Accel World - Volume 14 - Chapter 5

5

Tokyo Midtown was a large, mixed-use facility that had opened for business exactly forty years earlier in 2007. The area was redeveloped after the Ministry of Defense moved to Ichigaya, with a total construction cost of about 370 billion yen. For a private enterprise, it was an unthinkably large project in the eyes of Japan of 2047 and its continually shrinking economy—or so said the article Haruyuki had found online. And as noted in that article, it was even at present one of the top landmarks in the city, alongside nearby Roppongi Hills (itself apparently costing a total of 270 billion yen).

Midtown Tower, the center of the facility, had a height of 248 meters. Of course, in the forty years since it opened, any number of taller buildings had been built all over Japan, but its majestic appearance, surfaces covered in mirrored glass, still had not lost its freshness. The lower levels were taken up by a bank, doctor’s offices, meeting rooms, and the like, while the central floors were offices. And then the higher floors were occupied by a super-luxury hotel.

At the meeting of the Seven Kings on Sunday the week before, the destruction of the ISS kit main body had been the main agenda item. At that time, in addition to a head-on attack in which they charged the tower while avoiding Metatron’s blows in the Unlimited Neutral Field, they had also examined the surprise move of first getting into Midtown Tower in the real world and then accelerating.

Penetrating the office floors was close to impossible, but you could go into the bank on the lower level with a free pass. But the problem was that there was no way to secure a safe place to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. With a normal duel, which only lasted at most 1.8 seconds, you could manage in the bank lobby, but you didn’t know when a fight in the Unlimited Neutral Field would end. No one could predict how long it would take to move from the first floor to the highest levels and destroy the kit main body. Assuming it ended up being a long-term mission over several days, that would mean nearly ten children occupying a bench in the bank lobby on a full dive for five or ten minutes; there was no doubt that the security guard would come and stop them.

In the end, if they were going to go with the strategy of accelerating from within Midtown Tower in the real world, they would need to start by diving from the higher floors and quickly destroy the kit main body. But there, they ran into a fresh problem: the expensive luxury hotel that occupied the top floors.

Before the spread of Neurolinkers and social cameras, no matter how high-class the hotel, anyone could apparently breeze by the front desk and go up to the guest floors. But now with the concept of security greatly changed, gates were in place at pretty much every hotel that would not allow passage without Neurolinker authentication.

Thus, in order to set foot on the higher floors, they would need to be official guests of the hotel, but even the cheapest rooms started at the special fee of thirty thousand yen a night, and there was no one even at the meeting of the Seven Kings who could simply plop down a sum like that. Perhaps it would have been possible to raise enough for several people to stay there by collecting however much from the members of all the Legions, but the instant they did that, the Legions of the Accelerated World would sink to the level of a real-world outlaw group. Even if they did succeed in destroying the ISS kit main body, they would inevitably bring about an unwelcome change in the nature of the Accelerated World.

Given all these various circumstances, Haruyuki and his companions were simply walking northwest along a paved road made of cracked marble. To keep from drawing the attention of Enemies or other Burst Linkers with the noise from the engine, they weren’t using Niko’s tank either.

Niko herself was at the head of the group with Kuroyukihime, while Chiyuri and Takumu were discussing something as they walked alongside each other. Behind them was the parent-and-child team of Akira and Pard, but they didn’t appear to be having any kind of conversation. Haruyuki was walking by himself a little ways off to the side, and Utai and Fuko, seated in her wheelchair, took up the rear.

Because the old Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Midtown were surprisingly close, with only 1.2 kilometers separating them, even at a slow walk it wouldn’t take the group fifteen minutes to travel there. Several minutes from that moment, the biggest battle Haruyuki had ever been a part of would begin, but his heart was mysteriously silent.

“…what I had to do…” The words slipped out of him unawares, and apparently hearing this faint murmur, Aqua Current in front of him slowed down to come up beside him.

“You say something?”

“Huh? Um. Curren, you have good ears, huh…?”

“Water transmits sound almost four times better than air.”

“I—I get it. It’s no big deal. I was just telling myself that I did all the things I had to do for today’s fight.”

“Things you had to do…” Akira thought that over before saying distinctly, “I might still have something left.”

“Huh…? You mean something you have to do?”

“Yes. Before we all accelerated, I went up to level four to enter the Unlimited Neutral Field, but I still haven’t selected those level-up bonuses. And if I use the points I have left, I can go up more levels.”

“Huh?!” Haruyuki cried out, but then he quickly understood. For over two years, Akira—Aqua Current—had fought in tag teams with low-level Linkers as the Accelerated World’s lone bouncer. As a result, she had claimed successive victories to the point where she had been given the nickname The One, but in the process, she herself would have ended up earning the same number of points as her clients. The higher the opposing team’s level, the more points you got when you won, so Akira had to have amassed a relatively large stash. Enough to be able to go up to level five or six, forget level four.

Compared with Pard, who immediately went up to level eight, Akira was indeed cautious in stopping at the four required to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. But…

“But that’s just how it is,” Haruyuki said. “When I was getting my level-up bonuses, too, I wrestled with it for a super-long time. And I mean, levels, you have to make it so you don’t go up until you’ve got a fair bit of a safety margin, too. I think this thing you have to do is something you should take time to think about. Like, how do you want to grow your duel avatar—I mean, regrow it?”

Now Aqua Current blinked her pale-blue eye lenses as though surprised. But the expression soon left her face, and a hint of a gentle laugh bled onto her face mask through the film. “…I can’t believe it was only eight months ago when I guarded you on the verge of total point loss.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve grown. Proof that you’ve really done the things you needed to do. In the Accelerated World, and in the real world.”

“Hayuh.” A strange sound slipped out of Haruyuki, and he hurried to add, “I-it’s just you yourself never feel that you’ve grown, you know? I definitely don’t want any regrets in the two missions today, so I was just thinking about whether there’s anything left I need to do or think about while we walk.”

“You were…” Akira hung her head, as though she were reflecting on herself. “I actually do have something still. Something to do—no, say—before the mission.”

His heart rose up in his throat for a second, but fortunately—he supposed—Akira’s gaze was turned not on Haruyuki to her left, but on Pard walking up ahead. “Leopard.”

Her name called, the leopard-headed avatar twitched her triangle ears before slackening her pace and arriving at Haruyuki’s left. Pinned between the two of them for some reason, Haruyuki shrank into himself.

“Leopard—Myah,” Akira began speaking to her scion over his head. “I have to apologize to you.”

“…”

The words were rather sudden, but apparently understanding that this was not the whole of it, Pard said nothing in response. Without the slightest visible reaction, she continued to walk silently forward.

Akira also turned her gaze ahead and began to speak again after a slight pause. “I’m sorry about that time. I was wrong.”

Once again, Pard didn’t make a move to reply. Her steps utterly soundless, she stayed fifty centimeters to Haruyuki’s left. Unable to endure the increasingly strained atmosphere, Haruyuki was about to quietly fall back when—

“NP,” Pard murmured, and Haruyuki nearly let out a sigh of relief. But the instant he heard the words that followed, the virtual air got stuck in his throat. “…Or not. I was really angry. Incredibly. Than I’ve ever been.”

Given that the impatient alien Pard had always sought brevity in her utterances and was now using three different emphasizers, she must certainly have been, without exaggeration, seriously angry. What on earth had Akira done to her “child” Pard?

As Haruyuki jerked his legs back and forth, his upper body completely frozen, Akira turned to him and explained briefly, “A little while ago, I tried to erase Leopard’s memory.”

“What…?!” Haruyuki stumbled in his surprise, and Pard quickly grabbed his left arm to hold him up. But unable to take this in, Haruyuki simply stared at Akira. The flowing water that covered her face mask shuddered and her voice flowed out once more.

“Even after my avatar was sealed away at the Castle and I stopped dueling except for guarding, I still saw and talked with Leopard in the real sometimes. I wanted her to stop the freeze on leveling up. I might be her parent, but the members of Prominence couldn’t have thought too highly about her ceasing to level for the sake of another Legion’s member. Plus, someone might have tried a PK on her, eyes set on her vast sum of points. But no matter how many times I said it, Myah wouldn’t listen.” Akira let out a brief sigh, generating a few bubbles from the inside of her watery mask.

“You need a large sum of points to resist Seiryu’s Level Drain,” Pard said, nearly whispering, still holding Haruyuki’s arm. “It was you, Aki, who taught me that. You.”

“I’ve regretted telling you any number of times.”

Here, their conversation stopped, and Haruyuki timidly asked, “…So then you tried to erase Pard’s memories of Seiryu?”

“Not quite. My Memory Leak technique isn’t as handy as all that. I explained a little before the Territories yesterday, but what I can erase is only memories related to me.”

“What?! …S-so then what you tried to erase was…you, Curren…,” Haruyuki babbled, dumbfounded, when suddenly, he felt an intense pressure in his left arm. He looked to see Pard squeezing the thin armor of his upper arm as hard as she could—although her claws had fortunately been tucked away. This sensation triggered a memory from a dozen or so hours earlier: the brief exchange between Blood Leopard and Aqua Current immediately after she made it back from Seiryu’s altar alive.

—I told you…You were supposed to forget me.

—Can’t forget your parent.

“You were…serious…,” Haruyuki murmured.

Akira nodded slightly. “I tried to take her by surprise in her bedroom and have a direct duel. But when I was this close…”—she held finger and thumb about three centimeters apart—“…she got out of my pin.”

In his heart, Haruyuki thought that only stood to reason. The real Akira Himi was probably in the same grade as Haruyuki, while Pard, whose real name he still didn’t know (but was likely something close to Myah), was in grade ten, like Fuko. Adding in the height difference and that Pard must have had a fair bit of upper body strength, given the way she handled that large electric motorcycle, it would have been difficult to hold her down and force her to direct.

Put another way, Current had gone to those lengths to erase Pard from inside her. As a parent, to protect her child…

“It’s not that I didn’t understand how you felt, Aki,” Pard said quietly, relaxing her grip on Haruyuki slightly. “The reason I was angry is because you thought you could make me forget you. No matter what you do, there’s no way I’d forget. Not just in the real world, but in the Accelerated World, too, you’re my precious…” She didn’t say the words that came next, but rather slowly released Haruyuki’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” Akira apologized again. “I thought you’d end up in a sealed state, too, Myah. But I was wrong. And even with my avatar sealed away, I kept moving forward bit by bit. You were the same. Leveling up isn’t the only way to get stronger. I should have known that better than anyone.”

“That’s right, Curren.”

Surprised by this voice, Haruyuki looked up and saw Kuroyukihime, who had appeared right before him at some point. Advancing with a hovering motion, she had only her upper body turned back.

It wasn’t just Kuroyukihime. He’d thought Chiyuri, Takumu, Fuko, and Utai were focused on their individual conversations ahead of and behind him, but all, and even Niko, were moving in a circle around Haruyuki, Akira, and Pard. Apparently, they all had been listening in.

Kuroyukihime turned to Akira. “I also cut myself off from the global net for two years and locked myself up in a tiny shell, but…recently, I’ve come to think that even that time was not wasted. The past and the present, and the future as well, they’re connected. All the time that has passed creates ‘now.’ This ‘now,’ when I am walking here with you like this.”

“And, like, Current.” The Red King, who was walking nimbly beside the Black King, started to speak. “I mean, not thinking too much of Pard’s level freeze, that wasn’t it at all, y’know? Of course, no one but me knew the details or anything, but even still, they all understood. They were rooting for her. Like, Pard’s fighting for some kid who’s really important to her. And basically, I’m just saying here, but me and Pard fighting with Nega Nebulus like this in and of itself is a betrayal of the Legion if you’re looking at it from outside. But I believe in them. Once this is all over and I explain what the what is, all thirty-two of Promi’s members are gonna understand just fine.” Done speaking, Niko whirled around again, but Akira still stayed silent for a while.

Abruptly, she looked up at the madder-red sky. The flowing water of her entire body shone with the reflection of the eternal evening sun.

“Precisely because there is the past, there is now…” Her voice was quiet, like the babbling of a small stream, but it sank deep into Haruyuki’s mind and probably the minds of everyone else there. “The now is connected, and the future is born. Maybe because I gained the power to interfere just a little with the past, the now and the future receded from me. If I’d been able to accept the past, maybe I would have forgotten…that now is something that shines so brightly…”

At some point, they had all stopped, and the group now stood in the middle of the wide street, looking up at the sky.

Haruyuki couldn’t help but see himself in Akira’s words. For him, the past was hard and painful, a stratum of memory he’d like to forget if he could. No matter where he dug in it, the scenes unearthed only stabbed at his heart. But the truth was that any number of small, shining fragments were buried in there, too: Kuroyukihime appearing in the virtual squash corner of the Umesato Junior High local net. The children’s park where he ran around playing with Chiyuri and Takumu, covered in mud. And the distant, distant memory of walking in the evening in Koenji, holding hands with his parents.

The Brain Burst program stretched out “now” a thousand-fold. Maybe it was escapist. A shelter to run to from painful reality where you could heal your wounds together with companions similarly suffering; maybe this was also one part of the nature of the Accelerated World. But that was certainly not all of it. This expanded “now” also included the past and the future. You could find precious gems in the past expanded by a thousand, and you could see the future that would come at some point, with a thousand times the clarity. That was this place, the Accelerated World.

“…Let’s bring them together,” Fuko murmured from behind him, her voice reminiscent of a slight spring breeze. “The past to the future. To that end…Let’s fight now with all our might.” She pointed a slender hand up to the northwest.

A massive silhouette there cut out a dark piece of the evening sky.

They’d come within a distance of five hundred meters already.

Midtown Tower: Round marble pillars stood lining the walls with stone statues—somehow divine, somehow eerie—adorning the capitals. Straining his eyes to peer at the upper part of the tower, he saw nothing, as usual—but he could definitely feel it. The presence of something lording over the world below from far up on high.

Unable to endure the heavy invisible pressure, Haruyuki started to step back.

And then like Fuko, Kuroyukihime raised her right hand, turning the sharp tip of her sword toward the peak of the tower. The indomitable Niko clenched her small hand into a fist and thrust it up. Akira and Pard followed suit, and Utai and Chiyuri did the same soon after. Takumu brandished his Pile Driver, and finally, Haruyuki poured all the fighting spirit he could muster into his right hand and pointed it at the top of Midtown Tower.

This gesture naturally had no attack power. But Haruyuki could definitely see how the will released by their nine hands fused to become a beam that pierced the sky and reached the distant tower. And a massive silhouette casually twisting on the top of that tower.

“It seems our declaration of war has been received,” Kuroyukihime announced boldly, slashing directly down with the sword of her right hand. When they all brought their hands down, the ebony avatar turned back and said, “Well then, let’s confirm our strategy once more here. According to the information Haruyuki received from Iron Pound, Metatron’s aggro range has a radius of two hundred meters. But if we inch right up to the edge of it and we end up attacked first, this will all be for naught, so our standby position is two hundred and fifty meters from the Tower.”

Kuroyukihime bent forward and drew a small square with the tip of her sword in the white paving stone. She surrounded this with another large square.

“The small square is Midtown Tower, the big one is the Tokyo Midtown site. The northern half of the site is a park, and there are basically no obstacles up to the tower. Thus, our charge will be from the park in the north. First, Silver Crow will take the lead from the standby position and stop at the point where Metatron reacts. Two seconds later, the laser will be fired, so once we confirm that it can be defended with the Optical Conduction ability, you move forward and the rest of us will follow. I expect we’ll reach the tower before a second shot is fired, but if we don’t make it, Crow stops in the lead once more and deals with the laser. That is the basic plan.”

This was the strategy he’d already heard on the roof of the old Tokyo Tower, but Haruyuki was made aware all over again of the importance of the role he’d been given.

He would absolutely repel Metatron’s laser. This resolve was unshakable, but what if…in the worst case, he managed to defend against the first shot of the laser but not the second? It wouldn’t just be Haruyuki then; all his friends would also die instantly deep in Metatron’s territory, and then be hit with the laser and die again after they regenerated. They might end up in Unlimited EK. Whatever else happened, he had to prevent that at least from happening. He had to.

“…Once you turn right at that intersection you can see there, you’re at the park, our standby position. First, we’ll check if there are any other Enemies in the area…”

Kuroyukihime continued giving instructions, and as he listened, Haruyuki stroked the metallic armor of his right arm with the tips of his fingers. A groove that hadn’t been there before ran along it from wrist to elbow: It was a light-guiding rod that had appeared together with the awakening of his Optical Conduction ability. It hardly stood out at all compared with the silver wings on his back, but it was definitely there, proof of his new power.

Please. Protect everyone…and Rin, too, Haruyuki murmured to a small part of his heart, before clenching his hand into a resolute fist.

Approximately fifteen hours of inside time since their first dive…

The seven members of Nega Nebulus and the two from Prominence stood at the starting point for their final mission, the attack on Archangel Metatron. They stood at the edge of Midtown Garden, spreading out to the north of Tokyo Midtown.

With basically no buildings inside the park, there was only a smooth grassy field between them and the enormous tower soaring up into the sky two hundred and fifty meters ahead. All they had to do now was get into the agreed formation and move on the tower. Or so he thought.

“…Huh? What’s that…?” Chiyuri muttered, baffled, the moment the large park entered their field of view. The others also halted in front of the marble arch that was the entrance to the park.

On the north side of the grass, there was something strange about thirty meters from Metatron’s attack range. An enormous, elliptical object. But it wasn’t a perfect ellipse; the lower part grew heavily fatter, while the upper part looked like it narrowed in. It was perhaps six or seven meters tall with a circumference of about four meters.

“What the—? Doesn’t look like an Enemy, though…,” Niko said, narrowing her eye lenses. Scarlet Rain had an ability called Vision Extension, allowing her to “see” types of information that couldn’t normally be seen. But Haruyuki could also tell that the elliptical body was no Enemy. Because no matter how many times he blinked, he saw no health gauge.

“An object that was originally in the park in the real world was re-created here…maybe?”

Haruyuki was about to agree with Takumu, but that opinion was rejected by Fuko.

“No, as far as I know, there’s no object like that in this place. And if it was re-created in the Twilight stage, it should be white marble.”

“True. This sphere—or rather, egg—how can we express the color of it? Sort of black, sort of green, sort of brown…”

Just as Kuroyukihime said, in the red evening sun, all that could be said was the elliptical body was a fairly concentrated color. But more than the color, Haruyuki felt like the word egg triggered something in his memory. Like he had seen something before in the Accelerated World and thought, It’s like an egg. Or maybe he hadn’t?

“Hey, Haru?” Chiyuri murmured quietly, having come up beside him. “I—I feel like I’ve seen something like this somewhere before.”

“Huh? You too?”

“You mean, you do, too?”

They exchanged glances and then cocked their heads to the same side—and cried out briefly at the same time, “Oh!”

Unaware of the doubtful eyes of Kuroyukihime and the others turned their way, they stared once more at the blackish object.

He had actually seen something that looked very much like this. And only four days ago. In the Unlimited Neutral Field where he had dived with Chiyuri looking for a chance to obtain the Theoretical Mirror ability. And it hadn’t been an object—a “thing.” Nor an Enemy nor an Enhanced Armament. But a Burst Linker, just like Haruyuki and the others.

“B-but, Chiyu, he’s…so big,” Haruyuki babbled hoarsely.

And then.

A red light blossomed in the jet-black part of the massive elliptical body, where the evening sun didn’t reach. Not a reflection of the western sun. A deeper, more concentrated red, the red of fresh blood. The light flickered two or three times. The instant he saw that biological movement, Haruyuki instinctively knew: The source of the light was an eye. An Enhanced Armament in the form of a crimson eyeball.

An ISS kit.

“That’s…the enemy!” Haruyuki shouted in a trance, and everyone there braced themselves.

The elliptical body moved. It pulled itself up heavily, shuddering slowly, almost like a great beast awakening from a long slumber. The lower half of the black egg, sunk into the grass, hid short legs.

“Enemy?! An Enemy?!” Kuroyukihime cried, baffled.

“No!” Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head. “A Burst Linker!”

“B-but this size…”

Her skepticism was only natural. Now that it had stood up, the egg-shaped avatar was taller than the Red King with her Enhanced Armament fully deployed. And while the “he” Haruyuki had seen four days earlier had been enormous for a duel avatar, it hadn’t been this aberrant size. Haruyuki didn’t know why he had grown to three times that size or what he was doing here now, but it was a fact that he was an ISS kit user, and at the same time—

“He’s Magenta Scissor’s friend,” Chiyuri finished Haruyuki’s thought out loud, and the tension amongst their group immediately grew.

Takumu’s reaction was particularly remarkable; inhaling sharply, he readied the pile driver of his right arm. “So then, a preemptive strike!”

“Wait, Taku!” Haruyuki hurried to stop Takumu, who was about to charge forward. “Physical effects totally don’t work on this guy! His weak points, I’m pretty sure it’s fire and, um…”

“Freeze plus strike!” Chiyuri—naturally—cried out, but there was none among the nine who could use ice. Instead, they had two Burst Linkers who were skilled with flame attacks.

“Let me at ’im!”

“Us!”

Niko and Utai sprang to the front and got into position. A crimson overlay enveloped Niko’s fist, while a flame arrow burned brightly in Utai’s long bow.

“If possible, aim for the ISS kit!” Kuroyukihime let a sharp command fly toward the two small yet reliable backs. “Be careful of Incarnate technique counterattacks! Fire!”

Hrrrn! The air shuddered, and fist and arrow of flame were launched. The attack was of such force that a midlevel Burst Linker or lower would have easily been sent flying. The egg avatar’s movements were sluggish; it was already too late for it to defend or escape. The two flames ferociously closed in on the ISS kit stuck to the front of the torso.

Plark!

With a wet sound, the egg split in half. The enormous “mouth” that had tried to swallow up the master of the Legion Petit Paquet, Chocolat Puppeteer, four days earlier opened wide. There were no teeth or tongue to be seen inside; it was filled with a sticky darkness.

And from that darkness came five or six ink-black energy bullets. These collided with the flame bullets head-on and immediately began to swell up in the air. Haruyuki braced himself for an explosion that never came. Instead, the swirling crimson and ebony energy balls grew smaller before his eyes, as though perhaps their force canceled each other out.

In other words, given that the nihilistic something launched from the mouth of the egg avatar had canceled out even Niko’s Radiant Beat, it was an Incarnate attack. Haruyuki only knew one type of long-distance technique like that: Dark Shot, one of the two techniques the ISS kit gave to users. But that could only be launched from the right or left hand.

“Why…from the mouth?!” Haruyuki let slip out, dumbfounded, and then, before his eyes, something even more surprising happened:

The mouth of the massive egg avatar opened to a height of two meters and a width of four, and one human shape after another jumped out. There were five, ten—more than that. The silhouettes, of various shapes and sizes, were nothing other than battle puppets.

“Rain! Maiden! Get back!”

At Kuroyukihime’s command, the long-distance Niko and Utai withdrew. Haruyuki stepped forward with Takumu to protect them, but that was about as much as he could keep up with things.

He stared dumbfounded at the new Burst Linkers in front of the egg avatar. Once a thirteenth avatar had jumped up high into the air and done a somersault before landing on the grass, the egg finally closed its mouth. And then, almost as if it had thrown up everything inside it, the massive egg shrank before their eyes.

Once it reached the two-and-a-half-meter height, the contraction of the egg avatar stopped. But that was how Haruyuki knew it: The short limbs; the small, round eyes—it was without a doubt Avocado Avoider.

And the slender F-type avatar, standing with the group of Burst Linkers thirteen strong lined up behind her, was none other than Magenta Scissor, the very Burst Linker Haruyuki and his friends had fought a fierce battle with four days earlier and who had parasitized Ash Roller with the ISS kit.

With a form that looked as though dark-reddish-purple bandages had been wound around her entire body, Magenta smiled sweetly, her mouth the only part of her entire body exposed. And perhaps as a way of offering a greeting, she opened the arms crossed in front of her chest, spreading them out to both sides. Along with this gesture, the bandage armor on her chest melted away to reveal the ISS kit attached there. The blood-red eyeball also shone somewhat darkly on the bodies of all the avatars behind her, including Avocado.

Ten meters apart, Magenta’s crew of thirteen and the nine in Haruyuki’s group faced one another. A low murmur broke the tense silence.

“How…did…?” The owner of the voice was Takumu, still carefully wielding the Enhanced Armament of his right arm at the ready.

Haruyuki finished the sentence in his mind. How on earth did you ambush nine people?

Magenta was the one who attacked Ash Roller the previous day, so she might have anticipated that Haruyuki and his friends would go so far as to take on the challenge of destroying the ISS kit main body today in order to save Ash. But it would have been absolutely impossible to specify a precise time. And this was the Unlimited Neutral Field, where time was accelerated by a factor of a thousand. Even if they had been lying in wait since ten o’clock that morning real time, a simple calculation showed that more than three months would have passed on the inside.

If you waited in one place, alert to your surroundings, for that length of time, when your target did eventually show up, you would have been totally exhausted and unable to fight. In other words, an ambush in the Unlimited Neutral Field was, in practical terms, impossible. The only one who could pull it off was the lone—as far as Haruyuki knew—Burst Linker with the ability to decelerate, the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, Black Vise.

So he’s pulling strings again? The thought flashed through Haruyuki’s mind. When it came to Black Vise, it was possible that he’d been hiding around Midtown Tower since the morning, and then when he discovered his target, he could have returned to the real world to inform Magenta and her gang. But in that case, considering the time lag on the real side, Magenta and the others would have had to show up after Haruyuki and his friends. So that theory was contradicted by the fact that Avocado Avoider had been there when they arrived at the park. And Black Vise and his Acceleration Research Society likely thought Metatron alone was enough to guard Midtown Tower, so Haruyuki couldn’t believe he would expend such effort on Magenta’s behalf when she wasn’t even a comrade.

Haruyuki had thought this much through while he inhaled and exhaled, but he still absolutely could not understand how Magenta had managed to succeed in an ambush. As he racked his brain while he got into a fighting stance, Magenta smiled thinly and finally spoke.

“Hello, Silver Crow. It’s been a while, Cyan Pile. I’m glad we could meet again.”

“…I actually never wanted to see you again,” Takumu responded in a hard voice. He had come across Magenta in the Setagaya area in the middle of the month and been given a sealed ISS kit card. He had obtained it at first for the sake of gathering information, but pushed into an unavoidable situation, Takumu had equipped it and very nearly been dragged down into the dark side of Incarnate.

Glossy lips still stretched out in a grin, Magenta shrugged her sharp shoulders lightly. “So cold! I was ever so looking forward to our reunion, y’know?”

“Then prove it. Tell me how you managed to ambush us,” Takumu demanded, not entirely sure about where the “prove it” part of his statement was going to go.

“Sure thing.” Magenta’s smile turned wry, but she agreed readily. “I had to make my apologies for breaking my promise with Crow and all.”

“Promise…?” Haruyuki parroted, before finally remembering.

When they fought in the Setagaya Area four days earlier, he had indeed exchanged words like a promise with Magenta: “Are you going to achieve your goal first, or will we destroy the ISS kit main body first?” The woman had come that day to block Haruyuki and his friends from destroying the kit main body, so that couldn’t have been construed as him breaking that promise. But then, what on earth was Magenta ultimately doing?

As he listened with half an ear to Chiyuri explaining the situation to Kuroyukihime and the others behind him, Haruyuki tossed out the question inside him. “But, Magenta, if you hadn’t forcefully parasitized Ash Roller with an ISS kit yesterday, we wouldn’t have hurried like this to destroy the kit main body. Why? Why did you target Ash?!”

“Can’t answer that, sadly. Got obligations of my own…But your first question. The answer’s simple. The hard part of an ambush in the Unlimited Neutral Field is you can’t handle the passing time. I mean, the days, the months, right? But what if you didn’t feel time? You could wait however long you wanted then, right?”

“Didn’t feel…time?”

Time was indeed extremely subjective. Fun times passed quickly, while hard times flowed slowly. But there was no way an ambush was fun. Time you spent standing by on guard for an enemy who might appear anywhere at any time would actually feel longer, wouldn’t it? The words meant as a hint only deepened his doubts.

“I see.” A quiet voice came from behind him. “So there’s a secret to the egg-shaped duel avatar behind you then? You didn’t get in his mouth just to hide yourselves?”

“Sooo insightful. But he’s not an egg, he’s an avocado. He’s not so great at talking, so I’ll do the introductions. This is Avocado Avoider. A pleasure.”

Perhaps because his name was called, the dark-green avatar parked at the very rear stirred slightly. He had gotten a fair bit smaller, but even still, he was without a doubt the largest of the twenty-three avatars there.

Magenta Scissor brought her right hand down to her hip. “Avoider means someone who avoids, but that’s not all. Originally, the word meant to void, y’know.”

“To…void?”

“Yup. There’s nothing but a void inside Avocado’s mouth. And ’cause there’s no space, he can get any number of people in there. And there’s no time, so when you’re in there, you don’t feel outside time. Although once he swallows you, your avatar gradually melts into the void, so you need some defenses against that.”

Haruyuki needed two seconds or so to comprehend what Magenta Scissor was saying. The instant he managed to imagine it somehow, he cried out in surprise. “What?! So then, you mean, it’s like this? When you go into Avocado’s mouth in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and then his mouth opens again right away and you get out, a serious amount of time has actually passed. Something like that?”

“That’s exactly it, Crow. From my perspective, I only jumped into Avocado’s mouth a second ago. Incidentally, we started this ambush here at a little before nine in real-world time. What time’s it now, hmm?”

“…About twelve thirty.”

“Three hours, hmm? Which means that nearly five months have passed over here, huh? Normally, we’d have gotten sick of waiting and lost even the energy to talk, but this is how it is, so you don’t need to worry.” Magenta Scissor grinned.

“Yer a damned liar, Magenta Scissor, or whoever you are.” A low voice containing a fierce heat came flying at her.

It was Niko. When Haruyuki glanced back, the Red King stood next to the Black King, glaring at Magenta Scissor, a sharp light shining in her large eye lenses.

“Oh my! Liar? Whatever do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb. You know what I’m talking about. I don’t know anything about this void or whatever of yours, but it’s true thirteen of you went into Avocado Avoider’s mouth and didn’t feel time. But, you know, what about Avocado? He didn’t wait here in this park all sharp and focused by himself for five months, now, did he? You hafta know how hard that would be.”

Following the shower of verbal attacks—a rain of high-temperature flames—the smile finally faded from Magenta Scissor’s mouth and disappeared.

But it wasn’t Magenta Scissor who responded to Niko, but rather Avocado himself standing at the rear.

“I’m…fine…!” Avocado shouted, tiny round eyes blinking. “I. Was asleep. The whole time…! So. I’m fine…!”

He was parasitized by the ISS kit beneath his large mouth, but somehow, Avocado appeared to have maintained his self, although not to the extent Magenta Scissor had. In contrast, the twelve lined up in front of him were uniformly silent, the light gone from their eye lenses. When Haruyuki thought back, Avocado had repeated “Like. Chocolat,” while he was trying to eat Chocolat Puppeteer four days earlier.

The large avatar was about to shout something more, and Magenta Scissor stopped him with a hand. Turning to Niko, she bowed lightly.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Red King. I didn’t expect you and Bloody Kitty to be involved, but I am very glad to see you…Just as you say, I did push Avocado into a difficult role. I at least should have kept him company during the overly long wait, but I didn’t. But that’s not to say that waiting would have been annoying…If I was going to take on the Black King, then I wanted to fight in perfect condition. That’s all.”

Hearing this, Kuroyukihime responded in a voice like a honed blade, “So the sealed ISS kit card you gave Crow was indeed a challenge to me then, Magenta Scissor.”

“Well, it did end up being that. Although it’s quite a bit sooner than I’d planned. But to wish for any more than this would be greedy. Because my full battle power is set up here now, on this most perfect stage, where not only can no one interfere, but there is no time limit. If it means I can have an all-out war with the Black King, then I will be content to accept any censure.”

“…I believe this is our first meeting. Why are you so eager to fight me?”

Magenta didn’t reply to Kuroyukihime’s question right away. She moved her long, slender fingers to stroke the single short sword equipped on each hip. Beneath the bandage armor that covered the majority of her face, her lips tightened firmly for an instant. When she spoke eventually, it was the sharpest and coldest Haruyuki had ever head Magenta Scissor sound. “That is because you were born with something very big, Black Lotus.”

“Oh? And what might that be?”

“You actually got too many big things to count, but…To sum them all up, I suppose it would be power and will? When you dropped down into the Accelerated World as a Burst Linker, you already had overwhelming battle power and an unshakeable will. That form of yours is proof of that.”

Magenta raised her right hand without a sound and thrust her index finger at Kuroyukihime.

“The general principle of same level, same potential? Heh-heh, that makes me laugh. Everyone actually knows it, deep down. Some Burst Linkers are strong and some are not, right from the start.”

You can’t just say that! Haruyuki wanted to shout. The word potential didn’t only refer to abilities and special attacks. Even if you had hardly any special attacks or Enhanced Armament when you landed in the Accelerated World, as long as you believed in the avatar your heart had produced and you continually reached your hand out to the sky, never giving up, your duel avatar would respond someday. Haruyuki had fought to that very day supported by this conviction.

But at the same time, the words Magenta had said to him four days earlier replayed in his ears. Avocado Avoider was abandoned by his parent immediately after being born and had his initial points stolen by Legion members, one of whom was his parent. On the brink of total loss, Magenta Scissor had given him an ISS kit, and he turned the tables to drive them to total loss instead.

There hadn’t been a “someday” for Avocado. If Magenta hadn’t intervened, he would definitely have had all his points stolen and been permanently exiled from the Accelerated World. Simply because he didn’t have a powerful ability or a cool appearance. What saved Avocado hadn’t been the principle of “same level, same potential,” but rather the ISS kit.

Haruyuki gritted his teeth, unable to say anything, while Kuroyukihime stepped forward between him and Takumu.

“I will bear in mind your assertion. But what does that have to do with my form?”

This curt response brought a thin smile back to Magenta Scissor’s lips. “…A duel avatar is born in the forge of mental trauma. Everyone knows that. If the shape and size of that trauma—that ‘lack’—is reflected in the avatar…This is just my personal opinion, but the greater the symmetry of the avatar, the less that Burst Linker needs other people.”

“Symmetry…? You mean, left and right have the same shape?”

“Yes. Left and right, front and back, top and bottom. When you really poke into symmetry, you see it’s eternal. It’s that perfect. You learned this in school, didn’t you? Molecules with higher symmetry are more stable, they’re not broken or bonded.”

Had he learned something like that? Even in a situation like this, Haruyuki grew slightly uneasy and suddenly asked Pard, standing behind him to the left, “I-is that true?”

And her answer was: “Once the fight is over, look up benzene and resonance stabilization.”

At any rate, these weren’t the sort of terms you learned in eighth grade, so he nodded with an “O-okay” and turned to face forward again.

Kuroyukihime sloughed off a small shrug. “I think it’s a bit of a stretch to force molecular symmetry onto a duel avatar. And if you’re saying that my avatar has bilateral symmetry, then isn’t it the same for you and your companions?”

“At a glance, maybe, sure. But, you see, Black King, that form of yours hides something almost no other avatar has, a perfect symmetry.” Sounding mysterious, Magenta brought up her right hand in a supple motion and spread out her thin fingers.

Unable to immediately understand the meaning of the gesture, Haruyuki stared at Magenta Scissor’s hand. It had the same five fingers as Haruyuki’s—and pretty much every other duel avatar. The placement was also normal, and he couldn’t see anything she would go out of her way to show them.

And then he finally understood.

When you looked at it like that, the hand of a duel avatar—no, a human being—didn’t have bilateral symmetry. The lengths of the index finger and the pinkie finger were totally different, and there was nothing opposite the thumb. But only one person there in that place, only the Black Lotus alone, had hands that were symmetrical both side to side and front to back. As the blades of swords that cut through everything they touched.

Kuroyukihime likely understood what Magenta Scissor was trying to say the moment she raised her hand. But the Black King maintained her silence, while Magenta Scissor gazed at her squarely and continued in an even sharper voice, “Our hands are asymmetrical. Only when they are joined with someone else’s do they become symmetrical. But, Black Lotus, your hands are different. Your two swords have just that, a perfect symmetry. You don’t need anyone else. Because right from the start, you were born with everything you needed.”

“Y-you can’t just—!” Haruyuki cried wildly, unable to stand it anymore. “You can’t know all that just from the way an avatar looks! And you! You said before you hate pairs! You’re totally contradicting yourself now!”

“Oh my, that’s a little off the mark, boyo.” Magenta Scissor twirled her hand in the air. “What I hate is two being one. And I don’t want to fight the Black King because she is the manifestation of ultimate symmetry. I hate that she went and made a child, formed a Legion, and plays around at being a parent or a friend or whatever when she has the strength to go however far she wants all by herself. Above all else, I simply can’t swallow the Black Legion, the way you’re all ‘chosen knights to fight evil.’”

Her tone was subdued, but there were thick blades hiding in her words. In his rage, Haruyuki felt the world grow pale before his eyes. And Takumu and Chiyuri—and not just them, but Fuko and the others who had stayed silent so far—all radiated an aura like a colorless fire.

But even with this thrown at her, Kuroyukihime remained coolly dispassionate. “I see. I can finally understand what it is you’re trying to say, Magenta Scissor. For you, and your goal of making the Accelerated World homogenous through the ISS kits, the so-called elite groups are your greatest enemy. But, well. This thing, the ISS kit, to begin with, it exists to create—” She cut herself off and shook her head lightly.

The words Kuroyukihime had swallowed were likely something along the lines of “To create the ultimate berserker.” The ISS kit main body accumulates a vast amount of negative will, all of that is poured into a high-level Enhanced Armament, and the Armor of Catastrophe Mark II is born. —This was the theory Aqua Current had revealed three days earlier at the Arita house. It did seem like the sort of thing the Acceleration Research Society would think up, but unfortunately, they had no proof. Even if Kuroyukihime said it out loud now, it seemed unlikely she would be able to convince Magenta.

“…No,” Kuroyukihime continued nonchalantly. “I shouldn’t say anything about the kit at this late stage. Because we’ve come here to destroy it. And while I might accept your manner of speaking, the way you’re treating us as an elite group…Given the situation, there’s nothing I can say to change your mind on that matter. We’ll tell the rest with our fists. And let you know whether or not our strength is simply what was given to us by the system.” The Black King’s tone concealed a steely core, the strength of iron polished to a shine.

“Right.” Magenta accepted this squarely. “I’ve gotten to say basically everything I wanted to…But one final thing: If you win this fight, I don’t care what you do with the fourteen of us. I wouldn’t say nothing if you killed us repeatedly and forced us to total loss, even. But if we win…Black King, don’t interfere with the ISS kits anymore. Promise to simply watch as the world is reborn.”

“…You managed to succeed in a such difficult ambush, and yet, that’s all you ask? If you win in the Unlimited Neutral Field, I think it would be more than possible to force total loss on us all or forcefully equip each of us with ISS kits.”

“I’m good. As long as you have the Watch Witch, the kits’ll be yanked off. And I can’t even imagine how long it would take to send two kings to total loss. And…I want you all to see it. A world where the abilities of all avatars equalized, where there’s no meaning in tag teams or Legions. A place where Burst Linkers who weren’t born blessed in power or form will not be rejected for that reason. A new Accelerated World!”

The instant Magenta finished this fervent declaration, the eye lenses of the duel avatars lined up neatly behind her shone red all at once. Almost as if they were in powerful resonance with Magenta Scissor’s overly radical thinking.

Most likely, the thirteen subordinates under Magenta, including Avocado, were Burst Linkers from the Setagaya and Ota areas. Like the two members of the Legion Petit Paquet, some had likely been forcefully parasitized with the kits against their will. But over two weeks had passed since the appearance of the kits, and now, with the synchronization every night through parallel processing, all these Burst Linkers had to be seen as having become one under Magenta Scissor’s impressive conviction. Reaching out to individuals would no longer work.

“…Agreed. If we lose here, Nega Nebulus promises not to interfere until your objective is achieved. Although, even if every Burst Linker besides us ends up an ISS kit user, we have no intention of giving up the fight.”

Magenta Scissor smiled with satisfaction at Kuroyukihime’s declaration. “And that is why you’re the Black King, hmm? All right then. How about we get started already? Sorry, but I’m not doing any tournament-style thing where we send out one representative at a time or any garbage like that. I have no interest in playing at war like that.”

“Naturally, that wasn’t what I was thinking, either. As long as you all are using the ISS kits—negative Incarnate techniques—then this is necessarily nothing other than a slaughter where rules do not apply. Also, whoever wins, you will learn. The terror, the brutality, and the futility of an Incarnate war in which everything is possible…The reason the Incarnate System has been kept hidden for so very long.” Kuroyukihime’s voice was actually quiet to the end, even sad. But at the same time, a faint bluish-purple shimmering overlay enveloped the ebony avatar, showing her firm will to fight.

The Black King angled back slightly and murmured to the group around her. “Rain, Raker, everyone. I know I said that to Magenta, but powerful Incarnate techniques will draw in large Enemies. So hold back in the opening stages, and then annihilate them all at once when I say go. Up against Burst Linkers, victory might be slightly more attractive to you…but we’ll deal with that once everything is over.”

“Yup,” Niko said.

“Roger,” Fuko responded, and the others nodded.

“Master,” Takumu said, his voice concealing a strong resolve as he dropped into battle stance. “Will you leave Magenta Scissor to me at first? I was the one who created the connection between her and Nega Nebulus, after all.”

“…I suppose. But don’t stick out too much. I don’t think anyone has forgotten, but this spot is just on the edge of Metatron’s attack range. If we get too close to the tower, we’ll be hit from above by the laser. The limit line is…” As she spoke, Kuroyukihime indicated with her eyes a marble path that cut across the grass east-west about twenty meters from the two-hundred-meter line that was Metatron’s aggro range. “Let’s set it at that path. No matter what happens, be careful you don’t cross it.”

Once again, they all nodded.

Ten meters to the south, Magenta, having similarly given instructions to her comrades, turned to face them again and removed the small swords equipped on either hip.

“Pile, I’m pretty sure you remember, but…,” Haruyuki murmured.

“When those swords fuse, they become scissors, right?” Takumu was quick to respond. “It’s okay. I’m thinking of countermeasures. Crow, you…Bell…”

“Leave it to me.” Now it was Haruyuki assenting immediately. “I’ll make sure to keep her safe.”

This was normally when Chiyuri would fume at being treated like a child again, but this time, unsurprisingly, she moved behind Haruyuki without a word. She was probably the only one in this battle who couldn’t use the Incarnate System. Haruyuki would have to protect their precious healer against any Incarnate techniques.

The eight led by the Black King and the thirteen under Magenta Scissor dropped into fighting stances all at the same time. Kashak! The dry air of the Twilight stage rapidly grew strained. The tension was so great, sparks threatened to electrify his metallic armor, and Haruyuki had a fleeting thought in one corner of his mind.

If this had been a normal group fight, this was the moment when he would have been carefully scanning each member of the enemy team before the fighting started, guessing at their abilities from the avatar color and shape. But there was basically no point in that in this battle—because all the Enemies besides Magenta would come at them with nothing but Dark Shot and Dark Blow, the Incarnate techniques from the ISS kit. The thirteen before him were all sizes, shapes, and armor colors, but that no longer indicated the Burst Linker’s idiosyncrasies.

…Magenta Scissor. Is that really the Accelerated World you want?

Almost as if this question rattling around Haruyuki’s mind ignited the highly compressed air of the battlefield, twenty-three duel avatars all leapt into motion.