Outside the World, Outer Land (2)
This was not a subjugation. It was a competition.
The four Hundred-Horn adventurers gathered in that room had reached that conclusion for reasons that were, in their own way, perfectly sound. It was not as if they were fools who had never learned the terror of dragons.
Even if the greater part of the dragons had vanished with the close of the Mythic Age a thousand years ago, their majesty remained intact in the histories. There were differences from beast to beast, of course, but as a general rule it was all but impossible for a Sword Seeker to hunt a dragon alone.
Yes. As a general rule.
The Red Dragon and White Dragon sealed beneath Cambria were a far cry from ordinary dragons. They had originally been one creature split into two — already cast down by Arthur, stripped of the greater part of their power by Merlin, and sealed.
Once they had been great.
Dragons who had forgotten that greatness the moment they fell to earth.
The Red Dragon and White Dragon were dragons whose natures, strategies against them, and even their weaknesses had all been thoroughly exposed. And on top of that they had been weakened by long years of sealing — was anything more that needed saying?
Five Sword Seekers would be more than enough to hunt them.
What mattered was who landed the final blow.
That was how the adventurers gathered here saw it.
There would be some risk, of course — but the rewards for taking that risk? Dragon hide, bone, blood, heart: premium materials that commanded whatever price you named. And no adventurer was ignorant of the jaw-dropping performance of artifacts forged from dragon materials.
Adventurers were people who weighed gold against risk.
To them, this dragon subjugation was a chance that made their mouths water. The Guildmaster of the Central Guild knew that too, which was why he had made securing the subjugation rights his priority. He must have judged that the gains outweighed the danger.
The Imperial Knights were only insurance; the adventurers gathered in this city would be more than enough to handle the hunt…
—Or so they thought.
Merlin shrugged.
"If things had gone normally, that judgment wouldn't have been wrong. About two hundred years ago the White Dragon and Red Dragon revived once before, you know?"
This isn't the first time?
"Yeah. Every few hundred years they slip out through cracks in the seal once or twice. A perfect seal can't exist in this world. Anyway, every time a few Sword Seekers hunted them easily, so they'll figure it's the same this time."
She perched on the edge of the conference table and crossed her legs. Naturally Merlin was visible only to Najin's eyes, so to the other Hundred-Horn adventurers it simply looked as if Najin were staring up into empty air.
"But this time is different."
Merlin lowered her head to look at him.
"They're mistaken about two things."
She held up two fingers.
"One: thinking a weakened dragon will come out again this time. It's different. The sealing formula is going to break completely. What they'll be facing isn't a weakened dragon — it's the Mythic Age dragon that Arthur and I fought."
She folded one finger.
Waggling the other, Merlin went on.
"And two: even if a perfect dragon is revived, thinking they can hunt it. This delusion hasn't changed in a thousand years."
Merlin smirked as if she found it absurd.
A thousand years ago, when they cast the dragons down, Merlin had been a Six-Ring mage and Arthur a warrior who had reached the realm of Sword Seeker.
"Just the two of us brought down two dragons, so if several Sword Seekers gather it should be doable, right? That was the kind of talk that went around. I can't tell you how ridiculous it was every single time."
They had sealed the dragons, so there was no way to demonstrate the truth either.
Merlin sighed and propped her chin on her hand.
"If it were that easy, do you think we could have earned stars?"
Stars that could only be hung in the sky by accomplishing great feats.
Rolling her first star across her palm, Merlin looked at Najin. Those were not the eyes of one gazing upon the king she was meant to guide — they were also the eyes of one looking at a junior following in her footsteps.
"This time it's your turn."
Merlin's deep blue eyes and Najin's sunset-colored eyes met.
"It's your turn to prove it — in your own way."
A thousand years ago Arthur had cut the dragons' wings and cast them down to earth. So how would he cast the dragons down? How would he keep them confined beneath the ground? Merlin's eyes were shining.
A boy who resembled Arthur and yet did not.
What answer the boy would give in this subjugation, how he would seize his star — Merlin was desperately curious. But hearing that answer would have to wait a month.
Just as Najin's monologue reached Merlin, Merlin's monologue and emotions flowed into Najin to a certain degree as well. Having reached the realm of Sword Seeker, much had changed.
Feeling Merlin's emotions seeping in faintly, Najin curved the corner of his mouth.
You can look forward to it, Merlin.
What he had thought of while listening to her advice.
Turning that over in his mind, Najin smiled.
He, too, was thinking of a method of his own.
After receiving the subjugation-related information and documents from the Central Guild, Najin left the building. Every employee he passed along the way bowed their head in greeting — another privilege of the Hundred-Horn rank.
In Cambria, the City of Opportunity, rank was determined solely by results. And Hundred-Horn adventurers were those with the highest results of all.
So this is what it means to be called Cambria's nobility.
Thinking that, Najin walked on.
According to the Imperial calculation, the crack in the sealing formula would widen in a month, and Merlin had given a similar answer. In other words, they had about a month of leeway.
What to do for a month.
He could take on commissions large and small, but Najin was well aware that the public eye was fixed on him to an excessive degree. Whatever he did, gazes would follow, and his intentions would be questioned.
There are dozens of nominated commissions that have arrived for me alone.
Sorry to say, but he had no intention of accepting commissions whose ulterior motives were so transparent. He had already decided what he would do with the month anyway.
Merlin.
"Yeah, go ahead."
After we take the dragons, you said we'd go outside the Continent, right? The battlefield of the stars and the land of demons.
"That'll be how it goes."
Merlin nodded.
"There's no better place to build renown, accomplish great feats, and carve stars. And it's a place where countless heroes have set foot."
The battlefield of the stars and the land of demons.
Najin remembered the illusions Merlin had shown him before — landscapes that had shaken his soul and once brought him to his knees.
"Thaaat was… me testing you. You know that, right? Not that I didn't have any intention of scaring you, but it was a necessary process."
I know. Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?
"You said it last time, didn't you? That Merlin also gave you shit out of nowhere…"
A strangely dejected voice.
She still seemed to be hung up on the offhand remark he had made when they encountered Gerd: You did the same thing, Merlin. Najin snorted a laugh.
I get it. It was a test, right?
"Right?"
Seeing Merlin's voice brighten, he felt like teasing her a little more, but Najin held back.
Anyway, at the latest we'll be heading that way in about two months… so I was thinking of taking a look in advance this time.
"Now?"
Najin nodded.
To take a dragon, I figure I should at least face something dragon-like — and there's nothing suitable inland.
Monsters similar to dragons.
Beings with a thin mixture of dragon blood who had nevertheless not been granted that Mystery. Wyverns. That was the practice opponent Najin had marked.
"Wyverns are fairly high-tier monsters, so they'll be in the Demon Realms. So you're going to go catch one?"
I need to get a feel for it. I don't think I've ever really fought things that fly.
After thinking it over briefly, Merlin also nodded.
"Not a bad idea. Good for showing those who are curious about your movements, too."
That was also what Najin was aiming for.
He intended to show the gazes fixed on him right now: that he was testing an advance into the Demon Realms, and that he would be active there going forward.
"Not bad, but…"
Merlin trailed off as if something bothered her.
"The first time you see it… it's a bit of a shock, you know?"
The wyverns?
"No. Outside the world. The Outer Land."
She tried to explain something, then closed her mouth.
"Faster to see it once than explain it in words. So — planning to go right now?"
There was no harm in speed.
Considering the round-trip time, even a month could become a tight schedule. Nodding, Najin immediately hired a carriage.
A carriage that would run straight without stopping all the way to the end of the Continent — the place called the Boundary Line.
Outside the Continent, the Outer Land.
Some called it Outside the World, the Beyond. And that was not an incorrect expression. For the greater part of the rules that governed the world were warped or broken when applied there.
The living and the dead were not cleanly divided. Unsalted corpses rose and moved of their own accord after a single night, wandering the world as the dead.
The flow of time was not constant. In some places it was fast, in others slow, and in still others it was frozen solid entirely. Thus every season could coexist, or a single season could repeat forever.
A place where rules and providence were a mess.
A place where scenic wonders and wastelands were jumbled together at random.
And so —
The place where constellations who had already left this world could intervene was Outside the World, the Outer Land. The Demon Realms that were the habitat of demons, where Najin was headed now, also existed there.
"Some demons can rival constellations. There are ones that are constellations to begin with. Being a demon doesn't mean you can't be a constellation."
That much?
"The ones called Demon Kings, the rulers of the Demon Realms, should be about that level. The one called Baal that I burned to death had something like nine stars, I think."
Listening to Merlin's explanation, they traveled for several days.
After days and nights of running, the carriage suddenly stopped. The coachman said he could go no further from here, set Najin down, and turned the carriage back toward the inland.
Left alone on the wasteland, Najin blinked. Looking around, he found a stable-cum-tavern with a sign that read One Last Drink.
"First time here?"
A man sipping liquor outside the tavern called out to Najin. When Najin nodded, the man stretched out an arm and pointed in one direction.
"About an hour's walk and you'll be there."
With those words the man said nothing more, only sipped his drink. Najin turned his head to look in the direction the man had pointed.
A place of twisted terrain and desolated land stretching endlessly. For now Najin simply set off without a word. How long had he walked? Glancing up at the sky without thinking, Najin stopped in his tracks. He had no choice but to stop.
The sky was cracked.
Fissures ran through the blue sky, the cracks stretching far into the distance.
"We're almost there."
Merlin said so.
Najin started walking again. But before long he had to stop once more. A single boundary line was drawn across the ground. Whoever had drawn it, the boundary stretched far as if it bisected the world.
"That? The first Sword Saint drew it."
Merlin smirked.
"He saw Arthur drawing the boundary of Kamran and decided he had to draw one too — so he just went and did it, and this is the result."
A sword stroke whose trace remained even after a thousand years.
How, in what manner, did one have to swing a sword to leave a mark like this? He couldn't tell. After staring at the boundary line for a moment, Najin took a long breath.
Then he stepped outside the boundary line.
One step.
One footfall.
The moment he set foot outside the world —
"······!"
Najin's eyes flew wide.
Thump, thump, thump — his heart pounded violently, and the mana within his body churned madly. Bloodshot veins stood out in his pupils, and every sense in his body strained to its limit.
The air inverted.
The flow of mana reversed.
Every sense screamed.
Then — crack — something split. Najin looked toward the sound. His skin was cracking. No — not his skin. His flesh was slowly crumbling.
"Wrap mana around your whole body."
Najin quickly coated himself in mana.
Only then did the cracking stop.
"Here you always have to keep mana wrapped around you. Or else adapt your body to this place entirely. Well… thanks to Excalibur you could last a few months without wrapping mana, so if you want to try it you can."
Not that I'd recommend it.
As Merlin muttered, Najin slowly regulated his breathing. It was disorienting. He had only taken a single step, and the common sense he knew felt shattered.
"It's always like this here. That's the kind of place it is."
Merlin gave a bitter smile and stood right beside Najin.
"And it's still too early to be shocked."
She pointed upward with a finger.
Najin slowly raised his head. It was not only the flow of the area that had inverted in an instant. The landscape he had seen from beyond the boundary and the landscape he saw after stepping inside were completely different.
Desert and greenery coexisted; places lashed by blizzards coexisted with bone-dry wastelands. And most striking of all… structures that entered his vision in defiance of perspective.
A giant sword driven into the earth, a broken spear, arrows, chains, a scythe… weapons of every kind.
"Symbols of the constellations. That means 'this is our territory, so know you won't have fun if you come in' — a warning of sorts."
While explaining that, Merlin pointed at the sky once more. As if to say look at the sky first and save that scenery for later.
So he did.
Najin raised his head and looked at the sky.
And he could understand why Merlin had told him to look at the sky. A sky split at will. Like a shattered pane of glass the sky was broken, and every fracture was stained black.
Between the blue sky existed black night skies.
And in those night skies, shining stars were embedded. Stars gleaming in their own colors. Najin thought those stars looked like eyes.
"That's accurate."
Huh? What?
"Accurate. Those are eyes."
Merlin shrugged.
Then she snapped her fingers with a crisp sound. The veil Merlin had wrapped around Najin's soul lifted. In that instant, Najin gasped as sensations flooded in all at once.
Gazes. He could feel gazes.
Not one. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of gazes. Those gazes began from the sky. Every single one of those shining stars was a gaze. Hundreds of stars were watching Najin.
"Outside the world, the Outer Land."
Merlin spread her arms wide.
"Welcome to the damn land of the constellations."
The ancient constellation who held the most stars after King Arthur smiled bitterly.