The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer

by Reki Kawahara

  As Haruyuki coolly followed this thread, not a shred of emotion entering into his calculations, Olive continued to stand before him rather than fleeing. It wasn’t as though he had a choice. Haruyuki wasn’t sure if Olive was aware that he was the legendary destroyer Chrome Disaster, but either way, Olive was cowering with fear at the overwhelming battle prowess that had slaughtered his five companions before his eyes. As proof, his entire body, slickly shining as if it were wet, was trembling.

  “Hurry…Hurry…” The hoarse voice that slipped out of his mouth was directed at his own special-attack gauge. His eyes traveled back and forth and back and forth between Haruyuki, leisurely beginning to move, and his recharging gauge.

  Right around the time the longsword came down from Silver Crow’s shoulder to scrape dryly against the ground, Olive shouted, “Lipid Liquid!”

  The call of the technique name was practically a falsetto. Splsh! His slender body immediately melted away. His avatar completely lost shape, transforming into a large olive-green puddle spreading out on the ground. In this state, he was likely invulnerable to all pure physical attacks.

  And apparently, he still had the ability to move, since the puddle was charging toward one of the buildings lining both sides of the road, in a movement like the Slime that often showed up in fantasy-type games. If he fled into the elaborate terrain of the Demon City stage, it would be a pain to find him again.

  But again, Haruyuki had not allowed Olive to use his special attack because he hadn’t been paying attention. The greenish-brown puddle bulged in the center. Looking closely, he could see a black sphere wrapped up there. The ISS kit. Olive might have had the ability to become a liquid, but he couldn’t change the kit, which was treated as Enhanced Armament, into one.

  Haruyuki had deliberately brought about this situation. Staring at the slippery puddle as it receded, he took a deep breath. Soon, the sensation of something prickly bouncing about filled his chest. He let it build up and then blew it out as hard as he could.

  Released from the maw of the brutal helmet was not simple air, but rather flames burning hot and red. The ability: Flame Breath.

  Perhaps sensing something, the puddle moved intensely toward the building. But there was no way for it to escape the flames that radiated outward, scorching the air as they did. The instant the blazing breath touched it, the puddle burst into flames with a roar.

  The breath soon scattered and disappeared, but the flames blanketing the puddle did not. Almost as if the puddle itself was a flammable material—or rather, that was exactly what it was. The liquid that Olive Grab changed himself into was not water, but oil. The reason Ardor Maiden defeated him so thoroughly was because he was deeply incompatible with fire.

  Even as a liquid, Olive wouldn’t have lost his physical sensations. The lump of flaming oil bounced wildly from side to side. Haruyuki himself had been bathed in the fiery breath of the God Suzaku several times in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and the sensation of heat had been all too real. If Olive Grab was continuously experiencing anything on that level, the pain must have been unbearable.

  But the Haruyuki of that moment did not care about the suffering of his enemies. He walked over to the puddle of oil, motionless now perhaps having exhausted even the will to writhe, and casually stretched out a hand. He dug his sharp fingers into the burning lump. Soon, they encountered a sphere about five centimeters in diameter, and he grabbed on to it tightly. He could feel the unpleasant sensation of countless fibers tearing away as he pulled out a red eyeball hidden almost entirely behind its lids—the ISS kit.

  The handling of Enhanced Armament was a little different in the Unlimited Neutral Field than it was in the Normal Duel Field. First, once they were destroyed, external items did not regenerate even if the owner died and came back to life. In order to use Enhanced Armament items again, the owner had to exit the field through a leave-point and then return.

  Also—and this depended on the type of item—it was possible to temporarily steal an item as long as the original owner was alive. To steal it, another Burst Linker needed to pick it up from the place where it was dropped or sever it from where it was equipped. Haruyuki was currently attempting the latter. Having rendered the liquefied Olive Grab helpless with his Flame Breath, he was ripping the kit out before Olive’s HP gauge was emptied. This way, the ownership would remain with Olive Grab in the system, but usage rights would transfer to Haruyuki.

  Naturally, he had not the slightest intention of equipping it himself. His aim was just the opposite.

  He had earlier confirmed that the kit itself could not be destroyed when the health gauge of the wearer dropped to zero in an attack. In which case, he would first separate avatar and kit, and then attack the kit itself.

  A ferocious grin spreading across his face beneath his visor, Haruyuki concentrated his strength in his right hand. His razor-sharp talons dug into the rubbery surface of the eye. Instantly, the eyelids snapped open, and the bloodred pupil shuddered.

  The blood vessel–type structure dangling helplessly from the rear of the eyeball writhed and came together in the tapered form of a drill. This drill bit then attempted to pierce the armor of Haruyuki’s right arm—it was giving up on its original owner and trying to parasitize Haruyuki. Something similar had happened in the duel with Takumu the previous evening. The blood vessels of the kit had easily pieced Silver Crow’s chest then, but the thick armor of the Armor of Catastrophe easily repelled the drill.

  “Useless,” Haruyuki said, and put every ounce of strength he had into his right hand.

  Spplrrk! The sound of the rupture was disgusting, and was followed by an unusual metallic death rattle echoing through the air as the ISS kit crumbled into pieces and scattered.

  Now that he had destroyed an ISS kit in the Unlimited Neutral Field, he was sure something would happen.

  His expectation was not betrayed. From his right hand, a single thread of red light danced into the sky, turned sharply at a ninety-degree angle high up, and began to fly. The light was impossibly faint; if he didn’t have the enhanced vision of the Disaster, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed it.

  Beside him, Olive Grab finally exhausted his health gauge and scattered as he returned to his original human shape. But Haruyuki did not so much as glance at him as he spread the wings on his back.

  On the verge of taking off to chase after the light that had slipped out of the kit, Haruyuki caught sight of the two death markers nestled together a little ways off. One grassy green, the other gray. Bush Utan and Ash Roller, killed by the six kit wearers.

  He had ostensibly raced over here to help them. But the priority he placed on them now had dropped to a relatively low level. What filled his heart instead was the urge to destroy and massacre, not placated in the least by routing the six Burst Linkers. If he stayed in that place any longer, he might attack even the regenerated Ash and Utan.

  Thus, Haruyuki turned the focus of the rage that spurred him to destroy onto the ISS kits themselves. But, unaware of even these changes in his own heart, he turned aside and called back over his shoulder to the two avatars likely watching in a ghost state.

  “When you regenerate, get out through a portal before those guys come back to life,” he announced curtly, in a creaking voice, and then he took to the air from the scene of slaughter that the intersection had become.

  2

  Against the backdrop of the shades of black and blue of the Demon City stage, it was easy to pick out the red light that had escaped from the ISS kit. Ascending vertically until he was nearly at the swirling black clouds, Haruyuki caught sight of the luminous body flying quickly dead east.

  “I won’t let you get away,” he started to say, but what spilled out from beneath his helmet was:

  “Graaar!”

  Nothing but the howl of a Beast.

  He vibrated the now-sinister-looking metal wings with all his might. Looking very much like a bird of prey chasing its dinner, Silver Crow—the sixth Chrome D
isaster sliced through the black clouds.

  The rage that had boiled over in him immediately after summoning the Armor had vanished at some point and been replaced with something cold and honed that could have been called the will to destroy. Or perhaps this was something Haruyuki had unconsciously brought about himself to avoid attacking Ash Roller and Bush Utan, but his mind was in no position to recognize that at that moment.

  In that instant, a single determination and two facts were pushing Haruyuki onward.

  Determination: He could not forgive the ISS kit wearers or the makers of those kits.

  Fact number one: Those Acceleration Research Society guys created and distributed the ISS kits.

  Fact number two: The black layered avatar planned the incident that would serve as the trigger for the birth of the Armor of Catastrophe.

  The layered avatar—Black Vise, the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society—had barged into the final stages of the battle against Dusk Taker and toyed with Haruyuki and his friends. A fearsome enemy equipped with a terrifyingly powerful Incarnate attack whose tone and attitude were very much not those of a junior high or high school student. And due to the brain implant chip he had in his head, he possessed the ability to “decelerate” and slow his thought clock, making lying in wait for a long time in the Unlimited Neutral Field, where time flowed a thousand times faster than it normally did in reality, an easy feat.

  A very, very long time ago, this Black Vise set up a heartless trap and drove one Burst Linker to total point loss with the first Unlimited Enemy Kill in the Accelerated World. Due to the rage and grief brought about by that incident, the sixth star of the Seven Arcs, the Destiny, became warped, turning into the Armor of Catastrophe, the Disaster.

  These were facts Haruyuki should not have actually known. The birth of the Catastrophe was at the dawn of the Accelerated World—seven years earlier. In contrast, only eight months had passed since he’d become a Burst Linker.

  And yet he did not think it strange that the fathomless hatred and resentment toward the layered avatar Black Vise raced through his whole body as his own memories.

  I will not forgive you. I’ll never forgive you. All of you who created and distributed the ISS kits, led Takumu astray, hurt Ash.

  I will find and kill the ones who murdered…with the fangs of the mythical beast Jormungand over and over and over. Just like that day, I will inflict the maximum amount of pain and suffering. I will keep killing them endlessly until their points are used up.

  His determination hidden within him at absolute zero, Haruyuki flew intently after the red body of light. East from the northern part of the Shibuya area. He swept past Aoyama Street and the large school grounds beyond it in a single breath. The place coming into view up ahead packed with the small square stones was probably Aoyama Cemetery. The light flew along above the countless gravestones as if pulled in by something.

  If this ball of light was the “core” of the ISS kit Haruyuki destroyed, then what lay ahead had to be the main body. In the middle of the previous night, Haruyuki had been sleeping while directing with Takumu and was led to the mysterious interior of the Brain Burst central server through the imagination circuit. What he saw there was a galaxy of light, interweaving all the data saved and processed in the Accelerated World, along with a lump of black meat, eating into a corner of the space and writhing—the main body of the ISS kits.

  In this world, Haruyuki succeeded in destroying the kit housed in Takumu, but that made it seemingly impossible for them to return to the central server once more and attack the main body. When he thought about it, however, the fact that it was inscribed within the server as data meant that the main body existed as an object somewhere in the field that was the game world. Just like how the Seven Arcs, which glittered within the server like a constellation, existed in the field in the form of swords and armor.

  And if the ISS main body was hiding, then it wouldn’t be in the normal field, where creation and annihilation happened over and over; it would be somewhere in the eternal Unlimited Neutral Field. If he tailed the red body of light, he was bound to arrive at it. And wherever it was, one of them was bound to show up. Either the despised Black Vise or one of his friends.

  “Grrr…” A groan he couldn’t suppress spilled out of his throat.

  Now.

  Now, finally, the time was at hand. The time for the revenge he as the Catastrophe had been waiting these many months and years for, as he moved through the minds of Burst Linkers. He would decapitate them all, tear their limbs off, smash them to pieces. No matter what came as a result. Even if he lost his last shred of reason and became a demon god, indiscriminately attacking every Burst Linker and destroying the Accelerated World itself. Actually, that was a fitting end to this savage world of battle.

  Tearing the thick blanket of clouds immediately above his head with the shock wave emitted by the wings on his back, Haruyuki flew with single-minded determination. The red light fled intently a mere hundred meters ahead, almost as though it had a will of its own.

  Beyond it, a remarkably tall building appeared. Judging from its position in relation to the road, the building, surrounded by decorative pillars with the sharp edges characteristic of the Demon City stage, was Tokyo Midtown Tower, the mixed-use commercial structure in Minato Ward’s Akasaka in the real world. The body of light appeared to be descending, aiming for somewhere near the top floor of the building. This was it. The physical main body of the ISS kits in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  I will crush it!!

  Brimming with the desire to destroy, Haruyuki pushed his flying speed to the limit.

  Or he was going to. Immediately before he could, somewhere below him to the right, he felt like he could hear a voice. And no mere words. The call of a technique name.

  “Parsec Wall.”

  It was unfamiliar, the low, solemn voice of a boy, reminiscent of stark, craggy mountains. At the same time, Haruyuki’s field of view was painted over by a dark-green light.

  A wall. One after another, countless large green crosses—bigger than a person—appeared and joined seamlessly together to create a very wide and very tall wall. He couldn’t tell how far it continued in any direction, and if he detoured around it, he might lose sight of the body of light flying on the other side. Rather than finding the Burst Linker who produced this wall, his top priority was on discovering where that red light was going. He could deal with any intruders some other time.

  “Raaah!” With a low roar, Haruyuki brought up a black Incarnate overlay in his left hand. Without the slowing down, he brandished his fist and smashed it into the green wall.

  The instant the dull silver aviator and the rich green defensive wall collided, the incredible impact set heaven and earth shaking in the Accelerated World. But the wall did not break. The herd of crosses slid back and forth incrementally, absorbing the collision and sending it radiating outward to stop Haruyuki’s charge.

  The current Haruyuki was no longer Silver Crow, whose only strength was speed. He was now the ultimate fighting machine, layering power and defense onto that speed, the sixth Chrome Disaster. And he also had the thick Incarnate aura on his fist. The fact that the wall had repelled this blow most certainly meant that it was the product of someone’s Incarnate technique.

  “Grar…” A groan of annoyance slipping out, Haruyuki pulled back the left fist he had thrust forward. There was no damage to his armor or his health gauge, but there was also no sign of a crack in the green wall. Spreading his wings to hover, he slowly turned his head and peered in the direction of the earlier technique call.

  To the right—basically, due south. At a point about five hundred meters away, the space separated by the elevated Shuto Expressway No. 3, a building roughly as tall as Midtown Tower rose up into the sky. The main tower of the similarly large-scale mixed-use Roppongi Hills.

  On the roof was a large heliport, and in the center, two human figures stood. One had his left hand held high, a dazz
ling green overlay gushing from it. No mistake, this was the source of the Incarnate wall repelling Haruyuki.

  “Then I’ll take care of you first,” he muttered, and leisurely changed his orientation. The body of light he had been chasing, the core of the ISS kit, had probably slipped into Midtown Tower by now. It wouldn’t be easy to hunt down the kit’s main body in the enormous building, but if he had to, he could just destroy the building itself. He would think of this battle with the two intruders as a way to recharge the special-attack gauge he had used up flying at full speed.

  Resting the sword dangling from his right hand on his shoulder, Haruyuki started flying again.

  The roof of Roppongi Hills Mori Tower was about a hundred meters lower than the altitude he had been hovering at, so he basically only had to glide in. Clawing at the hard tiles with the talons of both feet, Haruyuki landed on the northern side of the heliport.

  He turned his gaze to first stare at the Burst Linker using the large-scale defensive Incarnate technique, but the second Burst Linker quickly pushed in front. It was a duel avatar he’d never seen before. Medium build. Basically the same size as Haruyuki in his current incarnation. The silhouette was orthodox, but two things drew his eye.

  One was the fact that both hands were ridiculously large. And they didn’t look like they had been enlarged like Olive Grab’s, but rather as if they were wrapped in round, thick gloves. And the second characteristic was the color of the Armor. The dull gleam reflecting the hazy sunlight was clearly metallic. There was no doubt he was looking at one of the few metal colors in the Accelerated World.