13

He slipped through the Umesato Junior High school gates mere seconds before the merciless tardy bell began. Checking that his Neurolinker had indeed just barely connected to the in-school net without penalty, Haruyuki panted and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

There was already practically no one in the schoolyard. If he didn’t reach his classroom within the next five minutes, he’d still be marked as late. Begrudging the time needed to stuff his feet into his indoor shoes, he raced up the stairs. As he flew in through the rear door, his two childhood friends seated ahead of him whirled around. Chiyuri’s eyes were colored with hopelessness, while Takumu’s were tinged with pain. Meeting each of their gazes in turn, he bit his lip hard and hurried to his own seat.

Chiyuri was probably worried about Haruyuki backed up against a wall like he was, and Takumu had probably lost hope in this Haruyuki who wouldn’t talk to him. But the only way to tackle the root of this situation was for Haruyuki to somehow make Seiji Nomi/Dusk Taker yield in a duel.

Currently, Nomi was holding three cards: Haruyuki’s real identity, the shower room video, and his flying ability. In contrast, Haruyuki only held a half card, knowing a little about Nomi’s real identity.

But when he thought about it, a Burst Linker’s real identity was too lethal; you couldn’t cancel that out no matter how many other cards you got ahold of. Even in this era, it was the same as Russia or America sending an armed nuclear submarine, drifting ghostlike through the deep sea. One lone ship was a significant deterrence. If, hypothetically, Haruyuki made public a photo of Nomi’s face, his real name and address, and the name of his duel avatar in the accelerated world, Nomi would be dead as a Burst Linker. He would be assaulted by the kind of extreme groups who didn’t shy away from attacks in the real, and once they got him in their grip, they would suck him dry of every last point. Haruyuki had been told that actual cases of things like this happening, while rare, did exist.

So thanks to this hammer hanging over his head, the video that Nomi had set him up for was, in the final reckoning, a card that couldn’t be played. If that video were submitted to the school authorities, it would be a disastrous development for Haruyuki’s life at school, but Nomi had to know that if he did submit it, he risked having a desperate Haruyuki, with nothing left to lose, expose his own real identity.

Put simply, the only card Nomi could really play without any hesitation to make Haruyuki his “point-earning dog” was the flying ability. But since a duel was the exclusive method of point transfer, if he could just beat Dusk Taker, even having had his wings stolen, he could resist and maybe even turn the situation around.

Naturally, this course of action would mean saying good-bye to the silver wings that had shone so brilliantly on Silver Crow’s back until just the day before.

But even that was okay, Haruyuki decided in his heart. It wasn’t because Sky Raker had given him a new way to fly. It was because he finally realized that his attachment to and dependence on these wings, an external object, had pushed him into a small box.

I will defeat Dusk Taker, who now uses my own wings. And then one day, I will set aside my ability and any Enhanced Armament, and I will fly using the power of my will alone, Haruyuki declared to himself, clenching his fists tightly.

The front door clattered open and Sugeno, their homeroom teacher, came in. The air now tense, the chattering class fell silent.

As soon as they had finished the customary pre-lesson bow, Sugeno said loudly, “No one sit down!”

Students who had started to sit jumped to their feet again with confused faces, and the young Japanese history teacher issued a further order, a blood vessel on his forehead popping up beneath his short hair. “All of you! Faces down, eyes closed!”

The feel of the room grew even more questioning, but pressed by the menacing look on Sugeno’s face, the students quietly obeyed. Haruyuki also did as he was told, lips twisting.

“Good. Stay like that and listen. I think you already all know this, but yesterday morning, it was discovered that a small camera had been set up in the girls’ shower room off the heated swimming pool. Fortunately, a student noticed it right away, so there was no specific damage, but even so, this is something that absolutely will not be tolerated. I’m very disappointed. And I’m furious. That a student who could do such a despicable thing could be here at Umesato!”

Bang! The sound of the teacher’s podium being hit.

“At the teachers’ meeting this morning, we decided to handle this within the school, since there were no victims. So listen…if the perpetrator is here in class C, raise your head now and look at your teacher. If you come forward on your own, your punishment will be reduced. So…are you here?”

Is he serious?

Still facing down, Haruyuki was stunned. Even if they did have their heads down and their eyes closed, any of them could easily have the image from their Neurolinker cameras displayed on the backs of their eyelids with one flick on their virtual desktops. He was sure some students were doing exactly that right now. You’d have to have nerves of steel to step forward after all his ranting about angry blah, despicable yada, punishment blah blah.

Naturally, Haruyuki kept his head down, and it seemed the other students did the same. Sugeno stubbornly made them all stand for more than a minute, but finally he said in a low voice, “You’re sure? This is your last chance. I won’t be this nice next time.” He sounded almost convinced that the perpetrator was in this class.

Haruyuki feared that Takumu might actually challenge Sugeno on this—Kuroyukihime definitely would have—but fortunately, he heard, “Fine. Sit down and open your eyes.” Forty chairs squealed, and once the noise had subsided, their teacher spoke again.

“If you’re going to come forward, do it today. Before your punishment gets really serious.”

Haruyuki felt like Sugeno was staring straight at him as he spoke, and he knitted his eyebrows. And then he got it. The fact that Haruyuki had come to school the day before yesterday on Sunday was in the local net logs. Sugeno was probably suspicious of his reasons for coming to school on a holiday, when he didn’t belong to any clubs or teams. But he couldn’t call him to the office with that level of proof.

Haruyuki shifted his gaze with a feigned ignorance, and his eyes met Chiyuri’s sidelong. He could see a deep panic and fear there, and now he held his breath. It had still only been a short time since Chiyuri became a Burst Linker. She didn’t know that with his real identity known, it was an enormous risk for Nomi to actually use that video.

He wanted to tell her in a mail not to worry, but Sugeno kept staring at him, so instead, he shot Chiyuri a short but firm look. Sensing something, apparently, his childhood friend moved her mouth slightly before turning around again, but the paleness of her cheeks persisted.

Haruyuki paid twice as much attention as usual in his morning classes and took lots of notes. If he relaxed his focus even a little, his thoughts were tottered in the direction of the revenge match with Nomi.

But he still had no way to challenge Nomi, blocked as he was from the matching list through some unknown means. His chance for a rematch would probably be when Nomi came for his “tribute” of next week’s points. Somehow, he had to train with the extremely capricious Enhanced Armament he had gotten from Sky Raker. Taking that into consideration, one week was actually not enough time.

Classes were strangely short when you paid attention, and before he knew it, the bell for lunch was ringing. He checked on Chiyuri and Takumu, thinking he might talk a little with one of them, but Chiyuri appeared to be eating her boxed lunch with several girls, and Takumu left the classroom without looking at Haruyuki.

He sighed briefly and started to bring his butt out of his seat with the idea of chasing after Takumu when a small RECEIVED icon flashed in the center of his vision. It wasn’t mail or a voice call, but rather a dive call requesting a conversation in full-sensory mode.

Who on earth— As soon as he saw the sender’s name, Haruyuki fell back into his chair with a crash. He forgot everything in an instant and, closing his eyes, murmured the command.

“D-Di-Direct Link.”

His Neurolinker received his hurried, slightly stammered order, and his senses were cut off from the real world. The classroom was painted with darkness, and a sensation of falling soon came over him. If he simply waited, he would land in the Umesato Junior High local net VR space, but before that could happen, Haruyuki stretched a hand out toward the access gate floating in front of him. His virtual body was sucked in, and he was spit out—

In the middle of a white beach, spreading out somewhere under a fierce sun and an impossibly blue sky.

He stood stock-still for a moment in his pink pig avatar, and then took a few staggering steps toward the water’s edge off in the distance, before he realized that this virtual space was not made of polygons. He had no sensation of walking in sand. Which meant it was an optical image of the real world, taken with a video camera, and flatly projected into Haruyuki’s vision. When he turned to both sides to confirm this, the scene did not follow but took on a strange, distorted perspective. It was completely dark behind him.

The information transmitted should have been just visual and aural, but strangely, he could even feel the hot, dry wind of a southern country and he took a deep breath. Then.

“Hey, it’s been a long time…Or I suppose it hasn’t. It’s been three days, hmm, Haruyuki?” A familiar and yet endlessly fascinating voice sounded, and a human figure slipped out from the right side of his field of vision.

Large straw hat. Thin white hoodie. Sunlight shining over the jet-black hair that draped itself over those shoulders, casting it in sparkle.

Bringing both hands behind her with a slightly bashful expression, Kuroyukihime continued hastily, “There’s no lag? I’m connecting to the local net there through the student council office server, so it might be a little slow.”

“N-no, not at all, it’s fine. There’s no noise, either. Um…um, h-hi, Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki dipped his avatar’s head and again drank in the person before his eyes.

Because it was an optical image, there was no sense of depth, but it wasn’t a polygon recreation; this was the real Kuroyukihime. She had gone to the trouble of setting up a camera to show him the scene in Okinawa, just like she promised.

“I-it’s beautiful, really beautiful. The sand and…a-and you.” When he added the last part at an extremely low volume, Kuroyukihime broke into a smile, albeit half bitter, and turned toward the emerald green sea as well.

“Henoko Beach. Earlier, there were military planes flying around here. I think you might have liked them.”

“O-oh really? I wish I had seen them.” As he spoke, his eyes were glued to the bare white legs stretching out below the hem of her hoodie. Kuroyukihime turned around again, and he shot his eyes up at the sky and said stiffly, “I-I-I’m so glad the weather’s good! The sky’s so blue, huh? Almost like a desert stage!”

She was looking at a camera lens over there, and so shouldn’t have even been able to begin to tell where Haruyuki’s eyes were focused, but, even so, Kuroyukihime had apparently realized something with her characteristic intuition, and, pursing her lips slightly, she yanked down the hem of her hoodie.

At that instant.

“C’mon, Hime! How long you planning to keep that thing on?”

A new human shadow entered the frame from the left. The girl with fluffy hair was a student council member Haruyuki didn’t know. She was in a pink one-piece swimsuit, and Haruyuki felt his throat close up suddenly, but as she came up from behind Kuroyukihime, she suddenly did something huge.

In some incredibly quick work, she tugged down the zipper on Kuroyukihime’s hoodie and yanked off the thin covering.

“Ah! Hey! What are you doing!”

“I believe someone was supposed to do some serious hanging out with me on the beach in her swimsuit this morning?” Giggling, the female student turned toward the camera and waved. “Take your time, Arita.”

And then she dashed out of the frame on the right. All that was left was Kuroyukihime, face red under her straw hat, hands clenched tightly together in front of her body.

The swimsuit that appeared from beneath the dismantled armor was, of course, black. And the fairly small two-piece revealed close to 90 percent of her snow-white skin. They were unassuming in size, but as soon as he saw the top of the two extremely lovely protrusions brilliantly reflecting the sunlight, Haruyuki felt his heart rate skyrocket. He forced himself to take several deep breaths, concerned that his Neurolinker might do an abnormal link out.

Finally, Kuroyukihime looked at Haruyuki with upturned eyes and said, “W-well, that’s, what. I mean, it is Okinawa, after all.”

“R-r-right! I-i-i-it is Okinawa after all.”

He wanted so badly to hit the record button in the corner of his vision, but if he did that during a full dive, she would know. Left with no other choice, he focused every fiber of his being on carving the real-time image into his brain, and he worked hard to make his mouth move. “Umm, okay, huh, well…I-it! It l-looks really good on you.”

“Th-thanks.” With a faint smile, Kuroyukihime brought her hands behind her back again, and Haruyuki stared desperately at her body. Very close to passing out, Haruyuki was pulled back this time by an incredibly faint scar cutting across the smooth porcelain skin on the lower right of her abdomen.

“……!”

Eyes widening briefly, Haruyuki bit down hard on his lip and when the too-gentle virtual pain generated was not enough, he bit harder.

He was sure that scar was from six months earlier when she had been critically injured, on the verge of death, saving Haruyuki from a car running wild. In the present day, thanks to advances in regenerative medicine, the majority of the aftermath of medical treatment was erased, but this had its limits. Or perhaps her injuries had simply been that serious.

Kuroyukihime seemed, keenly, to intuit the reason for his silence, and, blinking slowly once, she brought a smile to her lips that was colored with a different kind of gentleness. The fingers on her raised left hand traced the scar gently.

“Normally, you can’t really see it at all. But with the sun so strong here, I suppose you can a little, hmm?”

Haruyuki couldn’t reply to her quiet voice. Lifting her head, Kuroyukihime stared directly into the lens—into Haruyuki’s eyes—and said in a fairly strong tone, “You don’t need to worry about it. It’s my lone medal, after all. The pain, this scar came from protecting someone, rather than fighting, for the first time in my life. And now, this scar is a support for me.”

“…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki somehow managed to murmur that one word and clenched his avatar’s hands tightly.

I will never, ever hurt you again.

Once again, he made the same vow to himself that he had repeated countless times already, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but be aware of the hint of guilt he felt. If at that moment, Haruyuki were to explain the crisis he currently faced, Kuroyukihime would get mad, ask why he hadn’t told her sooner, and probably be hurt again. And then, most likely, she’d come up with some reason to come back from Okinawa right away, push herself to the limits of her abilities, and even maybe rescue Haruyuki.

But that was exactly why Haruyuki couldn’t tell her. He felt like he had to fight with his own two fists now, so that he could someday be the knight to protect her from everything.

“…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki said her name again, and then spoke as clearly as he possibly could. “I…I’ll get strong, too. Right now, you’re just protecting me all the time, but…one day, I’ll definitely be strong enough to support you.”

Her smile changed to something mischievous, and, taking a step forward, Kuroyukihime slid a gentle hand over the position of Haruyuki’s avatar. “It’s getting time for me to get back. I’ll call you again. And I’ll be back on Sunday, so you have to decide before then what you want as a souvenir.”

As soon as she said this, “souvenir from the Okinawa trip” and “reward for the Territories” got mixed up in his head, and the words that came out of his mouth as a result—

“Oh! Then th-thirty centimeters, d-di…”

“Huh? What? Thirty centimeters in diameter…A sata andagi sweet bun? Now, now! I really don’t think they sell them that big…Well, I’ll keep an eye out.”

At the tired look that said, Honestly, such a glutton, Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head. Sadly, however, she couldn’t see this motion.

“No…um, uh…I mean, if they have one, sure. Please enjoy the rest of your trip.”

“Mmm, thanks. Okay, see you,” Kuroyukihime said, and about to reach a hand out to the camera, muttered, “Oh!” and stopped.

“Wh-what’s wrong?” Haruyuki asked, working hard to keep his eyes from boring holes into the thin, snow-white legs that leapt into his field of vision the instant he hung his head in dejection.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, I got a strange mail from Takumu. About that seventh grader from the kendo team we suspected of being a Burst Linker…”

“Huh?!” Swallowing hard, Haruyuki continued, flustered, “Wh-what did it say?”

“Mmm. Let’s see. He asked if I couldn’t look into…Nomi, was it? This seventh grader’s scores by subject on the entrance exam, so I sent him what I found in the student database. Has he said anything to you?”

When he heard this whispered report, Haruyuki’s jaw dropped. “E-entrance exam? Why would he want that data now?…No, Takumu hasn’t said anything about it to me.”

“He hasn’t?…Ah! I have to go. Okay, I’m hanging up now. ’Bye!”

The flash of her right hand waving was the end, and the connection to Okinawa was cut off, leaving Haruyuki alone in a dark plane. The super-detailed images of Kuroyukihime in her swimsuit flew from his mind, and he tried to guess what Takumu was thinking, but he didn’t have the slightest idea.

Maybe he wants to fill in the data from the outside in, but the only thing left now is for Nomi and me to duel, Haruyuki muttered to himself before giving the link-out command.

When he returned to his real-world classroom, there were only ten minutes left in lunch. He stood, intent on hurrying over to the school store to get some bread, but glancing over at Takumu’s seat, he found it empty. His eyes then roamed over to Chiyuri to see that she was in the middle of a rare full dive. After staring for a minute at the Neurolinker on the thin, hunched neck, Haruyuki left the classroom.

With the current state of things, nothing’s going to change in a week.

That was what Haruyuki had anticipated. Given that Nomi had said he wouldn’t lay a hand on Kuroyukihime or Takumu, he thought there would be no movement.

However, Haruyuki had underestimated the intelligence and ability to take action of his childhood friend, who had once stalked the Black King, Black Lotus. He was forced to this realization at the very end of gym class, right after he got the call from Kuroyukihime, fifth period on Tuesday.

While the girls practiced their original dance routine in the gym, the boys were told to do a three-hundred-meter run, a command that left the feel of a certain disparity at work. But Haruyuki did his rounds along the school track, panting heavily.

In the bottom center of his field of view, cruel digital numbers marked his time. Things he didn’t want to know were displayed before him—the remaining distance, his expected completion time, everything from the average pitch value to his heart rate—and watching the pounding heart symbol, he worried that if he kept this up, his heart might explode.

The majority of the students had already finished, and the only ones remaining were Haruyuki and a few extremely bookish types. Maybe because the jerks on the sports teams had more energy than they knew what to do with, there was even a joker trotting along the inside of the track, imitating Haruyuki’s plodding form, and, Goddammit! I’ll remember your little joke when I get to level nine someday. I’ll use Physical Full Burst in the hundred meter and get the world record, then when some track-and-field team scout comes along I’ll be all, “I’d rather watch this anime,” and they’ll turn you down cold and then you’ll see, you stupid idiots.

He left himself to these ridiculous thoughts while he tried to throw his everything into a final burst on the last straightaway. When he was nearly at the finish line, Takumu sitting quietly caught his eye.

His old friend was not even looking at Haruyuki’s sad sprint. Haruyuki thought it might have been a kind of warrior’s sympathy, but apparently not; he was staring at a fixed point in space—in other words, some AR information—as if he were going to devour it.

What is he even doing? Haruyuki wondered, wiping away the sweat that poured endlessly over his forehead. In the distance of his blurred vision, he felt like he saw Takumu’s lips part slightly and mutter an order.

Naturally, he wasn’t close enough to hear what it was. But the words formed a command that Haruyuki could lip-read by now: Burst Link.

Taku, why the hell are you accelerating now…With this thought, Haruyuki thrust his right foot out for a final push on the remaining several meters.

Instantly, a familiar, cold lightning exploded, and after passing through a semitransparent blue, the color of the ground changed to a sharp silver, tinged faintly with green. The backs of the students running ahead of him froze, the sports team guy teasing him disappeared, and the gym teacher waiting at the finish line vanished.

“Ah! Wh—! Whoa!”

A light enveloped Haruyuki’s body, transforming him into his silver duel avatar. After falling forward a few steps, he put the brakes on with a suddenly nimble movement unlike anything his real body could manage. Standing up and stepping on the hard ground, Haruyuki let an astonished voice slip out from beneath his helmet.

“Ta-Taku?! Why are you dueling me—” Naturally, that’s what he thought. That Takumu had accelerated, and his own acceleration that immediately followed was because Takumu had requested a duel via the local net.

But this was not the case.

Words roared and burst into flames in the center of his vision: A REGISTERED DUEL IS BEGINNING!!

In other words, a duel he was registered to watch was starting. Haruyuki wasn’t one of the duelists—he was the Gallery. Takumu was starting a duel with someone, so Haruyuki, who was registered to watch Takumu, had been automatically accelerated and invited to the stage.

In the top left of his field of view, the name and HP bar of the duel instigator appeared: Cyan Pile. Then at top right, the Burst Linker who had been challenged—

The name Dusk Taker appeared.

“Wha…”

Haruyuki gasped. Dusk Taker—Seiji Nomi—always kept himself blocked from the matching list through some unknown means. The only way to challenge him to a duel within the school should have been to restrain his physical body and forcibly direct with him, like Nomi had done to Haruyuki himself the other day.

About three hundred meters ahead of him stood an imposing navy and light blue avatar. Here, Takumu finally shifted his gaze to Haruyuki, but, without uttering a word, he gestured with his right hand for him to get back. At any rate, members of the Gallery—other than parent/child or members of the same Legion—could not get closer than within ten meters of the duelists.

Quickly turning to face forward again, Cyan Pile took in the view of the upper side of the school, eyes shining blue in his mask and its rows of slim slits.

The General Classroom wing had already been transformed into something organic, shining with a slimy metallic luster. The countless windows had all been replaced with convex, glass-like black eyes, and innumerable protrusions resembling fins or gill-like pleats lined the walls. The sky was colored an abnormal green, and the large schoolyard was covered in pipes like blood vessels or wriggling metallic tentacles. No doubt about it, this was a Hell stage.

Haruyuki took a step back from the metal insects skittering around at his feet and tried again to ask Takumu what was going on. But before he could, a repulsive rupturing sound echoed loudly through the field.

Turning his eyes to the source of the sound with a gasp, he saw that one of the eyeball windows—around the center of the third floor, in the vicinity of seventh grade class B—had been pulverized from the inside. Buckets of viscous fluid oozed out of the new hole in the wall, fluid scattered by the feet of the small human figure exuded from the gloom.

“Oh dear. I had thought you to be more of the cautious type, Mayuzumi,” the blackish-purple duel avatar, Dusk Taker, remarked in his clear boy’s voice as he revealed himself, looking down on Takumu from on high, shaking his rounded, expressionless visor slowly from side to side. “I was expecting, or rather, I was hoping to give you the gift of the scenario where you gather up every little scrap of information on me, rack your brains for trends and countermeasures, and then when you actually act, it’s too late.”

“I’ve already collected plenty of info,” Cyan Pile returned curtly, and waved his left hand lightly. “Which is why I was able to pull you into a duel stage like this, isn’t it, Nomi?”

“……”

Turning toward Nomi, who let slip a sigh of displeasure, albeit a faint one, Takumu raised the metal stake of his right hand and continued. “Seiji Nomi. Unfortunately, I still don’t know what trick you’re using to keep yourself off the matching list itself. But I can guess almost to the second when that wall will be released.”

“R-released?!” It was Haruyuki who cried out.

“Yes.” Takumu glanced over at Silver Crow, finally speaking to him. “Nomi uses the power of acceleration in the real world to give himself an advantage. Even in kendo team practice matches. So naturally, he must be using it in other places. To beat people up, to take care of his homework…and, of course, during tests.”

“Tests…” Instantly, Haruyuki felt like he finally understood why Takumu had made that strange request of Kuroyukihime.

As if reading his mind, Cyan Pile nodded lightly and shifted his gaze back to Nomi, above him. “Right now, at this very moment, the seventh graders are taking their first practical aptitude test. The subject of your fifth period class is, Nomi, the history you got full marks on in the entrance exam. Using the power of acceleration, obviously. But unlike a kendo match, where all you need to do is sign in, during a test, you need to be constantly exchanging information with the in-school local net. You can’t shut it off. I figured you’d have to be connected to the local net and Brain Burst at least momentarily during fifth period, so I just sat and waited for you. And if you were going to use acceleration during a test, it would undoubtedly be when you were on the verge of running out of time. Because it’s more efficient to do all the questions you need to look up with an external app all at once. As a result…”

Takumu gestured grandly with his left hand, as if to say, Here we are.

Listening so hard he forgot to nod along, Haruyuki unconsciously let out a deep sigh of admiration. Having reached the conclusion that Nomi would appear on the matching list for a mere instant—just as time was running out during the test for the subject in which he got full marks on the entrance exam—Takumu sat in the schoolyard and accelerated repeatedly to keep checking the list.

Nomi, seen through with such perfect clarity, stayed silent for a few more seconds before suddenly shouting brightly, “And why on earth do we have history tests and the like! It’s the height of pointlessness, to be forced to answer through rote memorization tidbits you could look up in an instant, don’t you agree? And although you’re connected to the local net during tests, you’re blocked from viewing the database! I do think it’s some kind of a joke!”

Shoulders shaking as he laughed, Nomi continued, sounding increasingly self-controlled. “Mayuzumi. You said so now, didn’t you? That I am using the ‘power of acceleration in the real world to give myself an advantage.’ Almost as if this were the most evil act imaginable. But if you ask me, what’s incredible is that some people actually only use their Burst points for duels. If that’s all you’re going to do, why do you even need Brain Burst? There’s a veritable mountain of other more brutal, violent, and—this is key—pain-free games out there. At the end of the day, in the bottom of your hearts, you both also believe you’re part of a privileged class. That you’re one of a mere thousand Burst Linkers in the world, that you’re different from the other normal kids. You yourself are steeped in this sense of elite-ness, and yet you don’t take advantage of your abilities? If that isn’t hypocrisy, deceit, then what is it?”

“I don’t actually blame you in the least, you know,” Takumu returned, shrugging. “Until a little while ago, I used the power of acceleration to sneak around, too. How you want to use your points is up to you; you can do what you want. But if you’ll let me give you one piece of advice as someone who’s been there, a perfect score’s too much, Nomi. You’ll only attract unnecessary attention; there’s no gain in it.”

“That, I suppose, is a difference of opinion. For me, you see, my philosophy is to obtain the very best in all arenas. Whether it’s a single point on a test or a single strike in a practice match. Or rather…perhaps it’s more correct to say ‘take,’ hmm? Ha-ha!”

The avatar popped his upper body out through the hole in the wall and stuck his bolt-cuttered right hand straight out, palm up.

“There are a finite number of things in the world. Which means when someone gets something, someone else loses precisely that same thing at the same time. Such as with the law of conservation of energy, as it were. The fundamental principle of this world is ‘struggle.’ And I, well…I like taking, but more that that, I cannot stand losing things or having things taken from me. Right now, you’re trying to take a maximum of one point eight seconds of my time. Precious time, at that, during a test. It’s absolutely unforgivable. Naturally, you’ll compensate me for it. With your Burst points.”

“Nah. You’ll actually be giving something to me. Something you got unfairly, Seiji Nomi. Something precious you took from my good friend.”

The moment he heard those quiet words, Haruyuki felt his entire body stiffen with a gasp. Takumu already knew. That Dusk Taker had stolen Silver Crow’s silver wings.

Cyan Pile’s hard face took on a somehow mournful quality, and Takumu looked at Haruyuki briefly. “I heard rumors about your duel in Shibuya last night. Sorry, Haru, for not realizing. This time, it’s my turn to fight.”

“T-Taku!”

At Haruyuki’s short cry, Takumu flicked the index finger of his left hand up, as if to say, Leave it to me.

Instantly, Haruyuki was overcome by a powerful sense of his own smallness. He had been thinking of nothing but how he didn’t want anyone to know he had lost his wings, his power, and he had said terrible things to his best friend; he had hurt him. And yet here Takumu was trying to help him. For this purpose alone, his partner had planned and schemed, used his points, and made this duel happen.

“Taku…” Clenching both hands into tight fists, Haruyuki was ashamed of himself for trying to resolve the situation by himself and keeping everything hidden. He instantly forgot the long training he had undertaken to that end in the Unlimited Neutral Field and shouted out with his whole heart, “Taku, win this one! Not for me—win it to show him how strong you really are!!”

“I’ll win. To get your wings back, Haru.” Nodding firmly, Cyan Pile took a heavy step, and pale blue flames licked up around his foot, making the air shimmer.

Confronted with this zeal, Dusk Taker turned his face away, seemingly disgusted, and spat out in a low voice, “Oh, don’t put on this unpleasant show, please. Things like this make my skin crawl. Seeing such naifs saying such things with straight faces, as if they actually believed in fairy tales like ‘selfless friendship.’”

Here, the blackish-purple avatar finally emerged fully from the dark hole. He wrapped a tentacle from his left hand around the opening’s edge and used it to make his slithering descent. After kicking aside the metal insects squirming along the ground to make his landing, Dusk Taker glared with upward-turned eyes at the much taller Cyan Pile, from a distance of about twenty meters. The tentacle disentangled itself from the school wall and snapped back, coming to lightly stroke two curved angles—the folded-up flight membranes—protruding from the avatar’s back.

“Return them because I obtained them unfairly? You can’t be serious. Once I steal something, it’s mine forever. As long as I don’t get bored of it and no longer need it, that is. I like these wings. Until Arita finishes paying back his two-year loan, I plan to enjoy them to the fullest.”

Haruyuki clenched his teeth tightly, aware of an enormous fury and hatred in the pit of his stomach.

But before he could shout out in reply, Takumu whispered in the same quiet, and yet white-hot, voice, “Nah, you’re wrong. No matter what it is, power you steal can never become your own. The thing about power is, the only way you can get it is to create it, refine it, train it yourself.”

“Hrrk! Again with that.” Nomi sneered, pressing his right hand up against his mouth. “I’m likely to vomit if you say another word, so I’ll just be taking your points and sending you on your way. I still have another five questions left on my test and all.” Then the small avatar dropped into a crouch and readied both hands in front of his faceless mask.

In contrast, Cyan Pile simply thrust out his left hand: the imposing ready position he used in kendo matches.

“T-Taku!” Haruyuki shouted quickly, while taking a step back in the charged battlefield. “You can cut those tentacles off but they grow back! The cutter on his right hand is super sharp! And if he pins you down and gets you with a black beam from his mask, he can take abilities and Enhanced Armament, so be careful!!”

A member of the Gallery giving advice to one of the duelists was seriously bad manners, but naturally, in this situation, he had no reason to hold back. Nomi looked fleetingly annoyed at Haruyuki’s shouting.

Immediately, Takumu moved.

With a thunderous roar, the blue giant leapt forward in a blur—an incredible forward dash that should have been impossible for the heavyweight body. It carried a punch that was impossible to read, to boot. The propulsive force sending him rocketing forward was the pile driver of his right hand, the tip of which he had, at some point, thrust into the ground. He was taking advantage of one feature of the Hell stage—the fact that the surface of the earth was hard metal—and transforming the launch power of his metal spike into forward momentum.

Perhaps momentarily caught off guard by the attack, his enemy’s reaction was delayed, and Cyan Pile’s massive fist was up and headed straight for the face.

Dusk Taker abandoned the idea of trying to dodge the blow and crossed both arms to take a guard stance. The punches that rained down regardless sent pale beams of light shooting in all directions: the first attack of the battle. A sound like a hammer beating a steel plate rang out, and the smaller avatar flew, spinning, through the air. Haruyuki thought he might keep going and slam into the school building behind him, but the tentacles of his left hand wrapped around some protrusion on the ground and yanked him to a halt, like a giant rubber band.

As Dusk Taker landed on one knee, his HP bar was down more than 5 percent despite the fact that he had guarded, offering a glimpse of the enormity of Cyan Pile’s power.

“Ooh! That’s quite a change from when we’re in kendo, isn’t it? So then that meat sack expresses your ‘lack,’ does it, Mayuzumi? You’re so smart and clever, and yet what you truly long for is a rough machismo?”

Takumu had nothing left to say to the laughing Nomi. Almost before the stake in his right hand was reloaded, he hurtled across the distance between them, all the while keeping his guard up.

“And judging by your avatar’s name,” Nomi spat even more sneeringly, staggering backward as if overwhelmed, “I’d say the real essence of your mental scars is that metal skewer in your right hand. Hmm, I wonder what that could symbolize? Piercing…Perforation…Goodness, what’s wrong? Your eyes got a little scary there…?”

“Stop it! Stop it, you coward!” It was Haruyuki who shouted. If his position hadn’t been one of observer, he would have started pounding on Nomi himself.

A duel avatar is born from the mental scars of the person who lives inside of it. Every Burst Linker knew that. Which was exactly why Haruyuki had deliberately avoided bringing that topic up with any opponent he had faced. And when it came to Takumu and Kuroyukihime, he warned himself not to even guess at it in his heart.

Cyan Pile’s spike probably was an expression of some scar Takumu was carrying around. But he had taken ownership of it and mastered it as a weapon. Which meant, in other words, that he continued to fight his own scars on a daily basis.

“I mean, Nomi! You—Your avatar, too! It’s the manifestation of some pain you don’t want to look at, you know!!”

Dusk Taker chuckled at Haruyuki’s sharp words, his eyes still fixed in front. “Oh, ouch, Arita. I already said this, didn’t I? My pain is having anything taken from me. Thus, my Dusk Taker has the power to take. It’s actually quite obvious. About as obvious as your Silver Crow there!”

His last word was overlaid with a whipping sound as the three tentacles, previously lolling on the ground, undulated like snakes to fling their cargo straight at Takumu. Metal insects, one of the Hell stage’s many terrain effects, shot through the air, thin legs kicking frantically. In general, they were harmless, albeit creepy, but the ones in the flashy shells released different kinds of poison when crushed.

The three that Nomi had thrown were all vivid red or green. He had to have fairly good eyes to be able to grab hold of only the poisonous bugs, especially considering he wasn’t shifting his gaze away from Cyan Pile closing in on him for even an instant. It was no mean feat to pull that off and have a conversation with Haruyuki at the same time.

He’s surprisingly used to fighting.

Haruyuki opened his eyes wide at this thought, as Cyan Pile’s left arm knocked the metal insects out of the air in a reflexive motion. Together with a squelching crack, like an egg being broken, insect carapaces shattered and an even more loathsome-looking sludge flew out. The blue body was showered in the splatter, and white plumes of smoke rose up from all over it.

“Ngh!” His HP bar dropped only a little, but Takumu reeled at the unanticipated attack.

Not letting the moment slip away, Dusk Taker plunged forward like a bolt of black lightning, howling, and in the blink of an eye, his extended tentacles had seized Cyan Pile’s pile driver. And then, Nomi thrust his bolt cutters toward Takumu’s throat.

Milliseconds away from having his head cut off, Takumu just barely managed to grab one of the cutter blades with his left hand. Forced into this awkward position, his thumb was caught on the inside of the blade, something Nomi could hardly miss.

Immediately, the blades clanked shut around the digit, and Nomi gradually applied pressure, as if to drag out the pain.

“Unh…Ngh!” Takumu groaned softly.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to grab the blade of an open pair of scissors?” Nomi hissed from below. “See now, this is what happens.”

Clang! At the dreadful sound, the thumb of Cyan Pile’s left hand danced through the air. A chunk disappeared from his HP gauge while at the same time, his special-attack gauge shot up.

“And you. Didn’t anyone tell you my attack power’s not just in my right hand?” Takumu said in a strangled voice before quickly thrusting his chest out and crying, “Splash Stinger!!”

Shunk! From the alternating rows of small holes on Cyan Pile’s chest, slim missiles popped their sleek faces out and shot forward en masse.

Dusk Taker looked appropriately shocked and dropped into a defensive posture, crossing both arms, but even still, the needle missiles hit their mark one after another at extremely close range, blossoming into exploding flowers. Huge hunks disappearing from his gauge as he was thrown backward, the blackish-purple avatar did smash into the school building this time, ending up half buried in the metal wall.

“Aaaah!”

Not letting this advantage get away, Takumu plunged ahead decisively. The earth shook as he barreled along to build momentum and crash into Dusk Taker with his left shoulder. The building wall crumpled inward, and the two avatars hurtled into the school. Haruyuki hurriedly ran after them, entering the school through a hatch a fair distance off, since he couldn’t damage the stage himself.

The long first-floor hallway had been transformed into something even stranger than the schoolyard. Slits gouged in the wall undulated peristaltically, occasionally vomiting up steam. A viscous liquid drooled from what looked like bundles of protruding pipes, and the hallway trickled and dribbled.

On the other side of this repulsive scene, the two combatants were already standing up and away from each other. Cyan Pile’s remaining gauge was just over 80 percent, while Dusk Taker’s was down to 60 percent.

“Nomi, you’ve already lost,” Takumu announced gravely.

“What? Have I?”

“You have. You can’t destroy the walls of a Hell stage with your power. The exit is behind me. And in this small space, a speed type like you doesn’t have a hope.”

It did seem to be exactly as Takumu said. Haruyuki himself had also battled Cyan Pile once in the hallway of a building like this. That time, by focusing on getting past the pile attacks and escaping to the roof, he had managed to tease out a hope of winning. Right now, however, there was nothing but a dead end behind Dusk Taker.

His narrowed reddish-purple eyes glittered, and the slim avatar lunged forward with no warning. Perhaps in revenge for Takumu’s initial dash, he had at some point grabbed onto a wall pillar with the tentacles of his left hand, and, contracting them now, he flung his body forward. Unwilling to admit defeat, he was trying to get as low as possible so he could slip out between Cyan Pile’s feet and escape the dead end.

But Takumu was calm. Slamming his right foot into the floor, he generated the shock wave that was the particular domain of the heavyweight avatar and knocked Dusk Taker off his feet before jamming a left front kick into his staggering opponent. Nomi guarded but was still knocked back into the hall.

“It’s hopeless.” Takumu spread his arms, as if to block the path behind him, and advanced. “I’m not letting you have the rear. If we had been fighting in the school building from the start, this whole thing would’ve been finished a lot sooner. So if you don’t want me barging in every time you take a test, give those wings back to Silver Crow. And then, at the very least, I’ll stay out of your way. So…what’s it going to be?”

Faced with this condition, the injured Nomi propped himself up with his right hand and remained silent for a while.

Finally, he let out a long sigh. “Mayuzumi,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “You would faithfully keep such a ridiculous verbal promise, too, wouldn’t you? Honestly, that there could be people with such totally different values in this world—and in the same school no less…”

Nomi spread his hands almost exasperatedly and murmured a short, unfamiliar command: “Total Disarmament.”

Instantly, the tentacles of his left hand and the bolt cutters of his right disappeared, as if melting into thin air. The arming and disarming of Enhanced Armament could be done through a voice command the player registered in advance on the Install menu. Those two simple words were the command Nomi had selected.

Does this mean he’s accepting defeat and is ready to give my wings back? Seiji Nomi? Really?

Speechless, Haruyuki was once again filled with a sense of admiring wonder for Takumu, who had so perfectly maneuvered his opponent to this place, the consummate chess player.

“Taku—” Just as he was about to shout, You did it!, Nomi dropped his small, empty-handed, injured avatar into a very low stance.

“This doesn’t mean I’m surrendering,” he whispered at the same time. “Just that if both of my hands are full, I won’t be able to play my trump card.”

“Trump…card?”

Haruyuki was sure that Nomi had said something like this to him, too, right as their first duel was ending. At the time, he had thought it was just some contemptuous remark, but— It couldn’t be, he still had something…

As Haruyuki sucked his breath in sharply, Takumu got his enemy in his sights with his right hand. “If you’re planning to keep going, then I won’t show you any mercy, Nomi! I’ll take every single chance I get to fight you. And I’ll beat you down. You sure you want that?!”

“Goodness me.” The response was even quieter, completely devoid of emotion. “I don’t like this at all. You looking so serious and everything. And I mean, it’s not like I want to say the name of my special attack…But, well, given the situation, I suppose I have no choice.”

Dusk Taker used both hands to make a small triangle in front of his body. He then began muttering under his breath words that sounded like a spell—or a curse.

“Steal. Get. Grab. Remove. Take. Take. Take. Ta. Ke.”

Haruyuki heard the low whir of vibration, which soon turned into a metallic, high-pitched hum. And then he saw it: Nomi’s hands enveloped in a dull, midnight-purple pulse of energy.

The air in the hallway shuddered, and sparks snapped and raced everywhere. Special attack?! he thought immediately, but quickly brushed that idea aside. If it was generating these kinds of effects, his special-attack gauge should start to drop before the attack itself even began. But Nomi’s didn’t even twitch; it stayed just over half charged.

Haruyuki had only very recently learned about a logic other than a special attack that could generate this kind of phenomenon. The Image control system. Overwriting phenomena with the imagination.

Or by another name—

“T-Taku! Forget about the wings! Kill him right now!!” Haruyuki shrieked.

After a moment’s hesitation, Takumu cried sharply, “Lightning Cyan Spike!!”

Cyan Pile’s special-attack gauge, also half full, plummeted, and backfire like an aurora surged from the end of the pile driver.

Fwoosh! The air sizzled and the iron stake, a beam of pure light, shot out straight at Dusk Taker. From that distance, it would be impossible to avoid Takumu’s level-four special attack—or it should have been. However.

Vmmp!

With a sound like dense gas popping, the gleaming steel spike stopped dead without piercing anything. Held by a mere two fingers.

The index and middle fingers of Dusk Taker’s left hand, enveloped in the purple energy, lightly pinched between them Cyan Pile’s most powerful special attack, as if it were nothing more than a rolled-up tube of paper.

“Wha…” Haruyuki’s hoarse voice slipped out, and then the gleaming lance itself was sucked into the pulsing energy field with a sound like scorched metal being plunged into water. It vanished without a trace.

Languidly lowering his hand, Nomi lifted his face slightly and looked up at the stunned Cyan Pile, who stood rooted to the ground. Judging from how things had played out thus far, this would be the moment when he sneered something contemptuous with a disparaging laugh.

But Dusk Taker remained silent as he bent the fingers of both hands into claws and kicked at the ground. He generated an even stronger purple aura, this time of ripples, before launching himself into an incredible dash so fast, both legs were nothing but blurs. Twice as fast as the tentacles he had been using earlier. He ate up the ten meters separating him from Takumu in less than the time it took to blink, and as he closed in, Dusk Taker drew his left hand through the air in a large arc, from bottom to top.

The purple crescent moon cut into the air sliced across Cyan Pile’s thick chest armor diagonally. Then Haruyuki saw the impossible: Deep, cavernous valleys were carved out of the blue chest plate as if it were made of clay—no, pudding.

A moment passed, and then bundles of pale sparks jetted up, spurting like blood from the gouges left behind by the five claws.

“Ngh!” Groaning and reeling, Takumu immediately countered, even though he was likely more shocked at this attack than Haruyuki was.

He rammed the tip of his pile driver into Nomi’s left flank, which had been left unguarded. At the same time, he brought his free hand across, up to the launching mechanism at his right shoulder.

Thuk!

By the time the shot rang out, Nomi was already gone. It was so quick, it had to have been a short teleportation. He slid to the right and nimbly dodged the pile driver attack, before this time grabbing the base of the steel spike, which extended to its maximum immediately after being launched.

Once again, the eerie fwoosh filled the air, and the spike was crushed.

Or more correctly, the part in Dusk Taker’s purple shining hand disappeared instantly. With a sudden, mirror-smooth cross section as its end, the steel stake clattered heavily to the floor.

He was absolutely sure of it now: This was an Incarnate attack. The images produced by Seiji Nomi were negotiating with the system and making any object he grabbed with both hands disappear. Denial of existence. Overwriting the phenomena.

Most likely, Takumu still didn’t know about the existence of the Incarnate System. Even as every fiber of his being radiated pure astonishment, he determinedly tried other counterattacks. Perhaps understanding that Nomi’s hands deleted everything they touched, he jumped back and launched a kick attack from beyond Nomi’s reach. It was a spectacular right-roundhouse kick, the kind that set the air on fire. If it hit its target, it would likely have sent even the heaviest avatar flying.

But the power of this kick was simply numerical data, the sum of avatar weight, armor strength, and muscle parameters. In contrast, Nomi was overwriting data through image control faster than Takumu’s kicking power was being delivered to the system via movement control. As a result—

Thud.

The kick was cut short with a sickeningly wet sound and Nomi’s left hand. The force of the blow was entirely swallowed up by the pulsating purple energy and canceled out. The wet sound was Takumu’s right shin as Nomi’s fingers dug into it, nearly to the knuckle.

“Aaah!” A strangled cry of pain made it out of Takumu’s mouth.

Slowly wriggling the fingers buried in Takumu’s leg, as if to torture him, Nomi finally murmured, “Mayuzumi. Before, you said I couldn’t destroy the walls in this stage or something, didn’t you?”

Then he dragged Takumu, right leg still imprisoned in Nomi’s hand, left knee dragging, and walked toward the south wall. Dusk Taker carelessly thrust his free hand out and it was immediately, soundlessly buried up to the wrist in the sparkling metallic green wall of the Hell stage. As if pushing through jelly, he used the hand to dig a large circle in the wall.

“To be honest, I hadn’t wanted to show you. Although I suppose even seeing it, you can’t actually understand it. Because the only ones who know this logic are the six—no, seven kings and their close associates, and us. But you’re a smart guy. Now that you’ve experienced the gap in our abilities, I’m sure you understand.” As he talked, he drilled a gutter almost two meters in diameter into the wall. At a kick, the wall crashed to the inside and the outside light came streaming in. “That you all are out of options. That the moment I started at Umesato Junior High, your destiny to spend every one of the rest of your school days working as my dogs was already decided.”

Nomi had barely finished speaking when he waved his left hand fiercely and tossed Cyan Pile’s enormous bulk through the hole to the yard outside. Without so much as a glance at Haruyuki, he also exited the building.

A numbness spread up from the core of Haruyuki’s brain. In the dim hallway, shoulders shaking fiercely, he stood rooted to the spot.

Why? Why would a guy like Nomi know the Incarnate System? You wouldn’t even be able to see it exists without some outside help. You can’t learn this skill unless someone is kind enough to guide you to it.

Pulling Haruyuki back from his own stupefaction was a low, distant moan from Takumu. He lifted his face with a gasp, dove through the hole Nomi had made, and leapt outside, shuddering at the smooth fingermarks in the thick, dug-out section of wall.

In roughly the center of the schoolyard, he saw the shadows of the two entangled avatars. They weren’t fighting, however. It was more like a one-sided slaughter at this point.

Cyan Pile looked like he was just barely standing, oceans of sparks scattering from the wounds to his chest and leg. Even so, he launched attack after determined attack with both hands, but he didn’t even scratch Dusk Taker. The twilight-colored avatar casually evaded the punches while superficially shaving away his opponent’s armor with his fingertips.

Cyan Pile’s HP gauge was already down to 20 percent. The destroyed pile driver unrepaired, his fully charged special-attack gauge glittered in vain.

“T-Taku…” Haruyuki squeezed out a crushed voice.

He wanted to say something to his best friend, who wouldn’t give up despite being at an overwhelming disadvantage, but he couldn’t find the right words. Up against Nomi’s Incarnate attacks, likely the manifestation of the disappearance of objects including physical attacks, the simple, close-range blue Cyan Pile had no method of resistance.

The hundredth or millionth scar was etched into his mask, and Cyan Pile finally dropped heavily to his knees. In a normal duel field, the pain generated when an avatar took damage was about half that of the Unlimited Neutral Field, but even at half strength, the cumulative pain of many tiny injuries quickly became intolerable. This was no doubt Nomi’s aim in deliberately attacking with multiple shallow cuts.

When Takumu fought back against the virtual pain torturing his nerves and tried to stand back up, Nomi kicked him down as hard as he could, and Dusk Taker set his slim foot down firmly on top of the fallen Cyan Pile’s mask.

“Five hundred seconds left, hmm? Well, you fought a lot harder than I expected, Mayuzumi. You have more of a gift for this than you do for kendo.” Nomi chuckled before holding aloft the claws of his right hand. The purple energy pulse generated regular concentric circles and had conspicuously increased in strength. “Now then, I’ll have compensation for the one point three seconds of my real time that you took. Your Burst points and pain. And your humiliation.”

He went to plunge his right hand into Takumu’s throat.

“Wait, Nomi!!” Haruyuki shouted, at the very edge of the permitted spectator distance.

The hand pulled up short, and Dusk Taker’s round visor glanced over.

“Just wait!” Haruyuki cried desperately. “If you want points, take mine! Takumu used a ton of points to fight you! But I still have plenty. If you’re going to take some, take them from me!!”

He was half serious. But the other half was a plan, and the thin chance it was betting on.

He fell to his knees on the spot, pressed the forehead of his helmet to a ground crawling with insects, and shouted like a cry of pain, “It’s just like this, I’m begging you, Nomi!!” Naturally, this was his first experience prostrating himself so clumsily in the accelerated world, but that wasn’t the case in the real world.

Last year, before his fateful meeting with Brain Burst, Haruyuki had been the subject of harsh bullying by three boys in his class. They had extorted bread and juice from him at every opportunity, and when he didn’t have any and couldn’t buy any, he had been forced to apologize by prostrating himself like this. It was a memory stained with a shame he’d prefer not to remember, but right now, in this moment alone, he used that desperation in his voice and his bearing and scraped his head firmly along the ground.

“Ooh, this is the worst. In every sense of the word, this is the worst, Arita.” Nomi sounded astonished. “Going this far in the name of friendship is clearly an illness. But you are, for now at least, the owner of Brain Burst, are you not? Even I think this sniveling of yours has no place on the duel field.”

“Think whatever you want. I’ll make sure to pay you next week’s points, too, so please…I’m begging you!!”

“Yes, yes, I understand. Somehow this reminds me of torturing pill bugs in the garden when I was a child. But, well, I suppose it’s because you’re this kind of person that you obtained the flight ability.” Despite the considerable loathing in Nomi’s voice, Haruyuki heard the sound of Nomi’s foot being removed from Takumu’s face. Then he felt him open the Install menu from the HP bar.

Which was followed by a shrill warning noise accompanying a single window opening up in his field of view, a confirmation dialogue to change the field from a one-against-one normal duel mode to a Battle Royale mode that included the spectators.

Haruyuki momentarily lifted his face to look at Nomi, who was shaking his head in fake exasperation, and Takumu, who was still on the ground, before immediately pressing the YES button. Now, as long as Takumu accepted, the mode would switch, and Haruyuki would go from being a spectator to a duelist. He wouldn’t have to wait for next week; he could fight Dusk Taker now.

However—and he had anticipated this—Takumu wasn’t pressing the button. It was only natural. He was taking Haruyuki’s words at face value, and his pride wouldn’t allow him to let Haruyuki shoulder the burden of points that were rightfully hunted from him.

From a position almost touching the ground, which Nomi, standing, could not see, Haruyuki stared at Takumu, putting all his will into his eyes.

Press it. I’m not giving up. I want to fight him. I have to fight him. So please, push the button, Takumu!!

It might have been that the shout in Haruyuki’s head actually made it to his friend. Takumu momentarily opened his eyes behind his scarred mask and finally raised a trembling arm to touch a point in space.

A few silence-filled seconds followed, and then suddenly, all the data displays disappeared from his field of view. Following a digital alarm, Silver Crow’s HP gauge stretched out at top left. The previous gauge on the right side stayed gone, but small, completely replenished gauges popped up above the heads of Cyan Pile and Dusk Taker. Below the remaining time of four hundred seconds, the blazing text FIGHT!! appeared, and then scattered in flames.

Finally, Haruyuki murmured to himself, still prostrate. Finally, this moment had come. His rematch with Seiji Nomi/Dusk Taker. The battle to get back the many things taken from him, the battle he absolutely could not lose.

Klak, klak. The twilight avatar crunched across the metal yard and approached him. He glittered a strange color in the green light pouring down from the sky. Perhaps to maintain his connection to the Incarnate, both hands dripped with the empty pulsing.

Still cowering, Haruyuki carefully pulled his right hand to his chest, folded his thumb into his palm, and stuck the rest of his fingers straight out.

My arm is a sword. A sword of light, piercing any and all things, no matter how hard, even the dark of nothingness. As he stabilized the image in his mind, he felt an intense heat being generated in his fingertips.

The footfalls grew closer. A chill caressed the nape of his neck. The feet stopped directly in front of him. One foot was raised up and brought casually toward his head—

“Shah!!”

With a short battle cry, Haruyuki grabbed the foot about to step on him with his left hand, leveraged it to yank himself to his feet, and lunged straight out with his right arm at the same time.

“Ngh?!” Letting a short cry escape, Nomi reacted at a terrifying speed and tried to parry Haruyuki’s thrust with his left hand.

An abnormal clanging crash sounded throughout the field. The claws of Nomi’s left fingers slammed up against Haruyuki’s fingertips, now transformed into a radiant sword of pure white light. However, neither side touched. White and purple, pure light and empty aura fought each other, emitting a high-pitched squeal.

“What!…This technique…?! You dog…When did you learn this trick!!” Nomi howled, and the power of the purple pulse increased. His dark imagination, to make anything and everything disappear, ate into the system and tried to scrape away Haruyuki’s arm.

Haruyuki fought back with the image of a laser to pierce through everything in existence. Speed. The speed of light.

…Right. You’re faster than anyone.

The instant he felt that faint voice’s call, Haruyuki shouted, “Go…throoooooough!!”

A transient clarity filled the battlefield like a thousand icicles shattering and scattering.

Zzrk! The sword of Haruyuki’s right hand extended more than a meter instantly, piercing the darkness created by Nomi’s left hand. Soundlessly, it dispersed in all directions. Then.

Dusk Taker’s left arm itself shattered from the inside, from palm to shoulder.

“Ngaaah!”

As Nomi staggered backward, rivers of reddish-purple sparks gushing out of him, Haruyuki released the avatar’s leg and thrust out his own left hand.

“Aaaah!”

Regrettably, his enemy’s right arm managed to deflect the attack targeting the center of his chest, and Haruyuki managed only to cut up the armor. Nomi dashed away in reverse at a serious speed, spread both legs out, and stopped.

This was his chance to go for the kill, but Haruyuki couldn’t give chase. Maybe because he had managed to squeeze out such a strong image, white sparks crackled and dazzled his vision. He shook his head several times to shake them off, and when he opened his eyes again, Nomi was already back in a guarded posture.

“Oh, myyyy…” A bantering yet hoarse voice slipped out from under the rounded, expressionless visor. “How unexpected, an Incarnate attack…Which means that, the whole of last night, you were up on the mountain training, weren’t you, Arita?”

“Didn’t even take a whole night,” Haruyuki answered in a deep voice, standing up. The fingertips of both hands were still perfectly aligned; the white light and the hum of vibration remained.

“Hmm? I had heard that you lost pathetically to a bit player in the Green Legion. I was worried you might not be able to earn your point quota, but on the contrary, I see that you still have enough energy to bite back. I underestimated you.” Nomi followed this with a sneering laugh, waved his right hand, and blew away the purple pulsation.

“What, you already out of energy?”

“Ha-ha-ha! Impossible!!” Nomi cried brightly, and moved his right hand once more, raising it high up to the left, crossing the front of his body. “You see, I wasn’t just sleeping myself!!”

As he cried out, he drew his arm back as far as it would go, like drawing a bow. In sync with this motion, the angles protruding from his back deployed with a dramatic flap to both sides.

Five axial bones on each side. A thin membrane connecting them. Demon wings—the flying ability he took from Silver Crow.

Gulping unconsciously, Haruyuki watched as the wings spread out in the sky and once again flapped fiercely.

Wham! The air shook, and Dusk Taker’s body rose straight up.

There wasn’t a trace of the awkwardness he had displayed after taking the wings the other day; this was a spectacular flight. After quickly shooting past the roof of the school building, he whirled his body around and hovered.

No, I can’t be surprised at this, Haruyuki told himself, biting his lip. Nomi was a user of the Incarnate System. And control of the flying ability was also through image control. In which case, getting the hang of it would be no big deal for him.

A singsong voice came pouring down from the ominous silhouette carved out of the green sky.

“The truth is, they are actually quite impressive, these wings! You had such a unilateral advantage and yet still are at level four! But well, I suppose there’s no helping it given that all you have for a weapon are those short little arms and legs of yours, Arita. Rest easy, I’m not like you! I’ll be able to use and master this power to a much greater extent than you. Like this, for instance!”

Nomi had barely finished speaking before he stretched out his right hand and chanted quietly, “Equip Pyro Dealer.”

Haruyuki stood stock-still and stared up as the system, receiving the voice command, manifested new Enhanced Armament on Dusk Taker’s remaining arm.

An enormous piece of equipment now covered the entire appendage. From a large, tanklike object sitting on his shoulder, several pipes stretched to his elbow and then on down, to a firing device on the back of his hand.

Long-distance heat power! Haruyuki clenched his teeth tightly and strained every nerve in his body.

Point-five seconds later, with the artlessness of a child playing with fireworks, Nomi sent flames gushing from the short gun barrel.

These were the very definition of flames. Not a physical bullet, not a beam of light, but extremely dense, near-liquid fire. Like the blazing attack spewed forth by a dragon in some fantasy game, the attack raining down from high above his head, roaring as it did so.

He had no time to hesitate about how to respond. As soon as he dashed forward reflexively, a fwoomping howl was generated behind him, and a fierce heat beat down against his back.

“Hng!” Grunting from between gritted teeth, Haruyuki ran for his life, zigzagging randomly, but the thunderous flames were always chasing right behind him. Fires flickered all around him, and his HP bar was shaved away a few dots at a time.

When he had run westward along the wall of the school building for nearly ten seconds, the roar was finally interrupted. Whirling around as the soles of his feet slid along the surface of the ground, Haruyuki gazed up in wonder.

Smack in the middle of the large schoolyard was a bright red pond, about five meters in diameter. A small river wound its way out from the pond, and burbling, melted metal flowed before Haruyuki’s eyes.

The new Enhanced Armament Dusk Taker had called up was clearly a flamethrower. And one that produced a terrifyingly high temperature. If he took a direct hit from that thing even once, the ground below his feet would without a doubt melt, leaving him unable to move, and he would be burned to a crisp just like that.

Haruyuki ripped his gaze away from the gleaming red expanse and shifted it to Cyan Pile, still crouching near it. His HP gauge had been refilled and his visible injuries healed with the duel mode change, but it seemed the shock of the pain from his entire body being hollowed out still held him. He was going to need at minimum another minute before he could participate in the battle.

“Heh…heh-heh-heh!” Dozens of meters up in the sky above Haruyuki and his racing thoughts, Dusk Taker raised his voice in an innocent laugh. “Just as I expected, the combination of flight with long-distance fire power is incredible. I can recharge my special-attack gauge with field destruction bonuses as I hover up in the sky like this. A clear perpetual motion machine…To be perfectly frank, I’m invincible.”

“I dunno about that,” Haruyuki shouted at the avatar in a strangled voice, the flame demon changing the orientation of the flamethrower again. “There’s still one condition you have to meet if you want to be truly invincible.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You’d have to be the only one…who can fly!!” The words had barely left his mouth when Haruyuki raised both hands up high and prayed briefly in his heart.

Sky Raker. My other teacher. Thank you for these…Your wings!!

“Equip!! Gale Thruster!!”

The voice command rang out, sonorous.

Dusk Taker halted abruptly.

Two streaks of sky-blue light streamed from the sky, hit Haruyuki’s back, and coalesced—

Producing a big, strong, beautiful object: streamlined boosters about eighty centimeters long and ten centimeters wide. The pair settled in place on his back, side by side. The tips of the square thrust openings tapered slightly, and on the ends, there was a total of four small stabilizers around them, two horizontal and two vertical. Rather than boosters, these were the equivalent of having two small cruise missiles strapped to your back.

This was the Enhanced Armament that once earned Sky Raker the nicknames ICBM and Iron Arms.

Haruyuki stared at his opponent, who couldn’t completely disguise his shock, and lowered his stance. The boosters whined. Pale reflected light shone on the ground at his feet.

A heart that wishes for the sky. That is precisely the source of Gale Thruster’s power.

Once again, a distant voice echoed in his ears: Now go. You of all people should be able to fly again, Corvus.

“Aaaaah!!” Haruyuki howled and kicked off the ground with all his might.

An enormous crash shook the atmosphere, and a dazzling light filled the surroundings. And then Haruyuki was shooting up into the sky like a bullet, at a speed easily surpassing the vertical takeoff with his old silver wings.

Dusk Taker’s black silhouette grew closer with each microsecond. But at the same time, Haruyuki’s perception also started to accelerate, and his relative approach speed seemed to decrease.

“Wha…” Letting slip this semi-cry of surprise, Dusk Taker tried to turn the flamethrower of his right hand on Haruyuki. As the muzzle was on the verge of generating a red light—

“Heeaaah!!” Battle cry sharp, Haruyuki thrust his left hand out in a strike.

His sharp fingertips, wrapped in a white radiance, touched the muzzle and split it top to bottom. Then kept on going, piercing all the way up to the fuel tank on Dusk Taker’s shoulder.

With a thudding groan, the two avatars joined together and then separated. Haruyuki danced ever higher in the sky as scarlet flashes appeared below his feet, and he heard the rumbling of explosions chasing the flashes.

He opened his crossed arms and stopped his ascent. Looking down, he could see the familiar H-shaped school building and large grounds of Umesato, and the figure of Dusk Taker floating against them.

Having already lost his left arm, he now also suffered severe damage to his right. The flamethrower was completely blown away, and his arm from shoulder to elbow was cooked a burnt black. Fissures raced along armor shining like amethyst, and the dripping of dazzling sparks was constant. Nomi’s HP gauge was cut down to half.

Adjusting his descent trajectory by spreading his arms, Haruyuki landed on a pole at the edge of the schoolyard. It was topped with rows of strange eyeballs, which had apparently been floodlights in the real world.

Unlike with his stolen wings, flying with Gale Thruster didn’t consume his special-attack gauge. But just like Takumu’s Pile Driver, once it used up its energy in a momentary thrust, it took a long time to recharge. Checking in the upper left of his field of vision that the third gauge newly displayed there was slowly increasing, Haruyuki readied his sword hands.

“I see, I see.” Nomi also yanked up his injured right hand. The curved claws housed the purple pulsing energy once again. “So you were still hiding a card like that?” The voice was flat, as if squelching any hint of surprise or anger, but the echo of a sneer still coiled around it somehow.

“Say, please tell me, Arita. Where on earth did you find Enhanced Armament like that? You don’t have enough points to buy it in the Shop, now do you?…Oh, is that it? You chased the avatar who owned it to a forced uninstall and then stole it. Is that the case? How awful. Even I wouldn’t go that far.”

Nomi chuckled from deep in his throat, and Haruyuki responded calmly, “You wouldn’t understand, Nomi.”

“…And what’s that?”

“Even if I told you the wishes of the person who produced these sky-blue ‘wings’ and the hopes entrusted to me, you totally wouldn’t understand at all. Not when you think that the accelerated world is nothing more than a means to an end. And…someone like that, like you, doesn’t have the right to call himself a Burst Linker!!”

Haruyuki thrust his right fist, filled with white radiance, straight at Nomi.

The twilight-colored avatar remained silent for a while. Finally, he cocked his head abruptly and said, “You know, I’ve heard that line before. ‘Burst Linker’?…When have I ever used those words?”

“…What?”

“Did you know? Burst Linker is what the initial owners of Brain Burst called themselves. You can look anywhere you want in the system, but you won’t find that title anywhere. Which is why we would never use it.”

“We…?”

Before he could think about what that meant, Nomi spat fiercely, “If you’re going to refer to us correctly, it should be accelerated persons— No, accelerated users. We use the privilege we have been given to its fullest and obtain whatever we are able to obtain. That is how you and I should be. Well…isn’t it about time we settled this? Mine or yours, whose will—that is to say, whose ‘desire’ is stronger!!”

A whistling roar swelled, and the now familiar energy pulse radiated from Nomi’s right hand.

“The will is not about desire. It’s a wish!!” Haruyuki shouted, and swords of white light grew from both hands.

At the same time, he scraped together every bit of hope and desire for the sky in his entire body. A clear sky blue filled his chest and flowed into the boosters on his back.

This was the true purpose of Sky Raker training Haruyuki in the Incarnate System: so that he could use his will to recharge the Gale Thruster, which could normally only jump a short time on a single thrust. As long as he could do this, these boosters were no longer simply a jump-assist device; they could become real wings, allowing even continuous flight. The third gauge, on the verge of being empty, was at full change in the blink of an eye. Pale flames gushed from Haruyuki’s back.

The two duelists burst forward at maximum speed, tracing silver and purple trajectories in the sky.

“Aaaaaah!” With a battle cry from the bottom of his stomach, Haruyuki sent out his left sword hand at the speed of light.

“Chaaaaa!!” Raising his hand like a sword, Nomi raked his claws downward.

The shriek of impact echoed and the sky shook. The different-colored beams of light swirled and tangled and burst.

Two arms were ripped off, both nearly in half, and blown away.

“Not…yeeeeeet!!” With a howl, Haruyuki thrust the sword of his right hand directly at the center of Nomi’s chest.

His arm, now a dazzling beam of light, pierced the blackish-purple armor soundlessly and became buried up to the shoulder. But at the same time, Nomi’s right foot, enveloped by the illusory energy pulse, dug deep into Haruyuki’s left flank. Both of their HP bars instantly dropped 30 percent.

Enduring a fierce pain that nearly burned away the core of his head, Haruyuki mustered all of his remaining will, set his sights directly below him—the ground of Umesato Junior High—and opened his boosters all the way.

The entangled avatars plummeted, tracing out a tail of flames like a falling star. The hard ground raced toward them.

If they crashed like this, Silver Crow would no longer have the power left to fly, even if they ended up having the same amount remaining in their HP bars. As if sensing this, Dusk Taker tucked his body in, a defensive posture.

But Haruyuki lifted his face, and with his eyes wide open, added a slight, final adjustment to their descent trajectory.

“Taku! Now!!” he yelled.

“What?!” Nomi gasped, and in the center of the face he lifted—

Charging up from the ground, the bolt of lightning that was Takumu’s special attack—Lightning Cyan Spike—pierced him.

This attack worked like a brake, and taking advantage of the deceleration, Haruyuki spun his body one hundred and eighty degrees, yanking his right arm out of Dusk Taker’s chest as he did so. The rest was a matter of reverse thrust with the boosters, at the full force of their remaining energy.

Even still, the instant his legs touched the ground, cracks raced up his silver armor and sparks flew. Fissures rippled out radially through the ground, and at their center, he dropped heavily to his knees.

A second later, tracing the trajectory of the remaining beam of light in the sky, Dusk Taker crashed a few meters away.

He was in such a state it was a wonder that he had anything left in his HP gauge at all. Both arms were missing, and there was an enormous hole in his chest armor. The rounded visor of his face was cracked like a spiderweb, and a blackened scar marred the center where Haruyuki had stabbed him, sparks spurting out with a dry crackle. The tips of the wings, glued to the surface of the ground, twitched, perhaps with the intention to move again, but they didn’t manage anything close to an actual flap.

…It’s over, Haruyuki murmured to himself. However they struck Dusk Taker now, at that point, their victory was assured.

But Haruyuki stayed crouched down and motionless, waiting for the footfalls approaching slowly behind him.

Finally standing beside him, Takumu—Cyan Pile—was in a terrible state. Very nearly his entire body was scorched black, smoke rising up from it. But this wasn’t from being attacked; it was damage he had inflicted on himself. He had dragged his avatar, which was unable to move to his satisfaction because of the lingering pain, and sunk half his body in the magma pond created by Dusk Taker’s flamethrower. To fill his gauge enough to at least be able to get one blow in with his special attack.

It wasn’t like Haruyuki knew that by looking at him. If he had turned his eyes to Takumu even once during the battle, Nomi would have noticed the flow of his awareness and seen through to his friend’s intentions. So Haruyuki made sure not to look down from the sky. He simply believed: that Takumu would come through.

“…Nomi.” Haruyuki addressed the exhausted avatar who was the color of darkness. “The reason you lost wasn’t my Incarnate attack or the Gale Thruster. It was because we weren’t alone. And that’s the reason you won’t be able to beat us in the future, either.”

He received no reply.

Looking up at his partner by his side, Haruyuki nodded slightly, strongly.

Takumu returned his nod and offered his burnt left hand. Haruyuki grabbed it with his right and pulled himself to his feet.

There were still two minutes left on the clock. Haruyuki advanced one, two steps to deliver the final blow to Dusk Taker.

…Ring.

It was at that instant he felt like he heard a faint ringing sound. Haruyuki stopped abruptly and quickly looked around.

There was no one. How could there be? This field wasn’t created with the global net as intermediary but rather the Umesato local net. Which was why there was no way a new Burst Linker would appear—

Brrrring.

Again, he heard the crisp and yet somehow sad sound.

Haruyuki and Takumu both looked toward the source of the sound at the same time—the sky.

There was not the slightest shadow in the green sky of the Hell stage. But in the next instant, Haruyuki caught a small movement in the corner of his eye.

It wasn’t the sky. The roof of the school building towered up in the south. On the other side of the pointed cast-iron fence encircling it like lances, shining a green much more vivid than that of the sky, almost like peridot, a small avatar—

“What…”

Haruyuki couldn’t tell if he or Takumu spoke.

That, that avatar.

Lime Bell.

In other words, Chiyuri, Chiyuri Kurashima. But why? Chiyuri shouldn’t have already been registered on the automatic spectator list for Silver Crow or Cyan Pile.

“Chi—” Haruyuki started to call out in a hoarse voice.

However, as if to interrupt him, Chiyuri lifted the large bell on her left hand up to the sky softly. He felt like he could hear her voice. Quietly, riding the faint wind of the stage, extremely thinly, as if it were more a response with the senses than a sound.

…Sorry, Taku…Sorry, Haru.

And then the yellow-green avatar waved the bell. At the same time, she uttered a special attack name.

“Citron Call.”

The sound of the ringing bell was exceedingly beautiful, but perhaps because of the sound effects of the stage, it was distorted somehow. The emerald particles glittering and dancing down from the rooftop enveloped Dusk Taker, who was on the verge of death.

Haruyuki and Takumu could do nothing but stare as the deep wounds dug out of the blackish-purple armor began to heal at once from the ends.

“Why…” Haruyuki heard the cracked, broken voice coming from his own throat.

“Why on Earth…Chiyu.”

To be continued.