by Fujino Omori
They need Lilly in order to win the War Game?
She didn’t believe her. Lilly always held other people back—how could she possibly be the key to victory?
Other people had used her as a doormat, taken advantage of her at every turn, and stolen many things from her. How could one prum girl trapped in this dark reality possibly be of any use?
Why was she worth saving?
Hestia was spouting nonsense.
“We can’t win without you! It has to be you, no one else!”
The young girl objected.
She had never been needed before, and yet this goddess said she was.
That boy was the only one who ever helped her, who ever said that she was needed—now it was time to help him.
Hestia wanted Lilly to come to Bell’s aid.
“Please, help us____help Bell!”
She ran.
She ran as if shot out of a cannon.
Hestia’s pleas on replay in the back of her mind, she zipped through the dim stone corridor doors of Soma Familia’s storage facility with nary a sound.
It wasn’t something that weak little Lilly should be able to do. How could she possibly be able to save Bell? Hestia overestimated her worth despite her divinity.
But…!
She said Lilly was needed.
She asked for Lilly’s help.
She wanted Lilly, no one else.
No one had ever wanted her before, no one had needed her. But now, there was.
“Wah…!”
Her vision blurred, head feverish. Her chest felt so tight that her ribs might strangle her lungs.
There was no way to describe the onslaught of emotions that tore through her. Her only desire now was to help Hestia and those fighting for her in the courtyard. And to do that, she had to move.
With Zanis at the helm, there was only one way to stop this battle: appeal to the only person with more authority in the Familia than its leader, the god Soma. Lilly desperately searched through her memories of the day she was brought here and remembered seeing the deity in the building. He was also her only hope for being released from her contract with the Familia. She had to persuade Soma.
She used her memories to piece together a small map of the facility. There was an observation tower that overlooked the entrance to the underground holding cells. She was almost certain that the highest room of this tower belonged to Soma himself. That’s where she’d find him.
Leaving clear tears in her wake, Lilly rushed to find the stairwell that would lead to her god.
“They don’t know when to quit…”
Zanis watched the battle in the courtyard unfold from the roof of the storage facility.
Soma Familia’s soma wine cellar was a central tower at the front with five more towers on each side encompassing an open courtyard below. His subordinates were engaging intruders who had been forced underneath one of the lookout towers in the corner of the courtyard.
Zanis chuckled to himself as the group of less than ten desperately tried to fight back. He silently applauded them for making it this far despite the overwhelming odds.
If he were able to capture the young goddess below, it would be easy to strike a profitable deal with Apollo. He was already working out the finer details in his mind as he ordered his subordinates to surround the enemy.
“…?”
Zanis watched the battle like a hawk until a flash of color caught his attention.
It was Lilly, on her way to the main tower.
What the hell is Chandra doing?! he silently snapped, his cheek twitching in agitation. But his smile returned a moment later.
“Interesting. What do you think you can do?”
Leaving one of his high-ranking subordinates in charge, Zanis took off to intercept Lilly.
Lilly ran through the vast complicated passages of the main tower.
At long last, she found the stairwell leading to the second floor.
Emerging from the narrow confines of the lower floors to this new open space felt extremely liberating. The lower hallways were narrow and there were many doors leading to small rooms and other passages. She could see blue sky outside the open windows and the candlestick-style magic-stone lamps were bright and clean.
Soma’s room was on the third floor.
Every adventurer who should have been on guard had gone to join the fight. It was eerily quiet.
“Where do you think you’re going, Erde?”
“?!”
A voice came from behind Lilly as she ran down the open corridor. CRASH! A window out of her line of sight was destroyed.
It was Zanis. The upper-class adventurer had broken the second-story window before jumping through. Casually stepping on shards of broken glass, the man taunted Lilly again.
—He found me!
Willing more speed out of her weak legs, Lilly zipped around the corner and out of sight.
“The stairwell in that direction only goes up?”
“?!”
Lilly suddenly felt a pressure from behind her before she was tapped on the shoulder.
The palm of Zanis’s hand was all it took to send the girl crashing to the floor.
Nauseating pain overtook her as her body tumbled forward on the stone floor. Fighting through it, Lilly climbed to her feet and started running once again.
“Fu…ha-ha-ha-ha-hahahaha?! Now now, Erde, what’s the rush?!”
The man’s menacing laughter sounded from behind her. Lilly frowned and continued pressing onward.
A moment later, the man’s boot plowed straight into her ribs.
“Agh!”
“Don’t tell me, you’re going to try to meet with Lord Soma? Pointless! Absolutely pointless!”
His kick sent her face-first toward the wall. Fighting to find her balance, Lilly kept moving forward.
Her thin legs reached their limit and Lilly had to thrust her hand out to the wall to catch herself.
“What makes you think that he’ll listen to you? The only thing our god cares about is his wine!”
“Ighhh…!”
“Runts like you are nothing but background noise to him! No matter how much you revere him, asking for help will leave you with nothing but dismay!”
He let Lilly gain some distance before catching up and striking her again. Then he’d do some more taunting and repeat the process over and over. Be it his fists or his feet, one strike was enough to send Lilly’s small body flying in any direction he wanted.
It’d become a game to him. His black shadow would overtake Lilly, then he’d decide how to hit, enjoy her squeal of pain, and then look down over her as she got up and kept going forward.
All the while he would jubilantly remark about how all her effort was for nothing.
“You’re a strange one, Erde! I thought you were smarter than this! I liked that cold look in your eyes, like you hated the world and everything in it!”
In her darkest days, she had tried many times to escape the abyss only to have her connection to Soma Familia drag her right back in. The shell of a man who was Zanis sneered at Lilly.
However, the tears welling up in Lilly’s eyes were not caused by her dark past but by the pain coursing through her body. She would never show tears of sadness again. She had already shed far too many.
Overcoming Zanis’s physical and verbal attacks, Lilly pressed on. Forward, forward until she finally found the stairwell and climbed to the third floor.
There were only a few walls on this floor, making one large room with one area portioned off—Soma’s private room. Lilly channeled all the strength she had left into her legs and made a break for it.
“Three, two…WHAM!”
“AGUHH!”
Zanis counted down and playfully announced his own kick, hitting Lilly right between the shoulder blades with all of his strength. The girl’s body whipped through the air like a rag doll.
However, his kick sent her hurtling toward the door to the private chamber. Lilly fold
ed her arms across her chest and used that momentum to break it open.
SLAM! Lilly tumbled into the chamber as the doors creaked on their hinges after slamming into the walls on both sides.
“…”
Soma was there.
He stood in front of the wide balcony, tending to many different kinds of plants growing in the sunlight.
He paid absolutely no attention to the sounds of battle outside the window or even to Lilly’s loud entrance. The amount of water that each plant received, future ingredients for his wine, was the only thing on his mind at the moment.
“Lord Soma! Lord Soma! Please listen to what Lilly has to say!”
The deity kept his back to her as Lilly tried to peel her injury-ridden body off the stone floor.
At first, the god continued working in his slightly dirty robe despite Lilly’s pleas until finally turning around with a slightly annoyed look on his face.
Zanis had entered the chamber—it was he who Soma was looking at through his long bangs.
“This is much too bothersome, Zanis. I left all trivial matters in your hands.”
Ignored by her own god. Lilly was shocked.
Zanis enjoyed the look on her face to no end, gleefully chuckling under his breath. He kept his eyes on the girl and said:
“I apologize for the abruptness, Lord Soma. It appears that one Lilliluka Erde wishes to speak with you directly. Won’t you lend her your ears?”
Zanis spoke with a calm and almost mocking tone, as if he knew what was about to happen.
Looking even more perturbed, Soma shifted his gaze down toward Lilly.
The girl managed to force her aching body into a kneeling position.
“I beg you, Lord Soma. Please bring an end to the battle taking place outside—please save Lady Hestia and those fighting alongside her! Please, please…!”
Soma’s cheek twitched as if Lilly’s voice had hurt his ears. He slowly squared his shoulders in front of her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the expression on his face showed that he believed it to be a waste of time.
“What good are the words of a child who succumbs to wine so…easily?”
“—”
Lilly fell silent after hearing Soma’s monotone words. A cold chill swept through her veins.
But it was the look in his eyes that did it, made Lilly realize the truth.
Soma was disappointed. Disappointed in his own followers, disappointed in the world of Gekai.
The Divine Wine, soma, had caused Soma Familia to collapse from within. Just as he said before, the children succumbed to the power of the drink he was giving them as a reward. They soon began fighting amongst themselves for more, became selfish beyond belief.
From the god Soma’s point of view, all he did was reward them with delicious wine for their services. But rather than thank him, they turned on one another for more drunken pleasure. He had become disillusioned by their primitive reaction to his more refined methods.
—Soma harbored no ill will. He had no urge to inflict pain. At this point, he had no interest in any followers like Lilly at all. He was completely detached.
The divine being who’d had enough of the crude people of Gekai continued to produce soma and reward the children who made it possible for him to focus on his craft.
“The words of children who succumb are…irrelevant.”
Soma’s eyes, black as ink, were finally pointed in Lilly’s direction. However, Lilly’s face was not reflected in them, only empty disappointment.
Lilly remained still, unable to find any words in the face of her god’s cold stare. It was Soma who moved first.
He took a bottle of white wine off one of the shelves built into the wall of his chamber.
Lilly watched in dumbfounded silence as Soma took a glass from a different shelf and said to her:
“If you can say the same thing after drinking this, I’ll listen.”
—She couldn’t breathe.
The deity poured the wine into the glass, its cool yet sweet aroma filling the room. He held the glass out to her. Lilly looked at her own reflection on the surface of the white liquid.
Divine Wine.
Her throat clenched. Sweat poured down her face. The glass nearly slipped from her grasp as she tried to take it with both hands.
Memories of the dark days when she was under the influence of soma’s power rampaged through her mind. She looked back up at Soma, shoulders shaking in fright. The god’s face was void of emotion as he watched her from behind his bangs.
Zanis watched all of these events unfold, smiling as if he’d seen this coming.
“Ah, aah…!”
Lilly stood up on unstable legs.
Her breaths very shallow and staggered, she took another look at the glass in her hands.
She had no choice. In order to save Hestia, in order to finally break her ties with this Familia, she had no choice but to drink it.
Lilly brought the glass to her lips, hands shaking and palms clammy.
This wine had once turned Lilly into little more than a monster.
It had stolen her life from her, caused all of her problems.
Under the watchful eyes of Soma and Zanis, Lilly willed her mouth open and drank it down.
“—”
The world warped around her in the blink of an eye.
A boundless drunken euphoria enveloped her. The bliss was intense enough to bend her consciousness.
Tink! The glass fell out of her hands, hit the floor, and rolled away.
Her arms and legs quivered. She couldn’t keep standing and fell to her knees like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.
Acute warmth filled her cheeks as her eyes went out of focus…Lilly giggled.
“—a…haa.”
The flavor of the most delicious wine in existence made her heart melt.
Soma watched the girl’s spirit disappear and turned his back to her without a second thought. Lilly’s ears stopped picking up the sounds around her, with only one exception: Zanis’s bloodcurdling laughter.
Overwhelming contentment spread throughout her body. Memories flashed before her eyes before disappearing again. Nothing inside this room mattered to her, was worth seeing. Even her purpose for being here, why she was so determined to drink the soma, felt like nothing more than a passing thought. Everything that made Lilly who she was evaporated in an instant.
She saw everything in the room with a white hue.
Her body, mind, and spirit were warm.
Down, down, down she went.
Then, just as the white was about to embrace her, she saw something.
A boy, a smiling boy.
“—”
Her craving intensified. The animal that demanded soma within her was on the brink of taking over.
But amid all the white around her, she saw how the boy smiled when he saved her that day.
It remained deep within her soul even after everything else had been erased. His smile stayed with her.
“…”
A single tear slowly rolled down her cheek.
Her slack, open mouth smiled for a moment before weakening again. Lilly’s head started to rise.
The warmth of the boy’s smile had awakened her heart, filled her with new emotion, and caused a tear to be shed.
Lilly had returned.
“……Please.”
Not much sound escaped her lips, but it was enough to stop Soma in his tracks.
A moment later, he spun around with vigor.
His long bangs swung out of the way, revealing his black eyes. Lilly’s trembling figure reflected within them.
“…Stop it, please.”
Her words were getting clearer.
Soma and Zanis looked on in disbelief.
Lilly made eye contact with Soma.
“Lilly’s begging you—stop the fight!”
Her words were unchanged as even more tears trickled down her face.
“Wha…”
She didn’t know if that sound came from Soma or from Zanis.
She persevered. Lilly held off the effects of soma.
Countless people had fallen under its spell, becoming little more than savages in the process. And yet this little, fragile girl had not.
It didn’t matter that her Status was low, that her body was weak. She defeated soma with sheer willpower.
“Lilly wants to save those people!”
She yelled her most earnest desire as loud as she could.
She sounded no different from a sobbing child.
Bonds with her allies had been forged in the fire, and she was a Phoenix emerging from the flame, guided by them.
“Lilly knows, even without any gods telling her, Lilly knows that she was born for this moment!”
It was highly unlikely that Lilly would ever forget.
Even if she died and was reborn many times, even in the deepest pits of hell…
Lilly would never forget the smile on that boy’s face.
“Every mistake Lilly has made was in preparation for this day!”
The warmth of the hands that reached out for her, the kindness of his embrace.
She’d never forget the smile of the one who rescued her.
The image that had been seared into her very soul would never fade.
“This time, it’s Lilly’s turn to save him!”
Bell’s smiling face and warmth filling every corner of her mind, Lilly yelled once again.
She had not forgotten all of the mistakes she made and the gray areas of her past. Those memories gave her the strength to keep shouting.
“Please, bring an end to this battle!”
Lilly’s voice was loud enough to be heard outside the tower.
“……”
Soma stood, unblinking eyes locked on the girl.
Gods did not grow or feel distress of any kind. It was hard to comprehend what just unfolded.
Seeing a person of Gekai change right before his eyes for the first time left Soma speechless.
“No way…?!”
Zanis sensed danger in the expression on his god’s face.
His feeling of invincibility gone, he pleaded with the deity.
“Lord Soma, you mustn’t listen to her! Our Familia is under attack—!”
“Quiet, Zanis.”
Soma turned away without so much as a glance in his direction.