“I suppose it would be. The black armor is Enhanced Armament, so the shape would change depending on the avatar equipping it. However, its characteristics do not change, no matter who inherits it. Essentially, an aggressiveness very close to madness,” Kuroyukihime replied quietly, and as if guided by her words, the enormous black avatar wordlessly brandished its axes.
The blade’s target was obviously the strange stone where the Green King was hidden. Whether by some unspecified means or by instinct, Chrome Disaster had seen through the ambush.
With a roar like a carnivorous animal, the avatar brought its ax down with ferocious velocity. The thick rock split like butter, but just before it did, the green avatar leapt sideways, slipping out from behind the stone.
The massive ax followed and was brandished once again. The Green King, turning and standing his ground, unable to flee this time, held aloft the square shield on his left arm.
With a metallic screech, the four corners of the shield expanded, and its rectangular shape became a large cross, large enough to basically cover the entirety of the Green King. The crude ax collided with the shield from on high with all the power its wielder’s arm could muster.
A waterfall of sparks flew out, accompanied by the earsplitting clang of impact. Although the ax bounced back, the Green King dropped to his knees.
A cry indistinguishable between anger or joy leaping from his mouth, Chrome Disaster brought his ax down over and over with wild abandon. With his cross-shaped shield, the Green King efficiently and accurately continued his defense against the assault, which looked as though it could cut right through a body if it landed a single blow.
Here, Haruyuki finally noticed several deep cuts in Chrome Disaster’s dark silver armor. Each time the ax was swung, a black mist flew out of them and dispersed into the air.
“He’s injured…?” Haruyuki muttered unconsciously.
“He is,” Kuroyukihime replied in a whisper. “Right before this, he fought the other kings and was cornered in this place. In terms of his health gauge, he’s on the verge of death. And yet he’s still this wild. At the time, I feared him from the bottom of my heart.”
I can totally believe that. Just watching the replay like this makes me want to run so bad. Muttering to himself, Haruyuki felt the hair on his real-life body, the sensations of which should have been cut off, stand up. In truth, it was unthinkable. A single-handed rampage against the kings, supposedly the strongest beings in the Accelerated World. And doing it while near death. Did this mean Chrome Disaster’s true strength exceeded level nine?
Chrome Disaster growled, perhaps irritated at the Green King, whose defenses did not crumble no matter how many times the monster struck them with his ax. Even as he continued to attack, he stretched out his long head and wetly, abruptly opened his mouth.
Haruyuki stared in amazement as a long, thin tongue—or something resembling some kind of tube—sluggishly stretched out from the center of what was more reminiscent of a cylindrical intake port than a mouth.
“That’s one of Chrome Disaster’s abilities, Drain,” Kuroyukihime uttered sharply. “He steals the HP gauge of his opponent in battle.”
As she spoke, the long tube slithered out, trying to circumvent the Green King’s cross shield to approach his head.
“Watch out!” Haruyuki cried out involuntarily.
Black Lotus, who until that point had stayed hidden, not joining in the battle in any way, flew out from the background of the image like a flash of black lightning. She brought the sword of her right arm down at a speed that made it impossible to see, and Chrome Disaster’s tongue was severed at the root.
“Gah! Gahgahgahgahgah!!” The enormous avatar threw his head back, cries of clear distress and a murky darkness coming from the round mouth.
Black Lotus applied the sword of her left hand to a large wound carved into his chest and plunged through mercilessly, right up to the base.
The long blade, piercing through his back, suddenly shone a blinding violet. The Black King yanked her limb upward, ever higher, as she somersaulted magnificently backward. Before the glittering, ink-black avatar could land again, Chrome Disaster’s head was ripped in two.
And the slide bar displaying the play time in the bottom right of the screen reached its end.
Returning from the full dive with the “link out” command, Haruyuki realized the palms of his real hands were damp with cold sweat. Takumu, sitting straight across from him, was also pale. Looking to his left, he saw that even the Red King Yuniko kept her lips silently pursed.
“He continued to fight in that state for another two minutes before finally perishing,” Kuroyukihime murmured, removing the two cables plugged into her Neurolinker.
Haruyuki followed suit. “That…Was that really a Burst Linker?” he asked hoarsely, while bundling up the cables with stiff hands. “There was really a real player inside just like us…?”
“For sure. I mean, there’s no real difference from the way The Fifth fights now…and that is that, Black King.” Yuniko spoke in a low voice as she stood. She threw a glance at Kuroyukihime, who wore an unusually stormy look on her face. “I guess it’s a fact you guys worked your butts off to take down The Fourth, since you have the replay. But, okay, if that’s the case, why didn’t the armor there, the Enhanced Armament, why didn’t it disappear?!”
“It did!” Kuroyukihime shouted back, leaping to her feet. Lips pressed tightly together, she threw herself into a chair at the table. She waited for the other three to do the same before continuing in a strained voice. “Immediately after the owner of the Armor—the fourth Chrome Disaster—left the Accelerated World forever, the Green King and I rejoined the other five and checked our status windows then and there. We all confirmed it then: that we did not have the Armor in our storage. Meaning it was annihilated. The curse of continual transfer to the opponent defeating its host was severed at that time. And, in fact, Chrome Disaster stopped appearing after that!”
Abruptly cutting off the declaration that had practically become a shout by the end, Kuroyukihime glared at Yuniko as if challenging her.
The second Red King squarely accepted the pressure of those ink-black eyes. “If that’s true, how do you explain what’s going on now?!” she demanded sharply. “How do you explain the fact that The Fifth is definitely out there and running wild just like the old days?”
“What is The Fifth called? If whoever it is equipped the Armor, had their mind contaminated, and became the fifth Chrome Disaster, there’s no reason their name in the system would change. If you duel them, you should be able to find out the name of the avatar inside the armor. Exactly which King was it who was possessed by this armor?!”
This time, Yuniko lowered her gaze and dropped into silence. A few seconds later, she heaved a long, deep sigh and shook her head from side to side.
“…It’s not a King. The Fifth one is one of our…a member of the Red Legion, Prominence. Originally named Cherry Rook. But that guy’s not in there anymore. He’s been eaten up by the Armor; he’s gone.” Her voice, in contrast with her tendency toward aggressive words, was unusually hoarse and shaky.
“It’s not…a King? A member of the Red Legion? But…” Kuroyukihime’s eyes narrowed swiftly, and she stroked her pale lips with her right index finger.
As she furrowed her brow, sinking into thought, Takumu raised a hand lightly and began to speak. “Perhaps it’s something like this, Master. If they connect directly, perhaps through the shop, Enhanced Armament can be transferred between Burst Linkers. I can’t really speak to this personally, but considering that backdoor program incident, I can’t believe all the Kings are pacifists with perfectly clean hands. Perhaps some King with an ax to grind made a false promise two and a half years ago, secretly carried the Armor away, and then handed it off to Cherry Rook?”
“Could something like that…have happened? But it’s as I said before, the Kings—level-nine players—no longer have any reason to desire large quantiti
es of points. No matter how many we collect, we still can’t reach level ten. So if this King did hand the armor over…the only reason could be to strengthen their own Legion and weaken the others. But the risk of setting the uncontrollable Chrome Disaster loose is too great. Moreover, if a Red Legion member has it, then the originator would have to be the Red King. But the Red King who took part in the subjugation two and a half years ago…”
Most likely, Haruyuki was the only one who noticed Kuroyukihime’s voice stiffen for an instant.
Her cool hand suddenly touched his under the table. As if gaining strength from his warmth, she continued speaking, the tremor in her tone under control.
“The Red King of the time is no longer in the Accelerated World. He was also killed a mere three months after the subjugation of Chrome Disaster. So it’s not possible for him to have been the originator.”
“I don’t actually know the details since I had only just become a Burst Linker and was just chirping away back then,” the Red King interjected gloomily, seemingly having failed to notice Kuroyukihime’s momentary trouble. “Obviously, I didn’t inherit any Armor or anything from my predecessor. And even if I had, I wouldn’t dream of making a member equip it. Why would I? Just seeing that demonic fighting style…”
“I-is The Fifth…that incredible?”
Yuniko glanced up at Haruyuki’s question. “More than in that replay, in some ways,” she spit out. “He’s no Burst Linker anymore, and the way he fights is no duel. I…I saw him pluck the arm off a fallen opponent and chomp down on it.”
“Geh,” he groaned, imagining the scene involuntarily. Overpowering the sour, bitter taste of his coffee with plenty of milk and sugar, Haruyuki asked the two Kings before him, “B-but…before you said stuff like ‘possessed’ and ‘contaminated mind.’ The Enhanced Armament…Does that mean it’s not just an ordinary weapon? Does it actually interfere with the thoughts of the Burst Linker themselves?”
“It does. And it’s certainly possible,” Kuroyukihime asserted immediately. “Do you remember? I explained it to you when you became a Burst Linker, Haruyuki. Brain Burst reads the user’s feelings of inferiority and obsessions, condenses them, and creates the duel avatar.”
“R-right.”
“That means that it has the ability to access not only the sensory areas of the brain through the Neurolinker, but also the domains of thought and memory, although general applications are strictly regulated. All of which is to say—the Enhanced Armament is stained with the awareness of losing the Burst Linker who produced it. When someone else equips it, it’s quite possible that that awareness flows back into them.”
“That’s…I can’t…” A shiver ran up Haruyuki’s spine. He often found his own negative thoughts too much to handle; he was sure he would be instantly crushed at having to bear another person’s. “I-I’m fine. No Enhanced Armament for me.”
“Good,” Kuroyukihime agreed, laughing briefly. “Although, well, it’s most likely only Chrome Disaster that would contaminate your mind to the point where your entire personality changes. Just what kind of person was the first Chrome Disaster—”
“I don’t know. And I don’t care!” Yuniko shouted, standing suddenly, chair clattering. “He was a stupid bastard ruining everything! He was an idiot for making it! Same goes for the idiot who picked it up and hid it and then gave it to Cherry Rook! Cherry was…He was a good guy. Didn’t have any incredible abilities or anything, but he kept plodding ahead and made it to level six. Things were supposed to be fun for him from now on! And now…Shit! Goddammit!!”
As she turned away with incredible swiftness, Haruyuki saw something slightly damp in the Red King’s large eyes.
Staring out at the group of skyscrapers on the other side of the balcony, Yuniko squeezed out a trembling murmur. “He’s still a member of the Red Legion, and he’s going through the other members and attacking them systematically. Breaking the nonaggression pact. I…I have to clean house.”
“I see.” Kuroyukihime broke the profoundly heavy silence that descended briefly with a quiet observation. “Although this is the infamous Chrome Disaster. Even if you set out to defeat him normally…that is while he remains a member of the Legion…being Legion Master, you could expel him forever from the Accelerated World with a single move, with the Judgment Blow.”
Holding her silence a few seconds longer, Yuniko nodded slowly before shaking her head from side to side. “Ten days ago—he had just gotten to level seven—I challenged him to a one-on-one. To clean house, right? But—Get this, Black Lotus. He—Chrome Disaster managed to dodge every single one of my long-range attacks.”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter which Legion Master you are, the Judgment Blow is a close-range technique, basically point-blank. To land that blow, you gotta slam ’em with a normal attack to cut their legs out from under them. But no matter how much I fired my main weapons or my missiles, I couldn’t even scratch him. The opposite, actually. His sword chipped away at my HP until finally…I lost in a time-up.”
“You lost?! You’re telling me that even with the Judgment Blow, you, a King, lost?!”
“Don’t go acting all surprised. You fought him; you get it. That kind of mobility, no one but monsters can move like that. Incredible long-distance jumps, control of his trajectory in the air, it’s almost like he’s flying.”
“Fly…ing…” Swallowing back a murmur, Kuroyukihime stared first at Yuniko, standing on the other side of the table, and then at Haruyuki, sitting next to her. Then she nodded, slowly, deeply. “I see. We finally come to your objective. I understand why you spent such an incredible amount of time cracking Haruyuki in the real and going on this suicidal social engineering mission.”
At that point, Takumu seemed to arrive at the same conclusion, and scrutinized by the other three, Haruyuki squirmed, swinging his gaze from side to side.
“Wh-what? This objective…What is it?”
“Isn’t it obvious, big brother?” Yuniko said sweetly, abruptly adopting the pure demeanor of her angel mode. “You capture Chrome Disaster for me.”
Nearly five seconds passed with Haruyuki in a slack-jawed daze.
No way. Too scary. You’ve gotta be kidding.
Haruyuki shouted, fell off his chair, and tried to hide behind Kuroyukihime. But the Black King dropped her head thoughtfully, grabbed the back of the collar of his school uniform, and yanked upward mercilessly.
“Haruyuki, all things are experiences,” she whispered, the gentle smile of a saint on her face. “I don’t think there’s any harm in trying.”
“Wh-what?!”
“I’m not saying go in there and fight one-on-one. However, this problem involves not only the Red Legion, but the entire Accelerated World, including those of us in Nega Nebulus. In which case, perhaps this is a situation where you need to stand up as a man, as a Burst Linker.”
When she gets that look on her face and starts talking like this, she’s generally plotting something, Haruyuki groaned in his heart, but unable to guess what that something might be, he groped frantically for a decent excuse.
“B-but…even a King, I mean, a level-nine Burst Linker, was no match for this guy! A level-four Linker like me, he’ll send me flying instantly, and the whole thing’ll be over! And I don’t want to have my head or arms or anything yanked off!!”
“I would not let that happen to you, would I?” Once again: that smile like the finest gelato melting. “All you need to do is follow Chrome Disaster with your speed and flying ability, and prevent him from moving for a brief while. Myself and the little girl here will then steal from the enemy the power of movement.”
“Y-you say that, but—” Not knowing when to give up, Haruyuki dialed up his escape skills to full and somehow managed to come up with a final argument. “That means, then, that you’re assuming you’ll bring him into a team battle? But that’ll put Chrome Disaster up against at minimum me, you, and Scarlet Rain all by himself. There’s no way he’ll acce
pt a duel with that kind of handicap!”
As long as a Burst Linker’s Neurolinker was connected to the net, they couldn’t refuse a challenge to a normal one-on-one duel from another Burst Linker. But it was a different story when the duel mode was “team” or “battle royale.” They would be challenging the person inside Chrome Disaster to an extremely disadvantageous three-against-one fight, and he couldn’t possibly agree to that.
Wait a minute. Wasn’t I just wondering about that?
Speechless, Haruyuki dipped his head lightly, and Kuroyukihime said, glancing over at Yuniko as if to confirm, “If Chrome Disaster were running wild in normal duels, news of that should have already reached my ears. However, I haven’t heard a single rumor. Which means…”
“Right.” The Red King stuffed both hands in the pockets of her cut-off jeans, leaned her slim body back, and nodded decisively. “His hunting ground isn’t the Normal Duel Field…it’s the Unlimited Neutral Field.”
What the hell is that? Haruyuki once again had a question mark hanging above his head, but it was Takumu to his right who cried out sharply.
“I-it’s too dangerous, Master!” Leaning forward in his chair hard enough to make it clatter, he proceeded to argue even more vehemently. “Diving with our battle array is too reckless! Forget Haru and me; you’re constrained by special rules! If by chance another level-nine Burst Linker launches a surprise attack on you, if you’re defeated even once, you’ll lose Brain Burst instantly…and in the worst-case scenario—”
Takumu glanced at Yuniko standing to his right and seemed to hesitate slightly, but as he touched a finger to the bridge of his blue glasses, he said, “It’s my duty to say this. So I will go ahead and say it. In the worst-case scenario, it’s even possible that this entire spectacle—cracking Haruyuki in the real, telling us this story about Chrome Disaster, all of it—is just a trap set by the Red King. It’s possible she’s planning to lure you into the Unlimited Field, ambush you with a large force, and take your head.”
The Red Storm Princess Page 8
