“Wh..y?”

Haruyuki heard the cracked and crushed sound from his own throat.

“Why....Chiyu?”

The cold wind of the ?Purgatory? stage blew away the hollow question, and scattered it to the yellow sky above. But, there was no answer. Standing still on top of the school building’s roof, the bright green avatar ?Lime Bell?—Kurashima Chiyuri hid her face in order to avoid Haruyuki’s gaze, and sat down with a scraping noise while grasping the roof railing with her right hand.

Instead, what responded to his question was a very low, warped laughter.

“Fu....fu, fu.”

On the ground a little ways away, the lens-like mask of the dusk-colored avatar, which had thrown down its limbs and was lying on its back, was shaking bit by bit.

“Fufu..fu, amazing..how amazing..This is the ?healing ability?..truly a miraculous power..fufu, hahaha..”

As he laughed quietly, the avatar’s severe gashes from only dozens of seconds before were healed as if they had never been, and his whole body glowed a glossy dark purple. The recovery phenomenon didn’t stop at just the body, but even restored his right arm’s flamethrower which should have been destroyed.

Haruyuki—?Silver Crow?, and standing behind him, Takumu—?Cyan Pile?, at the end of a hard-fought battle on the field of Umesato Middle School, had managed to crush the dusk avatar ?Dusk Taker?. Both of his arms had been blow off in an aerial battle with Haruyuki and had been pierced to the ground by Takumu’s special technique, and all that was left was to go make his HP gauge run out completely with a single ordinary attack.

However, the one who interrupted that was Lime Bell, suddenly emerging from on top of the roof.

As soon as he was wrapped in a shower of light emitted from her right arm just now, Dusk Taker’s HP had radically recovered, and even his right side was brilliantly glowing now.

“Why..Why, Chiyu!!”

Haruyuki looked up at the school building again, and screamed out as if tearing his throat.

Dusk Taker was the enemy. The first year student who controlled that avatar, Noumi Seiji didn’t appear on the matching list even though he possessed ?Brain Burst?, and licentiously used his acceleration ability in kendo matches and real tests.

Not stopping there, he even cornered Haruyuki to just before the point of school expulsion by setting a trap, and had taken away Silver Crow’s wings in a match using his special technique ?Demonic Commandeer?. After somehow cheering up his heart that had been completely broken then and getting a new power at the end of a long struggle, Haruyuki had managed to grab victory despite becoming torn up in the process.

Now pushed past the edge of confusion, Haruyuki could do nothing but widen his eyes beneath his silver face and stare at Lime Bell.

Chiyuri didn’t try to say anything, and just kept clenching the roof fence and hiding her face beneath the brim of her huge hat.

As soon as he saw her delicate shoulders trembling intensely as if enduring something—

—Why? It’s obvious.

—Noumi. Noumi Seiji probably contacted Chiyuri during today’s lunch break, and demanded that she obey him. Like he did with Haruyuki, he took advantage of some weakness and threatened her. That was the only possibility.

As Haruyuki’s gaze turned back, while creakily laughing even further as he remained lying down, Dusk Taker opened up the black wings on his back fully.

The wings that seemed to cut through darkness struck the air slowly, and the slender avatar gradually stood up as if pulled by an invisible thread.

“Fufufu..ku, kukukuku..”

The volume of his gloating voice increased very fast. Inside his visor which had similar luster to the compound eyes of an insect, two reddish-purple eyes blinked intensely.

“Kuku, ha, hahaha. ?Flying ability?. And ?healing ability?. These two incredibly rare powers..are now both mine..”

Now completely standing up, the avatar stopped and simply floated about thirty centimeters above the ground. Energetically opening up his regenerated arms, Dusk Taker pointed his ten claw-like fingers towards the sky. A dusky-dark aura rushed out like mucus from those hands.

“Aah..What a wonderful feeling! This pleasant feeling of robbing! This almighty feeling of stealing and trampling on someone’s dreams, their hopes, their potential..it’s just so irresistible..!!”

That ugly joy coming from the voice of a young boy spread across the field as a physical pressure, and shook Haruyuki’s badly-bruised avatar.

But, without being conscious of that, Haruyuki squeezed out a voice covered in the noise of various feelings from beneath his helmet.

“....Y, ou.”

He took a single step toward the dusk-colored avatar that was floating at a slightly high place.

“Noumi..what did you do? What did you do to Chiyu?”

Hearing that, Dusk Taker slowly moved his face and looked down at Haruyuki.

Within that half-gross spherical surface, his two thin eyes slowly blinked once, and—

He formed a smile filled with the most venomous ridicule in silence.

Haruyuki’s sight was suddenly dyed in the color of blood. All his confused feelings converged onto a single needle-like point. That is, onto overwhelming hatred for Noumi Seiji.

“Nou..mi..”

While muttering that, Haruyuki unconsciously gathered his remaining right hand’s fingers into the shape of a sword. A high resonance ‘IIIIIIIN’ sound came out, and silver light flickered on his fingertips.

As if the swirling hatred had become noise and was the formation of his ?silver sword? image, the light was quite unstable. Without caring about that, Haruyuki greatly brandished his right arm and tried to slice it towards Dusk Taker.

But, an instant earlier.

“U..aaaaa!!”

Along a cry that seemed to vomit blood, there was a blue shadow which passed by Haruyuki from the right.

It was Cyan Pile. His armor burned from the previous battle and still emitting smoke, the heavy weight-class avatar rushed forward while unleashing a rumbling sound over the ground.

“You made Chii-chan..cryyyyyyyyyyyyy!!”

Takumu, who never lost his calm at any kind of time and should have been the one who held back Haruyuki’s rampage, tried to recklessly jump at Noumi while yelling like a little kid.

Even in the face of the raging heavy tank-like charge, Dusk Taker didn’t try to move away even a little.

He slowly raised his slender right hand and fully opened out his five sharp fingers. At the same time, he spat out a short sentence.

“Disappear already.”

*BYUAAA!!*?Along with a different vibrating sound, his right hand was wrapped in a glistening purple wave of nothingness. It soon changed shape, and claws, no, sickles extended out longer and longer from the tip of all his fingers.

The five sickles casually wrapped around Cyan Pile’s huge body from the front as he charged at him. The points of the curving long claws touched both sides of Cyan Pile’s neck, his right side, his left shoulder and his left side, and then—

Immediately after, those claws closed together without any resistance.

“....!!”

Before the eyes of the silently gasping Haruyuki, the upper body of the blue heavy weight-class avatar was split into several parts.

His head and arms flew through the air while releasing a terrifying amount of sparks from their cut sections, and rolled onto the ground after brushing against Dusk Taker’s body. Finally, his still charging lower body fell down with a grave sound.

Following a slight time lag, as if saying that?the system recognized the damage only after the phenomenon of being cutting apart, Cyan Pile’s HP gauge suddenly began to decrease. Changing to yellow as it reduced to half and dying red when it reached the remaining 20 percent, it continued decreasing in width, and then—

Reached zero.

The wreckage of the cut-apart avatar scattered into pieces of bluish-white polygons and disappeared. Before Haruyuki’s eyes, a system message signifying that Dusk Taker had destroyed Cyan Pile appeared.

“....Ku..ku, ku, fu, ha.”

Mincing laugher dripped out from the dusk-colored avatar’s mouth.

“The ones known as loser..are always so comical. Without even trying to admit they were defeated, they struggle in an unseemly manner and in the end have even the last of their pride taken away. Though I thought Mayuzumi-senpai was more the intelligent-type, he completely disappointed me. Well, after all, even with a brain, he has that muscular macho avatar, kukuku, fufu, hahahahaha!!”

Radiating a pronounced dark aura from both his arms, Dusk Taker laughed hysterically.

While being bathed in that voice, Haruyuki stared at the spot where Takumu had vanished several seconds ago, and then looked at Chiyuri, who was still crouching small on the roof of the school.

Standing stock-still, the sword of silver light on his right hand flickered little by little and then vanished.

He hadn’t lost his fighting spirit. It was the opposite. Like a blazing flame, a brutal destructive urge coursed through the inside of his avatar, and was disturbing Haruyuki’s mental concentration.

Hate. He wanted to destroy. He wanted to smash up the duel avatar called Dusk Taker—no, the mind of Noumi Seiji that was lodged inside it, to mince it apart, to tear it into shreds and trample over it.

The world already wasn’t a virtual game field anymore, nor a battle where numerical points of damage were exchanged back and forth.

Until now, in every game he had played including ?Brain Burst?, Haruyuki, while feeling frustration towards enemies who defeated him, had felt no hatred towards the real-life players who controlled those avatars.

But, right now was different. The temperature of the dark hatred that flowed through the blood vessels of his entire body easily exceeded that of frustration.

——Then, destroy.

Suddenly, someone whispered from right behind him.

——Destroy, eat. Devour his flesh, drain his blood, steal everything from him.

It was a familiar voice. Haruyuki had definitely heard that warped low voice that was mixed with a metallic overtone at some point, somewhere.

But, before he could trace the memory, an intense cold feeling like a needle of ice thrusting into him formed in the center of his back. It pierced deeply between his shoulder blades, penetrated all the way to Haruyuki’s heart, and from there released a liquid metal-like chill through his entire body.

The chilling hunger fused together with his burning hate, and at that instant—

His vision squeezed and contracted to the center.

The gold-green ground of the Purgatory field, the school building with an organism-like form, Lime Bell hanging her head on the roof, it all disappeared into the swaying darkness. The only thing he saw was the still high-pitched laughing Dusk Taker.

“Nou....mi.”

A moan with the same metallic effect as the voice he had heard before leaked out from Haruyuki’s throat.

“Noumi..You..you....”

All of his raging feelings flowed into the tip of his remaining right hand as if pulled there.

In order to activate the ?Incarnate System?—the skill which intervened in the image control system of the Brain Burst program and caused a phenomenon that exceeded the limits of the game, absurdly deep concentration was needed. In truth, the ?sword of light? that was given form due to Haruyuki’s mind had vanished the instant he was seized with hatred towards Noumi.

In spite of that.

Suddenly, a very long sword extended out from Silver Crow’s right hand along with a grave ‘ZUAAA!’ vibrating sound.

However, its color wasn’t the clear white of earlier.

As if drawing in and drowning out all light, a jet-black sword. It had a far deeper color of hungry darkness than the dark purple needles that Noumi had formed.

“....Hmm?”

Noticing Silver Crow’s unusual phenomenon, Dusk Taker stopped laughing and gave a short mutter.

“Oya..Do you still intend to do something, Arita-senpai? Do you intend to follow your companion’s lead and happily expose the same unsightly behavior?”

Haruyuki had no mental room to respond to that mocking. He felt his thoughts and feelings being sucked into his right hand’s sword. Besides that, the only thing that existed in him was the extreme impulse that only wanted to destroy the enemy in front of him into minced pieces.

——That’s right. Eat. Devour.

The brutal voice whispered in the center of his head.

As if urged on by that, he took a step forward with his right foot.

Immediately after, he kicked off the ground savagely.

“U..oaaaaa!!”

While howling, he raised the dark sword in his right hand high above his head. He placed the speed of his charge, the entire weight of his avatar, and all of his raging hatred into the sword edge, and aimed to cut down the face of the floating Dusk Taker.

It should have been impossible for the kendo player Noumi to not avoid the direct slash from Haruyuki who had no plan. But, the purple avatar didn’t try to move even a little from where he was, and like he did to Cyan Pile, tried to catch the black blade with only his opened right hand.

The blade created by Haruyuki and the five sickles created by Noumi touched in midair.

In the previous battle, as soon as their two mentally-formed attacks touch, they had violently repelled and conflicted with each other.

But this time, the exact reverse phenomenon occurred. That is, the instant the jet-black blade and the dark-purplish sickles clashed, the darkness swirled onto a single focused point and tried to suck each other in.

“Muu....”

Dusk Taker let a small voice leak out.

“An attack of the same attribute..!? What’s going on..?”

His eyes narrowed and seemed to fixedly observing the phenomenon. Facing him, Haruyuki no longer thought of anything, and just kept swinging forward his right hand and putting all his power into it.

“U..gu, ooh..”

He bared his teeth beneath his mask and shouted in a twisted voice.

“Disappear..disappear, Noumi! Disappear..from my siiiiiiiiiight!!”

*BYUAAA!!*?His right hand’s sword shook, and the swirling darkness increased in force at the contact point. The sickles extending from Noumi’s fingers effortlessly crumbled from their tips and were swallowed in.

“Tch..”

Clicking his tongue, Noumi produced purple sickles on his left hand as well, and piled it on top of his right hand’s sickles to grasp Haruyuki’s sword. The darkness that looked like a small black hole swirled even more violently, and fragments of glimmering metal and other things were suck in from the ground, leaving a momentary flash before disappearing.

“So insolent..!!”

Dusk Taker shouted and increased the force of the purple wave of energy from both his hands.

“Gu..ooooh..!!”

A beast-like roar also gushed out from Haruyuki’s throat.

Perhaps as a result of the abnormal gravity being calculated in, even the thick low-hanging clouds slowly turned and were being pulled in like a funnel towards the ground. The school building’s windows broke one after another while scattering sharp light, and lightning-like sparks followed and radial cracks ran through the ground.

And then, several things occurred at the same time.

“Stop it..stop it already——!!”

Chiyuri’s scream mixed with crying resounded loudly through the stage.

“Disa..ppeeeeeeeeeeear——!!”

Haruyuki’s yell pressed down and roared over it.

And the remaining time that was indicated in the upper part of his vision reached zero.

The characters of ‘TIME UP!!’ burst out in front of him and signaled the end of the duel.

When the accelerated state was released through the result screen of Battle Royal mode and he passed through rings of radial light and returned to the real world, let alone what Haruyuki had been doing before the start of the duel—he couldn’t immediately remember even where he was or what time it was now.

The sports-use track that was paved with auburn high-resistance material spread out straight in front of him. Many jersey-wearing male students were running in front of him.

And Haruyuki himself was also kicking off the ground noisily with both legs. His consciousness couldn’t link up with the movements of his intolerably sluggish physical body, and he nearly fell down before waving both his hands and holding himself up somehow. The students who sat on the inner part of the track and the male students running parallel to Haruyuki’s left suddenly laughed.

—Speaking of which, I’m in the middle of the measurement of the three thousand meter run. Right now it’s Tuesday, fifth period..in the middle of phys-ed class..

After thinking that in dumb surprise, Haruyuki suddenly became aware of a feeling blowing out like magma from the bottom of his belly.

—Just what on earth am I doing?

—The phys-ed lesson? The long-distance running? Those are inconsequential! I have to..crush Noumi Seiji at all costs!!

“Uuu..!”

He let out a low, unrestrained growl. After clenching his teeth and staring at the goal line over there, Haruyuki put all his fury into his arms and legs. The pace of his heavy resounding footsteps increased. He naturally leaned his body forward.

Next to the measurement time shown in his lower sight, a red R characters blinked. It indicated that his pace had improved from his personal record. But without being conscious of that, Haruyuki ran the remaining ninety meters at full power. He couldn’t overtake the students who were ahead of him, but Haruyuki’s last spurt as he clearly shortened the distance made a light stir among the boys of the class.

But Haruyuki didn’t care at all about those voices, nor his new personal time which flashed in front of him as soon as he stepped over the goal line. Rather, he didn’t even stop his feet and tried to run like that straight towards the entrance.

“Hey, where you going, Arita? The toilet?”

He heard the carefree voice of the phys-ed teacher and the laughter of the other students, but ignored them.

Of course, he wasn’t aiming for the toilet. He was going to run up to the third floor of the school building and launch an attack on Noumi Seiji’s classroom.

He would directly squeeze Noumi’s real body, forcibly direct connect with him, and this time, make him completely submit. If that was impossible, he would instead yank of his Neuro Linker from his neck, trample over it, and destroy its core chip.

Was it necessary to give up on such brutality? Against an enemy that went as far as to use foul means to threaten Chiyuri and make her obey his will?

Every time his intense violent impulse welled up, a point on his back throbbed. No, it seemed like the impulse was being infinitely produced from there.

“Just wait..!”

Shouting as if spitting out, he tried to kick off the ground even more intensely—at that moment.

*GASHI*?A strong hand held back Haruyuki’s shoulder from behind.

“Stop it, Haru!”

At the same time as a stifled voice resounded in his ear, Haruyuki reflexively put on the brakes. Unable to stop coolly like his duel avatar, he nearly pitched forward and fell, until his arm was grasped and he righted himself.

While deeply hanging his head in that position, Haruyuki squeezed out a hoarse voice.

“..Taku, why are you stopping me!?”

Takumu—Mayuzumi Takumu answered back while strongly holding Haruyuki’s left arm with his muscular right arm.

“If Haru causes an incident of violence here and gets suspended from school, things will just become even harder for Chii-chan!”

“..She’s already having plenty of a hard time! Noumi..he threatened Chiyu and told her to obey what he said by force! I can’t forgive that!”

For the first time, Haruyuki turned around here and saw Takumu’s face.

He noticed that Takumu’s always refreshing eyes were twisted by strong anguish on the other side of his sports-type glasses, and he held his breath.

That’s right—It wasn’t that Takumu couldn’t feel anything. Inside his heart, he must have been more concerned about Chiyuri and more enraged at Noumi’s actions than Haruyuki.

But his childhood friend was worried about Haruyuki at the same time. Even though Haruyuki himself was simply filled with rage and didn't try to think of Takumu at all.

His back still throbbed, but at the moment he made that storm-like violent drive go away. After taking a big breath of air and slowly letting it out from his trembling throat, Haruyuki undid the tension in his shoulders and spoke with a sigh.

“....Even though a short while ago you also jumped at Noumi before I did.”

Then, Takumu revealed a brief bitter smile.

“Indeed. How many years has it been since I acted like that..?”

The day Noumi stole Haruyuki’s wings, cruel things had been said between himself and Taku after they quarreled at his home, but Haruyuki felt that it all had suddenly melted away and disappeared. The two of them kept standing in a corner of the school grounds like that, but eventually, it seemed that the time measurement for all the students at the track behind them had ended, and the teacher clapped his two hands together and called for everyone to gather.

“..Let’s go back, Haru.”

After slowly nodding at Takumu’s words, Haruyuki added something in a low voice.

“Please go talk to Chiyu afterwards. Even if she was told something by Noumi, it isn’t necessary in the slightest for her to obey that guy.”

“Yeah, I know. I..no, we will protect Chii-chan.”

Looking into each other’s eyes for a moment, the two of them turned back.

Haruyuki stared at the third-floor section of the school building one last time, and muttered in the depths of his mind.

——Noumi, you did something you absolutely never should have done. From this moment on, my battle with you will be an endless death match. I’ll see through the method you use to block yourself from accelerated duels no matter what, and keep fighting relentlessly until one of our Burst Points reaches zero.

Clenching his teeth hard, Haruyuki began to walk towards the gathering place alongside Takumu.

However, only ten minutes later.

The situation once again advanced in a direction that betrayed Haruyuki’s expectations.

As soon as fifth-period ended, Haruyuki and Takumu dashed over to the gymnasium that was on the other side of the school building. They found Chiyuri just as she was coming out from a corridor, and they beckoned her from the shadow of a pillar.

Wearing a t-shirt and shorts, Chiyuri’s face froze as soon as she saw the two of them. That was only natural, as she had just dived into the field of her first actual battle just several minutes ago, used ?recovery? on Haruyuki and Takumu’s enemy Dusk Taker, and healed him. As a result, Cyan Pile (Takumu) had lost from losing his entire HP gauge. Silver Crow (Haruyuki) had also lost due to the Time Up, and they both had points taken away by Noumi.

However, they put ‘We didn’t come to blame you for that’ into their expression as much as they could, and Haruyuki continued waving his arm while giving an awkward smile. Chiyuri cast her eyes down and seemed to avoid their gaze, but eventually she approached Haruyuki and Takumu after saying something to her classmates in the locker room.

In spite of the fact that he had just been strenuously exercising, when Haruyuki saw Chiyuri’s pale cheeks, intense rage towards Noumi welled up in his chest again. After Takumu beside him also clenched his fists tightly for an instant, Takumu took a big breath and opened his mouth.

“..Chii-chan. We already know why you did such a thing. That’s why, we’ve some to tell you that it isn’t necessary to obey him.”

“Th..That’s right.”

Haruyuki energetically added his own words as well.

“He should also fear Chiyu’s power now. With an ability that can heal not only HP, but even broken armor as well, we can fight against him plenty..no, we can beat him!”

As she listened to that, Chiyuri’s eyebrows tightened for a moment. An action that showed she was considering something and hesitating.

Several seconds later—

“That’s not it.”

Those were the first words to quietly come out from Chiyuri’s mouth.

“Eh..th-that’s not it..?”

When Haruyuki dumbfoundedly repeated her words, Chiyuri’s expression suddenly changed and her eyes released a strong light, and she said it again after looking from Haruyuki to Takumu in turn.

“That’s not it. I’m not being forced to obey Noumi.”

“Chii-chan..w-what..?”

This time it seemed that Takumu was also surprised and tried to take a step forward while blinking rapidly. Backing away as if to avoid him, Chiyuri quietly, but decisively answered.

“I asked Noumi. ‘Make me your comrade. I’ll become your exclusive healer, so supply me with points without fail.’ It’s not a big deal, since I haven’t joined you and Haru’s legion yet.”

Taking yet another step away from the two of them as they stood stock-still in shock, Chiyuri continued speaking.

“We?and ?Nega Nebulas? will act without interfering with each other from now on. Since each side knows each other’s real identities. Of course, the agreement between Noumi and Haru is a different story.”

Even in the midst of his blank-filled mind that couldn’t grasp the situation, Haruyuki could understand what the ?agreement? that Chiyuri spoke of was. In other words, that was about how, if Haruyuki continued to pay ten burst points every week for two years to Noumi, he would get back his ?flight ability?.

They didn’t intend to fight from now on. But, that wasn’t related to Noumi extorting points from Haruyuki. That was what Chiyuri was saying.

That was also a shock, but before that, but the fact that Chiyuri referred to Noumi and herself as ?we? had itself too enormous of an impact on Haruyuki. Among all the years until now, whenever Chiyuri said ?we?, only she, Haruyuki and Takumu were included in that.

Showing a profile of evading the eyes from the frozen two of them, Chiyuri then simply gave a short “See you later, then”.

And then she quickly turned around and ran towards the locker room.

After that, only the sweet milk-like smell that they were so familiar with was left behind.