Am I the only one streaming Sword Art Online on the entire internet?

This is a first-person perspective recording. In the center of the frame is a man suspended in mid-air, a short knife protruding from his chest. The man's gaze keeps drifting upwards, seemingly towards his health bar.

"Is that Kirito?" Sorin waved his hand twice to signal Ya Wang to pause the screen, then pointed to the dark figure that briefly appeared in the lower right corner of the screen.

“It should be him. If that means Asuna should be nearby too.” Yuna nodded in agreement, replying with certainty. “It looks like we should be able to get more information than just this video later.”

“I think it’s fine. Let’s continue, Mr. Tooth King.”

The content just mentioned was already half of the video. Next, Sorin saw Kirito try to break the man free from the ropes with a throwing knife. However, just as the knife was about to reach the rope, the man finally stopped struggling, and his whole body turned into blue fragments and disappeared. The short knife, which was suspected to be the murder weapon, also fell to the ground.

“We’ve been studying this video for a while now, but even after slowing it down to 0.25x, we still can’t find any flaws.” Sinka stood up, put away the crystal used for projection, and then turned to Solin and Yuna, saying solemnly, “The impact of the murder in the industry is gradually spreading to the upper echelons. Many people are now panicking, believing that the industry itself is a dangerous zone. So please investigate the truth behind all of this, expose their methods of committing the crimes, and bring that lurking murderer to justice. I beg you!”

He bowed deeply to Sorin and remained in that position, as if he wouldn't get up until Sorin agreed.

"...I promise you. However, I cannot guarantee that the truth will come to light; I can only say that I will do my best."

Solin sighed, put Ivy Xin down and let her sit on his lap, then took out a notebook from his inventory and started taking notes. He wrote down several key elements of the video, checked that he hadn't missed anything, then put the notebook away and stood up.

"Then let's set off." Solin waved to the three of them, then took Ivy's hand and left the conference room. Ivy's gait was much more stable than before, and although her movements were still somewhat immature, they carried a touch of nobility.

Solin still remembered the original reason he came to the first floor, but judging from the current situation, even if he planned to send Aiweixin to a family that might be her original family, she would not be willing to leave Solin.

"This child is so clingy to me now, Yuna. Do you think it would be inappropriate for me to send little Ivy away now?" Solin asked, then lowered her head and asked softly in a coaxing tone, "Ivy, do you not want to leave your father?"

Aiweixin nodded first, then ran up to Suolin and looked at him pitifully with watery eyes.

“Ivy won’t leave you, Dad.” Her voice was fragile, and she looked like she was about to cry at any moment. “Don’t abandon Ivy, Dad, please.”

"Don't cry, don't cry, Daddy promises you, I will never abandon you." Suolin helplessly picked up Aivixin again, and after comforting her in his arms for a long time, he looked at Youna and said, "Look at this situation... wasn't our previous plan a bit inappropriate?"

"I'm just a little annoyed that this child calls me 'Mom' but is always clinging to you, don't worry about it," Yuna said from the side, her tone clearly tinged with a hint of jealousy. "Speaking of which, do you really think people in the entertainment industry can kill each other?"

“Of course, you can’t kill someone within the circle. At the time, I said the only possibility was a duel kill, but we didn’t see the ‘Duel Winner’ window when we watched the recording.” Sorin replied without hesitation, “Besides, Kirito was also there at the time. If it was a duel kill, he would have caught up with him long ago.”

“So, if that’s the case…” Yuuna looked thoughtful, and her pace slowed down considerably. “You can’t kill people within the circle, but we did see his death. His whole body turned into a blue polygon, which is obviously a death effect.”

She remembered the player death effect very clearly because a long, long time ago, she had also killed a red-named player under PoH in self-defense in this death game.

“There are still doubts about that. Let me give you an example. We probably hadn’t even met back then.” While maintaining the princess carry position, Sorin awkwardly extended an index finger and shook it from side to side twice. “There was an enhanced con artist on the second floor. You should have heard of him, right?”

"Are you referring to Mr. Nezha?" Yuna recalled for a moment; the information was so distant that it took her a long time to remember it. "I've only heard the general outline; I don't know the details."

"He used a quick-switch skill, the aura of a successful enhancement, and the fact that enhancing an item that has run out of enhancement attempts will instantly destroy it—three mechanisms—to create the illusion that the equipment would break upon failure. However, in reality, according to the game mechanics, enhancement doesn't cause equipment to break at all." Sorin briefly explained the enhancement scam method that the man in black, suspected to be from PoH, taught Nezhar and the others, and then continued, "So, the game mechanics we know are that non-duel PvP cannot occur within the safe zone, so all of this is just a smokescreen. What we need to know now is how this smokescreen is implemented."

After he finished speaking, he suddenly felt something move in his arms. He looked down and saw that Ivy had released her arms from his neck, shook her head, and gestured for Solin to put her on the ground.

"An illusion...?" After hearing Sorin's words, Yuna tried to deduce the workings of this illusion. "But no matter what, that person seems to be truly dead. How can that be explained?"

"So we need to start from the end and work our way back, slowly finding the flaws in this method, just like Kirito and I did back then." Sorin said, taking out a notebook from his backpack and showing it to Yuna. Several entries were written on the notebook: [Perpetrator unknown], [Source of harm unknown], and most importantly, [Whether the victim is dead is unknown].

"The last one refers to..." Yuna murmured in confusion, then looked at Sorin with a surprised expression.

"You're not wrong. In fact, whether that person is really dead is still unknown."

124. The Inner World and the Outer World (Part 6) (Bonus Chapter 22/75)

Solin's livestream has been offline for the past few days. To be precise, he hasn't dared to go live since finding Aivisin. He only left a message saying, "On vacation, temporarily off-air." His viewers still manage to create the illusion of a deserted audience every day despite the black screen, while simultaneously speculating about what Solin is up to.

This group of bored netizens naturally included the seven members of the Rainbow Squad [SAO Rescue Operation Team].

"I was saying, should we urge Xiao Mo? He hasn't streamed in so long." Grace lay on the bed fiddling with her tablet, maintaining a frequency of sending a private message to the [Elegant Mr. Solin] stream room every hour, while creating a low-brow atmosphere of a deserted city with those bored viewers.

“It’s only been two days. My son just told me that he’s on his honeymoon and told Aunt Grace not to bother him.” Mo Tian said this while showing Grace the messages on his phone. “Besides, it shouldn’t be us urging him to start broadcasting now, but him urging us to find someone quickly, right?”

In fact, the SAO rescue team had been reduced to only Surat, Elias, Monica, Mo Tianfang, Chu Ziyu, and Grace for a long time. The two SAT operators had been recalled.

However, they later discovered a rather unique way of entering the country: having newly recruited agents with higher education and younger age come to Tokyo to carry out this mission by studying at the University of Tokyo.

This significantly increased the number of people with the time to freely conduct search missions in Tokyo and other surrounding cities. Among them was a true heavyweight who directly applied for a professorship at the University of Tokyo's medical school. Yes, this guy was Gustav, codenamed Doc, the academic superstar with four doctoral degrees and two master's degrees.

"Don't you have any classes today, Gustav?" Monica looked at Gustav with some surprise and asked, "As a professor, you can't just slack off, can you?"

“It’s true that I can’t just slack off, but my graduate students are currently preparing their theses, so I can sneak out.” Gustav shrugged, then his tone suddenly became serious. “Twitch has just pinpointed the approximate location of Kayaba Akihiko’s hideout, so the operation can move to the next phase.”

"A new phase... I'd like to ask, how big exactly is this [approximate range]?" Mo Tian asked, lowering his consciousness.

“Chiba,” Gustav said, then spread out the map he had obtained earlier on the table and drew several red circles on some of the more well-known landmarks. “Considering that a step-by-step investigation is far too inefficient, I have decided to start the investigation with a few of the more well-known landmarks.”

“I think we probably won’t find anything by investigating like this. If I were Kayaba Akihiko, I definitely wouldn’t hide in such obvious places.” Mo Tianfang shook his head, indicating his dissatisfaction with this method of investigation. “He is more likely to be hiding in a residential area or a similar place, so even if it’s a waste of time, we shouldn’t waste it on these useless places.”

“No, I mean you can go and investigate these places yourselves. As for the residential areas you mentioned, we can just use drones and new recruits who can remotely control them from nearby.” Gustav seemed to have read Mo Tianfang’s mind and explained his arrangements. “Don’t worry, if things go smoothly, we will be able to narrow down most of the investigation area in just half a month.”

------

The reason Solin didn't start a live stream was simple: he didn't know how to explain the sudden appearance of Aivisin to the Rainbow Team. After all, he had a fairly deep understanding of artificial intelligence, and once Aivisin was exposed to the public eye, no one could guarantee that she wouldn't be taken away from Solin.

So he kept it a secret, including from his own father. Anyway, Suolin understood very well that since his father had done something like answering the call to arms and leaving him, who was only four years old, at a comrade's house for more than ten years, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't ask him to hand over Aivixin for the sake of the country, which was something he could never accept.

"Dad? What's wrong?" Aiweixin saw Suolin suddenly stop, his face filled with a conflicted and pained expression, and quickly ran to him, putting her hands behind her back and looking at him with a puzzled expression. Although Youna didn't ask, she could tell from Suolin's expression that he was thinking about something rather pessimistic.

She had never seen Suolin with such an expression before, as if he was hiding something, or as if he was torn between two extremes.

“It’s alright, let’s go, Ivy.” Solin sighed deeply, looking as if he had aged considerably in an instant, but his tone was unusually firm. “No one can take you away from me, I promise.”

"I have a feeling that you're thinking something, or rather... never mind." Yuna wanted to ask Sorin what was going on, but her intuition stopped her. She vaguely realized that even if Sorin was hiding something, it wasn't something she should know.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hide anything from you, but these things involve some confidentiality clauses, and I really can't tell you, Yuna," Sorin said in a low voice. "Just trust me, okay? Yuna."

"Hmm. I have a pretty good idea of ​​what's going on, don't worry." Yuna nodded, then gently hugged Sorin from behind. "But sometimes you have to learn to rely on others. It's very difficult to bear things all by yourself, isn't it?"

"I'd like to think so too, but the problem is... never mind, let's get back to the previous topic. The way to verify whether someone is truly dead in this game is very simple; you just need to find that player's name on the player's stone tablet in the Black Iron Palace. And if I'm not mistaken, Kirito and Asuna should be investigating this matter right now as well."

Solin shook his head, and when he looked up again, he was back to his previous self, exuding nonchalance and confidence. He swiped down with his left hand, pulled up the system menu, found the ID Kirito in his friends list, and sent a message.

[SorinMarkov: What was the ID of the person who was just killed in the community? I need to verify this with the Black Iron Palace; I suspect he isn't actually dead.]

125. The Current Status of the Starting Town

[Kirito: I also think this is very suspicious, but I really hadn't considered this possibility. His ID is Kainz...]

[Kirito: Didn't you say you were on your honeymoon? You're back?]

[SorinMarkov: Well, with this incident, we'll talk later. I'm heading to the Black Iron Palace now.]

After typing the line smoothly, Solin put the menu away. He was on his way to the Black Iron Palace, a journey that was a microcosm of life, especially the experiences of the poor in real life.

In such a place, it's truly rare to see people like Solin and his two companions, fully armed and dressed in finery. As they walked along, many people looked at them with pleading eyes, futilely stretching out their hands, hoping that this powerful figure who had descended from the upper echelons for unknown reasons would take pity on them and give them some coins that meant little to them.

"They brought this on themselves. After all, if they had just mustered up the courage, even if it was just to go out and slaughter pigs, things would have been much better than they are now." Solin shrugged. That was the only way he could describe the chaos here. "Let's hurry up and leave, Yuna, stop looking."

"But... is this really okay?" Although Yuna had gotten used to Sorin's way of thinking, getting used to it was one thing, but when she saw these players who could only beg on the streets, she still felt a little sorry for them. "Although they won't starve to death if they don't eat, it's probably an even more unbearable ordeal."

“They can choose to go out of town and kill monsters. Weapons are given to players at the beginning of the game, and no one is stupid enough not to kill a wild boar at the gate.” Sorin pulled Yuna aside and said in a somewhat warning tone, “These homeless people are a cancer to the municipal department. You might be able to sponsor one or even ten people, but there are as many as three thousand homeless people living in the town of Beginning right now. If we sponsor them one by one, it would be enough to empty our guild warehouse.”

However, although he explained it this way, and Yuna nodded seriously, some of the people noticed her earlier hesitation and reluctance. They suddenly stood up, staggered over to Sorin and his companions, and blocked their way. At first, there were only a dozen or so people, but more and more people came over, eventually blocking the entire block.

"Please have mercy... young master and young lady, I'm starving to death..."

"You must look very rich, you have to help us!"

Please, please save us!

Aivisin and Youna looked at Solin with some panic; they had never seen anything like this before. Solin, seeing this scene, also felt a bit overwhelmed and even had the urge to just grab a crystal and teleport away.

“I’ve said it before, Yuna, what’s the point of having compassion for people like this? The essence of charity is to help those who have been defeated get back on their feet, but it’s meaningless if they’re already lying on the ground.” Sorin looked at these people with a mocking and disdainful gaze, and her tone became contemptuous. “Now, let’s think about how to get rid of them with a big enough rice bin.”

"I was wrong, Sorin... What do we do now?" Yuna said softly, lowering her head. She hadn't expected things to turn out this way.

"It's simple. These people are all level 1, and their attributes are all initial. In SAO's setting, for a certain degree of realism, if your strength attribute is higher, it will directly push away the weaker side when the hit boxes overlap." Sorin thought of a solution after a moment's thought. He ignored those blocking his way, bent down, picked up Ivy and put her on his shoulders, and then pulled Yuna directly towards those people.

Just as Sorin had said before, when he ignored these obstacles and passed through directly, no one could stop him. Although Yuna had all her stats allocated to Agility, her Strength attribute was at least higher than that of a level 1 alt, so she could also do what Sorin did.

When the homeless men first stopped Solin and Yuna, they all thought they had succeeded again. They had done this more than once before, and the players coming down from above would always throw down some coins for them to scramble for, enough to feed them for two or three more days on black bread. However, this was something they had never heard of before, and they were dumbfounded. Their initial begging and feigned pitifulness quickly turned into vicious curses.

"Damn it! Why won't you give us some Cole? Aren't you upper-class people all rich?"

"You guys get thousands of Cole's for killing just one monster on the front lines, why won't you give us any now? We're going to starve to death here!"

……

Of course, for Sorin, these mundane Japanese swear words were hardly enough to stir his emotions. They weren't particularly offensive or offensive; he could simply ignore them and not take them to heart, much less lower himself to engage in a shouting match with these people. His expression wasn't good either. Although it wasn't the first time he'd seen something like this, he was very reluctant to let Yuna see him like this.

"I'm sorry, Sorin, I've caused you trouble." Yuna followed Sorin out of the encirclement and into the Black Iron Palace, still looking apologetic and disappointed. "I really didn't expect them to..."

“You live in a big city like Tokyo, and you're surrounded by the upper class. It’s normal that you haven’t seen anything like this before. There’s nothing to apologize for. But honestly, I thought someone like you who studied literature and history would understand this.” Solin sighed, put Aivixin back on the ground, patted her head, and then turned to Youna. “Actually, it’s not just you. Even leaders of Western countries have made similar mistakes. Look at their territories now, filled with refugees who have occupied other people’s land and are stealing their jobs and pensions. They’re the kind of people you can’t get rid of.”

“So now, let’s cheer up. We didn’t come to the first floor to fight them. We have important business to attend to.” Solin clapped his hands, waking up Yuna, who was in a daze after hearing what he said, and then strode into the Black Iron Palace. “And I bet we’ll see some old acquaintances soon.”

126. Public Execution (Fog)

The "old acquaintances" Sorin was referring to were naturally the seven red-named individuals he had tried to take action against years ago, but who were rescued by Kayaba Akihiko. Of course, a year had passed, and these seven guys certainly weren't the only ones serving their lives in jail; there were definitely other red-named individuals imprisoned here. He wasn't here to hang out with Sasa and Johnny Black, of course; he had serious business to attend to.

Sorin hadn't been to the Black Iron Palace many times, and his impression of the layout wasn't very clear. In fact, the stone tablet was located in the main hall, completely unrelated to the prison area. He walked to the stone tablet, opened a window, clicked a button, and began to view the contents of the tablet.

Normally, if it were a large stone tablet with ten thousand names written on it, it would be densely packed. But finding a specific name on such a stone tablet... you basically don't have to do anything else this morning. After finding that person, you can consider having lunch right away.

Therefore, the correct way to proceed is to select the "Investigate" option on the stone tablet and then enter the name you want to search for in the search bar. Sorin entered the name "Kainz" and found that there was no horizontal line indicating "dead" with the cause of death listed below it. In other words, this person who appeared to be dead is still alive.

"This is getting interesting... although I expected it to turn out this way." Sorin gave a sly smile and took out three crystals from his inventory. "Kirito said he was at the crime scene on the 34th floor. The investigation here is complete. Let's go find him there now."

"Transfer to Stratholme!"

------

In fact, people generally don't use the wasteful shortcut of teleportation crystals when moving between main cities. For most people, this TP (Teleportation Points) with no delay can be a lifesaver in many critical moments. It's estimated that only Thorin would be so wealthy as to use crystals to avoid the homeless people in the Starting Town.

The appearance of the three in the central square of Stratholme immediately attracted the attention of many players. After all, Yuna and Sorin, who openly wore matching outfits and flaunted their relationship, were already quite well-known in the areas near the front lines. This time, they even brought along a little girl dressed in the same outfit, which made the players who had set up stalls near the teleportation array feel as if they had been dealt a fatal blow.

“I have a feeling that it won’t be long before strange rumors start circulating on the front lines.” Solin looked at their reactions and couldn’t help but cover his forehead in frustration. “It’s just a game, we can’t do anything about it.”

"Actually, I can do some of the things you imagine, and I'm an adult now, so if you want..." After hearing Sorin say this, Yuna suddenly leaned over him, gently circling his chest with her left hand while whispering in his ear, "It's not impossible~"

"Don't do this, Yuna, there are children here." Sorin felt that he often found himself in situations where the roles of top and bottom were reversed, but he couldn't do anything about Yuna. He could only temporarily use Ivy as a shield. "Besides, I don't want my real body to experience physical conditions like erection or nocturnal emission. If that happens, I really won't be able to explain myself when I go out."

Of course, this scene was a bit inappropriate for a child like Ivy. At this moment, Ivy stood in front of Sorin and Yuna, who were almost touching, and tilted her head in confusion to look at Sorin.

"Dad? What are you and Mom doing?"