Chapter 009- Scapegoat!

The military general sitting opposite to him took a deep look at Rifat before he said, "When your uncle first told me about you, I thought he was just bragging. But after this short meeting with you, I must say he wasn't wrong with all the praises that he gave you. I personally don't have any problem about this plan."

"I can also convince the other military personals about this. The only thing you should worry about is from the governmental side. After all, the politicians are the ones who are most concerned about their reputation in front of the public." The general added.

"Thank you for your support." Rifat expressed his gratitude toward the general before looking at the head of cyber security awaiting for his response.

"Before I express my opinion about your plan. I have few questions. First, can you make sure that the government will not be inflicted in case this plan becomes public? Second, how many casualties are you expecting? If it's too much, then we wouldn't be able to control the public outrage and we would have no choice but to arrest you, the main shareholder behind the company that made the death game in order to appease the masses." The head of Cyber Security expressed his position.

In his mind, he already accepted the plan. The only reason for him to ask these questions now is to let Rifat know the consequences if thing goes out of hands. If Rifat didn't have some high ranking people behind him, he wouldn't have bothered and just directly accept Rifat's proposal. If thing goes out of hands, he can just blame Rifat without facing any kind of repercussions. But that is not possible because of Rifat's deep background.

"To answer your first question, I have someone in mind who would be happy to take the blame when SAO gets released. So, you don't have to worry about people finding out anything."

"As for your second question, if the government can cooperate with us, we can keep the casualties way below 1%. For the few that would die, I would compensate their family with huge sum of money. This should be enough to appease the populace since I plan to act as if I was trapped inside the game as well and fell into someone's else's conspiracy. With some slight manipulation in the media, it should be easy to keep the matter small and divert the people's anger toward something else." Rifat answered.

Seeing that Rifat already has thought of the countermeasures, the head of cyber security didn't hesitate anymore as he said to Rifat, "Since you have already planned everything else, I wouldn't say anything more. I personally agree to your plan but I have to make some phone calls before I can let you know about the official position of the government."

After saying so, the head of the cyber security excused himself from the room and went outside to make a few phone calls to other high officials of this country in order to inform them of this matter.

The next few minutes Rifat talked with the military general on some other topics as they both waited for the head of cyber security.

"We agree to your proposal and will try our best to meet any of your needs. But we have some conditions." The head of cyber security said as he returned to the private meeting room.

Rifat smiled hearing the answer as he spend half an hour more discussing in more details about the plan before finally ending the meeting.

.....

---In Argus Company---

Akihiko Kayaba was working on the laboratory inside the company when suddenly he heard a ding sound in his mind notifying him of a new mission. As he checked on the mission, his face became visibly ashen. Because the new mission that he got was very problematic.

'What the hell? This fucking system is really trying to kill me. If I do as the system said, I am 99% sure that Rifat will send me to jail. No matter how much of loyal I am to him, he would never let me fulfill my dream while destroying his reputation and loosing a large sum of money.' Kayaba cursed the shitty system in his mind.

'Even though the system gave me a lot of rewards which helped me a lot in increasing my knowledge in technological field, I am fed up with these fucking missions. First, it asked me to become a loyal of Rifat and now it is telling me to do something which will surely make me go to the prison without being able to do the thing that I always dreamed of.'

For half an hour, AKihiko Kayaba just sat and contemplated on what he should do next. On one hand, if he do as the mission says, he will probably end up in jail. On the other hand, the penalty of failing the mission will make him loose all the memories that are related to virtual technology and he will just become an ordinary person from a renowned scientist.

'Sigh! I don't want to loose my memories otherwise I will never be able to fulfill my dream of building a floating castle in the sky. So, there is only one choice left and that is to complete the mission. As long as I can convince Rifat that fulfilling my dream will not bring him any harm, there is still a chance that he will not send me to prison directly.' Akihiko tried to cheer himself as he went toward Rifat's office with a heavy heart.

.....

"So, why are you here, Kayaba?" Rifat asked even though he already knows the reason. After all, he is the one who sent that mission to Kayaba. Since he needs a scapegoat for the SAO plan, Akihiko Kayaba is the perfect person for it. So, he decided to release a mission which tells him to reveal the context of his childhood dream to Rifat and convince Rifat to help him fulfill this dream.

Doing that not only saved Rifat from being the bad guy in Kayaba's mind but it also will make Kayaba more grateful when Rifat agrees to fulfill Kayaba's dream after Kayaba himself reveals it to him.

"I wanted to talk to you about something, Rifat sama." Kayaba said with some apprehension as he slowly started to describe his dream of creating a world where no rules exists. Every person would need to fight to get their freedom and loosing would mean true death.

As Kayaba vividly described his dream of creating a death game, Rifat's face started to get more and more angrier as he said with a stern voice, "Kayaba, do you know what you are saying? You are planning to ruin people's life just to fulfill your sick dream. Do you even care what will my reputation become if you really do something like this? Not to mention you, even I might go to jail if this kind of things happen"

"P-please don't get angry too early, Rifat sama. I know many people will die because of this but our company will also get some benefits as well. As long as you let me do it, I am confident that I will be able to create a program that will make us realize the true virtual world that you always talked about. I just need these samples to perfect the program that I am making. As long as that program is created, anyone will be able to create a virtual world of his own as long as he has some basic knowledge of programming."

"Moreover, those virtual worlds wouldn't need any big server to run. Even if someone tries to create a real world simulation with all the details, that person would be able to do so using just one or two super computers."