Accel World - Volume 18 - Chapter 10

10

Haruyuki didn’t remember how he’d landed. When he came to with a gasp, he was being held by Fuko on the snow-white ground.

“…Master…Where are we?” he muttered, staring vacantly into Sky Raker’s eye lenses.

It wasn’t Fuko who answered his question, however, but rather the 3-D icon floating above his head.

“What are you talking about, servant?! This place, this very space is Area Zero Zero! We are still in the external area, but we have indeed penetrated that isolated space at long last!!”

Hearing her lively voice, his own head cleared, and he finally pulled himself upright.

“Are you all right, Corvus?” Fuko asked.

“O-of course.” He bobbed his head. “Um. How long was I unconscious?”

“Just a few seconds. Your deceleration and landing were also wonderful.”

“Th-they were? …That was probably automatic control.” Scratching his head, he took a fresh look at their surroundings.

Above his head, the inky night sky embraced the massive full moon. Beneath him was the ground, a combination of complicated tiles. It seemed the Moonlight stage continued.

When he lowered his gaze, he found stone slabs standing upright about twenty meters ahead. Made of pure-white marble, they were the massive gate doors. They were now closed with no gap between them, and a silver metal plate was attached with a bolt in the center. A relief of the God Suzaku carved into it, the object shone coolly bathed in the moonlight, the gate seal he’d seen before.

It had probably regenerated when Haruyuki and his comrades charged in, and the doors closed. But the one who opened it before they barged in had to have been him…

Now Haruyuki was finally fully awake, and he whirled around, still sitting on the ground. And he saw it.

An azure duel avatar standing a little ways off inconspicuously but still cloaked in an overwhelming sense of presence. The somehow noble armor design, the straight sword on the left hip. The sky-blue eye lenses quietly shining as they stared at Haruyuki.

He took a deep breath and held it for a minute before quietly calling out,

“…Lead…”

Instantly, a faint smile bled across the face mask. A drop of warm light rose up in the almond-shaped eye lenses, spilled out soundlessly, floated in space, and disappeared.

The young azure samurai avatar, Trilead Tetroxide, sat formally on his knees to match Haruyuki, who was still sitting on the ground. “It has been some time, Crow,” he said with his airy, beautiful voice. “You really came back, hmm?”

“Sorry I’m late.” He managed to squeeze the words out from the depths of his chest where he felt something warm welling up ceaselessly. “But I came…because I promised you…that I’d see you again.”

“Yes.” Trilead nodded his head deeply. “I believed you… That this time would most certainly come.”

He stood up with a movement that belied gravity and approached them, almost sliding, and deliberately extended his right hand. Haruyuki took that hand and got to his feet and then shook hands with Trilead again, reflecting on the flood of emotions that came back to him.

This was the reunion he’d wanted so badly, and it wasn’t that he wasn’t happy. But Haruyuki did feel a sad pain pass through his heart. If only Wolfram Cerberus, whom he had similarly hoped to be reunited with, could have been there. Haruyuki was sure he could have become best friends with Trilead.

Haruyuki swallowed this fleeting pain and gripped Lead’s hand tightly once more. Then he let go, took a step back, and looked around.

The plaza inside the Castle’s south gate. The first time he’d visited, it had been a Heian stage, and when he escaped, it had been a Purgatory stage, so it looked totally different again in the Moonlight stage, but the terrain was basically the same. A wide passageway stretched out to the north from the square plaza and led to the imposingly beautiful main building of the Castle. On either side of the passage, gothic-style circular pillars stood at regular intervals, and orange watch fires lit up the niches between the pillars.

But the atmosphere was decisively different from the last time. What exactly was it…?

As he furrowed his eyebrows, Metatron spoke up from his right shoulder. “In the memories of Silver Crow that I referenced, several hostile, high-level Beings were positioned at this point. Did you dispatch them, Lead or whatever you’re called?”

Right. That was it—when they’d broken in and when they’d escaped, Haruyuki and Maiden had had to work hard to stay hidden from the soldier Enemies/Beings that patrolled this place. But now, there was not a single Enemy, at least not that he could see.

Trilead was naturally surprised to hear his name from a ten-centimeter icon, but after blinking a few times, he answered politely, “No, it wasn’t me. I alone could never defeat the Enemies who guard this plaza.”

“You alone…But in the Castle…,” Haruyuki started to say, baffled.

And then Fuko beside him quickly lifted her face. Tracing her gaze, Haruyuki also looked up at the night sky.

There was someone at the top of a remarkably tall pillar that stood on the boundary of the plaza and the passageway. The armor was a black that melted into the night sky. But the pale moonlight caught and highlighted the outline of the sharp design.

“I have a very bad feeling,” Fuko murmured.

This someone casually leapt down from the pillar, likely twenty meters tall, and somersaulted in midair before making a perfect landing.

Haruyuki knew the inky avatar walking briskly toward them. There was no mistaking the figure he had fought only four days earlier in Shibuya. But there was no way he could be here. There was a reason why he couldn’t be here.

“How…?” Haruyuki groaned hoarsely, while Fuko beside him took a step and then another forward.

The black avatar stopped a mere two meters away from Fuko and made his greetings, voice and attitude both laid-back. “Hey Rekka, Crow. Long time no see. Or wait, I guess not. Four days no see. Maybe it’s my first time meeting the person on your shoulder, Crow? No…I kinda feel like we fought a real long time ago.” The avatar waved a lazy hand, the hilts of swords crossed on his back poking out from above his shoulders.

The first seat of Great Wall’s Six Armors. The Anomaly, Graphite Edge. There was no mistake. But how could he be inside the Castle in the Unlimited Neutral Field? Wasn’t he supposed to have been caught in an Unlimited EK on the God Genbu’s altar outside the Castle’s north gate?

Haruyuki stood stock-still, dumbfounded, and Trilead came up beside Graph to give him one further shock.

The young samurai avatar looked at Haruyuki and Fuko in turn as he uttered entirely unexpected words. “You all seem to be acquainted, but just in case, allow me to introduce you. This is Graphite Edge, my honored teacher. He guided me in sword usage and the ways of the world as a Burst Linker. He is also the parent who gave me the Brain Burst program itself.”

To be continued.