Outside the World, Outer Land (7)
An 8-Circle spell: Flicker.
Eight rings wreathed in flame spun with savage force. With every grinding collision of the rings, fire leapt free and burst into fireworks that stitched the sky in red. From the moment the witch raised her hand, the heavens were no longer blue, nor black.
Only red.
A merciless, all-consuming red claimed the sky.
Looking up at that scarlet expanse — so violently dyed it seemed ready to melt and pour down at any second — Najin let out a hollow laugh. Merlin had been right. This was not an enemy he could face as he was now.
How to fight it.
How to stop it.
How to escape it.
Nothing came to him. Even with the power to glimpse a sliver of the future, his mind remained blank. Drawing Excalibur would change nothing. Before a firestorm that would scorch heaven and earth alike, Najin was powerless.
So this is a Transcendent. This is a Witch.
The witch stood alone beneath the crimson sky — a Transcendent occupying a realm his present self could never hope to reach. Watching her, Najin smiled. It was not the laugh of a man gone mad, nor a howl of despair.
It was a sneer. A mockery.
Is this the height a thousand years of carving yourself down has brought you? Did a millennium plant you in that seat? Fine. I'll grant you that much. It's overwhelming. From where I stand, I can't even see a path that leads there.
But…
"Not much to it, really."
That was only true for now.
Don't imagine your thousand years will last forever. Holding that thousand years in place for fifteen minutes took nothing more than a mere eighteen years of life.
That's it. That's the way.
Merlin's laughter. Then the sound of someone driving a foot into the earth. Listening to that footfall, Najin smiled.
Najin had lost to the witch. His blade had never touched her; he had not drawn so much as a single drop of her blood. It had been a crushing defeat — and yet that defeat had not been meaningless.
Fifteen minutes. The time he had promised Gillette.
In those minutes, Najin had held the witch's attention, weathered her gestures, and forced the clock to keep turning. The time he bought was not worthless.
Shhk.
Because the one who would give that time its meaning had arrived on the field. With a quiet cutting sound, a single line was drawn between Najin and the witch. Along that one stroke — that single line — a storm surged forth and drove the heat away.
Then, thud.
Between Najin and the witch, at the very heart of the battlefield, someone took a step. The step itself was light, but the weight of the presence was anything but. The moment the man appeared, the scales that had tipped so far one way snapped back into balance.
The Sword Master of a forgotten kingdom: Kirchhoff.
To face a Transcendent, you needed another Transcendent.
A superhuman who had reached transcendence with a single sword had arrived on the field.
Some three hundred years ago, a nation was destroyed by a fallen star. The destruction came quietly, and the very fact that such a country had ever existed was erased from human memory. That was the authority of the star that had intervened in its fall.
Oblivion and incineration.
A star bearing that power destroyed a nation and wished for every trace of its existence to vanish from the world without a mark. Under ordinary circumstances, that wish should have been fulfilled.
Memory, evidence, remnant — all of it should have disappeared.
But the star's wish was only half granted.
The world forgot that such a nation had ever stood, yet the proof that it had truly existed refused to vanish from history. And so the world, through records and chronicles, remembered that the nation had been real.
The name of the forgotten kingdom was Rondinel.
The Forgotten Kingdom, Rondinel.
The reason the records of Rondinel were never fully erased — the reason those records were never dismissed as pure fiction — rested on the existence of a single man.
The Sword Master of a forgotten kingdom: Kirchhoff.
Rondinel's sole survivor. The living witness that Rondinel had been real. The Sword Master who announced that truth to the world with every swing of his blade.
"It's been a while, Witch."
Kirchhoff, stepping into the fray, curled the corner of his mouth. Looking at the man's back as he appeared before him, Najin knew at once. This was the "Kirchhoff" Gillette had spoken of.
"…Kirchhoff."
Ermina, the Witch of Flicker, furrowed her brow. She twisted her face and spat the words as if chewing them.
"Get lost. My business isn't with you — it's with that insolent little brat standing behind you."
"I don't particularly enjoy the graceless business of butting into someone else's fight… but then, isn't that just the nature of a battlefield?"
Kirchhoff raised his sword.
In an instant, his eyes narrowed to slits.
"And I always have business with you, Ermina. You can't pretend you don't know that."
The witch said nothing more.
She clicked her tongue and snapped her fingers. The moment her middle finger and thumb struck together with a sharp crack, the crimson sky came crashing down.
Flicker — the flame that extinguishes starlight.
Only then did Najin understand: the sky had not been dyed red. Fire had been blanketing the heavens all along. The sight of that sky-covering blaze plummeting toward the earth was at once wondrous and grotesque.
"A rough welcome."
Beneath the falling sky, Kirchhoff simply raised his sword. Settling into his stance, he glanced back over his shoulder.
"You there, boy."
"…Yes?"
"I'll thank you later for buying me the time. Run. I don't expect I'll have the leisure to protect you while I fight."
"I'd love to, believe me."
Najin gave a bitter smile.
"But my body won't move. Sadly."
He had driven himself past every limit. His flesh had hit its wall long ago, and with flame-bolts embedded throughout his body, even twitching a finger was agony.
"I don't think you'll need to worry about that."
Kirchhoff smiled.
Najin understood the meaning of that smile soon enough — because a chain came flying from somewhere with a metallic rattle and wrapped around his arm.
Whoosh!
The chain went taut and yanked Najin's body backward in a sharp pull. Where the chain dragged him, he found the Chain Unit that had survived the battle with the witch — and Gillette, their commander.
"Fall back! We're falling back!"
Gillette hoisted the immobilized Najin onto his back and started running, desperate to put as much distance as possible between them and the battlefield. From Gillette's back, Najin twisted around to look behind him.
There, the battle of Transcendents was unfolding.
There lay the realm he would one day have to reach.
Najin burned into his vision the image of a swordsman swinging his blade against the fire that blanketed the sky. With eyes wide open, he watched the sword of a man who had attained transcendence.
Shhk.
Kirchhoff swung, and a single stroke of sword-light that reached the heavens split the flames. As the bisected fire rushed inward to fill the void, he swung again.
With every cut of his blade, a line was drawn.
Line crossed line and began to connect.
Every time he swung, wind roared. Every time he carved a single line, the flames parted and the heat was driven back. With every handspan his sword advanced, the crimson sky was forced a handspan farther away.
…Ah.
Najin let out a low sound.
There stood a swordsman carving apart, alone, the fire that had smothered the sky. An unshakable Transcendent — the realm he would one day have to surpass — was unfolding right before his eyes.
Someday.
Surely, in a future not far off.
A battlefield he would face again.
Because he could not yet stand on that field, Najin simply engraved their battle into both his eyes — determined not to forget the storm that pressed in, or the heat of this moment.
Once they had withdrawn far enough to be safe, Najin and the Chain Unit rejoined allied forces and reached the encampment. The soldiers willingly gave Najin a tent and lent him their priests.
The removal of the flame-bolts lodged in his body.
Emergency treatment for burns and other wounds.
By the time the treatment was finished and Najin could barely hold himself upright, Gillette came to the tent. Behind him stood the soldiers of the Chain Unit.
"Thank you."
The first words out of Gillette's mouth were gratitude. He bowed his head toward Najin.
"We survived because of you. Our allies withdrew safely, and even the Chain Unit — which had steeled itself for total annihilation — came through with half its number still alive. All of it is thanks to the time you bought us."
Gillette raised his head.
Soot covered his body, and one of his arms was gone. When Najin's gaze drifted to the stump, Gillette merely shrugged.
"One arm is a cheap price. I was ready to die, and somehow I lived. Bowing a hundred times wouldn't be enough."
"…Is that so?"
"Of course it is. You don't seem to grasp just how extraordinary what you did was…"
Gillette gave a wry smile.
"On the small scale, you saved me and the soldiers of the Chain Unit. On the large scale, you saved the hundreds — thousands — of allies who were falling back. Every time the witch so much as gestured, dozens, hundreds of soldiers were swept away… and you took those blows, over and over. Didn't you?"
This is an impossible feat.
Saying so, Gillette clapped Najin on the shoulder.
"It's enormous. You saved an allied force that was about to be wiped out. Those fifteen minutes you held were worth more than anything. The proof is standing right here — me, the Chain Unit, and every soldier who made it out alive."
Gillette meant every word.
Najin fell silent, unsure how to respond. Something about it felt awkward. He had been through plenty of battles, but this was the first time he had saved people.
No — I've fought to rescue people before, more than once…
But this was different somehow.
His desperate struggle had saved lives. Because he had held that ground, hundreds of people had lived. The weight of those sentences was unfamiliar to Najin.
Of course it was. That had never been his intent.
He had simply followed his convictions. He hadn't wanted to run. He hadn't liked what he saw. Those were the reasons he had thrown himself onto the field. The thought of saving them might have been somewhere in the mix, but it hadn't been the center of it.
It's a little…
Perhaps that was why Gillette's gratitude sat uncomfortably with him. He hadn't swung his sword purely to keep them alive.
"Well, the truth is…"
Najin put that feeling into words. Accepting the thanks while leaving it covered up pricked at his conscience. And as he spoke, Merlin stood beside him, simply smiling.
"…So that's how it is. I didn't swing my sword thinking I would save all of you. The gratitude feels a bit more than I deserve."
When Najin finished, Gillette blinked — then burst out laughing. As if he couldn't believe it. As if he'd just discovered a rare breed of oddball.
"Well now. I've been so busy watching you do the impossible that I forgot — you're still young, aren't you?"
"Sorry? What do you mean by…"
"What does intent matter? The result is that we survived because of you. That's what counts."
Gillette chuckled as he spoke.
He had lost an arm in the battle and carried burns across his skin, yet the laugh was easy. And it wasn't only him. The soldiers of the Chain Unit simply smiled at Najin's words.
"It isn't more than you deserve at all. Gratitude is the only proper response, and you have every right to receive it. So straighten your shoulders and say it without shame."
Say what?
"That today, in this place, I saved hundreds of lives. You have every right to say those words."
Like a hero out of the old tales.
Like Arthur, who once raced across the continent — today, you saved countless lives. That was what Gillette was telling him. Najin listened quietly, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck…
"Is that so."
And then he smiled.
You saved hundreds of people today. It was not a bad resonance at all. It was a good one.