1

“Is this your car, Master?” Haruyuki asked abruptly from the backseat, unable to completely overcome the nervousness he felt at the upcoming meeting of the Seven Kings.

“Not likely.” In the driver’s seat, “Master”—aka Fuko—turned her head, surprised. “It’s my mother’s. There’s totally no way I could buy a car on my allowance. I’m still in high school.”

“I—I guess so!”

The EV was cutely rounded, the light, cream-yellow interior real leather, and an emblem patterned after a snake and a cross sat in the middle of the steering wheel. It was the mark of an old Italian automaker Haruyuki knew very well. The price was probably well beyond what any young person with a job could afford, much less a university student.

“You just seem really used to driving it, so I thought maybe. So…you paid for your license yourself, I guess?”

“Ha-ha, of course.” The answer to his timidly voiced second question came not from Fuko, but rather Kuroyukihime in the passenger seat. “Fuko turned sixteen this year, which means she’s a grown-up now. She can get her license and get married, unlike the rest of us.”

“Sacchi, don’t put it like that…”

Huh. So she’s a grown-up, huh? Haruyuki shook his head quickly at this momentarily unsteadying thought and got his head back on track.

They had in fact lowered the age at which you could obtain a regular automobile driver’s license from eighteen to sixteen, seven or eight years ago. The reason was ostensibly that the rate of traffic accidents had dropped dramatically with the completion of the social camera network and vehicle control AI being made mandatory, but this, in fact, seemed to not be the whole story.

Japan in the 2040s was on the brink of a total collapse of the nation’s social security system due to the unbounded decline in the birth rate and the rapidly aging population. The generation currently working could no longer completely support public expenditures such as medical and caregiving costs, what with public pensions increasing year after year, too. Thus, it appeared the government intended to also increase the number of young people legally allowed to work by lowering the age at which a person could obtain certifications or qualifications, typified by the driver’s license. In fact, the Labor Standards Act had also been revised at the same time to allow young people to enter into full-time employment from the age of sixteen.

In other words, in the eyes of the law, Fuko was already more adult than child. And given that she was fifteen that year, Kuroyukihime would be in the same position the following year. Haruyuki’s time, too, would come in a mere two years. Obviously, he wasn’t actually going to get a job right after finishing junior high, so in practical terms, he would continue to be a child, but even still, he couldn’t help but feel a certain uneasiness about the whole thing.

Just how long can I keep being the me that I am now?

After this thought popped into his head, Haruyuki laughed wryly to himself. He had for some time now felt the longing to not be the him he had been back then, to run off somewhere far away. And it wasn’t like this desire had vanished. He hated the way he looked, and he still couldn’t get himself to like junior high.

But if some godlike presence had come along just then and said it could make him a different person in a different place, he would no doubt have refused. This place—the backseat of the car Fuko was driving in the short term, his own corner of the Accelerated World as a Burst Linker in the long term—or, put differently, his place as a player of Brain Burst, boasting as it did a vast scale and incredible detail, a game that gave him endless thrills…He could ask for nothing more, not a single thing.

But even this wouldn’t last forever.

Brain Burst was a game. And a game had to end at some point. In fact, the reason Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime fought was precisely in order to reach that ending.

He didn’t know at that point what form this ending would take. He had no idea if Kuroyukihime would reach her long-sought level ten, thus ending the entire game of Brain Burst itself, or if the right to play would be mercilessly ripped away with the inevitable arrival of the end of their childhood, or if some other ending entirely awaited them.

Which was exactly why he had to give it everything he had now. He would throw all his energy into playing, into having fun, into protecting. Into this world where he and the people he loved could be together.

Haruyuki clenched his hands into fists as he made this vow in his heart in the somewhat small rear seat. But he soon remembered the situation he was in and let out a deep sigh. If he was honest with himself, he was in no position to be talking tough about protecting anything.

First on the agenda for the meeting of the Seven Kings, less than twenty minutes from that moment, were countermeasures for the Acceleration Research Society, the mysterious and destructive organization that had suddenly appeared in the world of Brain Burst. But the second item was how to deal with the impossibly resurrected Enhanced Armament, the Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster.

Both of these issues had been, until a mere week earlier, nothing but talk up in the clouds for level-fiver Haruyuki. He had been content to simply gaze on from the sidelines as the kings and those closest to them debated such matters. But he had now been dragged far from the sidelines and forced to stand center stage.

Because the one who had brought back from oblivion the Armor of Catastrophe to become the sixth-generation Chrome Disaster was Silver Crow—Haruyuki himself.

“No need to be nervous, Haruyuki.”

He jerked his head up at the gentle words coming from the front seat.

The owner of the voice suddenly pulled the lever to recline the passenger seat and leaned way back. Hurriedly fleeing to the driver’s side, Haruyuki watched as the seat fell into a fully flat position. Long black hair flowed down, some of it touching Haruyuki’s knees.

Unusually for her, Kuroyukihime was out of uniform today and in a tight-fitting, patterned T-shirt with slim gray jeans. She had layered on top of that a thin, short-sleeved shirt made of punched leather. Black, of course, in contrast with Fuko’s more feminine ivory dress with leggings that reached midcalf, but Kuroyukihime’s crisp, almost terrifying beauty was not lessened in the slightest.

Now lying down in front of Haruyuki, she stretched out her right hand, grabbed on to the collar of his T-shirt with her fingertips, and yanked him toward her. He pitched forward and a sweet fragrance wafting up to his nose, different from the scent of the car, and the gears in his brain ground almost to a halt.

“You have nothing to be afraid of. It’s okay. I won’t let those kings lay a hand on you. I’ll protect you.”

As she murmured the words so close to his face, he felt even dizzier, but he forced himself to put his brain into gear again. “Th-thank you,” he replied. “But…all the other kings naturally want to take action against Silver Crow, right? Which means…the Judgment Blow from the Legion Master.”

“I suppose they do.”

“Won’t…won’t it be bad for you if you refuse? Like, I mean, in terms of your standing or whatever?”

Haruyuki knew from experience just how cruel a majority wearing the mantle of justice could be. The delinquents who had so ruthlessly bullied him in seventh grade hadn’t started doing so out of some irrational violent impulse. They had first approached him under the guise of friendship, and the instant Haruyuki refused their invitation and tried to put some distance between them, they bared their fangs in the name of friendship betrayed.

And this time, in theory, the odds were likely not with Kuroyukihime, but with the kings. The Armor of Catastrophe was a curse to which too many had been sacrificed since the dawn of the Accelerated World, and Haruyuki knew only too well that it needed to disappear. He had actually been working on annihilating it himself for a while now. But if that proved impossible, then the Armor would have to be dealt with, together with the Burst Linker who owned it. If Kuroyukihime rejected this “just” opinion, what kind of mental and physical pressure would the kings put on her? That was Haruyuki’s concern. But…

“Ha-ha-ha! After all this time? What are you talking about?” He blinked rapidly at the light laughter that came flying his way. Then Kuroyukihime’s smile took on a daring edge. “I’m already their enemy,” she intoned quietly. “I won’t have anything to do with their idiotic nonaggression pact, either. And if they have any complaints, the kings could just come at me themselves in a duel. Although that is exactly what I want.”

“…Kuroyukihime…”

Seriously. She’s just so strong, so cool…so awesome.

Of course, Haruyuki didn’t have the ability to take the deep emotions in his heart and put them into words; all he could do was stare wholeheartedly at the obsidian eyes twinkling so near his own face.

The sharp glint in her eyes softened, and as she met his gaze, she smiled gently, softly. Her lips moved slightly, and her barely audible whisper rippled in the air between them. “Now that I’m thinking about it, you’ve been the one protecting me right from the start, hmm?” Fingers stretched out effortlessly to caress his cheek.

“That’s…,” Haruyuki somehow managed to reply hoarsely, heart pounding. “That’s not true at all. I’m the one who’s—”

But Kuroyukihime ran her index finger along his cheek, shutting down any arguments. “I’m your ‘parent.’ I have the right to protect you. Which is why you should simply lean on me now. You don’t have to say anything.”

“…Kuroyukihime.” His eyes still locked with hers and, chest suddenly full, her name was as much as Haruyuki could manage.

The swordmaster returned a gentle nod and, fingertips still on his cheek, she softly repeated, “I promise. I will protect you.”

“…Okay. Okay…I trust yngerk!”

A mess of noise drowned out the end of his sentence, as he was crushed by the driver’s seat back dropping onto him abruptly.

A hand reached over the edge of the seat to yank on Haruyuki’s left ear, followed by Fuko’s face popping out, cheeks puffed out. “Look, Sacchi!” she said indignantly.

“Corvus! Getting carried away all by yourselves in someone else’s car is not okay!”

It was almost 2:30 PM by the time the front seats had been returned to their original positions and Haruyuki had pushed himself deep into the backseat. Outside, the mid-June sky was slightly cloudy, a bit grumpy, but they could see pops of pale blue here and there. A sudden thunderstorm seemed unlikely, so there was no need to worry about Neurolinker connection problems.

Kuroyukihime cleared her throat lightly. “This meeting is not going to be in Battle Royale mode,” she said, sounding much more nervous. “Not everyone connected is going to be a duel opponent. Instead, the duel is between our host, the Blue King, and a close associate, with the rest of us automatically diving as the Gallery. Which means we don’t need to consider the risk of anyone attacking us.”

“Um…Even attacks via the Incarnate System?”

“Yes,” Fuko replied. “Even if someone were to try and use Incarnate, it’s impossible for the Gallery to attack or be attacked in a general duel field. Members of the Gallery come into the stage without HP gauges. The reason both participants and spectators got hurt by Rust Jigsaw’s Incarnate in the Hermes’ Cord race last week was because of the Special Field status. Everyone had HP gauges, but the values were locked.”

“Oh, that’s right…I just…Somehow, it’s like…,” Haruyuki muttered unintelligibly.

“Somehow,” Kuroyukihime interrupted quietly, “it’s as if an opening was deliberately left for someone to use Incarnate to destroy the race. Is that it?”

He hurriedly shook his head. “Huh? N-no, I wouldn’t go that far.” Because if he did, he would be forced to accept what inevitably followed from that thought: that the developer of Brain Burst approved of Rust Jigsaw’s destructive behavior.

But there was no way. That couldn’t be true. The exact motives of the unknown developer were still a mystery, but Haruyuki had come to feel a nebulous sort of respect for him or her as a gamer. A person who could build and maintain this sort of fun, exciting, and totally compulsive game—no, world—would never help anyone who played as dirty as the Acceleration Research Society.

“Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime’s gentle voice called him out of his thoughts when he began to forcefully grind his teeth. “Listen. Remember this at least: The main actor in the Accelerated World is each and every Burst Linker. This means you as well. The choice of how you’ll commit to this world is left entirely to you. Whatever the intentions of the developer.”

“…Right!” He nodded fervently, while the clock in the edge of his field of view announced that they had ten seconds to go.

“Good answer. All right, then, everyone: Open a global connection.”

At their Legion Master’s instruction, all three pushed their Neurolinker link buttons. The global net connection display flashed, followed by the connection status, and then about two seconds after these icons disappeared—

Skreeeeee!! The sound of acceleration filled Haruyuki’s senses. The flaming text A REGISTERED DUEL IS BEGINNING! burned brilliantly in the center of his vision.