Armor of Catastrophe

by Reki Kawahara

  “Hmm. If possible, I’d want you to take your time and do a thorough analysis, but—”

  At that moment, there came a different voice from behind them. “Can you secure him, Vise?”

  Brimming with a clear sweetness almost like the water of a snowmelt, with no hint of bitterness, without a doubt, this was the voice of the player who had continuously forced Blossom to resurrect. Fal sharpened his eyes even further beneath his visor, but a mysterious light blocked his view, and he couldn’t see the avatar on the other side.

  “I suppose I’ll give it a go.” The layered avatar nodded a head that was nothing more than an arrangement of thin panels and raised a left hand of the same design.

  The several panels comprising that arm slid off and disappeared into the ground one after another. Immediately after this, the black cross appeared soundlessly behind Falcon and pulled at his body with its bizarre magnetism.

  But.

  “Gr…aaaah!”

  With a short roar, he sliced the sword in his right hand to the rear, and the cross was quickly destroyed, producing a sound and feel like glass shattering. The bright light of a damage effect gushed out from the left shoulder of the wielder of the panels.

  “Whoops. Quite incredible. I very much cannot hold him with a normal technique.”

  Falcon focused more intently on the layered avatar muttering this. There were too many words in this conversation that were impossible to understand, but one thing at least was clear, and that was that they had planned the whole thing. That, in line with some kind of scheme or another, they had called Saffron Blossom out and tortured her to death with Unlimited Enemy Kill.

  In which case, they should be the first ones he hunted.

  Gripping the big sword with both hands, he brandished it high above his head in a solemn motion. He completely ignored the dozen or so confused and panicking players on the outer edge of the crater, turned toward the jet-black layered avatar, and took a single step. He soundlessly uttered the name of his technique.

  Flash Blink!

  He brought down his blade at the same time as he teleported at super-high speed and severed the layered avatar’s remaining arm at the base. However, his opponent, who lacked a face-like face, showed not the slightest air of being disturbed; he took a single step back and disassembled the body that had suddenly lost both arms.

  These pieces transformed into two enormous panels, which then closed around the four-eyed avatar standing next to him and also the avatar enveloped in light from behind. By some logic, the massive panels closed into one single, thin panel.

  Falcon sliced horizontally with his sword at the enormous ink-black panel sinking into the shadows on the ground. But the swing managed only to slice off a diagonal piece of the top edge and send it flying. The panel produced a gentle ripple in the shadow and sank into it completely; the aura of the three mysterious players vanished from the field.

  “Gr…raaah…”

  A groan of rage slipped out at having his Enemies steal away on him. A few seconds later, skrrinnk! An ear-splitting metallic sound accompanied a light blow to his left shoulder.

  He turned around languidly. Standing there was a midsize blue duel avatar. In both hands, it held a large, close-range weapon that was like a cross between a wooden sword and a traditional longsword. His opponent was someone whose face he knew well, who he could have been said to be close with. One of the few first generation, a direct attack from that long spear had even shattered the armor of the former Chrome Falcon. But a glance at his right shoulder showed that there wasn’t a crack or even the tiniest dent now.

  His opponent looked as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and without even trying to remember his name, Falcon casually brought down the sword enveloped in the dark aura.

  Whud. The heavy noise shook the cool air. The weapon the blue avatar held fell apart in the middle, and then the top half of its owner’s body also slid off and tumbled onto the ground. The lower half was a little late to tilt backward, only to stop halfway into its fall and explode, scattering at the same time as the upper half. Now all that remained was a small light the color of its armor.

  A violent and distinct shiver ran through the thirty or so people still left at the sight of a high-tier player being slaughtered with a single blow. Trembling voices—What’s happening, this isn’t what I signed up for—gradually increased in volume.

  “Crap…R-run!!”

  The instant someone shouted this, they all began to race in a single direction, like a dam had broken. They were no doubt intending to flee to the real world through the leave point in the Shibaura parking area some dozen or so meters ahead. However…

  Flash Blink.

  As he sent up this silent prayer, his blackish silver armor disappeared and reappeared immediately in front of the fleeing players. Another slicing attack. Three heads fell simultaneously.

  “Unh…ungah…ungaaaaaah!”

  Shrieks. Screams. Some players still tried to run, others tried to hide in the surrounding buildings, and still others tried counterattacks, but the sword of darkness swept down on all of them without exception and stole their gauges from them in one blow.

  Propelling Falcon forward now was no longer simple rage. A sublime determination that went beyond resentment or revenge—a curse.

  That this world would be destroyed.

  If a Burst Linker from later years saw Chrome Falcon at this time through some hidden logic of Brain Burst, they would have made this judgment: that this dark overlay was a manifestation of a purely negative will. That this was the dark side of the Incarnate System itself, smashing everything in existence through an absolute desire for negation.

  When the slaughter—barely seconds long—was over, only the countless embers flickered silently around the basin. The blackish-silver destroyer plunged the great sword into the earth, now that it had absorbed plenty of blood, and grew still.

  To wait for them to regenerate in an hour.

  That day, more than thirty players were exterminated from the Accelerated World all at once.

  The lone survivor who had the good luck to make it to the portal alive gave an account to freeze the blood in anyone’s veins, shaking with terror all the while. The story—that Chrome Falcon clad in an evil armor had slaughtered all of her companions—was initially met with raised eyebrows.

  But those who challenged Falcon to a general duel in an attempt to confirm her story were, without exception, decimated in a single blow from that great sword, and everyone was forced to accept that it was true. That a terrifying catastrophe had been born into the Accelerated World that had grown up over this last year or so.

  At some point, the players stopped called this destroyer by the original avatar name. Crowning him with the name of the Enhanced Armament, they called him thus:

  Chrome Disaster.

  Blackout.

  Spotlight.

  In the circle of white light, a knight appears, body wrapped in dark metallic armor, holding a sinister sword. The crouching figure is tattered and wounded, cracked; the sword is also severely chipped and scratched.

  To back him up against this wall, the strongest players in the Accelerated World challenged him to endless battles and exhausted him, sometimes in the one-against-many Battle Royale mode.

  But the destroyer did not refuse a single duel; in fact, he even took off the intrusion limit of once per day and accepted any and all fighting conditions. Despite the fact that normally, after ten successive battles, even in a normal duel, a player couldn’t really move very well due to mental exhaustion, he easily fought his way through more than a hundred duels in a day, wearing down his soul itself.

  At some point, the dark aura blanketing the sword grew weaker, and the armor lost its shine, but even still, the destroyer continued to fight. His win ratio dropped, and his points were eaten away bit by bit, until they finally drove him into this corner on the verge of losing all his points in this final, greatest battle in the U
nlimited Neutral Field.

  Several duel avatars steadily close in on the crouching knight. All of them are masters, said to currently be the strongest in the world. Among them are even a few of the Pure Colors, the leaders of the major Legions.

  On the verge of death, the destroyer clings to his sword and staggers to his feet. One part of the brutal design of the visor has fallen away, allowing the merest glimpse of the smooth helmet and its single, curved line, held inside.

  That mask looks up at the sky of the Accelerated World.

  I—the BB player formerly known as Chrome Falcon—disappear here today.

  If the rumor that your memories disappear or there’s some manipulation of your thoughts is true, then I will forget everything about the Accelerated World, even Saffron Blossom, whom I loved so much, and return to being a regular second-grade student who doesn’t even know a single big word.

  But this rage of mine—this sadness—and this despair will remain.

  Neither I nor Saffron Blossom wanted power. The thought of establishing a hegemony over the Accelerated World with the power of the armor never even occurred to us. All we wanted was to be able to stay in this world with everyone, forever.

  Those who saw domination and destruction and pillage in the mirrored surface of the armor saw nothing more than the reflection of their own desires.

  They were the ones who longed for power. The ones who killed Saffron Blossom over and over again in the cruelest manner.

  So then I’ll give it to them.

  I’ll leave my rage and Blossom’s suffering to this armor, to the Disaster. The next time someone craves power and puts this armor on, they will become something that attacks all Burst Linkers, destroys them, devours them. They will eat them and steal their powers and become infinitely strong. Until they are the last one. Until the end when only one remains in the wasteland of the infinitely vast Accelerated World.

  Because that is the true nature of your desire.

  I curse this world. I defile it. Even if I disappear temporarily here, my rage and hatred will come back to life any number of times.

  Blackout.

  2

  At the sensation of slender fingertips caressing his cheek, Haruyuki Arita opened his eyes a crack.

  The blurry world slowly came into focus. A small hand encased in pure white armor. Arms in the shape of short sleeves of the same color. Charming face mask and round, adorable scarlet eye lenses.

  Haruyuki stared for a while at Ardor Maiden—level-seven Burst Linker with the power of purification, one of the Four Elements of the former Nega Nebulus—standing on her knees, hand outstretched.

  A single transparent drop glittered at the tip of her slender finger. He cocked his head at the worried look on her face before realizing that the droplet had been flowing down his own face.

  “Huh…oh…,” he muttered hoarsely, and hurriedly rubbed at his face with his right hand before closing his half-open helmet all the way. He turned the face of Silver Crow, the duel avatar wrapped in the half-mirrored surface, and made his excuses.

  “Uh, sorry. I’m okay. I was sleeping and I had this…this superlong dream.” Here he stopped and furrowed his brow.

  He had been dreaming. And in that long, long dream, Haruyuki hadn’t been Silver Crow. He had been a metal color that looked a lot like him; the shade was just a little different. But that’s all he could remember. Where he went, what he did, and what happened was blocked by a soft white wall like silk floss, and he couldn’t recall any of it.

  All that was left was a faint feeling like a hole had opened up deep in his chest. And a prickling, sharp pain racing through that emptiness…a sense of loss?

  …I love you, you know…

  A voice he had never heard before passed through his ears, and he managed somehow to fiercely blink back the tears that threatened to spring up once more. He shook his head hard and inhaled deeply of the cool air while he was at it, pushing back the bizarre sadness before checking their surroundings again.

  At some point, it had gotten dark. Above his head, clusters of stars twinkling crisply, a sight not seen in the Tokyo of the real world, even in dreams. He could see the sky because they were not inside a building, but rather a courtyard-type space. Supporting his back as he sat, legs stretched out, was a thick pillar, about a meter or so in diameter. Immediately to his right, a high wall rose up very nearly to the sky.

  Nothing had changed; this was the same terrain he had seen before falling asleep. But when he at last looked down between his own legs, he realized that the thick ice that should have been there had been transformed into gravel, and he cocked his head to one side. Hurriedly looking over his shoulder, he saw that the pillar behind him was also not pale-blue ice, but rather vermilion wood.

  “Huh…Did the Change happen while I was asleep?” he asked Ardor Maiden in a hushed voice, and the white-and-scarlet shrine maiden avatar nodded sharply.

  “It would appear so.” Her reply was also whispered, her voice echoing with a crisp youth. “But I was asleep next to you, C, and so I didn’t notice it myself.”

  The Change was the phenomenon in which the attributes of the world—the “stage” of the Unlimited Neutral Field created by the Brain Burst program—were switched periodically. When Silver Crow and Ardor Maiden had begun their nap, this place had been an Ice stage where everything was frozen solid, but he could see no sign of snow or ice now.

  Almost as if the season had rolled back, the trees were brilliantly colored in fall plumage, and the pillars were wooden, the walls painted white. He very much wanted to call these attributes pure Japanese style.

  “This is the Heian stage,” Ardor Maiden murmured as she spread out her scarlet armor skirt and sat neatly on her knees, matching their surroundings so perfectly she could have been part of a painting. At his unconscious staring, the small shrine maiden hung her head, seemingly embarrassed, so he hurriedly averted his eyes.

  Controlling this adorable yet severe duel avatar was a girl four years younger than eighth-grade student Haruyuki, a girl named Utai Shinomiya. In fourth grade at Matsunogi Academy, a girls’ school affiliated with Umesato Junior High, she was basically a real-life sheltered princess. She had, no doubt, almost no experience with an older boy staring at her, and so he shifted his eyes away from her and around the scene once more.

  Vermilion-painted pillars standing in a row from north to south. A large cobblestone street stretching out between them. The flickering orange light of countless watch fires. And the stately silhouette of the enormous palace he could see in the distance in the north.

  The attributes for the Japanese-style Heian stage were essentially the ultimate match for this place. That was because they were inside the address of 1 Chiyoda, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, in the real world and also the center of the Accelerated World: the Imperial Palace of this side, the absolutely impenetrable Castle.

  Haruyuki and everyone belonging to the Legion Nega Nebulus had that day—Tuesday, June 18, 2047—at just after 7:20 PM, undertaken without a doubt their greatest mission since assembling their current regiment.

  The exceedingly difficult operation to rescue Ardor Maiden from where she was sealed upon the altar of Suzaku was, in terms of process, actually extremely simple.

  Their leader, Kuroyukihime/Black Lotus, with the support of Chiyuri/Lime Bell and her pseudo–healing powers, was to fire a long-distance attack on Suzaku and make herself a target. Haruyuki/Silver Crow would fly at top speed assisted by Fuko/Sky Raker’s booster over Suzaku, charging down the large bridge stretching out from the south gate. He would recover Utai/Ardor Maiden at the moment she appeared once she had been given the signal to dive by Takumu/Cyan Pile before turning up into the sky at 180 degrees and escaping from the bridge.

  He had believed the strategy would go well.

  However, at the last of last moments, something entirely unexpected happened. Despite the fact that Haruyuki had not so much as breathed on it, Suzaku shifted its target from Black Lotus
to Silver Crow and launched an extremely powerful fire-breath attack from behind him.

  With the hot flames roasting his back, he had been unable to turn after grabbing Ardor Maiden from the ground, and so he had simply kept charging forward. Since the palace’s southern gates were said to open only when Suzaku was defeated, he steeled himself to slam into them when, for some reason, the gates opened the merest hint of a crack for just an instant. Long out of other options, Haruyuki and Utai plunged through it.

  Haruyuki then crashed as he heard the sound of the gates closing behind him. After temporarily losing consciousness, he asked Utai, who was holding him tightly, “Um, are we maybe alive…?”

  The shock of her response to that question still reverberated in his mind.

  “We are alive. But…aah, but…”

  “Here…This place is inside the Castle.”

  “I still can’t believe it. I mean, us inside that Castle,” Haruyuki muttered, leaning up against the pillar.

  Utai, kneeling neatly before him, nodded. “I was surprised when we entered the Castle, but I’m even further surprised that we live on like this after more than six hours.”

  “What…D-did I sleep that long? So then this darkness isn’t a characteristic of the stage, it’s just nighttime already?” he asked hurriedly.

  Although you could see your total dive time in the Unlimited Neutral Field if you opened a menu window, there were very few methods of learning the precise internal time—what time it was in the hours and minutes of this world. Somewhere in the field, there was apparently a large clock that had been marking the passage of all the time that had passed since the start of this world, but he felt like that would be a terrifying thing to see. That clock would have to be displaying a date and time greater than one thousand times seven years; i.e., seven thousand years.