Accel World - Volume 25 - Chapter 3

3

When he thought about it with a cool head, the fact that he had been disconnected from the Unlimited Neutral Field definitely didn’t mean that his—Silver Crow’s—safety was assured. Since he hadn’t left normally through a portal, if he dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field, he would appear on the balcony of Heimwert Castle, and just as the White King had warned him, he would most likely die immediately in an attack from Tezcatlipoca standing before him the moment he dived. And then the same thing would be neatly repeated every hour.

For the first time since he’d reached level four, he’d been placed in what was for all intents and purposes an Unlimited EK. Just the thought that he couldn’t enter the Unlimited Neutral Field—the true face of the Accelerated World—made his lungs constrict. He had previously tried to put himself into the shoes of Utai and Akira when they had been sealed at the four gates, or of Kuroyukihime when she was caught up in the Inti drop, but this difficulty breathing, like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room, went beyond anything he’d imagined.

Even so, the instant he flopped down on his bed after seeing Seri, Rin, and Kuroyukihime off at the front door, sleep descended on him like a switch being hit. Wrapped in a warm, gentle darkness, he slept and slept, deeply, soundly.

He could hardly remember it when he woke, but he had a curious experience while he was asleep.

He guessed it was a dream. He was walking intently through a barren wasteland that stretched out endlessly to the horizon. His entire body was horribly injured, and a dull pain shot through him with every step he took, but he couldn’t stop moving. Because the thunderous, heavy shaking of the earth pursued him ceaselessly from behind.

He looked back over his shoulder as he walked. Something terribly large was moving in the distance in the colorless field. A giant, its entire body covered in red flames. Each time it brought down a tree trunk of a leg and fists like blocks of stone, flashes of multicolored light flickered on the ground, and faint shrieks rose up.

The comrades he had been fighting alongside were being mowed down by the giant. Haruyuki had fled alone from that battleground. He had to go back…But even as he had this thought, his feet did not stop. Farther. To get even just a little farther away, his feet continued to pound at the dried earth.

The sounds of battle that reached his ears gradually became fewer and farther between until finally silence fell.

Timidly looking over his shoulder, he saw that the giant had stopped completely. He could see nothing moving at its feet. The massacre was over. The comrades who had fought so bravely at the battleground he had fled had all been annihilated.

The end that had been predicted from the start. The demise of the world.

The giant frozen in the distance slowly turned its head to look at him. The ring that floated pale above its blank head flashed almost like an eye.