Accel World - Volume 11 - Chapter 14

14

The categories of stages randomly generated by the Brain Burst program had no links to the time or season or weather in the real world. Thus, when Haruyuki dived into the Accelerated World as his duel avatar Silver Crow, he was a little surprised when he saw that the Oume Highway on this side was also slick with pounding rain.

The bus had, of course, disappeared, so he landed on the road surface from the height of the seat, sending droplets of water scattering.

He quickly glanced at the sky. Although the thick gray clouds blanketing it as far as he could see were the same as in the Thunder stage, the swirling clouds were flowing from west to east at a fairly high speed, while droplets of water fell without stop. This was a Storm stage.

Its characteristics were the fact that the strength of the rain changed periodically, the fact that gale-force winds sometimes blew through, and the fact that terrain objects would, rarely, be destroyed by those winds. Thin buildings would snap in half, so it was essential to keep an eye on the surroundings.

Having finished confirming the specifics and characteristics of the stage in the span of two breaths, Haruyuki then stared at the enemy gauge in the upper right of his field of view. The avatar name inscribed there was, of course, Wolfram Cerberus. Haruyuki had accelerated on the bus, and no sooner had he found the name at the top of the matching list in ascending order, than he had challenged him to a duel without a moment’s hesitation.

What was a little unexpected was that Cerberus was still at level one again today. The day before, he had beaten the level-four Tourmaline Shell, the level-five Frost Horn, and the similarly level-five Silver Crow. And those were only the ones Haruyuki knew about. Considering the compensation for the level difference, he had probably earned a relatively large number of points. Unlike the Haruyuki of old, he should have been able to go up to level two with plenty of a margin left over.

“But that doesn’t matter now,” Haruyuki murmured, and lastly looked at the guide cursor. The triangle was indeed indicating the northeast, the direction of Nakano Station. From the fact that there were no members of the Gallery around him, he knew there was a fair bit of distance between them. The moment his friends riding the bus with him had dived into this stage, after their automatic registration had been activated, they would have been sent flying to the central point between Crow and Cerberus along with the other members of the Gallery.

He shook his helmet, knocking off the drops of water sticking to it, and then once again spoke out loud: “All right…Here we go!”

In the pounding rain, he began to run toward Nakano Station. Quickly reaching top speed, Silver Crow left a trail of water droplets swirling into a mist.

The day before, he had tried to use the terrain for a surprise attack and had instead had the first attack snatched away from him, so today Haruyuki decided to attempt to make contact head-on, no tricks. But even so, the instant he spotted the silhouette standing boldly in the center of the street, Nakano Station at his back, he couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.

No, I should actually be ready. I should go at him with that mindset. Because I was totally crushed by him yesterday. Today, I’m the challenger.

As he told himself this, Haruyuki slowed to a stop in the center of Nakano Street, about fifteen meters in front of Cerberus. Unlike the day before, they were on the southern side of the station, and there were basically no tall buildings here. Inevitably, the members of the Gallery, about thirty occupying the roofs of the buildings alongside the road, were also much closer than they had been the previous day.

Among the Gallery, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the massive Cyan Pile, the slender Lime Bell, and the even smaller Ardor Maiden. Haruyuki concentrated his strength in the pit of his stomach and began speaking to his duel opponent, standing beyond him in the pouring rain.

“I’m sorry, today on the heels of yesterday. I’d like to have a revenge match. I don’t like to let a loss sit.” For Haruyuki, these were challenging words, and the Gallery reeled slightly.

“Not at all.” Silencing this was the response of Cerberus’s ever cool and clear voice. “I’m glad. There are few people who are kind enough to duel with me again so soon after fighting me.”

These too could have been fairly challenging words, depending on how you took them. The Gallery stirred once more, and the temperature of the battlefield rose the slightest bit.

“Okay then. If I lose today, I’ll declare here and now that I’ll come again tomorrow for revenge…Although I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Haruyuki replied, and Cerberus giggled. Or that’s what it felt like, at any rate.

“You really are good, Crow. Just as I’d heard—no, more than that. I would like to fight you any number of times.”

“Is that maybe a declaration that you’ll turn the tables no matter how many times I come?”

“No. It means that if I lose, I will quickly ask for a rematch. Although I don’t think it will come to that.”

On the surface, this was a cool and polite exchange, but Haruyuki was keenly aware of the fact that with each riposte, the air in the field grew tenser. The feeling of that tension bursting and crackling spread out, a much different sensation from the vibration of the raindrops hitting his body.

Perhaps feeling the same way, Cerberus glanced down at the gray armor covering his body before lifting his head again. “Well then, shall we get started?” He raised up both arms and snapped them out to the sides. “Thank you for this opportunity!”

The previous day, Haruyuki had mumbled a response to the impressive greeting, but now, he raised his voice to the same level. “I also appreciate it! Now…here we go!!”

He sank down, stepping out onto the wet asphalt with his right foot. The sole of his lead foot had no sooner bitten firmly into the road surface than he was dashing forward ferociously.

At the same time, Cerberus charged straight forward. Silver and gray, the two metallic armors pulverized the raindrops on the road the instant they touched them, transforming the water into a minute spray. Drawing out white trajectories, the two metal colors instantly crossed the fifteen meters between them.

“Haah!” Cerberus launched a right long hook, the entirety of his kinetic energy riding on it.

“Sheh!” Haruyuki shot forth the exact same punch.

At that moment, neither of their special-attack gauges had been charged even a pixel. Thus, Cerberus was unable to use his ability, Physical Immunity, and Haruyuki couldn’t do his Aerial Combo, which required the thrust of his wings.

Their fists closed in on the other’s helmet, sending droplets of rain scattering. However, Cerberus showed no sign of trying to get out of the way. He had probably determined that even before his ability was activated, evasion didn’t matter, given the fact that the difference in their armor hardness was a draw.

And that was correct. If both of their punches hit their targets, then Haruyuki would take nearly double the damage. However, he wasn’t aiming for a direct attack with his fists.

His right fist, on the trajectory of a right hook, suddenly opened up wide. He collected as much rain as he could in his palm and five fingers, and with a snap of his wrist hit Cerberus’s face with that moisture.

The water splashed up against the dark gray goggles. Cerberus reflexively turned his face away, and the trajectory of his punch deviated very slightly.

“Nngh…!” Gritting his teeth, Haruyuki intently twisted his head to the left. The super-hard iron fist grazed the left cheek of his helmet, sending white sparks scattering everywhere. His health gauge decreased by a few dots, but he ignored that. He used the vector to rotate his body to the left and launched a low kick with his right leg.

Skreenk! A sharp metallic noise rang out, and he saw a damage effect, a beam of light jetting out from Cerberus’s left knee joint. Cerberus’s health gauge decreased 5 percent. A perfect first attack.

I got it today! Haruyuki shouted out in his heart. He still hadn’t gained any distance, but while Cerberus reeled, Haruyuki now used his water attack with a left palm strike. After blocking his opponent’s vision, he connected this with a left-middle kick. He got a clean hit on the thin flank of the armor and took another 7 percent off Cerberus’s gauge.

Here, Cerberus crouched down low. He leapt far back in a big jump—pushing off with both feet at the same time—as he had the previous day. Getting out of the close-range situation for a moment rather than aiming to pointlessly resist it—he definitely had good duel sense.

Haruyuki also had the option to close the distance between them with a dash. However, with just the smoke screen of a normal strike combo, it was impossible to cut away all at once the more than 90 percent remaining in his opponent’s gauge. And his opponent had Physical Immunity, which changed even his weakest parts into absolutely impenetrable armor. The real contest would start when he brought that out.

Thus, rather than chasing Cerberus, Haruyuki also stepped back. He opened up a dozen or so meters between them, and a quiet commotion rose up from the rooftops of the buildings on either side.

Not seeming to pay any mind to the voices of the Gallery, Cerberus slowly rose up from his landing position and, without taking his eyes off Haruyuki, he said, “I had absolutely no idea this rain could be used like that.”

“It’s actually hard to collect the rain in your hand, though, instead of having it bounce off,” Haruyuki responded.

Cerberus opened his right hand and sliced it through the air, palm up. But the raindrops all scattered, and none of the water pooled in his hand like the water Crow had thrown. In truth, Haruyuki had applied a secret technique Kuroyukihime had taught him.

“I see. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to imitate it so easily.”

“It’d be a problem for me if you could. I had to seriously train before I could do it.”

Hearing this, Cerberus lowered the hand he had offered up to the sky and clenched it into a fist. Haruyuki thought he might have been a little daunted, but… “I’m happy to hear that. So there are still things in this world to study and train in!”

Hearing this clear voice, Haruyuki felt that, while Cerberus was the hardest Burst Linker he’d ever fought, he might have also been the most refreshing. It was almost like there wasn’t a shred of negative emotion beneath that armor.

But that, unfortunately, was not possible. Great power was born from equally deep wounds. Just as Manganese Blade had recounted the previous day, that was the basic principle of the Accelerated World. Behind Cerberus’s strength were the mental scars he was carrying inside. Even if he himself was not aware of those scars.

The instant he had this thought, the words “Mental-Scar Shell theory” throbbed painfully in the back of Haruyuki’s mind. But he quickly shook them out of his head. He couldn’t be thinking about anything but the duel right now. He had to muster all his strength and face this powerful enemy. For that reason alone, Haruyuki was standing in this place now.

As if in sympathetic vibration with Haruyuki’s thoughts, Cerberus also changed his attitude slightly. After his right hand, he clenched his left and stood taller, the armor of his body clanking. From beneath the somehow wolflike helmet came a somewhat more severe voice. “Well then…this is a bit soon, but I’ll take my leave to begin!” He slowly raised his fists and turned his body forward. It was the form to activate his ability.

“Yeah. Come at me, Cerberus!” Haruyuki shouted, and crossed his own clenched fists in front of his chest.

Cerberus slammed his right and left hands together, and on cue, the top and bottom of the helmet visor clamped down on the sparks generated. When his goggles were nearly completely hidden, the area that had been his face up to that point looked almost like fangs. As a phenomenon, it was simple, but the system changes behind it were nothing to laugh at. He was now under the protection of Physical Immunity, which would repel punches and kicks, of course, but also probably even attacks with close-range weapons like swords and hammers. Haruyuki hadn’t noticed it the day before, but when he focused on Cerberus’s special-attack gauge, it was decreasing slightly, and he saw that the ability was not the nonstandard defensive power from the Incarnate system.

At the same time as Wolfram Cerberus activated his ability, Silver Crow snapped the arms crossed in front of his chest back to his sides. The metallic fins folded up on his back deployed with a slight rasping sound. It was the movement to ready his flight ability, but his special-attack gauge did not decrease yet. He used that up only when he was actually flying, but the mileage was a bit worse than Cerberus’s Physical Immunity, so if they both fought with their abilities at full power, the consumption rate would be basically synchronized.

The timer that had started at 1,800 still had more than 1,000 remaining, but this appeared to be the climax of the duel, and the dozens of spectators fell silent. If calculated into the system, the heat contained in their gazes would have locally evaporated even the ceaselessly pounding rain.

Haruyuki didn’t take his eyes off Cerberus for even a second, but even still, he was keenly aware of the feelings of his three friends in the eyes focused on him. He even felt the encouragement of the two who were not there arriving deep in his heart.

Taku, Chiyu, Shinomiya…and Master Fuko and Kuroyukihime, please watch. I’m going to give it everything I have right here, right now!

“Aaaaah!!” Roaring shortly, Haruyuki moved.

Stepping forward with his right leg: a dash riding on the thrust of his wings, almost twice as fast as his previous charge. The raindrops in the air scattered from the wind pressure alone, and he closed ten meters in the blink of an eye. A ramming attack—or a feint of one; he slid to the right immediately in front of Cerberus and tried to spin around behind him.

But the young prodigy also responded immediately to this Aerial Combo move. Even though he hadn’t been able to follow Haruyuki’s movements in three dimensions for a while after the start of the duel the day before, today he quickly spun on the axis of his left foot and continued to confront Haruyuki directly. Additionally, he even used the centrifugal force from this to launch a right middle kick.

This development was something Haruyuki had anticipated. In the back of his mind, the voice of Kuroyukihime, from his Spartan-style training over lunch, came back to life.

“Know that the techniques you showed him in the duel yesterday won’t work on Cerberus today!

“But it’s pointless to keep them locked up forever! With planning and application, all techniques are endlessly changeable—no, evolving!”

Right, Kuroyukihime!

Shouting in the back of his mind, Haruyuki roared and blocked Cerberus’s right leg, closing in on him, with the armor of his left arm. The instant metal touched metal, pale sparks shot out, and his forearm squealed sharply.

If he simply guarded like this, the basic differences in hardness and weight, together with the effect of the Physical Immunity ability, would simply shatter Silver Crow’s armor and cause him massive damage.

But as Haruyuki took the mid-kick with his left arm, he didn’t try to push it back, but rather attempted to diminish the force of it by synchronizing their rotational inertia. This required control of his entire body and his wings on par with trying to pass through the eye of a needle, but he summoned every ounce of concentration and made it through.

This guard, which nearly cracked the armor of his arm, lasted for about half a second in reality, but to Haruyuki it felt like an eternity. His brain cells threatening to burn out, he made it through the tightrope walk and somehow managed to absorb just the amount of lethal force contained in that kick. And then he moved to the next stage.

“Hah!” Expelling a sharp breath, he generated a new spiraling vector with the left arm that was still touching Cerberus’s right leg. The axis of the kick targeting Haruyuki’s torso slipped off to the outside from the interference. If he pushed like this, Haruyuki could probably ward off Cerberus’s kick without taking any damage.

He hadn’t had the leeway to use this in the duel the day before. Or rather, he had forgotten, to be honest. This technique, Kuroyukihime’s teaching, the Way of the Flexible. The way Haruyuki had caught the falling rain in his palm and thrown it before was also an application of this. And today at lunch, through five consecutive duels, Kuroyukihime had beaten the technique into Haruyuki anew. In the back of his mind, her stern voice rang:

“Haruyuki, your Way of the Flexible has basically passed the first level. But, of course, with every technique, there is always something more!

“If you’re going to simply block an attack and ward it off with no damage, then dodging without making contact to begin with is far less risky. The essence of the Way of the Flexible is not defense. It can change that into an attack, and then for the first time, the technique comes alive!”

Right, Kuroyukihime!

Responding in his mind, he further focused his concentration. With a strange skreee sound, the sense of super acceleration came over him, and the world changed color slightly. For Haruyuki, even the pounding rain appeared frozen in midair.

Haruyuki had secretly given his own Way of the Flexible the name “Guard Reversal.” But when he thought about it, this was too arrogant a name. What Haruyuki had been able to do thus far was simply interfere with the momentum of his opponent’s attack and ward it off; that clearly was not a reversal. If he couldn’t actually send it back to his opponent, he had no right to give it that name.

At that moment, the axis of rotation had been taken from Wolfram Cerberus’s own body to the point of contact between his kick and Haruyuki’s arm, and his posture was crumpling as his kick flowed to the outside. Like this, he would simply be knocked back to the other side of the road, and without falling, he would stop himself and then instantly be readying his next attack. Just as Kuroyukihime said, this brought risk, and there was no point in having defended with the Way of the Flexible.

“Ngah!” With a brief battle cry, Haruyuki took decisive action with absurd control, ascending with his right wing and descending with his left.

Naturally, his entire body listed to the left. Or rather, not listed—he generated intense enough torque to almost knock him over sideways on the spot, and his avatar’s body squealed. He poured this energy, all of it, into Cerberus’s right leg where it intersected his left arm.

“…!!”

An aura of shock leaked out from beneath the wolf-shaped helmet with its closed visor. It was only natural that he be surprised at Silver Crow’s body suddenly rotating like a propeller, sucking his own feet in. But it didn’t end there.

“Saah…yaaah!” Spinning to the left one time before standing again, Haruyuki yanked both arms up. The momentum of his spin was released—and with the force of his own kick combined with all of Haruyuki’s rotational power, Cerberus’s body was knocked flying spectacularly.

He crashed into the road nearly ten meters away and bounced hard, scattering a mist of water. He continued to tumble along until he crashed into the guardrail on the side of the road and finally came to a stop.

“Yaaaaaaah!!” The dozens of members of the Gallery cried out all at once in amazement. This surprise was not aimed at Haruyuki’s Guard Reversal. It was for the fact that Wolfram Cerberus’s health gauge had decreased nearly 20 percent.

“Wh-why’d it go down?! He’s using Physical Immunity right now, right?!”

“D-don’t ask me! Maybe it’s ’cos of the rain pooling on the road?”

“Obviously! He might be a metal color, but, like, submersion damage!”

The Gallery clamored, but then abruptly fell silent. Cerberus nimbly got to his feet and was readying himself for another attack.

“We’re only just starting!” His voice was crisp and clear as usual, and he dashed forward, ripping through the wall of rain.

About five meters ahead, Haruyuki sank gently down and jumped. He had repelled the first attack with a circular movement perhaps because he had determined that it was a curving middle kick, and now he was faced with a flying kick without any kind of rotation in the body. The speed at which he made the judgment and switched was nothing short of impressive. The jump kick was like a missile, with plenty of force. It looked like it could crash through two or three of the cracked buildings of the Storm stage.

And yet…

“Too soft!” Haruyuki shouted, and this time took Cerberus’s kicking leg with his right palm. He immediately vibrated his wings and rotated horizontally on the axis of his body. The intense spin that was generated swallowed up his enemy, knocking him once more onto the road on his back.

Perhaps because he crashed at a more acute angle than the first time, Cerberus’s small body made a wham! and cracked the asphalt beneath him. A moment later, a powerful impact wave dispersed the water on the road and in the air into a semi-sphere. His health gauge dropped by about 20 percent again. The accumulated damage had already surpassed 50 percent, coloring Cerberus’s gauge yellow.

“H-holy crap, he seriously pushed Cerberus into the yellow zone…”

“Is Crow seriously gonna get revenge?!”

“But…why is the damage hitting him?! I mean, the road surface’s totally a physical thing, right?!”

“…I see.” The quiet but fully menacing voice of a girl cut through the shouts of the Gallery. “The difference between a strike and a throw, then?”

When Haruyuki glanced at a building ahead, off to the right, even through the pouring rain he could see a female warrior avatar colored a deep blue. The horn on her helmet was a ponytail, which meant it was Manganese Blade. But today, standing beside her was the pigtailed warrior, Cobalt Blade.

Just like you, Manganese, Haruyuki murmured in his head as he got some distance from Cerberus, still lying on the ground.

Just as the member of the Gallery had noted, the road and the buildings were just hard objects, so they assumed that attacks using these would be physical and thus wouldn’t work on Cerberus in his current state of being physically invulnerable. And actually, making Cerberus crash into buildings or punching him with a mass of concrete made from smashing a building shouldn’t have done any damage to him. But with the road, the situation was a little different.

First of all, in a Brain Burst duel stage, the ground, including roads, was fundamentally indestructible. Looking at it another way, this meant nothing other than the fact that the ground was in the same state of physical invulnerability as Cerberus.

And secondly: In essentially all fighting games since the previous century, striking and throwing techniques were in different categories. In the old 2-D fighting games Haruyuki collected, too, the majority of titles didn’t allow you to avoid throwing attacks even when you had super armor activated.

Naturally, Haruyuki hadn’t been sure of it himself. But during his special training with Kuroyukihime, he had realized the possibility that even if striking attacks were ineffective, he could do damage by throwing Cerberus onto the road surface, and had asked for new training in the Way of the Flexible. In the space of a day, he could not in any way reach the level of Kuroyukihime, freely reversing the attack momentum of her opponent with a single arm, but if he combined the guarding technique he had practiced with his Aerial Combo that used his wings, he thought he might somehow manage to take in his opponent’s attack and return it—in other words, learn a real Guard Reversal.

To polish the technique to this extent, Haruyuki had had his armor endlessly sliced open by the swords of the Black King. After taking on the challenge of those fearsome swords—also known as World’s End—even Cerberus’s super-hard punches and kicks felt somehow round and soft.

The key to the Way of the Flexible was not to firmly repel anything, but rather accept it, become one with it. It absolutely couldn’t succeed if your heart was simply frozen with hostility.

The me of yesterday probably couldn’t have succeeded, even if I had remembered the Way of the Flexible. Thinking this, Haruyuki soundlessly watched Cerberus as he finally pulled himself to his feet. With the rainwater flowing along the notches of the design, the tungsten armor looked less hard than it did beautiful, somehow. The sharply tapered helmet and the protruding edges of the shoulders seemed like nothing but terrible weapons the previous day, but now Haruyuki felt they revealed something of his interior.

…What if.

What if that other failure the day before yesterday…happened because I was only thinking about firmly repelling? What if it was the same as this at the root? Accept it, become one with it. That’s not just the key to the Way of the Flexible…something bigger… This thought flitted through the back of Haruyuki’s mind.

“This…this is still the beginning!!” He was interrupted by the low cry of Cerberus, now on his feet.

At some point, he had thrown off the polite speech, and the young wolf bent over three times. Chak! He stepped firmly forward, almost carving out the asphalt, and came charging at Haruyuki from dead on, with no tricks or feints.

He was probably betting on settling this with his strongest weapon, the head butt that had broken Crow’s helmet the previous day. It was indeed a terrifying power. If Haruyuki took a direct hit from that, the difference in their gauges would at once be reversed. But.

“When your opponent fires off his big technique, do not flinch! Stand and face it! Because that is precisely the moment when your opponent is afraid!!”

Right!!

“Aaaaah!!” Haruyuki roared and prepared to meet the charging Cerberus. That said, he wasn’t going to fight head butt with head butt, of course. Just as they were on the verge of contact, he created negative pressure with his wings, sank down to the point where he was touching the ground, and dived under Cerberus. With his right hand, he held his opponent’s neck and quickly rotated vertically to the rear.

Kawhump!

The largest impact so far shook the stage. The raindrops over a wide area turned into mist, momentarily turning his field of view white. When this faded, Haruyuki and the spectators saw the figure of Wolfram Cerberus, his head and shoulders half-buried in ground that was supposed to be impenetrable. Haruyuki had basically flung his opponent straight down in an overhead throw, and all the energy from the head butt was absorbed by the road.

Cerberus’s health gauge was dyed red, a mere 10 percent remaining. The four gray limbs stretching out into air fell to the road surface. Haruyuki also flipped over and stood on his knees.

A low voice flowed out into the pounding rain. “…I give…You really did get your revenge. But…I’m happy. There must be many people in this world who are strong like you…”

Haruyuki didn’t immediately reply. He stared hard at the face mask of the fallen Cerberus from very close.

The top and bottom of the visor were still biting into each other, but when he saw them from close up, they weren’t actually glued together, but rather, there was a gap of about a centimeter. When he really thought about it, if there wasn’t a gap, Cerberus wouldn’t have been able to see, but in that gap was only black darkness; he couldn’t find the light of eye lenses.

“But I won’t let this loss stand. I’m going to work hard and get strong, and next time, I’ll crack your technique.” Even in this situation, there wasn’t a trace of poison in Cerberus’s words. They were sunny, clear, and full of the straightforwardness of a boy.

But—

But was that what a duel was?

Cerberus’s technique, in which he had had absolute faith, was crushed, and then he’d been one-sidedly defeated in front of the large Gallery. The difference in their remaining gauges was even bigger than it had been the day before. Because the only damage Haruyuki had taken was the few dots when the side of his helmet had been lightly grazed at the beginning.

And yet the fact that he was able to cheerfully acknowledge his defeat here was more than straightforwardness, somehow…

“…Is that how you really feel?” Unthinking, Haruyuki tossed out the question.

At the same time, the rain grew even more intense, and the raindrops pressing in on them at a diagonal mercilessly pounded both of the metal colors. With this, their conversation wouldn’t reach the Gallery.

But Cerberus didn’t say yes or no, his body half-sunken into the pool on the road. He simply continued to be pounded by the relentless rain silently, almost as though he had turned into a simple metal statue.

Abruptly…

Before Haruyuki’s eyes, Cerberus’s helmet made a quiet creaking noise. The visor, with the centimeter-sized gap, now bit together completely. All that remained then was a zigzagging line thinner than a thread; he wouldn’t be able to see outside like that.

Suspecting that this was some kind of intentional act, Haruyuki furrowed his brow. Immediately after that, something even more incomprehensible happened.

A clinking metallic noise also came from the armor covering Cerberus’s left shoulder. When he looked there, the fine zigzagging line that he had assumed was just a pattern up to that point expanded about a centimeter.

It was like, almost…his face and his shoulder had switched places.

This was the impression he had when, in the next moment, the gap that was created on the shoulder armor shone with a sharp red light.

Staring at this in amazement, Haruyuki watched as the shoulder zigzag spoke.

“…So it’s finally my turn…”

To be continued