Demon Hunt (6)
Jarkan’s neck was severed.
Having lost the neck that held it up, his head could not bear its own weight and plunged to the ground. The earth melted moments earlier by Jarkan’s spell was still soft and yielding, and his head sank into it with a wet, unresisting splat.
That was Jarkan’s end. The end of a black mage who had lived more than a hundred years was pitiful. There are few deaths in this world that are not pitiful, yet Jarkan’s was a little more pitiful than most.
Pssshk.
The headless body crumbled to dust.
Humans leave corpses behind when they die. Those who deal with demons leave nothing. Soul and flesh alike had long since been offered as the price of the bargain.
A death that leaves nothing. It was also the price for abandoning conviction and taking the easy road.
“In a way, that demon knight you cut down back then might have been the lucky one,” Merlin observed, watching the scene.
“At least he left a corpse.”
Bernhaigen, whom Najin had slain with Excalibur.
Excalibur had cut down the very demon that had contracted with Bernhaigen. With the contract nullified, Bernhaigen had been able to die as a human. If meeting Najin had been his misfortune, then being able to die human because he met Najin had been his fortune. That was how Merlin put it.
Is that really fortune?
“Depends how you look at it.”
Najin flicked the blood from his blade with a short snap of the wrist.
However one chose to see it, Najin had won. He had won without drawing Excalibur, by his own strength alone. Feeling the growth in himself, he allowed a quiet swell of pride.
It was while that pride was still warm that a flicker of light winked at the edge of his vision. One of the black mages who had survived the chaos—no, could that even be called surviving?—a man already dying of blood loss was leveling the tip of his staff at Najin.
Najin started to move.
Slice.
The black mage’s body parted. A single line bisected the man and the ruined building he had been hiding in. As if that were not enough, the ground itself was scored in a perfect stroke. The sound arrived a beat later.
Kiiiiiiiiiiing!
Sword aura, fired beyond the speed of sound. It had come from the summit of the distant castle, crossing hundreds of meters in an instant. Caught in the half-started motion of a dodge, Najin simply blinked. Even seeing it with both eyes, the sight was hard to accept.
I’ve been thinking this a lot lately.
“Mm.”
Isn’t the gap between a Sword Master and a Sword Seeker ridiculously wide?
“Would a transcendent be called a transcendent for nothing? The climb from Sword Seeker to Sword Master isn’t split into three stages just for decoration. There are essentially three full stages wedged in between.”
Sprouting. Blooming. Full Bloom.
The three passages a Sword Seeker must walk to become a Sword Master.
“You know Roselyn Ascalo? That mercenary captain you’re friendly with. She’s a Sword Seeker too, yet she filleted three other Sword Seekers three-to-one. The only difference was that she’d already gone through Sprouting.”
She did, yeah.
“Exactly. Every time you climb a stage, it stops being fair to call them the same realm.”
Merlin kept going after that.
“It’s the same for mages, and speaking of mage circles—did you know the whole concept of circles wasn’t properly established for ages? The genius who finally codified it was a certain mage, and that mage happens to be the one talking to you right n—”
She rattled on about things he had never asked to know. As always, Najin let the monologue enter one ear and leave the other. While he was doing so, a soft tap sounded from far away.
Yuel leaped from the castle summit and landed lightly in front of him. The landing was elegant, nothing like Jarkan’s theatrical crash. Only her pure-white hair stirred; not even the hem of her coat was disturbed.
“Well done.”
She looked at Najin.
Her face was as expressionless as a doll’s, yet a faint smile curved the corners of her mouth. Then she clapped.
“It exceeded expectations. An excellent fight. My god is giving you a thumbs-up as well. In particular, He is providing a long and detailed description of how much He enjoyed the moment you cleanly split the head. Yes, I understand. I will relay that as well. Yes? Yes. Yes…”
Yuel’s brow furrowed slightly.
Still gazing at empty air, she muttered shortly,
“You’re noisy. Shut up.”
“Pardon?”
“Ah—not you. I was speaking to my god whispering in my ear.”
Watching her slap her own ears with her palms as if shooing insects, Najin felt an unexpected kinship. At that very moment Merlin was launching into yet another round of self-praise inside his head.
People who live year-round with a chattering constellation learn, of necessity, how to hear the star’s voice with one ear and discard it with the other.
Yuel and Najin were living proof. They lightly chewed over the voices of the stars ringing in their ears while looking at each other and carrying on a perfectly normal conversation.
“It was a fine spectacle. You seem to enjoy that style of combat. Fighting that makes use of the terrain, that creates variables. I used to enjoy the same sort of thing before I reached the realm of Sword Master. It brings back old memories.”
Yuel gave a deep, satisfied nod.
“I understand it has not been long since you became a Sword Seeker. Yet already you have achieved this much? I find myself wanting to watch more of your fights.”
“Pardon?”
“You have not used your full strength yet, have you? It feels as though you are hiding something. I do not know what it is, but you still look relaxed.”
The Sword Master’s eyes narrowed.
Yuel glanced at him sidelong.
“So, about that.”
“Yes.”
“How about a duel with me?”
“…You mean a duel, not a spar, correct?”
“Yes. I do not place great trust in my own self-control. I lack the confidence to regulate my power the way the Sword Saint does in a friendly match. I will limit my sword aura, but I cannot guarantee I will not kill you. Something that might kill the opponent is not a spar, so a duel it must be, no?”
Saying this, she stared straight at Najin.
The gaze was transparent. Expectation dripped from it so openly that one could practically read the thought behind her eyes.
I want to see the bottom of you. One duel? You might die, but still—one duel?
That was roughly how Najin’s ears translated her words, and Najin was not in the market for suicide.
“So? What do you say?”
“I’ll decline.”
“What a shame.”
Yuel sighed. The regret on her face looked entirely genuine.
Someone once compared black mages to mold, and Najin found the comparison exact.
Clearing them out was much like cleaning mold. Simply wiping the mold (black mages) that had illegally colonized the wallpaper (the city) was not enough. You had to remove the cause.
You tore off the wallpaper, lifted the boards, replaced wood that had drunk too much damp. Or you opened every window and drove the moisture from the house.
The work after a black-mage purge was the same. Burn every scrap of their research. Smash their workshops. Collapse their laboratories. Fail to do so and new black mages would soon arrive, crowing, “Is this the famous geomantic site where you can just freeload on leftover research?”
The workshop left behind by the seven-circle black mage Kephalon—once the terror of the Empire—had been put to excellent use by his juniors. That alone proved the point.
“I heard you are leaving for the Outer Land.”
So Najin was walking with Yuel.
As they walked she swung her sword now and then. Every casual stroke split open another building that looked like a research facility with a wet crack.
“Yes. I intend to head for the battlefield of the stars.”
“Is that so.”
The split buildings collapsed and came apart into fine dust. Where Yuel’s blade had passed, only powder drifted on the air.
“Then take care.”
She was not offering the ordinary warning that the Outer Land was dangerous. A Sword Master who had reached transcendence, who had wandered the Outer Land before and still stepped into it whenever she had a free moment, spoke instead.
“The Outer Land. The outside of the world. The deeper you go, the more you will be doubted.”
“Doubted?”
“Doubt of yourself. You may call it a denial of your own existence.”
The words were not easy to grasp. When Najin blinked, Yuel continued.
“You will not age from now on. You know this, yes?”
“I know that those who reach the realm of Sword Seeker are freed from aging.”
“Yes. Warriors and mages who climb past a certain height no longer grow old. They are freed from senescence. They are not perfect immortals, yet they become beings so close to immortality that they will never simply die of age.”
But, she said.
“And the world rejects that. Because it is not natural. Biologically, from the standpoint of the ecosystem, it is a clear error. To be born, to die, to return to nature, and for new life to be born again—that is the proper order of the world. From the world’s perspective, you and I are both ‘wrong’ existences.”
Error. That which is mistaken and warped.
Warped, and therefore not in accordance with reason.
“So it drives us out. Pushes us beyond its borders. The place where such people gather is the Outer Land. Not everyone, but most. Thus it becomes ‘the place where those who should have died still live.’”
A place infinitely close to the underworld.
“One may interpret it differently, but I personally think of it this way: the Outer Land is the place that does the work the world itself could not finish.”
“The work it could not finish…?”
“The death of those who do not die.”
She stopped walking.
Standing still, she looked straight at Najin.
“Do you know how a transcendent dies?”
“No. I don’t.”
“A transcendent does not die by ordinary means. On the Continent, perhaps. But in the Outer Land, free of the world’s rules, they are nearly immortal. That, however, applies only to physical death.”
What of a death that was not physical?
Yuel tapped her temple lightly with a fingertip.
“The moment one doubts one’s own existence. The moment one denies one’s own story. The moment one can no longer have confidence in the self—then a transcendent meets death.”
She gave her sword an idle swing.
A building split, came apart, and crumbled to powder.
“In the Outer Land, an existence that denies itself suffers erosion of the flesh. The body twists. It becomes something closer to a beast than a human. And in the end it loses itself entirely. Oblivion. Only then does a transcendent truly die.”
Perhaps that is why, she murmured, lifting her face to the sky. She gazed at the stars that filled the night and spoke quietly.
“Why do you suppose the stars burn so brightly? To light the darkness? I doubt it. Every time someone looks upon their star and turns over the great deeds held within it, the constellations feel their own existence more clearly. They are freed from the doubt that gnaws at them.”
So, she said with her usual blank face,
“Look at me. Remember me. The light the stars pour out is closer to a plea.”
Najin found himself glancing toward Merlin.
She was silent. Stories she had once told him rose unbidden in his mind.
Constellations are not as great as you think. Not as noble as you imagine. Sometimes they are uglier than any of you.
They are the ones bound to the Outer Land, to Camlann, forever craving the next step of a journey that will never end.
So that was what she had meant. While he was turning the thought over, Merlin, sensing his gaze, spoke.
“What that girl said isn’t everything. That isn’t the whole of the Outer Land, and stars shine for other reasons too. But…”
Merlin smiled bitterly.
“Most stars are like that. The sky is full of stars that were heroes once and are heroes no longer.”
Not so bad.
“What?”
Najin shrugged.
Among fakes, the real thing only shines all the brighter, doesn’t it?
Merlin blinked at the answer, then burst out laughing—half in disbelief, half in pure satisfaction.
Suddenly Yuel stopped.
She turned and looked at Najin squarely.
“That is why your choice surprises me. Most people begin preparing to leave for the Outer Land around the age of a hundred. By a hundred and twenty at the latest they set out. After that, remaining on the Continent causes the body to erode.”
Yet Najin was only eighteen.
Far too young to leave for the Outer Land.
Hearing this, Najin tilted his head slightly.
“If erosion begins at a hundred and twenty, how are you still on the Continent, Lady Yuel?”
As far as Najin recalled, Yuel was at least a hundred and fifty. The historical records alone stretched that far; including the unrecorded years, the common estimate placed her near two hundred.
If erosion began at a hundred and twenty, how was she still active on the Continent?
“Ah. I am an exception.”
She answered as if it were nothing of consequence.
“I am a rather peculiar case, so I will not be useful as a reference, but I live simply. Because I live simply I have no need to brood, and because I have no need to brood I have no need to doubt myself. I live by the proverb that ignorance and forgetfulness are blessings.”
Yuel looked at Najin and offered a faint smile.
“I live for the pleasures and joys of the moment. I have no particular interest in saving the world, in the profound mysteries of the sword, in secret wishes, or in grand ambitions. I do not know the exact principle, but I suspect that is why erosion never comes for me.”
Merlin, listening from the side, shook her head as if the girl were beyond hope.
“I don’t know the exact method either. Even from our perspective she’s a complete oddball.”
An oddball among oddballs even to the constellations. On the Continent she was treated as a slaughterer and a butcher; in the Outer Land she was treated as a freak. Najin could not help smiling.
“In any case.”
They had reached the main gate of Baldernus.
The city’s cleanup was finished. The purge was over. Standing before the gate, one step ahead on the road, Yuel looked back at Najin and said,
“In the Outer Land, do not doubt yourself. Many will try to shake you, to make you question, to break you. Do not be shaken.”
Or, she added with a smile,
“Becoming as simple as I am is also a method.”
“I’ll pass on that.”
“A shame. I almost had a chance to make a kindred spirit.”
The face that said it did not look particularly disappointed.
“Ah.”
Just as Najin was about to board the carriage, Yuel let out a short “Ah.” When he turned, she spoke as though something had just occurred to her.
“I nearly forgot this.”
She stretched out a hand and pointed at the sky.
Where her fingertip aimed, a vast constellation of ten stars burned—not in a single color but in a riot of hues, like fireworks frozen against the night.
Pointing at that star, Yuel said,
“In the Outer Land, beware the Revelry Emperor.”
The Revelry Emperor.
As she spoke the name she loosened the collar of her almost completely covered clerical uniform. The fabric slipped from one shoulder, revealing the pure white of her skin—and a long scar that ran across it.
Tracing the scar with a fingertip, she continued,
“If one had to name the most dangerous being in the Outer Land, that one would win without contest. This scar is also that one’s work. So if you ever meet that one, run.”
Yuel added,
“Unless you wish to become a jester.”