Accel World - Volume 15 - Chapter 5

5

Once you’ve dived into the battlefield, there is only the duel, no matter your opponent. That was what his swordmaster Kuroyukihime had taught him.

The first time Haruyuki had fought Wolfram Cerberus was five days earlier, on the evening of June 25. He had been completely crushed, unable to mount any kind of real defense against Cerberus’s incredible responsiveness, far surpassing Haruyuki’s own flight ability, and the overwhelming hardness of his Physical Immunity.

Their rematch was the following day. After special training in the Way of the Flexible with Kuroyukihime, he had used this new system combined with throwing techniques to overcome the Physical Immunity ability and secure victory, although there had been the small matter of Cerberus switching personalities at the end.

And then again the next day, Thursday, June 27. Haruyuki had been dragged into a battle royale, with Suginami Area No. 2 as the battlefield rather than Nakano Area No. 2, and faced off for the third time against Cerberus. At the climax of their fierce fight, Argon Array had jumped in and flushed his win down the toilet, but Haruyuki still managed a face-to-face meeting with Cerberus in the real world after the duel, albeit for a mere instant.

Those fights had really brought home to him the idea of: The more blows exchanged, the closer the hearts become. If he and Cerberus kept dueling like that, he was sure they’d become real friends at some point. Haruyuki truly believed that; he just couldn’t believe their fourth encounter would come to pass here of all places.

He’d known Cerberus had some kind of deep connection with Argon and thus with the ARS. He’d also wondered if Cerberus himself was the success story of the Artificial Metal-Color plan based on the Mental-Scar Shell theory Argon was such a champion of. So in a certain sense, setting aside the timing and how they’d ended up there now, it really was inevitable that Haruyuki would see Cerberus in the decisive battle with them.

But I didn’t want to meet you here, Haruyuki thought, pained. The courtyard around him was silent, but the intense battle lust from either side clashed in the air above.

The reason he had jumped into the shadow corridor, slipped past the guard Enemy, joined with his friends to smash an indestructible wall using their Incarnate attacks, and arrived in this place was to get Niko back. That was his lone objective, the one thing he needed to achieve at all costs. And anyone who got in his way would have to be eliminated, with every bit of force he had at his disposal.

The time for other considerations was past. He couldn’t allow himself any softness now. Even if his opponent was the very Wolfram Cerberus he was certain he could come to an understanding with someday.

There were certain kinds of things you could say only through a sincere duel. That was what this principle of Kuroyukihime’s meant. But the fight that was about to take place was no normal duel. It was an anything-goes slaughter, with the Incarnate System fully activated right from the start. An all-out battle that would snap the meager thread connecting Cerberus and Haruyuki in an instant.

Even so. I believe in you. And me. Haruyuki murmured this in his heart, and a remarkably strong wind blew through the courtyard, making the black cross, like that on the steeple of a chapel, creak. On this signal, the Burst Linkers—minus Black Vise—sprang into action.

“Aaaaah!”

Haruyuki dashed forward, roaring.

Before him, Cerberus slammed his fists together with a clang. The helmet visor patterned after a wolf’s maw came down, leaving mere millimeters between top and bottom. The Physical Immunity ability was activated. The only attacks Haruyuki had that would work on Cerberus in this state were throwing techniques and his special attack, Head Butt, which caused light attribute damage. And if he tried either one while Cerberus was on guard against him, his opponent would no doubt dodge and hit him with a counterattack. But that was when they were in a Normal Duel Field.

Throwing off any hesitation, Haruyuki called up a silver overlay in his right hand. Setting his sights on the center point of Cerberus’s crossed arms, he launched a striking attack from outside his normal two-meter range: “Laser Sword!!”

With a sound like the shattering of glass, a sword forged of silver aura stretched from the tip of his right hand.

Cerberus’s Physical Immunity boasted such absolute defensive power that he had managed to take the shoulder charge of the Leonids’ heavyweight avatar Frost Horn and come out unscathed. Normally, Cerberus could easily guard against the striking techniques of Silver Crow’s slender hands; in fact, all that would happen was that Crow’s own fingers would be pulverized.

But there was only one principle at work now: Incarnate techniques could only be defended against with Incarnate techniques. Any normal ability, any normal armor, was powerless in the face of the Incarnate System, which overwrote the phenomena of the Accelerated World. In response to this principle, Kuroyukihime had strictly warned Haruyuki against using Incarnate techniques unless he was first attacked with Incarnate, but he dared to break that promise here. Even if he did end up dragged into the darker side of that power—if that was the price for rescuing Niko, he’d pay it.

Haruyuki’s full-powered Incarnate attack pierced the tungsten armor wrapped around Cerberus’s arms as though it were made of paper and sent the virtual heart beneath them scattering in tiny pieces. Or it should have, at least.

However, Cerberus’s right hand was cloaked in some kind of crackling repulsive force, like a burst of high-voltage energy. The tip of the Incarnate sword was unable to so much as touch his armor before it was violently repelled, and Haruyuki himself was thrown backward by the reaction.

Haruyuki’s eyes grew wide in surprise as he tried somehow to keep his feet under him. He saw a film of purple light covering the surface of the tungsten armor.

Cerberus hadn’t called the name of a special attack. And anyway, a special attack couldn’t defend against an Incarnate attack. Which meant that this luminescing phenomenon was the same as Haruyuki’s Laser Sword, an overlay produced by the Incarnate System.

The marbled, writhing texture of the shades of purple caused a faint déjà vu in Haruyuki, but that was quickly crowded out by his overwhelming shock. The fights between Pard and Argon on his left and Vise against Takumu and Chiyuri on his right had started, but he didn’t have the extra mental energy to look at either.

“Cerberus,” he shouted hoarsely. “You know the Incarnate System?!”

“Yes.” Cerberus nodded his helmet, only the upper half exposed, his arms still firmly crossed in front of his body and cloaked in the purple aura. “I was told that I couldn’t fight in the Unlimited Neutral Field without it. Although I don’t know the name of this technique.”

Cerberus sounded a little unnatural as he said this, but Haruyuki’s shock was so great that he didn’t even notice.

It was too fast. Much too fast. Wolfram Cerberus had appeared in the Accelerated World three days before Haruyuki’s first encounter with him. Which meant only eight days had passed since he started dueling. Of course, it was plausible that he had a period of training before making his official debut, but still, until very recently he had been level one and now he not only knew of the Incarnate System but had mastered it to a degree where he could use it in a real fight. This was so far from the norm that it couldn’t be neatly tied up with the word genius.

Cerberus turned his gaze for just a moment from his dumbfounded opponent to check on the conditions of the battlefield before continuing quietly. “I suppose I should tell you this much, at least. I believe you met number two previously, Crow?”

“Y-yeah. The uh, what do you call it? Separate personality? That lives in your left shoulder. We’ve been calling it Cerberus II.”

“Hee-hee, that sounds much cooler, doesn’t it? Number two and me, number one, are indeed separate personalities. But it’s not the psychological phenomena of so-called multiple personalities. It’s actually a more fundamental issue; we are different people. number two was originally an independent Burst Linker with a name other than Cerberus.”

“Independent…Burst Linker…?” Haruyuki parroted, stunned, unable to immediately grasp the meaning of those words.

“For the details…” Cerberus sounded pained, like he was suffering somehow. “Please ask Miss Argon someday. What I want to tell you, Crow, is that while there are limits, the me here now is able to use the powers of number two without the personality change. The way I flew into this place from the sky, too, was number two’s ability, Wolf Down—to be precise, I should say it was the power of flight he copied from you in the previous battle. The more he uses it, however, the less time it lasts, so he can only fly for a few seconds now.”

“……!!”

Even as he gasped in surprise, this made sense to Haruyuki in one part of his mind. He’d remembered Cerberus II and his ability to fly when Cerberus I had fallen from the sky a few minutes earlier, and it seemed that thought had been exactly on the mark.

Which reminded him. When II ate Silver Crow’s arm and re-created that power, he had said something strange: that his power wasn’t stealing, that he wasn’t like that guy. Something like that. Haruyuki frowned beneath his goggles, wondering what that meant, while Cerberus opened his mouth once more.

“And this is the true issue at hand…By advancing to level five, I became able to use not only the abilities of number two, but also the abilities of number three to a certain extent. This Incarnate technique…belongs to number three.”

“Wh…?” Rocked by even further shock, Haruyuki lowered his eyes and looked at Cerberus’s arms. More than protecting Cerberus’s armor, the purple marbling of the overlay wriggled like a worm, as though the armor was possessed.

Haruyuki was still far from experienced with the Incarnate System, but he knew this much, at least—whoever number three was, there was no doubt this purple aura was one born not from the positive but the negative Incarnate.

“Y-you can’t, Cerberus.” Haruyuki faced the small metal color standing a mere meter away. “You can’t use someone else’s Incarnate. You do that, and you’ll be dragged into their darkness—” But he cut himself off and ground his teeth together tightly.

The one who used an Incarnate attack first, a technique impossible to defend against with normal abilities, had been Haruyuki. It might have been a borrowed Incarnate technique, but from Cerberus’s point of view, if he hadn’t used it, he would have been dealt an irrational death in a single blow. So Haruyuki had no right now to tell him not to use it.

As if guessing at this struggle inside Haruyuki, Cerberus gently shook his head. “I understand what you’re trying to say, Crow. I also feel that there’s something inside myself that is carved away when I use this power. But…I don’t have any other options. Just as you don’t, Crow.”

This voice, low and throaty and yet filled with a powerful resolve, struck Haruyuki. Unconsciously nodding in return, he thought, It’s true—I already made up my mind. To rescue Niko at any cost—no matter what I had to sacrifice. I can’t hesitate here. There’s only one thing I can do.

“Yeah, you’re right. I was the one who wasn’t prepared. Cerberus, to save my friend, I’ll fight you,” he said, newly resolved.

“That’s exactly what I’d like, Crow.” Cerberus was similarly strong-willed. “I will also fight for what I want. Please come at me with everything you’ve got. Otherwise, you won’t be able to defeat me as I am now.”

Cerberus’s declaration was a definite fact. The conditions were all the same: level, status, even Incarnate techniques. Whether he met with victory or defeat came down to nothing other than the power of his techniques and his heart.

Dropping his hips and readying both hands, Haruyuki stared at the younger boy with the slightly long hair on the other side of Cerberus’s visor. From this moment, he would forget the Artificial Metal-Color plan and number two and three. He had a reason to fight, and he didn’t need anything else to face Cerberus on the battlefield.

Here I come!! He transformed the silent shout into a platinum aura emitted from his entire body and pushed off the ground.

Cerberus also charged directly at him—arms covered in the purple pulsation.

There was no changing the fact that Incarnate techniques were the most powerful weapons in Brain Burst, but given that they could both use them, he couldn’t really rely on that alone. An opponent could easily see the timing of Incarnate techniques that required the name to be called or some advance movement, so if he just recklessly lashed out, Cerberus would evade it and hit Haruyuki with a counterattack. This applied to special attacks as well, but the risk was greater with Incarnate techniques, given that they could fail to activate depending on your mental state.

Thus, Haruyuki simply readied himself to shoot back at Cerberus’s body slam, with the overlay still lodged in both arms for defense. His aim was to move from the Way of the Flexible to a throwing technique—a guard reversal. Cerberus’s forehead, protected by a tungsten armor far harder than the silver of Silver Crow’s, closed in on him, and he sank down with everything he had. Dodging the special attack, Head Butt, Haruyuki grabbed onto Cerberus’s left arm with both hands.

In their third duel, after he’d managed to throw Cerberus, he’d been pulled into a fierce struggle on the ground. But Cerberus could only do that because they had been in a snowy Ice stage. The earth in a Twilight stage was covered in marble tile, so there would be nothing to cushion his fall.

Cerberus switched from a head butt to a body press, trying to knock Haruyuki and his throw off-balance, and lunged at him from above. But Kuroyukihime’s Way of the Flexible was to manipulate the vector and motion of the opponent’s force even when the two fighters were in close contact. Haruyuki gripped Cerberus’s left arm and further accelerated his forward roll. At the same time, he pushed his right elbow into Cerberus’s stomach and got into position for an overhead throw—

“Raaaah!” the young wolf howled abruptly. And then, Haruyuki saw semitransparent wings shimmering hazily as they stretched out from Cerberus’s back.

The wolf’s downward acceleration increased with a jolt. The phantom wings only generated an instant’s thrust before melting into the air and disappearing, but that was plenty to ruin Haruyuki’s throw. Unable to repel the weight of the heavy avatar combined with the propulsive thrust of the wings, Haruyuki slammed into the ground on his back.

“Nngh!” A groan slipped out of his mouth, and his body bounced.

Behind him, Cerberus spun around at lightning speed to wrap his hands around Haruyuki’s neck and his legs around his waist. He squeezed hard, and the sharp, tapered edges of his tungsten armor ate into Silver Crow, sending orange sparks cascading.

This was basically how things had played out in the battle royale three days earlier, but the one difference was that the choke hold now was from behind rather than head-on. In this position, Haruyuki couldn’t use Head Butt. And like the last time, he couldn’t deploy the wings on his back, either, so he wouldn’t be able to use a drop attack from sudden altitude or drag Cerberus scraping along the ground with parallel flight. Meanwhile, the viselike pressure slowly crushed him.

“I’m sorry,” Cerberus murmured in his ear. “I kept aside just a second of time in which I could use the wings. I won’t be able to use them anymore in this battle, though.”

“I…see. Quick…response as always. Dam…mit.” He managed to squeeze out a reply, but his health gauge was steadily dropping. The 50 percent or so he’d been left with at the end of the Metatron fight was now cut in half, dropping into the yellow zone. If he’d gotten Chiyuri to heal him with Citron Call when they’d met up again, he would have been able to fight in top form. But unfortunately, too much time had passed since he took the damage, making that impossible.

Of course, it was possible to get her to heal the wounds he was taking in this battle, but he’d never beat Cerberus by relying on that. He had to turn this tight situation around with his own intelligence and power.

Don’t panic. Calm down—and do what you can do. As he resisted a pressure that seemed to have absolutely no give, Haruyuki quieted his feelings and tried to focus on the situation.

It was true that the explosion of emotion and battle spirit could generate a great deal of power. But he had only just learned in the Metatron fight that there were some walls you couldn’t break with that power alone. Sometimes, you had to fight by finding the merest hint of an opening through honed powers of concentration.

Abruptly, like a switch in his mind, Haruyuki’s consciousness accelerated another level—the super-acceleration that had come over him any number of times in the climax of a fierce battle. The color of the air changed, and the sound of the world receded. In the midst of this quiet time, Haruyuki began to think.

What are the weapons left to me right now?

He naturally couldn’t use Silver Crow’s greatest weapon, his wings. Because he was being held from behind, Head Butt was also ineffective. And he didn’t know whether or not he could deploy his newest power, Metatron Wings, in this situation. Not to mention that his Incarnate techniques were repelled by the purple defensive aura and couldn’t reach Cerberus’s armor.

He exhausted the list of noes and found that the one bit of good news was that his arms were completely free. He wouldn’t get anywhere attacking Cerberus’s arms or torso with his bare hands when Physical Immunity was activated, though, so he had only one course of action from this position, restrained with his face to the sky.

“Using a hold technique that takes time…was a mistake, Cerberus,” Haruyuki muttered, raising both arms high up into the sky.

The light of Incarnate grew in his hands. First, he stretched out the aura in his right hand to produce a silver lance in the air. He set his left hand on the base of the lance and focused his concentration, utterly intent on the image of a ballista.

“…What?” Cerberus’s voice came in his ear, but Haruyuki didn’t respond. Instead, he moved his arms quickly and aimed instinctively.

“Laser Javelin!!”

Zwwp! The air shook, and the Incarnate lance flew parallel to the ground.

With no homing function, the javelin couldn’t hit Cerberus behind him. But while Cerberus was fighting Haruyuki to defeat him, Haruyuki was not trying to crush Cerberus. He’d had one objective from the very start—to save Niko. To that end, he fired at the jet-black cross restraining her and probably keeping her unconscious, too.

The Incarnate lance carved out a platinum trajectory across the courtyard toward the altar, red in the evening sun, to land smack in the middle of the base of the cross, and nearly half of the thin, twenty-centimeter panel crumbled. A little ways off, Black Vise whirled his head around to stare at Haruyuki. But his left arm was busy doing double duty at the cross while his right was a shield of several panels defending against Takumu’s savage onslaught, so there was nothing he could do about Haruyuki’s attack.

“One more time!” Haruyuki shouted, starting the motion to activate the javelin.

“Whatcha doin’ there, Onesie?!” Argon shouted in irritation, caught in a dizzyingly frantic battle with Pard on the south side of the courtyard. “’Least try do your last job for real-like!”

“Nngh!” Cerberus let out a short grunt and tried to bring Haruyuki down to the side. He was likely trying to put Haruyuki at an angle that prevented him from launching a long-distance attack, but given that he was using both arms and legs in the hold technique, he couldn’t twist their two bodies around so easily.

Haruyuki thrust his left hand to the ground and resisted Cerberus with all his might before suddenly releasing his hold on the ground and twisting his body forcefully to the left. With the accelerated momentum, Cerberus spun around ninety degrees and loosened his grip on Haruyuki ever so slightly, allowing Haruyuki to spin another 180 degrees. Now, instead of holding Haruyuki from behind, Cerberus was facing his captive.

His back now exposed, Haruyuki fully deployed the silver wings pressed down against his back and activated them to full power. The moment their tangled bodies rose up into the air, Cerberus quickly released his hold. That choice was not a mistake—to avoid being yanked up to a high altitude.

But Haruyuki never had any intention of flying up high. He only risked being sniped by Argon, and more than anything else, a draw with dropping damage would be a loss in this fight because he had to get away from Cerberus and rescue Niko.

“Heeyah!” From just short of a mere meter up, he charged at Cerberus, who had one knee against the ground. He flipped over in midair and launched a roundhouse kick at Cerberus’s face from behind, and Cerberus raised both arms to defend. Of course, he couldn’t be damaged, but the kick was just the groundwork to get him to raise his guard. Using his wings, Haruyuki landed instantly, and with the light of the Incarnate still lodged in his right fist, he launched a hit at Cerberus’s open body.

Just as he had feared, however, the purple pulsation wasn’t only in Cerberus’s arms; he tried to defend against the punch by generating the aura on his body as well. Most likely, it was an automatic mechanism to respond to an opponent’s Incarnate rather than Cerberus’s instinctive Incarnate usage, but this made the reaction speed just the tiniest bit slower than that of an experienced user. Haruyuki himself was still very much a beginner when it came to the Incarnate System, but he was confident he could manage essentially the same speed as in a normal duel if he was just launching strikes enhanced by overlay rather than activating actual Incarnate techniques.

His right hook, with its silver light, was repelled by the purple aura when it was vexingly close, and once again, sparks went flying everywhere. But while Cerberus lost his balance under the reactive force, Haruyuki anticipated this pushback and used it to spin on the axis of his body and connect that with a left hook. The defensive aura was just an instant too late for this immediate follow-up attack.

Crack! Another furious shower of sparks. But this time, the tip of his fist grazed the tungsten armor. As his left hand was pushed back, he took a large step forward with his right foot, and his third blow, a right elbow strike, plunged deep into the armor’s thin solar plexus.

“Nngh!” Cerberus yelped.

Finally, the pace of Haruyuki’s successive blows surpassed the reaction speed of the purple aura. The Physical Immunity ability also could not completely defend against the Incarnate-enhanced blows. The force of the elbow strike pushed all the way to the naked avatar body below the armor and dealt damage, causing the avatar to stumble backward.

Now I rush him!

“Aaaaaah!!” Yelling a furious battle cry, Haruyuki began his Aerial Combo, a series of three-dimensional attacks using the instantaneous thrust of his wings. The dizzying succession of blows from fists and feet, elbows and knees, and even his head, caused sparks to blossom like fireworks in the air. Not every hit made it past the purple aura—about half were repelled and caused no damage—but he paid that no mind as he danced in the air.

Cerberus appeared to be doubling down on his defense while looking for an opening to grab Haruyuki again, but now that both his Physical Immunity and Incarnate defense were unraveling, he was having more and more trouble simply staying on his feet. Perhaps realizing this, the light of his eyes flashed strongly beneath his goggles after a few seconds.

“Ngah!” The sharp cry joined a right straight to meet Haruyuki’s left hook. It was an impeccably timed counterattack, but Haruyuki vibrated his left wing unconsciously and simply slid his body five centimeters to the right. At the same time as Cerberus’s fist passed by his helmet, scraping it slightly, he released a right upper as a counter to the counter.

But Cerberus turned his face with terrifying reaction speed and dodged his fist. With his right hand, he pushed on the back of Haruyuki’s head and shot his leg out in a Muay Thai Ti Khao. When Haruyuki raised his right leg to just barely guard against it, the collision between knee and knee whipped up a flood of sparks that illuminated their faces from below.

So close to his opponent that their foreheads were almost touching, Haruyuki exchanged an instantaneous glance with Cerberus.

They would fight until one or the other fell. This intensity radiated in the space between their face masks, sparking and crackling.

Haruyuki leapt back momentarily and then kicked off the ground. Forward. Always forward.

From a distance, the two metal colors fighting one-on-one looked like guns firing at zero range. Arms to guard against punches, shins guarding against kicks, two blows occasionally crashing into each other—flowers of sparks and overlay bloomed in the air. The gunshot sound of the impacts rang out and roared, making the air around them shimmer like a mirage.

Haruyuki’s Aerial Combo was winning with its many techniques and variations, but Cerberus had the greater inherent defensive ability and striking power. Their health gauges dwindled at essentially the same rate; whoever could get a clean hit in first—whoever could attack faster—would secure the victory.

“Unh…Aaaaaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki squeezed this voice out from the depths of his stomach, pouring all his mental and physical strength into each successive blow.

“Heee…yaaaaaaaaah!!” Cerberus yowled in response.

If they had been rushing each other like this in the real world, it would have been all they could do to draw breath, but the avatars of the Accelerated World didn’t need oxygen. What was consumed instead was the energy of their very spirits, the power generated from believing in yourself, caring about your comrades, and burning with battle spirit.

Even as the ultra-high-speed battle unfolded, Haruyuki’s expanded perception caught a sense of his comrades fighting on either side.

Pard, in Beast Mode once more, had grown Incarnate claws longer than Haruyuki’s when he was Disasterfied and fangs like those of a saber-toothed tiger. She was in a heated contest with Argon Array, who fired her lasers wildly, machine-gun style.

Takumu, meanwhile, had turned the pile in his right hand into the Cyan Sword and was ferociously charging Black Vise, who had transformed his own right hand into a shield of several panels. The reason Vise wasn’t using his restraint technique was likely because Takumu was relentless in his assault, leaving Vise no opening to pull the shield back. In a tag team with Takumu, Chiyuri stood at the ready with the Choir Chime of her left hand to heal Takumu in case of the worst. She wasn’t entirely over the exhaustion from abruptly activating the Incarnate System to break the wall of the classroom, but she was hanging back a bit because of it.

They were all fighting hard to save Niko, of course, but they were also creating an opportunity for Haruyuki to go head-to-head with Cerberus. No, it wasn’t just Pard, Takumu, and Chiyuri: Fuko, who had initiated him into the Incarnate System; Utai, who had opened his eyes to the Optical Conduction ability; Akira, who had saved him from a brush with total point loss; his rival Ash Roller, who had sharpened swords with him; and Kuroyukihime, who had opened the door to this world for him—they and so many others gave Haruyuki the power to fight now. Including even Niko, currently restrained on the altar; the Enemy Archangel Metatron; and Cerberus, trading blows with him here.

Cerberus! Haruyuki shouted in one corner of his mind, pushing his rush up to his very limits. You’re strong. On pure talent alone, I don’t even begin to compare with you. But you can’t beat me while you’re fighting with fists tightened by suffering and sadness!

“Aaaah!” As he roared again, his loudest yet, Haruyuki’s right uppercut finally broke Cerberus’s iron protective wall. His fist slipped past the block, a gap of a mere—yet decisive—thousandth or millionth of a second, and slammed violently into the jaw of the lupine face. The purple aura was too late.

Haruyuki’s Incarnate-assisted blow cracked the tungsten armor—lightning bolt darting outward on the surface—and sent the small avatar sailing up into the sky. He could have chased after him for a follow-up blow, but Haruyuki waited for Cerberus to fall back to earth, his fist still shooting up into the sky.

He’d said what he needed to say. Through his fists and the size, heat, and power of the energy supporting him.

A few seconds later, he heard a fierce skreenk, and Cerberus plunged into the ground backward, legs and arms splayed in the shape of an X. He showed no signs of getting up.

Lowering his hand, Haruyuki walked over to the gray wolf. Before he could say anything, a quiet voice came to him through the face mask, cracked in a zigzag pattern from the jaw up to almost the eyes.

“…That’s the first time I’ve lost…in a fistfight.”

“…It is?” Haruyuki said.

Cerberus turned his head toward him slightly. “When I was defeated by your throwing techniques in our second duel…I told you, yes? That I lost but I was still happy, that I’d work hard and get stronger.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But the truth is, I was so sincerely vexed in that moment. I grew so hot, and I very nearly cried, I was so frustrated. But…I couldn’t tell you that because I was an idiot. I actually wanted to shout my frustrations, but I couldn’t…”

At some point, the fighting to either side of Haruyuki had been temporarily suspended. It wasn’t just his friends; Argon and even Vise seemed to be listening to what Cerberus had to say, in the moments they could spare.

“The reason control of the avatar shifted to number two that time is because I suppressed my own feelings—my will to fight—and ended up in a Zero Fill. Although he was happy to get to fight you…” With a faint air of a smile, Cerberus slowly raised his fist, covered in countless tiny cuts. But perhaps he didn’t have enough strength left to hold it up, because the hand dropped back down to the ground. As if the clang was a signal, the wolf’s maw visor opened. The goggles beneath reflected the evening sky of the Twilight stage.

“But I’m not vexed this time,” Cerberus said in a remarkably clear voice. “I gave it my everything. Techniques, speed, abilities; I even mobilized the powers of number two and number three and fought in a trance. It was only for a mere instant, but I forgot the reason I was fighting and the role I’d been given…I really ‘dueled.’ I…I’m satisfied with this. I’ve been rewarded, more than enough…” A drop of transparent light pearled out from the fine cracks in his goggles and slid down the shining surface of his armor.

Haruyuki took a step forward. “What are you talking about, Cerberus?” he asked, raising his voice a little. “This is still just the one time. If you want to have a real duel, you can do it whenever you want from now on.”

The answer he got was a second teardrop. “Crow, I said it before the start of the duel…I’ve lost the reason I was permitted to exist, there’s nothing else to discuss. It’s been decided—there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“But that’s—!” Haruyuki started to shout, but Cerberus’s tranquil gaze closed his mouth. Something in those eyes—pride or dignity or a readiness—checked any words Haruyuki had.

“As long as I’m a Burst Linker, I can’t go up against them—the Society. They won’t hesitate to take Brain Burst away the moment they feel I’m in the way. But…even so, there is just one thing I can decide for myself. And that’s how I will disappear from the Accelerated World.”

The aura around Argon and Vise changed the slightest bit at this. But Pard and Takumu kept their Incarnate weapons at the ready and held the two Society members back.

“In their plan, I was to disappear at this time in this place, leaving only the avatar— No, I was to change into something else. But of all the things to happen, I wish to escape that alone. So…I adjusted the balance of my burst points in secret. Right now, the points left to me are ten.”

“……!!”

Haruyuki gasped sharply, and he felt an even greater sense of urgency from Argon and Vise.

Ten points left. Compared with the terrible trap Haruyuki had fallen into once, driven into a corner with only two points left, Cerberus had some wiggle room, but he was clearly near death at the moment. If Haruyuki, level five just like Cerberus, didn’t stay his hand and instead struck the final blow, the tungsten avatar would in that instant face total point loss and be completely erased.

Haruyuki was about to take an instinctive step back, but Cerberus’s powerful gaze held him still.

“I also considered losing all my points to a nearby Enemy opponent, but given who I’m up against, that was also an imperfect plan. So I made a wager. That you would come to save your friend. And then you would fight me, and whichever of us won or lost, you would be kind enough to listen to my story.”

Cerberus thrust his left hand into the ground and pushed his battered torso up, wobbling. Beneath the cracked goggles, a light shone, the strongest and straightest Haruyuki had seen since they met five days earlier. “Crow,” the young wolf said. “Please fly with me outside of Tokyo—to the very ends of the Accelerated World where no one will ever find me—and there take away my points. There is no other way for you to save your friend.”

Haruyuki had trouble even getting his head around Cerberus’s true intentions, much less obeying his request. As he stood there stock-still, gaping, he heard muffled laughter.

“Pff, heh-heh, ha-ha-ha…” The one laughing, both arms wrapped around her slender body, enormous hat shaking, was the Quad Eyes Analyst, Argon Array. “Ha-ha-ha! This is really somethin’. Never dreamed you’d go that far. Gettin’ the job done, huh, Onesie? Warms the heart, it does. As the parent what raised ya. You’re really all grown now.”

Her laughter died away, and she nodded several times, hands on her hips. “T’think a mighty BB player, a base Burst Linker like our little Onesie’s rebelling from our Society—whaddaya call this? Like, the student becomes the teacher, yeah? Guess it’s only natural. Knighty boy hears this, he’ll be raging, though. Ha-ha-ha! …Still, though, huh, baby, you leaving your momma, it’s still a bit— You’re just way too young for that yet.”

Pard carefully took position between Argon and Cerberus, ready to repel with her Incarnate power at any surprise laser attacks. But unlike the other day’s battle royale, it was unlikely Argon would shoot Cerberus now as punishment. All her efforts would amount to nothing if his remaining health gauge was to vanish and he was to die, after all. In which case, was Argon planning to force Cerberus into his “role” somehow?

“Onesie, I’m sorry, ’kay?” the Analyst said unexpectedly. “Seems you’re thinking you c’n stay so long as you’re not Zero Filling…But the president’s Revive the Dead’s not such a nicey-nice technique as all that. Honestly, ya made a deal with a real devil—”

“Array,” Black Vise warned curtly.

Shrugging lightly, the Analyst changed her tone and continued, “Well, that’s the long an’ short of it. So patience, Onesie. When we get back over there, I’ll buy you lunch in the caf—so no hard feelings, yeah?”

“…No matter what you say to me, I have no intention of following your orders any further. You people are wrong. You…mustn’t do this.” Cerberus returned resolutely and stretched his right hand toward Haruyuki from his spot on the ground. “Crow, please hurry and take me away from this place. If you do, they shouldn’t fight your comrades any further. They do nothing without purpose…That’s their code of conduct.”

Staring doubtfully at the extended hand, Haruyuki was assaulted by a moment of indecision. Just as he had told himself firmly before the start of the battle, his only goal right then was to retrieve Niko; he absolutely could not waver on this. But if what Cerberus had said was true, then he couldn’t save her even if he defeated Cerberus now. Plus, if he took Cerberus down, then the other metal color would lose all his points.

Why had Argon and Vise summoned Cerberus to this place to begin with? It had to be because they needed him to “process” Niko somehow. So if he carried Cerberus very far away, as Cerberus wanted him to, the danger for Niko would recede for the time being. Or it should.

Haruyuki made his decision and pushed aside his hesitation to grab hold of Cerberus’s hand.

Gripping Haruyuki’s hand tightly in return, Cerberus lowered his voice and said, “Actually…it might have been best if I’d never come to this place and instead disappeared somewhere far away by myself. But…I wanted to fight you in the end. I wanted to fight to our hearts’ content…and to say thank you…”

“…Cerberus.” Putting enough strength into his grip that he just barely didn’t generate damage, Haruyuki finally gave voice to his hardened resolve. “I’m going to do just as you asked. But I won’t take you to total loss. I just know there’s another way. A way to save both Rain and you.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned to tell Pard to hold the fort for just a bit. She was standing a few dozen meters away, her back turned to him.

“As if there could be,” a voice said, as cold and dry as a dead tree in the middle of winter, all hint of sunshine whittled away from it. “I mean, a way to save someone. There ain’t no such thing in this world. Like, right from the very start and beginnin’, there was no salvation. There was only hatred, fighting, betrayal, fraud, violation, lament, despair, etcetera, etcetera. I’ll teach you boys right now just how cruel the Accelerated World really is.” Cutting off her icy speech, Argon Array let the hands on her hips drop loosely to her sides and cocked her goggled head slightly to one side. “Yer turn, Threezie. Cerberus number three, activate!”

Haruyuki tensed reflexively, thinking she was calling a special-attack name. But no. It wasn’t Argon Array who moved, but rather Wolfram Cerberus, hand still in Haruyuki’s.

The visor on his face creaked as it began to close. This was apparently against Cerberus’s will; he let out a small wail and tried to stop the movement of the visor with one hand. But the thick metallic armor steadily closed as though controlled by some high-output hydraulic device. The five centimeters of exposed goggles were slowly being swallowed up and hidden by the wolf teeth.

“Cerberus!” Haruyuki called, reaching out to grab the upper part of the visor. A cold like dry ice stabbed his fingertips, even through his armor. No, not cold. An extremely thin overlay was oozing from the surface of Cerberus’s armor. This purple was not so much light as it was a kind of thick liquid that squirmed and wriggled.

“C…row…,” Cerberus said in a pained voice when the visible slice of his lenses had been cut to a single centimeter. “I’m…sorry…I never…knew…they would force…three to wake up…”

“You can beat this, Cerberus! Just hold on!” Desperately, Haruyuki tried to shove his fingers into the remaining five-millimeter gap in the visor. But the heavy, edged armor mercilessly pushed Haruyuki’s silver away and continued its steady march. Three millimeters, two…

“Run, Crow. Before…he comes…out…” Those were the last words of Cerberus—no, “Onesie,” Cerberus I.

Shklak! With a sound like the slicing of a large cutting machine, the visor closed completely. Haruyuki’s one hand was knocked back in the impact, but with the other, he held tightly to Cerberus’s.

“Cerberus! Don’t give up, Cerberus!!” No matter how desperately he called to him, the wolf’s maw, teeth pressed firmly together, no longer reacted in any way. The small metal color simply sat on the marble tiles, a metal statue.

Skree, skree. Suddenly, there was a new creaking. The source was not the visor on the head, but below it—the shoulder armor. The heavy armor looked extraordinarily like a face mask, and the zigzagging line that cut across it was opening. Haruyuki had witnessed this before, in the final stage of their second duel. When the visor on the head closed and the shoulder armor opened, it brought about a personality change in Wolfram Cerberus of an unknown logic.

But this phenomenon had occurred in a different place four days ago. Instead of the left shoulder, the armor of the right was opening before Haruyuki’s eyes. And in contrast to the red of the left—number two—the light spilling out from the jagged gap on the right was a dark purple. The same color as the aura that had automatically defended Cerberus in their fight.

Chang! The armor of the right shoulder opened completely.

Haruyuki felt an intensely icy shiver run up his spine. Instinctively, he let go of the hand and tried to jump back, but he was a moment too late. Aura in the form of claws jetting from Cerberus’s hand dug deeply into Haruyuki’s armor to slice open three gashes.

Haruyuki had felt this sensation before, although he knew he couldn’t have. A feeling not of being ripped open by a hard cutting implement, but of being carved away by an emptiness made manifest like air. The technique of someone who had wounded Silver Crow’s armor again and again and again…

Rooted to the spot, he watched Cerberus slowly stand as though pulled by an invisible thread. He clumsily covered his face with the purple claws of his right hand. Haruyuki heard a peculiar sound coming from inside the avatar’s face mask, like a gear racing or droplets of water on a steel plate…

No, it was laughter. A sneering keh-keh-keh from deep in his throat. Neither Cerberus I nor II had ever laughed like that. Yet it sparked an even brighter flame in Haruyuki’s memory.

I know someone who laughs like this. But I don’t want to know. I don’t want to remember.

As if sneering at even Haruyuki’s thoughts, the gray duel avatar lowered his right hand ever so slightly and spoke through the fiendish form of his claws.

“We finally meet, hmm? It’s been a while, Arita.”