3

Haruyuki couldn’t understand the meaning of Red King Yuniko’s words. Most likely, Takumu was in a similar state, eyebrows slightly furrowed behind his glasses. Only Kuroyukihime reacted with any intensity.

She abruptly clenched her right hand, which had been reaching for her cup. The Black King slammed her fist down on the table and shouted. “Fool! That armor…It’s already been destroyed!!”

She fell silent, eyes staring off into space, and Haruyuki hesitantly posed a question to her pale profile. “U-um…What is that? The, uh, Armor of Catastrophe? It’s a thing, not a person?”

For a few seconds, Kuroyukihime stayed silent, but finally, she leaned back gently in her chair and let out a long, narrow breath. Crossing her stocking-clad legs, she turned her upper body toward him.

“Yes…How to put it…It is a person, specifically, a Burst Linker; but it is also a thing, in other words, an object. I suppose you could describe it that way. Haruyuki, do you remember the first opponent you fought?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. The guy on the bike…Ash Roller, right?” Haruyuki nodded, an image of the splashy chopper motorcycle and the skull helmet floating up in the back of his mind. He still occasionally fought duels with him, a member of the Green Legion, which had its stronghold from the neighborhoods of Shibuya to Roppongi, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

“His motorcycle. It’s an object distinct from the rider himself but comprises the whole of the duel avatar. Which means that it ends up being a thing and a person, yes?”

“Umm…I guess so. Yeah.” He bobbed his head again.

“In the Brain Burst system, this type of external item is called Enhanced Armament.”

“Enhanced…Armament.”

That…has a kinda cool name. Haruyuki felt a momentary thrill, which quickly changed into dejection. Because no matter how he looked at it, the empty-handed Silver Crow didn’t have any.

As if seeing into Haruyuki’s heart, Kuroyukihime smiled very briefly and somewhat bitterly before saying, “I don’t have any, either. Don’t be so down about it.”

“I have some, though,” Yuniko said, twisting her mouth into a sneer.

“Although in your case, it’s rather that it has you at this point.” Kuroyukihime’s sharp voice rained down without missing a beat.

“Ooh! Those grapes are nice and sour!”

“O-okay,” Haruyuki hurriedly interjected himself between the two girls’ glares. “So those incredible heat-power lasers Scarlet Rain has…are those Enhanced Armaments?”

“They are. However, they are not such a rare item as this little girl boasts. There are actually four ways to get Armaments.” Kuroyukihime stuck out the thumb on her raised right fist and continued. “The first is, you have some from the start as your initial equipment. Ash Roller’s motorcycle is probably one of these.”

“The Pile Driver in my right hand is one, too, right?” Takumu cut in, and Haruyuki cried out in surprise.

“What? You have some, too, Taku?”

“Yeah, well. Let’s just listen.”

“…I’ll continue.” The nail of Kuroyukihime’s index finger stretched out, hitting empty space. “The second is, you obtain Armament as a level-up bonus. Although this is not possible if there are no choices for your bonus.”

“…I didn’t have any…,” Haruyuki muttered, remembering the three times he’d leveled up so far. But even if there had been, he’d have followed Kuroyukihime’s advice and poured all his bonuses into speed and flying time.

Her middle finger extended next, and Kuroyukihime continued with her explanation. “And then the third. You spend points and buy some in the shop. This one would be possible for you, Haruyuki, but, mmm, I don’t recommend it.”

“Huh? Shop…a store? Where is it?”

“Not telling. I can see only too well that you’ll go crazy with all of your points.”

“I—I…”

Takumu laughed out loud and nodded. “No doubt about it. When Haru goes into a store like that, his whole personality changes.”

“Wh-what are you two even…”

The relaxed mood wafting out to the living room was cut short by a demand from Yuniko. “Hurry up and say the fourth!”

Although Kuroyukihime nodded as she met head-on the dangerous gaze of the Red King, she didn’t immediately move to speak.

Consequently, Yuniko reached across the table and forced the ring finger on Kuroyukihime’s right hand up while spitting out abruptly: “Four. Kill someone and take it.”

“K-kill…”

“That’s not an entirely clarified phenomenon, but…,” Kuroyukihime added, a sigh-infused explanation for the benefit of Haruyuki gazing in wonderment. “If a Burst Linker with Enhanced Armament loses in a duel and thus her burst points drop to zero and she is forever removed from the Accelerated World, in some cases, the ownership of the loser’s Armament is transferred to the winner.”

“One of the current established theories is that it’s a randomly generated event with a low probability,” Yuniko interjected, clasping both hands behind her head. “But ‘maybe’ isn’t how it works for the Armor of Catastrophe. One-hundred-percent transferral rate—it’s totes cursed.”

“However,” Kuroyukihime murmured, her teeth squeaking sharply as she ground them together. “That is impossible. It was destroyed. Two years ago, I saw the Armor…I witnessed the end of Chrome Disaster; I confirmed its annihilation!”

Chrome Disaster is the name of a legendary Burst Linker who had existed in the dawning of the Accelerated World, which is to say, seven years ago.

The story Kuroyukihime told began with those words.

Wrapped in the metallic gray, knight-like Enhanced Armor, Chrome Disaster possessed fierce combat abilities and made many Linkers crawl before him. His fighting method was, in a word, severe…or perhaps brutal; he was said to decapitate surrendering opponents, tear off their limbs, and perpetrate every outrage on them.

However, the end finally came for even him, he who had pushed countless duelers to the permanent loss of Brain Burst. The highest-level Burst Linkers—other than himself—joined together, targeted Chrome Disaster, and deliberately and repeatedly challenged him to duels.

In the end, his points dropped to zero, and in the moment he faced his “death” in the Accelerated World, he laughed loudly and cried out, “I curse this world. I dishonor it. I will be resurrected again and again.”

Those words were truth. The Burst Linker called Chrome Disaster himself left, but the Armor…his Enhanced Armament did not disappear. Ownership of it transferred to one of those who had subjugated him, and the mind of the Linker who equipped it, whether out of curiosity or giving into temptation…was hijacked. Despite the fact that until then this Linker had been beloved as a noble leader, in the space of one night—a single night—she changed into a ruthless slaughterer. Apparently, this wild figure was absolutely indistinguishable from the first Chrome Disaster.

There her words stopped, and after wetting her throat with coffee, Kuroyukihime continued gravely.

“The same events have, in fact, been repeated three times. Once the owner of the Armor has sown terror, they are subjugated, but the Armor, rather than disappearing, is transferred to the one who dealt its owner the final blow, and this transfer changes their personality. This Burst Linker is then referred to as Chrome Disaster, instead of their original name. Two and a half years ago, already occupying one of the seats of the Seven Kings of Pure Color, I participated in the subjugation of the fourth Chrome Disaster with the other Kings. The dreadful nature of that battle…Even now, my hair stands on end. I couldn’t possibly communicate it in words.”

She set her cup back down and stroked her arms gently over her uniform. “And that’s it, Haruyuki.” Her tone changed abruptly. “Sorry, but can you get two direct cables?”

“Huh, c-cables?! Two of them…?”

“I have one myself. As for length, I suppose a meter should do.”

“O-okay.”

Still not getting what she was up to, Haruyuki stood and trotted to his room, grabbed two of the XSB cables bundled up on a wire rack on the wall, and returned to the living room.

“I had exactly two. Um, the length is, this one’s a meter, and this one’s…ooh, ouch. Fifty centimeters.” He dangled a cable from each hand, shrugging, and Yuniko stood up with an agreeable look.

“Ohhh, is that it? Okay, okay, I’ll make do with the fifty-centimeter one.” Smiling smugly, she grabbed the shorter of the cables from Haruyuki’s left hand and plugged it into the connector on her own red Neurolinker. As soon as she had:

“H-hey! Enough! I’ll use that one!”

“Noooope.” Yuniko slipped smoothly past Kuroyukihime’s outstretched hand and landed on Haruyuki’s left arm. A body still hard like a boy’s attached itself to him, its sweet and sour scent wafting upward as she aimed at the slightly stunned Haruyuki’s neck. She thrust the plug at him.

He had no time to dodge, and the plug was inserted in his Neurolinker, causing a WIRED CONNECTED warning to flash before his eyes.

“Wh-whoa?! Wh-what—”

Yuniko looked up at the flustered Haruyuki and smiled boldly. “Come on, put that looooong one in and hand it to the girl there. Oh, and if you try and peek into my memory, you’ll pay for it, so you better be careful.”

At this, Haruyuki finally grasped the meaning behind the three cables. Kuroyukihime was trying to create a daisy chain among the four Neurolinkers present.

Takumu’s and Yuniko’s Neurolinkers were the lite type, with one external connection terminal, so the only way to connect all four of them was to have Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime—equipped with high-performance types with two terminals—come into the middle. Quickly grasping this, Yuniko had likely secured the shortest cable right off the bat to annoy Kuroyukihime. The effect was immediate, and Kuroyukihime’s right cheek twitched as both fists trembled, and she cried threateningly, “Do not cling to him like that, you!”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I? Cable’s too short.”

“You were the one who chose it!” After raising her voice, Kuroyukihime finally sniffed with disdain and looked down on the Red King with her Kuroyuki smile and its temperature of absolute zero. “Honestly. This is why I despise children. Intimacy being this or that depending on the length of the cable, it’s really just nonsense!”

“Oh my, no one said anything about that, you know? I just figured there would be less signal decay with the shorter one.”

“Th-th-this…”

Watching her aura suddenly rise from absolute zero all the way up to the temperature of the sun’s surface, Haruyuki thrust out a cable with the other end connected and made desperate eyes at her, as if to say Please forgive me somehow, your Highness! Kuroyukihime took the cable, almost snatching it from him, and as she connected it to her own Neurolinker, she offered Takumu her usual two-meter cable, which she produced from her pocket.

Takumu, watching the proceedings half-dumbfounded, half smiling faintly, inserted the terminal, and Haruyuki heaved a sigh of relief when a second direct warning popped up, indicating that all four Neurolinkers were finally connected in a line.

“Um…so now.…what are we doing?”

“First of all, sit down,” Kuroyukihime commanded in an even more brusque tone. She promptly sat, tucking her legs under her and stretching her back up straight. Haruyuki hurried to follow suit, but the cable started pulling. Yuniko, still glued to him on the left, followed him down with a flop.

Finally, Takumu knelt, back straight, a reminder of his kendo team membership, and glanced over at Kuroyukihime. “Master, should we accelerate?”

“No, there’s no need for that. After switching to full sensory mode, jump through the access gate displayed. Now, here we go. Direct link.”

Watching Kuroyukihime’s eyelids snap shut and her shoulders relax, Haruyuki hurried to shout the same command. “Direct link.”

Immediately, the sensations from his entire body and the surrounding scene receded. His Neurolinker canceled out the actual information coming from his five senses, leaving only his consciousness to be called into the virtual space. In the darkness, he simply had a strong impression of falling. If he waited like this, he would go into a full dive on the Arita home net, but before that could happen, a round, shining access gate rose up before his eyes.

The instant he stretched out an invisible hand to touch it, Haruyuki’s consciousness was sucked through the gate.

Light spread out, as if yanked from the center of his vision, and enveloped him. The scene that appeared was an infinite wasteland with nothing but rows and rows of strangely purple rocks.

Wondering where exactly this was as he turned his gaze downward, Haruyuki noticed that his body was not there and panicked a little. However, he soon realized that this was not the Accelerated World, but rather a VR movie; in other words, a recorded video that played directly inside his brain. As evidence of this, numbers counting out the play time and a slide bar floated small in the lower right-hand corner of his visual field.

“Um…Kuroyukihime?” he asked, and there was a response immediately to his right.

“I’m here. Takumu, little girl, are you also here?”

Although he couldn’t see her, that was definitely Kuroyukihime’s voice. Which was followed by the sound of two other voices: “Yes” and “Don’t call me that.”

When Haruyuki looked around again and confirmed that, yes, there really was nothing other than the weird rocks, he asked timidly, “Umm…What is this movie file that’s playing? If we’re just going to watch a movie, why go to all the trouble of us directing?”

“I don’t want anything leaking to the outside, just in case. If I transmitted to all of you via your home net, it would remain in the cache of the condo servers.”

“O-ohhh.” He got the reason for the direct connection, but the content of the movie was still a mystery. He cocked the head of his invisible body with the thought that it probably wasn’t material that required any particular concern when he heard a sharp wind blowing suddenly in the sky above him. As soon as he raised his eyes, he saw a figure landing with a crunch about ten meters in front of him.

Jet-black, sparkling, semitransparent armor. Long, sharp, sword-shaped limbs. V-shaped head. There was no mistake, it was Kuroyukihime’s duel avatar, Black Lotus.

“What? Kuroyukihime…?!” Haruyuki cried out unconsciously.

“Mmm,” Kuroyukihime replied. “It’s me. From two and a half years ago, however.”

“Two…and a half years. No, wait…If you’re in that form, then is this the Accelerated World? I mean, is this a recording of a duel…?” he asked, wondering if this was a feature in Brain Burst. This time, to his left it was Yuniko’s voice that he heard.

“Thing called ‘Replay.’ You can record with a crazy-expensive item. Anyway, two and a half years ago—that means this is a replay of that battle you mentioned before, the Seven Kings of Pure Color versus Chrome Disaster? But there’s just you alone?”

“No, someone else will come soon.”

Before she had even finished speaking, a new duel avatar appeared from the left side of the field. Haruyuki strained his eyes as he wondered at the fact that it was a battle of many against one.

About a head taller than Black Lotus, its body was slim, but its arms and legs had serious volume to them. It carried a thick, rectangular shield in its left hand, and its right hand was empty. The color of the armor covering its body was emerald-like, deep and transparent green.

“What a beautiful green…Master, is that…?”

“Yes. The Green King,” Kuroyukihime responded to Takumu’s whisper. “Affiliation is near and midrange…but the nickname more accurately expresses this avatar’s particular nature. That is, invulnerable.”

“Looks pretty hard. Rumor has it, all his losses were time-ups, and even then, his HP’s never once been cut in half…Obviously a lie, though.”

“Watch and see,” Kuroyukihime replied curtly to Yuniko’s slight jeering, and the movie Black Lotus approached the green avatar, indicating with a gesture the shadow of a large rock beside them.

The Green King assented silently and slid into the shadow of the rock, pressing his back up against it. The Black King hid herself behind a rock a slight distance off. They were clearly planning an ambush.

Haruyuki watched over them, holding his breath even though he knew it was a video of the past, when he heard a sudden low crunch to his left. He snapped his gaze there with a gasp. Crunch, crunch. The dry sound of earth being trodden slowly drew closer.

A few seconds later, an enormous duel avatar appeared from between the strange rocks. It likely had another fifty centimeters on the Green King, and its chest, covered in bellows-shaped armor, was unusually thin and long, inclined forward, like a snake raising its head. Both arms were also almost impossibly long. Its hands, dangling down, held clumsy axes, thick blades nearly scraping along the ground. Its head was smoothly cylindrical, reminiscent of a massive earthworm, two black holes on the end. Dark inside, the eyes shone red and blinked vigorously over and over.

The armor on its body was a dusky silver. As the surface of it reflected the weak sunlight, the avatar, looking around at its surroundings, abruptly came to stare directly at Haruyuki. Standing stock-still, he instantly forgot this was a recording and cringed with fear.

What’s going on? This…is this a Burst Linker? An avatar operated by a flesh-and-blood human being?

No way. It’s like a robot…No, like a wild beast.

“Is that…the fourth Chrome Disaster? It’s completely different in form and size from the fifth one running wild right now,” Yuniko murmured in a voice that was relaxed as always but tinged with faint tension.

“I suppose it would be. The black armor is Enhanced Armament, so the shape would change depending on the avatar equipping it. However, its characteristics do not change, no matter who inherits it. Essentially, an aggressiveness very close to madness,” Kuroyukihime replied quietly, and as if guided by her words, the enormous black avatar wordlessly brandished its axes.

The blade’s target was obviously the strange stone where the Green King was hidden. Whether by some unspecified means or by instinct, Chrome Disaster had seen through the ambush.

With a roar like a carnivorous animal, the avatar brought its ax down with ferocious velocity. The thick rock split like butter, but just before it did, the green avatar leapt sideways, slipping out from behind the stone.

The massive ax followed and was brandished once again. The Green King, turning and standing his ground, unable to flee this time, held aloft the square shield on his left arm.

With a metallic screech, the four corners of the shield expanded, and its rectangular shape became a large cross, large enough to basically cover the entirety of the Green King. The crude ax collided with the shield from on high with all the power its wielder’s arm could muster.

A waterfall of sparks flew out, accompanied by the earsplitting clang of impact. Although the ax bounced back, the Green King dropped to his knees.

A cry indistinguishable between anger or joy leaping from his mouth, Chrome Disaster brought his ax down over and over with wild abandon. With his cross-shaped shield, the Green King efficiently and accurately continued his defense against the assault, which looked as though it could cut right through a body if it landed a single blow.

Here, Haruyuki finally noticed several deep cuts in Chrome Disaster’s dark silver armor. Each time the ax was swung, a black mist flew out of them and dispersed into the air.

“He’s injured…?” Haruyuki muttered unconsciously.

“He is,” Kuroyukihime replied in a whisper. “Right before this, he fought the other kings and was cornered in this place. In terms of his health gauge, he’s on the verge of death. And yet he’s still this wild. At the time, I feared him from the bottom of my heart.”

I can totally believe that. Just watching the replay like this makes me want to run so bad. Muttering to himself, Haruyuki felt the hair on his real-life body, the sensations of which should have been cut off, stand up. In truth, it was unthinkable. A single-handed rampage against the kings, supposedly the strongest beings in the Accelerated World. And doing it while near death. Did this mean Chrome Disaster’s true strength exceeded level nine?

Chrome Disaster growled, perhaps irritated at the Green King, whose defenses did not crumble no matter how many times the monster struck them with his ax. Even as he continued to attack, he stretched out his long head and wetly, abruptly opened his mouth.

Haruyuki stared in amazement as a long, thin tongue—or something resembling some kind of tube—sluggishly stretched out from the center of what was more reminiscent of a cylindrical intake port than a mouth.

“That’s one of Chrome Disaster’s abilities, Drain,” Kuroyukihime uttered sharply. “He steals the HP gauge of his opponent in battle.”

As she spoke, the long tube slithered out, trying to circumvent the Green King’s cross shield to approach his head.

“Watch out!” Haruyuki cried out involuntarily.

Black Lotus, who until that point had stayed hidden, not joining in the battle in any way, flew out from the background of the image like a flash of black lightning. She brought the sword of her right arm down at a speed that made it impossible to see, and Chrome Disaster’s tongue was severed at the root.

“Gah! Gahgahgahgahgah!!” The enormous avatar threw his head back, cries of clear distress and a murky darkness coming from the round mouth.

Black Lotus applied the sword of her left hand to a large wound carved into his chest and plunged through mercilessly, right up to the base.

The long blade, piercing through his back, suddenly shone a blinding violet. The Black King yanked her limb upward, ever higher, as she somersaulted magnificently backward. Before the glittering, ink-black avatar could land again, Chrome Disaster’s head was ripped in two.

And the slide bar displaying the play time in the bottom right of the screen reached its end.

Returning from the full dive with the “link out” command, Haruyuki realized the palms of his real hands were damp with cold sweat. Takumu, sitting straight across from him, was also pale. Looking to his left, he saw that even the Red King Yuniko kept her lips silently pursed.

“He continued to fight in that state for another two minutes before finally perishing,” Kuroyukihime murmured, removing the two cables plugged into her Neurolinker.

Haruyuki followed suit. “That…Was that really a Burst Linker?” he asked hoarsely, while bundling up the cables with stiff hands. “There was really a real player inside just like us…?”

“For sure. I mean, there’s no real difference from the way The Fifth fights now…and that is that, Black King.” Yuniko spoke in a low voice as she stood. She threw a glance at Kuroyukihime, who wore an unusually stormy look on her face. “I guess it’s a fact you guys worked your butts off to take down The Fourth, since you have the replay. But, okay, if that’s the case, why didn’t the armor there, the Enhanced Armament, why didn’t it disappear?!”

“It did!” Kuroyukihime shouted back, leaping to her feet. Lips pressed tightly together, she threw herself into a chair at the table. She waited for the other three to do the same before continuing in a strained voice. “Immediately after the owner of the Armor—the fourth Chrome Disaster—left the Accelerated World forever, the Green King and I rejoined the other five and checked our status windows then and there. We all confirmed it then: that we did not have the Armor in our storage. Meaning it was annihilated. The curse of continual transfer to the opponent defeating its host was severed at that time. And, in fact, Chrome Disaster stopped appearing after that!”

Abruptly cutting off the declaration that had practically become a shout by the end, Kuroyukihime glared at Yuniko as if challenging her.

The second Red King squarely accepted the pressure of those ink-black eyes. “If that’s true, how do you explain what’s going on now?!” she demanded sharply. “How do you explain the fact that The Fifth is definitely out there and running wild just like the old days?”

“What is The Fifth called? If whoever it is equipped the Armor, had their mind contaminated, and became the fifth Chrome Disaster, there’s no reason their name in the system would change. If you duel them, you should be able to find out the name of the avatar inside the armor. Exactly which King was it who was possessed by this armor?!”

This time, Yuniko lowered her gaze and dropped into silence. A few seconds later, she heaved a long, deep sigh and shook her head from side to side.

“…It’s not a King. The Fifth one is one of our…a member of the Red Legion, Prominence. Originally named Cherry Rook. But that guy’s not in there anymore. He’s been eaten up by the Armor; he’s gone.” Her voice, in contrast with her tendency toward aggressive words, was unusually hoarse and shaky.

“It’s not…a King? A member of the Red Legion? But…” Kuroyukihime’s eyes narrowed swiftly, and she stroked her pale lips with her right index finger.

As she furrowed her brow, sinking into thought, Takumu raised a hand lightly and began to speak. “Perhaps it’s something like this, Master. If they connect directly, perhaps through the shop, Enhanced Armament can be transferred between Burst Linkers. I can’t really speak to this personally, but considering that backdoor program incident, I can’t believe all the Kings are pacifists with perfectly clean hands. Perhaps some King with an ax to grind made a false promise two and a half years ago, secretly carried the Armor away, and then handed it off to Cherry Rook?”

“Could something like that…have happened? But it’s as I said before, the Kings—level-nine players—no longer have any reason to desire large quantities of points. No matter how many we collect, we still can’t reach level ten. So if this King did hand the armor over…the only reason could be to strengthen their own Legion and weaken the others. But the risk of setting the uncontrollable Chrome Disaster loose is too great. Moreover, if a Red Legion member has it, then the originator would have to be the Red King. But the Red King who took part in the subjugation two and a half years ago…”

Most likely, Haruyuki was the only one who noticed Kuroyukihime’s voice stiffen for an instant.

Her cool hand suddenly touched his under the table. As if gaining strength from his warmth, she continued speaking, the tremor in her tone under control.

“The Red King of the time is no longer in the Accelerated World. He was also killed a mere three months after the subjugation of Chrome Disaster. So it’s not possible for him to have been the originator.”

“I don’t actually know the details since I had only just become a Burst Linker and was just chirping away back then,” the Red King interjected gloomily, seemingly having failed to notice Kuroyukihime’s momentary trouble. “Obviously, I didn’t inherit any Armor or anything from my predecessor. And even if I had, I wouldn’t dream of making a member equip it. Why would I? Just seeing that demonic fighting style…”

“I-is The Fifth…that incredible?”

Yuniko glanced up at Haruyuki’s question. “More than in that replay, in some ways,” she spit out. “He’s no Burst Linker anymore, and the way he fights is no duel. I…I saw him pluck the arm off a fallen opponent and chomp down on it.”

“Geh,” he groaned, imagining the scene involuntarily. Overpowering the sour, bitter taste of his coffee with plenty of milk and sugar, Haruyuki asked the two Kings before him, “B-but…before you said stuff like ‘possessed’ and ‘contaminated mind.’ The Enhanced Armament…Does that mean it’s not just an ordinary weapon? Does it actually interfere with the thoughts of the Burst Linker themselves?”

“It does. And it’s certainly possible,” Kuroyukihime asserted immediately. “Do you remember? I explained it to you when you became a Burst Linker, Haruyuki. Brain Burst reads the user’s feelings of inferiority and obsessions, condenses them, and creates the duel avatar.”

“R-right.”

“That means that it has the ability to access not only the sensory areas of the brain through the Neurolinker, but also the domains of thought and memory, although general applications are strictly regulated. All of which is to say—the Enhanced Armament is stained with the awareness of losing the Burst Linker who produced it. When someone else equips it, it’s quite possible that that awareness flows back into them.”

“That’s…I can’t…” A shiver ran up Haruyuki’s spine. He often found his own negative thoughts too much to handle; he was sure he would be instantly crushed at having to bear another person’s. “I-I’m fine. No Enhanced Armament for me.”

“Good,” Kuroyukihime agreed, laughing briefly. “Although, well, it’s most likely only Chrome Disaster that would contaminate your mind to the point where your entire personality changes. Just what kind of person was the first Chrome Disaster—”

“I don’t know. And I don’t care!” Yuniko shouted, standing suddenly, chair clattering. “He was a stupid bastard ruining everything! He was an idiot for making it! Same goes for the idiot who picked it up and hid it and then gave it to Cherry Rook! Cherry was…He was a good guy. Didn’t have any incredible abilities or anything, but he kept plodding ahead and made it to level six. Things were supposed to be fun for him from now on! And now…Shit! Goddammit!!”

As she turned away with incredible swiftness, Haruyuki saw something slightly damp in the Red King’s large eyes.

Staring out at the group of skyscrapers on the other side of the balcony, Yuniko squeezed out a trembling murmur. “He’s still a member of the Red Legion, and he’s going through the other members and attacking them systematically. Breaking the nonaggression pact. I…I have to clean house.”

“I see.” Kuroyukihime broke the profoundly heavy silence that descended briefly with a quiet observation. “Although this is the infamous Chrome Disaster. Even if you set out to defeat him normally…that is while he remains a member of the Legion…being Legion Master, you could expel him forever from the Accelerated World with a single move, with the Judgment Blow.”

Holding her silence a few seconds longer, Yuniko nodded slowly before shaking her head from side to side. “Ten days ago—he had just gotten to level seven—I challenged him to a one-on-one. To clean house, right? But—Get this, Black Lotus. He—Chrome Disaster managed to dodge every single one of my long-range attacks.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter which Legion Master you are, the Judgment Blow is a close-range technique, basically point-blank. To land that blow, you gotta slam ’em with a normal attack to cut their legs out from under them. But no matter how much I fired my main weapons or my missiles, I couldn’t even scratch him. The opposite, actually. His sword chipped away at my HP until finally…I lost in a time-up.”

“You lost?! You’re telling me that even with the Judgment Blow, you, a King, lost?!”

“Don’t go acting all surprised. You fought him; you get it. That kind of mobility, no one but monsters can move like that. Incredible long-distance jumps, control of his trajectory in the air, it’s almost like he’s flying.”

“Fly…ing…” Swallowing back a murmur, Kuroyukihime stared first at Yuniko, standing on the other side of the table, and then at Haruyuki, sitting next to her. Then she nodded, slowly, deeply. “I see. We finally come to your objective. I understand why you spent such an incredible amount of time cracking Haruyuki in the real and going on this suicidal social engineering mission.”

At that point, Takumu seemed to arrive at the same conclusion, and scrutinized by the other three, Haruyuki squirmed, swinging his gaze from side to side.

“Wh-what? This objective…What is it?”

“Isn’t it obvious, big brother?” Yuniko said sweetly, abruptly adopting the pure demeanor of her angel mode. “You capture Chrome Disaster for me.”

Nearly five seconds passed with Haruyuki in a slack-jawed daze.

No way. Too scary. You’ve gotta be kidding.

Haruyuki shouted, fell off his chair, and tried to hide behind Kuroyukihime. But the Black King dropped her head thoughtfully, grabbed the back of the collar of his school uniform, and yanked upward mercilessly.

“Haruyuki, all things are experiences,” she whispered, the gentle smile of a saint on her face. “I don’t think there’s any harm in trying.”

“Wh-what?!”

“I’m not saying go in there and fight one-on-one. However, this problem involves not only the Red Legion, but the entire Accelerated World, including those of us in Nega Nebulus. In which case, perhaps this is a situation where you need to stand up as a man, as a Burst Linker.”

When she gets that look on her face and starts talking like this, she’s generally plotting something, Haruyuki groaned in his heart, but unable to guess what that something might be, he groped frantically for a decent excuse.

“B-but…even a King, I mean, a level-nine Burst Linker, was no match for this guy! A level-four Linker like me, he’ll send me flying instantly, and the whole thing’ll be over! And I don’t want to have my head or arms or anything yanked off!!”

“I would not let that happen to you, would I?” Once again: that smile like the finest gelato melting. “All you need to do is follow Chrome Disaster with your speed and flying ability, and prevent him from moving for a brief while. Myself and the little girl here will then steal from the enemy the power of movement.”

“Y-you say that, but—” Not knowing when to give up, Haruyuki dialed up his escape skills to full and somehow managed to come up with a final argument. “That means, then, that you’re assuming you’ll bring him into a team battle? But that’ll put Chrome Disaster up against at minimum me, you, and Scarlet Rain all by himself. There’s no way he’ll accept a duel with that kind of handicap!”

As long as a Burst Linker’s Neurolinker was connected to the net, they couldn’t refuse a challenge to a normal one-on-one duel from another Burst Linker. But it was a different story when the duel mode was “team” or “battle royale.” They would be challenging the person inside Chrome Disaster to an extremely disadvantageous three-against-one fight, and he couldn’t possibly agree to that.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t I just wondering about that?

Speechless, Haruyuki dipped his head lightly, and Kuroyukihime said, glancing over at Yuniko as if to confirm, “If Chrome Disaster were running wild in normal duels, news of that should have already reached my ears. However, I haven’t heard a single rumor. Which means…”

“Right.” The Red King stuffed both hands in the pockets of her cut-off jeans, leaned her slim body back, and nodded decisively. “His hunting ground isn’t the Normal Duel Field…it’s the Unlimited Neutral Field.”

What the hell is that? Haruyuki once again had a question mark hanging above his head, but it was Takumu to his right who cried out sharply.

“I-it’s too dangerous, Master!” Leaning forward in his chair hard enough to make it clatter, he proceeded to argue even more vehemently. “Diving with our battle array is too reckless! Forget Haru and me; you’re constrained by special rules! If by chance another level-nine Burst Linker launches a surprise attack on you, if you’re defeated even once, you’ll lose Brain Burst instantly…and in the worst-case scenario—”

Takumu glanced at Yuniko standing to his right and seemed to hesitate slightly, but as he touched a finger to the bridge of his blue glasses, he said, “It’s my duty to say this. So I will go ahead and say it. In the worst-case scenario, it’s even possible that this entire spectacle—cracking Haruyuki in the real, telling us this story about Chrome Disaster, all of it—is just a trap set by the Red King. It’s possible she’s planning to lure you into the Unlimited Field, ambush you with a large force, and take your head.”

“Welp, thanks for saying it, Cyan Pile.” Yuniko, returning once again to tiny demon mode, jerked her slender chin out, hands still in her pockets, and glared at Takumu. “This whole time, you’ve been the one saying all the smart stuff. What’s your deal? You the glasses guy? Your nickname ‘Professor’?”

After looking slightly injured momentarily, Takumu quickly regained his composure. “I’m saying, show us some proof, Red King,” he replied. “We’re a Legion of just three people; if you’d have us brave danger and dive in, you should have come with some kind of collateral for asking that!”

“Isn’t the collateral right here?” Yuniko quickly jerked her right hand, freed from her pocket, around her virtual desktop; bringing three fingertips together, she flicked. A semitransparent name tag again appeared in Haruyuki’s field of view. But this one was a little larger. Because it didn’t just have her real name; her address was displayed below that.

Haruyuki stared dumbfounded at the row of letters that started with “Tokyo, Nerima Ward” and ended with the name of a school and dorm he’d never heard of. She had exposed enough about her true identity just by telling them her real name and showing them her face; revealing her current address went beyond bold and into reckless.

Takumu and Kuroyukihime also appeared surprised by this, and under the wordless scrutiny of the three junior high school students, Yuniko jabbed at her own thin chest with the thumb on the right hand she pulled away from her desktop.

“Don’t you get it yet, why I contacted you in person? On the real side, I’m just an elementary school kid with no strength, no money, no organization. If I was attacked here, I’d be helpless. If I betray you, you can come and make me pay anytime,” Yuniko said, and Haruyuki watched as her eyes caught the afterglow of the midwinter sun streaming in the window and burned a radiant red.

She was fiercely determined, to the point where it was almost desperation. And it was true that a member of your own Legion breaking the nonaggression pact and going after other Legions was a problem you couldn’t shut your eyes to. But the major premise here was that at the end of the day, Brain Burst was a fighting game, a thing that existed to play, to enjoy, to thrill.

Which is why Haruyuki thought it was a mistake to sacrifice your real-world self to Brain Burst. He was sure this was the issue that had confused Takumu three months earlier, a problem that probably made him suffer even now.

“Yu-Yuni,” Haruyuki called out unconsciously on Takumu’s behalf, silent as if overawed, groping for what to say next.

“I know what you wanna say.” The Red King smiled self-deprecatingly as she lowered her right hand, as if guessing Haruyuki’s feelings from that single word. “But you know…You’ll probably realize this if you get up here one day, but when you get this game, the real is just so incredibly weak. Because of this ‘acceleration’ technology. If you knew exactly how much time me and that girl there had spent in the Accelerated World up to now, it’d knock you flat on your butt.”

“Huh…so your total play time…?” Haruyuki cocked his head and did a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Break it down to about ten duels a day. If the average time for one fight is twenty minutes, that’s a total of two hundred minutes—just over three hours. That was a lot of game play for someone in junior high, but it wasn’t unreasonable.

Over three hours a day, that would be a hundred hours a month. Twelve hundred hours in a year. And Yuniko said it had been about two and a half years since she became a Burst Linker, so…

“About…three thousand hours?”

That seemed huge, but compared with full-blown VRMMORPG (virtual reality massive multiplayer online role-playing game) addicts, it was practically nothing. Those guys easily dove ten consecutive hours in a single day.

But Yuniko started cackling the instant she heard the results of Haruyuki’s earnest mental arithmetic, and even Kuroyukihime was roused to a faint, wry smile.

“Huh? That’s not it? Then how how many hours in total, Yuni…?”

“Not telling. You decide the answer yourself. And—” The expression on the Red King’s face was suddenly scary as she continued darkly, “Quit with the ‘Yuni.’ Makes me itch all over. Niko’s good. Call me ‘Niko,’ and don’t you dare add any cutesy flourishes or anything.”

Feeling like he’d been let off the hook somehow, Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down and ran his eyes over the room. “Umm…then does this mean we can help Yuni—the Red King after all, as Nega Nebulus?”

“Mmm. There are many risks, but for the present, let’s accept this thing at face value. And it’s not as if there aren’t benefits.”

“B-benefits?” Haruyuki asked in response, and Kuroyukihime shifted her gaze to glance at the Red King.

“Exactly. Because for the incomparable Prominence to come to us with such a significant request, they’ve naturally prepared some bargaining points. For instance…they won’t lay a hand on our modest Territory in the future. Things like that.”

“Tch!” Clicking her tongue softly, the Red King—Niko—waved her right hand lightly. “Got it. If verbal’s good, we can make an agreement right now. I’ll tell my guys not to touch Suginami for the time being.”

Kuroyukihime dipped her head and from crossed arms lifted a single finger on her right hand. “However, that is just one point. Scarlet Rain…exactly how are you intending to ambush Chrome Disaster in the Unlimited Field? I’m sure you know it’s very nearly impossible to target and confront someone there.”

“I won’t make any trouble for you guys. I’ll take responsibility for this, set the time and place. Right now, all I can say is…it’ll probably be tomorrow evening.”

“My. Can you do that?”

Yuniko nodded her assent to Kuroyukihime’s question and its implications.

“In that case, I’ll let you handle it. We’ll meet again here after school tomorrow and dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. Acceptable, yes? Haruyuki, Takumu?”

What exactly is this Unlimited Field, though?

But even before the desire to pose that question, Haruyuki couldn’t help but feel his heart lurch. What? My place again?! It might be okay because his mother wouldn’t be back from Shanghai until the following day, but if he came home tomorrow and this time Niko was in the middle of appreciatively sampling the “other kind” of M-rated games in the living room—if that happened, he’d be doomed forever.

He had to defend it. This time for sure, he would defend his room!

Making this vow, Haruyuki bobbed his head as Takumu slowly nodded.

“Well, then let’s leave off there for today. Haruyuki, thank you for the coffee.” Kuroyukihime stood as she spoke and stared again at the collection of vintage Western games from several dozen years earlier scattered around the living room. “I’d like to come over and play sometime. You have a lot of titles I’ve never even heard of.”

“S-sure, that’d be great.” One of the ones that doesn’t have too much blood and guts, he added in his head as he saw Kuroyukihime and Takumu to the door.

“Okay, Haru, see you at school tomorrow. Whoa! It’s already so late!”

First Takumu, too impatient to even take the time to wave a hand, ran off toward the skyway connecting to a separate wing, and then Kuroyukihime slipped on her loafers and turned around.

“U-um…I’ll walk you home. It’s already late—” Haruyuki offered, but a dismissive wave of her hand interrupted him.

“No need to worry. It’s common for me to be even later with student council business. And my house is surprisingly close.”

“Oh…is it? But be careful.”

“Mmm-hmm. All right, then, thanks for having me over. See you tomorrow.” Kuroyukihime smiled, raised her right hand, and started out the door.

“’Kay then, Blackie,” Niko drawled at her back from behind Haruyuki. “Don’t be late tomorrow, y’hear? Now then, back to what I was doing…”

“Hold up!” Kuroyukihime whirled at top speed and shouted after the Red King who had started trotting back off into the living room. “Hold on a sec, Red!”

“Whut?”

“You can’t possibly be intending to stay here again tonight?” She glared at Niko, throwing her neck back, eyes shining from deep within, and demanded an explanation.

“Totes. Too much hassle to go all the way home and stuff.”

“Quit fooling around and go home! Children should go home, do their homework, brush their teeth, and go to bed!!”

Niko guffawed, and let the heat roll right off her. “It’s just, I go to a boarding school. And I got a three-day pass to leave, so even if I do go back, there won’t be anything for me to eat. So! Biiiig brother, what am I gonna make for supper tonight?” Uttering the last bit in angel mode, Niko disappeared into the living room.

“Wh-wha—” Kuroyukihime, on the verge of a massive explosion, both fists clenched and shaking, glared sideways at Haruyuki, who was standing stock-still in mute amazement. “I take back my ‘see you tomorrow.’ I’ll stay here tonight as well.”

After giving voice to this terrifying announcement/declaration of war, she shut the door forcefully, removed her shoes, and stomped down the hallway, returning to the living room.

His brain completely frozen, Haruyuki needed a full minute to reboot.

What’s going on?

What’s going on how is this happening is this actually real? Or is it, A to Z, all of it, fake and made of polygons?

Haruyuki sat down on the living room sofa, clutched a cushion, and let his gaze wander in space.

Maybe all of it right from the start—meeting Kuroyukihime, getting Brain Burst, becoming the Burst Linker Silver Crow—every little bit of it was a dream. He was probably running some kind of app to escape reality by constantly viewing a lengthy simulation.

Although Haruyuki tried seriously to doubt what was happening, the aftertaste of the slightly burnt hamburger he had eaten just half an hour earlier, the happy sensation in his stomach, and the sounds of water and girls’ voices as they played around, echoing from the bathroom and separated from him by a mere hallway, were just too real.

After Kuroyukihime’s sudden declaration, the three went shopping together in the shopping center at the bottom of the condo, made supper together, and did the cleanup. Ending the night with Niko and Kuroyukihime using the bath together first. But…

The situation and the sudden and precipitous turn it had taken was just too unrealistic, and Haruyuki was, wastefully, left running on automatic. His consciousness simply could not adjust to the scenario “home alone,” “two girls come to stay over,” and “make dinner, get in the bath.” Exactly what was the optimal solution to the problem of how to act now? What choices would be normal at a time like this, for a boy?

Smoke coming out of his ears in puffs, Haruyuki kept the excessive load of his thoughts scraping round and round. In anime and games of this type, this sort of scene generally had the boy going to ask about the temperature of the water, after which some crazy accident happens, and he ends up tumbling into the bath. Resulting in bath buckets and shampoo bottles being thrown at him until he beats a hasty retreat.

In which case, me doing that is really the optimal solution.

Haruyuki bounced to his feet and started staggering toward the bathroom. Already in his mind, he could see nothing other than a cut scene of Kuroyukihime and Niko covered in bubbles, washing each other.

However, unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—just before he could open the living room door, he heard two sets of footsteps heading his way down the hall. Haruyuki teleported to the sofa at light speed.

The knob turned with a violent clack, and Niko sprang through first, shouting, “Ice cream!” as she ran into the kitchen. When he instinctively averted his eyes from her, roughing it in a loose sweatshirt and shorts, his gaze fell upon Kuroyukihime.

She was wearing thin pink pajamas, likely bought at the shopping center that evening. From the slightly doubtful-looking figure, towel over damp, shining hair, came the scent of a touchingly defenseless loveliness, an impression he would never have even imagined given her usual black accoutrement, which separated her from other people. All Haruyuki could do was gaze at her, jaw dropped.

“Don’t stare at me like that. This color was all they had in my size,” Kuroyukihime said, turning away, and Haruyuki finally came back to his senses, shaking his head violently from side to side.

“N-n-n-n-no, it’s fine! Th-th-they look good on you! Really good!”

“D-do they? They’re not a bit childish?”

“No! Not at all! They’re perfect. Just right. Critical hit.” He had desperately, frantically gotten that much out, still kneeling, spine straight, when Niko popped her head in from the side and waved a popsicle in her right hand.

“Hey! Silver Crow! Know what?”

“Wh-what?”

“This girl might look like this now, but take her clothes off and she’s surprisingloof—”

The ending was courtesy of Kuroyukihime landing a merciless blow to her solar plexus.

“Now.” Squeezing the Red King’s throat from behind, Kuroyukihime smiled coolly. “You hurry and use the bath, too. The water will get cold.”

He looked at Niko dangling there and flew off the sofa, giving a little scream in his head. “R-right! Okay, I’ll leave you two and take a quick jump in the tub! There’s barley tea in the fridge, so please help yourself!”

The evening ended with an M-rated retro game tournament that lasted until the middle of the night.

As they sat on the floor around the massive game console from forty years earlier, chattering and laughing, slaughtering the flat images of creatures, Haruyuki could not stop wondering if the whole thing was actually real.

Me and these people, we’re basically only connected through the VR game Brain Burst. So I should recognize that the foundation of our relationship is online—the Net.

I do love Kuroyukihime, and she says she likes me, too. But the intermediary for those feelings up to now has basically been the quantum signals exchanged nonstop between our Neurolinkers. And I thought I was okay with a relationship that could be widely recorded and captured by vector data.

But today we made supper together, we ate it together, we took turns in the bath, and now we’re sitting here separated by only a few dozen centimeters; we can even feel each other’s body heat.

In this world where the border between real and virtual is endlessly blurred and we can’t even tell how much of the information our senses receive is analog and how much is digital—is this something that can happen in this world? How am I supposed to grasp and process off-line human relationships? After all, off-line—in the real world—all I’ve done is run away, hide, and shrink from everything.

The showy scream erupting from the enormous boss monster on-screen interrupted his rambling, whirling thoughts. At the same time, Niko dropped her controller and flopped over backward.

“Aah…I’m can’t go anymore. I’m tired. Tired!”

“Well, I did tell you. Children should—Naaah.” Kuroyukihime put her left hand to her mouth and yawned elegantly.

Looking up at the clock on the wall since he had already removed his Neurolinker for the night, Haruyuki saw the time creeping up on midnight. “O-okay, I guess we should head for bed already? Umm…Yuni—I mean, Niko—maybe the sofa here is good for tonight. And Kuroyukihime, please use my mom’s bedroom. Oh, but maybe it’ll be cold in there if I don’t turn the heater on for a bit—” Haruyuki had gotten that far when Niko interrupted loudly.

“Whatever. Such a hassle! Bring out a blanket, I can just sleep…here…” She buried her head in an enormous cushion and soon closed her eyes.

“Mmm. That’s good for me, too. Sleeping together in a pile, surrounded by games, a historic experience…actually…” And then she, too, was flat on her back.

Although he wondered at this, there was no way to do anything like valiantly pick them up and carry them to bed, so Haruyuki did as he was told and brought out whatever blankets they had. He gently covered Niko and Kuroyukihime, who were already asleep, and thought to himself, Now, then. I guess I should go sleep in my room?

But isn’t it kind of jerky to leave my guests to sleep on the floor while just I go sleep in a bed? Shouldn’t I sleep on the floor, too, in the interest of fairness? Isn’t that what a gentleman would do?

After persuading himself with this rationalization, Haruyuki turned the ceiling light to its lowest setting and curled up in a ball on the spot. The floor, embedded with heat-circulating pipes, was slightly warm, and the large, malleable cushions were fluffy and soft. And from so close he could reach out and touch it, he could smell the most amazingly pleasant scent.

Haruyuki closed his eyes tightly beneath his blanket thinking that there was no way he’d be able to sleep in a situation like this. But oddly, rather than nervous tension, a strange serenity descended on him, and his consciousness immediately dropped into a gentle darkness.

Haruyuki woke just once in the middle of the night.

When he stood to go to the washroom and casually shifted his gaze, an unexpected scene popped into view in the dim illumination of blue-white moonlight.

Niko and Kuroyukihime, who had been a meter or more apart, were glued together, sleeping deeply, as if they had at some point been squeezed down the valley of the two cushions. More than that, Niko had her head buried in Kuroyukihime’s chest and was tightly gripping the fabric of her pajamas with her right hand. And Kuroyukihime had both of her arms around her, as if wrapping up Niko’s red hair.

Rather than surprise at this sight, he felt something hit his chest and make him gasp, and Haruyuki opened his eyes wide.

The Red King and the Black King. Level-nine Burst Linkers bound by the special rule of sudden death.

Haruyuki couldn’t even imagine how many hours these two had passed in the Accelerated World, engaging in mortal combat over and over each time they went, or what lay ahead for them. But he could say this at least. If they both had their sights set on level ten, then one day, they would have to fight. Because the only way a King could move forward was by defeating another King.

But…

Tonight the two of them, through a coincidence brought about by a complicated entanglement of circumstances, were sleeping alongside each other like this in the real world. Almost as if both had wished for this moment deep in their hearts.

Was this scene the illusion of a single night? An accidental miracle never to happen again?

Or…

Haruyuki was seized with the premonition that he was on the verge of arriving now at a very important something. But the unnameable feelings cutting through his chest and the tears blurring his eyes would not allow him to put his thoughts into actual words.

So Haruyuki just stood there and stared, as if he could stand and stare forever at the girls slumbering soundly in the pale blue moonlight.