Fate/Revelation Online

[linkhyrule5]

That was a really really long post about something I wrote a week ago....

Um. Regardless - first, I'd like to note that people do dumber things because the internet told them to all the time. New Agers exist, hippies exist, people who learn how to refine meth from the internet exist. Would I do it, now? Hell no. Would I maybe have done it in my dark history in, say, middle school? ... Embarrassingly, yeah, actually, maybe I would've. Especially if it hurt, because - the "brew a poison and drink it" methods aside - most of the "Circuit Activation" methods have nothing in them that should hurt you. Listening to someone speak shouldn't cause shooting pain in your nerves.

Which gets into the second - actually, no, people are idiots and do dumb things to show off all the time. Even if it hurts - seriously, ask Tony Hawk how many times he scraped a knee learning to skateboard. Or broke his knee, for that matter...

All of which is ultimately beside my real point, which is this: it doesn't have to work. It just has to be plausible enough that the MA would rather give them the oh so great concession of not murdering them in their sleep than take the risk. The point isn't that people will learn magecraft from internet videos once they leave the game. The point is that if they play it smart, they're in no real danger of dying in droves to Enforcers.

Especially since, last and most importantly, Emiya bloody Shirou is still going to be handing out bullshit Mystic Codes to everyone he meets, fighting Enforcers with no regard to the Masquerade, and generally making a ruckus. And he is a hard target, not only personally but also politically - Ilyasviel may be borderline disowned but she still has a large portion of the secrets of the Third and bullshit Magic Circuits, so there's going to be people courting her in the Association. And then there's - Kirito, Asuna, and the other guild leaders aren't going to be pushovers either, and Argo will be a hell of an infowar magus by the end. The MA can't afford to piss them all off, not when they're sitting on the wrong side of entropy. Secrets are much easier to spill than keep.

So ultimately, the Masquerade won't break, but they're not going to all get gassed in their sleep, either.

 

[DeltaV11.2]

It's worth noting that Kayaba isn't just training a bunch of people to use magecraft. He's training a bunch of people to use magecraft as part of an organized semi-military force, and training everyone else to support that force economically. That's going to make them disproportionately powerful compared to the MA which is primarily a research organization.

 

[Candesce]

compared to the MA which is primarily a research organization.

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Well... I'd contest how much of a research organization the MA actually counts as. But they're certainly not military.

 

[Asunder]

It's worth noting that Kayaba isn't just training a bunch of people to use magecraft. He's training a bunch of people to use magecraft as part of an organized semi-military force, and training everyone else to support that force economically. That's going to make them disproportionately powerful compared to the MA which is primarily a research organization.

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Do you really think that whatever magecraft they come up with in a few years in SAO will match up to people that have been devoting their lives to magecraft for generations?

 

[Vanigo]

Do you really think that whatever magecraft they come up with in a few years in SAO will match up to people that have been devoting their lives to magecraft for generations?

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Of course not. But the magecraft they've been developing for generations is almost exclusively not intended for combat. They've generally figured out ways to use it in combat, the Moonlit World being a dangerous place and all, but that's a side application. One typical MA magus could wipe the floor with a party of front-liners in any context except a fight, but I seriously doubt a fight would go well for him. Enforcer squads are another matter, of course, but there's only so many of those, and if things escalate to the point where front-liners and Enforcers are fighting regularly, things have already gone horribly wrong for the MA.

 

[Asunder]

Of course not. But the magecraft they've been developing for generations is almost exclusively not intended for combat. They've generally figured out ways to use it in combat, the Moonlit World being a dangerous place and all, but that's a side application. One typical MA magus could wipe the floor with a party of front-liners in any context except a fight, but I seriously doubt a fight would go well for him. Enforcer squads are another matter, of course, but there's only so many of those, and if things escalate to the point where front-liners and Enforcers are fighting regularly, things have already gone horribly wrong for the MA.

Click to shrink...

 

[DeltaV11.2]

Do you really think that whatever magecraft they come up with in a few years in SAO will match up to people that have been devoting their lives to magecraft for generations?

Click to shrink...

Of course not. But the magecraft they've been developing for generations is almost exclusively not intended for combat. They've generally figured out ways to use it in combat, the Moonlit World being a dangerous place and all, but that's a side application. One typical MA magus could wipe the floor with a party of front-liners in any context except a fight, but I seriously doubt a fight would go well for him. Enforcer squads are another matter, of course, but there's only so many of those, and if things escalate to the point where front-liners and Enforcers are fighting regularly, things have already gone horribly wrong for the MA.

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More to the point is the organization and command structure. Like sure, in a 1v1 fight any serious MA magus would be a threat, and an Enforcer would probably trash anyone who isn't Shirou or Ilya. But SAO survivors aren't going to accept that sort of fight as a matter of course. If a guild gets attacked, especially a clearing guild, they're going to come in as 30-40 man block that's very used to fighting as a unit, especially against a single, powerful opponent. That's the sort of threat that SAO survivors pose, it's not about their power as combatants but their ability to fight in a way that for the most part the MA doesn't.

 

[Asunder]

More to the point is the organization and command structure. Like sure, in a 1v1 fight any serious MA magus would be a threat, and an Enforcer would probably trash anyone who isn't Shirou or Ilya. But SAO survivors aren't going to accept that sort of fight as a matter of course. If a guild gets attacked, especially a clearing guild, they're going to come in as 30-40 man block that's very used to fighting as a unit, especially against a single, powerful opponent. That's the sort of threat that SAO survivors pose, it's not about their power as combatants but their ability to fight in a way that for the most part the MA doesn't.

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And if they try and fight as a guild then that makes just so much easier for the MA to kill them all. You assume that a bunch of people with the equivalent of 'baby's first spell' is going to be a threat to the trained killers that the MA sends out when they need to erase a town. And believe or not the idea of a bunch of people fighting together is not new to magi just look at Lorelei and her brigade of DA killing magi. Yggdmillennia went and took anyone that would agree into their clan and they were still barely worth considering a danger to the MA.

 

[linkhyrule5]

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Uh-huh. And in a straight fight, no Reinforcement (hell, maybe even with Reinforcement), who wins, Rin or Taiga, a national class kendoka?

Learning self-defense is not the same thing as learning to fight. Learning to fight in tournaments, for that matter, is not the same as learning to fight.

Learning to fight means learning, as... actually, wasn't it Musashi Miyamoto him(her)self who said it? To kill with every stroke. To take every advantage, no matter how dirty.

Kayneth didn't even think to secure his entire building. Most magi just do not think like combatants. Only Enforcers. And they, again, are rare.

 

[Vanigo]

(snip pic)

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First, you see that third sentence in my post, where I address this?

Second, Rin is a terrible example. Her family has been fighting in Holy Grail Wars for generations; of course she knows a thing or two about fighting. Other magi, not so much.

 

[linkhyrule5]

And if they try and fight as a guild then that makes just so much easier for the MA to kill them all. You assume that a bunch of people with the equivalent of 'baby's first spell' is going to be a threat to the trained killers that the MA sends out when they need to erase a town. And believe or not the idea of a bunch of people fighting together is not new to magi just look at Lorelei and her brigade of DA killing magi. Yggdmillennia went and took anyone that would agree into their clan and they were still barely worth considering a danger to the MA.

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Uh-huh.

So, there's the other problem, which is that Kayaba's training is unprecedented.

Ironically enough? The SAO-ers have less pressure of death than the real magi do. Oh, sure, they can kill themselves if they fuck up too bad. But they don't get nerve damage - not as more than a curable Status Effect. They take hitpoint damage and pain, not tissue damage and serious harm.

Some of that will go away. But not all of them. Not if Kayaba's smart. Because the thing about training wheels are, they let you learn so much faster, because you can take more risks.

The SAOers get to train for two years, with much less fear of death, all the teachers they could ever want, exposure to Phantasmal Beasts of all kinds, and, oh yes, can't emphasize this enough, they can arm themselves from the the store of a legendary, Heroic Spirit tier blacksmith. If you don't think literally the first thing Shirou will do once he leaves is setting up a forge in his shed I really don't know what you're thinking.

These guys aren't "Baby's First Spell." They're not Enforcer tier, but they're going to be far, far more of a threat than the MA would assume.

 

[DeltaV11.2]

And if they try and fight as a guild then that makes just so much easier for the MA to kill them all. You assume that a bunch of people with the equivalent of 'baby's first spell' is going to be a threat to the trained killers that the MA sends out when they need to erase a town. And believe or not the idea of a bunch of people fighting together is not new to magi just look at Lorelei and her brigade of DA killing magi. Yggdmillennia went and took anyone that would agree into their clan and they were still barely worth considering a danger to the MA.

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I didn't say new- I said common and used to. Like the MA has the capability as an effectively governmental organization to levy itself an army and train them up to win a fight. But I don't think that they maintain many units like Lorelei's brigade. And once we get to talking about them deploying stuff like that to kill SAO survivors, it becomes more of a political question between entities. Yes, the MA could win a war. But would they want to fight one, given that it'd have costs in terms of resources and lives, and probably weaken them versus other factions and all of the nasties that the MA has to deal with as well?

Thinking of the progression in terms of Floor and Field bosses that we've seen so far, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say that a clearer or midline group could take down an Enforcer by the time we get to the later floors. The bosses have been made increasingly more realistic in terms of abilities, have been granted nastier mystic codes and actual magecraft, and are getting freer to pursue players and engage as intelligent entities rather than a conventional MMO boss.

 

[Asunder]

First, you see that third sentence in my post, where I address this?

Second, Rin is a terrible example. Her family has been fighting in Holy Grail Wars for generations; of course she knows a thing or two about fighting. Other magi, not so much.

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Yeah because Rin knows so much about grail wars right? If you want another example just look at the Clocktower's sparring session in the UBW finale. Fighting is not alien to magi, even their children have to know how to defend against assassins.

Uh-huh. And in a straight fight, no Reinforcement (hell, maybe even with Reinforcement), who wins, Rin or Taiga, a national class kendoka?

Learning self-defense is not the same thing as learning to fight. Learning to fight in tournaments, for that matter, is not the same as learning to fight.

Learning to fight means learning, as... actually, wasn't it Musashi Miyamoto him(her)self who said it? To kill with every stroke. To take every advantage, no matter how dirty.

Kayneth didn't even think to secure his entire building. Most magi just do not think like combatants. Only Enforcers. And they, again, are rare.

Click to shrink...

Rin with reinforcement wins everytime against Taiga. And are the SAO players going to have building destroying bombs with them when they're fighting the MA?

Uh-huh.

So, there's the other problem, which is that Kayaba's training is unprecedented.

Ironically enough? The SAO-ers have less pressure of death than the real magi do. Oh, sure, they can kill themselves if they fuck up too bad. But they don't get nerve damage - not as more than a curable Status Effect. They take hitpoint damage and pain, not tissue damage and serious harm.

Some of that will go away. But not all of them. Not if Kayaba's smart. Because the thing about training wheels are, they let you learn so much faster, because you can take more risks.

The SAOers get to train for two years, with much less fear of death, all the teachers they could ever want, exposure to Phantasmal Beasts of all kinds, and, oh yes, can't emphasize this enough, they can arm themselves from the the store of a legendary, Heroic Spirit tier blacksmith. If you don't think literally the first thing Shirou will do once he leaves is setting up a forge in his shed I really don't know what you're thinking.

These guys aren't "Baby's First Spell." They're not Enforcer tier, but they're going to be far, far more of a threat than the MA would assume.

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You're right SAOers don't have enough fear of death, they're playing a game that follows a fair pattern that lets them take advantage of things like Agro and Switching. Shirou can give every single one of them Excalibur and I would still bet on the MA's trained killers every time.

 

[linkhyrule5]

You're right SAOers don't have enough fear of death, they're playing a game that follows a fair pattern that lets them take advantage of things like Agro and Switching. Shirou can give every single one of them Excalibur and I would still bet on the MA's trained killers every time.

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... have - have you read the story?

Like, I'm only half asking here, because - seriously, have you read the story?

There's a major plot arc around "Kayaba is taking off the game-ish wheels." They're only on the fifteenth floor and they've already had fight a flying Boss that they have no way to even reach, nevermind deal a few million damage to. And, yeah, sure, Shirou chumped that one too, because Shirou is bullshit. But he won't be there forever.

(Also he wouldn't give them Excalibur, that would be dumb. He'd give them Hrunting. And you could give an army of trained monkeys Hrunting copies and I'd put them up against most Enforcers.)

And while I'm at it - first, see a few pages ago for how easy it is for even baby magi to get their hands on high explosives. A pound of flour might as well be its weight in TNT to a creative magus. Second, you're missing the point.

 

[Asunder]

... have - have you read the story?

Like, I'm only half asking here, because - seriously, have you read the story?

There's a major plot arc around "Kayaba is taking off the game-ish wheels." They're only on the fifteenth floor and they've already had fight a flying Boss that they have no way to even reach, nevermind deal a few million damage to. And, yeah, sure, Shirou chumped that one too, because Shirou is bullshit. But he won't be there forever.

(Also he wouldn't give them Excalibur, that would be dumb. He'd give them Hrunting. And you could give an army of trained monkeys Hrunting and I'd put them up against most Enforcers.)

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Since you are aware that Shirou has chumped everything so far with minimal effort, I ask you to consider that when asked how he at his max level would match up against someone like Bazzet, the answer by word of Nasu is that even if he pulls out broken phantasms, it does nothing to change the fact that she is a ruthless trained professional specialized in anti-magi combat and exceeds him in technique, battlepower and experience. It isn't even considered a good fight.

Then you have to consider that only a fraction of the players actually do the really dangerous stuff like fighting monsters that haven't had their abilities analyzed and made common knowledge, the majority just follow behind where it's safe and see if they left anything valuable behind or get exp by coming up with spells.

Sure not every enforcer is on Bazzet's level but they're all vastly more experienced, more powerful, hardened killer magi than a bunch of coma patients that have to deal with learning how to walk again. If the MA really really does need manpower that bad well then that what freelancers like Kiritsugu or Executors are for or even the Church's executors. If they really want to get rid of a bunch of SAOers fast then they could just blow up that special school that a bunch of them go to, or hypnotize their parents to poison their food or anything else that they've done over the millenia to deal with problems.

And if Shirou thinks that handing out nps is going to fix the problem well then I guess the MA is just going to have to have to send some enforcers to tear off his head and send his corpse back to london to study.

 

[Belkan Sniper]

More to the point is the organization and command structure. Like sure, in a 1v1 fight any serious MA magus would be a threat, and an Enforcer would probably trash anyone who isn't Shirou or Ilya. But SAO survivors aren't going to accept that sort of fight as a matter of course. If a guild gets attacked, especially a clearing guild, they're going to come in as 30-40 man block that's very used to fighting as a unit, especially against a single, powerful opponent. That's the sort of threat that SAO survivors pose, it's not about their power as combatants but their ability to fight in a way that for the most part the MA doesn't.

Click to shrink...

But the MA does have trained group of mages that work as a combined force, that's the whole point of Lorelei's army of 500 mages that she uses to hunt down DAs. I really don't believe that escalating against the MA is a game the SAO survivors will manage to win in the long run.

 

[DeltaV11.2]

But the MA does have trained group of mages that work as a combined force, that's the whole point of Lorelei's army of 500 mages that she uses to hunt down DAs. I really don't believe that escalating against the MA is a game the SAO survivors will manage to win in the long run.

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It's 50, not 500. Yes, in the long run the SAO survivors will lose because the MA has more ability to replace its losses and when it gets going and starts to pull together multiple forces of its own and deploy the existing units it has, it's going to do so with a far deeper pool of knowledge about magecraft and operations in general. Like, in a war scenario the MA is still going to crush SAO survivors. But making it a war scenario means that the MA has to weigh the choice to do so against just trying to get them to keep quiet about everything. And at the same time it means that any conflict is probably going to be super obvious and hard to cover up, making it a serious question if there's any point to trying to shut them up via force if it means that the secret would get out anyways.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Since you are aware that Shirou has chumped everything so far with minimal effort, I ask you to consider that when asked how he at his max level would match up against someone like Bazzet, the answer by word of Nasu is that even if he pulls out broken phantasms, it does nothing to change the fact that she is a ruthless trained professional specialized in anti-magi combat and exceeds him in technique, battlepower and experience. It isn't even considered a good fight.

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Comptiq Q&A, Bazette gets outmatched by the Kotomine of the Fourth Grail War, and if you want to claim that he could beat, say, Saber Alter in that cave, I'll laugh at you.

Because that's what we're talking about here, after the UBW route, after someone has got him to think about making his own Codes, after two years of fighting after the War. Emiya Shirou is starting where Counter Guardian EMIYA ended: his techniques, his skill, and all the Noble Phantasms that he ever saw across time and space. We're not talking about Fate Shirou, we're not even talking about EMIYA, we're talking about EMIYA plus.

We are very much talking about someone who can go toe-to-toe with Servants.

Does there exist, in the MA, someone who can beat him? Sure. Magi are bullshit. I wouldn't want to put him up against Lorelei, for example. And magi cheat. Shirou is usually better at cheating thanks to his ridiculously large arsenal, but he's also kind of .... straight-minded.

But we're not talking about someone the MA can just take out on a whim, either.

Then you have to consider that only a fraction of the players actually do the really dangerous stuff like fighting monsters that haven't had their abilities analyzed and made common knowledge, the majority just follow behind where it's safe and see if they left anything valuable behind or get exp by coming up with spells.

Sure not every enforcer is on Bazzet's level but they're all vastly more experienced, more powerful, hardened killer magi than a bunch of coma patients that have to deal with learning how to walk again. If the MA really really does need manpower that bad well then that what freelancers like Kiritsugu or Executors are for or even the Church's executors. If they really want to get rid of a bunch of SAOers fast then they could just blow up that special school that a bunch of them go to, or hypnotize their parents to poison their food or anything else that they've done over the millenia to deal with problems.

And if Shirou thinks that handing out nps is going to fix the problem well then I guess the MA is just going to have to have to send some enforcers to tear off his head and send his corpse back to london to study.

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Mm-hmm.

You know, I won't deny that.

But see, the thing is, this is completely irrelevant. Because "beating the MA in a fight" isn't the SAO survivors' win condition.

All they have to do is have one, just one, running magic battle on live television. One battle that spills over into the Tokyo Tower, or into whatever the Japanese equivalent of Times Square is. Just one.

If they can do that - no, not even that. If there exists a nontrivial probability that that could happen. The MA lose. Instantly, and permanently, because their Mysteries will become devalued by the accompanying surge of interest into magecraft.

That is the SAO survivors' trump card. This is not a one-sided thing. There will be negotiations. The SAO survivors don't have to win in a fight. They just have to be a hard enough target to that they can threaten to break the Masquerade. Because they have so very much less to lose there than the MA.

 

[Asunder]

Comptiq Q&A, Bazette gets outmatched by the Kotomine of the Fourth Grail War, and if you want to claim that he could beat, say, Saber Alter in that cave, I'll laugh at you.

Because that's what we're talking about here, after the UBW route, after someone has got him to think about making his own Codes, after two years of fighting after the War. Emiya Shirou is starting where Counter Guardian EMIYA ended: his techniques, his skill, and all the Noble Phantasms that he ever saw across time and space. We're not talking about Fate Shirou, we're not even talking about EMIYA, we're talking about EMIYA plus.

We are very much talking about someone who can go toe-to-toe with Servants.

Does there exist, in the MA, someone who can beat him? Sure. Magi are bullshit. I wouldn't want to put him up against Lorelei, for example. And magi cheat. Shirou is usually better at cheating thanks to his ridiculously large arsenal, but he's also kind of .... straight-minded.

But we're not talking about someone the MA can just take out on a whim, either.

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[v] Dengeki Hime 10/2006 - Fate Dream Battle Round 5 - Bazett vs. Shirou
EnglishJapanese
Nasu:With this time's battle, since we're working off the assumption that Shirou "has trained/is operating himself to the max", people might think that this might end up being a good fight, but m'lady Bazett's a trained professional specializing in anti-magus battles. Technique, experience, and battle power. Against someone like her whose superior in all those regards, even with a "Broken Phantasm", Shirou's disadvantages are still not going to change. And you see. She's ruthless.

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Shirou is not someone that can fight servants on a dime, the only one he has a chance against is Gil and even that is considered a once in a lifetime miracle. And isn't this Shirou from Fate route? As in Shirou at his lowest in nps seen and EMIYA exp leeching?

Mm-hmm.

You know, I won't deny that.

But see, the thing is, this is completely irrelevant. Because "beating the MA in a fight" isn't the SAO survivors' win condition.

All they have to do is have one, just one, running magic battle on live television. One battle that spills over into the Tokyo Tower, or into whatever the Japanese equivalent of Times Square is. Just one.

If they can do that - no, not even that. If there exists a nontrivial probability that that could happen. The MA lose. Instantly, and permanently, because their Mysteries will become devalued by the accompanying surge of interest into magecraft.

That is the SAO survivors' trump card. This is not a one-sided thing. There will be negotiations. The SAO survivors don't have to win in a fight. They just have to be a hard enough target to that they can threaten to break the Masquerade. Because they have so very much less to lose their than the MA.

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If the assumption is that SAOers aren't going to break the masquerade and so the MA doesn't feel like killing them, their friends, their family and their pet dog just in case then that's fine. Just don't act as if a bunch of coma patients can strongarm a millennia old organization that erased an island of people on a dime when it threatened their secrecy.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Definitely not. Remember that knowing in-joke when he said that "he would become a Jedi, like his father before him"? When Ilya said that he would be make a good Archer, and Shirou chuckled at himself?

And he knows about his Reality Marble too, and projects weapons other than Caliburn. (Or could, if it wouldn't break the game.) It's not UBW route that he comes from, but it's not Fate either; I'm pretty sure it's some mix.

And like... it's not really strong-arming? But the thing about major polities are, if you're a pushover you will get pushed over. There's not really a lot of difference, on an international scale, between "deciding it's better to come to the negotiating table" and "being forced to negotiate by the other party's threats." Only in the propaganda. All I'm saying is that the SAO survivors have enough power that there will be a negotiation, not just killing them out of hand like if it was just Kirito and Asuna on their own or something.

 

[Asunder]

Definitely not. Remember that knowing in-joke when he said that "he would become a Jedi, like his father before him"? When Ilya said that he would be make a good Archer, and Shirou chuckled at himself?

And he knows about his Reality Marble too, and projects weapons other than Caliburn. (Or could, if it wouldn't break the game.) It's not UBW route that he comes from, but it's not Fate either; I'm pretty sure it's some mix.

And like... it's not really strong-arming? But the thing about major polities are, if you're a pushover you will get pushed over. There's not really a lot of difference, on an international scale, between "deciding it's better to come to the negotiating table" and "being forced to negotiate by the other party's threats." Only in the propaganda. All I'm saying is that the SAO survivors have enough power that there will be a negotiation, not just killing them out of hand like if it was just Kirito and Asuna on their own or something.

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Figuring out that Archer is Shirou or that Shirou has an RM isn't hard to do, they basically brushed it aside in HF because they had bigger things to worry about. Everything that we've seen is pretty much from fate route.

And the best 'negotiation' that SAOers should get is 'we won't reveal magic or kill obvious amounts of people so please don't kill us', I mean if they do that then the MA wouldn't really have an immediate reason to make a mess.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Figuring out that Archer is Shirou or that Shirou has an RM isn't hard to do, they basically brushed it aside in HF because they had bigger things to worry about. Everything that we've seen is pretty much from fate route.

And the best 'negotiation' that SAOers should get is 'we won't reveal magic or kill obvious amounts of people so please don't kill us', I mean if they do that then the MA wouldn't really have an immediate reason to make a mess.

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I mean, sure they would. "Turn them all into Sealing Designates" is something the MA would love to do. So would just murdering them all out of hand - there's going to be concerns about even controlling their base without a central government, how are the SAOers even going to guarantee that they won't have rogues?

And I'll note that they never figured it out in the Fate route, and also that Shirou wouldn't be nearly as good a smith as he is without a very large base to work from.

 

[Asunder]

I mean, sure they would. "Turn them all into Sealing Designates" is something the MA would love to do. So would just murdering them all out of hand - there's going to be concerns about even controlling their base without a central government, how are the SAOers even going to guarantee that they won't have rogues?

And I'll note that they never figured it out in the Fate route, and also that Shirou wouldn't be nearly as good a smith as he is without a very large base to work from.

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Turing everyone into SD isn't something the MA loves to do because then they'll have to pay the enforcers to kill them all. The MA isn't murderhappy, it's just the most efficient way to stop masquerade breaking stuff from happening. If the SAOers can't control their base then why shouldn't the MA kill anyone that's a problem?

Also it's not hard for them to figure out that Archer is Shirou in the fate route, Rin'll probably figure it out eventually after the memory dreams or Shirou with the pendant or Illya after seeing her bow using brother with the ability to make nps and remember the mysterious bow using person with an unusual amount of nps. Nasu just didn't have them talk about it because Archer's identity is irrelevant to the fate route.

 

[Cyn]

Another point is that the MA has no idea that SAO is effectively Kayaba's School of Magic. They have no reason to give a rat's ass about a bunch of random coma patients. Furthermore, they have minimal presence in Japan. Once the game is over, Shirou, Ilya, and Rin are going to be actively trying to keep the MA from finding out, while simultaneously getting the survivors ready for when they do. Ideally they can delay discovery for years. By the time things come to a head, the SAO survivors will be recovered and somewhat organized. Plus, Ilya's gathering all the rare elements and training them in game, meaning most the potential bullshit tier characters will already be used to following her lead.

 

[Heart of the Star]

Having done a re-read of this recently i would like to mention how much i like the Kirito sections. The way he thinks in game terms is very well done and often amusing, usually even more so because i see it and go "heh, that's something i think". They're really good.

I'm also getting really curious about when somebody is going to figure out that magecraft is real. There have been a lot of hints and multiple people who have noticed something odd about it. So it shouldn't be too much longer before someone develops a spell to help them deduce stuff and turns it on the game. Heck Argo or Kirito could figure it out right now if they were able to turn off the "there's no such thing as magic" part of their brains.