Haruyuki was absolutely astonished, and he was far away from the action, watching from a safe place. So he had no trouble understanding why the red avatar froze in place for nearly two seconds.
Those two seconds were a bounty for Urocyon.
Closing the distance between himself and the red linker in a single leap, he threw his right hand out in an overhand punch. He didn’t so much as try to disguise the advance motion for this very obvious blow.
Recovering from the mental shock of his futile attack, the red-type attempted to block the punch with his rough left hand. His palm, equipped with the barrel of a gun, was both thicker and larger than that of the green-type, who had so recently fallen.
But Haruyuki still shouted reflexively, “Don’t! You have to dodge!”
However, his voice, coming from a rooftop nearly two hundred meters in the air, couldn’t possibly have reached the avatar on the ground below.
The instant the red-type’s raised hand touched Urocyon’s fist, it scattered in all directions, as though the attack had turned his hand into some kind of viscous liquid. The fist kept shooting forward to dig into the red avatar’s, like it was made of butter, plunging deep into his thorax from the shoulder.
Kakrrrrnk! The red avatar’s upper body exploded into dust.
The events that followed could not have been called a battle, by any definition of that word.
During the weeks of internal time in Unlimited EK, the Exercitus survivors had no doubt experienced unimaginable terror and despair. They’d also likely not had anything like proper sleep, but they nevertheless flew at Urocyon one after the other to avenge their slaughtered comrades.
But the Drive Linker easily evaded or pulverized the punches and kicks, swords, and hammers that rained down on him from all sides, and with a single counterattack, transformed more than one Burst Linker into tiny particles. He didn’t even try to avoid the bullets and lasers that rained down in long-range attacks, instead repelling them with his entire body.
This was no longer a fighting game or a Battle Royale game. It was an unparalleled action game with a lone hero mowing down the enemy army. Haruyuki’s conviction of only a few minutes earlier that Urocyon wouldn’t be able to defeat the more than fifty survivors remaining was dramatically shaken.
When the twelfth—no, thirteenth—Burst Linker had been transformed into a death marker, a cry he couldn’t hold back slipped from his mouth. “…Stop…”
“Haru,” Chiyuri next to him murmured, perhaps hearing his cracked voice.
He’d been convinced she would stop him, but the words that followed were the exact opposite.
“I’ll come with.”
“…Okay.” If he were honest with himself, he would’ve preferred that she wait here, but Chiyuri was not the type to have accepted that option.
The reason they had dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field in the first place was to check on the well-being of Chiyuri’s friend in the midsize Legion Ovest, Cotton Marten, and they still didn’t know if she was all right. There was a definite possibility that she had been driven to total point loss long before they arrived in this place. Even so, given that she might have been among the survivors or the death markers on the ground, if Haruyuki was going to go down there, then Chiyuri was absolutely going to go with him.
“But don’t do anything reckless,” he said, giving her a warning at least, and Chiyuri nodded firmly.
He thought for another second, then gave her two more instructions before wrapping his arm around Lime Bell’s waist. After getting a solid hold on her, he put his foot on the natural stone wall that wrapped around the roof. Right before he jumped, he shot a glance at the stone statue rising up to the rear of the battlefield.
The nine Drive Linkers showed no sign of moving. The long-haired boy in the red suit in position in the middle of them stood tall, with his arms crossed in front of his chest, but the other eight were sitting on the edge of the statue, leaning against one another, or even lying down farther back.
Suddenly, Haruyuki got the faintest feeling that something was off. But no matter how he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see what it might have been.
“What’s wrong?” Chiyuri asked, and Haruyuki shook his head slightly.
“Oh… It’s nothing. Let’s go.” Without waiting for her reply, he kicked at the stone wall and leapt into the air.
Although the full-speed flight from his condo to this place had used up a fair bit of the special attack gauge he’d charged right after they dived, his gauge still had about 40 percent left. This was not a comfortable margin to be charging into battle with, but he didn’t have time to go around smashing objects.
He spread the wings on his back the bare minimum necessary and descended at a sharp angle to at least not use up what remained of his gauge with flight. He put on the brakes on the south side of the Higashi-Ikebukuro Intersection and let Chiyuri down. After confirming out of the corner of his eye that she’d actually made it safely, he set his sights on the center of the battlefield and charged forward at super-low altitude, practically crawling along the ground.
He slipped past the feet of the members of Exercitus who had formed a large circle, and saw red and yellow lights flashing intermittently on the other side of the clouds of dust rising into the air.
While it went against his own policy of not launching a surprise attack against a new opponent, even more people could be sacrificed during the time it took for him to land and introduce himself. Making up his mind, he gave his wings just a moment of thrust.
Bwaan! Haruyuki shot through the dust clouds and grasped the situation ahead of him in 0.1 seconds.
The first thing he saw was a large blue-type avatar swinging a massive oak tree with both hands. He had seen this figure before—Covelline Miner, a member of the midsize Legion Cold Brew based in the Kita Ward. And in front of Covelline, with his back turned to Haruyuki, was the vanguard of the ten Drive Linker invaders from another world, Urocyon.
Just as his name suggested, Covelline Miner was a Burst Linker whose purpose in life was using his single pickax to dig up mountains in the Unlimited Neutral Field and unearth rare metals and gems. Given this, it might seem that he would be skilled at fighting, and indeed, every so often, his tunnels hit an Enemy nest. He even had a story about crushing a worm-type Wild-class Enemy on his own. Or so Takumu had told Haruyuki once.
Covelline was most likely one of those Burst Linkers who focused all their energy on one aspect of their avatar, devoting all his training to the piercing power of his pickax. No matter how tough Urocyon’s suit was, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to avoid damage from a blow with all the power of Covelline’s raison d’être riding on it.
But the Drive Linker merely raised his right hand again in an artless motion.
The instant Covelline’s pickax pierced it, Silver Crow would beat down on Urocyon’s wide-open back with the most powerful close-range attack he had, Spiral Kick. Making this instantaneous decision, Haruyuki flipped around and thrust his right foot straight out.
The tip of the pickax touched Urocyon’s hand. Blue sparks rained down, the pickax gouged into the palm of that hand—no. This pickax had penetrated even the armor of a Wild-class Enemy, and yet the moment it touched Urocyon’s palm, it bent like a needle and then shattered. The pieces quickly melted into a shower of sparks.
“…!!”
Stunned as he was, Haruyuki nevertheless tried to complete his surprise attack bearing the full weight of his strength.
His Spiral Kick was a serious technique, powerful enough to shatter the super-heavy armor of Glacier Behemoth, aka Habakkuk. As long as the blow landed, it was impossible for the target to defend against it and get away scot-free.
He adjusted the thrust in his wings and was about to spin his whole body around like a drill, when in an almost nonchalant motion, Urocyon threw up his left hand to the rear, into the path of Haruyuki’s kick. His position and timing were impeccable; it was like he had eyes in the back of his head. It was too late for Haruyuki to shift the aim of his Spiral Kick.
This won’t stop me! Back or hand, I’m going through it! he shouted in his head. And then he spotted it.
An extremely faint blue light enveloping Urocyon’s hand. And this was no mere light effect. It had to have been…
“Laser…” He didn’t know if he actually said the word out loud or if it merely echoed as a prayer in his head.
Instantly, a pale halation brightened the edges of his field of view, a by-product of his efforts to muster up the strongest image he possibly could.
Before he could finish shouting the attack name, his right leg and Urocyon’s left hand made contact.
Skreeeeeek! Together with a strange metallic screeching, blue and gold light twisted and swirled like living creatures.
The feedback that came to him through the toes of his right foot was an unbelievable hardness. Not the hardness of nature that metal or stone might possess, but the hardness of unshakable confidence, a firmness of will. Or to put it another way—Incarnate.
Gritting his teeth, Haruyuki reversed the thrust in his wings. Using the force from Urocyon’s hand knocking him away, he somersaulted backward and came to stand on the ground in a spot nearly ten meters away.
“…”
He slowly let out the breath he’d been holding and half folded the metal fins on his back as he glanced down at his own right leg.
A single crack, thinner than a strand of spider’s silk, ran through the armor over the tips of his toes. The injury was slight enough that it had no impact on his health gauge, but if that conflict had continued another five—no, three—seconds, his foot could have been shattered. And if he’d been even half a second later in mustering up his Incarnate power, he would have been a death marker right about now.