Using the reactive force to get a little distance from her, Haruyuki began another rush on his opponent to settle this match before she managed to pull herself back together.
“Hngaaah!”
Barely touching the ground, his Aerial Combo—which used the instantaneous thrust of both wings to launch both hands and feet at her over and over—ripped into Magenta, and she was steadily hammered deeper into the wall. Her two swords took about half his strikes, but Haruyuki had four limbs. Punches and kicks slipped past her guard to smash into her reddish-purple ribbon armor one after another.
He had suspected from the start that her defensive abilities were not that great. Reddish-purple was a little closer to long-distance than close-range on the color wheel. She shouldn’t have been able to really take a hit in close combat.
But hold on a sec. In that case, why is her weapon a sword? If she’s a sword user, then her color ought to be way closer to blue…
Haruyuki continued his onslaught, but just as this question popped up in the back of his mind, Magenta crossed the swords in both hands in front of her body. Ka-ching! It was the sound of the two metal elements fitting together. What had been two swords were in that moment transformed into something else: two blades opening like a jaw with a single rivet as the fulcrum and large ring-shaped grips.
Those aren’t swords anymore! Those are scissors! Haruyuki realized.
“You’re in danger! Dodge!!” Chocolat’s voice reached him from behind.
“Nngh!” He forcibly stopped the right roundhouse kick his leg was in the middle of and forced some backward thrust with his wings.
Magenta started to move her arms, but Haruyuki was already more than three meters away. It seemed to him that the range for the swords and the scissors was the same—or maybe the range for the scissors was smaller, since she had to operate them with both hands?
But a faint smile played on Magenta’s lips. In a movement filled with certainty, her arms slowly closed the scissors. The blades, opened to their maximum of nearly a meter, closed in on seventy centimeters, and then fifty.
Snip! He heard the jarring sound through his avatar body. He felt cool, chilled metal touching him on either side of his waist. He hurriedly turned his eyes in that direction, but there was nothing there. But the hard pressure increased with each instant, and the chill turned into pain.
“Wha—?!” he cried out in surprise, and just as he was on the verge of flying even farther back, the sound of metal ripping through metal echoed across the stage.
A crimson damage effect cut across Silver Crow’s stomach. A dizzyingly fierce pain raced through his nervous system, and he very nearly screamed, but managed to grit his teeth and endure it.
Glancing up to check his health gauge, he saw that it had dropped nearly 20 percent in just this single hit. If his dash backward had been half a second later, his avatar would no doubt have been cut right in half. But more importantly, why had the attack reached him? There were nearly four meters between the scissors and Crow now.
“Ability: Remote Cut. And now that you’ve made me use this technique, you won’t die quickly,” Magenta Scissor said in a whisper, then opened the two blades all the way once more. When they had been separated, they were smallish swords, but now that they were fused, they were enormous, sinister scissors. The weapon, its sense of presence orders of magnitude greater now, closed again with a cold snap.
Haruyuki instantly folded his wings up as he jumped to the right, but even still, she managed to inflict a shallow cut on his left arm, and then a burning pain assaulted him. His health gauge decreased another 5 percent.
Snip! Snip! Snipsnipsnip! Still embedded in the wall of the temple, Magenta opened and closed her scissors over and over. Haruyuki moved intently to avoid the line extending from the tip of them, but in the blink of an eye, his body was peppered with countless cuts.
He badly wanted to escape into the air with his flying ability, but his instincts told him that was not a good move. After all, he didn’t know how far the cutting power of the scissors reached. If he deployed his wings, the projected area of Silver Crow would nearly double—her target would get bigger, in other words. And if she took aim to cut even one of his wings, that was basically the end of the plan he and his allies had put together.
Intently slipping through snip after snip of invisible blades on the ground, Haruyuki groaned. This is definitely a red long-distance attack—and a fairly powerful one at that.
The power to cut a target at the end of a line extending from the scissors was, if looked at in a different way, perhaps the same as a rapid-fire slicer gun. The problem, however, was that he couldn’t see the attack. All he could do was guess at the line of sight from the direction of the scissors, and Magenta Scissor could freely adjust the timing for generating the cutting force. She could throw in all the feints and the random shots she wanted.
But if she had this kind of powerful technique, then why hadn’t she used it right from the start? Why had she actually had the scissors split into two pieces? These doubts in his mind, Haruyuki continue to do his best to dodge the double blades.
And then, suddenly, a human shape leapt in from the side in front of him. Simple body, a face with no eyes or mouth, entirely a dark brown. One of the Chocopets, the combat puppets created by Chocolat Puppeteer. The puppet, with nothing other than its fists as weapons, faced Magenta resolutely, as if to hide Haruyuki behind it. Ahead of it, the blades of the scissors closed cruelly.
Snap! Simultaneous with the metallic sound, a red line raced across the Chocopet’s neck. Whether Haruyuki wanted to or not, he was forced to visualize the puppet’s head tumbling to the ground. But naturally, it didn’t.
The head did separate momentarily from the torso, but the cross-section melted and fused the two back together in the blink of an eye. When he thought about it, the Chocopets had apparently taken absolutely zero damage from Haruyuki’s striking hand or Chiyuri’s bell attack when they were first fighting them. Most likely because their entire bodies were made of chocolate, cutting and piercing attacks were normally ineffective.
Seemingly annoyed at the Chocopet recklessly charging in, the scissors snapped together even more violently. Instantly, the puppet’s body was cut into five, six parts, but they were indeed soon all stuck together again.
Mouth twisting, Magenta switched from holding the scissors in both hands to carrying them in her right as she clenched her other into a fist.
The ISS kit attached to her chest emitted a crimson light. Her entire body was covered in a faint, dark aura, and this quickly concentrated in her left hand. Even seeing that inky black pulsation that warned of overwhelming force, the Chocopet showed no sign of fear. Wordlessly, it kicked at the ground and brandished an empty fist as it flew forward.
A cool smile spreading across her lips once more, Magenta murmured the technique name: “Dark Blow.”
Her left fist, enveloped in a viscous darkness, shot out, making the air and the earth shudder. It met the Chocopet’s descending right fist in midair. Rather than melting, the chocolate arm—immune to striking attacks—crumbled as if sucked into the surface of contact. The affinity of the Incarnate technique generated by the ISS kit was a nihilistic energy type. Even a chocolate puppet had no way of resisting it.
The right chocolate arm was instantly blown off from the elbow to the shoulder. However, not stopping there, the Dark Blow began to swallow the puppet in darkness from its torso to its head. Whmm! A heavy vibration sound shook the air, and when Magenta yanked her fist out, the remaining lower half of the Chocopet turned back into liquid chocolate and scattered into the air.
Through the brown mist, he could see Magenta Scissor’s mouth open wide.
Charging forward as if chasing after the puppet, Haruyuki finally noticed it. Perhaps to shoot off another Dark Blow or unsure about whether to pick up the scissors again, her left hand scratched at the air. But before it could choose either one—
Your sacrifice won
’t be in vain! Haruyuki vowed to the Chocopet as he brought his right hand down in a sharp chop.
“Laser Sword!!” The silver sword of light that extended from his fingertips cut through Magenta’s left arm above the elbow. After the faintest time lag, her arm slipped apart, top and bottom. Without a sound, the bottom fell, bounced once on the arabesque patterns of the ground, and scattered into tiny fragments before disappearing.
“Nngh!” Magenta Scissor groaned deeply and bent in half. She was likely withstanding the pain of losing a limb.
Haruyuki turned to her. “Now you can’t use your scissors anymore. You can’t open and close them with just one hand.”
“And that’s why I hate them, the two things that are one. I despise them. Scissors, shoes, the bilateral symmetry of the human body.” This was Magenta’s response.
He had the feeling that her words also contained the reason why she hadn’t moved to use the scissors right from the start, and also why she was trying to eliminate the concept of the tag-team pair from the Accelerated World. But before he had the chance to think very deeply about it, her lips moved once more.
“I’ll admit that was some fine work realizing you can render me nearly useless if you take one of my arms, boy. But, you see, you’ve seriously gotten the wrong idea about one thing.”
“Th-the wrong idea? About what?”
“Well, that…That’s the fact that you judged me to be the main power of the enemy.”
“But I mean, no matter how you look at it, you’re the leader, aren’t you? You were giving all kinds of instructions and all.”
“It’s not necessarily the case that the leader is the strongest, you know? Me luring you all the way over here means we win,” Magenta said, grinning. “Go on, take a look behind you.”
“C-Crow!!” Chiyuri’s scream reached Haruyuki’s ears. “What should we do?! I keep hitting him and hitting him, but it’s not doing anything at all! If we don’t hurry, Choco’s—!”
Haruyuki whirled around to find the enormous avatar Avocado Avoider standing imposingly over Lime Bell, who was slamming the Choir Chime against his egg-shaped body over and over.
And then, swallowed up to her chest in Avocado’s massive mouth clamped shut around her, Chocolat Puppeteer screamed in agony.
5
“Nngh…unh…aaaaah!”
Chocolat’s thin screams reached Haruyuki’s ears.
“Avocado doesn’t have any teeth in his mouth. Instead, he licks at the armor of a Burst Linker to dissolve it, although the time it takes depends on the Burst Linker,” Magenta said, leaning against the wall of the temple, the look on her face indicating that she was suffering real pain from the missing-part damage. “But Cocoa’s chocolate armor seems like it’d melt pretty quick? You better hurry over there?”
Haruyuki glanced at the reddish-purple scissors user and hesitated, unsure whether he should strike the killing blow or not. But given that she was unable to operate her scissors with just one arm, it was impossible for her to activate her most powerful weapon, Remote Cut. There was the possibility she’d come at him with Dark Shot, the long-distance Incarnate attack, with her right hand, but in order to do that, she would have to throw aside her scissors. He had no evidence to back it up, but he was certain she wouldn’t do that.
“I don’t need you telling me that!” he shouted, then spun on his heel. Running with all his might, he accelerated spectacularly with the added thrust from his wings, and in the blink of an eye, he was closing in on Avocado Avoider’s massive form.
“Let go of…Chocooooooooo!!” Roaring, he kicked at the ground and shot the sharp tips of his left toes straight forward, adjusting his rudder angle with thrust from his wings so that his entire body spun at top speed. Spiral Kick: a technique effective against large avatars because it doubled his power and penetrative force, although accuracy was slightly sacrificed.
His left leg, spinning like a drill, touched Avocado’s dark-green armor, which didn’t appear to have any thickness to it, and ripped through it easily. Splrt! There was the thunder of a heavy, wet impact, and Crow’s foot plunged deep into the right side of Avocado’s back.
But that was all. The massive egg-shaped avatar continued to move his mouth in a chewing motion as though he felt nothing, even with Crow’s foot sunk more than half a meter into his body. And yet he shouldn’t have been able to stay on his feet after taking that kind of damage because of the pain—especially given that one’s pain sensors in the Unlimited Neutral Field operated at twice the normal amount.
Dumbfounded, Haruyuki nevertheless applied reverse thrust with his wings and pulled his left foot free. Normally, the light of a damage effect would gush out like blood, but not a single spark spilled from the large hole in Avocado’s back. Just the opposite: A green buffer material thinner than the surface immediately filled it, actually going so far as to regenerate the thin armor.
“E-even with that blow just now, there’s no damage?!” Haruyuki groaned.
“Exactly!” Chiyuri ran over, staggering in the chocolate pond to answer him in a panic. “You can kick him and punch him, but he just regenerates right away! He probably absorbs all physical attacks!”
“That’s—he’s not a Chocopet or anything,” he said reflexively, before suddenly realizing something and looking around quickly.
In a spot about ten or so meters away, Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper were trying to eliminate the two Chocopets circling them nimbly, but their feet were caught in the chocolate covering the ground, and they couldn’t move freely. There should also have been two Chocopets getting in Avocado’s way, but they were nowhere to be seen. One of them had probably come to Haruyuki’s aid, but the other one—
“He ate it!” Chiyuri shouted quickly, reading Haruyuki’s thoughts.
“A-ate it?!”
“She said that at the beginning, remember? That was the weak point of the Chocopets. Avocado sucked the Chocopet in right along with the air and chomped it up. And then, when Choco got closer to make another Chocopet, she got…”
Here, the two of them looked up at Avocado’s massive body. From a mouth nearly two meters above them, Chocolat’s upper body hung out, an expression of agony on her face.
“Nngh!” Gritting his teeth, Haruyuki took off from the chocolate pond, and hovering in front of Avocado’s mouth, he grabbed onto Chocolat’s arms. He pushed his wings with everything he had and tried to pull her free, but she didn’t move so much as a centimeter. On the contrary—red sparks of damage flew from her shoulder joints.
“Unnh!”
Hearing the weak scream, Haruyuki hurriedly stopped his propulsive power. But Chocolat’s face still looked like she was suffering serious pain. Most likely, her armor skirt, reminiscent of flower petals, was being dissolved inside Avocado Avoider’s mouth.
Above the meter-wide mouth, relatively small—although they were still five centimeters in diameter—eye lenses blinked at short intervals. In time with the fluctuating light, a low, heavy voice rumbled from deep in the egg-shaped body, “Like…Chocolat…like…”
Haruyuki was momentarily speechless, and then, still holding Chocolat’s arms, shouted, “Just ’cos you like her doesn’t mean you have to eat her! If you want to be friends, then just say—”
Here, he was at a loss for words. Because when he thought about whether he himself could do that, he realized it would certainly be impossible. Just inviting Rin Kusakabe to the school festival had nearly brought him to dehydration; there was no way he could take action beyond that.
And Avocado Avoider was at present parasitized by an ISS kit, which amplified negative feelings. He was in no state of mind to be persuaded by words.
So if physical attacks were absorbed, Haruyuki would also fail to pull Chocolat free. Could he and Chiyuri eat this massive body like Avocado had the Chocopet? Impossible! As he racked his brain, he heard a halting voice.
“Heat…or ice plus attack is. The key…That’s the real weak point of the Chocopets…I’m
sure Avocado also…” The owner of the voice was Chocolat, swallowed up entirely to the point just below her chest. The chocolate-flavored armor, which didn’t seem strong at the best of times, was most likely dissolved inside Avocado’s mouth. Chocolat dying was equivalent to their mission to free Mint and Plum failing. Her health gauge was already down to less than half.
“G-got it! Hang on a little longer!” Haruyuki shouted as he let go of her arms. Once he had gotten a little distance, he thought hard about the problem.
Neither Silver Crow nor Lime Bell had anything in the way of fire or ice techniques. If the Shrine Maiden of the Conflagration had been in the battlefield, she could have roasted Avocado’s massive body to a crisp in the blink of an eye, but naturally, they didn’t have the time to escape through a portal and contact Utai in the real world.
“Haru! Is your laser sword no good?!” Chiyuri shouted from the ground, likely having heard what Chocolat said.
Haruyuki shook his head quickly from side to side. “It’s not hot!”
His Incarnate technique Laser Sword did have the word “laser” in the name, but its affiliation was basically a pure severing. It didn’t produce a drop of heat. And naturally, his piercing-type Lance and Javelin were the same. Even if he attacked Avocado with them, the soft armor would regenerate in an instant.
But maybe if he threw out physical attacks faster than the regeneration, he would at some point reach the body beneath the armor (assuming it existed). The problem with that, though, was that in the process, Avocado’s special-attack gauge would be infinitely charged, the power melting Chocolat’s armor would be enhanced, and Haruyuki would run the risk of some other new technique being activated.
If this were a Century End stage, there’d be tons of burning oil drums. There’s no fire or anything in the Sacred Ground— The instant his thoughts reached this point, his eyes flew open wide. He sent his gaze racing around their surroundings until his eyes landed on a small temple in the east of the grounds.
The Red Crest Page 9