The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer

by Reki Kawahara

  Copyright

  ACCEL WORLD, Volume 9

  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 © 2017 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: December 2017

  Originally published in paperback in March 2017 by Yen On.

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  ISBN: 978-1-9753-0090-6

  E3-20171108-JV-PC

  1

  Kill.

  Kill them all.

  All that existed was the urge. Already, it was beyond what could be called thought. The craving, the desire to hack and slash, to tear off his enemies’ arms, legs, heads—the desire to rip them to pieces became a cold flame racing throughout Haruyuki Arita’s entire body.

  “Grar…” The low howl of an animal slipped out of his throat as he raised the longsword high.

  The pure silver of the duel avatar Silver Crow had disappeared. In its place was a darker, more brutal chrome silver. His armor had also lost its original form: Previously slender, smooth limbs were covered seamlessly with sharp-edged metallic rings. Similar rings encircled his torso. But most sinister of all was his helmet, the maw of a carnivorous beast wrapped around the once-round head. Fang-like protrusions jutted out from the visor and hid his face completely; there was no sign left of the original, mirrored shield.

  This armor was no mere equipped item, nor even a simple Enhanced Armament, within the fighting game of Brain Burst.

  The strongest arms in the world were known as the Seven Arcs, aka the Seven Stars. The Destiny, the armor that was the sixth of these stars—the zeta—had fused with Star Caster, a high-level longsword. This combined form was then twisted by the raging grief of a particular Burst Linker of the past, at which point the Armor of Catastrophe, aka the Disaster, was born. Since the dawn of the Accelerated World, the legendary armor had brought about much destruction, always regenerating even when subjugated, never entirely disappearing. Its power surpassing even the Arcs, the Disaster now covered Silver Crow’s lithe body completely.

  In truth, the phenomenon did not stop at the level of “summoning” or “equipping.” Haruyuki was now the Armor; the Armor was Haruyuki. The will to destroy housed in the Disaster had become one with Haruyuki’s own mind, and he could no longer hear that gentle voice that had been whispering things in his ear all this time.

  “You…,” Haruyuki whispered in his own voice now. “I will kill you all.”

  Transformed into a demonic silhouette, as Haruyuki hovered with both wings spread out, he saw below him six Burst Linkers standing in a circle on the road of the Demon City stage—north of Miyashita Park on Meiji Street, in the Shibuya area of the real world—and staring up at him, the intruder. There were also two lights, shining weakly, in the center of this circle.

  One was a grassy color. The other was gray. Death markers, appearing in the position where a Burst Linker died in the Unlimited Neutral Field. The grass-colored one belonged to Bush Utan, a member of the Green Legion, Great Wall. And the gray was the biker Ash Roller, Bush Utan’s self-professed older brother and Haruyuki’s longtime rival.

  Five of the six Burst Linkers who had surrounded and repeatedly slaughtered the two dead Burst Linkers were faces he was seeing for the first time. But one of them, the avatar who had only minutes before dealt the death blow to Ash, was familiar.

  He was slender and of average height, but there was a sense of volume to his arms. His armor was a brownish dark green. Olive Grab, a main member of the Green Legion who had been teamed up with Bush Utan until mere days earlier. He obviously would have known Ash—he might have even called him a friend, in fact. And yet without the slightest hesitation, without showing anything even resembling emotion, Grab had stabbed him through the heart. He had tried to take all of Ash Roller’s burst points and eliminate him from the Accelerated World forever.

  Olive Grab—who was looking up at Haruyuki with a hint of doubt creeping onto his face mask—had an object embedded within his chest, as did the other five Burst Linkers around him. It was the same organic object in each case: a monstrous eye.

  ISS kits were dark parasites that gave the wearer the power to control the Incarnate System, which itself was a super attack power outside the normal battle system. In the process, the kits multiplied the scope and intensity of negative emotions, going so far as to warp the personality of the real-world person. All six Burst Linkers were currently under the control of the kits, which was why they hadn’t hesitated to attack Olive’s senior in the Legion, Ash Roller, or Bush Utan, who had an ISS kit of his own.

  However, all this no longer mattered to Haruyuki.

  At the end of the day, Ash Roller was technically his enemy, a member of another Legion. And although his parent was Sky Raker, Nega Nebulus’s second-in-command, Haruyuki had never actually met Ash in the real world.

  But…

  Ash was the first person Haruyuki fought as a Burst Linker. He was the first person he’d lost against, and the first he’d won against, as well. The biker seemed to enjoy every second of this landscape known as Brain Burst and, at some point, he had become a kind of foundation for Haruyuki. When he was struggling, when he was lost, Ash’s extremely upbeat fighting style and the hearty roar of his American motorcycle got Haruyuki back on the right path as a Burst Linker. His duels with Ash were always intense, passionate, fun.

  And so Haruyuki fiercely despised these six Linkers, who had tormented that same Ash with the overwhelming superiority granted to them by their number and power. Such emotion created an unusual contradiction, however, given that this very hatred and rage in Haruyuki’s heart had brought back to life the Armor of Catastrophe after it had finally been returned to a seed state, sending Haruyuki charging down a path that was the total opposite of the true path of a dueler. Unfortunately, however, he was no longer capable of recognizing this.

  Sending inky black sparks shooting off into the air, Haruyuki brandished the sharply tapered sword high above his head.

  Likely judging this to be a hostile action, Olive Grab and the other five Burst Linkers on the ground raised their right hands in perfect unison and trained them on Haruyuki.

/>   Palms of varying sizes became wrapped in dark overlays of, essentially, the same color. The viscous, dripping darkness instantly grew more concentrated and twisted the surrounding air, indicating a terrifying power.

  At the same time, small English letters began to race across the additional gray layer blanketing Haruyuki’s vision: PREDICTED ATTACK: INCARNATE ATTACK; RANGE/POWER ENHANCEMENT: NIHILISTIC ENERGY TYPE; THREAT LEVEL: 10.

  From the six palms, faint, transparent scarlet lines stretched out soundlessly. These were not the actual attack. The Armor, from its vast wealth of accumulated battle experience, simulated the trajectories of incoming attacks and displayed them in Haruyuki’s field of view.

  It would have been an easy feat to evade this direct, long-distance group attack: It targeted his own chest and lacked any particular zigs or zags.

  But rather than moving a single millimeter from the spot, Haruyuki tightened his grip on the longsword in his right hand, bringing the jet-black aura enveloping the blade to shudder violently. Although the coloring resembled the auras blanketing the six on the ground, if theirs were viscous, then Haruyuki’s was a conflagration. A flame at absolute zero, layers of his wild rage and whetted bloodlust.

  The Burst Linkers on the ground momentarily bent the fingers of their raised right hands before stretching them out once more. In one voice, they called out the name of the technique.

  “Dark Shot!”

  It was the first of two basic special attacks granted to ISS kit wearers. Three days earlier, the same dark beam shot out of Bush Utan’s hand and ripped off one of Silver Crow’s wings like it was paper. And now, six hands sent six dark beams charging toward him, leaving a sound of resonance in their wake. It was like the shriek of monsters.

  Each one of the beams contained enough power to instantly eliminate any duel avatar, but Haruyuki let them close in on him until the very last moment—until the instant their trajectories crossed, and he casually sliced through them with the longsword Star Caster.

  The brightly burning obsidian flames did not permit the dark beams to so much as touch the blade. The roar of impact threatened to shatter the air itself as the Incarnate attacks collided, and the six beams were knocked down to Haruyuki’s right. Deep holes were instantly gouged out of the exceptionally hard terrain of the Demon City stage, and black flames shot out of them an instant later.

  “Lukewarm,” Haruyuki murmured in a cracked voice, without even glancing at the destruction.

  It was, in the end, just a uniform Incarnate attack. They might have been able to mechanically cause an overwrite, but the core was empty, so weak it didn’t begin to compare with the Dark Lightning Spike Takumu had unleashed while under the control of the same ISS kit the previous evening. There was simply no heart in their technique.

  There existed inside Olive Grab nothing other than “hunger.” A futile, single-minded urge to collect burst points. An ugly appetite to indulge in risk-free victories with instant power handed to him on a platter.

  It was guys like this, with power like this, who had tormented Ash Roller to his death. These six had surrounded Ash, a man whose pride made him keep his distance from the Incarnate, a Burst Linker who had always worked to be a one-on-one fighter. And then they had killed him, over and over and over.

  And that wasn’t all. They had also hunted Ash’s little brother, Bush Utan, who should have been one of them. The two death markers snuggled up against each other near the six Burst Linkers were proof of that. If they hadn’t interfered, Ash and Utan would have joined up with Haruyuki and his friends in the Chiyoda area far to the northeast.

  Earlier today—June 20, 2047—at seven PM, the six members of the Legion Nega Nebulus had carried out a mission to rescue Haruyuki/Silver Crow and Utai Shinomiya/Ardor Maiden from where they were held captive, deep inside the Castle towering at the center of the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  In theory, the plan had been for Haruyuki and Utai to enlist the aid of Trilead Tetroxide, a mysterious Burst Linker they had met in the Castle, and escape through the south gate. At the same time, Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Takumu, and Chiyuri would divert the God Suzaku, the Super-level Enemy guarding said gate, and help the two get away.

  In reality, Haruyuki and Utai were unable to simply fly straight out because Suzaku had materialized sooner than anyone expected. Just as the two fleeing avatars were about to be burned to a crisp by the God’s flame breath, Kuroyukihime and Fuko, prepared to die to save Haruyuki and Utai, swooped in and made themselves Suzaku’s target. But their death in that place would have been the worst possible outcome, both Legion Master and submaster deep in the territory of one of the Four Gods, trapped in a state of unlimited EK. So after entrusting an unconscious Utai to Takumu and Chiyuri, Haruyuki did a one-eighty and returned to help his beloved friends.

  Grabbing them in his arms, he flew straight upward in the only route of escape left to them, but Suzaku relentlessly chased after them. Once the special-attack gauge that was the source of energy for his flying ability was drained, Haruyuki manifested a new Incarnate technique, Light Speed, and shot up through the stratosphere to reach the world of the stars.

  Unable to fly with no air, both Haruyuki and Suzaku languished there, but Fuko, with her booster-type Enhanced Armament Gale Thruster, charged down with Kuroyukihime on her back, finally crushing the God with the Black King’s lurid Incarnate attack, Starburst Stream. Although they didn’t manage to strike the killing blow because of the Four Gods’ ability to mutually heal each other at a distance, Haruyuki, Kuroyukihime, and Fuko did make it out of Suzaku’s territory alive.

  The six Legion members hugged one another fiercely and rejoiced in the success of the mission. But Ash Roller, who should have been there according to the plan, was not. When Haruyuki heard his rival never showed up at the meeting point, a terrible feeling that was hard to put into words came over him, and he flew off by himself to look for the man. And then he found—no, witnessed—it.

  The very instant Ash was slaughtered by Olive Grab.

  And the reason why Ash, a member of the Green Legion, Great Wall and thus ostensibly an enemy, would join up with the people of Nega Nebulus—and in the dangerous Unlimited Neutral Field at that—was because he intended to depart from his own beliefs and seek instruction in the Incarnate.

  After the duel that morning before they went to school, Ash had told Haruyuki he didn’t want to learn the Incarnate so he could fight no-holds-barred in the Unlimited Neutral Field. All he needed to do was strike one blow to wake up his little brother, Bush Utan.

  There was no doubt that the reason he didn’t show up at the meeting point was that he had run into Utan in the Normal Duel Field while on standby. Not letting that chance slip away, Ash had persuaded or begged Utan to come with him to the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  And Utan had probably listened to Ash’s persuasive/desperate words. He had resolved to get rid of the ISS kit possessing him and return to the true path of the Burst Linker once more. There was no doubt that the two of them had planned to meet here in the Unlimited Neutral Field and join up with Haruyuki and Nega Nebulus after they finished the Castle escape mission.

  But Olive Grab and the other five Burst Linkers had figured out where Ash and Utan would be and ambushed them.

  Haruyuki didn’t know which of them had died first. But when he arrived on the scene, Ash had been almost clutching Utan’s death marker to his own body to protect it. Since the marker was, as the name suggested, nothing more than a mark, there was no practical meaning in this, but he probably couldn’t stop himself from doing it.

  If there was a difference in the times of their deaths, then there would naturally be a time lag in their regenerations sixty minutes later. Even after one came back to life, the other would still be dead. In a helpless ghost state, they both had been forced to watch an adored brother be brutally killed over and over.

  “…won’t forgive.” A hoarse voice spilled from Haruyuki’s mouth once more. “I won’t forgive you. I’l
l kill you. I’ll kill all of you. I’ll keep killing you until all your burst points are gone and you disappear from the Accelerated World.”

  The world-destroying conflagration raced through his body at a temperature of absolute zero, waiting impatiently for the moment of its release, internal pressure building endlessly. Rage and hatred melted into its flames, converging into a single purpose that burned white-hot.

  “That’s what you want, right? To fight, to kill. For you yourselves and even this world to disappear. So then I’ll make your dreams come true. I’ll make you all disappear.”

  The voice that slipped out from the brutal visor was also more monster than Haruyuki already. The voice of someone with the ferocity of a wild animal and the cool of steel.

  No, that wasn’t all. Somewhere far away, deep, deep down, another voice echoed faintly. The voice of someone trying intently to talk, lamenting and grieving…

  But before their words could penetrate Haruyuki’s consciousness, the six people below him lifted their right hands once more. They didn’t seem the least bit shaken at the fact that six simultaneous Incarnate attacks were repelled with a single sword stroke. They looked like they had power to spare, or more precisely, like emotion itself was being worn away.

  In its place, the ISS kits parasitizing their chests glared at Haruyuki, crimson “eyes” filled with hatred. Viscous auras coiled thickly about the six arms, quickly concentrating in the palms, thin black sparks crawling through the air as if to hint at a power exceeding that of the previous attack.

  In Haruyuki’s field of view, the attack attribute information and anticipated trajectory were once again displayed. It was the same long-distance Incarnate attack, but the trajectory was different. The clear red line spread out halfway, color fading as it did, and wrapped up a sphere in the air around Haruyuki. In other words, this was—

  “Dark Shot!!”

  The calls of the technique name were in perfect unison, as though one person were moving six mouths at the same time. The inky black beams emitted from the open palms surged ahead, scattering a fine spray. But unlike the earlier attack, they did not rush forward in a straight line. Twisting irregularly through the air, the attack charged toward him, still clearly aimed at Haruyuki.