Accel World - Volume 9 - Chapter 1

1

Kill.

Kill them all.

All that existed was the urge. Already, it was beyond what could be called thought. The craving, the desire to hack and slash, to tear off his enemies’ arms, legs, heads—the desire to rip them to pieces became a cold flame racing throughout Haruyuki Arita’s entire body.

“Grar…” The low howl of an animal slipped out of his throat as he raised the longsword high.

The pure silver of the duel avatar Silver Crow had disappeared. In its place was a darker, more brutal chrome silver. His armor had also lost its original form: Previously slender, smooth limbs were covered seamlessly with sharp-edged metallic rings. Similar rings encircled his torso. But most sinister of all was his helmet, the maw of a carnivorous beast wrapped around the once-round head. Fang-like protrusions jutted out from the visor and hid his face completely; there was no sign left of the original, mirrored shield.

This armor was no mere equipped item, nor even a simple Enhanced Armament, within the fighting game of Brain Burst.

The strongest arms in the world were known as the Seven Arcs, aka the Seven Stars. The Destiny, the armor that was the sixth of these stars—the zeta—had fused with Star Caster, a high-level longsword. This combined form was then twisted by the raging grief of a particular Burst Linker of the past, at which point the Armor of Catastrophe, aka the Disaster, was born. Since the dawn of the Accelerated World, the legendary armor had brought about much destruction, always regenerating even when subjugated, never entirely disappearing. Its power surpassing even the Arcs, the Disaster now covered Silver Crow’s lithe body completely.

In truth, the phenomenon did not stop at the level of “summoning” or “equipping.” Haruyuki was now the Armor; the Armor was Haruyuki. The will to destroy housed in the Disaster had become one with Haruyuki’s own mind, and he could no longer hear that gentle voice that had been whispering things in his ear all this time.

“You…,” Haruyuki whispered in his own voice now. “I will kill you all.”

Transformed into a demonic silhouette, as Haruyuki hovered with both wings spread out, he saw below him six Burst Linkers standing in a circle on the road of the Demon City stage—north of Miyashita Park on Meiji Street, in the Shibuya area of the real world—and staring up at him, the intruder. There were also two lights, shining weakly, in the center of this circle.

One was a grassy color. The other was gray. Death markers, appearing in the position where a Burst Linker died in the Unlimited Neutral Field. The grass-colored one belonged to Bush Utan, a member of the Green Legion, Great Wall. And the gray was the biker Ash Roller, Bush Utan’s self-professed older brother and Haruyuki’s longtime rival.

Five of the six Burst Linkers who had surrounded and repeatedly slaughtered the two dead Burst Linkers were faces he was seeing for the first time. But one of them, the avatar who had only minutes before dealt the death blow to Ash, was familiar.

He was slender and of average height, but there was a sense of volume to his arms. His armor was a brownish dark green. Olive Grab, a main member of the Green Legion who had been teamed up with Bush Utan until mere days earlier. He obviously would have known Ash—he might have even called him a friend, in fact. And yet without the slightest hesitation, without showing anything even resembling emotion, Grab had stabbed him through the heart. He had tried to take all of Ash Roller’s burst points and eliminate him from the Accelerated World forever.

Olive Grab—who was looking up at Haruyuki with a hint of doubt creeping onto his face mask—had an object embedded within his chest, as did the other five Burst Linkers around him. It was the same organic object in each case: a monstrous eye.

ISS kits were dark parasites that gave the wearer the power to control the Incarnate System, which itself was a super attack power outside the normal battle system. In the process, the kits multiplied the scope and intensity of negative emotions, going so far as to warp the personality of the real-world person. All six Burst Linkers were currently under the control of the kits, which was why they hadn’t hesitated to attack Olive’s senior in the Legion, Ash Roller, or Bush Utan, who had an ISS kit of his own.

However, all this no longer mattered to Haruyuki.

At the end of the day, Ash Roller was technically his enemy, a member of another Legion. And although his parent was Sky Raker, Nega Nebulus’s second-in-command, Haruyuki had never actually met Ash in the real world.

But…

Ash was the first person Haruyuki fought as a Burst Linker. He was the first person he’d lost against, and the first he’d won against, as well. The biker seemed to enjoy every second of this landscape known as Brain Burst and, at some point, he had become a kind of foundation for Haruyuki. When he was struggling, when he was lost, Ash’s extremely upbeat fighting style and the hearty roar of his American motorcycle got Haruyuki back on the right path as a Burst Linker. His duels with Ash were always intense, passionate, fun.

And so Haruyuki fiercely despised these six Linkers, who had tormented that same Ash with the overwhelming superiority granted to them by their number and power. Such emotion created an unusual contradiction, however, given that this very hatred and rage in Haruyuki’s heart had brought back to life the Armor of Catastrophe after it had finally been returned to a seed state, sending Haruyuki charging down a path that was the total opposite of the true path of a dueler. Unfortunately, however, he was no longer capable of recognizing this.

Sending inky black sparks shooting off into the air, Haruyuki brandished the sharply tapered sword high above his head.

Likely judging this to be a hostile action, Olive Grab and the other five Burst Linkers on the ground raised their right hands in perfect unison and trained them on Haruyuki.

Palms of varying sizes became wrapped in dark overlays of, essentially, the same color. The viscous, dripping darkness instantly grew more concentrated and twisted the surrounding air, indicating a terrifying power.

At the same time, small English letters began to race across the additional gray layer blanketing Haruyuki’s vision: PREDICTED ATTACK: INCARNATE ATTACK; RANGE/POWER ENHANCEMENT: NIHILISTIC ENERGY TYPE; THREAT LEVEL: 10.

From the six palms, faint, transparent scarlet lines stretched out soundlessly. These were not the actual attack. The Armor, from its vast wealth of accumulated battle experience, simulated the trajectories of incoming attacks and displayed them in Haruyuki’s field of view.

It would have been an easy feat to evade this direct, long-distance group attack: It targeted his own chest and lacked any particular zigs or zags.

But rather than moving a single millimeter from the spot, Haruyuki tightened his grip on the longsword in his right hand, bringing the jet-black aura enveloping the blade to shudder violently. Although the coloring resembled the auras blanketing the six on the ground, if theirs were viscous, then Haruyuki’s was a conflagration. A flame at absolute zero, layers of his wild rage and whetted bloodlust.

The Burst Linkers on the ground momentarily bent the fingers of their raised right hands before stretching them out once more. In one voice, they called out the name of the technique.

“Dark Shot!”

It was the first of two basic special attacks granted to ISS kit wearers. Three days earlier, the same dark beam shot out of Bush Utan’s hand and ripped off one of Silver Crow’s wings like it was paper. And now, six hands sent six dark beams charging toward him, leaving a sound of resonance in their wake. It was like the shriek of monsters.

Each one of the beams contained enough power to instantly eliminate any duel avatar, but Haruyuki let them close in on him until the very last moment—until the instant their trajectories crossed, and he casually sliced through them with the longsword Star Caster.

The brightly burning obsidian flames did not permit the dark beams to so much as touch the blade. The roar of impact threatened to shatter the air itself as the Incarnate attacks collided, and the six beams were knocked down to Haruyuki’s right. Deep holes were instantly gouged out of the exceptionally hard terrain of the Demon City stage, and black flames shot out of them an instant later.

“Lukewarm,” Haruyuki murmured in a cracked voice, without even glancing at the destruction.

It was, in the end, just a uniform Incarnate attack. They might have been able to mechanically cause an overwrite, but the core was empty, so weak it didn’t begin to compare with the Dark Lightning Spike Takumu had unleashed while under the control of the same ISS kit the previous evening. There was simply no heart in their technique.

There existed inside Olive Grab nothing other than “hunger.” A futile, single-minded urge to collect burst points. An ugly appetite to indulge in risk-free victories with instant power handed to him on a platter.

It was guys like this, with power like this, who had tormented Ash Roller to his death. These six had surrounded Ash, a man whose pride made him keep his distance from the Incarnate, a Burst Linker who had always worked to be a one-on-one fighter. And then they had killed him, over and over and over.

And that wasn’t all. They had also hunted Ash’s little brother, Bush Utan, who should have been one of them. The two death markers snuggled up against each other near the six Burst Linkers were proof of that. If they hadn’t interfered, Ash and Utan would have joined up with Haruyuki and his friends in the Chiyoda area far to the northeast.

Earlier today—June 20, 2047—at seven PM, the six members of the Legion Nega Nebulus had carried out a mission to rescue Haruyuki/Silver Crow and Utai Shinomiya/Ardor Maiden from where they were held captive, deep inside the Castle towering at the center of the Unlimited Neutral Field.

In theory, the plan had been for Haruyuki and Utai to enlist the aid of Trilead Tetroxide, a mysterious Burst Linker they had met in the Castle, and escape through the south gate. At the same time, Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Takumu, and Chiyuri would divert the God Suzaku, the Super-level Enemy guarding said gate, and help the two get away.

In reality, Haruyuki and Utai were unable to simply fly straight out because Suzaku had materialized sooner than anyone expected. Just as the two fleeing avatars were about to be burned to a crisp by the God’s flame breath, Kuroyukihime and Fuko, prepared to die to save Haruyuki and Utai, swooped in and made themselves Suzaku’s target. But their death in that place would have been the worst possible outcome, both Legion Master and submaster deep in the territory of one of the Four Gods, trapped in a state of unlimited EK. So after entrusting an unconscious Utai to Takumu and Chiyuri, Haruyuki did a one-eighty and returned to help his beloved friends.

Grabbing them in his arms, he flew straight upward in the only route of escape left to them, but Suzaku relentlessly chased after them. Once the special-attack gauge that was the source of energy for his flying ability was drained, Haruyuki manifested a new Incarnate technique, Light Speed, and shot up through the stratosphere to reach the world of the stars.

Unable to fly with no air, both Haruyuki and Suzaku languished there, but Fuko, with her booster-type Enhanced Armament Gale Thruster, charged down with Kuroyukihime on her back, finally crushing the God with the Black King’s lurid Incarnate attack, Starburst Stream. Although they didn’t manage to strike the killing blow because of the Four Gods’ ability to mutually heal each other at a distance, Haruyuki, Kuroyukihime, and Fuko did make it out of Suzaku’s territory alive.

The six Legion members hugged one another fiercely and rejoiced in the success of the mission. But Ash Roller, who should have been there according to the plan, was not. When Haruyuki heard his rival never showed up at the meeting point, a terrible feeling that was hard to put into words came over him, and he flew off by himself to look for the man. And then he found—no, witnessed—it.

The very instant Ash was slaughtered by Olive Grab.

And the reason why Ash, a member of the Green Legion, Great Wall and thus ostensibly an enemy, would join up with the people of Nega Nebulus—and in the dangerous Unlimited Neutral Field at that—was because he intended to depart from his own beliefs and seek instruction in the Incarnate.

After the duel that morning before they went to school, Ash had told Haruyuki he didn’t want to learn the Incarnate so he could fight no-holds-barred in the Unlimited Neutral Field. All he needed to do was strike one blow to wake up his little brother, Bush Utan.

There was no doubt that the reason he didn’t show up at the meeting point was that he had run into Utan in the Normal Duel Field while on standby. Not letting that chance slip away, Ash had persuaded or begged Utan to come with him to the Unlimited Neutral Field.

And Utan had probably listened to Ash’s persuasive/desperate words. He had resolved to get rid of the ISS kit possessing him and return to the true path of the Burst Linker once more. There was no doubt that the two of them had planned to meet here in the Unlimited Neutral Field and join up with Haruyuki and Nega Nebulus after they finished the Castle escape mission.

But Olive Grab and the other five Burst Linkers had figured out where Ash and Utan would be and ambushed them.

Haruyuki didn’t know which of them had died first. But when he arrived on the scene, Ash had been almost clutching Utan’s death marker to his own body to protect it. Since the marker was, as the name suggested, nothing more than a mark, there was no practical meaning in this, but he probably couldn’t stop himself from doing it.

If there was a difference in the times of their deaths, then there would naturally be a time lag in their regenerations sixty minutes later. Even after one came back to life, the other would still be dead. In a helpless ghost state, they both had been forced to watch an adored brother be brutally killed over and over.

“…won’t forgive.” A hoarse voice spilled from Haruyuki’s mouth once more. “I won’t forgive you. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill all of you. I’ll keep killing you until all your burst points are gone and you disappear from the Accelerated World.”

The world-destroying conflagration raced through his body at a temperature of absolute zero, waiting impatiently for the moment of its release, internal pressure building endlessly. Rage and hatred melted into its flames, converging into a single purpose that burned white-hot.

“That’s what you want, right? To fight, to kill. For you yourselves and even this world to disappear. So then I’ll make your dreams come true. I’ll make you all disappear.”

The voice that slipped out from the brutal visor was also more monster than Haruyuki already. The voice of someone with the ferocity of a wild animal and the cool of steel.

No, that wasn’t all. Somewhere far away, deep, deep down, another voice echoed faintly. The voice of someone trying intently to talk, lamenting and grieving…

But before their words could penetrate Haruyuki’s consciousness, the six people below him lifted their right hands once more. They didn’t seem the least bit shaken at the fact that six simultaneous Incarnate attacks were repelled with a single sword stroke. They looked like they had power to spare, or more precisely, like emotion itself was being worn away.

In its place, the ISS kits parasitizing their chests glared at Haruyuki, crimson “eyes” filled with hatred. Viscous auras coiled thickly about the six arms, quickly concentrating in the palms, thin black sparks crawling through the air as if to hint at a power exceeding that of the previous attack.

In Haruyuki’s field of view, the attack attribute information and anticipated trajectory were once again displayed. It was the same long-distance Incarnate attack, but the trajectory was different. The clear red line spread out halfway, color fading as it did, and wrapped up a sphere in the air around Haruyuki. In other words, this was—

“Dark Shot!!”

The calls of the technique name were in perfect unison, as though one person were moving six mouths at the same time. The inky black beams emitted from the open palms surged ahead, scattering a fine spray. But unlike the earlier attack, they did not rush forward in a straight line. Twisting irregularly through the air, the attack charged toward him, still clearly aimed at Haruyuki.

Wordlessly, Haruyuki spread the metal wings on his back and flew hard to his right. Instantly, the beams also bent sharply to follow. So it was a homing attack. Since the beams wouldn’t overlap until the last moment, a defense using a single sword stroke was impossible. Even if he took one of them out with his sword, the remaining five would shower down on him. Because his health gauge, cut down in the battle with the God Suzaku, had been fully recharged when he summoned the Armor, they couldn’t actually kill him with this one attack, but he would take a certain amount of damage.

As he twisted and turned hard to his left, the black beams came after him, radiating a ravenous hunger. No matter how fast he maneuvered, not one of the homing beams faltered in its unerring pursuit. He might have been able to shake them if he flew straight ahead at full speed forever, but that was no different from running anyway.

And he didn’t have the slightest intention of fleeing. Instead, Haruyuki spread his wings and put on the emergency brakes; hovering in midair, he turned to face them.

The six beams pressed in on him, tangling up with one another in a complex way. Faint smiles bled onto the faces of the six Burst Linkers on the ground, perhaps taking Haruyuki’s stopping as a sign of surrender. As if acting in concert, Haruyuki also smiled coldly under his thick visor.

Right hand gripping his sword, he crossed his arms in front of his chest. He arrogantly threw his head back and stared at the jet-black Incarnate bullets closing in on him. Stopped at an altitude of thirty meters, he drew the beams in and drew them still closer.

When they were on the verge of showering down on his entire body in a direct hit, he muttered quietly:

“Flash Blink.”

Bwaan! Leaving behind only a momentary vibration, Silver Crow—or rather, the sixth Chrome Disaster, disappeared. Having lost their locked-on target, the dark beams raced around for a few seconds before erupting in black flames, some in the sky, some plunging through buildings on the ground.

Haruyuki, meanwhile, was already scattering a blackish-silver light as he materialized essentially right beside the six ISS kit wearers standing on the ground.

Flash Blink: The special attack of the ancient Burst Linker who gave birth to the Armor of Catastrophe in the Accelerated World—or more precisely, who twisted with his rage and despair the Destiny, the sixth star of the Seven Arcs, into the cursed Enhanced Armament the Disaster. The technique transformed his body into minuscule particles and pseudo-teleported them instantly to a distant location.

Haruyuki didn’t even know that long-ago Burst Linker’s name. His strange dream inside the Castle was all he had, a piece of a fragmented memory of something that had happened in the distant past. There shouldn’t have been any way for Haruyuki to remember what he looked like or what techniques he had used. And yet he had understood—no, he had known. That the Haruyuki of that moment could use this power now.

One of the kit wearers—a duel avatar with dull, dark brown armor and a left hand with gun barrels for fingers—did indeed stare with surprise at Haruyuki’s sudden appearance.

“Da…” He moved to thrust out his right hand as he called the name of the technique. But that hand was still facing straight up, not aimed at Haruyuki, and he tried to rotate it further back, ignoring his actual range of possible movement. And then a dark silver line ran across the base of his shoulder. The arm was quickly removed from the torso and fell to the ground of the Demon City stage with a noisy clack.

With lightning speed, Haruyuki had drawn the longsword in his right hand and severed his enemy’s arm in the same stroke.

Similar to Flash Blink, this was not a technique he had originally been able to use. Unlike Takumu—Cyan Pile—Haruyuki had never studied kendo in the real world, and in all his time in the Accelerated World, he had focused on bare-handed fighting. He didn’t even know how to hold a sword-type Enhanced Armament, much less swing one. But he no longer cared what was happening to him. The intense urge to slice up the enemies before him and banish them from this world filled his head and heart.

The dark brown avatar stared down at his own arm rolling along the ground for a minute before finally twisting his face mask up in the slightest bit of fear. “What are you…What is this power…”

The voice leaked out from a mask fitted with round goggle-type lenses. The pain of the injury apparently caught up with him at last, and he pressed his left hand tightly over the opening at his right shoulder. Perhaps reflecting the wearer’s agitation and suffering, the light from the eye on his chest—the ISS kit—also flickered irregularly.

But the kits of the five Burst Linkers standing to the rear all shone redly after a tiny hint of a delay. As if they were sending out energy, the kit in the brown avatar’s chest also regained its fierce light. Apparently, these six belonged to the same “cluster,” to use Takumu’s words. The fact that their ISS kits were linked meant that they were as genetically close as clones—in other words, parent and child, or siblings. That said, linking them was only a temporarily advantageous agreement; it wasn’t anything that could be called a “bond.” The fact that they had mercilessly hunted even Bush Utan, ostensibly a member of the same group, was proof of that.

Bond…

The instant the word popped up in his mind, something ached deep inside Haruyuki. A sensation like a single ray of hazy sunlight shining in the frozen darkness. Someone’s voice echoed from far, far, far away.

…emember…you, too…ave them…cious bonds…!

However, the overwhelming rage that immediately surged up in him again pushed the light and the voice away. “There’s no point in telling you my name,” Haruyuki muttered at the brown avatar before him, a pale burning blizzard of fury sinking into him. “Not when you’re going to disappear right here and now.”

“…Don’t get…carried away…” The eyes in the lenses glowed red. The ISS kit pulsed in sync with the other five kits, like a heart. Apparently, this avatar was also no longer feeling any pain, although here in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it should have been double that of the Normal Duel Field.

The brown avatar made a small signal with his left hand as he pulled it away from his wound. Instantly, the other five moved quickly to surround Haruyuki. The brown one was apparently their leader, but now, having lost an arm, the spearhead of the opposition would have switched to someone else. Deciding to crush that one with his next blow, Haruyuki started to turn around.

But his feet abruptly, heavily stopped. When he looked down, he saw that at some point a gleaming green liquid had crept up to his feet, and two hands were reaching out from it to hold his ankles fast. It was almost, but not quite like the terrain effect Ensnare in the Cemetery stage. The liquid and the hands rising up from it were the melted arms of the duel avatar standing to the left. When the slender avatar met Haruyuki’s eyes, a sneer crossed the simple elliptical mask. Olive Grab.

Haruyuki casually stabbed the hands grabbing his feet with the tip of the longsword dangling from his right hand. But the sharp metal met no resistance and simply sank in; it didn’t appear to do any damage. Apparently, in this state, Olive was impervious to physical attacks as he held his target with incredible force. The Armor likely hadn’t shown him this in the list of anticipated attacks because he had focused his gaze solely on the brown avatar.

The remaining five avatars spread out equidistant around the captured Haruyuki and raised their left hands in a perfectly coordinated motion. A viscous inky aura blanketed tightly clenched fists.

“Heh-heh, we’ll squeeze all your points out of you, too, every last one,” Brown said, in a creaking voice.

Now, again, text cut across his field of view: PREDICTED ATTACK/INCARNATE ATTACK; RANGE/POWER ENHANCEMENT/NIHILISTIC ENERGY TYPE; THREAT LEVEL/30. The red predicted trajectory lines pierced Haruyuki directly from five different directions.

The five avatars brandishing their fists above their heads dashed forward together, shouting as one voice, “Dark Blow!!”

The straight punches cloaked in darkness shot forward, burning the virtual atmosphere. However great the Armor’s defensive strength, if he was hit dead-on with five power-enhanced Incarnate attacks at the same time, he would take a fair bit of damage. But Haruyuki stared coolly at the approaching fists. Only their attack power was enhanced with Incarnate; the speed was not much greater than a beginner’s. Given Haruyuki’s rich history of special training to dodge the rifle bullets of red-type snipers, they were so slow, he was practically yawning. Once more, he drew the attacks well in, and then, when their auras were on the verge of making contact, he muttered the technique name beneath his visor.

Flash Blink.

Only a low vibration noise remained as the blackish-silver avatar disappeared from the spot. Olive Grab’s liquid fists clutched emptily at the air. Haruyuki teleported three meters or so to the rear and rematerialized, still in his standing position. Before him, the five fists, having lost their target and with no hope of pulling back now, crashed into one another.

The sound of the collision was almost enough to rip the heavens open. Jet-black flames shot up and momentarily blanketed his field of view. He merely turned his face away slightly and allowed the flow of concentrated energy pushing at him to pass.

When the blanket of flames had dissipated, five duel avatars came into view, rolling around on the ground and moaning. All had lost their left arms, right from the shoulder. The wounds looked as though the arms had been ripped off; the pain was, no doubt, far beyond that of having an arm cleanly sliced off with a sharp blade.

“That…you…”

Olive Grab sounded stunned, but without so much as glancing at him, Haruyuki took a few steps to place his right foot on the chest of a particular fallen avatar. Owner of reddish-brown armor, leader of the six. Now that he was missing both arms, however, he could no longer use Dark Shot or Dark Blow. Unable to even speak, the other avatar simply blinked the lenses of both eyes.

“Don’t fall for the same trick twice,” Haruyuki said, in a low voice.

Getting caught by the same technique—in this case, narrow evasion with Flash Blink—in another battle on a different day was one thing, but in the same battle, it was the height of stupidity. The rivals Haruyuki had previously fought ruthlessly would have grasped the nature and power of the technique just by seeing him dodge the first beam and would have responded immediately. Naturally, those rivals included Ash Roller.

Ash must have hated it, being hunted by players like this, swaggering with easy power, forgetting the basics of the duel, relying on numbers. The instant this thought crossed Haruyuki’s mind, his chest began to throb and ache again, but even that feeling was soon replaced by a blind rage.

Without considering how he must have looked to the eyes of Ash Roller in a ghost state awaiting regeneration very nearby, Haruyuki poured his strength into his right foot and the sharp talons readied there. Beneath his foot, he felt the ISS kit parasitizing the chest of the brown avatar pounding.

“Ngah…! Hnngh…Hah!” A clear cry of anguish gushed out from the avatar’s mouth. Having lost both arms, he struggled and flailed as if trying to scratch at the earth, but the knifelike talons of the Armor dug deep into his chest to hold him fast. Finally, cracks radiated across the angular armor, and a florid light effect splashed out into the air.

Spurred on by his fury, Haruyuki brutally cut down the health gauge of his enemy, while one part of his mind raced with digital thoughts, an independent processor.

Was it possible to selectively destroy the ISS kits? If he could, he assumed something would probably happen when he did. He had noted earlier that the ISS kits were linked to one another through an invisible circuit. But rather than being a “peer-to-peer” type where kits with terminals were directly connected to each other, that connection was a central authority “client server” type. Perhaps it was possible that the instant a kit was destroyed, some sort of signal was sent to the main body of the kits that had to exist somewhere in the Accelerated World.

Still feeling the pulsation of the ISS kit under his foot, Haruyuki pushed his foot down mercilessly.

“Ngaaah! S-sto…Gah…Aaaaaah!!” The earsplitting scream rang out at the same time as the strange sound of the duel avatar’s torso cracking into pieces. The avatar split into upper and lower halves to the left and right of Haruyuki’s foot, and before he could let out one final scream, his health gauge dropped to zero in an instant, and a red light jetted from his body as he exploded into tiny fragments.

Haruyuki coolly observed the death of the opponent he had so cruelly slaughtered. Silver Crow’s foot had indeed pushed through the ISS kit of the brown avatar. But judging from the death effect and the amount added to his special-attack gauge, he assumed that no Enhanced Armament destruction had taken place. Which meant that even if the ISS kit was pinpointed and attacked directly with a normal physical attack, only his opponent’s health gauge would decrease. The kit itself could not be destroyed like that.

As robotic thoughts ran through Haruyuki’s mind, one of the enemies he had knocked aside finally stood up to his right. “Fall back! Forget Cocoa Cracker!” he shouted briefly.

Cocoa Cracker was probably the name of the brown avatar Haruyuki had crushed and killed with his foot. Just like a hastily assembled gang to abandon their ostensible leader so easily. Olive Grab continued to stand motionless in front of Haruyuki, but the four avatars had no sooner nodded at one another than started to run south.

So they were planning to escape through the leave point at Shibuya Station, farther along down Meiji Street. Judging from the direction of his gaze, the unmoving Olive was waiting to build up his gauge to use his abilities again.

Haruyuki stood and stared at the four avatars racing off at top speed. He had not the slightest intention of letting them get away, however. He plunged the sword he clutched into the ground and raised his now-empty hands. He spread five sharp fingers wide and targeted the two on the ends of the fleeing foursome. He snapped his wrists back.

Ksshk! A small silver light launched from the lower part of his palms. He dragged out glittering platinum tails in the air, the lights chasing like gunshots after the two avatars running hard a few dozen meters away. They caught up to them immediately, and hit perfectly on target in the middle of the Armor on their backs. A dry, metallic sound echoed through the stage, but the pair continued to run, not even staggering. They appeared to have taken essentially no damage.

But…

When Haruyuki pulled his arms back a bit, he felt a heavy resistance, and the two Burst Linkers in the distance lost their footing. They stumbled and tried intently to kick at the ground, but their bodies did not move forward. Finally, they angled backward, their feet peeling away from the road, and they let out high-pitched cries as they flew back in a straight line. More accurate, they were pulled back, whether they liked it or not, by the extremely fine wires launched from Haruyuki’s palms. The power of Wire Hook, an ability secreted away in the Armor of Catastrophe.

In the blink of an eye, Haruyuki had yanked them back to where they started. He plunged the talons of his hands into their backs down to the knuckles to hold them fast and lift them up.

“P-put me down!”

“No way! He’s not using IS mode. How come he has this kind of power?!”

Their voices as they struggled and fought, insects stabbed with pins, were nothing more than cacophonous noise to Haruyuki. Concentrating an image in both hands, he uttered, in a nearly inflectionless voice, “Laser Sword.”

Zzvsssh! A heavy vibration shook the earth. Long, endless Incarnate swords stretched out from the hands of Silver Crow clad in the Armor of Catastrophe, piercing the prey he had captured. But the swords were not their original silver; they were dyed with an inky black overlay reminiscent of the abyss of space.

Large holes ripped open their chests, much less the critical point of their hearts, and the two duel avatars rose up over a meter into the air from the aftereffects of the incredible attack power and shattered.

Haruyuki lowered his hands, the two death effect colors reflecting off his dull silver armor. Through his visor, he could see the remaining two enemies pushing themselves to flee at even greater speed. Already, they were almost a hundred meters away. Naturally, he could have caught them easily if he used the wings on his back. But Haruyuki instead grabbed his longsword from the ground, dropped his hips, and yanked the blade back hard above his right shoulder.

With the sharp tip of the sword, he set his sights precisely on the two avatars. Their silhouettes were already not even specks, but perhaps as an effect of the additional layer added to his field of view by the Armor, he experienced no loss of resolution. Coolly measuring his timing, the instant the bodies of the pair running started to overlap into one—

“Laser Lance.”

The sword in his right hand charged forward at the same time as he called the technique name. The dark aura encircling the blade transformed into a lance and shot off into space. The movement to launch the attack was basically the same as the Black King, Black Lotus’s Vorpal Strike Incarnate attack, which it was modeled after, but Haruyuki was unconscious of this as he watched for results with narrowed eyes.

Off in the distance of Meiji Street, just as the two avatars were disappearing down the slope of Miyamasu-zaka, the Incarnate lance mercilessly skewered their backs. The avatars ran another few steps with massive craters in the middle of their bodies, as if they didn’t notice what had happened to them, before finally staggering and exploding, accompanied by the faint noise of destruction and a burst of extinction light.

Shouldering the sword that he pulled back slowly, Haruyuki turned to his final enemy—Olive Grab, the avatar with the ability to turn to liquid.

This was not the first time they had squared off. After school on Monday, three days earlier, when he had tag-teamed in the Suginami area with the “shrine maiden of the conflagration,” Ardor Maiden, she happened to select as their opponent the combo of Bush Utan and Olive Grab from the matching list. At that time, Haruyuki had been no match for Utan when he activated his ISS kit, but Maiden had gotten away from Olive without a scratch, even though he had to have been using the same dark Incarnate. Of course, she did have all the power one would expect from an Element of the former Nega Nebulus, but that probably wasn’t the whole story. There had to have been some kind of overwhelming difference in affinities.

As Haruyuki coolly followed this thread, not a shred of emotion entering into his calculations, Olive continued to stand before him rather than fleeing. It wasn’t as though he had a choice. Haruyuki wasn’t sure if Olive was aware that he was the legendary destroyer Chrome Disaster, but either way, Olive was cowering with fear at the overwhelming battle prowess that had slaughtered his five companions before his eyes. As proof, his entire body, slickly shining as if it were wet, was trembling.

“Hurry…Hurry…” The hoarse voice that slipped out of his mouth was directed at his own special-attack gauge. His eyes traveled back and forth and back and forth between Haruyuki, leisurely beginning to move, and his recharging gauge.

Right around the time the longsword came down from Silver Crow’s shoulder to scrape dryly against the ground, Olive shouted, “Lipid Liquid!”

The call of the technique name was practically a falsetto. Splsh! His slender body immediately melted away. His avatar completely lost shape, transforming into a large olive-green puddle spreading out on the ground. In this state, he was likely invulnerable to all pure physical attacks.

And apparently, he still had the ability to move, since the puddle was charging toward one of the buildings lining both sides of the road, in a movement like the Slime that often showed up in fantasy-type games. If he fled into the elaborate terrain of the Demon City stage, it would be a pain to find him again.

But again, Haruyuki had not allowed Olive to use his special attack because he hadn’t been paying attention. The greenish-brown puddle bulged in the center. Looking closely, he could see a black sphere wrapped up there. The ISS kit. Olive might have had the ability to become a liquid, but he couldn’t change the kit, which was treated as Enhanced Armament, into one.

Haruyuki had deliberately brought about this situation. Staring at the slippery puddle as it receded, he took a deep breath. Soon, the sensation of something prickly bouncing about filled his chest. He let it build up and then blew it out as hard as he could.

Released from the maw of the brutal helmet was not simple air, but rather flames burning hot and red. The ability: Flame Breath.

Perhaps sensing something, the puddle moved intensely toward the building. But there was no way for it to escape the flames that radiated outward, scorching the air as they did. The instant the blazing breath touched it, the puddle burst into flames with a roar.

The breath soon scattered and disappeared, but the flames blanketing the puddle did not. Almost as if the puddle itself was a flammable material—or rather, that was exactly what it was. The liquid that Olive Grab changed himself into was not water, but oil. The reason Ardor Maiden defeated him so thoroughly was because he was deeply incompatible with fire.

Even as a liquid, Olive wouldn’t have lost his physical sensations. The lump of flaming oil bounced wildly from side to side. Haruyuki himself had been bathed in the fiery breath of the God Suzaku several times in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and the sensation of heat had been all too real. If Olive Grab was continuously experiencing anything on that level, the pain must have been unbearable.

But the Haruyuki of that moment did not care about the suffering of his enemies. He walked over to the puddle of oil, motionless now perhaps having exhausted even the will to writhe, and casually stretched out a hand. He dug his sharp fingers into the burning lump. Soon, they encountered a sphere about five centimeters in diameter, and he grabbed on to it tightly. He could feel the unpleasant sensation of countless fibers tearing away as he pulled out a red eyeball hidden almost entirely behind its lids—the ISS kit.

The handling of Enhanced Armament was a little different in the Unlimited Neutral Field than it was in the Normal Duel Field. First, once they were destroyed, external items did not regenerate even if the owner died and came back to life. In order to use Enhanced Armament items again, the owner had to exit the field through a leave-point and then return.

Also—and this depended on the type of item—it was possible to temporarily steal an item as long as the original owner was alive. To steal it, another Burst Linker needed to pick it up from the place where it was dropped or sever it from where it was equipped. Haruyuki was currently attempting the latter. Having rendered the liquefied Olive Grab helpless with his Flame Breath, he was ripping the kit out before Olive’s HP gauge was emptied. This way, the ownership would remain with Olive Grab in the system, but usage rights would transfer to Haruyuki.

Naturally, he had not the slightest intention of equipping it himself. His aim was just the opposite.

He had earlier confirmed that the kit itself could not be destroyed when the health gauge of the wearer dropped to zero in an attack. In which case, he would first separate avatar and kit, and then attack the kit itself.

A ferocious grin spreading across his face beneath his visor, Haruyuki concentrated his strength in his right hand. His razor-sharp talons dug into the rubbery surface of the eye. Instantly, the eyelids snapped open, and the bloodred pupil shuddered.

The blood vessel–type structure dangling helplessly from the rear of the eyeball writhed and came together in the tapered form of a drill. This drill bit then attempted to pierce the armor of Haruyuki’s right arm—it was giving up on its original owner and trying to parasitize Haruyuki. Something similar had happened in the duel with Takumu the previous evening. The blood vessels of the kit had easily pieced Silver Crow’s chest then, but the thick armor of the Armor of Catastrophe easily repelled the drill.

“Useless,” Haruyuki said, and put every ounce of strength he had into his right hand.

Spplrrk! The sound of the rupture was disgusting, and was followed by an unusual metallic death rattle echoing through the air as the ISS kit crumbled into pieces and scattered.

Now that he had destroyed an ISS kit in the Unlimited Neutral Field, he was sure something would happen.

His expectation was not betrayed. From his right hand, a single thread of red light danced into the sky, turned sharply at a ninety-degree angle high up, and began to fly. The light was impossibly faint; if he didn’t have the enhanced vision of the Disaster, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed it.

Beside him, Olive Grab finally exhausted his health gauge and scattered as he returned to his original human shape. But Haruyuki did not so much as glance at him as he spread the wings on his back.

On the verge of taking off to chase after the light that had slipped out of the kit, Haruyuki caught sight of the two death markers nestled together a little ways off. One grassy green, the other gray. Bush Utan and Ash Roller, killed by the six kit wearers.

He had ostensibly raced over here to help them. But the priority he placed on them now had dropped to a relatively low level. What filled his heart instead was the urge to destroy and massacre, not placated in the least by routing the six Burst Linkers. If he stayed in that place any longer, he might attack even the regenerated Ash and Utan.

Thus, Haruyuki turned the focus of the rage that spurred him to destroy onto the ISS kits themselves. But, unaware of even these changes in his own heart, he turned aside and called back over his shoulder to the two avatars likely watching in a ghost state.

“When you regenerate, get out through a portal before those guys come back to life,” he announced curtly, in a creaking voice, and then he took to the air from the scene of slaughter that the intersection had become.