Accel World - Volume 15 - Chapter 1

1

There existed only one way to return to the real world of one’s own volition from the Unlimited Neutral Field, aka the true Accelerated World: jump into one of the leave points, known as portals, that sat inside large, landmark-type buildings.

That was it.

Your health gauge could drop to zero and you could die, but you would only be confined, in spirit form, to the area around your death marker until you regenerated sixty minutes later. If you happened to die deep within the territory of an Enemy so powerful a single blow from it would strike you down, you could even get stuck repeating this cycle of death and regeneration until your burst points ran out.

Strictly speaking, total point loss would actually allow a player to leave the Field without the use of a portal. But in that case, the Brain Burst program and all memories associated with the Accelerated World would also be lost. And for the majority of Burst Linkers, if it was a choice between the two, it was considered better to spend however many years locked up in the Accelerated World.

Thus, when taking on the challenge of difficult missions in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it was standard practice to make advance preparations to automatically stop acceleration from the real-world side, a so-called automatic disconnection safety. More specifically, this entailed connecting to the global net with a hardwired Neurolinker connection—and then setting up a predetermined forcible disconnect time.

When they started out on the Archangel Metatron attack mission with the entirety of Nega Nebulus, together with Prominence’s Niko and Pard, for a total of nine people, Kuroyukihime had set the safety to activate after ten minutes. It seemed like a short time, but in the Accelerated World, where time flowed a thousand times faster than in the real world, it was equivalent to 166 hours and 40 minutes—approximately seven days. This gave them a fair bit of leeway, and in fact, by the time they managed to crush Metatron after an intense battle, they still had over six days until the automatic disconnect.

But that leeway suddenly turned into a trap that came out of nowhere to blindside them all. The fight with Metatron had no sooner ended than their friend Niko—the Red King, Scarlet Rain—had been abducted by the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, Black Vise.

Wherever he was taking her, if the global connection in the real world was cut, then in that instant, her duel avatar would vanish from the Accelerated World and she could escape from danger for the time being. But the safety wouldn’t be activated for another six days—a lifetime away. Thus, Haruyuki had turned to his companions and shouted immediately before flying off after Vise: Get out through the nearest portal and pull Niko’s cable!

Tokyo Midtown Tower, the stage for the Metatron attack, was one of the most famous landmarks in the twenty-three wards of Tokyo, so there would have to have been a portal in there somewhere. Most likely, inside the tower itself.

But the problem was that the portal wasn’t necessarily at the entrance on the first floor of the building. In fact, the portal at Roppongi Hills, Midtown Tower’s twin rising up over the landscape, was in the vicinity of the fiftieth floor. If Midtown Tower’s was at a similar height, how many minutes would it take to climb up to it? And Midtown was an important base for the Acceleration Research Society, so it was also possible that they had set any number of traps to keep anyone from actually reaching their portal.

Which was why he couldn’t rely on a disconnection alone to save Niko. He had to do whatever it took to follow Black Vise and get her back. Because Niko was Haruyuki’s friend, and he had sworn to protect her.

“Faster…! Faaaaaasteeeerrrr!!” Haruyuki forced a scream from his throat, seeking increasingly more speed even as he plunged through the air faster than ever before.

On his back, a new pair of pure-white wings—the Metatron Wings—sat above the ten metal fins that were Silver Crow’s original wings, howling and whistling. Crowned with the name of an Archangel, the Enhanced Armament gave him unprecedented power, causing the hands that he held outstretched before him to compress the virtual atmosphere; his fingertips burned bright red with supersonic friction. But Haruyuki, in his hyper-accelerated consciousness, continued to pray for more—to go even faster.

Black Vise had captured Niko after the Metatron mission, sinking into the shadow of Midtown Tower to run off. Vise had the ability to move anywhere within interconnected shadows and remain hidden, but fortunately, the Twilight stage had few buildings. The shadows cut off at an intersection about five hundred meters away from the tower in a straight line, and Haruyuki had not missed the glimpse of the jet-black avatar revealing himself in order to cross it.

That said, however, five hundred meters was more than double the distance across the Tokyo Midtown complex. On top of that, it would take Vise at most three seconds to cross the intersection and dive into the next shadow. And once he fled into the shadow of the bridge off Expressway No. 3 up ahead, Haruyuki wouldn’t be able to follow him any farther—that bridge connected with the central ring road to the east and the Tomei Expressway to the west, which meant, in practical terms, it spread without limit.

Move five hundred meters in a mere three seconds.

To make that happen from a dead stop, he would need to achieve a speed of twelve hundred kilometers per hour. The acceleration required was about eleven G’s—a maneuver far beyond the limits of a duel avatar. But he had to do it.

The maximum speed of his own flight ability was five hundred kilometers per hour. A thousand when he activated his secondary Incarnate technique Light Speed. And with the Enhanced Armament Metatron Wings, eleven hundred…twelve hundred…

“Ah…Aaaaaah!!” Haruyuki howled in his spaghettified stretch of time.

The wall of air transformed into a highly viscous liquid pierced by Silver Crow’s sharp fingertips. Concentric shock waves shattered the buildings beneath him.

In the rapidly approaching intersection, Black Vise had finished crossing the road and was once more turning himself into square panels. The crimson armor of the petite avatar he held in both arms shone brightly in the depths of the dusk. But her bright color was already being swallowed up by the thin ebony panels.

Haruyuki glared at his enemy, about to sink into the shadows once more, and mustered every ounce of strength he had left. He was probably already flying at over twelve hundred kilometers per hour—beyond the speed of sound, in other words. Deceleration was out of the question—a normal landing was utterly impossible. His only option was to crash into Black Vise at top speed. Haruyuki and Vise would be killed instantly in the impact of the collision, and Niko, locked away inside Vise, would likely share their fate. But this was much better than her being carried off to some unknown location. While they were standing by to regenerate, their friends would catch up to them, and he could apologize as much as necessary once this whole mess with Niko was sorted out.

Silver Crow plunged toward the intersection, the steep angle of his plummet to the earth whipping up a storm of rubble in his wake. Ten meters until the inky panels slid into the ground…Five…

“Give back…”

Three meters. Two.

“…Nikooooooooooo!!”

One.

At the exact same instant that Vise’s entire body sank into the shadows, Haruyuki’s hands touched that spot on the ground. An enormous explosion, grand enough to shake the heavens themselves…did not happen.

Plrmp! Instead, a strange sensation enveloped Haruyuki. All light disappeared; all sound was cut off. Even the energy from his supersonic dive—more than ample to create a massive crater in the earth—vanished as though it had been sucked into some alternate dimension. He would still have continued moving dozens of meters even if his wings had stopped—for instance, if he had dived into water—and yet, all of his inertia had apparently been canceled out.

It was almost like he had plunged into a bottomless bog of jet-black ink. All that existed in his field of view was his health gauge, 50 percent full. The vibrations that had made his avatar creak until a millisecond earlier were also gone, and the input from his five senses dropped to zero.

—No.

A lateral force assaulted him. He was being pulled—no, he was flowing. The densely concentrated darkness was moving like an underground water current, carrying Haruyuki off somewhere.

“…Rain! Where are you?!”

Sensing that even his shout was promptly erased, Haruyuki desperately reached out into the black. But the tips of his fingers brushed nothing. He tried to flare the wings on his back to push against the current, but the thick darkness wrapped around them and interfered. All he could do was allow himself to be swept away in a current so black, he couldn’t see even a centimeter in front of his face.

Light…Some kind of light source…

He mentally went through his inventory for anything that might produce light before finally realizing he didn’t need an item for that. He held his right hand up high and focused his mind.

Vween! The clear sound of vibration echoed through his avatar, and a silver light—his Incarnate overlay—pushed the darkness back ever so slightly.

He took a sharp breath the instant it popped up in his view: a rectangular plate riding the current a few meters ahead of him. There was no doubt; this was Black Vise. Which meant that this unlit space was inside the shadows Vise used as his escape route. Perhaps because of his timing when touching the ground or due to his speed, faster than sound, Haruyuki had apparently followed Vise into the shadows.

“Stop! Let go of Rain!!” Haruyuki shouted in a voice that traveled nowhere. He brandished his right hand with the light lodged in it.

“Laser—”

Before he could utter the “Lance” part of the technique name, Vise suddenly rotated to the right. It wasn’t that he had sensed the attack from behind and moved to avoid it, but rather the shadow corridor itself appeared to turn at a sharp angle. And whether he liked it or not, Haruyuki was also swallowed up in that current, knocking him off-balance.

The light in his right hand flickered, and although he tried earnestly to maintain the image that powered it, he could do nothing while the force of the ebony current toyed with him. He had no choice but to pull in his limbs, fold up his wings, and give himself over to it. If he got separated from Vise now, in the worst case, he could end up knocked out of the shadow corridor.

Niko, hang in there just a little longer, Haruyuki called to her in his mind, remembering all too well the agony of when he had been similarly locked in Black Vise’s plates. I will save you. For sure…For sure!

He didn’t hear an answer. And there was no way his thoughts would even reach her anyway. Still, Haruyuki kept his mind firmly focused on Niko as he was carried along by the blackness.

Just when he was starting to wonder how many minutes it had to have been since he flew in after Vise—he had lost even his sense of time inside the shadow—the current finally began to ease up. Guessing exit was imminent, Haruyuki stretched his folded limbs out and brought the Incarnate light back to life in his right hand.

When he saw the silhouette of the rectangular solid pop up out of the darkness once more, albeit a little farther away now, Haruyuki was both relieved and anxious. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost sight of Vise, but once this chase was over, a fight with the mysterious layered avatar was inevitable.

Haruyuki’s previous encounters with Black Vise, the self-proclaimed vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, had been limited to a total of three occasions.

The first was the final battle with the Twilight Marauder, Dusk Taker. Thanks to the deceleration ability made possible by a Brain Implant Chip—aka a BIC—Vise easily ambushed him in the Unlimited Neutral Field, where such a thing should have been very difficult, and locked Haruyuki between two thin panels—an excruciating experience. If Kuroyukihime hadn’t raced back to Tokyo from her school trip in Okinawa, Haruyuki would very likely have ended up in total point loss, together with Takumu.

The second time was in the racing event set against the backdrop of the orbital elevator Hermes’ Cord. Vise, hidden in the shadows of the race shuttle, had withdrawn as soon as fellow Acceleration Research Society member Rust Jigsaw threw the event into chaos, not giving Haruyuki and his comrades a chance to counterattack.

And the third time had been ten days earlier, when Haruyuki had dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field after he’d made the mistake of equipping the Armor of Catastrophe. To fully awaken Haruyuki as the sixth Chrome Disaster, Vise had taken the form of the Black King, Black Lotus, and appeared before him on the roof of Roppongi Hills Tower. For a brief instant, Haruyuki had been on the verge of falling under the Armor’s control forever, but he’d just barely managed to pull himself back from the brink at the last minute, finally retaliating against Vise in a joint Incarnate attack with Kuroyukihime.

All of which was to say that the reason he’d been able to make it through these battles with Black Vise was because he’d had help from Kuroyukihime and the other members of his Legion. But in this fourth encounter, Haruyuki would have to crush Vise on his own because he’d charged off by himself and left his comrades behind. But he hadn’t had any other options in the moment; if he’d waited for his friends, he would’ve missed his chance to catch up with Vise.

Don’t be afraid. You just do what you have to do, Haruyuki told himself, as he was on the verge of giving in to fear inside the black channel, which appeared to be ending at last. I’ll fight to protect Niko no matter who I’m up against—even if it’s one of the Kings of Pure Color. I mean, I promised. I don’t deserve to be a Burst Linker if I chicken out and run away now.

He clenched his hands tightly, and his faint fear evaporated. Almost as if it had been waiting for exactly that, the shadow current finally stopped. The rectangular solid slid upward just ahead of him, and Haruyuki followed suit.

Once more, he passed through the disturbing plrmp sensation and shot up above a cold horizon. The exit at his feet then disappeared without a trace, and he landed on a hard floor. He quickly sent his gaze racing around his environs to figure out exactly where he was.

He wasn’t outside, but rather in a fairly large room. The four walls, ceiling, and floor were made of marble characteristic of the Twilight stage. Two exits, before and behind him. There were no windows; the only light came from a few lamps set high up on the walls.

The room was deserted, with nothing between Haruyuki and the motionless black rectangular solid about ten meters away from him. Still on one knee, Haruyuki pressed against the floor, but his fingertips were pushed back by smooth stone. He had to assume that he’d been able to enter the shadow corridor at the intersection near Midtown because he’d hitched a ride with the activation of Vise’s ability.

The rectangular solid that was the transformed Vise suddenly split into two panels down the center. Those spun around, the pieces fissuring again and again until the ultrathin panels once more took on the human shape of the layered avatar.

Vise stood with his back to Haruyuki, a small F-type avatar in his arms. She was still unconscious, with her limbs hanging limply and no light in her eye lenses. Her crimson armor was cracked in places, no doubt damage from being forcibly closed in Vise’s panels. Tiny fragments peeled off and fell to the floor as though she were bleeding.

The instant he set eyes on the battered Niko, Haruyuki’s heart caught fire. Spurred on by the white-hot flames, he stood and shouted his enemy’s name. His voice bounced off the four walls and echoed deeply.

Black Vise—perhaps having noticed Haruyuki’s presence, or perhaps not—turned soundlessly and cocked his head slightly to one side. Although the collection of thin panels that was his head featured nothing resembling eyes or a mouth, a magnetic gaze came from among the gaps in the panels to caress Silver Crow’s metallic armor.

“Oh my, this is a surprise,” Black Vise said a second later in his low, soft voice, somehow similar to a teacher’s. “What would you be doing in a place like this, Crow?”

“I came after you, obviously!”

“Excuse me, that was a foolish question on my part. But I must know—did you capture me from Midtown Tower the instant I used my latent shadow that second time? You might be fast, but given the distance involved, you shouldn’t have been able to catch up with me. How on earth did you manage it?”

The utterly casual nature of the question very nearly sucked Haruyuki in, but he kept himself from answering. The new wings folded up on his back—the Metatron Wings—weren’t visible to Vise from where he was standing. He needed to keep any cards he held close to his chest.

“I could say the same. How’d you manage to ambush us?” he asked instead in a low, strained voice. “I mean, you alone is one thing, but Argon Array shouldn’t have been able to withstand a long ambush. Or can she decelerate, too?”

“If I answer that question, will you tell me your secret? Hmm? It would be my pleasure to continue our little conversation, but unfortunately, that is the one question I cannot answer. You’ll have to ask her yourself the next time you see her.”

“I’ll do that,” Haruyuki declared with a threatening step forward, “right after I take Rain back.”

Vise stepped back in turn and shrugged. “Mmm, so sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”

He glanced down at the crimson avatar in his arms.

“The second Red King is scheduled to kindly leave the Accelerated World today.”

At first, the meaning in Black Vise’s sinisterly smooth voice went right past Haruyuki. His mind went blank for an instant—and then was filled with pure rage. This emotion, a powerfully flammable gas, caught fire with a single small spark—or rather, exploded—and spurred Haruyuki toward merciless battle.

“You. Bastard,” he said, pushing a hoarse voice from his throat and feeling as though his armor itself was electrified. “There’s no way I’m letting you do that. The one who’s leaving is you, Black Vise. I’ll make sure you never get to play another of your dirty tricks!”

“Dirty tricks? How cruel. I’m doing the best that I can here, you know, just as our president tells me to. I believe you act under the same principle, do you not, Crow?”

“Don’t lump us together! The Black King would never make her Legion fight while she went off and hid somewhere!”

At this very moment, Kuroyukihime and the other members of Nega Nebulus were headed for the nearest portal to force Niko to burst out. Kuroyukihime would lead her team to strike down any obstacle that might appear, expending every effort to rescue their friend. She was nothing like the unseen and unnamed leader of the Acceleration Research Society.

And it wasn’t as though Haruyuki blindly followed the orders of his Legion master, either. He knew what Kuroyukihime ultimately wanted, and it was precisely because he hoped to go down the same path that he offered her his sword as a knight. More than anything, Haruyuki hadn’t chased after Vise because Kuroyukihime had ordered him to; he’d done it because he wanted to save his precious friend, Niko—and because he believed that everyone in Nega Nebulus shared this feeling.

Just barely managing to control his explosive emotions, Haruyuki took another step forward. Again, as if expecting this movement, the layered avatar retreated to maintain the distance between them.

The urge to leap forward and rip Niko from his arms only grew, but if Vise was trying to provoke Haruyuki, he wasn’t going to play along. The more time he could buy there, the greater the probability that Kuroyukihime and the others would succeed in forcing Niko to disconnect. And unfortunately, he couldn’t say he had a good chance of winning in hand-to-hand combat against Vise. Although the black avatar specialized in capture and escape, he was still a high ranker at level eight when all was said and done, and he was also presumed to be one of the oldest of the old hands, the Originators.

While reason and emotion battled inside Haruyuki, Vise laughed lazily, probably guessing at least some of the inner turmoil playing out before him. “Ha-ha-ha! Now that you mention it, that’s true. I haven’t seen the president for some time, either. But that doesn’t mean they’re simply thumb twiddling or some such. After all, it was the president who tamed that Legend-class Enemy you fought before.”

Haruyuki felt the Enhanced Armament on his back shudder sharply. He took a deep breath and once more suppressed the urge to spread those wings and charge. “But in the end, all that did was force us to fight Metatron. Sorry, but we smashed the tool your absent president used to tame it. You won’t be able to make an Enemy protect your base anymore,” he stated, remembering the silver crown that had dug into the head of the Archangel, which had been guarding—forced to guard—Midtown Tower.

Black Vise cocked his head slightly to one side before laughing quietly. “Heh-heh, I see. You still don’t understand, hmm? Crow, what you smashed— Whoops, that’s all the time we have for conversation, I believe.”

“What do I supposedly not understand?”

“You’ll know the answer soon enough. Yes, in about one second.”

“What are you—?”

It was when he moved toward Vise a third time:

He suddenly felt an icy chill on his back and instinctively leapt to the right. A sharp steel-colored flash poured down from behind him and smashed into the floor where he had been standing a mere instant earlier. Staggering backward because of the blast and the wind pressure, Haruyuki opened both eyes wide.

A single sword, so large as to be terrifying all on its own: one and a half times as long as the Impulse, the greatsword carried by the Blue King, and twice as wide. Naturally, the hand gripping the hilt was also large. The arm and shoulder wrapped in steely armor were unusually tough, and the head capped in a knight-style helmet was so high up, Haruyuki had to tilt his head back to see it. The avatar was taller than even Avocado Avoider, much less Cyan Pile.

“Name yourself!” Haruyuki challenged, leaping back even farther. An attack in this situation meant it was probably a member of the Acceleration Research Society, but since every Society Burst Linker he’d encountered thus far had been without exception midsize or smaller, certainly a super-large avatar like this couldn’t be on their register—

Wait. That’s not it.

Bwwn! Haruyuki moved back all the way to the wall to avoid the blade as it sliced toward him horizontally—and finally noticed the silver crown wrapped around the horned helmet. Although its size was different, the design, with its countless, overlapping C-shaped hooks, was exactly the same as the one that had been pressed into Metatron’s head.

“It’s not a duel avatar…” Haruyuki’s voice was hoarse. “This one’s a tamed Enemy, too?”

“Exactly,” Black Vise readily assented, standing a little ways off. “And its status is Beast level. I must beg off battling solo, you see.” As he spoke in his drawl, Vise took one step back and then another. An entrance with no door popped open in the wall behind him.

Haruyuki couldn’t let the man get away now, but the knight Enemy was brandishing its blade once more, keeping him pinned in place.

“Rain! Wake up! Rain!!” Haruyuki shouted as he stared at the tip of the massive sword, but Niko’s eye lenses remained devoid of light. Since it was basically impossible to lose consciousness for long periods in the Accelerated World because of physical or attribute damage, Vise had probably pushed her into something like a Zero Fill state somehow, and Haruyuki didn’t know how to break her out of it. “Rain!!”

As if Haruyuki’s desperate cry was a trigger, the knight moved. It swung the massive sword in its right hand from top to bottom and then from left to right. Sparks jetted up from where the blade crashed into the floor, and the air it sliced through burned.

If Vise wasn’t lying when he said the knight was Beast class, then Haruyuki, at level five, might very well die instantly if he took a single blow from it. He didn’t know what would happen to Niko during the sixty minutes until he regenerated, and if the knight was always in this room, then Silver Crow might even end up in Unlimited EK.

Desperately dodging a series of blows, Haruyuki saw in the corner of his eye that Vise had finally reached the exit.

“Now then, I will take my leave of you here. I pray for your success in battle, Crow.”

Haruyuki made for Black Vise as the man melted into the darkness of the doorway, but the Enemy moved, swinging its sword around, and completely blocked the doorway with its massive body.

“Nngh!” Gritting his teeth, Haruyuki figured his only choice at this point was sink or swim—to charge past the Enemy to escape the room. He crouched down and was about to kick off the floor.

…No. Another voice murmured inside his head.

Precisely because he was in crisis mode, he relaxed, and his field of view expanded. Himself, the enemy, the battlefield: A close look at all these should tell him what he really needed to do.

Even the weakest Lesser was still far too difficult an Enemy for Haruyuki to defeat on his own. And the knight standing in his way now was equivalent to Beast class, far beyond even the Wild class. If he charged it in desperation, it was all too possible that the Enemy would catch him in a counterattack that killed him instantly. Still, fighting and defeating it was far more difficult than trying to slip past it.

However, this particular knight Enemy had a glaringly obvious weak point. This was, of course, the crown on its head. If the knight was tamed by it the way Metatron had been, all he had to do was land even one blow there to stop it from moving. While it was frozen, he could break free of the room and go after Vise.

The problem with this strategy was that, although the knight was of such massive bulk he needed to look up at it, the diameter of its head was much smaller than the seven meters of Metatron’s. And necessarily, the crown wrapped around that head was that much smaller as well—a mere five centimeters wide. Haruyuki would have to pinpoint a hard blow in that narrow range.

Since the knight was basically double the size of Silver Crow, a punch or a kick from the ground had no chance of reaching the crown. The idea of his long-distance Incarnate attack Laser Lance flickered to life in his mind, but he soon rejected it. The lance required a deeper imagination than Laser Sword and left him wide open pre- and post-activation. If, in the worst case, his aim was off, he would no doubt be hit with a counterattack. That said, it was still much riskier to try a direct physical attack on the head like in the fight against Metatron than to slip between the Enemy’s legs.

Haruyuki racked his brain, constantly in retreat to avoid the relentless slicing of the sword. There had to be something, some other way…

Unexpectedly, the wings on his back—not Crow’s original silver wings, but the white ones equipped above them—shivered once more. Almost as if they were trying to tell him something.

You…can do something?

Haruyuki didn’t hear a voice in response to the question in his mind, but he felt sure the Enhanced Armament Metatron Wings still had unknown power to reveal. The heat coming through on his back was the sign of the activation of an unknown ability. He deployed all four wings and dropped into a ready position.

Perhaps in response to Haruyuki’s action, here, for the first time, the armored knight let slip the characteristic, strange cry of the Enemies: “Rrooah…”

Blue-black eyes shone behind the narrow slit cut into the helmet. The Enemy gripped the massive sword with both hands and concentrated its strength in its thick arms.

“Rroooaaaaaaah!!” Roaring from the throat, it yanked its weapon into the air before swinging it, whistling, downward.

It took all of Haruyuki’s willpower to stand still and wait for the blow coming with a speed out of sync with the massive body. If he dodged with room to spare, as he had so far, he’d lose his chance to counter. He had to evade the sword with maximum speed and minimum motion.

In his super-accelerated awareness, he stared at the lethal blade rushing toward him and watched for an opportunity Riiiiiight…

“Now!!”

He took the Aerial Combo technique he’d spent so much time refining, added the force from kicking off the ground to the instantaneous thrust of his wings, and did a sliding dash a mere meter to the right. The massive chunk of steel slid by, whistling in his ear, and slammed into the marble floor, sending a galaxy of sparks shooting up to bounce crackling off Crow’s armor.

Haruyuki ignored the harmless heat-and-light effect and yanked his right arm back. He had absolutely no idea what kind of power the wings Metatron had given him would offer in this situation. All that came to him was a vague will, a voice telling him they could do something. But now that he was in the thick of it, he could only trust that voice and attack.

“Aaaaah!!” Haruyuki thrust his right fist out. In response to this, his upper right wing stretched up high. The thin wing, reminiscent of a sharp sword, bent in the air ninety degrees.

Shak! The wing sliced through the air and plunged ahead like lightning. The knight attempted to dodge by throwing its upper body back with unexpected agility, but the wing, now transformed into a ray of light, followed that movement, carving out a gentle arc to make a direct hit on the side of its helmet.

A dazzling light erupted, coloring Haruyuki’s field of view white, but he narrowed his eyes and watched as the silver crown, which was biting into the helmet, was severed by the wing/ultrathin blade—and then fell apart into pieces.

“One…blow?” he murmured hoarsely, marveling at the fearsome power, despite that it had been his own attack. When he was fighting Metatron, he had to hit the crown dozens of times before it was finally destroyed. Given the huge difference in size, the two crowns likely also differed in terms of strength. And the physical striking attack of his fists was no doubt quite different from the slicing attack of the blade, but even so, the wings exhibited a spectacular cutting power.

Awakening from his momentary shock, Haruyuki hurriedly jumped back, but the knight remained frozen in an unnatural position. The rings that had formed the silver crown peeled away from the helmet one after another, fluttered to the floor, and vanished before the giant finally began to move sluggishly.

Even if he had released it from a tame state, Haruyuki recognized as a general principle that all Enemies were active against Burst Linkers. Metatron was an exceptional exception to that rule, lending Haruyuki its strength after judging that it “owed” him for releasing it from the tame state, and there was a strong possibility that the knight Enemy would attack him again. Haruyuki decided he needed to leave before that happened and go after Black Vise. He slipped by one side of the still-hazy Enemy, cut across the large floor, and flew into the exit Vise had passed through.

That turned into a long hallway stretching out to either side. There were no windows out there, either, just orange light flickering from a few lamps. Not more than a minute had passed since Vise had gotten away, but the hallway was empty as far as he could see.

“Nngh.” Haruyuki gritted his teeth. He had to get Niko back as soon as possible, but there were no clues to help him decide if he should go right or left. As he stood there in frustration, the Enemy behind him started to move.

Right or left— No, wait.

“Up!” Haruyuki cried out to himself, turning his eyes toward the high ceiling. He might be able to find Vise if he was in the sky, and he could also check where exactly he was in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Naturally, there was no window or chimney in the ceiling, but he figured he could probably smash through a few floors of a brittle Twilight-stage building.

Spreading all four wings, he dropped his hips and prepared to take off at maximum velocity.

Rrrrrrring! He heard the light chime of a bell, and the top pair of wings—the Enhanced Armament Metatron Wings—turned into particles of light and disappeared. Losing his balance, Haruyuki fell backward onto his bottom.

“Wha—?” he cried out in surprise, looking back over one shoulder and then the other. But all he could see were Crow’s original silver wings. The string of characters METATRON WINGS, displayed in tiny font directly below his health gauge to indicate he had an Enhanced Armament equipped, melted away from the right into tiny pixels and vanished.

“W-wait!” Haruyuki called out desperately, looking at the snowy-white particles dancing up into the air. “He’s still got Niko! Just a little longer…Help me for just a little longer!”

But of course, he would get no reply.

Except he did.

“Calm yourself, little bird.”

“…Huh?”

“I am still here.”

With these words echoing in his mind, Haruyuki saw the particles floating in the air concentrate into a point. The small white ball instantly transformed into a more complex shape: a sharply tapered spindle facing downward with a thin ring floating above it.

Streamlined wings stretched out from both sides of the spindle. The whole thing shone with a white light and looked like one of the AR icons his Neurolinker displayed in his field of view. From the top of the ring to the bottom tip of the spindle, it was a mere fifteen centimeters long.

“Wh-what is this?” he muttered, peering at the mysterious icon.

“Not ‘this.’” He heard the intimidating voice once more. “Call me Lord Metatron.”

“Lord…Meta. Tron? So then— Wh-whaaaat?!” he shouted without thinking, hurriedly clamping his hands over his mouth. He looked back into the room behind him and checked that the massive silhouette of the Enemy was still motionless before turning an intent gaze on the mysterious body of light once again. “So, Metatron, you mean the Archangel Metatron we fought at Midtown—the one in control of its main body? You were on my back this whole time? You didn’t just give me your wings?”

In his great surprise, he forgot to say “Lord,” but fortunately, it seemed that the 3-D icon was willing to overlook it.

“I believe I told you that I would lend you my strength,” it replied, icon blinking randomly with pale light. “The wings I extended to you are one part of my being. Thus, it is possible to have two-way communication with our true self. Although to do this, it is necessary to turn into a terminal for a time.”

“Uh. Um. So then, that’s…The Metatron Wings are an Enhanced Armament, but they’re also Metatron itself. Which means they don’t entirely belong to me, is that it?”

It was like—no, in a certain sense, it was one of those items with a whole history, the super-high-level equipment you got after clearing a super-hard mission, only to have it just disappear when it wanted or talk to you a lot or whatever. That was what Haruyuki figured as he spoke anyway.

The icon’s response to this, however, was extremely cold. “Essentially, the idea that I would be under the control of you little warriors, even if only a part of me, for no compensation whatsoever is out of the realm of possibility. To obtain our Four Holy Powers, you must crush the first form with special conditions—and then defeat the second form. Speaking for myself, there is not one warrior who has ever accomplished this.”

He had spoken with Metatron any number of times during the fight at Midtown, but belatedly, he marveled at how perfectly they could understand each other through words. The Gods Suzaku and Seiryu had spoken insofar as speaking goes, but in contrast with the way they unilaterally issued statements, Metatron appeared to digest what Haruyuki said before it responded. If it was an AI, it was pretty high level—Haruyuki hurriedly yanked his thoughts back from this admiring train of thought and repeated the words spoken to him one at a time.

“Special. Conditions?” He once again visualized the earlier fight in the back of his mind.

The first form had to be the super-massive Enemy that Haruyuki recognized as Archangel Metatron with the spherical head and four wings attached to the long torso. In which case, was the Enemy that appeared after they crushed that the second form? Meaning that Haruyuki and his friends had, without knowing it, cleared these special conditions or whatever—even if accidentally?

He opened his mouth to ask just what those conditions were when he realized, finally, that now was not the time for leisurely conversation. He had to go after Black Vise and get Niko back as soon as possible. “Right. Um, I super-appreciate you helping me out so far. But it’s not over yet.”

The slowly blinking 3-D icon had nothing equivalent to a face, so he looked up at the ring part and continued earnestly.

“My really good friend’s been taken by a bad guy. I think this is his base or something, but while I was fighting the Enemy, I lost sight of them. So I’m going to smash through the ceiling and go outside. Please, Metatron, help me a little longer, just until I save Niko—my friend.”

He didn’t know how much of this Metatron, a non-Burst Linker—and not only that, a hostile Enemy of the highest rank after the Four Gods—would understand, but Haruyuki put every emotion into the eyes he turned on the icon. Finally, the flickering of the light sped up, and in his mind, he heard the same curt voice.

“I have no concept of good and evil as you do, and I have no interest in the squabbles of little warriors.”

“……”

“However, I have no intention of breaking my vow to lend you my strength. The reason I took this terminal form is because you were on the verge of taking an extremely foolish action.”

“Huh? Foolish…action?” Haruyuki parroted, struggling with whether or not he should be happy about what he had just been told.

The icon flashed brightly, as if nodding, and continued in its cool voice. “Earlier, you were about to try to smash the ceiling of this structure with your fists. If you had enacted this experiment, you would have been hurt instead.”

“What?! But…I’ve smashed a bunch of buildings of the Twilight stage…”

“If this Tawailait stayj, or what have you, that you speak of is the current field attribution HL06, then normally built structures do indeed have low strength. However, this structure is the exception to that rule. This would have been clear if you had paid greater attention to the attack of the mid-class Being earlier. This is why I call it foolish.”

He was well accustomed to being scolded in the Accelerated World, but he never thought the day would come when it was an Enemy taking him to task. A bit struck by this even as he chafed to get moving again, Haruyuki guessed at the meaning of the three words he’d never heard before.

He was pretty sure that attribution meant characteristic, so that word probably indicated the attribute of the Unlimited Neutral Field. So then HL06 was the code given to the Twilight stage? The last mention of Being probably referred to a creature.

“Um, Being? Do you mean the Enemy?”

“I do not care for this appellation of Enemy that you all use. Refrain from it in the future.”

“R-right! …So then, what was so obvious?”

“That Being struck the floor and walls several times with its sword, but they were not damaged in the least. If this were a normal HL06 structure, they would have been severely damaged.”

Haruyuki looked back, dumbfounded, and peered at the space behind him. Just as Metatron had noted, there was not so much as a scratch on the surface of the floor, against which the knight-type Enemy’s sword had created such a spectacular show of sparks. He had no idea why that would be, but given that the building could easily withstand a Beast-level sword attack, it wouldn’t crumble to pieces at a strike carrying the full propulsive power of four pairs of wings—in fact, there was a strong possibility that his fist would be what disintegrated, unable to endure the impact.

He looked farther back into the room to check on the status of the knight while he was at it and found the massive body still crouched on the floor. It looked like it would probably stay quiet for the time being, and Haruyuki let out a small sigh of relief.

But of course, in that instant, a vivid scarlet light flashed beneath the slits carved into the Enemy’s helmet. Bits and pieces of metal armor clanking, the knight slowly rose to its feet.

“Gah!” Haruyuki let out a low cry and took a step back. As if to take his place, Metatron’s terminal moved forward. The pure-white light flickered with dazzling intensity and reflected off the knight’s armor. The strobe light appeared to convey some kind of information; the Enemy froze in place.

Then the massive creature—over three meters tall—turned on its heel as though it had been mentally overpowered by the 3-D icon, a mere fifteen centimeters in height. The Enemy continued in that direction, departing, its weighty steps ringing out, and Haruyuki stared, stunned.

Once the giant had vanished through the opposite doorway and he could no longer hear its footfalls, Haruyuki asked, ever so timidly, “That En—I mean, Being—did it maybe leave on your orders?”

The icon spun around. “I assume we do not have the time for obvious questions,” it said, sounding exasperated somehow. “It was you who said we must find your comrade warrior as soon as possible.”

“Oh! Y-yeah. But if I can’t smash the walls or the ceiling, how am I supposed to look for her?”

“What I promised to lend you was strength, not knowledge. You must decide yourself in what direction to move; what should be accomplished.”

Thus chastised, he couldn’t stand there complaining any further. He should have simply been deeply grateful to Metatron for stopping him from recklessly crashing into the ceiling. And that the Legend-class Enemy—who could’ve instantly annihilated Haruyuki and his friends at Midtown Tower if it had felt like it—was helping him out at all was a significant bit of good fortune in and of itself. Better to get moving right away instead of standing here, twisting himself into negative, worried knots. So. Which way to go to save Niko?

“…This way!” Haruyuki shouted, kicking off the floor. Not to the right in the passageway, nor the left, nor upward; he charged back into the first room, cut across the broad floor, and flew out the door on the opposite side, as if chasing after the Enemy Metatron had gone to the trouble of neutralizing for him.

With exits A and B out of the hall, why had Black Vise chosen A? Maybe because the knight-type Enemy was approaching via door B? It might not have attacked Vise himself because of the taming, but it would have targeted Niko in his arms. Maybe that was why he couldn’t use door B?

In which case, Haruyuki could assume that the direction from which the Enemy appeared and into which it retreated was itself a key section of the base. If Vise had taken the long way around and was heading for that center, there was still the chance that Haruyuki could catch up to him.

The 3-D icon hovered silently by Haruyuki’s side as he ran. It wasn’t clear how long he had left until Metatron’s promise to lend him power expired, but all he could do was pray that it wasn’t before he rescued Niko.

Fortunately, unlike the other exit, beyond this doorway was a single straight path. He could see the back of the slow-moving knight up ahead, but he ignored it and kept running. Kashak! Kashak! He slipped by the massive feet treading on the floor and passed the knight. He’d expected this, but it showed no signs of coming after him.

“Just in case, I shall give you fair warning, you who lacks knowledge.” The icon bobbing along in the air spoke to him first, unusually enough.

“Wh-what?”

“The reason I was able to render that Being to the rear non-offensive is because the control state due to the abominable silver crown was released. Be warned that I cannot interfere with any new Being you might encounter up ahead, until you destroy the silver crown.”

“G-got it.” Haruyuki managed to wrap his brain around the meaning of this soon enough and bobbed his head up and down as he ran. “But the reason I managed to break the crown on the Being back there is thanks to the wing attack with the Metatron Wings.”

He’d intended to suggest that with that Enhanced Armament in terminal mode, he might not be able to break the crown so easily, but Metatron’s response was cold, as always.

“It is not a ‘wing attack.’ Call it Ektenia.”

“…R-right.” The laser attack had the ability name Trisagion, so he guessed the wing attack also had a proper name. He had no idea what either word meant, but he assented at any rate and turned his gaze back to the path ahead.

The straight line of the hall finally appeared to connect with the next room several meters ahead. Nearly a hundred meters away from the first room—meaning this base was relatively enormous. The Acceleration Research Society had to have been occupying a building somewhere in the Unlimited Neutral Field, but facilities of this size were fairly limited, weren’t they? So why hadn’t their base been discovered yet?

Haruyuki had pressed unprecedentedly deep into the central pillar of the Society, yet now he was assaulted with the sense that things were only going to get more ominous, and he wrapped his left hand around his right arm as he ran.

“…Metatron,” he spoke without thinking as he realized all over again how much courage he got from the presence of the small icon floating beside him. “Thanks.”

“Refrain from pointless utterances,” the icon replied briefly.

“Right,” he responded, pulling his head in. Haruyuki was gradually coming to think of the Legend-class Enemy with the name of Archangel as a strict teacher.

Arriving at the entrance to the next room, he stopped and peered inside from the edge of the wall. The configuration closely resembled the first room, but openings were built into all four walls of this one. From where Haruyuki was standing, the doors to the left and right seemed to connect to new passages, but he could see stairs leading up beyond the doorway ahead. The enormous space was deserted; there was no sign of a new Enemy or Black Vise.

Haruyuki wrestled briefly in the back of his mind with the question of whether he had been wrong in assuming Vise was taking the long way around to this room and whether or not he should go back to the first room and head down the other passage when—

A spot on the ivory white floor flashed red. As if sucked in by it, he moved into the room and took a few steps before crouching down. With the outstretched fingers of his right hand, he gently grabbed the object that had reflected the light, an almost microscopic crimson something. There was no mistaking this color; this was a fragment of the cracked armor of the Red King, Scarlet Rain. Solid proof that Vise had passed through this room no more than a minute or two earlier.

“Niko…” As her name slipped past his lips, the crimson fragment lost its life as an object, scattered into fine particles of light, and disappeared. He clenched his hand tightly and lifted his face.

The exit through which Vise had disappeared had no doubt been a large detour that connected with the right or left entrance to this room. Which meant he had gone up the stairs on the far side. Thanks to his shortcut through the central passage, Haruyuki had managed to largely make up for Vise’s head start.

“Just wait, Black Vise!” Haruyuki called in a measured voice and turned toward the stairs. But the floor before him suddenly changed from the snowy-white of marble to the jet-black of coal tar. Hurriedly putting on the brakes, he jumped a step back.

Concentric waves spread out in the lustrous black floor, the center puffing up in a circle. Just like the room he’d arrived in, there appeared to be an exit to the shadow corridor in here as well. Haruyuki reflexively braced himself to attack. Would it be an Enemy that appeared or a new member of the Society—?

Plrmp. With a viscous, watery sound, two human-shaped silhouettes leapt out, one after the other. Not Enemies, given that they were basically the same size as Crow. They shot up into the air before falling to the floor in a pile a ways off.

“Nngh!”

“Ouch!”

Both of these slightly underwhelmed voices were almost too familiar to him. He released his fists, ready for a surprise attack, and opened both eyes wide as he shouted, “Ta-Taku?! And…Chiyu?!”

The large blue avatar pinned to the ground and the small green avatar on top of him raised their heads toward Haruyuki at the same time. No matter how he looked at them, they were none other than Cyan Pile and Lime Bell.