Accel World - Volume 15 - Chapter 9

9

“Aaah…Aaaaaaaaah!”

Haruyuki screamed as if to rip his throat open, fists waving wildly.

Demonic Commandeer. Dusk Taker’s sole special attack. Of all the special abilities Haruyuki knew, its effects were by far the most fearsome: the semipermanent theft of another Burst Linker’s ability, special attack, or Enhanced Armament.

Far too belatedly, he understood the true meaning of what Cerberus II had said when he activated his Wolf Down ability during their second duel— “Relax. My ability’s not stealing. Unlike that guy.” That guy was Cerberus III, aka Dusk Taker. And stealing meant Demonic Commandeer.

“No! Stoooooooop!!” Bringing his fists together above his head, he beat at the semitransparent, purplish-black defensive wall. But Black Vise’s Incarnate technique Octahedral Isolation repelled Haruyuki’s fists with its absolute strength as if space itself had been cut away, and faint cracks appeared in his silver armor.

Then, the purple light flowing back to Cerberus III from Niko throbbed noticeably. A dazzling sphere was pulled from Niko and eaten up by the mouth on Cerberus III’s right shoulder. He was steadily stealing Niko’s power—mostly likely one of the firepower parts that made up her Enhanced Armament Invincible.

Eyes open wide in shock, Haruyuki felt another shiver of fear and moaned. The light flowing from Niko wasn’t disappearing. He heard a slithering, viscous sound as Cerberus III attempted to greedily suck away even more of her power.

“Ah…Aaaah!” Haruyuki screamed once more—his shock changing to a dizzying hatred and rage, then to despair. His voice had to have reached the inside of the octahedron, but neither Vise nor Argon, watching over the proceedings silently, much less Nomi, shivering with pleasure at his theft, so much as raised an eyebrow at him.

Haruyuki went to raise his cracked fists above his head once more. But a sharp voice slapped him from behind.

“Calm down, Haru!”

At the same time, someone caught the wrist of his right hand. Turning, he saw immediately before him Lime Bell’s eye lenses, radiating a cool light.

“You can’t lose control! Think…I just know you can think up a way to save Niko!”

“But…But! But!” Moaning blindly, he tried to wrench his wrist free from her grasp. And then, he felt the new wings folded up on his back shudder slightly. Almost as if scolding him.

Right. This is exactly the kind of time when I need to calm down and broaden my perspective. Look at everything…and think about what we should do.

Through intent imagination, he condensed the fit of rage piercing his entire body into a small sphere and sank it to the depths of his consciousness. He didn’t need anger at that moment. If he had the energy for that, then he should use it to think even just a little faster—a little more deeply.

“Got it.” Calm once again, Haruyuki gently freed his hand from Chiyuri’s grip. “Hang on just a sec.” He looked at the massive octahedron towering before his eyes, making full use of all of his senses.

Although it was Black Vise’s Incarnate technique, and the true depth of his actual power was still unknown, this partition couldn’t have had the absolute strength of Green Grandé’s Incarnate attack Parsec Wall. The amalgamation of thin panels had originally been an arm and a leg, which maybe meant that the joint areas would be weaker than the flat areas? In which case, they should attack…?

“Not the surface! The corners!” Haruyuki shouted.

“I got it,” Pard responded immediately. She leapt forward, opening her mouth to bite into one of the octahedron’s peaks. Rather than being pushed back again, her four Incarnate fangs just barely caught the place where the four surfaces came together. With every muscle of her animal body writhing, she generated a bite force that made the massive silhouette creak.

Haruyuki was confident it would break. But suddenly, the eight-sided body rotated quickly just a quarter to the right. The bottom edge that dug deep into the ground sent marble fragments flying, while the precarious balance of Pard’s fangs against the peak was shattered.

Kachank! She flew back—her jaw snapping shut—yet she had no sooner hit the ground than she was leaping up again, trying to bite into the new corner. But now the octahedron rotated to the left, and her fangs were knocked away once again.

“Taku! Chiyu!” Haruyuki shouted, pushing on one surface of the octahedron with both hands to hold it in place. Takumu and Chiyuri flew around to the opposite side, with Pard in the middle, and braced themselves. But the surface of the semitransparent wall had absolutely no handholds, and their hands slipped off when the octahedron rotated for the third time.

“Nngh.” Haruyuki gritted his teeth.

A second ball of light was pulled from Niko’s body and swallowed up by Cerberus III’s right shoulder. If this kept up, Cerberus III would soon steal all the pieces of Invincible—Haruyuki assumed they were the main Armament, the missile pods, the cockpit with its machine gun, the rear thrusters, and the legs: a total of five parts.

Haruyuki fought back the irritation threatening to balloon in him and thought harder. He was certain the octahedron peak was its weak point. But in order to hit it, they had to somehow stop the rotation. A simultaneous attack on all four vertices from all four directions? No, they still wouldn’t be able to block the rotation itself. The fulcrum was the regular octahedron’s bottom vertex, but that was digging deep into the marble earth; they couldn’t so much as touch it.

Digging into the earth…

“—!!”

Haruyuki’s eyes flew open, and he turned his head back to the sky above.

Of the six vertices, the true weak point was the actual peak—one of the apexes. The octahedron might be able to rotate on the horizontal, but it couldn’t spin perpendicularly, because the bottom vertex was fixed firmly in the earth. But if they tried to attack the apex, they would be shaken off by the horizontal rotation, like Pard’s biting attack had been. They needed to apply pressure directly to the bottom vertex from the top, a perfect perpendicular line without the slightest deviation.

A conversation from earlier suddenly popped up in the back of his mind. He whirled around. “Taku! How much is in your special-attack gauge?!”

“I’ve got plenty left!” Cyan Pile answered immediately.

“Great! I’m carrying you to the top of the octahedron. You do your thing straight down!”

With that alone, Haruyuki’s intention came through loud and clear. Eye lenses beyond the slits carved into Takumu’s face mask opened wide for a moment, and he nodded forcefully. “Got it. Leave it to me!”

Haruyuki grabbed Takumu from behind, spread the silver wings on his back, and pushed them as hard as he could. They soared the twenty-five meters to the top of the octahedron in an instant and looked down on the Incarnate defensive wall that cut a square of the courtyard.

At that very moment, a third ball of light was removed from Niko and devoured by Cerberus III’s shoulder. Just two more left. When all her Enhanced Armament had been stolen, Niko would lose the overwhelming firepower that earned her the name Immobile Fortress.

Brushing away a fleeting terror, Haruyuki dropped into an attack posture. Holding tightly to Takumu, he fell forward so that he was parallel with the top of the octahedron. At the same time, Takumu returned his Incarnate sword to its Pile Driver form and turned the exposed pile in the barrel toward the peak of the walled structure.

“Here I go, Haru!”

“Hit it hard, Taku!” Haruyuki deployed his wings fully, hoping to absorb the recoil.

Takumu shouted the name of the technique with everything he had—his voice echoing across the expanse of the courtyard. “Spiral…Gravity…Driiiiiiiiver!!”

The Pile Driver barrel was wrapped in a shining blue light and expanded with a kashak. The pile was tucked away, only to promptly return in the form of an enormous hammer drill, and this was fired—flames jetting from the rear.

The flat tip of the iron pillar spun savagely as it hit the peak of the octahedron—a perfect bull’s-eye accompanied by an incredible roar—as if the air itself was suddenly compressed at supersonic speed. The eight pieces of semitransparent glass that comprised the Incarnate shelter shuddered, and sparks cascaded from the point of impact.

Here, finally, the architect of the octahedron glanced up at Haruyuki and Takumu. He cocked his faceless head to one side, and as if that was a signal, the massive structure began to spin counterclockwise, the opposite direction from Cyan Pile’s drill. The waterfall of sparks became a torrent, the roaring grew deafening, and Haruyuki felt the world shaking as he clutched Takumu tightly.

If the launch angle of the hammer drill had been even a degree off from the direct perpendicular, it would have slipped away before it caught hold of the peak, now that the octahedron was rotating at top speed, and the two would have tumbled to the ground. But Cyan Pile’s level-three special attack, Spiral Gravity Driver, could only fire directly downward. Takumu didn’t have to bother with any fine tuning, and the direction of launch would still be fixed perpendicularly.

“Unh…Aaaaaaah!” As Takumu howled, a blue overlay jetted from his entire body. The shine of the Incarnate flowed down his right arm to the hammer drill, changing the dark gray spike into super-hard corundum. The swirling jet of orange sparks mixed with the blue aura to brightly illuminate the courtyard.

Psheenk! A strange creaking sound Haruyuki had never heard before shook the air. Unable to withstand the intense pressure, the octahedron spun ever slower, until it eventually stopped. In contrast, the now-sapphire hammer drill continued to drive into it with a force that likely far surpassed the time it had slammed Haruyuki down from the roof to the first floor so long ago.

The second creaking noise was accompanied by a high-pitched wail. Lightning-bolt cracks shot through the octahedron from the peak out to the fourth panel. But the fine cracks stopped at the next peak, a hair’s breadth away from causing total destruction.

“Just…a little…more…!” Takumu’s voice was pained.

Instantly, Haruyuki made up his mind. “I’ll help!”

He put more strength into the arms around Takumu to make the two avatars one. In addition to Silver Crow’s original wings stretching out from his back, he deployed the white wings he’d been newly given—Metatron Wings. All four spread out in the shape of an X, and he pushed every ounce of his willpower into them.

“Smash…iiiiiiiit!!”

A white light shot upward perpendicularly—the jet of a massive rocket. The incredible thrust went through Haruyuki and Takumu into the hammer drill down to the octahedron, and the flat surfaces buckled and warped. The cracks now stretched farther down, passing through the side vertices, and then split again to join the cracks reaching out from the other vertices.

Once the structure was covered in a spiderweb of fine cracks, the high-pitched shriek of destruction pierced the entire field. The smoky-black defensive wall shattered into countless fragments and scattered, glittering in the twilight sun.

At the same time, Cerberus III stole a fourth ball of light. Still bound as one, Haruyuki and Takumu thrust the tip of the still-spinning, roaring sapphire drill squarely at Nomi, directly below them.

““Ngaaaaaaaah!!””

The Spiral Gravity Driver, containing the power and will of both of them, transformed the fragments of the wall fluttering downward into fine particles and plunged forward toward Cerberus III’s helmet. An instant before it could make contact, Argon Array shot four lasers from off to the left to stop it.

Two of these Haruyuki repelled with his Optical Conduction ability, but the other two grazed Takumu’s flank and left shoulder, knocking him off-balance. The drill slipped and the spinning strike charged down a mere five centimeters to the left of Nomi, narrowly missing him and shattering the marble tile there.

Haruyuki put on the brakes with his wings to get Takumu back to the ground with no damage, but then he felt like he heard his good friend’s voice.

Haru! I’m okay. Go for the Red King while you can!

Roger!

After this instantaneous exchange, he released his hands, and no sooner had he turned himself toward the altar where Niko was held captive than he was flying at full power. Argon’s four lenses shone purple once more to his left, but Pard charged in under the cover of the rain of wall fragments and body-slammed her, so that her lasers shot off in vain toward the school building to the rear.

“Nikoooooooo!!” Haruyuki spread his arms out and grabbed onto the crimson avatar spread out over the black cross. He tried to destroy the cross at the same time, but perhaps not wishing to lose his left arm, too, Vise transformed the cross back into thin panels as he sank into the earth.

If Haruyuki had seriously chased after him, he could have maybe destroyed some of the panels, but he had something far more important to take care of first.

“Yaaaah!” he cried, flashing his right hand forward with silver Incarnate light to sever the line of purple that connected Cerberus III and Niko. The fifth ball of light he was trying to pull from her at that very moment stopped and returned to the inside of her avatar.

Niko! Haruyuki didn’t say it aloud this second time, but instead, he called the name of his cherished friend—his heart balancing a dozen mixed emotions.

The small, smooth duel avatar was definitely there in his arms. It had been forty minutes from the moment she’d been abducted by Black Vise at Midtown Tower to this joy of getting her back. It may have been a short time, but it felt like several days in Haruyuki’s lived experience.

And she had lost something incredibly huge. Cerberus III, Nomi, had in fact stolen four of Niko’s Enhanced Armaments with his Demonic Commandeer. Haruyuki didn’t know which parts those four were, but whichever they were, that was 80 percent of Invincible. Considering the MO of the Acceleration Research Society up to that point, the instant they judged the situation to be disadvantageous, Vise and Argon would try to take Cerberus and flee. He had to get those Enhanced Armaments back before they did.

Niko, hang on. I’m going to totally— Haruyuki had thought this far when the small face mask below stirred, and a faint green light rose up in the blackened eye lenses. Had she regained consciousness now that she was free from Vise’s cross? Haruyuki turned to the avatar in his arms and started to whisper to her.

But before he could say the first syllable of her name, he saw something unexpected: a crimson overlay jetting from Scarlet Rain with the force of a small star. A shock wave, pregnant with fierce heat, ripped his arms from her body, and Haruyuki fell, splayed, to the ground. He managed to avoid landing flat on his butt, but he was instead caught somewhere in between—his rump sticking up into the air as he turned his eyes up at the avatar floating above the altar.

As she descended gently on the upward current of air produced by the heat, Niko’s eye lenses looked in turn at Haruyuki, Takumu turning the Pile Driver on Nomi, Chiyuri with Choir Chime at the ready, and Pard facing off against Argon. He felt her gaze soften a little until she turned to glare at her three enemies.

The cute, round lenses changed from their usual green to the blue-tinged white of super-hot flames. The crimson aura spilling from her grew stronger, heating the cool air of the Twilight stage so it shimmered like a mirage.

Riding the powerful heat, she spoke finally, in an increasingly threatening voice. “You dolts…Just out here doing whatever the hell you want, huh…?”

Here, her smooth descent ended, and she came to stand on the small square altar as she crossed her arms in front of her.

“I ain’t gonna pay you back double, nuh-uh. That’s too good for you. I’ll give it to you ten times— Nah, you took such good care of me, I’ll pay you back fifty times this. I’ll burn ya to such a crisp there won’t be a lump of charcoal left behind. You can count on that.”

It’s Niko. Staggering to his feet, Haruyuki felt something hot welling up from the depths of his heart. This was Bloody Storm, Immobile Fortress, Scarlet Rain. Even if she had been forced into a fake Zero Fill for forty minutes—even if she had had her Enhanced Armaments stolen from her—the fire that lived in the spirit of the second Red King had not been extinguished.

Haruyuki knew that real-world Niko was a twelve-year-old girl who sometimes whined, sometimes cried. Maybe that was Niko’s true face. But if instead of sinking to her knees and giving up in the direst of predicaments, she was able to clench her fists and stand up—that itself was true strength. That was precisely the truest of wills that went beyond even the Brain Burst system.

Pard flipped her leopard body and howled before leaping to take up position at Niko’s feet. Haruyuki also moved a few steps and readied himself to the right of the altar. Takumu and Chiyuri were quick to join them on the left.

The first to react as they took up formation around Scarlet Rain was Argon Array. A thin smile rose up on the mouth exposed beneath the goggles. “So assertive, huh, teeny tiny?” Her voice was sunny and icy cold in equal measure. “All attitude even though you got four Enhanced Armaments nicked. If it were me, like someone took this big ol’ hat from me, I’d be weepin’ and wailin’ to be sure.”

“Then I’ll rip that stupid thing off together with your damned head and make you cry.” There was no sense of confusion at the present situation in Niko’s words or tone. She most likely hadn’t been unconscious during the time Vise’s technique had forced the Zero Fill on her.

“Ha-ha-ha!” The Quad Eyes Analyst’s shoulders shook with laughter at Niko’s refusal to back down even a step. “Scaaaary! But y’know, I’mma lady, so spare me the chrome dome. An’ I’m all tuckered out—all this fightin’, y’know? I’ll leave the rest to the young’uns and enjoy the show from on high. So, Threezie, please and thanks, yeah? You got a new toy an’ everything, just like you wanted.”

Haruyuki turned his gaze to Cerberus III. The metal color had maintained his silence for nearly two minutes now, ever since Takumu and Haruyuki had severed his Demonic Commandeer. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, and his head also hung low; he was like a robot with the power turned off.

No, maybe he actually is? Maybe with the reaction from stealing four large Enhanced Armament, he’s over capacity and can’t move? Haruyuki thought, remembering the time Nomi tried and failed to steal Takumu’s Pile Driver on top of Haruyuki’s flight ability.

But then a poisonous smile crept across the face mask, dripping with venom, to refute Haruyuki’s guess-cum-hope. “Heh…heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh-heh…It’s indeed annoying to have an intrusion at the very end…but this is incredible…I suppose I should say this is the power of a king, hmm? Compared with this, the cutter, the tentacles, the stingy wings I once stole from whoever, wherever, were utter garbage. I merely stole four items, and now I have the capacity of three people, hmm…”

As if reading Haruyuki’s thoughts, Nomi slowly lifted his face. The visor was, as before, completely closed, but Haruyuki saw a vision there of two dark purple eye lenses shining. Gradually pulling his upper body back and lifting his clawed hands, Nomi suddenly shouted, “This is precisely the pleasure of marauding! In an instant, the power that someone else worked so desperately to gain, that they cultivated with such love, that they held so precious, becomes mine…Heh-heh-heh. With this power, I’ll steal even more…Keh-keh-keh-keh! Ngah-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Aaah! Ha! Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

This loud laughter was exactly like the real Dusk Taker’s during the fierce showdown with Haruyuki two months earlier. No, the metal color laughing before his eyes now was the real one. The malice cut away from the real-world Seiji Nomi when he lost all his points had been summoned once more by some as yet unseen master of a massive evil intent. That was the true nature of Cerberus III.

He couldn’t let this happen. He had to rebury Nomi’s memories—no, his ghost—deep in the Brain Burst central server once again. He had to erase it completely, if possible. And maybe it was feasible in that moment.

Even if Cerberus had switched personalities, his total points saved in the system shouldn’t have changed. Right before he was forced to cede to III, Cerberus I had said he had only ten burst points left. Which meant that if Haruyuki—also level five—was to defeat him, then exactly ten points would be transferred, and Wolfram Cerberus would be left with nothing and would vanish.

In that case, the memories of Cerberus I would likely be handled with the normal erasure (or transfer) processing, but Haruyuki didn’t know what would happen to the memories that existed as II and III. They might be returned to some part of the server once more, or they might be completely erased this time, for sure. But if he could erase Nomi’s memories, Cerberus I would also disappear with them.

Haruyuki had no proof, but most likely, Cerberus was an unnatural Burst Linker produced through the Artificial Metal-Color plan based on the Mental-Scar Shell theory. Regardless that he had been made to fight and stay at level one to accumulate points on Argon’s orders, he was a rare genius, genuine and earnest, who hadn’t lost the heart to love the duel. And he was Haruyuki’s friend. Even if Cerberus himself wanted it, Haruyuki couldn’t send him to total point loss. Once the tungsten avatar was released from all this scheming, Haruyuki wanted to exchange blows with him. Whenever they wanted.

While Haruyuki wrestled with the two opposing emotions, Niko turned toward the one who had stolen her Enhanced Armaments.

“I get it.” Her voice was caustic. “Just as warped as they say. Jerk like you could never master Invincible. I mean, there’s heart in Enhanced Armaments.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” With another short burst of laughter, Nomi spread his arms theatrically. “Just the sort of thing one of those who call themselves Burst Linkers would say, hmm! Then I shall give you proof that this thing called heart has no power in either the Accelerated or real worlds.” His left hand flashed quickly, manipulating his Instruct menu. “The sole exception being a heart of loyalty to me.”

Oh yeah. This guy hates shouting the command names, Haruyuki remembered, holding his breath.

The sharply tapered index finger pressed four buttons that no one else could see.

Gogonnn! A tremendous roar shook the earth of the courtyard. Several enormous, transparent bodies appeared around Cerberus III—the detail and texture on them increased before his eyes to materialize a group of weapon objects covered in purple armor plating.

First, the long, narrow cockpit wrapped around Cerberus III from behind. Large laser-gun arms joined this on either side. A thruster block with four large thrusters clamped onto the rear, while two sturdy legs stretched out from below.

Haruyuki and his friends weren’t simply sitting and watching this combination sequence. The Enhanced Armament had no sooner started to appear as objects than both Niko and Haruyuki, with their long-distance Incarnate techniques, were bringing crimson and silver overlays into their arms. But Argon and Vise took similar action behind Nomi, so they couldn’t fire.

There was a brilliant burst of light, another colossal roar in the tight group encamped across from them, and then the fusion of the four Enhanced Armaments with Cerberus III was complete.

It was very different from Niko’s original Invincible in both shape and color. Because it was missing one part—he hadn’t been able to steal the missile pods—the sense of volume didn’t begin to compare with the original. It was closer to human than fortress—the slender body tall enough to nearly reach the top of the surrounding school buildings.

Just as the deep purple—a midrange color between long and close range—of his armor indicated, the laser guns on the outsides of his arms were scaled down, but in exchange, the arms were equipped with hands and four sinister claws. Two long claws also stretched out from the tips of both feet, and massive spikes shot up from his shoulders and knees, for an overall image that went past giant and on to demon.

Essentially encased in the thick cockpit block, Cerberus III brandished the Enhanced Armament arms. “How do you like this?” The shriek was amplified and twisted with a metallic edge. “This is power! This is what it means to rule!! Ruling through theft!! This is the sole absolute power!! Ha-ha-ha-ha…Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

The exultation once evidenced by the real Nomi was the same to the letter. This fact strongly pushed home to Haruyuki that the Nomi before his eyes was nothing more than an emulated presence from multiple memories…which was exactly why they needed to erase it.

For the sake of the real Seiji Nomi walking down a new path in the real world—and for the sake of Cerberus I, created as a vessel and made to fight without knowing the joy of the duel. And for the sake of Cerberus II himself, used after being called forth like a ghost through someone else’s will.

“Chiyu,” Haruyuki called to his childhood friend in a small voice that just barely reached her. “I’m counting on you this time, too. I’ll signal you at the right moment. Until then, focus on protecting yourself. Taku, I’m counting on you to guard Chiyu.”

He waited for the green pointed hat and the blue helmet to move slightly before speaking to the two members of the Red King, Prominence. “Niko, Pard. We’re gonna have to fight Invincible. You’re okay with that, right?”

“No big. Just get in there, do it.”

“’Kay.”

Their replies were immediate and heartening. He felt like they were spurring him on, too.

Thmmp. The ground vibrated heavily as the purple demon took a step forward. As he slowly opened the claws of his hands, he spoke, sounding like he was licking his chops. “Have you finished your strategy meeting, Hero and minionssss? Please don’t disappoint me…I’ll have you entertain me for five minutes, at the very least!”

Haruyuki was hit with a wave of battle pressure as he dropped into a ready position and kept one eye on the avatars to the rear of the demon. The amalgamated Cerberus III was a fearsomely powerful enemy, but he couldn’t forget about Argon Array and Black Vise, either. Argon was essentially at full strength still, and although Vise had lost his right arm and leg when the Octahedral Isolation was destroyed, he was standing calmly alongside Argon, showing no signs of suffering from any pain. If Haruyuki and his comrades gave him any opening, he wouldn’t hesitate to use his remaining arm and leg to attack.

Always stay calm and look at the whole battlefield, Haruyuki told himself.

As if this thought were the signal, Nomi raised the laser gun of his left arm. An amethyst light sat in the inky-black barrel, fifteen centimeters around. Hwheeen. The sound of the gun charging grew louder by the second.

The white wings on the upper part of his back—Metatron’s wings—shuddered warning.

I know. I’m not gonna get hit with a totally obvious attack like that, Haruyuki replied reflexively. He intended to take off just as the laser was on the verge of firing, grab onto the massive body, and beat it down with a combo attack.

But Metatron wasn’t warning him about the amalgamated Cerberus III’s long-distance attack.

Niko shuddered to his immediate left. “Nngh?!”

“Whaaat?!” Even Argon Array diverted her attention from the battlefield to stare up at the northern sky.

Haruyuki flicked his eyes in that direction and then opened them wide in amazement.

A single red line chased soundlessly across the evening sky and its gentle gradation from orange to dark blue.

It was too slow for a long-distance attack. And he sensed basically no physical power in it. Even if it had been aimed at Haruyuki and his friends, they would have easily been able to evade or repel it. And to start with, on its current course, the red light would pass through the sky above the school.

Nonetheless, Haruyuki was suddenly assaulted by a dread like his body had been plunged into ice water. Beneath his armor, his avatar stiffened down to its fingertips, and his virtual breath stopped. And yet he was overcome by the powerful urge to run and run now; his motionless body shivered fiercely.

Niko, Pard, Takumu, and Chiyuri were also stuck in place, staring with intense concentration at the sky. If Nomi fired his laser, they would have been hit hard. But Nomi, in position to fire the main Armament, also seemed to feel something, and he turned the massive bulk of the Enhanced Armament upward to peer out from the gap in the cockpit block.

The red line reached a spot in the sky directly above the courtyard and bent ninety degrees downward in a motion that ignored all the laws of physics. A faint sound reached Haruyuki’s ears: Hweeen, raaaah. A sound like the wind cutting—a noise like a crowd screaming.

“What is that—?” Nomi started dubiously.

The red light twisted to hit the cockpit block dead-on. But there was no explosion, no big effect of any kind. The light simply clung to the armor surface like slime, pushing inward through the gaps.

“Unh…Aaaah! Stop! …I heard nothing about this. Vise! Argon! Stop this thing alreadyyyyy!!” Nomi screamed, nearly shrieking. The Enhanced Armament arms waved wildly, and the feet trampled the tiles of the courtyard. The armor was in the way, so Haruyuki couldn’t see what was happening inside the cockpit, but he had no doubt it was terrifying, whatever it was. Something terrible beyond measure.

“No way…” Argon quickly pulled away from the rampaging Cerberus III and groaned in a rare show of shock. “It’s too soon. Like, this is too much! It can’t be…That lot, they went an’ did it in? This is really somethin’, def not what the president’s expecting.”

He couldn’t immediately understand what she was talking about. At any rate, the Acceleration Research Society apparently wasn’t expecting this, either.

“Aaaaaaaaaaah! They’re…inside me! …Stop! Stoooooooooooop!!” Shrieking in terror, the purple demon charged into the south side of the school building, arms raised, and began beating against the third-floor wall, like he had lost all control of his body. The building had the same attributes as a player home, and thus, not a single pane of glass was broken, but the powerful vibrations generated made the surface of the earth shudder, shaking Haruyuki and his friends.

The intense shock pulled Haruyuki free of his paralysis, but he didn’t actually know what he should do.

“I dunno what’s what here,” Niko shouted, “but in Promi, we smash first and ask questions later! Crow, we’re going in!”

“R-r-r-roger!” He clenched his fists tightly to chase away his fear and surprise, then called a silver overlay into his hands. With fists similarly hosting a red overlay, Niko took up position boxing-style.

“Laser Javelin!!” A silver lance shot forth from Haruyuki’s right hand.

“Radiant Burst!!” Ten flaming fists erupted from Niko’s.

Their Incarnate attacks caught the amalgamated Cerberus III at the base of his left shoulder and exploded spectacularly. The massive body lurched to one side, and the left arm, damaged at the joint, slowly pulled away and fell to the ground with a thud, followed by a waterfall of sparks.

The purple demon staggered a few steps before freezing in place. Nomi’s moaning, previously drowned out by the din of his attack on the indestructible building, echoed across the courtyard like a curse. “…You…tricked me…We’ll give you a new power, we’ll let you have revenge…You said all these convenient things…This was your plan…right from the start…”

Argon Array’s response was probably the closest thing to gratitude she was capable of, but she still sounded flippant, somehow. “Sorryyy, Threezie. You were s’posed to get to play a wee bit more, y’know? But, like, we’re just scraping by here, short-staffed an’ all that, sooooo sometimes, plans go belly-up.”

“Shut…up. Hurry…get it off. Help me…Otherwise, you all, too…”

Skree, kee, kee. The massive right arm creaked, and Nomi got Argon and Vise in the sights of his laser gun. But the two level eighters shrugged in unison, not seeming the least bit perturbed.

“Well, this won’t do.” This time, Vise spoke. “No matter which way you look at it, this situation is a difficult one, Taker.”

Haruyuki felt like he’d heard that line before, and Nomi’s voice grew even more deeply colored with anger.

“Are you…Are you going to abandon me again, Vise…? Twice…Me, here…”

“Relax, Taker. I doubt that what’s happened twice will come about a third time.” Black Vise’s voice was aloof to the extreme as he turned the collection of thin panels that served as his face toward Haruyuki and his friends. “Finally, I shall also offer a warning to the esteemed members of the Black and Red Legions. I would recommend you do not attempt to take back the Enhanced Armament, but rather depart immediately. The fusion is a tad early, but either way, the situation is more than you can handle now.”

“Bastard!” Niko cursed. “You planning on running?!”

“Of course.” The layered avatar, now missing an arm and a leg, nodded evenly. “Both Argon and myself find our lives dear, you see. We just barely managed to achieve forty percent of our mission objective, but, well, we’ll call it a win.”

“That’s the story. If you lot manage to get away okay, too, let’s play again. Pleasure chattin’ with you, kitty cat.” Argon waved her right hand with a flourish, and the thin panels of Vise’s body spun around and instantly fused into two larger panels.

Haruyuki dropped his eyes to their feet with a gasp and saw they were just barely touching the shadow created by the southwest side of the school.

“Nngh!” He gritted his teeth, but right now, his main priority was not a follow-up attack on Vise and Argon. They had to get Niko’s Enhanced Armament back and go meet up with Kuroyukihime and the others at Midtown Tower. To that end, they needed to destroy the purple demon and pull Cerberus III from the cockpit.

The instant the two thin panels clamped around Argon, Nomi shouted in a voice filled with rage.

“Viiiiiiiiiiiiiise!!”

A malevolent purple beam of light burst forth from his laser gun.

But the ebony panels had already fused into one and had sunk into the shadows. The light beam blasted into the earth, and a magnificent pillar of fire erupted upward. Marble tiles ripped away from the ground danced up into the air, but there was no sign of Vise or Argon among them. At that moment, they were likely escaping off somewhere inside the shadow of the school building.

“Dammit. Dammit! Daaaaammmiiiiiit!!” Nomi howled his rage, voice cracking. “I do not accept this! I will not allow this development! Someone, anyone, come here…And then, I…me…Aah…Aaaah…! Stop—no. I don’t want to lose…my power…my…”

The cursing steadily grew weaker. But as it did, a thin shadow of an aura began to bleed through the surface of the purple armor.

“Crow!” Niko cried sharply. “One more time!”

Haruyuki half-automatically raised his right hand. Brushing away the fear rising up in his heart, he focused his will.

The Laser Javelin/Radiant Burst combination hit the amalgamated Cerberus III squarely in the back—or it should have. But almost as if it had its own will, the shadowy aura crawling along the surface of his armor came together to create a thick membrane and repel the double Incarnate attack.

“What?!” Niko shouted.

“N-no damage?!” Haruyuki cried, hearing his comrades groan in shock around him.

But Nomi in the cockpit didn’t seem to even notice he’d been attacked. “No…I…don’t…I’m d-disappearing…I can’t. See anything…I can’t hear…Aaaah…Disappear…Dis…a…ppear…”

Abruptly, the tone of his voice changed. The fear, the rage, every emotion dropped away, leaving only an echo like digital noise.

“Disappear…DISAPPEAR…appear…ppear…ppear. D-d-d. D-D-D. Dee. Dee. Deel. Deel. Deel-deel-deel-deel. Deel-deel-deel-deel-deeeeeee.”

The strange cry suddenly cut off—the massive purple body frozen in an unnatural pose. Even the breeze that supposedly always blew in the Twilight stage dropped, and all sound vanished from the courtyard. Haruyuki was seized with a shiver of fear he’d never felt before in the Accelerated World and stood rooted to the spot, voiceless. Niko, Pard, Takumu, and Chiyuri also held their tongues, as though if they spoke a single word, the lid on something even more terrifying would have been lifted.

Breaking the silence was a dromp, a thick, watery sound. When he looked, the dull-black aura was dripping like blood from the wound on the giant’s left shoulder. It stretched out in a long thread before falling to the earth and pooling on the tile. The pool became slime and wriggled away…toward the left arm sitting on the ground.

Maybe he should have attacked the black slime, but Haruyuki couldn’t move. In the blink of an eye, the slime had reached the arm and entered through the destroyed joint.

The four sharp claws twitched. A thin, elongated form connecting the avatar and the arm, the slime contracted and pulled the arm back to the shoulder. As Haruyuki gaped, the massive iron arm was yanked up into the air and then wetly fused with the left shoulder six meters above the ground.

In the Unlimited Neutral Field, a destroyed Enhanced Armament was cut off from its owner and would not regenerate until the owner dived again. This bit of common knowledge was completely overturned as his left arm was regenerated, and the amalgamated Cerberus III staggered to stand up straight and turn ninety degrees to the left to face Haruyuki and his comrades squarely.

Because of the construction—cockpit block in the center, arms to the sides, legs below, thrusters to the rear—the giant had no head. But Haruyuki felt it. A gaze filled with a bottomless hunger staring down on the five of them from far above.

“…ppear…Deeeeel…” The abnormal howl echoed half like a beast, half like a machine. The shadowy aura wriggling around the giant’s body rapidly grew more concentrated. With a metallic creaking, the shape of the armor began to change. Straight lines bent and warped into organic curves. Claws on arms and legs exploded in size; gill-like slits sprang up everywhere.

Haruyuki noticed that at some point, thick black clouds had gathered in the twilight sky directly above the courtyard. Bolts of pale lightning flashed inside them, and the low roar of thunder rumbled across the sky. In this world where light was receding, the giant continued his transformation into a true demon.

The spikes on shoulders and knees nearly doubled in length, while the gaps in the cockpit block were completely blocked with metal panels like scales. The laser-gun arms began to look like annelids—rear thrusters like massive tumors. Finally, with a plok, a semicircular “head” appeared in the upper part of the cockpit.

The front of the semicircle opened like an eyelid, revealing an enormous eyeball with an iris the color of blood. Now glaring at Haruyuki and his comrades with a true gaze, the demon brandished his hands and the scythe-like claws and roared, “Deeel…lllllllooooooooaaaaaaah!!”

Purple lightning crackled and streaked down from the black clouds around the demon. It was no longer Invincible nor the amalgamated Cerberus III that rose up before them in the courtyard.

Haruyuki had seen something before that resembled this new creature almost perfectly, except for its size. Once in a video replay of the past. Once in a dream he’d had in a castle. And then, as something Silver Crow himself had transformed into.

In the back of his mind, a dreadful phrase came to life from a conversation he’d had with Kuroyukihime and Akira Himi three days earlier. The name that had spilled unconsciously from his lips, colored with an icy shiver of fear.

“…Armor of Catastrophe…Mark II…”

To be continued.