Accel World Vol 8 Chapter 4 (1/2)

Chapter 4

…Haru.

…Hey, wake up, Haru.

Having the feeling that he had been called by someone, he slightly lifted his eyelids. His surroundings were a deep gray. From the other side, a hazy figure of a person.

“…It’s still dark…let me sleep a bit more…”

Mumbling indistinctly, he tried to lie flat again, but this time his shoulder was shaken back and forth.

“Wake up, Haru.”

That voice’s echo, which in some way seemed urgent, slightly awakened his consciousness, which felt as if it were wrapped in cotton. He reluctantly opened his eyes again. As expected, it was dim. In this season, it was still around four at most.

“What’s happened, Chiyu…”

While speaking in a hoa.r.s.e voice, Haruyuki strongly blinked and forcibly opened his eyelids.

From directly opposite, the one placing her hand on the right shoulder of Haruyuki who was lying on the left side of his body was Chiyuri as expected. A slender silhouette sitting plopped down. Short hair, and atop that a large three-cornered hat. A bright green semitransparent armor covering her entire body. In her left hand, a large hand bell Enhanced Armament…

“—Eh?”

His consciousness finally more than half awake, Haruyuki jumped up like a spring mechanism. At that moment, his body rang with a crack. What were there were not his vertically striped half-sleeved pajamas—it was his mirror surface armor that shone silver.

Fl.u.s.tered, he looked at his hands and touched his face. Without checking the feel of his smooth mask, he knew this was his duel avatar Silver Crow. And the yellow-green avatar sitting before his eyes was Chiyuri’s Lime Bell.

…Why? Had Chiyu challenged him while he was half asleep?

First having thought that, he turned his eyes upward to try to check the health gauge and time count that were supposed to be in the upper part of his field of vision. However, there was nothing there. The green bar, the engraved number of 1800 seconds, and all the other overlay displays did not exist.

However, that was impossible. Since they had became duel avatars—basically, since they were making a full dive into a duel stage, no matter whether it was the normal duel field or the Unlimited Neutral Field, without exception one’s own health bar was visible, and it was not possible to erase it by changing one’s settings either.

If so, then this was a dream.

Sitting with his legs still sprawled out, Haruyuki tried to pinch his own cheek with his right hand. However, it was blocked by his hard helmet, and he couldn’t touch it. Still with halfway fuzzy thoughts, he thought about subst.i.tuting with Chiyuri’s cheek and began to reach his hand out to the avatar sitting immediately to his left. There, he remembered that all avatars’ face masks were hard in the first place. Other places that seemed able to be pinched…now that he thought about it, how about female F-cla.s.s avatars’ chests below their armor…

While thinking that vacantly, Haruyuki moved his left hand, and into the round protuberance peeking out from below Lime Bell’s mantle armor, with his index finger—.

Squish. That feeling was transmitted through his fingertips half a second later.

“Wh, what’re you doing!”

At the same time as her shout, ring! A tremendous impact accompanied with a large reverberation directly hit the crown of his head. With the Enhanced Armament «Choir Chime» in her left hand, Lime Bell had hit Silver Crow with all her might.

“Ooh!”

After causing the yellow chicks around the area of his head to tweet for a while, Haruyuki finally completely awakened his consciousness and suddenly lifted his head. Quickly looking around at his surroundings, he noticed that it was not the Arita household’s living room. It was a dim tube-shaped s.p.a.ce. To his right-hand side was a dead end, but to his left was a thin tunnel that seemed to continue forever while turning and twisting.

This was not a dream. However, it was not a normal «duel» either. Due to some irregular phenomenon, while sleeping, with Chiyuri the two of them had dived into this completely unknown s.p.a.ce.

…The two of them?

“…! Wh, where’s Taku!?”

He checked his surroundings again, but Cyan Pile’s huge frame was nowhere to be seen. He turned his gaze to Chiyuri; the verdant green avatar glaring at Haruyuki while further covering her chest with both hands changed her expression to a seemingly worried one and softly shook her three-cornered hat left and right.

“I don’t know…I also had just awoken here a moment ago. When I got up, I had become a duel avatar, you were sleeping beside me, and Takkun wasn’t here…”

“…Is that so…”

Below his helmet, he thought for a moment.

Both of them had transformed into duel avatars, but since neither the time count nor their health/special technique gauges existed, it was clearly not the normal duel field. He had unconsciously tried to deploy his wings, but even though he could usually just bring out his wings even if his gauge were zero, right now they did not even respond with a twitch. It seemed that all abilities had completely been made ineffective.

If that were so, there was only one thing of which he could think. This unnatural phenomenon was probably—no, was without a doubt something that the «ISS Kit» parasitically inhabiting Tak.u.mu had caused. Haruyuki and Chiyuri, who had been sleeping while directly connected to him, had been pulled into the phenomenon through the XSB cable. To put it briefly, it could be said in a sense that right now the two of them were inside Tak.u.mu’s dream.

If so, then Tak.u.mu must also inevitably exist in this world. Why they couldn’t see his figure was surely because he had moved somewhere. Into the depths of the dark tunnel extending endlessly to the left-hand side.

“…Let’s go, Chiyu. We have to search for Taku.”

“Unh, got it.”

Chiyuri, who had apparently reached almost the same conclusion as Haruyuki, immediately nodded. Haruyuki lifted his body up from a sitting position with a vertical jump impossible with his real body and lent his left hand to Chiyuri, helping her up.

Lime bell did not release her hand even after having stood up; on the contrary Lime Bell tightly squeezed it. Lightly squeezing back, he tried feeling this wall surface with his right hand. It was not earth or cement. It was a deep gray soft tissue having an odd elasticity. Its faint temperature and minute ring-shaped pleats were completely like the interior of a living thing’s body—no, otherwise it was that very thing.

Looking at each other, they exchanged nods once, and with their hands still joined the two began to advance briskly into the depths of the tunnel.

Their sense of time and distance were lost in the wink of an eye.

It was even unclear whether the two of them were «accelerating» in the first place. If they were in a non-accelerating state, the home server alarm set to go off at seven in the morning would probably knock them awake sometime, but if they were accelerating then time would have might as well stopped. Or they maybe could have been able to leave this queer world with the «Burst Out» command, but they had reserves about leaving Tak.u.mu behind. The reason was that if they were in the midst of accelerating, then in the few seconds that they awoke in the real world and woke up Tak.u.mu sleeping next to them, in this place a vast amount of time would have pa.s.sed by.

He had probably seen this dream yesterday night too. Then he must have received some kind of interference in his heart and been injected with a black something.

In that case, at this moment as well, that process might be progressing. What he had finally begun to take back through his direct connection duel with Haruyuki might be stolen once more…

That impatience caused his feet to quicken; before he knew it Haruyuki was running while pulling Chiyuri’s hand. Chiyuri’s feelings were probably the same; she was following the speed-cla.s.s Silver Crow with all her might. The two avatars kept running, running in the tunnel that extended while twisting and turning.

He had thought rather about flying with the wings on his back, but for whatever reason it seemed like his «flying ability» could not be used in this place. With his metal fins tucked in, no matter how much he focused his consciousness they did not move.

When he felt that they had probably exceeded five kilometers, at that moment.

Finally from the path before them, a faint light could be seen.

“An exit..?”

To Chiyuri’s voice, he nodded back and raised his speed even more.

They ran the remaining dozens of meters in one go; before the eyes of the two who had broke out of the tunnel at last—suddenly, a sight they had not antic.i.p.ated in the slightest appeared.

It was outer s.p.a.ce.

No; precisely, it slightly differed. A jet black s.p.a.ce that could be thought of as stretching out endlessly, and countless points of light coloring it. In the direction far above the heads of the two who had stood still dumbfounded, the cl.u.s.ter of points of light agglomerated densely and beautifully sparkled like a circular galaxy. However, what was different about it from a starry sky was that those lights were swaying and moving incessantly. One ray of light collided with the other still rays of light, and this time those began to move, b.u.mping into the next ones. That chain reaction was continuing in the entire galaxy without end. Just like gigantic three-dimensional billiards—or like some kind of network.

Since he could not get a grasp of the sense of distance, he did not know the precise size of the «swaying galaxy». However, Haruyuki intuitively felt that if he tried to draw right next to it, that cl.u.s.ter of light would spread probably spread out to a cosmic scale.

He looked at his back for a moment; the tunnel out of which he and Chiyuri had come was still existing there as if it were a hole opening to s.p.a.ce. From the tunnel, a thin bridge of two meters’ breadth extended and seemed to continue to the downward jet black s.p.a.ce. The two were standing at the foot of that bridge.

Returning his gaze again to the beautifully sparkling cl.u.s.ter of stars, with his left hand still grasping Chiyuri’s right he stood bolt upright; from his left, a faint whisper fell out.

“…Amazing…”

Nodding to that, Haruyuki also murmured in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

“What on earth…is that…”

To that question—somebody responded from his immediate right side.

“«Main Visualizer».”

“Eh..!?”

“Wh, who is it!?”

Raising a voice of surprise at the same time as Chiyuri, he turned to his right. Close to the edge of the thin pa.s.sageway where the two were, a slender silhouette that definitely had not existed until a moment before was standing inconspicuously.

It was not Tak.u.mu—Cyan Pile. Of course, it was not another legion member either. It was an F-cla.s.s duel avatar possessing a flower petal motif design on every part of her body. Her armor color was a warm bright golden yellow reminiscent of the suns.h.i.+ne of spring.

The moment he saw that figure, Haruyuki relaxed his guard and whispered to Chiyuri.

“It’s okay Chiyu, it’s not an enemy.”

“Eh…is she your acquaintance? If she is, then why is she here..? Isn’t this Takkun’s «dream»..?”

Answering that question was hard for Haruyuki too. However, while striving to somehow put the information he knew in an easily understandable form, he spoke.

“Um…this person’s not inside of Taku but inside of me. To be exact, she’s inside the Enhanced Armament I have, «The Destiny»…That’s right, isn’t it..?”

Last evening, Haruyuki had roughly explained to Chiyuri the matters concerning the Destiny, the sixth Divine Weapon that he had summoned. To Haruyuki’s inquiry, the bright golden yellow avatar slightly tilted her head.

“You could say it’s both like that and it’s not. It’s true that I exist inside the «Destiny», but because the main body of the Destiny is doc.u.mented inside this world…”

“Eh..? What’s that supposed to…Besides that, what’s the Main…Visualizer you were talking about at first..?”

To the question he further asked, the mysterious girl returned a greatly surprising answer.

“To put it in your words, it’s the «Brain Burst central server».”

“..!!”

This time for sure he was shocked from the bottom of his heart; he along with Chiyuri froze their whole bodies.

The Brain Burst central server, whose place of existence was unknown, was the so-called «main body» of the Accelerated World. Containing all Burst Linkers’ statuses, it was truly the core of the world, recording Brain Burst’s each and every bit of data, calculating every change, and moving every enemy.

The central server, which rejected all irregular interference and only permitted players to imagine its existence, was in front of their eyes…no, the bright golden yellow avatar had said that they were already inside it.

“Bu…but why did such a thing..? Even though veterans say it’s absolutely impenetrable…”

After he whispered that in a quivering voice, the girl faintly smiled—so he felt.

“Of course, that’s true. However, we were given just one way to make our hands touch the natural laws of the world. You already know what it is.”

“Make our hands touch…the natural laws of the world…”

After parroting her words in a murmur, Haruyuki abruptly opened his eyes.

“The «Incarnate system»..? The power of one’s image…using «imagination circuits», overwriting phenomena…”

“Correct. A very strong as well as saddening power…”

While listening to the words of the girl who was nodding, Haruyuki remembered something for a moment.

This was not the first time that he had encountered this bright golden yellow avatar. That had happened during the final stage of the direct connection duel carried out with Tak.u.mu in Tak.u.mu’s room today, no, probably already yesterday night.

From inside Haruyuki, who had been blasted away by Tak.u.mu’s «Dark Blow» and had lost the strength even to stand up, the girl had appeared. At that time, sure enough she had said it. That “because the circuits to thecentral system had been temporarily activated, I was able to talk with you, Haruyuki.”

The central system was namely the BB server, the «Main Visualizer» that the girl had mentioned. And the circuits were—«imagination circuits». It was the root of the Incarnate system, the path of conveying one’s image power to the natural laws of the world.

“But…we haven’t been using the Incarnate system..? What’s what, I don’t understand well what Mind Power is either…to begin with, we were sleeping, both of us…”

Chiyuri, who had been behind and to the left of Haruyuki up until now, took a step forward and asked that.

If one looked again, Lime Bell and the mysterious bright golden yellow avatar had completely opposite armor colors, but their entire body design lines were similar in some respect. They did not just have the point in common of having «leaf» and «flower petal» exterior motifs but also something deeper and more fundamental.

The girl who had seen Chiyuri nodded slowly and pointed with her left hand to the dark, long tunnel through which the two had pa.s.sed.

“This tunnel is precisely the «imagination circuit». The two of you had followed the circuit of your friend, whose heart you were connected to, and arrived as far as here.”

“Eh…T, Taku’s..!?”

“Then…right now, is Tak.u.mu invoking the Incarnate system..?”

The two of them raised their voices one after the other, but the girl gently shook her head sideways.

“This image is not his own. It’s a tunnel joined by the black power that’s penetrated inside him. —Over there.”

This time, the girl lifted her right hand and indicated the tip of the pa.s.sageway that disappeared into jet black s.p.a.ce. The floating bridge, which extended while twisting and turning, seemed to descend into the depths, into the depths of s.p.a.ce as if to avoid the sparkling, vast galaxy high in the sky. After squinting hard, far ahead through the darkness through which he had seen—.

An avatar who was walking totteringly step by step while doubling his large frame over and deeply hanging his head was slightly visible.

Without verifying his blue heavy armor and the Enhanced Armament on his right arm, Haruyuki and Chiyuri knew who that was.

“T…Taku!!”

“Takkun!!”

The two simultaneously raised shouting voices close to screams and began to run forth. However, in front of the two, a bright golden yellow left arm swiftly blocked them.

“You mustn’t. If you carelessly approach him, you’ll be noticed by that.”

“Th…that..?”

While being driven by impatience, he instinctively focused his gaze to where Tak.u.mu was walking.

A few seconds later, as if his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, «something» dimly stood out.

It was a thing that was difficult to describe as anything other than being enormous. If one said so, maybe a «lump of black living tissue». Meat wriggling in an indeterminate form that was surrounded by innumerable blood vessels in the shape of a mesh and was pulsing with a thump, thump. The blood vessels extended while branching off into the surrounding s.p.a.ce, making its thin tips snake back and forth like tentacles.

The state of the «black lump of meat» swaying with a fixed rhythm somewhere resembled the «light of the galaxy» in the sky overhead. However, the impression it gave was the exact opposite. Chaos that opposed order. Darkness that opposed light.

“Wh…what is that…Why is that thing in the middle of the central server..?”

To Chiyuri’s trembling voice, the girl also lowered her voice and answered.

“That is…not something that the system gave birth to. It’s something whose seed has been sown by someone among the BB players and had been slowly, slowly nurtured over many years…a so-to-speak «foreign substance»…”

“Whose seed has been sown…nurtured…”

Immediately after he murmured that, Haruyuki convulsed his body with a twitch and gasped in a voice unlike one.

“S, surely not…the «Disaster Armor»? Is that, the main body of the Armor..?”

“Uh-unh, it’s not like that. The Armor is one of the «Seven Stars»…a part of the system. The Destiny, see it’s over there.”