Accel World - Volume 11 - Chapter 10

10

There were two ways in the system to connect directly with the next duel rather than ending a duel. One was to switch into Battle Royale mode to bring the many members of the Gallery into a one-on-one duel as duelers. Because this only worked if all the members of the Gallery agreed to the switch, it didn’t happen very often.

And the other method was that the winner could immediately start the next duel by challenging a member of the Gallery once the regular duel was over. Since there wasn’t the added work of quitting acceleration and then reaccelerating, it seemed to be quite convenient, but this too almost never happened. The reason was the fact that the challenger’s side using up a Burst point remained unchanged—and the fact that a series of duels was mentally hard on a person.

Fights in the Accelerated World inevitably brought a fairly deep exhaustion compared with general full-dive-type duel games. It wasn’t because time was accelerated by a thousand, but rather because of the diverse duel stages and overwhelming freedom of movement, along with the strategizing to go up against duel avatars that never had a single thing in common. Even when they were not in contact with the enemy, the duelers had to intently rack their brains and concentrate with everything they had for when they did cross swords again. It had already been eight months since Haruyuki became a Burst Linker, and if he fought for a full thirty minutes, he ended up almost slumping down to the floor upon his return to the real world. Even the successive Chrome Disasters, feared as the most extreme berserker, had been unable to withstand the exhaustion of endless battles in succession and been dispersed.

Thus, the majority of Burst Linkers disconnected their Neurolinkers from the global net immediately after finishing a duel and took a break of at least a few minutes. Although he was level one, Wolfram Cerberus couldn’t have been unaware of this, given that this was not his first duel. And yet, without showing even a hint of hesitation, he had challenged Haruyuki. It wasn’t just about winning or losing, either; the small avatar was spilling over with the pure desire to fight Silver Crow and was waiting for Haruyuki’s response.

In this situation, do I have the right to say, “No thanks”? I don’t really.

Muttering in his heart, Haruyuki glanced at the health gauge in the top left of his field of view. The name inscribed below it was Silver Crow. The right side was Wolfram Cerberus. The timer in the middle had a full 1,700 seconds remaining. In other words, Haruyuki had accepted the challenge from the newcomer prodigy with the super-hard tungsten armor, praised as a “genius” by the senior member of the Leonids, Manganese Blade.

He had actually come to Nakano Area No. 2 to duel, and when he connected his Neurolinker to the global net, he had resolved to fight whatever opponent came at him. But given that this opponent was a nonstandard Burst Linker who, at level one, had pulverized a level-five opponent head-on, it was a different story. At the very least, he wanted to fight him after watching in the Gallery two or three—no, five or six—times…

“Don’t chicken out now!” he scolded himself quietly and stared at the guide cursor in the center of his field of view.

From Cerberus’s attitude, even if they hadn’t run into each other on this stage, there was a strong possibility that he would have challenged him the instant he found Silver Crow on the matching list. Given that, Haruyuki should feel fortunate to be in this situation instead, in which he knew, albeit if only slightly, the characteristics of his opponent. He would forget about the level difference and fight with everything he had. This was a matter of courtesy toward Cerberus, who had stood tall and challenged him directly.

After about a hundred seconds, Haruyuki succeeded in getting the restless train of his thoughts onto a new track, and once again took a look at his surroundings. The buildings, which had until a few minutes earlier had organic shapes, were now transformed into structures made of straight-lined iron skeletons and flat steel panels. With the start of the Crow-versus-Cerberus duel, the stage changed from Purgatory to Steel. The characteristics of this stage were that all terrain objects were more or less hard, that the effects of electricity and magnetism were enhanced, and that footsteps echoed strangely. Silver Crow was weak against electricity, so when his opponent was that kind of avatar, he had to be careful of electric shock attacks through the terrain, but there was no need for that now. Probably.

Actually, what required his attention was probably the footsteps. Metal-color avatars had the weak point of making more noise when moving than normal colors. It was impossible for both Haruyuki and his enemy to run in this Steel stage without making any noise. Given the complexity of the terrain, the sound of movement would no doubt be a key point in the contest. The members of the Gallery—more than thirty people once again—likely understood that since, unlike the previous Horn-versus-Cerberus fight, they were looking down from the roofs of the surrounding buildings at the battlefield in silence.

At that moment, the guide cursor disappeared from his field of view. “…Oh, there,” Haruyuki muttered to himself. At the start of the duel, the two of them had been randomly relocated. Haruyuki’s current position was basically the northern edge of the stage, on the east side of the road to Nakano Broadway. Cerberus had originally been coming straight at him from the west, but because the large shopping center rose up in the compass direction, he had no choice but to come around from the north or the south. Entry into buildings was permitted in a Steel stage, but that didn’t mean anything since there was no entrance along the eastern wall of Broadway.

North or south? Murmuring in his head, Haruyuki focused the entirety of his attention on his ears.

The strategy Haruyuki had come up with was extremely simple: wedge himself in between the indestructible edifices and limit his enemy’s path of movement to two options. And then, by further narrowing that down to an attack that created sound, he was aiming for a surprise first attack. His own footsteps would also make noise, but Silver Crow had a weapon called a Long Jump, which made use of his wings. It should be just barely possible for him to glide soundlessly to the southern or northern corner of the building.

So then…which way are you coming?! He pressed his back up against the wall of the building, made up of thick iron plates, and waited for the sound of metal against metal to reach his ears.

A few seconds later, he heard it. But the direction wasn’t north or south—it was east. In other words, right behind Haruyuki.

Skreenk! Together with an ear-splitting sound of destruction, a gray fist ripped through the iron plate and shot into Silver Crow’s right shoulder. The shock was like being hit with a large-caliber bullet. He was sent flying forward, spinning, and his back slammed into the road.

Shooting sparks as he came to a stop, Haruyuki stared, dumbstruck, as the fist protruding from the exterior wall of the building was quickly pulled back. Before he even had the chance to recover from his shock, a second, even more intense roar of destruction shook the air. This time, the steel plate, likely five centimeters thick, ripped open in concentric waves, and an entire avatar came flying out.

The buildings of the stage should have been indestructible, and yet Wolfram Cerberus had torn through this one with a single head butt. He slowly pulled himself upright in front of Haruyuki, and his visor, so like fangs meeting, opened with a creak that exposed his dark gray goggles.

Haruyuki couldn’t see the light of the eye lenses that should have been beneath them. However, he could feel the laserlike gaze, so directly focused on him that it was almost painful. A voice brimming with youthful passion flowed bright and clear, tinged with the peculiar echo of the stage.

“This is my second time in the Steel stage. It really is hard, though! My head is still spinning!”

At this cheerful line, Haruyuki finally managed to wake up from his daze. He checked that his opponent didn’t appear ready to attack him and then quickly got to his feet.

Seen from up close for the first time, Cerberus, while having an orthodox form and color, radiated a particular kind of presence. The reason for that was the pattern of thin striations running along the armor of his entire body. It was almost as if a hard-to-process material was machined to the point of exhaustion, so there was just nothing left to finish the surface—it was that kind of roughness. Despite the fact that he was also a metal color, Wolfram Cerberus was the polar opposite of the smooth-mirrored Crow.

“Maybe you could tell me: How did you know my position with such accuracy? You didn’t just guess at it, did you?” It was very much not a question a level five should be putting to a level one, but Haruyuki felt compelled to ask. Even if Wolfram Cerberus had seen through to Haruyuki’s plan to ambush him, there was no way he could have seen his position on the other side of the thick steel plate.

Cerberus stood up straight again and bowed his head, for some reason. “I do sincerely apologize for the surprise attack! It isn’t that I measured your position, Crow. It’s simply that this is the middle of the wall of the building. I like the middle.”

At this response, even the members of the Gallery, quiet thus far, stirred. Haruyuki also stared in mute amazement at the wall behind Cerberus. The large hole that he had plunged through did indeed seem to be precisely equidistant from the north and the south. After all, Haruyuki had readied himself in the middle so that he could respond whichever direction Cerberus came from. If he had been even a meter off to either side, then perhaps he wouldn’t have had the first attack taken from him.

Glancing up at his own health gauge, he saw that the one punch he had taken to his right shoulder had carved away nearly 10 percent. He really couldn’t underestimate the close-range attack power generated from the hardness of Cerberus’s armor.

But to put it another way, he just had to not get hit. “I get it. I have to apologize, too. I’m more experienced, and yet I was going for an ambush.” He returned the apology with his own apology and slowly raised his hands. He brought his left hand forward and pulled his right back. “I won’t run and hide. Let’s settle this with hand-to-hand combat, as two close-range types.”

“Yes! This is just what I want. Thank you very much!!”

In contrast with Haruyuki’s lowered stance, Cerberus faced forward and crossed his arms in front of his body before pulling both hands back with a high-pitched sound. Silver Crow was slightly taller, but Cerberus, with his straightly lined armor, was probably heavier.

Because Haruyuki had watched him one-sidedly defeat Frost Horn in the previous duel, his request for hand-to-hand combat definitely did not mean that he looked down on his opponent. But Haruyuki was confident that when it came to a contest of fists and feet, he was no slouch. Because his speed—which even the swordmaster Kuroyukihime had acknowledged—was Silver Crow’s greatest strength.

The tension between the two as they faced each other grew and grew until finally, it was so strained the air itself was almost electrified. The instant this fighting spirit made the steel panels at their feet creak, Haruyuki moved.

“Shi!” With a sharp battle cry, he dashed forward. In a single breath, he closed the distance between them, and his right hand shot out in a long punch.

Cerberus didn’t move to dodge the fist, but rather raised his left arm to block. So he really did place absolute faith in his defensive power. The armor with the rough notches on it did seem intensely hard, and if he forced his fist through it, he might actually end up taking damage instead.

But when his punch was on the verge of hitting his enemy’s arm, Haruyuki braked suddenly and instantaneously with his right wing. His body spun around, yanking his fist back. Using this vector, he went for a motionless low kick with his left leg. He was aiming for the place where Cerberus’s armor looked thinnest on his lower body, the side of his right knee.

If he had tried to pull off the combination of a feint with a right straight going into a low left with just his body, that intention would inevitably bleed into his movements, but it was impossible to read his movements when he controlled his posture with his wings. And yet Cerberus reacted spectacularly, lifting his right leg to block—but Haruyuki’s kick landed a moment before he could.

Metal collided with metal. The screech of collision. Countless scattering sparks cast dazzling illumination on the steel plates of the ground.

His upper body angled to one side, Cerberus shot off a counter of a right hook, but by that time, Haruyuki had already dashed back more than two meters. Of course, he had also used the thrust of his wings for a few tenths of a second to retreat.

Glancing up, he saw that this one blow had reduced Cerberus’s health gauge by about 5 percent. For a clean hit, that wasn’t very satisfying, but at any rate, if he aimed for gaps in the armor, he could do damage. As long as he was sure of that, then…

The only thing to do is rush him!!

“Urrrr…Aaaah!!” Roaring, Haruyuki charged once more.

The high kick, normally out of range, got a boost from the propulsive power of both wings. His curved trajectory abruptly turned straight, and the tip of his foot, stretched out into a silver lance, slipped past Cerberus’s crossed-arm block to explode into the thin armor at his throat. Robbed of just under 10 percent of his health gauge, Cerberus reeled backward.

Normally, Haruyuki also couldn’t move after completing a big kick until that leg hit the ground. But as he bent his extended right leg, he vibrated his left wing with everything he had. Using the propulsive force generated as a stepping stone, this time, it was a middle kick with his left leg. He drove his foot into Cerberus’s undefended right flank, and his opponent staggered and dropped to one knee. Haruyuki rotated diagonally in midair and brought the heel of his right foot down perpendicularly. This landed sharply on Cerberus’s neck, knocking the small avatar’s head to the ground.

Using the reaction force from the heel drop, Haruyuki flew backward through space and landed three or so meters away. Here, the members of the Gallery on the rooftops erupted once more.

“What was that movement?! I couldn’t read him at all!”

“You didn’t know? That’s Crow’s Aerial Combo.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen Cerberus go down.”

Without actively listening, these comments made their way to Haruyuki’s ears as he exhaled a long-held breath.

With the three clean hits of the succession of kicks, Cerberus’s health gauge had dropped to 70 percent. However, for damage done by a level five to a level one, it was comparatively small. Normally, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see that his opponent’s gauge had dropped into the yellow zone with hits like that.

It would be fairly tough to cut away the remaining 70 percent in this fashion—that said, he saw a chance at victory. He might be outmatched in defensive abilities and probably attack power, too, but he excelled at speed. As long as he kept his guard up and didn’t lose focus, he could push ahead with his Aerial Combo.

“But this is charging Cerberus’s special-attack gauge, too. The real contest starts now,” he heard someone in the Gallery say.

Haruyuki once again glanced up to the right. Indeed, with the bonus from object destruction when he ripped that hole open in the wall of Nakano Broadway and the series of blasts from Haruyuki, Wolfram Cerberus’s special-attack gauge was more than half charged. It couldn’t be that on top of the super hardness of tungsten, he also had a special attack? Haruyuki swallowed hard as Cerberus slowly pulled himself up from the steel ground where he lay.

“Wow…” He shook his wolflike head two or three times, and his usual bright voice rang out. “Just what I expected, Crow. I’d heard about you, but you’re much faster than I even imagined.”

“You’re a fair bit harder than I expected.”

At Haruyuki’s retort, the gray avatar bowed his head. “Thank you so much for the compliment. But…I’m sorry, it’s still not there.”

Unable to immediately grasp what he was saying, Haruyuki parroted the words back, “Still not there…? Not where?”

“I’ll show you now,” Wolfram Cerberus replied, not boastful in any way, and then he clenched his hands into fists before slamming them together in front of his chest.

Perhaps the movement was some kind of switch; the visor above and below his face bit into each other with a sharp metallic sound, hiding his goggles. That was the whole of the phenomenon—the open-and-close motion of the armor he had shown off several times up to that point. But his body didn’t transform; no weapon appeared.

“What exactly…?” The answer to Haruyuki’s murmured question was a sudden and fierce dash.

With Cerberus charging him head-on without the slightest feint or artifice, Haruyuki was slightly confused. But his mind quickly switched to battle mode. If Cerberus was going for a big finish, that was exactly what he wanted. He deployed the wings on his back with a gashk and started forward.

First, he’d stop Cerberus with a low kick, and then set up another combo. With that intention, he shot his right leg out sharply. The spot he was aiming for was the place he had gotten damage before: the side of the knee. Adding in the propulsive power of his wings, the lightning-fast kick dug into Cerberus’s left leg.

Up to this point, the situation was unfolding just like his first attack. But in the next instant, Haruyuki’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

The tip of his right foot should have gotten a perfect clean hit, and yet it was repelled like it had slammed into an absolutely impenetrable wall. And that wasn’t all. His silver armor was deeply dented, and a crimson damage effect like blood carved out an arc in the air. As proof that this wasn’t just appearance, Crow’s health gauge was cut away by nearly 10 percent.

“Wha…?” Groaning, Haruyuki lost his balance in midair, while in front of him, Cerberus’s tapered helmet closed in.

Desperately, he crossed his arms and took a defensive posture. Immediately after that came a tremendous shock. The pressure was like taking the charge of a Beast-class Enemy all by himself, and his arms were helplessly knocked back. The tip of the thick tungsten armor touched—no, buried—itself in Haruyuki’s exposed chest.

“Ngh…Gaah!!” he cried out, all the air in his lungs being pushed out, and flew backward.

In the blink of an eye, he was on the other side of the five-meter-wide street, his back slamming into a mid-size building. The impact was such that the tough exterior wall of the Steel stage was dented several centimeters, and his field of view went white for a moment.

With the damage from having a large hole opened up in his chest armor and the secondary damage of colliding with an object, Haruyuki’s health gauge, previously up around 90 percent, was abruptly colored yellow. This was a fearsome—actually, he wanted to say it was impossible—explosive attack power. And this decisive, full-power head butt should have caused some recoil for Cerberus as well, but he dug in to forcefully put a stop to it before charging again without a moment’s pause.

If I take this here, I can face him down!

Judging this instinctively, Haruyuki peeled his avatar off the dent on the steel plate and plunged forward. He focused all of his mental powers on the incredible force of the right straight punch that Cerberus was swinging at him. The power contained in that fist was apparent from the effect of the air scorching around it, but compared with the punch Great Wall’s Iron Pound had launched at him, it was slow; he could read its trajectory.

“Hngaah…!” His voice leaking out from between clenched teeth, Haruyuki let his left fist fly from down low. As he knocked away Cerberus’s punch from the inside with the armor of his arm, he’d hit his opponent’s head—basically, he was aiming for an irregular cross-counter.

The gray fist came flying at him, carving out more or less the arc he had expected. He aligned his left punch with the inside of that trajectory like a hook. The outside of Silver Crow’s forearm (the hardest part of his body) and the inside of Cerberus’s elbow (the part where there was only a thin overlay of metal panel) came into contact, and sparks flew.

Krrnk! A collision that rang through his bones. All the joints of his left arm creaked.

And what bounced back was once again Silver Crow. His full-body counterpunch was easily beaten back as though it had never even existed, and Cerberus’s fist slammed into the left side of his face. Once again, the impact was so great that not only his vision but his consciousness threatened to go flying. He worked hard to keep himself from flying off by utilizing the instantaneous thrust of his wings.

Why?! Haruyuki shrieked in the back of his mind, catching sight of his health gauge being cut away nearly 30 percent. Why would the kick or punch he launched with perfect timing be repelled this easily? His opponent’s armor might indeed have been the super-hard tungsten, but Silver Crow was a metal color with an armor hardness bonus. He had hit a brittle part; he just couldn’t process this result.

No, not yet. Don’t give up yet. Even if you lose in armor hardness, I still have speed…and the wings on my back! If this is how it’s going to be, then I’ll use up all of my special-attack gauge. It’s fully charged now from the successive serious damage. I can win this with a full-power dive attack from a super high altitude. Let’s see whether you can send even that bouncing back, Cerberus!!

“Urrr…aaaah!!” Haruyuki howled, mustering up the last of his will to fight.

He jumped into a back dash, whirling around and very narrowly avoiding the left hook his opponent threw his way after the right straight. He sank down, turning around to the rear, deployed the wings on his back, and flapped the metal fins with every bit of power he had. With his drawn-in right leg, he kicked hard off the ground and took off straight into the air like a rocket.

“—?!”

But in that instant, Haruyuki saw something that again went beyond all expectation. Cerberus had bent down slightly at exactly the same time as Haruyuki and kicked at the steel plate of the road with both feet, legs bent so much they creaked and squealed.

Whaaaam! The sound was an incredibly loud echo; the surface of the road rippled like a wave. The small avatar became a bullet shooting up vertically, twisting in midair, chasing after Haruyuki. He had no sooner flipped his body around with all his might than his helmet, visor still closed, hit the helmet of Silver Crow.

Haruyuki heard the sound of Silver Crow’s mirrored visor shattering and the sound of his own remaining health gauge being carved away to zero at the same time.

YOU LOSE!!

In his field of view robbed of saturation, the flaming letters popped up, burning relatively weakly compared with when he won. This was followed by the results screen being displayed—both of which Haruyuki stared at in a complete daze.

He had lost to an opponent four levels lower, so his reserve of Burst points dropped with alarming speed, but he wasn’t even aware of that. His duel avatar had already turned into polygons and scattered, so his consciousness alone hovered in a ghost state in the coordinates where he died, while he turned vacant eyes on the stage where the battle had ended.

A few meters away, Wolfram Cerberus, his visor closed once more, stood up straight facing Haruyuki (or in his general direction). He bent deeply at the waist and bowed before offering up a cheerful greeting without a hint of unpleasantness. “Thank you very much! I had a lot of fun!”

Haruyuki, the defeated, could leave the stage whenever he wanted once the results screen was shown, as long as he shouted the “burst out” command. But he didn’t even have the energy to utter those words; all he could do was stare at the young Burst Linker, his mind frozen.

Naturally, he had lost any number of duels. He had even been taken out by a lower-level opponent, had the whole fight flipped on its head when the enemy’s health gauge had less than 10 percent left once or twice. But those times hadn’t given him anywhere near the shock that this did.

There were two reasons that Haruyuki was hit so hard that he didn’t even have the energy to get depressed. First, there was Wolfram Cerberus’s overwhelming hardness. Of all the Burst Linkers Haruyuki had fought up to that point, the one with the greatest defensive abilities had been the Green King, aka Invulnerable, Green Grandé. Even though Haruyuki had at the time been fused with the Armor of Catastrophe, the Disaster, he had only been able to make the tiniest crack in the great shield the king carried, one of the Seven Arcs, the Strife.

However, Cerberus at level one normally couldn’t be compared with a level-nine king, but his hardness in a certain sense exceeded even that of Grandé—or rather, it was something different. In the first half of the duel, even with that hardness, Haruyuki had been able to do damage by aiming for the gaps in the armor. But in the second half, after Cerberus’s visor closed, his hardness was such that his entire body seemed impenetrable, including his so-called weak points. Haruyuki’s full-powered attacks had been in vain, repelled each time by Cerberus’s armor, and he couldn’t help feeling a despair that went beyond amazement.

And then there was the second, larger reason that knocked Haruyuki off his feet—his speed. In the final stages of the battle, he had abandoned the idea of hand-to-hand combat on the ground and wagered his hope of a reversal on a sudden drop kick after flying up to the limits of his altitude. Watching for an opening to take off, he tried to fly up in the shortest time, immediately after he had dodged his opponent’s big attack. That had been the plan.

But in that instant, despite the fact that Cerberus clearly kicked off the ground after Haruyuki, he’d gotten the jump on Crow after he’d taken off. The fact that his vertical ascent had been beaten down from in front of him was proof of that. In other words, although it was only in the last moment, Cerberus was also superior to Haruyuki in speed. He had lost in hardness as a metal color, and in speed, his greatest ability. On top of that, it was to a newbie opponent who had only become a Burst Linker a few days earlier.

Even after more than ten seconds had passed since the end of the duel, he still couldn’t believe the results screen before his eyes, and he continued to float, dumbfounded, in the place where he’d died. Through the light-purple, semi-transparent window, he could see the small gray avatar moving away from him. He was heading over to where several members of the Gallery were standing, and it looked like they were saying something—probably an invitation to a Legion—but he couldn’t hear what.

As he watched Cerberus from behind conversing with the more-senior Burst Linkers without seeming the slightest bit shy, Haruyuki’s ability to think finally recovered—however slightly—and he let fragments of vague guesses run through his mind.

The fundamental rule of same level, same potential. Had this finally been broken? Had Wolfram Cerberus been given power practically impossible for a level one right from the start? It was hard to believe, but that was really the only thing he could think of. Or rather, that’s what he wanted to think. He had lost because his opponent was a deviation from the rules of the Accelerated World, an exception—a violation of the rules. He couldn’t think of another reason for his defeat.

“—Silver Crow.” Abruptly, a low voice called his name from behind, and Haruyuki jumped and shrank back into his invisible body. Ever so timidly turning around, he saw a female warrior avatar standing there, with blue armor that had a hint of green to it. It was Manganese Blade.

Her sharp eye lenses quietly gleaming, the senior member of the Leonids continued. “I’m under no obligation to show you any kindness, but…considering the Metatron attack, it would be an issue if you were to collapse for a few days. I’ll offer you a word in the guise of advice.” Even though she shouldn’t have been able to see the form of the loser, Manganese’s eyes caught Haruyuki’s directly. Like her voice, they cut into his mind like the tip of a sword.

“First, acknowledge Cerberus’s strength. Unless you start there, you’ll do nothing but struggle. It’s true, his power—his ability, Physical Immunity, is overwhelming. You probably want to think it’s against the rules. But that is what a lot of Burst Linkers thought eight months ago—when the unique Aviation ability was before their eyes.”

“…!!” Haruyuki held his breath.

Manganese’s tone eased slightly as she murmured, “Go back to your starting point, Crow. A strong power is born from an equally deep wound—you should already know that. That’s all I can say…Ask Cyan Pile about the rest.” She finished with this fairly cryptic suggestion, and then the woman warrior turned around, somewhat dashingly. As she walked, she likely gave the command to stop the acceleration; her tall form soon disappeared without a sound.

His thoughts were still half-paralyzed, but Haruyuki carved Manganese’s words into his brain before staring at the gauges in the top of his field of view once more. Wolfram Cerberus’s health gauge actually had 70 percent left in it. The duel had taken a mere eleven minutes. He clenched formless fists and squeezed his eyes and his mouth shut before he quietly called, “Burst Out.”

The instant he returned to the real world, he naturally traced out the same movements with his real body. With his eyes closed, he forced open trembling fists and held down the global net disconnect button on his Neurolinker. The circuit disconnection was shown in his field of view, and once that had disappeared, he lifted his eyelids.

Unlike when he was accelerated, the evening scene of Honan Street looked slightly blurry. Haruyuki wiped his eyes with his fist and muttered, “…Dammit.”

Still standing stock-still on the dim sidewalk, one more time: “Dammit!”

With the passage of time, the shock at his unilateral defeat was steadily replaced with regret. He couldn’t use the excuse that Cerberus was an illegal avatar. If Physical Immunity was real, then it was indeed an incredibly powerful ability, but…if he was going to say that, then Silver Crow’s flight was the same thing. He was the only one in the Accelerated World who had the wings he had just used, and he lost completely to a level-one opponent.

The memory of Manganese Blade telling him to acknowledge his opponent’s strength came back to life in his mind. But it didn’t look like he’d be able to do that right away. Acknowledging Wolfram Cerberus’s strength would mean also acknowledging Silver Crow’s weakness, and he didn’t want to do that. Even though he had broken through the guard of the super-class Enemy, the God Suzaku; had returned alive from the depths of the castle; had even won against the control of the Armor of Catastrophe…he couldn’t bear to throw away the self-confidence he had built up little by little.

At that moment, the last thing Manganese had said echoed in a corner of his brain: Ask Cyan Pile about the rest.

Why had she said that before leaving? Why had she brought up Cyan Pile—Takumu—out of the blue? It was true, he had originally been a member of the Leonids, but he had left after the battle with Haruyuki, eight months ago—

“Oh…!” The instant his thoughts reached that, Haruyuki cried out with a realization. He staggered slightly and pressed his back up against the exterior wall of the building on the left side of the sidewalk.

The defeat by a level-one opponent with an “illegal” power. That was how the situation must have looked from Takumu’s perspective in the hospital battle when Silver Crow and Cyan Pile fought for the first time. Level four at the time, Takumu had had the chest of his avatar pierced by the fist of Haruyuki, who had awakened the flight ability, and been carried high up into the sky like that. And then he had been pressed by Haruyuki.

Do you concede, Taku?

That you totally cannot beat me in this Accelerated World. Do you concede, Taku?!

There was no way Takumu couldn’t have hated that. And yet he had acknowledged his defeat, and to atone for his actions, he even withdrew from the Blue Legion. After that, he had carefully guided Haruyuki, who was still very much a newbie; he had worried alongside Haruyuki, when he made a careless mistake and was on the verge of losing all his points; and he continued to firmly support Haruyuki even now, eight months later.

“…Taku…” Still leaning against the building, he closed his eyes tightly once more and said his friend’s name.

All this time, I forgot there’s something more important than getting the Theoretical Mirror ability, than purifying the Armor of Catastrophe, than anything, something I should do first. Losing badly to a level one, I finally realize it—or maybe I lost because I forgot…

He took a deep breath, his chest trembling, let it out again, and pulled his back away from the wall. Upon reaching the road he originally came down, his pace quickly changed to a trot toward Kannana.