Cradle of Stars Read online

  To fly.

  Unconsciously, Haruyuki moved his outstretched hand slightly. He touched his health gauge and called up the Instruct menu.

  The train, wrapped in rusty steel panels, passed with a roar.

  But before it did—skreek!—a silver arrow flew ever upward toward the clearest of blue skies above the ground.

  5

  Black Lotus—Kuroyukihime—watched over the battleground from the roof of a building a little ways off from the rest of the Gallery.

  She had seen right through what the boy Haruyuki, her child, was planning to do and turned on automatic-viewing mode as she returned to her hospital room. But she had the function to follow the battlefield switched off, so she’d had to move on her own power.

  When the four-carriage train passed the position where Silver Crow was attached to the track, and his health gauge remained in the green zone, the Gallery started to get excited. His duel opponent, Jade Jailer, was whirling his head around, looking for the silver avatar, but all that was left on the rail was one half of the handcuffs and the chain severed in two.

  But then finally, they also noticed the shining bird dancing in the sky above, glittering silver at a distant height. Astounded cries reached Kuroyukihime’s ears.

  “H-how’d he cut the chain?! I thought that was totally impossible?!”

  “I-it’s like he just suddenly accelerated. Like the firing of a booster or something.”

  “I saw it. Right before the train came, he was fiddling with the Instruct menu, yeah?”

  “So that’s why he suddenly powered up. He doesn’t have any Enhanced Armament, and anyway, he’d have to use a voice command to call it up.”

  The heated debate continued for a few seconds until finally one person hit upon the truth of how Silver Crow got enough thrust to sever Jade Jailer’s chain.

  “Oh! …Oh, ohh! I got it! He— That damned bird, he took his level-up bonus in the middle a duel. He enhanced his flight ability!”

  While the other members of the Gallery stood dumbfounded, along with Jailer, Crow rebounded against the sun and turned around. The way he looked, the sharp tips of his toes stretched out straight, plummeting downward, a line of fire in the blue sky, was exactly like a falling star in broad daylight.

  “So? Maiden, Curren. Raker. Graph. Did you see that?” Kuroyukihime murmured, narrowing her eye lenses. “That’s the child I chose. The door that I could not cut open with my two swords—I’m sure he will open it for me with his two wings. I know that he will fly to that far-off place that we could not reach. I…I believe it.”

  (End)

  AFTERWORD

  It’s been a while. Reki Kawahara here. Thank you so much for reading Accel World 17: Cradle of Stars.

  To start, I sincerely apologize that it’s been eight months since Volume 16. I had other books come out, but the power of the universe was at work here…But given that this volume ends with a smart “to be continued,” I would like to bring the next volume to you as soon as possible! Yes!

  And please allow me to explain one more point. In this Volume 17, in addition to the main story, there is the short story “Two Black Swords, Two Silver Wings.” This was something I wrote as a special bonus for the first Blu-ray and DVD of the TV anime Accel World, and since a lot of the details are the foundation for Volume 17, I thought it might be fun to read them at the same time, so I put it together like this. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in allowing me to do this. And once again, I thank all of you who bought the Blu-ray and DVD from the bottom of my heart! Thank you so much!

  Just a little further to go in the main story. In this volume, the name Shibuya Ravine Square comes up as a large-scale commercial facility near Shibuya Station. This is as of 2014 a redevelopment plan that will go ahead with construction aiming to open in six years’ time, but as of the current moment, the name of the facility has not been decided. At present, the name of the main building is Shibuya Station Area East Wing, and I had the thought that at some point in the future, this will turn into Something-Something Hills or Something-Something Tower, so I simply went ahead on my own and named the building Ravine Tower and the entire facility Ravine Square in the Accel universe. If you are reading this book in 2020, you are likely thinking, The name of the building’s wrong! but this is the situation, so please forgive me!

  As for the story itself, the incident with Chocolat Puppeter and her comrades, who first appeared in Volume 12, is fairly big. So that happened. They still haven’t met Haruyuki in the real, but I think at some point, they will, so I’m looking forward to writing Chocolat and her friends in the real world. Once again, I must thank Nagomi Ikuya for entering the avatar contest.

  We are moving forward with giga-maximum danger, and I have caused only serious trouble for my editor Miki and illustrator HIMA. I’ll tera-fight next time!

  Reki Kawahara

  On a certain day in September 2014