Accel World - Volume 25 - Chapter 2

2

In the end, Haruyuki’s efforts to understand their route in detail turned out to be mostly meaningless.

Led by White Cosmos and her bodyguard, Platinum Cavalier, as they sat astride Pegasus, the Super-class Enemy Tezcatlipoca flew east from Kitanomaru Park, and then southeast. They flew over Ginza, Harumi, and Ariake, and when they came out on Tokyo Bay, their altitude steadily decreased until they finally landed at Tokyo Grand Castle, the large theme park that had opened the previous year on a massive artificial island in the southwest area formerly referred to as the central breakwater reclaimed land and currently known as Reiwa Island.

Haruyuki had never flown there, but he had seen any number of pictures and videos of the enormous Western-style castle rising up in the center of the area. Naturally, this was the Accelerated World, so it didn’t look the same as in the real world, but the buildings of the Moonlight stage were all in the style of temples from some foreign land to begin with, so it still seemed fairly similar.

Crimson flames shooting from the soles of its feet, Tezcatlipoca descended in a straight line and came to land in the plaza in front of the fortress, causing the earth to shake. Grand Castle’s citadel—he was pretty sure it was called Heimwert Castle—was about eighty meters high at its tallest tower, but Tezcatlipoca was still two heads taller.

Still gripped in the giant’s right hand, Haruyuki twisted around as far as he could. He caught sight of Pegasus descending behind them to land on a balcony jutting out from the front of the castle. Platinum Cavalier slipped off its back first and then held out his right hand reverently. The White King’s slender fingertips touched it as she came down gently to the ground.

He’d hoped the two of them would disappear inside the building, but naturally, that didn’t happen. When the White King lightly waved the Luminary, Tezcatlipoca reached out the hand pressed to its chest and moved Haruyuki to the balcony, too.

It wasn’t that he didn’t consider fleeing at top-speed flight the instant the Enemy opened its hand. But he had no guarantee he’d be able to get away, and if the White King were so inclined, it was plenty possible for her to drop him into an Unlimited EK right then and there. Of course, Tokyo Grand Castle was the largest landmark in the city center, so there had to be a portal somewhere on the grounds, but he wouldn’t have the luxury of going around looking for it.

Thus, when Tezcatlipoca loosened its grip, Haruyuki let his avatar slide out. His feet touched the marble tiles, but unable to get his legs under him properly, he kept going and fell on his backside.

“So you can’t stand…,” Platinum Cavalier said, in exactly the same languid tone as he’d used when Haruyuki first encountered him, as he stared down through a helmet with a handsome and very knightly design.

If Haruyuki agreed that, no, in fact, he couldn’t stand, he very much doubted the other avatar would extend a hand to help him up, so he shook his head awkwardly. “Oh, I’m fine.”

He was actually painfully aware of how he had overexerted himself, more than he ever had before, because he’d gone straight from four months of training at Oumutei into the Inti battle and then the fight against Tezcatlipoca. But as a member of the Black Legion, he couldn’t exactly show that kind of weakness here and now. I slept for an hour on Mei’s lap! I can still move! he told himself, and forced himself to his feet.

He did wobble briefly, but ignoring that, he stood up as tall as he could and looked at Cavalier and White Cosmos before him. “What are you going to do to me?”

It was not the knight who answered, but rather the saint in the white dress.

“Oh-ho, even more impatient than rumor would have it. So we jump straight to the conclusion. What would you do if I said total point loss or brainwashing or some such?”

“I’d…run away…” It was the only answer he had, so he gave it, and Cavalier patted the hilt of his sword.

“Then…should I cut off those wings now?”

“What?!” Haruyuki couldn’t tell if he was being serious, if this was an actual threat. Fortunately, the White King spoke again before he drew his sword.

“It’s all right. The boy won’t run. Because he can learn a secret here that he’s simply been dying to know.”

“A-a secret?” Haruyuki parroted.

“Yes.” The White King smiled. “The objective of Oscillatory Universe and the Acceleration Research Society. The truth of the Accelerated World, which not even Rose Milady, who left the Legion, knows.”

Perhaps because the two Burst Linkers before him were not radiating any kind of enmity, much less the information pressure associated with high rankers, he had relaxed just a little, letting his fatigue win out, but now he felt an icy dagger plunge into his soul.

The elegant avatar before him, so slender her armor looked as though it would crumble at a mere touch, had brought about countless tragedies in the Accelerated World. She had pushed Saffron Blossom to total point loss in an Unlimited EK, creating the trigger that had turned Chrome Falcon into the first Chrome Disaster. She’d given her child and real-life younger sister Kuroyukihime false information that had her send the previous Red King, Red Rider, to total point loss with a surprise attack. She’d distributed ISS kits throughout the Accelerated World, plunging dozens of Burst Linkers into the dark side of Incarnate. She’d abducted the second Red King, Scarlet Rain, and stolen her Enhanced Armament to produce the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II. She had locked up Orchid Oracle, aka Megumi Wakamiya, in Tokyo Midtown Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field after treating her like a tool. And she had made Burst Linkers of the six Great Legions fight the Sun God Inti; tamed the Deity of Demise, Tezcatlipoca, when it appeared; and tried to push all Six Kings to total point loss in one go.

There was nothing that could justify all this suffering, this evil. Haruyuki had to tell her that he wasn’t interested and challenge the two of them to a fight right then and there. Even if he couldn’t actually put up a real fight, even if it meant losing. Even if he ended up incurring the wrath of the White King and being trapped in an Unlimited EK.

He silently clenched his hands into fists, and seeing this, White Cosmos smiled faintly once more.

“It wouldn’t be too late to fly into a fury after you hear what I have to say, would it?”

“How can you prove you’re telling the truth?” Haruyuki replied, his voice cracking. “How am I supposed to trust you, the same person who manipulated her own child with lies?”

Platinum Cavalier wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his sword. But the White King made a small gesture with her left hand, and he was motionless again, like a statue.

White Cosmos set the Luminary on her hip and sat down on the long white leather sofa in the middle of the balcony. She smoothly crossed her legs—this movement was startlingly reminiscent of Kuroyukihime—and looked up at Haruyuki standing stock-still before her.

“Hoh-hoh. Now that I think about it, that makes you my only grandchild, hmm, Silver Crow? Nothing unusual in the Accelerated World, but I do feel a certain emotion at the thought,” she said, in that endlessly clear, soft, neutral tone.

“We’re not related.” Haruyuki shook his head fiercely. “The Black King no longer thinks of you as her parent, so there is no bond between you and me.”

“Well, I suppose so,” Cosmos assented easily, showing no signs of being put out. “We say parent and child, but the BB program we copy and install doesn’t even include simple metadata, so unlike in the real world, we don’t inherit any genetic information. That’s why I made her a Burst Linker on a whim myself.”

“…On a whim?”

The parent and child of the Accelerated World is not something as trivial as that!

He intently resisted the urge to shout this back at her. As Burst Linkers, he and the White King were just too different in terms of values, viewpoints, convictions, everything. The gulf between them was so wide and deep that he couldn’t bridge it with even a thousand words.

Instead, he declared in a strained voice, “I knew I couldn’t believe anything you said. And even if this ‘truth’ about the world you’re going to tell me is, in fact, true, you would have zero reason to tell it to me.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then don’t you think I had no reason to bring you here in the first place? If I’d been so inclined, I could have killed every one of the Burst Linkers back there. I was a teensy bit surprised that you destroyed Tezcatlipoca’s hand, but for a monster like this, that doesn’t even qualify as damage.”

“…You’re lying,” Haruyuki muttered.

“Am I?” The White King raised a hand and pointed to the front of the balcony. “From here, you should be able to see its health gauge.”

“…”

When he looked back awkwardly, the blood-colored giant was standing tall in the center of the plaza. The head was still nearly forty meters above the balcony, but he could just barely make out the gauge floating above it. The instant he noticed the number of levels…

“Whoa…”

Ten levels.

The Archangel Metatron, a Legend-class Enemy, had four. The Gods Suzaku and Seiryu, Super-class Enemies, had five, and this was double that. And only the first of these levels was just barely depleted, maybe one percent if he gave a generous estimate. The damage from repeated blows inflicted by not only the special attacks but also the Incarnate techniques of the elite of the six Great Legions wasn’t even one percent of the entire ten-level gauge.

Haruyuki was at a loss for words.

“The Toxcatl of the right hand that you destroyed and the Miccailhuitontli that launches from the left hand are merely basic techniques, which can be used without gauge loss.” The White King’s voice echoed quietly behind him. “Mere normal attacks, and they have that level of power. Our analysis determined that Tezcatlipoca’s general fighting power is greater than that of the Four Saints and the Four Gods combined.”

“…”

His gut squelched the rising thought that this was impossible. Compared with the Four Saints and the Four Gods, the design was painfully simple—jointless arms and legs extending from a thick pillar of a torso, the head nothing more than a long ellipsoid—but it was precisely this that made him fear that it was an undeniably, indescribably foreign object, something outside the logic of the Accelerated World.

But if it was actually stronger than the Four Saints plus the Four Gods, then a new question popped into his mind. Two, in fact.

“Why would a thing like this exist?” Haruyuki forced his stiff body to turn around. “A game shouldn’t have a monster that can’t be defeated even if all the players worked together.”

The White King shrugged lightly as if she had anticipated the question. “That’s why it’s the god of the end. A devastator existing only to close the world. Crow, have you heard how the Accelerated World was created?”

“Y-yes, from Graphite Edge.” Holding back his animosity for the White King for the moment, Haruyuki told the mysterious tale carved into the deepest parts of his memory.

“Graph said that a long time ago, there was something like a war in a certain virtual world. Two forces fought about a Being locked in that world. One side was trying to free the Being, and the other side was trying to destroy it. At the end of the fighting, the two leaders reached the system console of this world at the same time. Leader A tried to destroy the Being with admin privileges, but that was impossible, so instead, they decided to lock it away forever somewhere no one could touch it. They built a dungeon like a massive fortress in the center of the world, sealed the Being in the very deepest part of it, and set eight guardian monsters as sentinels. The dungeon itself was protected by four monsters to guard the gates. That dungeon is the Castle now, and the monsters that stand watch over it are the Eight Divines and the Four Gods.”

The White King nodded slowly. “And then?” she asked.

“And then?”

“There were two leaders, yes? What did this leader B of yours—well, Graph’s—do?”

“Um.” Haruyuki continued his recitation word for word: “They decided to entrust their hope to the future. To believe that at some point, warriors powerful enough to defeat the four gatekeeper monsters would come, penetrate the stronghold, take down the eight guardian monsters, and release the Being. That’s what Graph said.”

“I see. Is that so?”

Haruyuki watched the White King nod again and was suddenly rocked with the worry that he had blabbed some extremely important information that she didn’t know. But her aloof aura didn’t change in the slightest.

“For a veteran more senior than the Originators, he does know a fair bit, hmm?”

He definitely hadn’t expected her to say that. “More senior than the Originators?” Unable to process the meaning of this, he stared intently at the white face mask.

“Originators” was what the first one hundred players were called. The one hundred children given the BB program directly by the creator of Brain Burst 2039—leader B in the story. It was impossible for any player to be more senior than they were.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

She looked at him silently for a moment before a faint smile rose on her face. “We’re touching on a matter quite close to the heart of things. Might I continue, then? I thought you couldn’t trust me?”

“Aah.” Reflexively, he started to move his hands to cover his mouth but managed to hold back. He went back through his memory to find why they had started talking about the Accelerated World in the first place and realized that it was because he’d been struck by the White King’s talk of the “god of the end.”

Tezcatlipoca was strong enough to completely destroy the balance of the game BB 2039 because this Enemy existed to close the world. There was a serious possibility that White Cosmos’s explanation was a lie from start to finish, but he did want to know the rest. And the meaning of the ominous words “close the world.”

“I’ll decide if I believe you or not once I hear your story,” Haruyuki replied, still aware that she was trying to manipulate him.

White Cosmos moved a hand without a word. Her slender fingers indicated an easy chair across from the long sofa where she sat. When Haruyuki hesitated to take a seat because Platinum Cavalier was still standing, the silent knight finally spoke.

“Well then…I shall return Arion to the stables.”

When his master nodded lightly, he straddled Pegasus, on standby in a corner of the balcony, and flew off toward the rear of Heimwert Castle. Apparently, Cavalier had named the horse— Wait. That wasn’t the important part here. What was important was that Tokyo Grand Castle appeared to have been transformed into the base of the White Legion in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

When he brought his gaze back, the White King still had her hand up, so he moved to the easy chair. He sat on the edge so that he could fly off immediately if anything happened, and then asked after a moment’s hesitation, “Is it okay for your bodyguard to leave? I’ve heard that of all the Seven Kings, you’re the worst at close-range fighting. What would you do if I attacked you?”

“Mmm. I suppose if you had a sword, I might be a little more on guard. But I would rip off your arms with my Incarnate before you could reach me with your bare hands. Although your head would work, too,” the White King said casually as she leaned back into the sofa. The simple yet elegant crown on her head—the true form of the Arc Luminary—caught the moonlight and glittered coldly.

Haruyuki had lent Lucid Blade to Takumu, so he did indeed have nothing equipped at his hip. But even if he had brought the sword, he very much doubted that a slicing attack would reach her, or even that he would be able to pull it from its scabbard. It was hard to immediately believe that she could rip off his arms or his head with just Incarnate power, but he didn’t much feel like testing the truth of that statement.

“I-I’m sorry.” He bowed his head and then asked again the question that had been interrupted before. “So you said Graph is a more veteran player than the Originators. What did you mean by that?”

“Hmm? Ohhh. He’s an isotope.”

“Huh? A-an isotope?” He gaped in blank incomprehension.

“Is that important?” She shrugged lightly. “Isn’t there anything you actually need to know?”

He did think it was important, but it was true that in terms of priority, the reason for Tezcatlipoca’s existence ranked higher.

“So then…tell me about the god of the end,” he said, glancing up at the super-massive Enemy, motionless in the plaza to his right.

Cosmos nodded, uncrossed her legs, and placed her hands on top of her extremely thin, skirt-shaped armor as she sat up and looked at him. “All right. I’ll tell you.” Her voice was utterly unchanged in volume and tone, and yet it made him feel like the temperature had dropped just a little.

“The prehistory of the Accelerated World you mentioned, the tale of a hidden war and a sealed Being, is basically true. Unable to secure the release of the Being, leader B left that hope to the future—that is not incorrect. But the problem comes after that. A great deal of time passed following the war, and once the three trial games finally started operation, they won over a great number of children. Just as you love Brain Burst 2039, Silver Crow, many children loved the worlds of its predecessor, Accel Assault 2038, and its successor, Cosmos Corrupt 2040, and all the things that were born there.”

The names of the two defunct games called up memories for Haruyuki. At the end of the previous month, after the extended fighting over five missions at the time of the Umesato Junior High School festival—the rescue of Aqua Current, the attack on Metatron’s first form, the destruction of the ISS kit main body, the return of the abducted Red King, and the crushing of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II—the White King had suddenly broken into Nega Nebulus’s accelerated meeting in a spectator dummy avatar, and said, Accel Assault 2038 and Cosmos Corrupt 2040. The reason these two worlds died out…is that both of these worlds were too biased. AA was filled with excessive fighting…and CC with excessive harmony. And thus they were destroyed. He still couldn’t understand what she’d meant.

“…When you jumped in at the Umesato festival, you said that the excessive harmony and cooperation of the CC world produced not acceleration, but stagnation. You said time stopped in the CC world and so it was destroyed.”

“You have quite a memory. I did indeed say that, and it is true.”

“Graph warned me not to take anything you say at face value, since most of your words are meant to manipulate people.”

“Oh dear, did he?” He sensed a wry smile beneath her face mask.

“But at the very least,” he continued, “it’s a fact that AA and CC are no longer in operation. Is that what the problem you mentioned is? That all the children who loved those worlds like we do this one had the game program forcibly uninstalled and lost their memories?”

“Hoh-hoh.” For some reason, White Cosmos laughed, and then slowly shook her head from side to side. The moonlight playing in her long, golden hair scattered snowy white particles in the air. “Your intuition is fairly decent, but unfortunately, this guess has missed the mark. The forcible uninstall and the erasure of memories is the greatest salvation for those who have lost all their points. Go on and picture it. You’re banished from this world, but you still have your memories and the BB program. And yet you cannot accelerate or duel ever again…You wouldn’t have that for anything, would you?”

Haruyuki was about to reflexively agree, but he clenched his teeth and swallowed the words. If he was only considering himself, she was right—maybe it would have been easier to lose all his memories along with the program. But in that moment, he would also forget the comrades he had fought alongside: Kuroyukihime, Takumu, Chiyuri, Fuko, Akira, Utai, Niko, Pard, Rin, Shihoko…and Metatron. When he imagined how they would feel, he couldn’t simply nod and smile here.

“That was a bit of a mean-spirited question, hmm?” A faint smile bled onto her face once more as she stared at him. “You wrestle with it terribly, but don’t reject it…I do believe, however, that if they could have made the choice themselves, the majority of those who have lost all their points would have agreed to have their memories erased. After all, along with your memories of the Accelerated World, you could erase even the mental trauma that was the mold for your duel avatar.”

“…”

In the back of his mind, he saw the carefree smile of Dusk Taker/Seiji Nomi after losing the BB program. He had been driven by bottomless hatred and a lust for power, but now he seemed to be giving his everything to his studies and team practice, almost like whatever had possessed him had fallen away. The “marauder”-era Nomi definitely didn’t seem happier than the Nomi of now. But Centaurea Sentry/Seri Suzukawa, who had been revived from a state of total point loss through some means, had told Haruyuki, “Ever since I stopped being a Burst Linker, I’ve carried this emptiness inside of me. Always trying to remember, never being able to…There was constantly this empty space inside of me that I could never seem to fill.”

Did the White King know about this sensation that tortured the lost? Would she be able to insist, even with that, that the memory erasure was a total salvation?

“So then…” He took a deep breath and let it out before asking, “So then, why are you called the Necromancer? Why would you do something like call back those people who have been saved according to you—Dusk Taker, Red Rider, and even your own Legion member, Orchid Oracle? Why would you bring them back to the Accelerated World and inflict suffering on them again?”

He asked the question fully prepared to incur the wrath of the White King in so doing and have her cut off the conversation or even attack him with Incarnate. But the look on Cosmos’s face didn’t change in the slightest—although Haruyuki hadn’t been able to read her thoughts or feelings right from the start. She merely tilted her head very slightly to the left.

“First of all, allow me to correct a misapprehension you have. The nickname Necromancer comes from my special attack ‘Resurrect by Compassion.’ Which merely shortens the regeneration wait time for avatars who have died in the Mean Level of the Unlimited Neutral Field. Naturally, it has no effect on Burst Linkers who have lost all their points.”

“B-but before she summoned Dusk Taker, your subordinate, Argon Array, said something about how your Revive the Dead was not so nice and wondered about some deal with the devil…”

“Oh dear.” Cosmos smiled more clearly than she had when he told her what Graphite Edge had said. “Argon never mends her chatty ways, no matter how many years pass. To get a real regeneration ability, a deal with the devil would be a small price to pay. After all, you’ve basically done the same thing, haven’t you, Silver Crow?”

“Huh?”

“You contracted with the Archangel Metatron, yes? Even though I was the one who worked my fingers to the bone to drag it out of the Shiba Park dungeon.”

“Th-that was to make her defend Tokyo Midtown Tower when you had the ISS kit main body, though!” he shouted, anger welling up at the White King for treating Metatron like a tool when she had the exact same intelligence and emotion as a human being.

And it wasn’t just Metatron. White Cosmos and the Acceleration Research Society had used Wolfram Cerberus, a newbie Burst Linker they should have protected and guided, as a pawn, and turned him into a vessel for the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II. In order to avoid hurting Haruyuki, Cerberus had even depleted his Burst Points until he had only ten left and tried to push himself to total point loss at Haruyuki’s hand.

And it was Orchid Oracle, Rose Milady, Black Lotus. The White King betrayed the Burst Linkers who had trusted her one after the other, used them as tools, and then tossed them aside. He could never forgive that, no matter what the reason, no matter what the necessity.

“I didn’t contract with her,” Haruyuki said in a strangled voice, these thoughts in his heart. “We became friends. We help each other out because we’re friends. Is that so strange?”

“Not strange, no. I was only thinking that you’ll get hurt one day.” She shook her head. “Well, that’s fine. Anyway, the problem with the three trial games that I was talking about is not the fact that the players of Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt had their memories erased. It’s before that, it’s what happened when the games ended.”

“What…happened?” he repeated, holding the indignation that smoldered in him like a live ember.

Before Brain Burst, he had experienced the service shutdown of an online game he’d played several times. The reason was decreasing profits, so there were correspondingly fewer active players right before the end, and he loitered in the empty town plazas, listening to the countdown to server shutdown. He wondered if the same thing had happened in the two trial games.

The White King took her gaze off his expectant one and looked up at Tezcatlipoca, frozen in front of the castle, and narrowed her eyes slightly. He felt like some emotion flitted through those eye lenses that were pale peach and light blue and lavender all at the same time, but it quickly disappeared, leaving only the original detached light. She turned her face back to him and spoke.

“It took ten years for the person you—Graph—called leader B to get from making the template for the Accelerated World to actually beginning operation of the trial games. One reason was that they had to wait for the first consumer devices equipped with the soul translation technology, the Neurolinkers, to be released. And then they had to wait for the children born immediately after to grow up, to make use of the high affinity with the STLT they gained through having them equipped from right after they were born. The other main reason it took ten years was they had to wait for the AI that actually controls the games to reach a level of practical use.”

“Huh? AI?! An AI is the admin for Brain Burst?!” Haruyuki cried out, before remembering a conversation he’d had with his Legion comrades a while ago.

It had been a Sunday about ten days earlier, when he’d gone to a pool on the top floor of Shibuya Ravine Tower with his fellow Legion members, before the mock Territories with the Green Legion. Kuroyukihime and Fuko had predicted that the Space stage would be implemented that same day, the reason being that July 14 was Sunflower Day, a celebration of the day the first Japanese weather satellite was launched. Their prediction turned out to be a bull’s-eye, and Nega Nebulus had pulled off a magnificent victory in the mock Territories in the Space stage. But Haruyuki hadn’t been able to keep from wondering if Sunflower Day and space weren’t a bit too obvious of an excuse for the administrator. Now that Cosmos was telling him the admin was an AI, that heavy-handedness made a certain kind of sense. Or so he felt.

And through the memories he’d experienced by way of the Armor of Catastrophe, he’d seen that Chrome Falcon had been thinking the same thing. Given that the admin rendered null the holes Burst Linkers discovered in the system—the delightful cheats—at astonishing speed, he’d wondered if maybe they weren’t actually human but rather an AI. In fact, the technique he used when he broke into the Castle, crossing the moat and wall with a series of Flash Blink trips, had become impossible in the blink of an eye when the gravity around the moat was enhanced.

As if she’d been waiting for Haruyuki’s surprise to turn into understanding, the White King opened her mouth once more. “It’s not as though I have met the admin, either, but there’s no mistake. However, if you hadn’t interfered earlier in Kitanomaru Park, I would’ve become a level ten and been able to confirm its true nature.”

“I’ll interfere as many times as I have to,” he declared firmly before returning to the subject at hand. “Even if the Brain Burst admin is an AI, how is that connected to what happened when Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt ended?”

“It means that the admin of this world is not an omnipotent god, just like leaders A and B. And that an old-school AI that doesn’t use STLT is a monster in intent pursuit of optimization,” the White King murmured, and then raised her slender hands to form a shape as if she were holding onto two transparent spheres.

“It would at least be better if the admin AI were an omnipotent god. In that case, in order to close the world, it could simply seize the program and memories from all players. But not being a god, it doesn’t have that much authority. To do the processing that would force an uninstall and erase memories, it first needs all players to have zero points. And thus…”

The White King slowly brought her hands together to fuse the invisible spheres into one.

“Right from the start, the admin AI incorporated a gimmick into the world to accomplish this. Its own proxy, an execution device. Not all-powerful but with exceptional abilities nonetheless.”

“An execution…device?” Haruyuki repeated the ominous words with dread, and looked at Tezcatlipoca once more.

The massive dark-red body with its unusual lack of detail did indeed seem more like an inorganic, synthetic object than a living creature. But it wasn’t like there were absolutely no other Enemies with this kind of design. And to start with…

“Isn’t that how all Enemies are? There are some that aren’t active, but most just attack without question.”

“But it’s not as though any of those Enemies are utterly unbeatable, yes? Even with the Four Gods of the Castle, you feel the possibility at least. You said so yourself at Kitanomaru Park. If everyone there joined forces, we could make the Castle’s Gods bend to us.”

“That’s…true, but…”

“Tezcatlipoca, however, is different. If every Burst Linker in the Accelerated World came together and attacked it, they wouldn’t even be able to cut those ten health gauges in half. Crow, do you think that egg for Tezcatlipoca, the Sun God Inti, was rolling around the Mean Level at random, with no particular purpose?”

“…It wasn’t?”

“Depending on the type, some Enemies can grow, too. The more Burst Linkers or other Enemies they defeat, the stronger they become. For eight thousand years of internal time, since the dawn of the Accelerated World, Inti has burned up countless Burst Linkers and Enemies, and nurtured Tezcatlipoca inside its shell. To bring about the end of the world. And to erase every single Burst Linker when that end comes.”

“…”

Haruyuki was speechless for a time.

Simply turning off the servers to end the game would leave the players with their memories. They had to be pushed to total point loss to erase those memories, and the only way to push them to total point loss was to destroy them through some means. He understood all this, but still.

“I think that story has at least two large contradictions,” he said quietly, and Cosmos’s eye lenses flashed for an instant.

“And they are?”

“First, the admin AI that made Tezcatlipoca is on the side of leader B—the side that made this game in order to release the Being sealed in the Castle. I feel like they could just defeat the Four Gods and charge the Castle with the absolutely unbeatable Tezcatlipoca and achieve their objective.”

“And?”

“And the other one is the question of why you could tame Tezcatlipoca, when it’s supposed to be unbeatable even with the combined forces of all Burst Linkers. Someone told me that tamable Enemies are the ones that in principle could be defeated in one-on-one combat. If you could defeat Tezcatlipoca on your own, then that contradicts what you’re telling me.”

“…I see. Mm-hmm.” The White King nodded twice, and he felt an unusual air of hesitation around her. She crossed her arms in front of an impossibly narrow waist and moved the index finger of her right hand. “Mmm. That is top-level, key information. We’ve come this far, however, so I suppose I can answer you. But once I do, you will only have two options left to you.”

“What options are those?”

“Cooperate with us or lose all your points right here, of course.”

“…”

Haruyuki’s entire body stiffened. There was no way he would ever cooperate with the White Legion—the Acceleration Research Society—and he couldn’t go losing all his points now. But he wasn’t particularly keen on being stuck in limbo by cutting off the conversation here. After agonizing over it for several seconds, he resolved on the compromise of withdrawing the two questions.

The White King suddenly swayed and then stared into space. “Unfortunately, it looks as though we will have to continue this next time.”

“Huh? Wh-why…”

“Your light cube—your quantum thought circuits—has started the back-up process. Your Neurolinker is being removed in the real world.”

“What?!” How could the White King sense a process that Haruyuki himself wasn’t aware of? And before that, why was his Neurolinker being removed?! …He was stunned at first, but then realized that of course, that was only natural.

Most likely, Kuroyukihime had burst out from the portal closest to Kitanomaru Park and turned to force-disconnect Haruyuki the moment her eyes opened. Given that White Cosmos had the special attack, Resurrect by Compassion, which forced regeneration with no regard for the wait time, she could steal a massive amount of points in a short period of time if she alternated between attacking and regenerating. If their positions were reversed, Haruyuki, too, would have tried to remove Kuroyukihime’s Neurolinker at top speed.

It wasn’t clear how many seconds he had left until he was actually disconnected, but for the sake of his comrades, he had to get as much information as he could. As he panicked and wondered what to do next, the White King posed a question.

“Silver Crow, did you dive with a Legion member in the real?”

“Huh? Y-yeah, Kuroyukihime,” he answered reflexively.

She pulled back slightly. “With Lotus? At this hour? So you have that kind of relationship?”

“That kind…? Oh! N-no, we don’t!” he cried, flustered, and then finally felt it. A sensation of decelerating, like the center of his field of view was receding in a tunnel.

The last things he heard were the calm words of the White King.

“I’ll contact you again within the week. Decide what you’re going to do before we meet next. And if you dive on your own at any other day and time than the one I specify, consider yourself dead a second later. And your comrades, as well, of course.”

Before he could reply, his senses were swallowed up by darkness.

Even after he opened his eyes, he couldn’t immediately understand what was in front of him. His hazy vision gradually came into focus, and he was able to tell that it was a person’s—Kuroyukihime’s—face.

“Are you okay, Haruyuki?!” she cried, shaking his shoulder. He noticed that her ebony eyes were slightly damp, and he gasped unconsciously before nodding several times in quick succession.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry to worry you,” he replied hoarsely, and tried to sit up, but couldn’t manage it. Because Kuroyukihime, in her long T-shirt, was straddling his stomach. “Uh, um, Kuroyukihime?”

“You’re really okay?! You didn’t lose all your points?!”

“O-of course not. Not only did I not lose all my points, I didn’t even die once.”

The tension in her face finally eased and she let out a long breath. “Good.” She nodded and lifted a leg to move off to his side.

Although all the lights were off, there was a dim brightness to the Arita living room. Haruyuki had entered the Unlimited Neutral Field at one thirty AM, but it was currently almost five AM now, and the sky outside the window was starting to brighten.

He tensed his abdominal muscles and this time sat up when he heard a new voice from his right.

“Um. Here. For you.”

When he looked, Rin Kusakabe was sitting formally on her knees, offering him a glass with both hands. Instantly, he was overcome with thirst and he accepted it with a thank-you.

He quaffed the cool water in a single gulp and felt a gradual numbness spread out in his head. He realized that he had been under incredible stress nonstop, from the moment the attack on the Sun God Inti began until Kuroyukihime had pulled off his Neurolinker.

Holding the now-empty glass, he turned back to Kuroyukihime sitting slumped beside him, and apologized again. “I’m sorry for getting captured so easily.”

“No. You have nothing to apologize for. In fact, I’m the one who should be apologizing. All I could do is watch as you were abducted, after you saved me—no, all the kings—from sudden death.” Her voice was filled with pain and regret.

“No!” He leaned forward. “The important thing is that you were able to escape safely through a portal. If we managed that, then whatever happens to me is a small price to pay!”

“Don’t talk like that! I haven’t the slightest intention of sacrificing you to save myself!” She was sitting so close to him on her knees, they practically bumped his.

“Cut to the chase. What happened?” came a calm voice from behind.

He reflexively jumped and then looked back, half-standing.

A girl in a tank top and shorts, with her long hair pulled into a ponytail, was leaning deeply into the sofa on the south side of the rug where Haruyuki, Kuroyukihime, and Rin were sitting. This was “Ruthless,” the one who had imparted the ways of Omega style Whole Blade to Haruyuki, Centaurea Sentry, aka Seri Suzukawa.

When they’d finished his four months of training in the Unlimited Neutral Field, Seri had left Haruyuki at Oumutei and returned to the real world, so she didn’t know the details of the attack on Inti. The same went for Rin, who had taken on the role of messenger to Kuroyukihime. He had to explain to them what had happened without leaving out a single detail.

“Um.” He stood up as he tried to sort the information in his head and was about to start speaking.

“Mmm.”

He heard another voice from behind him, so he looked back once more. Kuroyukihime was also standing, brow furrowed, as her fingers raced through the air.

“Calls from Fuko, Utai, Akira. Oh, and Chiyuri, Takumu, Niko, and Leopard. And from Choco and Rui, too.”

In other words, the entire Legion was calling Kuroyukihime. They probably wanted to check that Haruyuki was safe, in which case they could’ve just called him directly. And then he noticed his Neurolinker in Kuroyukihime’s left hand.

“Um, Kuroyukihime, in that case, could you ask them to connect to my VR space so that I can explain everything to everyone in a dive chat?”

“Mmm, I suppose…,” Kuroyukihime started, but then quickly shook her head, firmly. “No, you should take a proper break. The explanation can come later. Whatever situation Silver Crow is in in the Unlimited Neutral Field, you’re not in any danger as long as you don’t dive again.”

It was true that a weariness had seeped into not just his brain, but his very bones. But when he thought about it, this was strange. While he was accelerated, he’d been thinking not with his brain but with his personal quantum circuits in the Main Visualizer, and the moment he burst out, his memories alone had been synchronized. It didn’t make sense for his exhaustion to be carried over into the real world.

Even as he tried to tell himself this, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier, so he blinked several times before replying, “Okay then. I’m sorry, but I think I’ll do exactly that.”

“Rest as long as you need to,” Kuroyukihime said and held his Neurolinker out to him.

He took it in both hands and then turned to Rin. “My thanks to you, too, Rin, for today.”

“Next time I’ll. Fight with. You.”

“I’m counting on it.” He looked at Seri next and bowed his head low. “Um. Maestro—I mean, Seri—given the situation, please allow me to explain it in detail later, but just two things. Thanks to the ‘extreme’ of your Omega style, I was able to cut into Inti’s body.”

“Oh? Good.”

He almost grinned at the too-cool response, but pulled his lips tight and continued. “And…I feel like I was able to use Gou, too. For just a second, though.”

This time, Seri’s expression changed ever so slightly. A faint surprise. And a smile. She nodded without a word and stood up from the sofa. “I’m going home, then. Loads happened, but it was fun.”

“Thank you so much!” Haruyuki bowed his head once more, and Seri patted his shoulder before hoisting her backpack up from the floor and starting for the living room door.

But Kuroyukihime reached out a hand to stop her. “Ruthless—no, Sentry—no, Seri.” She corrected herself twice, cleared her throat, and continued. “I also offer my sincere gratitude. You really were a great help. And I know it sounds like an afterthought, but join our Legion.”

“What?”

It wasn’t Seri who cried out, but Haruyuki. The image of Centaurea Sentry as the proud, solitary, great swordmaster was strong in his mind, and he hadn’t even considered inviting her into Nega Nebulus, but it was true it would make him rest easier if she were to combine her force with theirs. He waited for her reply with bated breath.

“Kuroyuki,” Seri said. “I know it’s not that you don’t remember how I’ve rejected every Legion initiation, right?”

“Of course not. But back then, you also stubbornly refused to make an apprentice, much less a child. If you’ve yielded on one principle, then it’s no great difference to yield on two.” Kuroyukihime spoke in her usual fashion, a little too directly, and Haruyuki secretly worried that Seri would get mad.

Seri stared intently at the shorter girl and then said, “That’s true. Okay, I’ll join.”

“Gah?!” Haruyuki cried out in pure shock, and Seri and Kuroyukihime both turned their gazes on him.

“What of this, Crow? Do you dislike that I would join your Legion?” Seri asked in her formal Accelerated World style, and he moved his head from side to side at top speed.

“N-no, no, no, no, not at all! Um, I-I’m super happy about it!!”

“All is well, then.” She turned back to Kuroyukihime. “I’m disconnected globally right now. Can we direct to do the admission process?”

“Certainly. Haruyuki, if you would.” Kuroyukihime held out a hand, so Haruyuki grabbed an XSB cable sitting on the low table and thrust it at her.

Once the two Neurolinkers were connected, Kuroyukihime said, “Burst Link.” The two girls froze for an instant, and then she immediately began to remove the cable, so Haruyuki let out his breath. He’d worried that they might duel while they were at it, but in that case, they would have accelerated for a minimum of one second.

Kuroyukihime and Seri wordlessly extended their right hands and shook them firmly.

The veteran swordmaster, having joined Nega Nebulus hot on the heels of her return to the Accelerated World, nodded at Haruyuki and Rin before walking toward the living room door, head high.

“Um, Suzukawa?” Rin called out timidly to her back. “Are you. Going home like. That?”

Seri froze and looked down at herself, clad in a set of sleepwear tank top and shorts, before looking back. “Arita, I have to change. Let me use your washroom.”