Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire Read online

  Copyright

  ACCEL WORLD, Volume 6

  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 2010

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS

  First published in Japan in 2010 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 March 2016 by Yen On.

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  The Yen On name and logo are trademarks of Yen Press, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-9753-0088-3

  E3-20171027-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Insert

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Afterword

  Yen Newsletter

  Brain Burst was a full-dive, competitive combat network game.

  However, unlike similar games on the market, the servers on the global net did not determine the fight matchups.

  The standard for matchups was the location of the real-world body of the player—the Burst Linker. Burst Linkers could not be paired up in a fight unless they were within the same particular section of the real world. In Brain Burst, this section was called an “area.”

  Area sizes were different in the city center than the other regions in the country. Within the twenty-three wards of Tokyo, a single ward generally had between two and four areas. Suginami Ward, for instance, was divided into three: Suginami areas one through three. For each of these areas, a list—the “matching list”—displayed all Burst Linkers currently present within the area. A player could either choose a duel opponent from this list to challenge or go into Standby mode and wait for an attack.

  There was a total of approximately sixty areas in the twenty-three wards of Tokyo. Because nearly all of the roughly one thousand Burst Linkers lived in central Tokyo, there were roughly ten to twenty people registered on the matching list of any single area. Of course, this varied by place and time of day; a list of more than a hundred people around Shinjuku Station or in Akihabara on a weekend afternoon was not at all unusual.

  When that many people gathered in one spot, occasionally something unexpected happened: The opponent a player had selected at random from the list would abruptly appear very close nearby in the duel stage—even mere meters away—or one of the duelers might, conversely, enter the stage from near the Gallery.

  Brain Burst’s VR duel stages were re-created from images captured by the network of high-resolution security cameras set up all over the real world, the so-called social camera network. Which meant that the buildings and roads within a stage—although given a variety of new facades in line with the randomized “affiliation” of the stage—were basically the same as those existing in the real world.

  This meant that when two duel avatars appeared close to each other in this terrain, both players were also right in front of each other in the real world. This was relatively unpleasant, even dangerous, because exposing the real face or name of a Burst Linker—outing them “in the real”—was one of the Accelerated World’s greatest taboos. Someone could take a Linker’s photo and follow them, outing their address and real name, and anyone who had that information could kidnap the Burst Linker or threaten them in the real world with the intent to steal all of their burst points.

  And although they were very few, extremists who would run the risk of this kind of violent criminal behavior did actually exist in the Accelerated World. They were known as Physical Knockers, or PKs for short, and although the major Legions insisted that the PKs be neutralized, simply having your name revealed was extremely distressing. Because, almost without exception, any Burst Linker attacked in such a manner lost all their points, and thus, the Brain Burst program itself, together with all related memories, preventing the player from ever returning to the Accelerated World. The likelihood of this happening was small, but the terrifying risk lurked under the surface of the passionate, excited crowds in the busy weekend areas.

  Conversely, the possibility of being outed in the real in areas with a low population density of Burst Linkers was infinitely reduced. Of the twenty-three wards, the western part of Setagaya Ward, as well as around Ota and Edogawa Wards in general, were three such “depopulated” areas. For as large as they were, the number of people on the list was always low. Unexpectedly, the place in Tokyo where the danger of a near miss was lowest was thought to be the center of all the areas, Chiyoda Ward.

  Chiyoda was the only one of the twenty-three wards not divided up into areas. It was one of the biggest areas, outside of the special, independent area of Akihabara, but more than that, there were essentially no Burst Linkers making the area their home ground. This was because up to 20 percent of Chiyoda Ward was the Imperial Palace, and that was somewhere your average city dweller could not go.

  This rule also extended into the Accelerated World. In every stage was an Imperial Palace in a form matching the stage’s affiliations, but a barrier stood in the center of the moat, preventing any entry into the palace itself; it was simply a vast prohibited zone in the center of the large city map. If a dueler were so inclined, they could easily assault their opponent with a single long-distance attack and then spend the next thirty minutes running around to win by decision.

  Given the difficulty of fighting in this terrain, there weren’t swarms of players looking to fight in Chiyoda, especially in comparison with the fighting meccas of Akihabara to the immediate north and Shinjuku to the west. Thus, the Chiyoda Area matching list was always almost entirely empty of names. This was not to say, however, that the area was without value.

  Given the area’s location in the center of Tokyo, the risk of a real-body near miss was low. This feature gave rise to an unexpected use for the Chiyoda Ward: a place for negotiating, rather than dueling. When powerful enemies wanted to make contact whilst keeping to the barest minimum the possibility of being outed, the vast and desolate Chiyoda Ward served quite well.

  For these reasons…

  SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2047. 1:45 PM.

  Kuroyukihime, aka Black Lotus, the Black King, and leader of the Legion Nega Nebulus
; Fuko Kurasaki, controller of the duel avatar Sky Raker and Legion deputy; and Haruyuki Arita, aka Silver Crow, a junior member who fought alongside them, sat in a small electric vehicle parked in Fujimi Nichome, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, waiting for the time negotiations were to start.

  No, these negotiations were not to be simple talks between separate Legions.

  Because, at two PM, a meeting of all seven Kings of Pure Color would begin. They were coming together for only the second time in the entire eight-year history of the Accelerated World.

  1

  “Is this your car, Master?” Haruyuki asked abruptly from the backseat, unable to completely overcome the nervousness he felt at the upcoming meeting of the Seven Kings.

  “Not likely.” In the driver’s seat, “Master”—aka Fuko—turned her head, surprised. “It’s my mother’s. There’s totally no way I could buy a car on my allowance. I’m still in high school.”

  “I—I guess so!”

  The EV was cutely rounded, the light, cream-yellow interior real leather, and an emblem patterned after a snake and a cross sat in the middle of the steering wheel. It was the mark of an old Italian automaker Haruyuki knew very well. The price was probably well beyond what any young person with a job could afford, much less a university student.

  “You just seem really used to driving it, so I thought maybe. So…you paid for your license yourself, I guess?”

  “Ha-ha, of course.” The answer to his timidly voiced second question came not from Fuko, but rather Kuroyukihime in the passenger seat. “Fuko turned sixteen this year, which means she’s a grown-up now. She can get her license and get married, unlike the rest of us.”

  “Sacchi, don’t put it like that…”

  Huh. So she’s a grown-up, huh? Haruyuki shook his head quickly at this momentarily unsteadying thought and got his head back on track.

  They had in fact lowered the age at which you could obtain a regular automobile driver’s license from eighteen to sixteen, seven or eight years ago. The reason was ostensibly that the rate of traffic accidents had dropped dramatically with the completion of the social camera network and vehicle control AI being made mandatory, but this, in fact, seemed to not be the whole story.

  Japan in the 2040s was on the brink of a total collapse of the nation’s social security system due to the unbounded decline in the birth rate and the rapidly aging population. The generation currently working could no longer completely support public expenditures such as medical and caregiving costs, what with public pensions increasing year after year, too. Thus, it appeared the government intended to also increase the number of young people legally allowed to work by lowering the age at which a person could obtain certifications or qualifications, typified by the driver’s license. In fact, the Labor Standards Act had also been revised at the same time to allow young people to enter into full-time employment from the age of sixteen.

  In other words, in the eyes of the law, Fuko was already more adult than child. And given that she was fifteen that year, Kuroyukihime would be in the same position the following year. Haruyuki’s time, too, would come in a mere two years. Obviously, he wasn’t actually going to get a job right after finishing junior high, so in practical terms, he would continue to be a child, but even still, he couldn’t help but feel a certain uneasiness about the whole thing.

  Just how long can I keep being the me that I am now?

  After this thought popped into his head, Haruyuki laughed wryly to himself. He had for some time now felt the longing to not be the him he had been back then, to run off somewhere far away. And it wasn’t like this desire had vanished. He hated the way he looked, and he still couldn’t get himself to like junior high.

  But if some godlike presence had come along just then and said it could make him a different person in a different place, he would no doubt have refused. This place—the backseat of the car Fuko was driving in the short term, his own corner of the Accelerated World as a Burst Linker in the long term—or, put differently, his place as a player of Brain Burst, boasting as it did a vast scale and incredible detail, a game that gave him endless thrills…He could ask for nothing more, not a single thing.

  But even this wouldn’t last forever.

  Brain Burst was a game. And a game had to end at some point. In fact, the reason Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime fought was precisely in order to reach that ending.

  He didn’t know at that point what form this ending would take. He had no idea if Kuroyukihime would reach her long-sought level ten, thus ending the entire game of Brain Burst itself, or if the right to play would be mercilessly ripped away with the inevitable arrival of the end of their childhood, or if some other ending entirely awaited them.

  Which was exactly why he had to give it everything he had now. He would throw all his energy into playing, into having fun, into protecting. Into this world where he and the people he loved could be together.

  Haruyuki clenched his hands into fists as he made this vow in his heart in the somewhat small rear seat. But he soon remembered the situation he was in and let out a deep sigh. If he was honest with himself, he was in no position to be talking tough about protecting anything.

  First on the agenda for the meeting of the Seven Kings, less than twenty minutes from that moment, were countermeasures for the Acceleration Research Society, the mysterious and destructive organization that had suddenly appeared in the world of Brain Burst. But the second item was how to deal with the impossibly resurrected Enhanced Armament, the Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster.

  Both of these issues had been, until a mere week earlier, nothing but talk up in the clouds for level-fiver Haruyuki. He had been content to simply gaze on from the sidelines as the kings and those closest to them debated such matters. But he had now been dragged far from the sidelines and forced to stand center stage.

  Because the one who had brought back from oblivion the Armor of Catastrophe to become the sixth-generation Chrome Disaster was Silver Crow—Haruyuki himself.

  “No need to be nervous, Haruyuki.”

  He jerked his head up at the gentle words coming from the front seat.

  The owner of the voice suddenly pulled the lever to recline the passenger seat and leaned way back. Hurriedly fleeing to the driver’s side, Haruyuki watched as the seat fell into a fully flat position. Long black hair flowed down, some of it touching Haruyuki’s knees.

  Unusually for her, Kuroyukihime was out of uniform today and in a tight-fitting, patterned T-shirt with slim gray jeans. She had layered on top of that a thin, short-sleeved shirt made of punched leather. Black, of course, in contrast with Fuko’s more feminine ivory dress with leggings that reached midcalf, but Kuroyukihime’s crisp, almost terrifying beauty was not lessened in the slightest.

  Now lying down in front of Haruyuki, she stretched out her right hand, grabbed on to the collar of his T-shirt with her fingertips, and yanked him toward her. He pitched forward and a sweet fragrance wafting up to his nose, different from the scent of the car, and the gears in his brain ground almost to a halt.

  “You have nothing to be afraid of. It’s okay. I won’t let those kings lay a hand on you. I’ll protect you.”

  As she murmured the words so close to his face, he felt even dizzier, but he forced himself to put his brain into gear again. “Th-thank you,” he replied. “But…all the other kings naturally want to take action against Silver Crow, right? Which means…the Judgment Blow from the Legion Master.”

  “I suppose they do.”

  “Won’t…won’t it be bad for you if you refuse? Like, I mean, in terms of your standing or whatever?”

  Haruyuki knew from experience just how cruel a majority wearing the mantle of justice could be. The delinquents who had so ruthlessly bullied him in seventh grade hadn’t started doing so out of some irrational violent impulse. They had first approached him under the guise of friendship, and the instant Haruyuki refused their invitation and tried to put some distance between them, they bared their fangs in the name
of friendship betrayed.

  And this time, in theory, the odds were likely not with Kuroyukihime, but with the kings. The Armor of Catastrophe was a curse to which too many had been sacrificed since the dawn of the Accelerated World, and Haruyuki knew only too well that it needed to disappear. He had actually been working on annihilating it himself for a while now. But if that proved impossible, then the Armor would have to be dealt with, together with the Burst Linker who owned it. If Kuroyukihime rejected this “just” opinion, what kind of mental and physical pressure would the kings put on her? That was Haruyuki’s concern. But…

  “Ha-ha-ha! After all this time? What are you talking about?” He blinked rapidly at the light laughter that came flying his way. Then Kuroyukihime’s smile took on a daring edge. “I’m already their enemy,” she intoned quietly. “I won’t have anything to do with their idiotic nonaggression pact, either. And if they have any complaints, the kings could just come at me themselves in a duel. Although that is exactly what I want.”

  “…Kuroyukihime…”

  Seriously. She’s just so strong, so cool…so awesome.

  Of course, Haruyuki didn’t have the ability to take the deep emotions in his heart and put them into words; all he could do was stare wholeheartedly at the obsidian eyes twinkling so near his own face.

  The sharp glint in her eyes softened, and as she met his gaze, she smiled gently, softly. Her lips moved slightly, and her barely audible whisper rippled in the air between them. “Now that I’m thinking about it, you’ve been the one protecting me right from the start, hmm?” Fingers stretched out effortlessly to caress his cheek.

  “That’s…,” Haruyuki somehow managed to reply hoarsely, heart pounding. “That’s not true at all. I’m the one who’s—”

  But Kuroyukihime ran her index finger along his cheek, shutting down any arguments. “I’m your ‘parent.’ I have the right to protect you. Which is why you should simply lean on me now. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “…Kuroyukihime.” His eyes still locked with hers and, chest suddenly full, her name was as much as Haruyuki could manage.