The rebound pushed his hand dangerously close to the window on his virtual desktop, so he yanked his arm back over his shoulder as a scream slipped out of him. “Aaah?!”
Fortunately, he managed to evade a second tragedy in careless game play, but for some reason, he heard a strange “Heep” from behind. He tried to pull his hand back down, but his fingertips caught on something.
Ever so timidly, Haruyuki turned around and saw Kuroyukihime with a cardigan and a thick shawl over her pajamas and his own fingers pushing through the front of those pajamas all the way inside.
“Hngah! I—I—I didn’t mean—!!” Emitting an unintelligible cry, Haruyuki pulled his hand back with all the force he could muster. But it was caught on her second button. The pull of his hand sent this real-world button flying, and the most definitely real fabric fell open to both sides.
It had been four weeks since Kuroyukihime—vice president of the Umesato Junior High student council, Haruyuki’s parent, and the master of the once-defunct Legion Nega Nebulus—had been hospitalized near Asagaya Station. It had been touch-and-go immediately after the accident, but thanks to the great strides made in micromachine medical treatment in the last few years and probably the willpower of the girl herself, she had come back from the brink of death. Since she had been released from the ICU, her recovery had been remarkable, and now the only physical manifestation of her many injuries was the cast on her left leg to set her broken fibula. She was expected to be released from the hospital soon.
Naturally, this would be a truly joyful event, but Haruyuki felt a little sadness at the thought. He’d been stopping in to see Kuroyukihime every day on his way home from school, but once she returned to Umesato, she would go back to being the student council vice president, an inspiration to all the students of the school; she probably wouldn’t have time for Haruyuki anymore.
“I can actually read your mind now, you know,” she said, yanking his left cheek outward.
He hurriedly turned his face upward and found beside him the beautiful countenance of his classmate pursing her lips. “N-no, I wasn’t actually thinking anything weird—”
“I’ll just say this now. Once I am released from the hospital, I have every intention of putting you through your paces. Our objective is level three—no, four within this year.”
“Wh-whaaaat?!” Now Haruyuki felt a chill entirely opposite the one from earlier.
The fingers released his cheek, and Kuroyukihime turned to face forward, her expression softening. “Well, I, too, will be a little sad that these days will end.”
The contrast between the madder-red of the evening sun dyeing her face in profile and the lustrous shine of her black hair was so dazzling that Haruyuki unconsciously blinked before turning his gaze to follow hers.
They were currently seated alongside each other on a bench on the south side of the hospital roof, looking down at a view of the city that spanned from Asagaya to Koenji. The elevated Chuo Line drew a line in the sky to one side, and a little beyond that was Oume Highway. In some weird twist of fate, the bench faced squarely in the direction of Umesato, and if he squinted, he could make out the solar panels on the building’s roof glittering in the distance.
This part of Suginami Ward was a mix of shopping streets left over from the previous century, residential areas, and cutting-edge intelligent buildings, and all were highlighted a reddish-gold now. The sight was so beautiful that he almost wanted to call it a Twilight stage.
The skies had been clear the whole day, and the evening breeze had the slight chill that came with late autumn. Kuroyukihime pulled together the collar of the pajamas that Haruyuki had so recently defiled, and he pushed back to the depths of his mind the paleness of her bare skin that inevitably began to return to his thoughts.
“Um, we should probably be getting back inside,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. Thank you. It will be suppertime in twenty minutes…I’d like to stay here like this until then.”
“B-but it’s getting cold and all…”
“Mm. I see. So then, give me a little cold-resistance buff.” Grinning, Kuroyukihime shifted about ten centimeters to the right, and her slender body inevitably came into contact—or rather became glued to—Haruyuki’s left side, which did indeed cause the chill to recede. “Mm-hmm. This is perfect. You’re quite warm.”
“Uh, um, I am pretty confident in my heat generation.” Haruyuki threw his everything into a self-deprecating gag, but Kuroyukihime only moved her lips without smiling.
“Idiot.” She pulled her body even closer. “I’m not talking about physical warmth. I’m talking about emotional warmth. How can I put this…? I feel relieved. It’s only natural that Kurashima would face off against me when it comes to you.”
“Huh?” Unfortunately, Haruyuki couldn’t really understand what she meant, and he cocked his head to one side as he accepted her slight weight. “Chiyu—I mean, Kurashima just thinks that I’m her servant and should belong only to her.”
“Hee-hee. Well, at some point it will become clear. All kinds of things.” Now Kuroyukihime smiled and raised a finger as if she had just remembered something. “That reminds me. What on earth were you looking at before when you were waiting for me? You seemed to be excessively deep in thought.”
“Oh! Um, the Brain Burst console.”
“Oh? …Aah, I understand now. There’s only one thing that could make you agonize like that. Your level-up bonus.”
“Th-that’s exactly it.” Haruyuki’s eyes grew wide at how easily she guessed the answer. “But how did you know?”
“It’s obvious. I struggled the same way, way back when. Or rather, it’s a path all Burst Linkers walk down,” Kuroyukihime responded, still smiling, and then her expression clouded slightly. “However, it has already been several days since you reached level two, yes? Have you been fighting without taking your bonus?”
“Uh, yeah, well…I guess.” Haruyuki nodded, pushing together his index fingers, and now the face to his left was colored with a mix of surprise and exasperation.
“I don’t know whether to call that prudence or perseverance,” she remarked with a slight frown. “It’s true that these last few days, I’ve been busy with test after test, and I haven’t had the time to really work with you. But Takumu, for instance, seems like he would give you appropriate advice.”
“Th-that’s…” Haruyuki paused. “When I mentioned the level-up bonus before, Taku got this faraway look in his eyes and said he didn’t think he could help me because he always just took special attacks without even thinking about it.”
“…I—I see. My apologies.” Apologizing to the absent Takumu, Kuroyukihime, with a strange expression, lifted the leg held fast in a thin, lightweight cast up onto her other leg and then sat like that wordlessly, looking up at the evening sky as it gradually deepened into purple.
“Kuroyukihime, um,” Haruyuki said to his parent meekly. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to decide, no matter how long I think it over. So maybe I could get you to choose for me? What bonus to take, I mean.”
“I was just wondering if I should do that or not,” Kuroyukihime murmured, and her eyes were serious as she brought her gaze back from the sky to him. “I know very well how hard it is for you to decide on your own. There are more than a few parent Burst Linkers who decide the direction of their child’s growth. The parent has knowledge and experience that the child does not. And I think perhaps this is correct because of that. However…”
She closed her mouth momentarily and set half of the black wool shawl she was wearing over Haruyuki’s shoulders. But her eyes shone with a firm light, in contrast with the gentleness of this gesture.
“It might seem as though I’m being harsh, but the parent is not the child’s creator, and the child is not the parent’s creation. It was your own heart, Haruyuki, that produced your duel avatar, Silver Crow. In which case, the direction in which to flap those wings is something you should decide.”
“…Right.” Haruyuki nodded obediently. He realized that it was one thing to get advice on how to fight, but to rely on her for even the irrevocable choice of a level-up bonus was simply fobbing off responsibility. If he couldn’t make a decision himself now, then he should never have pushed the YES button that time, that day when Kuroyukihime had sent him the Brain Burst program in the Umesato lounge. “I understand, Kuroyukihime. The next time I go to the Accelerated World, I’ll try asking him—Silver Crow. I feel like if I really ask, he’ll tell me.”
“Mm. Good answer.” Kuroyukihime grinned and hugged Haruyuki tightly, her right hand holding the edge of the shawl. He belatedly became aware of her warmth next to him, and his heart rate abruptly tripled. Frozen in a self-induced Burst Link, Haruyuki’s five senses were so inundated with information—a sweet scent, a wonderful softness—that it surpassed his processing ability, and his consciousness started to fade.
“But I’m your parent. A sad thing to simply leave it at that,” her lips murmured in his ear, so close that they nearly touched him, and Haruyuki’s mind was somehow yanked back to the here and now. “Instead of advice, how about I tell you about my own experience?”
“Y-your own…,” he repeated absently before finally recovering about 50 percent of his processing power.
Right. When he really thought about it, there was a time when Kuroyukihime—known as the level-nine Black King, Black Lotus, in the Accelerated World—had also been a beginner.
“So…are you going to tell me about…your parent?”
“No.” Kuroyukihime shook her head. “It’s not that. My parent was completely hands-off in this area…To the point where I was not even allowed to join the same Legion.”
“What? …So then, did you get this strong all by yourself?”
“That is also a no. With the exceptions of the very beginning—and the end…my parent had essentially no dealings with me. But there was a Burst Linker who I could call teacher. So I will tell you about the way he spoke of.”
“The way…,” Haruyuki parroted, before he froze in a different sense. Because his not-very-sharp intuition was announcing danger, for some reason.
But almost as if she had anticipated his reaction, Kuroyukihime squeezed the hand resting on his shoulder. Holding him tightly, she inserted one end of a black XSB cable she had pulled from somewhere into her Neurolinker.
“Huh? Um, way?”
“We’ll talk with our fists—no, our swords. That’s the way of our master.” Grinning, Kuroyukihime stabbed the other plug into Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. Before the warning of a wired connection that flashed in his field of view had disappeared, her shining lips were striking the final blow. “Burst Link.”
2
“Hiii…yaaaaah!!”
The blow came riding in on a full-powered battle cry. The roar of a sonic boom ripped through the virtual air and shook the very stage itself. The black sword raced through space even faster, at a speed that left even these effects behind in the virtual dust.
There was no longer anyone in the Accelerated World who would try to meet head-on the slicing attack of the level-eight Burst Linker nicknamed World End, the head of the Legion Nega Nebulus, Black Lotus—with two exceptions.
One was Invincible, the leader of the Legion Great Wall: Green Grandé. The great shield the Strife, the Enhanced Armament in his possession that was the third star of the Seven Arcs, could resist every type of attack, be it long-range or close. The other was one corner of the Four Elements, the executive of Nega Nebulus, nicknamed Anomaly: Graphite Edge. He was also level eight. And his avatar’s coloring was almost visually indistinguishable from hers, not to mention a strikingly similar silhouette. Not the least of which reason was because, right now, his weapons were the two swords he held in his hands.
Graph waited for Lotus’s full-body attack without moving a step from where he stood. He whirled the longswords in his hands as he raised them up and crossed them in front of his body. Both blades had the same design, with edges of a metallic gray that was essentially black, but the central parts were a transparent glass-like material. Thus, when seen from afar, the swords looked hollow with only a two-centimeter blade.
Normally, only the blade part of a sword was used when attacking or defending, but Graph had crossed and readied his swords with the transparent parts facing outward—that is, the flat of the swords. These looked as though they would bend and break with a simple punch attack, but for him, this setup was no mistake.
Glaring at the midsize M-type avatar standing coolly on the other side of those blades, Lotus prayed silently in the moment of the slicing attack. Today for sure, I will break that shield!
It was a simple regular attack, but the sword of Lotus’s right hand came down with a force greater than any special attack and collided with the intersection of Graph’s double blades.
Kreeeaaan! She heard the screech of impact, and a shock wave rippled outward to the distant edges of the stage. The wave swallowed up two figures watching the battle a little ways off, but given that they were part of the Gallery, it had no effect on them.
Lotus’s slicing attack didn’t manage to take down Graph’s cross defense in a single blow, but her attack was not repelled, either, and the fight became a struggle at the intersection of the swords. Some years ago, when she had first struck Graph’s double blades, she had been easily repelled and knocked some twenty meters or more backward, so this could be said to have been significant progress. But World End would not be satisfied with this.
“Nngh…aaaaah…!!” She focused all her might in her right arm. Compressed to a pinpoint, the power transformed into pale sparks, causing the black armor of the fighters to flicker irregularly.
The swords of Black Lotus’s four limbs had the Terminate Sword ability. The effect was to eternally generate the highest-level severance-attack power in her blades. Many duel avatars were equipped with swords, but normally, it was only during the attack motion—when the sword was swinging—that the blade housed any force. Lotus’s swords, however, were always generating the attack force of a slicing attack, even when they were completely at rest. This power allowed her to sever an opponent’s fist or foot—or take down her prey simply by guarding against their attack. This was the origin of the nickname World End.
The only things that could survive a collision with Lotus’s limbs without being severed was armor that possessed the maximum resistance to severance damage (which only existed in Grandé’s shield), and swords that had the same level of power (and there weren’t really any of these in the Accelerated World, either). It wasn’t that there weren’t exceptions like items or abilities that allowed defense with special conditions—for instance, Yellow Radio’s baton increased his defensive power in proportion to the number of times it was rotated—but the only thing in the entire Accelerated World that could take Lotus’s slicing attack while being on the supposedly fragile side was Graph’s twin swords.
He wasn’t leaving the flats of his swords open to her because he was trying to go especially easy on her. This was actually the power of the duel avatar Graphite Edge—or rather, of his swords.
Two extremely powerful abilities were hidden away in those double swords. One was that they could guard against any and all attacks when the transparent sides were used as a shield. This was no special ability, but rather was derived from the material of the sword itself. The transparent area was not glass or crystal, but something called hyper diamond, which had a hardness that surpassed even natural diamond. In the four years since the start of the game Brain Burst 2039, not a single Burst Linker had broken through the protection this material offered. And of course, Lotus was no exception.
But today…definitely today!
“Aa…aaaaaaaah!!” With every scrap of energy she could muster, Lotus pushed back against the hyper-diamond core of Graph’s swords, supposedly the hardest substance in the Accelerated World. Another shock wave shot out and faded at super-high speed. The supposedly indestruc
tible earth cracked with concentric circles racing outward, perhaps unable to withstand the power generated in the struggle of the two level eighters, a force that went far beyond the numbers.
Black Lotus had crossed swords any number of times with Graphite Edge, a member of the Legion she was master of—her subordinate, in other words. It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, despite Graph pushing back against her authority. In fact, just the opposite—he had been instructing Lotus in the art of sword fighting since she was still only level two or three. In other words, he was something of a teacher to her.
And yet, Lotus had a reason for desperately trying to surpass her teacher in today’s lesson. She intended to advance soon to the (supposedly) untrodden territory of level nine. To go from eight to nine required the expenditure of a sum of Burst Points so vast it boggled the mind, but nonetheless, she had finally built up that massive reservoir, including an extra-points buffer that would prevent anything from getting in the way of her duties as Legion Master.
The masters of the other six major Legions were also on the verge of reaching level nine at basically the same time, so it would be unacceptable for her to be late, given that she was considered one of the Seven Kings of Pure Color alongside them. But there was one problem: Becoming level nine meant she would advance beyond Graphite Edge. She very well might be able to best him in a duel from level nine, but then she wouldn’t be able to say that she had actually surpassed him when fighting as equals.
Which was why that day would most likely be the last she was able to fight Graph on equal ground. He had passed on to her a multitude of techniques over more than three years in the real world and a period of time impossible to count in the Accelerated World, so she wanted desperately to show him some proof of her growth. No…She wanted to beat him down, this vexingly cool-as-a-cucumber double-sword user, and be proud of her victory.
“J-just fly already!!” Lotus squeezed a hoarse voice out of her throat, as she felt the periphery of her vision start to white out, perhaps because of her intense concentration.
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