Three of the five metal fins on either side were folded up, so he couldn’t produce even half of his normal thrust, but he was still able to go from dead stop to mad dash, causing Urocyon’s reaction to be delayed the tiniest amount.
He first pulled his right hand back, and then as he thrust it forward, he shouted, “Laser Sword!”
The overlay he’d been maintaining the whole time stretched out into a silver blade. Urocyon reinforced the aura in his arms as he tried to throw up a cross guard.
Just as the Incarnate sword extending from his right hand was on the verge of making contact with Urocyon’s aura, he stretched out the five fingers of his left hand he had readied on his hip and called out another technique name.
“Laser Lance!”
Skreenk! A metallic sound rang out as Urocyon’s arms blocked the sword of his right hand.
Whunk! A heavy sound accompanied the direct hit the Incarnate lance extending from his left hand made against Urocyon’s right flank.
Haruyuki had been convinced his lance pierced the Drive Linker’s side, but the health gauge above Urocyon’s head did not drop. He looked down to find a thick aura concentrated on Urocyon’s side, stopping the tip of his Laser Lance.
He can do that, too?
Haruyuki was awed by Urocyon’s control of the aura—overlay—for defense, when he’d thought it was nothing more than a light effect incidental to the Incarnate technique.
Judging from the game’s name of Dread Drive 2047, Urocyon and his friends would have had to have been given the program in January of this year or later. In fact, before the fight started, he said that they’d been waiting months for the two worlds to be connected—not years.
So then that meant all the Drive Linkers including Urocyon had shorter battle histories than Haruyuki, who became a Burst Linker in October of last year. Naturally, it was possible that they had him beat on accumulated accelerated time, but even still, how on earth did Urocyon obtain this kind of technique in less than a year of real time?
Brushing away a shiver of terror, Haruyuki focused all of his mental powers in his hands.
The key to the Incarnate System was changing the world through overwriting it; in other words, through the imagination. Laser Sword and Laser Lance were manifestations of the image of going further, ever further; momentary increases in range and force, just as the “light” of the name suggested. They were never geared toward prolonged conflict. Not to mention that this was the first time he’d ever activated both sword and lance simultaneously.
But if his Incarnate disappeared without breaking Urocyon’s defenses, then one of his arms—or if he really fumbled, his head—could be carried away in the counterattack.
The blue aura that repelled Haruyuki’s Incarnate had communicated only an overwhelming hardness on first contact with it, but now he felt a supple tenaciousness in addition to that. Almost like a wild animal… It wasn’t only Urocyon’s appearance that made him think this.
This aura could repel thirty-millimeter rounds. He wouldn’t be able to pierce it with force alone. He had to polish and hone his blade of light to the ultimate hardness, thinness, sharpness. But he’d never once drilled with a technique like that—
Actually, he had.
While it had been with a different sword, Haruyuki had soberly trained to cut that which could not be cut right up until that very day. Omega-style Whole Blade handed down to him directly by “Ruthless” Centaurea Sentry, a technique that was impossible to defend against. Whole Blade found the smallest point—the “minuscule” that was in an object, no matter how hard or big it might have been—and cut it with the “maximum” force.
Haruyuki had become Centaurea’s student so that he could learn how to use Lucid Blade, the sword-type Enhanced Armament he’d obtained as his level-six bonus. But a sword was a sword, a blade a blade. It should have been possible to use the Omega technique even with the Laser Sword, an imaginary blade that had no physical form.
It had already been five seconds since this standoff began. The aura lodged in Urocyon’s arms and side didn’t so much as flicker as it continued to fend off the Incarnate sword and lance. But Haruyuki’s own imagination would only last another three seconds. If he was going to do it, it had to be now.
At the same time as he extinguished the Laser Lance of his left hand, he set another image onto the silver overlay stretching out from his right hand, the image of a hard, thin, sharp sword. Previously, he would have had to invest a lot of energy and time to picture a color and shape, but the hours he’d spent with his beloved Lucid Blade had become a fixed muscle memory carved into his body, into his soul.
Wheen! The immaterial Laser Sword shrank down to less than a fifth of its thickness, the hard blade carving out a perfectly straight line—a Light Sword.
“…!”
Urocyon reacted with lightning reflexes and opened his mouth wide, perhaps intending to utter some technique name.
But before he could, Haruyuki tore into the blue aura with his shining white blade, albeit by the smallest amount.
He’d only dug into it by mere millimeters when the aura rapidly increased in hardness and tried to repel his blade. But the fact that the aura was hard meant it had definite form. If it was a hard armor attached to the suit rather than an undefined, rubber-like aura, then he could find the minuscule in it.
The instant he felt the Incarnate blade and the aura armor come into contact at a single point, Haruyuki mustered up all of the mental power that remained to him and prayed.
Extreme!!
Krshk. The Light Sword slipped straight down.
But he could no longer maintain the image, and the sword flickered and then disappeared.
He used the physical strength of his right leg and the thrust of his wings to jump back, and once he’d gotten more than five meters away, he let out the breath he’d been holding.
Here, at last, he saw the results of the blow that he’d poured all of his knowledge and technique into.
One of the arms that Urocyon held stationary and wrapped in his thin blue aura crossed in front of him, the right arm that had defended against the Light Sword soundlessly split in two midway between wrist and elbow.
Thd! The hand that bounced against the ground didn’t shatter into fragments of light like a Burst Linker’s severed limb, but was instead enveloped in blue flames and instantly burned up.
The extremely thin line of a blade was also carved into his remaining arm, but the cut was apparently not deep enough to sever the hand. Haruyuki’s plan had been to cut off both of Urocyon’s arms and also do damage to his torso if luck was on his side. But the Omega-style Light Sword he’d staked everything on had taken nothing more than a single arm. And if his opponent was the sort of person to lose the will to fight over a thing like that, he wouldn’t be the captain of a raiding party.
Haruyuki had basically used up all of his Incarnate power, but he still had to keep going somehow until time was up. Although how would he even know when five minutes was up anyway…?
“…I get it,” Urocyon said, lowering his arms and gazing at the stump of his right. “So this is Incarnate… The principle looks the same as DD’s Psion Arts, but application’s different, huh? Got a little secret spice in there that brings the heat.”
A gray tongue shot out of his mouth and licked the cross section. This couldn’t have told him anything, but he nonetheless smiled like everything made sense to him now as he turned his eyes to the northern sky.
“How many seconds left, Complicator?”
His voice wasn’t particularly loud, and yet from the top of the stone statue towering over the intersection, a voice with a somehow mechanical edge to it came in response.
“You were the one who decided on this condition. You could at least calculate the time yourself.” And then after a short pause, “One hundred twenty seconds left.”
“Roger! Lemme know when we hit zero.” Urocyon turned his face back and stared hard at Haruyuki. “Now, these last two minutes, I’m going full throttle. Keep up with me, Silver Crow.”
He had no sooner made this statement than he was turning his intact left arm and his severed right arm up high toward the sky. He threw his sinewy body back, opened his mouth below his fox mask, and shouted, “Chrysocyoooooon!”
The cry of the technique name was bold, like some anime hero’s. Haruyuki did feel the desire to stay and watch what happened, but he had no leeway for intelligence gathering at the moment.
As he dashed forward, he quickly called out, “Equip Lucid Blade!!” Instantly, a pool of light condensed on his left hip to produce a slender longsword.
This was his second trump card. Urocyon wouldn’t expect him to summon a real sword after going out of his way to create a sword with Incarnate. He gripped the hilt in his right hand and the scabbard in his left, and he sank down low.
A flaming blue aura rose up from all over Urocyon, but Haruyuki ignored this and drew his sword to launch a surprise attack. He had confirmed that the Drive Linker’s Incarnate—no, Psion armor—could be cut with the “extreme.” And even if that aura was made up of real flames, Lucid Blade had been enhanced to nullify heat damage, so those flames couldn’t touch it.