Kuroyukihime released a crimson spear; the eyeball shot forth a ball of inky-black light. She extended the Incarnate spear several dozen meters with 80 percent of her mind and ran with the remaining 20 percent. This was multitasking in the extreme, but given that Black Lotus had the power to move by hovering, she didn’t need to keep kicking at the ground with both feet in order to run. She could move at high speeds simply by leaning forward and concentrating her strength into her legs. It wasn’t that this had no drawbacks—sudden changes in direction were not great while hovering—but at that moment, at any rate, all she had to do was lean in…

  “…!”

  The red and black Incarnate attacks slipped past each other, and Kuroyukihime opened her eyes wide.

  The Dark Shot was spinning in a spiral, bending to the left. She had thought light-beam techniques couldn’t have homing abilities, but she quickly realized this was merely her own preconception. That sort of commonsense thinking didn’t apply to Incarnate techniques.

  If she kept running straight ahead, it would catch up with her. She had to turn to the right, but if she did that while she had an Incarnate technique activated, there was a very good chance she would fall. Even as Kuroyukihime gritted her teeth, the jet-black torrent closed in on her, resonating with both high and low vibrations.

  “Lotus!!”

  The voice came with an intense impact to the right side of her back. Her body was pushed off the Dark Shot’s trajectory, and the massive lance passed her, a mere meter away. Her own red spear plunged into the white of the kit main body, and liquid like blood gushed out. The feedback was faint, but it seemed she did some damage at least; the main body shuddered and shook its bulk, blinking over and over and over.

  Here, finally, Kuroyukihime turned her gaze to find Fuko, who had fired Gale Thruster to push Kuroyukihime out of the way, off to the right. A dark residue was scattered around her and her two slender legs were severed cruelly at the knee. She had taken the Dark Shot in Kuroyukihime’s place.

  “Fuko!” she cried in a strangled voice and whirled around to embrace her friend.

  In the Unlimited Neutral Field, a wound as severe as a severed limb—not to mention losing half of both legs in one blow—would bring about a terrifying intensity of pain. The avatar would be unable to move briefly, and it would be within the realm of normalcy if they fell into shock for a brief period.

  But Fuko courageously replied, “Not there yet!” and summoned a new Enhanced Armament. She pulled free of Kuroyukihime’s arms and sat down in the silver wheelchair that materialized in the place of Gale Thruster before pointing at the struggling kit main body. “I’m all right! Let’s stay the course!”

  “Right!” Kuroyukihime kicked ferociously at the floor with her right foot. She leaned as far forward as she could for a super-high-speed hover dash. Fuko’s wheelchair followed lightly to her right, and Akira was running just as hard even farther down the line.

  She was nearly certain that the ISS kit main body had the close-range Incarnate technique Dark Blow. The problem was how the massive eyeball, lacking hands and feet, would activate it. If, hypothetically, there was some kind of advance action, then it would be possible to dodge as long as they didn’t miss seeing it. If, in the worst case, there was no motion, and they were shot from all directions—well, they’d handle that when it happened.

  Having closed a dozen meters in an instant, the Burst Linkers avoided the front where the eyelid was and came in to attack from the sides.

  First, Akira cloaked her entire body in a pure blue overlay. She called the technique name with maximum volume. “Phase Trans: Keen!”

  Instantly, the flowing-water armor that enveloped her slender avatar froze in place, transforming into clear, transparent shielding. Her silhouette grew even more slender, thanks to the long katars that appeared on both arms. Akira crossed the blades before her, thin and sharp like razors, and prepared to fight.

  She danced about the fleshy armor of the ISS kit main body to hit it with successive high-speed blows. Enhanced with Incarnate, the ice swords easily sliced through the thick flesh, and fresh blood jetted out. But the cascade of blood was frozen instantly in the chill of the blades, breaking into countless red crystals and scattering on the floor.

  One of the more peculiar features of the avatar Aqua Current—formerly known as Aquamatic, a portmanteau of aqua and achromatic—was that she could freely change her uncommon flowing-water armor to match the characteristics of the stage. In an Ice stage, she produced weapons and armor of ice; in a Volcano stage, she used high-temperature steam to carry out range attacks. Aqua Current’s secondary Incarnate technique Phase Trans made this change from ice water steam happen, using only the force of her own will.

  However, there were multiple variations of the outcome of this technique, and Kuroyukihime herself knew of five. The Keen Pattern was the transformation into light ice armor with katars as weapons for close-range fighting.

  It was similar to Kuroyukihime’s ability Overdrive, but the phenomenon was much more drastic, and the two katars enhanced with Incarnate exhibited an attack power on par with an actual close-range type. Each time the ice avatar pirouetted up, the blue flash of a sword ripped into the left side of the kit main body.

  A little behind Akira, Fuko launched her attack from her wheelchair. She thrust both hands out in front of her as though she were holding an invisible ball and shouted the name of the technique. “Swirl Sway!”

  A small, glittering, green tornado grew in the space between her hands. Fuko only used this technique to protect herself, since she strictly forbade the use of destructive Incarnate for herself as a general rule, but there was no way that an Incarnate whirlwind spinning at super-high speeds was a harmless defensive technique.

  Released from her hands, the tornado grew to enormous size in the blink of an eye and touched the right side of the kit main body. The countless knives of air inside it began to dig into the thick armor. Chunks of flesh and rivers of fresh blood swirled up in the center of the whirlwind to become crimson light effects near the ceiling before evaporating.

  Attacked by powerful Incarnate techniques on the left by Akira and on the right by Fuko, the massive bulk—nearly three meters across—of the ISS kit main body spasmed fiercely. A reddish-black light flickered irregularly from beyond the almost entirely closed eyelid.

  If it had been an average duel avatar, this combined with Kuroyukihime’s initial direct Vorpal Strike hit was enough damage to knock the color out of its health gauge three times over. However, that it showed no signs of disappearing even as it struggled and writhed was proof that it was indeed outside the norm in all ways. Even now, after charging directly into battle with it, she had no idea how the Acceleration Research Society created it or how they made the shadow of Red Rider possess it.

  But they didn’t need to analyze in that moment; they needed to destroy. Following Akira and Fuko, Kuroyukihime jumped with all her power, did a somersault directly above the kit main body, and loosed a battle cry while upside down. “Aaaaaaah!!”

  A blue, almost white overlay grew in the swords of her hands. Spreading her arms wide, she spun her body at high speed, becoming a human drill. The pale-blue light became a ring around her inky-black avatar and jetted outward, like the solar corona viewed during a total eclipse.

  “The Eclipse!!”

  Guided by her imagination, the swords of both arms began to shoot outward at an incredible velocity. Kuroyukihime’s swordmaster and one of the old Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements, Graphite Edge, could launch twenty-seven consecutive blows of this major technique in a mere two seconds. Considering that this was 13.5 hits per second, it didn’t really seem to compare with the hundred blows a second of Black Lotus’s level-four special attack, Death By Bashing. But the force behind each strike was completely different. And in contrast with the system assist for a special attack that essentially moved the body automatically, you had to boost your hit speed with nothing but your own imagination when using an Incarnate technique.

  Faster…Faster! Focusing only on this idea, Kuroyukihime became a dwarf sun, shooting off the incandescent sword attack. Each time she hit, thick fleshy armor was ripped off like an explosion. Since she was hitting it repeatedly at ultra-speeds, it was more like she was shooting it with a large auto-cannon than cutting it with a sword.

  One second, two…When she had finished the twenty-seven hits at two and a half seconds, Kuroyukihime once again somersaulted and landed next to Fuko. Her two comrades finished their attacks at around the same time, and Akira’s armor turned from ice back into water.

  The ISS kit main body had lost almost all the armor on the top and the sides, exposing a smoother, curving black surface—most likely the internal eyeball. If they could destroy even part of this shell, which didn’t look very tough, they might be able to get at the portal locked inside, even if they were unable to eliminate the kit main body.

  But Kuroyukihime—and probably Fuko and Akira, too—couldn’t move right away, due to the backlash from using the most powerful Incarnate technique she had in her arsenal at full power. She had, however, fought four successive battles against extremely powerful opponents—the God Seiryu, Magenta Scissor’s army, Archangel Metatron, the shadow of Red Rider—and even though there had been a break in between, she could feel the energy of her spirit itself being consumed. But this was where they could stand tall as high rankers.

  “…And Haruyuki and the others, too…,” Kuroyukihime murmured.

  Fuko nodded immediately. “They’re working hard right now.”

  “We can’t lose, either,” Akira agreed.

  Their fighting spirits reignited, the three stood tall, and Kuroyukihime cast her eyes behind her for just a moment.

  The small shrine maiden in the Noh mask was dancing gracefully with the snowy white fan in one hand. There was a tranquility as though only the area around her had become a wooden stage, but anyone watching could tell that no ordinary phenomenon was proceeding there. The profound imagination being polished and refined by the dance made the space around her shimmer like a heat mirage, and ripples spread out in the marble floor like on the surface of water.

  “Another minute, whatever it takes,” Kuroyukihime said, turning back around. At that moment, the ISS kit main body, which had been seriously wounded and fallen into a suspended state, abruptly opened its eyelid wide. The reddish-black light that spilled from the massive pupil dyed their armor the color of blood.

  Wondering whether it was going to fire the Dark Shot a third time or try something else, Kuroyukihime focused her mind so she wouldn’t miss any changes that might occur in the eyeball. Because of this, she was late to notice that the Change occurred not in the exposed pupil in the front, but the fleshy armor remaining to the rear.

  Zlrmp. Two long tentacles popped out from the armor with a viscous sound. An ebony aura wrapped around the rounded nodules of the tips.

  “Close-range attack! Evade!” Kuroyukihime shouted and dashed backward with everything she had.

  Fuko spun the wheels of her chair in reverse, and Akira quickly retreated with a sliding dash by making the water membrane on the soles of her feet slip across the floor.

  But the two tentacles reached out nearly ten meters in an instant, squirming and twisting like black snakes, and easily caught Kuroyukihime and Akira in their range. The vast dark aura around the bulbous tips cohered, absorbing even the twilight sun coming in through the cracks in the wall and covering the floor in a gloom.

  Looking at the tentacle closing in on her from directly above, Kuroyukihime determined that evasion was impossible. She had no sooner landed than she was crossing the swords of both arms above her head and shouting, “Overdrive! Mode Green!”

  “Phase Trans! Adamant!” Akira shouted at the same time, stopping a few meters to her right.

  The two avatars were cloaked in overlays the exact same shade of green. Strictly speaking, Black Lotus’s mode change wasn’t an Incarnate technique, but there was a powerful synergy when she used it in conjunction with the Incarnate System. The shining green light spread out to form a circular shield with the intersection of her crossed swords at the center.

  And then, a pure and condensed negative Incarnate, the likes of which she had never experienced before, slammed into Kuroyukihime.

  If she hadn’t managed to defend against it in time, her avatar would have been annihilated together with the space around it by the super-powerful nihilistic Incarnate attack. She just barely escaped that, but the impact was on par with or greater than the time the God Byakko’s claws dragged into her. Her consciousness was half beaten out of her avatar, while a large amount of her health gauge was snatched away. Her sight, hearing, and even her sense of gravity were inhibited. In the middle of this blackout world, she resisted the enormous pressure, half dazed.

  A few impossibly long seconds passed, and the pressure finally started to ease, returning her vision to her. The first thing she saw was her own arms—more than ten centimeters battered off from the tips, the current edges chipped and peeling, and the black tentacle slowly pulling back. When she shifted her gaze to her feet, she saw that the swords of both legs had sunk into the tile floor nearly up to her knees.

  The situation with Akira was much the same; the heavy ice armor generated on her arms had shattered and scattered without a trace. On top of that, her left hand was missing from the wrist. Her legs weren’t stabbed into the floor, but she was low on her knees and seemed unable to stand.

  “Lotus! Curren! Are you all right?!” Fuko called out urgently, apparently having escaped the tentacle’s attack. Kuroyukihime managed to move her right hand in reply.

  The damage was enormous, but they had somehow made it through the Dark Shot and the Dark Blow that followed. Another thirty seconds until the two minutes they had promised Utai. If all three attacked with their entire might once more, they could buy that much time.

  Kuroyukihime tried to pull her left leg from the floor when she felt an abnormal shiver and jerked her head upward.

  And then she saw it. Immediately after firing the Dark Blow with the two tentacles, the ISS kit main body was concentrating a black aura in its wide-open pupil. Dark Shot…Its target was likely Fuko.

  Is its Incarnate energy limitless?! Groaning in her heart, Kuroyukihime shouted, “Raker, get out—!”

  But she froze mid-sentence. The massive eyeball, shining the color of blood, actually had its sights set far behind Fuko—on Utai dancing to the rear. She might have been able to avoid the attack if she stopped dancing and ran, but that would be a waste of the imagination she’d worked so hard to knead.

  It was Fuko, a mere ten meters in front of the eyeball, who made up her mind first. She released the wheels of the wheelchair and spread her arms out to both sides. More than a defensive posture, she cut a cool figure of an older sister protecting the baby.

  “It’s no use, Raker!” Kuroyukihime squeezed a hoarse voice from her throat and tried to pull out her right leg. Beyond the motionless wheelchair, Akira was also trying to rouse her injured body. The reason they had been able to defend against the Dark Blow—albeit just barely—was because the force of it had been divided into two. There was simply no way Fuko alone could defend against a Dark Shot with twice that power. At the very least, they needed to fuse their Incarnates.

  But just as Kuroyukihime and Akira were finally able to take a step forward—zwaaaan!—space itself shuddered, and the jet-black lance shot forward.

  Fuko pushed her arms forward in an almost lazy motion. Her slender palms hit the tip of the vortex of darkness with a whap.

  Kuroyukihime stared, dumbfounded, at the sight of Raker’s hands, which looked as bare as the word would suggest, not a hint of overlay about them, as they welcomed the superior Dark Shot of the kit main body. The nihilistic energy that ripped apart, swallowed, and vaporized everything it touched became a massive sphere, stopped, and then shivered heavily in front of those hands. A black spark would occasionally shoot off, hit the floor or ceiling or Raker’s body and hair, and then bounce away.

  How exactly was she guarding against what was arguably the greatest attack power currently existing in the Accelerated World? Eyes open wide in utter shock, Kuroyukihime suddenly realized what she was doing.

  It wasn’t a defense. She was neutralizing it. By pouring a pure positive will into the rampaging energy and its bottomless hunger, she was overwriting the nihilistic attack power. Not fearing the superpowered Dark Shot, but rather accepting it and fusing with it—this was the Way of the Flexible in the Incarnate System.

  The source of the vast imagination Fuko was generating was likely her firm desire to protect Utai. Her hands only looked defenseless because the shining of her overlay was instantly swallowed up by the black of the darkness. The moment she could no longer keep up with the generation of Incarnate energy, Fuko together with her avatar would be devoured by the emptiness and vanish.

  Having understood the phenomenon in front of her in less than a second, Kuroyukihime lifted her face and exchanged a quick nod with Akira.

  The bond between Fuko and Utai was special, even among the Four Elements. “Testarossa” Ardor Maiden would team up with ICBM Sky Raker and be propelled mercilessly into enemy camps, and what made that strategy possible was that the two were bound by a deep love and trust.

  But if it’s love for our friends, that’s in me, too. I almost forgot…But Haruyuki made me remember those precious feelings.

  “Raker!” Kuroyukihime started.

  “Us, too!” Akira continued.

  They approached Fuko from either side and raised their wounded hands.

  Utai, Fuko, and Akira; Haruyuki, Takumu, Chiyuri, Leopard fighting in some distant place…and Niko and Rin Kusakabe. She would protect them. She concentrated this feeling in her hands, shaping it into a ball of light.

  A pure-white overlay was born in the space wedged between her broken swords and began to sparkle like a star. Kuroyukihime took another step forward and gently touched the light that was her hands to the shuddering inky-black lump.

 

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