The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer

  Haruyuki then shifted his gaze to the one behind the metal avatar, the large duel avatar who continued to hold his left arm up into the sky.

  He had seen this one before. And not just that. The color, the form. He had come face-to-face with him only once before, but even if he tried to forget, the other avatar was filled with such an absolute sense of presence, forgetting him was almost impossible.

  The Armor plates, radiating a weightiness, were a green so pure, it could almost be compared with nothing else. The limb and chest plates were fat and thick, but the key points were tensed, so there was nothing lumbering in the impression he made. To sum it up in one phrase, a great tree—ruler of the earth, towering forever above the land without the slightest tremor in the face of any storm.

  It wasn’t possible to mistake a Burst Linker with this kind of pressure for anyone else, but Haruyuki, his mind fused with the Armor of Catastrophe, still found it hard to believe. Given that they had interfered with his pursuit of the body of light, he had to conclude that the pair were ISS kit makers—in other words, members of the Acceleration Research Society. But Haruyuki had seen the green avatar seated at the meeting of the Seven Kings the other day. And not as an attendant, but as one of the key players at the meeting.

  When Haruyuki soundlessly focused his gaze on him, unable to completely push aside his misgivings, the green avatar abruptly lowered the hand he had held aloft all this time. At the same time as the intense overlay housed in his arm weakened, the wall embedded in the sky vanished from the corner of Haruyuki’s eye.

  But the light didn’t completely disappear. Still lodged in the avatar’s left arm, it spread out into a square and gained substance. What appeared was a shield, glittering a remarkably pure green as though an enormous emerald had been carved into a panel.

  The priority, which was enough to faintly distort the surrounding air, was not something regular Enhanced Armaments had. Which meant it was an Arc. The large shield was the gamma of the Seven Stars, the Strife.

  There was definitely no doubt now. The green avatar who had generated a wall large enough to connect earth and sky with an Incarnate technique and repel Haruyuki’s forward motion was one of the Seven Kings of Pure Color, ruler of the major Legion Great Wall, the strongest person reigning in the Accelerated World.

  “Green King…Green Grandé.” Haruyuki said the name in a hoarse, creaking voice.

  There was, of course, pressure in being face-to-face with a king, but the emotions beyond that made him forget his fear. An aura of black flames dancing around his body, he turned toward the avatar, who was a head taller than himself. “Are you…the mastermind?” he asked. “Was it you who made the ISS kits and distributed them?”

  If his opponent moved his head in the slightest gesture of assent, Haruyuki was ready to use the sword in his right hand to cut him down without a moment’s delay. But the Green King only looked quietly at Haruyuki with strangely amber-colored eye lenses, evincing no reaction at all.

  “What the—?!” the metal color standing in front of the king shouted back instead. His head was a simple cylindrical shape, but that gave it a sense of toughness as the avatar shook it and turned a glove-shaped fist toward Haruyuki.

  “Silver Crow—no, Chrome Disaster! You’re the ally of the Society here!” he spat. “That filthy overlay is proof of that! The Six Kings were kind enough to give you a whole week to purify yourself, and here you are sneaking around behind the scenes, the height of cowardliness! You really are the child of the biggest traitor in the Accelerated World!”

  The instant this line echoed through his brain, something pinched unexpectedly within Haruyuki. He wouldn’t simply kill this one. As he resolved himself, a part of his brain was analyzing the information like an automated digital circuit.

  These two were already aware that the duel avatar standing before them was Silver Crow after summoning the Armor of Catastrophe. Still, that wasn’t especially strange. Although the Accelerated World was large, even newbies knew that the only one who could continuously fly was the crow from Nega Nebulus, and the kings and their closer associates would naturally have the information that Silver Crow had been parasitized by the Armor of Catastrophe. And Haruyuki’s current form had been revealed before the eyes of several hundred spectators in the final stages of the Hermes’ Cord race the other day.

  Setting aside the question of the Green King, Haruyuki should have actually commended the courage of the metal color, perhaps, who not only did not tremble in the face of the legendary destroyer, but even spit such challenging words at him. Naturally, he gave voice to none of this and simply let his thoughts run further along.

  If he was sincerely cursing Haruyuki out for being a friend to the Acceleration Research Society, that meant the two Green Legion avatars were not members of the Society. But if that was the case, then why would they interfere with Haruyuki chasing that body of light? And there was one more thing he definitely could not shut his eyes to. Before they fought, he had to ask this at least.

  “If you say you’re not allies of the Society,” Haruyuki began, staring at the headgear-shaped face mask of the metal color, “then how can you just be standing around here?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A mere three kilometers away, only a few minutes ago, two members of Great Wall were murdered several times by ISS kit wearers. If you were this close, why didn’t you go help them?”

  As he gave voice to this question, the image of Ash Roller being pierced through the chest and scattering in all directions flashed across the back of his mind, and Haruyuki once again felt the absolute-zero rage race through his veins. A howl he couldn’t suppress slid out from under his visor, a growl.

  “Ngh!” The metal color swallowed his breath.

  Haruyuki took a step toward him and glared at his opponent from beneath his visor. “Or is it that you don’t give a crap how much the subordinate members of your Legion suffer, or if they end up in total point loss?” he said, in a voice that was almost not a voice. “And you think someone like you has the right to call anyone a coward or a traitor?”

  Spitting words like pale flames, Haruyuki was still not aware of another enormous contradiction that existed within his own self. What he desired as the sixth Chrome Disaster was revenge on the layered avatar Black Vise, who had killed his beloved in the distant past, and the end of the Accelerated World itself, which was nothing more than a cradle for this kind of tragedy. And naturally, that included the annihilation of the people Haruyuki now loved.

  However, the Haruyuki left inside the Armor as Silver Crow still believed in and desired the many bonds he had built in this world. Which was exactly why he got angry when his parent Kuroyukihime was insulted and felt that he couldn’t forgive the Green Legion senior members for not protecting Ash Roller. Perhaps this double standard was proof that Haruyuki was still not completely fused with the Armor of Catastrophe, or perhaps it was because the Enhanced Armament Destiny itself had originally possessed these two faces. That said, this internal struggle did not show on the outside. Haruyuki took another step, an ever-more-intense aura gushing out of him.

  “Th-that was…” The dull gray metal color, holding his ground, hung his head slightly and groaned. “We have something important—”

  “There’s nothing more important than the lives of your Legion members! Guys who don’t even try to protect their friends are worse garbage than the Acceleration Research Society. Right now…I am going to make you both disappear from the Accelerated World!!” Crying out sharply, he sliced sideways with the longsword on his shoulder.

  The eyes of the downcast metal color shone, accompanied by the heavy sound of vibration. Slowly raising his face, he stared at Haruyuki. “What do you…know? We, our king…Do you know how much time we’ve sacrificed for the Accelerated World…Who exactly has been protecting and maintaining this world you all happily come to have fun fighting in…”

  At that moment.

  The Gr
een King, who had kept silent until that point, made a move. That said, he simply took a step back and crossed his arms behind the great shield. However, the metal color seemed to take some kind of intent from this movement and stopped speaking, dropping his head as his entire body stiffened with a snap once more. Finally, he lifted his face and spoke as if he had decided something.

  “Right from the get-go, I didn’t think we could do this without fighting you, aka the Catastrophe. Action before words. All that’s left is to talk with our fists.” He drew back his right foot, bending at the knee, and in a sudden change, danced about with light, nimble footwork. He raised his massive fists and readied them in front of his body side by side. “Third seat of Great Wall’s Six Armors, level seven, Iron Pound. We’re not waiting for the meeting of the Seven Kings in three days; we’re getting rid of you right here and now!”

  Taking in the proudly shouted name, Haruyuki opened his mouth under his helmet. But he couldn’t name himself, couldn’t shout back, member of Nega Nebulus, Silver Crow. Even if his mental state was abnormal, he was all too painfully aware that the way he was now, he had no right to that title. Thus, he murmured the name of the cursed armor, “Sixth Chrome Disaster.”

  Perhaps in response to this name, the dark aura rising up from all over the Armor abruptly increased in strength. As his upper body continued to sway rhythmically, the enemy metal color Iron Pound responded with a pale-blue aura lodged in his glove-shaped fists.

  If the Six Armors was the name of a leader group equivalent to the former Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements, then the avatar before him was a powerful fighter who was ranked fourth in the enormous Legion Great Wall. And he was two levels ahead of the currently level-five Haruyuki. This opponent had power on such a different level that, normally, Haruyuki’s chances of victory would be slim, even if he took on the challenge prepared to die.

  But now, he thought of Iron Pound up against him as nothing more than an annoying object. His true objective was the Green King. The distrust and rage he felt toward Green Grandé—not only had he not gone to rescue Ash Roller, supposedly a subordinate in his Legion, but he had interfered with Haruyuki’s pursuit of the ISS kit—would not subside until he had taken the king’s head.

  First, he would take care of this interloper with a single blow. Making this resolution to himself, Haruyuki placed his left hand on the hilt of the longsword and brandished it high in the air. The tip stopped at the peak, and just as he was about to start moving it, a vivid red line pierced his washed-out field of view—the attack prediction line. At the same time, the attack attribute information display began. PREDICTED ATTACK: INCARNATE ATTACK; RANGE/POWER ENHANCEMENT: STRIKING TYPE…

  But that was as much of the small text message as he got to read. Because with almost no delay after the moment the prediction line appeared, the enemy launched his Incarnate technique.

  There was just the blink of a blue light, which even Haruyuki could not make out, despite the fact that his eyes could pick out a bullet fired from a rifle in the Accelerated World. Iron Pound launched a series of frighteningly fast left punches, blow after blow shooting out beyond his actual reach—which Haruyuki understood only after they slammed hard into his face and sent him reeling.

  “Grr…raaaah!!”

  A howl of rage slipping out, he braced his feet and forcefully brought down the longsword. The blade, tinged with the dark aura, came down on the head of the enemy just as he finished his attack.

  Or not. What the sword actually caught was the afterimage of Iron Pound left in Haruyuki’s vision. The point of his sword dug deep into the heliport on the roof of Mori Tower, and the aftershocks from the power it contained produced sharp cracks several meters away. By that point, however, his enemy had already cut around two meters to the left, and his fist glittered once more.

  Bam! Babam! The blows popped the sides of his helmet rhythmically. This time, there was no chance for the attack prediction lines to be displayed.

  So fast!!

  An incredible speed, exceeding even the calculation abilities of the Armor of Catastrophe. The force of a single blow wasn’t that great, but because there were so many of them, Haruyuki’s health gauge was shaved down nearly 5 percent. Given that this small technique was breaking past the incredible defensive power of the Armor, it was clearly an Incarnate attack, but the ease of use was somehow different from the techniques he had been hit with before.

  As he pulled his sword from the floor and readied it in front of his chest to check the enemy’s movements, Haruyuki searched for the reason for this dissonance, and then realized what it was. Pound wasn’t calling the technique name that always accompanied an Incarnate attack. So the launch of the technique was abnormally fast, and it was also hard to get a grip on the timing. In the depths of his mind, fragments of the lecture from the Red King Scarlet Rain came back to life from what already felt like the long-distant past.

  “The heart of an Incarnate technique is whether or not the image is firmly fixed in your mind. Ideally, you wanna be able to call it up as naturally as you do the abilities and special attacks you had from the start. You were concentrating for nearly three seconds from the time you crouched down to the time you moved. That’s way too slow! So first, you give your technique a name, so then you superimpose over the image with you shouting the name as the trigger…”

  Something deep in his heart throbbed, but Haruyuki forcefully erased that emotion and sorted through the information in those words.

  Just as Niko had said, unlike a normal special attack, calling out the technique name was not an action required by the system for an Incarnate attack. The purpose of shouting the name of the technique was to semi-automate the focusing of the imagination as a conditioned reflex, so to speak, and speed up activation. Currently, it took Haruyuki approximately 1.5 seconds to go from a natural, relaxed posture to finishing the release of his Incarnate attack Laser Sword. However, without calling the technique name, it took more than four seconds.

  But the reason calling out the technique name was required to begin with for normal Brain Burst special attacks was because it was one restriction on releasing a powerful attack. Obviously, it made surprise attacks from behind impossible, but more than that, it informed the enemy of the attack timing and gave them precious moments to respond. Which was why the strongest attack was actually a silent special attack. And the attack Iron Pound was pummeling him with at that moment was precisely that. A special attack without the call of the technique name. He barely took even a tenth of a second from readying his fists to launching the punch. It was only natural that the Armor’s attack prediction line display couldn’t keep up.

  However, no matter how fast, the attack was, in the end, nothing more than a bare-handed punch. Pound’s reach also appeared to be extended with Incarnate, but it still wasn’t greater than the reach of Haruyuki’s sword. If he met his enemy’s initial onslaught with a slashing attack, the sword would land first.

  Leisurely raising the sword to chest level, Haruyuki concentrated on his enemy’s movements. The way Iron Pound danced about in small steps, his heels almost floating, made it hard to predict what he would do next. But although he could neglect the technique call as much as he wanted, he couldn’t hide the increase in overlay accompanying the activation of an Incarnate attack.

  “Sh!” A sharp breath.

  At the same time, Haruyuki saw the aura enveloping his enemy’s left fist flash brightly.

  The timing of his counterattack was perfect. Immediately before Iron Pound launched his punch, Haruyuki sliced downward with his longsword. The distance between them was just enough that his opponent’s fist could not reach him, but the tip of his sword could just barely reach his opponent. The power in the blade could easily slice through even the structures of the Demon City stage, so it should have bisected his enemy’s headgear mask. And yet…

  In a move Haruyuki’s experience had led him to believe was impossible, Iron Pound threw only his upper body back, l
eaving his feet planted where they were. The deadly blade flowed straight down into nothingness, leaving a few sparks in its wake.

  A feint.

  The enemy pretended to throw a left jab, inviting Haruyuki’s attack. Successfully luring the sword in, he dodged it by simply leaning back, and then, no sooner had Haruyuki been drawn in deep than his enemy immediately shot his right fist out in a straight line, a large rifle bullet.

  Again, there was no technique call. But the powerful, focused right hook of his enemy, wrapped in a thick aura, delivered a scathing shot to Haruyuki’s face the instant he finished swinging his sword. The impact was so great that he was surprised his helmet wasn’t shattered; in fact, the only reason Haruyuki managed to avoid that level of damage was because he had reflexively flapped his wings with all his might to push himself backward. Even still, the instant the bomb hit him, his head snapped back and his field of view went white. The power of the punch and the force of his own retreat sent him flying more than ten meters backward, reeling.

  “Graar!” A howl of rage slipping out, he pulled his face back down. Tiny fragments of metal fluttered off from the cracks in his visor. Somehow, he managed to get the fitful magma of rage erupting in him under control enough to speak. “That technique,” he muttered. “Boxing?”

  “Yeah.” Iron Pound nodded before him, smoothly pulling his extended fist back to bring both hands neatly in front of his mouth again. “There are basically no boxing-type Burst Linkers, so I guess I’m pretty hard to deal with at first glance.”

  He spoke the truth. Haruyuki had never once before dueled a Burst Linker who used boxing techniques. There were a lot of blue-type “strikers,” who had hands specialized for punching attacks, and he had fought them any number of times. But this was the first opponent he had faced who had mastered techniques from the sport of boxing to this extent and whose duel avatar was a perfect boxer form as well.