Chapter 68

Rings of light shone, a full hundred of them, and from them emerged monsters of every kind, pouring into the arena. The Sleeping Lion. Sphinx. King Eraser. The Dark Puffball. And on and on. All of them were familiar—and all of them were bosses. “Nooo! This is gonna be impossiblllllllllle!” Pearl wailed. “Hold on! Summoning all of these at once?! That’s hardly fair!” Nel added. This was some final boss! They had naturally expected the last enemy of this twisted labyrinth to put up a serious fight—but none of them had imagined a fight quite like this. A hundred boss monsters? “Impossible” seemed like an understatement. “Ha-ha-ha! Even better! I raised these myself. I call them EX versions—because they’ve got a little something extra. Let’s start with the Sleeping Lion. Show them your new, even stronger killer move!” The Sleeping Lion howled, and bright lights began to pour from the ceiling. Fay and the others felt a shiver down their spines. “Everyone, get those items!” Fay shouted. They knew how to respond to this attack in the marrow of their bones. They took the Ordinary Umbrellas from the Treasure Hall Master Key and held them over their heads. The Sleeping Lion EX uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heaven and destroys everything. Everything is destroyed. Anubis, of course, was unscathed. Fay and his team, who knew how to deal with this attack by now, immediately defended with their umbrellas (which were obliterated in their place). And… The ninety-nine other monsters, just as the in-game text had said…were destroyed. “Ahhhhhhhh! You fool! Why would you destroy your fellow monsters?!” “………” The response was only silence. The Sleeping Lion’s Rage Arts conventionally destroyed “the players.” Anubis had made it stronger so the destruction extended to “everything.” Apparently, that included other monsters. “Wait! Could this mean…?” Fay said. As he looked up at the deity with her head in her hands, a possibility presented itself to him. The possibility that a god who would create such a bug-riddled, off-the-wall maze had never been somebody who quite had it all together. “Her head is her weak point!” “Are you calling me stupid? Who are you calling stupid?!” “That’d be you!” Something in Pearl’s hands glowed. She’d pulled another item out of the key, one that hardly seemed appropriate in this dungeon: a massive rocket launcher. The Final Battle–Use Weapon, the Megalith Rocket. A single-use rocket launcher that could destroy any monster. It was by far the most powerful item they had crafted, and they had saved it all this time specifically to use in the final battle. “Final bosses were made to be defeated—so take your bow!” The rocket struck home, the entire coliseum shaking with the flames and the shock wave, which enveloped not just Anubis but the Sleeping Lion as well. “They don’t call it the Final Battle–Use Weapon for nothing!” Pearl said. “That wraps everything up in a neat little packa—” “Mwa-ha-ha! You thought it would be that easy, girl?” The billowing black smoke was swept away to reveal Anubis, unharmed. “Did you really believe a flea bite like that would stop me?” “Well, you’re the one who called it the Final Battle–Use Weapon!” “I don’t remember writing that!” “I think this god might really be an idiot!” “Come to me, O Golden Puffball!” A shimmering golden ball of fluff was summoned to Anubis’s feet. Their first area boss—how could they ever forget? The “God Bless” attack this puffball sneezed out dealt 9,999 damage to every player, regardless of defense. At the same moment: “Show them your breath!” Anubis shouted. “Nel!” Fay called. As the Golden Puffball exhaled its shimmering breath toward them, Nel was already out in front of the party, kicking high into the sky with her leg. “Right back at you!” She activated her Arise, Moment Reversal. It could kick anything back the way it came, regardless of energy or mass. Nel kicked the breath, sending it straight back into the face of the Golden Puffball. “Puuuuuuffff?!” “Hoh! I see you’ve learned a thing or two as you worked your way through my maze. Why, you’re ready for anything.” The god-girl leered at them, as if to say she would have expected—and accepted—no less. “I summon a hundred Golden Puffballs!” “You what?!” Nel exclaimed. “This is all completely out of proportion! Are you even interested in giving the players a chance to win?!” Pearl protested. Anubis, however, not only ignored them, she said, “What’s more! As is my right as game master, I’m changing the system. I’m introducing a stamina meter. Players may only move for up to fifteen consecutive seconds. Using an Arise immediately drains the stamina meter, with a five-second regen timer!” “You’re not allowed to just come up with a new game system on the spot!” Pearl said. “The game has changed—literally!” Leshea exclaimed. “Such is my power! Nothing is impossible for the game master!” Anubis triumphantly puffed out her chest. “With the stamina system, you’ll only be able to beat back a single God Bless with your Arise. If you don’t want to be destroyed, I suggest you start running. Meanwhile, I’ll be intoning the spell for my ultimate technique, God Laser. Seventy seconds from now, when I’m done, you’re all going to be wiped off the map!” So now they had seventy seconds left. In that span of time, they were supposed to defeat a hundred Golden Puffballs and stop Anubis. Ridiculous. Especially when the newly introduced stamina system meant they couldn’t move for more than fifteen seconds at a time. It was beyond impossible. “Or at least, that’s what you’d think,” Fay said, an unlikely grin spreading across his face. “What?!” Anubis’s eyes went wide. “You’re forgetting something, O god of the underworld! One of the events in the labyrinth involves rescuing the Zombie Puffballs. We have the Puffball Crest!” It had been a hidden event, one that involved bathing all the Zombie Puffballs in the purifying waterfall. By completing it, they had gained access to a hidden area, Puffball Village, where the King Puffball had granted them the Puffball Crest as a sign of friendship. “With this in hand, we can avoid battle with any puffballs!” It was a piece of metal engraved with a picture of a puffball. The moment Fay held it up, all one hundred of the Golden Puffballs stopped in their tracks. Even the ones that had been about to attack the party froze, turned around, and bounced out of the coliseum. Finally it was just Fay, his party…and one defenseless final boss. “Hrgh… Curses!” Anubis stood with her staff upraised, unable to move. She clearly hadn’t expected to just lose her Golden Puffballs like that. She had seventy seconds until she finished her deadly incantation, and during that time, she had no way to protect herself. “Now’s our chance! She’s paralyzed!” Fay said. “Focus fire!” ordered Pearl. They all rushed toward the god. Anubis looked at them, and then her pronouncement echoed around the coliseum: “You know what, forget the incantation! I’ve decided it’s possible to fire God Laser without one!” “Excuse me?” “God Laser, go!” A rainbow-colored light lanced from Anubis’s staff. It didn’t move that fast—if you knew it was coming, it probably could have been easily avoided. But the light of the gods simply came on too suddenly. Anubis used God Laser. The players are destroyed. However, the Bright Mirror of Dawn resurrects them this one time. Plink! The mirror Fay and his party had with them shattered. If it hadn’t been for the Bright Mirror of Dawn, they would almost certainly have been respawned straight back to the Execution Grounds. “Hoh? So you have an item that can resurrect you one time. Well, there won’t be a second!” Even Fay couldn’t stop himself from protesting this time. “Okay, hold on! What was the deal with that?!” Anubis had rewritten the game rules so her deadliest technique suddenly had no cast time. Not that he couldn’t understand the logic from her perspective, but to declare they had seventy seconds, then just go, “Nah, forget it,” gave a whole new meaning to deus ex machina. “Yeah, even I think that was pretty low,” Leshea said. “A cruel trick indeed,” Nel agreed. “What’s even the point of having an incantation?!” Pearl demanded. All four of them objected mightily, but Anubis actually seemed to enjoy listening to their protests. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Are you surprised, humans? I told you—nothing is impossible for the game master!” “She admitted it!” “If that’s how the final boss behaves, then there’s no fight, is there?!” Nel said. “Arrrgh! All right, one good surprise attack deserves another! Sphinx 3D Model, I choose you! Go, Sphinxie!” Pearl sent out another very rare item: a paper model that immediately transformed itself into the spitting image of Sphinx. It was only about a third the size of the real thing, but it could head-butt just as hard as the original. “Head-butt, now!” “Hngh?!” Sphinx head-butted Anubis, who went flying backward and slammed into the coliseum wall. It was working! The rocket launcher had been a flop, but Sphinx was Anubis’s pet. A divine-element pet ought to work on a god, right? It was only logical. “Grr… I felt that.” Anubis sent the paper model sprawling away with a single blow from her staff. “So you’re using your heads. I see you’ve figured out which items will work on me.” “Hmm? Well yeah, of course. If you want to surrender, now’s your chance. There’s a whole line of paper models—next is the Sleeping Lion!” “Laughable!” Anubis yelled. “I am the final boss. I use my automatic healing ability to heal all damage in a single second!” “Seriously, are you interested in giving us a chance?!” “Also, I just came up with another new rule. No items can damage me! At all!” ………Long pause. …No use debating with her, Fay thought. Some people just don’t listen. It wasn’t just him—the realization struck all of them as they looked at the crowing deity. Some gods didn’t listen, either. Maybe the case of dimwittedness had something to do with it. But there was a bigger factor… “Oh boy, am I having fun!” The god was laughing. Her cheeks were flushed like a child having the time of her life. This deity, who had lived hundreds or thousands of times longer than any human, looked as innocent as a little girl, her eyes sparkling. She was having such a good time, absorbed in her game, that she wasn’t listening to Fay and the others. “I’m glad I was revived. Games really are the best!” “Even the unfair ones?” Fay said, unable to suppress a pained smile. This god was truly cruel—the most crooked of any god Fay had ever met. “You look like you’re having so much fun, it almost makes me want to join you, even for a broken game like this.” “Three minutes of battle have passed! I think maybe I’ll give myself triple health!” “What? Don’t do that!” He took it all back. This game was a lost cause. And this god was dumb as rocks. “Allow me to demonstrate my great magic for you. Instant death to everyone on the ground!” “Everybody jump!” “Great magic, round two: instant death to everybody in the air!” “Hrk?! Everybody, get down!” “Wow! I’m impressed you survived that!” Anubis sounded more and more thrilled. This was turning into a test of endurance on death’s very doorstep. Again and again, Fay and his group evaded annihilation by razor-thin margins: with the Bright Mirror of Dawn lost to them, they were burning through every item in their inventory trying to keep themselves alive. Meanwhile, the final boss was darn near invincible. The rocket launcher specifically described as a weapon for the final battle hadn’t worked, and even the damage dealt by the Sphinx Model had been automatically healed in an instant. So what were the conditions for defeating this enemy? Was there any way to damage her? Or was this about surviving for a set period of time? “All right, I’m doing God Laser again. Cast time zero, of course!” “Hngh! We’ll just have to find an item that can—” “Items sealed!” There was a great crash, and the Treasure Hall Master key Fay was holding shattered. At the same moment, the word Sealed appeared above each of their heads. By the game master’s fiat, the game system no longer allowed the use of items. “Hold on a second! Are you serious?!” Fay demanded. “Yeah, there’s arbitrary and then there’s arbitrary!” Leshea added. “I don’t like this game masterrrrrr!” Pearl cried. “You have to learn how to hold back a little!” Nel said. Even as the words left their mouths, it was already too late. Anubis bounded high into the sky, a sacred glow enveloping the end of her staff. “I present to you: God Laser!” “Grr! See if I let you change the rules on us like that!” Nel’s leg rose through the air. Just as with the God Bless attack, she met the beam of light head on, attempting to kick it back the way it came. She crashed to the ground with a cry. Stamina, zero: players could only move for up to fifteen consecutive seconds without exhausting their stamina, and she had bumped up against that limit. “Nel, stretch out your hand!” Pearl shouted. A golden warp portal appeared in front of her, and Pearl half jumped, half fell through to grab the immobilized Nel an instant before the god’s beam scoured the spot. Both of them dodged it, barely. But by using her Arise, Pearl’s stamina went to zero, too. She fell to her knees beside Nel. “Awesome! Way to go, you two!” they heard Anubis cheer from above them. Her cheeks were red, her eyes sparkling like a child’s—she almost sounded like she had forgotten she was supposed to be the final boss. “Now for my biggest attack ever! I’m going to blow away the entire coliseum!” “This is getting ridiculous!” The hint was, “the entire coliseum.” The idea hit Fay in an instant, like a flash of inspiration, and he chose to trust it. Without a word to each other, he and Leshea both started racing for the exit. Fay grabbed Nel. Leshea picked up Pearl. The two who could move carried the two who couldn’t on their backs as they lunged for a place outside the coliseum. Behind them, they could hear Anubis bellow, “Fire in the hoooole!” There wasn’t so much as a second to look back. Light filled the arena, so bright they could feel it behind them—by which point the blast wind had already swept up everything in its path. The god’s attack blew up the coliseum and the very depths of the earth. The noise and violence of it were so immense, Fay thought they would knock him unconscious. The blast lifted the stones off the ground, tossing them around as easily as leaves. A blinding dust storm kicked up. “Cough! Hack!” “Ow?!” Fay and Leshea were flung to the ground without so much as a chance to catch themselves. For a second, Fay’s brain went fuzzy with the pain. As he collected himself, he grunted, then said, “Everyone all right?” He could taste sand in his mouth. He spat out sandy saliva but at least managed to sit up. “I’m feeling fine,” Leshea said. “I’m…alive, I guess?” Pearl said. “Yeah, me too. Somehow,” reported Nel. The three of them sat up, too. They had escaped the coliseum by a hairbreadth and avoided taking a direct hit from the explosion. A bright light shone above the four survivors’ heads. Another God Laser? No… That enveloping brightness was the light of the sun, shining down from a blue sky high overhead. The actual sun! The very bedrock of the coliseum had been blown upward by the blast, straight out of the yawning hole, so that now the depths were open to the cloudless blue sky. It was so beautiful, they could have just sunk into it, gazing at the sky and forgetting everything else. But the savoring would have to wait. This fight wasn’t over. For one thing, they still hadn’t figured out a way to do actual damage to the god. They’d been spending all their time desperately trying to survive attack after attack. “Where’s the god?! What’s she doing?!” Pearl asked. “Yeah, anyone have eyes on her?!” Nel said. There was a distinct creak from the direction Fay and the others were looking, like the sound of something opening. There, right where the coliseum had been, a girl with light-brown skin sat on the ground. “………” Not a girl, in fact: a god in the form of a girl. Without a word, she looked up at them. Even though they were ragged and flagging, Fay and the others got ready to fight. But the god let out a deep breath and said… “I am satisfied.” Then Anubis smiled. Her face was covered in mud and dirt, but her smile was as bright and pure as could be. Creeeeak… The sound came again. It was the sound of a great golden door opening behind Anubis. The door that exited Lucemia, the Labyrinth of Death and Rebirth. “That was fun. Congratulations on playing my game to the very finish.” As it echoed around the labyrinth, Anubis’s voice was calm, powerful, majestic. “All items, all areas, all events. An extraordinary adventure, was it not? And you took the time, effort, and passion to discover it all.” Anubis looked up at the light that poured down, light that by all rights should never have shone so deep beneath the surface. “As final boss, I saw those things clearly in our battle together. That, in the end, was all I truly wanted: to be certain of that dedication. All I needed was to see it. All I wanted was to know…to know that finally, somewhere, there is someone who could and did play my game all the way through.” Yes: the god had merely wanted confirmation. Was there anyone who was kind enough to play this game? Anyone who would devote themselves to it? The last boss, in essence, administers the final test of a game. They are the judge of whether the players are worthy to go on to the finale. Strength need not be the criterion. They had cleared the maze—were they players whom the god could gladly acknowledge for their achievements? Passion was the true final test here. Those who challenged the game-loving gods always held one final trump card: their own love of games, and nothing else. Anubis had been making sure they possessed that very quality. The ones for whom she had waited so long were here at last. “As you have accomplished that objective, there is no longer any need for me to be the final boss.” “—!” All of them gasped, their eyes going wide. The true condition for clearing Anubis, God of the Underworld, a completely invincible final boss? Get her to relinquish the title of final boss entirely. “This is great… Games are really so much fun!” Anubis said, almost as if she were talking to herself. Then she looked at them and grinned. “I am satisfied. Victory is yours!” There was a moment of silence as they absorbed those words, then chewed over their meaning, until finally… “Awwwwwwwww yes!” “We did iiiiiiiiit!” “Huh! That was some game.” Nel, Pearl, and Leshea in turn each clapped their hands. As for Fay… He reached up with both hands and took the Treasure Hall Master Key, which had reappeared in the air. The God’s Diadem: a special gift from the gods, bestowed upon the first human to clear one of their games. “I grant you a reward,” Anubis said. She pointed at the key without moving from where she sat. “What use is it if I alone enjoy this game? I give you that key.”