The End and the Beginning, page 7
part #15 of Accel World Series
“Don’t stop. Keep running!” Even as she gave the command, Kuroyukihime couldn’t take her eyes off the monstrosity.
Inside the membrane peeling back was a curved surface with an unexpectedly smooth luster. A sphere made of what looked like wet glass was enclosed inside the brain. The center of the exposed part rose up in the shape of a lens and emitted a hazy light. This lens part—perhaps a meter and a half around—abruptly moved. Then the entire glass sphere began to spin in all directions.
Whrr, whrr. The movement was so biological it called up an indescribable loathing.
Finally, the lens moved to the right and focused on the four runners.
Instantly, Kuroyukihime understood that the large object was not a brain, but an eye. The crack running from left to right wasn’t the longitudinal fissure of the cerebrum, but the slit between upper and lower eyelids. The exposed glassy sphere was the white of the eye, while the perfect circle of the lens was the pupil and the iris. The massive eyeball was watching Kuroyukihime and the others with some sort of hidden purpose.
A reptilian vertical pupil sat in the center of the black lens, a blue light shimmering like the surface of water beyond it. The light was ridiculously pure in contrast with the extremely repulsive design of the eyeball. A clear blue she’d seen before, a color that evoked a feeling like homesickness.
“Wait,” Aqua Current murmured sharply, her voice colored with an unusual tension that stopped the others in their tracks.
“What’s wrong, Curren?” Fuko asked.
Akira didn’t reply right away, keeping her focus instead on the gaze of the massive eyeball. “The portal,” she said finally, sounding even more tense. “It’s inside that eyeball.”
“What?!”
“How is that—?!”
Fuko and Utai cried out in surprise simultaneously.
Holding her breath, Kuroyukihime peered into the black lens one more time. She compared the regular pulsation of the blue light with her memory of the portal she’d passed through too many times to even count. The color. The shimmering. The size. All of it matched perfectly.
“You’re right!” Utai cried in a thin voice. “That’s the light of the portal!”
“B-but…” Kuroyukihime—and likely Fuko as well—could find no basis on which to refute her. “Is it even possible for an object to fully incorporate something indestructible, like a portal?” she asked, baffled.
“To begin with, what would the ISS kit main body be in the system classification?” Fuko voiced her own doubts. “From its form, it’s probably not duel avatar or Enemy. And if it were an item, which includes Enhanced Armament, it would be wiped out with the Change, right?”
Now that she mentioned it, that was actually true. Assuming it was the Acceleration Research Society that had made this enormous, jet-black, brain/eyeball object and that they had left it like this in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it would have been forcibly erased during the Change when the stage attributes switched. If the Society wanted to prevent that from happening, they would need a semipermanent guard for it: The instant they sensed the Change, they would have to return it to storage and then rematerialize it after the attribute change. Considering the Change occurred at minimum once every seven days—once every ten minutes in real-world time—this was for all intents and purposes impossible.
Faced with nothing but questions, there was at least one thing that could be settled in that moment.
“Whatever class of item it is, if the portal’s inside it, our plan’s changed.” She pushed her surprise and confusion aside and continued firmly, “We are going to smash that creepy eyeball—the ISS kit main body—right now. And then we’ll leave the Unlimited Neutral Field through the exposed portal. Raker, Curren, Maiden…” She threw her sword-arms out with a clang. “This is our do-or-die moment! Get ready to attack!!”
“Understood!” The voices of her three comrades echoed with double the resolve from before and cut through the darkness of the floor.
They pulled together in a diamond formation with Kuroyukihime in the lead, Fuko to her right, Akira to her left, and Utai at the rear to face the massive eyeball enshrined twenty meters ahead. Blue light flickering inside the long pupil, the glassy eye looked back at them with an inorganic gaze utterly devoid of feeling.
No. It wasn’t that.
The eyeball brought its eyelids down slightly…and laughed. That’s what it looked like to her.
A shadowy pulsation poured from the massive body. The instant she touched it, Kuroyukihime knew that the inside of the eyeball was filled with a vast malice. Its lust for destruction, tragedy, and slaughter had become a dull black fluid, a flood inside the organ that threatened to burst forth at any moment.
The blue light of the portal leaking out of the pupil suddenly changed to a dark bloodred. Several lumps noisily popped up on the surface of the brain-like structure enclosing the eyeball. Tumorlike, they swelled up like balloons before bursting, releasing a viscous fluid and…something else.
Smaller eyeballs.
About twenty centimeters large, more than ten of them. The pupils shone the same muddied red as the main body, and long, skinny legs stretched out from the bottoms. No sooner had they fallen to the floor than they were quickly crawling around, the legs making a dry rustling sound like some kind of monster bugs.
“M-most likely, that’s what my Vortex hit before!” Utai said in a shrill voice, readying her longbow. Even she, with her conviction to respect all life, couldn’t hide her revulsion at the leggy eyeballs. And to be fair, the small eyeballs were not critters that belonged to the Accelerated World.
“Careful! They’re probably ISS kit terminals! They might be able to parasitize us if they touch us. Destroy them before they can get close!”
Up to that point, the little eyeballs had been racing around the main body of the kit randomly, but as if Kuroyukihime’s order was the trigger, they began to run as one toward the girls.
Utai made her bowstring sing over and over. Her flame arrows found their marks on the kit terminals and sent them up in flames, but unfortunately, there was a limit to how rapidly she could get arrows in the air. Four of the eyeballs leapt over the blazing flames and spread double that number of needlelike legs to charge them.
Kuroyukihime raised the sword of her right leg and set her sights on the eyeball closest to her left. “Death By Bashing!”
So fast it was undetectable to even herself, her right leg shot out a flurry of kicks. The instant the eyeball came into contact with the effect range for the series of blows—a hundred per second—it exploded in a burst of red light.
The tip of her left leg jammed into the floor as a fulcrum, Kuroyukihime spun around to the right. The storm of kicks flowed with her, leaving a gray afterimage, and knocked one attacking eyeball after another flying. The ISS kits had thrown the Accelerated World into chaos with their overwhelming power, but the individual terminals were unable to use the two Incarnate attacks, leaving them with no method of fighting other than trying to touch an avatar to parasitize them.
Kuroyukihime’s special attack destroyed seven of the eyeballs, and the last one was finished off by Fuko skewering it with a sharp heel. Sky Raker’s specialty was flowing palm strikes, but even Strong Arm was apparently reluctant to crush them with her bare hands.
The dozen terminals the main body had produced were all destroyed in less than ten seconds, but given that the ISS kits should have been simple Enhanced Armaments in the system, that they could move on their own like that at all was incredible. There was the precedent of an Enhanced Armament with its own independent will in the Armor of Catastrophe, but even that fearsome armor couldn’t act on its own; it absolutely required a host. What exactly were these ISS kits? How on earth had the Acceleration Research Society produced such an object?
Struck once again by questions, Kuroyukihime pulled herself back into the present moment. “Beat down the main body before any new eyeballs come out! Ready for all-out attack!” In this situation, all-out meant a full attack using everything the Incarnate System had to offer them.
The reckless use of Incarnate attacks in the Unlimited Neutral Field drew in large Enemies, but there was no need to worry about that on the forty-fifth floor of a skyscraper. And although there was the risk of being swallowed up by the sense of omnipotence when using Incarnate attacks on other Burst Linkers—the forbidden delight of striking enemies down with overwhelming power could drag the user down into the dark side of the Incarnate—that wasn’t much of an issue here, either, given that their opponent was a soulless eyeball.
The four Burst Linkers colored the marble floor with their various overlays and waited for the moment to launch their attack.
Kuroyukihime took a deep breath to shout Here we go but was interrupted by the somehow languid voice of an M-type duel avatar flowing across the deserted floor.
“Merciless as always. Looks like you haven’t changed. I’m glad. Seriously.”
“Who’s there?!” Kuroyukihime barked, instead of giving the signal to attack.
Any number of large pillars littered this floor, which was a hotel lobby in the real world. Not only were there plenty of places to hide, but the voice reverberated in complicated ways, making it hard to pinpoint the source of the sound.
Regardless, Kuroyukihime knew. The voice was coming from the ISS kit main body.
But her instinct turned out to be only half right.
Chik, chak. She heard the hard sound of footsteps, and a duel avatar stepped out from behind the massive eyeball.
The kit terminals had been running in all directions around the main body, which meant that the owner of the voice would naturally have been within their reaction range, and yet, the person hadn’t attacked him. So she had to assume he was an ISS kit user equipped with a terminal—in other words, an enemy. In which case, they should immediately beat him back with all their might and destroy him together with the main body.
This was the judgment handed down by reason, but the instant she set eyes on the foot of the avatar that first appeared from the shadow of the eyeball, that reasonable decision flew right out of her head.
Long-boot armor encasing his feet. Notched spurs stretching out from the heel. And the coloring of both was so pure that it could be compared to nothing else.
Red. So red.
“…It can’t. Be…”
Was it Fuko who spoke or Akira or Utai? The same words tried to escape Kuroyukihime’s throat, but her avatar’s mouth was completely frozen in place.
Chak. Chak. Chak. The spurred boots echoed against the floor three more times before stopping.
Leaning his left shoulder against the brain-like external skin of the ISS kit main body, the M-type duel avatar brought his right hand to the brim of his ten-gallon hat. “Hey there. Been a while, Lotus.”
In her completely numbed mind, Kuroyukihime heard a cracked voice spill from her own mouth.
“Red King…Red Rider…”
3
“Chiyutaku, wh-what are you doing here?!”
It was the most common of Burst Linker common sense to never use any form of address in the Accelerated World that could lead to being identified in the real world, even if no one else was around, but Haruyuki’s shock was so great that he ended up shouting the real names of his childhood friends twice.
“It’s obvious, Crow.” Lime Bell, still settled on top of Cyan Pile, flashed her eye lenses at him. “We came with Pard to help you.”
“Well, to be honest,” Pile said from below her, “we were actually chasing Argon Array.”
“Pard? Argon?” Haruyuki whirled his head around. But no matter how he searched the deserted hall, he could spot neither Blood Leopard nor Argon Array. And when he replayed his memory of a few seconds earlier, it had been just Pile and Bell who tumbled out of the shadow corridor. “It looks like it’s just you guys here, though…”
“What?!” Chiyuri leapt down from Takumu’s back and whirled her head around. “Huh? Weird…I don’t know about Argon, but we jumped into the hole with Pard. She was right there with us while we were moving.”
Following her to his feet, Takumu also let his eyes race around the room. “What is this place anyway?”
“I’m not exactly sure myself, but I think it’s probably the headquarters of the Acceleration Research Society.” Haruyuki had gotten this far when the pure-white 3-D icon floated out from behind him.
“You are free to exchange information, but does there not exist a task with a higher priority at present?” it said, phosphorescence flashing intermittently.
“Huh? Oh! R-right!” Haruyuki cried hurriedly, looking at the stairs leading up on the other side of the hall. He had skidded to a halt at the sudden appearance of Chiyuri and Takumu, but this was not the time for lazy conversation. He had to catch up with Black Vise, who had passed through there minutes earlier, as soon as possible and take Niko back.
“Crow, what’s that little thing?” Cocking her head curiously to one side, Chiyuri reached out a hand to touch the icon, but Haruyuki quickly grabbed it. From their reaction, it appeared his friends couldn’t hear the icon’s voice. And he couldn’t even begin to anticipate their reaction if he told them that the floating icon was actually the Legend-class Enemy Metatron.
“I’ll explain that as we go,” he said simply, starting to move again. “What’s more important right now is that Black Vise went up those stairs a little while ago. Still holding on to Rain.”
“You should’ve said so!” Chiyuri shouted, grabbing Haruyuki’s arm in turn and yanking it as she began to run.
Silent once more, the 3-D icon floated off to Haruyuki’s right, while to his left, Takumu considered the situation as he got his feet moving.
“I think the shadow road that I, Bell, Pard, and Argon went through was created by Black Vise in advance. He might have underground passages set up in places that will always be in shadow, no matter how the attributes of the Unlimited Neutral Field change—like under expressways or train bridges, so-called eternal shadows. In which case, it wouldn’t be strange if they branched along the way or something.”
“So you’re saying Pard and Argon went into another corridor at some fork?” Haruyuki asked.
“It’s at best a possibility.” Takumu cocked his head ever so slightly. “But even supposing they had, I expect the majority of the corridors lead to the headquarters. So Pard would have appeared somewhere in this building and could be looking for the Red King right now. I think if we go after Vise, we’ll meet up with her at some point.”
“Good point. If Pard were here, she’d tell us to forget about finding her and focus on rescuing Rain,” Haruyuki said, nodding deeply.
Chiyuri, who had run ahead, looked back for a second. “You’ve got no proof of that! C’mon! Hurry!”
The three level-five Burst Linkers and one (part of a) Legend-class Enemy raced up the stairs that stretched out on the other side of the hall.
The marble staircase was unexpectedly long. There was a landing every twenty flights—where the stairs would turn back the other way and go up another twenty flights—but no matter how many switchbacks they passed through, they never made it to the next floor. Haruyuki and his friends were reminded of the emergency stairs of the tower condo they lived in, but unlike their condo, none of the landings had doors, so they had no choice but to keep running up.
As a general rule, buildings in the Unlimited Neutral Field replicated the structure of the building existing in the same coordinates in the real world, but could such a long stairwell actually exist? In skyscrapers, there would be a door at every landing, and even with an exceedingly tall tower like the old Tokyo Tower, there’d at least be a vertical hole dug deep into the ground…Considering this with half his mind, Haruyuki listened to his childhood friends chat with the other half.
“That reminds me, Pile. That special attack you used back there to yank open the entrance to the shadow corridor—you just get it?” Chiyuri asked. “That’s the first time I’ve seen it.”
“Oh no.” Takumu scratched the back of his head. “That was my level-three bonus, so I got it over a year ago now.”
“What? You should use it more, then! I mean, you made that huge hole in the ground—it’s gotta be pretty great for attacking, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve known that since I got it…But it can only be launched perpendicular to the ground, so it’s hard to find a place to use it. I’ve basically only used it to strike the final blow on a defeated enemy. But the motion before activation’s pretty long, so sometimes, they manage to dodge it. And then, I end up stuck with the drill in the ground, and the timer runs out. Lots of that…”
“Hmm. Too bad. It looks cool. And the name’s cool, too.”
That’s exactly the trap of special attacks, Haruyuki thought earnestly. He had pushed all his level-up bonuses, including his current level-five bonus, into enhancing his flight ability, but it would be a lie to say he hadn’t felt some conflict each time. There was always one special attack in the four bonus selections that appeared in the Instruct menu, and Haruyuki had been seriously tempted by the attack motion displayed in silhouette together with a technique name that would feel so good to call out. If his beloved parent and master, Kuroyukihime, hadn’t taught him otherwise, he might have succumbed to this temptation once or twice, or even three or four times.
Takumu had once briefly told him it had been on his parent’s instruction that he pick special attacks for his bonuses from level two through four. But his parent hadn’t guided him the way Kuroyukihime guided Haruyuki, making him think things through himself, realize the correct way, and make a choice. Instead, he had given orders heedless of Takumu’s hesitations and deaf to his cries of protest. Haruyuki didn’t want to speak ill of his friend’s parent, but privately, he thought you couldn’t very well call that guidance.
On top of that, when Takumu was facing the danger of diminishing points, instead of helping him, his parent had used him as a testing ground for a backdoor program. In the end, he was investigated for his bad behavior and departed the Accelerated World through the Blue King’s Judgment Blow.
