It took nearly thirty seconds for Haruyuki to manage to pull himself to his feet somehow. His duel avatar did not get tired in the same sense as his real-world self. He felt pain if his avatar body was injured, and his movement was limited if he lost a limb, but lactic acid did not build up in his muscles, nor did his glycogen dry up.
So he should have been able to stand up if he wanted to. Or at least, this is what he told himself repeatedly, but the limbs of the supposedly lightweight Silver Crow were heavy as lead. Unable to muster up any strength at all, he eventually had to get an assist from his Metatron Wings in order to peel himself off the ground.
While he sat cross-legged, taking deep breaths, sensation finally returned to his half-paralyzed limbs, and he at last yanked himself to his feet.
He first headed for Chiyuri, lying at the base of the statue. She looked more or less intact, but she was flat on her back and not moving a muscle. He wondered if she had lost consciousness, but when he drew near, she raised her right hand ten or so centimeters off the ground.
“Haru,” she said weakly. “Help me up…”
“Yep.” He bent over and grabbed her hand with his left. He himself was far from full strength, but he gave a hearty “heeyah” and pulled her up.
Although she staggered for a second once upright again, she managed to get her feet under her with Haruyuki’s hand as support. She shook her head several times before saying, “Thanks. I’m okay now.”
He let go of her hand, and she sighed at length.
“…They were pretty strong, huh?”
“Yeah,” he agreed slowly. “And it didn’t seem like they were even going all out…”
“And, like, how did they disappear?” she demanded. “You saw that clock thing from a second before they vanished, right?”
“Uh-huh,” he assented.
Most likely, the phantom two-handed clock and the disappearance of the Drive Linkers were due to this Incarnate technique—Psion Arts—called Rattrapante that Complicator had used. But as to what specific effect it had, he still couldn’t say even now, several minutes after he’d been hit with it.
“Probably some kind of perception-inhibiting technique,” he said, after looking up at the gray stone statue towering above them on their left. “At any rate, let’s go look for Cotton Marten. Can you move?”
“Yeah. I’m good,” she replied. “I still can’t entirely feel my legs, but if we’re just walking…”
“Same. That Incarnate technique Urocyon used maybe didn’t just have a knockback effect but a stun effect, too.” Gritting his teeth all over again at the unfathomable strength of the Drive Linkers, Haruyuki swept his gaze around to both sides.
Three great valleys stretched out from the large intersection to the north, southeast, and northwest. The valleys to the north and southeast were Otowa Street in the real world, and the northwestern valley was Green Boulevard. Over half of the Exercitus survivors mowed down by Urocyon’s Psion Arts were apparently also recovering from a stunned condition and leaning on one another as they started to assemble on Green Boulevard.
When Haruyuki hesitated, Chiyuri took a step forward and said, “Let’s go.”
He nodded wordlessly and started walking toward the northwest. He was “Betrayer” to Exercitus, but none of them were likely to try to fight him in this situation.
And there were a lot of them. Coming together in twos and threes at the mouth of the valley, the survivors numbered at least seventy on a rough count. Additionally, nearly thirty death markers still dotted the intersection.
But two or three times this number had likely been assembled when the mission to attack Tezcatlipoca began. Meaning that the number of Burst Linkers driven to total point loss in this place was, at minimum, a hundred people, and at maximum, two hundred. Most likely, the majority of the survivors had lost forever friends and comrades…and maybe “parents” and “children.”
The chances that Cotton Marten had survived definitely were not high, but Chiyuri walked forward courageously nonetheless. When they drew near the opening of the valley, she let out a small “Oh!” and sped up into a trot.
He thought she’d found Marten, but she was heading for a small group of M-types. There were four—no, five of them.
“Um, you’re from Ovest, right?” Chiyuri called out, and the five Linkers turned around slowly.
The large red-type avatar closest to them turned a face modeled in the shape of a tank gun turret for a mere instant toward Haruyuki before replying, “Yeah… We are.”
“Do you know where Cotto—I mean, Cotton Marten—is?” she asked.
“…”
The red avatar looked silently at his comrades.
A green-type with a similarly muscular physique slumped his shoulders as he replied, “Marten just leveled up, so she didn’t have a lot of extra points. And the place where she died was bad…”
“Huh…?” Chiyuri gaped at him. “Y-you mean…?”
“About five, six days into the Unlimited EK, she lost all her points.”
Chiyuri’s shoulders shuddered, and she staggered like her limbs had gone numb again, so Haruyuki hurried to hold his childhood friend up.
By the time they arrived, Tezcatlipoca’s Unlimited EK had been going on for two or three weeks. So the fact was that no matter how they tried, they could never have saved Cotton Marten. But total point loss was serious and not so easily accepted.
Cotton Marten had lost the Brain Burst program and any memories connected with the Accelerated World. Chiyuri would never see her again, not in the Accelerated World, not in the real one. And some percentage of the blame for this lay, without a doubt, with Haruyuki himself.
Still holding Chiyuri up, Haruyuki stiffened in expectation of some kind of reproach. From the members of Ovest, not from Chiyuri. But the five people before his eyes slumped to the ground one after the other and hung their heads, as if they no longer had the energy to keep standing, even.
Instead of their blame, Haruyuki abruptly heard his name called from immediately behind.
“Silver Crow!”
Haruyuki jumped and then looked over his shoulder.
Standing there was a duel avatar with saturated bluish-purple armor. The voice was male, but the avatar was so slender, it could have been mistaken for an F-type. From the chest down to the hips was particularly thin, obviously thinner than Silver Crow, even.
One of the five sitting on the ground called out to him in a hoarse voice.
“…Leader…”
Even before he heard this, the name of the duel avatar popped up in Haruyuki’s mind. Juniper Weasel. Leader of the Legion Ovest, which had its headquarters in the city of Nishi-Tokyo.
This was the first time he’d ever spoken with him face-to-face, but he’d had any number of normal duels against him. With weapons like a high-precision sniper attack launched from a rifle with an abnormally long barrel that fired real bullets, and an elusive mobility that brought pride to his namesake of the weasel, he was a rare red-type sniper, and he had dropped Haruyuki flying at top speed. Haruyuki was pretty sure he was level seven.
Juniper Weasel stared at him dead-on with eye lenses that shone faintly yellow, and then bowed the small head on top of a longish neck. “You saved us, Crow. If you and Lime Bell hadn’t come along, we woulda all been wiped out by that fox-face.”
“…”
Haruyuki had been convinced Juniper Weasel was going to tell him right off, so now his jaw dropped beneath his mirrored goggles.