The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer

by Reki Kawahara

Finally, a smooth voice. “It’s sad, Crow. You hear my voice with those ears, feel my technique with that body, and still, you can still ask a question like that.”

  The chalky pillars in the center of the roof of Mori Tower shone golden in the Twilight stage, illuminated by the setting sun from the right, with the left side sinking into shadow to create a strong contrast. From that shadow, a silhouette stepped out smoothly, silently.

  A face mask that tapered into a V from both sides. Armor skirt patterned after the petals of a water lily around the incredibly slender waist. Arms and legs in the form of long swords. And the Armor of the entire body a real black, more concentrated than the shadow.

  “…That…” Haruyuki felt a pitch-black despair drop into his heart. And like a drop of ink in a glass of water, the darkness seeped into the interior of his avatar.

  The volume of the Beast’s howl increased in step with this stain. Kree, kree. With a dry metal creaking, his hands and feet grew larger into claws. The protrusions on either side of his forehead shot out abruptly, and his visor began to shift into something resembling the maw of a wild animal.

  But unaware of the changes coming over him, Haruyuki simply continued to stare at the jet-black duel avatar standing in the shadow of the pillar.

  That form. And no avatar besides the Black King had that coloring. So then, those words before, were they Black Lotus’s true feelings—Kuroyukihime’s? Those cold words, announcing she would cut away Silver Crow—no, Haruyuki Arita—as a dangerous element and eliminate him from the Accelerated World…?

  Skreenk! His limbs transformed into thick, blackish-silver armor with sharp edges. The top and bottom halves of the visor enclosing his round helmet had already finished generating; all that was left was for him to bring the fang-shaped serrations together and bite down hard.

  THAT IS THE ENEMY. OUR ENEMY. CALL THE SWORD. BOIL WITH FLAMES! the Beast commanded Haruyuki, with an increasingly clear voice.

  But still, Haruyuki gritted his teeth beneath his visor and shook his head slightly. “No. I can’t accept that. I don’t believe it. That’s not Kuroyukihime,” he groaned, half talking to himself. The voice, the form, and even the color might have been those of the Black King, but that was not Black Lotus—Kuroyukihime. His instincts, his soul, were screaming it.

  The pronounced shadow of the large pillar, characteristic of the Twilight stage, swallowed up all details and painted over everything, obstructed his vision—no, all five of his senses. The avatar that looked like the Black King did not move, instead keeping her body sunk in the darkness, as if she was trying to flee the light. He felt something artificial in it.

  Wasn’t there any way to make her move away from the shadow, even if only for a moment? Smash the pillar— No. If he carried out any physical attack now, the Disasterfication would be completed instantly. Don’t destroy it; illuminate it. With a new, powerful light.

  Beast. Let me just check. Don’t get in the way of me activating my Incarnate, he murmured, and the pseudo-intelligence howled with dissatisfaction.

  GRAAAAR…IF THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO CONFIRM THIS IS THE ENEMY, THEN DO AS YOU WISH.

  …Yeah…I’ll confirm it. Exactly what that is, there.

  Haruyuki slowly turned the five fingers of his right hand, transformed into sinister claws, toward the Black King of the darkness—it was a movement like he was bracing to withstand an intense destructive impact. But in contrast, his heart was calm like the surface of a lake. He probably only had one chance, one moment. He had to focus on the image, activate, and release in less time than ever before.

  Light. The image of light. He mustered up every ounce of concentration from every corner of his body to focus on the mental image that was the source of his Laser Sword, the Incarnate technique he had shot off any number of times in the past and condensed in the depths of his right hand. This image, honed so small and sharp that it didn’t even generate an overlay—he had to release it all at once!

  “Light!!” he shouted out unconsciously. At the same time, a pure white light jetted out from the right hand of the more-than-half-Disasterfied Silver Crow, until it illuminated the world.

  That was when Haruyuki saw it.

  The form was indeed exactly that of the Black King. But it was a form that took shape only when seen from a very limited angle. In other words, it had no depth. The swords of the four limbs, the Armor patterned after flower petals, it was all just cut from panels thinner than paper—a shadow picture. The avatar perfectly resembled Black Lotus in the darkness, but this was its true form, exposed in the momentary flash of light.

  “You— Who are you?!” Haruyuki cried, thrusting the talons of his right hand out.

  The shadow avatar, sinking back into the darkness created by the pillar, didn’t move, as if it had been burned in place by the strobe light. In the gloom, it really was an almost perfect copy of Black Lotus, but now that he had seen its true form, he realized it was different from the Black King in one important way. Normally, the tips of the Black King’s toes floated a couple centimeters above the ground, since she usually moved by hovering. But the points of the shadow avatar’s feet were digging into the ground slightly. A minute, but decisive, difference.

  Even bathed in Haruyuki’s unflinching gaze, whoever it was who was pretending to be the king maintained their silence for a few more seconds, but finally, perhaps deciding that any further deception was impossible, they leisurely spread out the swords of both arms—or rather, the thin, weak panels patterned after them. At the same time, a voice:

  “I’ve underestimated you. The fact that you still use the Incarnate of the first quadrant although the Armor has penetrated you so deeply means you’ve grown, hmm?”

  The tone was again basically a perfect reproduction of Kuroyukihime’s in the Accelerated World. But the choice of words and the intonation made Haruyuki’s memory ache uncomfortably. He had the feeling that he had met someone who talked like this somewhere, sometime before. It was—Right, in the Unlimited Neutral Field…in a stage colored in the same thick shadows…

  “You…you…” Almost at the same time as Haruyuki moaned quietly, the dangerous thoughts of the Beast sounded in the depths of his head.

  YOU. ARE. YOU ARE…THAT. THAT TIME…

  Even faced with the hostile gaze containing the animosity of two beings, the shadow avatar stood calmly in place—or rather, was pasted there. Bringing down the extended arms in a slightly mechanical motion, he launched into another monologue.

  “Coming into contact with you Black Legionnaires here was entirely unexpected. But, well, this sort of opportunity doesn’t come along too often, does it? Metatron on the Midtown Tower was raging after three days of quiet, so I was on standby just in case, when I was surprised by unexpected guests.”

  The tone, aloof and somehow reminiscent of a teacher giving a lecture, stung at Haru’s memory sharply once more, but a physical unease great enough to override this moved Haruyuki’s mouth. “You were on standby?”

  Metatron—“Archangel Metatron”—was the Legend-class Enemy guarding Tokyo Midtown Tower, which soared up five hundred meters to the northeast. Haruyuki had indeed seen the terrifying, invisible monster use a dreadnought laser attack to create a massive crater in the urban center of Roppongi in reaction to the rocket punch launched by Iron Pound. Most likely, the shadow avatar before him had hidden himself here on the roof of Mori Tower, a position that allowed easy monitoring of the other skyscraper, in order to search out whoever had caused the monster to attack.

  But in reality, that was impossible.

  Haruyuki had seen Metatron attack about three hours ago in real-world time. So, in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it had already been three thousand hours since then. One hundred twenty-five days had actually passed. No one could possibly wait for a hazy something for that massive amount of time without even sleeping.

  The instant his thoughts got to this point, Haruyuki belatedly remembered he had been shocked once before in the same way.
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  The final battle in the Unlimited Neutral Field with Dusk Taker, a powerful enemy who had stolen Silver Crow’s silver wings. Despite the fact that Haruyuki and Takumu had taken the greatest measures to keep Dusk Taker from breaking his promise and setting up an ambush, people were already lying in wait on the Umesato Junior High grounds, where the fight was to take place.

  Dusk Taker had triumphantly told the tale to an astonished Haruyuki and friends. About how he was the only one in the Accelerated World who could stay on standby for incredibly long times. Because he was the only one who could stop the acceleration of his thoughts during a burst link due to the brain implant chip in his head, the lone “deceleration” user…

  “You…you’re…” Whirling to face the two-dimensional avatar, thin like a paper cutout, Haruyuki called out in a creaking voice:

  “…Vice president of the Acceleration Research Society…Black Vise!!”

  The instant he heard the name, the shadow avatar held his right hand up in front of his chest, bent at the waist, and bowed courteously.

  His entire body then neatly rotated ninety degrees on the pivot of the toes of his right foot, which dug lightly into the ground. Because his every part was made of extremely thin panels, at this angle, he looked to Haruyuki’s eyes like nothing more than a single line. But Haruyuki didn’t get the chance to look too closely; the thin pieces separated once more into ten or so panels on each side and lined up neatly with a few centimeters between them. What was produced was a “layered” avatar, like a detailed radiation fin cut out into the shape of a person. This was nothing other than the true form of Black Vise, the avatar who had once made Haruyuki and his friends suffer so terribly with his unusual powers.

  Vise was still courteously bent forward, right arm at his chest, but unlike when he was the fake Lotus, his left arm was missing from its socket. Still, he wasn’t injured…This strange avatar had the ability to freely detach the panels that made up his body and manipulate them over long distances. If he’d activated that ability now, then his target was likely…

  “You…her, the Black King, what did you…?”

  The fact that the real Kuroyukihime still hadn’t shown up on the roof of the tower like she was supposed to no doubt meant that Black Vise had gotten to her first. Haruyuki started toward Vise to press the question, when—

  Suddenly, a fierce, red-hot pain pierced the center of his spine.

  “Graaaaaaaar!!”

  Haruyuki didn’t know whether the tremendous roar of rage sounded in his mind alone, or if it actually jetted out from his mouth. But the next time, definitely in his head, he heard the crazed howling of the Beast.

  YOU…KILL! KILL! KILLKILLKILLKILL!

  Haruyuki staggered at the incredible explosion of negative thought, as though something had slammed into him physically. At the same time, scenes flashed across his view in quick succession.

  A large mortar-shaped hole dug out of the ground. A female-type avatar with golden-yellow armor standing at the bottom, restrained by a jet-black cross.

  From the deep hole next to the cross, the figure of a strange snake slithered into view. With a mouth lined with countless fangs, it ate the girl, chewing up her armor with a loud crunch.

  On the edge of the basin, a couple dozen Burst Linkers silently watched over the tragedy. In one corner, three shadows stood a distance from the rest of the group. A small avatar with four eyes that glittered eerily. An avatar cloaked completely in white light, such that her actual form wasn’t visible. And a matte-black layered avatar, several thin plates put together in the shape of a person…

  This figure burned into the Beast’s memory was overlaid perfectly on the Black Vise before his eyes.

  Haruyuki felt a large amount of information flowing into his mind like red-hot molten metal. Or maybe it existed within him right from the start. The “dream” he had had two days earlier, during the short nap he took after breaking into the Castle with Utai Shinomiya…Forgotten until now, that long, sad dream—or rather, all the memories of the first Disaster Chrome Falcon—suddenly came back to life.

  It’s him.

  He was the one who had set a trap for the golden-yellow girl, Saffron Blossom, the avatar who had held the ideal of zero total point loss. He had had the hell snake Jormungand kill her over and over and over. The very person who had brought about the incident that twisted the sixth star of the Seven Arcs, the Destiny, and the high-level Enhanced Armament Star Caster and turned them into the Armor of Catastrophe, the Disaster, was actually the Black Vise standing before him now.

  “You…you…”

  Now the Beast’s rage was Haruyuki’s. As if guided by an overwhelming urge to kill and destroy, the light armor covering his body abruptly transformed into something blackish silver and heavy, as a long tail slithered out from his back.

  “You…killed Fron…!!” As he cried out, his facial visor came down with a sharp metallic clank. His view was dyed a pale gray, and only the figure of his enemy was set in sharp relief.

  Even after Silver Crow had completed his transformation into Chrome Disaster, the layered avatar continued to stand calmly where he was. “Hmm. Very interesting,” he said to himself quietly, tilting just the thin panels of his head. “You know me—or, rather, you remember me from the past?”

  The voice was not the one that had sounded so much like Kuroyukihime only moments earlier, but rather the low, relaxed voice of the boy once more. It was extremely quiet, but Haruyuki’s enhanced hearing clearly picked up the words uttered.

  “How COULD I…forget…I HAVE continued to exist IN THIS world IN ORDER TO kill YOU.” The halting words were no sooner spat out than they turned into pure red flames and scorched the air.

  Essentially, the reason the Armor of Catastrophe existed was to obliterate all Burst Linkers. The source of that dreadful urge was, of course, the death of Saffron Blossom. Blossom had had the ideal of building a mutual burst-point-sharing system and removing the fear of total point loss from the Accelerated World. For it, she was betrayed by thirty or more Burst Linkers, who set a trap for her. So then, he would give them the elimination they desired that resulted from total point loss. This resolve of the first, Chrome Falcon, had become lodged in the Enhanced Armament and spurred those who wore the Armor after him to endless slaughter.

  However, in the end, the core of this massive, swollen compulsion was a hatred toward the three people who had orchestrated Blossom’s tragedy. None of the three had shown themselves center stage in the more than seven years of real-world time since that incident, and now Black Vise, the “restrainer,” happened to run into Chrome Disaster in an awakened state.

  The highly pressurized desire for vengeance caught fire, and the tremendous, murderous urge that subsequently exploded in him easily blew away what little control Haruyuki’s sense of reason held over the avatar. An aura of even more concentrated darkness rising up from his dark silver armor, Haruyuki—no, the sixth Disaster—took a heavy step forward.

  “I WILL NOT STOP slicing you UP UNTIL YOUR body is TRANSFORMED INTO a pile of scraps,” Haruyuki said, words riding on incandescent breath, and raised his right hand high.

  The beautiful madder-red sky of the Twilight stage suddenly clouded over. Dark cumulonimbus clouds appeared from nowhere and gathered together in a spiral, swathed in pale lightning. A remarkably fierce bolt of lightning appeared from the center—the sword once called Star Caster, about to be summoned to Haruyuki’s raised palm.

  Black Vise moved.

  The panels making up his right arm quickly slid in from the outside as they sank into the shadows at his feet. With almost no delay, two thin sheets gradually rose up from Haruyuki’s own shadow to slam up against his avatar on both sides and tried to catch him. He had been hit with this before. It was Vise’s restraint attack, Static Pressure.

  Haruyuki paused the summoning of his sword. “Flash Blink!” he called out quickly.

  When he had been pinned between these panels two months earli
er, the only way he had been able to escape was to crawl and yank himself free, losing all the Armor on his torso in the process. However, for the Haruyuki of the present, there was a way to evade it without injury: the ability left in the Armor by the first, aka Chrome Falcon—pseudo-teleportation. Long, long ago, Falcon himself had fled the super pressure of the thin panels with this technique.

  Haruyuki’s body turned into countless minuscule particles and started to move forward at super-high speed.

  Almost as if anticipating that reaction, Black Vise murmured, “Hexahedral Compression.”

  Haruyuki’s field of view was closed off by darkness. Though it wasn’t that the light had been lost. No, a new panel had appeared before him to block his way.

  His avatar, a mass of particles charging forward, slammed into the wall and bounced backward, rematerializing. As he staggered, his back hit a panel that appeared behind him. Flash Blink was basically almighty as a close-range movement ability, but it was still not true teleportation. His particulate body couldn’t move to a place unconnected to his starting point. There needed to be a hole or gap it could pass through.

  “Grar!” A cry of rage. Completely surrounded by matte-black walls on all sides, Haruyuki had nowhere to go. So then: up. He decided instantly and moved to jump. But perhaps this action had been anticipated as well; with a bang, the gaps directly above and below him were closed off with black lids.

  All light was extinguished, and Haruyuki understood that he was completely locked inside a rectangular box. And that wasn’t all. The panels on all six sides were closing in on him with a slow but certain movement. A fearsome pressure pushed against his head, shoulders, chest, back, and the soles of his feet, and his armor creaked fiercely, sparks flying.

  “Gr…raaaaaar!” Howling, Haruyuki tried with all his might to push back against the panels. Unlike the total speed-type Silver Crow, Chrome Disaster was all-powerful, with a balance of speed and strength. Haruyuki was currently incomparably stronger than his former self. And yet the six panels didn’t even flex, almost as though they were the borders of the very world itself.