Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire

  And yet, although Bush Utan was a defensive green—the exact opposite of long-distance red on the color wheel—he had used a long-range beam attack to take Haruyuki down from high up in the air, which was clearly a range-expansion Incarnate attack. But right before that, he had used an attack-power-expanding Punch technique, and there was just no way these two Incarnates could exist in the same avatar. Even a master like Niko had acknowledged that she couldn’t use the straight attack or defense Incarnates, since they clashed with her own attributes.

  These facts that outpaced his own ability to understand in hand, Haruyuki, still flat on his back, could do nothing but open his eyes wider.

  Facing Haruyuki, Utan glanced down at the eyeball stuck to his chest, long, sturdy arms hanging loosely at his sides. “Yo, I told you, didn’t I?” His mouth moved, and a whisper came out, rich with a ridiculous passion, a child telling secrets. “I got it. Someone I know gave it to me. This IS mode study kit—ISS kit for short.”

  “S-someone gave it to you? An ISS kit…That?!” Haruyuki muttered, his confusion doubling at the unexpected explanation.

  The phrase “study kit” itself was something he was quite familiar with. Any number of education-related companies in the real world sold products for children for every kind of area of interest: piano study kits, gymnastics study kits, even bicycle study kits. If you installed these in your Neurolinker, you could get quite adept instruction from a virtual instructor in a full dive’s artificial reality environment. Haruyuki himself had a past with these he preferred not to talk about, having been assisted by how-to-talk study kits and similar aids.

  But there was absolutely no way a real-world company could have been selling Incarnate System study kits in the Accelerated World. To begin with, the power of the Incarnate wasn’t something that could be learned with an instant method like that. And Utan hadn’t bought the kit; he’d gotten it from someone. Some other Burst Linker had probably transferred that black eyeball to Bush Utan and told him he could use it to study the Incarnate System.

  So then who had he gotten it from? It couldn’t have been…It couldn’t.

  “So…the one who gave you that, that ISS kit…was it Ash Roller?” Haruyuki asked nervously.

  Utan got a curious look on his face momentarily before finally shaking his head from side to side. “Nah, it wasn’t. My brother, Ash…It’s still a secret from him. This sort of thing, he maybe might not like it, y’know.”

  The tension in Haruyuki’s chest eased a little. Ash Roller was learning the basics of Incarnate from his parent, Sky Raker, although he was still very much the novice. He had no reason to reach out to suspicious assists like this ISS kit.

  But his relief was fleeting. “But if I get super strong with this kit,” Bush Utan whispered, even more heatedly, bringing his face in toward Haruyuki’s, “then I just know my brother’s gonna be happy. You think so, too, right, Crow? I got torn apart by you last week, but once he hears how I destroyed you in IS mode, he’s gonna be super happy, okay? He’s gonna say, ‘Giga coooool!’ to me, right?”

  “……!” Seeing the hard gleam of excitement in Utan’s round eyes up close, Haruyuki took a sharp breath. He reflexively shook his head vigorously. “Y-you’re wrong. That’s wrong. IS mode—I mean, the power of the Incarnate System isn’t something you should be learning with a kit like that. First, you have to face your own mental scars…You have to start with learning the source and the meaning of that power. Otherwise, the dark side of Incarnate will swallow you up instead—”

  “You lecturing me now?” Utan spit out, and Haruyuki was at a loss for words.

  Mask and mask came closer together, covering each other, and the Burst Linker who had only minutes before been a sunny, happy-go-lucky player uttered in a low, hoarse voice, “Crow. Talking like that, it seems like you know a little about this power, too. But you were in the race last week, so I guess you felt it with that body of yours. How Number Ten barged in and rusted us all into oblivion in an instant with the power of IS mode, all our shuttles and even the hundreds of people in the Gallery. IS mode has that kind of incredible power. The ultimate power, skipping over all the rules of Brain Burst, even. And there’re some jerks who knew about it and kept it quiet all this time. So what is even the point of worrying about the meaning of that power now? Actually…maybe you’ve been using this power for a long time, like maybe a little at a time in duels, and winning by cheating?”

  Utan’s right hand stretched out, an enormous snake, to clamp around Haruyuki’s throat and yank him up with overwhelming physical strength. Now incredibly, uncomfortably close, Haruyuki saw in the depths of Utan’s normally green eyes a reddish-black light flickering periodically. He realized that this pulsing was in perfect sync with the light in the ISS kit eyeball buried in Utan’s chest.

  “You gotta be strong or it’s all meaningless. If you’re not strong, you can’t get a win ratio worth anything, and you stay at the bottom of your Legion, your points dry up, you disappear from the secret Accelerated World. But it’s not like you could get how us loser Burst Linkers feel, not when you’ve had a rare ability like flight right from the start.”

  I get it. I know that pain better than anyone. I’ve never ever thought I was a winner, not in the real world, not in the Accelerated World, Haruyuki wanted to tell him.

  But before Haruyuki could open his mouth, Bush Utan rasped, “But this ISS kit makes even losers strong. Like the more of a loser you are, the stronger you can get. You saw, right? It’s only been three days since I got this thing, and I’m already pretty great at using IS mode. As long as I have this power, I can’t lose against close-range Linkers or long-distance types. I can beat all those Legion jerks who made fun of me…and my brother—I mean, Ash Roller, even. I’m strong…right. ’Cause I’m strong!!”

  At some point not just the tone of his voice, but his whole manner of speaking changed. Yanking up the hand clutching Silver Crow’s throat, Bush Utan shouted, howled, “Strong! I’m strong! I don’t need a tag team partner anymore! Olive Grab, once this duel’s done, you and I are facing off! I’ll show you whose IS mode is stronger! Where are you, Olive? You better watch me finish this guy off!!”

  Unable to follow the deeply incomprehensible situation or the extreme change in Bush Utan, Haruyuki’s numbed mind wandered absently.

  Olive Grab was the name of Utan’s tag team partner. They were probably friends from the Green Legion, and from the way Utan was talking, Olive had this ISS kit, too. So then, Olive would also be able to use this astounding all-attribute Incarnate Haruyuki was being pummeled with. In that case, what was happening with his own partner, Utai Shinomiya? She couldn’t also have been taken down so helplessly like he had…

  Before he could check the health gauge in the top of his field of view, he heard footsteps coming from his right and abruptly turned his head.

  An unfamiliar duel avatar was slowly coming toward them, parting grass that swayed in the cool wind.

  His armor was green mixed with tan, just like the avatar’s name—olive green. His entire body was slim like a tree branch, but his hands alone were incongruously large. And in the middle of his chest, a jet-black semisphere, just like Utan’s.

  But the eyelid was almost entirely closed; only a sliver of the “eye” inside was exposed. The red light blinked irregularly, looking like it might go out entirely at any second.

  When Haruyuki looked closely, Olive Grab’s movements were extremely awkward. He staggered frequently, just barely catching himself each time, and managed to advance somehow. It was almost as if…It was like he was running from something.

  “Olive?”

  The slender avatar raised its graceless head at Utan’s doubtful voice, two eyes open wide behind the vertical slits cut into the long mask. “Utan…H-help—” The hoarse voice was neatly cut off. He looked back abruptly and thrust out his right hand fearfully. A thin, shadowy aura enclosed angular fingers like tree roots. “D-dark Sh—”

  The na
me of the technique was interrupted by a light fwp. The sound of a long, thin stick covered in flames—a flaming arrow—piercing the left side of Olive Grab’s chest.

  Immediately, the avatar’s body shattered and disappeared. His health gauge had dropped to zero.

  Haruyuki reflexively looked up at the four—no, three bars remaining in the top of his vision. Bush Utan’s gauge had a little over 80 percent left. Silver Crow’s was about half emptied. And the gauge of Haruyuki’s partner, Utai Shinomiya—Ardor Maiden—had not dropped a single dot since the start of the duel.

  He had also seen that “eye”—the ISS kit, according to Utan—on Olive Grab’s chest, so Ardor Maiden had to have been hit with a preemptive Incarnate attack. In fact, Olive had, in his dying moments, tried to release the same long-distance technique Dark Shot that Utan used. That couldn’t have been the first or the last attack. So how could Maiden have not even gotten a scratch?

  Forgetting even to breathe, Haruyuki slowly lifted his gaze from where Olive had disappeared.

  Twenty or more meters away was the small figure of a duel avatar clad in the two colors of a white robe and vermillion hakama. The armor of her entire body gleamed, not a single dull spot to be seen. But her slight left hand was gently gripping something that had not been there at the start of the duel: a long, slender stick as tall as she was. The top and bottom curved gently, a thin string connecting the two ends. It was a bow.

  Ardor Maiden glanced with cool eye lenses at Silver Crow and his missing hand and wing, and then at Bush Utan, holding him in the air by his throat. Her left hand gently lifted the large bow. She placed an empty right hand on the string and pulled lightly.

  Instantly, in the space by her hand where there had previously been nothing, a thin line burning red materialized—an arrow. Straightening her back, Utai raised her right arm high and drew back the string in a lovely, almost charming motion. A moment of stillness passed, as though time itself had stopped. Then her right hand flashed as she flicked her wrist back.

  The flaming arrow came flying, howling, and plunged deep into Bush Utan’s right forearm.

  “Unh!” Crying out, Utan threw Haruyuki aside and yanked out the flaming arrow, which instantly burned into nothingness in the air. But not before Utan’s gauge had dropped more than 10 percent.

  Rooted to the spot, Haruyuki—and likely Bush Utan as well—was awed by the imposing figure of Ardor Maiden launching the arrow from her bow, not to mention the power of that missile and the accuracy of her aim. The Japanese-style avatar approached, gliding through the ocean of rustling, swaying grass. Size-wise, she was smaller than anyone else there, and yet the overwhelming sense of presence she radiated didn’t allow him to feel this smallness; it scorched the air. To borrow Niko’s words, it was an unbelievable “information pressure.”

  Coming quite close to Haruyuki and Utan, Ardor Maiden held her longbow low and horizontal. “This is an unexpected development,” she said in a nonchalant, ringing voice. “I had intended simply to contain the situation until the contest here was concluded, but I was forced to dispatch Olive.” She shook her head gently, as though victory with no damage was distasteful. She continued, a thoughtful monologue: “This ISS kit…If something like this is being freely disseminated, then the situation is indeed serious. We have to locate the source immediately.”

  She lifted her face and looked at Utan with harsh eyes. “Bush Utan, who gave you that?” She cut directly to the heart of it.

  The grass-colored avatar took one step, then another backward, overawed. Perhaps connected to his mental state, the light of the “eyeball” in his chest flickered irregularly, and the black aura over his body began to shudder violently. “I—I can’t tell…ya,” Utan replied hoarsely, shaking his head back and forth over and over. “I promised I wouldn’t say.”

  “You did? If you promised, I suppose there’s nothing to be done, then.” Utai nodded briskly, and then shot an even harder look at Utan. “I will tell you this: That power steals more than it gives you. Bush Utan, if you so desire, the fire attribute of my avatar can purify the foreign body parasitizing you. There’s still time if you do it now. Unfortunately, Olive refused me, but…what do you say?”

  Haruyuki didn’t immediately realize the significance of the fact wrapped up in those words, but after a second, his eyes finally flew open.

  She could purify a foreign parasitic body. That was definitely what Utai had said. But that ability wasn’t readily available. Hadn’t Kuroyukihime and Fuko been talking about that before? That only people with the rare ability of purification could remove an object with parasitic characteristics?

  So then Utai Shinomiya, Ardor Maiden herself, was someone with the purification ability. The keystone in Kuroyukihime’s plan to purify the Armor of Catastrophe. The person who would get rid of the element of Chrome Disaster clinging to Haruyuki.

  He forgot the pain of missing limbs and simply stood there, while before him, Utai nodded her head slightly, as if to encourage Utan.

  Several meters away, the black aura around Bush Utan weakened even further. “I…I just…wanted to be stronger…like my brother…strong,” he muttered feebly, taking a step forward. His arms hung by his sides, and his head shook in tiny increments; he was definitely about to return her nod.

  But…

  The eye in his chest opened up to a nearly perfect circle. The sharp red pulsed fiercely. Then in Utan’s own eyes, a crimson light began pulsing in perfect sync. Haruyuki felt almost like the eyeball—a supposedly simple object—was actually interfering with Utan’s nervous system.

  “No…This power is mine…It’s my power…my strength…” His voice gradually grew lower and slightly distorted. The concentration of the aura covering him increased once more. His loosely open hands were abruptly clenched into tight fists. “I’m not giving it to anyone…You’re trying to steal it…You want to take it from me…No…You can’t…,” Utan muttered incoherently and abruptly threw his upper body back. The dark red light in his eyes and the third spot on his chest turned into thin, gushing lances. “It’s my power, my IS mode! If you wanna steal it…this is what I’ll do to you!!”

  He flung his right fist up into the air, dark aura condensing around it. “Aaaaaaah…Dark Blow!!” he yelled, as he moved to bring his fist down and smash the smaller Ardor Maiden.

  “Ah!” Haruyuki reflexively stepped forward to fly out under that fist. But before he could, Utai raised a gentle hand and stopped him cold. At the same time, she threw an empty hand up above her head. Compared with Utan’s enormous rocklike punch, those five digits were thin like fresh buds only just sprouted. There was no way she could stop that fist, Haruyuki thought. But…

  In an instant, Ardor Maiden’s right hand glittered an indistinct orange. Fire. Cleanly transparent flames covered her small hand.

  When the invincible fist was on the verge of shattering her slender palm, Haruyuki heard a terrifying crash. The pressure of the impact surged outward, shaking Haruyuki and the grass around them ferociously. But, unaware of this, Haruyuki simply stared, dumbfounded, at the scene before him.

  Utan’s hand and Maiden’s were not touching directly. In the five-or-so-centimeter space between them, the black aura and the transparent flames were engaged in a fierce contest. White sparks dazzled the eye as they flew off from the edges of this battle. Two imaginations were fighting to overwrite each other; Maiden was defending against Utan’s Incarnate attack with her own.

  But the appearances of the two avatars were a world apart. In contrast with Utan, face twisted with undisguised rage and bloodlust, Utai was simply, calmly extending her right hand. Her expression was even pitying somehow.

  Suddenly, he heard her speak in a way that betrayed this impression.

  “Bush Utan. You are thinking incorrectly. The power of Incarnate—what you call IS mode—is not something you can be given by someone, not something that can be taken by anyone. It is a projection of yourself born from within your own heart.”

/>   “…Shut up. Shut up, shut up!” Utan groaned and brandished his left fist. But before he could bring it down to hit anything, the flames of Utai’s right hand grew the slightest bit more intense.

  Instantly, the balance was shattered. Utan’s fist was violently repelled, and his entire body fell with it into the grass behind him.

  They were simply at vastly different levels in terms of strength. Utai’s Incarnate was probably a defense expansion. Normally, red-type avatars couldn’t use this power, or they weren’t very good at it if they could. But given how she repelled that fist of steel with nothing more than her overlay, she was definitely no ordinary avatar.

  Bush Utan seemed to sense this unfathomability of Ardor Maiden. Instead of trying to punch her again, he stayed down and began swimming through the sea of grass. Ksh, ksh, ksh. The sound drew a circle and finally melted into the infinite rustling caused by the wind. Rather than running away, he was likely intending to get some distance before attacking with that beam of darkness he took Haruyuki down with.

  “Ut—I mean, Mei, he’s gonna attack with a missile!” Haruyuki whispered hurriedly, and Utai nodded lightly.

  She took a few steps over to him and looked around the area. Once again, her clear voice flowed out over the grassland. “Bush Utan, there’s one more thing you don’t know. If you’re going to carry out an Incarnate attack, you must be prepared for something very serious. And that is the fact that your opponent may counterattack with Incarnate.” She stopped and glanced at Haruyuki before murmuring in a completely unconcerned voice, “C. You only have to do it once, but please defend against Utan’s attack. It takes a bit of time for my Incarnate technique to activate.”

  “G-got it…Wait, what?!” Haruyuki immediately accepted, only to then panic. Defending against a long-distance attack originating from a place he couldn’t see was no easy feat. It was actually more like impossible.