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Accel World Vol. 25: Deity of Demise Page 2
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But he had seen the whole of this world a few times in the past. Not from the Lowest Level of the normal duel field nor the Mean Level of the Unlimited Neutral Field, but from the Highest Level. In that information space, where countless nodes shone like the Milky Way, there existed not only Brain Burst 2039, where Haruyuki and his comrades existed, but also the already defunct trial No. 1, Accel Assault 2038, and trial No. 3, Cosmos Corrupt 2040, laid upon each other. That was the entirety of the Accelerated World.
He had to imagine it: The triple world spreading out without bounds. Even just for a second…Eliminate all the anxiety, frustration, and fear in his heart and melt into the world. But he couldn’t accidentally go to the Highest Level. He wasn’t trying to focus his mind on an infinitesimal point and break through the wall of the world; he was scattering himself into the farthest reaches and disappearing from the system. From the northernmost node in the BB world to the southernmost…And from the AA world above his head to the CC world spreading out below his feet…
Imagine.
Gou.
Haruyuki saw the world ripple like waves. Those waves swallowed the avatar of Silver Crow, broke it into particles, and melted them into the air and the earth.
Of course, this wasn’t physically happening; Haruyuki and the BB system were only feeling it. The world wasn’t coming to him through his eyes, but rather his brain—his soul. From the Castle and the government buildings of Kasumigaseki all around him, the skyscrapers of Shinjuku and Shibuya, and all of the twenty-three wards, to the entirety of the Kanto Plain, Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu…and even farther to the two Accelerated Worlds overlaid on the world of BB…
Wait. Is this…?
His ever-expanding consciousness was suddenly yanked back into his avatar.
He had been melting into the world for less than half of half a second. But that was enough. Tezcatlipoca’s gravity attack had lost its target for a mere instant, and the pressure pushing down on Haruyuki’s body weakened. It wasn’t enough for him to stand. But it was enough for him to move an arm.
He lifted his right hand, covered in cracked armor, and pulled it back as far as he could. He set in the tips of his extended fingers the image of light.
His Incarnate technique, Laser Javelin, had the greatest range of Silver Crow’s long-distance attacks, but he needed both hands for the launch move, so he couldn’t use it now, and it didn’t have the greatest accuracy. His second most far-reaching attack, Laser Lance, would reach about thirty meters, but Tezcatlipoca’s head was a hundred meters up, and even the hand emitting the gravity waves was fifty meters above him. Plus, if his attack did actually hit its target, it would have been like being tickled by a gentle breeze for a Super-class Enemy. He needed to come up with a completely new technique to have even the slightest effect in a situation like this.
All of his attack-type Incarnate techniques, including Laser Sword, the first one he’d learned, were in the range expansion category. By holding in mind a strong image of his hand as a sword or a lance of light, he could overwrite and do damage to a target beyond the reach of his bare hands. The reason he used the image of a blade rather than a gun for a long-distance technique was because his duel avatar was specialized in a single power.
Before the big takedown of Dusk Taker, Niko had coached Haruyuki and Takumu on the Incarnate System. After demonstrating her range-expanding Radiant Beat and her movement-expanding Pyro Planing, she had told them, “Scarlet Rain’s long-distance flame power’s like the spines on a hedgehog. Inside all that, I’m just a weakling of a little kid with no power at all. Which is why I can’t use my will to enhance the attack or defensive power of the main body of this avatar. This right here is the absolute limit of the Incarnate System.”
Haruyuki personally believed that his avatar, Silver Crow, was the manifestation of the trauma that led him to wish he were anywhere but where he was. Because he was a pure speed type with nearly all his potential poured into his flight ability and no weapons other than his fists and feet, he’d been convinced that he could only learn range and movement expansion of the four basic types of Incarnate techniques—that he couldn’t use Incarnate techniques to enhance his attack or defense power.
But was that really true?
According to the Mental-Scar Shell theory of Argon Array, a key member of the Acceleration Research Society, those people encased in shells so thick and hard that they couldn’t see into the mental trauma that formed the mold for their avatars wound up becoming metal colors. He didn’t intend to accept everything Argon said wholesale, but if this logic was correct, then it meant that he also didn’t know what was really inside of Silver Crow’s metal armor.
What if.
What if there was something inside of his avatar besides the desire to flee?
When she was explaining the second stage of Incarnate techniques to him a month earlier, Kuroyukihime, his parent and the master to whom he had sworn his sword, had told him, “To generate a positive will, the process of inverting mental scars is absolutely essential. You face head-on your own trauma, shaped into the form of a duel avatar. You accept it, and you sublimate it into an image of hope. This is no easy feat. But you should be able to do it. You realized all on your own what the image is, after all.”
Haruyuki had replied to her words with excitement, “I’ll try. I’ll fight, I’ll find it. My image of hope.”
In the subsequent Castle rescue mission, he had generated the second-stage Incarnate technique Light Speed by inverting his mental scars in order to shake off the fierce pursuit of the God Suzaku. But what if there was something other than a scar inside of Silver Crow right from the start, a hope that didn’t need to be inverted?
The armor of metal color avatars was a mental shell to protect the self from something so painful the person couldn’t look directly at it—Argon Array’s assertion wasn’t wrong. But was that really the whole story? Were metal colors born with greater defensive power than green-type avatars simply to protect themselves?
Chrome Falcon, one of the Originators and the metal color who became the first Chrome Disaster, only ever thought about protecting his partner, Saffron Blossom. When he succeeded in the unprecedented feat of breaking into the Castle and had the opportunity to take for himself either the longsword Infinity, a powerful weapon, or the full-body armor Destiny, a powerful defensive item, Falcon chose the armor to complement Saffron where she was weak rather than selecting the sword that would have made him stronger. In the end, he had fallen into the dark side of Incarnate only because the scheming of the Acceleration Research Society had pushed Saffron to total point loss before his eyes. In Chrome Falcon’s leaden gray armor, there was definitely the desire to protect the people important to him.
Haruyuki had the same feeling inside his own heart. Actually, at some point along the way, his desire to protect himself had shrunk in the face of his growing desire to keep his comrades safe—not only Kuroyukihime and the members of Nega Nebulus, but also the many Burst Linkers he’d become friends with along the way.
Naturally, the majority of the Legion members and his rivals were stronger than he was. The truth was, the times when he was protected far outnumbered those when he was doing the protecting. But even so, all he wanted right now was to protect them, protect Kuroyukihime and Niko, of course, but also the other kings and the comrades who had given everything to this fight. He wanted to protect all one hundred of them from being killed by Tezcatlipoca.
He felt something hot filling his avatar. Not flames of rage that threatened to burn him up, but the energy of a peaceful, pure light. It didn’t feel newly born, but rather like something that had lived deep inside him all this time.
Yes: A light had lived in Silver Crow’s hard armor from the time of its birth. The fact that his initial special attack, Head Butt, dealt light damage was proof of that.
The light inside me…Please protect everyone!!
Praying with enough intensity to rend his soul asunder, Har
uyuki focused this light in his raised right hand and let it ride on his imagination.
“Light Shell!!”
By now, his deception of the system using Gou was fading away, and he was about to be pinned to the ground by Tezcatlipoca’s gravitational wave attack once more. But the sphere of light that spread out soundlessly from his hand pushed back the super gravity shaking the air itself. The shining white shell was so thin that he could see through it to the outside, and yet it expanded without any friction whatsoever. It grew to ten meters, then twenty, and approached the five kings standing frozen in the center of the Budokan crater.
A little farther, just a little more, and his light would reach Kuroyukihime.
“Nngh…G…ooooooooo…”
He stretched his hand out as far as it would go, and the figure of Black Lotus in the distance blurred before him. The load on his mind—his quantum circuits—was growing too large, hindering his faculties. But he couldn’t let his Incarnate stop now. He had to sever the gravity that bound the kings and create a chance for them to escape before Tezcatlipoca activated the attack in its left hand. Otherwise, both his Gou and his Light Shell would have been in vain.
The blurry world before him started to fade to black, and his other senses grew distant. Even still, he continued to squeeze out this image with everything he had left. Just a little farther, three more meters, two…
But there, the overlay in Silver Crow’s hand blinked and flickered and disappeared, and the shell of light shattered like impossibly thin glass, transforming into countless tiny particles and scattering.
And thus, the ninth crimson circle appeared in Tezcatlipoca’s left hand. The rings began to emit a dazzling light, and the energy there, already incredible, suddenly grew more concentrated, shaking the world itself. The time of the end had come.
But then light came streaming from behind Haruyuki on both sides, light of all colors: blue, red, yellow, green, purple light effects. Overlays.
It hadn’t been in vain. He’d only been able to hold the shell of light for a mere second, but his comrades had not wasted that time. Before the gravitational waves could assault them again, they called out the names of countless techniques in clear voices.
“Lightning Cyan Spike!!”
“Searing Note!!”
“Limonene Solvent!!”
“Icilin Strike!!”
“Charged Vine!!”
“Rocket Straight!!”
“Carnage Cannonball!!”
“Superluminal Stroke!!”
“Rangeless Scission!!”
“Spiral!!”
“Wind Bullet!!”
“Radiant Burst!!”
“Heavenly Stratus!!”
Those were about the only individual cries that Haruyuki could make out, but there had to have been at least fifty other voices shouting out at the same time. A rainbow of long-distance special attacks and Incarnate techniques shot up from the ground and raced across the night sky.
It wasn’t their reaction speed that was worthy of rapt admiration, attacks launching the instant the gravitational waves disappeared. No, it was the fact that, despite not having been able to confer with each other and coordinate their attack, the main force of the six Great Legions had all taken aim at the same target. Not Tezcatlipoca’s hands or face, but the White King sitting on her mount, hovering just a little behind the giant’s head.
Given her excessively slender appearance, she couldn’t have had any significant defensive power, even if she was a level niner. If she were hit with fifty simultaneous special attacks and Incarnate techniques, there was no way she would have been able to live through it. As if to offer evidence for this, Platinum Cavalier, holding the reins behind Cosmos, reached for the kite shield under his cloak that sat on his back.
But he was already too late. And even if he wasn’t, this wasn’t the kind of attack that a single shield could completely defend against.
White Cosmos had also judged this to be the case and yanked up the Luminary. In response, Tezcatlipoca moved with a speed that was out of place with its massive bulk. It raised its left hand, the blow that would end everything still hovering above its palm, and intercepted the rainbow bundle of long-distance techniques.
A flash of light.
A moment later, an astonishing explosion dyed the night sky red. The Burst Linkers’ special attacks and Incarnate techniques combined to detonate the tremendous energy charge in Tezcatlipoca’s left hand. A half-second later, a shock wave rocked the stage and made even Haruyuki’s armor squeal.
The giant’s enormous body lurched to one side. Haruyuki was about to reflexively call out a warning, but the Enemy threw its arm out to the side and took a step back, stopping the fall. Haruyuki would have liked to check how much damage the creature had taken, but the health gauge was displayed above its head a hundred meters up. It was impossible to see how many levels it had from the ground.
They hadn’t been able to knock it down, but when it moved its right hand to keep its balance, the gravitational wave attack had disappeared.
I have to take advantage of this chance, Haruyuki thought, but his head still wasn’t working properly, lingering aftereffects of having pushed his imagination too hard.
Suddenly, someone yanked him up.
“Crow, leave the rest to us!” Takumu shouted. Holding Haruyuki firmly with his normal arm, he brandished the Pile Driver of his right high in the air.
The other Burst Linkers also started to move as one, without waiting for commands. The fifty-odd fighters with long-distance attacks got into formation as they readied their next simultaneous attack. The remaining close-range types split into two groups and flew out front. It was a wonderfully coordinated action, but there was something more important than Tezcatlipoca at the moment. After being showered in the gravitational waves at extremely close range, the five kings in the center of the Budokan crater appeared unable to move, all of their armor horribly damaged, even that of the Green King.
“We have to…protect them!” Haruyuki squeezed out a hoarse voice and tried to take a step toward the crater.
“Bro!!” someone shouted from the middle of the long-range group. The pitch of their voice was bittersweet and high—the Yellow Legion’s Lemon Pierrette?
The Yellow King stood to the rear of the five kings, as if hiding, and spread out his abnormally long and slender arms, pulling Blue Knight and Purple Thorn to his right side and Green Grandé and Black Lotus to his left as he cried out the name of a technique. “Clown’s Last Resort!!”
A bright yellow light radiated from his entire body. This was no mere visual effect, but an Incarnate overlay. The light instantly turned into an odious smoke. There was a poof! and the figures of the five kings vanished.
And then yellow smoke puffed up from the center of the joint team to Haruyuki’s right. The night wind blew it away to reveal the five kings standing there.
“Teleportation?!” Takumu gasped.
It was no wonder he was astounded. In the fighting game that was Brain Burst, teleportation was much too strong a power, and as far as Haruyuki knew, Chrome Falcon’s Flash Blink was the sole teleportation technique. But even that was a pseudo teleportation in that it actually transformed the duel avatar into particles and moved them in a straight line at super-high speeds. When he’d become the sixth Chrome Disaster, Haruyuki had rampaged with this very Flash Blink, and the only thing that had been able to stop him was Hexahedral Compression, the special attack of Acceleration Research Society vice president Black Vise. To think that the Yellow King, who appeared least suited of all the kings to fighting, second only to the White King, would have such a powerful technique!
The place where the kings materialized was nearly fifty meters from the center of the crater. If Yellow Radio could teleport over that kind of distance, then couldn’t he have whisked them all away when Inti destroyed Vise’s confinement technique, Icosahedral Insulation, by dropping from the sky?
This question flitted t
hrough Haruyuki’s mind, but now was not the time for that. They had succeeded in defending the kings as a group, but they still weren’t out of the woods.
Resisting the urge to run over to the injured Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki looked up at the night sky. Tezcatlipoca’s massive body was still listing to one side, motionless. The afterimage of the explosion at last faded, and the left hand that had defended against the combined attacks emerged from the smoke.
Except for its thumb, the hand of the giant was essentially destroyed—which meant that some percentage of the force of the attacks had pierced the hand. In which case, the White King wouldn’t have been uninjured. In fact, there was a possibility that she had died, together with Platinum Cavalier.
As he considered this, Haruyuki stared intently into the night sky, and then a quiet commotion rose around him.
A pentagon rose against the snowy white moon, bathed in golden light. A shield—Platinum Cavalier’s kite shield. But it was too big. The shield hid not only Cavalier and the White King but even most of Pegasus.
Without a sound, the kite shield contracted, revealing the two Burst Linkers sitting on the back of Pegasus. They were too far away for him to make out any details, but it appeared that they hadn’t taken any major damage.
“…Damned Bashful. So he’s had a technique like that all this time?” the Blue Legion’s Manganese Blade muttered from his left. It seemed that this was her first time seeing this shield enlargement technique, even though she had fought Platinum Cavalier any number of times.
“But Tezcatlipoca’s left hand was smashed. It shouldn’t be able to do that annihilation technique now,” Cobalt Blade responded, from her place next to Manganese.
Ahead of them, Ardor Maiden looked back for just a second. “The gravity attack alone is a grave threat. We have to prepare so that we’ll be able to destroy it immediately if it makes any move to use its right hand.”
“True…We can’t have Crow shielding us every single time,” Manganese Blade said, and gently patted Haruyuki’s back.