The safe area located in the deepest part of the underground labyrinth of the Black Iron Palace is a very complete square room, not only has only one entrance, but the whole is extremely empty, without any decoration or decoration, only white walls, floors and ceilings.

The only exception is a black cube stone table in the center of the room.

In the center of the white room, there is a very sudden appearance of such a dark thing, which has to be said to be quite obvious.

And at this moment, on this dark stone table, a white dress also appeared.

Yui sat on the stone table, looking at Luo Zhen and Asuna lying on the ground, and smiled softly.

However, looking at Yui's smile, Luo Zhen and Asuna were not happy at all, but their hearts sank.

It's just because Yui's smile no longer has the innocence and innocence of the past, and some are just complex emotions full of knowledge.

That emotion is both sad and gloomy.

Therefore, Luo Zhen and Asuna are really not happy at all.

"Goo!"

"Whew!"

On the contrary, the butterflies and flower butterflies, as if they didn't notice anything, still cheered as always, and swept in the direction of Yui, showing a clear closeness.

Seeing this, the smile on Yui's face also eased a little complicated, and she stretched out her hand and touched the heads of the colorful butterfly and the flower butterfly.

"Thank you for staying with me all this time."

Yui thanked softly.

That look is really much worse than the previous Yui.

Luo Zhen and Asuna had already risen from the ground.

"Yui-chan ......"

Asuna looked at Yui, calling each other's names as if she was scared and at a loss.

“…………”

Luo Zhen remained silent, just staring at Yui intently, and did not make any action.

Yui turned her gaze back to Rajen and Asuna.

"Mr. Rozhen, Miss Asuna."

The voice is still familiar, but the strangeness in the name, Luo Zhen doesn't talk about it, Asuna is body trembled slightly, and it seems that she has received a lot of blows.

I don't know if Yui noticed this, she just said this with a somewhat illusory smile.

"I'd love to ask why the two of you are here, but if you think about it, if it's Mr. Luo Zhen, it's not strange to find this place at all."

Although Yui's tone became very unfamiliar, when it came to Luo Zhen, there was still joy and pride in his words that could not be concealed.

In this regard, Luo Zhen also didn't know if he had noticed this, so he pretended to smile relaxedly.

"After all, you're obviously a little unusual tonight, and I thought I might be able to find out something if I sneak after you."

That's what Luo really intended.

"I'm sorry, but I didn't mean to leave suddenly." Yui lowered her head and apologized, "It's just that the automatic repair of the program has started to work, guiding me here and making adjustments on its own, so I will leave the house like sleepwalking and come here." ”

Yui's words made neither Luo Zhen nor Asuna easily ignore.

"Auto-repair?"

Asuna was stunned.

"Program ......"

Luo Zhen moved his lips slightly, and finally turned all the doubts in his heart into one of the most critical questions.

"Yui." Luo Zhen looked directly at Yui and asked word by word, "Who are you?" ”

With the passage of these words, the surrounding atmosphere changed significantly.

Yui knew she was going to be asked such a question, and the smile on her face faded.

But Yui didn't choose not to answer.

"The world—SordArtOnline—is governed by a vast system."

Yui suddenly began to explain this for no reason.

"It's a system that can control the balance of the world based on its own judgment, designed with the concept that no human maintenance is required, with two main programs correcting each other's errors, and then using countless subroutines to make all the adjustments to the world———— Cardinal."

————〈Cardinal〉。

That is the system that governs the world, which is equivalent to the existence of laws.

"For example, the balance between the appearance of monsters, items and currency, the improvement of players' ability parameters, the change of weather and climate on the floor, etc., are all operated by the program group under the command of "Cardinal", and can be almost perfect, and the whole world can be operated without someone personally adjusting and operating."

Yui said slowly.

"But there is one task that must be carried out by humans."

What task?

"Troubles caused by the player's mental condition can only be solved by humans."

Yui lowered her head, only letting her voice come out.

"However, the developers of "Cardinal" wanted to leave the task of taking care of the players to the system, so they tried a certain program, using the characteristics of "NERvGear" to monitor the player's psychological state in detail, visit the players in question, listen to their voices, and give the program an emotional imitation function in order not to make the player feel incongruous."

Hearing this, Luo Zhen and Asuna had a certain premonition in their hearts.

Yui smiled a somewhat hollow smile again, as if she had seen through the premonition in the hearts of the two.

"Originally, this program was supposed to start visiting players on the day the game officially launched two years ago, and entered the use stage, but the main system (Cardinal) suddenly issued an order to her beyond the predetermined order, prohibiting her from interfering with the player's behavior, so that she can only continue to monitor the player's mental condition without being allowed specific contact."

The so-called unscheduled order, undoubtedly, could only come from SAO's only game manager———— Akihiko Kayaba.

Yui didn't mention him, just continued.

"Presumably the two of you also know what the mental condition of the players trapped here is like after the game is officially launched and thus becomes a death game, right?"

Needless to say?

"Fear."

"Despair."

"Anger."

"Grief."

"Under the domination of all kinds of negative emotions, the mental condition of the players has not only become extremely unstable, but some have even fallen into a state of madness."

Yui bit her lip and whispered.

"She continues to look at the hearts of these people, because she can't actively contact the player, but she has a program setting that must go to calm the player's emotions, causing great contradictions, and the program continues to accumulate errors, and begins to gradually collapse."

Speaking of this, Yui raised her eyes and looked at Luo Zhen, and a sincere smile appeared on her immature pretty face for the first time just now.

"Just when her AI program was on the verge of malfunctioning, one day, she suddenly noticed that a player had a different mental stat than the others."

Hearing this, Luo Zhen's heart couldn't help jumping.

"That's..."

Asuna also understood and looked at Luo Zhen.

：。 ：