to work. He needed as much information as possible.

  He took notes of what he found. Noah was mostly interested in the intricacies of the system, the floor maps, and a few interesting quests. But he was careful not to believe everything he read. He knew from the novel that a lot of beta testers were going to die from undocumented changes between the beta and live versions. One example was the boss of the first floor, whose backup weapon would be changed from a scimitar, to a katana, with very different sword skills. In the novel, one overly confident beta tester had fallen prey to it and been turned into a ragdoll while the boss executed a lethal combo on him.

  It was getting te, and Noah decided to go to bed. Once inside the game, he would have a lot of things to do and precious little time to rest. As he tried to fall asleep, his mind wandered to several matters reted to SAO like the skills he would first need, and the people he would want to meet.