As if this was a signal, Cosmos opened her mouth. “First, as to the conditions of victory in this fight,” she said, without any preamble, as if she knew every word they’d exchanged before her arrival. And then the White King uttered words that stunned not only Haruyuki but the Beings as well. “I learned them earlier.”
“Huh? …H-how did you find out?!” Haruyuki leaned forward eagerly. “You don’t actually have the admin’s contact info or something, do you?!”
“Of course I don’t have their contact info,” she replied curtly, waving a dismissive hand at him. “They were sent to me out of the blue. Most likely at the moment when Tezcatlipoca was destroyed and the sky changed color.”
“They were sent… You mean a system message? How come it was just for you…” He’d gotten this far when he remembered what Urocyon had said and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t just you, it was all seven of the Kings…right?”
She looked at him curiously. “What makes you think that?”
“Something Urocyon—the Drive Linker I fought—said. That this ‘interworld war’ was announced in a system message when he reached level nine. So I figured the BB message would’ve been sent to all the level niners, too.”
“Interworld war?” she repeated. “Did you come up with that?”
Posed this unexpected question, he blinked a couple times before nodding. “Y-yeah, well… Is that not what it is?”
“A war of the worlds, hmm? Well, that works, doesn’t it? I’ll use that myself.”
“S-sure, go ahead,” Haruyuki replied.
“And so what was this message about, then, Cosmos?” Metatron interjected, as if she had grown impatient.
“Before I tell you,” she said, “I wonder if you might ask the other three listening to this conversation to come out? You all are seriously involved with this as well.”
Other three?
Haruyuki whirled his head around. All that existed in the eternal and everlasting darkness wedged between the twinkling world of BB below and the world of DD far above were the three people White Cosmos, Snow Fairy, and Silver Crow, and the three pillars Archangel Metatron, Ohirume Amaterasu, and Abandoned Princess Bari. There wasn’t even a single kitten anywhere to be found.
The instant he had that thought, he noticed them. Minuscule points of light—dots—popped up and blinked soundlessly on the opposite side of Metatron, in a spot a little higher than his own head. There were one, two…three.
He blinked rapidly before reaching to try to touch the dot floating closest to him.
Crackle!
“Ow!” He felt pain like the slight shock of static electricity and let out a cry.
At nearly the same time, a high-pitched voice rang out inside his head, Don’t just go touching me, you lech!
“…L-lech?”
Even Chiyuri’s never called me that, he thought in his great upset, as the minuscule dot sent out rays of light thinner than threads.
The beams of light cut through the darkness and leapt around like a laser hologram to produce the figure of a person. It was woman a bit smaller than Bari, probably a similarly top-ranked Being, but her look was definitely not like anything the others wore.
Short hair that flipped out at the bottom in an almost retro style, short-sleeved shirt and a knee-length pleated skirt reminiscent of some school’s uniform, thick-soled sneakers. The only points of commonality with Metatron and the others were her flawless beauty and her closed eyes.
Floating in space, she glanced at Haruyuki with those closed eyes and said, “You Silver Crow? I thought you were a little too chummy, but you’re even handsier than I imagined. C’mon, get back. Go away.” She shooed at him with her right hand.
“O-okay!” Haruyuki cried, taking two steps back.
“Haah…” Metatron sighed heavily behind him. “You are as you ever were, Ushas. I won’t say anything further about your manner of speech, but could you do something about that outfit, at least?”
Ushas. Goddess of the Dawn, a top-ranking Being who lived in the Shinjuku Government Building Underground Labyrinth, one of the four great dungeons. In other words, she was one pillar of the Four Saints, alongside Metatron and Amaterasu.
Ushas lifted long, curled eyelashes the slightest bit and replied unhappily, “Easy for you to say, Metatron. I mean, your outfit’s kinda cute. Amaterasu’s and Bari’s, too, y’know? But my initial outfit’s got all this heavy armor stuck to it. I mean, fighting in it is one thing, but, like, I can’t be walking around in that all the time.”
“And where did you get ahold of those clothes without a shred of dignity to them?” Metatron demanded.
“Heh-heh! Not telling!”
Haruyuki stood rooted to the spot, listening to this exchange. There was no great difference in terms of details from a conversation with a junior high Burst Linker, but each of the speakers was one of the Four Saints, in possession of the greatest fighting power in the entire Accelerated World. He’d already been told by Ushas that he was “a little too chummy,” and he didn’t know what kind of punishment he’d face if he butted in here and earned further displeasure.
He frowned and cocked his head slightly to one side. He’d definitely heard Ushas’s name from Fairy and Cosmos, but he’d never had any contact with her. So why did she talk like she’d met Haruyuki before?
“I will say this for the record,” Metatron was in the process of saying. “The situation is such that we do not know whether our world will continue to exist. This is not the time to be concealing information, is it?”
“N’kay, hold up.” Ushas shook her head, exasperated. “How does getting cute outfits have anything to do with the survival of the world? Ohhh, I get it. You want a little uniform of your own, huh?”
Haruyuki was very much not brave enough to interrupt the two Beings, so he waited for their verbal jousting to come to an end.
“So, hello. Hi,” the White King interjected, sounding annoyed. “I know this is the Highest Level, but that doesn’t mean time’s standing still, okay? Perhaps we could get back to the subject at hand.”
Instantly, Ushas raised her eyelids the slightest bit and glared at her with colorless eyes. “…You’re White Cosmos, huh? Heard you nicked the Tenken from Metatron’s castle.”
“You had your Tensuu stolen from you long ago!” Metatron cried immediately.
“Who cares about that stupid sword?” He could hear Ushas rolling her eyes. “It wasn’t even cute at all.”
It took him a second to realize what they were talking about. “Tensuu” was the Arc that had been in safekeeping in the Shinjuku Government Building Underground Labyrinth, the greatsword Impulse, currently in the possession of the Blue King, Blue Knight. And “Tenken” was the crown/scepter Luminary, which had been held in the Shiba Park Underground Labyrinth. This was the magnificent crown that now sat upon the head of the White King.
Similarly, he’d heard that the Green King, Green Grandé’s shield Strife, had been in the Tokyo Dome Underground Labyrinth, and the Purple King, Purple Thorn’s staff Tempest, in Tokyo Station Underground Labyrinth. Which meant that the four Kings had beaten the Four Saints, but what they had defeated was the Legend-class Enemy first form. These Saints bickering before him now were their second forms, their true selves with power far surpassing that of their first forms.
No Burst Linker had ever defeated the true form of the pinnacle of Beings, the Four Saints, and the fact that the White King could be so composed despite this fact was either because the person inside, Enju Kuroba, had the daring of Anomaly Graphite Edge, or because she was confident that she could fight even these true forms.