CHAPTER 4
WHYDUNIT
…The wind continued blowing across the parched wasteland. The sand roiled up by the dry breeze caressed two small shadows that did not flinch, but merely outstretched their limbs weakly like corpses.
Twitch. The ground trembled slightly, and the corpses—pardon, shadows—quivered, thinking There’s our prey. Silently, breathlessly, one shadow signaled the other to move in. Like flowing mud, like writhing earth, they silently crept toward their quarry. But having the sharp ears of a weak beast, it retreated upon hearing their movement. Flight was a wise choice for a weak beast. Indeed, when faced with an unknown adversary, it was wiser to run away than attack. Little did the prey know, though, that this common wisdom led to its death.
Had it been foolish enough to confront its unknown adversary instead of making the wiser choice to turn tail, it could have easily survived. It assumed the two shadows—and anything weaker—expected it to bolt, clear proof the creature was, in fact, powerful.
Weaklings didn’t flee…because they lacked the strength even for that. Weaklings instead planted a multitude of savvy tricks before making the foolish choice to attack.
As the screech of their prey resounded through the parched air, the shadows stopped creeping along like mud, broke into a run, and sneered: You are wise, powerful beast. And that is why your intentions—the choices you will make, the path you will walk—are so transparent to us. Before your next wise step, we have placed a single trap. That will be enough…
…to send you spiraling to your doom—!!
As the wooden trap bit into the leg of their prey, the weak beasts rushed it with nonexistent fangs—
…Over the parched wasteland still echoed the roaring of the wind and of two beasts who had challenged the laws of nature that claimed the strong ate the weak. They had won the right to live through this day; it was an affirmation of their existence. Their souls thundered in celebration of being the strongest beasts among all the weak ones. Indeed, they were primitive humans who had risked only the strength of their wits to survive—!!
“…S-Soraaa…Shirooo! A-are you all right?”
Civilization (also known as Steph) called out the names of the pair who were supposed to be modern humans.
“? Growl?”
“……Screech?”
They cocked their heads and offered her their butchered prey—fawn meat.
“I—I certainly appreciate the gesture…but could you please first recall the Immanity tongue? And put on some clothes…”
Steph took a step back and groaned in supplication.
……
It had been twenty-seven days since the start of the game. Sora, Shiro, and Steph were now on the 165th space, a nameless, arid wasteland resting on the eastern edge of the Elkia territory. Greeting the three who had exhausted both their food and endurance was Izuna’s adorable Task:
—Catch the one little ant that smells like fish without hurting him, bitches, please.
It was telling them to catch a specific ant. They had no way of even telling what an ant smelled like, so they couldn’t fulfill it. Consequently, they were stuck in a wasteland for seventy-two hours with no food. Basically, this was Izuna’s cutesy way of telling them to die.
Sora had pulled out the tablet and, using the survival guide he’d hoped would never come in handy, began hunting. They’d tried to capture at least the three days’ worth of food and, if possible, enough to get to the next space…but had failed utterly.
…Which was no surprise. What kind of wild animals would let themselves be caught by a couple of totally amateur shut-in gamers with cursory hunting knowledge? Plus, they had only sixteen dice. No matter how they were distributed, their company could only consist of one adult and two little brats. But as the failure, exhaustion, and hunger mounted, Sora, with a parched smile, casually observed…
“Chasing and being chased…is like a game.”
The siblings looked at each other as if to say, What are you smiling about, losing your ass off in a game? They nodded silently and, with eyes glinting eerily, quickly sprang into action. They’d perfected traps in the blink of an eye, laid strategies, and in the end, reduced their clothing to a minimum after realizing their rustling was a hindrance. Spears in hand, they’d dressed themselves in strips cut from their backpacks. It had taken only two days to turn feral.
……
“A-anyway, it seems we’ve secured enough food for a while, haven’t we? Would you please come back already?!”
Civilization’s call seemed to reach Sora, who stopped tearing into his meat and looked up vacantly…
“?Oh, okay. I guess…we’ve beaten the game, huh?”
…uttering the words to awaken from his trance.
“Whoaaa, my younger sister! What is a young—too-young—girl like you doing dressed like that?!”
“…Huh? …Uh…no, I mean—y-you…w-were the one…who made, these…!”
Like that pair (who shall go unnamed) who ate of the fruit of Eden, the siblings returned to civilization and, suddenly aware of their shame, shrieked at the state in which they found themselves: nearly naked but for a flimsy excuse for cover.
“…I started a fire. Hurry up and change—or rather, scrub yourselves off first.”
Steph flung some wet cloth to the two ex-feral children. Sora, caked in dirt, had another realization: The fruit of Eden, from the tree of knowledge…was food. It was when food and clothing were plentiful that they knew shame. How profound. Sora and Shiro both reached for the garments that would reacquaint them with modesty…
“Um… I am quite grateful that you have provided us with food…”
Watching the fire, Steph softly sighed. The smoke from the primitive smoking device Shiro had devised and Sora had built by digging a hole in the ground got in her eyes. Normally, Steph was in charge of food, but she had been completely outdone. Sora expertly carved and parceled out the prey they’d caught. Selecting the cuts that would keep best, Shiro deftly slid them into the smoker.
“…but don’t you have human dignity, or pride, or something?”
Holding a skewer of scorpion, Steph mindlessly voiced her thoughts. Sora seemed to have forgotten what he’d said when Izuna had slain the monster. Something about how, as human beings, they should blah, blah, blah. Now it was if you can eat it, then eat it. Heh! He gestured with a smile.
“We shall slurp mud and devour sand!! We shall retract every last thing we’ve said, bathe ourselves in shame, and throw away our pride!! And yet, holding on to the things most dear to us, we shall survive… That and that alone constitutes the pride, the dignity that as a human one must uphold!!”
He was taking pride in throwing pride away.
“Everything else—we’ll sell if we can sell, we’ll eat if we can eat—we’ll throw away if it gets in our way.”
…
……A momentary silence fell after Sora’s proclamation as he chomped into his scorpion.
“…Brother, you win at life…even though, you’re a loser…”
“…I was impressed for a moment there, but really, you just said something unforgivably preposterous, didn’t you…?”
Sora bathed in Shiro and Steph’s ardent and icy gazes.
He’d coolly declared that anything he did evoked no shame. Steph suddenly spoke up.
“…‘Unforgivably preposterous,’ that reminds me of something… Sora.”
Was that preface really necessary? wondered Sora, but he valiantly decided to let it slide.
“What?”
Ignoring his hammily affected tears, Steph regarded her skewer uneasily.
“…Mr. Ino’s really not dead, right?”
We’ll betray each other, but we won’t kill each other. Steph had at one point found comfort in this aphorism of his.
“Hmm? Sure. He’s alive. For now.”
…But yes, there was still a yet at the end, which made Steph’s face cloud ever darker. Meanwhile, Sora and Shiro giddily chatted as they smoked their meat.
“Don’t let it get to you. If our plans go awry—”
“…We’re all…gonna die anyway…”
“…Indeed, that’s true, isn’t it? If we don’t make it to the goal, everyone but the leader is going to die, aren’t they?”
16:
If the game is IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTINUE , the Old Deus hath the right to collect all possessed by all participants except the foremost.
If the game reached an impasse, everyone but the leader would die regardless. Apparently recalling this rule, Steph renewed her sense of determination to finish the game. As she braced herself and bit into the gross skewer, Sora and Shiro cheered her on.
“Exactly! Everyone but the leader, the Old Deus, is gonna die, so we’ve gotta give it our best!!”
“…This is, no time, to be picky…! …Eat it.”
“Wha—?”
“Wha—?!”
“…? Wha…?”
Steph froze in place. Sora cocked his head to the side. Shiro tried joining their chorus for the heck of it.
“H-huuuhh?! Wha—? Why do you say but the leader—?”
“What? ’Cause that’s what the Old Deus said at the very beginning. ‘I shall wait at the end,’ just like that!”
“…The Old Deus is, also…a participant… The leader…is always the Old Deus…munch, munch.”
Like a gentle breeze, Sora and Shiro’s response was swift. Her assumptions overturned, Steph erupted, but they just eyed her strangely.
“If no one makes it, screw who’s in the lead—we’re all done for. But who cares about that? It doesn’t change what we’re gonna do. We’ve got our plan, and that rule’s got nothing to do with us.”
“Wh-what do you mean?! It’s the whole reason everyone’s fighting to—”
“For one person not to die. I tell you, the two of us would sure as hell never agree to a rule like that.”
“…………!”
As Sora momentarily narrowed his gaze seriously, Steph took a breath.
“If anyone finishes, no one dies. That’s what we’d all have agreed to…what we all had to agree to.”
Because…
“Didn’t I tell you we’d have to betray each other to win? Look at Pluuum, who’s in it despite having no reason to play or any way to win. He set things up so he’d win without finishing. Look at the Shrine Maiden, who, just like Ino said, has orchestrated things to steal our win—but whose life right now is in the Old Deus’s hands. Look at everyone… That’s what we had to agree to in order to betray each other!”
“……”
Sora’s easygoing laugh was met only by a silent plea of incomprehension from Steph.
“All right, this is all you really need to know.”
Not asking if she understood, Sora lightheartedly summed it up.
“Everybody, everyone, eeevery last one of us set it up so they’d win…”
In this game, if anyone made it, no one died. But if only one could make it to the goal…
…then, given this crowd, it was inevitable that they’d all think: Then the one who’s gonna win is me, right?
“So the only question is—whose scenario is playing out now?”
“…Brother…we’re done, in two hours…”
“Whoaaa, man, hold on! We haven’t even smoked all this meat! Sh-Shiro, you pack, all right?!”
Having been informed by Shiro, phone in hand, that Izuna’s Task would bind them for only two more hours, Sora panicked and fanned the flame under the smoker faster.
As they considered how best to distribute the dice after the three of them each lost one from failing the Task—
“Th-then what about the Old Deus…?”
—Steph interrupted their hustle.
“If everyone set something up…then wouldn’t the Old Deus do the same?!”
So couldn’t she arrange things so no one could finish? was the implication. Ignoring Steph’s shrill (though uncharacteristically insightful) cry, Sora kept fanning the flame and asked:
“Hey… For starters, ever wonder what an Old Deus is?”
Steph stared blankly at this sudden question. Sora slowly raised his gaze to the spiraling land in the sky, divvied into spaces—the too-majestic board.
“…‘A concept that has gained an identity’…itself…”
“Y-yes…that’s what I hear, too…not that I can make heads or tails of it.”
Yes, that was what was written in a book of Jibril’s that Shiro had read. By a funny coincidence, neither Sora nor Steph had the slightest idea what it meant, and they clutched their heads.
It was a question Sora had roughly swallowed with the thought, Here we go again, more unfathomable crazy shit. These transcendent forces didn’t form a group or have an agent plenipotentiary…which meant there was no way to take their Race Piece.
It wasn’t a big leap to think that, in this world, the players were the gods and all others were equally just their pieces. In that case… Sora smirked. …In this mysterious game, the biggest mystery was…
“…Why’s some pwn-storm like that doing playing pawns like us?”
Why is this game even happening? Alerted to this improbably fundamental quandry, Steph froze.
The Third of the Ten Covenants: Games shall be played for wagers that each agrees are of equal value. In this game, if anyone made it to the goal, none of them would have to die, while everything belonging to the Old Deus would be theirs. What would some god think they had that was of equal value to everything she possessed?
“Especially when it’s a game she could lose, which she knows that perfectly well…you know?”
“…Sh-she what?”
The Old Deus had no setup for certain victory. Steph was puzzled by this implication, but Sora just smiled.
After all, in this game, they couldn’t kill each other with dice or profit from killing each other with Tasks. They could all pursue their own gain and still very well win without dying when someone finished. What was more, most of the rules had been their idea. It was already a mystery why the Old Deus would participate in the first place, but in this particular game—
There were some rules that could only have been established by the independent will of the Old Deus: three of them. If these three rules constituted the Old Deus’s setup and, thus, her will…
“All right, question time! About that rule where only the leader is saved!”
Sora suddenly shouted excitedly.
“That rule none of us would agree to and doesn’t even matter because the leader is always the Old Deus! That rule that doesn’t even matter to the Old Deus regardless of who wins or loses! All that taken into account: Who does it matter to, I wonder?”
True, if no one finished, the Old Deus would take all. If anyone finished, the one who finished would take all. As such, this rule served no purpose for anyone… So why was it there—?
“Here’s a biiig hint! What vanished along with the Old Deus at the start of the game?”
As Steph struggled to remember that event already a month past, Sora thought: I’m somehow relieved—because I don’t expect any sort of answer from Steph!
“…Shrine Maiden’s…body…vanished…with her…”
“Ding-ding-ding, that’s right!! As your prize, you get a huuug!!”
Sora lifted Shiro up—her smoked meat in hand—danced, and shouted, ignoring Steph, who seemed upset she couldn’t get the answer right or something.
“Suppose she didn’t vanish…but was taken somewhere with the Old Deus…”
That would give meaning to that meaningless rule.
“Then the Shrine Maiden would be with the Old Deus on the final space, so no matter who wins—even if they lose—she gets saved…by this rule that only the Old Deus could have inserted of her own volition.”
Yes. Only the Old Deus, having collected the Shrine Maiden’s life before the game, could do as she liked with it, but in setting this rule, what she’d actually done—
—was save the Shrine Maiden’s life even if she herself lost. And as for the remaining two rules…if you considered their intent… Sora chuckled at his thoughts. He put down Shiro and lifted the freshly packed luggage onto his back.
“…What is a god? In our old world, we never met one, so all we know are rumors.”
For instance: A comedian who starts a bit with Don’t eat my fruit of knowledge, okay? You better not eat it. and then flips out when they eat it. Or an attention whore who handles her duty as the sun goddess by shutting herself up in a cave and only sticking her head out when she hears a party. A guy who thinks with his lower half and has all kinds of extramarital affairs under the grand pretext that it’s for the universe’s sake… If the rumors were true, then every last one of these gods was, well, pretty damn human. In fact, it would suggest that they were hopelessly human…but…
“Still, since we’ve come to Disboard and actually met some gods, they do seem like what we’ve heard…”
So the rumors back there might have some truth to them after all. Sora chuckled.
“Like, one of them’s a forever-alone who loses to us at chess and then gets so pissed he summons us without so much as an appointment.”
“…I thought…I was the best…forever-alone…until I met, Tet…”
“Sooner or later, you two are going to suffer divine retribution, you know… What do you think the One True God—?”
Just what even is a god? Sora and Shiro had no unearthly idea, and honestly, they didn’t really care, either. But when that god was explaining the rules, the way she looked at them for a second made them think. She didn’t appear concerned with victory or defeat at all, as though she didn’t care about anything. But her eyes had the look of complaining about something, though perhaps she herself was unaware of it.
“And the other one’s a little girl sulking after being outfoxed into playing this game…”
They didn’t seem to remotely fit some magnificent definition like “a concept that has gained an identity.” These gods were pretty damn human, just like the ones in Sora’s and Shiro’s old world.
What was that crying child trying to accomplish, and to what end—? Questions like that…
“…Don’t seem to have anything to do with winning or losing…at the very least, don’t you think?”
Walking side by side and looking up to the end of the sky, Sora and Shiro thought, It must be terribly simple and self-abandoning—but, because of that, fatal.
“It’s set up so it’s easy to win, but if you win easily, it’s like you lost…”
“…Like…with payback…you know…”
Steph chased after the mumbling duo with her brow furrowed in puzzlement……
So basically, they were cat burglars.
In the Eastern Union, in the Chinkai Tandai District reception chamber, Chlammy and Fiel were relaxing on the sofa across from Ino Hatsuse. Having originally identified them as backup, he’d concluded they were petty thieves. The girl who, at a time like this and in this situation, had demanded—Give me all your Eastern Union territory—continued.
“It’s nothing difficult, is it? It’s quite simple…” She laid it out with a smile. “A couple of dumb bitches happened to come when the Shrine Maiden was away, made some pointless sea blockade, and bet one state of Elven Gard. Diplomatic Commissioner Ino Hatsuse judged them to be chumps and took them on in a game he was sure to win (considering it had been reported to Elven Gard incorrectly), only to find out who the real bitch was. Surely you can follow that plot.”
The sea blockade, the wager of a state, everything—
“You can take us on credibly and lose credibly… See? We’ve got the perfect role for you!”
“Why, I don’t mind if you lick my shoes in gratituuude. Though if you do, I must have you sanitize them for me afterrr. ?”
Weren’t they Sora and Shiro’s accomplices? Their allies, their collaborators…?! Ino, unable to maintain his cool, found only questions spinning wildly in his head.
“Okay, theeen! ? I am Fiel Nirvalen, who was forced to inaccurately report the game of the Eastern Union to the Senate, just as Mr. Sora wished. Why, I am a clown who has been used for all I’m worth and certainly not your frieeend. ?”
Fiel beamed, apparently having magically read his mind.
No, she couldn’t have. Ino shook away the chills running down his spine. No matter how advanced her magic was, viewing or altering someone’s thoughts or memories was injury—a violation of the Covenants. She must be magically sensing spirits, similar to Werebeast cold reading, Ino surmised. After all, here he was at point-blank range, yet he couldn’t read anything from them. Their breath, heartbeat, temperature… It was all muddled by magic.
“I did report the Eastern Union’s game incorrectly to Elven Gard… However.”
…if they did thaaat—Plum’s sneer widened.
“No one would be able to take over the Commonwealth of Elkia, but the Eastern Union would be dooomed. These two are operating without the knowledge of the Senate, concealing both the details of the Eastern Union’s game and their rite to beat it. They’d go down with you! ? Sooo…”
His next expression drained the blood from Ino’s face.
“Since I couldn’t care less about the Eastern Union or the Commonwealth of Elkia, I’ll play the card fooor them! Now come, my two lovely suckers who have brought the most delectable treats for me to suck! I hate looking like such a villaiiin, but as they say, if you’re going to do something, do it right—like this!!”
Here I go! Plum’s satisfaction was chilling…
“I have nooooo plan B. If you don’t want to be destroyed, then let’s playyy! ? Yeahhh! ?”
Gently and with a smile, he sentenced all present to their deaths.
“…Fi, worst case, if we can’t use the rite…”
“…Why, of couuurse. I can and will shut down a relative of parasitic insects such as thiiis.”
“Yeees, that’s the spiriiit!! Please believe that you will be able to use at least one spell against meee!! That will make crowing over you as waken to reality even more enjoyyyable! ?”
Their surroundings made it clear it was no bluff. Chlammy tutted, Fiel was expressionless, and Ino assessed:
All right. So according to Plum’s scenario, he could prevent the Eastern Union from being taken. He could even win part of Elven Gard in exchange for a small Ixseed sacrifice. Could you argue that this is equitable for a small expenditure? But having witnessed the true power of these monsters, Dhampir…Ino was convinced that a “small sacrifice” would result in their release from their symbiotic chains to Siren. It risked unleashing a race that, preposterous though it may seem, could potentially fly even beyond the reach of Elven Gard. It might take time, but it would inevitably mean catastrophe.
He could reject Plum’s scenario and go down here or accept it and hang himself slowly.
Or he could get behind Chlammy and Fiel, lose on purpose, and hand over the Eastern Union.
No matter which he chose…it was just a matter of when, who, and how many would be laid on the chopping block!!
O…Holy Shrine Maiden. We should all have been able to survive if anyone made it to the goal in the Old Deus’s game. But I, in my folly within the game, and Chlammy, Fiel, and Plum, in their wisdom without… In the end, we only succeeded in aspiring to kill. O Holy Shrine Maiden, did you or did those siblings, after all, foresee this…? Then where is the plot? Where is the scenario by means of which none will be sacrificed??
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