No Game No Life - Volume 7 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1 
CLOSED CIRCLE 
 
It had been almost seven hours since the start of the game with the Old Deus, and now Sora was running through an alley shrouded in night. 
There were no stars in the sky above, framed into a square by the surrounding concrete. The hard asphalt was struck by the pitter-patter of a light rain and the pounding of his feet. In his hand was a gun, and his eyes reflected an approaching shadow—his enemy, alone. 
 Tsssk! 
He clicked his tongue. He leveled his sight with the enemy and, his thoughts mechanical, pulled the trigger. The hammer struck the cap, sparking a detonation within the cartridge’s shell. His hands shook from the impact. The once-solid supersonic gas forced out and accelerated the contents of the barrel, and the lead from the muzzle ripped through the air. In the span of less than a millisecond, lead and light were transformed into a lethal weapon that flashed through the pitch-black night. Revealed in that ensuing flash was a shadow—the body of a small Werebeast struck down by gunfire. 
Yes, the body… He wouldn’t aim for the head. In a murky game like this, he couldn’t trust the power of what appeared to be a handgun. No, even the handguns Sora knew from his old world carried the risk that, if the entry angle wasn’t just so, the bullet would glance off the skull, the hardest bone in the human body. And here his enemy wasn’t even human, but a Werebeast or some even greater monster. He’d aimed for the triangle formed by the chin and the chest. The bullet would incapacitate the target wherever it may strike, and if it landed true, he could hope for a fatal hit to the internal organs. Launched with such cold and calculated murderous intent, the surging bullet tore into the small Werebeast, sending it skidding down the street with fearsome speed before finally rendering it a corpse. 
He’d killed it. Yes, killed it. 
This game truly is simple, Sora laughed darkly to himself. 
It didn’t matter if he didn’t know who the traitor was. He could just rule out the one person it wasn’t—his sister—and kill everyone else. Eliminating all those suspected of betrayal was the all-too-simple answer that formed this game’s plot. 
Yes, it’s simple, Sora chuckled under his cover. Simple, yet easily beyond the “Very Hard” level, a game played on “Inferno” mode. After all, his enemies were all monsters, far beyond his ability to contend with. Even so, he couldn’t lose. This determination had kept him alive this far. Sora circled his gaze about warily as he assessed the situation. 
The game map, like that of the Eastern Union, resembled Tokyo—yet somehow it was different: gaps in height between buildings, complex alleyways, objects here and there. He’d exploited the countless advantages to put down a large Werebeast, a vampire, and a small Werebeast through sneak attacks. Feign alliance, then shoot them in the back. Deceive and lure them to you, then shoot them down. Though Shiro had called him cheap any number of times, he had exploited any means to stay alive this far. 
And yet, that would-be angel, that loathsome monster. He felt utterly powerless against her alone. With a sigh, he hushed his breath in the alleyway and listened carefully to the situation around him. He could hear the footsteps of several people approaching from afar, slowly encircling him. 
If I can at least rendezvous with my sister… No, I suppose I can’t even expect that now. 
A hopeless line, but in times like these, such a line set a flag for the game’s ending. As Sora sat thinking, half in resignation, half in hope, his ears picked up footsteps creeping into the alley. 
He reacted with his gun faster than he could even think. His aim involuntarily swayed toward a redheaded girl. There was something strange about her. Something—no, it was hard to find anything not strange about her by now. But regardless of Sora’s mixed opinions, his words came out clearly. 
“Hey, how’d you end up in this siege…? No, that can wait. Did you bring my little sister? Did you find any—?” 
“I did…I found a way.” 
No sound followed. Only an impact. A moment later, he understood; a bullet had sailed past the redhead and penetrated his stomach. 
“It’s what I should have done from the beginning…isn’t it, dear traitor?” 
“No… That was just a bluff—!” 
His body refused to move as his clouding vision captured the source of the phantom bullet that had pierced him. 
He gasped. The blush of the muzzle red-hot from the blast illuminated the shooter among the smoke. A white-haired girl…the one who had gone to find a way out of this hopeless game they were in. Standing beside the redhead was his little sister. 
She disregarded the frozen Sora’s slack-jawed stupor: 
“Look at yourself. If you’re not the traitor, going around killing everyone like that, who is?!” 
“No,” was his reponse to her enraged screaming. Or it was about to be, but instead, a glob of blood spilled out from his mouth and dripped onto the ground. 
“It’s…just, back then…it was the only way I could protect you, protect my sis—” 
At that moment, Sora came to a realization, almost like a divine revelation. He’d accounted for the possibility that the redhead would betray him. But if his sister—the one person who would never betray him—had turned on him, that meant… 
“It was…you… You were the traitor—you were a fake…all along…!!” 
Yes, that thing was sneering back at her dying brother. 
“You got my sister’s looks, her face… Don’t gimme that goddammn loooooook?!!” 
The redhead gasped at his wailing, but it was too late. The flash lit the alley again, mercilessly. Twice, three times. His vision, half blotted out already, caught the silhouette of the redhead as she fell to the ground. 
“…It can’t be… You were the one person…who I— 
“—believed in.” Her lips stopped. Her dulled eyes never to regain light. The white-haired girl—the thing in the form of his sister—slowly approached him. At the sound of her shoes hitting the cold, hard asphalt, as death was closing in, Sora finally concluded: 
—Oh. This game is a piece of crap. 
Didn’t see that coming, I’ll give you that. But how the hell was I supposed to, you bucket of failsauce? Just when the hell was it foreshadowed that she was a fake? And where the hell did that line come from—“You were the one person that I believed in”? Say that shit earlier. You can’t call it foreshadowing if it happens the same damn time as the thing it’s supposed to foreshadow! 
“I wonder…where I went wrong… What was the point of all I’ve…?” 
The main character pushed forward with his douchebaggery even after the game had been confirmed fail, and Sora could only resentfully concur. 
Yeah, just what was the point of all that effort? He’d only put up with this insanely difficult game for “his sister’s” sake. But if that one reason was an illusion, then why had he struggled? Why had he toiled? The plots, the tactics, the strategies he’d built up… What the hell were they for—?! 
“…Bye-bye, Brother…” 
Just one shot. The impact went through, but the end dragged on and on. It was that white-haired girl’s voice echoing through the darkness, robotic and cold: 
“…Brother…how does it feel…to die, a virgin?” 
…… 
Haaang on a sec. 
No, seriously, hold up! 
“Hey, Shiro, that can’t seriously be what she says! You’re just messing with me ’cause I don’t speak Werebeast, right? Don’t do that. How are you gonna take responsibility if I cry?!” 
And with that, the raven-haired young man lost consciousness. Staring at the screen, controller in hand, Sora shouted uncontrollably, tears in his eyes. 
 
Now, by this point, I suppose it should go without saying, but the personages on the screen were not Sora and Shiro, and certainly not Steph. And of course, this affair had nothing to do with the game of the Old Deus—of sugoroku. 
It was after Sora, right at the start, had boldly declared himself the traitor and demanded everyone’s dice. Everyone had filled out their Tasks and emerged from the doors, and naturally—no, extremely naturally—told him, You asked for it. After expressing their feelings, each rolled their own dice and went off on their own. In a similarly natural fashion, Sora and company rolled, aiming for sixty-two spaces. But they advanced only one, whereupon they stepped on space two, looked up to the sky, and then turned to the nearest house before deciding: 
—Oh. This game is impossible. 
Nodding to each other, they cast all memory of everything blissfully aside and shut themselves into the house to dedicate themselves to games. 
…With this first taste of defeat, the life of “  ” came to a close. Please look forward to Sora and Shiro’s next life. 

The two had put the period at the end of their lives and entered the afterword. The siblings’ dice had decreased to eight on the first move, consequently decreasing their respective ages by 20 percent and shrinking their limbs accordingly. Yet the memory of the game with the Old Deus had already receded beyond oblivion, much like their previous lives. They found an Eastern Union game console in the house where they holed up. 
Were there games there? Yes. 
Any reason not to play them? No. 
After zero seconds of contemplation, the two silently turned on the console and turned their backs on reality with abandon. Sora, unable to understand the Werebeast tongue and now approximately 14.4 years of age, turned on the captions. Resting on Sora’s crossed legs, Shiro, now approximately 8.8 years of age, messed with the tablet and voiced the captions out loud. His sister creatively interpreted the lines for all the characters with a remarkable range of theatrical expression. Why doesn’t she talk that clearly normally? Sora kept wondering throughout the two hours or so before he finally chucked away the controller, grabbed the package, and moaned. 
“I was all excited to see the Eastern Union had zombie games, too…but this one sucks ass.” 
Apparently, the title was Living or Dead 3: The Price of Silence. At least, according to Shiro. It was supposedly the sequel to the spin-off Love or Loved, that game they’d played with Izuna. They were hoping for some kind of crack like that, but instead, this is what they got. The setting was a big Elven experiment in resurrection magic, and, well, you know how that shit went down. The spell went out of control, the dead rose, it spread all over the world, blah, blah, blah. And the living dead disguised themselves among the living, and, yeah, this story was all kinds of bad. That was fine. Kitsch? Good stuff, but… 
“How’d they decide to put in a musclehead Werebeast zombie with wings? Are they nuts?” 
He recalled that none of the attacks did anything to that would-be angel, that loathsome monster. Yes, a loathsome monster. After all, he was half-naked—no, pretty much naked. A loincloth and nothing else. This was just the tip of the iceberg of this wannabe-Western difficult-as-shit game and its crappy story, but that he could take. His sole conscience! The “little sister character”! The Loli-type girl with the adorable animal ears! 
…And look where that got him. Then Sora remembered the main character’s line: 
“Where did I go wrong? It was the brains of this game’s devs that went wrong—!!” 
He hurled away the package, collapsed on the tatami, and howled. He’d gone through one thing after another for the little sister only to find she was a fake. And on top of that, she eyed him like a piece of trash as she killed— 
……Hey? 
“Hmm… Well, whatever. Yeah. When I think about it, I can consider it a reward.” 
“…Brother, where are you taking this…twisting it, even…further…?” 
Seeing his real-life sister eyeing him like a piece of trash, he cleared his throat. 
“…Mmm! …W-well, I guess the problem’s with the setting…” 
Still sprawled with his arms and legs out, he looked to the screen. There, the main character was showing off his plot armor. No matter how many death flags he set off, he had the ability to turn them all to life flags. True to trope, instead of dying, he instead woke up somewhere else. But Sora had already lost interest in what might happen next. He slumped over and looked at the ceiling. As he emptied his dazed head, he once again remembered that line: 
“I wonder…where I went wrong…” 
“…Killing all suspect…I wonder why he thought this one bitch would never betray him…” 
According to conventional theory, everyone should think the same way. 
“Betray and be betrayed. It’s practically destiny…” 
Yes, just like they were so quick to betray me after filling in their Tasks. Sora muttered while clicking his tongue. But at the same time, he thought about that game’s conditions. 
“Hey, Shiro, I wonder where I went wrong…” 
“If you really mean it, I can answer if you waaant?!” 
Steph’s answer came in the form of a rumble and a yell, and— 
“After betraying me while rendering me powerless to betray you! And forcing me to come with you and do eeeverything for you, your question is ‘Why am I holing myself up?’ Am I righhht?!” 
A red-haired girl smashed through the sliding door into the room with a cart. Like Sora and Shiro, she had eight dice in front of her chest and had been reduced in age to 14.4. 
Breathing heavily between outbursts was Stephanie Dola. 
“Observe! I have brought the lever you requisitioned!” 
“……Uh…mm?” 
“—What was that about again?” 
“I believe you said I couldn’t get you to move without a leverrr!” 
Regarding Sora’s and Shiro’s blank expressions, Steph tore at her hair and howled. 
“So all I have to do is pull you like a horse—yes, literally like a horse!” 
With that, Steph shoved the cart into the room, toward Sora and Shiro. Like a hydraulic shovel, she scooped up the surprised pair and deposited them in the cart in a literal demonstration of the lever principle. In a scene that would have been well accompanied by a dirge like “Donna Donna,” Steph merciliessly hauled the shut-ins out of the room… 
 
On the second space, Sora lay on the cart pulled by Steph, his arms and legs spread wide and his body a bed for his tablet-prodding sister. He gazed vacantly at the game he had written off as impossible only two hours earlier while Steph berated him. 
“So! Are you going to give me a convincing explanation yet?!” 
“…Of what? What? You couldn’t mean…why I labeled myself the traitor? That was—” 
“Yes, yes, it was to play me for a fool, wasn’t iiit? I can see that much!” 
Steph shrieked as Sora denied the reality staring him in the face. 
“Even I can see through pretense that thick… I can’t believe you would think I can’t!!” 
Indeed, there hadn’t been a speck of truth in Sora’s declaration of betrayal. It was 100-percent pure, not-from-concentrate bullshit. You didn’t have to be a Werebeast to see through that ruse; even Steph could. But, for that very reason, Steph found herself at a loss. 
“I cannot fathom what you truly intend…but…I know you won’t let us die or kill each other. I trust you.” 
With these awkward words, she handed Sora nine of her own dice. 
Blanching, shaking, she surrendered the time she’d existed—her life. How frightening to see your life span shrink… But if, in any case, this was a game in which one’s life and number of dice would decrease each time one advanced, would it be better to take them by force or kill each other indirectly? Weighing the balance, quaking in fear, Steph swallowed pathetically before resigning herself: 
“Everyone looked askance at me as I bravely handed you my dice! And savagely declared they would betray us!” 
“It’s on now, please!” Izuna had said cutely. 
“To challenge you is an honor I hardly deserve,” Jibril had cooed reverently. 
“You’ll regret having given me a chance, you knowww?” Plum had threatened ominously. 
—And: “Die” had been Ino’s flat response with no further decoration. 
“I just stared after them as they rolled their dice without so much as a second thought and went on ahead—all while you…!!” 
All while Sora, accepting her dice and by extension nine-tenths of her life, watched Steph regress to the equivalent of the single die she had remaining: 1.8 years old. Conversely, having gained nine dice’s worth of time, Sora had become 34.2 years old. He’d smiled—a smile so nice it was creepy—and looked down at Steph: 
“Hmm, gaining or losing dice only affects your body, but having more than ten dice increases your age, huh?” 
“…’Kay, Brother…now, that we’ve…checked…it’s all…cool.” 
“Yeah. A’ight—now then, we’re gonna have you come with us.” 
“…If you don’t, want to…you don’t, have to…that is…” 
“If you’d rather sit here alone with just one die—” 
“…And wait, for everyone…to die…it’s up, to you! ? ” 
“Oh yeah. And if no one gets there, everyone but the leader dies. Cheers! ? ” 
“So how do you think I feel being experimented on and threatened by you? In five words!” 
Sora rubbed his chin as Steph howled at him… Hmm. Five words? That was quite the challenge. 
“…‘I can’t take this anymore’…probably.” 
“Whoaa, Shiro! Exactly five words!! No wonder you’re a crossword master!!” 
“You got it just right! ? —Ahhhhh, I’m going to explooode!” 
Steph rattled the cart at the immediacy of Sora’s answer, creating a racket. 
“Gahhhh, wait, wait! I mean, think about it: What do you think we’re gonna say there except bullshit?!” 
“Yes, yes, now that I think about it, it’s quite natural, isn’t it—?!” 
Steph took a breath, then shouted self-deprecatingly: 
“After all, even if you collect all the dice, you can’t travel separately from Shiro, can you, Sora?! There’s only one person who would be dumb enough to take such bait! No, no—no one except meeeeeee!!” 
Yes. There had been two rules Sora and Shiro never touched on: 
04: 
T RAVEL IN COMPANY must first be declared, whereupon the company may advance according to the roll of one representative. 
05: 
A company of more than two shall, of the dice used, lose a number of dice equal to the NUMBER OF MEMBERS OF THE COMPANY MULTIPLIED BY THE NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS IN IT . 

They had to use these “company” rules to advance. And if you held more than ten dice, you would get older. If Sora collected everyone’s dice, giving him sixty-four, he’d be 115.2: dead by ordinary reckoning. Thus, Sora had stripped nine dice from Steph, added nine dice from Shiro, and, following the rules, declared travel in company and rolled twenty-eight dice—two dice per person, a total of six lost. 
“…Look, get over it already… I gave you back your dice, didn’t I?” 
Sora redistributed them so that the three each had eight dice, but… 
“Why did you make everyone betray each other?! I’ll keep up this caterwauling until you tell me!” 
Sora’s objectives had, in fact, been consistent—to win over Steph… 
…and, indeed, to encourage universal betrayal. Steph went on screaming to know why Sora had instigated the very event he had purported to avoid: mutual slaughter. Rather than answer, Sora simply did this— 
“Hunh?! Wh-what…is it?” 
He placed his hands on Steph’s cheeks and turned her face to look into his eyes. Gazing earnestly into her unconsciously blushing face, no longer full of rage, he said: 
“Believe in me. With the power of love and courage and friendship—we can all win.” 
. 
“…You await a punch line, yes? Why not reflect on your past?” 
When asked why he’d lied about being the traitor, Sora had answered, “Believe in me.” Steph’s icy response mired him in a dilemma. 
“Wh…wherefore believest thou not?! How could you doubt my pure, pure, so very pure heart?!” 
“While you’re at it, why don’t you reflect on the present?! Especially the part where you are using me as a horse!!” 
Steph’s skepticism finally got to him, and Sora crumpled to the ground theatrically. He’d held her face in his hands and spoken earnestly… Sure, that sounded good, but what he’d actually been doing was forcing her to look backward as she pulled the cart. 
As for what was supposed to inspire any faith in this situation— 
“Yes. That’s it. You got it.” 
—Sora spread his arms wide and boasted. 
“Everyone agreed to a game where we can all win if everyone trusts each other and works together, even though I’m playing?! Everyone agreed to a game where the Shrine Maiden’s life is on the line, trusting in love and friendship and so on? Despite the fact that only the one who makes it first wins and knowing full well someone’s gonna ensure Blank wins—because I’m here?! Hmmmm?!” 
He emphasized his point twice: You think everyone’s gonna trust me? From the very beginning, this game was predicated on distrusting him. When Steph realized how impossible it would be for them not to betray each other, she looked skyward and grumbled. 
“What shall I do…? Your argument is unassailable…” 
This game with so many strange points and seemingly complicated rules was, in fact, simple. Per the fifth of the Ten Covenants, “The party challenged shall have the right to determine the game.” Since they didn’t remember what happened before the game, they also didn’t know whether the party challenged was the Old Deus or Sora’s crew. But either way, the game required “unanimous consent” in order to begin. Had they all consented to a cooperative game in which the buy-in would be the Shrine Maiden’s life and the loss of their memories? 
How could this condition stand? 
“If the conditions don’t stand, then it’s simple, see—?” 
Rolling once more onto his back on the cart, Sora laughed and placed Shiro atop his chest. If the rules were based on “improbable conditions,” then— 
“That means the rules themselves are a fraud.” 
“…Something was explained…the first time, but not…the second.” 
“…The…second…?” 
“We swore by the Covenants to start this game. We must have learned the rules before we started, but our memory’s been erased—so there are the rules that only the traitor remembers, and there are the rules she told us. But they don’t match.” 
Sora’s answer was lighthearted. It wasn’t until after the game began and their previous memories were erased that they’d been told the rules. To top it off, the only one whose memory hadn’t been erased was declared the “traitor.” How could you not suspect something? 
“But you know, frankly—who cares about all that?” 
It didn’t matter who the traitor was. No, to be precise, they’d started this game under a mutual agreement—and now Sora and the others were wearing backpacks. Regardless of whether or not they had their memories, these facts said everything. Sora grinned. Rather than the impossibly asinine assumption that everyone would work together… Wasn’t this the more likely scenario? 
“Everyone started the game assuming we’d betray one another, and so…” 
If they were to agree on something, wouldn’t this have been it? 
“…everyone filled in their own script where they would win! ?” 
Sora grinned and grandly, loudly, nobly proclaimed: 
“Therefore! With purity, propriety, and beauty! Overflowing with sincerity! Your humble servant, I, Sora, virgin, eighteen—with eight dice and aged fourteen point four years—had the privilege of pledging on behalf of the party!” 
He stood up, waved his arms about in grand, theatrical gestures, and beamed. 
“Just say ‘We hereby pledge, in the best of faith, according to the rules, to betray each other.’ Okay?” 
Above all else, they were certain to betray one another. Sora had trolled them by way of a reminder. 
Steph stopped pulling the cart, turned, and shouted: 
“That I cannot accept… All it means is killing… I do not consent!!” 
“Right? That’s how we know there’s something off in the rules.” 
Sora sat back down on the cart, laughing, and answered sarcastically. Rules that none of them would agree to were necessarily false—which meant… 
“We agreed to betray each other. In fact, it was our idea.” 
…However. 
“We didn’t agree to kill each other. That’s all there is to it.” 
…… 
The sounds of the cart rumbling across the plain echoed once more. At Steph’s silence, unable to argue but unconvinced, Sora chuckled to himself, Yeah, that’s how it is. It was only natural that a sensible person like Steph wouldn’t be swayed. After all, if you broke down Sora’s claims— 
On her grandpappy’s name, he swore with fervent eyes: 
“I figured it all out—the culprit is us.” 
Indeed, mutual trust and cooperation would be futile with this group. But to jump from that all the way to traitor felt too much to Steph. 
“See, we have to betray each other. It’s supposed to be some sort of prisoner’s dilemma.” 
Having resumed her burden with the cart, Steph craned her neck to face the self-satisfied and sarcastic Sora. 
“…Prisoner’s…dilemma?” 
If the party worked together, someone would win, and everyone’s lives might be saved. 
But one who betrayed the rest could win alone. 
Meaning if everyone approached the game that way, it was all the more likely that everyone would lose… 
“It’s a famous scenario in our old world… Put simply…” 
A detective offers Prisoners A and B a plea bargain under the following conditions. 
   I. If they both keep silent, both serve two years. 
  II. If one confesses, he will go free while the other serves ten. 
 III. However, if they both confess, both serve five. 
If the prisoners trust each other and keep silent, each achieves a better outcome: two years. But if they both pursue their own benefit, they will invariably serve five years. If one betrays the other, he goes free while the other serves ten. This means that the option to keep silent is effectively nonexistent. One must confess, betting on the possibility the other will keep silent. In doing so, one avoids the worst-case scenario of ten years, while allowing for the best-case scenario of freedom. 
Hence why it’s called a dilemma. 
On top of that, in this game, the Old Deus kindly informed them there was a traitor. In this kind of situation, it was like saying But someone already confessed. Trust one another when there had already been a betrayal before the game had even commenced made no sense. 
“Then you mean we should betray each other? Is that not precisely what the detective wants?!” 
Okay, so trusting each other was pointless, leaving them with no option but betrayal. But if that was the case, weren’t they playing right into the hands of the detective: the Old Deus? 
It was quite unlike Steph to reach the crux of a problem. She looked uneasy. Sora smiled and corrected her: 
“Nope. It’s just what we want. Because this scenario isn’t a valid dilemma.” 
“………Pardon?” 
“If you trust each other to betray you, you can get an outcome even better than the better outcome: the best outcome!” 
Sora’s and Shiro’s thin smiles contorted creepily, and they continued. 
Fundamentally, this game, like all their games, revealed their approach in its entirety—the philosophy of Sora and Shiro, the greatest gamers among Immanity, “  ” (Blank). The fact that, past or future, whoever the opponent might be, the reality of the present was immutable. Specifically: 
“No matter what game it is, we have already—” 
“…won, before it began… That’s all there is…to it.” 
Everything was encompassed within the schemes they had already finagled and woven together. Nothing—not even a god—could escape their web. The pair who spoke so boldly and arrogantly caught Steph’s shoulders shaking. 
“……Well, if we can see the game through to the end, that is… Heh-heh, huh…” 
“……I’m…done, toooo… I…wanna go, hooome…” 
The next moment, the siblings watched Steph’s shoulders drop. Their keen, bold eyes had drifted to the reality they’d valiantly tried to avoid: the board stretching across the sky. Their gazes instantly clouded over, leaving voices overwhelmed by life in their wake as the pair collapsed in the cart. 
“…U-umm. If you’re going to act tough, could you please carry it through to the end?” 
Suddenly bereft of strength, Steph began panting, her eyes half-closed. Deep down, Sora concluded: Losing all their dice—their lives…there was no way. And failure by betrayal, by pilfering…there was absolutely no way. 
“Betrayal and killing are, like, whatever… We’ve got something else to worry about.” 
His eyes glazed over. Having dismissed everything so far as “whatever,” Sora gave Steph no time to object as he continued with a grim expression on his face. 
“…This is the real shit. Of all things, our most likely path to defeat would be—” 
He gazed upon the vast, endless game board and named it. 
“— starvation. ” 
. 
He was serious. 
“…Ehhh…? Um…what do you mean?” 
“Heh, heh-heh… I vaguely suspected, but have you really not noticed…?” 
“…Ignorance, is bliss… Those are…deep words…” 
Steph tilted her head in confusion, and Sora and Shiro smiled—albeit with eyes like dead fish. 
“Yes, all passengers, would you, ah, kindly direct your attention to your leeeft?” 
The only passengers were Sora and Shiro. 
Steph looked where Sora gestured like a tour-bus guide. There she saw, on the “surface”—floating on the sea, the islands of the Eastern Union. 
To the left. Not below or above. There was land to their left. 
“Oh, and neeext, would you please take a look to your righhht? Now what might this be?” 
It was the all-too-colossal sugoroku board created by the Old Deus. Spaces of land spiraling, floating without support, piercing the clouds and yet stretching farther into the heavens. 
You may have seen this more than a few times in video games set in fantasy worlds. Masses of rock that float in the air, heedless of gravity, and a stage where you walk on them. Like the last dungeon in F*9, or The La*oons, or The Kingdom of Zea*, or what have you. So you walk up one of those rocks and gradually tilt ninety degrees to a horizontal position. Common sense would dictate you should fall. But some kind of uncommon sense applies here that says you don’t. Here was a gathering of such ridiculous rocks going around picking fights with gravity and natural law, swollen so that each was the size of the city and labeled a “space.” Hundreds of them spiraled upward beyond the atmosphere— The audacity to claim this was a sugoroku board… Have you pictured it now? Given the circumstances, it’s inconceivable that one’s spontaneous utterance would be How pretty, but, more appropriately: 
“………What a, screwed up, massive, game board…” 
Yes, it was screwed up. And it was massive. 
“Yeees, on a freakishly huge game board! And after walking for five hours, where might we be?!” 
“……The second space, I suppose.” 
Yes, the second space—in other words, the second rock. 
“That’s righhhht! With these facts in mind—now!—the question you broke down the door of a house to pose (specifically, why we were holing ourselves up!) is about to get its long-awaited answer!” 
Fffff. Sora drew in a long breath: 
“It’s too friggin’ big! It’s too goddamn faaaar! We walked five hours and crossed one space after rolling a sixty-two! How many days or months is it gonna taaaake?!” 
…aaake, aaake… 
…aaake… 
In the game space derided as “too friggin’ big,” Sora’s cries echoed fruitlessly…and just as fruitlessly faded away. 
“It’s the game…of an Old Deus… Shouldn’t you…expect it…to be out of this world?” 
Sora sneered at Steph’s halting derision as she hauled the cart. I see. 
“Hunh!! That’s true. I have seen shitty devs like this who think just making the map meaninglessly big and cool means the game will be fun. This is what you get when you replace skills with budget, right?!” 
It was the same impression he’d always had seeing fantasy worlds where someone had gone to all the time and trouble of building cities in the air. Sure, he couldn’t even imagine how much power would be required to achieve this, but… Why! Of all things! Did you have to! Float land in the air?! Picking fights with gravity for no reason seemed a perfect example of a waste of energy. Faced with this literal divine feat, Sora still insisted: 
Virtual life’s good enough. 
“Then, after making this huge damn environment, they tell us it’s a one-track railway—and with long load times to boot…! This is the worst fake open world shit I’ve ever seen…” 
It wasn’t even load-free. 
It had been about two hours earlier, before Sora and Shiro had holed themselves up after deeming their game impossible. They had walked for five hours toward the space indicated by the pips on their dice: sixty-two. Finally, they’d traversed one space to stand at the border, the end of the earth. From there, they were transported to the next space in roughly the amount of time it took to cook Cup Noodles. Then, standing on the second space, Shiro had faintly mumbled: 
“…Number of steps, to this point…twenty thousand, eight hundred and thirty-four…” 
Even to Sora, who was not the math specialist, no further explanation was needed. Shiro’s current height was 131 centimeters and her gait approximately 0.48 meters. From that, you could extrapolate the size of one space: approximately 10 kilometers! They were automatically transferred the several kilometers between spaces. Even if you discounted that last bit under the assumption you didn’t need to cross it, this board twisting through the heavens was 350 spaces, meaning… 
“…It’s thirty-five hundred kilometers to the goal… And she told us, Get there on foot, bitch. No fast travel.” 
Sora smiled a Ya don’t say? at Steph, who was slow on the uptake. Perhaps this is a clearer way of illustrating: It was the approximate distance to cross the US or to walk the entire perimeter of Honshu, the main island of Japan. Wait… Maybe a better analogy for a resident of this world would be: 
“…It’s roughly the distance from the western edge of Elkia to the island of Kannagari—that clear it up?” 
Sora’s clarification extinguished the light from Steph’s eyes. Conversant as she was in politics, diplomacy, and trade, she had to have known just how far that was. Even Elkia’s fastest high-seas sailing ships would require, on average, half a month. Not to mention the trio would be traveling off-road, outside, in direct sunlight, and, since their dice were dwindling, as children. Under these conditions, Steph had the audacity to ask why they’d holed themselves up. To put it bluntly, that was no different from asking a mole why he’d dug himself a hole. 
“…In this game, if you get down to one die, you can’t go any farther. In other words, until everyone’s down to one or zero, it’s not gonna end.” 
It was one of those games that could go on forever… You really had to be in it for the long haul. And the longer it dragged on, the more everyone but Jibril (who didn’t need food or sleep) would languish. Sora smiled, his mouth so dry you could practically hear it chapping, and admitted why he’d dismissed everything, cast it all aside, and hidden himself away. 
“Walking that distance isn’t even possible, is it?! We’re only flesh and blood, you know?! We get hungry; we get tired! From a biological perspective—from any rational point of view—that distance would kill a person!!!” 
In days of old, it’s said that humans from the southern tip of Africa crossed the majestic Eurasian continent. They traversed Indonesia aboard wooden vessels and even made it as far as America. But the fortitude of these primeval humans had long since been lost to their descendants. In particular, the heaven-sent children of civilization, the two shut-in gamers, hadn’t a drop of it left. Walking one space for ten kilometers had delivered them to death’s door; this was modernity. Reality. No matter how their victory might have been assured before the start of the game, that presumed they saw it through, right? Factors independent of the game such as their lacking fitness or the passage of time would destroy them. This was, by Sora’s reckoning, the most absurd (and therefore the most realistic and conceivable) form of defeat. He looked at Shiro, who faced despair anew, and Steph, who had only now been plunged into it. Smirking, he was reminded once more of the line from that one game’s main character: 
“I wonder where I went wrong?” 
Steph would have answered that they’d gone wrong when they’d holed themselves up, but that wasn’t it. 
They were challenging a god. 
They were in the midst of betrayal. 
If they lost their dice, they’d lose their lives. 
If they lost the game, they’d lose their lives. 
You could rattle off any number of fearsome-sounding statements like these, but the fact remained: 
If they starved, they’d die. 
Faced with the all-too-real—and therefore easily understood—threat of this singular sentence, nothing else mattered. At this, Sora asked: 
Where did I go so wrong as to agree to these rules? 
 
They were still on the second space. 
It’d been nine hours since the start of the game. All was quiet. For a long, long time, the silence was broken only by the chirping of birds and the rustling of trees. The sound of wheels rumbling along was no more. Even Steph had fallen to her knees, no longer pulling the cart. Sora, too, lay motionless in the fading twilight as he faced reality once more. Contrary to the soothing landscape, if one were to paint this scene, it would be titled The End. But a small voice that resisted being hung in a gallery arose from Sora’s chest. 
All we’ve been doing is wandering aimlessly. 
Shiro, who until now had been fiddling constantly with the tablet, waiting for the battery to die, said: 
“……Brother…I’m done…calculating…” 
She showed her brother the glistening screen, but her smile sparkled many times brighter. 
The tiny shred of hope more radiant than a star showed her brother— 
“Wrrahh, all righhht!! Screw that Old Deus! Screw Tet! Hey, who was it who said, ‘You can always find God in your heart’? —Specifically, in my heart!!” 
“Yaaagh! Wh-wh-wh-what are you—? Oww! Th-that hurrrts!” 
Uttering a strange sound, Sora lifted his sister, the goddess, onto the cart, causing it to lurch forward and give Steph a hard whack to her face with its handle. But as the injury was guaranteed by the Ten Covenants to have been accidental, any objections from her were spectacularly ignored. Sora put Shiro on his shoulders and beamed as he turned the tablet toward Steph. 
Even accidents deserve an apology, Steph thought, but she appeared to have given up on the two who lacked any common sense. 
“…A map of the world? What are these…red slashes?” 
“It’s a map of the board—a map of the land areas the Old Deus copied!” 
Shiro had compared the first space they completed and their current position on the second space with the remaining visible spaces along the spiraling landmass. She had also calculated the board’s relative distances and intervals, assuming there to be 350 spaces with a total length of 3,500 kilometers. The result was a map of the board that she had copied from the land from start to finish. 
“…Is…this really all that amazing?” 
Sora, aghast at the poor commoner incapable of comprehending the work of the goddess, exclaimed: 
“D00d, look harder—there are no mountains or channels or deserts!! And this is dairy farming land, see?!” 
Yes. According to the map Shiro had worked out, this board went from the former continental domain of the Eastern Union—the center of the continent of Lucia—to the north-northeast. It grazed the Sanctuary, cut across Elven Gard territory, ultimately reaching the land of Elkia. None of the terrain would be physically impossible for them to traverse with the equipment they possessed. What’s more, their current location was dairy-farming land in Elkia’s southestern domain, formerly the Eastern Union. 
“Which means there’s still a route where we make it—!!” 
Past despair and ready to march on, Sora held Shiro and jumped off the cart. Sure, it was still a journey of 3,500 kilometers… 
…and, sadly, hadn’t a drop of that fortitude of the humans of old—but. 
“Let us go, then, like civilized folk. By having the walking done for us!!” 
“You mean by me. You mean by me, don’t you?!” 
“Listen up, Cart Horse! What I propose is we grab a means of transportation to pull the cart for us!” 
“So you do mean me, don’t you?! You just called me a cart horse, and you’ve already caught me!!” 
Sora ignored Steph’s ranting and turned to the cart’s contents, namely… 
“All right, Shiro. A horse or an ox—we’ll swipe ’em.” 
“…Roger, that…!” 
With a rope and a hoe in hand, a frightening grin arose on Sora’s face. 
“Y-you’re stealing?! That’s— W-wait, it’s not even about right or wrong… The Ten Covenants—” 
The voice of reason was, however, merely met with that same nonsensical grin. 
“…Hey, why don’t we look back on everything we’ve done so far?” 

Breaking and entering. Unauthorized use of private property. And to top it off— 
“As for you, there’s the theft of that cart you stole and the property damage to that door you smashed, right?” 
“?Hn, gh! …H-huh?” 
Sora smirked as Steph seemed to come to this realization. 
Had this land been created by the Old Deus from nothing, there shouldn’t have been houses. But stripping them from the land would have been a flagrant breach of the Covenants beyond any mere violation of rights. The Covenants were absolute even for an Old Deus, meaning: 
“The Old Deus just copied and pasted the land onto the map… Everything here is a copy of what’s on land. It’s no one’s property—so the Ten Covenants don’t apply.” 
Therefore, there were no Ixseeds in this land other than the game’s participants—no persons to whom the Covenants applied. 
Conversely, there were living things to which the Covenants did not apply: birds and trees, and cattle and horses on dairy farms. Everything on this board, apart from the players, was free to be used as they pleased! 
“That being the case! First thing we’re gonna do is grab a means of transportation to draw this cart.” 
…Which isn’t as easy as it sounds, Sora kept himself from saying. 
“Oh, so you weren’t actually planning to have me pull you the whole way…” 
“…Look, do ya think I’m the kinda guy who would make a human being pull a cart thirty-five hundred kilometers?” 
“Until just now, I had no doubt of it. You have elevated my estimation of you slightly.” 
“C’mon… If I did that, you’d totally wear out…!” 
If he made such an error— 
“Then who’d pull the cart?! Think about it, man!!” 
“How right you are! ? I had best adhere to my prior estimation. ?” 
In this world Tet called a utopia, where all was decided by games, it was by no means the desire of these two shut-in losers to agree to physical labor. 
But if they had to in order to win at a game, then they had to, Sora was saying. Had the siblings demonstrated such flexible thinking in their old world, they wouldn’t have had to be shut-ins at all. 
…Glancing at the sea to the left, beyond the game, Sora mumbled: 
“Come to think of it, when are Chlammy and Fiel gonna get in the game?” 
“Pardon? This is a game started by the Covenants, isn’t it? No one can intrude in the—” 
“They’d better. Plus, crashing a game is a classic, right?” 
Despite Steph’s skeptical query, Sora just smirked meaningfully. 
“—Okay, which farm animal is about to become a noble sacrifice for the glory of Immanity?” 
“…Brother…I like, horsies…but I like, moo-moo cows, even more…” 
Snapping the rope, Sora and Shiro searched for something excluded from the Ten Covenants: some poor creature stripped of the right to live in order to become fodder for the Ixseeds. 
“…Shiro, Shirooo… Will you please wipe your saliva…?” 
Steph now regarded the two predators as if they had transformed into a pair of devils, but they ignored her. They’d work their prey hard to carry them, and when it starved, they’d devour it—!! That was why they’d specified horses and cattle. In this game, the first, absolute condition was survival… It was time to show the filthiness of human living…! 
 
Large flowers blossomed across the open ocean. These massive blooms that sojourned over the waves, spreading their petals to cover the surface of the sea, were ships. They were silent and had neither masts, nor oars, nor propulsion devices, nor even flags to indicate their nation. The arresting spectacle of these ships as they traced paths of flowers along the water’s surface vividly articulated their affiliation. 
Elven Gard. 
These were floating blossoms woven by Elf magic that drifted on scent rather than water: vá-lu-plums. They wafted over land and sea, giving bloom to other flowers while still drifting along. There existed not just one, but countless vá-lu-plums, all gracefully traversing the rocky seas without a sound from west to east. Brilliantly colored, in perfect formation, at uniform speed; a giant garden stretching tens of kilometers from front to rear. Leading the fleet was a red rose vá-lu-plum larger than all the rest, and on its bow stood a dark silhouette. Her black hair and black veil flapped by the salty wind as she glared keenly ahead, the shadowy girl… 
“……Ha-chew!” 
…sneezed adorably, over and over. 
“……Ha—ha-chew! It’s—it’s so cold… It’s so cold here, Fi!” 
“Chlammy? Why don’t you quit putting on a show and come inside? You’ll catch a cold!” 
The black-haired Immanity girl shivering with a runny nose: Chlammy Zell. The blonde Elven girl spreading her shawl and embracing the former: Fiel Nirvalen. Descending from the bow, the black-haired girl inquired: 
“Nghh… A-also, Fi? About how much longer is it to be?” 
“Hmm, at this raaate…why, we may have the better part of a month left.” 
“! …It really shouldn’t take even a day to cover this distance…!” 
“These are relics we’re riding, you knowww? Why, it takes as much time to gather them as it does to ride them.” 
I know that, said Chlammy. Had they been traveling not by sea but by air—Elf’s preferred mode of transport—anywhere on the planet would be “in the neighborhood.” In Elven Gard, seafaring vessels had long since become disused antiques. But now they had no choice but to crawl along on these relics. Chlammy clicked her tongue. 
It had already been months since she and Fiel had started operating independently of Sora and company. They’d spent that time working tirelessly to undermine Elven Gard, and this was the final settlement. At the greatest port of sea trade in Elven territory—the state of Tírnóg—everyone who built the structures of power, the influential merchants, the relevant enterprises, even the state governor… The pair had challenged the lot of them to games, seized upon their weaknesses, replaced them with new faces, and quietly encroached. They’d even secured majorities in the Upper and Lower Houses and the guilds in order to fly over the Senate’s heads and move the state. 
All for this moment. 
When those two would challenge the Old Deus. 
The women had pushed themselves pretty far on behalf of those siblings who transcended expectations. There were countless shaky bridges they’d run across in doing so, but— 
“…If we don’t make it, it will all go to waste—and then everything will—!” 
“Miss the boat… Why, I’m aware, Chlammy…” 
Fiel spoke soothingly as she held Chlammy, who had worked herself up and was chewing her nails. 
That’s right. This game couldn’t end without them. Chlammy scowled up at the giant landmass floating across the sky—the Old Deus’s game board—and bit her lip. They were leading a massive fleet to arrive below it at the Eastern Union, the center of the spiral—the epicenter of the game they couldn’t let end without them. 
“…Fi, can you see what those two are doing now?” 
“Why, that I can. Of course I can! ?” 
At Chlammy’s words, Fiel’s irises and the gem in her forehead lightly glowed. Her tone and smile were rather haughty, yet she spoke with a confidence that was as natural as could be. 
For a hexcaster such as herself, nothing on this side of the event horizon could be out of sight. 
…But. 
“Why, I’ve seen them, but what they’re doing, it’s a liiittle hard to say.” 
“…What? What do you mean?” 
“Wellll, they poked a horse with a stick—ah, and a wild dog found them—and they’re crying and running awayyy.” 
………… 
“?Just what on earth are those fools doing?” 
Even Fiel could not see the answer to that bitter question. 
 
The thirty-eighth space…forty-two hours since the start of the game. Sora, Shiro, and Steph rode a carriage rapidly over a damp plateau. According to Shiro’s map, this was a carbon copy of the land even farther east of Elkia’s eastern edge. It grazed the Elementary territory of the Spirit Forest, commonly known as the Sanctuary. 
Now, Sora had no way of knowing about such distant grumbling. Yet as he sat on that violently swaying carriage, he wondered what in the world he was doing. Playing a game with an Old Deus? Surviving in the wild? Nay. One might say he was philosophizing on the topic…of “rights.” 
The Ten Covenants. 
They guaranteed rights and forbade any physical injury or plunder, otherwise known as “violations.” But to live in and of itself was to violate another’s rights. 
…No one could live alone. Being able to live somehow meant inconveniencing others or being responsible for little microtransgressions, but not without any give-and-take. In doing so, at some point, one invariably reached a line that could not be surrendered. Confrontation between two irreconciliable perspectives was unavoidable… This contradiction was what the Covenants evaded; it demanded people confront each other not by war but by games. But that did not resolve the fundamental contradiction inherent in life: that one must kill, infringe on another’s life, to stay alive. That was why the Covenants determined that the guarantee of rights should apply only to the Ixseeds. Anything other than the Ixseeds could be killed or consumed, thus resolving that one basic contradiction. Yes, what glorious Ten Covenants indeed—!! 
Wait, if you would, for a moment before singing such praise. Guaranteed rights work both ways, don’t they? At the same time, unalienable rights are also unalienable duties, are they not? Thus, rights that can be infringed would also be duties that can be reneged, would they not? Ah…how profound, Sora thought rapturously. Rights and freedom come with duties and responsibilities… This concept was still debated on Earth, yet in this world, it could be distilled more clearly, more simply, into one sentence: 
You can eat ’em, but don’t complain if they eat you, right?! 
“Rrrrauughh! Come on! Can’t this carriage go any faster?!” 
“A shoddy contraption like this?! If we go any faster, it’ll tip overrrr!” 
“…B-Brother…! Fire, more…firrre…!” 
Behind the careening carriage, a mob of monsters charged after them with fangs and claws bared. This could be our end, Sora felt in his heart. He swung and tossed torches, then scrambled, struggling for dear life. 
They’d chased a horse, then been chased by a dog, managed to fend it off, and finally captured the horse. They’d applied Steph’s celebrity riding skills, Shiro’s engineering skills, and Sora’s shaky Sunday carpenter skills to jury-rig something together that could possibly have been called a carriage. By then, eighteen hours had passed. After enough toil to fill an entire book, Sora and Shiro had handed the reins to Steph and collapsed in the back. With the rhythmic sound of the wheels as their lullaby, the two of them drifted into a deep and inelegant sleep. They dreamed they’d broken past that tough part that had convinced them the game was impossible and now stood at the start of a fine journey… The Japanese character for “fleeting” is written with “person” on the left and “dream” on the right—and fleeting, indeed, their dream had crumbled a few hours back. Hearing Steph shriek, they’d turned to see a vision of hell. In this manner, they had been pursued to the twelfth space by a death mob, and here they were. 
“D00d!! Don’t tell me this world is actually one of those serious sword-and-sorcery worlds as soon as you step out of the city?! ‘A utopia where everything is decided by games,’ my ass! I’m gonna report that damn Tet to JAR* for false advertising!” 
Feeling for the first time all too keenly what it meant to live in a fantasy world, Sora wailed with tears in his eyes. An environment where even moving spaces was soul-crushing. He’d figured that, at least if there was no prohibitive terrain, they’d have hope…but nobody’d said anything about monsters—!! The gap between them was closing, and the screeching, makeshift carriage was liable to break down any moment. If that happened, only one route would be left to them—the “fodder” route… 
“Monsters such as these are scarcely supposed to exiiist! Where are weee?!” 
“…R-right now…we’re near…the Sanctuary…the Spirit Forest…!” 
“Oh! Good news, Sora! These beasts only dwell in the vicinity of the Spirit Forest! If we just make it past, we’ll be— Listen to me! Don’t try jumping off the carriage, pleaaase!!” 
“…Brother… Brother! You must, live…!” 
Sora, unconsciously overtaken by fear, hyperventilated, having almost relinquished his grip on life. 
Calm down. When an otherworlder gets tossed into a serious fantasy world, what does he do to survive? 
…The tendency is to fight with the ultimate power of the chosen one or some cheat like that, I guess? But… Sora glanced at the hoard surging after them and chuckled. He and Shiro were shut-in sissies, free and easy loser gamers. They had no experience facing primeval bloodlust, not to mention being prey. In modern-day Japan, what kind of life would you have to lead to develop the guts to face monsters like these head-on? 
OP swordplay? OP magic? Or straight-up superpowers? No, that’s not it; that’s off the mark. No, I say! We humans are not a race that fights in such ways, are we—?! Before their impending deaths, Sora gripped his sister’s hand. 
“…Shiro. When we get back to Elkia…we’re gonna have them develop a sniper rifle…” 
His eyes distant, he raised the flag. 
They’d take the monsters down from afar, one-sidedly, allowing no counterattack, sneakily, surely. That was how humans fought, Sora was convinced. But… 
“…Nope…” 
Shiro curtly dismissed her brother’s proposal. 
“…Brother, let’s burn it…? With high-powered explosives… Let’s drop C6H6N12O12, every day?” 
Her eyes strangely agleam, she put forward her own suggestion, which made Sora shiver. 
Firearms are for pansies. 
From now on, let’s burn the forest every day. 
Till it with a good carpet-bombing until it’s flat. 
She was a genius, that darling little sister of his. Yes, that was how humans— 
A huge crash yanked his fleeting thoughts back to reality: One of the monsters had just clawed through the wooden carriage like butter. 
…Hmm. It appears we are indeed in some deep shit. 
“My bad, Shiro… Looks like I did something wrong. It’s pretty much game over.” 
Mumbling with lifeless eyes, Sora analyzed the factors of their defeat and summed up the results. 
Where did I go wrong? Was it when I challenged a god? When I misjudged our survival as a handicap? Or could it be…when I was birthed into this world only to be a virgin? Shiro muttered at Sora’s melancholic chortle: 
“…Brother, how does it feel…to die, a virgin?” 
“Ahh…to put it mildly, I am so chagrined I could die…heh-heh…” 
Ah…humans are weak. They lose, and they lose and lose and lose, and they grind their teeth, and they look back with chagrin on why they lost. Even so, they keep walking, saying, Next time, I swear, next time, until that day comes when, finally, they win. Sora compiled all the regrets and problems from his current life. In his next, he’d start by working to lose his virginity. Not that he had any idea how…but hey, he could leave that to the next him. Best of luck! 
With this, Sora weakly flung out all four limbs and wrapped up the resulting tally of his life. 
“Brother…” 
Shiro whispered faintly as she straddled Sora, her breath so close he could feel it. She lowered her face to hide her flushed cheeks. 
“…Okay…before we die…we might, as well…” 
Pulling away her clothes to reveal her white skin, her eyes glistening passionately— 
Now, then. Sora, virgin, dead at eighteen. Under normal circumstances, what would you do in this situation—? Easy: nothing. This was Shiro. His little sister. Age eleven—now approximately 8.8 after losing two dice. Amidst the insanity currently transpiring, would he even have the clarity of mind to chide her for showing some skin? But, facing the very real prospect of his death, not even aware how confused he was, Sora came to a realization. 
He thought back to the American films shown on television every weekend. 
Some normie would be having sex in the middle of a crazy life-or-death situation, completely taking Sora out of the movie. He had long doubted such scenarios; They should’ve just died—or so he’d thought—but now he realized that he’d been the one who was wrong. I get it now—they…all of them— 
—they were all virgins! 
If you were about to pass on to the afterlife, wouldn’t you think of doing it before you died?! Sympathizing with Hollywood like never before, Sora extended his hand to the warm flesh before his eyes— 
“Hey, youuuu! What are you doing back there at a time like??” 
At that moment, a second crash resounded. The carriage bounced, tossing Sora and company skyward. What had just happened—? Sora didn’t even have time to wonder as he reflexively wrapped his arms around Shiro. They crashed onto the ground, rolling with the momentum… And when they raised their heads amidst the pain— 
There was the true monster. 
A giant, circular crater had formed in the soft, black soil. In its center, knocked senseless, lay a monster heaving its dying breaths. Crouched atop it on all fours was a small, young, and adorable human-shaped beast looking puzzled. 
“I-it’s my food! You don’t get any, please! I-it’s your fault, please!!” 
She was a little girl in Japanese-style garb, swinging her large tail and fennec fox–like ears, a backpack on her back. Squinting down at Sora in displeasure was Izuna Hatsuse. 
…… 
“…Hey, remind me why you said monsters like these aren’t ‘supposed to exist’?” 
Sora checked to see if Shiro, who had fainted in his arms, was hurt before checking his own condition. He concluded that, by some kind of miracle (considering they’d fallen from a runaway carriage), they were practically unharmed—at which point, he’d posed his unanswerable question to Steph, who likewise appeared to have sustained no major injuries. 
“…Almost all large animals went extinct in the Great War… Also, as you can surmise—” 
The situation spoke for itself. Izuna had rocked the ground with a single step. Then her single strike—no, single swat—had lifted the ground up and formed a crater. Perhaps because to “attack” what she called her “food” would render her food unrecognizable, the mob of monsters had all scattered like baby spiders. With Izuna at the top of the food chain, it was only natural. 
“—the races other than Immanity…all have their own ways of lashing out in predation and defense… I mean, well…” 
“…I see,” said Sora as he looked to the heavens. Rights worked both ways and were also duties. But whether such rights and duties could be guaranteed without the Covenants… 
“…Brother, this world…isn’t so nice…to anyone…other than the Ixseeds…” 
Having escaped the fate of prey, Sora and Shiro thought: Humans are opportunistic creatures. To now feel pity for the monsters that had mere moments earlier been threatening their lives… Well…was this just the ego of the survivor…? 
 
“R-really, you don’t get any, please! I-I’m sooo mad at you, please!” 
…But if you insist, asshole, I might spare you a bite. Izuna’s eyes quivered while Sora and Shiro smiled and gave the thumbs-up. 
“…Don’t worry, Izzy… You saved…our lives… Plus…” 
“I think, as human beings—we gotta consider whether we wanna eat this until we’re at the brink of starvation, all right?” 
Throwing the creature straight out of Resid*nt Evil into the fire, they gracefully declined to partake. 
A few minutes later, as Izuna sat politely before her meal, Sora righted the carriage and asked: 
“…Hey, Izuna. Why’d you only take one?” 
Sora and company couldn’t have been the only ones flirting with starvation. Izuna was surely in similar straits. Shouldn’t you grab as much food as you can when possible? was the thrust of his question. 
“It’s taboo to hunt more than you need, please… It’s shameful, please.” 
Suddenly, Izuna joined her fists formally and bowed deeply in gratitude for the life she had taken. It must’ve been the custom of the Eastern Union. Seeing this, Sora, Shiro, and even Steph felt positively ashamed. Living surrounded by civilization, it was easy to forget that eating was partaking of life. What lovely table manners this child had… My goodness, was she a saint—? 
They’d have earnestly been of this opinion had Izuna not ruined everything with her ensuing outburst. 
“Pfff?! D-damn, this is some unbelievably disgusting shit, please! The hell do you have to eat to taste [bleep] as the [bleep] of a [bleep], please?!” 
She’d only taken one bite. 
“H-hey… No matter how many times I look at it, I really don’t think that’s edible…” 
“I-if you hunt it down, you gotta eat it all, please! …Ergh…” 
Thinking it was the least they could do for Izuna, who’d just saved their lives and whose face was distorted by enormous teardrops, Sora and company took some seasonings out of their baggage and did what little they could… 
“Prepare this…? …Wait, to begin with, what is this even?! Wh-where do you cut—? I mean, are you sure this is edible?! Eeeegh, S-Sora! There’s some kind of blue mucus coming out!” 
…Or rather, they made Steph do what little she could and listened to her shriek incessantly. If a Werebeast’s sense of smell said it was edible, then it probably was, though Sora and Shiro would have to bow out… 
As they roasted the meat Steph had prepared on spits around the fire, Sora asked: 
“…By the way, Izuna, why are you still around here?” 
They were on the thirty-eighth space, just under 380 kilometers from the start. Even though there were nine dice at Izuna’s chest, reducing her age by one-tenth, those overwhelming physical abilities of hers…couldn’t possibly be outrun by a horse. 
Izuna, who should have been well ahead, just squinted and groaned in response. 
“I’m mad at you, please… ‘Name the first choice Sora made in the bride selection screen the first time he played DQ5’… It’s damn obvious you wrote this shit, please!” 
Ahhh… Sora and Shiro laughed in recognition. She’d landed on the “Task” Sora wrote—in other words, here, the thirty-eighth space. Naturally unable to answer, Izuna was subjected to the grand prize of “not-being-able-to-move-for-seventy-two-hours.” And after those seventy-two hours had passed, one of her dice would belong to Sora. As if the memory of it brought reignited her rage, Izuna stood and howled menacingly in a huff. 

“What the hell, please?! At least follow the damn rules, please!” 
12: 
However, T ASKS of the following kinds are INVALID : 

12b:  T ASKS that can only be fulfilled by the assigner or cannot be fulfilled by any player 

Indeed, so it had been set in the rules. However. 
“Heyyy, hey… You’d better give respect where respect is due, my little animal-eared beauty. Shirooo?” 
Shiro nodded and punched in her answer on her phone so that Izuna couldn’t see. 
Rodrigo 
“That’s righhht!! Even Shiro knows! So that makes this Task valid. ?” 
Tasks that couldn’t be fulfilled either by anyone other than whoever wrote it or by anyone at all were invalid. An example would be if Jibril were to write, Use your own power to teleport. Presumably, it was also intended to prohibit impossible commands such as Correctly predict in which year you will die. Conversely, though, it was valid as long as at least one other person knew the correct response. 
“Which meaaans! What about ‘Answer with three mods where you can screw the bitches who ordered the murder of Paarthurnax,’ or ‘Answer with the titles of the first three porn games Sora ever bought, his heart pounding, as he celebrated turning eighteen years old’?! Questions like these, which, if you lack knowledge of another world—no, even if you have it—are über-questionable in terms of answerability are all okay!! Ya dig?!” 
Sora danced around as he spoke, with a look on his face likely to provoke a slap from even the Buddha himself. 
“…Brother, that’s über-cheap…über-epic…” 
“—You are the worst… It’s no wonder Izuna is angry…” 
Shiro and Steph regarded him with reverence and disgust respectively. 
“I followed the rules… Meat’s done, Izuna. Hope it’s a little better now.” 
Sora smiled and held out a skewer to the pouting Izuna, who spoke after a moment. 
“…It’s a little better, please. It tasted like complete shit and now just tastes like shit, please.” 
Izuna stuffed her cheeks with the skewer, instantly soothed, her tail swinging in good spirits. 
“……” 
Sora keenly noticed Steph wrinkling her brow suspiciously and laughed. 
He could read her befuddlement like the back of his hand. Following the rules or no, the “Task” was one hell of a cheap trick. After seventy-two hours passed, Sora would take Izuna’s dice—her life. He was killing one-tenth of her, and yet Izuna, however you looked at it, had helped him. Why was it that rather than leaving him for dead, she was instead so chipper? Why was it that, just as Sora had hinted, they had betrayed but hadn’t killed each other? 
“…Sora, Shiro. I’m not—gonna lose to you, please…?” 
Izuna was asking them as if to confirm something, intoning her statement like a question. Sora and Shiro held out all the remaining skewers. 
“We already thanked you for saving us. If you think we’re gonna give you some extraordinary compensation like letting you win, you’d better think again. ?” 
“…Izzy, you get the, consolation prize… We’re the ones…who are gonna win…” 
“It is remarkable how you are able talk down to even the one who saved you just as you were dropping out, not simply from the game but from life itself…” 
Steph groaned, past disgust and into awe. 
“……Mm! Bring it on, please!!” 
Izuna, as if she’d found all the answers she sought in their faces, chomped down all the skewers at once and said, with a broad smile: 
“Ngom-ngom… I’ll pass you fast, please. Get ready, please.” 
Immediately thereafter, she hugged her tail and rolled into a ball, her mouth still full of meat. Sora and Shiro rose when Izuna informed them she’d sleep until the seventy-two hours had passed. 
“Then I guess we’d better get a move on. Is the carriage all right?” 
“Y-yes, somehow… Hey, are we just going to leave Miss Izuna here?! It’s dangerous!” 
“Yeah…it’s really dangerous—for us.” 
Hearing Sora’s remark under his breath, Steph’s face suddenly stiffened. If one listened carefully, it was practically audible—the presence of the monsters that had scattered at Izuna’s appearance and were now waiting for her to fall asleep. Their target, of course, was not the sleeping Werebeast. No sense targeting a predator. Naturally, the creatures’ attention was fixed on the three asses in lions’ skins. 
“…Let’s accept Izuna’s kindness graciously—and get the hell outta here while she’s still awake.” 
Izuna, not yet soundly ensconced in slumber and therefore still a threat to the monsters around them, smiled softly. Having caught that smile—and the slight tremor in Sora’s voice—the three promptly hopped aboard the carriage and bolted. 
 
The fifty-ninth space…seventy-eight hours since the start of the game. The carriage and its three passengers galloped along the edge of a vast cliff. According to Shiro’s map, the terrain on this space was a copy of terrain far off Elkia’s northeast border. As luck would have it, this was the largest gorge on Disboard, known as Oblivion. The lustrous blue crack in the earth that extended across an ocean and two continents was said to be a vestige of the end of the war, the Final Battle. Listening to the thunder still rumbling at the bottom of the gorge—the dregs of the power that carved the planet—Sora thought: 
It’s been twenty-one spaces since we parted with Izuna. The neighborhood of the Spirit Forest should be far behind us by now. According to Steph’s intel, there shouldn’t be any monsters except around there, so we oughtta be well out of the danger zone. We should be safe now. Should, should, should, should—!! 
“I don’t buy it! I don’t buy this crap!! Who’s on our tail? …Nooo ooone—! Are they trying to catch us off guard?! Huh?!” 
“…I won’t, fall for that… Where are you? Where are you…hiding…?” 
Sora and Shiro were on high alert and acting like wimpy players in the middle of a horror game, constantly freaked out by motionless corpses and never making any progress. They were still wary of monsters even though their cell camera’s zooms revealed nothing. 
“…I understand how you feel, but it’s already been a day and a half! There’s no need to keep worrying…” 
True, it had already been thirty-six hours since they’d last seen a monster. Having ridden without any sleep or rest, the horses (including Steph) had reached their limit, and they’d had to squeeze in a few breaks along the way. In those instances, Sora and Shiro had each taken turns keeping watch, but no monsters had come. At last, Steph got fed up with their unending paranoia. 
“—Shiro, what do you think? I feel I may be prepared by now to give our safety the benefit of the doubt?” 
“…I’ll trust…what you think…” 
Hmm. Then it was settled. 
“?We survived, Shiro.” 
At this whimper, Sora and Shiro hugged each other and collapsed in the carriage. Large tears running down their faces, they exchanged nods as if reassuring each other they were alive. 
…Ah, the sky is so blue. Even that loathsome sun now seems but dear. The two squinted. 
“Let us forgive all transgressions—let all living be blessed…” 
“…Hallelujah… So sleepy…” 
“H—wh—excuse me?! We’ll still be in huge trouble if you just fall right to sleep!!” 
Aggrieved by the abrupt swing of their pendulum, Steph, still handling the reins, pointed ahead and yelled. 
“We’ve got three more spaces to the sixty-second! Another danger—another Task—awaits us!” 
Danger? A Task? —Hmm. Sora cocked his head. True, they had been advancing according to the dice toward the sixty-second space. Once they stopped there, they could expect a “Task” someone had written to activate. 
“…Compared to being chased by monsters, any Task is an easy win…” 
Sora had expended careful thought to arrive at this serious conclusion, to which Shiro nodded her earnest agreement. In this game of taking one another’s dice—their lives—and killing each other indirectly, the greatest threat was…the Tasks. Yet as far as they were concerned, compared to starvation, overwork, and predation, Tasks were pretty far down that list… 
“……I—I begin to be convinced, but there is still danger! After all—” 
Steph’s voice was cut off as her vision went black. The carriage must have reached the end of the fifty-ninth space. They were engulfed in a strange area filled with black mist. 
One of the reasons Sora had concluded that this game failed was the loading time between spaces. It must have been to prevent desertion or unauthorized movement through the game through the use of magic or such. At the end of each space, they hit an invisible wall like those in video games, and from there, they were transported to the next. They couldn’t go back. They could only move forward according to the roll of their dice. Worse yet, each time they moved between spaces, there was this goddamn long-ass load time. Jibril’s shifting power had been suppressed, and in its place had been put a force to adjust their coordinates according to the rules. True, there must have been some really sophisticated shit working behind the scenes, but— 
“…Brother…I finally remembered…what this is…” 
“Ahh, what a coincidence, my sister—this slow loading and this sound. There’s no mistaking it.” 
It was beyond the comprehension of these mere humans, incapable of perceiving magic or spirits, much less space. But the scratchy noise, to them, sounded like nothing other than a disc spinning. If they stared silently into the amorphously warping space, they could swear they saw at the edge of their vision the words “NOW LOADING” and a juggling monkey. Sora and Shiro muttered to themselves murderously it came to them: 
This is Neo G*o. 
“…C-can I ask…a question?” 
As the two siblings tutted and tapped their feet, Steph chimed in nervously, as if having realized a hidden danger in the rules. Trembling, she asked: 
“Wh-what if there was a Task—that said Die? Would you…die?” 
“Oh my… That’s not like you, Steph… Pretty sharp.” 
07: 
A die-bearer who landeth upon a space with a T ASK may be forced to carry out any instructions. 

“Forced to carry out any instructions.” Yes, even an instruction to throw away one’s life could not be refused. 
“This game is sooo full of wonders, isn’t it? Like in these rules about Tasks.” 
Sora spoke coolly, as if irritated but somehow resigned to spelling things out. 
“I told you, didn’t I? We didn’t agree to kill each other. You don’t have to worry—no one can tell you to die.” 
“Wh-what are you talking about? I mean—” 
12: 
However, T ASKS of the following kinds are INVALID : 

12a:  T ASKS that specify a party to whom they shall exclusively apply 

“You can’t specify the party. What’s someone gonna do if they write an instant-death Task and step on it themselves?” 
“?Oh!” 
Sora smiled as Steph’s face fell, as if properly shamed as he chuckled at her. 
That wasn’t all, Sora continued in his mind. Sure, the game was sugoroku—however you sliced it, only one could finish. And if no one finished, the only one to be saved would be the player in the lead. Using conventional logic—the fewer opponents the better, right? Killing all the other players would be the classic and safest move, right? 
Wrong. Sora laughed. If you killed them, you couldn’t take their dice. And since it was impossible to finish without taking dice— 
“Even if you used a Task to make someone die, as soon as they did, they’d have fulfilled the Task. The assigner would lose one die, and on top of that, the dead d00d’s dice would be irrecoverable— That’s one lamebrain move, the opposite of win.” 
These Task rules allowed you to force any kind of absurdity upon another player, but if you were actually trying to win, the things you could write were truly limited. 
“Instructions only you can follow are invalid. If you have to write Tasks that have some possibility of being fulfilled, there’s a risk someone may steal your chance to steal dice. So if you wanna give instructions that let you steal without being stolen from—” 
And with that, the loading time long enough to render instant noodles soggy ended. 
“Tasks like that are the most you can do.” 
Pointing into their returned vision, Sora gave a little smirk. At the start coordinates of the sixtieth space, still beside the yawning abyss, was a sign. Glancing at what was written there, Steph mumbled: 
“…What is that…?” 
…… 
“Hey, we’ve passed through how many spaces already, and you never noticed?” 
10: 
Each T ASK shall be transcribed upon a sign, and these signs shall be placed upon the spaces of the board in random order. 

“Haven’t you seen them?! Every time there’s a sign with a Task!!” 
“Do you suppose that prior to this I had a moment’s rest to pay attention to shabby signs such as these?!” 
……Yeah well, frankly, that was true. Both Sora and Shiro accepted Steph’s rebuttal without further ado. Even Sora and Shiro had only managed to read a few of them between all the running and sleeping. In any case, the sign Sora was pointing to read: 
Count every damn hair on your body—including tail hairs—and answer that shit correctly, please. 
…So Izuna even writes this way. Sora seemed pleased. 
“Anyone can do this Task, but there are only a few who can do it in seventy-two hours.” 
In the first place, the only ones with tails were Ino, Izuna, and Plum. Maybe those crazy Werebeasts could count their own hairs instantly. But those lacking such senses or even a tail—specifically, Sora and company—could only answer by counting every hair one by one, including the hairs on the tail of the horse hitched up to their carriage. They’d have to spend the full seventy-two hours… Actually, they’d grow more hair in the interim, so it was pretty much impossible. 
…Pretty nasty Task, Izzy. 
“But then Tasks like this are ultimately designed to stop you for seventy-two hours and take one die.” 
For instance, a Task could hold them up for seventy-two hours by asking a question only the minimum number of people could answer, like the ones Sora and Shiro had written. Or it could give a command that few could fulfill in seventy-two hours, like this one. 
If you were trying to win, in fact, these were the only two methods you could use. 
“…The Tasks…so far…were pretty much all, like that…” 
Shiro listed a few examples she could remember. 
Travel from one end of the space to the other and back on your own feet a hundred damn times, please. 
This had also been one of Izuna’s Tasks—walk two thousand kilometers in seventy-two hours, in other words. It sounded tough even for a Werebeast…but, to begin with, Izuna didn’t have to fulfill her own Tasks. Jibril could do it easily, Ino would drive himself half to death to do it, and everyone else would just be stuck for seventy-two hours. 
Immediately accept a game by the Covenants proposed by a party of at least two members—other than the one who assigned the Task—and win. 
That one must have been Jibril. Under most circumstances, it would be invalid and ineffectual, since, unless a third party was present, the premise wouldn’t stand, and it would be impossible for anyone to fulfill the Task. But in any case, if the premise did stand, it would likely be a Task of the highest difficulty. 
“Now here’s another wonder. Tasks only you can fulfill aren’t allowed—why’s that?” 
“…What? Because then there would be no game, right…?” 
Ah, yes, that was the sensible answer. Sora laughed. How would it look if there were a quiz show where everyone asked each other questions that only they knew the answers to? That show would get its sorry ass canceled after the first episode, and whoever was responsible would be forced to resign. But Sora responded to Steph’s sensible assertion with a sweet smile—and a dearth of sense: 
“So? Why does it have to be a real game?” 
“……Excuuuse me…?” 
“If this game is hosted by the Old Deus so we’ll kill each other, wouldn’t this rule just get in the way? She might as well have us hurling impossible missions at each other, saying, ‘You don’t fulfill it, you die,’ right?” 
So why wasn’t that the case? 
And…just then, one more die each appeared in front of Sora’s and Shiro’s chests, as if sprouting from thin air. One die was from Izuna, who’d landed on Sora’s Task, for Sora after the seventy-two hours had passed. Likewise, someone must have stepped on one of Shiro’s Tasks and lost a die after running out of time. Coincident with each of their dice increased to nine, their limbs slightly extended accordingly. Sora, approximately 16.2, and Shiro, approximately 9.9, smiled gleefully together and announced: 
“This I can tell you. The one who suggested that Tasks only you can do should be invalid—was me. ?” 
“…………Excuuuse meee?” 
Sora made this admission without a hint of any normal feelings of guilt—just like any devil would. These Task rules were far too convenient for Sora and Shiro specifically. As had been described to Izuna, Sora and Shiro traveling in company could assign problems only they could answer. 
…W-well. 
Considering the survival trek they’d endured, even this handicap seemed quarter-assed, but that aside… 
“Now then, imaaagine all the people!” 
Sora stood up grandly on the carriage: 
“In our wiped-away memory, before the game started! Let’s imaaagine yours truly has just checked the rules and is yelling, ‘The hell, what are we supposed to do if Jibril writes Shift? That’s friggin’ broken!’” 
At Sora’s shriek, together they…imagined it. 
Why was it? Even Sora wondered. 
“And next I’m going ‘Tasks only you can do are out, out, aaand out!’ —Did you manage to picture it?” 
That which should have been part of their lost memory, somehow…coalesced as vividly as if it had just happened. Shiro nodded deeply as if to say That’s my brother, while Steph rolled her eyes. 
“In this way, we can conclude that I secured rules that would be advantageous to Shiro and me alone—however!” 
Elated, Sora boldly continued. 
“Shall we think back once more? This game was started with everyone’s consent. And within it—” 
It was a premise not everyone could possibly agree to. Therefore, some falsehood had to have been hidden among the rules. 
“However you look at it, there’s gotta be something I slipped in… Isn’t that fascinating?” 
If this weren’t the game in which the Old Deus led them to kill each other… 
“Whose idea do you think this game was? Who started it? What were they planning? …Who do you think’s got the initiative?” 
Sora played with his dice and sneered. 
Steph muttered glumly: 
“…But if you die when you run out of dice…isn’t it the same?” 
If they took one another’s dice, sooner or later, someone would be forced down to zero. So, in the end, weren’t they just killing themselves by commanding one another’s deaths? Steph’s gaze pleaded with Sora. 
“True. If we lose, we die. Besides that, if we starve, we die; if those reliable friends of ours back there eat us, we die; even if we eat them and get food poisoning, we die. Pretty much whatever we do, it’s an instant ? Go to heaven, amirite?” 
“…Brother…I think…we’re going…to hell…” 
Steph winced at their devil-may-care response. 
“—But even so, that doesn’t mean we’re killing each other.” 
Steph faltered and stared at Sora’s suddenly composed response. “How so?” Indeed, insofar as the rules worked with a force that transcended will, if they’d put everything of themselves on the table, it meant they’d consented. They could very easily die even without the involvement of the dice or Tasks—but even so. 
“—’Cause come what may, Shiro and I are gonna win! ? ” 
… 
…… 
“…………Heh-heh… Yes, a fine point, sir!” 
It was just that our own scenario, which of course we’d win, didn’t have that as part of the plot. The gall with which Sora spoke was so refreshing, there was no longer a care on Steph’s face. For that natural fraud, Sora—and Shiro, who trusted him unconditionally—there was only one constant. They knew that because of that there was something Steph could trust, too. Just as they knew that was the reason Steph had entrusted her dice to them at the beginning of the game. 
“  ” didn’t lose. And if they were going to win, they were gonna win all-out—that was all they would allow. They would never accept a victory based on the death or sacrifice of someone else. Such an outcome would be worse than defeat. 
“…We’re getting to the sixty-first space, just one before our destination. Keep sharp and check out the sign.” 
Sora turned his face from the embarrassed gazes and pointed beyond the still-running horse. He pretended not to notice Shiro’s and Steph’s knowing, teasing looks. 
“Know what? I’ll tell you who wrote the next Task the moment after I see it.” 
Sora struck a pose, and at that same moment, the still-running carriage once more was enveloped by the usual black mist. From the sixtieth space to the sixty-first, they let the annoying noise pass through their ears as they waited for their vision to return. After the long load time, at their destination at the other side of the space border, what they saw—was indeed writing: an old sign with a Task scrawled on it, standing by its lonesome. Yes, a sign with the words…… 
Smile as you cut off your d*ck and be refreshed in death. 

* * * 
. 
Clop, clop, clop… Rumble, rumble… 
Beside the yawning abyss, under the glorious sky, only the sounds of hooves and wheels were audible. 
“Soraaa… It seems I must be exhausted! I thought I read something that completely contradicted what you just said. ?” 
Behind Steph, whose cheerful, singsong inquiry seemed oblivious to reality, Sora and Shiro, still striking a pose with tepid gazes, looked frozen in time. 
W-w-well, well. Well, well, well, well, let’s be ca-ca-cla-clam—calm. 
Be calm, Sora, virgin, again at risk of dying at eighteen, approximately sixteen point two years of age! Uhhh, there must be something I should be doing first. Yeah…just as I said— 
“ Old faaaaart!! I know you can hear me! You did this, you bastard, didn’t you? The hell are you writing? You finally gone senile? D00d, all you can do is talk dirty even when you’re not opening your mouth, isn’t it, you dog son of a biiitch?!” 
Sora raged to the heavens, instantly calling out the culprit. 
His answer came from the rear of the vast, spiraling game board. The perpetrator’s voice, apparently not far in terms of linear distance, echoed across the board. 
Oh, what good news! Sir, you have indeed landed upon my Task—and what’s this?! 
They couldn’t see him, but the Werebeast seemed to see them. 
My goodness… To think that Queen Shiro and Miss Stephanie accompany you… I suppose it will be a grievous sight for you to witness a gentleman tearing off his member with a smile and subsequently being refreshed in death… But remember!! This is in service of the extermination of that vile King Sora, in service of world peace!! Please consider it collateral damage— 
“We didn’t land here; we’re passing through! What were you planning to do if you landed here, asshole?!” 
“I was ready, sir. But you say you are bypassing— Tsk, what a stubborn pest…” 
…Clop, clop, clop… Rumble, rumble… The carriage continued whisking away the still-frozen Shiro and Steph, who smiled vacantly. Sora, the only one who could still think, pushed through a headache to groan: 
“Hey, old fart. Do you realize that if you did kill me, you’d still be losing out?” 
He’d just explained how an instant-death Task was the worst possible move in terms of victory. But the answer he received was clear and simple: 
Pardon? It seems clear that this game would be quickly resolved if only you, who deceived us and murdered the Holy Shrine Maiden, would perish, sir. Justice would be served, and the villain would be vanquished… In what way might you call this a loss? 
…… 
“Sora. Soraaa. This is, of course, all part of your plan…isn’t it? Isn’t it?” 
Sora responded to the pleading voice silently: This was definitely not part of my plan. The pointlessness of orders to die, the validity of mutual betrayal, etc… All this was predicated—on the assumption that everyone was acting rationally. In any case, whether he was that much of a moron or the death of the Shrine Maiden was that much of a shock—probably both, actually—the ill-humored Ino must have blown every fuse in his brain. He, possessed of such senses that enabled him to see through lies, had heard the same bullshit even Steph had seen through—and taken it seriously! 
“…I—I see. That’s some iron resolve you’ve got. Can’t compete with you there.” 
But this was no problem. Regaining his composure, Sora furtively wiped away his sweat and spoke with equal parts retribution and self-interest: 
“To be prepared to sacrifice even Izuna… You truly are the most loyal subject.” 
……Come again? 
The suspicion in Ino’s voice accounted for what little remained of his sense of reason—his belief that this Task would kill only men. He couldn’t specify a target, yet this would strike down Sora while sparing Izuna. Thus, had he constructed his Task to exploit what should have been the sole province of men… That must have been his intent, anyway. 
It was a massive fail. 
“If a female—say Izuna—lands on this Task, she’ll just have to smile while castrating some random animal before being refreshed in death… Gotta hand it to you. In some ways, that’s even sicker than telling somebody to dismember himself…” 
…This Task didn’t limit its target at all. It was just like the “including tail hairs” bit in Izuna’s Task. 
If you didn’t have your own, you just had to find them elsewhere. 
…… 
There was a long silence that seemed to say Look at this dumbass, followed by a cry that pierced through the noise of the galloping horse. 
S-sir, what shall I do?! Izuna has no crime; please have mercy on her! Please apply the wretched wiles that you daily fritter away on idle trifles! I beg you, sir, for a plan to save Izunaaa—!!! 
The pathetic entreaty, shaken by tears, echoed hopelessly throughout the void. 
“…Very well. Confess every one of these lame-ass Tasks you’ve written.” 
Yes, sirrrr! Yes, sirrrrr! Glblblbl. 
After parsing through Ino’s confession, Sora nodded solemnly. 
“—Hmm, yes, I see. Be at ease, for I have discovered a method to avert Izuna’s death.” 
O-ohhh…!! Sir, there has, after all, been meaning in the mistake of your birth! Ohh, sir, my humble thanks!! 
Shiro seemed to have reached the same conclusion as Sora, because she pulled a bag from their luggage onto her head and nodded along with him— 
“Like hell I’m gonna tell youuu!!!! Eat shit and die!!!!” 
“…Old fart…count your sins…besides being born…!” 
Gedou Baby and Kam*n Rider—the two brandished their middle fingers by way of answer. 
. 
The carriage proceeded to the tune of unintelligible castigation in the background. 
“Hey, you two! Y-you’re not going to tell him?! What if someone—?” 
“…He tried, to get Brother…to tear off Brother’s… That old fart, deserves to die, a million deaths…” 
Steph frowned at Shiro’s 40-percent-serious, oozing intent to kill, but Sora, having elicited all the Tasks of one person, carved the following on the carriage in Immanity script: 
That was a lie to get him to tell me his Tasks. No one’s gonna die from them. 
All of Ino’s Tasks were the same: just plain subject, object, verb. They failed without exception to spell out their targets and time frames. They lacked force, like a contract that doesn’t spell out who, what, where, when, and how. You could just wait seventy-two hours and still easily fulfill the Task, ending with Ino’s die being stripped. This dumbass was a high-ranking official for the Eastern Union? …He should be fired. 
W-well then, let me make you an offer! I shall introduce you to a number of attractive morrrsels! 
Even as this proposal rang out, Sora laughed it off. 
“……B—B-B-Brother, wh-wh—what’s wrong…?” 
“Sora, a-are you all right?! Did you hit your head when you fell?!” 
Shiro and Steph gasped with voices trembling as if they’d seen a ghost. But Sora exhaled with a calm smile and shook his head gracefully. 
“Please, damsels, be at ease. Young men are animals that grow from one day to the next!” 
That’s right—not too long ago I’d have chomped down on this bait instantly. But I’ve annexed the Eastern Union! I’ve met animal girls like the light of heaven and been incapacitated by their fluffiness! Sora, eighteen, still on his path—but be that as it may! He was no longer the man to be caught by cheap bait! 
There is an association that admires you, sir, and calls itself the I Wanna Be Glomped by King Sora Club, constantly troubling the Eastern Union with cryptic official stateme? 
“Oh, my friend, why are you so distant? Aren’t we two who have sworn to stick together through thick and thin since just now?!!” 
…This kind of expensive bait, however, was a different story. 
Sora chomped on it instantly, pulling a 180 so fast as to kick up a gust of wind. Basking in the disgusted—or rather, relieved—looks of Shiro and Steph, he shouted: 
“I shall provide you with whatever you need from my humble store of knowledge, so come, come, come, tell me what you know, my dear friend—!!” 
His histrionics were merely met with… 
……silence. Only silence—wait, no. The darkness and disc spinning returned, now a tradition by the sixty-first time around. The carriage, still charging ahead all this time, must have at last traversed the sixty-first space and reached the edge. 
“Loading in the middle of a cutscene?! The hell is this shit going for, the Fail of the Year Award?!!” 
The ill-timed loading was met by a furious howl from Sora and, subsequently, a sarcastic query from Steph. 
“…Never mind that. Have you forgotten that the next space holds our Task?” 
“How many times must I say it, peasant! Did I not just tell you I don’t give a shit about that sort of thing?!” 
“I just saw you fail to predict the last one would tell you to die. Do you remember that?!” 
A trifle, a jest. Sora sneered. One moron was enough comic relief, and he’d already determined that all of that moron’s Tasks were harmless. Whatever this Task might hold, the worst outcome would be that they’d be held back for seventy-two hours—in which case, he’d have plenty of time to confirm the details of this intriguing organization known as the I Wanna Be Glomped by King Sora Club—! Now flying high, Sora and his two passengers in the carriage advanced to the spot on the board dictated by the pips of their dice. 
As the sixty-second space finished loading—correction: once they were successfully transported and their vision returned— 
…… 
…………Uhhh, yeah. 
“Ah-ha, ah-ha-haaa…! Graaamps? Could you tell me about these girls who want—?” 
“…Brother…Brother…! Face…reality—!” 
Reality. Well, in that case… Sora smiled with a troubled expression. Shiro, the genius little sister of whom he was so proud, occasionally said strange things that defied the understanding of dullards such as himself. It was his duty as her brother to try to understand, though it was often very difficult… And yet. 
They were on a carriage. They were supposed to have been. Yet, suddenly and without warning, they had been tossed high, high in the open sky, with nothing on hand to save them. They were now literally toppling straight down into a bubbling lava chamber, like those free-fall events that were all the rage these days. Was Shiro actually saying this completely unrealistic scenario was real? 
…Ha-ha-ha, n-n-n-no w-w-wa-waaa-waaayyy— 
Sora’s thoughts spun idle as the announcement of the Task assailed his ears. 
—The party assigned the Task shall immediately be transported into the open sky, fall into a lava pit below, and burn. 
“Oh, I see! ? Sora? Soraaa? It appears I’m not so stupid after allll!” 
The same voice continued beside him. 
“All they must do is make it so you die if you can’t fulfill it—like this. ?” 
Steph smiled with lifeless eyes, strolling in midair alongside Sora, who smiled back. 
“Ha-ha-ha! You sure are stupid. It doesn’t change the fact that you can only recover one of the dice. By the way, Shiro, hear out your brother’s brilliant assessment… We’re gonna die, aren’t we?!” 
“…Welcome back, Brother… But soon, it’ll be…bye-bye…” 
They say that when facing death, people see their lives flash before their eyes. It’s a phenomenon in which your brain exceeds its limits, becoming abnormally active to search through all your memories and knowledge in a desperate attempt to find a way out of a crisis—so they say. Thus, it’s almost as if time stops. 
Sora’s accelerating brain sprinted through its vast store of memories: 
Animal-eared girls grabbing him, squealing, We wanna be glomped by Sora! The old fart, flexing a ripple through his beefy pecs. Sora himself, glomped by a shoving throng of animal-eared babes, while chuckling, Now, now, get along, you guys. The old fart, prostrating himself in a uniform fairly bursting at the seams from his muscles, enveloped in a glowing aura. The old fart, making the animal-eared girls massage his legs as he takes a drag from a cigarette. A swaying crimson cloth. A loincloth fluttering in the wind… The red—old— 
Fuuuuuuuck! How’m I supposed to die with this flashing in front of me, you damn old fart? Aaaaaah! 
Between the fake memories and the ones he wanted to erase, what was his brain trying to escape?! Amidst the raging waves of his chaotic flashback… 
“…Brother…” 
…It was as if a single drop of water had fallen. The voice was soft, but the hand in his was steady. The eyes looking into his…seemed to deny death. 
Sora’s gaze assured her I won’t let that happen, to which Shiro replied: 
“…Calm down, okay…?” 
Time still static, Sora cleared his billowing thoughts. The heat radiating off the lava and crawling over his skin as it prepared to scorch him, he shouted instinctively. 
You’re in my way—GTFO! Sora commanded. 
It was his answer to the warmth of the hand in his, the light of the eyes staring into his, revealing in an moment the implication of the unnaturally slow yet immiment cessation of life—the lava— 
Bitch, you’re in my way! 
Sora ground his teeth as if to shatter them and, in an instant, reached a conclusion. 
Generally speaking, it should have been possible to deduce who’d assigned the Task through the process of elimination, so what he should have done was list and verify the possible motives and solutions to suss out his options—but with less than a few seconds left before they were fried, the one capable of doing so in the time allotted was not Shiro, not Sora. So instead, Sora solved the problem his own way. In other words, he stared into the onrushing, boiling, bubbling lava…and recognized a certain malice in it— 
“?You got some nerrrve, asshole! You’d better watch it!” 
It was the boy who had guided them without a single lie, exploited them, and eventually plotted to devour them. The one whose face hid pure hatred plastered deep beneath his gloomy smile—the Dhampir. 
Sora assumed it was Plum’s smirk, leaving the proof of his hunch for later. 
“Give me your panties.” 
“?What?” 
He spun around to Steph with a serious expression and yelled: 
“Your panties, d00d, your panties!! Knickers, shorts, scanties!! Your panties—linen zero point eight millimeters thick with frills, a red ribbon, and a little natural pink dye. Those are your panties, right?!” 
Baring his canines at Steph, he wasn’t asking. Just verifying. 
Having mashed the Remember command to sear the image deep into his mind, he knew it vividly—that scene. That moment. When Shiro had pulled down Steph’s panties. He knew how they stretched, the shape of the wrinkles, the seams, even the thread—he couldn’t be wrong!! 
“You sexually harass me to the very end… It’s quite lovely how you remain true to yourself even in the very face of death—” 
“…Brother… You’re a virgin… How do you know, enough to…tell—?” 
As they felt the heat of the seething lava singeing their skin, flitting between resignation and shock, Sora said to himself: 
It’s because I’m a virgin . 
“Just do it—shut up and give me those highly flammable panties, biiiiiiiitch!!!” 
Before Steph could even respond to Sora’s ghastly howl— 
“Uhaaaaaaah?!” 
Shiro, grasping her brother’s intent, stuck her hands under Steph’s skirt and tore off her panties. The added momentum sent Steph into a tailspin, but time was too short for Shiro to care. She wrapped some jerky from her backpack in Steph’s panties and, with all her might—flung it into the lava rushing up at them. 
As this scene unfolded in an odd slow motion, Sora’s reason, finally catching up with his intuition, lined up the evidence for his assumptions. 
Why had they been forced to commandeer Steph’s panties? 
Because they needed something that would burn before they impacted. This Task transported the party into the air and necessitated that they plummet, but it didn’t spell out what had to burn—! 
As soon as Steph’s panties hit the lava—no, even sooner—the thin flax fiber was caught in the thousand-degree heat of the lava’s smoldering surface. Poof! And the instant a tiny flame ignited on Steph’s (meat-stuffed) panties— 
—The Task is deemed fulfilled. 
In concert with this resounding voice, the lava was replaced by a lake into which the trio splashed down. As he sank into the water, Sora grinned savagely at the final piece of evidence, the proof of Plum’s intent. 
These Task rules, contrary to how they looked on paper, were very limiting. Specifications only you could fulfill were invalid, but if you were going to design your Task to take others’ dice and keep your own—if you intended to win—you could only assign things that would delay your opponents for seventy-two hours. But what if you weren’t trying to win? There were only two reasons someone would assign a Task anyone could fulfill instantaneously. One was if they blew it (like Ino), and the other— 
“I can’t wait seventy-two hourrrs; please take my dice nooow”…is what I guess he’d say? 
Yeah. Sora smirked, imagining Plum’s face (If you don’t do it, I shall diiie), followed by a heart symbol, as he scrawled out his Task with that miserable, irritating smile of his. 
He was the only one. Plum was the only one for whom it was more convenient to have his dice taken—… 
“—Guh! Hff… Hff… W-we’re safe…right?!” 
Steph’s voice was scarcely audible as she surfaced, poking her face out of the water. Sora grinned and answered to himself: 
 NO. 
“Bubrbrbrbubebebubrbububrbubebebrbugubr?!!” 
The bubbles frantically frothing the lake’s surface translate as follows: 
D-don’t worry about meee! Just save my little sister… Save Shiro, pleaaase!! 
…I want…to stay, by your side…to the end…Bro…ther— 
While the best at gaming, these two were the worst at everything else. Their lives, the veritable embodiment of fragility, were more delicate than traditional Japanese paper. And yet they sank smoothly like literal stones to the bottom of the lake. 
 
“—Shiro. I promise you…I won’t…run…from reality…anymore.” 
“…Yeah… Yeah…! Brother, I agree… I won’t, run, anymore…” 
Thanks to Steph’s valiant efforts, the sinking siblings had been narrowly salvaged. Embracing, their cheeks wet with tears, they swore solemnly that they would face reality together. 
They would learn to swim. 
“Wellll, Sora! What sort of braggadocio are you going to trot out now to explain away your error?” 
Drenched and panting, Steph rose shouting, despite abject exhaustion. She’d hauled up not only the drowning Sora and Shiro, but their luggage, which had settled at the bottom of the lake. The astonishing lung capacity and inexhaustible energy reserves that enabled her to scream after all that demanded respect. 
If only respect could replenish one’s energy… 
“Ah, just this… Exactly as I planned—” 
“You’re wheezing and sputtering up water like a fountain, shivering with your sister, and sobbing, ‘Exactly as I planned’?! Was your plan to turn yourself into an artificial reef to decorate the bottom of the lake?! You certainly love nature, don’t you?!” 
…Apparently serious this time, Steph’s rebuke was several times keener than usual, but Sora grinned and spewed water from his upturned face, jeering. 
“Why would we build a reef in a freshwater lake…? If we were trying to conserve nature, we’d build it in the—” 
“That. Is. Not. My. Point. Sir!! Just how did you ‘plan’ this atrocity?!” 
Wham! Steph thrust her finger at Sora, who considered the aforementioned atrocity. 
He lay supine, Shiro on top of him, as Steph wailed. Though everything had sunk in the lake, their luggage—their backpacks—had been saved by Steph. The contents were likely more or less okay. The backpacks were waxed in anticipation of such events. Moreover, Sora’s and Shiro’s phones and tablet were all water-resistant for use in the tub. And now, having fulfilled the Task, each had an additional die floating before their chest. 
This was what Steph called an “atrocity.” So where was the problem—? 
“Aren’t we killing each other…? How can you talk about this going ‘exactly as planned’…?” 
Steph’s annoyed and reproachful tone made Sora realize he was a bit slow on the uptake. He’d said they weren’t killing each other, yet both Ino and Plum had nearly done them in. That was surely the “atrocity” to which she was referring. 
“…Hmm, I don’t know how to explain how I talk. You do it with your mouth…” 
Sora got to his feet muttering and faced Steph’s glare with his usual nonchalance. 
“Maybe I’ll cough up water, maybe fish, but I’ll still talk just the same—it went exactly as planned.” 
“…………” 
Steph glared at Sora stone-faced, but he just continued casually, wringing out his shirt. 
“The premise that we all agreed to start this game…doesn’t make sense.” 
Yes, it was an unsound premise. For them to trust one another, not to betray one another, killing each other, bargaining with the Shrine Maiden’s life. There were so many conditions it was implausible they could agree on—and one more. Sora put his wrung-out shirt back on and gave a thin smile. 
“A game with Old Deus…Shiro and I would be in on that without question. Jibril would obey our—I guess she’d play out of curiosity. If the Shrine Maiden was in, then Ino and Izuna would be, too. And you, Steph…you might just, you know, get dragged into it.” 
“—And? What about Plum?” 
…Steph could hardly get words out. The premise was implausible—but the game could only have been initiated by agreement under plausible premises. Even so, Plum had no reason, no motive, no duty to join. 
“The one whose survival is most questionable in this game isn’t us—it’s Plum. Look around. It’s an open-sky environment with plains as far as the eye can see. The gameplay extended, and this is someone for whom exposure to sunlight is lethal. There’s no blood—heck, he doesn’t even have access to bodily fluids.” 
With virtually no chance of finishing, there was no reason for Plum to join. 
“What is he after? What condition would convince him to play? It’s simple, right, Shiro?” 
They’d each wrung out and dried their clothes as best they could. Sora pointed to Plum’s dice by their chests, of which they had each gained one thanks to the Task anyone could fulfill. Shiro, seemingly finally caught up with her brother’s reasoning, happily answered. 
“…Plum…wants to win…without finishing…” 
Playing with the dice they’d taken—no, that Plum had given them—Immanity’s greatest gamers, “  ”, boldly and brashly declared through thin smiles… 
If you’ve forgotten, we’ll tell you as many times as it takes. 
“  ” doesn’t lose. 
Everything was precisely as predicted, exactly as planned. What they did was win, as a matter of destiny. 
“……Yes. Hee-hee, yes, that’s right, isn’t it?! In that case—” 
Steph mumbled, her expression no longer troubled. She beamed with relief as if having suddenly remembered something she’d forgotten, then she pointed at Sora and Shiro—no, behind them, beyond them. 
“…I would love to hear what’s next—including what I should do for underwear, while you’re at it. Please elucidate your plan, O wise king and queen, pride of Elkia… Describe how the plot will unfold so my heart does not break. ?” 
She remained dead behind the eyes as she smiled hollowly, but she had also drawn the siblings’ attention to something. The scenery had been temporarily changed by the Task, and on top of that, they’d been transported into the air. Now the horse they’d been using, along with the carriage, must have either run off or disappeared, for they were nowhere to be seen. Here they were in a world without roads, with no choice but to walk as the horizon still fanned out afar. Posed frozen and wordless, both Sora’s and Shiro’s cheeks glistened…with a single, silent tear. 
WTF. This was the first move. They’d gone through all that—felt themselves at death’s doorstep—just to stand on the sixty-second space. They’d have to roll the dice many more times and endure much more to reach their goal 289 spaces ahead. 
This was one-sixth of the way…still the opening, for God’s sake…? To be honest, Sora cursed the Sora in his absent memory who’d agreed to these rules. Couldn’t he have done any better? The mode of transport, at least—?! 
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!! Come. Gimme your dice again, and we shall go forth as one!!” 
Sora howled so as to lift his spirits, which were at their breaking point. They would travel in company just as they had in the first move. Leaving Shiro and Steph each one die, Sora gathered the rest. 
04: 
T RAVEL IN COMPANY must first be declared, whereupon the company may advance according to the roll of one representative. 
05: 
A company of more than two shall, of the dice used, lose a number of dice equal to the NUMBER OF MEMBERS OF THE COMPANY MULTIPLIED BY THE NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS IN IT . 

Traveling in company required they use six dice in one move, but there was no helping that. The trade-off was the dice they could roll increased, allowing them to go farther and land on fewer Tasks. As Sora held out his hand, Steph took eight of the dice floating by her chest and handed over— 
…Well, she intended to hand them over, but something came over her. She lowered her face. 
“…It may be late to ask…but why are you bringing me?” 
 Say…what? 
“S-sorry… Frankly, I underestimated you… We’ve never even seen this game before, and you want us to go for it with the weakest characters alone and no leveling—? Daaamn! You are a professional masochist!” 
“…Brother, the uploader, always…just makes an ass of himself, in those videos…” 
“Y-your meaning is quite lost on me! I—I mean…” 
Steph, having been forced to accompany them by what amounted to a threat in the first move, now frowned doubtfully. 
“Considering the ‘company’ rules…you’d be much better off leaving me, wouldn’t you…?” 
Why had they forced her to accompany them? Sora and Shiro looked at each other as she mumbled uncomfortably, apparently finally coming to a realization. 
Sure is late to ask… They smiled at each other in mutual pity of the girl. At the beginning, they’d swiped nine dice from Steph that they’d used to threaten her. If they went in company, though, they’d each expend two dice for every move for a total of six. On top of that, if they failed to fulfill a Task, they each lost another. In the worst case, they could be wiped out in one go. Even if they were able to travel farther with more dice, they’d use up more; it was a net loss. Whereas— 
“If you two went alone…you’d only have to use two dice to move, wouldn’t you?” 
Indeed, the rules said “a company of more than two” would use up more dice. More than two—more than. Not “two or more.” That didn’t include two. If it was just Sora and Shiro, they’d only have to spend one die each, two total. Adding just one more person instantly tripled their consumption. 
“So Shiro and I have to travel together, but there’s no point in anyone else using these rules. And Shiro and me aside, having one more person in our company immediately weighs on us. It’s an impediment to winning, so we should go without you—is that what you’re saying?” 
“Uh, yes…” 
Steph, flustered, heard the voice of the one who’d taken nine dice from Shiro and eight from her to hold twenty-seven. 
“Well, hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong… Pity, huh?” 
It was a sharp baritone booming with laughter—the voice of a man in his late forties. 
“We can rest assured that the one who added these ‘company’ rules—was me. Which means…” 
The “company” rules were totally meaningless for everyone except Sora and Shiro. Given that there was a traitor, there was no advantage for two to travel together, and traveling with more than two was just shooting yourself in the foot… There was no reason for anyone to use these rules. But if these rules (which Sora must have added because they were essential for Shiro and himself) were so convenient as to keep the two of them together without penalty, they must have been somehow convenient in this regard, too, huh, god? 
“The way I see it, we have to travel in company to win—so declare it.” 
He looked toward the so-called finish—far beyond the vast board—and chortled mockingly as if trolling the Old Deus who waited there. Having demonstrated (multiple times already) that a mere human could take down a god, his words, face, and voice, as if aged by years to come, made Shiro and Steph blush unconsciously. As he’d urged them, they took Sora’s hands and declared: 
Travel in company. 
As these words echoed, Sora plucked the dice of life from his chest and flicked them into the open space. They rolled over the ground, and once the numbers were displayed, the three of them were able to move forward accordingly, at the cost of their lives—20 percent. Abandoning the time they’d existed—their ages, their lives—to advance, what awaited them at their destination? Sora and Shiro sneered. Steph quaked. Together, they looked ahead to wherever their lives had rolled them… 
 
Thirty minutes passed looking. 
“I did ask this on the first move, as well…but what are you doing?” 
“I think I answered you on the first move, too… This is a ritual!” 
“…Random number analysis…” 
The tension had long since departed. Steph, age 1.8, sat holding her knees before putting her question to and immediately shot down by Sora and Shiro. It was a strange scene: two little girls and a shirtless virgin loser shut-in gamer around age fifty doing a handstand. One brush with the police would be enough to get him arrested and indicted on the stench of criminality and circumstantial evidence alone. Rest assured, he would be found guilty. 
“…Brother, for the next one…torch, crouch, move left, and right…then throw it.” 
“Ah, um…I would appreciate it if you could explain in a little more detail, you know.” 
Though for a moment he had looked like quite the slick older gentleman, when you looked at him now, it reeked of sad. It was just Sora. 
“Only I would prescribe those Task disabling and travel in company rules. I told you, I must’ve set them up—” 
And just as he had thirty minutes earlier, Sora threw a lone die. 
02: 
The die-bearer may advance a number of spaces equal to the result of a roll of all the dice he beareth. 
03: 
The result of the roll of the dice shall be determined randomly, whereafter ONE of the dice used shall be lost. 

“It was probably us who specified these dice rules, too.” 
“…Brother, for the next one…take a step, back…and throw, from…the bridge position.” 
As Shiro instructed, her brother got in the bridge position and launched another die, clearly uncomfortable but answering Steph’s questions nontheless. Not with words but with action. Still in the bridge, he rolled the twenty dice he’d been walking around with… 
…and they all came up sixes. 
“With a little technique, anyone can manipulate a roll…at least, this, much!” 
…Like hell they could! Shiro felt as though she’d heard Steph’s inner voice, but in fact, anyone could do it. Look at Izuna’s and Ino’s preternatural senses or Jibril and Plum’s magic. It was unclear who’d first said it should be prohibited, but the older brother continued. 
“But if we prohibit roll manipulation and trust that Old Deus with some fuzzy bullshit like ‘randomness,’ she could very well rig the dice so no one could finish. That’s a trick you can’t prove; we’d be doomed. You think I’d overlook that?” 
“…Brother, for the next one…press yourself down…on the ground…” 
As instructed, Sora dug his face into the ground and launched another die. 
“Given that, someone must have specified a random number generator.” 
He turned his gaze to Shiro to emphasize: 
“—Someone here.” 
Still staring at the number that dizzyingly appeared and disappeared on the rolled die, Shiro answered with a smug expression and a V for victory. If it were prohibited even for the Old Deus to manipulate the roll, then they would have to specify a pseudorandom number sequence—a randomization function. If memory loss were a condition to start, this would ensure that no one could game the randomization. 
“But! If Shiro delineated it, she definitely incorporated some sort of condition!” 
“…I made it so…if we figure out the seed…we can make the random numbers…the ones we want…” 
Here’s the proof this was our doing. The older brother smiled devilishly. 
“You have to roll all your dice, but it doesn’t say you have to roll them all at the same time, does it?” 
In which case, if they rolled them one at a time while changing the conditions, they could figure it out. 
“Well, it’s not news to me…but you are disgustingly reliable frauds. Both of you.” 
“…All right, Brother… Now, take off…your pants, and take a step, back…” 
“—Shiro, I gotta ask: Would you really seed an RNG based on whether or not I was wearing clothes?” 
Shiro answered her brother’s sarcastic quip internally—Of course not. Shiro would have used the routine from Romanc*ng SaGa 3 with its marked quirks. In which case, the seeds would have been the number of steps and elapsed time, which she could remember perfectly. But— 
“…Sure… That’s how I…roll…” 
“What are you saying…? What am I supposed to do if I have to get buck naked for the sake of the numbers?!” 
“…? Get, buck, naked…” 
“A middle-aged man in his birthday suit with two little girls? Isn’t that totally asking for the cops?!” 
…It’s probably already too late, Shiro thought. Steph seemed to have given up and was gazing at the blue sky, whistling through some grass she’d picked, the flat sound reverberating alone.