Accel World - Volume 16 - Chapter 3

3

There was nothing.

His consciousness alone wandered in the infinite darkness from which all light, sound, and even physical sensation had disappeared. Was he dead? Had he failed to avoid the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s guns and been evaporated together with Niko?

No. If he’d died in the Unlimited Neutral Field, he would have simply shifted to a standby state, waiting for regeneration in sixty minutes. The world would indeed have lost its color, but he would have been able to clearly see the scene around him. But no matter how wide he opened his eyes or how hard he squinted, he could see nothing beyond this long darkness. It went without saying that his own avatar was gone, but even the health gauge and special-attack gauge in the upper left of his field of view had been extinguished.

“…Niko,” he called softly, but there was no response. Fumbling around, he couldn’t tell if his own arms actually existed. “Taku, Chiyu…Pard…” His unease ballooning, he called his comrades. “Kuroyukihime…Master…Mei…Curren…”

But the world remained wrapped in cold silence. Actually, he couldn’t even feel temperature or the flow of air. The only word that fit this place was nothing. Had some anomaly occurred in the Brain Burst program, and had his spirit fallen into a place stuck between the worlds? Would he live in an infinite solitude in this endless darkness, going nowhere, seeing no one?

“Someone…? Anyone? Answer me!” Haruyuki raised a desperate voice, suddenly seized by the fear that the very mind aware of this nothing space might disappear, too. “Chiyu…Niko…Rin…Kuroyukihime…”

But his cries were futile. Absorbed into the darkness, they disappeared without so much as an echo. Wrapping his nonexistent arms tightly around his nonexistent body, he said in the weakest of voices, “Metatron…”

And suddenly, a single point of the tiniest light appeared soundlessly before his eyes. A single photon with no mass or even size. But it was definitely there. Focusing his entire self on the faintly shining dot, he started to speak ever so timidly.

“Metatron…? Is that you…?”

The dot fluffed out and turned into a small ring. When he looked very closely at the circle of white light, it appeared to be vibrating slightly. Wondering if maybe anything else had materialized, he started to look away, but the vibrations grew larger and larger, making it harder to keep his eyes on the ring. He hurriedly readjusted his gaze, and the ring stabilized once more. It seemed that if his consciousness wasn’t focused on it, he would slip out of harmony with the ring.

“Please, Metatron. If that’s you, respond to my voice.” Haruyuki synced his entire being to the ring, which was not even a millimeter across.

The ring slowly grew larger—or else Haruyuki started to shrink. Finally, the expansion stopped, and something hazy materialized beneath it. He hesitantly reached an invisible hand out to the mass of particles that were again diffusing hazily, trying to take some kind of shape—and touched it.

Hyoon! The particles clumped together and began to trace out a human shape—a semitransparent female figure. He’d seen this noble face, eyes closed, just once before. There was no mistake; this was the true form of the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron that had appeared after the fierce battle at Midtown Tower. Were there only two wings stretching out from the back of the thin dress, instead of the four from the last time he’d see her, because she’d lent half to Haruyuki?

“…Meta…tron…?” he murmured, and as if in response, the inhuman beauty slowly lifted her eyelids.

Two glittering gold eyes caught sight of Haruyuki’s mind. And then the ring above the girl’s—Metatron’s—head scattered in a dazzling circle of light that passed his consciousness, and the body of Silver Crow materialized, as if this light had given emptiness reality. Like Metatron, he was composed of particles of light and was more than semitransparent, but at any rate, he had physical sensation again, and he could clench his hands.

“………”

Heaving a sigh of relief from the avatar, which felt like it existed once more, Haruyuki brought his hands up to touch Metatron again.

“Insolent creature!” The sharp reprimand echoed in the empty space, and his hand was repelled with a snap. Eyelids lowered once more, the female-type Enemy arched her thin eyebrows ever so slightly and continued in a hard voice, “You mustn’t touch me so casually. Have you forgotten that you are my servant?”

“Huh…? Servant…?” Cocking his head to one side, he finally remembered. Now that she mentioned it, when they were hiding from the knight Enemy guarding the Acceleration Research Society headquarters, he had maybe gotten carried away and made a promise like that. Had he promised her a thousand minutes or a thousand hours or—no, now wasn’t the time for that. “S-sorry. I just wanted to check. Um, you’re Metatron…right?”

“That is obvious. I shall forgive you for omitting my title, but I am your master, after all. Ensure that you can be aware of me without touching or looking at me.”

“R-right.”

“To begin with, why did you not call my name immediately? If you had, we would have been able to synchronize much sooner.”

“Uh…Um…”

Apparently, she was not happy that, after awakening in this nothing space, Haruyuki had called Metatron’s name only after those of Chiyuri, Takumu, Kuroyukihime, Niko, and his other comrades. But there was nothing to be done about that now. All he could do was apologize. “I-I’m sorry. I never thought you’d actually answer me, so…”

“And that is why I tell you that you are a fool! There is no other presence able to have a rapport with you at this level other than me.”

“L-level? I’m still just level five, though…”

Metatron’s eyebrows shot up again. “I have no interest in such trivialities as the ranking of you little warriors! The level I speak of is, to wit, an awareness high enough, deep enough to know this world…You are currently looking at the world from a standard that is most certainly not normally reached with the body of a tiny warrior.”

“…High…” Haruyuki got that she was not referring simply to altitude in the Unlimited Neutral Field. That said, however, he had no idea what she was actually talking about. He looked around timidly, but there remained as before nothing other than his own self and Metatron drawn out in light particles. He looked down at his feet, and there, too, was only the endless inky darkness.

“Oh!” Here, Haruyuki finally remembered his dire situation right before he’d fallen into this space of nothingness, this “level” Metatron spoke of. “R-right! Mark II’s laser!! I—I—I was about to take a direct hit, and then…” A shudder of terror ran through him—the fear that the nihilistic great lance might break through the darkness at his feet and slam into him even now.

“This Mark II,” Metatron responded evenly, cocking her head slightly to one side. “Would that be the pseudo-Being you little ones were fighting?”

“Uh, um…I…think so…”

“Mmm. In that case, the fight is not yet over. Look down, very carefully.” Metatron waved her right hand lightly. Particles of pure-white light danced around as if to illuminate the scene, and beneath them, a pillar of muddy reddish-black particles appeared.

The pillar was diagonal—static in midair. It didn’t look to be moving, but the minute particles composing it squirmed and wiggled like a collection of tiny insects, and he felt an almost physical disgust.

“Wh-what’s that?”

“The void attack launched by that Mark II or whatever you call it, of course. Simply looking at it is quite odious…It’s quite astounding, actually, that it is able to produce such an abominable power.”

“Huh? S-so then, that black pillar is Mark II’s nihilistic laser?! Why’s it stopped?”

“To be more precise, you only feel that it is stopped. Further open your domain of awareness,” she instructed.

He wasn’t too sure how to do that exactly, but he opened his eyes wide at any rate—and intently so. Far below, he saw a mass even denser and more enormous than the reddish-black pillar. It was basically black, but the center held a silver light just a little darker than Haruyuki. If that was Mark II, then was the silver in the center maybe Wolfram Cerberus still in the cockpit?

If I can see Cerberus…, he thought, running his gaze along the horizon, where he found an assembly of particles shining a transparent red some ways off. Convinced that this was Niko, he moved to approach her, but Metatron stopped him.

“It’s pointless. At this level, you cannot interact with your little comrade warriors nor, of course, the enemy presence. All that is possible is to simply be aware.”

“O-oh. Um, so then is that maybe the same logic as to how you can’t move things in the real world while in the Blue World when you first accelerate?”

“I am unfamiliar with these terms, but if that is what you think, then it is likely so,” Metatron replied curtly, moving her haze to stand to his immediate right. “Now, we will further expand the domain of awareness.”

“Huh? …Ah…Whoa?!” Haruyuki let out this slightly pathetic cry because Metatron suddenly grabbed hold of his right arm. He didn’t even have time to finish the thought But she told me not to just go touching her before the Archangel was yanking him up and ascending rapidly. “I-if we’re gonna fly, then say we’re gonna—”

Before he could even finish his grumbled protest, they stopped abruptly. He had the curious feeling that inertia was not at work in any way both when they started and stopped moving, but he assumed that was just the way it was here and glanced over to his side.

Now that he was thinking about it, this female-type avatar, Metatron’s second form, had appeared before him for only a few seconds immediately after the fierce fight with her first form at Midtown Tower. At the time, he’d been shaking so hard from the extraordinarily intimidating air of the body that had suddenly appeared, he hadn’t been able to get a good look at her. But now that he was looking at her again up close, he was at a loss for words as to how to describe her supernatural beauty—not even the word perfection was close to adequate.

Even though she was nothing but particles of white light, he was overcome by a sensation like his soul was being knocked out of him. If this is her form in the Unlimited Neutral Field, then it’s no wonder I passed out— No, no, I can’t think about this now. I mean, I have Kuroyukihime and all…

“If you gaze upon me for too long, you will develop impairments in your cognitive abilities.”

“Oh! I-I’m sorry!” Haruyuki nearly followed this apology with a remark about how Metatron was apparently capable of jokes, but she could have simply been telling the truth, so he hurriedly averted his eyes.

When he looked down, they seemed a fair bit higher up than before. The nihilistic laser stagnating in midair, Mark II that fired it, and the floating Niko were all nothing more than pinpoints now. Squinting, he noticed a dot of crimson light on the inky horizontal far, far below—most likely the ground. From the color, it had to have been Blood Leopard.

In which case, he thought, turning his awareness out to an even greater sphere. There he found spots of green and blue on the same horizon as Pard but much farther off. That would be Chiyuri and Takumu.

“Hmm. It seems you’re now able to see, more or less, yes?”

“Y-yeah, well, I guess. But I still have no idea what exactly this world is.” Scrolling back through his memory, he felt like he’d heard the sound of acceleration—the same one as when he gave the Burst Link command, immediately before he shifted to this static, pitch-black space. But of course, it had only sounded like that lightning strike. If it had been the acceleration sound, he was in big trouble.

“We call this place the Highest Level,” Metatron informed him.

“Highest…Level,” he parroted back. “So then, what is the Unlimited Neutral Field where I was fighting until a minute ago?”

“The Mean Level.”

“Huh…” That word mean. He was pretty sure it also meant midway on top of the usual significance meaning. In which case, he was curious about what the normal duel field below that and the real world even lower down would be called. But he got the feeling she’d get mad at him again if he kept asking questions, so he shelved them and looked out at the world of the Highest Level again. Although he’d only been aware of the monotonous darkness at first, now he could at least tell the difference between earth and sky.

When he stared at the ground, it seemed that the terrain was roughly reproduced on this level as well. The line running along the left side of the crater made by Mark II was probably the expressway. Which meant that Haruyuki and Metatron were facing due north.

He turned his gaze upward to find four points of light clumped together a fair distance to the north. They weren’t as high up as Haruyuki and Metatron, but they were still at a considerable altitude. Sky blue, scarlet, pale blue—and black. Black but totally different from the muddied darkness of Mark II; it had the quality of transparent motion.

“Kuroyukihime!” There was no mistake. The spot of black light was Kuroyukihime—Black Lotus. Which meant the other lights were Fuko, Akira, and Utai. They were probably hanging in the air because Fuko was carrying the others with her Gale Thruster.

The four had remained at Midtown Tower in order to pull out Niko’s cable in the real world. So were they apparently moving toward Haruyuki and his comrades because they had witnessed Mark II’s first large explosion and suspected something out of the ordinary was going on? But even with Gale Thruster, Sky Raker would never be able to carry the weight of four people all the way here in one flight. It would be ten minutes at the very least before the arrival of reinforcements.

No. Counting on Kuroyukihime and the others to rescue us and deactivate the armor is a fantasy. We’ll finish this all up before they arrive and greet them with smiles.

“Thank you, Kuroyukihime. But I’m okay. The Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, we’ll definitely—” His murmuring was forcibly cut off because, once again, Metatron had grabbed his arm and started to ascend rapidly.

“Aaaaah!” he cried as he was yanked upward to what he perceived to be an altitude of over one thousand meters, where they again stopped abruptly with no concern for momentum or inertia.

“Now,” the Archangel announced in a somewhat colder voice—or maybe that was just in his mind. “Even you should be able to see the true form at this point.”

“Huh? Tr-true form?” He blinked hard several times and stared intently at the archangel. Nothing in the beauty of her face in profile, eyelashes lowered, seemed different from a moment ago. Twisting his neck, he unconsciously raised his right hand and went to poke the smooth line of her cheek.

“Insolence!!”

Whap! She slapped the palm of his hand away with the tip of a wing, and Haruyuki swallowed a yelp as he leapt back.

“I-it’s just—I don’t know what’s different, so…”

“I speak not of me!” the Archangel rebuked him sharply before gesturing toward the space below them with both hands. “You must use all your awareness and look at the world. You have put this into practice many times in the battle up to now. Broaden that sensation, deepen it, heighten it, extend it. Expand in every direction.”

Metatron wasn’t making too much sense to him, but even so, he felt like he got about half of what she was trying to say.

Look. Not at one point; at the whole. Not for a moment; continuously. In the Accelerated World, Haruyuki and the other Burst Linkers didn’t actually see with their eyes. Their avatars did have eyes, but it wasn’t as though these were connected directly to their real eyes. Their consciousness itself saw, heard, touched, and felt the world generated by the Brain Burst central server—also known as the Main Visualizer—through their Neurolinkers. This world, the Highest Level, was likely a place that expressed the elements that made up the Accelerated World in a form closer to their true nature. A world where things weren’t translated into easy-to-understand 3-D objects—where information itself flowed and drifted.

Haruyuki had unconsciously closed his eyes the way Metatron did. Despite the fact that when he blinked before, it had interrupted his vision, and he was able to perceive the world hazily now with his eyes closed. The earth a distant thousand meters below. Pard, Takumu, and Chiyuri there. Mark II floating in the air. Niko even higher up. Far off in the distance, Fuko, Utai, Akira, and Kuroyukihime.

That wasn’t all. He could even see down into the basement of the Acceleration Research Society hideout beneath the crater Mark II had made; it was far deeper and bigger than he’d thought. And the knight Enemies on guard—there were three, no, four.

His power of perception popped aboveground once more and spread out horizontally. He could feel in detail the terrain of the Minato Ward Area, right down to each and every building. When he reached a wide street running to the northwest, the tower that soared up remarkably high was probably the old Tokyo Tower. Fufuan at its peak was like a particle of sand compared with the large-scale terrain around it, but it felt warm somehow. And immediately beside the house, something whirling, smaller than the house, but which had a higher density of information. That had to be the portal.

Four small flying Enemies were suspended in the sky even farther north of the tower. When he expanded his range of perception, he found an infinite number of other Enemies. Large ones, small ones, hot ones, cold ones…And more than a few appeared to be approaching the crater that was the battlefield for Haruyuki and his comrades. They were probably drawn in by the Incarnate techniques activated in succession by both sides. He had to end this battle before they came charging in.

Haruyuki slowly lifted his eyelids. “Whoa…Ah…!” A faint moan slipped out of his mouth.

The world had changed phases completely. On the ground outside the crater where there had been nothing but darkness, infinite points of light were scattered; it glittered like a starry sky. Most of the particles of white light were distributed along the roads, but some were also in large buildings and every nook and cranny of the plazas. It was utterly impossible to count them all. Naturally, the areas beyond Minato were similarly filled with light, and the whole effect was like an art piece drawing central Tokyo in stardust.

“What are those lights?” Haruyuki asked.

“We call them nodes,” Metatron answered quietly. “The places where the information that decides the shape of the world is born, connected, and flows.”

“The shape…of the world…,” he parroted back before the true gravity of the statement hit him, eliciting a gasp. The arrangement of those lights that could have been ordered or were random was probably… “The social cameras?”

It took the form of a question, but Haruyuki was already certain of the idea. The network of automatic monitoring devices placed in every inch of every public space in the real world with the goal of maintaining public safety. They were social security–surveillance cameras—social cameras.

The Brain Burst program hacked the images captured by this monitoring network to produce duel fields that re-created the reality of the terrain in real time, so of course they were “deciding the shape of this world.” Information regarding the social camera network was strictly guarded, and there was no way for the general population—Haruyuki included—to find out how many cameras there were or where the facility was that aggregated and processed the information. There were some sites online that collected information on the position of the cameras, but there was also a theory that the cameras that could be seen with the eye made up less than half the total, with the majority being skillfully hidden. As far as he could see looking down on the distribution of lights from the Highest Level, that theory appeared to be correct. The white stardust shone with a density that was two—no, three times the layout of cameras he had found in town on his own.

Tokyo depicted in this vast number of points of lights visibly demonstrated the excessive monitoring of the people of the city, but at the same time, it was so beautiful that it took his breath away. As he shifted his gaze along a line of lights that shone even more brightly—probably the Yamanote Line—from Minato to Shibuya and on to Shinjuku, Haruyuki realized something.

“Huh?” The center of Tokyo, the very middle of the Chiyoda Ward Area, was alone sunken into inky darkness. No matter how he strained his eyes, he couldn’t pick out a single speck of stardust. But that was impossible. That was the imperial palace in the real world, one of the most heavily guarded places in the city. Obviously, there had to have been any number of social cameras in it; it should have been shining like the center of the Milky Way in this world. So why was there not even a hint of light there? It was almost like a super-massive black hole had eaten away the center of the galaxy.

“You seem to have noticed, hmm?” Metatron whispered. He glanced over at her. The Archangel still had her eyes closed, but Haruyuki strongly felt that her gaze was turned toward the darkness at the center of Chiyoda. “That place alone—the space that you little warriors call the Castle—is completely cut off from the world. Even with my own powers of perception, I can sense nothing of the inside.”

“Cut off? But, um…” Haruyuki struggled with whether it was okay to talk about this before timidly finishing his sentence. “I was inside the Castle just once before. It didn’t look fundamentally different inside than outside. There were buildings and Ene—I mean, Beings, and it had the same attribute as the outside world…”

“………”

Unusually, Metatron hesitated, and then she nodded gently. “I know that you entered the Castle from previous observations. The reason I spoke to you during your battle with my first form…and why I invited you to this Highest Level is indeed because of this fact.”

“What?!” he cried out unconsciously, stunned.

Metatron slowly turned to face Haruyuki directly. Her eyelids were raised ever so slightly, and glittering gold eyes pierced Haruyuki’s own, right down to his soul. Inside his head, a clear, solemn voice echoed. “Warrior Silver Crow.”

Without even realizing this was the first time Metatron had called him by his name rather than you, Haruyuki simply waited for her to continue.

“I, Metatron, one pillar of the Four Saints, suggest an exchange. I shall deliver unto you the destruction of that pseudo-Being.”

And then he remembered all over again. Right now, at this moment, he was on the verge of taking a direct hit from the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s nihilistic laser in the Unlimited Neutral Field—what Metatron called the Mean Level. To be honest, he had no idea how to avoid that attack. If Metatron said she would help him, he couldn’t very well refuse. But what bothered him was the “exchange.” Meaning that Haruyuki would also have to offer something in return for her help.

“What do I need to do?” he asked fearfully. He was completely unprepared for the Archangel’s response.

“You will allow me to reference your memories of the inside of the Castle.”

“R-reference…my memories? That’s all?” he asked, but then he gasped in realization. “Um, that—does that mean my memories will be gone?”

“I said reference, did I not?” she snapped in reply. “I will only look; I will not erase. To begin with, if I had such privileges as to erase memories, I would browse them without bothering with this exchange.”

“I—I guess so. Um…” He shrank back. Did I do anything embarrassing inside the Castle? No, no, I’m talking to an Enem—a Being here; there’s no need to be embarrassed about anything. His thoughts quickly ran through the possibilities, and then he nodded. “I’m fine with that. In fact, I’d actually like you to…But how am I supposed to show you my memories?”

“Good. With these words, the contract is made,” Metatron announced in a tone that brooked no argument, rather than answering Haruyuki’s question, and stretched out her hands. She wrapped her fingers around the dots of silver light that made up Silver Crow’s helmet. Although her fingers were so slender that he hesitated to even touch them, they held his entire body perfectly in place; he was unable to move hands or feet.

“Huh? Uh, wh-wh-what…?”

“Quiet. Calm your mind and accept me.” She had no sooner given him this order than Archangel Metatron was touching her own face to Haruyuki’s helmet.

Gaaaah?! he very nearly shouted, but desperately controlled himself, and Metatron’s fierce beauty slipped soundlessly through Silver Crow’s mirrored visor. Her golden eyes peered into his from extremely close-up, while she touched their faces firmly together. Haruyuki’s mental circuitry shorted, shooting out sparks, and he was unable to think about anything.

And then the core of his mind overflowed with a golden light. In this shining haze, several still images flashed up, one after another.

The God Suzaku hanging in the air against the backdrop of the Castle’s south gate.

Haruyuki charging into the south gate with Ardor Maiden in his arms.

The interior of the Castle—autumn colors dancing in the Heian stage.

The blue samurai avatar they met inside.

And the space at the very deepest level after descending steep stairs, sealed off by a massive sacred rope, and the golden light that flickered on the other side of the darkness…

“I have indeed been shown your memories.”

He returned to himself with a gasp. Metatron had already pulled her face away from his. But her hands were still pressed against his helmet, and her inhuman beauty was still right in front of him.

“I see…” A faint voice spilled from her graceful lips. “The Shrine of the Eight Divines. So then there are Beings in the depths of the Castle who surpass even the Four Gods…”

“Huh? Um, just now, what…?”

“To obtain more information than this, it seems I will need to contact this Azure Air. Does this mean that the time to face the Four Gods has come at last? …But at the moment, it’s still…”

He couldn’t tell if these words were really coming from Metatron’s mouth. Because the instant her body pulled away, he suddenly couldn’t hear them anymore. Or perhaps it was her thoughts that were being communicated to him, but she was an Enemy (Being), a program— What on earth would she be thinking about?

“Um.” Haruyuki took in the figure of the standing Archangel once more and asked timidly, “Why are you interested in the Castle?”

Metatron turned a cool gaze on him, as if to say this was a meaningless question. But in his mind, Metatron, the Four Gods, and the Castle all existed on the system side, so they seemed equal to him in their most fundamental form. As if reading these thoughts, the beautiful woman, snowy-white and luminescent, closed her eyes once more and turned her face to the galaxy on the ground.

“When I gained existence in this world, I was a simple Being who only followed the orders I was given.” Haruyuki heard a somewhat desolate yet quiet voice in his mind. “I waited for little warriors to visit the deepest level of the Contrary Cathedral, my domain in Area three-zero-two, and I fought them. That was everything I was intended to do.”

Haruyuki had never once been to Metatron’s castle, the Shibakoen underground labyrinth. It was the largest, most difficult dungeon in the Unlimited Neutral Field, so there had never been that many Burst Linkers daring to tackle it. Even if an attack was launched every weekend, seven days in the real world was seven thousand days in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Metatron must have been waiting patiently for enemies that only appeared once every twenty years. He turned his eyes toward her once more, but the Archangel continued with an aloof look:

“A long, long time passed, until finally, warriors appeared to crush my first form in Field Attribution UH-zero-one—what you little ones call the Hell stage. But when they departed with one of the Seven Arcs from the throne room, the frequency of the little warriors visiting my castle dropped even further. With no chance to exert my abilities as my second form, time equivalent to an eternity passed again. At some point, I began to think. I…What exactly was this consciousness that I had been given under the name Metatron? What being had produced me and given me this vain mission? And for what purpose did the world I perceived exist?”

“………!!”

Haruyuki gasped. Metatron’s monologue was shocking in two ways. One was that Metatron, an Enemy (Being) in the Accelerated World, doubted the reason for her own existence. Her intelligence had indeed reached a level that far surpassed the domain of a program within the game. And the second was that someone had said very similar words to Haruyuki before. In the depths of his mind, a faint voice came back to life.

“Burst Linkers reaching level ten would have the chance to meet the program creator and would be told the true meaning behind the existence of Brain Burst, as well as its ultimate goal. I…I want to know. Whatever it takes, I have to know.”

Kuroyukihime had said this to him eight months earlier over a direct connection in a café near Umesato back when they had just barely met.

The creator of the program, still shrouded in mystery—this person had produced the Accelerated World, the Burst Linkers, and Enemies (Beings) like Metatron. Kuroyukihime and Metatron were both seeking the same answer from outside and inside the world.

“Did you…find the answer?” Haruyuki hoarsely posed the question to the infinitely old creature.

Wordlessly, Metatron suddenly grabbed Haruyuki’s right hand. With her other, she indicated the glittering map of light in the distance below. And then something mysterious happened.

The countless lights that gave shape to central Tokyo began to stretch out vertically, silently. As if supported by the lights, now extremely thin vertical lines, new terrain materialized. One above the Tokyo he’d first seen and one below.

Now he was looking at a triple-layered Tokyo pierced by countless white pillars. Unable to comprehend the scene before him, he muttered, dumbfounded, “Three…fields…?”

“Yes. This is the current limit of my perception. This is everything of the world that it is possible for me to know.”

“Everything…of the world…” Repeating her words, Haruyuki stared hard. And he soon noticed it.

In the center of the Tokyo that had existed from the start, there were countless colored lights flickering, in addition to the pillars of monochrome that were the social cameras. These were Enemies, dungeons, portals, shops, and the very few Burst Linkers who were diving in the Unlimited Neutral Field at that very moment. But in the newly materialized upper and lower Tokyos, there were absolutely no lights other than those of the social cameras.

Parallel worlds that had the same terrain but not a single human being, the sort of thing you might see in a science fiction movie. Or worlds in which all life had been extinguished.

“Once…In the distant past, a great number of lights moved actively in those two fields as well. No doubt, little warriors such as yourself and Beings like me fought, talked, and lived in rapport. But those lights gradually started to decrease…and then at a certain point, they had all disappeared. I also do not know what happened.”

“There are other fields above and below the Unlimited Neutral Field? So I guess the lower one’s the normal duel field…There should still be plenty of Burst Linkers fighting there now, though.”

“No.” Metatron shook her head lightly. “Those two fields are completely different spaces from the field we belong to. They are laid upon each other, but there is no way to move between them.”

“Different spaces? What does that mean?” Cocking his head to one side, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide and gasped. Two different worlds. He was sure he’d heard something like this from someone else before.

It was when he had that chance meeting with the Green King, Green Grandé, on the roof of Roppongi Hills Tower. The Green King had spoken about why he went hunting Enemies by himself and distributed the points to other kings without any compensation. He said he couldn’t let this world be closed. Brain Burst—also known as Trial Number Two—couldn’t be abandoned the same way Numbers One and Three had been. The names of those already shuttered worlds were…

“Accel Assault 2038 and…Cosmos Corrupt 2040,” Haruyuki murmured in a voice that was not quite audible.

Metatron reacted with a brief “Oh? You know those names?”

“Y-yeah. A little while ago, another Burst Linker—what you call a little warrior—told me.” The Green King’s definitely no “little warrior,” though, he thought in one corner of his mind.

“Is that so?” The Archangel gave a light nod. “Well then, perhaps that warrior has also been to the Highest Level. But none of that matters now. My hypothesis is that the three fields—AA 2038, CC 2040, and BB 2039 in which we live—were all produced for the same objective.”

“Objective?”

“Think for yourself for once. If you look closely at the three fields, you should be able to also come to this conclusion.”

“R-right. Um.” Taking his eyes off Metatron’s face in profile, Haruyuki stared at the three layers of Tokyo.

But no matter how hard he looked, the upper and lower worlds were essentially completely “closed.” The only point they shared with the world of Brain Burst was the position of the social cameras. If both Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt were hidden games like Brain Burst—and that was extremely likely given that an obsessed gamer like Haruyuki hadn’t heard of them—then both had likely produced duel stages with exactly the same structure.

So did that mean that for however many years in real time, there had been other Burst Linkers fighting in a different game world from Haruyuki and his friends in the twenty-three wards of Tokyo? He supposed they would have been Assault Linkers and Corrupt Linkers rather than Burst Linkers, but at any rate, for some reason, they had disappeared. And their memories had most likely been erased when the program was forcefully uninstalled from their Neurolinkers, so they had forgotten that they once fought in a hidden battlefield.

To what end? For what purpose had the developer of the three games given such a cruel sport to children?

Having at some point come to grip Metatron’s hand tightly, Haruyuki continued to focus on the three layered worlds—or more precisely, the one world and the two ruins. And then he realized it abruptly.

The biggest commonality in the three worlds. The fact that, in all of them, the center was wrapped in inky darkness.

“There’s a Castle in Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt, too?” Haruyuki said.

“So you finally noticed it then?” Metatron nodded deeply. “The name might have been different in the AA and the CC fields, but just as in our BB field, there exists an isolated space at the center. And in those two worlds as well, the little warriors apparently had this space as their final objective. In which case, that itself is the reason for this world configured in its three layers and why the little warriors and Beings who fight there were generated.”

The pure-white Archangel raised her right hand up high and let her cool, clear voice echo through the infinite darkness.

“The reason for the existence of this space fusing three worlds—if I was to follow the example of you little warriors—the Accelerated World. It is to break into the Castle, a separate world in the center of this world, and the Shrine of the Eight Divines sunken in its depths and reach The Fluctuating Light sealed inside. I am confident of this.”

Even after the long reverberations of Metatron’s speech, like a heavenly proclamation, had disappeared, Haruyuki couldn’t speak.

The Fluctuating Light—TFL. Also known as Youkou, the eta of the Seven Arcs. This was likely the most powerful Enhanced Armament, one that every Burst Linker dreamed of getting ahold of—at most, it was an item within the game, and an assault on the Shrine of the Eight Divines was also nothing more than an item-obtaining event if they charged forward on it. Or rather, that was how Haruyuki had been thinking of it. But Metatron’s words upended his very mind.

TFL itself was the reason that Brain Burst, Accel Assault, and Cosmos Corrupt existed or had existed. This wasn’t on the scale of a requirement to clear the game or anything like it. If she was right, then even level ten was nothing more than a step in that direction. Because the mysterious developer was unable to remove the seal on TFL, they had distributed the game program free of charge to hundreds of children. That was what Metatron was saying.

But there was a large contradiction hidden there. Given that TFL was an obtainable item in the game, it had to have been the developer who made it and placed it in the depths of the Castle. The developer had privileges equivalent to a god, so if they wanted to, they could have moved it from the Castle or even just made another one. There was no real need to make Haruyuki and the other players attack the Castle, was there?

Or was TFL actually fundamentally different from the other six Arcs, even though it was said to be one of the seven? Not an Enhanced Armament or any other kind of item, but rather…? Right, for example…

Haruyuki finally remembered. He himself had been thinking the exact same thing before.

A little over ten days earlier, Haruyuki had charged into the Castle with Utai and met a strange young samurai avatar in the main building. Giving his name as Trilead Tetroxide, he had guided Haruyuki and Utai to the Shrine of the Eight Divines that existed deep underground in the main building. What he saw there was a golden light flickering in the distance in the vast darkness. The glow of the seventh Arc, the Enhanced Armament, The Fluctuating Light.

While he stared at the faintly pulsing light, Haruyuki had been overcome by the sensation that this wasn’t the first time. When he was training in the Incarnate System at the former Tokyo Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field, as he climbed the wall, free from all other thought, he’d gotten the feeling that someone was talking to him from the other side of a flickering light—a light that was the same color and warmth as TFL.

Someone.

When he was reunited with this light in the depths of the Castle, Haruyuki felt that it was not an Enhanced Armament, but rather a mind. But then his Neurolinker had been disconnected from the global net—and his thoughts cut off. And although he wished he would get inside the Castle again someday and make good on his promise to meet Trilead Tetroxide aka Azure Air again, he still had not managed to do that.

What if what he had felt then was real? That would mean that TFL was not simply an item designed and placed by the developer, but rather something cut off from the world, even as it existed in the center of the Accelerated World? Something that could not be touched even by the hand of the developer—or someone.

“If…,” Haruyuki murmured, staring intently at the ink-black hole that pierced the center of the triple field, “if someone did manage to break through the gates of the Four Gods and into the Shrine of the Eight Divines to touch The Fluctuating Light…What would happen?”

“Do you truly wish to know?”

“Huh?” The unexpected question made him glance at the Archangel. Her long eyelashes were again lowered, and he couldn’t read what she was feeling from her aloof beauty—if Enemies (Beings) did indeed have feelings, that was.

“………”

He paused briefly before nodding deeply. “I do. Even if it’s the end of the world. I haven’t fought with the Black King this long to stop and stand still. I want to keep moving forward.”

When he gave voice to this thought, he belatedly realized what it indicated. If reaching TFL was the reason for the existence of Brain Burst, then someone doing that might mean they finished the game, and the Accelerated World would also vanish. If that was to happen, the time of Haruyuki Arita, who lived in the real world, would continue to flow as always, but that wasn’t necessarily the case for Metatron. For her, the end of the game might be the same as death. Unconsciously, Haruyuki squeezed the hand still in his.

Perhaps picking up his thoughts through the palms of their touching hands, the Archangel murmured quietly, “I too wish to know. The meaning of the seventy-one million five hundred ninety-two thousand three hundred nineteen hours from the time I awoke in this world until now. Even if…it means the extinction of my existence in exchange.”

“…Metatron…” Haruyuki could do nothing more than say her name in a strained voice.

The Accelerated World had been born in 2039. Eight years had passed since. That alone felt like a very long time to Haruyuki, but living in the Accelerated World as she did, Metatron had passed through a thousand times that time—eight thousand years. A year was about 8,760 hours, so eight thousand times that was just as Metatron said, a little over 70 million hours. A length of time that was basically equivalent to eternity.

Dropping his eyes down to the triple galaxy glittering silently below, he gave voice to the words that rose up from the depths of his heart. “Um, so I promised to be your servant for a thousand years, right? So…I wish you wouldn’t disappear before I can keep that promise…I guess…”

“…You say such foolish things, as always. You haven’t even broken through the outer gates of the Castle yet; you won’t be able to conquer the Shrine of the Eight Divines in a mere thousand years. I do not need you to tell me that you will be serving me for a thousand years.” After this cold utterance, Metatron softened her tone the slightest bit. “However, earlier, you submitted what I requested. Thus, I shall also make my gift.”

“Huh?” What was she going to give him? Haruyuki felt the stirrings of a worldly desire, while Metatron led his gaze downward.

“The technique to defeat that pseudo-Being.”

These words instantly brought him back to reality, and he unconsciously stiffened his shoulders. It wasn’t as though he’d forgotten, but the actual body of Silver Crow frozen in the sky above the Minato Ward Area of the Unlimited Neutral Field was about to take a direct hit from the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s nihilistic laser. It seemed that time was essentially stopped here in the Highest Level, but a half second after he returned to what Metatron called the Mean Level, the jet-black great lance would slam into him.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, but…in that situation, how…?” he asked timidly.

“That is truly a disgusting and abominable object, but the amount of empty energy it contains is so great that even I am barely able to measure it,” Metatron replied, sounding slightly sterner. “If you err in your response, you will be instantly disassembled along with your armor.”

“D-disassembled…How can I not be…?”

“You must destroy it with a force of the opposite affiliation, of course. The void attack launched by the pseudo-Being and the body itself below that.”

“Opposite…affiliation…”

In the Accelerated World, the nihilistic (dark) affiliation was paired with the light affiliation. And Haruyuki had the long-distance, light Incarnate technique, Light Javelin. But he was still developing that, so it took a while to activate, and the precision of the sight was still soft. And more than anything else, it unfortunately did not have the power nor the range to pierce the body in the distance on top of erasing the nihilistic laser fired from Mark II’s main guns.

“Um. I don’t want to give up before I’ve even started, but with the techniques I have now, that kind of power— To start with, I don’t think I could even fire before I took that direct hit…,” Haruyuki admitted quietly, hanging his head, and his hand, still caught in Metatron’s, was squeezed with a merciless force. He didn’t have a health gauge on the Highest Level, so he assumed he wasn’t taking damage, but even so, he reflexively cried out in pain. “Ow-ow-ow-ow!”

The mighty Archangel arched her beautiful eyebrows above still-closed eyelids and snapped, “Listen to me. You are the servant of one of the Four Saints, so refrain from such fainthearted words and deeds. I say it is possible, so it is indeed possible!”

“O-okay.”

This is like getting chewed out by Kuroyukihime now. He gave himself over to these sorts of feelings, now at this late stage, while Metatron tugged on his hand again and turned them ninety degrees to the right. At the same time, she shifted her own position to face him once again.

Then she wordlessly turned her right palm out and offered it to him, so Haruyuki also nervously brought his left up to press on the slender hand. Their palms were now connected, but Metatron stayed ensconced in silence. If this were folk-dancing practice in gym class, this is when “Turkey in the Straw” would have played, but of course, the dark world remained replete with silence.

After nearly ten seconds had passed in Haruyuki’s subjective time, Metatron finally spoke. “I am aware that you currently do not have the power to destroy that pseudo-Being. And the power of the wings I have lent you, Ektenia, also cannot pierce that dense void. That technique was originally one for broad-range annihilation that my first form releases simultaneously from my many wings.”

“R-right. But it was plenty strong. It’s helped me out a bunch of times. Tha—”

“I’m telling you it is not that impressive!” the eight-thousand-year-old Legend-class Enemy Haruyuki told him indignantly, then paused briefly before continuing. “I am in rapport with you now through my wings. My actual self in the Mean Level has already returned to the deepest stratum of my domain, so I am not able to come to your battleground. But there exists a means of manifesting my power through your body.”

“Through me…Your power?”

“This is now the only way to pierce that nothingness and destroy the enemy.”

Metatron’s speech made Haruyuki remember once more the days he had passed at the old Tokyo Tower. Still holding her hand, he pulled his head back and asked timidly, “Um, are we maybe going to do some kind of training here or something?”

“I suppose we might, if you so desire. However, if we stay too long in this Highest Level, it will become difficult to return to the lower level. In fact, three thousand years or so ago, I lost sight of the way back and had some bit of trouble myself.”

“S-so no training then! …But then what exactly is this way?” Haruyuki cocked his head to one side, and before his eyes, the Archangel threw her slender body back and unfurled her double wings.

“Listen to me, little warrior. On the Highest Level, the concept of ‘distance’ is meaningless. Thus, it is possible for us two to touch like this, despite the fact that we are far apart on the Mean Level; for us to have this overview of all three fields; and to even reference memories. But there still exists a definite ‘gap’ between you and me. That is the movement of the mind to protect and maintain the very existence of our selves…This is the most primordial energy of what you little ones call the Incarnate System.”

“The Incarnate…source…” Although what Metatron was saying was difficult, he also felt like he understood it instinctively.

A firmly focused imagination overwrote phenomena. That was the basic gist of the Incarnate System. But most likely, the majority of Burst Linkers were always imagining something without realizing it themselves: a wall to protect their own heart. A hard shell built up around the soft, easily hurt soul…The duel avatar was produced with mental scars as the mold. Put another way, it was the armor Burst Linkers produced and wrapped around themselves—a weapon.

Haruyuki had thought the Brain Burst program created the duel avatars. That the night of the day you installed the program, it called up the trauma in your heart in the form of a nightmare and went ahead and designed your avatar from that image. But that might not actually have been the case. Maybe the Burst Linkers themselves strongly imagined a presence in the dream that would protect them and made that incarnate.

In which case, the duel avatar–birth process was the Incarnate System itself. Every Burst Linker used Incarnate in the first moment of becoming a Burst Linker. Those wishing for power in their own hands were blue types; those wishing for power to reach the distance were red types. Those wishing for the power to protect themselves and their comrades were green types; while those who desperately wanted not power, but a hard shell, were metal colors. And forever after that, without being aware of it, they all worked to maintain the form of their duel avatars with the power of Incarnate.

“Metatron.” Haruyuki looked at the beautiful angel whose hands were connected with his own. “You said you can hear the sound of the Incarnate System, right? So then…the sound of me protecting my heart is probably…super-earsplitting?”

“Why would you think that?”

“…I’m one of the few metal colors in the Accelerated World—I have metal armor. And that’s proof I want to protect my heart much more strongly than other people. That I don’t want to defeat enemies or save my comrades…I just want to wrap my own self up in a hard shell. There’s no way this sound of mine isn’t despicable.”

Haruyuki thought she would definitely get mad at him over this excessively self-deprecating line. But the Archangel replied without changing her tone or expression.

“I do not feel the individual differences between you little warriors as beautiful or despicable or any such thing. At any rate, I cannot go against my orders to destroy you while I am in my first form, so it is pointless to wonder how I feel.”

“…Oh…”

“However, I am able to decide whether I like or dislike all things, including you little ones. For instance, the other Four Saints are precious, and I do not care for the Four Gods of the Castle. I like the Twilight stage, but I despise the Hell stage. I can state that the pseudo-Being you are fighting is repulsive, and I believe that the next time I encounter the little warrior who twisted the power of the jeweled crown, The Luminary, that they stole from my domain and then dared to go so far as make me their guard dog after using it on me, I will spend approximately three thousand years evaporating them.”

Y-you will…huh? Haruyuki thought in a corner of his mind, shuddering. The silver crown that had restrained Metatron’s first form and the knight Enemy he had seen in the Society’s headquarters…That was apparently the effect of The Luminary, one of the Seven Arcs. Which meant The Luminary, said to be missing, was actually in the hands of the Society?

This bit of information nagged at him still, but right now he needed to focus on Mark II. Staring at Metatron’s face, he asked again, “So then…What’s my sound…?”

Metatron kept her mouth closed for a while, but then finally spoke in a slightly quieter voice. “At the very least, I do not enjoy this question.”

“I-I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer—”

“You must be able to discern it without asking such tiresome questions. Why would I make one who emitted an unpleasant noise my servant for a thousand years?”

“I-I’m really sorry. Wait. So then, what—?”

“Aah, really! Do you actually have such leeway as to make this kind of conversation with me?! I only just explained to you the damage from staying too long in the Highest Level!”

“R-right, you did.”

What were we talking about again? After thinking a second, he finally remembered. Metatron was talking about the gap between them. The mental wall everyone generated deep in their unconscious mind. This was, in other words… “Um. So then…Is what’s separating you and me the armor of this duel avatar itself?”

“Aye. Essentially, there is no need for armor or swords in this Highest Level. Because nothing can hurt you here. However, you have produced this same figure as on the Mean Level. As long as you have this awareness, I will not be able to share my own power with you.”

“B-but I mean, how am I supposed to…?” Haruyuki had already being fighting as Silver Crow for eight months. This figure was the most natural form to take while he was in the Accelerated World. Metatron said it was a manifestation of the mind to try to protect himself, but he had absolutely no awareness of this. “A-and I mean, you—you look the same as when we were in the Unlimited Neutral Field, though. It’s not like I’m the only one creating this gap…,” Haruyuki started muttering.

Metatron’s brow furrowed into a deep valley, a meter before him. But fortunately, the Archangel did not reprimand him. Instead, she hung her head and said half to herself, “It is indeed just as you say. There is something in me that could be called pride or boastfulness as a Saint, and it is that which is producing this form. But the time has come now to discard such shells. When I loaned you my wings, I made the choice to end a long stagnation.”

Metatron turned her face up, eyes still closed. Following her lead, Haruyuki also turned his face up. He couldn’t find a speck of light in the jet-black canopy. No; he wasn’t even sure if the sky was there or not. An endless spiritual darkness.

In a certain sense, the infinite sky was equivalent to a tough prison. Because either way, the fact that he couldn’t go anywhere was the same. And eternal time was equal to one second on a loop. The end was definitely not coming.

When he had awakened his flight ability and soared through the air of the duel stage for the first time, Haruyuki had felt it. That this world was infinite. But the Purgatory stage of Suginami Area No. 2 that had seemed so endlessly vast then was nothing more than the single smallest section of the Accelerated World. Above it were the Unlimited Neutral Field and the Highest Level, with its three overlapping worlds. Metatron had been held prisoner in an infinite and eternal prison, all without knowing why she had been born or the purpose of her fight.

Abruptly, a pillar of golden light rose vertically in front of him. Turning his gaze back, he found that the beautiful robe wrapped around Metatron was in the process of soundlessly vanishing. As the hem and sleeves melted into particles of light, the smooth lines of her body were revealed.

If this had been the Haruyuki of only a little while ago, he might have yanked his hand out of hers. But now, he only felt a sadness that pressed heavy on his chest.

A Legend-class Enemy with absolute power on par with the Four Gods of the Castle. The polar opposite of mere level-five Haruyuki in every way. But there was one thing they shared: The desire to see the edge of the Accelerated World. The desire to fly faster, farther, ever forward.

He didn’t need armor anymore, if that was all he wanted. He broke the shell that protected his soul and took a step toward her. He would allow the heart of a precious friend who shared the same dream to touch his own.

Silver light gently danced up from his body as well. The particles that made up Silver Crow’s armor were melting away. The naked body of his slender avatar was revealed, and then it further transformed into the real-world Haruyuki. The light rising up from their two bodies passed through their firmly linked arms and touched in their palms. Instantly, the circle this made flashed brightly and illuminated the infinite darkness with a ring of light.

Metatron slowly raised her eyelids and opened them completely for the first time. The golden eyes caught Haruyuki’s squarely, and the jet-black was painted over in a snowy white. Their two bodies melted into light, and just like when he first came to this Highest Level, his sense of sight and hearing and all other sensations disappeared and were lost. But Haruyuki felt it: another heart beating very close to his own.

The two hearts drew near each other. And touched.

Haruyuki couldn’t have known this, but in that instant, a change occurred inside the device called the Brain Burst central server—the Main Visualizer. The Brain Burst program raised the clock on the light quantum circuits inside that brain—the true matter of consciousness—and realized a thought speed of one thousand times faster. But this explanation was not the entire truth. Being accelerated was an intracerebral circuit interface that accepted a connection with the Main Visualizer via the Neurolinker. This communication was carried out not through the general-use global net, but rather through the nonpublic, super-high-speed, and high-capacity social camera net. And from accelerated Burst Linkers thought to be using their own dedicated quantum circuit within the Main Visualizer.

Right now, the quantum circuit with the name Metatron—one of the lights shining especially brightly in the galaxy Haruyuki once saw in “Takumu’s dream”—and Haruyuki’s own dedicated quantum circuit were connected in a new network. This phenomenon resembled the parallel processing that happened with the ISS kit main body and the kit users, but the nature of it was very different.

In contrast with the ISS kits, which used only negative emotion as the intermediary, the Metatron-Haruyuki network allowed the transmission of every kind of data. Not only thoughts and feelings, but also the power to fight…And even life itself.

In the pure-white light, Haruyuki heard it.

“Now, let us return to the Mean Level. It is time to fight our enemy.”

B-but…

“It’s all right. Stand and face it unafraid. Silver Crow…I am with you.”

Okay. Thanks, Metatron. I’ll fight. For my friends. For myself. And for you.

Time started to flow once more.