Gods’ Games We Play, Vol. 5, page 4
“Oh, right! The Bear in the Woods!”
Fwooosh. The moment Pearl, who had been observing proceedings from ground level, chimed in with this observation, the scene froze.
“……”
“……”
After a protracted silence, the god team turned toward her as if to ask, What’s with that name? Even the Goalie Bear itself looked flabbergasted, as if he wanted to say, Huh? Are you talking about me?
It was an opening.
Anita snapped back to awareness. “Now, Captain! Do it!”
Ashlan reacted almost as fast. “I’m afraid you’re open, my dear bear!”
He slammed the ball into the goal flower, completely ignoring the still-flummoxed bear.
“Gooooaall!” the meep cried. “Amazing! The human team has put five points on the board!”
Even the meep was getting into it. With the god team’s overwhelming advantage, it was astonishing that the first points went to the humans.
“Goalie Bear?! Where were you on that one?” the nymphs bellowed from far across the field, by the human goal. “We’ve put everyone on offense! If you don’t keep the basket safe, who will?! Now we’re already five points down!”
“…Grrrm,” the bear grumbled.
“It’s fine,” said the dryads, two of whom were running along the ground. “If they’ve taken five points off us, we just need to respond by taking ten.”
“Hmm?” Nel was the first to notice that something was off: namely, the two dryads sprinting across the forest floor. They had been climbing the god team’s tree mere moments ago but had immediately jumped down.
“So that’s what they’re planning! Captain Ashlan!” Nel shouted. However, he couldn’t hear her at this distance, and she knew it. “Get back here! They’re planning to commit all nine players to hitting our goal!”
“Too little, too late. Flowers? Fire!” All three dryads snapped their fingers, and every single one of the innumerable buds on Yggdrasil’s branches popped open audibly and began spitting seeds like machine guns.
“Huh?! Yowch!”
The barrage of seed bullets took out several members of the human team. This was a dryad’s plant magic. While the nymphs had wind magic, the dryads could control Yggdrasil’s plants and flowers.
It wasn’t over yet.
“Go, Treant!”
The massive creatures, nymphs still riding on them, charged again. Apostles that had finally made it to their feet cried out as they were slammed against Yggdrasil’s trunk.
“Guys?!” the wind user, Rax, called out, her eyes going wide. She was the last person on the human side who could still move—and all three nymphs were gathering in front of her.
“Too bad for you! One little human magic user is never going to beat us!”
“Eeeeeek?!”
The nymphs unleashed a more fearsome volley of wind magic, blowing Rax backward.
Eight members of the human team lay sprawled nearby. Their flower was completely defenseless, and a nymph lazily drifted over and dropped the ten-point ball into it.
“It’s a ten-point goal! The god team has turned this game around, and the score is now five to ten!”
They’d been well and truly worked over. Everyone on the human team wanted to cry.
They were learning that this was not a human ball game. Soccer, basketball, Ping-Pong, tennis, and all the rest, shared one thing in common. When humans played them, there was a brief break after a score.
Because there was only one ball. It took time to bring it back to the “restart” point.
“But there’s no such thing here…” Nel clenched her fists. It killed her that she had been so slow to realize the nuance. “There are four different balls in play. One of them might be used to score, but the battle for the other three doesn’t let up for a second.”
Anita and Captain Ashlan had made the mistake of breathing sighs of relief. They’d scored with the two- and three-point balls, and then they’d relaxed, assuming that there would be a moment’s rest before the game resumed. The dryads had turned that moment of inattention against them, using all the god team’s members to score with the ten-point ball.
Again, this was something different from human sports: The gods never stopped.
Not now, not later, she thought.
This was sports as real-time strategy, a game where the action never let up for a moment. It was like they were playing chess while having to navigate an ever-shifting game board. Yet they also knew that everything the god team was doing was in pursuit of a particular plan.
The only question was: What was that plan?
“Wahoo! We’ve got a five-point lead. I hope that’s not all it takes to beat you!”
“Oh, we’re not done yet!” Captain Ashlan ground his teeth.
Beside him, Anita, along with the apostles who had been blown around, showed that their fighting fire had in no way diminished. They all glared at the other team, roused to fury.
“Leader! What about the gods’ plan or whatever it is?” Anita said.
“Don’t get too bent out of shape about it, Anita. This game’s only just beginning!”
They didn’t have any answers yet. The god team hadn’t given them a chance to find any. By keeping up an unrelenting attack, they denied the human side any time to think.
Among the participants and observers, Fay alone was looking at something completely off the court.
“……”
The nectar clock. Drip, drip, it went.
Drop by drop, the golden nectar fell into the bowl below. Fay studied it intently.
“What if the gods’ plan is to…? But if that’s true, then…maybe we could turn that against them?” Fay muttered to himself, so quietly that only the vermilion-haired girl standing beside him heard what he said.
Chapter
Intermission
That’s Why I Am Undefeated
Gods’ Games We Play
In the Ruin branch office of the Arcane Court—specifically, in the basement Dive Center—Miranda stood stock-still.
“Ugh, I’m so tired. And my feet hurt…”
She’d been standing that way for an hour already. Under any other circumstances, she would have flopped down onto the sofa behind her and leaned back to enjoy a nice, comfortable break while she watched the gods’ games play out. But not today.
“And Fay and his friends don’t have a Godeye lens…”
The Arcane Court wasn’t even getting footage of the game, thanks to an aberration that had been affecting the Divine Gates ever since Anubis’s little “force everyone to come to her labyrinth” trick. The whole point of today’s game had been to check whether the aberration had been corrected—the general public had never even been informed of the issue.
If that had been the only factor at play, Miranda would have flopped right back onto that sofa—but it wasn’t.
“Human!”
“Y-yes, ma’am?!” the chief secretary squeaked, immediately straightening up again.
This was the true reason Miranda couldn’t relax: Someone who outranked her was present. Someone who outranked her by an overwhelming, superlative, utterly unbridgeable gulf of an amount—none other than a god.
“What might I do for you, Lady Uroboros?!”
A silver-haired girl was perched cross-legged atop the Divine Gate. This was the spiritual body, the form that the Endless God Uroboros had adopted when coming to the human world. Her presence kept Miranda on her toes—and on her feet.
“I’ve got something to say.”
“Yes, ma’am?!”
The girl broke into a broad grin. “This pizza sure is delicious!” She had been wordlessly wolfing down one slice of pizza after another the entire time. “Thin, fragrant, perfectly crisped pizza dough loaded with four kinds of cheese—wonderful. Even my undefeated self could nearly succumb to such a thing!”
“Yes, ma’am, and you might be interested to know that this particular pizza is even better with a drizzle of honey on—”
“What?!” Uroboros’s eyes went wide. She didn’t even wait for Miranda to finish. “You would put honey on pizza?!”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s the perfect complement to the salty flavor of the cheese. Would you like to try it?”
“I would!”
“I’ll get some for you right away. Ahem… Incidentally, Lady Uroboros…” This was the perfect opportunity: While the god was enjoying delicious food and in a decent mood, Miranda spoke seriously, carefully. The last thing she wanted to do was upset this deity. “I know you investigated the abnormality with the Divine Gates, my lady. Did you happen to uncover any clues?”
“………” Uroboros abruptly went silent.
“Ack! I—I mean, not to rush you or anything! Er, ahh, you must, of course, investigate at your own pace!”
“I already know.”
“Er… What?”
“Heh heh! Do not forget, I am the mistress of a hugely popular game. Adorable, immensely popular, and beloved—that’s why I am undefeated!”
“……………Right.”
Miranda wasn’t quite clear what this declaration of her supposed “immense popularity” had to do with the results of Uroboros’s investigation. She managed to swallow the question moments before it left her mouth.
“If you would be so kind, perhaps you could explain to me?”
“Sure!”
The silver-haired god bounded down from the divine statue, landing smack in front of Miranda.
“There were two divine mechanisms in play. The Divine Gate…”
Uroboros’s gaze dropped to Miranda’s hand, focusing on a small black device she was holding.
“…and that thing.”
“The Godeye lens?!” Miranda burst out.
The lens was just a machine, distributed by Arcane Court headquarters to the branch offices for the apostles’ use.
“I was kicked out earlier because there was some sort of mechanism affecting the Divine Gate. And then there was that thing you humans were all upset about because it was sucking everyone into a single game, right? That Lucemia situation.”
“Y-yes, I remember…”
“This thing was the mechanism.” Uroboros pointed to the Godeye lens again. “It’s like… Hmm. Like a collar with a chain attached. When a god pulls on the chain, they can pull the human wearing the collar right to them.”
“You’re saying this is…a divine collar?!”
The Godeye lens was a collar, and the apostles were voluntarily wearing it?
And wait… A god could simply “pull” on this collar and draw all the apostles wearing one to a single place?
Was that the truth behind the labyrinth, Lucemia?
“You mean there was another god there besides you, Lady Uroboros?”
“Uh-huh. Probably the same one that messed with me in the maze, I guess?” The deity turned on her heel. “The source of the power is right over there.”
“Uh…that’s a wall.”
“From that direction of the continent. Do you have a world map? Ah, here. It’s right around here.”
Uroboros went over to a map of the world hanging on one wall, and with her small fingers, she pointed to…
“The Myth City of Heckt-Scheherezade? Lady Uroboros, that’s…that’s where Arcane Court headquarters is located.”
“Uh-huh.” Uroboros nodded. Apparently, she didn’t actually care that much about that fact, because she nonchalantly picked up the can of ginger ale she’d left on the floor. “There’s a god there. Several of them, actually.”
Chapter
Player.2
Vs. The God-Tree Guardians —God-Tree-Fruit Basketball—
Gods’ Games We Play
1
The game was God-Tree-Fruit Basketball, and with two minutes and fifty seconds of elapsed game time, the score stood at ten for the god team (1 × 10-point basket) to five for the humans (1 × 2-point basket, 1 × 3-point basket).
“As a goal has been scored, new balls will be provided!”
Plonk, ponk, creak—maybe those were the kinds of sound effects that characterized the three colored nuts dropping from Yggdrasil’s branches.
A two-point, a three-point, and a ten-point ball hit the ground at almost the same time—maybe because the goals had been scored almost simultaneously.
“All right, let’s get our heads back in the game!” Captain Ashlan shouted.
“Yippee! You think you’ve got the hang of it? Let’s have a little fun, then!” the nymphs chortled.
The balls had fallen at center court, and now both the human and the divine teams were making a beeline for them.
“Damn… Everybody, hurry! Forget the stupid ground-bound ball; we can’t let those three get away from us!” Ashlan called.
There were three balls. How, then, to allocate each team’s resources—its ten players—among them?
“What are they up to over there?!”
“Oops, too slow!” The nymphs’ laughter rained down from above. “If you wait to see what we’re going to do, you’ll never catch the tempo of the game. Which is to say, they’re all ours, Treant!”
A stump-like treant reached out its roots, thin and fast as a whip, and wrapped them around the ten-point ball, which it passed to a dryad who sped by. The dryad smacked it like a volleyball, passing it to another dryad farther away. Perfect teamwork.
“Damn, they’re fast! Fall back, guys, protect the goal!”
“If we all retreat, there won’t be anyone to stop them from getting the two- and three-point balls! We can’t win by playing nothing but defense!” Anita looked across the court and gritted her teeth.
As for the god team, the six treants and dryads were passing the ten-point ball back and forth between them as they made for the great tree. Meanwhile, the nymphs were making a dive for the two- and three-point balls.
“We need to respond with six of our people! Have them take the ten-point ball back, while the other four get the two- and three-point ones!”
“Told ya, you’re too slow! We’ll just take these!” The nymphs dove from the sky, prepared to sweep up the two nuts Anita had her eye on. Except…
“Huh? This…this ball’s a bit heavy, isn’t it?” All three nymphs frowned. They strained to lift the ball but couldn’t do it with their tiny arms and wings. “Well, whatever! This calls for some wind magic!”
“Hah! Looking pretty weak there, O gods! Too slow!”
“Wha—?”
The nymphs hadn’t even noticed as Captain Ashlan closed in from behind—and with him was one of his team members, a young man stretching both hands out toward the balls.
“Do it, Gratton!”
“Gravity magic, activate!”
A magical diagram appeared in black directly under the nymphs, and a great creaking sound rent the air.
“Eek?! Why are we so heavy?!”
Specifically, the force of gravity had grown seven times greater. By the time the nymphs had noticed the change in their own body weight, the two-point ball (one kilogram) and three-point ball (two kilograms) had each likewise gotten seven times heavier, the extra weight dragging the green and the blue seeds from the nymphs’ hands.
“Oh no!”
“Got ’em, Captain!” A red-haired girl came rushing up next, easily tossing the two-point ball to Ashlan and clutching the three-pointer to her side before running off with it.
“How’s that for teamwork, eh? Gratton’s a two-year veteran mage, and the redhead over there is Zechey. Don’t let her sweet looks fool you; she’s got a proper Superhuman Arise. She could lift a full-size motorcycle clear over her head and—”
“Captain, behind you!”
“Yikes!”
If it hadn’t been for Anita’s timely shout, the nymphs’ blast of violent wind would have blown Captain Ashlan straight into the air, two-point ball and all.
“Nice pass, Captain! Don’t worry, I won’t let your sacrifice be in vain!” Anita promised as she caught the ball.
Ashlan, meanwhile, had put everything into his pass, leaving him completely open to the magical gust. It had flung him into the air, and he came back down to earth hard.
“Ow, ow, ow… Zechey, Anita! Don’t let them bully you out of those balls! Gratton, forget about me. Go cover the girls!”
“You don’t have to tell us twice!” Anita, two-point ball in hand, was already racing for the gods’ side of the court—straight toward the great tree where the goal flower grew.
She bounded up and over the roots growing from the ground and ran along them until she could jump up to the divots in the trunk. After that, the protruding knobs in the bark served as her footholds as she worked her way upward.
“You’re a pretty good climber for a human!” the nymphs called out to her. “Too bad it won’t help you. You can never climb faster than we can fly!”
Anita heard their wings getting closer. She saw the nymphs coming up from below at a tremendous speed.
“Glutton or…Gratton or whoever! I need gravity, now!”
“Ten G’s, coming up!”
The black magic circle gleamed, and a beam of light shot toward the nymphs, who were nearly upon Anita.
“Arrrgh! Our bodies are so heavy—again! Oooh! We hate gravity magic!”
All three nymphs plummeted to earth, freeing Anita of her divine pursuers.
“Fantastic work, Team Blaze! Now I just have to get up to that flower!”
She continued along the protuberances as if they were floating islands, and she was already more than twenty meters off the ground. One false step would result in a very long drop toward an unavoidable game-over. She had to move as carefully as she could while still going as fast as she dared.
“Let’s do this!” she said. She jumped from the trunk into the branches, followed closely by Zechey with the other ball and Gratton to provide support. They spotted the pure white flower and raced toward it.
“Roooooarrr!”
Until a huge, fuzzy brown beast blocked their way.
