6

As if it had never been, the damp heat of the rainy season turned to a dry, cold wind and caressed his body. Beneath his duel avatar’s mirrored helmet, Haruyuki snapped his eyes open. This moment when he checked the attributes of the stage was exciting, no matter how many duels he fought.

However, just then, he had something in his heart that was double, triple, quadruple the concern. So the instant he saw the fiery sunset and the sea of golden grass swaying in the wind, he realized it was a Grassland stage and immediately spun his body around—and swallowed his breath when he saw this quadruple concern in the center of his vision: the appearance of the duel avatar operated by Utai Shinomiya.

To a certain extent, it was what he expected: a fairly small avatar. But she had a dignified silhouette that made the avatar feel larger, fitted with long shields hanging below her arms and an armor skirt that spread out, covering the area from high up on her waist down to her feet. Combined, the armor looked almost like a white robe and red hakama—a traditional Japanese outfit.

Furthering the impression was the fact that the top and bottom halves of her avatar had almost entirely different coloring. The torso and the arms were a graceful, semiglossy off-white, like her Neurolinker. But the hakama armor was a concentrated red, with both depth and brightness, different from the pure red of the first Red King, Red Rider, and from the transparent crimson of the second Red King, Scarlet Rain. Like the form of the avatar, this red was somehow Japanese—vermilion, perhaps.

The head looked very much like the real Utai’s. A fringe-shaped armor covered the forehead of the white mask, and a long stabilizer stretched out from the rear of the head. Eye lenses the same brilliant red as the hakama were clear and severe, yet cute.

Haruyuki had never before seen a two-tone avatar. It went without saying that Silver Crow was entirely silver, and the other members of Nega Nebulus were a single color. It wasn’t that there weren’t avatars with multiple color schemes, but the majority were simply different shades of the same color. The reason for that was that the color name of the avatar equaled the attributes of the avatar, which equaled the body color. The color name was always one word, and the color expressed was inevitably limited to one—or it was supposed to be.

Utai’s avatar standing neatly before Haruyuki, however, had her lower half wrapped in a fairly pure long-distance red and her upper half in a similarly saturated, peculiar white; each color represented fairly different attributes. What kind of color name could express both in one word?

Haruyuki forced his eyes away from the Japanese-style avatar and checked the name attached to the second of the two health gauges in the top left of his vision. Ardor Maiden. That was Utai Shinomiya’s avatar’s name.

He understood maiden. Like a young lady or a virgin. And that was actually pretty fitting for Utai. But he couldn’t immediately translate into Japanese with his own brain the key to it all, the color name, the English word ardor. If he had been in the real world, all he would have had to do was focus his gaze on the word to make a translation window pop up, but unfortunately, that sort of useful function did not exist in Brain Burst. He felt like it was a word he’d seen somewhere before, but he was pretty sure at least that it hadn’t been a word in any of his English textbooks before eighth grade.

He gave up on asking what her name meant, since it was just too stupid, and finally checked his tag team partner’s level. Seven. So fairly high indeed.

Having spent approximately three seconds collecting all this information, Haruyuki lowered his head. “O-okay, then, I appreciate your help. I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

When he lifted his head again, he had the sudden thought. Just like it didn’t have a translation function, Brain Burst wasn’t equipped with a text chat feature, either. How on earth were they supposed to understand each other? Sign language? Or maybe eye contact?

But as soon as this thought struck him, Utai responded in a way that made Haruyuki doubt his eyes—or rather ears. “Looking forward to it. And you don’t have to be so polite all of a sudden, C.”

C? Does she mean me? Like C for Crow?

Wait, that’s not the real issue here. Right now, I’m sure, there’s no doubt—she spoke. The mouth area of Utai’s avatar Ardor Maiden moved, and I heard a voice.

“Ah! U-um?! Sh-Shino—no, wait, uhh, what should I call you here…”

“Anything except Den Den is fine. In the past, I was mostly called Mei.”

“O-okay…Mei, uh, just now, you…talked.” In his immense surprise, Haruyuki ended up being fairly impolite, but Utai showed no sign of being bothered by this as she nodded crisply.

“I can speak like this only when I’m accelerated. In fact, you could say that that’s one of the reasons I visit this world now.”

Inside the innocent childishness and clarity of her voice was a strength that cut to the core. Compared with Haruyuki’s rattling speech, which wasn’t much different from him in the real world, her voice was crisp, as though she had taken voice training, with an overwhelming smoothness and rich inflection.

“B-but being able to talk in this world…I thought it was the same mechanism as talking in neurospeak with your Neurolinker…”

“I don’t know the detailed theory behind it, either. Black Lotus once said it was because of the depth of connection with my consciousness, which is different at a quantum level.”

“O-oh…I don’t actually get what this is, either.” Cocking his head, Haruyuki took in the full picture of Utai’s duel avatar once more.

Even though just the combination of the vivid white and vermilion was beautiful on its own, paired with the Japanese hakama, he almost felt a seed of holiness there, like his soul was being pulled in. Or maybe there was a reason for that—this color and form together called to mind something that existed in the real world. Something he’d seen somewhere a long time ago. He was pretty sure it was before his parents got divorced, and the three of them went out at New Year’s…

“Um, C. Although I don’t especially mind how long you look at me…”

“…It’s…a big shrine…first visit of the New Year…”

“I don’t particularly mind if you do your first shrine visit of the year in June, either.”

“After we prayed, we got our fortunes…Huh, I was the only one to get terrible luck…”

“The guide cursor has been moving quite energetically for a while now.”

“Pretty sure I lost big in that one…Huh?!” Utai’s voice finally reached his brain, and Haruyuki hurriedly activated the light blue triangle displayed faintly in the center of his field of vision. It was indeed rapidly changing direction from right to left. And what lay beyond this arrow was, of course, the enemy.

After all, this beautiful grassy field was not a virtual space for chatting, but rather a duel stage produced by Brain Burst.

“Crap! They’ve gotten pretty close!” Hurriedly readying himself, Haruyuki checked the enemy tag team in the lower right of his vision.

One was a level four, Olive Grab. He was pretty sure this avatar was a member of the Green Legion, but he didn’t know them.

Haruyuki gulped the instant he saw the other name: Bush Utan. Level three and also a member of the Green Legion, he was a Burst Linker Haruyuki had fought a few times before. But whenever Utan had appeared in Suginami, it had always been paired up with the motorcycle-using Ash Roller, whom he adored like a big brother.

Haruyuki cocked his head slightly to one side, but he soon pushed aside the weirdness of it. Bush Utan probably couldn’t make the timing work out with his big brother every time. At any rate, from the way the guide cursor was swinging, the enemy was already closing in hard, within twenty meters. Just a bit more before contact—or it should’ve been.

“Wh-where are they?!”

Standing on his tiptoes, Haruyuki stared intently in the direction indicated by the cursor. However, there was nothing but tall grass swaying in the wind as far as the eye could see—no sign of any enemy avatars. They were probably making themselves as small as possible and moving along against the ground under the grass like they were swimming.

As he whirled his head around, Utai next to him whispered, “C, it seems the enemy team’s split up into advance and rear guards. I’ll keep the rear in check; you handle the advance. Let me see what you’ve got.” And then she quietly pulled away to the right.

Utai prepping him for battle like this and appearing before Haruyuki and his friends now after her long retirement probably meant she was involved in Kuroyukihime’s Armor of Catastrophe purification plan. Apparently, Utai was going to watch this battle very closely to determine whether or not she would help.

In which case, he had to at least show her a solid victory, even if he couldn’t manage an easy win, but that wasn’t going to happen if he couldn’t even find the enemy. His opponent seemed to be approaching in spiral to the left and would already be in the ten-meter range before he knew it. When that happened, the guide cursor itself would disappear. Straining his eyes even more desperately, Haruyuki still saw absolutely no difference between grass swaying in the random wind and grass swaying because of the enemy.

Right, the sound!

He abruptly closed his eyes and focused every bit of his attention in his ears. There should have been the slightest difference between the noise of the enemy parting the grass and the rustling caused by the wind. He would listen for that.

Two seconds later…

“They sound totally the same!” Haruyuki groaned and opened his eyes again. The ksh-ksh-ksh sound effect was essentially uniform in all directions. There might have been the tiniest difference in it somewhere, but he would need some kind of miracle training to be able to pick up on it.

Eyes no good, ears no good. If he used his wings to ascend, he probably would have been able to find his opponent, but his special-attack gauge was still empty, and there were no objects he could smash anywhere around him.

He was gritting his teeth at his mounting frustration when the guide cursor abruptly disappeared from view. Or more precisely, one of them did; another very faint cursor remained, but that was for the enemy rear guard some distance away and no use to him now.

The advance guard—it wasn’t clear whether it was Bush Utan or Olive Grab, but whoever it was was currently moving somewhere within a ten-meter radius of him and planning the timing to hammer Silver Crow with a serious advance attack. Haruyuki could also try creeping along the ground himself here, but if he did, he would lose his mobility, Silver Crow’s greatest weapon, and there was a serious possibility that he would get pulled into a ground skirmish.

If this had been a normal duel, this would have been the point where he abandoned everything he’d been thinking up to that point and braced himself to be slammed down in the beginning of the fight, all so that he could fill his gauge and bet the rest of the duel on the strength of his wings. It was practically his standard fighting style, in fact. Because Silver Crow couldn’t take much of a hit and hit his breaking point quickly, he was not suited to fighting on the ground. He was at a disadvantage when he couldn’t fly, and obviously…

From somewhere in his heart, the thought continued. Utai Shinomiya had said she wanted to see Haruyuki’s actual power. And his actual power meant his true abilities. And really, he had had no excuses or reason to hold back. Above all else, success or failure of the purification plan hinged on this duel.

Is that really my only option? I have to have something else I can use to deal with this, don’t I? The moment the thought came to him, a single idea flashed in his heart like a bolt of lightning.

What would she do? What would the Black King do? She was basically the same sort of close-range, high-mobility type as Silver Crow. She definitely wouldn’t be looking around so feverishly. She would no doubt stand calmly in one place, wait for the instant the enemy attacked, and wager everything on that moment’s offense and defense. Right, that was it. If his enemies were a close-range type, too, then they’d at least have to come up out of the grass in the moment of attack.

His first move would inevitably be slower. Even if his enemy became visible, he wouldn’t be able to act first. But she had taught him a technique to change defense into offense in that direct duel they’d had a week before. He totally wouldn’t be able to pull it off in the same way as she did, but trying and failing was a hundred times better than giving up and just standing there.

Haruyuki relaxed his entire body and half closed his eyes. In the back of his mind, he called up an image of Black Lotus from their fight the week before.

In an almost leisurely gesture, the Black King had caught his right straight, which had all of Silver Crow’s speed and power behind it. Her movement had been not so much fast as streamlined; there had been no wasted effort. Instead of repelling the power of her enemy’s attack, she pulled it in, changed the angle, and released it. Black Lotus called this technique “the way of the flexible”—a kind of reversal via blocking.

Despite the fact he hadn’t moved at all, he became conscious of a high-pitched whine, and the noise around him receded. It was the feeling of acceleration he got when he concentrated with a certain intense focus, but this was the first time he had relaxed his muscles so much and felt this stillness.

A time passed—whether it was long or short, he couldn’t tell—and Haruyuki sensed the first blow coming from the enemy finally, from not sound or sight but rather the vibration of his enemy’s footstep.

Behind, to the right!

He raised his right hand as he turned around.

A small avatar with grass green armor that blended into the background rose up from the grass and launched a punch: Bush Utan. Mask reminiscent of a certain primate, his arms were abnormally thick and long compared to his forward-leaning body and compact legs. He had probably used those sturdy arms to “swim” through the grass instead of run. So, naturally, his feet would have made no sound. He would also have used his shorter height to his advantage.

To Haruyuki, this punch was essentially the ground below the deep grass leaping up into his face. By the time he saw his opponent, that enormous right fist was already closing in on his face, less than a meter away. And given that his footing wasn’t very solid at that moment, there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to dodge.

“Hoooh!!” Utan let out a loud battle cry, perhaps certain that his first blow would hit home.

In contrast, Haruyuki remained silent and loosely caught his opponent’s fist in his open right hand. He felt the force of his enemy’s right hook in his palm, a burning sensation. If he had tried to force a block here, his arm would have been thrown back, and he would’ve taken a serious blow to the face. But rather than block, he fused his own movement with the fist’s, and without resisting his opponent, he changed only the direction of the attack.

The key was probably the circular motion. In the virtual squash game he used to play every day, the already incredible speed of the ball increased exponentially if he simply smashed it as hard as he could with every stroke, so he would sometimes squash his own power and cradle the ball in the face of his racquet.

Remembering that movement now, Haruyuki moved his palm counterclockwise, following his enemy’s punch. Unable to completely quench the force, the armor of his right hand creaked and squealed. But at the same time, he felt the trajectory of the attack shifting bit by tiny bit.

At this point, Kuroyukihime had turned the attack vector one hundred and eighty degrees and sent it flying directly behind Haruyuki. He, of course, did not have the skill for that. But if he could turn it a mere ten degrees down and to the left, he could at least avoid a clean hit. He held his breath, clenched his teeth, and carefully, cautiously, pulled in the rotation of Utan’s fist.

Skrk!

He heard a quiet scraping, and the sharp sensation of heat raced along his left cheek. Several dots were carved off his HP gauge, but the massive fist merely grazed Haruyuki’s helmet before flowing off behind him, and Utan staggered slightly. His center of gravity was likely too high when he attacked standing up because of his overdeveloped arms and shoulders.

When he sensed his opponent faltering, Haruyuki unconsciously swung his right leg out to sweep Utan’s short ones out from under him.

“Uwaah?!” The grass-colored avatar tumbled forward with a shout, and then hit the ground with his back. Wham! The sound of impact. The tall grasses beneath him acted as a cushion, so there wasn’t much damage, but Utan’s HP gauge did drop a few percent.

I did it! Something kinda like that block reversal thing! He shouted to himself gleefully, but his delight was short-lived.

Utan was swimming deep in the ocean of grass once more, and only the slithering sense of high-speed motion reached him; there was no doubt he was planning another surprise attack. Haruyuki slowly crouched down and sharpened his senses.

The second attack came quickly. Mere seconds later, the vibration of the step came, this time from directly behind him. Without taking the precious milliseconds needed to look back over his shoulder, he thrust his right hand back. The instant he felt something, he yanked upward in a circular movement.

When his eyes finally caught up they found Utan, left straight knocked, center of gravity off balance once again. He extended his left leg, perhaps trying to force his fist back onto its original trajectory, and his body rose up even farther. Reflexively, Haruyuki followed Utan’s punch with his left hand and brought them both up to his shoulder.

“Haa!” With a short battle cry, he heaved the other avatar into the air with everything he had.

Utan flew even higher than the last time, spun through the air, and slammed into the grass headfirst. The natural cushion couldn’t completely absorb the impact this time, and nearly 10 percent of his gauge was shaved away, accompanied by a damage effect.

For a brief moment, Bush Utan’s legs stuck comically up out of the grass, but eventually, he pushed himself to his feet using the strength of his arms and whirled around to stand. Looking like he planned to dive back into the grass for Stealth mode, he retreated several steps and thrust a finger out at Haruyuki.

“Oh-ho-ho! Just as one would expect from the eternal rival of my bro Ash, you feel me?”

Haruyuki blinked hard. This was unexpected. “Huh…I—I am?” he blurted, somewhat unkindly, but fortunately, Utan didn’t notice his curt tone.

“You sure use a pretty weird defense technique, huh!” he yelled. “This is the first time I didn’t get the First Attack bonus in a Grassland stage! But don’t go thinking you’ve won with that, punk! We dump the standing throws and get down to wrestling, and I am totally unbeatable in this stage! Got it?”

“Unh!” Haruyuki had no doubt that this was exactly the case. He felt like he had at last awakened to the “way of the flexible” Kuroyukihime had initiated him into, but he wasn’t going to be able to handle throws or locks. If those solid arms suddenly grabbed ahold of his legs from below in the grass, he’d be forced into the ground fight he was so bad at whether he liked it or not.

As Haruyuki panicked, Utan calmly waggled his index finger. “But my fans in the Gallery wouldn’t like it one bit if I used a locking technique here, you feel me? ’Cause, you know, they wouldn’t be able to see it at all!”

Haruyuki spun around and found the figures of spectators, albeit only three or four—in addition to Utai Shinomiya as Ardor Maiden—watching over him from a little ways off, and his other duel opponent, Olive Grab, still invisible, apparently moving around a great distance away. Because there was absolutely no higher ground anywhere nearby, they were all standing in the same grassy field. And indeed, if Haruyuki and Utan were to wrangle and wrestle in the bottom of the grass, they wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“So what now? Oh! And don’t even talk about arm wrestling! Not interested, all right?!” Haruyuki said preemptively, and Utan slapped his fist into the open palm of his hand.

“Ohh, nice idea, man. Sucks for you, but those skinny little arms of yours are no match for these powerful guns of mine. That’s why I’m gonna use a new trick I just learned!!”

“N-new technique?!” He couldn’t help but be on guard. As far as Haruyuki knew, Bush Utan had only two weapons: the sheer brute power of those overdeveloped arms and the ability to stretch them out over three times their length when he used his special-attack gauge. He hadn’t gone up a level since they’d fought last week—he was still at level three—so he couldn’t have gotten a new special attack or ability. In which case, he had either bought Enhanced Armament with points or come up with some new fighting method on his own. Either was cause for alarm.

Haruyuki crouched, nerves tensed, while Utan approached nonchalantly. “Mwah-hah-hah! If you charged in here now thinking you were in for an easy win like in that Territory Battle, you got another think coming, homie,” he sneered, challenging. “I’m not the me of last week no more. You’re gonna freak when you see it—this is the power that changed my life!!”

He stopped and made broad circles with his arms to cross them tightly before his chest. He held this position for a moment and then flung both hands out to his sides. “IS mode activate!! Hell yeah!”

E-eye ess mode? Although Haruyuki was bewildered by the completely unfamiliar technique name, he still tightened his taut muscles further, ready to dodge a sudden weapon whizzing his way. But what followed overturned any expectations he could possibly have had.

In the center of Bush Utan’s grass-colored chest, a bizarre something rose up with a pop: a black semisphere, five or so centimeters in diameter. Although it shone with a deep brilliance, it wasn’t metal. It made Haruyuki think of plastic, or something more alive. Glittering like light was leaking out. And then, proof that this impression was correct: The surface of the semisphere split at the center into top and bottom, like an eyelid opening. The “eye” that appeared held a deep red light reminiscent of blood and stared hard at Haruyuki.

Bwaaa! Waves of pressure shot out from Bush Utan’s body, and the surrounding grass was flattened in concentric ripples. From the center of the eye in his chest came a black aura, gushing out to envelop Utan. Although he was nearly ten meters away, Haruyuki felt the prickly stabs of this pressure on his own body.

Clad in the thick shadow of this aura, Utan looked at Haruyuki with eyes that sparkled strangely and charged head-on without the slightest show of hesitation. He brandished his right fist with a war cry, shouting the name of a technique Haruyuki had definitely never heard before.

“Hooooooo…Dark Blow!!”

Vzzzm. A heavy vibration echoed through the stage, and the coating of night around Utan’s fist grew even thicker. He closed in on Haruyuki, clenched fist raised and radiating a wrecking ball’s worth of pressure.

“Hngh!” If Haruyuki had been thinking clearly, he would have had enough time to try for a block reversal like he had before. But he was assaulted by unspeakably sudden shaking and abruptly switched to Dodge mode, flinging himself to the left and just barely avoiding the ominous fist.

And then Haruyuki opened his eyes so wide they nearly fell out of his head, and all thought of a counterattack fell by the wayside. Utan’s empty punch plunged into the ground at his own feet, sending that earth and its dense grass flying like his fist was a meteorite impact.

Unlike the buildings and rocks, the ground in a duel stage couldn’t be so easily damaged normally. And yet Utan had gouged out a crater that deep with a single blow. Whatever this IS mode was, it was no ordinary power. Haruyuki would have been in serious trouble if he had actually tried to catch and return that blow with one hand.

What was that?! Special attack—no, Enhanced Armament?!

Oozing silent astonishment, Haruyuki reflexively checked the thin blue line displayed below Utan’s HP gauge—his special-attack gauge.

Doubly shocked, he gasped. Utan’s special-attack gauge hadn’t dropped. Or rather, it hadn’t been charged to begin with. But the black aura tinged with a red phosphorescence still radiated from Utan’s body like it was overflowing from within.

A continuous emission of light that didn’t use up his special-attack gauge. There was only one word in the Accelerated World to explain such a phenomenon: overlay. When a powerful imagination passed through the Image Control System—an avatar control path hidden under the normal Movement Command System—the signal that spilled out was processed as light that could be seen with the naked eye.

Having gotten this far, Haruyuki finally understood exactly what “IS mode” was: It had to be short for “Incarnate System mode.” Or to someone used to using it: “Incarnate mode.” The aura enveloping Utan at that moment was proof that the forbidden power of the Incarnate System was being invoked.

But why? The number one thing that should have been drummed into Utan’s head when he learned the Incarnate System was that using this power first in a general duel was the greatest taboo. And what was that black eye stuck to his chest? Incarnate was a power born from within the heart of the user alone. He shouldn’t need to equip an object like that.

Battered by waves of confusion, Haruyuki couldn’t react right away to Utan charging him head-on once more, shrouded in that jet-black aura.

“Unh…hooooooo!!” With a low, nasal shout, Utan showily brandished his right fist.

Haruyuki finally opened his eyes wide with a gasp, but he no longer had time to dodge to either side. Painfully aware of the danger he faced, he thrust his open left hand out; he had no choice but to use the “way of the flexible.”

“Hoooo! Dark Blow!!” Shouting the same technique name as before, Utan unleashed a punch that roared as it ripped through the air.

Haruyuki caught this fist—the overlay of it even more intense now—in the palm of his hand. It was cold like ice. Almost before he had the time to process this, he heard the screeching of destruction, and Silver Crow’s left hand turned into a myriad of metal fragments and danced away on the wind.

“Ngah!” Haruyuki groaned, a fierce pain racing through his body as if his very nerves were being ripped out, despite the fact that this was a Normal Duel Field, where the sensation of pain was suppressed.

But Utan’s fist still did not stop; it charged forward toward his face.

He desperately tried to cock his head to one side and dodge the blow, but the thick thumb gouged deep into the left side of his helmet. And again, the burning heat came. The enormous pressure repelled him, and he was slapped onto the grass back first. Haruyuki rolled around, pale sparks shooting out of his right arm where it disappeared at the elbow, a deep wound carved out of his helmet.

Looking down on him, Utan heavily pulled his right hand back while slowly raising his left fist high above his head. In the eyes shining in the slightly humorous mask, there was no sign of that vibrant gleam—his passion for the duel—Haruyuki had seen in their fight the week before or even mere minutes earlier. They only shone now with the excitement of beating Haruyuki down, of destroying him, of making him yield.

The left fist came at him for a third time, shrouded in the viscous aura of darkness. Haruyuki frantically brought his back up, deployed both wings while still on the ground, and vibrated the ten fins with every ounce of strength he had.

Utan’s fist pierced deep into the grass where Haruyuki’s torso had been only a tenth of a second before and the hard earth beneath it. Feeling his blood freeze as he watched this, Haruyuki ascended, working to put distance between them. Once he had gotten about twenty meters up, he finally went into Hovering mode.

He hadn’t fully digested the situation yet. Or rather, he couldn’t accept the truth. He managed somehow to move his mouth, frozen solid beneath his mask, and pushed the words out. “U-Utan…Why…That technique…How on earth…”

Haruyuki’s answer was an enormous right hand thrust up toward him in the sky. A low, broken howl slipped out from the mouth area of Utan’s mask. “Flying’s no good either…” He spread his five fingers wide, and the black aura collected and condensed there. Then in a slightly distorted voice, “Dark Shot!!”

A heavy vibration shuddered through the stage while an inky black beam leapt out of Utan’s palm.

Beyond surprised, Haruyuki could only watch, dumbfounded, as the lance of darkness closed in on him. Unconsciously, he flipped one of his wings and slid in the sky to avoid the beam’s trajectory, but not quite fast enough.

He heard a crunch as the center of his left wing was pierced. The metal fins scattered in an instant, the wing of a bird shot with a gun. His propulsion suddenly unbalanced, and with no time to pull himself together, he plummeted to the ground.

If there hadn’t been a thick covering of grass below him, his health gauge probably would have dropped into the red at that point. But even with the cushion, it dropped down to nearly 50 percent. He glanced over at it, shuddering at the terrifying force of Utan’s Incarnate attack, and somehow pulled his torso upright.

“Whaddaya think ’bout the power of my new technique, huh?” Bush Utan approached him, grass crunching, and stopped to stand directly in front of Haruyuki, a grin cutting his face in half. “Pretty great, yeah? I’m pretty much unstoppable now, y’know?”

The light of the bloodred eye in the center of his chest pulsed. Throb, throb. Feeling the hunger in that gaze, Haruyuki asked hoarsely, nearly done in, “H-how…H-how on earth did you get this power…?”

Thinking it through, the only conclusion Haruyuki could come to was that someone had taught Utan how to use the Incarnate System, the way he himself had been initiated into the key points of the system by Sky Raker, as had Takumu by the Red King Scarlet Rain.

But one thing wasn’t sitting right with him. Of the four types of Incarnate power—expansions to range, movement, attack power, and defense—an avatar could only master those in line with their original attributes. Niko had said this was a key principle.

And yet, although Bush Utan was a defensive green—the exact opposite of long-distance red on the color wheel—he had used a long-range beam attack to take Haruyuki down from high up in the air, which was clearly a range-expansion Incarnate attack. But right before that, he had used an attack-power-expanding Punch technique, and there was just no way these two Incarnates could exist in the same avatar. Even a master like Niko had acknowledged that she couldn’t use the straight attack or defense Incarnates, since they clashed with her own attributes.

These facts that outpaced his own ability to understand in hand, Haruyuki, still flat on his back, could do nothing but open his eyes wider.

Facing Haruyuki, Utan glanced down at the eyeball stuck to his chest, long, sturdy arms hanging loosely at his sides. “Yo, I told you, didn’t I?” His mouth moved, and a whisper came out, rich with a ridiculous passion, a child telling secrets. “I got it. Someone I know gave it to me. This IS mode study kit—ISS kit for short.”

“S-someone gave it to you? An ISS kit…That?!” Haruyuki muttered, his confusion doubling at the unexpected explanation.

The phrase “study kit” itself was something he was quite familiar with. Any number of education-related companies in the real world sold products for children for every kind of area of interest: piano study kits, gymnastics study kits, even bicycle study kits. If you installed these in your Neurolinker, you could get quite adept instruction from a virtual instructor in a full dive’s artificial reality environment. Haruyuki himself had a past with these he preferred not to talk about, having been assisted by how-to-talk study kits and similar aids.

But there was absolutely no way a real-world company could have been selling Incarnate System study kits in the Accelerated World. To begin with, the power of the Incarnate wasn’t something that could be learned with an instant method like that. And Utan hadn’t bought the kit; he’d gotten it from someone. Some other Burst Linker had probably transferred that black eyeball to Bush Utan and told him he could use it to study the Incarnate System.

So then who had he gotten it from? It couldn’t have been…It couldn’t.

“So…the one who gave you that, that ISS kit…was it Ash Roller?” Haruyuki asked nervously.

Utan got a curious look on his face momentarily before finally shaking his head from side to side. “Nah, it wasn’t. My brother, Ash…It’s still a secret from him. This sort of thing, he maybe might not like it, y’know.”

The tension in Haruyuki’s chest eased a little. Ash Roller was learning the basics of Incarnate from his parent, Sky Raker, although he was still very much the novice. He had no reason to reach out to suspicious assists like this ISS kit.

But his relief was fleeting. “But if I get super strong with this kit,” Bush Utan whispered, even more heatedly, bringing his face in toward Haruyuki’s, “then I just know my brother’s gonna be happy. You think so, too, right, Crow? I got torn apart by you last week, but once he hears how I destroyed you in IS mode, he’s gonna be super happy, okay? He’s gonna say, ‘Giga coooool!’ to me, right?”

“……!” Seeing the hard gleam of excitement in Utan’s round eyes up close, Haruyuki took a sharp breath. He reflexively shook his head vigorously. “Y-you’re wrong. That’s wrong. IS mode—I mean, the power of the Incarnate System isn’t something you should be learning with a kit like that. First, you have to face your own mental scars…You have to start with learning the source and the meaning of that power. Otherwise, the dark side of Incarnate will swallow you up instead—”

“You lecturing me now?” Utan spit out, and Haruyuki was at a loss for words.

Mask and mask came closer together, covering each other, and the Burst Linker who had only minutes before been a sunny, happy-go-lucky player uttered in a low, hoarse voice, “Crow. Talking like that, it seems like you know a little about this power, too. But you were in the race last week, so I guess you felt it with that body of yours. How Number Ten barged in and rusted us all into oblivion in an instant with the power of IS mode, all our shuttles and even the hundreds of people in the Gallery. IS mode has that kind of incredible power. The ultimate power, skipping over all the rules of Brain Burst, even. And there’re some jerks who knew about it and kept it quiet all this time. So what is even the point of worrying about the meaning of that power now? Actually…maybe you’ve been using this power for a long time, like maybe a little at a time in duels, and winning by cheating?”

Utan’s right hand stretched out, an enormous snake, to clamp around Haruyuki’s throat and yank him up with overwhelming physical strength. Now incredibly, uncomfortably close, Haruyuki saw in the depths of Utan’s normally green eyes a reddish-black light flickering periodically. He realized that this pulsing was in perfect sync with the light in the ISS kit eyeball buried in Utan’s chest.

“You gotta be strong or it’s all meaningless. If you’re not strong, you can’t get a win ratio worth anything, and you stay at the bottom of your Legion, your points dry up, you disappear from the secret Accelerated World. But it’s not like you could get how us loser Burst Linkers feel, not when you’ve had a rare ability like flight right from the start.”

I get it. I know that pain better than anyone. I’ve never ever thought I was a winner, not in the real world, not in the Accelerated World, Haruyuki wanted to tell him.

But before Haruyuki could open his mouth, Bush Utan rasped, “But this ISS kit makes even losers strong. Like the more of a loser you are, the stronger you can get. You saw, right? It’s only been three days since I got this thing, and I’m already pretty great at using IS mode. As long as I have this power, I can’t lose against close-range Linkers or long-distance types. I can beat all those Legion jerks who made fun of me…and my brother—I mean, Ash Roller, even. I’m strong…right. ’Cause I’m strong!!”

At some point not just the tone of his voice, but his whole manner of speaking changed. Yanking up the hand clutching Silver Crow’s throat, Bush Utan shouted, howled, “Strong! I’m strong! I don’t need a tag team partner anymore! Olive Grab, once this duel’s done, you and I are facing off! I’ll show you whose IS mode is stronger! Where are you, Olive? You better watch me finish this guy off!!”

Unable to follow the deeply incomprehensible situation or the extreme change in Bush Utan, Haruyuki’s numbed mind wandered absently.

Olive Grab was the name of Utan’s tag team partner. They were probably friends from the Green Legion, and from the way Utan was talking, Olive had this ISS kit, too. So then, Olive would also be able to use this astounding all-attribute Incarnate Haruyuki was being pummeled with. In that case, what was happening with his own partner, Utai Shinomiya? She couldn’t also have been taken down so helplessly like he had…

Before he could check the health gauge in the top of his field of view, he heard footsteps coming from his right and abruptly turned his head.

An unfamiliar duel avatar was slowly coming toward them, parting grass that swayed in the cool wind.

His armor was green mixed with tan, just like the avatar’s name—olive green. His entire body was slim like a tree branch, but his hands alone were incongruously large. And in the middle of his chest, a jet-black semisphere, just like Utan’s.

But the eyelid was almost entirely closed; only a sliver of the “eye” inside was exposed. The red light blinked irregularly, looking like it might go out entirely at any second.

When Haruyuki looked closely, Olive Grab’s movements were extremely awkward. He staggered frequently, just barely catching himself each time, and managed to advance somehow. It was almost as if…It was like he was running from something.

“Olive?”

The slender avatar raised its graceless head at Utan’s doubtful voice, two eyes open wide behind the vertical slits cut into the long mask. “Utan…H-help—” The hoarse voice was neatly cut off. He looked back abruptly and thrust out his right hand fearfully. A thin, shadowy aura enclosed angular fingers like tree roots. “D-dark Sh—”

The name of the technique was interrupted by a light fwp. The sound of a long, thin stick covered in flames—a flaming arrow—piercing the left side of Olive Grab’s chest.

Immediately, the avatar’s body shattered and disappeared. His health gauge had dropped to zero.

Haruyuki reflexively looked up at the four—no, three bars remaining in the top of his vision. Bush Utan’s gauge had a little over 80 percent left. Silver Crow’s was about half emptied. And the gauge of Haruyuki’s partner, Utai Shinomiya—Ardor Maiden—had not dropped a single dot since the start of the duel.

He had also seen that “eye”—the ISS kit, according to Utan—on Olive Grab’s chest, so Ardor Maiden had to have been hit with a preemptive Incarnate attack. In fact, Olive had, in his dying moments, tried to release the same long-distance technique Dark Shot that Utan used. That couldn’t have been the first or the last attack. So how could Maiden have not even gotten a scratch?

Forgetting even to breathe, Haruyuki slowly lifted his gaze from where Olive had disappeared.

Twenty or more meters away was the small figure of a duel avatar clad in the two colors of a white robe and vermillion hakama. The armor of her entire body gleamed, not a single dull spot to be seen. But her slight left hand was gently gripping something that had not been there at the start of the duel: a long, slender stick as tall as she was. The top and bottom curved gently, a thin string connecting the two ends. It was a bow.

Ardor Maiden glanced with cool eye lenses at Silver Crow and his missing hand and wing, and then at Bush Utan, holding him in the air by his throat. Her left hand gently lifted the large bow. She placed an empty right hand on the string and pulled lightly.

Instantly, in the space by her hand where there had previously been nothing, a thin line burning red materialized—an arrow. Straightening her back, Utai raised her right arm high and drew back the string in a lovely, almost charming motion. A moment of stillness passed, as though time itself had stopped. Then her right hand flashed as she flicked her wrist back.

The flaming arrow came flying, howling, and plunged deep into Bush Utan’s right forearm.

“Unh!” Crying out, Utan threw Haruyuki aside and yanked out the flaming arrow, which instantly burned into nothingness in the air. But not before Utan’s gauge had dropped more than 10 percent.

Rooted to the spot, Haruyuki—and likely Bush Utan as well—was awed by the imposing figure of Ardor Maiden launching the arrow from her bow, not to mention the power of that missile and the accuracy of her aim. The Japanese-style avatar approached, gliding through the ocean of rustling, swaying grass. Size-wise, she was smaller than anyone else there, and yet the overwhelming sense of presence she radiated didn’t allow him to feel this smallness; it scorched the air. To borrow Niko’s words, it was an unbelievable “information pressure.”

Coming quite close to Haruyuki and Utan, Ardor Maiden held her longbow low and horizontal. “This is an unexpected development,” she said in a nonchalant, ringing voice. “I had intended simply to contain the situation until the contest here was concluded, but I was forced to dispatch Olive.” She shook her head gently, as though victory with no damage was distasteful. She continued, a thoughtful monologue: “This ISS kit…If something like this is being freely disseminated, then the situation is indeed serious. We have to locate the source immediately.”

She lifted her face and looked at Utan with harsh eyes. “Bush Utan, who gave you that?” She cut directly to the heart of it.

The grass-colored avatar took one step, then another backward, overawed. Perhaps connected to his mental state, the light of the “eyeball” in his chest flickered irregularly, and the black aura over his body began to shudder violently. “I—I can’t tell…ya,” Utan replied hoarsely, shaking his head back and forth over and over. “I promised I wouldn’t say.”

“You did? If you promised, I suppose there’s nothing to be done, then.” Utai nodded briskly, and then shot an even harder look at Utan. “I will tell you this: That power steals more than it gives you. Bush Utan, if you so desire, the fire attribute of my avatar can purify the foreign body parasitizing you. There’s still time if you do it now. Unfortunately, Olive refused me, but…what do you say?”

Haruyuki didn’t immediately realize the significance of the fact wrapped up in those words, but after a second, his eyes finally flew open.

She could purify a foreign parasitic body. That was definitely what Utai had said. But that ability wasn’t readily available. Hadn’t Kuroyukihime and Fuko been talking about that before? That only people with the rare ability of purification could remove an object with parasitic characteristics?

So then Utai Shinomiya, Ardor Maiden herself, was someone with the purification ability. The keystone in Kuroyukihime’s plan to purify the Armor of Catastrophe. The person who would get rid of the element of Chrome Disaster clinging to Haruyuki.

He forgot the pain of missing limbs and simply stood there, while before him, Utai nodded her head slightly, as if to encourage Utan.

Several meters away, the black aura around Bush Utan weakened even further. “I…I just…wanted to be stronger…like my brother…strong,” he muttered feebly, taking a step forward. His arms hung by his sides, and his head shook in tiny increments; he was definitely about to return her nod.

But…

The eye in his chest opened up to a nearly perfect circle. The sharp red pulsed fiercely. Then in Utan’s own eyes, a crimson light began pulsing in perfect sync. Haruyuki felt almost like the eyeball—a supposedly simple object—was actually interfering with Utan’s nervous system.

“No…This power is mine…It’s my power…my strength…” His voice gradually grew lower and slightly distorted. The concentration of the aura covering him increased once more. His loosely open hands were abruptly clenched into tight fists. “I’m not giving it to anyone…You’re trying to steal it…You want to take it from me…No…You can’t…,” Utan muttered incoherently and abruptly threw his upper body back. The dark red light in his eyes and the third spot on his chest turned into thin, gushing lances. “It’s my power, my IS mode! If you wanna steal it…this is what I’ll do to you!!”

He flung his right fist up into the air, dark aura condensing around it. “Aaaaaaah…Dark Blow!!” he yelled, as he moved to bring his fist down and smash the smaller Ardor Maiden.

“Ah!” Haruyuki reflexively stepped forward to fly out under that fist. But before he could, Utai raised a gentle hand and stopped him cold. At the same time, she threw an empty hand up above her head. Compared with Utan’s enormous rocklike punch, those five digits were thin like fresh buds only just sprouted. There was no way she could stop that fist, Haruyuki thought. But…

In an instant, Ardor Maiden’s right hand glittered an indistinct orange. Fire. Cleanly transparent flames covered her small hand.

When the invincible fist was on the verge of shattering her slender palm, Haruyuki heard a terrifying crash. The pressure of the impact surged outward, shaking Haruyuki and the grass around them ferociously. But, unaware of this, Haruyuki simply stared, dumbfounded, at the scene before him.

Utan’s hand and Maiden’s were not touching directly. In the five-or-so-centimeter space between them, the black aura and the transparent flames were engaged in a fierce contest. White sparks dazzled the eye as they flew off from the edges of this battle. Two imaginations were fighting to overwrite each other; Maiden was defending against Utan’s Incarnate attack with her own.

But the appearances of the two avatars were a world apart. In contrast with Utan, face twisted with undisguised rage and bloodlust, Utai was simply, calmly extending her right hand. Her expression was even pitying somehow.

Suddenly, he heard her speak in a way that betrayed this impression.

“Bush Utan. You are thinking incorrectly. The power of Incarnate—what you call IS mode—is not something you can be given by someone, not something that can be taken by anyone. It is a projection of yourself born from within your own heart.”

“…Shut up. Shut up, shut up!” Utan groaned and brandished his left fist. But before he could bring it down to hit anything, the flames of Utai’s right hand grew the slightest bit more intense.

Instantly, the balance was shattered. Utan’s fist was violently repelled, and his entire body fell with it into the grass behind him.

They were simply at vastly different levels in terms of strength. Utai’s Incarnate was probably a defense expansion. Normally, red-type avatars couldn’t use this power, or they weren’t very good at it if they could. But given how she repelled that fist of steel with nothing more than her overlay, she was definitely no ordinary avatar.

Bush Utan seemed to sense this unfathomability of Ardor Maiden. Instead of trying to punch her again, he stayed down and began swimming through the sea of grass. Ksh, ksh, ksh. The sound drew a circle and finally melted into the infinite rustling caused by the wind. Rather than running away, he was likely intending to get some distance before attacking with that beam of darkness he took Haruyuki down with.

“Ut—I mean, Mei, he’s gonna attack with a missile!” Haruyuki whispered hurriedly, and Utai nodded lightly.

She took a few steps over to him and looked around the area. Once again, her clear voice flowed out over the grassland. “Bush Utan, there’s one more thing you don’t know. If you’re going to carry out an Incarnate attack, you must be prepared for something very serious. And that is the fact that your opponent may counterattack with Incarnate.” She stopped and glanced at Haruyuki before murmuring in a completely unconcerned voice, “C. You only have to do it once, but please defend against Utan’s attack. It takes a bit of time for my Incarnate technique to activate.”

“G-got it…Wait, what?!” Haruyuki immediately accepted, only to then panic. Defending against a long-distance attack originating from a place he couldn’t see was no easy feat. It was actually more like impossible.

However, Utai had already shifted her gaze away from him and begun to focus her mind. She stood, arms loosely apart, eyes closed, the gentle flames of her overlay enveloping her body.

And then her avatar changed rather unexpectedly.

From below the hair-type parts hanging down on both sides of her face, additional armor slid out with a clang and covered her entire mask. Only a thin eye line, tracing an upward arc, existed in the smooth, perfectly white, curved armor. Almost—no, exactly like an actual mask. The eyes carved into this new face were both gentle and severe, depending on the angle. At the very least, there was no hint of the innocence of her original mask.

The next change was the generation of the Japanese bow gripped in her left hand. It was no sooner engulfed in a raging fire than it instantly shrank down to a fraction of its length. Utai moved this thing, now a short, flaming stick, to her right hand, and held it out directly in front of her. Haruyuki guessed that it was a gun or something when—

Bang! The sharp noise reverberated in his ears, and the stick spread out in a thin layer into the shape of a metal folding fan, its base the center of the bow. It was not a weapon, much less a projectile; it was, just as it appeared to be, a hand fan. He wanted to shout out, Why’d you give up a good bow for a fan?! but he couldn’t disturb her concentration at this point.

Left with no other choice, Haruyuki prepared himself to defend against Utan’s beam attack and sent his eyes racing around his surroundings. If Utan’s overlay had been a vivid primary color, he might have been able to see it through the thick grass, but the black aura melted into the darkness of the depths; he could see no sign of it. As before, he could hear nothing in the way of footsteps, so identifying where the attack would come from was many times more problematic than guessing the trajectory of an oncoming punch.

No. Even if he could kill the sound of his movement, Utan would have to make extraneous sound just once before his attack. And that sound would be the call of the technique name. Unlike normal special attacks, this wasn’t required for Incarnate attacks, but immediately releasing the attack without the imagination trigger of the voice was a fairly high-level skill. Having only gotten the ISS kit a few days earlier, Utan wouldn’t have that level of technique.

Haruyuki snapped out the fingertips of his right hand and focused all his powers of perception on listening. The wind howling, the grass rustling—he eliminated every kind of noise from his awareness. He simply waited intently for Utan’s voice, the memory of which still lingered from a few minutes earlier.

Several long, long seconds passed, and then finally it touched Haruyuki’s senses:

“Da—”

Haruyuki’s eyes flew open. “Laser Sword!!”

“—rk Shot!!”

The two Incarnate names rang out at nearly the same time.

A beam of darkness shot at Ardor Maiden from behind them, and Haruyuki cut sharply upward. From his fingertips, a silver aura stretched out into a sword. The tip touched the jet-black aura—

Skriiiing! The sound of the collision was earsplitting. The beam’s trajectory shifted upward, and it just barely grazed Utai’s shoulder before narrowly disappearing into the night sky. Surprise raced across Utan’s mask as he stood up in the distance. But he quickly sank back into the grass and concealed himself with his high-speed movement.

Haruyuki had defended against that Incarnate one time, just as Utai had instructed, but he was certain that a second beam would be closing in on them in seconds. Not knowing what to do, he looked at Ardor Maiden next to him. Utan’s fighting spirit didn’t seem to be waning at all, despite the fact that Incarnate attacks used an invisible mental strength gauge rather than consuming an avatar’s special-attack gauge.

The small avatar was gently moving the fan in her right hand, face still equipped with the actual mask. Her movement was almost like a dance.

The moment this thought crossed his mind, something prickled in his distant memory.

He felt like he had seen this somewhere before. Right, when he was little, he had seen some kind of play at the large shrine where he had gone for his first shrine visit of the year with his parents. While mystical music played, a woman in a white robe and red hakama had danced with a fan in one hand. She had looked almost exactly like Utai did now, with a few important differences: The woman in the play all that time ago hadn’t been wearing a mask, and Utai’s movements were more dynamic. Her tempo was more varied; she stopped completely at key moments. Her dance was nothing short of incredible.

Taking in the way Ardor Maiden moved, he forgot almost entirely about the beam attack threatening to destroy them any instant.

A sonorous voice flowed from the mouth area of her mask. Not a yell, it still seemed like it echoed from one end of the stage to the other, a clear, strong “song.”

“The slight cool of the three heats.”

Suddenly, the clearing shimmered gently as far as he could see. Heat haze—no, fire. A gleam the same flame color as the haze enveloping Utai’s body blanketed the stage far off into the distance. This was meant to be the light of her Incarnate—her overlay—but the range was just too large. It was on par with or maybe even greater than Rust Order, the space-corroding Incarnate attack Rust Jigsaw unleashed to destroy the Hermes’ Cord race the week before.

As he held his breath, her high-pitched voice continued to flood his ears. “Is this the only escape from suffering?”

The world…burned.

Crimson flames roared up in all directions, nearly touching the sky, and the grassland around them instantly went up in smoke. The entire stage shone red, countless sparks flowing across the night sky like stars.

Only a radius of about two meters centered on Utai was apparently safe; the flames didn’t cross into this area. But Haruyuki had the illusion of fierce heat, enough to burn him up, and he groaned uncontrollably.

Ardor Maiden moved her fan gently. Before it, the blaze swirled even more ferociously, burning up not just the grass, but even the virtual ground beneath. And then the curtain of flames parted, and he could see a small shadow.

Bush Utan. His entire body was enveloped in the blaze, and both hands had already burned away entirely; they were gone.

But strangely, he himself seemed not to feel the heat. He was looking down at his own avatar curiously, essentially nothing more than a pillar of flame. Haruyuki reflexively checked the health gauge in the top right of his gaze and saw that it was dropping with incredible speed. Soon, it was less than 30 percent, and even when the gauge dropped into a red more concentrated than the flames, it continued to plummet without stopping. Twenty percent, ten. And then zero.

The human-shaped fire flashed for a dazzling moment and then disappeared.

Dumbfounded, Haruyuki brought his gaze back to Utai.

The small avatar was dancing even more fluidly. As he stared wordlessly, Haruyuki felt her dance was bringing him answers to his many questions.

Maiden didn’t just mean “an innocent girl.” It also meant “a woman or girl who serves a shrine.” Of course, the white and red armor was reminiscent of a shrine. This was the figure of a shrine maiden, after all.

So then the meaning of Ardor was fire. Hotter than fire, fiercer than flames, a world-destroying conflagration.

Ardor Maiden.

The shrine maiden of the inferno.