Accel World - Volume 21 - Chapter 5

5

“Lotus, we got about five minutes until Pard and them regenerate…I think,” Niko said, looking at her Instruct menu.

The reason she couldn’t specify the regeneration timing just from looking at the total dive time was that they didn’t know how much time had passed from the moment the Territories stage changed to the Unlimited Neutral Field until the instant when Fuko and the others were wiped out. But Niko had good instincts, and if she read it as five minutes, then it likely wouldn’t be off by that much.

Kuroyukihime nodded.

In the end, not one of the death markers inside the ice cage had disappeared. This meant, basically, that for some reason—likely obstruction from the Oscillatory side—after escaping from the cage, Silver Crow hadn’t been able to reach a portal. In other words, there was a strong possibility that he, too, was dead somewhere nearby. She hadn’t the slightest intention of reproaching him for that, however; he had no doubt expended every effort in his own way.

Looking up at the bloody sunrise, Kuroyukihime called to her beloved child in her heart. It’s all right, Haruyuki. We will rescue Fuko and the others. And get vengeance for you, as well. Just wait a little longer.

She pricked her ears up to the sound of the dry wind for a moment before returning her gaze to Sengakuji below.

The massive ice cage in the center of the plaza. And immediately next to it, the Seven Dwarves’ Glacier Behemoth and Snow Fairy. In the area of the cage, twelve Oscillatory Universe members stood evenly spaced on strict guard. She had to admit that she would have expected nothing less than the watch they kept not only over the area on the ground, but also the air above. If they hadn’t been hiding on top of an unclimbable building, Kuroyukihime and Niko wouldn’t have been able to stay under their radar for the last forty minutes or so.

“The moment when everyone regenerates, and Behemoth and Fairy activate their Incarnate techniques, is our sole chance at victory,” Kuroyukihime murmured.

“Yeah.” Niko nodded. The only shot we got is to kill ’em in one blow, you an’ me. Not impossible if we can pinpoint their crit spots from here. But it takes a bit to deploy my Invincible. Won’t make it in time if I summon it once regeneration starts, and if I call it in advance, it’ll give us away.”

“What about Peacemaker’s charge shots?” Kuroyukihime looked at the handgun on the younger girl’s hip, and Niko looked thoughtful for a moment before quickly shaking her head.

“The guards on the outskirts might be one thing, but there’s no way I can blow Behemoth and Fairy away instantly, even fully charged. I wish I could say I could boost the power with Incarnate, but the fact is that I can only use first-level range and movement expansion with my main body. Honestly. If it was gonna come to this, a second-level—”

Destructive Incarnate is something I shoulda mastered, Niko was no doubt about to say, and Kuroyukihime unconsciously patted her with the flat of her sword blade.

“Hey, don’t treat me like a baby.”

“Mm? Oh, this was how I’d treat a small child.”

“How is that different—?” the Red King started to shout but hurriedly clamped her mouth shut.

Pushing back the urge to say See? You are indeed a child, Kuroyukihime returned to the matter at hand. “At any rate, if you summoned your Enhanced Armament, could you take out one of them—Snow Fairy, if possible?”

“O’course. But like I said…”

“It doesn’t have to be all of it. Could you call just the cockpit and main armament in a few seconds, for instance?”

“Wouldn’t be able to move with just that. Although without the thrusters, it’s basically the same. Right. Two parts alone, I’d need five—no, four seconds.”

“Hmm.” Looking down again on Sengakuji, which was now an execution site, Kuroyukihime muttered half to herself. “Understood. I will buy you those four seconds.”

“You mean you’re gonna take on Behemoth and Fairy—wait, add in the guards, and that’s fourteen people at once?” Niko was indeed surprised.

“Yes,” Kuroyukihime answered crisply. “Neither Behemoth nor Fairy will be particularly skilled at close-range battle in cramped quarters. It’s not impossible if I can get in a preemptive strike.”

“I got this feeling that the preemptive part’s gonna be hard,” Niko started but then closed her mouth and nodded, almost hanging her head. “Right. Do it. In exchange, I’ll make sure I succeed in summoning my Enhanced Armament and snipe that Fairy.”

“Good. Strategy’s settled then. We’ve got about three minutes left.”

“Two minutes, forty seconds,” Niko corrected, giving her a wry grin.

Kuroyukihime crossed the swords of both arms while still flat on her belly on the roof. To target the instant that Glacier Behemoth and Snow Fairy activated their Incarnate techniques, she would have to fly off the roof a few seconds before that. As long as she could approach to within a sword’s reach without anyone noticing, she was confident she could keep their attention with a full-powered attack for four seconds.

She was wagering the success of her surprise attack on whether any of the twelve people monitoring the area happened to check the sky the instant she flew off the building. If they’d had someone else with them, she would have considered a diversionary tactic, but there was no one, so there was nothing to be done about that. All she could do was leave luck to the heavens and charge in.

Even having made it through countless scenes of carnage in the Accelerated World, the following two minutes were longer than anything Kuroyukihime could remember. Most likely, it was the same for Niko. The voice that counted down the time remaining in increments of fifteen seconds was filled with a nervousness the other girl couldn’t completely suppress.

When she heard Niko announce one minute left, Kuroyukihime gave voice to something she’d been thinking about for a while. “Listen, Rain—Niko. If this surprise attack fails, and I’m defeated, you use that Incarnate technique of yours and escape through the nearest portal.”

“Yeah, I got it. I’ll go back to the taxi and pull off your Neurolinker—”

“No, not that. Stop the taxi and leave me accelerated. But don’t come into the Unlimited Neutral Field anymore.”

“Hey, what are you saying?” Niko brought her face up to start to argue.

“If I lose all my points, take care of the new Legion,” Kuroyukihime stated calmly.

Niko started to flare up, and Kuroyukihime gently brought her own head to touch hers. She could sense the younger girl desperately swallowing her words, and she apologized for her selfishness in her heart.

Finally, she announced in a voice that trembled only a little, “Thirty seconds left.”

“Roger.”

Pulling her head away, Kuroyukihime focused on the battlefield below her eyes. There would be a very gamelike light effect from the death markers accompanying the regeneration. In that instant alone, the attention of the twelve monitoring the outside would be directed downward, albeit for less than a second.

“Fifteen seconds.”

She moved away from Niko to a spot just barely still on the roof. She dug the tip of her right foot into the steel of the floor and focused her strength into her entire body.

When she leapt out toward Sengakuji, she would first aim for Behemoth in midair with her range-expanding Incarnate technique Vorpal Strike. It would be difficult to pinpoint his critical points while in free fall, but she should be able to keep him from moving for a while at least. She would land using the reaction force from the technique, draw near in a heartbeat, and bring the melee to zero distance.

“Ten seconds.”

Kuroyukihime tensed her mind so she wouldn’t miss the change in the death markers.

But then one of the Oscillatory members pointed upward and shouted, “Hey, over there!”

Kuroyukihime held her breath, but the finger was not pointed toward the building where she and Niko were hiding. It was pointing at something—someone farther up in the sky. She and Niko both looked silently at the northern sky.

A star. No—a person? Against the clouds dyed red, a human shadow infused with a pure light hung motionless. The long-sleeved dress was white. The hair that danced in the breeze was silver. A pair of snowy-white wings extended far out from her back. It wasn’t a duel avatar. It wasn’t a flesh-and-blood human. It was an Enemy.

“Meta…tron?” Kuroyukihime murmured.

Eyelids only slightly opened, the shadow looked down on the earth with golden eyes and slowly raised her right hand.

There was no mistake. This was the true form of the Saint, the Archangel Metatron, the Legend-class Enemy Kuroyukihime had seen just once at Tokyo Midtown.

But Haruyuki Arita said that her true form had been deeply wounded in the battle with the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, and that she was currently dormant in the boss room of the Shiba Park Underground Labyrinth. She had only appeared as a tiny 3-D icon recently. So why was her true form here now?

Naturally, the Archangel wasn’t going to respond to Kuroyukihime’s question. Instead, the angel made the halo above her head flash brilliantly while she said in a murmur that threatened to pierce the soul at the same time, “Trisagion.”

A light was born. The massive shining pillar pierced the thick clouds and poured down from the sky. The entire field was colored a snowy white.

She heard Snow Fairy shouting in Sengakuji directly below, “Great Growler!”

Immediately after, the pillar of light reached the plaza. At first, there was only a pure-white silence. But soon, the earth shook with a heavy rumbling, and the building on which Kuroyukihime and Niko were encamped swayed and shuddered. The ice cage in the center of the plaza evaporated, and the steel floor grew incandescent before their eyes. The pillars and small shrines lined up along the pilgrim’s road melted one after another or else burned up. Kuroyukihime heard several screams. The members of Oscillatory who were late to flee were swallowed up in the ultrahot light and killed instantly.

Twenty days earlier, Kuroyukihime had taken on the mission to attack Tokyo Midtown with her Nega Nebulus comrades in order to destroy the main ISS kit body, so she knew in her bones the intense ferocity of the laser emitted by Metatron’s first form. The Trisagion of the true form also likely had the same attack attributes, but the power and scope were on an entirely different level. A superpowerful attack worthy of the title of the Archangel’s divine retribution.

The laser was done firing after about five seconds, but it felt several times longer than that to Kuroyukihime. Even once the pillar of light disappeared, the central part of the plaza was still incandescent, and the remains of objects were in flames. The four new death markers were likely those of the Oscillatory members who had died instantly. Where the ice cage had melted, the fifteen markers remained as they were, naturally. And then nearby, there was something curious.

A transparent blue cube. Inside the massive cube, more than three meters to a side, two shadows of differing sizes were locked away. Kuroyukihime finally realized that they were Snow Fairy and Glacier Behemoth, who had curled his bulk up to be as small as possible. She was simply stunned that they had managed to survive a direct hit from that laser, but the pair showed no sign of coming out of the cube. Most likely, although they had managed to avoid instant death by freezing themselves with Incarnate, they also weren’t able to escape it under their own power. Or perhaps this was the type of technique that could manage stellar defensive powers by incorporating this kind of constraint right from the start.

Although the vertices and sharp edges of the ice cube had been exposed to the high-temperature laser and were melting away, it didn’t look like it would break for the time being without some additional damage being applied from the outside. In which case, the only remaining enemies were the eight who had fled from the plaza.

Niko produced a barely audible voice. “That was sum’in…Who’s that girl there?”

Now that she mentioned it, Kuroyukihime realized that Niko and the Prominence group still didn’t know Metatron, and she struggled with how to explain it exactly. But before she had the chance, there was movement in the plaza. The fifteen death markers spinning quietly in the center began to emit light of a variety of colors.

“She’s a member of Nega Nebulus, too. I’ll explain later. Right now, Raker and the others are regenerating.”

“Yeah. Dang it. What was that plan we worked so hard to put together for?”

“Don’t say that. The fact is, it’s a huge help, yes?” Kuroyukihime patted Niko’s back and got to her feet.

When she looked up, the Archangel Metatron was slowly flapping her wings in the sky. Her eyes were still closed, but there seemed to be a pained look on her beautiful face. Had she maybe used too much power again with the Trisagion? And where was Silver Crow? Metatron was supposedly haunting him.

The new question rose up in her mind, and Kuroyukihime looked around, but there was no sign of Crow.

“Hey! Quit yer gawkin’. We gotta join up with the others.”

At the sound of Niko’s voice, she brought her gaze forward again, just as the death markers were starting to change into individual duel avatars.

Even excluding the frozen Fairy and Behemoth, there were still eight enemies lurking in the environs of Sengakuji. They likely weren’t on par with the Seven Dwarves, but she was certain that they would all be experienced veterans. They had to first work with Sky Raker and their other newly regenerated friends to wipe out the enemy and ensure their safety.

“All right. Let’s go.” Kuroyukihime nodded.

Niko turned her back to her. “C’mon. Piggyback.”

“…?”

“You’re not gonna walk away if you jump from this height. I’ll take you down with my Incarnate technique.”

She was somewhat embarrassed to appear in front of her Legion members while being carried on someone’s back like a child. But she also hesitated to use flashy Incarnate techniques or special attacks just to offset the speed of her fall with reactive forces.

“Hurry and get us down.” Kuroyukihime was about to climb on the smaller avatar’s back, overcoming her embarrassment. But once again, she was unable to follow through.

Suddenly, she smelled something on the wind. The scent of dry paper and black tea. A large hardcover book and…royal milk tea steeped with CTC Assam.

“Megumi?” Kuroyukihime murmured hoarsely, sending her gaze racing over the area.

A tall, narrow building standing alone on the north side of Sengakuji. At the top, tapered in like a tower, a single shadow appeared. The distinctive silhouette with a visor and swollen armor skirt was a perfect match for the duel avatar of Megumi Wakamiya that sat in her memory. The pale-peach light that enveloped her slender body was likely an Incarnate overlay.

The avatar brandished the staff gripped in her right hand high above her head and spoke in a voice that sounded pained somehow.

“Paradigm Revolution.”

Rainbow light shot out of the staff, passed close by the Archangel Metatron hovering directly above, and pierced the cloud colored in the dawn’s light.

Once again, the world shook. The shimmering rainbow aurora rapidly spread out, blew past Kuroyukihime and Niko as they braced themselves, and scattered off behind them. The color of the clouds changed from a bloody red to a noxious purple.

Then the terrain was transformed. The buildings of the Demon City stage, perpendicular like swords, grew long, sharp thorns that twisted in weird ways. At Kuroyukihime’s and Niko’s feet, the steel plates rippled like living creatures, became gnarled, and grew countless nail-like spikes.

“Rain, hang on!” Kuroyukihime reached out and pulled Niko’s avatar in close. In a complete turnaround from the situation a moment earlier, the Red King was pressed up against Kuroyukihime’s chest.

“Wh-what the hell?!” Niko shouted. “What’s going on?!”

“A forced Change. It’s the Hell stage!!” Kuroyukihime shouted, turning her gaze to their comrades on the ground.

There were a number of fiendish gimmicks in the Hell stage, the greatest of the dark types, and one of them was that the ground was a damage zone. All earth outside of buildings and dungeons changed into steel thorns, poisonous bogs, acid swamps, lava, and more, so that players took damage by simply standing still.

If you drew a Hell stage in a Normal Duel Field, it just meant that the battle would be decided that much faster, and the Gallery was, in fact, delighted at the appearance of the super-rare stage. On the other hand, however, if the Unlimited Neutral Field changed to a Hell stage, it was truly hell. If there were no buildings nearby to flee into and no way to deal with the damage zones, you were forced to seek out a safe zone while dying any number of times.

Fortunately, Black Lotus’s normal hovering movement ability rendered the majority of the damage zones harmless, but that wasn’t the case for her comrades. She was about to lean over the building and instruct the newly regenerated Legion members to flee inside a building, but before she could, Niko shouted.

“Ah! The angel girl!”

“…?!”

She quickly looked up and saw that the Archangel Metatron had lost the light enveloping her body and was plummeting to the ground, countless feathers scattering, like a swan shot with an arrow.

In the Shiba Park Underground Labyrinth, which was her palace, there was a gimmick that forcibly weakened Metatron when the interior changed to a Hell stage. Most likely, that same mechanism worked on her true form as well, and the very fact that she was in this space robbed her of her power, after she had just used Trisagion and exhausted herself. There was no way this was a coincidence.

The White Legion—and the White King, White Cosmos, had anticipated the interference of the Archangel Metatron. In which case, Cosmos wouldn’t be satisfied with merely sealing Metatron’s power away. Kuroyukihime had no doubt that she would pull yet another trick to try to defeat Metatron’s main form.

She couldn’t decide whether to go save her comrades trapped in damage zones or the falling Metatron. As she wrestled with this, she called in the back of her mind.

Silver Crow…Haruyuki, where are you?!

Shihoko Nago/Chocolat Puppeter was the first of the fourteen-member attack team to die. Thus, she also regenerated before everyone else, albeit only by a matter of seconds. But those seconds gave her the time to process a series of unexpected incidents.

The pillar of light that poured down just before she regenerated instantly melted the ice wall imprisoning them and forced the powerful foes Glacier Behemoth and Snow Fairy to freeze themselves. It seemed like the danger of Unlimited PK had receded, but right before she regenerated, the veil of the aurora spread out once more and changed the field from the Demon Stage that was all cold and flat metal to a disgusting, desolate stage that Shihoko had never seen before. Countless sharp spikes shot up through the ground, and the instant she felt the sharp pain on the soles of her feet, she realized that this was a powerful damage zone and that her regenerated friends would be hurt once more.

If it had been a normal Change, the wait time for all the death markers would have been ignored, and they would have all regenerated instantly, but there was no change in the majority of the markers. So this was indeed an extremely irregular phenomenon deliberately brought about by someone.

Satomi and Yume had died at nearly the same time, and they were already back, faces twisting with pain on top of the spikes. Even if they did try to make a break for the buildings beyond the plaza, the members of Oscillatory who had survived the initial massive-scale laser attack would likely be lying in wait there, and escaping in a small group was basically like telling them to pick them off one by one.

I came back to life first. I have to do something fast, Shihoko thought, sending her gaze up to her own health gauge. Because she was taking about 1 percent damage every second due to the spikes, her special-attack gauge was also inching upward, but it had returned to zero when she regenerated; it would take too long to charge like this. Making up her mind, she threw her body on the thorny ground.

“Aah!” A cry slipped out of her at the intense burning pain across her body, but she gritted her teeth and stayed in position.

“Choco!”

“What are you—?!”

Satomi and Yume were about to race over to her, but she held up a hand to check them and got to her feet. In just a few seconds, her health gauge had dropped by nearly half, but her special-attack gauge was charged up to where she needed it to be.

“Cocoa Fountain!!”

As she shouted the technique name, she turned her hands downward, and brown chocolate welled up from the roots of the spikes, covering the ground in the blink of an eye. It had no sooner enveloped her comrades’ death markers than she was turning to Mint Mitten. “Min-Min, cool it off!”

Her longtime friend appeared to grasp Shihoko’s intent immediately. She touched the large gloves equipped on her hands to the chocolate pond and shouted, “Vapor Compression!!”

Mint Mitten’s main fighting method was to slow her opponent’s movement with chilling techniques such as Menthol Blow and Icilin Strike and then finish them off with hand-to-hand combat. But those techniques were hallucinations of cold at best; they didn’t actually generate any chill damage, so if her opponent realized this, they would push past the chill through sheer willpower and charge her. To turn the tables in situations like that, she had a third special attack, Vapor Compression. This technique made use of the compressors built into her hands to carry out vaporization and instantly produce real freezing air. If a player was hit directly, they would take targeted damage as the moving parts of their body froze. It didn’t have the same brutal power of Glacier Behemoth’s Sigh of Cocytus, but at the moment, it was more than enough.

Steam jetted from Mint’s shoulders, and a pale cloud of chilled air puffed out from her hands to cover the chocolate. The chocolate hardened in an instant, the spikes buried beneath it, to nullify the damage zone.

Immediately after, Olive Grab and Bush Utan regenerated. They had no sooner regained their material bodies than they were brandishing fists.

“How dare you do this…”

“…to us, you jerrrrks!”

They were ready to fly out at the massive cube of ice standing to the rear of Shihoko and her friends.

“Ah…W-wait, U!” Shihoko hurriedly moved to stop them.

The ice cube, more than three meters on each side, encased Glacier Behemoth, shrinking his dragon bulk down as much as possible, and Snow Fairy, pressed to his chest. Fairy herself had created the ice. The instant before the incredibly destructive laser rained down on the area, she had locked them up in the cube to avoid instant death.

So she wasn’t surprised that Utan and Olive wanted to surround them and attack while the pair were still in there. But most likely, it wasn’t that they weren’t moving, but that they couldn’t move. The ice was so hard and strong that it couldn’t be broken from inside, which is exactly why it could withstand a direct hit from that laser. In other words, attacking and breaking the ice from the outside might have the effect of saving Fairy and Behemoth.

But Shihoko was at a loss for how to explain this guess to Utan and Olive when they burned with such rage. But before she could open her mouth again, Satomi and Yume took practical action and pinned their arms behind their backs.

“You can’t leave the chocolate!”

“You’ll take damage if you step on the thorns!”

Properly warned, Utan and Olive finally noticed the malicious spikes buried in the ground beyond the chocolate zone. They blinked their eye lenses rapidly a few times and then looked up at the dark-purple sky, shuddering.

“Th-this can’t be…”

“The Hell stage our boys have heard about?”

Hearing this, the girls’ faces also grew grim.

“What? A Hell stage?”

“I’ve never seen one before…”

Of course, it was also the first time Shihoko had seen with her own eyes the Hell stage, the greatest of the dark types—the most malicious and evil of all stage attributes. She tried to remember what its gimmicks were, but the core of her mind was numb, and her thoughts wouldn’t connect at all. A coincidence? Probably not. So then the White Legion changed the Demon City to Hell? How? And for what purpose?

She stood stock-still, gaping up at the bizarre color of the sky.

Suddenly, she heard a strange resonance like bundled steel plates being ripped apart. Followed by a husky yell.

“Watch out!”

Someone shoved her down from behind, and a millisecond later, a beam of dull-black light shot through the space above her head before plunging into the ground on the north side of the plaza. A lump of darkness swelled up, and strange flames exploded upward.

The one who had saved Shihoko was Magenta Scissor—Rui Odagiri. Now that she thought about it, Magenta had also tried to save her when Snow Fairy used Brinicle. The fact that she’d been able to detect a danger and move before anyone else, even though she, too, had only just regenerated, was proof that she’d also been thinking coolly while she was dead.

She was a scary enemy when I met her…But she actually is pretty amazing.

Shihoko moved to thank Rui. “Um, Magenta, thanks…”

“Talk later. We’re in a bad sitch here,” she muttered.

The urgency in her tone made Shihoko ask the obvious: Who on earth had fired that black beam of light just now? Had one of the Oscillatory members who fled Sengakuji to avoid the initial massive laser returned?

And then she noticed an impossibly enormous human-shaped silhouette entering the plaza through the gate on the south side. It far surpassed Glacier Behemoth in height, reaching ten meters at least. It leaned forward with long arms, spiraling horns growing out of its head. Its face sank into the shadows; the eyes alone were red like glowing embers. She found it hard to believe that this was a duel avatar, and she stared hard before she saw the four green horizontal lines tacked up above the giant’s head. A health gauge. But in the Unlimited Neutral Field, duel avatar health gauges were invisible. Which meant it was an Enemy. And one that had a four-level health gauge…

“A Legend class?” Shihoko murmured.

“No,” Aqua Current replied, having regenerated at some point. “That is…Devil class. The highest level of Enemy, appearing only in the Hell stage.” Even Current’s normally calm voice contained an edge of tension.

“One thing after another…isn’t it?” Cyan Pile sounded similarly strained as he came to stand next to her.

And then from the other side of him, Ash Roller groaned, “Out of the frying pan into the fire, man.”

Crimson flames in its eyes, the massive demon looked down on Shihoko and her friends as it approached one steady step after the other. A type of pressure she’d never felt before made her want to flee immediately, but not everyone was done regenerating. Only nine had come back to life so far; the remaining five would regenerate within a minute or so, but in this situation, that was a very, very long time.

As the Enemy approached, it cried out in a bizarre voice, “ ” An inky electrical current ran along its two twisted horns.

“It’s coming again! Evasive action!” Magenta cried out sharply, still supporting Shihoko from behind.

Everyone immediately dropped into a defensive position. But the chocolate safe zone that Shihoko and Satomi had created wasn’t even ten meters across, making it difficult to leap off in any one direction.

The sparks coalesced into a small point in front of the devil’s forehead before transforming into the dark laser and jetting forward once more. The light roared bizarrely, like the cry of a living creature, as it closed in, and the nine Burst Linkers moved desperately to avoid it.

Fortunately, none of them took a direct hit, but the beam of light scraped the cube of ice a little ways off and slid away to the north, causing another massive explosion.

“Dammit. The ice!” Cyan Pile shouted.

Shihoko hurriedly looked over at the blue cube and saw a crack spreading out from where the beam had grazed it. The entire cube threatened to smash to pieces if it was hit again.

What would Behemoth and Fairy do if they were released now? Would they ignore the devil and activate their Incarnate techniques to annihilate Nega Nebulus once more? Or would they flee to a safe place like their comrades? Or…would they call a temporary cease-fire and fight alongside Shihoko and hers?

Were there really three possibilities? Was a future maybe possible where they could understand the members of Oscillatory and be understood in return, like with Rui, who earnestly tried to protect Shihoko now? She took her eyes off the approaching Enemy and looked up at the two Burst Linkers locked in the cube behind her.

“No. They won’t help us,” Aqua Current spat harshly, having come to stand next to Shihoko at some point, almost as if to put an end to the younger girl’s optimistic questioning. She returned her gaze to the Enemy to the south. “Because it was Oscillatory who made the change to the Hell stage, and it’s them controlling the Devil class.”

“C-controlling?” Shihoko repeated, dumbfounded.

Current pointed at the Enemy’s head with her flowing-water hand. “You can see a silver crown on the forehead.”

“Oh…You really can…” When she narrowed her eyes, Shihoko could see it, too: a metal crown embedded right below the twisting spiral horns. The monster didn’t have any other type of adornment, so the silver circlet was out of sync with the rest of the design.

“That’s an item Oscillatory uses to tame Enemies. Meaning Fairy and the rest of them won’t attack that thing.”

Shihoko clenched her dark-brown fists. Her hopeful thought of maybe being able to fight together was sweeter than even white chocolate. Oscillatory Universe was trying to eradicate Nega Nebulus from the Accelerated World and wasn’t fussy about how they did it. They were the ultimate enemy, and the only thing left for Nega Nebulus to do was fight and destroy them. “I understand.”

As Shihoko spoke, Moose and Porcupine, formerly of Prominence’s Triplex, and Nega Nebulus Element Ardor Maiden regenerated. They had already grasped the desperate nature of the situation apparently, and Moose stepped forward, swinging his horns.

“This area is disadvantageous for fighting a Devil class. We move north in thirty seconds!”

“But, Moose, the area around us is all damage zone!” Maiden noted.

“Pokki will take care of the thorns!” he replied without hesitation.

“Whoa, don’t go dumping this in my lap!” Thistle Porcupine snapped but then looked back and instructed, “I’ll make a path, so everyone get ready to dash!”

The party responded as one.

Two seconds later, the remaining two death markers were enveloped in light one after the other, and the leader and Submaster of the attacking team—Scarlet Rain and Blood Leopard—were regenerated.

A second after that, the Devil-class Enemy dropped into position to fire the dark laser for the third time.

“Evasion rea—,” Moose started to say.

“We can’t!” Shihoko turned to him and screamed, forgetting herself. “The cube is in the line of sight!!”

If the ice cube was hit with the beam of light one more time, it would be destroyed—and Behemoth and Fairy freed. If Nega Nebulus got caught in a pincer attack between a Devil-class Enemy and two of the Seven Dwarves, there was a strong possibility that they would be annihilated once more.

“Nngh!” Moose groaned.

“Anyone with Incarnate defense to the front!” Sky Raker’s clear voice rang out. “We will take this, no matter what!”

Instantly, Aqua Current and Cassis Moose lined up on either side of Raker. They were enveloped in Current’s blue, Moose’s purple, and Raker’s green overlays.

In contrast, the Devil-class Enemy appeared to be grinning from a height of ten meters. “ ” The dark sparks concentrated instantly into a point.

“Maelstrom!!” shouted Aqua Current.

“Dozer Blade!!” Cassis Moose.

“Wind Veil!!” Sky Raker.

A vortex of water spinning at high speeds became a circular shield, a steel plate with rough spikes growing out from top and bottom ate into the ground, and a green wind became a dome to wrap around them all. A triple Incarnate defensive wall from three of the most powerful class of high rankers. It seemed impossible that there existed an attack in the Accelerated World that this could not defend against.

However…However.

Shihoko—and probably the other thirteen—had forgotten about the fifteenth death marker spinning quietly a little ways off from the brown safety zone. Without anyone noticing, the ivory duel avatar regenerated at some point and raised his right hand in a relaxed motion. The dry, emotionless voice they had heard an hour earlier echoed once more.

“Imaginary Time.”

Shihoko felt an empty film without sound or light or vibration spread out like foam. Dammit. Dammit. Now it wouldn’t just be the triple wall that would be eliminated but also the ice cube imprisoning Fairy and Behemoth.

“Him!”

“This is bad!”

Perhaps thinking the same thing, Magenta Scissor took the large knives off her hips, and Cyan Pile raised the pile driver of his right arm. But they were already too late.

“Vorpal Strike!!”

Shihoko felt like she heard a new voice. Maybe it was just a thought that echoed in her soul. Because even if someone had called out that technique name, she’d never make it in time, and beyond that, the voice belonged to someone who wasn’t even there.

However.

From behind Shihoko and her friends, a crimson light raced across the sky, howling with a metallic vibration, and pierced the right side of the ivory duel avatar, digging deep into the robe-type armor. The colorless foam about to swallow the Incarnate wall was repelled and disappeared without a sound. And then the devil launched its dark beam of light.

Aqua Current’s water wall was the first to be hit, and it was pierced after two seconds of resistance. Cassis Moose’s steel wall lasted three seconds before the laser cut through it. Finally, Sky Raker’s wind wall held the black light for four, five seconds, spectacular sparks flying everywhere. Eventually, the beam of light gradually grew narrower, flickered and decayed, and then disappeared.

“Giga-coooooooool!! That’s my Master Raker!!” Ash Roller shouted, and Bush Utan patted him on the back.

“Sure, but, Bro, what was that attack?!”

Shihoko turned around with them and saw a shadow leaning forward and racing toward them at top speed as though the damage zone didn’t exist. Even in the weak lighting of the Hell stage, the armor was still semitransparent, shining deeply like black crystal. Sharp swords extended from all four limbs. Violet-blue eye lenses glittered sharply behind goggles. The Black King, World End, Black Lotus.

“Lo…Why…?!” Ardor Maiden gave voice to all their confusion, and the Black King nodded wordlessly in return.

It was a fact that Kuroyukihime had alighted on the bus they were all riding at Nishi Shinjuku. Even if she had gotten back on the next bus that came, she probably wouldn’t have reached Minato No. 3 before the start of the Territories. And to begin with, why had she come chasing after them anyway? It should have been impossible at that point to see through to the massive trap the White Legion had set.

Shihoko gaped while the Black King came around to the safe zone and stopped to face the ivory duel avatar.

“I never imagined you’d come yourself, Ivory Tower.”

Not responding immediately to the Black King, the tall, slender tower of an avatar glanced at his hip where a hole gaped. He had to have been feeling intense pain at having taken a blow like that in the Unlimited Neutral Field—not to mention the sharp thorns he was standing on—but he was impossibly unruffled.

The name Ivory Tower had been in the mission notes. Although he was the fourth of the Seven Dwarves, he was the White King’s full proxy, a mysterious Burst Linker.

“I would say the same to you, Black Lotus,” Ivory spoke in an even, nearly inflectionless tone as he shifted his gaze back to her, almost as though he felt no pain. “Exactly what did you come here to do?”

“It’s obvious. I came to crush the plans of Oscillatory and the Acceleration Research Society.”

“I see. That was a foolish question. I suppose I should have asked why you came. We had no intention of involving you in the true hell that is about to begin,” he spat, and while Shihoko struggled to understand what he meant, he revealed the arm hidden by his robe-type armor.

“That…can’t be?!” Sky Raker shouted as soon as she saw the white staff clutched in his hand.

It didn’t look like the sort of Enhanced Armament that would surprise a Burst Linker as experienced as Sky Raker. About eighty centimeters long, it was extremely simple overall, with just a silver sphere at the top.

The instant Ivory Tower moved to brandish the staff, Black Lotus moved again. “Vorpal Strike!!”

The sword of her right hand moved like a flash of light, launching a crimson lance at a speed that seemed impossible for an Incarnate technique. But just as it was on the verge of gouging into Ivory Tower’s shoulder, the special attack was blocked by a massive hand coming down from the sky above.

The Devil-class Enemy, which had gotten quite close without them noticing, had reached out its left hand to protect Ivory. The crimson lance plunged deep into the thick palm but didn’t manage to pierce it, and the devil didn’t look to have taken any real damage. The massive hand grabbed onto Ivory Tower and lifted him up onto its shoulder. It was then that Shihoko realized that the sphere embedded in Ivory Tower’s staff and the crown biting into the devil’s forehead shone with exactly the same silver light.

“There’s no mistake,” Fuko said. “That’s The Luminary.”

“For real?!” Thistle Porcupine threw her head back. “It looks like a toy, though!”

“The Seven Arcs are shaped by their owners. In other words, this means that system-wise, Ivory Tower is the owner.”

It had already been clear that the delta Arc, The Luminary, was in the hands of the Acceleration Research Society—the White Legion. In which case, the owner naturally should have been the White King, White Cosmos. So had she transferred this peerless Enhanced Armament to her underling for the sake of the battle that day?

They’re serious. How serious are they, even? They’re using any and all methods to try to crush Nega Nebulus.

A chill ran up her spine.

The devil was so tall, she had to crane her neck to look up at its shoulder where Ivory Tower brandished his staff once more. The silver orb shone brilliantly, and the devil’s crown flashed in response.

Shihoko felt another new shaking of the earth beneath her feet. It wasn’t just the main gate to the south of the plaza. Massive shadows were approaching from the east, west, and north entrances. Human-shaped. Dragon-shaped. Others shaped like cows or wolves or squid. Maybe ten of them. All were unbelievably huge and terribly repulsive, and without exception, silver crowns glittered on their heads.

“This many…Devil-class…,” Cyan Pile groaned.

Even the normally voluble Ash Roller merely muttered, “Tera sucks…”

Shihoko, Satomi, and Yume were frozen in place, unable to make a sound.

“Fairy’s Brinicle was a manifestation of the bare minimum of respect and mercy, I’ll have you know.” Ivory Tower’s voice was as inorganic and yet somehow as pitying as ever. “That technique kills you in an instant quietly, like going to sleep. In exchange, Fairy and Behemoth would be forced to focus for dozens, hundreds of hours, and I would continue to die with you, but even so, we chose to do that. However, you rejected our mercy. This is the result of that.”

As if drawn in by the brightly shining staff, the herd of devils drew closer step by step. Dark clouds rolled in, and lightning flashed incessantly.

“You will die tortured by the thorns of Hell and the tyranny of the devils. You will continue to suffer until the last of you reaches total point loss. You are the ones who chose this.”

The ten Devil-class Enemies surrounded Shihoko and her friends, crying out strangely. “ ” “ ” Saliva dripped from long fangs, and countless tentacles twisted violently.

“‘You are the ones who chose this’? That line sounds very much like your ilk,” the Black King said in a strong, echoing voice, sword-arms still readied in front of and behind her. “Do you intend to tell me that the very people who were parasitized chose the Armor of Catastrophe and the ISS kits? You’re wrong about that. You lot have deftly manipulated so many Burst Linkers, pressed their backs to the wall, and created situations in which they had absolutely no choice but to do what you wanted. But don’t think that this trick is going to work forever. Today, Nega Nebulus is going to destroy all your plans!”

Ivory Tower narrowed his eye lenses into slender threads at this bold proclamation. “That in itself is a foolish choice.”

The herd of devils inched forward, as if unable to contain their anticipation for the moment of slaughter. The air, already tensed to the limit, shuddered, practically crackling with electricity.

Standing as though to protect Shihoko and her friends, Magenta Scissor abruptly murmured in a hoarse voice, “Choco—Chocolat. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get you three out of here at least.” Her armor shone a red light. There was only one reason that a duel avatar would emit light outside of a special attack: an Incarnate overlay.

After blinking for a second, Shihoko touched her hand gently to Magenta Scissor’s back. “Choco’s fine, Magenta Scissor. Thanks…But we’re not giving up yet.”

Magenta Scissor looked back, surprised, and Shihoko stared hard at the face hidden by ribbon armor.

“I’m sure there’s still something we can do. No matter how hopeless the situation, we can open up a path somewhere. I believe that.”

“You’re pretty strong, huh, Choco?” Magenta Scissor smiled faintly, and then, as if that were a sign, they—fifteen in number now with the Black King—dropped into a ready position at the same time.

“Well, then.” On the Enemy’s shoulder, Ivory Tower brandished The Luminary even higher. “Good-bye, Black Legion.” He brought the Arc down, and ten devils roared.