The Floating Starlight Bridge Read online

  “Why?” a voice next to him replied immediately. “It’s so pretty. It’s way better than some brutal map like a Wasteland or a Century End.” The owner of these words was, of course, Lime Bell, clad in translucent emerald-green armor. Round, cute eyes glittered beneath the brim of her large, triangular hat.

  “Well, sure, at first glance, it looks fun. But, like, there’s too much stuff in the way when I fly, and I can’t see the ground at all in this place.”

  “Quit whining! You have to practice fighting on the ground sometimes, too, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Haruyuki nodded as she slapped him on the back with the bell of her left hand.

  The characteristics of the Primeval Forest stage were extremely poor field of view due to the thick plant growth, and a ridiculous number of small animal objects known as “critters.” Enormous carnivorous beasts also existed in this stage, and although they were few in number, duelers still needed to factor in their possible intervention when putting together battle strategies.

  Reviewing the stage attributes in the back of his mind, Haruyuki glanced up to the right and checked the two HP gauges lined up there.

  A two-person tag team had challenged them to this duel: the level-five Frost Horn and the level-four Tourmaline Shell, both active members of the Blue Legion, Leonids, and whose names Haruyuki knew only too well. Since he was currently level five and Chiyuri level four, there was no difference in terms of the numbers, but their opponents had likely become Burst Linkers a fair bit before them. Taking a simplistic view of the situation, they might be assumed to be better than Haruyuki and Chiyuri, who had leveled up fairly quickly, but in truth, that was not the case.

  This was how it worked: Burst Linkers were broken up into several types based on personality. For instance, there were the daredevils who took no account of win ratios and pushed whomever they could into a duel whenever they could, wherever they were, and the more conservative Linkers who carefully weighed advantages and disadvantages and aimed for the stars within reach with duels they could win. Even if Burst Linkers from two such disparate groups were at the same numerical level, they differed greatly in an invisible way: accumulated battle experience.

  When Linkers challenged a higher-ranking avatar they had no hope of beating no matter how they struggled, or an opponent whose avatar attributes they were not compatible with and would inevitably lose to, the duel gave the Burst Linker experience separate from the numerical points they might have won: battle techniques, knowledge, and above all else the heart to stand firm in a tight spot.

  Naturally, the play style of the daredevil group was less effective than that of the clever group. From time to time, they would be pushed into anxiety about burst points and would occasionally have to apply themselves to hunting Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field. But his teacher, Kuroyukihime, told him that in the end, it was this type who had the higher likelihood of making it to the top levels. Thus, Haruyuki made a conscious effort not to be choosy about his opponents once he had made up his mind to duel and gone out into the city; his aim was to maintain a style somewhere in between the daredevils and the clever kids, but…

  The pair who had challenged them now, in particular Frost Horn, was well known as go-for-broke guys, with a daredevil level far above Haruyuki’s. Which was exactly why they had not hesitated in the slightest to yank Haruyuki and Chiyuri into the Accelerated World immediately after they appeared on the matching list.

  Noting from the movement of the guide cursor in the center of his vision that the enemy team was heading straight for the government building tree they were perched in, Haruyuki resolved to go along with his opponents’ style.

  “Chiyu, you wanna just get down from here and get this over with quick and dirty?”

  “Sure.” His partner grinned. “After all, if I can’t see you, I can’t heal you, and I’ve been practicing hand-to-hand combat lately, too!” She waved the bell of her left hand and smashed five or six of the hard-looking nuts hanging behind them.

  Having been hit on the head by that bell in the past, Haruyuki unconsciously flinched before stretching a hand out to his partner. “All right, then how about we do a surprise attack from above!”

  “Yeah!”

  She offered her hand and he grabbed on to it before fearlessly stepping off the branch five hundred meters up in the air. They went into an upside-down free fall, aiming for the point indicated by the guide cursor, a spot in the hazy forest far below.

  The cursor only gave a rough idea of the enemy’s bearing, however. Thus, the opposing team wouldn’t immediately realize that Haruyuki and Chiyuri were rapidly approaching directly above their heads. To make sure they used this bit of deception to their fullest advantage, Haruyuki delayed decelerating until the very last possible minute. The wind howled in his ears, and the ground approached with terrifying force. Although he was used to dives like this, he couldn’t stop himself from holding his breath.

  But Chiyuri, diving right next to him at the same speed, didn’t even move her mouth to cry out; rather, her eyes shone with the thrill. She had some serious balls. Or maybe it wasn’t okay to use that word to describe a girl…

  “Found them!” A sharp whisper interrupted his meandering thoughts. “Below that huge red flower!”

  He quickly shifted his gaze and glimpsed a big shadow and a small shadow racing through the dense growth of tall Rafflesia-like plants. The one on the right with light blue heavy armor and enormous horns growing from his forehead and both shoulders was Frost Horn. To the left, clad in sharp bluish-green armor, was Tourmaline Shell.

  “I’ll take the one on the right, you get the left. Hit ’em with everything you got,” he said, and got a firm nod in response.

  The enemy should have already guessed that Haruyuki and Chiyuri were either on the ground or somewhere in the government building tree. However, in mere seconds, both sides would come into close range, and the cursors would disappear. They had to decelerate and get ready to attack immediately before that happened. Haruyuki opened both eyes wide and focused his entire being on calculating that timing.

  “Here we go. Five seconds to deceleration—three, two, one, zero!” He clutched Chiyuri’s hand tightly, and on zero, he fully deployed the wings on his back.

  To make the enemy mistakenly believe they were on the ground, Silver Crow hadn’t dared charge up his special-attack gauge. Thus, no thrust came from his wings, but he was able to use them like a parachute. The metal fins caught on the air and put the brakes hard on their descent. Using the deceleration force to turn them around, he stretched out his left leg and assumed a diving-kick stance. Chiyuri did the same, tugging slightly on his hand, and adjusted her sights. The guide cursor then vanished from his field of view.

  In that instant, the enemy tag team realized that Haruyuki and Chiyuri were unexpectedly close and stopped so abruptly that they dug grooves out of the earth. After quickly glancing around at their surroundings, they threw their heads back up at the sky.

  But they were too late.

  “Yaaaaaaah!”

  “Hooooooo!”

  Together with these battle cries, Haruyuki with his left foot and Chiyuri with her right kicked through the Rafflesia petals and plunged down onto their respective targets at an acute angle.

  The timing was such that even these skilled fighters couldn’t evade the strike free of injury. Frost Horn and Tourmaline Shell both crossed their arms in front of their bodies and braced themselves to block. Nonetheless, they were concussed by dive kicks storing up the kinetic energy of a descent from a height of five hundred meters.

  A splashy light effect and a crashing noise filled the stage, as if a special attack had hit its mark.

  “Mngh!”

  “Hrrnk!”

  Cries slipped from Horn and Shell as they hunkered down and fought to deflect the blow. Their feet gouged into the green earth, carving out four deep ruts. But no matter how large they were, it was impossible to completely guard against such
a powerful attack.

  The struggle for supremacy broke in a mere second: Horn and his partner were simultaneously thrown backward. Still digging deeply into the ground, they skidded back, only to crash into a large tree trunk far, far away. The impact effect shook the stage once again, and the health gauges in the top right sank almost 30 percent.

  Having succeeded in making the first strike, Haruyuki and Chiyuri landed on the ground via a backward somersault, and several voices cried out in the distance.

  These shouts—“Oh, wow!” “You almost never see that kind of damage with a normal attack!”—were those of the Gallery, sitting in twos and threes in branches high above, looking down at the battle zone. Despite the fact that it was a weekday, there looked to be more than twenty people gathered there—unsurprising given Shinjuku’s status as a duel mecca.

  As the excitement died down a little, Frost Horn and Tourmaline Shell—knocked over backward, legs popping up out of the shrubbery—now leapt to their feet. They staggered slightly with the aftereffects of the damage they had taken, but they found their footing quickly enough and started shouting loudly in turn.

  “Dammit! You were up on the observation deck! I bet you couldn’t see anything at all! I mean, raining like that!”

  “That’s not the point, Horn! It’s a date, get it? These two were on a date, Hoooorn!”

  “Wh-wh-what…So they figured on a date, might as well duel…?!”

  “That’s exactly it, Horn! They think they’re gonna take us down and then be all hugs and kisses, Hoooooooooorn!!”

  “U-unforgivable, Tori! Burst Linkers like this need to be wiped oooouuuut!”

  This skit appeared for all intents and purposes to have been prepared in advance, and the Gallery around them flared to life once again. Mixed in with the explosions of laughter came one-sided comments like, “That’s right, that’s right,” and, “Show ’em what the loveless are made of.”

  Listening to this exchange dazed Haruyuki, and he shook his head fiercely back and forth. “N-no, that’s not— I mean, a date or—”

  “If you’re so butt-hurt about it, maybe you should team up with a girl, too!” Chiyuri cried out as if to pour fuel on the fire, drowning out Haruyuki’s stammered objections.

  “Y-you don’t pull punches.” Frost Horn reeled back, unsteady once more.

  “Yup, yup.” Hands on hips, Tourmaline Shell bobbed his head in agreement. “We don’t have a lot of girl Linkers in our Legion. I mean, just the idea of a group of close-range fighters stinks of sweat.”

  “This isn’t the time for patting each other on the back! We’re all here; we gotta beat them back and make the road home for these two a little awkward at least!!”

  “Whoa! That’s, like, seriously amazing, Hoooorn!”

  “Shut up! We’ll show them how a real man lives! Here we go…”

  As Haruyuki stared dumbly at their little sideshow, Frost Horn suddenly readied his thick arms at his sides. The hard horns growing from his forehead and shoulders took on an intense light.

  “Frosted Circle!!” He shouted the name of the attack, causing rings of bluish-white light to race outward with a whoosh. They pushed through Haruyuki and Chiyuri, and then scattered off behind them.

  The speed and range were such that they couldn’t evade the attack, but the light itself was harmless. Their gauges didn’t move a pixel.

  However, Haruyuki braced himself anew and waited for the phenomenon that would follow. He had fought Frost Horn several times in the Territories, but this was the first time he had been hit with this special attack directly. He was pretty sure that rather than causing direct damage to the enemy, the attack changed the properties applied to the area.

  Cling, cling! Accompanying the sharp sound, the plants around them started to take on a whitish hue. Particles of light glittered in the air—they were all Frost. Crystallized water adhered to any and all objects, clothing them in a costume of ice.

  Silver Crow’s smooth, mirrored armor clouded at once. “Bell, I’ll take Horn,” Haruyuki said in a low voice as he watched a fairly thick layer of frost descend on his limbs and the extremities of his armor. “Keep Shell in check until I finish him off.”

  “Okay.” Immediately after this short reply—

  “Waa…aaaaah!”

  A throaty roar echoed from the other side of the veil of frost, and an enormous shadow came charging straight at him. Frost Horn. Just like Haruyuki, his light blue armor was caked in frost. The horns on his forehead and shoulders appeared to be covered in an especially thick layer of ice.

  He came at Haruyuki with a vicious shoulder tackle, right shoulder thrust far out. Haruyuki dropped his stance, opened his eyes wide, and watched for the moment to dodge and counterattack.

  “Haah!” He flew to the right and to avoid being hit.

  But his body was a fair bit heavier than usual because of the frost clinging to it, and his start was slow. It wasn’t a direct hit, but the horn scraped him, and he felt the crunch of impact in his left shoulder. Gritting his teeth, Haruyuki held his ground, turned toward Horn as he slid past, and threw his right fist into his opponent’s flank.

  But this time, too, his timing was off because of the added weight. Covered in the dense frost, Haruyuki’s short, straight punch would have caused greater damage than normal if it had hit the mark, but that force stopped at a mere light grazing of Horn’s body.

  This was the main effect of the special attack Frosted Circle. It increased the weight of the extremities of any duel avatar within range, interfering with small, swift attacks and serial attacks. Conversely, large, one-shot attacks became more powerful. It also had secondary effects: because Frosted Circle made it extremely difficult to see any distance, it effectively prevented getting distance for a sniper attack, and, because of the cold, it rendered thermal homing useless.

  In other words, it forced nearly every type of avatar within the area into a fierce struggle, making it a fearsome ability in a variety of ways. Even if an avatar tried to move outside of the range of the effect, the frost was generated over a broad swath with Horn at its center, so running away was no easy feat.

  Haruyuki glared at the shadow of Horn turning around in the distance and readying himself for another charge using his horns. All right, he murmured to himself. I’ll dance with you.

  While he was firming his fists and fighting spirit, he glanced over at the other pair of avatars facing off not far away.

  His partner Lime Bell was similarly frozen white. The bell of her left hand, in particular, looked very heavy, with several icicles hanging off it.

  But…

  Tourmaline Shell didn’t have a single particle of frost sticking to any part of him. The smooth, curved armor covering his slender body was unchanged from the start of the duel, glittering an almost wet bluish-green color. No—it actually was wet. The ice that tried to coil around him melted the instant it touched him and turned into drops of water.

  This was the reason Tourmaline Shell and Frost Horn liked teaming up together.

  When struck by anything, that tourmaline gem-colored armor took on an electric charge and generated heat. And although there were many electric-and heat-type avatars, there weren’t too many who continuously generated heat. Shell was one of a very few avatars on whom Horn’s special attack had absolutely no effect.

  Tourmaline Shell readied sword hands, thin sparks crackling as they crawled along his arms, and came after Lime Bell in a single fluid movement. He launched one close-range attack after another with flat-handed strikes straight out of Chinese kenpo. Bell was blocking solidly, her large bell raised up in place of a shield.

  Being a fairly high-saturation green, Lime Bell had a defensive ability that blew metal colors out of the water. On top of that, the thick frost covering her arms seemed to be blocking almost all damage from Shell’s Electric Heat Palm. As long as she focused on blocking, she would be able to essentially maintain her HP.

  However, the enemy tag team was no do
ubt expecting exactly this.

  Horn and his partner naturally knew that Lime Bell was a Healer, extremely rare in the Accelerated World. In a duel like this, where both teams had an identical total level, if one team used the healing ability even just once, the possibility of defeat for the other team spiked.

  Thus, they had come up with the battle strategy of Shell, who was able to move around freely within the range of Frosted Circle, keeping Bell occupied with successive, cutting blows while Horn took care of Crow. Although Haruyuki and Chiyuri had succeeded in attacking first, the duel since they had descended had proceeded exactly according to the enemy’s plan.

  To break out of this deadlock, Haruyuki had no choice but to defeat Horn without backup. But I knew that the minute I decided to fight a close-range battle on the ground!

  Haruyuki brought his transient thoughts to an end with this shout and focused his awareness on the shadow of Frost Horn charging.

  In the earlier confusion, he had physically experienced the added weight of the frost sticking to him. He should be able to just barely dodge this next onslaught and offer up a counterattack.

  Horn had his left shoulder forward this time, horn readied low like a battering ram. Haruyuki swallowed his fear and stood his ground as bait.

  Now!

  The instant he went to kick at the ground the slightest bit sooner than usual to avoid the hit, the tip of the sharp horn slammed into Haruyuki’s left shoulder.

  “Aaah!”

  Crying out involuntarily, he went flying helplessly. Spinning, he crashed into the ground but didn’t stop there; instead, he bounced back, high up. If he fell again from there, he’d take extra damage, and so Haruyuki somehow managed to pull off a landing on both feet to avoid that damage penalty, if nothing else.

  That said, at just a single blow from the spike, Haruyuki’s health gauge had been depleted by nearly 20 percent. A deep indentation had been gouged out of the armor of his left shoulder, and sparks snapped and cracked as they scattered. That particular pain of serious localized damage raced along his nerves, but more than that, Haruyuki felt an enormous surprise.