"Pffft. I'm not borrowing that many lilims just to do you a favor. Go find another sorceress."

The word 'lilims' is unfamiliar to both Sora and Shiro, but as soon as they consider the obvious hypothesis (a unit for magic) there's a small click and the partial definition sticks.

Fascinating. At this point the socially acceptable thing to do is offer a trade. Sora still has some gadgets on him that might be worth the trade. They might even be worth more in barter now than later on – it's not like the charge will last forever.

But the god of this world brought them here to play games, and playing games is what『____』 came here to do.

"No? Then let's play a game," he says.

The fairy rolls her eyes and drops out of the tree like an animal with purely decorative wings.

"All right, if my wager is casting the language spell for you, then yours is ninety days of faithful service."

"That sounds extreme," Shiro says mildly.

"Oh yeah? Tough. That's what I think you're worth."

Anyone can wager anything they want, as long as all participants agree that their wagers are of equal value.

So the rules aren't just for show. Hopefully this only applies to the table stakes and not betting on individual rounds, or else they're going to have to throw a lot of gambling theory out the window.

"Is there any way we could go in for less? Maybe a temporary version of the spell?"

"I can borrow the energy from you, if you let me," the fairy offers. "Humans don't use magic for anything, it's not like you'll miss it."

"That sounds reasonable to me."

"For your wager, I want one week of faithful service."

"Please stop asking for that."

"You're really making this easy on me, huh," the fairy says bitterly. "Fine, what else… hey, what's that gown you're wearing made of? I don't recognize the fabric."

"Cotton-polyester."

"Your gown versus my language spell cast with your lilims," the fairy offers.

It's an unwashed $17.00 sundress from Walmart. It's also the only article of clothing Shiro is wearing, and apart from the bits and bobs in the pockets it's the only thing she owns anymore.

"I accept," she tells the fairy.

Shiro is no coward.

The fairy nods. "I'll choose the game this time, humans. It's one-on-one, so one of you is sitting out. No intervening."

This is not standard operating procedure for『____』for two-player games, but at the moment Shiro is exhausted. The adrenaline boost from falling out of the sky is fading fast. Sora's a big boy, he can handle himself.

"I'm gonna have a nap," she announces, and promptly lies down on the side of the road.

Sora has been voluntold. That's fine, it's his turn anyways. When the fairy gestures for him to come over and sit down he obliges.

"We're gonna eat some berries," the fairy informs him cheerfully. As she speaks she reaches into the mass of vines that constitute her hair and starts pulling out individual berries, which she drops on the ground between them.

"We take turns. Choose a pile, eat as many berries as you want from that pile, then pass the turn. If there are no berries left to eat, you lose. Got it?"

"Are these berries edible for humans?"

"I've seen humans eat them before and they seemed fine. Sometimes they ask for berries as wagers. If you're really scared I'll hand-feed 'em to you."

Now why would that matter— right, because violence is against the rules. Presumably she won't be able to put poison directly in his mouth, or at least she thinks she won't.

"Thank you for the reassurance. I'd offer you the same, but you'd likely be immune to being poisoned by yourself, if indeed you were poisonous."

There are now three piles of berries on the ground. The first is a pile of fourteen light pink berries, the second is a pile of nine pastel orange berries, and the third is a pile of two jet black berries. If you can call 'two' a pile, that is.

"You go first," says the fairy.

Up until this point Sora harbored a nascent fear that Disboard was populated exclusively by people who were absolute fiends at gaming. That fear is now assuaged.

There's a fairly straightforward way to calculate winning positions in this game: convert each number into binary and XOR each column of bits together. If the result isn't zero at the start of your turn, remove berries from any column until it is. As long as the result is zero at the end of your turn, you can force a win.

Shiro has no problem doing bitwise XOR operations on the fly in her head, but Sora prefers the easier method of decomposing the numbers into powers of two, cancelling pairs, and adding the remainders.

Cancelling the 8s and the 2s leaves 5, which means that perfect play guarantees the win to whoever goes first.

This is immensely suspicious. If Sora were playing against a street hustler he would bet dollars to donuts that the point was to cheat with sleight of hand or distract him with the calculations while an accomplice pickpocket stole his wallet.

However, in this particular situation, it's actually more likely that the fairy is just ignorant. No one can steal his wallet – theft isn't just against the law, it's against the rules. He doesn't even have a wallet! More to the point, people played nim for centuries before anyone published the math of the game. He has no strong reason to believe that a forest spirit on an alien planet enjoys recreational mathematics as much as The Summoned Math Hero's Older Brother.

Plus, it looks like she picked her hair-vines clean. Perfectly adequate explanation for the number of berries on offer.

There's still a little wiggle room for useful strategy. Sora decides to go slowly, keep the game away from any board states that the fairy might have memorized in case there's a plan to cheat.

"I'll take three of the pink ones," he says, around one second after the offer to go first.