4

Perhaps the rainy season decided it was time to take a little break finally, because that Wednesday was the first wonderfully clear day in some time.

Even after sixth period ended, there were still only a few fleecy clouds floating in the sky, and with the sun on his back as it started to set, Haruyuki raced toward Koenji Station by himself.

His destination was, of course, the opposite side of the city, the new Tokyo Tower at Oshiage in Sumida Ward, formally known as Tokyo Skytree. In approximately two hours, a portal to the space elevator Hermes’ Cord would open on the special observation deck there…maybe.

It had all started with Haruyuki’s fairly dreamy thought. He later slipped into the Galleries in Suginami and Shinjuku, but not a single Burst Linker was talking about Hermes’ Cord. Even Kuroyukihime, the one who figured out the time and location of the portal opening, had added at the end of their dive call two days earlier, “Well, don’t get too down if this ends up being a miss.”

In which case, he at least wanted to incorporate the subtheme of a field trip to eastern Tokyo, a place where they normally never went, but unfortunately, Takumu and Chiyuri both had practice, and with the preparations for the school festival, Kuroyukihime had trouble getting away from the student council office these days. And so it fell to Haruyuki, the one who didn’t have the guts to charge into solo duels in an unknown area.

“Whatever. If it’s a miss, I can just go to that retro game shop in Akihabara.” He offered those consoling words to his lonely self and got on the Chuo Line.

He changed to the Hanzomon Line at Kinshicho and by the time he got off at Oshiage station, the town was at last sinking into evening. He turned around slowly on the sidewalk and heaved a sigh of relief the instant he spotted it in the sky.

Living in Tokyo, he almost never went to the city’s famous places, so this was still only the second time he had been to Skytree. The enormous tower and its truss construction glittering gold in the western sun rose up sharply like a ladder to the heavens.

A total of six hundred and thirty-four meters high, each side of the base was seventy meters. It had already been thirty-five years since it was built, but this broadcast tower was still the tallest building in Japan. He stood stock-still and simply took in its majesty for a while before hurrying toward it.

He paid the student entry fee at the gate and got on the high-speed elevator. The cabin started its ascent with a grinding acceleration, and an exhilaration still different from vertical takeoff in the virtual world came over him. As he had two days earlier when they climbed the government office, he unconsciously pressed himself up against the glass wall. If Chiyuri had been there next to him, she would no doubt have said, in an exasperated way, “You really do like high places, huh?”

A minute or so later, the elevator arrived at the observation deck and ejected Haruyuki along with a few tourists.

Somehow keeping himself from immediately running to the window, he glanced around at his surroundings. It being a weekday evening, there were very few minors. And the few that were there were university students on what looked like dates or young children with their parents. He didn’t see anyone in junior or senior high school loitering around without an obvious purpose—in other words, anyone likely to be a Burst Linker.

Naturally, he could have also just connected his Neurolinker to the facility’s local net, accelerated, and checked the matching list, but doing so on a closed net carried the risk, albeit slight, of being outed in the real. And supposing he did anyway, the only thing he could do when he found another Burst Linker’s name was duel, and that wasn’t his goal on that particular day.

Thus, Haruyuki gave up on his visual scan of the spacious observation deck and walked over to the windows on the west side.

The absolute height itself was far greater than that of the government office in Shinjuku, and the view of the city spreading out below the clear night sky was the very definition of overwhelming. With large skyscrapers popping up here and there among tiny speck-like buildings jammed together, it was almost like an old-school circuit board. Moving his gaze beyond all this, he found the majestic figure of Mount Fuji lying hazily in the distance outside of the bewitching city. To the upper left, the setting sun, its rays shooting down onto the horizon, held a belt of black clouds, promising more rain the next day.

When he turned his face up even farther, the hues of the sky shifted from a madder red to a gentle violet. Jets flew in, wingtip lights blinking and winking. Sightseeing airships floated lazily overhead.

Right now, high above this sky, a man-made object four thousand kilometers long is coming toward us at the hypersonic speed of Mach ten. The instant the thought popped into his head, Haruyuki let out a gasp. The world’s so big. Vast. It’s just way too macro.

I’m sure the reason I love to look up at the sky is because I get this feeling. I’m fat and pathetic and short, but when everything else becomes relatively micro like this, it doesn’t matter. That feeling. It’s like a temporary escape or something.

And I know it’s the same thing when I’m Silver Crow and out there flying. In those moments, I can feel with my whole body the absurd scale of the Accelerated World. Compared with the infinite nature of space and time there, even the mountain’s worth of problems I have are nothing more than a momentary speck popping modestly up on the surface of the ground. It’s only when I’m touching the sky that I can believe that.

…But…

Then why did You look to the sky? I mean, why do You still look to the sky? It can’t be that You want to experience that fleeting liberation the way I do. If that was your goal, then You have more than enough power in the Gale Thruster to make that happen. So why on earth…? What is it that You want in the sky…?

These questions Haruyuki asked in his heart were naturally directed at his other teacher, Sky Raker.

He then came up with some kind of vague answer to them. Of course, he didn’t know if he was right. Or rather, it wasn’t a matter of right or wrong. Only when Raker flapped her wings of her own volition once more and raced through the sky would the answer appear.

Which was why Haruyuki being at the Skytree now and waiting for a portal to appear was probably a complete waste of time. If Raker shook her head with her usual gentle smile and told him she had no intention of going, that would be the end of it.

But, Haruyuki thought, no matter how deep the wounds she carries, Sky Raker’s still a Burst Linker. Which meant that she shouldn’t be able to sit there and not be excited once she learned about a new field in the Accelerated World, and one that was a bridge stretching out four thousand kilometers up into the sky at that.

Just like the excitement was building in Haruyuki’s own heart at that very moment.

As he took in the view of evening in central Tokyo, his time display rolled around to half past five. The predicted time for the appearance of the portal that Kuroyukihime had calculated precisely was 5:34:42. At that moment, Hermes’ Cord, soaring in a waveform orbit centered on the equator, would be closest to Tokyo.

He waited impatiently for the minutes to pass until there were only five seconds to go, and he connected his Neurolinker to the global net.

At three seconds to go, he took a deep breath. At two seconds, he squeezed both eyes shut. And then with one second left, Haruyuki shouted in a voice that only he could hear, “Burst Link!!”

Skreeeeee!!

The noise of acceleration crashed over his body.

Opening his eyes slowly, he saw the frozen blue of the initial accelerated space. Everything—the city unfolding outside the windows, the floor and pillars of the observation deck, the smattering of tourists—had turned to transparent crystal and was still. In the form of his pink pig avatar, Haruyuki gently stepped away from his real-world body. After taking one, then two steps backward, he suddenly whirled around.

Normally, the café and merchandise shops sat in the center of the spacious observation deck, but at that moment, they had been completely wiped away; it was nothing more than deserted floor space now. However, no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes, there wasn’t even a switch, much less a portal there. Haruyuki stood rooted to the spot for nearly ten seconds before heaving a sigh.

I guess the idea that a Space stage would show up was just a childish fantasy after all, he murmured to himself, and was about to plop down onto the expansive floor when—

Intense light mingled with vibration abruptly slammed into his entire body, sending him leaping upward. He lifted his face with a gasp; an enormous object was in the process of springing forth in the center of the flat space.

Stairs drawing broad arcs gradually rose up one at a time from the floor. On top of these a circular stage appeared, spinning, and then six slender pillars soared upward, carving out a regular hexagon. The transparent pillars held a pulsating blue light inside. As if in sync with this, shimmering particles rose up vertically from the centers of the pillars, stretching out almost to the ceiling, glittering beautifully.

“…This…It’s the portal to Hermes’ Cord…,” Haruyuki muttered hoarsely, and stood up. The despair he had felt only a moment earlier was completely forgotten, and he clenched the right fist of his pig avatar tightly. So his guess hadn’t been wrong. Who was it, again, who’d called it “childish fantasy”?

He raced over to the stairs, and without even a moment’s concern or hesitation, he raced up the staircase on hoofed legs. Vmm, vmm. He slipped toward the center of the circle through gaps in the six pillars, which hummed the low song of that omnipresent vibration. For the final step, he brought his feet together and jumped. But those feet did not come back into contact with the floor.

“Whoa?!” Haruyuki yelped as he watched his own pig avatar be broken down into countless particles of light. It was actually more like returning to his origins than being broken down. As proof that his virtual proxy was being returned to essential information, the white particles were made up of minute chunks of digital code.

Immediately after he noticed this, Haruyuki felt his consciousness ascend vertically at an incredible speed. But there were absolutely no Gs accompanying the takeoff. He simply became massless light, shot through the upper structures of the Skytree, and flew off into the sky.

And there his view was completely whited out.

The cessation of sensation lasted only a few seconds.

First, Haruyuki heard the hard clack of his own feet touching the ground. Weight abruptly returned to his body and he involuntarily fell to one knee. In this crouching posture, he ever-so-tentatively opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was the HP gauge in the top left of his field of view. Huh? he thought and stuck out both hands to stare at them. There, he found five sharp fingers on each, glittering silver. There was no doubt, these were the familiar arms of Silver Crow.

He panicked at the fact he was his duel avatar even though no duel had started, wondering if this was the lawless Unlimited Neutral Field, but he soon noticed that in the center of his green HP gauge, the English word LOCKED was displayed. Unable to immediately grasp the meaning of this, he twisted his head around for a while before deciding to put the question off for the time being. He took a deep breath, and here finally lifted his head to face forward.

“Wh-whoaaaaaa?!” he shouted and fell back onto his butt from the force of jerking his head back. Heedless of the awkward pose this put him in, he simply stared at the scene before his eyes.

The metal floor Haruyuki was sitting on ended a mere meter ahead of him. Beyond that was…sky. And clouds. The surface of the Earth below.

It should have been a familiar sight, considering that he could fly. But this was on an entirely different scale. It was so high up. Several times—no, maybe ten or more times the fifteen hundred meters that was the upper limit for the altitude Silver Crow could reach. The sky was dyed a deep ultramarine, and the clouds formed thin streaks or enormous vortexes far below, while the sea was indigo, and the land was hazy brown and green. If he fell from a place like this, he would probably be burned up from the friction with the atmosphere before he took any damage from the crashing descent.

Unconsciously, he inched backward, and once he was three or so meters from the edge and its lack of railings, he finally expelled the breath he was holding. He stood up from his prone position and at last looked around to both sides.

The gray metal terrace appeared to be in the shape of a large circle. Following the line of it, he naturally looked back. And…

In the center of the ring-shaped terrace was a curved wall.

No, not a wall. A pillar. An extremely thick pillar, looking to be about a hundred meters in diameter, stretched up vertically. Haruyuki was standing on the broad floor at its flange base.

“Is this…Hermes’ Cord?” Haruyuki’s voice was barely a whisper as he stared dumbfounded at the structure, an enormous tower, a would-be residence for the gods. The metal glittered sharply like stainless steel and stretched up endlessly toward the other side of a sky that changed from ultramarine to a deep indigo, the top of the structure melting into the vanishing point, completely invisible.

The space elevator in the real world was composed of several cables made from intertwined carbon nanotubes bunched together. It was barely two meters thick, more accurately referred to as a “rope” rather than a “pillar.”

But the object re-created in the Accelerated World that towered now before Haruyuki’s eyes was nothing other than a pillar. It was a tower floating high up in the sky on a superhuge scale, several thousands of meters tall and a hundred meters in diameter. Why on earth would it have been expanded to this size?

He could think about it all day long and still not come to any answers, but he felt like all this was merely the details. The key point here was that there really was a Space stage. No, he probably should say that the place he was standing now was a High Altitude stage. In which case, if he climbed this enormous tower, a true space environment likely awaited…

“This is way bigger than I thought it’d be.”

Haruyuki nodded firmly at the voice on his right. “Yeah. Compared with this, Skytree’s a toothpick.”

“Instead, though, there’re almost no details on the surface. I wonder if there’s an interior structure.”

“But I don’t see anything that looks anything like a door…Uh.”

Gulp.

His entire body stiffened. Haruyuki jumped up adroitly and whirled ninety degrees to his right, shouting, “Gah?! Wh-wh-wh-wh-who-who-who-wh-wh-wh-wh-when-when—”

Who are you?! When did you get here?!

That’s what he intended to cry out as a sharp challenge, but nothing more than a series of strange noises came from his mouth. The silhouette looking down on him expressionlessly from extremely close up as he did was—

Slender, dark red body. Sturdy thighs and forearms. Hands with sharp claws extended. Sleek tail flicking.

And from the mask with pointed ears sticking up from toward the back of the head and eyes shining silver, there was no doubt that this was a close-range duel avatar, one of the strongest Haruyuki had come across.

“P…P-P-P-P-Pard?! Wh-wh-what are you d-doing here?!”

“Pard,” aka Blood Leopard, level-six Burst Linker belonging to the Red Legion, Prominence, popped her shoulders up and replied, “Same reason you’re here.”

“Huh…”

His interlocutor was quite calm, so Haruyuki also finally calmed down a little and belatedly got ahold of the situation.

Traveling to this place most certainly wasn’t a privilege that had been given to Haruyuki alone. Any Burst Linker who learned of the news of the placement of the social cameras in Hermes’ Cord could consider the possibility of a new stage being added to the Accelerated World, and then guess that the time and location of the portal’s appearance would be here, and then be able to arrive as he had.

He was a little happy that another player had had the same foolhardy thought as he had and actually come all the way to Skytree like this, and a grin broke out across his face. But he soon arrived at another thought and his whole body froze.

And that was that it wouldn’t have been at all strange for one new avatar after another to appear there at that moment. He whirled his head around hurriedly at their surroundings, but he didn’t get any sense that a third person was about to show up.

As Haruyuki freaked out that it was too late to do anything, Pard spoke to him in a voice that was the tiniest bit exasperated.

“The reason you came through the portal first is because you dared to accelerate right there on the observation deck. I dove in the toilet on the first floor, so I was a little late. I’m pretty sure anyone else is going to be putting priority on keeping from being outed in the real, so we should have a few minutes’ leeway still.”

“O-oh. You did? Oh, right, I guess…” Feeling a belated terror at his own recklessness, Haruyuki now greeted Pard properly. “H-hello. Good to see you.”

He bowed his head at Leopard, who waved her right hand dismissively and continued. “I am forever in your debt. I can only offer my apologies for communicating via nothing but mail after events took place…”

These words were in thanks for how very much Pard had helped in resolving the enormous predicament Haruyuki had been trapped in two months earlier. The leopard-headed avatar shrugged her shoulders and responded at unusual length.

“NP. You really helped me out that time, too. The info you gave me was really useful in finding the security hole at Akiba BG. But right now”—she patted Haruyuki on the back, urging him to move—“we should use this advantage, since we have it. Let’s take a look around the pillar.”

“O-okay!”

As he walked, Haruyuki felt a keen relief at the fact that Blood Leopard was the avatar who had shown up after he did, since they shared such a history. They might have been members of different Legions, but they could still get along. If it had been Frost Horn, he would no doubt have grabbed Haruyuki from behind without saying a word and tossed him down to the Earth below.

They cut across the flange, about twenty meters wide, approached the pillar of Hermes’ Cord itself, and even touched it, but the glittering alloy-like surface was unmoved. Despite details like seams in steel plating, there were no handholds that would allow a person to scale it.

Pard scratched at the pillar with her razor-like claws and discovered that it was too hard for her to make a mark on. Curious, she walked around to the right, with Haruyuki trailing along behind her. The pillar diameter was at least a hundred meters, so following the curved surface all the way around was no mean feat. When the backside of the transport device finally came into sight, Haruyuki noticed something and cried out.

“Ah! There’s something there!”

He raced over, footfalls clacking.

At first glance, the objects appeared to be cars or boats. The streamlined vehicles, six or so meters in length, sat neatly in a line on an angled platform at the base of the pillar, glaring up at the peak of Hermes’ Cord. Ten of them.

The vehicles had no roofs; the seating area was completely open. At the very front was an operator’s seat for one person behind a transparent windshield. Behind that were two rows of two-person seats. Instead of tires, the vehicles were equipped with four large discs on the bottom, which seemed to be some kind of propulsive device. The smooth lines of the slender bodies created a form that hearkened back to the original meaning of the word shuttle.

“Wh-what is this…” Muttering, Haruyuki climbed up to the platform and approached the vehicle on the left end with a “1” painted on its side. The blunt iron body was cold and silent, no sign of fire in the engine. He stretched out a timid hand, poked at the smooth line of the door area, and instantly:

Beebong. A purple holowindow popped up. After a moment’s surprise, he peered at it. Pard, beside him, also brought her face in.

At the very top of the window sat a row of text in an inorganic font: 3D 18H 25M 18S (JST). These numbers, indicating a day, hour, minute, and second, were obviously some kind of timer.

“Hmm. So if this is a countdown, then it’ll reach zero three days, eighteen hours, and twenty-five minutes from now…so at noon sharp on Sunday.”

After Blood Leopard spoke, Haruyuki followed with the thought, “And then what will happen…?”

But instead of replying, Pard pointed at the lower part of the window with a finger very like the toe on a feline’s paw. A short sentence was also displayed there: WILL YOU DRIVE ME? And below that, there was only a YES button. He understood the meaning of the simple English question, but even so, Haruyuki hesitated about what he should do.

“If you don’t push it, I will,” Pard, ever quick to impatience, whispered in his ear.

“Oh! I-I’m pushing it!” he replied, flustered. He raised his right hand, resolved himself, and touched the YES button.

Instantly, a short fanfare effect rang out, and the English text changed: YOU ARE MY DRIVER.

A few seconds later, the row of characters changed shape once more, leaving behind only the lone word RESERVED. At the same time, an object appeared, as if oozing out of the surface of the window.

It was a transparent blue card. In addition to the mark “1,” it showed the same countdown as in the window. The instant Haruyuki took it, the next, and final, phenomenon occurred.

The streamlined machine transformed from a body color of dull iron to dazzling silver, making a noise as it did so. Haruyuki quickly realized that the shade, almost that of a mirror, was exactly the same as his—that is to say, Silver Crow’s—armor.

“I get it,” Pard said, as if satisfied, and stepped over to the shuttle with “2” painted on it. She touched the body, the window popped up, and she clicked the YES button without hesitation. When she deftly snatched up between two fingers the card that appeared, the vehicle body this time turned a deep red, dyed to match the color of Blood Leopard’s armor.

Haruyuki walked over to Pard, still holding his card, and asked his question anew: “Uh, um…So you and I are registered as the drivers of these cars or boats or whatever they are…I basically get that. But what’s this countdown? There’re still more than three days left on it.”

“Obvious. These shuttles won’t move until the timer reaches zero at exactly noon on Sunday.”

He nodded in an accepting way at this clear response before his next question popped up.

“R-right…B-but why such a long time…”

Here, Pard, rather unusually, opened the mouth hidden in the lower part of her bullet-shaped mask and laughed, sharp fangs glinting. “That’s obvious, too. The three and a half days we’re being given are a grace period to get a driver and four crew members ready for each of the ten shuttles. At noon on Sunday, we’re going to slam our feet down on the accelerators and head for the top of this pillar. In other words…” She pointed with her uplifted right hand in the direction of the distant peak, and then the crimson leopard-headed avatar said, almost singing:

“We obtained the right to participate in the Hermes’ Cord Race.”

It took a full five seconds or so before Haruyuki understood the meaning of those words.

“Then…that means…the finish line is the top of this tower, which means…s-s-space?!” he cried, his voice practically turned inside out, and Pard nodded.

“Of course.”

But before she could say anything further, they heard the sound of transit coming from the opposite side of the pillar. The Burst Linkers who had accelerated in the basement had likely reached the portal of the observation deck.

After a swish of her long tail, Pard touched Haruyuki’s back and whispered, “It would be best if we disappeared before they found us.”

Indeed, since there were only ten shuttles, the limit for the number of people who could still register as drivers was eight. Having those who would inevitably be left out come along saying the privilege should be decided in a duel would be nothing more than a hassle.

“I—I guess so.” Haruyuki agreed for now, pushing back the surprise in his heart, and her next utterance came flying into his ears.

“Once you release the acceleration, wait at the door to the parking lot on the ground floor. I’ll take you to Suginami on my bike.”

“Eee!” He froze up again. In the back of his mind, the violent power of the large electric bike Leopard rode sprang vividly back to life.

However, naturally unable to say, No, that’s fine, I’m good, or anything like that, Haruyuki simply bobbed his head. “Th-th-thank you; that would be great.”

“NP.”

And then the pair shouted the command together.

“Burst Out!”

Meeting Pard in the real again after such a long time, she was fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—not in the maid’s uniform of the cake shop, but a tight-fitting T-shirt and slim jeans.

His eyes involuntarily strayed to the unexpected volume pushing out against the tight fabric, a volume imperceptible when she was wearing the billowing apron. Still with no expression on her face, Pard pulled an extra helmet out of the under-seat compartment, plopped it on Haruyuki’s head, and straddled the motorcycle. After fastening the buckle himself this time, he hurriedly climbed up onto the seat behind her and timidly wrapped his arms around the slim waist before him.

At first, he restrained himself to the utmost in terms of the strength he put into those arms, but the instant the in-wheel motors roared to life in the bike as it left the Skytree parking:

“Aaaaaah!”

Just as he had before, Haruyuki couldn’t help but cry out and cling to Pard as hard as he could. That said, it was all he could do to endure the extreme stops and starts at each and every red light, and he didn’t really have the mental breathing space to pay attention to any sensations other than the ones that let him know he was still holding on.

They passed from Sumida Ward through Okachimachi and Ochanomizu, and right around when they were coming out of Iidabashi, Pard’s voice reached Haruyuki’s ears.

“It’s five till six right now. You got time?”

“Uh, y-yeah.”

The curfew set by Haruyuki’s mother was nine o’clock, so he still had time. He couldn’t say anything about whether she allowed him, still in junior high, to be out until that somewhat inappropriate hour because she had faith in him as her son or because it was too much of a hassle to enforce an earlier curfew. If he broke curfew once in a big way, he would probably find out the answer to whether she would get mad at him or not, but he didn’t quite have the courage for that, and so he replied, “I’ve got about two hours.”

Pard then said, so very casually, “If I had tea for that long of a time, I’d melt away.”

Huh? T-tea?

He didn’t even have time to really have that thought before the large bike pulled into a fast-food place along the road, turn signal flashing.

In the last eight months, Haruyuki had gone into this restaurant more than twelve times with Kuroyukihime and once with Sky Raker. Nonetheless, he had not the slightest air of being used to such a situation and broke into a cold sweat, anxious about the spotlight of What is even up with such a mismatched couple? most certainly being shone on him.

Telling himself that he was being too self-conscious, that no one was even paying attention to them at all, he sat down facing Blood Leopard in a booth and tried to block out the other customers from his mind by focusing on the teriyaki burger meal Blood Leopard had treated him to.

For a brief moment, he thought he might succeed somehow.

And then Pard pulled a red XSB cable from a pouch on her belt, leaned forward, and stabbed one end of it into Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. With no expression on her face, she jammed the other end into her own.

Not able to hide from the wired connection warning that appeared in his field of view or the sight of the junior and senior high students in the shop very obviously staring at him and whispering to one another, Haruyuki ended up shrinking into himself, a total mess, cold sweat dripping down his face and all over his body.

It was clear that Pard paid absolutely no attention to customs such as the length of a couple’s direct-connect cable being an indication of their progress in dating, and Haruyuki, unable to liberate himself from such concerns, asked in neurospeak that was almost a shriek, “Oh! Uh, uh, um, wh-wh-why direct?”

Her reply was quick and simple.

“So we can talk while we eat.”

“…Right” was the only reply Haruyuki could give.

Pard displayed some serious technique in talking via the cable while digging into her hamburger as advertised. This seemed easy in principle, but there was a real risk of biting your tongue if you accidentally tried to speak with your mouth.

“Do you know how to dive into the stage for the race on Sunday?”

“Huh?” Haruyuki stopped chewing the fry in his mouth to answer the abrupt question. “We don’t just use the portal at Skytree again?”

“No need. The card you got when you registered as a driver is an item called a Transporter. It’ll simultaneously move a maximum of ten directing Burst Linkers.”

“W-wow…So then, we just get together in Suginami and use this, and we can go straight to Hermes’ Cord?”

“Yes.”

This was a huge relief. Because if, hypothetically, Kuroyukihime ended up taking part in the race, it was just too big of a risk for her to connect even for an instant to an external net in distant Sumida Ward, bound as she was by the sudden-death rules as a level niner.

After breathing a sigh of relief and biting into his hamburger, Haruyuki felt a rudimentary question rise belatedly to the surface. Ever since he had jumped into the portal at Skytree, he had been drifting along where the current took him, but the real issue—

“The real issue here is why are we suddenly racing? Those machines were prepared not by any player but by the system, which means the admin side of Brain Burst. It’s been eight months already since I became a Burst Linker, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single game master event like this.”

At Haruyuki’s inquiry, Pard thought for approximately half a second before replying, “It’s true that the BB admin normally never makes you feel their presence. But when there’s a large-scale update in the Accelerated World, there’re sometimes one-off events like this one. Like the year before last, when Tokyo Grand Castle opened…”

Grand Castle was a large theme park in the Bay Area. It ended up being a hot topic, this fortress city like something out of medieval Europe built with actual rocks, daring to take up the theme of “reality” during the heyday of full-dive technology.

“The day the social camera net started operating there, there was this event in the Accelerated World where you had to fight through swarms of monsters in the city and try to get the throne in the castle. My team was so close when we rubbed up against a large gang from the blue team and we all went down. If that jerk Horn shows up this time, I’m going to let him have it.”

Flames roared to life in Pard’s eyes, and Haruyuki unconsciously shrank into himself before managing to get a reply out.

“R-right, I get it. So then this race is…like an event to celebrate the addition of a new stage? Which means that the race only happens once…?”

“Pretty much.”

In that case, he was incredibly lucky to have been able to reserve one of only ten machines. After shouting, Mega lucky! in his heart, Haruyuki hurriedly banished that thought. He definitely hadn’t gone to Hermes’ Cord to obtain the right to participate in an open event. He had set his sights on the pinnacle of the space elevator because he had something he really needed to tell Her, Sky Raker.

Well, there is that.

Thinking there were other things he should at least know as basic knowledge, Haruyuki timidly let a question flow through the direct circuit. “Um…Pard. So like in the race, uh, if you come in first or second or whatever, is there some kind of—”

“Of course there is.” Blood Leopard nodded readily, not letting him get to the end of the question. “Probably some burst points. Or an Enhanced Armament or some other item. Should be some kind of prize.”

“W-wow, really?”

Although he tried to feign calm, the huge gulping motion he made with his throat apparently gave him away, and Pard grinned. Neatly folding up the paper wrapper of the hamburger she had finished in no time flat, she said with utter calm, “Best not to get your hopes too high. It definitely won’t be enough points to disrupt the power balance between the Legions. And more than that…” Here, she paused for a moment before she, the senior member of Prominence, shook the plait hanging down from her head and asked, “Will all five members of your Legion be in the race?”

“Huh?…Ummm, the shuttle holds five people, so…” Haruyuki, about to nod his agreement, forced his head to halt.

No matter how well they got along, or how she gave him rides on her motorcycle and treated him to hamburgers, Pard was, in the end, not on his side. She was a key member of the Red Legion, which might one day come up against the Black Legion. What was he doing carelessly telling someone like this about the movements of Kuroyukihime, who was bound by the rules of sudden death?

Perhaps having immediately seen through this hesitation on the part of Haruyuki, Pard quickly shook her head lightly. “I’m not thinking of using this opportunity to take the Black King’s head or anything. And HP gauges are locked during the event, so, I mean, that’s not even possible.”

“L-locked…?” Repeating the word, Haruyuki finally remembered. When he had been sent to Hermes’ Cord earlier, the lone word LOCKED had indeed been clearly stamped on his own HP gauge. “Uh, umm…So that means that no one can take damage or give damage during the event?”

Although Pard did make a show of thinking about this question momentarily, she soon nodded. “Yes.”

“Then why do we need four people for the shuttle crew? I figured we needed them to attack the other teams or defend or whatever…”

“Yes to that, too. The shuttle itself’ll probably have an HP gauge, and once that drops to zero, you’re destroyed. It was like that at the Grand Castle event. A game where each team carried an orb they were given, up to the throne on the top floor of the castle. The idea was that the players didn’t die, but the orb lost HP in attacks by the monsters or other teams.”

Haruyuki nodded at Blood Leopard’s words, impressed. With that setup, even in the rather lukewarm situation where their HP gauges were protected, the race could end up being very hot indeed.

“I get it…So that’s how it works. If that’s it, then I think all five members of our Legion will be in the race. But…why do you ask?”

Haruyuki turned a puzzled look on Pard, and in an extremely rare occurrence, she seemed to be struggling with what to say.

But the hesitation disappeared in a mere second.

“There are two people who are very important to me in the Accelerated World.” The quiet thought came through the red cable. “One is the king I serve. Someone I want to protect no matter what happens. And the other is my eternal rival. We became Burst Linkers at basically the same time, and we’ve fought countless duels. ‘Strato Shooter,’ ‘ICBM’…”

Haruyuki instantly grasped who those two names referred to. “…Sky Raker…?” he murmured, and Blood Leopard nodded gently.

“I was so happy when I heard she’d come back. But she’s only participating in the battles to defend Territories, so I haven’t seen her yet.”

“Oh…You haven’t? Right, you haven’t.”

Currently, the Red Legion, Prominence, and the Black Legion, Nega Nebulus, were in the middle of a cease-fire of an indefinite term. Thus, Pard, a senior Red member, would have no reason to take part in an attack on the Suginami area.

Haruyuki took a deep breath and, in a move that was unusual for him, looked straight into the eyes of his conversation partner before saying, “The truth is, I want to bring Sky Raker to Hermes’ Cord somehow, for my own reasons. Even if she’s not onboard with the whole thing, I’m going to try hard to persuade her to come. I’m sure you’ll be able to see her on Sunday.”

“That so?” Her response was brief, but a faint smile rose up on Blood Leopard’s lips, and she slowly, deeply nodded. “Thanks, Silver Crow. I’m glad we could talk like this…Maybe it won’t just be the two of us, maybe all three.”

Unfortunately, Haruyuki had no idea what she meant by that. Thus, like an idiot, he just asked. But…

“S-sorry? What…Who would that be?”

Not telling.

Instead of those words, it seemed, Pard yanked the direct cable out.

Back on the bike, she saw him to Suginami, and after Haruyuki watched her fade into the night until her taillights disappeared, he started thinking absently.

There were about a thousand Burst Linkers in total. And nearly all of them lived in the metropolis of Tokyo. It was a number that very much did not allow you to remember all of their names, and the majority of them had a relationship that consisted of single-mindedly taking points from one another. And yet if you fought for long enough, at some point, relationships other than “enemy” started to develop. When he thought about it now, the first time he met his now-priceless tag team partner Takumu—Cyan Pile—it had been as genuine enemies…

In the back of his mind, the faces rose up and disappeared again: those of his Legion companions, starting with Kuroyukihime; then friends like Niko and Pard, his rival Ash Roller; and even Frost Horn and that gang.

Aiming for level ten as a Burst Linker was essentially equal to continually kicking down other Burst Linkers. Most likely, this was exactly the thing the mysterious developer was aiming for: Make a thousand young people fight among themselves, and select just one perfected player.

But even if that were so, even the developer couldn’t exactly stop them from developing feelings for one another rather than hatred during the process. The fact that Blood Leopard could care about Sky Raker like that, a Burst Linker she had never been on the same team with, was proof of that.

I want to be like that, too. The feeling swept over Haruyuki as he walked toward his house. No matter how badly beaten I get, even if I’m so frustrated I could cry, I still won’t hate my opponent. Because I love this game and the Accelerated World. Because I think I’m happier than anyone that I get to be a Burst Linker.

Really? Is that really all?

A voice abruptly questioned him.

At the same time, several shadows quickly flashed across the screen in the back of his mind. A rust-colored avatar like a steel framework. A layered avatar, thin jet-black planks lined up. And the no-longer-extant dusk-colored avatar with the spherical visor and long talons. The members of the Acceleration Research Society, a group that saw Brain Burst not as a fighting game, but rather as a tool for thought acceleration, and focused only on the acquisition and use of points.

Over these last two months, any activities they might have carried out had been entirely under the radar. But there was no way that they had simply vanished. They were almost certainly lying in wait somewhere in the Accelerated World watching vigilantly, hostilely, waiting for the chance to invade again.

ARE YOU GOING TO LET THEM? CAN YOU FORGET THE TERRIBLE PAIN THEY CAUSED YOU, YOUR FRIENDS, THE HATRED IN YOUR HEART FOR THEM, AND HOW THEY MADE YOU SUFFER?

Haruyuki didn’t notice that the voice echoing in the back of his mind had at some point stopped being his own and taken on a dark, warped metallic quality. Scowling at the throbbing sensation in the center of his back, he stepped briskly onto the site of his condo building.

IT’S ONLY NATURAL TO HATE GUYS LIKE THAT. IT’S ONLY NATURAL TO STRIKE THEM DOWN WITH THAT HATE. RELEASE ALL THE RAGE, THE RESENTMENT, THE HATRED, AND DESTROY THEM. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO DO IT. THE POWER TO TEAR OFF THEIR LIMBS, DEVOUR THEIR FLESH, DRINK THEM DRY OF BLOOD. THAT’S RIGHT.

EAT THEM. EAT THEM. EAT THEM. EAT THEM. EAT—

“Shut up!!” he cried in a strangled voice, hanging his head low. He stopped in front of the main entrance to the shopping mall, and residents of the buildings and various shoppers went around him as if he were just another obstacle.

Among the countless pairs of shoes flowing to both sides, he felt like he saw talons glittering the purple of dusk and squeezed both eyes shut tight. In his head, he told himself firmly, If they show up again, I’ll fight them. But it won’t be because I hate them. It’ll be because I love the Accelerated World and because I believe in bonds other than hostility there. I’ll fight to protect that.

REALLY?

The voice left this word like a creaking laugh before receding. The throbbing in his back finally faded and disappeared.

He let out a long breath and rubbed palms soaked with sweat along his trousers before he set out with heavy feet, head still hanging, for his deserted condo.