Accel World - Volume 22 - Chapter 2

2

A dry wind blew across the rust-colored landscape. Haruyuki stepped onto the gravelly earth with hard silver feet and looked around.

All the office buildings encircling the hourly parking area in the real world had been transformed into giant rugged rocks. He could see essentially zero plant objects, and there were no birds in the pale-yellow sky. A Wasteland stage—which vied for first or second place in the super-yawn stage rankings.

But Haruyuki didn’t actually hate the Wasteland. You couldn’t go inside the boulders that took the place of buildings, and there were no weird terrain gimmicks or traps, so you could just focus on your battle with your opponent. Naturally, however, he had no duel opponent now. Even so, he did a brief scan of the area and once he confirmed that there were no Enemies or duel avatars around, he closed his eyes beneath his mirrored visor.

“I’m here, Metatron.”

He had previously needed nearly a minute to establish a link with the Archangel, but with just this single thought, a dot of white light appeared in the center of his dark field of view. It instantly stabilized from a blinking state and when he opened his eyelids—or more precisely, the shutters of his eye lenses—a glowing three-dimensional icon had materialized before his eyes.

“You’re late!!” The icon snapped an unfortunately familiar phrase before Haruyuki could say a word, as she slapped at Silver Crow’s helmet with tiny wings. “Do you realize how much time has passed since I called you, servant?”

“S-sorry. But time’s a thousand times slower in the real—I mean, the Lowest Level…”

“In that case, you must simply move within .001 seconds of my call,” she sniffed.

“That’s bonkers!”

His pathetically strangled cry made him realize now was no time to be argumentative. The minute he had promised Kuroyukihime and the others was in fact sixteen hours and forty minutes in the Unlimited Neutral Field, but he really should get back right away if possible. “W-wait, wait, forget that. Um, why did you call me? If you don’t need me for anything in particular, we have a big meeting soon on the other side, so—”

Whap, whap, whap!

“Foolish creature! I am quite busy myself, so the idea that I would call you here with no particular need…I won’t say I would never do that, but this is not one of those times.”

“Huh? So then what is it?” he asked as he rubbed his head at the site of the repeated wing slaps.

But the 3-D icon didn’t immediately reply. Instead, she examined their surroundings. “This place is…Hmm, it’s not very far away at all. Remain on standby for approximately thirty seconds.”

“Huh? Th-thirty seconds?”

Not far? From where? Haruyuki wanted to ask follow-up questions, but the 3-D icon had already vanished without a sound.

Left with no other choice, he counted down the half minute as he stood in the middle of the empty lot surrounded by massive reddish rocks. He counted ten, twenty, twenty-five seconds, and then he heard a faint echo of an unfamiliar sound, like something resonating at a superhigh frequency above his head.

Gah! Enemy attack? He dropped into a ready position and looked up to see something shoot straight down from the sky above. A female avatar, two wings spread wide, silver hair rippling gracefully. There was no mistaking her—this was the second form of the Legend-class Enemy the Archangel Metatron; in other words, Metatron’s true form.

Haruyuki was frozen in place as Metatron landed silently and approached Silver Crow’s mirrored visor with a beauty that made its intense majesty felt even though her eyes remained closed.

“What do you think? I made you wait only a mere twenty-eight seconds, yes? You would do well to learn from my example and come immediately when called.”

“W-wait, wait, wait! F-f-f-f-f-first…” He raised his hands unconsciously and grabbed the Archangel’s slender shoulders as he interrogated her. “H-how are you in this form in the Mean Level of the Unlimited Neutral Field? We defeated your first form in the Contrary Cathedral nearly a full nine days ago in real time. You should have gone back to your first form with the Change and returned to the dungeon ages ago— Oh! Is this maybe a vision or a holographic projection or something?”

As he rambled on excitedly, he squeezed and shook Metatron’s shoulders.

“S-such insolence!” The Archangel’s right wing snapped to attention and she flicked Haruyuki’s forehead with the tip of it. She might have intended it to be the lightest of touches, but given that this was a blow from the strongest Being in the Accelerated World outside the Four Gods, it was an order of magnitude stronger than the slaps of a 3-D icon with no battle strength to speak of.

“Hngah!” he cried out pathetically and flew backward to slam into a reddish-brown rocky pillar. That he escaped with only a 20 percent drop in his health gauge might have been due to the fact that the instant he took the wing poke, he instinctively tried to let the damage wash over him with the Way of the Flexible.

Even so, the effect of taking an incredible blow to the top of his head didn’t disappear right away, and when he peeled himself off the pillar, he fell face-first onto the ground. There was probably the white light of a stun effect circling around his head.

“Goodness. You did go flying farther than I’d expected.” Metatron glided over to him and, cupping her wings out to use them like hands, lifted Haruyuki up and cradled him. His depleted gauge remained that way, but the pure white phosphorescence of her wings was cozily warm.

“Unh.” More or less recovered from the stun effect, Haruyuki protested feebly, “Th-that was awful, Metatron.”

“It is your own fault for acting in such an unseemly fashion earlier.” She turned her face away from him sharply even as she continued to support him with her wings. “At any rate, you should now understand that I am not an illusion or anything of the sort.”

“Y-yeah. I understand completely. But…then how are you outside? Your first form in the Contrary Cathedral must have been restored ages ago.”

No matter how many times Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field were defeated, they were restored every time the Change occurred, and the Four Gods were no exception to this rule. And the interval between Changes was roughly seven days of time inside. Haruyuki and his friends had defeated her first form the previous evening, so it had already been nearly two years on this side, and countless Changes had to have occurred during that time.

Metatron nodded slightly, her eyelashes still lowered. “Yes, my first form has indeed been restored to the deepest level of the Contrary Cathedral.”

“Huh?” He stared hard at her. “So, so then don’t you have to go back in there, too?”

“I anticipated that myself…” Unusual for her, the Archangel allowed her sentence to trail away.

Now that he was thinking about it, pretty much all their conversations had been carried out via the 3-D icon or on the Highest Level where neither of them had actual bodies, so this was essentially the first time he’d had the chance to get a good look at the actual Metatron up close. Her face had the same structure as a human girl’s, but there was no whiff of humanity to her. It wasn’t that she looked polygonal or that she was too beautiful to be real, but rather that she had a divinity to her, akin to a real angel.

After talking to that tiny icon all this time, maybe I kinda forgot what Metatron’s really like…

Metatron opened her mouth once more, perhaps aware of what was in Haruyuki’s heart, perhaps not, as she stroked Silver Crow’s armor with both wings, almost tickling him. “Somehow, I…It seems that the system could not anticipate a situation in which the first form of Metatron would be outside what you little warriors call the ‘boss room’ when the transition occurred. I had returned to my castle prior to the transition’s arrival when you previously destroyed my first form, so I did not realize it before. But it appears now that I will not be forcibly returned to the room of the first form no matter how many times the transition happens.”

“Uh. Um. So in other words.” Haruyuki tried to digest the Archangel’s relatively difficult explanation. “If the Change happens when you’re inside the Contrary Cathedral, you’re returned to the inside of your first form. But when you’re outside like this, you stay in your true form forever. Is that it?”

“I believe I said exactly the same thing,” she replied curtly, and he nodded. Indeed she had.

“B-but then why were you in your icon form when you met me last night?”

“For me, that was not last night, but 15,212 hours ago, and I was approximately one hundred kilometers away from here at that time, so flying back was simply tiresome, servant,” she replied smoothly.

“A hundred…”

So then like in Gunma? Or maybe Shizuoka? he wanted to ask, but decided against it since she probably wouldn’t know what those words meant.

After they had returned to Suginami by way of the circular bus route the previous day, the party had held a short debriefing session at the Arita house before parting ways at six PM. Once he was alone, Haruyuki had a dinner of leftover rice and vegetables together with broad bean soup, took a bath, napped for an hour, and then visited the Unlimited Neutral Field again at nine.

He didn’t go to fight; he went to keep the promise he’d made to himself immediately after the fierce battle with the White Legion that he would go and see the true form of Metatron right after the mission was over. He wanted to thank her for helping him out so many times and then really sit and talk with her. But the first words out of her mouth when she appeared as a 3-D icon before him had been, “Let us train, servant.”

But Metatron was not interested in the duel techniques of Burst Linkers. She had only one objective: to further strengthen the link that connected her with Haruyuki. She apparently had been extremely displeased with the fact that their connection had nearly been severed by the White Legion’s Snow Fairy when they encountered her on the Highest Level during the battle.

On the roof of a tall building a little ways off from his condo, Haruyuki had sat formally on his knees, eyes closed, and practiced sensing Metatron’s presence. They had played hide-and-seek using the entire building, trained in conversing without using their voices, hunted Enemies, chatted endlessly, and on and on—for nearly two months of inside time, and Haruyuki had managed to achieve some modest results. Now, not only could he call her with his thoughts, he could receive something like a signal as a call from her: the faint bell that had echoed inside his brain in the car. Or more precisely, the sound of the halo that shone faintly above Metatron’s vibrating head.

After finishing his long training, Haruyuki had returned to his bedroom and flopped onto his bed, determined to sleep like a log until morning. He removed his Neurolinker and closed his eyes, and three seconds later, just as his consciousness was on the verge of slipping off into the distance, he heard Metatron calling him…even though he wasn’t wearing his Neurolinker.

Metatron had called out to him before in a dream, but he had been equipped with his Neurolinker. At first, he thought it was just ringing in his ears, so he ignored it, but the second and then third time he heard it, he realized it was apparently the real deal and hurried to push his Neurolinker back onto his neck. The instant he dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field, Metatron yelled at him, just as she had moments earlier: “Come as soon as I call you!”

“So you’re saying that whole time you were training with me, you were a hundred kilometers away? And yet the sound of you calling me still reached the Lowest Level?”

“This ‘sound of you calling’ is not a very beautiful way of putting it. Hmm.” She frowned. “From now on, let us call it the summons.”

“S-summon…”

Sounds like my servant level went up.

He set this opinion aside for the time being, preferring to seek an answer to his question, but Metatron raised a hand and placed it gently on his forehead.

“How many times must I tell you before you understand, servant? Our link is established through the Highest Level and distance in the Mean Level has no bearing on it. The reason the summons reaches even to the Lowest Level…Well, I don’t know the reason, either.”

For reaaaaal?

He didn’t give voice to this thought, but instead took the conversation a step back.

“So then…where have you been since you came back to Tokyo? If you go back to the cathedral, you’ll be returned to your first form with the Change. And I mean, you do rest and sleep and stuff, right? Especially now, you have to recover the strength you used up in the fight with the White Legion.”

“Your concern is unwarranted, servant.” Her tone was as curt as always, but she touched his helmet again in a gesture that was strangely gentle, and then opened up the wings cradling Silver Crow and retracted them. “We Beings have a different means of perceiving time, however slight, than you little warriors, but I do indeed require time to block off outside perceptions and decelerate my thinking. I moved away from To-ki-o for that purpose.”

“Huh.” He frowned. “O-oh, I get it. If you’re a hundred kilometers from the city, there’s basically no Burst Linkers to come attack you.”

“This way of speaking makes it sound like I was afraid and ran away, and I do not care for it. That was not my only reason for going to Fuji.”

“F-Fuji? Do you maybe mean Mount Fuji?!” Haruyuki stared, dumbfounded, at the Archangel and then looked toward the west. Not only was the sky of the Wasteland stage yellow and cloudy, countless clusters of massive rocks sprang up from the ground to block the way, so he couldn’t see the silhouette of the dormant volcano. But if they were talking about a Fuji that was a hundred kilometers away from Tokyo, that was pretty much the only option.

“S-so then when you were training with me, your true form was actually at Mount Fuji the whole time? What exactly is at Mount Fuji? Did you maybe heal your injuries there?”

But Metatron turned her face away, eyes closed, and proclaimed, “That is a secret.”

“…A-a secret?”

He had learned that it was pointless to argue when Metatron spoke to him like that, even if he was entirely baffled, so with no other choice, he let the matter drop. But in his heart he resolved to go and check what was out there one of these days, and then offered up a different question.

“But in that case, there isn’t really any place in Tokyo where you can truly relax and rest. Enemy-hunting Burst Linkers can show up anywhere, after all.”

Naturally, he didn’t think that a party with their targets set on a Wild- or Beast-class Enemy would be able to get the jump on Metatron, the most powerful of even the Legend-class Enemies, but the rule of the Accelerated World was that you never truly knew what would happen. Plus…if anyone learned that Metatron’s true form had left the Contrary Cathedral, some forces would probably try to come after her. For instance, Oscillatory Universe—whose clear victory she had overturned in the Territories the previous day.

This time, Metatron did not brush off Haruyuki’s misgivings. “Indeed, it is inconvenient that there is no place where I might securely cut off all my perceptions. If it comes to that, I have the option of borrowing a castle from one of the other Saints, but they are likely to request a strange compensation from me, and I do not wish that.”

He would have inquired further about that, but it would have taken the conversation off track once more, so he reined in his curiosity and continued, “So in other words, you just need a place where Burst Linkers would absolutely never go. The first thing that comes to mind is over there, but…” Haruyuki turned his face away from the west and toward the east.

Since the real-world car was parked in a lot in an office neighborhood, the buildings in this direction were also a succession of massive rocks, but they weren’t as dense as they were on the west side. And in between the gaps here and there, he could see the severe stone edifice along the north and south of the massive structure enshrined beyond the wall, the center of the Accelerated World occupying the central area of Chiyoda—the Castle.

“If you were inside, there’d be no one to meddle with you. And maybe somewhere far from the gates of the Four Gods, you could just hop over the wall…”

Is that a thing you could do? Before he could finish, Metatron was sighing in exasperation.

“Servant, if that were possible, it would then follow that you, too, would be able to freely come and go from Area Zero Zero.”

“Oh. I-I guess.” Shoulders slumping, he remembered the dream he’d had when he was parasitized by the first Chrome Disaster, Chrome Falcon’s memories.

Although it wasn’t quite a pure flight ability, by using his short-distance teleportation technique Flash Blink over and over, Falcon had been able to move through the air in a sort of pseudo flight, and it was with this power that he had made his way over the Castle wall. But not only did Falcon take serious damage from the ultra-gravity field around the wall even back then, the BB system sensed his “slide” and quickly blocked that way into the impenetrable fortress. Now, no matter what kind of special power a Burst Linker might have had, the instant you approached the wall anywhere other than at one of the four gates, you were yanked down into a bottomless moat where you died instantly. Apparently.

Even Sky Raker’s thrusters were basically useless, and they boasted a propulsive power greater than Haruyuki’s own silver wings, so flying over the wall was not a method that could ever be used to break into the Castle again. And the Four Saints, the most powerful of all Beings, were no exception to this rule.

“And…” Metatron turned her entire body toward the Castle. “When I entered Area Zero Zero attached to you, I had a certain thought. That the next time I came to this place, I would march in with my head held high after crushing the Four Gods as a member of Nega Nebulus.”

Haruyuki was more than a little surprised and definitely happy to hear Metatron utter the words “a member of Nega Nebulus,” but he felt like she’d start hitting him again if he said anything. So he settled for simply carving the feelings firmly into his heart and looked toward the Castle himself.

From between a gap in the strangely shaped rocks, he could catch a glimpse, albeit a faint one, of the massive, magnificent gate built into the Castle wall. Since their current position was on the west side of the Imperial Palace, that enormous gate would have been the Hanzomon in the real world—the west gate of the Castle in the Accelerated World. This was the place where Kuroyukihime and Fuko had fought the God Byakko in the battle three years earlier that had annihilated the first Nega Nebulus.

The two of them had just barely escaped Byakko’s ferocious attack with their lives, and they had safely rescued Ardor Maiden from where she was sealed away at the south gate and Aqua Current at the east gate. Graphite Edge, locked up at the north gate, had apparently escaped from the Unlimited EK under his own power at some point—albeit into the Castle.

Haruyuki and his comrades were steadily approaching one of their final objectives: attacking the Castle a second time. But it didn’t actually feel real, maybe because they still had so many obstacles to clear before then. And indeed, the most important of these was settling things with the Acceleration Research Society once and for all.

Nega Nebulus would finally beat back this organization they had been fated to confront so many times and take back the thruster parts stolen from Invincible, Niko’s Enhanced Armament. They would destroy the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, born from the ISS kits, and free Wolfram Cerberus, Haruyuki’s friend and rival.

As long as these goals remained unachieved, neither Haruyuki nor the reformed third Nega Nebulus could make any further progress. To that end as well, they simply had to prove that the White Legion was the parent group for the Society at the meeting of the Seven Kings coming up in four minutes in real-world time.

Newly resolved all over again, Haruyuki took a deep breath, figuring that they should get back to the starting point of this conversation. “I’m excited about when I can challenge the Four Gods together with you, too. But before that, we have to settle things with the Acceleration Research Society. Of course, I’ll report back to you after the meeting that’s about to start in the regular duel field—the Lowest Level. But why did you originally call—?”

Haruyuki started to ask and Metatron pressed a slender index finger to his mirrored visor.

“Before we discuss that, I would like to move elsewhere. After all your nattering about it, I wish to have a place where I can relax, which is only natural, isn’t it?”

And that’s supposed to be my fault?! Haruyuki thought, but it was obvious that he would only get a ready “yes” if he actually asked the question. And he would actually heave a huge sigh of relief if they could find a safe shelter for Metatron since she showed no intention of returning to the Cathedral.

“Um, uhhh…Inside of the Castle is out, the other dungeons are no good, and buildings turn into rock or ice or whatever depending on the stage and get smashed by Burst Linkers and stuff.”

As Haruyuki thought about the issue in earnest, the Archangel took a slight step back and turned her face toward the west side of the empty lot, eyes still closed.

“Do you have any thoughts on the matter, Sky Raker?”

“Hweh?!” Stunned, Haruyuki turned around, but he saw nothing except the reddish-brown pillars lined up there.

A few seconds later, however, a silver wheelchair rolled out from behind one of the stones, gravel crunching slightly beneath the tires. Seated in it, of course, was a pale blue F-type avatar clad in a snowy white hat and dress—Nega Nebulus’s deputy, “Strong Arm” Sky Raker.

Her flowing metal hair fluttering in the wind, Raker/Fuko rolled her wheelchair over to Haruyuki and Metatron, a faint smile rising up on her beautiful face mask.

“How very like you, Metatron. I had intended to completely cut off my aura.”

The Archangel chuckled. “Naturally. After all, I am not presently acquiring information through my servant’s eyes and ears. I realized you were hiding there the moment you appeared.”

“I wasn’t particularly hiding…”

Her smile turned wry, and Fuko turned her madder-red eye lenses toward Haruyuki.

“Corvus fought so hard during the Territories yesterday, I thought I would give him a bit of time as a reward.”

“Th-thank you for being so thoughtful…”

Shrinking into himself, he bowed neatly and then asked anew:

“S-so why are you here, Master?”

It was unclear how long Fuko had been behind the massive rock, but unless she had chanted the command at basically the same time as Haruyuki had accelerated, she couldn’t have appeared that much earlier. It was certain, though, that she hadn’t had the time to consult with Kuroyukihime and the others, which meant that she had chased after him at her own discretion.

“Now listen, Corvus,” the sky-blue avatar replied in a faintly exasperated tone. “It’s only natural that we be suspicious when you suddenly announce that Metatron called you before you entered the Unlimited Neutral Field, isn’t it? I thought it might have been a trap set by an enemy—by the Society—so I came after you. It does appear, however, that the call was real. The two of you have grown quite close at some point, hmm?”

“N-n-n-no, that’s totally not…Um, I’m sorry for worrying you…”

“You’ll tell me in great detail later exactly through what means Metatron is able to call you in the real world, Corvus. And from now on, please explain these events properly beforehand.”

Her tone was endlessly gentle, but when the actually very scary Master Raker spoke to him like that, he could only snap to attention and readily assent.

“R-roger!”

But if Sky Raker was Haruyuki’s teacher, then Metatron was his self-professed lord and master.

“I acknowledge that Silver Crow’s explanations have been insufficient,” the Archangel suddenly interjected and shifted in a gentle motion to stand directly in front of the wheelchair. “But it was I who called him this time, so there is no fault in Crow visiting the Mean Level as quickly as possible, Sky Raker.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not acceptable. You’re also a member of Nega Nebulus, so I’d ask that you put our Legion ties ahead of your own personal demands, Metatron.”

Crackle, crackle.

Haruyuki could almost see the bolts of white lightning bouncing between them. Fuko and Metatron were comrades from their mission into the Castle, but that apparently didn’t mean that they had completely opened up to each other. Not by a long shot.

I have to be the cushioning here! This thought did occur to him, but on the one hand, he had the strategic arms of the Accelerated World nicknamed ICBM, while on the other, he had an eight-thousand-year-old Being, the most powerful in the Legend class, and he worried that their eyes alone on him would dig holes into his armor.

Fortunately, however, the cold war reached its détente in about three seconds.

“As for the answer to your earlier question,” Raker said in her usual gentle tone, eye lenses flashing lightly.

Haruyuki cocked his head to one side, puzzled, before he remembered. Raker had apparently overheard Haruyuki and Metatron talking about somewhere safe outside the Contrary Cathedral from behind the rock.

“Do you have any ideas?” Metatron abruptly asked.

“I don’t know if you would approve or not, Metatron, but I may actually have an idea.”

“What?! Really?!” Haruyuki cried out unconsciously, before leaning forward and continuing in a quieter voice, “Do you know a place where Enemies and Burst Linkers wouldn’t go, Master?”

A faint smile spread across Fuko’s face once again, but rather than give voice to the reason for it, she stood up from her wheelchair in a supple movement and waved Haruyuki back a few steps before raising her right hand at the yellow sky. “Equip. Gale Thruster.”

At the same time as the voice command rang out, two beams of blue light poured down from the sky and hit Fuko’s back. Enveloped in light, the hat and dress disappeared from her avatar, and the wheelchair behind her also vanished. What appeared on her back in their place was a booster Enhanced Armament with elegant, flowing lines: Sky Raker’s wings, which Haruyuki had also borrowed when he lost his own flight ability.

“I think we can probably make it, but if I run out of energy midway, please hold me, Corvus.” Smiling, Fuko ignited her booster before Metatron could even react. “Corvus. Metatron. I’ll show you the way. Please follow me.”

She kicked off the ground and shot up into the sky, wrapped in the roar of jet propulsion. Haruyuki hurriedly deployed the silver wings on his back, while next to him, Metatron also gently extended her own snowy white wings.

“Honestly. Raker similarly does not offer sufficient explanation.” Metatron lifted off, grumbling all the while, and flew up into the sky at a speed on par with Gale Thruster.

Haruyuki desperately chased after her—or at least he tried to, but in an especially pitiful moment, his special-attack gauge was completely empty. He did actually have another way to fly without using his gauge or his Incarnate technique, but he had decided he would rely on Metatron’s borrowed wings only when he had completely exhausted his own resources and had no other choice—or he would try to do that anyway.

With no other option, he turned to the sky and shouted, “I’m sorry; please give me ten seconds!”

He clenched his right hand into a fist. There were no easy target objects to replenish a special-attack gauge in the Wasteland stage, so he would just have to destroy the massive rocks standing like a grove of trees around him. But while these weren’t indestructible like they would have been in the Demon City stage, they were relatively hard nonetheless. To do the maximum destruction in the shortest period of time, you would need an Enhanced Armament or a special ability if you weren’t a type specializing in fairly close-range attacks.

But Haruyuki set his sights on a nearby rock and kicked at the ground with everything he had, before launching a right straight punch with little flash to it. He had added one small trick, however: He’d affixed the image of a sturdy shaft piercing the rock from his fist to his elbow and up his shoulder to the core of his being. Tiny sparks flew from his every joint at the moment of impact, but Silver Crow—slender for a fighting type—gouged deep into the reddish-brown rock with his right arm, and the whole thing shattered with a resounding boom.

The polar opposite of the Way of the Flexible that Kuroyukihime had taught him, the Way of the Stiff transformed his avatar into a lump of steel for just an instant. He had learned the technique from fighting the superhard metal color Wolfram Cerberus and used it to pierce tough armor and structures.

He followed the right punch with a left and then a kick from each leg to destroy four massive rocks in succession. Within ten seconds, just as he’d said, Haruyuki had charged his special-attack gauge up to 50 percent, so he once again deployed his silver wings and ascended at maximum speed, hurrying to where Fuko and Metatron were waiting about a hundred meters up.

He’d been worried that Gale Thruster’s energy would end up significantly depleted while he kept them waiting, but once he caught up, he saw that Fuko had stopped the jet propulsion and that Metatron was supporting her avatar with one hand.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you wait!” He wanted to add something about how they looked quite chummy to his apology, but that would likely be stirring up a hornet’s nest, so he held his tongue.

“Listen, Corvus.” Fuko snapped her index finger out at him. “When you enter the Unlimited Neutral Field—”

“No matter what else, ensure your special-attack gauge is full,” Haruyuki finished, dejected. “I’ll be careful from now on.”

Metatron shook her head from side to side in exasperation. “You require the gauge or what have you to fly and such nonsense. You little warriors really are a bother.”

“Uh, um…It’s seriously superhard for little warriors—I mean, Burst Linkers, to fly, you know!” he replied, hovering, and watched his special-attack gauge inch its way toward empty.

Fortunately, Metatron did not try to drag the conversation out any further, but instead turned her gaze back to Fuko. “Well then, Raker, I’d ask that you now guide us.”

“Roger. Thanks for holding me aloft, Metatron.” Released from the Archangel, Fuko ignited her booster once more. “This way,” she said and started to fly south in the sky above Uchibori Boulevard, so Haruyuki and Metatron chased after her on their own wings.

Fuko went south for about five hundred meters along the Castle moat and then when they had flown over a rocky mountain as majestic as Australia’s Uluru—most likely the National Diet Building in the real world—she turned slightly to the east. There were no area boundaries in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and when they went over a broad ravine that was likely Sotobori Boulevard, Minato Area No. 1 lay ahead.

In the Territories the previous day, Minato Area No. 3 to the south had become the territory of Nega Nebulus, but Nos. 1 and 2 were still under the control of Oscillatory Universe. That said, he didn’t imagine they would run into any White members in the Unlimited Neutral Field now, but even so, he was fully on guard as he chased after Fuko’s blue jet flames.

Eventually, a mountain appeared up before them, about 250 meters high and shaped like the top had been lobbed off diagonally—Toranomon Hills Tower, developed in the 2010s. Even in the present in 2047, it was still one of the top twenty tallest buildings in Tokyo, and looking up at its majesty, Haruyuki wondered if this wasn’t perhaps where Fuko was taking them.

After all, the top of a mountain of that height would have been unreachable to all but those duel avatars with some kind of ability to run up walls, but that was at best only here in the Wasteland stage. In the Purgatory or Steel stages, you could go inside buildings and the elevators might even be functioning, so anyone could easily make it to the highest level. And on top of that, the roof was on a sharp diagonal, so even an Archangel would have a hard time living there.

Fuko quickly dispelled Haruyuki’s concerns. Although she did approach Toranomon Hills, she flew right past it to head farther south.

New mountains—likely tower condos in the real world—appeared one after the other, but it seemed that none of these was their ultimate destination. It had already been more than three minutes since they’d taken off from the west side of the Castle, so even though they were in economy mode at sixty kilometers per hour, Haruyuki began to worry that Gale Thruster’s energy was about to run out.

Just then, his field of view—which was obstructed by the clusters of condos—opened up all at once to reveal a basin covered in green. Although it was only cacti and other succulent plants, it was quite rare in the Wasteland stage. From the location, he assumed it was Shiba Park in the real world—under which lay Metatron’s domain, the Contrary Cathedral.

Fuko couldn’t possibly have been planning to return Metatron to her labyrinth, could she? If the Change occurred while she was in there, Metatron would be locked up in her first form and only able to appear in the outside world in her 3-D icon form.

Haruyuki was about to call out to Sky Raker up ahead to check what exactly she had in mind. But before he could, Metatron fell back to fly by his side.

“It appears that Raker is not moving toward my castle,” she said.

“Huh? Then where…?” Blinking rapidly, Haruyuki shifted his gaze from Shiba Park off to the right. Instantly, he realized that a strangely shaped mountain was rising up directly ahead of them, much taller than Toranomon Hills and far thinner. The silhouette was more like a tower than a building, and he had seen it before.

Back at the start of the first term of the school year, when Haruyuki had had his silver wings stolen by the marauder Dusk Taker, he had visited this place with the guidance of Ash Roller. Then, too, the Unlimited Neutral Field had been a Wasteland stage. He and Ash had ridden the motorcycle and raced up the vertical rock face, over three hundred meters, and Haruyuki had met her there for the first time: Sky Raker, Strato-Shooter, one of the Four Elements, a woman who had achieved an august return to Nega Nebulus and who had taught Haruyuki about the Incarnate system.

This was the old Tokyo Tower. And at its peak it was the player home where Raker had hidden away from the world for more than two years—Fufuan.

Haruyuki held his breath and looked up at the tapered tower while ahead of him, the light of Gale Thruster’s jets began to flicker irregularly. It had finally run out of energy.

Fuko spread out her arms to glide and Haruyuki and Metatron came around to either side to each grab hold of an arm.

Fuko looked to each of them in turn and then asked gently, “I don’t suppose you could carry me to the top of that tower?”

“I suppose we could,” Metatron deigned.

“Of course!” Haruyuki shouted.

With that, each flapped their respective wings forcefully.

In order to teach the Incarnate System to Haruyuki, whom she had only just met at the time, Fuko had mercilessly pushed him off the top of that tower. Having lost his wings, Haruyuki had to climb the tower with just his hands and feet, a task that took him seven days. During that time, Fuko had continued to wait for his arrival and dropped packages every day with food and notes containing hints.

Back then, once he understood how to use the Incarnate System, he had only been able to make a sword of light stretch out mere centimeters from his fingertips, but now he was able to use it freely as the Incarnate techniques Laser Sword and Laser Lance. He could even produce second-stage applications Laser Javelin and Light Speed, but naturally, he was still a long way from mastering the ultimate Incarnate. This ultimate technique arena was a third stage of Incarnate techniques, bringing about an overwrite of a higher dimension “through absolutism,” which Graphite Edge—the master of Trilead, a man he’d met in the Castle and a former member of the Four Elements—had told him about. However, the one who had first set him on the endless road of Incarnate was the very Fuko who was now entrusting Haruyuki with her body.

The Incarnate System had the two aspects of light and dark. If a Burst Linker kept using a fourth-quadrant destructive Incarnate, they would be swallowed up by a hole inside themselves. The negativity they felt toward themselves and others would increase without limit, and their personality would become twisted; all that lay ahead after that was carnage, an intense desire for nothing but destruction.

Even still, Haruyuki wanted to believe in the possibilities of the Incarnate System. It was precisely because he had this power that he’d been able to retrieve the wings that Dusk Taker had stolen from him, and he’d also been able to bring back Metatron when she was on the verge of annihilation. When he finally managed to reach the third stage of Incarnate, he felt like the truth about this world that Metatron and Kuroyukihime sought would finally be within reach.

“Master?”

“What?” Fuko turned her gaze on him, and Haruyuki realized that he had called her without any particular reason for doing so.

“Oh! Um, no, it’s, uhhh…”

But at just that moment, they reached an altitude of 333 meters and the peak of the rocky mountain came into view.

“Oh-ho!” Metatron sounded impressed as she held Fuko’s arm. “I’d realized that there was a portal at the top of this tower, but that’s not all that’s here, hmm?”

“Hee-hee-hee!” Fuko giggled. “It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it?”

Holding her tightly, Haruyuki and Metatron stopped ascending and moved horizontally to land gently on the edge of the top of the old Tokyo Tower.

In real time, it had been about twenty days since he’d visited this place, just before the Umesato Junior High School festival. That had been immediately after they’d challenged the God Seiryu to rescue Aqua Current from her sealed state, so he hadn’t had the luxury of enjoying the view. But when he looked at it now, he felt like it was even more beautiful than he remembered.

Even though they were in a Wasteland stage, the circular field, about twenty meters around, was covered in verdant lawn with a small pond in the center boasting a pure, clear water. Farther in was an elliptical blue light shimmering like a mirage—a portal that exited to the real world, also known as a leave point. Sweet flowering plants blossomed around the pond, and colorful butterflies fluttered around those.

Haruyuki wordlessly took in the sight, the true embodiment of a floating garden, when he heard the slightly skeptical voice of the Archangel.

“It is indeed a lovely view, but in terms of height, other places are actually higher up.”

“It’s not about the height alone, of course, Tron,” Fuko said, and quickly flicked through her Instruct menu to materialize an item as an object: a small key, gleaming with silver light. With this in hand, she walked toward the central pond. Haruyuki urged Metatron to follow her.

When they had walked about five meters from the edge of the garden, they heard the faint playing of a trumpet. Countless points of light popped into existence on the opposite side of the pond and coalesced into a cottage.

“Oh-ho! This is what you all call a ‘player home,’ yes?” Metatron’s voice held a note of astonishment, albeit ever so slight.

The cottage was small, but the dark green sloped roof, the white walls, and the bright brown door all came together to produce an image like something straight out of a picture book.

Fuko went around the pond and stepped up to the cottage, and the door automatically unlocked. “All right. Both of you, please come inside.”

Fuko prepared both a tea with a mysterious fragrance and a cake with a mysterious fruit for them. Immediately after polishing the meal off, Haruyuki looked around the cottage once again.

It only had one room, but this felt much larger than it had looked from outside. A small kitchen occupied one corner, and the rest of the space was taken up with a table for four, a bed, and a chest. Orange flames flickered pleasantly—and likely constantly—in the cute fireplace built into the wall.

After the annihilation of the first Nega Nebulus at the Castle, Sky Raker had lived in retirement in this cottage for two years until she met Haruyuki. Naturally, she hadn’t been on a continuous dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field that whole time; instead, she had used a disconnection timer and fixed her log-in position. So in a certain sense, she had basically sealed her avatar off at the top of the tower.

When he first saw this room three months earlier, Haruyuki had felt a hazy sadness in the air, but now all he felt was a comfortable warmth. Perhaps feeling similarly, Metatron started to speak in an unusually relaxed tone, finishing her cake soon after he did.

“That this room is far more cramped than my domain goes without saying…However, it is surprisingly not so unpleasant.”

“I’m so happy you like it,” Fuko replied with a slight grin, and opened her Instruct menu once again. She materialized a silver key essentially identical to the one she used before. With a klak, she placed it on the table. “All right. I’ll give this to you then, Metatron.”

“What?” Haruyuki cried out. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I don’t mean anything.” Fuko sounded exasperated. “This is what we were talking about right from the start, isn’t it?”

Haruyuki finally remembered what was actually going on. In the empty lot on the west side of the Castle, he and Metatron had been talking about finding a safe shelter in the Unlimited Neutral Field when Fuko appeared and said she had an idea before leading them to Fufuan. All of which meant…

“Huh?! So, so then, you’re going to let her borrow this house?!”

“Think less borrowing and more joint management.” Fuko nodded. “She can stay as long as she wants; I don’t mind at all.”

“B-but if you give Metatron the key, you…”

As he’d witnessed earlier, a player home was immaterial when the person in possession of the key was away from it, and no one else could interfere with it. Moreover, the old Tokyo Tower had completed its role as a tourist attraction—even the elevator no longer worked—so it was impossible to reach the peak no matter what the stage attribute, making it an ideal place for a shelter within the Unlimited Neutral Field. But put another way, this meant that when Metatron was in possession of the key, Fuko would no longer be able to use the house.

However.

“There’s no issue, though?” Fuko commented smoothly, and pulled a second—no, to be more precise, the first key out from somewhere on her avatar and set it down next to the key she’d placed there a few seconds earlier.

“Whaaat?!” Haruyuki was stunned. “Two keys?! D-did you make a copy somewhere?”

“As impressive as the Unlimited Neutral Field is, it does not have a locksmith,” Fuko noted. “Actually, I feel like making a copy of a player home key would create all sorts of problems.”

“S-so then, what…?”

“Accelerated World player homes always come with two keys. There are many theories as to why. Maybe one is for keeping in your Instruct menu and the other in your home storage…Or maybe for shared control with a partner.”

Haruyuki nodded in understanding. In the real world, house keys were generally electronic types with Neurolinker authentication, but keys in the Accelerated World were physical items. In which case, it was only natural to want a spare, and there might be times when an avatar wanted to share the home with another person. Fuko was saying that she would keep one of the keys and entrust Metatron with the other.

But the Archangel didn’t move to take the key on the table. Instead, she stared at Fuko, her eyes still closed. “Are you fully aware of what you’re doing, Raker? If you entrust a presence like myself with your house key, anything might happen because of it. In the course of events, my first form might even come to stay in this garden.”

“Eeah!” Once more, it was Haruyuki who reacted.

If Metatron’s first form, the divine beast that burned up anything and everything that lived with its super-large laser Trisagion, took over the garden in the sky and worse, was removed from the control of Metatron’s true form, no one—not even Fuko and her key—would ever be able to approach the small cottage again.

But Sky Raker’s smile remained firmly in place. “We’ll deal with that when it happens, Tron. You’re a member of Nega Nebulus, and if you are in trouble because you don’t have a safe place to go, then it’s only natural that I would do this much for you as your comrade. And Fufuan is right by Shiba Park and your castle, so perhaps you can feel more at home here?”

“……”

Unusually for Metatron, she was silent for more than five seconds before nodding slightly. “I do not have this ill-defined parameter of ‘feeling,’ but if you are willing to do this much for me, then I will gratefully accept.”

She reached out and took one of the keys lined up on the table. The key shone with a pale white light, rose up gently, and was absorbed into Metatron’s palm.

Fuko grabbed the remaining key and stored it in her own Instruct menu. “I don’t come here very often anymore, so feel free to use the house as you please. It does shake a little in the Storm stage, though.”

A bright smile spreading across her lips, she brought her hands together above the table and continued in a different tone.

“Now. Corvus, what exactly was the reason Metatron called you, then?”

With the conversational ball suddenly tossed in his direction, Haruyuki blinked rapidly beneath his mirrored goggles. “That’s, because…To see if there wasn’t a safe shelter for Metatron…”

The Metatron in question sitting to his right let out an exasperated sigh. And finally, Haruyuki himself also remembered the correct sequence of events.

The reason they’d started talking about a shelter was because Metatron had materialized in her true form in the vacant lot of the west side of the Castle. And the reason for that had been to explain the reason she had called Haruyuki. And that explanation hadn’t actually happened yet.

“Um, I’m sorry, she hasn’t told me,” he said, scratching his helmet.

Now Fuko shrugged. “I thought as much. Well then, let’s get into the issue at hand. Metatron, in the real world—the Lowest Level—we are currently about to attend a very important meeting to decide what happens next in the battle against the Acceleration Research Society and the White Legion. Corvus will no doubt be asked for key testimony, so if it is not a matter of some urgency, I’d prefer it if he focused on the meeting right now.”

Fuko didn’t so much as flinch in the face of the true form of one of the Four Saints—the most powerful Beings in the Accelerated World after the Four Gods. But they couldn’t leave the Castle, and Metatron was right here.

Haruyuki, however, unconsciously shrank into himself, though Metatron seemed to take no offense. In fact, she hung her head ever so slightly, eyes still closed, as though in apology.

“I understand that something important will occur soon for Nega Nebulus in the Lowest Level. And normally, I would rest myself in some place or other to await my servant’s report. But…I received a request I cannot easily refuse from a sworn friend. And an urgent one at that.”

“Sworn friend?” Haruyuki exchanged a glance with Fuko. Although Metatron possessed an intelligence essentially on par with or greater than that of a human being, when all was said and done, she existed as a CPU character in a fighting game. Who on earth was this “friend”?

Wait. I’ve heard that expression before. And not in the real world, but somewhere in the Accelerated World. Not from a Burst Linker, either. From someone else…

“Is this friend of yours a dangerous presence?” Fuko asked Metatron, before Haruyuki could succeed in unearthing the memory.

“That would depend on the definition of the word dangerous,” the Archangel replied. “I shall guarantee that she will not act in such a manner as to deplete your health gauges or steal your Burst Points. But I also cannot anticipate what she intends to discuss. There is a possibility that it may cause a shock to your logic circuits.”

Haruyuki felt a slight shiver of fear, wondering what this “friend” could possibly have to tell them, but Fuko smiled.

“If it means that we will be treated to a tale that surprising, then I actually look forward to it. Where should we go to meet this friend of yours?”

“There is no need to move,” Metatron said slowly. “In the Mean Level, that is. The discussion will take place in a location you wished to see, Sky Raker.”

“I see. The famed Highest Level, hmm?”

The exchange brought up a memory from three days earlier. To get information on the final Arc—The Fluctuating Light—Haruyuki, Fuko, and Metatron had broken into the Castle through the Suzaku gate and had happened upon the young samurai Trilead Tetroxide and his master/parent, Graphite Edge. During their conversation, Fuko had asked Metatron if she could see the Highest Level, too, and Metatron had asked if she wanted to give it a try, but then Graph interjected and they hadn’t actually gone anywhere.

“I know I asked you this in the Castle, but it’s not somewhere one can easily go, is it?” Fuko said.

“If you were attempting to do so as an individual, even you would require effort in the unit of years in the Mean Level,” Metatron sniffed. “But it is possible as long as you can align with myself and my servant. If you cannot, well, we will communicate the details of the conversation.”

“When you put it like that, right or wrong, I’d like to try. But…Corvus is one thing. It seems like it would be difficult to align with you, though, Tron.” Shrugging once again, Fuko spread out her hands on the table. “So? What do I have to do to align?”

“The act itself is simple. You simply do this.” Metatron grabbed Fuko’s hand. And then she reached out with her other hand to Haruyuki at her side. Sucked in, he gripped this hand and took Fuko’s free hand with his own.

They formed a triangle at Metatron’s urging, but now that Haruyuki thought about it, he had only visited the Highest Level twice himself. And the first time had been in the middle of that intense battle with the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, while the second time had been immediately after they’d gotten dragged into Orchid Oracle’s large-scale Incarnate technique. He had no experience shifting in a peaceful moment like this.

What on earth am I supposed to do now that we’re holding hands? He started to get nervous.

“No need to fret,” the Archangel instructed. “Interrupt your visual input and sense the flow of light that connects you and me with Raker.”

He closed his eye lenses and turned his focus to his hands. Even through the metal armor that covered the palms of his duel avatar, he could feel the warmth and softness of the hands of Metatron and Sky Raker. This sensory information became a hazy light that flowed back and forth between the three of them.

There had been just one other time when Haruyuki tried to reach the Highest Level on his own. He had been guided by a mysterious voice and tried to revive the Archangel’s core, which still remained on the Highest Level after she’d vanished, protecting Haruyuki from the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s attack.

At the time, the link with Metatron was on the verge of being severed, so it had been like trying to grab hold of a star flickering in the distant night sky. But now they were holding hands tightly. He could clearly feel the pulse of the higher-order link that he and Metatron had gradually strengthened over a period of time that included his two months of training the previous evening.

“Master, please follow me.” He spoke this thought at Fuko and heard her voice in reply in his mind.

“Yes, anytime.”

“Here we go.” He aligned his consciousness with the link with Metatron, jumped on the wave of light, aimed for the heights of the Accelerated World…and flew.

Skreeeeee!!

With the shrill sound of reacceleration, the hardness of the chair, the aroma of the tea, and even the mass of his duel avatar itself vanished. When he opened his eyes again, they were no longer inside the cozy cottage.

Well, the spatial address itself hadn’t changed. But the world had been plunged into darkness, and the three-dimensional structures of the home, its furnishings, and the old Tokyo Tower were depicted as minuscule points of light. The blue glow pulsing immediately next to them was the portal. On the ground a distant 333 meters below, countless glimmers shone and flashed, depicting something like the Milky Way itself. They were all what Metatron called “nodes”—the social cameras of the real world.

“…So this is the Highest Level,” a voice murmured.

He lifted his head and saw Fuko standing next to him. Fortunately—he supposed—she was not naked in her physical body, but in the form of Sky Raker. But just like the house, her outline was drawn in particles of white light and she was semitransparent. Haruyuki was similarly depicted in the form of Silver Crow.

“It’s beautiful,” she sighed. “Almost like a sea of stars. I wish we could’ve brought Sacchi. It was like this with the Castle, too. I keep seeing all these things before she does…”

“Yes. But…” Haruyuki nodded and then shook his head. “I think Kuroyukihime would say she doesn’t want someone to bring her; she wants to come to these places under her own power. I just know that someday, she’ll break through the guard of the Four Gods, open the gates, and march into the Castle with her head held high.”

“Hee-hee! I guess so. And so then…” She looked around their surroundings, her mane of light swinging. “I wonder where Tron went?”

“Huh?” Haruyuki whirled his head around, but there was no sign of Metatron anywhere. They couldn’t possibly have left her in the Mean Level?

“Of course you did not, servant.”

Together with this sudden rebuke, he felt a whap on his helmet and Haruyuki looked up. Metatron was descending to land softly behind him, folding her large wings once more.

“I will tell you this right now. The reason you and Raker are able to shift to this level is because I am here. Since the founding of BB 2039, no little warrior has reached the Highest Level through their own power…ostensibly.”

“I—I know…,” he answered, but added in his heart, But Kuroyukihime will definitely make it here someday. “So then where’s your friend, Metatron?”

“She has already arrived.”

The words weren’t even out of Metatron’s mouth before a small dot of light appeared next to her. The regular blinking quickly turned into a steady shine and expanded soundlessly to produce a thin disc about ten centimeters around—although in this space, that was merely Haruyuki’s subjective measurement. The disc appeared to have no thickness at all, and another extremely thin ring appeared around it, with ten lines like needles stretched out, intersecting the disc. The word sun popped up in the back of Haruyuki’s mind, and then suddenly, the disc assumed the shape of a forehead and carved out a human figure.

A girl. She was a little shorter than Metatron, but her costume, reminiscent of ancient Japan, had real volume to it. Her gentle beauty was also Japanese, and her straight hair fell all the way to her feet. He felt it was fairly lifelike for a duel avatar, but he couldn’t pick up the actual texture or feel of it in the Highest Level where everything was depicted in particles of light.

Even though she had her eyes closed, like Metatron next to her, when she caught Haruyuki with her gaze, he felt a fathomless pressure. And then the F-type avatar gently raised an arm to materialize a large hand fan out of nowhere and hid her mouth with it.

“We finally meet, Silver Crow.” Her voice was graceful and refined.

“Hwa?” After a relatively pathetic first utterance, Haruyuki asked ever so timidly, “Um…Do you know me?”

“Naturally. This may be the first time we have faced each other like this, but we have exchanged words.”

“Uhhh…Um…”

The only Japanese-style duel avatars Haruyuki knew were Ardor Maiden, Trilead Tetroxide, and the assassin ninja Shadow Cloaker from the White Legion, with whom he had fought the previous day. He had absolutely no recollection of an avatar like this, more reminiscent of a queen from the age of the gods than of a shrine maiden. Her courtly phrasing was similar to the mysterious voice that had given him advice on sword techniques when he fought Glacier Behemoth in the Territories, but the tone was completely different.

Wait.

He had no memory of the form, but he did feel like he’d heard the silky-smooth mezzo-soprano voice somewhere before. Not in the normal duel field or in the Territories. No—in the Unlimited Neutral Field. And not in a normal time, but in some kind of extreme situation…

When Haruyuki had cocked his head as far as it could possibly go to one side, Fuko brought her face in close and whispered, “Corvus, this person is probably—”

But before he heard what came next, his brain made the connection, albeit ever so faintly. “Oh! Are you maybe from that time?! You’re the person who told me that there was still hope when I thought Metatron was going to disappear!”

Unconsciously, he took a step forward and then another. He was about to clasp the fan-holding hand of the avatar with both of his own to express the gratitude welling up inside him. And then he froze in his tracks.

The F-type avatar before him had said then that she was Metatron’s sworn friend. And Metatron had said the same thing just now. That she wanted Haruyuki to meet her “sworn friend.” The Archangel had never treated Haruyuki as anything but a servant; she would never call a little warrior a sworn friend even if they were a powerful King-class soldier. Which meant that this woman was not a Burst Linker, but rather…

His hands, frozen a mere five millimeters from the woman’s right hand, slowly opened up and inched backward. “Um, are you maybe the same as Metatron?”

“If you had gone on and touched us, we would have slapped you in the place where you stood.” The fan hiding her mouth snapped shut, and the woman announced her name, her bearing the height of self-possession. “We are one pillar of the Four Saints, the Being Amaterasu, enshrined at Amano Iwato—what you would call the Tokyo Station Underground Labyrinth.”

I knew iiiiiit!! Haruyuki very nearly screamed and dashed back, but forced himself to keep it together.

When he’d gone to help Metatron on the verge of extinction, the owner of the mysterious voice guiding him had indeed given her name as something, something-terasu. He hadn’t managed to catch the whole thing, but now it was clear that it had been Amaterasu, the most powerful of all Enemies as a Legend-class Being, with the motif of the mythological Japanese sun god. It made sense that Metatron would call someone like this a sworn friend.

Shuddering at the fear that belatedly rose up within him, Haruyuki started to thank her for helping him. “I-it was you who spoke to me then, right, Ama—Miss Amaterasu? Um, thank you so much. Because of you, I was able to help Metatron—”

“Servant?” Metatron cut in abruptly, breaking her long silence.

He started and turned his face to look at her. “Wh-what?”

“You don’t give me any titles at all, and yet you offer Amaterasu a title of honor?” the Archangel said unexpectedly, furrowing her slender brow ever so slightly.

“Gulp! I—I mean, it’s just, I’m only meeting Miss Amaterasu for the first time and all,” Haruyuki responded.

The sun goddess spread her fan once more and spoke in the same languid tone as before. “Although we personally would prefer ‘my lord Amaterasu,’ if Metatron accepts a lack of title, then we, too, shall follow her example.”

“Th-thank you.” Haruyuki ducked his head in a bow and then had a sudden realization. “Actually, please wait a moment. When you called out to me before, Amaterasu, I don’t remember you speaking so formally.”

If his memory was true, the voice he’d heard then had been extremely unadorned and hadn’t used the royal “we” but rather a normal “I.”

Amaterasu brought her fan up around her nose awkwardly—or maybe it just looked that way to him. “At that time, the link via Metatron was on the verge of being severed. We sought to minimize the amount of information to be transmitted. This is our true self.”

“Um…uh-huh.”

Well, she is Metatron’s friend at any rate. She seems like she’s got her own quirks, too.

Perhaps picking up on Haruyuki’s thoughts, Amaterasu snapped her fan shut with some force once more. “Hear me, Silver Crow. Though we may permit the omission of our titles, you must never forget to maintain a worshipful attitude toward us. If you would thank us, this should not be carried out in the Highest Level. Rather, you must be conscientious and make your way to our shrine. Naturally, you must not forget an offering.”

“R-right…Definitely, soon,” he promised, and then realized that meant he might be attacked by Amaterasu’s first form if he dived into the Tokyo Station Underground Labyrinth in the Unlimited Neutral Field, but it was too late. In his heart, he added a caveat that he would go when he was level seven—no, level eight—and then glanced over at Metatron. “Um, Metatron. So you called me to introduce me to Amaterasu? Oh, of course, I’m glad to be here, but why now?”

“Your memory capacity is as low as ever, servant. I believe I told you I called you because I received an urgent request from my friend Amaterasu.”

“Oh…R-right.” He shifted his gaze once more from the Archangel back to the sun god. “Um, so did you have an urgent errand for me?”

“We would not engage in such a tiresome act if we did not. Unlike Metatron, we place a greater weight on introspection, thus we shift to the Highest Level in this way perhaps once in a hundred years. However, it is not we who have business with you.”

“Huh? Then…who?” Completely bewildered, Haruyuki looked back and forth between the two higher-level Beings.

It was neither Metatron nor Amaterasu who responded to his question, but instead a fifth person whose voice he could hear from everywhere and nowhere.

“Me.”

Gentle and smooth with a sweetly sour echo. This time, even Haruyuki knew who owned this voice. Because it was the very person who he’d fought the ultimate battle with only one day earlier.

“You…!” He jumped a step back unconsciously and dropped into a ready position.

A new F-type avatar stepped out from behind Amaterasu. Her surprisingly slender form belied the thickness of her armor, and sharp thorns sprouted from every part of her body while parts of her hair adopted rose motifs. There was no mistake; it was the third of the Seven Dwarves, Grumpy, Rose Milady.

“Wh-what are you—?” he started, but then realized with a gasp. The reason was unclear, but the method wasn’t. Just as Haruyuki and Fuko had reached the Highest Level via the link with Metatron, Rose had also borrowed the power of Amaterasu. Which meant…“Rose, are you like a servant or something to Amaterasu?”

The noblewoman avatar smiled faintly. “I would hope that we’re friends.”

Neither refuting nor affirming this claim, the sun goddess responded. “We have fulfilled your request, Rose. Speak until your heart’s content…Silver Crow.”

Haruyuki stiffened reflexively at hearing his name. “Y-yes!”

“We thank you once more for saving Metatron. Of all the Saints, she is the most restless. Do lend her your aid again in the future.”

“Yes!” He nodded with some force, although he was violently moved by this sudden statement.

Metatron, however, naturally raised a hand and rained a powerful flick down on Haruyuki’s defenseless forehead.

“Ow, ow, ow!” he cried. There was no physical interference in the Highest Level, but he couldn’t help but feel the illusion of pain at Metatron’s attack. He pressed a hand to his forehead, and a faint smile rose up on the part of Amaterasu’s mouth that peeked out from the edge of her fan.

Without any warning whatsoever, the particles of light that made up her avatar scattered. Just as when she’d appeared, all that was left in the space was a sun disc, and then this too shrank into a single point like a video on rewind. The final dot of light flashed several times before disappearing.

Haruyuki lowered the hand pressed to his forehead and looked at the serene Metatron, the dumbfounded Fuko, and Rose Milady, on whose face he could read no expression, before muttering to no one in particular, “Amaterasu’s…inside her first form in the boss room of the Tokyo Station Underground Labyrinth like the— Metatron, right?”

He’d very nearly said “the old Metatron,” but Rose couldn’t have known that the Archangel had left her labyrinth. And he couldn’t go giving any extra intel to a member of a hostile Legion.

And actually, the fact that Rose Milady had been informed that Haruyuki and Fuko were in this place at this time could have been dangerous in and of itself. If she managed to tell her comrades through some means or other, they very well could ambush Haruyuki and Fuko when they returned to the Mean Level from the Highest Level.

Metatron might have been ignorant of the Burst Linkers’ fights, but she had to have understood this logic. Why on earth had she and Amaterasu brought Rose Milady to meet Haruyuki and Fuko?

Haruyuki felt increasingly on guard, rather belatedly.

“That is exactly correct,” Metatron replied in her usual regal tone, after glancing at him with closed eyes. “Of the Four Saints, Amaterasu is the most—to borrow one of your words—shut in. I don’t believe she was exaggerating when she said she shifts to the Highest Level once every hundred years.”

“W-wow…”

A hundred years in the Unlimited Neutral Field was thirty-six days and twelve hours, definitely not a brief period of time, even in Haruyuki’s real-world perception. What reason could Rose Milady have had to go so far as to bring this shut-in goddess out of hiding and contact Haruyuki and Fuko on the Highest Level?

The noblewoman avatar with her countless thorns maintained her silence, her near-almond-shaped eye lenses firmly fixed on Haruyuki. He wanted to ask her what she wanted, but if he actually gave voice to the words, he would have no choice but to follow where they led. The pressure, alongside his own doubts, wedged into his heart and locked his jaw shut until Fuko gently patted his shoulder. This sensation was also an illusion, but it slowly melted away his nerves, and he let out a deep breath.

“It’s been a while, Rose,” Fuko remarked quietly.

After another two seconds or so of silence, she nodded slightly. “I wonder how many years it’s been since we spoke like this, Raker. I never imagined you’d be here as well.”

“I do apologize if I’m interrupting. But now that it’s come to this, I can’t exactly say nothing and walk away. The situation is…You do understand, don’t you?”

From this exchange, it appeared that Rose and Fuko were old acquaintances. But neither of them seemed particularly interested in reviving that.

The situation Fuko was talking about was, of course, the meeting of the Seven Kings in a few minutes in the real world. Nega Nebulus planned to explode a bomb there: Shihoko’s replay card. Essentially, this was the only means they had with which to back the White Legion and the Acceleration Research Society into a corner. Fuko was declaring in a roundabout way that they would not be persuaded or won over regardless of the reasons Oscillatory executive member Rose Milady had for getting in touch with them.

Rose nodded, a hint of sorrow bleeding out onto her dazzlingly beautiful face mask. “I assumed Nega Nebulus would cancel the meeting of the Seven Kings yesterday. Although it’s a fact that we lost in the Territories and had our right to control Minato Area Three taken from us, we didn’t give you a single piece of evidence with which to censure Oscillatory. Or we shouldn’t have. But you didn’t request a stop to the meeting. Which means you have some prospect for success.”

“You are free to think so if you’d like, but I will neither confirm nor deny,” Fuko replied, her tone gentle but resolute. “Rose, you of all people can understand that once the Black King opened hostilities against Oscillatory, she would never withdraw, no matter what happened. She risked level-nine sudden death to take part in the Territories yesterday. Regardless of her prospects or lack thereof for success, the Black King would not cancel the meeting, nor would she shrink from the battle ahead.”

“…I suppose not. The depth of Nega Nebulus’s determination was communicated more than sufficiently during the Territories.” Nodding slowly, Rose Milady turned her eye lenses to Haruyuki. “Corvus, you fought wonderfully yesterday. I never dreamed that you would allow your friend to cut through your own body.”

“No. Um. I was just caught up in the fight.” Haruyuki had not expected to be complimented in a place like this, and he reflexively hunched inward.

In the Territories the previous day, Haruyuki had defeated Rose Milady, Orchid Oracle’s bodyguard, by sacrificing his own body, a strategy that likely wouldn’t work on her again. He had blocked her field of view by feinting that he was going to swing his sword at her, and Trilead had released Heavenly Stratus from behind, a single-blow Incarnate technique that sliced both in half. It was a very particular strategy that could never have come together without the power of Lead’s technique, and of course Lime Bell’s Citron Call, which could wind back even fatal damage.

But even so, in the height of that fierce battle, Haruyuki had had the vague feeling that if Rose had wanted to, she could have killed him in an instant before he could have gotten anywhere near her. She just…didn’t…for some reason.

“And I don’t really think I won,” he admitted. “We were totally desperate, but you put a limiter on your own power…Although I don’t know why.”

Rose shrugged her thorny shoulders. “I heard you said the same thing to Oracle. But you’re overthinking. Your will was greater than mine, more serious. That’s all.”

A smile flashed across her face, and Rose looked at Fuko once more.

“Raker, I didn’t ask Amaterasu to arrange for me to see you—more precisely to see Silver Crow before the meeting in order to persuade you to withdraw. I just…I wanted to know.”

“Know?” Fuko raised an eyebrow. “You all know everything she’s doing and yet you still follow the White King, yes? I believe you are much more knowledgeable than we are about what the Acceleration Research Society has done up to now and what they’re planning to do from now on.”

“I won’t deny that. The Seven Dwarves and the Society are separate groups, but in the end, Ivory Tower is the one leading both, after all.”

Haruyuki felt a sharp throbbing deep in his heart.

In the previous day’s Territories, even though they were fighting the ultimate battle—or maybe precisely for that reason, Haruyuki had felt like he couldn’t hate this Burst Linker Rose Milady the way he did Black Vise. But she had announced that she followed the White King in full awareness of the fact that the White Legion and the Acceleration Research Society were two sides of the same coin and the fact that the Society had disseminated the ISS kits and tried to drive Niko to total point loss. That was probably the same for the rest of the Seven Dwarves—no, every member of the White Legion.

He couldn’t, and didn’t, want to believe that there existed a logic that could make such evil justifiable. So did that mean that in the end, Rose held the same values as Black Vise, Argon Array, and Dusk Taker? Unconsciously, he clenched his hands into fists.

Perhaps noticing this change, the noblewoman silently shifted to face Haruyuki squarely. She stared at him, her eyes basically at the same height as his own. “Corvus, it’s only natural that you hate us. I doubt that anything I could say could change that feeling in you. Oscillatory has its own reasons for fighting, and they are absolutely incompatible with Nega Nebulus’s.”

“So then!” Haruyuki shouted in a strangled voice, clenching his fists even tighter. “So then why did you call me here?! Attacks on avatars don’t work in the Highest Level, and you already know we’re not going to get anywhere talking to each other. Isn’t this meeting pointless?!” He sounded a tiny bit like a child sobbing convulsively, and Rose didn’t reply right away.

Instead, breaking her unusual silence, Metatron began to speak. “Your awareness that any attack is nullified is incorrect, servant.”

“Huh?” Haruyuki gaped, though his surprise turned into a shiver of fear the instant he heard what the Archangel said next.

“What is ineffective in the Highest Level is at most interference with the individual. For those who have learned the methodology, it is possible to interfere with the connection between individuals.”

The connection—in other words, the link.

Haruyuki gasped, and Metatron nodded at him before turning her face to Rose.

“Rose Malady or whatever it was. Is Snow Fairy not going to appear in this place?”

Right. The second Rose Milady had appeared, that name should have been the first thing that came to his mind. In the opening stages of the Territories the day before, Haruyuki had shifted his consciousness to the Highest Level together with Metatron, and Snow Fairy, the second of the Seven Dwarves, had appeared there. In a total reversal of her adorable girl-type appearance, she had mercilessly attempted to sever the link between Haruyuki and Metatron. In a certain sense, it was an attack more frightening than the Incarnate technique Brinicle, which instantly killed at first touch.

“No.” Rose shook her head slightly. “I haven’t told Fairy—or anyone in the Legion, for that matter—about this contact. Although Fairy’s always been able to shift to the Highest Level without borrowing the power of a Being, so there’s a nonzero possibility that she might show up suddenly.”

Haruyuki couldn’t help but whirl his head around to examine their surroundings. But only the galaxy of nodes flickered quietly in the inky black space; he couldn’t pick up any other aura there. He let out a sigh of relief, until a thought struck him:

“Um, Metatron. You said before that there’d never been a Burst Linker who could reach the Highest Level on their own power, right? But Snow Fairy—”

“I said that there shouldn’t be, servant,” the Archangel corrected before adding, “And I have no doubt that Snow Fairy also obtained help from a high-level Being in the beginning. Although I don’t know if it was one of the Four Saints or someone else.”

“What? There are Beings other than the Four Saints who can talk like you guys?”

“Conversely, why would you think there are not?” Metatron asked, exasperated.

Fuko chose that moment to toss him a life preserver. “Corvus, the Four Gods of the Castle do speak, you know.”

“Oh. R-right…”

“Well, I don’t expect that those Gods would assist a Burst Linker, however,” the Archangel sniffed.

Haruyuki was of the exact same opinion. Or rather, if they could have built a friendly relationship with even just one of the Gods, there would no longer be any need to charge the four gates with sheer force.

According to Graphite Edge, two developers had designed the Unlimited Neutral Field. One sought an eternal seal for the final Arc, TFL—The Fluctuating Light—while the other wanted its release. Developer A, who sought the seal, had generated a super-massive dungeon around TFL—aka the Castle—and set on guard around it four Legend-class Enemies, the Four Gods. In contrast, in order to cultivate a Burst Linker who could attack the Four Gods and the Castle, developer B, seeking the release of TFL, had produced everything else—the Four Saints and the four great dungeons, the lower-class Enemies, the shops, and perhaps even the Brain Burst game system of normal duels and Territories itself.

And it wasn’t just Brain Burst. There was a strong possibility that the similar hidden games of Accel Assault 2038 and Cosmos Corrupt 2040, which came immediately before and after Brain Burst, were developer B’s designs as well. If a player moved to a sufficiently elevated place like the Highest Level, they should have been able to see that the galaxy of light that made up the world was threefold.

If the Four Gods knew of this antagonistic relationship between the developers, then perhaps it was only natural that they would view Burst Linkers with absolute hostility, while the Four Saints, also enemies of the Gods, would try and forge bonds with them, like Metatron and Amaterasu had. But Haruyuki didn’t want to believe that Metatron’s actions were a result of system control. He wanted to believe that the proud Archangel, calling herself not an Enemy but a Being, had the same free will as he did.

Someday, he was going to break through the guard of the Four Gods with Metatron, Kuroyukihime, and the rest of his Legion comrades and enter the Castle. To that end, too, they had to finish the fight with the Acceleration Research Society sooner rather than later.

Perhaps sensing Haruyuki’s slightly tangential resolve, Metatron moved to stand to his right. She put a hand on his shoulder as if to tell him to concentrate on the here and now.

“It is unfortunate that Snow Fairy will not be coming.” Her voice was gentle as she uttered the harsh words. “I was hoping to strip her naked this time.”

“N-naked…?!”

“Servant, that was a figurative expression.”

“Y-yes, I know,” was all he could manage when a Being explained his own language to him like this, and then he let out a deep sigh. Deciding to tuck the possibility of Snow Fairy charging in on them away in the back of his mind, he shifted his gaze to Rose.

“I told you, didn’t I, Corvus?” she replied, sounding as relaxed as ever. “I didn’t call you here to persuade you, but because I wanted to know. Apparently, you told Orkki—well, Orchid Oracle—that the one who pushed Originator Princess Sakuya, Saffron Blossom, to total point loss was the White King.”

Haruyuki wasn’t the only one who suddenly gasped. Fuko did the same next to him. He hadn’t expected this line of questioning, but he had indeed told Oracle already, so there was no point in hiding the information at this point.

“I’d never heard that nickname before, but…there’s no mistake that it was the White King who pushed Saffron to total loss. When I merged with the Armor of Catastrophe and became the sixth Chrome Disaster, I saw the memories of Saffron’s partner, Chrome Falcon. The one who actually attacked Saffron was the Legend-class Enemy Jormungand, but the three of them were also definitely there. Black Vise held her down, Argon Array monitored the situation, and White Cosmos regenerated her.”

It was a tale he’d told any number of times, but even so, the anger, despair, and sadness that Falcon had felt at that time came back to vivid life, and Haruyuki pressed his hand firmly against his chest. He pushed past the pain to continue.

“The White King was wrapped in a strange light, so I couldn’t see her…But I’ll never forget the name of the special attack that brought Saffron back to life over and over again. Resurrect by Compassion. You must know that technique, right?”

Rose Milady didn’t speak or move for a while. And then a thorn-adorned arm rose up soundlessly. She pressed a hand to her chest as Haruyuki had and hung her head deeply. After another ten seconds or so of silence, Rose spoke, her voice hoarse, devoid of all its glamour.

“I know it. I’ve been revived by it. It seems I have no choice but to believe you. That the one who pushed Saffron Blossom—my and Orkki’s parent—to total point loss was the Acceleration Research Society and the White King.”

“What?!” Haruyuki groaned. “You’re Saffron’s child, too, Rose?!”

“It wouldn’t be strange if she were, Corvus,” Fuko murmured. She brought her face up to Haruyuki’s helmet and imparted the knowledge of a veteran Linker. “In the dawn of the Accelerated World, there was no limit on the number of BB program copies. As long as you found someone who met the criteria for a Burst Linker, you could try to install it any number of times. I’ve only heard about these kinds of things, but apparently, some Originators had more than thirty children.”

“Thirty…”

With just that, parent and children could form a large-scale Legion. Seeing him dumbfounded, Rose, having recovered her composure to some extent, wrapped her arms around herself.

“Saffron didn’t have that many children,” she offered quietly. “As far as I know, there are eleven including me and Orkki. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or not, but all of us have plant color names. None of us has especially great battle power. But even after Saffron and Falcon were gone, we tried to launch the mutual assistance Legion with just us, but we ended up disbanding without managing to take a single territory.”

“When we first met, you were already a member of Oscillatory Universe, weren’t you, Rose?” Fuko asked, her tone subdued, like she was trying to kill any emotion in it. “Did the other ten children all go under the protection of the White King?”

“No.” The hair so reminiscent of a bouquet of roses shook from side to side. “It was only me and Orkki that Oscillatory picked up. The White King said she would invite them into the Legion when we found the other nine, but even though Orkki and I went searching on matching lists all over the place every day, we couldn’t find a single one of them. And then even Orkki—I don’t know what happened, but she just disappeared one day.” Rose hung her head.

As he stared at her, the words he’d heard from Oracle the previous day came back to life in his mind. When Haruyuki had asked her why she lost all her points and how she’d come back to life, Oracle—Megumi Wakamiya—had said, “That alone I don’t know. Not me. And not Rose, either.”

Looking very much like her thorns themselves had shrunk, Rose continued her monologue.

“I was depressed after I lost Orkki, and the White King promised me she would analyze Brain Burst and bring Orkki and Saffron back to life someday. I believed her, and I tried as best I could to get stronger. I went up the ranks of the Legion bit by bit. I joined the Seven Dwarves. And before I knew it, six years had passed. But…But yesterday, Orkki really did come back. You can’t even imagine my surprise and joy when she appeared at the strategy meeting before the Territories.”

Haruyuki had never lost a Burst Linker he had formed a strong bond with to total point loss, so naturally, he had never experienced such a person coming back to life. Fuko and Metatron stood by silently.

Rose Milady glanced at them and then lowered her eye lenses once again.

“I don’t know how, but the White King kept her promise. The things she did with the Acceleration Research Society were not a mistake. One day, just like with Orkki, she would bring Saffron Blossom back to life…I believed that. But…right before the end of the Territories, Orkki said she was lying to us. That it was the White King herself who had pushed Saffron to total point loss in the first place, so she would absolutely never bring her back to life for us. I…I couldn’t believe it. And we lost the Territories because Orkki betrayed us and turned the field back…I thought Nega Nebulus did something to her, and I said terrible things to her, even though we’d only just been reunited.”

“Um!” Haruyuki said, unable to stand it any longer. “Um, what is Oracle doing right now? Kuro—the Black King hasn’t been able to get in touch with her since yesterday…”

“Neither have I. She wasn’t at the debriefing after the Territories. Her name wasn’t on the matching list, and I can’t find her from the Highest Level either. She’s probably had her global connection off since yesterday.” Rose’s reply was cool, but she wavered at the end for just an instant, perhaps reflecting a worry she couldn’t entirely suppress. “And it’s no wonder. After all, her older sister treated her like a traitor when they were reunited after six years apart. I mean, if I could, I’d like to get some distance from the Accelerated World myself…But I’m not permitted that kind of luxury.”

“Is that because you’re the third of the Seven Dwarves?” he asked.

“No. It’s because I’m a Burst Linker,” Rose declared, and there was no wobble in her voice now. She pulled herself up to her full height and took a deep breath. The countless thorns drawn out in points of white light became slightly longer and sharper; it was no illusion. “Thank you, Silver Crow…Sky Raker, and the Being Metatron. I was able to gain the knowledge I was seeking. It was our King White Cosmos who drove Saffron Blossom to total point loss. And she is not going to bring Saffron back to life.”

Depending on how you saw it, these words could have been taken as a farewell declaration to the White King and the White Legion. Unconsciously, Haruyuki took a step forward and asked the rose aristocrat, “What are you going to do now, Rose?”

“I’ll do what has to be done for Orchid Oracle’s sake, and for Saffron Blossom’s,” she answered briefly. She pressed her right hand to her chest and bowed gracefully, and then the particles of light that comprised Rose Milady’s avatar dispersed and vanished from the Highest Level.

The one to first break the silence that followed was Metatron. “There are all kinds of little warriors, hmm?”

“Well, of course. There are a thousand Burst Linkers, after all,” Haruyuki said.

Metatron jabbed his helmet. “That pales in the face of the sum total of Beings…At any rate, if this contact engenders even a slight change in Rose Milady’s action priority ranking, then there was also meaning in responding to Amaterasu’s request.”

“Action priority ranking?” He cocked his head to one side. Metatron was as difficult to understand as ever.

Fuko giggled as she interpreted for him. “She means that maybe this will bring about a change in Rose’s blind loyalty to the White King, Corvus. It’s only natural for Legion members to do everything they can for their masters, but it’s no good to anyone if you stop using your own head and plug your ears.”

“……”

He unconsciously stared hard at Fuko. “Do you mean…you and Kuroyukihime?”

“Of course.” A grin full of affection rose up on Sky Raker’s face. “You know very well how I’m always finding fault with Sacchi, don’t you, Corvus?”

“R-right, well, that’s true.” Now that she mentioned it, she had been picking at how much skin Kuroyukihime was showing in the car, but he wasn’t sure if that was part of what she was talking about.

But then Metatron moved directly in front of him and announced sternly, “You must never doubt me, servant. You must always obey me.”

After returning from the Highest Level to the Mean Level, Fuko and Haruyuki conferred with Metatron for a moment before using the portal in front of Fufuan to return to the real world.

He had no sooner woken up in the air-conditioned car with a sigh than Kuroyukihime was asking from the front seat, her voice slightly thorny, “So then, Haruyuki, what did Metatron want?”

“Oh! R-right…”

He lifted his face to find her twisted around and leaning forward through the gap between the passenger and driver seats. Her puffed-out cheeks indicated a seven on the ten-point scale of Kuroyukihime’s mood meter. He checked the time on his virtual desktop and saw that not even eight seconds had passed during his dive, but everyone in the car knew that this was equivalent to two hours in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

He opened his mouth to explain the events in the Accelerated World from square one, but he couldn’t actually sort it all out in his head since so many unexpected things had happened. So he merely flapped his mouth open and closed like a fish out of water, until Fuko tossed him another life preserver from the driver’s seat.

“I’ll explain, Sacchi.”

He didn’t think Metatron and Fuko got along particularly well, so when Sky Raker appeared in the Wasteland stage, he’d felt a shiver of fear at the idea of what might happen next, but now he could only be grateful and truly happy that she had chased after him. Of course, part of that was the fact that she had given Metatron access to the shelter of her digital house, but it was also that she had acted as a buffer in the conversation with Rose Milady. And more than anything else, she was now able to explain the situation to Kuroyukihime and the others at least ten times more smoothly than Haruyuki could have managed, and much more succinctly. She neatly finished her tale with three minutes to spare before the meeting of the Seven Kings was to start at one o’clock.

“That’s a surprise,” Kuroyukihime said with a sigh and leaned back in the semi-bucket seat. “The Grumpy, Rose Milady, doing that…”

“But I kind of get it,” Chiyuri commented. She had fought Rose alongside Haruyuki and Trilead in the Territories the previous day. “I mean, it felt like Rose was fighting more to protect Oracle than to beat Nega Nebulus. And if they have the same parent, they’re kinda like sisters and stuff. And on top of that, it’s only the two of them left in the Accelerated World.”

“Mmm. True.” Kuroyukihime started to turn toward the back seat as though she wanted to say something else, but then turned forward again right away. “Two minutes until the meeting of the Seven Kings. Fuko, Haruyuki, one thing: Do you think this contact with Rose Milady will have any sort of effect on the meeting?”

“No,” Haruyuki answered reflexively and then snapped his mouth shut. He looked to the driver’s seat, but Fuko stayed facing forward. They only had a brief period of time left, so he had to actually finish his thought quickly. He took a second to sort himself out and then opened his mouth once more. “Ivory Tower’ll be the only person from the White Legion at the meeting again. She might be able to contact him before then, but of course, we didn’t say anything to her about Choco’s replay card. And it seemed like she knew Black Vise’s true identity is Ivory Tower. So even if she did manage to get some information from us, I don’t think she’d go out of her way to help Ivory after he drove her parent Saffron to total point loss.”

“That’s…Do you mean there’s a possibility that Rose might leave Oscillatory?” Chiyuri asked.

“Probably not,” Fuko answered. “At the very least, not without Orchid Oracle.”

He heard a sharp electronic buzz in his mind just then. The alarm he’d set for one minute to one.

“Yesterday, right before the end of the Territories, I begged Oracle—Megumi. Leave Oscillatory Universe, join Nega Nebulus,” Kuroyukihime confessed, and Fuko and Chiyuri gasped quietly. “But she wouldn’t answer me. She just apologized and then grabbed my sword to push it through her own chest…I haven’t been able to get in touch with her since. But I’m not giving up.”

Thirty seconds.

“Once we expose Ivory Tower and his evil deeds at today’s meeting, the joint five-Legion subjugation mission will begin. Before it does, I want to get Oracle…and if she wants, Rose, out of Oscillatory Universe. Everyone. I hope I can count on your help.”

Not one of them responded to this request from their Legion Master in words. Instead, they stretched out their hands and placed them firmly on top of one another’s above the central console. Finally, Kuroyukihime laid her own hand on the pile and squeezed tightly.

Five seconds.

Nodding at each other, the five Burst Linkers leaned back in their seats again and closed their eyes.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, a flame-colored system message blazed to life.

A REGISTERED DUEL IS BEGINNING!!