2

A sky filled with a curious yellow-green light. Ground covered in blue-black tiles. Clusters of buildings adorned with fanged protrusions, and a thick fog flowing down, out, and around these.

“A Demon City stage? Well, I suppose it’s a good match for today’s agenda,” the Black King, Black Lotus, said, each step of her sharply pointed tiptoes ringing out on the tiles.

After staring momentarily at the fluid, ferocious figure of the Legion Master he so loved and respected, he let his eyes rest on the sky-blue avatar standing next to her inconspicuously. Simple and graceful, she had thick, blue-tinted hair that flowed like wings down the back of her slender, feminine body. The smooth lines of her legs and arms showed no sign of any equipped weaponry.

But Haruyuki knew. He knew that those thin legs themselves, planted firmly on the ground at that moment and keeping the avatar upright, were proof of the miracle that had happened with her—Sky Raker.

If Black Lotus was the swordmaster and Haruyuki’s “parent,” then Raker would have to be his teacher, his Master. She had retreated from the accelerated duels that were the world’s battlefront to live for a long time as a recluse at the top of the old Tokyo Tower, a place forgotten by everyone else.

Because two and a half years earlier, she had, of her own volition, cut off both legs at the knee, and with them, the better part of her fighting power. However, after meeting Haruyuki, who had also temporarily lost his own power—the ability to fly—and initiating him into the ways of the Incarnate System, she gradually regained her passion for the duel until finally, in the Hermes’ Cord race the week before, she was able to overcome the psychic trauma that had bound her and recover both legs.

After being taken over by Chrome Disaster even just that one time, Haruyuki knew in his bones how very difficult it was to get out from under the influence of negative imagination. Most likely, if Chiyuri—Lime Bell—hadn’t helped him with her special attack—her transcendental ability to turn back time for the target avatar—Haruyuki would have been swallowed up by the armor and his own self-hatred and indiscriminately attacked the hundreds of people in the Gallery.

In only a few minutes, the negative will of the Armor had penetrated his marrow, so much so that he had been on the verge of never finding his way back. And yet Sky Raker had somehow managed to cut the chains of fear and despair that had held her for two and a half years of real time. If that wasn’t a miracle, then what was? Struck by deep emotion, he stared hard at Raker’s legs.

“Honestly, Corvus. Do you like my beautiful legs that much?” she said in a voice filled with mirth.

Haruyuki hurriedly waved his hands somewhat frantically in front of his face. “N-no—I mean, of course, they’re incredibly beautiful, but that’s not what I was—”

“Oh ho! So you have a leg fetish? Sorry I don’t have calves or ankles.” Kuroyukihime spoke now, her violet-blue eyes glittering dangerously.

“Th-that’s—!” Haruyuki turned his head and excused himself again. “I love your legs, too—I mean, it’s not like I have a fetish or anything like that, okay?!” He felt like he would just sink further into this swamp if he said anything more, so he pointed southeast and shouted, “A-a-anyway, look! The guide cursor’s pointing that way! Let’s hurry! Let’s get going!”

Just as Haruyuki noted, the two gray triangles in the center of their fields of view were still, pointing in the same direction. Beyond them lay the two members of the Blue Legion executive who were hosting that day’s meeting. Two HP gauges were also lined up above the cursors, with a countdown between them. The timer would have started at 1,800 seconds but had already dropped to 1,750.

“Mmm. Now that you mention it, we did say to ensure that we met within a hundred seconds. That does it, then. Shall we run?”

All three nodded and took off as one south along the roads of the Demon City.

In exchange for not having the right to destroy the terrain or objects, members of the Gallery in a general duel were given maximum mobility and jumping power. Haruyuki and his Legion Masters ran up the wall of a building blocking their way and then charged forward in a straight line from rooftop to rooftop.

After they had been running for about twenty seconds, the heavy fog blanketing the road ahead abruptly broke.

“Whoa!” Haruyuki unconsciously cried out at the sight spreading out before their eyes. “I-it’s huge…”

The palace.

An enormous building soared up as if to pierce the sky a little to the southeast of the cursor. Made up of steel spires shining with a blue light and bizarre sculptures, the palace stood in the center of the demonic stage with a sense of presence that overwhelmed all else; it was almost even divine. The building was surrounded by high castle walls and a wide moat, with nothing remotely resembling an entrance to be seen.

Although he had caught glimpses of the palace rising up in the distant eastern sky from countless duels in Suginami and Shinjuku, this was the first time he had ever been so close to it, and he gaped as he took in the majesty of the colossal castle.

“In the real world, that is the Imperial Palace,” Kuroyukihime murmured, immediately to his right. “The only place you can never enter, in the Accelerated World as well, no matter what you try.”

“E-even if you’re flying?”

“Yes.” The answer to his question came from Fuko running to his left. “There are invisible barriers set above and below the castle walls, so you can’t get in even if you try to fly over or dig under. Apparently, in the early days, people tried all sorts of things, but…”

“Mm-hmm. There were any number of rumors, too, that there was a super-amazing Enhanced Armament hidden inside, things like that. But in the end, not one person was able to penetrate those walls. In the Normal Duel Field, at least.”

Sensing something in Kuroyukihime’s phrasing, Haruyuki asked in response, “Huh? What do you mean?”

However, before she could give him an answer, Fuko said sharply, “I see it. On top of that hill!”

He turned his gaze in the direction she pointed. And indeed, there, on the top of a small hill ahead of them, he could see two—no, three small human figures. The place probably corresponded with the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace in the real world. Unlike the palace, this area was open to the general public; Haruyuki himself had been there a long time ago, on a social studies field trip in elementary school.

Slowing slightly, he approached cautiously. Although they were participating as the Gallery and there was no possibility of being attacked, he couldn’t keep himself from shaking at just the thought that he was about to finally have a close-up encounter with the Seven Kings of Pure Color, the rulers of the Accelerated World.

They crossed the bridge over the wide moat, slipped through a magnificent gate, and climbed the stairs set into the slope of the hill. The utterly impenetrable Demon Castle stood to their immediate right, but Haruyuki didn’t even glance at it, instead training his gaze exclusively on the top of the hill. The stairs finally came to an end, and an expansive space covered in paving stones opened up before his eyes.

In the real world, this would have been the lawn of the remains of the inner citadel of Edo Castle. But not a single plant grew here; there was only a stand of steel pillars, forming a large circle. For some reason, however, a single pillar on the other side was noticeably shorter, only fifty or so centimeters tall.

And on it sat a duel avatar.

Blue. A deep, somehow transparent blue that threatened to suck any viewers in. It was not the color of the sky, nor of the sea. The avatar’s entire body was a pure blue, so pure that a real object that color would have been hard, if not impossible, to find.

The armor shape marked it as a perfect knight type, but without a shred of the ominousness of the Armor of Catastrophe; a gallant figure, the hero of legends. Dragon-like horns stretched out on both sides of the visored helmet, while a two-handed longsword hung from the left hip.

The blue avatar, who had adopted a relaxed pose—both arms crossed, left leg on right knee—was not that large. Standing, he was most likely the same height as Takumu while in Cyan Pile. However, his entire being emanated an overwhelming force, a meteorite hurtling toward the earth through space, and Haruyuki stopped when they were still more than twenty meters away from him.

“Th-that’s…,” he said in a hoarse voice, and Raker next to him nodded slightly.

“Yes. That’s the leader of Leonids, the Legion ruling the areas of Shinjuku and Bunkyo. The level niner also known as ‘Vanquish,’ ‘Legend Slayer,’ and many other nicknames, the Blue King, Blue Knight.”

“Blue…Knight…”

It was an extremely simple name, the sort that would get attached to some small-fry monster in any other game, but hearing it in the Accelerated World, there was something about the name that made Haruyuki conversely feel the absolute uniqueness of it.

A shiver ran up his spine at the fathomless air of intimidation before he finally remembered that the knight was not actually his duel opponent. In terms of position, they were both simply members of the Gallery. That Haruyuki would feel this kind of force from an observer with absolutely no actual fighting power, without an HP gauge even…Just thinking about the hypothetical possibility of getting stuck in a one-on-one duel was terrifying.

At that moment, he heard a slight ringing sound and the ice in his heart receded slightly. It was the sound of Kuroyukihime taking a single step forward. The Black King, Black Lotus, moved forward several steps as if to say the fierce air of the Blue King was nothing more than a gentle breeze to her, and then waved the sword of her right hand lightly.

“You’re the host today, so I’ll let you save face and say my greetings first. You look suffocating as always, Knight.”

At Kuroyukihime’s words, Haruyuki shrieked in his head, You’re practically sticking your tongue out and challenging him to a fight! When Raker laughed softly next to him, he got ready to flee with a frantic back dash, but fortunately, the blue warrior was faster than he was.

“Now, look, that’s no greeting, Lotus,” he said in the clear and cool voice of a young boy. “I haven’t seen you in two and a half years, and you’re just as crabby as ever.” His armor clanged as he shrugged his shoulders. At the same time, the bloodlust he had been radiating vanished as if it had never been at all.

From his tone, the Blue King appeared to be much more affable than Haruyuki had been expecting. The Blue Legion attacked Black territory without fail every week, so he had assumed that the King himself would certainly be burning to censure Kuroyukihime, but unexpectedly, this appeared not to be the case.

Just as Haruyuki relaxed his shoulders, two very similar human forms silently slid out of the heavy fog to linger on either side of the Blue King.

Traditional warriors! was his immediate thought. Complete sets of Japanese armor covered the slender, tall figures, layers of rectangular metal panels. The avatar on the left was a deep ultramarine, and on the right, a fairly bright blue green. Rather than full kabuto helmets, they had armored hachigane headbands tied around their foreheads, and their bound hair hung long. From the size and shape of their bodies, both were female types.

The two female warriors advanced several meters with a strange way of walking that was more like gliding, placed a hand on the grip of the sword dangling from each left hip, and spoke quietly at the same time.

“You who sneers before our Vanquish does not deserve the title of king!”

“The traitor should be grateful she’s even allowed in this place!”

And then, again, a bloodlust to make the air tremble jetted in the direction of the Nega Nebulus delegation, and Haruyuki squeaked.

As the Black King’s follower, he likely should have fought back, tossing off a similarly cool line right then and there, but he felt like they would send his head flying the moment he uttered a single word, and he was unable to even open his mouth. There was no doubt that these were the Blue King’s aides, the ones who had generated the field—in other words, the duelers—and thus they alone had the right to remove any obstructive members of the Gallery, as long as they both agreed on which members those might be.

However, in the next moment, Sky Raker replied in a voice filled with laughter. “Goodness, I don’t see you for a while and you manage to find your big-girl pants, hmm, ladies?” Moving to stand next to Kuroyukihime, her high heels clacking, she stretched out the palm of her right hand to the warriors and waggled her fingertips. “I’m ready to hang both of you from the top of the government building again anytime, you know?”

Eeeeeeee! Haruyuki screamed silently once more. Did you really just say that?! he shouted in his heart before accepting that Sky Raker was just the sort of person to say that much at the very least.

A blazing anger flared up in the almond-shaped eye lenses of the armored warriors, and they grabbed the hilts of their swords simultaneously.

“You—!”

The shout, two voices in perfectly synchrony, was interrupted from behind by the wry laugh of the Blue King. “Let’s stop right there, Cobalt, Manga.”

“…Fine.” The pair quickly bowed deeply and took a step back at the same time.

Haruyuki breathed a sigh of relief before once again staring at the two HP gauges lined up in the top of his field of view. Underneath the left-hand gauge shone the avatar name Cobalt Blade, while under the right was Manganese Blade. Given the amount of overlap in name and appearance, they must have been fairly similar in the real world as well. If, for instance, they were twin sisters, the Blue King really had to be an incredible person in many ways to be able to inspire both to follow him like this as his closest aides. This and other random thoughts wandered through his brain, while Kuroyukihime opened her mouth again, shrugging lightly.

“So then, Knight. Maybe you could get me a chair so you’re not the only one sitting?”

“Whoops. Excuse me.” With a wave of his hand, the Blue King signaled his two aides.

They dropped into fighting stances immediately to brace themselves and set hands on the hilts of their swords once more. Haruyuki didn’t even have the time to jump and shrink back before two beams of pale light sliced a broad circle around the stage, accompanied by the clear, high-pitched clang of metal.

Reopening his eyes, Haruyuki saw a blurry mess of motion in the warriors’ hands, swords glittering for an instant before being returned to their sheaths; the whole scene wouldn’t have taken up even three frames of a film.

This show was immediately followed by a thin break in the white, thickly flowing fog, and then the massive pillars soaring up on either side of the warriors began to fall soundlessly in groups of two, as if chasing that fog. The six columns crashed into the earth, setting off successive waves of sound rumbling the earth, and shattered into countless blue-black metallic chunks. All that remained were stumps with mirror-smooth cross sections.

“N-no way…,” Haruyuki could only mutter, stunned.

He was sure that the affiliation of this general duel field was Demon City. And the first characteristic of the Demon City was abnormally hard-terrain objects. Back when he had been training in the Incarnate System, he had only been able to dig a few centimeters into the wall of a Demon City building, and he had needed a full week of intense training just to be able to do that much. And yet Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade had, with a flash of their swords, simultaneously cut down three pillars each. Haruyuki had no doubt that if he had been standing in place of one of those pillars, his head and torso would have been severed from each other in a single blow.

So that was the actual power of the most elite Leonid Linkers. Which meant the king’s power would be even greater.

I—we, we’re trying to fight people like this…

The incredibly deep horror made his avatar shudder all over when he felt an unexpected pat on his back.

Sky Raker, the dazzling avatar bearing no weaponry of any kind, brought her mouth to Haruyuki’s ear. “Chopping down immobile pillars is a parlor trick, Corvus. You look so freaked out right now, and you know you’ll be punished for it later. ”

She left him as he snapped to attention and the Black King, together with her sworn friend, began to walk calmly toward the pillar stump closest to them. Kuroyukihime alone sat down, while Raker took up a place standing behind her. Haruyuki, fearing the punishment of his teacher Raker more than the blades of the warrior avatars, could only hurry after them and stand next to her, arms crossed and chest thrust out.

The warriors also retreated behind their master, and the hush that instantly fell over the stage was broken by Kuroyukihime.

“Now then, greetings to the inviting king are finished, so how about you all show your faces already?” she said, slightly exasperated. “One hundred seconds have long since passed, you know.”

Indeed, the counter was already cutting into 1,600 seconds. But what did she mean by “show your faces”? There were still only the six members of the Blue and Black Legions there…

This thought in mind, Haruyuki was about to search the stage with his eyes, but before he could, a voice that held both innocent childishness and immoveable strength rang out from somewhere, followed by a gentle footfall.

“Dang. What’s with that tone, Lotus? And here I was being respectful.”

He lifted his face with a gasp to see a single silhouette appear about three meters to the right on an adjacent stump. A dark red avatar, erect, with a form reminiscent of a carnivorous beast. He didn’t have to see the triangular pointed ears or the long tail to know that this was a senior member of the Red Legion, Prominence, nicknamed “Bloody Kitty”: Blood Leopard.

And seated on her left arm was a small crimson avatar, the owner of the voice. Two antennae stretching out like pigtails. Round, cute eye lenses. Curved, smooth armor on her limbs. Her coloring coupled with her tiny size made her almost like a single ruby. But this adorable little girl was the leader of Prominence, ruler of the Nerima and Nakano areas, the Red King, Scarlet Rain.

She didn’t have equipped the massive firepower containers from which her nickname “Immobile Fortress” came. Staring at her cute profile, Haruyuki opened his mouth to call to them: Rain, Pard! But the two red avatars emitted an aura that was just as fierce as that of the Blue King, and he clamped his mouth shut again.

It was different from the overlay of the Incarnate System; it was an invisible, pure fighting spirit. Although this was the Accelerated World, where all things were set in digital code, this phenomenon of “feeling auras” was no illusion. In terms of the logic, a rather occult explanation could be offered—that the aura was perhaps the weight of the battle history information within a duel avatar, coded as an exertion of physical pressure on another person—but in fact, it was simply that the truly strong overwhelmed the lower ranks with their presence alone, in just the way these two red avatars were making Haruyuki cower.

The Red King, real name Yuniko Kozuki aka Niko; Blood Leopard, aka Pard; and Haruyuki were all friends; they had all exposed their true identities to one another in the real. And Prominence and Nega Nebulus had concluded a ceasefire treaty of unlimited term after fighting together in the past. That said, however, their faces clearly communicated that their relationship was nowhere near the sort where they could be familiar with each other and hang out no matter the time or place. Haruyuki felt that this was the right course, although it did make him a little sad. But everyone who possessed Brain Burst was there to fight and grow stronger.

No.

In truth, there was one other reason why it was hard for Haruyuki to face Niko.

As Legion Master, Niko was supposed to have annihilated Chrome Disaster, thought to be parasitizing Silver Crow at that moment, with a Judgment Blow to her own “parent,” the Armament’s previous owner. So, in a certain sense, Niko’s motivation for seeking the death penalty for Haruyuki was greater than that of any of the other kings coming together in that spot.

He forcibly stopped himself from pushing his thoughts further in this direction and turned to face forward again. At the same time, Blood Leopard’s low voice reached his ears.

“Just me and the king from Promi. Greetings omitted.”

Jumping down from her lieutenant’s arm, Niko sat herself on the steel stool and Leopard stepped back to her rear, hands on her hips.

With that, three of the seven kings were together. The Blue King sat on the centermost of the seven amputated pillars, which were arranged in a semicircle. The Black King faced him on the right end, and to her right was the Red King.

Haruyuki braced himself for who would come next and from where.

“Heh. Heh-heh-heh…” Rather than footsteps, a throaty, high-pitched voice echoed from the distant side of the fog.

He had definitely heard this laugh, filled with obvious scorn and ridicule, somewhere else, but he couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. He whirled his head to look around, but each time, the source seemed to cut around behind him.

“Heh-heh…King, hmm? I do believe king is supposed to be short for the Seven Kings of Pure Color, if my memory’s correct? But isn’t the coloring of the little one sitting there a tad too cheap to be red, hmm?” The words flung from the fog were clearly meant to mock Scarlet Rain.

Niko was the only second-generation king among the rulers of the seven major Legions. The previous Red King, Red Rider, had had his head cut off two and a half years earlier in a single strike by the Black King, and had been forced to leave the Accelerated World forever due to the sudden-death rule that applied to fights between level niners. Niko had revived Prominence when it was on the verge of collapse and named herself its new master. Her avatar was indeed a slightly bright scarlet rather than a pure red, but that was absolutely no reason to treat her like an impostor. Because—

“C-color’s got nothing to do with it! Rain climbed to level nine under her own power, and there’s no other requirement for being a king!”

—is why.

And here, Haruyuki finally realized that he was the one who had shouted the thought rolling around in his brain. Raker giggled next to him, and Niko herself, seated not far from him, appeared to be smiling wryly.

“The crow over there took the words from my mouth, so I’ll just add one thing. If you wanna talk cheap, your banana color’d give me a good run for my money. But we don’t have time for this. Just come out already,” the Red King said, and snapped the fingers of her right hand to point at the middle pillar in line with her, three removed.

Hurriedly directing his gaze that way, Haruyuki realized that a tiny paper doll was standing on a stump he had simply assumed was empty. Cocking his head about five centimeters to one side, he finally understood. It was an observer dummy avatar, just like the one Kuroyukihime had used to gather information in the Accelerated World when she was in hiding from the kings’ assassins. The voice’s owner had taken advantage of the fact that they were connecting to the field as the Gallery to change his avatar into something extremely inconspicuous.

As soon as Haruyuki came to this realization, white smoke puffed up from the paper doll’s center. The smoke was carried away by the slight wind in the stage, leaving a slim, clown-type duel avatar with a brilliant—or garish—yellow appearance standing in the center of the pillar. Hat with large, curved horns jutting out on either side. A face mask with thin eyes and mouth cut into the form of a smile. Long, gangly limbs stretching out from rounded, bulbous shoulders and hips.

“Heh-heh!” The clown allowed another burst of laughter to slip out as he ran a finger as thin as a wire along his chin. “Banana color, what a terrible thing to say! I personally like to offer up the example of uranium, you see? But, well, I suppose there’s no helping it. Everyone knows that the monkey and her child love bananas, now, don’t they? Heh-heh.”

The clown before them bobbing his head and continuing to laugh was the very person who had once laid a trap for Kuroyukihime and Niko: the Yellow King, head of the Legion Cosmic Crypt Circus, which ruled the three areas of Taito, Arakawa, and Adachi, along with Akihabara—Yellow Radio.

Given the king’s chatty style and flamboyant gestures, Haruyuki didn’t feel the same oppressive aura in him as he did with the other kings. However, having witnessed the close combat between Yellow Radio and Kuroyukihime at close range, he knew only too well that this was not an opponent to take lightly. Despite the fact that Radio was an unblemished yellow—meaning that he was a purely midrange-attack type—he had crossed swords with Black Lotus without retreating even a single step.

The Yellow King had apparently come without any aides in tow. Controlling his laughter, he brought his right hand to his chest and bowed in exaggerated curtsy before moving smoothly from the bow into a seated position on the pillar.

So that’s four.

“So who’s not here yet? Let’s see,” Haruyuki muttered, just as his ears caught the sound of haughty footsteps.

Rrk, rrk! Intense vibrations shook the stage from the right behind him. He whirled around just as a large avatar split the fog and stepped forward.

It was big, but not quite a giant. In terms of mere size, it probably wasn’t even as big as the main Blue Legion member, Frost Horn, much less Niko with her Enhanced Armament deployed. But Haruyuki had never before faced an avatar possessing this kind of overwhelming solemnity. Mask, shoulders, lower body—all were covered in armor reminiscent of thick boards. But the hips were thin and tense, erasing any suggestion of sluggishness. His right hand was empty, but an equally large and solid shield was equipped in his left. All the armor was a vibrant green, deeper than emerald.

“The Green King,” Haruyuki said quietly. He had only seen this avatar once for a few seconds, and in a replay video of a past fight, no less.

Next to him, Raker nodded. “Yes,” she added in a whisper. “That’s Green Grandé, the leader of the Legion ‘Great Wall.’ Their territory is large, stretching from Shibuya to Ota. His nickname is ‘Invulnerable.’”

“Right, his HP gauge has never once gone into the yellow…,” Haruyuki murmured with an unconscious sigh. His own gauge frequently ended up bright red in same-level duels, even when he won.

In front of him, Kuroyukihime puffed her nose lightly in indignation. “To begin with, he’s actually not been in that many duels. Apparently, he earned the points he needed to make it to level nine almost entirely by hunting Enemies solo. Although that is still a significant enterprise.”

“Aaah.” Haruyuki let out another admiring sigh. Even the smallest of the strangely shaped Enemies loping through the Unlimited Neutral Field had serious fighting power, and on top of a player having to nearly kill themselves to defeat one, very few points were actually earned in that victory. Haruyuki loved grinding in a regular RPG, but even he was happier begging off Enemy hunting unless he started seriously losing in the general PVP duels.

Completely unaware of the respectful gazes from a distance, the “level-up artisan,” the Green King, approached the pillar between Niko and the Blue King with a sure step and set himself down heavily. Like the Yellow King, he had come without any other Legion members. He said nothing, and so the silence remained unbroken, but no one seemed to find this the least bit strange. He had apparently established himself as the quiet type.

Facing forward once more, Haruyuki took a deep breath. With the passing of time here, he felt like he had gotten used to the intense auras of these strongest residents of the Accelerated World, the kings. In fact, at some point, his trembling knees had anchored themselves, and the cold numbness of his hands had vanished.

Right. There’s no need to freak out. I mean, I’m the Black King’s subordinate—no, her “child.” I have every right to stand tall like Raker, he told himself and went to thrust his chest out and do just that.

“Ngh?!” He felt something like a cold hand clutching his heart and cringed with maximum fear.

What…is this? Bloodlust…? No, not that. It’s more decisive…the will to remove. A silent declaration…that I will be judged and banished from the Accelerated World.

Tak. Tak. High-pitched footsteps echoed from nowhere.

Stiffening up, he pricked his ears intently. The north. The footfalls drew nearer, walking toward the semicircle of seated kings. He turned his gaze that way, tensed neck creaking.

A single silhouette on the other side of the dense fog. Seeing it only at the shadow level, he intuitively felt it was a girl-shaped avatar from the long hair parts and the skirt-shaped armor swinging. The waist was constricted impossibly thin; the legs were like needles.

Tak. Tak. Tak. The footsteps, swords piercing the earth, perhaps sounded so sharp because of pin heels twice as high as the ones Sky Raker had. The instant those feet stepped into the ring of the pillars, the deep fog hanging over the area was largely blown away, as if the ferocity of the auras there was too much to endure.

If there was one word to describe the avatar that was finally revealed then, it was not king; nothing other than queen would do. What had looked like hair was armor in the form of a long veil stretching out from the circlet on her forehead. Her face mask was pointed and beautiful, and her shoulder and chest parts were also feminine and yet intimidating. Partitioned armor in the shape of a long skirt stretched down from a high position on her waist, exposing her long, slender legs in gaps that went almost up to her hips.

There was no doubt that this duel avatar was the most deserving of the word bewitching of all the avatars Haruyuki had ever seen. However, her beauty was not the inviting kind; various parts of her body, including the tiara on her head, were edged with thorny adornments, spiked ends glittering. In her right hand, she carried a bishop’s staff about a meter and a half or so long. At its tip was a rose vine with remarkably long needles. All her armor was a mysterious purple that shimmered hypnotically each time it caught the light.

“And so she appears,” Sky Raker murmured, almost inaudibly, while narrowing her eye lenses and staring at the approaching queen. “Of all the kings gathering here today, she is probably the most antagonistic toward us. Leader of the Legion Aurora Oval, ruling over the area from Ginza to the bay, nicknamed Empress Voltage: the Purple King, Purple Thorn. And the staff she’s carrying in her right hand is one of the Seven Arcs, the Tempest.”

“A-arcs?” Haruyuki parroted back.

“The strongest class of Enhanced Armaments in the Accelerated World,” Raker added in hurried explanation. “It’s assumed there are seven in total. The ones that have been confirmed as of present, other than that staff, are the Impulse, the large sword the Blue King has; the Strife, the large shield the Green King has; and then the last one is…” Here, Haruyuki could feel Raker momentarily falter for some reason, but he no longer had the opportunity to ask her about it.

The Purple King, moving forward leisurely through the center of the ring of pillars, stopped when she was closest to Kuroyukihime, who was sitting on the farthest right of the shorn columns. The queen stabbed the bottom end of her staff into the earth loudly, her thin veil swinging and her mask turning slightly toward the Black King. Her angled eye lenses housed a cold amethyst light.

The instant he felt the pressure the girl-shaped avatar had been radiating in no particular direction grow even stronger, and then focus on the three members of Nega Nebulus, Haruyuki very nearly fainted for real. If it had been a clear anger or hatred, he could’ve actually handled it. In the eight months since Haruyuki had become a Burst Linker, he had been in countless fights where he had come up against all kinds of anger.

But emanating from the Purple King was not any simple emotion; it was absolute rejection, a rejection so unyielding anyone who came up against it would instantly realize that there was no room for mutual understanding there. Haruyuki instinctively felt that this opponent would never stop fighting them, no matter how the situation might change in the future. Right up until the bitter demise of the Accelerated World.

“It’s been a long time, Lotus,” the Purple King, Purple Thorn, said quietly after looking down at Black Lotus for two seconds. “I never thought the day would come when I would be speaking to you again like this.”

There was nothing thorny about her tone; it was smooth like ice. Haruyuki swallowed even harder with the nervous certainty that this voice only had to break to reveal the countless sharp edges it contained. But he had heard the Purple King speak somewhere before, that sweet girlishness mixed in with her grave majesty, and after thinking about it, he remembered soon enough: He had definitely heard this girl speak once before. Not directly, of course. The Purple King had been in the replay video he had seen in the Unlimited Neutral Field. The sound came back to life in his ears from the depths of his memory.

“Rider, you think I’m just gonna let that go?!”

“Hey! Come on!”

The shout of a girl, indignant and yet still innocent.

In the video, at this moment, the Black King had wrapped both of her arms around the neck of the first Red King, Red Rider. And so the Purple King, who had been close to the Red King, had raised a voice that would have gone perfectly with an angry face. However, immediately after that, the swords of Black Lotus’s arms had closed like a pair of enormous scissors, cutting off Red Rider’s head.

Burst Linkers who reached level nine were bound by the rule of sudden death: The moment they were defeated by another level-nine player, they lost all of their burst points. Which meant that, in that instant, the Red King was chased from the Accelerated World forever. Recorded at the end of the replay video was Purple Thorn’s piercing scream.

The story Haruyuki had heard was that immediately after this act, Kuroyukihime leapt into mortal combat with the remaining five kings, and while the thirty-minute duel time ended with her unable to defeat even one, she was not defeated herself. For the following two years, she refrained from connecting to the global net, sheltering in the obscurity of the Umesato local net until opportunity knocked in the form of Cyan Pile’s assault and the birth of Silver Crow in the fall of the previous year.

This intense and heavy history palpable between them, the two kings locked eyes and radiated their own oppressive auras at each other for another few seconds. Haruyuki couldn’t help secretly fearing that Black Lotus would lower her face. In her heart, Kuroyukihime no doubt still regretted that day she had hit Red Rider with a surprise attack. Even if the Red King no longer remembered that he had been a Burst Linker.

However.

The black crystal avatar did not avert her eyes from those of the thorny queen; her sharp face mask did not so much as quiver. “Nor I, Thorn.” Kuroyukihime’s low, smooth voice finally flowed out into the field and the drifting fog. “I was certain the next time we met, one of us would lose their head.”

Taking in these calm words, the Purple King slowly blinked the eyes of her avatar, unmoved. When she spoke again, the chill in her voice seemed to have gotten slightly colder, although it could have just been in his head. “Perhaps one of us will, hmm? For instance, if all of us gathered here were to agree to change modes from Normal Duel to Battle Royale…the possibility’s there.”

Swallowing hard, Haruyuki desperately tried to keep himself from shouting. “Don’t even joke about that! I would totally never agree to do that!”

But Kuroyukihime’s reply was calm, with a hint of a laugh. “That would certainly speed things up. If today ended up being the day one of us cleared this game, we wouldn’t need to have these sorts of annoying meetings.”

Instantly, Haruyuki froze in place once more. Her words sounded like a declaration that she would hunt the other four kings then and there and become level ten; they could mean nothing else. He completely could not believe Sky Raker’s courage, that she was able to stand next to him so calmly.

The Purple King cocked her head slightly at the Black King’s retort and abruptly stabbed the staff in her right hand into the paving stones. The edged clang lingered in the air and Haruyuki’s cold blood ran even colder. He heard several sets of footfalls, neatly synchronized, coming from the direction the Purple King had arrived from, before eight Burst Linkers revealed themselves. Their coloring and armor shapes were all over the map, but he could tell at a glance that they were all skilled masters; most likely, the most powerful members of the Purple Legion had dived together.

Purple Thorn grinned here for the first time. “Unthinkable that you believe that to be a joke,” she said. “Naturally, I came prepared. So that if and when the time comes to fight you, you won’t be able to escape again, hmm?”

The show of force was no bluff. She was serious. This girl had feelings so strong locked up inside of her it would almost be presumptuous to think he could even begin to understand them.

Haruyuki felt a pressure so strong he could hardly breathe and pulled his right leg back the tiniest bit.

But Kuroyukihime still did not lose her composure. Somehow, she even managed to laugh. “Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha…I see. I underestimated you. But, well, Thorn, if you’re seriously looking to take my head, shouldn’t you really have your troops lying in wait on the very edges of the area? Learn from Radio over there.”

Huh? Haruyuki looked over at Yellow Radio, seated on the opposite side. The canary clown simply moved his shoulders slightly without saying anything, but now that Haruyuki actually thought about it, the Yellow King would never have come alone if the possibility of the meeting turning into a battle was even just 0.001 percent.

Reacting to Kuroyukihime’s comment was not the Purple King, but rather a female-shaped avatar who broke away from the eight-member entourage. Her armor was a deep reddish purple, reminiscent of wine. The broad-brimmed hat and wide thigh area were almost militaristic, but rather than a gun on either hip, she was equipped with a whip rolled up into a ring.

The female officer-type avatar stopped one step back from the Purple King. “Amusing that you would take your bravado this far, cave king,” she uttered, her voice chilled to the extreme. “You may have crawled out from underground to run around or whatever it is you do, but I’ll have you remember that the Seven Kings need only become serious, and your pathetic little frontier territory and what have you would be crushed in a single day.” Her speech was contemptuous in the extreme, but Haruyuki could only grit his teeth tightly.

Unfortunately, he had to admit that what the avatar said was true. Currently, Nega Nebulus ruled all of Suginami Ward, but more than 70 percent of the challenges they got during the Territory Battles at the end of each week were from small and midsize Legions. Of the six major Legions, one or two teams from Leonids neighboring them to the east would always participate, with occasional sorties from Great Wall to their south. And the average level of the challengers was four or five; a high-level Linker at level seven or greater had never once appeared before them.

Still, for Nega Nebulus, with only five members, maintaining their territory was no mean feat. If the six major Legions mustered all their energy and launched a concentrated attack just once during that battle time, Haruyuki and his friends would have been unable to win more than half of the enormous number of defensive battles, and the black flag would have been wiped from the map of the Accelerated World.

In other words, in a certain sense, it was precisely because the six—no, five—kings, excluding Niko and their ceasefire, had adopted a “wait and see” attitude that Haruyuki and his friends had been able to continue protecting their home area of Suginami.

Unable to put up a real fight in his own heart, much less make any sharp retort to the female officer, Haruyuki’s helmet sank downward. But just as his gaze was about to fall on his feet, a crisp, insistent voice rang out to his immediate right, and he lifted his face back up with a gasp.

“Well, for someone who could do no such thing, you certainly do manage to sound quite arrogant, hmm, Aster Vine?” It was Sky Raker. As Kuroyukihime’s deputy, she stood firm and proud, not backing down before the other officer’s bluster.

The whip user, apparently named Aster Vine, narrowed her eyes sharply under the brim of her hat. “Could do no such thing, you say?” Her voice was even icier. “While you were running and hiding all that time, did your head rust to the point where you can’t even assess your own fighting ability?”

“And you. I don’t see you for a while and your eyes cloud over so much that you’re unable to see reality.”

Haruyuki could do nothing but stand frozen and listen to this exchange practically electrify the air around them. No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out what Sky Raker meant by this reality. The difference between Nega Nebulus and the five kings—excluding Red—in terms of both membership and combined level, was so great that comparison was pointless. What on earth was Raker trying to say…?

The answer to his question came after a pause, in Raker’s own words. “If you think the kings are letting Nega Nebulus’s territory continue to exist out of the goodness of their hearts, you’re either thickheaded or not trusted. If they could crush it, they obviously would have done so long ago. The reason they can’t…is because they themselves who name themselves king know that this controlling power is not something absolute.”

“…What did you say?” Aster Vine squeezed out a creaking voice, while the Purple King maintained an eerie silence. He couldn’t read what kind of emotion was in the light shining in her eyes suddenly.

“Pay attention.” Raker’s cool voice continued to echo in the penetrating cold of the Demon City stage. “They may be the six major Legions, but their combined membership is just over six hundred or so. In contrast, more than a thousand Burst Linkers currently live in the center of Tokyo. And nearly forty percent of the Territories map is made up of gray neutral states, including the Chiyoda Area we’re in now.”

“…And what does that matter? All the Legions outside the ones ruled by the Seven Kings are ephemeral organizations that would fly off into the sky if you blew on them. Your teensy little home included.”

“True, the scale of all of those Legions is modest. But, you see, these four hundred people, including Burst Linkers with no Legion affiliation, have one thing in common. And that is that they want nothing to do with the seven major Legions.” Stopping briefly, Sky Raker then continued with an air so intimidating, it was as if she herself had become one of the level niners.

“Understand? The majority of them choose the micro of their own volition. Because of their own animosity toward the kings who have caused such stagnation in the Accelerated World with their nonaggression pact. And those Burst Linkers are paying close attention to the return of Black Lotus and the movements of the Black Legion. They’re trying to gauge whether her ‘traitorous intentions’ are real or fake. What do you think would happen if the Legions of the Seven Kings tried to crush her? You’re right: Our flag would indeed disappear from the territory map. But that wouldn’t make Black Lotus herself disappear from the Accelerated World, and the Legion itself would go on. And the smaller legions would likely take a step forward from ‘paying attention.’ If they all came together into one stream, I wonder if you’d still be able to scorn them as ‘ephemeral’?”

And here, Haruyuki finally felt that he vaguely understood what Raker was getting at.

At the Hermes’ Cord race the week before, the more than five hundred members of the Gallery gathered along the course definitely had not been booing at the appearance of the Black King, once exiled as a traitor. They had, in fact, welcomed her with warm cheers, had they not? There was no doubt that those cheers had been laden with expectation, the hope that the Black King would be the one to break through the stagnation.

And if that energy were brought together as a single force? Wouldn’t that be something that even the Seven Kings could not ignore—something they would be forced to recognize as a threat?

Sky Raker waved her right hand lightly at the silent Aster Vine. “Do you understand? That there is a far greater strain on the Accelerated World than you think right now? That underneath the pretense of stagnation, more than a few large currents are beginning to twist and swirl?” Her cool, clear voice rippled into the field and lingered before sinking into silence and at last fading entirely.

The sound of the Purple King’s high heels broke the silence as she stepped forward. Tak. Turning to face forward once more, she quietly walked away as though she had taken no notice of Raker’s comments. With a final fierce glare, Aster Vine turned to follow her. The remaining seven members of the entourage standing at a distance did the same.

The Purple King took as her seat the empty pillar between the Blue and Yellow Kings in the semicircle of seven columns. Her eight Burst Linkers stood in a V formation behind her. The heavy pressure of their majestic presence was clearly the most massive of any of the Legions gathered there.

Haruyuki felt keenly relieved that Aurora Oval’s territory was Ginza together with Ariake and therefore far away from Suginami, and then hurriedly pulled himself up straighter. Who knew what kind of punishment he’d get later if these two next to him noticed this weakness? He nodded slightly as if to hide it.

“So…that’s six. And the last person is, umm…”

Currently assembled were the powers of Black, Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, and Purple. So that meant the remaining king was—

“No,” Kuroyukihime murmured, impossibly quiet, before Haruyuki could give voice to his thought. “She won’t come.”

“Huh?”

“The remaining king won’t show herself here. I have no doubt she’ll send a proxy.”

He was about to ask how she knew that when he sensed something not quite right in one corner of his vision. He clamped his mouth shut and sent his eyes racing around.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary. The remains of the inner citadel in the East Gardens of the Demon City stage were quiet, white fog trailing through. Half of the round pillars standing there had been cut down, and on the seats those seven pillars had become, the seven representatives of the great Legions ruling the Accelerated World were—

“Huh?” The moment he realized it, Haruyuki jerked backward.

Seven seats had been made. Six kings had shown up so far. So one seat should have been empty. But all of the seats in Haruyuki’s field of view at that moment were filled. Had he missed someone’s arrival? No, he couldn’t have. And even if his extreme nervousness had made him miss something, he couldn’t believe Raker and Kuroyukihime would have.

Because the seat that had to be empty was immediately in front of the three members of the Black Legion. It might have been a different matter if the seat had been to one side, but they certainly would have seen someone approaching the pillar opposite them and sitting down. However, at some point, a single Burst Linker had actually done just that, taking the seat the very short distance of ten meters away from them.

Tall, slender body wrapped in a subdued, simple armor with nothing resembling a weapon. The sole distinguishing feature was likely the long, thin, and tapered head. Only a curved parting line was carved into the front; he couldn’t see any eyes or mouth. It was sitting so neatly, arms and legs together on the pillar, that it looked more like a decorative object than a duel avatar. The entire body was an almost matte ivory white, reminiscent of porcelain.

The avatar had an incredibly dilute presence. He couldn’t sense even a shred of the concentrated pressure emitted from its existence like he could with the other kings. Maybe it was actually an object? Impossible. Had there been a sculpture there this whole time and he just hadn’t noticed it…?

Just as Haruyuki was gripped by a sudden confusion, the ivory avatar bowed neatly from the waist, both hands still on its knees. At the same time as its upper body was brought back up, a voice flowed out, with no identifying features other than that it was masculine. “My name is Ivory Tower, member of the Legion Oscillatory Universe. I have come to take part in this meeting as full proxy and representative for the White King. I ask for your cooperation.”

It was an extremely businesslike greeting, almost as if they had moved from a duel field in the Accelerated World into a corporate conference room without realizing it.

Although they tried to suppress it, this greeting clearly made the other kings and their aides deeply uneasy. Most likely, none of them had noticed Ivory Tower’s appearance, either. The Yellow King, directly beside Ivory Tower, tapped the sharp-tipped toes of one foot on the ground, expressing his actual irritation.

However, the discomfort lasted only a few seconds.

The Blue King, Blue Knight, stood up abruptly in the center, armor clanking. “Good, so then everyone’s here,” he said in a strong, ringing voice. “First, let me thank all seven Legions for taking part. Good to see you.”

“Two of the faces here are different from the meeting of the Seven Kings two and a half years ago, hmm?” Interrupting with unnecessary chatter was, of course, Yellow Radio. He might have been making a sarcastic reference to the fact that the Red King was the second and that the White King had sent a proxy, but not a soul responded. The meeting continued forward with just the hint of a wry smile from the Red King.

“We don’t have much time, so let’s just get right into it. You all already know the situation, so I’ll just summarize briefly. In the middle of the Hermes’ Cord race event last week, in front of several hundred members of the Gallery, an incident occurred in which the Incarnate System was activated. The first item on the agenda today is how we should deal with this situation. That said, I can think of only two ways. We either expend every effort to hide the system, as we have been up to now, or we give up and disclose it to all Burst Linkers.”

“Disclosure’s impossible. Wasn’t that it?” Yellow Radio raised his voice once again, skirting around the edge of saying the idea was ridiculous. He spread his long, thin arms and shrugged exaggeratedly. “The Incarnate System’s like nuclear energy, yes? If it’s not strictly controlled, it could bring about catastrophic disaster to the Accelerated World. That was our shared understanding, hmm?”

The clown cocked his horned hat to one side, and the Purple King to his left immediately raised an objection.

“The point is that control has been shattered, Radio. If you’re making an analogy with nuclear, then the current situation is equivalent to the raw materials for nuclear weapons being scattered all over the world. How are we supposed to recover them now?”

“So are you then saying we should kindly hand out manuals for missile production? You realize the great majority of Burst Linkers still don’t even know what the Incarnate System is? Wouldn’t it be better to simply push the idea that there was a problem with the event’s stage design?”

“Excuse me, may I speak?” another voice interjected, just as the Purple King was about to refute the Yellow King once more.

Politely raising a hand was the ivory avatar seated on the left end of the semicircle, the representative of the White King, Ivory Tower. When all eyes turned toward him, he dropped his left hand. “Before we debate what measures to take, shouldn’t we find out how something like this happened? Who on earth is this Burst Linker who released the Incarnate in the middle of an event and pulled even the Gallery into the Space Corrosion, and what is their objective?”

Silence ruled the meeting venue.

The name and membership of the problem Burst Linker. Haruyuki already knew these. But he was incredibly reluctant to give voice to them here. Because in talking about that mysterious organization, he would inevitably have to touch on the Burst Linker who called himself its vice president. But the color that crowned that player was the same as a certain swordmaster he loved and respected more than anyone else—a pure black. If the kings knew that, it was obvious they would suspect a connection.

“Rust Jigsaw, a member of the organization Acceleration Research Society. That’s the name of the Burst Linker who carried out the Incarnate attack at the event.”

“Ngh?!” Haruyuki caught his breath the instant he heard the brilliantly clear voice.

It was Kuroyukihime. Without the slightest fear of suspicion being cast on herself, the Black King proceeded smoothly. “We don’t know the full story on the organization, but they called themselves a ‘circle’ rather than a Legion. The other confirmed members are Dusk Taker, who has already left the Accelerated World, and one more—”

“Hold up, Lotus.”

Just as she was on the verge of announcing that third name, a single voice interrupted her sharply.

It belonged to the Red King, Scarlet Rain, occupying the seat to their right. With her arms crossed over her chest, she emitted an air of intimidation out of proportion with her small body, the smallest of anyone there.

You’re throwing us a life raft, huh, Niko? Haruyuki thought, and the tension ran out of his shoulders.

However…

An aura like the flames of hell flew from the roundly cute eye lenses that glanced at them, and Haruyuki stopped breathing.

“If you don’t take care of the other item on the agenda, I can’t keep sitting here. We got someone not fit for the threat of Incarnate blah-blah right here. Someone living inside the avatar with a cursed power that was supposed to be completely gone, the darkest side of the ultimate Incarnate.”