Kuroyukihime lifted her face mask and stared hard at him with bluish-purple eye lenses that shone on the other side of her semi-mirrored goggles. “Mm-hmm. Right, that’s exactly it.”
She made the tip of her right leg clank against the marble of the floor, as if to mentally switch gears, and stretched her slender body up straight. The pale moonlight that poured down penetrated deep into her semitransparent, piano-black armor to make her entire avatar glow hazily.
They had accelerated on the roof of the Asagaya hospital, so they had come down in the same coordinates. But the scene below was completely different. All the buildings were white marble with gothic notes, and the sky was colored a bluish black, while a truly enormous full moon hung above their heads. The beauty of the Moonlight stage surpassed even the countless other stages that existed, and since there were no terrain effects or critters to be wary of, it was the perfect place for talking. And naturally, given that this was a direct duel, there was no one in the Gallery around them.
“The stages are for fighting, the duel avatars for fighting. My teacher was a Burst Linker who embodied that simple concept better than anyone else.” Still looking into Haruyuki’s eyes, Kuroyukihime started to speak again quietly. “And I cultivated Black Lotus to specialize in close-range, one-on-one fighting because I hoped to be like that, too. It wasn’t only that my teacher told me to. It’s because I felt that it was what this avatar actually wanted.”
“The avatar…wanted?” Haruyuki repeated, his eyes widening. He had not so much as considered this since he’d become a Burst Linker.
“Yes.” Kuroyukihime dipped her head in assent, an air of laughter bleeding through. “Our duel avatars are one with us Burst Linkers, coupled with us…Before I called this Lotus the ‘epitome of hideousness,’ but that wasn’t because I hate my avatar. This ugly form, the embodiment of severance, is surely my own self. What about you, Haruyuki? You’ve fought together all the way to level two now. Have you started to hear Silver Crow’s voice?”
He unconsciously looked down at his hands. The slender fingers wrapped in silver armor were far from the power of a fighter type.
In his first duel after becoming a Burst Linker, when he’d seen this avatar reflected in the window of an abandoned building, Haruyuki had inadvertently thought he was a “total small fry.” And that impression still hadn’t gone away, but if someone said they’d trade avatars of a different design from Crow, he’d probably refuse. It wasn’t because he’d manifested the lone flight ability. It was because the awareness of this shiny-headed metal color being himself had taken root in his heart at some point.
“Um. I can’t hear his voice yet, but I don’t hate him, either. I mean, Crow was born from my own heart. He was born for me,” Haruyuki said, clenching his tapered fingers.
“Mm. Yes. That’s exactly it.” Kuroyukihime nodded happily two or three times. “The words you just gave voice to are precisely the starting point for a duel avatar’s growth. Never forget that. Now. Taking this recognition into consideration, it’s about time we got started.”
“Huh? Started? With what?”
“Look here. I told you clearly before we accelerated, yes? That we would talk with swords.” Kuroyukihime shook her head in exasperation and stood up from her chalky chair. She glanced upward. “Ten minutes left. Well, that’ll be enough, I suppose.”
“E-enough? For what?” Haruyuki asked, not knowing when to give up, and at his throat was a sharp, inky blade, appearing so quickly that he couldn’t see the tip. Unconsciously reeling backward, he said hoarsely, “Uh, um. No way. A…a d-d-duel with me…”
“Hee-hee. Although I would love to ask you for a bout, the difference between our levels now is simply too great. I’ll look forward to a one-on-one duel when you’ve grown more,” Kuroyukihime replied in a laughing voice, and Haruyuki was relieved as the sword before his eyes was pulled back slightly.
“As a general premise, there is no correct way to cultivate a duel avatar. Will you aim to be an all-purpose type, with long-, close-, and midrange abilities? Or will you specialize in a single ability like my teacher and me? The choice in the end is yours. It would be simple for me to tell you to choose this or that level-up bonus, but I do want you to feel it yourself. What Silver Crow wants, what path he wants to go down.”
“What…he wants…?”
“Yes. That is, put another way, your own desire hidden away deep in your heart…Now stand up, Haruyuki.”
Kuroyukihime’s voice had an unusually kind air to it, and Haruyuki got to his feet from the white impromptu chair as if sucked in. He moved to take a step forward, but she actually waved him back. At the same time, she slid backward in a hovering motion to put a full ten meters between the two of them.
“Now then, here we go, Silver Crow! Respond to this blow with your whole heart and soul!!” Her fiercely thunderous voice—so powerful that he wanted to ask what happened to the gentle voice from just a moment ago—echoed through the tranquil stage. Her violet-blue eyes flashed forcefully. She pulled the swords of her arms back as her slender avatar gently leaned forward.
Boom! Concentric cracks raced outward on the hospital roof from her feet. She charged—or rather, shot forward—an obsidian arrowhead launched from an enormous bow. Before he could so much as blink, the figure of the Black King was closing in before his eyes.
When the sword of her right arm started slicing from above her head, Haruyuki’s brain finally switched gears. The sound around him seemed to drop in pitch as time got just a little looser. Even so, Black Lotus’s attack was incredibly fast, and the infinitely sharp black closed in before his eyes.
If Silver Crow had been given a long-distance special attack or Enhanced Armament, then perhaps it would have been possible to divert the attack before it got any closer. If, for example, he had been his friend Takumu’s avatar Cyan Pile, he could have checked Lotus’s approach with the special attack Splash Stinger, which launched a multitude of needle missiles from his chest area.
But at present, Crow didn’t have a single long-range technique. There was one in his level-up bonus options, but it was not possible to test it out before claiming it. All he could do in this situation was use his characteristic metal armor to defend himself. Kuroyukihime herself had said that metal-color avatars had a resistance to severing and piercing attacks.
In which case, if he firmly fixed his gauntlet arms, he should be able to guard here. Haruyuki was a wee chick who’d only just made it to level two, but of the many duel avatars he’d fought up to that point, there hadn’t been one who’d ripped through Crow’s arm armor using a sword.
These thoughts racing through his head in an instant, Haruyuki braced his legs firmly and crossed his arms in front of his face. Even seeing Crow’s fixed defensive posture, Lotus did not attempt to change the trajectory of her slashing attack. The blade came slicing down in a straight line from directly overhead.
Now…Guard!!
At the moment of contact, Haruyuki put all his might into his arms and waited for the impact.
But.
He didn’t sense any sound or weight or any other kind of impact. About all he got was a mere spray of orange sparks in the edge of his vision. He opened his eyes wide and saw something that was hard to take in at first.
The thin, jet-black blade was cutting through his thick silver armor like butter. A sight that lacked reality, as if his collision detector was on the fritz. But the chill that ran up both arms and the health gauge that started to drop in the upper left of his field of view were indeed reality. Staying with his guard up like this, in a moment, both his arms—no, Silver Crow’s body itself—would be cut in half.
“Nngh!” Haruyuki held his breath and threw his torso backward. However, there was no way he could move faster than the slicing attack. In the blink of an eye, the blade had cut through his armor and touched the naked body of his avatar inside. Perhaps because it was so sharp, he didn’t feel any pain.
This is the actual pow
er of a level niner…a close-range, specialized avatar. How am I supposed to guard against this? She knew it would turn out like this from the start. So then, why’d she tell me to defend?
When he’d gotten this far in his mind, thoughts mixed with defeat, Haruyuki finally remembered. Kuroyukihime hadn’t told him to defend. She’d said to “respond.” Which meant that the current Silver Crow had the power to manage this slicing attack somehow. And that meant there was just one possibility.
“Unh…aah!” Inclining his body even farther, Haruyuki deployed the thin metallic fins—the wings equipped on Silver Crow’s back.
The blade had already reached the center of his arms, and the tip was digging into the left side of his helmet. If he used his wings and tried to fly forward or upward, it would be the same as slicing his avatar up himself.
Up to that point, Haruyuki had only used the wings on his back—his flight ability—to charge, ascend, or drop rapidly; in other words, to advance. In fact, he’d thought there was no other way to use it. But Crow’s silver wings didn’t fly by flapping like a bird. The extremely thin blade fins vibrated at high frequencies and gained thrust by beating at the air. In which case, he should be able to fly backward from a static position.
“Fly!” Legs bent, leaning forward, Haruyuki fluttered his wings with everything he had.
Hit by the sudden atmospheric current, the speed of Lotus’s slicing attack dulled the slightest bit. Not letting his sole chance get away, Haruyuki kicked off the ground.
Graarr! He heard a sound like an explosion, and Silver Crow flew backward like he’d been hit by a giant’s hand—he was sent flying. The inky blade pulled free of his arms, tracing out a tail of sparks. Although he’d avoided the danger of being sliced in two, he lost his balance in the unfamiliar maneuver and just barely managed to take off, his feet scraping along the ground any number of times.
Once he’d ascended more than ten meters into the sky with the pale full moon behind him, he finally shifted to hovering.
“…Haaah…” As he let out a long breath, he looked down and met the eyes of Kuroyukihime, who was already lowering her swords.
Her gaze was calm and satisfied, as if the earlier murderous aura had been an illusion. She nodded firmly and called to him in the sky, “You’ve grown, Haruyuki!”
Understanding that he’d apparently “responded,” Haruyuki sighed again with relief and lazily descended. He landed right in front of Kuroyukihime and looked again at the wounds on his arms. The cuts were so perfect that if this were the real world, they would have been impossible to create, no matter what tools were used. The cross section that he could get just a peek of shone like a mirror.
“Nice work realizing in that moment that you could not guard against my swords. And the speed of your response after that was marvelous,” Kuroyukihime reported with a cool look.
“If you’d told me in advance, I wouldn’t have thought to guard from the start,” Haruyuki replied, a hint of complaint in his tone.
“But then that wouldn’t have been a lesson.” Kuroyukihime laughed briefly before straightening up. “Now, then. How about it? Did you perhaps hear Crow’s voice?”
“Uh. Um…I feel like maybe I did…But…,” Haruyuki stammered in reply, even though Kuroyukihime was taking the trouble to give him hands-on instruction.
But his teacher didn’t get mad, only nodded coolly. “It’s all right. If you can move like you just did, then the answer is already inside you. You just have to cultivate your avatar directly as your heart tells you to.” She quickly opened her Instruct menu.
Before he pushed the OK button in the window, requesting a draw that appeared in his field of view, Haruyuki clenched his hands into fists and bowed his head deeply. “Thank you very much!”
He left Kuroyukihime in front of the elevator on the top floor of the hospital, and while he was walking toward Koenji and home, Haruyuki played the words she’d said in the final moments of the duel on repeat in the back of his mind.
“You just have to cultivate your avatar directly…”
Although he had nodded as if in solid agreement, to be honest, he still had misgivings. Regardless of the fact that he had just barely managed to respond to the Black King’s indefensible attack in the Moonlight stage, if, for instance, Crow had had a long-distance special attack like Cyan Pile, he might have been able to stop the initial charge itself. And one of the four level-up bonuses he could select from at any time was Radial Shot, a special attack that launched three metal arrows from the armor of his arms radially.
The only information he had was the short explanatory text and the silhouette motion, so he couldn’t know how it would be used in a duel unless he actually selected it. But he’d been fighting empty-handed all this time, so for Haruyuki, a “flying tool” was a dream power. If he had that, he might be able to repay the red-type avatars that shot at him from far away as much as they liked with a shot—no, three shots.
And yes, Kuroyukihime had even said it herself, hadn’t she? To choose the power he most desired.
“Unnnh.” He groaned the same way he had a half hour or so ago and opened the Brain Burst console on his virtual desktop. He switched the tab to the bonus selection screen that he was now utterly familiar with.
The top left of the four bonuses was Radial Knuckle, a close-range special attack that closed the distance aboveground with a slide dash and launched a series of high-speed punches. The bottom left was Hard Armor, an Enhanced Armament that would increase the defensive power of his torso. And the bottom right was an enhancement of the flight ability he already possessed.
The Enhanced Armament wasn’t a weapon, so he wasn’t drawn to that, and the ability enhancement was so boring. If he was going to choose, then it would actually be a special attack, and of the two of those, the flying tool…His thoughts did indeed run in this direction.
“It’s a total waste to keep fighting without taking my bonus now that I finally made it to level two,” Haruyuki muttered weakly, and taking advantage of having stopped at a red light along the Chuo Line elevated bridge, he extended his finger to the top right of the window.
“Okay! That settles it then! When you think about it, flying tools plus flight is the most powerful combo, right? I’ll rack up the wins with this and hit level three before Kuroyukihime gets out of the hospital!” Unconsciously, he started explaining as if to convince himself, and his trembling finger approached the Radial Shot button.
But just a few millimeters away, his hand stopped for some reason. He had decided in his mind to push this button, so then why wouldn’t his body listen to what he was telling it? It was almost like he’d been hit with a debuff that made movement impossible.
“Haah.” He sighed with disillusionment—there had to be limits to indecisiveness, and yet…Haruyuki abandoned the bonus selection for the moment and glanced at the opposite side of the road. The wait time in the AR display next to the red pedestrian light said twelve seconds. Plenty of time.
“Burst Link.”
Skreeeeee!! The familiar sound of acceleration came as the world was frozen blue. Descending in the pink pig avatar in the initial acceleration space of the Blue World, Haruyuki switched the open console to the matching list.
After a moment of the loading display, the names of nearly ten Burst Linkers were immediately lined up on the list. The Suginami area where Haruyuki currently was had long been neutral territory, but together with the Black King’s return to the Accelerated World, she had declared this the territory of the new Nega Nebulus.
Within a territory, members of the ruling Legion had the right to refuse challenges from other Burst Linkers. Thus, as long as you were in your territory, it was possible to select only opponents who were advantageous for you. But after checking the list from top to bottom, Haruyuki reached out to the sole name he’d never seen. Unlike before, his hand didn’t stop; the black hoof touched the list. He hit the DUEL button that immediately appeared with a clack.
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��m going to make sure of it in this battle. Of what kind of power I—and Silver Crow—really want.
With this thought strong in his chest, he gave himself over to the effects to transform into his duel avatar.
4
In the normal duel field for the second time that day, the stage, and its marked destruction, had changed from Moonlight to Weathered. All of the surrounding buildings were transformed into desolate objects, crumbling concrete with chunks of rusty steel skeletons breaking through to the exterior. The surface of the road was a spiderweb of fine cracks, and the never-ending wind tossed up tufts of dust and dirt. The sky alone was beautiful, the clearest of blues, the dry clarity of a world from which the human race had vanished.
Haruyuki took in the blue of the sky for just a moment before blinking and checking the health gauge in the upper right of his field of view. The name displayed there was JADE JAILER; the level was three, one above him.
“Jade…Like the gem, huh? So then, a green type? Jailer is…like a prison person? Maybe a prisoner?” Unfortunately, this analysis was the limit for seventh-grade Haruyuki’s English abilities. Everything about the Brain Burst system was displayed in English, so for a Burst Linker, English was actually an important skill, but a language wasn’t the kind of thing you could learn in a day. In tag team matches with Takumu, his friend generally translated the English words for him, so he’d also been pretty spoiled and hadn’t really felt the need to study harder.
Either way, he’d figure out what jailer meant once he actually saw his opponent. The guide cursor floating in the middle of his vision was pointing pretty much due east. The fact that it wavered slightly was proof that his opponent was approaching in a straight line.
“Moving in a straight line in this terrain? But this is a residential neighborhood. There shouldn’t be any straight roads,” Haruyuki muttered, but then he quickly grasped the reason for this. His opponent wasn’t using the roads. Haruyuki smashed a series of nearby concrete lumps to charge his special-attack gauge and then jumped up with his wings to leap onto the linear structure that cut across from east to west above his head—the Chuo Line elevated bridge.
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