Chapter 93

Chapter Player.7 Enjoy! Gods’ Games We Play The dig site in the Relic City of Ange stood silent and empty—until, without warning, four figures appeared. “Ack! Ouch!” “I landed on my butt again!” They sprang from the Uroboros ring on the ground, popping out so fast that they flew into the air—which was all well and good until gravity quickly, inevitably caught up with them, and they dropped back to earth and landed on their behinds. More specifically, only Fay and Pearl landed on their behinds. Nel and Leshea came down on their feet with no trouble. “Sheesh…,” Fay grumbled and stood up, then looked around. “I think I see why we normally use Divine Gates to get in and out of the gods’ games… Huh?” “I’ve been waiting for you, Tiny Human!” a cheerful voice called from nearby. A silver-haired girl came skipping out from among the ruins. “Perfect timing. I just finished my preparations!” “Preparations?” “There’s a god who wants to meet you, Tiny Human!” “Meet me?” Mentally, Fay braced for anything. A god who wanted to meet him? Surely it wasn’t the mysterious deity he’d encountered immediately before the game in Yggdrasil’s forest, was it? That’s my first thought, but this feels different. And there was a simple reason: Uroboros’s innocent smile. She didn’t look like she was plotting anything. “I’m sorry, Uroboros, but I don’t have any idea who this god might be,” Fay said. “What, really? Haven’t you figured it out?” Uroboros gave a teasing grin. “This deity’s manifesting a spiritual body for the first time and doesn’t quite know what to do, see? Whereupon mine undefeated self is helping!” “Does being undefeated have something to do with that…?” “Sure it does!” “No it doesn’t!” When the gods on high wanted to make contact with human beings, they typically did it in the form of a so-called spiritual body. Gods like Uroboros, whose true form was a ten-thousand-meter-long snake—not human in the least—took on humanlike spiritual bodies when they manifested on the surface. By comparison, gods who abandoned their divine status to become human, as Leshea had done, were quite unusual. Leshea might have, in fact, been the only example in all of history. “Okay, well, anyway. Who is this go— Huh?!” Fay was interrupted by a thunderous rumble from the earth, enough to shake not just the massive dig site but the entire city. Then there was another, and another, in a rhythm like footsteps—and they were coming closer. Something of tremendous mass was approaching. “Wh-what’s with all the shaking?!” asked Pearl, who had grabbed hold of the nearest stone column she could find. “They sound like footsteps to me,” said Nel, who had dropped into a low stance in order to keep her footing. “Wait… This shaking…” Unlike the girls, Fay thought the massive footsteps seemed oddly…familiar. He recognized it in his bones—this sense of something overwhelming, something big enough to shake an entire city. He looked up. Somehow, he knew the enormous impacts were approaching them from the ruin-laden hills. There was the golden altar, its color tarnished by the elements. There was the stone column, engraved with characters from no current language. The sense of something coming was from beyond these—from the oblong black wall that stood there like a canvas. Then, from behind the wall, there came a powerful, cheerful, high-pitched voice. “Hello, kid!” Standing up on the hill was a massive woman, with hair like molten rock tied back behind her head. She was easily more than 180 centimeters tall, dressed in a luridly vibrant kimono, the neck of which was open to an audacious degree, showing off her excellent figure. “It’s been a while.” Fay’s breath caught as he looked up at the woman who greeted him with such familiarity. She grinned, and her footsteps continued to make the earth shake. More than anything, it was that molten, bright orange hair that Fay remembered. He knew a god who was over the top like this. “Titan…is that you?!” “Are you enjoying the games, kid?” Standing atop the ruins, the god gave him another big grin. The Giant God Titan… It had been the day Fay and Leshea had met. They’d jumped right into a Divine Gate, and this was the first god they had battled together. Titan had a body the size of a mountain, fists that could smash a building in a single blow. Yet at the same time, this deity was shrewd and calculating. That’s why they were also called the Sage of the Earth. Considering how the god’s unique characteristics had been incorporated into this spiritual body, Titan probably knew exactly what it was doing when it crafted the outlandish, grinning woman who stood before them. “I have to admit, I’m surprised. You went to all this trouble just to see me?” Fay asked. “Yes, well, silly me—I was just so satisfied by our game that I forgot to give you something.” Titan placed a hand on the black stone wall and leaned against it. “You know about this, right? Humans who win the gods’ games in certain special ways can receive a gift from the gods.” “Huh? You mean a God’s Diadem?” Pearl flinched—and understandably so. They already possessed three Gods’ Diadems—which, as a nymph had told them in Yggdrasil’s forest, was the limit. They had the Eye of Uroboros, the Sun Flower, and the Treasure Hall Master Key. They couldn’t accept a fourth. “So, um, well… You see, we can’t accept another reward from the gods…” “Oh, I wonder,” Leshea said with a giggle. “Pearl, you saw me and Fay battle Titan on the feed, didn’t you? Titan has been playing with humans for ages now; there’s no way it’s undefeated.” “Huh? Er, sure, that’s true!” Pearl said. Leshea was right: Titan had a long history of playing games with humans. According to the Arcane Court’s records, even in just the last thirty years, Titan had been encountered more than ten times, and humanity had only won 14 percent of the time. There was no way Titan was offering them a God’s Diadem, which was evidence that one had bested a formerly undefeated god. “Huh? What? So…” “There’s one other thing, right?” Fay said. “One other reward a god can give.” He looked up at the grinning god lounging on the hill and finally let out a breath. He remembered. Now that Titan had mentioned it, he did think he knew what she was talking about. “It was hardly the time for it back then, so it slipped my mind, too,” he said. “But none of the apostles went out in your game of Divinitag, did they?” In that game, players whom the god tagged became the god’s servants. And because those players could also be “flipped” back to the human side, there were no casualties in the game of Divinitag. “Titan is controlling Asta, but that’s within the rules of Divinitag. In other words, she isn’t ‘out’ yet. Sound right?” One of the ways in which players could earn rewards from the gods was to achieve victory without losing a single apostle. “I see! ‘God’s Love’ applies in this case!” Nel said, her face flushing. “There are no casualties in Divinitag, so it fulfills the conditions to achieve God’s Love! And that’s different from a God’s Diadem. Even if we have three of those, the cap doesn’t apply here. So we’re entitled to receive it!” God’s Diadem: Awarded to those who defeat a previously undefeated god. God’s Love: Awarded to those who achieve victory without suffering a single casualty during a game. That was why the Giant God Titan had appeared. Why it had sought them out, going so far as to assume a spiritual body and descend to the human realm. “So what exactly are you giving us?” Fay asked slowly. “……” Titan didn’t answer immediately. Instead, the molten-haired god smiled at them—lovingly, as if basking in memories of something long ago. Finally, she said, “Do you like games, kid?” “…Huh?” “I sure do. All the gods do! But…some of our numbers are twisted. Sad folks who can’t just sit back and enjoy a game. Folks who don’t believe in the possibilities of games.” The wind gusted, rushing through the dig site, where—but for these few humans and gods—there was no one. The wind kicked up the layer of ancient ashes, almost as if deliberately. Titan waited patiently until the gale subsided. Then she said, “I think one of these days, those folks are going to show themselves to you, kid.” “…!” Fay gasped. He’d already had that encounter. Fay stood wondering whether to reveal that fact, but Titan seemed to see straight through him. “That god’s gonna try to confuse you, throw you off. They’ll bring history down on you, kid, a history you don’t know—because it’s so far in the past that humans don’t even need it.” “…I, uh…” “But!” There was a great crash as Titan stomped on the ground with her right foot, so hard it made her kimono flutter. “These ruins? Three thousand years are the blink of an eye for a god. So we remember the ancient magical civilization. We remember it very well.” Suddenly, Fay realized that Titan’s words radiated love, a god’s love. “Even in the time of the ancient magical civilization, humans and gods enjoyed their games together, just like they do now. Games are games in every era, see? You ought to enjoy your games, enjoy them to the fullest.” Titan turned aside then, examining the dark stone wall against which she was leaning. “That’s why—” Boom! Titan slammed the wall with a prodigious backhand. There was an explosion like a cannon blast and a roar loud enough to shake the air. As Fay and the others looked on, cracks spidered along the stone wall. Krkl… Krk-krk-krk… The cracks revealed something remarkably colorful. There was something inside the wall? No, not quite. There was something that had always been here on this hill, around which the black wall had been built, as if to bury it. A coating, almost. A cover-up. Now, thanks to Titan’s fist, that frail ancient shell had been shattered. When the wall fell away completely, there stood revealed… …a mural in a riot of colors. A three-thousand-year-old mural. If they were to believe Titan, it must have dated back at least to the time of the ancient magical civilization. It had been covered in stone to protect it from the elements. “Wait! Is that Li’l ’Don there?!” Pearl exclaimed. “I can see Lady Minotaur, too,” Nel said, her eyes wide. “And that black, snakelike thing floating in the sky…is that Mistress Uroboros?!” The painting depicted humans and gods at their games together. Two of the figures looked like Minotaur and Poseidon, but there were also scores of gods that they didn’t recognize. The mural showed everyone playing, humans and gods alike, enjoying their games with childlike innocence. And the title of this mural? May Your Gods. “A team name. This is my reward for you,” Titan said. Her molten hair flowed. Then the Sage of the Earth grinned again and announced in a loud voice, “Take it with you, wherever you go from here!” “………” Fay was silent for a long moment. He thought about it and found he felt almost as if he were in a sort of trance. Confusion washed over him. There was a fearful awe: Was it really right for him and his teammates to take on such a grand name? But there was also joy—at receiving such a tremendous gift, at being given a God’s Love like this. The two emotions mingled in his heart. It was all he could do to answer, and finally, he said only, “We’ll cherish it.” He looked up at Titan, who gazed down at them. “It’s such a heavy name; I don’t think I could ever bear it alone. But I’ve got friends and teammates who will help carry it with me. We’ll bear it with pride.” “No need to get too serious, kid. It’s like the games—just enjoy it!” “Right… So there it is. Shall we go?” He turned to see Nel, her smile quivering with excitement, and Pearl, who looked a bit dazed. Then his gaze settled on Leshea, who wore the biggest smile of all, and he nodded firmly. “Let’s go to Arcane Court headquarters.”