Accel World - Volume 26 - Chapter 6

6

The Enemies that lived in the Unlimited Neutral Field—also known as Beings—were so varied and numerous that it was impossible to memorize all of them. But if that list were limited to Beast-class Enemies, which inhabited the twenty-three wards of Tokyo, then there could be said to have been roughly a hundred different types. Haruyuki had done his best to memorize their names and appearances, along with attack strategies, but he’d never seen this Enemy, Crococetus.

He’d heard of rare Enemies, though, not just among the Beast class but also in the Wild and Lesser classes, which only appeared in a specific location, so Crococetus was likely one of those. Since the Minato City Local History Museum was smack in the middle of Oscillatory Universe territory, he had to assume that no outsiders had been able to approach it, which meant that the Enemy had been omitted from shared databases.

Thus, rather than immediately approaching the pond after he dropped to the ground, Haruyuki started with observing the creature. Cavalier had set a time limit of thirty minutes, but failing to subjugate the Enemy because he’d run out of time was vastly preferable to dying instantly in a reckless charge.

Crococetus was swimming leisurely through the silver water. The pool was only about twice as wide as the length of the creature, so it seemed a tiny bit cramped. But perhaps the massive body was more flexible than it looked; it didn’t appear to have any trouble when it came to turning around.

Hiding behind a thick metal tree trunk, Haruyuki watched it patiently. The six spectators on the roof might have been annoyed by this, but he wanted to get a really good look at his opponent before he started in on it.

Two minutes later, Crococetus once again broke the water surface and stood. It supported its body with its hind legs and tail, while its front legs dangled down before it, and it moved its head slowly from side to side. The head looked like a whale and a dragon added together and then divided by two.

Haruyuki opened his eye lenses as wide as possible and inspected every nook and cranny of the Enemy body.

The bluish-gray skin looked pretty tough, and knife-sharp claws extended from the feet at the end of the front legs. Countless teeth lined the slightly open mouth, and the eyes were a dull yellow. Haruyuki couldn’t see anything that could have been called a notable characteristic like horns or a crest. He could only see the upper body that was visible at the moment, but he imagined the lower half in the water was probably more or less the same. So this really wasn’t a magical creature or a monster, just a pure animal type.

Many Enemies had a set weak point that could be destroyed to defeat them. For insect types, it was the nervous system; for mechanical types, the control module; for spirit types, it was the soul core. But for animal types like Crococetus, while the brain and heart were indeed places where it would be vulnerable, these weren’t set weak points, so it would have been extremely ineffective to focus on damaging them.

“I guess I’ll just have to chop at its gauge the usual way,” Haruyuki murmured to himself and put his hand on his left hip.

Takumu had returned Lucid Blade to him after the meeting three days earlier. At the time, Takumu had been the same as always on the surface, but he had to have been at least a little shaken inside. Just when they were at last on the verge of fulfilling their vow to each other to fight for real, he’d been brought down two levels, far below the level seven of their promise.

I gotta talk with him, too. Haruyuki swallowed this uneasiness, took a deep breath, and shouted, “Equip Lucid Blade!”

White light appeared on his left hip and contracted to produce a slender longsword.

At the same time, Crococetus whirled around and looked at Haruyuki. Its yellow eyes flashed dully, and a three-level health gauge appeared above its head.

Haruyuki had thought about sneaking around from behind and getting in a surprise first blow. But even if he succeeded, he ran the serious risk of falling into the pond. And attempting to fight in the water when he was up against an Enemy that clearly lived in the water went beyond an excess of self-confidence and straight into pure foolishness.

“Over here, Whale-croc!” he shouted, as he leapt out from behind the metal trees and ran toward the main gate of the palace. There was plenty of space there, and if push came to shove, he could escape into the building.

Fortunately, Crococetus did not appear to have the intellect of a real-world whale. It accepted Haruyuki’s challenge and pulled itself out of the pond before opening its massive mouth wide and roaring ferociously.

“Graaaaaaaaaoooooh!”

It scratched at the ground with a front leg like an excavator bucket, and then charged, making the ground shake. The behavior pattern might have been simple, but this was a Beast-class Enemy. If it body-slammed Haruyuki, he would be killed instantly, without a doubt.

Pushing back his fear, Haruyuki stayed where he was to lure the Enemy before sinking down at the very last possible second and jumping as hard as he could.

He just barely managed to leap over the battering-ram head, and flipped himself around to land on its back. He ran up the short neck, pulled Lucid Blade out of its sheath in a backhanded grip, and thrust it downward at the vertebrae popping up on the creature’s back.

The skin he could feel through the soles of his feet was thick and hard, and if he tried to simply hack his way through it, it would no doubt have easily repelled his blade. Thus, he aimed for the tip of the spinous process jutting out at regular intervals, so that he could take advantage of the fundamental principle of Omega style Whole Blade: the extreme. This technique generated the maximum power at the minimum point, and if successful, could cut through a literal lump of steel.

Haruyuki slid the sharp tip of Lucid Blade into the bluish-gray skin before pushing down to plunge it in all the way up to the hilt.

“Graaaooooooaah!” Howling with rage and pain, Crococetus threw its enormous bulk from side to side.

Haruyuki held the hilt of his sword tightly in both hands and tried for dear life to keep from being thrown from the creature’s back.

This was the strategy for attacking Crococetus that he’d thought up on the fly. Given the range of motion of its head and limbs, it wouldn’t be able to bite him or mow him down or stomp him into the ground if he was on its back.

The health gauge floating above the Enemy’s head was still about ninety percent full in the first level, but the beast would continue to take damage as long as Haruyuki’s sword was embedded in its spine. If he could just hang on until the third level of its gauge ran out, it would be his victory. If he was thrown, however, Crococetus would win.

“Hnngh!” Groaning, Haruyuki clung to his sword, shaken in all directions every time Crococetus flailed. As a metal color, Silver Crow was fairly lightweight, but all this swinging about was still putting an excessive burden on his sword. He’d enhanced it with the super-expensive fire damage nullification, so he could stab it into magma, and it would be totally fine. But it couldn’t withstand this lateral bending for very long.

I’ve got nothing against you, but please die soon, he begged, as he looked up at Crococetus’s health gauge once more. The first level had finally dropped below fifty percent. At this pace, it’d be about seven or eight minutes before all three levels were completely exhausted. He’d kill it within his allotted thirty minutes, but would his sword last that long?

Even if an Enhanced Armament was destroyed, it would return to its original state when the user left the Unlimited Neutral Field and dived again. But Haruyuki was opposed to the idea that this fact made it all right to handle these weapons roughly. He felt like he had to treat his sword right or it wouldn’t be there for him in his moment of need.

He would have to let go of the sword when it seemed like it was reaching its limit, before it broke. Having made this decision, Haruyuki tried to predict Crococetus’s movements and compensate for them to reduce the burden on his sword if possible.

The massive creature seemed to move entirely at random, but when he watched it closely, he found that there were only four basic moves: lean to the right, lean to the left, lift its rear, and throw back its head. If he watched for the signs of what was coming next and moved at top speed, he could to keep his balance before the Enemy flung him around.

He eliminated Crococetus’s slowly decreasing health gauge from his field of view, and focused on nothing but the creature’s movement.

Which is why he didn’t immediately notice the dome of light above the museum bending and creaking, like something was pressing on it from above. A myriad of cracks raced along its surface, and the dome shattered soundlessly.

A tremendous roar transformed into a shock wave and slammed into Haruyuki.

“…?!” Reflexively, he looked up at the sky.

Darkness. A massive shadow was blocking the sun shining faintly beyond the clouds. Not a bird, not a plane. The silhouette was entirely smooth, no bumps or protrusions. Almost like an ancient idol…

The Super-class Enemy, the Deity of Demise, Tezcatlipoca.

“H…ow…?” Haruyuki said, his voice cracking, as he clung desperately to the back of the thrashing Crococetus.

Platinum Cavalier’s Ignorable Zone had, until just seconds before, covered the entire courtyard. As long as they were isolated by that light, Tezcatlipoca was supposed to have been unable to detect the fact that an Enemy was being attacked.

But the one hundred-meter giant was descending directly toward this place, crimson flames jetting from the soles of its feet. Depending on what Tezcatlipoca did next, it was very possible that Haruyuki would fall into an unlimited EK once more.

“Everyone, run!!!” he shouted, in a trance, toward the right side of the palace roof.

Immediately, he heard Glacier Behemoth’s clear voice in response. “We shall lead Tezca away and then depart! Shake off Croc however you are able and exit through the portal on the third floor of the museum!”

“G-got it!” Haruyuki shouted, as Tezcatlipoca landed on the roof of the left side of the palace.

The building was crushed with an earsplitting shriek, unable to withstand the weight of the giant. The thick exterior walls ripped apart as though exploding from within, and an ocean of sparks rained down onto the ground. Although not as untouchable as in a Demon City stage, large buildings in a Purgatory stage were supposedly so strong, they were basically impossible to destroy. This was how far outside the realm of the ordinary Tezcatlipoca was.

The giant had in mere seconds transformed the left wing of the palace into a mountain of rubble and at last stopped moving when its feet touched the ground. A heartbeat later, Haruyuki felt a shaking like an earthquake. From this close up, he could only see Tezcatlipoca’s legs rising up into the air and the stomach that lay above them. Compared with this monster, even Crococetus, at six meters long, was a mere insect.

Crococetus kept thrashing around as though it hadn’t registered the arrival of this reddish-black giant. This made sense, since Haruyuki still had Lucid Blade plunged into its back, but the moment he pulled the sword out, he would be thrown into the air. It would be great if he was sent flying toward the main entrance of the palace, but it would be very bad if he was thrown into the pond or toward the feet of Tezcatlipoca.

However, Glacier Behemoth and the others were in even more danger, given that they were trying to lure Tezcatlipoca away from here. If it hit them with the gravity attack of its right hand, Toxcatl, or the annihilation technique of its left, Miccailhuitontli, they wouldn’t be able to escape certain death. And he had to wonder how Behemoth was planning on luring Tezcatlipoca away anyway.

The answer to this question was simple and bold.

“Congeal Ray!”

“Soul Squeeze!”

Behemoth and Reaper spoke at the same time, and two different-colored beams of light shot down from the right wing of the roof to strike the giant in the head. The ensuing explosion was like several hundred panes of glass shattering all at once.

Grrraaaaaaarrr. He heard a low, heavy rumble from far above. The unfortunately familiar voice of the titan.

The massive bulk slowly changed direction. For a mere blow—well, two blows—to draw the attention of the Super-class Enemy away from Haruyuki, they must have had exceptional power.

Clinging to Crococetus’s back, he managed to turn his gaze upward and saw Behemoth and the others racing away on the east side of the palace, in the direction of Takanawa.

Tezcatlipoca began to give chase. Its movements appeared slow, but not only was its stride nearly fifty meters long, its tree trunk legs easily crushed any and all obstacles.

Please get away safely! Haruyuki called in a silent prayer toward the Burst Linkers as they quickly disappeared from sight.

If the majority of the Seven Dwarves were caught in an unlimited EK, the White Legion would be severely weakened. Considering everything that had happened, maybe he should have actually been hoping for that. But Rose Milady and Orchid Oracle were part of that group, and he found it hard now to wish for the other four to lose all their points.

Haruyuki chased this thought from his brain. Right now, he had to focus on doing as Behemoth instructed and shake off Crococetus, so that he could leave the Unlimited Neutral Field.

Tezcatlipoca receded from view, kicking up clouds of dust with a rumbling roar. The left wing of the palace was in a disastrous state, but the central part of the main building with the portal on the third floor was unharmed.

The moment Crococetus’s thrashing eased up, he would yank his sword out of its back and use his wings if necessary to fly into the palace. Having decided on a plan, Haruyuki waited for the perfect moment to escape.

And then a silver line mowed across Crococetus’s front leg as it jumped up. The leg, thicker and tougher than that of an elephant, was severed soundlessly mid-shin. The cross-section was too perfect, smooth, and clean, and Haruyuki opened his eyes wide, unable to process what had happened.

Crococetus screeched and fell forward, prostrate. This was his chance to get away. He pulled Lucid Blade out of the Enemy’s back and jumped down to the ground. With the loss of its right front limb, the beast’s health gauge had dropped to the second level, so he felt a pang of regret at leaving it alive. But he also had no idea why it had been so seriously injured, and he really needed to prioritize leaving right now.

Still gripping his sword in one hand, Haruyuki dashed toward the entrance to the palace up ahead to the left. But he stopped again abruptly after taking a mere five steps forward. A human silhouette was hovering in the dust in front of him. He swiftly raised the sword in his right hand and was about to demand whoever it was identify themselves when a breeze cleared away the last of the haze.

The sunlight shining down from the cloudy sky made the clear silver armor shine faintly. Standing there alone, shield on his back, longsword with a cross grip readied in his right hand, was Bashful, Platinum Cavalier.

Haruyuki had assumed he’d gone with the other members of the group to draw off Tezcatlipoca, but it appeared that he alone had stayed behind. It was Cavalier who had severed Crococetus’s leg and created the opportunity for him to escape.

“Thanks a lot,” Haruyuki said as he started toward Cavalier.

Glint.

The knight’s right hand flashed.

The reason Haruyuki was able to take evasive action despite the fact that he was completely unprepared was perhaps because of the unconscious distrust of Platinum Cavalier lodged deep in his heart.

But it wasn’t enough. The moment he saw the flash, he threw his upper body as far to the right as he possibly could, but the angled silver line that shot toward him still touched his left shoulder and left the sensation of a sharp chill before slipping away to the rear.

“…!”

A momentary silence. And then the armor on Silver Crow’s shoulder slid off and tumbled to the ground.

He’d been cut in the same spot by Centaurea Sentry when she was instructing him in sword techniques. But unlike that time, when only his armor had been sliced off, this attack also took the naked body of his avatar. The cold sensation turned to incandescent heat, and a crimson-red damage effect erupted from the severed cross-section.

“Hngh!” Haruyuki readied Lucid Blade in his right hand. His left arm was still attached, but a two-centimeter chunk had been carved out of what would have been his upper arm bone, which rather severely impeded the movement of that arm. His health gauge had dropped nearly ten percent, but he was more surprised than anything else.

He wasn’t surprised that Cavalier had attacked. His surprise was at the speed of the attack.

He’d come this far in the Accelerated World relying on his speed to get through the many duels he’d faced, and yet Cavalier’s movement to raise and swing his sword had been essentially invisible. There were over five meters between the two of them, so the attack had likely been something that shot a slicing attack across a distance, much like the Coba-Manga sisters’ Rangeless Scission. And given that Cavalier hadn’t called out the technique name, Haruyuki was forced to assume that it had not been a special attack but a normal attack. And yet it was far too fast for that.

He hadn’t been able to respond to Centaurea Sentry’s slicing into him, either, but that was because his detection abilities had been inhibited by the Gou of the Omega style Whole Blade. Cavalier, however, had not disappeared from his field of view for even a fraction of a second. He could only assume that it was simply a tremendously fast slicing attack, but if that were the case, then it would be difficult—or impossible—to continue to dodge it.

Cavalier looked coolly at Haruyuki, frozen in place, through the slits in his visor. “I’m impressed you dodged that…I was actually aiming for your neck.”

Haruyuki swallowed the word “why.” It was a pointless question. Cavalier intended to kill him here and now—or even to drive him to total point loss.

So instead, he gave voice to a question he thought Cavalier might answer. “You said that light barrier blocks all Enemy detection abilities, right? So then why did Tezcatlipoca come to attack?”

“Fairy and the others asked me the same question…,” Cavalier replied. “That wasn’t a lie, you know. Ignorable Zone does block the sight, hearing, smell, and all other perceptions of both Enemies and Burst Linkers…You also didn’t notice Tezcatlipoca’s approach until it smashed the Zone, yes?”

Haruyuki stared hard at the knight. “So then how come?”

“Because Tezcatlipoca doesn’t detect Enemies being attacked with its senses…That giant is connected directly with the system of this world. And it is indeed impossible to block something like that…”

From the way Cavalier was speaking, it sounded like he had known from the start that if Haruyuki attacked Crococetus, Tezcatlipoca would come to attack. But if that were true, then…

He tightened his grip on the hilt of his beloved sword and said, in a low voice, “If I don’t burst out, Milady or Oracle will pull my Neurolinker off my neck. No matter how strong you are, there’s no way you can keep killing me until I’m out of points.”

“There are plenty of cheats and loopholes in the Accelerated World,” Cavalier replied, and Haruyuki could hear no emotion in his voice. “You’ve learned that from your time here…”

“I’ll tell you right now,” Haruyuki snapped. “I’m not agreeing to a sudden-death match.”

“Such a thing…I don’t want to do that, either.” Cavalier shrugged as he slowly raised his longsword.

Haruyuki immediately dropped into a fighting stance, but the knight was not moving to attack him.

Something shifted in the entrance of the palace that opened to the rear of Cavalier. A faintly white shadow appeared, as if oozing into reality out of nothingness. The silhouette was tall and slender, like a tapered pole. Its ivory armor had a texture reminiscent of unglazed porcelain. And the face mask was marked with an unsettling pattern instead of eyes or a mouth.

“Ivory Tower,” Haruyuki murmured, and the fourth of the Seven Dwarves, the Burst Linker with the nickname Doc, bowed slightly.

“It’s been a while. Or perhaps not so long as that, I suppose.” As usual, his voice had little inflection and communicated even less emotion than Cavalier’s. “The joint meeting, wasn’t it, Silver Crow?”

There was no way that Ivory Tower’s presence there was mere coincidence. Cavalier had him lying in wait here. Right from the start, his intention in having Haruyuki execute the final task had been to set a trap for Silver Crow.

Ivory Tower was one and the same person as the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, Restrainer, Black Vise. If he managed to grab hold of Haruyuki, he would be able to do all manner of things to him before Tsubomi or Megumi could get his Neurolinker off in the real world.

He had to do whatever it took to get out of this place. But Platinum Cavalier had his sword readied in front of him, and Crococetus behind him was recovering from the loss of his leg rather quickly. Silver Crow’s only path of escape was the sky, but Cavalier would have naturally taken that into consideration in setting this trap. The knight’s super-high-speed slicing attack would be impossible to evade in the air, and if his wings were severed, his back would well and truly be up against the wall.

The lone check in the plus column was the fact that Ivory Tower likely wouldn’t join the battle. Black Vise was a powerful foe who used a variety of restraint techniques, but he had zero combat abilities when in his Tower form. In the Territories, he’d actually transformed into Vise in order to defend against Blood Leopard’s special attack Bloodshed Cannon, making a grave mistake that Chocolat Puppeter caught on video.

Naturally, there was the possibility that he might transform now, but as long as he was Tower, he would likely stick to watching from the sidelines. Haruyuki’s only option was to check Cavalier’s movement somehow for even an instant and break away into the sky.

However.

He was rooted in place by the very strong feeling that if he left even the tiniest of openings, the knight would cut him down.

Was Cavalier keeping his distance rather than charging him because he wasn’t completely sure he could sever Lucid Blade? But if that was the case, he could simply keep using this slicing move over and over until he broke through Haruyuki’s defenses, given that it was a normal attack and not a special attack that used up his gauge. Was he not doing so out of some gentlemanly principle?

Either way, Haruyuki couldn’t stay on the defensive forever. In less than three seconds, Crococetus would be up to full speed and charging Haruyuki again. The moment he let his guard down to deal with the Enemy, he was certain Cavalier would have his head.

He had two choices for possible action. One was to remove himself from Cavalier’s view with Gou and attack. And the other was to also use Gou to disappear and then flee.

After working his brain at top speed for two seconds, Haruyuki decided on the best course of action for the situation.

“Graaarrrrrrarararrrr!” Crococetus’s rage-filled roar erupted from behind him as the beast charged forward on three legs.

The ground rumbled. He felt the information pressure of the Beast-class creature prickling against the back of his naked avatar. If it head-butted or bit him, Cavalier wouldn’t even have to draw his sword to take him down; he’d die instantly.

Not yet. Not yet…Keep drawing it in.

The instant Crococetus was within a meter from his back, Haruyuki activated Gou and dropped down.

Cavalier’s hand twitched. But he didn’t launch his slicing attack.

Gou, the secret Omega-style technique, caused a momentary glitch in the predictive ability of the Brain Burst system and erased him from the perceptions of others in the area. Since he was interfering with the system itself, Burst Linkers couldn’t defend against this technique, no matter how excellent their vision might have been. In fact, the more finely honed a Burst Linker’s senses were, the greater the shock when they lost sight of their opponent. Platinum Cavalier would have been viewing Haruyuki with an extremely precise sighting ability, which was exactly why he was unable to move when Haruyuki vanished.

Naturally, this trick wouldn’t work a second time. Gou only lasted for a fraction of a second, and he couldn’t use it repeatedly because it required a deep and careful focus. Once Cavalier got him in his sights again in a one-on-one fight, he would be taken down.

But Cavalier wasn’t the only one who lost sight of him.

Crococetus shot past where he was pressed firmly against the ground. Enemies were also part of the system, which meant they also lost their target when Gou was activated. Naturally, when the creature was disoriented and attempting to regain its target, it would turn to the person closest to it.

As soon as Crococetus’s chest, belly, and then tail passed above his head, Haruyuki spread the wings on his back.

He pushed off the ground and vibrated the metal fins at full power. Even Cavalier would have to devote his full attention to dealing with the Enemy when targeted by a Beast class. Haruyuki had to get out of attack range while the Enemy’s body was still shielding him.

“Yaaaaah!” Howling, he used up all of the special attack gauge he’d charged in the fight against Crococetus and shot up to the highest altitude.

“Laser Lance,” came a quiet voice from far behind him.

Huh?

By the time this thought hit him, a pure-white light was already piercing his back. His right wing was ripped off at the base, and he fell into a tailspin. As he spiraled toward the earth, a single word played over and over in his head.

Why? Why? Why?

Just as he chanted this question for the fifth time, he crashed into the ground at the southern edge of the pond. He was unable to take even a protective posture due to his immense shock, and his health gauge dropped even further, cut down by half.

Lying dazed on his side, he looked down at his right side. A hole about two centimeters across had been gouged out of his metal armor, and a stream of red light was pouring out of it.

“Grrrraaaaaaaooon!”

He heard a throaty roar to his left and turned his head that way to find Crococetus flipped over onto its back. With every movement of its flailing limbs, an ocean of damage effect gushed from its mouth and right eye.

It was clear what had happened. As the Enemy charged with its mouth open, Platinum Cavalier shot through it using a long-distance Incarnate technique to strike Haruyuki as he flew up into the sky.

High-ranking Enemies were fairly resistant to Incarnate techniques. And Incarnate should have been even less effective on a close-range combat type like Crococetus. And yet this particular technique had pierced the Enemy’s critical points in a single blow. But that wasn’t what concerned Haruyuki.

“That technique,” he rasped, as he pulled himself up into a sitting position.

Cavalier turned his gaze upon him, even though they were nearly twenty meters apart. He casually raised the longsword in his right hand. The platinum blade had Haruyuki in its sights. Once again, the technique name was called out:

“Laser Lance.”

Shwnk!

A silver light jetted from the tip of the longsword and shot through both Haruyuki’s left shoulder and wing at the same time. His already injured arm was severed at the shoulder and clattered to the ground. Pieces of metal fins scattered and dropped on top of it.

Laser Lance. This was the first-stage Incarnate technique Haruyuki had learned after much intense training, a range enhancement of his Laser Sword. The light of hope that he had found deep in his heart once he’d finally faced himself, after turning his eyes away for so long.

So how could Platinum Cavalier be using it?

Klak. Klak.

The knight approached, his boot-shaped armor sounding against the ground. The sword in his hand flashed, and a silver line ran across the neck of the overturned Crococetus; the Enemy instantly stopped moving.

The enormous head slid down off the neck and tumbled along the ground. The three levels of its gauge dropped to zero, and the disconnected head and body both shrank inward before exploding into pale flames and a universe of tiny particles.

Since Haruyuki had done some damage to Crococetus on his own, a not-insignificant sum of points was added to his total, but he didn’t even notice this. He continued to stare up at the approaching Cavalier.

Klak. Klak. Klak.

The knight stopped about two meters away from him and murmured, “You likely…think it strange, hmm? I can…imitate just about any Incarnate technique I like.”

“Imitate?” Haruyuki parroted, and Cavalier shrugged.

“That said, however…high-level techniques are beyond my reach. But I can copy simple techniques like your ‘light line’ series in a few days…”

“But,” Haruyuki started to protest.

Incarnate techniques were the embodiment of the darkness—or light—hidden away in the depths of an individual Burst Linker’s heart. They were supposed to be unique, inimitable abilities. Because no matter how simple the technique appeared to be, the mental scars that powered it were too varied and numerous to count. There was no way to reproduce them. For instance, even though they were both first-stage range expansion techniques, Haruyuki’s Laser Sword and Niko’s Radiant Heat were completely different, from appearance to effect.

A single possibility popped into his head, and Haruyuki clung to it.

“Do you have an ability like Dusk Taker’s Demonic Commandeer?” he asked, desperately. “Is it like the Incarnate version of that?”

“Heh…” Cavalier let out a faint, uncharacteristic chuckle. “I myself had that question a long time ago and posed it to the King once…Is this power of mine an Incarnate technique to copy Incarnate? But the King’s response was no…This is simply me.”

He cut himself off and pressed the tip of his longsword to Haruyuki’s brow.

“Let us leave it at that…I won’t be…seeing you as a Burst Linker again, anyway.” He sounded extremely nonchalant, in horrific contrast to the words he spoke. He pulled the tip of his sword upward a mere two centimeters.

A heartbeat later, a super-fast Incarnate slicing attack would come flying at Haruyuki and his head would be cut off. He had nothing left with which to change that future. He could use Gou, but it would have been pointless at such close range.

No.

Don’t give up. Kick and flail and struggle. There was a good chance he could do something at least, even if it only extended his life for a fraction of a second.

In his mind, focused and pushed beyond all limits, Haruyuki tried to grab at the thread of this possibility. There was no way he’d have enough time to call the name of a special attack, and he wouldn’t be fast enough to defend or attack with the sword in his right hand. Both of his wings had been destroyed, so evasion with a slide-dash was impossible. He had only one option left to him: silent, instantaneous activation of an Incarnate technique.

Unlike special attacks, which could not be activated without shouting the technique name, the calling of Incarnate technique names was nothing more than a trigger to focus the imagination. Ever since Niko had taught him how to use the Incarnate system, he’d always called the technique name either out loud or in his mind when using Incarnate techniques. But after all this time, he thought he should be able to do it silently now.

He had to believe. In the power of the image. And in the light inside of him. Even if he was cut off from the people he loved, the bonds they’d built wouldn’t disappear. The light he’d gotten from Takumu, from Chiyuri, from Fuko, Utai, Akira, and Niko—and most of all, from Kuroyukihime—shone brightly, powerfully in his heart and would never vanish.

Amplify that light and release it.

Light Shell.

A pure-white light surged from the center of his cracked and broken chest armor where he was kneeling on the ground, formed a spherical shield, and expanded.

At exactly the same time, Platinum Cavalier’s hand grew blurry, and the cross-shaped longsword flashed.

Silver sparks flew before Haruyuki’s eyes.

His second-stage Incarnate technique, Light Shell, was one he’d produced to resist Tezcatlipoca’s gravity attack. While it had proved to be a powerful defense against energy attacks, its effectiveness against physical attacks was an unknown variable. While Light Shell would maybe not be able to completely guard against the super-fast, long-distance slicing attack that had cut through Silver Crow’s metal armor like butter, he hoped he could at least knock it slightly off course.

The attack touched the barrier of light, but was unable to pierce it and bounced backward. And then Haruyuki saw it:

An ultra-slender, ultra-thin blade three meters long, twisting in midair like a ribbon made of pure silver.

The ribbon instantaneously contracted at Cavalier’s feet and turned back into the original longsword.

Inside of the fading Light Shell, Haruyuki felt certain he’d seen through to the mechanism of the long-distance attack. The blade itself of Platinum Cavalier’s cross-shaped longsword stretched out like a film, longer or shorter as required for the speed of the slicing attack. Because Cavalier’s attack was so impossibly fast, the blade thinned out and lengthened to the atomic level, so that it easily severed Crococetus’s head and Haruyuki’s shoulder. That was the true nature of the silver line.

But when it was repelled and unable to cut its target, the thin film of the blade twisted in the air and revealed its true nature. Cavalier hadn’t attempted to cut down Haruyuki with Lucid Blade earlier in an attempt to keep this from happening.

An attack so fast it was invisible to the naked eye and the proficiency required to handle the film-thin blade were god-level, but as a sword technique, it was as heretical as Omega style, or even more so.

“You have discovered…the mechanism, then, hmm?” Cavalier said, his voice tinged with a cold echo. “And you’d shown me that defense technique before, too…I assumed it didn’t work with physical attacks, my mistake. But…now I have all the more reason not to allow you to escape…”

Rather than replying, Haruyuki slowly stood. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but he managed to get his sword up and looked at the knight’s visor intently.

“I have no intention of running.” It took all his strength to get these words out. In fact, he was certain Cavalier would slice his head off the moment he turned his back, so even if he wanted to run, he couldn’t.

Fight and defeat the first of the Seven Dwarves. This was the only path that led to his survival.

Cavalier’s health gauge was full, and Haruyuki’s was at twenty percent. His left arm and his wings had all been destroyed, and there was a large hole in his chest. He was battered and bruised, but he could still move, and he still had his sword.

He would repel the long-distance slicing attack with Light Shell again, and in the opening that created, he would cut into a critical point with Omega style’s Extreme. Having decided on a plan, Haruyuki adjusted his grip on Lucid Blade.

He wouldn’t make it in time if he activated his Incarnate technique after he saw the light of the attack. He needed to keep his eyes on the whole of Cavalier and not only on his right hand, and perceive the start of the attack with all his senses.

At some point, he’d begun to see Platinum Cavalier not only as a duel avatar in the form of a knight, but also as a mass of shining, clear silver. It was almost the form he’d seen from the Highest Level, but he himself was unaware of this change in his perceptions as he intently waited for his moment.

Cavalier had defeated Crococetus, and now time was on Haruyuki’s side. The five Burst Linkers who had drawn away Tezcatlipoca might come back here instead of leaving through the portal. He was confident that there was zero possibility that they were all complicit in Cavalier’s plot—and doubly sure of that when it came to Tsubomi and Megumi.

The Two Burst Linkers remained still as statues as time alone moved forward silently.

And then, finally, a clear silver light inside of Cavalier shimmered the faintest hint to the right.

Light Shell.

The Incarnate barrier and the invisible slicing attack made contact with an earsplitting shriek. Repelled, the film blade danced into the air once again.

Haruyuki slid forward as he canceled the barrier and brought Lucid Blade down with the bare minimum of movement.

With impressive instincts, Cavalier twisted away from Haruyuki’s onslaught. The end of the blade caught not his head but his left shoulder. Still, Haruyuki had him.

Extreme.

He felt a tremor of feedback as the knight’s shoulder armor was severed vertically. The left arm slid off without a sound and dropped to the ground.

I did it!

But his exultation vanished a moment later, because he then perceived something impossible, something that should not have existed.

Missing his left arm, like a mirror image of Haruyuki, Platinum Cavalier should have had the smooth cross-section of an amputation on his left shoulder. But inside the thin armor, there was nothing but a gaping darkness.

“No avatar body?!” Haruyuki cried out, stunned.

Beneath the visor covering the knight’s face, previously unseen eyes abruptly came to life, shining a blackish red. These were not regular eye lenses; the outline shimmered like flames.

“So you saw…” Cavalier’s voice had an empty echo as he pulled his left leg back, bent forward, and hid the opening of his left shoulder with his right hand.

Unconsciously, Haruyuki took one step and then another backward.

“That body…is not a duel avatar?” he somehow managed to say. “A drone…? Or…an Enemy?”

But Cavalier made no move to answer. Instead, he removed his right hand from his shoulder. He brought it and the sword he held slowly above his head. Beams of a bluish-black overlay erupted from the platinum blade toward the heavens and began to tangle together like a swarm of snakes in an Incarnate technique unfamiliar to Haruyuki.

He intuitively knew he wouldn’t be able to defend against that with Light Shell. Plus, his powers of concentration were nearly exhausted because he’d silently activated twice in a row an Incarnate technique he’d only just learned. Even so, he readied his beloved sword directly in front of him, firm in his resolve to keep fighting until the very last.

Then Cavalier abruptly leapt backward as a beam of pale light pierced the spot where he had been standing.

The overlay enveloping the knight’s sword dispersed as another beam of light shot from the sky, only to be quickly followed by another and then another. Cavalier kept jumping backward to dodge the bolt from above until he was chased all the way to the palace entrance. Even the quiet observer Ivory Tower retreated a few steps into the building.

Here, finally, Haruyuki looked up.

A human silhouette was hanging there quietly against the backdrop of the cloudy yellow-green sky. But it wasn’t a duel avatar. He stared at the long hair and skirt fluttering in the wind, the beautiful wings spreading out in the air.

“Metatron,” Haruyuki whispered, his throat threatening to close over with emotion.

Legend-class Being, one of the Four Saints, the Archangel Metatron. Haruyuki hadn’t heard from her once since they’d transferred together from Nega Nebulus to Oscillatory Universe. And now, for some reason, she was here.

Perhaps sensing his surprise, Metatron raised a hand as if telling him to wait, and then turned that hand toward the palace. Points of pale light popped up on the tips of her slender fingers and transformed into beams of light that shot toward the earth with a loud screech.

The lasers carved out complicated spline curves in the air and hit the ground in front of the palace entrance. The surge of energy contracted to a single point, became a ball of light, swelled, and exploded.

“Ngh!” Haruyuki squinted as he threw up an arm to protect himself against the Blast Wave. The walls and ceiling of the main building that had escaped being trampled under Tezcatlipoca’s feet were unable to completely absorb the influx of energy and began to melt, red-hot.

He tried to find Platinum Cavalier and Ivory Tower in the midst of the roaring flames, but he couldn’t spot them anywhere. Maybe they had gotten caught up in the explosion and died, or maybe they had managed to escape. If it was the former, death markers would have appeared, but he wouldn’t be able to check for those until the fire died down. If they had survived, they wouldn’t try to attack him, not with Metatron here. He nevertheless kept up his guard as he looked to the sky once more.

Having transformed the first floor of the local history museum into a sea of flames, the Archangel finally lowered her hand, folded the wings on her back, and dropped in a free fall to the courtyard. When she was on the verge of a collision, she spread her wings once again to brake abruptly and come to a gentle landing.

“Metatron, thankmph!” Haruyuki couldn’t finish his sentence.

Because Metatron had thrown her arms out and embraced him with all her might.

“Honestly. You are always, always…,” she said, her voice filled with fury, displeasure, worry, and a million other emotions. She squeezed him tightly for another five seconds before finally releasing him.

“Pwah!” Able to breathe again at last, Haruyuki checked to make sure the intense pressure of her embrace hadn’t made his health gauge drop even further, before he looked at the face of the Archangel again.

It was a visage so beautiful it threatened to suck his soul in, so lovely it was almost impossible to believe that it was a 3D object. He suddenly wanted to reach out and touch it, but if he did that, she would push his gauge all the way down to a single dot for sure. So he restrained himself and returned Lucid Blade to its scabbard.

“Thanks, Metatron. If you hadn’t come along, I’d probably be worse than dead right about now,” he said, and let his gaze roam from her head to her feet and back again. “Um. Are you all healed up now?”

Metatron nodded regally, as if to say this was obvious. “Long ago. This time, there was no damage to my core.”

“Yeah? That’s great then.” He let out a sigh of relief, but found himself at a loss for what to say next. He couldn’t read from the look on Metatron’s face how she was taking the tragedy of the Tezcatlipoca attack mission three days earlier, the departure from Nega Nebulus, and the transfer to Oscillatory Universe.

He wished that this could have been their chance to talk about all of this and more, but unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of time at the moment. He didn’t know what Platinum Cavalier/Tomochika Kyobu would do after returning to the real world, and he was worried about how Rose Milady and the others had fared after luring Tezcatlipoca off toward Takanawa. And what had actually happened to Cavalier and Tower anyway?

He turned a questioning gaze toward the palace, and Metatron said, “You were fighting the horse rider from Oscillatory Universe and the shadow diver from the Acceleration Research Society, yes? I attempted to strike them down with Tehillim, but before they perished, they fled into the shadows.”

This was the first time he was hearing the name “Tehillim,” but he was pretty sure it was what she called the lasers she shot from her hand. He was curious about when she’d learned a technique like that, but there were more urgent matters of conversation at the moment.

“The one you call the ‘shadow diver,’ Black Vise—he has a ton of secret passages set up in the permanent shadows around here,” he told her. “I think they’re pretty far away by now.”

“I will kill them instantly with Trisagion during our next encounter,” she declared, with no change in her tone or expression, and then furrowed her brow slightly. “However…The shadow diver is a separate concern, but why was the horse rider trying to kill you when he is also a member of the same Legion?”

Haruyuki shrugged. “I don’t know the answer to that, either. Given that he called Ivory Tower—Black Vise—here, too, I think he wasn’t planning to kill me, but to capture me and do something to me.”

“I truly should have made the both of them charcoal, hmm?” Metatron replied. “But what concerns me is the question of whether or not White Cosmos approved of their actions.”

“Oh…” Haruyuki’s eyes grew wide as he considered this idea for the first time.

He couldn’t say that it was outside the realm of possibility. The White King was an incomparably merciless tactician, and she was the mastermind behind any number of tragedies and catastrophes since the dawn of the Accelerated World. He could never forget that she had deceived her own little sister, Kuroyukihime, and engineered a surprise attack that led to the first Red King losing all his points. She may very well have accepted him into the Legion in order to set just such a trap as this.

He was at a loss for words, and Metatron also appeared to be deep in thought. Eventually, however, she shook her head slightly.

“No, Cosmos is likely not connected.”

“Huh?” He frowned. “Wh-why do you think that?”

“Because while I was healing my injuries at Fufuan, I was analyzing Tezcatlipoca at Cosmos’s request,” the Archangel informed him haughtily.

“A-analyzing?!” he parroted.

“Yes. I was able to detect your crisis because Tezcatlipoca’s movement pattern changed while I was observing it. If not for Cosmos’s instruction, I would not have viewed these coordinates.”

“R-right.” Haruyuki nodded to himself. Metatron’s reasoning made sense. If the White King had permitted or even ordered Cavalier’s actions, it was hard to imagine that she would have instructed Metatron to analyze Tezcatlipoca, allowing her to potentially interfere with that plan.

In which case, Platinum Cavalier had drafted a plan that was not only not ordered by the White King, but might actually have gone against her will, and dragged the rest of the Seven Dwarves into it. Why would Cavalier go to such lengths to eliminate Haruyuki? He had just barely survived this time, thanks to Metatron. But if she hadn’t come along, Cavalier would have no doubt struck the killing blow with that Incarnate technique and its bluish-black overlay, despite the fact that in terms of both level and actual ability, Cavalier far surpassed Haruyuki and could easily best him without Incarnate.

He raised his face with a gasp. “What happened to Tezcatlipoca?! Milady and them lured it away, but…”

“At the point when I stopped observing, it had shifted from the Tah-kah-nah-wah direction to Shi-bah-ooh-ra,” Metatron told him. “I have no way of knowing from this position whether or not Rose Milady and the others are safe.”

“You don’t?” He sighed. “I guess you wouldn’t. I hope they managed to get away okay.”

Tsubomi and the others weren’t using an automatic disconnect safety, either, so if they’d fallen into an unlimited EK, Haruyuki needed to pull their Neurolinkers off in the real world. He wanted to check whether they were alive or not before he entered the portal, but he was barely still standing himself. He wondered whether he should burst out for now, but if the other five were still not awake and he ended up alone with Tomochika Kyobu…

“Well then, shall we go?” Metatron said, and she pulled Haruyuki close to her once again.

“Huh?! G-go? Go where?!” he asked in a panic.

Skreeeeee!!

The sound of acceleration—well, hyper-acceleration—roared in his ears.