The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer

by Reki Kawahara

  Then: He heard that voice, reminiscent of a young teacher somehow.

  “Crow—no, Disaster. Just like it seems to be for you, this is also the second time I’ve seen this technique of yours. Before you slipped out on me, you see? So I made a few adjustments.”

  The voice seemed like it was coming from all six directions. In fact, it likely was. It was the six panels themselves that were speaking.

  “Graar…Graaaaah!” At Vise’s composed words, Haruyuki—or the Beast mentally fused with Haruyuki—emitted another roar. He pressed the claws of his hands against the jet-black walls and tried to rip through them. But even these claws, which had torn through the Armor of any and every duel avatar, only scattered futile sparks. If he had at least had his longsword at hand, he might have been able to pierce the walls, but this enclosed space apparently prevented the summoning of Enhanced Armament; no matter how he called for it, there was no response.

  Howling like a wild animal, Haruyuki beat furiously on the walls with both hands and kicked with both feet. As if sympathetic to the out-of-control destroyer, the voice echoed gently once more.

  “It’s a little sooner than planned, but I’ll be collecting and analyzing this armor. Unfortunately, Crow, I’ll have to have you exit the Accelerated World, but what you really want likely isn’t to wander the Unlimited Neutral Field in this state, either. Well, depending on the intentions of the president, there might be another road, but…”

  Thmm.

  The rectangle enclosing Haruyuki sank straight down. A deeply unpleasant sensation enveloped him, like both feet stepping into a lukewarm mucus. This was the “shadow.” Black Vise was sinking into the shadow with Haruyuki trapped in the box, in order to carry him somewhere.

  A numbing cold spread out from his shadow-immersed feet and stole the strength from his body. Fused with the Beast, Haruyuki tried even now to rage, but the movement of his limbs gradually lost force. The level of the shadow increased in the blink of an eye, rising up to his thighs, his hips, his stomach.

  Then, suddenly, a crimson line cut from left to right across the center of Haruyuki’s field of view.

  The extremely thin line of light kept going around the right side, turned ninety degrees behind him, and then bent once more to join up with its starting point. When the red thread all around him disappeared, he could see the tiniest bit of the outside world through a thin gap.

  Abruptly, there came a crashing sound, like thick glass shattering, and the jet-black hexahedron holding Haruyuki crumbled. Swallowed up to the chest by the shadow, he was shot out and tumbled heavily across the white paving stones of the Twilight stage.

  Wide-open eyes caught his captor Black Vise standing straight, right arm missing as well as his left.

  And about ten meters away from him, standing quietly near the western entrance to the circular plaza, was another black duel avatar.

  Four flowing swords. Hip armor patterned after a water lily’s flower. A face mask reminiscent of a bird of prey on the verge of taking flight. The silhouette strongly resembled the shadow produced earlier by Black Vise. But he lacked the ability to perfectly re-create several features of this figure, standing in the golden light of the evening sun.

  First, the semitransparent armor that caught the afterglow within itself and glittered beautifully, like black crystal. And the eye lenses shining a bluish purple, filled with fierce resolve.

  Finally, ten or twenty minutes behind Haruyuki’s dive, the real Black King, head of the Legion Nega Nebulus, the traitor Black Lotus, advanced about three meters in an easy hovering motion. When he looked closely, the embers of a faint red aura twined around the sword of her right arm. There was no doubt a long-distance attack had been launched from that sword to sever Vise’s Hexahedral Compression and free Haruyuki.

  However, the Black King stopped without so much as a glance at the fallen Haruyuki, instead favoring the inky layered avatar with a bloody gaze. Black Vise didn’t flinch, although just a look from the Black King was enough to send a newbie into zero fill. He smoothly moved armless shoulders up and down.

  “I am indeed always surprised by you, hmm, Black King.” He spoke leisurely, voice uncolored by nervousness or anything near it. “Since you broke through so easily before, this time, I took the initiative of completely restraining and rendering the swords of your hands and feet ineffective, but…how on earth did you slip out? Though it seems that it didn’t come without injury.”

  Just as he said, the sword of Black Lotus’s left arm was cruelly shattered about twenty centimeters from the tip. But more than enough remained of the blade itself. If all four of her sword limbs had indeed been held fast by some restraint created by Vise, then she had, by some means, first destroyed her own left arm and then, with that newly freed arm, cut her right arm and her legs from their bondage.

  “I’m under no obligation to disclose my secrets to you.” The Black King’s response was curt. “After all, you were the one who preached the disadvantages of being too eloquent when we happened to meet before.”

  Her cool, sharp tongue brought a light, wry smile onto the face of the layered avatar. “Ha-ha! That’s a point for you. Perhaps I am indeed a little too talkative today, hmm? But just when I had waited in vain for over two hours, prepared for it to end as a fool’s errand, an unexpected and wonderful present happened to come along. It was inevitable that I should get a little excited.”

  “Hmm. From time to time, unexpected presents explode when you open them, you know. From the look of it, you’ve taken more damage than we have, and although I’m sure you’ve planned all sorts of petty tricks for my partner, I believe the situation remains two against one.”

  Exactly.

  Even while he was listening to the exchange between Kuroyukihime and Black Vise, the majority of Beast-fused Haruyuki’s mind was occupied with a cool calculation of how to completely destroy the loathsome layered avatar for good.

  Given that he was able to set up simultaneous, large-scale restraint attacks for both Black Lotus and Chrome Disaster, Black Vise was indeed a formidable foe, but both restraints had been destroyed, and Vise had lost both of his arms. In other words, this likely meant he could no longer use larger-scale techniques, including Hexahedral Compression.

  However, as he had declared before, his greatest ability was fleeing.

  Just as he had said, Vise did have what was essentially the ultimate escape technique; he folded his own body up into a single panel, sank into a shadow somewhere in the stage, and moved that way. Countless pillars and walls were crammed together on the roof of the Twilight stage Mori Tower; it would be an easy feat to move through the shadows they cast to the edge of the roof. Once he reached the shadow created by the wall of the massive building, he could run off anywhere. For instance, the shadow cast by all two hundred thirty-eight meters of Mori Tower, as it stood illuminated by the westerly sun, swallowed up over a kilometer of the urban center of Roppongi by itself.

  Thus, to make sure he brought down his sworn enemy and peeled one panel after another from his body until he brutally slaughtered him, Haruyuki couldn’t simply charge in recklessly. First, he had to remove the avatar’s avenue of escape.

  “Grar…” With a low howl, Haruyuki slowly picked himself up and crouched down low, checking his gauges with a glance. Thanks to the first surprise attack to the chest and the pressure damage from being inside the box, his health gauge had decreased by just over 30 percent. But his special-attack gauge was nearly zero, crushed after he activated Flash Blink. He wouldn’t be able to use his wings or any other abilities for a while. In which case, rather than first aiming for Vise’s body, he should target the large pillars in the center of the plaza. Destroy those and take away the shadows Vise is in constant contact with.

  Haruyuki himself couldn’t have been aware of this, but being able to run through these sorts of calculations even while completely fused with the Beast was an ability the previous Chrome Disasters had not had. Once they were clad in th
e Armor of Catastrophe, all they could do was rampage, propelled onward by the instinct to fight. As a result, their mental strength was gradually worn away, and in the end, each was as hungry as a large animal caught in a trap.

  However, even while spurred on by an inexhaustible rage toward Black Vise, Saffron Blossom’s murderer, the sixth Chrome Disaster, aka Haruyuki, maintained the ability to analyze and judge, arguably Silver Crow’s greatest power. Was this because not much time had passed since he’d become the Disaster? Or because he was more deeply synced with the Armor than anyone else had been?

  The answer came unexpectedly quickly—a mere minute or so later.

  Surprisingly, the first to move was Black Vise. He leisurely stepped out from the shadow of the plaza’s central pillar, which he had stubbornly stayed so close to, and exposed himself to the light of the sun.

  Under the red light of the sunset, he had an obviously different quality from the Black King, similarly ruled by the name black. Unlike Lotus’s semitransparent armor, shining like an obsidian crystal, the thin panels that made up Vise’s avatar were a matte black, which basically absorbed light.

  On the tips of the toes—even these looked like simple pieces of black paper in a row—Black Vise turned toward the crouching Haruyuki. “Two against one. I see,” he stated calmly. “You believe in this boy that deeply, even now when he’s changed into the Catastrophe entirely. The bond of parent and child, hmm? To be honest, I’m jealous. Right from the start, I’ve never had any connections.”

  Abruptly, the outermost of the panels that made up Vise’s right leg broke away. No sooner had it turned into a square in midair than it began to spin at high speed. In an instant, it looked like nothing more than an extremely thin, blurry gray disc.

  “I am jealous. So shall I at least take that bond with me?”

  At the same time as he spoke, the disc began to shine red like blood. Overlay. Some kind of long-distance Incarnate attack was coming.

  Haruyuki braced himself, but he was somewhat confused after reading the row of information displayed in his view. Because, all it said was: PREDICTED ATTACK: INCARNATE ATTACK; RANGE/POWER ENHANCEMENT: SEVERING TYPE; THREAT LEVEL: 5. The predicted trajectory shown in red was also a simple straight line. If he were to believe the analytic powers of the Armor, the technique was such that it could be dealt with by moving a single step or simply repelling it with his arm.

  However, this attack was not actually carried out.

  “I will not allow it!!” the Black King shouted sharply, and charged toward Black Vise. The sword of her right hand was wrapped in a vivid blue overlay.

  “Death by Piercing!!” She called out the ominous name of the special attack at the same time as she activated it, boosted with the power of Incarnate.

  The tip of the sword shot forward, containing enough power to shake the entire massive tower, threatening to pull it to pieces—and the inky layered avatar did not move to dodge or defend against it.

  Instead, the instant before the attack hit its target, his body changed form once more. In the blink of an eye, every part of him came together into a single thin panel, including the piece spinning at top speed. His body, now an extremely thin line, rotated dozens of times before drawing out a human shape into the air again.

  A flimsy shadow portrait appeared before Haruyuki once more, again with no depth. But it was not the fake Black Lotus he had tried to deceive Haruyuki with before.

  The edges were short hair turned up at the bottom. Armor at the shoulders and waist reminiscent of flower petals. Slender arms and legs, a cute baton gripped in the left hand.

  The shadow portrait, which should have been a solid black, in that instant alone, reflected the eternally fading light of the Twilight stage, and glittered a dazzling golden yellow. At the same time, Haruyuki heard a name spill out of his own mouth.

  “…Fron.”

  On top of this trembling voice came the hard sound of impact. The sound of the thrusting technique the Black King had released deeply piercing the chest of the golden-yellow girl-shaped avatar.

  As the girl slowly reeled back, she reached a hand out toward Haruyuki. Deep, deep in his ears, he felt like he could hear a hazy voice, like a faint breeze.

  …Fal…

  Crack!! A dreadful spark popped inside Haruyuki’s head. His entire field of view was dyed red, and the sky, the ground, and each and every terrain object disappeared. In the bloodred world, only the two entangled silhouettes stood out in sharp relief.

  The girl with the sharp sword plunged deep into her chest dropped lifelessly to her knees and fell on her side before disappearing completely, as if sucked into the ground. The other figure was briefly fixed in position, at the end of her technique, but eventually, she, too, turned her face away from him, as if repelled. But he could no longer recognize this other, dark avatar.

  Sparks burned his consciousness a snowy white. In that moment, the reason of Haruyuki, of Silver Crow—what little remained in the form of the power of judgment—disappeared completely. All that was left was a lone Beast, seeking vengeance and slaughter.

  “Graaaaaaaaaaaaar!!” He roared with enough force to shake the heavens, and black clouds appeared, whirling in the sky once more. From their center, a bolt of obsidian lightning poured down into his right hand, extended high into the air. Instantly, it gained form and became a sinister longsword.

  “Graaaar!!” Howling once more, the Beast kicked hard off the ground and headed toward the black avatar standing frozen a few meters away. That avatar was the attacker who had killed the girl he loved more than anyone else—his enemy.

  Charging, he brandished the sword high above his head. The slashing attack carved out a trajectory of black sparks, filled with an incredible power. But as long as its target had a certain level of expertise and read the timing, it would have been an easy thing to avoid it.

  But his enemy didn’t dodge. Instead, she crossed her sword-shaped arms—although the tip of the left had been shattered—and a vivid green light grew there.

  The longsword clad in dark thunderbolts and the green cross drawn by the two swords came into contact. The incredible energy of their clash compressed into a single minuscule point and glittered like a new star.

  Kwaaan! The power was immediately released and radiated outward into the surrounding air. Swallowed up by this energy wave, the countless limestone objects lining the roof of the tower crumbled silently and disappeared. Although the building itself was not taken apart like it had been when he’d hit the Green King, the impact was still powerful enough to turn the entire roof into a vacant lot instantaneously.

  Even after the shock wave died down, the two fighters stood with swords locked. Each time the intersection between them creaked, dazzling sparks illuminated their faces.

  Bluish-purple eyes narrowed in what looked like anguish beneath black mirrored goggles, his enemy appeared to be desperately shouting something as she held back the longsword of the Beast. But words did not reach the Beast, transformed now into a mass of senseless fighting instinct.

  “Graar!!” Howling briefly, the Beast beat at the slender body of his enemy with a tightly clenched fist. Although his opponent tried to deftly respond by going around to the right, he vibrated just the right side of the wings, abruptly rotating his entire body to change the trajectory of the punch. This was an application of the technique Aerial Combo, which the Burst Linker who was now a vessel for the Beast had once trained intently to master, but even that memory no longer remained within the creature.

  Wrapped in dark aura, the fist caught the enemy’s right side and drilled into it mercilessly, breaking and cracking her armor.

  As though she had been blindsided by an enormous hammer, the enemy flew sideways more than ten meters, bounced off the wall of the empty roof, and fell. Before his opponent could stand again, the Beast used his wings to fly fiercely toward her. He had no sooner straddled the body lying on its back than he cried out once more.

  “Grr…aaaa
aaar!!”

  He thrust the sword in his right hand into the ground, across the enemy’s uninjured sword-arm as a means to check her movement. Then he removed his hand from the hilt, tightened it into a fist, raised it—until he smashed it into the mask of his enemy.

  The single blow sent cracks like spiderwebs racing across the black mirrored goggles. He clenched his left hand as well and slammed it into her chest. The tiny fragments that went flying glittered red, reflecting the sun.

  Right, left, right. Howling endlessly, the Beast alternated fists to beat at his enemy.

  This could no longer be called a duel, or even a fight. It was an explosion of the ultimate ugliness of resentment and hatred built up over many, many long years.

  In the back of the Beast’s mind as he lashed out wildly with both fists, someone’s voice sounded weakly, kindly.

  —It’s…better this way.

  —I will take. Everything. That pains you.

  —Because I am your parent, your teacher, your senior…

  —And because I love you more than anyone.

  The once-beautiful black crystal armor was smashed beyond recognition, countless fragments dancing in the air. In between these fragments, several drops of a different hue, a silver light, hung perpendicularly.

  The source of the light was the sinister visor covering the Beast’s face. From the gap between the top and bottom biting together like the maw of a carnivorous animal, droplets of silver fell one after another, pouring soundlessly onto the shredded and destroyed black armor. Almost like rain.

  Like tears.

  9

  At the bottom of a hole so deep not a ray of light reached him, Haruyuki cowered, clutching his knees to his chest. Above his head, from somewhere very high up, the sharp, heavy sound of an impact rained down periodically. He didn’t know what the sound was. But Haruyuki dimly felt it.

  Something that must not happen was happening outside this hole—this jail. And when that sound stopped, everything would be in a form that could never be repaired.