Accel World - Volume 16 - Chapter 5

5

The total time in the Unlimited Neutral Field for the missions to rescue Aqua Current and destroy the ISS kit main body, along with the surprise mission to get the Red King back and destroy the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, was approximately twelve hours and thirty minutes. In other words, when Haruyuki slowly opened his eyes after returning to the Umesato student council office in the real world, the analog clock hanging on the wall in front of him had only advanced fifty seconds from 12:20:10, when the mission had started. Considering that they had reaccelerated after the mission to rescue Current, this was a fairly high-speed clear.

He’d had dives this long in the Unlimited Neutral Field before, but he’d never really felt the density of this flow of time, sped up a thousand times, like he did now. He’d been accelerated, true, but it felt like several days had passed in the real world.

When he took his eyes off the clock, he could hear a commotion coming from nearby. He blinked, wondering what all the fuss was about, before he remembered. Today—June 30—was Umesato Junior High’s annual school festival. Only that morning, he’d eaten a crepe at the booth on the track, gone around to the different classrooms, and watched the kendo team’s samurai dance, but those memories didn’t immediately come back to him. He was pretty sure he’d met up with Takumu in front of the kendo dojo and had lunch in the cluster of booths in the courtyard before they all went out into the front yard and then—

Rin Kusakabe had collapsed.

“……!”

His memory finally completely awakened, Haruyuki threw himself forward from the sofa backrest. Around him, the comrades he had fought with were blinking and stretching, but he was the first to stand—or he was about to be, when Fuko pushed him back.

“Uh, um, the Nurses’ Room, I—”

“I understand. I’ll come with you. Before that.” Grinning, Fuko pulled the emergency disconnect XSB cable from Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. If he had stood up with his intended force, he might have broken the connector. Shrinking into himself, he waited for Fuko to remove her own cable, and then they stood at the same time and moved away from the sofa set.

He turned to the girl in black still seated. “I’m sorry, Kuroyukihime. I have all these things I need to report to you.”

“Mmm. Go.” She smiled. “I’m sure Kusakabe’s waiting for you.”

“I-I’ll be back soon!” He dipped his head and hurried toward the door.

Fuko followed him. “We’ll be back in five minutes.”

He was worried about whether Kusakabe would actually be up so soon, but the only thing to do was go and check on her. It was a fair distance from the student council office, which was on the western edge of the first school building, to the nurse’s office, which stood at the eastern end of the second school building.

“Um, Master?” he asked Fuko in a quiet voice as they moved as quickly as possible through the hallways jammed with school-festival guests. “You guys took out the ISS kit main body, didn’t you?”

“It would seem so, at any rate. Although we had a little help.”

“Huh? From whom?”

“Let’s talk about that later. What I’m concerned about right now is that the kit terminals might not have actually disappeared when the main body was destroyed.”

“Uh…Huh?!” That was more than a concern; it was a serious problem. His feet tangled around themselves in his surprise and worry, and Fuko reached out to steady him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, leaning in, her arm linked through his. “I made you worry. Basically, the kits weren’t eliminated, but they were sealed. So all the terminals should have been rendered powerless, and the mental interference should have stopped for Rin.”

“They were…sealed?”

As long as they were disabled, it didn’t much matter if they were eliminated or sealed, but the difference did make him a little anxious. But there was no point in getting all worked up here. He’d know the second he saw Rin’s face whether everything was over or not.

Their slippers stepped onto the boundary between the passageway and the second school building. When they turned right into an empty hallway, the door to the nurse’s office soon came into view.

Fuko pulled her arm free of his and gave him a gentle push. Taking a deep breath, he placed a finger on the door handle and gently slid it open. “Hello?”

The health adviser, Mitsu Hotta, turned around in her desk at the front of the room and smiled. “You really are back soon, hmm?”

Soon? He was about to ask before he remembered. After Rin had collapsed, he had brought her to the nurse’s office, and before he had raced over to the student council office, he had told Ms. Hotta that he had something to take care of, but he would be back soon. Then he’d dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field and fought fierce battles against powerful enemies before coming back here. In terms of his own subjective time, it was definitely not soon. But of course, for Ms. Hotta, it had only been a few minutes ago, so all he could do was nod.

The teacher urged him on with her eyes, so he bowed lightly before cutting across the room to a bed in the back that was separated by a curtain. There was only silence on the other side of the spotless white fabric.

He opened his mouth, thinking he should say something at least before he pulled the curtain open, but he didn’t know what. Was Rin sleeping? Had the interference from the ISS kit actually stopped? Had the battle Haruyuki and his friends fought really been able to clear away the darkness corrupting the Accelerated World?

“Rin, we’re opening the curtain,” Fuko said on Haruyuki’s behalf, reaching a hand out.

Shf! When the curtain was pulled back, he saw the curving line of a white sheet and the short hair, slightly unruly, that peeked out from the top. He entered the cubicle with Fuko and closed the curtain before walking around to the head of the bed.

There, he found the face of Rin Kusakabe in profile, eyes closed, her right cheek on the pillow. Innocence was the perfect adjective to describe this sleeping face. But the only one who could determine whether the interference of the ISS kit was gone was Rin herself.

Fuko gently stroked the younger girl’s hair with her fingertips. “Rin.”

Her long, soft eyelashes trembled and lifted slightly. After blinking a few times, she opened her eyelids about 70 percent. A hazy light flickered in the pale pupils. She took in first Fuko and then Haruyuki standing next to her.

“Kusakabe,” he said, barely moving his lips.

A faint smile rose on her face. “Arita…Master Fuko.” Her voice was faint but firm. “In my dream…I heard. Your voices. And the voices. Of many other people. Too. The voices of people. Fighting their hardest to protect. Me—no, the Accelerated World…”

“Rin.” Fuko crouched down and wrapped her hands around Rin’s small face. “Rin…How is it?” she asked gently but still with a note of tension. Of course, by “how,” she meant whether the interference of the ISS kit had stopped.

Several lights bobbed up in Rin’s eyes and came together, flickering, to produce shimmering, shining droplets that flowed softly down her cheeks. But these were not tears of suffering or sadness. Rin didn’t have to say anything for Haruyuki to know that. “Thank you so much, Master. Thank you, Arita. I…It looks like. I can still be. A Burst Linker.”

“…Rin.” Light streaming out of the corners of her own eyes, Fuko used both hands to help Rin sit up and then wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. Watching over this scene, Haruyuki also felt something warm in his eyes.

Master and pupil embraced for a full ten seconds before they pulled apart. Rin turned to him, and Haruyuki opened his mouth to say, That’s great, huh, Kusakabe? But the instant her slender arms reached out toward him, he forgot his words and stood frozen in place.

But then Fuko, grinning, gave him a push with a force that compelled him whether he liked it or not. Haruyuki took a step toward the bed, and Rin wrapped her arms around him. The instant he was conscious of her softness and warmth and the faint scent of flowers, his brain stopped working. Or at least, he thought it would, but this time, it didn’t. Because the overwhelming relief and joy, along with a strange heartache, that rose up in him, pushed away his usual upset and surprise.

He gently touched his hands to Rin’s small back and murmured in the ear that was immediately nearby, “I’m so glad…This is really great.” The mental interference from the ISS kit that had tormented Rin Kusakabe had disappeared completely. Haruyuki could finally believe it.

Strictly speaking, it had been Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Akira, and Utai who fought with and destroyed the ISS kit main body at Midtown Tower. So maybe Haruyuki himself hadn’t been able to keep his promise to save Rin and her older brother, Ash Roller. But now, he was able to easily accept that he didn’t need to fixate on details like that. Now that he had been shown the Highest Level by Archangel Metatron.

The Accelerated World was much broader, deeper, and bigger than he had ever imagined. And at the same time, it was fragile, precarious, and ephemeral. In that world, a lone Burst Linker shone brightly as best as they could, like a small star. Several people came together and became a star system. Star systems came together to form a star cluster. Star clusters came together to create a single galaxy. Burst Linker duels were proof of the life pulsing through that galaxy. By fighting in earnest, winning and losing, rejoicing and lamenting; light, sound, and story were born in the vast darkness.

Rin and Haruyuki were incredibly tiny stars compared with the enormity of the Accelerated World. But they weren’t alone. They could reach out at any time, and there would be someone whose heart was connected to theirs.

All the stars had disappeared from the worlds he saw alongside one another in the Highest Level, Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt. He didn’t know why yet, but he firmly believed that he could not let the world of Brain Burst go down the same path. He felt like he understood at least a little of the Green King’s motivation in redistributing points without fear or favor. He was fighting back. Against the rules of the Accelerated World that said that those who lost all their points were instantly eliminated. All by himself, he was trying to protect the entire galaxy that was Brain Burst.

Haruyuki couldn’t even beat a Lesser-class Enemy solo; there was no way he could imitate Green Grandé. But he could help and be helped by the stars that formed the same star system near him and keep moving forward together. And then that star system would get bigger. Someday, it would be a star cluster.

“I’m so glad…you’re not going anywhere, Kusakabe,” Haruyuki said, tightening his arms around her, his voice shaking with emotion.

“Me too…I’m glad.” Rin replied weakly. “I can see. You again…like this.”

“And how long exactly are the two of you going to do that?” Two hands reached out and pulled Haruyuki and Rin apart. They turned their heads together and found Fuko’s exasperated smile.

“Uh. Um. It’s—,” Haruyuki stammered, looking at Rin and Fuko in turn as he belatedly realized the excessive boldness of his own action. “Um. R-right. We said we’d be back with the others in five minutes, right? So we should get going. Kusakabe, can you walk? Or maybe it’d be better for you to rest here a little longer?”

“There appears to be no need for that, Corvus.” Fuko set herself down on the folding chair that had been left out next to the bed. “I just got an e-mail from Sacchi. She can only use the student council office until twelve thirty, so we’ll have the meeting in a regular duel via the local in-school net. Sacchi will start it, I’ll be her opponent, and you two can just join the Gallery.”

“Oh! R-roger.” Haruyuki sat down on the chair next to Fuko, and Rin folded her legs underneath her on the bed. Because it was school festival that day, Rin, who was not a student at Umesato Junior High, had also been given permission for a limited connection to the local net. And Fuko was Rin’s parent and master, so of course, she had Fuko on her list of automatic Gallery inclusion.

“Ten seconds,” Fuko announced, leaning back.

Haruyuki also waited for acceleration in a comfortable posture. He glanced over at Rin on the bed and saw her lovingly stroking the cracks racing along her Neurolinker shell. The instant he had the thought about how great it was again—skreeeee!!—the sound of acceleration echoed in his mind.

The light of the sun was harsh in the almost transparent sky. The ground it hit was also blue as far as the eye could see. The entire field was covered in water.

The Water stage, naturally, was affiliated with water. Unlike the Ocean stage, the water was only ten centimeters deep, so avatars were not submerged, and there were also no large waves. All the buildings were skeletal concrete frames, bleached white by the exposure to the sun, and slight waves lapped across the water surface between them. The scene was beautiful and somehow sad. Some Burst Linkers called it a beautiful fin-de-siècle stage.

Appearing on the roof of a concrete shell a dozen or so meters high and a hundred meters wide—the first school building of Umesato Junior High—Haruyuki allowed himself a moment to take in the watery world before he whirled his head around. Since the Gallery was placed randomly around one of the duelers, Fuko or Kuroyukihime should have been somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t seem to find either of them.

So he checked the two arrow cursors displayed in the bottom of his field of view. Both pointed directly in front of him. But there was nothing but the schoolyard, now transformed into a vast, unpopulated pool, glittering in the sun.

“Huh? Where are they?” he muttered, leaning over the edge of the concrete frame. “Did they already go outside the school maybe?”

“Real Down.”

He heard a voice from beside him. Concentrating on the town across from the school, he unconsciously asked, “What’s that mean?”

“’S obvious, you. Real’s ‘direct’ and Down’s ‘below,’ so put ’em together, and you get directly below you.”

“That seems kinda off…”

“Oh, really? Then you tell me how to say ‘directly below you’ in English.”

“Um. Maybe ‘right under’ or something.” Absentmindedly continuing the conversation, Haruyuki peered down as instructed and saw two F-type avatars facing each other. One was an onyx black, the other a light-aquamarine blue—obviously, Black Lotus and Sky Raker.

“—?!”

Haruyuki jerked his head up and looked to his right.

Standing there with arms crossed was a fairly large M-type avatar, wrapped in a leather jacket with scattered spikes and wearing a skull-patterned helmet. He wasn’t straddling his beloved American motorcycle, but it could only have been the century-end rider, Rin Kusakabe’s older brother, Ash Roller.

Magenta Scissor had planted an ISS kit in the motorcycle that was essentially a part of him, transforming it into something strangely half machine and half living creature. The mental interference from the kit extended to Rin in the real world, and to protect his little sister, he had even gone so far as to vow that he would lose all his points himself. The reason Haruyuki and his comrades had headed into the Unlimited Neutral Field in the middle of the school festival was nothing other than to save Ash and Rin.

Thanks to the hard work of Kuroyukihime and her team, the main body of the ISS kit had been destroyed—he’d learn the details of this at the meeting that was about to start—and all the kit terminals had been sealed away. From the look of him, it did seem that Ash Roller had been cut loose of all influence from the kit.

“Ah…Ah…A—”

Aaaaaash!! Maybe this was the moment when he leapt up and screamed, but since they’d just had that silly exchange, he couldn’t figure out what to do. Flapping his mouth beneath his goggles, he stood there, frozen in place.

“Hey, ya damned crow,” the fin-de-siècle rider said bluntly, looking out over the endless submerged city.

“Wh-what?”

“Looks like I actually owe ya one now. So I’ll say that last one is a no count.”

“Wh-what? That last one…is what?”

“Obvioso! You pawing at Rin on the other side in a so-called hug, you mega-dolt!”

“Wh-what?! I-I-I-I’m sorry, big brother, sir!!”

“Who you calling big brother, yooouuuu?! Lemme tell ya right here, this is a right-now, one-time thing only! The next time you go wild with the meaty embraces, mighty me here’ll flatten you with my machine! Ultrathin!” Ash Roller shouted wildly, arms still crossed. “That’s thin like flat and ultra like you’re weak, because my mighty self is mega-coooool!!”

Haruyuki stared at him completely dumbfounded, thinking that this exchange ruined all sorts of things.

“Ash! Cooorvus!” Fuko’s voice came to them from the ground—well, watery surface—a dozen or so meters below. “It’s going to hurt if you don’t get down here in the next five seconds!”

“Y-yes sir, Master!” Ash snapped to attention and peered down. He couldn’t actually take any damage no matter how high the jump was since he was a member of the Gallery, but he seemed very reluctant to step over that edge.

“…What are you doing, Ash?”

“Aah, nah, just this rumor. Like, I heard sometimes there’re these huge sea slugs or sea anemones or whatever in the water of a Water stage…My fine self and the slithery things, it’s just—”

“……”

Haruyuki silently pushed Ash, and they jumped from the school building together.

“Nooooo!” The century-end rider fell, kicking and screaming, and landed face-first in the water.

Coming down gently beside him, Haruyuki turned to Fuko and Kuroyukihime and dipped his head. “Kuroyukihime, Master. I’m sorry we’re late. Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re all here. Behind you,” Kuroyukihime said.

He turned and saw six people sitting alongside one another on the concrete structure of the first floor of the school building. Naturally, none of their avatars had a scratch on them. The light of the sun in the blue sky reflected off the water and made their semitransparent armor shine brightly. Staring at his comrades, Haruyuki reflected once again on the fact that the long, hard fight was over.

The ISS kit main body was gone, and the darkness that was on the verge of overrunning the Accelerated World had been banished. They had returned to the days when Burst Linkers fought one another simply with techniques, wisdom, and guts in the normal duel field, and Legion members challenged massive Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

However, she was not in this world. The pure-white Archangel who had given Haruyuki wings and courage and taught him so many things no longer existed…

“Now then, let’s begin,” Kuroyukihime said. “A normal duel ends in thirty minutes, after all.”

Haruyuki took a deep breath. “Okay!”

Fuko and Kuroyukihime stood alongside each other in the courtyard, a mass of concrete cut from the school building. The nine people who had taken part in the mission, with the new addition of Ash Roller, formed a circle, and the meeting began. Haruyuki spoke first, earnestly.

The school was in the Minato Ward Area—the apparent headquarters of the Acceleration Research Society into which he had chased Black Vise after he abducted Niko. The Archangel Metatron who spoke to Haruyuki when he lost sight of Black Vise and was at a loss as to how to proceed. The decisive battle in the courtyard. Wolfram Cerberus jumping in. The theft of Niko’s Enhanced Armament by Cerberus III, aka Nomi’s copy. The red light that poured down from the sky and the birth of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II…

When he paused for a breath, after muscling through the many dizzying developments, Kuroyukihime dropped her gaze to the shimmering surface of the water. “I see…In other words, because we destroyed the ISS kit main body, the accumulated negative Incarnate energy was sent to the Society’s headquarters and created a new Armor at the worst possible time. Is that it, then…?”

“Not yer fault, Lotus,” Niko interjected immediately, sitting cross-legged on the concrete frame. “That damned Argon, she said it. Something about how it was too soon. ‘That lot, they went an’ did it.’ ‘That’ was deffo the ISS kit main body. And by too soon, she meant the timing of the Incarnate energy transfer. Which means those Society jerks were using the main body for storing energy right from the start. If everything’d gone ’zactly ’cording to their plan, the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, woulda been two or three or—worst-case scenario—ten times stronger than the thing we fought. This was the right time. We took it down. Couldn’t strike the killing blow, though…”

“If that’s the case, then I feel a little better.” Kuroyukihime nodded. “But all that said, you did well to defeat it. We saw that black explosion from Midtown Tower, but that went far beyond the level of an Enhanced Armament.”

“For reals!” Niko threw her hands up into the air. “Like, if you threw that at the Castle, you’d knock a god outta the sky…Heap your praise on your child, there. Without Crow, we’d deffo been wiped out.”

Pard next to her nodded her agreement.

“N-no.” Haruyuki flapped his hands in front of him. “We managed to win because no one gave up, right until the very end. If it had been just me, I probably would’ve run away before it even started.”

“Don’t be so modest, Haruyuki. You are definitely today’s MVP,” Kuroyukihime said with kindness, and a warm joy welled up in his heart.

But Haruyuki shook his head lightly once more and glanced up at the blue sky. “Thank you. But…it wasn’t my power alone. Archangel Metatron loaned me her wings and fought alongside me…If she hadn’t been there, I never would’ve been able to take down Mark II…”

No one responded for a time. Finally, Ash Roller spoke at last to break the silence.

“But, like, Crow, this Metatron, she’s like the Enemy boss, yeah? This is a giga-unbelievable story, man. Talking to an Enemy, tag teaming with her.”

“Yeah. But Metatron was no ordinary Enemy. We were just born in different worlds, but we have exactly the same spirit…I believe that.”

Once again, only the faint rippling sound of water filled the stage.

It was no wonder they were confused. For Burst Linkers, Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field were the ultimate foes. They sent large-scale parties scattering with their overwhelming battle power and occasionally pushed Burst Linkers to total point loss with unlimited EK. And the final objective of that day’s mission had been to subjugate the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron and end the blockade on Midtown Tower. He could say that this Metatron had become an ally, but there was no doubt it would be hard to believe right away…

“I believe you!” Chiyuri suddenly shouted forcefully.

Haruyuki let out a small “Huh?”

“I mean, I’ve actually seen an Enemy and a Burst Linker get close!”

“Seen—? Oh, right, you mean Coolu.”

When he visited the Setagaya Area of the Unlimited Neutral Field four days earlier with Chiyuri, Haruyuki had met a level-four Burst Linker called Chocolat Puppeteer. She had spent a long time reaching out to a Lesser-class Enemy of the species Lava Carbuncle and finally tamed it—though really, it was more like joined it in friendship.

Akira also nodded firmly. “There are rare examples of an Enemy being made non-active…or so I’m told. This is the first I’ve heard of one as high-ranking as a Legend class, but if it’s Crow…I feel like I can get on board with that.”

“The Sun God Inti even might become friends with C!” Utai declared, causing the whole group to laugh cheerfully.

“I see,” Takumu said once the laughter subsided. “That little icon flying around you in that school, that was Metatron herself then.”

“Yeah. She was showing us the way.”

“No way! I said something about her being a bug. I better say sorry the next time I see her.” Chiyuri shrank into herself apologetically.

And the tears he’d been pushing back since this conversation began, just one of them spilled out. It was beneath his mirrored goggles, so he didn’t think the rest of the group would notice, but Fuko sitting to his right peered into his face.

“What’s the matter, Corvus?”

“Oh, n-no. It’s nothing.” His voice in reply shook slightly, and he very much could not fool these trusted comrades. Letting one virtual tear after another fall, Haruyuki turned to Chiyuri. “Chiyu…You won’t be able to do that. Metatron is…To defeat Mark II, she transformed herself into the light of Trisagion…and she disappeared.”

With the group silent once more, Haruyuki haltingly told them about his experience in the mysterious Highest Level. About the things Archangel Metatron had shown him. Had told him. And about the end of the world that she had wanted to see…

Once he’d told them about Metatron’s annihilation, there was a full ten seconds of silence. When the timer in the upper part of his field of view reached five hundred seconds remaining, Kuroyukihime started to speak slowly.

“The final Arc, The Fluctuating Light itself, is the reason for the existence of the Accelerated World…Is that what Metatron said in this space, the Highest Level?”

“If that’s true, then the world won’t end even once someone reaches level ten…Is that it?” Fuko asked in reply, and the Black King slowly moved her face mask up and down.

After another brief silence, she said quietly, “When I attained level nine, the message text that was displayed in my field of view was precisely this: WHEN YOU REACH THE NEXT LEVEL, YOU WILL MEET THE CREATOR AND LEARN THE TRUE PURPOSE OF BRAIN BURST, THE TRUE MEANING OF THIS WORLD.”

“Didn’t actually say the game’d be cleared by someone hittin’ level ten,” Niko said, having seen the same message herself, her tone faintly angry. “But if we’re not clearin’ it, why make such a big deal outta level ten? I mean, the condition to make level ten’s pretty for real—push five other level niners to total point loss or you don’t get to be level ten. What’s the point in that?”

“…No idea. The only thing is to ask this creator about the truth…But Haruyuki’s story does make me think otherwise than I have been. I feel as though while the creator does wish to see someone reach level ten, they’re also afraid of this very thing happening…Something like that…”

Niko groaned.

“If the creator’s afraid,” Haruyuki said, trying to ignore the bitter pain of loss in his heart, “it might be connected with the end of operation of those two worlds—of Accel Assault 2038 and Cosmos Corrupt 2040. If the same creator’s behind all three games, then he—or she, maybe—this person only has our Brain Burst 2039 left now. And if someone reaching level ten means, like, the game’s final stage begins…”

Metatron had said it on the Highest Level. Long, long ago, plenty of stars had shone in the two parallel worlds, as well. But those lights had gone out one by one until finally they all disappeared. Thus, those two worlds must have produced some “result” a step ahead of Haruyuki’s. He didn’t know whether someone had made it to level ten and challenged the Castle or whether everyone had lost all their points before that. But at the very least, there was the possibility that this world would go down the same path. The possibility that it would be swallowed up by darkness with no one able to reach the light at the end.

Stewing silently, Haruyuki lightly tapped his right hand to his left.

“You told us a little while ago, Corvus, about the Green King discussing these two ‘trials,’ Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt,” Fuko said, her voice calm. “But now it seems that we need to obtain more detailed information. Ash.”

The man snapped to attention. “H-hhyah, Master?!”

“Please set up a meeting with Grandé soon. I’ll leave the venue to you, but I’d prefer a neutral area.”

“R-roger, yes, Master…So, like, G-G-G-G-G-Grandé, you maybe talkin’ about our LM?! S-s-s—”

“Seriously for real. Please.” Fuko flashed him a bright smile, and even Ash could not say “Giga impossible!” to that grin.

As Haruyuki watched the petrified century-end rider, the corners of his mouth finally softened. And then he heard a voice from nowhere.

“That won’t be necessary, Burst Linkers.”

Sweet like a young girl, clear like a pure holy woman—a stern echo like a noble queen. Although the elements resembled Metatron’s voice, he could tell that the essential nature of it was entirely different. Or rather, he couldn’t feel anything of the heart of the speaker, and that should have been the essential nature of the voice. A hard, cold, smooth wall completely blocked any empathy.

Who on earth…? Haruyuki started to look around and then noticed something strange about Kuroyukihime.

The Black King, also known as World End, was completely stiff, even more than the petrified Ash Roller had been. A strange light floated up in the eye lenses behind her goggles, but Haruyuki couldn’t tell what kind of emotion it was expressing. He’d never seen the Black King like this before. And yet, Haruyuki felt like he could see the expression on the face of the flesh-and-blood Kuroyukihime that lived in the avatar. It was definitely surprise, animosity, and fear.

Instantly, Haruyuki understood. Or rather, remembered. I’ve heard that voice before, too. Not directly…In a dream. Within the memories of Chrome Falcon that I shared in the Castle…

“On the roof!” Niko shouted, and everyone, with the exception of Kuroyukihime, leapt up from their concrete seats and looked up at the northern sky.

A hut that housed the stairwell jutted upward from the center of the roof of Umesato Junior High’s first school building. Someone was on top of it. Not a duel avatar; the slender body was wrapped in a snowy-white summer dress, and long golden hair fluttered in the breeze. A girl. But her face was covered by a platinum mask that you’d use at a masquerade ball.

A flesh-and-blood girl in the duel field? He was baffled for an instant before he realized it was a dummy avatar for spectator use. In other words, a Burst Linker besides Haruyuki and his friends had slipped into the Gallery for the duel that Kuroyukihime and Fuko had started.

“Who are you?!” Niko’s sharp voice flew once more.

Even at this demand from the Red King, the snowy girl didn’t so much as twitch. She stood on the edge of the hut and brought her hands together behind her back. A wind gusted up in the Water stage, making the girl’s golden hair and dress flap. He found it hard to believe that the lines of her graceful, refined limbs were polygons.

Although she had no butterfly wings on her back, and her coloring was the polar opposite, there was an air about her that was very similar to the avatar in the black dress that Kuroyukihime used in the local in-school net. For an instant, the words Snow White flashed through Haruyuki’s mind.

When the ripples on the expansive water surface died down, small, perfectly formed lips moved beneath the thin metal mask covering the eyes and nose. “Please ask Lotus for my name later. Right now, we have something more important to discuss.”

…She’d called the Black King “Lotus.”

Haruyuki glanced over at Kuroyukihime once again. The onyx avatar, the only one to remain seated, did not move a muscle, the swords of her arms and legs still crossed. No, just one place—the top of the sword of her right hand was shaking very minutely. Haruyuki couldn’t decide whether this trembling expressed fear or anger.

When he returned his gaze to the top of the school building, the mysterious girl looked directly at him with eyes covered by the mask and said, almost singing, “Accel Assault 2038 and Cosmos Corrupt 2040. The reason these two worlds died out…is because both of these worlds were too biased.”

“…Biased?” Takumu asked, his tone half guarded, half curious.

“Yes. AA 2038 was filled with excessive fighting…and CC 2040 with excessive harmony. To put it another way, in the world of AA, every player other than oneself was an enemy, and in the world of CC, they were always allies.”

While he was concerned about Kuroyukihime, as a gamer, Haruyuki reflexively interpreted the girl’s words. Accel Assault was a game with nothing but a so-called free-for-all mode. And Cosmos Corrupt was a game with just a cooperative mode. In which case, both were indeed biased. This was in comparison to Brain Burst 2039, in which all players could be enemies or allies.

But that this bias destroyed the world…What did that mean? He could understand if it was just the AA world. If the players were constantly killing one another, it was obvious that there would be only one left in the end. But why would the CC world also collapse over the same period when all the players should have been working together to clear objectives?

The girl on the roof seemed to sense Haruyuki’s question. “Excessive harmony, excessive cooperation…What these produce is not acceleration, but stagnation. Time stopped in the CC world. And it was destroyed because of that. In that sense, the flow of this world that you all love might also be starting to stagnate bit by bit.” The girl chuckled softly.

This sweet echo jabbed at Haruyuki’s memory again. Chrome Falcon, the Burst Linker who synced with Haruyuki in the Castle…He’d become the first Chrome Disaster because his beloved partner Saffron Blossom was killed over and over and over before his eyes. In an unlimited EK using the terrifying hell worm, the Legend-class Enemy Jormungand.

It was the Acceleration Research Society’s Black Vise and Argon Array who had put together this tragedy. But one other person was also there.

She had been wrapped in a mysterious light, so he couldn’t see her, but someone higher up the ladder than Vise and Argon was there. The owner of a sweet, pure, stern voice.

“…It can’t be…,” Haruyuki squeezed out hoarsely.

Kuroyukihime, who had not so much as twitched up to that point, raised her face mask haughtily. She leapt up high from her seated position and did a backflip before landing on the mass of concrete with a sharp klak. She sighted the girl on the roof with the tip of her right sword hand.

“Do you intend to say that that was why?!” Her tone was sharper and more severe than her swords. But Haruyuki realized that there was a shared echo, albeit slight, in Kuroyukihime’s crisp voice and the sweet song of the mysterious female avatar. “Are you trying to legitimize it by talking like that after you went around distributing a thing like the ISS kits?!”

She yanked her brandished sword downward, slicing through the air.

“Answer me!! White King…and president of the Acceleration Research Society, White Cosmos!!”

The wind of the Water stage ceased. The light of the sun clouded over, and the water surface calmed like a mirror. Thick black clouds rolled in to hide the endlessly clear blue sky. Even though it had to have been nothing more than a preset weather change event, it was almost as if the stage itself were afraid. Purple lightning bolts began wriggling like living creatures through the ink-black sky. The low rumbling thunder called up wavelets in the water at their feet.

The White King, White Cosmos. Also known as Transient Eternity, the head of the White Legion, Oscillatory Universe. Kuroyukihime’s parent and her real-life older sister. The very person who had convinced her that the Seven Roads—guns the Red King, Red Rider, created as symbols of peace—were the ultimate weapons of destruction and spurred her toward tragedy two and a half years ago.

She was the only one of the Kings of Pure Color who always had a representative attend the meetings of the Seven Kings that Haruyuki had been a part of, and now Kuroyukihime was saying that she was at the same time the leader of the Acceleration Research Society, another figure similarly shrouded in mystery.

“But…that’s…” The voice that spilled from Haruyuki’s throat shook so much that he himself could barely hear it.

The other eight were in varying degrees of shock. The one who appeared the most surprised was Ash Roller, who groaned “No way…” without a single word of Ash slang.

Chiyuri, on the other hand, muttered “Of course,” which jump-started Haruyuki’s brain again.

“Of course?” he asked his childhood friend. “How did you…?”

“Now look, the Society headquarters we slipped into…It was about two kilometers southwest from the old Tokyo Tower, right? And the girls’ school Kuroyukihime said the White Legion headquarters was in was basically the same place.”

“That’s exactly right, Bell.” Fuko nodded slightly. “We also realized it when we were moving from Midtown Tower. The White Legion is a cover for the Acceleration Research Society. We were planning to make that announcement at the end of this meeting, but…”

“I never imagined that the White King herself would show,” Akira remarked.

“Nor I,” Utai added.

The girl avatar standing against the backdrop of the thunder clouds accepted Kuroyukihime’s censure silently. The cold wind that had started to blow toyed with the hem of her summer dress and her long, golden hair.

The last to respond was the Red King. She took one step, then another, toward the school building before calling out in a voice that burned with a powerful fire, “You? You’re the one pulling the strings here? Not just the ISS kits…Creating the Armor of Catastrophe, the Disaster, and parasitizing one Burst Linker after another with it—that was your work, White Cosmos?!” A crimson aura rose like flames from her right hand, thrust toward the girl on the roof.

Niko had made her own parent, Cherry Rook, retire through total point loss with her Judgment Blow, because Rook had turned into the fifth Chrome Disaster and was indiscriminately attacking members of other Legions. It had been the Yellow King, Yellow Radio, who had given Rook the Armor of Catastrophe, but even this act of his was likely the result of the Acceleration Research Society’s invisible machinations. Since the dawn of the Accelerated World, the White King and Black Vise had been sowing the seeds of tragedy.

Flames of rage enveloped Niko, while the girl in white looked down at her through her platinum mask.

“We’ve forced you into difficult roles any number of times, hmm, new Red King. But that is proof that we recognized your power…Although, I suppose even saying that, I can’t expect you to forgive us.”

“Yer! Damned! Right! I’ll pay back this debt a hundredfold!!”

“If that is what you truly desire…” The girl—the White King—said with an innocent smile, as if humoring a small child. “Shall I switch from the current normal duel mode to Battle Royale mode right now?”

It took him about half a second to understand the meaning of those words. It was true that if all the spectators of a one-on-one duel agreed, they could switch to Battle Royale, and all the people in the stage would become duelists. The Red King and the White King, neither of whom had a health gauge at the moment, would be able to fight each other. However.

“You serious?” Niko snapped. “You seriously sayin’ you can actually fight us like that?”

Just as Niko noted, the White King had dived into the duel stage using a spectator dummy avatar, and a dummy’s fighting abilities didn’t begin to compare to even a level-one newbie. And the switch to a duel avatar required operating the BB console screen in the real world. Practically speaking, in a dummy avatar, the only possibility was to run—and run desperately. But in the Water stage where the buildings were nothing but frames, there were few blind spots. She might have been the White King, but escaping against ten people, including two kings and four high rankers, in the two hundred seconds remaining, would have been difficult…

No. Wait…There likely was a power in the Accelerated World that could be used wearing a dummy avatar. The Incarnate System.

Was that the source of the White King’s confidence? If she used Incarnate, then even with a dummy avatar, she could keep running until time ran out; maybe she even thought that she’d be able to win? He didn’t know. He couldn’t trace White Cosmos’s line of thought.

Shouldn’t it have been impossible for a King to challenge another King to a fight so casually like this, almost on a whim? The White King was a level niner bound by the sudden-death rule. If she fought using a dummy avatar, the defensive power of which was equivalent to a sheet of paper, and lost to the Black King or the Red King, both also level nine, she would instantly lose all her points.

Why? For what reason? Somehow, she was able to stand there quietly, not worked up in the slightest.

“…Cosmos…” Kuroyukihime called the name of her parent in a creaking voice. Her left hand flashed as she accessed the Instruct menu. If she pressed the button just three times, an offer to switch to Battle Royale mode would appear before everyone.

Is this a trap? Or is it the chance of a lifetime?

Kuroyukihime stood there, left hand trembling in the air, and Fuko, Sky Raker, and Utai waited silently. The readiness to simply follow their Legion Master became a colorless aura that radiated from the members of the Four Elements.

Suddenly, Haruyuki felt a twitch from the white wings that no longer existed on his back—a sensation he’d felt any number of times in the Unlimited Neutral Field. A warning from Metatron.

Even knowing it was a phantom signal from ghost wings, Haruyuki instantly took a huge step back and cupped Kuroyukihime’s hand in his own. At the same time, he turned to the girl standing on the roof and mustered all his courage. “White King!! Your offer’s not fair!!”

His mental circuits were blown at several levels; his words were basically from instinct.

“…Why do you think so, Silver Crow?”

The moment White Cosmos said his name, a pressure that made him shudder in fear pierced his avatar’s core, but he earnestly braced both feet and continued.

“Because your subordinate, Black Vise, still has one of the Red King’s Enhanced Armaments that he stole! If you’re saying you’ll fight in order to apologize, then you have to give that back first!”

Everyone around him, including Kuroyukihime, looked at Haruyuki with slight surprise on their features.

Meanwhile, the White King on the roof smiled faintly beneath her mask. “I see. Your logic is both understandable and not, but unfortunately, I cannot comply with this demand. That Armor is a very precious hope for me. You’ve no idea how relieved I was when I heard that it had just barely been recovered after it was purified by you all and on the verge of very nearly being taken back.”

“…Hope? What do you mean, hope?” He had thrown himself forward to stop a fight, but when the White King said this, he felt an enormous fire of rage blaze up inside him. He shouted at the top of his lungs, “You made all those people suffer with the ISS kits…pulled Metatron away from her domain…controlled total-loss Burst Linkers like zombies…stole Rain’s Enhanced Armament from her…forced Cerberus into such a terrible role…And you call the result of all this ‘hope’?!”

And that’s not all. The tragedy created by the White King and the Acceleration Research Society isn’t that. Chrome Falcon. Saffron Blossom. The Beast. The many Chrome Disasters. The first Red King. And now the Black King, my dear Lotus.

Three days before, Kuroyukihime had pressed her face to Haruyuki’s shoulder and sobbed. She had regretted and wept over the fact that, manipulated by the White King, she had stained her hands with a friend’s blood, abandoned friendships, and even destroyed her Legion.

Seeing those tears, Haruyuki had made a vow. When the time came that he faced off against the White King, he had to tell her. Tricking her little sister, making her cry, chasing her out of the house—was this what an older sister, what a parent, does? He had to tell her.

Sucking air into his trembling chest, he got ready to yell with everything he had.

But then Kuroyukihime gently placed the sword of her left hand on his shoulder.

“…Crow,” she murmured, and he knew instantly what she was trying to say.

Now was not yet the time for that. There was an appropriate time and place for the decisive battle with the White King.

“…Okay.” Haruyuki somehow managed to swallow his anger and took a step back. In his place, Kuroyukihime stepped forward—her earlier tenseness transformed into cool resolve.

“Cosmos. Your hope is for all other Burst Linkers to despair,” she announced to the White King. “I’m sure it is for Vise and Argon as well.”

“…That may very well be. But if that’s the case, then what, Lotus?” The question was calm, at best.

“It might not be enough for you to take, but we also have our own hope.” Kuroyukihime was also quiet in her reply. “The many Burst Linkers whose names you don’t even know have their own hope and are fighting in earnest. You might try to knock them down, toy with them, step on them, but our hope—the hope of all Burst Linkers—is not going anywhere. The small fires will come together, turn into a massive inferno, and someday burn away the cold hope that you all spread.”

As she made this bold declaration, a bluish-purple aura rose from the Black King, making the water at her feet rise up into fierce waves. Almost in response to this display of fighting spirit, bolts of lightning shot down from the black clouds that filled the sky to hit various areas of the first school building. One landed right next to the White King on the roof, but the silhouette of the girl didn’t move.

Amid the roaring storm, the older sister—parent—offered sweet words to the younger sister—child. “You’ve gotten stronger, Lotus. I look forward to it…the time when you come to stand against me of your own will…” The figure of the girl blurred in the rain that started to fall.

Mysterious particles of light enveloped her body. “Until then,” the White King said in a melodic voice, “I shall doze a little in a butterfly dream. Good-bye, Burst Linkers. It was a pleasure talking to you…”

Beyond the now-pouring rain, the girl transformed into a butterfly of light—or that was what it looked like. The butterfly danced up into the thunderous sky and immediately disappeared from view.

And then the timer hit zero, and flaming letters announcing that time was up burned a bright red in Haruyuki’s field of view.