Sugou Nobuyuki, also known in ALfheim Online as Oberon is the main antagonist of the Fairy Dance Arc 1/2. In addition to being Asuna's ex-fiance, he was also the chief of the research institute of RCT Inc., RCT Progress.

Bio

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|Japanese name | 須郷 伸之|
|Real Life Description | Tall, has dark eyes, had short, slicked black hair. He wore glasses and a suit with a red tie. After a real-life fight with Kirigaya Kazuto, his hair turned white.|
|ALO Description | In ALO, he had pale skin, long pointed ears, green eyes and wings and blonde hair below shoulder. Wore a crown, a long dark-green robe and green cloak adorned with green gems. His ears had gold leaf accessories on top, fashioned after Asuna's Titania avatar.|
|Avatar name (Japanese) | オベイロン obeiron|
|System name | Oberon|
|Epithet | Fairy King|
|Gender | Male|
|VR/AR | ALO|
|Occupation | RCT Progress Chief (former)|
|Voice Actors | JP: Takehito Koyasu; EN: Todd Haberkorn|
|First Appearance | Novel: Volume 3, Chapter 1; Manga: Fiary Dance Manga Stage.001; Anime: Episode 15; Game: Infinity Moment|

Background

Adopted into Asuna's family by her father, who originally selected Nobuyuki to marry Asuna. He was school rivals with Akihiko Kayaba and tried to win Kōjiro Rinko's affection. When theSword Art Online server security went down following the clearing of the game, he hacked into the servers and rerouted three hundred players' minds to ALO. He subsequently performed human experimentation on the 300, researching control of emotions and memories aiming for military money. Was logging into ALO as Fairy King Oberon while having administrative privileges there.

Personality

Nobuyuki presents himself to his superiors as a well-groomed intelligent businessman who will go far. The next moment, he will happily swap into Nobuyuki mode as soon as he and Kazuto or Asuna are alone. He is deeply amoral, greedy, and spoiled, blaming others of his issues. He is a control freak and has his way with everyone he feels are weaker than him. He seems to get more pleasure controlling Asuna than getting her affections, although he did that freely whenever he could, liking the smell of her hair the best.

He is a fighter much worse than Akihiko was, despite what he thinks. Kirito easily parried Oberon's attack with the strongest weapon in ALO, and Oberon panicked getting a scratch on his virtual cheek.

Chronology

Fairy Dance Arc

On January 19, 2025, Nobuyuki met Kirigaya Kazuto in Asuna's hospital room, and made it abundantly clear to him he thinks Asuna is his and that they will marry by default in a week, even though she was comatose. Asuna was locked and kept hostage in a giant bird cage at the top of the World Tree where he often visited and harrassed her, trying to convince Asuna to be his by threatening her.

On January 22, Kirito with Yui and Asuna's help ascended the World Tree and found Asuna. Oberon found them and pinned Kirito down by using gravity magic that was about to officially hit the game in a patch. He chained Asuna and pierced Kirito with his own sword for his trouble, changing the pain tolerance level to 80% so he would feel real-life pain from it. Oberon then proceeded to sexually assault Asuna in front of Kirito. Kayaba Akihiko's mental copy talked to Kirito then and shared his GM credentials; ALO having been a SAO rip-off in essence, those had higher privilege than Nobuyuki's. Kirito used a voice command to drop Nobuyuki's authority to zero. Oberon tried summoning Excaliber[sic], the strongest weapon in ALO, but failed. Kirito did it instead, and dropped the pain tolerance level to 0, allowing all pain to happen in reality unadulterated. Kirito created another Excaliber for Oberon and told him to defend himself. Oberon was a poor swordsman however, and Kirito could not restrain himself from giving him a lot of cuts and pain, until slashing Oberon in half and then piercing his eye with the sword, leading to Oberon's demise. Asuna was freed.

In the real world, in front of Asuna's hospital at night, Nobuyuki, his eye bloodshot and swollen, attacked Kazuto with a knife, certain that he would avoid any consequences. Still fresh after rehab, Kazuto was physically weaker, but he was definitely faster, and after a couple wounds, he fought back and soon held the knife at Nobuyuki's neck. Even though Kazuto did not kill him, Nobuyuki was broken, and subsequently arrested and interrogated. Nobuyuki tried shifting all blame for his human experimentation on Kayaba Akihiko, but a scientist from the project confessed and Nobuyuki had to admit it as well.

Non-canon

Infinity Moment, Hollow Fragment

Nobuyuki tried hacking into Aincrad to get his test subjects, but he and some more people of his team ended up in Aincrad instead. Nobuyuki created himself an overpowered character using his administrator account that did not look like Nobuyuki. He tried to join the Clearers, but Kirito dueled him for a test and found he could not actually fight well despite the stats and gear, and would be more bother than help.

Later, Alberich's player-snatching activities were discovered, and Kirito rescued the missing players and found a console with data on Strea, the captives, and their emotion states. He deleted the data.

Alberich appears when the game is almost beaten, and paralyzes the players using the console, intent to murder everyone but Asuna, whose memories and emotions he was planning to tweak for the marriage. He unleashed the Hollow Avatar creature that was meant to be the final boss. Several people broke free from the paralysis and dealt with the Hollow Avatar. Alberich paralyzed everyone again and attacked Kirito with an unstoppable poison blade. Strea appeared and took the hit for Kirito, as well as removed the admin privilege from Alberich.

Alberich was then imprisoned, and when the Aincrad incident was over, the survivors reported him to the police, whose investigation supported the claims. Nobuyuki was arrested.

Trivia

• Nobuyuki's English voice actor also voices Crimson Kingbolt in Accel World.

References

Sugou Nobuyuki - Fan Wiki
Sugou Nobuyuki - Abridged Fan Wiki