NOVEL WEB Chapter 376: Chapter 368: The Origin of the Old AI
[You have obtained the passive skill 'Free Will'.]
[Skill Effect: You are now immune to effects such as [Forced Paralysis], [Forced Hit], 'Forced Lock-On'... etc.]
The game panel popped up.
Haruto glanced at it briefly and was quite satisfied.
Although Kayaba Akihiko would definitely cheat during the battle—using things like near-death regeneration, teleportation, multi-skills, and more— as long as he couldn't forcibly restrict Haruto's character…
Then no matter how much Kayaba struggled, the outcome of the battle would still be Haruto's victory.
And Yui—also known as the Old AI (SCP-079)—after transferring partial authority, no longer spoke and simply watched Haruto in silence.
Haruto averted his gaze.
There was no way to promise anything to such an anomaly, so he simply chose not to respond at all.
He deactivated the [World] restriction.
Time began flowing once more.
Yui also lifted the restrictions on the hidden dungeon area.
"What just happened?"
Argo felt like her vision had flickered. The dungeon had been full of red warning lights just moments ago.
But now, it had all vanished.
It was like an illusion.
Asuna, meanwhile, looked at Yui with curiosity.
SAO, being a full-dive VRMMO, had strict age restrictions. And Yui clearly didn't look old enough to be playing SAO. But she also didn't seem like an NPC—she even had a player marker above her head.
"Could she be Haruto-senpai's daughter?!"
Asuna suddenly exclaimed.
Haruto was left speechless, lines of black forming on his forehead.
Where did that conclusion even come from?
Just as Haruto was about to explain—
A white teleportation glow suddenly appeared on his body.
And then he vanished.
Asuna and Argo were both stunned, then quickly grew anxious.
"What's going on?!"
At this moment, Yui spoke calmly:
"Notification: The individual has been teleported to Special Region 'A0' via upper-level permissions."
Upon hearing this, the two immediately understood—it must have been Kayaba Akihiko who teleported Haruto away.
However, this realization actually calmed them down.
After all, Haruto had previously told them about the state of his account—Kayaba wouldn't be able to do anything to him.
"What's your name…?"
Asuna grew even more curious.
Yui didn't feel anything like a child her apparent age.
"Name… I have no name."
As an AI lifeform, Yui had only her base code. She had no such thing as a name.
Upon hearing this, Asuna's imagination exploded with a barrage of stories. She envisioned things like an amnesiac little girl, and similar setups started flooding her brain.
Meanwhile, a sharp glint flashed in Argo's eyes.
"Was the anomaly just now your doing? Little girl, tell big sis~ Tell big sis, and I'll give you candy. Otherwise, the evil dragon will come and eat you~!"
As an excellent intelligence broker, Argo was always looking for opportunities to dig up secrets and make a killing selling them. Although she felt a slight pang of guilt about tricking a little girl, it paled in comparison to the gold she could earn.
Unfortunately, this wasn't an easily tricked child.
"Deceit. A8D3."
Yui stated bluntly.
Argo blinked.
Fine, she didn't get any info.
"…What does that mean?"
Argo didn't understand what "A8D3" meant.
"It is a command for deleting garbage files. It carries insulting connotations."
Yui explained calmly.
Argo immediately puffed up her cheeks in frustration.
Whose kid is this?! Even using command code to insult people!
Just as Argo was about to start arguing with Yui—
Yui's body suddenly swayed, and she collapsed backward.
Asuna instantly flashed forward and caught Yui. At that moment, the black-and-white colors on Yui's body faded, turning into a pure white dress.
She had completely lost consciousness.
No matter how Asuna called out, there was no response.
—Meanwhile—
Haruto stood atop a cloud.
In the distance, a massive conical tower floated in the air, with clouds flowing past on both sides.
This was the so-called A0 Region.
An inaccessible area, only reachable through special commands.
Under normal circumstances, Kayaba Akihiko would only bring the player who defeated him here at the end of SAO.
But clearly, he was quite desperate now.
Kayaba had detected the anomaly in the hidden dungeon through the system.
Not only did he detect it, but he also realized that parts of the system had gone out of control.
It seemed a virus had invaded the SAO system and completely hijacked it.
Even he couldn't counteract it.
At this point, only this isolated region could still be considered safe.
"Did your people implant a virus into the system? Why are you doing this now?!"
Kayaba's first thought was—Shiro.
In his mind, if anyone could hijack the SAO system…
It had to be Shiro.
But he couldn't understand—SAO was almost completely cleared.
Why flip the table now?
Why not just do it from the beginning?
Haruto glanced at the flustered Kayaba Akihiko.
Even now, this guy had made sure to switch his appearance back to the black-robed persona—
Still hiding his in-game player identity.
"What's the deal with the artificial intelligence inside SAO?"
Instead of answering, Haruto threw a question back.
Kayaba was briefly stunned.
"Artificial intelligence? Wasn't it the code you guys gave me? I never broke through anything on my own. Wait… you mean that anomaly earlier was caused by the AI? Could it be…"
Watching Kayaba fall into deep thought,
Haruto realized it.
So the Old AI really was connected to this guy.
Haruto wasn't in a rush—he just waited quietly for Kayaba to think.
This guy was already dead anyway, so he had no human rights left.
If he dared to lie, Haruto would just extract him from the SAO system and dump him into the Foundation's hardware—
Turn him into code, and read every last piece of data.
Even if it was inhumane.
Kayaba suddenly felt a chill, instinctively glancing at Haruto.
Then, he opened his mouth and spoke:
"I see now… It must be the player health monitoring AI. Truly incredible. That wasn't my creation—it was something I came across by chance."
Haruto curled his lips.
Even without Kayaba saying it, he already knew.
After all, Kayaba's tech was outdated. Though talented, there's no way he could handcraft an anomalous AI lifeform.
Under Haruto's "calm" gaze,
Kayaba continued speaking.
"That happened before the SAO project was even launched. At the time, I was still a college freshman. I met a senior from Kyoto University. That senior was involved in cutting-edge AI research. But at the time, AI was just a conceptual product.
His project kept hitting dead ends. After failing to produce results for a long time, Kyoto University canceled his research funding. However, after leaving university, the senior continued the project on his own dime—and eventually made a breakthrough.
Unfortunately, AI research requires high computational power and long self-iterations. Back then, 5.6 was the average CPU speed—way too low. That senior was later diagnosed with cancer and directly handed me the unfinished source code before disappearing.
I studied that code later too, but… I couldn't understand a bit of it. It was completely different from mainstream AI programming. Because of that, when I launched SAO, I gave up on researching that source code and tossed it aside.
Just before SAO officially went live, while deleting files from my computer, I stumbled across it again. So I thought, why not? I implanted it together with the code you guys gave me into an abandoned region in SAO—just as a random experiment.
But I didn't expect it to actually succeed. It really succeeded… That was a real AI lifeform!"