High Gear (HIGH GEAR)(2)
Shirone couldn't move.
His body was rigid as a plank, and he felt himself being pulled somewhere by an inexorable force.
A blue light, like electricity running along power lines, followed, and then everything went dark.
'Is the event starting?' When had he closed his eyes? Rumble. Rumble.
At the thunder he opened his lids and saw a sky choked with filthy, sludge-like clouds.
Cold raindrops fell and his eyes slipped half-shut.
"Hee hee hee! Found you! I found the stray dog."
He tried to lift his head at the voice at his feet, but a chain pressed against his throat.
'I'm tied up.'
He was lying on a plank, his whole body bound with thick chains.
A man with a long chain slung over his shoulder muttered as he slogged through the mud.
"Damn bastards. How dare they ignore my achievements?"
While listening to the man's words, Shirone checked his own mental state.
'Hmm. As expected, neither magic nor incarnation works.'
No trickery affects the avatar. Shirone had set it himself, so no anti-tamper reaction kicked in.
'Still... maybe I could cut this?'
If he threw himself at it with Yahweh-level resolve, the code didn't look indestructible.
'Even so, it's a really powerful code. His coding skills might even surpass Shura's.'
He wondered what the man's face would look like if he snapped the chain and stood.
'Then again, I probably won't get the chance.'
The moment he stepped away from the designer's intent, the whole event would likely freeze.
"Let me—
Shirone's mouth moved on its own.
"Tell me where you're taking me, you bastard—let me go!"
The man turned his head.
"Hee hee hee! Awake now? You're lucky. From now on you'll live forever."
"No! Send me back to where I live!"
"Too late. Why did you crawl into the junkyard anyway? You should've stayed inside like a rat."
"Waaah! Waaah!"
Shirone shook his head and thrashed.
'I'm dizzy.'
His mind was calm, but having his vision controlled felt odd.
"Ha! Ha!"
Even his frightened breaths felt foreign.
"It's here. It's almost here."
From his ground-level viewpoint he saw a door open and the ceiling rush closer.
He lay on a narrow, operating-table-like slab set along a slope, and only then did the man's face come into view.
A machine-man with flayed skin and flashing blue eyes glared down at him.
"Do you know what this is?"
He held out a spherical device.
'I don't know.'
Shirone wanted to answer, but the event forced his body to tremble.
"High Gear. A semi-permanent power core. With this, you'll enjoy immortality."
"No! Don't—"
The man ignored him, turned away, and went to the table.
"Let me introduce myself. I'm Dr. Martin. Developer of High Gear, a tragically gifted genius. How gifted? I made only one mistake in my life. And that one mistake put me in this state."
Martin pulled out an axe, its blade half corroded with rust.
"What was that mistake? Giving trash like you immortality. Damn it. You can't take immortality back. High Gear is a gift from God. With the sun, you don't need to eat or sleep."
A metallic rasp as he sharpened the axe.
"What I overlooked was that you were the scum of the scum. When I cured incurable diseases and made a drug to stop aging, they worshipped me like a god. There wasn't a city without a statue of Martin. But when I actually gave them immortality...
Martin snapped his head around.
"They tried to kill me, to monopolize my tech and become new gods."
Even between ragged breaths, Shirone found himself drawn into the tale.
"They were going to kill me and hoard my technology to be gods themselves. So I was driven out. I was horribly broken. But I didn't give up. Those who defy God will be punished. Hee hee! Yes, divine punishment."
Martin stroked the axe handle like a lover and grinned with madness.
"I stole the sun."
Shirone wanted to ask more, but his mouth wouldn't open. Martin finished his preparations.
"The High Gear will replace your heart. Countless nanomachines will circulate through your blood. Your brain will be assimilated before long. Arms can be cut off, you can bolt on an excavator for all I care. There will be no immune response."
Martin, axe slung over his shoulder, displayed the High Gear to Shirone again.
It didn't beat like a heart, but blue electricity pulsed rhythmically along lens-like grooves.
"I'm human! I'm not a monster, you bastard!"
The words he normally avoided left his mouth like a raw nerve.
"Then we'll begin. Hee hee hee! Iheeheehee!"
Martin spat into his palm, set the High Gear on the table, and gripped the axe with both hands.
"Get away! Leave me alone!"
Shirone's vision wavered as Martin raised the axe overhead.
"I'll eat your heart!"
Even knowing it was a simulation, the moment Martin charged made his head spin.
"No! No—"
Before Shirone's death rattle could end, Martin's axe plunged toward his abdomen.
'Gah!'
At that gut-dropping moment his sight went black and a woman's voice spoke.
"Customization begins."
When he came to, the damp lab had vanished. He stood surrounded by mirrors.
Staring at his naked reflection, countless gauges floated at his side.
"This is the space to process the user's body form. Create the form you desire, then give the completion command."
A quick skim showed every item needed for 3D design; some were locked.
'Paid content?'
Shirone flipped through options—gender swap, deformity, monstrosity—and then made his choice.
"Complete. Keep as is."
Unlike other users, Shirone had logged in for real-world reasons and felt resistance to changing his body.
"Customization complete."
His vision dimmed again, and a dreamlike, drugged landscape unfurled.
"Heh heh heh. Fight, fight."
Martin's voice echoed.
Shirone realized the chains had been removed and he was being dragged along the ground.
"A half-life that needs the sun to live. Destroy each other. Fight without end."
At a sheer cliff, Martin grabbed Shirone's foot and shouted.
"This is God's punishment!" As he felt the pull of gravity, his strength drained and his senses returned.
"Ughhh—"
Finally regaining control of his body, Shirone steadied himself and saw the ground far below.
'This is incredibly high.'
If he fell without countermeasures, not just his limbs but his torso would be crushed.
- Activating AI program.
A mechanical voice sounded in his head.
"Huh?"
A blue film descended over his retinas and a flood of information appeared in augmented reality.
- High Gear Level 1. Energy output.
A massive force surged from his heart and wrapped around Shirone's whole body.
"Whoa."
The raw power blunted his fear, but the height still meant lethal impact.
- Kinetic energy reduction mechanism.
A red circle appeared over the landscape and a probability updated in real time along the tangents.
'61.7 percent.'
Shirone spotted a rock jutting from the cliff at the right angle and grabbed it.
"Ugh!"
With a jolt that felt like his arm would tear free, the rock fractured and he began to fall again.
As his descent slowed, more recommended maneuvers popped up and their probabilities rose.
Kukutung!
After bouncing down the cliff a few times, Shirone landed safely on the ground.
- Location detected. Beginner zone: Iron Heights.
A cold wind cut at him. Piles of scrap metal blocked his view.
The AR labeled the items.
'They're all weapons and armor?'
Helmets, rifles, grenades—things his world never needed to make.
Tatatatatatat-tang!
Faint gunfire came from beyond the scrap heap.
'I should arm myself too.'
A beep sounded and a letter icon appeared in his right eye.
- Would you like to view beginner tips?
"View."
Dense, detailed information—more than any tutorial—filled the screen.
"Hmm. User status has three categories: AI level, engine output level, and selective options."
At Level 1, Shirone had no bonuses in any category.
"Well, I'll figure it out as I go."
Having a basic grasp of the system, he checked the part that bothered him most.
'No magic, no incarnation. But—'
He still had his senses.
'Is that what the beginner tips meant?'
High Gear's combat capability is calculated mathematically, but there are exceptions.
'Right—you can't quantify judgement or reflexes. Same for senses...'
His eyes brightened like a rabbit's.
"This is good."
With the hope of throwing the operator off, Shirone eagerly rummaged through the scrap.
He shoved on an old helmet, grabbed a rifle and a pistol, and loaded magazines into a belt.
It weighed over ten kilograms, but it didn't feel heavy.
'High Gear.'
Each cycle of the heart-replacing power unit released explosive energy.
'This is Level 1 output? If I became a ranker, how far would it go...'
A thrill rose and the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Alright! Let's go!"
He tapped the helmet and strode boldly into the virtual world.
Two hundred meters away.
"Ah, you're here."
A long-haired man stood atop a scrap heap, aiming a rifle at Shirone.
When a Level 7 AI rendered the AR, a codename appeared above the target.
"Codename: Yahweh2. Huh—Platinum?"
He lowered his eye from the sight and blinked.
'No parts, raw bio unit. An old helmet only found at the starting point. And Platinum.'
There was only one conclusion.
"Heh."
To claim a valuable codename, he'd pulled an insignificant real-world nobody into the game.
'Finally caught a big one.'
When Shirone's finger touched the trigger, the AI auto-aimed at his helmet.
'The old helmet is a good item, but a Level 7 AI calculates penetration too.'
That difference mattered.
In High Gear, the only organ you couldn't swap for parts was the brain.
'Slow computation is a downside, though.' The number next to the aim flickered and locked at 98 percent penetration probability.
'Here we go.'
He pulled the trigger; the rifle cracked.
At the same time, Shirone twisted and the bullet whistled past by inches.
The long-haired man gaped, stunned.
"Huh, how—?"
If the AI level had been high, it would have detected a sniper from the start.
"Dodged a bullet with nothing?" The man's eyes went vacant as the codename Yahweh2 shimmered over them.