"Satoru, surviving may not necessarily have been a good thing."
In those brief years, in that brief stretch of time he had lived as Yurnero, there had been bitter, gloomy days. Days spent walking through the forest beside a girl. And, finally, that moment of parting beneath the light of dusk.
Yet beneath the pull of this Fluctlight, only that one farewell kept circling quietly beside his ear.
It was as if the boy with the pale halberd were standing with his back to him, murmuring those words in a low voice.
No.
At that moment, Satoru only narrowed his eyes and laughed freely.
How could surviving not be a good thing?
This stimulation crawling across his nerves. These eyes that could look down on everything because they could see through everything. This godlike speed beyond anyone else.
With all of that in his hands, how could it not be good?
The rapier user's counterattacks before him looked like nothing more than desperate flailing. Even the pain buried in that man's heart seemed to slow down clearly before his eyes. This height. This view from above.
How could it not be good?
To become...
Yes.
To become what?
His memories opened like a long river turning back on itself.
What Rinko Koujiro had once mentioned.
Yes.
To become The Seed.
How could that not be good?
If he could grind away his old self, hatch into something entirely new, and reach a place no one had ever reached before, how could that not be good?
To go from a beast trapped in a cage to a person walking free outside the prison.
How could that not be good?
"You could only say that because you never reached this height," he sneered at that person in his memory. "You never felt what I feel. Your Fluctlight never touched this place."
With that mutter, the drifting memory behind him was cut down and severed.
"Too bad you left so early. If you had still been there to pressure me, I would have reached this place much faster."
"Fine... I will climb high enough for both of us."
Now, let me enjoy the thrill of this place.
...
Satoru's blade grew faster.
It no longer carried any trace of the Aincrad Sword Skills he had once used. Or perhaps even if he did use familiar Sword Skills, Shinkawa could no longer keep up with that speed and counter them. Before Satoru, Death Gun, the man who had cast the entire tournament in the shadow of death, was being driven back step by step.
Red wounds flashed constantly beneath the ragged cloak.
All Shinkawa could do was roar in a way that almost invited pity and launch attack after attack that achieved nothing.
The katana harvested his life with both cruelty and mercy.
After all, it was still only a cold weapon item forged from a ship's deck. Its killing power could not compare to a spray of bullets. Even so, consecutive hits to an avatar's vital points, such as the head, throat, or heart, would still benefit from increased weak-point damage.
Satoru, however, never aimed for those places.
He gave up the targets that would have dealt damage easily and chose the enemy's arms, thighs, and other places instead.
Not because he could not hit the vitals.
He was playing with him.
Savoring the pleasure of toying with his opponent.
"Good. That slash had decent speed! Keep going! Keep going!"
He even commented on Shinkawa's attacks from time to time, with an attitude that could only be called vile.
The fierce exchange from the beginning of the swordfight was gone. Even Sinon, watching from far away, could tell Satoru had the advantage. Shinkawa's counterattacks were losing more and more force, and the clean, sharp thrusts from the start were nowhere to be seen. Satoru was gradually driving him back.
For Sinon, the direction of the battle was what she wanted to see.
Of course she wanted Satoru to win.
...But.
Through Hecate II's scope, what she saw was Satoru with a savage grin constantly hanging at the corner of his mouth. She could clearly feel how he was squeezing and tormenting his opponent as he fought.
Seeing him like that, she felt something clog in her chest for reasons she could not explain.
At that moment, the one who looked more like Death Gun was Satoru himself.
And the Death Gun resisting like a wounded beast looked almost like the Satoru of this battle, a man trying and failing to make his conviction real.
"Samuro..."
Her worried voice was scattered easily by the night wind over the desert.
...
The pleasure of releasing his power made the discomfort he had spent nearly a year deliberately suppressing within his Fluctlight vanish without a trace.
His avatar had begun to feel pain, but that sting could no longer stop him. The temptation in the depths of his heart was stronger than pain. Pain was the body's automatic warning signal, but inside this brain, accelerated to the limit, that signal was dulled almost to nothing.
He had no intention of listening to it.
He only knew that his current state surpassed every state he had ever reached before.
Before his blurred, mottled-white vision, there was no longer any moonlit desert.
No Shinkawa.
No fragile figure struggling helplessly in front of him.
There was only endless white.
I have been here before.
When I fought Heathcliff.
When I fought Kayaba.
That man had forced himself to accelerate with a device in order to fight the version of me from that time. Back then, he had reached this place.
The threshold where no one else existed.
The boundary between human and divine.
The thought lasted only an instant.
Then it was swallowed by limitless arrogance.
No.
I am the first person here.
When he looked down, he could see his own hands and his own body. It was no longer like that day, when only his sight had seemed to exist in this place.
Forward.
Into this endless white.
The pain coming from his eye sockets only fed the fire of desire in his heart.
He reached out and raced forward, madly, without holding anything back.
This time, no one could stop him.
That desire was simple. Pure. He only wanted to run through this white expanse toward some unknown direction, to explore what lay beyond. There was nothing else. He did not even know what he would find there, nor what he would gain.
The stinging in his eye sockets deepened with his speed.
But the desire burning with arrogance covered it all. That desire had become his only heart. Following it, his heart moved, and so did his body.
His pale-gold eyes widened.
His unstable gaze fixed ahead.
In the endless mottled white, one color appeared.
A plain black.
It seemed to be exactly what he wanted. The fire in his heart surged. Shock and delight mingled together, and he rushed toward it as if he had discovered treasure.
He wanted to cross the border between black and white and reach the darkness beyond.
But for an instant, within that black and white, he glimpsed a streak of indigo-blue.
It had nothing to do with him.
He wanted to pass.
Then came the sound.
Tap. Tap.
Like the echo of footsteps, that indigo-blue expanded before his eyes.
A hollow figure slowly appeared from the darkness and walked toward him.
No.
Rather than hollow, the figure looked frail, barely able to move with those slow, gentle steps. As if even the slightest exertion would make him collapse. The floating black armor covering his body looked like a desperate binding, barely holding him together.
That indigo-blue was the color of the pupils burning in his empty eye sockets.
"Have you arrived?"
Satoru seemed to hear a voice.
A tired voice, on the verge of disappearing.
But Satoru did not even acknowledge him.
His pale-gold gaze was twisted beyond reason.
"Move. Let me through."
"No."
"Then try to stop me!"
Satoru lunged at him like a starving beast scenting blood.
"I am not here to stop you," the voice said quietly, watching Satoru rush toward him.
"I am here to kill you."
The indigo-blue light in the figure's empty eye sockets flickered as if it had caught fire.
In that instant, he was no longer frail.
A single look from him was terrifying enough to pin Satoru in place.
The right hand wrapped in pitch-black armor lifted like a flash of wind and lightning. Only then did Satoru realize that the figure had been holding a long blade all along.
The cold blade gave off a chilling gleam. Its edge was so sharp that simply looking at it made instinctive pain stab through him.
The blade turned.
Then swept through a horizontal arc.
Indigo-blue eyes met pale-gold eyes.
Satoru could only faintly see a brilliant white light flash before him.
He could not dodge.
He could not block.
He could only take it.
Perhaps it lasted only an instant.
Perhaps it lasted a very long time.
Only then did he finally react.
Stinging pain.
Tearing pain.
Ripping pain.
Collapsing pain.
Pain like burning in karmic fire.
"Aaaaaaaaaah!"
Satoru screamed, unable to hold it back. The cry tore from the depths of his chest. He clutched both eyes. The pain coming from them, like glass breaking apart, made even his soul tremble. Agony spread wildly through every part of him.
"Aaaah!"
As if trying to grind his fingers into his eye sockets, he staggered backward again and again.
The violent pain of something being cut away completely extinguished the flame that had been burning in his heart.
That arrogance looking down from above.
That deranged posture.
That godlike speed no one could follow.
All of it was annihilated by that one slash.
"Aaaaaaah!"
"My... my...!"
His whole body trembled beyond control. Clutching his extinguished eyes, he backed away and finally collapsed onto the white expanse.
"My Fluctlight!"
"My... Hollow Sanctum!"
With that final scream, Satoru vanished from the quiet place.
The figure calmly watched him disappear.
Then the black armor on his body scattered like mist.
"Your contract with me ends here."
A woman's voice whispered.
"... This is enough."
The figure closed his eyes.
His faint, illusory body was swallowed by the long blade.
And so, above the Hollow Sanctum, no one remained.