Accel World - Volume 23 - Chapter 9

9

“A Moonlight stage, hmm?”

When he opened his eyes, he could see an enormous moon hanging in the inky black sky. The hospital building had turned into a large, white marble temple. All the walls were gone, leaving only pillars behind, so he could look out over the entire floor. He sent his gaze racing around the area, but of course, he found no sign of Megumi nor Kuroyukihime.

Renewing the words of his pre-dive vow as he clenched his teeth, Haruyuki looked at Rose Milady’s F-type avatar standing next to him.

This was the third time he’d faced her, including once on the Highest Level, but no matter how often he saw her avatar, he was still blown away each time. The sharp spikes that glittered on her incredibly slender limbs and torso embodied the aphorism “no rose without a thorn” perfectly. If she were to stand alongside Magenta Scissor, who had a similar avatar design, the sight promised to be even more picturesque, but he wouldn’t get the chance to see that anytime soon.

While these vague thoughts drifted through his head, Rose Milady glared at him with eyes lenses that were half hidden by her gorgeous ringlets. “Silver Crow, you can’t just gape at F-type avatars like that.”

“H-hyah, I’m sorry!” He reflexively took on his flash-frozen pose, while he marveled at how the one giving voice to that line was the teensy, cute Tsubomi Koshika. He felt a fuzzy warmth in his heart, but he had the good sense to know she would inflict real pain on him if he told her that. So he kept quiet and instead shifted his gaze to the transparent outer edge of the temple. “S-so how are we going to look for Oracle?”

“I can think of two ways.”

“Huh? T-two…?”

“One must have already occurred to you.”

He finally remembered the conversation he’d had with Kuroyukihime at the Legion meeting the previous evening. They’d had the blacksmith in mind then, but the logic was the same. “Maybe the Highest Level?”

“Yes.” The aristocratic avatar looked up at the pale night scene spreading out beyond the temple grounds. “If we shift up, we’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the Mean Level. But it’ll be a Herculean task to pick out Orkki from the vast number of points of light.”

“I… guess so,” he agreed. “If we did find a light that was potentially her, we’d have to leave the Highest Level and go check every time.”

“I’m prepared to do it if it comes to that,” she told him. “But those five minutes I promised Lotus are three days, eleven hours, and twenty minutes over here. If we shift up, the time will pass pretty quickly. So before we go to the Highest Level, we’ll try the other method.”

“A-and that is?” Haruyuki asked Rose’s profile, and he was entirely unprepared for her reply.

“Divination.”

“D-divination?!”

“Listen. I’m not going to whip out a pack of tarot cards or burn turtle shells or anything, okay?” Rose snarked. And then she proceeded to tell him that she was going to the roof as she started toward the center of the temple. When he chased after her, he saw a spiral staircase that shot through the building. They climbed three floors of marble to come out on top of the temple.

There were no tall buildings around them, so they had a full view of the picturesque Moonlight stage, and Haruyuki unconsciously let out a sigh. The Moonlight stage had once been the site of his decisive battle with the twilight marauder Dusk Taker, and his memories of that difficult fight remained fresh. But the stage was still beautiful to him; the otherworldly temples illuminated in the pale moonglow.

Meanwhile, Rose began destroying the circular pillars that stood boldly on the broad roof, as if to say they didn’t have time to be awestruck by the scenery. Haruyuki hurried to join in the destruction to charge his special-attack gauge.

The efficiency of charging through the destruction of terrain objects was poor, but since there were too many pillars to count, he was fully charged in less than three minutes. When he returned to a position near Rose, who had finished charging a moment before he did, the noblewoman raised her arm with its rows of crimson spikes up high. Turning her palm to the night sky, she slowly called out a technique name.

“Flower Divination.”

Instantly, a flash of purplish-pink light emitted from the palm of her hand, and Haruyuki narrowed his eyes below his mirrored mask.

The light quickly came together in a point, but rather than disappearing, it created a large bud in her hand. This opened up into a circle of roses that had no sooner burst into bloom than they began to scatter beautifully. Dozens of petals spilled out into the air and simply drifted gently for a moment before finally being swept in a line outside the building, despite the lack of wind.

Watching the glittering ribbon go off on its way, Rose murmured, “East by northeast. You remember which way the petals flew off, too.”

“O-okay. Is that maybe the direction of Oracle?”

“I don’t know. It’s divination at best. The technique I used tells me the whereabouts of what I need now.”

“What you need?” he asked.

“It depends on the stage attributes,” she replied. “But in a normal duel, that’d be charging items or weapons or vehicles. So… it might be that the petals are simply attracted to that sort of object. In fact, I’ve tried divining her whereabouts several times since yesterday, but every time, that’s what happened. Right now, though, I’m directing with Orkki in the real world. All I can do is have faith that this connection will guide the flowers.”

Rose started to turn back to the stairs, but Haruyuki hurried to stop her. “B-but we can’t see the petals anymore.”

“They fly without concern for the terrain, so it’s impossible to chase them forever. The only option is to remember the direction and use the technique periodically. At any rate, once we get down to the first floor, we’ll go east on Setagaya-dori in front of the hospital—”

“In that case, I’ll carry you!” Haruyuki interrupted, forcefully deploying the silver wings on his back. “If I fly at full speed, we might be able to catch up with those petals!”

He reached out his hands, but Rose pulled away and looked at him suspiciously.

“Carry? …How, exactly?”

“Huh? Um, w-well,” he stammered. “It would be similar to a hug.”

Rose followed this with an exasperated sigh. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to suddenly hug someone who was your enemy until just recently, and in that case, he was about to tell her that she could also just hold on to his legs if that was better for her.

But suddenly, the spikes all over her body withdrew into her armor with a sharp klak. She took a step toward the dumbfounded silver avatar and held up her arms. “Okay, hug away.”

“O-okay.” Nodding, Haruyuki placed his arm around Rose’s back and carefully lifted her legs with his other hand. Once she was secured in his arms, bridal-style, he vibrated his wings carefully, about fifty percent of normal power, and took off.

After ascending about twenty meters, he narrowed his eyes east by northeast and felt like he saw a pink light flickering faintly. He wouldn’t have been able to pick it out if they hadn’t been in a night stage, but now that he had it in his sights, he started to soar.

“Hmm,” Rose muttered, once they had been moving for about ten seconds. “So this is the lone flight ability in the Accelerated World.”

“A-actually, it seems like it’s not so rare after all,” Haruyuki replied. “Platinum Cavalier of the Seven Dwarves was also flying and all.”

The aristocrat snorted. “Bashful’s Pegasus just does what its Enhanced Armament Mystical Reins tells it to. That’s not his own power.”

“Huh. Can he tame any Enemy with that item?”

“Not even close. As a general rule, it’s only those who he fights one-on-one and defeats. So the majority of the Legend class are out of the question. Naturally, he can’t use it on Inti, either.”

“Oh…” Haruyuki turned his gaze back to the small light in front of them.

Fortunately, the flower petals didn’t move quickly, and even prioritizing his gauge and flying conservatively, the petals seemed to be slowly catching up with them. He banished all extraneous thought from his mind and focused on the mission ahead.

“Those petals have already traveled a fair distance, hmm? Which maybe means they’re not being pulled in by some kind of item,” he suggested. “And to start with, items almost never pop up in the Moonlight stage.”

“Right. But…” Rose glanced off to the right. “I actually had some idea of a place where Orkki might be locked up. But looks like we’re slipping off that course bit by bit.”

“Huh?” He looked down at her. “Where?”

“You must have attacked it once yourself,” she said. “The Eternal Girls’ Academy in Minato Area Three. It’s the headquarters for Oscillatory Universe and also the school I attend.”

“What?!” he cried out and his hand slipped just a little, causing Rose to swing in his arms.

“Eep!” The lady let out an adorable shriek and grabbed hold of Haruyuki’s neck. “H-hey! Hang on tight! If I fall from this height, even I won’t come out unscathed!”

I’m amazed it wouldn’t outright kill you, Haruyuki thought, then bobbed his head up and down. “I-I’m sorry. I was a little surprised. So then the blue dress you were wearing in the real world is the Eternal uniform.”

“EGA,” she corrected.

“What?”

“People who call Eternal Girls’ Academy ‘Eternal’ are cursed for a hundred and thirty years, so be careful.”

“Oh! …O-okay.” Nodding once more, he returned to the subject at hand. “It’s true that if they were going to lock Oracle up, there’s a strong possibility that it would be in Oscillatory’s headquarters. But…”

He gained a little altitude and sent his gaze racing across the snowy white buildings spread out below them.

“If that road is Kannana, and the one that looks like Suidobashi intersecting it is the Shibuya Expressway… then the direction is definitely off. The petals seem like they’re not flying toward Minato Three but Shibuya One.”

“Right. Once we pass Shibuya, Aoyama, Akasaka, and then… the Castle.”

The instant Rose said this, Haruyuki very nearly stiffened up once again, and he hurried to hold her more tightly. “No way. Oracle in the Castle?! There’s no way just the two of us will be able to charge the four gates!”

Rose shook her head. “I really can’t imagine that’s where she is. I heard the Divine Light ability of the Luminary also doesn’t work on the Four Gods.”

“That’s… the power that tamed Inti, right?”

“Yes. One of the critical pieces to realize the White King’s plan.”

“… Plan?” The word Rose spoke so casually lingered strangely in his ears, and Haruyuki parroted it back to her. “What exactly is this plan?”

But instead of answering him, Rose pointed up ahead with one hand. “Look. The petals are passing Shibuya Station. I wonder how far they’ll go.”

“I just hope it’s not the Castle,” Haruyuki replied with some dread, then glanced at his special-attack gauge. Thanks to his level-five flight ability enhancement bonus that gave him four layered gauges, his mileage had gotten a lot better, but even so, he’d used over 60 percent of his gauge traveling from Setagaya to Shibuya carrying Rose. There were a lot of Enemies wandering about on the ground in this area, so he didn’t want to land if it was at all possible.

“Still… that’s a mysterious power,” he said, half to himself. “The ‘thing that you need.’ Who’s deciding that, though?”

“The BB system, I guess. Right now, I’m not seeking weapons or items. All I want is for Orkki to come back to me safely. If it means making that happen, I’m okay even with losing all my points today.” Her hand tightened just a little around Haruyuki’s neck.

Orchid Oracle—Megumi Wakamiya—was Kuroyukihime’s best friend. But to Rose Milady, she was a fellow child of Saffron Blossom, meaning the two of them were practically sisters. Since only the Originators were permitted to have multiple children, this was a bond that people of Haruyuki’s generation simply could not relate to.

“In Chrome Falcon’s memories,” Haruyuki started, and Rose shivered slightly, “Saffron said she wanted to make children, form a collaborative Legion, and someday laugh and play the game with everyone in the Accelerated World. Although she had no idea how long it would take to do that… I think both you and Oracle were the embodiment of her hope, Rose. So… So I…” Here, he reached the limits of his verbal abilities, and unable to put all the things welling up in his heart into words, he simply took several shallow breaths.

Whap.

Whap. Whap. In a somewhat awkward movement, Rose was hitting his neck. “Right. Even hypothetically, a Burst Linker can’t go saying they’re fine with total point loss. I’m going to rescue Orkki and take her back to Lotus. So you help, too. Using the power you beat me with.”

“N-no,” he protested. “Even with Lead and Bell’s help, I was really just barely—Oh!”

Rose quickly turned her head at his cry.

A few hundred meters ahead, the shining pink ribbon was gently descending. Below it rose a massive skyscraper. Like the surrounding buildings, it had been transformed into a chalky temple, but the design of the exterior walls—multiple sheets joined together—was familiar to him.

“That’s…,” he started. “Is it maybe Midtown Tower?”

“Looks like it,” she agreed. “But why would the petals stop there?”

The two Burst Linkers stared wordlessly for a moment at the massive tower bathed in moonlight.

Tokyo Midtown Tower was where the Acceleration Research Society had set the ISS kit main body and had it guarded by the Archangel Metatron after she had been tamed by the Luminary. But Metatron—just her first form, of course—was defeated in Nega Nebulus’s general attack, and Kuroyukihime’s team had also destroyed the ISS kit main body. After that, the Acceleration Research Society had abandoned Midtown Tower as a base. Or so he’d thought.

Ahead of them, the swarm of flower petals danced down to the roof of the tower, carving out a spiral in the air, and flashed like fireworks before disappearing.

“Looks like we’ll just have to go in,” Rose said.

“I have a bad feeling about this, though,” Haruyuki told her, although he had already made the same decision in his heart. He had about 20 percent left in his special-attack gauge, and if he glided part of the way, they could reach the tower even if he increased their speed slightly.

“Here we go.” He increased the vibrations of his metal fins. As he cut through the moonlight and accelerated, the massive pale tower piercing the night sky grew nearer in the blink of an eye. He had naturally taken a course with the intention of landing on the roof, but suddenly his partner stopped him.

“Hang on for a sec!” Rose whisper-hissed, so he hurried to drop his speed.

“Wh-what’s wrong?!”

“There’s an Enemy on the roof.”

“What?!” He strained his eyes as he shifted to hovering mode, but he could only see a small spire in the center of the wide roof; nothing was moving. If an Enemy was somewhere on that roof, it would have to be in the shadow of the spire.

“Oh!” Finally catching sight of it, Haruyuki unconsciously tightened his arms.

Something blacker than the thick shadows stood furtively—almost glued—to the side of the spire. The silhouette was human shaped, but from this distance, he couldn’t tell if it was an Enemy or a large Burst Linker.

“H-how do you know it’s an Enemy?”

“Take a good look at the head.”

He did as he was told and focused his gaze on the head of the silhouette. It caught the light of the moon reflected off the roof, and he noticed a silver flash in the shape of a ring.

“Oh, it’s like some kind of crown.” His own words kicked at his memories, and he groaned. “That… Is it maybe the Luminary’s…”

“There’s no mistake,” she told him firmly. “The Luminary’s an Enhanced Armament made up of two parts: diadem and scepter. The diadem produces a crown of thorns to tame the Enemy, and the scepter controls it. It’s possible to yield the scepter to another Burst Linker temporarily, but the owner in the end is the person equipped with the diadem—the White King.”

“Two in one.” He pondered this. “So then the staff Black Vise and Platinum Cavalier had wasn’t the main body of the Arc.”

“Exactly. I’ve never seen Cosmos let go of the diadem.”

“In that case… maybe it’s not just that black Enemy in Midtown Tower, but whoever in Oscillatory has the scepter?”

Milady thought a few seconds before replying. “The only possibility there would be Black Vise, given he has the ability to decelerate. But as far as I know, Vise died along with the five kings and hasn’t regenerated. To regenerate, he’d need to move Inti for a few minutes at the very least, and if the kings detected that, they could escape from the Unlimited EK, and then it would all have been for nothing. You all are probably watching Inti’s movement through some means or another, right?”

“Uh. Well, kinda…”

In fact, the one keeping an eye on Inti was Graphite Edge, who belonged to Great Wall, but he omitted these details. Rose didn’t seem to find anything suspicious about his response as she stared down at Midtown Tower, which was about three hundred meters away.

“In the most likely scenario,” she continued, “Inti won’t move until the White King and Black Vise’s plan reaches its final stage. So if you’re going to try and rescue Lotus and the other kings, you’d best assume that destroying Inti is your only option.”

This word “plan” echoed in his ears once more, but he gave up on chasing that down for the moment.

“Right,” he said. “We’re investigating ways to attack with that premise. Or like… this is just my own personal thought, but if we can save Oracle, maybe we’d get a little closer to destroying Inti.”

“Ohh.” Rose nodded. “Oracle’s Paradigm Revolution? So you want to use that to change the stage to an Ocean and put out Inti’s flames?”

“Y-yes. I didn’t know the name of the technique, but I’d heard that Oracle had that kind of special attack.” He sighed. “But it turns out the Sun God’s flames can’t be put out with water, so I don’t know how well that would work.”

“It’s true that Inti’s flames can’t be put out with water. So then why, if you know that?” Rose asked.

“Um.” Haruyuki tried to give shape to his vague, fragmented thoughts. “Even if water’s ineffective against it, I think Inti definitely doesn’t like water. I mean, it’s never shown itself when the Unlimited Neutral Field is an Ocean or a Storm, right? I feel like the key to an attack is in that somehow.”

“Hmm. Makes sense. Amaterasu and I have talked about strategies for Inti, but we eliminated water right from the start. We might need to go see Rudra at some point, too,” Rose muttered as though talking to herself, and then she shook her head slightly before staring once again at Midtown Tower.

“Right now, this tower’s more important than Inti. We can’t get near the roof, but there are a number of openings on the exterior walls. We might be able to get in through one of those.”

“Huh… Can’t we take down the Enemy on the roof?” he asked.

“That’s probably the Legend-class Enemy, Einherjar. He was moved from the Valhalla dungeon to this place. There’s no way we could defeat him—well, I won’t go that far, but he is a relatively tough opponent. And I don’t want to make a commotion before we find Orkki.”

Haruyuki was hearing these two names for the first time, further piquing his interest, but he held himself in check since this was no time to be distracted by such things. “I understand. But given that, it seems like there will also be tamed Enemies inside the tower. Since the Luminary can tame several simultaneously but there’s only one on the roof, that probably means they don’t want to make the building stand out to any observers. And it’s still not certain that Oracle’s in Midtown Tower.”

“That’s true,” Rose agreed. “But I believe in the guidance of my Flower Divination and my bond with Orkki. At the very least, there’s something in that tower if such a high-level Enemy is being made to guard it… An important something for Oscillatory’s plan.”

There was no need for further discussion. Nodding deeply, Haruyuki turned his focus back to the chalky tower. “Okay. So then we’ll go inside somewhere on the outside wall. I think somewhere as high as possible would be best.”

“Right. But if we get too close to the roof, Einherjar will notice us. I’m pretty sure the tower is two hundred fifty meters tall.” She paused thoughtfully. “I’ve got it. Aim for somewhere about a fourth down from the top.”

“Roger that.” Haruyuki took a deep breath before spreading his wings and cutting his thrust to approach Midtown Tower in a silent glide.

There were random openings on the walls of the skyscraper-turned-temple, just like Rose said. If this were a Steel or Purgatory stage, they would have had a bit of work finding an entrance, so he was grateful for Rose’s powerful luck in drawing a Moonlight stage as he went around from the west side of the tower to the north at a low speed.

About a fourth of the way from the top of the northern wall, there was a midsize opening. When Haruyuki indicated it with a hand, Rose nodded silently, so he dropped altitude to below the roof and approached, avoiding the eyes of the Enemy. Using up his special-attack gauge so that there was just barely 5 percent remaining, he decelerated and flew in through the opening to land.

He immediately searched their surroundings, but there was no sign of anything moving. He let out a breath and started to stand up.

“You can put me down already.”

He heard these words and realized he was still holding Rose bridal-style. The Haruyuki of a short while ago would have reflexively yanked his arms in and dropped her to the floor, but he narrowly averted that tragedy now and squatted down to let her feet touch the ground.

“Thanks, Crow,” Rose said as she stepped away and crossed her arms in front of her body. With a metallic squeal, countless spikes sprang up once more, and she took on her original thorny form.

Maybe it took her a lot of painful work to be able to pull in and push out those thorns, like the Black King and her “hands”… As this and other thoughts passed through his mind, Haruyuki looked around.

They were standing in the middle of a path that stretched out to both sides along the exterior wall. The interior wall was also white marble, and if Haruyuki and Rose hit it with everything they had, they could have broken it, but the spectacular noise would have drawn in new Enemies. For the time being, they would have to follow the terrain as they went about their search.

“Let’s find stairs first,” Rose suggested. “I think the fact that the flower petals were sucked into the roof means there’s something to find high up in the tower.”

“Right,” he agreed. “I’m pretty sure the main body of the ISS kit that Kuroyukihime and the others destroyed was on the forty-fifth floor of this building around the portal. How about we aim for that first?”

“Got it. I’ll take the lead; you keep an eye on our rear.”

They nodded at each other, and then started running south down in the corridor.

Tokyo Midtown Tower was fifty-four stories tall, and since they had come in around a quarter of the way from the top, their current position was somewhere around the fortieth floor. It was only five more to the forty-fifth, and they could hop up that in a flash so long as they could find the stairs. And if they found Orchid Oracle there, it would be a piece of cake to leave through the portal on the same floor.

As he prayed to the gods of the Accelerated World that Oracle would be there, Haruyuki chased after his thorny guide.

After about twenty meters, the wide corridor bent to the left. Rose stopped at the corner and pressed her back against the wall before peering out ahead. She pulled back in and murmured tensely, “There’s a large hall roughly twenty-five meters ahead, and an Enemy—Einherjar—is standing there. That’s probably where the stairs are, too, but there’s no way we can slip by without it noticing us.”

“Um,” Haruyuki said. “Is this Einherjar like those knight-type Enemies that were guarding Eterna—I mean, EG? I’ve fought those before.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the Beast-class Enemy Variangan,” she told him. “It’s also a powerful foe, of course, but Einherjar’s three times stronger. Still, after coming this far, we’ll just have to figure something out. Fortunately, the Einherjar guarding this tower has a weak point it doesn’t normally have.”

“Huh?” He was a little freaked by the idea of something three times stronger than those knights, and just as he was about to ask what this weak point was, he realized it himself. “R-right. The Luminary crown. If we can destroy that, we can check the Enemy’s movement for a bit.”

“Exactly. That said, though, it definitely won’t be easy.” She paused briefly. “To keep it from running wild, one of us will have to stop it from moving while the other destroys the crown in a single blow. And we can’t use Incarnate techniques since that’ll draw in the Einherjars from the other floors.”

“A single blow… without Incarnate?”

Pressing his back against the marble wall next to his guide, Haruyuki tried to remember the Einherjar he had caught a glimpse of in the shadows on the roof. Size-wise, it wasn’t super big, two meters tall at most. But if it was triple the strength of the knight Enemy he’d fought at Eternal Girls’ Academy, then they were in for a difficult encounter. Unfortunately, it would be hard for Haruyuki to stop the movement of an opponent like that for even a second.

“I might be able to do the destroying part,” he said.

Rose turned a slightly doubtful gaze on him. “Really? Even if it looks delicate, it’s still part of an Arc. It’s got fairly high endurance.”

“I—I know…”

In fact, when he tried to destroy the crown controlling Metatron’s first form, he’d had to hit it dozens of times with a striking hand reinforced with Incarnate. But the Haruyuki of today could borrow the power of another Enemy of the same Legend class as Einherjar—no, an Enemy in a position even higher, one of the Four Saints.

“I can do it. I’ll definitely do it,” he said, clenching his hands into fists.

“Got it.” Rose nodded slowly. “Then I’ll leave the destroying to you. I’ll keep it from moving… But since I can’t use Incarnate, I think I’ll only be able to stop it completely for three seconds.”

“That’s plenty,” Haruyuki declared, and gave a quiet voice command. “Equip Metatron Wings.”

A pure white light pierced the ceiling of the temple and generated new wings on Silver Crow’s back. Seeing the white wings, sharp like swords, Milady’s eye lenses widened and she let out a sigh.

“That… Those are the Archangel Metatron’s wings. I didn’t know you had a trick like that up your sleeve.”

“I try not to use them except for when I really need to, but I think now is one of those times, so…”

“……”

After a couple seconds of silence, Rose said in an even quieter voice, “I amend my statement.”

“Wh-what statement?” He cocked his head to one side curiously.

“Back in Orkki’s hospital room, I said I didn’t need you. Having you with me’s a real lifesaver. Alone, I—”

Haruyuki raised a hand to stop Rose from continuing. “You can tell me all about that once we rescue Oracle. Let’s go.”

“Right.”

They nodded at each other and took a deep breath in unison. Then Rose kicked off the floor and flew into the corridor around the corner.

Instantly, he heard the echo of metal clanging in the distance, followed by heavy, hard footsteps. Haruyuki also flew out from their hiding spot and stared into the depths of the corridor.

The Legend-class Enemy Einherjar was a fearsome sight, almost like an apparition clad in jet-black armor. A physical manifestation of darkness writhed inside of the helmet, and only the eyes shone bright like blue will-o’-the-wisps. In its left hand was a banged-up kite shield, in its right, a longsword that was missing chunks. But Haruyuki knew instinctively that if he got hit with that blade, it would easily send the limbs of even a metal color like Silver Crow flying.

Rose confronted the fierce charge of this Enemy, who was commonly referred to as a God of Death, head-on. She raised a hand and called at the minimum possible volume, “Ornate Skewering!!”

The rose-colored light that jetted out from her feet raced across the floor at a tremendous speed and slammed into Einherjar.

Keeeeeee!! Dozens of red vines stretched up from the ground and tangled around the apparition. Once they had clambered quickly up to its head, needle-sharp thorns shot out of the vines with an even shriller sound and plunged into the knight’s armor.

“Now!” Rose shouted, but Haruyuki was already bringing down the hand he had high above his head.

“Ektenia!!” His left Metatron Wing turned into a ray of light and bolted across the space, heading straight for the silver crown digging into Einherjar’s helmet.

“Vaaarrrrraaaa!!” The knight emitted an earsplitting howl and pulled up its arm. The myriad thorns gouging into it ripped away from its armor, and a red damage effect gushed from the wounds this left behind. The Enemy appeared not to feel any pain as it raised its sword to repel the light of his attack.

“Just a little… more!” Haruyuki brought down his other hand and fired his right Metatron Wing. This time, it didn’t fly in a straight line, but arced around Einherjar’s left shoulder, and after just barely scratching the wall, it turned sharply and collided with the silver crown from the Enemy’s blind spot.

Destruction thundered down as the countless hooks that had formed the crown shattered into pieces and fell to the floor before melting away.

Instantly, the will-o’-the wisps inside Einherjar’s helmet vanished, and it dropped its head like a marionette whose strings had been cut. When the rose vines suspending its body disappeared, it plunged to its knees.

“Run!” Rose shouted, and Haruyuki kicked off the floor.

The Einherjar was still motionless, but Haruyuki knew in his gut that the Enemy would reboot quickly and, freed from the Luminary’s control, it would come after them. If he could summon Metatron, she might have been able to deactivate it like she did at EGA, but he had no intention of disturbing her slumber at Fufuan until her recovery was complete.

Racing along, they were about to cut past Einherjar when the Enemy groaned.

“Vaar…”

Ice shot through his veins, but Haruyuki suppressed his fear and ran even faster, with the help of thrust from his wings. He had almost overtaken Rose, so he reflexively reached out and grabbed her slender wrist. They made it into a massive hall, and he saw a large staircase on the right. He ran up it without even a nanosecond of hesitation.

When he looked back toward the landing, Einherjar had disappeared, but Haruyuki couldn’t bring himself to slow down. He kept racing up the stairs, taking them three at a time, toward the next floor. Fortunately, there was no sign of an Enemy here, so he wound around to the next staircase and kept moving upward. Forty-second floor, forty-third…

“E-enough! Stop!” Rose called out from behind, when they had passed the forty-fourth floor.

“Oh… S-sure.” He slackened the speed at which he’d been running and stopped on the next landing. At once, his body turned to lead, and he nearly slumped to the ground. But before his knees could touch the floor, his comrade yanked him up by the hand, and he just barely managed to stay on his feet.

When he looked up, Rose Milady was staring down at him with a look on her face mask that was half-exasperated and half something else. “Honestly. You’re a weird one, Silver Crow. There I was thinking you were nervy enough to go and slice into your ally, aka me, then at the last minute, the light spins around, turning into a highly precise, pinpoint attack. And then you flee the scene so hard and fast that you eventually collapse.”

“Th-that’s… I’m sorry…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” she told him. “That was a fine attack. And my restraint wasn’t firm enough, so the thing bounced back your first attack. And yet you immediately launched a second. I was surprised.”

“I-it wasn’t because I didn’t have faith in you,” he protested. “I just sort of lashed out in a trance, honest.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Looking exasperated once more, Rose glared up at the stairs. “So up ahead is the forty-fifth floor, the area in question. There might be another Einherjar stationed there… In that case, we might actually have to defeat it this time.”

“I guess so,” Haruyuki murmured and began to rack his brain intently for ways to defeat that terrifying death-god knight. But then he abruptly remembered Rose’s restraint technique and asked, “That reminds me. That special-attack Ornate Skewering is a lot like the Incarnate technique you hit me with in the Territories—um, Secret Garden, right?”

“Nice memory.” She smiled faintly. “Yeah. Secret Garden’s the upgraded version of that special attack.”

“Those rose vines clamped down so incredibly tightly, I couldn’t move at all,” he told her. “I know that Incarnate techniques would draw in Enemies. But there’s a portal on the forty-fifth floor. If we do find Oracle, maybe it would be okay to use Incarnate techniques at that point? We could stop Einherjar from moving and jump into the portal with Oracle.”

“That’s… true.” Milady nodded slowly and then looked back at him. “Our only choice from here is to adapt on the fly. If just restraining it’s enough, then I won’t hesitate to use Secret Garden. But…”

“But?” he repeated.

She shook her head. “No, it’s nothing. We should get moving.”

“Okay.” He thought he saw something like concern flit across Rose’s face, but it quickly disappeared, and in its place a firm resolve bloomed.

Still holding his hand tightly, she gave it a yank and began climbing the few remaining stairs with a cautious step. After the Archangel Metatron attack mission three weeks earlier, Haruyuki had gone to Eternal Girls’ Academy to rescue Niko after she was abducted by Black Vise, so he hadn’t been a part of the fierce battle with the ISS kit main body that Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Akira, and Utai had fought here at Midtown Tower. He’d heard all the details once the dust had settled, but this was the first time he would see the forty-fifth floor and its portal with his own eyes.

Of course, the stage attribute was different—last time, it had been the endless dusk of a Twilight stage—so the interior design of the building would have been different, too. But the fundamental structure should have been the same. The forty-fifth floor was a large hall, and the portal was at the back. Even if there was a new Einherjar guarding the hall, if Rose could hold it for ten—no, five seconds, it wouldn’t be too hard to escape into the portal. Everything hinged on whether or not they could find Orchid Oracle before they were targeted.

He suddenly had a new idea and stopped his companion with a whisper. “Um, Rose?”

“What?” She looked over her shoulder at him.

“Before we charge in there, how about you try using Flower Divination one more time?” he suggested. “I think even just knowing Oracle’s approximate position would increase the probability of our success a fair bit.”

“That’s true.” Standing two steps above him, Rose nodded and then quickly shook her head from side to side. “But unfortunately, I used up basically all of the special-attack gauge I charged at the hospital on that Skewering back there. I could charge it up somewhat if I destroyed the wall, but I don’t want to make any loud noises.”

“Oh… I see. Right.” Now that she mentioned it, Haruyuki’s special-attack gauge also had less than 20 percent remaining. It had charged up however much when he’d destroyed Einherjar’s crown, but he felt the same anxiety. In a normal duel, his gauge would have gradually charged while he was punching and getting punched, but in the Unlimited Neutral Field, unless you actively charged your gauge every chance you got, you were likely to end up in a tight spot when push came to shove.

But there was no point in crying over spilled milk. They would just have to win with the cards in their hands. That was a basic principle of Brain Burst, whether it was a normal duel, the Territories, or the Unlimited Neutral Field.

“I know I said this before, but all we can do is pick up the fight where we come out,” she told him. “We decide to prioritize movement above all else and keep moving by improvising. Crow, you beat me. You can do this.”

“I also said this before, but I don’t think that I beat you or anything.” He paused briefly. “And what is this impro-whatever?”

He could practically see her eyes rolling beneath her avatar. “Off the cuff. Ad lib. You’re good at that kind of thing, right?”

“I’m not especially good at it or anything. But I’ll do my best. Once we get into the hall, we find Oracle and carry her out the portal. Even if there is an Enemy, we avoid it or restrain it as much as we can, avoid fighting whenever we can. That’s the plan, right?”

“Yes. If I could add anything,” she replied, “put saving Orkki before me. If I tell you to go on ahead, you go through that portal with Orkki without another word.”

“B-but…” Haruyuki was about to say that he could never do that. But Rose Milady’s eye lenses housed an even more serious light than when he faced her in the Territories, and he couldn’t offer any further protest. Instead, he said simply, “I’ll do my best.”

“I’m counting on you. Okay… Here we go.” Rose Milady turned around and started to race up the final twenty or so steps.

When they finally reached the forty-fifth floor, it was the same as the one below in terms of layout and corridor design, but for some reason the air felt noticeably cooler, and Haruyuki shivered.

There was no sign of an Enemy in the passage cutting across the stairway hall. But he saw large double doors on the wall directly ahead, and beyond them was probably the great hall and the portal. Most likely, Orchid Oracle was being held somewhere inside.

Silently nodding at each other, they cut across the stairwell hall and moved to the door. He tried pressing the side of his helmet to the chilly marble surface, but he couldn’t hear any sound from inside.

Doing the same thing on the left side, Rose shook her head briefly and then pointed at the doors—a sign that they would just have to open it since they couldn’t hear anything. Nodding, he put his right shoulder and left hand up against the marble. Rose held up three fingers, and folded her middle finger and index finger. The instant her thumb went down…

“Nngh!” Haruyuki shoved the door forcefully.

The thick marble shuddered and began to swing inward, creaking sonorously. Quiet! he shouted in his heart, but there was no talking to this inorganic opponent. Rose, pushing on the other side, also sent her eyes racing to their rear, an anxious look on her face. If an Enemy heard this squealing and appeared on the stairs, they would have no choice but to split up, and he absolutely did not want to do that.

A few tense seconds passed until the doors were open wide enough for them to pass through alongside each other. They quickly slid inside, and he checked what they were up against as he pressed his back against the door.

It was big.

The entire floor was a single hall—it looked to be thirty meters wide and fifty meters deep. There were a dozen or more narrow windows in the walls, and the moonlight drew a striped pattern on the floor. Directly ahead of them, in the back of the hall, was an elliptical shape pulsing a pale blue, the portal. They just had to reach that to escape this tower with its wandering ghost knights.

But almost as if to prevent them from doing so, a black shadow stood in a daunting pose immediately in front of the glowing orb. Inky black armor, silver crown on its forehead—a tamed Einherjar. Unlike the individual they had fought on the fortieth floor, this one had a tattered cape on its back and a thorny iron ball with chains in its left hand instead of a shield—a morning star. The longsword in its right hand was also significantly larger.

“Commander class!” Rose cried with a groan.

Haruyuki continued to scan the room in search of Orchid Oracle, and his eyes went to the center of the right wall—where he saw a human shadow at the base of a wide, floor-to-ceiling pillar.

Bound to the pillar with abnormally thick chains wrapped around it from head to toe was a figure slightly smaller than himself. He could just barely catch a glimpse of slender limbs and parts of the torso in the gaps in the chains, but in the reflected light of the moon, he couldn’t make out the armor color or shape.

But given the situation, he had to assume it was Orchid. Haruyuki turned to Rose and hissed, “I found her!”

“I see her!” Rose yelped at exactly the same moment. However, she pointed not at the right side where Haruyuki had found his Oracle but to the wall on the left.

He hurriedly trained his eyes in that direction and found a single avatar wrapped in chains at the base of an identical pillar on the opposite side. The size was basically the same as the avatar he’d found.

“Huh?!”

As Haruyuki let out a cry of surprise, Rose noticed the other prisoner bound to the pillar on the right.

“What’s going on?!” she groaned.

Unconsciously, Haruyuki gripped her hand. “We’ve got no choice but to get them both out! I’ll cut the chains of the avatar on the right, so you take the left—”

“No, it’s impossible.” A deep anguish and frustration bled into her voice. “Those chains have an abnormally high priority. Even if we used Incarnate, we wouldn’t be able to break them easily. And while we’re trying, the Enemy will start to move.”

Clenching his teeth beneath his mask, Haruyuki looked at the commander Einherjar camped out in front of the portal. They seemed to be just barely outside of its aggro range at present, but if they took a few steps toward either of the imprisoned avatars, he had no doubt that it would react immediately and charge them.

“Wh-what should we do?” He stood rooted to the spot, and Rose squeezed his hand, hard.

“We’ll just have to fight.”

“What…?” He stared at her.

“We defeat the Einherjar and then cut the chains. There’s no other way to save Orkki.” She frowned. “Although I don’t know which one’s Orkki.”

“I… guess you’re right.”

It was true. There was no other way. They could leave the tower temporarily, go back to the real world through another portal, get a battle party together, and then attack anew. But the moment they’d destroyed the crown of the Einherjar on the fortieth floor, the Oscillatory side was made aware of their entry into the building. When they next visited this place, the tower might be an empty shell, or the Seven Dwarves might be lying in wait, in addition to the Enemies. He had to assume that this was their only chance to rescue the girl.

“Understood. We’ll fight. What about Incarnate techniques?”

“I don’t want to use them if possible. Hang on until you just can’t.”

“Roger.”

Once they had come to a bare-minimum understanding, Haruyuki released her hand and reached down to his left hip, before murmuring a new voice command, “Equip Lucid Blade.”

A platinum light grew in his left hand, which then concentrated to produce a slender longsword.

Seeing this, Rose smiled faintly. “The sword you cut me with, hmm? I’m counting on it to have the same bite now.”

Rather than replying in words, Haruyuki slowly drew his sword.

They nodded silently at each other once more, and then sprang into action.