Accel World Vol 8 Chapter 4 (1/2)

Chapter 4

…Haru

…Hey, wake up, Haru

Having the feeling that he had been called by sos were a deep gray Froure of a person

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

Muain, but this time his shoulder was shaken back and forth

“Wake up, Haru”

That voice’s echo, which in sohtly awakened his consciousness, which felt as if it rapped 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 hoarse voice, Haruyuki strongly blinked and forcibly opened his eyelids

Froht shoulder of Haruyuki as 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 se her entire body In her left hand, a large hand bell Enhanced Armament…

“—Eh?”

His consciousness finallywith a crack What were there were not his vertically striped half-sleeved pajamas—it was his mirror surface armor that shone silver

Flustered, 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 beca 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 helhts, he thought about substituting 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 seeht about it, how about female F-class avatars’ chests below their armor…

While thinking that vacantly, Haruyukiout froer—

Squish That feeling was transertips half a second later

“Wh, what’re you doing!”

At the sa! A tree reverberation directly hit the crown of his head With the Enhanced Armament «Choir Chime» in her left hand, Liht

“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 rooht-hand side was a dead end, but to his left was a thin tunnel that see

This was not a dream However, it was not a norular pheno, with Chiyuri the two of them had dived into this completely unknown space

…The two of them?

“…! Wh, where’s Taku!?”

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

“I don’t know…I also had just awoken here a ot up, I had beco beside me, and Takkun wasn’t here…”

“…Is that so…”

Below his helht for a moment

Both of them had transformed into duel avatars, but since neither the ties existed, it was clearly not the nors, 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 pheno that the «ISS Kit» parasitically inhabiting Taku while directly connected to hih the XSB cable To put it briefly, it could be said in a sense that right now the two of them were inside Takumu’s dream

If so, then Takumu must also inevitably exist in this world Why they couldn’t see his figure was surely because he hadendlessly 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, i position with a vertical jump impossible with his real body and lent his left hand to Chiyuri, helping her up

Li stood up; on the contrary Li back, he tried feeling this wall surface with his right hand It was not earth or ce an odd elasticity Its faint te-shaped pleats were co’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 the» in the first place If they were in a non-accelerating state, the ho would probably knock the then tiht as well stopped Or they maybe could have been able to leave this queer world with the «Burst Out» co Takumu behind The reason was that if they were in the , then in the few seconds that they awoke in the real world and woke up Taku next to them, in this place a vast amount of time would have passed by

He had probably seen this dreaht too Then he must have received some kind of interference in his heart and been injected with a black so

In that case, at thisWhat he had finally begun to take back through his direct connection duel with Haruyuki ht 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 sa the speed-class Silver Croith all herin 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 see 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 froht could be seen

“An exit?”

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

They ran the reo; before the eyes of the tho had broke out of the tunnel at last—suddenly, a sight they had not anticipated in the slightest appeared

It was outer space

No; precisely, it slightly differed A jet black space 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 tho had stood still duloalaxy However, as different about it fro incessantly One ray of light collided with the other still rays of light, and this ti 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 cluster 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 co to space Froe of two meters’ breadth extended and seemed to continue to the doard jet black space The tere standing at the foot of that bridge

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

“…A…”

Nodding to that, Haruyuki also murmured in a hoarse voice

“What on earth…is that…”

To that question—soht side

“«Main Visualizer»”

“Eh!?”

“Wh, who is it!?”

Raising a voice of surprise at the sae of the thin passagehere the tere, a slender silhouette that definitely had not existed until ainconspicuously

It was not Takuiona flower petal n on every part of her body Her arolden yellow re

The uard 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 Arht, isn’t it?”

Last evening, Haruyuki had roughly explained to Chiyuri thethe Destiny, the sixth Divine Weapon that he had suolden 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 documented 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, theanswer

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

“!!”

This time for sure he was shocked fro with Chiyuri froze their whole bodies

The Brain Burst central server, whose place of existence was unknoas the so-called « 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, andevery enemy

The central server, which rejected all irregular interference and only perine 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, ere given just one way to make our hands touch the natural laws of the world You already knohat 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 systeination circuits», overwriting phenomena…”

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

While listening to the words of the girl as nodding, Haruyuki re for a moment

This was not the first tiolden yellow avatar That had happened during the final stage of the direct connection duel carried out with Takumu in Takuht

From inside Haruyuki, who had been blasted away by Takuth even to stand up, the girl had appeared At that tih 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 systeirl had ination circuits» It was the root of the Incarnate systee power to the natural laws of the world

“But…we haven’t been using the Incarnate system? What’s what, I don’t understand hat Mind Power is either…to begin with, ere 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, Liolden yellow avatar had con lines were similar in some respect They did not just have the point in co «leaf» and «flower petal» exteriordeeper 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 passed

“This tunnel is precisely the «iination 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 Taku the Incarnate system?”

The two of theently shook her head sideways

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

This tiht hand and indicated the tip of the passageway that disappeared into jet black space The floating bridge, which extended while twisting and turning, seemed to descend into the depths, into the depths of space 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 alking totteringly step by step while doubling his large frahtly visible

Without verifying his blue heavy arht arm, Haruyuki and Chiyuri kneho that was

“T…Taku!!”

“Takkun!!”

The two sian 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 iaze to where Taku

A few seconds later, as if his eyes had beco» dimly stood out

It was a thing that was difficult to describe as anything other than being enor tissue» Meat wriggling in an indeterminate form that was surrounded by innu with a thu off into the surrounding space,its thin tips snake back and forth like tentacles

The state of the «black lu with a fixed rhythalaxy» in the sky overhead However, the iave 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 treirl also lowered her voice and answered

“That is…not so whose seed has been sown by so the BB players and had been slowly, slowly nurtured over n substance»…”

“Whose seed has been sown…nurtured…”

Immediately after he asped 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”