Accel World - Volume 24 - Chapter 2

2

When he returned to his bedroom after drying his hair, the midsummer sun reflecting on the floor of the balcony dyed the whole room white.

July 22, 2:00 PM: It was only the second day of summer break, but it felt like more than a week had passed already. And that was because so many things had happened since the last day of school.

Yesterday, Black Vise and Wolfram Cerberus had barged into the meeting of the Seven Kings—or to be more accurate, the White King’s full proxy, Ivory Tower, had finally revealed his true identity—and dropped the Legend-class Enemy the Sun God Inti onto the Nippon Budokan, the meeting venue, thereby pushing the Blue King, Blue Knight; the Green King, Green Grandé; the Yellow King, Yellow Radio; the Purple King, Purple Thorn; and the Black King, Black Lotus, into a state of Unlimited EK.

Fortunately, the Red King, Scarlet Rain, and the others at the meeting had managed to escape, but the whole incident was a serious blow to Haruyuki and Nega Nebulus. Nevertheless, they were looking ahead rather than back and, at a Legion meeting, had come up with a strategy to rescue the Black King. They were ready to leap into action the very same day, and this was when Haruyuki received a message from Rose Milady, the third of the Seven Dwarves, which was the executive branch of the White Legion.

Trusting Rose when she said that she wanted to rescue Orchid Oracle/Megumi Wakamiya, who was a pawn in the plan of the White Legion—well, the Acceleration Research Society, really—Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime went with her to the National Center for Child Health and Development, where Megumi was hospitalized. Direct-linking with the unconscious girl, who had been in a coma for nearly two days, Rose and Haruyuki dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field and rescued Oracle from Tokyo Midtown Tower, a place deeply connected to all of the Society’s scheming, where she was being held prisoner.

At the time, Haruyuki had also liberated the wandering blacksmith NPC Mr. Smith—a drone—who was being held captive there for some reason, and gotten his Enhanced Armament Lucid Blade modified to nullify fire damage. Naturally, he did this as a countermeasure for the Sun God’s intense heat, but the strategy the attendants of the meeting of the Seven Kings hammered out for the Black King’s rescue had cast Trilead Tetroxide and his Arc of Infinity in the attacker role. There had been no time for Haruyuki to do anything else, however, and now attacking Inti was his job.

Can I really take on an important role like this the way I am now…?

He was seized by a moment of weakness as he stared out at the midsummer sun burning down on the veranda outside. Then he heard a faint ding, and his mail icon flashed.

The message was from Kuroyukihime. He hurriedly tapped the icon to open the message.

THEY FINISHED MEGUMI’S TESTS EARLIER. THEY DIDN’T FIND ANY ANOMALIES IN HER BRAIN, SO THEY’RE LETTING HER GO HOME TOMORROW. I’LL TELL YOU THE DETAILS LATER. I JUST WANTED TO THANK YOU ON BEHALF OF MEGUMI AND ROSE, TOO. HARUYUKI, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

It was her usual brief message, but Kuroyukihime’s relief still came through loud and clear. Haruyuki heaved a sigh of relief and replied, THAT’S GREAT. PLEASE TELL WAKAMIYA TO FEEL BETTER SOON.

Megumi had woken up just after ten that morning. Kuroyukihime and Rose Milady, aka Tsubomi Koshika, had stayed at the hospital, but Haruyuki had figured it would be difficult for Megumi to change clothes or eat with him in the room, so he’d left a little earlier than the girls. On his way home, he’d stopped by school to tend to Hoo, but he still made it back to his condo before lunch. And since his mother was away until the next morning, he had his first pocket of free time in ages.

Haruyuki lay down on his bed and wondered whether he should read the new manga magazine or maybe clear that retro RPG he was in the middle of before pushing all such temptations aside and moving to the living room. He poured himself a glass of cold barley tea, sat down at the dining table, and launched the Umesato integrated study app.

He’d worked pretty hard at Kuroyukihime’s the night before, but he still had plenty of summer homework left to do. His goal was to finish it all in July—or if that was impossible, in the first week of August—so he couldn’t exactly skip a day now. He decided to go for it and tapped the math tab, then started to solve the simultaneous equations, virtual pen in one hand.

The old Haruyuki hadn’t been able to concentrate for even a full ten minutes, but lately, he felt like he had pretty decent control over the gears in his head. The basic reason he hadn’t been able to focus was because somewhere inside of him, he resisted the whole endeavor—he didn’t want to do it; it was boring and annoying. But if he shifted his mind to a deeper level like when he was training in the Accelerated World, those extraneous thoughts disappeared—well, not exactly, but he could push the intruding ideas far away into the background. One hour of focus was more productive than three hours of scattered thoughts.

Wetting his throat from time to time with tea, Haruyuki plowed through the problems on the page, his mind clear and focused. For this assignment, not only did he have to give the answer, but he also had to write down how he arrived at that answer (not on real paper, naturally, but on e-paper), so he couldn’t cheat using a calculator app. When he got stuck, he opened his textbook and glared at the solutions to similar problems, looking for a hint. At some point each time, when he thought about it hard enough, he would get a flash of insight and his hand would start to move in a rush.

He took care of five pages of math homework this way. He let out a sigh before drinking the rest of his now-lukewarm tea.

Ding-dong! He heard the chime announcing a visitor. It wasn’t the front doorbell, but rather the intercom on the first floor of the condo building. A visitor window popped up, and there he saw…

“Huh? K-Kuroyukihime?!”

The girl wearing a white, wide-brimmed hat and a teal dress was without a doubt Kuroyukihime. Since she was wearing different clothes than when they’d said good-bye at the hospital, she must have stopped at home before coming over. But why?

“Uh, um, wh-what’s the matter?” he asked automatically.

The Kuroyukihime on the screen shrugged. “What do you mean? I said in my message that I would tell you the details later, didn’t I?”

“So by ‘later,’ you meant immediately afterward?!”

“You can’t really interpret it any other way.”

I don’t know about that, he thought, but naturally, actually saying this out loud was not an option. He quickly tapped the unlock button. “Um, c-c-come on in!”

“Mmm. Thanks.”

She waved and disappeared through the automatic doors to the left of the screen. Haruyuki hurriedly stood up and looked down at himself. He was in shorts and a T-shirt that he kept for lounging around the house, but since he’d just had a bath before changing into them, they didn’t stink of sweat. While he was at it, he scanned the living room and checked that nothing was lying about.

He dashed to the front entryway and set out the nicest slippers at the perfect angle when the chime rang again. When he undid the electronic lock and opened the door, he was greeted by the scent of citrus and a blast of hot air.

“H-hello, Kuroyukihime. You must be hot.”

“Mm-hmm. Makes me worry what August will be like,” the older girl said as she stepped inside, but she wasn’t sweating in the slightest. Haruyuki wondered if this was another thing she had conquered with the power of her Incarnate will as he moved to close the door.

However…

“Hey! I’m here, too, you know!”

“Oh! I’m sorry. Come in…”

He pulled the door back open and found a petite young woman in a dress-type school uniform standing there. Tsubomi Koshika/Rose Milady. He’d parted from her a mere five hours ago.

A previous incarnation of Haruyuki would have jumped in surprise, but he managed to curb that impulse as he asked, “Y-you came with Kuroyukihime, Koshika?”

Tsubomi looked at him through the gap in her long fringe. “You’re not surprised? And I even went and crouched down below the camera so you would be.”

Now that she mentioned it, it had only been Kuroyukihime in the visitor window.

“Wh-why would you do that?”

“Just playing around.” She shrugged.

“That’s…I deeply apologize for not living up to your expectations.”

I mean, I can’t go jumping at every little thing for the rest of my life, he thought as he set out another pair of slippers.

“Ah!!” Someone hit his back, and Haruyuki jumped high into the air, letting out a pathetic shriek.

“Ngaaaaaah?!”

He fell backward onto his butt in the entryway and looked up to find his childhood friend standing in front of the door, wearing a knit shirt and culottes.

“Ah…Chiyu?! You too?!”

“We ran into each other in the elevator,” Kuroyukihime explained from behind.

Chiyuri Kurashima grinned. “That was exactly the reaction I expected, Haru.”

“…You didn’t actually just come to scare me, did you?”

“I would never.” Her jovial expression turned to exasperation, and she held up the tote bag in her left hand. “I figured you were eating like crap, so I brought you dinner, see? Bow down to me!”

Faced with her might, all he could do was acquiesce with a “Yes, fine.” Chiyuri was exactly right—for lunch, he’d heated up some frozen fried rice, and that was it. “Y-you bring great blessings…Well, come on in, then.”

He set out a third pair of slippers and showed the girls into the comfortably cool living room. They sat down at the dining table, and he brought dishes and barley tea out from the kitchen.

The three large plastic containers that appeared from inside the tote bag contained a peerless lineup of finger sandwiches stuffed with different toppings, a green salad with plenty of broccoli, fried chicken, and asparagus wrapped in deli meat. There was more than enough for the four of them to eat their fill.

“Chiyu, did you know that Kuroyukihime and Koshika were coming?” Haruyuki asked.

Chiyuri moved her head quickly from side to side. “Uh-uh, not a clue.”

“So then why so much food…?”

“Mom said I should bring you at least three meals, since we were going to the trouble anyway. I was just as surprised as you when I got in the elevator and saw Kuroyuki,” Chiyuri said as she divided the fried chicken onto plates. She turned her gaze on Tsubomi. “So who’s this girl? Someone from Promi?”

What?! They haven’t been introduced yet?!

Haruyuki looked at Kuroyukihime with the question in his eyes, but his Legion Master was dishing out the salad with a look of clear conscience on her face. Tsubomi, beside her, was being Tsubomi and seemed to have no intention of introducing herself.

Left with no other choice, Haruyuki stopped pouring tea and said, “Um, first of all, Chiyu, she’s in ninth grade, so…”

“What? A year older than us?! I’m sorry for being so rude.”

“And she’s not Promi. She’s Oscillatory, so…”

“What? Oscillatory?! Excuse me ag— Wait. Whaaaaaaat?!” she cried out wildly and jumped back from the container of chicken, still holding a piece in the chopsticks in her right hand. “Oscillatory! That’s the White Legion!! Why would she come to your house with Kuroyuki?!”

“Um, it’s a long story,” he said. “Anyway, her name’s Tsubomi Koshika. She’s the third of the Seven Dwarves, Rose Milady.” Thus, he introduced his newest guest while setting empty plates on the table.

“Whaaaaaat?!” Chiyuri shouted twice as loud as before. When the piece of chicken in her chopsticks finally fell at this, Haruyuki caught it deftly in midair with the plate in his left hand.

Twenty minutes later.

By the time the homemade feast lovingly prepared by Chiyu’s mother was nearing its end, Haruyuki had basically finished explaining the situation.

At first, he worried that Chiyuri and Tsubomi wouldn’t get along right away. It was, of course, the first time they were meeting in the real world, but they’d already come face-to-face once in the Accelerated World. And not in the Normal Duel Field but in the Unlimited Neutral Field, where there were no rules.

In the Territories on Saturday, Nega Nebulus launched a surprise attack on Minato Area No. 3, the home base of Oscillatory Universe. Their objective was to strip the White Legion of their right to block the matching list and thus expose the members of the Acceleration Research Society lurking in the area. But Oscillatory had anticipated their attack and used Orchid Oracle’s superdreadnought of an Incarnate technique, Paradigm Breakdown, to change the Territories stage into the Unlimited Neutral Field.

At the height of the intense battle, Haruyuki and Chiyuri had gone off with Trilead, independent of the main squad, and tried to contact Orchid Oracle. Standing in their way was her guard, Rose Milady.

To take down the far more powerful Rose Milady, Haruyuki came up with a desperate strategy that put his own life on the line. While he was grappling with Rose, Trilead sliced through both of them with his Heavenly Stratus, and then Lime Bell used her Citron Call to heal Haruyuki before he died. So Chiyuri had seen her childhood friend split in two in that fight. Thus, he thought she might have some slightly complicated feelings when it came to Rose.

But then, after taking a sip of her after-dinner tea, Chiyuri suddenly said, “That reminds me, Koshika. I’m sorry for using such sneaky tactics during the Territories!” And Haruyuki joined Tsubomi in being briefly at a loss for words.

“Sneaky tactics.” He flapped his mouth open and closed a few times before he managed to ask her, “You mean the strategy where I sacrificed myself?”

“Duh,” Chiyuri replied. “I mean, I’d be totally upset if an enemy cut both of us in half and then only healed themselves!”

“N-no, but we were…,” Haruyuki mumbled in a sad attempt to argue back.

A wry grin bled onto Tsubomi’s face across from him. “Bell—Kurashima, you don’t have to apologize. That fight was no-holds-barred, anything goes, and anyway, your healing ability is an honest power, part of the BB system. If anyone should be taking heat here, it’s us in Oscillatory for changing the Territories stage to the Unlimited Neutral Field in the first place.”

She started to bow her head at them, but Kuroyukihime quickly jabbed at her forehead with her index finger to prop it up. She pushed harder, her finger digging in.

“What are you doing, Lotus?” Tsubomi finally asked.

“No need for you to apologize, either. It was Ivory Tower—or rather, Black Vise who put together that plan, yes?”

“That’s true, but I didn’t oppose it, so I’m also to blame here,” she insisted stubbornly. She tried to force her head down, while Kuroyukihime kept pushing it up.

Staring dumbfounded, Haruyuki thought in a corner of his brain, Right. That’s what’s weird. Why didn’t Tsubomi say anything against Black Vise’s plan when it used Orchid Oracle like a pawn? Oracle is Saffron Blossom’s child, too, so that means she’s basically Tsubomi’s sister. She has to be the most important person to her in the Accelerated World.

Tsubomi’s words when they first met at the library in Sasazuka came back to life in his ears.

“My priority is Oracle’s life, over the greater mission of the Legion.”

Greater mission. That was what she’d said. Tsubomi thought the plan—no, the conspiracy of the White King, White Cosmos, and the Acceleration Research Society—was a great mission.

The first of the Seven Dwarves, Platinum Cavalier, had said something similar when they encountered him right before he dropped the Sun God onto them.

“At any rate, even if we are attacked by the kings’ Legions and no one is able to flee…no member would dream of leaving Oscillatory.”

So that meant the nearly thirty Legion members all believed in the greater mission of the White King in the same way as Tsubomi did. What kind of purpose exactly could be so great as to legitimize tactics like the Armor of Catastrophe and the ISS kits?

Almost as though she had picked up on his thoughts, Tsubomi turned her gaze toward him. Kuroyukihime lowered her finger, and Tsubomi’s expression changed.

“Crow…Arita.” Tsubomi called him by his real name for the first time and then bit her lip. “You—and of course, Lotus and Bell—have a right to know the truth. About what the White King and Oscillatory Universe want and what they’re trying to do. But I need you to wait just a little longer. Once me and Orkki officially leave Oscillatory, I’ll lay out everything I know.”

Haruyuki had been forced to wait for any number of things since he became a Burst Linker, but the level of suspense for this one was the highest yet. But given the way things were going, he couldn’t exactly throw a tantrum over his desire to know.

“I understand,” he said finally. “But…you talk about leaving. That won’t be easy, though, right? You and the White King are both students at Eter—I mean, EG, so even if you’re cut off from the global net, she could totally use the in-school net to hit you with the Judgment Blow.”

“Very true.” Tsubomi nodded. “Fortunately, however, summer vacation just started, so it’s not impossible to keep running from her for a month until the end of the Judgment Blow term.”

“Oh! I—I guess so.” Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down, but Kuroyukihime, directly across from him, groaned, a complicated look on her face.

“Mmm. But, Koshika, you must have also had your real-world identity revealed to Cosmos and other members, yes? Your house is no doubt near the school, as well. I assume there’s a nonzero chance of a PK—an attack in the real?”

“Well, in theory,” Tsubomi replied and raised both hands theatrically. “But I can’t picture Cosmos, the princess of all princesses, launching an attack in the real. Maybe Fairy or that lot, but in that case, I can strike back.” She clenched her hands into small fists and thrust them out as if landing a body blow.

He couldn’t help but picture Tsubomi Koshika striking Snow Fairy in the real world with a punch to the gut, but he quickly shook the image out of his head. “Y-you still have to be careful. Oscillatory has boys in it, too, right? I mean, it’s not just EG members. It’s plenty possible they would come to grab you…”

He’d let his train of thought out unfiltered, but when he saw Tsubomi, Kuroyukihime, and even Chiyuri stiffen, he finally remembered something Niko had told him once. The stronger a girl Burst Linker was in the Accelerated World, the higher tendency she had in the real world to be on guard against boys. Because in the Accelerated World, F-types could fight M-types as equals, but there was a clear power differential when it came to their real bodies. It was a bit difficult for Haruyuki to wrap his mind around this feeling, but his guess that a group of boys might attack in the real world seemed to have caused far more fear than necessary.

“Uh. Um, I’m sorry,” Haruyuki apologized, shrinking into himself. “That came out wrong.”

The girls blinked several times before offering begrudging smiles.

“No. After all, we can’t say that sort of thing definitely won’t happen.” Kuroyukihime turned to Tsubomi. “In fact, will you be okay in that area? It does seem like the third of the Seven Dwarves stepping away would be difficult for lower-ranking members to accept.”

“I’m not sure,” Tsubomi replied. “I haven’t really talked to any of the younger kids.”

“But, Koshika”—Chiyuri cocked her head—“if you’re the executive, you give instructions and things to low rankers, right? Don’t you at least make small talk at times like that?”

“Oh, Reaper and Behemoth take care of all that on their own.” She paused briefly. “I doubt the younger kids have ever even seen Cosmos.”

Now it was Haruyuki who furrowed his brow. Behemoth he knew—the seventh of the Seven Dwarves, Glacier Behemoth. But he had no memory of going into battle against an Oscillatory member with the name Reaper. He dug around in his head, but he was sure the name hadn’t been on the member list Kuroyukihime had given out before the Territories.

“As usual, you have absolutely zero short-term memory, Haru,” Chiyuri said, looking exasperated, displaying her confidence in her own long-term memory. “The sixth of the Seven Dwarves is Cypress Reaper, okay? I’ve never seen him, either, but in the notes, it said that he’s more of a close-range type.”

“Cypress Reaper…,” he murmured.

“Reaper was assigned to the defense of Minato One in the Territories the other day,” Tsubomi offered. “So he wasn’t on the scene of that battle.”

“H-he wasn’t? Um…Does leaper mean someone who jumps?”

“It’s not spelled with an l in English,” Tsubomi corrected him. “It’s reap with an r…Reaper. Cypress is the tree, so literally, it’s like ‘the cutter of coniferous trees.’”

“Someone who cuts down trees,” Haruyuki mused. “So like a lumberjack avatar? With a chain saw or something?”

He’d had a modest amount of faith in this guess in a Haruyuki kind of way, but Tsubomi and even Kuroyukihime burst out laughing.

“Heh-heh! Sorry, but he’s not an avatar as cute as that, Haruyuki,” his Legion Master told him. “The cypress is a symbol of death in the West, and a reaper is also someone who reaps souls. So basically, a god of death. And he looks just like one, too, with the tattered cloak and the scythe.”

“Whoa! A shinigami, huh?” Haruyuki shrank into himself again before returning his gaze to Tsubomi. “So then Oscillatory newbies are given instruction by a shinigami and that massive Behemoth?”

“Well, basically.”

“Isn’t your dropout rate pretty high?” he asked. “I think I’d be crying by day three.”

“Goodness, Crow! Weren’t you instructed by ‘Strong Arm’ Sky Raker?” Tsubomi asked with a straight face.

Haruyuki glanced over at Kuroyukihime before nodding. “Y-yes, well…Kuroyukihime taught me about the system and know-how of the normal duel, but for Incarnate, it was mainly Master Raker.”

“Training from Reaper and Behemoth is nothing in comparison to that. They might look big and scary, but they’re both pretty solid teachers. Raker, on the other hand…Everyone in the neighboring areas used to talk about her ultra-Spartan style of instruction before her retirement, okay? Although I don’t know how it is now that she’s come back.”

“…”

Haruyuki felt a tight smile rise on his face, given that he couldn’t very well say that Raker’s style was still utterly and completely spartan following her return. His experience the first time they’d met—when he’d gone to her for induction into the Incarnate world and she’d gently but promptly shoved him off the top of the old Tokyo Tower—was still very fresh in his memory.

“When I learn Incarnate, maybe I’ll get Ui to teach me instead of Fuko.” Chiyuri sounded about 70 percent serious.

“N-no fair!” he yelped. “If I could’ve chosen, I would have picked Utai Shinomiya—”

“Oh!” His childhood friend gasped. “I’m totally telling Sis what you said just now!”

“Gah! Don’t do that!” Haruyuki pressed his hands together pleadingly, and Chiyuri stuck her tongue out at him.

“Now, now, both of you, how is it that I am not an option right from the start?” Kuroyukihime sounded peeved as she looked across the table at them. “I do believe I announced my intention to be more active in Incarnate instruction at yesterday’s Legion meeting.”

“O-of course we remember that, but…” Haruyuki trailed off.

Chiyuri picked up where he left off. “I mean, your training’s totally going to be even more spartan than Fuko’s!”

“Oh-ho.” A faint smile formed on their master’s lips. “You’ve gone and said it. I can’t step back now. Perhaps I could give both of you some rather thorough instruction to help with your digestion, hmm?”

“It was Chiyu who said it!” Haruyuki shouted and was about to attempt an escape when Chiyuri grabbed his collar tightly.

Abruptly, Tsubomi let out a huge sigh, so Haruyuki gave up on flight and looked at her. He had expected exasperation, but the smile on Tsubomi’s face was gentle and somehow sad.

“I get it. So this is the truth of Nega Nebulus’s strength.”

“Huh?” Haruyuki frowned. “Th-this what?”

“The air in the room right now.” Tsubomi spread her hands out wide and continued quietly, “The Speed Star, Silver Crow, and the Watch Witch, Lime Bell, they’re such ace Linkers now that there’s basically no one in the Accelerated World who doesn’t know who they are. And that goes double for World End, Black Lotus. Usually, the higher up the ranks you go, the more strained your relationships get, even with members of the same Legion, because Brain Burst is all about stealing points and information from one another. A trusted friend also knows your weak points. To hang on to your position, you build walls so that no information leaks out, and close friends fade away. Unless you’re bound by some pretty strong ties, that is.”

“That’s…” To Haruyuki, this worldview was simply too pessimistic. Because he’d seen how the many Burst Linkers he knew—Prominence’s Triplex or Great Wall’s Six Armors, for instance—trusted one another deeply and shared strengths and weaknesses unstintingly.

However…

“I suppose so,” Kuroyukihime agreed in a low voice. “The Four Elements and I used to be like that, too.”

“That’s…” Haruyuki’s eyes widened. “Walls between you, Master, Shinomiya, and Akira? I mean…”

“If that were true, then Nega Nebulus wouldn’t have been destroyed…Is that what you mean? Well, when I think about it now, I suppose I was the one building walls.”

“…”

He had no ready argument to this, given that he only knew of that era from hearsay, and he gritted his teeth.

“Actually, it’s rare for even the executive members of the Great Legions to have interactions in the real.” Tsubomi stared hard at Haruyuki. “Naturally, parent and child are a different story, but it’s not at all unusual for parent and child to end up killing each other.”

After finally sorting out his feelings, Haruyuki asked her, “A lot of the central members of the White Legion are students at EG, right? Don’t they all see one another in the real?”

“It’s not quite a lot of us,” she told him. “Currently, six, I guess, including me and Cosmos.”

“Six?!” Chiyuri cried out. Still holding the last finger sandwich in one hand, she openly showed surprise at this fact. “That many is totally a lot! I mean, there are only four students at the same school in our Legion, you know?!”

“Just because you’re at the same school doesn’t mean you’re best friends, though, right?” Tsubomi replied, and both Chiyuri and Haruyuki pulled back.

Before they became Burst Linkers, their relationship had been somewhat tense—or rather, Haruyuki had one-sidedly tried to pull away from Chiyuri and had even acted so outrageously that he slapped to the floor the lunch Chiyuri had been kind enough to make him. And beyond that, it was certainly true that it was impossible for all the students at a school to be good friends with one another.

“But still, it’s not like you’re fighting on the everyday level, right? That would make running a Legion seriously hard,” Haruyuki noted. “What kind of relationship do the EG Oscillatory members have, exactly?”

Tsubomi crossed her slender arms in front of her and groaned. “That’s a tough question to answer out of the blue…Okay, I got it. You know how in manga and video games, there’ll be the evil queen and her group of minions?”

“…Y-yeah, I guess,” he said.

“Kinda like that.”

“…”

Given that Haruyuki had taken in a large quantity of this sort of manga, anime, and video games growing up, the analogy was very easy for him to picture, but precisely because of this, he had very detailed images pop into his head: the White King and her five executive lackeys around an elliptical table in a mysterious room in the deepest depths of the Eternal Girls’ Academy. Anytime anyone was teased, she’d leap to her feet with a roar: “What did you say?!” And just when the whole thing was on the verge of exploding, the vice chair would shout, “Quiet! You are before the queen!”

After shaking his head quickly to clear away the absurd image, Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. “I—I basically get it. But…are you sure you should be talking about the White King like she’s an evil queen?”

“I’m leaving the Legion, so it’s all good. I think.” Tsubomi shrugged. “But yeah, I guess Cosmos isn’t really an evil queen. That’d be more…Purple Thorn’s style. And the evil queen doesn’t fit Cosmos’s whole ‘pretty princess’ image.”

“A saint,” Kuroyukihime said slowly.

Haruyuki couldn’t immediately figure out what she was talking about, but Tsubomi nodded in agreement.

“A saint, huh? Makes sense. Totally fits her purity politics…Are all the female Catholic saints martyrs, though? I’m pretty sure Cosmos has absolutely no intention of sacrificing herself for anything.”

“True, but she is Transient Eternity at any rate,” Kuroyukihime said with a sardonic smile before sighing. “Well, enough about Cosmos. Right now, let’s talk about you, Koshika. You may have a chance to avoid the Judgment Blow by taking advantage of summer break, but you definitely can’t say you’re safe. Until we find a way of doing something about that, perhaps you’d best not rush to leave the Legion?”

“Oh my!” Tsubomi looked surprised. “Are you sure you should be saying that? What if I change my mind and decide that Oscillatory actually suits me just fine?”

“That’s not likely to happen. Because right now, you value Megumi—Oracle—several times more than you value the Legion.”

Tsubomi looked pained, as though Kuroyukihime’s words hit home. She quietly sipped her tea before replying at last, “You saying that feels weird and complicated, but you’re exactly right. I can’t let Black Vise use Orkki ever again. The only way I can protect her is if we both leave the Legion as soon as possible and seek protection from a new Legion.”

“Huh?” Haruyuki frowned. “Uh, um, a new Legion? You’re not going to join Negabu?”

Tsubomi and Kuroyukihime looked at each other, and then Tsubomi grinned wryly.

“I’m happy you’d say that, but things aren’t that simple. The Legion Orkki and I move to will have to be one that makes the White Legion feel like it’s not to their advantage to be openly hostile. Oscillatory and Negabu are already in a state of all-out war, so there’s no need to make that relationship worse, is there?”

“B-but, I mean, the White Legion put five of the Seven Kings of Pure Color into an Unlimited EK!” he protested. “And, like, that’s a declaration of war unto all the Legions, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Tsubomi shrugged again. “So rather than one of the kings’ Legions, we’d end up going to a midsize Legion that’s not yet involved in hostilities against Oscillatory.”

It was true that there were plenty of small and midsize Legions in the Accelerated World outside of the six Great Legions. Even just around the Suginami area, a number of names quickly came to mind, like Helix in Itabashi Ward, which was expanding its power base; Night Owls, based in Toshima Ward; and Ovest, active in Nishitokyo. Even Oscillatory Universe likely wouldn’t be able to lay a hand on one of those midsize Legions. Given that they were already facing a full-frontal attack from the six Great Legions, Tsubomi and Megumi would hesitate to make any more enemies. Naturally, there was a risk to the Legion that took them in, but every Legion would desperately want the knowledge and battle power of two high rankers like Oracle and Rose.

However…

“Are you okay with that?” Haruyuki asked his Legion Master hoarsely. “You finally got Wakamiya back, and now you’re friendly with Koshika, and yet you can’t invite them to Nega Nebulus. On top of that, Wakamiya is a student at Umesato. So if she joins another Legion, you’ll end up fighting. You said so yourself, right? At the end of the Territories with Oscillatory, you asked Wakamiya to leave her Legion and join Negabu. And now…”

Haruyuki ran out of words there, and Kuroyukihime stared at him with a gentle expression. But there was something in her gaze that made him feel a deep pain she was holding back.

“Of course I’m vexed,” she agreed. “But given that, as a practical issue, it would be impossible to guard Megumi and Koshika twenty-four hours a day. We have no choice but to rely on the deterrence power of another Legion. This is something the three of us have already discussed and decided upon.”

“…”

Haruyuki hung his head, with no words to offer in response.

Kuroyukihime, Megumi, and Tsubomi had likely talked about the plan going forward after he’d left the hospital. They could have simply told him this over mail as a decided item. But instead they’d come all the way to the Arita house to explain it to him in person. The right thing here was to accept how they felt and what they’d decided. He knew that in his head, but…

“That kind of thing,” he started. “I’m sure you learned this long ago and don’t need me telling you, but…ever since Wakamiya’s memories as a Burst Linker came back, she’s been in terrible pain. She’s blamed herself this whole time for being manipulated by the White King and betraying her best friend, Kuroyukihime. Now she’s finally getting past that, and her avatar was liberated from that prison in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and yet…She can’t even go where she wants with all her heart to be. It’s just—!”

Hot tears sprang up in his eyes as he made this argument, carried away by his passion, and dropped onto his clenched fists. Chiyuri reached out from beside him and gently patted his back. This only brought him further misery.

I’m just being an unreasonable child. Don’t have a tantrum. Think. Think of a way to protect Wakamiya and Koshika from a real attack…Head still hanging, he set his brain into motion hard enough to almost burn out the motors.

Just like Kuroyukihime said, it would be difficult to guard them twenty-four hours a day, every day. If it was just when Megumi went out, they might have been able to take shifts and stay with her, but he seriously doubted that the kind of people who would do a PK would hesitate just because Haruyuki happened to be there. And Tsubomi likely lived in Minato Ward. They definitely wouldn’t be able to protect her, either. No matter how strong they were in the Accelerated World, in the real world, they were just junior high students with no money and no power.

In the real world. So what about the Accelerated World?

The objective of a PK was not the violence itself but to force a direct duel and push the player to total point loss. So if that player kept winning the duels, they could actually back their aggressor into a corner. But it was hard to stay cool when your physical body was restrained. If they could somehow jump into this direct duel…This was an absolute impossibility according to the Brain Burst rules, but Haruyuki had learned over the past six months the truth that nothing was absolute in the Accelerated World.

Right. A third-party Burst Linker couldn’t get close to affecting a direct duel between two players, but they could.

“Koshika!” Haruyuki yanked his head up and roughly wiped away the tears in his eyes. “Um, Koshika, you’re linked to the Saint Amaterasu, right?”

“Huh?” Tsubomi seemed perplexed by the sudden change in topic. “Yes, well, not so much linked. It’s more like we’re cooperating.”

He leaned toward her. “So then could you get Amaterasu to protect you if you were attacked in the real? A Saint should be able to interfere with even a direct duel stage to a certain extent via the Highest Level. Even if she can’t appear in person, she could, like, give you buffs or lend you an Enhanced Armament or something.”

“What?!” Tsubomi cried out in surprise and then furrowed her brow. “Amaterasu? Mmm…I feel like she’d overlook the ethical issue if it was to resist a PK, the most taboo of taboos, but I don’t know about it system-wise. I mean, with your Metatron Wings, you were in direct contact in the Mean Level of the Unlimited Neutral Field when you borrowed them, right? I wonder if it’s too much for even the Four Saints to have an actual effect on a direct duel. I think the limit’s about how far our voices carry.”

“Ugh.” This time, Haruyuki groaned.

She added another negative opinion to the pile. “To start with, I think the relationship between me and Amaterasu is just a little different than the one you have with Metatron. I said ‘cooperating’ a second ago, but it’s really at most something like a mutually beneficial relationship based on a contract, so I doubt she’d help me unconditionally because I was in a PK.”

“M-mutually beneficial relationship?” He cocked his head. These words didn’t show up very often in the Accelerated World. “That’s where you each provide something to the other, right? So what specifically?”

“Information,” Tsubomi told him. “Amaterasu provides information related to aspects of the Brain Burst system, and I give her information about the players, the Burst Linkers. Although we actually just make voice contact and talk about things from time to time.”

“But…,” Haruyuki started, a picture of the Saint Amaterasu in his mind, her elegance different from Metatron’s somehow. “But when we saw you in the Highest Level before the meeting of the Seven Kings yesterday, you said you thought of Amaterasu as a friend, right? Maybe Amaterasu feels the same way?”

Tsubomi smiled almost bashfully. “That’s nothing more than what I want, what I think. I have no idea what’s going on in her head. After all, we’re talking about a super AI who’s been active for thousands of years of subjective time.”

“AI…”

She was right. These “talking Beings”—aka the Saints Metatron and Amaterasu—were nothing other than artificial intelligences.

As of the present in 2047, AI technology was intimately fused with everyday life, so much so that it was impossible to tease out where it began and ended. Everything from household appliances to Neurolinker services could not exist without AI.

On the other hand, AI with high-level simulated personalities were strictly regulated by international treaties. Haruyuki and his friends had essentially no opportunities to interact with an AI that could converse on a human level. There had been some kind of AI-related incident in the late 2020s, several years before Haruyuki was born, and countries around the world had apparently taken advantage of this to enact various regulations. But he could never find any actual information on this, no matter how he scoured the net for details.

In other words, Metatron and Amaterasu, who possessed intelligence on the same—or perhaps even greater—level as Haruyuki and his friends, were clearly illegal AIs, but there was no point in getting hung up on the legality of the BB program, given that it existed only because it hacked into the social camera network. The problem before him was whether Amaterasu, a Being greater than human, would see Tsubomi as a friend and help her.

“So then let’s all go and ask her!” Chiyuri’s voice suddenly broke the pained silence that lingered over the dining table.

Haruyuki stared at her and slowly confirmed what she meant. “Go ask…Amaterasu?”

“Yeah!”

“…B-but we need Metatron’s help to go to the Highest Level,” he protested. “And her recovery’s supposed to take until tomorrow, so I can’t call her…”

“What are you talking about?” Chiyuri frowned. “This is serious. You can’t be all wishy-washy here; you gotta go see her! Amaterasu’s house—Amano Iwato, right? If you go all the way there and ask nicely, she’ll totally understand! Of course, getting Kuroyuki out of Inti comes first, though.”

“…”

Haruyuki wasn’t the only one briefly struck speechless. He gaped at the similarly dumbfounded Kuroyukihime and Tsubomi before turning back to his childhood friend. “So, um, Chiyu, that’s easy to say, but Amano Iwato is the Tokyo Station Underground Labyrinth—one of the four Great Dungeons! Do you have any idea how hard it’d be to get to the very bottom of it?”

“Ah, come on!” Chiyuri slapped him on the back. “In the Territories the other day, you, me, and Lead cleared the Shiba Park Underground Labyrinth, which is also a Great Dungeon, with just the three of us! This time, it’ll be four of us. Easy-peasy!”

“What are you talking about?!” Haruyuki jabbed her in the side in return. “Little Tron rendered all the Enemies in the Great Dungeon inactive, right up to the middle boss! If she hadn’t, it would’ve been completely impossible for the three of us to finish that mission. Normally, if you’re thinking of going all the way to the boss room, you’d want ten—no, twenty people—”

“Not necessarily,” Kuroyukihime cut in.

“…Huh?”

“The interior attribute of the four Great Dungeons is fixed, so if you’re just going to the boss room, then a charge with fewer than ten people is possible if you have a lineup of duel avatars with good compatibility with that attribute. Of course, if you want to defeat the last boss—the Saint—you’d want eighteen people and three parties.”

Why six people to a party?

Haruyuki decided to ask that question later and gave voice to a different one instead. “Um, so then what’s the fixed attribute of Amano Iwato?”

“The highest fire type, the Crimson stage.”

“Whoa…Higher than Volcano?”

From the lowest to highest, the nature-type fire stages were Desert, Scorched Earth, Lava, and Volcano, with the rarest and most dangerous—the Crimson stage—being above these. Haruyuki immediately frowned with all his might, and Chiyuri returned the jab to the side.

“You’re a metal color! You’ve got fire resistance—you’re fine. But I’m vulnerable to fire!”

“Th-that’s true, but…”

Lime Bell was a green type with high basic defensive power, but perhaps because her color name came from a plant, just as she herself said, she had low resistence to fire damage. In that sense, Rose Milady, with her own plant name, would have lowered fire resistance, too, and it wasn’t like Kuroyukihime was good with high temperatures.

“With the four of us, though, it’d be tough,” he said. “At least take Shinomiya and Niko, who have high fire resistance, or Akira, to put out the fires. Pard—she can run on walls. Or Master Fuko, with her area defenses; Taku, to dig into rock; and—”

“That’s basically all of us!” Chiyuri retorted, and he closed his mouth.

Kuroyukihime chuckled. “Well, even if we can’t call in all our Legion members, I would like to bring a couple more on board. But…even if we were to charge the Great Dungeon, there’s still one more problem, Chiyuri.”

“Huh? What’s that?”

“Mmm. The one who will greet us in the boss room is not the true form of Koshika’s friend Amaterasu but her raging, enormous first form. The attack power will be on par with Metatron’s first form.”

“Oh…” Chiyuri shuddered slightly.

Both Chiyuri and Haruyuki understood in their bones the fearsome, ferocious nature of Metatron’s first form. In anything other than a Hell stage, she was always invisible and transparent to all types of damage, meaning she was, for all intents and purposes, invincible. So she was one of the most powerful Enemies, one of the Four Saints, and her superfast laser caused instant death with a direct hit. Of course, while her abilities and attributes would be different, there was no question that Amaterasu’s first form would be just as dangerous. And in order to make her true form appear, they would have to defeat this first form without relying on any of the stage gimmicks.

“It’s impossible, Chiyu. There’s no way. Nope,” Haruyuki said, shaking his head at top speed. “The Metatron fight the other day was a miracle. The kind of win you get after trying a hundred times and losing ninety-nine of them. Think about it. Even though it’s been eight years since the Accelerated World was created, there’s not a single Burst Linker who’s made the second form—the true form of a Saint—appear. And now it hasn’t even been a week, and you want to do it a second time. It’s just way too—”

“Crow,” Tsubomi interjected.

“…Y-yes?”

“I just remembered this, but didn’t you actually make a promise?”

“…T-to whom?”

“To Amaterasu.”

He looked around in confusion before finally remembering.

When they’d talked on the Highest Level before the meeting of the Seven Kings, he had indeed made some kind of promise—or rather, his arm had been basically twisted into making that promise. Her ancient manner of speaking came back to life in his head.

“Hear me, Silver Crow…If you would thank us, this should not be carried out in the Highest Level. Rather, you must be conscientious and make your way to our shrine. Naturally, you must not forget an offering.”

And then the previous evening, when they’d shifted to the Highest Level from Kuroyukihime’s house, Amaterasu had given Haruyuki an order.

“Since this irritating Archangel boasted endlessly about eating cake or some such, we request the same.”

“Oh…I—I did promise…to bring Amaterasu some cake.” Haruyuki nodded.

Tsubomi laughed lightly. “Then you’d best fulfill that soon. Because naturally, Amaterasu and her kind remember forever each and every word of every conversation they have with us. If you skip out on your promise and put her in a bad mood, you’ll be in real trouble. Seriously.”

He wanted to ask what she meant by that last word, but it would probably just make him more scared, so he decided to ignore it. “But if you really think about it, it’s ridiculous,” he grumbled instead. “I mean, I bring the cake like I was told and get attacked by her first form.”

“Maybe Amaterasu’s looking forward to it, just a little,” Tsubomi replied, still smiling. “Maybe she’s thinking that you’re the ones who freed Metatron’s main form from the Shiba Park Underground Labyrinth, so you could also defeat her first form without any weakening gimmicks.”

“Huh?” He frowned. “But Metatron said Amaterasu’s reclusive by nature and she almost never comes out to the Highest Level.”

“That’s probably—” Tsubomi cut herself off there and shook her head slightly before continuing. “No. I won’t offer any more half-baked guesses. Amaterasu and Metatron talk just like we do, but their essential nature is something completely different from us. We probably couldn’t understand what they really want deep down.”

“…”

An impulsive argument leapt into his throat, and he opened his mouth. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t put it into words, so he took several shallow breaths.

Up to that point, Haruyuki had felt—no, believed—the exact opposite of Tsubomi. That while Metatron was a Being in the Accelerated World, she was essentially the same as a person. That she and Amaterasu had feelings, that they laughed, they cried, they even loved. But maybe that was just his own hope; maybe that was what he wanted them to be. Maybe it was just like Tsubomi said and there was an absolute separation between the artificial intelligences of Metatron and the Beings, and Haruyuki and his friends.

Even still, they should be able to close that distance. By talking, by sharing experiences, he was sure they could come to truly understand one another, even if it was only bit by bit. And for that, they really did have to free Amaterasu. From the prison of her first form, locked up in the depths of the underground labyrinth for eight thousand years.

Haruyuki took a deep breath. “We’re going. Because I made a promise to Amaterasu. When we free Kuroyukihime, we’ll take some cake and go straight to Amano Iwato.”

“All right,” Tsubomi said. “I’m sure your sword’ll be handy in Amano Iwato, too.”

After a moment’s confusion, Haruyuki realized she was talking about the fact that he’d gotten his Enhanced Armament Lucid Blade modified to nullify heat damage. And the vast sum of points needed for that enhancement had been paid by Tsubomi.

“Th-thanks so much for that…” Haruyuki lowered his head neatly, while Chiyuri leaned in the opposite direction, back against her chair.

“Hooooowever, I mean, you going and enhancing your own sword! You were giga-lucky to find the blacksmith so fast, but now you’re the one going up against Inti, Haru. Well, you could just hand the sword over to Lead or Taku.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Haruyuki said immediately, uncharacteristically decisive.

“Oh!” Chiyuri slapped his back again. “What’s this? You’re way more proactive than usual. This actually makes me feel like it’s worth healing you.”

“I’m always proactive.” Haruyuki told this blatant lie and then looked across the table. Kuroyukihime looked back with her black eyes. “Kuroyukihime, we’re definitely going to rescue you from the Unlimited EK, so please just wait a little longer.”

“Mmm. I have faith in you,” she replied mildly, sounding the slightest bit vexed.

Tsubomi turned to look at the Black King. “I don’t know if I should be asking this, but…what exactly is your rescue plan? It’s been a full day already. Don’t you think you’re moving a little slowly?”

“I don’t know if I should be telling you this,” Kuroyukihime began, “but all the kings’ Legions are in total chaos. Opinions are flying back and forth, some agreeing to a joint rescue mission of the five Legions, some opposing it, some saying we should prioritize the general assault on the White Legion, and others arguing that we should do the rescue first. Apparently, they’re having trouble coming to a consensus within the Legions.”

“I see. Huh,” Tsubomi said.

“That’s…!” Haruyuki’s cry drowned out her voice. “No matter how you look at it, the rescue mission has to come first!”

“I, too, would appreciate that, but…” Ever cool, Black Lotus continued, “This is only what I’ve heard from Raker, since she’s in charge of negotiating with the other Legions, but apparently, the idea that defeating the Sun God Inti is impossible has really taken hold. In which case, rather than going up against Inti directly, they want to close in on the White Legion controlling it and make them move it from its current location. Well, I suppose the idea has a certain logic to it. All the veteran Linkers who’ve fought Inti would no doubt have the impossibility of defeating it steeped into their bones, after all.”

“…”

Now that she mentioned it, he couldn’t argue against that emotional response. When Inti fell from the sky at the meeting of the Seven Kings, Haruyuki could only flee as if death itself were chasing him. He focused on getting himself under control and thought carefully before opening his mouth. “But I really doubt Black Vise is going to just move Inti because of a general assault on Oscillatory. No matter how many points we shave away from their members, he won’t give it a second’s attention. No way. For Vise, his Legion comrades are nothing more than pawns to fulfill his objective. Otherwise…he would never have done that to Wakamiya.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw again Orchid Oracle bound to a pillar on the forty-fifth floor of Midtown Tower, chains wrapped around her. Instantly, he heard shallow breaths from across the table. He looked up and saw Tsubomi staring at a fixed spot on the table, her lips pressed together as if she were wrestling with something.

The greater mission of Oscillatory Universe.

This mission, which made even the many evil acts of Black Vise righteous, still held Tsubomi between a rock and a hard place. A moment ago, she had said she would tell them everything once she and Oracle left the Legion, but he could see an agony in those pursed lips that made him worry about whether she would really be able to.

He wanted to tell her to keep her promise and think about herself and her ward, but a second before he spoke, Kuroyukihime moved one hand and said, her voice a little tense, “Speak of the devil…a mail from Raker. Apparently, the executive groups will meet alone to discuss the situation, no kings. Two people from each Legion will attend, and from our group, two from both Negabu and Promi are welcome. She says she wants me…to pick who…” She cocked her head.

“Um, no kings? Why is that, though?” Haruyuki asked. “I mean, if we have the usual discussion in a normal duel, you could all take part…”

“They’re likely on guard against getting dragged into the Unlimited Neutral Field again,” Tsubomi replied with a lilt in her voice. “This has been verified. When the Normal Duel Field is changed to the Unlimited Neutral Field via Paradigm Breakdown, Burst Linkers who didn’t escape from the portal will warp to the place where their positional information remains. In other words, the kings could be shifted to inside of Inti and die instantly again. And it wouldn’t be even close to anything yet in terms of points, but I think the mental damage can’t be overlooked. More for the members of the executive than the kings themselves.”

“Warp,” Haruyuki murmured and then said to no one in particular, “So then…in the Territories two days ago, because Master Fuko disconnected with a timer in the Unlimited Neutral Field like always, she alone would warp to Fufuan and escape Snow Fairy’s Brinicle. Is that it?”

“That’s the basic idea,” Kuroyukihime agreed. “The plan to leave normally after going to the Castle with you, Haruyuki, backfired…or perhaps not necessarily. Fufuan should have been outside the effect range of Paradigm Breakdown, so if she’d warped there, Fuko wouldn’t have been able to return to the battlefield, and we might’ve lost.”

He nodded silently. If they hadn’t had Sky Raker’s leadership and battle power, they probably wouldn’t have been able to take control of that fierce fight. He shuddered unconsciously, while to his right, Chiyuri cried out in astonishment.

“Warp, huh! That technique just gets more and more important sounding!”

“You’ve been talking like Ash today, you know,” Kuroyukihime noted.

“No way! I gotta make sure I don’t use that at school— Wait, no. This is about today’s meeting. If the other Legions are on guard against Paradigm Breakdown, then shouldn’t we tell them they don’t need to worry about that anymore?”

Tsubomi shook her head sharply. “I want to keep the fact that we rescued Orkki from Midtown Tower a secret. Oscillatory will notice at some point, but I want to push it right up to the edge as far as we can. If possible, until a means of defending Orkki against a real attack can be found.”

“And you, too, Koshika,” Haruyuki added, but Tsubomi simply shrugged.

“Don’t worry, Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime’s voice was calm. “The safety of Koshika and Megumi is our top priority. Once I’m able to move again in the Unlimited Neutral Field, we’ll try to contact Amaterasu. As for the executive meeting today…if it’s to be two of ours, then I’ll have you and Fuko go.”

“Wh-whaaat?!” Haruyuki unconsciously cried out before alternately shaking his head and his hands. “It definitely shouldn’t be me. It should be Akira or Shinomiya! I mean, if I go, all I’ll be able to do is stand like a statue in the corner!”

“I would like to see that, but unfortunately, that’s not how it will be. Because you are the most critical Linker to the Inti attack plan.”

“Um, actually, maybe it would be better to lend Lucid Blade to someone else,” he suggested.

“You say that now?!” Chiyuri whacked him on the back.

“Owwww!” he yelped.

“Just a second ago, you were the cool action hero, all ‘I’ll do it!’ I’m not doing the healing if it’s not you, Haru.”

“Y-you…” Haruyuki’s eyebrows formed an inverted V on his forehead.

Tsubomi smiled for the nth time. “Crow, you’re more afraid of going to the meeting than of fighting Inti?”

“Th-that’s not exactly it,” he protested. “It’s just, scary people will be coming from the other Legions, right? Like Coba-Manga and Aster.”

“Those girls squealed and shrieked just looking at a lesser-class Being back when they’d only just reached level four. They’re not scary. Not at all.”

“Maybe from your perspective, Koshika, but…”

As the child of Saffron Blossom, one of the Originators, Rose Milady was a member of the oldest and most powerful class of Burst Linkers, with likely more experience in the Accelerated World than even Kuroyukihime. To someone like her, Aster Vine and the sisters Cobalt and Manganese might have been adorable babies, but Haruyuki had only just become a Burst Linker last fall, and he absolutely could not agree with that assessment.

That said, however…

He could probably talk with them a little about the Inti attack plan at the meeting. It was only half an hour, so he doubted they’d get to anything to do with Silver Crow, and he had to say he was anxious about the details of the plan being discussed without him. Although he would inevitably turn to stone, he did also want to hear the conversation on the ground.

“I—I understand…I humbly accept my king’s nomination.” Haruyuki bowed his head, wrapping his right fist in his left hand.

Kuroyukihime went along with this little game with a “Mmm. Go forth with might.”

Chiyuri clapped in applause, and Tsubomi shook her head as though exasperated.

After helping clean up, the three girls left. Chiyuri looked like she was planning something, which concerned him a little, but at the moment, all Haruyuki could think about was the meeting that started at five.

He sighed before looking to the lower right of his field of view. The time was 3:50 PM. The midsummer sun was still quite bright, but the sunlight that fell on the living room floor was tinged a slight gold.

Tsubomi had said she lived in a skyscraper condo in Minami Aoyama Sanchome in Minato Ward, and so Kuroyukihime had sent her home by taxi. I’ll go with her! Haruyuki had proposed, but that had been rejected with “You need to rest up for the meeting at five.”

The meeting would be held as always in Chiyoda Ward—or so he assumed, but this time, it was apparently in the neighboring Shinjuku Area No. 1. This was fairly close to Suginami Area No. 1, where Haruyuki’s house was, so he had no objections. But it was unclear as to why the other Legions had agreed to hold it in Shinjuku when that was Leonids territory.

Fuko was supposed to pick him up in her car half an hour before the start of the meeting, so he had forty minutes to wait. It was not enough time to get back into his homework, but it was too long to just sit and wait. So what was he going to do? He looked down at his own hands.

You still have far to go, Silver Crow.

Haruyuki blinked at the voice that came back to life in his head.

It was the voice he’d heard six hours earlier in Tokyo Midtown Tower when he’d charged in with Rose. The voice that had spoken to him in the moment when he’d tried to slice into the armor of the superpowerful enemy, the Legend-class Einherjar—and any number of times before that.

It was a mysterious Burst Linker, though he already knew who it was to some degree. The owner of the voice had given his name as Centaurea Sentry and said that he was the third Chrome Disaster.

With Sentry’s guidance, Haruyuki had been able to cut into Einherjar’s armor. And he was seriously grateful for that, but right before the voice had disappeared, Sentry had said something strange.

You are the lone successor to the most powerful sword technique, praised as the ultimate evil, the Omega-style Whole Blade.

“No, no, no…I don’t remember signing up to be the successor to such a sketchy sword school.” Muttering to himself, he rubbed his right hand on his shorts.

But the sensation in his palm wouldn’t go away. The feeling of a critical hit, numbing him to the top of his head, when he cut into Einherjar’s armor with Lucid Blade. The sensation of fusing with the sword, different still from the exhilarating impact when he landed a critical hit in a bare-handed fight.

He looked at the clock again. 3:55.

He let out a long sigh and then quickly went into his bedroom to change into cargo pants and a short-sleeved shirt. He put a terry-cloth handkerchief in his right pocket and wet wipes in his left and got ready to go out before returning to the living room. He sat down on the sofa, physically connected his Neurolinker with the home server, and set the cutoff timer for twenty minutes. He closed his eyes, relaxed, and said in a small voice, “Unlimited Burst.”

Skreeeeee!! The sound of acceleration pushed past Haruyuki, and his spirit flew away from his physical body.