Accel World Vol. 21: The Snow Sprite Read online

  “What?!” Utai let out a small cry. Ardor Maiden’s longbow, Flame Caller, was a superior Enhanced Armament, and it had a range on par with a rifle when the bowstring was pulled all the way back. The arrow should have easily reached the low-hanging clouds and produced a light visible from anywhere in the area, but now this was no signal at all.

  She moved to pull the bowstring back once more, but then her hand froze. She quickly turned her whole small body to the west. Haruyuki had sensed it, too, now. An extremely powerful pressure, enough to shake his avatar to the core. Before he could discern the source, he heard a voice.

  “Any flame’s gonna flicker out in my snow.”

  He’d heard this lisping, sweet young girl’s voice before.

  “Top of Behemoth,” Blood Leopard with her keen eyesight muttered briefly.

  Taking her lead, he narrowed his eyes to peer beyond the falling snow. There was a small human figure on top of the head of the crouching beast who had lost one of his horns; the figure had probably moved there cloaked by the snow and the moonless dawn. He couldn’t make out the details, but there was no mistaking the silhouette of that armor with the snowflake motif. It was the Seven Dwarves’ number two, the one who had chased Haruyuki and Metatron to the Highest Level and tried to sever their link: Snow Fairy.

  So did that mean that it was her Incarnate snow? If it was powerful enough to snuff out Maiden’s flame arrow, then it was truly a terrifyingly powerful technique. But for all that, not only did it not do any damage, he didn’t even feel any cold, so what was—?

  “Crap,” Aqua Current murmured hoarsely as she flicked the fingers of a hand covered in flowing water armor to send droplets of water scattering ahead of her. Like the flame arrow, the shimmering droplets froze instantly a mere ten meters in front of her and fell to the ground like glass beads. “We’re surrounded by a super-low-temperature field.”

  “Huh? S-so then is it just that it’s not cold here?” Haruyuki’s voice was tense, and Sky Raker nodded without a word. He hurriedly surveyed his surroundings again and realized that the snow was falling perpendicularly within a space of about twenty meters around the party only; just beyond that, it was swirling violently. He had no doubt that the second they stepped into that maelstrom, they would be assaulted by a fierce cold and take serious damage.

  “You can’t leave that area now,” came Snow Fairy’s childish voice once more. The falling snow gradually grew thicker, and before he knew it, the buildings on all sides were basically invisible.

  “We could do a power charge and retreat to the portal,” Sky Raker murmured, perhaps judging that the situation would only get worse if they didn’t act soon.

  Ash Roller lightly revved his motorcycle’s engine. “I’ve been waiting for that, Master. You let us take the lead.” Seated behind Ash, Utan and Olive bobbed their heads.

  Fuko gave them a nod in return. “Please do, Ash. When I deploy the defensive wall, take that as a signal and ride south. I’ll cover everyone else, and we’ll run after the motorcycle. All right?”

  Everyone else nodded in unison.

  This exchange was all in whispers and quiet voices, so being twenty meters away, Snow Fairy couldn’t possibly have heard it. But from the other side of the curtain of dancing snowflakes, Haruyuki felt like he could hear a faint giggling, and he clenched his fists before returning Lucid Blade to the sheath hanging on his hip and readying himself for the signal to charge.

  In the center of the party, Fuko slowly brought her hand up and shouted, “Wind Veil!!”

  A brilliant-green overlay jetted from the palm of her hand. This instantly transformed into a whirlwind and expanded, knocking away the snow until they were all wrapped in the wind barrier. Fuko’s Incarnate defensive wall had once protected them from even the fourth quadrant Incarnate technique Rust Order, which the Acceleration Research Society’s Rust Jigsaw had activated, and now it pushed back the vague fear and anxiety Haruyuki had been feeling to give him new energy.

  The rear tire of Ash Roller’s motorcycle spun ferociously. The instant the tread bit into the cobblestones, the three-seater American motorcycle dashed ahead furiously. The remaining fourteen members also shoved off the ground and started to run.

  A hundred meters to Sengakuji Temple’s south gate. From there, depending on the route, it was about a kilometer to Shinagawa Station where the portal was. If they ran at top speed, they could cover the distance in a few minutes. In a formation with the three low-health Petit Paquet members and their depleted health gauges in the center, the team charged into the extremely low temperate space where the Incarnate snowstorm was twisting a blinding white.

  Or at least they were about to.

  “Last Glacial Period.” The weighty technique name chased up from behind and slipped ahead of them.

  Krrrrrr! An incredible roar shook the stage, and something suddenly rose up from the ground around them, blue and clear. Ice. Thick ice pillars popped up to form a circular wall.

  “S’noooo!” Ash Roller put on the brakes. Sparks flying from the front rotor, the machine decelerated, but it didn’t look anywhere close to stopping.

  “Got it!”

  “On it!”

  Cyan Pile and Cassis Moose cried at the same time and came out in front of the motorcycle from either side. Pile attacked the ice wall with his Pile Driver and Moose with the massive horns on his head. The iron pile and the spiked horns slammed into the ice wall at exactly the same moment, and then the two largest avatars on the attacking team stopped in their tracks. Unable to completely absorb the energy they generated, they were thrown backward.

  “Unh!”

  “Nngh!”

  Pile and Moose fell to the ground, and a second later, Ash’s motorcycle also crashed into the ice wall from the side. The three riding it managed to avoid fatal injury by kicking off the wall with their feet, but the mirror flew off, and the muffler bent in half.

  Haruyuki immediately deployed the wings on his back to slow himself down, catching Raker and the others running up from behind him as he cried out, dumbfounded, “It’s…not even scratched?!”

  The ice wall had been hit with the full attack power of both avatars, but he couldn’t see even a scratch, much less a crack in the wall that shone slick in the faint-purple light of the dawn from the east. The wall was a prison ten meters around and even taller than that, completely locking away the seventeen Burst Linkers.

  “This ice was also produced with Incarnayte,” Metatron muttered from his left shoulder.

  Haruyuki reflexively looked back and caught sight of a dark shadow still crouching on the other side of the thick ice. The technique call he’d heard before had to have been Glacier Behemoth’s. When he’d fought Haruyuki, he’d insisted on a clean fight. There had been no surprise attacks, no helping hands, no challenges or jeers. And now he had launched the first strike with an Incarnate attack, the ultimate taboo for Burst Linkers.

  It had been Incarnate power that had forcibly moved them to the Unlimited Neutral Field, and if the Oscillatory side’s intention was to get Nega Nebulus in an Unlimited PK, then obviously they were prepared to do whatever it took right from the start, but even so, Haruyuki couldn’t stop himself from shouting.

  “Behemoth!!”

  Did his voice make it through Fuko’s defensive barrier and the wall of ice to reach him? The massive creature stirred for the first time since their forced move to a new playing field, then slowly stood, Snow Fairy still riding on his head, his sharp eye lenses glittering palely.

  “For the sake of our great cause,” Behemoth announced in his gravelly voice, which felt like it went straight into Haruyuki’s psyche. “And for the sake of all Burst Linkers…You’ll have to be erased here.”

  “Y-your ‘great cause’? For the sake of Burst Linkers?” Haruyuki’s voice was hoarse, as if he was squeezing it out from the depths of his body. “Are you saying…what you’ve done was just?”

  “You all must have realized it by now, too, actual
ly.” It was Snow Fairy who responded, from her perch atop Behemoth’s head. “There’s a far, far more cruel curse on this world than the Armor of Catastrophe, than even the ISS kits.” The arms she stretched out toward the sky seemed far too slim to be part of a fighting game. Her slender silhouette was enveloped in a crisp, bright light. “We will set you free…from this curse that binds you.”

  Her overlay spread out, shaking the air, and the falling snow turned into particles of light with no heat. “Brinicle.”

  The surrounding snow started to spin violently, glittering all the while. Behemoth and Snow Fairy and the entire Sengakuji area were swallowed up in a white light and disappeared. Haruyuki instinctively dropped into a fighting stance, but the pale snowstorm simply raged on the other side of Behemoth’s ice wall.

  Was this another entrapment-type technique to check the movement of the seventeen avatars? In that case, maybe they should smash the ice wall now while they had the chance.

  With this thought in mind, Haruyuki stretched out the fingers of his right hand to activate his Incarnate technique Laser Sword. But before he could focus his imagination, the 3-D icon on his shoulder called out sharply.

  “Servant! Above!”

  Together with his immediate neighbors, who’d also heard the tiny voice, Haruyuki turned his head to the dawn sky. The rest of the group soon followed suit. A funnel-shaped white cloud was descending slowly.

  It was shuddering, a whirlwind spinning at incredibly high speeds—an ice tornado.

  Was this tornado the true form of Snow Fairy’s Incarnate technique Brinicle? If so, it was painfully slow for an attack technique. The tornado stretched out at a speed of about one second per meter—in other words, the tip that was currently thirty meters above them would take about thirty seconds to reach the ground where Haruyuki and his friends stood.

  There wasn’t a Burst Linker alive who would stand by helplessly to be hit with this technique if Fairy had activated it on its own, meaning the technique required that its target first be restrained through some other means. An attack in which speed was completely abandoned for the sake of some other power…

  “This is bad…” Thistle Porcupine’s hoarse voice backed up Haruyuki’s thinking. The fluffy fur on her back stood on end, perhaps because of her extreme tension. “That Incarnate technique’s prob’ly the type that’s all attack power; get hit, and you die. If you can’t dodge or defend, you’re in big trouble.”

  “Anyone who can use a defensive-type Incarnate technique, get ready to defend!” Team leader Fuko responded quickly. “Anyone who can use physical or fire types, smash this wall!”

  “R-roger!!” Haruyuki shouted back immediately, and now he really did focus his awareness in his right hand. To one side, Takumu grabbed the tip of the pile poking out of his Enhanced Armament with his left hand, while beside him, Akira crossed both arms in front of her.

  “Cyan Blade!!”

  “Phase Trans! Keen!”

  The two blue types shouted their technique names simultaneously, causing a gush of overlay in different shades of blue. Cyan Pile’s Pile Driver transformed into a great two-handed sword, Aqua Current’s flowing armor into frozen armor and a katar shield.

  Ash Roller, who hadn’t learned any Incarnate techniques as a matter of general principle; Bush Utan and Olive Grab, who had kept their distance from anything bearing the Incarnate name since they were freed of the ISS kits; the Petit Paquet group, who had only just learned of the existence of the Incarnate System from Fuko and the others; and Lime Bell, who hadn’t fully mastered an Incarnate technique yet, were put in the center of the circle, and the remaining members of the group positioned themselves to activate their individual Incarnate techniques.

  The defenders were Sky Raker, who had already activated her Wind Veil; Ardor Maiden, who turned her longbow into a handheld fan; and Cassis Moose, who had a purple overlay in his massive horns. The attackers were Silver Crow, together with Cyan Pile; Aqua Current; Blood Leopard, who had grown the claws on her hands to a great length; Magenta Scissor, with large knives ready on her hips; and Thistle Porcupine, who had changed the fur on her back into sharp needles.

  It took ten seconds for them all to make their preparations after Fuko’s shouted instructions, and the tip of the white tornado had already dropped down to fifteen meters above them.

  Fifteen seconds left. For Burst Linkers with focus pushed to their actual limits, this was definitely not a short time period.

  “We move together!” Fuko shouted.

  Haruyuki turned toward the ice wall at the same time as Takumu and the others and dropped into position. Behind him, Fuko, Utai, and Cassis brandished hands toward the tornado.

  “Three, two, one, zero!!”

  Haruyuki swung his right hand. “Laser…Sword!!” He’d focused his imagination around the singular resolve of smashing the wall, and now it produced a sword of light.

  Takumu and Akira brandished their steel greatsword and icy dagger, too.

  “Aaaaah!!” A battle cry ripping out of his throat, Haruyuki moved to pierce the thick ice wall Glacier Behemoth had created.

  In that instant, in the corner of his eye, someone who had not been there a mere second earlier popped into existence. It wasn’t exactly a sudden appearance, though. Haruyuki felt more like it was just that he’d finally now noticed someone who’d been there right from the start.

  The time between Haruyuki activating his Incarnate technique and the sword coming into contact with the ice wall had to have been at best 0.2 or 0.3 seconds. But in that brief instant, he saw someone appear, put up a hand, and activate an Incarnate technique in a wan voice.

  “Imaginary Time.”

  The technique generated absolutely no light, no sound, not even a vibration. Haruyuki’s health gauge didn’t drop so much as a pixel. The Incarnate sword in his right arm simply vanished.

  To his side, the two-handed sword that Takumu had been about to bring down also disappeared, and on his other side, the ice armor covering Akira’s body melted. Fuko’s Incarnate defensive wall that had enveloped them all was also gone.

  Dumbfounded, Haruyuki was unable to pull out of the blow he was in the middle of dealing, the force of his entire body and soul behind it, and his striking hand crashed into the wall. Naturally, not only was the wall not smashed, it wasn’t even scratched, and the armor of his own fingers creaked as a sharp pain overtook him.

  But he barely even registered this.

  An Incarnate technique to cancel other Incarnate techniques. He couldn’t believe something like that even existed, but that was the only explanation he could come up with.

  “Wha—?!” Takumu cried.

  “Impossible!” Akira muttered.

  Haruyuki turned to the left and looked directly at the duel avatar who had abruptly appeared.

  A tall, slender silhouette like a tapered stick. Face mask with neither nose nor mouth. The armor covering his body was a pale, shiny porcelain-like ivory. One of the Seven Dwarves, the full proxy for the White King, Ivory Tower.

  Haruyuki had only ever seen him at the meetings of the Seven Kings; he’d never fought him nor even seen him on the battlefield. His shock at someone like this suddenly showing up and exhibiting a terrifyingly powerful technique—one that could wipe out the Incarnate of nine people in an instant—quickly changed to fear.

  They couldn’t move from where they stood unless they destroyed the ice prison locking them away—Glacier Behemoth’s Last Glacial Period. Snow Fairy’s Brinicle was closing in from the sky above, sure to do massive damage if it swallowed them up. The tip of the tornado had already reached the space directly above the heads of the party, and they had six—no, five seconds until it touched down.

  “Corvus!!” The first to pick herself up from the shock and fear and break the momentary standstill was Fuko.

  ““Run!!”” she and Metatron both shouted to him at the same time.

  And indeed, in this situation, the only one who could get over t
he 10-meter ice wall and escape was the winged Silver Crow. But he could never abandon his precious comrades just to save himself. But he brushed away this instant of hesitation. Fuko wasn’t ordering him to run for sentimental reasons. If just one of them could escape, they would still have a chance to turn the situation around. In the worst-case scenario, the attacking team could be annihilated on that very spot, and they had to avoid that at all costs.

  “Okay!!” he shouted, his voice cracking with heartbreak, and spread the wings on his back.

  Three seconds until the lethal tornado touched down.

  Just one of them, at least. Haruyuki made an instantaneous decision about the lightest avatar closest to him and stretched his arms out as far as they would go. “Bell!!”

  Two seconds left.

  Lime Bell reflexively offered her own hands at Haruyuki’s call. He kicked off the ground, and clutching those hands, he vibrated the wings on his back with all his might.

  One second.

  Hanging onto Chiyuri tightly with both arms, Haruyuki lifted off, while behind him, a spinning drill of freezing air passed by him. It couldn’t have touched him, yet he felt a stabbing chill on his back, and his health gauge dropped ever so slightly.

  “Nngh!” Gritting his teeth, he flew up toward the outside in the gap between the ice wall and the tornado.

  At the same time, the cool whirling air reached the ground.

  “Aah!” Chiyuri cried out in sorrow. And, at the edges of his vision, Haruyuki saw why.

  The interior of the ice wall, ten meters around, was instantly dyed a snowy white. Diamond dust glittering in the pale dawn’s light swirled and cloaked his comrades from view. And then, in the center of the space, pale-blue and purple and then brown light effects erupted upward one after another. Having already taken serious damage in the battle with Behemoth, Chocolat, Mint, and Plum had died, unable to withstand the tornado. A little after that, two green effects. Utan and Olive.

  Haruyuki assumed—or rather hoped desperately—that the death effects would stop there.