Never before had Yuuki felt it so clearly.
Heat coursed through every limb, climbed her nerves, and made each beat of her heart thunder. She knew she was alive. Only because she existed could she follow those dizzying afterimages, feel that unfiltered pressure from another soul, and answer it with a force just as fierce.
Fire could only give off light and heat while it burned, even if it was destined to go out.
Who could experience the thrill of running free like this and not lose themselves in it? Who could laugh, sneer, take pride in their own strength, and find any of that strange?
Now she understood.
This was the road they had walked.
A road traveled alone was narrow and lonely. Add one other person, an opponent and a friend, and they could drive each other forward. Fluctlight bearers were rare kindred spirits, yet they were also caged beasts compelled to tear at one another.
Her eyes burned as though they were on fire, but her thoughts only grew clearer. She read every movement and made every decision faster than before.
Every answer lay in the sword.
All that mattered was whether she could keep up.
"What's wrong? You're slowing down! Have you reached your limit?!"
Satoru's challenge came as a roar. His eyes shone gold, just like hers. He had to be enduring the same pain, yet his voice remained steady. He truly was a veteran of countless battlefields. Even in a fight like this, his mind was as still as water.
The arrogance was gone. Somewhere along this road, he had only become lonelier.
"No... Not yet. Not even close!"
Yuuki's answer tore from her throat.
She could not retreat.
She could not let up.
She had to keep moving, clench her teeth, endure, and take one more step.
She let her Fluctlight strip away her life and sear its path through her, all to make the flames burn higher. The gold in her eyes blazed to its limit, and her vision finally changed. The vivid arena, her opponent, and the black blade flashing toward her all lost their color until only black and white remained.
For one instant, Satoru slowed.
She could see him.
So this was where his footsteps had led.
Yuuki stepped forward, toward the place where the ultimate sword dance waited, and forced herself to become stronger.
It worked.
For the first time, she took the advantage and broke the delicate balance between their speeds.
Before she could savor it, the black blade in her monochrome world surged forward. It became the same suffocating, relentless force it had been before, demanding every scrap of her attention.
The moment she took that first step, he drove her straight back.
Yuuki cried out again and launched another challenge.
A sharp crack split the air.
The obsidian sword and black curved blade snapped almost simultaneously. Their broken halves spun high from the force of the last exchange, then shattered into glittering white fragments before they could touch the ground. The hilts remaining in their hands broke apart an instant later.
Their speed had known no limit, and neither had their sword dance. Their virtual bodies possessed HP, however, and their weapons possessed durability. The system had judged every clash as an ordinary attack, so each one had inflicted only minimal durability loss. Ten blows, a hundred, nearly a thousand. Even one point at a time had eventually ground both weapons to death.
It had been a battle fierce enough to destroy two exceptional weapons, yet both HP bars remained deep in the green.
Apart from their opening exchange, neither had wounded the other.
If they continued like this, the time limit would decide the match, and the system would award victory to whoever had more HP remaining.
Neither of them would accept that.
Win or lose, the swords themselves would have the final word.
They sprang apart. Satoru switched weapons in an instant and summoned a spare black curved blade identical to the first. His right hand swept through empty air, drawing it from an invisible sheath with effortless flair.
Yuuki's right hand closed around empty space as well. Light flared within her grip as her new weapon materialized. Before the effect had even faded, she drove it straight toward Satoru's eyes. The attack came like lightning, without the slightest hint that she had just lost her weapon.
Satoru raised the flat of his blade beside his right cheek. His gaze followed the slender weapon streaking toward him through the blue light. To his eyes, the lightning-fast thrust was perfectly clear, almost slow.
He saw the weapon before anyone else did.
His eyes widened slightly.
"So you've come this far."
A laugh escaped him.
"Yeah... Give me everything you've got, Satoru!" Yuuki shouted, her voice bold and utterly free. "Use the move that defeated Didos and broke Heathcliff's Holy Sword! Use it on me, right here!"
"And in return, I'll answer with the strongest thrust I can deliver!"
"Gladly! But without Infinite Sword, that move is nothing more than a direct thrust!"
Satoru laughed with the same unrestrained joy. For the first time, a trace of pale blue dulled the brilliant gold in his eyes.
"If a Fluctlight can carry a person's will, though, then a strike filled with this much resolve may be the closest thing I have to a true killing move!"
"Try not to end up paralyzed!"
"Come on!"
Yuuki withdrew the blue streak of her blade and pulled her entire body back. It was only preparation for the attack that would consume everything she had.
Her black-and-white world began to change again. Anything useless was cast away and fed to the flames. Soon, even black and white had burned from her sight.
Only lines remained.
It was the barest vision imaginable, and the furthest she could force herself to see.
Yuuki drew her right arm back until it felt like a bowstring on the verge of snapping.
One final thrust.
Her newly summoned weapon shot forward. The strike surpassed every movement in her earlier sword dance, moving so fast that it blurred even within her altered vision. The light concealing its form blew away beneath the force of the thrust, finally revealing the weapon to everyone watching.
A steel-gray rapier.
It was not the one-handed straight sword of the Absolute Sword.
In Test Chamber 3, the instruments monitoring Yuuki's body began to sound their alarms. Her real body was already dehydrated, as though the flames of her soul were evaporating it from within.
Satoru spun his black blade in a dazzling flourish, then reversed it into his left hand and leveled the point straight ahead. His lowered gaze rose. His eyes were no longer pure gold, but pale blue threaded with gold.
At last, he chose to give everything he had.
One step.
His right hand slammed around the hilt, and his entire body surged forward behind the blade in a fearless, lethal thrust.
One Blade, Certain Death.
One Blade, Heart Eater.
Those words closed the skill description for Infinite Sword's finisher, One Blade, Heart Eater. They were Kayaba's perfect definition of the unique skill he had created. Satoru, Yurnero, had taken that skill to its absolute peak.
That same strike had devoured the Azure Gap Halberd.
It had devoured the Holy Sword.
For the third time, it would devour the final thrust racing toward him.
No evasion.
No retreat.
Only the straight line between two opponents and their weapons remained.
The steel-gray bolt shattered.
One Blade, Heart Eater tore through the rapier's full-powered thrust. Through their Fluctlights, the ferocity carried by the slender blade became a tangible wave that crashed through every part of Yuuki. Her golden eyes faltered beneath his blue-gold gaze. The fire she had fanned to life went out beneath the gale, and pain like severed nerves ripped the roar from her throat.
The black curved blade pierced her body. Satoru collided with her, both hands locked around the weapon as he continued to drive forward.
The blow lifted Yuuki onto her toes and forced her back more than ten meters.
The rapier slipped lifelessly from her hand.
The wind fell silent.
The clash of blades was over.
Satoru held the position for several seconds, then gently released the weapon and stepped away.
Yuuki staggered backward with the blade still buried in her chest and collapsed. The peerless black edge looked capable of severing anything.
Her HP had fallen, but not by much. As far as the system was concerned, the attack had not even been a Sword Skill.
Yet Yuuki's eyes were half-lidded, and the gold that had burned within them was already fading. Her original violet-blue color slowly returned. Strength had left her. A virtual body had no natural limit to its stamina, but she gasped like someone mortally wounded.
Satoru closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the blue-gold light was gone, replaced by their natural black.
"Was that... your strongest attack?" Yuuki asked, her lips trembling.
"Yes. Before I gained a Fluctlight and after, that has always been my strongest strike."
"Heh... Hehehe... I took it. How's that?"
"You're the first. That was impressive."
Satoru smiled.
Yuuki gave another weak laugh, then drew a breath.
"Still, that hurt like hell. It felt like the blade went through my actual body. No, even that wouldn't hurt this much. Fluctlights are seriously messed up. A fight like this is just unfair."
"I did warn you that it was dangerous."
Satoru looked down at the girl sprawled on the ground and spread his hands helplessly.
"That wasn't a warning. It was a damn challenge! Screw you, Satoru! You hear me? Screw you!"
Satoru sighed deeply.
"Could you stop swearing with the face of an angelic little girl? It's unsettling."
"You think I'm enjoying this? This body is at least a head shorter than mine. Fighting in it was awkward as hell. Good thing I could handle it. Put anyone else in here and they wouldn't last more than a few strikes against you, especially in a fight like that."
Yuuki glared at him, full of indignation.
"Do you have any idea how hard I worked?"
"Yes, yes. You did great. But seriously, what was the point of us going at each other that hard?"
"You crushed me with your broken powers last time, and now I finally got a fair rematch."
Yuuki pouted and muttered,
"It takes one cheater to beat another. Only a monster can bring down a monster, and today, I came to slay one."
Test Chamber 3 had gone completely silent.
Their conversation poured from the speakers at full volume. Higa stood with his mouth open, and everyone else looked equally lost.
Only Kikuoka's expression had darkened.
Slowly, he turned toward Nagashima, who was smiling at last.
"Dr. Nagashima."
His voice was low.
"What is it, Mr. Kikuoka?" Nagashima asked with a faint smile.
"That isn't Yuuki Konno. Who is inside the FullDive pod?"
"What a strange question. Who else here has a Fluctlight besides Yuuki?"
"Shouichi Shinkawa..."
Kikuoka fell silent for a moment, then drew a black handgun from behind his waist and aimed it at Nagashima. He was clearly more than a desk officer. The motion was as smooth as if he had practiced it a thousand times.
"Shouichi Shinkawa is inside that pod. Where is Yuuki Konno? Where did she go?!"
"She's already gone. She left this place."
Nagashima met the gun barrel without a trace of fear.
"She's finally free."
"Who helped you? You couldn't have moved her alone."
"If I could secure Shinkawa-kun's help, I could certainly find others willing to help as well. But you can't possibly be naive enough to think I'll name them."
Kikuoka's gaze swept across every person in the room.
"So a contract really can't restrain a restless human heart," he said flatly.
"I'm glad you understand that."
"Then you understand the consequences."
Kikuoka slowly lowered the gun. His voice remained cold.
"Shouichi Shinkawa has value, so I won't dispose of him. But you?"
"I stayed instead of running because I wanted to see this through," Nagashima said. "I wanted to witness the ending."
"You've made your peace with it, then. Good."
Kikuoka studied him before continuing in a heavy voice.
"Do you really think leaving this facility will save Yuuki Konno? You may have cured her illness, but her Fluctlight has already reached its limit. Otherwise, I would never have begun this end-of-life experiment. This isn't like AIDS. Wherever she goes, she will eventually suffer brain death."
"I know."
Nagashima smiled faintly.
"But she shouldn't have to die here."
"Why make such a fuss?"
A weary voice came from atop the FullDive pod.
"Don't worry, we only wanted the princess who had never left her cage to see the ocean before the end. I happen to be an upstanding citizen who can't ignore someone in trouble. And when that person wants the same thing I do, seeing the ocean, how could I refuse?"
A young man in a hospital gown climbed out. His face was pale, but his smile was content.
Kikuoka glanced at Shouichi Shinkawa.
"You think I won't find her? How far can she possibly go in that frail body?"
"Who said she's alone? If a princess is escaping the demon king's castle, naturally a hero has to carry her out."
Shinkawa waved a hand. His hospital gown was soaked through with sweat, and he looked as though he had just crawled from the sea.
"A hero...?"
"Satoru."
Shinkawa narrowed his eyes.
"So what's it going to be? Are you going to call Satoru now and discuss some grand plan, or are you going to make a preemptive move against the monster you handpicked?"
Kikuoka stood motionless.
Several seconds later, a low laugh escaped him.
"Heh... Ha. Hahahaha."
Smiling, he looked around at everyone in the room and gave a small nod. Then he turned and walked away without another word, leaving behind a room full of people who had no idea what to do.
Nagashima and Shinkawa exchanged a complicated smile.
...
At a gas station along a Tokyo highway, Satoru opened his eyes and removed the FullDive device from his head.
The sky outside had already grown dim. The championship had taken longer than expected, though at least it had ended within his planned window. Keeping his Fluctlight active for so long had left him dizzy, but he needed to stay alert.
Driving tired was never a good idea.
"When I heard what the 'delivery' was, I thought he'd gotten into smuggling. Human trafficking, too. Kidnapping an underage girl is a new low even for him."
Satoru shook his head and glanced at the delicate, doll-like girl in the passenger seat.
She was staring at him with wide eyes. Her face was identical to her avatar's, but compared with Shinkawa's performance in that body, the real Yuuki looked unmistakably feminine. Years without walking had left her frighteningly pale, slender, and fragile.
"I never expected that looking for you in-game would lead me straight to the real thing."
Satoru smiled.
"Hungry?"
Yuuki shook her head.
"Thirsty?"
Another shake.
"Need to use the restroom or anything?"
Yuuki immediately looked at him with suspicion. She shrank away and instinctively covered her chest, though the seat belt only made the utter lack of anything there more obvious.
"I'm only asking because we have a long drive ahead."
"Where are we going?"
Yuuki blinked at him, curious.
"Hokkaido. You once told Shinkawa you liked the ocean there. That bastard remembered, and somehow I'm the one stuck doing the work."
"Why...?"
Yuuki looked lost.
"Why are you helping me?"
"All of us considered Makoto Kaizuka a friend once. We had our own reasons, and none of us are exactly free to live as we please anymore. But you're the princess he promised to protect."
Satoru's quiet laugh was gentle.
"We may be a sorry bunch who've done plenty of stupid things, but this time, we're going to play the heroes and rescue the princess."
He settled behind the wheel.
"Buckle up. We're leaving."
Satoru turned the key. The sleeping Santana's engine coughed and rumbled awake. After sitting at the gas station for hours, the car finally pulled out and began its journey along the smooth highway.
With every mile, the Santana carried Yuuki farther from her cage and closer to the ocean she had dreamed of seeing.
Whatever happened next, she was free.
Her hero had fallen before he could finish the journey, but his promise had passed to his former rival and the companion who had once shared his crimes.
In the end, Makoto had kept it.
He had come back to her in another way.
Even someone like him might have watched them with a gentle gaze and smiled that same bittersweet smile.