The two duelists burst forward at maximum speed, tracing silver and purple trajectories in the sky.
“Aaaaaah!” With a battle cry from the bottom of his stomach, Haruyuki sent out his left sword hand at the speed of light.
“Chaaaaa!!” Raising his hand like a sword, Nomi raked his claws downward.
The shriek of impact echoed and the sky shook. The different-colored beams of light swirled and tangled and burst.
Two arms were ripped off, both nearly in half, and blown away.
“Not…yeeeeeet!!” With a howl, Haruyuki thrust the sword of his right hand directly at the center of Nomi’s chest.
His arm, now a dazzling beam of light, pierced the blackish-purple armor soundlessly and became buried up to the shoulder. But at the same time, Nomi’s right foot, enveloped by the illusory energy pulse, dug deep into Haruyuki’s left flank. Both of their HP bars instantly dropped 30 percent.
Enduring a fierce pain that nearly burned away the core of his head, Haruyuki mustered all of his remaining will, set his sights directly below him—the ground of Umesato Junior High—and opened his boosters all the way.
The entangled avatars plummeted, tracing out a tail of flames like a falling star. The hard ground raced toward them.
If they crashed like this, Silver Crow would no longer have the power left to fly, even if they ended up having the same amount remaining in their HP bars. As if sensing this, Dusk Taker tucked his body in, a defensive posture.
But Haruyuki lifted his face, and with his eyes wide open, added a slight, final adjustment to their descent trajectory.
“Taku! Now!!” he yelled.
“What?!” Nomi gasped, and in the center of the face he lifted—
Charging up from the ground, the bolt of lightning that was Takumu’s special attack—Lightning Cyan Spike—pierced him.
This attack worked like a brake, and taking advantage of the deceleration, Haruyuki spun his body one hundred and eighty degrees, yanking his right arm out of Dusk Taker’s chest as he did so. The rest was a matter of reverse thrust with the boosters, at the full force of their remaining energy.
Even still, the instant his legs touched the ground, cracks raced up his silver armor and sparks flew. Fissures rippled out radially through the ground, and at their center, he dropped heavily to his knees.
A second later, tracing the trajectory of the remaining beam of light in the sky, Dusk Taker crashed a few meters away.
He was in such a state it was a wonder that he had anything left in his HP gauge at all. Both arms were missing, and there was an enormous hole in his chest armor. The rounded visor of his face was cracked like a spiderweb, and a blackened scar marred the center where Haruyuki had stabbed him, sparks spurting out with a dry crackle. The tips of the wings, glued to the surface of the ground, twitched, perhaps with the intention to move again, but they didn’t manage anything close to an actual flap.
…It’s over, Haruyuki murmured to himself. However they struck Dusk Taker now, at that point, their victory was assured.
But Haruyuki stayed crouched down and motionless, waiting for the footfalls approaching slowly behind him.
Finally standing beside him, Takumu—Cyan Pile—was in a terrible state. Very nearly his entire body was scorched black, smoke rising up from it. But this wasn’t from being attacked; it was damage he had inflicted on himself. He had dragged his avatar, which was unable to move to his satisfaction because of the lingering pain, and sunk half his body in the magma pond created by Dusk Taker’s flamethrower. To fill his gauge enough to at least be able to get one blow in with his special attack.
It wasn’t like Haruyuki knew that by looking at him. If he had turned his eyes to Takumu even once during the battle, Nomi would have noticed the flow of his awareness and seen through to his friend’s intentions. So Haruyuki made sure not to look down from the sky. He simply believed: that Takumu would come through.
“…Nomi.” Haruyuki addressed the exhausted avatar who was the color of darkness. “The reason you lost wasn’t my Incarnate attack or the Gale Thruster. It was because we weren’t alone. And that’s the reason you won’t be able to beat us in the future, either.”
He received no reply.
Looking up at his partner by his side, Haruyuki nodded slightly, strongly.
Takumu returned his nod and offered his burnt left hand. Haruyuki grabbed it with his right and pulled himself to his feet.
There were still two minutes left on the clock. Haruyuki advanced one, two steps to deliver the final blow to Dusk Taker.
…Ring.
It was at that instant he felt like he heard a faint ringing sound. Haruyuki stopped abruptly and quickly looked around.
There was no one. How could there be? This field wasn’t created with the global net as intermediary but rather the Umesato local net. Which was why there was no way a new Burst Linker would appear—
Brrrring.
Again, he heard the crisp and yet somehow sad sound.
Haruyuki and Takumu both looked toward the source of the sound at the same time—the sky.
There was not the slightest shadow in the green sky of the Hell stage. But in the next instant, Haruyuki caught a small movement in the corner of his eye.
It wasn’t the sky. The roof of the school building towered up in the south. On the other side of the pointed cast-iron fence encircling it like lances, shining a green much more vivid than that of the sky, almost like peridot, a small avatar—
“What…”
Haruyuki couldn’t tell if he or Takumu spoke.
That, that avatar.
Lime Bell.
In other words, Chiyuri, Chiyuri Kurashima. But why? Chiyuri shouldn’t have already been registered on the automatic spectator list for Silver Crow or Cyan Pile.
“Chi—” Haruyuki started to call out in a hoarse voice.
However, as if to interrupt him, Chiyuri lifted the large bell on her left hand up to the sky softly. He felt like he could hear her voice. Quietly, riding the faint wind of the stage, extremely thinly, as if it were more a response with the senses than a sound.
…Sorry, Taku…Sorry, Haru.
And then the yellow-green avatar waved the bell. At the same time, she uttered a special attack name.
“Citron Call.”
The sound of the ringing bell was exceedingly beautiful, but perhaps because of the sound effects of the stage, it was distorted somehow. The emerald particles glittering and dancing down from the rooftop enveloped Dusk Taker, who was on the verge of death.
Haruyuki and Takumu could do nothing but stare as the deep wounds dug out of the blackish-purple armor began to heal at once from the ends.
“Why…” Haruyuki heard the cracked, broken voice coming from his own throat.
“Why on Earth…Chiyu.”
To be continued.
AFTERWORD
It’s been a while, or maybe this is your first time. Reki Kawahara here. Thank you for reading Accel World 3: The Twilight Marauder.
Accel World postures itself as a series of VR fighting game novels, but you can’t say that these are game novels in the strictest sense of the term. I think there are likely a good number of people who felt this with the first volume, because ambiguous things like battle cries and miracles transcend the presented game system. These are the sorts of things you must not have in a game novel, and I wanted from the bottom of my heart to avoid this sort of development if at all possible, but (LOL) when I’m writing, it ends up being this way for some reason.
This is probably because the question of whether a win in conformance with the system is really a win at all took up residence within me quite some time ago. In rock-paper-scissors, one side offers scissors, the other side offers rock and wins. Is that okay? This is the kind of question I’m stuck with. Like if you’re the hero (or if you’re the rival), you should just win with paper already (LOL).
No, I’m aware that what I’m saying is absurd! A test incorporating such sy
stemic indivisibility is the Incarnate System in this volume. This is an extremely ridiculous thing, made to cover up the ridiculousness of making the power of imagination or will an element of victory or defeat in a concrete game. But whether this story will be able to continue in the future as a game novel with this element, or if it will be thrown further into chaos…Either way, I hope you will continue to watch over it as long as you have the patience capacity for it! I would like that!
If you just think it over, the only energy source that seems like it could possibly surpass the various systems in the real world—that is, the framework of common sense—is simply the power of imagination, isn’t it? This is a world where no matter which way you look, there’s a wall and again a wall, and all you can do is let out a sigh, but at any time, it is possible to fly past these with imagination. So I write something good like this, throw up a smoke screen, and muddle along.
Once again, I have been greatly aided by the illustrator HIMA, whom I seriously intrude upon with design work for both the real-world and avatar versions every time a new character appears; and my editor Miki, who, as always, gives me her total focus to make the pinnacle of pessimism Haruyuki into something more like a hero.
And to you reading this far, you have as much gratitude as my will is able to manifest!
Reki Kawahara
July 23, 2009
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The Twilight Marauder Page 23
