Chapter 81

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. “I knew we’d see you here, Mister Bear in the Woods!” The god team’s goalkeeper. It had been shaken by Pearl’s pet name once, but not again. “Heh! You know, I really feel sorry for you. You saw your friends the nymphs take a dive a second ago, right? Okay, Gratton, you’re up!” “Activate!” A dark magical emblem appeared on the branch where Mister Bear in the Woods was standing. For the third time, the incomparable power of gravity drew its target inexorably toward the earth. “Roooooaaarrr!” “It’s not working?!” Zechey cried. “T-this is not good! Gratton, you have to run!” Anita shouted. Mister Bear in the Woods, meanwhile, charged. Disregarding the magical diagram that encircled him, he got down on all fours and flung himself forward with tremendous force. “No way! He can still run with ten times the force of gravity pulling on him?! How strong is this—hrrrgh!” Gratton went tumbling through the air, propelled by a blow from a bear who didn’t seem to care much about the force of gravity. The young man slammed into the tree’s trunk. That moment, though, provided the slightest opening, and Zechey flung the three-point ball toward the goal. “That’s three points for us!” she said. “Wait… What?!” “Roooooaaarrrrr!” Zechey’s ball bounced away from the goal. The bear, fresh from slamming Gratton backward, had simply turned, reached out a paw, and deflected it. “No… How can it be so big and still so fast?!” They had never seen anything as quick and nimble. This was the “Beast of Defense” entrusted with protecting the god team’s goal. No matter how fast they threw the ball, it seemed likely that it would have been almost instantly batted aside. “Hnngh… Fine! If the ball’s just going to be deflected…” Anita, two-point ball in hand, leaped forward. She used a huge leaf like a trampoline to bounce into the air; it sent her almost five meters skyward—far above Mister Bear in the Woods. Anita held the ball firmly overhead with both hands and dove straight toward the goal flower. “…then I’ll drop into the goal right along with it!” “Captain Anita?!” Zechey squealed. Anita fell toward—or rather dive-bombed—the flower five meters below her. Taking a headfirst dive to score a couple of points seemed certain to leave Anita herself with serious injuries. “Two-point goal!” the meep announced. “The score is now seven to ten—the human team is catching up!” The meep’s voice echoed across the court. But what about Anita? No sooner had the thought occurred to them than a girl with pink hair crawled out of the goal flower. “Urgh… Now my hair is full of pollen!” she groaned. Anita’s Arise, Iron Heart, made her body as hard as iron and had allowed her to escape the otherwise brutal fall unscathed.