by Yuu Kamiya
The page filled with the same word, smudged here and there by droplets, said it all. Without her memory, she wasn’t herself.
You could reason all you wanted about souls and such, but the fact was that the person who’d lost all her memories, the one reading this journal where all those memories were inscribed—could only regard it as the journal of a stranger.
This was another person altogether. And could you become that person by reading their journal? Of course not. It was just like how, no matter how many books you read, you could never obtain more than knowledge. Books could never tell you how their authors felt when they were written.
Having reached this conclusion, Jibril found herself unwilling to return the dice Sora had handed her. If she were to forget everything again, then she was inclined to refuse even rolling the dice another time. Given the choice, she’d even prefer dying right here. But that would mean she’d drop out with ten of the dice in her possession. And that was no laughing matter, for it could forfeit her masters’ victory—perhaps even their lives.
Thus, Jibril asked her masters if she might win.
“…How absolutely dreadful of me…”
Seeing the next page and what she’d written after making off with the dice she’d “borrowed,” Jibril couldn’t help but grimace in self-loathing.
She’d detailed on this page exactly how to set up this game.
If any of them could win this sugoroku game against the Old Deus, it would be Jibril. But she knew full well that wouldn’t suffice. Of all people, those two—her masters, her lords, Sora and Shiro—would never permit just anyone to win or themselves to lose. Therefore, she’d also made them bet their actual method for defeating the Old Deus and set it up so they had no choice but to resign. Jibril looked at the page where she’d laid it out, right down to the particulars, so she could carry it out even without her memory.
“Still… I beg of you, Masters…,” she whispered, her head low. They would scorn her. She would be content to accept any punishment. They could simply tell her to die… No.
If they would only let her die, it couldn’t come too soon… And yet!
“…Please, please, just once… I beg of you, Masters… Won’t you allow me this victory…? Just this once… Please—!”
She’d admit it: She was afraid. Helplessly afraid.
“…If someone not myself had my face, my voice…”
Everything she’d written in her journal—everything she’d seen, heard, learned, felt in these 6,407 years; the victory she was stooping to such depths to extort; the undeserved entreaty she’d made, the tears of shame—she had even forgotten their meaning.
“…If my masters called that person ‘Jibril’…and that person were not I…”
Recalling her most precious memory, being summoned to the side of those dear to her—
“…If that person treated them as worthless…I could never accept it…!”
—she imagined another in her place. Never before had Jibril experienced a fear like this…
……
It took a while. Then Jibril, who’d collapsed in tears, looked up at the flurry of activity displayed on the map and chuckled.
“…Of…course… My masters, Blank…would never…accept defeat, would they not?”
Surely, her masters had no mind at all to resign. That meant they would take up the challenge, and Jibril would be allowed to win. Just look at this mountain of letters she’d received from them; they were nothing but taunts. They could have just written “Resign” or “Die,” and as their property, Jibril would have had no choice but to obey.
“…I thank you, my masters, for this opportunity to test my mettle.”
With that, Jibril once more took up her pen and began issuing commands.
Victory would be hers, no matter what. Her masters would have no choice but to resign if she had them completely cornered. Still— Jibril took one last glance at her journal.
I cannot but think that my masters will win regardless.
This inscription made her think: Were this the case, at least she would like to lose to her masters…and die.
Were this her last game, she would like to get some answers: about that day the War ended, that time everything changed, how the world changed. Neither could she be sure of those answers herself, nor could she witness for herself the moment the world would change once more by the power of Immanity. How this game with the Old Deus might end, Jibril herself couldn’t be sure of, either. But once she knew these things for certain and wrote them all down…
It was at the edge of the 308th space.
“Let! Me! Through! Damn it! Please!!”
A scarlet beast roared in a furious attempt to shatter the surrounding space. Izuna’s fists descended in trails of boiling blood, each hit an explosion. Her bloodbreak transcended physics, allowing her vision to capture the battlefield far away.
From that edge, Izuna could see how the space was compressed to its utmost limit. The game simulating the ancient Great War—the power of the Old Deus made such things possible. Izuna had no hope of breaking through this space with her fists, yet still she burned with rage and threw herself into a frenzy, her fists, claws, and fangs piercing the void.
She had to go back and stop it. This was a game—a fantasy. Even Izuna understood as much. Still, she grasped the scene before her, where life was treated like dust and heaven and earth were torn apart like mere toys. And then there was Tet’s story, perhaps different in the details, but still tracing the same plot and the resulting conclusion…
“—Screw this shit—please—!!”
…Izuna was aware of that, too. She knew the answers that Jibril sought but did not know: how the Great War of old had ended and how the game before her would end.
Put simply: Someone would die.
“What troubles thee? Give but one name,” it proposed coldly. Izuna turned at the sound of the robotic voice, still swinging her fists so frantically that she might vaporize the tears spilling from the corners of her eyes.
“With that, victory will be yours—and all at once shall end.”
It just sat on the inkpot floating in emptiness, as if it had been doing so for all eternity.
The same one who’d asked, What is it to believe? the question she now had no interest in answering. The Old Deus who looked down on all confronted Izuna with a Task.
—Select one of the seven souls held by the Old Deus to be killed, whereupon thou shalt be transported to the final space.
Namely, who Izuna would sacrifice to finish this game.
“.”
Something different from confusion struck Izuna. She averted her gaze and trembled, gasping for breath. She simply had to sacrifice this Old Deus who viewed these circumstances with such disinterest, along with one more person—
—and everything would end. The game below her where Jibril and Sora and Shiro were killing each other; the game outside where Ino and Plum and Chlammy and Fiel were killing one another; the game here where, even if someone made it to the finish, the Old Deus would die. Everything. So what was one more? Then what if Izuna…sacrificed herself to win—? Would that not prevent any further sacrifices?
?!
“…Cut the crap, please… That’s bullshit, please—!!”
The hell’s this shit?! Izuna howled, baring her fangs. But she wasn’t addressing the Old Deus. She was addressing the biggest dipshit of all: herself.
At first, Izuna had thought this game didn’t require any complicated thinking. They’d all betray one another, yet ultimately cooperate, and someone would make it to the goal. She thought that once she’d exposed that logic with her childlike and consequently sharp sensibility, she would be the winner.
Then her plan had been to demand, Save everyone, including the Shrine Maiden. But now Izuna shrieked in frustration at what she herself had failed to notice.
“Doesn’t that just—bring us back to square one, please—?!”
If she finished, e
veryone would be saved? And that was why she was supposed to finish? If she just wanted to save everyone—then why play in the first place—?! On top of that, even if she did finish the game, this Old Deus would be sacrificed? That wasn’t even square one; it was more like square zero! And now, there apparently had to be another sacrifice in order to clear this Task?!
“—I! Don’t! Get! It! Please—!”
Izuna shook her head and, in childish petulance, thought: No way. No chance. That’s not possible. She’d never have agreed to that!
If you couldn’t save everyone, then even if you made it, what were you supposed to wish for?! If someone had to be sacrificed in this game, there was no way she’d ever have started it in the first place! In that case, Izuna glared at the Old Deus.
“To hell with your numbers, please… You’re a goddamn liar— I hate you, please!!”
Answering the claim that one or two sacrifices was all the same, she shrilly denounced it as a lie.
There was no question it was a lie. Izuna racked her brains at the innumerable mysteries. What was with this Task in the first place? The Task had stayed the same since the 301st space—why were they so close together?! No, let’s get straight to it: Who the hell even wrote this Task?! No—no, no, thought Izuna as she shook her head. In the first place… In the first place…
The Old Deus held seven souls…? Whose souls—? Sora, Shiro, Steph, Jibril, Izuna, Ino, Plum; sure, that made seven. But if you included the soul of the Old Deus, didn’t that make eight? And what about the Shrine Maiden—wouldn’t that make nine—?! No. That wasn’t it. That was definitely not it—!
“…I frickin’ swear to you…I’m not gonna name anyone, please!!”
Something was wrong; Izuna didn’t know what, but she had a hunch.
Hell no, that’s not it!
That much Izuna was sure of as she wept and cried, but…
“Acknowledged. Thy defeat is certain in any case.”
…the ever-emotionless voice of the Old Deus gave a response.
True, if she went for seventy-two hours without fulfilling the Task, Izuna would lose one die, leaving her with just one—which meant she couldn’t advance. But—
“…I don’t care if I lose, please. I just hate you, please! …But!!”
Izuna glared tearfully at the Old Deus.
“Even so—I’m sure as hell not going to let you die, please!!”
…After all, if nothing would change or cease without someone’s sacrifice, then why—?
“—Why’d Tet…tell me that terrible story…please?!”
Then this world…hadn’t changed at all, had it…please…?
It had already been sixteen hours since the start of the game with Jibril. The date 132 BT appeared on the map, which meant that, in-game, almost fifty-two years had already passed—
“—Done! Next! Hurry!!”
“…Too slow… Mail them, faster…!”
—and it had already been ten hours since they’d discovered they could deceive units. During this time, Sora and Shiro had been scribbling out commands without pausing for a second—
“Y-you know how to make an effort when it pleases you! You’re quite…mercurial, if you ask me!”
—while Steph was forced to sprint back and forth to the mailbox. It was close enough that under normal circumstances. Sora, or even Steph, could have reached it seated. However, now that the three were kiddie-sized, it was quite far.
“A-and of course…you have a good reason…for making me run like this, don’t you?!” Steph demanded.
“Of course. If there’s one factor that’s critical to winning games—”
Sora tapped his fingers on the map and projected it in midair.
“—it’s data, right?”
Steph gaped at the world map Sora showed her.
“We’re on Lucia?! H-how did we get to see so much—?”
The field map had been almost entirely black except for the city periphery and the modest range of a few Scouts. Now thousands of Scouts had exposed the continent’s entirety.
“H-how did you do it?! How do we have so many—?”
Indeed, it was no wonder Steph was surprised. Previously, their Scouts had died in at most a few minutes of subjective time (a couple months of game time). Yet now, in this hell where deathly ash fell from the sky and an encounter with another race would prove fatal, the map demonstrated that they’d managed to maintain thousands of Scouts—that is, increased their rates of survival. So how—? Steph gaped, to which Sora smirked:
“We made a telescope.”
“Oh… I should have known it was some such trickery or cunning…”
Steph was deeply disappointed. Discouraged, Sora offered a rebuttal: In a world that put nuclear warfare to shame, how could she call a telescope cheating?
“I can’t believe you! This is pretty much within the specs, you know?! What’s so wrong with doing something that’s well within the rules?”
“…Glass, the material, for…lenses…is in almost, infinite…supply.”
Even in present-day Elkia, glass transparent enough for lenses was by no means cheap or abundant. Steph eyed Shiro suspiciously.
“Yeah. Besides, these morons will make us as many as we want! ” Sora scoffed.
There was another flash in that instant powerful enough to bore holes into the earth… In other words:
“…Extreme high-temperature, high-pressure shocks… The power to vaporize deserts, mountains—and even mines.”
Like an ancient nuclear war that turned deserts into glass. That glass came from lead-based cerussite, thanks to their favorite morons. With a little polishing, they now had plenty of the stuff transparent enough to use for lenses—and in infinite supply.
“Now all we have to do is order our d00ds to buff the hell out of that shit and build it to spec.”
Then the units wouldn’t need optical technology. They just had to follow Sora and Shiro’s commands, or “blueprints,” and voilà, these non-sentient units constructed a 50× field scope combining four convex-concave lenses. This broadened their reconnaissance and map display range, but of course, that alone wouldn’t be enough to dramatically improve the survival rate of their Scouts. They had to calculate relatively safe movement routes and establish the tech for survival. They had to develop agriculture to work even on this waste of a world, experiment with food preservation tech, and so on and so forth. The two of them fumbled in the dark to reveal the answers, sent off a massive number of commands, and now…
“…Brother…I’ve found, them…!”
Sora leaped upon the map on the table at the sound of Shiro’s voice. Little by little, the projected world map now revealed…a group of foreign units, the ones they’d been looking for. Sora grabbed hold of them.
“I knew it—the sons of bitches are hunting.”
He chuckled as he watched them moving back and forth on their fixed route, then tapped on a Scout and pinched out to project its field of vision into the air. With outstretched arms, Sora broke out into a wide grin at what the telescope showed.
“Welllcome, Werrrebeast. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“…I would be loath to take on such a friend…,” Steph groaned softly. Sora’s tone implied, I’ll strip you of everything down to your ass hairs, so come on!
This was a land polluted by black ash, a world where everything might vanish in the next second. If you weren’t one of the top-ranking races, you wouldn’t have room for settled agriculture; it wouldn’t even be worth it. Given their physical abilities on top of that, there was no question Werebeasts would be hunter-gatherers. What remained unknown were their routes and frequency.
“…Brother… I’ve calculated, the routes…”
Ohm, a peaceful sigh of relief. Shiro had figured out the patterns in the blink of an eye and showed Sora her notes. The Werebeast stack went back and forth on six routes about every three seconds. Three seconds… According to the time in-game, that was pretty much ever
y day, which meant—
“Just as I thought… They’re starving. All right, Shiro, time for some good, old-fashioned diplomacy!”
Look at this world. It stood to reason that prey would be scarce, and that meant…
…these guys were one of the few races that gave them an opening. Sora and Shiro smirked at the developments unfolding just as they’d anticipated. They had a command on standby and would just add the coordinates before handing it to Steph. Once again, she sprinted to the mailbox, and on returning, she asked:
“Wh-what exactly are you, doing? …Are you making an alliance…with Werebeast?”
Sora and Shiro merely frowned as they answered Steph, who was panting for air.
“…What would be, the point…of an alliance…with starving, Werebeasts?”
“You wanna tell these hungry Werebeasts we got some tasty Immanity goodies for them?”
Sure, they’d demonstrated that you could con units. But still—promises and contracts meant nothing in this world. And if the Werebeasts knew Immanity existed, they’d be done for; that wouldn’t change.
So, Sora announced with an evil grin that hardly suited a 1.8-year-old.
“First, we’re gonna get…an Elven unit.”
“…E-excuse me? I thought you were…negotiating with the Werebeasts?”
Sora and Shiro responded with a glance at the projected map.
There was a Scout moving across it. When it arrived at the Werebeast hunting route…it turned back.
