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  If she twisted her left leg a mere ninety degrees to the outside, Dolphin’s shin would crash into Black Lotus’s sword limb—known by another name as the passive ability “Terminate Sword”—and would be sliced clean through like butter from the force of her own technique. However, Kuroyukihime chose not to dodge.

  “Hunh!” she cried sharply, plunging the sword of her left foot straight down. She felt hard resistance as she rammed her sword through the stage’s ground, almost up to her knee.

  Dolphin’s surface-skimming kick then crashed into the outside of Kuroyukihime’s left calf, generating an intense impact, and the fine sand piled up on the Okinawan Fortress stage shot out over a radius of three meters.

  Lagoon Dolphin’s kick held impressive force, but it couldn’t even move Kuroyukihime’s leg a mere centimeter, much less break it. Buried deep in the ground, the sword became an immovable spike and dispersed all the force of the kick into the earth.

  “Yukushiyassa. [No way.]” Opening her water-blue eye lenses in amazement, Dolphin pulled back her leg and steadily retreated. “She made a hole in the ground of the duel field.”

  Kuroyukihime looked up to see that the coral avatar watching from a distance was also expressing her shock, reeling back, both hands up at her mouth.

  There was a reason why the girls were so surprised at her simply stabbing her leg into the ground. It was possible to destroy most of the terrain objects—buildings, nature, decorations—in the Normal Duel Field, and this meant they were basically bonus items to charge an avatar’s special-attack gauge, but the ground alone was the exception to this. Destruction of the ground was too large of an interference with the field—it could even stop the duel itself from happening—so except for the attributes of a few specific stages, this sort of destruction was basically impossible. Those few possibilities were, for example, melting the ice covering the ground of the Ice stage with a fire attack, or evaporating the poison bogs of the Corroded Forest stage, but the earth itself beneath that ice or bog was impermeable. In this Okinawan Fortress stage, a player might send the three centimeters of white sand blanketing the ground flying, but the stone surface that appeared beneath it was indestructible.

  Or it should have been, but Kuroyukihime had simply applied a light pressure to the sword of her left leg in a standing position, and it had pierced the stone layer over fifty centimeters. This was the true power of the attribute of absolute severing that the Black King Black Lotus embodied, and none of the veteran Burst Linkers in Tokyo would have been surprised by it at this late date. But these two, who said they had grown up in Okinawa, probably didn’t even know who Kuroyukihime was. Dolphin and the coral one behind her stared in a daze at the jet-black avatar as she pulled her leg soundlessly from the earth and stood up properly once more.

  “Now, then. I’ll attack next, but I wonder if you still intend to continue? Or are you ready to make it a draw here?”

  It was the coral who responded first, turning the hands around her mouth into a megaphone to shout, “Th-that’s enough, Ruka! Let’s just ask her!”

  The nickname for the blue-type female-shaped avatar was likely a shortened form of the Japanese word for dolphin, iruka, and this dolphin avatar stood stock-still for another few seconds, before finally shaking her head and stamping her foot on the ground as hard as she could.

  “…Not yet, no way! Uchina warrior makirararen Yamato samurai! [As if an Okinawan warrior could lose to a mainland samurai!]” The cry was forceful but half-unintelligible.

  Kuroyukihime cocked her head slightly. “What’s the difference between a warrior and a samurai?”

  “It’s obvious! A warrior fights with her hands!” And then Dolphin came charging for the third time, but coral’s interpretation reached Kuroyukihime first.

  “Um, what she means by hands is actually karate!”

  “Is that so? I see. Your technique is karate, is it?” Kuroyukihime leaned forward, ready to take the blow. There was still plenty of time left and both of their health gauges had ample leeway, but her instincts whispered that this was the climax of the duel.

  Pressing in, kicking up sand, Dolphin yanked both arms back into her body. Her tightly clenched fists emitted a vivid marine-blue light. She dropped her hips low when she was still over a meter away from the range of her attacks up to that point and thrust out her chest.

  “Tidal Wave!!” As she called the name of the special attack, she launched her right and left fists in alternating succession.

  The speed and strength of this series of blows was like a double-barrel cannon. The punches covered in a sea-colored light effect came at a rate of more than five per second, flooding in from a distance double that of her normal attack. It was a good technique containing a stubborn fighting spirit to smash any enemy, any armor with those two fists.

  However, Kuroyukihime started moving before the first blow could reach her. She raised her right knee up high and turned her entire body to the left, resting on the tip of her left leg. She fell so that her upper body was parallel with the ground, and turned the sword of her right leg toward her duel opponent.

  Shf! As she extended her right leg, she called out the technique name, “Death By Barraging!”

  It might have looked to her opponent as a single side kick with no speed or power. But in the next instant, the whole sword of her right leg glittered a biting blue violet, and then disappeared. Or rather, it didn’t disappear, but split up into countless hazy parts. The tips of blurry swords spreading out in a cone formation resembled a shotgun of swords. Black Lotus’s level-four special attack Death By Barraging was a technique that shot off a hundred side kicks per second for three seconds with either her left or right sword leg. Anyone caught in its range would see an infinity of swords raining down on them in a terrifying concentration.

  That said, Lagoon Dolphin, having already activated her special attack, had no time to stop now and dodge, nor did she have any intention of doing so.

  “Kee…aaaah!!” In her battle cry, the innocence of a girl and the fighting spirit of a warrior coexisted without contradiction. She charged into the range of Kuroyukihime’s blades as her fists repeatedly shot out—Left! Right! Left! Right!—at top speed.

  The instant the fists, coated in greenish blue, touched the swords blanketed in ultraviolet, collision after collision produced flash after flash of pure white light.

  If it had been one sword blow against one fist blow, Dolphin might have come out on top. Unlike her level-five special attack Death By Piercing, or her level-eight special attack Death By Embracing, Lotus’s Death By Bashing was not a single-blow attack, but rather a barrage-type attack focusing on range and number.

  However, the number of successive blows was just too different. Even after compensating for the marine-blue fists, the dozens of swords that remained caught the entire body of the karate user charging in from head-on.

  “Aaaaaah!” Leaving a scream and a very showy sound of impact, Dolphin danced up high into the air. She reached the zenith of her parabola, orange sparks scattering from the many places she’d been hit, and then fell into a tailspin. Her health gauge at once dropped dramatically to less than 10 percent, and the rest threatened to be blown away casually if her head ended up stuck in the ground. Having judged this, Kuroyukihime had no sooner pulled her right foot in than she was making a dash.

  She thrust the sword of her left hand toward the point where Dolphin was falling. The instant the leveled side of her blade touched the flowing lines of Dolphin’s head, she used the Way of the Flexible to kill the force of the other girl’s fall. At the same time, Kuroyukihime flipped her around 180 degrees and brought her to the ground with a thud on her feet.

  For a moment, Lagoon Dolphin seemed unable to grasp why she was still alive, but finally she shook her head and stared straight at Kuroyukihime before her. She dropped to one knee in the sand with a crunch and set her fists down on the ground as well. “Dammit!”

  Unconsciously smiling an honest grin r
arely seen on her face in the Tokyo duel scene, Kuroyukihime nodded. “Mmm. Nice fight. That kick of your second attack was particularly good. It would be even better if you could connect it a little more smoothly to the feint.”

  “Yeah! I’ll train and fix it, Sis!” she shouted, and stood up before crossing both arms in front of her and bowing. Without giving Kuroyukihime the time to cock her head at the “Sis, she took a few steps and raised her fist to deliver the final blow to her own chest.

  “Ah! W-wait, Ruka! We still haven’t actually talked about the real thing yet!” The shout came from ten meters to the rear, and Lagoon Dolphin froze in place.

  She looked back over her shoulder at the coral avatar and then turned to face Kuroyukihime once more, before hitting herself lightly on the head with the fist raised up in the air. “Aitsu! [Whoops!] I totally forgot!”

  Even more dumbfounded, Kuroyukihime remembered that right from the start of this duel, the coral one had been saying some rather strange things. “Our real objective,” “let’s just ask her,” and now “the real thing.” In other words, the two girls hadn’t challenged her simply looking for a new fight, but they instead had some hidden purpose other than dueling.

  Hmm. As she watched over them, Lagoon Dolphin dropped to one knee on the ground once more and looked straight up at Kuroyukihime with her water-colored eye lenses.

  “Sis!” she shouted. “Having seen your power, we got a request! Please listen to what we got to say!”

  “That’s…Well, if you ask me to listen, I’ll listen, but…” She glanced up at the timer in the upper part of her field of view and saw there were still nearly twenty minutes left, because the duel itself had ended with a mere three attacks. Most likely, that was plenty of time to talk.

  But the two challengers had a different idea.

  “Nifuehdehbiru! [Thank you so much!]” Lagoon Dolphin shouted, and then she continued, “Okay then, Sis. There’s a café called Sabani on the corner of this shopping street, so when we get back over there, let’s meet at the table in front in one minute!”

  “…Wh…a…?”

  More baffled now than she had been during the entire duel, Kuroyukihime watched Lagoon Dolphin raise her right fist once again and bring it down hard and without hesitation on her own head. The tiny bit remaining in her health gauge was blown away, and the avatar became a cloud of blue sea mist and disappeared.

  It was actually a spectacular way of scattering, but without even looking at the flaming YOU WIN!!, Kuroyukihime opened her mouth once more. “Meet…in the real?”

  “That’s riiight!” the coral avatar responded from a ways off, waving her hand, on the verge of disappearing. “See you there, Sister!”

  And then the duel ended.

  3

  Returning to the real world, Kuroyukihime continued to stare into the showcase of the accessory shop she had been peeking at before the start of the duel. But she wasn’t taking in any of the cute earrings and pendants made of colorful shells. She was turning all her brainpower to the question of whether or not this was an elaborate trap.

  The greatest taboo for a Burst Linker, it went without saying, was cracking in the real. Another Burst Linker finding out personal information like your real face, name, home, and school risked bringing about the worst-case scenario of a real attack by PKers at some point. No matter how skilled the Burst Linker, in their real bodies, they were almost all powerless elementary and middle school students, so they couldn’t really fight back against threats backed by actual violence. Kuroyukihime had considered the idea that perhaps the ultimate acceleration command “physical full burst” given only to level-nine Burst Linkers bound by the sudden-death rule was a means of fighting back against real attacks.

  At any rate, for a Burst Linker, real information was protected insofar as possible—or it was supposed to be, anyway. But a few minutes earlier, Lagoon Dolphin and the coral avatar whose name she still didn’t know had suggested meeting up in the real world in the most casual way. Almost like they had never even heard the phrase “cracked in the real” before.

  Was it possible that everything the two said and did, including during the duel, was a clever performance? To crack her real information, knowing that Kuroyukihime was the Black King? Her instincts told her that the girls were naïve Burst Linkers with no ulterior motives, simply gamers taking pleasure in the duel. And she deeply wanted to believe those instincts.

  However, Kuroyukihime’s current position meant she simply could not lose all her points and be retired from the game due to some foolish misstep. Although the Legion was still modest in scale, she had relaunched Nega Nebulus, and she had risen up in revolt against the Six Kings of Pure Color.

  And more than anything else, there was the boy she had discovered in a corner of the Umesato local net and made her first and last child. She couldn’t stand being separated from him halfway along this path. Someday, he would spread his dazzling silver wings and fly to heights that even she and the other kings could not reach. She had to stay with him.

  Racked with a fierce indecision as she was, an involuntary tremor raced through her body until she suddenly felt a gentle hand on her right shoulder. At the same time, she heard a faint, faraway murmur:

  Kuroyukihime, trust your instincts. I mean, it was you who taught me the importance of believing in yourself, wasn’t it?

  “Hah…I suppose so, Haruyuki,” she murmured to herself, and pressed down firmly with her left hand on her right shoulder before straightening her back and turning around.

  She saw right away the place Dolphin had specified. At the intersection the sea-colored avatar had pointed toward in the duel stage, Kuroyukihime spotted an open café with the boat-shaped sign. Still preserving the barest minimum of her guard, she approached from the opposite side of the street. The name painted on a sign did indeed read “Sabani.” She was pretty sure that meant “small boat” in the Okinawan dialect.

  Hiding herself in the front of a souvenir shop on the opposite corner, Kuroyukihime looked out at the open patio. Two of the three tables were empty, while the remaining table had two girls sitting at it.

  “So they’re there.” Sighing unconsciously, she did one final check to make doubly sure. If this series of incidents was, hypothetically, an elaborate trap, then naturally, the two girls sitting there were not Burst Linkers but “bait,” and the real Burst Linkers were hidden somewhere nearby, watching the patio. And in that case, the real Burst Linkers would naturally have disconnected from the global net. If they were out in the open on the matching list, they wouldn’t have been able to avoid Kuroyukihime accelerating and counterattacking the instant she realized the two at the café were bait.

  “Burst Link.” She voiced the acceleration command quietly, and the surrounding buildings and shoppers froze blue. She strolled along in the blue world of the initial acceleration space in her spangle butterfly avatar as she opened the BB console from the icon on her virtual desktop to pull up the matching list. The avatar names there were…three. In addition to her own Black Lotus, she could see the names of level-five Lagoon Dolphin and level-four Coral Merrow.

  “A mermaid of the coral reefs, then. I see.” She was certain from the name that this was the coral avatar who had been in the Gallery before and called Dolphin “Ruka.” Which meant that, in fact, these two had left themselves on the matching list long after the duel was over.

  “So all that’s left now…is to trust them, hmm.” Kuroyukihime quietly gave the “burst out” command.

  When she climbed the steps up to the patio of Sabani and moved toward the table farthest in, the low heels of her mules clacking, the two girls with straws in their mouths abruptly lifted their heads.

  They were probably one or two years younger than Kuroyukihime. Gaping expressions rose up on both of their deeply tanned faces, traces of childhood still lingering in them. Since they stayed frozen like this for some time, Kuroyukihime was forced to go and sit across from them herself.

  An
d of course, a waitress came flying out of the shop with a hearty “Mensohreh!” and placed a cool cloth on the table for her to wipe her hands with. At the same time, a menu window was displayed through an ad hoc connection, so she ordered fresh pineapple juice. The waitress shouted a hearty “One fresh pine!” and from inside the shop came the response, “Fresh pine!” The throaty whine of an old mixer started, the juice was poured into a glass with an exaggerated gesture, and this was brought to the table, followed by the ching of 280 yen getting deducted from Kuroyukihime’s Neurolinker as payment. Throughout the entire sequence, the two girls stared intently with gaping mouths and wide eyes.

  Kuroyukihime put her lips to the straw and took a sip of the fresh pineapple juice before saying deliberately, “I believe it was you who called me.”

  Instantly, the pair were blinking at top speed and bobbing their heads up and down after a brief “Oh!” There the synchronized movement ended, as the slightly taller girl on the right scratched her reddish-brown hair roughly.

  “Wassaibiin. [I’m sorry.] Um, Sis, you’re just too churakahgi.”

  And there, finally, the girl with the ponytail to the left opened her mouth. “Uh, um, churakahgi means beautiful.”

  “I reckoned all the Naichah [mainland] Burst Linkers were just like Master, so I’m ippehshikannda [super surprised].”

  At this entirely open attitude, Kuroyukihime, still with a few percent of her guard raised, couldn’t help but also smile lightly. The grin playing on her lips, she first said to the darkly tanned girl with the short hair, “You’re Lagoon Dolphin, yes?”

  “Oh! Y-yes!”

  Then to the ponytailed girl with skin the color of cocoa, “And you’re Coral Merrow.”

  “Y-yes, I am…b-but I haven’t actually told you my name yet?” There was genuine surprise on Merrow’s face, and when Kuroyukihime revealed, “I looked at the matching list before I came,” the girl oohed, and then said a strange thing. “I understand! I totally thought you were born Sahdakaumari.”