Sacred Gear: Heavenly Crown

Chapter 13: Training is a lot of work(1)

{Time & Place - ?}

"Well...this is...fucking boring..." Yahweh mumbled to himself, lounging around in the dimensional gap. "How do you two stand it?"

"..."

"..."

Neither responded. "Sounds to me like you try to outbore the boredom...nice..."

Yahweh and the two other massive creatures continued to do nothing for a long time. A very long time. If you were to take a single mustard seed and place it in an empty box that was sixteen miles long, sixteen miles wide, and sixteen miles high, and continued to do that once every one-hundred years, that is how long the three did absolutely nothing.

"I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" Yahweh shouted. "THERE HAS TO BE A POINT TO THIS! GREAT RED? OPHIS? COME ON, BACK ME UP HERE!"

"..." Great Red said nothing, only let out a snort of air, and rolled back over.

"Empty..." Ophis said simply, still not really acknowledging anything.

"What does empty mean?" Yahweh asked. "Bah! Who cares! We're all-powerful, super-creatures! We CANNOT be this bored! I'm going to find something to do!"

And so, the one-day future Lord set out on a journey...across the dimensional gap...alone... He quickly found that there truly was nothing there. It was the dimensional gap. It was an infinitely large plane of absolutely nothing, no one, and non-existence. Entertainment was not present.

{Line Break}

"Hmm, very close, but still incorrect," Michael shook his head. "You fail."

"That's every move I have! What could possibly be left?" Rias demanded, frustrated at her repeated failures at something she'd thought she was pretty good at...chess.

"You're failing to see the bigger picture. This isn't exactly an easy puzzle," he explained, returning the pieces to their starting positions. "Allow me to demonstrate. Firstly, the queen captures the pawn at h7, checking the black king."

"That's a queen sacrifice!" Rias exclaimed. "Wait, I tried that on my third attempt! You said it's unwise to sacrifice your queen!"

"And what did you do after that?"

"I moved the queen back!" she defended.

"Exactly. Sacrificing your queen is unwise unless you have a very good reason to. You didn't have a good reason, you were simply trying to find out what I wanted you to do," Michael explained. He then went on to begin solving the chess puzzle, explaining each step as he made it. "And finally-"

"King to d2 revealing a hidden check with a checkmate..." Rias breathed out. "That's incredible! That's a seven-move forced checkmate! Even Sona would be hard-pressed to see that!"

"Indeed. Believe it or not, this was a human chess game," Michael chuckled, putting the pieces away. "Edward Lasker vs George Alan Thomas in 1912, a casual game of chess that went down in the history books. I've played, and been handily beaten by, the former in the 1915 New York Masters tournament. He's an exceptional player."

"You play chess in human tournaments?" she asked in bewilderment.

"Indeed. In fact, several famous players throughout history have been devils, angels, or fallen angels in disguise. It's a leader's game and one we tend to enjoy. Honestly though? The best players tend to be humans. Perhaps it's how they've survived this long."

"I had no idea," Rias responded honestly. "I knew that it was a good strategy game, but to this level..."

"What I'd like you to see, Rias, is not the board and its pieces, but a commander and his army," Michael explained. "They are not one and the same. You see, in the real world, telling your pawn to sacrifice himself is not something every leader will willingly do and even fewer pawns will willingly follow."