Chapter 70

Chapter Intermission (This Conversation May Not Be Recorded) 02 Gods’ Games We Play Let us go back in time about eighteen hours. The Lucemia labyrinth was empty, as it were. With the defeat of the final boss, Anubis, all the trapped apostles had returned home. With the humans gone, the various monsters that wandered the maze also fell asleep. Silence descended upon Lucemia, until the next time the game began… “Liar.” Just the one word. The girl’s crisp voice echoed around the very deepest depths of the labyrinth. “Anubis. Would you care to explain this?” The girl was staring at a god’s grave. It had been destroyed in spectacular fashion when Anubis had been respawned, but now the god was asleep again, and the tomb was restored as if nothing had ever happened to it. “……” The girl regarded the tomb, cold and expressionless. “You agreed with my belief, Anubis—you accepted the proposition that the gods’ games must no longer exist in this world. So why did you let them clear yours?” The tomb gave no answer. Anubis, the incarnation of the two sides of the coin, of life and death, had returned to the sleep of death. Until another challenger, another player, awakened her once again, no one could interfere with her. Not even a god. “The labyrinth of Lucemia was supposed to be an impenetrable fortress. You’re the last boss, Anubis. All you needed to do was keep sleeping in your grave. With the god gone, it would have been impossible to clear the labyrinth. This game was supposed to be a dead end…” The girl let out a small sigh, hoo. “Do you realize how hard it was to set this up? I pushed for the World Games Tour, ginned up the perfect excuse to visit every Arcane Court office in the world. We were able to gain access to every Divine Gate, tamper with them so they would lead here. All for this day.” The girl clenched her fist feebly. “The plan succeeded; we were able to trap hundreds of apostles from around the world in your maze. All you needed to do was stay dead. Then the humans, terrified of losing any more apostles, would have outlawed the gods’ games. That’s how it was supposed to work…” Another sigh, heavier than the first and tinged with regret. “Why would you have come back to l—” “Oh ho? Fancy meeting you here!” Tak. The underground cavern where there had once been a coliseum echoed with a young man’s clear voice. Sunlight poured down, gleaming off his golden hair, which made him look older than he was. “Whatever might you be doing in this place? Eh, Miss Heleneia Jonah Benedictine?” “……” The girl simply didn’t say anything at all. “Saint Heleneia” wore a black vestment with gold embroidery, the indisputable proof that she was the leader of headquarters’s most important team. The strongest team in the world, Mind Over Matter. The leader of that team turned and, without a hint of emotion in her eyes, said, “Who are you?” “Oh! Forgive me. I’m Ezrace, representative of the Ocean City of Fisshara. You remember how Fay was rookie of the year last year? I was what people called ‘The Second.’ I dared to think I had a certain measure of fame, but I see you don’t know me. Well, I hope you’ll remember me after today.” The boy’s tone was casual, but behind his jocular presentation, the girl detected a hostile light in his eyes. “Huh! So this is the innermost depths of the labyrinth,” he said, turning around and taking it all in, every detail of the coliseum that had been ruined by Anubis’s power. “They tell me our man Fay beat a god here. I couldn’t help being curious about where it had happened, so I decided to come have a look. I mean, we went to enough trouble in this maze. It’s the proper gamer’s attitude to wonder what happened in the end, don’t you think?” “……” The girl still didn’t respond. “Talk about unprecedented, am I right? Hundreds and hundreds of apostles from all over the world, all trapped here. Until even headquarters felt obliged to send your Mind Over Matter as part of the rescue operation…” Ezrace abruptly stopped. The girl maintained her silence, but he smiled at her. “And? What percentage did you get to?” “…?” She gave him a questioning look. “Come on. The clear percentage! The one that goes up as you figure out all the little tricks and traps in this maze? It goes out to two decimal places. Fay went well beyond me, but I’m betting you didn’t do half bad yourself, Miss Heleneia. I got up to 53.44 percent before it was all over, if you’re curious.” “……” Heleneia didn’t say anything. “What’s the matter? The game’s over. Why hide it now?” “49.99 percent.” “Hoh! I knew you’d have done a good job.” The young man, Ezrace, nodded vigorously. The motion tossed his bangs into his eyes; he brushed them away. “Now, I have a question. What have you and your team really been up to until just this moment?” “Whatever do you mean?” “Oh, please. If you’d seriously been working to clear this maze, you would never have misunderstood my question just now.” Ezrace pointed to the number floating above his head—the one that showed the unlock percentage he had achieved. “For one thing, this game doesn’t have a ‘clear percentage.’ It’s called the unlock percentage. The meep never once referred to a clear percentage. I just made that up.” “……” Heleneia was studiously silent. “Also, the unlock percentage typically only goes out to one decimal place. The fact that you could say 49.99 percent with a straight face tells me you don’t know the first thing about this labyrinth.” “……” More silence. “You know, it’s funny. Us rescue teams all came out and helped when Fay asked. The one team we didn’t see hide or hair of was headquarters’s own. The one that’s supposed to be the strongest team in the world.” “……” Heleneia didn’t say a word. “And I just wondered, you know? So I came looking. This seemed like the place to start.” Ezrace, representative of the Ocean City of Fisshara, glanced up—looking at the small tomb behind the girl where a god lay. “Is that the god’s grave? Huh! Guess it went back to being dead after Fay beat it.” “……” One more time, Heleneia held her peace. “So tell, tell. I heard you taking an awfully authoritative tone with that pyramid. Almost like you knew the person you were talking to.” “Huh. So you’re just an ordinary human.” The girl sighed. There was a hint of annoyance but also a distinct note of relief. “I was almost afraid Uroboros had changed into yet another persona to stick her nose in. But you’re human to the bone—just a human overcome by curiosity.” “Hmm? I don’t quite know what you mean, Miss Heleneia.” The way she used that word, human—almost as if she was saying that she wasn’t. “A most unfortunate human indeed.” There was a hiss. The girl’s, Heleneia’s, hair leapt up, and her vestments expanded from the inside, as if something within were trying to get out. “You have found me, to your woe. For you, human, your curiosity has proved deeply unfortunate.” “Wha—?!” Instantly, instinctively, and purely reflexively, Ezrace jumped back, urged to move by an aura more powerful than any ordinary force. “Miss Heleneia?! What’s going on?!” “Let me put it in terms of this labyrinth: It’s like a rookie adventurer has entered a forbidden area and stumbled upon a secret boss. That would not be good news for him but would instead be deeply unfortunate.” The thing in a girl’s body raised its right hand, pointing straight at Ezrace… “You will sleep now. Until my plans are realized.” There was an uncanny shlrp—the sound of Ezrace’s arms being sucked into the black vortex that appeared in midair. He couldn’t move his arms. Try as he might to resist, next his legs were pulled into the floating vortex. “Wh-whoa, hey! What is this, Miss Heleneia, some kind of joke? Is this your Arise…?!” “Heleneia?” The thing in a girl’s body paused briefly, perplexed. “Ahh, you refer to my human name. That is not what I am now.” “Huh?!” “I am sorry. And I pity your curiosity. Endure—ten years, perhaps. That should be enough for you to be free.” So the young man, Ezrace, began to sink into thin air. At that exact moment, though… “Ez? Ez, where are you?” “Hmph! How could you leave us and go exploring on your own? If there are still traps around here, you’ll be sorry!” It was the bright voices of two young women, accompanied by their footsteps. They soon arrived in the coliseum area, a couple of girls trotting easily along. They wore the same vestments as Ezrace. Two more apostles of Fisshara. Two apostles who had been trapped down here until Ezrace had rescued them. “Ez?” “Hey, are you all right? Why are you curled up there?” When the two of them arrived, Ezrace was finally able to get up off his knees. “Aw, sorry,” he said. His face was drenched with sweat, his bangs stuck fast to his forehead, but he brushed the golden hair aside like nothing had happened and smiled at them. “It’s nothing, Rencha, Mariage. I was just so eager to go exploring.” Both of the girls puffed out their cheeks angrily. “Oh, boo!” “I should have known! You’re always so quick to go off on your own. We’re ready to get out of this game already!” Ezrace gave a small smile for his adorable junior apostles, then let out a long sigh. He felt a cold sweat trickle down his back. He had managed to hide it behind his sunny tone, but his body temperature was near freezing. “Sounds good. Let’s get home. Man, your timing was perfect. I think the sudden appearance of my two adorable junior apostles might have just saved my life.” “…?” Rencha gave him a questioning look. “What do you mean?” Mariage asked. “Aw, nothing. Forget it. C’mon, let’s get going.” He put a hand on each of their backs to urge them along. Ezrace was careful to keep smiling, but he stole a glance back at the god’s tomb. The thing in the form of a girl was nowhere to be seen. “Now, the question is…if I report this to the Arcane Court, will anyone believe me?” An hour later, Ezrace Gear Scimitar, second in the rookie ranks to Fay the year before, had safely exited the Lucemia labyrinth. The innermost depths of the maze were once again silent, devoid of human presence. The monsters lay sleeping, and there where Anubis rested beneath the ground… “I seem to have made a miscalculation.” There was no longer anyone there to hear the sound waves, what passed for a voice, make something resembling a sigh. The speaker was talking to themselves, not intending that anyone should overhear. “I knew the snake would be a source of trouble. But Uroboros was not the real threat… It was that human, Fay.” There was a whisper of rock scuttling over rock as the echoing waves of the god’s voice knocked loose some exposed stone. “He must be stopped. Because if the gods’ games are cleared… This time, I will finally no longer be able to protect humanity…” The labyrinth had seen its battle through to the end, and now all that was left were words, words full of grief—and even more, resolve. “I shall never allow you to clear the gods’ games, Fay.”