Accel World - Volume 11 - Chapter 12

12

A bright Wednesday on June 26, 12:30 PM.

After polishing off a lunch of pork cutlet sandwich and milk at maximum speed, Haruyuki dived into the squash game corner in the Umesato local net. Accepting Takumu’s advice that there was a starting point further back he should return to, he had examined various avenues and decided that maybe this was that place.

There was also the idea of making his dive location the stall in the boys’ washroom on the third floor of the second school building, but he decided that there was no need to go so far as to bring back all those sad memories, so he was using a viewing booth in the library. Besides, no matter where you connected in the school, it didn’t have the slightest effect on the local net response anyway.

Stepping into the squash corner in the form of a pink pig avatar, Haruyuki touched the holo panel to start the game and tightly gripped the racquet that appeared. He swung it a couple times to test out the feeling that he remembered all too well. He hadn’t actually played this game since last fall, a full eight months earlier. In other words, he hadn’t played once since becoming a Burst Linker, so he was a bit astounded at how self-interested he was, but still, he also felt this had to be done.

Because back then, this had been Haruyuki’s lone place of shelter at Umesato, the place he fled to nearly every day. He had probably shed liters of virtual tears onto this polygonal floor. His desire to never return was joined by his wish to let this place rest quietly after protecting him for such a long time, and the two had kept him at bay.

But when he set foot on this game court for the first time in so long, the same feeling hung in the air, no different from eight months earlier. A game as unpopular as this didn’t get updates, so it was only natural, but it made him happy somehow. “I’m home,” he murmured absently, as he touched the start panel once more.

The countdown started in the center of the court, and the instant it hit zero, a ball fell from the sky. He hit it lightly with the racquet in his hand; it hit the floor and the wall ahead of him, and then bounced back. Haruyuki hit it a little harder the next time. While a light sound effect echoed, the ball came back about a meter to the left, and he returned it with a backhand.

Although he just barely returned it any number of times in the beginning, his instincts quickly returned, and Haruyuki sent his little pig avatar flying up and down and side to side, totally focused on chasing the ball. Each time the game went up a level, the speed of the ball increased, and its reactions became irregular. That said, this was still a game approved by the Ministry of Education, installed on the local net of a junior high school. It was slow compared with the bullets fired by red-type duel avatars in the Accelerated World, and it also didn’t use any feints like the strikes of blue-type duel avatars.

More than ten minutes had passed from the start of the game, and the ball was already just a trajectory of light zigzagging about, but even still, Haruyuki continued to pursue it on basic instinct alone. He could have perhaps played to the end of time like this…And just when he started thinking that—almost as though the game system had read the arrogant thought—it went up another level.

“…Whoa?!” Without thinking, Haruyuki stopped his avatar’s feet.

The ball had suddenly split in two. He couldn’t manage to decide which half of the ball flying off to either side he should go after, and so in the end, he let them both go by. As if lying in wait for this, the eight letters GAME OVER dropped from the sky and bounced around on the court.

“…Th-that’s really something…,” he murmured, and he glanced at the score that was then displayed. Since it was the first time he had seen the number of balls increase, he had no doubt he had set a new record, but there was no high-score mark next to the results HAL LV160 SCORE 2806900 that were displayed.

“Huh…?” Cocking his head to one side, puzzled, he poked at the panel and called up on the court a list of the high scores. The number at the very top of the window that displayed the best five of his own scores was the impressive level 166, with a score of over three million. But he had absolutely no memory of hammering out a score like that.

“Oh…Ohhh, right!” he cried out, finally remembering the incident eight months earlier.

That high score was not Haruyuki’s. When he had been disconnected with an abnormal link out, another student had kept playing his game and neatly taken the highest score. And that student had been the student council vice president, the object of adoration of all students at Umesato, Snow Black aka…

“Don’t you want to go further, boy…to accelerate?”

He had suddenly heard this voice behind him and jumped up. He rotated his avatar ninety degrees in midair and landed as he turned around.

Standing at the slightly elevated entrance to the squash corner was a single silhouette looking down on Haruyuki. The long dress, hem reaching to the floor, and the long hair swinging slightly were both a sleek jet-black. Hands covered in similarly black long gloves held a folded parasol. And more striking than anything else were the large spangle butterfly wings that stretched out from her back. With light shining through them from behind, the scarlet pattern at the base shone like fire.

“If you do, come to the lounge tomorrow at lunch.”

Haruyuki saw a vision of the avatar saying this and then disappearing, but of course, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, she came down the short flight of stairs, heels clacking, and stood on the game court.

She looked around the dim space and smiled. “Such sweet memories. It’s already been more than six months since then, hmm…”

“…Yeah. To be precise, it’s been eight months and one day. It was last October, the fourth Tuesday…when you spoke to me here.”

“You remember it well.” She let out a short laugh and came over to him. The spangle butterfly avatar—Kuroyukihime—glanced at the high-score window floating in the center of the court and laughed once more with satisfaction. “It seems my high score is still intact.”

“B-but you said you used acceleration to get this score.”

“Mm. Was that it? Well, it’s fine either way, isn’t it? It’s more fun for you if you have a goal, right?”

“H-huh? …Are you telling me to break that record under my own power?!”

“Mmm. If you can, I’ll give you a hundred butterfly points.”

The strangely named points could be collected in all the apps Kuroyukihime made—catching one of the butterflies that appeared earned one point. Haruyuki still hadn’t made it to three hundred points, so being told he could get a hundred all at once was definitely intriguing. Although he had not actually been informed of what would happen when he saved up the target thousand points.

“…I-I’ll do my best.” Still, Haruyuki clenched his pig hoof.

Kuroyukihime nodded with a solemn look on her face, and then her mouth relaxed. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in that form, too. I said this before as well, but I am fairly fond of it. You haven’t been on the local net too much these days, so it’s been a little lonely.” Through some gesture, the parasol in her hands vanished in an instant, and she walked over to him briskly. While he was unable to respond, her hands grabbed his pig avatar’s big head and pulled it up.

“Huh? Um, uh…” He twitched his ears and tail, but naturally, movements like that proved to be no resistance. The instant he was squeezed tightly in her arms, he felt a softness and warmth that seemed impossible for two polygon avatars, and his thought clock decelerated to less than 30 percent of normal.

…Huh? I was pretty sure avatars couldn’t touch on the local net…, he thought, ideas drifting vaguely about. But, well, a rule like that, I guess it doesn’t apply to her.

A surreptitious voice rolled into the large left ear of his pink pig. “…You came here to confirm your own starting point, yes?”

“…Huh…?!” After a few seconds, he grasped the meaning of what she said and opened and closed his eyes rapidly a few times. From this close, Kuroyukihime’s eyes glittered with a radiating scarlet light that they did not have in the real world, almost like onyx wrapped in flames. Staring intently into these beautiful jewels, he asked in a small voice, “D-did Taku tell you…?”

“No, he didn’t. I just happened to hear a rumor. About a duel you had in the Nakano Area last night.”

“—!!”

Although his avatar’s entire body stiffened reflexively, Haruyuki soon relaxed again. In addition to the fact that there had been more than thirty people in the Gallery in that stage, Wolfram Cerberus was currently an up-and-comer drawing widespread attention, so it was actually only natural that the news would travel far and wide through the Accelerated World.

But that said…

“W-word travels fast, huh?” he said, filled with surprise, given that it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since that duel.

“Naturally.” Still holding his piggy head to her chest, Kuroyukihime patted it and smiled. “When it comes to you, I know everything,” she boasted matter-of-factly, as she moved to the stairs at the edge of the court, high heels clacking. After sitting soundlessly on the lowest step, she set Haruyuki on her knees, which tilted to one side.

“…Did you find some kind of hint in this place? To attack the opponent who defeated you,” she asked, somewhat suddenly, smile still on her face.

Haruyuki blinked hard once more. Right, that reminds me. I came here to find my starting point…and more than that, to get some clue to a strategy against Cerberus, he remembered belatedly. He had been totally caught up in playing virtual squash, and while he did succeed in setting a new personal record, he unfortunately couldn’t believe that that was his hint.

“Um…I feel like I’ve maybe taken some steps forward when it comes to speed, but…but…” The super-premium situation of being held on Kuroyukihime’s lap—although they were both avatars—also disappeared from his mind, and Haruyuki turned his pig snout downward. Around his solar plexus, the shock and regret at his complete defeat throbbed back to life. “But he might be faster than I am now. And to begin with, speed might be meaningless in a duel with him. I mean, he’s almost impossibly hard. Silver Crow can only do physical attacks. No matter how fast I move, I can’t actually do any definitive damage, can I?” He had ended up sounding like he was whining, and he glanced up at his Legion Master.

But Kuroyukihime’s expression was unchanged. She nodded once before replying. “I see. Was he that hard, this rumored Wolfram Cerberus or whatever it is?”

“Yeah. Manganese Blade said it was the ability Physical Immunity.”

“Hmm. If that’s true, then he is indeed a strong enemy.”

“And Manganese told me to go back to my starting point, so I saw Taku after I got home last night. And Taku said that there was a starting point further back, so I tried the squash game here, but…” He sighed and hung his head.

Kuroyukihime pinched his pig cheeks with both hands and once more made him face her. What he saw there was not the gentle smile from up to that point, but the clear, taut face of the swordmaster. “Very well. So then, I shall offer another piece of advice.”

“O-okay. Please do!”

“You’ve gone too far back. Your starting point is one step ahead of this place.”

“O-okay? One step…to where?” He whirled his head around, surveying his surroundings, but the squash court had walls in front, and on all sides, so there was nowhere he could go. Just as he was cocking his head to one side—

“This one’s on me. I’ll take you there.” After saying this, Kuroyukihime uttered a phrase that was completely unexpected: “Burst Link!!”

…O-okaaaay?! Already reeling as the skreeeeee!! filled his hearing in the next instant, Haruyuki’s consciousness was suddenly cut even further free from the virtual world.

When you accelerated during a full dive to a VR space, including the Umesato local net, the objects that were there around you in the real world were all colored blue, transforming into the so-called virtual Blue World of the initial acceleration space. Although it varied by the type of VR game, the movement speed here decreased by a relative thousand times, which was precisely why it had been possible for Kuroyukihime to drum up a score of three million in the squash game.

However, this time, Haruyuki was only able to look at the frozen blue game court for an instant. Immediately, his field of view was blacked out, and in the center, flaming text appeared, burning red. They were, of course, the familiar HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!

As he transformed from his pink pig avatar to his silver duel avatar, he slipped through a rainbow-colored ring and landed on the battlefield beyond it. Stretching, he quickly looked at his surroundings and cried out, “Huh?!” What he saw was not the deserted squash court, but rather a room with several desks lined up in it. He thought for a second.

“Right, I guess so…” He soon nodded. This was the library on the second floor of the second Umesato school building, where the real-world Haruyuki was sitting in a chair in a viewing booth. As long as the stage did not prohibit entry into buildings, the starting point of a duel was always the coordinates where your real-world body was.

“So then…where’s Kuroyukihime?” he murmured. He looked around for her, but he caught no sign of the swordmaster who had been holding him only moments earlier. Which meant that she had dived from somewhere in the school other than the library. The places that came to mind were the ninth-grade classrooms, the cafeteria lounge, and the student council office. When he checked the guide cursor in the center of his field of view, the point of it was motionless, facing south by southwest. Given the connection with her position within the school, there was a strong possibility she was in the student council office.

Finally, he turned his eyes toward the health gauge in the upper right of his field of view. The avatar name inscribed there was, of course, Black Lotus. Staring at this name, the English text of which alone emitted a powerful sense of presence, he murmured to himself, “Why a duel all of a sudden? Although she did say she would take me there…”

Where exactly? As he thought, he unconsciously took a few steps, and a bright red light reflected dazzlingly from the surface of his avatar. Through the window, he could see the enormous sun sinking into the horizon. When he checked again, the desks and floor of the library were not their original synthetic wood, but had changed into cracked marble that had lost its luster. This was a lower-ranking sacred-type stage, the Twilight stage.

As soon as he was aware of this, a certain scene came back to life in the back of Haruyuki’s mind, and he lifted his head with a gasp. Umesato Junior High in the Twilight stage. This sight was nothing other than what he had seen the first time he visited the Accelerated World with her, his parent. In other words, Kuroyukihime was saying she’d take him—

At that moment, a beam of red light, thin as a thread, moved upward. It was sitting below him, about a meter to the left of where he was standing stock-still. And then, a little after that—shrk!—a sharp sound reached his ears.

“…?”

What was that just now?

Blinking rapidly, Haruyuki went to step toward the place the light had passed. But then, with a weighty vibration, the school building shifted before his eyes. The marble floor and columns separated, upward and downward, revealing a smooth cross-section. And apparently, the side that dropped was the one Haruyuki was standing on.

“Wh-whooaaa?!” Crying out, he desperately ran along the inclined floor. He made it to the glassless window and didn’t hesitate before jumping. In midair, he opened the wings on his back and glided in the direction of the first school building. In the next instant, the red light again—

Shrk!

The first school building was mowed down vertically. This time, without a moment’s pause, a second, then a third beam of light glittered diagonally, slicing into the marble like it was tofu. The building began to crumble in all directions.

“Wh-wh-whooaaa!!” Haruyuki shouted again. If his special-attack gauge had been charged, it would have been possible to ascend to any height, but since he could only glide diagonally downward at the moment, he would be forced to plunge into the crumbling school building. His ability to turn either way while gliding was also limited, so he pulled his head in, drew his limbs back, and somehow managed to dodge all the enormous chunks of rubble pouring down. Once he had broken away to the grounds side, he let out a huge sigh of relief.

He landed on the grassy field colored in the evening light and timidly looked back to see all the school buildings of Umesato collapse with a roar. As to whose work it had been, that was obvious when he saw the special-attack gauge in the upper right of his vision become fully charged all at once. And since this person normally only had close-range attacks, the red light that gave rise to this incredible damage would have to have been a forbidden Incarnate attack.

“Now the view is much better.” A cool voice reached his ears as he stood there in a trance. “Big buildings in the Twilight stage are too unromantic. You have this lovely sunset, but you can’t see it…Don’t you think?”

Together with this statement, a duel avatar came strolling toward him from the direction where the student council office had been. Her four limbs were sharply tapered swords, her armor skirt a water lily design, her semi-transparent armor reminiscent of black crystal. All of it was fiercely beautiful—this was the Black King, Black Lotus.

Once more, Haruyuki looked in turn at the ruthlessly destroyed school buildings on the right and the sunset burning redly on the left, and nodded slightly. “Y-yes. That’s probably true. But still, why go this far…?”

“Mmm. Well.” She lowered her voice a little, and it became sharper. “Because I’m just the teensiest bit angry.”

Th-this kind of destruction was “just the teensiest bit”?! He resisted the urge to shout this out and instead stood at attention. In this situation, if Kuroyukihime was angry, then the only possible reason was him. Because he had lost to Wolfram Cerberus? Because he couldn’t acquire the Theoretical Mirror ability? Or…

“Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime said, her voice quiet, severe, and just a little sulky. “The moment you were told to go back to your starting point, the first thing that should have come to mind was me. It’s not that I don’t forgive you for going to Takumu, but…why would the squash court be next?!”

“Huh? No! That! It’s—!”

She snapped the sword of her right hand up and pointed at him as if to say, No excuses! “If you thought for a millisecond about it, you would know that your starting point as a Burst Linker could be nothing other than your parent, me!” the Black King shouted. “I understood that in a nanosecond! If you had come straight to me, I would’ve given you special training in easy mode, but now I consider hard mode inevitable given how you took the long way!”

“Ea— Uh! Easy mode…Wh-what training…?”

“It goes without saying.” Her right hand cut horizontally with a sharp whine. Haruyuki’s parent and Legion Master said, “The strategy for Wolfram Cerberus, obviously!!”

There was no doubt had he not asked for this. But even so, once they had moved to the center of the grounds, Haruyuki couldn’t help but ask first thing, “Um…Even if I went to you for help, I thought you’d just tell me to figure it out myself. I mean, I’m already level five, and my opponent’s still level one, so. Um, wh-why?”

“Does a parent need a reason to help their child?” Kuroyukihime stated calmly, before shrugging and adding, “But, well, perhaps this is a little overprotective. If this was Fuko, she’d definitely tell you to ‘please figure it out yourself  ,’ and that would be the end of it. But…your opponent this time’s caught my interest.”

“Interest? Do you mean his strength?”

“There’s that, too…but also his timing, I suppose.” Kuroyukihime stopped speaking, and then her bluish-purple eye lenses shone quietly behind her smoked-mirror goggles as she came back with a question: “Haruyuki. After the meeting of the Seven Kings three days ago, you said to me and Raker that the Quad Eyes Analyst Argon Array is a core member of the Acceleration Research Society.”

Haruyuki swallowed his breath and then nodded slowly. “Y-yes. Just like I said at the time, I have no visible proof you can see. I just have that dream from when I was parasitized by Chrome Disaster, which is a super vague foundation anyway, but even so, I’m sure of it. She’s been friends with Black Vise of the Acceleration Research Society for a long time, and she was involved in the birth of the Armor of Catastrophe.”

“Mmm. I and Raker both believe you. Right, Fuko?”

“Yes, Corvus would never speak irresponsibly.”

“Th-thank you very much. But…is there some kind of connection between that and Cerberus?”

“Allow me to explain.”

At this, Haruyuki turned to his right. Standing there was a sky-blue duel avatar, with flowing metallic-type hair parts—unusual for the Accelerated World—the hem of her snowy white dress fluttering slightly in the breeze. Haruyuki bowed neatly. “Oh, yes, plea— Whaaaaaat?!”

He leapt up nearly two meters and then flapped his wings to descend slowly. And yet despite all that, he felt like something like this had happened before, too. Well, might as well confirm it, at any rate. “Uh, um…M-master? It’s you, right?”

“Of course. If you think you’re seeing a ghost or some such, you can go ahead and touch me to be sure.”

Although he started to reach an unsteady hand out at these words, he felt waves of murder from the left, and he quickly pulled it back. He didn’t need to confirm; standing there before his eyes could have been none other than the deputy of Nega Nebulus, “Strong Arm” Sky Raker.

Here, he finally realized that she was connected with this stage as a spectator. But still, it didn’t quite make sense. Because Raker’s real self, Fuko Kurasaki, went to a high school in Shibuya and should have been there at present in the middle of a weekday afternoon. But to be in the Gallery of this duel of Lotus versus Crow, she would have to move to the middle of Suginami.

“Oh. N-no, right. This duel’s not happening through the global net, but the Umesato local net instead, so even if you came to Suginami, you couldn’t watch it. So then, Master, are you actually in the school?”

“Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Although I understand your desire to see me.” The vacuum-destroying Raker Smile exploded onto her face. Unconsciously, Haruyuki staggered, but here, Kuroyukihime cleared her throat.

“We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll fill you in on the spoilers. I opened a long-distance access gate for the Umesato local net, had Fuko connect from Shibuya, to be on standby as a spectator.”

“O-oh, I get it— Wait, long-distance access to the in-school net?! I-i-if anyone finds out, it’ll be—”

“To secretly make a gate that won’t be found out is quite the challenge, even with the privileges of student council vice president. I only implemented it very recently. If I had completed it in April, I could have taken care of Dusk Taker directly. Or rather, considering that incident, I aimed to implement this gate, I suppose.”

“O-oh. So then, even when you’re away and we get attacked, we can be totally secure…”

“The issue is that the gate can’t be opened if I’m not in the school, but what’s more important right now is the Analyst.”

His relief snatched away again, Haruyuki stiffened. Kuroyukihime patted his back lightly with the flat of her sword.

“I told you this before, but Raker and I have complete faith in your story. To start with, that Argon Array has just too many unknowns. She’s always been an opponent requiring a certain level of vigilance.”

“Yes. She’s undoubtedly more of a veteran than we are, she’s never joined a Legion, and her parent is also unknown. And I have only the fewest memories of her normal duels. I really have no idea how she made it to the high-level region.”

Here, Haruyuki rapidly shook his head, setting aside the shock of Raker’s appearance and the long-distance gate. “R-right. But if she is a member of the Acceleration Research Society, then pretty much all those questions are taken care of, right? Those guys seem like they’ve been researching dubious ways to earn points.”

“Mmm. And dubious power-ups as well,” Kuroyukihime said, and turned her face mask toward the static sunset. After a brief silence, a slight logic leap slipped from her mouth: “What exactly is a metal color? Haruyuki, have you ever thought about this?”

“Huh? Metal colors?” Reflexively, he looked down at the silver armor enveloping his own body—glittering orange now with the reflection of the sunset—before answering. “You mean metallic color names, right? Like my silver, or the Leonids’ Manganese and Cobalt, or GW’s Iron Pound? Basically, they have high defensive abilities and are striking attack types. But they’re weak against acid or electric shocks and stuff.”

“The characteristics are exactly as you say.” Sky Raker nodded, her wide-brimmed hat shaking slightly, but she soon connected that with a “but.”

“But, you see, if we’re talking defensive types, there’s already green. Actually, in a group battle, metal-color and green-type duel avatars often end up playing similar roles. Taking up more specific specs, it’s not as though there aren’t metal colors softer than green types, and green types harder than metal colors. So then…why do you suppose the metal colors, a separate lineage from the normal colors, exist in Brain Burst?”

“The reason…metal colors…exist…,” Haruyuki parroted back before slowly shaking his head. “I’m sorry. Even though I’m a metal color, I’ve never thought about that before. I’m not sure what to say. Me being silver, too…As to a reason, I just thought it was randomly chosen.”

“Mmm. Well, there’s no doubt that there are a lot of random elements in determining color name. I also would prefer insofar as possible not to think about the fact that I’m black. However, the ‘kind of reason’ you just mentioned…A theory that attempts to explain that existed once. Although it was limited to the metal colors.”

“Th-theory?”

“Exactly. It’s called the Mental-Scar Shell theory. Its proponent is Argon Array.”

“—!!” Haruyuki gasped beneath his mirrored surface. It was partly because of the Analyst’s name coming up in an unexpected place, but more than that, it was because he remembered hearing the term “Mental-Scar Shell” sometime before.

Right. In the scene carved into the memory of Chrome Disaster, a shadow looking like Argon Array had said those words. She had muttered them at the meeting three days earlier while looking at Haruyuki, too. And then last week, he had blurted those words out when overflow from the Armor of Catastrophe had overcome him in the rear courtyard of Umesato—at which point, Utai Shinomiya had reacted strongly to hearing them.

“Wh-what exactly is a Mental-Scar Shell?”

“Just like it sounds. A shell that envelops your mental scars…apparently,” Fuko replied after taking a step forward. She turned the madder red of her eye lenses on Haruyuki and spoke to him in a kind yet clear voice. “All of us Burst Linkers have scars in the depths of our hearts. My scar is that I was born missing the lower half of both legs. That mental scar produced the duel avatar Sky Raker, who seeks the sky—and space beyond it.”

Haruyuki stood stock-still. Never averting her eyes from him, the sky-blue avatar continued.

“Corvus, you no doubt already know the wounds that are the sources of your childhood friends’ avatars, Cyan Pile and Lime Bell. In many cases, the color and appearance of normal-color avatars is a direct materialization of these mental scars. My child Ash is also like this. Rin, having been hurt by her brother’s racing accident, or perhaps Rinta himself, having lost his dreams, created the avatar with the motorcycle Enhanced Armament. It’s almost too obvious.” Fuko laughed faintly.

Kuroyukihime stepped forward beside her and picked up the explanation, also speaking quietly. “But there are also Burst Linkers for whom the mental scars that are the template for the avatar are not so readily obvious in their color or appearance. I’m sure you already know this, but…those are the metal-color avatars. Almost all of them are orthodox human forms, and they have no symbolic Enhanced Armaments. Their mental scars are, so to speak, wrapped in a thick, impermeable metal shell. Long ago, the Analyst proposed that we call this shell the Mental-Scar Shell.”

“A shell…wrapping mental scars…”

“Exactly. This shell, for exceptionally strong children—children with shells so thick that they themselves can’t see their scars—are thought perhaps to produce metallic duel avatars. This is the gist of the Mental-Scar Shell theory.”

They themselves can’t see their scars.

Kuroyukihime uttered these words in a tone that was kind and calm to the utmost. Even so, Haruyuki’s heart, wrapped in metal armor, throbbed painfully.

It’s true, I don’t really understand why I ended up as Silver Crow, as a duel avatar with the ability to fly.

But…that’s…It’s not that I can’t see my scars; it’s that I don’t want to, so I’ve always turned my eyes away. The truth is, that time…the time when Dad and Mom told me they didn’t want me—

Abruptly, feeling his body gently enveloped, Haruyuki opened his eyes, only to discover he had closed them at some point. When he did, Black Lotus and Sky Raker were directly in front of him, both of them gently holding him. In his ear, he heard their voices alternate.

“I’m sorry, Haruyuki. Both Fuko and I understand that talking to you about this was likely to cause you great pain. But this…is a path you cannot avoid.”

“Given that you are a metal color, at some point, you will have to face your own shell, Corvus. Before some malicious opponent pulls that door open. Sacchi and I discussed it and decided we should talk about it.”

Hearing this, Haruyuki finally grasped why Kuroyukihime had gone to the lengths of using the drastic move of a long-distance access gate to call Fuko into this stage. It was to ease the shock the Mental-Scar Shell theory would give him by using not just her own power as his parent, but also borrowing Fuko, who Haruyuki adored as his Master. The warm pulsations coming to him through the arms of the two duel avatars holding him was proof of that.

I’m so lucky. Even if I fail to get the Theoretical Mirror, even if I’m beaten black and blue by a level one, and no matter what scars are buried beneath the shell of my heart, that’s the one thing I can never forget. Forcefully reminding himself of this, Haruyuki took a deep breath. “Thank you, Kuroyukihime, Master. I’m all right. My ‘Mental-Scar Shell’ doesn’t even shake at a little tap like that.”

“That’s a strange kind of confidence, Haruyuki.”

“Shall we consider this a promising outcome?”

Kuroyukihime and Fuko offered their impressions as they pulled away from him, and the three laughed together for a moment.

“This is just roughly speaking, but that’s the basic idea of the Mental-Scar Shell theory. At the time it was proposed, many Burst Linkers accepted it as a theory that could explain to a fair extent the reason for the existence of the metal colors. But…after a certain time, everyone stopped saying it. It became a forbidden word, as it were.”

“F-forbidden? But it only explains the reason metal colors are born, right? There’s no particular harm…” Haruyuki cocked his head to one side, and neither of the girls moved to answer him right away. The slight breeze of the twilight grassy plain made Black Lotus’s sharp swords clink faintly.

Kuroyukihime crossed those swords before her, as though crossing her arms, and said in a more severe tone, “The truth is, well, there’s a corollary to the Mental-Scar Shell theory. Rather than something anyone proposed, this spread as a spontaneous rumor, the idea that if the theory is correct, then perhaps it would be possible to apply it.”

“Apply? To what exactly?”

“The deliberate birth of a metal color.”

“…!!” Haruyuki threw his helmet back in his total shock.

“If children whose mental scars are wrapped in a thick shell become metal colors, then,” Fuko explained, also sounding a little more tense, “if you make a Burst Linker after creating that shell first, perhaps you could purposely make that child into a metal color. That’s the idea. As a specific instance of this, you seal away the scars the target child bears through some means—for instance, through hypnotherapy or, in the extreme case, with a brain implant chip—and then install the Brain Burst program. The existence of this so-called ‘artificial metal-color plan’ was a whispered rumor of the early Accelerated World.”

“W-was that plan ever carried out?”

“Unknown. To begin with, we don’t even know the source of the rumor, so…” Kuroyukihime shook her head slightly, but then continued almost at a whisper. “But it is a fact that a while after that, a metal color appeared in the Accelerated World. His name was Magnesium Drake. An avatar with hard metal armor and a dragon head that came with a powerful flame attack. He immediately went up levels and was revered by a great number of people.”

This was the first time he’d ever heard the name. But Haruyuki felt a spark in the corner of his memory and furrowed his brow. “‘Was?’ Does that mean he’s gone now? Even though he was that strong?” he asked ever so timidly, and the other two nodded together.

“But, you see, he didn’t simply lose all his points and vanish from the Accelerated World.”

“He was the target of a concentrated attack by countless Burst Linkers, undergoing one fierce and bloody battle after another. As a result, he was subjugated.”

“Huh. Th-that—was he maybe—you talked to me about him before?”

“Exactly. Even though he was a noble leader, Drake suddenly became the second Chrome Disaster.”

It wasn’t that he had a memory of this. When Haruyuki became the Sixth Disaster, he had used the ability Flame Breath any number of times, spilling white-hot flames from his mouth. This was the ability left behind in the armor by the Second Disaster—in other words, the originator of that skill had been none other than Magnesium Drake.

“So, then.” Haruyuki pushed a hoarse voice from his throat, somehow taking in the shock that was large enough that he forgot to breathe. “This Magnesium Drake was an artificial metal color created by applying the Mental-Scar Shell theory—is that it? Is that the reason he became the Second Disaster?”

Given the flow of the conversation, it was only natural he’d want to make that assumption, but neither Kuroyukihime nor Fuko assented immediately.

“This is all in the realm of rumor, Corvus. All that is certain is the fact that Drake appeared in the Accelerated World and astonished everyone with his strength, but then at a certain time, he fused with the Armor of Catastrophe. After much blood was spilled, he was subjugated and disappeared.”

“And one more thing: As of that incident, Mental-Scar Shell became a taboo term. Though, from what Haruyuki said, Argon Array appears to be the only one not concerned by this.”

“…So that’s what happened…” After he had finished listening to the long story, Haruyuki glanced at the timer as he let out a sigh. The time remaining was eight hundred seconds—a little over thirteen minutes.

Now that he was thinking about it, why exactly had they gotten onto the subject of Mental-Scar Shell to begin with? He rewound his memory. It was Argon Array who had coined the phrase, and she was probably a veteran member of the Acceleration Research Society. Kuroyukihime had said she was concerned about the timing of her appearance, and that timing was—

“…Oh!!” Here, Haruyuki finally remembered that the main point of this duel was not a meeting, but rather special training. Kuroyukihime had invited him to this stage to instruct him in a means of attacking the new level-one metal color with the super-hard tungsten armor whom he had lost to so completely and utterly. “Huh? Wait. H-hold on a second, please…”

Having had a large amount of information stuffed into him in a short time, Haruyuki held his head up with an index finger on either side. It felt like his head was reaching the limits of its memory capacity.

“The thing you said you were worried about before, Kuroyukihime. Is it that the timing of the appearance of Wolfram Cerberus and Argon Array coincide? So then…that means, you think…” He lifted his face and stared at the black lotus avatar. “Cerberus may be an artificial metal color. Is that it?”

Haruyuki had worked his mental circuitry to the limit to come to this hypothesis.

“No idea!” was Kuroyukihime’s quick response.

“S-sorry?”

“How could I know? Not only have I not dueled him, I haven’t even been in a Gallery. I’d like to see him just once. I’d actually very much like to try fighting him, but he appears near the territories of the Leos and GW, so I can’t do that.”

“R-right.”

“And given that our opponent is level one, Uiui and I hesitate a little to challenge him,” Fuko added.

Kuroyukihime nodded. “So there, Haruyuki. You will study him in the guise of a revenge match. The full, unexaggerated power of your opponent. In other words, you have to draw out a feeling of desperation that goes beyond planning and strategies. The preamble to this has gotten quite long, but we are here for special training to that end. We won’t get any hints with a halfhearted approach. I’ll go full power as well!!”

H-huh?! Holding in the urge to scream, Haruyuki shrieked, “Uh, um, but, we only have like ten minutes left, and I mean, like, it doesn’t have to be actual battle style; a demonstration would be—”

“It’s okay. We have plenty of Burst points left over from spring break!”

“B-b-b-but when I really think about it, before I get revenge, I should really get the Theoretical Mirror ability—”

“No problem. All efforts converge on a single eventual point!”

“If push comes to shove, I’ll also help out.  ”

Looking back and forth between the level eight and the level nine, Haruyuki gave voice to the only thing he could say in that situation:

“…Th-thank you for this opportunity…”

Five consecutive duels spanning thirty minutes, with the last one in Battle Royale mode with Fuko joining in.

After somehow managing to finish the special training time—the most serious fighting he could remember doing for the last little while—Haruyuki couldn’t immediately stand up after awakening in one of the library’s viewing booths. The vision of little yellow chicks circling his head continued for a while, and his body trembled on the reclined chair.

After about thirty seconds, the dizziness finally subsided, and he let out a long sigh. “I-I’m so hungry…” His stomach felt empty—as if he really had used up all the energy in his body from battle, which had taken up more than two and a half hours of subjective time—but it was a false sensation. He had just had a cutlet sandwich in the real world less than an hour earlier, so he couldn’t exactly refuel again now.

Staggering out of the booth, he made it to the fountain in the hallway and drank from it to distract his stomach. He was extremely uneasy about whether or not he could make it through his afternoon classes in this condition, but he had to, if he wanted to take back the pride that had been ripped away from him. If the alternative was clutching his knees and losing his nerve after his stunning defeat by a level-one newbie, then being knocked down to the point of dizziness by grueling training was by far better.

Or rather, perhaps understanding his extreme, foot-dragging nature, Kuroyukihime and Fuko had been kind enough to beat him black and blue. Maybe they did it while inwardly crying, but he couldn’t be certain of that.

Standing at attention in the deserted hallway, Haruyuki first turned toward the student council office, and then to distant Shibuya Ward, where he bowed his head before murmuring, “Thank you, Kuroyukihime, Master. Next time, I’ll definitely—I don’t know if I can beat him, but I’ll give him a good run for his money.”

Exactly.

It didn’t matter if his opponent was a genius or if he had the Physical Immunity. He would also forget new things like the Mental-Scar Shell theory and the artificial metal-color plan. Give what you get: this simplest obstinacy was precisely the first principle of Brain Burst—and of the fighting game genre.

Haruyuki now finally felt like he could accept both his unsightly defeat of the previous day and his own weakness. He would take it all in just as it was and move forward from there. If he did that, the road would surely spread out infinitely before him.

“…All right!!” Clenching his fists once more, Haruyuki started to run toward his own classroom.