The Binary Stars of Destiny Read online

  Copyright

  ACCEL WORLD, Volume 8

  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

  © REKI KAWAHARA 2011

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS

  First published in 2011 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

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

  English translation © 2016 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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  First Yen On eBook Edition: November 2017

  Originally published in paperback in December 2016 by Yen On.

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  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-9753-0105-7

  E3-20171025-JV-PC

  1

  “Equip…the Destiny.”

  Haruyuki’s voice command made the bone-dry air of the Scorched Earth stage ripple and shake ever so slightly.

  As if a switch had been flipped, the distant roar of the wind, the alarm sounded by his nearly empty HP gauge, the crash of his opponent smashing through one thick wall after another in his relentless march toward Haruyuki—all of it disappeared.

  Haruyuki stood in the center of a large, scorched-concrete room, blanketed by heavy silence. And then sensation exploded from a single point within him.

  Intense pain.

  Like a molten lance piercing deep between his shoulder blades. His vision was haloed in white while an infinite shower of sparks scattered across his brain. His virtual breath stopped. Even his thoughts broke into countless fragments and shot off in all directions.

  “…Ngh…Hnk…Aaaah!!” His entire body jerked backward like a bow after its arrow, and a hoarse scream leaked out of his mouth. But even so, a voice abruptly echoed toward him from far, far away—though perhaps it was closer than anything else.

  It’s useless.

  I can no longer be separated from my vessel.

  Due to our overwhelming rage, grief, and despair, the armor derived from the Destiny cannot be changed. We desire nothing but blood. Only endless slaughter. Only an eternal parade of catastrophe.

  Before his snowy vision, several image fragments flashed in succession, like a “suggested videos” screen had taken over. At the center of them all was a knight-type duel avatar, body covered in heavy blackish-silver armor. But the design was different each time that image flashed.

  Innumerable teeth growing from the edge of a hood-shaped helmet.

  Tentacles of some sort twisting out from the entire face area.

  Long silver hair hanging from the bottom of the helmet down to the feet.

  Crimson flames shooting up from the head, dragon’s breath.

  And a sinister greatsword brandished below a sharply tapered visor that came low over the eyes.

  Haruyuki knew instinctively that they were the successive generations of Chrome Disaster. The forms might have been different, but the color of the armor, the aura of darkness, and the frenzied fighting style were exactly the same. In the fragments he saw, these knights swung swords, slashed with talons, and stabbed with teeth as if compelled by an unseen force. They were howling, wailing in excitement as they slaughtered entire groups of duel avatars, avatars who were nowhere near a match for their might.

  As the images faded, the voice echoed in his head once more:

  Smash. And devour. That is what you desire.

  Eat, take, become infinitely strong. Until you alone are left in the wastelands of the Accelerated World.

  Until the demise of this world.

  From the center of his spine—the exact position of the wire hook that the fifth Disaster had pierced him with—a pain like pale lightning radiated outward, stabbing into his extremities. But Haruyuki gritted his teeth to keep from screaming. If he lost to the destructive impulses now, all this would be for nothing.

  The sadness of Niko forced to condemn Cherry Rook, her parent and closest friend, in order to perform her duty as a king.

  The love of Chiyuri, who pulled Haruyuki back from the edge after he began to run wild on Hermes’ Cord by returning the armor to a seed state for him.

  The desire of Kuroyukihime, who reached out to the Haruyuki hiding in the depths of the local net and gave him wings called hope.

  And the prayers of a single girl lodged in a corner of the armor, waiting for such a long time…

  The pain simply kept growing, endlessly, surpassing the domain of physical sensation to become a storm of energy that overwhelmed, attempting to shred Haruyuki’s consciousness. It would all go away if he just called the name “Disaster.” He knew that, but he mustered the last of his mental energy and endured the onslaught with everything he had.

  At that moment, from the distance of the incandescent world far, far away, another voice came to him.

  Believe.

  It’s all right. I know you can do it, you of all people. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for all this time…

  The voice was without a doubt that of the golden girl who appeared before him earlier like a vision. Haruyuki used what little remaining focus he had to give a brief reply.

  I’m sorry. I’m not the special person you’ve been waiting for. I have a ton of problems. I worry all the time. All I do is mess up. I can’t trust people, so I run away, even though I can’t even walk straight by myself. I’m pathetic.

  But I do have one thing I’m proud of now.

  I know how to like people again. And lots of them, so many people. I still don’t like myself or believe in myself, but even still, I can keep fighting for them. I know that now. It’s not much, but I want to do whatever I can to protect our warm place…

  These thoughts of Haruyuki’s, a torch on the verge of burning out, were answered by that kind voice.

  That’s more than enough. After all, that—that all by itself—is proof of strength.

  Inside Haruyuki, there came the faint but definite sound of something cracking. But not the echo of collapse. The sound of something bouncing off the inside of a shell of hard, hard seed. The sound of birth.

  A clear silver the temperature of snowmelt spilled out, gushed out of him, pushing away the luminescent pain. Haruyuki opened his eyes wide.

  Glittering armor was smoothly generating from the fingertips of his remaining right arm. An even more pure, true silver than Silver Crow’s own covering—the armor.

  The design was powerful, but there was nothing sinister about it. From the palm of his hand to his wrist, up to his elbow, then his upper arm, the ar
mor equipped itself with a light metallic clink. Each time he felt another bit of reassuring weight add itself, a vitality twice as great as the armor was heavy filled him, and his body actually seemed to lighten.

  Instinctively, Haruyuki understood that this silver Enhanced Armament was the original form of “the Disaster,” the Armor of Catastrophe: “the Destiny.” The theta star of the Seven Arcs, enshrined alongside the epsilon—the straight sword Infinity—was the armor covering him now.

  A long, long time ago, someone had successfully made it into the Castle and obtained the Destiny. But after that, something—many sadnesses, the golden-yellow girl had said—happened, and the form of the armor was distorted to become the Disaster. When Fuko Kurasaki and Utai Shinomiya spoke of the “four confirmed Arcs,” they were referring to the Blue King’s greatsword Impulse, the Green King’s large shield Strife, and the Purple King’s staff Tempest, with the last one being the Disaster Haruyuki himself owned.

  Once he knew this, the incredible power hidden within the Armor of Catastrophe made sense. When he considered the fact that it was one of the Seven Arcs and that the epsilon star was effectively sealed away with the eta star still untouched, it was no exaggeration to say that this was the strongest Enhanced Armament in the Accelerated World.

  At that moment, Haruyuki was, by calling the armor’s true name, attempting to summon the original from before its transformation. If he succeeded, there should be no mental interference when he equipped it. And although the future-prediction function that had allowed him to effortlessly slaughter the powerful enemy Rust Jigsaw would no longer exist, he didn’t need that sort of power in this fight.

  He didn’t want to beat the IS-equipped Cyan Pile.

  Takumu couldn’t stop blaming himself for past crimes, and now that he was finally caught on the edge of despair, Haruyuki simply wanted to tell him. Tell him how much he, Haruyuki Arita, trusted, relied on, and needed this person, Takumu Mayuzumi. He wanted to be able to deliver a punch with all these feelings in it, a final blow. He wanted to borrow the power to smash through that aura of darkness, with the very little that was left in his HP gauge.

  As if in response to Haruyuki’s prayers, the pure silver armor continued to appear before his eyes. A large elbow pad, and then the light stretched out from there to his upper arm.

  However.

  Just as the armor was about to reach his shoulder, he abruptly felt a fierce resistance. A ferocious roar thundered faintly in his ears, and he realized it was the voice of the spirit housed in the arm, the voice of the beast, the Disaster. The beast refused to disappear. Enraged that only the Destiny, the Enhanced Armament it possessed, was being summoned, it was trying to interfere with the creation of the object.

  Kreee! A fierce creaking sound ripped through him, and the silver armor stopped where it had covered half of Silver Crow’s right shoulder. In the left of his field of view, a string of text in the system font was flashing irregularly. YOU EQUIPPED AN ENHANCED ARMAMENT: THE…He could read it up to there, but after that, only the blurry forms of the letters D, S, and T floated up.

  All the voices and pain receded until they were finally gone.

  For a moment, silence—so characteristic of the Scorched Earth stage—filled the charred space, the first floor of his real-world condo’s B wing. In the center of the dark room he was currently in, Haruyuki raised his right arm, covered in the new armor, and squeezed his hand into a fist.

  And then the front wall crumbled into tiny pieces, a large silhouette appearing from the other side.

  The dark aura blanketing Cyan Pile—Takumu—had grown even thicker. The true light-blue coloring of his armor was hidden; only the crimson eye of the ISS kit lodged in the Pile Driver, the Enhanced Armament of his right arm, glittered vividly. Even the eye lenses behind his mask’s narrow slits had changed from their old light blue to a sharp purple. Those eyes stared hard at Haruyuki.

  Finally, a quiet voice: “Is that the original form of the Armor of Catastrophe?”

  Even propelled by destructive, ruinous urges, Takumu had apparently not lost his power of insight.

  Haruyuki looked down at his right arm, covered in its new armor, and nodded. “Yeah. Although I couldn’t summon anything more than one arm…”

  “That alone is seriously impressive. You’re probably the first of all those Burst Linkers the armor has swallowed to resist its power.” Takumu’s voice was gentle but nearly inflectionless; it rang hollow. “You’re strong, Haru. You know, if you just gave in to the temptation of the armor, you could have tens, hundreds of times the power you have now, but you can still fight it. If it had parasitized me, it would have taken me over immediately. I’d probably have bared my fangs at you and Chii, and even Master…”

  “No way. Taku, you’d be able to summon more than one arm of the Destiny for sure. You’d get the whole thing. I really believe that,” Haruyuki asserted immediately, staring at Cyan Pile’s face mask.

  But Takumu hung his head low, perhaps to escape that stare and those words. “You still don’t understand, Haru?” he murmured, voice slightly quavering. “I…I’m not the kind of person you can say things like that about. I just put on this show. The truth is, inside, I’m jealous of other people. I hate them. I don’t want people to be happy; I pray for them to be unhappy. I laugh in the shadows when my rival gets bad grades; I feel good when the guy I’m up against for a regular spot on the team gets hurt. When my two best friends stopped talking, the people most important to me, people I’d been with basically since I was born? I pretended to be worried, but I was secretly relieved.”

  From eye slits now devoid of any light, several white particles spilled out. “That’s me. That’s the real Takumu Mayuzumi!” He’d shouted like he was spitting blood, and the black aura jetting up from his body increased in strength, reaching up almost to the ceiling.

  Thud. Cyan Pile took a step forward, and the charred, burned ground of the stage cracked beneath his foot. A pressure charged forward at Haruyuki, threatening to send him flying back if he stopped concentrating for even a second, but he resisted that power and opened his mouth once more.

  “Taku. I’m basically exactly the same.” He worked hard to keep his voice from shaking and began to quietly tell his story. “If we’re comparing the number of people we’ve cursed in our hearts, I’m definitely ten times worse than you. You think I haven’t been jealous of you, that I haven’t envied you? The only reason I can manage to resist the temptation of the armor is because my insides are as black as it is.”

  Takumu was silent then, the jet-black storm around him subsiding the slightest bit. His shoulders shook minutely.

  “Heh. Heh-heh. The way you talk hasn’t changed since we were kids. Right…You’ve always done this. You’ve always managed to control the dark parts of your heart. Not like me, always trying to put up a front—”

  “We’re no different! You and me, we’re the same! We get lost, we worry, and just when we think we’ve taken a step forward, we smash into a wall. But even with all that, the reason I’ve made it this far is because you were right there with me! So I know you can fight this black power, too! You can fight it and break it and move forward again! You can, Taku!!” Haruyuki cried earnestly, and he felt like Takumu smiled faintly beneath his mask.

  “Thanks. Thanks, Haru. You saying that to me now…maybe becoming a Burst Linker, fighting like this—it wasn’t a waste of time. But, you know…that’s exactly why I want to use my power until the end—for you, for the Legion. The control of…this ISS kit is overwhelming…I’m practically bursting with the urge to destroy right now. But how much of that is me and how much of it is the kit making me feel that…I don’t know anymore.” The voice murmuring this was quiet. But that quiet was a seed, ripe with omen.

  Brandishing the pulsing, blood-colored eye affixed to the Pile Driver of his right arm, Takumu continued, tense, “This parasite was probably put together by some king-level experts, fusing their abilities and special attacks
and wills. The more you fight, the more Enemies you devour, the greater the power it generates. And then at some point, it divides and makes a child—I mean, a clone.”

  “…A clone…” Haruyuki shuddered. Something that deliberately dirtied the parent-child system that was the foundation of Brain Burst…

  Takumu lowered his arm before opening his mouth again, and Haruyuki felt even more strongly that his friend was fiercely enduring something he couldn’t see. “The terrifying part is…the kit clones are connected by the medium of negative imagination. When Burst Linkers with clones of the same cluster cultivate their hatred and malice and rage inside the kit, the kits of the parent and child display even greater power. So the more clones you disseminate, the stronger you, too, can become.”

  “Th-that’s…So you mean Burst Linkers who have kits compete to spread their own clones…?” Haruyuki asked hoarsely.

  “Yeah.” Takumu nodded gravely. “While we’re here doing this, I can feel the black emotions pouring in from the Burst Linker Magenta Scissor, who gave me this kit in Setagaya, as well as Bush Utan and Olive Grab and the others who have her first-generation clones. And at the same time, the darkness I’ve cultivated is strengthening them.”

  In other words.

  The network of ISS kit clones was a malicious copy of both the parent and Legion systems that were the proper Brain Burst. If parents and Legions were joined by positive bonds of love and friendship, then the ISS kit clones were connected by the negative chains seeking power and profit.

  Haruyuki was speechless. But Takumu’s voice came to him, creaking like glass on the verge of breaking.

  “R-right now…if we don’t do something right away, the kit will blanket the Accelerated World in the blink of an eye, like a terrifying epidemic. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the meeting of the Seven Kings four days from now and whatever decision they come to. I can get the names of the people behind this from Magenta Scissor. I think she’s really close to the source of the kits. We might have to do a little sparring, but I intend to get some information about the kit. I don’t know the motives or objectives of whoever’s behind this, but anyone planning something as big as this has to have some way of controlling the situation…”