Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire

by Reki Kawahara

UNDERSTOOD. TO RESPOND TO SACCHI’S CALL, THIS IS A ROAD THAT I, TOO, CANNOT AVOID PASSING DOWN. ALL RIGHT, SHALL WE GO? She waved a hand at Hoo in the hutch and started walking while clutching the carrier, and Haruyuki hurried after her.

  He took the large carrier with a quick “Let me get that” and then said quietly, “Um, if there’s some kind of problem, you can explain it to me.”

  But Utai simply shook her head and made no move to answer him.

  Why would Utai Shinomiya be so afraid of Fuko Kurasaki?

  The answer came in an unexpectedly easy-to-understand form twenty-five minutes later, in the Arita living room on the twenty-third floor of a mixed-use condominium building in Kita-Koenji.

  “U-Uuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiii!!”

  A shout that was more like a scream was the first thing uttered by Fuko, the last to arrive of the six people gathered there that day. She threw her bag onto the living room floor and charged at top speed, skirt flying back, at Utai, who was on the sofa. Utai’s face froze as Fuko lunged with a force like a tackle and covered her and squeezed her to her chest. “Uiui! I missed you, you know, Uiuiiiii!!”

  The thin right hand thrust up from under Fuko’s body tapped at the air, almost convulsively. UI> PLEASE QAIT, NP, FU, I CAN’T BRWSGE.

  “You’ve gotten so big without me even knowing…! But it’s okay, I’ll still spoil you senseless like I used to in the old days!!”

  UI> SOMEONI, PKWASE HEKP

  “Aaah, Uiui…Uiuiiiiiii!!”

  …I’ve never seen Shinomiya mistype before, Haruyuki thought absently, standing dumbfounded by the kitchen. To his left, both Takumu and Chiyuri were also stunned, eyes wide, while to his right, Kuroyukihime was shaking her head in indulgent exasperation.

  It didn’t look like the scene of carnage on the sofa was going to end any time soon, so Haruyuki bobbed his own head before saying to Kuroyukihime in a quiet voice, “Um, Kuroyukihime? Before, you said that you only met Fuko and one other person in the real from the first Nega Nebulus, right? So then the other person was Shinomiya?”

  “Mmm. You have a good memory. That’s exactly right.”

  “But you also said that Fuko was the only person you were tied to by friendship even in the real world. It seemed kinda like a contradiction, so it bugged me, but…So then, um, this situation…”

  Kuroyukihime grinned wryly and nodded at Haruyuki’s words. “Hmm, well, that’s it, I suppose. Of course, I think of myself as Utai’s comrade in arms, but more than that, Utai is Fuko’s…How can I put it—” She interrupted herself momentarily, turned again toward Haruyuki and the others, and continued in an explanatory tone. “Perhaps you all already know the reason why Fuko was once called ICBM?”

  “Oh, yeah, Niko told me. Because in the Territories, her strategy was a kamikaze attack to the very rear of the enemy line with a single support on her back,” Haruyuki replied, and Kuroyukihime nodded once more.

  “Exactly. It was actually very effective when the line of battle was stretched out, but the support clinging to Raker had a truly terrible time of it. Dropped from up in the air to a point suitable for support, chased around by huge numbers of the enemy, sometimes thrown down right in the middle of enemy territory instead of a warhead…You may already have an inkling of who got that job. It was Utai. She was the Raker Special Option.”

  “O-option,” Haruyuki repeated, cheeks stiffening. Looking over at the sofa once more, he watched Utai’s arm, flailing for help, flop down onto the sofa.

  Approximately three minutes later.

  They all lowered themselves into their seats, Kuroyukihime at the head of the dining table, Chiyuri and Takumu facing her on the right, Fuko and Utai on her left, and Haruyuki directly opposite her. On the table were cups of the tea Haruyuki had made and a big plate of Chiyuri’s mom’s homemade sandwiches that Chiyuri had brought from home: a mountain of ham sandwiches stuffed with lettuce and pastrami, vegetable and cheese sandwiches combining cheddar cheese with arugula and asparagus, sandwiches putting smoked salmon and avocado between slices of black rye bread, and more—a truly magnificent sight. Having survived Fuko’s passionate hello, Utai took in the dish before her, eyes round.

  “Sorry for always putting you in this spot, Chiyuri. Please convey my warmest thanks to your mother.”

  “It’s fine! Mom’s happy that Haru’s got more friends!”

  Once the formal motions of Kuroyukihime bowing her head, Chiyuri grinning in response, and Haruyuki making a complicated face were complete, they all sang out a hearty “Let’s eat!” At once, six sets of hands reached out for the pile of triangle sandwiches.

  Utai finished one of each type and then made her fingers dance with unusual speed. UI> THESE ARE VERY GOOD. FROM WHAT SACCHI SAID BEFORE, I ASSUME KURASHIMA’S MOTHER IS ALWAYS KIND ENOUGH TO PREPARE FOOD BEFORE EACH LEGION MEETING?

  “You can use my first name!” After that statement, Chiyuri nodded as if embarrassed. She had been told in the initial self-introductions that Utai couldn’t speak because of expressive aphasia, so she continued talking without any confusion. “I only joined Nega Nebulus two months ago, so I still haven’t been to many meetings. But my mom’s always made food for the three of us whenever Taku and I came over to Haru’s place. When I asked her to make enough for six, she was super surprised. That’s double the old days, she said.”

  UI> THAT REMINDS ME. YOU, MAYUZUMI, AND ARITA HAVE BEEN FRIENDS SINCE CHILDHOOD, CHIYURI? Her fingers hovered there momentarily, as Utai looked at each of them sitting across from her in turn with large, clear eyes before adding, UI> IT’S A MARVEL THAT THREE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS WOULD ALL BECOME BURST LINKERS AND ON TOP OF THAT, FIGHT ALONGSIDE ONE ANOTHER IN THE SAME LEGION. OUR BONDS IN REALITY DO WIELD GREAT POWER OVER US. I, SACCHI, AND FU ONCE CREATED A BOND IN THE REAL WORLD, BUT A LONG, LONG TIME WAS NEEDED FOR US TO GET TO THAT PLACE. MOST LIKELY, TOO LONG.

  The instant they read this, Kuroyukihime and Fuko spoke.

  “Utai…”

  “Uiui.”

  Utai glanced over at them, and a gentle but somehow poignant smile crossed her lips.

  UI> WE COULDN’T SYMPATHIZE WITH THE DEPTH, THE ENORMITY OF THE FEAT SACCHI CHASED AND THE DESIRE FU CONTINUED TO SECRETLY HARBOR. THUS, SACCHI ENDED UP HUNTED BY THE SIX KINGS, AND FU’S AVATAR LOST BOTH LEGS. IN THE END, THE LEGION ITSELF FELL TO RUIN. IF ONLY MANY MORE MEMBERS, NOT JUST THE THREE OF US, HAD BEEN ABLE TO BUILD BONDS SOONER IN THE REAL WORLD, THEN PERHAPS THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN ANOTHER PATH. IT’S SOMETHING I REGRET EVEN NOW.

  Utai’s hands froze, and Fuko, next to her, gently clasped them. This gesture was the exact opposite of her earlier enthusiasm, this one full of a gentle sympathy. “But we were able to meet again like this, Uiui,” she murmured, smiling. Utai opened her eyes wide, almost gasping. “Two and a half years have passed. That little corvus there taught Sacchi and me that there’s nothing we can’t recover from. Sacchi stands once more as a king in the Accelerated World, and I’ve got my legs back. So that’s why…”

  “We are confident.” Kuroyukihime picked up the thought. Wiping her mouth with a paper napkin and snapping to attention in her chair, the Black King said determinedly, “Utai, your real body is still sealed in the Unlimited Neutral Field, but we are going to get it back…even if our opponent is an invincible God.”

  9

  When the mountain of sandwiches had been neatly decimated, the large plate cleared away, and more tea made, Haruyuki raised his voice with a question he could no longer keep himself from asking. “Um. What did you mean by what you said before, Kuroyukihime? That Shinomiya’s real body is locked up in the Unlimited Neutral Field? I had a tag team duel with Shinomiya in the Normal Duel Field yesterday, and…Is there some separate problem in the Unlimited Neutral Field?”

  To his right, Chiyuri similarly cocked her head. But Takumu seemed to have hit on something, and he opened his mouth, albeit hesitantly. “Master. Is it perhaps ‘unlimited EK’?”

  “Oh, just like you, Professor! Quite knowledgeable.” Kuroyukihim
e nodded, but Haruyuki had absolutely no clue what that meant.

  “U-unlimited EK? Taku, what is…?” he asked, leaning his whole body forward.

  “Haru.” Takumu replied with a question, pushing on the bridge of his glasses with a finger as he did. “Did you know that there are several ways in the Accelerated World to make a Burst Linker disappear—i.e., to push them into total point loss and the forced uninstallation of Brain Burst?”

  “Huh? There’s just dueling and winning over and over,” he responded reflexively, before remembering the fact that he himself had fallen to the brink of annihilation two months earlier and adding, “Wait. There’s also a big fight in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Both sides charge all their points onto a Sudden Death Duel card, and the winner gets them all. Oh, and speaking of sudden death, there’s also that special rule for level niners.”

  “Right. So that’s three. Anything else?”

  “There’s also that…PK…I think?” Chiyuri said with an expression like the tea in her mouth had turned to salt water. “Physical kill? The one where you attack in the real, lock ’em up in a car or something, and steal every last one of their points in a direct duel. Which is totally not okay.”

  Takumu nodded with a severe look and added, “I guess in a broader sense, you could call that guy who came after us in April a PK. Anyway, that’s the fourth. And the fifth is the ‘unlimited EK’ I mentioned, formally known as ‘unlimited Enemy kill.’”

  “Enemy kill…Not killing Enemies, right? So then killed by Enemies?”

  “Right. That’s exactly it,” Kuroyukihime interjected, so the three closed their mouths and looked her way. After bringing her cup of tea to her lips, their black-clad Legion Master began to speak quietly. “I already explained to Haruyuki yesterday that there are Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field with incredible attack power, called Beasts and Legends. However, the ones at the very top, the ones that are truly a force of nature, stay within predetermined Territories, rather than wandering the field freely, so they pose no danger as long as you don’t approach their areas. But conversely, if by some chance you are thrust into their territory and killed, escape is extremely difficult.”

  “Uh, umm?” Haruyuki let his gaze wander and tried to remember the rules of the Unlimited Neutral Field, a place he had visited countless times.

  In that world, a player’s HP gauge dropping to zero—the player dying, in other words—didn’t mean the Burst Linker was returned to the real world. You remained in the place of your death in a “ghost” state, your field of view colored gray, and were revived after an hour. And you couldn’t use the “burst out” command in the Unlimited Neutral Field. The only way to “drop” into the normal full-dive VR game and automatically return to the real world was to slip through one of the “leave point” portals set up at landmarks like stations or famous tourist spots.

  Taking these two rules into consideration, he thought about the situation Kuroyukihime mentioned. Assume you carelessly charged into the territory of a fixed-position enormous Enemy, were targeted and hit with an attack of overwhelming force, and then died instantly. Then YOU ARE DEAD would be displayed in your vision, and you’d wait for the regeneration gauge to fill, as a ghost tied to that spot with no physical body. An hour later, you would finally come back to life and be able to move—but that spot was still within range of the enormous Enemy. You would, of course, quickly be attacked again, and die once more. An hour later, you’d come back to life…and die again, and…

  “Th-there’s no end to it, is there?” Haruyuki shouted, and Kuroyukihime nodded with a gloomy look.

  “None. Which is why it’s ‘unlimited.’ The unlimited Enemy kill deliberately creates this situation. In other words, another method of causing a Burst Linker to lose all their points is to leave them deep in the territory of a massive Enemy and have them killed over and over and over, every hour. Naturally, the chances of escape are not necessarily zero. After all, once you come back to life, if you can move even the slightest bit before your immediate death, you’ll regenerate in that location next. You can gain distance bit by bit, and perhaps at some point, make it out of the Enemy territory, but with a single death, you lose ten points, as is the case with any Enemy. Die ten times, it’s a hundred. A hundred times, and you lose a thousand points. You can’t hold out against that for long.”

  A chill ran up his spine as he imagined himself plunged into such a situation, and Haruyuki assented her point in a hoarse voice. “Th-that’s true. Especially after you’ve used up a lot of points like right after leveling up or buying an expensive item or something.” However, he quickly realized something and furrowed his brow. “B-but this ‘unlimited EK’…Wouldn’t it be pretty risky to set up? I mean, you could die before you managed to leave your opponent in that territory.”

  “Exactly. Which is why people usually use methods such as throwing their opponent in from outside the territory or sending them flying in with an explosive attack.” The answer came from Fuko. Still with a gentle smile playing on the edges of her lips, she added, somewhat terrifyingly, “Once, I used Gale Thruster to drop this PK jerk—whose name I was lucky enough to find out—right on top of the head of a Legend. At any rate, in a normal unlimited EK, it’s not that easy to carry the other player that deep into the territory, so you can usually escape if you really fight and work hard. And since the stronger the Enemy, the riskier it is for the Burst Linker planning the kill, the distance needed to escape is usually shorter, too.”

  Haruyuki nodded in understanding, alongside the two other junior members of the Legion.

  At that moment, Utai, who had stayed silent until then, moved her fingers surreptitiously. UI> BUT THERE’S AN EXCEPTION TO EVERY THEORY. Clear eyes still turned on some far-off place, the fourth grader with the mysterious air slowly continued typing. UI> ONE OF THE THREE PEOPLE WHO CHARGED INTO THE VERY DEPTHS OF THE TERRITORY OF THE LARGEST AND MOST POWERFUL ENEMY IN THE ACCELERATED WORLD DIED, NEVER TO RETURN AGAIN. A BURST LINKER WHO CAN NEVER DIVE INTO THE TRUE ESSENCE OF THE ACCELERATED WORLD, THE UNLIMITED NEUTRAL FIELD, EVEN IF ABLE TO ENTER THE NORMAL DUEL FIELD. I AM HER.

  Haruyuki had already told Takumu and Chiyuri the gist of the story he had heard the day before in the student council office about the decline and fall of the first Nega Nebulus. About the absolutely impenetrable Castle in the middle of the Unlimited Neutral Field, and the most powerful Enemies that guarded its gates, the Four Gods. The members of the first Nega Nebulus had set their sights on reaching the Castle under the assumption that this was the second requirement for clearing Brain Burst and attempted to break past the Four Gods. And then they were annihilated.

  That was as much as Haruyuki had been told. He still didn’t know the crux of it, the reason why a single defeat had led all the way to the collapse of the Legion. However, from this talk now of unlimited EK, Haruyuki was arriving at a guess, albeit a hazy one. He took a deep breath, looked at Kuroyukihime, Fuko, and Utai in turn, and then opened his mouth. “Then that means…Shinomiya, two and a half years ago, you went deep into the territory of the Four Gods and died, and now you can’t come back alive. Is that it?”

  Nodding sharply, Utai tapped at the air. UI> YES. HAVING A HIGH RESISTANCE TO FIRE, I LED A SQUAD TO CHALLENGE THE GIANT FIRE BIRD SUZAKU, GUARDIAN OF THE CASTLE’S SOUTH GATE. IT WAS A DIFFICULT OPPONENT, WITH PHYSICAL ATTACKS FROM ITS LONG-RANGE FLAME BREATH AND TALONS, AS WELL AS A BROAD-RANGE FIRE ATTACK IN ALL DIRECTIONS. HOWEVER, WE HAD ALL THIS INFORMATION, SO WE DEVISED A STRATEGY TO RESPOND, AND WE SUCCEEDED IN PENETRATING TO A POINT WHERE WE COULD ACTUALLY SEE THE GATE. BUT THERE, SUZAKU’S ATTACK PATTERN CHANGED. IT ENVELOPED ITSELF IN FLAMES AND CHARGED AT HIGH SPEED. WE WERE UNABLE TO MEET THE ATTACK, AND OUR BATTLE LINE CRUMBLED. MY OWN RESISTANCE TO FIRE WAS ALSO LITTLE COMFORT. TO AT LEAST CREATE A ROUTE OF RETREAT FOR MY COMPANIONS, I LURED SUZAKU INTO THE DEEPEST PART OF THAT TERRITORY AND DIED THERE.

  “Apparently, the attack patterns of Seiryu at the east gate and Genbu at the north g
ate also changed for the worse halfway through,” Kuroyukihime murmured, and bit her lip before continuing. “It was the same with Byakko at the West gate, who I went up against with Raker. By all rights, we also shouldn’t have been able to make it back from so deep in Byakko’s territory. But using the last of her power, Raker carried me and flew us out.”

  “Because at the time, I had already lost my legs and wasn’t any use in battle.” Fuko moved her mouth with the same look on her face, as though she were enduring a certain kind of pain. “I mustered every ounce of my will and flew desperately to ensure that Sacchi at least made it out alive. Even now, I sometimes have dreams where I hear Byakko’s teeth clack-clacking right behind me…Although that punishment is too light for me, the only one of the Four Elements to survive.”

  UI> I KNOW I’M GRATEFUL FOR HOW HARD YOU WORKED FOR US, THEN, FU, AS I’M SURE ARE GRAPH AND AQUA.

  “That’s right, Raker. If you and I had been locked away at the gates of the Four Gods, we wouldn’t have been able to even think of having a ‘child.’ Without a doubt, Silver Crow and his honorable rival Ash Roller would not have been born. And without the formation of the second Nega Nebulus, we would never have met again like this. Your decisive flight led us to the future.”

  At Kuroyukihime’s gentle yet firm words, Fuko raised her lowered eyelashes and nodded softly.

  Feeling something welling up in his heart, Haruyuki silently watched over them, but at the same time, unable to suppress a question that had popped into his head, he saw his opportunity and timidly opened his mouth. “Um, Kuroyukihime? I understand that Shinomiya’s duel avatar is actually sealed away at the south gate of the Castle in the Unlimited Neutral Field. But yesterday, I teamed up with Shinomiya—with Ardor Maiden—and fought a duel. Which means that Shinomiya is still a Burst Linker. She didn’t lose all her points two and a half years ago, right? How is she protecting her burst points from the unlimited EK state?”