Chapter 109

Chapter Player.5 Enjoying an Unpleasant Story —Heckt-Maria: Half-God, Half-Human— 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.