“Oh-ho! Well, maybe I’ll just go take a look!” Titan grabbed the paper and crushed it. Then she reached out to Fay with her other hand. “Kid.”

Fay reached out, assuming she wanted a handshake, but his hand met empty air.

“…Huh?”

Instead, Titan reached around behind his head—and before he knew it, Fay was being drawn in for a big hug, whether he wanted it or not.

Her skin was hot like lava, yet remarkably soft—and he found his face buried smack-dab in her chest.

“?!”

“This is human etiquette, right? To thank you for telling me where to go sightseeing!”

Where had she learned etiquette? Even if Fay had wanted to ask, he couldn’t breathe, let alone get the words out. She was crushing him against her chest too hard. Just before he managed to get enough air to say so, four voices called out:

“C’mon, now!”

“Let’s get going!”

“Th-that’s against the rules!”

“And from an outsider, no less!”

Fay was flushed with embarrassment, but Uroboros, Leshea, Pearl, and Nel were even redder with rage as they kicked Titan away, sending her flying high into the sky.

“Wooooow! Is this another game?” Titan asked, managing to spin around in midair. Her lava-colored hair splayed out around her—and by the time Fay was able to look up, Titan had already flashed overhead.

All he heard was her voice: “See ya, kid! And make sure you enjoy your games!”

Just those few words, carried to him on the wind.

2

The Sacrament City of Ruin was among the largest of the “isle cities” that dotted the continent. Its tree-lined avenues were neatly manicured, and the electric automobiles speeding along them were all brand-new. Looking up, one could see clusters of high-rise buildings sparkling like rainbows—and the tallest of them all was the Arcane Court branch office.

“Welcome back, Fay,” Miranda said, waving cheerfully when she spotted him in the first-floor lobby. “And Lady Leoleshea and Lady Uroboros, fine work out there. Same for you, Nel. Ah, and Pearl, too.”

“Why do you make me sound like an afterthought?!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve had a very long and difficult journey, Pearl. Although I admit I am curious to know how the Ange-Exclusive lunch platter tasted. You no doubt ate one while aboard the train.” The chief secretary slid her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Now then, Fay. No rest for the weary. I’d like to hear your report immediately.”

“You mean about Chaos, right?”

“Partly, but also about your team name. Further, if you’re going to headquarters, we’ll have to set up a schedule. Let’s just say I have a lot of questions for you.”

Sunlight poured into the chief secretary’s office, where Miranda was pointing dubiously at a table piled with boxes of souvenirs.

“…Fay, what’s all this?” she asked.

“Souvenirs. I brought you Relic Cookies from Ange.”

“Well, what about this one?

“Relic Castella! That one’s from me!” Pearl chirped.

“…And this one?”

“Oh, I got that,” said Nel. “You just have to try this Relic Chocolate!”

“Relic this, Relic that…” Miranda heaved a sigh.

There were still two boxes of souvenirs on the table that hadn’t been claimed: Leshea’s Relic Rice Crackers and Uroboros’s Relic Chips.

“I’d heard the rumors that there wasn’t much in Ange… But there’s really not much there, huh?” Miranda said.

“You’ve never been there, Chief Secretary?”

“No. That’s why I was so surprised when I learned Chaos had moved to that gods-forsaken place.” Miranda was already opening the Relic Cookies. She looked at one of the pillar-shaped biscuits, distinctly disappointed, then popped it in her mouth… “Hmm… It tastes like sugar and—urgh! It’s so bitter! Fay, what is this?!”

“Ash, ma’am. They’re made with the volcanic ash you can find all over the city.”

“…If possible, the next time you go on a trip, I’d appreciate souvenirs in more…conventional flavors,” she said, putting the lid back on the cookies. They thought they heard her mumble, “I’ll get my subordinates to eat the rest…” Then more loudly, she said, “Well, color me surprised. There really isn’t anything but relics in that city, is there? What do you suppose possessed Chaos to move somewhere like that?”

That was the key question. It had occupied Fay’s thoughts on the train all the way home.

There’s nothing there that Chaos could have been after except those relics—the remains of the ancient magical civilization.

In which case, if he had moved on to another city, did that imply that he had completed his objective—investigated whatever he’d wanted to investigate?

If so, where did he go next? If he’d already completed his objective in the Relic City, wouldn’t he just have come back to Ruin?

But he hadn’t. So where had he gone after finishing his investigation—whatever it was—in the Relic City of Ange?

“Quick question, Fay,” the chief secretary said, sitting on a corner of her desk. She made it sound like she was just going to introduce some whimsical banter. “Do you intend to keep searching for Chaos?”

“……” Fay was silent.

“Well, there’s a grim look.”

Evidently, how he felt was showing on his face. Miranda looked downright amused.

Fay sighed theatrically and said, “…You know, I was thinking it might be time to stop.”

“Oh? Well, that’s unexpected.”

“It looks like finding people isn’t my strong suit. I feel like I could search for him for weeks and not get any closer…”

There was certainly precedent, considering he had only recently come back to Ruin empty-handed after spending six months looking for the red-haired girl from his memories.

“Ah, I see. Your luck never has extended to your life outside games, has it?” Miranda clapped once as she came to a conclusion. “Now it all makes sense. You’re going to give up looking for Chaos, about whom you have no clues, and instead…”

“Yes! We’re going to go to Arcane Court headquarters!” Pearl said, sticking her hand in the air. “There’s still the mystery of the Labyrinth of Lucemia. Just who caused apostles from around the world to be gathered and trapped there?!”

Indeed.

Uroboros had indicated that incident was the result of a mischievous god playing a trick. And the vehicle for the trick had been the Godeye lenses.

“This is where that little prank started…… All the humans gathered in that maze were carrying one, right? The lens is like a collar, with the gods holding the leash. If a human is wearing the collar, you just pull on the leash, and boom! You can drag them straight to Lucemia.”

With one good tug, apostles from all over the world who were wearing Godeye lenses had been dragged like dogs on a lead into the maze.

And who distributed the lenses? Headquarters.

The problem is figuring out who at headquarters was responsible and what they hoped to achieve. Causing a supernatural phenomenon like this on a worldwide scale is way beyond what any human should be capable of.

Gods were behind it.

“There’s a god there. Several of them, actually.”

There were four gods in the Myth City of Heckt-Scheherezade. That much, Uroboros had been able to detect. That was why Fay was going to headquarters.

“I can’t say I’m not curious,” the chief secretary said, as she pressed her palm to her forehead. “But suppose—just suppose—that the incident with the labyrinth was an innocent joke, or maybe a way of introducing themselves. The issue is that a little jape by the gods’ standards is more than we humans can bear. The Arcane Court can’t have them doing something like that ever again.”

That was certainly true. Fay didn’t object to what the chief secretary was saying. But there was one problem…

She’s wrong about one thing: What happened in the Labyrinth of Lucemia wasn’t a joke, and it wasn’t a friendly hello.

It had clearly been deliberate. By Fay’s estimation, it was a borderline criminal act by some god—or gods—with more than the usual level of commitment to the games.

“You, your friends, all humans, this very world, and the gods: I cherish them all. Because I cherish them, I wish to protect them. And that is why the gods’ games cannot exist.”

That was what the unidentified god in the lightless Elements had said—the god Fay suspected of being the mastermind behind the Lucemia incident.

Who could hear something like that and not wonder about it? What did it mean?

Fay simply wanted to know who that god was and what they were after. That just so happened to align them with Miranda’s goal.

“I’d like to ask you a question as well, Chief Secretary.” Nel, sitting properly on the sofa, straightened up even more. “There was a worldwide meeting between headquarters and the branch offices, wasn’t there? I gather we didn’t manage to prove anything about the Godeye lens at that meeting…”

“Right. Not enough evidence.” The chief secretary nodded firmly. “Our key witness, Lady Uroboros, decided it was too much trouble to attend, which meant we had no one to testify about the lenses. Our suspicions about headquarters also remain nothing more than guesswork… I see what you’re trying to say, though. With things the way they are, we’ll never come up with an excuse to bust into headquarters and look around, right? Truly, Nel, you’ve got a head of lonsdaleite.”

“Lonsdaleite?!”

“It means your head is very hard. Did you know lonsdaleite, also called ‘hexagonal diamond,’ is even harder than common diamonds? Bit of trivia for you.” Miranda’s fingertips brushed across her monitor, prompting a massive screen to light up in front of the sofa where Fay and the others were sitting. It showed an image of a city floating in the air. “Just say you’re going to the Myth City as tourists. That will be enough of an excuse. Your team has been on fire in the gods’ games, so no one would blame you for wanting to take a quick rest.”

“Y-yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

“I have the distinct impulse to leave this all to you, but… Hmm. I don’t think there’s any choice.” Miranda stretched, reaching toward the ceiling, then rubbed her stiff shoulders. “I guess I’d better go with you this time.”

“What?! You’re going to personally accompany us, Chief Secretary?!”

“Uh-huh. Technically, this trip falls within the realm of administrative business. Can’t just leave it to some apostles. If you’re going to be interacting with headquarters, you should have a bureaucrat with you.”

“Chief Secretary!” Pearl exclaimed, clasping Miranda’s hand warmly. “I’ve misjudged you! Here I thought you were perfectly happy to leave all the hard work to us apostles, but now I see that human blood really does flow through your veins!”

“Ha-ha-ha! You just keep telling yourself that, Pearl,” Miranda said, shaking Pearl’s hand off. “I must admit, I’ve been getting a little tired of doing nothing but desk work. This will be the perfect chance to slip away for a change of scenery. And they say the Myth City is home not just to headquarters, but an excellent pancake place as well.”

“Aww! Don’t ruin my moment of admiration!”

“Anyway, just let me handle the excuses. Let’s jump right to scheduling. I need a day I can take PTO. Hmm… That means we would leave the day after tomorrow… Oh.”

Miranda stopped and looked off into space as if she had suddenly thought of something.

“…That’s right, we have an all-hands meeting the day after tomorrow. Maybe the weekend, then? No, Ruin has a budget thing this weekend…and it’s going to happen again the same time next month, so we’d have to leave…”

She pored over the calendar on her screen, scrolling through day after day after day, her schedule broken down into detailed plans.

“Fay…,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I think I can take a couple days off in the summer two years from now.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

“…Me neither. Anyway, I’ll make it work somehow. I’ll do overtime until I drop, I guess. Haaah…”

Miranda’s shoulders slumped. She looked like she might cry.

3

The seventeenth floor of the Arcane Court branch office was a special one devoted to receiving important guests, and Leshea’s room there was even more special than the others.

“I guess haste doesn’t always make waste,” Fay said, putting his communications device into his pocket. He stood in a reception area that doubled as a living room. It was piled with toys and games of all kinds: decks of cards, darts, and even a roulette table. “The chief secretary says she managed to force some vacation into next week. We just have to wait until then.”

“Just wait?” Pearl asked.

“It means we’re going to sit around playing games.”

As he and Pearl were discussing the situation, Uroboros was eagerly examining one of the games.

“Oh-ho! So this is The Game of Another Life? The events of a human life are written on the squares, and you pass through them to arrive at the goal.”

She rolled some dice, with the roll totaling six. She moved her piece that many spaces along the board sitting on the table.

“Ooh, I landed on the ‘payday’ space. How does this work? It says you get a salary based on your profession. I’m undefeated, so I’ll take a hundred million goals…”

“Wait, what are you doing?!”

“Hold it right there, Mistress Undefeated!”

Pearl and Nel both tried to intervene as Uroboros grabbed handfuls of (fake) bills.

“There’s no such profession as ‘undefeated’!” Pearl said.

“You’re just a regular company employee, so you get ten thousand goals. Which is one of these bills.”

“Hmph…” Uroboros looked put out to find her windfall confiscated. “But Chesty, you’re a politician, and Rumpy, you’re a company president. You both have higher salaries than me!”

“Well, then you just need to land on a job-change space.”

“Precisely. You might even be able to become a pop idol—they earn way more than either of us.”

“I so will! I’ll become a singing, dancing, divine idol!” Uroboros’s eyes were practically sparkling. Neither Pearl nor Nel nor Fay felt like asking why she was so bent on becoming popular in the human world.

“It’s your turn next, Tiny Human.”

“Let’s see, I rolled a three… Ugh! ‘Your house is broken into by a thief. Lose half your assets.’ Well, that’s how it goes. I’ve got a question, Uroboros,” Fay said.

“Hmm?”

“Chief Secretary Miranda was wondering—we’re all going to headquarters. What do you want to do?”

“Oh-ho! Are you saying you would like me to accompany you?” Uroboros spared him only a sidelong glance; she was mostly focused on examining the squares of the Game of Another Life. Then a confident grin spread across her face. “I’m very popular, you see. I may be a mere company drone in the Game of Another Life, but in the real world, I’m an idol.”

“…I’m not sure when you got on the idol track. But anyway, aren’t you angry that this unknown god messed with you two different times?”

The first was when she had been forcibly “logged out” of the Labyrinth of Lucemia. The second was when they had dived into the divine gate after that. Fay and the rest of his team had ended up in the forest of the God-Tree, but Uroboros had been ejected with an anguished “Awww, again?!”

“Oh, little things like that don’t bother me,” Uroboros said, still studying the game board with a smile. “Games are everything. Isn’t it more fun to be playing than to be angry?”

“Well, when you’re right, you’re right.”

“I have arrived at the Truth. More delicious than pizza eaten while angry is pizza eaten while playing a game—oh?”

Uroboros had rolled the dice again, and when she moved her piece, she landed at a space on which GET MARRIED was written in large letters.

“Let’s see. You get married to the player who is on the square nearest to you. The closest player to mineself is behind me… Oh! Tiny Human! Tiny Human, it’s you!” Uroboros turned; for some reason, this was what caused her to raise her voice. “Tiny Human and mineself are married!”

“What? Oh, yeah, that happens all the time in these games.”

Getting married was one of the most iconic events in the Game of Another Life. Fay and the others had played it plenty of times, so he’d seen it before, but it was all new to Uroboros.

“Wh-wh-what shall I wear?!” she exclaimed. “The only kimono I have is black! I’ve heard that a white dress symbolizing innocence is what one needs for such an occasion!”

“You’re more shocked than anyone in history by this! Slow down…”

Fay was about to point out that it was just a game when Pearl grinned and beat him to the punch, saying, “Ha-ha-ha! It’s all right, Uroboros. It’s a game—just a game.” She practically sounded like a calm, reasonable adult in contrast to the panicking Uroboros. “You don’t have to take it so seriously. Do you, Nel? Leshea?”

“Mm-hmm, a most uncharacteristic misunderstanding, Mistress Undefeated.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You don’t have to lose your head just ’cause you landed on the marriage space.”

Like old hands at the game, Pearl, Nel, and Leshea all shared a look of agreement—and an indulgent smile, as if to say, Isn’t it cute to see her all riled up?

The girls’ expressions changed the next time Uroboros rolled the dice.

“Oh? It’s another new space.”

This one had an adorable baby picture on it.

“Ooh! A baby space? In other words, mineself and Tiny Human—”

“““Stooooop!””” the others cried.

“Wha—?! Wh-what are you doing, Chesty? Rumpy? Tiny Dragon?! I-it’s mine own turn, so why are you—yikes!”

The three of them piled atop Uroboros and took turns sitting on her.

“Now!” said Leshea.

“L-let me go, Tiny Dragon! I just want to start a family with Tiny Human and—mrgh?!”

Uroboros found herself restrained by Leshea, while Nel and Pearl shoved bread in her mouth to shut her up.

Thus, the Game of Another Life came to an abrupt end.

“Boo… What’s the problem?” Uroboros grumbled, even as she munched on her toast with jam. “And just when Tiny Human and mineself were about to begin our happily married life together!”

“Not allowed!” said Pearl, who was also eating jam on toast. “Gods and humans can’t get married. And they definitely can’t have children! The kid would be half-human and half-god!”

“Is it that shocking, Chesty?” Uroboros asked, looking as if she didn’t understand why Pearl was so upset. She rolled over on the floor and said, “It’s not unlike gaining ten wins in the gods’ games. Insofar as it’s possible for a human to become a god, should a half-divine child be such a surprise?”

“…What?”

“Huh?”

“What did you say?”

Pearl, Nel, and even Fay, who had all been relaxing in the living room, were flabbergasted.

“Mistress Undefeated?!” Nel practically flew off the sofa. “What are you talking about?! Ten wins in the gods’ games? Humans and gods and…human-god children?!”

“I meant what I said, Rumpy,” Uroboros replied breezily from where she lay. “If you win ten times and clear the gods’ games, you can receive a reward.”

“That much, we know…”

“Hmmm?” Uroboros sat up. “Rumpy. You know about that, but you don’t actually know what the Celebration—the glory of the gods—is? The reward you receive for achieving a Clear, you see…”

Celebration: when one was accorded the right to join the ranks of the gods.

A human who had won ten games would enter the company of the all-knowing, omnipotent deities.

In other words, they would become a god.

“…………”

“…………”

“…………”

The others looked soberly at each other for a long moment.

“…Fay…” Finally, Pearl broke the silence, sounding almost as if she were talking to herself. “Fay… Did you know that?”

“Who, me? No way,” Fay replied.

Nobody knew exactly what the Celebration was. Of course they didn’t. No human had ever cleared the gods’ games. But there had always been whispers from ancient times: The gods will grant any wish you ask, they said. The sort of thing people would tell themselves.

Fay, however, had asked Leshea about it, and what she had told him of the Celebration was…

“The rumors you humans have about it are pretty accurate—the gods will grant your wish. That much is true.”

“But if ‘that much’ is true, that means there’s something we’ve got wrong.”

“The gods don’t just grant one wish. You could make a hundred wishes, or even a thousand.”

But that had been only part of the answer. At the time, Fay had taken her to mean that the granting of unlimited wishes was itself the Celebration—when in truth, it was that one could become an all-knowing, all-powerful god. The wishes were themselves secondary, a sort of bonus; an almighty god could fulfill their own wishes.

I see. It makes sense. Leshea’s wish is to go back to being a god. And that’s exactly what the Celebration is.

Leshea hadn’t been hiding anything. In fact, she had told him precisely the truth of the reward. It was he who had misunderstood.

Leshea, incidentally, was taking a shower at that moment.

“…Still, uh… Huh…”

“Hmm? What’s the matter, Tiny Human? Why do you look so displeased?”

“Uhhh…”

“You too, Chesty? What are you so concerned about?”

“Well, it’s concerning.”

“And Rumpy, you’re crossing your arms? What’s wrong?” Uroboros tilted her head quizzically at them. She couldn’t understand what caused the three of them to furrow their brows—precisely because she was an all-powerful, all-knowing god.

But of course, Fay, Pearl, and Nel were all feeling the same way.

Precisely because they were imperfect humans.

Precisely because granting wishes was not easy for them.

To even imagine making one’s own dreams a reality…

“Tell me what’s going on, Tiny Human!”

“It’s just, we get that it’s not a bad deal for us,” Fay replied with a strained smile. “But somehow, it’s like…say you’d lived in the same house your entire life, when suddenly someone says they’ll give you a room in a luxurious mansion. It’s… You know… We already have a house we’re attached to.”

“Y-yes, that’s exactly how I feel!” Pearl said.

“Mm-hmm. I, too, don’t particularly wish to become a god. Just having a single wish granted would be more than enough for me,” Nel agreed. Each of them nodded in turn.

From behind them came footsteps accompanied by cheery whistling.

“If that’s what you want, you can do that.” Leshea appeared, wearing a summery tank top. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and she was drying her soaking vermillion hair with a towel. “You get ten wins and become a god. Then, after you grant whatever wishes you want, you can just go back to being a human. I mean, just look at me.”

The former god Leshea’s wish was to regain her divinity. In other words, she would go from god to human to god again, whereas Fay and the others could do exactly the opposite, going from human to god to human. Leshea was proof it could be done.

“I… I see.” Nel nodded, although she was thinking deeply. “It still doesn’t feel quite right to me, but assuming I could become human again… What do you think, Pearl?”

“Y-yes, I guess… I guess knowing that does make me feel a little better.”

“Well, there you have it! Discussion over!” Uroboros said, energetically grabbing the dice in one hand and her game piece in the other. “Back to the Game of Another Life, then! Let’s see! I stopped on the children square and was just about to start a nice, happy family with Tiny Human—”

“““Nooooo! We said stop!”””

“Wh-what the heck?! It’s just a game, remember?!”

Uroboros, just after turning to the “have kids” square, found herself pinned once again by the three other women.

In the end, they decided to play a different game. They wondered what they should pick from the pile on the table…

“What is this game?” Uroboros inquired.

“That’s a murder mystery. It’s all the rage right now,” Pearl told her.

“Mm-hmm! It’s one of those games where everyone tries to deduce who the killer is,” Nel added.

Meanwhile, Fay and Leshea had left the other three to their selection process and walked over to the seventeenth floor’s break area. They were standing by some vending machines.

“So, what would you like to drink, Fay? Cider? Ginger ale?”

“The yogurt drink, please.”

“Thing is, I already bought the cider.”

“Then what was the point of asking?!”

“I thought it was soda! Anyway, here you go!” Leshea said, shoving the can of juice at Fay. He took it reluctantly, knowing there would be, well, cider in it.

Then he said, “By the way, Leshea.”

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Uroboros said some stuff earlier, and I was really surprised. I guess I had the wrong idea.” He tugged the tab on his can, which opened with a psshh of carbon dioxide escaping. “I didn’t realize that was what you meant when you talked about the reward for getting ten wins. I guess any reward the gods came up with would have to be on a crazy scale, huh?”

“I don’t think what she said is any different from what I said.”

“…I think it was pretty different.”

Leshea grinned. It was possible that, from the very first time they had met, this former god had been picturing the surprise on Fay’s face.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t really feel like I need to become a god at all.”

“Sure.”

“I mean, I know you want to go back to being one. What would you do if you were a god again?”

“………” Leshea didn’t answer. The vermilion-haired former god was completely silent. Instead, she gazed off into space, her expression something between somber and blank.

“…Oh yeah,” Fay said. “I guess we’ve never talked about this.”

Sublime.

The barely whispered word held within it the power of a god.

“I’ve been one of the gods who oversees the gods’ games, but before that…”

The time of the Dragon God Leoleshea must have been roughly the same time as that of the ancient magical civilization.

What had been before that?

“Maybe I could call it a past life. But it’s not as if I was born into another life like in the game we were just playing. I was still myself…but ‘myself’ was something quite different before I came to this world.”

“Huh?”

Before she ‘came to this world’? She almost made it sound as if she had come from a different world.

“I was a dragon before I became a god, too. But not like I am now. You might be surprised to hear it, but…I was a very rowdy dragon.”

“I’m definitely not surprised to hear that.”

“What?! Why not?!”

It sounded to him like she was the same as she’d always been. Fay quietly suppressed the impulse to say so out loud. He was about to speak when Leshea said:

“Calra -l- Bediws Leo Lecie.”

“What’s that? Some kind of code?”

“It was my name. Back then, maybe I wasn’t called Leoleshea or Leshea, but Calra.” She gave the slightest of smiles. Normally she wore the brightest grin; this was an unusual smile of pain from her. “That name, it means… The Winter Princess of the Tragic Red Plague.”

“That’s a heavy name!”

“Yes, it is. I was a bad dragon. Back then, I was in pain, always lashing out…always anxious. But then one time, everything went…white? No, more like…rainbow-colored. And the next thing I knew, I was a god in this world.” She gently shook her can of blood orange juice, the contents sloshing. “I thought it was such a lovely world. There were no wars here! Instead, gods and humans could enjoy games together.”

“………” Fay didn’t say anything.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve been freed from battle.’ We were allowed to play games in this world, so I was sure this world was a reward; the place you went after all the pain was over.” Leshea turned to him and smiled brightly, any trace of those dark memories wiped from her expression. “I really like this world, you know. For the same reason that I want to go back to being a god. Because after I do, I want to play lots, lots more games! It’s as simple as that.”

The vermilion-haired girl’s smile, full and broad, seemed to say that there could be no greater wish.

“Well,” Fay said after a second, “you are a gamer through and through, aren’t you?”

“That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“You remember what I told you? That I was playing hide-and-seek with some humans, and that I hid at the bottom of a lake…”

“Oh, yeah. And then, while waiting, you fell asleep.”

She’d accidentally slept for three thousand years and ended up in the present day. Talk about oversleeping!

“In the end, the ancient magical civilization disappeared while I was napping.” Leshea sighed in exasperation. “Waking up in this era—that was the biggest shock of all.”

“The ancient magical civilization, huh?”

Fay wondered if it was just a coincidence. It reminded him that his old team leader, Chaos, had been investigating something in the Relic City of Ange—the very place that held the ruins of the ancient magical civilization.

“Do you ever wonder, Leshea? I mean, about what happened to the ancient magical civilization while you were asleep?”

“Of course I do.” Leshea opened her drink with a soft fzz. “But there’s no way to even begin investigating. Before I met you, Fay, I asked Miranda to gather every bit of research material she could find.”

“But it didn’t tell you anything about the ancient civilization?”

“No, but it’s all right.” She shook her head, almost speaking as much to herself as to Fay. “If I can become a god again, that’ll solve everything.”

“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right.”

The gods were all-knowing and all-powerful. Once Leshea regained her divine status, she would be able to use her supernatural awareness to find out what had happened.

“As for you, Fay, you don’t have to become a god to get your wishes if you don’t want to. Once I’m a god again, I’ll be happy to grant them for you.” Leshea giggled, her lips curling up into a smile as she held her can of juice out toward him.

Cheers.

Fay gently tapped the lip of his cider can against her juice.

“A red-haired older girl, right? You want to find the person who taught you to play games.”

“Right. And, hey, we’ve come this far.” Fay gave Leshea a firm nod as he looked into her eyes. “I’ll fight as hard as I can to clear the gods’ games.”

He was at seven wins now—just three more to go until he reached ten wins, something no one in human history had done before.

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

This world could be cruel to humans.

Roughly 2 percent: that was the surface area of the continent covered by every human city combined. The rest was terra incognita, with plains roamed by massive, primordial creatures called Rexes and scorching deserts where the heat would claim a human life in less than an hour.

But that’s why humans explore and blaze new trails.

The Arises people received from the gods allowed them to carve a path through the wilds—through its poisonous swamps, its burning volcanic regions, and its deadly jungles. Yet…nature, red in tooth and claw, stood against the human challenge like a wall.

“Everybody, fall back!”

“We can’t, Captain! The Rexes! They’ve got us surrounded!”

In the midst of the Grashala-Prus, the storm peaks, was a team of pioneers making their way along sheer cliffs no human had ever set foot on before. They had been caught in a storm and were attempting to evacuate—but a herd of terrible Rexes was waiting for them on what would have been their way home.

“Mage unit, fire! Don’t let that big one get close!”

“W-we’re trying, sir! But…we can’t hit it!”

The carnivorous beasts could dodge magic.

Each time the exploration team came into these mountains, they learned something—but so did the Rexes. Fireballs, icicles, lightning bolts—it didn’t matter. Each one sliced through the air, missing the Rex, which could jump more powerfully than any horse.

“That’s impossible!”

“I-it’s almost on us—eeeyaaarrghhh!”

There was a terrible scream. The Rex leaped at the unit, its great mouth open wide and glistening…

…until it was plucked right off the ground.

Instead of landing on the humans, it simply floated there, held as easily as one might hold a kitten. Grasped by the scruff of its neck, it kicked uselessly in the air.

“Wha—?”

“What…the heck…is going on?”

As the exploratory team looked on, astonished, the Rex was flung against the side of the cliff. Toss! Like a piece of trash.

The moment the first Rex had been released, another one was picked up and flung aside. The horde that had surrounded the humans were all slammed against the cliff-side in no time at all.

“This…can’t be happening,” said one woman, so amazed that she swayed on her feet and had to sit down. She was looking at a god. One any former apostle would have come across in the Arcane Court database at least once.

It was a giant, as tall as a high-rise building and the color of molten lava. The Giant God Titan, “the Sage of the Earth,” was looking down at them.

“Titan?!” somebody cried.

“We’re not in Elements! Wh-what’s a god doing in the human world?!”

The deity didn’t move, only looked down at the humans at its feet.

“Hey, um…,” someone said.

“……” Titan was silent for a long moment.

And then, suddenly, it exploded.

Pieces of molten rock that composed its body inflated and then popped like balloons, sending thousands upon thousands of shards everywhere.

“The hell?!”

“Everyone hit the dirt!”

Chunks of rock came raining down, and the team was about to scatter in every direction to save themselves from getting crushed—until they heard a voice.

“Just a sec, there!”

The voice was powerful, cheerful, and coming from a wild-looking woman with rock for skin who stood before them.

“Sorry to startle you. I just wanted to ask you something.”

Her hair—which was the color of molten lava—was tied back behind her. She was easily more than 180 centimeters tall and dressed in a garish kimono, opened boldly at the chest to reveal exactly how fine her body was.

She tried to beckon the humans over, but they just blinked at her.

“Hmm? Still shocked? Oh! Sorry. This is my first time doing a spiritual body.”

“Spiritual body?!”

Everyone on the expedition looked at her in amazement. Sure, they might have had an inkling, but now they knew: This woman with hair the same color as the Giant God was, in fact, Titan itself.

“P-please, pardon us. I’m Bach, leader of this expeditionary team!” coughed a strapping young man. “You must be Lady Titan…”

“Oh? Yes, exactly! So you do know me!”

“Yes! Yes, of course! Thank you so much for saving us!”

“Hmm?”

“…Huh?”

“Was there some kind of problem?”

“Er… I mean, we… We were being attacked by a horde of Rexes. Didn’t you come to save us?”

“Oh… I guess I see?” The Giant God Titan nodded with a beatific look on her face. “I thought for sure you were playing a game of tag.”

“………” The humans were all silent.

“I felt bad breaking up your game, but I guess all’s well that ends well!”

“Er… Right…”

They were looking at the same situation, but on a completely different scale. What had been a life-or-death race away from the Rexes for the humans looked like a simple game of tag to a god.

“By the way, I want to ask you something,” Titan said.

“Y-yes, ma’am?! What is it?”

They certainly hadn’t expected a god to have a question for them. What exalted riddle might she pose? The entire team gulped nervously. Titan took something out of her sleeve—a hand-drawn map with a star marking a particular city. She pointed to it.

“Do you know where the Sacred Spring City of Mal-ra is?”

“M-Mal-ra, ma’am?”

“Yeah! I wanted to do some sightseeing around the human world and heard that Mal-ra is pretty developed and has some interesting humans.”

“The Sacred Spring City of Mal-ra…”

“Uh-huh?”

“……The Sacred Spring City of Mal-ra is……” Bach, the captain of the expedition, pointed hesitantly toward the mountains. “It’s over there.”

“Oh? You mean on the other side of the mountains.”

“No. On the other side of the mountains, through the densest, darkest forest, across the ocean, and then beyond a vast desert. That’s where Mal-ra is.”

“Huh?!” Titan’s jaw dropped. “But that’s just silly. I followed the map!”

“Respectfully, Lady Titan…you had the map upside down. You’ve been going the wrong way.”

“Sorry to bother you!” Titan said as she spun around. With godlike speed (it was only natural) and immense power, she sprang up the sheer cliffs (so far untouched by human feet) in just a few steps, and in the blink of an eye the god had vanished from sight.

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

1

“This is a special express train bound for the Flower-Viewing City of Aerlrith. We will be departing shortly.”

The silver train sat gleaming in the central station of the Sacrament City of Ruin—and the whole platform was filled with the sound of Miranda’s shouting.

“Come on, Pearl, you’ve got to hurry! If we miss this train, it’s all over!”

“Run, Pearl!”

“Ruuun!”

“You’ve got to run!”

“Pick up the pace, Chesty!”

“This isn’t my faaauuult!”

Pearl breathlessly staggered along, a huge travel bag strapped to her back.

Everyone other than Pearl—the chief secretary, Fay, Leshea, Nel, and Uroboros—was already relaxing in their cabin on the train.

“This all started because you got the departure time wrong by an hour, Chief Secretary… Wait, why are you all sitting and relaxing?! Shouldn’t you be cheering me on as I run for my life?!” Pearl complained.

Pearl finally made it to the platform, flinging herself through the ticket gate with all her strength and toward where Fay and the others waited.

“Thanks for your patience, everyone! The star is late, but she’s here! At last, I, Pearl, shall—”

At exactly that moment, as Pearl lunged toward the train doors…

“This special express is now leaving.”

Ka-shunk.

…the door snapped shut right before her eyes.

“““G’bye, Pearl!””” the others called out.

“Come on! This is not ‘Goodbye’!”

Teleport.

Pearl vanished from her forlorn place outside the departing train, and an instant later, she was standing in front of Fay where he lounged in the cabin.

“Huff… Puff… I can’t…move another inch…”

“Phew! Glad you made it in time!” the chief secretary said with a laugh. She was holding a half-drunk beer, having wasted no time in kicking off her vacation. “It’s going to be a long ride to Heckt-Scheherezade. This train won’t even take us all the way there, just to our transfer. It would have been no fun for anyone if you’d missed it.”

“Then I wish you would have told me the right time to show up for this all-important train!”

“You know, I’ve never traveled so far away,” said Nel, who had a map of the continent open. The line representing the Continental Railroad stretched far beyond their current location in Ruin. Heckt-Scheherezade, the Myth City, lay so far away that they would have to transfer to another line.

“We’ll be passing through a mountain range so high that oxygen density is low, then there’s wilderness beyond that… Is it just me, or does part of this route pass through Rex territory?”

“Oh, you’ve got a good eye, Nel,” said the chief secretary, who had already finished her first beer. She must have chugged it in virtually one gulp, but so far, she hadn’t so much as turned red. “While riding this train, I’ve seen a few wild Rexes myself. I don’t mean loners, either—whole herds of them. Boy, could they move. I sort of felt like I was riding through a Rex zoo!”

“Isn’t that dangerous?!”

“Oh, Pearl, calm down. Here, have some potato chips.”

Pearl was white as a sheet, but Miranda seemed entirely at ease.

“I said it was like a zoo, didn’t I? The Continental Railroad line is perfectly equipped to keep the monsters at bay. It’s a unique tourist opportunity, observing Rexes from the safety of a train!” Then she glanced at Fay. “We’re just on a trip, remember. Honestly, I think the moment we reach Heckt-Scheherezade, we’ll probably cause quite a stir. I mean, not me, but you, Fay. With your incredible string of victories in the gods’ games, I don’t think there’s a soul in the Arcane Court that doesn’t know about you.”

“……You think so, Chief Secretary?”

“You could stand to be a little more aware of the scale of your own achievements. As I think I’ve mentioned before…” Miranda leaned against the window frame and sighed, “…that record of wins is impressive enough on its own, but what really got everyone’s attention was that you were crucial to clearing Anubis’s maze. Even headquarters appreciated that. I expect they’ll welcome you with open arms.”

It was all about impressions. If the Ruin branch office showed up and said “We’re going to investigate you!”, headquarters wouldn’t take it well. But if they just happened to drop in as tourists? The people of Heckt-Scheherezade would welcome them, and that might make headquarters lower their guard.

“I actually expect them to be the ones to suggest you take a tour of headquarters. I’m sure they’d love to steal you from us.”

All Fay and the others had to do was accept the invitation. They’d be able to walk into the Arcane Court building with heads held high—and let Uroboros find the four gods.

“Which brings us to you, Lady Uroboros.”

“Hmm?” The silver-haired girl in the UNDEFEATED T-shirt looked up as if thinking, You called? Her mouth was full of melon bread.

“Human,” she said, her eyes sparkling. Her cheeks were stuffed full like a squirrel’s. “I presume you have business weighty enough to excuse invoking my name when I am in the middle of savoring this melon bread, the greatest of all snack breads.”

Miranda, fixed beneath the god’s glare, somehow managed to just chuckle.

“Of course. If there’s one thing you can’t do without on a train trip, it’s plenty of alcohol!”

“But mineself does not drink alcohol,” Uroboros objected.

“Yes, yes. But this smoked cheese is irresistible even without a drink to go with it. Please, do try some.”

Uroboros took the cheese, looked it over several times, hummed thoughtfully, then tossed it into her mouth…

“!” With a crash, she jumped up out of her seat. “S-such depth of flavor! Such smokiness! It is nothing like the cheese on pizza!”

“Heh-heh-heh… Human intelligence at work. That’s smoked cheese. Want another bite?”

“Yes!”

“By all means, help yourself. In exchange, I simply ask for your aid when we get to Arcane Court headquarters.”

“Done!”

Uroboros was grinning from ear to ear. Across from her, the chief secretary was practically cackling, but the god was so taken by the taste of the cheese that she didn’t notice.

“Chief Secretary? I didn’t realize you had gotten so good at wrangling Uroboros.”

“Ha-ha-ha, Fay! Good food is the key to friendship between any beings,” she said, taking out another bag of cheese. “On that note, would you like to try one, Lady Leoleshea?”

“Don’t talk to me right now, Miranda.”

Beside the chief secretary, Leshea was playing by herself, industriously working on a house of cards. One might expect it to come tumbling down the moment the train rattled, slowed down, or sped up, but Leshea claimed she liked it that way—that it was more challenging.

“Heh-heh… I’m almost there. Two more levels to go!”

The pyramid of cards was coming together nicely, and the closer Leshea got to the end, the more excited she looked.

“You can do it, Leshea!”

“Thanks, Pearl!”

One more level. Leshea picked up the last two cards, preparing to balance them on the very top…

“Emergency signal detected.”

Skreeech!

With the howl of metal against metal, the emergency brakes brought the train to a halt.

“Yikes!”

“Eep!”

Fay and Nel were thrown forward in their seats by the force of the stop.

“We’ve been informed that wild Rexes are running along the tracks one kilometer ahead. For your safety, the train has been stopped until the herd clears.”

“That sure was startling. So that’s what the emergency brakes feel like,” Pearl said, dabbing at the sweat on her forehead. “Say, Leshea? Did the sudden sto—”

She didn’t even finish her question.

Leshea’s cards were fluttering to the ground. The pyramid had been unable to withstand the abrupt stop, sending all of Leshea’s effort up in smoke.

“……” Leshea was absolutely silent. She stared into the distance, still holding the two cards that should have crowned her carefully assembled house. Finally, she said, “Whose…fault…was that, Pearl?”

“I-it wasn’t me! It was because the train came to an emergency stop!”

“Ah, yes. The train.” Something that looked like flames began to emanate from Leshea’s body. “So it’s the conductor’s fault.”

This was bad—Pearl deduced that the conductor was in mortal danger and took immediate action. She grabbed Leshea, who was starting to stand. “N-no, I take it back! It’s the Rexes’ fault the train came to an emergency halt!”

“Then those Rexes need to be annihilated.”

“Eep! Please don’t annihilate anything?! W-wait, I take it back again! I’m sure the Rexes are only there because it’s the natural thing to do…”

“Then it’s time to burn nature to the ground.”

“That’s not my point! W-wait, just wait! I’m sure what lies behind this is, y-you know, destiny, or logic itself!”

“I think I’ll go back to annihilating the Rexes.”

“I’m telling you, you can’t do thaaaaaaaaat!”

2

Cherry blossom petals fluttered in the air all over the city. The “hundred-year cherry blossoms” that lined the avenue bloomed year-round, be it spring, summer, fall, or even winter. Every time the wind gusted, it sent thousands—no, tens of thousands—of petals scattering like snow.

This was the Flower-Viewing City of Aerlrith.

“Wow. I’d heard the stories, but it really is beautiful,” Fay said, looking up at the sky, which was practically blocked from view by cherry blossoms. Indeed, there were cherry blossoms as far as the eye could see. Their petals danced by on the wind, brushing Fay’s cheeks and piling up on his shoulders. It was like snowfall.

“Oh, wow! Amazing! I’ve never seen such beautiful blossoms before!” Pearl said, catching some in her hand and gazing at them in admiration.

Incidentally, Leshea and Uroboros were both giving them quizzical looks, as if unsure what all the fuss was about.

“My, they’re very elegant. No matter how many times I come here, I always love it,” said Miranda, who was in high spirits. She was drinking straight from a bottle, too nonchalant to even bother with pouring her drink into a cup. “They have excellent quality water here, which means excellent alcohol. And cherry blossoms and alcohol—well! You know what I’m saying, Nel?”

“Erm… Well…” Nel frowned. “I’m still underage, so no, not really…but I’m sure those two things are what you need for a flower-viewing party.”

“A hot spring!” the chief secretary said, letting some of the petals settle into her palm. “Here’s what you do. You float a tray in the bath, then you put a bottle on it and sip spirits. Now that’s how real adults enjoy themselves! The final stop humans have found on the ride of life!”

“But, uh, Madam Chief Secretary? Isn’t drinking too much bad for your health?”

Miranda really did look extremely satisfied, but Nel was obviously disturbed by her advice.

“You had a beer on the train, and you’ve been drinking straight out of the bottle since we got to this city. And now you want to sit in a hot spring and drink. Won’t you be completely inebriated?”

“……Mm.” Miranda just made a noise. Undeterred, Nel continued.

“Anyway, if you ask me, alcohol has a hundred drawbacks and no benefits. They say not to let alcohol drink you, and indeed, it carries the risk of addiction. Even if it didn’t, filling your stomach with alcohol decreases your appetite for food, which harms your nutritional balance. Moreover, the violent, uncouth displays of drunkards are simply scandalous. It’s one thing to harm oneself, but I can’t abide dragging other people into—”

“Whazzat?” The chief secretary swirled her now-empty bottle, her eyes bloodshot. “Listen, Nel, sweetie, you’re right that alcohol’s no good for your health. However. Which do you think is worse: a little drink, or working for a week straight with practically no sleep because your apostles are making trouble yet again? For example, suppose a formerly retired apostle from Mal-ra were to suddenly show up begging to face the Bookmaker because she wants to make a comeback…”

“…Kgh?!” Nel made a choked noise, and her eyes went wide. “W-well, that—”

“And then, after her comeback, she wants to officially move to Ruin. That takes paperwork, you know. Meanwhile, our divine gate leading to the Bookmaker hasn’t been used in decades, so it has to be prepared, permissions need to be applied for—it’s a lot of work. I pulled an all-nighter to deal with the red tape for that.”

“U-um, yes, I…”

The chief secretary was pressing ever closer to Nel, who, overwhelmed and cornered, found herself with nowhere to go but into the street. “Ahem… I’m…very grateful to you, of course, Chief Secretary…”

“I think that’s when I started drinking more. Stress was keeping me up at night, so I started relying on alcohol to get to dreamland. And you, the one who did this to me, you say you can’t abide causing trouble for others? Now that, I can’t—”

“I’m sorryyyyyyy!”

In the face of Miranda’s onslaught, Nel caved and prostrated herself on the ground.

Drawn in by the promise of seeing the relentless flurry of blossoms alight on the surface of their baths, tourists to the Flower-Viewing City of Aerlrith all shared a single objective: the hot springs.

The Cherry Blossom-Cypress hot spring was particularly famous. The tubs were made of thoroughly smoked cypress, with no end of petals fluttering about. And in the changing room…

“What? Tiny Human’s not here?”

“No. I tried to invite him, but he said he was embarrassed because he was the only guy. He’s playing games back in the room.”

“That’s too bad…especially since guys and girls can share the baths here because everyone wears swimsuits,” said Pearl.

“Mm-hmm. It would have been a fine opportunity for us to all enjoy a bath together,” Nel agreed.

She, Uroboros, Leshea, and Pearl went in with their changes of clothes, their towels, and their cypress-wood bathing buckets. Fay was, as the conversation indicated, not present.

“Aww, Fay is so innocent!” said Miranda, who had filled her bucket with hot sake. The chief secretary was already done changing, dressed in a two-piece swimsuit with her towel wrapped around her shoulders. She glanced from the changing room into the bath. “Looks like there are plenty of male customers. And lots of parents with their kids, too—the swimsuit rule makes it very accessible.” She took off her glasses, which were steamed up from the bath, and put them carefully in their case. “His loss for getting all embarrassed. To take a bath surrounded by so many cute girls is like a scene from a dream!”

“…Did you hear that, Pearl?”

“…Yes, Nel. Yes, I did.”

They were whispering to each other.

“The chief secretary just casually included herself when she said ‘cute girls,’” said Nel.

“Girls, yes. Girls. And not only that—”

“Did you two say something?”

““Nothing, ma’am!”” they chorused, then raced out of the changing room.

In a corner, apart from the chatty trio, an UNDEFEATED T-shirt was pulled off with gusto and tossed aside.

“So this is a hot spring!”

Uroboros had changed in an instant. Her swimsuit was a plain blue one-piece, but just like her T-shirt, it had the word UNDEFEATED printed across the chest. Unique indeed.

The moment she saw the bath, her eyes lit up. “It is a tiny sea! Wait, why is it steaming?”

“That’s not a sea,” Leshea informed her. She was dressed in a frilly two-piece suit the same color as her hair. It was very cute, and the bold hue made her stand out among all the other visitors.

And yet…she was studying Uroboros, her brow furrowed. Specifically, she seemed transfixed by the god’s chest. Finally, she muttered, “You do have them.”

Yes. Despite her baby-face and small stature, Uroboros did, indeed, “have them.” In fact, she was strikingly voluptuous. Even in her one-piece suit, which didn’t show too much skin, her considerable cleavage was apparent.

“…No!” Leshea said finally. “I haven’t lost. Even I can hold my own here…”

“Oh-ho-ho! Impressed by mine immense size, Tiny Dragon?” asked Uroboros, who had noticed Leshea looking. She smirked and very deliberately puffed out her chest. “You say we are equal, Tiny Dragon? I think not—consider chest divided by height!”

“!” Leshea twitched. “W-we’d have to measure that to know for sure!”

“Would we indeed? After all, I am undefeated! In fact, I yearn to know defeat!”

“Undefeated? You’re undefeated?”

This was the Endless God’s own “killer phrase,” but in the face of it, Leshea rose to the challenge with a mischievous smile on her face.

“Heh-heh-heh! You want to know defeat? Mwa-ha-ha! Such foolishness!”

“Hmm? What is it, Tiny Dragon?”

Something was strange. Uroboros frowned, noticing the change in Leshea’s demeanor.

“Let me introduce you to defeat, then. Come forth, Pearl!”

After a moment, Leshea’s shout faded to silence in the changing room.

“Pearl! Answer me!”

“Y-yes?! What is it, Leshea?” Pearl hurriedly turned around. She was wrapped in a bath towel, and if she looked a little embarrassed, well, Leshea had caught her just as she was about to change into her swimsuit. “Um, I’m sorry, I’m still changing…”

“That’s perfect.”

“Excuse me?”

Pearl approached them, still towel-clad. She stood where Leshea pointed, in front of Uroboros.

“…?” Uroboros looked up at her, perplexed. “What are you playing at, Tiny Dragon?”

“Now, Snakey, behold! Pearl, give us a cheer!”

“Huh? L-like I’m cheering? H-hooray!”

Swish! The moment Pearl threw her arms up like she was celebrating something, Leshea moved. With godlike speed, she whipped off Pearl’s towel.

The seal was broken.

There stood Pearl, without a scrap of clothing and with nowhere to hide from Uroboros.

At the sight…

“………?!”

The Endless God, for the first time in her life, saw something bigger than she was.

“Eeeek! Wh-what are you doing, Leshea?!” Pearl cried, but Leshea didn’t answer. She was too busy looking down on the shaking, quivering Uroboros, who had fallen to her knees.

“Now you understand.”

“…………Hngh!”

Uroboros rose unsteadily to her feet. Her head was spinning like she’d been hit with a hammer, but the sound of Leshea’s voice appeared to have brought her back to her senses.

“Chesty!” she said.

“Y-yes? What is it— Aaah! Wh-what are you doing?!” Pearl exclaimed again, her face going bright red.

And for good reason. Uroboros had stuck out both her hands and firmly seized hold of Pearl’s ample endowment.

“What in the world is this?! What quantity!”

“Please don’t shout that while you’re grabbing my chest!”

“Even with clothes on I could tell you were large, but who knew that under the veil of your clothing you were hiding more than even a god could measure. The size…!” Uroboros’s eyes opened wide. “These are on a cosmic scale encompassing all phenomena and all physical laws!”

“I’ve never heard of that kind of scale!”

“This is the end of this world!”

“Should a god be saying that?!”

It was then that Nel wandered over. “That’s my Pearl!”

“You too, Nel?!”

“I know… I understand! I can tell that since the last time I saw them, they’ve grown even bigger… Huh?! They’ve increased in size even since your contest with Minotaur!”

“I never had any contest?!”

“Growth!” Uroboros exclaimed—while maintaining a firm grip on Pearl’s chest. “Chesty, your chest continues to grow when already so big… That means you’ll continue to expand endlessly! Who knew there was another being even more endless than mineself?!”

“It’s definitely not endless!”

“…Guh.” Uroboros drew back, taking her hands off Pearl’s chest, and for some reason started to remove her own swimsuit. What was she doing?

As Nel and Pearl watched in surprise, Uroboros produced a permanent marker from who knew where and began to write on her swimsuit. Beneath the word UNDEFEATED, she added in smaller letters ONEDRAW.

“…I allowed mineself to become dismayed,” she said with a sigh. She put the revised swimsuit back on and, for some reason, started to chuckle. “Heh-heh-heh… I see now. So this is how it feels to be the challenger. I’ve not tasted such bitterness—it runs deep, but at the bottom one finds a burning drive!”

“Um… Um?”

“Just wait, Chesty! You will see! See mine own endless growth!”

And then, still in her swimsuit, Uroboros dashed outside.

“I will be right back! And when we meet again, I will have grown yet further!”

“Lady Uroboros?!” Miranda came racing out of the bath, but by the time she got to them, Uroboros was already at the door of the changing room. “We’re supposed to go to headquarters tomorrow!”

“That doesn’t matter!”

“Yes, it does—yikes?!”

Crash!

Uroboros, still in her swimsuit, smashed a huge hole in the wall of the changing room and escaped.

“Pearl, what have you done?! This is all because of your shameless chest!”

“I’ve been accused of a lot of things, but that’s a first!”

So it was that the Endless God Uroboros, her competitive streak ignited by Pearl’s chest, completely forgot about going to Arcane Court headquarters and set off on a journey to make herself bigger.

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

A gleaming silver city—the Myth City of Heckt-Scheherezade—drifted through a perfectly blue sky, higher than the birds, higher than even the clouds.

No one visited its library, where millions of old records lay dormant. It was the quietest place in the whole city, which also made it the most secret—the spot best suited for conversations that shouldn’t be overheard.

There would be no one to see, no one to listen. That was why this had always been the favored meeting place, the home base, of the five people who made up Mind Over Matter. Or perhaps more accurately, the four gods and one human.

“They’re going to come here tomorrow, I hear.”

“Bwha?! H-Heleneia, sweetie, that’s news to me-ow!” A girl with red hair jumped back so dramatically that she fell out of her chair. At first glance, she looked delicate and weak, but her eyes, wide in her exaggerated reaction, burned with immeasurable power. She was the Great Beast Nibelung, the god who had offered the cornerstone of Superhuman Arises to humanity, and now she slammed both her hands on the desk. “Are mew talking about that human, Fay?!”

“Nibel, please.” Across from her, the girl called Heleneia sighed quietly. She, too, appeared delicate, with lavender hair and jade-green eyes. “I believe I sent an electronic message to the team stating that Fay and his companions appeared to have left Ruin early yesterday morning.”

“Mew know I don’t like reading! Mew have to tell this one with your words!”

“Fine…” Heleneia was the leader, and she’d only done the leader’s duty of reporting information, but for some reason, Nibelung was mad at her. “They’re traveling by special express train. They just arrived in the Flower-Viewing City of Aerlrith.”

“Meowhat?! That’s practically on our doorstep! Heleneia, mew have to tell us such important things sooner!”

“…I did tell you.” Heleneia sighed again, sadly this time. “They didn’t reach out to Arcane Court headquarters. They’re pretending their trip is all about sightseeing, and I’m sure they’ll come up with an excuse to come to headquarters when they arrive here. A friendly tour of the facility, something like that.”

“Ah-ha-ha! We’d better be ready for the paw-ssibility that they’ll figure out who we really are!” The red-haired girl, Nibel, climbed back onto her chair. Where Heleneia looked concerned and thoughtful, Nibel swaggered like she was in complete control of the situation. “It’s all good for this one, but mew’ll have problems if they sniff you out, right, Heleneia? You do have that human parent, after all. Meowthing could be more of a shock than finding out one’s own daughter was a god in a past life!”

“I’m going to play dumb.”

“…Gonna try to put them off the scent? If they have the snake with them, they’ll find us for sure.”

“Nonetheless.” Heleneia sounded firm and resolute. “Uroboros can say whatever she wants; there’s no way for the humans to verify it. I simply won’t give her the time of day.”

“Hmm? If mew say so, Heleneia…”

“The snake, Uroboros, will not come.”

“What?”

“Bwuh?”

The two girls were absolutely flummoxed by this interjection from a boy’s soprano voice.

“Elder…,” Heleneia said.

“Are mew sure about that, ol’ Ararasoragi?”

They turned toward the voice. A boy with brown hair sat on the library floor, gazing into the air. He was charmingly boyish, but his behavior and tone exuded maturity beyond his apparent years.

“Sure? What a question.” He continued to stare into space. The boy—or, more appropriately, the god Ararasoragi, King of the Spirits—had observed this with supernatural powers. He saw what happened in faraway lands. “That snake just ran off from the hot springs region of Aerlrith.”

“Why?” Heleneia asked.

“Yeah, meowhat’s going on?” Nibelung chimed in.

“Ah… So that’s the reason. Mmm… Yes, that’s substantial indeed.”

“Sorry?”

“Hmm… What a…truly cosmic scale! Yes, the sight of such a thing would certainly spark the competitive nature of the snake Uroboros.”

“Erm…Elder?”

“Hey, ol’ Ararasoragi, mew gotta actually talk to us.”

The two girls didn’t understand what the brown-haired boy was saying, nor why he was now nodding to himself with a look of conviction on his face.

“No… I don’t believe I shall tell you. It would be too cruel to you.” The god in the form of a brown-haired boy shook his head. He sounded oddly disappointed. “Heleneia, Nibel. This is for your own good. Yes… One expects much healthy growth in the future.”

“…Uh?” Heleneia made a perplexed sound.

“Hey, ol’ Ararasoragi, have mew gone soft in the head?” asked Nibelung.

The two girls looked at each other again. The brown-haired boy ignored them, however. Instead, he clapped to redirect their attention. “In any event! We need not worry about the snake now. Put your minds at ease.”

“…I’m not quite sure I agree with your reasoning.” Heleneia flipped the pages of an old book she had at hand. “Still, Uroboros’s absence is a boon. If no one is going to see who and what we truly are, then the need to confront them directly disappears. I had been thinking of greeting them as Mind Over Matter, but now I think I’ll pass.”

“Mew plan to just hide in the library?”

“Yes. We should lie low until they go home. As for the rest…”

Heleneia trailed off, but her line of thought was quickly picked up by a young man with a monocle who was tucked in a corner of the library. “The dragon,” the youth said. He had a calm, intellectual demeanor, but for some reason, the book he was holding was upside down.

He was Nafutayua, the artifact spirit.

This god had a more voracious appetite for knowledge than any other and loved solo games more than anyone. At the moment, he was immersed in a private challenge of reading upside down. This was typical for him. He would become so absorbed in one solo game after another that even speaking was too much trouble for him.

Yet this god ceased his playing and spoke, something which, to Heleneia’s knowledge, happened perhaps once every ten years at best.

“The dragon? Ah, you mean the former god Leoleshea,” Heleneia said.

“………” Nafutayua was silent.

“Thank you. But she isn’t worthy of our concern.” Heleneia smiled at the young man, who had gone back to reading his upside-down book. “Leoleshea might catch our scent, but in her human body, she won’t be able to pin down us gods. The plan remains: We stay in the library and play a bit of hide-and-seek.”

This was the end of the discussion. If Uroboros, the snake, was not coming, then there would be no one who could tell who they really were. Let Fay and his friends come to the Myth City; Heleneia and her compatriots would simply stay put and keep a low profile.

“Thank you all for contributing your perspectives on this matter. Nibel, Elder, Nafutayua…and Chaos.”

“Yeah. There’s one thing I’d like to know.”

There was a rustle as the four gods turned as one toward Chaos, the only full human in the room and Mind Over Matter’s team coach.

“You won’t hear objections from me about any of this. If Fay really shows up, a lot of the citizens are going to expect you to have a chat with him…but I’m the coach. I can come up with a good administrative excuse. I’ll say Heleneia’s busy getting ready for the next round of the gods’ games.”

“That would be helpful.”

“But that’s not what I want to ask about. How’s the chairman doing, Heleneia?”

“…………………” Heleneia was silent for a very long time. She suppressed the slight smile that threatened to play across her lips, tugging on a lock of her lavender hair instead. Finally, she said, “Do you mean how my dear father is today, or how he was yesterday?”

“Both.”

“Yesterday…wasn’t good. But I’m sure he’s better today.”

“Is that right?”

Chaos knew. “Not good” was, in part, what Heleneia hoped for. “Not good” meant the chairman would need complete rest and quiet.

The gods were all-knowing and all-powerful.

But Heleneia, half-god and half-human, had lost nearly all her omniscience and omnipotence. She had to leave her father’s health in the care of his doctors.

“I think, when Fay gets here, you could tell him exactly what’s going on. Say your father the chairman isn’t well, and you have your hands full caring for him. It would be the truth.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want him to know my weakness. I want neither sympathy nor pity from a mere human.”

“Understood.” Although he nodded outwardly, Chaos couldn’t resist a small sigh and a grim smile to himself. So that was how it was. That was how much Fay was weighing on her mind. “All right, let’s talk contingencies. Suppose, just on the off-chance, that Leoleshea does figure out who the four of you really are. Even then, there’s no need for you to leave this place. Your coach will go and meet with Fay.”

“…If you’d be so kind,” Heleneia said slowly.

“This is the whole reason I am your coach. I’ll do my duty.”

Heleneia gave him a slight bow, the half-god lowering her head to the full human. Chaos turned and left the library.

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

1

Fay and his companions boarded another train from the Flower-Viewing City of Aerlrith. The railway stretched out into the horizon, where a pillar of light rose up to the blue sky.

“I see it! It’s that light, isn’t it?” Pearl opened the train window and leaned out excitedly. “That’s the path of light that leads to Heckt-Scheherezade, the Myth City!”

“Watch out, Pearl! It’s dangerous to lean out the window of a moving train. Let me switch spots with you!”

“You just want to get a better look, Nel!” said Pearl as Nel tried to squeeze her own head out the window. It wasn’t that large a space, and the two girls began a brutal contest for the best view.

“Gosh, what do we do now? I guess our plans are in shambles without Lady Uroboros,” said the chief secretary, beer in hand. The way she gleefully munched on potato chips as she spoke belied the urgency of her words. She sighed. “The whole thing about sensing the power of multiple deities from Heckt-Scheherezade was Lady Uroboros’s testimony, too.”

“I guess Leshea is our fallback plan,” Fay said, turning to the young woman who sat across from him in their cabin. “You’re a former god yourself. You should still be able to sense other gods, right?”

“Hmm-hmm-hmm…” Leshea hummed sweetly. She was busy building another house of cards. As she precisely placed two cards together, she said, “I probably can, but I can’t.”

“That’s quite a riddle. Is there some sort of condition or something?”

“I guess so.” Leshea put a hand to her chin thoughtfully. Then she pointed at Pearl and Nel, who were still struggling for supremacy at the window. “For example, if you saw the two of them at random, Fay, you’d take notice of them, right?”

“Well, sure.”

“What if they were wearing sunglasses, heavy coats, scarves, and masks to disguise themselves?”

“I guess I’d walk right by without recognizing them.”

“It’s the same thing.” Leshea shrugged. “I can sense divine power. But if the four gods in Heckt-Scheherezade are concealing their power and hiding among the humans, it’s going to be a lot harder.”

“Ahh. Yeah, I see.”

That was the difference between a former god and a current one, he supposed. If a god went out of their way to conceal their aura, the former deity would never notice them.

That’s why Uroboros was so important to us. I wonder where she went.

He wasn’t sure if she would be back soon. The danger was that the difference between humans’ and gods’ perception of time was as great as the gulf between heaven and earth—as seen in the way Leshea had “accidentally” fallen asleep for three millennia.

“Chief Secretary, how many days do we have in Heckt-Scheherezade?”

“Three,” she said immediately, looking grim. “But we might be able to stretch it out to five if I hop online and remotely participate in meetings at the Ruin branch office. I sure hope Uroboros comes back in that time.”

“Yeah, but I’m guessing ‘soon’ means a few centuries for a god. Or at least a few years…”

“This is hopeless!” Miranda slumped back in her seat. “We’re almost at Heckt-Scheherezade!”

An announcement sounded around the train: “Thank you for your patience. This train will soon arrive at the surface terminal directly below Heckt-Scheherezade.”

The announcement was followed a moment later by a thunk, and the train slowed as it pulled into a massive, dome-shaped terminal surrounded by walls. Beyond it was a plaza with a massive pillar of light.

“So this light goes all the way up to the sky, huh?” said Fay, looking at the dome’s ceiling. There was a hole in the middle, like a doughnut. The pillar of light passed through it and far, far up into the blue sky.

An elevator of light.

That seemed very divine indeed.

One by one, people entered the huge pillar of light and rose into the sky. The Myth City lay just beyond that luminous beam.

“…It’s nothing short of spectacular,” Nell said with a sigh of admiration. “Chief Secretary, so this isn’t the same as ships or trains engineered with science?”

“This is the legacy of the ancient magical civilization,” stated Miranda, pointing at the beam while pulling her suitcase behind her. “To this day, we don’t know how it works—only that it functions by using the power of a god. In short…it’s magic.”

“…A legacy from an era when civilization harnessed magic, huh?”

“That’s right. And I’m grateful we’re able to use it in the modern day, too. Go on now, Nel.”

“O-okay! It’s very mysterious and beyond my comprehension…but if the only way to get to the Myth City is to jump into that light…” Nel nodded firmly, and quickly stepped up behind Pearl.

“All right, Pearl! I’ll give you the honor of stepping in first.”

“Isn’t that just because it’s terrifying?! Hey, don’t push, Nel! Don’t push!”

They were right in front of the luminous elevator.

Dozens of passengers from the train formed a line and walked one after another into the light.

“The end of the line is this way, please!” a staff member said brightly, gesturing to them. “This is called ‘the Elevator of Light and Cerulean,’ one of Heckt-Scheherezade’s most famous attractions. It’s a so-called ‘out-of-place’ artifact—lost technology—and is the only location in the world where you can personally experience magical technology left over from the ancient magical civilization. If you like traveling through the sky, you’ll love the feeling of weightlessness as you float up into the air! On that note…” The young woman held up a chair and a safety belt. “Unlike a car or an aircraft, the Elevator of Light and Cerulean doesn’t offer much solid footing! For those who are afraid to look down during their journey, we recommend taking a seat and buckling in!”

“…!” Pearl’s eyes glittered as she reached out for the safety belt the woman was holding. “Me! I want one! Give me that b—”

“C’mon, Pearl, here we go!” Before Pearl could take the belt, Leshea had grabbed her by the collar. “You have to try out the zero-G!”

“I’m not happy about this!”

“They say the buildings on the surface get so small that they look like little beans!”

“I don’t want to see that!”

“And you have to stay nice and still, because they say sometimes the light weakens and disappears out from under you!”

“I don’t wanna faaalll!”

Pearl was dragged along. Fay, Nel, and Miranda followed her, and the moment they stepped into the light, they found themselves floating upward, lifted by some invisible power.

“W-we’re floating!” Nel said, looking down. She stood on nothing but a beam of light, and as it rose, so did she. Five meters into the air, then ten. The young staff member grew smaller even as she watched, until the distance was almost frightening.

“I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scaaaaared!” Pearl wailed, clinging to Leshea.

“Th-this certainly is striking,” Nel said. She was standing on her own two feet, but she was somewhat intimidated. It was, after all, just a pillar of light. There were no walls to secure them. Everywhere they looked, in every direction, the scenery made it obvious how high up they were. The most hardened thrill seeker would also have felt some instinctive terror at that height.

Even Fay couldn’t suppress a grimace at the feeling.

“It’s daunting, for sure. Hey…Chief Secretary?”

“………” For some reason, Miranda was crouching. She’d even let go of her beer can, from which she had so far been inseparable. But now she was clutching her suitcase and squeezing her eyes shut as tight as she could.

“I take it you’re not the best with heights, Chief Secretary?”

“I have a hangover…and now I’m on what amounts to a roller coaster. It’s hard, Fay…”

“You’re just drunk?!” Fay exclaimed. “Wait, why are you pale like you’re about to throw up?! Don’t do it, Chief Secretary! If you get sick here, it’ll be the worst thing imaginable…”

“Urgh… The floating feeling isn’t doing my stomach any favors…”

“Hang in there! You have to make it to the top first, Chief Secretary!”

As the elevator took them some ten thousand meters up, Fay tried his best to encourage the chief secretary—who had a hand over her mouth and was groaning. He was still giving her the best pep talk he could when they reached Heckt-Scheherezade.

2

The wind was…close. Gusts started high in the sky, above even the birds, and worked their way down to the surface. Fay had never heard the newly formed wind from so close before.

There it was: the Myth City of Heckt-Scheherezade.

The city closer than any other to the sky—and the gods. After coming so high up, the massive terminal on the surface now looked no bigger than a pebble. And the city around them…

“Huh? Well, this is unexpected,” said a shocked Pearl, looking around the grand avenue where they stood. “It’s very, uh…cozy.”

There were no high-rise buildings; everything was just one or two stories. All the buildings were white as snow, melding into the background of the blue sky like clouds. The avenue, of course, was packed with sightseers and displayed all the verve of a tourist trap, but the overall impression was one of small scale.

This wasn’t the big city!

“That’s because this place is left over from three thousand years ago. It’s not the latest cityscape—in fact, it’s the oldest,” said Miranda, walking ahead of them. She tossed her empty beer can, and a moment later, a trash can in the square sucked it up. “That’s why it looks like this. Take it all in—it’s all thanks to the buildings being so low that you can see the tourists milling around the shops and stalls on these streets. Which reminds me, the Blue Sky beer they sell here is supposed to be the best money can…huh?”

The chief secretary came to a sudden stop and turned back toward them, a mischievous grin on her face. “And here they come.”

“L-Lady Leoleshea?!”

“Hey… Those four are from Ruin!”

A murmur spread through the people crowding the thoroughfare, and one by one, like dominoes toppling, they started to turn toward the newcomers.

“Look at that guy! Isn’t that Fay?!”

“And the red-haired one is Lady Leoleshea! And the black-haired girl with them is Nel! And the golden-haired one is…what was her name? Oh, I remember! Ruby Sapphire!”

“It’s Pearl Diamond!” cried Pearl. “Huh?”

Someone had tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see a young boy, no older than ten, eagerly reaching toward her.

“Uh, um, excuse me?”

“Yes, sweetie? What do you need?”

“……” This child was silent for a moment, looking innocently up at her. It was the same way Pearl herself had once regarded Fay and Leshea.

“I saw you on the stream!”

“Who, me?”

“Uh-huh!” The boy paused, then finally managed, “You were so cool!”

“……!” At that, Pearl froze, her breath caught in her throat. A moment later, she hugged the entranced little boy.

“It makes me so happy to hear that! I acknowledge you as my very first fan. Fay! I finally have a fan of my own!”

“Y-yeah. That’s awesome, Pearl…”

“Leshea! Look!”

“Uh-huh… Great…”

“Nel!”

“M— Mm-hmm.”

None of them sounded very attentive. And why should they? While Pearl was busy losing her mind over her first fan, the other three were being mobbed by hundreds of people.

“Lady Leoleshea, can I get a picture?!”

“Fay, sir! An autograph? Argh! If I’d known you were coming to our city, I would have brought decent autograph paper! Maybe you can sign my T-shirt instead?!”

“Nel, I— I’ve always loved your intense fighting spirit!”

They weren’t being surrounded so much as they were being crushed. In the time it took them to interact with one fan, five more would appear. They were multiplying faster than the team could count.

“This is great!” said the only one of them not caught up in the mob: Miranda, who was relaxing on a bench nearby. She had her arms crossed like a coach watching her team in an intense game. “That’s how you do it, Fay! I knew they’d be excited. Now we just need to wait for the big fish to bite—”

“Would you happen to be Chief Secretary Miranda?” asked a man in a suit, who acted as if he had simply been walking by. He looked to be the same age as Miranda—too old to be a young man, but exuding intelligence and vigor.

“Oh, well if it isn’t Secretarial Assistant Alain!” Miranda got up from the bench and waved to him.

Got ’em, she mouthed, but only Fay saw her.

“What brings you here, Chief Secretary? Look at this commotion… Ah, look who it is!” said the man as he noticed Fay and the others.

The man was Alain Villa, secretarial assistant at Arcane Court headquarters. He’d almost certainly been drawn by the sight of the crowd on the grand thoroughfare. Precisely as Miranda had expected.

“Fay Theo Philus and the Dragon God Lady Leoleshea. That reminds me, I heard a report that their team finally got a name a few days ago. ‘May Your Gods,’ as I recall,” the man said.

“You always were excellent at your job, Alain. You think there’s a Chief Secretaryship at some branch office for you next year?”

“Don’t tease me,” Alain said, peering around. “If Chief Secretary Nos heard you say that, he’d give me a piece of his mind about not getting a big head.”

“Oops, sorry! And is Chief Secretary Nos here right now? I worry that all this commotion might be a bit of a nuisance to him.” Miranda narrowed her eyes behind her glasses. She pointed at Fay and the others as they shook hands and signed autographs. “When Fay and his friends told me they’d never been to Heckt-Scheherezade, I scrounged some time off so I could take them sightseeing. And, well, look what happened.”

“Ha-ha. That’s a celebrity for you. Even headquarters keeps an eye on them. Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear some talk of them. Hmm…” Alain glanced at his watch. “It’s one PM now. There’s just a bit of time before the meeting.”

Naturally.

After all, Miranda had made it her business to arrive when she knew headquarters’ staff would have a few minutes to spare.

“Do you have any plans today, Chief Secretary Miranda?”

“Hmm… Let’s see. We’ve already had lunch, so I thought we could wander around and see the sights. We don’t have a strict schedule.”

“Perhaps you’d favor us with a visit to headquarters?”

“………” Miranda didn’t say anything.

“After that business in Lucemia, even headquarters is aware of their efforts,” Alain added. “It’s not just the apostles—even the ordinary staff members are grateful to them.”

“Ah. Wow, yes, I see.” Miranda crossed her arms and made it look like she was considering a very difficult conundrum. To Fay, who saw her every day, it was an obvious act. “We’re really just here to be tourists…but hmm… An invitation from the secretarial assistant of headquarters himself. I don’t know, what do you think, Fay?”

“Let’s go!” shouted Fay, who had finally reached the end of a snaking queue of handshakers. “Maybe I should have anticipated this welcome from the home of headquarters. Mal-ra gave us a warm welcome, but it was nothing like this…”

“I’m finally done, too…,” said Leshea, for once uncharacteristically tired-looking. Most of her fans were guys, and most of them wanted photos, so she’d had to keep up her best smile for a long time. She wasn’t used to it, and it had taken a toll. “Smiling…is hard, huh…”

“Fine work, both of you,” said Miranda.

“We finished early, and we’ve been resting,” said Nel, who had signed the last of her autographs not long ago. Pearl, meanwhile, had wandered over to a nearby crepe stand and was enjoying a sweet treat.

“Yes, fine work, everybody!” Miranda clapped her hands. “Now, I know you’re fresh off a very warm welcome from your fans, but guess what? Arcane Court headquarters itself wants to say hello, too. Meet Mr. Alain.”

“Thank you! Let’s not waste any time!” said Alain as he strode away at a brisk pace.

They went straight down the thoroughfare, and not five minutes later they saw an iridescent gray building towering against the bright blue sky. It was huge. Maybe it just seemed so large because it was surrounded by single-story buildings, but it certainly felt bigger than the Ruin branch office.

“Welcome to headquarters!” Alain said with a sweeping gesture.

Headquarters boasted a round domed roof and several steeples that speared into the sky—to say nothing of the windmills.

It looked less like an administrative building and more like an ancient temple.

This was the headquarters of the Arcane Court—and insofar as it was reminiscent of a place of worship, its stern architecture made sense.

“It’s certainly imposing, but for a headquarters…there doesn’t seem to be many people here,” said Pearl.

“We get that a lot. But actually, there’s at least twice as many staff members here than in most cities,” the secretarial assistant said with a laugh. “The large interior means occupant density is low, so it looks quiet—but I think you’ll be surprised by how lively it is inside.”

“Alain, that reminds me,” Miranda said, looking slowly around the vast space. “Since we’ll be touring headquarters, I would love to pay my respects to the chairman. Maybe this isn’t polite to ask, but how is his health?”

Alain paused. “Not good.” He heaved a sigh, furrowed his brow, and gave them a look. “The chairman of headquarters is currently suffering from a serious disease. I can tell you that much because it’s already been made public. It’s been announced that he’s chosen to retire at the end of this season.”

“It’s such a shame, when he’s been so dedicated,” Miranda said. “He was an apostle himself in his teens. It gave him a special concern for the young apostles; he’d always find time to watch the streams and cheer them on, even with his busy schedule. He would rather watch than sleep!”

“Exactly. He would be overjoyed if he knew you were all here—but most unfortunately, I think meeting you would be too much of a strain. Please don’t hold it against him. Now, if you’ll come this way…”

Alain began walking down a path by some bushes.

The first thing that greeted Fay when they stepped into the massive, temple-like edifice was a gigantic monitor dangling from the blindingly bright ceiling. The screen was divided into eighteen parts, and each one showed humans contesting against a massive god.

“Oh! These are the gods’ games going on around the world, aren’t they?”

“That’s right, Lady Leoleshea. This monitor displays the streams from every branch office. You’ll find many such screens around headquarters,” Alain said.

“I want one of these in my room! Buy me one, Miranda!”

“I’ll, uh, look into it. But I think they’re exorbitantly expensive.”

As Leshea’s eyes shined with excitement, Miranda smiled wryly—as if she’d known this would happen.

“So! I hope you’ll help us out, Lady Leshea,” Miranda said.

“Huh?”

“Look, here they come.” She indicated somewhere ahead of them with a sweep of her eyes. Leshea followed suit, only to make a choked sound and start trembling a moment later.

From behind the monitor they came, young men and women, one after another. Every one of them wore ceremonial garments worked with gold embroidery—the sign that they were apostles of headquarters.

“You’ve got another handshake-and-autograph event,” said Miranda.

“Nooo! No mooore!”

Leshea tried to hide behind the chief secretary, but her shout backfired, drawing the attention of every apostle in the area. They started to wonder about the identities of the young men and young ladies who were visiting headquarters in civilian clothes. There was much muttering and mumbling.

A tall man walked past them, then whipped around and did a double take. “Hmm? Wait…are you Fay? Fay Theo Philus?!” The man looked to be in his early twenties, with close-cut hair and a sharp, intelligent gaze. He was built like a champion athlete—and he looked familiar.

“I’m Kilhiedge. Headquarters has asked me to chair this meeting and give you all the rundown on what’s going on.”

Back when everyone had been trapped in the labyrinth of Lucemia, he’d been selected by headquarters to form a rescue team. He was effectively their second-highest ranking apostle.

“Oh, hey. Thanks for your help in the labyrinth,” Fay said.

“Thank you! Hey, I hardly recognized you dressed like that…” Kilhiedge’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. His gaze took in Leshea, Pearl, and Nel, who were also dressed in street clothes. Finally, he settled on Miranda, who was still holding a can of beer. “It doesn’t exactly look like you’re here on official business. Or are these disguises of some kind?”

“Nah, we’re just tourists today.”

“Tourists? Well, that would explain it.” Kilhiedge crossed his arms. At that moment, several apostles rushed over, shouting.

“Captain! Is that…you know?!”

“Wow! Fay, in the flesh! And the former god Lady Leoleshea! Captain Kilhiedge…do you know them?!”

“Yeah, sort of. We met during the thing in Lucemia,” Kilhiedge said with an awkward smile. “Fay, sorry for all the curiosity. Given everything that happened with Lucemia, even headquarters has been buzzing about your achievements on a daily basis. Think you could humor them?”

Before Fay could answer, the rumbling sound of many footsteps shook the air. The door at the end of the hallway burst open beneath a flood of apostles who rushed in, running so fast they were panting.

“Is the Fay really here?!”

“He made the trip all the way out here?! Nobody mentioned he’d be visiting! Wait…is this a secret inspection?!”

“It’s gotta be, y’know! Remember that rumor that there was going to be a contest to see who was better, them or our team Mind Over Matter?”

“Huh? I heard we poached them!”

“Yeah, didn’t the chairman himself say that they should be offered more than anyone in history to switch over to headquarters?”

Fay and the others were apparently the subjects of every imaginable kind of rumor. Worse, nobody was bothering to whisper; they all surrounded Fay and shouted to each other at the top of their lungs.

“Hey, who’s the girl with the black hair?”

“That’s Nel Reckless, dummy! She moved to Ruin from Mal-ra.”

“I know that other girl, too! What was her name? Onyx Crystal, I think?”

“It’s Pearl Diamond, for crying out loud!” Pearl yelped.

This was their welcome to headquarters. It wasn’t just the apostles who were excited; even the staff started to congregate with undisguised interest.

“Now we’ve got a good crowd forming,” Fay said, looking around at the people packing the first-floor hall and threatening to crush him. “Well, Leshea?”

“………” She was silent, looking at each of the nearly hundred people around them in turn. The crowd didn’t just consist of apostles and staff. Tourists who were simply paying a visit to headquarters had closed in and were talking excitedly. Fay had a strong feeling that none of them suspected that as they pressed to get a glimpse of him and his friends, they were the ones being observed by the visitors from Ruin.

“………………” After another few moments of silence, Leshea shook her head, her vermilion hair flicking back and forth. “They’re not here. Or at least I don’t think so.”

There were no gods among the crowd.

They knew there were four gods at headquarters. But despite all the people gathered at that moment, none of them had the right smell to Leshea.

Four of them, huh? Well, it’s not like I don’t have a guess.

That number—four. It made one thing seem more suspicious than any other…………… That was where Fay’s mind went.

It happened by sheer coincidence. He’d looked at the ground, lost in thought, then just as he happened to raise his head—he caught sight of someone several layers deep into the crowd.

It was Chaos, the leader of his old team, Awaken.

He stood about half a head taller than Fay. He had heavy-lidded eyes, as if perpetually sleepy, and he kept his dark blue hair long enough on one side to hide one eye. His strong jawline and prominent features made his careless approach to his appearance all the more egregious.

The moment Chaos spotted Fay, he vanished into the still-growing mob.

“Chaos?!” Fay reached out, but his old team leader was already gone.

It seemed ridiculous. There was the man who had vanished from the Relic City of Ange, whom Fay and his team had been trying to track down without a single clue as to his current whereabouts. Fay could only wonder what the other man was doing at headquarters.

“Chaos, I need to talk to you!” Fay called out, but he couldn’t shout loud enough. There were too many people asking for autographs and begging to shake his hand; his voice hardly carried at all. But by that point, there was no sign of anyone who looked like Chaos anywhere in the hall.

Was it just someone who looked like him? No, I saw the way he turned around the moment our eyes met. He knew who I was, too.

It was unquestionably Chaos himself.

“………” Fay was quiet for a long time. Then someone clapped him on the shoulder.

“Fay?” It was Miranda, who had been conferring with Secretarial Assistant Alain. She pointed—maybe by chance—in the same direction Chaos had disappeared. “Alain was kind enough to get in touch with the chairman for us. It sounds like he’s feeling relatively well today, and he would love to meet you all. Shall we go say hello?”

“Yeah. All right.” Fay was talking as much to himself as to her.

Right. They were standing in the entrance to headquarters. Their job here was to find the four gods who had caused all the trouble in the Lucemia Labyrinth.

“All right, everybody,” Secretarial Assistant Alain said, clapping his hands to get their attention. “I’m sorry to break this up, but our friends have a meeting with the chairman. You can all come back again later. Now, this way, please.”

Fay bowed to the dejected-looking apostles of headquarters, then followed the secretarial assistant.

They took an elevator to the third floor, where they found themselves in a hallway made of white marble. It was lined with dozens of shimmering stained-glass windows whose light painted the walls in every color of the rainbow. It was a mythical display, truly worthy of the city’s name.

“This hallway is always breathtakingly beautiful, no matter how many times I see it. When we renovate our branch office, I hope we can do something this pretty…if we have the budget,” Miranda said, looking up at the panoply of colors. “By the way, Alain. Just checking, but your little story about the chairman being well enough to say hello to us was just that, wasn’t it? A story to get the fans in the grand hall to leave us alone?”

“That would be a most improper pretext.” Alain, walking slightly ahead of them, smiled awkwardly. “It’s absolutely true that chairman Augusto issued a personal invitation. He said he’s at work in his office, and to please feel free to drop by.”

“I thought he wasn’t feeling well.”

“In his own words, the weather today is fine, and so is he. Then again, there have been times when he’s said just that and then collapsed, so we on staff are beside ourselves…”

They came to an intersection. They were about to follow the stained-glass hallway to the right—indeed, they had started to make the turn—when Alain came to an abrupt halt.

“………”

“Alain? What’s the matter?” Miranda called, but he didn’t so much as turn around. Sensing that something was wrong, the chief secretary peeked around the corner. Fay followed her…

…and saw a small, old man doubled over in the hallway.

He had one hand on the wall, with the other on his chest as he coughed heavily. He wore a loose-fitting white robe with gold embroidery that gave off an almost cleric-like impression, making it clear he wasn’t just anybody.

“………Ah………” The old man was quiet, but then he gasped softly before falling silent again—only to collapse on the floor.

“Chairman?!” Miranda and Alain cried in unison. Faces pale, they rushed over to him. The old man didn’t look up even at the sound of their shouting.

“Chairman! Alain, what is this?!” said Miranda.

“I knew he was pushing himself too hard!” Alain said, clenching his jaw. “There’s a medical office on the first floor. It’ll be quicker for me to run down there than to call them. Stay with the chairman!”

Alain raced off without waiting for an answer. Left behind, the others had to do what they could.

“Chief Secretary Miranda, is there somewhere more comfortable we can move him?!” Fay said.

“The chairman’s office is that door right there!” she said.

“Nel, you take his left side.”

The two of them flanked the chairman, supporting him on their shoulders as they lifted him up. Pearl and Leshea opened the door to the office, entering into a reception area with a sofa inside. Once they laid the chairman down on it, Fay finally let out a long breath.

“That will do for a start,” he said.

“Phew. Good work. Now we just have to wait for Alain to come back with a doctor.” Miranda had a hand on her chest and was taking a deep breath herself. She crouched down and peered at the old man. He was breathing hard. “Chairman, medical help will be here soon. Until then, just—”

Ping!

Behind Miranda, from the direction of the open door, came the high-pitched sound of something breaking. They all turned to see a young woman standing there, her face pale.

She wore a black ceremonial garment embroidered with shining gold…

“Father?” she asked.

Heleneia O. Missing. She was leader of the world’s strongest competitors in the gods’ games, Mind Over Matter—but at that moment, she did not wear the stern visage of the leader of a great team. She was just a girl, unable to hide how pale she was, unable to conceal the trembling of her lips.

On the ground were the fragments of the ceramic cup she had dropped, now resting in a small pool of water. Her hand hung limply at her side, still clutching a tray that had held the cup and some capsules. She must have been on her way to bring her father his medicine.

“Father…!”

“We’ve already summoned a doctor. Or rather, Secretarial Assistant Alain has,” Miranda said, turning towards the girl. She tried to sound reassuring; the girl was ready to howl with grief. “He was quite lucky—we happened to be there right when he collapsed. We brought him in here so he could lie down until the doctor arrives. I mean, these young people here did.” She gestured to Fay and the others.

At that, Heleneia swallowed hard. Until that moment, she hadn’t registered anything except her father lying on the sofa. “Fay… Theo… Philus…” Heleneia’s gaze grew hard. The look was not friendly, and she didn’t bother hiding it. “You brought my father here?”

“Hey. Uh, nice to meet you,” Fay said with a small wave.

To be perfectly honest, even he hadn’t been expecting this.

Seriously? I sure didn’t think this was the way we were going to finally meet.

Really, from the first time they had talked through that screen, he’d sensed her hostility towards him.

“Would you consider quitting the gods’ games?”

And this unexpected, tragic moment was their first encounter?

“………” Heleneia was silent. She started to say something, then stopped. She started again, thought better of it, then finally opened her mouth once more in a third-time’s-the-charm sort of way. “You—”

“Heleneia, sweetie! There mew are!”

A voice came from behind Heleneia, who was standing just inside the door.

“Nibel,” Heleneia said.

“Hmm? Just a meowment, sweetie. Who are those humans, hmm?”

A girl with braided hair pushed past Heleneia and into the chairman’s office. Whereas Leshea’s hair was a brilliant vermilion, like flames, this girl’s locks were a deeper, darker crimson. She looked earnest and composed, but her eyes sparkled with a childlike curiosity.

“Oh-ho!” the red-haired girl clapped, then turned to Heleneia and grinned. “I thought we weren’t going to show ourselves, meow?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Nibel,” Heleneia said slowly. She hung her head, a lost look in her deep, jade-green eyes. “It was an emergency. My father—rbbgh?!”

No sooner did she try to explain than Nibel finally noticed the chairman and exclaimed “Outtatheway!”, shoving Heleneia aside. “Chairman?! What in the world happened to mew?! Mew look agonized…”

“Coming through! All of you, make way, please!”

There was a flurry of footsteps as a group came racing into the room—it was Secretarial Assistant Alain with several doctors in tow. They piled into the office, completely ignoring Fay and the others as they loaded the chairman onto a stretcher and hurried out again.

The room was silent once more.

Fay, Leshea, Pearl, Nel: Team May Your Gods.

Heleneia and Nibel: Team Mind Over Matter.

The two top teams in the world at that moment, tied with seven wins apiece in the gods’ games, stood facing each other in the chairman’s office at Arcane Court headquarters.

“Uh… I’m glad they were able to help the chairman,” Fay said.

Heleneia responded with the words: “Your team name.” Her tone was fearfully cold; the passion with which she had cried out for her father only moments before had vanished. “I see you finally chose one. And not a modest one at that.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“What?”

“Someone was kind enough to pick it for us. They’re not here right now, though.”

“And who was that?” Heleneia demanded, before snapping her mouth shut. “Ahem! N-never mind. It’s nothing.” The girl turned on her heel, swiftly enough to make her lavender hair billow. She let the momentum of the turn carry her straight toward the exit of the chairman’s office.

“I have nothing to talk about with you,” she said. “Now, goodb—”

“Wait a meowment, Heleneia, sweetie!”

Crick! There was an audible sound as the red-haired girl, Nibel, grabbed Heleneia around the neck with both hands to force her to turn and look at Fay and the others.

“Hrrgh?!” Heleneia gasped. They’d never heard a sound quite like that from her. “Ahh…ah… N-Nibel?”

“Heleneia! They helped out the Chairmeown! Mew gotta say thank-mew!”

“N-Nibel… My neck… You’re going to break my neck…”

“The chairman owes his life to these folks!”

“I can’t…b-breathe…or talk…,” rasped the increasingly breathless Heleneia.

Far from loosening her grip, Nibel lifted Heleneia up higher and tried to turn her to face Fay. “Heleneia, sweetie! Why won’t mew say anything?!”

“B-because…I can’t! Humans…can’t speak…while…necks…crushed…”

“Hmm?” Nibel finally seemed to realize what was going on with Heleneia. She studied the other girl, who was going pale for want of air. “Why, Heleneia, mew’re practically white as a sheet!”

“I’m g-going…to die…”

At last, Nibel let her go. Heleneia clutched her throat and coughed hard—and then they heard two more sets of footsteps as others arrived.

“Hoh-hoh. Heleneia, my dear.”

Heleneia’s eyes went wide. “E-Elder! And Nafutayua…”

Standing in the hallway by the chairman’s office were a brown-haired boy who was so cute he could have been a doll and a young man wearing a monocle and holding a huge dictionary.

“I see that the game is over,” the brown-haired boy said with a grin. “If you’re found in hide-and-seek, you lose. Of course, you came out of your hiding place of your own accord, but a loss is a loss. Accept it with good grace.”

“Accept what? I wasn’t playing any hide-and-seek to speak of.” The girl, their leader, pointedly turned her head away, her lips pursed as if she were pouting. “What’s worse, now you both have come out of hiding. And you, Nibel.”

“Yep! Since I’m out in the open, meowbe some introductions are in order! Mew there!” The red-haired girl, Nibel, pointed enthusiastically at Fay. “Mew’re the human they call Fay, aren’t mew?”

“Er… Yeah. Hi.”

“Then allow this one to introduce meowself!”

Fay had noticed the girl’s rather…unique way of speaking ever since she came into the room, but he resisted the urge to point it out. Instead, he took a good look at the four people standing across from him.

Heck, they don’t have to introduce themselves. I know who they are—they’re the most famous team in the world!

“Nice to meet you,” he said. “You’re Mind Over Matter, right?”

“Exactly! I am Nibel, and this unmannered young lady is our dear Heleneia!”

“I—I am not unmannered! Not really…,” Heleneia said, but she still didn’t look at them. She was supposedly the leader of the team, yet in this company she seemed oddly…small—as if she were the youngest of them all.

“We meowght as well mention these two while we’re at it,” Nibel said, gesturing to the pair behind her: the brown-haired boy, whose cheerful grin gave nothing away, and the monocled young man, who still hadn’t said a word or even looked at them.

“The old-fart-sounding guy is Ol’ Ara,” said Nibel.

“Hoh-hoh! You may also call me Elder; either is fine.”

“And this sullen character is Naffun!”

“……” Naffun remained silent.

Ol’ Ara? Naffun? Hold on. Had the names on the list of Mind Over Matter’s members in the Arcane Court apostle database been quite so odd? Miranda and the others shared a perplexed look.

“Ol’ Ara. Naffun,” Pearl repeated to herself. “Those names are a little, uh, strange. Are they nicknames, maybe?”

“What’s in a name?”

There was a shiver in the air—a chill and pressure that took one’s breath away. No sooner had Fay registered the sensation than the red-haired girl, who had been smiling a second before, was bristling as if her hair might pierce the heavens. Her pupils had narrowed like a beast’s.

“All this world is a game. This name of mine, too, is but a game. To be distracted by it, to be constrained by it, is to be no god—mew!”

“Wh-what did you say?!”

A god. Had he misheard? No, he was sure. This girl, Nibel, had just revealed herself as a god. Not only with her words, but with her overpowering glory.

So it was true. According to Uroboros, there were four gods hiding at Arcane Court headquarters.

And Mind Over Matter had four members…

“Heleneia!” Fay shouted.

A gust of hot wind blew through the chairman’s office, surging from the red-haired girl—Nibel, the god. Fay bellowed into the raging gale, even though an instant’s inattention would see him blown away.

“I have to talk to you! What you’re hoping for is—”

“Thank you. I offer my gratitude in regards to your assistance of my father the chairman,” said the girl with the lavender hair, turning back toward them at last. Her eyes were veiled as though behind a hood, and she walked toward the hallway as if the rushing wind didn’t bother her at all. “But this is over, isn’t it, Nibel?”

“Good, very good. I’m purrfectly happy now that I know my dear Heleneia can mind her manners. Well, b’bye!”

Whoosh!

The wind grew stronger. It felt hot enough to pierce the skin; Fay instinctively covered his eyes and looked away.

“…They’re gone?”

When he opened them again, the wind had subsided, and the members of Mind Over Matter were nowhere to be seen.

Fay and the others who were left in the office stood and stared in disbelief.

“I’m…not quite sure what to say about that,” remarked Miranda, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose. One didn’t have to be staring hard at her to see how her fingers trembled. “Ahem. Uh, Fay? This would seem to imply that the world’s strongest team, Mind Over Matter, is in fact four gods. At least, that’s how it looked to me?”

“I got the same read, Chief Secretary,” Fay said.

The crimson-haired girl, Nibel, had definitely been a god. The look in her eyes, the sheer overpowering awe that had radiated from her—they were on a different level from any human.

But it didn’t seem to bother Heleneia or the two guys behind her. All four of them must be gods. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

If that was true, it would turn the Arcane Court—no, the entire idea of the gods’ games—on its head. The games were supposed to be battles of wits between humans and gods.

And if humanity achieved ten wins…

Even the participation of Leshea, a former god, was the exception to end all exceptions, but that had been allowed precisely because Leshea had abandoned her status as a god to become a human.

For a god to participate in another god’s game would be a violation of an unspoken rule. Uroboros said so herself.

She’d said it was better that way, so everyone could have a good time playing. To Fay’s knowledge, no matter how far back one went in the Arcane Court records, there were no cases of a god participating in a game on the human side.

Games have rules. They’re fun to play exactly because everyone abides by them.

And throughout history, everyone always had.

But now, for the very first time, the members of Mind Over Matter—the gods themselves—were breaking those rules.

It was Nel who broke the silence. “N-now, wait just a second! We’re sure that the four of them are gods. But who else at headquarters knows that? And how much do they know?! What about Secretarial Assistant Alain? What about the other apostles and staff members? What about the chairman?!”

“I’m wondering the same thing!” said Pearl. “A-after all, Heleneia called the chairman ‘father.’ If she’s really a god, then does that mean…does that mean the chairman is a god, too?!”

“Okay, slow down there, Pearl,” Miranda said, shaking her head. She looked pointedly at the couch where the chairman had been resting until moments before. “The chairman was just carried off to the medical office. Do you think a god would collapse from illness?”

“N-now that you mention it… Okay, so the chairman is human. But then that would make it weird for his daughter to be a god. So maybe she’s human after all?”

“Nah, I think she’s a god,” Leshea volunteered.

“That doesn’t make any seeennnse!” Pearl pulled at her hair.

She was right: It was almost time to check their answers.

“Well, there you have it, Leshea. We humans don’t get it,” Fay said.

“The red-haired girl, for sure. The other three, probably, is what I think.” Beside him, Leshea knit her brow, thinking hard. “Hmm… But that old guy, the chairman, he’s human, no doubt about it. Of that, I’m certain.”

The chairman was human. But his daughter, Heleneia, was a god.

Fay wondered how that worked.

“I wonder if the chairman has any idea his own daughter is a god. Much as I’d like to know, the only way to find out would be to ask him, and he doesn’t look like he’s in any condition for questions right now…” Miranda shrugged in defeat. “I guess we’ll have to try to ask young mistress Heleneia about—”

“Allow me to explain.”

Fay heard approaching footsteps at the door behind him, accompanied by a very familiar voice. It was still too soon to call what he felt for that voice nostalgia. After all, he had been on the speaker’s team until only a year ago.

“Chaos?!”

“It’s been a while, Fay. A year, to be exact.” It was Chaos, the leader of Fay’s old team, Awaken. He had blue hair with a long fringe on one side that hid one of his eyes—eyes that always looked somewhat tired. He scanned the chairman’s office. “Sorry I haven’t been in touch, Chief Secretary.”

“Ah, Chaos. It’s been a long time, but I’m glad you seem to be doing well,” Miranda answered easily, waving. “Still letting your hair grow out, I see.”

“Too much trouble to cut it,” he replied. It was hard to tell if he was joking or not.

Nel turned toward him, a nervous expression on her face.

“Master Chaos, sir, you must pardon me!”

“Hmm? For what?”

“I’m going to ask you a very impertinent question. According to the stories, a year ago you dissolved your own team with hardly a word to Master Fay or his teammates. And then you simply vanished—isn’t that right?!”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Chaos said softly. He looked every bit as serious as Nel was nervous. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Pearl’s breath caught in her throat. “…You will?! The whole story?!” she sounded excited. “Oh, I’m Pearl! I’m on Fay’s new team and—”

“I know. You’re Pearl, and that’s Nel. They’ve been streaming your games even here at headquarters. I make sure not to miss a single one.” Chaos looked from one side to the other, checking that there was no one else lurking in the chairman’s office. “As you know, I was at the Ruin branch office until a year ago. My old team, Awaken, was riding high—thanks in large part to a certain young rookie named Fay.”

“Y-yes, that’s right! But you broke it up…”

“A year ago, I learned a secret I couldn’t even tell my teammates. Or maybe I should say I was tasked with a secret mission.”

“A secret?!” Pearl exclaimed.

“Master Chaos, this mission…!” said Nel.

Chaos replied with utmost gravity, “The truth is this world is being invaded by gods of destruction from another realm. I was fighting a one-man battle to save the world from annihilation.”

“You what?!” Pearl cried.

“You were?!” Nel exclaimed.

“But I lost. My right arm and left leg are mechanical prosthetics now, and I’ll never be able to fight again.”

“Your very body is mechanical, Master Chaos?!”

“That’s right. These are artificial limbs made of metal.” Chaos rested his hand on his right shoulder. He was dressed in a black suit that concealed his limbs, but if what he said was to be believed, then underneath the fabric must be metal.

“I’ve been searching headquarters to find someone who can take up the fight against the evil gods in my place. But…” He stepped into the room, gesturing with his allegedly mechanical right hand at Pearl and Nel, who looked at him in shock. “Now I’m sure. You two are the warriors chosen to fulfill that destiny!”

“Us?!” Nel exclaimed.

“You think we’re, uh, capable of that?!” Pearl said.

The two of them looked at each other. Perhaps drawn in by Chaos’s passion, their cheeks had flushed with excitement.

“L-let’s do it! Right, Pearl?!”

“Y-yes! I’m not exactly confident, but if it’s to save the world, we’ll do anything!”

“Then take these keys.” Chaos produced two keys from his suit pocket and tossed them to Pearl and Nel. “There’s a hidden warehouse below headquarters. It contains a hundred-meter-tall god-destroying weapon called Godfinger. I want you to board it and bring down the God of Destruction Megazombie!”

“We’ll do it!”

“Just wait—we promise to bring down this awful god!”

Chaos, Nel, and Pearl shared enthusiastic handshakes.

After watching the entire dramatic conversation play out, Fay and Miranda sighed.

“Say, uh, Pearl? Nel?”

The girls turned to him.

“Yes?”

“What is it, Master Fay?”

A bit exasperated, Fay looked at them clutching their keys and said, “I think those are locker keys.”

““…What?”” they both said.

“Am I right, Chaos?”

“Mm-hmm.” The man with one eye hidden behind his bangs nodded in satisfaction. “This one’s to my bike. The other one is for a locker.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Wh-what’s this about?”

Pearl and Nel asked, looking anxiously at their keys.

“W-well, Fay? What is it about?” Pearl pressed.

“Ah… Well, uh… Chaos may look deadly serious all the time, but he has more of a playful side than you’d expect.”

“Let me put it in simpler terms,” said Miranda with a sigh, one finger pressed to her forehead. “Everything young Chaos just said was a lie. He doesn’t have any mechanical limbs, and he definitely isn’t waging a one-man war against evil gods.”

““Whaaaaaaat?!”” cried Pearl and Nel, the chairman’s office ringing with a shout that was a combination of anger and total shock.

“Chaos has always been like this,” Fay said. Even though he looked so solemn at first glance! Fay couldn’t help sighing to himself.

One thing was certain: This was undoubtedly Chaos, the leader of his old team, Awaken. A man who could tell a tall tale and look proud doing it. Incidentally, Chaos himself probably saw this as just a little joke, but he always sounded so sincere that people really got taken in.

“When’d you come up with that particular story, Chaos?” Fay asked.

“Oh, just a few minutes ago. Personally, I figured by the time I got to the part about the hundred-meter-tall giant robot, they would know it was BS.”

“How were we supposed to know that?!”

“Y-yeah, Master Chaos! You said you were going to tell us everything, so Pearl and I were listening earnestly! That was just plain mean, was what that was!”

“It was just a little joke,” said Chaos, who genuinely didn’t seem to feel guilty. He looked at Pearl and Nel, who confronted him with red faces. “There is, however, one thing that I never lie about.”

“Just one?!”

“I never lie in a game.”

All right… But what did that mean? And who was he saying it to? Fay was probably the only one in the room who knew the answers to those questions without a moment’s hesitation.

“Chaos?” he said.

“I’m not much for just standing around and talking,” the man with the blue hair said as he turned to Fay.

It was then that Fay realized: Chaos had intentionally not looked at Fay yet, so that he could face him at this moment.

“Fay. How about a game with me? For old times’ sake.”

“Master Chaos?! What’s that mean? Weren’t you about to tell us why you split up your old team? How is this suddenly a challenge?!”

“Because it’s not a pleasant story,” he said, brushing his hair back to reveal his hidden eye. Fay knew that was proof the man was truly serious.

In which case…

“So if I win, you’ll tell us?”

“You got it. If you can beat me in a game, I’ll tell you everything you want to know and more. I don’t lie in a game…and well, there’s one more reason. The one I just told you.” Chaos reached into a bag he was holding and took out a portable deck of cards. “It’s not a pleasant story—so I’d like to at least enjoy a game while we talk.”

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

According to tradition, the Sacred Spring City of Mal-ra was protected by the spirit Undine. Indeed, it was known as a rich source of water—despite being in the middle of what was known as the vast dry zone.

A river ran through the town, its clear water sparkling in the light of the sun.

“………” On the riverbank, Dax sat silently with his arms crossed and his eyes closed. He had spent five hours under the blazing sun.

Behind him, dozens of female fans—the so-called Dax Girls—were busy squealing and taking photos.

“Where are they?!” After five solid hours of waiting, Dax’s eyes snapped open. He had reached the limit of his patience. “Fay! You said that a god would pass through here, so I should be here to take them on. But when is this Giant God Titan of yours coming?!”

At just that moment, the communication device in Dax’s pocket made a noise.

“Kelritch? What’s going on?”

“You seem to have missed each other. There’s a woman over here claiming to be the Giant God Titan…”

“Say what?! I’ve been waiting at the gate since the crack of dawn! Although I did, admittedly, take an hour off to film Dax’s Lunch.”

“I suspect that’s when it happened. Anyway, you missed each other.”

On the other end of the communications line, Dax could hear a tremendous commotion. Kelritch was at the Arcane Court building—and based on the sheer amount of noise behind her, Dax suspected a god really had dropped in.

“I’ll be right there. Don’t move until I get back, Kelritch!”

“I’ll be having lunch myself while I wait. See you soon.”

Dax rushed over to the Arcane Court Mal-ra branch office, where he found Kelritch eating her lunch and Chief Secretary Baleggar looking less than pleased behind his sunglasses.

“Welcome back, Dax,” said Kelritch.

“Looks like you nearly missed her,” said the chief secretary.

He also saw a divine gate…which had practically been reduced to powder.

“I’m sorry, what?” Dax asked.

Mal-ra’s divine gates were statues in the shape of the spirit Undine, but one of the four had been smashed so badly it was nearly impossible to tell what it once depicted.

Their divine gate, a precious image of the city’s protector, had been cruelly destroyed.

“Kelritch! And Chief Secretary! What in the world happened while I was away?”

“She happened,” said Kelritch.

“The culprit is right over there,” Baleggar told him.

“…Huh?”

The two of them gestured with their chins, and Dax looked over to see a large woman lying on the floor, covered in bits and pieces of the shattered gate. Her most striking feature was her hair, which was the color of lava. She wore a kimono—unusual attire in Mal-ra—and appeared to have turned over several times where she was lying, so her robe was spread open at the chest provocatively.

“Urgh…,” the woman groaned piteously.

In her hand was a can of beer. On closer inspection, several more cans lay scattered on the floor around her.

“It’s so strange,” the woman was mumbling. “Uroboros said it was this…‘cider’ drink…that would have bubbles in it… So why does my head hurt?”

“She appears to be drunk,” Baleggar said from behind Dax, sighing in disbelief. “Mistress Titan.”

“…Yeeeaaah?” the woman drawled.

“What you drank was beer, my lady, not cider.”

“What?!”

“Then you got drunk and smashed a divine gate. God or not, property damage is a crime.”

“Urgh… I’m sorry… I’ll fix the statue…”

Titan rolled over and heaved herself up—or at least tried to. She pitched forward and had to catch herself with a hand on the wall.

“I feel like I’m gonna retch…”

“The alcohol’s coming back up?”

“No… Magma.”

Everyone in the room froze.

“Hrk! I feel like I’ve got a whole volcano that wants to come out…”

The entire room was immediately in an uproar.

“No, wait! Please!”

“Somebody! Get some water for Mistress Titan!”

“Bring a hangover cure from the medical office! She’ll destroy this whole city!”

People raced for the emergency exit. Meanwhile, Titan had slid to the floor again and was somehow looking pale.

“Kelritch. Send a message to Fay,” Dax said, turning on his heel. “No god ever came here. Just some drunk.”

“He’s not at the Ruin branch office. I think he said he was going to pay a visit to headquarters,” Kelritch replied.

“He said what?” Dax stopped and thought. Then his eyes started to gleam as an unsettling smile crept across his face. “Very interesting! Oh, Fay, I’m looking forward to this!”

At the same moment, far, far away from the Sacred Spring City of Mal-ra…

Not physically far, but dimensionally—as far as the gulf between the human world and Elements, the superior spiritual realm.

In the divine maze of Lucemia.

Deep in the heart of the maze, once the host of unprecedented abductions of apostles, stood an arena designed for the challenge against the last boss—the god.

And there…

“It is I!”

A vivacious and, indeed, adorable voice echoed throughout the coliseum. A young woman skipped into the arena wearing a swimsuit with the word UNDEFEATED emblazoned across the chest—the Endless God Uroboros.

“Mine undefeated self has come to play!”

“………”

But other than Uroboros’s cheerful shout, the coliseum was deathly quiet. Normally, the last boss would be waiting there, but all Uroboros saw was a two-meter-tall pyramid. It was the tomb of Anubis, God of the Underworld.

She peered closely at it.

“Hellooo? Did you hear me? Mineself is here! Mine immensely popular self has come to see you!”

“………”

The tomb was silent. And of course it was. The whole premise of the game was that Anubis was supposed to be dead. Only after players had cleared every trick and explored every corner of the maze, unlocking 100 percent of the map, would she be resurrected. If one desired an audience with the last boss, one must first challenge the sprawling—

“Get out here, you big, dumb dummy!”

“Where do you get off calling me a dummyyyyy?!”

There was an explosion. The top of the pyramid—frozen in silence until that moment—burst off like a volcanic eruption and flew into the air as a god with tan skin emerged from within.

“Here I am having a nice nap in my tomb, and you go around stomping and yelling!”

The god held a yellow- and black-striped staff, and her blue hair was covered by a gold mesh. She landed on the highest level of the coliseum.

“I am the god of this maze and the last boss, God of the Underworld—”

“Boring! Who cares?”

“I care!”

Anubis, who had really been getting into it, shook her head furiously. Then she gave Uroboros a hard look, studying her from her head to her toes.

“Why are you in a swimsuit?”

“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about!”

“Oh?”

“Give me a medicine that will make my chest bigger!” Uroboros, who had placed her hands on her hips, now thrust out one hand, like a child begging her mommy for sweets. “I can grow endlessly, but waiting for a body to grow naturally takes time. I want to settle things now! This maze has all sorts of fun items. It must have a potion or two that can help me out.”

“Yeah, no. No, it doesn’t.”

“………”

The maze was silent once again. Uroboros stood frozen with her hand out, while behind her the brown-furred creatures called Puffballs came and went without a care in the world.

“What do you mean, no?! You must have something! Mine intuition tells me so!” said Uroboros, undeterred. “Come! I offer you an autograph—a signature written in mine own hand! Let’s trade!”

“If I don’t have it, I don’t have it! I can’t— No! Hold on a moment!” Anubis’s eyes opened wide; she turned slightly away from Uroboros, then scrabbled with something at her chest with both hands. “Let’s see… This size should be just about perfect… Hrm! Hey, don’t run away!”

“What are you doing?”

“There! Ready!” Anubis announced, spinning back around. She placed her hands on her hips and stood tall as if to emphasize her own chest. “Behold!”

“Ohhh?!”

Uroboros observed with intense interest—for Anubis’s chest was suddenly a good two sizes more ample than it had been before. It practically looked ready to pop out of the black slip she was wearing.

“Yes! That’s it! That’s what I wanted! How did you do it?!”

“Heh-heh-heh! Like this!”

Anubis pulled at the neckline of her clothing. She was wearing what amounted to a tank top, and the moment she tugged on it, something brown and fluffy came popping out.

“Puuuff!”

“Y-you used Puffballs?!” Uroboros looked stupefied as the little monsters flew through the air.

Indeed. Anubis’s solution had been to stuff Puffballs into her shirt.

“And that makes your chest look bigger on the spot!”

“Oooooh!”

“And that’s not all! If you want to further increase the swell, you can tuck this apple in there, too!”

“Whoooaaa!”

It was one of the most famous fruits in Lucemia, the killer apple. They looked crisp and delicious, but they were one of the maze’s most dastardly traps. At several points they had stood in the way of players (mostly Pearl) who sought to clear the maze—Uroboros remembered well how they had ushered the players to a respawn in a spray of blood.

“I knew it. You are a dummy.”

“What makes me a dummyyyyy?!”

“Sorry to bother you!” Uroboros chirped. The Lucemia Labyrinth did not have what she wanted. With that realization, Uroboros set out afresh on her travels.

All to achieve robust growth. The objective behind going to Arcane Court headquarters had completely slipped her mind as she set a course for the next Elements.

“Someone! Anyone! Somebody, teach me the secret to growing big boobs!”

In her haste, however, this all-knowing, all-powerful god had forgotten something.

She had forgotten that among the many gods with their many games, there was another who loved mazes just like the Lucemia Labyrinth. She would be the one…

Uroboros arrived in a certain Elements. This was an underground labyrinth rich with the smell of earth. It was so underground, in fact, the walls and ceiling were all made of dirt. And there in the main hall…

“What?!”

“Huh? What’s wrong, Li’l Mino?”

“I thought I heard someone call me just now.”

…were two gods playing cards together. The one called Li’l Mino had cow-like ears that pricked up as she looked around.

“Someone calls for the human/beast-god, Minotaur!”

“Uh… I don’t think so?”

The other deity was a little girl wearing a hooded sea-blue outfit, and she didn’t sound very impressed. She sat there with her cards in her hand, her beloved trident plunged into the ground behind her.

The Sea God Poseidon.

A god she may have been, but she and the human/beast-god Minotaur referred to each other affectionately as “Li’l ’Don” and “Li’l Mino.”

“You are obviously trying to escape a losing hand, Li’l Mino.”

“A-am not! I’m sure I heard it! A voice seeking me out!”

“And yet I did not hear a thing.” Poseidon smacked the ground impatiently, like a child eager to get back to her game. “Anyway, someone might seek help from me, but why would they ever come to you, Li’l Mino? Your only redeeming quality is that huge rack.”

“Yeah, you’re right…”

“Erk?! I thought I was mocking you, so why do I feel like you just dunked on me?!”

“Hee-hee! You are so cute, Li’l ’Don. C’mon over here.”

Minotaur was the “bull” god. By far, her most striking physical characteristic was a chest that seemed to scream Well? How about this?! Her chest was so imposingly ample that if she so much as turned around, it shook violently. It was such a sight that when Leshea and Nel had witnessed it, they had both cried out, “Look at the size of those!”

“You really are right, though. My only redeeming qualities are the size of my chest and my cute voice, and how tolerant and broad-minded I am, and how demure and calm I am, and how good at games I am…”

“Now you’re just boasting,” said Poseidon. Minotaur had picked her friend up in a hug so tight that Poseidon’s head was half-buried in the valley of her chest.

“Maybe. But I really do think I heard something.”

“It must be your imagination. Some fool snake is prattling on, but there’s no need to listen to her.”

“So you can hear it!”

“I can’t have her interrupting our game.”

“True enough!”

So the divine pair ignored Uroboros completely and went back to playing cards.

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

1

Back at Arcane Court headquarters—the building located more than ten thousand meters in the air in the Myth City of Heckt-Scheherezade, which sat like a white dot high up in the blue sky.

“One of the free-play rooms is open. Let’s go there,” Chaos said.

Fay and the others were somewhere on the second floor of headquarters. When they opened the door to the room, they saw more than ten square tables lined up to face each other. The first thing they noticed was that each of the tables had dice, pencils, and other game supplies on them. A camera hung from the ceiling above each table, indicating this place was set up to stream, too.

“As you can see, this is a practice room for board games. I’ve reserved the entire thing,” Chaos said. He pointed to a table in the center as if to say, Let’s use that one.

“Miranda! I think I’m in love with this room!”

“I know exactly how you feel, Lady Leoleshea. I’d love to have something like this at the Ruin branch office. Looks expensive to set up, though…” Miranda looked around with interest. “Wow, Chaos. Looks like you got over your lazy streak long enough to make a halfway decent suggestion.”

Miranda watched as Fay and Chaos sat down at one of the tables. She crossed her arms, intrigued, and said, “So let me make sure I’ve got this straight. The two of you are going to play a game. If Fay wins, you’ll tell us what we want to know.”

“You got it.” Chaos nodded, then shifted his gaze to Fay, who was sitting across from him. “Fay. I really do feel bad about breaking up Awaken. I’m sorry to you, and to all our teammates.”

“I hear you,” Fay replied with a pained smile. Whenever he thought of that moment, he wished he could have asked Chaos to at least give them one word of explanation. “If you’ll really tell us the story if I win, then I’m going to do my best.”

“I’ll tell you. In fact, I’ll tell you everything you want to know and more.”

“………” Fay was quiet. That nagged at him. Chaos had said the same thing earlier—but what did it mean for him to tell them “more” than they wanted to know? The way he deliberately repeated it grabbed at Fay’s attention.

“So, Chaos, what game are we playing?”

One side of the room was home to a shelf with dozens of games in boxes. Presumably, Chaos would pick one of those. But as far as he could see, Fay had already played everything that was on that shelf.

“Fay, you played Mind Arena back in Mal-ra, didn’t you?”

“I’m impressed you know that.”

“That was another game that caused quite a stir at headquarters. It was a good contest.” Chaos took out an old book—no, wait. When he opened the beaten, weathered cover, it was hollow inside. It was a game box in the shape of a book. Within were sixteen cards. “Mind Arena is based on a game that humans first encountered in the gods’ games. And so is the one we’re going to play now.”

“These cards here?”

“Yeah. They’re descended from a game given by the gods long, long ago.”

A game from long ago?

It was true that even Fay hadn’t seen this game before, but these cards looked awfully clean for something that had supposedly been around for eons. They had very modern illustrations and—most notably of all—the text was printed in modern language. To put it in game terms, Fay might have said: I doubt it.

This was presumably one of Chaos’s trademark straight-faced jokes.

“More precisely, these cards are copies, made by yours truly. I translated the cards from the ancient game and got an illustrator I know to do the artwork. Nice printing, right?”

“Huh! So, which city do they sell this game in?”

“I’m not lying this time.”

“Why is it so hard to tell with you?!”

Fay retracted his doubts. Apparently, Chaos was telling the truth.

Upon hearing that, Leshea’s eyes lit up. “You, human! Sell those to me!”

“Mm-hmm. You know, it crossed my mind to commercialize it,” said Chaos with surprising candor. “Let’s see if we can find a sponsor who’s keen on the deal. If you like what you see when Fay and I play, spread the word. This is an online card battler that people all over the world can play via electronic terminals. Reach out to Mystic Factory, the Joy Division. We call it MF, Division J.”

“Who exactly are you talking to?!”

“As one who loves games, I have a duty to share them with the world.”

Chaos spread the sixteen cards out on the table. Pearl, Nel, and Leshea, to say nothing of Miranda, watched him with fascination.

“This is a test run for the commercial version. Which is another way of saying we’re still at the prototyping stage. I might be the translator for this game, but that’s not to say I’m necessarily great at it.”

“Okay. What’s the basic premise?”

“It’s a comparison game—play two cards and see which one has the higher number. You see the coins over there? If you’re confident in your cards, you bet lots of coins, and if you’re not, you fold, just like in poker. The numbers that serve as an indicator of strength are on the cards.

Fay checked the cards, and the very first thing he saw was that almost all of them were printed with either the word HUMANS or the word GODS.

“I see you’ve noticed it. We pick either the six-card Gods deck or the six-card Humans deck, and then we play. This is the ancient card game ‘Ragnarök League’—also known as the final battle between humans and gods.”

The ancient card game Ragnarök League:

“Knowing you, I assume you’ve already got all that down,” Chaos said, taking out two electronic devices.

Each had a screen displaying the words Ragnarök League: The Final Battle Between Humans and Gods. They were evidently Chaos’s prototypes, but the display was clean and legible.

“We play using the app on these devices,” Chaos said. “Tap a card on the screen to select it, then tap on a coin to select those.”

“Got it.”

The game master and its creator—Chaos.

Versus a total beginner—Fay.

He couldn’t discount that knowledge gap, but as long as both players properly understood the effects of the cards, it was psychological warfare that would tip the scales in favor of one or the other.

Chaos wants a straight showdown—and I think this game is going to value mind games more than knowledge or patterns of play.

That meant Fay could make up the difference in their knowledge and skill. There was just one catch…

The Gods deck and the Humans deck. At first glance, anyone would think that the Gods deck was obviously more powerful.

“All right,” Chaos said, holding out one of the devices and keeping the other for himself. “I’ll take the Gods deck.”

“Wh-whoa, hold on!” cried Pearl, who had been studying the cards from over Fay’s shoulder, before Fay could even open his mouth.

But it was too late. On his device’s screen, Fay could already see that the Gods deck was assigned to Chaos, leaving him with the Humans deck.

“That’s not fair! Not when the Gods deck is obviously so much more powerful!” said Pearl.

“What makes you say that?”

“Huh? Well, it’s… I mean… Isn’t it, Nel?!”

“Mm-hmm. It looks that way.” Nel nodded somberly. “Especially the Angel and Divine Dragon cards. They clearly break the balance of this game.”

The Angel, in addition to being the most powerful card in either deck, could be used repeatedly. Meanwhile, the Divine Dragon could single-handedly end the game. They were clearly overpowered.

But it’s not like the Humans deck has no way to counter that. The Hero could beat either of those cards, and the Mage could fight them to a draw.

Still, it put Fay at a disadvantage in the psychological game. The Divine Dragon was particularly fearsome. If Chaos played that, Fay would have to make sure he played the Hero or the Mage on the same turn. Otherwise, the game was lost.

Somewhere in these five turns, the Divine Dragon is going to show up. The question is, which turn? I have the Hero and the Mage, but that means I have only a two-fifths chance of matching them up against the Divine Dragon.

In other words, three-fifths of the time, he would lose. The Humans deck couldn’t hope for a victory rate better than 40 percent. At least, that was how it appeared.

“You’ve got the right idea. The Gods deck has the psychological advantage in the opening game,” said Chaos, bathed in the blue glow from the monitor as he looked down at his screen. “But Fay, there’s a reason I’m having you use the Humans deck.”

“Because Mind Over Matter is a god-team, and we’re the humans?” Fay asked.

“You’re a quick one.” For once, the corners of Chaos’s lips turned up in a smile. “You’re pitting yourself against the gods themselves. Can’t have you afraid to go up against a mere deck of them.”

After a second, Fay said, “And is it your job to make sure I’m ready?”

“I’m just a gofer. Now, to get back to the rules for a second, this game requires a third-party referee. In our case, the program will do it automatically.”

This game was played without the cards ever being turned face up.

For example, suppose that in the first round, Fay played the Sage (attack power six). Chaos would play a card, but Fay wouldn’t know what he’d played because it would be face down. If Fay won, he would know that Chaos must have played Meep, Holy Spirit, or Guardian Beast (all of which had less than six power). If he lost, Chaos could have played only the Demon or Angel. (If Fay lost to the Divine Dragon, the game would be over.)

It’s a game of incomplete information. The question is how precisely we can guess what’s in our opponent’s hand based on the referee’s judgments.

They each had just six cards, but the fact that the players never saw them made things much more complicated.

“At the start of the game, each of us loses one card at random from our decks. The program will do that, too, nice and neutral.”

On his screen, Fay saw the six cards of his deck shuffle themselves face down, then watched one of them fly away so that it sat outside the field of play. The remaining five cards would become his hand.

Trapper, Sage, and Traveler would all be good cards to drop. I could work with losing the Healer, too. But if that drop cost me the Hero or Mage, I’m in trouble.

The cards stopped shuffling themselves, and Fay saw what he was left with.

“………”

He understood.

Fay had to suppress a wry smile at his own hard luck.

“Now we get five minutes to plan our strategies. Think about what card we want to play in round one,” Chaos said. “Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Miranda—” Here he tossed her a keycard. “There’s a monitor room next door, set up so that you can observe the game Fay and I are playing on a nice, big screen. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to look over our shoulders at our devices in here.”

“Well, look who’s prepared.” Miranda turned, twirling the key card between her fingers and beckoning to Pearl, Nel, and Leshea with her other hand. “Looks like we’re moving out.”

The girls followed her from the room, leaving only the two young men—Chaos, who a year ago had been the leader of Awaken, and Fay, who a year ago had been his newest rookie.

Both were silent.

They stared at the five cards in their hands so hard they could have bored holes through them, imagining hypothetical rounds in their minds. Which card would they each play, and in which round?

These five minutes aren’t just for thinking about your first move. I have to figure out my entire strategy with this deck.

Time passed all too quickly, and in what felt like the blink of an eye, the five minutes were over.

“Five minutes ain’t as long as it sounds, huh?” Chaos said, looking up at the clock on the wall. His relaxed manner suggested that he had already run through his simulations of all the upcoming rounds. “This is your first time even seeing this game. If you need it, I could give you another five minutes to plan.”

“It’s all right,” Fay said, looking at the cards on his screen and nodding. “Let’s play, Chaos.”

Meanwhile…

Miranda and the three young ladies piled into the monitor room next door.

“Chief Secretary! Quick, turn on the monitor!”

“Patience, Nel, patience. Now, let’s see. It looks like this button should do it…”

The monitor hanging from the ceiling lit up. Miranda sat in the coach’s chair, while Nel, Pearl, and Leshea stood behind her and looked up at the screen.

“Oh! I see them!” Pearl pointed up at the screen, which now showed a black-haired young man, Fay, and an expressionless Chaos with his long blue locks. Then the display switched to show the screen of Player 1 (Chaos). It must have been the same screen he was seeing on his device. They could see his five Gods deck cards, but those of his opponent Fay were all hidden.

“So this is Master Chaos’s hand!” Nel said, peering at the monitor in excitement. They could see the five cards of the Gods deck… “He’s got the Meep! And the Guardian Beast and Holy Spirit…”

“He’s got the Angel, too. He must, because I can see something that has eleven power!” Pearl said, getting in on the commentary. “The other card has nine attack power. Which means it must be…!”

Her breath caught in her throat. There was one card in the Gods deck with nine attack power: the Divine Dragon. When that card won a battle, it also won the entire game. And terrifyingly, the most powerful card in the humanity deck had only eight attack power.

“That’s a good set of cards,” Leshea said with a serious look. “The randomized removal discarded the Demon from the Gods deck. I’m sure Fay was hoping it would take out the Angel or the Divine Dragon. The fact that this hand still has both makes it dangerous. The only cards in the Humans deck that can compete with them are the Hero and the Mage.”

Fay couldn’t spare either of them—because he would need both of his trump cards to neutralize both of the Gods deck’s big plays.

So what were the cards in his hand?

“Quick, Chief Secretary, hurry! Show us Fay’s hand!”

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying. Here, look.”

The screen changed again, this time to show Fay’s perspective.

Pearl gasped. “Yes! He’s got the Mage!”

The Mage was the weakest card in a vacuum, but it could copy the attack power and effects of the opponent’s card. That made it one of the Humans deck’s strongest plays, able to fight almost anything in the Gods’ deck to a draw.

“Beside it is the Healer, then the Trapper, the Sage… The last card has an attack power of two, so it must be the Traveler! ……Wait. If that’s all his cards, then… Nooo!”

The Hero was not among Fay’s five cards.

“Well, shoot. I guess Fay never was good at luck of the draw stuff like this,” said Miranda, her head in her hands. “This is not a good start.”

Behind her, even Leshea gave a pained smile. “The god side has every chance of winning this game. At some point in the next five rounds, that Divine Dragon is bound to show up. If Fay doesn’t play the Mage at the exact same time, it’s over.”

“But that’s a one in five chance, right?!” said Pearl.

“Yep. From what we’ve seen, his hopes of winning are less than twenty percent. And even if he does happen to stop the Divine Dragon, that means he’ll have used up his Healer and the Angel will start trouncing him in the next round since it and its eleven attack power can just keep coming back.”

“Then he’s as good as lost this game, right?!”

“From the perspective of card power, yeah.”

“Huh?”

“Have you forgotten about this, Pearl?” Leshea tossed something to Pearl, who was staring bleakly at the ceiling. The object traced a gleaming, golden arc through the air and landed in her hand. It was one of the coins that had been on the table. Leshea must have snatched it up when they were in the other room. “The cards are just a proxy for a game of stealing each other’s coins.”

“He can bluff!” cried, not Pearl, but Nel. She knew better than anyone, from the game against the Bookmaker, that one’s skill at poker was not about the strength of one’s hand. It was exactly when your hand was weakest that you had to act in such a way that your opponent would never know.

“You could have won… You should have called my bluff…”

Fay had to make Chaos think he had both the Hero and the Mage. He had to keep raising and raising to sell the illusion—because Chaos, of course, didn’t know which card Fay had lost.

“Fay can’t afford to let Chaos figure it out,” Miranda said, resting her chin on her elbows as she faced the screen. “They’re former teammates, so they must know each other’s tells. If Fay makes Chaos suspicious by raising too aggressively, it’ll only be counterproductive. The moment Chaos thinks Fay is missing either the Hero or the Mage, he’ll play the Angel and the Dragon in succession, and then it’ll be all over.”

“Master Fay is going to be on thin ice for this entire battle,” Nel mumbled.

At the same moment, the chief secretary switched camera angles to the main view, so that the screen swapped to show Fay and Chaos.

“All right, let’s get started,” Chaos said. “Round one.” His voice was the only sound in a room otherwise dominated by tense silence.

Round One

In the free-play room, Fay stared intently at his screen, knowing that Leshea and the others were watching from next door.

“……”

The five cards in his hand (with their attack power) were: Healer (8), Trapper (6), Sage (6), Traveler (2), Mage (1).

He was missing the Hero. It had disappeared from the Humans deck during the random removal at the beginning of the game.

Okay, what do I do? For that matter, what does Chaos do? There’s always a possibility that the Angel or the Divine Dragon were discarded.

There was a two-out-of-six chance that he had lost one of those cards—in other words, it would happen in one out of every three games. If Chaos was missing one of those cards, then Fay just needed to make sure he got the Mage out against the other one.

The ideal scenario is that he’s dropped the Divine Dragon, but that could well be wishful thinking. What really scares me is that he might play it in round one and I immediately lose the game.

He shouldn’t hope for too much. One always needed to imagine the worst-case scenario, which meant Fay had to work out a strategy for if Chaos was still holding both the Divine Dragon and the Angel.

I need to put myself in his shoes. If I had the Divine Dragon, would I play it round one?

The longer the game went on, the smaller their hands would get and the easier it would become to guess what their opponent might be holding. If an OHKO with the Divine Dragon gave the Gods deck its best chance of winning, then the Gods player would want to play it early in the game, while it was still an open question what might be in their hand.

It was the same with the Angel. As long as the Angel kept winning, it would keep returning to its owner’s hand. There was no stronger card for a round-one play.

Which meant that Fay’s first move had to be the Mage (since he didn’t have the Hero). That was the best answer the Humans deck had. A first-turn Divine Dragon or Angel was the Gods player’s optimal play; if Fay unhesitatingly used the Mage to stop it, it would play into a bluff and suggest that he still had the Hero to spare.

It seems like the perfect move. So perfect that Chaos might see right through it.

If he were in his former team leader’s position, he would guess that Fay would play the Mage or the Hero in the first round and play some other card. Then, whichever card Fay played first would be wasted, and Chaos would decisively gain the upper hand.

This is where the real contest starts, to see which of us can read the game out further. And that’s a contest I have to win.

First, the Divine Dragon: Would it come out in round one, or not?

If it did, his only hope was to meet it with the Mage. But if he was wrong about Chaos’s opening gambit, he would lose his only means of countering the Divine Dragon. Fay thought it over as the clock ticked down, racking his brain until the final tenth of a second…

“All right, let’s get started. Each player chooses their cards at the same time,” Chaos said, his pronouncement breaking the silence. “Here we go, Fay.”

“I’m ready.”

On the screen, the card Fay touched glowed and appeared face down. The same happened with Chaos’s card.

“Is this the part where we bet our coins?”

“That’s right. One each for ante, then you decide how much you want to wager.”

They each had ten coins. After the one-coin ante, that left nine to bet with. After that, it was a question of how many you could win.

“I’ll wager one coin in addition to the ante,” Fay said.

“Call,” Chaos said without hesitation. Two of each of their coins moved to the center of the screen. Now they were ready for their cards to have their showdown.

“Moving to card judgment,” an electronic voice announced.

I picked the Healer. If Chaos plays the Divine Dragon as his first move, I’ve already lost.

He had to have faith. Had to trust his own judgment.

Only an instant passed, but for Fay, it could have been half an hour. It certainly felt like it.

“Round one. The winner is Fay. After transferring coins, Fay has twelve coins, Chaos has eight. Remaining cards: Fay—five; Chaos—five.”

““…!””

Fay and Chaos both gasped and, for just one second, looked at the each other.

Neither of them were down to four cards.

The significance of the total remaining cards wasn’t lost on them. They had each played a card out of the five in their hand, so they should have had four left. Yet both of them still held five cards.

Meaning the cards’ effects had caused their hands to increase by one.

My Healer is able to return to my hand after I use it. And the only card in the Gods deck that can supplement hand size is the Meep (attack power one)!

Fay had gotten his Healer back, so he still had five cards. Chaos had used and lost his Meep, but had gained one of the Additional Cards, which was why he still had five. That meant that the composition of his hand was currently: unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, and an Additional Creation Card.

Now I’ve got something else to think about: Which of the Creation Cards did he choose?

There were two possibilities: Lightning & Sword, which added five to one card’s attack power, or Wings & Shield, which subtracted five. They might look like opposing effects, but the Gods player was almost guaranteed to choose Lightning & Sword.

Because it gives them a better chance to take out the Hero. Plus, it lets them ensure the strength of their Guardian Beast.

The Hero couldn’t defeat the Guardian Beast on its own—but by using the Healer as an Additional Creation Card, the Hero could be boosted to six attack power.

But now that won’t be enough, because Lightning & Sword can raise the Guardian Beast up to ten power.

And the Hero still wouldn’t stand a chance against the Divine Dragon. For that reason, if the Humans player played the Hero or Mage, it would be easy pickings for a Guardian Beast boosted by Lightning & Sword. Worse yet, during the round he played Guardian Beast, Chaos could go all in on his bet—because there was no way he could lose.

But the worst thing is that he can do exactly that as a bluff. If he bets all his coins, I’m going to have to fold, whether it’s a bluff or not.

Fay was at a severe disadvantage. Come round two, he couldn’t afford to make the slightest mistake.

Meanwhile, the others had watched round one play out.

“So that’s Master Chaos’s strategy!” Nel said, biting her lip. The situation looked dire for Fay. “Master Fay doesn’t have any cards that can beat the Guardian Beast!”

“N-now, that’s just not fair! He put Fay on the defensive by threatening to play the Divine Dragon in round one, then used the Meep of all things to supplement his hand, and now that Additional card means even the Hero can’t beat him, right?! Even if Fay had it, which he doesn’t…”

In the monitor room, Pearl kept flicking the screen from one angle to the next.

On Chaos’s screen, he had chosen the Lightning & Sword as his Additional card, just as they had expected.

On Fay’s screen, the Healer had come back to his hand, but that was all. The moment Chaos combined Lightning & Sword with the Guardian Beast and went all in with his coins, Fay would have no choice but to fold.

“Master Fay’s only hope is if, when Master Chaos bluffs with the Guardian Beast, he plays something other than the Mage and wins. Using Trapper would be great, but…no, Master Chaos must be able to foresee at least that much. And there’s always the chance he’ll play the Divine Dragon…”

“I wonder,” said Leshea.

“Wha—?!”

“This is just my intuition, but I think the next card he’ll play won’t be the Beast or the Divine Dragon. It’ll be the Angel. I think he’ll use a round to see what the situation is.” Leshea almost seemed to be talking to herself.

“Wh-what do you mean by that, Mistress Leshea?” Nel turned to Leshea, her eyes wide, so fast it disheveled her black hair. “Master Fay has no cards that can counter the Guardian Beast. Shouldn’t Master Chaos go all in on every round from now until the end of the game?”

“Should he? I think, in his mind, he’s seeing a different card.” Leshea switched the screens, so that it showed the display of all sixteen cards. “First, round one. Fay can be sure that Chaos played the Meep, because his hand size didn’t go down. The Angel also stays in the hand, but if Chaos had played that, it would have defeated the Healer.”

The winner of the first round was Fay (with the Healer). Thus, he could be sure that his opponent had played the Meep.

“But what about from Chaos’s perspective?”

“…!” Nel gasped. “I see! Master Chaos can’t be sure. He might think it wasn’t the Healer but the Traveler that Master Fay played!”

The Meep had an attack power of one. On the first turn, Chaos couldn’t be sure which of these cards it had lost to.

“He was probably thinking something along the lines of this: A first-turn Divine Dragon is certainly a powerful move, but he could expect Fay to meet it with the Mage or the Hero. The Gods deck can counter that by causing the Humans deck to swing and miss on that first turn, then following up with Guardian Beast plus Lightning & Sword and going all-in. The Meep sets that strategy up, but we can expect Fay to have read at least that far ahead.”

What would he do, then?

Chaos would have to keep piling guesses upon guesses.

“The best counter to a first-turn Meep is a first-turn Traveler, because it allows you to draw one of the really powerful cards from the Heaven & Earth category.”

Additional Cards [Heaven & Earth]

“I see! He has to go for the Creator!” Miranda said, expanding that card so it filled the viewscreen. “A Guardian Beast boosted by Lightning & Sword has an attack power of ten. Even the Hero can’t counter that, which is why Chaos can just go all-in. But the Creator has an unanswerable ninety-nine attack!”

This was probably what Fay was thinking: Chaos’s most effective move in the second round would be the Guardian Beast or the Divine Dragon. But the Creator could beat both of them.

That much, at least, would also line up with Chaos’s thought process.

“I finally understand what you’re talking about, Leshea!” Pearl said, putting a hand on her chest and taking a deep breath. “Round two! Chaos, wary of the Creator, plays the Angel…but wait—what?! Fay’s first move wasn’t the Traveler!”

Precisely.

Fay had played the Healer in round one. He’d trusted Chaos to be alert to the possibility of him playing the Traveler in round one and the Creator in round two.

If Chaos had played the Divine Dragon during the first round, Fay would have lost the game instantly. But he had embraced that huge risk—and survived.

“He risked life and limb to conserve his Traveler,” Miranda said. “This way, Fay can play it in the second round, followed by the Creator in round three. An ambush from the most powerful card around.”

Chaos’s second-round play was likely to be the Angel (in anticipation of the Creator). Only during the third round would he go all in and play Lightning & Sword with the Guardian Beast. And that was where Fay could strike back with the Creator.

“How far are they reading each other on this game?!” Pearl said, clutching her head. “S-so, Leshea, what card will Fay play on his second turn?”

“That depends on him.”

“What about Chaos, then?!”

“Not to sound like a broken record, but it won’t be the Guardian Beast. He might play the Divine Dragon if he’s anticipated that Fay will play the Traveler, but I think the Angel might be the safer, more certain move. It depends on what kind of player he is.” Leshea’s eyes sparkled, almost as if she were playing the game herself. “Those two know each other, right? I’m sure something is going to happen in this next round. I just can’t wait to see what!”

Then the big screen in the monitor room filled with a message indicating that a new battle was about to begin.

Round 1 complete. Moving to Round 2.

Fay: 5 cards, 12 coins

Chaos: 5 cards, 8 coins

2

“Beginning round two. Players, choose your cards.”

Chaos looked at the message on the screen, then murmured to himself, “Now, what to play?”

For his next move, he had to choose one of two cards: the Angel or the Divine Dragon.

He thought back. The first round had been about setting expectations, in a manner of speaking. Chaos himself couldn’t dismiss the possibility of opening with the Divine Dragon—call it about 10 percent—but in the end he’d gone with the Meep.

It would have been great if I could have gotten rid of his Hero or Mage, but he saved them. Fay still has five cards, which means there’s a good chance that he used the Traveler, but…

There was also the chance that he had played the Healer and would show up with an unexpected Creator. It was something else, however, that bothered Chaos.

Why wouldn’t he use the Hero or Mage? There was a distinct chance that I would play the Divine Dragon in round one.

Maybe he’d just assumed Chaos wouldn’t make a game-ending play as his first move, but Chaos could turn that same line of thought against him by exploiting it with the Divine Dragon—as Fay would well understand. So it wasn’t enough to say that he had wanted to conserve his Hero and Mage.

There must’ve been some reason he didn’t want to play them in round one. Like…if he didn’t have one of them.

Suppose the Hero (or the Mage) had been discarded initially. Then Fay would only have one trump card. If he was too eager to use it, he would lose his only way to defend against the Divine Dragon—which was exactly why he’d steeled his resolve and made the dangerous choice to play the Traveler (or Healer) in the first round. That seemed plausible.

It’s not that he didn’t want to play his Hero or Mage. It’s that he couldn’t. And if that’s true, then I win this by round three.

Chaos had his strategy. Now he just needed to wait for Fay’s decision.

There’s still time. That said, just waiting around is boring.

Chaos looked at his former rookie, his tone cool and indifferent. “Fay,” he said. “I know what I’m playing as my second card, so I’m feeling a little lonely over here while you pick yours. I think I’ll talk to myself to pass the time.”

“And I think I’ll talk about the ancient magical civilization. Stuff you’ve never heard before.”

The soliloquy came on suddenly, as they were still choosing their cards for the second round. It was just as Fay was racking his brain for patterns that might possibly arise.

“This would have been decades ago, now. They found ruins of the ancient magical civilization, which until then had been nothing but legend, buried under layers of volcanic ash. That was in the Relic City of Ange, of course.”

Chaos’s words pulled the rug out from under all of it—Fay’s concentration, his caution. Everything.

“…Chaos?” he asked.

“Even I don’t know what drew me to it. I guess I’ve just been interested in that stuff since I was a kid. I’d devour history books like I was some sort of scholar, so I left Ruin to go see the relics, almost like a vagabond. And that’s when—purely by chance—I found it.”

What? What had he found?

The question sprang to Fay’s lips, but he hesitated to voice it for two reasons.

One, because he still hadn’t decided on his round-two card.

And two, because he had the distinct sense that his former team leader would answer the question whether Fay asked it or not.

“Fay. It’s something you know, too.”

“What does that mean?” Fay asked slowly.

“The God’s Diadem.”

There was a plunk as Chaos put something on the table: a small piece of black stone.

“You can earn rewards in the gods’ games. A God’s Diadem is a gift for defeating a previously undefeated god. Like the Eye of Uroboros that you got.”

“That’s a cursed item. Pearl said we should throw it out with the non-combustible trash.”

“It happens sometimes,” Chaos said with a nod. He looked completely serious. “Gods and humans have very different senses of what’s valuable. It’s not that shocking if something a god sees as a reward looks like trash or even a disaster to a human. But then there’s stuff like this.”

Chaos let his eyes drift to the small black shard of stone on the desk and was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “This God’s Diadem that I excavated at the Relic City of Ange was something useful to the people of the ancient magical civilization. No question about it.”

“………” Fay didn’t say anything as he peered at the black stone on the table. Could it really be…?

“You excavated a God’s Diadem, Chaos?”

“Yeah. In modern terms, we would call this a high-capacity storage device. This little piece of rock can hold the equivalent of an entire library’s worth of books. After I found this, I learned how and why the ancient magical civilization was destroyed.”

“…!” Fay was startled. “Is that why you left Ruin?!”

“Yeah, exactly. I was going to go look for more of these black stones, but it ended up being a wild goose chase.”

After a long moment Fay said, “I see…”

That answered one question: why Chaos had gone to the Relic City after the breakup of Awaken.

He learned the history of the ancient magical civilization that was recorded on this stone and wanted to dive deeper.

The question then became, what history had he learned? What couldn’t he tell Fay or any of their teammates?

“Didn’t you ever think about going public with this?”

“There were two reasons I couldn’t. One was that this stone is pretty weathered and doesn’t boot up anymore. Wouldn’t be much of a story if I didn’t have any proof to back it up. The other reason was personal judgment. It’s not a pleasant story. So I…”

A bell rang. They were out of time to choose their cards.

“Guess that’s enough talking to myself,” Chaos said, sounding exactly the same as he had all day. “I got your attention, and that’s what matters. Beat me, and I’ll tell you the rest.”

“I’ll do my best.” Fay looked at this apostle who had once been his senior teammate and nodded. “I’ve picked my card.”

“Me too.”

After choosing their cards, it was time to decide how many coins they would bet.

“I’ll bet one coin in addition to the ante,” Fay said.

“Raise. My read, Fay, is that you haven’t played the Creator on your second turn, so I’m betting a total of three coins. What’s your move?”

After a second, Fay said, “Call.”

The each put in three coins, a total of six migrating to the center of the screen—but that wasn’t what was important. What really counted was the cards.

Two cards floated up, one from Fay’s hand and one from Chaos’s, and glowed brightly…

“Round two. The winner is Chaos. After transferring coins, Fay has nine coins, Chaos has eleven. Remaining cards: Fay—four; Chaos—five.”

There was a major swing in the number of coins, but neither the loser, Fay, nor the winner, Chaos, so much as flinched. From the instant the result was declared, they were both thinking so fast and so hard that they begrudged even the time to cry out.

Fay had to start making deductions. His hints were the result of the latest round and the remaining cards.

I played the Trapper (6). That can be defeated by one of three cards: the Angel (11), the Divine Dragon (9), or the Demon (7).

It was easy enough to guess which card he had lost to since Chaos’s hand size hadn’t decreased. That meant he must’ve used the Angel, which returned to his hand when it won a battle.

I can see he’s not going to play the Divine Dragon. Not until I play the Hero or he’s sure I don’t have it.

Chaos was probably hoping to win a series of victories with the Angel. He would keep playing it until Fay used either the Hero or the Mage to stop him. It was practically a challenge to use up one of his two best cards.

He’s starting to figure out which cards I have in my hand. It’s like he’s saying, “If you’ve got two killer cards, what’s the problem with using one of them?”

Chaos likely suspected Fay was missing either the Hero or the Mage—that he didn’t want to use one of them because the other had been discarded by the random removal.

Do I play the Mage? No, I can’t. If he played the Divine Dragon in the round after, I would be finished.

Moreover, the Gods deck still had the Guardian Beast as well. The possibility that his Mage could wind up in its worst possible matchup was constantly hanging over Fay’s head. And yet, at the same time, if he didn’t play the Mage, he would just keep getting trampled by the Angel.

What to do, what to do?

“Wh-wh-wh-what is he supposed to do?!” In the monitor room, Pearl pointed up at the screen, which showed the cards in Fay’s hand. Her face was pale. “Fay is completely cornered! I m-mean, if he just keeps facing the Angel—”

“Don’t lose your head!” Nel admonished her. “There’s no doubt that Master Fay’s hand leaves him at a disadvantage, and it’s only a matter of time until Master Chaos realizes just how bad it is…but there’s still a way to turn this around!”

“Oooh!” Almost in spite of herself, Pearl balled both her hands into fists, carried by the force of Nel’s conviction. “What is it, Nel? Tell me!”

“Yes, tell us, Mistress Leshea!” Nel requested earnestly.

“You’re just going to pass the buck?!”

Pearl was shaking visibly. Nel gritted her teeth. The reactions might be different, but the feeling that inspired them was unquestionably the same. They were both wondering: What did Fay have to do to win?

“Good question…” Leshea gazed at a screen, but she was looking at Chaos’s view. On his screen, Fay’s hand appeared as unknown, unknown, unknown, and unknown. “There’s one thing I don’t understand. Miranda, switch screens for me. Go to the part where Fay played his Trapper during round two,” she ordered. Then she manipulated the screen even further, pulling up the overview of the sixteen cards.

It had a high attack stat and a powerful effect. Not only could it defeat the Guardian Beast (at least if it was unboosted), but then it would allow you to see the opponent’s hand and even choose the card they had to play in the next round.

“There was always a good chance that Chaos would play the Angel in the second round,” Leshea said.

“Because he would assume Fay was likely to play the Creator, right?” Miranda asked.

“Yeah. But if Fay was going to lose anyway, he should have played the Healer.”

That would at least have returned to his hand after he lost. Instead, Fay had lost a card in round two that there was no need to lose.

“It was such an illogical choice that Chaos is as confused as we are. He’s wondering if maybe it actually was the Healer that Fay played, instead of the Trapper.”

“Huh?!” Pearl gasped. “Why would he think there was any chance it was the Healer?!”

“Because that’s what the Healer does.”

The card didn’t say that it would return to your hand. You could also deliberately eliminate it to get it out of your hand.

“Chaos is thinking that maybe Fay deliberately refrained from taking the Healer back into his hand in order to drop his hand to four cards—specifically to make Chaos think he’d played the Trapper.” The point would be to sow the seeds of doubt. To make Chaos wonder if the Trapper might, just might, still be in Fay’s hand. “What Fay’s done isn’t quite a bluff. He’s used up his Trapper, which could easily be called a mistake. But he just needs Chaos to doubt himself for one moment—that’s my guess.”

In his first move, he’d played the Healer at risk to his entire game.

In his second, he’d played the Trapper, which was hardly a bluff—and might even be considered a poor play.

Very well. What card could he possibly use to follow those up?

Round 2 complete.

Fay: 4 cards, 9 coins

Chaos: 5 cards, 11 coins

3

“Beginning round three. Players, choose your cards.”

As soon as the message appeared on the screen, Fay stared intensely at his four cards and tried to make sure Chaos didn’t see him let out a breath.

This was where the true contest of deception would begin.

Fay’s hand consisted of: the Healer (8), the Sage (6), the Traveler (2), and the Mage (1).

It’s clear what Chaos is after: He’s going to keep using the Angel until I send out my Hero or Mage to stop him!

This was an open invitation. If Fay accepted it, Chaos would use the Divine Dragon the moment his Mage was gone, and the game would be over. So instead, the card in which Fay had to put his faith was…the Traveler.

The Traveler, that’s it. This is my actual trump card, and it’s time to play it. Right now.

“I’ve made my choice,” Fay said, moving from card selection to coin wagering. “I pay my one-coin ante and fold.”

“…!”

Chaos’s gaze became harder than ever as the screen instantly displayed notification of Fay’s defeat.

“Round three. The winner is Chaos (Fay folds). After transferring coins, Fay has eight coins, Chaos has twelve. Remaining cards: Fay—four; Chaos—five.”

No change in the number of cards. Now Fay could be sure that Chaos had played the Angel twice in a row. But what would Chaos guess about what Fay had played? He was still holding four cards. With the Humans deck, that meant that either he had played the Healer and then taken it back to his hand—or he had burned his Traveler to take one of the Additional Cards.

Knowing Chaos, he’ll probably see straight through me. And he’ll know that I used my Traveler to gain the Nameless Child.

Everything hinged on this. Round four was when the destiny of the Humans and Gods decks would be decided.

Round 3 complete.

Fay: 4 cards, 8 coins

Chaos: 5 cards, 12 coins

4

“Beginning round four. Players, choose your cards.”

Chaos glanced at his screen, which indicated that his opponent (Fay) had four cards in his hand. He nodded the slightest bit, barely a matter of millimeters.

Fay’s hand amount didn’t change. That means in round three, he must have played either the Healer or the Traveler.

Chaos could only guess which one, but Fay folding in the previous round was a major hint. He’d had no intention of fighting. By choosing unconditional surrender before the battle began, he avoided the Divine Dragon’s battle-victory effect (i.e., game over) and essentially passed the baton to the next round.

Which means it was probably the Traveler. He gets to put a powerful Additional card in his hand and use it against me in the following round.

So which had he picked?

Additional Cards [Heaven & Earth]

If Fay had picked option one and copied the Hero, he could defeat the Angel or the Divine Dragon, but not the Guardian Beast.

Option two would fight to a draw with the Angel, but would defeat any of the others. The caveat was that it would have to be played in the very next round (in this case, the fourth round).

It’s obvious. Fay has almost certainly chosen the Nameless Child.

At a glance, it might seem that the first involved the possibility of a loss, whereas the second ensured a draw at worst. That would make the second choice seem less risky, but it came with the condition that the card had to be played in the following round. In other words, it could also be seen as a trap: It might seem to promise a draw at worst, but in reality, a draw was all but guaranteed.

So Fay would probably take option one, then, and hope to take out the Angel or the Divine Dragon. It was the right choice.

It also matches my read: Fay lost either the Hero or the Mage in the random discard.

Which meant that Chaos was almost certain of what was in Fay’s hand.

Fay’s hand (four cards):

The Sage; either the Healer or the Trapper; either the Mage or the Hero; the Nameless Child

Here in round four, with the game state the way it was, there was really only one card Fay could play.

“Anyway, I think that’s what Chaos expects,” Leshea said, her eyes shining.

“So, he’s got it all basically exactly right?!” In the monitor room, Pearl yelped for the umpteenth time. “Chief Secretary!”

“I know, I know. I’ll change it to Fay’s view, okay?”

Fay’s hand had four cards in it: the Sage, the Healer, the Mage, and the Additional Card Nameless Child.

In other words, precisely what Chaos had guessed.

So, what did Chaos’s hand look like from Fay’s perspective?

Chaos’s hand (Fay’s POV):

Angel, unknown, unknown, unknown, Additional Card Lightning & Sword

Chaos’s hand (actual):

Angel, Divine Dragon, Guardian Beast, Holy Spirit, Additional Card Lightning & Sword

From Fay’s perspective, half of Chaos’s cards were unknowns—because Chaos had been able to use the Angel in the second and third rounds to conserve his cards.

“Master Chaos will almost certainly come out swinging with the Angel for a third time in a row. Until Master Fay stops that card, he has no hope of winning…but now, he might have that chance!” Nel clenched her fist and brought it down as if to smite the table. “Now he has the Nameless Child! With it, he can copy the Hero and stop the Angel!”

Fay finally had the Hero and the Mage, the two cards that could counter the Gods deck’s trump cards, the Angel and the Divine Dragon.

“But Nel,” Pearl said, “the Gods deck has three trump cards. If Chaos plays Lightning & Sword with the Guardian Beast, even the Hero and the Mage won’t be able to beat it!”

“Then it’s a contest of who can read the game better. The only thing to do is make him miss!”

Their plays were clear. Now it was only a question of who would win the battle of guessing what their opponent would do next.

For this fourth round, however, no prediction was necessary. They both knew exactly what the ideal play was for their opponent.

“There’s no need for Master Chaos to change his strategy at this point. The Angel is coming out a third time!”

He was hoping Fay would use the Hero.

Because the ideal scenario for the Gods deck was an OHKO with the Divine Dragon. After all, Fay had only two cards that could stop it. A rough calculation showed that since Chaos had four cards (including one Creation Card) in his hand, there was a 25 percent chance that he would play the Divine Dragon. Fay just had to match it against either the Hero or the Mage. That gave him a one-in-two chance.

But what if he accidentally used the Hero against the Angel? In that case, the chance that Fay could match up his lone Mage against the Divine Dragon from the remaining three cards in Chaos’s hand would fall to one in three.

“Master Chaos is willing to sacrifice the Angel in order to lure Master Fay into playing the Hero! That’s the best way for the Gods player to improve their chances of winning. And Master Fay will have to go along with it even if he knows that’s what’s happening. Otherwise, the Angel will just keep running roughshod over him!”

As such, it was easy to predict what would happen in round four: Chaos would play his Angel while Fay played his Hero (or Mage). They would each know what the other was thinking.

Or so everyone assumed.

Until the voice of the electronic device in the monitor room sounded:

“Chaos picks two cards.”

“…Wha— Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!”

“No! Is that Master Chaos’s plan?!”

When they saw the Gods player’s selected cards on the screen, Pearl, Nel, and even Miranda were blown away in surprise. Even Leshea, who had otherwise simply been watching quietly, breathed “Huh!” and smiled.

The true shock, however, came after that.

“Fay picks two cards.”

“……………” Everyone in the room simply fell silent, the onlookers too astonished to make a sound. In fact, they had moved beyond astonishment and right into incomprehension. They simply did not know what this meant—and a human whose mind has gone blank is a human who can’t even make a sound of amazement.

Finally, Pearl managed, “Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh…?” She pointed at the screen and collapsed. “Why in the world would he play that card?!”

At about the same time Pearl was yelling in the other room, Chaos was staring silently at his screen, glancing at the twin messages it displayed:

Guardian Beast, set.

Lightning & Sword, set.

He’d decided: That was it. This fourth round would be the hinge upon which their destinies turned—or at least that was presumably what Fay was thinking.

I know how he feels. That’s why I can trick him. I won’t let round four be a predictable nonevent.

It would be obvious to anyone that he should play the Angel for the third time in a row. Fay would defeat it with his Hero, and that would be the end of the round. But the obvious path was also the boring one. If Fay was going to play the Hero anyway, Chaos might as well smash it—with his Guardian Beast.

He added Lightning & Sword, boosting its attack power to ten. Since the most powerful card in the Humans deck (the Healer) only had an attack power of eight, his chances of victory for this round were about a billion percent.

I could easily go all-in with my coins and win everything back. But I shouldn’t. That would put Fay on the alert. Maybe I should go with a low bet to make him think I’m playing the Angel?

They’d each picked their cards; the only remaining question was how many coins to pile on. Chaos might be utterly assured of victory in this round, but the important thing was to make Fay think that he could win with his Hero. Going all in would only raise a red flag.

“I pay my one-coin ante,” Fay said, reaching for his monitor—and then tapping it twice. “And I bet one coin. Two in total.”

“Call.”

Obvious. He wasn’t thinking of folding.

His one coin spoke volumes. Fay was confident. He was sure that Chaos was preparing the Angel yet again, and that his Hero would beat it.

And he’s playing the Hero, not the Mage. The Mage would only draw. There’d be no reason to add more coins.

“Player one, Chaos, uses an Additional Card.”

“Player two, Fay, uses an Additional Card.”

In reaction to the game’s announcement, a tightness faintly appeared around Fay’s lips. Chaos didn’t so much as flinch.

Well within expectations. You anticipated me, didn’t you, Fay? You knew I might play the Guardian Beast.

And Fay had used some insurance. He’d played the Healer as a Creation card, just on the remote chance that Chaos would buck the obvious Angel play and use the Guardian Beast instead.

Hero (4) + Healer-as-Creation (2) = 6. Stronger than the Guardian Beast’s five attack power.

Chaos had played his Additional Card, Lightning & Sword, as a counter to such a possibility.

“Fay. You made the best choice that was available to you.”

The words Chaos spoke as they sat facing their respective devices were unmistakably an expression of appreciation. Fay had anticipated that he would play, not the Angel, but the Guardian Beast, and he had played the Healer as a Creation card in order to counter it.

Their powers of prediction proved equal. It was round one that had determined the victor. Chaos’s first-round Meep, followed by drawing the Additional Card Lightning & Sword, had produced this outcome.

“Round four. The winner is Chaos. After transferring coins, Fay has six coins, Chaos has fourteen.”

He’d won.

As the realization sunk in, Chaos gave an internal sigh of relief, although he never let the collected mask slip from his face.

I have fourteen coins. Even if the game goes into extra rounds, I could fold each round and still wind up with eleven, winning the game.

“Remaining cards: Fay—three; Chaos—three. Extra rounds are activated. Based on the remaining cards held by both players, the game will extend to round seven.”

The occurrence of extra rounds was also within Chaos’s expectations—and now he knew exactly what Fay had in his hand.

Fay had four cards. On this turn, he used the Hero and the Healer, then returned the Healer to his hand.

That would explain everything. The breakdown of his hand was:

FayMage (1), Sage (6), Healer (8).

While Chaos held Holy Spirit (4), Divine Dragon (9), and Angel (11).

But there’s still a slim chance—call it one percent—that Fay could come out of this the winner. That would be if he didn’t use his Hero in the fourth round.

Fay had played two cards. If they had been the Mage and the Healer, then he would still have the Hero in hand.

And yet, the way he’d bet his two coins without hesitation smelled fishy to Chaos. Could it have been a sacrifice play to make Chaos think he’d played the Hero?

My strategy was going to be to fold in each of the remaining rounds—but if Fay still has the Hero, then I won’t be able to escape!

The Hero had two effects.

Chaos had fourteen coins, while Fay had six.

If Fay still had the Hero…

Round Five: Chaos folds and has thirteen coins; Fay has seven.

Round Six: Chaos folds and has twelve coins; Fay has eight.

Round Seven: Chaos folds and has eleven coins; Fay has thirteen (he gains six via the Hero’s effect).

He could turn this around in the very last round. That’s only if he still has the Hero, of course—which should be very unlikely.

But Chaos knew Fay—knew he would do it. They were on the knife’s edge, and that was exactly when Fay would pull a trick to score an upset victory. That was the kind of man he was.

Chaos had to approach these final three rounds as if Fay still had the Hero.

Round 4 complete.

Fay: 3 cards, 6 coins

Chaos: 3 cards, 14 coins

“Beginning round five. Players, choose your cards.”

For the fifth time, they heard the round-start message. By now, the mechanical voice hardly even registered with Chaos. He didn’t have the time.

The possibility remained that Fay had conserved his Hero. It was the one thing that could defeat Chaos. How could he smash it? All his thoughts were focused on that one question.

But turning the question around, it meant that as long as Chaos played on the assumption that the Hero would still appear, his victory was certain.

“I’ve decided,” he said, touching a card on the left edge of his screen.

Here in round five, he selected the Holy Spirit (4). After holding onto this card all game, now would be its moment of glory.

He would simply get rid of the Hero. If it was still in Fay’s hand, Chaos would force him to discard it before it could reach the battlefield.

“Both players have chosen their cards. Wager your coins.”

“I fold,” said Chaos. That was the least risky course. By deliberately losing, he would activate the Holy Spirit’s power, which would play right into his hands…

“I don’t think so, Chaos,” Fay said, abruptly breaking his silence. “You need to bet a couple more coins.”

“The Sage!” Chaos hissed.

On the screen, Chaos saw his coins forcibly added to the pile—two of them in addition to his initial ante. Now six coins, three from Chaos and three from Fay, sat piled in the middle of the screen.

I see. Excellent timing. He knew I would be questioning whether he still had the Hero.

They went on to the judgment of the cards—but since Fay had played the Sage (6), the Holy Spirit (4) was never going to beat it.

“The winner is Fay. After transferring coins, Fay has nine coins, Chaos has eleven. Remaining cards: Fay—two; Chaos—two.”

The gulf between their coin totals had suddenly narrowed. The pile of coins moved toward Fay—but even as he watched it go, Chaos grasped his own victory.

Total number of coins? With two rounds to go, I can manage that somehow.

He’d already considered the possibility of an upset victory on coins. That was why he’d played the Holy Spirit in the first place.

“I activate the effect of Holy Spirit. If you’re holding the card I name, Fay, I’d like you to throw it away. I name the Hero.”

“………” Fay didn’t say anything. Instead, a message flashed across the screen: The Holy Spirit’s effect fails.

Fay didn’t have the Hero.

Did I overthink it? No, no. It was always just to be safe. Now I know that Fay’s holding the Mage (1) and the Healer (8).

Chaos himself had the Divine Dragon (9) and the Angel (11). That meant there were only four (or more precisely, five) possible matchups during rounds six and seven.

Of these, scenarios two and three would result in victory by OHKO from the Divine Dragon. Only scenarios one and four would be determined based on total coin count. Both would result in one victory and one draw—so Chaos’s triumph was assured.

Round 5 complete.

Fay: 2 cards, 9 coins

Chaos: 2 cards, 9 coins

5

“Beginning round six. Players, choose your cards.”

Fay no longer even heard the message. He was staring at his two cards, unwilling to so much as blink.

“………”

He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. The moment Chaos had played the Holy Spirit and had named the Hero, the pressure had been almost suffocating.

He wondered just how far ahead Chaos was reading.

Over the previous five rounds, Fay had piled stratagem upon stratagem, delicately, carefully, to reach this sixth round.

He’s probably predicted 90 percent of what I’ve done. The question is the other 10 percent. My entire plan hangs on round four.

That was why a chill had run down his spine when the card Chaos named as the target of the Holy Spirit’s effect was the Hero.

He suspected me on the fourth round—he followed my train of thought and realized I was only pretending to play the Hero in order to conserve it.

Chaos was not one to rush a win. Fay’s old team leader was that kind of man. It wasn’t enough for him to smack the proverbial stone bridge before crossing; he would roll a human-sized rock onto it to make sure was strong enough, and then, still not satisfied, he would reinforce it with concrete before finally crossing while wearing a lifeline.

In reality, Chaos’s instinct was half-correct.

Before revealing that second half, Fay had a choice to make—one he absolutely had to get right.

Chaos’s handAngel (11), unknown (?).

Was the unknown card the Divine Dragon or the Demon?

It was safe to assume that it was the Divine Dragon. Chaos’s repeated, unhesitating use of the Angel on turns two and three told the story: It said he still had his true trump card in hand.

Which would mean that during either round six or seven, he’s guaranteed to play the Divine Dragon.

With two rounds left, Fay had only one guaranteed counter. If he made the wrong call, the game would be over on the spot. This last choice was the biggest of them all.

Now? Or later? Round six? Or round seven?

When would Chaos play his Divine Dragon?

Think back. Remember everything he’s said and done since we got to headquarters. I’m sitting here across from my old team leader Chaos!

He hadn’t changed. He was the same person who had left the Ruin branch office a year before.

Which was why…

“I’ve decided,” Fay said. He reached for the device, his trepidation palpable.

“Chaos? Could you pick which card you’re going to play this round?”

From Chaos’s perspective, of course, his victory was already assured. They each had two cards in their hands, and with two rounds left to play, there were four (or five) possible combinations. In all of them, Chaos won.

I’m holding the Divine Dragon and the Angel. I could close my eyes and pick one at random and still have a one-trillion-percent chance of winning.

As certain as he was, Chaos suddenly realized that his fingertips felt the slightest bit cold.

He was nervous.

This wasn’t over yet. Even though the cards and the coins both attested to his inevitable victory, it seemed in some corner of his heart he couldn’t yet be totally sure.

I know you, Fay. You’ll try something. And I really want to see what it is.

Chaos knew full well that from the moment he had joined team Awaken to until a year ago, no one had observed the rookie Fay Theo Philius as closely as he had.

“Yeah. I’ve made up my mind, too.”

The final choice. Should he play the instantly-lethal Divine Dragon now, or later? In round six, or round seven? He hadn’t shown the Divine Dragon at any point yet. Fay couldn’t even be certain Chaos had it in his hand.

Which meant now was the time to use it.

By this point, I’ve done enough to leave him with the impression that I’ll wait until the last round to play my Divine Dragon.

Now Chaos would betray that expectation. Everything he had done, from the first round until the fifth, was a bluff designed to set up this sixth round.

“Both players, cards set.”

“All right. In addition to my ante, I wager one coin,” Chaos said.

“Call,” Fay replied, so fast that Chaos almost didn’t believe his ears. Calling so soon? Had he given up the possibility of winning by number of coins?

But no.

He hadn’t: It was Fay’s eyes that made Chaos sure.

Fay wasn’t looking at Chaos, but staring intently at his monitor, so focused he was almost boring a hole in it as he waited for the outcome.

“Round six. Draw. Four coins remain in the pot; Fay has seven coins, Chaos has nine. Remaining cards: Fay—one; Chaos—one.”

“A draw!” Chaos was moderately shocked. But he could still see how the contest would go during round seven. He would use his Angel to defeat Fay’s Healer and collect the four coins in the pot—giving him the majority of the coins.

The winner of this game was as good as decided.

And yet, he looked again at the screen, for Fay had met his Divine Dragon with the Mage.

Ever since round two, I’ve been making it obvious that I’ll keep playing the Angel. I never gave him a hint that I was holding the Divine Dragon.

He’d done everything to give the impression that he would end the game with a flourish, playing the Divine Dragon in the final round. To have seen through his plot was nothing short of brilliant.

“Looks like we have a standoff, Fay.”

“Yeah. At least we won’t need any time to choose our cards. I’ll fight with this one.”

“…Right.”

The impending outcome could not be clearer. Each of them only had one card left. Those cards would do battle, and the victor would take the majority of the coins and win the game.

Round 6 complete.

Fay: 1 card, 7 coins

Chaos: 1 card, 9 coins

“Moving to round seven. Players, choose your cards.”

The card in Chaos’s hand was the Angel (11). He’d used it twice and won both matches. It boasted the greatest attack power of any card in either the Gods or Humans decks.

Fay, meanwhile, held the Healer (8). It was the most powerful attacker in the Humans deck, but it couldn’t match the best cards in the Gods deck.

No speculating this time. It’s just a simple fact that Fay has been holding back his Healer.

Chaos knew exactly what was in Fay’s hand, which was why he was so confident that the Angel would bring him victory.

“Both players, cards set. Coin betting will be skipped and the cards will be compared immediately.”

It’s like the real humans and gods, but in miniature. Humans’ most powerful card is no match for the gods’ most powerful card.

Chaos gazed at his screen.

Humans and gods.

The final card from each camp appeared in the center of the screen and slammed against each other. A shower of colorful sparks, very appropriate for a final battle, flew everywhere.

It was decided.

As Chaos looked on impassively, an electronic voice announced:

“The winner is Fay. The final round is over, and the winner of the game is Fay!”

“What?!”

Everything was suddenly turned upside down—all of Chaos’s expectations, the recipient of the coins, and even the victor.

This wasn’t possible. There had to be some mistake, didn’t there? Had he misheard? Or could the machine be malfunctioning?

Even as Chaos watched, however, all the coins in the pot moved over to Fay.

What is this? What the hell happened?

Chaos had played the Angel. With one exception, it should have been powerful enough to defeat any card in the Humans deck. Anything except the Hero.

And yet I lost. So did Fay play the Hero?!

That wasn’t possible. Chaos knew he didn’t have it, because during the third and fourth rounds…

It was overwhelmingly likely that Fay had used the Hero in round four. But just on the minor off-chance that he’d tried to conserve his Hero, Chaos had played the Holy Spirit during round six to take it away from him.

In round six, he didn’t have the Hero. But then it suddenly appears in round seven? There’s no way that could hap—

“…!” Chaos’s breath caught in his throat.

There was a way!

One lone possibility drifted into Chaos’s mind.

“You held back the Nameless Child?!”

The object of the Holy Spirit’s discard power was, ultimately, the Hero. If Fay was holding the Nameless Child instead, it would escape unscathed. Then he could play it as the Hero in the final round and destroy the Angel.

There was no other way the Angel could be defeated.

No, that still doesn’t make sense! I’m sure Fay used the Nameless Child (Hero) during round four!

The number of cards left in his hand had proved it. In round four, the cards left in Fay’s hand had been:

Sage: Used in round five (i.e., not used in round four)

Mage: Used in round six (i.e., not used in round four)

Healer: Used as a Creation Card

Additional Card Nameless Child: Only possible card to play in round four

That was just how it was. No matter how many times Chaos went over the permutations, it all worked out the same way: There had been no card Fay could play during round four except the Nameless Child. There was no way he could have saved it until the last round…

The door flew open. Chaos reflexively looked up and saw the three young women pile into the room, abuzz with excitement.

“Phew! That was heart-pounding!”

“Mm-hmm! The trap during round four was one thing, but that two-pronged dilemma in round six had my hands sweating.”

“Oh, man! I’d love to play this game!”

They were followed by Miranda, whose arms were crossed as if to deliver a verdict of profound significance. “That was a close one, Chaos,” she said. “Again and again, you were a hair’s breadth from victory.”

“Chief Secretary,” Chaos said, slowly turning his chair around. “From the way you say that, I take it you know what happened in the final round.”

“Sure. We got to see everything in spectator mode, after all. When we saw both your hands, there was so much shouting. Admittedly, even we did a double take when we saw the defense Fay mounted in round four.”

So Chaos was right: That had been the crux. He knew something had happened on that turn.

“I want to compare our answers,” he said with a sigh. He looked at the group of women who were watching him expectantly—the audience who had observed their battle. “My Angel was defeated in the last round, and the Hero is the only thing that could have done it. That’s my take, anyway. But Fay didn’t have the Hero in his opening hand. May I take it that it was discarded by the random removal?”

“Exactly right, Master Chaos,” said the black-haired girl, Nel. She nodded with a keen look in her eyes. “Master Fay never had the Hero. The Nameless Child copied it in the final round.”

“That makes even less sense,” Chaos said, with one eye on Nel and one on his electronic device. “I’m sure he used the Nameless Child during round four. Working backward from the running battle we had until the final round, it’s the only thing Fay could have played.”

“Oh! That’s where you’re wrong,” said the golden-haired girl, Pearl, pointing to the device’s screen. “We were shocked when we saw what you played that round. We were so sure you would go with the Angel for the third time, but then you picked the Guardian Beast. It was an awesome move—we know you predicted that Fay would probably play the Nameless Child!”

“You’re saying my prediction was right?”

“Y-yes! Fay played the Nameless Child!”

So he had done it. Even the onlookers agreed that Chaos had made the right choice.

Fay played the Nameless Child (Hero) in round four. So, what? He had another Nameless Child in the final round?

That wasn’t how it worked. That was like cheating, unless there could somehow be two copies of the Nameless Child. But it was an Additional card that could only be obtained using the Traveler. Unless there were somehow two Travelers…

No.

Turn that around: If there were two Travelers, then it could be done.

Chaos gasped. “Don’t tell me… It wasn’t the Hero you copied with the Nameless Child on round four! It was the Traveler?!”

He could have kept using the Healer indefinitely, but he deliberately got rid of it! All to hide the fact that he had obtained the Nameless Child a second time!

If Fay had been holding four cards at the end of round four, Chaos would probably have guessed that he had used the Nameless Child as the Traveler. Instead, Fay had gotten rid of the Healer to make Chaos think what he wanted him to think.

“I see…” Chaos finally understood. In their battle to predict each other in round four, Fay had been one step ahead.

“You definitely smelled something amiss,” Miranda said. “You were so sure that Fay had played the Hero (the Nameless Child) in round four, yet something nagged at you enough that you played the Holy Spirit in round five just to be sure. That surprised me.”

“Me too,” said Fay, modestly raising his hand. Until that moment, he had simply listened to the conversation intently. He wore a slightly strained smile of relief. “If you’d called the Nameless Child instead of the Hero as the target of Holy Spirit, I would have lost. Half of round six was pure luck, for sure.”

“I don’t know about that.” Chaos switched off his device, and the screen dimmed to black. Then he stood up. “I’ve seen what I wanted to see. I’m satisfied.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll tell you the story, like I promised. I’m guessing that’s part of the reason you came to headquarters. But first…”

“If it’s coffee you want, I bought some,” Miranda said, pulling a can from her pocket. “Low-sugar, milk, hot. Right?”

“That’s why you’re the Chief Secretary,” Chaos said, taking the can, which was almost hot enough to burn. It would be a few minutes before he could drink it. Holding it lightly in his hand as he waited, he said, “Fay, what power heated this can?”

“……? Power? You mean, like, electricity or science? Is that what you’re thinking of?”

“Close. Modern civilization is built on electricity—but in the ancient magical civilization, this can would have been heated by magic. Our two societies are very different.” He tossed the can into the air, watched it twirl on its way up, and then said, “The past and the present. Our two civilizations are connected by a forgotten history—a missing link. And I’m going to tell you what it is.”

Chapter

Gods’ Games We Play

1

In the free-play room at Arcane Court headquarters, a room packed with tables and chairs for gaming, Chaos tossed his coffee to Fay. “Fay! This is for you,” he said.

And to think Miranda had just given that to him.

“Huh? But this one was for you since you like coffee. The chief secretary went out of her way to get the low-sugar one.”

“I realized something recently. It’s not that I like low-sugar coffee; I just like sweet drinks.”

“It’s a little late to be realizing that!”

“Do you remember what I said during our game to pass the time?”

Fay could only think of one answer to that. It had been during a lull in the second round.

“I learned how and why the ancient magical civilization was destroyed.”

But, in Chaos’s own words, this wasn’t a pleasant story.

“I used the word magic, but strictly speaking, it’s an Arise granted by the gods. I don’t have any problem calling that power magic, though—it might sound like a big word, but we still call those people Mages, right?” Chaos stuck his hand in the pocket of his jacket, then walked over to the wall and leaned against it. “It was Arises that supported the ancient magical civilization. They didn’t have advanced science, so they were far more dependent on Arises than we are.”

The Myth City itself, floating in the sky, was proof. Three thousand years ago, magic had existed on a much greater scale than it did in the current day.

“I’m just speculating here, but I suspect there were also a lot more people who could use Arises than we have today. But in every era, in every place, there are some things that only humans can do.”

“You’re saying not everyone used their Arises for good. Aren’t you?”

Everyone in the room turned toward the source of the words: Miranda, who almost sounded like she was talking to herself.

“Hmm? Oh, just call it the intuition of an adult who’s had to take the bitter with the sweet in her life. A guess.” She gave a little smile. “Even today, some people use the powers given by the gods for personal ends. I just figured it must have happened back then, too.”

“You figured right. In the briefest terms, that’s the whole story.” Chaos took an IC card from his pocket. It contained a list of all the teams and apostles in the Arcane Court, organized by office. It included the names of Fay and his team, for example, along with their win/loss record in the games, as well as details on their Arises. Anyone who worked for the Arcane Court could access it.

“Pearl Diamond.”

“Y-yes?!”

“Your Arise is a teleport power, yeah? Have you ever used it for ‘personal ends’?”

“N-no, never!” Pearl quickly shook her head. She gazed upward, her eyes clear, unclouded by any hint of guilt. “Pure, right, and adorable! At any and all times, I hold the Arise granted to me by the gods in the utmost regard. I would never use it for greed or evil!”

“You sure about that?”

“Sure as sure can be!”

“Interesting. So while you guys were in Aerlrith, you never quietly connected your room to the bath area, which is supposed to be closed at night, so that you could enjoy a forbidden late-night dip?”

Pearl, who had put her hand to her heart as she swore her goodwill, froze where she stood.

“My investigation suggests Aerlrith’s security cameras have video evidence of you doing exactly that.”

Pearl flung herself on the ground in abject apology. “I’m soooorrry! The hot springs were just too wonderful!”

Leshea and Nel looked down at her and sighed, but next Chaos turned to them.

“Nel Reckless.”

“Yes, Master Chaos?”

“How about you? A Superhuman Arise can easily be used to wreak havoc. Have you ever been a menace to society using your Moment Reversal?”

“Never!” Nel barked, slapping her hand over her chest. It made her look just like Pearl had a moment before. “I, Nel Reckless, have never in my life misused or abused the Arise gifted to me by the gods! I’m not like Pearl here!”

“That so?”

“I should say it is!”

“In that case, the day Fay came to Mal-ra, when you stopped traffic by kowtowing in the middle of the street and ended up kicking a runaway truck—I must be misremembering that.”

Now it was Nel’s turn to freeze.

The truck was sent barreling backward, its speed undiminished, straight into a wall.

“Oh… Oh no! I didn’t mean to! It’s just a reflex! D-driver! Are you okay?!”

“U-uh, um… Master Chaos, that was f-force majeure…”

“Sheesh. I wish the two of you wouldn’t abuse your powers,” Leshea said with a smile—but also an exasperated shrug.

She looked completely convinced, despite the fact that Miranda was behind her muttering, “You’re the worst offender of all, Lady Leoleshea…”

“To be fair, what you’ve done is pretty mild.” Chaos picked up the shard of black stone and held it in his fist. “Arises are given to people by the gods to play the games, but eventually people started to misuse their powers, claiming that they had been chosen by the gods. That caused people to start using them to commit crimes and fight each other, and it only got worse from there.”

“The ancient magical civilization didn’t have anyone to stop them, huh?” Miranda said with a great sigh. “It’s not as if people like that don’t exist today; there’s just not very many of them. If you’ll forgive me for patting myself on the back, the Arcane Court organization has done a good job promoting the proper use of such powers.”

“Yeah. That said, even I don’t know what was fundamentally rotten in ancient times.” Chaos took the shard of black stone and tossed it—right into the trash receptacle in the corner of the room. “Whatever it was, they couldn’t stop Arises from being misused, and that put the ancient magical civilization on the road to destruction. The last nail in its coffin was when Arises started to be used in wars between cities. They became a way to hurt people.”

“I see… You’re right, that isn’t a very nice story,” Nel said, biting her lip. “And we can’t pretend we’re dispassionate observers. It’s a lesson for us to never repeat the mistakes of history…”

“That’s exactly it.”

“What?”

“You, Nel. You make sure you remember what you just said.” Chaos was staring…straight at the former god, the girl Leshea. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Hmm… You mean my opinion as a former god?” Leshea twirled a strand of hair around her finger—hair such a bright red it almost seemed to shine. Then, uncharacteristically, she gazed into space, lost in thought. Finally, she said, “I guess I feel like it’s a waste.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The gods don’t object to whatever humans do, but they might be mystified by the fighting. Like, instead of hurting each other, wouldn’t the humans find it more fun to play with the gods?”

“A very godlike logic.” Chaos gave a dry smile. “The gods three millennia ago probably felt much the same. I’m not sure sadness is the right word for it, but it’s true that they pitied the turmoil of the human world.”

“Umm… Chaos?” Pearl raised her hand ever so slowly, looking up at him. “Couldn’t the gods have intervened and told the humans to stop fighting? I mean, they’re all-powerful, aren’t they? They could make the fighting cities listen to them.”

“It’s because they’re all-powerful that they didn’t,” answered, not Chaos, but Leshea. “It’s a sort of unwritten rule: The gods are too knowledgeable and too powerful, so they don’t interfere in human affairs. That would just be oppression, right?”

They had the capacity to control humans if they so desired—which was exactly why the gods could not intervene. They simply observed from Elements and privately grieved.

“But it wasn’t the gods who were saddest of all,” said Chaos. He held out a book, a battered old tome. It was the one in which the Ragnarök League cards had been stored and, according to him, was a treasure from the ancient magical civilization. “Three thousand years ago, just like today, there was a girl who loved games from the bottom of her heart. She persisted in the sincere belief that if everyone could play together, peace would prevail. She must have been desperate to stop the use of Arises for war.”

Chaos put the Ragnarök League cards back in the book, then held it out as if to say, take it.

“I think she was like you,” he said.

“Like me?” Fay asked.

“If you’d lived in that time, you’d have said the same sort of thing, right?”

“………” Silently, Fay took the book. To be honest, he wasn’t sure about that. The ancient magical civilization was too far back in history for him to imagine what he would’ve done had he lived then.

“Chaos… What happened to that girl?”

“She wasn’t able to change anything. The fighting between the cities only got worse—the wars were much too big for one person to stop. And so…”

Chaos abruptly fell silent. Then, after second, he said:

“In a crazed state, the girl took ten wins in the gods’ games.”

Nel gasped. “Master Chaos, just a moment!”

“Ten wins? But that means she cleared the games!” Pearl said.

The two of them looked at each other, their faces so close their foreheads were almost touching. Even Miranda couldn’t hide her shock as her jaw hung half-open.

Naturally, Fay also doubted his ears.

The gods’ games are supposed to be the toughest problem in human history, never solved before. No, wait… All that really means is that there’s no record of anyone ever clearing them.

But if this had happened before the records were kept…

It wasn’t a contradiction to suggest that there might have been someone who cleared the gods’ games—one person, three thousand forgotten years ago.

“Master Chaos! Tell us, are you sure that’s true? This isn’t another of your stories?”

“Oh, it’s true. I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“What?” Nel blinked.

From the girl herself? This deed had been done three thousand years ago, beyond the span of anyone’s knowledge. It would have been one thing if Chaos had said he’d learned of it from the black stone, but he claimed he’d “heard” it? What did that mean?

“There is a reward for those who clear the gods’ games. What this girl wished for was to become a god herself.”

“……Kgh!” Nel made an inarticulate sound of shock, accompanied by similar noises from Pearl and Miranda.

But for Fay, at that moment, all the dots connected. It made sense, when he thought about it. Uroboros had told them that the “celebration” that followed the gods’ games involved becoming a god. Yet something had still felt off. The reward is to become a god? It seemed like such a human wish to me. Not something the gods would think of. But if there had been a human in the past who had determined the nature of the Celebration, that would make sense. Now Fay was sure that it was because of the wish a girl had made three thousand years before.

If so, what had moved her to make that wish? What had she been thinking?

“Once she was a god, she reset everything.”

Reset?

What did that imply?

“She used every ounce of her divine strength to reset human memories. They forgot the gods’ games and the Arises. That finally put an end to the Arise wars.”

“Whaaaaaaat?” Pearl yelled.

“Th-the scale of it is almost unimaginable! I— I mean, I guess anything is possible with a god’s power, but…”

“She had audacity, I’ll give her that. But what a very human idea.” Unlike the flabbergasted Pearl and Nel, Miranda smiled a bit, almost like she was being objective about it. “Who hasn’t dreamed of taking ultimate power and remaking the world the way they want it? This girl just happened to get to wish for it. She obtained godlike power and changed the world. And under those circumstances… Still, Chaos, I have to wonder.”

Miranda abruptly walked over to a corner of the room. She reached into the trash can and pulled out the memory stone Chaos had thrown away earlier.

“Supposedly, that caused the ancient magical civilization to suddenly vanish. I’m curious about how the patchwork bits of that history go together, but that’s a secondary concern. What you just described—what that girl did was a major intervention in the human world. And I thought there was an unwritten rule that the gods don’t do that?”

“Full gods, sure.” Chaos nodded as if he’d been waiting for this question. “She was able to do it exactly because she was an ascended human—half-divine, half-human.”

“And this girl, was she…”

“I think you already know.”

Fay realized that Chaos was speaking not to Miranda, but to him.

“The name of the girl who became a god was Heckt-Maria. Today she goes by Heleneia.”

Time to compare answers.

The story was astounding, yet no one in the room could raise an objection. Fay presumed they had all sensed it on some level.

He’s filled in every space, answered every doubt. Like a perfectly precise jigsaw puzzle.

Fay didn’t doubt a word of it—this time, Chaos wasn’t making anything up.

“Here’s something else I think you already know, but I’ll say it just for the record.” Chaos’s gaze shifted to Miranda. “Her team, Mind Over Matter, is actually four gods. Or more precisely, three gods’ spiritual bodies.”

“And no one at headquarters has noticed this? Not with that whole strange crew?”

“That’s the power of the gods. They’re just doing a little gentle interference with the humans’ powers of perception.”

“I see. Okay, different question,” Miranda said, her brow furrowing. “So, our young lady Heleneia became a god. You said she used all her divine power to expunge the gods’ games from human memory. That was so people wouldn’t misuse Arises, and—to take it a bit further—so that there would be no more apostles, right?”

“Exactly.”

“And yet we still play the gods’ games today.”

“……” Chaos looked up at the ceiling, gazing off into space. “Yeah. We sure do. Divine power may have erased the gods’ games from human memory, but it didn’t mean everything just stopped. Because…”

“…the gods are starving for games.”

This, perhaps more than anything else, might have been what Chaos had really wanted to tell them. That was the feeling they got, such was the force of his words.

“The gods…and humans, too. In every age, in every world—those who hunger for games will never disappear.”

“Do you like games, kid? I sure do.”

Titan had spoken those words to him at the archaeological dig in the Relic City of Ange, standing before an ancient mural that depicted the humans and gods enjoying their games together.

In every era, games were games.

And they should be enjoyed.

“History repeats itself. More than two millennia after the ancient magical civilization, scholars exploring unknown regions discovered the divine gates amid the ruins. They dove in, and the gods’ games began anew. It was inevitable, if you ask me. But…” Chaos closed his eyes. “…Heckt-Maria will never accept it.”

A withered sigh fell from his lips.

“This is the girl who fought with every fiber of her being to clear the gods’ games, wished for a god’s power, and then used it to the fullest to wipe out human memory. And now we have people who use their Arises for their own ends again? I guess you can’t blame her for being afraid we’ll make the same mistakes.”

“And that’s why she reincarnated?” Leshea asked.

“I knew a former god would understand.” Chaos, his eyes still closed, nodded at Leshea. Then he heaved himself up away from the wall. “Heckt-Maria might be half-human and half-god, but she no longer possesses any divine powers. She reincarnated as a mere human, but her goal is the same as it was three thousand years ago: to eliminate the gods’ games.”

Yet, ironically, she had reincarnated as the daughter of the chairman of the Arcane Court—the very organization whose business was to promote the gods’ games around the world. No one wished more fervently for humanity to clear the games than its chairman.

So Heckt-Maria reincarnated as the human called Heleneia. I don’t think she was expecting that.

As a god, she wanted to get rid of the gods’ games.

As a human daughter, she would want to take her father’s feelings into account, his desire to advance in the games.

She must have felt trapped.

“Uh, Chaos? How exactly does she plan to get rid of the games?” Pearl asked, her arms crossed in thought. “Heleneia has lost her divine powers, right? So now she can’t get rid of everyone’s memories of the games like she did during the ancient magical civilization.”

“She just needs to get those powers back, then.”

“O-oh, I see! If she takes another ten wins in the games, she can become a god… So that’s why she’s teamed up with three deities!”

“Huh! Didn’t see this coming,” Leshea said, clapping her hands. “Her situation is a lot like mine.”

Indeed, it was the first place Fay’s mind had gone to when Chaos told his story.

I’ve been wondering about that this whole time. Their motivations might be different, but I felt like Leshea and Heleneia have a lot in common.

They’d both gone from god to human and were seeking ten wins in the gods’ games in order to regain their divine status.

It was precisely because Heleneia was half-human that she could once again participate in the gods’ games, in which humanity sought victory over the gods.

But Fay had one question.

“Chaos… If all this is true, why is she still at just seven wins?”

It seemed too slow. Heleneia had cleared the games during the time of the ancient magical civilization, and now she had three gods on her team. Ten victories should have come swiftly.

But in reality, they haven’t. Mind Over Matter abruptly started playing a lot fewer games recently.

“Things happen,” Chaos said, dropping his voice ever so slightly. “You all should understand now why she can’t dive into the divine gates.”

“You mean the chairman?” Miranda asked, sliding her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Behind the lenses, her gaze was every bit as hard as Chaos’s. “We saw him. Young miss Heleneia must be beside herself with worry, not knowing when her father might collapse. And you can spend twenty or thirty hours in the gods’ games practically without even trying—and with no idea what’s going on in the human world until you get back.”

Heleneia was half-god, but also half-human. For her, this era into which she had reincarnated was her home, and the chairman was undeniably her father. She could hardly dive into the gods’ games when he was in such an unstable condition.

As such, she had reached seven wins and stopped.

“This is just my guess, but I think she probably didn’t want him to gain an advantage over her.”

“…Fay has caught up to her at an incredible pace. I think it’s only natural for her to see him as a rival.”

The chief secretary just happened to be right on the money—she wouldn’t want us clearing the games before she did.

Heleneia was trying to eliminate the gods’ games, and she couldn’t have someone else completing them first. So…

“Chaos,” Fay said. How many times had he uttered that name here in headquarters? He knew his voice was tense with worry. He could feel in his entire body that this was the most nerve-wracking moment of all. “What about you?”

“What about me? Don’t tell me you think I’m a god, too.”

“I mean, what do you think of Heleneia’s goal?”

“I don’t know what to think, any more than you do.” Chaos turned and moved away from the wall, crossing in front of Pearl, Nel, Leshea, and Miranda before resting his hand on the door of the free-play room. “What you’re going to do, I leave it to you to decide,” he said.

Then Chaos, the coach and only human member of Mind Over Matter, walked out of the room.