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Accel World - Volume 14 - Chapter 3




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3

The post-mission processing—recovering everyone’s health gauges and refreshing Niko’s Enhanced Armament, which had been pounded full of holes under Seiryu’s fierce attacks—required roughly an hour.

The means for it was incredibly simple. They returned to the real world briefly through a leave point in Tokyo Station and then immediately reaccelerated. Although this used up an additional ten points, their duel avatars and the Enhanced Armament were completely regenerated. It felt like mere seconds in experienced time for Haruyuki and his friends, but while they were shouting the Unlimited Burst command, about a thousand times that much time passed in the Accelerated World.

Compared to the many online games Haruyuki had played before Brain Burst, the complete recovery of health and equipment with just one re-log-in seemed fairly generous, but there was a problem: When you used a portal, your location information was also reset.

Thus, when Haruyuki touched down in the Accelerated World once more, the scene around him was not Tokyo Station. Instead, he had returned to the yard of Umesato Junior High. And on top of that, in the mere hour they had been away, the Change had apparently come, so that the night of the Century End stage had lifted, and the grounds were dyed red, as though they were on fire.

He had been so impatient to get back, he had shouted the command at the fastest speed the BB program recognized, so no one else had dived in with him yet. And since a difference of 0.1 seconds bloated up into a hundred seconds on this side, it would take a minute or more for his companions to join him.

Haruyuki turned around and looked at the Umesato Junior High school buildings, transformed now into something resembling Grecian temple ruins. He narrowed his eyes to stare at one corner on the east side of the first floor of the second school building.

In the nurse’s room that existed in that spot in the real world, right now at that very moment, his cherished friend, Rin Kusakabe, was fighting with everything she had. She was desperately trying to endure the mental interference of the ISS kit parasitizing the American motorcycle that was a part of her duel avatar, Ash Roller.

Rin had collapsed in the middle of the school festival right after watching the boys’ kendo team group performance, so in real-world time, thirty minutes had not yet passed. But since the power of an individual ISS kit’s interference grew in step with the spread of the infection through the Accelerated World, one minute must have felt any number of times longer than that to Rin, who was struggling to keep the kit from taking control.

They had learned that you couldn’t get away from the kit’s interference even if you removed your Neurolinker or switched the power off from when Takumu had been parasitized. Haruyuki had no idea what the logic behind it was, but as long as the ISS kit existed inside the Neurolinker—or as long as the kit’s main body existed inside the Brain Burst central server—the phenomenon would continue.

“…Kusakabe. Hang on just a little longer.” Haruyuki started talking to Rin in the real world. “Curren’s back, and Pard’s level eight now. We’re all going right now to take out Metatron and destroy the ISS kit main body. And then let’s go check out the rest of the festival together. There’s still a bunch of stuff I want to show you. And your brother— Ash, I want to properly introduce him to everyone. So…So…”

He fumbled earnestly to string these words together, but the fretful feeling in his heart didn’t go away. It was as though all the things he had pushed back so he could concentrate on the mission to rescue Aqua Current were now forcing their way up and out of him.

What if they failed to destroy the kit main body?

The only means left, then, to stop the mental interference for Rin would be for her to stop being a Burst Linker—for Ash Roller to be erased. Ash had been Haruyuki’s first fight, his first loss, his first win in the Accelerated World, and he was just as important to Haruyuki now as any of his Legion companions. And he felt the same about Rin, who had worked hard to pull Haruyuki back when he was on the verge of pushing for total point loss so he could take the Armor of Catastrophe out with him. Both were priceless, invaluable friends to him.

They couldn’t fail. Failure was not an option. If success or failure in the Metatron mission rested on Haruyuki’s Optical Conduction ability, then even if it meant sacrificing himself, he would repel the laser attack that was powerful enough to rend the earth asunder.

He clenched his hands into tight fists as he stared at the corner of the second school building, and the sound of an avatar appearing came from behind him. He turned to find Lime Bell—Chiyuri—flying down inside a circle of light. She had no sooner set eyes on him than she was exploding into one of the lectures she was so adept at.

“I get that you’re in a hurry, Haru, but your command was too fast! What if you’d gotten pushed back?! You’d end up making all of us wait however many minutes instead!”

Haruyuki mentally sent a few last words of encouragement toward Rin in the real world before arguing with some force, “Wh-whatever! The BB command and my special-attack names are the only things I never stammer over!”

“I wonder about that…”

When she stared at him with those doubtful eyes, he felt like maybe he had once or so, and he tried to force the conversation onto a different track.

“A-anyway, dawn came with the Change. And when I see the morning light, I get reflexively sleepy, you know?” He made like he was yawning.

But Chiyuri only narrowed her eyes further and glared. “So in the world you’re in, the sun rises in the west?” she retorted.

“Huh?” He hurriedly shook his head from side to side. The red sun was indeed hanging just above the horizon not in the direction of Shinjuku, but rather Mitaka. The orange of the sky that Haruyuki had been convinced was the sunrise was actually sunset. But to meekly admit his mistake here would be a loss of face as the senior Burst Linker. “W-we don’t know whether that’s the real sun or not! It could just be a huge ball of flames burning in Hachioji.”

Chiyuri’s eyes became even cooler at this cringeworthy counterargument, digging into Haruyuki from above. “If something like that was over there burning, the Burst Linkers who dived in the Hachioji area would be killed instantly. And this is a Twilight stage. Twilight means when the sun is setting, so if that’s not the evening sun, then what is it?”

“…Y-you have a point…” Effortlessly backed into a corner, Haruyuki twisted the index fingers of both hands together to indicate his obvious submission.

“Heh-heh!” He heard the laughter-filled voice of Kuroyukihime, who had appeared behind them at some point. “I also believe that is the sun, but I can’t say with utmost certainty that Haruyuki’s assertion is mere tall tales either.”

“Huh? What do you mean, Kuroyukihime?”

Just as Haruyuki turned around, the rest of his comrades appeared, one after another. After a glance to check that all nine members were present, the Black King adroitly crossed her sword arms.

“In the Unlimited Neutral Field, verrrrrry occasionally, the Legend-class Enemy Sun God Inti appears. The only way to describe it, I suppose, is that it’s a massive ball of flames that rolls around on the ground. It absorbs fire-type attacks, evaporates water-type attacks, and on top of that, if you get near it, you die instantly from high-temperature damage. I doubt there has ever been a Legion that’s defeated Inti.”

“I-I’d like to never run into it.”

“I wanna see it!”

When Haruyuki and Chiyuri expressed totally opposing opinions, Akira stepped forward, accompanied by the sound of flowing water. “A long time ago, just once, I fought Inti,” she said nonchalantly.

“R-really, Curren? I’ve only ever seen it from afar.”

“Graph and I found it when we were out hunting Enemies. I tried to run away, but that idi—reckless one said he had a good strategy…”

The “idi—reckless one” Akira was referring to was the last of Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements, Graphite Edge. He led the squad attacking the north gate in the Castle attack mission and fought the God Genbu before ending up in the same Unlimited EK state as Utai and Akira. That was basically all Haruyuki knew about him, but apparently, he was the sort of avatar who was always raring for a fight.

Complicated looks rose upon the face masks of Fuko and Utai, who had joined the circle of conversation at some point, while Niko grinned and Pard looked exasperated.

Akira glanced at them all and then continued the ballad of the ancient adventure. “Graph’s plan was to pull Inti to somewhere with a large amount of water, knock it in there, and extinguish the flames. We were in Aoyama, so we drew it all the way to the Akasaka imperial garden two kilometers away, death breathing down our necks the whole time. And somehow, we managed to get it to fall into the pond.”

“…S-so then, did Inti’s flames go out…?” Takumu asked with excited interest from behind Haruyuki.

Akira shrugged slightly. “The flames weakened for just a moment, but the pond—which is two hundred meters around—was boiling in a flash, and Graph got incinerated attacking it with a sword, so I left it and ran. When he regenerated, that idi—that boy who easily gets carried away, said he was going to keep it chasing him around the city until the stage changed to a Storm. And then he was going to drop it into Tokyo Bay for good measure.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” Here, Niko erupted in laughter as though she could no longer hold it in. “Just like Negabu’s Anomaly! I’ve heard all kinds of rumors, and it sounds like he was seriously quite the mighty hero.”

“For him, you have to add idiot before hero, Red King.” Fuko smoothly uttered the adjective that Akira had hesitated to, leaned back in her wheelchair, and looked up at the madder-red sky. After a brief pause, sounding somehow concerned, she said, “Speaking of the Change…I didn’t expect we would be so lucky as to get a Hell stage, but I can’t really say a Twilight stage is such a good omen.”

“Huh…?” Why is that, Master? Haruyuki was about to ask, but a moment sooner, Takumu naturally slipped into professor mode.

“Right. The Archangel Metatron’s power is weaker in a dark-type stage. So then a holy-type stage—albeit a low-level one like Twilight—would add a positive correction to Metatron’s status, right?”

“Just a little, but yes. Still, it’s a fact that in a battle of extremes, that ‘little’ might influence the state of the game…Lotus, I leave the decision to you.”

“Mm…” The leader of this mission, Kuroyukihime, looked up at the dusky sky, as Fuko had. “When we went back to the other side for just a moment, the time was 12:20:15. In other words, we have nine minutes and forty-five seconds left until the forced disconnect safety set for twelve thirty is activated…We have 585,000 seconds on this side, which equals 162.5 hours, which equals six days and eighteen hours and thirty minutes.”

Being able to churn out conversions between Accelerated World and real-world time like that is another mark of a high ranker, huh? Haruyuki thought in one corner of his mind as he concentrated on Kuroyukihime’s voice.

“During that time, there will be at least one change, and if we’re lucky, two. The battle against Metatron will likely—no, definitely—be a short one, so it would in theory be possible to wait for the next Change somewhere safe. Of course, there is a nonzero chance that the next stage will be a higher-level holy type, but in my experience, holy and dark types essentially never appear twice in a row. If we’re going to play it safe, we’ll go on standby for three days—”

“K-Kuroyukihime!” Haruyuki shouted, unconsciously stepping forward. “It’s okay. No matter what the stage is, I’ll make sure to definitely repel Metatron’s laser! So no standby or anything, right away—” He frantically flapped his lips, a picture of Rin on a bed in the nurse’s room in the back of his mind the whole time.

Even supposing they did spend three days on the inside, only four minutes and a bit would pass on the outside. But right now, Haruyuki couldn’t see that time as “only.” They had to free Rin from her suffering even one minute, one second faster. This was the promise Haruyuki had made when he took on the challenge of the two major missions back-to-back.

“…Right now, we have to go to Midtown Tower!” Haruyuki pushed each word brokenly from his trembling chest and clenched his right hand into a tight fist.

A hand covered in a cool film of water gently wrapped around that fist. The endlessly flowing water gently eased Haruyuki’s fitful impatience. “I completely understand how you feel, Crow.”

The owner of the voice was Aqua Current, recently freed from a sealed state. Moving to stand in front of him, she stared hard at Haruyuki with eyes pale like the light of the moon reflected on the surface of water.

“A very long time ago, back when I still hadn’t joined the Legion, I wasn’t able to help someone very important to me. This was someone very strong with incredibly big dreams, but…people were jealous and feared her, and their malice swallowed her up. Which is why I really do understand your wanting to hurry and save Ash Roller without wasting a single second. But that’s all the more reason why we can’t rush this. It’s not that anyone doubts your abilities. But you can’t win against Metatron by yourself. For all of us to give it everything we’ve got, we need to collect as much information as there is to collect, discuss it all again and again and again, and prepare as thoroughly as we can. That’s what’s needed right now.” For Akira, this was a very long and very emotional speech.

Haruyuki slowly relaxed his shoulders and hung his head deeply. “…But…Three days—I mean, wait for three days…During that time, Kusakabe’s…”

“I’m not saying three days. But will you give us a day—no, one night?”

Off to the left of Haruyuki’s hanging head, he heard a powerful voice, as if shaking off its hesitation. He lifted his eyes and looked into the face of the swordmaster, Kuroyukihime. Beneath her inky goggles, her violet-blue eyes shone resolutely.

“We won’t rely on the Change. Our attacks won’t hit Metatron in anything other than a Hell stage anyway. There’s nothing to be done about slight status corrections. But we do need to scout the area around Midtown Tower and reexamine the details of our strategy. And…I’m sure no one is aware of it right now, but the exhaustion from the battle with Seiryu before is still with us. We’ll rest a night, recover our mental energy, and take on Metatron in top condition. So that we can definitely save your friend—Ash Roller.”

“…Okay!” Haruyuki took a deep breath and nodded forcefully. Prompt action and a reckless charge were totally different things. Up to that point, he had any number of times thoughtlessly barged into all kinds of situations and made everyone worry, but if he really wanted to make it to level seven—to become a high ranker—then it was about time he learned the importance of knowledge and thought. But also, so he didn’t disappoint Takumu in their promised duel.

…Kusakabe, just twelve more hours. Hang on for just forty-three seconds in the real world. And then we’ll end all of this.

He sent this third thought to Rin and then switched mental gears to the business of strategy. First, a night of rest. That said, there were a limited number of places where they could rest safely in the Unlimited Neutral Field, given the Enemies swarming around, and all the more so in a Twilight stage with all the buildings now half-destroyed like Greek ruins.

“Um, so then, first of all, where…?” Haruyuki turned to look at Kuroyukihime, Akira, and the veteran squad, but everyone was wrestling with the same question. He didn’t get an answer right away.

“Um, is it a big no to resting in the school?” Chiyuri asked. “Although, I guess the walls and floors are all busted up, but…”

“Well, it’s not that we can’t rest here,” Niko replied. “But we’d hafta post a sentry so we don’t get attacked by Enemies or other Burst Linkers. That’s kind of a hassle, y’know? You don’t even have anyone to talk to or anything.”

“Hee-hee-hee, it’s okay, Niko, sweetie! I’ll keep watch with you so you don’t get lonely!” Chiyuri teased.

“Wh-who said anything about lonely?! And quit it with the ‘sweetie’ crap!”

Watching this with a smile, Utai looked back as though she had suddenly remembered something. “Speaking of places to rest, Fu, can we not rest there?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm, I thought of that, too, but it’s a little far,” Fuko replied. “From the east gate of the Castle, it’s just a little to the south, though. That would’ve been nice.”

…There? Far? South of the east gate? Haruyuki input all this data into the computer in his mind, and the answer popped out with a ding!

“Oh, right!” he shouted. “Master Raker has a house, doesn’t she?! No Enemies or Burst Linkers can get in there, so we could sleep in peace—” Here, he remembered exactly what he had been through at that house, and his mouth snapped shut.

Haruyuki had visited Sky Raker’s player home, a house built on top of the old Tokyo Tower, two and a half months earlier. He had begged her to teach him the Incarnate System, and smiling gently, Raker had stretched out her right hand and mercilessly pushed him off—to the ground far, far below from a height of three hundred thirty-three meters.

No way, that wouldn’t happen again—no, no, no way. I mean, I’ve already mastered Incarnate techniques, and I have my wings back, too. Even as he told himself this, Haruyuki was seized by an ominous premonition, even while the discussion proceeded among the girls.

“Mm, I see. Yes, Fufuan. It is a little far from here, but fortunately, we have been allocated a taxi.”

“Now, look here, I’m gonna start charging you! And where exactly is this Foo-foo-an anyway—Shiba Park?! Deep in Oscillatory, with Aurora just off to the right?! That’s haunted territory! Why would you—?”

“Hee-hee, it’s the highest player home in all twenty-three wards of Tokyo, Red King. Currently, the only ones who can make it up there on their own are me and Corvus, and…Ash on a good day.”

Although a pained look flickered across her face when she spoke Ash Roller’s name, Fuko quickly regained her smile and continued.

“If we go the way we went before and then straight south from Kasumigaseki in the Chiyoda area, we can basically make it without really passing through Oscillatory Universe territory. But we used a lot of Incarnate techniques in the battle with Seiryu, so Beast-class Enemies might be gathering in that area right about now. It’s a little bit longer, but it would probably be better if we went up Yamate Street to Shinagawa and then go north.”

“But then we’re cuttin’ right through GW territory? Those guys love Enemy hunting. We might run into a huge party. It is Sunday afternoon and all.”

“Mm. Well, we’ll manage somehow.”

“You can’t seriously be planning to chop them all down and pass through, yeah? I’m totally not into giving ol’ Iron Fists a reason to whine and complain at the next meeting of the Seven Kings. That guy’s such a pain in the butt.”

“Goodness, Fists can be quite adorable, though, you know. When I caught his rocket punch in midair and we all tickled it and pinched it and did all sorts of things, his reaction really made me burst out laughing.”

“…You seriously get around and do your thing, Strong Arm,” Niko said, her red face mask paling slightly, and Pard bobbed her head up and down in her usual position behind the king.

Kuroyukihime cleared her throat and brought the derailed conversation back on track. “A-anyway, I think the Shinagawa course from Shibuya is relatively less dangerous,” she said, sounding more like she was posing a question to all present. “The real headquarters for Oscillatory is hypothesized to be a girls’ school that goes all the way from elementary through university in Shirokane, Minato Ward, but there won’t be any problems if we move at a distance of more than two kilometers from there. Anyone have any opinions?”

Chiyuri’s right hand twitched, but she stayed silent beside him. Haruyuki could basically guess what his childhood friend was thinking at that moment. She’d probably been about to ask Kuroyukihime why she had such detailed real info on the White Legion, which had its territory in distant Minato Ward.

Given that the majority of Burst Linkers were elementary, junior high, or high school students, it was often the case that key Legion bases were the schools attended by the master or the senior executive. Nega Nebulus itself was like that, and the small Legion Petit Paquet they had encountered in the Setagaya area was the same.

Thus, there was a certain level of risk at play if the name of the school/Legion base got around, although perhaps not on the level of an individual Burst Linker being cracked in the real. Kuroyukihime used her privileges as student council vice president to set up various defensive measures against any leaks, and Oscillatory Universe had to have been doing the same. Identifying the headquarters from outside was difficult in the extreme.

But of course, this information hadn’t been obtained from the outside. The Black King was the in-game scion and actual younger sister of the White King, White Cosmos. The reason Kuroyukihime knew the White Legion’s base was because she was a relative who had once lived with her under the same roof.

Kuroyukihime herself had informed Haruyuki of this after school three days earlier in the student council office of Umesato Junior High. The only other people there who likely knew were the three Elements, but given how sharp her natural intuition was, Chiyuri had probably figured out that there was some kind of relationship between Kuroyukihime and the White King. Haruyuki was sure Kuroyukihime would talk to her and Takumu in the not-so-distant future about everything, about the series of events leading up to her split from her “parent,” the White King.

Whether she was aware of Haruyuki’s thoughts or not, Kuroyukihime nodded slowly and brought the discussion to a close. “Now, at any rate, we appear to have no opposing opinions, so we’ll all fill our special-attack gauges, just in case, and then head first toward the old Tokyo Tower on a southward course. If the Red King aaaaaaabsolutely insists she does not want to drive, we will have no choice but to walk the twenty kilometers.”

“Ugh! Honestly! Fine, I get it!” Niko cried, waving her right hand around. But then, with a grin, she countered, “But sneaking around on these back roads is a total hassle. We’re taking the main streets! We run into any big Enemies and I’m charging right through ’em. You fall off, you get back up on the roof on your own!”

Despite this wild call, Niko’s driving was actually quite restrained, compared with their earlier trip. The armored truck, like new after being refreshed in the second dive, rolled down Oume Highway at a speed of forty kilometers per hour and took a right at Nakano-sakaue Station. Once they got onto Yamate Street, the sixth of the eight roads encircling the city center, she sped up only slightly.

Just as the Shinjuku Government Building rising up to their immediate left indicated, this area was smack in the middle of Blue Legion territory, but fortunately, there was no sign of any Enemy hunting parties. To start with, even if they set up a long-term camp for a continuous month, that was only about forty-five minutes in the real world. Unexpected encounters with other Burst Linkers were relatively rare.

If there were no hunts going on, then it stood to reason that the possibility of encountering an Enemy would increase, but even when they passed through the center of Shinjuku, Yamate Street was blanketed in silence. The Twilight stage wasn’t the best for their current mission, but the excellent visibility that came from all the buildings transformed into ruins was a blessing.

Kuroyukihime, Akira, Utai, Pard, and Chiyuri were merrily chatting away in the center of the roof, but having volunteered to keep watch, Haruyuki alone was sitting at the very front of the vehicle with watchful eyes. They passed through Shinjuku, and a large grassy field came into view up ahead on the left. The temple standing alone in the center with little in the way of ruins damage had to have been Meiji Shrine. Which meant that on the other side was the Shibuya area.

“Corvus, it seems like you don’t often go to Shibuya. Is there a reason for that, I wonder?” The question came abruptly from behind him.

Haruyuki jumped and looked over his shoulder. His eyes landed on Fuko’s gentle smile as she sat in her wheelchair, having taken his back at some point. “Um, oh, nothing in particular. It’s not like that, but…” Shrinking into himself, he mumbled, “It’s like, Shibuya and Harajuku, I mean, there’s this image, like you go buy clothes and stuff there or, um, like you go on d-dates…I guess I just never…had the need to go, you know…”

Fuko blinked and then smiled broadly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. I mean to ask why you don’t go duel there.”

“Heh…”

He felt like Niko in the cockpit below was holding in a laugh, but Haruyuki didn’t have the mental wiggle room to respond to that. He waved his hands wildly in front of his face.

“R-right! Please forget what I said! Um, the reason I don’t duel in the Shibuya area…B-basically, I don’t really go there in the real, so I don’t know the lay of the land too well. And I kinda figured that if I rubbed the Green Legion, GW, the wrong way and they came at us for real in the Territories, we’d be in trouble.”

“You needn’t worry about that second reason. GW’s Six Armors aren’t the type of people to get revenge for normal duels in the Territories. Probably…But the only thing to be done about your first reason is resolve it with experience.”

“E-experience…What do you…?”

“Once this mission is over, I’ll show you around Shibuya. There are a lot of shops I could show you that I think you’d like, Corvus?”

“Sh-shops? Not like…an Accelerated World shop, but…”

“Real-world arcades, used bookstores, things like that. Of course, I don’t care at all if you’d prefer to go buy ‘clothes and things.’”

“Th—”

That’s basically a da— The moment this flashed through his mind, he heard a voice from below once more, and it didn’t come via the speaker.

“Hey, gimme a break already. Don’t go making dates right on top of someone’s head here!”

“D—” He was about to shout, It’s not a date—it’s training! when it suddenly occurred to him. Naturally, he wasn’t averse to being alone with Fuko, but if they were going to take a field trip to Shibuya, a big group would definitely be more fun.

He took a deep breath before somehow regaining his calm and turning around. “I understand, Master. So on our next free day, we’ll all go to Shibuya. With Niko and Pard and Kuroyukihime and Takumu and everyone…And of course, Rin, too.”

“Yes, let’s do that.” Fuko kindly narrowed her madder-red eye lenses and nodded slowly twice. “Those green kids will get quite the surprise, hmm?”

“H-hey! I wasn’t saying you gotta drag me along or something, you know!” Niko shouted as if flustered, then added, “I’m not saying I won’t go, though.”

Haruyuki and Fuko laughed out loud together.

Even after they passed through Shibuya and entered Meguro, the road was quiet. Engine gently rumbling, the armored vehicle moved forward along the dusky main highway, ruined temples lining both sides. Ebisu, Meguro, Gotanda—Haruyuki had absolutely no opportunity to visit the south side of the city center in either the real or Accelerated World, so he gradually lost track of where they were at any given moment. The massive setting sun off to the right had shifted at some point to directly behind them, and with that, he finally realized that their direction had changed from south to east.

Great Wall, which controlled the three areas of Shibuya, Meguro, and Shinagawa, was without a doubt the largest organization in the Accelerated World in terms of both territory size and number of members. But their policies were the most moderate of the six Legions that had signed the mutual nonaggression pact, and they very rarely went on group trips to even the neutral areas. Although they sent an attack team to Nega Nebulus’s territory during the Territories every weekend, the group was usually made up of level twos and threes, up to five at the highest—which gave Haruyuki the impression that GW was trying to give their younger members experience rather than take Negabu’s territory.

The Green Legion poured the majority of their strength into hunting large Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Accordingly, the Green King, Green Grandé, was powerful enough to be able to safely hunt Wild-class solo, and he earned a massive quantity of burst points on his frequent long-term hunting trips.

What was different about Grandé was that he turned all those hard-won points into card items and then fed them to the weakest Lesser-class Enemies. And he didn’t limit this feeding to Shibuya and Meguro, so parties from other Legions could also hunt these so-called bonus Enemies to win large numbers of points. This was actually more often the case than not.

In other words, the Green King was redistributing the points obtained from Enemies around the Unlimited Neutral Field, with the point of this work being the continuation and expansion of the Accelerated World, of the fighting game Brain Burst 2039. When Haruyuki met him by chance on the roof of the Roppongi Hills Tower, Grandé explained his reasons using unfamiliar terms.

Trial number one aka Accel Assault 2038.

Trial number three aka Cosmos Corrupt 2040.

They had both been abandoned due to the exit of all the players. But Brain Burst 2039, trial number two, was equipped with some elements that the other two did not have. Until it became clear what these were, the world could not be permitted to be closed.

While all of this was utterly incomprehensible to Haruyuki, it was also terrifying at the same time. Especially the word trial. If it was the trial of “a series of trials and errors,” then didn’t that mean this world that had saved Haruyuki, guided him, and given him so much was nothing more than a fleeting fiction to be extinguished on a whim? So Haruyuki had so far not taken the time to think too deeply about the Green King’s words.

It wasn’t that he blindly feared the destruction of the Accelerated World. As long as the master of swords, Kuroyukihime, the person he loved and respected more than anyone, achieved her dream of reaching level ten and as a result, cleared the game, he thought he might like to watch the end of the world by her side. He felt like, in that case, he would be able to get something just as big and important, even if the Accelerated World vanished.

But the idea of some unknown entity deciding it was a failure and flicking a switch to make everything disappear—all of it reduced to zero with them only halfway through, taking along for the ride the memories of each and every Burst Linker—he absolutely hated this possibility. But at the same time, he was at a level where he could do nothing about it on his own, something that was so frightening it made him tremble.


On the verge of actually shaking, Haruyuki pinned his avatar down with both hands and switched mental gears. Right now was not the time for thinking about things outside the world that he’d never be able to touch; he need to focus on the precious friends who were, at that very moment, suffering nearby. Rin Kusakabe and Ash Roller had helped Haruyuki any number of times, so this time, he would help them.

Lifting his face, he spotted a double-arched bridge up ahead, like the aqueducts of Roman times. He peered at it and wondered what it could have been in the real world when Fuko, who had been behind him the whole time, began to explain.

“I suppose that would be the Yamanote Line bridge and the Shinkansen bridge? Once we go through that and make a left onto Dai-ichi Keihin, Shinagawa Station is basically right there. And then we ride another four or five kilometers north, and we’re at the old Tokyo Tower.”

The tank went exactly the way Fuko said, and in a few minutes, the chalky tower piercing the distant sky came into view. Reflecting the eternal twilight, the tower was dyed red on the left side and purple on the right. His friends chatting in the rear also moved to the front of the vehicle.

“Ah, it’s so pretty!” Chiyuri let out a cry of wonder on the party’s behalf. “I’ve never seen the old Tokyo Tower in a Twilight stage before!”

“Now that you mention it, neither have I,” Haruyuki said, unconsciously competitive.

“Of course it’s my first time,” Takumu chimed in. “It’s already been ninety years since the real thing was built, and it has a grandeur that really makes you feel that, huh?”

Aaah, Taku, you always know the right thing to say! Haruyuki thought admiringly.

“Just like Four Eyes to say something professor-y!” Niko’s voice rang out from the speaker.

At the moment the red armored trailer rode into Shiba Park east of Minato Ward area—it had become customary to remove the term Ward for all twenty-three Tokyo segments besides Kita Ward and Minato Ward—precisely thirty minutes had passed since the start of their second dive.

A mere three kilometers north was the east gate of the Castle where their fierce battle with the God Seiryu had unfolded. The thought did cross his mind that it would have been nice if they could have saved their position when they left through the portal, but Brain Burst—in principle, a fighting game—could not be expected to have a such a useful feature as that.

When the passengers had climbed down from the roof and Niko had returned the Enhanced Armament to storage and landed on the ground, the nine Burst Linkers stood in a row and gazed up at the massive tower, twenty meters or so in diameter.

In the real world, the old Tokyo Tower was a tapering radio tower made of linked steel, but in the Accelerated World, it appeared as a pillar with the same surface area at the top and bottom. Naturally, the wall was perfectly perpendicular all around, and there was no ladder or elevator.

When Haruyuki had tried to climb it with his bare hands for his Incarnate training two and a half months earlier, it had been a Wasteland stage and all the buildings had turned into rocky mountains, so the wall before him had been suitably sturdy. But now it was made of smooth marble, with basically no indentations that could act as foot- or handholds. The buildings of the Twilight stage were brittle, so they could probably poke holes in the wall, but…

“…Master, I’ll ask just in case: What would happen if you made a bunch of holes in this tower…?”

“It would break, of course.” Fuko grinned. “It would be restored in the next Change, but I don’t think I’d ever forget the fact that you destroyed my house, Corvus.”

“I—I won’t break it! No way!” Haruyuki flinched into himself.

“Whoa, Fuko,” Kuroyukihime interjected with a wry laugh. “Don’t threaten my child unduly. Large geographical features in the Unlimited Neutral Field don’t break as easily as all that.”

“Hee-hee-hee, I suppose that’s so. But I’m a little interested in seeing whether my house would simply float in the air if the tower did break, or if it would come crashing down to the ground.”

“Hmm. Given that normally, coordinates are fixed, I suppose it would…float…”

“Oh! If we’re experimenting, I can knock the tower away with my big guns!” The dangerous proposal had no sooner been made than Niko was moving to actually re-summon her Enhanced Armament.

Pard scooped her up in her arms and silently shook her head.

“H-hey, Pard! Don’t treat me like a kid! I wasn’t really gonna do it or anything!”

“…Your voice was dead serious.”

“…It was.”

Akira and Utai commented with straight faces while Chiyuri and Takumu burst out laughing. They all giggled together for a minute before Haruyuki returned to the original conversation.

“Um, so then, just in case, it seems like we should give up on the idea of punching holes in it and climbing up. Which means our only choice is for Master and me to carry everyone, but all at once…is prob’ly not going to work.”

The height of the tower was near the maximum altitude of Gale Thruster, so Fuko would only be able to fly there with one person. And no matter how Haruyuki looked at it, there was no way he could yank up the remaining six all in one go.

“You can just take us there in two groups. Sorry, but—,” Kuroyukihime started to say.

“I can probs climb it,” Pard announced, Niko still tucked under her left arm, as she touched the marble surface with a hand.

“What?! Leopard, do you happen to have the ability to run up walls?”

“I took my level-up bonus while we were moving,” the leopard-headed avatar informed them smoothly.

They all eyed her doubtfully for a moment before crying out in unison—with one exception—“Whooaaa!”

“B-but Pard, we’re not talking a level-two or -three bonus here! This is seven and eight! Which means they’re basically your last ones. When you’re choosing something like that, you have to spend a week or two weeks or a month or six months just thinking it over,” Haruyuki rattled on without pause.

“NP.” Pard shrugged lightly and said something astounding. “You make a mistake, it’s not like there’s no recovery method.”

The slight breeze of the Twilight stage gusted up and when it died back down, they—except for one—cried out again in surprise.

“““Whaaaaat?!”””

“I-is that true, Leopard?!” Kuroyukihime pressed in close. “Even I’ve never heard talk of that!”

“Seriously, Pard?! You know something like that, you need to be telling me first!” Niko wailed, still being held by Pard.

But Pard took their sudden hounding in stride. “I just realized it myself. Basically…” Her eyes flicked over to the only person who hadn’t cried out—Aqua Current.

Handed the baton, Akira simply circulated her flowing water armor for a while, but finally, she murmured, “I don’t really want to say it.”

“What? You knew as well, Curren? …Mm…Oh…I see. So is that it…?” As she spoke, Kuroyukihime apparently came to understand something, crossed her arms, and abruptly fell silent.

This was followed by Fuko, Utai, and Niko all murmuring “Oh…”

And then, for some reason, even Takumu and Chiyuri were muttering, “No way…” and “Perhaps…” until finally, it was only Haruyuki left in the not-understanding zone. Trying to escape from this too-sad situation, he frantically set his mind to work.

A method of reselecting level-up bonuses. Aqua Current had known about it for a long time. Blood Leopard realized it recently. The common point between the two with regard to leveling up was…

“Oh! R-right!” When he finally reached this place, a simple answer flashed in the back of his mind, and Haruyuki cried out. The commonality was not leveling up, but leveling down: the God Seiryu’s unique attack, Level Drain.

While everyone there hesitated to say it out loud, Akira nodded, arcs of flowing water shimmering. “Yes. When you drop levels in Seiryu’s attack, the bonuses you got with the relevant levels also disappear. Put another way, when you reach that level again, you can reselect your bonus.”

“B-but, Curren.” Haruyuki took a step forward and gave voice to one of the many questions that popped up into his mind. “When you were at level one, you still had lots of abilities, right?”

In addition to the Hydro Auditory she revealed in the Territories the previous day, which turned all of a stage’s water into her own personal sound system, Aqua Current had a group of abilities such as being able to slide down water surfaces and envelop companions in her water armor, an impossible diversity for a level one.

“I didn’t get those abilities through level-up bonuses,” Akira replied smoothly. “Just like your Aviation and Optical Conduction, they came to me suddenly in the middle of battle. So they didn’t go away even after I leveled down.”

“Ohhh…” Haruyuki let out a large sigh of admiration.

Aqua Current had long worked as the bouncer to protect newbie Linkers on the verge of total point loss and had also been given the nickname The One, with the idea that she was the most powerful level one in the Accelerated World. Haruyuki himself had once been saved by her in a pinch. This strength of hers had been refined precisely because she had endured the terrifying adversity of the level drop.

Entire body dyed the color of the evening sun, the flowing water avatar looked around at the others. “The reason I didn’t explain the secondary effects of Level Drain before,” she said in a tone slightly more clipped than usual, “is because I didn’t want you to decide to fight Seiryu in order to reselect level-up bonuses. I think you all noticed this in the mission there, but unless a fixed period of time passes in the battle—or more likely, it gets angry for real—my impression is that Seiryu doesn’t use Level Drain. If you go for an easy fight, there’s a fairly strong possibility you’ll die before you get to that stage. It’s totally impossible to just set foot on the bridge, get your level lowered, and then make a quick getaway.”

“Mm, that’s exactly right,” Kuroyukihime said. “But it’s all right, Curren. Not a soul here regrets their own choices. And Leopard, you can’t be saying that you’d really and deliberately go for level down.”

Pard nodded, almost as if to say “of course.” “Y. I mentioned the possibility of bonus reselection because I wanted Current to tell us this. My short temper’s one thing, but, Curren, you need to fix this habit of holding everything in.”

“…”

Her child held nothing back in letting her know what was what, and Akira let a hint of a wry laugh bleed across the water covering her face mask. “I’ll try. I’m still holding onto all kinds of things, but I’ll tell you bit by bit.”

“K.” Pard took a step back from the tower wall and tossed Niko from the crook of her arm high up into the air directly above her.

“Whaaaaa?!” The Red King, likely the lightest avatar there, flew up into space, screaming.

“Shape Change.” Once she had transformed from human to leopard, she caught Niko on her back.

“Uh, so, Pard, you just said you were going to work on your impatience!” her Legion Master shrieked.

“Work target,” Pard replied, setting her right now-front paw, after the Change, to tap on the tower wall. After pressing the pads of that paw against it a few times, she nodded as if satisfied and then smoothly climbed the vertical surface about three meters up. Panicking, Niko, on her back, grabbed at her neck.

“K. I can prob’ly make it to the top.”

“P-prob’ly?!”

“…Most likely.”

“M-most likely?!”

The two members of the Red Legion went back and forth, a perfectly timed comedic duo.

“Roger.” Fuko waved and smiled. “Then we’ll see you at the top.”

“K.” Pard began to run up the slick marble wall. Running up a wall didn’t look all that extravagant, but it was a relatively rare and powerful ability. And combined with Blood Leopard’s inherent agility, it was basically the same as there being no obstacles in a stage.

Eeeaaaah! Niko’s voice—maybe a scream, maybe a cheer—receded, and once they could no longer hear it, Fuko smiled happily.

“…Prominence’s increased their power quite a bit with this, hmm? I’m really looking forward to the day when our Legions fight.”

“Mm-hmm. We also must get stronger for that,” Kuroyukihime responded, bringing her gaze back to earth. “Now then, we should go, too. Who will you carry, Raker?”

“Goodness! You have to ask?” Fuko spread her hands out slightly as if to indicate that it went without saying, and then suddenly vanished from the wheelchair. With a speed on par with teleportation, she had moved directly behind Utai. The small shrine maiden’s face stiffened and she tried to leap away, but two hands yanked her off the ground.

“Auunh, I—I was careless.” Utai’s arms and legs hung limply, as though she had resigned herself to her fate of being a tightly held sack of potatoes.

“It’s all right, Maiden,” Fuko declared lovingly. “I won’t drop you or anything today.”

“O-of course you will not!”

Kuroyukihime shook her head in exasperation at the seasoned duo of ICBM and Testarossa—and their act so reminiscent of the two members of the Red Legion—and then turned back to Haruyuki. “Which means, Crow, that you end up carrying Pile, Bell, Curren, and me. So? Can you do it in one go?”

“Yes, that’s okay!” Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down, while Chiyuri looked on slightly skeptical. But this time, his promise was not baseless and ill-conceived. During the mission to subjugate the fifth Chrome Disaster six months earlier, Haruyuki had flown nonstop the five kilometers from Suginami to Ikebukuro with Black Lotus under his right arm, Scarlet Rain in his left, and Cyan Pile hanging from his legs.

This time, there was the addition of Aqua Current, and Lime Bell was a bit heavier than Rain, but as long as he didn’t go too fast, he should have been able to lift four people at once over a distance of three hundred meters.

“Okay then, Lotus, we’ll go on ahead.” Holding Utai in front of her, Fuko stored her wheelchair and summoned Gale Thruster, waved her right hand in the air, and then looked up at the sky. She bent her knees and jumped lightly while at the same time igniting the boosters. Glittering with a blue light, the flames of propulsion immediately receded into the twilight.

“Now, shall we go as well?” As she spoke, Kuroyukihime brought her body close to Haruyuki’s right arm.

This was, of course, not their first tandem flight, but when he touched his beloved swordmaster, even though they were both avatars, his heart pounded as usual. Still, he managed to smoothly lift her by her narrow waist, and breathing a sigh of relief to himself, he stretched out his left hand to Chiyuri. “C’mon, Chiyu. Hurry up.”

“You are weirdly used to this.”

“I—I am not! I—I—I don’t care if you hang from my legs instead!”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. Please and thank you.” Chiyuri leaned—almost slammed—into him.

Once he had his left arm around her, this time without any excessive heart pounding, Haruyuki had a sudden thought: If Takumu grabbed onto his legs like last time, how would he hang onto Aqua Current?

“It’s fine,” Akira said, as if reading his thoughts. She approached from the front to wrap both her arms around his neck. Before he had a chance to panic and freak out, the water film covering Current’s entire body was adhered to Crow’s silver armor; it was probably an application of her ability to slide down walls. In which case, even if Haruyuki didn’t support her, she likely wouldn’t fall.

After securing the three on his upper body, Haruyuki spread his wings and vibrated them carefully. He slowly left the ground and went into a hover about a meter and a half in the air. “You’re good, Taku. Sorry for putting you on the bottom all the time.”

Cyan Pile grabbed on tightly right away from behind—or he should have, but there was no response, so Haruyuki called to him once more. “Taku?”

“Oh. Right, sorry, Haru. Thanks.” This time, there was a response, and the sturdy arms wrapped tightly around both of Silver Crow’s legs.

Haruyuki gradually increased his thrust until Cyan Pile’s legs were off the ground and then turned his eyes upward.

Fuko and Utai had morphed into a missile and shot upward so quickly that they were already out of sight, but he still could spot a small shadow moving along the wall high up in the distance. It looked like Pard was also going to make it to the top without her ability’s effect running out midway.

“Okay, here we go!” Haruyuki called, increasing the frequency of his silver wings’ vibration.

Vwwm! A sense of gravity akin to the departure of an elevator came over him and then quickly changed into a floating sensation. Maintaining a distance of five meters or so from the tower wall, he ascended at a fixed speed. His special-attack gauge started to drop in the upper left of his field of view, but as long as he stuck to eco-flying mode, it looked like it would last long enough.

“Wow!” Chiyuri let out a cry of delight. “There’s, like, all these temples over there! Haru, move a little to the left!”

“Uh, um, so…if my gauge runs out, use Citron Call.” Grumbling, Haruyuki moved horizontally from the south side to the west. While he was at it, he turned his body to the left, and the center of Twilight-stage Tokyo spread out before him.

To his right, he could see a vast space encircled by a bottomless pit—the Castle where the fierce battle with Seiryu had only just played out. But Chiyuri was likely talking about the group of high-rise temples standing in a row in front of that. The floors supported by (probably) Corinthian columns were stacked in several layers, so that the whole thing looked like a future city in the style of ancient Greece.

In the face of the magnificent panorama, Haruyuki forgot to even complain, and as he gazed at the view, Kuroyukihime stretched out the sword of her right arm.

“That area is Kasumigaseki and Nagatacho. From the right, it’s the Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Agriculture; Forestry and Fisheries; and the Cabinet Office. The short, large one beyond that is the National Diet Building. Didn’t you go there on a social studies field trip in elementary?”

“Oh! We did!” Chiyuri beat him to the punch. “We did go! Haru got lost inside, and it turned into this whole thing!”

This was confidential information his childhood friend was spilling, so Haruyuki hurriedly tried to fix it. “I—I wasn’t lost! I was exploring! There’s a secret room in the Capitol Building in the US, so I just figured maybe there was one in the Diet Building in Japan…”

“That’s from a movie we watched way back when! There aren’t any secret rooms in the US or in Japan!”

“How can you be so sure?! It’s a secret! They keep it hidden from the people!”

“No way. You believe that?! Even now, in eighth grade?!”

“Wh-whatever! It’s fine! There’s no age limit on imagination!”

Haruyuki and Chiyuri continued to bicker and ruin the hard-won view, when abruptly, a giggle slipped out of Current, pressed up against his chest.

“Truly, a very Crow episode. I apologize for destroying the mood, but I think there is perhaps a way to check if there actually is or isn’t a secret room.”

“What?! D-do you mean sneak in?”

Now it was Kuroyukihime’s turn to laugh at the dumbfounded Haruyuki. “Is that it? I see. Check in the Accelerated World rather than the real? If there are social cameras in this secret room or what have you, then it would be generated on this side as well. The building structural changes in the Twilight stage are extreme, but, right…if it were a Factory stage or a Steel stage…”

“Oh, I get it! Okay, so let’s go check it out on our next day off!”

“What?! You just denied the whole idea a minute ago!”

And so they went on. Haruyuki continued to gain altitude at a fixed pace, and finally, the Castle and the National Diet Building were hidden beneath thin clouds. Turning his gaze skyward once again, he saw the edge of the tower now cut a clean curve into the twilight sky. The four who had gone ahead had presumably already landed; he could see no sign of them.

As expected, it looked like he’d have a little extra in his special-attack gauge, so he sped up for the last thirty meters and flew over the old Tokyo Tower. Just as he remembered, the top was covered by a lush, grassy garden, and he saw Fuko and the others in one corner.

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” Haruyuki called out to the four who had arrived ahead of them as he halted his ascent and shifted to gliding. First, Takumu, dangling below, let go and landed with a thump on the lawn. Then, when Haruyuki just barely stuck his landing, Kuroyukihime and the others jumped down from his arms and chest, and offered their own words of thanks.

His role as transport carrier completed without incident, Haruyuki let out a long breath and then abruptly realized Takumu had been excessively quiet during the flight. Maybe he’s no good with heights, he thought as he moved to look at his friend behind him, but Fuko’s voice interrupted him.

“Everyone, welcome to my garden. This is the first time I’ve had so many guests. I hope we all fit inside the house.”

Now that she mentioned it, Fuko’s house, where Haruyuki himself had once stayed—which had apparently been given the elegant name Fufuan—was not as big a structure as all that. Would nine people actually fit in there? Haruyuki had his gaze turned to the circular space of the garden, and then suddenly opened his eyes wide.

In the center of the garden was a small pond. And in the center of the water, an elliptical shape shimmering blue on the water surface, shining orange as it reflected the evening sun—a portal. So far, this was all as he remembered. But the neat cottage with the green roof and white walls that should have been on the other side of the pond was not there, no matter how he strained his eyes.

Haruyuki forgot Takumu’s strange silence and pointed to the east side of the garden. “Uh! Um! Master! Y-your house is— The house isn’t there!”

“Hee-hee-hee.” Fuko, who had already taken off Gale Thruster and returned to her usual white dress form, laughed, the broad brim of her hat shaking. “It’s not as though it was blown away by a tornado or destroyed by a wolf. A locked player home doesn’t materialize unless the owner approaches it.”

Deftly flicking through her Instruct menu, she turned a small item into an object. In her hand, shining with a silver light, was an old-fashioned key.

Now that he thought about it, Haruyuki himself had feverishly searched for a key that had long been sleeping in a corner of the Unlimited Neutral Field a mere nine days ago in order to access a player home somewhere else. He had left it inside the main room, together with two high-level Enhanced Armaments, so no one would ever be able to find the house again.

With a key of a different shape than the one Haruyuki had found, Fuko took a few steps toward the pond. When she did, the familiar white cottage appeared, wrapped in a hazy light.

“Ooh!” Chiyuri and Niko cooed in awe.

“Now please come this way.” Fuko turned around and beckoned them with a wave. “I’m sure I have some food left. Although, they might be a thousand years or so past their expiration dates.”



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