Accel World Vol. 20: The Rivalry of White and Black Read online

  The former members of Petit Paquet nodded as one, and the other members joined them.

  “Master,” Takumu began from beside Rui, “I was a member of Blue Legion, Leonids, until nine months ago, and I took part in the Territories then, too. The Blue Legion won by a long shot in terms of numbers, but even against them, Nega Nebulus always had one thing that put them on top: the element of surprise. This Legion has the strength to turn the tables in any situation, no matter how difficult. And that’s a strength that’s impossible to see coming.”

  Here, for some reason, he glanced at Haruyuki, and then he turned his gaze back on Kuroyukihime. “Even if Oscillatory Universe has figured out every detail of our strategy, even if they’ve prepared every possible countermeasure, Nega Nebulus won’t go down so easily. Not a chance.”

  “Oh-ho-ho!” Chiyuri chirped. “You’ve really started talking Negabu style, too, huh, Taku!”

  Takumu pushed up the bridge of his glasses as though embarrassed, so the entire party burst into laughter once again.

  “It’s just as Takumu says.” Kuroyukihime nodded firmly and brought the impromptu roadside meeting to a close. “Even supposing Oscillatory concentrates all their battle power in Minato Three, that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to fail. And even if we are defeated, that does not spell the end of everything. I am utterly and thoroughly vexed that I cannot take part myself, but I will wait and have faith in your victory. Now let’s head off toward our first mission. Everyone, disconnect from the global net!”

  At this, Haruyuki finally noticed that they were nearly at the border between Suginami and Nakano. If they kept walking with global connections on, every member of Nega Nebulus would appear on the matching list for Nakano Area No. 1, and any Burst Linker who happened to check the list would wonder what was going on.

  He hurriedly reached up and cut the global connection on his Neurolinker. The 3-D map he had open switched to offline mode, and the real-time traffic information disappeared. Swiping the map away, he looked up at the pure, blue summer sky. The anxious desire to flee had faded from his heart at some point, and in its place he felt prebattle nerves and a hint of excitement rise up.

  Five minutes later, they were at Nakano Central Park, which was even busier than he’d expected. A number of cafés and fast-food joints stood on the north side of the mall that faced Shikinomori Park, but every one of them was jam-packed with young people and families. Some even had lines stretching out the door.

  Given that it was currently 1:50 PM and the meeting with Prominence started at two, they didn’t exactly have the luxury of wandering around looking for a restaurant that could seat them all. Panicking, Haruyuki went into crisis mode, but for some reason, Kuroyukihime and the others were as relaxed as ever.

  “Uh. Um, Kuroyukihime? Everywhere’s jammed with people,” Haruyuki started, his voice somewhat shrill.

  “Don’t get flustered, Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime grinned. “I expected it would be busy today.”

  “S-so then, did you make a reservation?” he asked anxiously.

  Rather than replying directly, she snapped her fingers. “Supply troops, you’re up!”

  “Roger!” the Petit Paquet group—Shihoko, Satomi, and Yume—barked in immediate response. Haruyuki looked closely and saw they were carrying bags and baskets.

  Looking resolute, Shihoko saluted and pointed toward the park spreading out to the north of the mall. “We have already found a suitable location, Commander!”

  “Good! Then we move!” the commander shouted in response.

  Haruyuki chased after them, wondering what exactly this little performance was all about.

  Shihoko walked ahead to lead the entire party to the base of a broad-leaved tree rising up in the center of the park. Around the trunk was a plaque informing them that it was a beech tree. The large canopy cast plenty of shade across the green lawn, and a pleasant breeze brushed over Haruyuki’s skin once he stepped into the large shadow.

  Satomi pulled a large tarp out of a bag and flapped it out over the grass. Instantly, Shihoko and Yume were fixing the corners with small pegs before encouraging the rest of the Legion onto it with a unified “Please sit!”

  Chiyuri took off her sneakers and then stepped onto the tarp, followed by the rest of the girls’ squad. They sat down in a circle, and Haruyuki and Takumu added themselves to one corner.

  Once seated, Haruyuki’s attention was immediately drawn to the two baskets set down in the center of the circle. If they were playing picnic, then he would assume the baskets had tasty treats inside, and he would further assume that these had been handmade by Shihoko and her friends, members of their school’s cooking club. He further concluded that they would be receiving them shortly.

  Following this train of thought, Haruyuki was unconsciously inching closer to the baskets when he was suddenly yanked back by the collar. “Hrnk!” Groaning, he turned to find the angelic Raker Smile.

  “Not yet, Corvus. That’s for after the meeting.”

  “Hy-hyaah.” Bobbing his head up and down, he looked at the bottom right of his virtual desktop and saw that it was 1:58 PM.

  Right about now, the Red Legion Burst Linkers would also be waiting somewhere nearby. Haruyuki surveyed their surroundings. There were several other groups of people their age picnicking in the area, each of which looked quite suspicious to him.

  “Come now! If you keep whirling around like that, they’ll figure out who we are, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime scolded.

  “S-s-s-s-sorry.” Haruyuki shrank into himself and then followed Takumu’s example by sitting formally on his knees on the tarp. He straightened up, clenched his stomach, and took a deep breath.

  “All right, then. I’ll check the matching list first,” Fuko offered calmly. She then called the Burst Link command and quickly closed her eyes. “Right now, every Burst Linker on the list is a part of the mission today.”

  “That sounds about right,” Kuroyukihime remarked. “If you were looking to duel in Nakano, you’d head for Area Two around Broadway. And while Central Park is equipped with a local net, it’s a completely family-oriented facility, so most Burst Linkers stay away. Which is exactly why we chose this location.”

  “And in the event that there is someone in the way, we can pick a duel and neatly beat them back from the local net, hmm? ” Fuko spoiled Kuroyukihime’s technical explanation with a smile, and then composed herself in a manner befitting a deputy before lightly bringing her hands together. “Now, then. Thirty seconds left. Everyone except Rin, connect to the Central Park local information net. Sorry to leave you out, Rin.”

  “No, it’s. The only way this. Time.” Rin shook her head vigorously at the apology from her usually strict parent. “I’m in GW. If I show up, it will put everyone in Promi on guard.”

  “We’ll soon let you know how it goes,” Fuko said, winking. “Just hang on for one point eight seconds.”

  “Okay.” Rin nodded, and the rest of the party moved as one onto their virtual desktops.

  Haruyuki selected the target net from the list of networks that popped up and connected. The Central Park logo was displayed in his field of view, and windows opened up showing assorted coupons and the seating availability at the various shops, but he quickly got rid of these.

  The digital numbers in the bottom right of his view were steadily marching toward two PM. He’d been in this situation any number of times before—and this time, he wasn’t even going to actually duel. Still, he was overcome with a nervousness he’d never felt before. He clenched both hands into tight fists.

  Haruyuki had gotten the Brain Burst program from Kuroyukihime and become a member of Nega Nebulus last fall. Although a great many things had happened in the nine months since then, the power structure of the Accelerated World, divided and controlled by the six Great Legions, was basically unchanged.

  However, the world was about to change significantly, starting with the meeting today. It wasn’t just that Nega Nebulus and Prominence were goin
g to merge and become a major Legion with territory straddling Nerima, Nakano, and Suginami. If they could succeed in stripping Oscillatory Universe of its right to block the matching list in the Territories later in the day and have the Leonids’ Coba-Manga sisters confirm the presence of Acceleration Research Society members in Minato area, the Accelerated World would be plunged into war, setting the White Legion against an allied force of the five Great Legions. The difference in numbers was overwhelming, but their opponent was the White King, and to get to her, they had to face the terrifying battle power of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II. The war would be a hard one.

  His heart’s desires were to rescue his friend Wolfram Cerberus, now that the Acceleration Research Society had forced him to join with the Armor, and to get back the thruster from the Red King’s Enhanced Armament Invincible, currently the vessel for the Armor.

  If he could achieve these two goals, the plot of Kuroyukihime’s tormentor the White King and her Acceleration Research Society would necessarily fall apart. This would be their highest-level, most difficult mission so far, but if he just had faith in his other half, Silver Crow, the duel avatar he’d worked hard to train; his Legion comrades, the players he’d built such strong bonds with; and his own self, whom he’d come to hate just a little less lately…If he just gave it everything he had, they would definitely…absolutely…

  At 1:59:59 PM, Fuko called the acceleration command. A second later, the flaming words A REGISTERED DUEL IS BEGINNING!! blazed up before his eyes and carried Haruyuki’s consciousness off to an instance of a world.

  2

  Burst Linkers inevitably felt a sense of joyous luck or ominous foreboding the moment they saw the duel stage with its diverse characteristics, attributes, and idiosyncrasies. For instance, the Purgatory stage, with metal insects wriggling around organically twisted buildings; the Primeval Forest stage, its pools of purple poison welling up in forests of withered trees; and the ultimate dark type, Hell stage, which Haruyuki had never seen himself, were all ominous; while conversely, the Sacred Ground stage, with its countless crystals floating in a snowy white field; the Moonlight stage, where a full moon hung in the night sky; and the Heian stage, in which madder-red torii gates rose up in the midst of red and yellow autumn leaves dancing through the air, were thought by pretty much everyone to be fortunate stages.

  Praying that the setting for the all-important general meeting with Prominence would please be a lucky stage, Haruyuki slowly opened his eyes.

  A strangely yellowish-green sky and damp, gray earth filled his field of view. The brilliantly leafy green beeches of the real world had been transformed into massive lopsided and twisting trees with trunks as white as bone, while the buildings of Central Park that he could see on the south and east sides were half-rotted, reddish-brown rusty liquid coloring their walls.

  “Gah. A Corroded Forest stage?” Haruyuki muttered.

  Before he could reject the idea in his head, a chocolate-colored, chocolate-flavored young lady poked his back. “What ridiculous nonsense are you speaking here? There aren’t any buildings in a Corroded Forest stage!”

  “R-right…”

  Choco, you’re still wildly different on this side! Unable to voice his thought, Haruyuki searched the list of stage data in the back of his mind. Scenery-wise, it seemed like a natural type with wood affiliation, but this poisoned atmosphere could also mean it was a dark type.

  Before Haruyuki could reach a conclusion, however, a slender F-type avatar whose entire body was wrapped in reddish-purple film-type armor muttered in a rough voice, “We got another rare stage here, huh?”

  It was Magenta Scissor. She shrugged.

  “Honestly.” Black Lotus nodded, her onyx-colored crystal armor shining. “And it’s a somewhat—no, a very annoying one, too.”

  “Huh? What do you mean, annoying?” Haruyuki asked his mentor, giving up on remembering the name on his own. “It looks a lot like a Corroded Forest, but at first glance, there don’t seem to be any poison swamps or insects.”

  It wasn’t Kuroyukihime who answered him, but rather Fuko, the duel’s starter. “Come now, over there, Corvus.” Seated in her wheelchair, the avatar in the white dress pointed off to the north.

  Squinting, he saw a sinister pink mist seeping out of the school-like building on the opposite side of the road. At last he succeeded in extracting the data and slapped a fist into the palm of his other hand. “Oh! This is that one. Um…A Plague stage!”

  “Correct. And it does seem like that poisonous mist is coming this way,” Kuroyukihime murmured, narrowing her bluish-purple eye lenses.

  Categorized as a mid-level dark type, the Plague stage was not exempt from the troublesome field gimmicks that characterized a dark stage. The poison mist before Haruyuki now was one of these, gushing up from the ground at random. If you touched it, you were “infected” with the plague. Depending on the color of the mist, you would be hit with slip damage, nullification of special attacks, visual impediments, aural impediments, or loss of balance, among other de-buffs. Not to mention that since the mist was no simple poison, but rather a pathogen, the duel avatars who came into contact with it also became a source of infection, bringing about the same symptoms in nearby avatars. In a normal duel, a player would actively try to use these to take down their opponent, but drawing this stage in the Territories was basically the worst. And it wasn’t much better if you were using the stage as a meeting venue, as they were doing now.

  “And I’m pretty sure a pink mist is slip damage, right, Lotus?” Fuko said. “Pard and I will be the only ones infected, since we’re the duelers, but it won’t be much of a meeting if the deputies keep losing health.”

  Kuroyukihime groaned. “I suppose we have no choice. Shall we discuss with the Prominence side and try for a new stage? That reminds me. Where are they?”

  The entire party looked around. When the duelers were so far apart that they could not visually confirm each other’s presence, a guide cursor indicating the enemy dueler’s position was displayed in each one’s field of view. Given there were no guide cursors in view for either Fuko standing before them or the other player, Pard had to be somewhere nearby at least, but there was no sign of anyone in the desolate park or the rotted buildings.

  “Are the Promi peeps really logged in?” Plum Flipper, aka Yume, cocked her head and its round hat to one side quizzically.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Mint Mitten, aka Satomi, jabbed her with a mittened fist. “Leopard’s health gauge is displayed right there.”

  Just as she said, the avatar name BLOOD LEOPARD was neatly inscribed beneath the right-hand health gauge. And if Pard hadn’t been there, Fuko wouldn’t have been able to generate the duel stage in the first place.

  But then why hadn’t anyone from Prominence shown up despite the fact that it had already been over a minute since the start of the duel? Maybe the enemy forces were obstructed by…some kind of unexpected situation? Haruyuki began to wonder beneath his face mask.

  “SRY. Late.”

  A quiet voice echoed from above, and the entire party hurriedly turned their heads to see a silhouette slipping soundlessly down the trunk of a twisted tree. The slim torso, four powerful limbs, and long tail belonged to none other than the Prominence deputy “Bloody Kitty,” Blood Leopard.

  “Oh. Um. How long have you been up there?” Haruyuki asked when Pard reached the ground mere seconds later, neglecting to say hello.

  “Start, basically,” Pard responded briefly.

  “Th-then why didn’t you come down right away?” Haruyuki frowned.

  “Minor situation,” she said, with a sigh for some reason, and raised a hand to point toward the building on the east side of the park, Central Park East.

  “……”

  Haruyuki and the other ten people silently turned their attention in that direction. The half-rotted East building fell back into silence. Nothing moved. And then suddenly a loud voice thundered overhead.

  “Sorry for the wait,
Nega Nebulus!!”

  Two silhouettes—both fairly large, arms crossed tightly in front of their chests—appeared on the roof of the East building. For some reason they stood far apart. They were followed by two new figures from behind, and then another two behind them, and then, in the blink of an eye, a couple dozen silhouettes had formed a long row on the roof until finally a small duel avatar appeared with some force in its center.

  This middle avatar raised a silent hand and pointed at the yellowish-green sky. As if this were a signal, the thirty-odd people took on poses from ancient tokusatsu masked-hero TV shows and shouted in unison, “We are Promineeeennnce!!”

  Four or five sparks were launched from the rear and exploded together with a pa-pa-pa-pum! sound that was a little lacking in impact.

  “……”

  The eleven members of Nega Nebulus found themselves at a loss for words.

  “SRY,” Pard muttered with another sigh.

  “…Leopard,” Fuko said. “Are you saying the reason it took a while for them to appear was because they were…getting that ready?”

  “Yes.” The crimson cat avatar nodded apologetically. “Rain says stuff like this is decided in snap judgments right at the start.”

  “Ha-ha-ha! That does totally sound like something Niko would say.” Haruyuki waved a hand at the Red King, “Bloody Storm” Scarlet Rain, posing smartly in the center of the duel avatars lined up neatly on the roof of the East building. “Heeey!”