Elements

by Reki Kawahara

  “It’s not your fault,” Crikin whispered, as if reading her mind. “I mean, you could actually call this a good opportunity. In the sense of my particular abilities.”

  “I’m counting on you,” Kuroyukihime returned briefly, as the mysterious Burst Linker on the dinosaur’s back bowed neatly.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Black King. And greetings, people of the region. My name is Sulfur Pot. I look forward to knowing you better.”

  “Strange. So you finally name yourself. I’ve been waiting for this day for the last three months, ever since you appeared! Listen. The mighty power before you is known as…” Crikin braced his simple legs in the shape of cylinders cut in half lengthwise and moved to proudly call back his own name.

  “Oh, it’s fine. You don’t need to tell me. There’s no point, and anyway, you’ll be at total point loss soon enough,” came the humiliating reply, and the Strongest Name ended in a misfire.

  Crikin trembled with rage, and Kuroyukihime held him back with a gesture before launching her thoughts into high gear once more. She had never heard the avatar name Sulfur Pot before. Which meant that he had become a Burst Linker during the two and a half years she had been in a state of semiretirement. But the swaggering way he carried himself was that of a veteran, and a major feat like the taming a Legend-class Enemy was impossible for a mid-ranking Linker, much less a newbie. He had either an incredibly rich history of battle experience, or the backing of a large Legion.

  The instant her thoughts made it to this point, the thing that she should have remembered straightaway finally sparked to life in the core of her brain.

  “Gunah majimun”—small monster. That’s what Ruka had called Sulfur Pot, because he didn’t appear on the matching list. Normally, this was completely impossible. A major principle of Brain Burst was that connected Burst Linkers would always be registered on the matching list given that they had to connect to the global net to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  However, the previous fall, Kuroyukihime had suffered greatly because of an enemy who managed to skirt this principle. Takumu Mayuzumi—Cyan Pile—currently teamed up with Silver Crow as a trustworthy member of Nega Nebulus. He had used a program given to him by his parent Burst Linker to disappear and reappear in the Umesato local net like a ghost. The situation now was very similar. She might even say it was exactly the same.

  She took a sharp breath and called out to the avatar lording over all present from five meters up in the air, “Backdoor program.”

  Sulfur Pot’s shoulders twitched. “Now, what exactly is that?” His voice preserved its calm, but his upper body leaned forward slightly. Through this movement, the avatar, who had been in the shadow of the dinosaur’s dorsal fin, was exposed to the sunlight of the Weathered stage, revealing his color and form.

  Sulfur—befitting the name, his armor was a fairly vivid yellow, but somewhat paler than Yellow Radio, Yellow King, and one of the Kings of Pure Color. Sulfur’s slender body had an orthodox form, but large holes in his shoulders, chest, and hips drew the eye.

  Staring hard at her enemy’s face, designed to look as though he were wearing a mask and goggles, Kuroyukihime offered a few more words. “No, wait. If I remember right, that program can’t be used anymore with the server update, hmm? But I have no doubt you’re using a similar cheat technique. Which means, Sulfur Pot, you’re not in Okinawa, but rather diving at a distance from Tokyo, hmm?!”

  The first to respond to this were the three members of the Okinawan group from Crikin down.

  “Wh-wh-what?!”

  “Akisamiyo!!”

  “No! Way! No faaaair!”

  At the three cries in succession, Sulfur Pot didn’t so much as flinch. Finally, he slowly leaned back and said, almost in a murmur, “I see, I get it. You may have withdrawn to your little nest for a few years, but you still have teeth. Well, that’s that, then. I didn’t have this on my schedule, but I’ll have you disappear here, Black King. Everyone’ll be so disappointed if our farming sees a setback here.”

  “What? Farming?” Kuroyukihime murmured. In addition to the “crop cultivation” and “animal husbandry” listed in the dictionary, the word farming Sulfur Pot used also had meaning as a net game term: quick turnover in monster hunting to earn large amounts of money and experience points. That was precisely what he had been doing in Okinawa using the massive Nidhogg.

  Putting it all together, she ended up with something like this.

  Three months earlier, Sulfur Pot had visited Okinawa, probably on a school trip like Kuroyukihime, and set up some kind of cheat tool in the vicinity of Henoko at that time. After he returned to Tokyo, he dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field in Okinawa from a distance, together with the Nidhogg he had tamed in advance, and mowed down the Wild and lesser–class Enemies that lived there. Thus, he was protected by the same logic as Cyan Pile had once been, and no matter how many times Crikin and his team checked the matching list, his name was not there. If he did the same thing in Tokyo, he would become a target for subjugation by the major Legions in the blink of an eye, but that wasn’t a concern in distant Okinawa. If Ruka and Mana hadn’t risked their lives and tried contacting her while Kuroyukihime was there, she would never have even thought about diving into the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  “I’m the one presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here, Sulfur Pot. I happen to have a personal grudge against all kinds of cheat tools. So I’ll make sure to expose your petty little secret here and make it so you can never use that tool again.”

  Clang! Flinging out the sword of her right hand, Kuroyukihime called out clearly, “Don’t think the nickname Legend Slayer has been patented by the Blue King! Come! I will fillet you and your steed!!”

  Her sharp tongue descended on him like a conflagration, and Sulfur Pot’s demeanor changed in response. His eyes, beneath round goggles, burned, and he responded in a low voice, “Now you’ve gone and said it. Even my own parent has never spoken to me like that. I don’t think any of the usual ways of killing you will do here. Let’s see if you can still puff out your chest like that when Nick has smashed a leg and an arm.”

  The air in the field immediately became tense, and the temperature rose. Even the gusting-wind characteristic of the Weathered stage held its breath, as if sensing the impending clash.

  Kuroyukihime glanced over at Crikin, prepared for battle next to her, and murmured quickly, “Crikin, we’re doing that.”

  “Roger. Understood,” the crimson avatar responded briefly, his manner entirely different from when they had first arrived in the field. Briskly, he gave instructions to Ruka and Mana, standing to the rear. “Students, in the opening of this battle, my fine self and Lotus will be that giant’s opponent. When you fight something this large, the surrounding buildings are destroyed one after another and turned to rubble. What you two are going to do is gather up any metal objects from that rubble and bring it to this intersection.”

  “What? We’ll fight, too—” Ruka started to raise her voice in protest, but Mana quickly blocked it.

  “Understood, Master! We’re picking up scrap metal, right? Leave it to us!”

  “Go all out. The amount of steel you collect will decide the battle! Here we go!”

  “Haah!” With a battle cry, Sulfur Pot snapped the reins he clutched in both hands. On standby until that point, the dinosaur-shaped Enemy’s eyes gleamed a dull red, and it opened wide a maw lined with sinister teeth.

  “Graaaaaaar!!” It had no sooner released the earth-shaking roar than the massive, twenty-meter-long dinosaur started to charge ferociously.

  9

  First, by way of greeting, clash with all your might!

  Having resolved herself, Kuroyukihime crouched down before the enormous Nidhogg charging them in a straight line and took on a position ready to draw her blades.

  Of course, even the level-nine Kuroyukihime would be knocked aside when body-checked head-on by a Legend-class Enemy. And to begin with, Black Lotus was
specialized in attacking; defense had basically been jettisoned to that end. So rather than crashing into it in a foolishly honest way, she would dodge with the bare minimum of movement, pulling aside at the very last second, and bring down a counterattack on that snout. Nidhogg’s charge was powerful, but the speed itself was not that different from a Beast. She should be able to see it.

  What disturbed these calculations of Kuroyukihime was not the enemy, but Crikin, in position beside her.

  “That jerk! Take this, why don’tcha!” With a powerful cry, he thrust his left arm straight out and called out the technique name.

  “Tapping Screeeeeew!!”

  Whk whk whk whk whuk! His five fingers shot off from his hand. Just like his torso, they were covered in a side-winding, fine zigzag—fingers with screw threads carved into them suddenly transformed into tapping pieces with tapered tips. They flew through the air like missiles, flames jetting out of the cross-shaped holes on the back ends, all of them hitting their target of the beast’s head.

  If the precision of his aim was a marvel, his wariness was also something to be applauded. She had assumed that all he did was get drunk at the bar, but he had properly charged his special-attack gauge immediately after diving.

  However…

  The five screws continued to rotate at high speed after digging into Nidhogg’s sharklike head, and after sending a shower of sparks flying for a few seconds, they soon enough tumbled and fell to the ground. The only trace they left was the slightest of indentations.

  “Oryo?” By the time Crikin murmured this, the dinosaur was already right in front of them, and Kuroyukihime lost her chance for counterattack.

  Nidhogg galloped between Kuroyukihime and Crikin, and then Ruka and Mana, to smash into the ruins at the rear of the intersection and come to a stop.

  In the Unlimited Neutral Field, the shops run by drones were, as a general rule, indestructible, but at this rate, it looked like every building but that one would be destroyed. When taking on large Enemies, the basic theory was to take advantage of complex terrain to hide, so she would have preferred to settle this before the region became an empty lot, but it seemed like they wouldn’t be able to manage that.

  However, Kuroyukihime had put together her strategy taking into account that the buildings would be destroyed one after another. And the fact that the keystone Crikin was alive. But…

  “Look! There’s no way some half-assed flying tools would work on a heavy armor–type Legend!” she grumbled.

  “I-it’s just…,” Crikin muttered back, kneading his hands together. The five fingers of his left hand, which he had sent flying, were charged up with new screws from the base. “It’s been three years since I was in a real fight and all.”

  “Then sit still and be quiet! Once we’ve piled up plenty of steel, I’ll make sure to give you your chance in the spotlight!” Kuroyukihime shifted her gaze and called out in a low voice to Ruka and Mana, who were already racing around. “I’m counting on you!!”

  The girls popped their thumbs up and ran over to the ruins on the north side destroyed by Nidhogg earlier. The terrain objects of the Weathered stage were half-rotting concrete and half-rusted steel framing. A Factory or Steel stage would have been best, littered as they were with metal on the ground and in the buildings, but they could’ve also ended up with a Wasteland or a Primeval Forest, where there was zero metal, so she couldn’t complain.

  After confirming that Ruka and Mana were pulling enormous chunks of steel from beneath the rubble with superhuman strength that seemed at odds with their slender avatars, Kuroyukihime turned back to Nidhogg.

  The massive dinosaur had just finished changing its orientation. Due to its massive size, its turning speed was indeed slow. In which case, she was inclined to think that its rear was a weak point, but that long, spiky tail was incredibly suspicious. Just as she initially planned, the way to handle this was to get counterattack damage little by little while sidestepping the heavy charges.

  As the dinosaur prepared itself to charge once more, Sulfur Pot, on the beast’s back, shouted with plenty of swagger, “Don’t hold back. You can go ahead and use whatever special attacks you want, Black King. Well, according to our data, I feel like all of your attacks are short range, though. I just know it’ll be interesting to see if you can return Nick’s attacks.”

  Our? The word caught her attention momentarily, but she quickly banished it to the back of her brain. She could analyze the information all she wanted after they had won this.

  However, what Sulfur said was painfully true. All the special attacks Black Lotus had learned were basically for close-range fighting; even her nominal long-range attack, Death By Piercing, only just barely spanned a distance of five meters. And at that range, even if she did manage to deal the dinosaur some damage, it would charge hard while she was frozen after the technique.

  Of course, it was different if she used that. A certain logic hidden in the Accelerated World. The strongest ultimate power that interfered with the way of the world with the power of an image and overwrote it—the Incarnate system.

  It depended on her mental state, but with her Incarnate attack Vorpal Strike, Kuroyukihime could realize a maximum distance of nearly fifty meters, a length that compared favorably even with the ranged attack of a red-type avatar. If she used that, it was plenty possible to pierce the dinosaur from a distance where she could comfortably evade the charge attack.

  However, she must not use it. There was one absolute law for the Incarnate system: Incarnate must not be used unless you were first attacked with Incarnate. This wasn’t simply a matter of cowardice or idealism or something. When you broke this rule—the promise with yourself and your companions—and attacked with Incarnate first, the user’s mind was, without exception, pulled to the dark side of the Incarnate. The result waiting there was inevitable tragedy. Beginning with the fifth Chrome Disaster, who she had fought a mere three months earlier, Kuroyukihime had seen more than a few Burst Linkers swallowed up by a dark will to bring about irreparable destruction to themselves and the people they loved. She absolutely could not go down that same path.

  Thus, Kuroyukihime glared at Sulfur Pot, smirking on high, and said, “I’ll use my special attacks once I beat you down from that place. You can look forward to experiencing them firsthand.”

  “Ha-ha-ha! Of course a king would say something that cool! Well then, just as you wish, I’ll have Nick crush you and end this!!” Sulfur yanked the reins again, and the dinosaur stamped fiercely at the ground with its front legs.

  Faced with this, Kuroyukihime crossed the swords of her arms in front of her body as she adjusted her position ever so slightly, such that the large building was directly behind her.

  She had no intention of using Incarnate techniques. But her opponent had an overly powerful assistant in the form of a Legend-class Enemy. Which was why…

  “That’s just about enough! Aaaah!” With a battle cry, she focused her mind and shouted, “Overdrive! Mode Green!!” Instantly, the armor partition lines running across Black Lotus’s entire body emitted a vivid green light.

  The “overdrive” command was also not a technique or ability prescribed by the system. Having said that, it wasn’t an Incarnate attack, either. It was a so-called positive autosuggestion, following the same logic as Overflow, the phenomenon of a negative image run wild, and Zero Fill, the phenomenon of an empty image run wild. Basically, it was a type of battle cry, but Kuroyukihime had added a trick to it. Taking advantage of the characteristic of her own body of possessing no color affiliation, she had set three modes. Mode Red pushed her avatar’s performance diagram toward the long range, Mode Blue brought it to the close range, and Mode Green changed it to a defensive type. Naturally, this did not have the absolute attack power of only being avoidable with Incarnate, the greatest characteristic of an Incarnate attack, but it should prove helpful at any rate. And anyway, the effect of Incarnate attacks on Enemies was relatively weak.

  Sulfur P
ot watched the modest change that came over Black Lotus and laughed again. “Ha-ha-ha! Your little tricks are useless before this guy! Go, Nick!!”

  Kuroyukihime stared wordlessly at the snout of the massive dinosaur charging toward her with the force of a huge trailer. This time, Crikin dropped obediently into an evasive posture. But the dinosaur’s trajectory did not deviate. Its target was the Black King alone.

  She gritted her teeth and pulled the fierce charge in, a charge that would likely carry away more than half her health gauge if she was directly hit. Not yet…Not yet…Now!!

  “Sheeah!” Leaping diagonally to the left and forward, Kuroyukihime launched the sword of her right foot in something like a roundhouse kick.

  In midair, the tip of her sword collided with one of the massive teeth in Nidhogg’s mouth. Her leg squealed from knee to hip at the fearsome stress. However, perhaps thanks to the autosuggestion of Mode Green, she endured it without her sword breaking. Ting! Her sword came around to the front, and Nidhogg slammed past her on the right, to plunge into the building behind her.

  Broken and sailing through the air was the white tooth of the dinosaur. Noting that the top bar of the three-tiered gauge of the Enemy displayed in the top of her field of view decreased just a little, Kuroyukihime did an easy backward somersault in the air and landed on the ground.

  For the next three minutes and thirty seconds, the battle developed along similar lines.

  Kuroyukihime dodged Nidhogg’s charge at the very last second, and in the instant they crossed paths, she dealt a minuscule amount of damage. She got the beast to charge into the building behind her, and while it was turning around, she took up her next position. Naturally, she didn’t escape unharmed every time. Teeth or scale would touch her, and Kuroyukihime’s health gauge was steadily shaved away. The pace of damage was slower than her enemy’s, but the absolute value was totally different. If she kept using the same strategy, the gauge that would be exhausted first would belong to Black Lotus.