Chapter 490: 478: Who is Real and Who is Fake?

Chapter 490: Chapter 478: Who is Real and Who is Fake?

Twenty-eight days had passed in the real world since all players were trapped in *Sword Art Online*.

The air in the Aiselan Kingdom was thick with irrepressible anxiety.

In the Royal Capital Square, the crowds that had once cheered for *Sword Art Online* now gathered in silence, their faces etched with the agony of waiting. For the families of over five million people, every passing second was a lingering execution.

Meanwhile, on the ninety-ninth floor of Aincrad.

“ROAR!”

With a roar of defiance, the colossal skeletal dragon collapsed, dissolving into a flurry of scattered data fragments.

Yak, commander of the Blood Alliance Knight Order, leaned heavily on his half-shattered broadsword, gasping for breath while drenched in blood. Behind him stood the remnants of the clearing group—fewer than three hundred players. Though every one of them was battered and wounded, their eyes shone with astonishing brilliance.

Ahead of them slowly rotated the crimson portal to the one hundredth floor—the fatal trial leading to the end.

Inside the Cybertron Main Control Room, Allen watched this scene with calm indifference.

[Reporting to the Commander: The AI strength of the bosses from the ninety-fifth to the ninety-ninth floor has been reduced by an average of 17.3%, according to the preset plan.]

[The clearing group’s time of arrival at the final area aligns closely with the estimated timeline.]

[There is a two-day buffer remaining on the reality side, which is sufficient to complete the final data collection.]

With a gentle wave of his hand, Allen magnified the projection. He had personally directed this grand “death march,” perfectly timing its conclusion for the very last moment.

For the outside world, these past twenty-eight days had been a life-or-death struggle for 5.17 million people. For him, they had been twenty-eight days of harvesting a complete technological loop capable of rewriting the very nature of life.

Now, only the final piece of the puzzle remained.

…

Two days later, inside the game world.

Having finished their recuperation, the three hundred surviving warriors stepped into the crimson portal with a tragic sense of resolve. They were the last hope for over five million people, and every single one of them was prepared for mutual destruction with the final demon king.

When the light faded, the Purgatory-like scene they had anticipated was nowhere to be found. Instead, an overwhelmingly grand and unnervingly empty palace stretched out before them.

Above, streams of light circulated across the domed ceiling like a moving galaxy. The floor was paved with a single, colossal slab of dark red crystal, as smooth as a mirror.

In the center of the palace, there was no terrifying demon king and no roaring Giant Beasts. There was only a mirrored black Obelisk, standing a hundred meters tall in total silence. It seemed to have existed there since the dawn of time, mutely reflecting the silhouettes of every intruder.

The players exchanged bewildered glances. Tightening their grips on their weapons, they approached with caution.

The moment Yak stepped within a hundred meters of the Obelisk, a system prompt echoed simultaneously in everyone’s minds.

[Welcome to the final destination, the Red Jade Palace.]

[The Final Trial begins: Defeat yourself.]

[The first person to defeat their “Mirror Image” will be the one to clear the game.]

Dead silence. After several seconds of utter stillness, an unbelievable, euphoric sense of surviving a disaster erupted among them.

“Defeat… ourselves?” a Mage muttered, then burst into loud laughter. “That’s it? It’s actually… that simple?”

“My god! I thought it was going to be a World-Ending Ancient Dragon or something!”

“This is the mercy Lord Wesren left for us!”

Yak raised his legendary longsword high, his voice trembling with excitement. “He gave us a fair chance! A chance we can actually win!”

“Long live Lord Wesren!”

“We can finally go home!”

Cheers echoed throughout the empty palace.

After enduring a grueling month of bloody massacres and watching countless comrades be permanently erased during boss fights, this final stage felt like a charitable gift. The crushing mental pressure they carried vanished in an instant.

Fight themselves? That was at least a fifty-fifty shot! No, better than that! Who knew their own weaknesses better than themselves? They were heroes fighting to save five million people, and that conviction was their strongest weapon! As long as just one person could beat their own reflection, the game would be cleared!

Morale soared to unprecedented heights.

Just then, the central Obelisk emitted a low HUM, and hundreds of beams of light shot out from its surface, enveloping everyone.

The next second, the world spun.

When Yak opened his eyes again, he found himself in an isolated space made entirely of white light. Ten meters away, a figure was rapidly materializing from streams of data.

It wore the exact same blood-red Knight armor, held the same broadsword, and bore the identical scars and bloodstains. Even the resolute exhaustion in its eyes matched his own down to the smallest detail.

Another “Yak” was staring at him coldly.

“Bring it on,” Yak growled, charging forward first. The battle erupted instantly.

As soon as their blades clashed, he realized something was wrong. The mirror image’s blocking angle matched his own perfectly. This wasn’t imitation—this was synchronization!

When he unconsciously tried to feint, his opponent side-stepped in advance. When he attempted his usual combo of linking his third technique into his seventh, the image assumed the exact counter-stance the moment he initiated the attack.

Thirty moves passed, and Yak hadn’t landed a single strike. Cold sweat rolled down the back of his neck. Could this thing… actually read his mind?

He wanted to cut right, and the image cut right at the same time. He wanted to retreat and open up some distance, and the image retreated as well. It was exactly like facing a mirror with zero latency.

In room number forty-two, a shieldbearer named Gray had been locked in a stalemate with his mirror image for seven minutes.

He executed a feint, deliberately exposing his right flank to lure the opponent into a thrust. The image didn’t fall for it at all. It dodged the attack with a movement Gray was all too familiar with, murmuring a sentence under its breath.

“Martha… protect me, give me strength.”

Gray’s hairs stood on end instantly. Martha. That was the name of his three-year-old daughter. He had never mentioned that name to anyone in the game.

“You…” Gray’s voice trembled. “How do you know that?”

What chilled him to the bone was that the image’s face suddenly displayed the exact same expression of extreme shock and terror that he was feeling.

It looked at Gray and asked in an equally trembling voice, “What are you talking about? That’s my daughter.”

—

Back in Cybertron, Allen calmly observed the hundreds of synchronized “self-duels” playing out on the projection.

[Reporting to the Commander: The “Self-Backup” experiment has been fully initiated.] Jarvis’s voice rang out. [Currently recording logical conflict data generated by the “original” and the “backup” driven by their survival instincts. Some players have already realized the truth about their “clones.” Captured 73 instances of cognitive confusion regarding “memory ownership” and 12 instances of logical wavering concerning “self-existence.” The data model is iterating at high speed.]

This was Allen’s final experiment. The “clones” the players encountered were clones in the truest sense—perfect backups replicated at the soul level.

Only the victor of the duel would be allowed to return to their physical body.

From Allen’s perspective, each pair consisted of two identical people; it didn’t matter who won. When a soul was perfectly duplicated, the original and the backup had zero difference on a data level. But for the two individuals locked in combat, both of whom believed they were the true original—would they simply step aside and let their opponent return to occupy their body?

Two completely identical consciousnesses. Possessing the same memories, the same personality, and the same obsessions. When thrust into a life-and-death cage, forced to fight over a singular right to survive, what kind of brilliant sparks would they create in their collision?

Who was the original? Who was the backup? When both firmly believed themselves to be “real,” who was left to make that distinction?

“Continue recording,” Allen ordered. “This is the most precious boundary data on ’humanity.’”

He watched the players fight tooth and nail to prove they were the “real” ones. They had no idea that the moment the backup was generated, the concepts of “real” and “fake” had completely lost all meaning.

“If one day I find myself facing the same predicament,” Allen mused as he stared at the bloody, visceral self-slaughter on the projection, “between the original Allen and the backup Allen, who would have the right to press the delete button?”

Inside the game, Yak’s battle had also devolved into a stalemate. He and his mirror image were like two identical, cornered beasts. They tore at each other with unhinged ferocity, only to inflict the exact same wounds upon each other.