6

Via the leave-point set in the lobby of the Nerima Ward Office, Haruyuki returned to the real world. Taking a deep breath, he sat up on the sofa. As he pulled the XSB cable out, he looked to his side and saw Takumu breathing evenly, long eyelashes lowered beneath his glasses.

Right now, his good friend’s consciousness was in a different time stream from Haruyuki, entirely devoted to a desperate training. No, the simple word training couldn’t quite encapsulate it. Takumu was at long last confronting psychic wounds he had likely spent years pushing to the bottom of his heart and trying to overcome them.

“You can do it, Taku,” Haruyuki whispered, and then stood up.

On the opposite side of the table, he saw the innocent sleeping face—although she wasn’t in fact sleeping—of the girl clad in an elementary school uniform. She really almost was an angel like this. “Thank you,” he said to her, and he meant it from the bottom of his heart. Then he went to step out of the electromagnetic wave isolation room, opening the thick door into the hallway.

“This way. Hurry.” A voice came down from above his head, and he jerked his eyes upward.

Standing there was, no mistake about it, the clerk who had brought their drinks and cake earlier. Jacket puffed up at the shoulders, long skirt, both in a dark cherry color, topped by a snow-white apron decorated with conservative lace over. The Alice band on her head and the thin ribbon on her chest were both a brighter red than her clothing. In short, she looked the maid in every way. Seen up close, she was younger than he had thought; she was fairly tall, but she was probably still in high school. Her fringe was parted perfectly in the center and the hair in the back was gathered into a braid that fell below her shoulders. Her face was angular, and her narrow, upturned, single-lidded eyes reinforced the impression of sharpness.

Does she mean hurry up and get out? Are Niko and Takumu gonna be okay like this? Haruyuki wondered. He bowed, in any case, and tried to slip through the hall to the shop. But…

He heard her say, “Not that way,” as the collar of his blazer was yanked from behind, knocking his head back. The shock he felt that a cake shop clerk, and one dressed as a maid to boot, would act so aggressively grew several magnitudes larger with the words that came next.

“Go out the back. Follow me, Silver Crow.”

“Wh—?!”

Oh crap, I’m outed in the reeeeeaaaal! he screamed in his mind and instinctively tried to run away, but she had a firm hold on his collar, so he only ended up strangling himself again. She was slim, but she had a seriously powerful grip.

“No need to run. And anyway, it’s too late for that,” she told him in a husky voice that was almost a monotone, and he had no choice but to give up on thoughts of escape. He turned around.

The maid looked down at him completely expressionless and finally let go of his collar. “Scarlet Rain told me to help with your investigation,” she informed him with extreme nonchalance. “My name’s Blood Leopard. If you’re going to call me by name, go with Leopard, not Blood. If you need to shorten it, go with Pard, not Lep.”

“Hey…uh…Please hold on a minute.” Haruyuki managed to get that much out somehow, while he earnestly set his brain to work to try and understand the situation.

I don’t know all the deets; go ask the person who does! the Red King Niko had said right before he’d logged out. However, he had naturally taken that to mean within the Accelerated World. But it seemed that that maid, exposing her real self in the real world, was the “person who does” Niko had mentioned: a Burst Linker in the Red Legion, Prominence, and at the same time, a clerk in this shop. In other words, this was no ordinary cake shop but something along the lines of a Prominence base.

He had muddled this far when the maid, Blood Leopard, nickname Pard, said as if growing impatient, “I waited two seconds. Think about the rest as we move.” And then she whirled around, long skirt fluttering, and started toward a door visible at the end of the dark hallway.

Haruyuki no longer had any other options. He followed the mysterious older girl’s order.

The door was apparently the back exit, and where it came out was next to a garage behind the cake shop.

The maid moved her fingers, and the shutters facing the road began to open automatically. Blood Leopard seemed to be a fairly impatient type for some reason, and she thrust a finger out at Haruyuki, as if she couldn’t waste time waiting.

“This is all Master told me: You got a Burst Linker who doesn’t show up on the matching list, even though he’s connected to the local net. You want to figure out how. That’s the end, ’kay?”

She sought his assent with half of the word okay carved away, and Haruyuki nodded. “R-right, that’s exactly it.”

“I’ve heard of list interception, but lately there’re rumors of a local net troll.”

The maid’s assessment was sudden, and Haruyuki, flustered, unconsciously leaned forward. “L-local net troll? What’s that?”

“Don’t know the deets. Apparently, on a certain net, this Burst Linker challenges you, but when you go for a rematch, the Linker’s already gone from the list.”

“Wh-where is this ‘certain net’?!”

“Akihabara.”

Haruyuki recoiled at the concise reply. “A-Akihabara? That’s the Yellow Legion’s territory, ri—”

“Yup.” Haruyuki watched the maid nod as if it were no big deal. He swallowed hard.

It was a mere three months earlier that, due to the evil machinations of the Yellow King, Yellow Radio, ruler of the Legion Crypt Cosmic Circus, the Red King Niko had, without warning, ended up in serious trouble, ambushed by dozens of people. Haruyuki and the other members of Nega Nebulus had been dragged through that hell with her, so it would be fair to say that currently, of the six major Legions, Haruyuki was the most vigorously opposed to Yellow.

He wanted very much to go and collect information, but not quite having the courage to head off into such an enemy’s territory, Haruyuki bit his lip. But this isn’t the time for me to sit here freaked out. I mean, just her telling me there’s a clue in Akihabara is a lucky break. If I just go and hang out in a normal duel gallery there and ask about any rumors, I should be able to get in and out without too much trouble…

These thoughts running through his mind, Haruyuki tried to muster what little courage he had.

Blood Leopard, similarly silent for several seconds, finally said with utmost brevity, “’Kay. We’ll go now.”

“Huh?”

…Go? To Akihabara? With her? Dressed like that on a train…? His eyes opened so wide, his eyelids threatened to peel right off.

She grabbed his collar, almost as if to say she wasn’t interested in talking anymore, and strode into the garage, short boots clacking on the concrete.

Enshrined there, radiating an overwhelming sense of presence, was an enormous electric bike at least two meters long. A completely different beast from the electric scooters zipping along peacefully with their lilting engines, the body was enveloped by a sleek red-and-black cowl, and the motorized front and rear wheels were astoundingly thick, maintained by an active suspension arm so tough it looked like armor. The streamlined body was low, practically crawling on the ground.

“W…ow…” He let out an involuntary sigh of admiration.

Pard grabbed something rounded from the rack on the wall and shoved it at him. He took it reflexively and looked down to find an open-face red helmet in his hands.

“Huh?” He simply stood and stared, not understanding the meaning of this. Blood Leopard approached on quick feet and picked it up again—and then popped it on Haruyuki’s head. She deftly buckled it on under his chin with one hand.

She slipped a full-face black helmet over her Alice band, and after a quick shake of the braid poking out from under it, she grabbed Haruyuki’s collar again and plopped him down in the passenger seat of the large bike.

…No way. No. Wait. Wait a minute.

The older girl didn’t even leave him the time to groan. She straddled the bike, still in her maid’s clothing, and grabbed the handlebars firmly, slender hands in leather gloves.

“Start,” she murmured, apparently a voice command, since the bike’s dash subsequently flashed to life. The fully extended front and rear suspension arms whined with preloading.

Haruyuki’s Neurolinker also automatically connected to the bike’s CPU, and windows appeared for speed and battery gauges and other things one after another before his eyes. Meanwhile, he heard Blood Leopard’s voice—not her real voice, but one communicated wirelessly.

“Hold on.”

“Huh? Uh, no, but…,” he cried, but two hands immediately stretched out from in front of him and took hold of his arms. She yanked his forward and forced them around her slim waist to lock over her apron. This girl was apparently not the type to give an order twice.

Thinking escape was likely impossible, he half gave up at this point, but he couldn’t fully let go of the dream of freedom. “Uh, um, are you going to drive dressed like that?”

“Waste of time to change.”

“A-and what about the shop?”

“My shift was till five. Any other questions, ask them all at once.”

“…That’s it.”

“’Kay.” And the maid casually opened the throttle.

The massive machine slipped smoothly out of the garage attached to the cake shop, the noise of its motor the eye of the storm made by its bottomless torque.

The clock display in the lower right of his vision read 5:08 PM. At some point, the rain had stopped, and the gaps in the clouds streaming westward were dyed a spectacular orange.

Ah, I left my umbrella in the shop. Oh well, Taku’ll probably grab it for me.

Haruyuki idly wondered about this and other escapist thoughts while the electric bike silently and slowly slid through the Sakuradai neighborhood. Blood Leopard seemed to be as safe a driver as she was impatient. But just when he had started to relax, the bike turned right at a large intersection onto Kannana Street.

Krraaaaa!! The internal motors in the front and rear wheels roared and the needle on the hologauge jumped up. In the periphery of his vision, he could see her long skirt flapping and fluttering. The wind pressure slapped his face through the shield of the helmet.

“Aaaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki screamed with his real voice.

The enormous bike with the driver dressed as a maid and the passenger a junior high boy in his school uniform moved from Kannana to Mejiro Street and raced hard to the east.

Although these days, the legal speed limit for motorcycles and passenger vehicles couldn’t actually be broken. Control systems were equipped with limiters, which were automatically set to the maximum speed for a given road. If you wanted to break the speed limit, your only choice was to illegally mod the vehicle or order emergency mode and temporarily shut down the control AI. Naturally, it was against the law to turn off the AI without good reason, so either way, you had to be ready to face the police.

Blood Leopard’s bike was naturally neither modded nor in emergency mode, and the limiter was, in fact, set at Mejiro Street’s legal speed limit of eighty kilometers an hour, but they went from zero to the speed limit in an exceedingly brief period. Huge Gs slammed into Haruyuki’s round body, the likes of which he had never experienced in the real world, and he nearly shrieked. And as if that wasn’t enough, he wasn’t sure about this whole thing where his stomach was glued to Pard’s slim body.

Way better that I’m sitting in the back. If we were the other way around, it wouldn’t be her back, but the feeling of her front. Agh, the other way could totally never, ever happen.

As his mind raced, the bike turned onto the outer ring road at Iidabashi, which was fairly busy, as you might expect at dusk in the city center. The drivers of the electric cars and scooters around them opened their eyes wide when they saw Blood Leopard’s motorcycle. Which was only fair, given that you hardly ever saw a large bike like this these days, much less one ridden at twilight by a dazzling maid in a snow-white apron, with a roundly plump junior high school student on the back, to boot.

Unable to stand the many eyes concentrating on them as they waited at the light, Haruyuki shrank into himself. “Uh, um, I feel like we really stand out?” he said in neurospeak.

“Yes.” Pard sounded like she didn’t care, and maybe she really didn’t.

Haruyuki kept himself from flinching and continued, “A-and we’re charging into CCC’s stronghold; it’s a little dangerous.”

This time, her answer was somewhat longer. “No prob. We won’t stand out.”

“Huh?”

But he got no further response; she opened the throttle all the way the instant the light turned green. Lightning from the motor. Haruyuki suffocating.

After the bike pulled into a parking garage adjacent to the western edge of the Akiharaba district and they had walked for a few minutes, he finally understood what she meant.

The instant they stepped onto the main street that cut north-south through Electric Town, at least three women in maids’ uniforms leapt into Haruyuki’s sight. They were, of course, not real maids—although, that said, neither was Blood Leopard—but rather seemed to be doing promotion for some store, handing out holopapers to passersby with sparkling smiles. The only difference between them and Pard was the presence/absence of a smile.

“I get it.” He nodded his complete agreement and looked up again at the majestic city that never slept.

Due to redevelopment in the early 2000s, this area had once been redesigned as a new kind of stylish neighborhood. However, as the center of electronic sales shifted to Ikebukuro and Shinjuku, property values dropped, and in the recession of the time, the banks got spooked and pulled out completely. This led to a subdivision of the land rights, and by the twenties, the former chaos of the previous century had once again descended on the area.

Now, in 2047, countless tiny shops jostled up against one another for any and every business related to electronics and networks and subcultures. Because the windows of the buildings lining the streets glittered with as much neon as people could pack in, there was nothing in the way of uniformity of color. Standing in Electric Town at night was like standing in the middle of a galaxy with dense formations of primary-colored stars.

If Haruyuki connected his Neurolinker to the global net now and allowed unlimited ad information, his field of vision would no doubt be so full of holopamphlets for sales on Neurolinkers and standalone custom computer parts and all sorts of applications software, he wouldn’t be able to see.

“Nice.” The edges of his mouth relaxed at the informational disorganization that was far more virtual world than real one when he was abruptly choked by the collar of his jacket yet again.

“This way.” Blood Leopard seemed entirely unaffected as she started walking north on a sidewalk overflowing with shoppers, dragging Haruyuki along with her.

She took him to a remarkably noisy building a little off from the main street. At first glance, he had no idea what kind of place it could be. A neon sign at the entrance read QUADTOWER, but beyond that, the lights were turned down, enshrouding the place in a gloom. Loud electronic noises leaked out, an infinity of machines.

“Quadtower? What is this place?” Haruyuki asked, a little freaked out.

“Arcade,” Pard replied, aiming for the building without the slightest hesitation. They descended a short staircase and the instant they stepped out onto the dark floor, the meaning of that single word became clear.

The bare concrete floor was jammed with prehistoric game machines, old CRT monitors and joystick control panels embedded in enormous cabinets. The sounds of punches and explosions and background music flowed unimpeded from the many speakers, while players sitting on long chairs pounded and banged single-mindedly, all clacks and smacks, on the panels.

He watched in mute amazement from the wall as one player, at a console backed up to another of the same kind so that they were in mirror position, struck a victorious pose, and the audience behind the player burst into cheers. On the opposite side, a young man stood up, looking regretful. Players apparently fought each other on the two machines.

A member of the audience soon slipped in to take the losing player’s place. The girl, flamboyantly dressed as if she herself were a game character, plucked a silver hundred-yen coin from her pocket and dropped it into a slot in the middle of the panel.

“O-oh, right,” Haruyuki murmured with a dry mouth. “Arcade means video arcade…and these machines, they’re those arcade games from way back!” he continued excitedly, but Blood Leopard simply replied, “Yes,” with her standard brevity and started walking again.

While he understood the reason they had come to this neighborhood and the seriousness of the situation he had gotten dragged into, he couldn’t help thinking how much he’d like to sit down at that fighting game, just once. He had never touched that sort of large controller, but when it came to game pad–controlled 2-D fighting games, he had played so many on consoles at home, it was sick.

However, the real kicker here was that he did not have a single piece of old-school material money like a hundred-yen coin in his pockets or in the bag on his back. If he poked around in the arcade, he’d probably find an electronic money changer somewhere, but if he got separated from Pard in this expansive, dim place, he’d be screwed—or more to the point, she’d get mad at him—so he regretfully abandoned the idea.

Finally, belatedly, feeling doubts about why she had even brought him to this place, Haruyuki chased after the plait swinging against the maid’s back and arrived finally at an elevator in the wall farthest in. They stepped into the cab of the terrifyingly ancient machine, and it started to lurch and clack its way upward, stopping at the fourth floor.

The other side of the opening door was pin-droppingly quiet, a world apart from the ground floor. Instead of game cabinets, this room was lined with narrow booths, divided by solid-looking panels. The wall to the right was taken up by a row of drink machines.

This sort of place Haruyuki was familiar with. A so-called “dive café,” a place that provided private rooms for full dives, both in the middle of town and at a low price. You could lock the booths, so compared with leaving your real-world body in an open space like a family restaurant or a coffee shop, a dive café was far and away the safer choice.

That said, if they were just headed to a dive café, he was sure there were several near the garage where they had left the motorcycle. He wondered why they’d had to come all the way to this building. Pard quickly finished up at the deserted front counter and walked briskly into the café, leaving him no choice but to chase after her again.

“Get in.”

He was ordered into what was clearly a single-person booth, but Blood Leopard came in after him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. This time, he couldn’t keep his questions to himself.

“Uh, um, there’s only one chair.”

“No pair seat booths open. We can squeeze in,” she responded expressionlessly, closing the sliding door. The sturdy-looking lock fell into place with a sharp clack.

Gathering up her long skirt, she sat on one side of the recliner. When she slid her slim frame right to the edge, there were actually about forty centimeters of space left on the chair. But that was just barely enough for his plump self. He’d have to jam himself in.

“Um.” He was about to continue with, I’ll just get another room for myself, but the maid beat him to the punch.

“No prob. I’m fine with a kid stuck up against me.”

But I am totally not fine!! And anyway, considering the first requirement for a Burst Linker, we are at most three years apart!! he yelled in his heart, but still, he resigned himself to let things be what they would be and set his body down next to Blood Leopard’s, stammering, “E-e-excuse me,” as he did. He did his best to cling to the armrest, but there was still only a gap of about two millimeters between her aproned chest and the tip of his nose.

A soft, sweet scent wafted up, and the moment he realized it was the smell of cream and strawberries, he nearly lost consciousness. But he managed to hold it together somehow, and he heard her murmur so close to him he could feel her breath on his forehead.

“First, set up a full-dive avatar that’s not connected to the real you.”

“Huh? Ha, yeah.” Cranking his decelerating brain back up, he did some quick manipulations of his virtual desktop and changed his avatar from the pink pig he used in the Umesato local net to a green lizard he had never used. “I-I’m done.”

“When you do the full dive, dive into the access gate with the tag ‘Akihabara BG.’”

“G-got it.”

“’Kay. Countdown. One, zero.”

Normally, you start from three at least!! Simultaneous with this thought, the same command was released from both of their mouths.

“Direct link!”

With a whoosh, his consciousness and real-world body were separated, and Haruyuki fell into the darkness.

Several access gates approached from below. Since he was currently disconnected from the global net, they should all have been via the local net operated by the Quadtower building. Among glittering and sparkling text like ALL-YOU-CAN-READ COMICS! and FREE ONLINE GAMES, there was indeed the inconspicuous tag AKIHABARA BG.

When he reached an invisible hand toward it, his vision was pulled in and the moment he was sucked into the circular gate, he felt the slightest of lags—the sense of something being verified. But the sensation of moving soon came over him again, and eventually, the soles of his feet touched the ground with a hard metallic clank.

When he raised his lowered face, he couldn’t tell if he was in an enormous bar or a club or what. All the floors and walls were made of steel plates and chain-link mesh rusted red. The center of the square space was a sort of atrium, and on the first and mezzanine floors enclosing it, rough, naked steel tables were lined up equidistant from one another. He could see a few avatars at the tables in the gloom who appeared to have dived into the bar at the same time as him. They sank into the shadows, but the instant he saw their silhouettes, something clicked in him.

This was not the Accelerated World. It was a normal virtual space. Even still, Haruyuki knew these people were all Burst Linkers. And he realized only people with Brain Burst in their Neurolinkers could connect to this Akihabara BG net. He gulped his green lizard throat several times and let his eyes roam farther.

The next thing he noticed was the large four-sided monitor suspended on chains from the ceiling in the center of the expansive space. The bar was dimly lit, so he could clearly make out the text on the virtual screen.

Displayed at the very top was TODAY’S BATTLE in a gothic font. Below that “18:00,” probably a time. And then FROST HORN, LV5, 1.57 VS SLATE BOTTLE, LV4, 3.22. Definitely a notice for an upcoming duel. But he didn’t really understand the numbers after the levels, the ones with the decimal.

“Um, where…” Haruyuki finally stopped looking around and started to talk, hushed, to Blood Leopard, who was standing next to him.

Her avatar was—justifiably but perhaps surprisingly—no longer wearing the maid’s uniform. Her entire body was covered in a skintight black leather riding suit. But topping this body was not a human head, but a catlike beast with sleek, dark red fur. Here, for the first time, Haruyuki remembered the Japanese meaning of the English name Leopard.

The feline-headed female rider glanced down at Haruyuki’s lizard avatar with eyes that glowed a faint gold. “Akihabara Battle Ground. The Burst Linker duel Holy Land.”

“H-Holy Land…?” he repeated before a thought struck him. “So, Akihabara? Does that mean this is a Yellow Legion base or something?”

“No. This is the only neutral place in Akihabara. Follow me.” She walked away, boots ringing out against the hard floor, so he started after her.

At the very back of the bar was a counter, naturally made of steel plating. Blood Leopard slid down into the center of a stool in a single, smooth motion. Haruyuki climbed up onto the one next to her with a heave-ho of his lizard body.

“Evening, Matchmaker.”

An avatar popped its face up on the other side of the counter at Pard’s quiet voice, and Haruyuki immediately shouted to himself, A dwarf! Stout and short of stature with a scraggy beard, wire-rimmed glasses over sunken eyes and a huge bow tie around his neck…He looked so much the dwarf it was strange he wasn’t holding an ax in his sturdy hands.

The dwarf avatar first looked at Pard’s leopard head and hoisted a single eyebrow before looking next at Haruyuki’s lizard head and humming nasally. He looked back at Pard and grinned.

“Well, here’s a sight for sore eyes. How many months has it been, Leopard?” An incredible baritone, the perfect dwarf voice. But the person connected to this net and controlling the avatar had to be a Burst Linker, too, which meant that even if he was one of the most senior ones, he couldn’t have been more than seventeen. But it was probably rude to be noticing things like that.

Pard shrugged lightly. “Eight months.”

The dwarf, who apparently went by the name Matchmaker, laughed and his beard shook again. “Guess you’re missing the shoots here. Or you just looking to earn a little pocket money?”

“Sorry, I didn’t come to duel today. Or bet.”

At this, Haruyuki reflexively asked, “B-bet?!”

The dwarf raised an eyebrow and indicated the huge central monitor with a jerk of his beard. “You saw those numbers, yeah? You saying those look like anything other than odds?”

“Odds…” Now that the dwarf mentioned it, that was exactly it. The 1.57 and the 3.22 after the duelers’ names were nothing other than the stakes for a bet. So then this place was like a bookie for Burst Linker duels.

“Wh-what on earth could you bet? N-n-not burst points?” he asked in a hoarse voice, and the dwarf snorted loudly.

“Idiot. You let people bet points, some jerk gets carried away and ends square at forced uninstall. Bets are in real money, obviously.”

“R-real money…” That was still plenty risky. This kind of privately operated gambling hall was completely illegal. Haruyuki flapped his mouth open and shut, and the Matchmaker grinned suddenly.

“Kid, you got any idea how much the leopard-headed lady here’s earned?”

“Don’t give him the wrong idea. The only thing I earned here was money from fighting; I’ve never made a bet, and even if you win, it’s five hundred yen a match. Way less than what I get at work.”

“…F-five hundred yen,” Haruyuki repeated, dumbfounded.

The dwarf laughed gleefully. “Well, that’s how it is. Betting, max is three hundred yen a match. Pretty much the best you could do on a student’s allowance.”

“…R-right…” Haruyuki finally relaxed the slightest bit, and then Blood Leopard put him back on the edge of his seat.

“Enough small talk. Let’s get straight to it.”

“Impatient as always, Leopard. If you’re not here for a match or to bet, then why’d you come?”

“Came for information. Wanna know about the local net troll…the Burst Linker who can block the matching list even when connected to a net.”

His reaction was striking. The instant he heard Pard’s request, a sharp light came glinting into the dwarf’s eyes, and he quickly looked up and down the counter. After checking that there were no other divers within hearing range, he squeezed out an even lower voice. “Where’d you hear about list blocking? The rumors running around now aren’t so detailed as that.”

This time, it was Blood Leopard’s brow that furrowed. “I’m asking the questions here.”

“Hmph. Guess so. In that case, you don’t need to pay me for this story, just tell me yours in exchange.”

“’Kay, as much as I can.”

The Matchmaker nodded sharply, leaned into the counter, and began to talk in a voice like a groan from deep in his beard. “The Burst Linker blocking the matching list. He’s a huge problem behind the scenes here right now.”

“So listen, kid,” the dwarf said, turning toward Haruyuki, who was visiting this place for the first time. “Akihabara BG’s a local net. You can only connect to it from inside the Quadtower arcade. If you want to be a betting match here, you gotta come here and register as a player at the counter. Then the system weighs level and compatibility to select the optimal duel opponent and displays the match time and odds in the center of the monitor.

“If you wanna bet, you put a maximum of three hundred yen on one of the two right up to the cutoff time. After that, immediately before match time, one of the players accelerates, selects their opponent from the matching list, and the duel begins. That’s the basic structure. Simple, yeah?

“The biggest rule on this local net is, only the players who’ve been matched up are allowed to duel. Break that rule, and a very competent bouncer will take down the better or whoever it was who went and challenged someone to a duel—in a duel, natch—and chase you out. This place is the dueler’s Holy Land. Even the ruler of Akihabara, the Yellow King, can’t touch anyone in here.”

“So anyway.” After taking a gulp of the liquid in a tumbler that had at some point appeared on the counter, the Matchmaker continued. “About a week ago, this rude bastard shows up and challenges one of the duelers right before the announced match was supposed to start. Without registering as a player. Akihabara BG’s set up so that all the divers have to show their ID when they connect initially, so the moment the guy showed up again the other day, the bouncer accelerated to send him packing. So then, see? He was definitely connected to the local net, but…his name wasn’t on the matching list.”

Haruyuki inhaled sharply. The situation the Matchmaker was describing. It was exactly the same as what was happening on the local net at Umesato Junior High.

Draining the glass of the amber-colored liquid, the dwarf set it down on the steel plate of the counter. “That day, too, the bastard jumped into the match, took the player down, and then logged out cool as a cucumber. And then the next day. And the day after that. Right now, I’m explaining it away to the players and the customers as a glitch in the match registration system, but I’m at the end of my rope here. And rumors of the ‘local net troll’ are spreading like wildfire. If I can’t stop this guy running wild like this, it could mean the end of Akihabara BG.”

“Uh, um.” Gulping hard, Haruyuki asked timidly, “What’s the name of this Burst Linker who doesn’t show up on the list?”

The name the dwarf uttered with annoyance was “Rust Jigsaw.”

It’s not him. Haruyuki sighed unconsciously, but if it wasn’t him, then he had a different problem. Because that meant that there was more than one Burst Linker with the ability to block the matching list like Nomi could. In the Brain Burst system, this privilege was too huge.

The Matchmaker whispered similar misgivings. “You don’t get to pick your duel opponent. That’s the fundamental principle of the Accelerated World. You might wanna pick out only guys you’re good with, but you never know when one of them’s gonna show up on the list. And while you’re waiting for your perfect match to show, you get sucked into a duel with someone you’re bad with. Happens all the time. That’s why all us Burst Linkers polish our special skills and work hard to overcome our trouble spots.”

“That’s exactly it.”

“So this Rust Jigsaw is using the Akihabara BG system right now to pick out whatever opponent he wants. You just look at that monitor there and you know which Burst Linkers are gonna be connecting at what time. All that’s left is to pick someone you’re sure to win against and challenge them right before the match starts. Bastard’s already earned more than a hundred points in duels here alone. As the Matchmaker…and as a Burst Linker, I definitely can’t let this stand.” Concluding his painful story, the dwarf glared round eyes behind round wire frames at Haruyuki and Blood Leopard. “And that’s the long and the short of it. So now it’s your turn to tell. The only ones who’re supposed to know about Rust Jigsaw blocking the matching list are me and my bouncer, so where the hell’d you hear about it?”

“Um.” Haruyuki glanced up at Pard and then moved his lizard mouth haltingly. “It’s not got anything to do with this place. On a local net I usually connect to, another Burst Linker with the exact same ability showed up. And I just thought maybe someone in Akihabara would know…”

“What? At the same time, another one?! That can’t be a coincidence.” The dwarf groaned lightly before asking the obvious question. “Where’s the local net?”

“I-I’m sorry. It’s connected with my real info, so…”

“What? Then I’m basically the only one talking here, ain’t I?!”

“Matchmaker,” Pard said abruptly in a quiet voice. “What’s this Rust Jigsaw’s level and type?”

“Hmm? Level six, same as you. Color’s just like the name says: rust. So you got that in common, too, but his fighting style’s different. Guy’s hunting short-range types, leaving the mid-to long-distance ones, so you being mainly close-range, to be honest, pretty poor compatibility.”

Pard’s a close-range type? Even though she belongs to the Red Legion, and the name “blood” seems pretty red, too?

Blood Leopard’s next words blew this momentary question away. “’Kay. Then instead of paying you for the info, I’ll do this. Me and the kid will register as players for a tag match and restrict opponents to long-distance-type teams. If on top of that, you cancel all the remaining matches, Rust Jigsaw’ll have no one else to attack, so he should pick us as today’s prey.”

“Wh-wh-wha—?!” Haruyuki nearly fell off his stool and hurried to grab on to the counter.

The dwarf turned suspicious eyes on him once again. “Leopard, your name’s more than enough to be decent bait. Just who is this new kid already?”

“Maybe more famous than me.” Pard let slip the faintest hint of a smile and whispered into the dwarf’s ear, “This kid’s the shining crow of the reformed Nega Nebulus.”

Hyoo! The low sound was the Matchmaker half whistling from behind his beard.

Haruyuki and Blood Leopard opened their Brain Burst option menus and registered each other as a tag team. This way, when one of them was called into a duel, they would both automatically be connected to the stage. You could check on the matching list whether or not a Burst Linker was joined up in a tag team, and a solo Linker could challenge a tag team, but the converse—a tag team taking on a solo Linker—was naturally not possible.

When the names Blood Leopard and Silver Crow appeared as a team on the large monitor in the center of the bar, the floor erupted into commotion. Cries like “Hey! Promi’s Leopard’s fighting!” and “Why is she teaming up with NN’s crow?!” rose up all over the place, and the odds numbers immediately started to move.

They shifted from the counter to a dim table in the corner, and Haruyuki decided to ask a few questions while they were waiting for the match to start. “Um, why a tag match? The problem Linker, Rust Jigsaw, he’s a solo act, so he’s not gonna charge in on two opponents, is he?”

“Not necessarily.” Pard shook her head briefly, after touching the cocktail glass to her leopard mouth. “The level difference is calculated from the tag-team total, not the average, so if you challenge as a solo, you’re not out that many points if you lose, and if you win, you get a ton of them. Rust Jigsaw seems to be focused on points, so there’s a very good chance he’ll think we’re very tempting prey. My name’s fairly well known as a close-range type, and Jigsaw seems to specialize in close-range hunting, so there’s no disadvantage for him compatibility-wise. And…” Here, she flicked golden eyes toward Haruyuki and closed her mouth once, before opening it again to continue. “Pretty big rumor has it you can’t fly anymore. If Rust Jigsaw knows that, the chances he’ll attack are even better.”

The concern Blood Leopard had shown, even if it was momentary, over the fact that he had lost his wings was hard to bear, but it also made him happy. He hurried to say something. “Right. If he kills me right away, then it’s just a regular one-on-one with you.”

Nodding slightly, Pard brought her glass to her lips once more, and Haruyuki followed suit, gulping down his virtual cocktail. He scowled at the bizarre taste as he thought.

Hypothetically, if this Rust Jigsaw were connected with Dusk Taker, he had no reason to be worried about Jigsaw learning anything about Silver Crow here. Dusk Taker was, after all, the very person who had taken his wings and weakened him like this.

He checked that they still had a while before the start of the match and voiced his next question. “Also…maybe I’m getting ahead of things, but…even if Rust Jigsaw isn’t showing up on the matching list, the fact that he’s connected to this local net means that he has to be somewhere in Quadtower in the real world, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then can’t we do something to find this real self?”

Pard shrugged her leather-clad shoulders lightly. “It’s an arcade from the ground floor to the third floor and a dive café from the fourth to the sixth. At this hour, there are hundreds of people here, very high density, so identifying him would be difficult. But…”

“B-but?”

“There might be a way.”

“H-how?!”

“I’ll explain later. More importantly…” Pard’s body next to him on the sofa moved fluidly, bringing her leopard mouth near Haruyuki’s lizard ear. So quietly, it would be impossible for any other diver to overhear, she whispered, “As long as your enemy doesn’t use it, you can’t use the Incarnate System.”

He flinched and nodded. “R-right,” he couldn’t help but add. “That’s what the Red King said. But…but why is that? I do think it’s not fair for just one side to use that power. It’s way too strong. But if your opponent’s breaking the Brain Burst rules—”

“No, it’s not for your opponent’s sake. It’s for yours.”

“Huh?”

Now that you mention it, Niko said basically the same thing, didn’t she? he thought.

Pard brought her body even closer, and she stared into Haruyuki’s eyes from an extremely short distance. “The Incarnate is born from the hole in your heart. When you pull power from it, you also get pulled into the hole bit by bit. If you ever lose that tug-of-war, you’ll be swallowed up by the darkness at the bottom.”

“D-darkness?”

“The will of the first Chrome Disaster, the Incarnate running wild, was what produced the cursed Armor of Catastrophe you fought. And the kings know that, which is why they’ve been trying for years to keep the existence of the Incarnate System quiet.”

Haruyuki stiffened once again. The Incarnate, the will was generated from hope with a missing necessity as the source—the Red King Niko had said that, too. And that you couldn’t learn Incarnate unless you faced your own mental scars.

“But,” Haruyuki said slowly, as if talking to himself rather than Blood Leopard, “the person who first taught me about Incarnate said that what generated the will was the power of the wish. That the other side of those mental scars was hope.”

“That’s also true, I think,” the red leopard murmured, exhaling softly. “But just like Brain Burst itself, the Incarnate System also has two sides. The other side of hope is despair. When you chase after that power, you absolutely lose something as payment. Your teacher’s probably no exception.”

Instantly, in the back of Haruyuki’s mind, an image of Sky Raker sitting in her silver wheelchair floated up. The legs she had lost, that she would never have again. He blinked his avatar’s eyes hard before speaking, half in thought. “Even still, I want to believe. In the will…In the power of the wish. No…In Brain Burst, which saved me.”

Blood Leopard, strangely for her, stayed silent for a long time, seemingly on the verge of saying something. Finally, she relaxed her fierce gaze and murmured in his ear, nearly kissing it. “I get it. It’s just like Rain said. You…This Accelerated World, maybe you can—”

However, he didn’t get to hear the rest.

Just more than a minute before the official start time noted on the monitor, Haruyuki’s ears were filled with the dry sound of a lightning strike. Then the text announcing the appearance of a challenger burned red to fill his field of vision.