Accel World Vol. 21: The Snow Sprite Read online

  “Nin!” The ninja uttered a strange cry, and instead of retreating, he took a step closer and caught the sword on his forehead. The headband armor shattered soon enough, but a metal band like the bowl of a helmet was wrapped around the forehead of the naked body, bringing the slicing sword to a halt. Once again, a shower of sparks erupted.

  “Whoa!” Haruyuki had put everything he had into the blow when he launched it in midair, and now with this unexpected defense, he lost his balance.

  “Dan!” the ninja grunted, and the sword in his left hand flashed.

  Haruyuki desperately thrust backward with his wings, but the shortsword slid into a gap in between the armor of his forearm and the palm of his hand to cut into the naked body of his avatar. Fortunately, the cut was shallow, and he lost less than 5 percent of his health gauge, but if it had been a few centimeters deeper, he would have lost the use of his right hand.

  Once he succeeded in somehow managing to put some distance between them, he readjusted his grip on his sword, clenching his teeth against the pain in his hand. The ninja also readied his blade in a backhand grip without a word.

  Judging from the earlier shadow surprise attack and this blow just now, it was clear the man was aiming for Haruyuki’s extremities—a fighting style that sought to do damage by amputation, terrifying.

  But Haruyuki didn’t get the sense that he was enjoying the duel in the slightest. Maybe that was only natural in this situation, though—Oscillatory was trying to drive all the members of Nega Nebulus to total point loss; this was nothing other than total slaughter.

  Haruyuki wanted to at least ask his opponent’s name, but he got the feeling that the other Burst Linker would never answer him, so he closed his mouth before it was fully open and focused his entire mind on the tip of Lucid Blade.

  Lucid was an adjective meaning aware, with the root word apparently being the Latin word for light. And just as the name would suggest, the sword had one special ability. To activate it, he needed to fight under normal status and charge his attack-energy gauge above a certain amount; but after the intense battle with Behemoth, he more than met that condition.

  “Conversion.”

  In response to Haruyuki’s voice command, Lucid Blade’s silver body was enveloped in a pure-white light from the base as it whined in vibration. And it wasn’t simply glowing. The metal sword itself was transformed into a so-called energy blade. In this state, the sword lost basically all mass and could no longer catch or reflect the hard bodies of weapons or bullets. Instead, it would cause essentially all objects to melt due to its super-high temperature, and if the weapon was such high priority that it could withstand this heat, the blade would instead slip through it. Most likely, his adversary’s sword was in that range.

  And yet, Haruyuki had a reason for daring to “convert” Lucid Blade—the powerful light that the sword itself generated.

  After narrowing his eye lenses momentarily at the dazzling brightness of the energy blade, the ninja glanced down at his feet. He must have noticed the new shadow trying to make an appearance at his feet because the gradually increasing brightness of the dawn had been wiped out by the light of the sword. Of course, deep shadows were cut into the world behind them, but if the ninja’s Shadow Lurker was the same level as Black Vise’s, then he wouldn’t be able to dive into his own shadow.

  Meanwhile, Haruyuki had used up his special-attack gauge in the full-powered back thrust earlier. From now on, this would be a simple contest of technique against technique.

  “It’s okay! I’m going to win!” In his mind, Haruyuki spoke to Chiyuri and Metatron silently watching over him. He knew they had faith in him, but they were also likely on pins and needles. He readied the lightsword in the orthodox midway position in front of himself.

  At the same time, the ninja followed suit, his own sword before him diagonally in a backhand grip. His right hand still clutched the two bo-shuriken, but at sword’s length, he wouldn’t be able to throw them. The next time Haruyuki charged in, he would press in on his opponent until the end, glued to him.

  Building up resolve deep in his stomach, Haruyuki moved to kick off the steel ground just as the ninja’s body blurred gray—his super-high-speed movement. But this time, Haruyuki didn’t miss seeing the slight change in his center of gravity.

  Left!

  He obeyed his instincts over visual confirmation and launched a horizontal slash.

  Bwon! The lightsword hummed, and the tip caught a hazy shadow. A pale beam of light scattered from the thin armor, but then the ninja’s figure blurred in flowing lines once more.

  Up…No, down!

  Holding his breath, Haruyuki yanked back the consciousness that was turning toward the sky and moved to beat directly downward with the lightsword.

  But before he could, the ninja plastered himself to the floor like a giant spider and slid his shortsword toward Haruyuki’s ankle.

  He could dodge it if he jumped. But given that he couldn’t use his wings, he wouldn’t be able to respond to the next hit if he leapt up into the air. And more importantly…

  “Here!” Haruyuki kicked at the oncoming blade with everything he had.

  Skreek! The earsplitting sound of metal clashing rang in his ears, as orange sparks and crimson particles jetted outward.

  The sword flew out of the ninja’s hand and clattered onto the floor, but Haruyuki’s right leg was severed at the ankle at the same time. The pain—fireworks and electric shocks—raced up to the top of his head, but he gritted his teeth and brought his sword down.

  Because of his unnatural position, the blow didn’t carry his full weight, but the lightsword’s attack didn’t require weight; as the ninja tried to roll away on the floor, the energy blade cut into his left shoulder, melting the arm away from its base with a roaring impact.

  One more…hit!

  He braced his severed leg on the floor, and the intense pain caused his field of view to go white again, but he clenched his teeth and brandished the lightsword. Using his special-attack gauge, now recharged thanks to the massive damage both taken and inflicted, he gave everything he had to a thrust dash.

  The shining blade was sucked in toward the shoulder of the enemy, who was starting to get to his feet. All he had to do was bring it down, and the ninja avatar would be severed in two. The tip of the blade made contact with the blue-gray armor and instantly melted—

  Haruyuki’s entire body creaked and groaned to a stop.

  Stunned, he opened his eyes wide, but not only had he stopped moving, he couldn’t even speak. It was as if he were completely encased in transparent plastic. His body was leaning forward as far as possible with only the toes of his left foot touching the floor, yet Lucid Blade’s impact-energy gauge dropped to zero, and the blade returned to its original metal form.

  The ninja slipped out from beneath the sword on the verge of ripping through his left shoulder and stood up straight. Haruyuki finally noticed that the two bo-shuriken had disappeared from his right hand at some point.

  Had he thrown them in the middle of battle? But they weren’t piercing his duel avatar anywhere, and anyway a simple numbness was one thing, but there was no way a poison that could bring about this mysterious freezing could actually exist.

  When he managed to move his eyes and shift his gaze as far to the left as possible, he saw that Chiyuri was similarly frozen in place at the edge of the roof. She was reaching out a hand toward him as if to warn him of something. A long shadow stretched out from her feet, the product of the morning sun. And at the tip, in the center of the silhouette of her pointed hat, a dark, long, slender piece of metal—the ninja’s shuriken—was standing quietly.

  Even as he told himself it was impossible, he sent his gaze racing toward his own shadow, the place where Chiyuri was pointing. And there, in the head of Silver Crow’s shadow, wings stretching out from his back, he found the other shuriken.

  As Haruyuki noticed this, Metatron’s voice rang out in his mind. “Servant, this is di
rect interference with the Mean Level—the power of the Incarnayte System!”

  “A-an Incarnate technique?!” He was ready to retort that he hadn’t heard any technique name, but then he noticed that the shuriken piercing the head of his shadow was enveloped in an extremely faint gray haze. There was no mistake: That was Incarnate overlay.

  The call of a technique name was an important trigger in activating Incarnate techniques, but unlike special attacks, it wasn’t a factor required by the system. The man must have spent long hours training so he could activate the technique without shouting the name. And not only that. During battle, he had probably tossed the two shuriken straight upward and had them drop down precisely on the heads of Chiyuri’s and Haruyuki’s shadows. This, too, was amazing.

  Frozen in place, sword brandished in one hand, Haruyuki heard the hoarse voice of his opponent.

  “Secret technique, Shadow Tying.” The announcement of the name came very much after the fact.

  The ninja picked up his shortsword deftly and flipped it around to point down, showing no hint of the pain of having his left arm melted away.

  “Your life is forfeit!” he hissed, closing the distance between them as though he were sliding along the steel floor surface. Divine speed and a special sword attack closed in on Haruyuki’s neck.

  If he died there, the ninja would take Chiyuri’s head next. He’d do it over and over and drive both of them to total point loss. Haruyuki couldn’t let that happen.

  Placing all his bets on a sliver of hope, he concentrated his imagination into his wings. If he was being held by an Incarnate technique, then it was possible to break the restraint with an Incarnate technique. He couldn’t speak, so he wouldn’t be able to yell the technique name, but even still, he had to try. Forgetting at some point the pain in his right leg, Haruyuki mustered up every bit of his mental energy.

  Light…

  But he couldn’t activate the Incarnate technique.

  The ninja also couldn’t take Haruyuki’s head, however.

  “Blast Wave!!”

  He heard a cool, clear shout, accompanied by a high-speed shock wave coming right at him—or rather, a crescent-moon-shaped slicing wave slammed into the ninja.

  Now he did indeed show a reaction, throwing up his shortsword in defense, but he was pushed backward over ten meters altogether, the ground squealing and creaking beneath him.

  A figure landed silently between Haruyuki and his adversary. Haruyuki knew who it was simply from the voice.

  The design of the armor, shining a deep sapphire blue, was reminiscent of an ancient noble. The hairstyle of a young samurai, not yet come of age, and the cool, sky-blue eye lenses. In his right hand was held a somewhat slender straightsword, an overwhelming sense of presence clinging to it.

  Trilead Tetroxide. The young samurai had only just joined Nega Nebulus before the start of the Territories, and now he glanced at Haruyuki, nodding as if to say, “Leave this to me.”

  Facing forward again, he readjusted his grip on the two-handed sword. It was one of the Seven Arcs, The Infinity.

  Trilead had been instructed to stay on standby to the rear until the opening of hostilities. Most likely, he’d noticed Haruyuki in flight and the ninja in pursuit and had come after them. Given that he didn’t have the ability to dive into shadows or anything, he’d have to have undertaken the life-threatening and serious task of climbing the hotel wall. But Trilead had climbed it. To save Haruyuki and Chiyuri.

  “Oh, Lead…,” Haruyuki earnestly called out to his friend in his immovable mouth.

  “You’ve been saved, hmm, Servant?” Metatron also sounded relieved, having already met Trilead in the Castle.

  “Yeah…But…” He pushed away the new anxiety bleeding into his heart without letting it into his thoughts.

  Lead would win. He was the sole child of the Anomaly Graphite Edge, and he’d trained to become a transcendent swordsman, befitting the owner of an Arc.

  Haruyuki prayed desperately, still restrained by the ninja’s Incarnate technique.

  The navy ninja and sapphire samurai continued to face each other wordlessly. The tips of both the shortsword, with its dull-steel-gray blade, and the straightsword, with its hint of icy blue, didn’t so much as twitch, both aimed squarely at their opponents.

  In the silence, only the massive morning sun continued to inch its way upward. The buildings standing to the east of the hotel were already showing more than half their faces, and the bloodred light of the dawn pierced the thick clouds of the Demon City stage to shine down on them. The ninja stood on the west side and Lead on the east, so Lead’s shadow stretched out near the enemy’s feet. If a shuriken got lodged in his head, Lead would also be rendered immobile, so Haruyuki wanted to warn him somehow, but he still couldn’t even speak.

  “He’ll be all right, Servant,” Metatron spoke to him in his mind, as if reading his thoughts—or maybe she had actually read them, in fact. “Trilead Tetroxide must have realized that the dagger plunged into your shadow is the reason you cannot move.”

  “Yeah…And that dagger’s called a shuriken.”

  “Oh-ho! I shall remember this.”

  It wasn’t as though Trilead could have heard Metatron, but for a mere instant, he dropped his gaze to the shuriken plunged into Haruyuki’s shadow.

  Instantly, the ninja moved. His sword-arm flashed like lightning, and he pulled a third shuriken out from his chest with his fingertips. With just a snap of his wrist, he tossed it at Lead’s shadow on the floor.

  Clack! A hard sound rang out, and the sharp blade dug into the steel floor.

  But the instant before it did, reacting at a speed that would have been impossible had he not been anticipating the blow, Lead turned his head and made his shadow dodge the shuriken. He planted a foot hard on the floor.

  “Kaaaaaaaah!!” With a shriek, he launched a slicing stroke diagonally to the right.

  It was incredibly fast; so fast that even Haruyuki’s eyes couldn’t pick it up, and he was accustomed to high-speed battle. There couldn’t have been many swordmasters in the Accelerated World who could have swung the two-handed greatsword that was The Infinity at such a speed.

  However.

  The blow with Trilead’s full weight behind it sliced through only an afterimage of the ninja, barely visible as he zipped through the air. The blast of wind kicked up by the Arc made the thick steel floor shudder. Having swung the heavy blade, Lead sank down, bending at the knees to absorb the massive inertial energy.

  The ninja didn’t miss this hint of an opening.

  “Zan!” Having dodged Lead’s blow, the ninja flashed his shortsword as he passed by. A red damage effect shot off the young samurai’s right elbow, and deep-blue fragments followed.

  Straightening up again, Trilead tried to counterattack with a horizontal slash while turning around forcefully, but by that time, the ninja had already put some space between them again.

  Fortunately for Lead, the armor shape around his elbows was complicated, and while the ninja had been looking for severance damage, he hadn’t managed to completely catch the seam. Trilead had barely managed to avoid having his right arm severed, but the tip of the ninja’s sword had to have reached down to his avatar’s flesh, causing him intense pain. Worry wormed its way into Haruyuki’s heart.

  Trilead Tetroxide had been inside the Castle all this time, meaning that this was probably his first person-to-person fight that wasn’t training. And it wasn’t even in the Normal Duel Field, but in the Unlimited Neutral Field, in a slaughter where Incarnate techniques were more than possible and extra-painful.

  Naturally, Lead had undergone extensive, even cruel training with Graphite Edge, one of the most powerful swordsmen in the Accelerated World. Strong enough to freely manipulate the Arc of Infinity, which Haruyuki would have barely been able to hold on to. Trilead was easily in master territory, technique-wise.

  But in a real battle where anything could happen, you couldn’t win with skills alone. Yo
u needed the determination to deceive your opponent, hide yourself, and use anything and everything at your disposal.

  And the shadow-using ninja was no doubt a master of attacking his opponents’ weak points, given that he had named the Acceleration Research Society’s Black Vise his master. To fight an opponent like this, Trilead’s sword was too beautiful, too pure—and too honest.

  Crimson light dripping from his elbow, Lead readied his sword directly in front of himself once more.

  The dark eyes of the ninja shone coldly beneath his metal forehead covering.

  “It’s no use, Lead. No matter how fast you strike, if you show any initial motion, you’ll never hit that ninja!” Haruyuki called desperately in his mind, but his thoughts couldn’t reach Lead.

  His comrade had to have felt the fierce speed of the ninja. But the young samurai did not flinch; he attacked from square one once more. Taking a large step forward, he brandished the greatsword.

  “Seiyaaaaaah!”

  A heroic downward strike from on high, enough to sever even the air. It wasn’t a special attack, yet pale sparks bounded across the stage, and even Haruyuki’s body, in forced stasis, shuddered and shook.

  This was a blow so powerful that if it hit its target, Haruyuki wouldn’t have been surprised if it ripped his health gauge out from the root. But his misgivings turned to reality once more.

  “Nin!!”

  Call echoing in the air, the ninja’s figure blurred. With divine speed, he dodged the powerful blow and shot out with a counterattack in a flash of white light.

  The sword shimmered, and a large damage effect jetted from the back of Lead’s neck. The ninja wasn’t aiming for the limbs, but rather instant death through beheading.

  A second layer of ice descended on Haruyuki’s body as he stared while Lead swayed. But the samurai managed to brace himself somehow. A wound about five centimeters long was revealed when the droplets of virtual blood had settled down.

  The reason his head hadn’t been completely cut off was because Lead’s downward slice had been exaggeratedly full power—or put another way, he had attacked with the intent of sacrificing his own self. The gut knowledge that the ninja wouldn’t escape with a mere scratch made him take an extra-large step to avoid the blade.