The time was 4:08 p.m.
Light enveloped Satoru once again and carried him into the same featureless arena. It served as one of countless simultaneous qualifier stages, and everything about it felt cheap. Not ruined or weathered by age, just industrial. The curve of the circular arena was too perfect. Every marble tile was identical in color and size. Not a single spectator occupied the roughly modeled stands.
A virtual world had to be deliberately aged. Artists needed to test rain-worn textures, scatter broken stones with care, and place lonely weeds between cracks in the floor. They had to manufacture the weight of passing centuries, much like an expert craftsman forging an antique.
That was the nature of virtual worlds. Human effort defined everything. Physics, scenery, even the endless sky and sea were no longer fixed or untouchable. A world made by people rather than gods offered boundless freedom, along with countless imperfections.
Put in the work, and the world came alive. Neglect it, and it remained a lifeless map.
This place had clearly received little attention. It was only a qualifier stage, a crude space that still felt like software.
The finals would be different. They were held atop the Sky Tower on a grand, lavish stage. Rose petals greeted each fighter, real players packed the elevated stands, and every clash of steel drew thunderous cheers. The combatants became stars, like gladiators in ancient Rome, and every carefully staged detail fed the crowd's excitement.
That was a setting worthy of deciding the strongest swordsman.
But a decisive battle was not always something a crowd bestowed upon you.
Sometimes all it took was one fighter arriving with a blade and another waiting with a sword. No fanfare. No cheering. No watching eyes. Wherever they happened to stand, that place became their final arena.
There were moments when a person answered a challenge for the sake of their convictions, wholly unseen by the rest of the world.
It had been that way among a thousand mirrored doors, with only two men. Now, in this hastily assembled arena, there was only Satoru and the girl waiting across from him.
He stepped calmly from the shadows at one end of the arena and glanced at the match information overhead. A faint smile touched his lips as he took a deep breath. The air was completely plain. Other areas might have added flowers, moisture, or some manufactured scent.
Yet the arena no longer felt entirely empty.
Yuuki's gaze, her stance, and the savage curve of her smile had brought it to life. This was no longer a disposable qualifier map. It felt like an execution ground at the edge of a cliff.
Winner of Group A: Yurnero.
Winner of Group C: Yuuki.
[Yurnero vs. Yuuki]
They watched each other from opposite ends of the arena. Satoru's eyes remained calm, while Yuuki's flashed gold. An eager, cutting smile transformed her delicate face. Her slender body had already dropped into a half crouch, like a starving beast preparing to pounce.
"Your Fluctlight is already burning at its limit," Satoru said quietly. "I can feel the hostility from here. With that kind of resolve, you won't be easy to defeat. But letting it burn without restraint also proves you can't control it. Take it from someone who's been there. That's dangerous."
Yuuki said nothing. She only watched him as a predator watches its prey.
"Be careful. At that temperature, your mind is a fuse leading straight to an explosive. One mistake and you'll get hurt."
His warning almost sounded friendly. His next words did not.
"Then again, if you hold back, I'll carve you full of holes. Pain that reaches the soul is very real."
Yuuki's eyes widened slightly, and her grin grew fiercer. Her obsidian sword was already drawn.
Satoru studied her in silence, then stepped forward and drew the black blade at his left hip.
The countdown began.
Far away in the real world, every conversation in Test Chamber 3 stopped. Seijirou Kikuoka took an unconscious step toward the screen. Dr. Nagashima pulled both hands from his pockets, his expression taut.
Back at the woodland home, Klein had returned with a huge bag of popcorn. Everyone sat on the floor, staring up at the broadcast.
Plenty of viewers across the network had noticed the two players gathering momentum.
To Satoru and Yuuki, however, no one else existed.
Three.
Two.
One.
A piercing tone announced the start of the match, and their enlarged HP bars appeared overhead.
Neither moved.
Both had demolished every previous opponent with an immediate assault. This time, without exchanging a word, they chose to wait.
Gold shimmered like something alive in Yuuki's eyes. Still crouched, she began circling Satoru with the measured steps of an experienced predator. The black sword hung from her hand like an extended claw, probing for a reaction.
Satoru's eyes remained black. He did not move. He simply tracked her.
For a time, the only sound was Yuuki's faint footfalls.
The battle had already begun. Every nerve in both fighters was drawn tight.
This was not an opponent either of them could overwhelm with a blind charge. Nor could they win by circling forever. The first real strike would have to carry everything, like an arrow released from a fully drawn bow.
In Test Chamber 3, the Fluctlight waveform before Takeru Higa trembled violently. Waves spread across the display as though boulders were being hurled into water, one after another. Even during Yuuki's earlier rampage, her readings had never been this intense. Merely facing Satoru had pushed them past every previous record.
Knowing that the display represented another form of Yuuki's brain activity made Higa swallow hard.
On the screen, Yuuki stopped circling and began walking straight toward Satoru. She approached slowly, then came to a silent halt at precisely the right distance.
The waveform exploded.
The ripples did not spread. They erupted.
"Yurnero!"
The roar ripped every trace of sweetness from Yuuki's voice. Her crouched body compressed for a split second, gathering force in absolute silence.
Then she launched.
The system rendered visible distortions in the air around her charge. Her black sword pointed straight at Satoru's throat, and laughter spilled from her lips as she closed the distance.
The instant Yuuki moved, the black in Satoru's eyes ignited into the same blazing gold.
CRASH!
Black sword met black blade.
Satoru intercepted her impossible thrust with perfect precision, cutting off the sword's path. Both fighters locked both hands around their weapons and poured everything into the clash. Steel ground against steel with a shriek that set teeth on edge, spraying sparks in every direction.
They stepped forward together. Neither gave an inch.
The pressure between their weapons seemed to force the air away. At that distance, each saw their own freezing stare reflected in the other's golden eyes. Satoru's face remained as cold and solid as stone. Yuuki's grin only widened.
Clang.
They drove harder, as if each meant to break through both weapon and wielder.
Satoru suddenly angled his blade and slipped aside, yielding first. Yuuki's black sword surged past him, but his curved blade slid along its surface toward her neck. Defense and attack became a single suffocating motion.
Yuuki stopped the blade with her left hand.
Three fingers vanished. The severed edges flashed red with a web of damage effects.
She ignored the injury, seized Satoru's blade with what remained of her hand, dragged it aside, and wrenched her own sword back into position.
She had answered his counter with one of her own, but Yuuki was willing to pay far more for it.
Pain lanced through the missing fingers even though the simulation had no pain setting. Their real confrontation had begun at the level of neural signals long before their weapons met. With both Fluctlights burning and their eyes locked, hostility and resolve became almost physical, cutting directly into the soul.
Yuuki screamed and unleashed a storm of black slashes.
The obsidian sword seemed to roar with her. Attacks too fast for ordinary eyes formed a cage around Satoru. None of them belonged to a registered Sword Skill. That was exactly why they could exceed the system's speed limit.
Each spontaneous sequence moved at the level of an Original Sword Skill with more than ten hits.
"Beautiful."
Satoru's voice came out as a low roar.
He abandoned his attempt to take Yuuki's left arm. A fraction of hesitation would bury him beneath the cage of afterimages. His black curved sword rose to meet hers.
Satoru could track bullets and strike the weak point of a spell because he possessed a Fluctlight.
So did his opponent.
Both could see.
Both could intercept.
Both could attack.
Every slash and thrust sought flesh, yet each became a defense the moment the other weapon intercepted it. A dense, piercing rhythm of metal rang through the arena like someone hammering the highest key of a piano without pause.
There was no final hit count. This storm had no system-defined sequence. As long as they could breathe and keep swinging, it could continue forever.
Their neural reactions climbed higher with every exchange. Golden eyes darted after each incoming edge. Curved sword and straight blade dissolved into afterimages, their models distorting so badly that every collision looked as though the weapons had passed through each other.
They no longer needed Sword Skills.
A casual movement from either of them became a sword dance no ordinary player could follow, much less block.
Anyone watching the broadcast could have mistaken it for a scripted animation. Satoru and Yuuki barely shifted from their positions, yet the space between them filled with lethal black trails that twisted and struck too quickly to remain visible.
Their Fluctlights burned through the mind and seared the heart, buying thought at impossible speed. Their avatars were dragged along behind that acceleration by sheer force.
Speed became something beyond speed.
Gold met gold.
Want to win?
Want to strike the other down?
Want to pierce that false body and grind it into fragments?
Then move faster.
Faster than the opponent.
Strip away everything except the need to win. Make blade and sword disappear from sight, then go beyond even that. Turn every thought in your heart into an edge sharp enough to reach the soul. Drive black steel through the false body before you and force your opponent to accept an honest defeat.
"Aaaaaaah!"
Yuuki's eyes had become pure gold. She roared as if trying to force every last part of herself into the attack.
Satoru answered with silence, his black blade matching every increase in her speed.
Something inside him roared too. His fire did not blaze openly like a crimson inferno. It smoldered beneath the ashes, invisible until someone tore apart the charred wood and exposed the sea of molten embers underneath.
Before Higa's eyes, the Fluctlight waveform synchronized with Yuuki's movements and went wild. Her thoughts seemed to have become an army in full charge.
He touched his glasses, shaken.
Could a human brain truly produce this much activity?
His expression grew grave.
"Is this... The Seed?"
"No. Not yet. At most, this is the seed beginning to stir."
Kikuoka stepped beside him, his voice calm.
"Combat in a virtual world is only one way to express its potential. It was never meant solely for this kind of childish violence. Something worthy of being called The Seed should offer more than brutality. Divine power has uses beyond destruction."
He watched the duel continue.
"We can't imagine the true limits of thought, but even this display is worthy of awe. Watch closely, Higa-kun. Just as I told you, we're already on the road to that door. These two are the ones walking ahead of us. Chances to glimpse their backs are rare."
"Enter through the narrow gate," Nagashima said quietly. "The gate to ruin is wide and its road is broad, and many choose it. The gate to eternal life is narrow and its road is hard, and few ever find it."
He looked toward Kikuoka.
"If you're going to use a name like The Seed as your sales pitch, perhaps you should spend some time considering Matthew 7 as well, Mr. Kikuoka."
"As you said, it's only a sales pitch."
Kikuoka accepted the jab with surprising humility.
"I'm a materialist, to be honest. To me, the Bible is little more than Christianity's promotional booklet. I've read it, but I've hardly studied it."
His smile returned.
"Still, those lines come from one of the shortest passages in the Sermon on the Mount, and they sit at the heart of the Protestant spirit. For the Puritans, life meant endless hardship. It meant choosing the narrow gate. Compared to that, we may be crossing a single-plank bridge. I've been prepared for that from the beginning."
His smile faded slightly.
"Someone like me has to prepare for the consequences well in advance."
Their attention returned to the duel on the screen.
There were only two kinds of people on such a road.
Those who sought the way, and those willing to die for it.
Keep moving forward.
Keep pushing yourself.
That was the only way to...
Something complicated passed through Kikuoka's eyes.