The Red Crest

by Reki Kawahara

  “Choco, your friend.” He quickly turned back to Chocolat and instructed her tightly, “You have to call Coolu! Coolu can shoot a real laser!”

  Chocolat opened her peach eye lenses wide, as if momentarily forgetting her agony. But she soon shook her head. “I—I…cannot. Coolu would attack…you two…”

  “It’s okay!” Haruyuki took a deep breath, put his strength in his stomach, and shouted the rest. “I’ll reflect the laser!”

  “…!”

  Chocolat was speechless once more, but after she shifted her gaze to glance up to the left and check her own health gauge, she nodded slowly, but firmly. “I…understand. I trust you, Silver Crow.” Then she mustered up the little life remaining to her and clenched both hands before closing her eyes and shouting, “…Help me, Coolu…!!”

  The reaction was instantaneous.

  From the temple in the east: Krrrrrr! Haruyuki had no sooner heard the shrill voice growling than the armadillo-like figure was racing out onto the grounds. Although it was a lesser Enemy, it was easily over two meters long from its head to the tip of its tail. Its bulky mass—much larger than that of the majority of Burst Linkers—shook the ground and began to dash across the white earth.

  “Choco, hold on twenty more seconds!” Haruyuki spread his wings and moved away from Avocado, charging full speed toward Lava Carbuncle.

  “Leave the healing to me!” Chiyuri’s voice chased after him.

  “Thanks!” he responded briefly. After just seconds of flight, he landed a scant twenty meters ahead of the Enemy, its eyes glittering red and burning with rage.

  “Krrrrrrr!!” Howling sharply, Carbuncle had clearly recognized Haruyuki as its master’s enemy. It stopped, bracing its four limbs against the ground and dropping its head low. The interior of the elliptical ruby embedded in its forehead flickered with a crimson light, almost exactly like the effect when the Red King’s main armament was preparing to fire.

  Apart from the Four Gods, the Super-class Enemies that guarded the Castle, the monsters that lived in the Unlimited Neutral Field—“Enemies”—were categorized into four classes.

  The strongest was the Legend class, which made the deepest level of major dungeons in each region or famous landmarks their territory. A few dozen experienced Burst Linkers could meticulously prepare and strategize to challenge one of these Enemies and might still be totally annihilated by the slightest misstep. The Blue King, Blue Knight, was said to be the only one who had ever succeeded in defeating a Legend class solo, and for that, he had been presented with the nickname “Legend Slayer.”

  Next were the large Enemies known as Beast class. If you got a party of twenty or so people together, it wasn’t impossible to safely hunt these creatures, but naturally, it required closely coordinated movement. And since Beast-class Enemies often moved along bullet-train tracks, occasionally, an unlucky few would stumble upon them and meet the sad fate of targeting and instant death. Very few people knew that the Green King, Green Grandé, had continuously defeated these Beast-class Enemies solo and turned the vast points he earned from this endeavor into card items to replenish other Burst Linkers.

  Third was the Wild class. Their average size was about five meters, and when someone talked about “hunting,” they meant this class. However, even veteran Burst Linkers were said to have difficulty defeating these Enemies solo—and even then, the Enemies occasionally formed herds. So while a single avatar was focused intently on fighting one of them, other Enemies of the same type would link together and stampede; these sorts of tales were often told in the Accelerated World.

  And the fourth class of lesser Enemies was used as a trial for recognition as a senior Linker in many Legions. The idea was that if you could defeat one solo, you had attained full Burst Linkerhood. The majority who took on this challenge were strong players who had reached level seven. Or put another way, a single lesser-class Enemy possessed fighting power equivalent to a level-seven Burst Linker.

  Naturally, Haruyuki, still at level five, had never challenged a lesser class on his own. More than a few times, he had been careless and ended up targeted, but in each of these instances, he had run for his life and yelped each time his health gauge dropped dramatically at taking just a single blow from a seemingly subdued long-distance attack.

  However, right now, he could not run away. For Chiyuri, who spent three days going around the dangerous Unlimited Neutral Field looking for Enemies. For Chocolat, who stood up all by herself against the encroachment of the ISS kit in Setagaya area. For Mint and Plum, who’d been forcefully parasitized and had had long years of friendship ripped away from them. And he couldn’t put the reason into words, but for Magenta Scissor and Avocado Avoider as well, he could not lose this fight.

  “Come!!” Haruyuki shouted, and he crossed his arms firmly in front of his body.

  Immediately, the jewel in Carbuncle’s forehead flashed crosswise, and a ruby-red laser beam shot out.

  Compared with the main armament of the Red King—which had vaporized Crow ten times in a row—the torrent of energy pushing on him felt more concentrated, proportional with the narrower diameter of the beam. The instant it collided with the metal armor of his chest, the area was red-hot.

  The majority of the energy was reflected into their surroundings, due to the 95 percent reflectance that was silver’s special characteristic. But the remaining 5 percent would penetrate his armor and sap his endurance. If his metal shell—his armor and greatest weapon as a metal color—were destroyed, the naked body of his avatar inside would be instantly vaporized. If he simply guarded the way he was now, it was obvious the end result would be the same as in the training with Niko.

  It’s not enough to bounce back the light. Enduring a burning heat like every nerve in his body was aflame, Haruyuki began to talk himself up. A mirror isn’t just a panel that reflects light. Reflection is, in other words, rejection. Something that rejects light couldn’t be so beautiful, so unwavering.

  In the back of his mind, he saw the massive three-sided mirror he had been shown in the mirror room of the Suginami Noh Theater that was Utai Shinomiya’s family home. Before a Noh performer put on a mask and stepped onto the stage, they focused their mind in front of the mirror. Utai described the mirror as the boundary between this world and the other world.

  Boundary. A border, but also a path. In other words, rather than a simple flat panel, a mirror was an entrance and an exit. It accepted light, guided it, and released it once more.

  As of the previous evening—when he had been shown the three-sided mirror at Utai’s house and been told the sad story of her older brother, Kyoya Shinomiya (aka Mirror Masker)—Haruyuki had sensed that mental state, albeit only vaguely. The trigger for this vague instinct to sublimate up to understanding had been the fierce battle with the mysterious metal color, Wolfram Cerberus. At the beginning of the contest, Haruyuki had suffered so thorough a loss that he didn’t even know what to say as an excuse.

  But then there was the second fight with him, in which he was the challenger after special training during that day’s lunch hour. With the Way of the Flexible that he had learned directly from its master, Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki secured his victory with the strategy of warding off Cerberus’s fierce blows, turning them into power for throwing techniques, and slamming his opponent into the ground.

  If, in the midst of this current offensive, he’d even once tried to resist his opponent’s power with power, in that moment he would no doubt have had his armor smashed, just like the previous day. It was precisely because Haruyuki had accepted Cerberus’s punches and been able to merge them with his own movements that he’d succeeded in his Guard Reversal.

  In which case, maybe the same thing was possible against a laser attack? A true mirror accepted light and changed its direction only to send it out: the Way of the Flexible against light.

  Don’t be afraid!

  The guards on his arms were still in one piece somehow, but even so, his health gauge was steadily d
ecreasing. Haruyuki ripped his mind away from the fact and told himself firmly, I am Silver Crow. I am the duel avatar currently most like a mirror in the Accelerated World. I’m probably far short of Shinomiya’s older brother—“mirror” was part of his name, after all—but even still, for one moment, just one moment, I know I can fuse with the light. I can be a boundary to guide the light.

  Okay, then. Abandon your fear and your power. Accept it! Haruyuki still had his arms crossed, but he relaxed his tense, forward-pitched body slightly and lifted his face.

  On the other side of his field of view, dyed red, his eyes met those of the small Enemy shooting the intense laser from the jewel in its forehead—or so he felt. In that instant, the decrease in his health gauge and the scattering of the light stopped simultaneously. It wasn’t that the laser had been interrupted. Rather, it had become a crimson sphere condensing in the center of his intersecting arms.

  “That’s…iiiiiiiiiiit!!” Haruyuki thrust his right arm out straight ahead as he spun his body to the left. Toward the massive bulk of Avocado Avoider ten meters away, who was still licking at a dissolving Chocolat.

  Shppksh! The air shuddered, and Carbuncle’s laser shot forward once more, bent at an angle of 120 degrees or so. The laser made a direct hit on Avocado’s armor and was almost sucked into the lower part of his body, and in short order, it was digging into his armor.

  But the laser wasn’t piercing that armor. The thick, soft cushioning was absorbing the energy like it had the physical attacks.

  If this attack had been successive firing of actual bullets or a collision wave, Avocado’s soft armor might have been able to completely withstand it. But just as Chocolat had suspected, heat seemed to be his Achilles’ heel. In the blink of an eye, the dark-green surface armor was bright red, the color radiating outward from the point of entry. Haruyuki had to admire the determination of the other avatar when he still did not spit Chocolat out, but a Linker couldn’t endure the attack of an Enemy—even a lesser one—with determination alone.

  In a mere three seconds, the entirety of the egg-shaped body was incandescent, and cracks started to appear here and there in the armor. Haruyuki barely had time to register this before he heard a heavy, viscous sound.

  Splrt! Avocado Avoider’s massive body was melting, the thick liquid evaporating and disappearing before it even hit the ground. Naturally, the large mouth also vanished, and Chocolat was thrust out into midair. Just as she was on the verge of falling helplessly to the ground, Chiyuri raced over to catch the chocolate avatar in her arms. Almost as if the creature were aware that Chocolat had been released, the laser emitted from Carbuncle’s forehead also weakened, until it finally stopped.

  “Haah.” Heaving a long sigh, Haruyuki relaxed his shoulders. When he looked down at his arms, the armor that had been burning red hot was a silver far more clear than usual—or rather, he realized, it had changed into a “mirror color.” He stared hard as the mirror in his arms disappeared and his limbs returned to their original silver sheen.

  Was that the Theoretical Mirror ability? Did I actually manage to get it? he asked himself, but of course, no one answered. If he opened his Instruct menu then and there and looked at the status column, he would have been able to check whether or not he had more abilities, but he didn’t have time for that now.

  Because they were coming up on the final stage of the battle.

  He checked that Lava Carbuncle’s aggro had stopped, and then Haruyuki turned toward Chiyuri and Chocolat, and he opened his eyes wide in surprise.

  There was a strange object on the ground not far from the two girls: a brown sphere about thirty centimeters in diameter. He thought it was maybe some kind of Chocopet, but the material was different. As he stared, dumbfounded, short arms and legs popped out of the sphere, and once it stood upright, it ran as fast as the little legs could carry it toward the west side of the grounds. To where Magenta Scissor was watching the battle, still embedded in the temple wall.

  Haruyuki went up to Chiyuri. “What…is that?” he asked, in a low voice.

  “D-don’t ask me…”

  “Probably…Avocado’s main body,” Chocolat answered, still in Lime Bell’s arms. “Or a pit, I suppose. I don’t think there’s any harm in leaving him.”

  “P-pit…He really is a nonstandard duel avatar in all kinds of ways, huh?” Shaking his head shortly, Haruyuki switched tracks and checked Chocolat’s injuries. Her large armor skirt was almost completely gone, and the chocolate color of both legs was half peeled away. But it didn’t look like it had gone so far as her losing any parts.

  As if to affirm Haruyuki’s judgment, Chocolat said weakly, “Thanks, Bell. Please put me down. I’m all right.”

  “…Right.” Chiyuri stooped forward slowly, and Chocolat stepped onto the ground and stood up, albeit staggering slightly. She turned her bonnet-covered head and stared resolutely toward the south side of the grounds.

  Almost as though it had been waiting for her eyes to turn in that direction, a heavy vibration, one Haruyuki was already intimately familiar with, shook the air—the sound of a dark Incarnate attack being activated by the ISS kit. Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper had pulverized the two Chocopets hindering their movement with Dark Blow.

  The Cocoa Fountain covering the ground had also reached its time limit and was disappearing. On the original white tiles of the Sacred Ground stage, the two small F-type avatars walked lifelessly toward them. The eyes attached to each of their chests blinked with a red light reminiscent of blood.

  Haruyuki and Chiyuri started to get into battle-ready positions, but Chocolat shook her head lightly and stopped them. Injured, battered, she took a step forward, and a few seconds later, her former best friends stopped a mere two meters away from her.

  “Why won’t you come with us, Cocoa?” Mint Mitten spoke first, her head like a knit hat and her hands large and swollen.

  “Come on, let’s be stronger,” Plum Flipper murmured, a perfectly round beret on her head. “Let’s get strong and change the world, Cocoa.”

  The voices sounded intimate, but they were hollow somehow. Their eye lenses were also dim, so that it seemed almost as though it were the eyes on their chests speaking rather than themselves.

  Though perhaps that was exactly what it was.

  The most significant feature of the ISS kit was that night after night, synchronized processing of the seeds was carried out while the user slept. The kit took in the negative thoughts cultivated by surrounding users and spread the user’s own negative thoughts out around them. Mint and Plum were synchronized now with the dark will of Magenta Scissor, the parent of all the kits plaguing Setagaya.

  “Min-Min. Pliko. You don’t need that kind of strength to change the world,” Chocolat replied earnestly, her injured avatar just barely managing to stay upright. “If you just believe…that will change the world. The two of you taught me that.”

  She glanced back at Haruyuki and Chiyuri and then quickly turned her gaze forward again.

  “In the real world, and in the Accelerated World, we have feared the outside. We closed ourselves off in a gentle, comfortable box…we never turned our eyes toward the past or the future. But that was a mistake. The reason we became Burst Linkers was…to accelerate. To shake off painful memories and move forward. With every step forward we take, the walls of our box expand that much, and the world changes. The gifted power you have now…we don’t need to rely on that, Min-Min, Pliko!” Voice tearful, Chocolat made her injured body take a step forward, just like she’d said. Then another. And another.

  Now she was standing in front of Mint and Plum. Their eye lenses grew even darker, and in exchange, the shining of the ISS kits increased. On their right hands, different in both size and shape, was the exact same black aura. Haruyuki started to step forward reflexively, but beside him, Chiyuri lightly shook her head.

  In a stiff movement, as though their joints had rusted, the two raised their right arms. Unflinchingly exposed before this, Chocolat s
pread her slender arms and wrapped them around both of her friends at the same time.

  The two ISS kits flickered intensely. The inorganic sense emitted by the eyeballs could be taken as hatred but also as fear. In sync with the disturbance in the kits, a change came over the actual eyes of Mint and Plum. Eye lenses that had been essentially grayed out continually increased in brightness, and fists that had been raised and held in midair trembled and shook. The dark, swirling aura shuddered unstably, even as it increased in concentration.

  If they launched Dark Blow at the same time from that distance, Chocolat would disappear without a trace. If she was going to achieve the result she had first thought of—force Mint and Plum into total point loss with the Judgment Blow—this was her first and last chance.

  However, Chocolat didn’t move. Head hanging, she kept hugging her friends tight. From Mint and Plum’s irregularly blinking eye lenses, droplets of white light spilled out and fell into the air.

  In that instant, it wasn’t the three members of the Legion Petit Paquet who moved, nor was it Haruyuki or Magenta Scissor off in the distance watching the scene unfold; it was Chiyuri—Lime Bell.

  She brandished the Enhanced Armament of her left arm, Choir Chime, up high, and spun it in quick, broad, counterclockwise circles.

  Bong! The echo, reminiscent somehow of school bells, came once, twice, then three times, and then four times. A pure citrus-green light gushed out of Lime Bell like a liquid and came pouring down directly ahead of her. At the same time, she called out the technique name: “Citron…Caaaaaaaaall!!”

  The light surging out from inside the chime flowed forward in a straight line, making countless sparkling, glittering crosses, and enveloped Mint and Plum at the same time. In the center of the pillar of light that rose up from below, their two bodies were lifted ever so slightly off the ground.

  Dropping her hips and supporting the bell of her left hand with her right hand, Chiyuri continued to emit the light with an intent expression on her face. Haruyuki approached her by habit and supported her back with a hand. Her body, as slender as those of Chocolat and the members of Petit Paquet, trembled all over, demonstrating her desperate mental focus.