Accel World - Volume 26 - Chapter 3

3

He crossed Oume Highway at the intersection a little to the east of the school gates and hurried to the specified coordinates on the opposite side of the street. As he ran, he connected his Neurolinker to the global net. The moment he left the Umesato grounds, he was cut off from the in-school local net, so the only way he would be able to get into the taxi was to connect globally. There was the chance of someone challenging him, but he would deal with that then.

A holotag that only he could see was floating in the taxi area along the sidewalk. The displayed timer had twenty seconds left on it. If the reserved passenger wasn’t in the pickup location, automatic taxis on main roads would quickly drive off again, so he was really cutting it close.

“At least give me five minutes,” he grumbled, but the moment he saw the car that pulled up in front of him, his jaw dropped in amazement.

It was definitely an automatic taxi, but instead of the compact two-seater often seen on the roads, this was a large black SUV. He looked to both sides of himself, thinking this car had to have been reserved for someone else. But he was alone in the taxi area, and he could see the holotag rotating quite obviously on the roof of the car.

The SUV stopped in front of him with exquisite precision, and the passenger side door opened. He felt a cool breeze from the air conditioner as he peered inside, but naturally, the driver’s seat was empty, and the steering wheel and instrument panel were tucked away.

Taking a deep breath, he slid into the vehicle, sat down on the cushy passenger seat, and fastened his seat belt. The door closed with a luxurious click, and the planned route and anticipated arrival time were displayed on the windshield. The destination was a spot in Shirokane Yonchome, Minato Ward.

The map was a simple thing, so there were no names attached to the buildings on it. But he knew what lay at this particular destination without having to look it up. The time had finally come for him to step inside Oscillatory Universe headquarters in the real world.

He heard the flicking of the turn signal and the low hum of the powerful engine as the SUV smoothly pulled out into traffic. It quickly slid over to the right-hand lane, merged with the flow, and began to drive.

Since he was here anyway, he was determined to enjoy the drive. He basically never got to ride in a luxury vehicle like this. He leaned back in his seat and inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the sweetly scented air. As he exhaled slowly, he wondered at the fact that he hadn’t yet heard any of the usual announcements from the vehicle.

“Hello, Crow.”

“Hyaah?!” He shrieked at the greeting that came out of the blue from behind him. He froze for a minute before ever so timidly looking over his shoulder to peer into the back seat.

Sitting there were two girls who looked to be about his age. There had been no announcement because there were already passengers in the vehicle.

The adjustable tinted windows in the back seat had been set to the darkest level, and his eyes, used to the strong light of day, couldn’t immediately make out the girls’ faces. He blinked several times as he squinted until he finally realized who they were.

The small girl sitting directly behind him in the light-blue dress-type uniform was Tsubomi Koshika. Third of Oscillatory Universe’s Seven Dwarves, Grumpy, aka Rose Milady. She was the one who had greeted him.

The girl sitting beside her had short, kind of fluffy hair.

“Whaah?! Wa-Wakamiya?!” he cried out, even more surprised.

Megumi Wakamiya gave him a hard stare. “Why are you ‘whaah’-ing, Arita? You really that unhappy to see me?”

“N-no, that’s totally not it. Honestly.” He shook his head from side to side before asking tentatively, “And, like, how are you feeling?”

A faint smile rose on her pursed lips. “Mmm, I’m totally fine now.”

“You are?” He let out a sigh of relief. He’d only learned that Umesato Junior High student council secretary, Megumi Wakamiya, was also a Burst Linker by the name of Orchid Oracle a mere week earlier, in the middle of the territory battle against the White King that had taken place the previous Saturday.

With Paradigm Breakdown, an Incarnate technique Blood Leopard/Mihaya Kakei praised as the pinnacle of techniques in the Accelerated World, Oracle had cut an area four kilometers across out of the Territories stage and shifted it to the Unlimited Neutral Field. The White Cosmos had forced her to do this, and the reason Oracle had followed her orders was because Cosmos had told her that she would bring back to life the parent of Oracle and Milady, Saffron Blossom.

But once Oracle had learned from Haruyuki that it had been the White King herself who had pushed Saffron to total point loss, she had restored the battleground to the Territories stage with her opposing Incarnate technique, Paradigm Restoration. Thanks to this, Nega Nebulus was able to defeat Oscillatory Universe, albeit with difficulty. But Oracle had paid a high price for this.

He still wasn’t clear on exactly what had happened, but Oracle’s mind ended up connected to a light cube that wasn’t hers, and the real-world Megumi had fallen into a coma.

Haruyuki and Tsubomi had gone and found Oracle in the Unlimited Neutral Field and rescued her this past Monday. It had only been five days since Megumi woke up in the large hospital in Setagaya, but she had apparently recovered enough to be out and about. Haruyuki was overjoyed, but…

“Um, Koshika, Wakamiya? Do you know that this taxi is heading for Eter—I mean, EG?” he asked, twisting his body around as far as possible in the passenger seat.

The girls nodded at the same time.

“Why would we not know?” Megumi replied calmly.

“It’s right there on the windshield,” Tsubomi noted, with similar equanimity.

“Well, if you know, then I guess that’s fin—,” he started to say, but was quick to reject that idea before he’d even finished saying it. There was no way any of this was fine. “No, no, but then why did you get in?! You both left Oscillatory and transferred to some midsize Legion somewhere, right?! If you go to EG now, they’ll hang you. Or worse, they’ll beat you senseless in duel after duel.”

“We’ll take them down in a flash!” Tsubomi snapped a finger out at him before resuming her serious expression. “Well, we both know we’re not going to get off with just a chat. And it’s not like me and Orkki have formally stated we’re leaving the Legion. Even Cosmos wouldn’t judge us based on nothing.”

“Mmmmm.” Haruyuki simply could not accept this. He craned his neck as far as it would go to try to meet her eyes. “But you’re up against the White Cosmos. I seriously doubt she can actually be reasoned with. And, Wakamiya, you got stuck in the Unlimited Neutral Field like that as punishment for disobeying her and turning the stage back in the Territories last week. Can you really say she wouldn’t try the same thing on you again?”

“Oh right. I haven’t properly thanked you yet,” Megumi said, as she sat up straighter and bowed. “Arita, thanks for rescuing me.”

“U-uh, Koshika did most of the work, so…” Haruyuki shrugged.

“I’m not saying anything here,” Tsubomi interjected. “I don’t like this whole humble hat-in-hand routine.”

“Th-that’s okay. You don’t have to say anything,” he stammered. “Anyway, to go back to what I was saying, I feel like if you go to EG like this, Wakamiya…you’ll be forcibly possessed by Cerberus again.”

The moment he spoke the name of Wolfram Cerberus, something throbbed deep in his heart, but he managed to push this pain aside and waited for the two girls to answer.

Megumi glanced at Tsubomi, a serious look on her face, before replying slowly, “I don’t entirely understand the logic myself. But Cosmos’s ability to revive the dead can rewrite Main Visualizer access privileges.”

“R-right,” he said, hesitant.

Now that she mentioned it, that was exactly it. White Cosmos could interfere with the light cube of each Burst Linker that existed in the Brain Burst central server—also known as the Main Visualizer—and through this power had brought about many miraculous, or perhaps demonic, phenomena: reviving the first Red King, Master Gunsmith, Red Rider, and putting him to work producing a huge number of ISS kits; forcing Twilight Marauder, Dusk Taker to possess the right shoulder armor of Cerberus and create the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II; and even locking Orchid Oracle up inside of Cerberus and making her activate Paradigm Breakdown. Haruyuki agreed with Megumi that these deeds were likely caused by direct manipulation of the Main Visualizer.

To put it in terms of other video games, this was akin to hacking the server and directly overwriting internal data. The BB system had thus far crushed without exception any player’s cheating behavior, such as with the backdoor program Takumu once used. So why was it overlooking the White King’s hacking? Or did this actually mean that her power to revive the dead was a legitimate ability given to her by the system?

Perhaps sensing Haruyuki’s indignant questions, Megumi warned, “As a rule, Cosmos can only exert power over the light cubes of Burst Linkers who have already lost all their points and been banished from the Accelerated World. She can’t manipulate the circuits of active Linkers. If she could, she’d have killed the kings a long time ago and reached level ten, wouldn’t she?”

“Oh. I—I guess so.” Haruyuki started to nod his head in agreement, and then suddenly shook it from side to side. “B-but! When you were forced to possess Cerberus, Wakamiya, the system was treating you as an active Linker, right? So then how?”

“‘As a rule’ means that there are exceptions,” Tsubomi cut in. “Especially when it comes to Brain Burst.”

Haruyuki looked toward the smaller girl, and she pushed away the hair hiding her right eye.

“There’s a command,” she said abruptly.

“A command?” He had not expected this. “Do you mean a voice command? Like Burst Out or Physical Bu— Yikes!” He clamped his mouth shut, to very narrowly escape wasting five points.

“Hey!” Megumi snapped. “Are you stupid or something?!”

“Whoa! No one could be that stupid!” Tsubomi yelled, and then sighed.

Megumi glared at him. “The PB that you almost carelessly activated just now, Arita, is a public command that’s on the Instruct menu. But there are also secret commands like PFB—the full burst—and one of those is a command to remove the lock from your own light cube. And I am not telling you what it is, so you can forget it.”

“I—I don’t even want to know.” Haruyuki shook his head vigorously before asking hoarsely, “B-but why would there be a command like that?”

“I don’t know that,” Megumi said simply. “But Cosmos…I guess it would be more accurate to say that Doc forced me to say it and stole the access privileges to my light cube.”

“Doc?” He raised his eyebrows at the unfamiliar name, but then realized that it must have been one of the seven dwarves who appear in Snow White, like Grumpy and Sleepy. He was pretty sure it was translated as “doctor” in Japanese. And if he were to pick the Burst Linker in the Seven Dwarves who most suited this nickname…

“By ‘Doc,’ do you maybe mean Ivory Tower?” he asked.

“Correct,” Megumi assented and leaned back in her seat, her dislike of the White Legion executive member on full display.

He belatedly noticed that she was wearing her Umesato uniform. Her perfectly white shirt was neatly ironed out to the edges of the collar, and he supposed he should have expected nothing less from a current student council member. The moment this thought struck him, he wanted to asked her a bunch of things about last year’s election, but he held his tongue; now was not the time for that.

“Um, so then, Wakamiya,” he started to say. “Your quantum circuit, your light cube, is still under the control of the White King? In that case, I really do think it’s too dangerous for you to go to EG—”

“There’s a thirty-minute time limit for the lock removal command,” Megumi interrupted.

Haruyuki started to heave a sigh of relief, but a new fear quickly rose in him. “Who told you there’s a time limit? If it was Ivory Tower…”

“Relax.” She rolled her eyes, slightly. “It wasn’t Doc or Cosmos. When I spoke the command in the Unlimited Neutral Field, there was a system message that the effect would expire in thirty minutes.”

“O-ohh.” Now at last he was convinced, and the tension drained from his shoulders.

But then another possibility popped up in his mind, and he once again leaned in to the back seat area. “Um, Wakamiya!”

She jumped visibly. “Wh-what?”

“So when you were forced to possess Cerberus, he was there, too? Right?”

“Of course he was.”

“Then do you know who he is? Like his real name or where he lives or something,” he said urgently, and Megumi shook her head.

“Mm-nn. That was the first time I’d ever met Wolfram Cerberus. And it goes without saying we’ve never met in the real, either. He didn’t say a single word the whole time.”

“He didn’t? What about you, Koshika?” He looked at Tsubomi, clinging to a thread of hope, but her answer was the same.

“I only know his avatar name,” she said. “There’s basically no mixing between the members of Acceleration Research Society and Oscillatory.”

“Oh, really? Thanks anyway.” He bowed his head and felt a pain in his neck from spending most of this car ride twisted around toward the back seat. He turned to face forward again for the time being, leaned into the artificial suede seat back, and let out a sigh.

Right before Kuroyukihime and the team had set out on the mission to attack the God Genbu, Haruyuki had called to Cerberus from the Highest Level and promised to save him, to purify the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, and end the scheming of the Acceleration Research Society. And then they would duel again.

He was definitely going to fulfill this promise. But right now, he needed to focus on the situation at hand. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself and set his thoughts to the future.

At any rate, there seemed to be no danger of Megumi’s mind being held captive once more, and as long as Haruyuki and Tsubomi didn’t say the lock removal command—whatever it was—they couldn’t end up in that position, either. But in that case, why would Snow Fairy go so far as to pay the fare for an expensive taxi to bring the three of them to Eternal Girls’ Academy? And why would Tsubomi and Megumi not make up a reason to refuse to answer the summons?

Wait. I could ask myself the same thing, he muttered to himself, as he pulled a thermos out of the grocery bag twisted around in front of him and took a gulp of the nicely chilled sports drink inside.

He’d been at school when he got the mail from Fairy, so he could’ve said he was in the middle of club work and escaped that way if he’d wanted to. But in the end, he’d followed her instructions, basically because he was a member of Oscillatory Universe. He had no attachment to the Legion or any sense of loyalty or camaraderie, but he couldn’t lie to avoid a summons, and he didn’t want to. That was what being a Legion member meant. It was probably the same for Tsubomi and Megumi, even after the King had treated her so cruelly.

Lifting his face to look out the windshield, he saw that the taxi had at some point left Suginami and entered Nakano. If he’d been alone, he would have wanted to get into the driver’s seat and pretend he was driving. But he couldn’t do something so childish with Tsubomi and Megumi in the car. He decided to settle for enjoying the view from up on high in the tall SUV.

“Right. I should say this while we’re here.”

He heard Megumi’s voice abruptly from the back seat, and he looked back once more. “Wh-what is it?”

“Arita.” She looked at him solemnly. “When we get back to Suginami, you have to actually talk to Kuroyuki.”

“Huh?” Haruyuki froze, and the next attack came raining down from Tsubomi.

“Honestly! Call her right away when you get home. That’s an order.”

“That’s…I don’t think you’re in a position to give me orders, though, Koshika,” he grumbled.

Tsubomi arched an eyebrow at him. “Who was it again who gave you the points to enhance your sword?”

“Hngh!” He couldn’t argue with that.

He’d needed to enhance his beloved Lucid Blade to nullify fire damage in order to slice into the Sun God Inti. But the price at the blacksmith NPC’s had been astronomical, and when he panicked about not having nearly enough points on hand, Tsubomi had paid the entire sum for him.

Naturally, he intended to pay her back one of these days, but he definitely couldn’t cover this debt with a month or two of Enemy hunting. And more importantly, just as Zelkova Verger had said during their duel, hunting in the Unlimited Neutral Field right now was simply too risky. Before he could pay Tsubomi back in full, he needed to do something about Tezcatlipoca. As he had this thought, he gasped in realization.

He’d completely forgotten because he’d been on challenge standby these last few days and hadn’t looked at his Instruct screen. But he should’ve had a serious influx of points when he destroyed the Sun God Inti, and he remembered there had been a drop of three or four items. If even one of them was a super-special rare item, he might be able to sell it for enough to pay the debt in full. He’d been planning to distribute any Inti drops to everyone on the mission, but no one would complain if he used them to pay Tsubomi back.

He wanted to check his item storage right that second, but the only thing he could check without accelerating was his duel avatar status. And it was a waste to use up a point and accelerate just to look at his storage.

As he stared, undecided, at the BB icon on his virtual desktop, he heard Tsubomi’s voice once more.

“I’ll tell you right now, you don’t have to return those points. Instead, you can actually obey that order. Got it?!”

“I understand.” Haruyuki sank deep into his seat, forced to acquiesce.

Their tones were harsh, but the fact that Megumi and Tsubomi were worried came through loud and clear. The same went for Utai, Niko, and all the rest of his friends. The more Haruyuki put off apologizing to Kuroyukihime, the more they would all worry. He knew that. Painfully well.

The right turn signal flickered, and the SUV turned onto Yamate-dori Street from Oume Highway. Although it was a Saturday afternoon, the road was relatively deserted, and the navigation system said that they would arrive in another twenty minutes.

Wanting simultaneously to arrive as soon as humanly possible, and to be delayed as long as possible in a sudden traffic jam, Haruyuki continued to stare at the tail of the car in front of them. He’d had to skip lunch, but he was so nervous that he didn’t feel hungry at all.

It was unclear exactly who would be awaiting them at their destination. At the very least, however, he felt certain that the person who had invited him, Snow Fairy, would be there.

“The whims of the King are so troublesome, hmm? Even though we’re approaching the last page of the story,” Fairy had said when he’d encountered her on the Highest Level.

The last page. Did that mean their current situation, with the Deity of Demise, Tezcatlipoca, freed from the shell that was the Sun God Inti? Or were there still pages left to turn?

The taxi passed the Hatsudai-minami interchange and slipped onto the Central Circular Route running below Yamate-dori Street. The midsummer sun receded behind them to be replaced by orange artificial light.

“I hate tunnels,” Megumi said simply, from behind him.

In the end, they did not get trapped in a single traffic jam, and the taxi reached their destination at exactly the predicted time. Since Fairy had paid the fare in advance, they merely got out of the car when it stopped.

Instantly, the heat of the sun threatened to melt Haruyuki into a puddle on the sidewalk. But he stood rooted to the spot, not even noticing the intense sun shining down on him.

The chalky white gate rising up on the other side of the sidewalk formed a majestic arch. ETERNAL GIRLS’ ACADEMY was etched into a nameplate in Japanese on the left pillar, while the right-hand pillar displayed the school’s name in English. A lush tree-lined path stretched out onto the grounds beyond the gate.

He had learned that the campus was much larger than that of Umesato when he’d visited the school in the Accelerated World long ago. But he’d had his hands full then with rescuing Niko after she had been abducted by Black Vise, and he hadn’t had time for a leisurely look around. Viewing EG for the first time with his actual eyes, it looked to be less school and more historic ruins.

“Okay, here we go,” someone said, grabbing his arm, and he jumped before looking to his side.

Tsubomi stood there in a white capelin hat, while Megumi held a pale peach parasol over herself. Both looked disgusted with the heat, but neither seemed the least bit nervous. He could understand that Tsubomi might not be tense, given that she was a student at EG, but Megumi’s total calm was a testament to her fearsome courage.

“Um,” he stammered, “can we really just walk through the gates? Don’t we need, like, a permit or something?”

“Fairy’ll handle it,” Tsubomi said simply, and all he could do was believe what he was told.

He chased after the girls as they walked away briskly and slipped under the stone arch. He waited for an alarm to begin to wail, and a security drone to come flying over, but there was none of that. He had no doubt that a school this famous and wealthy would have top-notch security, but they had probably taken a number of measures to keep that security discreetly out of sight. With that in mind, he did a scan of the area and realized that the social cameras were cleverly blended into the landscape with the trees and lampposts, rather than having the blatantly obvious placement seen at most schools.

When he stepped onto the tree-lined path, completely covered in a canopy of leaves, the heat felt a little less intense. He walked along the twisting cobblestone path, listening to the chorus of cicadas, so loud and numerous it was hard to believe they were still in the city. After the group had gone about two hundred meters, the trees finally opened up in front of them.

This was likely an inner courtyard, but it was larger than the entire Umesato campus. The ground was covered in a gray brick reminiscent of a European plaza, and snowy-white school buildings rose to the right, left, and dead ahead of them. Although old, the buildings were not unfashionable, and the overall impression was more of a museum rather than of a school. There was no sign of any students, perhaps because it was summer break.

Tsubomi came to a stop at the entrance to the courtyard and pointed at the buildings in turn as she spoke. “The one on the left’s the main building, the right’s the central building, which is where the junior high and high school are, and way in the back’s the elementary division and the chapel.”

“Th-the chapel?” he repeated.

“I’m pretty sure it was built in 1928,” Tsubomi added.

“So then…it’s almost a hundred and twenty years old?!” Haruyuki was stunned.

Megumi giggled. “If we have time afterward, you should take a look inside. So…where’s the meeting, Rosie?”

“The usual place, probs,” Tsubomi replied, and started walking toward the central building on the right.

This four-story building looked more like a school than the main building and the elementary school division, but the face of the central wing jutting outward featured an enormous stained-glass window, which made the building look like a palace somehow.

He put on the visitors’ slippers in the entryway and at last stepped inside the school. The natural wood floors, unusual in this day and age, were polished to a shine, and a faint, sweet floral scent wafted through the air. Regrettably, the air conditioners weren’t on, but given that there was absolutely no one around, this was only natural.

“This way.” Tsubomi beckoned Haruyuki with a hand and headed toward the stairway hall adjacent to the entryway. The stairs they climbed intently were illuminated by the light of the sun through the stained glass. Just when he was running out of breath, they finally reached the top floor.

The party advanced north down the silent hallway. From the windows on the left, he could see the large inner courtyard.

A mere month earlier, Haruyuki had in this very spot in the Unlimited Neutral Field fought against Argon Array, Black Vise, and the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, with Wolfram Cerberus inside. Naturally, he could find no sign in the real-world courtyard of that violent battle, but if he listened carefully, he felt like he could almost hear the echoes of that thunder.

In the middle of the fight, Haruyuki had linked with one of the Four Saints, the Archangel Metatron, and become a “contractor,” to borrow Centaurea Sentry’s word. Metatron had previously joined him in a number of battles, and she even transferred to Oscillatory Universe with him in the end. But these last three days, he hadn’t gotten a single link request from her, not even during times when he was accelerated.

He knew that she was currently recovering from the damage she’d sustained in the Tezcatlipoca fight at Sky Raker’s player home, Fufuan, but she had said that there was no need for her to go into complete withdrawal mode like she had before. As he followed Tsubomi and Megumi, he wondered if he should try reaching out to her if he returned alive from EG.

The long hallway finally ended, and a single door appeared at the end. This one was not the sliding type like all the others they’d passed, but rather a heavy double door. The brass plate posted on the upper half of it read, JUNIOR HIGH STUDENT COUNCIL OFFICE.

So far, Tsubomi Koshika had advanced unhesitatingly from the gates to this place, but now she stopped abruptly a meter in front of this door.

Megumi Wakamiya placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Megumi was tall for a ninth-grade girl, and despite being in the same grade, Tsubomi had such a slight build that she could have been mistaken for an elementary school student. So there was a noticeable difference in their heights, but even from behind, he could sense very clearly that these two girls were linked by a powerful bond.

“Let’s go,” Megumi murmured.

“Yeah.” Tsubomi nodded, and the two of them started toward the door. Megumi gripped the left handle, Tsubomi the right, and they pulled at the same time.

Inside the student council office was…actually, he couldn’t see all the way in. Because there was a stained-glass partition on the other side of the doorway.

Stepping into the room, Tsubomi and Megumi split to the left and right to go around the partition, and Haruyuki wasn’t immediately sure which one of them he should follow. After a moment of confusion, he went around to the right, after Tsubomi.

“Aaah, you’re finally heeere!” came a drawled exclamation.

Now that he could see it, the student council office was even larger than he’d imagined. It was maybe five meters wide and eight deep. The wall to his right was covered in bookshelves, while the walls to his left and directly ahead of him were taken up with windows with old diagonal lattices. An enormous elliptical meeting table ruled the center of the room, surrounded by high-back mesh chairs.

There were nine chairs in total, but five were empty. Meaning there were four members of Oscillatory Universe waiting for Haruyuki, Megumi, and Tsubomi.

One of them, a girl with her hair in braids, sitting in the chair to Haruyuki’s immediate right, bounced against the seat back as she said, “Honestlyyyy, you took so long, Bomi. I was getting sick of waaaaiting!”

“You’re the one who sent the car for us. So don’t whine at me about it. And quit calling me that,” Tsubomi snapped, apparently known to the EG student council as “Bomi.”

But the girl ignored Tsubomi’s foul temper and giggled, long braids swinging. “Ooh, you’re so cuuuute! Rio-Rio, you think so, too, riiiight?” she asked the boy occupying the chair on the opposite side of the table, stretching out the end of the question at length.

Even seated, it was obvious at a glance that he was fairly tall. His body, clad in a simple white shirt and black slacks, was sturdy, like he did martial arts of some kind. Both sides of his head were shaved in a clean sporty cut, and he wore glasses with thick black frames.

Why is there a boy at a girls’ school? Haruyuki blinked rapidly in surprise.

“No, no,” the boy said in a husky, low voice. “Please don’t come looking to me for support. I also don’t recall agreeing to that nickname.”

The courteous tone and the mismatch with his muscular appearance tugged at Haruyuki’s memory, but he couldn’t place where he’d heard it before. Furrowing his brow, he glanced at the boy in glasses as he continued speaking.

“At any rate, we mustn’t ignore our guests to have this conversation now. Weren’t you on tea duty today, Sagisu?”

“Whaaat? Was I?” The girl with the braids—Sagisu, apparently—replied vacuously, as she stood up and walked to the back of the room, the same light-blue dress as Tsubomi wore swinging around her. There was a sofa set and a simple kitchen on the other side of the meeting table, and this part of things resembled the student council office at Umesato a little.

But Haruyuki’s gaze was sucked in by the two other members sitting on the far end of the table.

A slender boy was leaning back in his mesh chair reading a paper book. His hair was cut in the fashionable two-block style, with the sides shaved up and left longer on the top, and the face Haruyuki could see in profile beneath that hair was likely almost shockingly handsome. But perhaps due to allergies, his face from the nose down was hidden by a surgical mask, even though it was summer, and the hand holding the book was covered by a thin glove.

The other person was a small girl like Tsubomi. The thing that first drew his eyes was the wavy blond hair reaching down to nearly her waist. He could only assume that the natural-looking and magnificent mane was not dyed but rather blond from birth. And with her almost translucent pale skin, she was almost like a doll. No, a fairy.

A fairy.

The avatar names of the girl with braids, the boy in glasses, and the two-block boy were unclear, but he was sure he knew who the blond girl was. He forced his stiff legs to move and stepped past Tsubomi out front.

“Um. Are you…Snow Fairy?” he asked the blond girl, who was apparently typing something on her holo keyboard.

“Hang on a sec,” she responded in a slightly muddied, sweet voice, and let her fingers dance in the air for another three seconds before slamming a finger against the return key. She whirled herself and her chair around, and looked up at Haruyuki with sapphire-blue eyes lined with blond eyelashes. “Yep. I’m Snow Fairy. Real name Nanako Juholt. My dad’s Swedish, hence the name.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So you’re half-Japanese?”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “Eighth. My mom’s a quarter, three-quarters Danish, one Japanese, so one-eighth of me is Japanese.”

“Eighth.” He’d never heard this way of putting it before, but he supposed that she wouldn’t have these very obviously blue eyes and blond hair if her northern blood hadn’t been so strong. Given how strongly she physically resembled her duel avatar, she was a perfect match in a sense that was different from the usual abilities and attributes.

Haruyuki was lost in staring at her for a moment before he came back to himself with a gasp. However cute she might have been, this girl had tried to slaughter the members of Nega Nebulus with her powerful Incarnate technique Brinicle and even attempted to sever the link between Haruyuki and Metatron. Although they were currently in the same Legion, she was definitely not someone to let his guard down in front of.

Warning himself to stay vigilant, Haruyuki introduced himself. “Um, I’m Haruyuki Arita. I’m in eighth grade at Umesato Junior High, and I belong to the Animal Care Club.”

He felt like he’d accidentally blurted out something entirely irrelevant to the proceedings, but Fairy, aka Nanako, nodded slightly and moved her pale-cherry-pink lips.

“I’m in seventh grade—I mean, I’m first year in the junior high division. I’m the student council secretary.” She turned her blue eyes on the boys occupying the opposite side of the table and instructed them in an authoritative voice that sounded like she was used to giving orders. “Introduce yourselves.”

“Right, right,” the boy in glasses responded right away. He politely stood up from his mesh chair, faced Haruyuki, and cleared his throat. “My name is Rioh Koshimizu. I am in ninth grade in the junior high division of Shirakabanomori Academy, and the vice president of the student council. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

He placed his right hand on his chest and bowed, and the moment Haruyuki saw this theatrical gesture, he finally realized who this boy was. He was curious about the school, too, the name of which he’d never heard before, but confirming the avatar name came first.

“A-are you maybe Behemoth?” he asked hesitantly.

“Well, well! You only came to that conclusion now?” Rioh chuckled good-naturedly. “I am indeed Sneezy, also known as Habakkuk, Glacier Behemoth.”

“I-I’m sorry. I recognized your voice, but…” Haruyuki shrank into himself, and Megumi broke her silence to interject.

“Well, it’s no wonder, Koshimizu. I mean, you lost hard to Arita in the Territories last week. Demanding that he remember you is pretty nervy.”

“No, no, this is truly inexcusable, Wakamiya. While it is true that he did break off one of my horns, the contest itself is still on hold. Isn’t that right, Arita?”

Haruyuki did indeed recall Behemoth saying something along the lines of “I will save the deciding battle with you for the next opportunity” after he’d destroyed the horn of the massive avatar with his Lucid Blade. He panicked, wondering if the other boy was actually going to make this the place of that battle, but fortunately, Behemoth continued without waiting for his reply.

“I was quite looking forward to going up against you again, but right now, we are facing an important battle. The rest of our match will take place at some point in the future. And so next—”

“It’s Airi’s tuuuurn!” the girl with braids said as she returned from the simple kitchen, so Haruyuki took two steps back to open up a space and let her pass.

She slowly set the tray in her hands down on the table, and then whirled around to look at Haruyuki. “So you’re Silver Crowwww? We finally meeeet! Do you know who Airi is?”

The third-person “Airi” of the girl smiling brightly at him was likely the first half of her real name. Although he knew that much at least, he had absolutely no clue as to what her avatar name might have been.

Since two of the four gathered there were Snow Fairy and Glacier Behemoth, there was a good chance that she was also one of Oscillatory Universe’s Seven Dwarves. He was pretty sure that Fairy was the second, Behemoth was the seventh, and Rose Milady/Tsubomi Koshika was the third. That left four seats to choose from. She had a totally different vibe from the first seat, Platinum Cavalier, and if this fluffy, cutesy girl was inside of the fourth seat, Ivory Tower/Black Vise, his socks would be knocked off his feet and into outer space.

So then she was either fifth or sixth. But since he couldn’t pull the avatar name of the fifth out of the air pockets of his memory, he decided to gamble on sixth, sink or swim. “Cy—Cypress Reaper!”

“Ding, ding, ding!” she cried, delighted. “Your prize is the biggest slice of caaaake!”

He automatically looked at the tray on the table. Occupying a flat wooden plate was a circular cheesecake cut into pieces. And although there were indeed seven slices, no matter how generous he tried to be, there was a significant difference between the smallest and largest pieces.

“Airi, could you not get a little better at this?” Tsubomi said, exasperated.

Airi Sagisu/Cypress Reaper puffed out her cheeks and sulked. “But there are seven piiiieces. I mean, six or eight is one thiiiing, but even you couldn’t do seven, Nanaaaaa!”

“I could, too,” Snow Fairy replied without hesitation, and all present stared intently at her.

“Whaaat? Hoooow?” Airi wailed.

“If you fold a rectangular piece of paper three times, you get lines dividing it into eight, right?” Fairy replied, briskly. “If you spread the paper out and overlap each of the panels from the outside, you can make a regular heptagon. Press those pieces onto the center of the cake and mark it up.”

“Huuuuh? Does that actually make a regular heptagonnn?” Airi asked dubiously.

Haruyuki folded and spread out an imaginary piece of paper in his mind. The moment he understood that the result was exactly as Nanako said, he cried out, “Oh!”

Tsubomi, Megumi, and Rioh all seemed to get it at the same time, too, and began applauding, so Haruyuki joined in.

A few seconds later, Airi finally cried out, “Ohhh! I get iiiiit!”

“You don’t have to do all that annoying work,” a new voice said. “You could just use an AR app…”

Haruyuki stopped clapping immediately.

The voice was lazy and beautiful, trailing off with each sentence it spoke. Goose bumps popped up on both of his arms, and an icy chill ran up his spine.

He knew this voice. He would never forget the cruel words it uttered to him at the base in Tokyo Grand Castle, the large amusement park on Reiwa Island in the Unlimited Neutral Field: “Then…should I cut off those wings now?” First of the Seven Dwarves, with the nicknames Bashful and Basher, the platinum knight riding a snowy white Pegasus.

“Platinum Cavalier.” Haruyuki half groaned the name, and the boy with the two-block hair sitting on the opposite side of the table slammed the book he was reading shut.

He rotated his chair slightly and turned his face toward Haruyuki. He was obviously handsome, even with the mask on his face. Haruyuki’s own best friend Takumu was a relatively handsome boy, but the two-block boy’s regal nose and dazzling eyes with irises that threatened to suck a person in went beyond the realm of the average person. This boy could have been a real model or actor, but unfortunately, Haruyuki had essentially zero knowledge of that world.

Momentarily forgetting to keep his guard up, Haruyuki stood rooted to the spot, and the weary voice came his way once again.

“Shirakabanomori Academy, ninth grade… Tomochika Kyobu… I’m the student council president.”

The school name was the same one given by Glacier Behemoth/Rioh Koshimizu, sitting at the left end of the table. If Behemoth was the vice president and Cavalier was the president, then they had to have been pretty tight. Haruyuki found it a little curious that they were sitting so far apart for some reason, but he didn’t actually have the nerve to ask about that, so he gave voice to a different question.

“Um. What’s this Shirakabanomori Academy?”

“It’s right next doooor!” Airi Sagisu said. She indicated the windows on the north side with the cake server she was using to dish out the cheesecake. “Look! You can see just a hint of it past the elementary division, riiiight?”

“Uh. Uh-huh.” When Haruyuki stood up tall and looked out the window, he was indeed able to catch a glimpse of a building that appeared to be a different school on the other side of the elementary division building. The walls were the same white as EG’s, but the minimal design of the curved body gave a more modern impression.

“It looks super new, huh?” he said, as he brought his heels back down to the floor.

“Although it looks new, it in fact opened its doors in 2015. Which makes it thirty-two years old,” Rioh told him. “Naturally, its history isn’t quite as extended as that of EG, but our Shirakaba Junior High student council has long been in communication with the student council of EG’s junior high. The King herself used this connection to set up a base for the Legion at both schools.”

“So then,” Haruyuki started to say, “is everyone on the Shirakaba student council also a member of Oscillatory?”

“No, no.” Rioh waved a leisurely hand. “It’s only myself and Kyobu from the student council. We do, however, have several regular students in the Legion.”

“Several?” Haruyuki repeated, and a sudden hypothesis popped into being in his head and immediately turned to certainty. He was about to ask about it, but quickly stopped himself. If he interrogated Rioh now, there was a strong possibility that the other boy would evade the question.

“Is Shirakaba a boys’ school?” he asked instead.

Rioh shook his head as he stood up from his chair. “If it were, our situation here would seem comparable to something out of a fairy tale. But no, it is in fact coed. I will help you, Sagisu,” he said, making his way around the table.

“Oh! I can help, too!” Haruyuki hurried to add himself to that list, but he was stopped by a large hand.

“No, no,” Rioh said. “You are our guest. Please, sit. We will also extend the same hospitality to Koshika and Wakamiya today.”

“That’s kinda creepy.” Tsubomi wrinkled up her face in a scowl, even as she settled into an empty chair on the bookcase side of the table.

Haruyuki followed suit and also sat down, leaving a chair between them where Megumi sat down, leaned back, and crossed her legs.

This movement was very reminiscent of Kuroyukihime, and Haruyuki wondered if Megumi didn’t have stronger nerves than he’d thought at first glance. But then he noticed that the slender hands in front of her stomach were clasped together so tightly her metacarpals were popping up. So she was nervous, too, probably more so than Haruyuki or Tsubomi.

Whatever new developments awaited them, he couldn’t let any harm come to Megumi and Tsubomi. They were both serious veteran Linkers, far above himself, so he absolutely couldn’t say to them that he would keep them safe, but he was free to think it.

After resolving to make sure the two of them made it home safely, he gasped in realization. Megumi’s house was in Suginami’s Shimotakaido area, but Tsubomi lived in Minato Ward’s Minami-Aoyama, not too far from EG. In which case, why had she already been in the taxi when it arrived at Umesato?

He was about to whisper this question to Megumi, but Airi’s voice rang out a heartbeat sooner.

“Okaaay! Here we aaaare!”

Glasses with iced tea and plates with cheesecake were set out before Haruyuki and the two girls. Just as she’d announced, the slice of cake Haruyuki was served was about 1.2 times larger than the ones before Megumi and Tsubomi.

“Why…would the smallest piece come to me?” Tomochika Kyobu/Platinum Cavalier said from his seat across from Haruyuki, the faintest hint of sadness creeping into his ennui-laden voice.

Haruyuki looked over to see that the cake on the plate in front of Tomochika was indeed rather meager.

“Whaat? Okay, how about all of us rock-paper-scissors, except for Aritaaa?” Airi asked, and Tomochika let out a slight sigh beneath his mask.

“No…This is fine…”

“You’re so niiiice, Chikarin!” Airi said before taking her seat next to Rioh, and Haruyuki wasn’t sure how much of that was sincerely flaky and how much was actually calculated.

Now they were all seated around the meeting table, with Nanako, Tsubomi, Megumi, and Haruyuki on the bookshelf side, and Tomochika, Airi, and Rioh on the window side. There were two more mesh-backed chairs, but given that the cake had been cut into seven pieces, the executive members not present—Ivory Tower, the fifth position he couldn’t remember, and Legion Master White Cosmos—were likely not going to take part in the meeting.

When Tsubomi had previously visited the Arita home, Haruyuki asked her what kind of relationship the EG Oscillatory members had. She replied that it was something like the evil queen and her group of minions out of so many manga and video games. He had been able to imagine this fairly easily at the time, but now that he was actually here in the EG student council office, about the only thing that matched his mental picture was the massive meeting table. The room was bright, and the mood was peaceful.

If the reason for that was the absence of White Cosmos and Ivory Tower, then he wanted them to continue to stay away. Nonetheless, he was disappointed he wouldn’t get to meet Ivory Tower or the White King in the real. Naturally, that wasn’t coming from any kind of fanboy feeling, but rather from a desire to see with his own eyes the kind of people they were in the real world, these Burst Linkers who could bring about such destruction and chaos in the Accelerated World. He wanted to check if they were even actual human beings who ate and drank and breathed.

“Please, dig iiiiin!” Airi urged.

When he lifted his face, he saw that the eyes of the other six people present had at some point come to rest on him. Apparently, they were waiting for the guest of honor to take the first bite.

“Oh! Th-thanks!” He hurriedly picked up his fork and cut into the end of the golden-brown baked cheesecake. The cake was nicely dense and yet somehow smooth as silk, and it melted into nothing on his tongue. A cheesy sweetness coated his mouth, and the richness of it almost made his cheeks hurt.

“Th-this is great. Really great.” When Haruyuki gave his opinion, Airi grinned from her seat on the opposite side of the table.

“I’m glad you like iiiit! Nana bought this cheesecake for uuuus!”

“What? Really?” He leaned forward a little and looked to his right.

Nanako replied curtly from the other side of Megumi and Tsubomi. “I didn’t buy it for you. I got it because I wanted it.” She took a large bite and focused on chewing before speaking once more. “You should savor it while you can, Crow. You won’t have the luxury soon enough.”

“Wh-what does that…?” he said, baffled.

“Now, now, let us leave the complicated conversations for later,” Rioh insisted with a smile. “Delicious food must be enjoyed.”

Haruyuki had no other choice but to sit back in his chair. It did indeed feel like heresy to eat a cake this good with a distracted mind. Maybe it was also because he’d missed out on lunch, but to be honest, it was hard for him to say which was better, this or the rare cheese tart from Patisserie la Plage that Niko and Pard had brought to the send-off party for the Inti mission.

He thought about asking Nanako the name of the store and the price of the cake later. If he had the time and money, he imagined he could maybe buy one as a present for everyone in Nega Nebulus before he realized that even if he did buy the cake, he would have no chance to give it to them.

Pain stabbed at his heart again, and Haruyuki drank it down with his iced tea before taking another bite of cheesecake.

Next to him, Megumi and Tsubomi were also moving their forks silently. Tomochika Kyobu was showing off his cake-eating technique, pulling his mask up with his left hand only at the moment of putting the cake into his mouth with his right, while next to him, Airi had a happy smile on her face. Rioh, directly across from Haruyuki, had such a serious look on his face that there was a crease in his brow.

The Seven Dwarves had made Haruyuki shake in his boots any number of times in the Accelerated World, but they were also boys and girls who could become totally absorbed in a piece of cake in the real world. When he had this thought, a different kind of pain throbbed powerfully in his chest.

All Burst Linkers were supposedly gamers playing the same game. And yet ever since the launch eight years ago, they had been hating each other, deceiving each other, fighting each other, killing each other.

If he were to say that this was the design principle behind Brain Burst, well, yes, that was true. The point and territory systems were created to encourage players to struggle against each other. But if they went along with this design and fought each other mindlessly, weren’t the Burst Linkers merely dolls dancing in the palm of the developer’s hand?

“This is really good,” Haruyuki said once more, wanting to push back against that nebulous something.

“Riiiight?!” Airi agreed with a smile.

What if, despite all the fierce battles they’d fought against each other, he and the members of Oscillatory Universe could come to understand each other over a piece of cheesecake? Maybe they could even someday find a way to transform the culture of struggle that dominated the Accelerated World.

As he let his thoughts wander in this direction, Haruyuki slowly brought the last bite of cheesecake to his mouth.

But a mere ten minutes later, he was made painfully aware of just how naïve he truly was.