The End and the Beginning, page 6
part #15 of Accel World Series
“We’ll finish this conversation next time, kitty cat.” Her laughing voice suddenly grew distant.
Mihaya couldn’t let her get away. Securing Argon was Mihaya’s job. Silver Crow had believed that Blood Leopard, of all of them, could do this, which was exactly why he left the rest to her and went after Black Vise on his own.
Even though she had seen the flash of Razzle Dazzle for only a second, her eyes still hadn’t completely recovered. But as Argon herself had noted in their earlier conversation, sight wasn’t the only sense.
Mihaya’s sharp leopard ears picked up the faint sound of footsteps; the pads on her four paws caught the vibrations in the earth. Argon appeared to be running north—a different direction from Crow’s pursuit of Vise. Mihaya didn’t know their destination, but all she had to do was chase; directions didn’t matter to her now.
Smashing through another wall to come out onto the street, Mihaya ran low to the ground. Her whiteout vision couldn’t pick out small obstacles like a railing on the side of the road or crumbling pillars, but she pulverized these with her head as she charged forward. Although her armor wasn’t that thick since she was a red type, her basic defense and physical strength had gone up a fair bit in her leap to level eight. If she’d still been level six, Argon’s omnidirectional lasers would have no doubt killed her instantly.
Mihaya had gone so long without leveling up in order to rescue Akira Himi/Aqua Current from the nest of Seiryu. Current was Mihaya’s parent and also one of the Four Elements that formed the executive branch of Nega Nebulus. There weren’t many in the current Prominence who held a grudge against the Black King for pushing the previous Red King, Red Rider, to total point loss, but there were some—Blaze Heart and the others who attacked Suginami in the Territories the day before were representative of them. But given that Mihaya belonged to the Triplex, the executive group for the Red Legion, the fact that she had stayed at level six for Current’s sake was essentially a betrayal of her Legion.
But the Red King and the other two members of the Triplex had allowed Mihaya this selfishness. And it was the Black Legion’s Watch Witch, Lime Bell, who got Mihaya’s burst points back, when they should have been gone forever after she was hit with Seiryu’s Level Drain. After so many people had supported and aided her to allow her to finally reach level eight, she basically had an obligation now to muster up every little bit of power that level entailed and push it to the very limits.
“Graaaaar!” Racing forward, Mihaya unleashed a wild roar, another of the special privileges of a half-beast avatar. A purple silhouette popped up in the center of her blurred-white field of view. There’d be no more chitchat when she overtook Argon. Only instant slaughter and transformation into a death marker.
As she concentrated her strength in her back legs and sprang forward, the glamour effect finally ended. Sight back to normal, she spotted Argon stopped in place and looking over her shoulder. The myriad lenses on her body had disappeared at some point. Was she giving up on her flight? …No, that wasn’t it.
The slender avatar was sinking into the ground before her eyes. The shadow of a large building stretched out at Argon’s feet. Mihaya strained her eyes and saw that the shadow had liquefied into a pool of ink about two meters wide, centered on Argon. The dark bog quickly swallowed up over half of Argon’s body.
Black Vise was supposed to be the one with the ability to dive into the shadows, not Argon Array. She couldn’t believe Vise was anywhere near them given that he had fled in an entirely different direction. So then had Vise lent his own ability to Argon through some means? …Or…
Part of her head whirring with these thoughts, Mihaya stretched out her hands as far as she could to prevent Argon’s flight. But once again, her claws did nothing more than scratch lightly at the large hat.
A faint smile rising up on her face, the Analyst sank into the shadow.
I’m not letting you get away! Mihaya did a somersault at the same time as she landed to dive into the shadow herself. She plunged both hands into the ebony bog without the least hesitation, and they were sucked in up to her elbows together with an unpleasant sensation. Plrmp.
But that was it. At some point, the shadow bog had shrunk so that it was smaller than Mihaya’s shoulders. Not only were her avatar’s elbows caught, unable to dive, the contracting hole was making her arms creak with an inescapable pressure.
“Shape Change!” Mihaya shouted, returning to human form. The now-slender avatar tried to dive in headfirst, but the speed of the hole’s contraction was faster. Now both shoulders were caught, preventing her entry.
Most likely, this was a time-limited movement gate generated at these coordinates in advance by Black Vise. Argon’s time-buying chatter was to ensure she arrived just before the gate disappeared. If it closed up, Mihaya’s chance to follow her would vanish with it.
“Nngh…ah!” She marshaled all her remaining strength and tried to force the hole open. But the power of the hole’s inward march was relentless. The armor of her arms cracked, and her health gauge was further cut away.
There was one thing left she could try: transform back into a leopard and attack the gate with her special attack that turned her into a bullet, Bloodshed Cannon. The technique caused enormous backlash damage, which meant she very likely would not be able to live through it with the current state of her health gauge. But she had no other options. If she stayed the way she was, the contracting hole would rip her arms off and kill her.
“Shape…” She started to give the transformation command in a hoarse voice.
“Paaaard!”
“Leopard!!”
From behind her, she heard voices and footfalls. Even without looking, she knew it was Nega Nebulus’s Lime Bell and Cyan Pile.
“Help me”—she halted her transformation and called over her shoulder—“with this gate!”
Stopping at her sides, they seemed to instantly understand the situation. Lime Bell crouched down and was about to thrust both hands into the hole, but Cyan Pile stopped her.
“Wait, Bell! Please leave this to me, Leopard!” The large blue avatar readied the pile-shooting Enhanced Armament of his right arm, aimed at the gate, and shouted, “When I count down to zero, please get back from the hole! Three, two, one…”
If she pulled her arms out, the gate would close in a matter of seconds and disappear. But Mihaya shook off her momentary hesitation and leapt backward as she heard his voice call “Zero!”
Stepping forward as if to take her place, Cyan Pile called out a technique name she’d never heard before. “Spiral Gravity Driver!!”
As the spike in the Enhanced Armament was pulled in and tucked away, the barrel expanded. A flash of blue—a thick hammer drill—shot forth, more than double the size of the spike. The savagely spinning iron pillar wedged into the gate as it was on the verge of closing and stopped it with a strange crack.
But the silence was soon broken. The force of the hammer drill was greater than the pressure of the gate, and it began to rotate once more, sparks jetting up and tumbling down like waterfalls. As the drill dug deeper and deeper, cracks radiated outward in the ground around the hole.
“Ah…Aaaaaah!” Roaring, Cyan Pile thrust his right fist downward, as if to make doubly sure. There was an otherworldly sound like space itself was being destroyed, and the edges of the gate broke into pieces and fell away.
Now cracked open to a diameter of about two meters, the hole was filled with a viscous darkness. Cyan Pile pitched forward on the follow-through, and Mihaya grabbed his shoulders to pull him back.
“GJ! Leave the rest to me!” She tossed herself into the hole. She was up to her chest in the liquefied darkness when Pile and Bell nodded at each other and jumped in after her.
She had absolutely no idea where the gate led, but because Argon had tried to block her pursuit, there was a strong possibility that it was to the Accelerated Research Society base. The danger level was on par with Midtown Tower or even greater.
But before Mihaya could say anything, Lime Bell shouted resolutely: “We’re coming, too! After all…”
Here, Mihaya’s head was swallowed by the darkness, and Lime Bell’s voice along with it. But she heard the words “…we’re friends” with the ears of her heart.
The shadow tunnel pushed the three intruders along for a moment or an eternity. Her field of view was painted a uniform black, and her hearing was completely blocked. She stretched out a hand, but her fingers touched nothing. All she could do was leave herself to the current and pray that she didn’t get separated from Pile and Bell and that they could catch up with Argon. And of course, that they could rescue the Red King—Niko.
Though praying alone would not be enough. She had to squeeze out every bit of knowledge and power she had and make it a reality, Mihaya vowed firmly. With that, she curled up and allowed herself to be carried away in the lightless channel.
Tokyo Midtown Tower, forty-fifth floor. In the real world, it was the lobby of a super-luxury hotel. In the Accelerated World, this was reflected in the building’s construction: A large space with orderly rows of square pillars spread out before Kuroyukihime’s eyes as she charged in through the hole in the floor.
As she did a rough survey of the terrain, her mind switched to enemy-detection mode. The floor was dimly lit, the four walls deep in the shadows, but she couldn’t see anything moving in the area. But Utai had said she’d gotten some feedback after shooting Flame Vortex up into this floor, so there was definitely something lurking there.
In the real world, the sensation of feedback felt by the user when a flying instrument made an accurate hit would probably be classified as some kind of occult sixth sense, but on this side, it was firmly based in reality. If your long-distance attack connected with an Enemy or a duel avatar, even beyond your own field of view, your special-attack gauge would increase. The amount it was charged was clearly different from the destruction of terrain objects. There was no way a veteran like Utai would mistake one for the other.
When Utai herself appeared from the hole in the floor, followed by Fuko and Akira, she quickly set a flame arrow against her longbow. She had anticipated immediate battle, but realizing that there was no enemy in sight, she murmured as though confused, “When I shot from below, I definitely hit something dead-on…”
“And you didn’t get any points, right?” Fuko asked quietly.
“I did not.” The shrine maiden avatar nodded sharply. “Maybe it retreated after taking damage. Or…?”
“Or it’s hiding in the shadows,” Akira concluded, flicking her light blue eye lenses around the room. But even someone as sensitive as she was couldn’t find any trace of their enemy.
After a moment’s thought, Kuroyukihime turned to the others. “No matter. Our priority is a quick departure. We ignore the possibility of an ambush and dive into the portal.”
“Agreed. But one question.”
“What is it, Curren?”
“The portal’s not where it should be.”
Caught off guard, Kuroyukihime stared intently at Aqua Current. The transparent crystal of her face mask turned toward the south side of the floor. “I’ve left from here any number of times. There’s no mistake. The Midtown Tower portal should be on the south wall of the forty-fifth floor.”
Following Akira’s gaze along with Utai and Fuko, Kuroyukihime peered into the gloom fifty meters ahead of them. But she couldn’t find even a reflection of the characteristic pulsing blue light of the portal. Instead, her eyes landed on a burnt fissure that cut a straight line across the center of the floor.
“It can’t be,” Fuko murmured. “Metatron’s reflected laser destroyed the portal?”
“Impossible!” Kuroyukihime refuted, voice emphatic. “The portals of the Unlimited Neutral Field can’t be destroyed or moved. This entire building could be destroyed, and the portal would stay in its fixed coordinates!”
“I thought so, too, but…”
“Wait,” Akira said sharply, staring hard at the place where the portal had once sat. “Something…There’s something there.”
“What?” Kuroyuki turned together with Fuko toward the south side of the floor and focused her entire being on seeing. The contrast in her visual field improved, and something that had melted into the thick darkness up to that point popped up hazily. It was big. Nearly three meters across. It appeared to be a sphere, but from this distance, that was all she could tell. “Maiden, shoot a flame arrow into the wall over there.”
Utai nodded and readied her long bow. The flame arrow, launched diagonally upward, carved an arc out of the air and plunged high into the wall on the south side, pushing back the darkness with orange light.
“Wh-what is that?” Fuko whispered hoarsely.
The other three simply opened their eyes wide without a word.
Some thing was occupying an area just under ten meters to the right of the fissure splitting the floor. “Brain” was the first thing that popped into Kuroyukihime’s head. There was a ruggedness—mazelike indentations—rising up on the surface of a massive spherical object. A pattern of fine stitches crawled all over it, pulsed, and throbbed, forcing to mind the image of a living creature’s brain—more specifically, a human being’s.
But the sphere was a matte black that sucked in all light, and a deep fissure cut horizontally across the front. If it had been modeled after a human brain, it should have been split not top and bottom, but right brain, left brain. This difference, however, only served to make the object even more unsettling. As though, despite the powerful resemblance to a human brain, it was actually the brain of a decisively different creature…
And now, Kuroyukihime finally noticed that the enormous organ was pulsing softly in the darkness.
She knew this sight. She hadn’t witnessed it herself, but she had received a detailed report from Silver Crow and Lime Bell. About their encounter inside the Brain Burst central server with the root of the dark force running rampant in the Accelerated World.
“…This can’t be…” Kuroyukihime’s voice was almost inaudible.
“…the ISS kit main body?” Fuko finished for her.
At first, Kuroyukihime couldn’t believe that their final objective, the thing they had been convinced was hidden somewhere deep within the massive Midtown Tower—although at present, this objective had dropped to number two on the list of priorities—was placed—no, left here defenseless like this. It would have been logical to think it was a fake meant as a trap for intruders, but her eyes and instincts were insisting that this really was the kit main body. A mere shell of an object could never produce the weighty pressure she felt oozing from the massive brain, this unearthly force.
“…I think it’s real.”
“I concur…”
Akira and Utai confirmed Kuroyukihime’s instincts in hoarse voices.
“Mmm.” Nodding, Kuroyukihime put aside her shock for the moment and set the gears of her mind racing furiously. If this massive brain was the ISS kit main body, then they had to destroy it right away. Then the kit terminals parasitizing Ash Roller and so many other Burst Linkers would disappear, and the danger they presented would be gone from the Accelerated World. That was indeed the final objective of the series of missions the combined team of Nega Nebulus and Prominence had set out on.
On the other hand, Kuroyukihime and her comrades needed to reach the portal as soon as humanly possible and pull out the cable that connected with Niko’s Neurolinker in the real world. Assuming they succeeded in destroying the ISS kit main body, if the price for that success was total point loss for the Red King, then the damage to both the Red and Black Legions would be more devastating than that caused by the ISS kits plaguing the Accelerated World. Both inside and outside this world.
If the Midtown Tower portal was gone, as Akira said it was, then should they leave the building right away and head for the next-closest leave point in Roppongi Hills Tower? But if they did that, would the ISS kit main body still be unguarded when they returned to this place?
There was also the option of striking it as a test to see whether or not they could destroy it, but she didn’t expect they’d be able to see its health gauge, and it was quite possible that that one blow might bring about an unexpected situation.
The other three must have felt the same anguish as Kuroyukihime faced with the choice between two alternatives and no room for error.
“Your choice is our choice, Sacchi,” Fuko said in a clipped but gentle tone as she drew near. “No matter what the result is, we will share responsibility for it together, all of it.”
Akira and Utai also nodded deeply, their eyes shining with unwavering light.
Nodding briefly in return, Kuroyukihime announced her choice to her trusted comrades. “We head for Roppongi Hills. Seven hundred meters in a straight line to the building, forty-fifth floor for the portal. We’ll be there in less than five minutes.”
“Understood!” they shouted in unison.
With this reassuring push, Kuroyukihime stepped to the south. Roppongi Hills was southwest of Tokyo Midtown. Rather than drop down to the ground, it would be faster to have Fuko use Gale Thruster, likely charged up to some degree by now, to fly them as far as she could on that charge from the fissure cut out of the southern wall.
They began to run alongside the gash Metatron’s laser ripped north-south through the marble floor and were about halfway across the fifty-meter-wide floor, when the massive brain enshrined ahead of them moved.
“Look!” Utai called out, running at the tail end of the group.
Reflexively, Kuroyukihime turned her head and saw the crack running horizontally across the front of the ebony brain slowly opening. At first, she thought it was separated into upper brain and lower brain, rather than left-right. But it seemed that it wasn’t just the surface of the brain that was moving. The complicated indentations became wrinkles and folded back, gradually revealing something hidden inside.
