Accel World - Volume 7 - Chapter 3

3

The cobblestone main road continuing from the south gate of the Castle—which was named Suzakumon—to the main entrance of the inner sanctuary was approximately three hundred meters long. Standing on both sides every eight meters was a vermilion pillar. Since the pillars themselves had a diameter of two meters, the gap between each pair of pillars was six meters. The warrior Enemies patrolling the main road didn’t appear to notice the existence of the intruders when they were hiding quietly behind a pillar, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that the instant the warriors saw them moving or heard the sound of footsteps on gravel, they would swoop down upon them.

Thus, to make it to the inner sanctuary of the Castle, the only choice Haruyuki and Utai had was to cross from the shadow of one pillar to the next of thirty-five pillars while avoiding the warriors’ reaction range. Naturally, Haruyuki’s first inclination was to consider using his wings for an aerial approach, but the falcon-like birds dancing slowly in the night sky concerned him. If they were some of the harmless critter objects, simply one part of the stage’s terrain, it would be fine, but he and his partner would be in serious trouble if they turned out to be some kind of lookout Enemies.

Nevertheless, his wings weren’t entirely useless. Crouching in the shadow of the umpteenth pillar, holding the small body of Ardor Maiden in his arms, Haruyuki listened hard and waited for his moment.

Warriors marched south along the main road five or so meters to their left, armor clanging. Those weighty footfalls came up directly beside the pillar, passed by, and receded farther.

Utai, in his arms, nodded her tiny head. At the same time, the metal fins on Haruyuki’s back fluttered with the minimum output, and lightly, soundlessly, the pair flew—or rather, jumped. They landed gently on tiptoe behind the pillar eight meters ahead. The warriors behind them continued to walk away at the same pace, not seeming to notice anything out of place.

“Phe…” He suppressed the sigh that started to slip out, and Utai turned worried eyes on him. He looked back into those ruby-like lenses and nodded that he was okay.

He had a certain amount of experience fighting Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field, but this was the first time he had been forced to engage in covert action that used so much mental energy. In more than twenty minutes, the distance they had covered was at most a hundred meters. However, they couldn’t rush this. He had to concentrate and make a perfect jump each time.

It was a difficult situation, but luck was also on their side. To begin with, there was the fact that Haruyuki’s flight was not a special attack that required him to utter the name of the technique in order to activate it, but rather a normally activated ability. Thus, they didn’t have to worry about the warriors hearing his voice.

And one more piece of luck was that holding his breath and hiding himself was real-world Haruyuki Arita’s big signature move. Of the three hundred and sixty people at Umesato Junior High, no one had polished their Inconspicuous skill to the extent that Haruyuki had. The seemingly paradoxical trick to this was to sneak out in the open. Because Haruyuki had been excessively bothered by the eyes of the students around him back in seventh grade, he had provoked the sadism of some delinquents. Nothing was ever good in excess.

Right: careful guard, but without fear; join the natural flow—complete the next jump.

His precious special-attack gauge, filled up when he was scorched with Suzaku’s flames, had about 60 percent left. If he used it well, that would be plenty. If he flew steadily between one pillar and the next without rushing, he’d reach the finish line at some point. A lesson he’d learned cleaning out that animal hutch.

A new group of warriors approached and passed by on the other side of the pillar. Utai nodded. Haru nodded back and gently vibrated his wings. Jump.

Forty minutes later, when they had finally reached the base of the last of the pillars, Haruyuki let out a long, heavy sigh of relief this time.

The patrolling warriors apparently didn’t come up to the side of this pillar. After checking that there was no sign of any Enemy around them, Ardor Maiden, in his arms, whispered at minimum volume, “Very nice work, C.”

“Yeah. You, too, Mei.” He let the slender avatar down gently onto the gravel. Huddled together, crouching, they cautiously peeked out from the shadow of the pillar.

The inner sanctuary of the Castle, the very center of the center of the Unlimited Neutral Field—the true Accelerated World—rose up a mere five meters ahead of them. Given that this was the Japanese-style Heian stage, the design of the building also closely resembled the reproduction model of the Council Hall of the Imperial Palace in ancient Kyoto, which he had done a full dive into in his Japanese history class. It was just much, much bigger.

The roof was black tiles. The walls were painted white, and the pillars and latticed windows were vermilion. To their right was the main entrance, leading off from the center of the main road. But going in through there was probably—no, definitely—impossible. On either side of the gate stood Enemies far more massive than the courtyard’s warriors; they were fearsome, imposing, and perhaps best described as two guardian Deva kings.

“C, I have to ask at least. Are you planning to challenge those people?”

At Utai’s whispered question, Haruyuki moved his head at high speeds, horizontally, back and forth. “N-n-n-n-n-no way, y-y-y-y-y-you gotta be kidding! I don’t want to get another centimeter closer to them.”

“…Neither do I. But…then what exactly are you planning to do? I do believe that we won’t find a portal without going into that inner sanctuary.”

“…Um, okay.” Beneath his helmet, he bit his lip for a moment. He didn’t know if she’d believe him if he told her what they were going to do and the basis for that action. However, Haruyuki didn’t want to tell any kind of lie to this girl, Utai Shinomiya, still so childlike and innocent despite having borne a massive weight on her shoulders for more than two years. Which is why he simply told the truth.

“When I was dozing back there under the pillar at the southern edge, I had a dream. Someone who looked a lot like me but who wasn’t me took the exact same route as us and got into the inner sanctuary.” He still couldn’t fully remember all the details of that dream. But when he saw that vision of the silver avatar moving forward across the gravel, the part that came after that returned hazily to life in his mind.

Ardor Maiden stared at him curiously as he put a hand on her right hip and stood her up with him. Holding her gently, he raced his eyes around to the left and right to check it was safe. He used the tiny bit left in his gauge for the final long jump.

He was aiming for not the main entrance to their right but the latticed windows along the white wall—specifically, the one fifth from the left.

When he landed immediately in front of the window, which itself was a careful hatching of vermilion crosspieces, Utai took a step forward and then turned around, shaking her small head.

“It won’t open, I think. And it’s almost certainly impossible to break it—this type of window is almost always an unbreakable object, locked by the system.”

She was absolutely correct. Unlike the Normal Duel Field, which was a straightforward fighting-game stage, the Unlimited Neutral Field that the Brain Burst program generated was more role-playing game, good for strategizing and adventuring. Pretty much any building in the Normal Field could be destroyed, but that was not necessarily the case in the Unlimited Field. Just like a locked door wouldn’t open unless you had the key that fit it, if you didn’t have a reason to go inside places closed off in this world, the system would most certainly not let you.

But Haruyuki simply half nodded at Utai and looked up at the latticed window. He reached up and grabbed a thin vermilion crosspiece. Please, he prayed as he gently pulled it forward.

Sure enough, the latticed window rotated soundlessly with the central crosspiece as the axis.

Utai took a sharp breath. Her scarlet eye lenses opened wide as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

It was only natural she’d be surprised. On the inside of the latticed window, on the bottom, a hefty lock glittered gold. But the bolt had been completely opened, showing that this window was in an unlocked state, according to the system.

Ardor Maiden took a few steps, still saying nothing, and reached up to the next latticed window. She tried to pull it open in the same way, but the vermilion crosspiece stayed firmly fixed to the window frame, not even bending. Clearly, only the fifth window had been unlocked from the inside by someone.

“Did you also dream that this window would be open?” Utai asked him hoarsely, having returned to his side.

“Yeah.” Haruyuki nodded slightly. “In my dream, someone got in through this window, like they slipped through it and opened the lock.”

“Was that someone the same person who broke the seal on the south gate?”

“I…don’t know. But I feel like there wasn’t a bit like that in my dream. And the person I saw maybe didn’t have anything swordlike,” he replied, almost absently, as he searched his memory intently. But they were talking about a dream he’d had while napping. All that came to mind were confused fragments of images; he couldn’t even put them in chronological order. Maybe if he had had the dream recorder app that all the Neurolinker companies were working on, it would have been a different story, but even still, that would have only worked in the Basic Accelerated Field, where you could launch external programs.

But, more important, had it really been just a dream?

Dreams were essentially something produced from your own memories. So he shouldn’t have been able to see anything in a dream that he didn’t actually know. This was obviously the first time Haruyuki had entered the Castle. In which case, where did the memory that this window was unlocked come from…?

Haruyuki had gotten this far when a faint sound reached him from the east, and he turned his gaze with a gasp. The clanging drew nearer on the narrow path between the courtyard of trees in autumn brilliance and the endless white wall. There was no doubt it was a group of warrior Enemies. Apparently, this path was also a patrol course, albeit an infrequent one. They had to move right away.

After meeting each other’s eyes for half a second, Haruyuki and Utai nodded together. They couldn’t go back now, not when they’d come so far. Haruyuki first poked his head in through the unlocked window and checked that there were no Enemies inside the wide hallway. He slid gently inside before reaching out to pull Ardor Maiden up with both hands. Without a moment’s delay, he closed the lattice, and they crouched below it, side by side.

The heavy footfalls on the gravel of the lane outside passed by, turned near the main gate, and passed by once more before disappearing back into the east.

“Phew…” At the same time as he let out yet another sigh, they looked at each other again, gently bumped fists, and grinned.

Finally.

They had at last succeeded in entering the inner sanctuary of the Castle itself, famed as being impenetrable. They were drawing infinitely closer to the center of the Accelerated World. Unfortunately, however, it was almost certainly a fact that another Burst Linker had made it this far before them. And if the person who destroyed the Suzaku seal on the south gate and the person who unlocked the latticed window here were not one and the same, there had actually been two intruders before them.

If they wanted to know who those other Burst Linkers were, their only choice was to head even farther into the inner sanctuary. The fearsomeness and number of the guardian Enemies here was likely an order of magnitude higher than outside, but all they could do was keep moving forward.

“Umm.” Haruyuki blinked hard once before quietly asking, “How much real time has passed since we dove here?”

“I’d estimate that it’s been about seven hours of inside time, so twenty-five thousand, two hundred seconds divided by a thousand…about twenty-five seconds.”

“Okay, then it’s probably been about twenty seconds since Kuroyukihime and the others got back. How long you think they’ll wait before pulling our cables out?”

“At the earliest, I think they will force a disconnect at thirty seconds. Another ten seconds in real time…Here, we have two hours and forty-five minutes left.” Utai’s prompt response was just what he’d expect from a veteran Burst Linker; Haru was still not that great at mentally calculating accelerated time.

He bobbed his head up and down. “We either make it all the way in alive, or we die along the way. Either way, that much time’s plenty. Let’s go, Mei. Going to the right is probably safe.” He sat with one knee raised and stretched out his left hand.

Utai stared at him for a moment, scarlet eye lenses glittering in her snow-white face mask. When he cocked his head to one side, she spoke in a voice colored with a smile. “It’s just that since we got here, I’ve steadily felt more and more like I could rely on you, C. Almost like…my older brother.”

Having something like this sprung on him sent his awkward meter shooting through the roof in the blink of an eye. “Wh-what? Mei, you have an older brother? What grade’s he in?” he asked shrilly, eyes frozen in place.

But Utai grabbed his hand and stood up without responding to this question. Once more, a thin smile crossed her face, this time lonely somehow. “Well then, shall we go? Whether we live or die…I leave my life in your hands, C.”

“…Yeah.” Pushing aside his confusion, Haruyuki nodded firmly.

He was the one who had insisted on aiming for the inner sanctuary. So he had to give his all to keep Utai safe now. As a Burst Linker, Utai was overwhelmingly the stronger one, but this was a different sort of problem. Even if he had to sacrifice himself, he wanted to make sure Utai at least avoided falling into an Unlimited EK state again.

Secretly resolving this to himself, he started walking along the wooden floor of the silent, cool hallway, when a tiny voice came back to life in his ears.

Look, big brother Haruyuki. If one of us—or maybe both of us—lose Brain Burst, we’ll probably forget everything, everything about each other, you know…

This wasn’t a fragment of that strange dream. These were the words of Yuniko Kozuki—the second-generation Red King, Scarlet Rain—when she suddenly showed up at his house after the Meeting of the Seven Kings. It had been held in the east gardens of the Imperial Palace in the Normal Field two days earlier in real time, on Sunday, June 16. She had looked scared somehow. Or, given that she was saying things like lose Brain Burst, maybe she actually had been afraid of something.

But what? Did anything actually exist that Niko—a top-level Burst Linker at level nine and one of the Seven Kings of Pure Color ruling over the Accelerated World—would have to be afraid of? Considering the fact that in addition to the terrifying firepower of her Enhanced Armament, she had also mastered the Incarnate techniques of Range Expansion and Movement Expansion, she should have been able to escape from even the territory of Suzaku under her own power.

Still, she might have been a king, but Niko was a sixth-grade girl in the real world, so it was no wonder if she got anxious about things sometimes. And in the Armor of Catastrophe incident six months earlier, she had herself condemned to exile Cherry Rook, a Linker close to her who had become the fifth Chrome Disaster. Rook had apparently been one of the few friends she had at her real-world boarding school, and now he had lost his memories of Brain Burst and transferred to a school far away. It would have been strange if she wasn’t a little lonely.

“Hey, Mei?” Haruyuki unconsciously opened his mouth as they walked down the long hallway.

“Yes?”

After fumbling for the right words for a minute, he started talking again to the young shrine maiden looking up at him. “If we find a portal and get out of here…if we get through all this, I have a friend I want to introduce you to.”

“A friend? Do you mean in the real world?”

“Yeah. She’s two years older than you. She’s in grade six right now. Kinda sassy, kinda rough, but…but she’s really great. If it’s all right with you—if you’re okay with it, I mean, maybe you could be friends—”

Suddenly, a sensation like pain pushed up from the center of his chest. Haruyuki stopped breathing, and his eyes flew open. Was this…a premonition? That what he had just said would probably not come true? That some terrible…sad catastrophe would befall them before it could…

As if there’s any such thing!

I’ll keep my world safe. I won’t make anyone unhappy anymore. I won’t let anyone be sad. Kuroyukihime, my teacher, Chiyu, Taku, and Shinomiya, too…and Pard and, of course, Niko. I’ll protect this warm circle, these bonds we have, modest and yet bigger than anything else. I will keep this safe.

“C.” A tense voice called to him, and Haruyuki opened his eyes with a gasp. When he turned his gaze to his side, the young shrine maiden was focused intently on the path ahead of them in the hallway. Drawn in, Haruyuki looked ahead and noticed several massive auras. Soon, a heavy sound of creaking movement reached his ears.

“It appears that there are indeed Enemies inside as well.”

He nodded quickly and looked to both sides. On the wall to the right, the line of vermilion latticed windows. They could probably unlock one and get outside, but there was the possibility of the warrior Enemies there, too. On the left, rather than a wall, a row of brilliantly painted sliding fusuma doors. He couldn’t see anything resembling a lock, so he expected they would open if he pulled on them, but which of the fusuma should they slide open…?

He then had another strange vision: A pale, human-shaped silhouette pulled open the fusuma two meters or so ahead and slipped inside.

“Over there.” Rather than doubting his eyes, Haruyuki followed the phantom avatar. Without hesitating, he pulled the fusuma open and found another hallway with a polished hardwood floor. Another line of fusuma both ways. They slipped into the space stretching out to the north and closed the room dividers behind them with a thump.

They didn’t even get the chance to breathe for a second before movement somewhere along the hall made the floorboards creak loudly. The shadow before his eyes that looked so much like himself glided forward, opened a fusuma to the right, and disappeared.

Just what was that shadow? And why was he the only one who could see it? There were a lot of things he didn’t understand, but at this stage, all he could do was trust and follow where it led. Swallowing the echoes of the pain lingering in his heart, he forcefully called up all his focus and opened the next fusuma, pulling Utai along by the hand.

If they had tried to advance on their own and avoid the herds of warriors and Shinto-priest guardians that crowded the map of the interior of the Castle’s inner sanctuary, even a full day would not have been anywhere near enough time.

Although the hallways were wide and they didn’t lack for objects like pillars and sculptures to hide behind, the Enemy patrol patterns were complicated, definitely not readable with a few moments’ observation. The building was also made up of a series of fusuma and hallways that looked almost exactly like one another, making it very easy to get lost, and, of course, there was no auto-mapping function, so before they knew it, they had lost all sense of north and south. The fact that they had been able to make any headway at all in a labyrinth of this level of difficulty was because they had help from the strange silhouette that floated up in Haruyuki’s field of view.

The small nameless duel avatar found the blind spots of patrolling Enemies with a timing like passing through the eye of a needle and opened one unremarkable fusuma door after another, guiding Haruyuki and Utai forward. It was already quite evident that this was no mere dream or hallucination.

It was probably a “memory.” The logic of it was unclear, but the memories of a Burst Linker who had once snuck into this Castle were replaying in Haruyuki’s consciousness. He couldn’t come up with any other explanation for this phenomenon. But if that was the case, then that meant whoever this was had succeeded in reaching the most central depths of the Castle, and then left their memories in some kind of media after they made it home alive. Which meant there had to be a portal connected with the real world in the final site this hazy silhouette arrived at.

Haruyuki believed there was and chased after the memory shadow with undivided attention, pulling Ardor Maiden along by the hand. They had a few close calls, but after more than an hour had passed and they hadn’t been targeted by a single Enemy, the pair finally reached the entrance to a large hall that seemed to be very close to their goal.

“This is…,” Utai murmured, and squeezed his hand in hers tightly.

It was an enormous space, one better described as a massive temple than a hall. Vermilion pillars supported the high ceiling, and the walls on all four sides were adorned with dazzling color prints. It had a very “last boss room” look to it, but there was no sign of any Enemy. Regardless, a concentrated something hung in the air that made them hold their breath. Haruyuki squeezed Utai’s hand back and strained his eyes intently beneath his silver mask.

The silhouette of memory that had guided them here was stepping slowly into the hall and heading toward the gloomy depths. Steeling himself, Haruyuki followed it. The shadow glided in between the row of pillars and—

The moment it had advanced to a certain point, it vanished without a sound.

“Ah!” A quiet cry slipped out of Haruyuki, and he quickened his pace. If the memory shadow had disappeared, then the portal had to be in there. But only darkness and cool air filled the depths of the hall; he definitely didn’t see any flickering blue light. But that…to come all this way and have there be no exit, it couldn’t be…

Half running, he crossed the last ten meters and was forced to acknowledge that his fears had been realized. There was indeed something there. But it was very clearly not a portal.

Square stone pillars blackly lustrous side by side, a distance of about two meters between them, standing as high as Silver Crow’s chest perhaps. When he saw the thin, disparately colored panels on them, he figured these were no ordinary pillars, but rather pedestals to place something on.

But both were empty. If anything had sat on them at some point in the past, those items had already been carried off. The gray shadow who had guided them here had probably taken at least one of them. So then a onetime portal that—as the name suggested—activated only once.

“I…We came all this way…” Enormously discouraged, Haruyuki started to drop his shoulders.

Utai suddenly squeezed his left hand so hard it creaked.

“…?!” Hurriedly looking to his side, he saw the young shrine maiden, who he had never once seen lose her cool composure, staring at the pedestal on the right as if she were trying to devour it, scarlet light spilling from her eye lenses.

“A Seven Stars plate.”

“Huh…huh…?” Bewildered by the words, which he’d never heard before, Haruyuki looked at the pedestal once more…and realized that a small silver plate was indeed embedded in the front, which he hadn’t noticed before. He took a step toward it and stared hard. Several characters were carved into it, along with a curious diagram.

Seven dots, and six lines connecting them. He had seen this before. There was no mistaking it; it was the shape in the night sky he had looked up at from the Castle garden two hours earlier. The tail of Ursa Major. The seven stars of the Big Dipper.

Thmm.

The point on his back throbbed sharply again. It seemed like this pain had a bit more presence to it than it had before. He shook his head lightly and pushed it out of his mind. “Seven Stars?” he asked in a low voice. “Do you mean the Big Dipper stars carved into this plate? Is there something going on with this pedestal?”

Utai finally lifted her face. “What sat on this pedestal was an Enhanced Armament,” she told him in the quietest voice possible. “However, it is no normal weapon or armor. A group of legendary armaments, said to be the most powerful in the Accelerated World, the Arms of the Seven Stars, also known as the Seven Arcs.”

“Seven…Arcs…”

There’s no way he would have forgotten that term. Haruyuki’s teacher, Sky Raker, had explained it to him at the Meeting of the Seven Kings the day before yesterday. The Tempest, the staff owned by Purple Thorn, the Purple King. The Impulse, the greatsword worn on the hip of the Blue King, Blue Knight. The Strife, the large shield carried by the Green King, Green Grandé. All of these together were called the Seven Arcs.

At that time, Raker had told him that the prevailing hypothesis was that there were a total of seven Arcs existing in the Accelerated World, but the existence of no more than four had been confirmed. The basis for this hypothesis was probably the plate embedded in this pedestal. When he looked very closely, the sixth star from the left in the relief of the seven stars of the Big Dipper carved into the plate was bigger than the others. He supposed that meant that particular star corresponded with this particular Arc.

“So then, the Arcs that the Blue King and the others have, they were on pedestals like these?” Haruyuki’s question omitted the thought process that preceded it, but Utai still nodded.

“Yes. The Arcs that the Vanquisher and the others have obtained were enshrined in the deepest parts of the four great dungeons of the Accelerated World: Shibakoen, Tokyo Dome, Tokyo Station, and the Shinjuku government building. I subsequently saw only the pedestal for the Impulse, but it was exactly the same design as this. C, please take a look here.” Utai pointed to a spot on the plate.

Two characters were carved out beneath the seven stars relief in a severe typeface. They could be read as kaiyou, but he had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

“This kaiyou is the Chinese name for the zeta star of the Big Dipper. The pedestal for the greatsword Impulse that I saw had the characters tensuu cut into it, the Chinese name for the alpha star. Similarly, the Chinese name for the beta star—tensen—was on the pedestal for the staff Tempest, while the pedestal for the shield Strife was imprinted with the Chinese name for the gamma star, tenki.”

“…I get it.” Haruyuki nodded deeply, intently etching the string of peculiar nouns into his brain.

Four great dungeons set to the north, east, south, and west of the Castle in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Four Enhanced Armaments sealed away deep within them. And carved into those pedestals, the Chinese names for the four stars that made up the bowl of the Big Dipper. Given that, it was only natural that the veteran Burst Linkers who found them judged that they were four of likely seven powerful armaments.

Aah, seriously, why didn’t I get to be a Burst Linker sooner?! Exploring the four great dungeons, capturing the bosses inside—probably super huge, too—getting the most powerful equipment…All the fun’s already over.

After letting these regrets race around his mind, Haruyuki quickly rethought things. Hadn’t his teacher, Sky Raker, said that everything was starting now? And if he had become a Burst Linker in the early days, there was a possibility that right about now, he might belong to a side against Nega Nebulus—against Kuroyukihime. And he had no greater fortune in this world than that of having been able to become her child.

He covered his face lightly and reflected deeply on his own thoughts. “That reminds me,” he said to Utai in a low voice. “I didn’t see it at the Meeting of the Seven Kings, but what’s the last of the four Arcs presently confirmed? I’m assuming someone’s already got it, like the other three hidden in the four great dungeons?”

“That…It’s been confirmed that the delta tenken pedestal in the lowest level of the large Shibakoen maze was already empty…” Utai broke off momentarily, and a look like she was thinking it over herself rose up on her face as she continued. “It’s unknown to the present day who obtained the Luminary, the Arc that should have been there. At the very least, as far as I’m aware, there is no record of it ever having been used in a duel.”

“What?!”

That was unexpected. Having expended the effort to obtain one of the most powerful Enhanced Armaments in the world, was it even possible to not use it? Perhaps whoever had it was worried about standing out and becoming the target of concentrated attacks, but if they had the actual strength to break through an enormous dungeon, then they were probably safe to stand up proudly and call themselves the owner of an Arc.

And there was something else that didn’t quite click. Puzzling over this, he asked Utai, “But I’m sure Master Raker said there were just four Arcs confirmed. So if they only found the pedestal, does the Luminary count as one of the confirmed Arcs?”

“No.” Utai shook her head, and the hair parts of her shrine maiden avatar swung back and forth. She lowered hesitant eyes before murmuring at minimum volume, “Luminary is treated as unconfirmed. The last of the four Arcs that have appeared up until now in the Accelerated World should have sat on this kaiyou pedestal, the Destiny.”

“Des…tiny…” Repeating the name, Haruyuki looked at the plate on the front of the pedestal as if drawn in by it. Beneath the relief of the Big Dipper with the single larger star and the two characters that spelled out the Chinese name for the zeta star, he did in fact spy several roman letters: THE DESTINY.

It was a name he had never heard before. Or it should have been. And yet Haruyuki felt that strange piercing sensation in the center of his body once more. Thmm, thmm. It throbbed somewhere deep in his soul. The pulsing reached his central nervous system and gave rise to a small spark at a single point on his back. Abruptly, the world before his eyes shook. Or no, not the world—only the roman letters on the plate he had his eyes focused on were losing shape. The seven letters of DESTINY shuddered, twisted, and transformed into another row of letters, similar and yet different…

“C.”

Haruyuki’s eyes flew open at the firm squeeze of his left hand.

The vision disappeared, and the letters on the metal plate returned to their original arrangement. At some point, the throbbing in his back had also vanished. He blinked several times before remembering what they had been talking about immediately before the vision.

“Oh! S-sorry.” Haruyuki apologized to a worried-looking Utai in a voice that was still slightly hoarse. “I just…spaced out. Umm, so then that means that some Burst Linker did come here before us and got the Disaster from this pedestal and used it in a duel, right? Who was it? Probably one of the kings or something?”

But Ardor Maiden only shook her head in tiny increments at this question. “You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t seen it directly, either. I heard that it was a long, long time before I became a Burst Linker.”

“It was?” Haruyuki pushed back his frustration. If it was something even a serious veteran like Utai didn’t know, then Haru would definitely have no point of contact with it, given that he had been a Burst Linker for only eight months. Which was why this uneasiness smoldering in the back of his brain had to be a misapprehension. This itchy, annoying feeling practically insisted he knew the answer, but he just couldn’t remember.

Almost as if he were unconsciously trying to avert his eyes from the name Destiny, Haruyuki moved another few steps to the left, still holding Utai’s hand, and examined the neighboring pedestal. This one had a similar metal plate embedded in it. The carving of the Big Dipper was also the same. But the larger star was fifth from the left. The characters inscribed there were gyokusho.

“Gyoku…sho, maybe?”

“Yes. The Chinese name for the epsilon star. The Arc inscription is…”

He brought his face in closer at the same time as Utai did and found the English letters there. Together they murmured, “‘The Infinity.’”

“This is also the first time I’ve heard this name. Since this pedestal is as empty as its neighbor, someone—perhaps the same person—has already carried it off. If that’s the case, then like the Luminary, it would be an unconfirmed Arc, never once used.”

“I…I guess so.” Haruyuki let out a small, secret sigh.

Immediately before the Meeting of the Seven Kings the day before yesterday, where he had seen the Castle rising up in the distance in Chiyoda Area, Kuroyukihime had said there was a rumor about some incredible Enhanced Armament being hidden in the very innermost room of the Castle’s inner sanctuary. And that had evidently been true. And that Enhanced Armament was likely higher in status than the Arcs the Blue, Green, and Purple kings had.

And yet what they found were only the pedestals; the essential items had been carried off by someone long ago. As not just a Burst Linker but also a hardcore gamer, there was no way he was not going to be utterly and crushingly disappointed.

“Infinity, huh…It was prob’ly an amazing piece of equipment. I wish I could have at least seen it,” he muttered in frustration, and then jerked his head up in sudden realization.

Four Arcs in the four great dungeons scattered about the Unlimited Neutral Field. And two Arcs in the innermost room of the inner sanctuary of the Castle in the center of the Accelerated World. All together, six. But there were seven stars etched into the pedestal. Hadn’t Utai said that was why they were called the Arms of the Seven Stars? In other words, that meant…

“There’s one…missing…” His mouth opened of its own accord.

Ardor Maiden, next to him, nodded firmly. “I—I was also thinking that myself. In this hall, meant to be the very center of the Accelerated World, there are only two Arc pedestals. Then Alkaid, the eta star of the Big Dipper, which would be ‘Hagun’ in Chinese readings…Where on earth is it?”

Exchanging a glance, the silent pair heard—

“Allow me to answer that question.”

—the clear, bright voice, like the wind blowing across the autumn sky, of a young boy.