5

The instant Silver Crow’s feet touched the ground of the stage, Haruyuki spun himself around to check the situation.

It was night. He couldn’t see a single star in the inky sky, but several pale blue dots rose up through it like searchlights, illuminating thick clouds. The source of the light was a group of buildings that sported a blue-black metallic luster and ornamentation that looked like massive blades encircling their walls. The ground was covered with tightly packed tiles in complicated shapes, and there wasn’t a single plant to be found.

“…De…” He opened his mouth, but the intense roar of an engine cut him off—and then was itself drowned out by an even louder shout.

“Hey, hey, heeeeeey!! Demon City stage, seriously noice choice! Giga-greatastic compared with a Desert or an Ocean, anywayyyyyy!!”

“I totally feel you, but what’s ‘greatastic,’ bro?”

“You gotta be kidding! Even I know that one! Just means ‘great,’ right, bro-man?”

“Ah, gotcha. Just like it sounds then, sweet!”

“……”

Haruyuki’s brain shut down completely for few seconds, until he shook his head to reboot and recommence his espionage. The stage attribute was a Demon stage, just as the “bro” on the motorcycle had noted. In normal duels and the Territories, it was always night, and the buildings were so hard they were basically indestructible, but there were no annoying gimmicks like poison or insects or pitfalls.

They were currently smack in the middle of an intersection where two large streets crossed, and skyscrapers rose up in front of him as if to pierce the night sky; behind him, a steel circuit ran parallel to the ground in midair, likely an overhead expressway in the real world, be it for cars or trains.

The only human figures in the area were the group of three putting on their little show a ways off. There should have been a total of eighteen people on the Nega Nebulus territory attacking team, but there was no one else as far as he could see.

Was it possible that the Oscillatory Universe defense team was a mere four people, and so the attack team had been whittled down to that number to match? The thought crossed his mind, but he quickly rejected it. If that were the case, the rule was that the members with the highest levels were selected in order, so there was no way level eighters Fuko and Pard would be skipped in favor of himself, a level six. The health gauges displayed in the upper part of his view, too—only Haruyuki and the three others were displayed in the top left, while the top right was completely blank.

Haruyuki walked over to the little group, thinking to discuss the incomprehensible situation. “Um, Ash…”

Ash Roller snapped his index fingers out at him, straddling his extremely over-the-top American motorcycle, and shouted, “Hey! Finally, the radical epoch, ya damned bird!!”

“R-radical epoch?” Haruyuki frowned. “What’s that?”

“Whoa, whoa, catch my drift already! You’ve known me too long to be confused now! ‘Radical’ is ‘big’ and ‘epoch’ is ‘day.’ Put it together and you got the big day, obviosoroso!”

Haruyuki suppressed the sigh that rose up within him. “Totally obviosoroso…but, like, this isn’t the time for that! For some reason, there’s only the four of us here. I can’t see the gauges of any of our comrades or the enemy. What’s going on here?”

In the normal way of things, this would be the time when Ash finally noticed the abnormality and started freaking out with his “Realiousy?!” But this time was different. He whirled his index fingers around, and a grin crept onto his skull face.

“So then, Crow, this’s your first time in a large-scale territory fight, huh?”

“Th-that’s obvious, isn’t it? Nega Nebulus’s been a single-digit Legion this whole time.”

“Okaykaykay. U, Oli. Explain the sitch to our newbie bird here.”

“Roger that, boss man!” Bush Utan responded enthusiastically and slammed his gorilla-like arm up against his gorilla-like chest before stepping out in front of Haruyuki. “Um, so Crow—the rules are just a little different for large-scale territory fights with a total of twelve or more people involved, you feel me? For the initial placement, okay, you’re distributed in teams of four, and only the health gauges of allies and enemies that are right near you are displayed.”

When Utan closed his mouth, Olive Grab stepped up, the light of the buildings reflecting off his rich green armor almost wetly, and added, “But there’s no need to panic. Both teams are split up and placed either east-west or north-south, so everyone else should appear somewhere near here. You and Oli and them’ll meet up with them as we move toward the center.”

“I—I get it…Giga-thanks for the explanation…” After he dipped his head in appreciation, Haruyuki asked the question that wouldn’t stop nagging him. “So like, Olive, the last time I saw you, you referred to yourself as ‘I,’ right? When did this ‘Oli’ start?”

“Olio, oh, you noticed, huh?” A grin spread across his simple elliptical face mask. “It’s just like, compared with Bro and U, Oli’s character’s kinda weak, yeah? Oli thinks maybe that’s the reason the ISS kit ate way deeper into Oli, so from now on, Oli’s gonna really set up a real character to connect with! Third person it is!”

“……”

“I—I get it…I can understand that…” Nodding once more, Haruyuki looked around. Now that they mentioned it, he remembered being told at the pre-mission briefing to head for the center while occupying any visible bases if team members appeared in separate locations. He’d just assumed that wouldn’t happen, but it did seem now that they would have to move at first as a small group.

“So then, let’s hurry up and get moving, Ash,” Haruyuki stated as he started to walk.

Ash crossed his arms in front of his chest and shook his index finger back and forth in a tut-tut-tut motion. “Don’t be in such a rush, Crow. First, you gotta take a deeeep breath.”

“Huh? O-okay…” Thus ordered in unusually correct English, he couldn’t exactly say no. He stopped, stood up straight, and spread his arms out together with Utan and Olive as he breathed iiiiin and oooooout.

Ash continued calmly, “Me and U and Oli, we ran into a giga-terrible time being parasitized by the ISS kits. But we’re not part of the mission just ’cos we want to get our revenge on those Acceleration Research Society jerks.”

Haruyuki continued to breathe deeply, in and out.

The skull rider stared at him as he continued his monologue. “I just really like duels. O’course, I got all kinds of plans…But more than anything else, I’m happy if I can get that red heat while I’m fighting. How! Ev! Er! We just go letting the Society do whatever they want, we won’t be able to have any real good duels soon. If Negabu are gonna fight to protect what I love, then I can’t exactly sit back and watch, y’know? That’s why I’m here. But, like…”

At some point, Haruyuki had forgotten to breathe deeply, and the words Ash spoke next penetrated deep into his heart.

“I ain’t inclined to bend now. Whatever happens, I’m not bringing any grudges or hatred into the duel, get it? I’m just gonna burn red and fight…Are you understanding?”

“……Yep, I completely understand.” Haruyuki bobbed his head. “The important thing is to burn with everything you’ve got on the battlefield, and not be bound by the Society. We can’t forget that.”

“Nail hit with that answer, Crow.” Instead of Ash’s finger guns, he got a solid thumbs-up, and Utan and Olive also clenched their hands into tight fists.

This might have been a critical mission, but it was also the Brain Burst Territories. So he would have fun with the fight like Ash. And even if he couldn’t get to that point, he could just plant his feet firmly on the ground, look around carefully, and fight the way he always did.

Now that he was thinking about it, he didn’t actually know where in Minato Area No. 3 they’d appeared. “First, let’s check on our current location!” Haruyuki ran over to the nearest skyscraper. The building itself was too hard to smash easily, but maybe the lance-like railing that encircled the site could be broken.

“Hng…aaaah!”

He mowed down over ten meters of the black iron railing with three roundhouse kicks in succession to build up his special-attack gauge to around 30 percent. A moment later, he deployed the wings on his back and jumped with everything he had. The metal fins shook and ascended to an altitude of around thirty meters in an instant.

Hovering, he spun around to look at his surroundings and saw a large waterway on the other side of the overhead line and a dark body of water beyond that that was probably the ocean. Even farther in the distance was the reclaimed land, complete with a demon king’s castle and a large Ferris wheel, plus a bridge that was now a network of large lances. That would be Odaiba and its Rainbow Bridge. Which meant they were currently on the southeastern edge of Minato Area No. 3.

Here his special-attack gauge started to run out, so he began to glide down. Right before he hit the ground, Haruyuki spent the last of his thrust to come down softly. “I figured it out! We’re a little to the north of Tennozu Isle!”

As he opened the map he’d memorized in the back of his mind, he pointed to the west. “Shinagawa Station’s this way, and on the other side of that is the center of the area!”

“Awriiiight! Team Rough Valley Rollers Plus One, mission start!”

Ash made his engine roar with panache.

““Roger!”” Utan and Olive cried out together.

Huh? That’s the team name you picked? Haruyuki thought in dismay, but in the end, all he could say was “Roger.”

Rui Odagiri/Magenta Scissor had never fought in the Territories. Given that she had just become a part of a Legion for the first time that very day, this was only natural. But she’d gone over the rules and basic knowledge of the whole thing very carefully so that she wouldn’t drag the rest of the team down just because she was new to this.

The Territories were essentially a tug-of-war for footholds. These footholds, metallic rings floating in the air, would charge the special-attack gauge of any duel avatar who stood inside one. But to turn on the charging function, you first needed to “occupy” the foothold, and for that you had to be on standby beneath the metal ring for thirty seconds.

These thirty seconds seemed short and yet were incredibly long, Sky Raker had told Rui and the Chocolat Puppeter team in their Territories lecture. Indeed, in a place where there were no surrounding obstacles, it was painful just to imagine standing there for a full thirty seconds while enduring fierce enemy attacks. Given Magenta Scissor’s thin armor, she probably wouldn’t be assigned the role of occupying.

In which case Rui’s role had to be that of thoroughly protecting the avatar who did. To that end she would need to go ahead and use the ability she normally did her utmost to avoid using, and she would have to do it without any reservation right from the initial stages of the battle.

Do me right today, she murmured in her heart as she stroked the pair of large knives equipped on her hips.

“I knew it. Looks like there’s no one in the immediate vicinity, huh?” A large close-range avatar—Cyan Pile—trotted over to her.

The small, defensive avatar whirling her head around next to Rui—Lime Bell—tilted her triangular witch hat. “I think we got distributed over a pretty wide range. So should we move toward the center like in the strategy?”

“Yeah, that’d make sense.” Pile nodded.

“Roger,” Rui replied.

They had appeared right beside Shibaura-futo Station on the Yurikamome line, in the northeastern part of Minato Area No. 3. If they proceeded west on the road in front of them, they would run into the JR line in a kilometer or so, and the central area was on the other side of that. The enemy was probably also starting to move, so they had to reach the center first before the critical stronghold was taken from them.

They started to run along the deserted main thoroughfare in a triangle formation, with Cyan Pile in the lead. The Demon City was dark, quiet, and immaculate, so it was one of Rui’s favorite stages, but she was forced to admit that its one major failing was that the sound of their footsteps carried far on the hard-tiled earth.

Listening to the kashk-kashk of Pile’s heavy feet and Bell’s rhythmic tuk-tok-tuk-tok, a question—or rather a curiosity she’d felt any number of times—abruptly popped up in her mind, and Rui opened her mouth. “You mind if I ask you one thing, maybe?”

“Ask away!” the Watch Witch replied cheerfully.

Rui looked at her out of the corner of her eye and casually asked, “Are you and Pile dating in the real?”

“Gaaaah!” Cyan Pile slipped ahead of them. He threw his arms out wildly and just barely managed to regain his balance.

Bell, however, kept both feet moving calmly—or so it seemed—as she groaned. “And herrrre it is!” She glanced at Pile’s back with her catlike eye lenses, and then replied with another question: “Why do you think that, Magenta?”

“Um…” Why do I think that, actually? She traced her own thoughts backward. “Seeing you in the real together, I just thought that…I guess. That and the form of your duel avatars.”

“Our avatars?” Lime Bell seemed to frown. “But they have absolutely nothing in common.”

“Oh my, they do, though.” Rui giggled a little and pointed at the handbell equipped on Bell’s left hand. “You and Pile both have a large Enhanced Armament equipped on one hand, and your silhouettes are asymmetrical, y’know? You look pretty compatible.”

“Sh-she said it…” Groaning once again, Bell raised her left arm and lightly rang the clapper inside the bell that had apparently been fixed in place until then. Rinnng…She turned her ear to the faint trail of the sound and murmured, “Hrm…Are Taku and I dating…? To be honest, I wonder about that myself…I haven’t really been able to see him much.”

Pile’s large back shook just a little. But he kept silent.

“You two and Crow’ve known one another since you were little?” Rui asked.

“Yup. We have.” Bell nodded right away. “Since right after we were born, actually.”

“So then, longer than me and Avo, huh…? I wonder if there’s anything you can’t see when you’re this close for that long.”

“It’s not about how long you’ve known someone or the physical distance or anything…or, like, that’s what I’ve been thinking lately anyway.” Bell looked up at Rui, and a smile that had a somehow plaintive air to it rose up on her face.

“In fact, if you’re always right next to each other, then that gradually becomes ‘just the way things are’…Like maybe you stop understanding how fleeting and precious what you have really is. So I’m really grateful to Brain Burst, because it connected me and Taku and Haru again when we were on the verge of breaking apart. Of course, the Accelerated World might not continue forever either…If Kuroyukihime clears the game, it might disappear, and maybe the day will come when we’re all adults and we stop accelerating. But that’s exactly why I want to protect everything here now—Nega Nebulus, all our friends, and the Accelerated World itself. That’s what I think, anyway.”

This was the most Lime Bell, the girl named Chiyuri Kurashima, had ever said in a conversation with her, and Rui felt the emotion of what she was saying deep in her own heart.

Rui had actually tried to destroy the existing order of the Accelerated World using the ISS kits. But that was also because her initial desire had been to protect. She’d wanted to save weaker Burst Linkers like Avocado Avoider who were simply exploited for their points before they disappeared. She wanted to make a world where even those players who were born without a cool look or powerful abilities and who lacked Enhanced Armaments could stand up tall and live proudly. And because she wanted this, Rui had sought strength.

But her mistake there was twofold.

The ISS kit was not just an object to redress the ability gap among duel avatars. It was an evil parasite that tried to corrupt the minds of users, including Rui, and breed endless self-hatred. And her other, even bigger mistake was that for a long time, she hadn’t even questioned whether the disparity and unfairness she was blindly attempting to correct really existed in the Accelerated World. She realized this in the fight with Black Lotus and Silver Crow in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and again in the duel she watched between Chocolat Puppeter and Avocado Avoider.

Avocado’s fighting style went far beyond Rui’s expectations; he was brave, persistent, wonderful. The duel itself had ended in a TKO loss for Avocado, a decision from Rui based on everything she’d seen up to that point, but if she’d let them keep going, he might have even been able to turn things around in a one-in-a-million chance for the win.

It was Rui herself who had arbitrarily decided that Avocado Avoider was a weak person only there to be exploited. Avocado could boast of his own particular strength, and he had potential. She wasn’t so naïve that she believed in the whole “same level, same potential” spiel at this stage in the game, but if Avocado Avoider wanted to get stronger…and if he had comrades besides Rui who would train him, guide him, laugh with him, and fight with him, then maybe he would someday beat Chocolat or Silver Crow or even Rui. No one, especially not Rui, could deny this possibility, and as long as that possibility existed, she had to protect this world she had once tried to destroy.

“…Right…I have a dream. No, I found my dream,” she murmured, and Lime Bell turned her large eye lenses on her quizzically. “I want to go and apologize to each and every one of the Burst Linkers in the Setagaya area who suffered so much because of me—Melon Splitter, Terracotta Bowl, Mud Halibut, Hay Saikidai, Honey Bee, Butter Bar, Almond Urchin, Taupe Mole, Pimento Ant, Pewter Guppy, Corn Corn, Meadow Sheep, and Avocado Avoider—and if I can be forgiven, I want to fight together to find fun things this time.”

“Sounds great!” Lime Bell responded immediately, with a huge, bright smile. “So you can just invite them all to join the Legion, right? And boom! We announce our ownership of Setagaya Areas Two to Four. GW might come and attack, but we’ll all help out for a solid defense!”

“I appreciate that.” Rui nodded with a dry smile at this future that Bell had put forth so casually. Her original question had disappeared into the ether at some point, but it would be uncouth to pry any further, so she decided to just let it go for now.

Amusingly, an air of relief wafted up around Cyan Pile as he ran ahead of them, and so Rui found herself grinning again. Before she knew it, the steel railways cutting north-south across the stage appeared up ahead.

“So, like, Cassis? I thought the groups were random with the distributed start in a large-scale Territories fight?”

At this question from the Triplex’s Thistle Porcupine, Cassis Moose shook his massive horns from side to side. “No. I remember it being not completely random. The groups are split up based on duel and tag team histories, with the addition of your location in the real…I believe. It should be.”

“Aah, I get it. So then it totally makes sense we’d get lumped together.” Thistle nodded, the fur on her back fluttering in the breeze, and Mihaya looked away from her and up at the dark sky of the Demon City stage.

For Mihaya as well, it had been a long time since a large-scale Territories battle with a grand total of more than twenty people. Now that she was thinking about it, it might have been since back in the days when Prominence was still led by the first Red King. She’d expected them to be split up, but she hadn’t thought that they would be so far apart that she couldn’t see any of their comrades even with Blood Leopard’s enhanced vision.

“So what’re we doing, Pard?” Thistle asked. “Find our comrades or head for the center?”

After a second’s thought, she made her decision. “The center. I want to pin down the stronghold before the enemy.”

“Awright! Doing it!”

“Roger that.”

Thistle and Cassis replied at the same time, and the triad started running to the west, slipping under the overhead expressway.

It was said that there were few objects in the Demon City stage that could be destroyed, but that wasn’t necessarily the case for high rankers. They systematically smashed the stone pillars and iron fencing along either side of the wide road, Mihaya with the sharp claws of her hands, Cassis with his horns like a bulldozer blade, and Thistle with high-speed tumbling body slams.

Once their special-attack gauges were charged to a certain degree, she shouted, “Shape Change!!”

The three avatars were enveloped in light, and Mihaya became a sleek leopard, Cassis a burly moose, and Thistle a nimble porcupine. Then the three beasts charged down the midnight road, 30 percent faster than before.

In this Territories fight, Mihaya and her comrades were positioned as helpers, but they were definitely not sidelined observers. She had her own tie to the White Legion—the Acceleration Research Society—that rivaled that of the Black King.

In the attack on Midtown Tower twenty days earlier, she had been deeply humiliated when Niko, as the Red King, had been kidnapped by Black Vise before her very eyes, given that she had sworn to protect the girl for all time. Although she chased after them and made it into the Society’s headquarters, Mihaya had been unable to break through Vise’s long-distance Incarnate technique Octahedral Isolation and had been forced to watch as four parts of the Red King’s Enhanced Armament were stolen from her.

Silver Crow had done everything he could, too, and they’d gotten three of the parts back, but the rear thrusters remained in the thief’s possession. On top of that, the massive amount of negative Incarnate accumulated through the ISS kits was poured into those thrusters to transform them into the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, and the White King had described this as none other than a “precious hope.”

Today, for sure, she would get them back. And then she would smash to pieces this scheme of the Acceleration Research Society and the White King.

“Grar!” Unconsciously, the roar of a wild beast slipped from her throat, and Mihaya kicked at the road beneath her even harder.

“Pwaaah, it’s daaaark. It’s haaard. I’m scaaaared,” Yume—Plum Flipper—whined as she punched half-heartedly at the dark iron fence.

“Now loooook!” Satomi—Mint Mitten—called out to her in exasperation from behind. “There’s plenty of other dark stages. Like, there’s no way we’re gonna be able to break these pillars. They look haaaard.”

“But, liiiiike, I feel all anxious when my special-attack gauge isn’t charged.”

“That’s why I’m always telling you, Yume—I mean Plum—that you should practice fighting with us. It’s all well and good to be able to knock a plum pit flying, but for a duel, you actually need to know the basics of punching and kicking—”

“It’s not a plum pit! It’s a plum seeeeed!”

“Same thing!”

“Look, both of you,” Shihoko interjected with a sigh, since she didn’t know how long they’d keep this up if she stayed silent, “it’s about time we got moving.”

“Huh?” Satomi wondered. “Aren’t we going to wait for Crow and the others, Choco?”

“We’re not.” She nodded hard enough to push away the uncertainty and fear in her chest. “The location we appeared in is most likely the closest to the center of the stage. In which case, this is our chance to lock down the stronghold before the enemy!”

“Th-that might be true, but we might encounter the enemy—just us,” Yume pointed out uneasily.

“We’ll think about that when it happens!” Shihoko barked. “If we get freaked out before we fight, we won’t be able to win a winnable fight!”

“Guuurl. You’re just getting carried away because you won in that solo duel yesterday,” Satomi grumbled, but then brought her hands, ensconced in their large mittens, together. “But, yeah, if you’re talking about chances, this is a chance. Yume, the dead center of Minato Three’s right up ahead, yeah?”

“Prob’ly. I think it’s on the other side of the station building there.” Yume pointed with her slender hand at the skyscraper rising up nefariously on the southern side.

They were standing on the platform of the Yamanote Line’s Takanawa Station, which had opened for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Naturally, in line with the design of the Demon City stage, it had been given a sort of sci-fi noir look, but the silver tracks below the platform shone with a pale light.

Nodding at each other, they jumped down from the platform and came out onto the Dai-ichi Keihin highway, straddling the tracks, which were sharp like knives, and started to run alongside each other. Large buildings stood on the other side of the wide six-lane highway, but beyond them, she could see the hazy shimmer of a blue light. It was probably…

“The stronghold…maybe. It’s close,” Satomi murmured, and Shihoko and Yume nodded wordlessly.

At the moment, there was no sign of any other Burst Linkers in the area. No enemy health gauges were displayed in the upper right of her field of view, either.

“All right, we’ll occupy the fort first and protect it until Crow and the others catch up!” Shihoko instructed in a hushed cheer before running again.

Chocolat Puppeter was level five, while Mint and Plum were both four, meaning they were likely the bottom-ranked team on the battlefield in terms of strength. But they could put up a solid fight as long as they could just occupy the stronghold. She could create Chocopets, chocolate AI fighting puppets, without limit if the stronghold kept charging her special-attack gauge. That together with Satomi’s close-range skills and Yume’s long-range attacks should be enough for a defense the enemy wouldn’t be able to break through so easily as all that.

But conversely, if the fort was occupied before they got there, approaching it alone would be a suicide mission. If that happened, they would have no choice but to quietly retreat and await the arrival of their allies. In other words, they needed to approach the stronghold as quickly and quietly as possible.

Minimizing the echo of their feet on the hard ground as they crossed the highway, the three Burst Linkers moved through the gaps in the buildings farther west.

Soon a dense forest came into view ahead of them. The trees were tinged with a metallic luster, the branches and leaves pointed like weapons. In the center of this forest, an ostentatious building rose up like a pagan temple. The walls and roof were made up of enormous swords layered over each other, and blue watch fires shimmered ominously along the sides of the building. Countless sharply pointed iron pillars formed lines to threaten potential intruders. This would undoubtedly be the lair of the boss monster in any other stage.

“What would that building be in the real world?” Satomi asked.

“Probably Sengakuji Temple,” Yume replied, plucking from her vast stores of knowledge. “The place with the graves of the forty-seven ronin.”

“Whoa.” Satomi looked impressed. “What’ll we do if we see the ghost of Kira Yoshinaka?!”

“Look, that’s the guy who got hit by the forty-seven ronin.”

If she let them start, they’d never stop, so Shihoko cleared her throat to interrupt them. “Right now, the enemy’s scarier than any ghosts. Do you sense them in the area?”

“Not at the mo.”

“Seems okay.”

She nodded firmly. “Then we’re going in.” Stepping from the road into the forest, she cast a glance at the timer in the upper part of her field of view and found that nearly three minutes had already passed.

Minato Area No. 3 was about three kilometers wide east to west, which meant it was about a kilometer and a half from the edge to Sengakuji. Even hurrying, it would take at least four or five minutes to get there while occupying the footholds along the way. As long as no other team had been placed near the center like Shihoko and her friends in some kind of coincidence, they would have the time to occupy the fort.

They trotted forward beneath metal trees until the grove finally ended and her field of view opened up.

In front of the ostentatious temple was a square plaza about thirty meters on each side with a square altar in the middle. A metallic ring with a complicated design carved into it floated above the center of the altar, a mere fifty centimeters off the ground. Humming quietly and emitting blue light as it rotated slowly, the ring was a lone stronghold, the center of the Territories stage. And it was still empty.

“Yassss! We’re first!” Satomi cried out in a small voice, and she leapt forward.

Shihoko reflexively moved to pull her back, but then thought it over and stepped out of the forest herself. She couldn’t imagine an enemy ambush in this situation. If anyone had arrived earlier, they would have been trying to occupy the fort themselves.

She chased after Satomi, cutting across the plaza to reach the altar. The three players quickly exchanged nods and then jumped onto the altar at the same time to set foot in the magic circle pattern drawn directly beneath the ring.

Instantly the ring grew brighter, and it started to rotate faster. Three digital displays of 30 popped up around them and started to drop with a beep each second. Once the counter reached zero, their occupation of the base would be complete.

“Hurry! Hurry!” Satomi stared impatiently at the numbers.

Shihoko grabbed her head without hesitation and yanked it forward. “It feels slow because you’re counting down! You should be keeping an eye out for danger!”

“Fiiiiine.” Satomi turned her gaze to the western side of the plaza. Yume was already checking the east, so Shihoko set her attention on the south. There was an indestructible temple immediately to the north, so there was no fear of being attacked from that direction.

Even as she kept watch over the field, she couldn’t stop counting down silently with the beep-beep. Twenty-three…twenty-two…twenty-one…

Just as Sky Raker had told them in the lecture beforehand, a mere thirty seconds was unbelievably long. She was seized with dread that an enemy group would appear at any moment at the southern entrance or from the forest to the east and west, and her breathing became shallower. Fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…

Maybe we should have charged our special-attack gauges at the station like Yume said. But if we had, we would have been two minutes later getting here…As her thoughts turned this way, the time remaining was finally dropping into the single digits.

And then Shihoko noticed her feet were being swallowed up by a white mist. Satomi and Yume also looked down at the ground at the same time.

“What the heck?!”

“Fog…?”

But the Demon City stage wasn’t supposed to have any terrain effects. The mist was coming in from behind them and rolling off to the south. After exchanging a look with each other, the three girls turned slowly to the north.

Originally the main hall of Sengakuji, the jet-black temple had been enveloped in snow-white frost at some point while they weren’t looking. It flowed down from the entire building and crawled along the ground—meaning it was no simple frost but a cold front. The steel temple was completely frozen.

The countdown hit zero, and the ring above her head flashed brilliantly. At basically the same time, the ground of the stage shook violently and delicate stitch-like cracks raced across the surface of the steel temple.

And then the building she’d thought was indestructible shattered into a million pieces. A thunderous roar shook the ground of the stage again, causing the dumbfounded girls to stagger and grab each other’s hands to narrowly avoid falling over.

Shihoko squeezed her friends’ hands hard when she saw it.

Someone—no, something—was standing on the other side of the ruined temple. She couldn’t imagine it was a duel avatar. It was just too big.

Its height—altitude?—was nearly three meters, and its overall span was twice that. Bent as far forward as it could go, the creature was closer to a beast than a person, and the two thick, rounded arms touched the ground. The shape of its head was completely that of a carnivore, and a total of four long horns—from shoulders and forehead—pierced the sky. A long tail stretched out from its backside. The heavy armor encasing its body was pale like ice, and cold air from the fanged mouth spilled out in the form of a frosty mist. Most likely, this beast had completely frozen the temple and then smashed it with a body blow.

“I-is that…an Enemy…?” Yume croaked.

“Can’t be.” Satomi shook her head slightly. “I mean, this is the Territories battles.”

“But there’s no way any duel avatar’s that huge…”

Satomi didn’t rebut Yume again. And Shihoko also thought it was impossible, but she couldn’t get her mouth to open.

As far as she knew, the largest avatar was Avocado Avoider, whom she’d fought the previous day—but he was only two and a half meters tall. In contrast, this white beast would be five meters tall if it stood up on its hind legs. That was closing in on the Wild class—or even Beast class—of Enemy. And if it really was Beast class, then it would rout the three girls of levels four and five with a single blow.

But then the eyes of the white beast shone a pale blue, and a new health gauge was displayed in the top right of Shihoko’s view. Not only was this fully charged, of course, but the special-attack gauge was also full. Below that, a simple font shone in pearlescent white: GLACIER BEHEMOTH. Beside this: LV 8.

“That’s an enemy Burst Linker!” Shihoko shouted. “Plum! Mint! Get ready to fight!!”

Satomi and Yume quickly dropped into position. But their legs were shaking. And no wonder—level eight was for all practical purposes the highest rank in the Accelerated World. For the three junior players, this opponent was not all that different from a large Enemy. Actually, given the fact that they couldn’t leave the stronghold to flee, its threat level might have been even higher.

But if they were going to helplessly vacate the base they’d only just occupied, then she didn’t know why they’d volunteered for the Territories team—or why they’d even joined Nega Nebulus in the first place. If they couldn’t win, they had to at least buy time until one of their allies caught up.

She glanced up to check their own gauges. Although their special-attack gauges were steadily charging thanks to the base ring, they were still far from full. Meanwhile, the enemy’s gauge was practically bursting thanks to the fact that it had smashed an entire temple. They had to attack now rather than wait for their gauges to charge and risk getting slammed with a special attack. Shihoko took a deep breath to call up her Chocopets.

But before she could shout the technique name, the enormous white beast jumped. With a movement so nimble it belied its girth, it bounded over the mountain of rubble and landed immediately to the north of the stronghold Shihoko and her friends were occupying. And then its dragon mouth moved.

“My, my…I haven’t seen you girls before.”

““I-it spoke!!”” Satomi and Yume shouted at the same time.

The knife-like fangs of the beast avatar’s mouth arranged themselves in something akin to a wry smile. “Oh yes, well, I do talk, you know. I apologize for not introducing myself sooner. I’m a member of Oscillatory Universe, Glacier Behemoth of the Seven Dwarves. My nicknames are Sneezy or Habakkuk. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

““Sev—,”” Satomi and Yume started to shout, but Shihoko silenced them by jabbing a finger up to the second knuckle into each of their backs as she returned the greeting.

“Th-thank you for the kind introduction. My name is Chocolat Puppeter. This is Mint Mitten, and this is Plum Flipper. We’re pleased to meet you.” She somehow managed to sound normal, if slightly awkward, but in her mind, Shihoko wanted so badly to shriek like her friends that she could hardly stand it.

Glacier Behemoth. The name had definitely been on the list of Oscillatory Universe members that Kuroyukihime handed out. And this was no ordinary Legion member, either, but one of the Seven Dwarves, the executive group. Given that he was one of the White Legion’s top players, she would be wise to assume that even among the very few level eighters, he belonged to a more powerful class.

The three girls stayed where they were in the base ring with their frantic thoughts while the Burst Linker Glacier Behemoth looked down on them, eye lenses shining with pale light.

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I have heard those names before. If I’m not mistaken, you belong to a small Legion in Setagaya? The Legion name…It was something like Pettit Pocket…”

“It’s Petit Paquet!” Shihoko corrected unconsciously.

“Yes, yes. That’s what it was.” The beast nodded several times. “So, members of Pattit Piquant, what do you find yourselves here for?”

“It’s obvious!” Satomi yelled, and Shihoko jabbed her in the side to shut her up.

He might know the name Petit Paquet, but he doesn’t know we transferred to Nega Nebulus!

In which case, their best move here would be to drag out the misunderstanding. She inhaled deeply and called out boldly, “Yes, it’s quite obvious! We cannot stay a rootless Legion forever, so we came to test our strength against the most powerful Legion to make the challenge of the Territories a little more exciting!”

Behemoth narrowed his eyes doubtfully, but nodded once more nonetheless. “Oh, oh, that is quite the laudable spirit, but to be quite honest, it comes at not entirely the best of times. We’re actually in the middle of an important mission…Well, I suppose that’s all right. In that case…” Muttering and mumbling, he looked up at the night sky. “Congeal Ray.”

Following the sudden calling of the technique name, the left of the two horns growing from Behemoth’s forehead glittered bright blue, so Shihoko and her friends stiffened defensively. But the pale ray of light shot straight up into the clouds in the distant sky above and did nothing more than make them shine blue for a few seconds before disappearing.

“What was that?” Satomi murmured.

“Probably a signal to his allies,” Yume replied. “Calling them here or…”

If it was a signal to come together, Shihoko and her friends were in a precarious situation. But when Behemoth turned back to them, he shook his head in a kindly exasperated way. “Now then, I shall be your opponent for a brief period,” he said, his tone completely out of sync with his menacing appearance. “The Seven Dwarves do not usually participate in the defense, so if I do say so myself, you are blessed with a precious experience here. Please do take it as a seed for your future growth.”

“We deeply appreciate your kindness!!” Shihoko thrust both hands behind her. During the conversation, her special-attack gauge had finished charging. “Cocoa Fountain!!”

It wasn’t visible to Shihoko, but behind the stronghold, a large chocolate pond should have appeared. With the darkness of the stage, it should have blended in with the ground and not really have been visible from Behemoth’s position, either. That said, however, the chocolate pond was at best a prerequisite. Until her now-empty special-attack gauge was fully charged once again, she would need Satomi and Yume to fight and cover her as best they could.

Taking Shihoko’s call as her cue, Yume thrust a hand out, and two more small balls flew out from the ball-shaped armor of her wrist. Connected to her wrist with a Y-shaft, this was Plum Flipper’s main weapon, a slingshot. When she drew the rubber band connecting the small balls with her other hand, a reddish-purple light grew in the holder area.

“Cyanide Shot!!” Yume launched the light bullet. There was no way it could miss the massive Enemy-level form standing still a mere ten meters away, and just so, the ball made a direct hit with the armor of his left shoulder. She launched one bullet after another, shouting the technique name each time.

Next to her, Satomi clenched her gloved right hand into a tight fist, and a minty light started to shine. “Menthol Blow!!”

She threw her fist forward with all her weight behind it, and a transparent mint-colored, fist-shaped aura shot out to slam into Behemoth and envelop his enormous body in a light of the same color.

Glacier Behemoth merely welcomed their special attacks, neither defending against nor evading them, and yet his health gauge didn’t decrease at all. But that was to be expected—the girls hadn’t used physical attacks intended to do damage, but rather de-buff techniques to exploit weak points.

Pale-blue smoke started to waft out of the five scars Yume’s light bullets had carved in the icy armor. Cyanide Shot produced hydrocyanic gas from the bullets buried in the enemy’s armor—Yume’s so-called plum seeds—that caused continuous poison damage. And although it was just an illusion, Satomi’s Menthol Blow made recipients feel a chill so powerful, it prevented movement.

As Behemoth was enveloped in the poisonous gas, his health gauge started to decrease slowly. But the massive beast seemed utterly unperturbed. “Hoh-hoh, coming in with a de-buff instead of a simple damage technique shows fairly good judgment, hmm? And the poison gas attack doesn’t need to pierce the armor to be effective. Even better. But…”

He turned his head, long horns swinging through the air, and stared at Satomi.

“Your cold front—or is it a cool sensation attack? At any rate, it’s honestly unacceptable. It’s clear from both my name and appearance that I am an ice-type duel avatar, yes? A chill like this is a gentle breeze to me.” As he spoke, he raised a sturdy front leg and took a ponderous step forward. Eight meters separated them now.

Satomi didn’t lose heart at the criticism. “Weird. That was just a little test! Try seeing if you can move after taking a hit of this!” This time, she clenched her left hand and got into position. “Icilin Strike!”

The remaining 70 percent in her special-attack gauge was completely drained, and in exchange, a bright light enveloped her fist, much more intense than with the Menthol Blow.

Menthol, a compound found in mint leaves, causes a sensation of sudden coolness when applied to the skin, not because skin temperature is actually being lowered, but because the cold receptors in the skin are being stimulated. Over a thousand other similarly chilling compounds have been discovered, but the strongest among them is a compound called icilin, which has a chilling effect two hundred times greater than that of menthol. When Shihoko had been hit with this level-four special attack of Satomi’s, a powerful cold had made her whole body shiver so fiercely she couldn’t move from the spot.

The phantom fist looked quite chilly indeed as it hit Behemoth squarely on the thick armor of his chest. The instant he was wrapped in the fine diamond dust of light microparticles, the massive body shuddered. “H-hoh-hoh, this is rather…cold, hmm?” he said haltingly. Even he apparently couldn’t treat Icilin Strike as a light breeze.

The issue, however, was that Satomi’s chill techniques had no actual attack power. She could stop enemies in their tracks, but it was pointless unless that was followed up with an actual attack. Yume’s poison gas was doing damage, but perhaps because Behemoth’s defensive abilities and health value were high to start with, his gauge hadn’t even gone down 5 percent yet.

“Wohkay…Here we go!” Satomi shouted as if to encourage herself and jumped out of the stronghold ring.

Yume fired her slingshot repeatedly to cover Satomi as she boldly sallied forth to engage in hand-to-hand combat with a level-eight opponent. Meanwhile, Shihoko used her half-recharged special-attack gauge and played her next trick.

“Puppet Maker!!”

Brble, brble, brble! The eagerly awaited Chocopets sprang forth one after another from the chocolate pond behind the altar. The chocolate automatic fighting dolls, which appeared four at a time, slipped past Shihoko and Yume on either side and flew at Behemoth.

“Chocopets! Support Mint!” Shihoko ordered, and the chocolate dolls split into two groups to attack Behemoth’s bulk from the sides. Satomi took up the front and launched a series of punches and kicks straight from her dojo training.

The level eighter was apparently not going to sit down and take this layered attack, and he tried to mow Satomi down with his sinister claws, but with the chill of the Icilin and the slingshots to the face, not to mention the continuous motion of the Chocopets on either side, his aim was always slightly off. Dancing nimbly around the giant, Satomi evaded Behemoth’s attacks as she got in one clean hit after another.

Since Shihoko was also a close-range fighting type, she deeply wanted to charge in and lend a hand, but she needed to take full advantage of the base for the time being. If she called forth another four Chocopets, they’d start to have a chance at wearing down even this powerful enemy.

Satomi piled on the physical attacks with intense focus and finally got the beast’s health gauge down 10 percent.

“Tut-tut-tut, this is…I mustn’t underestimate the tiny Legions,” Behemoth said as he raised one hand to protect his face from Yume’s slingshot. “The balance here with close range, long distance, and intermediate is quite nice.”

“Heh! We’re only getting started!” Satomi retorted. “Once you get another taste of my icilin, you’re not gonna be able to talk so high and mighty!” She leapt back and readied her left fist.

Glacier Behemoth looked down at her, and when he spoke, his voice was distinctly icier. “No, no, that’s quite enough data collection. And if I play around any more than this, my comrades are sure to become cross with me. If you don’t mind, it’s about time to put an end to this.” And then the pale beast inhaled deeply enough to make his thick chest swell up. He swiftly exhaled toward the ground in front of him.

The instant Shihoko noticed that his flow of air contained a diamond dust several times denser than Satomi’s Icilin Strike, Shihoko shouted, “Mint! Chocopets! Retreat—!”

But she was too late. The ground beneath the plume made several bursting sounds and then froze a snowy white. The frozen area instantly spread, swallowing the feet of the Chocopets and Satomi before racing ever farther outward.

“Choco! Run!” Yume shouted and shoved Shihoko backward. In the next instant, the snowy white of the cold front pushed all the way to the base ring and caught Yume.

“Ngh!” Gritting her teeth, Shihoko did a backflip to escape to the south side of the altar. But her foot got caught in the chocolate pond she’d created and she fell. Although she hurried to stand again, the chill caught up with her, freezing her feet and the chocolate pond around them.

When the freeze finally stopped speeding outward, the area that was frozen white was twenty meters across. Shihoko and Yume only had their feet frozen, but Satomi, who had been right in front of Behemoth, was covered in white frost up to her chest, and the four Chocopets were completely frozen. All this with but a simple breath attack from Glacier Behemoth; he hadn’t called the technique name or spent any of his special-attack gauge. Which meant…

“I-Incarnate?!” Shihoko cried hoarsely.

Behemoth shrugged his horned shoulders. “My my, this is unexpected. There’s no reason why I, the most gentlemanly of the Seven Dwarves, would use Incarnate in the Territories—and against such weak F-type avatars as yourselves—now, is there? This is merely my normally activated ability. It’s called Sigh of Cocytus. Please remember this at least when you leave, all right?” The icy beast smiled, revealing his sharp fangs. “Now then, now then…That was a nice fight, Pottit Pecking members.”

The massive body bent to the right and then spun in the opposite direction with impressive force. Using every scrap of the power generated, his long tail whined as it mowed down the surrounding area, shattering the four frozen Chocopets into brown fragments before closing in on the motionless avatar of Satomi.

“Min-Min!!” Shihoko cried.

Satomi forced her frozen arms to move into a defensive posture. In the next instant, the tail slammed into her, and she was peeled away from the ground and flung off with terrifying force. She crashed into Yume, still inside the base ring, but this was not enough to stop the momentum, and the tangle of girls came flying toward Shihoko.

With her feet frozen in the chocolate pond, Shihoko couldn’t possibly get out of the way, and she had no intention of doing that, anyway. She spread her arms and attempted to catch them, but the impact was nearly enough to knock her consciousness out of her avatar. Her feet were yanked out of the chocolate pond, and she hit the ground hard.

“Unh!” Groaning, she managed to get to her feet and then gasped at the sight of her friends.

Satomi, who appeared to have temporarily lost consciousness, was horribly battered. The armor that had guarded against the tail was completely destroyed, exposing the naked gray avatar body inside, and her chest and head armor were cruelly cracked. The damage to Yume, also unconscious, was not so serious in comparison, but a deep crack ran along the armor of her chest where Satomi had hit her, and the slingshot affixed to her left hand had been broken away at the base. Their health gauges were at 70 percent for Shihoko, 40 percent for Yume, and 10 percent for Satomi.

With a single sweep of his tail—one hit of a normal attack—Glacier Behemoth had completely destroyed four Chocopets and dealt significant damage to three Mid-Level Burst Linkers. But he seemed somehow displeased with this result.

“Dear, dear,” he said as he straightened up. “I had intended to bring all three of you down with a combination shot. Your defense is surprisingly good, ladies. I do apologize. This time, I will make sure to end this, so please don’t move, all right?” He announced their death sentence in his endlessly courteous way and then lowered his head to turn the large horns on his forehead squarely at them.

He was going to strike the final blow with the laser beam attack he’d used to signal his allies before. Satomi and Yume were still unconscious, so Shihoko was going to have to get them out of there on her own. But she had also been hit with enough force to whisk away 30 percent of her health gauge in one go, and her avatar wasn’t listening to what she was telling it to do. She tried to stand with Satomi in her left arm and Yume in her right, but her legs only trembled.

A pale phosphorescence quietly grew around Behemoth’s horns. He moved his dragon mouth to casually utter the technique name. “Congeal Ray.”

One of the horns on the head of the massive beast flashed, and a pale beam of light shot out toward the girls.

Thwnnk.

Something fell with incredible force from the sky to block the path between Shihoko and Behemoth. The silhouette that popped up in the middle of the intense blue light had widely spread, sharp-edged wings like an array of swords.

“…Crow…” Shihoko muttered, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of impact as Behemoth’s beam of light hit the winged silhouette.

The intruder, Silver Crow, was trying to defend against the blue light with both arms crossed in front of his body. But tiny particles of ice danced up around him, and the ground at his feet was frozen white. She remembered that the English word congeal actually meant “freeze.” In other words, this was a freezing light beam, and it would freeze Crow’s avatar whether he guarded with his arms or not.