The End and the Beginning, page 18
part #15 of Accel World Series
The overlay blanketing the small shrine maiden became crimson flames that rose up to the ceiling. They couldn’t have been real flames, and yet, a definite heat reached Kuroyukihime a dozen meters away. Almost divinely beautiful, Utai danced gracefully inside the pillar of swirling flames—the very image of the Shrine Maiden of the Conflagration. She flipped the fan in her left hand upward, and then once again, her “song” echoed powerfully.
“…Dirt of the earth, we are.”
Krrr! An extraordinary roar beat down on Kuroyukihime’s back. Forgetting her fatigue, she reflexively flipped around and saw a red light illuminating the ISS kit main body from below. The floor ten meters around the bulky eyeball shone a brilliant red.
No, it wasn’t shining—it was melting. The Incarnate Utai had spent a hundred and twenty seconds kneading was overriding the thick marble of the floor and heating it to a super-high temperature beyond its melting point, turning it to liquid—the attack was turning the floor into magma.
The kit main body wrapped its fleshy armor with a dark aura and tried to block the heat, but the magma, shimmering in a gradient from the red of the twilight sun to the white of the blazing sun, evaporated even its aura and mercilessly scorched its thick armor.
Eventually, the immense body began to sink into the lake of magma. Although it seemed to have a meter or two of play, the kit body had essentially fixed its three-dimensional coordinates by locking the portal inside of it. This, in turn, became the reason it couldn’t escape the magma.
If, hypothetically, it had had a mouth, the massive eyeball would likely have been howling very loudly. The reaction of the main body was so intense Kuroyukihime could be certain of that. Its front eyelid twitched and shuddered shut, and the two tentacles flailed senselessly. From time to time, a black overlay condensed at the tip of one of them, and an incomplete Dark Blow beat at the lake of magma. But it merely stole a tiny fraction of the vast thermal energy and vanished without causing any damage.
“This…is the Incarnate technique she came up with for the God Genbu,” Fuko said quietly, glancing at Utai dancing beyond them.
“It has to be,” Kuroyukihime responded hoarsely. “The circumference of the magma will need to be about four times this, but if she can drop Genbu’s bulk in…”
“…she could burn it up.” Akira’s voice also contained a hint of tension.
More than the fearsome power of the lake of magma, what made a chill run up their spines was because Utai, the mildest and most even-tempered of the Four Elements, had generated this level of Incarnate technique. If it was categorized on the regular coordinate system, it would likely have fallen into the fourth quadrant—negative will with range as its target.
Destructive Incarnate techniques had their energy source in negative emotions such as anger, despair, and sorrow. Thus, compared with the creative Incarnate techniques produced by positive emotions, the extent to which the user was pulled into the hole of their heart was overwhelmingly greater. From the results’ end, an Incarnate technique like Kuroyukihime’s Vorpal Strike brought about significant destruction on a large scale, but the kernel of the image was formed with the creative desire to enhance her own sword technique. But the aim of Utai’s so-called Flame Dance was clearly to burn up its target to cinders. The blowback to her mind would be as enormous as the power of the technique itself.
“…Uiui…,” Fuko said, pained, clenching the hands she had pressed against the floor. In her heart, she probably wanted to run and make Utai stop her Incarnate attack right then and there. Kuroyukihime felt the same way. But whether they succeeded in destroying the ISS kit main body now rested squarely on Utai’s small shoulders.
Holding their collective breath, the three Burst Linkers watched as the kit main body finally lost all its armor and its two tentacles to reveal its true form—a hard, lustrous, ebony eyeball. With the thick flesh burned away, the eyeball was now just two and a half meters across, but this only increased the sense of otherworldliness. Even with its bulk half swallowed by the lake of magma, and even as flames spurted up from every part of it, the animosity jetting from the bloodred pupil did not weaken.
“……?!”
Now the pupil abruptly spun to the left and looked at the southern side of the floor. Following its gaze, Kuroyukihime turned her eyes but saw nothing other than the rows of Grecian temple pillars and the marble wall. There was no sign of anyone there. But the kit body was clearly looking at something. Perhaps it was on the other side of the wall, somewhere off in the distance.
The red pupil narrowed in diameter—a lens automatically adjusting its focus. And then, a single beam of red light shot out from the magma-scorched eyeball.
The beam was far thinner than Dark Shot, and no sound accompanied it.
Stretching out to the side, it hit the undamaged wall but slipped through it smoothly, butter-like, instead of destroying it. One thing was clear: It was not an attacking technique.
Regardless, Kuroyukihime felt an icy chill envelop her as she lay still, prone on the floor. Fuko and Akira similarly stiffened, and small cries slipped from their throats.
The red light, that thing—it was not a good thing. Quite the opposite. Even compared with the many, many things she’d witnessed in the Accelerated World, this object might very well have been the absolute worst.
It was…the embodiment of the vast, malicious evil the ISS kit main body had accumulated through every single kit terminal.
9
“Aaah…Aaaaaaaaah!”
Haruyuki screamed as if to rip his throat open, fists waving wildly.
Demonic Commandeer. Dusk Taker’s sole special attack. Of all the special abilities Haruyuki knew, its effects were by far the most fearsome: the semipermanent theft of another Burst Linker’s ability, special attack, or Enhanced Armament.
Far too belatedly, he understood the true meaning of what Cerberus II had said when he activated his Wolf Down ability during their second duel— “Relax. My ability’s not stealing. Unlike that guy.” That guy was Cerberus III, aka Dusk Taker. And stealing meant Demonic Commandeer.
“No! Stoooooooop!!” Bringing his fists together above his head, he beat at the semitransparent, purplish-black defensive wall. But Black Vise’s Incarnate technique Octahedral Isolation repelled Haruyuki’s fists with its absolute strength as if space itself had been cut away, and faint cracks appeared in his silver armor.
Then, the purple light flowing back to Cerberus III from Niko throbbed noticeably. A dazzling sphere was pulled from Niko and eaten up by the mouth on Cerberus III’s right shoulder. He was steadily stealing Niko’s power—mostly likely one of the firepower parts that made up her Enhanced Armament Invincible.
Eyes open wide in shock, Haruyuki felt another shiver of fear and moaned. The light flowing from Niko wasn’t disappearing. He heard a slithering, viscous sound as Cerberus III attempted to greedily suck away even more of her power.
“Ah…Aaaah!” Haruyuki screamed once more—his shock changing to a dizzying hatred and rage, then to despair. His voice had to have reached the inside of the octahedron, but neither Vise nor Argon, watching over the proceedings silently, much less Nomi, shivering with pleasure at his theft, so much as raised an eyebrow at him.
Haruyuki went to raise his cracked fists above his head once more. But a sharp voice slapped him from behind.
“Calm down, Haru!”
At the same time, someone caught the wrist of his right hand. Turning, he saw immediately before him Lime Bell’s eye lenses, radiating a cool light.
“You can’t lose control! Think…I just know you can think up a way to save Niko!”
“But…But! But!” Moaning blindly, he tried to wrench his wrist free from her grasp. And then, he felt the new wings folded up on his back shudder slightly. Almost as if scolding him.
Right. This is exactly the kind of time when I need to calm down and broaden my perspective. Look at everything…and think about what we should do.
Through intent imagination, he condensed the fit of rage piercing his entire body into a small sphere and sank it to the depths of his consciousness. He didn’t need anger at that moment. If he had the energy for that, then he should use it to think even just a little faster—a little more deeply.
“Got it.” Calm once again, Haruyuki gently freed his hand from Chiyuri’s grip. “Hang on just a sec.” He looked at the massive octahedron towering before his eyes, making full use of all of his senses.
Although it was Black Vise’s Incarnate technique, and the true depth of his actual power was still unknown, this partition couldn’t have had the absolute strength of Green Grandé’s Incarnate attack Parsec Wall. The amalgamation of thin panels had originally been an arm and a leg, which maybe meant that the joint areas would be weaker than the flat areas? In which case, they should attack…?
“Not the surface! The corners!” Haruyuki shouted.
“I got it,” Pard responded immediately. She leapt forward, opening her mouth to bite into one of the octahedron’s peaks. Rather than being pushed back again, her four Incarnate fangs just barely caught the place where the four surfaces came together. With every muscle of her animal body writhing, she generated a bite force that made the massive silhouette creak.
Haruyuki was confident it would break. But suddenly, the eight-sided body rotated quickly just a quarter to the right. The bottom edge that dug deep into the ground sent marble fragments flying, while the precarious balance of Pard’s fangs against the peak was shattered.
Kachank! She flew back—her jaw snapping shut—yet she had no sooner hit the ground than she was leaping up again, trying to bite into the new corner. But now the octahedron rotated to the left, and her fangs were knocked away once again.
“Taku! Chiyu!” Haruyuki shouted, pushing on one surface of the octahedron with both hands to hold it in place. Takumu and Chiyuri flew around to the opposite side, with Pard in the middle, and braced themselves. But the surface of the semitransparent wall had absolutely no handholds, and their hands slipped off when the octahedron rotated for the third time.
“Nngh.” Haruyuki gritted his teeth.
A second ball of light was pulled from Niko’s body and swallowed up by Cerberus III’s right shoulder. If this kept up, Cerberus III would soon steal all the pieces of Invincible—Haruyuki assumed they were the main Armament, the missile pods, the cockpit with its machine gun, the rear thrusters, and the legs: a total of five parts.
Haruyuki fought back the irritation threatening to balloon in him and thought harder. He was certain the octahedron peak was its weak point. But in order to hit it, they had to somehow stop the rotation. A simultaneous attack on all four vertices from all four directions? No, they still wouldn’t be able to block the rotation itself. The fulcrum was the regular octahedron’s bottom vertex, but that was digging deep into the marble earth; they couldn’t so much as touch it.
Digging into the earth…
“—!!”
Haruyuki’s eyes flew open, and he turned his head back to the sky above.
Of the six vertices, the true weak point was the actual peak—one of the apexes. The octahedron might be able to rotate on the horizontal, but it couldn’t spin perpendicularly, because the bottom vertex was fixed firmly in the earth. But if they tried to attack the apex, they would be shaken off by the horizontal rotation, like Pard’s biting attack had been. They needed to apply pressure directly to the bottom vertex from the top, a perfect perpendicular line without the slightest deviation.
A conversation from earlier suddenly popped up in the back of his mind. He whirled around. “Taku! How much is in your special-attack gauge?!”
“I’ve got plenty left!” Cyan Pile answered immediately.
“Great! I’m carrying you to the top of the octahedron. You do your thing straight down!”
With that alone, Haruyuki’s intention came through loud and clear. Eye lenses beyond the slits carved into Takumu’s face mask opened wide for a moment, and he nodded forcefully. “Got it. Leave it to me!”
Haruyuki grabbed Takumu from behind, spread the silver wings on his back, and pushed them as hard as he could. They soared the twenty-five meters to the top of the octahedron in an instant and looked down on the Incarnate defensive wall that cut a square of the courtyard.
At that very moment, a third ball of light was removed from Niko and devoured by Cerberus III’s shoulder. Just two more left. When all her Enhanced Armament had been stolen, Niko would lose the overwhelming firepower that earned her the name Immobile Fortress.
Brushing away a fleeting terror, Haruyuki dropped into an attack posture. Holding tightly to Takumu, he fell forward so that he was parallel with the top of the octahedron. At the same time, Takumu returned his Incarnate sword to its Pile Driver form and turned the exposed pile in the barrel toward the peak of the walled structure.
“Here I go, Haru!”
“Hit it hard, Taku!” Haruyuki deployed his wings fully, hoping to absorb the recoil.
Takumu shouted the name of the technique with everything he had—his voice echoing across the expanse of the courtyard. “Spiral…Gravity…Driiiiiiiiver!!”
The Pile Driver barrel was wrapped in a shining blue light and expanded with a kashak. The pile was tucked away, only to promptly return in the form of an enormous hammer drill, and this was fired—flames jetting from the rear.
The flat tip of the iron pillar spun savagely as it hit the peak of the octahedron—a perfect bull’s-eye accompanied by an incredible roar—as if the air itself was suddenly compressed at supersonic speed. The eight pieces of semitransparent glass that comprised the Incarnate shelter shuddered, and sparks cascaded from the point of impact.
Here, finally, the architect of the octahedron glanced up at Haruyuki and Takumu. He cocked his faceless head to one side, and as if that was a signal, the massive structure began to spin counterclockwise, the opposite direction from Cyan Pile’s drill. The waterfall of sparks became a torrent, the roaring grew deafening, and Haruyuki felt the world shaking as he clutched Takumu tightly.
If the launch angle of the hammer drill had been even a degree off from the direct perpendicular, it would have slipped away before it caught hold of the peak, now that the octahedron was rotating at top speed, and the two would have tumbled to the ground. But Cyan Pile’s level-three special attack, Spiral Gravity Driver, could only fire directly downward. Takumu didn’t have to bother with any fine tuning, and the direction of launch would still be fixed perpendicularly.
“Unh…Aaaaaaah!” As Takumu howled, a blue overlay jetted from his entire body. The shine of the Incarnate flowed down his right arm to the hammer drill, changing the dark gray spike into super-hard corundum. The swirling jet of orange sparks mixed with the blue aura to brightly illuminate the courtyard.
Psheenk! A strange creaking sound Haruyuki had never heard before shook the air. Unable to withstand the intense pressure, the octahedron spun ever slower, until it eventually stopped. In contrast, the now-sapphire hammer drill continued to drive into it with a force that likely far surpassed the time it had slammed Haruyuki down from the roof to the first floor so long ago.
The second creaking noise was accompanied by a high-pitched wail. Lightning-bolt cracks shot through the octahedron from the peak out to the fourth panel. But the fine cracks stopped at the next peak, a hair’s breadth away from causing total destruction.
“Just…a little…more…!” Takumu’s voice was pained.
Instantly, Haruyuki made up his mind. “I’ll help!”
He put more strength into the arms around Takumu to make the two avatars one. In addition to Silver Crow’s original wings stretching out from his back, he deployed the white wings he’d been newly given—Metatron Wings. All four spread out in the shape of an X, and he pushed every ounce of his willpower into them.
“Smash…iiiiiiiit!!”
A white light shot upward perpendicularly—the jet of a massive rocket. The incredible thrust went through Haruyuki and Takumu into the hammer drill down to the octahedron, and the flat surfaces buckled and warped. The cracks now stretched farther down, passing through the side vertices, and then split again to join the cracks reaching out from the other vertices.
Once the structure was covered in a spiderweb of fine cracks, the high-pitched shriek of destruction pierced the entire field. The smoky-black defensive wall shattered into countless fragments and scattered, glittering in the twilight sun.
At the same time, Cerberus III stole a fourth ball of light. Still bound as one, Haruyuki and Takumu thrust the tip of the still-spinning, roaring sapphire drill squarely at Nomi, directly below them.
““Ngaaaaaaaah!!””
The Spiral Gravity Driver, containing the power and will of both of them, transformed the fragments of the wall fluttering downward into fine particles and plunged forward toward Cerberus III’s helmet. An instant before it could make contact, Argon Array shot four lasers from off to the left to stop it.
Two of these Haruyuki repelled with his Optical Conduction ability, but the other two grazed Takumu’s flank and left shoulder, knocking him off-balance. The drill slipped and the spinning strike charged down a mere five centimeters to the left of Nomi, narrowly missing him and shattering the marble tile there.
Haruyuki put on the brakes with his wings to get Takumu back to the ground with no damage, but then he felt like he heard his good friend’s voice.
Haru! I’m okay. Go for the Red King while you can!
Roger!
After this instantaneous exchange, he released his hands, and no sooner had he turned himself toward the altar where Niko was held captive than he was flying at full power. Argon’s four lenses shone purple once more to his left, but Pard charged in under the cover of the rain of wall fragments and body-slammed her, so that her lasers shot off in vain toward the school building to the rear.
“Nikoooooooo!!” Haruyuki spread his arms out and grabbed onto the crimson avatar spread out over the black cross. He tried to destroy the cross at the same time, but perhaps not wishing to lose his left arm, too, Vise transformed the cross back into thin panels as he sank into the earth.
