Chapter 84

Chapter Player.3 Mind Over Matter Gods’ Games We Play 1 Far from the city of Ruin, in the southern part of the world continent, a metropolis floated several thousand meters above the surface. It was the only floating city in this world, in this age. The scale of the city itself was not all that grand, but it was the place where the “magic” of the ancient magical civilization remained more potent than anywhere else. The Myth City of Heckt-Scheherezade. Some three thousand years ago, this world and this continent had belonged to titanic creatures who walked the earth; for humans, there had been no place. So humans had lifted their cities into the air…using a God’s Diadem. For among the rewards received for defeating undefeated gods, there was a legendary stone called the Flight Crystal. With it, humans lofted the cities they had built into the sky one by one. This was the beginning of the ancient magical civilization—but three thousand years prior to modern day, that civilization had abruptly vanished. Why had it crumbled? Investigating that question was profoundly difficult due to the dearth of physical remains from the ancient civilization, but one lone example of their magical technology had remained throughout the millennia: the Myth City. A great silver city floating like a bird in the vast blue sky. This was the location of Arcane Court headquarters. One could hear them: Creak, creak, crack, crack. Hundreds, thousands of windmills decorating the tower that was headquarters. In the tower’s great library, a girl sat reading silently, bathed in multicolored light from the stained glass. “……” Without a word, without a sound, she sat in the otherwise empty library, reading a weathered book. She was not a librarian. She was an apostle of the Arcane Court. She wore black ceremonial garments worked with gold embroidery, a sign that she not only served at headquarters, but was a member of its most distinguished team. That is to say, the strongest team in the world: Mind Over Matter. (Motto: The Holy See where all souls gather.) “Heleneia.” A man’s rasping voice sounded. Hearing her name, the girl closed the book she had been reading. “Yes, Father?” “I’ve been looking for you, Heleneia.” Unsteady footsteps approached. The girl turned toward the entrance to find a man, old but not yet elderly, walking slowly toward her, supported by a cane. Her eyes widened when she saw him. “Father, you mustn’t! Your body isn’t ready yet; you can’t leave your room…” She walked quickly over to the man, placing a hand on his back to support him. Slowly, she guided him to a chair and helped him sit down. “This is pathetic,” the man said, shaking his head with the slightest hint of a bitter smile. “The chairman of Arcane Court headquarters, practically unable to fulfill his duties. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about retirement.” “Whatever do you mean?” The girl gave him her sweetest smile. Still, her father shook his head, so she placed a hand gently on his cheek. “It’s just an illness. You’ll get better with enough rest. But tell me, what’s wrong? What was so urgent that you had to leave your room to visit me?” “Something very ominous has happened,” said the chairman, Augusto O. Missing. He leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. “It’s the incident with the labyrinth, Lucemia.” The breath caught in her throat, and her eyes widened again, ever so slightly, but her father didn’t notice. “You know, when more than two hundred apostles were trapped in a game and couldn’t get home? Rumors are starting to swirl. People think maybe headquarters was involved.” “Baseless speculation,” the girl said softly. In her voice, though, there was the hint of a chill, so slight that her own father would never have detected it. “You want humanity to obtain a Clear in the gods’ games more than anyone, Father. What in the world would you have to do with such an unfortunate incident? Anyway, what proof could they possibly have for—” “Uroboros.” “……” That brought the girl up short. “A god has descended to the human world. Not in their real form, of course; I mean in a spiritual body. In any case, this deity seems to have taken a real shine to the human who defeated them. You’ve heard the reports, that Uroboros is now living at the Ruin branch office?” “Yes…” “Well, this god has formally declared that they can sense divine power from the Godeye lenses. Which puts suspicion squarely on the distributor of the lenses—headquarters. The Ruin office is requesting a meeting…” Chairman Augusto shook his head again, feebly this time. He looked lost. Well, why shouldn’t he? This human, this “father,” truly knew nothing at all. “The other branch offices will be there as well. I expect this to be a long meeting… By all rights, the chairman should be the one to represent headquarters, but to my own chagrin, I have to admit that I don’t have the stamina right now.” “I understand completely, Father.” The girl nodded and stroked her father’s back as he gnashed his teeth. “I, the vice chairperson, will appear on your behalf. You needn’t worry about a thing. Ruin’s suspicions will soon be cleared up.” “I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble.” “Just leave everything to me.” She took her father’s hand and helped him to his feet. Then, bracing his back once again, she ushered him to the library door. “The conference is at noon tomorrow,” he said. “I’m sorry about this, Heleneia.” “Not at all. Just make sure you have the doctor take another look at you as soon as you get back to your room, Father.” She watched with a smile on her face until his frail figure was out of sight. “Uroboros. You snake. Are you really so taken with that human, that…Fay?” It was not the girl’s voice. It was the rippling utterance of a deity, tinged with anger, that echoed around the ancient library. 2 In a conference room at the Arcane Court’s Ruin branch office, Fay sat at a round table large enough to fit thirty people or more. At the moment, it was occupied only by himself and Chief Secretary Miranda. Each of them had a conference monitor in front of them. In fact, a third seat, beside theirs, also had a monitor—but there was no one sitting at it. “Fay. Where’s Lady Uroboros?” “She turned me down flat. Said she wasn’t interested. ‘You want mineself to go to a meeting? Not until after we’ve played my game.’ Her words. I thought about it, but she said her game takes a minimum of five hundred hours to finish.” “She and Lady Leoleshea are just the same. The gods really aren’t interested in anything besides games, are they?” Miranda gave a tired smile as she turned on her monitor. “We’re only having this meeting because Lady Uroboros testified that the culprit is at Arcane Court headquarters. It might have been nice to have our star witness with us.” “The thing going on with the Godeye lenses, right?” “That’s it. We humans can’t detect the gods’ power, so if they just tell us they weren’t able to find any evidence of tampering, there won’t be much we can say. Here goes…” The monitor blinked to life. There was a brief mechanical buzz, and then it displayed a conference screen split into twenty-one segments. The twenty branch offices from across the world, plus headquarters. “We’re the only ones with our cameras on,” Fay observed. “We’re just here first. We’ve got another twelve minutes until this meeting starts, so I think we can just relax. If you need to use the bathroom, Fay, now’s the time.” Fay wasn’t sure if Miranda was joking or not. She spread some papers in front of her. “I think we’re in for a long one today.” Twelve minutes later, with the world-spanning video conference underway… “We detected no irregularities with the Godeye lenses.” The conference fell silent. The words, cool and composed, came from a girl occupying the center of the screen, from where she spoke to the more than thirty participants in the meeting. They were the first words out of her mouth, the moment Miranda, as the one who had convened the meeting, finished what she had to say. “Headquarters has conducted its own investigation of the Godeye lenses in response to the Ruin branch office’s claims that they are imbued with divine power, and that they were somehow connected to the Lucemia entrapment incident. However, no signs of anything unusual were found.” The young woman who served as vice chairperson stared straight ahead as she spoke, refusing to make eye contact with any of the others who were gathered there. “Interviews were also conducted with staff and apostles associated with headquarters, but it was determined that none of them should be considered a suspect in the incident. A detailed report will be prepared on the subject.” Beside Fay, Chief Secretary Miranda raised her hand. “May I ask a question? I’m not the one who discovered the abnormality with the Godeye lenses. It was Lady Uroboros. Are you still going to maintain that there’s nothing wrong?” “We cannot be certain,” the young woman said, shaking her head. “Insofar as there are only humans at headquarters, we have no one capable of detecting the mighty power of the gods. As much as it pains us, the most headquarters can do is to look for any physical or material abnormalities in the lenses. If you could convince Lady Uroboros to come to headquarters herself, perhaps the situation would be different.” “I see,” Miranda said, slowly crossing her arms. It was the Ruin branch office that had made the claim that there was divine power within the Godeye lenses, but the unfortunate truth was that humans couldn’t sense that power. They had no specific proof to offer. Which was exactly why they had wanted Uroboros to attend the meeting and give her testimony. Something’s bothering me, though. Something about headquarters’ unflappable confidence. What particularly nagged at Fay was what the young woman had said after making her announcement. He took it to mean that if only Uroboros would come to headquarters, they might have been able to prove something. What was the flip side of that statement? It sounded to him as if headquarters was very confident that Uroboros would stay where she was. Was it just his imagination, or did it seem like they were all too familiar with Uroboros’s attitude, with her complete disinterest in the human world when it came to anything besides games? “Are there any other questions? I’m afraid the chairman is feeling poorly, so I will continue to answer any inquiries in my role as vice chairperson.” Silence. None of the representatives of the various branch offices looked particularly eager. Apostles around the world had been trapped in Lucemia; if they could have proven that there was some gimmick by which the Godeye lenses caused the disciples to gather in a certain place, the other chief secretaries would almost certainly have become disgruntled. But no one had proven anything, or could. Certainly not as long as the undefeated god, Uroboros, refused to go public. “Headquarters will also continue its investigation into the incident in the labyrinth of Lucemia. With that, I think we can conclude today’s—” “Sorry, could I ask one thing?” The interruption came from…Fay. On the monitor, he saw the young woman peer at him with her large jade-green eyes, her face frozen in a rictus of suspicion. “Fay Theo Philus,” she said. “Oh, you know who I am?” “Why, yes. Your reputation has certainly reached us here at headquarters. I’m quite interested in you myself.” He was known to even the vice chairperson at headquarters… No. Right now, at this moment, there was a better way to refer to her: Heleneia O. Missing. Leader of Mind Over Matter, the strongest team at Arcane Court headquarters. Her jade eyes had a trace of blue in them, as did her long lavender hair, which was tied in pigtails on either side of her head. Fay had never asked anyone how old she was, but just judging by her looks, she seemed to be his age. I’m not sure I get it. As far as I know, this is the first time we’ve met, but I can hear an edge in her voice. She seemed strangely menacing. It wasn’t aggressive enough to be outright hostility, but the tone in which she spoke to him was as flat and hard as a steel wall. “By clearing the labyrinth of Lucemia, you freed all the apostles who were trapped in that game. I must thank you.” “Gosh, don’t mention it. I sure didn’t do it by myself.” “What’s this? Modesty? Trust me, there’s no one who would doubt the skills or abilities of the man who’s recorded such a sterling streak in the gods’ games. Seven wins and no losses. So. What was your question?” “Oh, it’s just something I was wondering about. No big deal.” With that preamble, Fay fixed his gaze on the young woman, who was still staring straight at him. “That thing you said earlier. ‘Interviews were also conducted with staff and apostles associated with headquarters’ about the Godeye lenses. Who did those interviews? Did the chairman speak to those people personally?” “As I said, the chairman is feeling poorly. He’s focusing on his recovery at the moment.” “So you’re saying…” “I was the one who performed the interviews.” “All right, so that would mean—I’m just asking to make sure this is on the record—no one interviewed you, Heleneia?” “……” There was an instance of chilling silence. Then Heleneia said probingly, “Do you want to interrogate me here and now?” “Hey, I don’t know anything,” Fay replied with a shrug. “Only the gods can detect the interference of other gods. That’s why I thought Uroboros’s testimony would be so important.” “That’s true. We would, of course, welcome Lady Uroboros if she wished to come to headquarters and allow us to examine her.” “Cool. We’ll drop in on you as soon as we get the chance.” The young woman, the vice chairperson, seemed surprised—her breath caught, and her eyes widened. That was ridiculous. Uroboros would do nothing. Was Fay suggesting that a deity who spent every moment thinking only of games and who could have cared less about the humans’ situation would go all the way to another city? Fay, at least, thought he could see the confusion written on her face. “Lady Uroboros will be with you?” the young woman ventured. “Nah. We’ve got a former god here.” “You can’t mean…the dragon god who awakened in the rare earth belt of the Great Northern Cold-Wave Zone?” “You got it. I think Leshea might be able to sniff something out.” Having lost her status as a god, the Dragon God Leoleshea had also lost her ability to detect other gods. She probably had only a tenth of her “sense of smell” left. Nonetheless, it seemed likely that when they walked into Arcane Court headquarters, she would know if something was up. “What with how you’ve already got four whole gods right there at headquarters,” said Fay. Four powerful gods. With that many of them in one place, even Leshea’s enfeebled nose would be able to pick up their scent. “………” The girl with the lavender hair was silent for a moment; then she let out a long breath. “Be our guest. If it helps us figure out what’s going on, headquarters would welcome your visit. Now then… If there’s nothing else, I’ll call an end to this meeting. Thank you all for your time.” She cut the connection from headquarters, as if to say that this discussion was over. The feeds from the other cities winked out one by one, until Fay was left looking at a solid black monitor. “Ugh. Well, no surprises there,” Chief Secretary Miranda said with a big yawn. “I guess it only makes sense that no one at headquarters would know any more than we do. You have to be a god like Lady Uroboros to detect anything.” She stood up and immediately gave a great stretch, working out the kinks from sitting up so straight for so long. “Fay, what was all that stuff about—” Fay interrupted her. “Chief Secretary, look at this!” He pointed at the screen. Present: 2. Exited: 19. One other city was still active in the meeting. And it was… “The Myth City? Headquarters?!” “Yes. There’s something I forgot to ask,” came a girl’s voice. Heleneia hadn’t left the meeting after all. She’d simply turned off her video—but she was still connected to the call. But why? Did she create this moment intentionally? Did she want to talk to me alone?! “Fay. Do you like games?” What did that mean? He didn’t understand the girl’s question. What a strange thing to ask someone with such a long and successful record in the gods’ games. After a moment Fay said, “If you mean that literally, then of course.” What the young woman said next, however, left Fay speechless, and even the chief secretary didn’t know what to say. “Would you consider quitting the gods’ games?” “I’m sorry… What?” “There are countless human games in this world. More than one person could play in their lifetime. Why, then, should one be uniquely devoted to the gods’ games?” For a moment, Fay was lost for an answer—not because he understood and agreed with her, but because what she was saying almost didn’t make sense. Isn’t she the leader of headquarters’ most famous team? A group that’s scored seven victories in the gods’ games? Standing beside him, Miranda looked like she could hardly pick her jaw up off the floor. “Well?” the girl’s voice asked. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Fay said to the pitch-black monitor, looking squarely at it even though he couldn’t see the person he was talking to. “But I have my own reasons for challenging the gods’ games.” He’d made a promise. One he wasn’t about to break at this young woman’s seemingly random suggestion. “I want to go back to being a god, and you want to find your friend.” “I promise I’ll play with all my strength—so we can clear those ten games.” “…I see.” The screen remained dark, only the girl’s voice reaching them through her microphone. “So you still don’t know. You haven’t learned that humanity must not achieve ten victories in the gods’ games.” Fay sucked in a breath. What did that mean? Even as he leaned toward the monitor, the girl said, “If you’re coming to headquarters, just let me know ahead of time.” Then the young woman from Arcane Court headquarters disconnected the call and actually left the conference. 3 With the conference over, Fay said had goodbye to Chief Secretary Miranda, and now he was back in the apostles’ dormitory. He lay on the floor of his room, staring up at the ceiling. “……” It was something of a personal quirk: When he needed to think, he liked to do it lying down instead of sitting in a chair. But if he lay in bed, he might fall asleep—the hard floor was better for pondering. This is the third time I’ve lain here in this room thinking this hard. The second time had been just recently: the day he’d returned to the Ruin office after half a year away. After he had met the Dragon God Leoleshea, who looked so much like the red-haired older girl in his memories that he’d almost had trouble separating them in his mind. When had the first time been, then? It had been the day when the team to which the rookie, Fay, had belonged had broken up. Why had they broken up? As a rookie, he hadn’t understood any of it, and he remembered now how he’d felt that the only thing he could do was spend the entire day lying in this room, gazing into space. “You said you just got back here after six months away, right, Fay? You must have been on a team before that. Couldn’t we join with them?” “The team broke up.” “Did you have a fight?” “No, everyone got along great. It was very sudden. I went to the team room one day and was told they’d decided to split up…” That was what he’d told Leshea when she had asked him about it—but thinking back on it, there had been one sign of what was coming. A few days before the team’s dissolution, Fay had heard the young man who was their leader mumbling to himself. “I shouldn’t have seen it, but I did… We’re not supposed to clear these games…” At the time, Fay hadn’t known which games he meant specifically—but today, when he heard what Heleneia said, he’d finally connected the dots. Could it be that their leader had meant they shouldn’t clear the gods’ games at all? “Whoa, hold on!” Fay exclaimed, bolting upright. “In that case…what did he ‘see’?” His former team leader had seen something; that much was obvious—something that had caused him to conclude that they shouldn’t clear the gods’ games. “If I could ask him about it…maybe I would understand what Heleneia was saying.” Fay felt his heart beat faster. With an anxiety unlike anything he’d felt in any game, he reached for his communications device on the table. “Oh, hello. Fay?” said the voice on the other end. “What’s going on? If you’re still thinking about that conference—” “Chief Secretary Miranda,” Fay interrupted. Then he took a breath, trying to give himself a moment to calm down before he continued speaking. “Could you find out where Chaos is right now? I mean the leader of Awaken—my old team.” 4 The next day… “…and that’s why I’d like to talk to Chaos again.” “I think ‘and that’s why’ is a bit pushy!” Pearl exclaimed. They were in Chief Secretary Miranda’s office, sitting around the table: Fay, Leshea, Pearl, and Nel. “Ugh… My brain’s so full, I feel like it’s going to burst,” Pearl sighed. She wasn’t disappointed so much as she was genuinely overwhelmed by the amount of information Fay had just given them. “That was fascinating hearing about your former team, Master Fay,” said Nel, who was seated beside Pearl. She crossed her arms and looked serious. “I simply assumed you must have left your old team in order to form a new one with Mistress Leshea, but now I know your old team, Awaken, broke up. And that immediately before it did so, its leader, Master Chaos, said something that, in hindsight, sounded very important.” We shouldn’t clear these games. That, to Fay, lined up with what the young woman from Mind Over Matter, the strongest team, had said. Namely, that the gods’ games must not be cleared. “Mistress Leshea, if anyone here seems likely to have some idea of what this is about, surely it would be you?” “Not a clue!” Leshea shook her head vigorously, her vermilion hair swishing around her head. “Speaking as one of the gods who once oversaw the games, the gods absolutely welcome humans who want to test themselves in the games. If the humans win, the gods are happy to acknowledge their defeat, and if any human ever achieved ten wins, I think the gods would be only too happy to congratulate them. I guarantee none of them would be upset to know someone had beaten them ten times!” “Yeah, it seems like it,” Pearl concurred, taking a cookie from the table. “What was your impression of the meeting, Chief Secretary?” “Pretty much what you’d expect.” Miranda was at her desk, having a staring contest with her monitor. “Headquarters’ chairman is recovering from a serious illness, so Heleneia, his daughter and the vice chairperson, appeared on his behalf. I pretty much assumed she was going to say she didn’t know anything about the divine power in the Godeye lenses. A simple enough excuse, since humans can’t detect it.” “Why did she say that stuff to Fay, then?” “This is just my guess, but I think she didn’t want him to gain an advantage over her.” Miranda tapped her terminal. A large screen set in the wall flashed to life, showing pictures of Fay and Heleneia. 7 Wins: Heleneia O. Missing (team: Mind Over Matter). 7 Wins: Fay Theo Philus (team unnamed). “It still bugs me that your team doesn’t have a name yet, but let’s set that aside.” Miranda pointed at the monitor. Specifically, at the neatly aligned number sevens. “They’re neck and neck. Fay has as many win marks as the leader of the world’s strongest team.” “Oh my gosh! He does! That’s amazing!” “That, however, is according to the Arcane Court’s official data—which doesn’t account for the loss of three victories to the Bookmaker. Anyway, the point is, Heleneia believes Fay is tied with her.” Fay’s true victory count was six. Fay had dived into two games without a Godeye lens—the battle with the Bookmaker and then the contest of God-Tree-Fruit Basketball—so headquarters hadn’t been able to see them. Hence, there was a disconnect in the number of wins they attributed to him. “Again, I must emphasize that I’m just guessing. Heleneia is the chairman’s daughter and the leader of the strongest team in the world, and Fay has caught up to her at an incredible pace. I think it’s only natural for her to see him as a rival.” “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I had much the same thought,” Nel said with a nod. She looked a bit uncomfortable about it. “If we continue at our current rate, we could conceivably achieve the first Clear in human history before her team manages it. Perhaps the best way she could think of to slow us down was to claim that we shouldn’t achieve ten wins in the gods’ games. What do you think, Master Fay?” Fay reflected for a second. “I don’t think we know enough to determine the truth yet.” He couldn’t dismiss Miranda’s and Nel’s suggestion that this was a way for Heleneia to control a rival—but that didn’t explain his old leader’s agonized murmuring about how they weren’t supposed to clear the games. But Leshea, a former god, said this isn’t ringing any bells with her. That only makes me more curious as to what Chaos saw—what he learned. “Chief Secretary Miranda, were you able to find out anything? I mean, about what I asked yesterday?” “Chaos’s location? The most recent record is from six months ago.” She tapped her terminal again, and the screen changed to show a handsome young man with dull blue hair. “That’s when he submitted the request to dissolve your old team. After that, he cleared out of the Arcane Court dormitory, then left Ruin entirely.” “Do you know where he went?” “The Relic City of Ange.” With that, Miranda slid her glasses up the bridge of her nose, looking put-upon. “The place where the traces of the ancient magical civilization were discovered. If you want to go there to do some sightseeing, I won’t stop you—just make sure you put in the paperwork for the time off. And make sure you come back this time.” Several days later, Fay and the others arrived in the Relic City of Ange, only to discover that Chaos, the leader of Fay’s old team, had already moved on to another city entirely.