Chapter 48: Chapter 46

Haruto stomped the brake, bringing the car to a standstill. There was no way he could safely escape that ability, anyway.

“Now’s time.”

He reached for his own skill, taping over the floating icon next to him.

He had only a single moment to turn, spotting the man leaning out of the van’s window, with some firearm he couldn’t recognize in hand. With a deafening roar to boot, a flurry of deadly pellets were fired his way.

“Ability activated: On-site crafting.”

Stopping everything in place, Haruto could still hear the booming growl of the weapon’s shooting looming before him. Freezing time at that precise moment had caught it right amid that one shot, so the sound of it going off remained as well, persisting throughout the level like the cry of a caged demon.

He couldn’t properly discern the projectiles, or tell where they were. How close? How many?

Regardless, it didn’t matter. They hadn’t hit him yet.

He wouldn’t be fixing any part of the car for now, because his focus was actually on the outside. Moving around its dark blue body after selecting some random component he wouldn’t be replacing anyway, he focused on the trunk window, which had been heavily pierced by about a dozen long shards from the windows he had broken through just a while prior.

He acquired them all, including the shards from his own broken window, which made up enough individual items to fill up an entire page of his inventory, leaving the back window of the Midnight Gale entirely uncovered. Among the items he’d previously had, there were also quite a few lengthy pieces of an exhaust pipe, though he wasn’t sure what vehicle they were supposed to belong to.

Bringing them out, he linked them all together, and then coupled them with the countless pieces of shattered glass, forming a large, skewering ball of glass atop the thick metallic staff.

He brought it over his head, and slammed it hard against the floor, several times, until he could see, ever faint, a few crooked, uneven lines starting to appear below his feet.

Haruto Maekawa, now all alone, had nothing left to attach him to that moment. To himself. He had no more allies. And from there on, there was only one target left to mind, as well.

With only two players left, no more would be left to chance.

(So, screw this building.)

Moving back inside the car, he threw the weird mace thing he’d cooked up onto the passenger seat, which it stabbed through unceremoniously upon landing, and opening the item menu again, picked up the very last piece of junk he had left: an incredibly short, thick car door that somewhat resembled the first car he’d had in that world, though on a smaller scale. He wedged it between himself and the door on the driver’s side of his car, hoping it could serve him some degree of protection.

Still, though…

It was curious… Everything was moving surprisingly faster this time around… Crafting menus, inventory tabs, materialization and blending mechanics… Even his own movement ever since he’d frozen time… He felt unusually nimble. Like he could get a lot more taken care of inside than confined ability than was usual. The only exception to his observation, was the time limiter, which was actually running slower, compared to its usual rate. Despite the values being the exact same…

(What’s going on here…?)

Could it be…?

It felt almost like his assigned ability had been artificially improved on, somehow. It wasn’t the usual, menial change like a few more seconds on his timer or a slightly wider range of searching grounds which was occasionally granted to him upon leveling up. This time, it all felt considerably more sudden. Drastic, even…

Well, whatever it was, he could figure it out later.

There was one more thing he could still do.

He took a look at his inventory. Feeling confident in his timer, which still had a few seconds to spare, he pulled out the black gauntlet, examining it.

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If fixing the car would be no use, then perhaps he could at least fix this…

By now, the weapon had already broken down again. He could, of course, fix the top chamber of the weapon and use that free space to up the one available arrow onto once more, it’d be better than nothing… Of course, according to Suzuka, these kinds of items did not work inside a duel race, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try something with it, or could he?

All  doable repairs finished, he leaned back against his seat, taking a breather. The timer would deplete soon enough. That was when the real counter would begin.

The harrowing echo of the shotgun’s fire faded away.

In the blink of an eye, the mercenary had cursed him with words he could not understand, the floor below them had shattered into a million pieces, and the two vehicles had fallen down to the level below. Haruto had felt some of the pellets collide with the side of his car, about two or three piercing through his door and even the cheap shielding he’d put together at the last second, and had even razed his left calf, startling him as a tiny hint of checkerboard suddenly took form around it.

Both his car and the van crashed violently against the glass flooring on the level below. Unfortunately, though, the footing did not hold against their weight, and quickly gave in, leaving the two vehicles to fall once again, crashing past the next floor as well until at last they stopped, landing loudly on the one that followed.

When he came to again, he was splayed across the car’s front end, half on the driver’s seat and half on the passenger’s, his aching leg poking against the sharp glass ball he’d made, prompting him to jerk back in a brief panic. His own arms and torso were covered in static as well. His body was likely in a critical state. If he didn’t move fast and win that race as soon as possible, there was a chance it would break down as he moved along.  A quick glance out the window told him he’d fallen more or less vertically. No signs of life from that thug, and, from where he was he could see all the windows and doors on both sides of the vehicle had been completely smashed to pieces. But Haruto wasn’t receiving any notifications about having won the race, either. He had to move quick, before that bastard woke up. The place he had landed looked pretty much identical to the one he’d previously stood on, save for the unseemly amount of cracked walls, cracked flooring and barely existing ceilings to boot. The van seemed to have landed just a few feet from him, colliding directly on its side with the glass.

Fighting himself to snap out of the sheer shock from the fall, the boy sprang forward, grabbing hold of the wheel again. It was incredibly lucky he’d even managed to endure the sheer impact without being eliminated on the spot. He could feel the chirping and creaking of the floor giving in under them once again, but he knew the Midnight Gale wouldn’t last another drop like that. His doors and ceiling were bent to the point of being barely recognizable anymore, and the windows were all in splinters. The door on his side, in particular, was so battered it had lasted no more than three seconds before crumpling up and falling to the side, completely ripped out from its hinges.

It quite surprised him how fast the engine turned back on, even after all of that. The tires seemed to wheeze and struggle uphill for a moment, scratching and tearing against the sharp glass from the broken flooring, but soon enough he’d managed to start moving again, weaving how he could through the clusters of bent, drooping steel beams as he headed for the next ramp.

The crackling under them only became louder as the seconds went on, telling him as clearly as it could that this feeble foothold would not last. He had to move, fast. Another detail to note were Sixshot’s bullets. Although he had been able to dodge for the most part, the ones which had failed would be back for him five more times, taking with them whatever crossed their path. His only chance would be to try his luck and rely on their gradual decrease of speed with each new rebound by moving down as fast as he could. If he was able to put enough distance between himself and the returning projectiles, there was a chance that they would get stuck on the countless glass surfaces and metal pillars that stood in their way as they headed directly for him, thus ensuring his survival and leaving Sixshot in the dust.

As the following climbdown closed in on view, he wildly revved up the machine once again, playing up the brakes and gas until he could properly position himself sideways and enter the narrow ramp once again.

For once, the car did not even veer to the wrong side. He skidded down the ramp and onto the next floor, quickly turning the wheel to turn himself back to the right direction and head directly for the one after.

He floored the gas. He could see the van lying idly around one floor above, the glass surface barely supporting it as the cracks increased ever more.

He descended one more floor. And then one more. And then, the one that followed it.

Keeping his steering wheel steady, Haruto sighed in relief. He’d completely spent his ability, and the charging time to use it again would still take a while, but… Well, at least he’d managed to lose that guy’s crazy ricocheting skill.

Now, all that was left was to lose his opponent and head directly for the finish line, which would hopefully be…

(Wait a second…)

He glanced upwards again. With these many layers of glass between the two of them, now, it would be harder to discern Sixshot and his vehicle up above, but…

(It’s not that they looked blurred out, or murky… They just…!)

The van had completely disappeared from its crash site, leaving only a large, empty bulge of cracked glass in its place.

“Damn it…! I’ve gotta move faster…!”

The boy desperately stepped on the gas pedal, but he was already moving as fast as he could. At some point, the gangster had managed to regain his senses and start after Haruto once again, and although it wasn’t quite nitid enough for him to discern, he was able to catch sight of the enemy vehicle sliding perfectly over a ramp two floors right above him as he reached for the next one in his path.

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