No Game No Life, Vol. 4 Read online

  “…Uh, umm…S-soo, what are we supposed to dooo…?”

  “Good point. Jibril. Take Shiro and me—and, Plum, we’re taking you, too.”

  “Uh, a-all righhht… Huh, where are we goiiing…?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? —We’re getting not two races, but three.”

  And Sora continued, beaming.

  “Now, here’s the question. To blow the lid off this game of unknown victory conditions, the most efficient approach is to dig up all the records we can about the queen’s game as it’s been played in the past and compare them against one another to deduce the principles—so, then, among all the places we could go, where would have the most records?”

  …

  —A moment’s pause. And then. Kshhrrrk, two wills—perfectly contrary to each other—roared out.

  “At last—at last! The new lord to reign over the Flügel shall finally grace his throne above us—oh, that this blessed day should visit so soon!”

  “NOoooOOOOoo, no, pleaaase! Anywhere but that den of monsterrrrs!”

  The sounds of Jibril, kneeling so fast in prayer as to kick up sand, and Plum, first wailing and trying to flee only to be caught by Jibril while struggling. Yet both were ignored by Sora as he took Shiro’s hand. Nodding subtly, he spoke:

  “Come, let us go—to Avant Heim.”

  TO BE CONTINUED

  AFTERWORD

  Wheww. I’m tired. ^__^ It’s all done!

  Actually, how this got started was I got asked to do the stuff I joked about in the preview in the last volume for real.

  I didn’t really have the story for this. ←

  So I figured there was no sense in trampling over everyone’s goodwill and gave a shot at giving ’em what they wanted…lol.

  Now a word to you all from my editor—

  Editor S for Sadist the Second: Mr. Kamiya, please desist from your thuggish disregard for professionalism. If you weren’t doing both the text and illustrations, the original deadline would have already been a one-month extension. Also, I suggest you limit your Internet copypasta to about three lines at most.

  —I’m sorry. I’ll be serious. This is Yuu Kamiya. No Game No Life is back after five months—one month after it was originally supposed to be released. First of all, let me apologize deeply for the delay.

  “Please feel regret. Deeper than the Mariana Trench.”

  Let me also mention that another reason the book was delayed was that my editor drastically misunderstood how it was going.

  “I feel regret. Deeper than the lower mantle.”

  So, thus we have No Game No Life, Volume 4. Just as announced, it was my intention to make this volume fluffy and lighhht. After all, the threads going through Volumes 1 to 3 have all come together for now. So I planned this volume as, on one hand, a run-up to future developments, and, at the same time, a fluffyyy, lighhht kick-back party volume—

  …That was the plan, anyway. How did it get this way?

  “If you ask what I think personally, I would like to mention that the first draft of this fluffyyy, lighhht volume was over four hundred pages and request an explanation of this X-Files-esque mystery.”

  …Well, yes, there’s a reason for that deeper than the Gutenberg discontinuity. Would you like to hear about it?

  “Deeper than the lower mantle? I’d be much obliged.”

  To be frank. Do you remember that a certain editor had me make a manga of this with my wife? And then I ended up spending over a week every month working on it, so now, practically speaking—I’ve gone back to being a manga-ka.

  “……Um, well…you see…”

  And then I ended up also writing on a different series the previous Editor S for Sadist approached me about. That one, well, it’s co-written, so it’s not actually that much work. But, with all this going on, the machine I use for work broke down. And I ran to buy a new one, and I got hit by a car and suffered a bone fracture. Since I was running short on money and it got me some damages, that’s fine, I guess.

  “…It…is?”

  The problem was afterward, when my editor drastically misunderstood how the book was going and caused me to try to split it up into three volumes. But it took a lot of work to split it up, and splitting it in two was the best I could do, you see? Thus it was four hundred pages. But, if I just split that straight in two, it would cause problems with the structure, and, most importantly, it would lose the momentum—etc. So, given this situation, I went through many iterations of working over the structure and revising the text. What do you think? Is it as deep as the Guten-whatever-it-is-ity?

  “It’s the Gutenberg discontinuity. What shall I say? That’s—quite the story. ”

  Yes, but I’d also like your comment on how a large proportion of this calamity was human-generated.

  “There certainly are some diabolical editors out there… It’s a scary industry…”

  Yes, some editors are so diabolical as to say lines like that with a straight face… (Voice trembling) It certainly is scary.

  —Well, human-generated calamity aside, there were a lot of other things that I haven’t even written about here. There was blood in my urine, and I got yelled at by my doctor, and I decided to eat some Korean barbecue for once and got food poisoning, for instance.

  …I’m going to spell this out just in case, but this is nonfiction, okay?

  “Mr. Kamiya, I suspect you should seriously visit a shrine for purification?”

  I have.

  “…What?”

  The Meiji Shrine before I got cancer. Then the Fushimi Inari Shrine after. This year I went to Kawasaki Daishi, but look how that turned out. If I hadn’t gone, I suppose by now I’d be crossing the river into the next life. Oh, but, at the end of last year, I was updating my bank book and I saw that it said “0” in real life, so I guess I wouldn’t have had the fare to cross the Sanzu… What is it that happens if you didn’t have the fare? Do you still get to be reincarnated?

  “Um, I don’t think there’s supposed to be that kind of system for salvation…”

  With that—let’s call it a day. While this volume’s contents were lighhht and eaaasy (heh), it’s a run-up to the dash—while this series did have its first peak in the last volume! This is to be exceeded! As I work to push up the pace once more, with your kind—

  “Oh, Mr. Kamiya, Mr. Kamiya.”

  Uh, oh, yes, what is it? Just when I was wrapping things up.

  “Your editor from Alive has inquired, Is the storyboard done yeeet?”

  ……

  “Then there are those extras, and the copy for the pamphlet for that project, and—wait. Mr. Kamiya? Are you there?”

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  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome

  Insert

  Title Page

  Easy Start

  Ch. 1 Encounter

  Ch. 2 Strategist

  Ch. 3 Charmer

  Ch. 4 Wild Card

  Interrupt End

  Afterword

  Yen Newsletter

  Copyright

  Copyright

  NO GAME NO LIFE, Volume 4

  YUU KAMIYA

  Cover art by Yuu Kamiya

  Translation by Daniel Komen

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  NO GAME NO LIFE

  ©YUU KAMIYA 2013

  Edited by MEDIA FACTORY

  First published in 2013 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights reserved by HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, INC. under
the license from KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Yen On is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Yen On name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  First ebook edition: March 2016

  ISBN 978-0-316-38522-0

  E3