No Game No Life - Volume 7 - Chapter Ep

PRACTICAL END 

At about that same time, Sora was thinking, half-dazed, his mind almost frozen: 
Who the hell wrote this scenario? 
A few minutes earlier, on their fifth move and at the 296th space, Sora, Shiro, and Steph each had three dice. Arriving as children and looking every bit on the brink of death— 
“I have been waiting for you, my masters, my lords, my commanders…” 
—they found Jibril, pinching her belt and bowing politely, idling with her five dice. 
“You swiped our dice, stalked us, and waited for us? You couldn’t just say you got here first?!” 
The sarcastic Sora wore a stiff expression. Actually, Shiro and Steph did, too. They turned their eyes to the sign inscribed with the Task. It was one they’d seen many times along the way, word for word. On this space they’d wanted to avoid if at all possible, the Task resounded: 
—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. 
It was the Task they’d dreaded the most, the most difficult one in the game. It applied only to a company of at least two, which could only be Sora and Shiro. Furthermore, this Task wouldn’t apply without another party present (Jibril), since the premise wouldn’t stand. She must have staked everything on this chance that might never arise, throwing away all other opportunities to seize dice in the hope that Sora and Shiro would land on her challenge, so she’d followed them. 
The scenery altered bit by bit as per the booming directive of Jibril’s Task. The space expanded, the terrain writhed and rolled, and the sky flowed. The world around them was transformed. 
“All right, Shiro. You ready for this…?” 
“…Mmm…I was…born, ready…” 
“Miss Jibril’s game…truly…is nightmarish…” 
Sora let the sweat trickle down his cheeks and grinned bitterly while Shiro licked her lips and Steph just gaped at the heavens. If Jibril was going this far, it probably wasn’t just a quiz. 
Promising no hints nor help, Jibril stood upon the stage she’d constructed and dared her masters, I shall give you all I’ve got, so let us see you win. 
“…Masters, are you aware…?” she murmured. “In all of history, the number of races that have dethroned an Old Deus and achieved deicide—excluding the Old Deus itself—totals but two.” 
Jibril settled as she watched them and continued. 
“They are we the Flügel…and the Ex Machinas, who slew our lord.” 
Her amber eyes, gazing distantly, hollowly, as she muttered matter-of-factly, made Sora and Shiro tighten their grip on each other’s hands and break out in a cold sweat. Watching Jibril emotionlessly oversee the reconstruction of the landscape, they felt an indescribable…unease. 
“…It has been over six thousand two hundred years since then… The world has changed.” 
As Jibril vacantly droned on, Sora furrowed his brow and weighed the meaning of her words. 
The world had changed—through the Great War, and the end of the War, and the Ten Covenants—into Disboard. War had been replaced by games. Now, in place of weapons and force, everything was resolved by reason and wit. 
“And now you, Masters, are poised to achieve the third deicide in history.” 
“……” 
“If it be that the world transforms each time a god is surpassed, surely this time, too, it will change.” 
What…is this? I’m getting a really bad feeling…the quaking in Sora’s and Shiro’s joined hands seemed to say. 
“…However, for me to see that to the—” 
Jibril cut herself off and shook her head. 
“…My prelude has been excessive. Masters, allow me to present you…my game.” 
As the scenery change concluded (with a backdrop of the collapse of heaven and earth), Jibril spelled out everything they couldn’t refuse, as they had not choice but to agree: a game their Task bound them to accept unconditionally and win. 
“The game recreates the Great War. It is a strategy game.” 
She continued with Armageddon behind her, built with the power of the Old Deus. 
“We shall commence the game with you three as Immanity…and myself as Flügel.” 
 

……Hey. Hey, d00d. 
“Whaaa—? I was expecting the highest difficulty, but seriously, isn’t this a little too much of an impossible sicko game?” 
“……Jibril…don’t be…douchey…” 
Like playing Civ with only Ancient units and beating Modern units? They’d actually done that… But Flügel would probably vaporize even Beyond Earth units! Quite the impossible challenge you’ve thrown at us. Sora grinned in resignation. 
“We shall each have the same condition for victory—the fall of the opponent’s capital. When this occurs—” 
Her next words wiped the grin off Sora’s face. 
“—as soon as one’s capital falls, one shall renounce one’s life……and perish by their own hand.” 
. 
“…………Hey, Jibril…what the hell are you—?” 
“Either side is free to resign. However, quitting…counts as defeat.” 
Sora and Shiro gasped as if for breath, but Jibril proceeded unperturbed. 
“The losing side shall forfeit all its dice to its opponent, and as an addendum for you, Masters…” 
Her gaze was razor-sharp. 
“…you shall tell me how to win this Old Deus’s game, in full and uncompromised detail.” 
. 
“Also, at the start, I shall be restored to ten dice… I demand the transfer of five.” 
…… 
Forced to surrender their dice under scorched heavens on grounds stained with death. Facing the moribund planet they’d been shown once before during the game on Avant Heim, Sora was thinking, half-dazed, his mind almost frozen: 
Who the hell wrote this scenario? 
That Jibril would use the Tasks to challenge them was to be expected. But what the hell was this? This was above and beyond expectations—! 
“…Well, Masters, as you can see, here we are in the Great War—unquestionably, the field I dominate.” 

If you win, I’ll die? 
Using herself as a shield to intimidate us ??! 
“…Jibril, are you screwing with us? What the hell is this supposed to beeeeeee?!” 
Even Shiro, who’d never left his side for eight years, watched him scream with an expression she’d never seen before. I don’t get it! Sora roared to himself. After all the work we put into this, we have to kill her to win—?! 
“Pardon me, Master, but I believe I told you, this game I must win.” 
Unlike the enraged Sora, Jibril— 
“By any means necessary, in fact… This game alone I must win…” 
—was cold and emotionless. Her eyes, with their amber-colored crosses, spoke to Sora, and he was at a loss for words. As she gently closed them, she whispered, “If that is not to be……through this game called the Great War, I will observe this second deicide.” 
I don’t understand. 
“I will know how you would behave, survive, and—if my conjecture is accurate—slay a god.” 
I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t fucking understand, Jibril!! What the hell?! What did I get wrong—?! 
“Before the world changes once again, please entertain my humble wish… With that, the oaths…” 
Where the hell?did I go wrong??! Sora shrieked silently, but the binding force of the Task moved his hand and tongue, preventing him from objecting. Sora, Shiro, Steph…and Jibril: All four raised their hands and opened their mouths. 
This is no good, Jibril. With these rules, I can’t even quit. ’Cause under these conditions, these rules, even if I quit— 
at least one of us will still die?!! 
But Sora’s mouth didn’t permit him to scream, and the four of them uttered only one word: 
 Aschente ?. 
 
Likewise, at about the same time, Tet, the re-creator of the world, watched it all—the Eastern Union and the board in the heavens—as he sat on the throne of the One True God atop the peak of the giant chess piece. With an empty book and quill in hand, he gazed upon everyone fighting among themselves and thought: 
All games have conventions: moves that have been logically established, according to the specifications and rules, as being correct. Moreover, their inevitable fate is to be smashed to smithereens. 
So to those wondering about the end while wishing for an end that’s never-ending, the final solution…is this. Projected on separate screens within the ether was each player and their current status within the game. The two people facing him—no, the person he was showing on one of the screens… 
She was on the 308th space, forty-three spaces from the goal. 
“…The hell…? Bitch…please…” 
Standing stock-still before an implausible mystery was a grumbling Izuna, two dice in her hand. Ever since the 301st space, she’d passed the same sign over and over and over. A Task she didn’t remember ever having seen before suddenly kept recurring, word for word. It was suspicious that the Tasks, which were supposed to be distributed randomly, would repeat with such bias. On top of that, the Task would clearly be invalid in normal circumstances. Furthermore, there shouldn’t have been anyone who could make it valid like this. Having finally landed on it, Izuna was overwhelmed by countless quandaries. 
Who the hell wrote this Task? 
Who the hell wrote this scenario? 
Something floated before Izuna Hatsuse’s eyes. Sitting in midair on an inkpot roughly her own height, her cheek propped on her hand as though nothing in this world was of interest, was…a girl. She projected a number of scenes in the air like screens. 
Two against two, facing a game that seemed to have no end without somebody getting sacrificed. 
One contender against three, starting a game that seemed to have no end without somebody winding up dead. 
And one mortal and a god standing before a sign with a Task etched on it. 
For all this, the girl distractedly addressed Izuna in a businesslike tone as if the lot of it hardly interested her. 
“My host seeth an illusion. Its end is this.” 
She was a girl of few words. Only far, faraway Tet, with his omnipotence to see through all, heard that silent voice saying that the convention free of sacrifice, the one the Shrine Maiden had dreamed of…had been a contradiction from the start. 
“So long as all make the moves that benefit them most, such an outcome can never be.” 
The game should have been easy. It should have let everyone survive. But the end to which it led was projected on the screens: visions of people killing one another, disregarding even the rules. The prisoner’s dilemma was not as simple as Sora had described. It was inviolable. As long as everyone wanted to be a winner and not a loser, the inevitable outcome was… 
They played along. When the time came to reveal the winner and loser, it was clear which would be the inevitable sacrifice. And what was more… 
“It is illogical to propose that the Shrine Maiden, who deceived a god and sold her ether to you, would omit a sacrifice.” 
Therefore, the girl hypothesized, the world had not changed at all and never would for all the eons to come. The only things that would change were the labels applied to the excuses and tools they used to plunder and kill. 
“Now, in this childish game conceived by my host, victory is easy. Fulfill the Task and gain all. 
However, as sworn by the Covenants, I shall ask the question I have taken from thy memory—” 
Still she exhibited no sign of having noticed Izuna, who stood frozen in place. 
Nor did she show any indication of expecting an answer. 
“The question ye contrived to settle by means of this game—I shall ask it once more.” 
Some thought the world hadn’t changed. That was half-true and half-false. No matter how many thousands of times heaven and earth were remade, so long as the purpose woven into the world itself remained fixed, everything would stay the same. There were some who knew this. 
It was long ago, before even the Great War, during the period people called creation. All things material and immaterial, living and lifeless, organic and inorganic, were being forged without purpose or consciousness. There was a goddess who had vaguely wondered about the absurdity of it all, who had come into existence to speak for creation, a concept. She was the first in this world, on this planet, to ask—Why? Within the infinite flow of time, she had an equally infinite amount of questions, but, as no one responded, she had merely wandered alone. That all-too-transient goddess, forsaken by everything, and constantly deceived by the Shrine Maiden— 
The sneak peek is presented in the original right-to-left orientation, so please read it in that order. 
“What is it to believe?” 
—asked with empty eyes why the Shrine Maiden had betrayed her. 
She couldn’t trust anything: her ether, the manifestation of the concept that formed the god of doubt, even herself. The Suniaster, too, was nescient. Even omnipotence could not know that which was not—the nameless god. 
The same way the Shrine Maiden had chosen me as a sacrifice. The same way I had been forced into a game in which loss meant death, with my ether as a shield. Perhaps that was what the Shrine Maiden and Sora and Shiro defined as belief. Perhaps deceit and betrayal were what the Shrine Maiden called trust. 
The same way she had given up on everything, lost all hope in anything, all she could do…was show the faint tinge of a betrayed child who blamed the adults. 
—Select one of the seven souls held by the Old Deus to be killed, whereupon thou shalt be transported to the final space. 
Echoing the Task on that space, she pressed Izuna for an answer. Nothing would end without someone’s sacrifice. Come, she said. 
Pick one to join me. Choose who shall be sacrificed to decide the one who emerges victorious…