Accel World - Volume 13 - Chapter 5

5

As a general rule, the amount of people taking part in the Territories was set so that the number on the defending team and the number on the attacking team matched. In other words, if there were three on the defending side, then even if the attacking side was a team of five people, two of them would be automatically removed, and only the three with the highest levels would dive into the battlefield.

The exception to this rule was when there was just one or two people on the defending side. The minimum for the attacking side was three, so even if there were two or fewer defenders, they would have to fight an enemy of three.

So for Territory Battles among the Great Legions with member Burst Linkers numbering in the dozens or more, the element of reading the number of people on the opposing team came into play. If a large team of ten people was intercepted by a team of three, that would waste the battle potential of seven of the enemy’s team, and in the event that defending the entire territory was impossible, there was a chance to take a worthwhile loss by putting just one person in an area where the greatest number of the enemy was expected to attack and throwing the fight.

However, with the current state of affairs in Suginami, that level of strategic operation wasn’t necessary. Since everyone knew that the second Nega Nebulus was a small Legion with fewer than ten people, those coming to attack didn’t put together teams of more than three. About the only element to read in advance was whether the attacking side would avoid the area where Black Lotus was. The reason was simple: They couldn’t win against her.

Put another way, in areas without the Black King, the fight would be good. Sarcastic enemies would even shout out, “All right! Hit the jackpot!” when they got an area without Lotus but with Crow, so Haruyuki absolutely couldn’t let his guard down whether he was on Kuroyukihime’s team or not.

Thus, the instant the first duel of the day started mere seconds after four o’clock and he descended into the battlefield of Suginami Area No. 1, Haruyuki shouted in high spirits, “All right! Let’s work hard and defend this place, Mei, Curren!!” But the next moment, he dropped his shoulders and groaned, “U-ugh…this stage…”

There was nothing that particularly stood out in the terrain as he looked around. The roads were covered in a gray asphalt that strongly resembled that of the real world, and the buildings were all made of a similarly gray concrete. About the only thing that stood out were the large manholes dotting the road. But these were precisely the biggest feature of the Sewer Stage.

“…’Cos Lo went and said that, it actually happened…” Ardor Maiden’s voice was also lifeless.

Next to her, for Aqua Current, in what was her first Territory as a member of the new Nega Nebulus and thus something to be memorialized, the pace of the water flowing around her body dulled just the slightest bit. It was no wonder their morale plummeted; the Sewer stage was the unshakable unfavorite of all the water-type stages.

But Aqua Current, the oldest of the three and with the longest history as a Burst Linker, naturally looked at the situation coolly. “It’ll be just as hard for the enemy team. If it’s a battle of willpower, then there’s no way we can lose.”

“Y-you’re right. I mean, a sewer’s just a dark, stinky, wet pipe!”

“…Your wording aside, Crow, that spirit’s good. So then I’ll ask you to take the lead in this Territory Battle. Thanks.”

“Okay, leave everything to— Wh-what?!” Haruyuki recoiled belatedly, but even Maiden was bobbing her head up and down.

“Once the battle starts, Ren and I will move on your instructions, C. I’m looking forward to a nice strategy!”

“…Y-yesh…I’ll do my best…” Haruyuki could hardly tell them no at this stage, so he nodded firmly and then checked the enemy team formation displayed in the upper right of his field of view.

There were three of them, naturally. From the top, they were the level-five Blaze Heart, the also-level-five Ochre Prison, and the level-four Peach Parasol. None of the names were unfamiliar. In fact, he had even dueled them several times. But the instant Haruyuki saw those three avatar names together, he let out a small cry.

“Huh…? Why…?!”

“What’s the matter?” Utai cocked her head curiously, seeing Haruyuki’s reaction.

“The reason Crow is surprised”—it was Akira who explained smoothly—“is that all three of them belong to the Red Legion, Prominence.”

“Th-that’s right. Promi and us, we have an unlimited cease-fire right now; we promised not to attack one another in the Territories. So then why all of a sudden…Niko—I mean, the Red King—didn’t say anything to us…” After babbling this far, Haruyuki lit upon a single possibility and clenched his hands into tight fists.

The cease-fire pact between Prominence and Nega Nebulus, unlike the eternal mutual nonaggression treaty among the six Great Legions, prescribed no punishment whatsoever; it was, in other words, a gentlemen’s agreement. So it was possible for them to come and attack in the Territories if some “impetus” caused by something surpassed the “rationality” of keeping the agreement. And given the current situation, of the handful of reasons he could think of, the most likely was—

“I-impossible…Even members of Promi are infected with the ISS kits…” The instant Haruyuki groaned, a note of tension raced across the faces of Akira and Utai. He had said it was impossible, but ten days earlier, members of another of the six Great Legions, Great Wall, had been infected. And Nerima area, Prominence’s territory, was not that far from Adachi area, one of the three places within the city known to be a source of ISS kit occurrence.

Haruyuki took a deep breath. “So far, there hasn’t been anyone infected with the ISS kit taking part in the Territories,” he said quickly. “But it was only a matter of time. If all three of the enemy are equipped with kits, then they won’t hesitate to randomly shoot off the two Incarnate attacks—the long-distance Dark Shot and the close-range Dark Blow. Either of them has enough power to instantly kill if you’re hit without any guard. And”—he glanced toward the north of the stage—“if the enemy are kit users, it’s possible they won’t come through the sewers, but just charge us in a straight line aboveground.”

Normally, players couldn’t move freely aboveground in a Sewer stage because there were high, solid concrete walls blocking the way all over. They were movement restrictions to force players to use the sewers whether they liked it or not, but these restrictions had no meaning for anyone with an ISS kit. The two Incarnate techniques could easily gouge a hole in the thickest of walls.

The three members of the defending team were silent for a moment as they looked to the north of Suginami Area No. 1. In the Territories, regardless of the location of your real-world body, the attacking team and the defending team were always placed east-west or north-south. Haruyuki and his team had appeared on the southern edge of Kanpachi Ring Road No. 8 that cut through the area from north to south, so the enemy team would be coming at them from the northern end of this road.

In any other stage, they’d have been able to see fairly far down the street, but the Sewer stage wouldn’t allow that. A concrete wall, stained black by the rain, cut across the road just a dozen or so meters ahead of them. To go beyond it, they would have to use an ability that allowed them to climb vertical walls, go through the sewers underground, or fly over it.

“…I’m going to go investigate from abo—”

Haruyuki swallowed his words mid-sentence. In order to fly, he needed to charge his special-attack gauge, but in a very considered design touch, you could barely charge your gauge when you broke terrain objects aboveground in a Sewer stage. In exchange, there were plenty of mysterious oil drums in the tunnels underground that would make your gauge leap up if you smashed just one. It was, after all, a stage designed in every detail to make players give up and go underground.

Even so, if you tried to forcefully charge your gauge aboveground, the only way was to hit your allies or to be hit by them. But for victory in the Territories, in the event that the same number of people were still alive, the match would be decided by the total remaining in their health gauges, so they had to avoid needless damage to whatever extent possible.

Silver Crow’s greatest ability, flight, was suddenly locked away, and Haruyuki slumped down.

“The intensity of your highs and lows hasn’t changed at all,” Akira said in a voice that contained the slightest of smiles. “It’s okay; I’ll investigate.”

“Uh…um, how…?”

Without responding, Aqua Current walked over to the nearest manhole and kicked at the edge of the rusted cover from directly above. Kwaaan! A metallic sound rang out, and the round cover bounced up and rolled onto the street. The hole that appeared was probably a meter or so in diameter. When Haruyuki listened closely, he could hear the heavy burbling of water flowing.

Aqua Current held her right hand above the hole and turned her fingers downward. When she did, two or three liters of the water racing around her body poured down and disappeared into the manhole.

“Uh, um, just what…?” Not comprehending, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide. As a phenomenon, it looked like Current was simply throwing part of her valuable flowing-water armor into the sewer. The amount was about 10 percent, but the membrane of water covering her body was obviously thinner.

“Just leave it to Ren,” Utai calmly offered, beside him.

The silent Current lifted her face. “The enemy team is approaching through the sewers,” she announced matter-of-factly. “All three are moving together in a group. They’ll reach the center of the stage in a few minutes.”

“What?! H-how do you know that?!”

“The ability Hydro Auditory. Everything in the liquid my water is mixed in with is in my ears. I’ll tell you the rest as we move,” Current stated smoothly, and then she threw herself without hesitation into the manhole at her feet. Rather than using the ladder, she simply slid down the wall inside and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

“So…w-we really will have to fight down there…”

“But this isn’t a bad development. If they’re moving properly underground without smashing the walls aboveground with Incarnate techniques, the possibility that they’re parasitized by ISS kits is lower. And in the middle of a Territories stage…”

At Utai’s words, Haruyuki steeled himself and nodded. “That’s where the strongest base is. It’ll be annoying if they occupy it first…Okay, Mei! Let’s get moving, too.” He stretched out his right arm and lifted up Ardor Maiden’s petite form before taking a few steps forward and jumping into the manhole.

Although it was the first time he’d had a Territory Battle in this stage, that didn’t mean he had no experience with the Sewer stage itself. He had memorized the depth of the manholes and the internal structure. They were in free fall for about ten meters in the pitch-black, vertical hole, and then when they came out into a wide, gloomy space, he spread the wings on his back and braked. Silver Crow glided, carving out a spiral, and landed in the water with a splash next to Aqua Current, who had preceded them.

They were in an enormous underground tunnel with a semicircle cross section like a kamaboko fish cake; it was probably six or seven meters in diameter. The floor and walls were the same concrete as the world aboveground, but they were covered entirely with a mysterious mucus—maybe mold, maybe moss—and the metal pipes of various sizes were cruelly rusted. For lighting, there were only the old-style fluorescent tube lights attached to the ceiling, and in the darkness where the light didn’t reach, small, unidentifiable creatures darted about.

A thin layer of water was flowing along the level floor, but it was actually a disgusting, muddied gray color, and just being sunk into it up to the ankles was extremely damaging mentally. If the day came when you tripped and fell into it face-first, you would inevitably faint in agony—or Haruyuki had experienced as much.

You will absolutely not fall today! Resolving himself, Haruyuki asked Maiden, his right arm still wrapped around her, “Um, Mei, can I put you down…maybe?”

“…If I said no, would you hold me the whole time?”

“Huh? W-well, until we encounter the enemy…”

“That’s a good idea.” The words had no sooner come from his left than Akira was also leaning into him, so Haruyuki reflexively lifted her with his left arm. But no matter how small the F-type avatars might have been, lifting two of them at the same time did put a certain load on him.

“Uh, uh, if I run like this, there’s a fairly good chance that I’ll trip and splash in face-first…”

“It’s okay. Smash that.”

When he looked in the direction of Current’s pointing finger, he did indeed see a cylindrical silhouette enshrined there, almost lost in the darkness. The Sewer stage bonus item: the oil drum. He approached it carefully so that he wouldn’t trip, and when he pulverized it with a single kick, a mysterious luminescent gas wafted out and illuminated their surroundings for a few moments. Bathed in this, the three avatars watched their special-attack gauges jump to nearly half-full.

“All right. Now I can fly to the center of the stage carrying both of you!”

“Please. My Hydro Auditory’s about to run out. I expect the enemy team will reach the center…in another minute and thirty seconds.”

“That’s plenty of time!” Haruyuki shouted as he deployed the metal wings on his back. It took mental energy to fly in a confined space, but if they could trace the enemy’s position, he didn’t need to be careful of surprise attacks, so he could go pretty fast. He lightly vibrated his wings, and once his feet were a couple dozen centimeters about the muddy water, Haruyuki started flying parallel. The straight part of the tunnel ended in the blink of an eye, and a bifurcation to either side appeared ahead of them.

“Right,” Akira murmured in his ear before he could slacken his speed.

“Roger!” He inclined his body and went into a high-speed, right-angle turn, his specialty. The tip of his wing dipped in and out of the water surface, grazing it, and columns of water rose up behind them, one after another.

“It’s like a movie!” Utai said from his right arm, voice tinged with just the slightest bit of excitement.

Hearing this, Haruyuki wanted to go even faster, but it wouldn’t serve their purpose for him to come into contact with a wall because he was going too fast and dump all three of them into the sludge. Hurry carefully, he told himself.

He continued turning right and left, following Akira’s directions, and when they had flown for less than a minute, he could see a bright light up ahead. The blue color of it, closely resembling that of the special-attack gauge, was not a fluorescent light, but the light effect emitted by the base.

“That’s the center,” Akira noted. “The enemy team will be here in a few more seconds.”

“We’re going in!” he shouted as he spread out both wings wide and applied the brakes. Dropping speed, they flew out of the tunnel and into a round, underground space.

Sewer tunnels like the one they had come through met from all directions here, forming a gray lake in the center. The space was fifty meters across and probably thirty meters high, up to the ceiling of the dome. In the middle of the lake was a small concrete island, and on this floated a metal ring shining with blue light. Rotating slowly, emitting a strange vibration, this ring was the “foothold” specific to a Territories stage. Inside the ring, a player’s special-attack gauge was automatically charged, so the basic strategy of the Territories was to occupy the foothold somehow, defend it if you did manage to occupy it, or attack if it was occupied.

The foothold in the center of the stage was known as the “stronghold,” a charging ring larger than any of the other footholds. If they were small, three avatars could charge at the same time—although the recovery speed would slow down a bit—so whether this ring could be taken was often directly connected to victory or loss. Thus, Haruyuki started to fly to the small island in the center of the lake to occupy the still-deserted stronghold. But.

“Dodge!” At the same time as Akira’s sharp voice rang out, something flew in from the tunnel on the opposite side at high speed. Oval and straight line and arc formed of bright red flames—it was an eighth note.

“Whoa!” Crying out, he turned sharply to the right and dropped down. The sparks, scattering from the flaming musical note, bounced off Silver Crow’s armor in several places, but the heat resistance of his metal color proved a boon, and there was no damage.

The note carved out a loosely curving trajectory and flew off behind them. When it hit the concrete wall, it split into four thirty-second notes before forming an enormous vortex of flame.

Catching this on the edge of his field of view, Haruyuki fully braked on the verge of landing in the water. Unable to reach the foothold, he descended into the lake about twenty meters ahead of it. His feet were once more swallowed up by the muddy water, but in this situation, he obviously couldn’t waste his time with feelings of visceral disgust. Akira and Utai jumped down from Haruyuki’s arms and spread out to either side of him.

“…That technique just now, I’m pretty sure it was, um…”

The answer Haruyuki was trying to dig out of his memory came from the small duel avatar who leapt forcefully out of the tunnel he was facing. “So you dodge my Searing Note with no damage! You’re a real piece of work!” Paying no mind to the filth at her feet, the avatar ran splashing forward and stopped in a position where she created an isosceles triangle with Haruyuki and his friends and the floating island of the foothold as the triangle’s feet. She spun around twice there before striking a pose with her left hand on her side and her right thrust up into the air.

Her entire body was colored a fairly vivid, long-distance red. Of course, she wasn’t as saturated as the Red King, Scarlet Rain, but in the gloom of the underground space, the orange-scarlet stood out sharply. The armor of her upper body was in the shape of a blazer with a necktie, while that of her lower body was a miniskirt, and her head, with two long pigtails dangling down, was equipped with large ribbons on either side.

Haruyuki had seen this avatar, somehow reminiscent of an ancient cyber idol, before, albeit only two or three times in the Nerima area duel Galleries. “…Blaze Heart…”

Haruyuki’s voice as he uttered her name was a little hoarse, reflecting the anxiety and tension in his body.

Now that he was facing her directly, there was no longer any room for doubt. She was definitely a member of the Red Legion, Prominence. So then the problem was whether this battle was of her own volition or not.

Haruyuki took a step or two forward as he stared at Blaze’s body, still in her trademark pose, as if to devour it. The chest armor patterned after a blazer was split to either side, exposing the naked body of the avatar within. If she were parasitized with an ISS kit, it would have been right there. He concentrated, squinting hard to seek out the jet-black semisphere he had witnessed any number of times.

Perhaps sensing his gaze beyond Crow’s mirrored goggles, Blaze Heart slapped both hands over her chest and shouted, “Wh-what’re you staring at?! Sorry for being hella flat-chested!”

“Huh?! N-no, that’s, I wasn’t—”

“Whaaaat?! So then, you some kind of perv who likes washboards?! Now that you mention it, your comrades’ve got nothing going on upstairs, either!!”

At this from Blaze, he just barely managed to suppress the unconscious urge to look at Maiden and Current’s chests. Haruyuki mustered up all his willpower and fixed his eyes firmly in front. “N-no, that’s not it. It’s not that I like flat chests or whatever!”

“That’s right!” Utai’s crisp voice followed in declaration. “Crow doesn’t like breasts; he likes legs!!”

“Right, that’s exactly— N-no, no, no!!”

“Hmm, that so? I’ll make a note of it,” Akira mentioned to his left, and Haruyuki wanted to run away.

But fortunately, before he could put that plan into action, Utai murmured at a volume that their opponent could not hear, “From Blaze’s behavior, she doesn’t seem to have been parasitized by the kit. I can’t confirm a kit visually, either.”

“Y-yeah…you’re right. But then the problem is…” When Haruyuki had gotten that far, Blaze’s two comrades chased in after her, sending water droplets flying everywhere, and came to a stop.

On the right was a yellowish-brown M-type avatar equipped with enormous claws on each sturdy arm. And on the left was a pale peach–colored F-type carrying a parasol-shaped Enhanced Armament as tall as she was. Ochre Prison and Peach Parasol—both Burst Linkers were also members of Prominence.

Haruyuki diligently but as casually as possible looked over their chest armor, but he couldn’t see ISS kits on either one of them. When Blaze Heart brought her arms back down from in front of her body, he gave voice to the question swirling around in his heart.

“…You’re all in Prominence, right? So why?! Us and Promi, we have an unlimited cease-fire. Or is this the will of the Red King—”

“It’s not Rain!” The idol-type avatar in the scarlet blazer didn’t let Haruyuki finish. “We’re the ones who decided to attack!” Her high-pitched cry was clearly tinged with anger. Peach Parasol also raised her voice with “That’s right! Exactly!” and Ochre Prison opened and closed the claws of both hands, making a rasping sound.

Apparently, something had happened that Heart and her comrades could not stomach—to the point where they would break the truce prescribed by the Red King—sending them here to challenge Suginami in the Territories that day. But Haruyuki had absolutely no clue as to the details of that “something.”

When it came to incidents involving Nega Nebulus and Prominence, there was basically only the Fifth Chrome Disaster at the beginning of the year. But at that time, the Master, aka Niko, had set up some social engineering centered on Haruyuki, and none of the other Legion members had made an appearance. When the incident with Dusk Taker had happened in April, Niko and her deputy Pard had helped Haruyuki and Takumu, and they had maintained friendly relations ever since—or rather, the two of them were simply precious friends. So Haruyuki had a feeling of closeness to the Red Legion itself, and even if their opportunities for exchange were few, he had absolutely no memory of ever taking action hostile to its members. So he couldn’t even imagine what had so enraged Blaze Heart and her comrades.

He glanced to either side, and both Utai and Akira lightly shook their heads. If they didn’t know what was going on either, the only thing to do was simply ask directly. “Um, what’s the reason for this? Did we do something to Pro—?”

“Of coooooourse you did!!” Blaze Heart screamed, her round and cute eye lenses shining a blue reminiscent of high-temperature flames. “You’re not going to tell me you forgot about yesterday! I mean, after you tried to get the Red King, Scarlet Rain, stuck in an EK with a super-huge Legend-class Enemy when she was leading the hunt! There were twenty or more of us in Promi out hunting Enemies in the Toooooshima area of the Unlimited Neutral Field!”

“Wha— Wha—?!” Haruyuki threw his head back and then fiercely shook it, waving his hands from side to side as well. “W-we didn’t! We wouldn’t do that!”

Next to Heart, Peach Parasol’s eyes shone sharply. “That’s a bold-faced lie! Me and Heart and Och, we all tooootally saw it!” she cried, holding the umbrella-type Enhanced Armament in both hands and spinning it at high speed. Then the parasol stopped spinning and was turned forcefully toward Haruyuki as she set her sights on him with the gun muzzle in the tip. “It’s true you guys weren’t there, but…instead, she was riding on the back of a Legend class! Your Master! The Black King, Black Lotus!” Her voice, burning with anger, shot through Haruyuki’s chest like a bullet from a large-caliber rifle.

Even after the echoes created by the large underground dome faded and disappeared, Haruyuki couldn’t react. Ardor Maiden took a step forward instead and called back in her clear voice, “That’s not possible! Lotus would never launch a surprise attack like that. And to attack using an Enemy! She just wouldn’t!”

“Shut it! Shut up shut up shut uuuuuuup!!” The cry that gushed out of Blaze Heart had thrown off the sweetness of the idol and was somehow colored with grief. She clenched both her hands in front of her, and her small body shook violently as she continued to push the words out. “She did it, though! Two and a half years ago…a cowardly surprise attack on the previous Red King! Red Rider! She killed him, didn’t sheeeee?!”

“…!”

Haruyuki suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he unconsciously pressed a hand to his chest. He tried to take in the virtual air, but the sensation of his throat being blocked wouldn’t leave. He absolutely could not believe that Black Lotus—that Kuroyukihime—would have planned a surprise attack in the Unlimited Neutral Field on the Red Legion with a Legend-class Enemy, but it was a fact that she had caught the former Red King in a surprise attack and forced him to total point loss. There were many threads leading up to that tragedy, but Haruyuki didn’t have the time or the right to explain them all.

This time, neither Utai nor Akira moved to refute the claim. Blaze Heart lowered her voice just the slightest bit and said to the silent members of Nega Nebulus, “…The second Red King, Scarlet Rain, also took part in the Enemy hunt yesterday. The Black King simply set a Legend class on her and disappeared, but it was obvious that if Rain had gotten into a tight spot, she would have shown up again to try to land the killing blow.”

Hearing this, Haruyuki finally pushed aside tightness in his throat and asked, “S-so then, Rain…the Red King’s okay, right?!”

“Of cooooourse! ’Cos we were there with her! And as if we’re gonna let you kill our master ever again! Not one more tiiiiiiiime!!”

Upon Blaze’s declaration, Peach brandished her umbrella rifle, and Ochre snapped out the claws of both hands.

Haruyuki had been told that with the disappearance of the previous Red King two and a half years earlier, Prominence had been destroyed as a Legion. The former Promi members had split off into several groups and were locked in combat with the members of the small-and medium-size Legions that came to challenge them; it had apparently been something like the Warring States period of ancient times.

The one who stepped up and took the lead in this massive confusion, piling victory upon victory until she eventually reached level nine, the proof of kinghood, was the Immobile Fortress, the Bloody Storm, Scarlet Rain. After she became the second Red King, Prominence was reformed with her as a pillar, and things settled back down in the Nerima area. But not too many of the old members stayed in this new Prominence. The scale of thirty or so members was proof of that fact, making it the smallest of the current six Great Legions.

But from what he could infer from the way she talked, Blaze Heart was a holdover from the old Prominence. And given that Peach Parasol and Ochre Prison were also taking part in this territory attack, they probably were, too.

“…So then, Blaze, the reason you and your comrades are attacking Suginami is…to fight Black Lotus?” Haruyuki asked, and the three attackers nodded resolutely.

“That’s right! When she’s in her territory, we can’t challenge her to a regular duel! Rain said not to move until she can get a hold on the situation, but…we just can’t allow this! Even three against one, I don’t think we could beat the Black King, but, but at least one blow! We won’t be satisfied until we punch her a gooooooood one!!” As Peach shouted this, Haruyuki definitely saw a battle spirit that resembled flames flicker faintly around her right fist.

There was no way the Black King had used an Enemy to hunt the Red King—absolutely none. To Kuroyukihime, Niko was no longer just the head of a Legion they had a cease-fire with. She was a cherished friend in the real world. Just like it was for Haruyuki.

So if Blaze and her companions were saying they saw Black Lotus on the back of a Legend-class Enemy, then he could only assume it was a trick set up by a force that was neither Nega Nebulus nor Prominence. But even if he explained that here and now, the three enemy Linkers were burning with such anger that they likely wouldn’t accept it. The grudge from Red Rider’s fall was pushing them forward.

“…Unfortunately, the Black King is not in this stage,” Aqua Current uttered abruptly, quietly. She reached out her right hand and clenched it, scattering water droplets. “So we’ll prove it to you on her behalf. The fact that Black Lotus and the Nega Nebulus she leads would absolutely never set up a sneak attack on your king.”

“And how are you going to prove that?! We’re not interested in your little excuses!” Peach Parasol shouted.

“Naturally, we will not rely on words,” Ardor Maiden responded boldly, not flinching at the gun barrel that threatened to erupt in flames at any moment. “We are Burst Linkers. So we speak with our fists and our battle cries!” Utai thrust out her right hand just like Akira had and made an adorable fist.

Although Haruyuki felt like he should say something, too, he unfortunately couldn’t come up with anything to add to the declarations of the two more experienced fighters. Left with no choice, he silently followed their example and stretched a tight fist out.

Seeing the three fists lined up, Blaze Heart started to call something out reflexively, but she swallowed it down hard. After a second, she replied, “Just what we were hoping for! We’ll kick you down before we get to the Black King!!” She opened her right fist—still thrust out—and continued, “Mic onnnnnnnn!”

This was apparently a key word, since a red light gathered around the palm of her hand to produce a single object. For an Enhanced Armament, it was fairly small. The cylinder, which was twenty centimeters or so long with a rounded end, was indeed the very definition of a microphone.

Maiden, the Black team’s long-distance fighter, also called up her Enhanced Armament: “That the path of the bow and arrow does not stray.”

When she uttered this poetic phrase, flames gathered in her left hand and stretched up and down to generate a slender longbow. Named “Flame Caller,” the powerful weapon combined force and accuracy.

In Territory Battles of three against three, it often happened that the teams scattered before meeting, so that right from the start it was one-on-one duels in three different places. But when both sides met while still together like this, the synergistic effects of abilities, the speed at which team members understood each other—in other words, teamwork—became an important element in deciding victory.

In that sense, the three members of Nega Nebulus were at a disadvantage. This was the first Territories duel for the team of Ardor Maiden, Aqua Current, and Silver Crow. They hadn’t developed a single three-person combo technique.

So then scatter and take it to one-on-one?! Or aim for improvised combo techniques?! As if targeting Haruyuki’s fleeting hesitation, the Promi team took the lead in moving. Actually, more precisely, they’d started before he even knew it. Ochre Prison, who hadn’t said a single word so far, was not simply a silent character, but apparently was getting ready to activate some secret technique.

“Edged Cage!!” he shouted in a throaty voice. He plunged his hands, equipped with the enormous claws that were his most significant feature, up to the wrists in the filthy water at his feet.

Instinctively determining this to be a grounder type of attack, Haruyuki sent his eyes racing through the water. There were nearly twenty meters between the two teams. No matter how fast the technique was, it was possible to see it and get out of the way.

Clang! The heavy, sharp metallic sound echoed in all directions. Rising up from the water to surround Haruyuki and his team were Ochre’s claws made enormous—now many times larger than they had been. And it wasn’t just their size; their number had also increased. Nearly thirty claws, lined up with a gap of a mere twenty centimeters between them, came together and closed above their heads.

In the blink of an eye, the Black team had been confined in a cage of steel claws. Though when Haruyuki thought about it, “ochre” was basically a pure, indirect-type yellow. There was no reason an avatar like that would have a special attack that was simple, straightforward long-distance firepower.

“…You were a little too late in inferring the nature of the attack,” Akira murmured, pressed up against Haruyuki to avoid touching the cage. From her tone, she had somehow guessed that Ochre’s technique was a capture type, but had waited for Haruyuki’s instruction as per her previous declaration.

“I-I’m sorry!” he shouted, flustered at the sudden error. “I’ll break it right away!”

At a glance, the individual claws didn’t look that strong. But just when he’d clenched his fist to smash it, he was stopped by Utai. “You have to look carefully. The claws all have blades on the inner edge. If you simply punch them, you’ll be the one to take damage.”

“Nngh…” Indeed, all the claws making up the cage had sharp edges like razor blades, facing inward rather than outward. No matter how resistant to slicing attacks Silver Crow was as a metal color, he wouldn’t get off scot-free if he punched the blade. It was possible to hit the side with all his might and break out that way, but since there were only twenty centimeters between each set of claws, he couldn’t get the correct angle for a punch.

“R-right…A special attack for a special attack!” Haruyuki clenched his left hand and blocked with both fists in front of his face. Silver Crow’s lone special attack, Head Butt, required a large motion and took a long time to charge up, and even if he did manage to launch it in the middle of high-speed, hand-to-hand combat, it wouldn’t land on its target. But if he used it against a motionless object, the effect was huge. He glanced up at his special-attack gauge and confirmed that it was just barely charged enough.

With his arms still crossed, he leaned back, and light began to gather at his forehead with a screeching sound. The two more experienced Burst Linkers, seeing this, commented coolly once more.

“I don’t think the aim is bad, but…”

“Is it time to use it now?”

—What? Haruyuki said in his heart.

“As if I’d let yoooouuuu!” Blaze Heart shouted. “Searing Noooooote!”

She yelled the technique name loudly toward the mic in her right hand. The mic glittered red, and then, almost as though the voice itself had sparked it, an enormous flaming eighth note was generated in midair.

Krrr! Roaring, the deadly annotation charged toward them, and Haruyuki instantly knew he wouldn’t make it in time. Since he had a pretty good idea of what would happen if he ignored his instincts and insisted on activating his special attack, he quickly dropped his arms.

The light gathering at his forehead dissipated futilely into the air, and shaking off any regret, he shouted, “Defensive formation!” At the same time, he tried to step out in front of his teammates to use his metal shell’s heat tolerance as a shield.

But getting the jump on him was Aqua Current. “Roger.” With a single word, she wrapped her arms around Crow and Maiden and then shifted the flowing-water armor of her body to envelop all three of them.

The flying, flaming eighth note touched the top of the cage of blades and split into four thirty-second notes, which dropped down around the cage, bounced once, and exploded.

The flash colored his field of view orange, and then a swirling vortex of fire pressed in on them from all sides. The flames slipped through the gaps between the claws and filled the inside of the cage. In an instant, the three-centimeter-thick layer of water heated up, and a powerful sensation of heat was communicated to Haruyuki’s body. Fortunately, however, the temperature stopped increasing right around the level of a fairly hot bath. The strength of the blaze weakened and flowed back outside the cage again.

“Th-thank you…That’s just like you, Curren.” Since they were still wrapped in a layer of water, his words sounded burbly.

Akira quickly shook her head. “If we’re hit with that attack again, the water will boil and evaporate. I can replenish from the lake below, but that water’s fairly dirty, so it’d take time to purify it.”

Aqua Current meant that she could supplement losses to her water armor with water from the stage, but she had to remove any impurities before she could use it. The muddy water of a Sewer stage was, in that sense, very nearly the absolute worst. The only dirtier water he could think of was the poison bogs of the Corroded Forest stage or the blood ponds of the top-level, dark-type Deadly Sin stage.

“But…they shouldn’t be able to shoot off a large attack like that in succession…,” Haruyuki said, searching for a way to escape with one half of his brain. Given that Blaze Heart’s attack of throwing flaming music notes looked very impressive and had a wide effect range, it had to have eaten up a fair bit of her special-attack gauge. And in this Sewer stage, breaking objects other than the oil drums didn’t charge your gauge. Before the next music note attack came, she’d have to charge her special-attack gauge somehow.

Once his thoughts reached this point, he finally realized it: There was a way to recover your gauge more easily than oil drums, and forever on top of that.

“Crap…!” By the time the word slipped unconsciously from Haruyuki’s mouth, Blaze Heart was already starting to run to the right. What she was aiming for was, of course, the large energy charger in the center of the underground dome, the stronghold. Right now, it was still neutral, but thirty seconds after an avatar entered the metal ring, it would shift to occupied status, and the function to charge special-attack gauges would be opened. When that happened, Blaze would be free to shoot off as many flaming music notes as she wanted.

They had to prevent her from occupying the foothold at least. The only way that would be possible when they were locked up in this cage of blades was with the longbow Ardor Maiden carried. But naturally, the enemy was likely anticipating that. There was no doubt in his mind that Peach Parasol and her large rifle were doing nothing but standing by because she was waiting on Maiden’s shot. So then…

“…Curren, on the count of three, pull back your water, and Mei, please aim for Blaze with your bow.” When he gave the instructions in a quiet voice, Utai and Akira nodded slightly.

Three, two, one. Counting down to zero, Haruyuki quickly crouched down. At the same time as the layer of water blanketing the three of them returned to Current’s body, Ardor Maiden, who had been in Silver Crow’s shadow up to that point, lifted the bow in her left hand. When her right hand touched the bowstring, a flame arrow glittered red, and she pulled it back with all her might.

However, the instant she saw Maiden’s bow, Peach Parasol also moved. “I’m not letting that happen!”

She had no sooner dashed over to the line that connected Maiden and Blaze than she was opening her umbrella all the way. The flower petal–like metal plates expanded to a second level and instantly formed a circular shield extending a meter and a half in diameter. No matter how much power Maiden’s flame arrow contained, it would have been difficult to destroy a defensive Enhanced Armament with a normal attack. It was a different story if you fired over and over at the same place, but in the time it took for something like that, Blaze would have easily overtaken the foothold.

However, Haruyuki’s true aim was not Blaze Heart as she took over the foothold. Still crouching, he changed the direction he was facing and vibrated the wings that were just half-deployed on his back with all his might. Normally, he would shoot forward and crash into the blades of the cage, dragging Utai and Akira along with him, but that didn’t happen—because the tips of his wings were sunk deeply into the muddy water on the floor of the stage.

Instead, the high-frequency vibration of the metallic fins dredged up water and changed it into mist, generating an enormous cloud of fog to their rear. The white haze flowed toward Peach and robbed her of her view. Naturally, Maiden couldn’t see Peach or Blaze, either, but Haruyuki had only ordered her to aim. The shooting was, naturally, another obstacle altogether.

“Mei, Ochre!”

“Roger! Understood!” At a speed that suggested she had anticipated this instruction from Haruyuki, Utai changed the angle of her flame arrow. The instant she had Ochre Prison in her sights—who couldn’t move while he was maintaining the cage of knives—she was launching her arrow without a moment’s hesitation.

Ochre had to have been able to see Utai, but he couldn’t move while the capture technique was active. The flame arrow flew through the air, carving out a red trajectory in space, and hit home squarely on Ochre’s round head, which was wrapped in a frame like a birdcage.

Whoosh! The flames that rose up enveloped his head.

“Mwaaaah…!” Speaking for the second time that day, Ochre Prison threw his head back. As his arms were yanked out of the water, the cage of knives that restrained Haruyuki and his team sank into the water and disappeared.

Haruyuki couldn’t let this chance get away. But he also didn’t have time to give detailed instructions. Thus, he simply shouted, “I’ll leave the rest to you!”

With this instruction that probably meant he was a failure as a leader, he used up the last tiny bit remaining in his special-attack gauge and flew. His gauge was used up immediately after taking off, but it was more than enough to leap a mere twenty meters. Crow flew past Peach Parasol, still cloaked in thick fog and panicking, and plunged forward toward the foothold on the other side of her. The indicator bar on the ring showed that the time remaining to occupation was two seconds…one second…

“Aaaaah!!”

“Wha—?!” Blaze Heart finally noticed Crow descending on her as he crashed into her.

He had to get his opponent out of the foothold. With nothing else in his head, Haruyuki crouched down to yank her from the little island, and from the force of it, plunged into the muddy water together with Blaze.

“Aaaaah! Let gooooo! So dirty! It stinks! It’s slimyyyyyy!!”

“I-I’m not in love with it eeeeeeeeither!!” he shouted back, desperately restraining the flailing Blaze. It wasn’t like the occupy timer would reset because he’d chased her from the ring. He had to keep her away from it until it gradually dropped to zero.

He was honestly reluctant to use a hold on a small-statured F-type avatar with an idol-like design, and a flat-chested one to boot, but if he loosened his grip even a little, she might slip away with the help of the slime. So he used not just both hands but also his feet to keep her pinned.

“C-c-come onnnnn! What are you doing to Heartchiiii?!” Finally free of the thick fog, Peach Parasol closed her enormous umbrella even as her eye lenses threatened to jump off her face mask. The gun muzzle tip stretched out with a chak, and the Enhanced Armament changed from shield to rifle mode. “Die, you perv! Yeah!!” Flying into such a rage that any thought that she might accidentally shoot “Heartchi” had flown right out of her head, Peach readied her rifle to shoot Haruyuki.

“Whoa! Don’t shoooot!” shrieked Blaze.

“I’m not a perv!” Haruyuki tried shouting, but the murderous rage in Peach’s eyes didn’t disappear.

“Charge Shot!!” When the trigger was pulled, light gathered at the muzzle for a moment before a ragged flame jetted out. The large-diameter, glittering pink bullet grazed Haruyuki’s helmet with a choon!, skipped up against Blaze’s ribbon, and then shot up a massive column of water nearby.

“Eee! Uh, um, do something about that!!” Haruyuki shouted.

The idol avatar shook her head back and forth quickly, as if having forgotten for a moment that she was pinned down. “Once Peacchi gets like that, she won’t stop until her target’s full of holes!”

“Wh-what?! So she’s a sniper who’s snapped?”

Even during this exchange, Peach was yanking the bolt handle of the rifle with a high-pitched sound and ejecting the round to ready the gun once more. Haruyuki and Blaze both shuddered and clung to each other unconsciously.

Fortunately, however, the next round was not launched. In the large underground dome, he heard the call of a technique name in a clear voice tinged with exasperation. “Flame Torrent.”

The longbow was turned diagonally upward to launch a flame arrow. Once the arrow passed the peak of the parabola, it split into dozens more, transforming into a crimson rain on Peach Parasol’s head.

“Waaah?!” she cried out, apparently snapped out of berserker mode. The folded plates enclosing the rifle body opened, and she hid herself under the Enhanced Armament, which was turned umbrella once again. A rain of flames poured down.

The range of the technique was surprisingly small—the flame arrows didn’t reach as far as Haruyuki and Blaze—but being within its range was pretty awful. Of course, the ground was covered in water, but the arrows continued to burn even after they fell on the water surface. A large number of them also pierced Peach’s umbrella, and she was evidently in a burning hell.

“Th-that’s Negabu’s Testarossa…” Blaze Heart’s trembling voice came from under him.

“Huh? D-do you know her?” Haruyuki asked unconsciously.

“Everyone at the midlevel of Promi’s heard the rumors. She’d fly in carried by the ICBM Sky Raker and then turn the field into a sea of flames with that technique. And then finally she’d drop down on the foothold, a fireball herself.”

“Wh-whoa…” Trembling along with Blaze, he remembered now the stories he’d heard. The second Red King, Niko herself, had said that even she’d gotten into a world of hurt when Maiden had dropped down at close range during the Territories way back when. And it was true that if an avatar with that kind of firepower occupied the foothold, it would be a difficult job to get close to it, much less get it back.

Immediately after he had this thought, Ardor Maiden completed the occupation of the foothold, and the metal ring was colored the Legion’s shade of black.

“C, I’ll keep Peach in check!” Utai shouted to Haruyuki, pulling back her bowstring as it pointed at the sky.

“I’ve got Ochre,” Akira’s voice added from a distance. “Crow, you two leaders settle this!”

When Haruyuki glanced behind him, Aqua Current was toying with Ochre Prison, who flailed and slashed with his claws while she danced around at high speed like flowing water itself. If the two veterans were on top of the rest of the Prominence team, he wouldn’t have to worry about any simple counterattacks.

Haruyuki met the eyes of Blaze Heart, who was still pinned beneath him. Silently, they reached a mutual understanding and pulled away from each other, bounding up from the muck.

“Aaaall right…Now it’s for real, one-on-one, black and white—I mean, red and black, we’ll settle this!”

“Wh-when you put it like that, it sounds like we’re already the losers. But this is just what I was hoping for!”

Haruyuki readied himself, sending water droplets flying, and Blaze showed off her spin and pose once more. There weren’t even two meters between them, but he didn’t get the sense that his opponent was falling back.

“You’re prob’ly thinking ‘hand-to-hand with a long-distance red’!” Hitting the nail on the head, Blaze let a grin rise up on her adorable face mask. “Let me tell you! Long-distance red is the red of flames! And the red of flames, well”—she pressed the mic in her right hand to her mouth and said, ridiculously loud—“is the red of hot bloooooood! Burning Heaaaaaaart!!”

As her voice touched the bright red mic, sparks flew off and started to burn. Searing Note, the special attack Blaze has used twice up to that point, was a long-distance attack that generated flame notes from her voice. So Haruyuki reflexively moved out of the path of the mic.

But what it produced this time was not a music note but an enormous heart, which shone so red it was dazzling. And this crumbled immediately after it was generated to wrap Blaze herself in an intense fire. The long pigtails also changed to flames and stood on end, undulating. Her eye lenses, which had been a sapphire color up to that point, turned into rubies.

“Silver Crow!!” Transformed into the spirit of fire, Blaze Heart shouted in a voice tinged with a high-pitched, metallic edge, “If you believe in your master, then try to stop my fists with those feeliiiiiiings!!”

As if unable to withstand the heat of that line, even the mic clutched in her right hand burned up, becoming a massive fire that enveloped her fist.

The water on the ground around Blaze began to burble and boil. Wondering how an avatar could have this high of a temperature and still be all right, Haruyuki glanced at the enemy health gauge in the top right of his field of view and saw that she wasn’t, in the end, entirely okay. Blaze Heart’s gauge was decreasing with each passing second, meaning she was also burning herself with those flames.

So then if I run around and dodge, she’ll eventually destroy herself?

It would have been a lie to say the thought didn’t cross his mind. Or rather that, if this were a normal duel, a normal Territories match, Haruyuki wouldn’t have hesitated to do exactly that. But Blaze Heart and her comrades were enraged that their beloved leader had been set up for an Enemy kill, and they had attacked Suginami area to land just one blow—even though they knew they could never be victorious in an encounter with the Black King.

In which case, running away was basically the same as confessing that the feelings of love he had for Kuroyukihime, his own Legion Master and parent, were inferior to the passion of Blaze and her comrades. It was emotion, rather than logic, that told Haruyuki this.

“…Obviously I believe in her!!” he shouted, clenching his right hand into a fist, and he dropped his hips to ready himself. Naturally, since using the Incarnate system in any normal duel, including the Territories, was the greatest taboo, he couldn’t make his fist shine like Blaze’s, but even still, his focused battle spirit became a faint signal transmitted to the BB Imagination Control System, and something like a heat haze shimmered around his fist.

Seeing Haruyuki brace himself, Blaze brought an MC’s grin across her face. “Thaaaat’s the spirit! No tricks…Here I cooooooome!!” Kicking up stagnant water, she charged at him in a straight line. Whirling around once, she launched her blazing fist into an impressively forceful right straight.

At the same time, Haruyuki also leapt forward. In contrast to Blaze’s showy motion, he barely raised his arm. Instead, he simply drew back his fist and accelerated with a kick.

The incandescent meteor of Blaze’s punch and the almost pure-white beam of light of Haruyuki’s carved out exactly the same trajectory and smashed into each other. A light effect of fire and light canceling each other out shimmered in the air, and a little after that, the impact wave shook the stage. The water below their feet turned hot and was pushed back by the pressure, revealing the concrete floor.

However zealous an idol she might have been, Blaze Heart was still a long-distance type. Her striking power and armor strength were fundamentally different from those of Silver Crow, a close-range metal type. But while unable to push Crow’s fist back, Blaze’s did stop it solidly with the help of her special attack.

In this situation, the advantage went to Blaze. Swallowed in flames, Crow’s fist instantly became red-hot, and his health gauge started to slowly decrease. He might have had the high heat resistance of the metal colors, but the melting point of silver was fairly low compared with that of iron or tungsten. If he stayed in direct contact like this, his armor would melt away, and not only his fist but the majority of his right arm would be blown off.

“…Are you not moving because you’re sneering at my flames?! Or are you just an iiiiidiot?!” Blaze shouted, still in this contest of strength with Haruyuki, her tone triumphant and yet somehow slightly dissatisfied.

“The latter!” he shouted back even through the scorching heat.

Meeting her head-on like this and then continuing the pointless contest of strength was, strategically speaking, the height of folly. But this situation was precisely what Haruyuki wanted. From between clenched teeth, he squeezed out what voice he could. “But I know my parent, the Black King, would do this, too! ‘Throw clever retreats to the dogs; once you dive into the stage, the only thing is to duel with all you have’…That’s her teaching!”

“…!”

Instantly, Blaze opened her crimson eye lenses wide.

Haruyuki wanted to go further and tell her, Which is why the Black King would never incite an Enemy and then run off on her own, but he couldn’t communicate all his feelings with words alone. In the end, it was the fist. He had to tell Blaze with the battle spirit in his fists.

The armor of his right hand passed the red-hot stage and glittered orange, apparently finally on the verge of melting. His health gauge dropped more quickly, already cut down to 70 percent.

From here, it was next to impossible to push back Blaze’s enhanced fist. But in the back of Haruyuki’s brain lived a single image: That of a super-hard metal color who, despite being as small as Silver Crow, slammed dead-on into a large avatar and failed to retreat a single step. Wolfram Cerberus.

The force of Cerberus’s punches and head butts wasn’t dependent only on the performance of the tungsten armor he was born with. The reason why it was so hard, so heavy, was that he put all of himself into his blows. Every ounce of energy the duel avatar produced was focused on the one point, the one moment of impact.

What made this possible was his incredibly tough joints. Cerberus probably locked all the joints on his body in the moment of attack to become a single lump of metal that crashed into the enemy. It was a technique that was the polar opposite of the Way of the Flexible—the idea of making the entire body soft to accept and let flow the enemy’s attack—that Haruyuki had learned from Kuroyukihime. The so-called Way of the Stiff. That was what made Cerberus’s technique a knockout blow.

Naturally, without the hardness and weight of tungsten or the same joint strength, Silver Crow couldn’t flat-out copy Cerberus’s Way of the Stiff. But even if it wasn’t possible with his whole body, he could definitely turn at least his right arm into a lump of steel for just a moment. Before he learned about the Incarnate system, Haruyuki had gouged the incredibly hard wall of a building in the Demon City stage with his bare hands, so Crow’s arms had to have that much hardness to them.

Haruyuki turned his body slightly and stretched out straight the right arm that continued to fight Blaze’s punch. He brought his wrist, elbow, shoulder, and even the right wing extending from his shoulder blade into a single straight line, imagining passing a steel shaft through there. If his joints bent or warped even a tiny bit, his arm wouldn’t be able to completely endure the action and would break.

Cerberus, I’m just going to borrow your technique, he murmured to the duel avatar with the wolflike head—no, to the younger boy he’d had a fleeting encounter with in the real—and abruptly stopped breathing. From his perspective, he had a few seconds before the armor of his right hand melted. This was his first and last chance.

“Here I go, Blaze!!”

Perhaps sensing the end of the contest was at hand even before Haruyuki shouted this, Blaze Heart also responded in a flash, “Come, Crow!!”

Her flames burned noticeably brighter, and in that instant, Haruyuki kicked fiercely off the ground with both feet. At the same time, he forced the wings on his back to full power. A roar shook the air like the firing of a large-caliber rifle, and massive quantities of sparks scattered from Crow’s right wrist, elbow, and shoulder. But his arm did not bend or crumple; instead, it shot forward with a strength and speed on par with Cerberus’s iron fist or even Cyan Pile’s Pile Driver.

The flames enveloping Blaze Heart’s fist cut a perfect circle into the air and then scattered just before the small avatar was bounced back from the force and crashed into the distant wall of the dome.

Three minutes later.

Peach Parasol, her umbrella Enhanced Armament full of holes from Ardor Maiden’s Flame Torrent; Ochre Prison, all the claws on both hands severed by an unknown technique of Aqua Current’s; and Blaze Heart, entire body burned to a crisp, got together in a line and bowed their heads at the same time, declaring in unison, “We give up!!”

All six fighters had escaped from the dark, confined, slippery sewers and moved aboveground to Kanpachi Street. The time remaining was five minutes and a dozen or so seconds, and if the Territory Battle ended like this, it would be a victory for Haruyuki’s team from the combined value of their health gauges.

Even so, Haruyuki maintained the bare minimum of caution that Burst Linker etiquette dictated as he returned a light bow. “Uh, um. GG—no, I mean, good game.”

Hearing this, the three members of Prominence lifted their faces and exchanged glances before smiling together—although Haruyuki still didn’t know what were the eyes and what was the mouth in Ochre’s birdcage mask.

Haruyuki didn’t understand the reason for their reaction, and seeing his perplexed face, Peach Parasol said on their behalf, “You get that Pard speak from Pard herself?”

“Oh! R-right…Yeah, basically.”

Pard, aka Blood Leopard, who made free use of all kinds of abbreviations not just within the game but in real-life conversation as well, was one of the Triplex, the senior executives of the Red Legion. Naturally, Peach and the others would have been hearing Pard-speak on a regular basis.

All three of them relaxed their shoulders, and not letting the opportunity slip by, Haruyuki ever-so-timidly broached the taboo topic. “Um, about the Enemy kill in the Unlimited Neutral Field that you were talking about before the fight…”

“You don’t have to say any more than that.” Blaze Heart raised her right hand and shook her head lightly. “To be honest, I’m still not particularly interested in accepting everything you say…I can’t believe there’s another duel avatar besides Black Lotus in the Accelerated World who’s that black and that pointed. But—” She cut herself off for a moment and dropped her gaze to her right hand, slowly closing it as if confirming the sensation of impact lingering there. “But I know at least that you completely believe in your own master. The way we believe in Scarlet Rain. So we’re gonna swallow a whole bunch of things right now. ’Cos our master told us to.”

“Th-tha—” Haruyuki reflexively opened his mouth to thank her, and Blaze stopped him again with her right hand.

“I can’t accept those words. Even setting aside the Enemy-kill issue, it’s an indisputable fact that Black Lotus pushed Red Rider to total point loss with a surprise attack. This alone we can’t forget, no matter what Rain and Pard say. So the three of us are never gonna be friends with your Nega Nebulus.”

“…”

Haruyuki resisted the urge to tell them that even with the Red Rider incident, there were circumstances the three of them didn’t know about. But just as Blaze had said, a fact was a fact. Kuroyukihime had taken the head of the former Red King in her desire to reach level ten. That had been her own choice, and the resentment and hatred that Blaze and her comrades had now was a result of that choice. Even her child, Haruyuki, couldn’t intervene in that fate from the sidelines. So he simply nodded silently.

With the time remaining at two minutes, the three members of the Red Legion turned on their heels together. Territory Battles didn’t end until one of the teams was completely annihilated or thirty minutes had passed, but perhaps to indicate that they had nothing left to discuss, they intended to leave Kanpachi Road.

“Tell us just one last thing,” Aqua Current called quietly to their receding backs. Blaze Heart stopped and finally looked back, pigtails swinging. “You said the Black King incited an Enemy to attack and then disappeared. Does that mean she ran off across the ground?”

This question was apparently unexpected, and Blaze blinked her eye lenses, now light blue again, several times, before shaking her head quickly from side to side. “No. She jumped down from the back of the massive Enemy, and then it was like she plunged her entire body into the ground and disappeared.”