one chance. In order for that lump of meat to connect with Takumu, it must expose some kind of vulnerable part. He would aim and shoot there.

He concentrated his senses in his right hand; a dazzling silver light was born in his fingertips and immediately covered him up to near his elbow.

As if responding to that light, the far-off lump of meat stirred its blood vessels extending from its whole body. It moved its tentacle-like tips and seemed to search its surroundings. Sure enough as the girl had said, if Haruyuki approached any closer those tentacles would notice him and try to take him in. Like how the ruptured ?Kit? had done so at the end of his battle with Takumu.

While reverberating with a high?riiiing?vibration sound, the silver light in his right hand extended a couple dozen centimeters in the shape of a sharp sword. Trying to guard his right hip with the pre-motion of the normal ?Laser Sword?, Haruyuki stopped his arm still.

The same techniques, the same Mind Power he had been using up until now would not be able to reach it. He had suddenly intuitively felt that. Haruyuki had already fought with the aura generated by the ISS Kit with his Mind Power yesterday night. To bore through that redoubtable, thick darkness, he needed a stronger, stronger image of piercing.

As if being led by something, he raised his right arm up to the height of his shoulder. He bent his body and arms and drew them tight nearly to his limits. It was the motion of the astonishing long-range attack that in the past his teacher and parent Kuroyukihime—Black Lotus had shown a number of times, ?Vorpal Strike?.

That Incarnate technique was probably the ultimate range expansion and power expansion technique. One could not use the same technique without preparation. But he was sure he could definitely do it just by redoubling his image. He had to do it.

Due to the preparatory motion to which he was unaccustomed his image had possibly wavered, causing the Over-Ray residing in his right arm to flicker irregularly.

That moment, his left hand was gripped even more tightly. Simultaneously, a whispering voice.

“Haru. Though I can’t use Mind Power, my feelings are the same as yours. I want to take back Takkun. In order for us to begin to walk facing the future, not the past. Even if..even if one day our paths differ.”

Though her voice had slightly quivered and trembled, Chiyuri had proclaimed that distinctly.

Suddenly, a pale light green glitter covered Lime Bell’s whole body. That vivid light also flowed into Haruyuki’s body as well through their joined hands, stabilized the Over-Ray in his right hand, and strengthened it further.

“That’s the power of Mind Power, Chiyu.”

Haruyuki had answered in a dwindled voice.

“Pray for me. That my hand can reach Taku.”

“Unh.”

Riiiiiing..The resonance like the sound of a bell increased again in volume. The black lump of meat made its mass of tentacles rustle irritably. However, it seemed unable to find Haruyuki and company.

At that time, Cyan Pile, who had been continuing to advance forward, finally arrived right before the lump of meat and stopped his feet. As if a thread had been cut, he kneeled and hanged his head deeply.

On the surface of the ?Pile Driver? covering Takumu’s right arm, a burbling black globule rose up. It opened its eyeball with a color like that of drenched blood and looked about, checking its surroundings—and its entire form suddenly floated up.

With the narrow blood vessel tissue still joined to Takumu’s right arm, wholly like a snail’s antennae the black eyeball slowly lengthened upwards. From the main body, the black lump of meat, a bundle of thick blood vessels was extended out in order to accept it.

At the moment when both of them tried to conjugate with the other—.

In one go, Haruyuki thrust his right arm straight out, which he had been tensing above his shoulder to his limit. At the same time, he shouted the words welling up from inside his heart.

“—?Laser..Lance?!”

With an intense metallic sound, a narrowly condensed lance of light was shot far, far from his right arm.

The lance penetrated the darkness lurking around the main body of the ISS Kit and lengthened. Twenty meters, thirty meters; its momentum had not yet declined.

However, there Haruyuki felt a heavy resistance in his right arm.?That feeling. A cold incandescence, same as that of when he had taken Bush Utan’s ?Dark Blow? for the first time.

—Reach!

—Reach!

The unvoiced shouts of Haruyuki and Chiyuri resounded simultaneously. The Over-Ray covering the two avatars scintillated dazzlingly, melted together, and flowed into the lance of light—and blew the heavy film of darkness away in all directions.

Takumu’s ISS Kit, which had been trying at that very moment to connect with the mass of blood vessels extending from the main body, looked back with the very movement of a living organism and caught sight of the lance. Its black eyelid was opened wide to its limits. It immediately began to return to the place it had parasitically infested, Cyan Pile’s right arm, but a mere moment earlier than that could happen.

The tip of the Mind Power lance deeply pierced the pupils of the crimson eyeball.

While raising a terrible splat sound and spraying out a jet black liquid, the eyeball ruptured all too easily. All of a sudden, Haruyuki felt the ferocious waves of anger emitted by the vast lump of meat—the Kit’s main body.

The countless tentacles stretching from the lump somewhere resembling a brain searched for the intruder, swirling violently. Directly below them, Cyan Pile, who had been hanging his head down, suddenly lifted his head.

“T..Taku! Over here!!”

Haruyuki shouted in as loud a voice as he could muster. Takumu, who had looked back, visually recognized Haruyuki and Chiyuri. From the depths of the slits engraved in the face mask, his pale eyes, which seemed to have fully awakened, opened wide.

“Takkun, run!!”

In response to Chiyuri’s scream, Takumu stood his avatar upright and stepped toward the two. Although he ran a few paces across the narrow floating bridge, whatever he was thinking he stopped still and turned about facing his rear—the direction of the lump of meat.

The Kit’s main body had twisted together most of its tentacles into a single one and was trying to arrest Cyan Pile again with it. If he were engulfed by that, he would probably be parasitized by a new Kit once more.

“Taku, run awa..!”

Halfway through, Haruyuki swallowed the words he had begun to yell.

The reason was that Takumu had suddenly gripped the tip of the steel pile extending from the Pile Driver on his right arm with his left hand.

That was—that motion was the Incarnate technique Takumu had mastered, the attack power expansion—

“?Cyan Blade?!!”

The call of a technique name spoken with his head held high. At the same time, the Enhanced Armament on his right arm was dismantled, and a blue Over-Ray enveloped the pulled-out steel pile. By the time he grasped it firmly again with his two hands with smooth movements, the pile was already changing into a large two-handed sword.

Without any sign of fearing the rushing mass of tentacles, Takumu held his sword glittering blue overhead.

“CHEIAAAAAAA—!!”

The vigor of a piercing scream. The very space around him trembled electrically, and an aftershock wave of intimidating might was transmitted as far as where the two were standing stock-still.

While effusing a light resembling lightning, the two-handed sword cut down from a head-on direction—.

It severed the swarm of tentacles and cut deeply into the lump of meat of the Kit’s main body.

A silent shriek.

The entire body of the lump of meat writhed violently, and the dozens of Burst Linkers joined to its blood vessels also swayed tremblingly. Some of them had regained consciousness and seemed to be blankly gazing around at their surroundings. From the vicinity of the two-handed sword that was still cutting into it, a blue light stretched radially and gave birth to some fine cracks.

Right after, a part of the Kit’s main body about ten meters in diameter internally exploded, and a large amount of black liquid and gas was dispersed. The passageway in which Takumu, Haruyuki, and Chiyuri were standing crumbled from its base. The avatars, losing their balance, were helplessly thrown into the bottomless space of outer space..

—Or so they had thought, but the next moment.