His special-attack gauge, charged when he took serious damage in the two fist collisions, was dropping with terrifying speed. Once it hit zero, he would lose his last chance. Haruyuki and Niko would be killed instantly, and Pard, collapsed on the ground below, would also be taken out.
He stretched his hands up into the sky. His mind started to burn white. “Light…,” he shouted with the last of his fuel, his very existence itself, “…speeeeeeeed!!”
Even the logic of the Incarnate System—concentrating one’s imagination to overwrite the phenomenon—was long gone from his head. If he’d been trying to activate an attack, the system would not have responded to his call of the name. But Haruyuki’s second-quadrant Incarnate technique, Light Speed, was unstable; its activation strongly depended on his mental state. It was this instability that responded to Haruyuki’s will now.
A light dozens of times greater than anything he’d produced thus far jetted from his wings, almost like the explosion of a supernova. As the silver overlay colored the world white, Haruyuki saw the sky come mere tens of centimeters closer. The maliciously spiked tires of the armored tank pulled away from the ground one after the other. The massive five-meter-long body began to tilt farther and farther upward.
“Unh…Aah…Aaaaaaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki shouted, the last of his willpower on the verge of burning out completely, and called in one corner of his heart, “Metatron. One more time…One last time, lend me your strength.”
He heard no response. But he didn’t have to see it to feel the snowy white wings on the upper part of his back manifesting another wing. With his original silver wings, three pairs of wings now stretched out from his back, generating a layered harmony like the song of an angel.
In the center of the explosion of light powerful enough to wipe out even two gauges, Haruyuki flew. The sky was close. The earth grew distant. But the massive talons continued to hold fast onto his avatar.
Haruyuki ascended—the entire massive bulk of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, dangling below him. Higher…Higher…!!
Mark II couldn’t fly. Which meant if he could bring it up to a super-high altitude, he could do some severe damage to the armor, even if it meant he died while doing so. He wouldn’t be able to finish the job of protecting Niko, but Pard, on the ground, would definitely rescue her for him.
So higher he rose. Into the sky.
He was about to flap his six wings one final time with everything he had when the restraint that had held him like a vise abruptly disappeared. Mark II had let go on its own. In reaction, Haruyuki started to ascend rapidly, but he opened his wings wide and barely managed to brake and reorient himself downward.
His altitude was maybe five hundred meters. Against the backdrop of the dusky Twilight stage, the enormous armored tank immediately lost momentum and started to fall. It had apparently released Niko at the same time as Haruyuki; he spotted the crimson avatar in the air a little ways off.
Although he was on the verge of passing out from the enormous mental strain of his flight, Haruyuki desperately held fast his consciousness and drifted several meters to one side to grab onto Niko’s hand. She seemed half-conscious herself, but the hand in his squeezed back weakly.
“…Niko.” He gently pulled the petite avatar into his arms. She was so thoroughly battered, it was surprising she still had anything left in her health gauge. He wouldn’t let go of this hand again. Not until they got back to the real world from the Unlimited Neutral Field. Hardening his resolve, he watched the falling armored tank.
If it crashed from this height, it might not be destroyed, but it would certainly be shocked into immobility. While it was, they would get back the original Enhanced Armament with Lime Bell’s Citron Call—this time for sure. And then it would all be over—
“Deel…rrrraaaaaoooooooh!!” Suddenly, the thunderous roar filled the sky.
Pakunk! The tank emitted a strange noise and peeled apart into top and bottom. The metal armor wriggled frantically, changing shape. The upper half into a torso. The lower half into two legs. In mere seconds, the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, had returned to its original human form, the shutter covering the eye of its head wide open.
A reddish-black light flickered fiercely inside the fifty-centimeter hole. A dense aura mixing hatred and rage and all kinds of other negative emotions wrapped around the massive body of Mark II. The two arms were powerfully thrust forward. The two gun barrels drew a double cross with inky particles.
…Crap…It’s already recharged, Haruyuki thought, dumbfounded, and the double nihilistic lasers were fired with a roar.
Special-attack gauge: zero. Incarnate energy: zero. It was all he could do to keep hovering in midair as the two great lances shining the color of blood and darkness fused into one and closed in on him at a ferocious speed. His only option was to stare at the torrent, the tidal wave powerful enough to erase all of creation—
No. Don’t give up. You have to fly. Maybe you’ve used up all your energy, but as long as your wings still move, you have to push a little more, a little higher, a little farther…!
Skreeeeee!! Abruptly, the dry sound of a lightning strike filled Haruyuki’s consciousness.
This is.
The sound of acceleration.
3
There was nothing.
His consciousness alone wandered in the infinite darkness from which all light, sound, and even physical sensation had disappeared. Was he dead? Had he failed to avoid the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II’s guns and been evaporated together with Niko?
No. If he’d died in the Unlimited Neutral Field, he would have simply shifted to a standby state, waiting for regeneration in sixty minutes. The world would indeed have lost its color, but he would have been able to clearly see the scene around him. But no matter how wide he opened his eyes or how hard he squinted, he could see nothing beyond this long darkness. It went without saying that his own avatar was gone, but even the health gauge and special-attack gauge in the upper left of his field of view had been extinguished.
“…Niko,” he called softly, but there was no response. Fumbling around, he couldn’t tell if his own arms actually existed. “Taku, Chiyu…Pard…” His unease ballooning, he called his comrades. “Kuroyukihime…Master…Mei…Curren…”
But the world remained wrapped in cold silence. Actually, he couldn’t even feel temperature or the flow of air. The only word that fit this place was nothing. Had some anomaly occurred in the Brain Burst program, and had his spirit fallen into a place stuck between the worlds? Would he live in an infinite solitude in this endless darkness, going nowhere, seeing no one?
“Someone…? Anyone? Answer me!” Haruyuki raised a desperate voice, suddenly seized by the fear that the very mind aware of this nothing space might disappear, too. “Chiyu…Niko…Rin…Kuroyukihime…”
But his cries were futile. Absorbed into the darkness, they disappeared without so much as an echo. Wrapping his nonexistent arms tightly around his nonexistent body, he said in the weakest of voices, “Metatron…”
And suddenly, a single point of the tiniest light appeared soundlessly before his eyes. A single photon with no mass or even size. But it was definitely there. Focusing his entire self on the faintly shining dot, he started to speak ever so timidly.
“Metatron…? Is that you…?”
The dot fluffed out and turned into a small ring. When he looked very closely at the circle of white light, it appeared to be vibrating slightly. Wondering if maybe anything else had materialized, he started to look away, but the vibrations grew larger and larger, making it harder to keep his eyes on the ring. He hurriedly readjusted his gaze, and the ring stabilized once more. It seemed that if his consciousness wasn’t focused on it, he would slip out of harmony with the ring.
“Please, Metatron. If that’s you, respond to my voice.” Haruyuki synced his entire being to the ring, which was not even a millimeter across.
The ring slowly grew larger—or else Haruyuki started to shrink.
Finally, the expansion stopped, and something hazy materialized beneath it. He hesitantly reached an invisible hand out to the mass of particles that were again diffusing hazily, trying to take some kind of shape—and touched it.
Hyoon! The particles clumped together and began to trace out a human shape—a semitransparent female figure. He’d seen this noble face, eyes closed, just once before. There was no mistake; this was the true form of the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron that had appeared after the fierce battle at Midtown Tower. Were there only two wings stretching out from the back of the thin dress, instead of the four from the last time he’d see her, because she’d lent half to Haruyuki?
“…Meta…tron…?” he murmured, and as if in response, the inhuman beauty slowly lifted her eyelids.
Two glittering gold eyes caught sight of Haruyuki’s mind. And then the ring above the girl’s—Metatron’s—head scattered in a dazzling circle of light that passed his consciousness, and the body of Silver Crow materialized, as if this light had given emptiness reality. Like Metatron, he was composed of particles of light and was more than semitransparent, but at any rate, he had physical sensation again, and he could clench his hands.
“………”
Heaving a sigh of relief from the avatar, which felt like it existed once more, Haruyuki brought his hands up to touch Metatron again.
“Insolent creature!” The sharp reprimand echoed in the empty space, and his hand was repelled with a snap. Eyelids lowered once more, the female-type Enemy arched her thin eyebrows ever so slightly and continued in a hard voice, “You mustn’t touch me so casually. Have you forgotten that you are my servant?”
“Huh…? Servant…?” Cocking his head to one side, he finally remembered. Now that she mentioned it, when they were hiding from the knight Enemy guarding the Acceleration Research Society headquarters, he had maybe gotten carried away and made a promise like that. Had he promised her a thousand minutes or a thousand hours or—no, now wasn’t the time for that. “S-sorry. I just wanted to check. Um, you’re Metatron…right?”
“That is obvious. I shall forgive you for omitting my title, but I am your master, after all. Ensure that you can be aware of me without touching or looking at me.”
“R-right.”
“To begin with, why did you not call my name immediately? If you had, we would have been able to synchronize much sooner.”
“Uh…Um…”
Apparently, she was not happy that, after awakening in this nothing space, Haruyuki had called Metatron’s name only after those of Chiyuri, Takumu, Kuroyukihime, Niko, and his other comrades. But there was nothing to be done about that now. All he could do was apologize. “I-I’m sorry. I never thought you’d actually answer me, so…”
“And that is why I tell you that you are a fool! There is no other presence able to have a rapport with you at this level other than me.”
“L-level? I’m still just level five, though…”
Metatron’s eyebrows shot up again. “I have no interest in such trivialities as the ranking of you little warriors! The level I speak of is, to wit, an awareness high enough, deep enough to know this world…You are currently looking at the world from a standard that is most certainly not normally reached with the body of a tiny warrior.”
“…High…” Haruyuki got that she was not referring simply to altitude in the Unlimited Neutral Field. That said, however, he had no idea what she was actually talking about. He looked around timidly, but there remained as before nothing other than his own self and Metatron drawn out in light particles. He looked down at his feet, and there, too, was only the endless inky darkness.
“Oh!” Here, Haruyuki finally remembered his dire situation right before he’d fallen into this space of nothingness, this “level” Metatron spoke of. “R-right! Mark II’s laser!! I—I—I was about to take a direct hit, and then…” A shudder of terror ran through him—the fear that the nihilistic great lance might break through the darkness at his feet and slam into him even now.
“This Mark II,” Metatron responded evenly, cocking her head slightly to one side. “Would that be the pseudo-Being you little ones were fighting?”
“Uh, um…I…think so…”
“Mmm. In that case, the fight is not yet over. Look down, very carefully.” Metatron waved her right hand lightly. Particles of pure-white light danced around as if to illuminate the scene, and beneath them, a pillar of muddy reddish-black particles appeared.
The pillar was diagonal—static in midair. It didn’t look to be moving, but the minute particles composing it squirmed and wiggled like a collection of tiny insects, and he felt an almost physical disgust.
“Wh-what’s that?”
“The void attack launched by that Mark II or whatever you call it, of course. Simply looking at it is quite odious…It’s quite astounding, actually, that it is able to produce such an abominable power.”
“Huh? S-so then, that black pillar is Mark II’s nihilistic laser?! Why’s it stopped?”
“To be more precise, you only feel that it is stopped. Further open your domain of awareness,” she instructed.
He wasn’t too sure how to do that exactly, but he opened his eyes wide at any rate—and intently so. Far below, he saw a mass even denser and more enormous than the reddish-black pillar. It was basically black, but the center held a silver light just a little darker than Haruyuki. If that was Mark II, then was the silver in the center maybe Wolfram Cerberus still in the cockpit?
If I can see Cerberus…, he thought, running his gaze along the horizon, where he found an assembly of particles shining a transparent red some ways off. Convinced that this was Niko, he moved to approach her, but Metatron stopped him.
“It’s pointless. At this level, you cannot interact with your little comrade warriors nor, of course, the enemy presence. All that is possible is to simply be aware.”
“O-oh. Um, so then is that maybe the same logic as to how you can’t move things in the real world while in the Blue World when you first accelerate?”
“I am unfamiliar with these terms, but if that is what you think, then it is likely so,” Metatron replied curtly, moving her haze to stand to his immediate right. “Now, we will further expand the domain of awareness.”
“Huh? …Ah…Whoa?!” Haruyuki let out this slightly pathetic cry because Metatron suddenly grabbed hold of his right arm. He didn’t even have time to finish the thought But she told me not to just go touching her before the Archangel was yanking him up and ascending rapidly. “I-if we’re gonna fly, then say we’re gonna—”
Before he could even finish his grumbled protest, they stopped abruptly. He had the curious feeling that inertia was not at work in any way both when they started and stopped moving, but he assumed that was just the way it was here and glanced over to his side.
Now that he was thinking about it, this female-type avatar, Metatron’s second form, had appeared before him for only a few seconds immediately after the fierce fight with her first form at Midtown Tower. At the time, he’d been shaking so hard from the extraordinarily intimidating air of the body that had suddenly appeared, he hadn’t been able to get a good look at her. But now that he was looking at her again up close, he was at a loss for words as to how to describe her supernatural beauty—not even the word perfection was close to adequate.
Even though she was nothing but particles of white light, he was overcome by a sensation like his soul was being knocked out of him. If this is her form in the Unlimited Neutral Field, then it’s no wonder I passed out— No, no, I can’t think about this now. I mean, I have Kuroyukihime and all…
“If you gaze upon me for too long, you will develop impairments in your cognitive abilities.”
“Oh! I-I’m sorry!” Haruyuki nearly followed this apology with a remark about how Metatron was apparently capable of jokes, but she could have simply been telling the truth, so he hurriedly averted his eyes.
When he looked down, they seemed a fair bit higher up than bef
ore. The nihilistic laser stagnating in midair, Mark II that fired it, and the floating Niko were all nothing more than pinpoints now. Squinting, he noticed a dot of crimson light on the inky horizontal far, far below—most likely the ground. From the color, it had to have been Blood Leopard.
In which case, he thought, turning his awareness out to an even greater sphere. There he found spots of green and blue on the same horizon as Pard but much farther off. That would be Chiyuri and Takumu.
“Hmm. It seems you’re now able to see, more or less, yes?”
“Y-yeah, well, I guess. But I still have no idea what exactly this world is.” Scrolling back through his memory, he felt like he’d heard the sound of acceleration—the same one as when he gave the Burst Link command, immediately before he shifted to this static, pitch-black space. But of course, it had only sounded like that lightning strike. If it had been the acceleration sound, he was in big trouble.
“We call this place the Highest Level,” Metatron informed him.
“Highest…Level,” he parroted back. “So then, what is the Unlimited Neutral Field where I was fighting until a minute ago?”
“The Mean Level.”
“Huh…” That word mean. He was pretty sure it also meant midway on top of the usual significance meaning. In which case, he was curious about what the normal duel field below that and the real world even lower down would be called. But he got the feeling she’d get mad at him again if he kept asking questions, so he shelved them and looked out at the world of the Highest Level again. Although he’d only been aware of the monotonous darkness at first, now he could at least tell the difference between earth and sky.
When he stared at the ground, it seemed that the terrain was roughly reproduced on this level as well. The line running along the left side of the crater made by Mark II was probably the expressway. Which meant that Haruyuki and Metatron were facing due north.
He turned his gaze upward to find four points of light clumped together a fair distance to the north. They weren’t as high up as Haruyuki and Metatron, but they were still at a considerable altitude. Sky blue, scarlet, pale blue—and black. Black but totally different from the muddied darkness of Mark II; it had the quality of transparent motion.
Snow White’s Slumber Page 6
