ABSTRACT WAR GAME
A group of figures could be made out in the silent chambers of the Elkia Royal Castle’s Great Hall. The tension was palpable. Two players were seated at a table, staring wordlessly at the chessboard in front of them as a group of spectators watched nervously from the sidelines. After taking a while to plan his next move, a young man with dark eyes and black hair finally broke the silence.
“…Okay, no way my mind is playing tricks on me. So yeah… Uh—?”
His face froze into a smirk befitting his personality, one that was almost avant-garde levels of twisted.
“Mind telling me when this piece got there?! When did you move this?!”
His yelling echoed through the castle halls—Sora, virgin, eighteen years old.
“Why, whatever are you saying? You couldn’t pooossibly think I’d ever get away with such an obvious way to cheat. ”
The pointy-eared Elven girl who replied had wavy, golden-blonde hair and clover-shaped pupils. She shrugged off Sora’s claim with the sunniest of smiles—her name was Fiel Nirvalen.
“You know what I’m talking about! When did my rook get there?! …Aggghhh, I’m putting that back where it was!”
“You can’t just move the pieces any which way you want. Looks like you’ve lost thiiis one—”
“I know you moved it with your magic!! If you’re gonna act like you didn’t, at least try to sound convincing!!”
Fiel was definitely cheating. Any form of cheating would automatically make her the loser. Sora glanced over at one of the spectators—Jibril—who answered his look with a regretful shake of her head. She couldn’t tell when or how the piece was moved—therefore, it was impossible to prove Fiel had broken the rules.
Besides, there was no point in pushing the issue any further; Sora’s rook had been moved to a spot that put Sora at an advantage!! Fiel had secretly moved one of his pieces in order to make him look like a cheater. He looked at her smug face and said:
“Also, couldja cut the invisible crap with Shiro before I’m forced to hang myself?! Have mercy on my neck here!! C’mon—if you value my life at all, you’ll hurry up and cancel your spell, kthx!!”
“Fi, don’t cancel that spell!! If we play our cards right, Sora just might off himself for us!”
Sora was doing his best to hold it together but was basically ready to take himself out at any moment. One spectator wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass her by—Chlammy, who with utmost enthusiasm ordered Fiel to keep up her spell.
“Oh? Do you have any proof that I turned Shiro inviiisible?”
Sora thrust his smartphone at Fiel, who was playing dumb as per Chlammy’s request.
“I can still see her in my camera! To my right! She’s way whiter than usual, see?! I dunno what you did to her, but hurry up and turn the spell off, you damn monster!!”
“Hmm? So you have proof that picture is real, too? ”
Y-you…you bitch—!!
“Same goes for that damn sun!! Get rid of that shit!!”
Sora lost his cool, both physically and mentally. The giant, bright ball floating above him played a large role in that. He was being pelted with rays of hot sunlight, as if he were at the beach in the middle of summer instead of inside a castle.
“Just how many spells do you plan on using?! I’m only a human! Take it easy, will ya?!”
“Why, I have to use so many because you’re only an Immanity. To be honest, I wish I could use a lot mooore,” Fiel replied with a pleasant smile, but she was deadly serious—her eyes were as cold as ice.
Why are we doing this again? Sora searched his hazy thoughts for the reason why a simple chess scrimmage had turned into a borderline death match…
“Hey, Fiel. You up for some chess?”
Sora had been the one to challenge Fiel. Depending on the game, he could hold his own against a mage—hell, even a god. Theoretically, it was impossible to cheat at a finite, zero-sum, two-player game with perfect information. The Ten Covenants forbade injury of any kind, including tampering with thoughts and memories. Tampering with the board was similarly impossible, so long as both players paid attention. One could potentially skirt the rules by claiming their opponent was misremembering things, but a third-party observer would prevent that from happening. Simple enough, right? This was precisely why…
…Sora wanted to test this out himself.
So he challenged the most adept magic-user he knew to a match.
“Why meee, though? Whyyy would I play a game with you?”
Fiel had flatly refused his challenge with a smile. After all, she had no reason to show him any of the tricks up her sleeve. Sora had anticipated her answer, so he made an offer—using Chlammy’s memories as bargaining chips.
“In return, I’ll tell you one of Chlammy’s suuuper-embarrassing memories. One you don’t know about.”
He was wagering a deep, dark secret held by Chlammy—without Chlammy’s permission, of course.
“…Um, stop right there. Where do you get off using my memories as a prize for playing—?”
“Why, I know what Chlammy does at night when she’s all by herself—are you offering somethiiing else?”
“Hey—what?! What are you talking about, Fi?!” Chlammy cried out in embarrassment, but it went unheard between Sora and Fiel, who had already started their dealmaking. Both players had slight grins on their faces as they tried to suss each other out.
“But you don’t know what she’s thinking about when she does it…right?”
“You have yourself a deeeal. Nooow—let’s get started.”
With a brief but firm handshake, they shared an intense gaze—and agreed to the terms of the match.
Shiro, who had watched the entire exchange from beside Sora, quietly interjected:
“…So, what will…Brother get…if he wins…?”
Oh, right…
She’d figured out that her brother had yet to even think about such details and continued:
“I vote for…thirty minutes of…FiChlam yuri stuff… Just keep it, PG-13…”
“Shiro…I’m gonna stop you right there—ChlamFi is a way better ship name!”
“…Ohhh… So you’re forcing me to piiick between a secret and yuri?!” Fiel agonized as the siblings became engaged in a heated debate.
“You’re not actually considering this, are you, Fi?! I lose no matter what the outcome is! Don’t I get a say in this?!” Chlammy cried out in vain; Fiel was already in the palm of the siblings’ hands.
With a wager like this, Fiel only stood to win. For Chlammy, on the other hand, the opposite was true. It was the beginning of just another game…
Once the game was finished, Jibril captured the loser’s end of the deal on camera using Sora and Shiro’s smartphone and tablet. Meanwhile, the siblings thought: I’ll never be able to look at a pair of scissors the same way again…
“Fi! You better not have lost on purpose! Hey, stop—”
“Who, me? I did the best I could, hooonest… Why, I’m feeling really down about it… Maaaybe I’ll feel better if you use the Covenants to figure out where you should touch me right nooow. ”
“Sto… I—I can’t say that out loud— Hngh!”
Whether the Covenants had anything to do with this was another matter entirely. The fruits of Sora’s victory were sweet indeed, but rather than basking in it…
“Jibril… Multi-casting is something only Elves can do, right?”
“Yes. Well, if you exclude a few exceptions and fakes, then that should indeed be true.”
“And Fiel’s a hexcaster… Hang on—can anyone cast more than six at a time?”
…Sora was exhausted—cautious, even—as he asked Jibril the question. He thought of the sheer amount of magic he had just gone up against for a simple chess match. Even thirty blissful minutes of FiChlam action didn’t need that much magic.
“As far as I know, there have been two others in the past—two octa-casters.”
Jibril’s answer sent beads of cold sweat down Sora’s—and even Shiro’s—spine. A mage capable of casting two more simultaneous spells than Fiel? Jibril began sharing what she knew about these octa-casters, as if prodded by the looks of astonishment coming from the two siblings.
“Let’s start with Nina Clive.”
Nina was a god-tier genius who unified the three Elven forces at the end of the Great War; an unprecedented master strategist and tactician as well as a manipulator of magic who compiled the rites of spirit-breaking, a feat that earned the Elf the highest mage title of all time—Grand Magus.
“…Rites of spirit-breaking?”
“Yes, a total of five spells which include Kú Li Anse and Áka Si Anse.”
Aha. Sora had seen these before, during his Materialization Shiritori match with Jibril and the Great War RTS, respectively. The first spell was capable of protecting against a hydrogen bomb while the second could pretty much wipe a city off the face of a planet—he remembered both incidents vividly. But something was strange… Why did Jibril know all this stuff? Both siblings immediately began to speculate while Jibril continued her explanation.
“The other was Think Nirvalen.”
Until Nina’s heyday, Think was considered the most adept caster in all of Elven history and an unprecedented genius. Like Nina, she was also a Grand Magus. Think was responsible for the system that served as the basis of all Elven rite compiling—something multi-casters still used to this day. A gifted tactician, she formed the first Elven mage battalion capable of casting large-scale magic in tandem—
“Hmm? Wait a second… Did you say Nirvalen…?” Sora interrupted. He, Shiro, and Jibril let their gazes fall to their screens.
“That’s righhht! No point in hiding it! Why, she’s the distant relative of your veeery own Fiel Nirvalen! Nom. ”
“Hyaaagh?! That’s my ear! Get that out of your mou—byaaaah!!”
As they recorded this girl-on-girl, Elf-on-Immanity romp, Sora and Shiro couldn’t help thinking, eyes aglint:
…Bet Fiel’s ancestor is rolling in her grave.
“…So, uh…mind if I ask what Think was like?” Sora inquired, quickly ridding his eyes of any remaining glint before twiddling a chess piece in his fingers. Fiel’s mouth, with Chlammy’s ear still in it, began to form a dangerous smile. She looked straight at Jibril and answered with a strange sense of pride:
“Why, there aren’t many details left about her… After allll—”
“Yes—evidently, she lived in the Elven capital that I destroyed with my Heavenly Smite before I borrowed all their books. ”
Figures. That explains why Jibril knew so much about the two mages. It’s always her fault, the siblings thought with a sigh.
“I suspect the two mages were the same person.”
A perp doing the detective work? First time for everything, I guess, an exasperated Sora thought as he listened to the culprit’s (that is, Jibril’s) deduction.
“First—both of them were born toward the end of the War, approximately three hundred years ago.”
“…Huh. So the only two known octa-casters ever were both conveniently from the same generation.”
“Furthermore, any mention of Think Nirvalen seems to disappear from my library the moment Nina Clive steps into the picture.”
“…………”
“And yet, after the War ends, Nina Clive is mentioned one last time when founding Elven Gard before disappearing without a trace, let alone any descendants. Meanwhile, the supposedly defunct Nirvalen lineage continued with the pathetic specimen we see here.”
Jibril pointed at Fiel, who was still having her way with Chlammy even though the thirty minutes dictated by the Covenants had ended. QED.
“I believe Nina Clive might be an alias created by Think Nirvalen,” Jibril deduced with a brief bow.
“Ya don’t say…” Sora twiddled the chess piece in his fingers even faster, then smiled as if he’d figured something out.
“…Brother?”
Shiro had yet to figure it out herself. Sora definitely wanted to let her in on his fun little discovery. He looked at the pawn in his hand, then out the window at the giant chess piece that loomed over the landscape.
“Cool if I ask one more question?”
He asked a question he already knew the answer to:
“It’s about chess—how long has it existed in Disboard?”
Shiro grinned in realization—“ ” was now on the same page.
“The game’s origins are unknown, but the rules were standardized after the establishment of the Ten Covenants… Master?”
Jibril looked somewhat confused when she noticed the siblings’ devilish grins. A thought occurred to them:
It’s so obvious. Chess definitely existed during the Great War.
That was why Tet created the giant chess pieces around Disboard and established the Race Pieces and their rules. He was the one who ended the Great War—which undoubtedly happened—by treating it like a game. Sora and Shiro smirked as they wondered—was Tet the only one who thought of war that way…?
Chess is an abstract game—a war played out on a game board.
And Sora had just beaten Fiel, whose ancestor was an even more accomplished mage than herself. Given that chess existed during the Great War:
“I bet there were others, too… Others who tried to end the War by treating it like a game.”
Or, in other words—
—a practical war game.
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