Accel World - Volume 15 - Chapter 7

7

Arita.

There was only one Burst Linker who would call—no, who had called Haruyuki that.

But that wasn’t possible. He’d lost all his points over two months earlier, lost all his memories relating to Brain Burst, and left the Accelerated World forever. Haruyuki himself had struck the final blow. He’d definitely seen that avatar cut perfectly in two and swallowed up into the night sky of the Moonlight stage, wrapped in a final extinction effect.

So the third personality lodged in Wolfram Cerberus’s right shoulder that had appeared as Cerberus III couldn’t be him. No matter how familiar his voice or his tone or his laugh or the way he called Haruyuki “Arita,” that alone was absolutely, absolutely…

But then the gray avatar, lowering his right hand another few centimeters, turned the completely closed visor to the left and continued, “Aah, Mayuzumi and Kurashima are also here, I see. That does bring a certain memory to mind…About that night…”

The purple claws hid his mouth, and his shoulders shook with laughter. Called out by their real names, Takumu and Chiyuri also stared dumbfounded at the third.

Argon Array, who had summoned him with her mysterious command, and Black Vise, still restraining Niko, maintained their silence. Pard, her leopard body readied in a low position, was on guard against Argon and Vise even as she occasionally sent suspicious looks toward Cerberus III.

“Quit with the creepy impersonation!” Takumu’s strained cry broke the momentary silence. “The Burst Linker you’re copying no longer talks or laughs like that. He was released from the curse of acceleration. If you’re a Burst Linker, too, then how about you stand up and fight as yourself?!”

“Oh, oh, how many times do I have to tell you?” Cerberus III finally took his right hand away from his face and waved it from side to side as though he were chasing away an unpleasant smell. In the faint gloom of the courtyard, the purple overlay drew a complicated afterimage. “Please don’t refer to me by that disgusting collective noun. And my hobby is not to blindly imitate others, you know. I am me, Mayuzumi. It does give one goosebumps to name oneself before the battle, but well, today is a special day, so let’s say that’s fine. My name is…”

Haruyuki felt the powerful urge to plug his ears and interrupt Cerberus III and his voice full of condescension. He felt like if he was forced to hear the name, then the thing that he was desperately rejecting in the back of his mind would become fact.

But it wasn’t the metal-color avatar before his eyes who spoke the name; it was Chiyuri, finally breaking her silence.

“Dusk Taker.”

Her voice was quiet, but it carried. Cerberus III froze on the spot. He turned his entire body to the left and looked directly at her before bowing half-heartedly. With a laugh deep in his throat, he resumed speaking, his voice dripping with venom. “Keh-keh…I’m so happy we can speak again like this, Kurashima. That was fun, wasn’t it? When we overran the Shinjuku and Shibuya areas as a tag team? Although, well, you were just playing at being the obedient pet while you watched with an eagle eye for your chance to betray me, hmm? Ha-ha-ha! I was completely fooled by your adorable demeanor and sweet attitude—”

“Stop it, Nomi!!” Haruyuki reflexively took a step forward.

“Don’t you dare say Chii’s name!” Takumu shouted, readying his Cyan Blade.

Cerberus III spread his hands as if to say Oh dear and shrugged. “It seems that you will not accept reality, so perhaps I should make you believe it? But you already understand, don’t you? That I’m the real thing.”

It was true. They could no longer reject it. He had absolutely no idea what logic exactly was bringing about this strange phenomenon, but Cerberus III, number three, Threezie, was the very Seiji Nomi who had supposedly been banished after total point loss—the Twilight Marauder, Dusk Taker.

But was that even possible? In experienced time, it had been a day before, but in real time, Haruyuki had just seen him a mere half an hour or so earlier. At the Umesato school festival, Nomi had been dancing with his whole heart in the kendo team’s samurai performance. At what point had he gotten his memories and Brain Burst back and dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field to chase after Haruyuki and his friends? And even if he had managed that, why had he not appeared in his original twilight-colored avatar, but rather in the form of a parasite on Wolfram Cerberus? Above all else, was the Nomi at kendo, the one who practiced so seriously with Takumu, the one who called him “Taku,” all just a lie?

It wasn’t Nomi, or Black Vise and Argon Array, waiting behind him, who pushed away the darkness of doubt that began to swallow Haruyuki; it was Chiyuri speaking in her calm voice once again.

“Real thing? You’re wrong about that, Dusk Taker.”

“…What do you mean, Kurashima?”

“Cerberus I said it before. That number two had originally been a single, independent Burst Linker with a different name, not Cerberus. So then, you, number three, must work the same way. You used to be a Burst Linker with the name Dusk Taker, but now you’re not. Now you’re a shadow parasitizing Wolfram Cerberus’s avatar, a ghost copied from the memories of Dusk Taker. That’s what you are!” Chiyuri proclaimed, stabbing the index finger of her right hand forward.

The hint of a sneer disappeared from Cerberus III. “I see you’re as clever as always,” he murmured, covering his face with his right hand once more. “Reminds me of the time you went and betrayed me now, doesn’t it? Aah…that was quite annoying. I’m serious here. Honestly…” He hung his head deeply and put his left hand to his face as well.

Haruyuki kept his guard up, eyes on Cerberus, as he quietly called out to Chiyuri. “Is a copy of memories even possible, Chiyu? I mean, Nomi lost all those memories two months ago already. Even if you were going to copy them, the originals aren’t…”

“That’s true, but that’s the only thing that’s even plausible, right?” Chiyuri shot back.

“Oh!” Takumu shuddered, his Incarnate sword still at the ready. “N-no way…Actually, right, so that’s what it is…”

“Wh-what, Taku? What is what it is?” Haruyuki realized after pushing the question that he’d uttered the real names of his comrades on enemy ground. But there was no point in worrying about that after Nomi had tossed “Arita” and “Mayuzumi” around all over the place. Given that the school that was the main base for the Acceleration Research Society had also been exposed, it wasn’t likely that they’d get into a back-and-forth of attacks in the real.

Takumu glanced at Haruyuki. “Burst Linkers who lose all their points have their memories relating to the Accelerated World erased. We’ve all believed that up to now, right?”

“Y-yeah. We actually saw it happen.” Haruyuki naturally thought of Seiji Nomi after he lost all his points. When they’d seen each other at school, Nomi had told him apologetically, “I’m sorry, but I don’t really have much interest in net games anymore,” and Haruyuki absolutely could not believe that the whole scene was an act.

“Yeah.” Takumu nodded as if recognizing this fact, but then quickly uttered an oppositional conjunction. “But what if…your memories aren’t annihilated but are taken from you? They’re pulled from the head of the Burst Linker and saved somewhere in the Brain Burst central server. And then someone—probably a member of the Acceleration Research Society we don’t know yet—called up those memories somehow and set them inside Cerberus—”

Clap. Clap, clap.

Haruyuki jerked his head in the direction of the brief spate of applause and saw the Quad Eyes Analyst, Argon Array, bringing her hands together.

“The blue kid’s not too bad. Not bad at all,” she said, and once she stopped, a faint smile rose up on her face. “Instinct’s important. I mean, in the very end, all you got to count on’s your guts and your feet to run away on. And here’s what my instincts are sayin’. They’re sayin’ it’s getting to be about time.” She flung her arms open and cocked her head slightly. “Threezie, I’m sure you kids got loads to talk about, but the time for chitchat’s over. And Vi, would it kill ya to be serious once in a while?”

Cerberus III kept his face turned downward, but Black Vise lightly raised and lowered the thin panels that passed as a shoulder.

“That was wholly unexpected,” he remarked coolly. “I am ever serious, you know. But it does indeed appear that this is the most critical position in the current game. So then, let us make a real effort.”

An overlay like a gray shadow enveloped the jet-black layered avatar, and seeing this, Haruyuki and his three comrades immediately took on ready positions.

He was still reeling from the shock of discovering that Cerberus III was that Dusk Taker. Takumu’s hypothesis was the only thing that explained the situation, and Argon sounded like she was acknowledging that he was largely correct, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow. The memories of a Burst Linker in total point loss were actually saved somewhere in the Accelerated World—Haruyuki could more or less accept this. But was it really possible to take the memories of a Burst Linker in the same position as Haruyuki and his friends and make them possess someone else? Wasn’t that an act that went far beyond the domain of a player?

But he couldn’t deny the reality before his eyes, and it wasn’t as though his objective had disappeared, either.

Save Niko.

He was here for that reason and that alone.

His sole concern now was whether or not he ended up fighting Dusk Taker—no, Cerberus III. That the avatar before him had only ten burst points left hadn’t changed with the personality switch from I to III, which meant that assuming he won, the chimera Burst Linker known as Wolfram Cerberus would leave the Accelerated World forever.

Cerberus himself sounded like that was what he wanted. And Haruyuki already knew that sometimes total point loss could be a seed of salvation.

…But. I…He pushed the complicated tangle of feelings in his heart down to the bottom of his stomach with a deep breath of the cold air. There was no longer any time for indecision or hesitation. All that was left was to simply give it everything he had. For the sake of Niko and Rin. For Cerberus I. For Takumu, Chiyuri, and Pard fighting with him there. For Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Utai, and Akira likely fighting at Midtown Tower.

Metatron. This is the final battle. Lend me your strength just a little longer. He sent a prayer to the new wings folded up neatly on his back and clenched his hands into tight fists. A silver aura rose up to wrap around those fists, and he started to step toward the motionless Cerberus III.

And then, a gray overlay wriggled upward from Black Vise. The dozens of thin panels that comprised his right arm and leg separated one after another and floated up. Haruyuki and the others quickly braced themselves for Vise’s specialty, restraining techniques.

“Octahedral Isolation.”

The name of the technique was very similar to the restraining technique Haruyuki had been caught in after he turned into the sixth Chrome Disaster. However, the panels transformed into a square fence that encircled Vise, Argon, Cerberus III, and Niko.

Immediately, Pard leapt forward with a savage roar. An instant behind her, Haruyuki also realized Vise’s intent. This wasn’t a restraining technique; it was a separation technique for defense.

They had to destroy it immediately. Alongside Takumu, he pushed off the ground as hard as he could.

An instant before claws and fists and sword could make contact—klink!—an extremely thin fence stretched up and down, bent toward the inside to create two peaks, and closed. The regular octahedron extended at least twenty meters on each side. The panels had grown to such an enormous size, they turned semitransparent like smoked glass, looking more brittle than the Hexahedral Compression Haruyuki knew.

Smash it! Haruyuki beat on one of the equilateral triangles that made up the octahedron with a fist full of resolve.

The dull sound of impact echoed through the stage, and sparks flew from the joints of his wrist, elbow, and shoulder—unable to completely absorb the intense backlash. But the semitransparent glass panel—which looked to have essentially no breadth—was not so much as scratched. Pard’s Incarnate claws and Takumu’s Cyan Blade had similar results. The three kept attacking for a moment, but they were forced to concede the absolute strength of the octahedron and step back.

“This is an Incarnate of absolute refusal,” Beast-Mode Pard said quietly with her leopard mouth. “Simply punching or clawing at it won’t break it, even if we are using Incarnate techniques.” This was an unusually long speech for Pard, which seemed to in fact show the panic in her heart.

“That’s—!” Haruyuki cried, dumbfounded.

As if he had heard him—except, no, he had heard him: Cerberus III slowly lifted his face, and his voice, although strangely distorted (perhaps because it was passing through the defensive wall), reached Haruyuki’s ears very clearly. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m real or whether I’m a fake.” He flicked the claw-shaped auras of his hands open and closed in front of his face. “I’ve waited for this moment. The moment when I take the duel avatar from number one and fight you once more. My dear upperclassmen, all the many, many things you took from me—my points, my pride, and my power—I will have you return them now!!”

Haruyuki stared, holding his breath, at Cerberus III—at Nomi—as he threw his arms out. Attacks couldn’t actually pass from inside the octahedron to the outside, could they? No, there was no way. In which case, what on earth was he planning?

Haruyuki could sense Nomi sneering beneath the face mask, mouth and eyes completely hidden. The gray metal color pulled his left foot back a step and slowly turned around as if irritated. Past Takumu and Chiyuri—until facing him was the small altar that stood to the right, inside the octahedral object in the center of the courtyard.

“Nomi…You—!!” Haruyuki flew at the octahedron once again. Beating wildly on the glass panels with both fists, he shouted, almost howling, “Stop it! I’m the one you want to fight, aren’t I?! I’ll fight you, just like you want, so come out of there right now!!”

But Nomi did not so much as glance at Haruyuki; rather, he twisted his body a little farther until his right shoulder was turned toward Niko, still unconscious and restrained on the jet-black cross before him. The shoulder armor—its design so eerily similar to that of the head—opened its heavy metal fangs wide. The light that leaked out dyed the inside of the octahedron violet.

“Nomi! Stoooooooop!!” Haruyuki shrieked. Pard bit into the edge of the octahedron, while Takumu stabbed his sword into it.

And then he heard the technique name that had plunged the old Haruyuki into a bottomless despair.

“Demonic Commanderrrrrrr!”

Zrrrmsh! A twilight-colored beam of viscous light jetted from the maw of the right shoulder to hit Niko squarely in the chest and penetrate every crevice in her armor. And after a fleeting silence, it started to flow back toward Nomi.