Accel World - Volume 26 - Chapter 12

12

Zelkova Verger, level-six Burst Linker and member of the small Legion Gallant Hawks, crossed his arms tightly in front of him to push down his impatience.

The rooftop of Toshima Ecomuse Town, the super skyscraper soaring above the Higashi Ikebukuro area in the Unlimited Neutral Field, was crowded with over a hundred Burst Linkers on standby like he was. Sunshine 60 three hundred meters to the northeast and the roofs of the other nearby skyscrapers were the same.

The fact that this many people had assembled in the span of a mere hour demonstrated the serious expectations they had for the brand-new, unified Legion army, Exercitus. When he’d first heard this name, which meant “army” in Latin, a part of him had thought they were putting on airs, but once he got here, that opposition melted away. Because the central members of Exercitus had set into motion an outrageous attack and were actually, unbelievably succeeding at it.

He looked out from his spectacular vantage point of one hundred eighty meters above the ground to take in the sight of Higashi Ikebukuro covered in pure blue water as far as the eye could see. The only things poking through the water’s surface were skyscrapers like Sunshine 60 and any nearby condos that were over a hundred meters tall. Because as of the present moment, seven PM, July 27, the attribute of the Unlimited Neutral Field was an Ocean stage.

Naturally, more than three hundred Burst Linkers had not come together to take in the spectacle of a rare Ocean stage. They were all looking down with bated breath at the terrifyingly huge human-shaped Enemy held captive in the center of a circle of frosty ice about four hundred meters across. Frozen up to the chest was the Super-class Enemy that had run rampant in the Accelerated World for the last three days, the Deity of Demise, Tezcatlipoca.

Exercitus had formed with the objective of defeating Tezcatlipoca, rather than waiting for the seven Great Legions to do something about the terror it was inflicting on their world. But to actually get to this stage where they were about to go on the offensive, the central members had gone through hell.

First, there was the scouting party. A single misstep there meant certain death, and yet they’d carried on for a total of over a year of inside time. While the party gathered intel on the giant, other members of the group desperately investigated various methods of attack. An away team had even been dispatched to the city of Nagoya far outside the one hundred kilometers of Tezcatlipoca’s reaction range to earn the points needed for the mission.

Initially, Zelkova had taken a skeptical view, wondering if the midsize Legions called to form Exercitus—Cold Brew, Ovest, Gouen, and Night Owls—simply wanted to usurp the place of the current seven Great Legions. But after seeing the tremendous effort they’d put into this mission, he was forced to recognize that they were the real deal.

They’d spent pretty much all of the points they’d saved up hunting Enemies in Nagoya to first buy up a large amount of the Rainmaker item in the shop. They’d then used these to increase the probability of a water-affiliated stage and drawn an Ocean stage in the Change immediately after that. They’d laid multiple traps and set up a variety of teams in this spot in Higashi Ikebukuro before attacking a Lesser-class Enemy and luring Tezcatlipoca into their snare.

The giant shot over like it was jet propelled, and the moment it sank chest-deep into the eighty-meter-deep ocean, they exploded the countless ice bombs they’d sunk in the area in advance, while over twenty Burst Linkers with freezing abilities attacked in unison. Their combined efforts froze a vast quantity of water and succeeded in trapping the giant.

Locked away in the jail of thick ice, Tezcatlipoca sometimes moved its boulder of a head from side to side, but it showed no signs of being able to break free. Even as he watched from on high, a semicircle of ice users to the rear of the giant were showering it with beams of pale light, ice bullets, and snowstorms to strengthen the prison.

“Hope this goes well,” a smaller Burst Linker murmured anxiously, as she looked down on the scene of the battle from beside him.

“It’ll be fine,” Zelkova Verger remarked confidently. “Now that we’ve come this far, victory’s basically guaranteed.”

“Yeah.” The F-type who agreed vaguely was Taupe Cape. Although she was the parent who’d given him the Brain Burst program, she was a year behind him at the junior high they attended in the real world.

Normally, Zelkova tried to speak in a more polite way to add a bit of character to his avatar, but when he talked with Taupe Cape, he always reverted to his real way of speaking.

Taupe Cape’s parent and previous Gallant Hawks leader had fallen prey to one misfortune after another and lost all their points last year in an unlimited EK. Taupe had a tendency to brood ever since, and Zelkova tried to do what he could to cheer her up somehow, but it wasn’t going too well. That morning, he had dragged a reluctant Taupe on the journey to neighboring Suginami, so that she could watch him beat the Betrayer, Silver Crow, who had caused this whole Tezcatlipoca thing. But that had backfired pretty spectacularly.

Folks like Crow appeared from time to time in the Accelerated World. They got lucky and drew a rare color or ability, hopped straight into a Great Legion, and raced up the ranks without doing much of anything. The Great Legions had a points surplus, so they could easily set up young members at the enhancement shop or with Enhanced Armament, and they also excelled at providing information to new recruits. Zelkova had only just learned Conic Smiter recently, and he was sure the reason Silver Crow had been able to turn its weak points—the fact that he couldn’t move while it was activated and the fact that he would be hit with the spikes if the target jumped directly above him—to his advantage was because he’d bought Zelkova’s information in advance or learned about attack methods from his veteran comrades.

But today would change the situation in the Accelerated World.

The seven Great Legions were the ones that had gone out of their way to attack the Sun God Inti, despite the fact that the Enemy was pretty much harmless so long as you stayed away from it. And the result of that attack had been to break Tezcatlipoca out from inside of it.

The Kings of Pure Color had been strutting around like they owned the place, but if Exercitus could destroy Tezcatlipoca, then their authority would plummet to the bottom of a lake. Exercitus could demand a vast sum of points as compensation for all the damage the Kings had done to them, and not only that, they would even be able to insist that the Kings abandon their Territories. Naturally, there would be a stream of people leaving the seven Great Legions, and if Gallant Hawks could absorb some of those players, then it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for them to grow into a massive Legion that controlled the areas from Mitaka to Suginami, and all the way out to Nakano. And when that happened, their leader, Taupe Cape, would definitely be excited to play again, the way she used to be.

After hesitating for a second, Zelkova lightly tapped the shoulder of Taupe’s grayish-purple cape-type armor. “Look. Phase two’s gonna start any second. We’re part of the long-distance attack team, so the danger’s pretty minimal. But that also means the close-range team has the advantage in terms of dealing damage. We gotta really work to carve away Tezca’s gauge and earn those points.”

“Yeah.” Her voice finally had some life back in it, and she jabbed Zelkova in his side with her small fist. “Hey, so Zel, don’t get all carried away and get too close.”

“I won’t.” Zelkova smiled wryly, just as the amplified voice of the mission lead began to echo in the valley between the rows of skyscrapers.

“Phase two starts in sixty seconds! Groups two, three, and four, get into position, and wait for the countdown!”

“Wohkay! Here we go!” Zelkova Verger nodded at Taupe Cape, and then leapt up onto one of the countless ropes set up to drop down from the roof. He adjusted the strength of his grip and slid to the frozen water surface a hundred meters below. When he shifted his gaze slightly to the east, he saw that the captive Tezcatlipoca was already covered in white frost right up to the back of its head.

According to what he’d heard while they were on standby, the central members had gotten the idea for this freezing strategy from the shameful sight of Oscillatory taking a stab at an Enemy in the Minato area, like they were playing a little game, and then being chased around by Tezcatlipoca. As they fled, they led Tezcatlipoca to the waterways near Shibaura, froze the ocean water, and stopped the giant. And the Exercitus scouting party had witnessed the whole thing.

If its movement could be slowed down by freezing just the area up to its ankles, then…They’d been quick to realize the possibilities, but even if any one person could come up with that idea, it was no simple task to actually execute it. Among the central Exercitus members, the Night Owls based out of Ikebukuro had played an even more central role, and it was fair to say that their power was already on par with that of the seven Great Legions.

The one thing that concerned Zelkova was the fact that the midsize Legion Helix, based in the Itabashi area, was not taking part in this mission, nor in the Exercitus alliance itself. There was no great difference in terms of membership between them and Night Owls or Ovest, and he’d heard that their leader, Beryllium Coil, was a pretty skilled player, so he thought they would have readily joined in.

Zelkova Verger snorted lightly. They were probably just coasting on easy mode, having fun picking fights in the Territories with Nerima area’s Prominence and continually losing. They would have only gotten in the way if they had taken part in the mission. If they chose the path of fading into obscurity with the Kings’ Legions, well, they would do what they wanted.

His feet touched hard ice, and a fraction of a second later, Taupe Cape slid down the rope next to his. The other members of their Legion had been placed at Sunshine 60 because of the abilities they brought to the mix, but they should have also dropped down at the same time as he and Taupe.

“What d’you think? Should we look for the gang and try to meet up?” Zelkova asked softly, but Taupe shook her head slightly.

“Nuh-uh. They’re close-range types, so even if we did find them, we’d have to split up again pretty quick. The two of us’ll have to do what we can together here.”

“Guess so,” he agreed. “And if we dawdle, all the good spots’ll be taken. Let’s go!”

“Yeah.”

They nodded at each other and started to run at the same time.

At the advance briefing, there had been talk of how the ice scaffold was thinner the farther out to the edge you went, so if they ran too hard, there was the risk that it might break. But the feedback he got from the soles of his feet told him that it was far firmer than he had imagined. The ice users that made up group one were probably doing whatever they could to strengthen the ice.

Tezcatlipoca was held captive in a place that was a school ground in the real world, wedged between two main streets. Of course, the roads and the buildings were all sunk beneath the water of the Ocean stage, and the only thing in the area now was the pure-white, enormous circle of a battleground.

A myriad of battle cries roared from the right, and when he glanced that way, he saw that the hundred and some warriors who had dropped down from Sunshine 60 were charging ahead as one. Zelkova and those around him yelled, too, just as loudly.

“Yaaaaaaaaah!!”

Up ahead, a group of ice users who had depleted their special attack gauges were waving at Zelkova and the others charging in, cheering in welcome.

“Go get him!”

“Take that thing out!”

“We got this!” Zelkova shouted back as he passed by them and ran even harder.

Less than thirty meters to Tezcatlipoca. The head and shoulders protruding from the ice were enormous, like small mountains.

“Counting down…Twenty…Nineteen…Eighteen…” The leader’s voice rang out once more.

Zelkova and Taupe put on the brakes, cutting into the ice, and took up the best positions twenty meters directly behind the giant to wait for the signal to begin the attack.

The Enemy had immense and terrifying power, but its attack patterns were simple. Outside of physical attacks like kicking and hitting, it only had the gravity attack of its right hand, the fireball attack from its left, and the Blast Wave that radiated outward from its mouth.

Since both of its hands were completely locked away in the ice, all they had to watch out for was the Blast Wave. But the scouting party had been thorough in their work, and the effective range of that attack had been made clear. Although it reached up to a hundred meters in the direction the giant was facing, it could only extend thirty meters to either side and twenty meters to the rear. In other words, as long as Tezcatlipoca couldn’t change the direction its head faced, Zelkova and Taupe were in the safe zone. The Burst Linkers on either side also carved out a smooth quadratic curve that just barely kept them out of range of the Blast Wave.

“Twelve…Eleven…Ten…”

As he listened to the countdown, Zelkova crouched down and pressed his hand to the ice. Naturally, he’d charged his special attack gauge to full in advance. First, he’d get off ten direct hits with Conic Smiter and make the leaders watching over the battle from Ecomuse Town pay attention to him.

“Nine…Eight…Seven…”

“Zel,” Taupe Cape murmured, abruptly.

Wondering what she could possibly want six seconds before the start of the attack, Zelkova looked to his side and followed her gaze down to the ice at his feet.

Dark, red…light. The depths below the thick ice were shining crimson like blood.

Boshhm! He heard a bizarre sound from immediately behind. And then again from either side.

Zelkova Verger looked up to see snowy-white steam jetting up from a massive hole in the ice.

The countdown was still going on, but there were cries of confusion all around him. The ice scaffold shuddered, and countless cracks ran up and down it.

The crimson shining rapidly rose to the surface from the depths. This was no ordinary light. It was superheated flames.

“Zel!” Taupe shrieked.

Zelkova peeled his hand off of the ice, stretched it out, and grabbed Taupe’s hand in a trance as his field of view was filled with bright-red light.