6

The first to come pouring down was, naturally, the torrential rain of the distance attacks.

It might have been the Yellow Legion, but that didn’t mean that all its members were in the yellow family—that the Legion was made exclusively of Burst Linkers whose affinity was midrange attacks. The group of thirty foes encircling the crater looked like it included at least ten in the red family, and the number of beams and explosive rounds could more aptly be called concentrated fire.

The majority of it was aimed at Niko, but the Red King dashed backward and avoided the rounds admirably, with a nimbleness that was a far cry from her fortress mode. However, one blue light beam, whether targeted or a misfire, came straight for Haruyuki, who was holding on to Kuroyukihime and unable to get his feet to move.

“Ngh!” Although he tried twisting his body to avoid it, the beam grazed his shoulder. Playing at being tough, he was laughing it off in his heart—Can’t even call that a scratch—when:

“Hnngh!”

Haruyuki’s back arched at the scorching heat suddenly generated in his shoulder.

When players took damage in a duel in Brain Burst, they were given a pain stimulus on a level that was not possible with normal Neurolinker apps. But the pain Haruyuki felt was twice that of a normal duel.

Which meant something like: In addition to features like “no time limit” and “can’t instantly withdraw,” this place, the Unlimited Neutral Field, increased the sensation of pain by an order of magnitude when struck, as a risk to counterbalance the advantage of being able to earn points outside of duels.

After a slight lag, a number of small missiles rushed in above Haruyuki’s head as he stood there.

“Heeey!” Howling, Cyan Pile came to stand before them, blocking Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime with the Pile Driver device in his right arm, aimed at the missiles.

The sharp iron spike launched with a metallic rasp, and the majority of the enemy rounds exploded from the impact wave. However, a few survived and struck the body sheathed in blue armor. Flashes of light. Sounds of explosions.

“Gaaah!” he cried out and reeled back, but Takumu did not fall. Instead, he turned his enormous body around, plumes of smoke rising from it, and barked, “Haru! Run!”

“G-got it!”

Apologizing in his heart, Haruyuki started running, practically dragging Kuroyukihime’s avatar along with him. In his path, Niko had already drawn the gun on her hip and was firing blindly at the enemies in position on the east side of the crater.

If they didn’t get out of this siege first, retreating or fighting back would be impossible. Fortunately, because their foes had spread themselves out along the entire hundred-meter-diameter crater, the wall, as it were, was thin. If they could break through in a single hit and get out onto Green Street, Sunshine City and its leave point were right there.

Haruyuki, still holding Kuroyukihime under his arm, opened the wings on his back. Thanks to that hit earlier, his special attack gauge had increased, albeit by just a tiny bit. But it was enough to make a sliding dash to the edge of the crater possible.

One point in the eastern circle was starting to come apart thanks to Niko’s steady fire. Staring right at it, Haruyuki kicked the ground with everything he had.

Then the voice of the Yellow King, smooth and cool while also somehow discordant, echoed remarkably high behind him. “Silly Go Round!!”

A special attack!

But it was too late! The edge of the crater was right in front of his eyes—

“Waaah?!” Haruyuki reared at the phenomenon that abruptly unfolded.

The world had started to turn. No, the truth was the inside and outside of the crater were rotating in opposite directions, with the edge as the border. The buildings in the background, and the enemy duel avatars standing there, flowed from left to right at high speed.

Around them, several toy horses had popped up at some point, a transparent, hazy yellow, and were moving up and down together in a happy-go-lucky way. He even heard a sunny country tune, but that, too, was eerie.

Immediately, Haruyuki lost his sense of balance and dropped to one knee. He saw that Niko, right ahead of him, and Takumu, at his side, were also bracing fiercely, their bodies swaying.

“Th-the field’s rotating?!” Haruyuki blurted, dazed, to which the Red King replied sharply.

“It just looks like it’s rotating! The truth is, nothing’s moving! Close your eyes and run!”

“But…which way?!” He already had absolutely no idea which way was east, which was what he’d been aiming for. It would all be for nothing if he charged forward blindly and ended up farther away from the leave point.

“That way!”

“This way!”

Niko and Takumu simultaneously pointed in completely opposite directions.

Instantly, as if aiming to strike while they were frozen in place, the surging wave of a volley spiraled in from the outer edge of the crater and converged on them.

As he looked up at the multicolored line of fire, Haruyuki knew in his gut that he wouldn’t be able to dodge. That trajectory of the volley only looked like it was deeply arching. It only felt curved because of Yellow Radio’s hallucination attack.

Thinking that at the very least he had to protect Kuroyukihime, he tried to cover the slim avatar beneath his outspread wings.

But before he could, Takumu cried out, “Get down!!” Scooping the three of them up in his strong arms, he covered them, as if falling.

“Ta—” Haruyuki’s words as he opened his eyes wide were erased by the fierce instrumental ensemble of explosions. His field of view was painted white, and heat scorched his cheeks. The stifled scream of his friend popped next to his ear.

“Ngaaaaaaah!!”

At that moment, every single kind of long-distance attack was raining down in a fierce barrage on Takumu’s broad back. With the pain from just one round scraping Silver Crow’s shoulder being that intense, exactly what was the sum total of the agony hammering Takumu’s nerves? Given the circumstances, it would have to be even greater than what Haruyuki inflicted on himself in his training room.

“Stop…Taku, stop already!” Haruyuki cried, trying to crawl out from under his friend.

But the young man’s essentially steel arms held him even tighter, locking him in place, while at the same time, he gasped. “I-it’s okay, Haru. I have to…do this much…to pay you…”

“You don’t! You don’t have to! How many times do I have to tell you that, Taku?!” Haruyuki shouted desperately, but the answer he got was more anguish. Each time he felt the shudder of a direct hit, a cracking groan slipped out from the slits dividing Cyan Pile’s mask.

Mixed with the sound of countless shots firing, the Yellow King’s detestable voice just barely reached him. “Monstrous…Burn that little puppet up already.”

The sound of several shots in concert came in response, but Takumu did not fall.

The red Burst Linkers in this enemy group probably weren’t very high level. And although Cyan Pile was still level four, he was blue, a type emphasizing endurance. Thus, even taking this kind of concentrated fire, he could keep going without falling. But that also meant the agony Takumu himself was experiencing would be drawn out until who knew when.

There was nothing left for Haruyuki to say. Takumu was prepared to continue protecting the three of them until the effectiveness of the Yellow King’s special attack wore off.

Likely having already guessed this, next to Haruyuki, Niko said clearly, “Retreat in your mind at least, Cyan Pile. Thirty more seconds.”

“Under…stood…”

An unpleasant rasp nearby erased Takumu’s voice, and Haruyuki stared, dumbfounded, at three glittering chunks of metal protruding slightly from the thick chest sheltering him.

At some point, the enemy fire around them stopped. In the midst of the sunny and strange music of the merry-go-round, Cyan Pile’s enormous body was lifted in a movement not of his own volition.

Standing behind him was a blue-green duel avatar with basically the same physique. A remarkably massive right arm in the middle of its unrefined form caught Haruyuki’s eye, reminding him of heavy machinery used for public works projects. At the end were three fiendish claws, which had pierced Cyan Pile’s chest from behind.

One close-range type who’d been put on standby had probably gotten exasperated and come flying down. Its goggles, the shape of which reminded Haruyuki of the CRT monitors of the previous century, blinked, and the avatar emitted a thick voice.

“I’d heard you do reasonably well among the young blues. Was that just bravado, Cyan Pile, nothing more than empty boasting?”

The heavy machinery avatar yanked the skewered Takumu up and sneered. “Heh-heh! Before you drop dead, listen good. The one who defeated you was me, Saxe—”

“Not interested…in the name of an idiot,” Takumu rasped. Raising his right arm, he pressed the launcher to the center of his own chest.

“Lightning Cyan Spike!!”

With a weak but resolute cry, a bluish-white flash of light surged from of the end of the cylinder. At the same time, a bolt of lightning pierced Cyan Pile’s chest, to the heavy avatar’s right arm, and then, by extension, its square head. Saxe so-and-so’s right arm and goggles went flying with a crack, and both avatars were tossed into the air before collapsing in a thunderous roar.

Because of the merry-go-round hallucination, they couldn’t accurately target their enemies, even close-up. But when the enemy’s arm had you, it was a different story: a body had to be at the other end of that arm.

“T-Taku!!” Haruyuki shouted.

Amazing, you really are amazing. Way stronger than me, way smarter. I’m proud to be your friend. But he didn’t get the chance to put the feelings rushing through his chest into words.

“Unh…Aaaaaugh!!” With his remaining strength, Takumu leaned against the enemy avatar, which was pressing its left hand to its face and writhing on the ground as it screamed.

A hoarse voice came Cyan Pile’s mask as he turned briefly toward Haruyuki. “The rest…is up to you, Haru.” And then, firmly pinning the enemy down with both arms:

“Splash Stinger!!”

From the gap between the two bodies pressed together came the sound of rapid fire, like a machine gun, and successive flashes of light. The enemy’s thrashing ceased abruptly, and innumerable fissures pitted the pair of avatars.

A moment later, two pillars of blue light in differing shades soared high upward from the bottom of the crater. Takumu and the enemy burst and scattered, fragments of polygons flying, and then they were nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, the merry-go-round hallucination attack ended, and the world took on its original aspect.

A moment’s silence filled the crater in what was once South Ikebukuro Park.

The shots from the outer edge had stopped as well, with just the distant lightning and howling wind resounding heavily once more.

There were limits to the duel avatars’ long-distance attacks—overheating in the case of light beams, number of bullets for live rounds. It wasn’t as if they could keep shooting forever. Even making allowances for that, this silence was strange. They were likely caught up in it, too. In the dreadful theater of the simultaneous deaths of Cyan Pile and the other one.

This is our chance to escape, Haruyuki thought. This was the time Takumu literally laid down his life to create for them. But for some reason, his feet didn’t move. Still raised up on one knee, his thin avatar trembled all over.

A feeling he couldn’t explain swirled in the depths of his chest. A sense of helplessness due to his inability to act while his friend protected him. Rage at the Yellow King and this cowardly plan that toyed with other people’s emotions. And more than either of those, directed at the pitch-black avatar hanging limp, as if its power had been severed, still clutched in his right arm—

“Kuroyukihime…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki squeezed a voice like a groan from the depths of his throat. “Kuroyukihime. Why…why won’t you stand up…?”

“It’s pointless, Silver Crow,” Niko muttered. Making her footsteps resound loudly, the Red King came to stand directly over the petite figure.

“Zero fill. Right now, the signal output by the girl’s soul, which is supposed to be communicating with the avatar, is at zero, so the system’s overwhelmed. Without a Burst Linker with the will to fight, the avatar can’t move. The duel avatar’s power source is the heat of the heart of the person inside it. If you don’t have the strength to face your own wounds, you can’t even stand up. That’s what this Brain Burst game’s about. And this girl understands that, so much that she hates it. Even if you get it, it’s a problem you can’t do anything about.”

Once she had explained all this in hushed tones, Niko glanced back at Haruyuki. “Sorry. I know Cyan Pile sacrificed himself to buy us time, but…I can’t run. I didn’t train all that time just to go running all helter-skelter here. You’re good. You take the girl and get out of here.”

The girl’s crimson avatar looked like it was burning up. It wasn’t an illusion. Around the foot that had stepped forward, Haruyuki actually saw faint flames rising.

It was reckless. The enemy battalion was still essentially unharmed. There was no way she could win.

Even as he told himself he should do as reason dictated and run, he couldn’t move. He felt like something would be decisively lost from him and from Kuroyukihime if he ran off and left Niko here, and, still crouching on the spot, Haruyuki whispered in return, “I won’t run. I’m not going to run off and leave a friend behind!”

“Friend…You’re really a hardcore idiot. Well, you do what you want,” Niko muttered after a brief moment of speechlessness, as if dazed, and then took another step forward.

The Red King stretched her right arm out straight ahead, jabbed a fingertip at the Yellow King standing at the western edge of the crater, and shouted, “Yellow Radio! That special-attack gauge you so diligently charged up before making your awesome appearance is totally empty! Now it’s my turn to pay you back. Don’t forget, if I take you out, you get banished forever, right there on the spot!!”

As if overawed, the Yellow King’s clown avatar retreated a half step.

Niko responded with another step forward and threw her arms open. “Come! Enhanced Armament!!”

An inferno raged suddenly, and the avatar engulfed by it floated up gently. From the surrounding sky, armament containers covered in flames sprang up one after another and began converging on the girl from all sides. The shoulder missile pods, the thick armor skirt, the thrusters on her back—and the terrifyingly huge main weapons in place of her arms.

Finally displaying the true form implied by her second name, Immobile Fortress, the Red King Scarlet Rain struck the center of the crater with a heavy, rumbling shock, and white gas plumed from her entire body.

The collective discomposure of the thirty avatars surrounding them was clear even to Haruyuki. Because the Yellow Legion had their headquarters on the east side of Tokyo, they didn’t have many chances for contact with the Red Legion, which ruled Nerima and Nakano in the west. The majority had never even watched a battle with Niko in the gallery, much less fought her directly themselves. The enormity of Scarlet Rain’s true form, so large that she could barely be called a duel avatar, struck them dumb. The same way it had struck Haruyuki the day before yesterday.

The sound of Niko’s quiet voice, with strong effects applied, reached Haruyuki, who was holding his breath anxiously. “Hey, Silver Crow. Sorry, but you just take care of any close-range opponents sticking to my butt.”

“G-got it. But…Kuroyukihime…”

“These jerks won’t touch the girl. Not until they take me down, anyway. If I get done in, don’t sweat it, fly out of here with Lotus.”

Done in—In this situation, that meant the forced uninstallation of Niko’s Brain Burst.

Before Haruyuki could say anything in response, the Yellow King looked down on them from on high and cried out even more venomously, “There is no need to fear! That thing is just a fixed fort; if you glue yourself to her, she’s simply a lump of steel!”

He threw his right hand up. “Close-range team, you’re up! Long-distance team, support! Now go!!”

His arm flashed with yellow reflections as he brought it down, and the roar of a war cry rang out as fifteen or so duel avatars surged forward as one from the outer edge of the crater.

As if acting in concert, the missile pods on Niko’s shoulders deployed with a crisp metallic clack. Dozens of seeker heads poking out shone red and fired, leaving a trail of white smoke.

Fanning out into a semicircle, the missiles flew straight up before spreading out and raining down on the enemy duel avatars on the ground. Some pulled up in a dash, others tried to drop into defensive postures, and the force of the charge slackened.

Scarlet Rain immediately sighted two standing frozen with the main weapons of her arms. The ruby-colored heat beam these weapons released with shrill resonance swallowed the unfortunate Burst Linkers whole. The lump of energy briefly swelled into a sphere before quickly destabilizing into a fierce explosion.

The denotation erupted into a pillar of fire, and light the same color as each of the avatar’s armors rose into the sky. Their HP gauges were blown away, disassembled, annihilated.

One shot! Haruyuki shuddered. At the same time, he thought, If that’s how this is…then maybe.

However, the long-distance avatars had finished recharging and launched a bombardment from outside the crater. Given Scarlet Rain’s enormous size and immobility, there was no way they could miss, and every shot was absorbed by the crimson fortress.

Explosions bloomed all over her body, but the Red King didn’t even flinch. In response, she turned toward the crest of the crater and began unloading on them with her four machine guns.

Her only answer to the long-distance attacks at the moment was to endure. Haruyuki clenched his teeth tightly and laid Kuroyukihime’s avatar down.

Niko had said that a Burst Linker couldn’t move until she healed the wounds in her heart. This was something Haruyuki was familiar with.

Three months earlier, back around the time when he had just learned about the existence of the Accelerated World, Haruyuki had fought his good friend Takumu—Cyan Pile—to protect Kuroyukihime. And he had been beaten horribly, swallowed up by his own insignificance and helplessness, and ended up not even being able to stand next to the unconscious Kuroyukihime’s avatar.

If, at that time, he hadn’t heard Kuroyukihime’s voice—either a hallucination or she had actually communicated with him—Haruyuki probably wouldn’t have been able to fight again. The hidden potential of Silver Crow—the ability to fly—would not have awakened, and he would have lost everything.

So now, Haruyuki did not feel despair or even anger at Kuroyukihime’s inability to move.

He was sad. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help feeling sad.

Closing his eyes tightly, Haruyuki removed his hand from the ebon avatar and stood up. He started running in a straight line. In his sights was a close-range avatar trying to get onto Niko’s back. It was olive green in color, and the tips of its ridiculously long and thick arms were U-shaped metal.

Seeing Haruyuki en route, his opponent gave a guttural howl. “Shoo, small fry!” It turned the U of its left arm toward Haruyuki and continued shouting.

“Magnetron Waaaaave!”

As the avatar uttered its technique, purple lightning gushed out and captured Haruyuki. However, rather than being damaged, Silver Crow’s slim avatar was yanked up by an incredible force and snapped onto the U with a harsh clanking.

“Hee-hee! Metal colors get sucked in so nicely!” Olive Green shouted and started pummeling him with his right hand.

Guard against these blows with both arms, Haruyuki thought calmly. From the name, this special attack probably pulled in opponents with magnetism. In which case, there should be a time limit. And given that the technique completely immobilized an opponent, that was at most maybe ten seconds.

Haruyuki abruptly stretched his arms out to cover his opponent’s scope-shaped eyes. Then he spread his wings and took off in one go.

“Hey! You! Let me go!”

Pulling airborne both the magnet affixed to his chest and his struggling opponent, Haruyuki quickly flew up to a height of a few dozen meters. The surge of purple emitted by the magnet disappeared abruptly, and his opponent knocked Haruyuki’s arm away with his free right hand.

“You trying to blind me? That’s not gonna damage—Aaaah?!”

His challenger shrieked as he realized his situation—plummeting from a ridiculous altitude without a handhold in sight—but Haruyuki paid no attention and dove at full speed. Overtaking the magnetic avatar in the sky, he pointed his legs into his best approximation of a cylinder and charged.

“Yaaaaah!!” With a yell, he pierced the back of a drill-equipped avatar that had tried to jump Niko. He slashed a left overhand into the seams of his target’s neck armor, punching him into the surface of the ground with a thunderous slam.

“Ah! Gah! Aaaah!”

Just as he leapt away from his enemy, who was screeching at having had two vertebrae gouged out, the magnet avatar crashed out of the sky in front of him. This one was also unable to move, convulsing from the shock that had slammed its entire body.

But a sudden blow caught Haruyuki’s right cheek as he was about to take off to finish the the two. Sent flying spectacularly, he ended up tumbling along the ground. A fierce pain ripped through his mouth as if his molars were shattering, and sparks flew before him.

This third enemy closed on Haruyuki, who forced himself to ignore the pain and sparks and jump to his feet. A pale blue karate uniform covered a body as square as if carved from stone. The mask, which closely resembled an Easter Island statue, was funny, but the threat hidden in the avatar’s rocklike fists could be seen at a glance. It was a weaponless, extremely close-range type, and this sort of orthodox avatar was actually terrifying.

Likely experienced in a crisis, the karate master avatar came after him following a suitable pause. Without wasting its breath on pointless chatter, it suddenly delivered a right front kick.

Silver Crow’s extremely slender body proved fortunate in that he managed to dodge the direct impact. But sparks scattered where the blow clipped his left flank, and his HP bar dropped. He launched a left Punch in counterattack, but this was blocked by a massive right arm, like hitting a tree trunk.

In the event that a metal color ends up in close combat with a type specialized in blows, against which metals are weak…Unexpectedly, a lecture from Kuroyukihime he had heard at some point resurfaced in Haruyuki’s brain. Do not panic and guard or try to hit back; instead, turn aside the enemy’s attacks and use that power. With your reaction speed, it’s possible. Understand? Don’t forget that no matter how mighty the fist, it is slower than a bullet.

“Hiyaaah!!” The karate avatar let fly a thick battle cry and thrust forward the face of his fist.

Haruyuki squashed his terror and stared at the mitt, which was encased in a blue aura and approaching fast. Falling backward, he would apply his left hand below his enemy’s fist and his right foot to the enemy’s stomach.

“Hah!” As he shouted, he flapped the wings on his back as hard as he could for an instant. Using the thrust generated as a catapult, the force of Haruyuki’s right foot and his counterpunch sent the clumsy karate master soaring into the air.

“Niko! Above you!” Haruyuki cried, and instantly, the missiles on Scarlet Rain’s shoulders were brought together and launched, every one of them seizing on the karate avatar in the sky. It crashed to earth, swallowed in multiple, reddish-black explosions and trailing a tail of smoke before turning into a light blue pillar of light and vanishing.

“Ooh, for as weak as you look, you do reasonably well, Silver Crow.”

“Well, thanks!” he called back at Niko’s insult, and bracing himself to face the next enemy without letting his guard down, Haruyuki stared at the jet-black avatar still lying a slight distance away.

She’s—Kuroyukihime’s definitely not some flawless superhero. She’s a teenager like me, a girl who’s easily hurt. Haruyuki had never once forgotten this, ever since the time he saw Kuroyukihime shed tears at his own thoughtlessness. However, that said, the admiration and adoration inside of Haruyuki was not diminished in the least.

It wasn’t her strength.

It was the determination to be strong itself. Haruyuki was absolutely drawn to her spirit and the way it shone, trying to fight back against any and all adversity.

Which is why you’ll stand up again. I don’t know what your relationship with the former Red King was, but you’ll get over that memory and stand up for me. Right?!

When he uttered this soundless cry beneath his silver mask, the enemy legion’s attack, which had temporarily slackened, started up again, even fiercer than before. The remaining close-range types didn’t even number ten, but they were charging from all directions. The long-range barrage to support them fell like heavy rain.

“Is that all you got?!” Niko roared, deploying with a crack both main weapons on her sides, the missile pods, and the machine guns.

They erupted in fire all at once. Before they did, though, a strange noise disturbed Haruyuki’s hearing. A high-frequency grating sound, like static, shook the air. At the same time, he saw double, triple.

The missiles launched by Scarlet Rain abruptly went into a tailspin and struck the wrong places. The main weapon beams targeting the long-range types on the outside of the crater also turned away from their intended targets and hit a building in the distance, causing a faint explosive rumbling.

“Dammit! They’re jamming me!” Niko cried in a low voice. “It’s not Radio…It’s one of his yellow subordinates! Find them!”

“R-right!” Haruyuki spread his wings, kicked hard on the ground, and flew up.

However…

Two wires snaking up from the ground wrapped themselves around his ankles. Immediately yanked back down, he slammed into the ground hard. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but Haruyuki moved to bring his hand down sharply like a sword to free himself of the wires.

“Shock Therapy!!”

“Ngh…!!”

Together with a voice calling out the name of someone’s attack, bluish-white lightning suddenly surged through Haruyuki’s body, assailing him with an intense shock. When he looked, he saw a mechanical avatar at a distance from him. Wires stretched from both arms, sparking energetically from a device it carried that looked like an old electrical transformer.

The stun effect seemed to be the main attack. Haruyuki took almost no damage, but, unable to make his body do what he wanted, he couldn’t get free of the wires around his ankles.

“Unngh!”

The electricity-generating avatar showered the groaning Haruyuki with a high-pitched, scornful laugh. “Hee-hee-hee-hee! You just sleep there for a while, brat! Until we’ve peeled away every bit of the Red King!!”

Just like the avatar said, he could see several close-range types flying toward Niko’s fortress avatar. They started attaching themselves to her guns’ blind spots and peppering the joints of her Enhanced Armament with punches and kicks. Orange sparks flew, bolts popped, and first one and then another thick armor plate was ripped off.

Desperately fighting to roll over against the current numbing his entire body, Haruyuki tried to turn toward the electricity-generating avatar and inch in its direction. But the current didn’t seem to be weakening in the slightest, and he couldn’t even turn his head.

What can I do? What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do at a time like this, Kuroyukihime? If I don’t…If I don’t hurry, Niko will—

As he raised a despairing voice in his head, Haruyuki heard a laugh rich with inflection ringing out from high on the distant outer edge of the crater.

“Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

The Yellow King, Yellow Radio. Long, thin body and double-pointed hat shaking, he expressed his joy with pantomimes. “How! How uncouth! How funny you look! The dignity of a King and all that…Not a shred of that here, is there?! You two were unfit to call yourselves Kings after all, that’s what this is!! Because the Red is an upstart and an imposter!! And the Black, well, she is a cowardly traitor, isn’t she?!”

Over his merciless contempt, Haruyuki heard a metallic creaking. And then the thin voice of a girl in pain.

“Ah…Ah!”

Quickly turning his gaze, Haruyuki saw a large, close-range avatar standing on Scarlet Rain’s missile launcher, holding her left main weapon. The avatar was using its entire body to forcefully twist the enormous armament. Sparks flew like flames magnificently from the joint, almost like fresh blood. Finally, with a remarkably fierce wrenching sound, the main armament was torn off.

At the base, the left arm of Niko’s real body dangled, snapped off at the elbow. Niko’s scream poured out unchecked, and the roar of the elated enemy avatar raising the weapon high blended together with it.

“Yesssss! This is what the Red King is! Guys, peel back every bit of skin and drag that kid out!! We’ll humiliate her plenty, right up until her gauge runs out!!”

Haruyuki clenched his teeth until they almost cracked and scratched desperately at the earth with the outstretched fingers of his right arm. Ahead of them, the Black Lotus avatar lay covered in dust, the light completely gone from her eyes.

“Kuroyukihime…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki pushed a hoarse voice from a throat tingling at the stun effect.

Behind him, the sound of her remaining weapons fired continually, likely Niko’s final push. Feeling the vibration of the empty explosions, Haruyuki called out once more.

“You…Is this what you want? Is this how your game ends?”

In the back of his mind, he faintly saw the image of the real-life Kuroyukihime and Niko sleeping against each other as he’d seen them the night before. Haruyuki couldn’t even guess at what that scene symbolized, what these two girls really wanted. But the one thing he was sure of was that everything was about to end. That the faint bond accidentally created one night was about to be cruelly severed.

“Kuroyukihime…Black King!!” Haruyuki screamed, mustering every last bit of strength remaining to him.

The mental wounds Kuroyukihime was confronting now were no doubt so deep Haruyuki couldn’t begin to understand them. She had almost certainly continued all this time to regret from the bottom of her heart the impulsive act of betrayal that had banished the first Red King—her companion, her friend—forever from the Accelerated World.

Or maybe she and Red Rider were something more than companions or friends. Maybe she had attacked someone like that.

But…

Even if that were so…

“What acceleration is to you!! What Brain Burst is!!” Fighting the charge to bring his clenched fist down violently on the ground, Haruyuki howled passionately. “Is this all it was, all your ambition to reach the untrodden ground of level ten and see the future of this world?! Was it such a cheap thing that it can be replaced by the memory of one guy?! You were trying to go beyond your human shell…and now you’re just going to be paralyzed by past regrets and crawl around forever like a bug?! You don’t have time for this! I thought you decided that you were going to cut down every obstacle, mow them all down, and keep charging forward until you were the last one standing! Black Lotus!!”

Clink.

He was probably hallucinating that he saw the obsidian tip of her splayed right arm twitch.

No, he wasn’t—he could see a violet light blinking faintly in the depths of the goggles of the ink black form, like a very distant, fixed star. It pulsed—throb, throb—with a weak flicker that made him think of the glowing ember of a soul.

“Kuro…yu…,” Haruyuki whispered.

Bzz!

A strong vibration detonated. It was the sound of two eyes glittering fiercely beneath those goggles.

A light of the same color filled the crease lines of the semitransparent armor from head to toe, like carved onyx. As it did, the dust covering her body blew away, restoring a fresh reflective sheen. Finally, the swords of her arms and legs chimed loudly.

Haruyuki could only stare, lump in his throat, at the jet-black avatar rising, as if gently pulled by an invisible thread. Standing straight, Black Lotus flicked the tips of her legs, floating slightly above the ground, and started moving in a leisurely hover. Still gripped by the electric shocks and lying on his side, she drew close to Silver Crow and stopped abruptly.

“Haruyuki.” Her voice was the usual, gentle and severe.

“Yes,” Haruyuki replied, suppressing a sob, and she started murmuring with her familiar, bitter smile.

“Look. The way you spoke before, it was almost as if Rider and I had been in love, yes?”

“Y-you weren’t?”

“We absolutely were not. I told you, you’re the first. And…don’t just keep rolling around. Thrust a hand into the ground.”

“Huh?…O-okay.”

Haruyuki did as he was told and brought together his sharp fingertips, thrusting them into the dry earth before him. The instant he did, he could feel the sparks binding his body seep quickly into the ground, and he cried out, “O-of course! Earth…”

“If you think about the technique affinity and characteristics, you should be able to handle them even on a first encounter. It seems I still have a lot to teach you.”

He heard a pathetic sniffle from behind, and Haruyuki turned his face back to see the electricity-generating avatar gradually retreating, white smoke rising up from the transformer on its back.

“You can handle the rest, yes? I’m going to go look after the little girl who got caught in a trap.” She had barely even finished the nonchalant remark when the sky boomed and her raven-like avatar disappeared.

A dash with absolutely no preparation, so swift it was terrifying. Kuroyukihime, plunging ahead several dozen meters like a beam of darkness, appeared the next instant beside the enemy’s close-combat leader, striking a pose on top of Niko.

“Whoa!” A startled cry slipping out, the enemy avatar abandoned the red artillery he’d been holding, unfurled hands with abnormally tough fingers, and danced toward Kuroyukihime. Just from the fact that it had ripped Niko’s main armament off through brute strength alone, it was likely not a pugilist type, but rather a grappling-technique duel avatar.

Despite this, Kuroyukihime inexplicably stuck her right arm straight out, practically asking to be grabbed. The enemy’s eyes blazed fiercely, and arms struck out like snakes to take hold of Black Lotus’s arm in two places.

“Gotcha! One Way Thr—” Shouting the technique as it angled its body around, the avatar hoisted the captive arm against its right shoulder and took on a posture for a one-armed throw.

And with that motion, something spilled down, falling in pieces.

Ten thick, curved cylinders: Fingers. The fingers the enemy used to clench the swords that were Kuroyukihime’s arms were severed against the blades by virtue of their own strength.

“Sorry, but grappling techniques basically have no effect on me,” she said to the frozen enemy as she started bearing down, arching the arm still braced against the avatar’s shoulder in a downward diagonal.

A thin ray of light escaped from the right shoulder to the left flank. From there, the enemy avatar’s muscular torso slid smoothly away and dropped to the ground, leaving 70 percent of its body behind.

“Ah! Ga—Gaaaaaah!!” Although it apparently still had HP since it didn’t disappear, given its situation, disappearing would no doubt have been preferable.

No longer interested in the enemy shrieking at the pain of having been bisected and bouncing around on the ground with its remaining arm, Kuroyukihime glared in turn at the seven or eight close-range combatants still surrounding her.

“It’s nothing personal, but anyone who engages me must inevitably experience amputation.” Her tone was calm, but its violent undertones made everyone on the battlefield hold their breath.

“So…don’t go telling me now you don’t want it!” she called out sonorously, and she leapt to attack the first unfortunate avatar like a bird of prey. The high-pitched sound of metal endlessly screeching and the desperate, angry voices of the surrounding Burst Linkers immediately filled the air.

Deciding that she would be fine if he left her to that for the time being, Haruyuki turned again toward the electricity-generating avatar that still had him ensnared in its wires.

The instant their eyes met, the enemy reared back. His face resembled an old gauge, and he held a single hand out. “Hey, hold on. The battery’s recharging now—”

“As if I’m going to wait!!” Haruyuki yelled, grabbing the two wires tied to his ankles with both hands and pulling before kicking off the earth and ascending in one fluid motion.

“Aaah!”

He gained altitude, still dangling the struggling enemy, and started turning in circles while hovering.

“Wah! Aah! Aaah!”

After adding sufficient centrifugal force to his opponent so that its prolonged scream rose and fell with the doppler effect, Haruyuki released the wires. The bulky robotic avatar flew toward the south with incredible force, and a small crash echoed somewhere amidst a group of buildings there.

Somewhat dizzy himself, Haruyuki shook his head hard before looking down and gazing in wonder at the aspect of the battle unfolding. Perhaps it would have been more accurate at that point to call it a “massacre” rather than a “duel.”

The blue close-range avatars mostly fought with their own fists and feet, or hand-to-hand weapons like swords and hammers. So if two blue avatars went up against each other, the basic strategy would be to exchange attacks and guard while aiming for any gaps that appeared in their opponent’s defenses.

But although Kuroyukihime—Black Lotus—was at first glance an extremely close-range type, given that her limbs were actual swords, every single motion was an attack.

Obviously, this included purposeful action like cutting and thrusting, but if an opponent’s fist caught her arm, that fist was severed, and the movement of her legs could shred her opponent if she simply chased them down. She brooked no contact at all; everything that touched her was dissected—she was, without doubt, the water lily of black death.

Her figure, fighting as if dancing, was absurdly beautiful and so cold it was almost sad.

In the span of a mere minute or two, the majority of the enemy’s infantry had either been annihilated or rendered helpless by the intense pain of severed limbs that left them rolling around on the ground.

“Aauuugh!!” The enormous Burst Linker that was the last of the close-range types howled thickly, abruptly. Brandishing a long sword with a fat blade over its head, it moved to strike Kuroyukihime headlong.

Its speed and timing were impressive. Unable to avoid the blade, a steel-colored bolt of lightning thundering down—Kuroyukihime stopped it on the intersecting swords of her arms.

Skreeee!

A high-frequency, ear-piercing screech rang out. Dazzling sparks flew from the point of contact, and movement on both sides stopped. Followed by successive, high-pitched metallic creaks. The silver and black swords increased the depths at which they bit into each other with each second.

Haruyuki couldn’t determine in that moment which carved into which. But the warrior avatar with the sword contorted its grinning, demonic mask into a sneer.

“Ha!” The warrior’s low voice cried out at the same instant that Kuroyukihime’s arms, directly beneath his sword, disengaged themselves and immediately sliced out to the sides.

Falling soundlessly were the warrior avatar’s head and the top half of the enormous sword. Kuroyukihime ruthlessly pierced the head tumbling to the ground with the tip of her left leg, its eyes still wide-open, as if unable to comprehend what was happening. A pillar of light soared up, and the enemy avatar shattered like glasswork and disappeared.

Once again, a few seconds of silence.

Breaking that silence came a short voice issuing from the distant edge of the crater. “Why?”

In a tone so flat it made Haruyuki wonder if he had finally lost the composure that had kept him going up to now, the Yellow King whined, as if moaning, “Why do you appear now and obstruct the circus carnival I’ve been preparing all these years? After curling up and hiding in some little hole somewhere for two years, why?”

The upturned eyes carved into the clown’s laughing face filled with a white phosphorescence. He spread arms like dead twigs out to his sides, jumped up onto one leg, and shook his head from left to right. Suddenly from beneath the mask, there slipped the short, staccato beats of laughter. The Yellow King pointed accusingly at Kuroyukihime with his right hand, muttering in a voice swiftly regaining its derisive color.

“Does this mean you’ve already forgotten? The friend of ours you betrayed and beheaded? I wonder where he is and what he’s doing now. I don’t suppose he’s dwelling on the fact that he can never return to the Accelerated World…or the certain someone responsible for that, hmm? I, for one, certainly cannot forget it. A straightforward duel is one thing, but that sort of surprise attack…Hmm?”

Listening to the sneering, throaty chuckle, Haruyuki screamed in his heart. You can’t listen to him. He’s just trying to incapacitate you again.

However, Haruyuki couldn’t bring himself to actually utter the words. He could see that these two—the Black King and the Yellow King—shared a history that no one could come between, a history training together since the early days of the Accelerated World and of friendship until the incident two years before.

Haruyuki descended gently and stood directly behind the half-demolished, silent Scarlet Rain and Black Lotus standing next to her. He prayed fervently, somewhere deep inside, that they not lose.

Suddenly, Kuroyukihime’s right arm came up without a sound. She turned its obsidian edge, unblemished by even a single scratch despite the fierce battle, straight at the Yellow King. “You’ve got one thing wrong, Yellow Radio,” the Black King declared, her voice crystalline and clear.

“Oh? And what’s that? You can’t possibly mean to say that that wasn’t a cowardly ambush?”

“No. That you think your head carries the same weight for me as Red Rider’s. Shall I tell you something else? You see, I…” Kuroyukihime brandished her right arm to the side with a clink and said, “I have hated you from the very moment we first met!”

The Yellow King threw his upper body back with a start.

Kuroyukihime glanced back quickly and yelled, “Rain, your remaining weapons have finished charging, yes?! Crow, protect her!! I’m going!!”

She set off a savage dash, carving a rut into the bottom of the crater.

“Hey! Rest a little longer!”

It was Niko who cursed at her. She made her remaining weapon—the right-hand one—and the half-destroyed missile pods click into place and pointed them at what was left of the enemy’s long-range battalion, which was arrayed on the edge of the crater.

Neither had Haruyuki just been standing idly and listening to the exchange between Kuroyukihime and Yellow Radio. Taking advantage of the dozen seconds of cease-fire, he’d been looking for something: the enemy’s midrange avatar that was the source of the signal for the jamming attack.

There! Haruyuki’s heart cried when he spotted a yellow type on the northern face of the crater, lurking behind a red type as if hiding. The pods mounted on either of its shoulders were deployed, and a light effect of concentric circles was being generated from the parabolic antenna protruding from the center.

No sooner had he spied this figure, which practically screamed radio attack in progress, than Haruyuki was springboarding off the ground.

However, it was a full thirty meters from the center of the crater to its outer edge. No matter how speedy Silver Crow might have been, he wouldn’t be able to cover that distance in an instant; there’d be just enough time for the big gun of the red bodyguard to get him in its sights.

Something chillingly cold ran up Haruyuki’s spine. He was being targeted by a gun on an open plane with no cover. This was the exact scenario responsible for his winning slump these last few months.

He would just have to dodge it. If he didn’t take down that jamming avatar, Niko’s firepower would stay locked up. In which case, the gunfire of the red avatars still going strong in the enemy array would focus on Kuroyukihime, necessarily impeding her showdown with the Yellow King.

The tide of this battle likely hinged with whether or not Haruyuki could dodge this one bullet.

His hands and feet chilled to numbness at this overwhelming pressure. His vision narrowed, and only the darkness of the gun barrel grew larger. It was hopeless. There was no way he could dodge in this situation. In the stillness of his virtual training room, he could only barely avoid the projectile 30 percent of the time.

No. This situation is different from that white room.

Because this gun was attached to the avatar holding it. A sniper-type duel avatar, large-lensed eyes glittering on a brown, camouflage-patterned body. Instead of the gun, he should watch the guy. He should watch for a sign telegraphing the pull of the trigger.

Instantly, everything but the enemy avatar disappeared from Haruyuki’s field of view. He forgot even the battlefield, his wide eyes capturing only the figure of his opponent readying its rifle.

The back of the enemy’s neck stiffened abruptly, its right shoulder went up a few millimeters, and its right arm shook—

Here it comes!

—and its right finger squeezed the trigger, the muzzle flickering white.

By that time, his body was already twisting, barreling left.

The air whizzed past his ears, and the heat beam skimmed his chest and right shoulder before flowing off behind him. Ignoring the gouge of scorching heat, Haruyuki plunged ahead the final ten meters, slipped close past the side of the enemy sniper, and sprang at the midrange type behind it.

With hands flat, he chopped at the antennas stationed on the shoulders of the radio-wave avatar, who looked profoundly stunned. The moment the delicate device was smashed, Haruyuki crouched, only to fly straight up.

Niko!!

He wasn’t certain whether or not this shout in his mind reached her, but the instant the jamming ceased, Scarlet Rain’s remaining weapons fired all at once.

Assailants on her right flank were mowed down by the heat beam of her main cannon, and missiles rained down on her left, launching a curtain of flames as if tracing the outer edge of the crater. Naturally, the enemy army was not completely destroyed with this one volley, but the long-distance attacks that had been targeting Black Lotus and fired at random dropped en masse into silence.

The sound of explosions died down, but the quiet that was briefly born was pierced by a howl, a raging fire from Kuroyukihime.

“Radio!!”

The sword of her right arm drew a black arc. Split soundlessly in two, dancing in the air, was the right corner of Yellow Radio’s enormous hat.

“Lotus!!” the Yellow King answered back angrily in a voice lacking even the slightest hint of the teasing lilt it had held up to that point. He offered a counterblow with a long, large, baton-shaped weapon he had produced from somewhere. With her left arm-sword, Kuroyukihime knocked aside the thrust launched at her, drawing out a yellow line. The sparks that flew lit up the pair brilliantly.

Haruyuki landed on the stabilizer extending prominently from Niko’s back, the Red King continuing to launch intermittent cover fire, and he stared, half-stunned, at the fierce fight beginning on the western end of the crater.

It went without saying that this was the first fight between Kings—level-nine Burst Linkers—he had seen.

It was likely that could have been said about anyone there—including the two participants themselves.

The current Kings of Pure Color, except for Niko, had reached level nine at basically the same time two and some years earlier. They had then learned of the harsh sudden-death rule to advance to level ten and had held a roundtable meeting to avoid fighting to the death.

At that meeting, Black King Black Lotus had killed the first Red King, Red Rider, with a surprise critical hit. That was the first and last time a King had defeated a King. The Black King, hunted ever since as a traitor, had hidden herself for two years in the Umesato local net, and the other Kings had concluded a mutual nonaggression pact and no longer ventured out of their respective territories.

Which is why this was the first time since the founding of the Accelerated World that two level nines had crossed blades in so natural a duel.

Haruyuki. And Niko. And the dozen or so remaining Yellow Legion members who had at some point stopped their attacks, held their breath, and watched the tide of the fight.

They’re so fast! Haruyuki let a sigh of admiration slip out in his heart.

If he didn’t concentrate, all he could see were mysterious bolts of lightning popping off in succession in the area where the pair faced off. The Black King slashed out four, five times in a row; the Yellow King admirably stopped the blows with his baton, twirling in a frenzy; and then he kicked out a long leg, not missing the slight opening she left. Each time Kuroyukihime blocked one of these Kicks with her leg, shock waves spread out like ripples on the water and distorted the background.

Perhaps because of these successive and incredibly high-powered attacks, cracks started to radiate out from beneath the feet of both fighters, and pieces of rubble began flying. As the air filled with a colorless pressure, the light emitted by their armor seemed to increase in strength.

“…Nearly there,” Niko muttered, and Haruyuki replied reflexively with a question.

“Wh-where?”

“Their special-attack gauges should be just about full. The real show starts now.”

Before the last word had faded from his ears, a remarkable crash exploded, and both fighters moved away from each other, as if propelled by it.

Instead of springing back into the fight, Kuroyukihime leisurely lowered her hips and set her left arm sideways in front of her body, notching the sword of her right arm perpendicularly at the peak of the first. A pulsing violet light engulfed the long blade in tandem with a low-frequency vibration shaking the air.

Facing her, Yellow Radio crossed both arms in front of his body and inserted the yellow baton between his fingertips. The spheres attached to either end of the wand also emitted a cyclic light.

Haruyuki felt the rapidly increasing pressure touch his cheek, as if it were shooting out in bits and pieces. He had witnessed a glimpse of the power of a King’s special attack during his duel with Niko. The enormous beam that shot out from one of her main weapons had casually blown the uppermost part of the Shinjuku Government Office onto the other side of the duel field.

What would happen if you got hit by an attack with that level of potential at such close range?

“…It’s not power that decides this. It’s speed.” Niko’s murmuring reached Haruyuki’s ears again as he kept his eyes wide-open and forgot to breathe.

“Huh? Wh-what do you mean?”

“No matter how you slice it, Lotus’s special attack is direct. Against that, Radio’s prob’ly got a hallucination. Which means the whole thing hangs on whether or not Lotus can deliver her blow before Radio’s attack is effective.”

Haruyuki gulped hard.

The steeply inclined sun dropped a single ray of red light through a gap in black clouds, red light that glinted off the obsidian sword.

Black Lotus called in a clear voice, “Death by Pier—”

At the same time, Yellow Radio shouted, “Futile Fortune Wa—”

However…

The two voices, simultaneously calling out their two attacks, failed to utter their final syllables.

Thuk.

This dry sound, quite small and yet carrying an overwhelming presence, silenced the voices of the two Kings.

It was the sound of something piercing the vibrant yellow chest armor of Yellow Radio from behind.

Kuroyukihime halted her attack midway. Haruyuki, Niko, the other Burst Linkers, and the Yellow King himself all simply stared at the silver-gray metal protruding neatly from the armor and extending out about fifteen centimeters.