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If you win, our world will disappear. He had nearly let that go in one ear and out the other, but this was the most important piece of information yet. Urocyon had only said that today was the end of service for Trial No. 2, but the end was equally possible for Dread Drive 2047. If Haruyuki and the other Burst Linkers met some kind of victory condition, then it would be DD2047 that disappeared.
Most likely, this was the “stuff” that Urocyon had danced around earlier. Even this warmongering, bestial fighter with unfathomable power hesitated to give voice to the annihilation of DD. In which case, the possibility of Haruyuki and the Burst Linkers coming out of this victorious was not zero. In fact, he would bet that Urocyon and his team had also estimated that they had a 20 or 30 percent chance.
But only they had been told how the Burst Linkers could win. He had to do whatever it took to get that information out of them. He forced his leaden legs to push against the ground and staggered to his feet.
Ahead of him, Chiyuri was overwhelmed for an instant, but then held her head higher to respond boldly, “…Even so! You could at least talk to us first. If we shared all of the information we have without hiding anything, we might be able to find a way where no one’s game has to go anywhere!”
“I bet all the players of the long-gone Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt would’ve looooved to know this mysterious way of yours,” Urocyon muttered in a strained voice. He put his left hand on his hip before apparently realizing he had no pocket there and letting it drop once more. “You. Name?”
Chiyuri hesitated for a second and then replied, “…Lime Bell.”
“Uh-huuuuh. So do all you BBers got a color in your name?” Urocyon nodded in understanding. “Listen up, Lime Bell. You’re free to be all sunshine and flowers and hope in vain however much you want. But don’t go pushing that on us. Before we went through that portal, we talked about it so much, our tongues practically fell out. If you’re such a pacifist, then cover your eyes, plug your ears, and go sit in a corner somewhere.”
“How do you know my hope’s in vain?!” Chiyuri cried, her voice even more courageous.
“Oh, I know,” Urocyon spat in response, before raising his left hand nonchalantly. The film of an aura wrapped around his fist instantly grew thicker and flashed up like flames.
Chiyuri still hadn’t learned how to use the Incarnate system. Or more precisely, she had provided backup for Haruyuki and Takumu with the overlay generated by the bell of her left arm exactly once when they were trying to dig a hole in an indestructible wall with their Incarnate techniques after infiltrating the headquarters of the Acceleration Research Society in Minato Area No. 3 of the Accelerated World. But she’d passed out at the same time as the light disappeared, and she hadn’t done any particular Incarnate training since.
Which was why if she were jabbed in the head or the torso with Urocyon’s Incarnate-enhanced fist, she would die instantly.
“…Stop!” Haruyuki cried hoarsely, desperately forcing his noncompliant legs to move.
Perhaps noticing his approach, Urocyon turned his head back the slightest bit and said, “Don’t get the wrong idea, Silver Crow. I told you I’d let you go if you survived for five minutes. Roar Ring.”
He opened the hand he held at shoulder height and then clenched it shut once more, sucking the swirling flames inside his fist.
The action looked like nothing big, but Haruyuki saw the intensity with which the Drive Linker clenched his hand and twisted the air—no, space itself.
Before he had time to even cry out, the ultra-compressed aura exploded with a roar reminiscent of the howls of several hundred wild animals and became a ring of blue light, which instantly expanded.
Standing next to Urocyon, the tall Complicator merely staggered slightly when touched by the ring of light, but Chiyuri before them was knocked high up into the air like a rag doll.
“Bell!” Haruyuki started to rush to Chiyuri’s side, but he was unable to dodge the ring of light as it grew at unbelievable speed. He was hit with a pressure powerful enough to crush the metallic armor covering his body, and his back slammed into the ground once more.
A second later, dozens of cries echoed from all directions all at once. Urocyon’s ring of light—the aura impact wave—had crossed the sixty- or seventy-meter radius of the Higashi-Ikebukuro Intersection to reach the edge and mow down the Exercitus survivors.
Curiously, his health gauge didn’t decrease after being hit with this intense impact. Even Lime Bell, who had been up close and dead center, seemed to have not taken any significant damage, although she had been knocked backward onto the ground. Most likely, the technique was a nonfatal one, deliberately fine-tuned by Urocyon to be that way. He had used his imagination to retain the collision power of the attack while reducing the offensive force to nearly zero, a far more difficult task than amplifying that force.
“Silver Crow, all you jerks out there, you should thank Lime Bell.” After showing them his overwhelming power, Urocyon lowered his left hand and said, as if to push the point home, “This shrimp’s guts bought you another day of real time. We’ll leave the portal buried until July twenty-eighth at twelve midnight.”
“Are you certain, Fang?” Complicator asked, a note of concern in their voice. “Drill’s definitely going to snap if you make a promise like that without consulting anyone.”
“I’ll deal with that then, Wheel.” Urocyon turned to look at his comrade. “And you said you got something you wanna check out in this world anyway, yeah?”
“Well, that is true… But please discuss with me in advance the next time you are going to decide something.” Shrugging, as if to say they were used to his shenanigans, Complicator turned their head all the way around. Without so much as a glance at Silver Crow and Lime Bell on the ground nearby, they began to walk in the direction of Otowa Street that stretched out to the southeast from the intersection.
“Okay, but you don’t get to just pick where we go without the whole discussing part!” Cursing, Urocyon chased after him.
Haruyuki knew he needed to get at least a hint of what the condition for victory in this war might have been, but it was all he could do to lift his head mere centimeters. He opened his eyes wide and focused intently to at least try to see where the two Drive Linkers were going.
Black cloak flapping as they walked, Complicator spoke in a somehow languid voice, “Rattrapante.”
Haruyuki had never heard this word before, but he was at least sure that it was a technique name. Because the small gears attached to either side of Complicator’s head flashed with a golden light—most likely, an Incarnate overlay.
The instant this flash reached his eye lenses, something strange (curious??) rose up before him—the semitransparent dial of a clock. But there was only one hand. Actually, no. There were two hands of exactly the same length, sitting on top of each other at the twelve position.
Tic tic tic tic… The two hands began to move simultaneously. But soon enough, the movement of one slowed. It did a full sweep in one second, but then it was two seconds a circuit, then three… And then it stopped with a faint tic.
Instantly, Haruyuki felt like he was sliding into unconsciousness and blinked his eye lenses several times.
At some point, the phantom clock had vanished. And Urocyon and Complicator, walking along some ten meters away, had also disappeared like smoke.