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Accel World - Volume 14 - Chapter 4




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4

Suddenly, Haruyuki felt like he’d heard a faint sound. He opened his eyes a crack and saw the lone door being closed. Someone had left the room.

Lifting his head slightly, he looked around. His comrades were scattered around on the floor of Fufuan, which was larger than he had remembered, all asleep for the time being. And naturally, all still duel avatars.

Niko was using Pard, who was curled up like a cat, as a pillow. Lying on her side, Fuko was holding Utai tightly in her arms. Shuddering and flickering beside them was Akira, her flowing water armor rolled up in a ball. Takumu was asleep with his back against the wall, and Chiyuri had her arms and legs splayed out next to Haruyuki.

But there was no one in the room’s only bed.

The right to use the bed had been unanimously presented to the Black King, who looked like she would have trouble sleeping on the floor, given her variously tapered form. Which meant it had been Kuroyukihime who had left the house seconds earlier. If they had been in the real world, he could have brushed this off with the question “Bathroom, maybe?” but in the Accelerated World, no matter how much you ate or drank, no such physical needs were generated.

“…”

After wrestling with his sleepiness for a few more seconds, Haruyuki slowly sat up. He stood, being careful not to make a sound, and then stealthily tiptoed across the wooden floor. When he touched the doorknob, the door opened outward, and he slipped through and closed it carefully. Perhaps the sound he’d heard before was the whisper of wind sneaking in during the door’s opening and closing.

Outside the house, the world was still wrapped in the same vivid dusky light as when they’d arrived. When he checked the continuous dive time in his Instruct menu, it seemed that he’d been asleep for about five hours, but apparently, the Change had not come during that time.

He made the menu disappear and looked around to find a silhouette sitting on the bench at the western edge of the tower’s outer circumference. From where Haruyuki was standing, it overlapped perfectly with the red evening sun floating on the horizon. The sharp form of the black silhouette was nothing less than heroic on the battlefield, but it now felt ephemeral for some reason, like art made of glass, and Haruyuki stared soundlessly in that direction for a while. The wind blew up again, causing faint ripples on the surface of the pond, and this spurred him to start walking.

Perhaps she had already noticed that Haruyuki had been the one to come out of the house. “Sorry. Did I wake you?” Kuroyukihime asked quietly, once he’d gotten about two meters away from the bench.

“…No, I slept plenty already.”

Without a word, the young woman slid over to the right. Haruyuki took another five steps to come around to the front of the bench from the left, and then set himself down in the empty space. The garden in the sky dropped off close ahead, and there were no handrails or anything at the edge, so when he lifted his face, a spectacular view of the Accelerated World spread out before him. Not only could he see the central areas from Roppongi to Shibuya, but he could see the city beyond that, continuing out to Setagaya, Chofu, and Hachioji, and even farther out, where the mountains of Okutama were illuminated by the eternal twilight sun, burning red. He felt like his heart almost pulled into the scene.

“It would feel so good if I could just fly and fly and fly toward that sun with you,” Kuroyukihime murmured.

“I…guess so. I feel like right now, we could make it to the end of the Accelerated World,” he responded half-consciously, before suddenly coming back to himself and adding, “although my gauge would actually run out somewhere around Shibuya.”

“What if you used the Incarnate System, I wonder,” Kuroyukihime added after a brief silence.

“What…?” Haruyuki glanced over, but just like Crow’s, the Black King’s face was hidden by full-cover goggles, and he couldn’t discern her expression. He returned his gaze to the setting sun in the distance and thought a little before replying. “Um. If I kept climbing as high as I could with Light Speed and then gliding, I think we could go pretty far. But that’s the least stable of my Incarnate techniques. I practice sometimes, but there are plenty of times when my imagination’s lacking and I can’t activate it.”

“I see…No, it was just a random thought. I’m sorry for suggesting something so suspect. The activation of Incarnate techniques is largely connected with your mental state. So it’s not always going to go the way you want in regular training. No need to rush it.”

“R-right.” Haruyuki nodded, but something still wasn’t quite clicking for him, and he snuck a peek at her face in profile once more. The Incarnate System had a dual nature, light and dark. For instance, even if it was a positive Incarnate technique, taking hope as its energy source, if you misused it, you would be pulled toward the hole in your heart and eventually swallowed up by a bottomless darkness. It was Kuroyukihime herself who had taught him this, and she had barely ever said the word Incarnate without referencing its drawbacks.

Unable to get the question “What’s wrong?” out of his mouth, Haruyuki sat in silence.

Abruptly, Kuroyukihime moved her left hand and opened the Instruct menu. She deftly selected commands and categories on a screen that looked invisible to Haruyuki and apparently pulled something out of her storage. White particles of light collected in her hand and came together in the shape of a small rectangle.

It was a familiar object in the Accelerated World—an item card. They held sealed within them all kinds of consumables, Armaments, burst points, and more, while others still had their own special functions like replay cards or sudden-death duel cards.

Straining his eyes to see exactly what this particular card was, Haruyuki immediately inhaled sharply beneath his goggles. This thing sitting at the tip of Kuroyukihime’s sword had a string of vivid-red characters on an inky matte-black backdrop. Even from where he was sitting, he could read the English text inscribed there. INCARNATE SYSTEM STUDY KIT. It was the sealed ISS kit card he’d obtained four days earlier in the Setagaya area.

An F-type Burst Linker by the name of Magenta Scissor had given it to him. She was planning to homogenize the Accelerated World with the ISS kits, and she had tried to get the small, three-member Legion Petit Paquet under her control. But she had given up when Silver Crow and Lime Bell had intervened, and then handed the two now-unnecessary sealed cards to Haruyuki before she’d left.

It wasn’t that Magenta had abandoned her plan to disseminate the kits. That was clear from the fact that a mere three days later, she had attacked Ash Roller in Setagaya Area No. 1 and forcibly infected him with a kit. But then why had she given the two sealed cards to Haruyuki? She herself said they were tainted with positive Incarnate, so she could no longer use them, but in that case, she could have just destroyed them herself or left them to lie around in storage.

Of course, there was also the possibility that it was some kind of trap, but Haruyuki just couldn’t believe that. He’d sensed a kind of pride in Magenta Scissor’s back as she left the cards and departed after losing a fierce battle. A strong will that said she definitely wasn’t just being manipulated by the ISS kit—or by its makers, the Acceleration Research Society.

Thus, Haruyuki had taken the two cards home, and at the meeting the next day, he showed them to Kuroyukihime and Fuko. Naturally, they were both surprised, but the reason for that went beyond anything Haruyuki could have imagined. A single crest was hidden on the jet-black background of the ISS kit card. The crest of the first Red King, the Master Gunsmith, Red Rider.

Having materialized the sealed card, Kuroyukihime held it above her head as she had three days earlier, up to the setting sun of the Twilight stage. Behind the item name, the crossed-guns crest rose up. The sword tip the card was adhered to shook for an instant. The air grew tense, telling the story of Kuroyukihime’s deep pain.

Thinking that this time, for sure, he had to say something, Haruyuki opened his mouth in a trance and called to her. “Kuroyukihime…”

She glanced over at him. But the words that should have followed did not come.

“Um…Uh…” Panicking slightly, Haruyuki blurted out a question that was definitely inappropriate for the moment, despite the dozens of things he could have said. “H-how do you get items to stick to your sword? Is it like a magnet or something?”

“Mm…?” This was no doubt outside her expectations, and she blinked her eye lenses a few times before she replied with a wry smile. “No, there aren’t magnets in there or anything. In my perception, I’m definitely holding it with my fingertips, but you just can’t see those fingers…Something like that, I guess…”

“H-huh…So then, like, typing on a keyboard…”

“Mm, it’s not impossible. Although it is a trial since I can’t see my fingers. In the Incarnate technique I showed you before, where I turn my sword into a hand, I am the source imagining my fingers becoming one with the sword. Like your Light Speed, though, it won’t really stabilize…”

She stopped there for a moment, and then continued, sounding as though she were peering into the distant past on the other side of the card.

“…A long, long time ago, Rider said…‘You couldn’t shoot me even if I did give you one of my guns, Lotus.’ I was a child, I thought he was teasing me, so I took offense…But maybe he was already planning it at that time. The Seven Roads, guns that absolutely could not be fired on the Seven Kings. Giving us those symbols of eternal friendship and peace. And in the end, right up to the last, he never knew this hand actually could shoot a gun…”

“…Kuroyukihime…” Once again, all Haruyuki could do was call her name.

But she nodded deeply at him and lowered the card. “…You went to the trouble of bringing this sealed card back for us, but I haven’t been able to uncover the reason why Rider’s crest is inscribed on it. And it goes without saying that I can’t try opening the seal.”

“O-of course not! Please don’t say something like that, even as a joke.”

“Yes, right. Nonetheless, we still know nothing about the card itself. But I feel like I can more or less imagine Magenta Scissor’s intention in giving it to you.”

“Huh? Wh-what do you mean…?”

“She knows that the crest hidden on the card is Red Rider’s and that I was the one who pushed Rider to total point loss. And she also assumed you would show me the card once you had it. In other words, this is a challenge to me. Magenta is asking me if I’m prepared to face head-on the ISS kit main body and whatever relationship it has with Rider.”

“…!!” At these utterly unexpected words, Haruyuki’s entire body stiffened again. “Th-that’s— So then I did exactly what Magenta…”

“No, I’m not reproaching you. It was the right decision to give me the card. Thanks to that, I was able to tell you about the White King, something I haven’t been able to speak about all this time…And I was able to gain some time to ready myself before the attack on Midtown Tower. In that sense, I almost have to thank Magenta.”

“……”

Although Kuroyukihime was kind enough to reassure him like this, he couldn’t actually hold his head up high for a while. Whatever Magenta Scissor’s true intent, it was a fact that Haruyuki had given Kuroyukihime an enormous mental shock. Head hanging deeply, he murmured, I’m sorry, Kuroyukihime in his heart, and then took a deep breath and switched gears. If she was trying to ready herself, then he couldn’t shake her up now.

“…Kuroyukihime?” Yanking himself up straight, Haruyuki voiced the biggest question that had popped up during their conversation so far. “What do you think the ‘whatever relationship’ you mentioned between Red Rider and the ISS kit main body is? The first Red King left the Accelerated World a long time ago, more than two and a half years ago. I don’t think it’s possible for him to be directly involved…”

“Mm…I think you’re quite right. If any relationship is possible, then the only thing I can imagine is that some kind of Enhanced Armament generated with Rider’s unique ability—with Arms Creation—is still somewhere in the Accelerated World, and that it’s playing a role in the production of the ISS kits.”

“Arms…Creation…” As he hoarsely parroted the words, Haruyuki was once again struck by how incredible an ability this power of the first Red King’s actually was.

Normally, Enhanced Armament could only be obtained through level-up bonuses or purchases at the shop, but Red Rider had been able to make them. The true wonder of this power was in the way it grew in influence the more time passed. Even assuming he could only make one every three days, that was ten weapons in a month. Which worked out to a pile of a hundred twenty guns in a year. He didn’t have to think too hard to see how much these arms would strengthen the Legion.

So then, rather than stopping at mere guns, did Red Rider go even further and produce some thing that could make new Enhanced Armaments? And then, through whatever set of circumstances, did that thing fall into the hands of the Acceleration Research Society, and was it now being used to manufacture ISS kits?

“An Enhanced Armament that can generate Enhanced Armaments…” Kuroyukihime nodded slightly, as if Haruyuki had spoken these thoughts out loud. “If you’d asked me four days ago whether something like that could exist, I would have laughed it off. But now that I’ve seen Rider’s crest inscribed on the sealed ISS kit card…I can’t think of any other explanation. And…”

Kuroyukihime cut herself off there and turned her face mask to the right of the evening sun. Ahead, skyscrapers soared upward, a little shorter than the old Tokyo Tower but several times wider. Two buildings, with the wide main road between them. The curvy building on the left was Roppongi Hills Tower, where Haruyuki had once fought the Green King, Green Grandé. And the perfectly square building to the right was Tokyo Midtown Tower, the ultimate target of their current mission. Kuroyukihime’s eye lenses were naturally turned to the tower on the right. Like the other buildings in the stage, it had been transformed to resemble a chalky temple, but even from twelve hundred meters away, Haruyuki felt a kind of unearthliness shrouding it.

Encamped at the summit of Midtown Tower was the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron, invisible and impenetrable to all attacks, and its eyes shone with a light that would generally evaporate anyone who came within two hundred meters of the building. And on one of the higher floors hid the ISS kit main body, the core of the Acceleration Research Society’s plans. Unless they succeeded in their task to slip past Metatron’s ferocious attack, charge into the tower, and destroy the kit main body, the Accelerated World would be blanketed in darkness—and Haruyuki would lose his bond with Rin Kusakabe and Ash Roller forever.

He unconsciously curled his hands into tight fists, and Kuroyukihime began to speak once more as she stared at Midtown Tower. “And I feel it. Like, I’m going to end up facing my past in that place…Although I don’t know yet what form it will take.”

“Your…past?”

“Yes. Since becoming a Burst Linker seven years ago, I’ve made a great many mistakes. Driven forward by my endless ambition, I have brandished my swords and spilled much blood. This card is wet with that blood. If I can reach that puddle of it…At the source, my past is most certainly waiting for me.”

Uttering these bleak words, Kuroyukihime sat up straighter, her eyes still on the massive tower in the distance. “But I won’t forget anymore. I’m not going to try to run from the past. I have Fuko, Utai, Akira, Takumu, Chiyuri, Niko, Leopard…and you. No matter what is waiting there in the tower, I will not take even a single step back. That alone I promise you now.”

Even after she stopped speaking, Haruyuki couldn’t respond right away. In fact, he couldn’t even turn his head. Because the tears that had built up beneath his silver mask threatened to spill out if he moved even a little.

Staring hard at the evening sun, blurred into a rainbow, Haruyuki took a deep breath and somehow managed to reply. “I…promise, too. No matter how hard the fight is, I won’t break. I won’t give up. I will fight with you, by your side right up until the last.”

“Mm.” Kuroyukihime nodded and then, after a second, added, “But if I tell you to run—”

“I’m not leaving you and everyone and running. Never,” Haruyuki declared resolutely before she could finish.

In the end, Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime didn’t go back to Fufuan, but rather stayed there, talking on the bench. Ninety percent of their conversation was meaningless chatter, but recently, Kuroyukihime had been busy preparing for the school festival, and they hadn’t really had time to talk, just the two of them, so for Haruyuki, it was a span of time like a dream.

Eventually, he heard the door opening behind them and looked back to see Niko stepping out on the grass, stretching hard. She froze when she noticed him sitting alongside Kuroyukihime, and her two antennas twitched and shivered before she came over to them at a trot.

“Morning, Big Brother!  ”

Why angel mode all of a sudden? His guard up, Haruyuki returned the greeting. “M-morning, Niko. You sleep okay?”

“Yup! But my big brother was supposed to be snuggling me, and when I woke up, he was gone, so I was saaaad.”

“…Oh?”

He heard a fairly severe voice beside him, and Haruyuki waved both hands and shook his head frantically from side to side as he leapt off the bench.

“N-no, no, no, no!” Yelping, he turned back to Niko and hastily retreated several steps—until one of his feet missed the edge of the tower, and he lurched backward.

“Wh-whoa, whoa, whoa!” He flung out his arms, flailing, before he finally remembered the wings on his back and fluttered them slightly to return to solid ground. He panted heavily before insisting, “I—I wasn’t hugging you! You were using Pard as a pillow the whole time!”

“Oh my? Waaaas I? Oh, I know!   I was getting my memory of last night mixed up with—”


“Aaaaah!” Haruyuki made an enormous X with his arms to shut Niko up, and then cleared his throat several times, straightened again, and deliberately changed the topic. “A-anyway, is everyone else still asleep, then? Given that we still need time for the strategy meeting, maybe it’s about time we woke them!”

“Oh, Raker was awake, so she probably woke everyone else up by now. But, like, did you guys actually get any sleep?”

At this question from Niko—angel mode ended—Kuroyukihime nodded, some suspicion still hanging in the air around her. “Yes, no problems. We woke up a little early, so we were merely examining attack strategies.”

“Ohhh, attack strategies, hmm?”

“…What are you trying to say?”

“Noooothing.”

Sparks crackled in the air between the two kings—or they did in Haruyuki’s mind anyway. He started to retreat again, but only a fool would step off the edge a second time.

“Uh, um.” He managed to still his feet and speak. “S-so then, I’ll go call everyone else. I figure it’s probably better to have the meeting looking at Midtown Tower.”

Taking care to move with the utmost naturalness, he had taken a few steps when he heard Kuroyukihime’s voice behind him.

“Haruyuki. Once the mission is complete and we return to the other side, I would like to ask you about last night, so stay in the student council office.”

“……H-hokay,” he replied nervously, then headed for the house at a quick pace somewhere between a fast walk and a trot.

On the other side of the still-open door, everyone was awake and up just as Niko had guessed. Only Pard and Akira, who were apparently not morning people, were a bit unsteady on their feet, but they came out with Fuko prodding them forward.

Utai, Chiyuri, and Takumu followed shortly after, and no sooner was the house empty than Fuko was immediately closing the door and locking it.

She’s really on top of it, Haruyuki thought.

She looked back, key dangling in her right hand. “We don’t even use this kind of key in the real world, what with long-distance locks for houses and cars. So if I don’t lock it right after I come outside, I forget.”

“Oh, makes sense. Have you ever actually forgotten?”

“I have, of course. I went without realizing I’d forgotten to lock it for five days in real time. I left the door wide open for nearly fourteen years on this side.”

“F-fourteen…Did any robbers or anyone come inside?”

“It really was quite strange. Although the items I’d put into the storage attached to the house were all fine, the food alone was completely gone. I think it was Ash’s work, but he wouldn’t confess even when I questioned him.”

Haruyuki started to imagine exactly what form the questioning took before he had an abrupt realization and shook his head violently. “Oh! N-no, it wasn’t me either!”

“Goodness, you weren’t even asked the question yet. That’s quite the quick reaction, hmm?”

“I—I—I—I—I—I really didn’t!”

Ahead of them, Akira and Pard were apparently back to normal blood pressure, awake enough now to both turn at the same time.

“Def a ghost.”

“You should have it exorcised right away.”

“Ha-ha! There aren’t any ghosts in the Accelerated World,” Haruyuki said, laughing.

Fuko exchanged looks with Pard and Akira, and then smiled in a profoundly meaningful way.

“Huh? Th-there are…?”

Instead of answering, the three older girls stepped briskly toward the other side of the pond.

“Uh! Um! Hey! Please tell me!” Even as he chased after them in a panic, Haruyuki was whirling his head around, looking at his surroundings.

Once all nine were together by the side of the pond, Kuroyukihime opened her Instruct menu once more and checked the cumulative dive time.

“As of this moment, ten hours have passed. Unfortunately, I suppose, there has been no Change. The Twilight stage will continue for the time being. These are slightly, but only slightly, disadvantageous conditions for fighting Metatron. But as we also discussed at school, right from the start, it is an impossibility to defeat that Legend-class Enemy in anything other than a Hell stage. We have one objective: break into Midtown Tower and destroy the ISS kit main body. Ultimately, we would ignore Metatron, were it possible. Is there anything else to note so far?”

“Yes.” Takumu raised his right hand—well, his pile driver. “Master, this is just in case, but…Will Metatron stop attacking once we enter the tower?”

“Mm…That is a point of concern, it’s true.” Kuroyukihime turned and looked out at the building in question, rising twelve hundred meters to the northwest. “We can’t see it right now, but Metatron is camped out on the top of that building. And it uses its insta-death laser attack on anyone who comes within two hundred meters. Correct so far, yes, Crow?”

She looked to Haruyuki for confirmation, and he nodded deeply.

“Yes. I saw Metatron on the roof with my own eyes, although just its silhouette. And also how it evaporated anything that came into its territory with this immensely powerful laser. Two hundred meters was what GW’s Iron Pound told me. Pound said Midtown Tower was a ‘tiny Castle.’”

“Hmm, that is well said, hmm?” Chuckling, Fuko shifted her gaze from the enormous tower in the distance to Haruyuki and cocked her head slightly to one side. “Corvus, you said ‘anything that came into its territory’ just now. Does that perhaps mean it’s not just Burst Linkers but any object that will get shot down with the laser?”

“Uh…Um…” Haruyuki sank into thought.

“Oh, I got it!” Chiyuri cried out. “If Metatron will shoot anything, then we can throw rocks and stuff from outside its range and make it shoot its laser for no reason and use up all its energy, right, Sis?”

“Yes. It might be a Legend-class Enemy, but it’s not as though it has an infinite energy source. If we can make it fire persistently, that source should be exhausted at some point. Well then, Corvus?”

The center of everyone’s attention, Haruyuki lifted his face and slowly shook his head. “No…It’s too bad, but I don’t think we can do that. When I was shown Metatron’s laser, Pound deliberately used his own arm as bait. And that rocket punch, once it’s broken, he’s like that until he leaves the stage, right?” He saw Fuko nod and continued, “So then if rocks or something would have done the trick, he would have used his arm. Which means, at the very least, Metatron won’t fire its laser unless part of a duel avatar comes within the two-hundred-meter range…”

“Mm, I see…What was the time delay like, from the moment it reacted to the intruder until it actually fired the laser?” Kuroyukihime asked.

“Um.” Haruyuki again replayed the movie from ten days earlier in the back of his mind. “The rocket punch crossed the expressway and then got closer to Midtown Tower…And then a transparent something moved on the top of the tower. It spread these incredibly huge wings, and the wings kind of lit up. And by the time I noticed that, the laser was firing. So from reaction to firing…Right, at most it would have been about two seconds.”

“Two seconds…It would indeed be difficult to make it across two hundred meters before being fired upon.”

Everyone nodded at Kuroyukihime’s words.

Haruyuki felt like it maybe wasn’t impossible for Fuko alone to use her booster one way and fly at top speed to reach the building. But they didn’t know what was waiting inside Midtown Tower. It was hard to believe that the thoroughly prepared Acceleration Research Society would have left guarding the ISS kit main body to Metatron alone. So even if she did succeed in reaching the tower, they could expect more fighting inside, making a lone charge far more dangerous.

If it had been the Haruyuki from a little while ago, he would have said something reckless and foolish now, like, “It’s all right…I’ll go alone.” But having come through a tumultuous month, Haruyuki had learned that if there were times when you had to fight alone, there were also times when you needed to lean on your friends.

Thus, as he stepped into the center of the circle they made, Haruyuki said calmly, “It’s all right. I’ll make sure to defend against Metatron’s laser until you all reach the tower.”

For a moment, none of the others reacted to this, but rather simply stared at him. He started to worry he’d said something stupid yet again.

“We do appreciate your effort, C,” Utai declared, and then everyone else was talking all in a jumble.

“Thanks, Haru!”

“We’re counting on you, ’kay!”

“I know you will.”

“I’m trusting you here!”

“Please do.”

“We’ll leave it to you, Corvus.”

And then finally, Kuroyukihime nodded heavily. “Now again, after the Seiryu fight, we are placing a heavy burden on your shoulders. But, Crow, I believe your wings are exactly the thing that is going to break through to the future of Nega Nebulus and the Accelerated World. To destroy the ISS kit main body and clear away the darkness that is trying to fall over the world…and to save our dear friend, lend me your strength.”

“My strength has always belonged to you, Black King. Just give the order, and I will fly to any height.”

“I see. Well, then…” Turning toward Haruyuki and advancing, Kuroyukihime stretched the sword of her right hand out. The sharp tip was lit with a soft overlay, and in the next instant, the blade split without a sound to create five fingers. Everyone except Haruyuki gasped, while Kuroyukihime, rather than giving an order, said softly, “Let’s fight. Together.”

“…Okay!” Haruyuki gently gripped the slender “hand” proffered.

Previously, Kuroyukihime had only been able to maintain the adapted Incarnate technique, with no attack power whatsoever, for a maximum of about twenty seconds. But once she released Haruyuki’s hand, she shook the hands of the other seven in order. Immediately after she had released Fuko’s, the last, there was a sharp ting! and the five fingers turned back into a sword. The hand had shattered before instead of turning back, so it wasn’t just the time she had made progress with.

Akira, Utai, and Fuko, who had known Kuroyukihime the longest, must have been impressed. And even after Kuroyukihime returned to her original position, she continued to stare down at her own hand for a while.

“If Lotus is gonna go that far on us, we gotta throw ourselves into it, too!” Niko cried quite forcefully on behalf of the speechless members of Nega Nebulus. “Up against an Enemy, no need to hold back. We’ll send it flying, Incarnate guns blazing right from the start!”

Yeah! The cheering voices sent gentle ripples across the pond beside them.

They took an hour or so for a briefing and nailed down the details of their charge on Midtown Tower. When it was finally five minutes before their scheduled departure, Haruyuki had a sudden thought and moved over to the western edge of the garden once more. He stared intently at the view of Minato Ward spreading out below him. He had only looked at the area around Midtown Tower when he was sitting on the bench with Kuroyukihime, but he remembered now that there was also another place he ought to be burning into his brain.

Minato was somewhere he normally never went, so he had even less of a sense of the place than he did of Shibuya. But he sort of spread out a map of Tokyo in the back of his mind and overlaid it on the terrain of the Twilight stage. The wide road cutting across the southern side of the old Tokyo Tower was Ring Road No. 3. On the other side of this was Azabu, with its many embassies from all kinds of countries. Even farther to the south was Minato Ward’s Shirokane, which Haruyuki basically knew only as the name of a ritzy residential area.

He peered at the Shirokane area where small temple ruins were clustered—although in the real world, they were likely palatial mansions—and saw a fairly large open space in the center. In terms of area, it was closing in on the size of Shiba Park, which sat at the base of old Tokyo Tower’s east side. Still, within the site stood a group of large temples with room to spare between them. All were of a remarkably gorgeous design, and the way they shone ruby-red in the evening sunlight, they looked more like newly constructed buildings than ruins.

“It has to be…over there…,” Haruyuki muttered, continuing to stare intently at the cluster of temples he needed to burn into his memory.

It was the girls’ school Kuroyukihime mentioned before they moved, the one that went from elementary all the way through university. In other words, the base of the White Legion, Oscillatory Universe.

Currently, of the six great Legions, that was the one they had the least connection with. Not only had he not fought them in the Territories, but he couldn’t even remember having had a normal duel with any of its members. The only Linker from the Legion Haruyuki had seen was Ivory Tower, who attended the meeting of the Seven Kings as the White King’s representative, and they didn’t make much of an impression.

But the White Legion would almost certainly come to stand in the way of Kuroyukihime’s fight for level ten. The White King, White Cosmos, was the one who had manipulated elementary school–age Kuroyukihime and caused the first Red King, Red Rider, to lose all his points, and Kuroyukihime viewed her as her ultimate enemy. The new Nega Nebulus—only just now at a total strength of seven people—was still a long way from standing shoulder to shoulder with the White Legion, but someday, the time for them to fight would come.

And when it does, I’m totally letting the White King have it. Deceiving your little sister, making her cry, getting her chased out of your house, is that what an older sister—what a parent—does?

His resolve hardened in his heart as Haruyuki burned Oscillatory Universe’s headquarters into the back of his eyes.

When he whirled around, Takumu was just raising a hand from the north side of the tower. “Heeey! Haru! Time to get going!”

“Sorry. I’m coming!” By the time he ran over, his mind had switched gears, back to the Metatron mission.



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