Accel World Vol 8 Chapter 7 (1/2)

Chapter 7

The stage of today’s second duel was the «Steel stage», whose entire topography was formed entirely from riveted iron plates.

Its distinctive feature was that first of all, it was hard. It conducted electricity well. And one’s footsteps echoed strangely. Even more so if one’s duel avatar were a metal color down to one’s soles.

Haruyuki, who had caused the reverberation of a shrill clang! sound and had alighted onto the stage, waited for a second sound of footsteps while looking down. However, since he did not hear anything even after several seconds had pa.s.sed, he lifted his face and looked around at his surroundings.

The former Umesato Middle nurse’s office had changed into just an empty rectangular room with neither beds nor desks. The floor, walls, and the ceiling were all bulky iron plates glinting with a dull brown color. The duel opponents who had nearly been stuck close together before acceleration had obeyed Brain Burst’s rule that they would «materialize separated by at least ten meters»; she stood surrept.i.tiously at the east window of the room.

A sleek jet black semitransparent armor that made one think of obsidian. An armor skirt in the design of a water lily and a superfine body; a mask sharpened in the shape of the letter V. And her limbs were all blades so long and sharp as to make one shudder—.

Giving a look at the Black King «Black Lotus’s» beautiful as well as ferocious standing posture that he would never get used to seeing no matter how many times he saw it, Haruyuki finally realized why he had not heard footsteps. Though it was only the extent of a centimeter, the Black King’s two sharply pointed legs sure enough were floating from the ground. She was also one of the few «hover-cla.s.s avatars» in the Accelerated World.

In that state, Kuroyukihime stared at Haruyuki’s avatar «Silver Crow» for a further number of seconds, but before long she came sliding smoothly forward. She stopped right before his eyes, and in the depths of her black mirror goggles, her violet blue eyes shone vividly.

“Just by looking at your figure I knew, Haruyuki-kun. You’ve gone through another harsh fight…”

He immediately inferred that those calmly resounding words referred to the heated fight carried out last night between Tak.u.mu and him. He had not yet explained to Kuroyukihime the details of the happening that had occurred from last night to this morning, but she had probably seen through the fact that the two had already spoken to each other through their fists as Burst Linkers.

To be sure, it had been a bitter, trying fight. In order to pull back his close friend who had begun to be drawn into the pitch-black power known as the ISS Kit, Haruyuki had lost his left arm and left wing and had continued to stand up even while his entire body was cracking into tatters. Encouraged by the strange bright golden yellow girl, he had summoned the original form of the «Disaster Armor», the Divine Weapon «The Destiny», even if it had been only one arm’s worth, and had squeezed out all the Mind Power that he had.

The result was that in order to save Haruyuki, who was on the verge of being parasitized by the clone of the ISS Kit, Tak.u.mu had punched through himself with his special technique, but what had been left inside Haruyuki by that fight seemed to be there, without a doubt. If one were to say what that was, it would probably be a mere small «feeling of believing in himself». Precisely because that feeling existed was he able to fire his new Incarnate technique, one that possessed a range surpa.s.sing that of «Laser Sword», in the following strange fight in the «Brain Burst central server».

However, Haruyuki, whose habit of shrinking when he was praised had become second nature, looked down while rubbing his two hands together, fidgeting.

“N, no, such a thing…I’m always just being saved by somebody…”

“Fufu, having become able to think like that is the proof that you’ve matured.”

Kuroyukihime briefly laughed, lightly tapped Haruyuki’s back with the ridge of the sword of her right hand, and spoke.

“Now then, show me, Haruyuki-kun. Show me all the Incarnate techniques that you’ve acquired.”

Here he wanted badly to fidget again, but right now the two were not in the Unlimited Neutral Field but the normal duel field. They were only able to remain for a trifling 1800 seconds. It was normal for training to take over several weeks even to learn just one of the elementary techniques, so thirty minutes was too short. They could not afford to waste even one second.

Haruyuki took a deep breath, stored it firmly in his belly, and nodded.

“All right. —Let’s go.”

He moved several steps and halted at a position three meters from the wall of the south side of the deserted room.

Originally pure-white wallpaper had been pasted, but now it was a reddish-brown thick plate of steel. Even with just one of the rivets driven lengthwise and crosswise, it conveyed an overwhelming hardness.

However, that hardness was in the end nothing more than a parameter described by the server. It was possible to override it with the strength of the will of piercing it. Haruyuki slowly lowered his waist; he first a.s.sumed a stance with his left hand at his hip and aligned his five fingers straight.

He concentrated the image of a «penetrating light» at his fingertips, and immediately a silver radiance—an «Over-Ray» was born and lit up the dim room. As his image was focused, a riiiing resonance sound faintly reverberated, and light covered the area from his left hand to his elbow. The speed of this Mind Power activation had become considerably faster compared to that of the past, but taking no heed of that Haruyuki swiftly pulled his left hand.

“—«Laser Sword»!!”

At the same time that he uttered his technique name, he sharply revolved his waist and plunged his left arm forward.

With a clear-cut shukiiiiin! sound, the silver light that had taken the form of a sword lengthened over two meters from his left hand and drilled deeply into the thick steel wall.

However, without stopping his movement there Haruyuki drew his right foot far back, and he placed his right arm not at his waist but in the area above his shoulder. He readied his left arm, which had returned to its original position, horizontally before his body.

This time a silver light was born in his right arm and shone strongly.

“…Ohh!”

A war cry burst forth naturally from his mouth. He made the tip of the light that had sharply extended several dozens of centimeters from his right hand float about the back of his left hand—and released it.

“«Laser Lance»!!”

Just this morning, only one time, he had released this technique inside his dream in borrowing Chiyuri’s help, but Haruyuki had the conviction that he could do it. The radiance of the Mind Power released not as a sword but as a lance precisely hit its target, the bruise on the wall where his Laser Sword had bore through three seconds earlier, and again it pierced through ferociously.

The lance of light, which had stopped for an instant, unraveled into a number of threads of ribbons and vanished. Immediately afterward, the wall plates of steel themselves scattered into smithereens as if unable to absorb fully the power dealt to it. From the other side of the large hole opened in the wall, an iron pillar standing in the s.p.a.ce that corresponded to the front yard of Umesato Middle in the real world was severed in its middle and fell with an earth-shaking rumble.

From where Haruyuki was standing to the iron pillar, it was probably easily ten meters. It was a firing range that was actually over three times farther than that of his Laser Sword unleashed earlier.

“…Whew.”

At the back of Haruyuki, who had lightly exhaled and had let down both his hands, a refres.h.i.+ng ring, ring sound reverberated. He looked back; Kuroyukihime was clapping the swords of her two arms together wholly as if applauding.

“Splendid. Splendid imagination, Haruyuki-kun.”

“Th…th, thank you very much…”

Haruyuki, as always unused to being praised by someone, bowed while ducking his head. However, at the remarks Kuroyukihime uttered immediately after, he raised his face with a twitch.

“That Mind Power of yours is already in the stage of completion as the basic «range expansion technique». Both «Laser Sword», used for hand-to-hand combat by expanding and contracting your sword from both hands at high speed, and «Laser Lance», used for midrange fighting as a lance that fires your ama.s.sed power from your right hand: both are good techniques whose sense of purpose is clear. However, due to that, from now on as well you can refine your technique and polish your sighting accuracy and activation speed but cannot expect to make dramatic progress…”

“Eh…”

—If so, does that mean…with this, this is the end for my Mind Power..?

Stunned and thinking in that manner, he began to slump his shoulders, but he was checked right beforehand by the following voice that resounded.

“It’s too early to be disappointed. I just said earlier, didn’t I, that there existed a «second stage» to the Incarnate system.”

Kuroyukihime, who had approached without a sound by hover movement, whispered as if admonis.h.i.+ng a little child in a voice with lowered volume.

“You…your heart conceals unlimited possibilities. From the point of believing that, everything begins. —The technique you showed right now belongs to one of the four types of basic techniques of Mind Power, «range expansion». The appearances of basic techniques are multifarious, but if they’re of the same type then they share the same essential abilities. You’ve understood that much, right?”

“Y…yes.”

While nodding, Haruyuki recalled Niko’s—the «Red King» Scarlet Rain’s range expansion technique unique to her that she had shown before.

Niko’s technique hurled flames dwelling in her hand at high velocity and burnt her faraway target to ashes. It far surpa.s.sed Haruyuki’s technique with a long range that exceeded fifty meters and with a high-speed activation to the extent where she did not even require a technique name utterance any longer, but despite that they both shared the essence of a «long-distance standalone attack».

As if she were waiting for Haruyuki to understand that far, Kuroyukihime nodded, leisurely lifted the sword of her right hand, and spoke.

“—In opposition, the second stage of Mind Power is basically the «applied technique». Combining two or more images of the four elementary types, or incarnating a wholly new image, and bringing about an even larger «override». «Rust Order», used by Rust Jigsaw, who had destroyed the previous race event, and «Wind Veil», used by Fuuko, who had protected us from that technique, are without a doubt second stage techniques.”

“…And your «Vorpal Strike» is one too, right, Senpai? That technique is a combination of range expansion and power expansion, isn’t it.”

In response to Haruyuki’s words, perhaps it was a figment of his imagination, but Kuroyukihime nodded her half-mirror face mask in a seemingly slightly embarra.s.sed way.

“Mm, well…it’s something like that, I guess. Maybe, however, the right way of putting it is that it became that way as a consequence of something…at any rate. Haruyuki-kun, the time has finally arrived for you to proceed to that second stage as well.”

The first half of her words were slightly mysterious, but without the leisure to ponder their meaning Haruyuki straightened his back and shouted.

“U, understood! I’ll do my best!”

However, there another new question floated to his mind.

“…Um, however, at first in the nurse’s office, you said in order to acquire the second stage of Mind Power, one must understand the meaning of something along the lines of the power of imagination even in the real world…didn’t you, Senpai? Concretely, what did you mean..?”

“Unh… That’s, well…”

Though she had begun to speak, Kuroyukihime cut short her words and gazed at her right hand—the point of her sharp sword, which was still raised before her chest. For some reason, a faint tinge of nervousness clouded her blue-violet eyes, and she continued in a whisper.

“…Since that meaning’s difficult to convey in words, let’s subst.i.tute with a real demonstration. Haruyuki-kun, in truth for some time past, I’ve also been challenging myself to acquire a new «applied technique».”

“Eh…”

With bated breath, he stared gapingly at Kuroyukihime’s avatar mask. A new applied technique—in short, was that a super-offensive power that surpa.s.sed «Vorpal Strike» too? Was she going to demonstrate that in this narrow room?

“Ah, th-then, shall we go outsi…”

Kuroyukihime slightly shook her head and stopped Haruyuki, who had begun to speak.

“No, there’s no need for that. Here will suffice.”

And then, the Black King Black Lotus pointed the tip of her right hand sword straight at Haruyuki’s body and stood still.

—No way, surely she won’t perhaps use me as a guinea pig for that new technique.

—No, it’s possible. Because this person is the sworn friend and master of Sky Raker, who pushed me off the summit of the Old Tokyo Tower. If so, even if Kuroyukihime were also more spartan in her way of guiding my Mind Power than she was, it wouldn’t be strange at all. Don’t be afraid, think of it as a windfall. Being able to be the first to experience the yet-to-be-revealed technique of the person whom I believe without question to be the strongest in the Accelerated World, there’s no training better than this. I should take it while puffing out my chest.

While those thoughts progressed at high speed in less than a tenth of a second, Haruyuki gnashed his molars and stopped his breathing.

Kuroyukihime, whose right hand was still extended out, narrowed her eyes beneath her goggles and also similarly showed signs of concentrating.

At the point of the sharp sword, with a pop a yellow light—an Over-Ray was born. While it faintly pulsated, it lightly enveloped the sword up to a point around twenty centimeters from its tip.

While staring at that with both his wide-opened eyes, Haruyuki felt a slight bewilderment.

As to why—it was warm. The light enveloping the sword was kind, ephemeral, and warm to the extent where one could not possibly believe that it would produce ma.s.sive destruction.