The Twilight Marauder

by Reki Kawahara

  The three that Nomi had thrown were all vivid red or green. He had to have fairly good eyes to be able to grab hold of only the poisonous bugs, especially considering he wasn’t shifting his gaze away from Cyan Pile closing in on him for even an instant. It was no mean feat to pull that off and have a conversation with Haruyuki at the same time.

  He’s surprisingly used to fighting.

  Haruyuki opened his eyes wide at this thought, as Cyan Pile’s left arm knocked the metal insects out of the air in a reflexive motion. Together with a squelching crack, like an egg being broken, insect carapaces shattered and an even more loathsome-looking sludge flew out. The blue body was showered in the splatter, and white plumes of smoke rose up from all over it.

  “Ngh!” His HP bar dropped only a little, but Takumu reeled at the unanticipated attack.

  Not letting the moment slip away, Dusk Taker plunged forward like a bolt of black lightning, howling, and in the blink of an eye, his extended tentacles had seized Cyan Pile’s pile driver. And then, Nomi thrust his bolt cutters toward Takumu’s throat.

  Milliseconds away from having his head cut off, Takumu just barely managed to grab one of the cutter blades with his left hand. Forced into this awkward position, his thumb was caught on the inside of the blade, something Nomi could hardly miss.

  Immediately, the blades clanked shut around the digit, and Nomi gradually applied pressure, as if to drag out the pain.

  “Unh…Ngh!” Takumu groaned softly.

  “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to grab the blade of an open pair of scissors?” Nomi hissed from below. “See now, this is what happens.”

  Clang! At the dreadful sound, the thumb of Cyan Pile’s left hand danced through the air. A chunk disappeared from his HP gauge while at the same time, his special-attack gauge shot up.

  “And you. Didn’t anyone tell you my attack power’s not just in my right hand?” Takumu said in a strangled voice before quickly thrusting his chest out and crying, “Splash Stinger!!”

  Shunk! From the alternating rows of small holes on Cyan Pile’s chest, slim missiles popped their sleek faces out and shot forward en masse.

  Dusk Taker looked appropriately shocked and dropped into a defensive posture, crossing both arms, but even still, the needle missiles hit their mark one after another at extremely close range, blossoming into exploding flowers. Huge hunks disappearing from his gauge as he was thrown backward, the blackish-purple avatar did smash into the school building this time, ending up half buried in the metal wall.

  “Aaaah!”

  Not letting this advantage get away, Takumu plunged ahead decisively. The earth shook as he barreled along to build momentum and crash into Dusk Taker with his left shoulder. The building wall crumpled inward, and the two avatars hurtled into the school. Haruyuki hurriedly ran after them, entering the school through a hatch a fair distance off, since he couldn’t damage the stage himself.

  The long first-floor hallway had been transformed into something even stranger than the schoolyard. Slits gouged in the wall undulated peristaltically, occasionally vomiting up steam. A viscous liquid drooled from what looked like bundles of protruding pipes, and the hallway trickled and dribbled.

  On the other side of this repulsive scene, the two combatants were already standing up and away from each other. Cyan Pile’s remaining gauge was just over 80 percent, while Dusk Taker’s was down to 60 percent.

  “Nomi, you’ve already lost,” Takumu announced gravely.

  “What? Have I?”

  “You have. You can’t destroy the walls of a Hell stage with your power. The exit is behind me. And in this small space, a speed type like you doesn’t have a hope.”

  It did seem to be exactly as Takumu said. Haruyuki himself had also battled Cyan Pile once in the hallway of a building like this. That time, by focusing on getting past the pile attacks and escaping to the roof, he had managed to tease out a hope of winning. Right now, however, there was nothing but a dead end behind Dusk Taker.

  His narrowed reddish-purple eyes glittered, and the slim avatar lunged forward with no warning. Perhaps in revenge for Takumu’s initial dash, he had at some point grabbed onto a wall pillar with the tentacles of his left hand, and, contracting them now, he flung his body forward. Unwilling to admit defeat, he was trying to get as low as possible so he could slip out between Cyan Pile’s feet and escape the dead end.

  But Takumu was calm. Slamming his right foot into the floor, he generated the shock wave that was the particular domain of the heavyweight avatar and knocked Dusk Taker off his feet before jamming a left front kick into his staggering opponent. Nomi guarded but was still knocked back into the hall.

  “It’s hopeless.” Takumu spread his arms, as if to block the path behind him, and advanced. “I’m not letting you have the rear. If we had been fighting in the school building from the start, this whole thing would’ve been finished a lot sooner. So if you don’t want me barging in every time you take a test, give those wings back to Silver Crow. And then, at the very least, I’ll stay out of your way. So…what’s it going to be?”

  Faced with this condition, the injured Nomi propped himself up with his right hand and remained silent for a while.

  Finally, he let out a long sigh. “Mayuzumi,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “You would faithfully keep such a ridiculous verbal promise, too, wouldn’t you? Honestly, that there could be people with such totally different values in this world—and in the same school no less…”

  Nomi spread his hands almost exasperatedly and murmured a short, unfamiliar command: “Total Disarmament.”

  Instantly, the tentacles of his left hand and the bolt cutters of his right disappeared, as if melting into thin air. The arming and disarming of Enhanced Armament could be done through a voice command the player registered in advance on the Install menu. Those two simple words were the command Nomi had selected.

  Does this mean he’s accepting defeat and is ready to give my wings back? Seiji Nomi? Really?

  Speechless, Haruyuki was once again filled with a sense of admiring wonder for Takumu, who had so perfectly maneuvered his opponent to this place, the consummate chess player.

  “Taku—” Just as he was about to shout, You did it!, Nomi dropped his small, empty-handed, injured avatar into a very low stance.

  “This doesn’t mean I’m surrendering,” he whispered at the same time. “Just that if both of my hands are full, I won’t be able to play my trump card.”

  “Trump…card?”

  Haruyuki was sure that Nomi had said something like this to him, too, right as their first duel was ending. At the time, he had thought it was just some contemptuous remark, but— It couldn’t be, he still had something…

  As Haruyuki sucked his breath in sharply, Takumu got his enemy in his sights with his right hand. “If you’re planning to keep going, then I won’t show you any mercy, Nomi! I’ll take every single chance I get to fight you. And I’ll beat you down. You sure you want that?!”

  “Goodness me.” The response was even quieter, completely devoid of emotion. “I don’t like this at all. You looking so serious and everything. And I mean, it’s not like I want to say the name of my special attack…But, well, given the situation, I suppose I have no choice.”

  Dusk Taker used both hands to make a small triangle in front of his body. He then began muttering under his breath words that sounded like a spell—or a curse.

  “Steal. Get. Grab. Remove. Take. Take. Take. Ta. Ke.”

  Haruyuki heard the low whir of vibration, which soon turned into a metallic, high-pitched hum. And then he saw it: Nomi’s hands enveloped in a dull, midnight-purple pulse of energy.

  The air in the hallway shuddered, and sparks snapped and raced everywhere. Special attack?! he thought immediately, but quickly brushed that idea aside. If it was generating these kinds of effects, his special-attack gauge should start to drop before the attack itself even began. But Nomi’s didn’t even twitch; it stayed just
over half charged.

  Haruyuki had only very recently learned about a logic other than a special attack that could generate this kind of phenomenon. The Image control system. Overwriting phenomena with the imagination.

  Or by another name—

  “T-Taku! Forget about the wings! Kill him right now!!” Haruyuki shrieked.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Takumu cried sharply, “Lightning Cyan Spike!!”

  Cyan Pile’s special-attack gauge, also half full, plummeted, and backfire like an aurora surged from the end of the pile driver.

  Fwoosh! The air sizzled and the iron stake, a beam of pure light, shot out straight at Dusk Taker. From that distance, it would be impossible to avoid Takumu’s level-four special attack—or it should have been. However.

  Vmmp!

  With a sound like dense gas popping, the gleaming steel spike stopped dead without piercing anything. Held by a mere two fingers.

  The index and middle fingers of Dusk Taker’s left hand, enveloped in the purple energy, lightly pinched between them Cyan Pile’s most powerful special attack, as if it were nothing more than a rolled-up tube of paper.

  “Wha…” Haruyuki’s hoarse voice slipped out, and then the gleaming lance itself was sucked into the pulsing energy field with a sound like scorched metal being plunged into water. It vanished without a trace.

  Languidly lowering his hand, Nomi lifted his face slightly and looked up at the stunned Cyan Pile, who stood rooted to the ground. Judging from how things had played out thus far, this would be the moment when he sneered something contemptuous with a disparaging laugh.

  But Dusk Taker remained silent as he bent the fingers of both hands into claws and kicked at the ground. He generated an even stronger purple aura, this time of ripples, before launching himself into an incredible dash so fast, both legs were nothing but blurs. Twice as fast as the tentacles he had been using earlier. He ate up the ten meters separating him from Takumu in less than the time it took to blink, and as he closed in, Dusk Taker drew his left hand through the air in a large arc, from bottom to top.

  The purple crescent moon cut into the air sliced across Cyan Pile’s thick chest armor diagonally. Then Haruyuki saw the impossible: Deep, cavernous valleys were carved out of the blue chest plate as if it were made of clay—no, pudding.

  A moment passed, and then bundles of pale sparks jetted up, spurting like blood from the gouges left behind by the five claws.

  “Ngh!” Groaning and reeling, Takumu immediately countered, even though he was likely more shocked at this attack than Haruyuki was.

  He rammed the tip of his pile driver into Nomi’s left flank, which had been left unguarded. At the same time, he brought his free hand across, up to the launching mechanism at his right shoulder.

  Thuk!

  By the time the shot rang out, Nomi was already gone. It was so quick, it had to have been a short teleportation. He slid to the right and nimbly dodged the pile driver attack, before this time grabbing the base of the steel spike, which extended to its maximum immediately after being launched.

  Once again, the eerie fwoosh filled the air, and the spike was crushed.

  Or more correctly, the part in Dusk Taker’s purple shining hand disappeared instantly. With a sudden, mirror-smooth cross section as its end, the steel stake clattered heavily to the floor.

  He was absolutely sure of it now: This was an Incarnate attack. The images produced by Seiji Nomi were negotiating with the system and making any object he grabbed with both hands disappear. Denial of existence. Overwriting the phenomena.

  Most likely, Takumu still didn’t know about the existence of the Incarnate System. Even as every fiber of his being radiated pure astonishment, he determinedly tried other counterattacks. Perhaps understanding that Nomi’s hands deleted everything they touched, he jumped back and launched a kick attack from beyond Nomi’s reach. It was a spectacular right-roundhouse kick, the kind that set the air on fire. If it hit its target, it would likely have sent even the heaviest avatar flying.

  But the power of this kick was simply numerical data, the sum of avatar weight, armor strength, and muscle parameters. In contrast, Nomi was overwriting data through image control faster than Takumu’s kicking power was being delivered to the system via movement control. As a result—

  Thud.

  The kick was cut short with a sickeningly wet sound and Nomi’s left hand. The force of the blow was entirely swallowed up by the pulsating purple energy and canceled out. The wet sound was Takumu’s right shin as Nomi’s fingers dug into it, nearly to the knuckle.

  “Aaah!” A strangled cry of pain made it out of Takumu’s mouth.

  Slowly wriggling the fingers buried in Takumu’s leg, as if to torture him, Nomi finally murmured, “Mayuzumi. Before, you said I couldn’t destroy the walls in this stage or something, didn’t you?”

  Then he dragged Takumu, right leg still imprisoned in Nomi’s hand, left knee dragging, and walked toward the south wall. Dusk Taker carelessly thrust his free hand out and it was immediately, soundlessly buried up to the wrist in the sparkling metallic green wall of the Hell stage. As if pushing through jelly, he used the hand to dig a large circle in the wall.

  “To be honest, I hadn’t wanted to show you. Although I suppose even seeing it, you can’t actually understand it. Because the only ones who know this logic are the six—no, seven kings and their close associates, and us. But you’re a smart guy. Now that you’ve experienced the gap in our abilities, I’m sure you understand.” As he talked, he drilled a gutter almost two meters in diameter into the wall. At a kick, the wall crashed to the inside and the outside light came streaming in. “That you all are out of options. That the moment I started at Umesato Junior High, your destiny to spend every one of the rest of your school days working as my dogs was already decided.”

  Nomi had barely finished speaking when he waved his left hand fiercely and tossed Cyan Pile’s enormous bulk through the hole to the yard outside. Without so much as a glance at Haruyuki, he also exited the building.

  A numbness spread up from the core of Haruyuki’s brain. In the dim hallway, shoulders shaking fiercely, he stood rooted to the spot.

  Why? Why would a guy like Nomi know the Incarnate System? You wouldn’t even be able to see it exists without some outside help. You can’t learn this skill unless someone is kind enough to guide you to it.

  Pulling Haruyuki back from his own stupefaction was a low, distant moan from Takumu. He lifted his face with a gasp, dove through the hole Nomi had made, and leapt outside, shuddering at the smooth fingermarks in the thick, dug-out section of wall.

  In roughly the center of the schoolyard, he saw the shadows of the two entangled avatars. They weren’t fighting, however. It was more like a one-sided slaughter at this point.

  Cyan Pile looked like he was just barely standing, oceans of sparks scattering from the wounds to his chest and leg. Even so, he launched attack after determined attack with both hands, but he didn’t even scratch Dusk Taker. The twilight-colored avatar casually evaded the punches while superficially shaving away his opponent’s armor with his fingertips.

  Cyan Pile’s HP gauge was already down to 20 percent. The destroyed pile driver unrepaired, his fully charged special-attack gauge glittered in vain.

  “T-Taku…” Haruyuki squeezed out a crushed voice.

  He wanted to say something to his best friend, who wouldn’t give up despite being at an overwhelming disadvantage, but he couldn’t find the right words. Up against Nomi’s Incarnate attacks, likely the manifestation of the disappearance of objects including physical attacks, the simple, close-range blue Cyan Pile had no method of resistance.

  The hundredth or millionth scar was etched into his mask, and Cyan Pile finally dropped heavily to his knees. In a normal duel field, the pain generated when an avatar took damage was about half that of the Unlimited Neutral Field, but even at half strength, the cumulative pain of many tiny injuries quickly became intolerable. This was no doub
t Nomi’s aim in deliberately attacking with multiple shallow cuts.

  When Takumu fought back against the virtual pain torturing his nerves and tried to stand back up, Nomi kicked him down as hard as he could, and Dusk Taker set his slim foot down firmly on top of the fallen Cyan Pile’s mask.

  “Five hundred seconds left, hmm? Well, you fought a lot harder than I expected, Mayuzumi. You have more of a gift for this than you do for kendo.” Nomi chuckled before holding aloft the claws of his right hand. The purple energy pulse generated regular concentric circles and had conspicuously increased in strength. “Now then, I’ll have compensation for the one point three seconds of my real time that you took. Your Burst points and pain. And your humiliation.”

  He went to plunge his right hand into Takumu’s throat.

  “Wait, Nomi!!” Haruyuki shouted, at the very edge of the permitted spectator distance.

  The hand pulled up short, and Dusk Taker’s round visor glanced over.

  “Just wait!” Haruyuki cried desperately. “If you want points, take mine! Takumu used a ton of points to fight you! But I still have plenty. If you’re going to take some, take them from me!!”

  He was half serious. But the other half was a plan, and the thin chance it was betting on.

  He fell to his knees on the spot, pressed the forehead of his helmet to a ground crawling with insects, and shouted like a cry of pain, “It’s just like this, I’m begging you, Nomi!!” Naturally, this was his first experience prostrating himself so clumsily in the accelerated world, but that wasn’t the case in the real world.

  Last year, before his fateful meeting with Brain Burst, Haruyuki had been the subject of harsh bullying by three boys in his class. They had extorted bread and juice from him at every opportunity, and when he didn’t have any and couldn’t buy any, he had been forced to apologize by prostrating himself like this. It was a memory stained with a shame he’d prefer not to remember, but right now, in this moment alone, he used that desperation in his voice and his bearing and scraped his head firmly along the ground.