Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire

by Reki Kawahara

  Kuroyukihime crossed her arms and nodded. “An unopened gate’s the same thing as a wall, after all. If it’s a gate, it’s logical to think that it opens. If we could get there and push on the door, that is.”

  UI> YES. THE GATES ARE THERE, BUT WE CAN’T REACH THEM. ALL FOUR ARE VERY OBVIOUSLY GUARDED BY FOUR TOP-LEVEL ENEMIES, THE STRONGEST OF THE STRONG EVEN IN THE UNLIMITED NEUTRAL FIELD.

  “……!” Haruyuki took a sharp breath, feeling like he could finally see where this discussion was going.

  Enemy was the name for the monsters that lived in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Similar to general MMORPGs, they were controlled by the system, and the majority of individuals would savagely attack any Burst Linker that entered into its response range. If you took one down, you got burst points instead of experience points, but not only were even the lowest-level Enemies terrifyingly strong, they paid a trivial amount of points. If you were going to put some real effort into hunting Enemies, you would first need to put together a party of a few people and then camp out in the Unlimited Neutral Field for a few days to a week; it was no mean feat. Haruyuki was definitely not averse to some dull grinding, but even he couldn’t really muster an interest in taking an active part in a hunt.

  He wetted his dry throat with cooling tea. “The strongest. So how strong are they?” he asked.

  Kuroyukihime fell into thought. “Mmm…To be honest, there’s no way to really explain it…Okay. Haruyuki, perhaps it was just the one time, but you did see a party of about twenty hunting Enemies once, didn’t you? I think it was that time we were heading toward Ikebukuro with the Red King.”

  “Y-yeah. It was a huge one, maybe the size of a building. Was that one of the top-level Enemies Shinomiya’s talking about?” Haruyuki asked fearfully, and the two veteran Burst Linkers grinned wryly in perfect sync.

  Utai’s fingers flashed, and the cherry font flowed with a light sound effect. UI> AN ENEMY THAT CAN BE HUNTED BY TWENTY OR SO PEOPLE IS CALLED A Beast. AN INDIVIDUAL APPROXIMATELY TEN TIMES STRONGER THAN THAT IS A Legend, BUT PLAYERS ALMOST NEVER ENCOUNTER THESE. IF A PLAYER DID ENCOUNTER ONE UNPREPARED, IT WOULD ESSENTIALLY MEAN DEATH.

  “T-ten times…than that…?!” Haruyuki cried out, a chill running up his spine. He had been convinced that going one-on-one with the Enemy they’d seen on Yamate-dori Street on their way to Ikebukuro would mean instant death. His own experiences actually offered no means of imagining just how strong a Legend would be.

  However.

  Haruyuki couldn’t react at all, much less shiver, at what Kuroyukihime followed that with, as smooth as ever.

  “And the Enemies guarding the four gates of the Castle are so strong that the Legends look like Chihuahuas. They’re called top-level because we can’t even begin to guess at their status. They’re also known as the Four Gods, and just as that name implies, they should be recognized not as monsters but as the true gods ruling the Accelerated World.”

  The Accelerated World’s…gods.

  Until that moment, Haruyuki’s faith that the strongest beings in the game space produced by Brain Burst were the Seven Kings of Pure Color had never wavered. He had been convinced that no matter how strong the large Enemies might have been, Kuroyukihime, Niko, and the other kings would be able to defeat them even in one-on-one combat.

  And if the conditions were right at least, they could probably win against a Beast, or even a Legend depending on the situation. The Blue King’s nickname was Legend Slayer, after all. Haruyuki was certain that was proof that he had once defeated a Legend solo. And that this had been such a great exploit, it ended up a title of honor.

  But it almost seemed like a faint hint of fear bled into Kuroyukihime’s voice as she spoke now.

  “Umm.” Haruyuki lowered his voice and asked timidly, “So which is stronger: a king or a god?”

  “The kings are, in the end, people. In contrast, the gods are far beyond the domain of human beings. If we were to seriously take them on directly, we Seven Kings could muster every bit of power we had and likely not be a match for even just one of the Four Gods.”

  “Seriously?!” he said, dumbfounded. “So then, um, doesn’t that mean there’s no way to break through the gates those monsters—I mean, the god-level Enemies—are guarding?”

  Utai nodded, shaking the ponytail that hung down to her shoulders. UI> YES. IT’S INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT. IT’S BECAUSE OF THIS DIFFICULTY THAT WE CAME UP WITH THIS IDEA. THE IDEA THAT SLIPPING PAST THE GUARD OF THE FOUR GODS, OPENING THE GATE, AND GETTING INSIDE THE CASTLE MIGHT BE THE SECOND REQUIREMENT TO CLEAR BRAIN BURST.

  “Oh! I—I guess!” Haruyuki cried out unconsciously.

  The known requirement—take all the burst points of five other level-nine Burst Linkers and become level ten—was extremely difficult, but he could see it being possible soon, in a certain sense. Five of the Seven Kings simply had to sacrifice themselves and offer their heads to one king. In that instant, a new level-ten Burst Linker would be born, and something would happen in the Accelerated World.

  Naturally, however, in reality, that sort of thing was not going to happen. Every Burst Linker fought to make themselves stronger. There was no way any of them would simply throw it all away, not when they had given the game such passionate devotion for such an enormous amount of time to finally reach level nine.

  Conversely, breaking past the Four Gods and getting inside the Castle was, at best, a problem of fighting power. It might be possible to break in if, for instance, all the members in a single large Legion were in the king class. This, too, was unrealistic, but there was no need for any self-sacrificing mentality.

  So the two requirements of “level ten” and “Castle siege” had different difficulties: The former required strength of heart, the latter strength of fist. Thinking about this contrast, it made sense to think that if someone managed to reach the inside of the Castle, something would indeed happen in the world—that depending on the circumstances, Brain Burst itself would be cleared. Plenty of sense. After all, wasn’t the impregnable castle in the middle of the world map the final stage in pretty much all the old games?

  “Yeah.” Haruyuki leaned forward and bobbed his head up and down, enjoying the way his serious gamer mind was being so enticingly stimulated. “That’s possible. That might be it! If it’s protected by such incredible monsters, then the Imperial Palace—I mean, the Castle—is the so-called last dungeon! If we can just get inside, some kind of amazing…something amazing might be…”

  UI> DEPENDING ON HOW THINGS ARE SET UP, THERE MIGHT ALSO BE SOME KIND OF INCREDIBLE LAST BOSS EVEN MORE POWERFUL THAN THE FOUR GODS. AT ANY RATE, WHEN SACCHI ANNOUNCED HER RETIREMENT TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO, I AND THE OTHER MEMBERS OF NEGA NEBULUS INSISTED ON THE SAME IDEA WE EXPLAINED TO YOU NOW. IF ONE PATH TO CLEARING THE GAME WAS BLOCKED, THEN WE WOULD TRY THE SECOND. OBSTINATE SACCHI.

  “I stopped you,” Kuroyukihime noted with a wry grin. “Of course I stopped you. I screamed with all my heart that it was hopeless, that I wouldn’t forgive you, that you had to give it up.”

  Her expression was calm, her tone light and easy. But the slightest hint of pain appeared in her black eyes, and the instant he saw it, Haruyuki had a fuzzy foreboding of how this escapade had ended. His previous excitement receded, replaced with a cold tension filling his chest, and he waited intently for what followed.

  “But it wasn’t just the Elements; each and every one of that lot in the first Nega Nebulus was obstinate. Not content to merely go against their Master’s orders, they even told me to give them all the Judgment Blow if I wanted to stop them. In the end, I lost my temper and sat down in protest, but they left, heading toward the Castle in small groups.”

  UI> NATURALLY. BECAUSE WHILE WE WERE YOUR SUBORDINATES, WE WERE AT THE SAME TIME YOUR PROTECTORS, SACCHI.

  “Now look, Uiui. You had only just started elementary school at the time! Really, each and every one of you…” The end of her sentence melted tremblingly into space. Haruyuki stayed quiet, watching her pale thr
oat moving as she shut her eyes. She soon lifted her lids again; her eyes were slightly wet, but no tears fell.

  “With no other choice, I struck out for the Castle with everyone else.” Kuroyukihime continued her quiet recollection. “The field attribute at the time was the rare Aurora stage. Beautiful lights shimmered across the night sky…That path we walked from Suginami to the Castle along Shinjuku-dori Street, it was almost like a midnight picnic.”

  UI> IT WAS FUN, WASN’T IT? IT’S STILL ONE OF MY CHERISHED MEMORIES, THAT TIME SPENT CHATTING WITH THE LEGION MEMBERS AS WE WALKED. GRAPH GAVE ME A PIGGYBACK RIDE. AND AQUA PUSHED RAKER’S wHEELCHAIR. IT’S LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY.

  “We reached the Castle so quickly, I thought perhaps we should do another turn around Tokyo. Or wait. Graph did actually say that in all seriousness, didn’t he? But, of course, that proposal was rejected, and there on a hill in Kojimachi before Hanzomon, we held our final strategy meeting.”

  She lowered her long lashes, and her eyes fluttered as though she were looking into the distance. Quiet memories fell from her slightly parted lips.

  “The Four Gods are essentially one body split into four parts, so we needed to fight them all at the same time. We split the Legion up into four squads and placed them north, east, south, and west. Before we separated, everyone received a buff from Utai, and with our hearts as one, brimming with courage in the highest of spirits, we charged the guardians of the Castle.”

  “S-so then…what happened?” Haruyuki asked hoarsely, unable to bear the mere second of silence.

  Kuroyukihime straightened up in her seat and placed both hands on her knees. “About a hundred and twenty seconds after the start of the attack, the last of us fell,” she said quietly. “The first Nega Nebulus did not disappear through the usual dissolution. It was annihilated in that moment by the hand of God.”

  We’ll bring in Takumu and Chiyuri and discuss the rest tomorrow, Kuroyukihime told a dazed Haruyuki and drank the last of her cold tea.

  In truth, he still had many, many things he wanted to ask. What specifically did annihilated mean? Where were the former members now and what were they doing? Why did they stay silent? Why didn’t they get in touch with Kuroyukihime? And why was one of them, Utai Shinomiya, here before Haruyuki and his friends now, after an absence of two and a half years?

  But she was right. This was a story that current members Takumu and Chiyuri should also hear. And more important, the chic analog clock hanging on the wall indicated that it would be seven in a few minutes, the hard deadline for leaving school grounds.

  After quickly washing up the teacups and picking up her school-designated bag from a corner of the sofa, Kuroyukihime urged the other two on with a “Well, let’s go, then” and started walking toward the door. Haruyuki could almost believe that her face in profile was the same as it always was.

  Last fall, when she met Haruyuki, back when she cast aside her dummy avatar and returned to the Accelerated World, she had seemed afraid to even glance at her memories of the past. In fact, when the Yellow King had shoved a replay video before her on the battlefield, it caused her to “zero fill”—she lost the will to fight and became unable to move. All of which was to say, even Kuroyukihime, with her transcendent battle skills, also fought her own weakness on a daily basis.

  I’ve got no time for uncertainty, either. He stood and followed Kuroyukihime to the door as he made a new resolution in his heart.

  He had to get stronger, ever stronger, as a member of the reborn Nega Nebulus. He would chase away that Armor of Catastrophe parasite sticking to his avatar somewhere in days—forget a week—and fight proudly in the Territories on Saturday. Kuroyukihime still hadn’t explained to him what sort of “purification strategy” she was thinking of, but he would endure whatever special training or penance was necessary. He secretly clenched his right hand into a tight fist.

  At that moment, the chat window still in his field of view offered up a question that proved Kuroyukihime was indeed not as composed as usual. UI> I’LL ASK JUST IN CASE. SACCHI, DO YOU INTEND TO WALK HOME DRESSED LIKE THAT?

  Huh? he thought, looking over at Kuroyukihime ahead of him: beyond the black hair hanging down her back, a glossy T-shirt of quick-drying material. On her lower half, formfitting shorts and slender legs stretching out from under them. Haruyuki had completely forgotten that during that long conversation, Kuroyukihime was still in the gym clothes she had changed into to clean the hutch.

  “A-ah! I forgot. Hold on a minute,” Kuroyukihime said, quite panicked—unusual for her—as she whirled around. She pushed through wide-eyed Haruyuki and somewhat exasperated Utai to run over to the lockers in the southwest corner. Abandoning her bag to the floor, she took the hem of her T-shirt in both hands and, without the least hesitation, yanked it up over her torso.

  Her snow-white back and the strap of her lacy black bra were burned into his retinas—

  “Hnyagh?!” He didn’t know whether letting this mysterious yelp out was a huge mistake or just the right thing to do.

  At any rate, the moment she heard it, Kuroyukihime looked back with a start once more, and as soon as she saw Haruyuki standing there stiffly, she quickly covered her chest with both arms.

  I’m glad this is the real world, Haruyuki said to himself seriously, watching as her face grew red hot. If this were the Accelerated World, she would use the most massive Incarnate attack she had to chop my head off.

  The T-shirt she had sent whirling through the air slapped him in the face, filling his nose with the most wonderful scent and blacking out his entire visual field.

  After Kuroyukihime had chased Haruyuki from the student council office and changed at super-high speed, he followed her and an exasperated Utai out of the school gates with twenty seconds left before 7:00 PM, just barely getting a normal record in the school log.

  Before he had the chance to even breathe a sigh of relief, he was pelleted by harsh words in a harsher voice. “Haruyuki. It’s already dark. You’ll walk Utai home! When you’re done with the Animal Care Club tomorrow, convene in the student council office! Make sure you talk to Takumu and Chiyuri! That’s all! Now good-bye!”

  In front of the school gates, Kuroyukihime gave orders and farewells at top speed, whirled around, and headed off in the direction of Asagaya. The clacking of her loafers grew distant, and, watching her swinging black hair melt into the evening dark, Haruyuki expelled the air he had been holding in his lungs.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, though,” he whispered.

  Next to him, Utai tapped away with the fingers of both hands. UI> SACCHI’S ALWAYS BEEN A SECRET KLUTZ.

  “Yeah, I kinda knew that.” He bobbed his head and then shook it from side to side, rethinking the whole situation. A lot of things had happened since school let out that day, but he still hadn’t cleared every mission. There remained the task Kuroyukihime had set for him: seeing Utai to her house.

  Glancing up at the sky, he saw all signs of dusk were almost completely gone; the lights of the city dimly illuminated the bottoms of the clouds. Even with the social camera network on each and every road, it was definitely not safe for a fourth grader to be walking home alone by herself at this time of day. But more important—

  “Um, Shinomiya? It’s already past seven. You’re okay for curfew?” he asked, and Utai’s fingers started moving, the look on her face unchanging.

  UI> THAT’S NOT A PROBLEM. I’M ALSO A BURST LINKER, YOU KNOW?

  When he finally understood the meaning of this a few seconds later, Haruyuki unthinkingly clenched his teeth.

  Essentially all Burst Linkers carried around one shared hurt. That’s what Haruyuki’s teacher, Sky Raker, had said. And this was the pain of being watched over by Neurolinkers from infancy instead of by a loving parent. Utai’s statement essentially boiled down to a question of whether a child raised in this manner would face any kind of reprimand if they were to arrive home late.

  Haruyuki had no adult in his house to yell at him, even if h
e came home past nine, and he knew the answer only too well. “Right. But, well, I guess there’s no harm in getting home earlier. You’re probably hungry after all that work you did cleaning.” The moment he said this, a fairly loud, low-frequency rumble came from Haruyuki’s own digestive tract.

  Utai giggled slightly and nodded, her bound hair swinging. UI> THAT IS TRUE. I CAN MAKE IT HOME BY MYSELF, SO PLEASE FEEL FREE TO GO, ARITA. HAVE A GOOD EVENING. She bowed and began walking south, the hem of her white skirt fluttering.

  “No, I’ll walk you!” Haruyuki hurriedly chased after her. “It’s already dark and all, and if I go home now, Kuroyukihime will for sure get super mad at me tomorrow.”

  Utai cocked her head to one side, still walking. UI> THAT CERTAINLY WOULD BE THE CASE. WELL THEN, MY APOLOGIES, BUT I DO APPRECIATE YOU SEEING ME TO OMIYA. She then adjusted her pace slightly to walk immediately alongside Haruyuki.

  This was actually a strange journey for him.

  Haruyuki was an only child, so naturally, he had no brothers or sisters, and his mother was estranged from her relatives, so he basically had no memory of ever spending time with a small child. If pressed to give at least one example of a child he knew, that would be his cousin Tomoko Saito, in neighboring Nakano Ward, but he hadn’t seen her since they’d met at his mother’s parents’ house five or six years earlier.

  But…he could say he had a younger friend in Niko, who had snuck into his house by pretending to be this very Tomoko. However he looked at it, though, she was the Red King, ruling over the great Legion Prominence. He very much did not get the feeling that he was dealing with a small child with her. Moreover, if he did try to treat her like a child, there was a good chance she would burn him to a crisp with a blow from her main armament. Thus, walking alongside Utai Shinomiya—brown knapsack on her back, gym bag in her right hand—in an older brother–type role was an extremely new experience for him.

  “Oh! I-I’ll carry your bag!” he said, finally noticing after they had already gone over a hundred meters, and Utai handed it to him with a crisp bow. He grabbed it with his right hand and tossed it over to his left in an overly grand gesture.