The Black Dual Swordsman

by Reki Kawahara

  A second later, the F-type avatar duo of Lignum and Chafer stuck their landing rather splendidly, while Ash, behind them, hit the ground on all fours.

  “Um, Ash!” Haruyuki impulsively called out as the century-end rider moved to stand up ever so fearfully. “Why’d you come here without your bike?”

  “Shaddup! You’re one to talk! You can’t fly with no air!”

  With this fact pointed out so succinctly, Haruyuki could do nothing but fall silent with a pouting frown. When he thought about it, the last time he’d fought a motorcycle-less Ash Roller had been the second duel they had after Haruyuki had become a Burst Linker. That time, although he’d clearly been a total newb, he’d managed to win the tough fight, but it had been eight months since then. He’d be wise not to assume Ash’s actual fighting power was the same as it had been then.

  “I understand. I’ll keep my guard up!” Haruyuki declared, readying his hands before him.

  But the avatar in the Qipao dress gestured for Ash to step back. “Ash, team up with Lignum. I will fight Silver Crow first.”

  “Huh?” Haruyuki cried as the same time as Ash howled “whyyyy?!”

  Rather than answer them, however, Suntan did a short, elegant, and fierce martial arts demonstration, reminiscent of the kata for Chinese kenpō. She settled into a relaxed pose as though they were in a totally normal gravity environment instead of one-fourth the usual. “You will show me the skill that won against my brother Pound one-on-one!”

  “O-oh, that’s—!”

  That’s when I was Chrome Disaster.

  She didn’t give him the chance to give voice to the words. Walking like she was gliding smoothly across the cracked concrete, Suntan rapidly closed the distance between them.

  “Ya!” The right hand that was thrust forward with the short battle cry was not clenched into a fist. Haruyuki immediately surmised that this was a palm strike to his face and tried to bring his arms up to guard.

  However, Suntan’s palm only gently touched Haruyuki’s left wrist. There was no damage, but a cold chill raced up his spine. He hurried to pull his arms back, but the palm had already snapped shut around his wrist.

  Giving him no chance to escape, she twisted his left arm inward, and his elbow and shoulder joints squealed violently at the limit of their range of movement.

  Now!

  Suntan launched a palm strike with her left hand.

  “Nngh!” He just barely managed to guard with his right arm, but in the moment of impact, sparks shot out from the overextended joints of his left. Together with a sharp pain, his health gauge was cut down about 5 percent.

  Gritting his teeth beneath his goggles, Haruyuki belatedly grasped what was going on. One-quarter gravity meant that the force of simple striking attacks was also one-quarter or even less. Just kicking or punching wouldn’t have any real effect, and there was also the risk that the reaction would send you floating up off the ground. The only way to deal any accurate damage in a hand-to-hand fight in this situation was to grab hold of your opponent and launch strikes, or use judo locking techniques. Suntan’s attack—pushing his right arm to the limit and striking with her left hand—was a high-level technique that did both simultaneously. Most likely, Suntan and the others had been lectured in advance by Graph on how to fight in the low-gravity environment of the Space stage.

  His thoughts racing, Haruyuki tried to somehow pull his wrist free from its extreme position, but Suntan’s hand was glued to him and refused to let go.

  “It’s no use!” she shouted. “My palm is an aggregate of tiny suction cups. You cannot break free with force!”

  “Wha—?”

  That’s scary! The thought flashed through his mind, but he felt like he’d read somewhere that insects that could climb up glass did indeed have feet like that.

  “Okay then!” Enduring the pain in his left arm, Haruyuki launched a roundhouse kick with his right leg. If they were joined at their arms, then it stood to reason he could also hit her.

  “You’re soft!” With exquisite timing, she yanked on his left arm and knocked his kick off track. She easily guarded against it with the thick armor of her left forearm and launched her own quick kick in response.

  “Ha!” Her leg stretched out directly above him in an impeccable vertical kick, scraped his lower jaw, and carried away another 3 percent of his gauge.

  Haruyuki was definitely not bad at close-range, hand-to-hand combat. That was, in fact, his main attack style. But his own distinctive flavor of that was high-speed, three-dimensional movement, so he was at a disadvantage when he was forced to cling to his opponent like this. He had to somehow drag her into his playing field.

  If I can’t get my arm back! Haruyuki strengthened his resolve and sank down.

  “Hngaah!” He jumped as hard as he could. It seemed that Suntan didn’t have suction cups on the soles of her feet, at least, and she pulled away from the ground with Haruyuki clinging to her.

  “What is this?!” Suntan hurriedly tried to let go of him, and now it was Haruyuki grabbing her wrist and pulling her closer. The weak gravity vanished in a flash, and they started to ascend into the infinite starry night. The only way they were going to return to one of the islands was if they hit the stage boundary somewhere in the distance above or used a special attack that generated some kind of kinetic energy.

  “Hey! Let go of me!” Suntan shouted, her voice tinged with an edge of panic as she tried to kick Haruyuki again. But all she accomplished was adding spin to their conjoined bodies. She might have gotten some pointers before the battle, but this was still her first experience in a totally gravity-free environment.

  Of course, it was also Haruyuki’s first time. But when he really thought about it, he’d experienced something similar any number of times—free fall from impossible altitudes. During a free fall, kicks and punches were mostly useless. The only effective attack was when the opponent was completely restrained.

  “Please excuse me!” Apologizing automatically, Haruyuki slipped his arms around Suntan from behind before squeezing the slender torso with everything he had.

  Since duel avatars didn’t breathe or have blood flowing through them, choke holds worked totally differently from in the real world. To cause damage, an avatar needed to apply enough pressure to break the other player’s armor, but Silver Crow didn’t have that kind of strength.

  “It’s…no use! My armor cannot be crushed with this force!” Suntan shouted, removing her hands from Haruyuki’s arm. And she was right; her armor was quite strong, as befitting her insect motif. He doubted he could put a tiny crack or two with a choke hold.

  However, that was not his objective.

  The instant his opponent turned her focus to escaping the hold, he loosened his arms and let them slip slightly to cross his forearms while still holding on to Suntan. At the same time, he pulled his head back as far as he could.

  “Head…” Silver Crow’s face mask shone with a pure-white glow, and the light of the stars receded. Suntan, desperate to escape Crow’s arms, reacted the slightest bit too late. “…Buuuuuuuuuutt!!”

  Haruyuki smashed his head into the back of the head in front of him.

  The Anomaly, Graphite Edge. The reason for the nickname was the fact that he was equipped with swords that could cut through anything and a shield that could defend against anything.

  Although it wasn’t exactly a shield, per se.

  The longsword of Graph’s right hand—named Lux—was matte black along the edge, while the blade itself was a transparent glass-like material. Thus, in poor light, it looked like it was nothing more than a thin black border. This edge was graphene, a sheet a single atom thick. Because the blade tip was only a single atom wide, it could cut through any substance in the Accelerated World. The blade itself was made of hyper diamond, a fullerene aggregate. Boasting an overwhelming hardness and fracture toughness, it repelled any substance in the Accelerated World.

  It hadn’t been drawn yet, but Graph had Umbra on
his left shoulder, a longsword of the exact same appearance and performance. So then what would happen if sword was to cut sword—Lux against Umbra? Many Burst Linkers had questioned this for several years, but Graph merely grinned in response.

  It had been three years since she’d fought Graphite Edge, formerly the earth of the Four Elements, and now the first seat of the Six Armors. And the stage for their last fight had been the roof of Shibuya Hikarie, the commercial building beside Ravine Square.

  Back then, she had begrudgingly been defeated, unable to break the cross-guard defense of the two swords, but today she had to show him how she’d grown in the last three years. She couldn’t fail in this mock territory battle, and most importantly, Graphite Edge had been Kuroyukihime’s sword teacher.

  “First, I’ll have to make you draw your second sword, hmm?” Kuroyukihime said, guard up as she dropped into position.

  “Looking forward to it.” Graph grinned beneath his face mask—or so it seemed. “Been a long time since I drew Umbra.”

  “Hasn’t it been a long time since you even dueled?” she retorted.

  “Now that you mention it, I guess it has.” His arrogant tone hadn’t changed, but the tip of the longsword he gripped in his right hand was perfectly still even in the super-low gravity of the stage.

  Facing him, Kuroyukihime quickly glanced around to check on the situation. She was standing on the left part of the floating island split apart by Graph’s special attack. Silver Crow and Suntan Chafer had been fighting on that same island until a few seconds earlier, but Crow had jumped to send them flying off into the zero-gravity zone, so she couldn’t see their battle at the moment.

  Some ways off, Cyan Pile and Lime Bell were taking on green’s Lignum Vitae and Ash Roller. Pile and Bell both excelled at close-range fighting, but in addition to the unfamiliar stage, they were apparently bewitched by Lignum’s parasol and the way it stretched and shrank and opened and closed. But they hadn’t taken any significant damage yet.

  On the other island, gradually drifting off to the right, Aqua Current was fighting Iron Pound, and Sky Raker was facing off against Viridian Decurion. The strategy appeared to place Ardor Maiden at the rear to shoot arrows while Current took Pound’s strikes with her water armor, and Raker deftly handled Decurion’s slashing attack, but without fire, the arrows didn’t seem to be penetrating Pound’s iron armor or Decurion’s buckler.

  Both teams were stuck in deadlocks, but once someone started the chain of special attacks, things would get moving. Kuroyukihime couldn’t stand there glaring at Graphite Edge forever, either.

  “I suppose we should get started, too, then, Graph?” Kuroyukihime raised the sword of her right hand, and Graphite Edge also readied himself in the same pose.

  “Anytime you’re ready, Lota.”

  “I’ll say this now. Things won’t go as they did three years ago!” she shouted, thrusting the tip of her right leg into the concrete before leaping forward.

  In this kind of low-gravity environment, an avatar would normally be forced upward when they kicked off the ground to dash, but given that she could use both her feet as spikes, Black Lotus was the exception to this rule. She stuck to the ground in a low-altitude dash, slashing the sword of her right hand upward.

  Graph easily caught the blow with his longsword. But she had been counting on that. Her aim lay elsewhere.

  “Hup!” Graph barked as his body floated up lightly, unable to completely absorb the energy from the blow.

  Not letting this chance slip away, she thrust her right foot into the ground as she lashed out again with her left. And once more, although he parried the blow, Graph rose farther upward.

  The key to fighting with a sword in the Space stage was to use mainly sword strokes from a low position rather than the high position. With an attack from below, a sword wielder could get maximum power by bracing both legs on the ground, not to mention that the upward swing caused the defending opponent to float. And once away from the ground, there was no way for a sword user to counterattack.

  Here we go! Shouting in her heart, Lotus dived directly beneath Graph, now two meters in the air. As she folded her legs under her and lowered her body, she turned her right arm straight upward and yanked it back.

  “Death By Piercing!!” She called the technique’s name with every bit of strength she could muster, but her voice was drowned out by a sound like an external combustion engine.

  A bluish-purple light brilliantly lit up the dark stage. She stretched her body upward as far as she could and thrust her sword arm straight up.

  There were two courses of action Graphite Edge could take. Parry, or block with his sword. But Black Lotus’s level-five special attack wasn’t so weak that its trajectory could be changed with a normal attack when her opponent quite literally did not have his feet on the ground. And if he was going to block, even if the blow didn’t shatter his hyper-diamond blade, Graph would fly up toward the distant stars. It would be perfect if they could defeat all the other green members while he was struggling to make his way back.

  The tip of her Terminate Sword, glittering lethally, closed in on the chest of the dual swordsman. If the special attack of a king pierced a critical point, instant death was certain, no matter how high-ranking the player, and yet, Graph showed no sign of moving Lux.

  No parry and no block? No matter. Be pierced!

  “Oh!” Grunting, Kuroyukihime tried to break through the thin armor on Graph’s chest.

  Here, finally, the swordsman responded. But it wasn’t his right hand that moved; it was his left. This empty hand, slender for an M-type, casually grabbed the tip of Kuroyukihime’s sword.

  The swords of her four limbs were the origin of the king’s nickname, World’s End, and they tore through everything they touched. The only exceptions were the Seven Arcs the kings had, the weapon of the successive Chrome Disasters, and Graphite Edge’s double swords. Plus, Graph’s duel avatar body had such little defensive power that Sky Raker had even remarked that Graph was more sword than person. Thus, the five fingers of Graph’s left hand, holding on to the Black King’s sword while a special attack was activated, should have dropped off instantly.

  “Nngh?!” Kuroyukihime gasped in shock.

  The powerful thrust of her special attack vanished, as though her sword had stabbed into a lump of thick rubber. From the gaps between Graph’s fingers, the bluish-purple light scattered pointlessly. Not a single finger was cut off, and the health gauge displayed in the upper right of her field of view did not drop so much as a pixel.

  On the verge of touching the chest armor, her sword lost all momentum and stopped.

  “What on earth did you do?” Kuroyukihime murmured, staring up at this.

  The answer was so nonchalant, it was almost hateful. “I’m the one who taught you the Way of the Flexible, Lota.”

  Kuroyukihime’s blade still gripped in his left hand, Graphite Edge casually swung Lux. The jet-black single-atom blade touched the side of her ebony sword.

  Ting! Kuroyukihime watched as the top fifteen centimeters of her right hand were severed.

  The instant the Head Butt propelled forward and made contact with the back of Suntan Chafer’s head, his full weight behind it, a pure-white light effect reflected brilliantly off the armor of both avatars. Although Suntan’s armor boasted a strength on par with any metal color, cracks radiated outward, and tiny fragments flew off.

  Head Butt, Silver Crow’s sole hand-to-hand special attack, possessed the two characteristics of Physical/Striking and Energy/Light. The majority of the physical damage was checked by her thick armor, but the light damage became a directionless shock wave and penetrated down to the inner body of the avatar.

  “Nngh!” Suntan groaned while her health gauge dropped nearly 20 percent. The knockback of the attack caused them to be blown a good distance away from each other, Suntan toward the sea of stars that colored the sky of the stage and Haruyuki down toward the floating island.

  The
sky of a normal duel stage had a boundary wall, so Suntan wouldn’t fly up and off into the depths of space. But it would take a fair bit of time until she hit the wall and came bouncing back. He had to get back to the island before that and stand alongside Takumu and Chiyuri in the fierce fight against Lignum and Ash.

  As he fell in a straight line in the zero-gravity space, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide to try to take in the status of the battle. He suddenly saw a vivid violet-blue flash of light illuminate one of the floating islands. The light of the Black King’s special attack, Death By Piercing.

  Narrowing his eyes, he saw Graphite Edge floating up off the ground and Kuroyukihime directly beneath him. If she launched her special attack from that position, even if he did manage to somehow block it, Graph would be repelled directly upward and shoot off toward the stars just like Suntan.

  Nice, Kuroyukihime! Haruyuki clenched his fist in victory.

  Then, instead of the light of the special attack piercing Graph like a lance, it scattered in all directions and disappeared. In the right side of Haruyuki’s field of view where the health gauges of enemies and allies were displayed, Kuroyukihime’s dropped more than 10 percent.

  “Kuroyukihime!” Haruyuki shouted, perplexed by what had happened.

  Most likely, Graph had somehow kept himself from being knocked backward by her attack and instead decided on an immediate counterattack. As was to be expected, this former Element and current first seat of the Six Armors was no ordinary player.

  Haruyuki thought about changing the target of his descent from Takumu and Chiyuri to the spot beside Kuroyukihime and gritted his teeth.

  I’ll take Graph. Kuroyukihime had made this declaration right before the start of the battle. On top of that, the Black King was far too good a player to ever be done in like this. He had to have faith and leave this to her. So Haruyuki took his eyes off Kuroyukihime and focused on the battlefield with Takumu and Chiyuri.

  Pile Driver, the large Enhanced Armament equipped on Cyan Pile’s right arm, was an effective weapon in the Space stage as well, as long as his feet were planted on the floating island. But the instant he went out into the zero-gravity sphere, the pile would lose essentially all its force. This was because, the instant he launched it, he would be unable to absorb the recoil, and his body would inevitably be pushed backward.