“You can totally do it, Haru.”
“We’re right here with you!”
They offered these extremely reassuring words as they popped the cable into his Neurolinker.
Striking the final blow was Fuko: “If you make us wait inside…well, you understand, yes, Corvus?” When she smiled gently, escape was already impossible.
For the sake of Utai, who had difficulty calling out the acceleration command, Kuroyukihime set a countdown to start in twenty seconds. As Haruyuki counted with her, he thought, Let it be what it may. It won’t kill me. And then, with his friends, he shouted, “Unlimited Burst!”
It was only after the thundering sound of acceleration ripped through his ears that he realized, No, it will kill me. Twenty times, too.
4
“…Got kinda lucky with the stage.”
At the sound of Niko’s voice, he opened his closed eyelids. What he saw through his half-mirrored helmet were countless neon signs in primary colors glittering in the nighttime city. A Downtown stage. It resembled Akihabara Electric Town somehow, so Haruyuki definitely didn’t hate it. But the highs and lows in the terrain were extreme, and there weren’t many wide-open spaces, so it wasn’t really suited to practice or events with a number of people.
“Why lucky?” he asked.
The bright-red girl-type avatar moved her head from side to side, shaking the two antenna parts. “With, like, a Storm or a Drizzle stage, you get a minus correction on laser techniques. And with underwater stages like an Ocean, you can’t even use lasers.”
“…Makes sense.” He nodded.
Kuroyukihime and Fuko strolled up, having apparently gone to take a quick look at their surroundings.
“We can’t see any other Burst Linkers in the area,” Kuroyukihime noted.
“There was a largish Beast-class Enemy a little south of Kannana, so if we’re going to move, north would be best,” Fuko added.
“Oh, okay then, let’s finish the day off by hunting that guy! Crow’s gonna lose some points. Gotta top him up again!” Niko’s thoughtful consideration sent a chill up his spine.
The eight of them had appeared on the roof of a skyscraper that corresponded to Haruyuki’s condo in the real world. Entry into buildings was not permitted in the Downtown stage, so their coordinates when they dived had been moved up here. It was a large condo, so the roof was also fairly large.
Haruyuki looked around once more before proposing, “If we need a big space, isn’t this already good enough? Even if there are other Burst Linkers, it won’t be easy for them to get up here from the ground or anything.”
“That is exactly as you say, but…” A little ways off, the shrine maiden–type avatar, clad in the two colors of unbleached cloth and scarlet, cocked her head to one side. “If we use very showy major techniques in a place as high up as this, the battle effects will be visible from a fair distance. A blue hunting party might come over from Shinjuku.”
“If they do come over and try to interfere.” Raker grinned. “Well then, you and I will take care of them, right, Uiui?”
Maiden shrank back as she murmured, “…I suppose.”
“’Kay! So we’ll give it a go here! The mission to get Silver Crow the Theoretical Mirror ability starts now!” Niko shouted, with the enthusiasm of a children’s educational program, and Pard, Takumu, and Chiyuri clapped. The Red King nodded thoughtfully and then continued in a teacherlike tone, “So until Crow dies— Wait, before we get into it, if you have any questions, ask ’em now. Anyone.”
“I do!” Chiyuri raised her hand right away. “Um, I don’t really get it yet. How is an ability different from a special attack? I actually only know that you can use an ability without shouting the name.”
“Oh, good question. And the answer is…from the teacher in charge of system explanations, Black Lotus.”
“Wh-what? Me?!” Startled at being called up so suddenly, Kuroyukihime cleared her throat once before beginning to talk, moving the sword of her right hand as a pointer. “The most basic difference is that an ability is essentially a passive skill, while a special attack is an active skill.”
For Haruyuki, who had been a net gamer since before he could remember, the terms were very familiar, but Chiyuri appeared not to have heard them before.
“Passive?” She cocked her triangle hat to one side.
Kuroyukihime would have to explain the explanation. “A passive skill is, in other words…a receptive— No, that’s not it. Let’s see….” She struggled for a moment, but then readily abandoned the exercise and turned the point of her sword to one side of Chiyuri. “We’ll hear the rest from Professor in Times of Trouble, Cyan Pile.”
Having served as a Legion officer for long years, Takumu nodded as though he had known it would come to this, and stepped forward to stand beside Kuroyukihime. “In Brain Burst, passive skills are powers that are targeted on yourself and always activated, or activated for as long as your gauge lasts. Active skills are defined as powers that are mainly targeted externally that use up your gauge and have a momentary effect.” He spoke smoothly, as one would expect of someone known as the Professor.
However, perhaps this was still too difficult for Chiyuri. “Always on you. Momentary externally,” she murmured.
Takumu turned the Pile Driver Enhanced Armament equipped on his right hand up toward the night sky and launched the pile inside with a sharp metallic rasp. The pointed spike instantly stretched up more than a meter, and then began to be reloaded, spinning as it moved.
“This technique of mine looks like a special attack at first glance, but it’s actually a passive skill that’s always available, given to me by this Enhanced Armament. In other words, it’s an ability. I don’t need my special-attack gauge to use it. Your swords are the same, right, Master?”
Kuroyukihime looked down at her own glittering obsidian arms and nodded. “Mmm, exactly. The ability name is Terminate Sword. And of course, it’s always activated.”
“Oh, I get it. I think I understand!” Chiyuri shouted, and snapped the index finger of her right hand out at Haruyuki. “Haru, your flying ability is a passive skill, but it’s not always activated. It’s the limited activation kind where you use up your gauge when you use it. Ash’s Wall Riding and Sister Raker’s Boost Jump are like that, too.”
“O-oh, right.” The things he had simply understood had been neatly put into words for his friend. He was impressed; Chiyuri was basically a newbie when it came to games, but her ability to absorb things since she had become a Burst Linker was honestly astounding.
“So then this Theoretical Mirror ability, if you can get it, maybe it’ll be always activated. So that would…maybe make light techniques ineffective forever?” Chiyuri mused.
Haruyuki gulped hard beneath his helmet before lifting his head with a thought. “Huh? But everyone’s been talking about getting it…but can I even do something like that? I mean, can’t you only get special attacks and abilities as level-up bonuses? I-I’m not going to be able to make it to level six for a while.” He tentatively looked around at everyone, and Kuroyukihime looked back with a face that he could tell was exasperated, even through her goggles.
“Look, Crow. There are limits to your forgetfulness. Try to remember. The time when you awoke your flying ability.”
How was it exactly? He crossed his arms and thought before finally realizing it.
Right. The duel avatar Silver Crow hadn’t been a flying type right from the start. At the time he was born into the Accelerated World, he had been just a plain old metal color without wings.
But in the final stages of a fierce battle with Cyan Pile, when he had tried to stand up one last time, wounds covering his body—on his back, where there had been no protrusions until that point, ten shining silver metallic fins were generated and then guided Haruyuki into the sky. In other words, he obtained his flying ability not at the time when his avatar was born, not when he went up to level two, but…
“It was…in the mid
dle of a duel,” Haruyuki murmured.
“Right.” Kuroyukihime nodded deeply. “You can only get special attacks when you level up, but that’s not necessarily the case for abilities. They sometimes manifest through some sort of trigger during a normal duel or while diving in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Like how in the very old RPGs, a new technique would flash in the middle of battle. If you had the Instruct menu open in the moment when your Flight awakened, you would have seen a new ability written there…Of course, it is an extremely rare phenomenon.”
“E-extremely rare?” he repeated reflexively, and then realized that that was not the important part. “No, um, the trigger. What exactly is it?”
“Mmm…Right. It’s a bit difficult to put into words.” Kuroyukihime closed her mouth.
“Adversity.” Blood Leopard, silently watching the proceedings up to that point, picked up the thought on Kuroyukihime’s behalf. At this one word, the high rankers all nodded together.
Fuko, standing beside Pard, smiled and added, “That’s just it. To call up a new ability, you need adversity, and the will to fight it. In that sense, the process is a little similar to acquiring Incarnate techniques.”
“Incarnate techniques are slowly refined through the imagination, while abilities are, in the end, activated instantaneously as a behavior trigger. Thus, Haruyuki, no matter how strongly you imagine a mirror, you will not be able to obtain the Theoretical Mirror with mental strength alone.”
Kuroyukihime concluded the explanation and then turned her gaze toward Lime Bell. “Chiyuri, is that good enough for the difference between abilities and special attacks, and Incarnate attacks, while we’re at it?”
“Yeah. I totally get it now, Professor!” she responded enthusiastically.
Haruyuki nodded. If he wanted to get a new power, an ability, he would have to fight adversity and take a step forward. Just like he had eight months ago in the hospital room where Kuroyukihime was sleeping. That was exactly why he needed the help of the Red King and her powerful light techniques. He had to take the lasers she fired with his whole body, fight back, and move forward. If he could do that, the Theoretical Mirror ability should definitely show up in Silver Crow.
Finally hardening his resolve, Haruyuki stared at the small avatar of Scarlet Rain and the gun-type Enhanced Armament shining at her hips. “I don’t have any more questions, Niko. Let’s get started.”
“Oh, that’s what I like to see! Hardly ever get to see that attitude. ’Kay, how about we start with the actual technique?”
Grinning, the Red King turned around and began to walk toward the center of the wide roof. Faced with that strong back, half to encourage himself, Haruyuki called out to her, “No point holding back, Niko. Keep firing that laser gun until you run out of bullets.”
It’s settled, he said to himself.
In that moment, Niko turned around, a few dozen meters away from him, and looked at the guns on her own hips with a slight “Huh?” She then shrugged and said, rather unexpectedly, “Oh, I can’t use these. They’re not lasers. Real bullets.”
“Huh?” Now it was Haruyuki’s turn to be confused.
“I’ve got just one light technique. Hold on a sec. I’ll call it now.” She tossed her head back to the dark sky. “Equip Invincible.”
She gave the voice command dryly, and in the next instant, several enormous polygon blocks appeared from behind her, together with a low rumbling. They immediately grew more detailed, transforming into machine guns and missile pods, thick armor plating and hover-thrusters.
The minimal-sized girl avatar was in the blink of an eye surrounded by armament containers, until finally, two enormous main armaments fused onto her from either side. With a mechanical growl, the entire thing shuddered and landed, white smoke pluming from all the exhaust ports, as it radiated a sense of overwhelming presence on par with a large Enemy. This was the Red King’s true form—the true nature of the one also known as Immobile Fortress.
“Wh-whoa, whoa! So huuuuuuge!” Chiyuri cried, reeling at beholding for the first time the sight of Scarlet Rain and the entirety of her Enhanced Armament fully deployed.
Niko glanced over at her, only her head and shoulders peeking out from the center of the containers. “You guys should get back a little more. You might get caught with splash damage,” she instructed, kindly yet terrifyingly.
Once Chiyuri and Takumu had retreated to where Kuroyukihime and the others were standing along the southern edge of the roof, Niko looked straight at Haruyuki once more. “’Kay then, you wanna go ahead with the first blow?”
Hearing this, Haruyuki finally recovered from his mentally stunned state. “Huh? Um, you can’t, uh…your light technique, is it maybe that…?”
“No maybe about it. This is it.” She whirled the right main armament, which made a cool whining vibration sound and caught Haruyuki dead center in the sights of the enormous barrel.
“No way. No. Hold on a sec. Is there, like, maybe, something a little milder at first, like a test course?”
“I told you, didn’t I? This is the only light technique I have. Relax. I’ll use the normal firing rather than the special attack.”
These thoughtful words were nearly drowned out by the sound of the cooling fans whirring at the rear of the armament. Sparks raced and snapped along the long barrel, and in the depths of the darkness of the mouth of that barrel, a crimson light flickered irregularly.
“Here we go. Firing in three, two, one…” The merciless countdown began, and unable to do anything further, Haruyuki crossed both arms in front of his body and took a defensive pose. “Fire!”
Zrrssssshooon! The sound of firing was also fierce and cool—but before that, Haruyuki’s field of view was colored a pure red. A strange sensation enveloped his body. The pain from damage taken in the Unlimited Neutral Field was double what it was in the regular duel field, but more than painful, this was hot. And because that heat was so intense, it actually felt cold, too.
Believe! Create an image! Haruyuki shouted in his heart, as he fought back against the current of concentrated light energy. My armor is silver. Of all the metal colors, silver is the most reflective. Bounce back that laser. Become a mirror. A Theoretical Mirror, enough to bounce back all light.
From the center of his crimson field of view, a pure white light radiated outward and raced past his surroundings. The pressure and the heat receded somewhere, and his consciousness alone floated up.
…Ahh, Niko, the light…I can see the light… In his wandering thoughts, Haruyuki felt like he heard Niko responding in her angel mode.
…Yeah, I know, Big Bro.
…But, uh, Big Bro…? You’re melting.
“Huh?” A brief cry slipped out of his mouth.
A tenth of a second later, there was a shhhf sound, and Haruyuki evaporated.
Ten times he was assaulted by the main armament of the Red King. Ten times he died, ten times he came back to life.
At first, Kuroyukihime and the others kept an eye on him from nearby during the sixty minutes they had to wait for him to regenerate, but around the third time, they started to get bored, and he couldn’t chide them for being heartless when they went to hunt Enemies together the fifth time. If he had been in their place, Haruyuki would have gotten bored, too. In fact, he was actually grateful they faithfully came back to the rooftop every hour.
“…Um…,” Niko said, the tenth time he came back to life, looking at him with slightly pitying eyes. “…What d’you wanna do? Keep going? The curry was pretty great, so I’ll hang out with you for another ten times or so, but, like…”
Haruyuki was dejected and spent, his mouth turned down at the corners.
“Mm-hmm,” Kuroyukihime replied on his behalf, also sounding a little evasive. “Well, I did think that if we just kept going, at some point…but like this, I also feel like we need to approach this from a different direction. How about it, Raker?”
“I suppose so. What if we increase the extent of the adversity a
little more?”
“Oh? For instance?”
“He could get hit with both of the Red King’s main armaments at once, or instead of her normal attack, the special attack.”
Haruyuki had no sooner heard that much than he was lifting his drooping head and shaking it vigorously. “N-no, that’s—please pick a slightly different approach!”
“Mmm. I see. But, well, different, hmm.”
Okay, so the real thing. Actual training with Archangel Metatron’s incredible laser.
Haruyuki was ready to flee the instant anyone put forth this idea. However, fortunately, as if reading his mind, Takumu threw him a life raft.
“Master, just doing this is not working, so maybe that means just the action is not enough.”
“Meaning?”
“Maybe a level of understanding of the image—the mirror—is required?”
Haruyuki joined Black Lotus and the others in cocking his head to one side. “But like, Taku, a mirror’s a mirror, right? Just a panel that reflects light…”
“It is in the real world. But what about in the Accelerated World? Just like the silver color of Haru’s armor is a metaphor for Haru’s internal world, if a perfect mirror exists in this world, then surely…”
“It’s a metaphor for some kind of concept?” Kuroyukihime murmured, and appeared to sink deeper into thought.
Silence followed for a few seconds, this time broken by Chiyuri raising her hand. “I just thought of a question, a little late, I know, but…”
“Mmm. Go ahead.”
“There was someone before Haru who mastered this Theoretical Mirror ability he’s trying to learn, right? Go get them to teach—or maybe, can’t we just have them go up against Metatron?”
Haruyuki opened his mouth, gaping. Now that she mentioned it, this idea made perfect sense. It was precisely because there existed a Burst Linker who had acquired this ability that it had been given that name, so why hadn’t they even considered him or her up to that point? Or rather, why had Kuroyukihime and Fuko ignored that direction all this time?