Accel World - Volume 18 - Chapter 5

5

“Just because the rainy season’s over doesn’t mean it has to suddenly go full summer on us,” Haruyuki grumbled, the western sun burning into his back. He was on his way home from school after taking care of Hoo, so it was around four, but the temperature displayed on his virtual desktop was exactly thirty degrees Celsius. He wanted to get home as quickly as possible and throw himself into the air-conditioned lobby of his condo, but before he could do that, he had one other mission to accomplish.

Wednesday, July 17th. Glaring at the date below the temperature, he bent each of the fingers of his right hand. No matter how many times he counted, the fateful Saturday was three days away.

Saturday morning was the long-awaited closing ceremony for the end of the term. Perhaps thanks to the superhard-mode study group organized by Kuroyukihime, the results of his final exams had been miraculously good, so he wasn’t particularly gloomy about his report card. Once summer vacation started, he wouldn’t be able to see Kuroyukihime as often, but he’d still have to go to school to take care of Hoo, so he’d probably get the chance to see her then. And in August, they were all going to go to Yamagata, which was extremely exciting.

If it had been just that, then he might actually have been able to look forward to Saturday, but the problem was that afternoon. Four o’clock, to be specific. That was when Nega Nebulus would finally attack Minato Area No. 3 in the Territories, using the recently returned Shibuya Area No. 2 as the bridgehead. They would attack the territory of the White Legion, Oscillatory Universe—and the headquarters of the Acceleration Research Society.

As for the details involved in this, Nega Nebulus would register an attack on Shibuya Area No. 1, and then immediately prior to four o’clock, Great Wall would abandon the territory. As long as there were no other attacking teams—and the assumption was that there most certainly would not be—Shibuya Area No. 1 would become black territory without a fight, so they would immediately register to attack neighboring Shibuya No. 2, and green would abandon once more. And with that, not even a minute past four o’clock, both areas would have been returned to Nega Nebulus.

Haruyuki and the others on the attacking team would then go to Minato Area No. 3 in the real world and register an attack. Naturally, the Oscillatory Universe would have a defense team registered, so the real Territories would begin there. If they won, the black flag would fly in Minato Area No. 3, and the White Legion would lose the privilege of blocking the matching list. Nega Nebulus would check the list, and if even one member of the Acceleration Research Society appeared on it, they would be able to state that the White Legion clearly was the Acceleration Research Society.

That was the general strategy, but there were just two problems. The first was who to ask to take on the role of a third-party matching-list confirmation—the observer.

This witness was key to everything, so it had to be a Burst Linker with status and popularity. And because they would need to tell him or her in advance that the reason Nega Nebulus was invading Oscillatory territory was because they had Oscillatory pegged as the ringleader, this Burst Linker had to be someone they could trust not to leak the information. Great Wall would be seen as having assisted Nega Nebulus, so they couldn’t ask anyone from the Green Legion. For the same reason, Prominence was also out of the question.

Which left only three major Legions: Blue Leonids, Purple Aurora, and Yellow CCC. Haruyuki would have been hard-pressed to say that they had a friendly relationship with any of them, but purple and yellow held clear enmity toward black, so by process of elimination, blue was their only option. They couldn’t possibly ask the Blue King himself, however, so they would have to negotiate in secret with some high-ranking member.

The second issue was who to send in the attack on Minato Area No. 3. Naturally, it would have been ideal to have Nega Nebulus’s full force on the team. Minato was split into three areas, and even if Oscillatory divided their defensive power evenly, there would probably be at least two people from the executive Seven Dwarves, together with another ten general members.

As a general rule in the Territories, the number of people on the attacking side was matched to the number on the defending side. If there were fewer on the defending side, the attacking side was automatically adjusted downward, but in the case where there were more on the defending side, the match would simply go forward without any team modifications. In other words, assuming the Oscillatory team would have twelve people, they wouldn’t be able to fight fairly in terms of numbers unless they put together a team the same size.

But currently, the full force of Nega Nebulus, including the Petit Paquet group who had just joined, was a mere ten people. Even if they did attempt the attack with the whole Legion, the defending side would likely still have more members. And they had to leave at least three people for the defense of Suginami, which meant only seven could make the trip to Minato.

At the meeting the previous day, Kuroyukihime had insisted petulantly that she would go, but everyone else frantically worked to dissuade her and somehow managed to get her to stand down. If in the worst case, the White King herself happened to be leading the Oscillatory defense team, the Territories would suddenly turn into a final battle of king vs. king.

Kuroyukihime insisted that since no Burst Points were transferred to her in the Territories, the level-nine sudden-death rule also wouldn’t apply. But without any definite information on this front, they couldn’t expose their Legion Master to the risk of sudden death. Haruyuki had already been incredibly anxious in Sunday’s Battle Royale with Great Wall. With the clearly hostile White King as her opponent, they needed Kuroyukihime to be careful with anything and everything on Saturday.

The one who finally persuaded her was, surprisingly, Chocolat Puppeter, aka Shihoko Nago, taking part in a meeting in the real world for the first time. She didn’t sound as formally girlish in the real; in fact, she projected the image of being a serious, polite girl. She stared at Kuroyukihime as if dazzled when she had said, “It’s very painful and sad to have that bond severed when your heart is connected to someone. It’s probably the saddest thing that can happen in the Accelerated World. We joined Nega Nebulus because we don’t want anyone else to have to go through that again. I understand that the battle on Saturday is very important. But I think what’s even more important is that everyone here now can continue being Burst Linkers forever.”

Shihoko had experienced the loss of this bond with Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper, who were also her close friends in the real, and her words had a gravity that forced Kuroyukihime to assent. Although it might also have been the fact that the three homemade cakes the girls brought for everyone were surprisingly delicious.

“Cooking club, huh? Lucky. They get to make cakes like that at school and eat them every day, I guess,” he muttered, reflecting on the rich flavor of the carob-chocolate gâteau he had taken an enormous liking to, then shook his head to get back on track. Before he knew it, he had walked almost to the intersection of Shinoume Highway and Kannana Street. Normally, he’d turn left there to go home, but in order to complete the mission he’d been given, he had to cross Kannana and get on a bus.

“Fwoo…Haah…” He took a few deep breaths while he waited for the light to change to relieve even a tiny bit of the pressure he felt.

UI> YOU CAN DO IT!

A chat window jumped up in his field of view, and Haruyuki jumped.

“Waah?!” He whirled around to find the smiling face of the super president whom he’d parted with when he left school fifteen minutes earlier, Utai Shinomiya. “Sh-Shinomiya, why?! Didn’t you go home?!”

Stunned, he blinked in rapid succession, but no matter how he looked at it, the Utai there in her snow-white dress-type uniform with the brown backpack over her shoulders was the real deal. There wasn’t a drop of sweat on the forehead beneath her neatly arranged bangs, but that wasn’t because she was an AR image; rather, it was the difference in their mental training.

The fingers of her small hands flashed, and words scrolled through his chat window. UI> YOU SEEMED ANXIOUS, ARITA, SO I LEFT MY THINGS AT A RENTAL LOCKER AT SHIN–KOENJI STATION AND CAME AFTER YOU.

“Huh? So you were behind me the whole time?”

UI> I OVERHEARD PERFECTLY WHEN YOU WERE TALKING TO YOURSELF BEFORE. YOU AREN’T THINKING ABOUT QUITTING THE ANIMAL CARE CLUB TO JOIN THE COOKING CLUB, ARE YOU?

Utai pursed her lips adorably.

“I—I wasn’t. Not at all!” He hurriedly shook his head. “Nothing like that! It’s just like…Sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. And your house is in the opposite direction. You came out of your way to see me off…”

Now Utai was the one who was surprised. UI> I’M NOT SEEING YOU OFF, THOUGH. I WOULDN’T HAVE LEFT MY THINGS IN A LOCKER JUST FOR THAT. I’M COMING WITH YOU, OF COURSE!

“Whoa!” All Haruyuki could do was cry out once more.

After they crossed Kannana, got on the EV bus, and sat down next to each other in a two-person seat, Haruyuki let out a sigh. The air-conditioning in the bus was weak, but compared with outside, where the temperature soared past thirty degrees, it was heavenly. Around the time he finally stopped sweating, he had a sudden thought.

“That reminds me. There’s no air conditioner in the animal hutch at Umesato. Is Hoo going to be okay in the heat?”

UI> HE’S A NORTHERN WHITE-FACED OWL, SO HE CAN DEAL QUITE WELL WITH HEAT, BUT WE WILL NEED A HEATER IN THE WINTER. LET’S TALK WITH SACCHI ABOUT PUTTING SOME SOLAR PANELS ON THE HUTCH OR MOVING HIM SOMEWHERE FOR THE WINTER.

“Right. I guess he’s originally from Africa, after all. I’ll check into how much it would cost to install a solar heating system.”

UI> THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT. Utai grinned and returned her hands to her lap.

The bus traveling east along Shinoume Highway entered Nakano Area No. 2 a little past Higashi–Koenji Station. The Leonids had temporarily occupied the area during the Saturday Territories in order to attack Suginami, but as a general rule, it was unoccupied, so there were plenty of duels unfolding even on a weekday evening.

Naka-2 was where Haruyuki had first dueled against Wolfram Cerberus. It seemed like a hundred years ago, but it had actually been a mere three weeks earlier. But far too many things had happened in those three weeks, and Cerberus was now gone from the Accelerated World.

Cerberus III, aka the copy of Dusk Taker, had stolen the Invincible thrusters from Niko, but system-wise, the thrusters should have still been in the possession of Cerberus I. He assumed the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, also remained with Cerberus, so there was no way that the vast negative Incarnate energy, far surpassing that of the ISS kit terminals, was not having a negative effect on Cerberus in the real world.

In the heart of one of Koenji’s bustling shopping areas known as Look Street, the Cerberus Haruyuki had encountered for the briefest of moments had been a small-statured, gentle-looking young boy. A strong light had shone in his clear eyes, despite the fact that he had been made a Burst Linker through the inhuman experiment that was the artificial metal color project. If he closed his eyes, Haruyuki could vividly remember the figure of Cerberus smiling at Haruyuki and bowing deeply, hands at his side.

Today’s objective was Shinjuku Area No. 3 on the other side of Nakano Area No. 2, but once they got into Nakano, he would accelerate for a second and check the matching list. Maybe Cerberus’s name would be on it.

Utai started tapping at her holokeyboard again. UI> ARITA, BEFORE WE GO INTO THE NAKANO AREA, HOW ABOUT WE TEAM UP?

“Huh?”

UI> IF YOU’RE SOLO, YOU’LL PROBABLY BE CHALLENGED BY ANY NUMBER OF PEOPLE, C.

“I—I guess. I haven’t been doing too many free duels lately.”

UI> THAT’S WHY! YOU WERE VERY ACTIVE IN THE METATRON MISSION, AND RUMOR OF THAT HAS SPREAD QUITE FAR AND WIDE, SO I’M SURE THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO’D LIKE TO HEAR THE STORY.

“Huh. There’s basically nothing I can tell, though.” Everyone probably wanted to know how he defended against Metatron’s sudden-death laser, but he couldn’t exactly run around blabbing about the performance and weak points of his ability Optical Conduction. And he hesitated to lie and say he’d gotten the Theoretical Mirror ability he’d been asked to get. Moreover, he absolutely could not leak to anyone the existence of the true form of the Archangel Metatron and the fact that she was now a member of Nega Nebulus.

“O-okay then, please team up with me,” Haruyuki said hurriedly as he watched the sign for Higashi–Koenji Station pass by the window.

UI> THAT’S ROGER AND A GO!

They pressed the BB icon on their virtual desktops at the same time and specified their tag partner in the console. Now they would appear on the matching list as a team, and there likely weren’t too many warriors who would see the name Silver Crow alongside Ardor Maiden’s and still come to challenge him.

This also meant that if he did see Wolfram Cerberus’s name on the list, Haruyuki would be unable to challenge him, but in that case, he could explain the reason and temporarily leave the team.

“Um, Shinomiya. Once we’re on the area border, I’d like to give the list a quick check,” he said as he closed his console.

Utai looked at him with those eyes that seemed to see through everything and nodded firmly.

Thirty seconds later, the EV bus drove leisurely in the left lane out of the Suginami area and into Nakano. Haruyuki closed his eyes and prayed briefly for a miracle. He had to assume that, normally, Wolfram Cerberus wouldn’t make the trip to Nakano without a reason when his home was in Minato. In fact, if Cerberus had returned to the duels with the Armor of Catastrophe still living inside him, that would mean the Society was conspiring again, and he would definitely not be happy about that.

Even so, he couldn’t stop himself from praying. If he could just see him again, if they could exchange words—and blows—he was sure he could pull Cerberus back from that spiritual darkness. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, ready to call out “Burst Link.”

Skreeeeee!! The screech of acceleration shot through his head. Flaming text burned brightly in his vision, announcing the appearance of a challenger. Someone had come to challenge the tag team of Haruyuki and Utai.

The EV bus stopped on the road and melted into the air. The buildings standing on either side of the street also vanished one after another, and the afternoon summer sky rapidly darkened.

His silver-armored feet touched down on thin grass that reached his knees. A sea of grass swayed in the wind as far as he could see.

“It’s a Grassland stage, then,” said the shrine maiden avatar next to him, sounding a little bittersweet. But it made sense; the first time he’d teamed up with her, they’d fought Bush Utan and Olive Grab in a Grassland stage.

Nakano Area No. 2 was also adjacent to the Shibuya area in the south, so it was possible that Utan and Grab were the duelers again today. Or maybe it was the famed Leonids duo, Frost Horn and Tourmaline Shell. All right then, who is this reckless fool from wherever who would challenge the shrine maiden of the conflagration? With a bit of a borrowed swagger, Haruyuki looked up at the health gauges in the upper right of his field of view and a “Whoa!” slipped out of his mouth for the third time that day.

The name neatly laid out on the first of the two gauges was Cobalt Blade. And on the second gauge was Manganese Blade.

“Wh-why are they in Naka-two?!” Haruyuki reeled.

“How like you, C, to draw such a favorable lot!” Utai clapped her hands. “This will save us the time of going all the way to Shinjuku.”

“Uh. Th-that’s true, but I was planning to talk with everyone in the Gallery…”

“In the Gallery, we’ll be cut off once the duel ends, but if we’re all duelers, then we can have the full thirty minutes to discuss. And moreover, the likelihood that they would agree to talk to us is very low. Now that they’ve challenged us, I believe our only choice is to fight first.”

“I—I guess. But how are we going to…?” he wondered.

“I am merely accompanying you, C,” Utai replied, cherubic eye lenses shining. “Thus, I will follow your strategy.”

“…R-right…” He’d had a feeling she’d say something like that, so he nodded firmly and looked around the stage.

Some distance away, avatars were standing in twos and threes around the vast grassy plain, but they were part of the Gallery. He narrowed his eyes and stared hard, but unfortunately, he couldn’t see Cerberus among them.

The two light-blue guide cursors displayed on top of each other in the center of the lower part of his field of view were both motionless, pointing due north. Did that mean that their opponents were not moving from their point of origin? Or that they were approaching in a straight line? Given that he was up against Coba-Manga, it was probably the latter.

His opponents were a tag team of the most powerful class of close-range types in the Accelerated World outside of the kings. If he and Utai were going for victory, the best strategy would be to take advantage of the fact that duels began with the duelers a significant distance from one another, and they would keep running away, unilaterally attacking with Utai’s flaming arrows.

But Haruyuki dared to keep his feet planted on their appearance point. It meant throwing away the one advantage they had over their superpowerful opponents, but as long as they had this stage and this team, they had a trump card that could turn the tables in the second half with one blow.

“Um, okay then, in the opening, please stick it out for a bit. I’ll take Manga, so I’d like you to look after Coba, Mei,” Haruyuki instructed.

The shrine maiden cocked her head to one side. “Which one is Manga and which one is Coba again?”

“Uh, um. The one with the bluish armor and pigtails is Coba, and the one that’s just a little green with the ponytail is Manga.”

“Understood!” Utai nodded sharply and slowly raised her longbow.

At the same time, Haruyuki felt a cool wind blowing in from the north. No, that wasn’t it. From the way the grass was dancing, the wind blowing through the stage was southerly, so what he was feeling was extremely refined battle spirit…Or else, a high ranker’s information pressure wave. Straining his eyes to the north, Haruyuki saw two silhouettes slipping toward them in the sea of grass, which shone a golden-green in the evening sun.

Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade, twin soldiers and close aides of the Leonids leader, Blue Knight. Their heavy armor was patterned after that of samurai and deeply intimidating, while the greatswords on their left hips communicated their razor-sharpness without even being drawn.

When they stopped about ten meters away, the number of people in the Gallery spiked due to the automatic transfer function. He checked one more time, but of course, Cerberus was not among them.

Normally, jeers and cheers would be flying through the air, but today, perhaps overwhelmed by the threatening presence of the soldiers, everyone was waiting quietly for the start of the fighting.

Gulping hard, Haruyuki was about to try announcing his business with them since he had nothing to lose.

But before he could open his mouth, the ponytailed Manganese Blade announced in a brilliantly clear voice, “So you’re level six now, hmm, Silver Crow?”

“Oh.” He unconsciously dipped his head at this unexpected comment. “Y-yes. Thanks.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea—I’m not congratulating you!”

And of course, he was rebuked by Cobalt Blade, causing him to shrink into himself with a squeak.

The pigtailed soldier pointed squarely at Haruyuki and continued as if talking to herself, “Level four is still a babe, level five, finally a novice, but if you have reached level six, then I will not treat you as a forelock.”

“…Forelock? What does that mean…?” Haruyuki muttered.

“It refers to a young samurai before his coming of age,” Utai quickly interpreted for him, “because he’s not yet shaved his forelocks, the hair in the front of his head.”

“O-oh, I see.” He bobbed his head, and now Manganese was angry with him.

“You! Listen well!”

The twin soldiers gripped their swords at the same time, with the same relative hand, and shouted in perfect sync, ““No insufficiency in a tag team of opponents of levels six and seven! Now, as always, the contest!!””

No way they’re gonna go for dueling another time and just talking today, huh? Accepting his fate, Haruyuki gave a brief instruction to his partner. “Just like I said before. Please hang on until our gauges are charged!”

“Roger that!” She nodded and drew her bowstring halfway back. And then Ardor Maiden abruptly turned toward the soldier to the right, the double-horned Cobalt Blade, and charged.

“Wha—?!” he cried out, once more dumbfounded. But he couldn’t freeze now. He dashed after Maiden and moved to get the first hit in on Manganese Blade to the left.

The soldiers moved in perfect sync once more as they leaned forward, gripping the hilts. Anticipating that they would draw and strike in one stroke, Haruyuki felt the core of his body become as cold as ice.

This was the first time he’d fought Manganese, but he actually didn’t have that much experience fighting other sword-wielding avatars, either. This was because, as a flying type, he inevitably ended up with gun users as opponents. But his teacher was the most powerful blade user in the Accelerated World, and their numerous bouts had given Haruyuki serious confidence. No matter how sharp Manganese’s slicing attack, it couldn’t have been greater than Black Lotus’s Terminate Sword. Step past the fear and go forward!

““Shah!!”” Not even a millimeter of difference between them, Cobalt and Manganese unsheathed their swords simultaneously.

Haruyuki used the slipperiness of the grassy field to slide beneath the flash of Manganese’s sideways scythe. The blade grazed his mirrored goggles, and dazzling sparks burned his field of view.

On the right side, Utai jumped without warning and leapt over Cobalt’s slicing blade. Although she was a pure long-distance type, she apparently intended to seriously take on the challenge of a close-range battle with a female warrior who was the bluest of blue.

The soldiers yanked the blades back above their heads with impossible speed and, this time, brought them directly downward. ““Seh!!””

If he stopped sliding, his helmet would be split in two. Understanding this instinctively, Haruyuki used the mere pixels charged up in his special-attack gauge from the scratch he received earlier to vibrate the wings on his back for a microsecond. The generated thrust accelerated his slide and pushed his avatar directly below the falling blade.

Ting! Once again, there was a small, sharp metallic sound, and the blade grazed the top of his helmet. The downward slash severed the surrounding grasses, and the blades of green danced up into the air, while Haruyuki shrank into himself, slipped between Manganese’s legs, and grabbed at the grass on either side as makeshift emergency brakes.

How’s Mei?! Haruyuki glanced over to the left as he bounced back up.

Ardor Maiden had firmly caught Cobalt Blade’s slash with the top of the longbow Flame Caller in her hand. Here, for the first time, the twin soldiers’ synchronization crumbled.

“Nngh!” Cobalt abandoned the push-pull struggle with the longbow and leapt backward.

Assuming the priority of the Enhanced Armaments was equal, Cobalt was definitely superior to Maiden in terms of physical avatar strength. If she had just kept going, she should have been able to use brute force to push back the bow and slice into Maiden’s armor.

The reason Cobalt put some distance between them instead of doing that was because of the bright-red flames generated when Utai pulled the bowstring back with her right hand while she held the sword in check with her left. A flaming arrow aimed at her face, a mere dozen or so centimeters away, didn’t leave Cobalt much choice.

Utai shot her flaming arrow at Cobalt, who was still very much in range. But her enemy was no fool; she made an impressive catch with the blade of her sword, and the arrow’s scattering flames made the evening grasslands shine red.

Meanwhile, Haruyuki charged forward in a fierce dash, straight for Manganese. Before the warrior could get into position for a slicing attack, he closed the distance between them to zero. The twin’s blade was likely eighty centimeters long, but she wouldn’t be able to use it if he glued himself to her.

“Ha!” Stepping deep into Manganese’s space, he launched a right short hook. This was blocked with her gauntlet, but he immediately took aim at her body with his left fist. She was unable to defend in time with her sword hand, and he landed a hit on her side where her armor was thinner, finally stealing a bit of her health gauge.

“Impudence!” The warrior grimaced and moved to slam the hilt of her sword in Haruyuki’s face. But Takumu had used this technique on him in fights, and he knew to duck to the right to avoid it before beating at her body once again with his left knee.

Once again, he got a clean hit, but it was actually too good, and the impact pushed Manganese back. Taking advantage of the moment’s respite this brought her, the warrior tried to lash out with a compact face strike. But Haruyuki threw the bundle of grass he’d yanked up when emergency braking at her face, and she immediately closed her eyes, knocking her attack slightly off course.

Using the opportunity, he glued himself to her again and cut away at her gauge with a series of short punches.

Ardor Maiden was also proving more than equal to Cobalt in a close-range fight. She wasn’t sticking quite as closely to her opponent as Silver Crow, and that she managed to continually evade the warrior’s slicing attacks was solely due to the overwhelming power of her bow.

With Flame Caller, there was no need to pull an arrow from a quiver and nock it. She only had to draw the bowstring back a certain amount with her left hand, and a flame arrow was instantly generated. To Haruyuki, it looked like she was launching more than one arrow a second. She wasn’t pulling the string back all that far, so each arrow didn’t carry that much force, but the barrage was more than enough to check Cobalt’s approach.

Two hundred seconds into the duel, the health gauges of Crow and Maiden were holding at more than 90 percent, while those of Cobalt and Manganese had dropped to nearly 70 percent. Naturally, Haruyuki didn’t think they could keep this up right to the end. But if they could steal 50 percent of their gauges before the breakthrough—i.e., when the enemy started using their special attacks—their chances of victory would increase significantly.

“Go!” he shouted briefly at himself and kicked off the ground. He was about to launch the technique he’d christened Aerial Combo, a high-speed, three-dimensional charge that made use of the instantaneous thrust from the wings on his back.

However, Haruyuki—and probably Utai, too—hadn’t noticed that Manganese and Cobalt Blade, who were supposedly fighting separately, had at some point started to approach each other, backs coming together.

“Sehaaaaaah!!” With a battle cry that shook the air around them, Manganese swung the sword in her right hand out horizontally.

If it had been the same slice as the one she’d been using so far, he would have been able to close the distance and evade it. But there was no need for that. Although her eyes remained on him, Manganese’s target was not Haruyuki in front of her, but somewhere directly behind her.

For a moment, Haruyuki’s brain froze at the unexpected and seemingly entirely useless action. Thus, he was late to react to the second sword that came flying in from outside his field of view.

“Ngah!” Haruyuki moaned as a searing impact assaulted his right arm. The blade ripped deeply into his armor, and a crimson damage effect spilled out. If he had taken just one more step toward Manganese, his arm would have been cut off at the shoulder.

At precisely the same time, he heard Utai’s small voice from behind the warrior sister. Here, Haruyuki finally grasped what had happened.

Their backs perfectly aligned, Manganese and Cobalt had attacked at the same time to the rear. Cobalt’s blade came at him from completely outside his awareness, while Manganese’s struck Maiden. This terrifying duo of twin soldiers could pull off a simultaneous attack to the rear without any kind of signal, without so much as looking at each other. If their breath had been 0.1 seconds off, their falling blades would have cut into each other.

In order to avoid a follow-up attack, Haruyuki got some serious distance from his opponent, but Manganese did not come to close it. He checked on Maiden on the other side of Cobalt. Her right arm had also been sliced into, and she pulled back, abandoning her barrage of flame arrows.

The twin soldiers readied their greatswords at precisely mid-body, backs still pressed together.

Manganese opened her mouth first. “It’s been quite a while since I was hit to that extent by a fighting type. It seems your points were well earned, Silver Crow.”

After this, Cobalt turned to Utai. “Indeed, to be so toyed with at close range by a bow user. This is truly the Testarossa whose name is known throughout the Accelerated World, Ardor Maiden.”

“But we could never show our faces again in Shinjuku if we allowed ourselves to be defeated so.”

“The time has come for us to use the ace up our sleeves.”

The synchronized speech ended, and the twin samurai sheathed their swords almost languidly. But it was obvious that this did not signal the end of the fighting. An ironlike battle spirit jetted up from the soldiers’ feet as they lowered their stances, making the grass around them ripple and sway. The sisters weren’t glowing, so this was no Incarnate overlay, but Haruyuki felt a shiver of fear at this aura. It was so powerful he almost wished it was Incarnate.

Intuiting that it would be very bad if he took a direct hit from the next attack, Haruyuki determined that it was also time for them to pull out their own trump card and turn the battle around.

He deployed the wings on his back. His special-attack gauge was 60 percent charged; Utai’s 70. They weren’t going to make it to full gauges, but this would be enough.

“Just what I was hoping for!!” he yelled at the soldiers, then kicked off the ground. He feinted as if he were charging forward and then detoured wide to the right in front of Cobalt.

“Mei!” he shouted, reaching out with his right hand. Utai grabbed it with her own injured right, and he ascended straight up with everything he had.

Haruyuki had assumed that Manganese and Cobalt would aim for the moment when he picked up Maiden, so when the twins didn’t so much as twitch, it felt a little anticlimactic as he gained an altitude of fifty meters in the blink of an eye.

He held Maiden in his arms and shifted to hovering mode before looking down at the stage. He caught sight of the soldiers, beans dropped down in the center of the vast grassy plain illuminated by the evening sun.

The formidable enemy Dusk Taker, who had once stolen Haruyuki’s silver wings, had been elated with his own success, crying out, “…The combination of flight with long-distance firepower is incredible…To be perfectly frank, I’m invincible.”

Haruyuki wouldn’t go so far as to say they were unbeatable, but once he brought their close-range blue tag-team opponents to this situation, their victory was 90 percent certain. From high in the sky, where enemy swords most certainly could not reach, they would attack unilaterally with Utai’s flame arrows. Moreover, this was the Grassland stage, where there were basically no obstacles. Or anything to hide behind.

But is this way of winning really okay?

As if sensing the momentary hesitation in Haruyuki’s heart, Utai said, “No matter the situation, never forget to respect your opponent and leave it all on the battlefield. Don’t hold anything back. That is the underlying principle of the duel, C.”

She pulled back Flame Caller’s bowstring with her injured fingers. Rather than stopping halfway as she had up to that point, she drew the string as far back as it went, and the flame arrow generated burned with an almost terrifying power.

Even in the sights of the crimson inferno, the twin soldiers on the ground were unflinching, hands on the hilts of their swords. Most likely, they intended to continue to meet Maiden’s normal and special attacks in kind. If they could continue to do that until Haruyuki’s gauge was used up, and he could no longer fly, it would be their victory.

“Here I go,” Utai murmured, and Haruyuki spread his wings as far as they would go in order to stabilize them in anticipation of the activation of her special attack.

““Rangeless Scission!”” Cobalt and Manganese shouted in unison, fifty meters below.

An attack name.

But Utai hadn’t fired her flame arrow yet—were they a step ahead? Or could it be…?

The two warriors were already drawing their blades in a perfectly synchronized motion. Blue light flashed, and then Haruyuki felt a wind colder than ice blow past both sides of his body.

Fwd. Their altitude dropped. Hurriedly, he tried to increase the thrust of his wings, but their gentle descent did not stop. Reflexively looking back, he saw two halves of his own silver wings reflect the evening sun as they fell soundlessly. Belatedly, his health gauge dropped over 20 percent.

They cut me?! But we’re fifty meters apart?!

I know it’s a special attack, but there’s no way close-range sword users could have a gun’s range…

And then, understanding, like an explosion of fireworks, pushed these dumbfounded thoughts out of his head. Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade: The twins were not true close-range blue; they were metal colors just like Silver Crow. Exceptional colors not constrained by the color wheel.

I should have known that. Gritting his teeth, Haruyuki pushed what remained of his metallic fins to full throttle and tried to stop their descent. He managed to get them hovering again, but his special-attack gauge was dropping with terrifying speed. It would last, at most, ten more seconds.

“Flame Vortex.”

Utai chanted the name in a calm and cool tone.

Krrr! The flames enveloping the arrow swelled up. Launched with an earsplitting roar was not an arrow, but rather a crimson helix of a great lance.

The warriors on the ground split up immediately and took evasive maneuvers just as the great lance hit the ground between them. The red, flaming vortex instantly swelled up over ten meters and swallowed the sisters.

The enemy health gauges in the top left of his field of view were dropping at exactly the same speed. They could not yet emerge from the flames because the vortex also had a magnetic pull. Wild waves rode through the grass around them, and chunks were pulled up and sucked into the flames to become sparks dancing upward.

In the old days, Ardor Maiden had regularly pulled off magnificent victories in the Territories when teamed up with Sky Raker, and this incredible technique made him vividly feel the reality of that legend. And Utai had most certainly guessed that the twins’ special attack was long-range. If only the knowledge that they were metal colors hadn’t fallen out of his head, Haruyuki might have also realized this and evaded their slicing attack.

I’m still very much the forelock, he told himself as his special-attack gauge was depleted.

“We’re going down!” Haruyuki started to glide unstably with what was left of his wings.

“Now the true contest begins.” Utai’s resolute voice reached his ears. “I’m counting on your determination, C!”

“R-roger!” he shouted, and landed outside the vortex of flames that was finally starting to die out. The twin soldiers appeared from beyond the white smoke that puffed upward, their armor charred. Given that they were metal colors, their heat resistance was high, and despite that they had taken Maiden’s special attack full in the face, their health gauges were still at 40 percent.

Four eye lenses shone with a pale light, humming with vibration. Cobalt and Manganese wordlessly readied their swords, and Utai brought up her bow—and Haruyuki, his hands.

I’m still way behind in brains and technique. But I can’t be beat for determination!! he shouted to himself through clenched teeth, kicking at the charred-black earth.

Fifteen minutes later.

Manganese Blade’s downward slice quickly caught the right straight Haruyuki launched with the last of his strength. At the same time as his arm was cut away at the shoulder and sent flying, his bright-red health gauge fell to just 10 percent. When he lost his balance and fell into the grass, the tip of the greatsword was charged toward his neck.

Is this the end? Haruyuki waited for the final blow, but the sword dug into the earth a mere two centimeters from his face mask with krnch. Staring stunned at the pale metal before his eyes, he heard a voice from above.

“You gave me a decent fight, Silver Crow.”

“Huh?” Haruyuki timidly lifted his head.

“It’s not that I have taken pity on you.” Manganese snorted as she yanked her blade out of the ground. “If this were a simple duel, I would have no mercy and take your head. But you came here for some purpose, yes? Something to do with our Leonids?”

“Oh. Th-that’s right.” Hurriedly pulling himself up, Haruyuki sent his gaze to his right as he knelt formally on the grass. The battle between Cobalt and Maiden seemed to be shifting in Maiden’s favor, albeit slightly, but then they, too, stopped fighting.

“Um. Manga?” He looked up at Manganese once more. “I’m sorry, but could you give me a little time after this? I do have something important to talk to you about…”

“…Involving the Society?”

“Y-yes.”

The ponytailed warrior sheathed her sword as she glanced at her pigtailed sister. Apparently, that was enough to come to an understanding, and she nodded lightly. “No choice then. Crow, whereabouts are you now?”

It took him a moment or two to realize she was asking about his position in the real world. “Hyah?! Um. Sh-Shinoume Highway.”

“Mm. Well then.” She bent over and brought her face mask close to him before murmuring at a barely audible volume, “Come to the family restaurant at the five-way intersection in Nakano when you get back.”

“Hyah?! S-so then, you mean, in the real—?”

“You’re too loud,” she scolded quietly, then stood back up before surveying their surroundings. Sensing the end of the duel, the members of the Gallery were cheering and clapping loudly, but the female warrior merely shot them a sharp look. “It’s entirely possible a spy has slipped into the duel stage. We could forcibly eject the Gallery, but that also looks bad in its own way.”

“R-right. Well, true,” he agreed, “but if we’re meeting in the real, then we need to decide on a sign or something.”

“Mm. We are Burst Linkers. We will know each other at a glance.”

Wiiiiill weeee, thouuuuugh?

Although this doubt rose up from the bottom of his heart, Haruyuki could only nod.