No Game No Life, Vol. 3

by Yuu Kamiya

  “Could you elaborate?”

  “…The reason Izuna didn’t come supering at us from the beginning was probably that she was worried about you. If that’s the case, then Izuna must be about on your level when we’re just talking about basic stats.”

  Sora inserted with a deep sigh.

  “Just for your reference, it takes me about fifteen seconds to go one hundred meters. Shiro will probably run out of breath if you ask her to do it in twenty. So, Jibril, how many seconds would it take you the way you are now to go a hundred meters?”

  Lightly kicking at the ground and angling her neck as if thinking, Jibril came out with:

  “…Two steps, I suppose?”

  “Your units are quite odd!”

  “Frankly speaking, that’s all I can do with this heavy body… Masters, every day you live despite such inconvenience… So stalwart you are… Truly I can only bow my head in admiration.”

  “…Please don’t forget that our stats are still like fifty times lower than yours.”

  At Sora’s sarcastically expectorated words, Jibril looked to the heavens with a tragic mien.

  “—W-with such a fragile life, like glasswork, still my masters would challenge me and Werebeast, and even the God! Oh, what courage, what brave souls!”

  “Could you shut the hell up, please?”

  Sora sighed at Jibril, whose respect was deepening now that she’d glimpsed his and Shiro’s powerlessness.

  “Well—that’s just how outmatched we are in specs. If Shiro had miscalculated a single bullet in that hell, she’d be out. For me, if she even gets close I’m toast—if we don’t use math, it’s not even gonna be a fight.”

  Yes, to the crowd, Sora and Shiro must have looked overwhelmingly superior. But in fact—if they so much as let Izuna get near, it would be checkmate for them. Even with Shiro’s diabolical shooting, were her aim to wobble from accumulated fatigue, that would be the end.

  …In which case, finally there would be no meaningful force left but Jibril.

  —Advanced tactics meant that a single error could wipe out everything. To have to rely on an elaborate strategy—looked at the other way, meant that you had no way other than to rely on it.

  “However, once you just guess what kind of cheat the enemy is using, next time you can formulate a new strategy—and then finish her off, can you not?”

  Jibril asked this blithely, but Sora, his a face not relaxed in the slightest, declared:

  “No.”

  “—Pardon?”

  In place of Shiro, who was fully engaged in bashing out formulas on the ground, Sora explained.

  “The uncertainty principle…ahh, no, I guess I shouldn’t go off on things I don’t really understand.”

  Scrabbling at his hair, Sora laid it out in his own way.

  “…See, broadly speaking, there are two ways to win in a game. Either smash them one-and-done, or keep losing until at the end you flip it all over and run away with the victory. Those are the two.”

  Sora, explaining while raising fingers, yet shook his head and lowered his fingers.

  “But a condition to do the second is that you keep acting like an idiot and get the enemy off guard.”

  …Yes, just as the previous king did, for example.

  “When our opponent knows that we’re capable of overcoming her, the second way isn’t gonna work anymore. Then our opponent’s gonna change her hand to adapt to ours. And then it gets pretty much impossible to make an absolute mathematical prediction…”

  Having said this, Sora plopped down by Shiro and sighed.

  “Now we’re going to have to just play by the rules.”

  Beside Shiro who bit her nails and bashed out equations, Sora himself, seemed uncomfortable.

  “—I’m counting on you, Shiro. Now that we didn’t manage to take her with the rush, from here on—we’re winging it.”

  “…Mm!”

  —Play by the rules? Against a cheater with deep knowledge of the game and overwhelming physical ability? So basically what he was saying—was that it was more or less a hopeless—

  “…Jibril, please help me keep watch. In a game like this that has the concept of stamina, even though Shiro can move like a precision machine, if she gets tired, she won’t be able to hold her aim steady—she hasn’t got that many shots in her like the ones you saw before. Let’s protect her so she can focus on calculating.”

  To Sora, interrupting Jibril’s thoughts with orders, Jibril responded reverently.

  “Yes, my lord, it shall be done.”

  “…Damn, maybe I should exercise a little more on a daily basis…”

  With this crack, Sora stood and stared down the oncoming NPC girls boldly, but with a line of sweat running down his brow.

  VIEWING FLOOR

  Watching the screen, Ino sharpened his hearing. He could hear the heartbeats of Sora and his friends, sleeping by Izuna on the stage, perfectly. Their pulses told him that Sora’s words audible from the screen were not lying. But still the heartbeat of a person whose chance to win had withered away—neither was it this.

  —They still had something, muttered Ino subtly at a frequency only Werebeasts could hear, so as not to be detected by the watchful Chlammy.

  —Indeed, using the same method by which he had reported Sora’s sniping.

  IN-GAME

  [Izuna, they’re at the west park. They’ve still got an ace up their sleeve. Watch out.]

  Yes—this was the Eastern Union’s first cheat. If they put a blatant cheat in the game itself in a public match and it was revealed, they were done. But on the stage, able to see everything in the game—basically, a God’s-eye view—could only be detected by those able to hear the frequencies he produced…that is, Werebeast.

  “…Hff, hff…”

  Izuna’s ears, hidden in a multiuse building a few hundred meters from Team Sora, picked up Ino’s report.

  (—Ya don’t have to tell me, please.)

  There was no way a bunch with strategic skills like that would bet it all on one rush.

  (It’s still just scouting, but I’ve got something ready, please.)

  How they’d deal with it…would be a sight.

  [Izuna, are you all right?]

  —Izuna, unable to fathom what he was talking about. All right? Of course she was all right. It was true they’d startled her a little, but actually beating her was a whole different—

  […Ah, never mind. I suppose you were just quite startled.]

  Look—what are you—

  [Your face is tense. Let go.]

  ……? Having had it mentioned, she touched her face. He was right; it was tense. But what was this—

  (…I’m smiling, please?)

  —What was that about? What was she smiling about? What was so funny? What was this face?!

  (…And, since a while ago—my heart needs to shut up, please!)

  How long did it plan to keep beating? She hadn’t exercised so much it should be like this. What was she so giddy about? What was she so happy about?!

  —When’s the last time you felt a game was fun?

  (!!)

  As Sora’s words flashed through her mind, she pounded the wall. The building shook, and Izuna withdrew her fist from the broken wall and stood up.

  (…Hff…hff…)

  [Izuna.]

  (Shut up, please!)

  This couldn’t be fun; she couldn’t acknowledge her feeling that this shit was fun.

  —She had to finish off those bastards quickly, quickly. She had to get this over with—

  ……

  “Maaan, I like that they’re animal-girls, but it sucks I can’t touch them.”

  Sora, as he spoke, picking off every one of the girls who furiously came to embrace him.

  “Why not, Master? You have such a reserve of Love Power, I had assumed that a bit of energy drain would be no impediment to your indulging a bit more your desire to touch them and such.”

  Jibril, guarding Shiro,
chatted non-chalantly with Sora as he just barely dove through a pack of girls.

  “That’s true, or it would be if they weren’t Werebeasts! I mean, if they grab me, I’m not sure I can get them off, and—”

  He dodged the hands of a gal flying to hug him. The clutches he’d avoided—crunched into the ground.

  “Hey, yo, old fart! In this game, if Shiro or I falls from a building or gets hugged by one of these bitches, aren’t we gonna die? What’s gonna happen then!”

  To Sora’s cry, the announcer—Ino’s voice—responded.

  “Ah, that is not a problem. You cannot die in this game.”

  “Oh, really? Okay, then, I’ll go ahead and—”

  “However, please note that the pain will feel as if you are dying.”

  “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, Jibril! H-help me!”

  Sora, having allowed himself to be embraced in the hope of some sexual harassment, cried out in agony as bones snapped here and there. Immediately, Jibril took out the girl who had embraced Sora, fretting:

  “Master! A-are you all right!”

  “Hff…hff… S-sure…I’m fine…”

  Sora sprawled on the ground, enduring the intense pain and even raising a thumb and smiling.

  “I did it… I got in a squeeze… Honestly the pain numbed me to all other feeling, but it wasn’t bad, yeah…”

  “At your iron will, Master—your humble servant can only bow in admiration…!”

  —Then. Suddenly, there was a discordant something that wasn’t an NPC girl, at which Jibril and Sora swished their guns together. It was—looking at them with eyes devoid of light—

  “……Oh, it’s just Steph.”

  With that, Sora unhesitatingly fired eight rounds. Each one hit right on the mark. And Steph’s clothes—all of them, except her underwear, were blown away.

  “…Jibril.”

  “Yes.”

  “You take the handicap.”

  “Understood.”

  Solemnly carrying out her lord’s orders, Jibril shot through Steph’s forehead.

  “Ohhhhhhhh, Jibril, not faiiiiiir! Where have you been, going away with everyone and leaving me behind, I’ll never let go of you agaiiin! ”

  “…Maybe we screwed up bringing her along…”

  VIEWING FLOOR

  [I-Izuna…]

  As Izuna began to watch for the moment for her next attack, Ino’s report echoed in her ears.

  [Ehh…how do I put it…? It appears they show no mercy even to their allies.]

  That was all Ino could report. At the unbelievably unbelievable treatment of an ally, both the crowd and Chlammy widened their eyes.

  (…That girl, she’s too… Must be rough.)

  To Chlammy, who’d touched upon Steph’s treatment in Sora’s memory and felt inclined to sympathize from the heart, Fi remarked:

  [Chlammy…I have a feeling you and Stephanie should get along welll.]

  —Chlammy decided not to pry into what she meant.

  IN-GAME

  …Almost two hours had passed since the start of the game. Team Sora’s fourth raid had yet again ended abortively, so back to Point Gamma once more. But this time—

  “…So now we’re finally stuck on the defensive, jeez.”

  The muttering Sora, already having lost one of his shirts, watched his surroundings with keen eyes. Was his success in only taking one bullet so far thanks to his prodigious powers of judgment? Or was it the work of the conviction that no one wants to see a man naked? Shiro had already lost her uniform’s coat and dress and was down to her shirt, knee-highs, and shoes. Jibril, who didn’t wear many articles to begin with, had lost a few of the fasteners on her clothes. Were they to take much more damage, the team would be too exposed.

  —By now they were practically an illustration of the word “screwed.” As Izuna snuck in from time to time among the NPCs assaulting them, they couldn’t help but be on edge.

  “…Seems our attacks have stopped working, too… Just a matter of time now?”

  “Lord Shiro, what is our next—”

  “…Jibril…shut, up…!”

  Jibril was likewise showing stress, yet Shiro, pulling at her hair restlessly before the equations that had already spread to fill the ground of the park, bit her nails.

  —It wasn’t working. No matter how much she calculated, she couldn’t find the last thing she needed. Her calculations were perfect, but it wasn’t enough to complete the picture—Seeing Shiro’s expression, clouded with irritation, Jibril broke a sweat and whispered to Sora.

  “…Master…could it be this is futile? Even for Lord Shiro…”

  “No, she can do it.”

  Strongly, with no trace of doubt, Sora, looking around diligently, shot her down.

  “In games, Shiro can do what I can’t. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it will be.”

  —With those words. Within Shiro flashed a method to complete the formula. But it was—just too. Faintly, Shiro mumbled.

  “…Brother, do you…trust, me?”

  “Huh? You think your brother has ever doubted you?”

  Slipping past a groupie flying at him and shooting her down in a smooth motion, Sora spoke.

  —Yeah, come to think of it. Shiro remembered, in that Othello game—the one they’d played with Chlammy. There had been something she still hadn’t told Sora.

  “…Then, Brother… This, time…it’s your turn…okay.”

  “Uh, what?”

  Shiro subtly turned up the corners of her mouth. And in the formula that filled the park, with a hand raised vigorously, she smashed down—the last variable.

  —B. And the next moment—a silhouette flashed across the sunlight for an instant. Between and from the walls of the buildings surrounding the park, Izuna’s bullet ricocheted to descend on Sora.

  “Oh, shi…! Jibril, follow up—!”

  Evasion was impossible. Sora braced for impact, immediately ordering Jibril to shoot him back. But before the onrushing bullet could hit Sora—

  “Wha—”

  Into the trajectory of the bullet headed to pierce Sora—leaped Shiro.

  ……A bullet, obstructed by the sunlight, launched from the air while jumping from building to building. A forced attack. But a shot she could clearly feel bite. Unable to watch it to its mark, Izuna landed on a building roof, fracturing it, and pricked up her ears.

  “No, bounce sound—I did it, please?”

  To her words which implicitly requested confirmation from Ino—that is, that he check Sora’s pulse—without delay, Ino’s voice responded.

  [Shiro’s flatlined…in a completely relaxed state. No longer in control. You got her, Izuna.]

  ……And, seeing Shiro turn her barrel on Sora with lifeless eyes. Sora, Jibril, the whole crowd watching from beyond the screen everyone shared the same thought.

  —Here was an enemy…worse than Izuna. Swiftly getting some distance from Shiro—his instinctual response but one he repressed, Sora stood his ground. Toward the flash of Shiro’s muzzle, he stuck out his wrist, and his wristband took the bullet.

  “Jibril! Above!”

  Would Izuna miss a chance like this? It was obviously time to go in again to attack—! Stating his prediction as fact, Sora threw a bomb into the air, and Jibril shot it. The flash of a blast. Toward the shadow she saw for an instant, Jibril fired rapidly while rolling. But she didn’t have the luxury of a look. Shiro’s muzzle flashing again. But this time Sora stuck out his left foot toward the barrel. In a shower of hearts, his left shoe was ripped apart—and it disappeared with the bullet. (If she shoots—there’s no way I can dodge! Don’t let her fire!!)

  —But. Shiro moved her body to the side half a step and lowered her barrel toward the floor.

  “Oh, cra—?!”

  Grasping what it meant in an instant, Sora howled softly. She’d sidestepped—to attack from a position Sora’s shot-blocking couldn’t cover. Expecting that her bullet, fired at the
floor, would bounce three times, or maybe eight times, or maybe more—that it would ricochet surely and accurately, rendering any timing Sora could choose for a counterattack meaningless and drill into him, an inescapable attack, her unswerving conviction drew the blood from his face. Dropping his balance, he took off his remaining shoe on the floor and kicked it. The bullet struck Sora’s shoe, scattering hearts, and both disappeared.

  —He’d blocked it. But. He’d lost his balance and his shoes. Blocking the second round that would be shot in succession—was beyond his reach.

  “Jibriiiil!”

  To Sora’s summons, Jibril responded on the spot, crossing the distance of ten meters in one step and lifting her master. Then with her second step, she launched them fifty meters all at once. But the bouncing bullet Shiro had unleashed had possibly taken Jibril’s entry and flight into account. It tore away a bit of one of the metal accessories Jibril wore on her arms.

  —The attack based on diabolical calculation, of the kind Izuna must have experienced, gave chills even to Jibril, holder of the finest combat abilities among the Ixseeds. She managed to land and deposit Sora, but Shiro meanwhile had already turned calmly to begin her next assault.

  “…We are finished, it seems.”

  Experiencing it herself for the first time, Shiro’s shooting… Now if someone said that was a cheat, Jibril couldn’t have argued the point, the Flügel muttered as she trembled. Without Shiro’s equations, after all, they had no hope of winning this game.

  “…Master. Lord Shiro’s decision to shield you escapes my understanding—”

  “Yeah—I understand it, so don’t worry about it.”

  But Sora’s expression as he stared intently at the equations scrawled all over the park…

  “The variable B—it’s Brother, i.e., me.”

  …consisted of merely a cold sweat and a strained smile.

  “In other words, even accounting for Shiro becoming our enemy, the variable of me completes the equation—this magical formula that will take us to the promise of victory…that’s what you’re saying, right, Shiro?”

  As Sora let out a dry cackle at this fact, he found himself targeted by Shiro’s barrel once more.