Accel World - Volume 23 - Chapter 5

5

Transformed into his pink pig avatar for the first time in a while, Haruyuki let out a sigh of relief when his small hooves touched solid ground. Given that this was a VR space designed by Fuko—whose nicknames were ICBM and Strato-Shooter—he’d been ready for there not to even be any ground depending on her mood, but apparently, she hadn’t gone that far. He lifted his head to look around.

“Eeeeeeah!” He immediately shrieked and fell flat on his backside. Instantly, laughter came from all around him.

“See? He couldn’t handle it, either! I win the bet, Bell!” a redheaded girl yelled, cloaked in something a fairy-tale prince would wear. One day earlier she had been the second head of the Red Legion, Prominence, and was now the provisional Submaster of the third Nega Nebulus, the Red King aka Scarlet Rain aka Yuniko Kozuki aka Niko.

The girl standing beside her in a dress and cat ears, with gloved, cat paw hands on her hips, was Haruyuki’s childhood friend and Takumu’s Brain Burst child, Lime Bell aka Chiyuri Kurashima. “Aah, come on! You’re always flying around! You should be able to deal with high places!”

“High places?” Haruyuki bounced to his feet. “Anyone would be surprised by this! I mean, a tower or a floating island or whatever’s one thing, but this thing is alive!”

As he spoke, he checked his surroundings once more. No matter which direction he looked, it was blue sky and white clouds. The area at his feet was a gray plane, but it rounded off to either side, dropping down, and then rose up like a hill in front of him. Behind him, a massive boomerang-shaped gill stretched out long and thin, wavering in the air. Haruyuki and his friends were standing on the back of a creature with flowing lines, ten meters long and seven meters wide.

“Master, is this a whale?” he asked the girl avatar in the light-blue dress standing on the hill—the head of the massive creature.

“Correct, Corvus.” Grinning, Sky Raker aka Fuko Kurasaki continued, the slight breeze playing with her long, flaxen hair. “Her name is Thalassa. Favorite foods: cirrocumulus and fish-scale clouds. She hates lightning and gets a little wild going into cumulonimbus, so be careful.”

“… R-right.”

But this isn’t the Unlimited Neutral Field. It’s a VR space in the global network, so it’s entirely up to you whether or not there are cumulonimbus clouds. He kept this remark to himself as he bobbed his head up and down.

Looking around once more, he saw that more than ten avatars were already assembled on the flying whale’s enormous back. They were all different shapes and colors, but he could quickly pick out Ardor Maiden/Utai Shinomiya in her shrine maiden attire, Aqua Current/Akira Himi transformed into an otter, Cyan Pile/Takumu Mayuzumi looking like an old-timey robot, and the leopard-headed motorcycle rider Blood Leopard/Mihaya Kakei.

The three female avatars in apron dresses that strongly resembled their real-world selves were without a doubt Petit Paquet: Chocolat Puppeter/Shihoko Nago, Mint Mitten/Satomi Mito, and Plum Flipper/Yume Yuruki. The long-haired girl in the light-purple nurse’s uniform with a pair of large scissors hanging at her hip was probably Magenta Scissor/Rui Odagiri. This was the former Nega Nebulus group.

After meeting each of their gazes in turn, Haruyuki turned his eyes toward the three unfamiliar avatars standing on the tail end of the whale.

Two had design elements in common with Pard. The head of the male avatar in a dark-red suit was that of a deer with large antlers. The head of the girl avatar in a dress of the same material as the suit was a porcupine with long quills. He assumed the deer was Cassis Moose, while the porcupine was Thistle Porcupine, both of the former Prominence’s Triplex.

After nodding at them, Haruyuki turned to the third person and his jaw dropped. “Whoa…”

The avatar was unbelievably high quality.

Unlike the duel avatar that was automatically generated by the Brain Burst program, avatars used in the normal full-dive space were created by the users themselves. Naturally, you could use or customize ready-made data, but if you had the skills, you could build one yourself from scratch.

Haruyuki had once created a supercool—although when he thought about it now, he couldn’t deny he had overdone it—black knight avatar to use on the Umesato local net, but it had been stolen from him after a few days by a bunch of hooligans. He’d been forced instead to use a pink pig avatar, part of the default set from the school, which he was also using now. He could have gone back to his black knight avatar anytime after the main hooligan disappeared, but he continued to wear the pig avatar even now because he’d gotten used to it. And because Kuroyukihime had said she liked it.

But the craftsmanship of the avatar standing a few meters away from him far surpassed that of the black knight that Haruyuki had poured his soul into. If he were to express it in a word, perhaps that word would have been “idol.” The bright-red bolero and miniskirt were processed with a glossy effect that shone in complex ways, and the ruffles and ribbons were also ridiculously detailed. And more than anything else, the avatar wearing this outfit was so vivid and alive that it didn’t even look like an avatar. Haruyuki knew of only one other person who had a human avatar with this level of precision, design, and data load.

The idol avatar approached him, her long pigtails swinging smoothly. “Been a while, Silver Crow,” she greeted, in a voice that had just the slightest echo of something boyish to it.

The voice was familiar, and Haruyuki opened his eyes wide. “Oh… Blaze Heart?”

“Yup.” The idol avatar nodded.

“Um.” He cocked his head. “How did you know I was Crow?”

Haruyuki had only fought the former Prominence’s Blaze Heart in the Territories once and then seen her at the Legion merger negotiations. They’d never run into each other in a VR space, much less in the real world. So she should have had no reason for deciding that this pink pig avatar was Silver Crow… or so he thought.

The beautiful pigtailed girl blinked in slight exasperation. “Well, Lime Bell said you’re always flying around, so. And Sky Raker called you Corvus.”

“… O-oh, right.”

“But I figured it was probably you when I first saw you, before they said anything. Good avatar. I like it.”

“Ah… Th-thanks…”

It was a simple thing to say, but his heart inevitably started… well, blazing.

Behind him, he heard the clearing of a throat, followed by light footsteps. A female avatar stepped forward, clad in a long, onyx dress with black spangle butterfly wings on her back. Boasting a level of perfection that didn’t pale before Blaze Heart, this was of course the avatar of the current head of Nega Nebulus, Kuroyukihime.

Gently pushing her closed parasol into the whale’s back, the Black King faced Blaze. Long strands of jet-black hair and reddish-brown pigtails rippled gently in the virtual breeze.

In the Territories at the end of the previous month, Blaze Heart had told Haruyuki that it was an undeniable fact that the Black King had launched a surprise attack on the previous Red King and driven him to total point loss, and thus she could never get along with Nega Nebulus. But she had also voted in favor of the merger with no conditions. What on earth had changed her mind? Or did her true feelings remain the same? Haruyuki still didn’t know. With bated breath, he watched as the two girls faced each other.

“It’s not that I’ve forgiven you for driving Rider to total point loss,” Blaze Heart said, her voice hard.

Haruyuki wasn’t the only one who tensed up at this; the original Negabu members and the Triplex also seemed on edge.

But the look on Kuroyukihime’s face did not change as she nodded slowly.

“But setting that aside, I will express my gratitude for your sacrifice in saving Rain. Thanks.” Blaze finished and bowed neatly.

“No.” Kuroyukihime spoke at last. “I, and the other kings, didn’t set out to protect Rain. It was simply that we needed her mobility to help as many of our comrades as possible escape the flames of the Sun God Inti.”

Hearing this, Haruyuki glanced over to one side where Niko stood alongside Pard. She kept her arms crossed and her mouth shut.

“Still, it’s a fact that you ended up in an unlimited EK ’cause of this, Lotus,” Thistle Porcupine said, the bittersweet, high tone of her voice contrasting with her masculine manner of speaking. “And like… you’re our LM already, so just accept our thanks.”

“I see,” Kuroyukihime replied, a slight wry smile rising up on her face. “Well then, allow me to say just one master-like thing to you. From now on, when I do anything for a member, there is absolutely no need to thank me.”

“Hmm, spoken like a strosi mas, just like the rumors,” the deer-headed Cassis Moose murmured from Thistle’s side.

“Um.” Haruyuki threw his arm up into the air, bewildered by just one part of this statement. “What’s a ‘strosi mas’?”

“A strong and silent Legion Master, boy.”

“Uh… uh-huh.” He took a moment to digest this. “So then what kind of master is Rain?”

“She’s pretty pushy, so a push mas,” Cassis replied.

“I see.” Haruyuki nodded, and an angry cry came from his left.

“Hey, Cassi! How exactly am I pushy, huh?! And Crow, don’t just go agreeing!!”

“Isn’t what you’re doing right now push—?” Haruyuki started, pig nose wiggling.

It looked like he’d gotten a hit in accidentally. Niko cleared her throat and clapped her hands together loudly, cutting him off. “An! Y! Way! This is everyone who’s supposed to be at the meeting. And unlike BB, we’re not accelerated here, so let’s get this show on the road, or we’re gonna be here all night!”

“Rain’s right,” Fuko assented with a smile and gently dropped down from the whale’s head to move into the center of the group. “So then it’s about time we got to the main agenda. I had intended to serve as our chair, but if there are any objections…” She looked at the faces of the assembled party and quickly continued. “It appears there are not. So everyone, please sit.”

Fuko snapped her fingers, and simple round chairs appeared on the whale’s back, matching the size of each avatar through some unknown mechanism. Haruyuki jumped onto the mini chair that materialized right behind him and sat up straight. With all eyes on her, Fuko snapped her fingers again, showing not the slightest hint of nerves. Now, rather than chairs, a large whiteboard rose up, and the VR space began to take on the air of a lively classroom.

UI> FU, YOU SEEM LIKE A TEACHER SOMEHOW.

Utai typed in the chat window, and Moose and the other members of the former Prominence group glanced at the small shrine maiden. They couldn’t have known that Utai had expressive aphasia and could only speak in her own voice in the Accelerated World. But perhaps they sensed something nonetheless and chose not to ask about the chat window.

“Goodness, I do? Then perhaps I should change clothes,” Fuko replied. Smiling, she performed some deft movements in a window. The breezy light-blue dress changed into a very teacherly blouse and tight skirt, with her hair pulled up, and rimless glasses resting on her nose.

Now dressed for the role, Fuko cleared her throat and wrote in big black letters across the entire whiteboard: “Mission to subjugate the Sun God Inti.”

“I explained beforehand in a mail to those of you who were not at the meeting of the Seven Kings, but…” Fuko turned around, and Takumu and Akira nodded silently. Seeing this, she continued to explain in a voice that while gentle, still carried well.

“Just in case, I’ll go over the main points again. Thanks to the replay card Choco recorded for us, we were able to prove that the White Legion’s Ivory Tower is the Acceleration Research Society’s Black Vise, and that the puppet master behind the many tragedies and upheavals in the Accelerated World is the White King, White Cosmos. But Vise changed the meeting venue into the Unlimited Neutral Field with the Incarnate technique of Wolfram Cerberus—more precisely, Orchid Oracle trapped inside of Cerberus—and dropped the Legend-class Enemy, the Sun God Inti, which had been captured with the Arc Luminary, onto the heads of the meeting participants. Although the majority managed to escape, all the kings except for Rain fell into a state of Unlimited EK inside of Inti’s flames.”

As he listened to Fuko, Haruyuki hung his head; the terror, impatience, and helplessness of that instant rushed back. But then he heard a high-pitched noise and reflexively looked up.

The source was the retractable pointer Fuko held in her right hand. With modern electronic blackboards, such a thing was no longer in use, but she now resolutely rapped it against every character on the whiteboard as she continued.

“Thus, the new mission for our Nega Nebulus is to subjugate the Sun God Inti and rescue our Legion Master and the other four kings. At today’s meeting, I want us to openly discuss the ways we could do this.”

“Sorry. You mind if I…?” Blaze Heart asked.

Fuko encouraged her with a gesture. “Go ahead, Blaze.”

“I want to check on two things before we get on with the business at hand. First, if we’re going to investigate this topic, shouldn’t we invite not just the members of Negabu, but also that of GW and all the Leos? And the other thing is, if it’s just about rescuing the kings, we don’t have to go to all the trouble of defeating Inti, right? We can just move it a few meters or something.”

Now that she mentioned it, that was exactly right. From the impression he’d gotten fighting in the Territories, Haruyuki had thought that Blaze Heart was an impulsive, straightforward, and determined idol, but apparently, she was quite the theorist off the battlefield.

“About your first question.” Fuko pursed her lips about 30 percent. “The reason that we did not invite guests from the other Legions is because this meeting is taking place in a dive call. Many people have their real faces reflected in their chat avatars, so the risk in having outside members is too high. In which case, why did we not have the meeting in the Accelerated World? Now that we’ve entered into an all-out war with Oscillatory, we don’t know what could happen over there. With an opponent who can change the normal duel field into the Unlimited Neutral Field, even if we thought we completely eliminated all outsiders, we couldn’t say with absolute certainty that they did not infiltrate the stage… To be honest, I don’t think the security in even this private VR space is perfect.”

“So then, in other words…” Niko, in her regal costume, pointed a finger at the head of the flying whale. “This location’s also a measure against peepers?”

“Well, just in case, you know,” Fuko agreed. “Thalassa is also set to cry out and let me know if there is any unauthorized access. Although I’d have to throw in the towel if someone was able to break that security.”

Haruyuki whirled his head around. Only a few scattered clouds hung in the air near the whale swimming lazily high in the sky, and of course, there was no sign of any other people. But it wasn’t necessarily the case that the visible was the whole truth, not only in the virtual space, but in the real world as well. Haruyuki had fallen into Dusk Taker’s trap because he had neglected to be on guard about just such facts.

When he brought his gaze back to the group, Fuko glanced over and smiled as if to reassure him, and then turned to Blaze Heart once more. “And the answer to your second question is… because it seems like more fun to defeat it than to move it.”

That’s the answer?! Haruyuki panicked, but Blaze grinned broadly.

“Okay, I’m in,” she said. “I’ll even offer the first idea to make up for holding up the meeting. The Sun God Inti is a ball of flames that’s immune to physical attacks and energy. In which case, the only way to destroy it is to douse it with lots of water. I know a bunch of Burst Linkers have had this idea before and actually tried to do it, but are any of them here?”

With this question in the air, Haruyuki and the rest of the former Nega Nebulus group looked at Akira. The otter avatar in the red glasses twitched her pointed nose unhappily.

“I refused at first, but I was forced to go along,” she sighed. “Four or five years ago, I attempted to subjugate Inti together with Graphite Edge. Prepared to die at any moment, I somehow managed to guard against the heat with my flowing water armor as I pulled Inti over two kilometers and dropped it in the pond at Akasaka Goyochi.”

Haruyuki had heard this story before, but now that he had personally experienced Inti’s awesome heat, it was five times more frightening, and he held his breath as he listened intently to Akira.

“Inti’s flames did weaken the instant it fell into the pond, and I thought I saw something like a core. Graph didn’t let the chance get away—he sliced at it with a charging attack. But the pond, which is easily two hundred meters across, evaporated in the blink of an eye. The idiot hero ended up roasted to death and I skipped out.”

All the Nega Nebulus veterans, including Kuroyukihime, laughed at Akira’s biting telling of the story, but Rui and Shihoko and her friends, along with Prominence’s Cassis, Thistle, and Blaze, were dumbfounded, at a loss for words.

Finally, Cassis Moose cleared his throat. “You mean the former member of the Nega Nebulus executive who has currently vanished from the scene, the dual sword user, the Anomaly, Graphite Edge?”

“The very same,” Akira assented.

“I’ve also heard any number of anecdotes from the era when he was active,” Cassis said. “But there are still many more of those heroic sagas, it seems.”

“They’re not heroic sagas,” she disagreed. “They’re records of follies.”

“W-well, I won’t comment on that. But from what you’ve told us, the idea of cooling it with water doesn’t seem to have much promise. Blaze, what was your idea specifically?” Cassis turned to the idol to bring her back into the discussion.

Blaze Heart raised her index finger. “A pond two hundred meters wide is not enough to douse Inti’s flames. And rumor has it, the Sun God is nowhere to be found when the Unlimited Neutral Field is a water-type stage. But, like, the way things are now, Inti can’t move even if it wants to, right? So then we can just wait patiently until a Storm or Ocean comes. Don’t you think?”

“Oh… Y-yeah,” Haruyuki muttered, and looked up at the sky of the virtual space.

It was an extremely simple idea, but Blaze Heart was exactly right. Although Storm and Ocean stages didn’t appear very often, neither was as rare as a Hell or a Heaven. If they dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field and waited for ten hours in real time—about a year and two months inside—they’d definitely encounter one or the other. In fact, it would have been totally par for the course for one or both to have come over the Accelerated World during the time from the end of the meeting of the Seven Kings to the start of this gathering.

“If I’d stayed inside and kept watch…” He hung his head with regret, and a hand slapped him on the back.

“Now why are you getting all down in the dumps by yourself?” Kuroyukihime asked.

“B-because we might have already missed our chance to get you out of there,” he protested.

“Listen. Do you think I hadn’t already considered what Blaze said?”

“Huh? S-so then what do you—?” Haruyuki started, but was interrupted by Fuko clapping her hands together in front of the whiteboard to get everyone’s attention.

“This is the perfect time to call in our additional meeting member.”

Huh? Someone else is coming? Who on earth…? Haruyuki wondered, while he watched Fuko flick at her window.

A second later, a new avatar materialized with a whoosh on the whale’s head.

Human-shaped, Japanese-style. But instead of the usual haori jacket and hakama trousers, he wore the noshi robes of Heian nobility in a blue richer than that of the sky behind him. On his head was a tall black eboshi hat, but the face beneath was covered in a porcelainlike mask.

The Japanese-style avatar bowed deeply, and Haruyuki leapt off his round chair. “L-Lead?! What are you doing here?!”

Standing tall again, the Japanese-style avatar walked over to Haruyuki as he spoke in a voice like a cool breeze. “What an awful thing to say, Crow. After all, I am also a member of Nega Nebulus.”

“Th-that’s true, but…” He waved his hands in a panic, and then he stopped in a moment of realization. Lead aka Trilead Tetroxide was also seeing Haruyuki’s pig avatar for the first time, just like Blaze Heart and the others. But he didn’t bother pestering his friend about this. He simply apologized instead. “Sorry, Lead, I didn’t mean to sound like you don’t belong here. I just kinda got the impression you couldn’t really dive too late at night…” From all his interactions with Trilead, he’d gotten the idea that the samurai was the son of a relatively “good” family.

“No, this hour is not a problem at all.” Lead appeared to smile beneath his mask. “And given that the situation is urgent, involving not only the Legion but the entire Accelerated World, I intend to participate in this meeting until its very end, even if it should extend into tomorrow.”

“Oh? Thanks, Lead.” Haruyuki bowed neatly, then stood on his chair, turning to face the other Legion members. “Um, I’m pretty sure some of you haven’t met before, so I’ll introduce you. This is Trilead Tetroxide. I call him Lead, though. He joined the Legion yesterday. He’s Graphite Edge’s student and a master swordsman himself.”

“I—I am far from a master,” Lead protested quickly, as he pressed his hands neatly up against his sides and bowed deeply. “I am called Trilead Tetroxide, and I was permitted to join Nega Nebulus at this time. However, this name is one given to me by my master…” He appeared to hesitate for a fleeting moment before continuing in an unshakable voice. “My formal avatar name is Azure Air. But I would be delighted if you were all to call me Lead as Crow does.”

“Roger, Lead! I’ll keep calling you that!” Chiyuri’s cat-eared avatar responded immediately.

This was also the first time Lead was seeing this version of her, but he bowed lightly again without a moment’s hesitation. “Thank you so much, Bell.”

Now that Haruyuki was thinking about it, the two of them had spent a long time together as they moved with Haruyuki and Metatron in the Territories the previous day in Minato Area No. 3. And in the final stages of the battle, Lead had carried Bell, racing across the ground covered in sharp thorns, to valiantly bring her to the battlefield before his strength gave out. After sharing an experience like that, it was only natural that they’d open up to each other. However.

“So you’re Trilead?” Takumu said, as he stood up.

Yikes, Haruyuki muttered internally.

Even after they’d stopped going out the previous fall, it was clear that Takumu continued to have feelings for Chiyuri. In fact, the reason he kept working so hard, never letting up on his studies, his kendo, or Brain Burst, was probably because he had the unshakable goal of becoming good enough for Chiyuri once more. What must he have been feeling at the exchange between her and Lead?

This misgiving of Haruyuki’s appeared to have been needless. Stepping over to Lead, Takumu offered his hand with his usual cheerful smile.

“We finally meet. I’m Cyan Pile, a blue type like you,” he said. “My main weapon isn’t a sword, though, unfortunately. There are a lot of girls in Nega Nebulus, so I’m happy we got another boy. I’m looking forward to fighting together.”

“Likewise. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Pile.”

Watching Takumu and Lead shake hands, Haruyuki secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He felt like he saw a lightning bolt travel between them for just an instant, but that was probably all in his head, so he decided to ignore it.

“So Master, what did you mean when you said it was the perfect time to call Lead?” Haruyuki asked Fuko, once the introductions were finished. “And how did you get in touch with him in the first place?”

“I didn’t,” she replied.

“Huh?” Haruyuki cocked his head as far as it would go to one side. “But this is a closed net. How did he—Oh! I get it. Graph.”

“Exactly. I invited Graph, but our reclusive hero sent his beloved student as a messenger.”

And Haruyuki realized what kind of message Trilead had brought. Moving his gaze, he asked the young, masked samurai, “Lead, is Graph monitoring Inti in the Unlimited Neutral Field?”

“Yes.” Lead looked around at the meeting members through his white mask. “When my master Graphite Edge learned about the events of the meeting of the Seven Kings from Raker, he began voluntarily monitoring the Sun God Inti in the Castle’s Kitanomaru Park. His aim was twofold: to inform Black Lotus if there was any sign of the Acceleration Research Society moving the Sun God Inti, and to confirm what happened to Inti when the Unlimited Neutral Field changed to an Ocean or Storm stage.”

“You mind?” Rui Odagiri in her nurse’s uniform raised her hand. “So you said ‘monitor’… It’s been about seven hours and forty minutes or so in real time from the end of the meeting of the Seven Kings until your appearance here. That’s more than three hundred days in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Monitoring any situation for that length of time would be impossible unless you had superhuman focus or the ability to decelerate like Black Vise.”

“In this case, it would be the former,” Lead replied smoothly, and added by way of explanation in a more serious tone, “Most likely, the members of the initial Nega Nebulus, his comrades in ancient battles, are well aware of this, but while Graphite Edge is normally very breezy and impossible to get ahold of, when push comes to shove, he displays unfathomable battle power and mental strength. My master appears to feel a deep remorse for Lotus and the other four kings ending up in an Unlimited EK. Thus, he volunteered personally for a grueling mission. But…”

The porcelainlike mask turned ever so slightly downward.

“Unfortunately, the message my master entrusted me with is no doubt not what you were hoping to hear. First, at present—more precisely, up until immediately before I dived into this VR space—there has been absolutely no sign that the Acceleration Research Society is planning to move Inti. And this is the main point. About four months after my master started his observation, a Storm stage appeared. A torrent of rain poured down on Inti, but for the week until the next Change came, Inti’s flames continued to burn without issue, showing no sign of weakening in the slightest.”

“B-but…!” Haruyuki protested, the image of the Archangel Metatron when she offset the blast from the Armor of Catastrophe Mark II floating up in the back of his mind. “The energy of an Enemy—a Being is limited. If it managed to evaporate that much rain, then it would have to consume an equivalent amount of power. I mean, even the God Suzaku, who’s way above Inti as a super-class Enemy, even his flames went out when we pulled him into space… There just wasn’t enough water. If it kept raining for a couple weeks or a month, Inti’s flames would go out—”

“Calm down, Crow,” Kuroyukihime rebuked him, from her seat next to him.

He came back to himself with a gasp. Trilead was only delivering the message from Graphite Edge. It wasn’t fair to attack him like that. “Sorry, Lead,” he apologized, his pig nose wiggling.

“No.” The young samurai shook his head. “I understand all too well how you feel, forced to simply sit on the sidelines and watch. I, too, wish I could have delivered even a single piece of useful information.”

“Um?”

Haruyuki looked to his right, at the source of this slightly laid-back voice.

A girl avatar in large glasses with a white apron over deep-red puffed sleeves had a lazy hand in the air. Petit Paquet’s Yume Yuruki.

“I don’t think it’s the case that we’ve got zero useful information here,” she said. She stood up before continuing calmly as everyone in the space turned their attention toward her. “Trilead said Inti’s flames kept burning even in a downpour, right? But when you think about it, that’s kinda weird. When you dump a whole lot of water on flames super-hot enough to melt metal, I think that would create a huge amount of steam. The whole area would be white, so you couldn’t see anything.”

“That is indeed true.” The otter avatar, Akira, nodded. “When I got Inti into the pond at Akasaka Goyochi, a thick cloud of steam puffed up over the boiling pond, and we couldn’t even see the flames. I’ve never heard anything about Graph having enhanced sight, so it doesn’t quite make sense that he could see Inti in pouring rain.”

“True,” Kuroyukihime said. “I’d like to have Graph himself here, so we could get the story directly from him, but…”

“I’m sorry.” Trilead bowed apologetically. “I suggested to my master that it might be better for him to communicate this information himself, but he said that he is still a member of Great Wall, so he can’t exactly participate in a Nega Nebulus meeting.”

UI> HE’S JUST LIKE LO THAT WAY. ALWAYS HAS BEEN. THAT STUBBORN STREAK.

Fuko and the others giggled, and Kuroyukihime spread her hands before her as though upset.

“Now, now, Maiden! Just about the only thing that idiot hero and I have in common is the color of our armor. At any rate, back to the matter of the rain not turning to steam… As the name suggests, a Storm stage is not only a downpour. There’s also a fierce wind, so perhaps the steam was blown away the moment it was generated?”

“No, Lotus, the wind in the Storm stage doesn’t simply blow at the same fixed speed and intensity,” Fuko said. “The strength and direction change at random. Sometimes, it stops dead as well. Depending on the timing, Inti should indeed have been enveloped in steam, and it’s curious that Graph did not mention that.”

“Mmm. There’s that, too.” Kuroyukihime crossed her slender legs. “But in that case, why—?”

“Um, gang? I wasn’t actually done,” Yume said.

Fuko, in front of the whiteboard, beckoned her with a hand. “Plum, if you don’t mind, perhaps you could come here and explain?”

“Whaaaat?” Yume visibly shrank back. “That’s actually a serious hurdle to clear, like…”

“Come on! Master Raker called you by name! Go! Go on!” Satomi, in her sky-blue dress, whacked her on the back, and Yume almost fell forward.

It would have taken Haruyuki twenty seconds just to calm the pounding of his heart for such a task, but Yume was surprisingly composed. She merely cleared her throat before beginning to speak, confidently. “So okay, I’ll just start with a little introduction. Um… Corvus?”

Suddenly called by name, Haruyuki felt both of his ears twitch to attention. “Huh… M-me?”

“Corvus, do you know what flames are?”

“F-flames? Um.” He thought for a second. “Red, hot, fiery…”

“That’s right, more or less!” Yume gave him two thumbs-up before explaining. “A rough definition of flames—well, fire—would be a situation where a combustible gas is oxidized while emitting heat and light. The keyword there is ‘oxidize’—in other words, combining chemically with oxygen. I naturally thought this was what Inti’s flames were, too, but hearing Lead’s story, I think it might be a little different.”

“You say ‘different.’” Cassis Moose sounded slightly baffled. “Are there flames that aren’t an oxidation reaction?”

“There aaaare,” Yume sang. “For instance, if you ignite a mixture of hydrogen chloride and hydrogen, it will burn even without oxygen. And if you cause a reaction between fluorine and hydrogen, it will explode without ignition. But I don’t even have to give you these kinds of chemistry experiment examples. You all see flames that aren’t oxidation pretty much every day.”

Every day? Where? Haruyuki cocked his head to one side, puzzled, but Takumu and Lead both called out at the same time.

“Right… The sun!”

“It’s the sun!”

And then Kuroyukihime nodded. “I see. Indeed, the sun’s—a fixed star’s—‘flames’ are a product of nuclear fusion, so they do not require oxygen. In other words, Plum, you’re saying that Inti’s flames are also—”

“Whoa, well, before that.” Pushing back at Kuroyukihime’s question with both hands, Yume turned her gaze on Haruyuki once again. “Okay, now it’s Corvus!”

“M-me again?!” He gaped.

“Supposing you had an unlimited quantity of water in space—well, I guess it’d freeze and be ice, but if you kept tossing that at the sun with all your might, do you think you’d be able to put the fire out at some point?”

“T-toss… Um, ummmm.” Wiggling his pig ears, he thought intently. “Even if the flames of the sun are nuclear fusion and not oxidization, it’s like the fuel source is unlimited, right? So that means if the amount of water’s infinite and I keep tossing it on there, the sun’ll run out of energy at some point and the fire will go out… Won’t it?”

“Incorrect!” This time, Yume turned her thumbs down and grinned. “Well, it’s not like I’ve actually gone out and done it myself. This is all theory here. If you threw water at the sun, the water would first vaporize and turn into steam. It’s true that this would rob the sun of some amount of heat, but the generated water vapor—i.e., the H 2 O—would thermally decompose due to the surface temperature, which exceeds five thousand degrees, and separate into hydrogen and oxygen.”

“Hydrogen and oxygen…,” Haruyuki repeated, and then flapped his hands in the air. “Th-that’s no good! I mean, the sun fuses hydrogen in its nuclear reaction, right? If you throw hydrogen on there, it’ll just have more fuel!”

“Bingo!” Yume turned her thumbs up again and added, “Incidentally, the oxygen generated in thermal decomposition is also used up in this thing called the sun’s CNO cycle and also becomes energy, so that’s no good, either. To sum it all up, not only will you not be able to put out the fire of the sun with an infinite amount of water, you’ll actually make it burn even moooore.”

She cleared her throat as if to change gears, and the eyes behind her glasses grew serious as she looked around at the assembled group.

“Of course, I also don’t think the Sun God Inti is just like the real sun in every little detail. But if nothing else, I do think there’s a possibility the flames are not an oxidation reaction but rather nuclear fusion. Although this is a hypothesis at best. But if it’s true, then Inti’s flames cannot be put out with water. If you drop it into a lake, let the rain fall on it, whatever, it will just decompose every drop of water that touches it and turn it into its own fuel. The reason there was steam when it was pushed into the lake was because the lake water boiled from the heat. And the reason there was no steam in the rain is because the tiny rain drops decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen without the time to turn to steam first.”

When Yume finished, the group was quiet for a minute.

“At best a hypothesis,” she said, but having been subjected to Inti’s superheat if only for an instant, the idea that those flames were due to nuclear fusion was very persuasive for Haruyuki.

“So then…” He heard his own dry voice spill out of his mouth. “So then Inti’s flames won’t disappear in space, unlike Suzaku’s. Even without oxygen, they’ll just keep burning. How are we supposed to put out flames like that…?”

Yume simply shook her head before she bowed and returned to her own seat.

A few seconds of heavy silence followed, which was eventually broken by a firm voice.

“You don’t put the fire out, Crow.” Niko leapt to her feet. “And o’course, you don’t roll it over, either. What we’re aiming for here is taking down the big egg! It might be all nuclear fusion, but that’s still an Enemy. Meaning it’s gotta have a health gauge, yeah? We bring that to zero and knock it into next week. That’s the sole unshakable fact here!” She clenched one hand into a tight fist.

Haruyuki unconsciously started to clap. Soon, Kuroyukihime and then everyone also brought their hands together, and the back of the whale was briefly filled with lively applause.

Once Niko had waved away their accolades with the embarrassment that she dressed up as a sullen look, Kuroyukihime also stood.

“It’s just as Rain says. I realize that I am the one awaiting rescue, but we have a chance to accomplish the monumental feat of being the first in the Accelerated World to defeat the Sun God Inti. We won’t be able to clear this mission unless we take on the challenge with that kind of fighting spirit. Naturally, it won’t be easy. But there absolutely has to be a way. I believe two enormous mysteries are the key to this.”

“T-two mysteries?” Haruyuki blinked rapidly.

“Yes.” Kuroyukihime looked down at him. “The Acceleration Research Society tamed Inti with the power of the Arc Luminary, hid it above the clouds, and dropped it on Black Vise after he activated his Icosahedral Insulation. They may be our enemy, but this was a marvelous strategy. But as for the two unsolved mysteries… One is how they raised Inti above the clouds when it has only rolled along the ground thus far. And the other is why Inti’s heat does not break the thorned crown the Luminary grants to the targets of its taming.”

“Oh… Th-that’s true.” Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. “When we fought Metatron’s first form at Tokyo Midtown Tower after it had been tamed the same way as Inti, I smashed the Luminary crown with a physical attack. And then the taming spell was released, and Metatron couldn’t move anymore… That crown’s not an indestructible object, and yet it doesn’t melt in Inti’s flames. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Hang on. So that means…” Niko’s expression was hard to read. “So long as we smash that thorned crown, we can get Inti to roll off somewhere without killing it, and Lotus and the others’ll be able to regenerate?”

“M-maybe,” Haruyuki said. “But if you think about it the other way, how are we supposed to break something that Inti’s flames can’t? Maybe our only choice is to defeat Inti after all.”

Niko’s sour look didn’t go away. She shifted her gaze to Kuroyukihime and spread out her white-gloved hands. “Lotus, how the heck is the Luminary crown a hint in how we subjugate Inti?”

“It’s simple.” The beauty in the black dress raised her parasol like a sword. “If we obtain a weapon with the same ability as that crown—able to endure even Inti’s superheat—we plunge it into the nuclear fusion flames and damage the body… perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Smiling wryly, Niko nodded, setting her ponytails swinging. “But, like, okay, yeah, that does make sense. Hmm. What kinda sense is there in the crown Crow could destroy with his little chops twenty days ago now being able to withstand five-thousand-degree heat? Physical attacks work, but it’s resistant to fire attacks?”

“Inti’s flames are not something we can squeeze into the usual affinities,” the Black King noted. “Iron Pound was among the avatars captured by the Icosahedral Insulation, and he’s resistant to heat. But his health gauge basically declined as fast as any of the others. If it is not as a rule indestructible, then even the ground itself will melt.”

“Right, right,” Niko muttered. “So then that means that in a mere twenty days, there was some kind of decisive change with the Luminary. That thing… Is it just maybe, you know…?”

Kuroyukihime nodded wordlessly, and the two girls looked at each other with hard faces.

“Rain? What do you mean by ‘you know’?” Haruyuki asked.

“‘You know’ is like…” She paused. “An urban legend? Nah, an AW legend kinda thing.”

Guessing that “AW” meant the Accelerated World, Haruyuki nodded and waited for her to continue. Niko gave him a steady glare before she spoke again, tugging on the large collar of her princely costume.

“I don’t think it’s just me. I bet Lotus and the rest of the executive’s never actually seen it, either. There’s been this rumor for ages of a blacksmith in the Unlimited Neutral Field.”

“A-a blacksmith?” Takumu parroted.

Sitting next to him, Chiyuri tilted her pointed hat to one side. “So does that have something to do with the Legion Master before you, Rain—Red Rider? He could make whatever Enhanced Armament he wanted, right?”

“Nah, shouldn’t have anything to do with my predecessor,” Niko replied. “The blacksmith, it’s this wagon shop that drifts around the Unlimited Neutral Field. If you find it, you can get them to make you the Enhanced Armament you want, enhance whatever Enhanced Armament you got… Takes points, though, natch. That’s the rumor.”

“Enhance an Enhanced Armament,” Chiyuri murmured, and the words melted into the gentle breeze and disappeared.

The whale didn’t seem the least concerned about how things were going with the meeting being held on her back, and was instead swimming peacefully through the vast blue sky. Each time a massive cotton-candy cloud passed by, his avatar’s skin grew chilled.

“So that means…,” Haruyuki said, his imagination going full throttle, since he had never even seen a normal shop, much less this blacksmith. “So that means the White King found this blacksmith and enhanced the Luminary… Is that it? That’s why it can withstand Inti’s flames?”

“It’s a guess. No proof, though. But I can’t think of any other reason. And if my guess is right, then I can see a tiny opening when it comes to attacking the thing.” Niko stopped there and slid a slender saber from the red scabbard at her hip. Naturally, it had absolutely no attack power—to start with, the avatars gathered in this VR space didn’t possess so much as the concept of a health gauge—but when Niko turned the tip of this blade toward Haruyuki’s pig nose, she grinned boldly.

“We take the most powerful Enhanced Armament of any of our Legion members and get the blacksmith to enhance it even more so it can pierce Inti’s flames. Oscillatory managed to do it, so there’s no way we can’t too, yeah? So then, like, who has the most powerful Enhanced Armament in Negabu right now?”

Niko looked around at her comrades, and Haruyuki hurried to answer.

“That’s obviously you, Rain. You can scour the entire Accelerated World but you won’t find too many Enhanced Armaments as tough as Invincible.”

“Now, look…” Instantly, Niko was at maximum exasperation, and she jabbed her sword at his nose. “Setting aside the whole strength issue, my Invincible’s long-range firepower only. Enhance it all you want, but it’s just fire on oil to Inti.”

“Oh! R-right. If we go in the same direction as the Luminary, then it’d have to be at close range and physical… H-hang on a sec.” Haruyuki used his hooves to grab the blade of the saber in his face with a bare-handed sword catch as he stood up. “A close-range, physical Enhanced Armament, that’d be a sword or a lance or a hammer or something, right? Even if we get one enhanced at the blacksmith so it could withstand Inti’s flames, the user’d have to get within the weapon’s range, so wouldn’t they get burned up by the flames anyway?”

“Not necessarily.” Blood Leopard spoke for the first time that day.

The leopard-headed avatar, slender body wrapped in a black leather riding suit, flicked her long tail back and forth as she calmly talked.

“When we were escaping from Inti’s heat-death zone after it dropped on us, me and Suntan Chafer in the rear were prepared to die along the way. But thanks to Lime Bell’s Citron Call, we both made it out alive. That’s really an amazing power. I personally think it could be counted among the greatest techniques in the Accelerated World alongside Metatron’s Trisagion and Orchid Oracle’s Paradigm Breakdown.”

“… Th-the greatest…,” Haruyuki repeated, swallowing hard. He’d thought the same thing. But the idea took on a new level of persuasiveness coming from Pard, a high ranker of established rapport. He timidly turned his gaze toward Chiyuri, wondering exactly how she would take this.

The avatar with the cat ears in the white dress pressed a glove/paw to the back of her head and chuckled nonchalantly. “Heh-heh-heh-heh! Naaaah, it’s not that great.”

Haruyuki practically slid to the ground from where he stood on his chair, but he managed to somehow stay on his feet as he turned to Pard. “W-well, anyway, Citron Call’s helped me out any number of times, too. But the special-attack gauge consumption’s no joke. Just healing one time wouldn’t increase the amount of time you could stay in Inti’s heat-death zone all that much, would it?”

“Hey, Crow! I’m the one who gets to say stuff like that, you know?!” Chiyuri interjected and pinched his pig cheek, so Haruyuki—not to be outdone—yanked on the cat avatar’s tail.

“You were all ‘Heh-heh-heh-heh’!”

“Of course I’d be happy to get a compliment!” she snapped. “You should try not being so humble all the time and maybe be more ‘I’m a genius’ sometimes!”

“H-how could I say that?!” he shouted. “But, like, do you think it’d be cool if I did?!”

“People would be creeped right out, obviously!” She rolled her eyes at him.

“S-so then why are you trying to get me to say it?!”

While the two of them were sniping at each other, the members of Petit Paquet burst out laughing, and as if she could stand it no longer, Rui Odagiri also erupted in sound. The bright circle of laughter spread quickly to everyone there, and when he looked back, he saw Kuroyukihime’s shoulders were also shaking as she hid her mouth with her parasol.

Feeling just a little relieved at this reaction, Haruyuki brought his gaze back to Pard. The leopard cleared her throat as if she was trying to suppress a laugh before she muttered “SRY” and continued with her explanation.

“It’s true the special-attack gauge consumption is a critical problem. But in the Accelerated World, the synergy to realize successive special-attack gauge charges has been studied since the long-distant past, and while there aren’t many, there are some Burst Linkers who have techniques that allow for a single charge. It shouldn’t be hard to pull in the Blue, Green, Yellow, and Purple Legions since their kings are in an Unlimited EK with Lotus, so we might be able to put together the first five-Legion synergy.”

“Oh… M-makes sense,” Haruyuki muttered, and the first thing he remembered was the Purple King’s special-attack Elementary Charge.

When she touched a duel avatar with her staff, she could recover their special-attack gauge by 1.60217662 times her own gauge’s consumption amount. He’d wondered why it was such a random number, so he’d looked it up after leaving the Unlimited Neutral Field and found that “elementary charge” was a physics term and that the number in question was part of an equation expressing that. At any rate, it was a technique that could have functioned as a high-power booster if they managed to put together this synergy, but regrettably, Purple Thorn was together with Kuroyukihime in the Unlimited EK. Still, Pard was right: There were other avatars in the Accelerated World who could recharge other people’s gauges.

“In other words, we combine the techniques and abilities of a group of Burst Linkers to create something like a huge energy tank and keep replenishing Bell’s special-attack gauge. It’s true… if we did that, we might be able to hit Inti with close-up attacks a few times!” Haruyuki shouted.

“But,” Pard quickly added, although she nodded her leopard head, “for this strategy, we need to clear three hurdles: we have to get a close-range, physical-type Enhanced Armament powerful enough to do serious damage to Inti in a single blow; we have to prove the existence of a blacksmith shop in the Unlimited Neutral Field; and we have to enhance the Enhanced Armament so that it can withstand flames of five thousand degrees. To be honest, any one of them is still an optimistic guess.”

After thinking for a second, Haruyuki shook his head from side to side. “No. The first one’s probably okay. In the current Nega Nebulus, we have someone with a sword in the most powerful class in the Accelerated World. Right, Lead?”

Standing next to the whiteboard, the young masked samurai looked up at the sound of his name and almost shrugged as he nodded firmly. “Yes. Although the sequence of events that led to me obtaining it is very much not something I can be proud of… the power of it is no lie. If the Infinity, ‘gyokusho,’ one of the Seven Arcs, could withstand even flames, then I believe it could do a not-insignificant amount of damage to the Sun God.”

The instant Lead spoke the name of the Arc, Cassis Moose, Thistle Porcupine, and the other former members of Prominence started to murmur excitedly.

Currently, there were six Arcs in the Accelerated World whose owners were known. Of these, the Luminary was held by the White King, and the Destiny had been sealed away by Haruyuki’s own hand. The Impulse with the Blue King, the Strife with the Green King, and the Tempest with the Purple King had fallen into an Unlimited EK, so the only Arc available for use in this mission was for all intents and purposes Trilead’s Infinity.

“Trilead…” Kuroyukihime stepped away from her chair and spoke to the young samurai with a serious look on her face. “Positioning your Infinity as the main pillar of the Inti subjugation mission means that you would be assigned to attack alone. Given that a single misstep might cause you to fall into an Unlimited EK yourself, I hate to press such a dangerous role on you, especially when it has only been a single day since you joined the Legion. Are you sure?”

“Of course,” Lead answered immediately. “For a long time, all I knew was the inside of the Castle’s high walls. Crow and Raker risked the danger of Unlimited EK at the altar of the God Suzaku to bring me out. I don’t believe that my master Graphite Edge instructed me to leave the Castle in anticipation of this situation. Even so, I’m sure of it… That I left the Castle in order to carry out the role given to me in the subjugation mission to come.”

“I see. When you sound so certain, I cannot hesitate, either. Trilead… I’m counting on you.” Kuroyukihime bowed her head deeply.

Lead bowed back just as deeply, ever so politely. “Please leave everything to me, Master!”

So I guess now there are two people who call her Master.

Haruyuki felt a shiver run up his spine, but rather than saying the thought out loud, he simply said, “So we’ve cleared the first hurdle in this mission! Now we just need the blacksmith!”

“That blacksmith is a problem, though.” Grinning cynically, Kuroyukihime looked at him and then Fuko. “That reminds me. The entirety of the Unlimited Neutral Field is visible from the Highest Level, yes? Couldn’t we look for the blacksmith wagon from there?”

“Oh…” His jaw dropped. He hadn’t even considered that possibility. But after a moment, he could only offer a negative response. “No, that’s probably impossible. You do get a bird’s-eye view of the Mean Level if you go to the Highest Level. But the terrain, the Enemies, the Burst Linkers—they’re all expressed as little dots, so to find out what it is you’re looking at, you have to leave the Highest Level and go to the actual spot.”

“Ohh, I see.” She nodded. “But we might be able to get a fix on an area. If the blacksmith wagon exists as it is rumored to, it supposedly moves around not in the shopping areas of each region, but rather alone through the wastelands. It would be hard to tell it apart from Enemies, but I think this way would be better than racing around the Unlimited Neutral Field blindly with no idea at all.”

“You’re right about that,” he agreed, but something else nagged at him.

He couldn’t shift to the Highest Level under his own power. Once he accelerated, he had to contact Metatron and get her to lift his consciousness. But at the moment, she was resting at Fufuan to recover the body of information she’d lost, and it would be ten years in Accelerated World time before that was complete—three days in real world time. She’d said it was a “mere” three days, but that was far too long in their current situation.

If they needed to search the Highest Level to find the blacksmith, Haruyuki himself was prepared to see it through no matter how many months or years of subjective time it took, but he was reluctant to disrupt Metatron’s sleep once more for that. He struggled with how exactly to explain all this.

“Crow, no need to worry,” Kuroyukihime said gently, as if sensing Haruyuki’s anxiety. “I also have no intention of dragging Metatron into this mission. As a member of Nega Nebulus, she carried out a full-throttle suicide attack in the Territories with Oscillatory when the stage was transformed into Hell and rescued us from a desperate situation. We won’t do anything to disrupt her sleep until those wounds are completely healed. Even if she herself gets angry with us after the fact.”

“R-right. But getting to the Highest Level by myself is…”

“There are other Saints besides Metatron… yes?” Kuroyukihime asked, and Haruyuki simply blinked, frozen. Without another word, Kuroyukihime patted his pig avatar’s head and turned toward the Legion members to speak in a resolute voice.

“I think we’ve firmed up a skeleton of a strategy in the discussion up to this point. Our final objective is to crush the Sun God Inti—to that end, we enhance Trilead Tetroxide’s Arc Infinity at the blacksmith and construct a multilayered synergy to continuously charge Lime Bell’s special-attack gauge in parallel. For both of these objectives, we will call for cooperation from the other four Legions and plan for the quick execution. Are there any questions?”

Immediately, Thistle thrust her hand into the air. “Just one. What about the general attack on the White Legion that was decided on before the meeting of the Seven Kings got turned upside down? If we’re gonna do both missions at once, we’ll have to divide our members up for the attack on Minato area.”

“Hmm, true.” Kuroyukihime placed a hand on her slender jaw, as if kicking her thoughts into gear.

“You’re right, Pokki,” Fuko said. “Purple Thorn and Blue Knight made the announcement right before the meeting turned into the Unlimited Neutral Field. As soon as we were done there, a joint force of the five Legions of Blue, Green, Purple, Yellow, and Black would begin a general attack on the areas of Minato One, Two, and Three. More concretely, if any members of Oscillatory were found on the matching list, they would be continuously challenged and pushed to total point loss. Moreover, in the next Territories, we would attack Minato One and Two and strip them of their rights to the territories… But as of right now, we haven’t moved to carry that mission out. Most likely, none of the Legions have yet determined a policy on how to handle the abnormal situation of their masters being in Unlimited EK.”

“That mean the general attack’s postponed for now?” Thistle asked.

“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t like how things are turning out here one bit.” Niko snorted. “I know how it sounds, me talking when I’m the only one who escaped the heat-death zone… But I think this sitch’s fundamentally beyond Oscillatory expectations, too. That Ivory woulda kept on playing like he didn’t know or do a darned thing if Chocolat hadn’t recorded his transformation with the replay card. So I think they prob’ly aren’t ready for a general attack from the five Legions yet. We can’t let this chance get away from us, but it’s like offensive. Gross.”

Niko clasped her hands behind her head and pursed her lips in classic “pouting child” pose, and Kuroyukihime laughed dryly.

“To be honest,” she said, “I thought rescuing us from inside of Inti could come after the general attack on Oscillatory. Even if we can’t dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field, there’s nothing keeping us from the normal duel field or the Territories. But I don’t know what the other Legions are thinking. We need to hold at least one more executive meeting so we can align our intentions toward the general attack. At present, that won’t be easy, either.”

“Vise’s underlings will sneak into that meeting, too, and mess it all up again,” Niko groaned. “It’s plenty possible, yeah.”

“To avoid that…,” Kuroyukihime started, but then quickly shook her head, murmuring, “No, that’s impossible right from the start.”

“C’mon, Lotus!” Niko thrust her head forward. “Finish what you—” But she also was unable to bring her sentence to an end.

Behind the whiteboard, a pillar of light shimmered down onto the top of the whale’s head. A new avatar materialized.

A slight, slender girl type. The short hair was fluffy, but she was wearing a black leather shirt covered in countless silver studs and a ripped-up pair of cut-off jeans. It was hard to tell whether she was girly or punk. No sooner had the avatar opened her cute, round eyes than she was running toward Haruyuki. She didn’t hesitate to lift his pig avatar into an embrace with both arms.

“A—Crow!!” The punk girl had most likely been about to say “Arita,” and now she squeezed him with all her might, causing Haruyuki to flail his piggy body around and around.

“R—Ash!” Haruyuki too had been on the verge of saying her real name, but Rin Kusakabe/Ash Roller didn’t seem to pay this the slightest mind.

“Crow!” she shouted. “I’m so. Glad you’re. Okay!”

“Ash, how did you…?”

“Oh. I’m also. A member. Of Nega Nebulus. So…,” she said in her teary voice, and he remembered the truth of her words. She was a member.

Ash Roller, Bush Utan, and Olive Grab had obtained permission from the Green King to move from his Legion to Negabu on the condition that it was only until the fight with the Acceleration Research Society was settled.

“Sorry for worrying you, Ash. I’m totally fine, though. Just got my toes a little scorched by Inti,” he said, slapping her shoulders, and finally Rin loosened her grip.

The instant he let out a sigh of relief, he noticed the glares of Kuroyukihime, Chiyuri, and Niko, and he unconsciously sent his eyes racing around the area. He wanted her to return him to his seat, but Rin didn’t move to set down his pig avatar. With no other choice, he moved his eyes even farther and caught sight of the exasperated faces of Cassis Moose, Thistle Porcupine, and Blood Leopard.

“H-hang on a sec. That cute pink girl is the person inside that wild rider?” Blaze asked, and Haruyuki hesitated over how exactly to answer.

The reason they were all calling one another by their avatar names at this meeting rather than their real names was because the three from the Prominence group hadn’t met the members of the Nega Nebulus group in the real yet. In other words, they didn’t know about the complicated relationship between Rin Kusakabe and Ash Roller, so it was only natural that they would be confused, but Haruyuki hesitated to explain the circumstances himself.

While he was uming and hmming, Rin turned to Cassis and the others and bowed.

“Yes, I am indeed Ash Roller. But strictly speaking, the one who fights in the Accelerated World. Isn’t me. Basically.”

“What? Meaning?” Blaze Heart looked even more doubtful.

“Right now, it’s like. Two personalities,” Rin explained simply. “Please think of it like that. Someday. I’ll explain properly.”

“That it? Okay, makes sense.” Blaze readily agreed, and Cassis and Thistle also nodded.

Now that he thought about it, there were more than a few Burst Linkers who dramatically changed character in BB from the real, so considering it in those terms, it wasn’t actually that hard to understand.

Blaze and the others also gave their names, and once the introductions were finished, Rin turned to her parent, Fuko.

“Um, Master. I’m sorry for. Being late.”

“It’s all right, Ash. How are things over at Great Wall?”

“I got a message. From Decurion,” Rin told her. “He said GW is. Putting priority on. Rescuing their king for the time being. They want to. Talk to Nebulus. Right away. About it.”

“I see. So that means GW is also postponing the general attack on Oscillatory. Given that, Blue and Purple likely have the same policy of prioritizing their masters’ rescue. I don’t know about Yellow, though. I get the feeling that Radio isn’t quite that popular,” Fuko remarked breezily and looked at Kuroyukihime. A quick nod was all they needed to communicate their intent to each other.

“Well then,” Fuko said, raising her voice to address the entire group. “We will reconfirm our policy going forward. There are three things we need to do. One: find the blacksmith shop. Two: construct a special-attack gauge recovery synergy. Three: speak with the four Great Legions. With regard to the first item—the search—we will need to take the utmost care given that we’ll have to enter the Unlimited Neutral Field. We’ll select a team for the task, so for the time being, I want you to inform all Legion members including the Prominence group that no one is to go off on their own looking for the blacksmith.”

“Roger that. We’ll be sure to let the Promi group know,” Cassis Moose assured her.

Fuko nodded before continuing. “I actually want you to do the opposite with the second item—recovery synergy. Wring every bit of information from every member. If anyone has any ideas about methods to recover special-attack gauges, please send them to me no matter how trivial they might seem, and I will collect them into a file and distribute them. The ideal would be two different lines—no, actually I’d like to create three different lines.”

“Um, about that.” Still held by Rin, Haruyuki raised his hand.

Fuko smiled in her schoolteacher costume as she lifted her glasses. “Whaaat, Corvus?”

“Uh, I think everyone here knows about the existence of the system at least, so I’ll go ahead and ask: Would it be a thing to go through Incarnate for this special-attack gauge recovery synergy?”

Instantly, the air around him grew tense, despite the fact that this was a virtual space, and Haruyuki shrank into himself, worried he’d messed up somehow.

The first to respond was Utai in her shrine maiden costume.

UI> I THINK THAT WE SHOULD USE WHATEVER MEANS ARE AT OUR DISPOSAL. IT’S NEGA NEBULUS’S RULE THAT INCARNATE POWER MUST BE USED ONLY WHEN WE ARE ATTACKED WITH INCARNATE, BUT BOTH ORCHID ORACLE’S PARADIGM BREAKDOWN, WHICH CHANGED THE VENUE OF THE MEETING OF THE SEVEN KINGS TO THE UNLIMITED NEUTRAL FIELD, AND BLACK VISE’S ICOSAHEDRAL INSULATION, WHICH LOCKED UP LO AND THE OTHERS, ARE INCARNATE TECHNIQUES. SO IN ORDER TO FIGHT THOSE, IT WOULDN’T BE BREAKING THAT RULE IF WE USED THE POWER OF INCARNATE.

After typing this long text in less than three seconds, Utai looked first at Haruyuki, then Fuko, and finally, Kuroyukihime.

“It is indeed as you say,” Kuroyukihime replied, half murmuring, and removed her hand from her parasol to stretch it out in front of her. “The power of Incarnate has generated any number of tragedies in the Accelerated World. No. I don’t have the right to talk about it as if I’m somehow apart from that. Two years and eleven months ago, I myself killed the Red King Red Rider in a single blow with a special attack.”

Hearing this sudden monologue, Cassis Moose, Thistle Porcupine, and Blaze Heart jumped. The air grew even more tense, and Haruyuki couldn’t breathe. Kuroyukihime continued speaking quietly, her hand still raised.

“I unconsciously enhanced that special attack with Incarnate. If I hadn’t used Incarnate, then perhaps Rider could have escaped instant death. This inevitable imagining and regret has pulled me even further from the Incarnate System. I couldn’t even guide the child I chose, Silver Crow, in the ways of Incarnate. However.”

She clenched her raised hand into a tight fist and continued to speak, as if pushing through pain, her voice making her strength even more powerfully felt.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. If the power of Incarnate was a simple system bug, then the Brain Burst admins would have dealt with it ages ago. The fact that they didn’t suggests that the presence of Incarnate techniques in the Accelerated World has some kind of meaning. I… I probably can’t refine my Incarnate power any further. But I don’t want new Burst Linkers to go down the same road I did. If the Incarnate ultimately leads to not only the deep darkness but also the light of hope, then I want them to find that someday.”

Even after Kuroyukihime had slowly lowered her hand, no one spoke for a time.

Spurred on by the impulse that he had to say something, Haruyuki gritted his teeth. But his heart was too full, and no words would come out.

As if sensing his frustration, Rin squeezed him harder for a moment before speaking in an unusually certain voice. “My brother, Ash Roller, stubbornly refused to train in the Incarnate System even at Master Raker’s urging. Because the power of Incarnate, drawing directly on the darkness of the heart, is in violation of his policy to simply enjoy the duel. But after going through the Territories yesterday, it seems like he’s changed his stance on that a little.”

“Do you mean because he personally experienced the threat of Oscillatory’s Incarnate attack?” Kuroyukihime asked.

“No, that’s not it.” Rin shook her heard firmly. “I can only remember the times when my brother is fighting hazily, like a dream, but even still, I remember this. Kuroyukihime’s Starburst Stream that decided the fight at the end of the Territories—it’s supposed to be a destructive Incarnate and yet it’s a technique so beautiful that he almost cried. It shook my brother’s heart.”

“Whoa! Whoa there!” It was Niko butting in, of course. “I was busting my ass out there with my Incarnate technique at full power, too! Your bro didn’t say anything about my Radiant Burst?!”

“Um… No, nothing…”

“That skull-faced jerk,” Niko grumbled. “I’m really gonna make him cry the next time I see him.”

Kuroyukihime smiled cheerfully at her for just an instant before she looked at Rin again. “If he thought that my Incarnate was beautiful… and if this leads to him studying the Incarnate, I can’t be afraid forever myself… Crow.”

Haruyuki straightened up in Rin’s arms. “Y-yes!”

“About your earlier question. At the present stage, we can’t eliminate the possibility of using the Incarnate System in this mission. However—and I believe you are also aware of this—with Incarnate techniques, light and dark are opposite sides of the same coin, and using them incites Enemies. So we must be very careful.”

“Yes!” he shouted again.

The faint smile vanished from Kuroyukihime’s face, and she added through slightly pursed lips, “And… how long are you going to keep doing that?”

“Doing what?” He blinked in confusion before realizing that she was referring to the way he was being held. “No! Um! This is—!”

Panicking and stammering, he waved his arms, but Rin kept clutching him like his pig avatar was a stuffed animal. Unable to forcefully extricate himself, he simply twitched his ears as he cried, “You’ve got the wrong idea!”

“Heh-heh-heh… Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Hearing this cheerful laughter, Haruyuki looked to his left.

It was the young samurai avatar in his white mask. Realizing that the eyes of the entire group were now focused on him, he pressed a hand to his mask, but the laughter did not subside. In the end, he had to turn away from the group.

What exactly in this conversation tickled Lead like that? Haruyuki thought curiously.

An even greater wave of laughter than during his back-and-forth with Chiyuri rose up and washed over the back of the whale. He felt a slight shaking and looked up to find Rin was laughing out loud, too, mouth open wide. Takumu, Chiyuri, Fuko, Kuroyukihime, Niko, Pard, Akira, Utai, Rui, Shihoko and her friends, and even Cassis and the others were laughing a great deal, filling the air with their cheer.

Getting carried away, he broke into a chuckle himself, then thought in one corner of his mind that even the members of Oscillatory Universe—who were trying to bring about massive conflict in the Accelerated World—would have had times like this. Priceless moments, laughing together with comrades they were connected to by the heart… And yet. Why?

He was suddenly almost in tears, and he blinked repeatedly to push them back. A feeling that he himself couldn’t put into words filled his chest, and unable to say anything at all, Haruyuki simply continued to look deeply upon the faces of his comrades.