2
“What…on earth…?”
Kuroyukihime’s voice was hoarse as she struggled to push herself up on exhausted arms.
On the southern edge of the sprawling forty-fifth story of Tokyo Midtown Tower, the marble floor was melting into a bright-red pool of magma ten meters across. Half sunken into that pool, with its jetting flames and powerful heat, was an ink-black ball. Cracked and scorched by the magma, this object was the root of the evil behind the large-scale chaos in the Accelerated World—the ISS kit main body.
The eyeball-shaped thing had repeatedly fired terrifyingly powerful Dark Blows and Dark Shots and pushed Kuroyukihime and her companions to the edge of annihilation. But the magma produced by Utai Shinomiya/Ardor Maiden’s destructive Incarnate had gutted the mysterious monolith and nearly melted it into nothingness. Its lids were more than half-closed, and the pupil had lost its light; the fleshy armor that had protected the eyeball was also burned away. If it had had a visible health gauge, there would have only been a few pixels left in it.
But Kuroyukihime and the similarly prone Fuko Kurasaki/Sky Raker and Akira Himi/Aqua Current had taken their eyes off this melting body. Instead, they stared at the utterly unremarkable white wall off to the right. In particular, at a single spot on that wall, blackened as though with soot.
Mere seconds before, a narrow shaft of light had shot off from the kit body, pierced the wall—or more precisely, slipped through it—and disappeared off to the south. It hadn’t been an attack; rather, it appeared to have been a beam for the simple purpose of transmitting information. Whatever it was, the instant Kuroyukihime saw that red line, her entire body had grown colder than ice, numb to all sensation.
It had been seven years since she had come into this world as Black Lotus. During that time, she had repeatedly been faced with phenomena that far surpassed her comprehension and beings so fearful that they caused her to freeze in terror. But this transmission shooting from the ISS kit main body—not even three seconds long—made Kuroyukihime shiver with a fear greater than anything else she had ever encountered.
Malice. That beam transmitted to an unknown endpoint the vast malice accumulated within the ISS kit main body. The pure negative Incarnate energy, refined to hurt, torment, and destroy all Burst Linkers.
The Incarnate System was the strongest force in the fighting game Brain Burst. An imagination honed to the limit overwrote every kind of phenomenon and brought about a myriad of miracles. But given that it was still a system, the logic had its restrictions.
One: A player could not acquire Incarnate techniques in opposition to their avatar’s affinity.
Two: The more powerful the technique, the fiercer the exhaustion it brought about.
Three: Misuse would bathe the player’s heart in darkness, causing a loss of self…
In other words, there was a limit to the amount of Incarnate energy a single Burst Linker could produce. Even if you sought a power great enough to destroy the entire Accelerated World, the capacity of an individual mind wouldn’t be able to withstand that level of energy.
As far as Kuroyukihime knew, the most powerful destructive Incarnate user was Transient Eternity (aka the White King, White Cosmos), but even she would have to carry out dozens of attacks over the span of a half minute or so in order to destroy even a third of a duel stage—a power that barely compared to Archangel Metatron’s laser attack, which had decimated that same area with a single shot. Basically, that was the limit of an individual’s Incarnate technique.
The Acceleration Research Society had smashed that limit with a new system, the ISS kits. By giving dozens of Burst Linkers the same Incarnate techniques, collecting and fusing in the kit main body the rage and hatred each of them held in their hearts, the Society had produced a destructive Incarnate energy on a scale previously unseen in the Accelerated World. The fact that the battle with the main kit had ground down Kuroyukihime, Fuko, and Akira to the point of being essentially helpless now was proof of how fearsome this power truly was. It would have been utterly impossible for them to mitigate that Dark Shot again. Fortunately, they had just barely managed to protect Utai to the rear so her Dance of Flames could destroy the kit main body.
But the Society’s gambit hadn’t ended there. A beam of red light had come from the main kit as it was on the verge of death: all the destructive Incarnate saved up in its body. The ISS kits themselves had been nothing more than a means to an end. The vast refined and pure dark energy in the eye had been sent off somewhere in the Accelerated World. Somewhere, something was about to happen. Something worse—something even more frightening.
“…Haruyuki…” Unconsciously, Kuroyukihime gave voice to the name of her only child.
Haruyuki Arita/Silver Crow had flown off from Midtown Tower in pursuit of the Red King after she was kidnapped by the self-proclaimed vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, Black Vise. She was confident that Crow of all people would bring Niko back to them safely, but Black Vise was an enemy whose depths they still hadn’t plumbed. And it concerned her that the beam of light shot out toward the south side of the Minato Ward Area—the same direction in which Vise had fled.
Cyan Pile and Lime Bell had both gone after Silver Crow, while Blood Leopard had chased after Argon Array, and she hoped the four would be able to meet up, but—
Suddenly, Kuroyukihime heard a small thud behind her. Quickly looking back, she saw a small figure on her knees on the chalky floor. The Shrine Maiden of the Conflagration, Ardor Maiden.
“Uiui!” Fuko called weakly from the floor alongside Kuroyukihime. The sky-colored avatar tried desperately to stand, but having taken a direct Dark Shot hit, her legs were missing from the knee down, and her beloved wheelchair was lying on its side far away. The tips of Kuroyukihime’s hands and feet were similarly shattered, and she too had trouble getting to her feet.
“I—,” Akira said, the least damaged of the three. As she staggered into an upright position, the flowing water armor covering her body collected at her feet, and she slid to the rear of the floor. She picked up the utterly depleted shrine maiden avatar and made a side trip to grab the wheelchair before returning to them at a walk.
Having finally succeeded in standing, Kuroyukihime helped Fuko up with the battered remains of her right hand and sat her in the wheelchair.
“Thanks, Lotus, Curren.” Fuko took Utai from Akira and held her tightly on her lap. The additional Noh mask armor covering the shrine maiden’s face had been released, but there was no light in her round eye lenses. A pseudo Zero Fill—the impact of activating such a large technique, a large-scale, fourth-quadrant destructive Incarnate technique. If it had been an actual Zero Fill, she would have recovered at some point, but given the situation, they faced the possibility now of a negative-will overflow.
Fuko gently stroked Utai’s face. “You worked so hard, hmm, Uiui? You just rest now…It’s okay. We’ll be right here with you until you open your eyes, all right?”
Perhaps Utai heard this; to Kuroyukihime, it seemed that the shrine maiden’s white face mask softened slightly. Kuroyukihime and Akira exchanged a faint smile before turning their eyes to the southern end of the floor.
Utai’s Incarnate attack had ended, but the magma maintained its intense heat, shining a dull red. The ISS kit main body buried in the center of it—or rather, the main body of the main body with all its fleshy armor burned away—had lost its black-pearl luster and was now a hunk of half-burned charcoal. In fact, it had sent all its essential negative Incarnate energy off somewhere, so the black sphere was nothing more than an empty shell. What concerned her now were the words of the re-creation of Red Rider, which had been forced to parasitize the main body.
It wasn’t an Enemy or an Enhanced Armament. It was probably a duel avatar. If this massive obsidian eyeball known only as the ISS kit main body was in truth a duel avatar, then it—no, he or she—had a real name. And the Burst Linker with this enormous avatar had to exist somewhere in the real world.
“…Isn’t there a way to confirm the avatar name in the Unlimited Neutral Field?” Kuroyukihime murmured.
“No.” Akira next to her shook her head slightly. “Don’t think so…I still can’t believe it, either. That that’s a duel avatar like us.”
“Mm. But there is one way to check that, at least,” Kuroyukihime declared, and Akira and Fuko both nodded.
If the ISS kit main body, which looked to be on the verge of death, was not an Enemy or an object but rather a duel avatar, then a death marker would appear immediately after it was eliminated. And the value of the Burst Points added to their totals would be another way to make this clear. If, hypothetically, the marker did appear, and they confirmed that the kit main body was a duel avatar, then the rules of the Unlimited Neutral Field would be applied. The kit would regenerate sixty minutes later, but its essential Incarnate energy had been sent off somewhere, so all that would return to the spot was a powerless shell.
“If it is, then Maiden should be the one to strike the final blow and get the points after pushing it to this place, but…” She turned her eyes to Utai in Fuko’s arms, but the shrine maiden still showed no signs of regaining consciousness.
Fuko lifted her face and responded with a faint smile. “You finish it, Lotus. I’m sure Maiden would say that herself.”
“I agree,” Akira assented.
Kuroyukihime was forced to nod her own agreement. Strength had finally returned to her limbs, and they didn’t have the luxury of mulling this over any further. They hadn’t charged into Midtown Tower to destroy the ISS kit main body, but rather to return to the real world through the portal inside the main body and pull the direct cable out of Niko’s Neurolinker. Kuroyukihime moved to take a step forward with a shattered sword leg.
And then several things happened in succession.
First, an extremely intense pressure assaulted them from the south—a half-physical shock wave. Reflexively, she looked to the ISS kit main body, but that was not the source. It was coming from the direction of the red beam on the other side of the walls enclosing the floor.
“Nngh?!” She was bracing herself before she realized it, wondering if a new enemy had appeared. The source of the pressure was not Midtown Tower where she and her comrades were; the explosive Incarnate energy released by someone somewhere off in the distance had come to them like an air quake. But who on earth could generate that kind of force, enough to rival a volcanic eruption?
Kuroyukihime and her friends were stunned, albeit only for a moment, and simply stared blankly at the southern wall. So they were just a touch late to notice it.
They had thought the ISS kit main body was rendered immobile, given that it was on the verge of death, but this half-dead creature suddenly opened its lids. The exposed blood-red eyeball split in the middle, and a viscous black liquid splattered out, throwing a small something toward Kuroyukihime at incredible speed. A small sphere with tiny tentacles protruding like iron probes.
An ISS kit terminal.
“Sacchi!!” Fuko shrieked hoarsely.
Akira brandished her right arm, while Kuroyukihime also reflexively drew the sword of her left hand. But with fifteen centimeters of its length broken off, she was only able to cut away one of the kit’s tentacles.
In the next instant, jet-black needles plunged one after another into Black Lotus’s cracked chest armor.
“The Armor of Catastrophe…Mark II…” Haruyuki shook his head back and forth a number of times, as if trying to erase the words that spilled from his own lips.
The many plots of the Acceleration Research Society—the spread of the ISS kit infection, the artificial metal color plan, the abduction of the Red King, Scarlet Rain—the end point of each was the creation of the Armor. Aqua Current, aka Akira Mimi, had guessed as much a few days earlier.
But for Haruyuki, it was just too unreal. The first Armor, Chrome Disaster, had been a cursed Enhanced Armament, born at the dawn of the Accelerated World, accumulating power as it was passed down through six Burst Linkers—that last of which had been Haruyuki himself. Going by just the myriad legends that had sprung up, it might have been able to stand shoulder to shoulder with even the super-class Enemies of the Castle, the Four Gods.
Haruyuki believed no one could produce a thing like that in the span of mere weeks, not even the Acceleration Research Society. But maybe he had only wanted it to be impossible. Not just because he was afraid of a new threat to the Accelerated World but also as a matter of misplaced pride as the former sixth Disaster. However, he could no longer deny that the steel giant towering over him only a dozen or so meters away, emitting its peculiar shriek at the overcast sky, strongly resembled Chrome Disaster—the form-fusing machine and living creature with a sinister aura enveloping its entire body.
Standing to either side of him, Takumu, Chiyuri, Pard, and Niko appeared to be speechless, overwhelmed by its enormity. They should have been making the decision to fight or flee, but they simply gaped, unable to move a muscle.
Abruptly, the giant stopped its ferocious roaring and slowly lowered the hands thrust up into the air.
“Deelloorrrrr…” Groaning like a combustion engine from the previous century, the monster turned to reveal the flowing lines of its upper torso where a massive single eyeball emitted a brilliant, blood-red light. A cold, bottomless hunger, reminiscent of the shining of the ISS kit eye.
“…Wh-what should we do…?” Chiyuri muttered from Haruyuki’s immediate left.
Her voice was shaking, but her words broke through his paralysis, and Haruyuki took a deep breath. The cool air of the Twilight stage filled his virtual lungs, and he regained a tiny bit of his power to think. “We have to fight,” he croaked.
Chiyuri’s slender avatar stiffened, but no word of objection came from her or from his other comrades. They all understood why he had made that decision.
The original Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster, had been composed of three elements: the successive wearers of the Armor who had gained power at the same time as they nurtured the item; the Beast, a pseudo intelligence produced from the darkness of the negative Incarnate that accumulated in the Armor; and the Enhanced Armament that became the vessel—the silver armor Destiny, the sixth star, the theta of the Seven Arcs.
The new Mark II generated by the Acceleration Research Society had a similar three-component structure. First, the wearer: the mysterious metal-color Wolfram Cerberus, produced by Argon Array based on the Mental-Scar Shell Theory. Controlling Cerberus was the red light of unknown origin that had shot down from the sky into the cockpit and taken over Mark II. And the vessel for the body of Mark II was the Enhanced Armament, Invincible, which the Red King, Scarlet Rain, had cultivated over years and with enormous effort.
If they were to make absolutely sure, they should retreat from that place, rejoin Kuroyukihime and the others at Midtown Tower, and take on the challenge with their full forces. Unfortunately, however, that wasn’t an option. If they let this moment slip by, there was a very good chance that Niko’s Enhanced Armament, which was basically a part of Niko herself, would be lost forever. They had to get Invincible back. After all, Niko was only helping them in their mission that day as a friend, for the sake of Ash Roller/Rin Kusakabe, who she’d only just met, and Aqua Current/Akira Himi, one of Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements.
Haruyuki glanced to his right. His eyes met Niko’s. Before the Red King could say anything, he declared again, “Right now, we still have a chance to take Invincible back. We’re absolutely going to get it back. We’ll fight him, and we’ll win!”
The faint air of a wry grin rose up around the Red King as well as Pard, who was across from her. She shrugged her small shoulders. “Well, we’ve come this far. Gotta go the distance, yeah? So listen. For the icing on the cake, we’re gonna send that giant thing flying and set off some huge fireworks.”
“K.” And that voice was, of course, Pard’s.
“Got it, Haru,” Takumu said from Haruyuki’s left, as though he’d made up his mind. “If it really is like the Armor of Catastrophe, then the more time passes, the stronger it’ll get. If we’re going to fight, it has to be now.”
“Allll right!” Chiyuri agreed. “I’m gonna knock it on its butt with one—”
“No, Chii, your job’s too important,” Takumu interrupted. “You need to step back to the rear.”
“A-again?! That’s all I ever do!!”
Haruyuki’s mouth relaxed the tiniest bit beneath his mirrored goggles as the banter between his childhood friends went back and forth.
This was different from the time he’d tried to fight the Armor’s control all by himself, in his own interior world, during his stint as the sixth Chrome Disaster. Now, unlike then, he was surrounded by comrades he could count on. And although they were currently over three kilometers away, Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Utai, and Akira were also with them in spirit. He was sure of it. Haruyuki clenched his hands into tight fists as if feeling their fighting spirit.
So far, Mark II had whirled its eyes around very much like a robot with the power turned on for the first time, but now it froze in place. The massive body shifted course another thirty degrees to face Haruyuki and his friends. Venting black steam from the gill-like slits all over the armor, it thundered in a low groan, “Deel…ru-ru-ru-ru-ru…”
From the inorganic movement and aura, Wolfram Cerberus—supposedly incorporated into the torso—was apparently still unconscious. A forced personality switch had already wrested control of the avatar from the Cerberus I that Haruyuki knew and given it to Cerberus III a few minutes before the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, had awakened. Although the duplicated personality of III—aka Dusk Taker/Seiji Nomi—had managed to steal four of the five components that made up Niko’s Invincible with his special attack, Demonic Commandeer, immediately after that, he had been hit by the beam of red light that shot down from the northern sky and let out a strange scream before suddenly falling silent…or being extinguished.
If Cerberus I was also still unconscious, then that meant the armor, Mark II, was at the moment being moved by the energy infused by the red light itself. Even the Beast that lived in Chrome Disaster hadn’t been able to control the avatar on its own, so the energy that poured into Mark II was something that defied conjecture in terms of both total amount and base nature. But no matter how great the power it contained, this did not necessarily translate into strength. Now, when it was still newly born and awkward in its movements, they had a chance of victory.
“He’s got Invincible as the base, so he should be a long-distance type, too,” Haruyuki said quickly. “We charge in and stick to the legs—close off its movement. Chiyu, while we’re stuck to that guy, you fall back inside the building through the south gate.”
The others nodded immediately, with no further complaint from Chiyuri. She was likely also well aware that Lime Bell’s ability would play the most critical role in taking Invincible back. Though, no—his assumption here was ridiculous. After all, when Dusk Taker stole his flight ability, the one who had gotten his wings back through a mix of unexpected quick wit and sheer effort was Chiyuri. He lightly touched his fingertips to Lime Bell’s arm to communicate his faith in her before calling upon all his mental energy and returning the glare of the iron giant’s single eye.
The top of Mark II’s head was over six meters from the ground—the size of a Beast-class Enemy—but the only weapons he could see were the large laser guns equipped on either arm. Given that these were the main armaments of Invincible, their power was nothing to laugh at, but there was a charging time of about one second before they fired, so he assumed Mark II wouldn’t be able to manage successive shots. The instant the enemy dropped into an attack stance, they would dash in, take the ground directly under the massive body, and crush the legs.
Haruyuki and his comrades also had other advantages. Their current location was the central courtyard of a school-type building, about two kilometers southwest of the old Tokyo Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Surrounded on all four sides by the school, transformed into a white temple, the battleground was limited to thirty meters on the short side and fifty on the long—a cramped space for the massive, long-distance Mark II. If they glued themselves to the enemy and prevented it from firing its main arms while simultaneously continuing to attack, they just might have a chance.
They would win. Absolutely. And then they could all laugh and high-five once they got back to the real world.
The enormous single eye of Mark II shone with a reddish-black light in its inner darkness.
“Here we go!” Takumu shouted, and Haruyuki dropped into a low stance, watching for the moment to charge.
The giant slowly raised the arms hanging loosely at its sides. At the same time, the countless slits at the base of the main armament and its five-centimeter barrel opened their mouths, and a sound somewhat like a biological energy charge started to echo through the stage. The evening sky and the school building in the background around Mark II’s arms shimmered like a mirage, perhaps because of the heat venting from the slits.
No…The air itself was becoming unstable. The excessive concentration of high-density energy was distorting the Accelerated World. He’d seen this in the instant before the flame breath of the God Suzaku and the Trisagion of Metatron’s first form. But this was an even larger scale of the warping of time and space.
It couldn’t be…An attack with power that surpassed even those?
Abruptly, the new wings on his back, the Enhanced Armament, Metatron Wings, shivered with a ferocity that resembled an electric shock.
“Gang!” Haruyuki threw out both arms and called out, “Grab on!!”
This was in total contradiction with the strategy he had only just outlined, but his friends did not so much as hesitate. Instantly, Takumu was holding on tightly to his right arm, Pard his left, and they grabbed onto Chiyuri and Niko with their empty hands to yank them up.
The darkness that filled Mark II’s gun barrels shone a deep red.
Deploying the wings on his back in an X formation, Haruyuki kicked off the marble earth with everything he had. The instant his body was off the ground, he released every bit of thrust he was able to generate. The power—enough to make the metal armor of his avatar creak—sent them straight up like a rocket.
Heeeengah! With a screaming roar, two cloudy blood-red great lances shot out of Mark II’s guns.
The two beams of energy plunged into the spot where the five had stood only a moment earlier, and then all color disappeared from the world.
The eternal twilight of the sky, the school that served as the headquarters for the Acceleration Research Society—all of it became a black line drawing on a white background. In the middle of all this, the only color was the half sphere glittering a sinister dark red as it ballooned ever outward to swallow up even the iron giant that had launched it until it filled the courtyard that was fifty meters to a side. It closed in on the feet of Haruyuki and his friends as he ascended with everything he had.
He didn’t feel heat or pressure. Instead, Haruyuki was aware of a freezing chill and an intense gravity trying to suck him into the energy ball. Certain it would devour them if he eased up even a little, he continued to fly up toward the rough monotone sketch of the sky.
“Th-the school is—!” Takumu shouted.
Haruyuki couldn’t spare a millisecond to look down and check, but he figured the school building surrounding the courtyard had been destroyed.
Normally, that would have been impossible: The school in which Haruyuki and his friends had fought Black Vise and Argon Array was designated as a player home, as hard as that was to believe, which meant it was indestructible. Even to make a tiny hole in the wall separating classroom from courtyard, Haruyuki and Takumu had used successive full-power Incarnate attacks, and they’d still needed Chiyuri’s help to finally make it through.
So given that Mark II had just pulverized such a building, it had not fired a normal energy bullet, but rather an Incarnate bullet with nihilistic attributes—in other words, an attack of the same type as the Dark Shot launched by the ISS kit users, but with tens, hundreds of times the power.
“Whoaaaa!!” Haruyuki squeezed out a cry as he continued his desperate flight.
If it had been Silver Crow’s original wings alone, his special-attack gauge would have been completely exhausted in the blink of an eye with this all-out ascent carrying four people, and they would have already been caught in the explosion. But the power of the new wings he’d been given by the F-type Enemy who said she was the main body of Archangel Metatron—he hadn’t even known there was such a thing until that day—was incredible, and he pushed back against the gravity of the Accelerated World and the attractive force of the negative energy, rising to ever-higher altitudes in the blink of an eye.
Once they had passed a height of fifty meters, one hundred meters, one hundred fifty meters, the chill and roar and pull finally receded and disappeared.
“We should be okay now, Crow,” Niko said.
“Thanksy,” Pard murmured.
He slackened his ascent speed but flew up another twenty meters just in case before shifting to hovering. Timidly, he gazed downward.
“Unh…Aah…” The voice that slipped out was so hoarse, Haruyuki couldn’t believe it was his own.
Color finally returned to the Field, and the southern part of the Minato Ward Area spread out before him. To his left, the east side, stood national highway No. 1, Sakurada Street. To his right, the west side, was the overhead bridge for expressway No. 2. The school, the Acceleration Research Society headquarters, that should have been wedged between the two—no longer existed.
In its place was a large crater nearly 150 meters across. This attack had brought about the same level of destruction as the laser of Metatron’s first form that he had witnessed from Roppongi Hills Tower, but the scale was even larger, with not even a single plume of smoke. The ground had been carved away like a god had dug into it with a giant spoon to shell out a loose arc. The surrounding air swirled up into a roaring whirlwind. There had been at least one tamed knight-type Enemy on the first floor of the school, but that, too, had been instantly evaporated.
Looking down at the terrain around the crater, something jabbed sharply at his memory, but this sensation flew out of his head instantly when he spotted the copper-colored giant rising up in the center of that gray crater, entirely uninjured.
“Getting sucked into an attack like that…and not a scratch on ya,” Niko said, her tone unable to hide the shock.
If they had followed through on their initial strategy of diving in below its legs before the bombardment, the giant wouldn’t have hesitated to turn its main armaments directly downward on itself, and right about now, Haruyuki and his comrades would have been dust along with the school. If Mark II was still in the ruins when they regenerated sixty minutes later, they might have even taken another hit and been killed instantly, falling into an unlimited EK.
Exactly. This thing was an Enemy now. And forget Beast class, the Mark II surpassed Legend class; in the worst-case scenario, it even rivaled the super-class Enemies beyond that, the Four Gods.
“This is ridiculous…How could it…?” Chiyuri shook her green pointed hat from side to side in Takumu’s arms. This was the girl who had surprised Haruyuki and Takumu by pulling off any number of unexpected turnarounds in too many tight spots, but this time, she appeared to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the destruction.
As was Haruyuki. He’d been able to lift off after the warning from Metatron, who was connected to him through the wings, but he had absolutely no idea what they should do now. The core of his mind was completely numb.
But they couldn’t stay aboveground forever. The Metatron Wings got pretty good mileage, and even hovering with four people hanging off of him, his special-attack gauge was only gradually being consumed, but even so, it would run out sooner or later. They had to reformulate their strategy and find somewhere to land before it did.
The one to break the fearful silence was Pard, glued to Haruyuki’s right half. “We have to find out how long those guns take to charge.”
“Right,” Takumu replied immediately. “As far as I can see, his only weapons are the laser guns. If they take time to recharge, we can cling to him immediately after he fires…”
Niko nodded firmly at this proposal. “And if we make him fire into the sky, we won’t get caught up in the explosion. So then…Crow, next laser, you dodge it somehow in midair.”
“You can do it, Haru!”
When even Chiyuri cheered him on, he couldn’t sit and cower forever. He took a deep breath. “Got it. I’m going to go in slowly, so, everyone, keep a close eye on him.”
“I got this!” Niko shouted. She possessed a Vision Extension ability, and now she opened her eye lenses wide.
Firming up his resolve, Haruyuki started a gentle descent.
“Since the laser fired, it’s now forty-eight seconds, forty-nine, fifty…,” Pard counted calmly, having apparently kept careful track.
Sinking down almost vertically, Haruyuki and his friends had reached an altitude of a hundred meters, when Mark II, encamped in the center of the crater, threw its enormous iron body backward and caught them with the crimson eyeball’s hungry gaze.
“Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine…”
Sixty.
The giant raised both arms and got Haruyuki and his comrades in its sights with the lethal double barrels.
“Nngh!” Kuroyukihime groaned at the pain, cold and biting.
It felt like even her core was frozen. She had barely stopped the flying ISS kit terminal from touching her avatar with the sword of her right hand, but a dozen tentacles extended from it to pierce the cracks in her armor and press inward. Several had already reached her avatar’s naked body.
If her sword—the reason for her nickname, World End—had been in perfect condition, it would have cut a little thing like the terminal in two instantly, but it was broken and battered after the battle with the main body; she was unable to muster even half of its normal cutting power. And the small eyeball was elastic—rubbery—so that no matter how she pressed her blade into it, it simply warped and twisted; she couldn’t get a handle on it.
“Lotus!” Fuko shouted again, reaching out from her wheelchair to try to pull the kit terminal off.
A little farther away, Akira splashed, as if she was about to run to her Legion master’s side.
But Kuroyukihime called out sharply, “Stop!”
“What?!” The girls froze in place, their faces clouded with apprehension, as though they worried the pollution of the kit had already reached her mind.
“No, I’m fine,” Kuroyukihime reassured them immediately. “But…I can hear something through this thing…No, I can see something…” She closed her eye lenses beneath her goggles.
Sound. Deel, deel, deel. From far, far away, she heard a heavy, low rumbling that was hard to describe, like an animal breathing or a machine running.
And…sight. The image of a square space enclosed by white walls with plenty of windows, reminiscent of a school somehow, was hazily projected in the back of her mind. For a brief moment, she felt a strange sensation that was almost like nostalgia. She wondered at first if it was the courtyard at Umesato, but there were walls on all sides, so that wasn’t it. It was somewhere she’d never seen—never been…
“………!!”
Kuroyukihime clenched her teeth hard, eyes still closed, in her immense shock.
She knew this place. A courtyard enclosed by school walls on all sides. The altar-like fountain in its center. It had been transformed in the Twilight stage of the Accelerated World, but there was no mistaking this sense of scale—this atmosphere.
…This is…that school. Stunned, when she looked down at her feet from a viewpoint about at the height of a window on the second floor, Kuroyukihime was visited by a fresh shock.
Five small human silhouettes were lined up and looking her way. One was a remarkably small, crimson duel avatar. And on the back of the avatar standing next to her were silver wings that glittered in the evening sun—
“Lotus!!” Fuko’s strained cry rang out once more, and Kuroyukihime’s eyes flew open.
As the phantom scene disappeared, she met the eye of the ISS kit terminal, suddenly only ten centimeters away from her. The sword of her right hand should have been digging into the eye, but all it was doing was yanking back just three of the tentacles. She hurriedly tried to push the bloody orb away, but the tentacles stretched in response, and the inky eye drew steadily closer.
Fuko and Akira both reached out and yanked several tentacles away. But the kit terminal’s survival instinct was too powerful, like it was the last of its kind; it kept pressing in on Kuroyukihime’s face. Eyelids open wide, the crimson pupil emitted a hungry glow just centimeters away.
In the depths of that eye full of empty darkness…Kuroyukihime saw it. Light in the shape of two guns, bodies overlapped to form an X. The crossed guns: the emblem of the Red King and Master Gunsmith, Red Rider.
And in the very instant the eye was about to touch Black Lotus’s goggles, the two guns changed angles with a decisive metallic sound to line up on the horizontal—turning from an X into a minus sign.
Likewise, the crimson iris of the kit terminal suddenly turned gray, all light fading from it. The straining tentacles hung limply and dropped away from Black Lotus’s armor. Fuko and Akira pulled their hands back, and the eye fell to the floor, rolling about a meter before coming to a stop.
“That was close,” Fuko said.
Akira nodded while she said in a slightly reproachful voice, “I was a little worried. What exactly did you see?”
“Oh, mmm. I’m not sure how to explain it,” Kuroyukihime murmured, expelling a long-held breath. Lifting her face, she first crushed the small eye on the floor with her foot before looking over at the ISS kit main body enshrined a little ways off.
The magma of the floor seemed to be finally cooling off, but rather than returning to its original marble form, it was hardening into a gray concrete. The kit main body’s lower half was buried there—countless fine cracks on its charred surface and tiny pieces peeling off and falling to the ground. The pupil that had launched the kit terminal continued to open wider, and she could see a clear-blue light pulsing regularly inside it. It was the light of the Midtown Tower portal that had been incorporated into the main body.
“The kit terminal that tried to parasitize me seems to have been linked to something. But it wasn’t the main body there…It was something far from Midtown Tower…And Haruyuki and the others were—”
“What?!” Fuko cried out in surprise. She gripped the wheels of her chair tightly. “So Corvus and the others are fighting this ‘something’ then? We have to hurry and help them!”
“Before we do, we have to completely destroy the ISS kit main body,” Akira noted. “And someone has to return to the other side through the portal to pull out the Red King’s cable.”
Kuroyukihime thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No. It seems there’s no need for that. I saw Niko standing next to Haruyuki. He got her back from Black Vise.”
“Really?” Fuko smiled, relieved. “Thank goodness. How very like Corvus, hmm?”
Kuroyukihime nodded, but there was still something that concerned her. Silver Crow and his team were facing off against the “something” that was linked to the ISS kit terminal, most likely generated by the massive negative Incarnate energy sent out from the kit main body. So why hadn’t the Red King deployed her Enhanced Armament, Invincible? Well, she’d find out the answer to that when they got there. She had only seen it for a moment, but Kuroyukihime knew the precise coordinates.
“Let’s hurry and regroup with Haruyuki and the others. But first…” Kuroyukihime brandished the sword of her right hand and stared at the ISS kit main body.
“Rider. It was you who activated the crossed guns’ safety and saved me. You promised to deactivate all the kit terminals if we destroyed the main body.”
There was no response. But Kuroyukihime felt like she could see the back of the first Red King riding off somewhere, straddling his beloved horse as he waved two fingers of his right hand in a kind of salute.
“Farewell, BBK…Red Rider.”
She pulled the brandished sword back and shouted, “Death By Piercing!!”
Her special attack was activated without incident even though the tip of her blade was broken, and the resultant light sword easily pierced the ISS kit main body. The inky eyeball shrank inward for just a moment before exploding into millions of pieces. A dark pillar soared up to the ceiling before gradually growing thinner and disappearing. So far, this looked like the death effect of a duel avatar, but she still couldn’t say for sure. Would the death marker appear or not? That would make the truth of the ISS kit main body clear.
But what actually happened was far beyond anything Kuroyukihime and her comrades had expected. The black fragments shooting through the air became red ribbons one after another and dissolved into nothingness. Weaving the ribbons was the thread of fine binary code.
This was a duel avatar’s—
“…Final extinction event?!” Fuko squeezed a strained voice out.
“It is,” Akira assented.
No marker appeared, but there was no room for doubt. The ISS kit main body was a duel avatar—no, a Burst Linker, and with Kuroyukihime’s final attack, their Burst Points had dropped to zero, so they had vanished from the Accelerated World forever. In other words, while the reason for it was unclear, the main body’s points had been on the verge of drying up.
As the last of the red ribbons melted into the air, a crisp blue light spilled out and colored the entire stage—it was the appearance of the portal that had been locked up inside the kit body. The pulsing blue light was almost holy, purifying the miasma that had filled the floor.
With this, not only was the last kit that had tried to parasitize Kuroyukihime deactivated, but now all the ISS kits already equipped by Magenta Scissor, Avocado Avoider, and every other user should have been deactivated—and the mental interference cut off as well. Naturally, this also included the kit parasitizing Ash Roller/Rin Kusakabe lying in the nurse’s office in the real world.
Who exactly had the kit main body been? Why had they been nearly out of points? Mysteries remained, but Kuroyukihime put those questions aside for the time being and turned around. “Raker, I’m sure you want to go running to your child’s side…”
Fuko shook her head, indicating that there was no need for Kuroyukihime to finish. “I understand. There’s still something we have left to do, yes? Let’s hurry to where the others are and fight this enemy—although I’m not quite sure what it is. And then, we’ll all go home together.”
It wasn’t Kuroyukihime or Akira who responded to those determined words.
“You’re exactly…right. I’m more than able to keep fighting.” The voice was faint, but there was a strong center to it; its owner was Utai, held in Fuko’s arms.
Kuroyukihime gasped and turned her gaze in that direction to see the shrine maiden avatar return her gaze, eye lenses alight once again. “Are you all right, Maiden?”
“Yes. I was simply pulled in slightly because I used the Incarnate technique for so long…But you, Ren, and Fu protected me, Lo.” Smiling, the little girl slowly raised her hands and wrapped her arms around Fuko. Looking like the very picture of a girl adoring her older sister, she pressed her face into the chest of the sky-blue avatar. “Thank you, Fu.”
Like many Burst Linkers, Utai Shinomiya changed what she called her comrades in the real world and the Accelerated World. For instance, Kuroyukihime was Sacchi or Lo, and Haruyuki Arita was Arita or C. But when it came to Fuko, at some point, Utai had started calling both the duel avatar and her real self Fu, for the most part.
Fu was the Fu from Fuko, so there was a slight risk of this leading to being cracked in the real. In fact, for a while after she joined the Legion, it had been Raker. Given how reserved and generally reluctant Utai was to reveal the depths of her heart—although on this note, Kuroyukihime herself was hardly one to talk—the fact that she was so stuck on the name Fu, which could almost be said to be a violation of manners as well, was proof that she wanted this connection with Fuko that much, this true bond.
And Fuko herself, rather than squeezing Utai with all her might and squealing “Uiuiiii!” like she usually did, now simply stroked the girl’s back silently. Perhaps the brief contact restored her mental energy; Utai quietly sat up and said thank you once more before dropping down to the floor.
She staggered for the briefest instant but then immediately stood up straight and offered calmly, “Now, let us hurry. C and the others are waiting.”
“Mmm. Let’s go.” Nodding forcefully, Kuroyukihime turned around.
The portal was right there, so if they returned to the real world momentarily and then accelerated again, the damage they’d received would have been completely recovered. But then they would have to start again from the Umesato student council office in distant Suginami, and they didn’t have the time for that. They had to join up with Silver Crow and the others as soon as possible, muster whatever power was left in them, and fight this giant “something” that had been born in the Accelerated World.
As she advanced in an unstable hovering motion, Kuroyukihime glanced one last time at the area around the shining portal on the southern edge of the floor. There was essentially no trace anymore of the duel avatar that had been called the ISS kit main body, nor any sign of Red Rider, who had been forcibly called back from the distant past and made to produce the kit terminals. She didn’t know if Rider’s memories, which she assumed had been copied from the real first Red King and stored somewhere in the Brain Burst central server, had been completely erased in the battle that day. As long as the necromancer who brought Rider back to pseudo life was still alive, there was the possibility of the same thing happening again.
However, she could not allow it a second time. She would confront them and that necromancer hiding somewhere in the Accelerated World, once this current fight was over. All the lingering mysteries of the ISS kit main body would be resolved at that time.
She took her eyes off the portal and advanced another dozen or so meters to stand in the southeast corner of the floor. There was a small, sooty scar in the marble before her eyes. This was where the red beam had shot out into the world. She waited for Utai, Akira, and Fuko in her wheelchair to come to a stop behind her before brandishing her swords above her head. The damage to the blades was severe, but they were still sharp enough to cut through the wall of a building in the Twilight stage.
She brought them diagonally downward and then followed this up with a horizontal slice with her right foot to complete the outline of an equilateral triangle in the wall. Finally, she pushed lightly with the tip of her sword, and the block of marble dropped outward, leaving a large hole.
The southern part of the Minato Area they could see from the forty-fifth floor of Midtown Tower was, at first glance, enveloped in a peaceful quiet.
Before them stood the Roppongi Hills Tower on the other side of the overpass for national highway No. 3. On its western side, the dense cluster of the embassies of Azabu. But somewhere in this scene, at that very moment, Silver Crow and the others were facing the final battle.
Kuroyukihime started to turn around to ask Fuko if she could fly them there when, from the distance of Hills Tower, a phenomenon that could be called nothing other than “black light” swelled up soundlessly. The chalky-white town illuminated in the setting sun was swallowed up by a jet-black half sphere tinged with blood-red sparks. An instant later, a thunderous roar reached Midtown Tower and shook the entire enormous building.
A Dark Shot explosion. And on a scale even larger than that launched by the ISS kit main body.
“Haruyuki!!” Kuroyukihime screamed.
Haruyuki frantically tried to pull his focus back from the massive gun barrels aimed at him. He’d falter in his midair evasion if he only looked at them; he needed to look at everything—at the whole of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s massive bulk, and the unfathomable hunger it radiated. Even if his opponent was a heartless monster, as long as it had a hostile will, Haruyuki would be able to sense any increase in it.
“Deeeel…” The giant let out a low moan, almost as if it was mocking Haruyuki’s tension.
A high-density energy began to swirl a reddish-black within the guns. A nihilistic attack, but Haruyuki didn’t sense the inorganic nature of the Dark Shot of ISS kit users. It was more alive, full of the desire to destroy, crush, and eliminate everything. Mark II itself was basically a soulless iron robot, while the Dark Shot alone that it launched contained a tangible will. But whose will was it, exactly?
It wasn’t that of the incorporated Wolfram Cerberus. Nor was it that of Cerberus II who had parasitized him, or Cerberus III, the already eliminated Dusk Taker. Most likely, it was the will of the red light itself that had shot down from the sky to take over the armor.
When that beam of light had arrived, the Acceleration Research Society’s Argon Array had shouted, as though stunned, “It’s too soon. Like, this is too much! It can’t be…That lot, they went an’ did it in?”
He couldn’t say for sure what “it” was, but he could hazard a guess. Most likely, the thing hidden away in Midtown Tower…
One part of his mind followed the trail of these thoughts, while the rest of it concentrated. But as if Mark II refused to allow his brain to consider these questions any further, its hostility grew several orders of magnitude larger. The tips of the two guns housed an inky cross of light. Haruyuki had no sooner seen this than he was releasing the energy stored in the wings on his back.
“Whoa…Ohhh!!”
Not right or left, not forward or back, but down. He turned the weight of the four people he was carrying in his arms into the momentum for a sharp dive. Of course, if he kept up like that, they would take a direct hit from a beam of the greatest destructive force in the Accelerated World and disappear without a trace. The instant the great lances shot forth from the barrels in spiraling arms of black and red, however, he flapped his wings with everything he had and slid their falling trajectory inward.
The twin beams passed Haruyuki and his comrades at a mere meter away and fell into the distant evening sky of his inverted field of view. There was no damage, but they felt a wave of energy so strong as to shake even the sky, and he lost his balance.
Rather than go against the vibration, Haruyuki whirled his body around and put on the brakes for just a moment as he shouted, “Everyone! I’m letting go!”
“Okay!” Niko had no sooner shouted on behalf of the entire crew than he was opening up the arms that were wrapped around Pard and Takumu. Those two avatars released Chiyuri and Niko at the same time, and the five Burst Linkers went into a free fall.
“Aaaaah!” The first to roar out a battle cry was Takumu as he readied the pile driver of his right hand. “Cyan Lightning Spike!!”
His level-four special attack and its immense piercing power: The iron pile transformed into a pale plasma and shot out toward the lens of the single eye, the only unarmored part of Mark II’s massive body.
Next, Niko drew the weapon equipped on her left hip for the first time in this fight, took a wide stance, and readied the somehow adorable gun in both hands.
“Scarlet Exploder!!” She shouted the name of what was probably an Incarnate technique and pulled the trigger. A brilliant bullet of red light whistled through the air.
Pard, now in Beast Mode, tucked her arms and legs under her in midair and shouted the name of a technique Haruyuki didn’t know. “Bloodshed Cannon!!” A semitransparent tube materialized to enclose her, and a terrific explosion boomed at the tail end of it. Instantly, Pard shot straight down like an enormous bullet.
Of course, Haruyuki wasn’t simply sitting there watching everyone attack. The instant he felt the slight shiver of urging vibration from the Metatron Wings on his back, he crossed his clenched fists before him and shouted as loudly as he could, “Ekteniaaaaa!!”
Maybe the technique name wasn’t necessary, but in response to Haruyuki’s will, the two white wings stretched upward. He raised his crossed arms, and as he brought them down before him, the wings became a lance of pure white and charged toward Mark II’s head.
There wasn’t so much as a second of delay between the four attacks. Takumu’s plasma lance struck the dark-red eye squarely in the center, sending dazzling sparks scattering. Niko’s Incarnate bullet then made a direct hit in the same place, and a single crack raced across the lens. Pard, transformed into a bullet herself, slammed into the single eye of the giant, triggering a massive explosion—well beyond the domain of a body slam—and the crack in the lens fissured into a spiderweb.
Haruyuki’s Ektenia slipped by Pard as she somersaulted in midair and moved away from the line of sight so that both hit the mark simultaneously. He heard a loud sound like the ringing of a church bell, and then countless cracks blanketed the lens, and it clouded over a milky white.
“Ruu…Dee…ruuu…” Mark II groaned in agony as it reeled backward. But even with the concentrated might of all four of their strongest attacks, the single lens did not reach the breaking point; they had not brought down the giant.
“Nngh!” Haruyuki sucked a sharp breath in through clenched teeth.
His comrades’ attacks were all powerful, but his Ektenia was strong enough to have destroyed in a single blow the crown object that tamed the knight Enemy in the basement of the Acceleration Research Society’s hideout. If the single lens, which he assumed was Mark II’s lone weak point, had this kind of strength, then the armored part of the giant was essentially indestructible. He thought about making one more push, but once they hit on the ground, they wouldn’t be able to get the right angle to hit the eye.
Takumu, Niko, and Pard had already dropped into landing positions, so Haruyuki was the only one still able to do a follow-up attack. But he couldn’t move until his extended wings returned to his back. Hurry! he called fervently in his heart.
“Aah…Hngaaaaaah!!”
Suddenly, a ferocious battle cry rang out across the crater. It was Chiyuri, who he’d assumed was taking cover to the rear. Using his right shoulder as a stepping stone, she brandished the large bell of her left hand, Choir Chime, high in the air. Head thrown back as far as it would go, the small avatar used the massive recoil and yanked the bell down in one swoop.
Ringoooooong!! The impact was solemnly sonorous as Bell slammed her weapon into the center of Mark II’s lens.
After an instant of silence, the massive eyeball turned into an infinite shower of rubies and scattered through the air.
“Graaaaaoooooh!!” Howling in anguish, the giant staggered backward until it finally collapsed, shaking the earth as it fell.
“Nice, Chiyu!” Haruyuki shouted as he flapped the white wings that had finally returned to his back and grabbed his falling friend’s arm. He put on the bare minimum of brakes and came down to stand next to their comrades on the ground.
“Twenty seconds!” Pard cried out sharply. This was, of course, the elapsed time since Mark II had fired its main armaments at Haruyuki and the others in the air. They’d already confirmed that the guns took sixty seconds to recharge, so they had another forty seconds to go.
The problem was whether Mark II’s immobile state would continue that long. The single lens had been smashed, and the giant had been seriously damaged, but the almost unearthly aura radiating from it hadn’t weakened in the slightest.
If it comes to that, we’ll make it stop moving!
Thus resolved, Haruyuki gave instructions in rapid succession. “Niko, Takumu! If that thing looks like it’s gonna start moving, stop it with long-distance attacks! Pard, refuel your special-attack gauge!”
In lieu of a reply, the large blue avatar and the small red avatar readied their weapons, while the leopard-faced avatar wordlessly dashed out of the crater, still in Beast Mode. Haruyuki took a deep breath and turned toward the fourth member of his team.
“Chiyu…I’m counting on you!!”
“I got this!!” Chiyuri replied firmly, taking a step forward. She raised her Choir Chime—the assault weapon of a moment ago—into the air again. As she whirled it counterclockwise in a large circle, a clear ringing filled the crater. Once, twice, three times…four times.
“Citron…” A vivid lime-green glittering spilled from the large bell that enveloped her left arm. As she brought it down, her sights set on Mark II still on its back, sluggishly moving its limbs. “…Caaaaaaall!!”
Her voice was full of fight as she shouted the name of the technique, and a torrent of light shot out from the bell opening. The beam flew straight forward, and once it hit Mark II’s left leg, it instantly wrapped around his entire body. The chiming of choir bells rained down from the distant twilight sky.
Citron Call Mode II, a special attack of Lime Bell—aka the Watch Witch—had the incredible power of rewinding permanent status changes of the target to four stages back from the present. Which meant she could get back all four of the Enhanced Armaments Cerberus III had stolen from the Red King. But as was always the case with an ability of this kind of astounding power, there were also serious restrictions. Citron Call used up a fully charged special-attack gauge, and there was a waiting period before the rewind was activated. The beam of light also had no homing function, so it could be easily interrupted if the target moved or hid behind something. When the real Dusk Taker had stolen Haruyuki’s flight ability, Chiyuri had gone so far as to pretend to be Nomi’s ally without telling Haruyuki or Takumu anything in order to make Taker accept the light of Citron Call.
If the copy of Nomi had still lived in the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, then this time, for sure, he would have tried to evade Citron Call. But the copy had been annihilated, and the red light that shone down from the sky was in control of Mark II now. Something that wasn’t even a Burst Linker would have no knowledge of Lime Bell’s power. It likely had the instinct to evade an enemy’s attack, but the light of Citron Call itself had no power to cause damage, so if Mark II just judged it to be a harmless light and let it wash over its giant form…
Haruyuki’s brain was on fast-forward, while time slowed to a glacial pace. Seven seconds left until the status rewind effect activated…Six…
Kashank! Abruptly, he heard an earsplitting metallic sound. Still flat on its back, Mark II lined up its legs and fused them into one. Then its torso lurched upward with the force of a spring released and flopped forward onto its legs—its armor fusing with a squealing creak. Both arms folded up onto the sides of the body and became one with it.
Haruyuki and his comrades were not simply staring slack-jawed while this was happening. The moment the enemy started to move, Takumu and Niko were aiming their respective weapons. Haruyuki also clenched his hands and got into position to activate Ektenia.
Because Mark II’s torso was folded forward, the eye on the head appeared in front of Haruyuki and his comrades as a ready target. Lens still smashed, the inside of the sixty-centimeter hole was filled with a dense darkness.
He had absolutely no idea what the giant was attempting by folding itself in half and fusing all its armor together. It wouldn’t be able to move if it was a limbless lump. Citron Call wasn’t a technique that did damage, so it could shore up its defenses all it wanted, but it was meaningless. But one thing, at least, was clear: It was trying to do something. In which case, this was not the time to be twiddling their thumbs.
“I’m firing!”
At Takumu’s signal, Haruyuki and his comrades joined together to attack the lone weak point, the large hole on the head. Takumu’s Cyan Lightning Pile, Niko’s handgun, and Haruyuki’s Ektenia were on the verge of piercing the inky darkness when six brown armor plates folded inward like the shutter leaves on an old camera to shut the three attacks out. At the same time, smoke erupted from Mark II’s lower half.
Still another four seconds until the activation of Citron Call’s effect…Three…
“No way! This guy!” Niko shouted.
“Deeeellluurrrrru-ru-ru-ru!!” It roared like an old combustion engine that had no muffler. Transformed into a five-meter-long rod of metal, bent forward with all four limbs fused, Mark II—perhaps due to some propulsive force—charged them.
“Chiyu!” Reflexively, Haruyuki reached and wrapped his arms around Chiyuri, who was still holding her bell before her, light pouring from it, and jumped with all his might. The sharp protrusions stretching out from Mark II’s back grazed the tips of his toes, but fortunately, he succeeded in evading the attack. Niko and Takumu also leapt to the sides, unharmed.
But Citron Call, having lost its target with only two seconds left, immediately weakened and disappeared. To activate it again, Chiyuri would have to charge her special-attack gauge to full once more.
But at the moment, there was something more important than that. Hovering in midair, Haruyuki turned and caught the departing lump of metal in his sight.
Human-shaped until mere seconds earlier, the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, had transformed into something entirely different. Three rotating bodies covered in tapered metal—wheels—had at some point been generated on each end of the lower half of the armor with its organically curving lines, and these spun against the ground. Black flames jetted from the thrusters to the rear, giving the massive body even more acceleration power.
“What is this form?” Haruyuki groaned.
“That bastard!” Niko responded from the ground, her voice filled with rage. “Transforming into Dreadnought!!”
The dignified human form with two arms and four legs was peculiar to the Invincible, the Red King, Scarlet Rain’s Enhanced Armament. As was befitting its nickname, Immobile Fortress, it overwhelmed enemies with its immense firepower, but on the flip side of that coin, it had low mobility. After a great deal of work to compensate for this weak point, Niko had developed a transformation from human form to a tank shape—Dreadnought mode. This had played a big part in their mission, charging into the nest of the God Suzaku with Haruyuki and the others riding on top or carrying them all from Umesato to the former Tokyo Tower. He hadn’t even imagined that Mark II would also be furnished with this transformation ability, though. At five meters in length, it was about half the size of the real Dreadnought, but its speed was that much faster.
“…I only had two seconds left…,” Chiyuri muttered regretfully in his arms.
Haruyuki started to nod and then stopped himself and shook his head forcefully. “No, if you kept going like that, he would’ve run you down. You’re our trump card, Chiyu. As long as you survive, we’ll make as many chances as you need.”
“…Right. I’ll go smash some buildings and charge up my special-attack gauge.”
“Do it!” This time, he nodded deeply and descended to the ground, where he passed Chiyuri to Takumu. “Taku, guard Chiyuri until she’s charged up! There was a building just to the south of the crater that looked breakable! Niko and I will lead that guy away!”
“Roger, Haru! Red King! Don’t do anything reckless!”
“We’ll be back in a minute!” Chiyuri added.
As the childhood friends raced off, Mark II spun around at the northern edge of the crater, smoke snaking up from all six of its squealing tires. It stopped with Haruyuki and his comrades before it, and the six shutter leaves protecting the eye opened slightly. Even if it was a lump of Enhanced Armament moved by something inhuman, it apparently still needed to see what was outside.
Mark II, Haruyuki, and Niko glared at one another for a bit, separated by less than fifty meters.
“Crow,” Niko murmured abruptly, standing to Haruyuki’s immediate right. “I’ll say this now. Thanks for coming to rescue me.”
Haruyuki swallowed before responding in a hushed tone, “Of course. I mean, you came with us to help us, after all.”
“But gettin’ caught by that pile of panels was entirely on me. And four o’ my Enhanced Armaments got taken ’cause I couldn’t get out of that restraint under my own power. So all the responsibility for this sitch is on me.”
“……”
The small, red-type avatar spoke with resolve, her eye lenses still turned toward Mark II. “So I’ll finish this guy off. You take Pile and Bell and head back to Midtown. Don’t worry. Once we take care of this lug and get my Enhanced Armament back, Pard and I will—”
Haruyuki grabbed hold of Niko’s wrist tightly. He had no intention of letting her say anything more. “We all go back together, Niko. I made a promise.”
“I said I’d protect you.” He didn’t say those words out loud, but he believed she heard them through the armor of their touching avatars.
Niko didn’t answer right away. Instead, she raised her hand and gripped Haruyuki’s tightly in return. “…nks.” She murmured something in a voice so faint that Haruyuki couldn’t catch what she said, and then she shouted loudly to make up for it, “Ya never listen, huh? Even though you’re just a baby bird! Well, that’s it, then. We’ll knock this guy flying together!!”
“Roger!!”
As if roused by the pair’s combined battle spirit, the armored tank also jetted dark steam from the gill slits covering it. The eye shutter opened even farther, and a red light flickered in the darkness inside. Deep down in that darkness, Wolfram Cerberus was being held prisoner.
After appearing in the middle of a duel with Haruyuki, Cerberus II said he’d been “tuned for a certain purpose.” And this purpose was to equip that thing Haruyuki had sealed away. This “thing” was obviously the original Armor of Catastrophe, the Enhanced Armament, the Disaster. But the armor had been split into its original components using Ardor Maiden’s purification ability and left to rest in a place where no one could touch it for all eternity.
The Acceleration Research Society, most likely having learned this fact through Argon Array when she’d attended the meeting of the Seven Kings, had thus launched their backup plan. Use the ISS kits, the Red King’s Enhanced Armament, and Cerberus III aka Dusk Taker’s theft ability to produce a new Armor.
The reason the Acceleration Research Society was so utterly fixated on the Armor of Catastrophe was unclear. It might have been simply because they wanted to sow destruction and confusion in the Accelerated World, but it also could have been nothing more than one element in a much larger plan.
But there was no need to wrestle with that now. If they could rewind Mark II with Chiyuri’s Citron Call and return Invincible to its original owner, they could thwart the Society’s scheme. And they’d be able to free Cerberus from this mission he hadn’t wanted, because he would no longer serve any purpose to the Society.
“Just wait, Cerberus. We’ll make you a regular Burst Linker soon, just like I am. And then we’ll fight again. We’ll win and lose and delight and cry. Any number of times,” Haruyuki vowed.
Almost as if sneering at this promise, the armored tank moved the main armaments on either side of the vehicle body. The 60-second recharge time had long since passed, so Haruyuki was ready for the fearsome lasers of annihilation to be fired at any second. He just had to dodge the attack one more time and close in on the tank.
The Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster—he should probably call it Mark I now—had had any number of abilities. On top of the greatsword that was its main weapon, there was the Wire Hook launched from both hands, the fire-breath attack Flame Breath, the short-distance teleportation Flash Blink, and the ability to make the health gauge of a devoured enemy its own, Energy Drain. But these techniques had been left to the armor by the successive wearers. The newly born Mark II should have only had Cerberus’s armor strength and Invincible’s main armaments. If they stuck close to the vehicle body, they’d muddle through this somehow.
“I’ll fly right before it fires,” Haruyuki murmured, still holding Niko’s hand.
“Counting on ya.”
Evading the laser on the ground meant they would get sucked into an explosion of the same scale as the single blow that had created the crater where they currently stood. They would need to make it shoot into the sky and dodge it there like they had with the second shot.
The eye of the tank opened even wider. The instant the overflowing red malice flashed brightly, Haruyuki instinctively kicked off the ground and flew. Yanking Niko up, he engaged his four wings with everything he had. The double barrels turned sharply up to chase them as they rapidly ascended.
Zzshunn! The launch of the reddish-black lances shook the air. Haruyuki dropped to the left and twisted through the sky to avoid them. Powerful though they might be, a straight trajectory long-distance attack with no homing function wouldn’t be able to take Haruyuki down as easily as—
“Crow! Still coming!” Niko shouted suddenly, while a second heavy vibration tried to drown her out.
Mark II had fired the two guns separately.
“Nngh!!” Haruyuki yanked himself out of the roll to the left and veered to the right. The pressure threatened to rip his entire body apart, but he gritted his teeth and kept turning. The great nihilistic lances grazed the tip of his lower-left wing, sending black sparks shooting off around them. Although he tried to pull away, the laser itself seemed to have some kind of gravity; he was being yanked toward it whether he liked it or not…
“Rah…Raaargh!!” In response to Haruyuki’s battle cry, Metatron’s wings flapped powerfully. The momentary thrust severed the laser’s pull, and Haruyuki and Niko started a sharp descent, spinning and falling downward to the right.
In the center of his upside-down field of view, he could clearly see the massive bulk of the armored tank. Perhaps intending to avoid a collision with Haruyuki and Niko, the many tires were spinning frantically backward, while the shutter in the eye started to close.
“Like I’m lettin’ that happen!” Niko thrust her gun forward and fired blindly. Flames of impact bloomed one after another around the shutter, and the speed at which it was closing slowed.
“Laser…” Concentrating on the image of light in his left hand, he shouted at the top of his lungs, “…Lance!!”
He thrust his hand downward, taking advantage of the added speed of their free fall, and a silver light jetted forth to hit Mark II’s eye just as the shutter was on the verge of closing completely.
The blowback to his arm was fierce; sparks flew from his wrist and elbow joints. The 50 percent remaining in his health gauge was cut that much further, but the shutter that protected the enemy’s eye was damaged. It stopped moving, leaving a hole about five centimeters across.
“Niko! There!” Haruyuki said as he spread his four wings and decelerated, but Niko was already stretching out her right hand, the red handgun clenched tightly in her small fingers, and pulling the trigger.
Krk, kew, kew, kew! Six light bullets drove into the darkness of the hole.
The massive armored tank shuddered fiercely, emitting a strange pained noise: “Deel…looroodeeroo…!!”
We gotta keep this up! Haruyuki flung himself at the front of the tank, half colliding with it, and grabbed onto the opening of a gill slit with his left hand. He had no sooner checked that Niko was similarly supporting herself than he was opening his hand and brandishing it high above his head.
“Laser…” Pushing his imagination to the limit, he brought a powerful light into his right hand. If he could pierce the eye, even the mighty Mark II should stop moving. The power of the nihilistic laser and the transformation into Dreadnought put the fear of the fight in him, but he would end it all right now. Today, he would forever check the ambitions of the Acceleration Research Society. He started to bring down his light sword—
But he failed to notice one thing. The fact that Mark II had fired the two guns at different times showed its learning ability—the evolution of its fighting style.
The word sword was on the verge of leaving his throat in a yell when a black shadow, a fast-moving mist, charged in on him from both sides of the vehicle and seized him. “Wha—?!”
“Crap!!” Niko yelped at the same time.
They were already being peeled away from the front of the tank with an irresistible force, caught up in Mark II’s arms, which had supposedly fused into the sides of the tank. Three massive talons squeezed his avatar, and the incredible pressure made his armor squeal. His health gauge dropped even further until it was dyed a deep yellow.
“Ni…Niko…!” Fighting back the dizzying pain, Haruyuki desperately reached out with his right hand, now bereft of the Incarnate light.
But he couldn’t reach Niko where she was trapped by the arm growing from the left side of the tank. Before his eyes, the crimson armor—already badly beaten—split and crumbled with tiny fragments gleaming like blood as they fell to the ground. She might have been a level-nine king, but the armor strength of the pure, long-distance-type Scarlet Rain was likely less than that of his metal color. But she did not so much as groan in pain.
“Tch! Messed that up,” she remarked bravely. “Forgot this guy’s arms’ve got hands, unlike my Dreadnought.”
“Hang on. I’ll…get out soon!”
Perhaps it was fortunate that he was being held on the top of the tank. Unlike Niko, who was snugly wrapped up in the massive fist, arms and all, Haruyuki was held only from the waist down, leaving his arms and wings free. Enduring the agony, he brandished his right hand once more and called back the Incarnate light. His Laser Lance had a range of more than ten meters, so it should make it to her.
“Forget about me!” Niko shouted in a sharp voice before he could launch the technique. “Hit the eye!!”
“B-but!”
“I’m not gonna get done in by somethin’ like this! Hurry and shoot, Crow!!” The Red King sounded like her impatience was greater than her pain. She must have felt it, too: that Mark II’s battle sense was improving at a terrifying rate.
“Got it!” With no other choice, Haruyuki shifted his gaze from Niko to the armored tank. Although the shutter was damaged, the diameter of the hole that led to the eye—the monster’s lone weak point—wasn’t even five centimeters. He might not make it through the hole with Metatron Wings’s Ektenia. His only option was his Laser Lance, but would he be able to accurately fire at a pinhole while his lower body was being crushed?
No, it wasn’t a matter of could or could not. He had to. He turned the tip of the Incarnate lance lodged in his right hand toward Mark II’s single eye. His silver overlay output was unstable; it trembled and flickered.
More. More light! He focused intently on pulling out every bit of energy left to him.
Mark II didn’t let this mere millisecond of stagnation slip by. It stopped trying to crush Haruyuki and Niko and suddenly threw its arms out. The fists clutching them were thrust out forcefully.
“Nngh!!” Haruyuki cried out at the shock, so great that it threatened to tear his soul right out of his avatar. He lost both vision and hearing, and the dim world became nothing but a high-pitched screeching. In the upper left side of his field of view, his health gauge dropped more than 20 percent all at once, plunging into the dangerous red zone.
“Deeloooo…” A low groan came from the tank with arms. Its fists were still spread out to the sides, and there came another collision. Boom! The massive roar was like a cannon shot, and his gauge lost another 20 percent, leaving a mere 10 percent. If he took another hit like that, he would die.
The extreme agony went beyond pain—it felt like his body was about to fall apart, but he still managed to squeeze out, “Ni…Niko!”
“I…I’m still here…” The reply, similarly weak, came from a little ways off. Then she said, with just a bit more strength, “Crow. I’m gonna create an opening, just for a second. You gotta use it to escape somehow.”
“Huh? An opening? I mean…how?” His eyes widened in desperation, and as his vision slowly recovered, he caught sight of the small figure of the Red King.
She was held firmly from shoulders to hips by the three massive machinelike talons; there was no way she could fire the gun in her right hand. The damage to the exposed parts of her armor was severe, and a blood-red light effect poured from those areas. Inside the fist, the damage probably reached the avatar’s naked body. The small, battered figure began to recede. Mark II was opening its arms for the third time. If they were slammed outward again, both Niko and Haruyuki would die.
Suddenly, from a gap in the claws that held Niko came a crimson glimmering many times more brilliant than the twilight sun pouring down over the stage: It was overlay, proof of the activation of the Incarnate System. But the only Incarnate attacks Niko could use without her Enhanced Armament were Radiant Beat, which launched flame bullets from her fist, and Radiant Burst, which fired a succession of these. If she activated either technique while she was caught in Mark II’s fist, the flames would burn up not only her enemy, but also Niko herself.
This was Niko’s plan—no, resolve. She was going to sacrifice herself to create an opening for Haruyuki to escape from the restraint.
No. You can’t. Absolutely not. I said I’d protect you.
“I…promised!!” Haruyuki spread his wings in a trance. The Mark II’s claws ate into his avatar’s hips and legs like a vise. No matter how he tried to fly, he wouldn’t be able to shake them off. But there was one thing he could still do.
His mind, half-muddied from the double impacts, had no way to generate the focus needed to activate his Incarnate technique. But flying—revving up the wings that were his duel avatar’s reason for existence—and aiming for the sky…
“Niko! Trust…me!!” he shouted again as if to rip his throat open, pouring all his remaining willpower into the silver-and-white wings.
“Deeraaar!!” Unleashing a roar of rage, Mark II moved to slam together once more the fist that held Haruyuki and the hand clutching Niko.
In the next instant, a shooting star shining a deep red pierced the gap between the two. The ball of light smashed into the front of the armored tank and exploded magnificently. Fortunately, Haruyuki and Niko were wrapped up in the fingers, and neither took anything more than a little scraping damage. But Mark II’s single eye had been wide open when it took that direct hit. The giant lurched backward, howling in agony.
A long-distance firing attack?! Who on earth—?!
Eyes wide open, Haruyuki spotted a figure in the middle of the dying bonfire: a crimson leopard, throwing her body back as she fell to the ground.
It wasn’t a gun attack. It was the special attack Bloodshed Cannon, which turned the very body of Blood Leopard—Bloody Kitty, one of Prominence’s Triplex—into a bullet. She had gone beyond the crater to recharge her special-attack gauge and was now taking decisive action to save Niko and Haruyuki with a suicide attack.
After hitting the front of Mark II—equivalent in strength to Wolfram Cerberus’s tungsten armor—with a body blow, Leopard slammed into the ground, pieces falling from her own armor.
This sight roused a new flame in Haruyuki’s heart. I can’t waste this last chance Pard created for me. I have to fly. If I don’t fly now…Then why do I even have wings?
“Ah…Aaaaaaaaaaah!!” As Haruyuki howled, ribbons of dazzling silver light unfurled from his back. His own wings sang in loud resonance with Metatron’s and shook the Twilight stage.
The enormous fist clutching Haruyuki reached out, showering sparks. The front of the armored tank rose several dozen centimeters into the air, thanks to Pard’s attack, and stopped at that angle. Although the tension threatened to rip him to pieces, Haruyuki kept fueling his wings with all his strength. Waterfalls of sparks shot out from the armor joints of his shoulders and chest and stomach. Already down to just 10 percent, his health gauge was carved away bit by bit.
So heavy. He’d known in his mind that the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s mass far surpassed the range of a Burst Linker, but this was something else. It might have been missing one of the original Invincible’s parts, but it still didn’t so much as shift, almost as though it were fused to the stage itself.
His special-attack gauge, charged when he took serious damage in the two fist collisions, was dropping with terrifying speed. Once it hit zero, he would lose his last chance. Haruyuki and Niko would be killed instantly, and Pard, collapsed on the ground below, would also be taken out.
He stretched his hands up into the sky. His mind started to burn white. “Light…,” he shouted with the last of his fuel, his very existence itself, “…speeeeeeeed!!”
Even the logic of the Incarnate System—concentrating one’s imagination to overwrite the phenomenon—was long gone from his head. If he’d been trying to activate an attack, the system would not have responded to his call of the name. But Haruyuki’s second-quadrant Incarnate technique, Light Speed, was unstable; its activation strongly depended on his mental state. It was this instability that responded to Haruyuki’s will now.
A light dozens of times greater than anything he’d produced thus far jetted from his wings, almost like the explosion of a supernova. As the silver overlay colored the world white, Haruyuki saw the sky come mere tens of centimeters closer. The maliciously spiked tires of the armored tank pulled away from the ground one after the other. The massive five-meter-long body began to tilt farther and farther upward.
“Unh…Aah…Aaaaaaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki shouted, the last of his willpower on the verge of burning out completely, and called in one corner of his heart, “Metatron. One more time…One last time, lend me your strength.”
He heard no response. But he didn’t have to see it to feel the snowy white wings on the upper part of his back manifesting another wing. With his original silver wings, three pairs of wings now stretched out from his back, generating a layered harmony like the song of an angel.
In the center of the explosion of light powerful enough to wipe out even two gauges, Haruyuki flew. The sky was close. The earth grew distant. But the massive talons continued to hold fast onto his avatar.
Haruyuki ascended—the entire massive bulk of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, dangling below him. Higher…Higher…!!
Mark II couldn’t fly. Which meant if he could bring it up to a super-high altitude, he could do some severe damage to the armor, even if it meant he died while doing so. He wouldn’t be able to finish the job of protecting Niko, but Pard, on the ground, would definitely rescue her for him.
So higher he rose. Into the sky.
He was about to flap his six wings one final time with everything he had when the restraint that had held him like a vise abruptly disappeared. Mark II had let go on its own. In reaction, Haruyuki started to ascend rapidly, but he opened his wings wide and barely managed to brake and reorient himself downward.
His altitude was maybe five hundred meters. Against the backdrop of the dusky Twilight stage, the enormous armored tank immediately lost momentum and started to fall. It had apparently released Niko at the same time as Haruyuki; he spotted the crimson avatar in the air a little ways off.
Although he was on the verge of passing out from the enormous mental strain of his flight, Haruyuki desperately held fast his consciousness and drifted several meters to one side to grab onto Niko’s hand. She seemed half-conscious herself, but the hand in his squeezed back weakly.
“…Niko.” He gently pulled the petite avatar into his arms. She was so thoroughly battered, it was surprising she still had anything left in her health gauge. He wouldn’t let go of this hand again. Not until they got back to the real world from the Unlimited Neutral Field. Hardening his resolve, he watched the falling armored tank.
If it crashed from this height, it might not be destroyed, but it would certainly be shocked into immobility. While it was, they would get back the original Enhanced Armament with Lime Bell’s Citron Call—this time for sure. And then it would all be over—
“Deel…rrrraaaaaoooooooh!!” Suddenly, the thunderous roar filled the sky.
Pakunk! The tank emitted a strange noise and peeled apart into top and bottom. The metal armor wriggled frantically, changing shape. The upper half into a torso. The lower half into two legs. In mere seconds, the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, had returned to its original human form, the shutter covering the eye of its head wide open.
A reddish-black light flickered fiercely inside the fifty-centimeter hole. A dense aura mixing hatred and rage and all kinds of other negative emotions wrapped around the massive body of Mark II. The two arms were powerfully thrust forward. The two gun barrels drew a double cross with inky particles.
…Crap…It’s already recharged, Haruyuki thought, dumbfounded, and the double nihilistic lasers were fired with a roar.
Special-attack gauge: zero. Incarnate energy: zero. It was all he could do to keep hovering in midair as the two great lances shining the color of blood and darkness fused into one and closed in on him at a ferocious speed. His only option was to stare at the torrent, the tidal wave powerful enough to erase all of creation—
No. Don’t give up. You have to fly. Maybe you’ve used up all your energy, but as long as your wings still move, you have to push a little more, a little higher, a little farther…!
Skreeeeee!! Abruptly, the dry sound of a lightning strike filled Haruyuki’s consciousness.
This is.
The sound of acceleration.
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