More than anything, if they could defeat the Enemy here, when it next regenerated, it would be back in its original territory, the deepest level of the Shiba Park Dungeon. It still wasn’t clear who had moved Metatron from there to the top of Midtown Tower, but it wouldn’t be easy to manage that feat twice. In other words, even if they didn’t manage to complete their mission to destroy the ISS kit main body that day, they could at least leave the tower defenseless for a while.
For these reasons, the nine Burst Linkers took on the challenge of a decisive battle with the Archangel.
Two minutes and thirty seconds after the assault began, Haruyuki—and probably his friends, too—were made powerfully aware of how soft their initial estimations had been.
“Wing attack’s coming! Get ready to evade!”
At Kuroyukihime’s instruction, the vanguard of Haruyuki, Takumu, Fuko, and Pard quickly jumped back and looked up at the sky. Above them, Metatron’s main four wings were spread wide. The feathers, twelve tapestries on each wing, shimmered with blue light. Ksha! The air split and all twelve shot down to the ground like lightning bolts.
The feathers were more than a meter wide, but thin like paper, and easily sliced through the armor of any avatar they touched. They whizzed through the air, their trajectories completely random, and Haruyuki and the others did everything they could to slip around and past them. Thin blue blades shot down one after another and dug deeply into the surface of the earth.
“Crow, watch out!” A voice cried out from behind him just when he thought he’d dodged them all.
An intense impact—but he took basically no damage. He looked back and saw Takumu holding up his right arm as he pushed Haruyuki aside. The tip of a sharp feather had pierced his Enhanced Armament and made it all the way through the thick plating to the avatar’s body. The pile driver, the symbol of Cyan Pile, was already battered and beaten after the spike had been transformed into a two-handed sword for the Incarnate technique Cyan Blade—not to mention blocking any number of Metatron’s attacks. Yet, it was still in one piece for now; the pummeled pile had not lost its shine.
When the forty-eight feathers were pulled back up into the air, Haruyuki slapped his hand on Takumu’s back and shouted, “Sorry, Pile!”
“It’s okay. I can still keep going!” His close friend’s words were reassuring, but there was a hint of exhaustion in his voice.
Haruyuki himself was aware of his focus getting worse. That he had missed the feather attacking from behind was proof of that. His health gauge still had more than 60 percent left, after the damage he took defending against the laser, but if his movement got any duller, it would be cut down to the red zone in an instant.
“Pile, hold on just a sec!” Chiyuri shouted from where she was stationed to the rear in the middle guard. “As soon as my gauge charges, I’ll heal you!”
“Got it!” Takumu waved his hand in response.
In a long Enemy battle, there was nothing more reliable than Citron Call. But the technique seriously ate up Chiyuri’s special-attack gauge, and there were basically no objects in the area that could be destroyed. Thus, even she needed to get close during the slim openings with Metatron and charge her gauge through direct attacks. Since they couldn’t lose Lime Bell, Akira was guarding her, but she was still without the majority of her flowing water armor, so they had to plan their assault timing carefully.
After the completion of the cutting-feather attack—this also likely had an official name like Trisagion, but the mysterious voice hadn’t said a word since the start of the battle—Metatron’s four wings folded back. That was when the beast was assailed by countless flames, drawing out parabolas in the sky.
This was Niko and Utai from the rear, the group’s long-range attack squad. The rocket missiles of the Red King, who had once again summoned the armored trailer Dreadnought, and the fissioning flame arrows of Maiden’s special attack, Flame Torrents, blanketed the Archangel’s massive body. Dozens of small explosions made the stage shake, and the first level of the Enemy’s four-level health gauge disappeared without a sound.
Still three levels to go…
Haruyuki shook off the thought that flickered through his mind and leapt off the ground. He joined up with Kuroyukihime and Chiyuri and the others who came racing over and launched his Aerial Combo, hovering next to Metatron’s torso. The matte, snowy-white structure felt to his hands like he was punching sturdy ceramic composite, and it neither cracked nor dented. But he believed that each blow brought the gauge down however little, and he put his all into every punch, kick, and spin.
“Crow, you’re going too far!”
He heard Kuroyukihime call out abruptly, and he opened his eyes wide. Without his realizing it, innumerable tiny holes had opened up all over the seven-meter head sitting on top of the long torso.
“Ngh…!” Guarding his body with his arms, he folded the wings on his back. His avatar was pulled downward by the virtual gravity, but not fast enough.
Tight, snail-like spirals poked their faces out from the openings in Metatron’s round head. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat! The spiral bullets shot out, machine-gun fire in all directions.
They had learned that the instant the holes appeared, they needed to immediately stop their attack and take cover in the one place the bullets didn’t reach—underneath Metatron’s torso. But Haruyuki had been late to retreat, and he was hit in the right arm and left hip, which knocked him to the ground. The white snails kept rotating for a while even after impact, and they dug deep into Crow’s silver armor, sending orange sparks and red damage effects shooting outward.
“Nngah—!” The pain was dizzyingly intense.
Clawed hands yanked him up.
Blood Leopard. From the fang-filled mouth, a stern order was issued in a tone that brooked no argument: “Crow, long-range with Rain and the others.”
“Huh…? I-I’m okay. I can still—”
“Get back, Corvus.” A new voice interrupted his rebuttal. “We’ll call you up again soon.”
When even Fuko was telling him to fall back, there was no point in arguing it. He could throw a tantrum, but it would only expose everyone else to danger.
“…I’m sorry!” Haruyuki shouted just this, and somehow managed to return the nod from Kuroyukihime, who was watching him with concerned eyes, before spreading his wings. He flew back to where Niko and Utai had set up camp, about fifty meters to the rear.
The instant he landed beside the tank, all the strength drained out of his legs and he dropped to his knees. His exhaustion was apparently greater than he’d thought.
Dammit! At such an important time! He tried desperately to stand, but—
“C, please rest a little.” Utai wrapped a small hand around his shoulder. “That is also important work.”
“That’s right, Crow!” Niko’s voice came over the speaker. “You’ve already done some seriously fine work. You leave the rest to us!”
Their kindness made him happy but also frustrated at the same time, and Haruyuki clenched his hands as tightly as he could.
He’d been faintly aware that he was not good with long battles. Even in his daily normal duels, if the fight time exceeded twenty minutes, his chances of victory dropped significantly. He was good at hyper-accelerating his senses in the critical moment, but the flip side of that was he couldn’t really show off his full power in situations that required a fixed concentration for a long period.
It was the same in the real world. He managed somehow to get through the homework every day, but even when he decided to voluntarily study for a long period, he would end up staring into space after two or three hours, and the meaning of the numbers and letters no longer registered in his mind.
He knew he couldn’t keep going like that. With his current scholastic abilities, there probably wasn’t any point in even talking about achieving the biggest objective he’d ever had in his life, the goal he secretly harbored in his heart—going to the same high school as Kuroyukihime in two years.
For that, he would need to study diligently on his own and bring up his grades now, while he was still in eighth grade, but no matter what he did, his brain’s energy just wouldn’t last.
“You mustn’t rush,” Utai noted quietly, almost as if reading his mind. “One little thing, another, another, and then another. If you build your work up like this, you’ll reach your goal someday. No matter how far away or great it might be, I’m certain of it. C, you must already be aware of this.”
As Haruyuki lifted his face, the small shrine maiden drew her longbow. A smooth, effortless motion; calm, relaxed. The ultimate in refinement, backed by thousands, tens of thousands of repetitions.
She launched the flame arrow with a call of the technique name. It turned into a red shooting star and flew through the evening sky, splitting soundlessly. The flaming meteor shower rained down on the massive Enemy with terrifying precision.
One small thing, one at a time.
“…Right. If you’re tired, I guess you should rest,” Haruyuki muttered. He relaxed his clenched fists and let all the tension slip out of his body. Strangely, the sensation came back into his weak legs. “It was like that when I was cleaning Hoo’s hut, too. I didn’t try to clean everything right from the start. I thought of things I could do and got a little further, and then a little further, and then before I knew it, it was all finished.”
Utai said nothing, but a faint smile rose up on her face. Or so he felt.
Haruyuki stood up slowly and took a deep breath. The exhaustion was still there. But that was only natural. To repel Metatron’s laser, he had pushed his powers of concentration to the absolute limit. Right now, he had to do the things he could here.
He reached out the fingers of his right hand and generated a silver overlay in them. He built it slowly, without hurrying. Once it was large enough, he stretched his arm out in front of him. Slowly, slowly, he pulled it back.
Now, where to aim?
Laser Javelin, the sole long-distance attack available to Haruyuki, did not have a high accuracy. But Metatron was enormous. He should be able to aim for the wings, torso, or head.
Coolly, he observed the Enemy’s body. If it had a weak point, it would have been the strangely shaped horn stretching out from the top of its round head, but that was definitely too small a target. The next thing that stood out was the crown on the top of its head. When looked at closely, the crown alone, out of all the parts of Metatron’s body, was not white, but rather silver.
Try to hit it?
Eyes fixed on the platinum circlet and careful not to exert himself, Haruyuki pulled his right arm back to just before his shoulder. The silver lance produced itself in midair, trembling slightly. If Haruyuki wanted force, he would call out the name of the technique here and increase his image of it with that trigger. But right now, what he wanted more than power was accuracy; if he yelled, that would knock his aim off. Mouth closed, he gently cut the base of the lance free with his left hand.
The Incarnate lance flew, trailing silver light. Anytime he’d used it before, it had carved out a spiral trajectory, but just this once, it was flying in what was basically a straight line. Metatron had stopped for the wing attack, and the lance was sucked soundlessly into the crown tightly encircling its head.
Skeeenk! The clear metallic squeal reached even Haruyuki’s distant ears. At the same time, it looked as though the Enemy’s massive body stiffened, if only for a moment.
And then he heard the voice again.
Yes. That is good. Continue to aim for the same location.
—What? You’re still here? Why didn’t you say anything?
You were not listening. From now on, turn your ears this way and do exactly as I say.
Who died and made you king? he couldn’t help thinking. The formal nature of the speech was totally different from Utai’s. Once again, he felt the question of who exactly this voice belonged to, but it didn’t seem like this was the best time to take his eyes off Metatron. At the very least, if the voice was giving him advice, it wasn’t an enemy.
“Rain, Mei!” Haruyuki turned to Utai and Niko. “That crown thing on Metatron’s forehead seems to be a weak point. Let’s all concentrate our fire there.”
“Where’s the forehead?! And where do you get off bossing me around?!” Even as she yelled at him, Niko turned her main armaments a little to the left. Utai also lowered the sights on her longbow.
“We’ll all fire together. I’ll count down.” Bringing the light into his right hand once more, Haruyuki continued, “Four, three, two, one, zero!”
Bright ruby-red lines gushed forward from the two laser guns, a large flame arrow shot forth from the longbow, and a lance of light was released from Haruyuki’s hand. The three long-range techniques gradually closed in bit by bit, flying across the fifty meters, before fusing right in front of Metatron and slamming into the silver crown.
A high-pitched metallic shriek rang out, dozens of times louder than the previous hit. Kuroyukihime and the others on the front line leapt back in surprise. The massive Enemy body twisted in anguish; the wings fluttered open and closed.
“Wh-whoa…It worked…”
“It worked!” Utai agreed.
Nodding, Haruyuki sank into thought. If a long-distance attack was this effective, then a direct attack from close range would do even more damage to the crown. He unconsciously took a step forward, but then stopped. He’d been ordered to the rear by both Pard and Fuko; he couldn’t exactly just go back to the front line on his own—
“Get in there,” Niko said abruptly, her voice containing a wry smile.
“Huh? But…”
“You’re relaxed, you’re good. Or is that it? You not gonna obey the order of a king?”
“O-of course! …I understand. I’ll go.” Resolving himself, Haruyuki spread the wings on his back. “…Thanks, Rain, Mei!”
He kicked hard off the ground, strength now returned to his legs, and used his nearly full special-attack gauge to plunge toward the chaos around Metatron without holding back. Even as he flew along at top speed, the mysterious quiet in his heart didn’t go away. Normally, his field of view would always narrow down to the single point of his objective, but now not only was Metatron itself perfectly clear, but so were the developments around it with the vanguard team, the middle guard a little farther back, and even the half-destroyed Midtown Tower in the background.
Still raging, the Enemy spread its four wings—the feather cutter attack. The sharp, thin films shone blue, and Kuroyukihime and the others on the ground readied to dodge.
Looking at them from above, he saw that the wings were deployed in an X shape, but there was a slight opening in the middle, at the back. He should be able to slip through that gap and reach the head. Cutting back and forth from right turn to sharp left, Haruyuki carefully examined his assault course.
Ksha! The forty-eight feathers shot outward. While the four members of the vanguard on the ground determinedly evaded the feather blades that gouged into the earth, Haruyuki plunged forward from Metatron’s backside. He slipped through the gap in the wings and closed in on the round head.
The seven-meter diameter of the sphere was unfathomably large up close. Spiraling lines raced across the surface, and holes were burned not just into the front but the very rear as well. On the top sat the platinum silver crown, with a two-meter-long horn jutting up over the edge.
Without hesitation, Haruyuki grabbed onto the crown and launched a straight punch with his right fist, which bore the full thrust of his wings. A loud reverberation rang out, like a massive bell being struck. The sound waves radiated outward, making the twilight air shudder. Metatron’s enormous body twisted violently, and almost as though its nervous system had gone awry, it flailed its many legs and wings.
Grabbing onto the crown tightly with both hands so he wouldn’t be thrown off, Haruyuki shouted to Kuroyukihime and the others on the ground, “I’m attacking the crown! You guys keep attacking the body when Metatron starts to rampag
e!” He thought they would get mad at him for coming back without being asked, but they didn’t.
“K!” Pard responded instantly, and everyone else also voiced their agreement to the plan.
Haruyuki pushed back the impulse to start whaling recklessly on the crown; he needed to wait for the right timing. If he could prevent Metatron’s attacks by hammering at its weak point, then he should aim for the moment when it started the feather cutter or the snail shooter. Still clinging to the crown, he focused on the Enemy’s movements.
Seen from up close, the platinum crown had a strange design, several C-shaped parts all joined together, but the tapered ends turned inward rather than out. Thanks to this, they were like handles, making it easy for Haruyuki to hang on. But the sharp, tapered ends cut into Metatron’s white armor plate, and he wondered if it didn’t hurt.
But even as he considered this detail, 80 percent of his mind was carefully taking in every aspect of the Enemy; he wouldn’t miss the start of an attack. The rings that made up the body, each nearly two meters in diameter, began to spin at high speed. Purple sparks crackled in the several centimeters between the rings, forming air gaps. It was an area of effect electrical-discharge attack. Unlike Seiryu’s Thunder Blast, this one spread out horizontally, so unless you immediately went into a frantic full dash to get some real distance the moment you saw the first inklings of the attack, you couldn’t escape it.
But the four members of the vanguard trusted Haruyuki and stayed in close range. He couldn’t let them down. Taking his hands away from the crown, Haruyuki hovered and plunged his right fist—and unconsciously its overlay—into the joint between two C shapes.
Archangel of Savage Light Page 18