Accel World - Volume 26 - Chapter 1

1

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!

Haruyuki glanced dispassionately at the burning letters. He did feel the usual pre-duel thrill, but the core of his being was cool as ice. He kept his emotions in check and his mind sharp as he waited to be sent to the duel stage.

The flames faded away, and a sinking sensation came over him. He fell through an infinite darkness until eventually, his feet touched hard ground, and his field of view took on brightness and color once more.

He had been walking down Oume Highway on his way to Umesato Junior High when he was challenged. The scene that manifested before his eyes now was roughly that terrain as it had been. But cruel cracks cut across the sidewalk, and the multiuse buildings and apartments to either side of the road were charred as though they had been exposed to intense heat. The sky that had been a clear, cloudless blue in the real world was now blanketed by a roiling yellow sandstorm.

A lower nature-type—the flame-affiliated Scorched Earth stage—Haruyuki realized right away. He turned his gaze toward the guide cursor displayed in the overlay in the center of his field of view. The light-blue triangle pointed southwest and trembled slightly. His opponent was apparently closing the distance between them in a straight line, but judging from the pale color of the cursor, it would be a little longer before they made contact.

Haruyuki looked up and to the right. The enemy avatar name displayed below a health gauge there read “Zelkova Verger.” He had learned neither of these words so far in junior high, but he knew what they meant nonetheless. “Zelkova” was some kind of tree, and a “verger” was a guard. So tree guard. But this didn’t mean someone who guarded the tree; his opponent’s affiliation was the tree part.

It was no mere chance that he knew this much about his opponent, despite the fact that this was his first duel against them. This knowledge was the result of a lot of hard work day and night for the last few days to memorize the details of Burst Linkers active in the Tokyo area.

Naturally, he had made similar efforts in the past, but his focus had mainly been limited to the members of the seven—well, excluding Nega Nebulus, the six Great Legions. But now he had expanded that focus to Burst Linkers from small and midsize Legions, as well as to those without any Legion affiliation. Given that there were around a thousand Burst Linkers in total, remembering every little thing about all of them wasn’t as simple as memorizing mathematical formulas or historical eras, but he was currently in no position to complain.

At any rate, it was a good omen that Zelkova Verger was among the just under five hundred people whose names, Legion affiliations, and characteristics he’d memorized thus far. Zelkova was a member of the small Legion Gallant Hawks based out of Mitaka, which neighbored Suginami to the west. The fact that he had appeared from the southwest likely meant he’d taken the Keio Inogashira Line to come on an expedition to Suginami Area No. 3, although one could not call that a particularly far expedition.

The reason Haruyuki had never had the chance to fight Zelkova before, despite being neighbors, was simply because he had never gone to Mitaka with the objective of dueling, plus the fact that he was protected by the right to refuse challenges in the Suginami area, given that it was Nega Nebulus territory. However, that privilege had been stripped away three days earlier, on July 24.

He yanked back his thoughts as they threatened to slip away into reminiscence. He had to concentrate on the duel before him.

Zelkova Verger was an M-type, level six. Haruyuki’s Silver Crow was also level six, so in light of the principle of “same level, same potential,” there was no significant difference in the abilities of their duel avatars. The contest would be decided by the knowledge and experience, insight and judgment, and inspiration of the Burst Linkers themselves.

The enemy was still approaching in a straight line. He was able to do that, despite the dense clusters of buildings and houses that filled Suginami Area No. 3, because the majority of structures in the Scorched Earth stage were essentially skeletons, nothing more than floors and pillars. The burnt-out walls were much more brittle than they looked, and most would crumble to dust if stormed by a heavyweight avatar. So a player could charge up their special attack gauge while they smashed through the shells of the structures.

But Silver Crow was a metal color and lightweight, so he couldn’t break through the thick walls just by running at them. To charge his special attack gauge, his only option was to break whichever walls looked like they would crumble from his punches and kicks.

Haruyuki turned his gaze upward. He could see seven or eight Gallery members encamped on the roofs of buildings with frames laid bare. Some among them probably intended to challenge him once his duel with Zelkova was finished. Silver Crow’s specs had long been public knowledge, but he was under no obligation to reveal his pre-fight routines.

He returned his gaze to the guide cursor and saw that the blue had gotten quite saturated. Estimating that the distance between him and Zelkova was down to five hundred meters, he started running west on Oume Highway.

Before too long, a large intersection came into view up ahead. If he proceeded straight, he would reach the gates of Umesato Junior High, but there was no point in going to school in a duel stage. Although luring an enemy to familiar terrain was an effective strategy, it also came with the risk of being cracked in the real world.

He turned left at the intersection, started down Itsukaichi Highway, and picked up speed. After a minute or so, he turned left onto a random road and went around to the rear of his charging opponent, smashing the buildings to his left as he did so. But naturally, Zelkova would realize that Haruyuki was trying to get behind him and adjust his own course accordingly.

The guide cursor bobbing in his field of view turned just a little bit faster; Zelkova had shifted to the left. Haruyuki also turned left at the same time and plunged into a narrow residential alley. This movement would have been communicated to Zelkova through the cursor, but he still had plenty of time to set a trap.

Although the buildings in the Scorched Earth stage were burnt-out husks, walls and fences in this dense residential area still more or less remained, so visibility was poor. Duelers had nothing to rely on but the subtle movements of the guide cursor to estimate their enemy’s location and direction of movement. But too great a focus on the cursor in an attempt to gain the upper hand would lead you to forget a single fundamental rule: The guide cursor only spun around three hundred and sixty degrees horizontally. It did not take into account vertical movement.

“Hup!” Haruyuki kicked off the ground with a soft cry after he’d gone some ways down the alley.

He found footholds on a half-destroyed wall and a charred tree, and leapt up to the roof of a two-story house. If he stopped there for even a moment, Zelkova might notice something was up, so he jumped from rooftop to rooftop at the same speed as he had been running.

In other stages where the buildings were more solid, running across rooftops was a standard technique, but it became dramatically more difficult in the Scorched Earth stage. Reinforced concrete buildings and apartments were one thing, since even burnt-out, their roofs would not break so easily as that. But the roofs of residential houses were about as tough as thick cardboard, so the most lightweight of avatars could easily step through them by accident.

The reason he was nonetheless able to advance without falling through one of these cardboard roofs was thanks to the super-high-level task given to him by his new master—or rather, teacher. And that task was to first step onto the surface of a body of water with his right foot, and then take a step forward with his left foot before his right sank. Repeat this process to take ten steps in a row on top of that body of water. He very much wanted to insist that she had assigned him an impossible task, but she had apparently mastered it in the distant past. Now she had the Surface Walk ability, which allowed her to walk across water without sinking.

So these last few days, before Haruyuki went to bed, he had been diving into the Unlimited Neutral Field to train his water-walking on whatever random water surface was around if it was a Water stage, or on the temple pond or school pool if it wasn’t. He’d been doing this for nearly two months of inside time, but all he had to show for his efforts was a mere five steps in a row. To be perfectly honest, he was starting to feel pretty jaded about the whole thing, but he also couldn’t quite bring himself to abandon the endeavor after getting this far.

It would probably take him another year or two to make it to the ten steps he’d been assigned, but it turned out that he’d already gained something from all his training: His ability to minimize his weight had seriously improved. Compared with water, into which even a grain of sand would quickly sink, the charred roofs of the Scorched Earth stage were as sturdy as steel.

After thirty seconds of racing along the densely packed rooftops with a light bouncing motion that felt weird even to him, he heard the dry roar of destruction up ahead and saw yellowish smoke drift into the air from the left. Zelkova had smashed the wall of a building.

The destruction of this object filled Zelkova’s special attack gauge. Now he would no doubt attempt to blindside Haruyuki with a large attack, and thereby gain initiative. Even though the other Burst Linker was still thirty meters away, Haruyuki could feel this energy crackling in the air around him.

Naturally, Zelkova would have been well prepared for Silver Crow’s flight ability. And he would know its limitations—top speed, altitude. And the fact that he couldn’t fly unless his special attack gauge was charged.

He had probably kept an eye on the sky at the start of the duel for a surprise attack from above, but then let down his guard when Haruyuki dared to approach without charging his gauge. He was now likely relying on the exclusively horizontal gauge to determine Silver Crow’s whereabouts.

Haruyuki kicked gently at an especially fragile roof and leapt upward. The cursor disappeared from his view. Close range.

“Cubic Squelcher!”

A powerful cry came from the other side of the wall of the house to his immediate left, and half of Zelkova’s special attack gauge vanished. A heartbeat later, the concrete wall exploded into millions of tiny pieces.

Shooting up out of the cloud of dust with a thunderous roar was a semi-transparent fist, three-dimensional and fifty centimeters across. The massive mitt shot below Haruyuki, cut across the small yard, and smashed through the wall of the neighboring house as well.

The precision of Zelkova’s attack was truly magnificent, given that he had only the guide cursor to go on and was aiming into a room invisible from the outside. If Haruyuki had been moving along on the ground, that special attack would have slammed squarely into his chest, and half of his health gauge would have been shaved away. The only advance information he had to go on was the technique name, Cubic Squelcher. But it was one thing to picture it and entirely another to actually see it.

But the duel was no simple show of technique and strength; it was a contest of insight and deception.

Haruyuki leapt into the massive hole in the wall, an even greater calm ruling the core of his being. The cloud-of-dust effect hadn’t yet disappeared completely, but he could clearly see the large silhouette standing inside of it.

Zelkova was frozen with one fist thrust out in front of him, unable to move for a fraction of a second as the immediate aftereffect of his attack. Haruyuki had no sooner landed in front of his enemy than he was grabbing that defenseless fist and flipping the other avatar with everything he had in a one-armed shoulder throw.

His opponent went flying right through what was left of the wall he’d put a hole into with his special attack, and groaned loudly when he landed flat on his back in the yard.

“Nnngh.”

The majority of terrain objects were weak and brittle in the Scorched Earth stage, but the ground itself was one of the few exceptions. As a general rule, it was indestructible, so in a certain sense, it was heavier and harder than any weapon. Thus, for an armor-specialized avatar like Zelkova Verger, a throwing technique was often more effective than any half-baked striking attack.

That said, however, Haruyuki couldn’t actually do enough damage with a one-armed shoulder throw to decide the match. Zelkova bounced to his feet right away and snapped into a fighting posture, seeming to pay no mind to the fifteen percent eaten away from his health gauge.

“An impressive performance indeed, Silver Crow!” he cried in a clear, low voice. “I could not fathom that you would come from above when your gauge is quite empty!”

His tone was polite, but not because he was trying to show Haruyuki respect. He was simply creating a character similar to that of the Yellow King, Yellow Radio.

It wasn’t that you couldn’t fathom it, you didn’t let yourself fathom it, Haruyuki thought, though he kept this to himself.

Instead, as he stepped outside through the hole, he replied, “I must say to you as well, your sighting’s pretty accurate, even through the wall.”

“…”

Perhaps his response was unexpected. Zelkova Verger fell silent as if taken aback, and Haruyuki took the opportunity to study him.

Just as in the advance information Haruyuki had memorized, Zelkova was a fairly large duel avatar, but there was no sense of sluggishness to him. His shoulders, chest, and limbs were covered with heavy, square armor, but the naked body of the avatar beneath looked even more slender than Cyan Pile.

The wooden armor, Zelkova Verger’s most prominent feature, was a reddish-brown, more matte than glossy. It had a high resistance to all kinds of piercing attacks, including slicing, striking, and physical bullets, but given that it was wooden, it was obviously weak to fire. Haruyuki, however, had no flame-affiliated weapons or techniques, and there were no sources of fire in the stage, either.

Other effective attacks were throwing and submission techniques. But after that one-armed throw, Zelkova would now be on guard against such strategies. And Haruyuki faced the same issue with any submission technique, as with a throwing technique: He first had to grab on to his enemy. But it had long been the case in fighting games that a throwing technique was not easy to pull off when your opponent was expecting it.

Thus, he didn’t move to close the distance between them himself or even drop into a fighting position.

The moment he saw the name of his challenger, he had expected it to more-or-less go down like this. Which was why he’d gone after the first strike a bit forcefully. As long as the amount left in his gauge was greater, Zelkova would have no choice but to come and attack him, knowing full well the risk he faced of Haruyuki grabbing hold of him.

After about ten seconds of this stalemate, an impatient voice called down from above somewhere, “Heeeeey! How long are you gonna stare at each other?!”

“If you don’t want to fight, then just resign already!”

Jeers came from the Gallery, which had been automatically transported to the surrounding tall buildings as the scene of the battle shifted.

Neither the timbre nor the tone of the voices was familiar. The crowd was made up of Burst Linkers from small or midsize Legions who, like Zelkova, had traveled to be there in the hopes of raising their standing by defeating “Speed Star,” aka “Betrayer,” aka Silver Crow.

Zelkova, below him in a fighting stance, shifted his center of gravity ever so slightly. The rude cries from the Gallery were upsetting his concentration. He was the same level six as Haruyuki, but his primary means of earning Burst Points might have been hunting Enemies, so that he didn’t have as much experience in duels.

As Haruyuki gleaned this, he was already stepping forward. The movement was neither running nor walking, but rather sliding along the ground. He was still far, far from the absurdly smooth interval between motion and stillness of his teacher, Centaurea Sentry. But thanks to the lessons drilled into him in his water-walking training, he felt like he had sheared away a great deal of unnecessary motion.

“Yaah!” Zelkova cried, as he tried to launch a right straight, but Haruyuki had already closed the distance between them.

Given that he had much more left in his health gauge, Haruyuki could have patiently waited for his opponent to attack. But recent events had put him into a mode where his body reacted automatically whenever there was an opening. Actively considering and discarding strategies was only an option until contact with the enemy. Once contact was made, all he could do was leave himself to the flow of things.

He thrust a hand at Zelkova’s chest, and the other Burst Linker’s massive bulk staggered backward. One hand clutched at the air in front of Haruyuki in an attempt to regain balance.

Haruyuki immediately grabbed on to that arm with both hands and whirled around. He twisted the joints in the limb to their limits, and then used up the special attack gauge he’d charged in the previous shoulder throw to vibrate the wings on his back at full power for a single second. The finely tuned thrust of his flight ability hit the joint of Zelkova’s left shoulder.

Crack!

However sturdy the armor, it couldn’t defend against submission attacks on the naked body of the avatar itself. And physical stature was practically irrelevant when it came to the durability of the avatar body.

Using this combination of a joint lock and his striking technique, Aerial Combo, Haruyuki ripped Zelkova Verger’s sturdy arm off at the base.

“Ngah!” Zelkova staggered backward, groaning.

Although the sensation of pain in the normal duel stage was half that felt in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it was still genuinely hard to ignore the agony of losing a limb. However, if you got lost in the sensation, you were basically begging your opponent to come at you with follow-up attacks.

Haruyuki tossed away the arm he’d twisted off and jumped toward Zelkova again.

The other Burst Linker tried to open up a space between them with a leap backward. But he was a heavyweight avatar and needed a moment’s preparation to jump.

Haruyuki shot out with a low kick, legs neatly aligned side by side. The damage from the kick was minute, but because Zelkova was destabilized from the loss of his arm, he flipped over so forcefully, he nearly spun around again. He slammed into the ground on his back, and another chunk of his health gauge vanished.

It was plenty possible for Haruyuki to push forward with another attack, but he decided instead to step back.

Silver Crow’s health gauge was still full. Zelkova Verger’s, on the other hand, was already down by half.

In the battle so far, it was fair to say that Haruyuki had overwhelmed his opponent. Zelkova had to have understood now that the reason for this was the difference in duel experience.

Of course, it had only been a little over nine months since Haruyuki himself had become a Burst Linker. He was just barely a mid-ranker, having graduated from the ranks of newbie at long last. But he’d spent so much of his time in this world in an increasingly harsh battle against the Acceleration Research Society and the White Legion, with his many duels featuring the fiercest of fierce warriors, names known throughout the Accelerated World, that his avatar had gleaned tremendous experience for the amount of XP his avatar had collected.

“Plunderer” Dusk Taker.

“Quad Eyes Analyst” Argon Array.

“Restrainer” Black Vise.

“Sneezy” Glacier Behemoth.

“Grumpy” Rose Milady.

“Sleepy” Snow Fairy.

“Bashful” Platinum Cavalier.

And the White King, “Transient Eternity,” White Cosmos.

All of these fights had been literal life-or-death struggles. He could have easily lost all of his Burst Points in any one of them. And the only one he could say he had clearly won was against Dusk Taker; all the others had been losses or at best draws. The White King, in fact, had defeated him without even fighting him directly. But having somehow survived any number of extreme situations, he no longer got particularly nervous in a normal duel against an opponent of the same level.

He could tell at first glance that he was calm, and Zelkova Verger was too worked up. It was fine and normal to want to keep from losing, but Zelkova’s desire to win was too strong. It bled into his actions and allowed his opponent to predict his next move.

The high rankers who fought me probably thought the same thing, Haruyuki thought, and he reined in his feelings. The line between confidence and arrogance was razor thin, and he was still too much of a baby in terms of inside time to consider himself among the strongest warriors of this world.

He retreated to the opposite side of the garden, and Zelkova, perhaps convinced now that Haruyuki was not coming in for a follow-up attack, finally got to his feet, the red of the damage effect spilling from his empty shoulder socket. The gaze from behind his rough face mask was full of rage.

“It almost seems as though you’re suggesting I resign,” he said, his voice tense.

Haruyuki shrugged. “Well, it’d really help me out if you did.”

“What is this attitude of yours?!” Zelkova punched a stone pillar with his remaining hand. The pillar crumbled without resistance, chunks of it flying out into the small yard. About ten percent of the stones hit Zelkova himself, but he seemed to pay this no mind as he roared in anger.

“It’s not like you don’t know what Tezcatlipoca has done to the Unlimited Neutral Field! Many Legions are in real crisis now that they can no longer hunt Enemies. And the culprit behind it all is Oscillatory Universe. And yet you, traitor that you are, went over to their side. And now you act as though you’re above it all. You disgust me!”

This was fairly mean, but the blade of words did not pierce the shell surrounding Haruyuki’s heart. He’d heard all this and worse over the course of the last few days.

“I’m not trying to be above it all,” he replied evenly. “I’m just saying if I can get an easy win, I’ll take it.”

The wrath radiating from Zelkova grew even more intense.

Haruyuki instinctively realized that Zelkova was going to come at him with something, but he still didn’t drop into a fighting stance. Zelkova’s special attack gauge was fully charged once again, thanks to the serious damage he’d taken. If he had some way of turning the tables on this almost-certain defeat, Haruyuki wanted to see it.

Zelkova seemed to understand this desire. He threw his remaining fist high into the air, as if to say, You want to see? Then I’ll show you. The eight or so meters between them couldn’t be bridged with any regular attack, but there were no binding-type abilities in the details Haruyuki had memorized. And if Zelkova turned to special attacks, he wouldn’t use Cubic Squelcher again, not when Haruyuki had already grasped its potential.

Offensive special attacks in Brain Burst were not so easy to get a hit with, whether long- or short-range. The standard practice was to use them in a surprise attack or to combine them with a normal attack to somehow chip away at the enemy’s ability to evade.

Zelkova was also level six, so he would have been well aware of all this. Which meant that he had some kind of plan that would allow him to attack and make that attack hit Haruyuki as they faced off here.

I hope it’s some kind of trick, Haruyuki thought, as he waited for the activation of the technique.

Zelkova Verger stretched out the fingers of the hand brandished above him and plunged them down into the ground.

“Conic Smiter!!”

This name was not in Haruyuki’s advance information. Had he kept this card hidden up his sleeve all this time? Or had he recently learned the technique?

Zelkova’s hand shone a bright red. But his special attack gauge did not decrease.

It can’t be an Incarnate technique? Haruyuki tensed up. And then he felt a faint vibration in the soles of his feet and reflexively leapt away.

Zelkova’s special attack gauge finally dropped. At the same time, something sharp and pointy shot up from the ground at lightning speed.

The cone-shaped spike was a meter and a half long and thirty centimeters across. It was the same color as Zelkova’s armor and looked pretty hard. Haruyuki got the gut feeling that Silver Crow would have been skewered from bottom to top if he hadn’t jumped.

He would never have been able to dodge this long-distance attack and its entirely invisible trajectory on his first encounter with it if he hadn’t noticed the faint shaking in the ground. But now that he had dodged it, it would definitely be a slight and a sign of contempt if he didn’t counterattack.

He’d seen what he needed to see; it was time to end this. Haruyuki crouched and was about to make a dash toward Zelkova until he saw that the other Burst Linker’s special attack gauge had dropped a mere ten percent.

He’d already started to move, so he didn’t feel any vibrations. He relied on his gut this time and jumped in the opposite direction from before.

Two spikes ripped through the ground thunderously to pierce the space where he had been only an instant before.

Zelkova’s fingers were plunged all the way into the ground, and he still had eighty percent of his gauge left. Which meant…

Haruyuki had no sooner landed than he was throwing himself backward in a somersault. The third spike popped up a millimeter in front of him. Another somersault, another spike shooting past his nose. On his next somersault, the fifth spike grazed Silver Crow’s back.

Zelkova’s aim was steadily getting more accurate, and with the walls of houses closing in behind him, Haruyuki didn’t have enough space to do another flip. Rather than relying on Zelkova to send it one way or another with his gaze or some other signal, this Conic Smiter special attack was likely able to automatically follow its target. An ideal high-performance technique for localized defense, befitting someone with the name “Verger.”

Judging from the speed at which Zelkova’s special attack gauge was decreasing, there were likely ten spikes. It would be impossible to evade all of the remaining five in this small yard.

Making this split-second judgment, Haruyuki narrowed his options down to three and assessed each of them in an instant.

The first thing he thought of was to flee into the air, but that risked him being hit in the hint of an opening between when he deployed his wings and generated thrust.

The second thing he thought of was to counter the spike with a striking palm. If he cut through the minimal, single point that was the sharp tip, he was certain he could destroy it. But if his aim was off by even a millimeter, his hand would be shattered.

And the third option was one he hesitated to use, but it had the greatest chance of success. It was also the option that would settle this match the quickest.

In his hyper-accelerated awareness, with time slowed to a crawl, Haruyuki somersaulted through the air three times, and just as he was about to land, he said to himself, Gou.

Waves rippled through his field of view. His mind expanded and melted into the air.

Bam!

The sixth spike jutted up out of the ground. But it was in the middle of the yard, three meters away from where Haruyuki had landed.

“Huh?!” Zelkova cried out, stunned. And this was no wonder. The automatic targeting couldn’t be knocked off target, and yet it had been seriously knocked off target.

The “Gou” technique that Haruyuki used was one of the Omega style secrets he had learned from Centaurea Sentry. By completely interrupting the signals output by his own consciousness, he caused an error in the predictive abilities of the BB system (also known as the Main Visualizer) and erased his presence not only from this duel opponent, but also from the detection of the system itself. Automatic tracing-type special attacks were no longer able to follow, and Zelkova Verger himself would have lost sight of Haruyuki for an instant.

Gou was not an Incarnate technique, but the proviso “strictly speaking” did apply. His teacher Centaurea said that Incarnate techniques, which overwrote phenomena using powerful images, and Gou, which disconnected every kind of image, were based on entirely opposing logic. But both were the same in that they used the BB Image Control System, so Haruyuki couldn’t help feeling that there was a bit of Incarnate to Gou.

But when he really thought about it, image power was indispensable to all Burst Linkers. A clear image was required in both the instantaneous choice of how to move your avatar and the long-term vision of how you wanted to grow. When he really drilled down to it, even the water-walking he worked at was actually practice, with the image of making his weight zero.

The boundary between normal and Incarnate techniques was in point of fact fuzzy, and if there was a line to be drawn between them, then he would have to follow the definition of the Red King, Scarlet Rain: Incarnate techniques shone.

The so-called overlay of Incarnate techniques was the result of the excess signal when the user’s imagination passed through the BB Image Control System, thereby being processed as a system light effect. Gou, reducing image output to zero as it did, naturally did not shine. Thus, it was not an Incarnate technique. This was the line that Sentry insisted on.

Having shaken Conic Smiter, Haruyuki landed and immediately kicked off the ground again with all his might. He accelerated full-power using the wings on his back and closed in on his baffled opponent.

Zelkova quickly shook off his shock, but he made no move to pull his hand out of the ground. He probably couldn’t pull it out until a spike hit or his gauge was entirely depleted. Given the power of the technique, Haruyuki wasn’t surprised that it had that kind of constraint to it.

He’d been planning to rip Zelkova’s right arm off like he had the left, but that was impossible if it was affixed to the ground. All the better, then.

Quickly changing his plan on the fly, he kept charging and jumped up when he was practically on top of Zelkova.

As he floated up into the air, the Conic Smiter spike automatically retargeted him and jutted up from the ground. But the sharp tip just skimmed the air a centimeter below the soles of his feet.

Missing its intended target, the spike shot through Zelkova, who was crouched directly below Haruyuki, from the thin armor over his stomach all the way up to the nape of his neck.

The forty percent remaining in his health gauge vanished in an instant, and the massive reddish-brown body shrank into itself before shattering into a million pieces.