Armor of Catastrophe

  “Umm, wh-what was that again?” Haruyuki twisted his head to the side.

  “The agreement to reply with the location of the seventh star, the last of the Arcs of which you spoke,” the boy clad in azure replied smoothly.

  Standing up from the crosspiece-turned-bench, Trilead led Haruyuki and Utai into the darkness where he had first appeared on the north side of the hall.

  The wall at the end, where the light from the candles basically did not reach, was made up of vermilion pillars and white wall as the walls to the sides were, but there was something in the center of it that he hadn’t noticed before.

  An entrance, a gate. Pillars put together in the shape of a small torii shrine gate, the opening between them heavily spilling out black, cool air.

  Unconsciously pulling into himself, Haruyuki murmured, “So this hall…isn’t the deepest part of the Castle…”

  “No. This is the last of the court’s gates. Once we slip through it, we will find the Shrine of the Eight Divines. Shall we go?” Trilead said, and stepped with his hakama -clad leg into the dense darkness. Without appearing to hesitate in the slightest, Utai followed him, and Haruyuki steeled himself to join them.

  Once they had gone through the torii, he saw there was just a tiny bit of light in what he had thought was the completely dark interior. The hallway soon turned into stairs leading underground, where the faint light seemed to originate. With an assured step, Lead started to descend, and the other two Burst Linkers followed him.

  As they advanced, Haruyuki felt a pressure pushing on his avatar of a type he had never encountered before. It wasn’t the sense of power the God Suzaku or the armored warrior Enemies emitted, but rather a sensation that the air itself was tinged with some kind of spiritual energy.

  But the word spiritual didn’t really fit with the Accelerated World. This was a VR world generated by the Brain Burst program, and all the information received by the five senses was digital data that could be replaced with code. Niko had used the phrase information pressure for the pressure received from other Burst Linkers. Taking that analogy, did that mean that even the air in this place was included in some kind of data set? Not surface information like temperature and smell and wind direction, but a series of existences equal to infinity that expressed time, or rather history…

  When they had gone down thirty or more of the ebony stairs, the steps wrapped around 180 degrees and continued on. Right around the time he was starting to lose track of exactly how far they had crept underground, the stairs ahead of them finally ended, leading into a fairly large room with a wooden floor. But it was a mere fraction of the size of the great hall on the top floor where the two pedestals sat.

  “Huh? Is that the last room of the Castle? It’s surprisingly small. And I mean, it looks like there’s nothing in it,” Haruyuki unconsciously let slip.

  Ahead of him on the stairs, Trilead looked over his shoulder, a faint smile on his face. “No, you’ll be able to see when we get to the bottom.”

  Haruyuki wondered what exactly he was going to see and quickened his pace. A few steps behind Lead he entered the room, only to find a second and much, much larger torii gate jumping up into his field of view.

  The vermilion gate soared to such a height at the front of the room that almost touched the walls on both sides and the ceiling above. However, an object that hadn’t been on the gate upstairs connected the two pillars: an impressively thick snow-white rope. A shimenawa, used to bind sacred spaces. An address border dividing the world of the living from the holy.

  Swallowing hard, Haruyuki took a few steps toward the gate and its display of absolute separation and tried to look into the gloom beyond.

  “…It’s huge…,” he murmured like a gasp.

  Two rows of small watch fires flickered from the sides of the torii toward the interior, but he couldn’t see the third wall at all. The latticed ceiling was also just barely visible. The floor was polished stonework, but the area of the room far surpassed that of the gym at Umesato; he had absolutely no idea exactly how many meters it was in any direction.

  Big, chilly, and silent, and yet definitely not futile—he knew this sensation. He thought about it for a minute, and it hit him: that enormously pregnant tranquility that had filled the space before Suzaku appeared on the large bridge stretching out from the south gate of the Castle.

  Unable to say anything more, Haruyuki simply stood there, and Trilead stepped soundlessly forward from between himself and the similarly silent Utai. He raised his right arm and indicated the line of watch fires in the distance.

  “Over there.”

  Straining his eyes as told, Haruyuki could see a light up ahead that was a different wavelength from the flickering flames. He held his breath and focused more intently on looking at it. The darkness receded slightly to reveal what it had hidden.

  A pedestal cut out of black stone.

  It was the same as the two in the hall above, metal plate embedded on the front. But it was just too far away; he couldn’t make out the characters on it. And then on the pedestal itself, a warm, golden yellow light pulsed slowly, as if it held the blue light of a portal. As if it were whispering. As if it were calling out.

  Unconsciously, Haruyuki went to take a step forward toward the shimenawa, and Lead gently held him back with his right hand on Haruyuki’s shoulder. “You mustn’t. It’s too dangerous up ahead.”

  “B-but…” Haruyuki was unable to make much in the way of a response, so filled was he with an emotion resembling impatience or perhaps even…craving.

  “Trilead, that is the last Arc, the eta star of the Big Dipper, yes?” Utai asked softly.

  “Yes, that’s exactly right.” Lead nodded, hand still on Haruyuki’s left shoulder, and continued in a sweetly ringing voice. “To even draw near enough to be able to read the inscription carved on that pedestal required an amount of time that was essentially infinite. The name of that light is—”

  “—Youkou. The Fluctuating Light.”

  “Fluctuating…light…” Without being aware of it, Haruyuki repeated the name.

  It was a phrase he had absolutely no memory of hearing. To begin with, Haruyuki hadn’t even known about the existence of the Arcs until he took part in the Meeting of the Seven Kings the day before yesterday. But despite this, the word that most closely described the emotion that brimmed up from his heart and filled his chest was a kind of fond remembrance.

  “I—I—” Still without his awareness, Haruyuki’s mouth began to move. “I’ve seen that light before…”

  Both of the small avatars to his left gasped sharply.

  Their questioning eyes on him, Haruyuki fumbled intently for the right words. “It’s—Right, that’s—Of course, in the Unlimited Neutral Field—It was when I was first training in the Incarnate System. Master Raker pushed me off the top of the old Tokyo Tower and told me that I had to climb back up with my own hands…”

  The moment she heard this, Utai let out a small sigh. Given that Sky Raker had similarly made her do all kinds of things, she had to be thinking that this was only too plausible, but he had no mental leeway then for conjecturing about her emotional state.

  “At first,” he continued in a hoarse voice, “I couldn’t even make a scratch in the wall. But I kept shooting my hand at it day after day after day, and I gradually managed to get so my fingertips would dig into it. And then I got so that my fingers would pierce it all the way to the knuckles. After a week, I started to climb the tower. I totally lost myself in it. I just climbed the wall for hours, stabbing my right hand in, then my left, back and forth…Sometimes…that light…But I feel like it wasn’t an object…that golden light…”

  Here, Haruyuki finally turned his gaze on Lead and Utai. He announced his final words to the pair—listening with wide eyes—in a trembling voice.

  “It was a person. It was calling me.”

  For a while, silence filled the space.

  Breaking this was not anyone speaking, but rather
the crimson characters that filled Haruyuki’s view. DISCONNECTION WARNING. Kuroyukihime and the others had burst out thirty real-world seconds earlier, and they were now about to pull out Haruyuki’s direct cable.

  The direct connectors on Neurolinkers were water-resistant, noncontact-type ports. Thus, even if the cable was pulled out, the signal would continue, albeit for a very brief time. Naturally, this was a matter of units in the point-zero-second range, but even so, in the Accelerated World, this allowed an extension of dozens of seconds from the time the warning appeared.

  “Ah! Um!” Abruptly dragged back from the reaches of his memory, all he could do was flap his mouth open and shut.

  It was Utai who explained in a calm voice, “Trilead, our comrades have activated the disconnection safety in the real world. I do apologize, but we will soon burst out temporarily.”

  “Y-yes, I understand.” The young samurai nodded.

  “It is a forced disconnect from outside,” the shrine maiden further added, albeit at a slightly quickened pace. “So the next time we dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field, we will appear once more at these coordinates. Therefore, although I do realize this is rather impudent of me to ask, if possible, I’d like to meet you here once more. When would be the next time you would be able to dive in real-world time?”

  “Yes, let me think…” Considering it for a mere instant, Lead soon responded, “Well then, two days from now. How is precisely seven PM, Thursday, June twentieth?”

  “Understood. We truly appreciate your assistance. Thank you so much.”

  Following Utai’s lead as she bowed her head, Haruyuki bowed himself before finally managing to get some words out.

  “Uh, um, Lead, I want to thank you, too. You taught us a bunch of stuff. But there’s still a ton I want to talk to you about, a ton of things I want to ask you. So I’m excited about seeing you again.” The disconnection warning in his field of view began to blink at top speed. In the real world, the XSB cable was likely almost completely pulled out of his Neurolinker.

  At Haruyuki’s rushed yet earnest words, the azure samurai avatar blinked once before a smile colored with a complex set of emotions rose up faintly on his face. “I also very much enjoyed speaking with you both. I promise, the day after tomorrow, I will definitely be here. I would also like to talk with you both much, much more.”

  And then the boy with the strange avatar name Trilead Tetroxide took a step back and looked at Utai and Haruyuki in turn. The crisp figure standing there, reminiscent of an autumn wind, was finally blanketed by the oncoming darkness and disappeared.

  5

  The very first thing Haruyuki was aware of upon his return to the real world was not the weight of his physical body sinking into the sofa nor the cool of the air-conditioning, but rather supple fingertips touching his cheek.

  His eyes flew open. And stared into the beautiful starry sky he had looked up at in the Castle garden only moments earlier. Except, wait—that wasn’t it. Jet-black eyes filled with particles of light like stardust?

  When those eyes blinked once, slowly, the tiniest droplet of water bounced off long eyelashes and disappeared into the air. At the same time came the whisper of a voice. “So you’re back, Haruyuki.”

  After staring for a bit at the clear, crisp beauty of Kuroyukihime—swordmaster, leader of the Legion Nega Nebulus, Black King, Black Lotus—who he respected and adored more than any other, Haruyuki replied hoarsely, “Yes, Kuroyukihime. I just got back now.”

  The place where Haruyuki awakened was number 2305 on the twenty-third floor of the mixed-use skyscraper condo in northern Koenji, Suginami Ward, in the real world—in other words, the living room of the Arita home. He sat in the center of the sofa set near the southern windows, and directly before him, Kuroyukihime was leaning forward, left hand pushing up against the backrest of the sofa, the fingertips of her right hand gently resting on his cheek. In her palm, she held the plug for the XSB cable, the silver cord that stretched out to the connector panel on the wall.

  The panel was for wired connections to the Arita family home server. For this dive, Haruyuki and his friends had connected globally via a wired connection to his home server, rather than wirelessly. Haruyuki and Utai had returned to the real world without using a portal because Kuroyukihime had pulled this cable out of Haruyuki’s Neurolinker.

  “That was a long thirty seconds, you know,” Kuroyukihime murmured, fingers still touching his cheek. “While we sat here like this, you and Utai were perhaps being chased by Enemies inside the Castle. Or maybe regenerating and dying over and over and over. I could hardly stand it.”

  The instant he became aware that this voice contained the slightest hint of a tremor, something burst open in Haruyuki’s heart. He sat up straight, took a deep breath, and opened his mouth. “Kuroyukihime…That time—When Suzaku shifted its target to me, I’m sorry for disobeying the order to retreat. But—But I had to…” Even though he had so firmly decided that he would apologize properly when he got back to the real world, when it came right down to it, his faculty with words lagged far behind the intent in his heart.

  He bit his lip, opened his mouth, and then bit down again. Over and over.

  Kuroyukihime took her left hand off the sofa and dropped the cable in her right hand to wrap now-empty hands gently around his shoulders. A smile like the bud of a water lily bled onto her pale, glossy lips. “It’s fine, Haruyuki. It’s precisely because you do such things that I believe I can entrust myself and the future of the Legion to you. You shook off even Suzaku’s flames and simply flew forward. There’s no way I could fault that kind of bravery.”

  “…Kuro…yukihime…” Choking back all the things welling up inside him, Haruyuki simply stared wholeheartedly into her eyes. He clenched both hands tightly and tried to turn the emotions overflowing within him into words. “Kuroyukihime. Th-the reason I could fly was because you told me to fly—han-huh-hee-hoo-ha!”

  Ruining the tail end of his so carefully crafted speech were two hands stretching out from either side of him to pinch his cheeks and yank hard.

  “Okay, look! Exactly how long—” Chiyuri yelled, pinching his left cheek.

  Fuko, yanking on his right, picked up where she left off. “—are you two going to keep this up?!”

  Three minutes later.

  Once they had switched locations from the sofa to the dining room, with Haruyuki and Utai settled into the chairs on the south side, Takumu and Chiyuri across from them, Kuroyukihime to the left and Fuko to the right, they all checked the current time.

  7:35 PM.

  Not even ten full minutes in real-world time had passed since the start of Operation Rescue Ardor Maiden. However, in Haruyuki’s actual perception, it seemed like yesterday already when they had called out the “unlimited burst” command to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. And actually, given that he had napped for six hours inside the Castle, it was only natural he’d feel that way. Not to mention that during that nap, he’d had a very long dream, vicariously lived through memories that spanned no mere six hours but several days—and really, several years of experience.

  “First of all, nice work, everyone.” Kuroyukihime’s voice interrupted Haruyuki’s thoughts. He hurriedly added his voice to the chorus of “nice work!”

  After taking a sip of the café au lait Chiyuri had made for her, Kuroyukihime looked around at them and continued. “The second phase of the plan to purify the Armor of Catastrophe, Operation Rescue Ardor Maiden, was unfortunately not a total success on all fronts. All the fault for that lays squarely with me and the fact that I could not keep the god Suzaku focused on me and me alone. I’m sorry.”

  At their Legion Master’s contrite words and deeply bowed head, her five subordinates cried out together, “That’s not true!”

  “Sacchi.” The Legion’s second in command, Fuko Kurasaki—Sky Raker—quickly spoke out for all of them. “Suzaku changed its target despite the fact that Corvus had not attacked in any way. No one could have
predicted that behavior. Most likely, it’s set to add more Hate for people intruding deep into its territory than people causing it the most damage.”

  Kuroyukihime raised her head briefly, then lowered her eyes as though she were deep in thought again.

  Haruyuki timidly raised his right hand and broke the short silence. “Um, Master? About the Hate-adding just now…”

  Hate was, put simply, a word to explain numerically the logic by which Enemies selected their attack targets. Naturally, Hate increased for Burst Linkers directly attacking them, but also for Burst Linkers who were only supporting other Burst Linkers with their abilities, such as with indirect interference attacks. The Enemy attacked whichever opponent had the maximum Hate value at that moment. Or so it was generally assumed. Suzaku may have been a top-level inhuman Enemy, one of the Four Gods, but it still should have selected its targets based on the Hate principle. The fact that it had turned from Kuroyukihime to Haruyuki on the big bridge meant that Suzaku was set so that people approaching the Castle’s south gate earned more Hate than people attacking it directly—that was the general gist of Fuko’s remark.

  “What is it, Corvus?” Fuko cocked her head to one side, setting her long, airy hair swinging.

  “So, Suzaku.” Haruyuki pushed his question out with some difficulty. “No, the Four Gods, including Suzaku, don’t actually have AI more advanced than any of the other Enemies, right? Wait, maybe not AI, I dunno…Umm…” Vexed at being unable to clearly put what he wanted to say into words, he flapped his mouth open and shut.

  Utai Shinomiya, seated to his right, was the only one among them holding a mug of hot milk, and she set this down on the table before making her hands dance through the air. Cherry-pink font scrolled by shockingly fast in the semitransparent window displayed in the lower half of Haruyuki’s field of view.

  UI> ARITA IS LIKELY TRYING TO SAY THAT PERHAPS THE FOUR GODS HAVE A TRUE INTENT OF THEIR OWN THAT GOES BEYOND THE REALM OF AI.