The End and the Beginning, page 9
part #15 of Accel World Series
But they had no choice. They had to break down the wall separating the classroom and the courtyard in order to save Niko.
Haruyuki made his decision. “Got it.” He clenched his right hand into a tight fist.
“Haru,” Takumu said, his arm still draped around Haruyuki’s back, in unison with Chiyuri on Haruyuki’s other side.
But then they both nodded firmly back at him.
“I’ll help,” Takumu said simply.
“Please,” Haruyuki replied, lifting his head just a little from his crouched position to look out at the courtyard.
Having just arrived in the center, Black Vise was setting Scarlet Rain down on the square altar. They didn’t have a second to spare. Still keeping himself low, Haruyuki approached the wall beneath the window and brought his fingertips to touch the white marble.
Takumu stepped up beside him and grabbed the pile sticking out of the Enhanced Armament of his right arm with his left hand. “Cyan Blade.”
As he quietly called the technique name, he pulled the pile out. Sheathed in a blue overlay, it transformed into a large blade. Takumu pressed the tip of the Incarnate sword, still badly damaged from the fierce fight with Magenta Scissor, against the wall right next to Haruyuki’s fingers and nodded.
“Let’s do this.” Haruyuki gave the signal quietly, then concentrated every bit of imagination he could muster into his right hand. And shouted, “Laser Sword!!” The silver gleam that jetted from his fingertips slammed against the wall, sending dazzling sparks flying.
“Aaaaah!” Takumu added his own sharp battle cry, and the Incarnate sword plunged into the wall. Bolts of blue lightning shot from the tip and melted into Haruyuki’s overlay, coloring the entire classroom with a pale-blue light.
At this point, Black Vise appeared to notice the unusual phenomenon. And there was a very good chance that the knight Enemy that had gone off to the north in the hallway would return, drawn in by the singular sound of the Incarnate techniques. They were in a fight against time.
Go. Through! Haruyuki prayed, focusing his will to the limit.
In the four basic types of Incarnate System techniques, Haruyuki’s Laser Sword was classed as a Range Expansion type, while Takumu’s Cyan Blade was an Attack Power Expansion technique. Although both had improved in terms of activation speed, power, and range compared with when they first learned them, neither technique yet began to even compare with a high ranker’s second quadrant Incarnate technique. If Black Lotus or Ardor Maiden had been there, they might have instantly pulverized—or melted—the wall and opened up a path. But they were off fighting somewhere else toward the same goal as Haruyuki and his friends.
Up until that point, no matter what kind of tight spot he’d found himself in, he’d always been saved by Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Utai, Akira, Niko, or Pard. Somewhere in his heart, he’d depended on the sense of security that came from having such reliable, experienced Burst Linkers by his side. But inevitably, the time would come when he would have to step out from under his parents’ wings and take off in flight, when he would have to stand on his own two feet to confront an enormous problem.
He was sure that time was now.
“Unh…Ah! Aaaaaaaah!!”
His entire imagination, so white-hot it very nearly burned up his soul, was concentrated in the single point of the tips of the outstretched fingers of his right hand. The words “go through” had even evaporated at some point, and he was overflowing with nothing but a silver torrent produced by the depths of his mind. The overlay in his right hand slammed up against the hard wall, compressed to become the smallest star, and shone.
“Nngh…aaaaah!” Takumu squeezed a battle cry from deep inside and tried to pierce the wall with the Incarnate sword he gripped in both hands. One flash of lightning—then another—shot off from the point of contact, crashing into walls and desks and ceiling, an infinity of sparks scattering.
The marble wall under Incarnate attack resisted the pressure and shook violently. Two concentric circles of light that were the violet color of the system spread out on the surface of the wall and lapped against the window and the floor. But the wall remained stubbornly intact.
If the thought that their task was an impossible one so much as crossed his mind, then that would become the reality. So Haruyuki had no intention of releasing his focus on his image, even if it did burn his entire soul away. The edges of his field of view started to turn white, the roaring that filled the classroom receded, and he even started to lose his sense of oneness with his avatar.
“Unh…Waaaaaaah!!” The higher pitch of a third voice rang out behind him, and the light of a third color lit up the world. The torrent of vivid, fresh green light pushed between Haruyuki and Takumu and crashed into the wall: Lime Bell’s. But he hadn’t heard her shout the name of a special attack. Which meant that this green light was not a normal light effect, but rather overlay—the miraculous light produced by the Incarnate System.
Chiyuri can’t use the Incarnate System, so why—? The thought was a momentary spark and disappeared. Haruyuki once again mustered up all the imagination he had—the very last of it.
Silver, blue, and yellow-green light melted into one another to take on the clear color of the sky; this torrent smashed through the system-colored firewall. A single, minute crack raced across it, then a second, then a third.
A noise like a hammer hitting hard metal, powerfully loud—a sound Haruyuki had never heard before—rang in his ears, and then the wall smashed into pieces.
Haruyuki felt his consciousness start to fade, perhaps a reaction to pushing his mental powers past his limit. But before he could collapse, a yellow-green avatar flopped onto him from behind, so he stretched out a hand to stop her. Takumu lifted his left hand at the same time, and the two kept Lime Bell from crumpling to the floor.
He stopped moving for a mere instant from the sense of achievement at smashing a wall protected by the system and the shock of Chiyuri somehow activating the Incarnate System.
“The wall will close! Hurry and go through it!” Metatron chastised inside his brain, kick-starting Haruyuki’s mind again.
His wide eyes caught sight of a purple light shining on the inside of the two-meter hole in the marble wall. Semitransparent cubes shimmering with the system color took shape as objects, aligning themselves, trying to fill in the hole.
After exchanging a look with Takumu, Haruyuki got a firmer grip on Chiyuri’s arm as he kicked at the floor. They dived into the hole in the wall headfirst, and while it was a little tight, the three managed to slip through and tumbled out into the courtyard about half a meter or so below.
The wall was rapidly plugged up, and a second after the 3-D icon passed through it with room to spare, it closed over completely with a bright Klink! As the hole was on the verge of disappearing, Haruyuki felt like he could hear the footsteps of the knight Enemy running back down the hallway, but there was no need to worry about that anymore. And he didn’t have the mental energy for it, either.
Because when he lifted his head, twenty meters ahead of Haruyuki stood the figure of Black Vise, in what was to be their third encounter of the day. And on the altar immediately in front of the layered avatar lay a crimson girl.
I’m not letting you get away. I will take Niko back.
That resolution became high-temperature flames that flickered to life in every nook and cranny of his avatar, and Haruyuki’s exhaustion receded at once.
“Pile, look out for Bell,” he murmured quietly, entrusting the half-conscious Chiyuri to their mutual friend before slowly standing up. Tightly clenching both hands into fists, he took one step, then another forward. “Black Vise!!”
The angry roar came from the depths of Haruyuki’s heart, but the layered avatar didn’t bother to turn toward him. He merely raised his right hand, as if insisting Haruyuki wait a moment.
Spurred on by fresh rage, he took another step forward. Then all the thin panels that made up Vise’s left arm dropped away soundlessly and were absorbed into the ground. Haruyuki reflexively took a defensive position, but he was not the target. The panels appeared on the altar in the shape of a black cross, crucifying the Red King.
The instant he saw Niko, both arms forced outward, helmet lolling forward, and a rage several orders of magnitude greater than anything he had felt up to that point erupted inside him, coloring his field of view a pale red.
A long, long time ago, Haruyuki had seen a duel avatar held captive in exactly the same position. It wasn’t his own memory, but a dream he’d had twelve days earlier inside the Castle after he’d charged inside with Utai. A cross stood at the bottom of an Enemy’s craterlike nest—an F-type Burst Linker held captive against it. Black Vise, Argon Array, and one other person whose name and form he didn’t know used a snake-type Enemy to kill the crucified girl over and over and over.
The Enhanced Armament that had shown Haruyuki this dream, the Disaster—aka the Armor of Catastrophe—had already been purified, split up, and laid to rest for an eternal sleep in a corner of the Unlimited Neutral Field. But that didn’t mean all the memories the Armor had given Haruyuki had disappeared. And one of those memories he would never, ever forget was the execution of this girl—Saffron Blossom.
The vision of the extremely cruel Unlimited EK overlapped with the figure of Niko hanging from the cross before his eyes, and Haruyuki was filled with an incandescent fury.
“Viiiiiiiice!” Pushing a hoarse voice through his gritted teeth, Haruyuki was about to kick violently at the ground to propel himself forward, but he yanked himself to a stop.
No. Don’t give yourself to anger. Anger’s not a bad thing. But if you’re swallowed up by a single emotion, you’ll only be able to see a single thing. I’ve failed like that so many times before. But today, right now at least, you cannot fail. I’m not here to defeat Black Vise. I’m here to get Niko back.
Haruyuki took a deep breath and let it out. The flames of rage were compressed into a crimson crystal in his heart. The heat it emitted became a hazy overlay in his hands.
“You’re giving Rain back now, Black Vise,” he called in a measured tone.
The layered avatar turned for the first time, watching Haruyuki. The many thin panels of his face had neither eyes nor mouth, but it managed to express emotion nonetheless.
“Oh-ho,” Vise replied, voice calm. “It seems you really are a little different from before, hmm? I’m also a tad surprised you were somehow able to make such a large hole in the wall of our castle. Although, it did apparently take three of you to do it. Even still, I think there aren’t too many high rankers who could do such a thing. Aah, I’ve underestimated you.”
In point of fact, if the 3-D icon floating directly behind Haruyuki—Archangel Metatron—hadn’t declared in its usual curt way that that was the only choice, Haruyuki probably wouldn’t have been able to focus his imagination that intently, so it had actually taken four to do it. But there was no need to blurt that out like an idiot.
“‘Our castle.’” He ignored Vise’s faint praise and picked out one idea to pursue. “That’s what you said. So then, this building—no, school—is the headquarters of your Society. I can see the old Tokyo Tower over there, so it shouldn’t be too hard to dig up the name of the school in the real world. That said, I wouldn’t go so far as a real-world PK. But. I wouldn’t hesitate to attack on your local net.”
“Well, well, well, how dashing you sound. Indeed, it is my own error that allowed three uninvited guests to come all the way here. For future reference, would you tell me how you slipped past the guard in the basement? Or should I not ask?”
“You shouldn’t. I have no intention of giving you one more piece of information. I wouldn’t even give you a single burst point. Nor, of course, the Red King,” Haruyuki stated quietly, thrusting his fist—still wrapped in silver light—at the jet-black avatar. “This is where you and I settle things.”
“Oh my! How frightful!” Black Vise sounded completely unalarmed, as usual, and shrugged his left shoulder lightly; the arm below it was broken up into the cross at the moment. “But, you see, Crow, that’s such a brave speech—but wrong in just one way.”
“And what’s that?”
“You really must say not ‘you,’ but ‘all of you.’” Vise took a soft step back.
A short warning buzzer sounded in his mind. A moment before he heard Takumu shout “Crow!” from behind, before the air of the courtyard shook with the sharp sound of vibration, Haruyuki reflexively yanked his arm down in front of his face.
A ray of bright, reddish-purple light shot down at him at an angle. He caught this with the light-conducting crystal in the armor of his forearm—the Optical Conduction ability—and bounced it toward the ground before once again looking up into the sky on the south side of the courtyard.
There on the roof of the school building was, as he’d expected, a duel avatar wearing a large hat out of balance with her slender body—the Quad Eyes Analyst, Argon Array. In the battle royale three days earlier, he’d been essentially defenseless against the lasers she shot simultaneously from the lenses on her hat and the goggles that were her eyes, and his avatar had been riddled with holes. And even now, if he’d turned himself over to his rage and narrowed his field of view, the surprise attack would have been impossible for him to defend against.
But this was the third time he’d seen her lasers. As long as he noticed the halo of light filling her lenses right before she fired them, his body now remembered how long it took for them to reach him. And he’d been on guard against a sniper attack in one corner of his mind ever since he heard that Takumu, Chiyuri, and Pard had jumped into the shadow corridor with Argon.
“Well done reacting in advance of my own warning,” Metatron said in its compressed voice.
Haruyuki asked it to please say it in words next time before lowering his arm and glaring at the analyst-cum-sniper. “Come down, Argon! Or else I’ll reflect your laser at you next!”
To be honest, he’d only just learned Optical Conduction, and he wasn’t exactly confident he could control the direction of reflection with 100 percent accuracy. But Argon’s shock at him escaping her laser scot-free when it had nearly destroyed him three days earlier must have been quite large.
“No long-distance type here gonna beat me down!” she replied, voice tense and lacking her usual cool grin. “’Least, that’s what I’d like to say…” She glanced over her shoulder.
“You never give up! You’re more canine than feline!” she shouted, skipping down from the roof. She somersaulted lightly in midair and stuck the landing from a height of three floors up, then dashed to the side of Black Vise in front of the altar. “Yo, Vi! You said this job’s a piece o’ cake, just do a little backup an’ then run! So why’s it this superior hassle now, huh?!”
“Oh no, it’s not a hassle at all. I’ll toss in a little extra remuneration for you, so I would indeed appreciate you doing one more job.”
“O’ course you will! This ain’t worth it ’less you pony up two—no, three times what you offered!”
Listening with half his mind to this back-and-forth between the executive team of the ARS, Haruyuki turned the other half of his attention to the school roof on the south side. His expectation—or maybe hope—soon became reality. A silent silhouette appeared against the backdrop of the twilight sky.
He didn’t need to see the triangular, pointed ears or the long tail stretching out from the backside to know that this was Bloody Kitty—aka Blood Leopard. Although she had leapt into the shadow corridor with Takumu and Chiyuri, she had ended up on a separate branch somewhere along the journey but still managed to chase Argon all this way. To carry out the instruction Haruyuki called out to her before taking off at Midtown Tower: “Pard, chase down Argon.”
Apparently, it wasn’t possible to pursue a powerful enemy like Argon and remain uninjured; Leopard was holding her left shoulder with her hand, but the instant her amber eyes turned to the center of the courtyard, a fierce roar erupted from her leopard’s mouth, as though her pain had been forgotten. Now that she’d seen Niko pinned to the black cross, it looked like Leopard, crouched low, was going to leap from the roof and charge the altar. But perhaps controlling herself just barely, she leapt straight down the way Argon had and moved over to the east side of the courtyard where Haruyuki and his friends were encamped.
“Sorry for the wait,” she said. Up close, Pard’s deep crimson armor showed traces of being pierced by lasers in several places besides her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Pard,” Haruyuki replied, once again feeling the weight of the emotion in her brief utterances. “I still haven’t been able to get Rain back.”
“NP. We won’t let them go any farther.” Her tone was restrained, but the resolve within Leopard became a radiant heat that warmed Haruyuki’s armor. Perhaps the heat was transmitted to the two in the rear; Takumu and Chiyuri—albeit supported from behind—both stood and took up position to Haruyuki’s right.
Black Vise—holding Scarlet Rain captive on the altar’s cross—and Argon Array to his left. Lined up near the eastern wall of the school building: Cyan Pile, Lime Bell, Silver Crow, and Blood Leopard.
The two level-eight Burst Linkers and the other group of four—composed of one level eight and three level fives—faced one another silently for a moment. Breaking the tension-filled silence was a seventh person—the 3-D icon floating behind Haruyuki.
“It seems that it would be best for me to return to your back, hmm?” The compressed voice—which somehow communicated a speech of any length to Haruyuki in a mere fraction of a second—echoed in his mind.
Please, Haruyuki replied similarly with his thoughts, though unconsciously. They still haven’t noticed you here. I feel like you’re going to be the trump card in this fight.
“Naturally. However, once I become wings again, we will no longer be able to have this sort of two-way communication. You alone must control the power given to you with your own resourcefulness. Fight with your full might, so as not to disappoint me.”
