by Yuu Kamiya
Yeah, good point, Sora thought. Even if they forfeited all their dice—their “time of substance”—they’d just lose their physical bodies and turn into ghosts. That was why he hadn’t argued when Jibril asked, “It is permitted that I win, is it not?” In fact, Jibril…probably could make it to the goal.
However.
“So you’re using your own life to threaten us into admitting defeat?”
“…Your jokes…make no, sense… And, they’re…not even, funny…”
Even in the best-case scenario, someone would die. Sora sat in a chair and cast his gaze downward with his hands folded in his lap. The bizarre atmosphere silenced Shiro, and even Steph. They held their tongues and waited for Sora’s answer.
.
Several seconds (or was it several minutes?) later, Sora finished his contemplation and lifted his head. It felt as if several hours could have elapsed in that time. Steph suppressed a shriek at the savage smile plastered on his face, warped with malice.
“It’s simple after all. She’s telling us, if we wanna win, kill her.”
As he spoke, it occurred to Sora that this didn’t really seem like a joke. This wasn’t some bluff or lie on Jibril’s part; it was a serious demand. Even worse…
“—That’s some sass she’s giving us… Like, ‘If you don’t think you can win, feel free to quit.’”
How kind of her to offer them the “easy way out.”
“Fine, then… Shiro—let’s go.”
As Sora slowly got to his feet, Shiro searched her brother’s threatening glare for his true intent—
“You think we’re gonna let her have her way?”
“…………Mm, got it…”
—and seemed to grasp what lay behind. She nodded solemnly, resolute.
“How did humans survive the Great War, she asks?” Sora grumbled.
He and Shiro sat in the chairs, faced the map, and gripped their pens.
“We’ll give her all the answer she needs…”
“A-are you serious about this?! I mean, can you actually win?!”
Steph alone worried— No, she was asking if they even had a chance in the first place. Sora and Shiro answered with dark smiles on their faces.
“—No sweat. We could win this with our eyes closed.”
“…Piece, of cake…”
They didn’t know what Jibril’s deal was pulling this game, but no matter. If she’d decided she either had to beat them in this game or die—
—then that left them only one option. Sora grinned…
At the same time, on the 308th space, a young beast stood staring at the video feed of Sora and the others projected in midair. The young girl with fennec fox–like ears was a few sizes smaller than usual, having only two dice left.
“Why…? Why’s everyone doing this shit, please?!”
This was Izuna Hatsuse, barking at the one displaying the image for her—someone sitting atop an inkpot floating in midair, her presence cold and inorganic, yet overwhelming.
Izuna fixed her gaze on the Old Deus and continued in a panic, almost questioning or even blaming. I thought we were playing sugoroku with you?
And yet…
“Why the hell’re we picking someone to die, please?!”
…the Old Deus did not answer her outrage. Rather, she didn’t feel an answer was necessary. It was as if what she projected to Izuna was enough.
Her projections were the natural conclusion of events: Sora’s team versus Jibril, competing in a game in which the loser would be sacrificed. Chlammy and Fiel, arriving to seize the Eastern Union amidst the confusion. Plum, taking advantage of the ensuing situation to use a Werebeast sacrifice as a stepping-stone to another sacrifice.
In or out of the game, nothing ended without someone’s sacrifice. But it wasn’t the Old Deus Izuna had chastised who’d orchestrated these circumstances. This was all their own doing. That was the answer.
“What a strange question. You, there. Accomplice, conspirator. Why do you ask?”
Her voice carried not a hint of blame or disappointment or despair and wholly lacked any desire.
“The respective Old Deus is obligated to fulfill the victor’s every demand.”
The god spoke indifferently, unfamiliar with loss or hope.
“The conceit that one would usurp the almighty power of an Old Deus…can only end thus.”
“.”
They’d tried to take everything from her; in other words, “you started it.” Izuna gulped as she picked up the implied blame in the Old Deus’s words.
…In that case, even if they did manage to make it to the goal…what about this Old Deus?
As Izuna pondered, the Old Deus considered her with vacant eyes, as if she’d never had any interest in Izuna anyway.
—This is merely what happens when everyone seeks their own benefit. The truth is, no one can gain without taking from another.
The Old Deus’s gaze seemed to indicate as much. Izuna could say nothing, but only hung her head…
At the same time, outside the game, someone in one corner of Kannagari, the Eastern Union’s capital, poked her head out of the window of an inn. She looked up at the spiraling land that blocked the moonlight—the sugoroku board created by the Old Deus—where people both inside and outside the game had lapsed into chaos, caught up in confusion, fear, impatience, and their own machinations.
“Hmm, I don’t really get it, but it looks like the Elven fleet’s arrived. I’m soooo bored, though.”
The figure spoke with utter indifference, as if wholly unacquainted with tension, then retrieved a single sheet from a large bundle of papers and nodded. She was convinced that everything was truly in place.
It had been thirty-eight days since the start of the game with the Old Deus. Everyone had either been betrayed, deceived, usurped—or killed.
—This is merely what happens when everyone seeks their own benefit. The truth is, no one can gain without taking from another.
Let’s say that, if you thought about it logically, this was as obvious as an object tumbling down a hill…
Then just don’t think about it logically.
Things had happened just as intended by those who had said as much, the ones who’d left her this sheet.
Word for word, precisely as written.
Feeling relieved and slightly chilled, the figure left the inn, a heavy knapsack on her back.
“Hey! I’m still in the backpack, aren’t I?! Just who do you think I am?! Hey!!”
As she who dwelled in the water-filled, overly heavy knapsack noisily asserted herself, the one entrusted with the sheet recalled what she’d asked herself:
—Say you had to die for the sake of the world. What would you do?
“If it would save the world, then I’d have to die.”
However, they had all smiled bitterly at her response.
“Then if that didn’t save the world, you’d have died for nothing.”
And they’d continued.
“One sacrifice, two sacrifices, a thousand, a billion—it’s not much difference.”
If you’re fine with sacrificing a few people in order to save many more, then one day, the number you sacrificed will surely surpass the number you saved.
Small sacrifices and self-sacrifice will never save the world. They’ll only help it survive—help it carry on unchanging, looking for its next sacrifices one by one, until the day it all finally ends…
If you’re gonna prattle on about saving the world, then you’d better refuse to allow even a single sacrifice. That’s what they’d said: This world is a game. If you accept a single sacrifice, the game will go on forever. In this world, such ludicrous rules are neither necessary nor absolute. And that’s why we’re going to put an end to this right here…
No longer in anyone’s memory, the figure who had been entrusted with such proof therefore carried their weighty move forward—
“Hey! Could you be a little more careful with how you’re carryin
g me?! How dare you treat me so roughly when you’re not even my darling! Do you want to make the sea your enemy? Excuse me, are you listening? Hello?!”
—their literal weighty trump card, complaining from inside the backpack.
Step by step, she staggered up the endlessly long hill to the Chinkai Tandai District.
CHAPTER 1
PREPARATION
The Great War. The time when the gods and their relations fought for the throne of the One True God. A stain on history, where they rent heaven and earth and trampled the world as if sneering at the decaying planet and the transient souls who inhabited it. Sora and Shiro, now engaged in a simulation of this war, continued to madly scribble out commands. As they kept scrawling these immensely über-Herculean tasks for the sole purpose of staying alive, though, Sora suddenly stopped and shouted—
“—?! Shiro, I just got a great idea!!
“Wouldn’t it be funny if we tried the command ‘Bang your neighbor’s wife’?!”
Pow.
There was another flash…and a mountain vanished from the map, right where their Capital had been seconds before. The destructive light would have surely blown them away along with the mountain had they not read the attack in advance and commanded a Settler to move the Capital. Shiro was unbothered and gave a thumbs-up in response.
“…Good job, Brother… But, your commands, need to be…specific…”
“Ohhh… Wait, so how do you go about banging the neighbor’s wife—?!”
He hadn’t banged anyone before—had never even had a real girlfriend who existed outside the confines of his own imagination. This could be considered a feat even more grueling than living. But in the midst of Sora’s agony—
“I’ve been wondering just what you’re up to—why are you being so casual about this?!” Steph screamed as she shuttled their commands to the mailbox. “If—if you’d been a second late, we—we’d be dead… C-can’t you take this seriously?!”
Steph went pale at the prospect of their Capital getting captured, but Sora merely said to himself, Whatever, it’s fine.
It was a strategy game convention—your Capital isn’t considered to have “fallen” until it’s been captured. And considering what Jibril was after, it was all the more unlikely that they would die even if they took a direct hit. The player space they were in was undoubtedly isolated from the outside world. After all, right now, the sibling gamers weren’t even two years old: Sora was 1.8 and Shiro was 1.1. Steph was 3.6. The table was so high for them, they couldn’t even write their commands without standing on a chair. Steph, the oldest, could just barely deposit their orders into the mailbox by standing on her toes. Kids like that, in a hell like this, would have been long dead if they weren’t isolated. It was true that if they lost all their cities they’d run out of Immanity units and be screwed. But hey.
“Hmm. Hey, how d’you think I should go about getting the neighbor’s wife to fall in love with me?” Sora asked Steph casually.
“Oh my, you’re asking me? Well, let’s see, if I may speak from personal experience… Why don’t you con her and force her to fall in love with you?”
“—Wha…?!”
Steph was beaming at her biting retort, and Sora was momentarily dumbfounded. “D00d, you’re sharp! That’s right, I just gotta con her!!”
“That was all the sarcasm I could muster! Can’t you at least react a little?!”
Steph responded to Sora’s sincere praise with an equally earnest plea. Then— Whap, Sora wrote out two commands without a moment’s hesitation as Steph pouted.
“With a head like yours that’s capable of coming up with such manner of vile abuses in mere moments, can’t you think of anything productive?”
“…Productive, you say. What do you consider productive?”
“…S-sorry?”
Sora paid no mind to Steph as she deposited his orders, and he continued with a stern expression.
“You’re right… Why don’t I do something productive, like diplomacy?”
Diplomacy. The building of fiduciary relations by contract. Sora and Shiro had little to bargain with, but it wasn’t as if they had nothing. They had their knowledge of their old world, their information as players, their food…and so on and so forth. Could they put that up to get some kind of promise of cooperation or trade from another force?
“…If you look at that and still think any such promises will be kept, then should we give it a try?”
“That”… In other words, the scene outside as projected in midair by their Scout. A raging storm that shattered the earth. Looking at that grotesque spectacle, Steph could hardly be convinced: In a world that conquered by killing, contracts…meant nothing.
“Well, how about I do something else productive, like combat?”
Combat. The securement of territory by force. The odds weren’t in their favor, that was for sure, but it wasn’t impossible. Of course, if they took things head-on, they’d be steamrolled…but Sora and Shiro knew more than a little about the characteristics of some of the Ixseeds, such as Werebeasts, Elves, Sirens, and Dhampirs. They could use this knowledge to mobilize their units, strategically encircle the enemy, and then pull off an ambush. If Sora and Shiro robbed the opponent of their advantage through limited confrontations and used the terrain’s features against them…then hey, they might win. They’d destroy one or two enemy units, and if all went particularly well—
“We might even be able to deal a fatal blow to one race—and then what? Where will that get us?”
It would only make them targets and drive others to take revenge, needlessly increasing their risk. So neither diplomacy nor combat would be productive. In fact, if they made any faulty moves or attracted attention leading their opponents to identify their Capital…
“They’d crush us on a whim and game over. The end, literally.”
So for starters… Sora chuckled bitterly.
“If you think in terms of common sense—we start in checkmate, don’t we?”
How had Immanity survived this war at all? Sora, of course, had no way of knowing the truth.
“There aren’t many ways humans could survive under these conditions.”
And, among these limited choices, only one stood out as the most realistic.
“—Run like hell and hide… That’s it.”
They would need to act so as not to be noticed, not even acknowledged. Like a small animal, like a worm, like a leaf, they would snuff out their presence. Their most feasible option was to run and run, forever. However…
“Even that won’t work when Jibril already knows about us… Will it?”
Right. They were screwed if the enemy took note of them, but she knew about them from the start. Under these conditions, they could barely even move any of their units. If Jibril so much as spotted one stray, she’d find their Capital—and it would all be over.
“……”
Sora nodded, continuing to chuckle bitterly at Steph as she blanched and made a gurgling noise in her throat.
What could they do to be productive? Right now—jack squat.
The most they could do was send out Scouts to track enemy movements and relocate their Capital to avoid stray fire. Or they could secure food supplies or send Jibril letters to troll her.
“We can’t fight! If we send a unit out, it’ll die, and then it’s game over! So how ’bout we risk our gamer pride on this totally undiplomatic, piece-of-shit game and try to enjoy it?!”
“You’ve got your priorities mixed up! It’s not your pride we’re risking, it’s our lives!!”
Steph’s panic was quite reasonable, but Sora was perfectly aware of all that. That was why he was experimenting. Yes, for example—
“…Brother… It looks, like…he…banged her.”
—this.
When Shiro spoke up, Sora grinned, leaped onto the table (the map), and zoomed in. It seemed to indicate the two units had successfully pulled off the experiment, but—
“Whoaa
a… She really went and did it… Women are freaky…”
“…Yeah… Brother, women…are scary, aren’t they…?”
“Why’re you weirded out when you’re the one who made her do it in the first place?!”
There were the two units, the man and his neighbor’s wife, repeating their rendezvous in secrecy from the husband. Sora was repulsed, and Shiro was practically hypnotized for some reason. Steph shouted at them, but—
“Made her?! Pshaw! Have you forgotten what I wrote in my commands?!”
Sora had given Steph two commands to deposit. What he’d written was:
—Command 1: Unit c1fe436 “Neighbor’s Wife”
For the next twenty days at 2200 hours each day, you shall be panged with hunger and proceed to coordinates x765 y9875 “Food Storeroom,” where you shall covertly embezzle provisions.
—Command 2: Unit b3fc412 “Wife Banger”
Starting in fifteen days, at 2201 hours, you shall encounter Unit c1fe436 “Neighbor’s Wife” at coordinates x765 y9875 “Food Storeroom.” Then you shall demand carnal relations in exchange for overlooking her embezzlement.
So basically—!! Sora announced:
“I ordered her to steal food! I used that to pressure her into doing it once!”
True, he’d made the Neighbor’s Wife snatch the food. The Wife Banger had been forced to blackmail her.
“But! And yet! Howeverrrr—!!”
Wham. Sora pointed at the map where the two units, despite the command period having already terminated, were yet sweetly “rendezvousing…”
“The ones who decided to keep it up…are these two!”
No, he had not ordered the Neighbor’s Wife to fall in love with the Wife Banger. Neither had he ordered the Wife Banger to demand repeated carnal relations. And more importantly, Sora summed up, that meant one thing!
“I didn’t even order the Neighbor’s Wife to submit to the Wife Banger’s demands!!”