Gods’ Games We Play, Vol. 5, page 2
“Huh? But where are these, uh, goals?” Captain Ashlan asked, trying to peer fifty meters into the distance. “I don’t see any markers.”
“The goals are at the farthest end of each of your sides. There’s an especially large tree growing on each end of the court, and up in its branches—fifty meters up—a white flower blooms. That’s the goal. Protect your own goal, while also dropping a ball into your opponents’ flower, and you shall score points!” The meep pointed into the branches.
“We have to climb some giant tree?!” Pearl’s eyes were wide. The goal tree looked as big as a high-rise building. The trunk alone must have been ten meters around, and only once they had climbed it would they be able to reach the white flower that was the goal, blooming somewhere among the branches.
So the “balls” were seeds, and the “net” was a flower.
Other than those two little substitutions, this was unmistakably basketball.
Except for one thing: They would have to utilize the entire forest if they wanted to achieve victory.
“I see you think the goal is too high up there. You are, of course, welcome to lob the balls toward the goal from the ground, but players can also climb the trees. As you can see, Yggdrasil’s trunk has plenty of nooks, crannies, protrusions, and handholds, so it’s a simple matter of climbing up while carrying the ball.”
They weren’t sure how they were supposed to reach a goal that was fifty meters above their heads. However, coming up with a strategy for that was what the game was all about.
“You see those trees that are leaning at an angle on either side of the huge tree? I bet you could run up those to get close to the goal, too,” Nel said, her arms folded. “And then there are those vines hanging from the branches. You could climb them like ropes to get up. Hey, Meep, I’ve got a question.”
“Ask me anything!”
“In basketball, players dribble the ball. Would kicking these seeds be against the rules?”
“No, that’s quite all right. ‘Carrying the ball’ is just an expression to enable human understanding. My divine master, Treant, has tentacles, for example. However you choose to move the ball is at your discretion.”
Behind the meep, the tree spirits, the treants, wiggled the roots that served as their legs. Unlike the nymphs and dryads, the treants really just looked like walking trees. Those roots wrapped themselves around the green ball and duly picked it up.
“My Lord Treant has picked up the ball, which weighs one kilogram and is worth two points.”
No one made a sound. Everyone was focused on…not the green ball the treant was holding. They were fixated on the three other balls still on the ground.
“This game of basketball is a race to fifty points,” the meep said. “Perhaps some of you already have an inkling, but in this game, all four balls are in play at the same time. The blue ball weighs two kilograms and is worth three points. The yellow one, twenty kilograms, and it earns you ten points.”
So there were four balls, and the harder they were to lug around, the more points they were worth.
“Finally, our red ball! This one is ‘ground-bound’; it cannot be lifted. It’s a tricky little extra element. Score with it? Hah! Getting it anywhere near the flower will be a colossal challenge—but if you put it into your opponent’s goal, the reward is—”
“Oh! I bet I know!” Anita exclaimed, flinging her hand into the air. “It’s fifty points, isn’t it?”
“—one hundred million points!”
“Do we really need a ball worth that much?! Well…whatever. So the red ball is an instant win; that’s what matters. The others are two points, three points, and ten points in order of weight. And the first team to fifty points wins. Simple enough.”
“That’s right! But I warn you, be careful about running out of time. Allow me to summon our nectar timer!”
Something else came plummeting from overhead: a cup—like a paper cup—but made of Yggdrasil’s woven leaves. With a plip-plip, drops of nectar poured into the cup from one of the giant tree’s flowers.
“This is your reference for how much time you have remaining. The nectar will fall at the rate of one drop per minute, so thirty drops is thirty minutes. When the nectar overflows this vessel, I, your humble referee, shall blow the end-of-game whistle!”
“Hmm?” Fay got the feeling that something was a bit off. The meep was about to continue, but Fay raised his hand. “So what you’re saying is that when the nectar cup is full, that’s not time’s up, right?”
“Correct. The nectar timer is only an approximation; time is up when the referee—namely myself—blows the whistle. At that point, the team with more points will be declared the winner.”
“……” Fay put his hand to his chin and silently pondered that information. Even the meep couldn’t have guessed the potential plan that began to form in Fay’s mind at that moment.
“Of further note, in this game you’re allowed to steal another player’s ball, interfere with other players attempting to score at your goal, and so on. Fundamentally, nothing is against the rules.”
“Aren’t you practically begging us to rough one another up, then?!” Ashlan exclaimed. “If the gods are going to get physical with us…”
“We’re more than prepared for the possibility of casualties. Ah, incidentally, if you’re rendered unable to move, you’ll be automatically returned to the human world—in one piece! No need to fear.”
“I know human sports aren’t always safe, but this sounds like it could be a doozie,” Ashlan said, turning to Fay with a grim smile. His teammates seemed anxious, too, at this intimation of what was to come. “If we’re supposed to assume that we could be taken out by some casual brutality, that means we need to be thinking about substitutes. Fay, Lady Uroboros isn’t around, is she?”
“Afraid not. The Divine Gate kicked her out just before she could dive.”
If only Uroboros were there…
Suffice it to say, Fay knew how Captain Ashlan was feeling. If they had the (self-proclaimed) undefeated god who had run roughshod over Anubis’s maze Lucemia, they might have stood a chance against the gods’ team getting physical with them.
Uroboros was thrown bodily backward. “Awww, again?!”
That had been her second forcible ejection after the episode in Lucemia.
Why had only Uroboros been kept out? From what Fay could tell, some god had intervened to reject her—but not, it seemed, one of the gods here in Yggdrasil’s woods.
“………” Fay was silent for a long moment.
“Fay?” Pearl said. “Is something wrong?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Oh, no, it’s nothing. I’m just hoping Uroboros is all right.” He was almost as worried for Chief Secretary Miranda. Uroboros must have been furious about being punted out of another game, and Fay could just picture the chief secretary trying to calm the god’s rage. “May I ask another question?” he said, turning to the meep. “About the ‘rough play.’ Say a member of the human team gets hurt. Does that nectar clock stop while we swap in someone new?”
“It does not.” The meep shook its head. “The nectar timer is just a natural phenomenon produced by Yggdrasil’s flower. It runs continually at a steady pace and will fill up after thirty drops, or thirty minutes of human time.”
“So play continues while substituting players?”
“That’s right. If you take too long with it, you’ll leave yourselves open. Better watch out!”
So that was it for the explanation of the rules.
At the exact same moment, Captain Ashlan got everyone’s attention with a loud clap. “All riiiight! Rough game or no, humans invented basketball! If it’s an athletic contest the gods want, this’ll be the perfect chance for Lady Leoleshea to strut her stuff!”
Leshea could probably heft the twenty-kilogram yellow seed (ten points) without any trouble. In fact, she could probably do better than lift it: She might be able to fling it right up into the goal.
“I’ll bet that god team didn’t count on us having a divinity of our own!” Ashlan said.
“And that does it for the explanation of the ordinary rules,” the meep said.
“Huh?”
There was an audible swssh as all nine members of the god team, who had acted perfectly indifferent until that moment, turned and looked fixedly at the humans.
“You have among you people with five or more victories in the gods’ games. So let’s step it up to Expert Mode!”
“Wha—?! Hold on, are you talking about Fay’s wins?!” Captain Ashlan cried.
The only people more shocked than him were Pearl and Nel.
“Wait…five wins?!” Pearl stared at her own palm, then looked at Fay. “But I thought you only had four—”
“Shh! Keep it to yourself!” Nel said, clapping a hand over Pearl’s mouth from behind before she could finish her thought.
That’s right: There was a good reason for Fay’s teammates to be so shocked.
Nell whispered a warning to Pearl. “Don’t forget. They haven’t told anyone that Master Fay lost three victories to the Bookmaker. Nobody knows he has three fewer wins than they think, except us and the chief secretary!”
“Y-yeah, I know! But that means he should only have four wins!” Pearl hissed back.
Fay, meanwhile, glanced down at his right palm.
It showed the symbol V.
The roman numeral indicated the number of wins he had. The gods themselves had inscribed it there; it was impossible to fake and impossible to hide. Hence the riddle at the heart of this moment.
Pearl’s right. We should all be at four wins. Where did this extra one come from for me?
The history of Fay’s win marks:
1. When he met Leshea, he was at 3-0 (three wins, zero losses).
2. Win: vs. the Giant God Titan: 4-0.
3. Win: vs. the Endless God Uroboros: 5-0.
4. Win: vs. the God of the Sun Army Mahtma II: 6-0.
5. Loss: vs. the Bookmaker, lost three marks: 3-0.
6. Win: vs. the Bookmaker, to bring Nel out of retirement: Nel’s losses cleared.
—Then he and the rest of the team had three wins, zero losses—
7. Win: vs. the God of Underworld, Anubis: 4-0.
It should have been four wins. And yet, there on Fay’s hand, and Pearl’s, too, was engraved a V.
Why do we have an extra win? Everyone was at three wins immediately after facing the Bookmaker. We all saw one another’s scores.
Maybe it had to do with Anubis. There was every chance that dungeon had represented “two wins’ worth.” But why? Fay was reminded of what Uroboros had said.
“There were six gods in that labyrinth.”
That included Uroboros and Anubis. Which meant that there had been four unidentified gods hiding somewhere in Lucemia.
I don’t know why, but there were several gods in that dungeon. Is that why our win marks went up?
Leshea’s and Nel’s, too. They were looking at their palms, so they were probably wondering the same thing Fay was.
Of course, Fay saw his own palm every single day. The fact that he had never noticed the V there before suggested that the change had taken place very, very recently.
“I couldn’t say why, but it looks like we’ve all got five wins,” Nel said slowly. “I hope it’s not some kind of trap…but it does tell us one thing. The gods’ games get harder the more you win.”
“Aw, gimme a break!” Captain Ashlan was practically tearing his hair out. But then he said, “No, wait. We know that already, right? Or at least, people have guessed that it has worked that way for a long time now. They think maybe the reason no one in human history has ever cleared the games is because that ninth or tenth game becomes virtually impossible to finish.”
But now, for the first time, they had proof. Straight from the mouth of a meep who served the gods.
“Now, hold on a minute,” said the meep, floating over Ashlan’s head. “I only said that we would step up to Expert Mode. That is not the same thing as the difficulty level.”
“Oh, I get it! Depending on what that means, the difficulty level might even go down, huh?”
“Heh-heh-heh!”
“Ugh, what’s with the ominous laughter?! Yo, Fay! You’re the one with seven wins—help us out!”
“I’ll, uh, do my best.” Fay nodded at Captain Ashlan, but his mind was already on Expert Mode. The game of God-Tree-Fruit Basketball was exceptionally simple, so he assumed that Expert Mode involved making it more complicated.
“All right, tell us,” he said. “What kind of additional rules are there?”
“An excellent question. The newest stipulation is that namely—”
“…a minimum penalty rule comes into play when time runs out!”
The meep was cut off by the three nymphs, who were too excited to wait another moment. Their voices echoed through the woods.
“Listen closely, humans, because we’ll only say this once! Expert Mode adds a special calculation in the event that time runs out. At the end of the game, if neither team has scored fifty points, the team with the most points wins—but in Expert Mode, there’s a special calculation called the minimum penalty. It means that points from the ball which was used to score the fewest goals don’t count. Oh, except for the ground-bound ball, which scores one hundred million points. That’s a special case and isn’t subject to this rule. The rule applies only to the two-, three-, and ten-point balls. Only after the minimum penalty is applied will the highest-scoring team be determined. Got it? Then let’s—”
“Now, just a moment,” a dryad interrupted gently.
The nymphs’ verbal torrent suddenly stopped, and they seemed to come back to themselves. “…Huh? Oops! Did I talk for two hundred hours straight again?”
“No, only for a few dozen seconds. However, observe: You see how the humans stand with their jaws agape? They’re still struggling to comprehend the rules.” The green-skinned dryads clapped their hands one time. “Perhaps a concrete example would help. Suppose that when we reach the time limit, you humans have thirty-four points. Further, suppose that you scored them in this way: six goals with the two-point ball (twelve points), four with the three-point ball (twelve points), and one with the ten-point ball. Under the minimum penalty, the points scored with the ball used for the fewest goals would not count.”
2-point ball × 6 goals = 12 points
3-point ball × 4 goals = 12 points
10-point ball × 1 goal = 10 points excluded
Under the minimum penalty, ten points scored with the ten-point ball, which was used for the fewest goals, would be excluded. Therefore, the final score would be twenty-four points.
“Only after the minimum penalty is applied will the scores be compared and a victor determined.”
“Huh? Hey, hold on,” Ashlan said, frowning. “That means that even if, say, the humans are ahead when time runs out, after this minimum penalty thing is applied, the scores could flip-flop. Who cares if we actually manage to score with that ten-point ball if it’s not going to count, like in your example just now?”
“Now you’re getting the idea!” The three nymphs had perched among the treants’ branches. “The higher the value of the ball, the more the minimum penalty hurts. If you want to make best use of that ten-pointer, you’d better score a lot of goals with it! Right, Treant?”
“………………”
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t speak the humans’ language, do you? Don’t worry, I’ll talk enough for both of us. Anyway, it’s all good. That’s it for the rules. Hurry up and pick your ten players, humans.”
What was that?
The gods’ team consisted of nymphs, dryads, and treants, three of each, for a total of nine. If the humans were supposed to pick ten, were the gods being given a handicap? Perhaps this was an act of mercy.
No sooner had the thought crossed the humans’ minds than the meep proclaimed, “All right! Let’s meet the final member of the god team!”
The humans let out a collective sigh. How naive of them to think they’d caught a break. This was an all-out contest between the humans and the gods. There were no handicaps and no mercy.
“Say hello to the Beast of Defense, Goalie Bear!”
“Rrrawwwrrr!” The forest greenery shook, and a furry brown bear came flying out—a bear so fluffy that it looked just like a sweet, cuddly toy.
Except for the fact that it was three meters tall. Big enough that even a full-grown human looked like a child beside it.
“Goalie Bear won’t take part in the offensive push. It specializes in protecting the divine team’s goal.”
Pearl pointed at the massive beast. “Don’t tell me! Is this bear the legendary—?!” She turned and whispered to Fay, “Fay! I’ve got something to tell you! Don’t tell anyone, but I know what that bear really is!”
“You do?!”
“I’m sure of it! It must be the Bear in the Woods! You know? From the kids’ song about the girl who meets a nice bear in the woods?”
“Uh…I’m pretty sure they just introduced it as the Goalie Bear.”
“It’s the Bear in the Woods!”
“Um, all right. It’s still the tenth player on the gods’ team.”
This basketball game was going to be ten on ten. The humans needed to pick ten players.
Who would they be?
Leshea and Nel with their exceptional athletic abilities, certainly. And of course, Pearl, whose Arise seemed likely to come in handy. In which case…
“Yo, Fay!” Captain Ashlan turned and gestured in a shooing motion that clearly meant stand back. “This is an order from your commander-in-chief. I’m saving you and your team for later. I’ll pick ten of us from Blaze for the starting lineup.”
“What? You mean…”
“You heard ’em, right? This game’s gonna get rough. No point in you getting hurt before we figure things out.”
“I appreciate the thought…I guess…”
“I see!” Anita said, looking deeply moved. “You’re going to put yourselves in the line of fire to help find out how to win this game! What beautiful self-sacrifice! Then I, too, shall save myself in preparation for the latter half of this contest, when—”
