Archangel of Savage Light

by Reki Kawahara

  “…Thanks!” he called briefly in reply, and leaned into her. His body stabilized, he now focused all his mental energy on his crossed arms.

  Silver Crow’s Optical Conduction ability used a light-guiding rod in his arm to change the vector of light-type attacks. It didn’t compare with Mirror Masker’s defensive power of turning his entire body into a mirror and reflecting light from all directions, but it did have one advantage over Theoretical Mirror—and it was that he could control, to a certain extent, the direction the laser was reflected.

  Currently, the extremely thick laser was being scattered in a lenticular, which was why more than 30 percent of the energy was hitting the ground and producing the magma. But he should have been able to narrow the reflection vector and let the light flow off into the sky. If he did that, then the ground wouldn’t melt any more than it already had.

  The idea wasn’t to become a wall that simply rejected the light. It was to be a path that accepted the light, guided it, and then released it. That was the answer Haruyuki had arrived at. Niko had taught him this, and Utai, and Kuroyukihime, and Wolfram Cerberus, and his classmate Reina Izeki; this was his ability and his alone: Optical Conduction.

  You have to believe. In everyone. In me. In Silver Crow.

  Haruyuki loosened his tightly clenched fists. Instantly, the pressure of the light beam increased, and his body slid back several centimeters together with Magenta. But he had faith in the strength of the hands supporting him and continued to lean into them. Now that he thought about it, the reason for the pain in Magenta’s voice wasn’t just the flames roasting her feet. She was also actively resisting the orders of the ISS kit parasitizing her chest.

  He stretched out the fingers of his unclenched hands. The illumination filling the light-guiding rod reached down from the palm of his hand up to the tips of his middle fingers. Next, bit by bit, he moved his arms, already crossed into an X, into a vertical equal sign.

  The beam of light became hundreds of small streams blowing off in all directions and then started to come back together piecemeal. Ten thick lines bundled together into four, joined into two, returned to one—toward the sky.

  Now Haruyuki’s arms shifted Metatron’s giant light lance ninety degrees, sending the beam upward to be absorbed into the distant sky. Enormous holes were ripped into the clouds along its trajectory, making the evening darkness sparkle.

  Right. Like that.

  Abruptly, he heard someone’s voice inside his mind. It seemed like a woman, but it wasn’t Magenta. It had a childish aspect to it, but it wasn’t Niko or Utai, either. Cool, inorganic, a voice slightly removed from humanity.

  Just like that, reverse the light.

  —Don’t be absurd!! Haruyuki replied reflexively in his mind. It’s seriously way too hard just to bend Metatron’s super-laser ninety degrees!! Now I’m just going to keep doing it and wait for his energy to run out!!

  It won’t run out for a while. It collects sunlight with its wings. And the name isn’t super-laser. Call it Trisagion.

  —How do you know that? And to begin with…how are you talking…?

  You don’t have time to concern yourself with trivialities. Hurry, you must reverse the light. There is no other way for you all to survive.

  —As if it’s that easy! I mean, I’m slamming up against my limit here! Haruyuki threw these thoughts at the mysterious voice, but if its owner was right, then as long as Metatron was bathed in the light of the sun, its energy would continue to be charged. He had diverted the laser that was heating the ground up into the sky, but the magma at their feet still hadn’t cooled, and his and Magenta’s health gauges continued to decrease steadily.

  —So that’s my only choice, then…!

  He had no basis for believing the unidentified voice, but he followed his instincts, and once again concentrated all his mental energy in his arms.

  His arms were facing palm out and were bent deeply, in a shape like boxing gloves; he tried stretching them out just a little. The angle of the pillar of light reaching up into the sky changed the tiniest bit, but at the same time, an incredible pressure made his entire body creak. It’s totally impossible to make the angle of reflection any bigger than this, he thought, before he remembered that only moments earlier, he’d sworn he absolutely would not give up, at least not in this fight. Hadn’t he?

  “Hn…nngh…!” A thin groan escaping him, Haruyuki extended his arms a little more. The laser’s angle of reflection passed a hundred degrees, and his avatar began to shake irregularly. Supporting Crow from behind, Magenta had to be enduring even more serious pressure, but the hands gripping his shoulders didn’t so much as twitch.

  Once more, and again, Haruyuki bent the enormous pillar of light, what the mysterious voice had called Trisagion. The pressure also increased proportionally, unlimited, and sparks began to shoot like blood from Crow’s joints. Magenta panted as if she were struggling, too, and both were pushed backward.

  But at that moment, he heard yet another voice:

  “Unh…unh…Aaaaah!” A thick war cry that didn’t quite form words.

  Zzsh! He felt the ground shake heavily, and then their backward slide stopped. Haruyuki couldn’t see him, but Avocado Avoider had come up to brace Magenta with his massive body. But Avocado, clad in fatty armor, was weak to fire. The ground around them was still burning red-hot, and if he stood there, he would go up in flames in seconds.

  “Unnh…Unh!” He was in anguish.

  “Get back, Avo!” Magenta instructed hoarsely. “We’re okay here. You run with everyone…”

  “N-no, can’t…! I’m…I’m a. B…Bur…”

  His voice cut off there, but Haruyuki knew what Avocado Avoider was trying to say. I’m a Burst Linker, too. That’s what he wanted to declare.

  “Avo…,” Magenta murmured.

  The crackling roar of the flames drowned her out. Avocado’s armor had probably started to burn. Haruyuki had maybe ten seconds left. Could he bend the laser 180 degrees before that…?

  Fwwsh! White smoke rose up from the earth. Stunned, Haruyuki looked down at his feet and found that most of the red-hot magma had hardened to black in an instant. Someone had thrown a large amount of water on it. But the Twilight stage was essentially dry; the only water was in places that corresponded to large ponds or rivers in the real world. Where on earth had this much liquid come from?

  He turned his head slightly, and entering Haruyuki’s field of view was Aqua Current, missing the majority of the flowing water armor that was her lifeline. Laid bare, the avatar’s body was a transparent material like crystal. She had used the water that covered her to cool the ground.

  “We’re late.” Akira reached out her extremely thin arms to support Haruyuki’s back from the left of Magenta Scissor.

  “Sorry, Crow.” New arms wrapped around his back from the right. “Magenta’s comrades couldn’t move. It took us a while to carry them to a safe place.”

  Kuroyukihime. And then on either side of these two—Takumu, Chiyuri, Fuko, Utai, Niko, Pard all stretched out their arms to form a tight scrum with Magenta and Avocado.

  “We’re counting on you, Crow!” Takumu cried.

  “Up to you now! Crush it!!” Niko shouted.

  With two Enemies and eight allies—no, ten Burst Linkers—supporting him, Haruyuki nodded to the extent possible and then turned his resolve back to Metatron’s laser.

  The members of the Magenta army, other than Avocado, had likely fallen because of the clash between the orders the ISS kits were giving and their own wills. In other words, in their hearts, they too wanted to come fight together, like Magenta and Avocado. To protect their comrades from the sudden threat assaulting them. No matter how the ISS kits polluted their minds, it could not extinguish the flames at the very depths of their souls. As long as they were Burst Linkers, those would never disappear.

  “Unh…Ah…” Squeezing a groan from his throat, Haruyuki pushed his arms forward bit by tiny bit. The force pressing in on hi
m threatened to instantly crush his avatar if his focus so much as wavered, but there was no longer any doubt in his heart.

  When the angle of reflection had reached 120 degrees, the bent laser touched the tip of Midtown Tower. The marble wall was instantly red-hot, melting and shattering. Almost like a divine sword being brought down from on high, the laser cut the massive chalky tower in two. A terrain object of that size was, as a general rule, indestructible in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and yet, this laser had slid through it so easily; it was indeed a fearsome power.

  The laser destroyed only one part of the building, fifty meters wide, but there was also the chance that the ISS kit main body somewhere on the upper floors had been hit directly. If he moved the laser from side to side, that probability would increase, but that, at least, was firmly outside the realm of possibility. He was mustering every ounce of his physical and mental energy, and yet it was all he could do to bring his arms straight down.

  Yes. Don’t think of anything else.

  He heard the voice again. That inorganic…and somehow inhuman voice didn’t even quaver despite coming in the midst of destruction so great that it was enough to split a landmark of the Accelerated World.

  Keep going down. Aim for the laser’s emission point. Anything else will pass through.

  —Pass through…? At this, Haruyuki finally remembered: Archangel Metatron was invisible outside of a Hell stage…and all attacks passed through it. But the mysterious voice was telling him there was a place where Metatron could take damage, even in this Twilight stage. This information didn’t come out at the meeting of the Seven Kings; which meant that the owner of the voice knew things that even the Seven Kings—no, the first Burst Linkers known as the Originators—didn’t.

  Who in the world was it? The thought bubbled up in a corner of his mind, bounced, and disappeared. He only had the will left now to simply and precisely follow its instructions.

  A hundred fifty degrees. A hundred sixty…A hundred seventy.

  Already some percentage of the laser was overlapping with itself on the return trip, and he couldn’t keep his eyelids up in the dazzling light that the colliding energy released. The world was dyed in light and shadow, and Silver Crow’s arms bringing about this phenomenon shone with a pure-white light. It seemed like they would explode with the light-guiding rod at any second, but there was no fear inside Haruyuki. His hips, his back, both were being supported by eight—no, just for right now, ten friends. He felt their wills filling his avatar and giving him strength.

  One hundred seventy-five degrees.

  The bottom edge of the reflected laser touched the transparent head of Metatron. The outline only shone a little more brightly; nothing else happened. Not moving in the slightest, the large Enemy continued to fire its laser. But Haruyuki believed in himself and his friends and the mysterious voice, and continued to push his arms down. His elbows were already essentially straight. Carefully turning his arms, his palms up…With fingers snapped straight, he shot through the laser’s origin point.

  One hundred eighty degrees.

  Something happened.

  At first, that was all he could feel. There was no explosion or roar, but he felt the laser—which should have continued to pass right through the Enemy—hit a small something. The pillar of light gradually decayed. The pressure weighing heavily on his entire body slowly slackened. It weakened, and then got still weaker…and disappeared.

  Before he knew it, the pure-white radiance that had encompassed his field of view, the vibrating noise that drowned out all other sound, had vanished like they never existed. All he could hear was the sound of rubble falling in the distance from the cross section of Midtown Tower, that reached from the roof almost down to the base.

  No, that wasn’t all: There was a strange noise, too, like the creaking of a large chunk of ice suddenly melting. Krak-krak, skree-skree. The foreboding sound steadily grew louder. And it seemed like Haruyuki wasn’t the only one who heard it; the clump of ten at his back also strained their ears, motionless.

  Inside Haruyuki’s mind as he stood stock-still, he could hear that voice yet again.

  It all starts now.

  You must all fight with your entire might.

  Skreeee!

  The sound of collision threatened to rip the field itself apart—like the sound of acceleration when you called the Burst Link command, but amplified a thousand times.

  And then Haruyuki saw it. Fifty meters away, the shell of space split and a figure appeared from inside.

  What appeared first were widespread wings. Not those of a bird of prey. And they were different from Crow’s metallic fins, too. Looking like numerous complex tapestries all lined up, these wings had a span as great as the breadth of Midtown Tower. And there were two each on the right and left, for a total of four. The torso beneath the wings was composed of countless connected white rings. Beneath the torso, more than ten tube-shaped legs stretched out.

  And the head was a massive sphere, perhaps seven, eight meters in diameter. This alone was basically the size of a Beast-class Enemy. Along the surface of the sphere, curving lines radiated outward and came together in one spot in the front, but this area alone was black, caved in. Probably where the organ to launch the laser—no, Trisagion—had been.

  On the top of the round head sat a crown-like ring that shone platinum silver. And from the center of that, a curiously shaped horn stretched up. At a distance, he couldn’t see the details of the chaotic silhouette.

  Haruyuki had confirmed this much when Kuroyukihime moved smoothly away from supporting his back. “There’s no mistake,” she announced, her voice quiet but still maximally tense. “That is the Legend-class Enemy, Archangel Metatron.”

  Hearing this, the other nine slowly pulled away from Haruyuki. Finally, Haruyuki lowered the arms still crossed in front of him.

  “Magenta Scissor,” Kuroyukihime murmured. “Can we hold off on our contest for a while? We must defeat this Enemy.”

  “Why don’t you run?” Magenta replied in a similarly quiet voice. “I think you could escape now, yes?”

  “If we run now, Crow’s hard work is for nothing. We’ve sealed away the laser, which is this monster’s greatest weapon. And its transparency has also been released. There is no time but now. After we defeat Metatron, we can recommence our fight if you wish.”

  “…” After a slight silence, Magenta said to him, “The arrogance, hmm, just like the rumors. But…just this once, I’m not annoyed. We’ll fight another day…Let’s go, Avo.”

  Magenta turned on her heel, and Avocado slowly roused himself to go after her, both of them still with the ISS kits on their chests, although the lids were half-closed. Which meant that the kit main body had not taken a direct hit and was still going strong somewhere inside that building.

  In that moment, he honestly didn’t understand how they had fought the control of the kit, but he could say this at the very least: Magenta Scissor and Avocado Avoider had not abandoned their pride as Burst Linkers. Just that.

  “Um, thank you, Magenta!” Haruyuki managed to call out toward her back as she started to walk to the north. “If you hadn’t held me up, I would have been evaporated.”

  “…We both would have. And I’ll say a thank you for helping my friends.”

  As she and Avocado walked away, Haruyuki saw their lower halves were scorched by the heat of the magma.

  Magenta had to have understood. That the reason Haruyuki and his friends were fighting Metatron was to destroy the ISS kit main body inside Midtown Tower. And that once the main body was destroyed, the kit terminals that gave her and her comrades their strength would all lose that power.

  Haruyuki saw the two of them off, an indescribable feeling in his heart. But he wasn’t given the time to sit with it.

  Vsshn. An earth-shattering noise shook the field, and he whirled around.

  Perhaps recovered from being shot in the head with its own laser, Metatron started to lumber forward. Haruyuki
couldn’t see anything that looked like eyes anywhere, but even so, he felt a powerful gaze. An inorganic will to eliminate anyone who invaded its own territory.

  “This is the critical moment of today’s mission.” Kuroyukihime stated, her voice clear with no hint of the exhaustion she must have felt. “Although we’ve sealed away the laser that is its main weapon, that does not change the fact that Metatron is a fearsome Enemy. But we must defeat it. Absolutely. Now, after Crow took on such an important role with such resolve and determination, we must match his efforts—”

  “So basically, don’t go giving Burst Linkers a bad name!!” Waiting for the perfect moment to shout this out was, of course, Niko. Clenching her right hand into a fist, she thrust it at Metatron, who was steadily shambling forward. “I am so seriously on fire right now. Those ISS kit kids, they showed some serious guts. You guys, if we don’t put the fight up now, we might as well close up shop as Legions! Got it? No holding back! Knock that giant lump outta the park!”

  To Niko’s king-upstaging speech, Utai immediately added:

  “We’re gonna smack ’im good!”

  The two red types had apparently gotten fairly close that day. In response, the other seven—with Kuroyukihime sounding just a little bit grumpy—all agreed, “Yeah!”

  7

  In the battle strategy they had agreed on at the old Tokyo Tower, they were to avoid direct combat with Archangel Metatron to the best of their abilities. While Haruyuki was defending against the laser, the others would charge into Midtown Tower.

  But now that Metatron had descended, they were forced to essentially scrap that plan. It seemed doubtful that the Enemy would stop targeting them once they ran into the tower, and in the worst-case scenario, they might get caught between an enemy lying in wait inside and Metatron prowling around outside.

  In unexpected good news, however, Metatron could not fire the large-diameter laser—supposedly its most powerful attack—and its usual status of being immune to all damage had been stripped away. As long as these two factors were taken out of play, it was actually possible to fight Metatron in something other than a Hell stage. Naturally, they couldn’t underestimate the power of a Legend-class Enemy, but at the very least, Metatron was no longer on the unfathomable level of the Super-class Enemies of the Castle.