Surprisingly, of the forty-nine current members of the third Nega Nebulus, there were, in fact, forty-seven present at the sudden all-hands meeting announced a mere ten minutes earlier.
After checking the total number of avatars standing around in groups of twos and threes, Haruyuki stared for a moment at the starters just barely visible in the circle of people—the Black King “World’s End” Black Lotus and “Strato Shooter” Sky Raker—before turning his eyes to the field around him once again.
Drizzly rain fell from the slightly cloudy sky like fog. Taking a step caused water to squeeze out of the thick lichen that covered the ground. A lower water-affiliated Drizzle stage. A river about ten meters across flowed before him, and the banks on either side were broad swaths of lush green. The row of massive rocks barely visible on the other side of the curtain of fine rain was probably a residential district in the real world.
As he searched his memory to answer the question if there was anywhere like that in Suginami…
“This is the Zenpukuji River Greenbelt in Suginami Area Three.” He heard a voice from behind say, and he looked over his shoulder.
Standing there was a shrine maiden avatar, her small body clad in semitransparent armor patterned after a white robe and red hakama trousers. One of Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements, “Testarossa” Ardor Maiden.
“Mei, hello.” Haruyuki bowed, his silver armor clanking, and Maiden also returned the greeting.
“Good evening, C.”
“Zenpukuji River, huh?” he said.
“While the view in reality is not quite as charming as this, it is still a nice place,” she told him. “When it cools off a little, let’s ask everyone to go on a picnic here.”
“Oh, good idea,” Haruyuki agreed, and he was about to ask after Hoo on his trial move from Umesato Junior High. But a heartbeat before he could, a clear voice rang out from the center of the group of avatars.
“First, let me offer my sincere thanks to all of you, members of the third Nega Nebulus, who responded to the sudden call to assemble despite the late hour!”
The speaker was, of course, the Legion Master Black Lotus/Kuroyukihime. She stood—well, more accurately, she floated, with her hovering ability—over a triangular rock jutting out of the moss-covered earth.
To the left of the triangular rock was Sky Raker, sitting in her elegant wheelchair. Seven or eight meters ahead of them were “Bloody Storm,” aka the Red King, Scarlet Rain, and “Bloody Kitty” Blood Leopard. To the right of these two was the Triplex’s Cassis Moose, and to their left was the Triplex’s Thistle Porcupine, while the other Red faction members took up the right side of the large circle.
And on the left side were the Black faction members, starting with “Aquamatic” Aqua Current. Lime Bell, Cyan Pile, Magenta Scissor, the former Petit Paquet crew: Chocolat Puppeter, Mint Mitten, and Plum Flipper. The temporary transfers of Ash Roller, Olive Grab, and Bush Utan. Newly minted members Centaurea Sentry and Ardor Maiden, standing next to Haruyuki. Unfortunately, two people were absent: Metatron, who could not manifest in a normal duel stage, and Trilead Tetroxide.
He was pretty sure that Kuroyukihime had said Trilead Tetroxide was training on Mount Fuji in the Unlimited Neutral Field with his master “Anomaly” Graphite Edge. But she’d told him that three hours ago, which was 125 days on the inside. Was he actually still not back yet? Haruyuki wondered anxiously.
“Lotus, hold up!” Scarlet Rain—Niko—called out in a childish yet dignified voice and took a step forward. “Before we get into it, you wanna explain that link in the mail? This is Suginami area, yeah? So how come I can be the Gallery when I’m in Nerima?”
“Don’t worry about it” was Kuroyukihime’s answer.
Even Niko gaped for a second before waving her rounded arms. “O-of course I’m worried about it! If you got some kind of mad wild tool to fool the whole BB system, then worst case, all of us here end up slapped with a ban—”
“There’s no need for concern,” Kuroyuki interrupted coolly. “I didn’t trick the BB system, I tricked your Neurolinker position.”
“…”
Now it wasn’t just Niko. The entire assemblage, outside of Kuroyukihime and Fuko, were stunned.
The Neurolinker location information system boasted a precision of essentially zero errors while aboveground, and even underground, it would only be off by a few centimeters, at most, as long as the Neurolinker was connected to the global net. Naturally, security for this system was unusually tight. A great number of crackers had attempted to break through in the past, but they apparently hadn’t even understood the mechanism by which location was measured. And now Kuroyukihime casually said that she had “tricked” this very system.
Paying no mind to the silence of the forty-six people around her, she continued.
“Since it seems you have understood, I will get right to the issue at hand. I will work to ensure we finish this meeting in the remaining twenty-five minutes. But if we don’t, I will create a second framework with the same procedure. Now then, I’m sure some of you are already aware of this, but the joint army Exercitus, composed of a number of small and midsize Legions, attempted and failed to subjugate the Super-class Enemy Tezcatlipoca approximately two hours ago.”
While her tone and wording were detached, Haruyuki could clearly pick up on a regret and sadness that she couldn’t completely hide.
After being informed of the formation of Exercitus by the White King on the Highest Level, Kuroyukihime had expressed her sincere hope that this joint army of unprecedented scale would crush Tezcatlipoca and use that momentum to challenge the seven Great Legions, including Nega Nebulus, to a fight. But Exercitus had been defeated, and the majority of its members had lost.
It seemed that most of the Legion members already knew all of this. When he thought about it, that was only natural. It had been nearly an hour since the Exercitus survivors had left the Unlimited Neutral Field. While Haruyuki had been having supper with Chiyuri and Takumu, a vast quantity of information must have been flying back and forth both in and outside of the Accelerated World.