The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer

by Reki Kawahara

  “E-extra effect? What kind of power is that?”

  “The shield takes in any attack and counters with double the power. In other words, the only way to break the defensive barrier of that shield is to get rid of it in a single super, superpowerful blow, or to create gaps through endless, successive attacks and aim for the main body of the avatar. Although I have no memory of seeing either of these succeed.”

  “C-counter? Maybe. It did. Probably.” That moment where he fought sword against shield, Incarnate against Incarnate, with the Green King as his opponent felt like the long-distant past, but even so, a chill ran through him. “But that force probably all went into the air around us. We sent half of Mori Tower flying.”

  “Mm-hmm. So that was that explosion, then? We saw it from the southern bridge of the Castle.”

  Haruyuki thought for a minute and then shook his head in tiny increments. “No. I think that was probably something else. After the battles with Pound and the Green King, another big thing happened…but I’ll tell you about that after. I want to go back a bit. Before, you said that if the Armor of Catastrophe fights an intense battle with a strong enemy, its activity drops for a while, right? That’s exactly where I am right now, I think. The Beast that lives in the Armor’s asleep. It’s drowsy because it fought both members of GW so ferociously and squeezed out the last drop of Incarnate. Which is why I could talk with R—Ash normally and why I can be here like this with you now. But at some point—no, definitely tomorrow—it’s going to wake up. And then it’ll try to get me to go hunting for fights. Whether or not I can resist that and stay myself…to be honest, I…have my doubts…”

  For Haruyuki, being able to conclude such a long speech without stammering—and while he was holding and being held by the person he adored most in the world—was a fairly difficult task. But he was unaware of this as he finished speaking, and Kuroyukihime, who had simply listened quietly, smiled faintly, for some reason.

  “Mmm. That’s a wonderful theoretical analysis. I believe that’s true myself. In which case, in order to succeed in the purification tomorrow, there is just one action we should take now.”

  “Huh? A-a-a-a-a-a-action…Wh-wh-wh-what do you mean?” Haruyuki stammered and spat with a force strong enough to cancel out his earlier long speech.

  Kuroyukihime smiled again before manipulating her virtual desktop with quick movements.

  Next to them, something gradually rose up with a whine from the natural wood flooring where there had previously been nothing. The cylindrical device, about fifteen centimeters in diameter and fifty centimeters high, was probably an integrated terminal connected to the house’s home server. Normally, this device was used to control household appliances without a Neurolinker, but Kuroyukihime apparently used it in a different way. She pulled a wind-up XSB cable from the middle of the small tower and inserted the end into her Neurolinker.

  “Haruyuki, you burst out because of the forced disconnection on the roof of Roppongi Hills, yes?”

  At the abrupt and unexpected question, all he could do was nod dumbly.

  “Mmm. Then five—no, three seconds. After I accelerate and three seconds pass, pull the cable out.”

  “Huh? Um. What exactly—?”

  “I’ll explain later. Understand? I’m counting on you. Unlimited Burst.” The command was uttered nonchalantly, and then Kuroyukihime’s body slumped down, lifeless.

  Haru didn’t know what was what anymore, but at any rate, all he could do was follow her instruction. The instant the digital digits in the lower right of his field of view increased by three, he yanked the plug from the piano-black Neurolinker.

  Kuroyukihime’s eyes flew open before him. “I’m back, Haruyuki,” she said with a serious face.

  “Um, Kuroyukihime, I have no idea what is even—”

  “What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious? I moved from Suginami to Roppongi Hills in the Unlimited Neutral Field.”

  “H-huh?!” Unconsciously, he cried out wildly. The command he’d heard earlier was indeed definitely the one to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. But even if it was a world where the mind was accelerated by a thousand, three seconds of real time was still a mere fifty minutes on that side. In a world where taxis and the like didn’t exist, you’d have to run from Asagaya to Roppongi, and really kill yourself running as hard as you—

  No, no. That’s not what he should have been thinking about. The real question was why Kuroyukihime did it. And the answer was self-evident, wasn’t it? To rendezvous with Haruyuki on the other side.

  “Y-you can’t, Kuroyukihime! Once I dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field, the Beast could wake up at any—”

  “That’s why,” she asserted, deadly serious. “That’s why we’re going.” She pulled a second cable out from the integrated terminal. As she brought it to Haruyuki’s neck, their faces also grew closer. When he could feel her sweet breath, a voice clearer than neurospeak came at him.

  “Haruyuki. While you and I are parent and child, we are also master and student. In which case, at some point, the time definitely comes. And that time is now. You needn’t this development or the results. All you have to do is stand in front of me, just as you are now.”

  “Kuroyukihime.” As he said her name in a voice that was not quite a voice, Haruyuki earnestly tried to move his frozen head from side to side.

  What she was saying was perfectly clear.

  Fight. They would fight. If the Beast living in the Armor of Catastrophe used up some kind of energy through intense fighting, then the Black King herself would be his duel opponent and guide the Beast into a certain slumber until the purification mission the next evening. However…however…

  “I— Around the time I became a Burst Linker, I made a decision. That I would never fight you, no matter what happened. That if it came to that, then I would uninstall Brain Burst of my own will,” Haruyuki argued fiercely, sounding like a child on the verge of tears.

  Kuroyukihime smiled gently, wryly, and patted his head admonishingly. “Although it is indeed a fight, it’s different from a conflict fueled by hatred. It’s a duel. The sole and greatest reason Brain Burst exists. Or…” Puffing out her cheeks slightly, she added, “…are you saying you can duel Ash Roller—I mean, Rin Kusakabe—but you can’t duel me?”

  “N-no, it’s not like tha—”

  “Listen. There is indeed something in the Accelerated World that has to be communicated not in words, but with fists and swords and bullets. And now that I’m thinking about it, didn’t you yourself seek out a duel with me the night before the Hermes’ Cord race? You told me many, many precious things then, not in words, but with both fists. Now, it’s my turn to tell you what I have to say. As your parent.”

  “…Kuro…yukihime…” All kinds of feelings welled up in his heart, and all Haruyuki could do was groan.

  Kuroyukihime nodded with a kind smile before gently inserting into Haruyuki’s Neurolinker the plug of the second XSB cable she pulled out of the integrated terminal. “Now, me, too,” she urged.

  Haruyuki finally realized he was still clutching the first XSB cable. Even though his heart was in chaos, his fingers moved on autopilot, and the plug clumsily approached Kuroyukihime’s Neurolinker.

  She accepted the connection with eyelids closed, and the wired connection warning had no sooner disappeared than she was murmuring in a low voice, smile still on her lips, “We go on the count of five. If we both make it back safely…” Her lips kept moving, but he couldn’t catch the words they made.

  After a pause, a louder voice began to neatly carve out the time. “Now then, starting the countdown. Five, four, three, two, one.”

  If he shouted the command now, he might not be able to come back as himself again. Full of resolve and indecision in equal measure, Haruyuki braced himself and quietly said with Kuroyukihime:

  “Unlimited Burst.”

  8

  Forty-five years had already passed since the completion of construction on Roppongi H
ills Mori Tower, but it remained an enormous building poking its head far above the rest of the buildings in the Akasaka neighborhood. The roof was six thousand square meters, much larger than the sports grounds at Umesato Junior High. With a height of two hundred thirty-eight meters, it fell short of Tokyo Midtown Tower soaring up to the northeast by ten meters, but the floor area was one and a half times that other giant.

  Thus, the superb view that leapt into existence the second he opened his eyes stole his soul for a moment or two. Perhaps best called an enormous sky garden, walls and pillars reminiscent of Greek ruins were scattered around, made of a white, porcelainlike limestone. Small flowers he didn’t know the name of sprang up in the cracks and crumbling bases of the stone, and clouds drifted leisurely through the sky, shining madder red. Off near the horizon in the western distance was the sun, a large gold coin.

  A Twilight stage, a “natural” stage with earth attributes. Its features were: terrain objects that were easily shattered; though apparently entirely comprised of stone, many things were flammable; and surprisingly dark in areas of cover. Nothing particularly spectacular.

  However, for Haruyuki, this place had personal significance.

  Last fall, a time he would never forget, he had been given the key to another world by a black spangle butterfly who descended suddenly before him, and the first place they had visited was this land of eternal dusk. That butterfly had reached a hand out to Haruyuki, who was obstinately hanging his head, and asked, “Do these virtual two meters feel that far to you?”

  Yesterday, eight months after that day, when they direct-dueled in the nurse’s room at Umesato Junior High, Kuroyukihime had shown Haruyuki a modest, but true, miracle. She had denied the attributes of her own duel avatar through the Incarnate System—the phenomenon of overwriting—and changed the sword of her right hand into five slender fingers. The newly born “hand” shattered in a mere seventeen seconds, but that Incarnate in and of itself was nothing but a loud declaration: That Kuroyukihime herself would also close the two meters from that day in the past.

  This thought drifting through his mind, Haruyuki started to shift his gaze to seek out Kuroyukihime. However, immediately before that, he realized he had forgotten the thing he should be checking first and foremost.

  He hurriedly raised his hands and stared at his spread fingers. Silver Crow’s ten fingers—normally so slender that it was hard to believe he was a hand-to-hand combat type—had doubly thick armor and tapered into claws at the ends. They were basically in the same condition as when he direct-dueled with Rin Kusakabe before. He next checked the form and color of his body and found that these, too, were about the same as three hours earlier, a mix of 80 percent Crow and 20 percent Disaster. Finally, he closed his eyes and focused on the center of his spine deep within his consciousness, but it seemed that the Beast that lay there was still dozing. He couldn’t perceive its piercing pain, or its low howl.

  “Just stay asleep like that a little longer,” Haruyuki murmured, as he lifted his face and once again surveyed his surroundings.

  The roof of Mori Tower was large, but due to the terrain effects of the Twilight stage, countless pillars and stone walls covered it in a labyrinthine configuration, and Haru couldn’t see all the way to the other side. Clearing his ears, he couldn’t hear anything besides the howl of the desolate wind blowing.

  “Kuroyukihime?” Haruyuki called out to the person he was waiting for in a slightly tense voice. But he couldn’t see a single active object, much less obsidian armor. But now that he thought about it, Kuroyukihime had said simply that she’d moved from Suginami to the roof here in Roppongi Hills; it would have been impossible for her to precisely grasp the position where he would appear. She had to be somewhere in the maze searching for him just like he was her.

  With this thought, Haruyuki started walking along the narrow path between the chalky stone walls. Unlike the main tower building, the decorative walls and pillars were likely not very strong, so he might have been able to smash through them in a straight line, but he seriously hesitated to do so. The rare Twilight stage was, for him, a place to memorialize, a sacred space.

  The path hit a wall soon enough and branched off to both sides. He turned right on a hunch. Taking care not to step on the small flowers blooming on the left and right of the cobblestone path, he headed toward what he thought was the center of the roof. He turned right several more times, and then left, and then he slipped through a crumbling arch to find a plaza about twenty meters in diameter, slightly lower than the surrounding area.

  The center of the roof of the real Mori Tower was also a heliport, a meter lower than the wooden deck around it. So this was probably the center. Of course, there was no H mark for the heliport; instead, a dozen or so pillars stood in a ring. In the center of these there was a remarkably thick, tall pillar; water flowed smoothly from the top of it, and at its base was a shallow pond.

  He stepped down into the plaza as if pulled in and walked over to the central pillar. He brought his hand up to the wet limestone surface, and just as he was about to touch it—

  “Crow.” He heard a low, calm voice call his name from the other side of the pillar.

  “Oh! K-Kuroyukihime!” Is this where you were? he was about to say, moving around the pillar, but the voice continued and held him back.

  “Stop. Don’t move, just listen.”

  “Huh…? O-okay.”

  The diameter of the pillar standing in the center of the plaza was, generously speaking, eighty centimeters at best. She might have been small, but with her design emphasizing the edged areas of her limbs, Black Lotus would have had to strain to hide completely behind this pillar. Unintentionally imagining how she looked, all scrunched up, Haruyuki stopped in place.

  “Silver Crow. I’ve been thinking for a long time about how I can help you now that you’re parasitized by the Armor of Catastrophe.” Kuroyukihime’s voice came from the other side of the stone pillar once more, with just the slightest bit of a flat echo, as though she were deliberately suppressing any intonation. Haru held his breath and waited for her to continue. “I examined several ideas, but this did seem to be the best method. Crow. Unfortunately, you have become too great a danger now. For the Legion, for the Accelerated World, and for me.”

  “…K-Kuro…yukihime…?” An inexpressible confusion. The words she uttered did in fact express reality, but that way of speaking, somehow businesslike—no, even cold…

  “Thus, this is my decision. Disappear from this world.”

  The completely emotionless voice slammed into his ears from the other side of the pillar.

  At basically the same time, something pierced the thick limestone before him and reached out in a straight line. A sharp, black blade. A sword— No, the Black King’s hand.

  Dumbfounded, Haruyuki stared at the ebony tip aimed precisely at the center of his own chest, the most critical point for a duel avatar. His thoughts stopped, and he had no sensation in his limbs. But perhaps his body reacted on its own; he leaned his torso to the left a mere five centimeters.

  Whuk.

  With a very modest impact, the black blade plunged deeper and deeper into the right side of Silver Crow’s chest, until it came out through his back.

  An instant of a chilly, cool sensation. And then—an incandescent, fierce pain.

  “Unh…Ah!” A hoarse cry slipped out of him, and he focused every bit of his strength in his legs to jump straight backward. The sword slid out of his chest, giving rise to a new round of pain, and the bright-red light of the damage effect in the air shimmered like fresh blood. He staggered, bathed in that light, and plunged his left knee into the ground.

  Although he had evaded a direct hit to his heart, he had taken serious damage to his torso, and his health gauge abruptly dropped over 20 percent. Naturally, his special-attack gauge was also charged by an amount corresponding to the damage, but there was one other obvious change inside him.

  ….GRAAAR.

  A low
howl. The first drop of the molten iron, the red-hot rage that was about to spill out of him. The Beast was waking up. Haruyuki hadn’t managed to dodge—albeit by only a few centimeters—the black blade’s surprise attack by chance or his own reflexive action. The Beast had moved his duel avatar.

  “Kuro…yukihime…why…!” Haruyuki squeezed a voice out, pressing his right hand to the wound on his chest—or holding back the rage of the Beast trying to gush out from it. “Why…would you…?!”

  It was true that they had dropped into the Unlimited Neutral Field to fight. However, this—the surprise attack, not letting him see her—had simply fanned the Beast’s rage and called it to complete wakefulness.

  Wait. Did Kuroyukihime ever have any intention of dueling? Was her plan all along to bring him into the Accelerated World, beat him down, and solve this problem in one fell swoop with the Judgment Blow?

  GRAAAAR…ENEMY…IF THIS IS AN ENEMY…THEN ONLY…SLAUGHTER…EVEN IF…THAT IS YOUR PARENT, a creaking voice echoed forlornly in the depths of Haru’s mind. He could no longer stop the Beast’s awakening.

  But down on one knee, body curled up into itself, Haruyuki started speaking desperately to the pseudo-intelligence living within him. Wait, Beast! You’re wrong. You’re totally wrong!

  Exactly. It was wrong. He couldn’t believe that the voice calling to him from the other side of the pillar and the blade that pierced his chest belonged to anyone other than Black Lotus, but…even still, it was wrong. She wouldn’t say that. She wouldn’t do that. So then, someone was faking the Black King’s voice and techniques. That was the only conclusion—no, the truth.

  Haruyuki slowly stood up and glanced down at his body as his armor darkened with the awakening of the Beast. “Come out from behind that pillar ple—I mean, come out! Who are you?!” he shouted resolutely.

  Momentarily, the wind stopped as if afraid, and even the flowers at his feet hid their faces.