The Lost Ones (1)
Merlin had said it once before.
That she could not teach him how to use the stars. It was the same reason she could not teach him how to wield a mindscape, she had explained.
“As I told you before, the fundamental parts are something you have to fill in yourself. That hasn’t changed. But just as I couldn’t teach you how to handle a mindscape, yet I could still show you how to give it form…”
Merlin flicked a finger.
At her fingertip, a blue constellation flared to life.
“I can at least tell you what a star is. How I handle this power. You fill in the foundation yourself—but I can teach you a direction.”
Najin listened closely.
Merlin normally ran her mouth with a lot of useless talk, bragged endlessly about herself, and sometimes even looked a little pathetic…
“You just thought something incredibly rude, didn’t you.”
“I did not.”
Regardless, Merlin was a constellation who possessed eleven stars. Save for Arthur and the Witch of the Abyss, she held more stars than anyone.
So when that Great Constellation (her own emphatic claim—anyone with more than ten stars, she insisted, was no ordinary constellation but a Great Constellation) spoke about the stars, it was worth listening to.
“The feats you accomplish become stars. A star carries your story within it. So drawing power from a star is, in a way, reenacting the feat you achieved.”
“Reenacting?”
“Yeah. Reenacting. Something like this, for instance.”
One of her eleven stars shone.
“I’ve drowned countless demons. There were times I raised a great flood and sank an entire demon fortress whole. This is the star I gained from that. And when this star shines, the demons always say the same thing.”
A wave. The wave is coming.
“To them I was the wave—an unstoppable disaster.”
Like that, Merlin said.
“The story held inside a star, the landscape someone imagines when they look at it, and above all the mindscape you yourself see when you look upon your own star. All of it mixes together until the star becomes a single story.”
“And once it becomes a story?”
“Think of this world as a novel written out in lines of prose. The conversation you and I are having gets recorded inside quotation marks, and when the dialogue ends, a sentence describing the situation follows. ‘Merlin said.’ Something like that, right?”
Merlin said.
“And handling a star means inserting your story between those lines of prose. Carving a firm, unshakable self that won’t be swept away by dozens or hundreds of words and sentences.”
She gestured. Stars flared at her fingertips. All eleven of them scattered deep-blue light as they flickered.
“——————.”
Within the flickering light Merlin spoke. She spoke, yet her voice was never pronounced.
It was simply written.
"The wave is coming. A wave that will sweep everything away."
And then—
The wave came crashing.
A colossal shadow fell across the underground city. Only belatedly did Najin realize the shadow was cast by a wave tall enough to reach the sky. The wave blotted out the sky of the underground city. Veiling the stars, it slammed down upon everything below.
The wave thundered. A torrent swept through the streets.
Buildings caught in the surge collapsed. Nothing could keep its shape before that enormous flood. Everything in sight crumbled. The wave submerged an entire city. It was submersion and drowning all at once.
Caught in the wave, Najin was forcibly hurled out of the mindscape. He opened his eyes in reality and expelled the breath he had been holding.
—Roughly like that.
Beside him Merlin was still flicking her finger. Looking at her, Najin’s eyes held genuine awe for the first time in a long while. He often forgot, but this person really was extraordinary.
—Of course, not every constellation can raise phenomena on that scale the way I do. Most of them use their stars simply to define themselves more clearly—‘I am an eternally burning flame,’ or ‘I am an unbreakable sword,’ that sort of thing.
But I have to be a little greater than that, don’t I?
Muttering as much, Merlin grinned.
—A Great Constellation of my caliber doesn’t just use the story of a single star. We don’t stop at reinforcing ourselves—we raise vast phenomena.
She shrugged.
—The star I gained drowning countless demons, the star I gained submerging an entire city, the star I gained when I raised a wave that swept away the Witch’s army, and so on. Linking the stories held in multiple stars…
After bragging for quite a while longer, Merlin noticed the interest rapidly draining from Najin’s eyes and wrapped it up.
—Anyway. Remember what stars you’ve gained, and what stories they hold.
Najin looked at his own stars.
One was Challenge. The other was the Star of Dragonslaying.
—In the Outer Land that denies everything about you, only the stars you’ve earned will affirm you.
Najin arrived at the boundary of the Outer Land.
A different place from the last time he had set foot there. Not the front line where imperial forces were stationed, but a path leading into strategically worthless badlands—and also the route closest to the Battlefield of Stars.
Najin stepped toward the opaque membrane.
Outside the boundary line. The moment he crossed it, the air changed. The flow of mana reversed. That much was the same as his previous visit to the Outer Land.
“….”
Yet his senses did not scream.
His heart did not hammer wildly.
The mana inside him did not surge; no blood vessels stood out in his eyes, and his senses did not stretch to their limit. Najin silently raised a hand.
Back then, without wrapping himself in mana his skin would crack and his body crumble. Now, even without any mana coating, his body remained whole.
“Hoo…”
Najin let out a short breath.
Breathing itself was no longer difficult. Possessing a star meant he had earned the right to set foot in the Outer Land. Najin understood the meaning of that.
I don’t feel any gazes either.
In the past, the moment he entered the Outer Land countless stars had fixed their eyes on him. Now he felt none of them. Then he had been a conspicuous outsider; now he was not.
A sky shattered to pieces and dyed black.
Among the countless stars shining overhead, Najin’s own stars shone as well. They felt closer here than they had on the Continent. Feeling his stars, Najin walked on.
—The Outer Land is divided roughly into three regions. You know that, right?
Yes. You explained it before.
—Good. Simply put: the entrance, the middle, and the depths. From here on you’re heading into the middle region.
Near the boundary—the entrance of the Outer Land—a front line had formed where the Demon King’s forces clashed with the Empire. That was where Najin had once fought with the Wyvern Corps, and Merlin had said the influence of constellations was weak there.
—But from the middle region onward it’s different.
The middle region. Past the front line, deeper in.
That place was what people called the Battlefield of Stars. A land where countless stars were born and then set. Where the influence of constellations grew strong, and where transcendents were occasionally sighted.
That was Najin’s destination now.
Depending on which direction one entered the Outer Land, the time required to reach the middle region varied. The path Najin now walked was called the Path of the Ascetic—a road that skipped the entrance entirely and led straight to the Battlefield of Stars.
It was also a road many heroes of the past had walked.
As he continued along it, Najin could feel the scenery gradually changing. The sky that had still held some blue, only partially split to reveal the night, was coming to an end. The sky turned pure black. A complete night sky stretched all the way to the horizon.
The sun did not rise. There was no blue sky. Yet the stars that filled it took the sun’s place.
Stars burning in every color. Their fierce light illuminated the ground. Najin kept walking. How long had he walked? Sound reached a land that had been filled only with silence.
Kang. Kaaang!
The clash of metal. A sound that could only be made by humans. Najin turned his gaze toward it. There stood a knight in battered armor, surrounded by other humans and fighting for his life.
“I am Graf! Graf, knight of Kurtan!”
The knight’s sword flashed as he raised his voice. Blue sword-aura. A color familiar to Najin—Ivan’s sword-aura had been exactly that shade.
Whoosh.
The blue sword-aura blazed like fire. Sword-aura given form—the mark of a Sword Seeker. The knight who called himself Graf swept his fiercely burning blade through the encirclement, cutting them down one by one.
Those fighting Graf were strong in their own right, yet Graf was on another level. Even to Najin’s eyes he was a powerhouse.
Before long the fight ended. Graf’s victory. Charred corpses lay scattered across the ground. Najin had been watching from a distance when Graf, still catching his breath, suddenly whipped his head toward him.
“Don’t just stand there watching—come at me fair and square. One more opponent is nothing.”
He leveled his sword at Najin.
Najin raised both hands.
“A misunderstanding. I have no intention of ambushing you, sir.”
“Not their comrade?”
“No. I only just set foot in the Outer Land. I have nothing to do with them.”
“…You just arrived in the Outer Land?”
Graf’s eyes narrowed.
He quickly looked Najin over. Equipment free of rust. Clothes that looked almost new. Slowly, Graf lowered his sword.
“You do look it. Well, this area is close to the boundary.”
Graf gave a short laugh.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone from outside. I am Graf. Back on the Continent I belonged to an order of knights called Kurtan. Do you know the name Kurtan?”
“I know them as an order active around a hundred and seventy years ago.”
“Huh. A hundred and seventy years. Has it been that long? Do you know any more of Kurtan’s story? Recent news, perhaps.”
“I know a little.”
“Is that so?”
He beckoned Najin closer.
Permission to approach. Najin nodded and walked toward him.
“What became of Kurtan? Do they still command the same renown? I’m curious who the current grandmaster is.”
“I’ve heard they still distinguish themselves on several battlefields. Among the Empire’s knightly orders they’re said to rank within the top five.”
“Hahahaha! Even after a hundred and seventy years Kurtan remains the same. Of course. That is Kurtan. Valiant Kurtan. Our swords know the enemies they must strike…”
He glanced at Najin.
The motto of the Kurtan Order. A question: do you know the rest? Having read it in a book, Najin answered smoothly.
“Sing of glory, knights of Kurtan.”
“That’s it! I like this fellow already.”
Graf laughed heartily.
As they exchanged a few more words, Najin glanced at the corpses lying at the man’s feet.
“May I ask why you were fighting them?”
“Ah. Of course.”
Graf said,
“They insulted my pride. Living in the Outer Land, what kind of knight are you, what kind of Kurtan—mocking me like that. Then they must be punished. Kurtan’s sword knows when it must be swung.”
“I see.”
Najin’s eyes narrowed slightly.
He looked at one of the bodies. No—not a body. Even with flesh charred black, the man was still twitching. His mouth worked, as if trying to speak.
“You said you just entered the Outer Land?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then you’re ignorant of this land’s common sense. In this place, you see, dying is rather difficult. Killing is just as hard.”
He drove his sword into the spine of the man sprawled on the ground with a wet thrust. The man’s vocal cords had burned away so he could not scream, but his body convulsed violently to express the pain.
“No matter how much you cut them, no matter how thoroughly you burn them, they don’t die. Given enough time they revive. So how do you kill them?”
Graf swung his sword.
Impaled on the tip was a heart.
“The heart. Nothing is more important than the heart in this land. Even if arms and legs are torn off, even if the head is gone—never lose the heart. That is common sense here.”
The moment the heart was lost, the convulsing corpse went limp.
“Of course the real monsters keep moving just fine even with their hearts ripped out, but for most people, take the heart and they die.”
Saying so, Graf plucked the heart from his sword tip with his hand. Then he brought it to his mouth.
Crunch.
He bit into the heart. The way one eats food. The way one tears meat. Or the way one bites into an apple. Najin’s eyes narrowed. At that look Graf blinked, as if asking why he was being stared at that way.
Najin pointed at the heart in Graf’s hand. Only then did understanding dawn; Graf exclaimed, “Ah!”
“Ah, aah! I’ve lived in the Outer Land so long I forgot. Right. On the Continent this would be a monstrous act. Defiling a corpse and eating its heart? Something only savages would do. Not the act of a knight.”
Graf laughed awkwardly.
“But in the Outer Land it’s only natural. Do you know what’s inside a heart? Mana, nourishment, life itself. The heart is life, and taking a heart is taking a life.”
Graf bit into the heart again. He chewed and swallowed. Licking blood from his glistening lips, he said,
“Wouldn’t it be a waste to throw it away? In this Outer Land nothing is more valuable than a heart.”
His tone was utterly calm. His expression was that of a man stating the obvious. In other words, every part of the act felt natural.
“If you take a heart, you can obtain starlight.”
Graf swung his sword at Najin.
That motion, too, was completely natural. Natural enough to feel like just another part of the conversation.