No Game No Life - Volume 12 - Chapter Ep

 ROLE-PLAYING END

…A long, long time ago, a mass of earth was flung through the heavens during a battle between the gods.

A powerful, earth-shattering attack sent the land hurtling into the heavens by coincidence.

It gradually broke apart—a calamity of shards plummeting toward the ground before vanishing…

This calamity was mere happenstance…and yet.

 It remained in the memories of all intelligent life as the calamity that floated through the heavens.

And after an eternity of being immortalized in memory, it eventually gained a core and became a Phantasma…

 It wasn’t clear who gave it this name, but at some point in time, the Phantasma became known as Avant Heim.

And while the mass of land continued to float through the heavens, raining down hell on earth…

It was nothing more than an apparatus that replicated a past event. A system.

It had no goal or intent to harm—it didn’t even have an identity.

Someone feared it. Someone dreamed of its return.

And someone—desired it. And so it existed.

The calamity was born again—as a monster…

Why did the monster rain destruction on the earth below?

 Because…that’s what monsters do.

 Because it was a monster.

It was doing what it was born to do, as a phantasm.

No one wondered why clouds rained, and no clouds would answer them should they ever be asked.

This monster was like a cloud—one that rained destruction on all it passed over.

 …………

“ ?! Th-there it is…! The light!! Heh-heh-heh. So you gonna tell me what’s up, Av’n’? I wanna know why you’re ignoring me!!” said a one-horned Flügel hunched over on the ground.

She was wearing a helmet and had a pickax in her hands—Azril, struggling for breath…

“Nyaaa! It was hard to dig to your core while I have the strength of an Immanity, Av’n’!! And I’m stuck here wonderin’ why no one wanted to lend me a hand!! You’d think it’d help to open up a little hole in space or something!! It was my first time even touching a pickax! Why should the leader of the Flügel be the one doing all the digging?!”

The young woman shared her discontent—from beneath her previous lord’s throne.

It was the deepest part of the Phantasma Avant Heim…in other words—

“……………………”

It sluggishly turned to Azril without saying a word. But the hollow boy—what looked like a boy—soon stared elsewhere.

More than half of its body was covered in bluish-white crystals, and whatever it was, it was clearly not human.

Like Azril, it had a single horn, a sign that the two shared their power with one another. The vaguely humanoid figure had one eye closed, as if it was dreaming…

This—was where Avant Heim’s core resided…

“Hrm… Is that still on your mind? So much that you’d ignore me?!”

Only a month ago—Avant Heim had stopped responding when she called.

So three days ago, I decided to come see his core. Try and ignore me, face-to-face.

Azril had started digging three days earlier and had finally reached Avant Heim’s core.

But evidently, he ignored her once they were face-to-face.

 I think I’m gonna cry!

Tears were welling up in Azril’s eyes when—

“…On your mind…? Who? The Phantasma—?”

The young boy looked back emotionlessly at Azril and tilted his head in confusion.

 Oh… Looks like Av’n’ can’t tell.

Azril didn’t share only her power with Avant Heim—but their subconsciousness as well.

That’s how she knew why he was reminiscing about something that had happened so long ago.

And she understood what that eye of his was watching so dreamily—more so than Avant Heim did.

Av’n’s gaze was fixed on a tall tower in the center of Garad Golm…

The Domain of Despair. The Hope-Consuming Beast. The Phantom of Destruction—the Devil.

Av’n’ lacked the self-awareness—if he had any at all—to vocalize why he was looking over there.

Azril, on the other hand, could put his subconscious feelings into words:

 The Devil is a Phantasma, just like me.

Something born without reason or purpose.

An existence without meaning or will.

A calamity. A monster. Just a system—

Just…

A Phantasma… A dream someone saw…

That’s what he should be. How it should work, but…the Devil had something.

A role, a goal, and a meaning to his existence—things Av’n’ had once been given but had lost.

Most of all, the Devil wanted something, and he worked to get it. He had a clear sense of self…

The Devil has everything I lack. Everything.

We’re both Phantasmas—we should be the same…but why are we so different?

In other words, Av’n’ was…

“…Oh-ho, nya? So you’re jealous? Of him…?”

Azril said it for him.

“…Jealous…of him…? A fellow Phantasma—?”

It only confused Av’n’, who lacked the self-awareness to really understand it all. Azril chuckled wryly to herself.

Maybe a year ago, I would’ve felt jealous with Av’n’.

But not anymore. Her little sister worked for two masters who were far too weak for comfort.

Azril, just like those two masters, spent a little less than a year crawling along on the ground like an ant.

And like an ant, she had a tiny brain…

Despite its size, it was her own to use, and she would use it—and she continued:

“But, Av’n’…I doubt he’s anything like how you imagine.”

 At least, not yet…

With her tiny brain, Azril thought of the Devil.

Knowing that this was unlike her, and that she was the last one who should ever say this—

Failing to stifle a sad smile, she’d muttered those words to Avant Heim…

“……………………”

Unable to process what he was being told, Av’n’ looked to Azril with confusion—perhaps his first-ever show of emotion…

“But now’s not the time for that! We’re super-duper busy!!”

Azril kept her thoughts to herself and changed the subject.

“We have our own game to do! If you keep ignoring me, I’m gonna set up a railcar through this tunnel and ram you with it every day until you respond, you hear?! Nya?”

 I’mma hold it against you for making me dig this darned tunnel.  

Azril said this with a grin reminiscent of how she, the First Number, used to grin during the Great War.

 Avant Heim, the Phantasma…

Its core—the young boy—was largely void of all emotion and a concept of self, but nevertheless…

“…I-I’ll…try to do better… Azril………I’m…sorry?”

 He didn’t need emotions to tell that it was better for him to apologize and avoid confrontation.

Although it was clear the boy was not actually sorry at all, Azril snorted and then nodded to him before turning to leave.

The boy spoke once more before she left, though.

Avant Heim was gazing off into the distance, where the Devil was—but then he looked farther up.

Above Garad Golm, and above the tower that jutted toward the heavens.

At something that made him weep whenever he saw it—the bloodred moon.

“Azril…is the moon falling…?”

 He realized that the moon was following him.

“Didja finally notice?! That’s why we’re so busy!! Honestly—whatever happens, things ain’t lookin’ good for us!! So I wantcha to get a move on! Hop to it!!”

With that, Avant Heim’s consciousness went to Azril’s from his core.

There he could feel her irritation before returning to his own consciousness…

 The eighty-first floor of the Tower…

What Sora and the rest of the party saw when they reached the top of the stairs was a new stage, just like they’d expected.

Shiro, Steph, Til, and Izuna—and even Jibril and Emir-Eins—were at a loss for words.

The landscape that unfolded before them was nothing short of indescribable—a sight that defied description, a spectacle beyond imagination…

 It was the aftermath of a battle…

The corpses of various races that must’ve fought each other piled up into mountains and filled the rivers—rivers dyed red with blood.

All life—even microbes maybe—was dead in this hellscape. It was a never-ending vista of death, but left unrotten.

Even more horrifying than this, however, was that—aside from the lingering embers of finished battle—there was no motion, and nothing made any sounds. There was only endless silence in the world of death.

 But this wasn’t what left the party speechless.

What stole the words from the Flügel and Ex Machina who’d rained terror down on the world during the Great War long ago.

What caused them to fall silent and avert their gazes.

Was an invisible something that enveloped the deathscape.

Though intangible, even the Immanity of the group could sense its presence—an invisible something.

“ Wh-what is this…? What is this?!”

Steph was half panicked when she cried out, but no one there could answer her.

There were no words for what it was. They could neither perceive nor understand it.

One member of the party gazed toward what the others averted their eyes from—Sora.

 With a grim look in his eyes, he opened his mouth to answer Steph…

“Steph…you know how I told you what hope really is?”

 Hope…a chemical reaction in your brain.

In this world, the mechanism was referred to as positive spirits, but nevertheless, it was a highly measurable substance.

A physical, physiological reaction that happened in the body—in other words, an illusion.

So—

“So…what do you think despair is?”

When Sora asked her this, Steph turned to see what he was staring at.

“ Th-this is…what you think despair looks like—?!” she yelled, before quickly turning her gaze away and facing Sora.

 Something was looming over the world of death…

Something that completely and utterly rejected any form of comprehension…

It was a nebulous feeling and, thus, could not be described in words.

Instinct was what made its presence clear. The party members could feel the overbearing presence of something—

If a word had to be assigned to it…it was—

—hatred.

Or lament. Or anger.

Or maybe resentment? Regret? Contempt, disgust, hostility, fear—no, none of these.

All this world’s evil—feelings of evil—was compressed into this spectacle. What lingered over it was something they could only sense, something their fight-or-flight instincts screamed to escape from.

It must be—true despair. That definition made the most sense.

The party gasped, but Sora shook his head sluggishly and rejected the idea:

“Nope, not quite. This is the same thing we’ve seen on every floor—it’s the Tower.”

The beautiful house of worship. The lush forest. The volcano, the miasma-filled valley.

“In other words, it’s all a part of the Devil…the Phantom of Destruction, the Hope-Consuming Beast.”

And if the Devil was a beast that consumed hope, then—

“This is also just—hope.”

“…Brother…what are…you saying…?”

The concept of ultimate evil, so evil that even Jibril and Emir-Eins hesitated to look directly at it.

Why would that ever be considered hope?

Sora’s dark eyes were void of any light as he looked forward.

Shiro gazed into them, questioning his sanity. The party was starting to sense fear in those eyes when he apathetically continued:

“Despair is what happens to you when you run out of hope… It isn’t the opposite of hope. If hope is a positive, then despair is zero…not a negative. There’s no such feeling as despair. It’s just what happens when there’s no hope… Despair has no shape.”

Then what was this essence wriggling before them?

“…You hate someone. They disgust you, annoy you. You detest and abhor them. You’re jealous, envious. They’re so unlikable and gross, so disgusting and intolerable. You want to hurt them, make them suffer, break them, tear them up, destroy them, get rid of them, kill them—no, death isn’t even enough; you want them to live forever in pain—”

It was all these ideas, and more:

“You want everyone to die, you want the world to be destroyed… These are all just emotions you feel, what you wish for. It’s chemistry in your brain. A physiological reaction. There’s no right or wrong, good or evil behind it. It’s—”

In essence—

“—just hope…hope that the Hope-Consuming Beast consumed.”

Namely:

“The end of the world—an envisioned phenomenon that will never happen—a collective fantasy called hope…”

 This was the true essence of the Devil.

 Sora’s words left the party in a deep silence.

What were those dark eyes of his looking at?

Even the Flügel and Ex Machina knew little about Phantasma, let alone the sudden mutation that was the Devil.

It personified the fantasy of a phenomenon that had yet to happen, something inexplicable.

“…M-Master…what do you mean by…a phenomenon that will never happen…?”

Jibril came forward, apologizing for her inability to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Sora finally averted his eyes, and with a self-deprecating grin, he replied, “Ah, yeah…that part perfectly describes exactly what the Devil is.”

 Throughout the ages, all across Sora’s original world—or no?

The same went for this world, and for each of the races, too.

It’s strange, really. All people—

—want to think of themselves as good, clean people…

I hate them. I want what they have. I want to steal it and hurt them and kill them… This is all hope.

Evil hope—so evil that it’s viewed as bad to ever feel that way, which is why:

 People always want to blame others…

They want to blame other people for their own base emotions. It’s someone else’s fault for making them feel that way—or yes…

“The devil made me do it…right?”

 Nobody ever wants to own their evil thoughts. Nobody wants to be evil.

They think they are good, pure, innocent, and righteous.

But they can’t reject the feelings they have deep down. Which is why it’s always someone else’s fault.

They’re the bad ones for making me feel this way. I’m in the right.

Ah, I hope something bad happens to them. I hope someone kills them. Ah…

“They call it karma, or whatever, and hope that something bad happens to others, just because it should.”

“And they don’t even feel guilty about it. They just hope for it within the confines of their own minds…”

“ ”

 Sora didn’t say this out of ill will or animosity…

It was almost as if he was talking about himself—the party was speechless.

Therefore, Sora apathetically continued…

“So. The Great War. People died as often as the wind blew—creating hellscapes like this stage here. It was an era full of hatred. Ask anyone, and I’m sure they’ve thought at some point or another—I wish everybody I hated would just die. I wish someone would destroy everything except for me. But…what if everyone wished that?”

It would create the exact scene that they saw before them—and the vortex of hope that swirled around them.

Thus, this collective fantasy, this hope took shape—a phantasm of the world’s destruction, a monster that killed everyone and everything.

 This must have been how the Devil—the ultimate evil—was born…

“ ”

…The party was at even more of a loss, however:

“The brain works in a pretty convenient way, y’know?”

Sora wasn’t finished.

“They can blame their own evil thoughts and hatred on a nebulous ultimate evil—but this isn’t really constructive, is it? Because evil is still evil. So they’re forced to accept and recognize its existence as something that needs to be done away with. An ultimate evil that needs to be defeated.”

 Which is why…

“The Devil is a Phantasma that includes its own defeat…”

Which was why the Devil sought out heroes to defeat him.

“The Devil consumed the evil hopes the world had of killing everyone, and he tried to destroy the world, but the world then hated him and killed him for it—he was a convenient stage for the world to place and quell its evil…”

That was why the Devil created a theoretically winnable game.

And why the Devil asked for nothing from the heroes who challenged him.

The heroes inherit everything the Devil had if they destroy his core at the top of his Tower.

 Destroy his core… Everything he had… It was in past tense…

“If we defeat the Devil at the top of this dungeon—the game is set up on the assumption that his core will break and, well…”

There’s only one thing that will happen then…

“What the Devil wants from all this is…for someone to kill him… That’s it…”

 …………

“ I…see… Then the Devil is not a mutant, but the same as the other Phantasmas—”

“Hypothesis: The Devil has never acted proactively. The Devil is a passive system that represents all living beings’ evil desires for each other’s demise… This explains the as-yet-undiscovered reasoning for his sudden deviation from other Phantasmas.”

Jibril and Emir-Eins seemed to accept Sora’s suggestion—but conversely…

“And you’re okay with that…? What are you saying? Is this some sort of joke?”

This very notion was even more wicked than the hellish sight of the piles upon piles of corpses sprawled across the abandoned battlefield before them, or even the vortex of hatred-for-others that they could instinctually feel swirling around them.

“So everyone can hate each other?! And wish for each other to die?! And then it all gets forced onto the Devil, who has to be killed for this?!” Steph shouted with trembling, clenched fists.

And then—

“So he was born for everyone to hate and kill?! That’s just…too cruel!!” she yelled.

Shiro and Til looked down at their feet.

Izuna was holding back tears.

 That cute little furball.

The one who was so excited for the heroes to come and fight him.

That big smile on his face was his way of saying…

 “Please, kill me”…?

 It can’t be.

I won’t stand for it!! So what if he’s the Devil…?

This world created him, so it’s the world that should suffer 

“……There’s a way around this… Right, Sora…?”

Just as the very ideas that were at fault were rearing their ugly heads, Steph stopped herself.

She wasn’t going to let these thoughts into her mind. She shook her head and turned to Sora.

Looking into his eyes, which contained only darkness, she asked him:

“You agreed to participate in this game because you knew there as a way to defeat the Devil, yes?!”

 This is Sora. The man who says games are already won before they start. The man who, in the name of the Commonwealth, chose the incredible disadvantage of not letting anyone die!! He would never play a game that necessitates a sacrifice—!!

Steph’s gaze was imploring him—as were Shiro’s, Til’s, and Izuna’s.

But within Sora’s eyes that were darker than darkness, there was nothing to be seen. He looked away…

And then he held out his smartphone—and replied:

“…No, Steph. There’s no way to do that… None.”

 ,

“…We’re the heroes, and the Devil is our enemy… If the Domain of Despair spreads, it’ll end the world. The heroes need to defeat the Devil—this is the plot of the game we have to play…”

 ,

Sora turned around after giving an answer no one would have ever expected from him.

He then ordered Jibril to shift the party out of there, leaving the eighty-first floor hellscape behind 

 Meanwhile…outside the Tower…

Atop a hill on the outskirts of Garad Golm.

Within the fierce blizzard that showed no signs of ceasing, a suited skeleton was kneeling as if in prayer.

“Ah… I remain safe, thanks to the Devil’s revival and your great power, Emperor.”

The skeleton, who called himself Genau Ih, rattled as he spoke.

“Both the Commonwealth’s intervention and my seizure of the Devil’s Army Joint Chiefs of Staff have gone according to your plan—and while I had my doubts, the party may well defeat the Devil, as you so predicted. Everything is going smoothly.”

From atop the otherwise nondescript hill, the skeleton bowed low as he gave his report.

Ah, yes—even if the heroes have indeed come within reach of victory over the Devil…

And although highly unpredictable—should they so choose to accept his sacrifice…

Or more realistically, if they refuse to do so—and they lose the game…

Or perhaps—they find some other unforeseen method to win…

The fact that they have already entered the Tower means—it is too late.

Whatever they do is futile and in line with the plan. It will not impact the results…

 The skeleton looked pleased, but then he suddenly picked up the slightest amount of displeasure aimed at him.

“ ?! Ah, ah… Please, forgive me! I ask your forgiveness for sundering your eyes with this abhorrent vessel!!” Genau Ih shouted in a panic as he did away with his skeletal body.

Then Genau Ih knelt once more, this time in his…or her true form before looking up to the heavens and begging for forgiveness—

 The girl, with a single horn growing from her forehead not unlike a one-horned rabbit, and eyes as red as the moon above her head, spoke once more…

“ Demonia’s Race Piece is as good as within the palm of your miraculous hand…my lord.”

Her body shook as soon as these words left her mouth.

She did so, of course, not because of the blistering snow that pelted her.

You shine your crimson light on those trapped on this planet with the utmost mercy. From a place higher and more supremely noble than any god’s.

Your glorious essence sits atop the heavens and crowns the crimson moon.

Should your true voice ever grace my ears, I would do away with them, for you need not address this humble servant—

—O Creator. My lord.

“Ah… It is all for you…the Moon God.  ”

The Moon God, Xenathus 

For as long as history existed, his forever goal of descending to the wretched planet below was beginning to look plausible.

 The young woman before him was of Ixseed Rank Thirteen: Lunamana.

And she was overjoyed, quivering with ecstasy…