“Kuroyukihime!” There was no mistake. The spot of black light was Kuroyukihime—Black Lotus. Which meant the other lights were Fuko, Akira, and Utai. They were probably hanging in the air because Fuko was carrying the others with her Gale Thruster.
The four had remained at Midtown Tower in order to pull out Niko’s cable in the real world. So were they apparently moving toward Haruyuki and his comrades because they had witnessed Mark II’s first large explosion and suspected something out of the ordinary was going on? But even with Gale Thruster, Sky Raker would never be able to carry the weight of four people all the way here in one flight. It would be ten minutes at the very least before the arrival of reinforcements.
No. Counting on Kuroyukihime and the others to rescue us and deactivate the armor is a fantasy. We’ll finish this all up before they arrive and greet them with smiles.
“Thank you, Kuroyukihime. But I’m okay. The Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, we’ll definitely—” His murmuring was forcibly cut off because, once again, Metatron had grabbed his arm and started to ascend rapidly.
“Aaaaah!” he cried as he was yanked upward to what he perceived to be an altitude of over one thousand meters, where they again stopped abruptly with no concern for momentum or inertia.
“Now,” the Archangel announced in a somewhat colder voice—or maybe that was just in his mind. “Even you should be able to see the true form at this point.”
“Huh? Tr-true form?” He blinked hard several times and stared intently at the archangel. Nothing in the beauty of her face in profile, eyelashes lowered, seemed different from a moment ago. Twisting his neck, he unconsciously raised his right hand and went to poke the smooth line of her cheek.
“Insolence!!”
Whap! She slapped the palm of his hand away with the tip of a wing, and Haruyuki swallowed a yelp as he leapt back.
“I-it’s just—I don’t know what’s different, so…”
“I speak not of me!” the Archangel rebuked him sharply before gesturing toward the space below them with both hands. “You must use all your awareness and look at the world. You have put this into practice many times in the battle up to now. Broaden that sensation, deepen it, heighten it, extend it. Expand in every direction.”
Metatron wasn’t making too much sense to him, but even so, he felt like he got about half of what she was trying to say.
Look. Not at one point; at the whole. Not for a moment; continuously. In the Accelerated World, Haruyuki and the other Burst Linkers didn’t actually see with their eyes. Their avatars did have eyes, but it wasn’t as though these were connected directly to their real eyes. Their consciousness itself saw, heard, touched, and felt the world generated by the Brain Burst central server—also known as the Main Visualizer—through their Neurolinkers. This world, the Highest Level, was likely a place that expressed the elements that made up the Accelerated World in a form closer to their true nature. A world where things weren’t translated into easy-to-understand 3-D objects—where information itself flowed and drifted.
Haruyuki had unconsciously closed his eyes the way Metatron did. Despite the fact that when he blinked before, it had interrupted his vision, and he was able to perceive the world hazily now with his eyes closed. The earth a distant thousand meters below. Pard, Takumu, and Chiyuri there. Mark II floating in the air. Niko even higher up. Far off in the distance, Fuko, Utai, Akira, and Kuroyukihime.
That wasn’t all. He could even see down into the basement of the Acceleration Research Society hideout beneath the crater Mark II had made; it was far deeper and bigger than he’d thought. And the knight Enemies on guard—there were three, no, four.
His power of perception popped aboveground once more and spread out horizontally. He could feel in detail the terrain of the Minato Ward Area, right down to each and every building. When he reached a wide street running to the northwest, the tower that soared up remarkably high was probably the old Tokyo Tower. Fufuan at its peak was like a particle of sand compared with the large-scale terrain around it, but it felt warm somehow. And immediately beside the house, something whirling, smaller than the house, but which had a higher density of information. That had to be the portal.
Four small flying Enemies were suspended in the sky even farther north of the tower. When he expanded his range of perception, he found an infinite number of other Enemies. Large ones, small ones, hot ones, cold ones…And more than a few appeared to be approaching the crater that was the battlefield for Haruyuki and his comrades. They were probably drawn in by the Incarnate techniques activated in succession by both sides. He had to end this battle before they came charging in.
Haruyuki slowly lifted his eyelids. “Whoa…Ah…!” A faint moan slipped out of his mouth.
The world had changed phases completely. On the ground outside the crater where there had been nothing but darkness, infinite points of light were scattered; it glittered like a starry sky. Most of the particles of white light were distributed along the roads, but some were also in large buildings and every nook and cranny of the plazas. It was utterly impossible to count them all. Naturally, the areas beyond Minato were similarly filled with light, and the whole effect was like an art piece drawing central Tokyo in stardust.
“What are those lights?” Haruyuki asked.
“We call them nodes,” Metatron answered quietly. “The places where the information that decides the shape of the world is born, connected, and flows.”
“The shape…of the world…,” he parroted back before the true gravity of the statement hit him, eliciting a gasp. The arrangement of those lights that could have been ordered or were random was probably… “The social cameras?”
It took the form of a question, but Haruyuki was already certain of the idea. The network of automatic monitoring devices placed in every inch of every public space in the real world with the goal of maintaining public safety. They were social security–surveillance cameras—social cameras.
The Brain Burst program hacked the images captured by this monitoring network to produce duel fields that re-created the reality of the terrain in real time, so of course they were “deciding the shape of this world.” Information regarding the social camera network was strictly guarded, and there was no way for the general population—Haruyuki included—to find out how many cameras there were or where the facility was that aggregated and processed the information. There were some sites online that collected information on the position of the cameras, but there was also a theory that the cameras that could be seen with the eye made up less than half the total, with the majority being skillfully hidden. As far as he could see looking down on the distribution of lights from the Highest Level, that theory appeared to be correct. The white stardust shone with a density that was two—no, three times the layout of cameras he had found in town on his own.
Tokyo depicted in this vast number of points of lights visibly demonstrated the excessive monitoring of the people of the city, but at the same time, it was so beautiful that it took his breath away. As he shifted his gaze along a line of lights that shone even more brightly—probably the Yamanote Line—from Minato to Shibuya and on to Shinjuku, Haruyuki realized something.
“Huh?” The center of Tokyo, the very middle of the Chiyoda Ward Area, was alone sunken into inky darkness. No matter how he strained his eyes, he couldn’t pick out a single speck of stardust. But that was impossible. That was the imperial palace in the real world, one of the most heavily guarded places in the city. Obviously, there had to have been any number of social cameras in it; it should have been shining like the center of the Milky Way in this world. So why was there not even a hint of light there? It was almost like a super-massive black hole had eaten away the center of the galaxy.
“You seem to have noticed, hmm?” Metatron whispered. He glanced over at her. The Archangel still had her eyes closed, but Haruyuki strongly felt that her gaze was turned toward the darkness at the center of Chiyoda. “That place alone—the space that you little warriors
call the Castle—is completely cut off from the world. Even with my own powers of perception, I can sense nothing of the inside.”
“Cut off? But, um…” Haruyuki struggled with whether it was okay to talk about this before timidly finishing his sentence. “I was inside the Castle just once before. It didn’t look fundamentally different inside than outside. There were buildings and Ene—I mean, Beings, and it had the same attribute as the outside world…”
“………”
Unusually, Metatron hesitated, and then she nodded gently. “I know that you entered the Castle from previous observations. The reason I spoke to you during your battle with my first form…and why I invited you to this Highest Level is indeed because of this fact.”
“What?!” he cried out unconsciously, stunned.
Metatron slowly turned to face Haruyuki directly. Her eyelids were raised ever so slightly, and glittering gold eyes pierced Haruyuki’s own, right down to his soul. Inside his head, a clear, solemn voice echoed. “Warrior Silver Crow.”
Without even realizing this was the first time Metatron had called him by his name rather than you, Haruyuki simply waited for her to continue.
“I, Metatron, one pillar of the Four Saints, suggest an exchange. I shall deliver unto you the destruction of that pseudo-Being.”
And then he remembered all over again. Right now, at this moment, he was on the verge of taking a direct hit from the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s nihilistic laser in the Unlimited Neutral Field—what Metatron called the Mean Level. To be honest, he had no idea how to avoid that attack. If Metatron said she would help him, he couldn’t very well refuse. But what bothered him was the “exchange.” Meaning that Haruyuki would also have to offer something in return for her help.
“What do I need to do?” he asked fearfully. He was completely unprepared for the Archangel’s response.
“You will allow me to reference your memories of the inside of the Castle.”
“R-reference…my memories? That’s all?” he asked, but then he gasped in realization. “Um, that—does that mean my memories will be gone?”
“I said reference, did I not?” she snapped in reply. “I will only look; I will not erase. To begin with, if I had such privileges as to erase memories, I would browse them without bothering with this exchange.”
“I—I guess so. Um…” He shrank back. Did I do anything embarrassing inside the Castle? No, no, I’m talking to an Enem—a Being here; there’s no need to be embarrassed about anything. His thoughts quickly ran through the possibilities, and then he nodded. “I’m fine with that. In fact, I’d actually like you to…But how am I supposed to show you my memories?”
“Good. With these words, the contract is made,” Metatron announced in a tone that brooked no argument, rather than answering Haruyuki’s question, and stretched out her hands. She wrapped her fingers around the dots of silver light that made up Silver Crow’s helmet. Although her fingers were so slender that he hesitated to even touch them, they held his entire body perfectly in place; he was unable to move hands or feet.
“Huh? Uh, wh-wh-what…?”
“Quiet. Calm your mind and accept me.” She had no sooner given him this order than Archangel Metatron was touching her own face to Haruyuki’s helmet.
Gaaaah?! he very nearly shouted, but desperately controlled himself, and Metatron’s fierce beauty slipped soundlessly through Silver Crow’s mirrored visor. Her golden eyes peered into his from extremely close-up, while she touched their faces firmly together. Haruyuki’s mental circuitry shorted, shooting out sparks, and he was unable to think about anything.
And then the core of his mind overflowed with a golden light. In this shining haze, several still images flashed up, one after another.
The God Suzaku hanging in the air against the backdrop of the Castle’s south gate.
Haruyuki charging into the south gate with Ardor Maiden in his arms.
The interior of the Castle—autumn colors dancing in the Heian stage.
The blue samurai avatar they met inside.
And the space at the very deepest level after descending steep stairs, sealed off by a massive sacred rope, and the golden light that flickered on the other side of the darkness…
“I have indeed been shown your memories.”
He returned to himself with a gasp. Metatron had already pulled her face away from his. But her hands were still pressed against his helmet, and her inhuman beauty was still right in front of him.
“I see…” A faint voice spilled from her graceful lips. “The Shrine of the Eight Divines. So then there are Beings in the depths of the Castle who surpass even the Four Gods…”
“Huh? Um, just now, what…?”
“To obtain more information than this, it seems I will need to contact this Azure Air. Does this mean that the time to face the Four Gods has come at last? …But at the moment, it’s still…”
He couldn’t tell if these words were really coming from Metatron’s mouth. Because the instant her body pulled away, he suddenly couldn’t hear them anymore. Or perhaps it was her thoughts that were being communicated to him, but she was an Enemy (Being), a program— What on earth would she be thinking about?
“Um.” Haruyuki took in the figure of the standing Archangel once more and asked timidly, “Why are you interested in the Castle?”
Metatron turned a cool gaze on him, as if to say this was a meaningless question. But in his mind, Metatron, the Four Gods, and the Castle all existed on the system side, so they seemed equal to him in their most fundamental form. As if reading these thoughts, the beautiful woman, snowy-white and luminescent, closed her eyes once more and turned her face to the galaxy on the ground.
“When I gained existence in this world, I was a simple Being who only followed the orders I was given.” Haruyuki heard a somewhat desolate yet quiet voice in his mind. “I waited for little warriors to visit the deepest level of the Contrary Cathedral, my domain in Area three-zero-two, and I fought them. That was everything I was intended to do.”
Haruyuki had never once been to Metatron’s castle, the Shibakoen underground labyrinth. It was the largest, most difficult dungeon in the Unlimited Neutral Field, so there had never been that many Burst Linkers daring to tackle it. Even if an attack was launched every weekend, seven days in the real world was seven thousand days in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Metatron must have been waiting patiently for enemies that only appeared once every twenty years. He turned his eyes toward her once more, but the Archangel continued with an aloof look:
“A long, long time passed, until finally, warriors appeared to crush my first form in Field Attribution UH-zero-one—what you little ones call the Hell stage. But when they departed with one of the Seven Arcs from the throne room, the frequency of the little warriors visiting my castle dropped even further. With no chance to exert my abilities as my second form, time equivalent to an eternity passed again. At some point, I began to think. I…What exactly was this consciousness that I had been given under the name Metatron? What being had produced me and given me this vain mission? And for what purpose did the world I perceived exist?”
“………!!”
Haruyuki gasped. Metatron’s monologue was shocking in two ways. One was that Metatron, an Enemy (Being) in the Accelerated World, doubted the reason for her own existence. Her intelligence had indeed reached a level that far surpassed the domain of a program within the game. And the second was that someone had said very similar words to Haruyuki before. In the depths of his mind, a faint voice came back to life.
“Burst Linkers reaching level ten would have the chance to meet the program creator and would be told the true meaning behind the existence of Brain Burst, as well as its ultimate goal. I…I want to know. Whatever it takes, I have to know.”
Kuroyukihime had said this to him eight months earlier over a direct connection in a café near Umesato back when they had just barely met.
The creator of the program, still shrouded in mystery�
��this person had produced the Accelerated World, the Burst Linkers, and Enemies (Beings) like Metatron. Kuroyukihime and Metatron were both seeking the same answer from outside and inside the world.
“Did you…find the answer?” Haruyuki hoarsely posed the question to the infinitely old creature.
Wordlessly, Metatron suddenly grabbed Haruyuki’s right hand. With her other, she indicated the glittering map of light in the distance below. And then something mysterious happened.
The countless lights that gave shape to central Tokyo began to stretch out vertically, silently. As if supported by the lights, now extremely thin vertical lines, new terrain materialized. One above the Tokyo he’d first seen and one below.
Now he was looking at a triple-layered Tokyo pierced by countless white pillars. Unable to comprehend the scene before him, he muttered, dumbfounded, “Three…fields…?”
“Yes. This is the current limit of my perception. This is everything of the world that it is possible for me to know.”
“Everything…of the world…” Repeating her words, Haruyuki stared hard. And he soon noticed it.
In the center of the Tokyo that had existed from the start, there were countless colored lights flickering, in addition to the pillars of monochrome that were the social cameras. These were Enemies, dungeons, portals, shops, and the very few Burst Linkers who were diving in the Unlimited Neutral Field at that very moment. But in the newly materialized upper and lower Tokyos, there were absolutely no lights other than those of the social cameras.
Parallel worlds that had the same terrain but not a single human being, the sort of thing you might see in a science fiction movie. Or worlds in which all life had been extinguished.
“Once…In the distant past, a great number of lights moved actively in those two fields as well. No doubt, little warriors such as yourself and Beings like me fought, talked, and lived in rapport. But those lights gradually started to decrease…and then at a certain point, they had all disappeared. I also do not know what happened.”
Snow White’s Slumber Page 7
