[Sunder the Gold]

Huh, I just thought of something else.

In the lightnovels, KYH marvels at how unlikely it was for Crikin to find two people who could and did successfully install Brain Burst. She actually dares to hope that their outrageous luck will continue, and that eventually they will create a new Burst Linker society outside of Tokyo.

On the one hand, they might actually be able to do it, because one of their members is a precognitive psychic who's getting all sorts of useful visions. Figuring out who her Child should be ought to be a safe bet with that advantage.

Spoiler for More Text -- the Okinawan MMO-only Legion:

Of course, the further the current generation gets away from her, the more likely someone is ignore her advice and make a bad choice -- which threatens to put an end to the ONE working lineage they have, since it's just one long chain of Parents and Children up to the last one.

Still, Crikin is Level 7. That's high enough to declare himself a Legion Master. So long as every new Burst Linker is inducted into the Okinawa Legion, Crikin will have a greater appearance of legitimate authority... and the very real power of Judgment Blow. That makes it a little more likely that he can enforce Merrow's psychic selection process on his descendents.

And thus a little more likely that one corner of the Accelerated World deviates completely from the creator's intended model, because I doubt he ever considered or desired the possibility of an entire legion made up of one continuous lineage. A real-world and Accel World family. A clan, with a king-father ruling over his descendants.

A blood-related army that tackles the Accelerated World not like a fighting game or territory game, but almost entirely like an MMO.

Just one way in which The Supernatural is an Out-Of-Context Problem that messes up a plan born of human technology.

Now, on the immediate hand, this paints a confusing picture about the growth of the Burst Linker population. Burst Linkers NEED to make more Burst Linkers, because their cannibalistic economy chews through membership like a chainsaw.

Older Linkers who haven't reached Level 4 must be constantly getting retired from the game because they only need to lose 10 times to lose Brain Burst. LESS than 10, actually, since in the meantime they would have spent at least 10 Burst Points on simple Acceleration, for the purposes of experimentation, having fun, cheating, self-defense or bullying, and -- most importantly -- issuing challenges to other Linkers.

It takes 200 points just to reach Level 2! That's the equivalent of retiring two other Burst Linkers from the game completely. Those are 200 points GONE from the economy, which your opponents will never be able to win back from you.

Even if you didn't actually, personally retire two other Burst Linkers, the Linkers you did take points from went on to take points from others or lose more points to others, and then take or lose more points while those others went on to take or lose more points...

Someone, somewhere, gets the short end of the stick. And the only way for weak Burst Linkers low on points to survive is to find brand-new Burst Linkers with plenty of points and no experience. New Burst Linkers will be SWAMPED by these deseperate souls, and quickly either become another desperate soul, become a successful predator, or be retired.

Burst Linkers can only make one Child, and they can only try once, and they HAVE to do it in person. Maybe a failed attempt erases the candidate's memory of the attempt, so that the masquerade remains safe, but would-be-Parents don't know that. All of this means that Burst Linkers generally don't try to make Children very often.

And if the process is very likely to fail, even when you try to choose carefully? That just makes other Burst Linkers even more reluctant to try. And it all means that the addition of new blood into the system happens very, very infrequently.

So how the hell does this cannibalistic system survive?

The introduction of the Unlimited Neutral Field and the Enemies really doesn't help. Players below Level 3 are still restricted to eating each other for points just to keep Accelerating, let alone to level up.

Only Level 4 players can hunt the Enemies, and the Burst Point rewards are crappy when considering the difficulty, and considering the cost of the Unlimited Burst command. Every time you enter the UNF, you either have to team up and raid two huge monsters or fight two other Burst Linkers of at least an equal level in order to see some kind of profit.

Given that, how many Level 4 Burst Linkers would simply let Level 3 or under players defeat them, for the purpose of injecting more Points into the fighting circuit? The attitude is probably going to be "We Level 4 players EARNED those points, AND we earned our way up into Level 4 for that privilege! Plus, we NEED those points to keep going!"

So, yeah. Once you get to Level 4, your own need to cannibalize others is reduced, and other Level 4s have new reasons to not retire you -- because they need your help to hunt Enemies, and because if they hunted you, no one else would feel safe around them. A society of cannibals that needs to forsake eating each other lest each individual member risk getting eaten; but they can only afford this solidarity because other prey exists.

But meanwhile, so many Burst Linkers are retired from the game without ever reaching Level 3, let alone 4.