No Game No Life, Vol. 8

by Yuu Kamiya

  “…You wanna play with no regard to means or sacrifices at all—anyone can do that shit.”

  Yes, it was simple. And proven by everyone as they’d carried on and on with no regard for the world. So just what was it they were looking for at the end of that mountain of sacrifices? An ending where they died, someone else died, or everyone died—did they really want it that badly? Sora didn’t see the point—and had a feeling he never would.

  “This world is a game. It’s become a game.”

  As those goons had carried on with their mundane play—someone had sneered. Someone had refused to accept even one sacrifice. Sora looked at Jibril and smiled.

  “—No one will die, nor will they be allowed to. Not you, Jibril, not us, and not anyone—”

  How had the world changed…?

  “The world’s changed so that you can get away with throwing that tantrum—and you might even get what you want.”

  Then the least they could do was to say a last prayer for this old world.

  —Hey… Whoever you were…

  Seventy hours had passed. Izuna sat on the 308th space, watching. Many races had perished, and the world, the planet, was being destroyed, too far gone to come back. Just as the Old Deus had predicted, Sora and Shiro were cornered, and their faces were starting to show strain. But Izuna’s expression as she watched them held no tension, only nostalgia. Tet had told her—the old story, the untold story.

  Those two who had ended the previous Great War were kind of like Sora and Shiro. They had achieved an incredible feat, yet their older sister had asked…

  “Why, am I so…frustrated…?”

  Tet, the Suniaster in hand, had spoken as if in reply.

  “Because the game’s not over.”

  Long, long ago, that day, Tet had grasped the Suniaster and laid down the Ten Covenants. Tet, the one who claimed to have remade the world—but this was what he’d said next. No matter how many times Izuna reviewed it in her memory, he had surely said:

  “Come, then—let the games continue.”

  Long, long ago, the game—had not begun. It had started long before that and just—continued, so the unsung defeat could continue into a sung victory. The previous pair had sought and missed it, passing it along—all the way to the future pair…

  For that one victory—that would take that infinite string of defeats and give them meaning.

  For that one victory—that no one yet, not even Sora and Shiro, had achieved.

  For that final victory in which no one could be sacrificed.

  “…Tet, I went and called you a goddamn liar, please… Forgive me, please.”

  Izuna bowed apologetically, her long ears and head drooping. Sora and Shiro were like those two—but only kind of. Sora and Shiro weren’t as strong, and that comforted Izuna. She knew—these two wouldn’t make the same mistake as their predecessors.

  “……………”

  And Izuna saw the inorganic, emotionless face of the Old Deus tremble just a little.

  “…Sorry, please. I’m not smart… So I can’t give you an answer, please.”

  “What is it to believe?”

  Izuna didn’t know how to answer or how to reach the goal, but still, her intuition told her for sure she wasn’t wrong.

  “I won’t win if you die, please! I believe that’s total bullshit, please!”

  Met with only silence, Izuna looked back at the projected scenery. The end of the world. Izuna smiled, So let it be. After all—they were the ones who’d destroyed that world for them…

  The boy recalled among his racing thoughts:

  Say you had to die for the sake of the world. What would you do? That was what he’d thought that day, and he’d sneered that there was no point in winning all by himself. But it still wasn’t enough for both of them to win—so how could they win it all? He’d half resigned himself to thinking that perhaps no such method existed in this world.

  But there was such a method in that world. That day he’d heard the ten rules, he’d stood where he could look out to the giant chess pieces in the distance. The erstwhile boy—the black-haired, dark-eyed young man—had held his sister’s hand and cracked a smile.

  They’d finally found the method. There it was—the Ten Covenants. Convention had dictated that nothing could be done without sacrifice. This groundwork led beyond.

  What a convenient fantasy, eh, this world? He felt both happy and bitter about it, but—it wasn’t just convenient. It was convenient, but for a reason. Someone had faced what he’d run from and given everything to finally make convenient…could you buy a story like that? Were it not for the Covenants and the fact that the Great War had ended, he would have dismissed it with a laugh. Whoever it was had been some hell of a human, the young man thought, humbled—but now he also thought…whoever it was… —No.

  Hey, you.

  Was that really good enough?

  No matter how I look at it…I don’t feel that way……

  ……

  The impact cut short Sora’s speeding thoughts. The projected map displayed the date −53 BT. That meant they had twenty-eight minutes left until the time limit. Meanwhile, the light that had passed right by them had evaporated the earth’s crust straight up to the stratosphere—

  —and the “death storm” that had covered Avant Heim—had been stripped away.

  “Hey! What are we going to do? What’s going ooon?!” shouted the teary-eyed Steph, who’d lost her balance and fallen to the ground from the impact.

  “Hell if I know! It’s a perfect storm of everything we expected to be unexpected!”

  “……Mmngh…I so thought…we had it…!”

  Sora and Shiro yelled back at her and furiously scrawled out commands then stared at the map, the map that, fifteen hours earlier, had rendered the entire world as plain as day and showed them the course of the war. Now it was back to black, showing almost nothing. What it did display eloquently was how the war was going.

  “Well, we knew from the start this game was impossible! You gotta enjoy this kinda game understanding that in advance, right?!”

  “…When a game’s, impossible…it’s all about, challenging yourself…how far, you can go!”

  Sora and Shiro repressed their panic and forced smiles together as they kept writing.

  They had been aware that they couldn’t perfectly predict the movements of races they lacked intel on. But—for God’s sake, Sora ground his teeth silently. Lunamana, the race about which they had the least intel, the race said to have already been on the red moon as of the Great War, had arrived. The quite unpredictable convulsion had been caused by the same factor that spelled doom for the two races around which the war had heretofore revolved, the Elves and Dwarves. The moon had fallen and opened up the sky, whereby the Dhampirs—their Scout units—were also crushed by the upheaval of heaven and earth and subsequently perished. Dwindling remnants of Immanity units and Cities still remained, and as if searching for something or trying to corner them—surrounding Sora and Shiro’s Capital, now stripped of its death storm, and closing in—were a few enemy units. The gamer siblings had been deprived of mobile units, and even races they might have been able to move indirectly were done. They were practically out of options, and then—

  “…Masters. You have done enough. Please command me—”

  Jibril looked down and murmured, but Sora and Shiro cut her off.

  “…STFU. ”

  “…Jibril, sit. ”

  Jibril was forced into a sitting position before—

  “Mmgyaughhhh?! What was that flash? Hey! That flash!!”

  The projectiles were coming so close they couldn’t hear them anymore; perhaps they weren’t within the range of their hearing? The only movement came from flashes, shocks, and Steph, who dashed back and forth to the mailbox.

  “…At this rate, you’ll die, Masters—even little Dora, too…!”

  “What do you mean, even me? I’m about to burst into tears!!”

&nbs
p; Steph, the only one still ignorant of the situation, put her life on the line running back and forth to mail Sora’s, Shiro’s, and Jibril’s commands. Even Sora and Shiro were moved to shivers by her fathomless magnanimity, her naive benevolence, but—

  “Please order me to hand over my dice and die—!”

  Jibril’s tearful wail shook the room. It froze Steph, and she couldn’t believe she was hearing what came after.

  “…I am, afraid…! Please… I beg, your indulgence…!”

  Her journal tightly in hand, Jibril shivered as she begged, soaking the floor. Sora and Shiro did not respond. Steph couldn’t say anything.

  A deafening silence was the sole reply…and then.

  A loud VOOMP broke the long silence—another impact of the light. Steph jerked as it reminded her of her imminent death, and Jibril kept mumbling:

  “…I am well aware that you have embarked on risks inconceivable for my wretched sake… But please.”

  She wiped her tears and tried to compose herself.

  “As your undeserving servant, it would be an honor beyond all imagination… Please consider the circumstances.”

  Jibril held out nine dice from her chest.

  “…As a Flügel, I feel nothing toward death. Please give me the order…”

  If she gave them her dice, she’d lose her memory—and be unable to kill herself. She would need the binding command of Sora and Shiro, her owners. That would be enough, and then this game—Jibril’s selfish death game—would be over. Satisfied with this, she smiled and said:

  “There is no need for you to die, Masters. Please let me be the—”

  “Shut the hell up!! Just shut your trap and be quiet! You’re distracting me, damn it!!”

  The roar of Sora cutting her off rocked the hall more sharply than the devastating shock waves. Finally, Sora and Shiro set down their pens and looked— No. Glared.

  Their seething eyes took Steph’s and Jibril’s breath away. The next moment, they were back to writing commands while Sora ranted.

  “Let you die ’cos you’re scared?! ‘I’m not afraid to diiie!’ STFU!! We’re all afraid to die! We’re not even worrying about pissing ourselves but something much bigger and stinkier than that!”

  “…Brother… When’s the last, time…we went…to the bathroom…?!”

  Oh. No wonder they were about to soil themselves! Shit! Sora slammed new orders into Steph’s hand—

  “And you just keep talking and talking and talking and talking!! You just wanna look cool, don’t you?!”

  —and cut Jibril down.

  I’m afraid to lose my memory, so I want to die. —But? But?

  I don’t want to be a burden. I want to win. If I can’t I want to die. —But! But!

  It’s my fault. It’s not your fault, Masters. —But! But! But! But!

  It’s the only choice. Live for my sake, too—!!!

  “Who the hell do you think you are, Jibril?! Who’s your master?!”

  “…If you’re…the property, of a couple of shut-in…loser, gamers…”

  “Then fly right! Do it right!! Be true; be like us—be a dweeb!!!”

  As Steph falteringly slid a command in the box— Suddenly.

  One of Immanity’s Cities—literally disappeared. They’d intentionally revealed and drawn attention to it, and now it was gone from the map, along with its label.

  “Say you don’t want to die! You don’t want us to die! You don’t want to lose your memory, and you don’t want us to lose our memories of you! Say ‘Save me’!! If we fail, we’ll all die—but say it: I don’t wanna!!”

  Still furiously scribbling commands, Sora and Shiro were shaking, screaming—

  “Why don’t you learn a thing or two from us and bawl like a pathetic dweeb!!”

  “!!!”

  With that, Jibril’s face distorted, tears in the corners of her eyes.

  Seventy-one hours, forty-five minutes.

  “You’re saying one death’s enough?! Then what difference does it make if it’s one or three, a billion or a trillion?!!”

  “…B-but! At this rate, if the Capital falls—”

  Sora and Shiro and Steph— No, in the worst-case scenario, everyone involved in the Old Deus’s game would perish with it.

  “W-w-we’ll cross that bridge…when we come to it?!”

  “…I-it’s not like…it’s gonna, fall…?”

  But Sora’s voice cracked, and Shiro’s eyes moistened as they rebutted Jibril’s argument with uncertain shrieks. Not counting the Capital, two Cities remained, and they’d tossed one entirely as a decoy in order to buy a few minutes—not even fifty days in-game—before the enemy loomed once more. Not allowing their hands a single break, Sora and Shiro merely thought:

  Seventy-one hours, forty-nine minutes.

  …It wasn’t as if they had any proof. All they had was circumstantial evidence upon which they’d laid layer after layer of conjecture. Yet somehow, Sora and Shiro felt strangely certain, as if they’d seen it.

  …Some complete idiot had decided that this hell was a game. That it was time to take this world scorched by battle, submerged in despair—and change it with zero sacrifices. To go beyond convention—and follow a dream too fatuous to mention. To take on the world, to struggle, to claw—and then to miss.

  And to say, next time…next time.

  Some super badass gamer had said it until his dying breath.

  But—!

  “You think we can be that strong? You think we can manage to live such badass lives?!”

  At Sora’s command, another City was gouged by light and perished. But this time—it had taken the enemy that had erased it along with it. The E-bomb secured from the fallen Dwarves had been set off by the enemy’s own attack. The land that no longer even deserved to be called a continent crumbled, and Immanity was left with one City and 177 units. Even so, Sora and Shiro still thought in tandem:

  Seventy-one hours, fifty-one minutes.

  That god-tier badass gamer—had failed. That great and noble hero who had ended the war and opened the way for the Ten Covenants! Yet, ah, we shall say it as many times as we must—the hero had failed—!!!

  “Right?! If we were gonna be cool, we’d beat you now, right?!”

  Glancing at the formula Shiro passed him, Sora inscribed what it implied without a hitch.

  “So! What if I was all crying like, ‘Jibril, I won’t let your death be in vain!’? I’d be a real badass if I lied to you like that, wouldn’t I?! I’d be such a stud! Go on, shower me in praise! And while I’m showing my ass here, I might as well ask you this one thing!!”

  As if demanding it of all the obnoxiously cool protagonists who ever were, he shouted:

  “—Tell me, after you finish being so cool, what’s left?!”

  What future lay in store for the teary-eyed Shiro, the running-scared Steph, the floor-gazing Jibril?

  “You skip out! They cry their eyes out!! And the virgin has to live with all your karma— WTF?! I’m gonna get a fever, this is so screwed up!”

  Yeah, sure. There were other things. Like the world where everything was decided by games—where no one had to be sacrificed next time. The hero had left the Ten Covenants—the groundwork—you could say that. Sure, that was crazy. They couldn’t even dream of pulling that off. But—

  What did the hero think about it—?!

  What did that godly gamer hope to accomplish by going to such lengths?! To end the Great War?! To save the world?! Hell no! You’re saying a dumbass of astronomical proportions who would dream up something so psycho and then actually do it—a proud fool such as few humans had ever rivaled—did it for some goody-two-shoes reason like that?

  Get outta here!!

  “You’re looking at a shut-in loser gamer who has one more year without a girlfriend every birthday, who asks with a straight face what a friend is, whose only special skill is lying! ‘People can change,’ you say? Shit, a water flea isn’t gonna turn into a whale; there’s a goddamn
limit, y’know!! —So!!”

  Sora took a deep breath, pausing from his rant to distract himself from his fear. Then he spoke quietly and calmly.

  “…Why don’t we live our own way…?”

  .

  “All or nothing. We won’t even say sorry.”

  His voice was resolute, yet shaky. He gripped Shiro’s hand firmly as his feet tapped the floor.

  That was who they were. The siblings smiled to each other. They didn’t wanna die. They didn’t wanna let Jibril die. They didn’t wanna have regrets. Didn’t wanna, didn’t wanna, didn’t wanna! They’d rejected everything to come to this world.

  “If somehow—not that it’ll happen—we die, we’re going with everyone.”

  “…So…shut up…and suck it. At least…”

  They wrapped up their tantrum, sufficient to make even a spoiled brat want to behave, with unabashed dorkiness:

  “Let’s enjoy it to the end!! It’s a pretty damn thrilling game, when you think about it!”

  As if in response to Sora’s laugh, one more City went down, taking enemy units with it. They’d used the nuclear option in their own territory—the famous “Belkan defense”— No, actually, they must have just reached the point of blowing themselves up and saying, if we die, we’re taking you with us.

  •Five minutes, forty-two seconds remaining.

  Still hanging her head, Jibril mumbled, but only Steph was able to make it out.

  “…Even, so… I, was responsible for…”

  “Mmm… No… Those two are just a bit touched in the head… I think.”

  Jibril looked up to see Steph—smiling.

  “They think if someone must be sacrificed, then we should all die indiscriminately. That kind of irrational thinking is enough to make your head hurt.”

  Steph was exasperated, yet clear, as she spoke before dashing off once again.

  “—But that’s why we shall sacrifice no one! This is a line of reasoning I’m willing to stick with to the end!!”