The End and the Beginning

  Copyright

  ACCEL WORLD, Volume 15

  REKI KAWAHARA

  Translation by Jocelyne Allen

  Cover art by HIMA

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  ACCEL WORLD Vol. 15

  © REKI KAWAHARA 2013

  First published in Japan in 2013 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2018 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kawahara, Reki, author. | HIMA (Comic book artist) illustrator. | Beepee, designer. | Allen, Jocelyne, 1974– translator.

  Title: Accel World / Reki Kawahara ; illustrations, HIMA ; design, bee-pee ; translation by Jocelyne Allen.

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2014–

  Identifiers: LCCN 2014025099 | ISBN 9780316376730 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296366 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296373 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296380 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296397 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296403 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316358194 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316317610 (v. 8 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316502702 (v. 9 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316466059 (v. 10 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316466066 (v. 11 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316466073 (v. 12 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975300067 (v. 13 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327231 (v. 14 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327255 (v. 15 : pbk.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | Virtual reality—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K1755Kaw 2014 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2014025099

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-2725-5 (paperback)

  978-1-9753-2726-2 (ebook)

  E3-20180817-JV-PC

  In that case, I’ll protect you.

  If you get into a jam, I’ll come flying. Anytime.

  Haruyuki had made this vow to Niko last night, when she’d suddenly arrived with the intent to stay over.

  “I’m counting on you,” she had replied with a smile. And then:

  It’s fine. As long as you stay close, that’s enough. So don’t go changing on me, ’kay? Even after you go up levels and get to be a high ranker, you just stay the way you are. And…like, if someday I…

  Had the Red King felt it then? Had she sensed the malicious presence that would attack her in the near future? Was her “if someday I” supposed to be followed by “disappear from the Accelerated World”?

  Haruyuki couldn’t let her premonition become reality. He had made a promise: No matter what happened, he would protect his cherished friend. He would protect Niko.

  Which was why he had to fly now. Beyond his limits—at the speed of light.

  “F…lyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!” Haruyuki cried.

  As if in response to his will, the new wings stretching out from his back grew bright with silver light, brilliantly illuminating the sky of the Twilight stage.

  1

  There existed only one way to return to the real world of one’s own volition from the Unlimited Neutral Field, aka the true Accelerated World: jump into one of the leave points, known as portals, that sat inside large, landmark-type buildings.

  That was it.

  Your health gauge could drop to zero and you could die, but you would only be confined, in spirit form, to the area around your death marker until you regenerated sixty minutes later. If you happened to die deep within the territory of an Enemy so powerful a single blow from it would strike you down, you could even get stuck repeating this cycle of death and regeneration until your burst points ran out.

  Strictly speaking, total point loss would actually allow a player to leave the Field without the use of a portal. But in that case, the Brain Burst program and all memories associated with the Accelerated World would also be lost. And for the majority of Burst Linkers, if it was a choice between the two, it was considered better to spend however many years locked up in the Accelerated World.

  Thus, when taking on the challenge of difficult missions in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it was standard practice to make advance preparations to automatically stop acceleration from the real-world side, a so-called automatic disconnection safety. More specifically, this entailed connecting to the global net with a hardwired Neurolinker connection—and then setting up a predetermined forcible disconnect time.

  When they started out on the Archangel Metatron attack mission with the entirety of Nega Nebulus, together with Prominence’s Niko and Pard, for a total of nine people, Kuroyukihime had set the safety to activate after ten minutes. It seemed like a short time, but in the Accelerated World, where time flowed a thousand times faster than in the real world, it was equivalent to 166 hours and 40 minutes—approximately seven days. This gave them a fair bit of leeway, and in fact, by the time they managed to crush Metatron after an intense battle, they still had over six days until the automatic disconnect.

  But that leeway suddenly turned into a trap that came out of nowhere to blindside them all. The fight with Metatron had no sooner ended than their friend Niko—the Red King, Scarlet Rain—had been abducted by the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, Black Vise.

  Wherever he was taking her, if the global connection in the real world was cut, then in that instant, her duel avatar would vanish from the Accelerated World and she could escape from danger for the time being. But the safety wouldn’t be activated for another six days—a lifetime away. Thus, Haruyuki had turned to his companions and shouted immediately before flying off after Vise: Get out through the nearest portal and pull Niko’s cable!

  Tokyo Midtown Tower, the stage for the Metatron attack, was one of the most famous landmarks in the twenty-three wards of Tokyo, so there would have to have been a portal in there somewhere. Most likely, inside the tower itself.

  But the problem was that the portal wasn’t necessarily at the entrance on the first floor of the building. In fact, the portal at Roppongi Hills, Midtown Tower’s twin rising up over the landscape, was in the vicinity of the fiftieth floor. If Midtown Tower’s was at a similar height, how many minutes would it take to climb up to it? And Midtown was an important base for the Acceleration Research Society, so it was also possible that they had set any number of traps to keep anyone from actually reaching their portal.

  Which was why he couldn’t rely on a disconnection alone to save Niko. He had to do whatever it took to follow Black Vise and get her back. Because Niko was Haruyuki’s friend, and he had sworn to protect her. r />
  “Faster…! Faaaaaasteeeerrrr!!” Haruyuki forced a scream from his throat, seeking increasingly more speed even as he plunged through the air faster than ever before.

  On his back, a new pair of pure-white wings—the Metatron Wings—sat above the ten metal fins that were Silver Crow’s original wings, howling and whistling. Crowned with the name of an Archangel, the Enhanced Armament gave him unprecedented power, causing the hands that he held outstretched before him to compress the virtual atmosphere; his fingertips burned bright red with supersonic friction. But Haruyuki, in his hyper-accelerated consciousness, continued to pray for more—to go even faster.

  Black Vise had captured Niko after the Metatron mission, sinking into the shadow of Midtown Tower to run off. Vise had the ability to move anywhere within interconnected shadows and remain hidden, but fortunately, the Twilight stage had few buildings. The shadows cut off at an intersection about five hundred meters away from the tower in a straight line, and Haruyuki had not missed the glimpse of the jet-black avatar revealing himself in order to cross it.

  That said, however, five hundred meters was more than double the distance across the Tokyo Midtown complex. On top of that, it would take Vise at most three seconds to cross the intersection and dive into the next shadow. And once he fled into the shadow of the bridge off Expressway No. 3 up ahead, Haruyuki wouldn’t be able to follow him any farther—that bridge connected with the central ring road to the east and the Tomei Expressway to the west, which meant, in practical terms, it spread without limit.

  Move five hundred meters in a mere three seconds.

  To make that happen from a dead stop, he would need to achieve a speed of twelve hundred kilometers per hour. The acceleration required was about eleven G’s—a maneuver far beyond the limits of a duel avatar. But he had to do it.

  The maximum speed of his own flight ability was five hundred kilometers per hour. A thousand when he activated his secondary Incarnate technique Light Speed. And with the Enhanced Armament Metatron Wings, eleven hundred…twelve hundred…

  “Ah…Aaaaaah!!” Haruyuki howled in his spaghettified stretch of time.

  The wall of air transformed into a highly viscous liquid pierced by Silver Crow’s sharp fingertips. Concentric shock waves shattered the buildings beneath him.

  In the rapidly approaching intersection, Black Vise had finished crossing the road and was once more turning himself into square panels. The crimson armor of the petite avatar he held in both arms shone brightly in the depths of the dusk. But her bright color was already being swallowed up by the thin ebony panels.

  Haruyuki glared at his enemy, about to sink into the shadows once more, and mustered every ounce of strength he had left. He was probably already flying at over twelve hundred kilometers per hour—beyond the speed of sound, in other words. Deceleration was out of the question—a normal landing was utterly impossible. His only option was to crash into Black Vise at top speed. Haruyuki and Vise would be killed instantly in the impact of the collision, and Niko, locked away inside Vise, would likely share their fate. But this was much better than her being carried off to some unknown location. While they were standing by to regenerate, their friends would catch up to them, and he could apologize as much as necessary once this whole mess with Niko was sorted out.

  Silver Crow plunged toward the intersection, the steep angle of his plummet to the earth whipping up a storm of rubble in his wake. Ten meters until the inky panels slid into the ground…Five…

  “Give back…”

  Three meters. Two.

  “…Nikooooooooooo!!”

  One.

  At the exact same instant that Vise’s entire body sank into the shadows, Haruyuki’s hands touched that spot on the ground. An enormous explosion, grand enough to shake the heavens themselves…did not happen.

  Plrmp! Instead, a strange sensation enveloped Haruyuki. All light disappeared; all sound was cut off. Even the energy from his supersonic dive—more than ample to create a massive crater in the earth—vanished as though it had been sucked into some alternate dimension. He would still have continued moving dozens of meters even if his wings had stopped—for instance, if he had dived into water—and yet, all of his inertia had apparently been canceled out.

  It was almost like he had plunged into a bottomless bog of jet-black ink. All that existed in his field of view was his health gauge, 50 percent full. The vibrations that had made his avatar creak until a millisecond earlier were also gone, and the input from his five senses dropped to zero.

  —No.

  A lateral force assaulted him. He was being pulled—no, he was flowing. The densely concentrated darkness was moving like an underground water current, carrying Haruyuki off somewhere.

  “…Rain! Where are you?!”

  Sensing that even his shout was promptly erased, Haruyuki desperately reached out into the black. But the tips of his fingers brushed nothing. He tried to flare the wings on his back to push against the current, but the thick darkness wrapped around them and interfered. All he could do was allow himself to be swept away in a current so black, he couldn’t see even a centimeter in front of his face.

  Light…Some kind of light source…

  He mentally went through his inventory for anything that might produce light before finally realizing he didn’t need an item for that. He held his right hand up high and focused his mind.

  Vween! The clear sound of vibration echoed through his avatar, and a silver light—his Incarnate overlay—pushed the darkness back ever so slightly.

  He took a sharp breath the instant it popped up in his view: a rectangular plate riding the current a few meters ahead of him. There was no doubt; this was Black Vise. Which meant that this unlit space was inside the shadows Vise used as his escape route. Perhaps because of his timing when touching the ground or due to his speed, faster than sound, Haruyuki had apparently followed Vise into the shadows.

  “Stop! Let go of Rain!!” Haruyuki shouted in a voice that traveled nowhere. He brandished his right hand with the light lodged in it.

  “Laser—”

  Before he could utter the “Lance” part of the technique name, Vise suddenly rotated to the right. It wasn’t that he had sensed the attack from behind and moved to avoid it, but rather the shadow corridor itself appeared to turn at a sharp angle. And whether he liked it or not, Haruyuki was also swallowed up in that current, knocking him off-balance.

  The light in his right hand flickered, and although he tried earnestly to maintain the image that powered it, he could do nothing while the force of the ebony current toyed with him. He had no choice but to pull in his limbs, fold up his wings, and give himself over to it. If he got separated from Vise now, in the worst case, he could end up knocked out of the shadow corridor.

  Niko, hang in there just a little longer, Haruyuki called to her in his mind, remembering all too well the agony of when he had been similarly locked in Black Vise’s plates. I will save you. For sure…For sure!

  He didn’t hear an answer. And there was no way his thoughts would even reach her anyway. Still, Haruyuki kept his mind firmly focused on Niko as he was carried along by the blackness.

  Just when he was starting to wonder how many minutes it had to have been since he flew in after Vise—he had lost even his sense of time inside the shadow—the current finally began to ease up. Guessing exit was imminent, Haruyuki stretched his folded limbs out and brought the Incarnate light back to life in his right hand.

  When he saw the silhouette of the rectangular solid pop up out of the darkness once more, albeit a little farther away now, Haruyuki was both relieved and anxious. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost sight of Vise, but once this chase was over, a fight with the mysterious layered avatar was inevitable.

  Haruyuki’s previous encounters with Black Vise, the self-proclaimed vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, had been limited to a total of three occasions.

  The first was the final battle with the Twilight Marauder, Dusk Tak
er. Thanks to the deceleration ability made possible by a Brain Implant Chip—aka a BIC—Vise easily ambushed him in the Unlimited Neutral Field, where such a thing should have been very difficult, and locked Haruyuki between two thin panels—an excruciating experience. If Kuroyukihime hadn’t raced back to Tokyo from her school trip in Okinawa, Haruyuki would very likely have ended up in total point loss, together with Takumu.

  The second time was in the racing event set against the backdrop of the orbital elevator Hermes’ Cord. Vise, hidden in the shadows of the race shuttle, had withdrawn as soon as fellow Acceleration Research Society member Rust Jigsaw threw the event into chaos, not giving Haruyuki and his comrades a chance to counterattack.

  And the third time had been ten days earlier, when Haruyuki had dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field after he’d made the mistake of equipping the Armor of Catastrophe. To fully awaken Haruyuki as the sixth Chrome Disaster, Vise had taken the form of the Black King, Black Lotus, and appeared before him on the roof of Roppongi Hills Tower. For a brief instant, Haruyuki had been on the verge of falling under the Armor’s control forever, but he’d just barely managed to pull himself back from the brink at the last minute, finally retaliating against Vise in a joint Incarnate attack with Kuroyukihime.

  All of which was to say that the reason he’d been able to make it through these battles with Black Vise was because he’d had help from Kuroyukihime and the other members of his Legion. But in this fourth encounter, Haruyuki would have to crush Vise on his own because he’d charged off by himself and left his comrades behind. But he hadn’t had any other options in the moment; if he’d waited for his friends, he would’ve missed his chance to catch up with Vise.

  Don’t be afraid. You just do what you have to do, Haruyuki told himself, as he was on the verge of giving in to fear inside the black channel, which appeared to be ending at last. I’ll fight to protect Niko no matter who I’m up against—even if it’s one of the Kings of Pure Color. I mean, I promised. I don’t deserve to be a Burst Linker if I chicken out and run away now.

  He clenched his hands tightly, and his faint fear evaporated. Almost as if it had been waiting for exactly that, the shadow current finally stopped. The rectangular solid slid upward just ahead of him, and Haruyuki followed suit.