Accel World - Volume 18 - Chapter 3

3

Niko and Pard have got to be freaking out right about now, Haruyuki thought as he looked down at the confirmation dialog box before him.

It was, of course, not the first time he’d seen the message written in English—something to the effect of YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED TO A BATTLE ROYALE. YES/NO. He’d gone from the Gallery to a Battle Royale a million times before.

But just this once, he had a hard time keeping his head on his shoulders. Naturally, he was nervous about fighting the powerful warriors of Great Wall, but what loomed far larger was that two from the group gathered there were kings—level niners.

“Kuroyukihime, is this really all right?” Haruyuki asked in a hushed tone as he shifted his eyes from the dialog box to the avatar beside him.

She had already pressed the YES button, and yet, Kuroyukihime shrugged slightly. “Well…”

“Well? That’s kinda— I mean, this isn’t the actual Territories, so that level-nine sudden-death rule applies, right?”

“That is true. And it wasn’t a normal duel in which I took Red Rider’s head, but a Battle Royale.”

“S-so then maybe you shouldn’t? If the worst happens, I…” Haruyuki tried to change her mind for the nth time.

“I appreciate your concern, Crow.” Kuroyukihime lightly patted his shoulder with the flat part of her sword hand. “But I can’t be the only one to remain in the Gallery. When I do eventually come face-to-face with the White King, we, too, will be fighting under sudden death. And in this Battle Royale, Grandé and I have promised not to fight each other directly. If he was the sort to renege on that and come for my head, he wouldn’t have agreed to a meeting like this in the first place. In fact, if either of us was going to be nervous about this, I’d expect it to be him.”

Haruyuki glanced over at the green camp standing firm a little ways off. The Green King and Graphite Edge had apparently both been in on the plan to switch the meeting to Battle Royale mode for a mock Territory battle. But it seemed to be news to the members of the executive from Viridian Decurion down, and while they agreed with the basic idea, Iron Pound was furiously counseling the Green King about something or other.

Unconsciously perking his ears, Haruyuki heard not an argument to stop the king from participating, but a specific strategy proposal on how to keep him safe on the battlefield.

Not about to be outdone, Haruyuki turned to Kuroyukihime. “I understand. But you totally can’t charge into the enemy camp. Try to stay to the rear.”

“Heeey!” A laid-back voice came from the green camp. The speaker was the one who proposed the Battle Royale mode, the double sword user. “Thirty seconds left! Who still hasn’t pressed the button?”

Hurriedly turning his gaze upward, Haruyuki saw that the timer that had started at 1,800 seconds had only thirty seconds left. “Uh, um, anyway…I’ll protect you, Kuroyukihime!” he declared, stretching a finger out to the dialog box.

Before he knew it, Fuko, Utai, Akira, Takumu, and Chiyuri had gathered around them. He looked at the faces of his trusty comrades in turn and nodded sharply before pressing the YES button.

A BATTLE ROYALE IS BEGINNING!! The flaming text burned bright red before his eyes. Ten seconds until the mode switch.

“Don’t worry, Haru. We’re totally going to win this!” Chiyuri declared in a very quiet but resolute voice and then slapped him on the back. His childhood friend was always there to cheer him on.

“Yeah. Let’s do it!” he replied, clenching his hands into tight fists. The countdown burned flashily as the numbers dropped steadily toward zero.

Klang! Silver Crow’s health gauge popped up in the upper left of his field of view, and the color of the sky began to change. The eternal evening sun of the Twilight stage sank into the horizon with incredible speed. Indigo blue painted over the madder-red, then became quickly overtaken by black.

A night stage. Moonlight? Cemetery? Or maybe Bizarre Festival?

Krrrr! A powerful quake made the buildings of the stage shudder and shake. Haruyuki hurriedly looked around, only to be confronted with an entirely unexpected sight:

The ground of the duel stage was caving in. Ravine Square centered around Shibuya Station was safe for the time being, but the buildings in the direction of Dogenzaka and Miyamasu-zaka were swallowed up one after another, leaving nothing but massive holes where they once stood. The countless craters expanded and joined up with one another until, finally, all that was left of the ground were a few blocks like floating islands.

At last, the ten-story building where the black and green teams stood was ripped in half with a loud roar midway between their encampments. Broken into north and south sides, the pieces of Ravine Square gradually began to pull away from one another. The other islands scattered throughout the stage also appeared to be moving freely.

Haruyuki had never seen a stage like this. He looked down over the edge of the rupture, wondering what was in the holes, and groaned. “What?! Th-there’s no bottom!!”

All he could see was an infinite darkness that absorbed all light.

No, wait…He couldn’t make out what they were exactly, but he could see a few small lights bobbing around. The lights immediately increased in number, glittering a cool white or blue or red. They were…

“Stars?” Takumu murmured beside him.

Indeed, the lights looked like nothing other than stardust. But how could there be stars beneath the ground?

“Hey,” Chiyuri spoke then from directly behind, her voice hoarse. “Up. Look up. Up.”

“Huh?” Obediently, Haruyuki turned his face upward at the same time as Takumu.

“Whoa!” They cried together, almost drowning out Utai’s admiring “That’s amazing…”

A starry night spread out above their heads as well. But this was totally different from the sad sky of the Moonlight or Cemetery stages; it was bright. Against a jet-black background, countless stars completely filled the heavens, with red, blue, and yellow galaxies adding dashes of vivid color. It was almost like they were looking up from a point immediately beside the central part of the galaxy.

“Oh!” Haruyuki cried out again. “Th-this stage, it can’t be…!”

“It does seem to be doing the impossible,” Kuroyukihime assented, unable to hide her own surprise. “I thought it would be implemented today, but I never dreamed we would draw it here. There’s no mistake. This is the Space stage.”

“But we’re still able to stand normally,” Akira noted, and the seven looked down. It was true that their avatar feet stood firmly on the cracked tiles of the building’s roof and showed no signs of floating up due to lack of gravity.

“So then does the Space stage just look like space, but still has gravity?” Chiyuri sounded a little let down.

“N-noooooo!” A throaty cry echoed through the stage. “Hey! Somebody! Gimme a haaaaaand!”

Haruyuki turned his face up again and saw against the background of the magnificent sky the century-end rider bobbing upward. “Oh, he’s floating…”

Takumu pushed up his nonexistent glasses as he remarked, “Apparently, gravity stops working if you jump carelessly. So I guess if you have no means of propulsion, you need to fight with your feet on the ground of the floating island.”

“That’s not necessarily the case if you can attack at long-distance,” Akira remarked. “You can just shoot the enemies on floating islands while you float in the zero-gravity space.”

Haruyuki nodded. Thinking about it now, in anime set in space, they fired beam rifles or missiles and things at one another, and it seemed okay to assume that those principles applied in the Space stage as well. But then…

“…We might be in trouble,” he said.

“…?”

Akira turned around and raised a questioning eyebrow, so he explained his concerns.

“Um. It was like this in the Hermes’ Cord race, too, but there’s no air in the Space stage, so I won’t be able to fly.”

“Huh,” Chiyuri said like it had nothing to do with her and cocked her head to one side. “But even without air, it’s not hard to breathe. And we can talk and all.”

“C-c’mon, don’t go digging too deep,” he said on behalf of the BB system, then realized something with a gasp. He shot his gaze back toward Akira and jabbed a finger with a splsh into Aqua Current’s flowing water armor, which glittered beautifully in the light of the galaxy. A small ripple spread out on the surface.

“Hey! What’re you doing, Crow?!” Chiyuri jabbed him in his side.

“I—I wasn’t!” He hurried to defend himself. “I mean! I was just thinking space is supposed to be absolute zero, but Curren’s armor’s not freezing.”

This time, Fuko interjected from his right. “You’re not quite right there, Crow. Space is actually filled with microwaves known as cosmic background radiation, and because of that, it’s just a few degrees warmer than absolute zero.”

“…B-but that’s still, like, minus two hundred seventy Celsius, right?” he replied. “You can’t call that warm.”

“Hee-hee, I suppose not. Actually, there’s no heat or cold in this Space stage, hmm? …I don’t feel warmth or wind or smell anything.” Indeed, the thin dress Fuko wore and the ribbon on her hat were not fluttering in the wind.

“Hmm.” Kuroyukihime looked up at the starry sky. “If I had to name the attribute, I’d say it was ‘nihilistic,’ perhaps. It seems we’ll have to test a variety of things to see what’s effective and what’s not. At any rate…shall we smash the things in the area and build up our gauges?”

“I guess we should.” Haruyuki nodded and tried to crush the concrete pillar standing beside him with a punch. The strength of the terrain objects was not as bad as the Twilight stage, but they were still fairly brittle.

His comrades similarly smashed pillars and walls, and when the floating island had essentially become flat terrain, they heard a sad cry from Great Wall’s island some thirty meters away.

“No! Noooooooooo! Mighty me! My super-machiiiiine! Aaaaaah!!” Ash Roller, floating in zero-gravity space, was straddling his motorcycle, which he had summoned at some point, and was going hard on the accelerator. But the apple of his eye, the V-twin engine, didn’t so much as squeak.

“Ohhh. There’s no air, so that old-style engine doesn’t work,” Haruyuki said as he watched. This is going to make for a pretty tough battle for Ash and me.

And then Lignum Vitae turned the parasol she’d been using to destroy terrain objects toward Ash. The wooden shaft slid out and grew longer, and the sharp stone tip caught the wheel of the motorcycle. She pulled the umbrella back down, and the bike approached the wobbling island before both tires finally made contact with the ground. Then the umbrella returned to its original length in an instant with a sharp Shf!

“Ooh!” Chiyuri stared intently at the green camp. “That parasol’s great! Stretching and shrinking like that seems super-handy. I wonder where they sell them.”

“Unfortunately, Bell,” Akira said, “that umbrella is Lignum’s initial setting equipment, so I doubt it’s sold in any shop.”

“Tch!” Chiyuri tsked in disappointment.

Meanwhile, Haruyuki noticed that Utai, a little ways off, had a complicated look on her face. Being careful not to jump, he took a few steps and asked quietly, “Mei, is something the matter?”

“Oh! Yes, I’m sure this will be difficult for you, C, but I think I will be facing some issues, as well.”

He stared hard at the small shrine maiden, wondering what on earth her “issues” could be before finally realizing it. “Oh! R-right…Without air, flames…”

“Yes. My flame attacks will most likely be ineffective. In such an important fight, it seems I will only drag the rest of you down.” Utai hung her head dejectedly.

Haruyuki unconsciously put his hands on her shoulders. “I-it’ll be o—” Before he could get the last syllable out, Utai was yanked away.

ICBM, aka Fuko, lifted her up from behind. “It’s okay, Maiden. Even without the fire damage, your bow is strong enough. I’ll make up for whatever’s missing.” She squeezed Utai tightly and then threw her head back and shouted, “Equip Gale Thruster!!”

From the starry heavens, two streaks of light shot down into Fuko’s back, followed by a blinding flash. Her dress and hat scattered and disappeared to reveal the flowing lines of an Enhanced Armament on her back. These rocket boosters that Haruyuki himself had once borrowed contained overwhelming thrust power.

Fuko would be able to use them without any problems at all. In fact, they were originally created to fly in this stage: Sky Raker’s wings.

With Gale Thruster equipped, Fuko gently set Utai down before the high heels of her feet clacked against the ground. Her previously soft aura was completely gone now. “Silver Crow said it at the top of Hermes’ Cord,” she said boldly. “I, Sky Raker, am a space-battle duel avatar, born to fly across the ocean of stars. Here, today, I will prove those words true.”

“Mm. I’m counting on you, Raker,” Kuroyukihime agreed. “The rule is that I can’t cut down the enemy camp, so I leave the front line to you. Rip them to shreds.”

“Of course!” Fuko replied.

Perhaps the snappy exchange between Legion Master and Submaster reached the enemy camp some dozens of meters away. The seven members of Great Wall dropped into ready positions as one on the floating island drifting to the south. It seemed that they, too, had finished analyzing the new stage and charging their special-attack gauges. The timer had 1,523 seconds remaining.

Haruyuki instinctively understood that the battle would start the instant the numbers reached 1,500. Still, there weren’t many options for a crow that couldn’t fly. At best, he could be someone’s shield.

“…Ah, no, hang on a sec,” he muttered, staring at the enemy team again.

The Green King had retreated to the rear of the island and set the great shield Strife solidly down in front of him. Standing in a row before him were the gladiator, Viridian Decurion; the boxer, Iron Pound; the kung fu artist, Suntan Chafer; the somehow treelike Lignum Vitae; Ash Roller, still straddling the motionless motorcycle; and the dual swordsman clad in black, Graphite Edge.

“Um, Kuroyukihime?” Haruyuki asked. “Do they not have any long-distance types over there?”

“Hmm?” she responded. “Mm, quite possibly.”

“At most, the missiles of Ash’s bike,” Haruyuki agreed. “But he can’t fire continuously, and we have Mei with her bow and Pile with his long-distance special attack. So couldn’t we win by just getting them to shoot all they want?”

“That’s the feeling I’m getting.” Akira nodded sharply.

The two islands were already more than thirty meters apart. To cross this distance with a jump would require a powerful leap with a running start, but anyone who did that would fly off into the starry sky like Ash Roller had.

“…………”

The members of Nega Nebulus exchanged curious looks, and the remaining time reached 1,500 seconds. Haruyuki and his comrades had let their guards down for a mere instant. But in that moment, the enemy had already gained the upper hand.

Graphite Edge jumped up lightly in the center of the enemy line, leaned forward, and bent his legs up underneath him. And then Iron Pound launched a hard right straight at the soles of his feet.

Bwum! The shock wave shook the stage, and the body of the swordsman came flying at them with a force so intense it was as though he had fired up hidden boosters. By kicking at Pound’s right straight with perfect timing, Graph managed to accelerate suddenly along the horizontal. This way, there was no chance of him flying up into the sky.

“Incoming!”

At the sound of Kuroyukihime’s voice, Utai pulled back the bowstring of her longbow, Flame Caller. The string hummed, and the arrow that launched drew out a silvery tail instead of a flaming one as it streaked toward the sword user’s face mask.

But Graph caught Utai’s arrow with the flat of the longsword he drew from his right shoulder. Clang! The arrow was repelled without fuss and disappeared into the stars.

“Nngh!” Haruyuki stepped forward as if in a trance and readied his fists. Of all the members of the black team, the metallic-colored Silver Crow had the greatest resistance to swords—severing attacks. He would have to step up and take on Graphite Edge.

But having drawn just the one sword, Graph took yet another unexpected action. Still flying through the zero-gravity space, he brandished the blade high and shouted what was probably the name of a special attack, “Vertical Square!!”

The longsword slashed out four times on an upward trajectory, so fast it was invisible to the eye. The vivid-blue swipes drew an enormous square in the empty space. But Graph was still so far from Haruyuki. There was no way the sword tips would reach him.

Empty swinging? Just a demonstration?

But it was not. Although the blue square, three meters on each side, seemed to be just a light effect, it moved forward instead of disappearing, tumbling end over end, and touched the black team’s island. Haruyuki felt a powerful vibration beneath his feet, and the square of light closed in on him, ripping the concrete island apart.

“Run, Crow!” Kuroyukihime shouted from behind.

Haruyuki threw his body to one side. The blue light grazed the tip of his right foot, sending tiny sparks scattering. And then the square sank into the center of the thirty-meter island, and he lost sight of it.

A second later, the island split in two with a krrrk.

“Wh-whoa!” Hurriedly clutching at the ground, Haruyuki felt the virtual gravity suddenly weaken. The weight of his duel avatar was essentially halved, and the fierce shaking of the island threatened to throw him off.

“G-gang!” He somehow managed to stabilize himself and turned around to see Takumu, Chiyuri, and Kuroyukihime standing on the same half of the island—and Fuko, Utai, and Akira on the other, legs spread and hips lowered to find their balance.

Most likely, the smaller the islands got when they were blown apart, the weaker the gravity they generated. The accuracy of shots fired from such an unstable foothold was doubtful.

But the bigger problem was whether Graphite Edge had slashed into the island with the aim of weakening gravity for the black team. If he had, then that meant that the swordsman knew the Space stage.

The black-clad avatar came down to land soundlessly on Haruyuki’s chunk of island. Seemingly unperturbed by the unreliable gravity, he stood perfectly still.

“Never dreamed we’d get the Space stage when it was only just implemented,” Graph drawled, resting the sword in his hand on his shoulder. “You were the last one to press the button, yeah, Silver Crow? So you’re lucky. Or not.”

What? So does that mean I’m the one who got us this stage? Haruyuki panicked.

From directly behind him, a sharp voice shot out.

“You speak as though it’s not your first time in the Space stage. Have you been here before, Graph?” Kuroyukihime snapped from behind, only to come out and hover in front of him.

“No way.” The black dual swordsman shrugged lightly. “Of course it’s my first time. But I’ve fought plenty in other games on a similar map. As a general rule, players with long-distance techniques’re at a lopsided advantage when it comes to space. So I’m just leveling the field.” He had no sooner made this statement than he was lazily brandishing the sword he bore.

“Slant!” Together with the technique name, he brought his blade down diagonally. The blue sword of light slashed directly in front of Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime and cut a straight line into the gray concrete.

Krrkaan! The ground shook once again. Cut apart in a single blow of the special attack, the floating island shuddered and split. Haruyuki hurried to grab hold of the foothold that was now a quarter its original size, but the gravity decreased even further, and he basically couldn’t feel the weight of his avatar at all anymore.

As if Graph’s second blow was a signal, five avatars, excluding Grandé—Ash Roller had gotten off his motorcycle—leapt forward from the green camp island a few dozen meters away. Apparently, they intended to turn the fight into a low-gravity group melee and nullify any long-distance attacks.

But just as Haruyuki had guessed earlier, jumping diagonally upward meant that they quickly left the sphere of the island’s gravity and flew toward the stars. Still on all fours, Haruyuki watched with wide eyes, wondering how the green team would manage to change their trajectories.

“Distant Shield.” The sonorous technique call came from behind the group flying through the air. The owner of the voice was the Green King, alone on the floating island. He held the great shield up high with his right arm and then brought it down hard against the ground.

Zzzsshrn! The shock wave spread out, and a massive cross appeared in front of the five members of Great Wall. This was exactly the same color and shape as the Strife, but transparent enough that the stars behind it were visible.

And yet, it had substance. Iron Pound and the others kicked off the vision of the shield one after the other to change the angle of their jumps.

“Here they come!” Chiyuri shouted.

“I’ll handle Graph!” Kuroyukihime shouted, quickly doling out instructions: “Pile and Bell, Maiden and Current, team up and take on the enemy! Crow, Raker, you’re ranging!”

“Roger!!” the six members of Nega Nebulus called out in unison and dropped into position to meet the oncoming attack.

Aiming for Pound and the others approaching from the sky above, Utai began shooting arrows at them. The majority of these were knocked aside by Viridian Decurion’s buckler, but they seemed to be effective as a challenge. The five avatars pushed at one another in midair to split into two groups, and Decurion and Pound came down toward the chunk of rock where Utai and the others were encamped, while Lignum, Chafer, and Ash fell toward Haruyuki’s island.

Standing up very carefully from the ground in the weak gravity, Haruyuki moved away from Kuroyukihime and readied himself alongside Takumu and Chiyuri. The role he’d been instructed to play was roving attacker, but if three enemies were coming in, then he had to be there to welcome them.

A second later, the F-type avatar duo of Lignum and Chafer stuck their landing rather splendidly, while Ash, behind them, hit the ground on all fours.

“Um, Ash!” Haruyuki impulsively called out as the century-end rider moved to stand up ever so fearfully. “Why’d you come here without your bike?”

“Shaddup! You’re one to talk! You can’t fly with no air!”

With this fact pointed out so succinctly, Haruyuki could do nothing but fall silent with a pouting frown. When he thought about it, the last time he’d fought a motorcycle-less Ash Roller had been the second duel they had after Haruyuki had become a Burst Linker. That time, although he’d clearly been a total newb, he’d managed to win the tough fight, but it had been eight months since then. He’d be wise not to assume Ash’s actual fighting power was the same as it had been then.

“I understand. I’ll keep my guard up!” Haruyuki declared, readying his hands before him.

But the avatar in the Qipao dress gestured for Ash to step back. “Ash, team up with Lignum. I will fight Silver Crow first.”

“Huh?” Haruyuki cried as the same time as Ash howled “whyyyy?!”

Rather than answer them, however, Suntan did a short, elegant, and fierce martial arts demonstration, reminiscent of the kata for Chinese kenpō. She settled into a relaxed pose as though they were in a totally normal gravity environment instead of one-fourth the usual. “You will show me the skill that won against my brother Pound one-on-one!”

“O-oh, that’s—!”

That’s when I was Chrome Disaster.

She didn’t give him the chance to give voice to the words. Walking like she was gliding smoothly across the cracked concrete, Suntan rapidly closed the distance between them.

“Ya!” The right hand that was thrust forward with the short battle cry was not clenched into a fist. Haruyuki immediately surmised that this was a palm strike to his face and tried to bring his arms up to guard.

However, Suntan’s palm only gently touched Haruyuki’s left wrist. There was no damage, but a cold chill raced up his spine. He hurried to pull his arms back, but the palm had already snapped shut around his wrist.

Giving him no chance to escape, she twisted his left arm inward, and his elbow and shoulder joints squealed violently at the limit of their range of movement.

Now!

Suntan launched a palm strike with her left hand.

“Nngh!” He just barely managed to guard with his right arm, but in the moment of impact, sparks shot out from the overextended joints of his left. Together with a sharp pain, his health gauge was cut down about 5 percent.

Gritting his teeth beneath his goggles, Haruyuki belatedly grasped what was going on. One-quarter gravity meant that the force of simple striking attacks was also one-quarter or even less. Just kicking or punching wouldn’t have any real effect, and there was also the risk that the reaction would send you floating up off the ground. The only way to deal any accurate damage in a hand-to-hand fight in this situation was to grab hold of your opponent and launch strikes, or use judo locking techniques. Suntan’s attack—pushing his right arm to the limit and striking with her left hand—was a high-level technique that did both simultaneously. Most likely, Suntan and the others had been lectured in advance by Graph on how to fight in the low-gravity environment of the Space stage.

His thoughts racing, Haruyuki tried to somehow pull his wrist free from its extreme position, but Suntan’s hand was glued to him and refused to let go.

“It’s no use!” she shouted. “My palm is an aggregate of tiny suction cups. You cannot break free with force!”

“Wha—?”

That’s scary! The thought flashed through his mind, but he felt like he’d read somewhere that insects that could climb up glass did indeed have feet like that.

“Okay then!” Enduring the pain in his left arm, Haruyuki launched a roundhouse kick with his right leg. If they were joined at their arms, then it stood to reason he could also hit her.

“You’re soft!” With exquisite timing, she yanked on his left arm and knocked his kick off track. She easily guarded against it with the thick armor of her left forearm and launched her own quick kick in response.

“Ha!” Her leg stretched out directly above him in an impeccable vertical kick, scraped his lower jaw, and carried away another 3 percent of his gauge.

Haruyuki was definitely not bad at close-range, hand-to-hand combat. That was, in fact, his main attack style. But his own distinctive flavor of that was high-speed, three-dimensional movement, so he was at a disadvantage when he was forced to cling to his opponent like this. He had to somehow drag her into his playing field.

If I can’t get my arm back! Haruyuki strengthened his resolve and sank down.

“Hngaah!” He jumped as hard as he could. It seemed that Suntan didn’t have suction cups on the soles of her feet, at least, and she pulled away from the ground with Haruyuki clinging to her.

“What is this?!” Suntan hurriedly tried to let go of him, and now it was Haruyuki grabbing her wrist and pulling her closer. The weak gravity vanished in a flash, and they started to ascend into the infinite starry night. The only way they were going to return to one of the islands was if they hit the stage boundary somewhere in the distance above or used a special attack that generated some kind of kinetic energy.

“Hey! Let go of me!” Suntan shouted, her voice tinged with an edge of panic as she tried to kick Haruyuki again. But all she accomplished was adding spin to their conjoined bodies. She might have gotten some pointers before the battle, but this was still her first experience in a totally gravity-free environment.

Of course, it was also Haruyuki’s first time. But when he really thought about it, he’d experienced something similar any number of times—free fall from impossible altitudes. During a free fall, kicks and punches were mostly useless. The only effective attack was when the opponent was completely restrained.

“Please excuse me!” Apologizing automatically, Haruyuki slipped his arms around Suntan from behind before squeezing the slender torso with everything he had.

Since duel avatars didn’t breathe or have blood flowing through them, choke holds worked totally differently from in the real world. To cause damage, an avatar needed to apply enough pressure to break the other player’s armor, but Silver Crow didn’t have that kind of strength.

“It’s…no use! My armor cannot be crushed with this force!” Suntan shouted, removing her hands from Haruyuki’s arm. And she was right; her armor was quite strong, as befitting her insect motif. He doubted he could put a tiny crack or two with a choke hold.

However, that was not his objective.

The instant his opponent turned her focus to escaping the hold, he loosened his arms and let them slip slightly to cross his forearms while still holding on to Suntan. At the same time, he pulled his head back as far as he could.

“Head…” Silver Crow’s face mask shone with a pure-white glow, and the light of the stars receded. Suntan, desperate to escape Crow’s arms, reacted the slightest bit too late. “…Buuuuuuuuuutt!!”

Haruyuki smashed his head into the back of the head in front of him.

The Anomaly, Graphite Edge. The reason for the nickname was the fact that he was equipped with swords that could cut through anything and a shield that could defend against anything.

Although it wasn’t exactly a shield, per se.

The longsword of Graph’s right hand—named Lux—was matte black along the edge, while the blade itself was a transparent glass-like material. Thus, in poor light, it looked like it was nothing more than a thin black border. This edge was graphene, a sheet a single atom thick. Because the blade tip was only a single atom wide, it could cut through any substance in the Accelerated World. The blade itself was made of hyper diamond, a fullerene aggregate. Boasting an overwhelming hardness and fracture toughness, it repelled any substance in the Accelerated World.

It hadn’t been drawn yet, but Graph had Umbra on his left shoulder, a longsword of the exact same appearance and performance. So then what would happen if sword was to cut sword—Lux against Umbra? Many Burst Linkers had questioned this for several years, but Graph merely grinned in response.

It had been three years since she’d fought Graphite Edge, formerly the earth of the Four Elements, and now the first seat of the Six Armors. And the stage for their last fight had been the roof of Shibuya Hikarie, the commercial building beside Ravine Square.

Back then, she had begrudgingly been defeated, unable to break the cross-guard defense of the two swords, but today she had to show him how she’d grown in the last three years. She couldn’t fail in this mock territory battle, and most importantly, Graphite Edge had been Kuroyukihime’s sword teacher.

“First, I’ll have to make you draw your second sword, hmm?” Kuroyukihime said, guard up as she dropped into position.

“Looking forward to it.” Graph grinned beneath his face mask—or so it seemed. “Been a long time since I drew Umbra.”

“Hasn’t it been a long time since you even dueled?” she retorted.

“Now that you mention it, I guess it has.” His arrogant tone hadn’t changed, but the tip of the longsword he gripped in his right hand was perfectly still even in the super-low gravity of the stage.

Facing him, Kuroyukihime quickly glanced around to check on the situation. She was standing on the left part of the floating island split apart by Graph’s special attack. Silver Crow and Suntan Chafer had been fighting on that same island until a few seconds earlier, but Crow had jumped to send them flying off into the zero-gravity zone, so she couldn’t see their battle at the moment.

Some ways off, Cyan Pile and Lime Bell were taking on green’s Lignum Vitae and Ash Roller. Pile and Bell both excelled at close-range fighting, but in addition to the unfamiliar stage, they were apparently bewitched by Lignum’s parasol and the way it stretched and shrank and opened and closed. But they hadn’t taken any significant damage yet.

On the other island, gradually drifting off to the right, Aqua Current was fighting Iron Pound, and Sky Raker was facing off against Viridian Decurion. The strategy appeared to place Ardor Maiden at the rear to shoot arrows while Current took Pound’s strikes with her water armor, and Raker deftly handled Decurion’s slashing attack, but without fire, the arrows didn’t seem to be penetrating Pound’s iron armor or Decurion’s buckler.

Both teams were stuck in deadlocks, but once someone started the chain of special attacks, things would get moving. Kuroyukihime couldn’t stand there glaring at Graphite Edge forever, either.

“I suppose we should get started, too, then, Graph?” Kuroyukihime raised the sword of her right hand, and Graphite Edge also readied himself in the same pose.

“Anytime you’re ready, Lota.”

“I’ll say this now. Things won’t go as they did three years ago!” she shouted, thrusting the tip of her right leg into the concrete before leaping forward.

In this kind of low-gravity environment, an avatar would normally be forced upward when they kicked off the ground to dash, but given that she could use both her feet as spikes, Black Lotus was the exception to this rule. She stuck to the ground in a low-altitude dash, slashing the sword of her right hand upward.

Graph easily caught the blow with his longsword. But she had been counting on that. Her aim lay elsewhere.

“Hup!” Graph barked as his body floated up lightly, unable to completely absorb the energy from the blow.

Not letting this chance slip away, she thrust her right foot into the ground as she lashed out again with her left. And once more, although he parried the blow, Graph rose farther upward.

The key to fighting with a sword in the Space stage was to use mainly sword strokes from a low position rather than the high position. With an attack from below, a sword wielder could get maximum power by bracing both legs on the ground, not to mention that the upward swing caused the defending opponent to float. And once away from the ground, there was no way for a sword user to counterattack.

Here we go! Shouting in her heart, Lotus dived directly beneath Graph, now two meters in the air. As she folded her legs under her and lowered her body, she turned her right arm straight upward and yanked it back.

“Death By Piercing!!” She called the technique’s name with every bit of strength she could muster, but her voice was drowned out by a sound like an external combustion engine.

A bluish-purple light brilliantly lit up the dark stage. She stretched her body upward as far as she could and thrust her sword arm straight up.

There were two courses of action Graphite Edge could take. Parry, or block with his sword. But Black Lotus’s level-five special attack wasn’t so weak that its trajectory could be changed with a normal attack when her opponent quite literally did not have his feet on the ground. And if he was going to block, even if the blow didn’t shatter his hyper-diamond blade, Graph would fly up toward the distant stars. It would be perfect if they could defeat all the other green members while he was struggling to make his way back.

The tip of her Terminate Sword, glittering lethally, closed in on the chest of the dual swordsman. If the special attack of a king pierced a critical point, instant death was certain, no matter how high-ranking the player, and yet, Graph showed no sign of moving Lux.

No parry and no block? No matter. Be pierced!

“Oh!” Grunting, Kuroyukihime tried to break through the thin armor on Graph’s chest.

Here, finally, the swordsman responded. But it wasn’t his right hand that moved; it was his left. This empty hand, slender for an M-type, casually grabbed the tip of Kuroyukihime’s sword.

The swords of her four limbs were the origin of the king’s nickname, World’s End, and they tore through everything they touched. The only exceptions were the Seven Arcs the kings had, the weapon of the successive Chrome Disasters, and Graphite Edge’s double swords. Plus, Graph’s duel avatar body had such little defensive power that Sky Raker had even remarked that Graph was more sword than person. Thus, the five fingers of Graph’s left hand, holding on to the Black King’s sword while a special attack was activated, should have dropped off instantly.

“Nngh?!” Kuroyukihime gasped in shock.

The powerful thrust of her special attack vanished, as though her sword had stabbed into a lump of thick rubber. From the gaps between Graph’s fingers, the bluish-purple light scattered pointlessly. Not a single finger was cut off, and the health gauge displayed in the upper right of her field of view did not drop so much as a pixel.

On the verge of touching the chest armor, her sword lost all momentum and stopped.

“What on earth did you do?” Kuroyukihime murmured, staring up at this.

The answer was so nonchalant, it was almost hateful. “I’m the one who taught you the Way of the Flexible, Lota.”

Kuroyukihime’s blade still gripped in his left hand, Graphite Edge casually swung Lux. The jet-black single-atom blade touched the side of her ebony sword.

Ting! Kuroyukihime watched as the top fifteen centimeters of her right hand were severed.

The instant the Head Butt propelled forward and made contact with the back of Suntan Chafer’s head, his full weight behind it, a pure-white light effect reflected brilliantly off the armor of both avatars. Although Suntan’s armor boasted a strength on par with any metal color, cracks radiated outward, and tiny fragments flew off.

Head Butt, Silver Crow’s sole hand-to-hand special attack, possessed the two characteristics of Physical/Striking and Energy/Light. The majority of the physical damage was checked by her thick armor, but the light damage became a directionless shock wave and penetrated down to the inner body of the avatar.

“Nngh!” Suntan groaned while her health gauge dropped nearly 20 percent. The knockback of the attack caused them to be blown a good distance away from each other, Suntan toward the sea of stars that colored the sky of the stage and Haruyuki down toward the floating island.

The sky of a normal duel stage had a boundary wall, so Suntan wouldn’t fly up and off into the depths of space. But it would take a fair bit of time until she hit the wall and came bouncing back. He had to get back to the island before that and stand alongside Takumu and Chiyuri in the fierce fight against Lignum and Ash.

As he fell in a straight line in the zero-gravity space, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide to try to take in the status of the battle. He suddenly saw a vivid violet-blue flash of light illuminate one of the floating islands. The light of the Black King’s special attack, Death By Piercing.

Narrowing his eyes, he saw Graphite Edge floating up off the ground and Kuroyukihime directly beneath him. If she launched her special attack from that position, even if he did manage to somehow block it, Graph would be repelled directly upward and shoot off toward the stars just like Suntan.

Nice, Kuroyukihime! Haruyuki clenched his fist in victory.

Then, instead of the light of the special attack piercing Graph like a lance, it scattered in all directions and disappeared. In the right side of Haruyuki’s field of view where the health gauges of enemies and allies were displayed, Kuroyukihime’s dropped more than 10 percent.

“Kuroyukihime!” Haruyuki shouted, perplexed by what had happened.

Most likely, Graph had somehow kept himself from being knocked backward by her attack and instead decided on an immediate counterattack. As was to be expected, this former Element and current first seat of the Six Armors was no ordinary player.

Haruyuki thought about changing the target of his descent from Takumu and Chiyuri to the spot beside Kuroyukihime and gritted his teeth.

I’ll take Graph. Kuroyukihime had made this declaration right before the start of the battle. On top of that, the Black King was far too good a player to ever be done in like this. He had to have faith and leave this to her. So Haruyuki took his eyes off Kuroyukihime and focused on the battlefield with Takumu and Chiyuri.

Pile Driver, the large Enhanced Armament equipped on Cyan Pile’s right arm, was an effective weapon in the Space stage as well, as long as his feet were planted on the floating island. But the instant he went out into the zero-gravity sphere, the pile would lose essentially all its force. This was because, the instant he launched it, he would be unable to absorb the recoil, and his body would inevitably be pushed backward.

To avoid that situation, Takumu was moving very carefully to keep from accidentally floating up. But as a result of that, he was unable to get the lightweight Lignum Vitae within range of his weapon. Meanwhile, the parasol that was Lignum’s main weapon was mesmerizing him, stretching and contracting, opening and closing, but it didn’t seem to have enough power to pierce Cyan Pile’s armor.

The other fight, Ash Roller vs. Lime Bell, was developing even more simply: Ash merely fled from her.

“Heeeey! Waaaaiiit!” Bell cried as she swung the striking weapon Choir Chime.

“Mighty me can’t stop, won’t stop!” Ash shouted. The rider himself had almost zero fighting power once he had descended from his American motorcycle, but he was quick on his feet, if nothing else. He bounced deftly along in the low-gravity environment, and Chiyuri couldn’t get close to him.

Neither Lignum nor Ash appeared to have noticed yet that Haruyuki was closing in on them from above. He wondered which to surprise with an attack and then grimaced abruptly.

The fact that Lignum Vitae and Ash Roller had joined together in this fight was no random roll of the dice. They must have teamed up because of some synergistic effect, and yet, it looked like the two of them weren’t doing anything other than running away. They might have been buying time, but the Change didn’t happen in normal duel stages, and once a Battle Royale had started, it was impossible for reinforcements to jump into the fight.

Wait. I need to take them down instead of just worrying about stuff! Haruyuki set his sights on a surprise attack on Lignum, who was closer to his landing spot.

Abruptly, an intense light source appeared beyond the floating island off in the distance and painted the stage in monotone contrasts.

“Th-the sun?!” Haruyuki cried out unconsciously.

A girl’s voice from below drowned out his yelp. “Carbon Cycle!!”

As if Lignum Vitae had been waiting for this to abandon her defensive position against Takumu, she stopped moving and held her parasol up high. The Enhanced Armament rapidly grew in size to cover and hide Lignum.

Haruyuki didn’t know what kind of technique this was. But he couldn’t just stand by and let her do it. Bending his legs deeply and squatting to absorb the force of his landing, Haruyuki started running toward her as soon as his feet were on the ground. As if thinking the same thing, Takumu also closed the distance between them, readying his Pile Driver.

Lignum’s special attack was apparently of the transformation variety. The dress-clad torso stretched out into a thin cylinder, while her feet became one with the earth. Her parasol swelled up into a cone shape and swallowed her upper body. She was a tree. A large green tree, reaching a height of three meters.

“Yaaah!” Haruyuki launched a roundhouse kick to smash the thirty-centimeter-thick trunk.

On the opposite side, Takumu braced his feet and fired the Pile Driver.

Ka-klang!

Both Haruyuki and Takumu were both knocked backward and fell to the ground.

“N-no damage?!” Takumu cried, shocked, still on his backside. The torso/trunk of Lignum was not so much as scratched.

In the back of Haruyuki’s mind, Aqua Current’s words from before the start of the meeting floated to the surface.

Lignum Vitae, that’s the name of the wood that’s said to be the hardest in the world.

So then, did that mean Lignum had gone full defense and abandoned the idea of attacking? In that case, was she still trying to buy time now that she was a tree? This hypothesis of Haruyuki’s was quickly proven false.

A geometrical pattern that shone with a green light rose up on the surface of the canopy/parasol turned massive cone. The light flowed down the trunk toward the roots, just as a tree bathed in the light of the sun produced energy through photosynthesis. The light that collected at the roots focused into a single line and flowed across the ground to where Ash Roller was some ten meters away.

“Hey, hey, heeeeeey!!” Ash stopped and shouted. “Here we go! Here we go! Giga-overflowiiiing!! Sorry for the wait, you kids!! Now’s where it all starts!! Mighty me! My tuuuuuurrrrrn!!”

Snap! He turned finger guns on Haruyuki and his friends. Chiyuri stopped, dumbfounded, and then started running as if coming back to herself, swinging the large bell.

“Your turn is never coming! You can just take a nap right there!” Chiyuri shouted.

“Howling Panhead!” Ash cried at nearly the same time.

Haruyuki remembered this special attack name. Flying Knucklehead was the one that fired the antiaircraft missiles from the launcher on Ash Roller’s motorcycle, and Howling Panhead launched the ground-to-ground missiles. But the motorcycle was sitting on the green camp island off in the distance; there was no way Ash could control it—

Wait. No.

“Bell! Run!” Haruyuki called before he’d gotten visual confirmation. And then he saw two points of light come flying from the north side of the stage at a ferocious speed. Large missiles with the first seeker lens shining red. Ash could launch the missile long-distance with just the technique call, even when he wasn’t riding the motorcycle.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” Chiyuri put on the emergency brakes with both feet and spun around to try to head over to Haruyuki. But the speed of the missiles’ flight was approaching that of Silver Crow’s top flying speed. And given how difficult running was in the Space stage, she wouldn’t be able to make it with just her feet.

Takumu, about fifteen meters away, threw his upper body back forcefully and shouted, “Splash Stinger!!”

Cyan Pile’s chest armor opened up, and a myriad of tiny needle missiles were launched in quick succession. These scraped past Lignum Vitae in tree mode and closed in on Ash’s missiles from the left side.

The school of small missiles and the two larger ones crossed paths at basically the same time as Haruyuki threw himself forward to grab onto Chiyuri and yank her down to the ground.

A burst of red light—the sound of explosions. The floating island shook fiercely, and as he covered Chiyuri, Haruyuki felt an intense wave of heat and debris assaulting his armor. Although they’d managed to avoid a direct hit, his health gauge dropped before his eyes.

The damage was probably due to all of Takumu’s needle missiles exploding, too, but even so, this was quite the destructive power. If he’d taken even one hit, he would have sustained heavy damage, but fortunately, this technique of Ash’s used up a serious amount of his special-attack gauge. Haruyuki had to get close and take him down before it recharged enough for a second shot.

He checked Ash’s gauge among those lined up in the upper right of his field of view and opened his eyes wide in surprise. “Whoa?!”

Ash’s special-attack gauge was replenishing before his eyes. Was he drinking something? No, no; there was nothing like that in the normal duel field. His mind racing, Haruyuki lifted his head and looked at Ash, but he was simply standing there on the edge of the floating island in an imperious pose; he wasn’t smashing terrain objects or anything…

“It’s Lignum, Crow!” Takumu shouted, and Haruyuki finally understood what was happening.

The line of light that connected Ash to the tree that was Lignum Vitae was there to charge his special-attack gauge. Lignum’s transformation was not simply defensive. Most likely, she could generate energy just like photosynthesis when bathed in sunlight and share that with her comrades. In other words, Ash’s missiles were now unlimited for all intents and purposes. This was the synergistic effect of the Lignum/Ash duo.

“You fiiiiiiiinally figured it out, damned bird bunch!” the century-end rider shouted, a smile of satisfaction on his skull face. “And it’s late o’clock! Mighty me’s turn! Never ends, yooooooo!! Howling Panhead!! One more time! Howling Panhead!! For luck, Howling Panheaaaaaaaaad!!”

Whud, whud, whud, whud, whud, whud!! Six missiles were successively launched from the American motorcycle parked off in the distance.

Ardor Maiden aka Utai Shinomiya took a deep breath as she began to pull back the string of her longbow, Flame Caller. Particles of light enveloped her hands to become a long, thin straight line and make the lacquered vermilion arrow manifest.

Normally, the arrow would have been wrapped in bright-red flames, but in the Space stage where there was no oxygen, flames could not burn. The silver arrowhead shone sharply, but unfortunately, it could not break through the thick armor of Iron Pound nor the hard buckler of Viridian Decurion with simple piercing damage alone.

Nearly five minutes had passed already since Utai, Sky Raker, and Aqua Current had started to fight Pound and Decurion on one chunk of the floating island that had been split apart by Graphite Edge. The strategy was for Raker and Current to stand firm and handle the fierce attacks of the two green members, while Utai launched arrows from the rear, but this was something they’d been forced into, rather than the optimal strategy. Now that Utai had lost the divine protection of flames, she wouldn’t be able to endure close-range combat with “Fists” Pound or “Consul” Decurion. And since Utai couldn’t approach the enemy, Raker (who was definitely not a close-range type herself) and Current were in there giving it their all.

She wondered if she might be more useful if she retreated to a different floating island farther off and tried a long-range attack from there. Of course, they were defending against pretty much all the arrows she launched at this close range, so unless she came up with some pretty serious tricks, she wouldn’t be able to do any damage from a distance, either. Even so, Utai couldn’t help thinking it would be better than simply standing there and letting the others protect her.

Her parent and real-life older brother, Mirror Masker/Kyoya Shinomiya, had sheltered Utai from a massive falling mirror and lost his life doing so. She had absolutely no desire to see anyone else get hurt protecting her. It was more painful than having her own body ripped into a thousand pieces.

But before this fight began, Sky Raker/Fuko Kurasaki had told her, “Get back, be patient, and keep shooting arrows. You’ll definitely make it like that.”

Having been teamed up with Raker ever since the days of the former Nega Nebulus, she trusted her implicitly, and she truly adored Fuko in the real world. But Utai found herself just the tiniest bit unnerved by the older girl. Because when it came down to it, Fuko would try to protect Utai. She would shower Utai with love and try to look after her. And that felt very, very good.

Maybe it was inevitable that Fuko would protect her. The fact was, though, the gap between their actual fighting abilities went far beyond the numbers of level seven and eight. It had been years since they last dueled each other, but if, hypothetically, she was to go up against Raker today, Raker would knock all the arrows Utai launched to the ground with the palm of her hand, close the distance between them in an instant, and defeat Utai before she had a chance to even fight back.

But someday.

Someday, she would reach the same heights as Raker and not simply be protected by her. Utai had started thinking she wanted to become a real partner since she joined the new Nega Nebulus—to be more precise, since she met Silver Crow/Haruyuki Arita.

To be honest, she’d thought he was a little unreliable at first. He didn’t really look like the kind of Burst Linker that the Black King, Black Lotus, World’s End, would choose for a child and entrust with the future of the Legion. But by the time Crow had rescued her from Suzaku’s altar, and they had returned from the Castle together, Utai, too, had come to understand what made him special.

Crow’s strength was his very determination to reach distant heights. That strength of will, no matter how hopeless the situation—even if he was beaten a hundred times and made to crawl on the ground, he would grit his teeth and force himself to his feet to take on the hundred and first fight. Which was why he had been born with those beautiful silver wings, the lone duel avatar in the Accelerated World with the power of true flight.

Utai had learned from Silver Crow the importance of standing firm and moving forward in a crisis. Even in this situation, where she seemed to be nothing more than baggage, if she had faith in Raker and kept shooting her arrows, something would surely change.

Her beloved bow, Flame Caller, had the ability to generate arrows without limit, so unlike a gun-type Enhanced Armament, she could never run out of ammo, no matter how many she fired. She aimed the thirty-third arrow at Iron Pound and released the bowstring. The arrow whistled through the sky, despite the lack of air, nearly hit Pound’s face just as she’d intended, but then it was blocked by his left glove. The arrow fell to one side without doing any damage and melted out of existence.

Not yet, she thought as she went to ready her next arrow.

“Nngh!” Decurion grunted sharply from his place fighting at Pound’s right. He had failed to defend against a whiplike high-speed jet of water that shot out from Aqua Current’s hand and took some damage, albeit minimal.

But why was Decurion off his rhythm? Utai had been aiming at Pound, and he had completely defended against the arrow…

She gasped with realization and quickly pulled back the arrow produced by the longbow. This time, she shot at Decurion. The Consul caught the arrow with his buckler again as he had up to that point, but at the same time, Pound failed to dodge Raker’s sword hand and clicked his tongue. “Tch!”

“I see how it is,” Utai murmured. She finally understood Sky Raker’s intention. For the last five minutes, she had been launching her arrows at a fixed pace, but the target had been random. She’d switch between Pound and Decurion and then fire a few times in a row at one or the other. The cumulative effect was to produce hesitation and annoyance in the veteran warriors of Great Wall— “Which one of us will it be now?”

In which case.

Rather than suppressing her battle aura as she had been up to that point so they would not guess who she was aiming at, Utai poured it all into her bowstring. Her whole body frozen with the bow drawn and aimed, she built up the fire of her battle will. Still not shooting. Not shooting. Not shooting…

Pound and Decurion glanced at Utai impatiently, and Sky Raker and Aqua Current did not let those openings slip away.

“Ha!”

“Hunh!”

Crying out at the same time, the two took a huge step forward, and Raker launched a palm strike from a low crawling position, while Current produced a water blade to deal ferocious attacks at their respective targets. The end goal of these “floating techniques” was marvelously accomplished, and Pound and Decurion were knocked upward simultaneously.

“Dammit!” Pound cursed and turned his fists toward the starry sky as he slipped out of the island’s field of gravity. He was likely intending to fire some special attack upward and return to the island with the recoil. But floating in the zero-gravity space, he was now the perfect target for Utai.

“Superluminal Stroke!!” Utai shouted, further drawing back the already taut bowstring.

Ardor Maiden’s level-seven special attack, the only one whose force was not lessened in this stage. She drew a light attribute arrow that specialized in range, speed, and piercing power. Unlike her fire attribute special attacks like Flame Torrent or Flame Vortex, there was no particular explosion effect, but if it pierced her enemy’s critical point, it could deal serious damage. But the accuracy compensation that the majority of her special attacks had did not work at all on this one, so if her heart wavered even slightly, the accuracy would diminish.

The nocked arrow was enveloped in a pure-white light. Her consciousness traveled down to her duel avatar’s fingertips, and the instant she felt the bow and arrow become even more a part of her—she released it.

A silent flash raced through space and was pulled into Iron Pound’s body.

As a phenomenon, that was it, but as Iron Pound raised his arms, his thick chest armor shattered outward from the center. The health gauge that had been at nearly 90 percent dropped rapidly through the yellow zone and into the red, finally stopping when he was down to only 20 percent. Because the light had pierced that avatar in an instant, his kinetic energy did not change, and Pound continued to float in place.

It wasn’t instant death, but for a high-level metal color, she’d been able to do more damage than she’d expected. Raker would strike the final blow for her later. With this thought in mind, Utai next turned her bow toward Decurion.

“Pound! Fall back!” Decurion shouted, brandishing the Gladius dagger in his right hand.

Pound narrowed his eye lenses in vexation as he positioned his hands in front of himself. “Eruption Blow!”

Flames spewed from both gloves, and with the reactive force, Iron Pound flew off to the island to the rear. The enemy team didn’t have any means of recovering their health gauges, but even so, Sky Raker sank down to follow in pursuit. But she wasn’t allowed to strike the final blow.

“Viridian Legionnaire!” Decurion roared thunderously in midair, sword still raised.

Four bolts of green lightning jetted from the sword and struck the earth of the floating island one after another. Raker and Current leapt aside in time, so there was no damage. But this special attack of Decurion’s wasn’t a simple ranged attack.

“Here it comes,” Raker murmured as shadows oozed up from the ground where the lightning had hit. There were four soldiers clad in heavy armor, all a slightly lighter green than Decurion’s, carrying rectangular shields and rough lances.

Chocolat Puppeter, a new member of Nega Nebulus who had just joined the other day from the Setagaya area, had the ability to produce automatons called Chocopets. Excellent soldiers with chocolate bodies impervious to physical attacks, they could understand a fairly high level of commands, but the Viridian Legionnaires that Consul Viridian Decurion summoned were on an entirely different level. He could call up four with one special-attack gauge, so if he repeated the technique, he could summon even eight at one time, which was terrifying.

Two of these green soldiers headed for Raker, the other two, Current, while Decurion, back on the floating island, lance in hand, kicked wordlessly off the ground and charged toward Utai.

On the left, the powerful shock wave of incoming missiles. On the right, the heroic footfalls of Legionnaires. Kuroyukihime keenly felt the struggle of her comrades. But she didn’t have the freedom to concern herself with that now.

Her right hand’s sword tip was gone, so she could no longer execute thrusting attacks. The swordsman who had dealt this damage still had not drawn his second sword and remained casually cool up against her.

Black Lotus, however, was reeling from the shock of the M-type avatar catching her Death By Piercing, a special attack that had pierced countless powerful enemies up to that point. It had indeed been Graph who had taught her the Way of the Flexible, or as Silver Crow put it, Guard Reversal, but rendering a piercing special attack powerless with one hand was a total aberration.

“Don’t look so serious, Lota,” Graph drawled, seeing through to Kuroyukihime’s heart. “It’s only because gravity’s so weak that I could stop your DBP without taking damage. It’s like your avatar’s made of Styrofoam, basically.”

“Don’t abbreviate my technique name,” she replied curtly, trying to switch mental gears. Just as he said, if there was no gravity, then her body would also be lighter, and the force of her attack would no longer be completely transmitted. So then, why had he been able to cut her sword? Because he’d fixed in place the tip of her sword with the hand that caught her special attack.

The key to close-range combat in the Space stage was to fix yourself firmly on something with mass. She had thought that had been what she was doing, but it wasn’t enough. If she didn’t also fix her opponent in place, she wouldn’t be able to have any impact on a master player like Graph.

But given that all her limbs were swords, Black Lotus couldn’t use any grabbing techniques. She could have one of her comrades grab hold of him for her, but mentally, that would be the same as defeat. If she was going to cut Graph down using her own power, then there was only one option. He had probably already read her mind on that one, too, though. If she aimed blindly, she would just be hit with a painful counterattack. She needed to carefully lay out a strategy that led to that checkmate.

You were always good at this, Haruyuki, she spoke to her scion in her heart, and the pressure eased just the slightest bit.

It was true: She couldn’t lose this mock Territory battle. If they didn’t win and get Shibuya back, the decisive battle with the White King would fade into the distance. During that time, Cosmos would use her latest Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, to wreak some new havoc on the Accelerated World.

What on earth did this girl, her real-life sister, want? What was she fighting for? Kuroyukihime still didn’t know. But as Kuroyukihime’s parent, she had given her Brain Burst. She had manipulated Kuroyukihime with false information and made her drive Red Rider to total point loss. Behind the scenes, against the backdrop of the mutual nonaggression pact among the six major Legions, she had formed the Acceleration Research Society and brought about a number of chaotic situations using backdoor programs, remote farming, and the ISS kits. She had abducted Niko and created the Mark II. All these were the process to realize some single objective.

Kuroyukihime would find out what this hidden objective was when she defeated White Cosmos and forced her to talk at sword point. She couldn’t lose to Graph there. But Haruyuki Arita had taught her that just seeing the objective ahead didn’t make a battle worth fighting. She needed to muster her full power in this duel.

…And have fun.

“That’s right, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime murmured the thought to Silver Crow, fighting hard in the battlefield to the left, before taking a deep breath and letting it out.

“Overdrive. Mode Blue.” She voiced the command almost in a whisper, and a blue light rose up in the grooves along her body. She abandoned armor strength and technique range to specialize her avatar in close-combat attacks.

Graph’s aura also changed the instant he saw her transformation. More precisely, anything like an aura disappeared completely, and any sense of his internal being was gone. The swordsman moved his left arm languidly, and he had no sooner grabbed the hilt of Umbra above his shoulder than he had smoothly drawn it.

Crouching, Kuroyukihime squared off against the Anomaly, now finally equipped with both swords. She had 80 percent left in her health gauge, while Graph’s was practically full. As for their special-attack gauges, Kuroyukihime was at 60 percent, while Graph was at 70. Both of his gauges were greater than hers, but at this level, they could flip back and forth any number of times; that was the Brain Burst duel.

Kuroyukihime readied the sword of her broken right hand to the front and her intact left to the rear. Graph mirrored her, taking on the same stance. The rapidly increasing pressure was on the verge of cracking the earth at her feet, but she accepted even that.

Enjoy—no, delight. I never thought I would get the chance to cross swords with this master again, and now here we are facing each other. I’ll show him how far I’ve come. I’ll show him the power I refined while we were apart.

Beneath her goggles, Kuroyukihime smiled unconsciously. Sound disappeared, pressure disappeared, fear disappeared. In that moment, Kuroyukihime moved.

The six large missiles, an impossible triple launch of Howling Panhead, closed in on Haruyuki and his friends, seeker lenses glittering violently.

“Nngh! One more time!” Takumu threw his upper body back again and moved to trigger his special attack, but Haruyuki hurried to stop him.

“Wait, Pile. It probably won’t be enough!”

The previous Splash Stinger had just barely managed to take down the previous two large missiles. With the late start, it would be impossible for Takumu to make all six of the missiles flying toward them explode. And as long as he was hooked up to Lignum Vitae, Ash Roller could simply launch more, as many as he wanted.

What were those missiles using to lock onto Haruyuki and his friends anyway? It wasn’t heat. Duel avatars had no body temperature, and if that was their homing device, the rear missile would lock onto the missile before it.

Was it simply that they locked onto an “enemy avatar”? No, that might have been possible during the Territories or a tag-team match, but the rules of this duel followed Battle Royale. System-wise, everyone except yourself was an enemy, so the missiles would attack Lignum.

At the very least, the fact that they had lenses meant they had to be looking at something. Not infrared light, but visible light images. And if they were identifying enemies and allies, then an external guidance? Which meant…Ash Roller’s gaze!

Haruyuki yanked his head up and locked eyes with the skull rider staring at them from the edge of the floating island.

There was no mistake.

Which meant he just had to make sure that gaze didn’t reach them. “Pile! The ground!”

With just these words, Takumu seemed to guess at Haruyuki’s intent. They would be leaving it to chance, but there was no longer any other way. Takumu nodded and turned the Pile Driver of his right hand toward his feet, shouting, “Spiral Gravity Driver!!”

The enlarged Enhanced Armament shot a high-speed spinning hammer drill slamming into the concrete. This technique had the restraint that it could only be fired perpendicular to the stage, but it had enough force to destroy even Octahedreal Isolation, the imprisoning space Black Vise generated. And because of the flames that jetted from the rear of the Pile Driver, Takumu wouldn’t float away after using it.

The steel-hammer drill plunged deep into the floating island, and the left half on which Haruyuki and his comrades stood broke into countless fragments and shattered. The local gravity disappeared completely, and the lumps of concrete drifted aimlessly.

“Aaah!” Chiyuri shrieked, and Haruyuki grabbed her hand.

The missiles were speeding toward them, but Ash Roller’s gaze was blocked by countless obstacles, and one after another, they crashed into the concrete and exploded.

“Nngh!” Haruyuki tried to figure out their next move as he shielded Chiyuri from the heat and small fragments pressing in on them.

Still in tree mode, Lignum Vitae had her feet caught in a chunk of stone three meters across, so she couldn’t move and instead elected to continue photosynthesis. Ash clung to this rocky lump, cursing violently, but it seemed that his special-attack gauge was still being charged. They’d be targeted by his missiles once again if they flew carelessly out of the asteroid belt. But if they stayed hidden forever, Suntan Chafer might come back after Haruyuki had gone to all the trouble of sending her flying off to the end of the sky.

“Taku, Chiyu.” Haruyuki leaned in toward his childhood friends behind a large lump of concrete and communicated the strategy quietly.

They seemed a bit hesitant, but they trusted him implicitly and nodded their agreement before taking position as Haruyuki had instructed. The three nodded at one another once more before Haruyuki kicked at a nearby rock and came out from behind the obstructing curtain.

“Go!” he shouted the instant he caught sight of Ash.

Takumu, directly behind him, fired his Pile Driver, and Haruyuki caught the launched pile with the sole of his right foot. Using the Way of the Flexible, he bent his leg and turned the attack power into propulsive force.

However, unable to completely absorb the force of the pile in the zero-gravity environment, he felt the armor on the bottom of his foot crack. But it didn’t go so far as to penetrate, and Silver Crow became a silver bullet, charging through space.

“Giga-fooooooool!! A banzai attack like that’ll never defeat mighty me now that I’m infinityyyyyy!!” Ash Roller cried, still clinging to the rock up ahead. He snapped the fingers of his left hand out at Haruyuki, about to fire his missiles again.

“Citron Calllllllll!!” Chiyuri shouted, and a beam of yellow-green light gushed up from behind Haruyuki to envelop Ash’s entire body.

“Whoa!” Ash howled as his special-attack gauge dropped before his eyes. His once-fully-charged gauge was being reversed by Lime Bell’s Citron Call Mode I, which wound back the status of the target avatar in increments of seconds.

“H-H-Howling Panhead!!” Ash frantically shouted the technique name, but his gauge had already dropped below the required amount, and the motorcycle, on standby off in the distance, didn’t so much as sigh. Of course, once Chiyuri’s special attack ended, the gauge would be filled up once again by Lignum’s ability, but as long as it bought Haruyuki a few seconds to get closer, it was enough.

“Hngaaaaaaaah!” Haruyuki beat down on Ash’s chest with a flying cross chop. The kinetic energy generated by Cyan Pile’s Pile Driver was transmitted as if the two avatars were billiard balls, and the larger one—Ash—shrieked.

“I’ll be baaaaaaack!” And he flew off into the distant darkness.

“No need to hurry!” Haruyuki called in his mind, grabbing onto the rock Ash had been clinging to only a second earlier. He’d anticipated this, but the line of light that spilled from Lignum also poured into Haruyuki’s body and started to replenish his health gauge.

After a few seconds, Lignum appeared to notice the energy thief. “Krebs Cycle!” she shouted, an attempt to cancel tree mode. The conical canopy became a parasol again, and the trunk took on the lines of a girl once more.

Perhaps if he was the hero in an anime or a manga or a Burst Linker who followed the way of the gentleman, he would have made a vow not to attack an enemy in the middle of transforming. But Haruyuki, still just level six, didn’t have that luxury against a high ranker.

“……!”

Not wasting any time, he kicked off the stone. Aiming for the instant that the tree roots of Lignum’s feet turned back into slender heels, he quickly used up the special-attack gauge he had stolen. “Head Buuuuuutt!!”

Lignum, hands still holding the parasol high above her head, was unable to get her guard up in time and took Haruyuki’s Head Butt to the chest. But even if she had guarded, the result would have been the same.

“I will be back.” The fourth seat of the Six Armors flew off in a different direction from Ash.

Haruyuki immediately looked up at the sky, but he still saw no sign of Suntan.

And with that, the three opponents Kuroyukihime had instructed them to engage were dispatched for the time being. If they could add their strength to the other battlefields in the time they’d bought, the fight would tilt heavily in Nega Nebulus’s favor.

“Kuroyukihime!” Haruyuki stared hard at the floating island where Kuroyukihime and Graphite Edge were waging war.

An intense chill shot up his spine. Anticipation. Fear. Dread…

The certainty that he’d made an oversight he could never make up for.

On top of the three meters of rock, he looked back as if compelled and saw a cross-shaped silhouette approaching rapidly, pulling at him like a massive planet.

“Maiden!” Fuko cried in dread.

Back in the old Legion days, Utai would fly into the enemy camp in Fuko’s arms and be dropped onto the enemy base like a bomb. But thinking about it now, she couldn’t remember ever dying because of this strategy. After Utai burned the area to the ground with her ranged techniques, Fuko always swept in to protect her from the enemy counterattack.

In the present moment as well, Fuko was moving to protect her from Decurion’s powerful attack. Utai could see her turning her back to the two Legionnaires marching her way, aiming instead for her directly.

But Utai couldn’t let Fuko spoil her forever. If she couldn’t stand tall and call herself the fire of the Four Elements eventually, she’d never be able to move forward.

“I’m okay!!” she called, mustering up all her willpower and drawing her longbow.

There was no way the long-distance-type Ardor Maiden could win in hand-to-hand combat against the close-range Viridian Decurion, so before he got close enough to swing his sword, she needed to check him in his place. All she had to rely on was the special attack that had pushed back Iron Pound, Superluminal Stroke. Sink or swim, she would aim for the avatar’s critical point.

Except…that wouldn’t work.

There was no way a sink-or-swim approach would work on a high-ranking opponent. However, at a time like this, she imagined Silver Crow would certainly not give in to despair, but rather try to find a way out.

Swallowing her fear, Utai drew Decurion in as far as she could. Just when Gladius was within striking distance, she bent her knees deeply and kicked off the ground with everything she had.

“Yaah!” Her lightweight avatar pulled away from the gravity of the floating island in the blink of an eye, and she ascended toward the starry sky.

“You’re not getting away!” Decurion shouted, jumping after her—until he groaned, suddenly understanding his error.

They flew essentially straight up, a mere four meters between them.

Decurion couldn’t approach Utai as long as inertia propelled them forward. He couldn’t even change his trajectory to return to the floating island.

Most likely, if Utai had jumped even a second earlier, Decurion would have guessed at her aim. But because he’d already dropped into his slashing posture, he’d matched her rhythm.

Decurion probably also had a special attack of the type that could generate kinetic energy. But he’d only just generated the four Legionnaires, so his gauge had to be empty. She needed to take this chance to deal as much damage as possible.

As she moved toward the brilliantly colored stars, Utai drew her longbow. Naturally, Decurion moved his buckler to try to defend. But it was impossible to cover his entire body with a shield only forty centimeters across—and there were only four meters between them.

Fwng! Her arrow plunged deep into the gap in the armor covering Decurion’s right foot. The drop in his health gauge was about 5 percent, but the direct hit to an extremity gave Decurion angular momentum, and he started to spin on the perpendicular. Newton’s third law of motion ensured that Utai was also pushed backward when she fired the arrow, and the pair pulled away from each other bit by bit.

“Nngh!” Decurion moved his limbs, seemingly in a panic, but stopping the spinning once it had started was not possible in space. He soon gave up and curled into a ball, trying to protect himself by covering his body as much as possible with the round shield, but his back was virtually defenseless.

Taking a deep breath, Utai drew her bowstring once more. Carefully applying the right amount of pressure, she focused on one spot and fired.

Snap! The arrow pierced the long armor plate stretching down from Decurion’s chest. There was no avatar body beneath, so this didn’t bring about any extra damage, but Utai had her eye on something else. With the addition of spin in the opposite direction, Decurion’s vertical rotation stopped just as his back was turned toward Utai.

“Heeaaaaaah!!” With an unusually fierce battle cry, Utai made the string of her beloved bow sing. The arrows launched in succession half a second apart and pierced Decurion’s back one after the other.

“Hnngaaaah!!” Decurion tucked in his arms in an attempt to turn his body around, but he had nothing that could defend against the onslaught of Utai’s arrows. They turned the thin armor of his back into a pincushion in the blink of an eye, and Decurion’s health gauge dropped rapidly while both of their special-attack gauges increased dramatically.

The instant hers moved above 50 percent, Utai pulled her bowstring back with extra force and shouted, “Superluminal Stroke!!”

White light flashed between her hands. Her unhesitating arrow shone so brightly that it made the stars themselves seem dull.

Shpak! By the time the sound of impact reached her ears, the arrow of light had already pierced Decurion’s back. Just as with Pound, it didn’t fell him in one blow, but his health gauge was colored bright red, and he dropped toward the floating island, arms and legs splayed. Meanwhile, hit with unprecedented recoil, Utai was pushed up toward the infinite sky. With this momentum, she wouldn’t be able to return until she hit the wall of the stage. She would have to leave the rest to Fuko and Akira.

And then she saw it: a blue light glittering on the island far below her.

A light she’d witnessed any number of times before—the flames of Gale Thruster, the sole Enhanced Armament in the Accelerated World for use in space.

“Fuu,” Utai murmured nostalgically.

A silhouette ascended at incredible speed from the island. It was none other than Strong Arm, Sky Raker, flying with her left arm tucked up alongside her body and her right fist thrust ahead of her.

“So it’s come to thiiiiis!!” The falling Decurion thundered and brandished his Gladius. He was planning to strike at the rapidly approaching Raker.

The sword was tinged with green sparks. Decurion looked for the right timing and called the technique name, “Viridius—”

But the technique did not activate. Raker’s overwhelming speed would not even permit him to call out its second half.

The vertical ascent of the comet that was Sky Raker slammed into Decurion. Raker’s fist pierced the hole that Utai’s special attack had opened up in his chest armor from the opposite side. His health gauge vanished instantly, and the second seat of the Six Armors broke into countless emerald fragments and exploded outward.

Having landed the first win in this Battle Royale, Sky Raker did not pose victoriously, but rather continued to ascend and closed in on Utai.

“Maiden!” she shouted, reaching out her hands to catch hold of Utai’s avatar and hug her to her chest.

I was saved once again, Utai murmured in her heart, but she wasn’t upset about it. She felt like she’d done everything she could as a red long-distance type.

“Fuu.” Utai said her name again and wrapped her arm about Fuko’s. Or she was about to, at least, when they were suddenly assaulted with a fierce sideways G, and she groaned sharply.

Raker turned at a sharp angle and spoke to Utai with alarm in her voice. “Maiden, it’s not over yet!”

“Wh-what happened?!”

“We were hit…That whole watching-from-the-sidelines thing, that wasn’t about lenience. It was a strategy.”

“What do you mean?” Utai asked.

“Grandé!!” Raker shouted, forcing her boosters into overdrive as she flew straight toward the opposite side of the battlefield.

In Brain Burst, players could control their avatars just as they did their real-life bodies, so naturally, your dominant arm in real life was the dominant arm of your avatar. Kuroyukihime, like the vast majority of Burst Linkers, was right-handed. Apparently, up until twenty or so years ago, some parents would correct their children if they were left-handed, but subsequent brain research found that forcibly correcting the dominant hand impeded development, so that sort of thing had since stopped.

All of the members of the current Nega Nebulus were right-handed, but there had been a few southpaws in the old Legion. And just one member was ambidextrous. That had been the Anomaly, freely wielding two swords, Graphite Edge.

And now, the Anomaly was not so much as taking a step, even as Kuroyukihime closed the distance between them with a full-powered dash. Lux in his right hand and Umbra in his left, his blades hung loosely at his sides; his gaze sat blocked by his dark goggles, so she couldn’t tell where he was looking.

But this relaxed, natural state was itself Graph’s Way of the Flexible warm-up movement. He would absorb any and all attacks with minimal movement, reverse the vector, and beat his opponent back. There was even a story—almost a legend—about how in a fight with the first Red King, the Master Gunsmith, Red Rider, he had caught every single bullet fired from those two guns and sent them back to their owner.

If Kuroyukihime slashed at him lazily, he would lightly brush the attempts aside and immediately deal her a painful counterattack. She first needed to make him pull out his double-sword cross guard, his most powerful defensive technique and one he only used when the Way of the Flexible couldn’t be applied.

“Yaaaaah!!” She crossed the swords of her arms and raised them high. It was a special motion, but it wasn’t a special attack. Even if she slashed down with both arms at the same time, she wouldn’t be able to produce much more force than an attack with one arm. With Graph’s abilities, he wouldn’t have to use the Way of the Flexible; he could have simply guarded with one sword and countered with the other to do serious damage.

But the Mode Blue effect light in Black Lotus’s arms dulled his instincts. No doubt judging that this was a new ability or special attack she had learned in the last three years, Graph brought his crossed swords above his head and took on a defensive posture.

In their exchange back then, Kuroyukihime had lost, unable to break this cross guard. Now she feinted to break this absolute defensive technique, which was perhaps even on par with the Strife, the Green King’s Arc.

“Hyaah!!” She launched her right leg in a forward kick with no warning. With both swords up, Graph’s sides were totally open, and the sharp tip of her sword dived in. If her aim was straight, she would no doubt plunge through to his back.

“What—?!” Graph whirled the swords crossed in front of his face to his sides with an impossible speed.

Shnnk! The tips of Lux and Umbra just barely stopped Kuroyukihime’s right leg, like a pair of scissors swinging down.

The number of things in the Accelerated World that could be caught between Graphite Edge’s two swords—and not severed—could be counted on one hand. Kuroyukihime’s limbs were not on that list.

Accompanied by her sharp and fleeting shriek, the sword of her right leg was cut off below the knee. Her health gauge dropped dramatically, plunging all at once to 50 percent.

But she had expected all this.

Kuroyukihime didn’t stop moving for a second, even with her right leg amputated. Instead, she wrapped both arms around Graphite Edge, including his swords.

This technique was one she had not used on him before, and because his wrists had turned the dual swords inward, they had reached the limit of their range of motion. It would be impossible for him to immediately counter.

Not letting the opportunity slip away, Kuroyukihime shouted, “Death By Embracing!!”

Black Lotus’s level-eight special attack. The range: a mere seventy centimeters. But whatever her arms embraced was severed.

An intense violet-blue light gushed from the Terminate Swords with Graph and his swords in their fatal grip.

Kssshk! Her arms crossed, and Graphite Edge was cut in two.

Or at least, he should have been.

But instead of the usual sound of crystal shattering, she heard an abnormal metallic sound that rubbed her nerves the wrong way. Her closing arms had been stopped midway.

As the light died down, Kuroyukihime opened her eye lenses wide. The swords of Black Lotus’s hands had dug halfway into the blades of Graph’s Lux and Umbra and then stopped. Pale sparks gushed from the place where smoky quartz and hyper diamond met, and she couldn’t tell which was cutting into which—or if they were both taking on the same amount of damage.

“Nngh!” Kuroyukihime tried to open her arms to counter. But no matter how she pulled, her arms were not freed from Graph’s swords.

“Ah, what the…?” Graph let out a dumbfounded cry as he also tried to pull his swords away, but the four blades, intertwined like a disentanglement puzzle, only creaked faintly.

““……””

Former teacher and student stared at each other wordlessly.

“This is an idiotic situation.” The first to break the silence was Kuroyukihime. “But if I simply hold you down here, it’s my victory. My comrades will take care of the rest of the fight.”

“Looks like you’re bringing up some good young players, Lota,” Graph replied, the aura of a grin bleeding through. “But it’s about to be do-or-die, you know?”

“What?” Kuroyukihime narrowed her eye lenses below her goggles and then immediately opened them wide.

In the infinite starry sky unfolding behind Graph, a single shadow was flying in from the distance, emitting an overwhelming sense of pressure, extremely thick armor, and a cross-shaped shield equipped on his left arm. Invulnerable, Green Grandé.

The Green King’s aim was not the central floating island where Kuroyukihime and Graph were fighting. It was the asteroid to the left where Silver Crow and the others were duking it out.

Haruyuki!! Crying out in her heart, Kuroyukihime tried once more to swing her arms free. But the enmeshed swords didn’t so much as twitch, almost as if they had been welded together.

In contrast, Graph fixed his swords in place as though he were actually trying to keep Kuroyukihime from moving. “Surely you didn’t think G was going to sit and watch right to the end, did you, Lota? That old man’s fighting style is to wait and wait and wait and wait until the moment. Always has been.”

“Oh-ho, looking forward to this, then,” Kuroyukihime snapped, pushing back her panic.

“Huh? But you can’t move, and even if you could, the rule is you can’t engage directly with G, yeah?”

“Not me. We also have someone who decides when the moment comes,” Kuroyukihime replied, sending her thoughts out to the subordinate she trusted so deeply.

I’m counting on you, Raker!

This is when he decides to come at us?! Haruyuki was frozen in place, unable to figure out what to do, as he stared at the Green King closing in with ferocious speed.

He’d been about to breathe a sigh of relief with the knowledge that the black team had somehow come out on top after they knocked Lignum Vitae and Ash Roller to the distant edge of the stage. And now he had this attack to worry about.

And it wasn’t just that. The very fact of Grandé’s existence had completely slipped Haruyuki’s mind, and likely Chiyuri’s and Takumu’s as well. After creating that foothold for the green team at the start of the battle, Grandé had been silent, so Haruyuki had been convinced he was going to just stand and watch the rest of the fight play out.

That had been the green team’s strategy: erase the presence of their king, their most powerful member. By tossing in this potent bomb to catch the black team totally off guard, they could wreak maximum havoc.

Haruyuki could guess at the enemy’s objective, but that didn’t mean he thought up anything in the way of a counterstrategy. He simply stared at the approaching king.

The first to recover from the shock-induced stupor was Takumu. “Push him back!” he growled, bracing against the biggest rock in the area to ready his Pile Driver.

Takumu was right: Their best and last chance to attack the Green King was at that moment, when inertia was propelling him through the zero-gravity space. Even if he defended, the impact of their blows would still push him back into the distance.

“Do it!” Haruyuki cried.

“Go!” Chiyuri yelled.

Takumu nodded, carefully set his aim, and called the name of the technique. “Lightning Cyan Spike!!”

Cyan Pile’s level-four special attack turned the pile to plasma before launching it into the air at high speed. The jet of white-hot energy shone with a pale light and became a giant lance shooting forward.

The Green King casually moved his great shield, the Strife, and the plasma lance hit the cross dead center before swelling outward into a sphere.

Unsurprisingly, even a special attack couldn’t break through the Arc. But it should have at least been able to stop Grandé’s forward momentum. They would use that opportunity to think of some counterstrategy…

“……What?!”

Just when they’d started moving again, Haruyuki’s thoughts were interrupted once more.

The plasma did not explode when it made contact with Grandé’s cross-shaped shield. It stayed in a sphere, shuddering, almost as if it were caught in some kind of field.

An icy chill took hold of Haruyuki. He remembered what Kuroyukihime had once said to him: “The shield takes in any attack and counters with double the power.”

“Pile! Run!!” Haruyuki shrieked.

But he was too late.

Zrssh! The plasma transformed back into a lance of light twice as thick as the original Lightning Spike and shot forward. The jet of pale energy traced the same trajectory back and plunged into Cyan Pile’s Pile Driver.

“Nngh!” Takumu’s right arm from the shoulder down evaporated instantly, taking with it more than half the massive rock behind him.

“Pile!” Chiyuri cried in dismay, leaping over to catch Takumu as he started to drift backward.

“Bell, heal Pile!” Haruyuki shouted, then turned back to Grandé. Although the king had decelerated the slightest bit, he was still steadily approaching.

He hadn’t remembered what he’d been taught about the special abilities of the Strife partially because Grandé’s sudden entry into the fray had dumbfounded him, and that was Haruyuki’s mistake. He could reflect on his mistakes all he wanted later, though. Right now, he had to get out of this tight spot.

Once again, Kuroyukihime’s words echoed in his mind: “…The only way to break the defensive barrier of that shield is to get rid of it in a single super, superpowerful blow, or to create gaps through endless, successive attacks and aim for the main body of the avatar.”

The former was impossible for Haruyuki. But the latter, maybe. After all, he was standing on this asteroid, so there was nowhere to run from Grandé.

“Go!!” he chided himself, kicking off the rock behind him with all his might. Flying in a straight line in the zero-gravity environment, he clenched his right hand. Grandé’s massive body drew closer with every breath.

“Unh…Aaaaaaaaaah!!” With a fierce cry, he pushed away the pressure field surrounding the king and threw his fist into the center of his shield.

Wrist to shoulder, his joints creaked from the too-heavy feedback, as though he had punched the ground of Demon City. But if he stopped attacking now, he would only take the force of that punch times two. So he executed a left kick using the reactive force. Another right straight. And then a left hook. Punch. Kick. Punch. Kick.

Every time he landed a blow, the silver glow on the emerald surface of the shield grew, most likely the accumulated energy of Haruyuki’s physical attacks. If his pace lagged for even a millisecond, this energy would double in size and bounce back to smash Silver Crow to pieces.

It was weird that all his punching and kicking didn’t knock his avatar backward in the zero-gravity space, but he could feel some kind of strange magnetism. Judging from how Takumu’s plasma energy also accumulated on its surface, the Strife most likely generated a weak absorption field when defending.

“Unh— Aaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki mustered up all his speed and rotated his striking techniques. If even a single blow missed the core of the shield, he would lose his balance and momentum, breaking the chain of physical strikes. He needed to keep going with maximum speed and maximum precision.

Pushing his powers of concentration to the limit, Haruyuki remembered the time he had fought Grandé a month earlier. The place had been the roof of the Roppongi Hills Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Equipped with the Armor of Catastrophe, Haruyuki had become the sixth Chrome Disaster and had swung his greatsword to strike the Strife.

That had been what Kuroyukihime called the “single superpowerful blow.” And although he hadn’t been able to knock Grandé’s shield back with that blow, he hadn’t lost to the shield, either, and as a result, the force of reaction had been dispersed downward, completely destroying the top of the Hills Tower.

Haruyuki currently did not have the force he possessed at that time. Back then, he’d been able to get a draw with Grandé thanks to the power produced by the Enhanced Armament the Chrome Disaster, the attack force of the cursed greatsword Star Caster, and the Beast, an artificial intelligence that lived in the armor. The difference in their actual abilities at present was essentially heaven and earth, but as long as Grandé kept taking his blows, Haruyuki would keep piling them on.

The wave of hyper-acceleration that only visited him when his powers of concentration crossed a certain line pushed up and enveloped him. All sound faded, and the color of his field of view changed. All that existed in the world were the cross-shaped shield before him and his own fists and feet.

Faster. Faster.

The interval between his strike shortened ever further, and the sound of successive impacts was like a machine gun firing nonstop. The accumulated silver energy grew and grew and grew until finally the shield itself began to shine.

Faster, faster. Faster, faster, faster!!

Haruyuki made his duel avatar dance, the interval between blows as short as humanly possible. As long as he was in this zone, he felt like he could keep going forever.

Breaking this concentration was a shout from directly above. “That’s enough, Crow!”

He knew who it was without looking. Suntan Chafer, sent flying to the boundary wall in the upper sky in the early stages of the Battle Royale, had returned. And she wasn’t alone.

“I’m coming, Boss!” Iron Pound shouted.

“I’m baaaaaack, baby!” Ash Roller cried gleefully.

It seemed they had also returned from the distant edge of the stage.

If all three green members got in his way, Haruyuki wouldn’t be able to keep pummeling the Green King. And the instant his fists stopped moving, the physical energy stored in that shield would be returned twofold. No matter how much of a metal color he was, Haruyuki would definitely be shattered into tiny pieces with that kind of impact.

What am I going to do? What should I do?

There’s no “should” here. Just keep going to the very last second!

“Unaaaaaaaah!!” Mustering up every scrap of energy left to him, Haruyuki accelerated his onslaught even further. His hands and feet groaned, moving so fast he could only see them in freeze-frame, and the joints of his overloaded avatar were red-hot. He didn’t know how many blows he’d landed so far, but the Strife was a massive rock in his way, not so much as even twitching.

He’d looked up the English word strife in the dictionary once and discovered it meant conflict. So then, what was conflict? How was it different from a contest? So he looked that up and learned that contest meant fighting an opponent to complete an objective, while strife was conflict born from one side refuting the ideals of the other.

At the time, he’d felt that strife was not a great name for a shield meant to protect a person. But he understood now, having experienced its special power of returning a hit twofold. Reject any and all attacks, reflect, destroy. There was no ability that more purely manifested this concept of “refusal.”

Refusal. When he thought about it, Green Grandé himself had fought to refute the Brain Burst 2039 system. By hunting Enemies solo in the Unlimited Neutral Field and freely sharing the vast sums of points he earned with middle-rank Burst Linkers, he was rejecting the end of the world.

Grandé had explained his reasons for doing this before. Most likely, Brain Burst 2039 possessed whatever element that was missing from the already abandoned Accel Assault 2038 and Cosmos Corrupt 2040. The world could not be allowed to close until that element was made manifest.

Haruyuki still didn’t entirely understand what Grandé had meant by this. But one thing was certain: Grandé’s will was rock-solid, and now he was standing in Haruyuki’s way. In which case, Haruyuki too had to prove his own will right until the very last moment. Even if he was attacked by Suntan and the others, even if the twofold energy was activated and smashed his avatar to pieces, he could not give up before the moment that happened.

Sparks shooting from every red-hot joint of his body, Haruyuki pushed ahead with his final onslaught. And then he heard it—

Corvus, fight just a little longer!!

He didn’t know if it was a voice or just a thought. But Haruyuki flicked his eyes up to the right for a mere instant while his fists and feet were on full rotation and saw it.

A blue comet flying against a dark-purple gas nebula. A red shooting star in the comet’s arms. “ICBM” Sky Raker and “Testarossa” Ardor Maiden.

“Flame Torrent!!” Maiden shouted as she drew her bow, hanging in the arms of Raker and hurtling through the sky.

The arrow she launched was not shrouded in flames. But the special attack itself was activated, and instantly, the arrow split into dozens of arrows to become a silver rain and pour down on the battlefield.

“Nngh!” Suntan raised her arms and took a defensive posture as Utai closed in from above, and Pound and Ash, coming in from behind Grandé, did the same.

Ka-lak-lak-lak-lak-lak! The arrows clanged against armor.

Haruyuki was also caught in the range of the special attack, but any arrows that might have fallen onto him were deflected by Suntan overhead and the great shield before him. Although Suntan, Pound, and Ash took directs hits from any number of arrows, their health gauges did not decrease in any significant way, and Grandé took no damage whatsoever, despite the fact that he took no defensive action at all.

But the aim of Maiden’s special attack was not damage. In the instant of quiet generated by the rain of arrows, Sky Raker silently separated from Maiden and flew. Flames jetted from the Gale Thruster with ten times the force they had thus far. Blue lines ripped across the night sky.

Haruyuki opened both eyes wide as he dug deep for whatever strength he had left to keep up his attack. But even in the midst of his hyper-acceleration, he could barely catch sight of Raker as an afterimage.

The blue light hit Suntan Chafer, and she didn’t get the chance to so much as cry out before she was knocked flying again and disappeared into the darkness of the bottom of the stage.

The light tightly cornered and blindsided Ash Roller and Iron Pound. Ash was just sent flying like Suntan, but Pound, with little left in his health gauge, turned into steel fragments and exploded outward.

Having dispatched the three green team members, Raker turned again and danced up behind Haruyuki.

Corvus!!

The instant her voice rang out in his brain, Haruyuki beat at the great shield in front of him with a roundhouse kick and used the force of the reaction to leap backward. Normally, the successive attack would have been judged to have ended there, and the physical damage accumulated in the Strife would have been returned twofold. But something plunged into the center of the shield with exquisite timing.

Kaboooom! The pointed toes and narrow heel of Sky Raker’s right foot slammed into the great shield.

His mental reserves exhausted, Haruyuki floated with arms and legs splayed and tried to burn this image into his retinas and his memory.

The Gale Thruster equipped on Raker’s back was turned completely around on her shoulders, so that its injection flames jetted back above her head. Her long silver hair flapped violently, and her slender torso and long right leg transformed into a lance to dig into the Arc of ultimate defense.

Pale sparks gushed from the surface of contact between Raker’s sole and Grandé’s shield. The sky around them rippled, perhaps because of this fearsome amount of power concentrated in one spot.

Master. Raker. Clenching his still red-hot fists, Haruyuki called to her in his heart. You…You alone were born to fly in this starry sky, the sole duel avatar built for space battle. In this place, no one can beat you. Even if that someone is a King.

Therefore…Therefore!!

“Pierce it, Raker!!”

It wasn’t Haruyuki who shouted, but rather Kuroyukihime, who was off fighting Graphite Edge on a floating island in the distance. As if her voice was fuel, the blue flames jetting from Gale Thruster instantly burned brighter and hotter.

Suddenly, a low, heavy sound rumbled and shook the core of his body, and the Strife broke up into the four parts that comprised its shield. Haruyuki gritted his teeth in anticipation of a new attack.

But it wasn’t.

Massive plumes of steam erupted from the sides of the four pieces held together with a brace. The shield was discharging the stored damage, having reached its limits for energy accumulation.

In the next instant, the equilibrium crumbled. The sound of a collision, several times more powerful than the earlier impact, shook the entire stage. The light of the impact became several concentric circles spreading out from the bottom of Raker’s foot.

“…Impressive.” Leaving only this word behind, the Green King was sent sailing into the stars, the separated cross shield still equipped in his left hand. Haruyuki had to take off his hat due to the fact that the King’s health gauge did not drop even from such a powerful impact, but still, Grandé would be unable to return to the main battlefield for the time being.

Sky Raker did a nimble somersault and returned Gale Thruster to its usual position before turning toward Haruyuki and floating in place. “You fought well, Corvus,” she said softly.

Haruyuki’s eyes blurred with tears he didn’t understand. “No, if you hadn’t come, Master, he would’ve sent it back to me twofold and done me in…”

“That’s not true.” Fuko gently shook her head. “Because you didn’t give up, because you kept attacking, Maiden and I were able to get here in time. And because of the damage you built up there, we broke through Grandé’s shield…However, the battle’s not over yet.”

He bobbed his head as he took the proffered hand. He couldn’t relax just yet.

From Great Wall, Viridian Decurion and Iron Pound had left the field together. But Suntan Chafer, Lignum Vitae, Ash Roller, Graphite Edge, and Green Grandé were still active. All seven members of Nega Nebulus were still alive, but Cyan Pile had been severely injured, and Black Lotus had also taken serious damage. There was still the possibility of the green team turning the tables when its members returned from the abyss into which they’d been flung.

“Now then, he will prove troublesome if he stays in the field, so shall we go remove the one who’s more sword than person?” Fuko said with a smile, lightly firing Gale Thruster while gripping Haruyuki’s hand.

Surrounded by Lotus, Raker, Current, and Maiden, it was a mere thirty seconds later that Graphite Edge announced his surrender.