“N-no thank yooooouuu!!” Haruyuki sprinted desperately, and the front wheel of the bike—spinning with inertia—scraped his back lightly. His health gauge dropped the tiniest amount, while his special-attack gauge increased by a mere hint. Haruyuki immediately took this and poured it into thrust for his wings. He couldn’t take off, but somehow he managed to avoid a crash with a long jump, waving his arms about in the air, as he fled to the north.
However, a few seconds later, a massive wall appeared ahead of him for an unknown reason, and Haruyuki opened his eyes wide. Since this valley had originally been Kannana Street, it should have continued all the way to the edge of the stage. Which meant the wall was not a real wall, but something big enough to look like a wall.
“Ah! Crap! Ash, you can’t—!” Haruyuki shouted, flustered as he finally realized what the wall actually was.
But the big brother was burning with an unprecedented rage and showed no signs of letting up on the throttle. If Haruyuki slowed even slightly, he would definitely be pressed flat by the rear tire after being pulled down to the ground by the front tire, so he had no choice but to keep charging forward. Once they had broken the twenty-meter mark to the dark, wetly illuminated, reddish-brown wall-like thing, the small mountain shuddered and began to move.
The most significant feature of the Primeval Forest stage was that large creatures lived there, on scale with the Wild-class Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field. And without a doubt, lifting its thick head ahead of Haruyuki and Ash Roller at that moment, having been disturbed in its nap and in a foul mood, was the most powerful identified among these creatures: Tyrannosaurus rex.
“I’ve never seen anyone wake a sleeping Tyranno in this stage before!” one of the members of the Gallery following on the branches of the trees around them cried out, dumbfounded.
“Just like an Ash-Crow fight, giving us the goods!”
Immediately after someone offered this in response, Haruyuki and Ash and the motorcycle became a single lump that slammed into the side of the Tyrannosaurus.
“Ahhhh.” Haruyuki leaned back on the bench and expelled a long sigh as he looked upward.
The rain that had been falling in the morning stopped during third period, and the gray coloring in the sky had increased considerably in brightness. Many students were seizing this chance to go out into the courtyard, and a slightly chilly breeze brought the tumult of the lunch break up to the roof.
“You think you’ll make it in time for the class exhibit?” Takumu asked from beside him as he opened the package of his sandwich.
Haruyuki brought his head back up and nodded. “Yeah, we’ve basically got all the photos we need. All that’s left is to put them into the display program on Saturday, and we’re done. So, like, what kind of cosplay are you doing?” he asked in return, likewise ripping open the package containing his bun with yakisoba noodles.
“The boys’ kendo team is in charge of the choreography for the performance.” Takumu grinned wryly, almost shrugging his broad shoulders. “The girls’ team is doing the costumes. They were super careful about measuring our sizes, so I kind of have a bad feeling about it.”
“Ha-ha! Can’t wait to see it. I’ll definitely be there.” After a brief laugh, Haruyuki took a big bite of his bun, and for a while, the pair simply moved their mouths, taking yogurt drink packs in hand at the same time and slurping them down.
“So? Didn’t you have something you wanted to talk with me about, Haru?” Takumu asked as Haruyuki was on the verge of going for a second bite; his teeth clamped down on empty space. Haruyuki lowered his yakisoba bread, and an awkward smile spread across his face.
“Y-you saw through me, huh? Just like you, Professor Mayuzumi.”
“Well, you know, when Professor Arita is kind enough to invite someone as humble as me to lunch, I figure something’s up.” His friend grinned before resuming a straight face. “So? What’d you do this time?”
I feel like I’ve heard that line really recently, Haruyuki thought, but he gave up on thinking too deeply about it. After quickly confirming there were no other students around, he put out a slightly circuitous question. “Uh, so, like, Taku. I was just thinking. Isn’t the school festival pretty risky? In terms of Burst Linkers.”
“Oh. Yeah, it’s an event we need to be careful at. I mean, twice a year, students from other schools can legitimately connect with the in-school net, after all.”
“T-twice a year? What’s the other time?”
“The entrance ceremony, of course. But current students aren’t at school on the day of the entrance ceremony, as a rule, so the risk is a little greater at the school festival.”
Hearing this smooth explanation, Haruyuki nodded in understanding. “S-so then…it’d be pretty bad to give a student from another school an invitation when you know they’re a Burst Linker…I guess?” Ever so timidly, he put forth this question, circling in on the heart of the matter, but fortunately, Taku appeared to be thinking of it in general terms. A broad, wry smile crossed his face.
“Actually, I think that would be safer. I mean, that means that you’re both cracked in the real to each other, right? Like the Red King or Leopard. We could invite those two to the festival, and I expect there wouldn’t be any security risk. But there would be other kinds of risks,” he added in a quiet voice, though this did not reach Haruyuki’s ears.
Instead, the boy secretly felt a rush of relief. If Niko or Pard was okay, then Rin Kusakabe—similarly mutually cracked in the real—would naturally be okay as well. In which case, he could assume that there was no need to obtain the understanding of his Legion members in advance.
Right. I still have those two other invites. Maybe I should ask Niko and Pard, too. No point in wasting the invitations. Okay! After school, I’ll send them a quick message—
“What we should actually be careful about is the relatives and friends the other students invite. There’s definitely a nonzero possibility that one of them is a Burst Linker, you know.”
After a time lag, Takumu’s increasingly serious voice reached Haruyuki’s brain, and he blinked rapidly. He thought for a moment and then nodded; that was true. “If one of them checked the matching list just once during the festival, they’d know at a glance that Umesato here is the headquarters for Nega Nebulus, I guess.”
“Yeah. But the invited guests all have their real info on the register, so they’re carrying a certain amount of risk themselves. For a Burst Linker, a school festival is an event that requires caution, but that goes both ways. Students at the school hosting the festival, don’t let your guard down. And don’t just stop in on other schools’ festivals. Right? I think Master’ll probably talk to us about it soon.”
“Right…I guess so…” As Haruyuki digested this information together with his yakisoba bread, Takumu grinned once more, pushing up the bridge of his glasses.
“So who’re you inviting, Haru? Or did you already invite them?”
“Huh? O-oh, that’s, I mean…”
“The number of Burst Linkers from other schools you know in the real is fairly limited. Master’s probably inviting Raker and Maiden, so then there’s the two in the Red Legion, and—”
“Uh, um, a-a-a-anyway, we should talk about what to do if there really is some strange Burst Linker mixed in with the invited guests—”
What saved Haruyuki, as he flapped his right hand clutching what little remained of his yakisoba bread, and his left hand, still holding the yogurt drink pack, was an icon informing him of the arrival of a text message. Takumu appeared to get one at the same time, and he turned his gaze away.
Together, they opened the message, which was a brief missive of two lines in a light-purple font against a black background: I APOLOGIZE FOR THE SUDDENNESS, BUT I’D LIKE TO HAVE A MEETING IN FIVE MINUTES. YOU’LL COME INTO THE STAGE THROUGH THE LOCAL NET AS AUTOMATIC SPECTATORS, SO PLEASE MAKE YOUR PREPARATIONS. IF THERE’S A PROBLEM, REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. At the end of the message, there was a butterfly mark a
s a signature.
When the two boys closed their windows, having finished reading the message, the mail deleted itself, which erased the “mail arrival” mark as well. Haruyuki and Takumu exchanged a glance and cocked their heads to one side in sync.
“I know she’s impatient, but even for her, this is sudden. And I mean, a meeting in a duel stage—you think something happened?”
“Hmm. If it was about how to respond as a Legion on the day of the school festival, she wouldn’t have to be so urgent about it, right?”
Since there was no way Haruyuki was going to be able to understand something Takumu didn’t, he stopped thinking about it. “At any rate, let’s eat. Like they say, you can’t accelerate on an empty stomach.”
“They don’t say that. But yes, let’s.”
They made what was left of their yakisoba bread and sandwich lunches disappear in one minute, and then for dessert, Haruyuki polished off a chocolate cornet and Takumu a package of milk pudding before they nodded at each other, finished. Chiyuri was having lunch with her girlfriends in the cafeteria, but if the meeting was through a normal duel, then at most, it would take 1.8 seconds. As long as she pretended she was on a full dive in the local net, she wouldn’t have any problems.
By the time they had thrown their garbage down the chute in a corner of the roof, they had one minute left. Haruyuki and Takumu got ready to accelerate on the bench. Not even a second past the time they had been warned of, a cold thunder roared in their ears, and their consciousnesses were cut away from the real world.
7
His second battlefield of the day was a Wasteland stage with a dry wind howling through the gaps in strangely shaped, reddish-brown rocks. Of the natural-type, earth-attribute stages, it was one of the most peaceful; there were no troublesome terrain effects or fearsome moving objects.
Thinking how lucky they were that they had gotten a stage suitable for a meeting, Haruyuki checked the health gauges on the left and right. On the right side—in the place of the challenger—was Black Lotus. Which meant the challenged was Lime Bell. The thought had no sooner come into his head than he saw that the name on the left was Sky Raker.
“Huh?! Why is our sister connected to the Umesato local net?!”
The voice came from directly behind him, so he looked back and found the vivid yellow-green of Lime Bell. He sensed the same question from Cyan Pile beside him, so Haruyuki explained, having been made aware of this mechanism earlier.
“Kuroyukihime finally managed to set up a secret access gate from outside.”
“O-oh.” Chiyuri sounded strangely impressed. “That’s just like our Black King. Nothing she can’t cut through, huh?”
Takumu also nodded his head, wearing a face mask with its horizontal slits, before looking around at their surroundings. “So then Maiden would have to be in the Gallery, too.”
“Yes, I’m right here.” The response came from a fissure in the rocky mountain that had originally been the first school building of Umesato, rising up immediately to the north of them—a place where the small shrine maiden avatar revealed herself.
They exchanged hellos with Utai Shinomiya, who would have been connecting from the elementary division of Matsunogi Academy to the south in Suginami Ward; then all four gazed into the northwest. Guide cursors indicating two more duelists pointed in that direction, but there was no sign of them yet.
Entry into buildings wasn’t possible in a Wasteland stage, or rather there was no interior construction to the rocky mountains that the buildings turned into, but the massive rocks that had been the school and other large buildings in the real world were laced with narrow cracks like a labyrinth. If you accidentally ended up in one, it took a fair bit of effort to get out again.
“This is the direction of the student council office, right? Should we go look for them?” Haruyuki proposed, wondering if Kuroyukihime and Fuko were lost inside the mountain.
But before anyone could respond, a gray light flashed along the surface of the mountain. The enormous rock offered up a magnificent cross section before crumbling, and from within appeared Black Lotus, the jet-black duel avatar with long swords for limbs, and Sky Raker, her long hair reminiscent of fluid metal as it fluttered in the faint breeze, her slender body wrapped in a white dress. The two of them looked at Haruyuki and the others and then began to approach at a brisk pace.
“Sorry to keep you all waiting. We tried to leave the mountain, but all the paths were dead ends.”
“Although, that said, cutting down the wall as a method of tackling giant labyrinths is a good bit of heresy.”
“A-and who was it who suggested using Gale Thruster to fly out?”
“You’re allowed to fly out of labyrinths with no roofs. That’s always been allowed.”
“L-liar. That is a lie.”
Haruyuki was more than willing to listen to the back-and-forth of Kuroyukihime and Fuko, perfectly in sync as always, but unfortunately, the timer in the top of his field of view continued to steadily decrease, so he timidly interjected, “Uh, um, Kuroyukihime, Master, maybe we should start the meeting?”
“Mmm. R-right. This isn’t the time to be talking about labyrinths.” Kuroyukihime cleared her throat and straightened up while Fuko stepped back to one side in the same beat. “First, I apologize for interrupting your hard-won lunch hour. Sorry for calling you here so abruptly.”
“I have to apologize as well. I was the one who asked Lotus to convene the Legion.”
So it was Fuko who had such urgent information that she couldn’t wait until after school for all the Legion members to come together. Haruyuki and the other three at his side turned their eyes on her, but she appeared to be leaving the telling to the Legion Master; she urged Kuroyukihime on with a gesture.
The Black King nodded lightly and took the conversation in an unexpected direction. “Do any of you know a boys’ junior high/high school called Meihoku Academy in Shimokitazawa?”
This was the first Haruyuki had heard of it, but Takumu, who was standing on the left end, raised the Pile Driver equipped in his right arm slightly. “Yes, Master. It’s a fairly high-ranking academic school in the city.”
“Mmm. Their average scores on the national tests for the junior high division are about ten points higher than any year for us at Umesato.”
Utterly unable to see where the conversation was going, Haruyuki cocked his head. Unmoved by the reactions of her Legion members, Kuroyukihime continued smoothly.
“This sort of earnest academic school often is not very passionate about in-school events. They have a simplified version of the school trip; they take care of gym tournaments and school festivals with minimal energy—things like that. Meihoku Academy in Shimokita is one of these, and they hold their school festival for half a day on a weekday. To be specific, this morning.”
“Uh, uh-huh.” As he made a noise of assent, thoughts wandered through his head: They wouldn’t get very many people coming on a weekday, and finishing it before lunch meant there probably wouldn’t be too many things on offer or anything.
“Master, you can’t mean”—from this bit of information, Takumu had gleaned something Haruyuki hadn’t, and he put it forward in a tense voice—“a raid on this school festival?”
“R-raid?!” Haruyuki cried out at the same time as Chiyuri, and then finally understood the meaning of this. Although Takumu used the word raid, no one had ever gone in and punched students from a rival school or occupied the building like armed terrorists. He was talking about the Accelerated World, naturally.
“It seems that three members of Great Wall are enrolled at Meihoku. They were challenged by a single Burst Linker via the local net, which had been opened up for invited guests for the festival. And they lost.”
“…!”
Haruyuki and Chiyuri were not alone in gasping; even Takumu and Utai, who had likely figured out where this was going, took sharp breaths.
Since the duel fields in Brain Burst were based in reality, if you d
ueled in school, then the terrain was re-created with the placement of the school buildings and gym just as they were in the real world. In other words, the terrain advantage would have been with the three students at Meihoku Academy.
“Sacchi. Do you know the difference in level between the raider and the three who lost?” Utai asked.
“This is just hearsay,” Fuko responded in Kuroyukihime’s place, “so it’s not certain, but the three were at level five and six. In contrast, the raider was apparently level six.”
“Essentially the same level. And yet total victory on enemy territory. This is no small matter. What if the raider was using…?”
“That does appear to be the case. The three from Meihoku were apparently helplessly defeated by beams and punches with a black effect,” Fuko noted.
“Ah!” Haruyuki shouted instantly, in perfect harmony with Chiyuri once more. “ISS kit!”
“There’s no doubt about it. An ISS kit user has finally knocked on the front door and attacked a corner of the six great Legions.” Kuroyukihime paused there before announcing the rest in a voice that was increasingly tense. “After handily beating the third one, she apparently left a message: ‘If you want this power, come to Setagaya Area Number Five.’”
Haruyuki unconsciously clenched his hands into tight fists. At levels five and six, these were solid Linkers who had long since left their newbie days behind. And people who belonged to Great Wall wouldn’t give in to such blatant temptation—or so he wanted to believe. But the power of the ISS kit was too overwhelming. Even Haruyuki, about to advance to the second stage of the Incarnate System, felt a deep terror toward that comprehensive long- and short-range power.
The desire to become stronger was a basic one shared by all Burst Linkers. Shown a power that was impossible to oppose and then told they could have it, too, how many people in the Accelerated World would not be moved at all? Haruyuki himself had given in to the temptation of the Armor of Catastrophe more than once and called its name.
The Red Crest Page 13