Accel World - Volume 5 - Chapter 7

7

Ding-dong.

A light chiming sound echoed inside his brain, disturbing his deep sleep.

Wha? he thought, with a head that was at best 10 percent awake. It wasn’t the sound of the alarm clock he always used. And in any case, that clock sat on the headboard, so he should be hearing the noise from above. But the sensation of sound delivered directly to his consciousness, without it going through his ears— Oh, that’s right, I fell asleep without taking my Neurolinker off. I hope the shell didn’t get cracked or anything…

Ding-dong.

The chime again. He finally realized that the sound was not an alarm to wake up. It wasn’t the sound of mail or a call arriving. The ringing was the intercom to let him know someone was at the door. Reluctantly, he half opened his eyes and looked at the clock hanging on the wall to the right of his bed. Nine in the morning.

His mother wouldn’t be home until the middle of the night. Maybe it was a courier with a morning delivery? He thought about just pretending he didn’t hear the bell and having them leave it in the delivery box, but it was time for him to get up anyway. Takumu and the gang were coming at eleven.

After closing his eyes tightly one final time, Haruyuki got up.

Instantly, he felt a slight tugging resistance on the right side of his neck. He turned his gaze to find a silver XSB cable stretching out from the external connection terminal of his Neurolinker. Glinting in the light of the sun coming in through the gap in the curtains, it disappeared beneath a thin blanket—

Where the tiniest part of a head of silky black hair popped out.

“…Unh.”

Waaaaah?! He very nearly shrieked before clapping his hands over his mouth to desperately hold the cry in. In the moment of this shock, as if all circulation of blood in his body had suddenly reversed direction, he was entirely awake. Blinking repeatedly at top speed, he stared doubtfully, but the small head didn’t disappear. Just the opposite, the distinct outline of a slender body lying there appeared under the blanket. He could doubt it no longer: Someone was sleeping in Haruyuki’s bed, fifty centimeters away, back turned to him.

“Mmm…mmm.”

This someone, perhaps sensing Haruyuki moving, rolled over and let out a small sigh. The blanket slid off and the hidden face was revealed.

“……Ku—”

Ro-ro-ro-ro-ro?! He managed somehow to suppress scream number two. That beautiful face—a beauty he was very familiar with and yet never felt even slightly used to—belonged without a doubt to Kuroyukihime.

Why the hell is this—?! He shrieked in the back of his mind before finally remembering the details of how the previous night had ended. Kuroyukihime had come to his room late, they’d talked for a while, and then they’d had a direct duel. After that, he didn’t know what had happened or how, but when all was said and done, Kuroyukihime had ended up falling asleep like that in this bed, and Haruyuki seemed to have no recollection of the process leading up to this result. Serious misstep. Serious situation.

Still frozen like a stone statue, he mustered every ounce of willpower not to look at the rumpled sleeping figure, pajama top noticeably flipped up—Don’t look don’t look don’t look—

Ding…dong.

Once again, the chime, longer than before now, echoed in his auditory system. With the thought that that was one seriously patient courier, he glanced at the visitor window in the right of his vision; it seemed that they hadn’t just come to the entrance on the first floor, but all the way up to the twenty-third floor already. Having little choice, he decided to put off the situation before him for the time being and gently plucked the direct cable out before carefully stepping down to the floor. He tiptoed out of the room, closed the door, and sprinted to the entryway, replying in a hush, “Okay, okay, I’m coming!”

“Sorry to make you wait so—”

Haruyuki swallowed the “long.”

On the other side of the opened door was not a cheerful young courier standing there grinning.

Snow-white, wide-brimmed hat. Shrug of the same color. Light blue chiffon dress. Thigh-high socks with a border pattern on slender legs peeking out from the skirt hem. Long, full hair reaching down her back, a small bag dangling from both hands. This visitor was clearly—

“M-Master?! I mean, Raker?!” Haruyuki cried out, stunned, and the woman bowed lightly at him. She responded in a voice even more clear and gentle than it sounded through the net.

“Good morning, Corvus. When we meet in the real, you can just call me Fuko.”

At these words from the second-in-command of the Legion Nega Nebulus, level-eight Burst Linker Sky Raker, real name Fuko Kurasaki, a girl two years older than himself, Haruyuki quickly bowed again.

“Oh! R-right! Good morning, Fuko. Oh! Uh, excuse me! Please come in!”

“Thank you. That would be lovely.” She closed the door and, as she took her sandals off, he got some slippers ready for her.

“A-although…you’re pretty early,” he said, still somewhat spaced out. “There’s still ages until we’re supposed to meet.”

“Hee-hee-hee, I’m sorry. I wondered if it might be a bother, but it’s the first time for me to come over to your house and I’m afraid I couldn’t wait. At any rate, I did send a mail very early this morning…”

“I-I’m sorry! The truth is I was asleep until just a minute ago.” As he spoke with an embarrassed laugh, Haruyuki finally realized that the current situation was very much not one in which he should be laughing.

At that very moment, on Haruyuki’s bed only seconds away down the hall, the Legion Master aka Kuroyukihime was fast asleep! Clad in perfect pajama top and bottom!

Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-what am I gonna do! No, now’s not the time for doing. Think, think! Right, first, I’ll show Raker to the living room. And then I’ll secretly get Kuroyukihime’s stuff, and she can change in my room, and we can work it out so she comes in from outside again. That’s it; that’s the only option.

As Haruyuki instantly came up with this secret operation, Sky Raker politely lined her sandals up before stepping into the slippers set out. She no sooner had them on than Haruyuki was showing her the way to the living room.

“P-please, this way, p-p-please…Straight ahead, please!”

“R-right. Thank you.” She smiled, puzzled, but then began to walk next to Haruyuki. She spoke in a singsong voice. “The truth is, I came early because there’s something I wanted to talk about, just you and me, Corvus. It’s been a while since just we two talked. Lately, the only chance we get to meet is in the Territories…I wanted to thank you properly…once…”

Her words suddenly dropped away and the reason for the abrupt interruption was clear. However, he did not have the extra brain space to come around to that insight. Because at that point in time, Haruyuki had again frozen solid, one foot in the air, about to take another step.

The French-gray-pajama-clad figure that appeared shuffling from around the corner two or so meters ahead of them in the hallway looked first at Haruyuki and then at Fuko with a dazed expression. She batted long eyelashes. She moved her lips and the voice of someone freshly awake came out.

“Morning, Haruyuki.”

Followed by.

“Morning, Fuko.”

Reflexively, Haruyuki dipped his head with a “Good morning,” and as if pulled along, Sky Raker also replied, “M-morning, Sacchi.”

“Mmm.” Still 80 percent asleep, Sacchi aka Kuroyukihime nodded once before facing forward again. She cut across their view, walking in a fashion similar to the hovering of her avatar, and disappeared to the left. A few seconds later, they heard the sound of the door to the washroom opening and closing.

Silence.

It was not a voice that broke this heavy blanket of quiet, but a movement. A pale hand extending from the right pinched Haruyuki’s ear and yanked on it hard.

His whole body stiffening, he allowed himself to be pulled around to confront a smile he had rarely seen on Sky Raker’s face. He wondered, almost as a means to escape, where he had seen that expression before, and it soon hit him: It was the very smile that her duel avatar had given him in training, when she pushed him off the top of the old Tokyo Tower in the Accelerated World’s Unlimited Neutral Field.

Eeee! Haruyuki shrank into himself.

“Corvus,” Raker said gently. “What is the meaning of this?”

“…I-it’s not like that.” Haruyuki could think of no other option than to immediately shake his head vigorously.

About ten minutes later:

Fuko faced Kuroyukihime, back in her Umesato uniform now, and Haruyuki, also changed into daytime clothing, sitting together on the sofa, and silently brought her teacup to her lips.

Chak! She returned it to the saucer and lifted her face. The same tranquil smile as always was on her face, but Haruyuki was convinced that if this had been a VR world, she would have had a little anger emoticon flashing near her forehead.

“Well, I do understand the circumstances here. And the heavy rain last night was indeed not in the forecast? And there were malfunctions in the network in the west of the twenty-three wards? You probably would’ve encountered some difficulty in returning home, wouldn’t you?”

“E-exactly. The rain was really quite something, Fuko. And the lightning, it was just like that time when Purple lost it…”

Kuroyukihime acted her story out with her body and her hands, earning a bright smile from Fuko. However, that smile held an attack power on par with the special attack Ultimate Chill Kuroyuki Smile. Attribute: Terrifying wind. Right, maybe he could call this one Vacuum Smashing Raker Smile. He was so glad that Chiyu wasn’t here, too. If this smile were combined with the Superheated Chiyuri Beam, they would annihilate each other and bring down this room—no, the entire condo…

As he escaped into his thoughts, Fuko’s next attack reached his ears.

“Which is why I’ll be understanding of this. But if, as you say, Lotus, nothing untoward happened, then there’s no real reason for me to help you conceal the incident, is there? If Bell and Pile knew, they would certainly be moved at the closeness of their Legion Master and Silver Crow—”

“Th-tha-that’s just—!”

Haruyuki laid his own cry over Kuroyukihime’s stammering.

“A-ah! M-M-Master, please, it’s just that—”

“Well then, how about we do this?” Once again, the glittering Raker Smile. “Please invite me to a sleepover as well sometime this month. Under that condition, I would be delighted to keep this quiet.”

“Wh—! Wh-wh-what are you talking about, Fuko?!”

“Goodness! I did have Corvus stay at my house once, you know? Complete with dinner?”

“Wh—! Wh-wh-wh-what is she talking about, Haruyuki?”

“N-n-n-no, not like that, not in the real, in the Accelerated World! And I slept on the floor!”

Whipping his head back and forth at top speed, Haruyuki thought to himself, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Sky Raker enjoying herself so much or Kuroyukihime so on the defensive. These two really are connected on some deep, spiritual level. As only honestly good friends, who shared a different history than they did with Haruyuki, could be.

That bond was cut once by inescapable fate. And then three years later, guided by the same fate, they met again and now were completely restored. That’s what he wanted to believe. He wanted to believe it, but…

Haruyuki had spent his time since the fall of last year staring intently at and adoring Kuroyukihime, and he knew. No matter how many walls they might try to take down, in the depths of Kuroyukihime’s eyes, there was a pain that was not completely melted away. An equal measure of self-recrimination likely lay in the shadow of Sky Raker’s smiling face as well.

The Incarnate System required those players seeking to master it to confront their own mental scars. Because powerful imagination was only born from a powerful wish, and a wish was nothing other than the flip side of a lacking. Unless you turned toward and occasionally entered the emotional holes that made up the core of your duel avatar, holes so dark you wanted to forget they were even there, you would never be able to obtain sufficient power to produce a large overwrite.

That’s what Sky Raker did three years earlier. She cut both legs off of her avatar to purify this lacking within herself, and then used the Incarnate System to increase the power of Boost Jump she’d been given by the original system to the point where it was Flight. If he were to seek more power than any of his basic attacks, then Haruyuki, too, would likely have to tear open the scar in his heart that he had now finally managed to start walling over and let the blood flow again. His own scar, his psychic wound, was his hatred of himself. Hatred of his ugly, fat, bad-at-talking, bad-at-sports, bad-at-school self.

No, maybe the truth is it’s not really that. I mean, back then, I wasn’t as fat as I am now. The me back then who stood on the other side of that living room door and eavesdropped on the conversation inside. And yet…the people fighting in whispers, about me…No, that’s not it. That’s not it. It’s because I’m fat. It’s because I’m always flinching. That’s why they, I mean someone like me—

“…yuki. Haruyuki!”

A sudden slap on his left arm and Haruyuki lifted his face with a gasp, only to meet the suspicious eyes of Kuroyukihime. Reflexively, he dropped his head again.

“What’s wrong? You stopped talking all of a sudden.”

“You don’t…look so good, Corvus,” Sky Raker said, and Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head.

“N-no, it’s nothing at all! I—I was just…thinking about the Incarnate System…”

After his mouth had heedlessly raced this far, he realized it was not the most appropriate subject to bring up in the current situation and clamped his lips shut, but he couldn’t cancel out the words that had already been released. Kuroyukihime and Fuko both opened their eyes wide for a moment, and then after a few seconds of silence, smiles of a similar nature spread across both of their faces.

“…I see. Was there something you wanted to ask?” Kuroyukihime brushed his hand lightly as if she had read his mind. Her fingertips, normally comfortably cool to the touch, were now the slightest bit warm, and Haruyuki exhaled shortly. The gaze Fuko had turned on him was full of a gentle light again, and at some point, words started to fall from his lips.

“Uh, umm, well…I was just thinking. About the structure of the Incarnate System…In the end, the bigger the lack at the core of the Burst Linker, the more…I mean, the more unhappy you are in the real world, the stronger it is. Like, is it something like that—”

“No.”

“That’s not how it works.”

Their answers were instantaneous. They exchanged glancing looks, almost as if to determine who would speak next, and Kuroyukihime to his right turned to face him directly.

“Those mental scars are in the end nothing more than a key deciding the attributes of the duel avatar. There are much stronger powers than that in the Accelerated World, so strong as to be unlimited. The knowledge to put together battle strategies and techniques, battle abilities cultivated through training and experience, and the bonds of friends and companions and rivals. Even in an Incarnate battle, the predominance of these powers is not in the least bit shaken. So really, it’s the exact opposite of this idea you have. Which is that those who drag their real-world unhappiness into the fight become stronger than those who simply enjoy the duel, isn’t it?”

“Y-yeah…I guess it is.”

“That idea is absolutely correct. Do not doubt it even a little. What we say now has that as the foundation.” When Kuroyukihime closed her mouth here, Sky Raker smoothly picked up where she had left off.

“At the same time, there exists still another reality, Corvus.”

“R-reality…?”

“Yes. To other people, you may look like you are simply and earnestly enjoying the duels. But it’s very nearly impossible to be completely satisfied in the real world as long as you are a Burst Linker, even for instance, a Burst Linker like my ‘child’ Ash Roller. Because the essential requirements for the installation of Brain Burst—to have been equipped with a Neurolinker from shortly after birth and to possess a high-level aptitude for the quantum connection—are elements that run counter to real-world happiness.”

The moment he heard this, Haruyuki gulped his breath back.

When it came right down to it, 90 percent of the time, the reason for putting a Neurolinker on an infant was to cut down on the amount of work involved in child-rearing. With the Neurolinker, you could always monitor temperature, heart rate, and breathing, so you could step away from the child, and you could automatically execute a variety of educational programs instead of talking to them. And when the baby started crying in the night, you could even force it into a full dive. However, no academic or education critic could assert definitively that the baby was happy like this.

Similarly, the requirement for a high-level aptitude for the quantum connection might seem like a superior talent that only chosen children possessed, but the truth was not so. This aptitude, or rather this affinity with the Neurolinker, was determined by how many long hours you had spent since childhood in high-density full dives; put another way, how much time you had thrown away in the real world and locked yourself up in a virtual world. Like the way Haruyuki had always escaped with single-minded focus into the virtual squash game of the Umesato local net.

As if reading his thoughts, Kuroyukihime began to speak again quietly. “Perhaps this is an uncomfortable way of phrasing it, but…in the majority of cases, those able to meet the conditions required to become a Burst Linker are children raised without enough love from their parents. Conversely, children raised from infancy always watched over by their parents, touched by them, having conversations in their real voices, don’t need Neurolinkers or any virtual world. However, young me needed these, as did Raker.”

Haruyuki dipped his head lifelessly and mumbled, “Of course, I needed them, too. When I was little…I was always alone in this house, even at night, and it was so scary.”

The pale fingertips once again touched the back of Haruyuki’s hand, and she continued almost soothingly, “All of which is to say, well…nearly all Burst Linkers have a single common lack: real love between parent and child. That’s the reality Fuko mentioned earlier. And those who become Burst Linkers, when they exercise their right as a ‘parent’ to copy and install that one time, they instinctively try to select someone who bears the scent of the same scars as themselves to be their ‘child.’ As a result, we are intensely dependent on this second parent-child relationship we’ve obtained; we cling to it. To gain what we were unable to get in the real world…In other words, we cling to the Accelerated World itself. To maintain these new bonds, we try to preserve the stability and the concealed nature of the Accelerated World. Honestly. It’s quite the well-made system. You really have to hand it to the developer.”

“Ha-ha-ha.”

At Kuroyukihime’s chuckling, a slightly reproachful smile came across Fuko’s face.

“Sacchi, you’re as cynical as ever, hmm? Corvus, I know I said ‘unhappy reality’ earlier, but that wasn’t to say that the thing itself is unhappy.”

“H-huh?”

Haruyuki fluttered his eyelids, and Sky Raker turned a gaze on him that was the very definition of the word affection.

“What I’m trying to say is this: The Incarnate System does indeed use as its energy source those mental scars, that is to say, your trauma. Which is why in a way, it might be true that the more unhappy you are, the greater the power you can manifest. But, well…all Burst Linkers in the depths of their hearts bear the huge, enormous scar of being given a Neurolinker instead of their parents’ hand soon after they were born. It’s just not reflected in their avatar or their Incarnate because they don’t really remember it. So then it’s futile, isn’t it, to compare this with any unhappiness accumulated after this one that is so vast? Better is to compare the size of your hope. The power of the Incarnate System isn’t decided by the depth of the holes in your heart alone. It’s also determined by the height of the trees rooted and budding there.”

Here, Fuko’s voice shook momentarily. She slowly lowered her gaze to the glass table.

“A long time ago, I tried to force those trees to grow and ended up cutting them down at the root, so perhaps I have no right to…to speak now…” Regret and even more than that, a deep resignation colored her words.

Kuroyukihime stretched out a hand toward the now-silent Sky Raker. “Come here, Fuko.”

Raker stood up from the sofa opposite and detoured around the table to set herself down to the left of Haruyuki. The girls, now forcibly wedged into a two-person sofa with Haruyuki in between them, acted in a completely and utterly unexpected way.

They stretched out their arms from both sides of him and squeezed each other tightly—and Haruyuki in the process. Naturally, all of the serious conversation they had been having up to that point flew out of his head, and, dumbfounded, he curled up into himself.

However, for some reason, the panic that honestly should have kept up forever rapidly melted away just this one day, like ice in the sun. Instead, a warmth he couldn’t really put a name to spread out in his chest. It was something still different from the sweet, painful warmth when Kuroyukihime had held him on the bed the previous night.

Eventually, he heard Fuko above his head. “Hee-hee-hee…We’re like a pack of kittens whose mother hasn’t come home, huddling together in the nest.”

“It’s a happy thing to have someone to huddle together with.” Kuroyukihime’s response came swiftly. “The night ends sooner that way. And then you can tumble around and play in the sun once more.”

“You’re right. Play in earnest, play seriously. Whatever the expectations of the developer of the BB system might be, this alone we can never forget.”

The two of them sat there still for a while, but finally, their bodies pulled apart, neither one initiating it. Kuroyukihime placed a hand on Haruyuki’s still-dazed head.

“First, today’s race! This is Brain Burst, after all, so there’ll no doubt be no manual or tutorial as there would be with a normal race, so it might be rough going, but we’re counting on you, Driver!”

“R-right.” Haruyuki nodded hurriedly, and now Sky Raker was patting his back.

“Exactly. I deeply despise things like putting up a good fight or losing by a narrow margin. And I also hate the word ambivalent. If you get ambivalent about your promise to invite me to a sleepover, I will push you off of old Tokyo Tower once again.”

“Wh-whaaaat?! B-b-b-but th-th-th-that’s—”

“H-h-h-he’s right, Fuko! No one’s even said anything about a promise—”

“A-ha-ha! You’re too late. You’ve already signed the contract in your soul!”

Listening to Sky Raker laughing delightedly, Haruyuki resolved himself anew in his heart.

They absolutely had to win the race event that day. At the very least, they would somehow, someway reach the top. And not for the victory or the prizes. To extend a long, long vine from the past and cut the thorns of regret that held these two even then in its curse. If they climbed those four thousand kilometers to an altitude where the gravity of the surface didn’t reach, he was sure they could do it.

And just then, the high-pitched visitor chime rang for the second time that day. When he looked at the clock, he saw that the hands had arrived at eleven before he knew it.

“Oh! Looks like Taku and Chiyu are here.” He stood up and took a few steps before timidly offering a reminder. “Um, Master, the two of them, I mean.”

“Don’t worry. I made a promise. I’ll keep your secret.” After Sky Raker nodded with a grin, she winked in a deeply meaningful way. “But secrets bring about new secrets, you know.”

Aah! She’s serious.

He tucked the thought away for the time being and raced toward the entryway before impatient Chiyuri rang the bell a second time.

“Bow down! Give thanks!”

Chiyuri raised up the basket in her hands as she spoke. And as usual, the starving fell prostrate with glee before the divine object—or, more accurately, the bewitching scent drifting out from it—and they ended up first taking care of the business of defeating their hunger.

Pulled from the basket was tagliatelle with seafood tomato sauce, offering ample demonstration once again of the skill of Chiyuri’s mother. She had prepared enough for five people—even more than that, actually, with plenty left for Takumu and Haruyuki to have seconds. She had apparently no sooner finished making it than Chiyuri and Takumu were dashing up the two floors to the Arita residence, since hot steam was still rising up from the flat pasta when they measured it out from the deep dish. The five of them seated around the dining table scrambled to plunge their forks into their plates.

“Mmm, what wonderful skill.”

“This really is incredibly delicious.”

Kuroyukihime and Fuko raised their voices in admiration at their first taste of Chiyuri’s mother’s cooking, and Chiyuri ducked her head, as if embarrassed.

“Heh-heh-heh. My mom seemed all excited, too…this many people coming over to Haru’s place for, like, the first time ever—”

“H-hey, Chiyu! You don’t need to make a big announcement!” Haruyuki reflexively interrupted her, but he himself knew best just how true this actually was. He also glared at a giggling Takumu before devoting himself to scarfing down pasta.

“Now that I’m thinking about it,” Kuroyukihime said, somewhat apologetically, still smiling, “ever since the mission sometime back to subjugate the Armor, Haruyuki’s house has ended up being our sortie base for every little thing. I really should put together a proper Legion headquarters.”

“N-no, we can use my house; it’s totally fine! I mean, my mom hardly ever comes home on the weekends anyway,” he hurried to respond before realizing that talk about parents was still a somewhat sensitive topic, and abruptly added, “Now that you mention it, what did you do during the era of the first Nega Nebulus? For a headquarters, I mean.”

Kuroyukihime and Fuko, sitting next to each other across from Haruyuki, exchanged glances, and then nostalgic looks came over both faces. It was Fuko who replied in a gentle tone.

“At the time, there were a great many more members than there are now, but almost none of them had a relationship that allowed meeting in the real. To be specific, it was Lotus, me, and one other. Nega Nebulus was a Legion united by strong feelings toward the aloof flower Black Lotus, rather than by relationships between its members. Longing, worship. Or feelings of protectiveness.”

“F-feelings of protectiveness?” Takumu asked. Haruyuki and Chiyuri also opened their eyes wider.

“Yes.” Sky Raker smiled even more delightedly. “When the Legion formed, Lotus was still only nine in real-world years. Although naturally that sort of real information was not made public, you could tell to a certain extent from her bearing and attitude. While boasting overwhelming fighting prowess, she was nonetheless childish and easily hurt. Many Burst Linkers no doubt squealed and cooed over her and joined the Legion.”

“C-come now! It’s true I was a child, but I refuse to consent to the idea that I was easily hurt, Raker!”

“Oh? Well then, shall I also tell them about how we ended up meeting in the real?”

“N-no! You can’t; I forbid it! I absolutely forbid it! If you tell them, it’s the Judgment for you!” she shrieked as she began to intently peel a shrimp, and Haruyuki involuntarily burst out laughing. Kuroyukihime hung her head even farther and muttered, “Even though you older lot were all only ten or eleven anyway…”

Fuko’s shoulders shook for a minute with laughter. “That was how it was,” she continued. “So back then, there was nothing so large-scale as a headquarters. I suppose that’s basically the same situation with the other Kings’ Legions. The King and their executive court had the possibility of enormous danger if they exposed their real information, even to other Legion members.”

“Mmm. Although it’s a different story if you’re confident you have a perfect grasp on the entire Legion,” Kuroyukihime said after finishing the shrimp as she abruptly wiped the previous expression off her face.

Haruyuki cocked his head to one side. The Legion Masters may have had the privilege of the Judgment Blow, but it would be hard to bind all the members of a large Legion with the fear of that alone. The effective period of Judgment was for a month after leaving the Legion, so as long as you were prepared to keep running during that time, betrayal was possible.

However, Kuroyukihime’s tone suggested that there was in fact a King actually achieving this sort of perfect grasp. He wanted to ask her about it, but before he could, she set her fork down with a clatter and said in her usual tone, seemingly satisfied, “Aah, that was truly delicious! Thank you, Chiyuri. Please thank your mother as well.”

“Oh! Sure! I was a little worried about whether or not you’d like it. I’m glad you did!” Chiyuri grinned happily, and Kuroyukihime turned a wry smile on her as she wiped her fingers.

“Come come, my usual fare is incredibly slapdash. I could give Haruyuki a run for his money.”

“Whaaaat? That’s not good for you!” Chiyuri screwed her face up.

“Well then,” Sky Raker said with a composed look. “Perhaps Corvus and Lotus both had the same frozen pizza last night.”

Puzzled looks from Chiyuri and Takumu. Contrasted with the deer in the headlights from Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime.

“F-frozen pizza lately’s pretty good with the whole CAS freezing technology! Do you know about this? Basically, they use supercooling so that they don’t destroy the cells when they freeze stuff…”

Blathering away in a desperate bid to change the subject, Haruyuki had the abrupt thought, Wait, there is one, isn’t there? A Legion that’s under perfect control.

The second Nega Nebulus now was exactly that—or rather something more than that. Because all the members exposed their real information to one another and even came together to eat like this. None of them doubting any other, they were bound by real trust. Almost as if they were a family.

This absolutely could not scale up to a large Legion with more than forty or fifty members, but Haruyuki felt that these bonds themselves were their greatest weapon to fight the other Kings going forward. At the same time as this feeling hit him, in the depths of his heart, he prayed resolutely that they would be bound like this forever. He closed his eyes for a moment, quickly opened them again, and involuntarily smiled wryly without letting it onto his face. In his ears, Kuroyukihime’s words came back to life.

To maintain these new bonds, we try to maintain the stability and the concealed nature of the Accelerated World.

That sentence summarized everything in his mind at that moment.

But…Haruyuki took a step forward in his thinking. Even if the movements of my heart put me onto the exact trajectory the developer intended, that wouldn’t decrease the value of these bonds even the tiniest bit.

Right. Whether or not there’s some hidden objective somewhere in Brain Burst…

I will protect this family.

A few minutes later, once they had all finished eating and everything was cleaned up, they moved to the living room sofas. The U-shaped set was for five people, and they sat down in such a way as to allow them all to daisy-chain.

After they quickly connected using four XSB cables of various colors, Haruyuki looked around at everyone assembled. “Umm,” he said. “Once you accelerate and show up in the initial accelerated space, please stay on standby there. I’ll use the transporter card in my menu, and then we should all be instantly taken to the bottom station of Hermes’ Cord.”

The others nodded. The details of the race had already been outlined in that earlier mail, so all that was left now was to wait for the time. They stared not at the analog clock on the wall, but the digital clocks in the bottom right of their virtual desktops, which constantly displayed the precise Japan Standard Time. Two minutes and three seconds until noon.

Real-world time normally felt like it raced by, the surging waves of swift currents, but at times like this, each and every second seemed so long as to be vexing. Still, the digits did indeed continue to decrease until at long last, there were just twenty seconds left.

“Now then, everyone,” Kuroyukihime uttered in a light, clear voice. “Let’s enjoy every minute of the Hermes’ Cord Race! I’ll start the countdown! Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

The five leaned back deeply into the sofa as they closed their eyes. Six, five, four.

They took a deep breath. Three, two, one.

They shouted.

“Burst Link!!”