Accel World - Volume 10 - Chapter 2.11

11

At the words “She’s coming” from Mana, Kuroyukihime stared intently up at the sky of the Weathered stage once more.

But all she saw were countless scattered clouds flowing past one after another; there was indeed no one there. And there was no reason there should have been. In that moment, the only Burst Linkers in Henoko were Kuroyukihime, Ruka, Mana, and Crikin. The invader Sulfur Pot was using some trick to dive long-distance from Tokyo, but she couldn’t believe that other Burst Linkers were able to freely use this same setup. Which meant that even if, hypothetically, someone did appear, they would be Sulfur’s comrade, and the situation would be that much worse.

Suddenly, she saw a light.

At a single point in the sky, a small glow, the color of cherry blossoms, appeared and spiraled downward, almost like a flower petal fluttering on the whirlwinds of spring. The pale pink vortex immediately expanded in scale to fill Kuroyukihime’s field of view with dancing flowers.

From the center, two legs descended silently. High heels transparent like glass glinted in the light, followed by a broad, pale-pink armor skirt spreading out. The waist pulled in tightly, and a large ribbon adorned the back. The shoulders of the dress were round and puffed out, and slender arms carried a single lovely scepter. The face mask was the height of elegance, while the long, clear silver hair parts fluttered in the faint breeze, ringing crisply.

It was a duel avatar Kuroyukihime had never before set eyes on. However, at the same time, she was struck by a single firm conviction: I know her.

The light-pink, female-type avatar came fluttering down slowly from an altitude of several dozen meters, as if free of gravity, until its glass heels touched the ground in front of Kuroyukihime. The gentle mask smiled, and then that voice uttered the words:

“Hime. I…I’m here.”

“I-it can’t be…M-Megumi?”

The greatest taboo in the Accelerated World was to give voice to someone’s real name, but the shock was enough to make her forget even that. This was the first time she had ever seen the elegant duel avatar before her, but there could be absolutely no doubt about the voice and, more than that, the gentle aura radiating from her entire body. This Burst Linker was Kuroyukihime’s close friend, Megumi Wakamiya.

But that was logically impossible. The fact that Megumi did not have the Brain Burst program was proven when she did not appear on the matching list of the Umesato local net. And it was also unthinkable that she had become a Burst Linker on this school trip. Because to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field, a player needed to have reached level four, and that was absolutely impossible to do in a mere day or two.

Having thought this far, Kuroyukihime noticed that the Megumi-like duel avatar’s entire body was slightly transparent. And the hem of her skirt and the tips of her long hair parts were shimmering almost like a heat haze. The instant she confirmed this, a single insight visited her, like divine inspiration.

The past?

Had Megumi been a Burst Linker in the distant past? Before Kuroyukihime had formed her Legion, back when she was training in the Minato Ward area, had Megumi left the Accelerated World, lost Brain Burst, and now, through some logic, had she been invited to this world once more?

She didn’t get the chance to put this supposition into words because, from behind her, riding an enormous wave of anger and vexation, a voice rang out like a cracked bell.

“What is this?! What is going on with you guys?! No more! I’m not letting any other weirdos get in my way!”

Whirling around, Kuroyukihime saw Sulfur Pot standing tall on the back of the dinosaur Nidhogg. The color of hatred boiled in his round eye lenses, and he glared down on the five people—Kuroyukihime, Crikin, Ruka, Mana, and Megumi—in the intersection.

“I’ll wipe you all out together. Burn you to tiny crisps,” he spat in a creaking voice. Holding the reins, he stretched out his arms straight ahead, and a thin smoke started to leak out from not just the two holes in his palms, but also the holes on his shoulders, chest, and hips. “Charcoal Storm.”

Immediately after he called out the technique name, clouds of black smoke erupted from the yellow avatar’s entire body, on a scale several times larger than the earlier attack. Without waiting for directions, the smoke spiraled up to blanket a thick region in the area. Apparently, this time, he intended to send the whole town up in flames.

“Y-you can’t!” Staggering, Kuroyukihime moved to take a step forward. However, a slender hand on her shoulder gently restrained her.

“It’s okay. I…I’ll protect you, Hime,” Megumi said gently but resolutely, and brandished the scepter she held in her left hand.

The large gem embedded in the tip of the staff shone a dazzling rainbow color. The glittering immediately enveloped her avatar’s entire body and soared up into the sky. With a light inflection, Megumi called out as if in song:

“Paradigm Revolution.”

Instantly, an immense light soared up and ever higher. When the pillar of light shimmering across the spectrum of seven colors pierced the distant sky, it puffed out into a ring. Fluttering almost like a curtain, it flowed in all directions.

Although it was the first time she had seen this technique, Kuroyukihime had witnessed a phenomenon that almost perfectly resembled it any number of times in the Unlimited Neutral Field. A seven-colored aurora that always appeared when the field attributes switched—no, when the world was reborn. In other words, that meant this technique…

“A…forced…Change!!” Kuroyukihime shouted in a trembling voice.

The Change. The superhuman feat of universally overwriting the state of the Accelerated World. It was incredibly hard to believe that a single Burst Linker could bring that about through her own will, but that was the only way to explain the phenomenon occurring before her eyes.

Because on the inside of the aurora ring spreading out endlessly, even the color of the sky was changing. From the dark clouds of the Weathered stage into a clear blue sky. The dusty gusting wind shifted to the dry, gentle breeze of a southern country.

“Wha—?! What is—?!” Sulfur Pot shouted from Nidhogg’s back, as the eruption of gunpowder stopped, and he changed his grip on the reins.

“Nick, ignition! Blow them all away!! Scorching—”

But that instruction was not carried out.

Abruptly, the ground disappeared. More precisely, it didn’t exactly vanish. The sand-covered wasteland at once transformed into the blue surface of water. Kuroyukihime, Ruka, Mana, and Crikin, still on his back, along with the enormous dinosaur Nidhogg and its knight, were helplessly swallowed up by the water.

Quickly throwing out her arms to stop her sinking, Kuroyukihime popped her head above the water’s surface and looked around, but she could no longer see a hint of land. The world was covered in water all the way to the horizon in all directions, with only a smattering of small rocks and islands off in the distance. This was the ultimate nature-type, water-attribute stage—the Ocean stage.

“Hime.”

Kuroyukihime quickly moved her head and saw something entirely unexpected.

The duel avatar that was supposedly Megumi was not even close to submerged. Her glass heels barely touched the water surface, and she smiled gently. “The magic hour is ending, so I have to go home. Hime, keep going straight ahead on your path, okay? And I’m not going to look back anymore, either.”

Kuroyukihime didn’t feel like she could understand the full meaning of those words in that very moment. But she nodded deeply and replied, “Mmm. Thanks, Megumi.”

Megumi dipped her head gently and began to ascend. Kuroyukihime stared motionless at the cherry-blossom avatar returning to the sky and silently murmured “Thanks” once more, before taking a breath and letting her entire body sink into the sea.

The emerald-blue ocean water was abnormally clear, so she could easily make out the situation.

The enormous Nidhogg was kicking its short legs a little ways off. Its rider Sulfur Pot was intently yanking on the reins, apparently trying to get the dinosaur to float up somehow, but from its form, the Enemy was clearly not adapted to water. Countless bubbles burbled up from its mouth, and it didn’t seem to have the leeway to release its breath. The mist of black gunpowder that Sulfur had released earlier had also disappeared neatly and completely.

Very close to Kuroyukihime, Ruka and Mana were looking around goggle-eyed as they swam smoothly in a standing position. It seemed that they couldn’t yet digest exactly what had happened. And then at their feet was Crikin, also kicking and flailing. A voice—or rather a cry with a burbling effect applied to it—reached her ears.

“H-h-h-heeelp! Precious me is no good in the waaaaater!!”

Just as he said, his screw avatar, which must have had a fairly high specific gravity, was gradually sinking. But in the Ocean stage, there were very few metal objects that Crikin might have been able to use. At the bottom of the ocean, there was the incredibly rare sunken ship, but they didn’t have time to go looking for anything like that right then.

“Sorry, you’ll have to sink for a while, Crikin. That was nice work back there,” Kuroyukihime said coolly.

Ruka and Mana waved. “Njichahbira [good-bye], Master!”

“All right. Dolphin, Merrow. This is where the battle is decided. Before he can escape to some island somewhere, we’ll finish this in one go!”

“Okaaay!!”

“I’ll charge in first and handle the dinosaur somehow, so you two attack from the sides, being careful not to let it target you,” Kuroyukihime instructed, and Ruka and Mana looked at each other, grinning broadly.

“Don’t worry, Sis! I mean, it’s the ocean!”

“You just leave the water stuff to us!” they said, and before she had the chance to stop them, they had started swimming. Their movements were smooth, befitting the dolphin and mermaid that ruled their names, but Kuroyukihime worried that, in a battle with an Enemy, that alone…

But in the next moment, Dolphin and Merrow spun around once in the water and cried out with one voice, “One, two! Shape Change!! Marine Mode!!”

Their bodies were wrapped in a blue and a coral light. The small fin-shaped parts that protruded from Lagoon Dolphin’s elbows to her hips quickly grew in size. Her legs changed to a smooth, flowing shape, and her feet were also equipped with large fins.

The change that came over Coral Merrow was even more dramatic. Her two legs fused into one, turning into a fish’s tail. The pointed tail fins flicked, and her body wriggling around in the water was very much that of a mermaid.

Having changed into forms perfectly adapted to the water, the pair nodded at each other once more, and then began to swim in a straight line.

Their speed was incredible, obviously faster than when they were running on land. They easily pierced the dense ocean water and closed in on the enormous Nidhogg like torpedoes.

Sulfur Pot finally seemed to notice the two approaching him. “Small fry, huh!!” he spat and yanked the reins back as hard as he could. The dinosaur changed the direction its head was facing, looking pained all the while, and turned its maw lined with sinister teeth toward Ruka and Mana.

Just as it looked like they were on the verge of being swallowed up by the jaws flung open wide, the two nimbly turned. When they came up directly above the dinosaur, they began to rotate at high speed, as if to surround Sulfur Pot. Instantly, the water began to swirl and soon became an enormous tornado.

“Whoa! Y-you—! What are—?!” Sulfur Pot shouted from the center of the vortex, as his body gently rose up from the dinosaur’s back. Here, finally, Kuroyukihime understood Ruka and Mana’s intention. They were trying to separate knight from Enemy with the force of the vortex’s rotation and suction.

“Ngh! Ngaaah!” Sulfur tried intently to pull on the reins, but the current was not something that could be fought by a yellow avatar with fundamentally low arm strength. After a brief tug of war, his hands finally came away from the reins, and Sulfur Pot was sent flying up near the water surface, spinning in the waterspout.

“Aaaaah!”

As a high-pitched cry escaped the avatar, Dolphin and Merrow stopped their breakneck-speed turns and chased after him. They likely intended to finish him off, but what about the Enemy? In the moment Kuroyukihime wondered this, Mana looked back for a second and shouted, “Sister! Cut the dinosaur’s bridle!”

“Understood. Leave it to me!!”

The side giving the orders and the side getting orders had completely flipped, but Kuroyukihime responded immediately. This was the middle of the ocean, the world of these girls who had been born and raised on the Okinawan coast.

She couldn’t match the two of them for speed, but she plunged through the water using the swords of her legs as fins. Soon enough, she closed in on the Legend-class Enemy, the enormous dinosaur Nidhogg, flailing helplessly.

Having lost its knight, the dinosaur was apparently still not free to move on its own. If she attacked its likely weak points, the throat and the eyes, with all her might now, it might have been possible to defeat it, but Kuroyukihime didn’t even consider that option. She simply glared at the leather strap wrapped around the beast’s snout.

Ten meters away, eight, six meters—once she had gotten this close, she righted herself and pulled back the sword of her right arm as far as she could.

“Aaaagh! Death By Piercing!!”

Bluish-purple blades extended outward, glittering in the ocean water, to neatly and unerringly slice through just the bridle of the beast. The leather split to the sides, and the reins finally fell from the monster’s mouth. Even freed from the item that had controlled it, the Enemy only moved its limbs slowly for a while. But then, abruptly, its eyes shone with a sinister red gleam.

Although Kuroyukihime immediately readied herself for battle, she soon realized the truth: The dinosaur didn’t have its sights set on Black Lotus. Its tapered snout jerked and pointed straight up. It twisted its long tail furiously, paddled powerfully at the water with all four limbs, and started to ascend with a nimbleness that called into question its awkward movement up to that point.

In its line of sight were Sulfur Pot, drifting near the surface of the ocean, and Dolphin and Merrow, spinning at high speed around him to prevent him from moving.

“N-Nick!” Sulfur called out in a high-pitched voice, seeing the approaching Nidhogg. “Right, over here!! Rip these two bratty small fries to pieces!!”

Ruka and Mana didn’t make a move to flee even when they saw the Enemy charging toward them. It was almost as if they knew what was going to happen next.

Released from the taming, the massive dinosaur ascended with the force of a large submarine toward the person who had been its master until a minute or so earlier.

“How do you like this, small fry?!” Sulfur Pot cried exultantly, both hands spread out as if to welcome the Enemy. “Even without those reins, Nick knows that I—and I alone—am his master! See! Soon enough, you’ll all be ripped to pieces, fish food—”

But Sulfur Pot abruptly slowed down midspeech.

He thrust his open arms out ahead of him and quickly shook his head. “That’s…No way—it can’t be. Why…Nick, why would you…?”

The enormous dinosaur passed between Dolphin and Merrow without as much as a glance at either of them. It popped its mouth open and turned rows of ominously sharp teeth toward Sulfur.

“No way! No way! Nick, I’m your master! No way! Stop! Stoooo—!!”

The scream was abruptly interrupted there. The enormous maw came down on Sulfur Pot’s head. The countless teeth bit into the yellow torso. The armor resisted the pressure for a mere instant. Fine cracks popped up all over the avatar’s body, and then the body turned into thousands of fragments and scattered. It was a quick and cruel death.

Kuroyukihime, Ruka, and Mana wordlessly stared at the enormous Legend-class Enemy. The dinosaur turned its head absently and considered the two girls nearby, and then Black Lotus floating a little ways off.

Then, abruptly, it moved its head once more and began to swim east near the ocean surface. With the swiftness of an actual marine dinosaur, it receded before their eyes. The large ripples spread out behind it, faded, and finally disappeared, until they could no longer see the Enemy.

Kuroyukihime gently moved her legs and ascended until she was beside the girls. “You did good, Dolphin, Merrow,” she said. “That was some wonderful fighting.”

Suddenly, both girls stretched out their hands and clung to Kuroyukihime. The small avatars were trembling. Most likely, this was the first real battle both Ruka and Mana had had with not an Enemy, but a Burst Linker. The tension of the passionate battle was gradually starting to release.

She held them both gently and ascended farther. When she popped her head out above the water, she spied a rainbow curtain in the perfectly blue sky, approaching from the distance. The effective time for the forced change Megumi’s avatar had brought about in the field was over, and the world was attempting to return to normal.

“Sis,” Ruka said slowly in her ear.

“Hmm?” She shifted her gaze in that direction. “What is it?”

“So, um…I’m gonna get stronger. I’m gonna train more and study more and get stronger. And then…and then someday…”

Here, she shut her mouth tightly, and Kuroyukihime gently stroked the face of the young Burst Linker with the flat of her sword.

“Mmm, get strong. I’ll be waiting. For the time when we can meet again in this world.”

“Aah, no fair! Sister, me too!” Mana shouted, and Kuroyukihime patted her head with her other sword. The aurora was finally almost there, and the clear blue of the Ocean stage was returning to the original reddish brown of the Weathered stage.

“Still, I feel like we’re forgetting something.” Kuroyukihime cocked her head, but she soon shrugged as if to say Oh well and waited for the moment when the ocean would disappear.

She remembered what she’d been forgetting as soon as she spotted the screw-shaped avatar tumbling along the ground immediately after she touched down on the floor of the Weathered stage.

Forgotten not only by Kuroyukihime, but even by his beloved students, Crikin had no sooner returned to the bar than he was ordering a giant mug of aged awamori and getting drunk again. “S’fine, s’fine. This great me’s just a screw and all.”

Suppressing a wry smile, Kuroyukihime apologized before bringing her ear close to his head and murmuring, “Sorry, but would you send Dolphin and Merrow home through the portal first? I don’t want to show them an ugly part of this world.”

With just that, Crikin seemed to understand Kuroyukihime’s intention. Nodding, he drained his cup before standing up. “Come on, then. We’re going home, my students…Oh, right—before we do, Lotus, here.”

She caught the object he flicked at her with the tip of her sword: a card.

“It sank down to the bottom of the ocean, so I picked it up. But I got no way to use it, so I’ll give it to you as thanks for this.”

“Oh?” Casting her eyes to the surface of the card shining with silver light, she saw the text ENHANCED ARMAMENT: MYSTICAL REINS carved in small letters.

“Enhanced Armament Mystical Reins?” she murmured, and then she finally understood what it was. It had to be the reins that controlled the Legend-class Enemy, the massive dinosaur Nidhogg. After Kuroyukihime severed the bridle, the Enhanced Armament went into a field drop state, and because the user Sulfur Pot had died after that, it returned to a sealed card state, free of ownership.

“Mmm. You can give it to me, but as for a use—”

“Well, don’t say that. In the north of the Okinawa area, there’s all kinds of interesting Enemies, like a horse that can fly and stuff.”

“Hmm. Well, if you want to give it to me, then I will gratefully accept it.”

When Kuroyukihime opened her storage and tucked the item away, Crikin smiled, seemingly satisfied. “Wohkay! Come on, get up, Roo! Mah! You fall asleep here, and you won’t be able to sleep tonight!”

At some point, Ruka and Mana had fallen asleep in a corner of the bar, and Crikin yanked them to their feet before walking outside the bar. Kuroyukihime raised the sword of her right hand lightly at the girls, who were rubbing tired eyes, and then murmured quietly, “Now, then.”

The battle was over, but there was still something left that needed to be done. When she stood up and left the shop herself, she checked that Crikin and the girls had headed off to the hotel and then moved a hundred meters or so to the west.

There, on the surface of the ground, was a small, flickering yellow light. Naturally, it was the marker of Sulfur Pot’s death after he was eaten by Nidhogg.

Kuroyukihime began to speak quietly at Sulfur, who should have been in a ghost state near the marker and watching her. “Sulfur Pot, if, when you next regenerate, you tell me everything you know about the cheat tool you’re using for the long-distance dive from Tokyo, I will let you go today. However, if you don’t tell me…” She lowered her voice slightly. “…I will continue to kill you until you feel like talking. For however many hours, however many days.”