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Accel World - Volume 15 - Chapter 4




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4

Kuroyukihime had tried any number of times to remember what specifically she had thought and felt in that moment.

The first meeting of the Seven Kings in the Accelerated World held two years and ten months earlier, August 2044. On this occasion, the Red King, Red Rider, pleading for a truce among the seven Great Legions, had turned to the Black King and said If we ever meet in the real world, I could be friends with you. Totally. Actually, I want to be!

This could also have sounded like a tentative push beyond the friendship that bound the young kings as Burst Linkers, depending on who was listening.

Hey, Rider! The first to react had been the Purple King, Purple Thorn—who was closest with Rider at the time. You think I’m just gonna let that go?!

N-no, that’s not it. I didn’t mean it like that…Ah, crap.

The Blue King, Blue Knight, and the White King, White Cosmos, had laughed at this, and even the Yellow King, Yellow Radio, managed a few chuckles. Only the Green King, Green Grandé, had stopped at simply allowing his thick armor to creak slightly. In this venue of an amicable battle royale field, Kuroyukihime had thought it was possible that the two were parent and child.

The Seven Kings, once called the Pure Colors, were the masters of the seven Great Legions and all veterans who had been fighting since the dawn of the Accelerated World. But that didn’t mean they were all Originators, the initial hundred players. Naturally, Kuroyukihime, the child of White Cosmos, was not; and she wasn’t certain, but there was a good chance that the White King herself was likewise not an Originator. She’d heard that the hundred people who received the BB program from the mysterious developer had started grade one in April 2039—in other words, children born in the year 2032, the same year as Kuroyukihime and a year after the White King.

Why was the age of the Originators not the same as the oldest Burst Linkers? There were many theories, but the most plausible was that only about half the children born in 2031 could meet the conditions for the installation of the BB program. Neurolinker models for infants were developed in September of 2031, and it would have been impossible for children born before that to be equipped with a Neurolinker immediately after birth. At any rate, of the Seven Kings, the ones she could be most certain were Originators were Knight and Grandé.

If Thorn and Rider are parent and child, or maybe in love, she will never forgive what I’m about to do. Kuroyukihime’s memories of her own thought process cut off there.

Once the Kings’ laughter began to subside, she had stood up and approached Rider, showing her acceptance of the truce. Delighted, Rider had extended a hand to shake hers, and Kuroyukihime responded with an embrace. Thorn had objected with an even higher-pitched shriek, and laughter welled up once more. And then, that moment had been upon them.

Black Lotus’s level-eight special attack, Death By Embracing. A range of mere tens of centimeters, but its power was limitless. When she had closed the swords of her crossed arms, anything within them was severed—no exceptions. Even if it happened to be the armor of a level-nine duel avatar.

She didn’t remember what she had felt when the Red King’s head sat at the intersection of those two swords and his body crumpled to the ground at her feet before melting into countless thin ribbons and disappearing.

N-nooooooooo!! the Purple King had shrieked, loud enough to be heard across the entire field.

Is this your choice, Lotus?! the Blue King had roared, as if he’d switched personalities.

And there, finally, the blank space of her memory ended. Yanking her bladed arms down sharply, the twelve-year-old Kuroyukihime thought, Four more.

No matter how many burst points you accumulated, you couldn’t reach the final level of ten from level nine. The system required that you push five other level-nine Burst Linkers to total point loss. It was precisely because he knew this rule that Red Rider sought a truce among the kings—and also the reason why Black Lotus had lopped off his head. In the long history of the Accelerated World, the level-nine sudden-death rule had actually only been applied that one time—supposedly. Despite that Kuroyukihime had given herself over to madness and fought like a savage goddess, she hadn’t been able to strike down a single one of the other Kings. It was perhaps a miracle, in fact, that she’d survived until the end of the battle royale and returned to the real world.

Two years and ten months had passed since then, and her memories of that night were closed off in a faint red fog; it was difficult to remember the details. But she had actually done it. When she opened her Instruct menu and looked at the level-up screen, a single red light flashed at the left end of the indicator of the five lives required to reach level ten. The name Red Rider was even displayed when she touched it. Which is why there was no way the first Red King could be there now.

Kuroyukihime stared hard at the gunslinger-style duel avatar that had appeared from behind the ISS kit main body wearing a ten-gallon hat and a gun belt, one part of her mind running through the possibilities: Someone had transformed into Rider. Or she was being shown a projection with no physical substance. One of the two was the most likely explanation.

But even as she hypothesized with her rational mind, she felt the truth of the situation instinctually, keenly. The voice. The tone. The mannerisms. The aura. All of it was that of the first Red King, the Master Gunsmith, Red Rider.

Fuko, Akira, and Utai came to stand next to her, having apparently recovered from the shock before she did. The youngest, Utai, had very little direct experience with Rider, but Fuko and Akira were veterans on Kuroyukihime’s level; they had encountered him, exchanged words, and fought him any number of times in the battlefield.

But both maintained their silence, neither speaking to the red avatar twenty meters before them. Kuroyukihime distinctly felt through her armor her comrades’ intention to leave all the decisions here to her.

The frenzied night when she had taken Rider’s head—and the tragic collapse of Nega Nebulus at the Castle four months later. Kuroyukihime later learned that she had been deeply deceived and manipulated by the person she trusted most in the world. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She would feel, think, choose, and decide on her own. As the master of the new Nega Nebulus; as the parent of a boy a year younger than she was, who was fighting in a different place right then at that very moment.

“I believe I killed you, Red Rider.” Kuroyukihime uttered her first decisive words, eyes intent on the gunslinger approaching the massive jet-black eyeball.

“Yeah, you did.” The red avatar had the air of a hazy smile. “That time, it was like, I went from Heaven to Hell, y’know? Just when I thought I was getting a hug from the no-touching-allowed World End, I get that, right?” He opened up two of the fingers of his right hand and closed them like a scissor’s snip.

From hearing the way he so accurately captured the situation, his manner of speaking, and the boyishness lingering in his tone, she really couldn’t believe she was looking at anyone other than the first Red King. She shivered uncontrollably at her astonishment at the impossible, and in turn, the shock of memories she had buried deep in her being were instantly unearthed. But she willed all her strength into her legs and stayed on her feet.

Five months earlier, when Kuroyukihime had agreed to assist the second Red King, Scarlet Rain, and joined the mission to subjugate the fifth Chrome Disaster, the Yellow King had surprised her with a video replay of Rider’s total point loss, and the shock of being ambushed with such a painful memory had forced her into a Zero Fill, rendering her helpless.

A recording didn’t begin to compare with the impact of what was going on at that moment before her very eyes. But whatever came from this unnatural meeting, she had no intention of collapsing in such an unseemly fashion again.

“So then, are you the ghost of a duel avatar? Or are you the first Burst Linker to find a way to reinstall Brain Burst after losing all your points? I suppose it’s one or the other.”

“I s’pose so.” Rider tilted the brim of his hat at the hard echo in her voice and thought briefly. “If it has to be one or the other, I guess it’d be the first.”

“Oh-ho, you were so consumed with hate, you became a ghost? Then you have perfect timing. I happen to be accompanied by a shrine maiden with the power of purification, so she can send you on your way.”

She felt Utai twitch and stiffen beside her, and Fuko’s hand flashed out at inhuman speed to prevent the Shrine Maiden’s retreat. Taking courage—albeit only a tiny bit—from this small moment of normalcy between her friends, Kuroyukihime added, “Or perhaps you appeared because you have something to say. In which case, out with it. You do have the right to…blame me, after all.”

Of course, Kuroyukihime didn’t believe they were seeing an actual ghost. He might have been banished from the Accelerated World, but the boy who had once been the Red King still lived somewhere in real Tokyo, even now. And he had lost any and all memory of his life as a Burst Linker.

But on the other hand, anything could happen in the Accelerated World—within the limits of what the system allowed, naturally. The full-dive fighter game Brain Burst still hadn’t shown even a veteran among veterans like Kuroyukihime everything it had to offer. So a digital phantom in some system-approved form…was perhaps possible.

“Well, you’re exactly right that I’m here ’cause I got something to say.” Rider crossed his arms, still leaning back against the kit main body. “But I’m not here with some grudge or the resentment you’re imagining. I know now: the real reason why you cut my head off in a surprise attack.”

“…What did you say?” Kuroyukihime murmured, dumbfounded, massively shocked for the nth time in the last few minutes.

The real reason Kuroyukihime had struck the Red King. The majority of Burst Linkers thought it was because she was trying to reach level ten before anyone else. That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Behind the tragedy was also a certain someone who had told Kuroyukihime about the Seven Roads, the gun-type Enhanced Armament the Red King produced with his Arms Creation ability. That someone had informed her that they were the ultimate weapons of destruction, designed to keep the Accelerated World forever in a state of stagnation.

But the only ones she’d confessed this truth to were the Four Elements of Nega Nebulus and her child, Silver Crow. There was no way they had given Rider that information; to start with, Rider was already gone by that point.

No…There is one other person who knows the whole truth. The “puppet master” who had so deftly deceived and manipulated her.

“His color.” Akira broke her silence quietly.

“What’s wrong, Curren?” Fuko was quick to ask.

“That avatar,” Akira said, lowering her voice even further. “His color’s starting to change.”

Kuroyukihime stared intently at the gunslinger twenty meters ahead of her. The color of the armor of the duel avatar standing alongside the ISS kit main body was exactly the same as Red Rider’s in her memory, a pure and singular red that defied any kind of descriptive adjective—and yet. When she really strained her eyes, she saw that Akira was right. The color was steadily changing from the feet sunken into the gloom. From a dark, dirty bloodred, through the purple of twilight, and into a matte black reminiscent of partly burned charcoal.

Sensing the eyes of the four Burst Linkers firmly fixed on him, Rider also looked down at his feet and clicked his tongue lightly. “Tch! You’re here already? I figured I had three minutes, though…”

“What’s the meaning of this?!” Kuroyukihime yelled in frustration. “Are you really Rider?! Aren’t you here because you have something to say?!”

But instead of answering her, the gunslinger—now black up to his hips—tipped his hat apologetically. “Sorry, Lotus. We’ll finish this chat after we fight.”

“Wh-what?”

“Listen, you win, okay? Be more merciless than last time. Beat me black-and-blue. The more energy gets used up, the longer I can be me.”

“…Win? Against who?”

“Well, against…me, of course.” The Red King spread out his arms and shrugged lightly while the charcoal erased the red of his chest, his neck, and then finally, his face mask. The shallow V of his goggles was filled with a viscous darkness.

Bwwm. An unpleasant vibration accompanied a flash of light the color of blood beyond the goggles. And then, a murderous aura gushed from the avatar’s slender frame to nearly cover the floor, and Kuroyukihime and her comrades gasped. They knew this bottomless hunger—this somehow inorganic wave. The same aura the ISS kit users under Magenta Scissor were cloaked in when they had fought them earlier in the field on the north side of Midtown Tower.

Standing fixed in place, the four Burst Linkers stiffened for the merest of moments, and as if aiming for that opening, Red Rider’s hands, blackened all the way to the fingertips, flashed so quickly they blurred. He grabbed the two guns on either side of his gun belt, drew them, and aimed; the whole process took essentially zero seconds.

I made it.

Niko still exists in this world.

The instant Mihaya set eyes upon Scarlet Rain, captive on the black cross, a smoothly liquid relief rose up in her chest. But a fraction of a second later, overwhelming rage set flame to that liquid.

Rain’s armor was cruelly splintered, and she was unconscious—no light in her eye lenses. On top of that, she was crucified like a historical criminal receiving the death penalty, her arms spread wide. Mihaya would never forgive this treatment of the Red King, the leader of Prominence. Never.

Propelled by the flames of rage burning inside her, Mihaya forgot the pain in her left shoulder from Argon Array’s laser and let out a roar. She sank down, preparing to leap the three stories from the roof to Black Vise, Rain’s captor. But she managed to control herself, somehow.

Vise and Argon stood together in the center of a courtyard about fifty meters on each side, while Silver Crow, Lime Bell, and Cyan Pile were lined up along the east side. The three junior members of Nega Nebulus boldly faced the two execs of the Acceleration Research Society and their unfathomable abilities. This battle didn’t belong to Mihaya alone. Silver Crow had continued to chase Vise to this place; he had earned the right to start this fight.

She turned her eyes toward Niko once more and vowed in her heart to save her before jumping almost straight down. She cut across the courtyard to Crow’s side and offered a brief apology for keeping them waiting.

In fact, it had taken longer than she’d expected to reach this place. Everything had been good up to the point she charged into the shadow tunnel after getting help from Cyan Pile and Lime Bell, but she’d gotten separated from them in the total darkness and been carried to a different exit.

However, fortunately—she supposed—she caught sight of Argon running ahead of her in the gloomy corridor, so she followed her, taking care not to be noticed, and made it through the mazelike basement. Argon discovered her not long after they came aboveground, but she apparently prioritized meeting up with Vise; she just kept running, instead of attacking Mihaya with her lasers. So Mihaya had managed to regroup with her comrades in the place of the final battle.

The fact that the Acceleration Research Society headquarters was this bright and large—and apparently a large school in the real world—had surprised her, but they could spend the day analyzing this information later. At the moment, she had to focus on crushing the two tough enemies before her to get Niko back. The Black King and the group they’d left at Midtown had to have made it to the nearest leave point by then, but no matter how they hurried, it would take at least three seconds to return to the real world through the portal, move their flesh-and-blood bodies, and pull out Niko’s cable. That was fifty minutes on this side—it would be great if they could crush Vise and his crew before then, but even if they couldn’t, they had to at least protect Rain.

Newly resolved, Mihaya extended the claws on her hands to their full length. And then, a seventh Burst Linker fell with a rumble from the sky, adding a new level of confusion to the war situation.

At first, Mihaya didn’t know who the intruder was. But she’d heard the name Silver Crow uttered hoarsely before.

Wolfram Cerberus. The fearsome newbie who’d suddenly appeared in the Accelerated World. Parent and Legion affiliation totally unknown, battle intelligence far beyond that of a beginner, powerful defensive ability Physical Immunity. He’d crushed one middle ranker after another. A duel genius. All the rumors had reached Nerima.

Given that he mainly showed up in areas controlled by Leonids and Great Wall, Mihaya still hadn’t seen him fight with her own eyes, but she’d been thinking she should sit in on one of his fights from the Gallery, at least. And now, her first encounter with him was here in this situation.

The issue was whether Cerberus was friend or foe. If he was a foe, then in a certain sense, she should probably be more on guard against him than Vise or Argon. Especially since all the three attackers on this side were only physical, close-range types. Her misgivings became reality a second later.

Standing up, the gray metal-color avatar turned his back to Vise and Argon and faced Silver Crow squarely. Wolfram Cerberus was a foe. A member of the Acceleration Research Society. Mihaya carved this knowledge into her brain.

But Cerberus’s first words were somewhat unexpected. “I didn’t want to meet you again like this…Crow.”

He sounded as though he was enduring severe pain, and she didn’t believe it was an act. Silver Crow’s response, too, seemed to contain an equal mix of pain and shock.

“Me too, Cerberus. Because you’re in the Unlimited Neutral Field…you went up a level?”

“Yes.” Cerberus nodded. “Not to the bare minimum of level four. The same level five as you, Crow.”

“So we’re the same level now. But…does that mean your ‘role’ of staying at level one and earning points is over, then? I want to have a regular duel with you. A duel with no tricks—a pure duel. So…please don’t stand there, Cerberus.” Crow’s speech was restrained, but there was an earnest echo in his words.

“I’m sorry.” The small avatar shook his head slightly. “I can’t step away from this place. But what you said after the battle royale on Thursday made me happy. And that you met me in the real as well.”

“…No need for the past tense. We can meet again whenever you want…Anytime.”

There was an edge in this exchange between gray and silver metal colors, like an extremely thin wire had been stretched as far as it could go and was now being plucked. A pure and dangerous rapport as they both pulled powerfully against each other. It would be no surprise if it snapped at any moment.

“It’s just as you said, Crow. The role I was given is essentially complete. Which means there is no longer any reason to permit my existence. Today will be the last day I talk with you like this…”

Mihaya sensed a faint smile rising up on the wolfish face mask as Cerberus spoke. In contrast, Crow was clenching his hands into tight fists.

“Cerberus!” he called in an increasingly tense voice. “You don’t need the role you were ‘given’ or a reason for your existence to be ‘permitted’ or whatever! A Burst Linker can always find their own objectives, right?!”

“……”

Head hanging, Cerberus didn’t immediately respond. Instead, they heard Argon Array’s mirthful voice, with that hint of secret laughter that never failed to rub them the wrong way. “Ha-ha-ha! Crow, you really got some hella smooth words there! But damned straight here. We don’t talk none of that Burst Linker crap!” Argon jeered.

“You mustn’t say things like that, Array,” Vise rebuked her from her side. “After all, you yourself have an objective or two, yes?”

“Well, I won’t say I don’t got three or four. And one of ’em’s gonna be checked off today, so I’m not joinin’ you for any beatdowns or what. Aah, for real, this is a real long deal. I’m workin’ here, seriously…”

“Such comments are a bit premature. Personally, I’d be glad to have you begin before any further obstacles come along.”

The conversation made no sense, and Mihaya tried to shut it out of her head. She’d only recently learned that Argon’s tendency toward speech itself was a close-range, glamour-type attack, and she had paid the price for it. They had to attack before she got them all turned around.

“Can I leave Wolfram Cerberus to you?” Mihaya murmured to Silver Crow beside her, his hands still clenched into fists.

Although it took just a second to come, Crow’s answer was definite. “Yes. I’ll be his opponent.”

“’Kay. I’m taking Argon down. Pile and Bell…” Mihaya glanced at them, and the large blue and small green avatars nodded in tandem.

“Vise, right?” Takumu said. “He’s a powerful enemy, but he can’t use one arm right now. I’ll do something and hold him off while you and Crow are fighting.”

“I’ve got your back, Pile,” Chiyuri chirped. “I’ll just keep healing you up!”

At this reassuring response from the level fives, Mihaya nodded slightly but firmly.

If they compared just the total value for their levels, the enemy was 8 + 8 + 5 = 21, while her group was 8 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 23. If this were the duel holy land, Akihabara BG—although you couldn’t fight there in teams of more than three—most people would bet on Mihaya’s group. But the true power of Wolfram Cerberus couldn’t be measured in numbers, and the other two Society members were the same. To even think that Mihaya, who had only just advanced to level eight, was in the same place as Argon and Vise, who had probably reached that level ages ago, was hubris.

But the three members of Nega Nebulus were true warriors; they inevitably displayed a power beyond their level when push came to shove. Lime Bell with her astounding ability to reverse time, Cyan Pile, hiding an outstandingly keen intellect beneath that thick armor, and Silver Crow—the depth of whose potential still could not be seen. As long as she had these three with her, they would definitely make it over this sword’s edge. And they would get back Niko—the master she had sworn her eternal loyalty to. They would not fail.

Mihaya leaned forward the slightest bit and activated the Incarnate System that she had long kept sealed away. A bloody red overlay gushed from her hands and sharp claws, powerful enough to dim the red of the twilight.

As if in response to the sudden increase in battle spirit in the seven avatars, the sky above the courtyard suddenly clouded over and rumbled with the low roar of thunder.

Master Gunsmith.

This first Red King had been given this nickname because of his matchless ability to produce any number of gun-type Enhanced Armament himself. But that certainly didn’t mean Red Rider was what other net games called a crafter. Half the reason he’d been dubbed Master lay in the transcendence of his gun work.

Entire body dyed the color of darkness, Rider whipped his guns out in a quick draw like a lightning strike and pulled the triggers without a flicker of hesitation. One roar after another echoed across the vast forty-fifth floor of Midtown Tower, but Kuroyukihime and her comrades had already leapt off to the sides.

The Red King’s main arms were two revolver Enhanced Armaments called Helios and Eos. Since each of their cylinders held six bullets, with both guns, he could fire twelve successive shots. Alternately pulling the triggers of the left and right guns, the Red King used up all his bullets in a mere two seconds. Eight of the fired bullets passed between Kuroyukihime and Akira (who had jumped to the left), and Fuko and Utai (to the right), but the remaining four closed in with terrifying accuracy on the critical point of each girl—the heart.

“Nngh!” Gritting her teeth, Kuroyukihime deflected the bullets targeting her and Akira with a wave of her left sword-arm.

On the right, Fuko launched a left-right palm-strike combo and pulverized those two bullets. The four young women had managed to prevent a direct attack on their bodies, but it was impossible to defend against bullets without taking some damage. The system registered the grazes, and her health gauge dropped the slightest bit. And it had to have been the same for Fuko.

Having emptied his rounds, Red Rider raised his guns smoothly. Chak! The cylinders swung open and the empty casings tumbled to the ground.

“Now!” Kuroyukihime called, kicking off the ground ferociously.

One part of her mind was still in chaos, an unpartitioned hard disk. Was this Red Rider who suddenly appeared before them the real deal or not? What was the meaning of his mysterious words? Why did his color suddenly change? Why did he start attacking? The mountain of questions only grew ever higher.

But in the bottom of her heart, Kuroyukihime had been prepared for something like this, knowing she would inevitably have to face her own past if she continued to pursue the ISS kit main body. The moment she saw the crossed-guns crest on the sealed card Silver Crow entrusted to her, it was clear that the first Red King was involved in some form or another.

Of course, she never imagined she would face Rider in a direct confrontation like this, but that didn’t mean she could run away. Rider had said to fight, so she would fight. A continuation of the “duel” that day that had ended in a mere second with Kuroyukihime’s surprise attack.

“Ah…Aaaah!” Roaring with resolve, Kuroyukihime brandished the sword of her right hand.

The biggest opening for a red-type avatar was the moment they ran out of ammunition. And the Red King was no exception.

Normally, once the empty casings were ejected, the cylinder needed to be reloaded by hand—one bullet at a time. But at nearly the same time that the chamber was emptied, the armor on Rider’s arms opened up and speed loaders popped out. The loader arms stretched forth and pushed six bullets into the empty cylinder simultaneously.

Chak! The sound echoed once more as the cylinders snapped back into the gun body, and reloading was complete. The time from the moment he turned his guns upward to the instant the loaders, having served their purpose, were tucked back into his arms was a mere two seconds. This was Auto Load.

Back when Red Rider was fighting on the front lines, this quick-firing, quick-loading technique had blocked the close-range attacks of the blue-type avatars and had even broken through the solid defenses of green-type avatars with grazing damage alone. Even Kuroyukihime, who was justly confident in her charging speed, had been pushed back any number of times by this rapid-fire assault, leaving Rider just barely beyond the reach of her sword-arms.

But this time, she was fortunate in that the distance between them at the start of the fight was relatively small. By the time the Red King was aiming his guns again, Kuroyukihime was already bringing her Terminate Sword down on him. This blade severed everything it touched, and now it was closing in on Rider’s defenseless neck.

But somewhere deep inside her, in a reflex she couldn’t control, she shuddered for a mere instant. The vibration knocked her attack off course, and rather than the neck, the blade hit the left shoulder, covered in hard armor for a red type.

Skreek! The light of the damage effect scattered with a sharp metallic sound.

Her sword had cut deep into his shoulder, stopping the movement of the gun in his left hand, but almost as though he didn’t feel the pain of the injury, Rider quickly turned the gun in his right hand squarely at Kuroyukihime’s chest. His finger, machinelike in its precision and ruthlessness, pulled the trigger.

Flames blossomed at the mouth of the barrel that was practically pressed up against her chest. The bullet very nearly hit her armor before she whipped her sword-arm in front of her to catch it.

Once more, the ear-splitting shriek of metal. Brilliant sparks shot up from the ridge of her sword, and her health gauge dropped slightly again. And naturally, Rider’s attack didn’t end at one shot. He pulled the trigger over and over with the speed of a machine gun—and a second, then a third shot landed in precisely the same place. She defended against each one successfully, but with every impact to her arm, the amount her gauge dropped grew. Shot repeatedly in the same spot, the damage in her sword was accumulating. But she couldn’t exactly move it and let a bullet hit her critical point.

Pushed back by the barrage, Kuroyukihime was keenly aware of the cause of the trembling that had knocked her slicing attack off course: the fear, regret, and guilt she’d shoved to the bottom of her heart for nearly three years. She hated herself for using a surprise attack to push the Red King to total point loss, and this hatred had made the battle spirit that moved her avatar freeze up—if only for an instant. It was exactly the same reason as the Zero Fill six months ago.


Disgusting! Kuroyukihime rebuked herself as Rider emptied his right-hand gun, Helios. I promised him—I promised Haruyuki!

I said I wouldn’t be afraid, I wouldn’t run from the past anymore…I said no matter what was waiting for us at Midtown Tower, I wouldn’t retreat a single step!

Hit with pinpoint accuracy by six bullets, her sword made a faint but ominous sound. It was still there, though, unbroken. And her spirit, while shaken, was not broken, either. She would fight on. Both the enemy before her eyes—and her own fear. She plunged the tips of both feet into the floor and stopped her retreat.

While auto-loading the emptied chamber, the Red King took aim with his left-hand weapon, which had previously been pushed back by the slicing attack. It was fast, leaving absolutely no opening.

He was supposedly an extreme red type, yet fighting him was like going up against a blue type with close-range weapons in each hand.

Kuroyukihime had the option of giving up on close combat and leaping back to join Fuko and Akira in a defensive formation, leaving Utai to attack with her longbow. But right before he’d turned black, Rider had told her to beat him black-and-blue, to be merciless. And then that bit about “the longer I can be me.” She didn’t think she could make that happen with a clever strategic win, and more than anything else, she felt as if stepping back now would be the same as losing.

She wasn’t trying to be obstinate and reject the help of her comrades, but at the very least, she couldn’t fall back until she beat him back with a satisfactory slicing attack. But to get within sword’s reach of Rider again, it wasn’t enough to simply guard against his bullets. She would have to anticipate the firing of each bullet and dodge them while moving forward.

Kuroyukihime. She suddenly heard a quiet voice in her ears. You can’t look at the gun barrel. To see when they’ll fire, you have to look at the person holding the gun and read the signs from their whole body.

I’ll try! She shifted her gaze away from the black barrel of Eos in Rider’s left hand.

The vitality she’d sensed—albeit slightly—during their conversation had completely disappeared when the Red King was eaten up by darkness. But in its place came a vibrant, thirsty bloodlust. Two points of bloody light blinked faintly beneath his V-shaped goggles.

Tossing herself forward, Kuroyukihime pushed off the ground and flew with every scrap of strength she had.

Fire jetted from the gun barrel. The bullet grazed one of the antennas stretching out at length on either side of her helmet. Rider fired again, lowering his aim, and Kuroyukihime sank even lower to slip past the coming projectiles. Bang! Bang! In her accelerated consciousness, she heard the roar of the bullets, and lumps of metal rocketing forward at nearly the speed of sound grazed the armor of her back. She had brought herself so low to the ground that she would fall on her face if she leaned forward any farther—and that was when the sixth bullet removed a piece of her armor skirt and shot off behind her.

She couldn’t actually see it, but he should have been just about finished reloading the gun in his right hand.

She only had one chance to attack. This time, for sure, she had to shake free of the fear etched into the depths of her heart and launch a single blow with her entire body and spirit.

“Aaaaaaah!!” Roaring mightily, Kuroyukihime spread the swords of both arms.

From her position, body bent as far as humanly possible, a proper sword attack was not possible. She didn’t have enough room to brandish her sword-arms, and a kicking technique would take too long. Kuroyukihime had only one technique she could launch from such close range.

She kicked off the floor once more and bounced upward. With a head butt, she pushed Helios up and away and latched her avatar onto Rider’s. Wrapping both arms around him, she crossed the tips of her two swords.

A torso wasn’t quite the same as a neck, but she had basically put them in an equivalent position three years earlier, deceiving the Red King with both words and attitude to get close enough to launch the technique. But this time was different. Counting from the first shot, she had dodged, repelled, and slipped past twelve bullets to close the distance between them.

I am not the person I was then!!

Putting every bit of willpower she had into her arms, Kuroyukihime pushed away her fear and shouted, “Death By Embracing!!”

A line of crimson light flashed. A relentless and decisive sound effect rang out in her ears.

Black Lotus’s level-eight special attack severed the torso of the Red King right along the line of his gun belt.

Rider didn’t so much as grunt, despite that the pain dancing across his nerves had to be the fiercest sensation that could be generated in the Accelerated World, but instead tried to fire the gun in his right hand. For nearly all duel avatars, having their head severed from their body meant instant death, but some did manage to survive being rent asunder at the waist. But Kuroyukihime couldn’t move right away because of the moment of stiffness that came immediately after activating a major technique.

Just as the gun barrel was on the verge of exploding in flames, however, drops of water came flying up from behind to splash into Rider’s goggles. The water became a vision-blocking fog that kept him from firing his gun.

Aqua Current had launched part of her now finally recovered flowing-water armor like a slingshot.

Then, a bright-red flaming arrow plunged into Rider’s right arm. With magnificent skill, Ardor Maiden had pierced the core of the avatar’s naked body and temporarily paralyzed the hand holding Helios. Even backed into this corner, the Red King still did not cry out, but rather, he tried to reload Eos in his left.

Sky Raker flew in now, transformed into a gust of wind, with sliver-blue hair fluttering. No doubt she had fired a burst from Gale Thruster to charge the Red King with a speed impossible to attain in a normal jump. With a brief battle cry, she struck him loudly with a palm strike. “Ha!”

The intense impact was too much to withstand, and cracks radiated outward in his thick chest armor. Sooty fragments peeling away, the Red King turned his guns forward with fearsome battle instincts.

Here, Kuroyukihime’s stiffness finally ended. She used her hunched posture to jump up high, then turned toward Rider’s torso floating through the air. She propelled a leg directly up. “Yaaah!”

The tip of her sword carved a blue crescent moon out of the air as it ripped through Rider’s stomach up to his head, cutting his trademark ten-gallon hat perfectly in two.

That was the final blow. Red Rider’s health gauge—assuming he had one—was completely spent. He stopped unnaturally in midair, torso reeling, before scattering into countless black fragments. The fragments turned into jet-black smoke and vanished while Kuroyukihime did a backward somersault to land on her feet. She turned slowly toward her comrades as they raced over to her.

“Sacchi,” Fuko called to her in a murmur.

Kuroyukihime stopped holding her breath. “He’s a fake,” she replied briefly.

“……”

Her friends were silent, eyes turned toward her, and she continued, softening her tone, “Rider’s strength wasn’t that. Even four against one, he would shoot and shoot and shoot, never taking a step back. He would shoot and win, shoot and win some more…That was the kind of guy Red Rider was. They might have re-created his gun techniques, but the will contained in each and every one of those bullets was totally different. There’s no way that was the real Rider.”

“But his aura, the way he talked before his armor changed color, that was the Master Gunsmith,” Akira noted.

“Mmm.” She nodded, then shook her head. “But…I can’t say how, but it was different in some way. And my victories against level nines didn’t go up, either.” She glanced at the system message area on the left side of her field of view.

The voice she heard in response was not Fuko’s, nor Akira’s, nor Utai’s.

“Ha-ha-ha! It’d really be something else if that went up. You could get to level ten just by taking me on here.”

“ !!”

Whirling around, the four Burst Linkers watched as an avatar was ejected from the pupil area of the massive eyeball on the south side of the floor—the ISS kit main body. Kuroyukihime didn’t need to see the wide-brimmed hat and the large gun belt to know this was the very Red Rider she had only just defeated minutes ago.

“Wh-what’s going on?!” Fuko cried out in surprise, staring at the avatar pulling his body free from the semitransparent membrane.

Rider stood up and then started to walk—the spurs on his boots clacking. “I told you—I’m kinda like a ghost. In a way, I’m the real Red Rider, but at the same time, I’m a total fake. To get you to understand that, I needed you to fight me once, you know? Sorry for attacking you, huh, Lotus?”

“N-no. That was on me, too—,” Kuroyukihime said, baffled, before pulling herself back together and crying sharply, “real or fake, quit saying all these things that are supposed to be so deep! What exactly are you?! What kind of logic has you appearing here and regenerating?!”

“Don’t be mad. I’ll explain everything. Thanks to you guys totally crushing it before, it looks like I can be me for a while now.” The Red King stopped about ten meters away from Kuroyukihime and her comrades, perhaps to show he was not there to fight, and sat cross-legged on the marble floor. He gestured with his fingertips for them to come closer, so they stepped toward him, on guard.

Kuroyukihime stopped close enough to be able to hear his murmured voice, and Rider looked up at her.

“I’m a ghost, but it’s not like I transformed and appeared of my own will.” He made the fearsome announcement in a calm voice. “After you cut off my head, and I lost all my points, a certain Burst Linker brought me back to life in a limited way. As a pawn toward their own objective, you know?”

“B-brought back to life? A Burst Linker who didn’t die after his health gauge dropped to zero…but rather one who lost all his points and vanished from the Accelerated World?” Kuroyukihime’s voice was shaking—so hoarse she almost couldn’t believe it was her own. Fuko and the others stood with her, frozen speechless.

It was impossible. A Burst Linker who lost all their burst points left the Accelerated World forever through a final extinction phenomenon, and the Brain Burst program installed on their Neurolinker was completely erased.

To be more precise, this didn’t happen the moment a player lost all their points, but rather the instant they learned the outcome of the battle when they had zero points remaining. For instance, if you accidentally made a purchase in the shop so that your points dropped to exactly zero, you could escape forcible removal if you recovered those points before your next duel. In the case of the Red King, however, his points had been zeroed according to the level-nine sudden-death rule, so any rescue should have been impossible. And of course, any regeneration.

Having driven the top four members of Nega Nebulus into a maelstrom of shock, Rider shrugged lightly from the ground and added, “I said limited, yeah? The me here now is the shadow of the Red Rider who fought you and vanished three years ago— Frankly, I’m a zombie. The real me in the real world is out there living a peaceful student life, all memories of the Accelerated World gone from his head…Although I can’t say for sure he’s got no memory of that particular scene. Anyway, someone prob’ly made a copy of something like my spirit with a special attack or an Incarnate technique—and…made it possess the giant eyeball back there.”

“Possess…copy of the spirit…,” Kuroyukihime parroted back.

To her left, Utai shook her head slightly. “If that is true…you can’t be said to have come back to life. Copying the spirit of someone who’s left the Accelerated World and using it for your own purposes— That power is not a regeneration technique. It’s more fitting to call it necromancy.”

“That is true, hmm? But why? Why would this whoever do that?” Fuko asked.

“To use Red Rider’s abilities, of course,” the shadow of the Red King replied quietly. “They made me, Rider’s zombie, so they could make the Enhanced Armament they want with Arms Creation. And then they made me parasitize that vessel, the eyeball.”

The Red King’s words were so shocking it was all Kuroyukihime could do to digest the information, but even so, she immediately grasped the meaning of this Enhanced Armament. “The ISS kits, hmm? Those eyeballs distributed throughout the Accelerated World were made using your ability. That’s what you’re saying, yes?”

“I’ll tell you right now, I didn’t pick the design or the specs. To start with, when I’m swallowed up by the giant eye, it’s like my main switch is turned off; I can’t see anything or hear anything or think anything. To make me come out like this, the eyeball uses up a ton of energy; it only happens when it’s in recovery mode. Now’s one of those times.”

“You mean it used energy to reproduce the you we defeated? That’s why you said all that about beating you black-and-blue?”

“Exactly. Incidentally, I managed to come out the first time because the giant eyeball materialized a ton of tiny eyeballs for defense. Although you guys made quick work of them, too.”

“I see. In other words, when the eyeball recovers its energy, you’ll turn black again and come to attack us, then.” Businesslike, she asked the question merely for confirmation.

“Sorry, but that’s about it.” Rider raised the brim of his ten-gallon hat lightly in apology. “Well, I expect I’m a whole lot weaker than the real me, though. I think I can still talk a little longer, though.”

If what Rider was telling them was true, then they had to get as much information from him as they could right now. But there were too many things she wanted to ask about, and it was hard to immediately prioritize one. Kuroyukihime fell silent, caught in this fleeting hesitation.

“To start with, what is that?” Akira’s voice pierced the brief silence. She shot her eyes toward the massive eyeball object behind them.

“It’s not energy, and it’s not an Enhanced Armament,” the Red King answered neatly. “It’s prob’ly a duel avatar.”

Shocked yet again, Kuroyukihime, Fuko, and Utai all gasped. But Akira, as might be expected of the parent of Blood Leopard, did not waste time; she was already moving on to her next question.

“Which means that a Burst Linker like us is making that eyeball—the ISS kit main body—move?”

“That’s the rub right there. An Enemy wouldn’t sit still like this even if it was tamed, and an Enhanced Armament would be wiped out with the Change. Plus, this massive eyeball does actually have something like emotions and intent. Just…if it’s a Burst Linker, I don’t have the first clue how they can stay in the Unlimited Neutral Field for so long like this. I’m a zombie, so I don’t usually feel time, but this vessel here wouldn’t be like that. I mean, it’s been fifty years at least since it appeared in this spot.”

“F-fifty years?!” Kuroyukihime cried out reflexively. But it had already been over two weeks in real time since the ISS kits had been first confirmed in the Accelerated World. In the Unlimited Neutral Field, that did indeed work out to nearly fifty years. For both internal and external reasons, a continuous dive of that length of time was almost certainly impossible.

To start with, it was a sphere nearly three meters in diameter—surface covered in a fleshy armor reminiscent of a brain. It had no legs or arms, only a single massive eye. And it held a portal inside its body. Could a duel avatar like this even exist? What kind of mental scars exactly could produce such an avatar?

While on the one hand, she felt a Burst Linker like this was impossible, a part of her also wondered What if: What if the Acceleration Research Society were the ones distributing the ISS kits? They had for all intents and purposes produced the Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster; destroyed the Hermes’ Cord race; and even tamed the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron. She wouldn’t be surprised at anything they did anymore. She had no doubt that whoever turned Red Rider into a zombie to use him after his total point loss was also a member of the Society.

And more than anything else, the Acceleration Research Society had used the Twilight Marauder, Dusk Taker, as its vanguard to wreak havoc on Umesato Junior High School during Kuroyukihime’s absence and cruelly torment Haruyuki Arita, Takumu Mayuzumi, and Chiyuri Kurashima. They were working to bring about massive disorder and strife in the Accelerated World. When it came to that group, they might even be able to produce a duel avatar like the ISS kit main body using some unimaginable, evil method.

“Rider.” Shaking off her surprise and confusion, Kuroyukihime called to the Burst Linker who had been her friend, whose life she had cut short with her own hands. “I— We have to destroy that eyeball. Whether it’s a duel avatar or not. Even…even if as a result, the you here now is extinguished.”

Still settled on the floor, the gunslinger let slip a faint, wry smile. “I’m not gonna beg you to stop or anything. This me’s just a zombie forced to make these shitty Enhanced Armaments. I’ve been waiting this whole time, y’know, for someone to end it for me. And then you, Lotus…” Unable to finish his sentence, the Red King shrugged once more.

“But, like, when you do end up fighting it, that thing’s strong. Even I don’t know what attacks it’ll come at you with. But the one thing I do know is that it’s hella strong. Don’t think of it as just an object. Go at it with everything you got, right from the get-go.”

“…Understood.” Kuroyukihime nodded.

Rider tugged the brim of his hat and stretched his legs out in front of him before jumping lightly to his feet.

“BBK, tell me one more thing,” Akira called out.

“That name takes me back! What, Aquamatic?”

“The ISS kits made with your ability and distributed through the Accelerated World. Will they die if the main body’s destroyed?”

That was indeed something they should confirm. Their current top priority was to leave for the real world through the portal that was inside the kit main body and pull out Niko’s cable, now that she’d been abducted by Black Vise, but the original objective of that day’s mission was to render the ISS kit terminals harmless and stop the mental interference with the infected—that is to say, with Rin Kusakabe aka Ash Roller—whom they had left behind in the nurse’s room at Umesato Junior High.

However.

Rider froze for a moment and then shook his head vigorously from side to side. “No. Even if the big eyeball dies, it prob’ly won’t take the teeny ones along for the ride. I’m pretty sure the big one and the teeny ones I was forced to make are connected through that portal. You wipe out the big eyeball, and that info exchange deal’ll stop, I bet. But the individual teeny ones’ll keep on going.”

“Th-that’s—!! So then, Ash—!!” Utai cried in a thin voice.

Kuroyukihime was equally stunned. She had believed unwaveringly that the terminals would die if the main body was destroyed.

“As long as we stop the information exchange, at least—the mental interference—we should be able to avert the crisis for the time being.” Akira’s voice was stiff but cool. “We just have to discuss how to get rid of the kit with everyone later.”

“Oh! Th-that’s true. Once we have some time, I can definitely purify the kit parasitizing Ash…,” Utai started to say with conviction, but the Red King interrupted her.

“That won’t be necessary, miss. I’ll take responsibility for things I made and render them powerless.”

“…How will you do that?”

“They and Lotus know this, I bet, but I can remotely activate a safety in any Enhanced Armament I make. No matter where it is in the Accelerated World. Which includes the little eyeballs here, of course. And those eyeballs multiplying out there are no exception, either.”

“……!”

Kuroyukihime inhaled sharply and then quickly shook her head. “I didn’t forget about your remote safety ability…But the crossed-guns emblem isn’t anywhere on the ISS kit terminals. And that’s the safety structure, isn’t it?”

“I said so before—it’s not like I designed the things. But if it’s an Enhanced Armament I made, then it’ll be there somewhere. Right now, the big eyeball’s stronger, so I can’t interfere with the teeny ones. But if you destroy Big Eye here, I’ll go ahead and lock the safety on all the little ones. I might be a zombie, but I’ve got that much pride left, at least.”

Making this quiet declaration, Rider turned his back to the four again. He made a show of giving a thumbs-up and started walking toward the massive eyeball.

Kuroyukihime shouted some last words at the gunslinger’s narrow back. “Rider! You…”

Don’t you have anything you want to say? Isn’t the anger and hatred toward me, the one who stole your life as a Burst Linker with a cowardly surprise attack and destroyed the Red Legion, stored up in that avatar?

But she couldn’t give voice to the words that rose up as far as her throat. Because she understood that she would only be asking to make herself feel better. Instead, she raised a superficially similar question.

“…You said before that you already knew why I pushed you to total point loss three years ago. How did you find out?”

“I said I knew, but it’s more like I guessed. I don’t think I’m wrong, though,” Rider replied without stopping. “Like I said, I don’t remember who turned me into a zombie. Unfortunately. But they had to have been in the field at the meeting of the Seven Kings. Y’think they were merely lucky enough to bring me back to life when you just happened to push me to total point loss? Nah, there’s no way. I was a target from the start—that’s how you should be thinking. The basic story is: set a fire under the Black King, get her to take the head of the Red King, and secretly make him their own puppet…Someone who could do something like that…”

Red Rider cut himself off and glanced back. The sharp shape of his goggles glinted in the evening sun pouring into the hall through the rupture in the building.

“You should look for the rest of the answers yourself. Later, Lotus. And to you three of the Four Elements. Say hi to Anomaly for me, too. And…say thanks to number two. He took over Promi for me. Tell him it’s up to him now.”

Lifting his right hand once more, he lightly waggled the index and middle fingers, and then the first Red King stepped feetfirst into the pupil of the massive eyeball. The semitransparent membrane swallowed the avatar slowly, sucking him in, and when the dark eyelid blinked sluggishly, there wasn’t a trace of him left behind.

Kuroyukihime didn’t understand the feeling she was experiencing. It wasn’t fear or anger or sadness, but a blend of all these—some kind of high-pressure energy that threatened to rip her avatar open from the inside.

“Sacchi.” Fuko touched her back gently, perhaps sensing her tension.

Kuroyukihime took a deep breath and let it out again. “What we have to do hasn’t changed,” she announced to her comrades, keeping herself under control. “We will expend every bit of power we have and destroy the ISS kit main body.”

“Right,” Fuko said. “That is why we came here, after all.”

“We’ll get it done,” Akira continued.

“We will fight as hard as we can!” Utai declared.

The ISS kit main body was neither Enemy nor Enhanced Armament, but rather duel avatar. That’s what the shadow of Red Rider had told them. In which case, whoever produced this massive eyeball was a flesh-and-blood human being just like Kuroyukihime and her comrades, a boy or maybe a girl close to her own age. And they had the Red King locked inside them so they could use his ability to produce massive numbers of an Enhanced Armament injected with a dark will to spread throughout the Accelerated World.

She didn’t know if this person had wanted this. It was quite possible they were simply under the control of the Acceleration Research Society. But even if that was true, now that things had come this far, there was nothing left to do but fight. When they faced each other on the battlefield as Burst Linkers, there was only the duel. There were things that could only be known, communicated for the first time through battle. Even if the opponent was a massive eyeball that didn’t speak.

Perhaps in response to Kuroyukihime’s resolve, the pupil of the ISS kit main body changed color once more—from the blue of the portal locked inside it to the dark red of venous blood.

Vwaaam! She felt a heavy vibration, and viscous darkness gushed from the spherical brain-life surface. This aura, nothing other than the manifestation of pure evil, rushed over to the four Burst Linkers standing at the ready twenty meters away, where it produced a sensation akin to the surface of their armor being stabbed by countless pins.

“Is this…all Incarnate overlay?!” Fuko shouted, almost moaning, as she raised her right hand. A shining ripple of light blue spread out from her palm and pushed back the dark aura. The overlay itself had no attack power, but in contrast with how a positive aura warmed and gave courage to those it touched, a negative aura had an effect like a chill that froze an avatar.

Kuroyukihime, Akira, and Utai simultaneously cloaked themselves in their own overlay colors, and the cold darkness receded. It wasn’t clear whether or not the kit main body understood words, but just in case, she gave her instructions in a quiet voice.

“With that body, it shouldn’t have any maneuverability! We all close in, go around to the rear, and hit it hard!”

“Roger!” came three voices in unison as the members of Nega Nebulus readied themselves, waiting for their leader’s mark.

“A…”

…ttack.

Before the shout could leave her lips, the aura blanketing the eyeball concentrated to a single point. A jet-black beam shot toward them from the pupil: the ISS kit’s particular long-distance Incarnate attack, Dark Shot. But the scale was several orders of magnitude greater than the one Burst Linkers infected with terminals used.

Almost as if the attack had the exact opposite attributes of Archangel Metatron’s superheated laser, the nihilistic torrent shaved away, ate into, and disintegrated everything it touched. And this beam charged forward to swallow up Kuroyukihime and her comrades.



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