Accel World Vol. 21: The Snow Sprite Read online

  “Who could do this?” Haruyuki narrowed his eyes at the stars below, remembering the sweetly clear and yet somehow sad voice calling out “Paradigm Breakdown.”

  In the Highest Level, it wasn’t only the nodes that mapped out the terrain that were visible, but also the Burst Linkers currently diving in the Unlimited Neutral Field. When he really focused his mind, a small silver light appeared in the center of the darkness of Sengakuji Temple, a little toward the eastern side. Haruyuki instinctively understood that this was Silver Crow. While he savored the strange sensation of staring at his own self from the outside, his perception of the world grew broader.

  The gray dot of light that appeared immediately to Crow’s side was Ash Roller. A bright-green Bush Utan and a rich-green Olive Grab were also stuck to them. The group of three brown, purple, and pale-blue lights a little down to the south were Chocolat Puppeter and the other members of Petit Paquet. And the large, shining, ice-blue dot that looked to be facing off against Haruyuki and his friends had to have been Glacier Behemoth—one of the Seven Dwarves, the White Legion’s executive group. Only these eight were within the Sengakuji Temple grounds, but he could see several more points of light on the roofs of the office buildings on the east and west sides of the temple. He couldn’t make out which light was who, but the high rankers of Nega Nebulus were camped out on the east side, while the west side was occupied by Oscillatory Universe.

  And there was also a small light on the lone building standing tall and narrow to the north of Sengakuji. The pale pink with a hint of purple was the same color as the overlay that had enveloped the Territories stage like an aurora. This was without a doubt the Burst Linker who had activated the Incarnate technique at work, but in the Highest Level, he couldn’t know her name or what she looked like, which was extremely frustrating.

  “I have absolutely no way of knowing anything other than the location information from the current situation,” Metatron said, as if reading his thoughts. “However, only those belonging to the army of the attacking or defending sides are permitted in the Low Level of your ‘Territories stage,’ so given that you do not know her, the little warrior in question would presumably be a member of Oscillatory Universe or whatever you called it.”

  “Right. I guess…” Although he bobbed his head in agreement, Haruyuki stopped it at an angle that was neither here nor there.

  Immediately after the forced change from the Territories stage to the Unlimited Neutral Field, Glacier Behemoth had let slip some mysterious words.

  King…Does this mean that now is that time?

  Haruyuki had no idea what this really meant, but at the very least, Oscillatory executive member Behemoth had also been caught off guard by the progression of events. That’s what it had felt like, anyway. But it could also have been taken to mean that he knew what this forced change was. So was the one who activated this Incarnate technique, Paradigm Breakdown, Behemoth’s king—the head of Oscillatory Universe, the White King, White Cosmos? And was this light that flickered alone with an air of sadness on a building to the north the White King herself?

  In his mind, Haruyuki compared the voice that called out the Incarnate technique name today with the voice of the White King when she’d presented herself in a dummy avatar on the day of the school festival the previous month to see if they were the same. He felt like they both had that sweet clarity. But he hadn’t sensed even a hint of sadness in the White King’s voice when she had barged into the Umesato local net. Even in that situation, she’d maintained an air of calmness—of detachment—and left without having revealed anything of her interior.

  If they were different people, then there was no way Haruyuki would know the pale-peach duel avatar, likely a White Legion high ranker.

  “Huh? But…” Furrowing his brow, he put his hazy hand to the side of his helmet. “That voice…I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere?”

  “What are you talking about, Servant?” Metatron asked.

  “The voice of the Burst Linker who dragged us into the Unlimited Neutral Field—I feel like I’ve heard it before,” he replied, half on autopilot. “But where? …Not at the meeting of the Seven Kings…Not at the merger meeting, either.”

  “Hmm. In that case, I shall search your memories.”

  “Yeah, okay— Wait, what?!” He started to bring his head forward obediently and then yanked it back in a hurry. “S-search? You can do that?!”

  “We’ll see. The memories of you little warriors and of us Beings are stored in a similar format, I assume? If I can expose them, we will be able to understand something.” Her words deeply frightening, Metatron clamped her left hand onto Haruyuki’s helmet. Even though her hand was much smaller and more slender than Silver Crow’s, he was rendered unable to move his head at all.

  “Eeaaah, h-help…”

  Without so much as twitching an eyebrow at Haruyuki’s cry, Metatron stretched out the index and middle fingers of her right hand and was about to thrust them straight into his helmet. But then her entire body froze. Left hand still gripping his head, she whirled around.

  “Who are you?!” she barked.

  Haruyuki opened both eyes wide in amazement. This was the Highest Level, where time was basically stopped. The abyss of the Accelerated World that Haruyuki could only reach while linked with the Legend-class Enemy Metatron. There was no way anyone else could appear here, however strong they were.

  Ping!

  He heard a faint sound, like a fingertip popping off an extremely thin metal film.

  Ping. Ping. Repeated at regular intervals, the sound grew louder bit by bit.

  It was…footsteps? Haruyuki managed to pull free of Metatron’s hand somehow and then stared into the distant darkness.

  At first, all he could see was a white shape, shimmering hazily. As it approached, it took on human form. Just like Haruyuki and Metatron, it was an outline of faint light, a small F-type duel avatar. She only came up to Silver Crow’s chest, with a surprisingly small torso and limbs, and her whole body was wrapped in dress-type armor with a geometric pattern reminiscent of snowflakes. The girl stopped immediately before Haruyuki and Metatron, her sweet face mask brightening into a smile.

  “Oh-ho! I finally found you.”

  “…Wh-who are you?” he stammered.

  “It’s polite to give your own name before you ask someone else’s. I’d like to say that at least, but I know your name, so I’ll make a special exception and tell you. I’m Snow Fairy, also known as Sleepy.” The girl’s voice was sweet and sour. “Nice to meet you, Silver Crow.”

  The instant he heard the cutesy name, Haruyuki forgot he was in the Highest Level where physical interference was not possible and took a step back into a ready position.

  And that was because this name had been given a fairly high number on the list of Oscillatory Universe members Kuroyukihime had shared.

  She was a member of the executive group, the Seven Dwarves. Glacier Behemoth, the powerful enemy he’d fought earlier, was seventh among their ranks.

  Snow Fairy was number two.

  With regard to the order of the list, Kuroyukihime had said, “It’s not that they’re simply in order of strongest. If I had to say, it’s in order of who is the most villainous.” In other words, the avatar before his eyes was one of the uber-villains among the White Legion.

  “H-how did you get here?” Haruyuki asked immediately.

  Snow Fairy grinned once more. “I felt like someone was watching me somehow. It’s scary, so I don’t really like to come here. But I like being spied on even less.”

  “Like someone was watching you?” Haruyuki repeated, dumbfounded.

  If he were to believe what she’d just said, the girl avatar grinning before his eyes had sensed Haruyuki’s gaze as he observed the Unlimited Neutral Field from the Highest Level. He absolutely could not believe that that was possible. In his understanding, observers on the Highest Level were like the gallery watching an old-style online game through a monitor. What kind
of dueler could notice the presence of a third party in the distant network?

  Haruyuki might have been training his powers of instantaneous thought, but now he froze in his ready position, not knowing how he should respond to the situation.

  Meanwhile, Snow Fairy turned her gaze to Metatron next to him, and her smile faded just a little. “I wonder why you two are so unreasonable…If you’re an Enemy, then you should just be an Enemy and satisfy yourself bullying Burst Linkers. It’s because you’re here like this that there’s weird interference.” She stopped for just an instant before shrugging lightly. “Well, whatever. We’re never going to meet again, anyway.”

  She took a step toward Metatron, who had maintained an uncharacteristic silence, and casually raised one hand. Her fingers—so surprisingly slender that it seemed impossible she was a fighting-game avatar—moved as though pinching something.

  Metatron reacted instantly. She remained motionless, but the ring above her head flashed, and Fairy took a step back as though repelled by an invisible impact.

  Haruyuki couldn’t begin to imagine what was taking place between the two of them, when interaction was impossible in the Highest Level. But then he suddenly felt as though the floor had dropped out from beneath his feet, and he cried out unconsciously. “Unh…Aah?!”

  Reflexively, he tried to hover with the wings on his back, but that had no effect. Whatever was happening, though, it seemed that Metatron was doing it and that it was not an attack by Fairy. Standing alongside the still-silent Archangel, he plummeted into the darkness.

  The pixie avatar shrugged slightly, growing distant in the blink of an eye. “Aw, too bad…”

  As this faint voice reached him, a wave of noise enveloped him like the Brain Burst acceleration sound played backward, and the world faded to white.

  2

  Haruyuki staggered slightly when he returned to the Unlimited Neutral Field. He managed to brace himself and then look first at his left shoulder. After confirming that Metatron’s 3-D icon was indeed sitting there, he let out the breath he’d been holding. In terms of physical sensation, he felt like he’d been in the Highest Level for more than five minutes, but in reality, not even a second had passed. Next to him, Ash Roller, Bush Utan, and Olive Grab were looking around, stunned, searching for the missing stronghold.

  “I won’t let that Snowflake or whatever it was get away with this.” Metatron’s voice was unprecedentedly thorny.

  “Huh?” Haruyuki flinched and pulled his head in. “Th-that thing back there? What did she try to do?”

  “She tried to sever the link between you and me, the link that I have gone to great lengths to strengthen.”

  “Sever…But I thought you couldn’t interfere with other people on the Highest Level?”

  “That is true as a general rule. However—”

  “Oy, you damned crow!” Ash Roller turned around and yelled, straddling his bike, perhaps noticing their voices in conversation. “What the heck did they…?”

  Even the fin-de-siècle rider couldn’t hide his confusion, and the Petit Paquet group, Sky Raker, and the others to the rear were in the same boat. But the Oscillatory side had to have had a firmer grasp on the situation, so Nega Nebulus risked them taking the first attack if they charged their front line now.

  Haruyuki decided that he first needed to get his team back on their feet and ready to fight. “Ash, we have to pull back for now!” he called toward Ash Roller and his gang. “This is the actual Unlimited Neutral Field! If we die, we could end up in an Unlimited—” The words that leapt unbidden from his mouth were fed back into his thoughts after a very slight time delay, sending a powerful chill racing through his entire body.

  Unlimited EK.

  When an immediate burst out was not possible in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and a player died inside the territory of a powerful enemy, they were then attacked and immediately killed by that same enemy an hour later when they automatically regenerated. Unlimited EK was this process repeated over and over until the player lost all their Burst Points. To avoid this fate, common sense motivated players to set an automatic disconnect timer with a global connection when diving into the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  But what if there was a Burst Linker with attack power on par with a Legend-class Enemy? Even without playing a sudden-death card, such a player could push another Burst Linker to total point loss just like in an Unlimited EK. Not an Enemy Kill, but an Unlimited Player Kill.

  That was the whole point then. If the Oscillatory camp had brought about this forced change, then that had to have been their aim. The complete elimination of Nega Nebulus, which had repeatedly checked the plans of the Acceleration Research Society and the White King.

  A powerful shiver of fear numbing his avatar’s limbs, Haruyuki prepared to once again urge Ash and the others to retreat temporarily. But before he could, he heard a voice calling out to him from the rear.

  “Corvus, are you serious?!”

  Quickly turning around, he saw Sky Raker racing toward him, her white dress fluttering. Behind her were Ardor Maiden, Aqua Current, and the other members of the attack team. Seeing them run in, Chocolat and her friends also came running their way after their temporary retreat to the south.

  Reflexively, Haruyuki counted his comrades. Three of the Four Elements, Nega Nebulus’s executive. Beside them was the Triplex, the former Prominence executive of Blood Leopard, Cassis Moose, and Thistle Porcupine. To the rear, Cyan Pile, Lime Bell, and Magenta Scissor were clustered together. Adding in Ash and the other two on his American motorcycle; Chocolat Puppeter and her friends; Haruyuki; and Metatron made a total of seventeen. Only he, their secret weapon, wasn’t there, but that was all according to the plan.

  Since everyone on their attack team had been able to join the battle, that meant that the White Legion had placed the maximum of nearly twenty people in Minato Area No. 3 in anticipation of their attack. It was only natural that they would put an emphasis on protecting the area with their headquarters, but the issue was why they had included several of the Seven Dwarves on the defense team.

  Bemoaning the fact that his investigation on the Highest Level had ended so abruptly, Haruyuki explained the situation to Sky Raker. “Master, we’ve been moved to the real Unlimited Neutral Field. The White Legion is probably aiming to—”

  “Servant!” Metatron cut him off. “There!” The 3-D icon’s small wing pointed. Following it, he turned his head back up to the sky approaching dawn.

  Countless white objects were dancing down from the rich-purple clouds, lightly, softly. When he caught one in his open palm, it immediately melted into water and then instantly evaporated. He didn’t feel any cold, but no matter how he looked at it, this was…

  “Snow?” he murmured.

  “There aren’t supposed to be any weather effects in the Demon City stage.” Naturally, it was Takumu who responded. “Well, though, given the abnormal situation, I can’t say anything with certainty.”

  “What is this nonsense you speak?!” The 3-D icon flapped her thin wings. “This is the Mean Level overdrive phenomenon. It’s due to the power that you all call Incarnayte!”

  “What?!” At a loss for words, Haruyuki looked up at the dark sky once more.

  The pure-white snow was not just falling quietly from the sky above Sengakuji, but it enveloped the entire center of Minato Area No. 3 at least. There were indeed ranged Incarnate techniques, but he had never seen nor heard of a technique with such a wide-ranging effect.

  Who on earth and to what end…? He followed the drifting snow with his eyes. And there he found a crouching, silent figure.

  It was the White Legion’s powerful warrior Glacier Behemoth, aka Sneezy. Haruyuki had been fiercely engaged with him until just before the stage had been manipulated. Just as his name would indicate, Behemoth made liberal use of his powerful freezing techniques to push the three members of the Petit Paquet group to the line between life and death and tortured Haruyuki when he raced in as backup.
So was this snowfall his Incarnate?

  Haruyuki stared at the massive form encamped some twenty meters away, gripping his Enhanced Armament, Lucid Blade, in his right hand.

  Behemoth had been completely silent since murmuring “King…Does this mean that now is that time?” right after the forced shift. The way the enormous avatar was pulled into himself, head hanging, it was almost as though he were afraid of something. Or—this couldn’t possibly have been it, but—

  He almost looked as if he was apologizing to Haruyuki and his comrades.

  In the midst of the gradually intensifying snow, Sky Raker spoke in a low, strained voice. “The situation is too unclear. I’m sorry, but we have to stop the mission for the time being and go back to the real world. The nearest portal is…”

  “Shinagawa Station,” Cassis Moose noted. “If this is the real Unlimited Neutral Field, that is.”

  “There’s no doubt about that,” Haruyuki said.

  Fuko nodded lightly. She turned to Utai, who was standing at her side. “Maiden. Give the retreat signal.”

  “That’s a roger.” Ardor Maiden turned her longbow toward the snowy sky. Just as Glacier Behemoth had called his comrades to him with a light beam technique, the Nega Nebulus troops had decided in advance on all kinds of signals from Maiden’s flaming arrows. Although the majority of the team was gathered together there, they had to let him, standing by to the rear, know about the retreat as well.

  She pulled back the longbow string, and even when the bow generated an arrow of flames, Behemoth didn’t move. The Oscillatory Burst Linkers encamped on the roofs of the buildings to the rear also showed no signs of approaching. The Incarnate snow simply continued to fall silently on the battlefield.

  Bowstring fully drawn, Utai released her hand after a moment of stillness. The arrow wreathed in crimson flames flew upward. But when it was barely ten meters up in the sky, its glimmer abruptly faded and vanished as though the arrow had burned itself up.