"We are the Norse G.o.ds after all. In that snowy land, people had a lot of time to tell stories and play games while stuck at home during the winter."
But Raidou added one more message.
"Then again, we do need to take on our proper roles instead of just playing games all the time."
"You can"t just play games all the time, you know? So how are things going on that front?"
Scarecrow thought about the question directed to her.
She was in the library working the checkout counter while reading an extinct animal encyclopedia.
"Shall I make you a library card?"
"You"ll make one for me? I do think I will come here from time to time. …The more topics of conversation the better, after all."
"Is that so?" said Scarecrow before asking the other person a question.
"You were given a real manifestation by viewing the current oldest work of literature as mythology, so what business do you have here?"
"Did Balancer tell you?"
"No, I simply could not detect your divine territory. And you do not have the scent of a nature G.o.d like my friends among the Norse and Egyptian G.o.ds. …If you are very old but not a nature G.o.d, the options are rather limited. Also…"
"Also?"
She seemed really into the conversation and that seemed like a common trait among the G.o.ds of ancient mythologies.
"That uniform."
It was a new style uniform, but most of it was made of transparent materials and the cutting was quite risqué. If she was from an ancient mythology and intentionally showing off her body…
"You appeared in the legends as a prost.i.tute. …If I a.s.sume you are from a major mythology, that more or less confirms it."
Scarecrow gave her answer.
"You are Shamhat, a prost.i.tute who rose to the level of a G.o.d. What are you doing here?"
"Oh, dear," said Shamhat.
"I am currently going by the name Shamu Hatoko. You can call me Hato."
"I asked what you are doing here."
"Fair enough," said Hato with a hand on her chin.
"Are you familiar with my role?"
"According to the epic ent.i.tled "He who Saw the Deep", you work at temples as a sacred prost.i.tute. In other words, you are a priestess who grants people divine authority through the act of docking."
"That is not quite the word I would have used, but I like the sound of it. Continue."
Scarecrow was actually blushing a little on the inside.
…The library is not the place to talk about things like docking!
The G.o.ds related to such things would see it differently, but she was not such a G.o.d. Well, agricultural G.o.ds do have to worry about pistil and stamen issues.
Regardless, that was Shamhat"s job.
And the job of temple prost.i.tute made it clear what her role was.
"Since you work in temples, you must go around visiting different temples, visiting royalty who have been given divine authority, and visiting other kingdoms. You must also visit the wealthy. In other words, the name Shamhat refers to you as an individual, but it also refers to a group or to the areas in which the temple prost.i.tutes live in each region."
And what did that mean?
"Those of you in your group will approach those with divine and royal authority while establishing a network that allows you to move between those people without opposing them. The kings cannot let their guard down around you, but you are also a powerful source of intelligence and you can be sent into enemy territory to gather information before an invasion. I can only speculate, but to sum up…"
Scarecrow held out her right hand to point at Shamhat"s face.
"Your role is either to declare war on us or to establish a relationship between us and your king."
Hato smiled.
"You are getting ahead of yourself there, but I do like the caution. …Yes, even Bilgamesh sent me to his future partner Enkidu so I could teach her about Babylonian culture."
But she also tilted her head.
"It"s strange, really. I came here to prepare the way for Bil and Ki, but every time I"ve tried to meet up with them here, it hasn"t worked."
Hey.
"You"re using your authority to prevent me from meeting our main party while we"re here, aren"t you?"
"Oh? What makes you say something like that?"
Scarecrow gave a small smile.
"Perhaps a mere upstart overestimated her ability to prepare the way and has simply failed to find the G.o.ds who are only living their lives like normal."
"Perhaps so. It might be that. But you know what?"
She asked a question.
"I tried entering this school a few times because Bil and Ki told me to go ahead of them. …And you know what? When I walked straight ahead after entering the school, I found myself in front of this library."
Scarecrow said nothing, so Hato continued.
"When I saw the library sign in the hallway, I thought I had taken a wrong turn, so I tried using the side entrance the next time."
But…
"I ended up here again."
Isn"t that odd?
"After some thought, I tried going in…I think it was Building B. I ended up here."
What could that mean?
"I was curious, so I used the emergency stairs to enter at the second floor. But yet again, I found myself here."
She had to laugh now.
"Kubiko Scarecrow, this is your authority."
Hato smiled.
Just as her ident.i.ty had been revealed earlier, it was her turn to reveal this other girl"s ident.i.ty.
"You are a G.o.d who guides visitors and shows them the way. Add in the fact that you control agriculture, and your ident.i.ty is not hard to figure out. Especially when your name is Scarecrow. …You are Kuebiko, G.o.d of scarecrows, aren"t you?"
"Oh?"
The other girl raised her eyebrows. She looked honestly impressed.
"It sounds like you did your homework. I did not expect someone from such a major mythology to look into such a small part of Far Eastern mythology."
"Yes," said Hato.
"But I made sure to look into everyone that has already made an appearance here."
She took a breath.
"Scarecrows use their presence to tell people where people live and sometimes to point them in the right direction. They also keep away harmful birds and act as a warning to foreigners. …Does that give you a combat element in addition to the wisdom and agriculture elements?"
"I do not have anything that impressive."
"Oh, how scary. My authority is more suited for use on men, so I doubt it would be much use against you."
"But you still intend to prepare the way?"
Hato could tell Scarecrow was trying to provoke her.
But she shook her head.
"No. I think there is an easier way. Plus, Bil and Ki are not following me right now."
"Is that so? I am glad to hear it."
Hato realized something when she heard that.
Scarecrow had stood up at some point and she held a cane in her left hand.
The counter stood between them, but they were still very close together. This meant…
"The scarecrow has moved? What path are you directing me down?"
"I am on the Library Committee. So…"
She placed a card on the checkout counter.
"Knowledge is a path to anything and everything, so I will offer you that path here. Write your name on this and you can check out five books at a time. You can check them out for two weeks. Is that clear?"
"Incredible…"
Tenma looked to Omokane by her side and sighed.
They were in the library.
They were behind the counter and behind Scarecrow.
Shamhat, who was going by Shamu, was tilting her head at the counter and writing her name on her new library card.
She had not noticed Tenma and Omokane.
"Omokane-senpai, she was looking for you."
"Yes. s.h.i.taharu noticed her ahead of time, so I fled back here to see what happened, but Kubiko-kun really is useful at times like this."
"How does this work?"
"The standard way for any Shinto individual to escape pursuit is to hide in the rice field, Tenmkun. And Kubiko-kun can create a "rice field" within the mobile territory around her if it falls under Shinto jurisdiction. In other words, we need only remain behind her. As long as no one with a greater divine rank shows up and as long as we do not speak too loudly, no one can find us here."
"Make sure I don"t see you when you leave, okay? But…"
"Yes, they are here. And since they were not caught by your "guidance", those two must have a high divine rank. I bet theirs is even higher than mine."
Omokane took a breath.
"It seems we must make some preparations and lay some groundwork. Also…this is probably a job for me rather than Sumeragi-kouhai. I need to learn what the Divine Committee wants and what those two are after."
"I see. This is indeed dangerous."
Ki heard her partner say that.
"It seems Shinto is being supported by more mythologies than we thought."
"Most of them are newer than us. But that is why they will have new and improved techniques. It is times like this when we truly cannot let our guard down."
They discussed this in some shade from the summer sun.
The place known as the club building was a building with clubrooms arranged in a large circle. The middle was an open atrium with a diameter of about 20m and the door directly across that center area was labeled "Game Club".
They stood at the entrance. The first floor hallway led to the courtyard. The hallway had doors to shower rooms and bathrooms. It also had some vending machines along one wall.
They could hear the voices of the athletic clubs in the distance, but were those coming from some silly G.o.ds, or were they automatons created to recreate this era?
That was unclear.
"It"s become painfully obvious we"re using brute force to enter a strange land."
"I would like to claim it is the powerless who try to run away, but whoever set this up has a decent divine rank."
Ki"s partner narrowed his eyes toward the sunlit door across the courtyard.
"I would like to say this distance is nothing, but…"
"Just give up. We didn"t prepare for this and that means we were careless."
"Maybe I should start carrying a Silver Mattock around everywhere."
"I would advise against it because you would stand out too much around town. And I know you really would do it if I didn"t stop you."
She stepped up to his side as she continued.
"Listen. You can"t see it, but the courtyard has been turned into a labyrinth. And only for outsiders."
"Hato was supposed to meet up with us, but she was guided elsewhere. …They set us up, didn"t they? I"m sure some of it was a misunderstanding, but Hato has a troubling tendency to intentionally fall for those things for fun."
"If Hato was here for this labyrinth, she would almost certainly rush right in so it could "swallow her up"."
Ki pulled out one of her black hairs and tossed it into the air.
Instead of a summer wind, a wind seemed to blow from their shadows and into the courtyard. That wind carried the hair.
"Watch this."
The hair floated away from them, but the answer was revealed to them when it had traveled a mere meter away from them.
It disappeared.
"Was it erased?"
"No. Like I said, it was "swallowed up". You could also say it was "taken deeper in"."
This is trouble, thought Ki.
"I really don"t want this to be a common thing, but it"s a labyrinth divine protection."
"Is it for those theme parks that were developed later on? We didn"t have any of those escape games back in our time."
"No, this is more troublesome than that. It"s deeper. You saw my hair grow darker when it disappeared, right? That was because it sank into a "dark" depth."
"Where do you think it is from?"
"Labyrinths created underground can be found pretty much anywhere, but the deeper ones would be from Egypt."
Ki"s partner placed a hand on his chin as he thought.
"If I knew we were getting into a fight with the Heliopolis bunch, I would have brought my Hyper Armor."
"Are you planning to go to war? We are here to negotiate. Although military might is still important. Also, the Heliopolis group is in the same position as us here."
"So this is similar to infighting?"
"I heard from my mother that other G.o.ds from Egypt were given real manifestations to prevent too much authority from gathering in the Ennead."
Ki explained.
"Are you familiar with Khnum?"
Bil responded to that name with a hand on his forehead.
"So that"s what this is about," he muttered.
"So this has to do with your origin, does it?"
"That would pretty much be the original story of creating people out of dirt. But that is probably why he was called here. And…"
Ki slapped him on the shoulder.
"If it was Khnum who did this, he has a longer history than us. Just in case, I want to avoid being trapped."
"You always stop me from doing things."
"Because I am always following you."
And Ki said more.
"Paying respect to someone with a greater history is the right thing to do. And if we don"t provide any direct support, I doubt he will get in our way beyond this. This labyrinth is really only meant to give the ignorant gamers some time to prepare. In that case…"
"I must accept this as Bilgamesh, king of all creation, hm?"
"You"ve been a good ruler ever since you joined me, right?"
Ki smiled and slapped his shoulder again, so he had to make a decision.
"Fine then," he said.
"I can"t say no when you use Call Bil on me. Let"s go, Ki."
And just as he turned around…
"Waaaaaahh!!"
They heard a loud shout from the door across the courtyard.
"I lost! I lost! Senpai, I"m nothing but a pig compared to you and Family Tennis!!"
"They really are just playing games, aren"t they!?"
"That voice sounded familiar, but maybe I"m imagining it."
Meanwhile, a Revelation Board opened. The slate-style screen showed Hato who had gone missing.
"Hey! Let"s meet up outside! It probably wouldn"t work out inside the school! And I checked out a bunch of books, so help me carry them! This Sazae-san Volume 1 has got to be super rare!"
"What have you been doing!?"
"Hmm, she"s acting a lot different from her virtual manifestation. I hope there"s nothing wrong."
Senpai was ridiculously good at Family Tennis.
"Wow, you got the top spot when you"ve never even played this game before."
"Eh!? Eh!? Is that what…happened?"
"I thought we"d be waiting around a lot with a 6-person tournament of two-player matches, but watching the other games gets pretty exciting too."
"Yomoji-senpai"s idea was a good one. When you win a match, you get 1 point. When other people are playing, you bet on one of the players and get 1 point if they win. If they lose, you have to give one of your points to the person who beat them. That allows a major upset even when someone has taken a bunch of points."
"Sumeragi, you intentionally took a loss so you"d be dragged down from the top spot, didn"t you!? Who loses while using Bunbun!?"
"Huh!? Don"t be silly. I give every challenge my very best shot, but when Senpai played against me using Ebaruto and swung her body around along with the controller, I couldn"t take my eyes off her jiggling b.o.o.bs and a game over was unavoidable! So what place did you end up in, Raidou-senpai? 4th? That"s what you get! I was in 5th! Oh, what"s that look for!? Give me more!"
"I"ll ignore all that noise, but Senpai-chan? The match against Sumeragi-chan might be a special case, but why are you so good at this game?"
"Eh? am I that good?"
"I think it worked in her favor that she focuses on her hands without looking at her opponent. With a 20-inch TV, she can still see the whole screen while focused on her hands. And Ebaruto has the highest running skill and has a good racket hitbox thanks to the girl character rules."
"Kh. I can"t believe I ended up in 4th while using Endoru."
"Well, I"m not too upset since I ended up in 2nd."
Shifu then changed the subject.
"I have a suggestion. How about we do the terraforming here?"
"Are we set up to do it here?"
"We are actually. Check this out."
Shifu opened the locker. When she had opened it to pull out the games earlier, Balancer had been inside glaring at her, but…
…Honestly, what is that AI even doing?
This was what happened earlier:
"What are you doing here, Balancer?"
"I take offense at some of that, but what about the visors? We technically don"t need them, but they make it easier for Sumeragi-chan to accept what"s going on."
That was convenient. But Kunugi would not have shown up earlier for no reason.
"Has some trouble shown up?"
Kuwajiri asked the idiot a question while watching Shifu place enough visors for everyone on the table. She made sure to glance over at the busty uppercla.s.sman first.
"Sumeragi, do you remember "dying" during the terraforming before?"
"Eh? Did that happen?"
The idiot had not actually died during the previous terraforming session. That had happened after being hit by a truck in the Divine World afterwards.
That may have been why the idiot tilted her head.
"I"m not sure. I do kind of remember being hit and killed in the city at night while playing some kind of immersion game."
"Um, then do you remember the terraforming?"
The idiot thought about Senpai"s question.
Sumeragi may have been so carefree because she did not understand what any of this was about, but she finally answered with a smile.
"Again, I"m not sure. I do have a vague memory of being killed by…a dragon? Something red?"
…Wow…
Kuwajiri sighed in her heart.
The busty uppercla.s.sman would have wanted the idiot to remember what happened the day before, but…
Oh, she thought. This G.o.d can keep it together.
In fact, she had managed that before too. During the 11th rollback, she had endured Sumeragi"s idiocy while hoping things would work out better the next time.
She was probably doing the same during this 12th time.
…What a foolish G.o.ddess…
Even Kuwajiri"s divine rank was higher. She did not know what G.o.d this busty uppercla.s.sman was, but if her original values were low and she was close to that initial state, then someone who had risen a fair bit like Kuwajiri would end up at a higher place unless her potential was very high indeed.
But Kuwajiri had not gone to all this meaningless effort.
An idiot chose you as their partner and then forgot about you. Kuwajiri had never experienced anything like that, but this foolish G.o.ddess was enduring it right now. So…
"Sumeragi."
She spoke to that idiot.
"You might not be aware, but the terraforming works with a partner system. And, well, you chose your partner on a whim. Do you know who it is?"
"No, I don"t. I didn"t even know I had a partner."
"Your partner is this uppercla.s.sman here. Lucky you, huh?"
"For real!?"
The idiot had already looked away from her. Meanwhile, the uppercla.s.sman glanced over at her and nodded. Then Shifu smiled from the next seat over.
"Kuwajiri-chan, you can be awkward, but it"s great that you can do things like that."
"I see no reason to work on being less awkward."
Shifu slapped her on the back a few times, but that was a good thing. Then they put on the visors, but there was no reason for that either.
Still, they covered their eyes as a ritual to help Sumeragi understand what was happening. And…
"Let"s get started."
Shifu lifted up her visor.
Everyone else was wearing theirs, but…
"Sumeargi-chaaan?"
Sumeragi had removed hers. She also seemed focused on the uppercla.s.sman next to her.
"If you"re going to touch her, do it once we"re on the other side."
"No, no, no! This isn"t about that! I was just interested in the visual! I mean, blindfolds are pretty kinky!"
Did it matter at all that he turned into a girl? she wondered, but…
"C"mon, put your visor back on."
"Oh, okay! I"ll do that!"
She did. Then Balancer appeared over her head.
Being an AI couldn"t be fun. Shifu realized Senpai-chan and Kuwajiri had also lifted up their visors to look at the idiot. Tooru was crossing his arms in an impressive pose with his visor still on and Yomoji was seated with oddly proper posture, which had an oddly dangerous look to it.
…We don"t do things halfway, do we?
All of a sudden, Senpai disappeared. Sumeragi soon followed.
"Ohh."
The visors must have been fixed to a coordinate because they remained in the air even after the people wearing them disappeared. In that case…
"Okay, send us too. It looks like we have to do it right this time."
Balancer nodded and then her vision wavered.
She shifted out of place.
She shifted out of the AI-created Divine World and into reality.