Chapter 7
The stage of today’s second duel was the «Steel stage», whose entire topography was formed entirely from riveted iron plates.
Its distinctive feature was that first of all, it was hard. It conducted electricity well. And one’s footsteps echoed strangely. Even more so if one’s duel avatar were a metal color down to one’s soles.
Haruyuki, who had caused the reverberation of a shrill clang! sound and had alighted onto the stage, waited for a second sound of footsteps while looking down. However, since he did not hear anything even after several seconds had pa.s.sed, he lifted his face and looked around at his surroundings.
The former Umesato Middle nurse’s office had changed into just an empty rectangular room with neither beds nor desks. The floor, walls, and the ceiling were all bulky iron plates glinting with a dull brown color. The duel opponents who had nearly been stuck close together before acceleration had obeyed Brain Burst’s rule that they would «materialize separated by at least ten meters»; she stood surrept.i.tiously at the east window of the room.
A sleek jet black semitransparent armor that made one think of obsidian. An armor skirt in the design of a water lily and a superfine body; a mask sharpened in the shape of the letter V. And her limbs were all blades so long and sharp as to make one shudder—.
Giving a look at the Black King «Black Lotus’s» beautiful as well as ferocious standing posture that he would never get used to seeing no matter how many times he saw it, Haruyuki finally realized why he had not heard footsteps. Though it was only the extent of a centimeter, the Black King’s two sharply pointed legs sure enough were floating from the ground. She was also one of the few «hover-cla.s.s avatars» in the Accelerated World.
In that state, Kuroyukihime stared at Haruyuki’s avatar «Silver Crow» for a further number of seconds, but before long she came sliding smoothly forward. She stopped right before his eyes, and in the depths of her black mirror goggles, her violet blue eyes shone vividly.
“Just by looking at your figure I knew, Haruyuki-kun. You’ve gone through another harsh fight…”
He immediately inferred that those calmly resounding words referred to the heated fight carried out last night between Tak.u.mu and him. He had not yet explained to Kuroyukihime the details of the happening that had occurred from last night to this morning, but she had probably seen through the fact that the two had already spoken to each other through their fists as Burst Linkers.
To be sure, it had been a bitter, trying fight. In order to pull back his close friend who had begun to be drawn into the pitch-black power known as the ISS Kit, Haruyuki had lost his left arm and left wing and had continued to stand up even while his entire body was cracking into tatters. Encouraged by the strange bright golden yellow girl, he had summoned the original form of the «Disaster Armor», the Divine Weapon «The Destiny», even if it had been only one arm’s worth, and had squeezed out all the Mind Power that he had.
The result was that in order to save Haruyuki, who was on the verge of being parasitized by the clone of the ISS Kit, Tak.u.mu had punched through himself with his special technique, but what had been left inside Haruyuki by that fight seemed to be there, without a doubt. If one were to say what that was, it would probably be a mere small «feeling of believing in himself». Precisely because that feeling existed was he able to fire his new Incarnate technique, one that possessed a range surpa.s.sing that of «Laser Sword», in the following strange fight in the «Brain Burst central server».
However, Haruyuki, whose habit of shrinking when he was praised had become second nature, looked down while rubbing his two hands together, fidgeting.
“N, no, such a thing…I’m always just being saved by somebody…”
“Fufu, having become able to think like that is the proof that you’ve matured.”
Kuroyukihime briefly laughed, lightly tapped Haruyuki’s back with the ridge of the sword of her right hand, and spoke.
“Now then, show me, Haruyuki-kun. Show me all the Incarnate techniques that you’ve acquired.”
Here he wanted badly to fidget again, but right now the two were not in the Unlimited Neutral Field but the normal duel field. They were only able to remain for a trifling 1800 seconds. It was normal for training to take over several weeks even to learn just one of the elementary techniques, so thirty minutes was too short. They could not afford to waste even one second.
Haruyuki took a deep breath, stored it firmly in his belly, and nodded.
“All right. —Let’s go.”
He moved several steps and halted at a position three meters from the wall of the south side of the deserted room.
Originally pure-white wallpaper had been pasted, but now it was a reddish-brown thick plate of steel. Even with just one of the rivets driven lengthwise and crosswise, it conveyed an overwhelming hardness.
However, that hardness was in the end nothing more than a parameter described by the server. It was possible to override it with the strength of the will of piercing it. Haruyuki slowly lowered his waist; he first a.s.sumed a stance with his left hand at his hip and aligned his five fingers straight.
He concentrated the image of a «penetrating light» at his fingertips, and immediately a silver radiance—an «Over-Ray» was born and lit up the dim room. As his image was focused, a riiiing resonance sound faintly reverberated, and light covered the area from his left hand to his elbow. The speed of this Mind Power activation had become considerably faster compared to that of the past, but taking no heed of that Haruyuki swiftly pulled his left hand.
“—«Laser Sword»!!”
At the same time that he uttered his technique name, he sharply revolved his waist and plunged his left arm forward.
With a clear-cut shukiiiiin! sound, the silver light that had taken the form of a sword lengthened over two meters from his left hand and drilled deeply into the thick steel wall.
However, without stopping his movement there Haruyuki drew his right foot far back, and he placed his right arm not at his waist but in the area above his shoulder. He readied his left arm, which had returned to its original position, horizontally before his body.
This time a silver light was born in his right arm and shone strongly.
“…Ohh!”
A war cry burst forth naturally from his mouth. He made the tip of the light that had sharply extended several dozens of centimeters from his right hand float about the back of his left hand—and released it.
“«Laser Lance»!!”
Just this morning, only one time, he had released this technique inside his dream in borrowing Chiyuri’s help, but Haruyuki had the conviction that he could do it. The radiance of the Mind Power released not as a sword but as a lance precisely hit its target, the bruise on the wall where his Laser Sword had bore through three seconds earlier, and again it pierced through ferociously.
The lance of light, which had stopped for an instant, unraveled into a number of threads of ribbons and vanished. Immediately afterward, the wall plates of steel themselves scattered into smithereens as if unable to absorb fully the power dealt to it. From the other side of the large hole opened in the wall, an iron pillar standing in the s.p.a.ce that corresponded to the front yard of Umesato Middle in the real world was severed in its middle and fell with an earth-shaking rumble.
From where Haruyuki was standing to the iron pillar, it was probably easily ten meters. It was a firing range that was actually over three times farther than that of his Laser Sword unleashed earlier.
“…Whew.”
At the back of Haruyuki, who had lightly exhaled and had let down both his hands, a refreshing ring, ring sound reverberated. He looked back; Kuroyukihime was clapping the swords of her two arms together wholly as if applauding.
“Splendid. Splendid imagination, Haruyuki-kun.”
“Th…th, thank you very much…”
Haruyuki, as always unused to being praised by someone, bowed while ducking his head. However, at the remarks Kuroyukihime uttered immediately after, he raised his face with a twitch.
“That Mind Power of yours is already in the stage of completion as the basic «range expansion technique». Both «Laser Sword», used for hand-to-hand combat by expanding and contracting your sword from both hands at high speed, and «Laser Lance», used for midrange fighting as a lance that fires your ama.s.sed power from your right hand: both are good techniques whose sense of purpose is clear. However, due to that, from now on as well you can refine your technique and polish your sighting accuracy and activation speed but cannot expect to make dramatic progress…”
“Eh…”
—If so, does that mean…with this, this is the end for my Mind Power..?
Stunned and thinking in that manner, he began to slump his shoulders, but he was checked right beforehand by the following voice that resounded.
“It’s too early to be disappointed. I just said earlier, didn’t I, that there existed a «second stage» to the Incarnate system.”
Kuroyukihime, who had approached without a sound by hover movement, whispered as if admonishing a little child in a voice with lowered volume.
“You…your heart conceals unlimited possibilities. From the point of believing that, everything begins. —The technique you showed right now belongs to one of the four types of basic techniques of Mind Power, «range expansion». The appearances of basic techniques are multifarious, but if they’re of the same type then they share the same essential abilities. You’ve understood that much, right?”
“Y…yes.”
While nodding, Haruyuki recalled Niko’s—the «Red King» Scarlet Rain’s range expansion technique unique to her that she had shown before.
Niko’s technique hurled flames dwelling in her hand at high velocity and burnt her faraway target to ashes. It far surpa.s.sed Haruyuki’s technique with a long range that exceeded fifty meters and with a high-speed activation to the extent where she did not even require a technique name utterance any longer, but despite that they both shared the essence of a «long-distance standalone attack».
As if she were waiting for Haruyuki to understand that far, Kuroyukihime nodded, leisurely lifted the sword of her right hand, and spoke.
“—In opposition, the second stage of Mind Power is basically the «applied technique». Combining two or more images of the four elementary types, or incarnating a wholly new image, and bringing about an even larger «override». «Rust Order», used by Rust Jigsaw, who had destroyed the previous race event, and «Wind Veil», used by Fuuko, who had protected us from that technique, are without a doubt second stage techniques.”
“…And your «Vorpal Strike» is one too, right, Senpai? That technique is a combination of range expansion and power expansion, isn’t it.”
In response to Haruyuki’s words, perhaps it was a figment of his imagination, but Kuroyukihime nodded her half-mirror face mask in a seemingly slightly embarra.s.sed way.
“Mm, well…it’s something like that, I guess. Maybe, however, the right way of putting it is that it became that way as a consequence of something…at any rate. Haruyuki-kun, the time has finally arrived for you to proceed to that second stage as well.”
The first half of her words were slightly mysterious, but without the leisure to ponder their meaning Haruyuki straightened his back and shouted.
“U, understood! I’ll do my best!”
However, there another new question floated to his mind.
“…Um, however, at first in the nurse’s office, you said in order to acquire the second stage of Mind Power, one must understand the meaning of something along the lines of the power of imagination even in the real world…didn’t you, Senpai? Concretely, what did you mean..?”
“Unh… That’s, well…”
Though she had begun to speak, Kuroyukihime cut short her words and gazed at her right hand—the point of her sharp sword, which was still raised before her chest. For some reason, a faint tinge of nervousness clouded her blue-violet eyes, and she continued in a whisper.
“…Since that meaning’s difficult to convey in words, let’s subst.i.tute with a real demonstration. Haruyuki-kun, in truth for some time past, I’ve also been challenging myself to acquire a new «applied technique».”
“Eh…”
With bated breath, he stared gapingly at Kuroyukihime’s avatar mask. A new applied technique—in short, was that a super-offensive power that surpa.s.sed «Vorpal Strike» too? Was she going to demonstrate that in this narrow room?
“Ah, th-then, shall we go outsi…”
Kuroyukihime slightly shook her head and stopped Haruyuki, who had begun to speak.
“No, there’s no need for that. Here will suffice.”
And then, the Black King Black Lotus pointed the tip of her right hand sword straight at Haruyuki’s body and stood still.
—No way, surely she won’t perhaps use me as a guinea pig for that new technique.
—No, it’s possible. Because this person is the sworn friend and master of Sky Raker, who pushed me off the summit of the Old Tokyo Tower. If so, even if Kuroyukihime were also more spartan in her way of guiding my Mind Power than she was, it wouldn’t be strange at all. Don’t be afraid, think of it as a windfall. Being able to be the first to experience the yet-to-be-revealed technique of the person whom I believe without question to be the strongest in the Accelerated World, there’s no training better than this. I should take it while puffing out my chest.
While those thoughts progressed at high speed in less than a tenth of a second, Haruyuki gnashed his molars and stopped his breathing.
Kuroyukihime, whose right hand was still extended out, narrowed her eyes beneath her goggles and also similarly showed signs of concentrating.
At the point of the sharp sword, with a pop a yellow light—an Over-Ray was born. While it faintly pulsated, it lightly enveloped the sword up to a point around twenty centimeters from its tip.
While staring at that with both his wide-opened eyes, Haruyuki felt a slight bewilderment.
As to why—it was warm. The light enveloping the sword was kind, ephemeral, and warm to the extent where one could not possibly believe that it would produce ma.s.sive destruction.
However, at the same time, in contrast to the gentleness of the phenomenon, Haruyuki also knew that Kuroyukihime was without exaggeration mustering up all the imagination of her body and soul. The slender avatar trembled bit by bit, and her legs sometimes also wavered.
Then, a faint voice.
“Haruyuki-kun…your hand.”
Before pondering the meaning of her words or becoming perplexed, as if being drawn to her he stretched out his right hand. His fingers approached Kuroyukihime’s extended sword tip and softly made contact.
If Kuroyukihime’s Mind Power had been of the attack-cla.s.s, at this point in time an override would have occurred, and regardless of his metal color armor hardness Haruyuki’s fingers probably would have fallen off.
However, that did not happen. Instead, a phenomenon he had not predicted in the slightest was incarnated.
The black, sharp sword—was softly dispelled.
Its tip divided into four. Slightly below, another one was born. The total of five part.i.tioned thin, slender organs took in the light shining from the large hole in the wall and shone with a glitter.
These were—
Fingers. It was a hand.
Besides a faint Over-Ray, it was a slight change that produced neither a bit of sound nor radiance.
After he reflexively wondered why he had lowered her offensive power on purpose, Haruyuki finally noticed it. That this «applied Incarnate technique» was an extraordinary miracle that outcla.s.sed any large range attack technique.
No Burst Linker could acquire Mind Power contrary to his or her attributes.
In the past, the Red King Niko had said that that was a fundamental principle of the Incarnate system.
Judging from her figure, whose four limbs were all swords, Kuroyukihime’s attribute was clearly «cutting». She cut everything she touched. Denial. An aloof black lotus that not a single person could approach. Even her sole «child», Haruyuki, still had many things he did not know regarding her. No matter how much they stared at each other from a short distance or exchanged words with just the two of them, the depths of her heart were hidden by a deep darkness and could not be seen.
Nevertheless, he thought that was fine. Even that was a part of the beauty of the person Kuroyukihime.
In spite of that—right now, Kuroyukihime had showed that she had refused her attribute of her own accord. She had shown that the words of “I don’t even have hands in order to hold hands with somebody” that she had once spoken had been negated through her imagination.
There was certainly a declaration being put into this Mind Power. That as the chief of Nega Nebulas, she was facing its members in a form different from that of the past. That she was extending her hand out, opening up her heart, and forming true bonds not only in the Accelerated World but in the real world as well—.
“…Sen, pai…”
While whispering, Haruyuki was self-aware of an acute accompanying pain. That he really knew nothing about this person. That he had been using the superficial phrase «aloof beauty» without knowing anything.
His vision blurred and became distorted. While tears spread beneath his silver surface, Haruyuki tried to entwine her five slender fingers like needles with his right hand softly. The jet black and silver touched each other, and he felt a momentary warmth being transmitted to his consciousness, but immediately after.
With an ephemeral, hard sound like that of ringing an unlimited number of tiny bells, Kuroyukihime’s «right hand» scattered into minute crystals and broke into pieces.
“Ah..!”
Haruyuki leaked out a voice at the same time that Kuroyukihime’s body collapsed as if her power had been exhausted. Unconsciously, he extended his right hand and supported her slender waist.
Hugging her right arm, which had been lost up to near her elbow, to her chest, for a while as if withstanding the pain—no, in fact probably in that state, she took shallow breaths repeatedly. However, before long she lifted her face and whispered in a placid voice.
“Seventeen seconds… A new record by a wide margin. It was because you were here…right.”
Those words basically indicated that up until now Kuroyukihime had challenged this applied Incarnate technique and had had her right hand crushed countless times.
“…Senpai.”
Unable to restrain his infinitely overflowing deep emotions, Haruyuki returned that one word in a tremulous voice. Being driven by impulse, he tightly embraced the avatar in his bosom and stringed words together with all his might.
“Senpai…thank you. I have the feeling that I’ve understood. In order to acquire the second stage of Mind Power…one must face not one’s avatar, but one’s own real self. One must continue to think about what one fears, what one desires, and what one imagines: not only in the Accelerated World but in the real world as well; it’s that sort of thing, isn’t it.”
“Exactly so.”
The voice that had responded close to his ears was in a volume almost equivalent to being inaudible, but nevertheless it resounded commandingly in the duel stage of just the two.
“It’s a process unnecessary for users of pure «negative Mind Power». As for why, anger, hate, and then despair are things inseparable from their own living bodies from the start. However, «positive Mind Power»—to produce the power of hope, the process of «reversal of one’s trauma» becomes necessary by any means. Meeting in the real world head-on with one’s wound, which in the Accelerated World has been made into the sophisticated form of one’s duel avatar, accepting it, and subliming it into an image of hope… That is not an easy thing. It’s easy to fall into the «hole in one’s heart», but the path of climbing it is steep…for me, who’s spent a vast amount of time as a Burst Linker, even a thing at the level of changing my sword into fingers was beyond my reach. However…”
There, she temporarily stopped her words short; Kuroyukihime lifted her face, and from a distance so close their masks touched each other, she caught Haruyuki’s eye.
“However, you can do it. You, who noticed singlehandedly your «image of something».”
Normally, this would maybe be a scene where he would say things like “That’s impossible” or “Not me, such a thing.” However, only right now did Haruyuki shake off his timidity and nod deeply. Their masks b.u.mped into each other with a clunk, but with them still touching each other he murmured.
“Understood. I…, I’ll do my best. Though I won’t make it in time for tonight’s «Imperial Palace escape strategy»…despite that, I will do my best, and I will find it. My «image of hope».”
“Ahh. —I will do my best too. So that next time I can maintain it for at least thirty seconds and be able to hold hands with you properly.”
This time for sure, the whispered words concealed a power enough to set Haruyuki into transition as usual.
“Uh, um, well.”
After blinking at high speed below his silver surface, he somehow answered back.
“Th, tha, that’s true. Besides that, if you had hands, it’d be easy to operate the «Install» menu.”
At that very moment, her violet-blue eyes, which were right before his own, glittered glaringly and dangerously, and her voice, whose frigidity had increased—.
“…That’s true. I thought about making this duel a draw, but since it’d be troublesome to operate it without hands, I guess I’ll just win normally after all.”
Fortunately, with the point of her sword Kuroyukihime accepted Haruyuki’s proposed draw offer.
Haruyuki, who had ended the direct connection duel, looked at the ceiling vacantly for a few seconds and then finally became of the situation again. He was lying on a bed in the nurse’s office, and immediately next to him Kuroyukihime lay p.r.o.ne, her body stuck close to him, a situation surprising even for last-century romantic comedy manga—
“Haruyuki-kun.”
A breath softly touched his left ear; after shrinking in fear, he timidly looked that way.
That moment, Haruyuki, who forgot both his nervousness and his fright, opened his eyes wide.
While facing sideways on top of the sheets, Kuroyukihime was staring hard at her snow-white right hand. Her pet.i.te nails, sleek like a pearl, shone glitteringly while reflecting the illumination of the light panels. Her black pupils blinked once and refocused on Haruyuki’s eyes.
“Haruyuki-kun, do you remember. The day I gave you your first lecture on Brain Burst…in the «Initial Acceleration s.p.a.ce», I reached my hand out to you, and said: «Are these mere virtual two meters that far to you?».”
There was no way he would forget it.
At that time, Haruyuki had diverted his eyes from her extended hand and had answered in his heart. That it was far.
After he nodded deeply, Kuroyukihime wore a smile that was in some way filled with plaintiveness and continued.
“In truth…those two meters were far to me too. It was because it had been a long…a truly long time since I last extended my hand out to someone of my own accord. I had always continued to fear grasping a person’s hand. The legion members with whom my heart was supposedly joined…even Fuuko, Utai, Current, and Graph’s hands, I might have been refusing them in the true sense of the word. However…from the day I encountered you in the virtual squash corner…no before that, from the day I noticed the figure of a small pink pig looking down as if to avoid others’ eyes and running with all his might in a cranny of the local net…”
There, Kuroyukihime closed her mouth. However, Haruyuki had the feeling that through the still-joined direct connection cable he had undoubtedly understood her unsaid words.
Another smile, and a faint whisper.
“Well, Haruyuki-kun. Have the two meters of that day shortened..?”
Haruyuki was unable to say anything. As to why, the emotion welling up was too great and was blocking up his chest a lot.
In exchange, he screwed up all the courage he had; he lifted both his hands up and softly wrapped them around her still-raised right hand.
It was warm. The same warmth as that of Black Lotus’ «right hand», which he had touched for a mere instant in the «Steel stage», permeated his palms, circulated through his nervous system, and sparkled in a golden color in the center of his consciousness.
Kuroyukihime lifted up her left hand too and covered the outside of Haruyuki’s right hand. In his world filled with warm light, only their four mutually touching hands and her beautiful face smiling placidly existed.
Her long eyelashes were cast down. The angle of her face changed.
As if being drawn in, Haruyuki shifted his upper body a little forward. With her eyes closed, Kuroyukihime also drew her body nearer in the same way. By now, her white face—or her pink lips were only a mere fifteen centimeters away. They approached each other a little bit more. The distance between them dropped below ten centimeters—.
Rattle; the sound of the door sliding brought their situation to a stop.
Only two seconds later, with a speed like teleportation Kuroyukihime had separated her body from his, pulled out the direct connection cable, alighted from the bed, and returned to the adjacent chair. The seam between the white curtains was lifted up, and the school nurse Hotta showed her face.
“Arita-kun, how are you feeling?”
“…”
After Haruyuki opened his eyes and mouth gaping wide and froze, the nurse furrowed her eyebrows.
“Your face is red, maybe your fever’s returned?”
“…No, I’m fine-gh.”
There was nothing Haruyuki could do other than answer with that. As for Kuroyukihime, who was sitting gracefully in the chair, with a completely composed facial expression she didn’t have a drop of sweat on her face. It was actually a fearsome mind control ability. Not only that, but before he was aware of it her two hands were grasping the cooling bottle as they were before.
With no alternative, Haruyuki sucked on the straw of that bottle, which was outstretched straightforwardly with a gesture completely natural of a «health-care committee member subst.i.tute».