Accel World Vol. 25: Deity of Demise Read online

  Copyright

  ACCEL WORLD, Volume 25

  REKI KAWAHARA

  Translation by Jocelyne Allen

  Cover art by HIMA

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  ACCEL WORLD Vol. 25

  ©Reki Kawahara 2020

  Edited by Dengeki Bunko

  First published in Japan in 2020 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2021 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kawahara, Reki, author. | HIMA (Comic book artist) illustrator. | bee-pee, designer. | Allen, Jocelyne, 1974– translator.

  Title: Accel World / Reki Kawahara ; illustrations, HIMA ; design, bee-pee ; translation by Jocelyne Allen.

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2014–

  Identifiers: LCCN 2014025099 | ISBN 9780316376730 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296366 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296373 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296380 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296397 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296403 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316358194 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316317610 (v. 8 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316502702 (v. 9 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316466059 (v. 10 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316466066 (v. 11 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316466073 (v. 12 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975300067 (v. 13 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327231 (v. 14 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327255 (v. 15 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327279 (v. 16 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327293 (v. 17 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327316 (v. 18 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975332181 (v. 19 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975332716 (v. 20 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975332730 (v. 21 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975332778 (v. 22 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975332754 (v. 23 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975321338 (v. 24 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975335083 (v. 25 : pbk.)

  Subjects: CYAC: Science fiction. | Virtual reality—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K1755Kaw 2014 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2014025099

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-3508-3 (paperback)

  978-1-9753-3541-0 (ebook)

  E3-20211008-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Insert

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Afterword

  Yen Newsletter

  1

  “It is unfortunate that we have to say good-bye so soon after being reunited. Good-bye, my friends. Good-bye, my beloved child. You performed your roles wonderfully, right up until the end.”

  The White King, White Cosmos, sounded almost plaintive as she spoke from the back of Pegasus in the night sky, as though she truly did regret their parting. As the horse rhythmically flapped its wings, she gently raised her silver scepter, the Arc Luminary. The staff glittered as it caught the pure rays of light bathing the Moonlight stage.

  A second later, it sliced down smoothly, as if cutting through the red threads of fate.

  Circles of crimson light rippled upward from the palm of the nearby giant—some hundred meters tall—that looked down upon the Burst Linkers on the ground. The Super-class Enemy, the Deity of Demise, Tezcatlipoca.

  That crimson light was the sign of an imminent attack. Haruyuki was certain the force of it would far surpass any technique he had thus far witnessed in the Accelerated World, but there was no way he was going to be able to dodge it. He was held in place by the powerful gravitational waves that rippled out from the dark circles above Tezcatlipoca’s other hand to mercilessly press down on the Inti attack team, a union of the six Great Legions.

  As he listened to the sound of his own armor cracking, Haruyuki turned his mind to a place meters ahead of where he lay pinned. He and his companions weren’t the only ones Tezcatlipoca’s red rings were targeting. Five Burst Linkers had materialized mere seconds earlier in Kitanomaru Park adjacent to the Castle where the Nippon Budokan had once stood: the Purple King, Empress Voltage, Purple Thorn; the Yellow King, Radioactive Disturber, Yellow Radio; the Blue King, Vanquish, Blue Knight; the Green King, Invulnerable, Green Grandé. And the Black King, World End, Black Lotus.

  Having previously been killed on impact in the Inti drop, a suicide mission on the part of White Legion chief officer Ivory Tower, aka Black Vise, the five kings had at last managed to regenerate, thanks to the Inti attack team, the combined might of the five Legions. But this, too, was all part of White Cosmos’s plan: After Haruyuki cut Inti’s ball of flames open with his Omega style Whole Blade, the White King had appeared out of nowhere to take control of what emerged—Tezcatlipoca—with the Luminary’s Divine Light ability.

  The kings had been informed by messengers from their Legions that the Inti mission had been a success and thus had appeared in the field, believing that all danger had been eliminated, so they could not have anticipated materializing in the middle of this. Even so, given their long experience in battle, the level niners shouldn’t have taken more than half a second to grasp the danger of the situation and readied themselves to take some kind of action.

  And yet, they stood in a group in the center of the Budokan crater, motionless.

  They couldn’t move. The absolute force pressing the ninety-six members of the attack team to the ground—Tezcatlipoca’s gravitational waves—also held the kings. When Haruyuki looked closely, he could see black circles at their feet, the same as the one beneath him, although he couldn’t see it, given that he was on his belly on the ground.

  He expected nothing less of the Kings of Pure Color than for them to be able to stay on their feet without bending at the knee under the pressure of this unparalleled force, but even the power-types like Blue Knight and Green Grandé apparently had their limits. He could hear the squealing of the kings’ joints and the cracking of their armor mixed in with the heavy rumble of the giant.

  While Tezcatlipoca rendered a hundred Burst Linkers powerless with its right hand, it brought up a shining red circle and then another in its left. Although the black rings in its right hand numbered five, there were already seven of the red rings, and he didn’t know what it meant, if anything, to cont
inue charging even farther. At any rate, once it activated this attack, the five kings and Haruyuki and everyone else would be killed instantly—six kings, actually, since the Red King, Scarlet Rain, was also a member of the attack team.

  Although he and his comrades had succeeded in their mission to destroy the Sun God Inti, all the kings and key personnel of the six Great Legions would fall into a new Unlimited EK.

  “No…! You can’t…!”

  Haruyuki heard a cry from his right. It was Nega Nebulus Submaster Sky Raker. She was clutching the wheels of her wheelchair with both hands and trying her best to stay upright, but the slender silver rims were cruelly crushed, unable to withstand the load.

  The instant he heard the squeal of the spokes snapping, Haruyuki understood what Raker was afraid of.

  It wasn’t the fact that the Six Kings would fall into another Unlimited EK. The Deity of Demise was under the control of the White King, which meant there was a very good possibility that the spoils of any battle involving the giant would also belong to her. If Haruyuki and the others were killed, they would only have however many points taken from them, but it was different for Niko, Kuroyukihime, and the other kings. All level niners were bound by the most ruthless rule in the Accelerated World: the rule of sudden death. If they were killed by another level-nine Burst Linker, they would lose all their points in that moment and have Brain Burst forcibly uninstalled.

  In other words, when Tezcatlipoca carried out its attack, Blue Knight, Purple Thorn, Yellow Radio, Green Grandé, Kuroyukihime, and Niko would stop being Burst Linkers. They would lose their memories of the Accelerated World, the bonds they’d formed in it, and even the duel avatars that were the other halves of their own selves.

  “No…No!!” Haruyuki squeezed out a cracked voice from beneath his mirrored mask.

  No. Stop. You have to stop.

  He looked up at White Cosmos hovering far, far above and prayed desperately. But the White King’s hand, holding the lowered Luminary, didn’t so much as twitch. She was about to send the kings she’d fought alongside since the dawn of the Accelerated World to total point loss, together with her own child, Kuroyukihime, but she appeared as aloof and removed as ever.

  This—this was likely the White King’s aim. When she appeared there riding Pegasus with the first of the Seven Dwarves, Platinum Cavalier, she’d said, “All the necessary cards are laid out here.” Meaning the Deity of Demise and the Six Kings.

  She’d had a chance to wipe out the kings before. If she had used the Luminary for the Inti drop instead of giving it to Black Vise, she would have pushed all the kings, except for Niko, into sudden death rather than Unlimited EK. The reason she hadn’t done this was so that she could maneuver the combined forces of the six Great Legions to destroy Inti when it had been impossible for the White Legion to do this alone. And to control Inti’s second form, Tezcatlipoca, once it emerged, followed by total point loss for the kings. In so doing, White Cosmos would be able to reach the uncharted territory of level ten, finally clearing the impossible hurdle of defeating five level niners.

  But even that was not her final goal.

  The pinnacle of Enemies, Tezcatlipoca. The pinnacle of Burst Linkers, level ten. And the essence of negative incarnate power, the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II. By lining up these three ultimate powers of the Accelerated World, Cosmos was clearly attempting to accomplish something very particular, something that Rose Milady had called the great mission of the White Legion.

  Whatever it was, Haruyuki couldn’t let it happen. There was no way he could accept any “great mission” that was built on the sacrifice of Kuroyukihime, Niko, and the other kings.

  His perceptions accelerated to the point where his brain—no, his quantum thought circuits—threatened to burn up, while the number of red rings increased again to become eight. An instinct with no base in reason told him that the next one would be the last.

  The idea of calling on his most powerful protector, the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron, for help did cross his mind. She was currently in total shutdown at Fufuan on the very top of the old Tokyo Tower to recuperate from her injuries. He could wake her, though, if he called to her through their link, but then she would be facing off against a more powerful Super-class Enemy at less than full capacity. And even Metatron couldn’t cross the nearly four kilometers between here and the old Tokyo Tower in mere seconds. He couldn’t rely on her or anyone else. He had to do something himself.

  Here.

  If he couldn’t stand up right here and now, then his becoming a Burst Linker, reaching level six, the many trials he’d faced—all of it would have been for nothing.

  “Unh…Aah…Aaaaaaaaah!!” he yelled.

  But pressed down by the immense gravity, his avatar didn’t so much as twitch. He couldn’t get up, or spread the wings on his back, or turn his hand toward Tezcatlipoca. He was even using the Incarnate System already, but his invisible shackles remained as strong as ever.

  If the dark, blood-red giant really was categorized as a Super-class Enemy doing the bidding of the White King, then it was indeed an absolute in the Accelerated World. A super Being perhaps even more powerful than the Four Gods of which the Anomaly, Graphite Edge, had once said, “You can’t beat them if you don’t go beyond the system.”

  Beyond…the system.

  This thought called up a faint voice from his memory.

  So then, if the sights we see are produced by the system, this creates space for interference.

  That was what his swordmaster, Centaurea “Ruthless” Sentry, had told him. The day he’d started training at her player home, Oumutei, Sentry had revealed the secret of Omega style. She had disappeared, almost melted away from his field of view as he faced her, and had severed Silver Crow’s shoulder armor. At that time, Haruyuki hadn’t even realized he’d been cut until the chunk of armor fell at his feet.

  Sentry explained to his stunned self exactly what had happened.

  During battle, the system anticipates a moment into the future and shows us that image. This future prediction is frightfully accurate, and there are no mistakes as a general rule. Because the system is making these predictions based on our thoughts—the signals that transmit the Image Control System.

  The key here is, if you can understand the mechanism of this future prediction, it is possible to deliberately make it miss the mark.

  Sentry had been talking about how the BB system produced the images that filled the players’ fields of view, but the movement of Enemies was also part of the BB system. A top-level Enemy that reacted with incredible speed to a Burst Linker’s attack wouldn’t be using that future prediction.

  Tezcatlipoca was currently targeting a full one hundred and one Burst Linkers. Haruyuki could tell that the waves were no simple range attack but instead restrained each individual target separately through the black circles that appeared at their avatars’ feet. If he could remove that circle for a mere instant, if instead of lashing out with force, he could cause a future prediction error and make the system erroneously view Haruyuki as not there…

  Even after his four months of training at Oumutei, he hadn’t been able to unlock the secrets of Omega style. But all the techniques Sentry had shown him, everything she’d said to him, was burned into the back of his mind.

  Rather than thinking you will not move, you fill your mind with nothing. Erase oneself and become one with the world—this is the truth of the Omega style’s deepest art, Gou.

  Could he really erase even his unconscious mind in this situation, in the middle of an absolute crisis when he was facing the end of everything? Especially when he was worse than anything at controlling his own nerves?

  Although it had been nine months since he’d become a Burst Linker, his heart practically leapt out of his mouth before a normal duel, not to mention before the Territories, and he stuttered and stammered awkwardly when talking to a Burst Linker he was meeting for the first time. Rose Milady, aka Tsubomi Koshika, had praised hi
m by saying he was such an ace Linker that there wasn’t a person in the Accelerated World who didn’t know who he was, but he was absolutely nothing of the sort. He had only managed to survive this long because he’d been blessed with teachers, friends, and friendly rivals. If he’d been fighting on his own, he was sure he would’ve been at a total point loss in the blink of an eye.

  But. Even so.

  With Niko and Kuroyukihime facing more and more certain death, he definitely, absolutely, most certainly could not use his own weakness as an excuse to give up. He had to think, think so hard that his maximally accelerated spirit burned up.

  Centaurea Sentry had said that Gou, the deepest art of Omega style, used the same Image Control System as an Incarnate technique, but that the way it used this was the opposite of an Incarnate technique. It completely erased the image output from the quantum circuits and became one with the world.

  Niko, the second Red King, Scarlet Rain, had once told him about a similar logic: Zero Fill. When a Burst Linker fell captive to intense despair and helplessness, the orders they gave their duel avatar were erased by negative Incarnate, and the Burst Linker was unable to move. Haruyuki himself had lost his will to fight in the middle of a battle with Dusk Taker and very nearly ended up in Zero Fill himself.

  But Gou and Zero Fill were only similar on the surface. What zeroed out in Zero Fill was the command to move your avatar when a large amount of negative Incarnate was output from the quantum circuits—the spirit. In order to achieve Gou, you had to completely erase the signals transmitting to the Image Control System. It was neither positive nor negative Incarnate, but a “null” Incarnate.

  How was he supposed to achieve that? The key was probably what Sentry had explained as “becoming one with the world.” By expanding his mind to the entirety of the vast, boundless Accelerated World, his imagination would be infinitely diluted. He would have an image of the infinite.

  Up to that point, his activity in the Accelerated World had essentially been confined to the areas between Suginami and Chiyoda in central Tokyo. Normally, it would have been impossible for him to imagine the whole of the Accelerated World stretching from Hokkaido to Okinawa.