Accel World - Volume 5 - Chapter 9

9

The flash of the light, the impact, the enormous explosion—did not happen.

Instead, a strange phenomenon enveloped the machine. The dark blue sky spreading out around them vanished, and a light the same rainbow color as the mysterious rings radiated outward. At the same time, the howling of the linear wheels ceased, and the space was filled with only a high-pitched sound of resonance.

The roar and vibration of the race disappeared abruptly, and feeling a curious sensation in his ears, Haruyuki hesitantly opened his mouth. “Uh, umm, Kuroyukihime, what is this…?”

“Warp zone.”

He whirled around at Kuroyukihime’s immediate and decisive reply. Huh?!

“W-warp?! Something like that in the race?!”

“I get it. Actually, it’s only natural that there would be, Haru.” This time, it was Takumu nodding. A single finger popped up, and he entered full-on professor mode to explain. “I mean, think about it. The total length of Hermes’ Cord is four thousand kilometers, right? And this shuttle’s maximum speed is five hundred kilometers an hour. Which means even if you kept the accelerator floored, it would take eight hours to reach the finish line. And that ends up being an endurance race. It’s basically impossible for one driver to drive the whole way.”

“O-ohh…Yeah, now that you mention it…”

Totally satisfied with this explanation, Haruyuki checked the meter with the distance remaining and saw that the four digits were dropping at a bewildering pace. Somehow, they seemed to be taking a shortcut through this space to a point about a thousand kilometers away from their goal.

“So then, like, anyone who doesn’t go into the rings there is gonna be in serious trouble, right?” Chiyuri said, her pointed hat shaking.

“Come come, Bell!” Kuroyukihime’s response was mixed with laughter. “You’d just need to make a U-turn at that point.”

“Oh! I guess! Hmm. But I kinda get the impression that if you play this sort of game cautiously, you’re gonna lose!”

“Well, I wholeheartedly agree with that.”

Their little back-and-forth made everyone laugh briefly, and just as that laughter was subsiding, Kuroyukihime, still seated, turned to Fuko, who was sitting to her left, and began to talk quietly.

“Raker, thank you. And…I’m sorry. You suffering for such a long time was solely due to my own cowardice.” Just as she was about to bow her head deeply along with this apology, Sky Raker gently stretched out her right hand and stopped her.

“Lotus. I, too…There are so many things I need for apologize to you for as well. But we won’t be able to completely communicate our feelings in words alone. So when I’m able to fight you once again at full strength, let’s talk, and talk at length, then.”

“Mmm, I suppose so…I suppose you’re right…,” Kuroyukihime murmured in response, and closed her eyes briefly before continuing with a faint smile. “Indeed, our total duel results are one thousand, two hundred and thirteen wins for me…and how many losses, I wonder?”

“Oh! You only forget the number that’s inconvenient for you!”

Once again, a tranquil laughter spread out through the warp zone, and, bathed in these gentle reverberations, Haruyuki murmured in his heart, Maybe I didn’t need to butt in after all. These two are definitely connected in a deep place in their souls. Right…They must have been able to build that connection precisely because of their time here in the Accelerated World, where time flows a thousand times faster…He closed his eyes and tried to thoroughly process his own thoughts when—

Thmm. The center of his back throbbed. At the same time, cold words were born in the back of his mind, in his own voice and yet somehow not his own voice.

In that case, the opposite must be true, too. Don’t you think?

There has to exist in the Accelerated World an ugly, swollen hatred nurtured through time moving a thousand times faster than outside. Perhaps inside me.

RIGHT. THE SEED OF A HATRED YOU CAN’T GET RID OF HAS TAKEN ROOT IN YOU. IT WAITS FOR THE TIME TO BUD AND BLOOM.

HAVE YOU ALREADY FORGOTTEN THOSE WHO ONCE TORTURED YOU? HAVE YOU INDEED FORGOTTEN ALREADY THE PAIN OF THE WOUNDS THEY INFLICTED ON YOU WITH THEIR IRRATIONAL VIOLENCE AND MALICE? MALICE WITH MALICE. POWER WITH POWER. THAT IS THE RESPONSE. THE SEED TO THAT END IS ALWAYS WITHIN YOU.

As the darkly twisted voice whispered, several faces floated up on the backs of his tightly closed eyelids.

The malicious classmates who had teased Haruyuki in elementary school. The delinquents who rained violence down upon him, bluntly demanding money and more once he started junior high school. When their faces disappeared, the masks of duel avatars sprang up in their place. Although they were few, the Burst Linkers he had hated unreservedly in the Accelerated World looked down on Haruyuki from on high, grinning.

You intend to understand even them? Be connected? No. It is impossible.

Aah, that’s exactly it. I mean, I’ve already banished one of them forever. So I can’t be connected to him anymore. But that’s…I had no choice. That’s the natural thing to do with a guy like that!

Accompanying this shout like a howl, the throbbing in his back gradually grew stronger. However, curiously, that pain was no longer simply uncomfortable. The larger it grew, the more he could imagine the pleasure when it was released. The voice continued, irritated, inviting.

THAT’S RIGHT. IT’S NATURAL TO CRUSH THEM. YOU ALREADY HAVE THE POWER TO DO EXACTLY THAT. YOU JUST HAVE TO SAY IT, THAT NAME. JUST THAT AND YOU CAN BEAT THEM ALL DOWN SO THAT NOT ONE REMAINS. CUT THEM UP, TEAR THEM TO PIECES, EAT THEM UP. EAT THEM. EAT THEM. EAT—

“C-Corvus?!”

The sharp cry was accompanied by a hand grabbing his left shoulder firmly, and Haruyuki opened his eyes with a gasp. He froze momentarily before awkwardly looking back.

Sky Raker, sitting on the left of the middle row, was the one stretching a hand out. The deep red of her eye lenses shone intently as she stared hard at Haruyuki. A dry, thin voice slipped from between her lips.

“Corvus…What did you do just now…?”

“Huh…Wh-what…I didn’t…” Haruyuki shook his head firmly, feeling guilty at the turbulent thoughts racing around in the back of his mind. But he wasn’t actually lying. His body was simply sitting in the driver’s seat and gripping the steering wheel. He really was doing nothing.

“…I…saw it, too. For just a moment…an Incarnate overlay on your body…?!”

“Hngh…?!” This time, he groaned, shocked to his core.

He had absolutely not been using the Incarnate System. That alone he could declare with certainty. To begin with, at his level of training, there was no way he would be able to unconsciously do anything to activate an overwrite.

“Th-there was not! I wasn’t using Incarnate or anything! Honestly!!” he shouted as he continued to shake his head fiercely.

Fuko’s hold on Haruyuki’s shoulder grew even tighter, but eventually, she let go, exhaling softly. “Yes. There’s…no way. Your overlay is silver. But…the light before…”

Fuko’s voice faded away and Kuroyukihime picked up where she left off. “So we saw wrong. Most likely, some change in the surrounding light effects was reflected in Crow’s mirrored body…Sorry for scaring you. But, you know, it’s your fault, too, for being that color.”

Her words, her tone 70 percent back to its usual coloring, lightened the mood in the cabin in the middle of the super-high-speed warp. Chiyuri and Takumu, together in the backseat, let out long breaths.

“Honestly! Don’t scare us, sis! Although it’s true Haru’s avatar can sometimes make your eyes all wonky.”

“Seriously. Oh, I got it! How about you smoke yourself with some sulfur and oxidize that steel?”

“A-ha-ha! That’s a good one, Taku!”

A wry smile unconsciously came across Haruyuki’s face at the conversation between his childhood friends. Instantly, he felt the release of the power tensing up his entire body, but that something cold that had seeped into the depths of his heart didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

That voice he’d been hearing every so often these last few months…Haruyuki had thought all this time that the voice with the metallic effect applied was being uttered by his own interior self. That it was another self born from accumulated feelings of negativity. Haruyuki had spent a great deal of time by himself from the time he was a child, so he did have this sort of habit of having conversations in his head.

But…what if it wasn’t? What if it wasn’t just a metaphor, but there really was something other than Haruyuki producing this voice?

However, in that case, the owner of the voice would have to exist not in the Accelerated World, but inside Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. Because the voice would also, on exceedingly rare occasions, whisper to him when he wasn’t in a dive. Which meant that it was some kind of virus or AI program? Or…the consciousness of a real human being was lurking in his memory somewhere…? Was something like that even possible…?

He felt like someone somewhere far away was suppressing a laugh, and he closed his eyes tightly to try and banish the thoughts from his mind. This was no time for uncertainty. They were about to plunge into the climax of the Hermes’ Cord Race and they had to win, no matter what.

At the very moment he opened his eyes wide, a ring of blue light came into sight ahead of the machine. Most likely, the warp-zone exit.

“Everyone!” He took a deep breath and shouted. “We’re coming back out onto the course! Hold on!”

Four crisp shouts of assent came back to him.

Holding tight to the steering wheel, Haruyuki pointed the nose of the shuttle toward the center of the blue ring. The exit grew closer before his eyes, filling his vision, and the instant the machine touched it, it became a vortex of light, swallowing everything.

“Waaah!!” Chiyuri was the first to shout.

And then all of them, including Haruyuki, raised admiring voices.

The sky before them was a perfect obsidian black. Against this backdrop, countless particles of light came together to draw a beautiful line. It was the river of the heavens: the Milky Way. However, it was almost entirely different from the night sky they would look up at in a Moonlight stage or a Desert stage, in terms of the number of stars and the brightness of them. It was as if they could hear the clear melody played by the stars like the ringing of bells, despite the cold, still world they found themselves in.

Hermes’ Cord, the orbiting space elevator, the enormous steel pillar, pierced this starry plane and stretched upward in a straight line. A fierce sun shone from the left of the gently curved surface. The light also fell on the body of the shuttle speeding along, making it glint silver and creating a thick shadow to the right of the vehicle.

“…Space…,” Kuroyukihime murmured, pointing the sword of her right hand straight out at the Milky Way. She continued in a still voice. “Is this scene a digital painting done by the BB servers?…Or…”

“…They’re probably using images of the real thing captured by the social cameras. The position of the stars is just too accurate…,” Fuko responded, also in a near whisper.

Of course, even if the image was the real thing, coming at them through cameras and networks and Neurolinkers as it did, it was probably different from the sight the astronauts and tourists were seeing with their naked eyes. Still, Haruyuki, and likely his four companions, too, continued to drink in the galaxy before them, each of them with their own strong emotions spilling into their hearts.

I could stay and admire this silent, cold, and yet busy world forever if it were possible—Although that wish sprang up in Haruyuki, the majestic moment did not continue for long.

The roaring of several engines came at them from behind. Naturally, if this were the real outer space, they wouldn’t have been able to hear any noise at all, but in the Accelerated World, some measure of user-friendliness was given priority. Hurriedly looking back, he saw machines of a variety of colors come shooting out of the warp-zone exit.

In the lead was the red shuttle, driven by Blood Leopard. Slightly behind that, the gunmetal shuttle containing Ash Roller’s team. Followed by the Yellow Legion shuttle.

After a bit of an interval, two of the midsize Legion shuttles appeared. Apparently, there were only six teams left, including Haruyuki’s. Excluding the one that was decrepit right from the start, two more teams had joined Frost Horn’s in dropping out.

The incredible echoing of each machine howling ever louder shook space. Above his head, the three enormous spectator stands warped out, and six hundred Burst Linkers raised their hands and stamped their feet. Taking in the cheers showering over them, the six shuttles formed a line and raced on.

“Good! Only five rival machines left!” Kuroyukihime shouted in a crisp tone, switching gears abruptly. “They’re all strong enemies, but we’re the ones who’re going to win this! Listen, we’re going to tear them all apart!!”

“Yeah!” Haruyuki and the others thrust their fists into the air. He checked the meter: just under a thousand kilometers to the finish line. If they flew full throttle at five hundred kilometers an hour, it would take two hours, but with the Territory battles on the weekend, the total time was double that. They were so absorbed in the race that two hours would be an instant.

All right! I can’t make a single mistake now! No way I’m letting Pard and her team use us as a shooting range again! he shouted in his heart, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel as he glared ahead into the distance for any complex terrain, any kind of obstacle zone.

However…

Immediately to their right, the unexpected, the seemingly impossible happened.

A bizarre something rose up from the center of the concentrated shadow of the shuttle, which was produced by intense sunlight, and accompanied by a slight splashing sound.

A single thin, large panel. Rectangular, about the same length and height as the shuttles, it ran silently parallel to number one, about two meters away. Even though it was supposedly moving along at five hundred kilometers an hour, it produced not a single vibration, not a single sound. The matte black seemed to swallow all light.

The nature of the object sent a jolt through Haruyuki’s memory. He didn’t have to work at recalling why.

The mysterious Burst Linker who had jumped into the “final battle” in the Unlimited Neutral Field at Umesato Junior High School two months earlier, just after the start of the new school year. There was no doubt that before them now was that avatar with the ability to change his own body into thin panels and slip into any and all shadows to move about. But what was he doing here now?

The impact and the question burst from Haruyuki’s throat in the form of a name. “Black Vise…!!”

Almost as if responding to his cry, the enormous panel peeled back soundlessly to both sides, to become two thin membranes. They spread out before quickly disappearing, as if melting into the vacuum.

The object that then appeared from between those thin membranes stunned Haruyuki all over again.

A shuttle. It was exactly the same shape as the one the Nega Nebulus team rode in, but the color was different. A powdery reddish brown, as if tiny speckles had bled out—in other words, the color of rust. This was very clearly shuttle number ten, which had sat rotting quietly at the right end of the starting platform. But this machine, which had seemed to be out of the action, now had brilliant lightning gushing from its four linear wheels and was zooming along at top speed.

Which meant that shuttle number ten had not been destroyed by corrosion, but rather that the color was nothing more than a re-creation of that of the registered driver.

Struck with a certain conviction, Haruyuki shifted his gaze the tiniest bit and looked over at the cockpit of this tenth shuttle. Sitting there, silently gripping the steering wheel, was—

The thin body, reminiscent of a riveted steel frame, of a duel avatar the same rust color as the machine. And this was not Haruyuki’s first encounter with him, either. Two months earlier, he had fought this opponent just once at Akihabara Battle Ground, the underground arena set up within the local net of an arcade in Akihabara.

“Rust Jigsaw…” Haruyuki uttered the second name at a lower volume than his previous cry.

However, even when his name was called, the rust-colored avatar remained silent, not even turning his head. He sank intently into the seat, as if he had become one with the shuttle.

Looking at the rear seating area for the four-person crew, he saw only one person there. Or rather, it would be better to say “one panel.” Because there in the back row was just a shadow with no thickness. The strange shape—black paper arranged in human form—could be none other than Black Vise, just as he had thought.

Both Burst Linkers belonged to a group that called itself the Acceleration Research Society. The scope of this organization and the members that made it up were unknown. The one thing Haruyuki did know was that they all had illegal VR devices—brain implant chips, aka BICs—in their skulls and that, using this power, they maneuvered to avoid the limitations of Brain Burst.

Which was why, for Haruyuki, the fact that these two would show up at an event so festive as the Hermes’ Cord Race was wholly unanticipated. Unable to rouse himself from the shock of it, he could only gape as countless voices rose up suddenly from the sky above.

“H-hey, whoa! Where’d that shuttle come from?!”

“Number ten didn’t drop out, after all?!”

“If that thing wins, what happens to our bets?!”

The Gallery was also apparently stunned at this unexpected development. The wave of commotion contained much more of the element of surprise than of excitement.

Haruyuki listened to the quiet conversation happening on shuttle number ten among the shouts.

“…I guess this is where my work ends?” The calm voice sounding like a teacher belonged to Black Vise.

“Yeah, you’re good.” The purposefully low voice of a boy, cracking with adolescence, replied. “Go home.”

“Well then, I’ll take my leave of you here, Jigsaw…Good-bye, Black King. And the ladies and gentlemen of Nega Nebulus.”

“…You,” Kuroyukihime muttered. But by the time she made a small movement with her right hand, the human-shaped shadow in the rear seat was already dancing upward. It slipped into the ink of the starry sky and receded in the blink of an eye, vanishing.

With things having come this far, Haruyuki finally managed a hazy guess as to why number ten had abruptly appeared from the shadow of number one.

Possessing many curious abilities as he did, Black Vise was likely able to lock up not only himself, but also other people and objects within his black panels, and then sink into the shadows with them. When the portal had opened at five thirty on Wednesday afternoon on the top floor of Skytree, Haruyuki and Pard hadn’t been alone in being the first to visit the top of Hermes’ Cord. Black Vise and Rust Jigsaw had also, in fact, been there. The pair must have concealed themselves in the shadow of the tower and registered to drive the tenth shuttle the instant Haruyuki and Blood Leopard had burst out. Which was why none of them—not Haruyuki, not Pard, and not Ash Roller and the others who came running in immediately after—noticed the shadowy duo.

And it wasn’t just during registration that Vise showed off his powers of concealment.

The instant the race started that day, the starting platform had been completely swallowed up by the shadow produced by the enormous spectator seating. Vise and Jigsaw had slipped through this to get into their shuttle before concealing the machine itself immediately after the race started. From there, they moved into number one’s shadow without attracting anyone’s notice, and then they had held their breath right up next to Haruyuki and his friends until that moment. All of which was Vise’s ability: to move or stop with total freedom as long as he was in the shadows.

While Haruyuki was running this speculation down in his head, Rust Jigsaw, the sole remaining avatar in shuttle number ten, fell silent once more and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Rust Jigsaw.” Unable to completely grasp the current situation, and also feeling an incomprehensible discomfort, Haruyuki began to toss out words at the rust-colored avatar. “Why are you showing up here now? If you wanted to, you could have stayed hidden in our shadow all the way to right before the finish line and then flown out and snatched the win.”

Jigsaw didn’t even blink, much less answer. But Haruyuki squelched his physical unease and continued.

“But leaving the shadows now at this stage instead of doing that…you feel like racing us for real? That suits us just fine! A fair and square fight for the remaining thousand kilometers—”

“Silence.” The lone word cut Haruyuki off. Hearing Rust Jigsaw’s voice for the first time, he found it cold and dry, and yet tinged somehow with heaving emotion, almost boiling.

“Huh…?”

“Don’t talk. Don’t make me listen to bullshit about races and fights.” After this languid utterance, Rust Jigsaw moved for the first time to glance over at Haruyuki and his team. His eyes were a penetratingly cold red, set beneath a face mask that had a design like an assemblage of thin iron pieces. His only memory of that face from the duel before at Akiba BG was of Jigsaw, at wits’ end, losing to Blood Leopard’s literal bite, but the ice residing in the gaze of the rust avatar now was enough to wipe that helplessness away.

Jigsaw narrowed those eyes and said—practically ordered: “Have some shame. Be ashamed of how you all continue to avert your eyes from the true nature of Brain Burst.”

“Oh?” Having stayed silent until that point, Kuroyukihime spoke up now, her voice containing a dangerous edge. “Then I ask you. What is this true nature?”

Even when faced with this question almost like a sword itself, Rust Jigsaw showed no signs of agitation. “Recognize,” he spat, slowly turning his face forward. “Brain Burst is simply a slightly dirty life-hack tool.”

“Life…hack…?!” The voice, heavy with indignation, belonged to Takumu. The large blue avatar started to lean over the side of the ship, and the yellow-green avatar next to him pulled him back.

“Look, you!” Having stretched out instead of Takumu, Chiyuri offered her own rejoinder point-blank, without a hint of fear. “That’s a matter of personal opinion! Even if it is just a tool for cheating for you, it’s not like that for us! Our Brain Burst is a superamazing fighting game, got it!”

“That’s exactly right.” Sky Raker picked up Chiyuri’s thread. “And you contradict yourself. If it’s simply a tool, then why are you taking part in this event? Why did you show yourself halfway through the course? If you have the desire to fight, to compete, then that’s proof that your Brain Burst is not a tool but rather a game.”

At this pointed remark, Rust Jigsaw curled up tightly in the cockpit.

Haruyuki thought he might be trying to endure something with that movement. And then several conjectures popped up in his mind.

What if Jigsaw himself wanted to repudiate his own words? Didn’t he want to fight properly as a Burst Linker, to taste the thrill and excitement of the duel and, through that, feel a connection with someone? In other words, was he hoping to leave the organization that bound him…the Acceleration Research Society…?

The instant he remembered how the twilight-colored marauder—who had belonged to the same organization—had not made that choice, or perhaps had been unable to make that choice even while he had the option to, Haruyuki instinctively called out, “Y-you…The truth is, you wanted to come here, didn’t you…?”

Silence.

After a fairly long pause, Rust Jigsaw slowly lifted the face he had hidden in the steering wheel and looked at Haruyuki once more.

In that moment, Haruyuki understood that his guess had been inescapably wrong.

What Jigsaw had been enduring was anger. A confused rage boiled, wholly unconnected with sharpness or genuineness. A diffuse hatred that simply spread in all directions, unable to converge on a precise target. An enormous rusty saw brandished wildly, so to speak.

“Regret,” Rust Jigsaw commanded in a creaking voice. He then took his right hand off the wheel and clenched those five fingers around his forehead. The movement was one of enduring extreme pain, but the words he uttered gradually grew colored with an insane heat, rose in pitch, and changed to a shriek. “Regret your own softness for not attacking the instant you saw me. And pay the price. Scream in the midst of overwhelming terror! Your foolish sport ends today! And then the era of desire and competition, destruction and slaughter will arrive! Precisely now…this time!!”

And then Haruyuki saw it.

Shafts of dull red light rising up in all directions from all over Rust Jigsaw’s body.

At once, the light began to swirl and writhe like a myriad of snakes. High-frequency vibrations began to shake the shuttle, and then the enormous body of the space elevator. The steel surface, the two shuttles, and even inky black space blazed red.

It wasn’t a special attack. Because HP gauges were locked for this race event, their special-attack gauges wouldn’t charge. Thus, this light was born from Jigsaw’s will, his imagination…

“He can’t—! Overlay!” Kuroyukihime was the first to shout out. “Get us out of here, Crow! An Incarnate attack is coming!!”

Haruyuki was already yanking the steering wheel to the left as hard as he could. At a steering angle that was just barely above dropping into a spin, the shuttle tried to get some distance from machine number ten.

“Behold, imbeciles!!” They heard the voice as if it were chasing the machine escaping to the backside of the tower. “This is the true form of Brain Buuuuurst!!”

In the rearview mirror, Rust Jigsaw stood up in the cockpit and threw both arms high into the air.

He howled.

“Rust Order!!”

The world trembled.

…That was overlay?!

Haruyuki shuddered as he jammed on the accelerator like he was trying to push it through the floor. The vortex of red light centered on shuttle number ten swelled up to the scale of a small star, zooming in on shuttle number one.

“H-hold on!” Shouting, Haruyuki pulled back a little on the steering wheel. The explosion of light was a force to swallow up the entire hundred-meter diameter of Hermes’ Cord. Running at an angle, they wouldn’t be able to get clear of it. The light chased after them insistently, several centimeters behind the rear of the shuttle, now back on a straight trajectory.

Holding the wheel steady as he looked back over his shoulder, Haruyuki gasped hard at the sight behind them.

The surface of the elevator, which had until mere moments before shone a lustrous steel gray, was decaying with incredible force!

Almost as if he were watching a video on fast-forward of a piece of steel left on the beach, spots of red rust popped up one after another, anywhere the light touched it. These grew enormous before his eyes and soon merged to completely cover the elevator. Eventually, cracks grew up here and there, and chunks of the tower caved in, scattering blood-colored rust. Several craters formed, as if the tower were being showered with invisible meteors.

“Th…that’s…crazy…” A hoarse voice slipped from his throat, and Haruyuki shook his head from side to side. “I mean, an Incarnate attack’s one thing, but this…Pard’s claws didn’t even leave a scratch on the elevator…A-and even before that, the scope’s just too large…!”

As far as Haruyuki knew, for all Incarnate attacks, the effect target was limited by the person. For instance, even with a long-distance attack, you first had to expand your own attack power with your will and then release that at the enemy.

But the will of Rust Jigsaw raging before his eyes now was causing unlimited destruction over a broad swath. In principle, this should have been impossible. The energy source for Incarnate techniques was the wielder’s mental scars…in other words, the imagination that belonged to the wielder, and no one else.

Kuroyukihime, similarly looking behind them, replied to Haruyuki’s question in a low voice. “Space Corrosion…”

“The antithesis of will, with hope as its source…” Sky Raker explained the unfamiliar term. “The ultimate form of a hateful will. A powerfully strong hatred of the world causes an overwrite of the field itself…But to bind this amount of imagination, even a King-class player would require very long hours of mental concentration.”

Kuroyukihime narrowed both eyes sharply and nodded. “Hiding in our shadow that whole while was likely to buy that time. But even so, it’s too far beyond the norm. He’s surely forcibly boosting the depth of his mental concentration with a BIC function…?”

“He can’t be. That’s…It would place too large of a burden on a living brain…”

Even as the two talked, the rust storm Jigsaw had summoned continued its destructive march.

Several of the other team shuttles trailing behind ended up prey to the corrosion. Blood Leopard and Ash Roller had apparently managed to take advantage of their excellent control to evade the storm by decelerating, but still, their shuttles were instantly half coated in rust, significantly slowing them down. Even if they had escaped total destruction, looking the way they did, there was no way those shuttles were going to make it to the finish line.

But that was nothing compared with the damage to the Yellow Legion and the two midsize teams. They had charged headlong into the range of effect, and the cries of a dozen people rang out all at once.

Immediately, the three shuttles were covered with a thick coating of rust. And it didn’t stop there. The armor of the crews in the vehicles also corroded before their eyes, parts and equipment crumbling and scattering to the rear. Finally, the damage reached the avatars’ forms beneath the armor, and they collapsed and spilled out, falling into the darkness behind them.

“What’s going on?! Our HP gauges are supposed to be locked!” Takumu’s groan was overlaid with Chiyuri’s heartbroken cry.

“This…This is too awful! The race is in shambles!!”

“Heh-heh-heh.” Almost as if he had heard them, Rust Jigsaw’s laughter caught up with them from behind. “Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Despair!! Lament!! And feel remorse!! This is the retribution for your deception!! This world does, after all, have the same roots as reality!! Impossible to avoid the corrosion of everything in existeeeeeeence!!”

The raging red light practically erupted upward as though these words themselves were Incarnate. The vortex of energy captured one of the floating spectator stands.

No way. Haruyuki’s eyes flew open as even the audience seating—an object that should have been completely protected by the system—was blanketed in red rust, accompanied by an unpleasant zrr zrr zrr zrr sound. Several cracks immediately appeared in the once-smooth bottom, and the outer panels fell off one after another. And then a few seconds later, the enormous structure simply crumbled in the sky above the tower.

More than a hundred people from the Gallery crammed in there were thrown into the void, an avalanche of avatars. Cries rose up from all over. Some were completely corroded, while others crashed into the surface of the elevator. Either way, they were all forcibly ejected from the Accelerated World with a momentary flash.

“I-insanity…,” Kuroyukihime moaned, her upper body thrown back as though the scene itself were pressing into her. “Going this far…The Gallery will most certainly realize it, too. That this phenomenon transcends the framework of the normal system…”

At these words, Haruyuki was conscious all over again of the madness of the situation.

The senior Burst Linkers, including the Seven Kings of Pure Color, had been doing everything within their power to conceal the existence of the Incarnate System. For instance, even when the need arose for a guide to give instruction in how to use the techniques, those guides were resolute, making the initiate swear to use Incarnate only when attacked with Incarnate. The reason for this was solely because of the enormous dark side the Incarnate System contained.

Those who reached a hand into the holes in their own hearts, seeking even greater power, were at the same time pulled into those depths. You were swallowed up by the negative feelings once sublimated as your duel avatar. The worst of these cases was the Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster, which formerly brought about enormous chaos in the Accelerated World. To prevent the same thing from ever happening again, the Kings had strictly controlled information related to the Incarnate System. Even the cunning Yellow King, Yellow Radio, had chosen the path of retreat in front of many subordinates, rather than use Incarnate.

Now, however, at the climax of the grand event Hermes’ Cord Race, Rust Jigsaw had released an Incarnate technique before the eyes of more than five hundred Burst Linkers, providing the members of the Gallery obvious confirmation of the phenomenon through their own senses. Confirmation of the irrationality of the supposedly protected audience seating collapsing, supposedly locked HP gauges being blown away. Of the existence of an abnormal power overwriting the normal system.

“Why…would he…,” Sky Raker murmured helplessly, shaking her head slowly. Haruyuki understood how she felt so much it hurt.

She, of all the Burst Linkers, believed most strongly in the light side of the Incarnate System. She believed that hope, rather than hatred or fear, was the greatest power in the Accelerated World. For Raker, the sight of a power materialized through the ultimate hatred injuring so many Burst Linkers must have been hard to bear.

“Master…” When he turned around to speak to her, Haruyuki noticed something on the edge of his vision and hurriedly faced front again.

Ahead of the shuttle, which was just barely outracing the effective range of Jigsaw’s enormous Rust Order attack, several protrusions stretched up from the surface of the elevator. Probably obstacles to make the race more exciting. If the situation were not what it was, this would be the place where he would be eager to show off his skill, but as it was, Haruyuki felt only astonishment. Charging full speed ahead through the antennae and tanks in close proximity was out of the question, but if they slowed down even a little, they’d be caught in Jigsaw’s Incarnate.

As he gritted his teeth, the enormous reverberation of the collapse of the second floating spectator stand reached his ears, along with countless screams.

“Dammit…Dammit!!” Haruyuki shouted involuntarily. The tears springing to his eyes blurred the world into a rainbow.

This was supposed to be the best, most exciting race. I was supposed to team up with my best friends and fight my heart out with my best rivals. And more than anything…Just a little more, only the tiniest bit farther, and I would’ve been able to take Raker to the “end of the sky” she’s wished so hard for!!

“As if…I’m gonna lose heeeeeere!!” Haruyuki screamed, brushing away his tears and glaring straight ahead. He couldn’t accept that the race was going to be destroyed by a hateful will. He would fight to the end. He would resist.

The only way to keep moving forward while evading the Incarnate attack was to make it through this obstacle zone without slowing down at all. The load Jigsaw was carrying in number ten was far and away the lighter, but perhaps because he was trying to keep the accelerator pressed down while he released his enormous attack, his speed was essentially the same as that of Haruyuki and his team in number one. If he could just continue to keep this gap between them, they should be able to fly through the finish line first, without getting caught in the rust storm.

Almost as if he were becoming one with the machine, Haruyuki concentrated all his mental strength into his hands upon the steering wheel, his right foot upon the accelerator pedal, and the seat beneath him.

A few seconds later, the sprinting shuttle flew right into the middle of the antennae covering the tower surface at irregular intervals.

“Hng…ah!” As a cry slipped from beneath his clenched teeth, he dodged to the right and left the steel poles that came flying at them one after another. Because he couldn’t ease up on the accelerator, if he slipped up even once, that would be the end of it. Over and over, he just barely managed these corners. The magnetic force generated by the linear wheels was on the verge of losing its grip on the steel surface.

It seemed that the four in the rear seats had picked up on Haruyuki’s determination. Each time the machine threatened to angle up into a dangerous incline from his wild cornering, they shifted the load on the opposite side without saying a word. With this desperate, cooperative play, shuttle number one continued to flee unwaveringly, scant centimeters in front of the Incarnate storm chasing them.

In contrast, shuttle number ten did not deviate from its path a single millimeter, even as it plunged into the obstacle zone. All the antennae and tanks before it transformed into lumps of rust from the top down and were blown away. Despite the fact that it had already been five minutes since Rust Order was activated, the raging Incarnate light showed no signs of weakening.

If he could sustain such a large-scale overwrite for so long, the strength of his imagination was truly terrifying. Yet at the same time Haruyuki shuddered at the depth of that hatred, he felt a touch of doubt.

This wasn’t the first time he had gone up against Rust Jigsaw. Two months earlier, he and Blood Leopard had teamed up to fight Rust Jigsaw on the duel stage at Akihabara Battle Ground, and they had won.

But back then, Jigsaw hadn’t even tried to use any kind of Incarnate attack. And, judging from everything he had said and done today, if he could have used one, he definitely would have. Haruyuki could think of two reasons for that. Either the only Incarnate attack Jigsaw had was this Space Corrosion, which took a long time to activate and carried an element of risk for his brain, or the previous time they met, he had been forbidden by his superiors to use any kind of Incarnate.

If it was the latter, that would mean that during these last two months, there had been a significant policy shift within the mysterious Acceleration Research Society. Because Rust Jigsaw’s actions—his rampage—today had to be happening with the approval of that organization. The fact that Black Vise, who had identified himself as the vice president, had helped him was proof of that. What on earth could the objective of the Acceleration Research Society be, to launch destruction like this on such an enormous scale…?

Haruyuki was able to start churning these thoughts around in his brain—albeit only in one corner of it—once he had memorized to some degree the pattern of the obstacles’ appearance. It was complicated, but the antennae were placed following a fixed set of rules. All he had to do after figuring it out was continue to dodge to the sides without making a mistake. And this was the sort of action he had mastered more than a few times up to now in the countless racing games he had played—

But, in a flash, Haruyuki understood that the pattern was itself the area’s biggest obstacle. The instant he became accustomed to the placement of the antennas and had a little mental leeway, the rule for that placement changed entirely.

“Hng!” Groaning, he devoted himself to steering. The sides of the machine scraped up against obstacles he couldn’t dodge completely as the shuttle swung left and right, sending vivid sparks scattering.

Then, a few seconds later, as if sneering at Haruyuki struggling, a group of antennae lined up in front of them blocked the way forward entirely. There wasn’t enough space to slip between them. The only thing he could do was dodge wide to the right or the left. But at this speed, the instant he turned the wheel, they would roll.

By the time he made that judgment, his right foot was already reflexively pulling back from the accelerator and stepping on the brake. Skree! The magnetic force lines howled, and the shuttle pitched forward into a left turn.

The storm chasing them didn’t let the opportunity presented by this slight deceleration get away.

“Haruuuu!!” Takumu shouted as a rusty red swallowed the rear of the machine.

An abnormal vibration came to him through the steering wheel. Even without looking in the mirror, he knew that the beautiful silver body was rapidly corroding, peeling back, and falling away. Mastering his fear, Haruyuki tried to accelerate once again, now that they had pulled out of the turn. But the acceleration that had been so reliable until just a moment ago did not return.

It wasn’t just the body; the linear wheels in the back had also rusted. Shuttle number one tried earnestly to sprint away with just the magnetic power generated by the discs in the front, but these produced only half the output.

“Ngh!”

“Aaah?!”

Immediately after he heard Takumu and Chiyuri crying out, the maw of the red storm came down on Kuroyukihime and Fuko in the seats ahead of them and even on Haruyuki in the driver’s seat.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Corrode! Degrade! Decay!!”

Jigsaw’s shrieking laughter came to him from a distance. But Haruyuki had no time for listening to it.

So hot! A fierce pain, as though his entire body were being showered with boiling water, enveloped him. When he looked down, the smooth, glittering silver armor of Silver Crow was clouded white all over and pocked with tiny holes. Simultaneous with this phenomenon, the HP gauge in the top left of his field of view was rapidly ripped away as if mocking the LOCKED displayed above it.

Enduring the agony, Haruyuki looked back. And reflexively twisted his face. Similarly having every bit of the armor of their duel avatars eaten away, the four members of his crew were curled up, trying to withstand the fierce pain. A metallic color to start with, Silver Crow was weak against corrosion attacks, but to see even the regular colors of Kuroyukihime and his friends being devoured—Jigsaw’s Incarnate was not the simple idea of “rusting.” It was, just as the attacker himself had shouted earlier, a more fundamental “degradation,” “decay.”

“Ah…Ah!” As if unable to withstand the pain, a thin cry escaped Chiyuri. Hearing it, Takumu tried to shield her with his own body, but the red light penetrated every nook and cranny, and the fresh green of Lime Bell withered cruelly.

“Bell…!” Sky Raker called, and then dropped her eyes, as if hesitating.

But the next instant, she jerked her face up and reached her slender right hand up high into the sky.

“Raker—” Kuroyukihime started to speak, but Raker stopped her with a wave of her hand.

A vivid sky-blue light gushed from Fuko’s outstretched palm.

Overlay. The light of an unshakeable will released from deep in her heart.

“Wind Veil!!”

The high cry of the technique name was followed by wind. A whirlwind, tinged with a hazy light blue color, appeared, centered on Raker, and enveloped the entire shuttle. Instantly, the corrosive pain torturing Haruyuki’s entire body faded away as if it had never even happened. A web of sparks bounced up where the red light and the blue wind came into contact, showing the two imaginations clashing.

There was no mistake, this was an Incarnate technique activated by Sky Raker. Not an attack, but a defensive image. And it covered not only herself, but also everything within a radius of three meters.

If…

A positive Incarnate targeting the individual was hope.

And a negative Incarnate targeting a range was hatred.

Then what to call a positive Incarnate protecting five people?

These feelings flitting through Haruyuki’s heart were fleeting. Wrapped in the blue veil, machine number one had slowed down, and number ten with Rust Jigsaw inside was closing in on them at high speed from twenty or so meters away. The rust-colored avatar rising up from the cockpit thrust both hands up at the sky, malice turning to loud laughter and scattering.

“Ha-ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

The antennae ahead of him snapped one after the other, while the surface of the tower behind him split into deep fissures as the shuttle quickly grew distant. The very person who had so thoroughly destroyed the Hermes’ Cord Race sped upward, alone, to the finish line awaiting the winner in distant space.

“Dammmmmmit!” Haruyuki shouted involuntarily. He couldn’t let this happen. It was already impossible for the half-destroyed number one to overtake number ten, but at the very least, there was absolutely no way he was going to allow Jigsaw to be the winner. That would be defeat for all the teams taking part in this race—no, for everyone, including the more than five hundred people in the Gallery.

That said, there was still one thing Haruyuki could do…

No.

There was. Even if he couldn’t race anymore, there was still one lone method of stopping Jigsaw.

The shuttle finally slipped out of the effect range of Rust Order. Raker reined in her sky-blue wind and slumped into her seat, spent. Kuroyukihime held her shoulders, looking worried. After watching this scene, Haruyuki brought his eyes back to the front. The shuttle’s speed had been cut in half, but he should still have the two linear wheels in the front.

Completely forgetting the emotions carved into his heart only moments ago at Sky Raker’s Incarnate technique, Haruyuki gritted his teeth. He could drive the machine like this, but he had no chance of catching up with Jigsaw anymore. Which was why there was just one method left now. Right. Not with the machine, Haruyuki alone.

“Haru, what should we do? If we go ahead and keep a safe distance like this, we could probably be second, but…,” Takumu said from the rear seats.

“Mmm,” Kuroyukihime replied in a strangled voice. “If that’s the only prize we’re going to pick up, we might as well leave the machine here…”

Their conversation barely registered in Haruyuki’s consciousness. He saw only the receding rust storm as he staggered to his feet in the driver’s seat.

“Crow?” Kuroyukihime called, as if suspecting something.

“Kuroyukihime, watch out for everyone,” he replied curtly without looking back.

“Wh-what are you going to do?!”

Instead of answering, Haruyuki smashed the accelerator to the floor, still standing. The half-ruined machine squealed in protest. Lightning gushed from the rusted linear discs like the throes of death.

Haruyuki confirmed that the digital meter was once again increasing as he leaned forward with a grunt. He threw both hands ahead. Drew them back forcefully. In sync with this action, the thin metal fins folded up on his back deployed on both sides.

The damage from the Incarnate attack that had ignored the system’s protection had taken more than 30 percent of his health gauge. To compensate for that, his special-attack meter had been charged to more than half full.

In other words, he could fly. Right now.

“Y-you can’t! Stop, Crow!” Kuroyukihime shouted, guessing his intention. “You can’t fight a hateful will with hate! There’s no longer any meaning for you to fight here and now!!”

“But…I…I!” Haruyuki squeezed a cracked voice from between clenched teeth. “I can’t let him do this!!”

Whatever means he had to resort to, he would stop Jigsaw. No, crush him.

Immediately after he added this in his heart, the right linear disc released dazzling sparks and abruptly exploded. Seconds before it did, Haruyuki bent forward and leapt into the sky with all his might.

To support his body, the rear of which threatened to blow off, he vibrated his spread wings only lightly. But he stared ahead, as if devouring the scene before him, and in the center of his field of view caught sight of number ten racing in the distance.

“Go!!”

With a sharp cry, he released the full thrust of both wings. Deserting number one as it went into a spin before coming to a stop, Haruyuki flew upward alone.

The maximum speed of Silver Crow, the lone duel avatar in the Accelerated World with the ability to fly, was roughly three hundred kilometers. In contrast, shuttle number ten was racing along at a speed of more than four hundred kilometers. Thus, starting from zero, there was no way he would have been able to catch up, but if he shot himself forward, using a shuttle going the same speed as a catapult, the supplement should give him a tiny chance.

Channeling every ounce of his mental strength and his special-attack gauge into flying power, Haruyuki plunged forward, a beam of light.

He soon charged into Rust Order’s effective range, and the armor covering his body began to cloud over. The surface foamed as if boiling, became minute particles, and melted off behind him.

The fiery pain once again danced around his nervous system, but the size of his anger won out. He pierced the raging rust storm in a straight line and closed in on the shuttle. The corrosion reached the wings on his back, and one by one the ten metallic fins on each side peeled away from the base, but he paid no attention and kept charging.

He lost both momentum and thrust rapidly, and his speed dropped. Six hundred kilometers an hour. Five hundred. If he didn’t catch up with the shuttle before his speed dropped below the four hundred kilometers an hour the shuttle was doing, he would never get another chance to catch it.

He drew nearer rusty number ten…nearer…but his forward momentum was growing duller—

“Unh…Ah!” As he pushed everything he had into a battle cry, Haruyuki touched the rear wing of the shuttle with the fingertips of his left hand, fell back again, touched it again—and dug solidly into it.

“Aaaah!!”

Howling, he finally yanked his body forward with nothing but the strength of his arms and flew into the rear seat of the shuttle. In the cockpit, Rust Jigsaw looked back with a gasp. The slightest hint of surprise raced across his naked framework face.

At this distance, almost like the eye of a typhoon, there seemed to be almost no corrosion effect. Still, during the time he was charging through the Incarnate storm, Silver Crow’s body had become covered with rust, worn-out. Thirty-five percent left in his HP gauge. Pieces of armor dropping, Haruyuki drew in his right hand, lined up his fingers, and focused the last of his mental strength there.

He sharpened his imagination. Generated an overlay, concentrated this on his fingertips, and made it converge into the shape of a sword.

“……Laser Sword!!”

Haruyuki released the sole Incarnate attack he had learned, squarely at the center of Rust Jigsaw’s chest.

Along with a metallic squeal, silver light stretched out from the hand he thrust forward. He reached the rust-colored armor, grazed it—

But here, Silver Crow’s right arm itself quietly crumbled from the elbow. The silver light diffused vainly into space, and Haruyuki’s first and last attack ended in carving merely a single dot off of Jigsaw’s HP gauge.

Having exhausted every ounce of strength, he was on the verge of collapsing on the shuttle floor when a thin line, extending from the outside of Rust Jigsaw’s right arm, caught Crow under his left arm to support him.

“Heh. Heh-heh-heh.” Chuckling leaked from the rust-red avatar as he turned completely around to face the rear. He took his foot off the accelerator, and the shuttle gently decelerated.

But even if Haruyuki had succeeded in stopping number ten here momentarily, it meant nothing to what was left of number ten and the totally destroyed machines driven by Blood Leopard and Ash Roller.

As number ten came to a complete stop, the Incarnate storm gradually subsided, and space returned to its original color and stillness. The cold light of the stars and the fierce light of the sun poured down on them.

“Recognize.” Rust Jigsaw dangled Haruyuki on a thin line about two meters long, stretching out from his right arm. “This is the limit of you who blindly believe that this world is a game.”

Abruptly, the fine black line began to vibrate repeatedly. A dense row of minute triangular blades popped up from the top of it. A saw. This was clearly his main weapon, the jigsaw that had given Haruyuki and Blood Leopard so much grief during the duel in Akihabara.

“And understand. This is the price for your foolishness.”

The vibrations of the jigsaw suddenly doubled. At the same time, a weak overlay enveloped the entire saw. He was inactivating the stage’s HP protection rule at the same time that he enhanced his cutting power with Incarnate.

Immediately, a metallic shriek came up from under Haruyuki’s left arm, followed by an incandescent pain.

“Unh…Aaaaah!” Screaming, Haruyuki tried to jump back. But his body wasn’t obeying his commands.

Silver Crow’s own weight hanging down gradually pulled the jigsaw into the base of his left arm. A few seconds later, a stream of sparks came gushing out, and his arm was effortlessly removed. His health gauge, dyed a bright red, was cut down to 10 percent.

Having lost both arms now, Haruyuki collapsed to the shuttle floor like a broken doll, and Jigsaw tossed off words again, tinged with cold laughter.

“Heh-heh. Lament. That if you had to be a metallic color, you could not be gold or platinum, resistant to corrosion, or at least stainless steel.”

And then Jigsaw extended the saw from his left arm, crossed it with the one from his right, and clasped them around Haruyuki’s neck, yanking him up high in the air.

Crucified, head helplessly thrown back, Haruyuki caught sight of the last remaining spectator stand.

The hundred or so members of the Gallery were still clamoring with confusion and doubt. However, even in the midst of that, a pronounced disappointment wafted through the air at Silver Crow, who, after making such a daring and bold attack, was now dangling helplessly without even getting to strike a single blow. “What’d this guy even come for?” “This is what we got all excited for…?” The countless voices pierced Haruyuki’s ears.

I don’t need you guys telling me that. I’m the one most disappointed in me, okay? Haruyuki murmured in his heart, waiting for the jigsaw around his throat to bare its teeth. I was soft. Too ignorant. I never even dreamed that Incarnate born with hatred as its source could be this incredibly powerful…

Someone from inside his head responded to this thought.

Naturally. Did you really believe this thing called hope could be greater than malice in terms of attack power?

He closed his eyes and replied, Well, how was I supposed to know? I mean, I can’t use that kind of power.

Once again, someone rebutted. Not true. You knew. That power’s been sleeping in you for a very long time. A power even purer than hatred. A malice accumulating inside, never dispersing to the outside world, single-mindedly honed and whetted.

That is: anger. The Incarnate of rage has existed within you from the distant past, waiting for the time it would be released.

Thmp.

Suddenly, the center of his back began to throb coldly. Thmp. Thmp. This pulsing, almost a heartbeat, cycled a frozen fluid, like mercury, through Haruyuki’s veins.

Well.

WELL!!

NOW IS THE TIME! CALL MY NAME!! RELEASE ME!! I WILL CHANGE YOUR ANGER INTO POWER!!

“Unh…Aah…!”

The chill filling his entire body abruptly became flames, and he was overwhelmed with a burning sensation. Haruyuki opened his eyes.

And then he saw it: the fluctuation of a thick aura rising up from his own battered body—overlay. But it wasn’t silver. It was a gray pressing up against the boundary between gray and black, a color of darkness he was sure he’d seen somewhere before.

Something terrifying was happening. Instantly, he was choking on fear, but the moment he looked at Rust Jigsaw dangling his body in the air, that fear vanished.

The conversation with whomever it was had apparently taken place in the mere twinkling of the eye while Jigsaw pulled Haruyuki’s body up and began to whirl the saws. A discordant sound came from his throat, and the minute teeth ate into his thin armor.

But Haruyuki had forgotten his terror of having his head cut off. “I…won’t let you,” he muttered, staring intently at Rust Jigsaw. “You alone…I will totally not let you.”

“Heh. Heh-heh. Resign yourself. There’s no longer anything you can do.”

“I won’t let you…I won’t let you…,” Haruyuki returned, almost delirious, his core cold as ice. It stirred up his overwhelming rage, as if to surround ice with scorching heat.

Rust Jigsaw no longer existed there as himself. He was the symbol of all the irrational malice that had tortured Haruyuki for the better part of the fourteen years of his life.

If, in that place, there had been even just one friend connected to his heart, perhaps Haruyuki might have been able to stop himself. The way he had in that decisive battle in the Unlimited Neutral Field two months earlier.

But now, he had left the stalled shuttle number one, together with Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Takumu, and Chiyuri, who had all been deeply injured by Jigsaw’s Incarnate attack, off in the distance behind him. This fact only served to increase Haruyuki’s anger all the more, and there was nothing to hold him back.

“You…You…” In a voice that resonated metallically, Haruyuki released his final roar. “As if I could ever…let yooooooouuuuu!!”

Instantly.

The heat of his rage finally crossed a certain threshold.

Haruyuki felt something break through the armor of his back and stretch out, writhing. He brandished whatever this was in place of his lost arms, and beat at the two saws binding his neck, breaking them.

“Mmng!” Jigsaw groaned while Haruyuki leapt back, putting some distance between them.

After landing outside of the parked shuttle, he plunged the thing stretching out from his back into the surface of the tower. Brilliant sparks flew everywhere, together with an enormous crash.

It was a sinister tail, countless blackened silver segments connecting, a sharp, sword-shaped protuberance at the tip. The black silver tail swaying like a snake, Haruyuki took the deepest breath he could, threw his head back, and howled, “Unh…ah…aaaaaaaaah!!”

An aura of darkness cascaded from his entire body, and shock waves rippled through the stage. The Gallery in the air began to shout and holler in earnest. But their voices no longer reached Haruyuki’s ears. Instead, a single sharp command slammed into the center of his brain.

NOW THEN! CALL MY NAME!!

Striking a daunting pose, thrusting his tail into the vertical wall to support his body, Haruyuki called the name that flashed in the back of his mind.

“Chrome…Disasteeeeerrrrrrrr!!”