Sugou Nobuyuki

Sugou Nobuyuki (須郷伸之), known as Fairy King Oberon (オベイロン) in «ALfheim Online» (ALO), is the main antagonist of the Fairy Dance Arc. He was the former chief of the research institute of RECT Inc., RECT Progress, as well as Yuuki 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. In the anime, after his failed attempt on Kirigaya Kazuto's life, his hair was shown to have turned white.

ALfheim Online Avatar
In ALfheim Online, his avatar, Oberon, has green eyes and wings, along with 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, and Koujiro Rinko, whom he repeatedly courted. Once «Sword Art Online» (SAO) was cleared, thus disabling the security of the SAO servers, he was able to hack into the SAO server via router and reroute the minds of three hundred SAO players including Asuna, to ALfheim Online. He then utilized these players as test subjects for research on controlling peoples' emotions and memories. In ALfheim Online he adopted the persona of Fairy King Oberon.

Personality
Nobuyuki hides his true personality, especially in front of Asuna's father but shows his true colors to Kazuto as soon as they were left alone. Nobuyuki is an amoral and greedy entrepreneur, having 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 were helpless to do anything about it. He also has an extremely perverted side, especially towards Asuna, as he had sexually harassed her on many occasions, even going as far abusing her in front of Kirito.

Unlike Akihiko, however, Nobuyuki is 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 was 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. On January 19, 2025, 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.



On January 22, 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 two 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 Excalibur, the strongest weapon in ALO, for himself but to no avail. After Kirito repeated the same command and gave the generated Excalibur 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 were 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 the latter was running to the hospital Asuna was held in. 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. According to Kazuto, Nobuyuki eventually confessed everything because of this.

Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment
Sugou Nobuyuki attempted 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 ended up getting sucked into Aincrad themselves. Taking the opportunity, Nobuyuki used his administrator account to create a powerful avatar, named «Alberich». As Alberich, he attempted to join the Clearers, stating that his level and equipment should suffice to prove his abilities. However, after dueling with Kirito, it was revealed that despite his high stats and equipment, his battle skills were poor and would only hold the Clearing group back in the end.

Eventually, Kirito saw Klein confront Alberich, who used a mysterious weapon to forcefully transport a player somewhere else upon a single touch. Kirito demanded another duel with Alberich, who believed that their last duel was a fluke, and ended up winning. Alberich disappeared, 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 discovered 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 reappeared after the defeat of one of the last few Floor Bosses, 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 then used the privileges of his super account to paralyze everyone and slowly destroy them by using the Hollow Avatar creature, which was intended to be used as the final Floor Boss. He intended to spare only Asuna, whose memories and emotions he was planning on modifying in preparation for their upcoming marriage in the real world. Kirito and the others managed to break through his paralyzing effect and defeated the Hollow Avatar, before Alberich paralyzed everyone once again and attempted to kill Kirito with a special blade that held an incurable poison, which would gradually but inevitably reduce the target's hit points to zero. However, this attempt was negated by Strea, who took the attack for Kirito and removed Alberich's super account privileges before being forcibly fused with the Hollow Avatar.

Alberich was then imprisoned along with the rest of his group by the Clearers, and remained inactive during the rest of the game. After the Aincrad incident ended, Sugou Nobuyuki was 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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