The Carbide Wolf

  12

  A bright Wednesday on June 26, 12:30 PM.

  After polishing off a lunch of pork cutlet sandwich and milk at maximum speed, Haruyuki dived into the squash game corner in the Umesato local net. Accepting Takumu’s advice that there was a starting point further back he should return to, he had examined various avenues and decided that maybe this was that place.

  There was also the idea of making his dive location the stall in the boys’ washroom on the third floor of the second school building, but he decided that there was no need to go so far as to bring back all those sad memories, so he was using a viewing booth in the library. Besides, no matter where you connected in the school, it didn’t have the slightest effect on the local net response anyway.

  Stepping into the squash corner in the form of a pink pig avatar, Haruyuki touched the holo panel to start the game and tightly gripped the racquet that appeared. He swung it a couple times to test out the feeling that he remembered all too well. He hadn’t actually played this game since last fall, a full eight months earlier. In other words, he hadn’t played once since becoming a Burst Linker, so he was a bit astounded at how self-interested he was, but still, he also felt this had to be done.

  Because back then, this had been Haruyuki’s lone place of shelter at Umesato, the place he fled to nearly every day. He had probably shed liters of virtual tears onto this polygonal floor. His desire to never return was joined by his wish to let this place rest quietly after protecting him for such a long time, and the two had kept him at bay.

  But when he set foot on this game court for the first time in so long, the same feeling hung in the air, no different from eight months earlier. A game as unpopular as this didn’t get updates, so it was only natural, but it made him happy somehow. “I’m home,” he murmured absently, as he touched the start panel once more.

  The countdown started in the center of the court, and the instant it hit zero, a ball fell from the sky. He hit it lightly with the racquet in his hand; it hit the floor and the wall ahead of him, and then bounced back. Haruyuki hit it a little harder the next time. While a light sound effect echoed, the ball came back about a meter to the left, and he returned it with a backhand.

  Although he just barely returned it any number of times in the beginning, his instincts quickly returned, and Haruyuki sent his little pig avatar flying up and down and side to side, totally focused on chasing the ball. Each time the game went up a level, the speed of the ball increased, and its reactions became irregular. That said, this was still a game approved by the Ministry of Education, installed on the local net of a junior high school. It was slow compared with the bullets fired by red-type duel avatars in the Accelerated World, and it also didn’t use any feints like the strikes of blue-type duel avatars.

  More than ten minutes had passed from the start of the game, and the ball was already just a trajectory of light zigzagging about, but even still, Haruyuki continued to pursue it on basic instinct alone. He could have perhaps played to the end of time like this…And just when he started thinking that—almost as though the game system had read the arrogant thought—it went up another level.

  “…Whoa?!” Without thinking, Haruyuki stopped his avatar’s feet.

  The ball had suddenly split in two. He couldn’t manage to decide which half of the ball flying off to either side he should go after, and so in the end, he let them both go by. As if lying in wait for this, the eight letters GAME OVER dropped from the sky and bounced around on the court.

  “…Th-that’s really something…,” he murmured, and he glanced at the score that was then displayed. Since it was the first time he had seen the number of balls increase, he had no doubt he had set a new record, but there was no high-score mark next to the results HAL LV160 SCORE 2806900 that were displayed.

  “Huh…?” Cocking his head to one side, puzzled, he poked at the panel and called up on the court a list of the high scores. The number at the very top of the window that displayed the best five of his own scores was the impressive level 166, with a score of over three million. But he had absolutely no memory of hammering out a score like that.

  “Oh…Ohhh, right!” he cried out, finally remembering the incident eight months earlier.

  That high score was not Haruyuki’s. When he had been disconnected with an abnormal link out, another student had kept playing his game and neatly taken the highest score. And that student had been the student council vice president, the object of adoration of all students at Umesato, Snow Black aka…

  “Don’t you want to go further, boy…to accelerate?”

  He had suddenly heard this voice behind him and jumped up. He rotated his avatar ninety degrees in midair and landed as he turned around.

  Standing at the slightly elevated entrance to the squash corner was a single silhouette looking down on Haruyuki. The long dress, hem reaching to the floor, and the long hair swinging slightly were both a sleek jet-black. Hands covered in similarly black long gloves held a folded parasol. And more striking than anything else were the large spangle butterfly wings that stretched out from her back. With light shining through them from behind, the scarlet pattern at the base shone like fire.

  “If you do, come to the lounge tomorrow at lunch.”

  Haruyuki saw a vision of the avatar saying this and then disappearing, but of course, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, she came down the short flight of stairs, heels clacking, and stood on the game court.

  She looked around the dim space and smiled. “Such sweet memories. It’s already been more than six months since then, hmm…”

  “…Yeah. To be precise, it’s been eight months and one day. It was last October, the fourth Tuesday…when you spoke to me here.”

  “You remember it well.” She let out a short laugh and came over to him. The spangle butterfly avatar—Kuroyukihime—glanced at the high-score window floating in the center of the court and laughed once more with satisfaction. “It seems my high score is still intact.”

  “B-but you said you used acceleration to get this score.”

  “Mm. Was that it? Well, it’s fine either way, isn’t it? It’s more fun for you if you have a goal, right?”

  “H-huh? …Are you telling me to break that record under my own power?!”

  “Mmm. If you can, I’ll give you a hundred butterfly points.”

  The strangely named points could be collected in all the apps Kuroyukihime made—catching one of the butterflies that appeared earned one point. Haruyuki still hadn’t made it to three hundred points, so being told he could get a hundred all at once was definitely intriguing. Although he had not actually been informed of what would happen when he saved up the target thousand points.

  “…I-I’ll do my best.” Still, Haruyuki clenched his pig hoof.

  Kuroyukihime nodded with a solemn look on her face, and then her mouth relaxed. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in that form, too. I said this before as well, but I am fairly fond of it. You haven’t been on the local net too much these days, so it’s been a little lonely.” Through some gesture, the parasol in her hands vanished in an instant, and she walked over to him briskly. While he was unable to respond, her hands grabbed his pig avatar’s big head and pulled it up.

  “Huh? Um, uh…” He twitched his ears and tail, but naturally, movements like that proved to be no resistance. The instant he was squeezed tightly in her arms, he felt a softness and warmth that seemed impossible for two polygon avatars, and his thought clock decelerated to less than 30 percent of normal.

  …Huh? I was pretty sure avatars couldn’t touch on the local net…, he thought, ideas drifting vaguely about. But, well, a rule like that, I guess it doesn’t apply to her.

  A surreptitious voice rolled into the large left ear of his pink pig. “…You came here to confirm your own starting point, yes?”

  “…Huh…?!” After a few seconds, he grasped the meaning of what she said and opened and closed his eyes rapidly a few times. From this close, Kuroyu
kihime’s eyes glittered with a radiating scarlet light that they did not have in the real world, almost like onyx wrapped in flames. Staring intently into these beautiful jewels, he asked in a small voice, “D-did Taku tell you…?”

  “No, he didn’t. I just happened to hear a rumor. About a duel you had in the Nakano Area last night.”

  “—!!”

  Although his avatar’s entire body stiffened reflexively, Haruyuki soon relaxed again. In addition to the fact that there had been more than thirty people in the Gallery in that stage, Wolfram Cerberus was currently an up-and-comer drawing widespread attention, so it was actually only natural that the news would travel far and wide through the Accelerated World.

  But that said…

  “W-word travels fast, huh?” he said, filled with surprise, given that it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since that duel.

  “Naturally.” Still holding his piggy head to her chest, Kuroyukihime patted it and smiled. “When it comes to you, I know everything,” she boasted matter-of-factly, as she moved to the stairs at the edge of the court, high heels clacking. After sitting soundlessly on the lowest step, she set Haruyuki on her knees, which tilted to one side.

  “…Did you find some kind of hint in this place? To attack the opponent who defeated you,” she asked, somewhat suddenly, smile still on her face.

  Haruyuki blinked hard once more. Right, that reminds me. I came here to find my starting point…and more than that, to get some clue to a strategy against Cerberus, he remembered belatedly. He had been totally caught up in playing virtual squash, and while he did succeed in setting a new personal record, he unfortunately couldn’t believe that that was his hint.

  “Um…I feel like I’ve maybe taken some steps forward when it comes to speed, but…but…” The super-premium situation of being held on Kuroyukihime’s lap—although they were both avatars—also disappeared from his mind, and Haruyuki turned his pig snout downward. Around his solar plexus, the shock and regret at his complete defeat throbbed back to life. “But he might be faster than I am now. And to begin with, speed might be meaningless in a duel with him. I mean, he’s almost impossibly hard. Silver Crow can only do physical attacks. No matter how fast I move, I can’t actually do any definitive damage, can I?” He had ended up sounding like he was whining, and he glanced up at his Legion Master.

  But Kuroyukihime’s expression was unchanged. She nodded once before replying. “I see. Was he that hard, this rumored Wolfram Cerberus or whatever it is?”

  “Yeah. Manganese Blade said it was the ability Physical Immunity.”

  “Hmm. If that’s true, then he is indeed a strong enemy.”

  “And Manganese told me to go back to my starting point, so I saw Taku after I got home last night. And Taku said that there was a starting point further back, so I tried the squash game here, but…” He sighed and hung his head.

  Kuroyukihime pinched his pig cheeks with both hands and once more made him face her. What he saw there was not the gentle smile from up to that point, but the clear, taut face of the swordmaster. “Very well. So then, I shall offer another piece of advice.”

  “O-okay. Please do!”

  “You’ve gone too far back. Your starting point is one step ahead of this place.”

  “O-okay? One step…to where?” He whirled his head around, surveying his surroundings, but the squash court had walls in front, and on all sides, so there was nowhere he could go. Just as he was cocking his head to one side—

  “This one’s on me. I’ll take you there.” After saying this, Kuroyukihime uttered a phrase that was completely unexpected: “Burst Link!!”

  …O-okaaaay?! Already reeling as the skreeeeee!! filled his hearing in the next instant, Haruyuki’s consciousness was suddenly cut even further free from the virtual world.

  When you accelerated during a full dive to a VR space, including the Umesato local net, the objects that were there around you in the real world were all colored blue, transforming into the so-called virtual Blue World of the initial acceleration space. Although it varied by the type of VR game, the movement speed here decreased by a relative thousand times, which was precisely why it had been possible for Kuroyukihime to drum up a score of three million in the squash game.

  However, this time, Haruyuki was only able to look at the frozen blue game court for an instant. Immediately, his field of view was blacked out, and in the center, flaming text appeared, burning red. They were, of course, the familiar HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!

  As he transformed from his pink pig avatar to his silver duel avatar, he slipped through a rainbow-colored ring and landed on the battlefield beyond it. Stretching, he quickly looked at his surroundings and cried out, “Huh?!” What he saw was not the deserted squash court, but rather a room with several desks lined up in it. He thought for a second.

  “Right, I guess so…” He soon nodded. This was the library on the second floor of the second Umesato school building, where the real-world Haruyuki was sitting in a chair in a viewing booth. As long as the stage did not prohibit entry into buildings, the starting point of a duel was always the coordinates where your real-world body was.

  “So then…where’s Kuroyukihime?” he murmured. He looked around for her, but he caught no sign of the swordmaster who had been holding him only moments earlier. Which meant that she had dived from somewhere in the school other than the library. The places that came to mind were the ninth-grade classrooms, the cafeteria lounge, and the student council office. When he checked the guide cursor in the center of his field of view, the point of it was motionless, facing south by southwest. Given the connection with her position within the school, there was a strong possibility she was in the student council office.

  Finally, he turned his eyes toward the health gauge in the upper right of his field of view. The avatar name inscribed there was, of course, Black Lotus. Staring at this name, the English text of which alone emitted a powerful sense of presence, he murmured to himself, “Why a duel all of a sudden? Although she did say she would take me there…”

  Where exactly? As he thought, he unconsciously took a few steps, and a bright red light reflected dazzlingly from the surface of his avatar. Through the window, he could see the enormous sun sinking into the horizon. When he checked again, the desks and floor of the library were not their original synthetic wood, but had changed into cracked marble that had lost its luster. This was a lower-ranking sacred-type stage, the Twilight stage.

  As soon as he was aware of this, a certain scene came back to life in the back of Haruyuki’s mind, and he lifted his head with a gasp. Umesato Junior High in the Twilight stage. This sight was nothing other than what he had seen the first time he visited the Accelerated World with her, his parent. In other words, Kuroyukihime was saying she’d take him—

  At that moment, a beam of red light, thin as a thread, moved upward. It was sitting below him, about a meter to the left of where he was standing stock-still. And then, a little after that—shrk!—a sharp sound reached his ears.

  “…?”

  What was that just now?

  Blinking rapidly, Haruyuki went to step toward the place the light had passed. But then, with a weighty vibration, the school building shifted before his eyes. The marble floor and columns separated, upward and downward, revealing a smooth cross-section. And apparently, the side that dropped was the one Haruyuki was standing on.

  “Wh-whooaaa?!” Crying out, he desperately ran along the inclined floor. He made it to the glassless window and didn’t hesitate before jumping. In midair, he opened the wings on his back and glided in the direction of the first school building. In the next instant, the red light again—

  Shrk!

  The first school building was mowed down vertically. This time, without a moment’s pause, a second, then a third beam of light glittered diagonally, slicing into the marble like it was tofu. The building began to crumble in all directions.

  “Wh-wh-whooaaa!!” Haruyuki shouted again. If his speci
al-attack gauge had been charged, it would have been possible to ascend to any height, but since he could only glide diagonally downward at the moment, he would be forced to plunge into the crumbling school building. His ability to turn either way while gliding was also limited, so he pulled his head in, drew his limbs back, and somehow managed to dodge all the enormous chunks of rubble pouring down. Once he had broken away to the grounds side, he let out a huge sigh of relief.

  He landed on the grassy field colored in the evening light and timidly looked back to see all the school buildings of Umesato collapse with a roar. As to whose work it had been, that was obvious when he saw the special-attack gauge in the upper right of his vision become fully charged all at once. And since this person normally only had close-range attacks, the red light that gave rise to this incredible damage would have to have been a forbidden Incarnate attack.

  “Now the view is much better.” A cool voice reached his ears as he stood there in a trance. “Big buildings in the Twilight stage are too unromantic. You have this lovely sunset, but you can’t see it…Don’t you think?”

  Together with this statement, a duel avatar came strolling toward him from the direction where the student council office had been. Her four limbs were sharply tapered swords, her armor skirt a water lily design, her semi-transparent armor reminiscent of black crystal. All of it was fiercely beautiful—this was the Black King, Black Lotus.

  Once more, Haruyuki looked in turn at the ruthlessly destroyed school buildings on the right and the sunset burning redly on the left, and nodded slightly. “Y-yes. That’s probably true. But still, why go this far…?”

  “Mmm. Well.” She lowered her voice a little, and it became sharper. “Because I’m just the teensiest bit angry.”

  Th-this kind of destruction was “just the teensiest bit”?! He resisted the urge to shout this out and instead stood at attention. In this situation, if Kuroyukihime was angry, then the only possible reason was him. Because he had lost to Wolfram Cerberus? Because he couldn’t acquire the Theoretical Mirror ability? Or…