The Floating Starlight Bridge

by Reki Kawahara

  Instantly, Haruyuki finally understood.

  Sky Raker hadn’t given up or anything like it. She had been afraid. She was afraid that even if she did equip her Enhanced Armament, she wouldn’t be able to fly like she used to—that in the same way her legs continued to be lost, her own negative will would also inactivate the Armament.

  However, there was no fear in the way she threw her chest out now and reached both arms out into the sky. In those deep-red eyes, he glimpsed a nearly infinite sky.

  As if singing, Sky Raker cried out the “preset equip” phrase loudly.

  “Calling Gale!!”

  In the endless ultramarine of the empty sky the machine hurtled toward, Haruyuki saw the twinkling of a vivid light blue star.

  This turned into two laser beams pouring down, which pinpointed Sky Raker immediately, despite the fact that the shuttle was racing ahead at maximum speed. The light enveloped her entire body before quickly concentrating on her back and materializing as the streamlined silhouette of the boosters of the Enhanced Armament Gale Thruster. Perhaps because they interfered with the equipment, the white hat and dress melted into light and disappeared, revealing the slender main body of the avatar.

  “Raker…”

  “Master!”

  “Sis!”

  “Sky Raker!”

  The four other Legion members all cried out at the same time, and Sky Raker nodded forcefully before dancing up from her seat. Of course, this wasn’t because she had thrown herself from the vehicle. Taking Lime Bell’s hand, she moved to the rear of the shuttle and grabbed tightly ahold of the small rear spoiler.

  “Crow! Stabilize the ship dead ahead!”

  Haruyuki jumped to follow Raker’s instruction. The red team in number two had likely guessed number one’s intention and began to shower them with an even heavier hail of bullets, but Kuroyukihime once again knocked each and every one of them aside.

  “I’m going! Three seconds to boost! Two, one, zero!!”

  Krrrrr!! An extraordinary roar was generated, and at the same time, Haruyuki’s entire body was pushed forcefully back into his seat as he clenched his teeth.

  This acceleration. Desperately struggling to keep the machine under control, he peeked at the rearview window. There reflected he saw two jets of flames erupting from Raker’s back and stretching out endlessly, like the tail of a comet. The output was far and away greater than when Haruyuki had used Gale Thruster. There was no abnormal light effect coming from the booster itself—i.e., they were not emitting any overlay—so this power boost wasn’t due to the Incarnate System. It was the crystallization of effort, the vast quantities of burst points poured into the Armament over who knew how many years.

  Bringing his gaze back to the front, he saw that the speedometer in the right edge of the windshield had smashed through the limit, and that they were reaching 650 kilometers an hour. The curtain of fire from number two had already been cut off, and the red team reflected in the starboard mirror grew smaller and smaller before his eyes.

  Haruyuki suppressed the wave of emotion trying to fill his heart and focused on driving the shuttle. If their orientation were disturbed even the slightest bit at this speed, the machine would no doubt crash immediately. Up to now, there had been no obstacles at all on Hermes’ Cord, but he couldn’t let them get tripped up by a tiny gap or anything now.

  A mere half second later, Haruyuki saw that his misgivings were realized.

  A curious object appeared ahead of them. A line of broadly spaced rainbow rings glittering on the surface of the pillar. The diameter of each ring was at least three meters. If they kept charging ahead like this, they would smash into the one in their path.

  “E-evasive action! Raker, get back in your seat!” Haruyuki shouted hurriedly, but before he could finish speaking, Kuroyukihime gave an unexpected instruction:

  “No! Charge on like this, Crow!”

  “Huh…B-but?!”

  “It’s fine! Just go!”

  Either way, it seemed that Gale Thruster’s energy gauge was exhausted, and Sky Raker once again borrowed Chiyuri’s hand to return to her original seat. After seeing that, Haruyuki readied himself and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “U-understood! We charge! Everyone, hold on tight!”

  A mere two seconds later, still at the same insane speed, shuttle number one plunged into one of the rainbow rings.

  9

  The flash of the light, the impact, the enormous explosion—did not happen.

  Instead, a strange phenomenon enveloped the machine. The dark blue sky spreading out around them vanished, and a light the same rainbow color as the mysterious rings radiated outward. At the same time, the howling of the linear wheels ceased, and the space was filled with only a high-pitched sound of resonance.

  The roar and vibration of the race disappeared abruptly, and feeling a curious sensation in his ears, Haruyuki hesitantly opened his mouth. “Uh, umm, Kuroyukihime, what is this…?”

  “Warp zone.”

  He whirled around at Kuroyukihime’s immediate and decisive reply. Huh?!

  “W-warp?! Something like that in the race?!”

  “I get it. Actually, it’s only natural that there would be, Haru.” This time, it was Takumu nodding. A single finger popped up, and he entered full-on professor mode to explain. “I mean, think about it. The total length of Hermes’ Cord is four thousand kilometers, right? And this shuttle’s maximum speed is five hundred kilometers an hour. Which means even if you kept the accelerator floored, it would take eight hours to reach the finish line. And that ends up being an endurance race. It’s basically impossible for one driver to drive the whole way.”

  “O-ohh…Yeah, now that you mention it…”

  Totally satisfied with this explanation, Haruyuki checked the meter with the distance remaining and saw that the four digits were dropping at a bewildering pace. Somehow, they seemed to be taking a shortcut through this space to a point about a thousand kilometers away from their goal.

  “So then, like, anyone who doesn’t go into the rings there is gonna be in serious trouble, right?” Chiyuri said, her pointed hat shaking.

  “Come come, Bell!” Kuroyukihime’s response was mixed with laughter. “You’d just need to make a U-turn at that point.”

  “Oh! I guess! Hmm. But I kinda get the impression that if you play this sort of game cautiously, you’re gonna lose!”

  “Well, I wholeheartedly agree with that.”

  Their little back-and-forth made everyone laugh briefly, and just as that laughter was subsiding, Kuroyukihime, still seated, turned to Fuko, who was sitting to her left, and began to talk quietly.

  “Raker, thank you. And…I’m sorry. You suffering for such a long time was solely due to my own cowardice.” Just as she was about to bow her head deeply along with this apology, Sky Raker gently stretched out her right hand and stopped her.

  “Lotus. I, too…There are so many things I need for apologize to you for as well. But we won’t be able to completely communicate our feelings in words alone. So when I’m able to fight you once again at full strength, let’s talk, and talk at length, then.”

  “Mmm, I suppose so…I suppose you’re right…,” Kuroyukihime murmured in response, and closed her eyes briefly before continuing with a faint smile. “Indeed, our total duel results are one thousand, two hundred and thirteen wins for me…and how many losses, I wonder?”

  “Oh! You only forget the number that’s inconvenient for you!”

  Once again, a tranquil laughter spread out through the warp zone, and, bathed in these gentle reverberations, Haruyuki murmured in his heart, Maybe I didn’t need to butt in after all. These two are definitely connected in a deep place in their souls. Right…They must have been able to build that connection precisely because of their time here in the Accelerated World, where time flows a thousand times faster…He closed his eyes and tried to thoroughly process his own thoughts when—

  Thmm. The center of his back t
hrobbed. At the same time, cold words were born in the back of his mind, in his own voice and yet somehow not his own voice.

  In that case, the opposite must be true, too. Don’t you think?

  There has to exist in the Accelerated World an ugly, swollen hatred nurtured through time moving a thousand times faster than outside. Perhaps inside me.

  RIGHT. THE SEED OF A HATRED YOU CAN’T GET RID OF HAS TAKEN ROOT IN YOU. IT WAITS FOR THE TIME TO BUD AND BLOOM.

  HAVE YOU ALREADY FORGOTTEN THOSE WHO ONCE TORTURED YOU? HAVE YOU INDEED FORGOTTEN ALREADY THE PAIN OF THE WOUNDS THEY INFLICTED ON YOU WITH THEIR IRRATIONAL VIOLENCE AND MALICE? MALICE WITH MALICE. POWER WITH POWER. THAT IS THE RESPONSE. THE SEED TO THAT END IS ALWAYS WITHIN YOU.

  As the darkly twisted voice whispered, several faces floated up on the backs of his tightly closed eyelids.

  The malicious classmates who had teased Haruyuki in elementary school. The delinquents who rained violence down upon him, bluntly demanding money and more once he started junior high school. When their faces disappeared, the masks of duel avatars sprang up in their place. Although they were few, the Burst Linkers he had hated unreservedly in the Accelerated World looked down on Haruyuki from on high, grinning.

  You intend to understand even them? Be connected? No. It is impossible.

  Aah, that’s exactly it. I mean, I’ve already banished one of them forever. So I can’t be connected to him anymore. But that’s…I had no choice. That’s the natural thing to do with a guy like that!

  Accompanying this shout like a howl, the throbbing in his back gradually grew stronger. However, curiously, that pain was no longer simply uncomfortable. The larger it grew, the more he could imagine the pleasure when it was released. The voice continued, irritated, inviting.

  THAT’S RIGHT. IT’S NATURAL TO CRUSH THEM. YOU ALREADY HAVE THE POWER TO DO EXACTLY THAT. YOU JUST HAVE TO SAY IT, THAT NAME. JUST THAT AND YOU CAN BEAT THEM ALL DOWN SO THAT NOT ONE REMAINS. CUT THEM UP, TEAR THEM TO PIECES, EAT THEM UP. EAT THEM. EAT THEM. EAT—

  “C-Corvus?!”

  The sharp cry was accompanied by a hand grabbing his left shoulder firmly, and Haruyuki opened his eyes with a gasp. He froze momentarily before awkwardly looking back.

  Sky Raker, sitting on the left of the middle row, was the one stretching a hand out. The deep red of her eye lenses shone intently as she stared hard at Haruyuki. A dry, thin voice slipped from between her lips.

  “Corvus…What did you do just now…?”

  “Huh…Wh-what…I didn’t…” Haruyuki shook his head firmly, feeling guilty at the turbulent thoughts racing around in the back of his mind. But he wasn’t actually lying. His body was simply sitting in the driver’s seat and gripping the steering wheel. He really was doing nothing.

  “…I…saw it, too. For just a moment…an Incarnate overlay on your body…?!”

  “Hngh…?!” This time, he groaned, shocked to his core.

  He had absolutely not been using the Incarnate System. That alone he could declare with certainty. To begin with, at his level of training, there was no way he would be able to unconsciously do anything to activate an overwrite.

  “Th-there was not! I wasn’t using Incarnate or anything! Honestly!!” he shouted as he continued to shake his head fiercely.

  Fuko’s hold on Haruyuki’s shoulder grew even tighter, but eventually, she let go, exhaling softly. “Yes. There’s…no way. Your overlay is silver. But…the light before…”

  Fuko’s voice faded away and Kuroyukihime picked up where she left off. “So we saw wrong. Most likely, some change in the surrounding light effects was reflected in Crow’s mirrored body…Sorry for scaring you. But, you know, it’s your fault, too, for being that color.”

  Her words, her tone 70 percent back to its usual coloring, lightened the mood in the cabin in the middle of the super-high-speed warp. Chiyuri and Takumu, together in the backseat, let out long breaths.

  “Honestly! Don’t scare us, sis! Although it’s true Haru’s avatar can sometimes make your eyes all wonky.”

  “Seriously. Oh, I got it! How about you smoke yourself with some sulfur and oxidize that steel?”

  “A-ha-ha! That’s a good one, Taku!”

  A wry smile unconsciously came across Haruyuki’s face at the conversation between his childhood friends. Instantly, he felt the release of the power tensing up his entire body, but that something cold that had seeped into the depths of his heart didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  That voice he’d been hearing every so often these last few months…Haruyuki had thought all this time that the voice with the metallic effect applied was being uttered by his own interior self. That it was another self born from accumulated feelings of negativity. Haruyuki had spent a great deal of time by himself from the time he was a child, so he did have this sort of habit of having conversations in his head.

  But…what if it wasn’t? What if it wasn’t just a metaphor, but there really was something other than Haruyuki producing this voice?

  However, in that case, the owner of the voice would have to exist not in the Accelerated World, but inside Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. Because the voice would also, on exceedingly rare occasions, whisper to him when he wasn’t in a dive. Which meant that it was some kind of virus or AI program? Or…the consciousness of a real human being was lurking in his memory somewhere…? Was something like that even possible…?

  He felt like someone somewhere far away was suppressing a laugh, and he closed his eyes tightly to try and banish the thoughts from his mind. This was no time for uncertainty. They were about to plunge into the climax of the Hermes’ Cord Race and they had to win, no matter what.

  At the very moment he opened his eyes wide, a ring of blue light came into sight ahead of the machine. Most likely, the warp-zone exit.

  “Everyone!” He took a deep breath and shouted. “We’re coming back out onto the course! Hold on!”

  Four crisp shouts of assent came back to him.

  Holding tight to the steering wheel, Haruyuki pointed the nose of the shuttle toward the center of the blue ring. The exit grew closer before his eyes, filling his vision, and the instant the machine touched it, it became a vortex of light, swallowing everything.

  “Waaah!!” Chiyuri was the first to shout.

  And then all of them, including Haruyuki, raised admiring voices.

  The sky before them was a perfect obsidian black. Against this backdrop, countless particles of light came together to draw a beautiful line. It was the river of the heavens: the Milky Way. However, it was almost entirely different from the night sky they would look up at in a Moonlight stage or a Desert stage, in terms of the number of stars and the brightness of them. It was as if they could hear the clear melody played by the stars like the ringing of bells, despite the cold, still world they found themselves in.

  Hermes’ Cord, the orbiting space elevator, the enormous steel pillar, pierced this starry plane and stretched upward in a straight line. A fierce sun shone from the left of the gently curved surface. The light also fell on the body of the shuttle speeding along, making it glint silver and creating a thick shadow to the right of the vehicle.

  “…Space…,” Kuroyukihime murmured, pointing the sword of her right hand straight out at the Milky Way. She continued in a still voice. “Is this scene a digital painting done by the BB servers?…Or…”

  “…They’re probably using images of the real thing captured by the social cameras. The position of the stars is just too accurate…,” Fuko responded, also in a near whisper.

  Of course, even if the image was the real thing, coming at them through cameras and networks and Neurolinkers as it did, it was probably different from the sight the astronauts and tourists were seeing with their naked eyes. Still, Haruyuki, and likely his four companions, too, continued to drink in the galaxy before them, each of them with their own strong emotions spilling into their hearts.

  I could stay and admire this silent, cold, and yet busy world forever if it were
possible—Although that wish sprang up in Haruyuki, the majestic moment did not continue for long.

  The roaring of several engines came at them from behind. Naturally, if this were the real outer space, they wouldn’t have been able to hear any noise at all, but in the Accelerated World, some measure of user-friendliness was given priority. Hurriedly looking back, he saw machines of a variety of colors come shooting out of the warp-zone exit.

  In the lead was the red shuttle, driven by Blood Leopard. Slightly behind that, the gunmetal shuttle containing Ash Roller’s team. Followed by the Yellow Legion shuttle.

  After a bit of an interval, two of the midsize Legion shuttles appeared. Apparently, there were only six teams left, including Haruyuki’s. Excluding the one that was decrepit right from the start, two more teams had joined Frost Horn’s in dropping out.

  The incredible echoing of each machine howling ever louder shook space. Above his head, the three enormous spectator stands warped out, and six hundred Burst Linkers raised their hands and stamped their feet. Taking in the cheers showering over them, the six shuttles formed a line and raced on.

  “Good! Only five rival machines left!” Kuroyukihime shouted in a crisp tone, switching gears abruptly. “They’re all strong enemies, but we’re the ones who’re going to win this! Listen, we’re going to tear them all apart!!”

  “Yeah!” Haruyuki and the others thrust their fists into the air. He checked the meter: just under a thousand kilometers to the finish line. If they flew full throttle at five hundred kilometers an hour, it would take two hours, but with the Territory battles on the weekend, the total time was double that. They were so absorbed in the race that two hours would be an instant.

  All right! I can’t make a single mistake now! No way I’m letting Pard and her team use us as a shooting range again! he shouted in his heart, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel as he glared ahead into the distance for any complex terrain, any kind of obstacle zone.