The Hidden Player: Land of the Faries

Chapter 23: The True Ending

May 16th; 2025: SAO Surviver School

Y/N POV:

It had been a few months since that day Kirito and I freed everyone and fought Sugou in the parking lot of the hospital. I was now enrolled in a special school for SAO survivers which was new for me. I wasn't alone however Kazuto was here as was Asuna, Rika and Keiko(Silica). My sister Mika had also enrolled in the school and was able to take classes here. I'll never forget that night after I saw Mika awake in the hospital.

Flashback

After telling Mika everything that happened and that the game was finally over we hugged each other. I looked out the window and saw Mika, Rika, Nilo and myself standing there as our SAO avatars. Nilo was on my shoulders and Rika was holding on to me. Mika hugged me and the four of us walked away into the distance. At that exact moment I knew for sure we had beaten the game.

Flashback Over

Class had just gotten out for lunch and I decided to go to the school gym for awhile. I had been practicing on the punching bag trying to work up a sweat and an appetite. The scars from my fight with Sugou both in ALO and in the real world were still very apparent on my body. I tried to not think much about when Rika saw she freaked a bit until she knew for certain I was okay. Her words exactly were "I am okay with a guy with scars then tats". Her father had told her people with tattoos all over were Yakuza.

I continue to punch the bag over and over again. With each punch I think about what has happened over these past months. That day Sugou Nobuyuki was arrested in the hospital parking lot due to his injuries from me he was sent to the hospital for surgery. Lucky bastard got his fingers back but he still traumatized from almost dying. When the coward was interrogated he denied everything. All he said over and over was that it Akihiko Kayaba's fault he was responsible for everything.

Kayaba may of trapped all of us inside a game of death but he was true to his word. Once the game was beat everyone who was alive would be set free. Eventually one of the employees who was working with Sugou on the illegal experiments came forward and agreed to testify against him. Before that could happen Sugou finally came clean and had told the authorities everything that he knew and everything had done. No company was going to save him after that.

My sister and the other 300 players who hadn't escaped SAO woke up with no memory of what had happened to them. Mika had said multiple times that she had no memory of what happened during the time she was being experimented on. Neither did any of the other survivers. Luckily there was no neurological damage and there wasn't any problems. That meant they all could go back home and return to society.

The day I got to wheel Mika back home was the best day ever. All of our family was there to cheer for her as she came home. I had never seen mom cry like that before not ever. The same was with dad he was in tears that day they were like the same tears when I came home. Mika was suprised to see the new home and her new little niece. Things began to return to normal from there.

Sadly I can't say everything was great for others. Asuna's father retired as the CEO of RECT, RECT Progress inc. was disbanded and the main RECT branch suffered incredible losses. The gaming industry took another big hit after the SAO incident. With it still recovering from that and now Sugou's experiments it's reputation was pretty much now in shambles. ALO was shut down and as Kazuto and I predict maybe five or six more VMMORPG games won't last long.

I had soon learned what happened to Akihiko Kayaba the once creator of the nervegear and SAO and the great commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath. Apparently he had died due to him commiting suicide I had a feeling it was a lie. A man like Kayaba wouldn't kill himself unless there was something to gain from it. But from what Kazuto and I have heard was that after SAO collapsed he had preformed a high-output scan of himself which was to copy his consciousness on to the internet. Which had a one in a thousand chance of working.