Sugou Nobuyuki

Sugou Nobuyuki (須郷伸之) is the former director of the research institute of RCT Progress Inc. He was Fairy King Oberon (妖精王オベイロン), the main antagonist of the Fairy Dance Arc. He is also Asuna's ex-fiance.

Real Life Appearance
In the real world, Nobuyuki has short, slicked back hair, dark eyes and glasses, and wears a business suit. He is quite tall, and wears a red tie.

ALfheim Online Avatar
In ALfheim Online (ALO), his avatar, Oberon, has green eyes and wings, shoulder length blonde hair. He wears a crown, a long dark green robe and a green cloak, both with an emerald-like jewel. He has a pale skin, long pointed ears, as do all the characters except Cait Siths, but his have gold leaves on top, like Asuna's Titania avatar.

Background
Originally selected by Asuna's father to marry Asuna, he was adopted into her family on her father's wishes. He attended the same school with Kayaba Akihiko, whom he viewed as his rival. Once «Sword Art Online» was cleared (until that point the SAO servers were untouchable), he was able to hack into SAO server via router and obtain the minds of 300 SAO players, Asuna being among the 300 players, as test subjects for his research on controlling peoples' feelings, memories, in other words, research on the manipulation of the human soul. In «ALfheim Online» he adopts the persona of Fairy King Oberon.

Personality
Nobuyuki hides his true personality: he hid it in front of Asuna's father but shows his true personality to Kazuto as soon as they were left alone. Nobuyuki is an amoral and greedy entrepreneur, as he had kidnapped 300 players from SAO for his experiment on manipulating the human mind, which he planned to sell to other companies. Nobuyuki also has a habit of framing others for his problems, especially Kayaba as he felt that he was the source of all of his problems.

Nobuyuki also viewed himself as a god that could get anything he wanted, viewing other people as inferiors who tried to interfere with his actions, and often abused his GM status to flaunt his "god"-like status. Nobuyuki also harmed many people, especially their feelings, and thought that they are helpless to do anything about it. He also has an extremely perverted side, especially towards Asuna, as he had sexually harassed or molested her on many occasions.

Unlike Akihiko, however, Nobuyuki was a poor fighter, as when he tried to attack Kirito after the latter had given him the strongest weapon in ALO, Kirito parried with ease. Nobuyuki also has low tolerance for pain; even a slice on the cheek is enough to make him panic.

Fairy Dance Arc


As the Fairy King Oberon, Nobuyuki kept Asuna locked up in a giant bird cage at the top of the World Tree. In the real world, he confronted the powerless Kazuto by voicing his intentions of wedding the unconscious Asuna. While keeping Asuna locked up in ALO, he constantly visited her, and there he brought her to the verge of tears by harassing her.



After Kirito managed to ascend the World Tree and reach Asuna, Oberon appeared and used his administrator privileges to keep Kirito pinned down with powerful gravity magic. Once Kirito and Asuna were unable to move due to the gravity magic, he manipulated a menu to call down 2 chains, which he used to shackle Asuna. After Kirito voiced his protest against Oberon mistreating Asuna, Oberon used Kirito's sword to stab him, soon afterwards turning the Pain Absorber program level down so that Kirito would experience real pain from the injury. Oberon then began sexually assaulting Asuna in front of the helpless Kirito. Fortunately, Kayaba Akihiko saved Kirito by giving him the details necessary to log in with Akihiko's ID Heathcliff, which, due to ALO being a copy of the SAO servers, had greater system authority than Oberon's ID. This allowed Kirito to use a Voice Command to nullify Oberon's supervisor authority. After this, Oberon tried using a Voice Command to generate Excaliber, the strongest weapon in ALO, for himself but to no avail. After Kirito repeated the same command and gave the generated Excaliber to Oberon, he used another Voice Command to set the pain absorber program from level 8 to level 0, causing every injury to feel as if it was 100% real. Even though Oberon tried attacking Kirito, probably due to his rage and lack of experience, Oberon left an easy opening, which Kirito used to strike Oberon at his cheek. Afterwards, Kirito lashed out at Oberon with all the anger he had accumulated, amputating his hand, bisecting him, and then stabbing his sword though his eye, killing his avatar.



Afterwards, in the real world, Nobuyuki attempted to kill Kazuto with a knife when he was running to Asuna's hospital. Even though he was in control of the situation for a little while and even had the chance to deal a fatal blow, due to the pain and fogginess of his right eye he missed and Kazuto soon mustered the strength needed to overpower him. Nobuyuki was later arrested and interrogated. However Nobuyuki tried denying everything and blamed it all on Kayaba Akihiko, though an underling of his confessed when news of the existence of a witness was spread.

Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment
Sugou Nobuyuki attempts to hack into Aincrad in an attempt to retrieve the minds of the players for his experiment on manipulating human emotions. As a result, he and several members of his team had ended up getting sucked into Aincrad themselves. Taking the opportunity, Sugou uses his administration account to create a powerful avatar named "Alberich". As Alberich, he attempted to join the Assault team, stating that his levels and equipment should suffice to prove his abilities. However after dueling with Kirito, it was apparent that despite his high stats and equipment, his battle skills were poor and would only hold the Assault team back in the end.

Several other members of Alberich's team are seen throughout the town, harassing other players and abusing their power as the "Harassment Warning" function and "Jail transport" function appeared to have no effect towards them, despite still affecting the original players.

Eventually, Kirito will see Klein confront Alberich, who used a mysterious weapon to forcefully transport a player somewhere else upon a single touch. Kirito demands another duel with Alberich, who believes that their last duel was a fluke, and ends up winning. Alberich disappears, leaving one of his men behind to be interrogated by Klein and Kirito about the whereabouts of the other players. After rescuing the missing players, Kirito will discover a console that held information regarding Strea, the captured players, and their emotion states, before deleting all the files and shutting down the data for good.

Alberich will reappear after the defeat of one of the last few floor masters, revealing his true identity and his plans of creating a program to control the emotional states of people and to sell the program throughout the world. Alberich will then use the privileges of his "super account" to paralyze everyone and slowly destroy them using the Hollow Avatar creature, which was intended to be used as the final floor master. Kirito and the others manage to break through his paralyzing effect, and defeats Hollow Avatar before Alberich paralyzes everyone once again and attempts to kill Kirito with a special blade that held an incurable poison. However, this attempt was negated by Strea, who takes the attack for Kirito and ends up fusing with Hollow Avatar.

Alberich is then imprisoned along with the rest of his group by the Assault team, and remains inactive during the rest of the game. After the Aincrad incident ends, Sugou Nobuyuki is reported to have been stripped of his position and arrested due to the complaints and comments made by all the surviving players, as well as an investigation report that supported such claims.

Gallery

 * See: Sugou Nobuyuki/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Nobuyuki appears in Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment as Alberich and like his ALO avatar, his appearance bears no resemblance to his real life form.
 * Nobuyuki's ALO avatar, Oberon, is based on a fictional character with the same name who is the king of the fairies in medieval and Renaissance literature. He is best known as a character in William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which he is Consort to Titania, Queen of the Fairies.
 * Titania is the name that Nobuyuki gave to Asuna's first avatar in ALO while she was trapped, though she rejected it repeatedly.
 * Todd Haberkorn, Nobuyuki's English voice actor, also voices Crimson Kingbolt in Accel World, another series written by Kawahara Reki.

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