11

At the same time as his overlay disappeared, Haruyuki’s wings turned back into his original metal fins. These automatically folded up neatly and were tucked away in a protruding cover. After silently offering words of thanks to his own wings, Haruyuki looked again at the faces of his friends in turn.

They smiled gently, as if they could all tell he was crying beneath his mirrored visor. But, in this moment at least, he didn’t feel like he had to hang his head in embarrassment. Because the presence of the grinning shrine maiden directly in front of him was the result of an indescribable success that was nearly miraculous.

Sealed away at the southern gate of the Castle in the Unlimited Neutral Field for two years, the “shrine maiden of the sacred fire,” Ardor Maiden, was finally free. Once she moved a mere hundred meters to the south and slipped through the portal inside the triangular building—a police station in the real world—Utai would return normally to the real world, together with her avatar.

“You did it, Haru.” It was Lime Bell—Chiyuri—who spoke, a grin spreading across her face all over again.

“Yeah,” Haruyuki replied earnestly as he looked into her eye lenses, holding back translucent droplets. “Thanks, Chiyu. Thanks, guys.” Instantly, the strength rushed from Haru’s legs and he nearly collapsed on the spot, but he hurried to brace himself. He couldn’t relax yet. He still had one—no, two more things to do.

First, the purification of the Armor of Catastrophe lodged inside himself. And once they succeeded at that, he wouldn’t have to worry anymore about a bounty being placed on his head by the Seven Kings. At the same time, the repeating cycle of catastrophe would finally be broken.

And once they were done with the purification, training alongside Sky Raker’s child, Ash Roller, to learn the Incarnate System awaited him. He couldn’t imagine what kind of Incarnate Ash would materialize, but he was sure it would be a flashy technique to scare the wits—

“H-huh?” Haruyuki realized that the skull face of the century-end rider was not currently before his eyes. Blinking back the tears blurring his vision, he turned to Fuko. “What about Ash? You guys met up with him in front of the condo in Suginami and came here together, right? Oh, no way! He didn’t get freaked out by Suzaku and make a break for it or something?”

He added this last bit 30 percent seriously, 70 percent jokingly, but Fuko didn’t laugh. In fact, she bit her lip lightly as a hint of unease rose up in her eye lenses.

“Well, actually, we couldn’t meet up with him.”

“Huh? Wh-what do you mean?”

Ash Roller was supposed to have dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field from Fuko’s car in the underground parking garage at Haruyuki’s condo building in the real world. There was basically no horizontal distance between them. It should have been a simple thing to meet up in front of the building.

“The thing is, Haru,” Takumu explained in a subdued voice, “in front of your condo, there were just tire tracks that looked like they had been left by Ash Roller’s motorcycle. We kept waiting and waiting, but he never showed up.”

“Tire tracks? So then, he couldn’t wait and took off for the Castle by himself…and maybe got lost on the way or something?”

“No. That’s hard to imagine.” Fuko shook her head lightly. “He knows the route from Suginami to the Imperial Palace quite well. It’s also easy to find the way in the Demon City stage. I can’t believe he would get lost.”

“And, Haruyuki, we chased after the tire tracks for as long as we could. They looked to continue on quite a ways due south of the condo,” Kuroyukihime said, crossing the swords of her arms in front of her chest.

It was indeed strange. If you were going from Suginami to the Imperial Palace, even if you started out to the south, you’d have to turn to the east pretty quick.

Suddenly, an ominous feeling, strong enough to take his breath away, came over Haruyuki.

Ash Roller did have his flaky side, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to blow off a promise. Especially when the person he was meeting was his master and parent, Sky Raker. Even if he had, hypothetically, seen some small Enemy that looked easy to defeat off in the distance, Haruyuki couldn’t believe he would just chase off after it on his motorcycle.

In which case—something had happened. Most likely while he was on standby in the parking garage. An emergency so urgent he couldn’t even wait to meet up with Fuko and the others had sent Ash racing off to the south. And then, over there, something else had happened.

Two and a half hours had already passed since Haruyuki and the others had dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field. And if Ash had dived even a single minute before seven, then he had already been in this world for over a dozen hours.

“Uh, um, I’m going to look for him!” Seized by an indescribable unease, Haruyuki spread the metal wings on his back once more. He used his special-attack gauge, recharged during the space battle with Suzaku, and floated gently upward.

“Haruyuki, it’s dangerous to move alone! If you’re going to search for him, we’ll all—”

“It’s okay!” he interrupted Kuroyukihime as she tried to stop him. “If I find anything, I’ll come back and get you first! Please wait for me in front of the portal in the police station!” He hovered upward, gaining more altitude.

“Haru, if you’re not back in an hour, we’ll pull the cable on the other side, okay?”

“Got it! Thanks!” he shouted, grinning wryly at Chiyuri’s declaration, and shot up into the sky.

If Ash Roller had gone south from Koenji, then that was southwest from the Castle. From a height of around fifty meters, he strained his eyes, but there were too many tall buildings in the Demon City stage, and he couldn’t see anything. Gaining even more altitude, he began to move slowly.

Haruyuki flew in a straight line south of the Castle, first hitting Kasumigaseki and then moving into Akasaka and Aoyama. He let his eyes race intently across the landscape as he flew, but the only things moving were small- and medium-size Enemies. If he had seen a party hunting Enemies, he would have stopped to ask them if they knew anything, but perhaps because it was a weekday evening, he heard no sounds of battle.

He listened carefully, but the only sound was the hard wind of the stage blowing. The silence only further deepened his unease. Although he was flying at a speed that just barely conserved energy, his special-attack gauge was dropping bit by bit. And he definitely didn’t think he could use the new Incarnate technique he had just awakened earlier, Light Speed, in this mental state.

“…Okay, then…” Haruyuki made the decision to go higher, bracing himself against the risk of being spotted by a hostile presence from the ground. Before he knew it, he had reached Harajuku. After this would be Yoyogi Park, and then Shibuya to the south.

Then.

In the center of the large intersection where Meiji and Inokashira crossed, at what was probably Meiji-jingumae Station in the real world, he felt like he saw something flash. When he looked down again, there were no Burst Linkers or Enemies there, but he decided to go down just in case.

Looking around carefully, Haruyuki landed on the blue-black road and reached out to pick up what was probably the source of the reflected light.

At first glance, it was an unidentifiable object. A semicircle of clear orange glass set into a silver disc about four centimeters in diameter. A thin pole extended from the edge of the disc, but it seemed to be broken in half.

“…What is this…” Muttering, he turned the mysterious part over and over in his hand, the faint sunlight of the Demon City stage reflecting off it so that the object flashed orange every so often.

Instantly, Haruyuki realized what it was.

A motorcycle turn signal. He was sure this was part of the turn signal Ash Roller had made blink as a feint during the duel on Kannana that morning.

In the Unlimited Neutral Field, pieces broken off Enhanced Armament and the like stayed around for a fairly long time compared with the Normal Duel Field. Most likely, Ash Roller’s motorcycle had been in some kind of accident when it passed through here, and the turn signal had been damaged. Haruyuki looked around again with this idea in mind and found several burn marks on the walls of the buildings lining the south side of the road.

So the direction of attack was from north to south. Which meant that Ash had ridden here, taking Inokashira from Kannana, been attacked from the north by someone, and turned south at this intersection?

Still clutching the turn-signal part, Haruyuki kicked at the ground and flew upward. The unease filling his chest had reached the level of his throat.

At a speed that just barely kept his gauge from decreasing too suddenly, he flew south along Meiji Street. After just twenty seconds, he spotted the next fallen object. He descended to the ground to check it out.

He didn’t have to wonder about what it was here. A hub and rim with thin fixed spokes. Around it, a thick gray rubber tire. The bike’s wheel. Guessing from the width, the front wheel.

On the ground, he saw a concentration of black attack marks just like the ones he had seen before. He assumed that the motorcycle had taken serious damage here; the front wheel had broken off, and the experienced rider had continued riding south, doing a wheelie. But he wouldn’t have been able to keep up the trick-riding forever.

“Ash!” A hoarse voice slipped out of Haruyuki’s throat, and he turned his gaze to the road stretching out to the south.

At that moment, the faint sound of a collision shook the air. On the wall of a group of buildings a hundred meters or so down the road, something flickered green. The hard noise and the light were not the explosion of an object or an attack effect. They were a duel avatar’s death effect.

Reflexively, Haruyuki started to run, before remembering he could switch to flight. He took a shortcut, flying up over the roofs of the buildings along the road that gently curved to the right. The instant the road near Miyashita Park in Shibuya Ward came into sight, his entire body started shaking. His wings stiffened up, and he unconsciously hovered about twenty meters in the air.

Directly ahead, his eyes picked up an object that was once a metallic gray American motorcycle, mercilessly destroyed—tire, engine, frame, muffler, pieces of it scattered everywhere.

A little farther ahead, a group of six Burst Linkers stood in a circle. Not only was he close with none of them, he didn’t even know their names. The one thing all six shared was a weak aura of darkness rising up from their bodies. Incarnate overlay. The energy source—the “eye” glittering red like blood in the center of their chests. ISS kits.

And in the center of their little circle, a single Burst Linker curled up in a ball. Shiny leather riding suit. Flashy knee and shoulder pads. And on the head, a helmet with the shield of the face mask patterned after a skull.

“Ash?” Haruyuki squeezed out a voice that was not quite a voice from his chest.

Deep cuts covered Ash Roller’s body. But the damage wasn’t what was keeping him from moving. He wasn’t moving because he was using his avatar as a shield to protect a tiny light floating above the road.

The flickering grass-colored point of light was a marker left in the place where a Burst Linker died in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Probably the owner of the death effect Haruyuki had felt a minute or so earlier. He’d seen that color before. He was sure of it—that was Ash’s “little brother,” Bush Utan.

Haruyuki understood the situation in a flash of intuition. What had happened here while he and Utai were struggling to escape from the Castle.

It was probably something like this:

While waiting for the seven PM dive time in the car parked under Haruyuki’s condo in the real world, he had been called to the Gallery of a duel. In that stage, he had run into Bush Utan, who had been the dueler or maybe another spectator. There, he had persuaded Utan to meet up with him in the Unlimited Neutral Field, so that he could communicate the things that he should as a big brother.

The meeting place had probably been around Shibuya. So Ash had no doubt thought he’d go and get Utan before meeting up with the four members of Nega Nebulus in front of the condo at precisely seven o’clock, and he’d dived early and headed to Shibuya.

But the time and place had, somewhere along the line—probably in the duel field where he was in the Gallery—been leaked to people in possession of ISS kits. They launched an ambush at Meiji-jingumae Station to hunt Ash and Utan as prey. Caught off guard by the dark Incarnate technique, Ash fled all the way here, even as he took damage to his motorcycle, but his beloved ride was finally destroyed. No, not only that. If Ash Roller had dived into this world a little earlier than seven o’clock, then Haruyuki assumed that more than ten hours had passed already. Which meant—together with Bush Utan, he had gone through the cycle of death and regeneration at least a few times.

In the Unlimited Neutral Field, Enhanced Armament that was completely lost once did not regenerate until you left the field and re–logged in. Ash Roller would have lost his entire health gauge and died, but when he regenerated an hour later, the American motorcycle that contained nearly all the potential of his duel avatar would not have returned with him.

So then, the Burst Linkers standing there were surrounding an Ash Roller who had lost the majority of his battle power and torturing him to death with the dark Incarnate generated by the ISS kits.

Over. And over. And over and over and over and over…

“Unh…Ah…Aah…” A moan slipped out of the hovering Haruyuki’s throat.

Not seeming to notice this, one of the six stepped toward Ash Roller crouched over on the road. He had a midsize, unremarkable form, but there was a fair bit of volume to his arms. Haruyuki felt like he had seen him before but couldn’t remember his name.

“Next up…is me. Wonder how many points you got left?” the avatar said, and then grabbed hold of Ash’s helmet tightly with his large right hand, a black aura pouring over it.

Skrrk! A sharp sound rang out, and Ash’s trademark skull face broke into pieces and crumbled.

The attacker now grabbed on to the exposed head of the duel avatar, a face that seemed delicate and boyish somehow, for all the swagger of the character he played.

The attacking avatar pulled Ash Roller—still trying to protect Utan’s marker light—up off the ground forcefully. Face turned upward against his will, Ash caught sight of Haruyuki frozen on the roof of the building. His pale-green eye lenses opened wide momentarily, and then he seemed to smile weakly. In Haruyuki’s mind, the usual reckless and boastful voice echoed haltingly.

Heh-heh…Messed up. Sorry, Crow…Wasted…the good vibes from you and Mast—

Krnch! A thick sound echoed in the stage, and the left arm of the attacker pierced the center of Ash’s chest. A pillar of gray light shot up, and the slender rider together with his riding suit exploded into pieces.

Showered in the scattering fragments, the attacker turned his head slightly to look at his own Instruct menu. “Oh!” he said. “One more time and I can level up. I hope he hangs on until my turn comes again.”

Haruyuki’s entire body shook so hard that it threatened to fly into pieces. Tensed to the limit, his limbs creaked, and his teeth chattered beneath his helmet. The voice that leaked out from his throat was low and broken, cracked in a way he himself had never heard before.

“Ah…Aaaaah…Aaaaah…”

His body felt like it had been filled with freezing liquid. Or maybe fiery hot like molten steel. At any rate, a single enormous feeling was concentrated within him, and this raced around his body instead of blood.

Rage.

Anger. A rage so overwhelming it turned his vision red. A dark hatred. And the urge to destroy.

“Ah…Aaaah, ah, aaaaaah…!”

Keee! A sharp metallic noise came from Haruyuki’s hands. Silver Crow’s slender fingers were tapering into the talons of a bird of prey, curving, getting larger. At the same time, the color of his armor changed. From the glittering mirror silver to a clouded chrome silver.

No! You can’t give in to those feelings! You’ll disappear!

Someone somewhere far, far away was shouting. But the faint voice no longer reached Haruyuki’s consciousness.

Metal still shrieking, his arms were covered in additional chrome-colored armor. And then his legs. This form, with its malicious edging, was much more sinister and far more demonic than when it had materialized at Hermes’ Cord.

Instead of the girl’s voice, a distorted metallic voice filled his mind.

We are you. You are us. You cannot be resurrected, should even an eternity pass. I am Catastrophe. I am Demise. The one who shall sound the death knell for this world.

It was exactly the same voice he had heard after school in the yard of Umesato Junior High in the real world, but unlike that time, he didn’t feel any pain at all. Which meant that this wasn’t an overflow of negative Incarnate. Haruyuki himself was calling it, seeking to fuse with it.

Haruyuki shouted the name at the same time as the voice.

My name is…

“…Chrome Disaster!!”

The ferocious yell that gushed out was nothing other than the roar of a beast hungry for blood, seeking slaughter. Purple system font cut across the top left of his field of view like a flash of lightning. YOU EQUIPPED AN ENHANCED ARMAMENT: THE DISASTER.

Shrieking metallically, armor like the fangs of a demon covered him thickly from stomach to chest. A sharp tail shot out from his back and his wings were transformed into a weapon-like silhouette. His smooth, round helmet was completely swallowed up top to bottom by a visor patterned after the maw of a wild animal. His field of view was covered by another thin gray layer.

In the sky above, the black clouds of the Demon City stage formed an enormous vortex. From its center, a bolt of black lightning rained down, accompanied by booming thunder. Haruyuki reached out his right hand to greet it.

The bolt stopped in his hand, changed shape, and became an object. A one-handed long sword, hilt blackly lustrous with a sharply tapered blade. The high-level Enhanced Armament once called Star Caster in the long-distant past.

This was the strangely glittering binary star of destiny, following alongside the sixth star Kaiyou aka the Arc Destiny, the original form of the Armor of Catastrophe, the eighth star of the Big Dipper.

“Hnggaaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki roared, brandishing the demon sword high above his head.

The battle cry was filled with boundless rage and hatred, but it rang through the sky of the Accelerated World like a wail somehow.

To be continued.