Pull of the Dark Nebula

by Reki Kawahara

  “It’s fine; we’re fine— Oh! We’re not fine.”

  At Graph’s latest reaction, Haruyuki timidly looked back to find a second cascade had started a scant ten meters away. A distance at which they would certainly be attacked if discovered.

  “S-seeeeee?!”

  “Welp! Everybody run!”

  The swordmaster took off toward the main building so fast that he left a gray afterimage hanging in the air.

  “Heeeeeeeey!”

  So irresponsible! Haruyuki cursed as he hurried to chase after him.

  “I’m sorry, Crow.” Lead, running next to him, bowed his head apologetically. “My master is always like that.”

  “N-no, you don’t have to apologize, Lead…”

  “When a person’s with that boy,” Fuko said darkly from behind, “everything is like this, so you’d best get used to it sooner rather than later, Corvus.”

  After a minute or two of dashing, Haruyuki made it to the plaza in front of the main building in one piece and let out a long breath.

  Graphite Edge was already there, hand up to shield his eyes, staring in the direction of the south gate. “Aah, they’re just re-popping like bunnies out there. Gonna have to clear them away again…Hey, Crow, Rekka, you have to help when you leave.”

  “What…?” Haruyuki stiffened in place. Defeat that entire Enemy squad?!

  “If you did it once, you can do it again, Graph,” Fuko responded.

  “Aah, that hurts.” Graphite Edge winced. “You got any idea how hard Lead and I worked to clear them away for you?”

  “Yes, yes. And you’ll have our thanks for that. In our deepest heart of hearts,” she finished, effectively silencing Graph.

  It was Lead who spoke next, instead. “The Enemies guarding the main entrance of the main building will be recovered soon. Let’s go inside before they are.”

  Haruyuki’s memories of his previous visit came back to him now. The design of the main building was significantly different here in the Moonlight stage than it had been in the Heian stage before, but the basic structure and Enemy placement would have been the same. And the last time, the two terrifying Enemies had stood on either side of the main entrance, blocking the way, clearly on a different scale from the other guards.

  “D-did you actually defeat those two monsters?!” Haruyuki asked, stunned.

  “Yes.” Lead nodded bashfully. “Although I was merely assisting my master.”

  “No…Just the fact that you fought them is plenty amazing.” Haruyuki looked once more at the young blue warrior before him. He felt like he had grown a little at least over the last month, and it seemed like Lead was also not the same person Haruyuki had first met.

  I want to hurry up and get somewhere safe so we can talk more. Suppressing his impatience, Haruyuki climbed the large stairs with the rest of the group.

  The main entrance was a set of imposing, metal double doors, apparently in the Western design of the Moonlight stage. In terms of size, at least, they didn’t compare with the massive doors of the four gates, but they were as splendid as he’d expect from a building that sat in the center of this world, the pale moonlight reflecting off the complicated geometrical designs on the surface.

  “Now, Crow. Here we have the fifth of the ninefold gate, the central door. Please go ahead and open it.” Lead urged him forward with a wave of his hand.

  “Huh?” Haruyuki reeled, captivated by the silver doors. “I-I’m going to open it?!”

  “That is why you came, isn’t it?”

  “B-but it’s not like I defeated the guard,” he mumbled, his experience a month ago fresh in his mind. He had slipped into the Castle main building with Utai, using the window Chrome Falcon opened long, long ago to get inside, so he had never even approached the main entrance before. Wondering if he was really qualified to open the doors, he looked up at the magnificent entryway.

  “Aah, enough! I grow impatient!” It was, of course, the Archangel Metatron shouting. The small, three-dimensional icon moved from Haruyuki’s shoulder to above his head and slapped at his helmet with her wings. “This is an order, servant. Open those doors immediately! Come on, hurry it up!”

  “G-got it.” He quickly placed a hand on each door, and without taking a moment to savor the occasion, he pushed with all his might on the metal panels, feeling their heavy density.

  Fortunately, he was not confronted with the humiliating tragedy of pushing on a door only to find he was supposed to pull; no, this time, the large doors began to open outward, the ground rumbling sonorously. Cool air flowed out from the darkness inside, and he suddenly felt all eight thousand years of the Accelerated World keenly.

  Once the double doors were all the way open, several pale flames sprang up ahead of him to clear away the darkness and reveal a vast entrance hall. On the far side were broad stairs leading upward, and a number of doors were set in the walls to either side. There was no sign of Enemies inside, but the aura of the guards at the top of the stairs or lying in wait behind the doors mixed with the cold air and rolled out over his feet.

  However, only Haruyuki was so nervous he couldn’t speak; his comrades casually crossed the threshold and proceeded inside. And then Metatron started whapping him on the head again, so he hurried after them.

  “Okay then.” Graphite Edge stopped and looked around, after he’d led them forward for a minute or so. “Where’s safe ground in the Moonlight stage again?”

  “Oh, it’s not this hall?” Fuko asked. “There don’t appear to be any Enemies.”

  The double sword user shrugged. “Unfortunately, every five minutes, a patrolling Enemy comes in through some door. We can’t really relax and talk here.”

  “So then you should have defeated all the Enemies inside,” she replied.

  “Whoa, whoa. Don’t get carried away,” he protested with a cheeky grin. “We didn’t have time for that. We had to really hustle to get them cleared away outside.”

  Fuko narrowed her eye lenses, and Haruyuki knew why. So Graph and Lead had known when Haruyuki and Fuko appeared in the Unlimited Neutral Field and had made preparations to welcome them…

  The swordmaster squirmed under Fuko’s hard gaze until he was rescued by Lead.

  “Master, I’m pretty sure the safe area was the small room at the top of the stairs.”

  “Ohhh, right, right, right.” Graph fumbled cheerfully as he began to move again.

  It appeared that the student had a firmer mental map of the interior of the main building than the master.

  Now that he was thinking about it, Haruyuki hadn’t seen Graph here at all the last time. Of course, it wasn’t like he was diving 24-7, but the same could be said for his student Trilead, despite the fact that today wasn’t the first time Trilead had appeared with exquisite timing. The last time Haruyuki was here, Trilead had suddenly been there when Haruyuki and Utai first met him in the Arc hall somewhere in the depths of this building. How on earth were they sensing people coming into the Unlimited Neutral Field? Haruyuki was caught up in the mystery as he cut across the entrance hall after the three other Burst Linkers.

  Once they had climbed the large staircase, they came to a long hallway stretching out straight ahead, once again with any number of doors in both walls. Even if they wanted to open every door and check inside, it would take far too long, but Trilead walked over to the second door on the left without hesitation and quietly pulled it open.

  Assuming an Enemy would leap out roaring, Haruyuki flinched reflexively. But in the end, there was none of that—the young samurai simply urged them to step through the door and into a long, narrow hallway that led to a square room about six meters on each side. Lead had said it was a small room, but in real-world measurements, it was about thirty square meters. Made entirely of stone, the room was windowless, but the lamps hanging on all four walls gave off more than enough light. There was a wooden table in the center, and as if the room had been made to order, four chairs sat around it.

  “No tea t
o offer, but, well, have a seat anyway,” Graphite Edge said. He set himself down first, and Lead took the seat next to him.

  Haruyuki exchanged a look with Fuko before sitting down across from the other Burst Linkers. Instantly, he felt the tension that had kept his nerves taut since the moment they started out for the Suzaku gate spill out of him, and he let out an unconscious sigh. Metatron also floated down from his head back to his shoulder.

  But he couldn’t relax yet. There were still so many things that he had to do—that he had to learn. Sitting up straight, he first opened his Instruct menu and checked their accumulated dive time. The display read fifty-five minutes. Haruyuki and Fuko had set the safety so that it would automatically disconnect after one hour, fifty-six minutes and forty seconds of inside time, so they had about an hour left. If they couldn’t achieve their goal before then, they would have to return to the real world and immediately reaccelerate.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, so please speak quickly, Graph,” Fuko began immediately as she closed the Instruct menu she’d opened at the same time as Haruyuki. “First, how did you unlock the Genbu gate seal and enter the Castle? Start there.”

  “Hmm. Hmmmm…” Arms crossed, Graphite Edge groaned for a bit before nodding as though he’d made up his mind about something. “Well, I did leave Denden and the rest of you hanging, so I’ll tell you everything I can. But I’m still a member of GW, so I can’t exactly go spilling that stuff. You gotta understand that.”

  “…Fine,” Fuko assented briefly.

  When the curtain fell the other day on the mock Territories against Great Wall in Shibuya No. 2, Nega Nebulus had won. As a result, the Green King himself had promised to return Shibuya Areas Nos. 1 and 2, but he had not extended this promise to include Graphite Edge’s return to Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements. This was because, in joining the ranks of Great Wall back in the day, Graphite Edge had taken the role of stanching the blood and bearing the brunt of the dissatisfaction likely to erupt among the Legion members over the abrupt loss of their territory. It was unclear exactly how he would pacify them, but at the very least, he apparently had no intention of betraying his position and responsibilities as first seat of the Six Armors.

  He moved his hand from his chest up to his right shoulder and grabbed hold of the hilt stretching out there.

  Chank! The instant the sword was unsheathed, Haruyuki hovered up above his seat slightly. But Fuko simply watched calmly, so he hurried to reseat himself.

  Graph stretched out the hand with the sword before him and set his weapon down on the table gently. “This guy’s one part of my initial and final equipment, Lux.”

  Haruyuki stared wordlessly at Graphite Edge’s legendary Enhanced Armament up close for the first time. He had seen more than a few sword-type Enhanced Armaments up to that point, but the particular form of this one made it stand out from all the rest. Most impressive was the blade itself, so transparent it almost didn’t exist at all, jet-black coloring wrapped around it like a frame. The blade was eighty centimeters long and probably eight millimeters thick. Its ephemeral beauty made it seem more like a piece of art than a weapon, but Haruyuki had seen in the earlier battle that this sword was a match for the Black King’s own Terminate Sword.

  Fuko, meanwhile, seemed utterly unimpressed as she lifted her chin. “And what of it, your true self on the table here?”

  Instantly, a giggle slipped out of Lead. Graph also shrugged as though he were smiling wryly before speaking again.

  “It’s not like I’m trying to brag, okay? But um, at best, this is just an item with particular settings. The edge is made of this stuff graphene, though. And graphene is as thick as an atom of carbon…Meaning you can think of this sword as being ‘honed to single atom,’ the way you see in old manga and anime all the time.”

  “Ohh…”

  Cool! Haruyuki thought innocently, letting out an admiring hum.

  Fuko simply urged him to continue with a nod.

  “Okay, so this is totally different from that. Crow…and whoever’s on your shoulder there, you’ve gotten the lecture about the Incarnate system, yeah?”

  Haruyuki glanced at his Incarnate technique instructor—or rather the teacher from hell that was Fuko—before hurriedly nodding. Metatron also flashed her angel halo once to indicate her agreement.

  “Great. Put simply, the Incarnate System is a technique to interfere with the game using the power of one’s imagination. So long as your imagination’s strong enough, you can do things that are set as impossible in the system. And conversely, you can stop being able to do things that had previously been possible. The first one’s overwriting, and the second’s Zero Fill. Basically, you can do stuff like punch holes in indestructible terrain or make a totally close-range type use super-long-range techniques.”

  “In other words, Graph, is this what you’re trying to say? That you used that sword and Incarnate techniques to break the Castle’s north gate?” Fuko asked suspiciously, eyebrow raised.

  “No, no.” The dual swordmaster immediately shook his head. “Use Incarnate all you want, but that ain’t gonna happen. The ninefold gate that guards the Castle—the four gates in the four cardinal directions, the main doors of the main building, and then the four massive doors inside—are top-priority objects in the Unlimited Neutral Field. To smash ’em with Incarnate would be totally out of the question, even for Vanquish’s rage-gauge explosion status.”

  Vanquish, aka the Blue King, Blue Knight, was said to be the most powerful close-range type in the Accelerated World. If he couldn’t do it, then there wasn’t a Burst Linker in the world who could destroy the four gates. In that case, however, what exactly did Graphite Edge do with his sword and Incarnate technique?

  “Listen, Graph. I told you we don’t have a lot of time. Perhaps you could get to the point sooner rather than later.” Fuko was about three times as patient as the impatient alien Pard, and even she had a note of annoyance creeping into her voice as she admonished him.

  But the swordsman remained irritatingly carefree. He lifted the sword once more and said, in fond reminiscence, “I taught Lota three types of Incarnate techniques: Vorpal Strike, Starburst Stream, and The Eclipse. They’re all showy, high-power, second-stage attacks. But like…with the Incarnate System, there’s something beyond that.”

  “What?!” Haruyuki cried out once again. He stared intently at the swordmaster’s face mask as he asked, oh so timidly, “S-so that would be…third-stage Incarnate techniques then?”

  “Mmm.” Casually assenting, Graph began to explain, moving Lux like a pointer. “I’ll go over the deets just in case. First-stage Incarnate techniques are just one type—range, movement, power, or defense expansion. Like, the basics. Second stage combines the different types, or else they’re adapted techniques that give results outside the standard framework. Good so far, yeah?”

  Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down, Metatron made her halo flash, and even Fuko dipped her head slightly.

  “Great. So, to sum it all up, second stage’s like way flashier than first. So then, third stage oughtta be all bang and pew-pew…That’s what you’d think, right, Crow?”

  His name suddenly called, Haruyuki went ahead and nodded.

  Graph leaned back, seemingly satisfied, and swung the sword from side to side. “Actually, truth is, it’s kinda the opposite.”

  “Wh-whaaaaat?!” So then why did you push that on me before?! Haruyuki wanted to voice his complaint, but his interest in the topic won out. “Opposite…So then, third-stage techniques are smaller and less conspicuous than second…Is that it?”

  “That is totally, exactly it. Still, that doesn’t mean they’re weak. Just the opposite, in fact…it’s like that thing. In manga and stuff, they’re always like ‘First you go big, and then you bring it home,’ y’know? In the third stage, you take the imagination you expanded waaaay out in the second stage and focus it on a single point, like, to an extreme. As for what happens when you do, well—” Graph had simp
ly rambled on and was starting to puff his chest out for his next line when he was cut off by a voice from Haruyuki’s shoulder.

  “Direct interference with the information on the Highest Level.”

  The swordsman stopped as if stunned.

  “That is what you are attempting to explain, is it not, Graph or whatever it was?”

  “…Well, this is a shocker…” Perhaps he wasn’t just saying it and really was surprised; Graph simply focused on the 3-D icon for an intent moment, speechless. Finally, he nodded slowly, as if coming to an understanding. “I really feel like I met Shoulderina there somewhere a really long time ago. It’s not a Burst Linker sensory terminal, though, is it? An Enemy…and one of the highest class, the Legend class. So one of the Four Divines?”

  “You do have fairly decent eyes, then. You are quite right.”

  Realizing that now that it had come to this, and it would be impossible to fool Graph, Haruyuki let the small icon proudly name herself.

  “I am the master of Silver Crow, the ruler of the Contrary Cathedral, one pillar of the Four Divines, the Archangel Metatron.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Trilead was first to bow politely. “I apologize for the lateness of my greeting. I am called Trilead Tetroxide, and I am Graphite Edge’s student.”

  “Mmm. I shall remember this,” Metatron replied placidly as she turned her icon toward Lead’s master and awaited his greeting as well.

  But the twin blades swordsman simply stammered—“Ah, ah, ah”—and rather rudely pointed at the icon. “Okay, okay, I get it now. So that’s why I felt like I knew you somehow. Waaay back when, I fought you, just the one time,” Graph said, as though fondly reminiscing. “I worked so ridiculously hard to take you down, and then the Arc altar was empty, so it was pretty sad, though.”

  Metatron made an angry “hmph” before rattling on smoothly in a very non-AI-like way. “You sound proud when you say you defeated me, but what you were in contest against was nothing more than my first form. And you also had the support of a Hell stage; if we fought outside the Castle, a mere warrior such as yourself would not last a hundred seconds against me. The same could be said for the warrior who came a little earlier than you and took The Luminary out from my palace.”