Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume SS - Chapter 10

Short Story:

The Head-Ripping Prince’s Work is Never Done!

AFTER I FINISHED MY LESSONS that day, I headed for Zanoba’s room. My purpose was, of course, Julie’s education. In the month since I bought her, she’d learned how to produce a Stone Bullet with silent casting. I wasn’t sure if it was because that was the only thing I’d taught her or if she had a talent for magic, but whichever it was, she’d picked it up incredibly quickly. Maybe it was thanks to her dwarven traits, but she also had nimble fingers and good sense. If she continued with her education, in a few years, she could be making figurines that met not only Zanoba’s standards but mine, too. Breathless with excitement, I opened the door to Zanoba’s room.

You want to know if I knocked? Ho ho. Between Zanoba and I, there was no need for such ham-handed gestures… Though, thinking about it, maybe I should have knocked. Manners are important even between friends, after all…

“Sorry to bother you.”

“Why, Master! By all means, come in!” 

Despite my worries, Zanoba greeted me with a big grin when I walked in. I should have known he would. He wasn’t the type of guy to get hung up on little things like knocking.

“Hm?” With that, I noticed the object that Zanoba was cradling. It was a wooden box big enough to wrap your arms around. It was a bit big to put figurines in…but maybe he’d bought a model from the master grade line.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Ah, you have a discerning eye, Master!” Zanoba’s eyes gleamed as if he’d been waiting for me to ask.

Anyone would have wondered about a thing that size, discerning eye or not…

Grinning, Zanoba put the box on the table, then opened the lid.

“Oh!” When I looked inside, I gasped in spite of myself. It contained many delicately carved pieces, along with what looked like a game board.

“Is it a game?” I asked.

“I should have guessed you’d recognize it, Master. Indeed, it is Kalka Tranga, a war simulation game.”

Tranga was a popular board game on the Central Continent, sort of like chess. The rules and the name varied a little from region to region: I was pretty sure Kalka Tranga was what they called it in Asura, and it would have been a little different again in Shirone, where Zanoba was from. 

“Look at these pieces!” Zanoba said, picking up one of the pieces and holding it aloft. It had a staff-like head protruding from a magician’s robes. The effect was a bit creepy, but you could tell it was a magician at a glance.

“The model’s an interesting shape,” I said.

“It is, isn’t it?! The originality of using staffs and swords for the pieces’ heads! It is not an idea that would come easily to any other modeler!”

“Were these made by someone famous?”

“Oh, yes! The modeler responsible for these was employed by the Asuran palace, and so, as a rule, you do not see their work for sale. But by some quirk of fate, these found their way to Ranoa, and I was able to obtain them! Truly, fortune has smiled on me!”

As he spoke, Zanoba carefully laid out the pieces. There were knights in armor with swords for heads, swordsmen with two sword-shaped arms protruding from their coats, squires in armor with banners but no heads, commoners in plain clothes with short swords for arms, a king with a head shaped like a crown sprouting from his gown…

Without knowing anything else, I got the impression that the pieces with heads were the stronger ones.

“What are the rules?” I asked.

“Master! You don’t mean to say that you don’t know the rules of Kalka Tranga?”

“No one around me had board games… Do you know them, Zanoba?”

“But of course. It is compulsory for royalty in Shirone to learn every country’s rules for Tranga.”

I guessed that must mean there were times when the game was used for diplomacy. 

Pray tell, dost thou play Tranga? It has rather preoccupied us of late.

But of course, Your Majesty! I would be honored to be your opponent!

Or something like that. Maybe people entertained foreign diplomats with Tranga all the time.

“I’d like to try playing it. Could you teach me?”

“Hmm… If you insist, Master.” Zanoba didn’t seem that excited about the idea. Figurine supremacist that he was, he probably saw the modeling as the be-all and end-all and didn’t care so much about the game.

“First, you arrange the pieces on the board like so…”

Zanoba teaching me something. This is new. With that, I gave my full attention to Zanoba’s explanation.

***

There was a quiet knock at the door. Three hours had passed since Zanoba had taught me the rules and we’d begun to play.

“You may enter,” Zanoba called.

“Sorry, is Rudeus here?” Peering hesitantly through the door was Fitz.

“I’m afraid the master is currently engaged.”

“Oh, don’t worry! That’s fine! I didn’t need anything. He just didn’t come to the library today, so I wondered what had happened…”

Fitz came to the library practically every day to help me with my investigations into the displacement incident. We hadn’t agreed to it or anything, but still, he always came. He had probably been worried when I didn’t show up without saying anything, and had come to find me. I appreciated that.

“Um… What are you doing?”

“This is Tranga. The master said he had never played, and so I took the liberty of instructing him myself.” Zanoba looked down at the board as he spoke. It was a grim picture. My west knight and magician had already been taken, and my king was surrounded by enemy soldiers. Even a king was only human. He didn’t want to die, and even if it was just delaying it, he wanted to survive as long as he could. He’d been searching desperately for a way to stay alive, but his army was in tatters, and no help was coming. The right thing for a king to do when he found himself in such a position was to take his own life with good grace. A king couldn’t be murdered by commoners, after all.

“Hrm… Mrm… You’ve got me.” After humming and hawing to myself for a long time, I finally bowed my head to him.

“Indeed,” Zanoba agreed. He took my king and laid it on its side.

“Gaah,” I groaned as my king fell, my head drooping. Zanoba had played with the so-called six-house-down handicap, which meant he was short his two major pieces—the knight and the magician—as well as two swordsmen and two squires. Even then, I’d never felt like I could win. 

“The loss of your paladin was when you lost.”

“What should I have done?”

“Rather than honor your knight, it would have been better to bide your time for a while. It seemed easy because I made it look that way as a trap.”

“Now you mention it…”

The “honor” Zanoba talked about was what, in shogi, you’d call a promotion—or like queening a pawn in chess. When knights gained honor, they became paladins, which were really strong—strong enough to decide the course of a game. Lured by the promise of honor, my knight had charged the enemy’s territory and succeeded in claiming it. Afterward, though, his movement options had become more and more limited until, without so much as a struggle, he’d been taken. 

“Huh? Rudeus, you lost?”

“Yeah…”

Hmph. Despite what you might think, in my past life, I had actually dabbled in online shogi and chess, and I’d read 81Diver and The Ryuo’s Work is Never Done! all the way through… But then, it had been my first time playing this game. And there were a lot of differences between its rules and those of shogi or chess. It stung to have lost to Zanoba when he didn’t seem to care at all, but so long as I was a beginner, I’d have to live with it.

“Wow, so there is something you’re bad at.”

“Hey, there’s lots I’m not good at.” Where had he gotten the idea that I wasn’t bad at anything? A mystery, that was. If anything, it was hard to think of anything I was good at.

“Do you want to play too, Fitz?”

“Hmm… Yes, okay. Right, time to get you back for the entrance exam!” Fitz said. Zanoba stood up, allowing Fitz to take his seat and start arranging the pieces.

“I actually used to play Lady Ariel quite a bit when I lived in Asura, so I like my chances.”

“Haha. Go easy on me.”

“Is two house down all right? Then let’s play.”

I mean, I was the one who’d said I wanted to play. Today, I’d serve as everyone’s punching bag with good grace.

***

“Huh?” Ten minutes later, Fitz sat frozen with his hand over his mouth. His king was in a bit of a sticky situation. Smoke was rising all over what had been an impregnable stronghold. His steadfast magicians were dead after a hard-fought battle, and while his knights were still standing, the king was cut off from them and now nearly surrounded. There was still a way out, but at the end of that path, he could see the enemy king himself waiting for him. If he could regroup with his knights, he might be able to break free, but the way was too perilous. Things had come to this after I’d cleverly taken care of his magicians in the middlegame.

“Hmm…hmm…” Fitz hummed and hawed for a while, then said, “I’ve got nothing. You beat me.” After admitting defeat, he added, pouting a little, “You’re not that bad at this, Rudeus.” Even behind his sunglasses, I could tell he was surly.

“I worked out your plan part way through. That was what led me to it.” I thought it had been a pretty good match. Until the middlegame, I’d been on the back foot, but then I’d noticed that Fitz was fixated on his magicians, so I’d cleverly lured him into a trap. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have lost.

“I could hold my own against Luke playing one knight down, you know…” Fitz said. One knight down was the handicap where you played without the knight, a major piece. Knights were the strongest pieces, like queens in chess. The fact that it was knights, rather than swordsmen or magicians, who were the strongest pieces, told you that this game had been made by nobles—but that wasn’t important right now.

One knight down was only a one-piece handicap, but it still represented a major disadvantage. Incidentally, Fitz had played two house down, which meant he was down a swordsman and a squire. I probably would have lost without it.

“Is Luke a strong player too?”

“Yes, I heard he won the Asura school championship. Though the contest was only for under-fifteens.”

“Wow…”

I glanced at Zanoba. Totally indifferent to us, he was picking up the pieces from the board and polishing them with a dreamy look in his eyes. Julie followed his example, polishing with such enthusiasm that the pieces squeaked. 

“I wonder which of them is stronger?”

“The simple answer would be Zanoba…”

I looked at Zanoba again. Now he was nuzzling one of the pieces with his cheek. That sure didn’t make him look strong… Of course, from someone else’s perspective, it might look like he loved this game, but we knew that his love wasn’t for the game but the craftsmanship of the pieces. Still, there was no denying that he was a strong player. 

“Why don’t we find out?” Fitz’s face lit up with irrepressible curiosity. Boys his age always wanted to know who was the strongest.

“How?”

“Leave it to me,” Fitz said, putting a hand to his chest.

Well, if Fitz said so, all I could do was trust him. I’d go ahead and assume I was in safe hands.

***

A month later, the student council at the University of Magic hosted a Kalka Tranga tournament. It had been a simple process. When Fitz talked to Princess Ariel, she’d said, “That sounds like fun,” clapped her hands, and voila, we were hosting a tournament. Preliminary rounds were held in each year group to decide the competitors until there were seven competitors left. They, along with one extra, would participate in the main tournament. The main tournament would be elimination style, with a magnificent prize awaiting the victor—a board and set of pieces made by me. Zanoba hadn’t been all that excited about it, but when he found out what the prize was, his eyes had lit up, and he declared he was entering. Luke, of course, was seeded in the extra slot. Important people get all the perks. 

Naturally, as one of the people who’d suggested the tournament, I’d taken part in the preliminaries—but my second opponent wiped the floor with me. Tranga was played all over the world and was even commonly used in diplomacy, so experienced players were able to adjust to small differences in rules just like that. Of course, there were also a lot of people who had learned to play with Kalka Tranga, the Asuran rules.

In any case, the preliminaries went without a hitch, leaving us with seven players plus Luke. Sure enough, Zanoba had won the second-year category to secure his spot in the main tournament. Fitz, like me, was knocked out in the preliminaries. He lost to Lady Ellemoi, another of Ariel’s servants. After Luke, Zanoba, and Ellemoi, though, they were all names I didn’t know. The sixth and seventh-year students were apparently famous—they had won the Tranga tournament in Ranoa last year and the year before, respectively. The seventh-year apparently had a job lined up as a Tranga instructor in Ranoa…in other words, a pro. When all of them saw the game set I’d made, their eyes lit up. “I never imagined I’d see such a magnificent prize in a school tournament,” someone said admiringly. “Lady Ariel really is something.”

That made me pretty happy to hear.

The main tournament began. A section of the indoor training area had been booked out and then divided into four boards. The pairings were decided by lots. Each competitor sat down opposite their opponent, and the games began. There were eight competitors, so whoever won three games would win the tournament.

Zanoba won his first game without ever looking threatened. Luke won without any wobbles as well. Ellemoi lost. Zanoba won the semi-final too, but Luke lost. His opponent was the sixth-year who’d won the Ranoa championship last year. As it happened, he’d taken down the seventh-year in his first match. For the final, we called experts up to the stage, drew up a board on a blackboard, and had them provide commentary and analysis of the match. That was my idea.

Zanoba faced off against the sixth-year. It was a fiery contest. Honestly, I didn’t really follow it because I’d only just learned the rules, but Zanoba apparently played a rarely-seen move and the sixth-year played the appropriate move in response, surprising the seventh-year who was doing the analysis. He said both of them really knew the game. The match took a turn as they were about to enter the middlegame, when Zanoba made a mistake. He mixed up a play and wasted a move, which led to him losing a knight, the strongest piece. After that, Zanoba was forced further and further into a corner. His magician, his other key piece, was still standing, and he was putting up some resistance, but he couldn’t make up for the disadvantage caused by the loss of his knight and he was steadily running out of options.

They reached the endgame. According to the seventh-year’s analysis, the sixth-year’s victory was all but guaranteed. Both of them had lost pieces, but Zanoba’s king was backed almost into a corner without anywhere to run. In order to pin down Zanoba’s king, the sixth-year had exposed his own king to danger, but the difference of that one move meant that Zanoba would still fall to his king’s blades.

Just after the seventh-year gave this analysis, however, Zanoba made a strange move. He took the slave piece, the weakest on the board, and moved it forward. I wasn’t sure how strange it was exactly, but the seventh-year went, “Huh? What’s he doing?” At the same time, a whole section of the crowd—presumably the ones who’d played Tranga—fell silent.

The sixth-year stopped short as well. There was a pause, then the seventh-year let out a quiet, “Oh,” just as excited murmuring broke out among the audience. I didn’t know what it was, but Zanoba had done something. A moment later, I heard someone say, “Isn’t that mate?”

The seventh-year doing the commentary stared at the board with his hand over his mouth. As though to deny those words, he said nothing. The sixth-year scrutinized the board, his eyes wide, but he didn’t move except for the sweat that beaded on his forehead. Zanoba’s face was as blank as a robot’s. He didn’t move a muscle. But now I thought about it, he’d worn that same expression ever since his knight had been taken. As though he’d known this would happen.

Some moments later, the sixth-year let out a deep sigh, then turned to look up at the ceiling. Finally, sounding as though every word was an effort, he said, “I have no more moves. You win.”

The murmuring exploded into cheering.

***

The next day saw Zanoba polishing the game pieces I’d made with a huge grin on his face.

“That was an easy win for you, huh?”

“Easy? Not at all. The last match was a very near thing.”

“Oh, right. I guess it was. You did make that mistake in the opening.”

“That was no mistake. I was up against a strong opponent, so I prepared a little trap.”

“You what?” Having only just learned the rules, I didn’t really get it, but he had to mean he’d messed up the standard move on purpose. 

“Master, you know that they say the knight is the strongest Tranga piece, do you not?”

“Yeah. Isn’t it?”

“Oh, it is. It is the strongest individual piece. But that only applies when you consider it as an individual… In other words, two squires are stronger than a single knight. When my knight was taken, I took two of my opponent’s squires in exchange. In addition, I kept my slave in reserve.”

As a result, Zanoba’s opponent was unable to carry his attack out to completion, and at the very end, Zanoba had pulled ahead by a single move. The game had turned on a knife’s edge.

“Wow… That’s amazing. You surprised everyone.”

“Really, I cannot fathom what good it does being good at a mere game like this. I would much rather be able to make wonderful things such as you do, Master,” Zanoba said hopelessly. Then, he lined up the pieces I’d made alongside the pieces that had set off the whole tournament and gave them a satisfied smile.

I’d have thought he could put his experience in the game to good use in something else, or given his level, he could even turn it into a job… But Zanoba was a prince, so it wasn’t like he needed a job or money.

“But enough of that, Master,” he said. “I trust you will instruct Julie in magic again today!”

His talents don’t fit his dreams, I thought as I took Julie through her magic practice for the day.