“Wh-what the…” Takumu cursed under his breath at the same time countless heavy footsteps echoed around them.
Shadows of avatars lined the circumference of the crater in every direction. Big, small, long-distance, close range, their characteristics ran the gamut, but there was just one thing they all had in common: their aura. The eyes Haruyuki felt on him conveyed a thirst for battle that practically overflowed from the assemblage as they stared intently and silently at their prey. The aura of a hunter.
The number of Burst Linkers quickly reached thirty. And finally, the center of the group encircling the outer edge of the crater parted, and an avatar with remarkable presence appeared.
Long and thin, it was probably taller than Cyan Pile, but the slenderness of its limbs was on par with Silver Crow’s. On this body, a skeletal insinuation of a human, only the shoulders and hips were rounded and filled out. Atop its head, it sported a hat shaped like thick horns, curving long and thin to both sides. Large spheres stuck onto the ends of the horns wobbled soundlessly. The face was covered by a mask in the pattern of a smile.
“A clown?” Haruyuki whispered. The avatar’s silhouette eerily resembled the joker from a deck of cards. But there wasn’t a hint of humor in the mask. The long, thin eyes—nothing more than upended talons—shone dimly white with a cruel glimmer in the backlit shadow.
Abruptly, the clouds in the sky above parted, and beams of ashen sunlight weakly trickled across the landscape, illuminating the avatars tightly encircling the crater. They represented a rainbow of colors, but if anything, the majority were red and yellow. Shining conspicuously vividly among them was the armor of the clown avatar standing lanky in their nucleus.
The armor was a garish yellow like uranium ore, without even a trace of dullness to muddy it. The instant he saw it, a fierce shudder ran down Haruyuki’s spine. Duel avatars with that kind of vivid color saturation just didn’t exist. He’d seen this sort of color personally only twice: obsidian darkness and crimson fire. Which meant…Which meant, this clown…
As if to give credence Haruyuki’s speculation, the crimson avatar next to him emitted a hoarse acknowledgment. “Yellow Radio. The Yellow King. Why is he—”
A King. A level-nine Burst Linker, one of only seven in existence in the Accelerated World.
Up to now, Haruyuki hadn’t had any contact with members of the Yellow Legion, much less the Yellow King himself. This was because the Territory the Yellow Legion controlled was the opposite side of Tokyo as seen from Suginami—the area from Ueno to Akihabara. Although he occasionally went to Akihabara to buy old computer parts and such, Haruyuki made sure to cut off his global connection when he did.
Put another way, it was highly unnatural that the Yellow Legion would be here in Ikebukuro at this moment and accompanied by such numbers. Obviously, it wasn’t a coincidence. Because the four of them had used the “unlimited burst” command at Haruyuki’s condo to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field, only something like a few seconds would have passed in real time. Definitely not enough time for a member of the Legion to discover them, contact the outside, get other members together, and meet up in Ikebukuro.
Which meant they were also monitoring Cherry Rook’s movements, had predicted that Haruyuki and the others would turn up here, and laid an ambush.
If that was true, then there was only one reason for it. All of it. Every little thing leading to this situation was their—
“Bastard!!” Niko howled suddenly.
The Red King, likely having reaching the same conclusion with similar rapidity, jumped a step forward, clenched her fists, threw her head back, and roared in an accusation that was at once both childish and menacing, “You’re behind this whole thing, Yellow Radio!!”
Right. That was the only answer.
The raging flames of her blame flared at him, but the Yellow King’s slim figure didn’t flinch. Unexpectedly, he took his time raising his bone-like arm. He waved it out broadly to the right and flipped his palm up.
“Well, well, when the little bug fluttering in the sky comes falling to earth, he brings a surprising guest. Hello, Red King.” Emanating from the grinning mask was the clear, fluid voice of a boy. However, a distortion effect, almost as if it had been encoded at an incredible compression ratio, added a certain odiousness to it.
“What’re you talking about? You’re the one who ambushed us!”
“You don’t understand what I’m saying? I only came out this way to have the Red Legion take responsibility one way or the other for violating the nonaggression pact and attacking my precious subordinates and hounding them into total point loss. This duel avatar running so insolently wild in our Territory recently is a real problem, hmm?”
Countless layers of metal rings that comprised the horns of his hat wobbled lazily. Almost as if he was trying to suppress a smile.
Niko jabbed her index finger at him and cried, flames leaping forward, “And you’re the one who made him like that! You gave Cherry Rook the Armor of Catastrophe, which you had concealed, to lure me out to this place…You were the one who laid the temptation in front of him and sent him on a rampage in violation of the pact!!”
“‘Concealed’? ‘Gave’? That’s no way to talk to a person. The Armor disappeared ages ago, hmm? Didn’t your subordinate simply make it again?” he asked throatily. This time he stretched out his left arm before continuing, tracing a line in the air with an abnormally long and sharp finger.
“In the sacred pact formerly consecrated among the Kings, we have this clause: ‘Should a member of a given Legion be pushed to the forced uninstallation of Brain Burst due to an attack in violation of the pact, the aggrieved Legion may select one from the ranks of the Legion to which the transgressor belongs, consigning that person the same fate.’ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…In truth, it’s an uncivilized method of revenge, hmm?”
Heh. Heh-heh-heh.
This time an unmistakable laugh leaked out from beneath the acute angles of the inverted triangle of the mask. The upward-arching eyes flickered faintly in time with the laughter.
“However, rules are rules. Isn’t that so? If I, a King, were to ignore the pact here, we can’t say for certain that there wouldn’t follow a string of similarly insolent fellows, one after the other. Thus, I had no choice but to come all the way out to the boonies of Ikebukuro. To find one person affiliated with the Red Legion and have them pay for their comrade’s sins, yes? However…perhaps this is yet another cruel trick of fate?”
Placing both hands on his hips and bending over abruptly, the Yellow King uttered coolly, obscenely, “That this person coincidentally turns out to be none other than the head of the Red Legion, Scarlet Rain herself.”
It’s no coincidence! Haruyuki screamed in his heart, grinding his teeth.
The duel avatars lined up outside the crater had topped out at about thirty. It might have been a King’s Legion, but this was probably about the maximum that could be mobilized on a weekday evening. It was impossible that their objective was anything other than hunting a King, the strongest prey in the world.
The Yellow King had predicted that Scarlet Rain—Niko—would pursue this course of action. That, given Niko’s personality, she would show up like this in the Unlimited Neutral Field to punish the crimes committed by her subordinate, Cherry Rook, with her Judgment Blow.
No, it wasn’t just that. Luring Niko into this situation and legally hunting one of the five heads he needed to elevate himself to level ten—for this purpose, the Yellow King had slipped the Enhanced Armament Chrome Disaster to a Red Legion member. That was the only thing that made sense. In which case, that meant…
“It was the Yellow King who hid the fact that the Armor dropped two and a half years ago when The Fourth was defeated,” Haruyuki whispered to himself, unaware that he was speaking aloud. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence supporting this. If he started hollering about his hypothesis here, it would just be an endless argument.
Likely u
nderstanding this, too, Niko stayed silent, her clenched fists shaking violently. Finally, her hands opened and dropped to her sides. A controlled, level voice flowed up from the bottom of the crater.
“It should also say this in the pact: ‘It is permitted to select any one person and exact vengeance, but this shall not be the case in the event that the Legion Master personally judges and sentences the offender to total point loss.’ I’ll judge him; I’ll judge Cherry Rook. You got no problem with that, right?”
“Go right ahead!” Spreading his hands smoothly, the Yellow King, Yellow Radio, said amusedly. “If you’re capable! I heard the rumors on the wind. The other day, you certainly made an attempt, and you lost spectacularly. And you suffered the further shame of a crude time-out loss! Isn’t that so? If you are going to challenge him again, you are free to do so. However, where exactly is this Cherry so-and-so?” He swiveled his enormous hat-accesorized head from side to side theatrically.
“We are busy, too, you know. You don’t plan to make us wait here for days when you don’t know when he’ll make an appearance, do you? If you can’t deal with him right away, then it seems our only choice will be to make do with you here, hmm?”
“Hngh!” Niko grunted, vexed.
They had verified that Cherry Rook was moving in the real world with Niko’s remote monitoring before accelerating, but there was a time lag before their opponent actually appeared in the Unlimited Neutral Field. For instance, even with a lag of a few minutes in the real world, in this world, where time was accelerated by a factor of a thousand, in the worst case, the difference could end up being a day or more. Just as the Yellow King said, it would be impossible to capture Cherry Rook right away.
Bracing himself, Haruyuki took a step forward and murmured very quietly at Niko’s back. “It’s hopeless, Niko. Right from the start, he was trying to trap you. There’s no way he’ll let you go. Let’s retreat temporarily. Log out and then the next chance—”
“We can’t.” Her reply was immediate and concise. “System-wise, we can’t do that. In the Unlimited Neutral Field, immediate log out’s not possible.”
“Wha—” Speechless, Haruyuki heard Takumu, who’d moved alongside him, murmuring in his ear.
“It’s true, Haru. The only way to get out of here is to go to one of the leave points set up in the area. Even if you commit suicide, you can’t log out. You’ll just be resurrected an hour later in the same spot you died. Of course, if someone on the real-world side yanks your Neurolinker off for you, that’s a different story. But, right now at your place…”
There was no one. His mother didn’t get back from her business trip until tomorrow, and three years would pass before then in this world.
“The closest leave point is either Ikebukuro Station or Sunshine City,” Niko whispered quickly, glancing backward. “We can’t get to either of them fast. And even if we did head for one, we’d have to fight at least once just to bust through this circle.”
She cut herself off momentarily, both eyes glinting sharply like rubies. “But y’know, this Radio Jackhole’s made a miscalculation of his own.”
“M-miscalculation?”
“Yeah. This is how many people he got together to take me down, to take down a King. But, uh, we got another one here right now, don’t we?”
Haruyuki’s eyes flew open.
On the color wheel that determined the attributes of a duel avatar, yellow excelled at midrange attacks. Although it was particularly good at unpleasant, back-stabbing kind of maneuvers, it was inferior to the other colors in terms of direct attack power. Meanwhile, Red King Niko was a demon with long-range heat powers, and although he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her fight, from her form alone, he could see the Black King Kuroyukihime specialized in close-range attacks.
If the two of them worked to cover each other, they might have a chance at winning, even up against thirty people, one of whom was a King.
Having thought this far, Haruyuki was suddenly gripped by a physical unease. Why had Kuroyukihime been silent this whole time? Normally, she would have been flaring up at the Yellow King the second he showed his face even more aggressively than Niko.
Turning abruptly, Haruyuki saw the jet-black avatar, sword hands dangling at her sides, head hanging, almost as if she was afraid. “Ku—”
Just as he was about to instinctively shout her name, the Yellow King’s clear voice rang out once again.
“As long as Cherry-whatever doesn’t show up, it seems the only thing to do is have you take responsibility, hmm, Red King? And that being the case…” A long finger on his leisurely raised arm aimed straight at a black spot at the bottom of the crater. “You’ll just sit back and watch the thrilling, wonderful carnival about to commence without interference, hmm, Black King?”
Even slapped with the Yellow King’s overly self-righteous manner of speaking, Kuroyukihime showed no reaction whatsoever, head still hanging. After a full five seconds had passed, she finally lifted her face in an almost rusty motion and pointed the sword of her right hand at the Yellow King.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Radio.” The words slipping out from under her mask were combative, but her voice didn’t contain its usual severity. Almost as if talking to herself rather than her opponent, Kuroyukihime went on spitting out words. “Even you don’t believe you’ll actually be able to bring down two Kings with this strike force. If you think I’m just going to sit back and watch, you’ve made an enormous mistake.”
“Oh? So you’re saying you’ll fight? That you’ll turn that bloodstained sword on me as well? And here I was trying to give you a front-row seat to the show. But you’re saying you’d rather deliberately meet with a bad end?”
Despite the fact that the situation could not in any way be said to be to his party’s advantage as Kuroyukihime had indicated, the Yellow King laughed from deep in his throat. “It is true that I hadn’t considered that you might join Scarlet Rain in appearing in the Unlimited Field here today. But, well…a wrinkle like this won’t put a stop to our Legion Crypt Cosmic Circus’s exciting carnival. You see, I have been waiting all this time, aaaaaall this time in my heart of hearts, to meet you like this one day, Lotus. So that I can give you this wonderful present I’ve been carrying around in my pocket for so very long!”
Haruyuki saw something square glittering at the end of the Yellow King’s fingers as he stretched them out with a performer’s grace. It was about the same size as a playing card, but he couldn’t make out the pattern on it.
The clown avatar twirled the card around deftly with his fingertips before flicking it out. It reflected the sunlight trickling through the gaps in the thick clouds and danced several dozen meters into the air, shimmering and glistening before striking the ground soundlessly a short distance from Haruyuki and the others.
It didn’t seem to be anything dangerous. Haruyuki stared absently at the sideways triangle, which popped up on the card surface and blinked. Immediately, Niko next to him warned in a low voice, “A replay file.”
The card’s surface sparkled dazzlingly and emitted an inverted cone of light straight up. Countless horizontal lines ran through the sky like noise, soon coming together in a single image. The semitransparent 3-D projection was of a duel avatar that Haruyuki had never seen before.
Red. The figure was an orthodox human shape, but the balanced armor it bore shone a red so pure it seemed impossible for it to be any more so. It was different from the flaming crimson of Scarlet Rain—the color of passion, as it were.
Once again, a hoarse voice slipped out of Niko. “My predecessor…Red Rider.”
Kuroyukihime took a step back and said, almost shouted, “Stop…stop it!”
It was then that the semitransparent 3-D image suddenly started to move.
The bright red avatar projected large in the sky clenched his right fist in front of his body and waved his left directly to the side. The crisp voice of a boy broadcast loudly, echoing clearly in Haruyuki??
?s ears.
“This…this ridiculous goal is what we’ve been fighting for up to now?! Hating each other, stealing from each other, killing each other…Did we keep fighting however many thousands of duels for however many years because we wanted to see an ending like this?! No, even if this is the scenario the developer of Brain Burst wrote…we’re not NPCs made to dance by the game master! The heroes of this game are us, all of us here! Right, Lotus?”
Here, the screen pulled back, and as the red avatar grew smaller, another avatar sitting in front of him came into the frame. A jet-black avatar equipped with four long, daunting swords. Black Lotus.
The first Red King continued tossing out harsh words, accompanied by even harsher gestures, at the Black King, who quietly hung her head.
“It’s true we all control our respective Legions, and we’ve fought hard up to now. But that’s definitely not because we’re enemies! It’s because we’re rivals, isn’t it?! I…I like your fighting style, Lotus. If we ever met in the real world, I could be buds with you. Totally. Actually, I want to be! Which is why I don’t want us to try to kill each other in sudden death! It’s gotta be the same for you!”
At that moment, the slightly sharp voice of a girl came from offscreen. “Hey, Rider! You think I’m just gonna let that go?!”
The red avatar turned to the left as if flustered and held a hand up. “N-no, that’s not it. I didn’t mean it like that…Ah, crap.”
Background laughter could be heard above this exchange.
The Black Lotus, hanging her head on-screen, abruptly relaxed her shoulders. Raising her face, in a calm voice, she said: “Mmm…I suppose so. It’s just like you say, Rider. I like you, too. Naturally, I mean, I respect you.”
Standing smoothly and taking a step up, the Black King extended her right sword hand to the Red King.
“I knew you’d get it, Lotus!” the Red King shouted gleefully, and when he reached out to shake hands, he stopped as if confused.
The Black King shrugged and said, her voice tipped with laughter, “Oops! Apologies. Well, then…how about this?” In a smooth, unreserved motion, the Black King thrust herself against the Red King’s chest, bringing both arms up around his neck and hugging tightly.