8

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!!

Haruyuki stared dumbly at the text displayed before him, which followed the now familiar sound of acceleration.

A duel?! Why now?!

After all, Nomi had been keeping himself off the matching list through some unknown means and single-mindedly avoiding battle. So why now, and why would he be the instigator?

Thoroughly confused by the sequence of events, Haruyuki’s brain couldn’t readily fathom Nomi’s intentions. He opened his eyes wide and simply stared as the world transformed with a dry vibration into a duel stage.

Every tree in the dense courtyard copse dropped its budding leaves at once, metamorphosing into jet-black deadwood. The sky instantly grew dark, dyed with the indigo of dusk. The school buildings, rising up on three sides around them, crumbled into ruins before his eyes, leaving nothing but the framework. Countless rods and planks popped up from the gray ground…Or rather, not rods—tombstones. Moss-covered crosses and stone monuments stretched out endlessly, as far as he could see.

When the stage generation was complete, two HP gauges materialized on either side of the top of his visual field. The name of Haruyuki’s duel avatar, Silver Crow, appeared below the bar on the left. And on the right—

Dusk Taker. Level five.

It was a name he had never seen, never heard before. And yet the avatar it belonged to was at a high level.

Most likely, Nomi had done this exact thing over and over again. Set a trap for another Burst Linker, grasped his weak spot, threatened him, forced him to “pay tribute” with his Burst points, and in so doing, leveled up without having to actually fight.

Haruyuki clenched his teeth, and the word FIGHT!! in large letters burned brightly in front of him before scattering into the ether.

Watching the last sparks disappearing, Haruyuki finally realized he was still lying facedown on the ground, just as he had been before acceleration. And that someone’s foot was still resting on his back.

“……?!”

He quickly jumped to his feet, bounding back to create some distance. Readying both hands, he glared straight ahead, where the strange form of the avatar stood stock-still.

Its silhouette was a normal human shape. On the smaller side, it was not that different in size from Silver Crow. Its face also looked very similar: The entire surface was a featureless visor, beneath which the reddish-purple of the eyes hung sharply. The body and legs were also slim poles; the arms alone deviated sharply from this normalcy and appeared to be utterly bizarre.

The right was clearly of the mechanical variety. The inner side of the thick arm, made up of an assemblage of gears and shafts, was equipped with a brutal edged tool like bolt cutters.

But the left was, for all intents and purposes, organic. The arm was very much like that of some creature, with thin protruding segments and divided from the elbow down into three long tentacles.

The avatar’s form had no real sense of unity, but the entire body was, as the “dusk” of its name indicated, a uniform dark purple. Its affiliation on the color circle was likely close-range and distant, but the saturation was fairly low.

Gleaning that much from his immediate observations, Haruyuki braced himself, guard up, and muttered the conclusion he had finally reached. “So you’re going to try and suck my points away now. I don’t fight back, you defeat me, and you get today’s ‘tribute;’ that’s what you meant?”

Nomi—Dusk Taker—remained silent a few seconds longer, and then turned his twilight-colored visor toward Haruyuki. “Once you get all dressed up in your duel avatar, you really take charge, hmm, Arita?” he said finally, sounding as though he was suppressing his laughter while the tentacles of his left arm writhed. “Even though you’re still under my foot in the real world.”

“And you! You so sure you should be leaving yourself open like this?” Haruyuki instantly fired back, ignoring Nomi’s contemptuous snickering. “I know your face and name in the real world, and now I know your avatar name and appearance. You don’t think my having all this information is just as lethal as you having that shower room video?”

“In other words, is this what you’re trying to say? That if I release that video, you will counter by outing me ‘in the real’ and I’ll be attacked by other acceleration users?”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

“Ha-ha-ha! Tough talk! Well, I’ll acknowledge that you have indeed managed to get ahold of one card. But to get your points, no matter which route we go, there is still the need for the duel. So I thought I’d hang onto one other thing for you.”

“H-hang onto?” Haruyuki wasn’t immediately able to grasp the meaning of Nomi’s words, distorted by a metallic effect.

“Yes. Something very precious to you. Now then…we went to all the trouble of getting this stage, so perhaps we should fight? Although it is a little lonely without the Gallery. But this is a Direct Duel, after all.” As he spoke, the blackish-purple avatar raised the cutters of his right hand and snapped the blades shut.

Haruyuki no longer had any idea what Nomi was planning. But if they were going to fight, Haruyuki had no intention of sitting quietly and getting beaten down. He definitely had Nomi’s real identity in his hand; all he had to do was broadcast that information in the accelerated world, and Nomi would be hounded by point-hungry Burst Linkers until he couldn’t move without getting challenged, something Nomi was likely interested in avoiding.

In which case, they just had to settle things now in a normal duel. He expected that Nomi’s plan was to take this “something very precious”—i.e., his pride—with an overwhelming show of force, just as in the fight earlier, and make Haruyuki bend to his will.

But.

“If you think you can have an easy victory in this world, go ahead and try, Seiji Nomi!!” Haruyuki shouted, clenching his fist. With a single kick, he shot off the ground.

The battleground was a Cemetery stage, the main characteristics of which were that it was dark and the arms of the dead shot up from the ground occasionally to grab onto the legs of the duelers.

His opponent was a level higher than he was, but unlike online RPGs and other games, a difference in levels was not a determining factor in victory or defeat in the fighting game Brain Burst. Obviously, at the extremes of levels one and nine, overcoming the difference in fundamental abilities was difficult, but in a duel between four and five, the stage attributes and compatibility with them were much more important. And in this Cemetery stage, Haruyuki was confident he had a definite advantage.

“Aaaaah!” Sprinting in a straight line, he used his metallic fists and feet to smash the tombstones along his path as if they were made of Styrofoam. The object destruction bonus he got from this went straight into charging his blue special-attack gauge.

Keeping the attacking Silver Crow in his sights, Nomi—Dusk Taker—barely moved at all. He shifted his feet unhurriedly and braced the bolt cutters of his right hand before him and the tentacles of his left behind.

“Chehhh!” By the time Dusk Taker waved his left arm with a high-pitched, assertive kiai shout just like in the kendo tournament, the distance separating them was still more than five meters.

The three tentacles bent, whiplike, and snaked out ahead.

But Haruyuki had been expecting this. In basically every game, tentacles always snaked out. The speed at which the glittering, pointed tips rushed forward was fairly decent, but even so, they were slower than a bullet. Haruyuki shook his head to dodge the one targeting his face, chopped at the remaining two with a sword hand, and closed in on Dusk Taker.

“Tchah!” With a short cry, he shrank into himself and slipped past the protruding bolt cutters.

“Haah!” He pushed off as hard as he could with his left leg, and the perpendicular elbow strike he unleashed, aim true, was a direct hit to his enemy’s lower jaw. Haruyuki heard a crunch and a light effect exploded, illuminating the surface of the ground. A chunk disappeared from the HP gauge on the right. First strike.

Head hammered back, Nomi tried to stop himself from reeling backward, but Haruyuki gave chase, driving a right middle kick into Nomi’s defenseless chest.

“Ngah!”

He pressed farther as Nomi groaned and staggered, left hook and right high-kick in quick succession. Silver Crow’s body, more slender and lighter than his real world body could ever hope to be, flashed like a lightning strike, faithfully enacting the commands barked out one after another by Haruyuki’s brain.

How do you like that? You see this?…You see this?! Haruyuki roared in his head, launching a kick from a showy three stories up in the air, looking for all the world like wire action in a kung fu movie.

You might not have realized this, since you’re too busy running from duels, but when it comes to close-range, hand-to-hand fighting, there isn’t anyone at my level who can beat me. Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to get this kind of speed? You don’t know how many times I’ve taken a virtual bullet and thrown up in the toilet. A guy like you, obsessed with a dirty info war in the real, thinking you can reach the top of Brain Burst like that—

“You don’t deserve to call yourself a Burst Linker!!” Slicing through the air laser-like, his right straight punch pierced the blackish-purple helmet, concentric cracks rippling out from the epicenter.

Dusk Taker flew backward and crashed violently into a tombstone, health gauge already down to nearly 30 percent.

“One more and you’re done!” Haruyuki shouted, and at last focused his power in his shoulder blades. As he drew both arms to his sides, the sharp sound of metal clanged as he deployed his enormous wings.

After all this fighting, his special-attack gauge was completely full. If he got a dive kick in, dead-on, from way, way up, the last of Nomi’s HP would be dust in the wind. There was nothing around them but the endless rows of tombstones, no cover of any kind for Nomi to hide behind.

In a single breath, he tucked his body in, and just as he readied himself to take off—

Dusk Taker’s left arm twitched to life with no advance warning as its owner lay limp against a gravestone, the three tentacles flying at him like each was a separate life-form.

Haruyuki dodged two with some fancy footwork, but the third coiled itself around his right wrist. But he didn’t panic, and instead grabbed onto the tentacle when it struck and yanked it up as he kicked off the ground.

He rose up about fifty centimeters, shifted the perpendicular thrust of his wings to the horizontal, and tried to drag Dusk Taker up with him. His opponent resisted, planting both feet firmly, but Haruyuki had enough momentum to make those feet scrape ruts in the ground.

He had come up against many enemies like this who tried to capture Silver Crow with whips and wires. But nearly all of them had either been pulled up high into the sky, still connected by those very whips and wires, or trapped awkwardly, scraping along the surface of the earth. The propulsive power generated by Silver Crow’s wings was essentially inexhaustible so long as he had charge left in his special-attack gauge. He had even won a tug of war with Chrome Disaster, the evil Burst Linker with power greater than that of any king.

“Aaah!” At Haruyuki’s battle cry, a silver aura surged from his wings. He would drag Nomi through the tombstones and whittle away both the avatar and his remaining health. Thinking these merciless thoughts—

Dusk Taker caught the elbow of his own left arm with the enormous cutters of his right hand. Without even the time to register his shock, Haruyuki heard an unpleasant snip, and his arm was severed as if it were made of butter.

Instantly, the tension of the tentacle clinging to him vanished, and without the extra load, Haruyuki cartwheeled backward through the air. He bounced twice, three times on the ground, destroying several tombstones before finally coming to a stop.

He stared up at the reddish-black twilight sky, temporarily stunned, before hurriedly springing to his feet. Suddenly, however, skeletal white arms erupted through the ground around him and grabbed his limbs: “Ensnare,” a terrain effect of the Cemetery stage.

“Dammit!” Cursing, he tried to brush them off, but the arms kept popping up and persistently clutching his various parts. Forced to remain on his back, he spread his wings and tried to lift off straight up.

However.

Just as his body was about to break free of the earth, a shadow shot toward him, moving like some kind of insect, and came down on Haruyuki’s shoulder with a kick. Haruyuki was nailed back down.

Above him, naturally, was Dusk Taker, whose HP gauge was now less than 20 percent thanks to the self-amputation of his left arm. In contrast, Haruyuki was still at 90 percent. A turnaround seemed impossible at this point, but the dusky avatar’s entire body was strangely relaxed. He bent over languidly and drew near Haruyuki’s featureless helmet.

As soon as the Ensnare wears off, I’ll get up in the sky and finish this thing, Haruyuki thought as he said quietly, “Do you like stepping on people that much?”

“Ha-ha! Here you are saying that when it seems that you enjoy being stepped on,” Nomi muttered with little inflection, and then lifted his left arm, half of it missing, to stare at the cross section.

Drawn by his gaze, Haruyuki looked in the same direction and observed with a faint physical revulsion three wriggling nubs—new tentacles poking out. “So they regenerate? Like a lizard’s tail or something.”

“If we’re talking about it, it’s more like octopi or sea anemones. Or wait, I think the former owner said starfish.”

“Wh-what?” Haruyuki asked in response, unable to grasp the significance of this statement.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Nomi turned toward him and began to murmur in an even colder voice, “That I would hang onto something very precious to you. And that—”

The blades of the bolt cutters clacked open around Haruyuki’s left arm.

“—means—”

Light from the reddish-purple eyes swirled around in the center of Dusk Taker’s helmet, which was so close now that it almost touched Haruyuki’s.

“—this. ‘Demonic Commandeer.’”

His special attack!

But the voice uttering the attack name contained neither fight nor exaltation; the words were simply spit out. Almost as if Nomi were distancing himself from the rule itself—that players must call out the name to activate their special attacks.

Dusk Taker’s face emitted a pillar of black light that slammed into the mirrored surface of Haruyuki’s helmet, and then bounced back in every direction.

“Ngh…!” Haruyuki gritted his teeth and readied to withstand the shock. Nomi could attempt to take him out at this extremely close range, but it just wasn’t possible to bounce back from an HP gap like this in one blow. Haruyuki decided he would respond with a counterattack once Nomi’s had finished doing whatever it was going to do, and he turned his attention to his timing.

But.

His gauge didn’t decrease.

Silver Crow’s health gauge continued to gleam a bright green, without moving in the slightest. There was no pain, either. Nor heat.

And yet Dusk Taker’s special-attack gauge was plummeting from fully charged at an alarming rate. The blackish-purple vortex increased further in intensity, putting a cold pressure on Haruyuki’s face, but otherwise, nothing changed.

No.

Haruyuki suddenly felt something being sucked from his body. He realized it the instant his enemy’s special-attack gauge had dropped to half: The flow of the light reversed itself, erupting like a slithering liquid from Haruyuki’s helmet. Spray scattered, swallowed up by Nomi’s formless face.

Several seconds later, the phenomenon simply stopped.

His opponent’s special-attack gauge was at zero, completely consumed. In contrast, Haruyuki’s was once again full. His health gauge had taken absolutely no damage, and Nomi’s was similarly unchanged, with 20 percent remaining.

“Whoa!” Haruyuki yelped, willing himself to fly in the same breath. This attack of Nomi’s probably had a delayed effect, in which case, there was no point in waiting for it to be activated. If he got up to a very high altitude with Dusk Taker still on him like this, and then dropped his enemy to the ground from that height, he could settle this—

……

Silence.

A chilly atmosphere permeated the field.

The arms of the dead twisting in and around his body were gone. The only thing holding him down was the light touch of Dusk Taker’s left foot and right hand, each claiming one of his shoulders. And yet.

He couldn’t fly.

No matter how much power he concentrated in his back, no matter how he focused his awareness, the metallic wings that should have brought Silver Crow’s body up and released it to the sky did not respond.

Dumbstruck, Haruyuki whirled his head around and peered over his shoulder.

They aren’t there.

The silver fins, ten on each side, that should have been shining reliably and beautifully as always, had disappeared, without any trace whatsoever.

Completely bewildered, Haruyuki slowly turned to face forward again, and the blackish-purple avatar in front of him stood up soundlessly, casually releasing Haruyuki’s restraints and taking several steps back.

“Heh-heh-heh.” A thin laugh that was equal parts a young child’s innocence and a veteran’s tenacity slipped out from beneath the visor. “Ha-ha! Underneath that mask, you must be astonished, no doubt. Perhaps you’re already thinking about the possibilities in that gaming head you’re so proud of. ‘What was that attack before; what’s happening to me.’ I’m not the sort to put on airs, so I’ll just come right out and tell you. In short…”

Nomi crossed his arms in front of his chest as Haruyuki had a few minutes earlier, then thrust them out to the sides. “It’s like this.”

A hollow, wet sound filled the air, and, unable to speak, Haruyuki simply stared as two curving protuberances stretched out from Dusk Taker’s back. They extended a meter or so before stopping, trembling, groaning, and then they deployed wide to both sides, scattering a dull, viscous black fluid.

Wings.

Composed of bones and membrane, like a bat or a demon, they formed a sinister black silhouette in the red of the evening sky.

The wings flapped loudly, and before the eyes of Haruyuki, within whom all thinking had ceased, the small avatar jumped up slightly, then quickly returned to the earth’s surface. The avatar cocked its purple helmet.

“Goodness, this is fairly difficult, hmm? I suppose they’re controlled not just by the physical order system, but also with input from other systems.” Flap, flap. The wings beat fiercely over and over, and each time, the avatar’s lift increased. “Oh! Like this? I guess I’ll need to practice until I can control them without thinking.”

Although it staggered and wobbled left and right, the avatar moved solidly away from the ground to float upward. It wasn’t a jump. It wasn’t hanging from a wire, either. This was…This was—

“No way.” A cracked voice leaked from Haruyuki’s mouth. “No way. No. Way.”

There is and has ever been only one duel avatar with the ability of pure flight.

That’s what she said, didn’t she? Only me. The only one who can fly in this world is me. The one and only, my power. My hope. My…everything.

“Oh no, this is quite real.” Hovering three meters above the ground, Dusk Taker spread both hands slowly. “My lone special attack, Demonic Commandeer, takes the Enhanced Armament, the special attack, or any one of the other abilities of the target avatar. Those tentacles, I got them from someone ages ago. Although I’m not really that good with them. Do you understand what I’m saying? Ultimately…there is no time limit. Although naturally, I can only keep so much in stock.”

Stealing abilities. No time limit.

So that meant this midnight-purple avatar stole the silver wings that were the reason for Silver Crow’s existence, never to return them…?

“N-no way! Give them back…Give them baaaaaaack!!” Haruyuki screamed, as if his voice could fight the bottomless sense of emptiness washing over him. He leapt to his feet, took several quick steps, and jumped with everything he had, stretching out his right hand to grab at Nomi’s feet.

“Whoopsies!”

The feet were swiftly lifted higher and Haruyuki’s hand cut through empty air. He fell to the ground with a metallic clatter and clumsily got to his hands and knees. His limbs grew cold, and his sensations grew distant. He tried to stand up again, but his avatar wasn’t listening to him.

“Arita, Arita! Please don’t be so dejected.” The words rained down from high above, as if they were teasing—or, perhaps, as if they were consoling. “I told you, didn’t I? That I’d hang onto something precious? Please don’t worry. I’ll give them back. The day you graduate from Umesato Junior High. Naturally, you’ll deliver your quota of points to me every week. Two years’ worth, paid in installments, as it were. And if you default even once…Well, you understand, don’t you?”

As if to drive the point home, he flapped the strangely shaped wings loudly once and continued coaxingly, “It will be fine. You have that close-range fighting ability. You very nearly made me use my trump card, after all. You’ll do quite fine without wings and such. I guarantee it! Heh-heh-heh…Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Haruyuki couldn’t suppress the shaking that wracked his entire body.

This isn’t real; there’s no way this could happen. There’s no way the system would allow such a ridiculous special attack as stealing abilities. This…This—

“Do you think I’m a coward, a cheater?” Snickering from his throat, Nomi continued mercilessly. “But, you see, isn’t that how everyone who’s faced you in a duel up to now has felt? ‘Flying is too much; how is it even possible?’…Now then, I suppose I’ll take this week’s payment. Please stay still right there. Or I suppose you can no longer move?”

He heard the flapping of the sinister wings and felt Nomi landing very near him. But Haruyuki no longer had a shred left of the will to fight.

With the nonchalance of a bored factory worker, the large cutters grasped his left arm. The metallic snap, the sparks of amputation, the pain careering through his nervous system—Haruyuki felt it all from a distance, like the happenings of another world.

The duel ended, and as Haruyuki returned to the real world, Nomi’s foot was removed from his back.

“Thank you for the duel, Arita,” the small seventh grader said brightly, coiling the cable he had yanked free of the two Neurolinkers. “This concludes the clarification of our positions in both the real world and the accelerated world. It’s inevitable, actually, that someone superior like me would use someone like you, at the very bottom of the ladder. I look forward to the next two years.”

Glancing backward, he looked hard at Chiyuri, still on the ground after he’d sent her flying. “I’m tired after that serious duel, so I’ll have to have you show me your avatar another time, Kurashima. Please do remember your promise to be my pet. And…it goes without saying, but please keep this a secret from Mayuzumi and your boss—if you want your wings back. I have a few more preparations to make before I settle things with them. All right then, if you’ll excuse me.” After a neat bow, Seiji Nomi left the courtyard with the same composed air as when he’d appeared.

Haruyuki, on all fours, put some effort into it and raised himself up on shaking arms, only to collapse with a thud on the same spot. Although a minute hadn’t yet passed in this world since he had been punched and kicked by Nomi, he was essentially oblivious to the lingering pain. His entire body was soaked in a greasy sweat, but he only felt an empty cold, as if he were hollow inside. Teeth chattering, he was unable to even take a deep breath.

Chiyuri’s shoulders were similarly shaking, but she finally crouched down before him and forced out a hoarse voice. “Haru…Why…Why is this happening…Why would he…say such horrible things…”

It’s supposed to be a game. It’s supposed to be fun, her wide-open eyes said.

“Sorry, Chiyu.” Haruyuki hung his head and pushed a voice that wasn’t quite a voice from his throat. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess. I’m sorry for scaring you. But I…I can’t do anything. He took my wings. I can’t fight anymore. I don’t have anything anymore, nothing.” As he muttered, drops flashed to life in both eyes and poured down his cheeks.

I—Haruyuki Arita, Silver Crow, lost in every way to Seiji Nomi/Dusk Taker. In the information war in the real world, in the fistfight with real bodies, and even in a duel in the accelerated world, I lost utterly and completely. And—he took It from me. Everything.

He watched as two kneecaps, blurred by tears tumbling and falling one after another, sidled up to him. For a moment, he wondered if she was going to hit him. If she would jab him and yell at his cowardly, pathetic self like always.

But.

Chiyuri abruptly pulled Haruyuki’s head toward her and buried her own forehead in his shoulder. “I hate this…I hate it, I hate it, this…It’s all crumbling…We tried so hard, so, so hard…to go back to the way it was…So hard!”

The thin weeping in the pauses between her bitter words dug much, much deeper into his chest than the pain from Nomi’s fists.