EP.25 Under the Sea -3
EP.25 Under the Sea -3
A sea of towering waves, tornadoes, and thunder and lightning.
Beneath those waters, where all manner of sea creatures struggled desperately to survive, we were playing a board game in perfect comfort.
That didn't mean the atmosphere was calm.
"This is blatant fraud!!"
"It's not fraud. It's your luck."
"How is this not fraud when I alone hit Fenrir Khan three times in a row?!"
"How unsightly, Leviathan. Accept the results gracefully."
"Silence! A filthy game that leaves everything to luck! This kind of game should be, right now—!"
"There is a combat power rental function. Would you like me to use it?"
"Right now—! Do it!!"
Leviathan, who had been about to declare defeat—ruin—due to insufficient combat power.
Furious that he would be the first eliminated, he had been about to flip the board, but upon learning of the rental function, he sat back down and rolled the dice once more.
That was because his previous roll had come up as a '4,4' double.
For all the rage he spat out, his body was awfully honest about following the game's rules.
"Hmm, a Divine Beast Rule Khan. Let's see... Ha! Hahaha!!"
"What? What on earth makes you laugh so creepily?"
"Must've drawn something good. That goes without saying."
"You fools! Do you not see this Promotion to Great Divine Beast? This multiplies my combat power by five...!"
"You're now able to repay the combat power I lent you earlier, aren't you? Then I'll reclaim that much."
"What?!"
"Truly foolish."
"Idiot."
For all that, the three divine beasts were enjoying the board game happily enough to shift into human form.
This was all thanks to the board game Yata had prepared and the Yellow Lucky Pouch she had handed me.
One hour earlier.
The moment Hraesvelgr was defeated, I extracted apologies from the three divine beasts.
They, who had been so ferocious they looked ready to devour me, became docile under Hraesvelgr's confession assault.
It was ambiguous whether to find it astonishing or pitiful, but regardless, in exchange for accepting their apologies, I drew them into playing a single game.
Right before their eyes, I swiftly finished setting up Divine Beast Marble and immediately opened the Yellow Lucky Pouch Yata had prepared.
Like the first Red Lucky Pouch, the pouch contained only a single slip of paper.
I pulled out the only thing inside—a note—unfolded it at once, and read the contents with my eyes.
'Those three are divine beasts who have nothing but pride. So for the first round, crush their noses completely, even if you have to use every single dirty trick you can think of, dear husband.'
A ruthless demand, but one I was perfectly capable of fulfilling.
So first, I taught the divine beasts the basic rules and explained how the game generally flowed.
What I explained was only the basic rules; I deliberately hid the hidden rules or moves that were normally impossible.
And then I exploited those advantages to the fullest.
For example, one of the special squares in the north was called Hraesvelgr's Wind.
Landing there let you move to any other square, but you couldn't come right back to the square you were on.
You couldn't take a spaceship and land back on the spaceship boarding pad, right?
But the divine beasts, complete novices at board games, never even thought to question it, and that was how I used the combat power awarded for going around the board once to endlessly expand my resources.
Later, when a divine beast tried to use the same method, I dominated the Hraesvelgr square in the north and made them pay usage fees.
On top of that, there was a rule that landing on the start square let you strengthen any divine beast, and a rule that let you spend combat power to reverse-dominate someone else's divine beast square.
I used rules only I knew to drive them thoroughly into ruin.
That was how the three divine beasts got lightly crushed in the very first round.
For a moment I thought they'd get angry and say I'd made the game completely shitty, but instead, their competitive spirit blazed up.
"We lost simply because we lacked understanding of the rules."
"The human knows this game well. That's why we can't beat him."
"Therefore, human! Just sit back and watch until we adapt to this game!"
Without a single thought of having been tricked, the divine beasts cleanly accepted their defeat and analyzed the cause.
Now, solely to surpass me, they ran their own league and tried to adapt to the game.
It was a sight that couldn't help but warm the heart of a veteran player of the game.
Watching newbies struggle to improve however they could naturally put you in a good mood.
Though I had done something rather un-veteran-like and smurfed on them in the first round, it had sparked a desire to improve in them, so the result wasn't bad.
"Yuu~!"
"Oh? Tia, you're awake?"
"Yeah! More importantly, Yuu, what's this?"
"Ah, this is a game called Divine Beast Marble."
"A game...!!"
The moment she woke up, Tia showed interest in the board game the divine beasts were playing.
As a baby dragon who had tasted the appeal of games before she was even three months old, that was only to be expected.
It wasn't intentional, but since Tia had accompanied me and accidentally stepped onto the path of the game junkie, she was bound to go crazy for board games too.
If Tia grew up like this, she'd probably become an outstanding game-junkie divine beast, just like Alice.
"How do you play this game?"
"How to play..."
Unlike the sea divine beasts, for whom a single explanation had taken some time, Tia absorbed knowledge by grasping ten things when I taught her just one.
Like a round, pink, gluttonous character that devours everything.
"I want to play too!"
Thus, once she had fully grasped the rules, Tia walked in boldly and declared she was joining the three divine beasts' game.
I worried a little whether they'd accept her, but Tia was accepted without any problem.
The three divine beasts who received the intruder began to lick their chops.
They had already played over five rounds, but Tia was a newbie just starting her first.
They wore gleeful smiles, saying they would cruelly teach the baby dragon the difference between reality and skill, but...
Regrettably for them, the newbie they had accepted was no ordinary beginner.
Perhaps you could say she was a cut above from the start—Tia possessed an unusual gaming sense from the very beginning.
For example, while the other divine beasts used 'Minerva's Feather'—a one-time defense—the moment they drew it, Tia used it only at truly critical moments.
She didn't just blindly strengthen a divine beast but made distributed investments based on the combat power she held.
Aside from that, she deliberately went to the Human Realm to rest for three turns, or beat others to a divine beast square they were trying to dominate and took it first.
With strategies that didn't seem like those of a first-time newbie, she thoroughly crushed the remaining sea divine beasts.
"I won!!"
"What is this...?"
"Th-This is absurd...! To lose to a young divine beast who just started...!"
"This is a perfect, crushing defeat. Haha...!!"
Having dominated every divine beast and ended the game, Tia was bouncing around with a bright smile.
Even I couldn't win overwhelmingly since the game was fundamentally a luck-based shitshow, no matter how well you used the rules.
But Tia hadn't just overwhelmed them; she'd won in an outright perfect game.
Something absolutely impossible without outstanding talent and considerable luck—she'd pulled it off as if it was nothing. I suddenly grew curious about Tia's future.
"Mr. Seon-ju, I think it might be about time to check the Green Lucky Pouch..."
"Now?"
"Yes. Looking at the other divine beasts, the loss to Tia seems to have cut them so deep that they look out of their minds...!"
"That's true, but I'm not sure the negotiations can proceed with them in that state."
The divine beasts, whose very souls had been stripped bare by Tia, all wore expressions as if struck by post-nut clarity.
With post-game clarity that profound, it looked like they wouldn't touch Divine Beast Marble for a while.
I'd been told to bring them pleasure, but ended up giving them nothing but despair.
I wasn't sure if bringing up the peace treaty negotiations right at this moment would work.
'Still, there's no helping it.'
The moment to open the Green Lucky Pouch was 'when the game is completely over and the negotiations have begun.'
The negotiations hadn't even started, but the game was definitively over, so without fail, I pulled out the Green Lucky Pouch and opened it.
The contents were likewise just a single slip of paper.
Except, while the previous note had been the size of a sticky note, this one was about the size of a notebook page.
Realizing that meant it had a lot more content, I calmly read it line by line, and learned that it was, on the whole, about proposals for the treaty terms.
It meant I was to add them to the draft agreement exactly as written.
Still, as expected of Yata, not a single item in the proposals lacked substance, and many points were not so bad for the southern divine beasts either.
Solid, practical content that must have taken considerable effort in order to lead the negotiations to success.
Since Yata knew the future, she must have written these proposals with the certainty that the treaty would not fail.
"Hmm...?"
At the moment I finished checking the final proposal, I abruptly discovered a line of small handwriting at the very end of the paper.
Wondering why she'd left a message so hard to see right at the end, I squinted to check what it said.
"D-Do... Ra... ga...?"
Suddenly...?
I thought hard for a moment about why she had written such a thing, but I couldn't fathom Yata's intent on my own at all.
So I turned my head to ask Hraesvelgr and Kor...
And there was the mouth of a whale, bigger than a mountain.
"Huh?"