“Laser Lance!!”
Shouting out with his entire body and soul, Haruyuki launched the Incarnate technique he had only just developed. From his extended right hand, a lance of silver light gushed forward and hit his target at the base of the knight’s neck, dead-on. The massive creature staggered, albeit slightly, and the sword attack aimed at Lead slid off course and slammed violently into the floor.
At the same time, the health gauge of the knight Enemy was displayed in Haruyuki’s view. The right edge of the first of the three bars stacked up there decreased about 2 percent.
“Whoa,” he cried out unconsciously.
Including the clean hit Lead had gotten on the knight’s body before, the amount of the gauge they had taken still wasn’t even a tenth of the first bar. At this rate, how many minutes—how many hours—would it take to carve away the swollen gauge?
“Both of you, please hold out against it for three minutes.” A firm voice echoed from behind him. “I will take over after that.” The owner of the voice, silent until that point, was, of course, Utai Shinomiya—Ardor Maiden.
They’d probably only barely be able to cut away another couple percent from the knight’s gauge in three minutes. She said she would take over from there, but could the completely long-range Maiden actually draw the Enemy’s focus?
“R-roger!” Haruyuki shouted, and knocked the fleeting question out of his brain.
“I understand!” Lead’s voice came from a little farther off at the same time.
Nodding at their replies, Maiden held a long Japanese yumi bow that had appeared in her left hand at some point. It was immediately enveloped in crimson flames and began changing shape, as though melting. The item, now transformed into a short, flat stick, opened out thinly into a hand fan with a satisfying snap. From both sides of the shrine maiden’s innocent face mask, additional snow-white armor slid out, meeting in the center to produce a curious screen. Then her entire body was wrapped in a thick crimson aura.
After watching this much out of the corner of his eye, Haruyuki moved to Lead’s side. They communicated their strategy through eye contact alone. That said, it wasn’t anything complicated. They would both increase the knight Enemy’s hate to about the same amount and split its focus as much as possible while attacking.
“Vorrraaaaaaa!!” the knight roared, as if irritated that it hadn’t yet gotten a direct hit. Until that point, it had been bringing the massive sword down in one strike at a time, but now it began swinging from side to side as it advanced on the two Burst Linkers.
Haruyuki and Lead drew the Enemy as close as they dared before leaping off to the sides, and then with perfect timing, together…
“Haah!!”
“Laser Lance!!”
Blue and silver light shot out. Two light-effect colors bounced off the knight’s side. Damage: 4 percent.
The following three minutes were excruciatingly long, hard, and just the teensiest bit exciting. However much they were splitting the Enemy’s focus, they couldn’t quite manage to flee a safe distance. Although they dodged the sword closing in on them while the knight roared fiercely, sometimes they took splash damage from the blade hitting the floor.
If Haruyuki had been alone, he would no doubt have been eating a direct hit in less than a minute; he could keep slipping by the lethal blade thanks to Lead’s precise instructions. Somehow, not only did the young samurai have maps for all the various structures of the inner sanctuary, he also apparently possessed complete knowledge of the attack patterns of the transforming guardian Enemies. He perfectly read in advance the trajectory of the sword the knight brandished from side to side, and even more than that, the placement of the log-like legs and the wind-pressure attack using the shield, and told Haruyuki how to avoid all of these.
Faithfully following these instructions to evade the attacks, Haruyuki aimed for any and every little opening to get a blow in whenever the knight targeted Lead. In a certain sense, moving in perfect sync like this to walk a tightrope where making a single mistake meant certain death was the real thrill of network games.
Once two minutes or so had passed, Haruyuki and Lead had basically stopped talking. Lead communicated instructions via a slight movement of his hand, and Haruyuki responded without a moment’s delay.
If I had done it like this…If I had done it like this in the basketball game today, imaging not just the opposing players but even my teammates’ movements and thoughts, and moving in line with that, then maybe…
In the middle of the intense battle, the thought flitted through Haruyuki’s head, but he quickly stamped it out.
There’s no way I could. Real-world me is totally different from Silver Crow. Not this light. Not this fast.
But…maybe I can aim for that at least. No matter how impossible it seems. If I hope I change, and I take one step, just one step toward that, maybe I can, too.
“Come here!” A sharp voice sounded abruptly from his rear, and Haruyuki opened his eyes wide with a gasp.
At some point, the three minutes Utai asked for had passed. He exchanged a quick look with Lead, off to his right, and then they both jumped way back at the same time. As the knight Enemy charged after them, raging even more fiercely, they led it in the direction of Utai’s voice.
However, even though they had endured for the three minutes as instructed, the first bar of the Enemy’s three-level health gauge was still nearly 90 percent full. What exactly was Utai planning to do?
Feeling slightly anxious, Haruyuki continued to dash backward alongside Lead until they reached the two pedestals in the center of the great hall.
Instantly, the right side of his field of view was dyed red, and he reflexively pulled his eyes away from the Enemy to look in that direction.
What he saw there was a scene that made even Haruyuki—who had come up against all kinds of supernatural phenomena within the Castle and hardened his nerves to pretty much anything—swallow his breath in dumbfounded amazement.
Flames. The source: the small body of the shrine-maiden avatar. From the tips of her tabi-covered toes to the ends of the long hair coils, she was enveloped in a conflagration burning red.
Since Ardor Maiden didn’t seem to be taking any damage herself, they probably weren’t real flames. It was likely overlay, the irregular light effect that accompanied the activation of the Incarnate System. But even compared with the overlay of another red-type avatar, the Red King—Scarlet Rain—the flickering hue was much closer to the look of real flames.
This aura, which took a full three minutes to muster, was several times more intense and more beautiful than when she had burned Bush Utan to ashes in the tag-team duel three days earlier. Cloaked in flame, the shrine maiden held her fan over her head and danced unhurriedly. The knight Enemy charged in with enough force to smash her to pieces.
“Grief-stricken flames of Dvesha.” All of a sudden, a sonorous “song” rang out from the mouth of the shrine maiden. She waved her fan neatly, and a spray of small flames flowed off into space. Seeming to be nothing more than meager sparks, they fell at the feet of the knight Enemy.
Krrrr! Instantly, a deafening roar filled his ears and shook the air, and the supposedly incredibly strong floor of the Demon City stage burst into flames—and melted.
The knight Enemy sank helplessly up to its chest in the liquid—the magma—glittering with a dazzling orange light. The cold dark-gray shine of the metal armor immediately grew incandescent, like a lump of burning coal.
“Vorooooaaaaaa!!”
A roar—or a scream. The knight waved both arms frantically and tried to free itself of the magma, but the “lake” of molten floor was easily larger than five meters in diameter. All the knight did was vainly scatter droplets of fire; the large frame didn’t seem to move up in the slightest.
“Become dust in the ground and be gone.” Once again, a verse with a mysterious rhythm echoed in the hall.
The crimson aura enveloping the shrine maiden grew more and more intens
e, and the temperature of the magma lake increased further. Although Haru was plenty far away, a hot wind blew toward them and threatened to cook his own body. If he got any closer, he wouldn’t be surprised if he did actually start taking damage.
After standing slack-jawed for over ten seconds, Haruyuki finally looked at the health gauge of the knight Enemy displayed above his head. The first bar was just on the verge of being similarly burned up.
Lead had said that even in the great hall, if they used Incarnate techniques for more than ten minutes, there was the possibility that it would call other Enemies over. Taking that into consideration, it was a little iffy as to whether or not the remaining two bars would be carved away during this grace period. This was perhaps the time for Haruyuki to join in with a long-distance technique, but for some reason, he felt like he shouldn’t. This “flame dance” was a stage for Utai alone, and other people shouldn’t force their way in. Lead, maybe feeling the same thing, simply stood quietly near Haruyuki.
The shrine maiden danced for another five minutes, the flames eddied and coiled, and the knight writhed. Eventually, the third health gauge bar was also burned up, and the Enemy disappeared in the center of the magma pool together with a magnificently large scattering effect.
Even after Ardor Maiden slowly lowered her fan and stopped moving, Haruyuki was unable to say anything. He was overwhelmed. By the power of Utai’s Incarnate technique, its beauty, its ferocity. He couldn’t help but tremble at this terrifying, destructive power.
As far as the logic of the technique, it wasn’t that complicated. Melt the floor of the stage, turn it into a high-temperature liquid, and drop opponents into it. What was terrifying was what came after that. There was basically no escaping from it. If you couldn’t fly like Haruyuki or you didn’t have some kind of special movement ability like the fifth Disaster’s wire hook, you’d never be able to get out of the lake of magma. The liquid was viscous, hindering movement, and even if you did manage to somehow make it to the shore, the inside wall of the hole was also melted. It would be like trying to climb a wall of glass covered in oil.
It was a fundamentally different power than the flame of purification that had burned up Bush Utan three days before. The category of Incarnate technique was—he didn’t want to think about it, but it was probably the fourth quadrant, i.e., negative power targeting range. But why exactly had adorable, youthful Utai Shinomiya managed such a tortuous technique of destruction…
Part of Haruyuki’s half-numbed brain was wandering along this track when Ardor Maiden, standing a few meters ahead of him, shook violently.
“Ah!” Reflexively, Haru dashed forward to catch Utai’s back as she was about to collapse to the floor. Before his eyes, the white face mask covering the shrine maiden’s face split apart and retreated beneath her hair parts.
Her crimson eye lenses blinked irregularly and looked up at Haruyuki. A weak voice flowed out. “It seems that…it was a bit too soon. To use in actual battle.”
“Huh? What?”
“That. Technique. I’ve been practicing it for a year now. An experimental…technique for heavyweight, ground-based Enemies. More precisely…for the God Genbu.”
“For Genbu?”
Naturally, Haruyuki had never actually seen Genbu, the super-high-level Enemy guarding the north gate of the Castle. He had no idea what it looked like or what kind of attacks it used. But he did know one thing: Another of the Four Elements that Fuko and Utai had been a part of in the old Nega Nebulus was currently sealed at Genbu’s feet.
In Haruyuki’s arms, Utai closed her eyes and continued speaking in bits and pieces. “My power…it was as if it didn’t reach the God Suzaku. At the time of the mission to attack the Castle, I personally wished to lead the team against Suzaku. I foolishly thought…if it was fire, then I would be able to control it, no matter what kind of power it had…Perhaps if it had been Aqua Current and the water she controls, then opposite attribute…Or maybe Sky Raker, faster than the wind…Maybe they would have broken through Suzaku’s guard. In which case…the annihilation of the Legion two years ago…it was my disdain for the enemy, my forgetting to respect it…my…fault…”
Haruyuki saw a single small droplet of water shining on the edge of her closed eyes and instinctively shouted, “That—That’s not true! Absolutely no one thinks it was your fault, Mei!”
“No…that is a mistake for which I should be rebuked. Because…at that time, in my heart…I foolishly thought I might be the one to quell Suzaku’s flames and make it through the gates alive…and I said nothing…What would you call that…” The murmured voice, colored with sorrow, finally halted there.
Unable to find any words to say to her, Haruyuki felt like he finally understood why Utai had stayed hidden in a corner of the Accelerated World for two years, without trying to contact Kuroyukihime and the others.
Before, Utai had said that it was because she didn’t want to be the cause of secondary damage in a mission to rescue her avatar sealed away in front of the Castle. And of course, that wasn’t a lie. But at the same time, she had been severely blaming herself. She was convinced that she was the cause of the Legion’s destruction, and because of this sin, she had decided that no matter how much she wanted to see Kuroyukihime and Fuko, she couldn’t be allowed that. For a period of two years.
But…
But these feelings of guilt were shared by Kuroyukihime and Fuko.
Kuroyukihime had decided that her taking the head of the first Red King, Red Rider, on impulse and bringing about a war on all fronts with the remaining five Kings’ Legions was the direct cause for the destruction of Nega Nebulus. She had hidden herself in the Umesato Junior High local net for two years.
Fuko worried that she had created all the underlying causes for the dissolution of the Legion when she resolved to cut off her legs to strengthen her own will and forced Kuroyukihime to perform the act for her. She had lived in seclusion in the old Tokyo Tower for two years as well, in the Unlimited Neutral Field.
It was all the same. The three of them were all the same. Because they all cared so deeply about their companions, felt tied to them by profound bonds, they punished themselves. Haruyuki was sure, absolutely certain that the other two Elements, and the other Legion members whose names he didn’t even know yet, all went into hiding thinking the same thing. Eternally sacrificing themselves for the destruction of the old Nega Nebulus, never to stand center stage in the Accelerated World again.
“But…but…” Staring down at the face of Ardor Maiden in his arms, her eyes still closed fast, Haruyuki worked to push out his voice. “But Brain Burst doesn’t exist for us to—to struggle or worry or hate or fight. It shouldn’t, at least. Lots of sad and hard things happen in this world, but someday, we’ll get past all that, and the day will come when we can again take the hands of the people we love and share everything with one another. The day is definitely going to come when you can share with your friends this pain you’ve been shouldering by yourself all this time. It’s been two years already since the destruction of the old Nega Nebulus. So this day could be that day!”
As he moved his mouth frantically, Haruyuki vaguely understood the source of the destructive Incarnate that Utai had displayed earlier.
It was sin. It wasn’t colored with the same level of darkness as despair or hatred, but it was definitely not a positive force. If those flames were to roast a criminal, then Utai must have tasted the same anguish as her target the whole time the technique was activated.
And at the same time, the sin Utai carried with her was probably not just tied up with the destruction of the Legion. There had to be a deeper, stronger emotion directly connected with the real-world her. After all, Kuroyukihime had said it herself. You definitely couldn’t generate a second-level Incarnate technique without facing head-on the scars of your own self in the real world.
Naturally, there was no way Haruyuki would be allowed to enter into the depths of Utai’s heart, given that it had been me
re days since they met. Right now, he couldn’t even imagine the things she had been through, what she had suffered, and why she had lost her real voice. But…but…
“If you have to be tormented forever, to hate people forever even here in the Accelerated World for all your mistakes and disagreements, then why did we even become Burst Linkers?” Haruyuki squeezed the feelings in his heart out into words, and Utai’s limp body twitched in his arms.
The crimson eye lenses opened slowly. But their light still flickered weakly. Although Haruyuki wanted to say something more, another few words of some kind, his heart was shaking too fiercely and no words would come out.
At that moment, a voice cool and gentle as a breeze blowing over a grassy plain came to them softly.
“‘For sport and play, I think that we are born; for jesting and laughter, I doubt not we are born.’”
It was Trilead, who had been silent the whole time. The young samurai had moved soundlessly out from behind Haruyuki to now face him, Utai between them, before he sank down on his knees without even bending his back.
After a brief period of silence, Utai replied in a hoarse voice, blinking slowly as she did, “‘For when I hear the voice of children at their play, my limbs, even my stiff limbs, are stirred.’”
It was probably some old poem or something, but Haruyuki didn’t know it. Still, he felt like he could get the meaning of it, albeit only on an intuitive level.
Lead shifted his gaze from Utai to Haruyuki and began to speak quietly. “I am embarrassed to say this, but I have never before considered the kinds of fates Burst Linkers other than myself have borne or for what objectives they fight. However…however, I had the…vague idea…that the majority had fun playing this game. And that someday, I would be able to…join them.”