Accel World - Volume 15 - Chapter 3

3

“Chiyutaku, wh-what are you doing here?!”

It was the most common of Burst Linker common sense to never use any form of address in the Accelerated World that could lead to being identified in the real world, even if no one else was around, but Haruyuki’s shock was so great that he ended up shouting the real names of his childhood friends twice.

“It’s obvious, Crow.” Lime Bell, still settled on top of Cyan Pile, flashed her eye lenses at him. “We came with Pard to help you.”

“Well, to be honest,” Pile said from below her, “we were actually chasing Argon Array.”

“Pard? Argon?” Haruyuki whirled his head around. But no matter how he searched the deserted hall, he could spot neither Blood Leopard nor Argon Array. And when he replayed his memory of a few seconds earlier, it had been just Pile and Bell who tumbled out of the shadow corridor. “It looks like it’s just you guys here, though…”

“What?!” Chiyuri leapt down from Takumu’s back and whirled her head around. “Huh? Weird…I don’t know about Argon, but we jumped into the hole with Pard. She was right there with us while we were moving.”

Following her to his feet, Takumu also let his eyes race around the room. “What is this place anyway?”

“I’m not exactly sure myself, but I think it’s probably the headquarters of the Acceleration Research Society.” Haruyuki had gotten this far when the pure-white 3-D icon floated out from behind him.

“You are free to exchange information, but does there not exist a task with a higher priority at present?” it said, phosphorescence flashing intermittently.

“Huh? Oh! R-right!” Haruyuki cried hurriedly, looking at the stairs leading up on the other side of the hall. He had skidded to a halt at the sudden appearance of Chiyuri and Takumu, but this was not the time for lazy conversation. He had to catch up with Black Vise, who had passed through there minutes earlier, as soon as possible and take Niko back.

“Crow, what’s that little thing?” Cocking her head curiously to one side, Chiyuri reached out a hand to touch the icon, but Haruyuki quickly grabbed it. From their reaction, it appeared his friends couldn’t hear the icon’s voice. And he couldn’t even begin to anticipate their reaction if he told them that the floating icon was actually the Legend-class Enemy Metatron.

“I’ll explain that as we go,” he said simply, starting to move again. “What’s more important right now is that Black Vise went up those stairs a little while ago. Still holding on to Rain.”

“You should’ve said so!” Chiyuri shouted, grabbing Haruyuki’s arm in turn and yanking it as she began to run.

Silent once more, the 3-D icon floated off to Haruyuki’s right, while to his left, Takumu considered the situation as he got his feet moving.

“I think the shadow road that I, Bell, Pard, and Argon went through was created by Black Vise in advance. He might have underground passages set up in places that will always be in shadow, no matter how the attributes of the Unlimited Neutral Field change—like under expressways or train bridges, so-called eternal shadows. In which case, it wouldn’t be strange if they branched along the way or something.”

“So you’re saying Pard and Argon went into another corridor at some fork?” Haruyuki asked.

“It’s at best a possibility.” Takumu cocked his head ever so slightly. “But even supposing they had, I expect the majority of the corridors lead to the headquarters. So Pard would have appeared somewhere in this building and could be looking for the Red King right now. I think if we go after Vise, we’ll meet up with her at some point.”

“Good point. If Pard were here, she’d tell us to forget about finding her and focus on rescuing Rain,” Haruyuki said, nodding deeply.

Chiyuri, who had run ahead, looked back for a second. “You’ve got no proof of that! C’mon! Hurry!”

The three level-five Burst Linkers and one (part of a) Legend-class Enemy raced up the stairs that stretched out on the other side of the hall.

The marble staircase was unexpectedly long. There was a landing every twenty flights—where the stairs would turn back the other way and go up another twenty flights—but no matter how many switchbacks they passed through, they never made it to the next floor. Haruyuki and his friends were reminded of the emergency stairs of the tower condo they lived in, but unlike their condo, none of the landings had doors, so they had no choice but to keep running up.

As a general rule, buildings in the Unlimited Neutral Field replicated the structure of the building existing in the same coordinates in the real world, but could such a long stairwell actually exist? In skyscrapers, there would be a door at every landing, and even with an exceedingly tall tower like the old Tokyo Tower, there’d at least be a vertical hole dug deep into the ground…Considering this with half his mind, Haruyuki listened to his childhood friends chat with the other half.

“That reminds me, Pile. That special attack you used back there to yank open the entrance to the shadow corridor—you just get it?” Chiyuri asked. “That’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

“Oh no.” Takumu scratched the back of his head. “That was my level-three bonus, so I got it over a year ago now.”

“What? You should use it more, then! I mean, you made that huge hole in the ground—it’s gotta be pretty great for attacking, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve known that since I got it…But it can only be launched perpendicular to the ground, so it’s hard to find a place to use it. I’ve basically only used it to strike the final blow on a defeated enemy. But the motion before activation’s pretty long, so sometimes, they manage to dodge it. And then, I end up stuck with the drill in the ground, and the timer runs out. Lots of that…”

“Hmm. Too bad. It looks cool. And the name’s cool, too.”

That’s exactly the trap of special attacks, Haruyuki thought earnestly. He had pushed all his level-up bonuses, including his current level-five bonus, into enhancing his flight ability, but it would be a lie to say he hadn’t felt some conflict each time. There was always one special attack in the four bonus selections that appeared in the Instruct menu, and Haruyuki had been seriously tempted by the attack motion displayed in silhouette together with a technique name that would feel so good to call out. If his beloved parent and master, Kuroyukihime, hadn’t taught him otherwise, he might have succumbed to this temptation once or twice, or even three or four times.

Takumu had once briefly told him it had been on his parent’s instruction that he pick special attacks for his bonuses from level two through four. But his parent hadn’t guided him the way Kuroyukihime guided Haruyuki, making him think things through himself, realize the correct way, and make a choice. Instead, he had given orders heedless of Takumu’s hesitations and deaf to his cries of protest. Haruyuki didn’t want to speak ill of his friend’s parent, but privately, he thought you couldn’t very well call that guidance.

On top of that, when Takumu was facing the danger of diminishing points, instead of helping him, his parent had used him as a testing ground for a backdoor program. In the end, he was investigated for his bad behavior and departed the Accelerated World through the Blue King’s Judgment Blow.

At the end of this story, Takumu had said, “I’m grateful to him for choosing me as his child and opening the door to the Accelerated World for me. Only learning special attacks, being seduced by the backdoor program—the responsibility for all those choices is mine. But if I had to do it all over again from the start…I can’t say I’ve never wondered…”

“It’s all still ahead of us, Taku.” Haruyuki dared to used his friend’s real name as he took the stairs two at a time. “We can’t know how our duel avatars will evolve until we’re high rankers. And when that special attack of yours hits the bull’s-eye, it’s insanely strong. I’ve been hit with it myself, so I can tell you that, for sure!” He remembered when that drill had slammed him down during their first duel, from the roof of a five-story hospital all the way to the first floor. He felt a wry smile leaking from the slits in the face mask of the large avatar running to his left.

“You gotta let that go already. But if you say so, I’ll try to think up more ways to use it.”

“Cool! Then, in the next Territories, let’s try a bunch of stuff, you and me in combo!”

The first one to react to this proposal was surprisingly the icon floating to his right—Archangel Metatron. “What is this ‘Territories’ you speak of?”

“Huh? Um.” He opened his mouth to reply and then quickly closed it. Chiyuri and Takumu couldn’t hear Metatron’s voice or telepathy or whatever it was, so to them, it would look like it suddenly started muttering to itself.

But Metatron appeared to have absolutely no interest in taking such conditions into consideration. “Provide the requested information immediately,” it pressed him imperiously.

“R-right! The T-Territories are when Legions fight one another for control of Areas— Oh, a Legion is—”

“I know what it is. Hmm. So you mean to say that the little warriors race around their meager domains in the lower field and fight?”

“W-well, I guess that’s basically it,” Haruyuki assented.

“Hey, Crow?” Chiyuri looked back at him suspiciously. “You muttering to yourself there?”

“Oh, uh…”

But just then, fortunately—he supposed—a longed-for sight popped up in his field of view. In the wall on the landing ahead, a square hole opened a dark mouth.

“A-anyway, Bell, up ahead! Look!” Haruyuki indicated the direction of progress with one hand.

“Hmm?” Chiyuri turned back and then shouted in relief. “Oh! Great! An exit! I was starting to wonder if the map was caught in an infinite loop.”

“I don’t even remember how many times the stairs turned,” Takumu noted.

“Twenty-four times,” Metatron remarked in the voice only Haruyuki could hear.

They sprinted up the remaining stairs, and Haruyuki, the first one on what was apparently the twenty-fifth landing, pressed his back against the wall next to the opening and checked out what lay ahead.

Just like on the lower level, a gloomy corridor stretched out in a straight line. There was nothing moving as far as he could see, but it was more than likely that a tamed Enemy was also patrolling up here. They couldn’t just linger there, though. Black Vise would have come through only a few minutes earlier carrying Niko.

Haruyuki was just the slightest bit more at ease now that he had been able to join up with trusted comrades, and he focused himself once more with a deep breath.

Niko, hang on. We’re definitely going to save you. And, Rin, keep fighting just a little longer. When we get back to Midtown Tower, we’ll destroy the ISS kit main body.

After thinking these thoughts very hard at the two of them, Haruyuki gave rapid-fire instructions to his friends. “Tamed Enemies patrol this building. If you sense one, let me know right away.”

“Leave it to me!”

“Roger!”

“I suppose.”

The last response was unexpected, although he told himself it was time he got used to it already. “Okay, here we go!” he hissed.

Slipping through the square hole to step into the corridor, he ran as fast as was possible while still keeping his guard up. After thirty meters, he reached a corner that turned to the right, so he stopped for a moment and felt for any presence ahead of him before leaping out.

A pale-orange light filled his eyes. The source of the light was several long, horizontal windows on the left side of the long corridor. It wasn’t sunlight pouring directly in, but rather the faint light of dusk reflected in the cloudy sky falling diagonally from the windows onto the floor. There were evenly spaced glass windows, along with large sliding doors, on the opposite wall. It was supposedly the first time he’d set foot in this place, and yet, he felt a curious déjà vu at this sight.

Chiyuri summed up the reason for this when she murmured briefly, “Huh? Is this…a school?”

And truly, it was nothing other than a school hallway. The arrangement of the windows and doors set in the wall to the right were clearly those of classrooms. Disturbed at being yanked back from the headquarters of an evil organization to such an everyday space, Haruyuki proceeded a few cautious meters forward before peering into a window to the left.

On the other side of the transparent glass, he saw several large buildings that, although temple-like in construction in keeping with the Twilight stage, were completely unharmed. Behind these, an expanse of half-destroyed ruins spread out, while far off in the distance, he could see a slender tower rising up so high, it was nearly touching the sky.

“Is that maybe the old Tokyo Tower?” Haruyuki said.

“It looks like it.” Takumu peered through the window to his right. “From the position of the sun and the size of the tower, this building’s located to the southwest of the tower. Yeah…Maybe about two kilometers away.”

Haruyuki tried to mentally overlay this measurement onto a map of Tokyo, but he had absolutely no sense of the terrain on the south side of the twenty-three wards. Even though he had been looking in this very direction from the top of the old Tokyo Tower a few hours earlier, the sense he got looking down from the sky versus up from the ground was totally different.

“A school two kilometers southwest of Shiba Park,” Chiyuri muttered faintly, now standing immediately to his left. “So then, that means— No way…This place is maybe—”

But he didn’t get to hear the end of her sentence.

Thmmm. Thmmm. They all noticed the heavy echo approaching from deep in the hallway at the same time. No mistake: It was the footfalls of the knight-type Enemy he encountered in the basement. Since it hadn’t overtaken them on the single set of stairs, it was probably another one of the same type. Which meant that a silver crown to tame it would be set into the Enemy’s head, and unless they destroyed that, Metatron wouldn’t be able to deactivate it for them.

It wouldn’t be such a difficult job to destroy the crown now that there were three of them, but they needed to avoid any battles they could. Haruyuki put his right hand to the window in front of him and pushed hard, wondering if they could just step outside temporarily.

But although the glass panel looked to be at best two or three millimeters thick, it didn’t so much as crack—and just barely creaked. He started to scratch his head at this—hard glass in the Twilight stage?—before he saw the 3-D icon flash in exasperation, and he realized it with a gasp. Just like the floors and walls on the basement level, the aboveground part of the building was also completely protected through some unknown mechanism.

Takumu followed suit and turned the Pile Driver of his right hand toward the window, but Haruyuki stretched out a hand to stop him.

“This building’s indestructible—everywhere. Let’s try hiding in a room and waiting for it to pass,” he said before realizing it was also possible that the doors were locked.

But Chiyuri had already yanked open the sliding door on the other side of the hallway. “Hurry up! Come on! It’s pretty close!”

Flicking his eyes down the corridor, beyond the weak light coming in through the windows, he saw an enormous silhouette, so large as to very nearly scrape the ceiling. Hurriedly, he dived into the room with Takumu and closed the door behind them, careful not to make a sound.

An Enemy’s main enemy-detection method—although in this case, “enemy” meant a duel avatar—differed from type to type. With beast types, it was smell; bugs used vibrations; and there were even some types that relentlessly targeted avatars within detection range using some mysterious extra sense. But human-shaped Enemies basically relied on sight and sound. In other words, if you hid behind something, stayed perfectly still, and made no sound, you had a fairly decent chance of making it through without a fight.

Similar to the hallway, the room inside the door was strongly reminiscent of a school classroom. Of course, the stage didn’t go so far as to re-create the teacher’s podium and lockers, but there was a neat arrangement of six long marble desks. The three friends squeezed together and hid among them, listening hard for the approaching footsteps.

Thmmm. Thmmm. The vibrations were on the verge of reaching the classroom, and Haruyuki gulped, opening his eyes wide. Although Cyan Pile even had managed to lay his bulk down flat and somehow tuck himself in the shadow of a desk, the white 3-D icon was bobbing above another one, totally exposed to the hallway through the window!

Instantly, Haruyuki reached out to snatch the icon down and hold it beneath him.

“Insolence! Release your hand this instant!” Metatron’s rebuke was shrill inside his head, but he held the icon tightly with both hands.

“Sorry, just be quiet for a second!” he whispered.

“Do you know who I am?! One pillar of the sacred four, and you dare treat me like this! If I wasn’t a terminal, I would turn you—”

“I know! I know! We’ll do this later!”

As he was lost in restraining the icon, the regular footfalls stopped abruptly. A massive silhouette blocked the orange light coming in through the window, pitching the room into a gloom. Perhaps finding fault with Haruyuki’s whispering, the knight Enemy was peering into the classroom.

It wouldn’t be able to fit its enormous body through the doorway even if it did notice the intruders hiding in the classroom, but Haruyuki and his friends had to get out into the hallway to go after Vise. Not only would a showy fight on the upper floors likely call in even more Enemies, it would push Niko’s rescue that much further away.

Go away, go away. Haruyuki didn’t know if his telepathic message was received, but the knight Enemy pulled itself back up soon enough and resumed walking. Its heavy footsteps moved slowly from right to left, and when it turned back at the south corner, it passed by the classroom once again and departed toward the north from whence it had come.

The footsteps finally faded, and Haruyuki relaxed his hands, letting out a sigh of relief. Instantly, the 3-D icon, having quickly escaped his grasp, began flickering ferociously.

“Remember this. You shall pay for this insolent behavior for a thousand years. Swear that you will obey my every order during this time as my servant. Otherwise—”

“Fine, got it. I swear.” He glanced to one side and met the eyes of Chiyuri and Takumu, dubious expressions on their faces.

“Crow, just explain it already,” Chiyuri demanded. “What exactly is this bug thing?”

“Bug?! Insults upon insults! I cannot endure this any longer!”

What exactly am I supposed to do here? Haruyuki swallowed a sigh as he shook his head.

And then Takumu abruptly opened his arms wide and embraced Haruyuki and Chiyuri—before pushing them down with a force that brooked no argument.

“Haru! Chi! Hide!”

“Wh-what’s wrong? The Enemy’s not back yet.”

“Not the hallway. Outside the window!”

Takumu’s whisper was extremely strained, and spurred on by this tension, Haruyuki looked back, still crouching, to peer out the window on the east side of the classroom.

On the other side of the glass was something like a central courtyard, enclosed on all four sides by the chalky temple—a school building. It was more than double the size of the courtyard at Umesato Junior High; each side was probably fifty meters long. The ground was covered in white marble tiles, and there were no decorative objects other than where the ground gradually rose up in the center like an altar. The only entrance was the large arch on the south side of the school building.

And under that arch, a lone silhouette had just appeared, moving as though oozing through. It wasn’t another knight; it was a jet-black avatar—much smaller but still emitting an unfathomable sense of presence. The peculiar figure, dozens of thin panels overlapping to take on a human form, could be none other than Black Vise. He had gone around the basement of the school from the south and just arrived at the courtyard. Which meant this was Vise’s final destination.

Vise’s layered arms held the still-unconscious crimson avatar. The instant Haruyuki saw the battered Niko, an incandescent fury burst into flames in his heart once more. He tried to shake off Takumu’s arm and charge toward the window, but his childhood friend firmly held his shoulder down.

“You can’t just go charging in there recklessly, Haru!” he whispered urgently.

“This school’s indestructible, right?!” Chiyuri chided him. “You can’t break the window!”

This was unfortunately correct. Haruyuki could throw his whole body at it, but the glass window separating the courtyard and the classroom wouldn’t so much as twitch. The only thing he’d accomplish doing that was to tell Vise where they were hiding, free of charge.

“But,” Haruyuki said, his hoarse voice burning with impatience, “we don’t have time to go all the way to the south arch!”

The Red King is scheduled to leave the Accelerated World today.

That was what Vise had told Haruyuki in the basement. It wasn’t clear exactly how he was going to push her to total point loss, but that “process” might be starting in minutes or even seconds, if their luck was bad. Even knowing there was a 99.9 percent chance he would be repelled, he had no other options. His only chance was to charge at the window at full power and wager on that slim 0.01 percent—

“Calm yourself, little bird.” The voice echoed in his mind and cooled Haruyuki’s mind like a splash of cold water. “How many times will you make me repeat myself? Now that you have become my servant, I would have you reconsider your rash actions.”

“B-but there’s no time!”

“Stop. Listen to me.” The small icon floated up right before his helmet and flashed strongly, as though scolding Haruyuki.

He hung his head and glanced out the window. The layered avatar was headed toward the altar at the center of the courtyard, not hurrying but at a measured pace. Turning his gaze back to the icon, Haruyuki said as fast as he could, “Fine. Could you talk in a voice so they can hear you, too?”

“It is unpleasant for me to align with those who cannot recognize my voice in compression mode, but I suppose I have no choice. Are you prepared? For you, it is a fortuitous event occurring only once in a thousand years to be able to hear my normal-mode voice.” The 3-D icon expressed some dissatisfaction Haruyuki was hard-pressed to understand before it dimmed its pure-white light very slightly. The voice that came next was not in Haruyuki’s head, but his ears.

“The reason this structure is equipped with nonstandard strength”—here, Takumu and Chiyuri recoiled, stunned, but Metatron paid them no mind—“is most likely that the entire structure is set with prioritized owner privileges by some who are little warriors like you.”

“What?!” Takumu said immediately, apparently having decided to postpone the question of the icon’s true identity. “So do you mean to say this is…a player home?” His tone was on the polite side, maybe because he unconsciously picked up on Metatron’s information pressure.

Chiyuri, however, sounded the same as always. “No! Way! This gigantic school?! The whole thing?!”

Half a second later, Haruyuki also went through the process of consideration → understanding → shock, and his eyes flew open impossibly wide beneath his goggles.

Player homes in the Unlimited Neutral Field—such as Sky Raker’s Fufuan standing on the top of the old Tokyo Tower—were indeed given the attribute of indestructibility. But as far as Haruyuki knew, player homes only existed in remote areas, and the standard for size was at best about two rooms plus a kitchen. He’d never even heard of someone owning a building the size of a school. If that was allowed, then Kuroyukihime would have long ago bought Umesato Junior High, wouldn’t she?

But given that Metatron was, in a certain sense, the ruler of the Unlimited Neutral Field, Haruyuki doubted it was wrong. And if it was a player home, then unassailable strength of the walls and windows made sense.

“If this is a player home, then is there a way to slip through the wall?” Haruyuki asked, deciding to trust Metatron.

The Enemy with its own will stunned the three Burst Linkers once again. “You little warriors have the power to interfere with the way of this world, I believe.”

“Interfere…with the way…You mean the Incarnate System?”

“I do not know the name of the power. To us Beings, it is recognized with a singular sound, and thus, I do not care for it that much. But the only method to destroy the configuration of this structure is likely to use that power.”

The precise meaning of singular sound was unclear, but just as Metatron noted, the Incarnate System had the power to “overwrite” phenomena in the Accelerated World. On the subtler side, overwriting could correct an attack that couldn’t connect or fix an Enhanced Armament that couldn’t move, but there were also more incredible techniques, like reducing the health gauges of the locked Gallery or sealing away other people’s memories.

But if you were trying to overturn critical rules, then naturally, you needed an equally powerful imagination. The protection of player homes was so absolute they were more durable than even the ground of the field; a half-hearted Incarnate attack wouldn’t even scratch its walls.

But they had no choice. They had to break down the wall separating the classroom and the courtyard in order to save Niko.

Haruyuki made his decision. “Got it.” He clenched his right hand into a tight fist.

“Haru,” Takumu said, his arm still draped around Haruyuki’s back, in unison with Chiyuri on Haruyuki’s other side.

But then they both nodded firmly back at him.

“I’ll help,” Takumu said simply.

“Please,” Haruyuki replied, lifting his head just a little from his crouched position to look out at the courtyard.

Having just arrived in the center, Black Vise was setting Scarlet Rain down on the square altar. They didn’t have a second to spare. Still keeping himself low, Haruyuki approached the wall beneath the window and brought his fingertips to touch the white marble.

Takumu stepped up beside him and grabbed the pile sticking out of the Enhanced Armament of his right arm with his left hand. “Cyan Blade.”

As he quietly called the technique name, he pulled the pile out. Sheathed in a blue overlay, it transformed into a large blade. Takumu pressed the tip of the Incarnate sword, still badly damaged from the fierce fight with Magenta Scissor, against the wall right next to Haruyuki’s fingers and nodded.

“Let’s do this.” Haruyuki gave the signal quietly, then concentrated every bit of imagination he could muster into his right hand. And shouted, “Laser Sword!!” The silver gleam that jetted from his fingertips slammed against the wall, sending dazzling sparks flying.

“Aaaaah!” Takumu added his own sharp battle cry, and the Incarnate sword plunged into the wall. Bolts of blue lightning shot from the tip and melted into Haruyuki’s overlay, coloring the entire classroom with a pale-blue light.

At this point, Black Vise appeared to notice the unusual phenomenon. And there was a very good chance that the knight Enemy that had gone off to the north in the hallway would return, drawn in by the singular sound of the Incarnate techniques. They were in a fight against time.

Go. Through! Haruyuki prayed, focusing his will to the limit.

In the four basic types of Incarnate System techniques, Haruyuki’s Laser Sword was classed as a Range Expansion type, while Takumu’s Cyan Blade was an Attack Power Expansion technique. Although both had improved in terms of activation speed, power, and range compared with when they first learned them, neither technique yet began to even compare with a high ranker’s second quadrant Incarnate technique. If Black Lotus or Ardor Maiden had been there, they might have instantly pulverized—or melted—the wall and opened up a path. But they were off fighting somewhere else toward the same goal as Haruyuki and his friends.

Up until that point, no matter what kind of tight spot he’d found himself in, he’d always been saved by Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Utai, Akira, Niko, or Pard. Somewhere in his heart, he’d depended on the sense of security that came from having such reliable, experienced Burst Linkers by his side. But inevitably, the time would come when he would have to step out from under his parents’ wings and take off in flight, when he would have to stand on his own two feet to confront an enormous problem.

He was sure that time was now.

“Unh…Ah! Aaaaaaaah!!”

His entire imagination, so white-hot it very nearly burned up his soul, was concentrated in the single point of the tips of the outstretched fingers of his right hand. The words “go through” had even evaporated at some point, and he was overflowing with nothing but a silver torrent produced by the depths of his mind. The overlay in his right hand slammed up against the hard wall, compressed to become the smallest star, and shone.

“Nngh…aaaaah!” Takumu squeezed a battle cry from deep inside and tried to pierce the wall with the Incarnate sword he gripped in both hands. One flash of lightning—then another—shot off from the point of contact, crashing into walls and desks and ceiling, an infinity of sparks scattering.

The marble wall under Incarnate attack resisted the pressure and shook violently. Two concentric circles of light that were the violet color of the system spread out on the surface of the wall and lapped against the window and the floor. But the wall remained stubbornly intact.

If the thought that their task was an impossible one so much as crossed his mind, then that would become the reality. So Haruyuki had no intention of releasing his focus on his image, even if it did burn his entire soul away. The edges of his field of view started to turn white, the roaring that filled the classroom receded, and he even started to lose his sense of oneness with his avatar.

“Unh…Waaaaaaah!!” The higher pitch of a third voice rang out behind him, and the light of a third color lit up the world. The torrent of vivid, fresh green light pushed between Haruyuki and Takumu and crashed into the wall: Lime Bell’s. But he hadn’t heard her shout the name of a special attack. Which meant that this green light was not a normal light effect, but rather overlay—the miraculous light produced by the Incarnate System.

Chiyuri can’t use the Incarnate System, so why—? The thought was a momentary spark and disappeared. Haruyuki once again mustered up all the imagination he had—the very last of it.

Silver, blue, and yellow-green light melted into one another to take on the clear color of the sky; this torrent smashed through the system-colored firewall. A single, minute crack raced across it, then a second, then a third.

A noise like a hammer hitting hard metal, powerfully loud—a sound Haruyuki had never heard before—rang in his ears, and then the wall smashed into pieces.

Haruyuki felt his consciousness start to fade, perhaps a reaction to pushing his mental powers past his limit. But before he could collapse, a yellow-green avatar flopped onto him from behind, so he stretched out a hand to stop her. Takumu lifted his left hand at the same time, and the two kept Lime Bell from crumpling to the floor.

He stopped moving for a mere instant from the sense of achievement at smashing a wall protected by the system and the shock of Chiyuri somehow activating the Incarnate System.

“The wall will close! Hurry and go through it!” Metatron chastised inside his brain, kick-starting Haruyuki’s mind again.

His wide eyes caught sight of a purple light shining on the inside of the two-meter hole in the marble wall. Semitransparent cubes shimmering with the system color took shape as objects, aligning themselves, trying to fill in the hole.

After exchanging a look with Takumu, Haruyuki got a firmer grip on Chiyuri’s arm as he kicked at the floor. They dived into the hole in the wall headfirst, and while it was a little tight, the three managed to slip through and tumbled out into the courtyard about half a meter or so below.

The wall was rapidly plugged up, and a second after the 3-D icon passed through it with room to spare, it closed over completely with a bright Klink! As the hole was on the verge of disappearing, Haruyuki felt like he could hear the footsteps of the knight Enemy running back down the hallway, but there was no need to worry about that anymore. And he didn’t have the mental energy for it, either.

Because when he lifted his head, twenty meters ahead of Haruyuki stood the figure of Black Vise, in what was to be their third encounter of the day. And on the altar immediately in front of the layered avatar lay a crimson girl.

I’m not letting you get away. I will take Niko back.

That resolution became high-temperature flames that flickered to life in every nook and cranny of his avatar, and Haruyuki’s exhaustion receded at once.

“Pile, look out for Bell,” he murmured quietly, entrusting the half-conscious Chiyuri to their mutual friend before slowly standing up. Tightly clenching both hands into fists, he took one step, then another forward. “Black Vise!!”

The angry roar came from the depths of Haruyuki’s heart, but the layered avatar didn’t bother to turn toward him. He merely raised his right hand, as if insisting Haruyuki wait a moment.

Spurred on by fresh rage, he took another step forward. Then all the thin panels that made up Vise’s left arm dropped away soundlessly and were absorbed into the ground. Haruyuki reflexively took a defensive position, but he was not the target. The panels appeared on the altar in the shape of a black cross, crucifying the Red King.

The instant he saw Niko, both arms forced outward, helmet lolling forward, and a rage several orders of magnitude greater than anything he had felt up to that point erupted inside him, coloring his field of view a pale red.

A long, long time ago, Haruyuki had seen a duel avatar held captive in exactly the same position. It wasn’t his own memory, but a dream he’d had twelve days earlier inside the Castle after he’d charged inside with Utai. A cross stood at the bottom of an Enemy’s craterlike nest—an F-type Burst Linker held captive against it. Black Vise, Argon Array, and one other person whose name and form he didn’t know used a snake-type Enemy to kill the crucified girl over and over and over.

The Enhanced Armament that had shown Haruyuki this dream, the Disaster—aka the Armor of Catastrophe—had already been purified, split up, and laid to rest for an eternal sleep in a corner of the Unlimited Neutral Field. But that didn’t mean all the memories the Armor had given Haruyuki had disappeared. And one of those memories he would never, ever forget was the execution of this girl—Saffron Blossom.

The vision of the extremely cruel Unlimited EK overlapped with the figure of Niko hanging from the cross before his eyes, and Haruyuki was filled with an incandescent fury.

“Viiiiiiiice!” Pushing a hoarse voice through his gritted teeth, Haruyuki was about to kick violently at the ground to propel himself forward, but he yanked himself to a stop.

No. Don’t give yourself to anger. Anger’s not a bad thing. But if you’re swallowed up by a single emotion, you’ll only be able to see a single thing. I’ve failed like that so many times before. But today, right now at least, you cannot fail. I’m not here to defeat Black Vise. I’m here to get Niko back.

Haruyuki took a deep breath and let it out. The flames of rage were compressed into a crimson crystal in his heart. The heat it emitted became a hazy overlay in his hands.

“You’re giving Rain back now, Black Vise,” he called in a measured tone.

The layered avatar turned for the first time, watching Haruyuki. The many thin panels of his face had neither eyes nor mouth, but it managed to express emotion nonetheless.

“Oh-ho,” Vise replied, voice calm. “It seems you really are a little different from before, hmm? I’m also a tad surprised you were somehow able to make such a large hole in the wall of our castle. Although, it did apparently take three of you to do it. Even still, I think there aren’t too many high rankers who could do such a thing. Aah, I’ve underestimated you.”

In point of fact, if the 3-D icon floating directly behind Haruyuki—Archangel Metatron—hadn’t declared in its usual curt way that that was the only choice, Haruyuki probably wouldn’t have been able to focus his imagination that intently, so it had actually taken four to do it. But there was no need to blurt that out like an idiot.

“‘Our castle.’” He ignored Vise’s faint praise and picked out one idea to pursue. “That’s what you said. So then, this building—no, school—is the headquarters of your Society. I can see the old Tokyo Tower over there, so it shouldn’t be too hard to dig up the name of the school in the real world. That said, I wouldn’t go so far as a real-world PK. But. I wouldn’t hesitate to attack on your local net.”

“Well, well, well, how dashing you sound. Indeed, it is my own error that allowed three uninvited guests to come all the way here. For future reference, would you tell me how you slipped past the guard in the basement? Or should I not ask?”

“You shouldn’t. I have no intention of giving you one more piece of information. I wouldn’t even give you a single burst point. Nor, of course, the Red King,” Haruyuki stated quietly, thrusting his fist—still wrapped in silver light—at the jet-black avatar. “This is where you and I settle things.”

“Oh my! How frightful!” Black Vise sounded completely unalarmed, as usual, and shrugged his left shoulder lightly; the arm below it was broken up into the cross at the moment. “But, you see, Crow, that’s such a brave speech—but wrong in just one way.”

“And what’s that?”

“You really must say not ‘you,’ but ‘all of you.’” Vise took a soft step back.

A short warning buzzer sounded in his mind. A moment before he heard Takumu shout “Crow!” from behind, before the air of the courtyard shook with the sharp sound of vibration, Haruyuki reflexively yanked his arm down in front of his face.

A ray of bright, reddish-purple light shot down at him at an angle. He caught this with the light-conducting crystal in the armor of his forearm—the Optical Conduction ability—and bounced it toward the ground before once again looking up into the sky on the south side of the courtyard.

There on the roof of the school building was, as he’d expected, a duel avatar wearing a large hat out of balance with her slender body—the Quad Eyes Analyst, Argon Array. In the battle royale three days earlier, he’d been essentially defenseless against the lasers she shot simultaneously from the lenses on her hat and the goggles that were her eyes, and his avatar had been riddled with holes. And even now, if he’d turned himself over to his rage and narrowed his field of view, the surprise attack would have been impossible for him to defend against.

But this was the third time he’d seen her lasers. As long as he noticed the halo of light filling her lenses right before she fired them, his body now remembered how long it took for them to reach him. And he’d been on guard against a sniper attack in one corner of his mind ever since he heard that Takumu, Chiyuri, and Pard had jumped into the shadow corridor with Argon.

“Well done reacting in advance of my own warning,” Metatron said in its compressed voice.

Haruyuki asked it to please say it in words next time before lowering his arm and glaring at the analyst-cum-sniper. “Come down, Argon! Or else I’ll reflect your laser at you next!”

To be honest, he’d only just learned Optical Conduction, and he wasn’t exactly confident he could control the direction of reflection with 100 percent accuracy. But Argon’s shock at him escaping her laser scot-free when it had nearly destroyed him three days earlier must have been quite large.

“No long-distance type here gonna beat me down!” she replied, voice tense and lacking her usual cool grin. “’Least, that’s what I’d like to say…” She glanced over her shoulder.

“You never give up! You’re more canine than feline!” she shouted, skipping down from the roof. She somersaulted lightly in midair and stuck the landing from a height of three floors up, then dashed to the side of Black Vise in front of the altar. “Yo, Vi! You said this job’s a piece o’ cake, just do a little backup an’ then run! So why’s it this superior hassle now, huh?!”

“Oh no, it’s not a hassle at all. I’ll toss in a little extra remuneration for you, so I would indeed appreciate you doing one more job.”

“O’ course you will! This ain’t worth it ’less you pony up two—no, three times what you offered!”

Listening with half his mind to this back-and-forth between the executive team of the ARS, Haruyuki turned the other half of his attention to the school roof on the south side. His expectation—or maybe hope—soon became reality. A silent silhouette appeared against the backdrop of the twilight sky.

He didn’t need to see the triangular, pointed ears or the long tail stretching out from the backside to know that this was Bloody Kitty—aka Blood Leopard. Although she had leapt into the shadow corridor with Takumu and Chiyuri, she had ended up on a separate branch somewhere along the journey but still managed to chase Argon all this way. To carry out the instruction Haruyuki called out to her before taking off at Midtown Tower: “Pard, chase down Argon.”

Apparently, it wasn’t possible to pursue a powerful enemy like Argon and remain uninjured; Leopard was holding her left shoulder with her hand, but the instant her amber eyes turned to the center of the courtyard, a fierce roar erupted from her leopard’s mouth, as though her pain had been forgotten. Now that she’d seen Niko pinned to the black cross, it looked like Leopard, crouched low, was going to leap from the roof and charge the altar. But perhaps controlling herself just barely, she leapt straight down the way Argon had and moved over to the east side of the courtyard where Haruyuki and his friends were encamped.

“Sorry for the wait,” she said. Up close, Pard’s deep crimson armor showed traces of being pierced by lasers in several places besides her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Pard,” Haruyuki replied, once again feeling the weight of the emotion in her brief utterances. “I still haven’t been able to get Rain back.”

“NP. We won’t let them go any farther.” Her tone was restrained, but the resolve within Leopard became a radiant heat that warmed Haruyuki’s armor. Perhaps the heat was transmitted to the two in the rear; Takumu and Chiyuri—albeit supported from behind—both stood and took up position to Haruyuki’s right.

Black Vise—holding Scarlet Rain captive on the altar’s cross—and Argon Array to his left. Lined up near the eastern wall of the school building: Cyan Pile, Lime Bell, Silver Crow, and Blood Leopard.

The two level-eight Burst Linkers and the other group of four—composed of one level eight and three level fives—faced one another silently for a moment. Breaking the tension-filled silence was a seventh person—the 3-D icon floating behind Haruyuki.

“It seems that it would be best for me to return to your back, hmm?” The compressed voice—which somehow communicated a speech of any length to Haruyuki in a mere fraction of a second—echoed in his mind.

Please, Haruyuki replied similarly with his thoughts, though unconsciously. They still haven’t noticed you here. I feel like you’re going to be the trump card in this fight.

“Naturally. However, once I become wings again, we will no longer be able to have this sort of two-way communication. You alone must control the power given to you with your own resourcefulness. Fight with your full might, so as not to disappoint me.”

G-got it. I’m counting on the wing attack—I mean, Ektenia…Seriously, thanks, Metatron. For helping me.

“…Foolish one. Save such words for after you have successfully rescued your comrade.”

The cool voice hadn’t yet faded in his mind when he heard the light ringing of a bell, and the display in the left side of his field of view once again indicated that an Enhanced Armament was equipped. Metatron had materialized folded up on his back just like his own wings, and he felt a modest, yet reassuring weight there.

He took a deep breath, concentrating his willpower deep in his belly, before turning toward his fated, bitter enemies. “I’ll rephrase then. This is where we settle things with the two of you.”

Vise and Argon glanced at each other and chuckled. Stepping up to speak on both of their behalves was the “you” who had corrected Haruyuki before, Vise: “My apologies, Crow. And after you went to the trouble of correcting yourself. I wonder if I could ask you to correct once more the ‘two of you’ bit.”

“…Is one of you planning on running?”

“Ha-ha! Not likely! Just the opposite.” Vise threw his right arm out theatrically. “There is simply one more of us, you see.”

In the next instant, an enormous dirt cloud rose up between the two encampments. A roar assaulted their ears, and a shock wave pushed toward them so that Haruyuki and his friends unconsciously pulled back.

“What?!” Takumu shouted. “A long-distance attack?!”

“No,” Haruyuki replied, looking straight up. “Something just fell from the sky!”

From the explosive impact, the thing had to have fallen from a height of over a hundred meters. But there was nothing in the sky of the Twilight stage besides the thin orange clouds, so something flying at high altitudes hadn’t dropped an object on them. In which case, had the fallen object made it up into the sky on its own power and come crashing down? What on earth could…?

Holding his breath, Haruyuki waited for the dust to clear. Finally, the wind blowing across the field gradually dissipated the fine particulate effect.

It wasn’t a thing. Crouching on the marble tile was a human being—a duel avatar, its body curled up as tightly as possible, arms wrapped around both legs. The armor was a sober gray, and the head was tucked in so Haruyuki couldn’t see the face mask. He assumed this was the “one more of us” Vise was talking about, but there were still two things he couldn’t get his head around.

One was why the avatar didn’t get hit with falling damage and die after crashing into the ground at that incredible speed. And the other was how a single duel avatar made it that high up in the first place. As far as Haruyuki knew, there were only two duel avatars who could ascend beyond a hundred meters under their own power. One was “Strong Arm” Sky Raker. And the other was, of course, him, Silver Crow. But the multitude of sharp edges covering the curled-up avatar was a far cry from Raker’s elegant flowing design.

Hold on. Haruyuki had very recently witnessed one other duel avatar who could “fly.” Four days earlier, on Wednesday, the final stages of a normal duel in Nakano Area No. 2. His opponent had ripped off Silver Crow’s right arm and digested it, which allowed the avatar to temporarily reproduce the flight ability and fly.

“No…way.” Haruyuki muttered hoarsely.

Perhaps hearing these words, the duel avatar a dozen meters ahead of him unfolded its tightly bound arms and legs and slowly began to stand up. The evening sun, falling on the courtyard through the windows on the western side of the school building, reflected off the level surface of the main body of the armor, giving rise to a sharp shine.

Metallic armor—a metal color. Even from this distance, he could clearly see the overwhelming density and hardness of the unusual texture, and there was no longer any doubt. That was the tungsten armor assessed by Magenta Blade as being the hardest in the Accelerated World.

Haruyuki stared at the backlit face mask patterned after a wolf’s maw as it was slowly raised and shouted the avatar’s name.

“Wolfram…Cerberus…!”