——Elkia Castle, the Great Hall.
Multiple figures stood within the room, shrouded in silence. The air getting increasingly tense. Two figures confronted one another silently, a lone table with a chessboard atop it between them, with an audience watching with bated breath. The one who broke the silence was one of the two players, who had been pondering for a long time to himself——a young man with black hair and dark eyes.
“…Right. I don’t recall that, you know. Yeah…You know what——?”
With a twisted smile growing on his face, demonstrating his artistically distorted personality, he tightened his grin and shouted,
“This piece wasn’t here, was it!? Oi, when did you move it!?”
Echoed the screaming denunciation of Sora——virgin, 18 years old.
“Eh~ Such a false accusation~ I don’t cheat so blatantly♪”
An Elven girl sat across from him. She had four diamonds in her eyes, with long ears peeking out of her wavy, pale, gold hair. She was Fiel Nirvalen, who brushed off the accusation with a smile.
“Not that one——my rook! Ah, well then, you better return it back to its original position!!”
“Wow~ You want me to move the piece illegally~? Alright then~ This is another loss for you, Mr. Sora——”
“You moved it with your damn magic!! Stop trying to cheat at least!!”
Clearly an injustice by Fiel. Essentially an unconditional defeat for her, but was only a glimmer of one without any proof. Jibril, one of the spectators, shook her head regretfully at the look Sora sent her. She couldn’t figure out when or how she had moved it——in other words, there was no way to prove she had moved the piece. There’s no point in trying to find out how she did it now. At any rate——the rook piece was being moved in favor of Sora! The smile on her face was intended to let Sora strike unaware of her plan, her plan to make him look guilty of cheating,
“Stop blinding Shiro, or I’ll choke myself! Do you not care about what happens to me!? Now, if you want me to spare my own life, break the spell!”
“Don’t listen to him, Fiel! This is your chance to turn Sora into a dead man of his own accord!”
Sora, who had been trying to be so patient, forcefully presses his own neck as a hostage, tearing up whilst doing so. A member of the crowd——Chlammy——shouted happily with a twinkle in her eye, cheering on Fiel to not miss this opportunity.
“Oh~? What proof do you have that I’m blinding Ms. Shiro~?”
Sora thrusts out his phone at the blubbering Fiel and barks at Chlammy’s words.
“It’s caught on my phone’s camera! Right next to me! There’s even more bright light on there than usual, right!? I don’t know what kind of disguise you’re using, but you’re going to have to disarm it!”
“Eh~? You don’t have any proof that the image is real~ ♥”
——Oi, you… You bitch!!
“The sunlight is too bright!! Turn it off now!!”
Blood rises to Sora’s head as he screams at the abomination that shines omnipotently overhead. Even though they were indoors, the midsummer sun was shining down on them, making them sweat like crazy,
“How many times are you going to use magic! They’re only Immanity, how hard do they even try?” Chlammy exclaimed from the sidelines.
“They’re just little Immanity~. Honestly, this isn’t even remotely enough, right?”
Fiel smiled mischievously, but glanced at Sora intently——with a cold gaze. Even after having gone this far, she looks down at the chessboard, which is still advancing in Sora’s favor.
——How did this happen? she wondered.
Sora scoured through his boiling brain for something that he could use as a plan to prove she was cheating……
“Fiel, how would you like to play a one-on-one chess game with me?”
This was the plan that Sora had thought of, and proposed it to Fiel.
——Even if your opponent is a mage, or even a god, you can still fight as equals, depending on the game. For example——in Zermelo’s Finite Two-Person Games of Perfect Information theory, cheating is almost impossible. After all, with the Ten Commandments, direct inspection and falsification of thoughts and perceptions——all harm is forbidden. If a player always knows the score——indirect cheating——such as falsifying the board, is also prevented. Or, if it’s one-on-one, you could get away with saying, ‘I’m remembering it wrong’. But this could be prevented if an observer was present, if you think about it in a normal way. And that’s why…
——I wonder if it’s really true.
Sora decided to offer, as far as he knew, the best mage another game,
“And why should I have to agree to that~?” She replied, brushing it off with a smile.
——There’s no reason to go out of your way to reveal your hand. Naturally, Sora——who possesses Chlammy’s memories——continued.
“I’ll tell you an embarrassing story of Chlammy——from her memories——that you’re unaware of, how does that sound?”
It’s a simple trade-off. A price for the girl cheering on Fiel——without permission, of course.
“…Hey. Wait a minute!? You, without my permission…you’re going to use me as bait——!?”
“What do you mean, something I’m ‘unaware of’ about Chlammy? Like, how she sleeps at night thinking of very perverted things~?”
“What the hell!? What was that you said, Fi!?”
Chlammy screams in shame, but she didn’t reach the two who had already started up another game. Sora and Fiel exchanged a thin smile as they explored one another’s——
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but… Alright.”
“Yay~ ♥ Alright, let’s begin…”
And in three seconds or less, they exchanged a firm handshake and a hot hostile gaze——an agreement. Shiro, who oversees the whole game next to Sora, suddenly whispered in her brother’s ear.
“…But…Nii…what if you…win…?”
Ah. Perhaps sensing the voice in her older brother’s mind, who wasn’t thinking about it in particular, Shiro continued.
“…Fi × Chlammy……thirty minutes…very healthy…yuri play…demands….”
“Shiro… That’s the only thing I can’t get away with——Fi × Chlammy would be the end of me!”
“…Uh, do you want me to choose between winning and losing!?”
The sight of the siblings locked in a heated argument and Fiel’s anguished face stirred up Chlammy’s thought.
“Don’t bother with them, Fi! Wait, no, I don’t want you to win, what am I thinking!? Who should I go with!?”
Chlammy screams, breaking down before being embraced with a hug.
——Win or lose, Fiel would gain something in the end either way.
And so, the game begins……
After the game of Sora and Shiro against Fiel, Jibril finished her analysis on Fiel’s methods. While Sora was recording on his phone and tablet PC, analyzing the analysis results on the screen, he thought.
——Let’s build a tower here. We have a name for it… “Kima City Tower”.
“Fi!! You didn’t mean to lose this one, did you!? Hey, stop——”
“What~? I tried to win…but you were hurt…. If only I could get your pretty mouth to tell me where I am right now with my Pact of Allegiance. You can get back on your feet~ ♥”
“I can tell you that I’m not——huh!?”
………But whether this is really due to the power of the pact or not, I don’t know.
It was a beautiful sight, Sora had won, a delighted grin showing on his face——
“…Jibril, isn’t it true that using multiple spells at once is a specialty of the Elves?”
“Yes, Master. Well, with a few exceptions and pseudo ones, that’s true, right?”
“So, Fiel is a Grand Magus, right? What even is that…and are there any more?” Sora asked Jibril, sighing a fatigued breath.
——Even in chess, the massive amount of magic she used, must’ve been quite a struggle to that extent. Even the bliss of watching Fi × Chlammy for thirty minutes is not balanced…so…
“As far as I know, there were once two Grand Magus Elves.”
Jibril replied, and Sora, even Shiro, broke out into a cold sweat. Two more Grand Magus Elves——and to the gaze that questioned the wonders of them, Jibril spoke once more.
“The first one is Nina Clive.”
At the end of the Great War, he was a genius of the divine realm who had made the Elves one of the three major powers. He was a monster, unprecedented in his tactical strategies, of course, but also in the development of magic——the compilation of magic formulas. He was the highest-ranking Elf whose Spirit Breaking Technique is still unmatched to this day——the Grand Magus.
“……A spirit break?”
“Yes. There is a total of five techniques, from the Eternal 4th Protection to the Void Zero Protection.”
——I see. That’s what I saw in the figurative scriptures with Jibril and the Great War reenactment RTS… The defensive magic that prevented even an E-Bomb, and the other bombs that literally wiped out their city——still fresh in my mind. But more than that…Jibril, don’t you think you’re being oddly specific? I guessed the answer early, but Jibril continued——
“The other one is Think Nirvalen.”
Until the rise of the former Grand Magus, the same Grand Magus who was heralded as the one and only genius in the history of Elven Gard. She constructed and systematized the foundation of the Elves spiritual magic formula compilation utilizing multiple magic formulae that continue to this day. She was also the first person to organize a squad for the first time in the Elves’ history, and was also a tactician who used large-scale magic for group organizing——
“Um…wait a minute!? Nirvalen is…”
Interrupting the narrative, Fiel couldn’t help but slip her gaze to Sora, Shiro, and Jibril.
“Yes, for heaven’s sake~ I’m a descendant of Think, Fiel Nirvalen~ ♥”
“Hii! Ears! Not my ears——Hiiiiiiiiii!!!”
In front of Sora’s phone camera, intertwined with a same-sex Immanity, and a same-sex Elf——Chlammy and Fiel were at it again.
……Your ancestors, I wonder if they’re crying in a shade of grass right now at the sight of this,
“……What was it like for you guys to be together? Could I ask you what they were like?”
Sora asks, as he wipes his eyes, plucking a piece from the chessboard and proceeds to play with it with his fingertips. But Fiel just twisted her smile maliciously as she covered Chlammy’s ears. For some reason, she proudly stretched out her chest——looking at Jibril, she replied.
“As for the details~ There are hardly any records left, you know…so——”
“Yes, Master. Indeed, I destroyed them with my attack and borrowed most of the books. I borrowed a lot of books from you, and it seems you lived in the same city♪”
——Yeah, I was starting to think, “Oh, no wonder you’re so good at this. How do you know so much?” It’s always this girls’ fault, Sora and Shiro sighed together.
“But my guess is——perhaps it was the same person.”
——Report. The culprits reasoning. This is a new one, and the culprit presents her reasoning to the half-eyed Sora.
“First of all, they were both born about 300 years before the end of the war.”
“Well……yeah? There are only two octogenarians in the world and they are both my age.”
“Also, just before the rise of Nina Clive, all references of Think Nirvalen disappeared from my possession, even from my books. But after the war,”
“……”
“But after the end of the war, Nina Clive vanished after his involvement in the founding of Elven Gard. His family tree was never verified. Instead, the supposedly vanished House of Nirvalen continues to its unfortunate daughter.”
She pointed to Fiel, who was still lewding Chlammy after thirty minutes——and concluded.
“Nina Clive was an alias Think Nirvalen went by, I thought.”
To Jibril’s reasoning, which was concluded with a bow, Sora——heh…
His fingertips were still playing with the chess piece, even more amused a smile of some conviction appeared on his face.
“……Nii?”
He said that he would love to share this fun with his sister——Shiro, who was still curious. Sora, in turn, turns his gaze——to the piece in his hand. Then it turns to the piece that rises beyond the horizon, outside the window.
“As an added bonus, can I ask you one more question?” He asked a question he already knew the answer to, “How long has chess been played in this world?”
With those words from Sora, Shiro also noticed——a common understanding between the two as『 』.
“Although its origins are unknown, the rules did not unify until after the Ten Commandments…Master?”
The two of them inwardly think in sync, looking at Jibril, who notices Sora’s amused smile and tilts her head slightly.
——Ah, of course. Of course, it was already present at the time of the Great War. Hence why Tet made the horizon pieces and set the race pieces as pieces played in chess.If so,to someone who refused to end the Great War, which definitely existed, as a game that is. Sora and Shiro just laugh and think——did they really come up with it?
——Was it really only humans…
……Chess. It’s best described as an “abstract game”.
Ultimately, it is——an “Abstract War Game”.
An ancestor that surpasses the Elf who I just dealt with, a chess game that already existed at the time of the Great War——
“I think there were…others. Someone who tried to end the war on the board.”
For now——yeah,
In “Practical War Game”———
Translation Notes
Zermelo’s Theory: A theorem about finite two-person games of perfect information in which the players move alternately and in which chance does not affect the decision-making process. It says that if the game cannot end in a draw, then one of the two players must have a winning strategy (i.e. force a win).
“Kima City Tower”: A Japanese pun originating from the internet meme “Kimashita Wa”, a lesbian/yuri joke.
RTS: Acronym for “Real-time Strategy”, which is a subgenre of strategy games.
——Elkia Castle, the Great Hall.
Multiple figures stood within the room, shrouded in silence. The air getting increasingly tense. Two figures confronted one another silently, a lone table with a chessboard atop it between them, with an audience watching with bated breath. The one who broke the silence was one of the two players, who had been pondering for a long time to himself——a young man with black hair and dark eyes.
“…Right. I don’t recall that, you know. Yeah…You know what——?”
With a twisted smile growing on his face, demonstrating his artistically distorted personality, he tightened his grin and shouted,
“This piece wasn’t here, was it!? Oi, when did you move it!?”
Echoed the screaming denunciation of Sora——virgin, 18 years old.
“Eh~ Such a false accusation~ I don’t cheat so blatantly♪”
An Elven girl sat across from him. She had four diamonds in her eyes, with long ears peeking out of her wavy, pale, gold hair. She was Fiel Nirvalen, who brushed off the accusation with a smile.
“Not that one——my rook! Ah, well then, you better return it back to its original position!!”
“Wow~ You want me to move the piece illegally~? Alright then~ This is another loss for you, Mr. Sora——”
“You moved it with your damn magic!! Stop trying to cheat at least!!”
Clearly an injustice by Fiel. Essentially an unconditional defeat for her, but was only a glimmer of one without any proof. Jibril, one of the spectators, shook her head regretfully at the look Sora sent her. She couldn’t figure out when or how she had moved it——in other words, there was no way to prove she had moved the piece. There’s no point in trying to find out how she did it now. At any rate——the rook piece was being moved in favor of Sora! The smile on her face was intended to let Sora strike unaware of her plan, her plan to make him look guilty of cheating,
“Stop blinding Shiro, or I’ll choke myself! Do you not care about what happens to me!? Now, if you want me to spare my own life, break the spell!”
“Don’t listen to him, Fiel! This is your chance to turn Sora into a dead man of his own accord!”
Sora, who had been trying to be so patient, forcefully presses his own neck as a hostage, tearing up whilst doing so. A member of the crowd——Chlammy——shouted happily with a twinkle in her eye, cheering on Fiel to not miss this opportunity.
“Oh~? What proof do you have that I’m blinding Ms. Shiro~?”
Sora thrusts out his phone at the blubbering Fiel and barks at Chlammy’s words.
“It’s caught on my phone’s camera! Right next to me! There’s even more bright light on there than usual, right!? I don’t know what kind of disguise you’re using, but you’re going to have to disarm it!”
“Eh~? You don’t have any proof that the image is real~ ♥”
——Oi, you… You bitch!!
“The sunlight is too bright!! Turn it off now!!”
Blood rises to Sora’s head as he screams at the abomination that shines omnipotently overhead. Even though they were indoors, the midsummer sun was shining down on them, making them sweat like crazy,
“How many times are you going to use magic! They’re only Immanity, how hard do they even try?” Chlammy exclaimed from the sidelines.
“They’re just little Immanity~. Honestly, this isn’t even remotely enough, right?”
Fiel smiled mischievously, but glanced at Sora intently——with a cold gaze. Even after having gone this far, she looks down at the chessboard, which is still advancing in Sora’s favor.
——How did this happen? she wondered.
Sora scoured through his boiling brain for something that he could use as a plan to prove she was cheating……
“Fiel, how would you like to play a one-on-one chess game with me?”
This was the plan that Sora had thought of, and proposed it to Fiel.
——Even if your opponent is a mage, or even a god, you can still fight as equals, depending on the game. For example——in Zermelo’s Finite Two-Person Games of Perfect Information theory, cheating is almost impossible. After all, with the Ten Commandments, direct inspection and falsification of thoughts and perceptions——all harm is forbidden. If a player always knows the score——indirect cheating——such as falsifying the board, is also prevented. Or, if it’s one-on-one, you could get away with saying, ‘I’m remembering it wrong’. But this could be prevented if an observer was present, if you think about it in a normal way. And that’s why…
——I wonder if it’s really true.
Sora decided to offer, as far as he knew, the best mage another game,
“And why should I have to agree to that~?” She replied, brushing it off with a smile.
——There’s no reason to go out of your way to reveal your hand. Naturally, Sora——who possesses Chlammy’s memories——continued.
“I’ll tell you an embarrassing story of Chlammy——from her memories——that you’re unaware of, how does that sound?”
It’s a simple trade-off. A price for the girl cheering on Fiel——without permission, of course.
“…Hey. Wait a minute!? You, without my permission…you’re going to use me as bait——!?”
“What do you mean, something I’m ‘unaware of’ about Chlammy? Like, how she sleeps at night thinking of very perverted things~?”
“What the hell!? What was that you said, Fi!?”
Chlammy screams in shame, but she didn’t reach the two who had already started up another game. Sora and Fiel exchanged a thin smile as they explored one another’s——
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but… Alright.”
“Yay~ ♥ Alright, let’s begin…”
And in three seconds or less, they exchanged a firm handshake and a hot hostile gaze——an agreement. Shiro, who oversees the whole game next to Sora, suddenly whispered in her brother’s ear.
“…But…Nii…what if you…win…?”
Ah. Perhaps sensing the voice in her older brother’s mind, who wasn’t thinking about it in particular, Shiro continued.
“…Fi × Chlammy……thirty minutes…very healthy…yuri play…demands….”
“Shiro… That’s the only thing I can’t get away with——Fi × Chlammy would be the end of me!”
“…Uh, do you want me to choose between winning and losing!?”
The sight of the siblings locked in a heated argument and Fiel’s anguished face stirred up Chlammy’s thought.
“Don’t bother with them, Fi! Wait, no, I don’t want you to win, what am I thinking!? Who should I go with!?”
Chlammy screams, breaking down before being embraced with a hug.
——Win or lose, Fiel would gain something in the end either way.
And so, the game begins……
After the game of Sora and Shiro against Fiel, Jibril finished her analysis on Fiel’s methods. While Sora was recording on his phone and tablet PC, analyzing the analysis results on the screen, he thought.
——Let’s build a tower here. We have a name for it… “Kima City Tower”.
“Fi!! You didn’t mean to lose this one, did you!? Hey, stop——”
“What~? I tried to win…but you were hurt…. If only I could get your pretty mouth to tell me where I am right now with my Pact of Allegiance. You can get back on your feet~ ♥”
“I can tell you that I’m not——huh!?”
………But whether this is really due to the power of the pact or not, I don’t know.
It was a beautiful sight, Sora had won, a delighted grin showing on his face——
“…Jibril, isn’t it true that using multiple spells at once is a specialty of the Elves?”
“Yes, Master. Well, with a few exceptions and pseudo ones, that’s true, right?”
“So, Fiel is a Grand Magus, right? What even is that…and are there any more?” Sora asked Jibril, sighing a fatigued breath.
——Even in chess, the massive amount of magic she used, must’ve been quite a struggle to that extent. Even the bliss of watching Fi × Chlammy for thirty minutes is not balanced…so…
“As far as I know, there were once two Grand Magus Elves.”
Jibril replied, and Sora, even Shiro, broke out into a cold sweat. Two more Grand Magus Elves——and to the gaze that questioned the wonders of them, Jibril spoke once more.
“The first one is Nina Clive.”
At the end of the Great War, he was a genius of the divine realm who had made the Elves one of the three major powers. He was a monster, unprecedented in his tactical strategies, of course, but also in the development of magic——the compilation of magic formulas. He was the highest-ranking Elf whose Spirit Breaking Technique is still unmatched to this day——the Grand Magus.
“……A spirit break?”
“Yes. There is a total of five techniques, from the Eternal 4th Protection to the Void Zero Protection.”
——I see. That’s what I saw in the figurative scriptures with Jibril and the Great War reenactment RTS… The defensive magic that prevented even an E-Bomb, and the other bombs that literally wiped out their city——still fresh in my mind. But more than that…Jibril, don’t you think you’re being oddly specific? I guessed the answer early, but Jibril continued——
“The other one is Think Nirvalen.”
Until the rise of the former Grand Magus, the same Grand Magus who was heralded as the one and only genius in the history of Elven Gard. She constructed and systematized the foundation of the Elves spiritual magic formula compilation utilizing multiple magic formulae that continue to this day. She was also the first person to organize a squad for the first time in the Elves’ history, and was also a tactician who used large-scale magic for group organizing——
“Um…wait a minute!? Nirvalen is…”
Interrupting the narrative, Fiel couldn’t help but slip her gaze to Sora, Shiro, and Jibril.
“Yes, for heaven’s sake~ I’m a descendant of Think, Fiel Nirvalen~ ♥”
“Hii! Ears! Not my ears——Hiiiiiiiiii!!!”
In front of Sora’s phone camera, intertwined with a same-sex Immanity, and a same-sex Elf——Chlammy and Fiel were at it again.
……Your ancestors, I wonder if they’re crying in a shade of grass right now at the sight of this,
“……What was it like for you guys to be together? Could I ask you what they were like?”
Sora asks, as he wipes his eyes, plucking a piece from the chessboard and proceeds to play with it with his fingertips. But Fiel just twisted her smile maliciously as she covered Chlammy’s ears. For some reason, she proudly stretched out her chest——looking at Jibril, she replied.
“As for the details~ There are hardly any records left, you know…so——”
“Yes, Master. Indeed, I destroyed them with my attack and borrowed most of the books. I borrowed a lot of books from you, and it seems you lived in the same city♪”
——Yeah, I was starting to think, “Oh, no wonder you’re so good at this. How do you know so much?” It’s always this girls’ fault, Sora and Shiro sighed together.
“But my guess is——perhaps it was the same person.”
——Report. The culprits reasoning. This is a new one, and the culprit presents her reasoning to the half-eyed Sora.
“First of all, they were both born about 300 years before the end of the war.”
“Well……yeah? There are only two octogenarians in the world and they are both my age.”
“Also, just before the rise of Nina Clive, all references of Think Nirvalen disappeared from my possession, even from my books. But after the war,”
“……”
“But after the end of the war, Nina Clive vanished after his involvement in the founding of Elven Gard. His family tree was never verified. Instead, the supposedly vanished House of Nirvalen continues to its unfortunate daughter.”
She pointed to Fiel, who was still lewding Chlammy after thirty minutes——and concluded.
“Nina Clive was an alias Think Nirvalen went by, I thought.”
To Jibril’s reasoning, which was concluded with a bow, Sora——heh…
His fingertips were still playing with the chess piece, even more amused a smile of some conviction appeared on his face.
“……Nii?”
He said that he would love to share this fun with his sister——Shiro, who was still curious. Sora, in turn, turns his gaze——to the piece in his hand. Then it turns to the piece that rises beyond the horizon, outside the window.
“As an added bonus, can I ask you one more question?” He asked a question he already knew the answer to, “How long has chess been played in this world?”
With those words from Sora, Shiro also noticed——a common understanding between the two as『 』.
“Although its origins are unknown, the rules did not unify until after the Ten Commandments…Master?”
The two of them inwardly think in sync, looking at Jibril, who notices Sora’s amused smile and tilts her head slightly.
——Ah, of course. Of course, it was already present at the time of the Great War. Hence why Tet made the horizon pieces and set the race pieces as pieces played in chess.If so,to someone who refused to end the Great War, which definitely existed, as a game that is. Sora and Shiro just laugh and think——did they really come up with it?
——Was it really only humans…
……Chess. It’s best described as an “abstract game”.
Ultimately, it is——an “Abstract War Game”.
An ancestor that surpasses the Elf who I just dealt with, a chess game that already existed at the time of the Great War——
“I think there were…others. Someone who tried to end the war on the board.”
For now——yeah,
In “Practical War Game”———
Translation Notes
Zermelo’s Theory: A theorem about finite two-person games of perfect information in which the players move alternately and in which chance does not affect the decision-making process. It says that if the game cannot end in a draw, then one of the two players must have a winning strategy (i.e. force a win).
“Kima City Tower”: A Japanese pun originating from the internet meme “Kimashita Wa”, a lesbian/yuri joke.
RTS: Acronym for “Real-time Strategy”, which is a subgenre of strategy games.
