The Essence of Three Hundred Years (3)
Kruenbel was an outstanding knight.
He was the very model of knighthood, held in high regard by his comrades and the imperial court alike. He understood pride, he understood honor, and he understood the value of silence.
Kruenbel believed that anything spoken past the lips must be kept. He never spoke lightly, nor at length. He always chose short, concise words—only those he intended to uphold. That was why he was the Silent Knight.
"A knight is one who does not yield."
Once, when his order's commander asked, "What is a knight?", Kruenbel answered:
"To advance steadfastly without yielding. To walk the righteous path without ever retreating. Even if that path leads straight to hell—if it is the right path, a knight willingly walks it."
"Even when unbearable hardship and adversity strike?"
"Yes. Because overcoming them is what makes one a knight."
It was no empty platitude.
Kruenbel was a man who always kept the words he spoke, and the "chivalry" he had uttered before his commander he gladly put into practice.
He hunted fallen stars that threatened humanity.
He hunted renowned black mages.
He delivered death to transcendent beings who had gone mad.
At the boundary of the Outer Land he slaughtered the Empire's enemies.
He protected the Emperor from the pillars of the Empire who had raised the banner of rebellion, and he reclaimed the capital occupied by traitors, leading the Dawn War to victory.
Through countless great deeds he advanced. Wielding a banner-spear flying the Empire's flag, he marched. He was the Empire's spear, its guardian, and its hero. On the day he followed his commander into the Outer Land, the aged Emperor himself came out and saw him off with tears.
"Do not grieve that I am leaving. I am not leaving. On those outer lands I will face the Empire's enemies. I remain a knight of the Empire."
To the weeping old Emperor—
to the Emperor who, in Kruenbel's memory, was still young and full of vigor—Kruenbel knelt and swore.
"Glory to the Empire. I will go a little farther, Your Majesty."
One hundred and fifty years on the Continent he lived as a knight.
No one could find fault with Kruenbel's achievements, and the deeds carved into the stele set in the Empire's deepest heart would be remembered for eternity.
That was how it should have been.
That was how it must have been.
The Outer Land denied Kruenbel's entire life. He cut down countless demons, granted rest to fallen heroes, and marched without end—yet he could not march forever.
The Revelry Emperor and her knight, Quixote.
The rulers of the Outer Land barred the path of the Golden Horn Knights. Countless demons and constellations who followed the Revelry Emperor attacked them.
Kruenbel fought with all his might. The proud Golden Horn Knights never yield. Look—the commander is swinging his sword. Whenever he swings his sword we have always won. We have won gloriously. So advance, Golden Horns… Crying out thus, Kruenbel blew his horn trumpet.
They won the battle.
But they lost the war.
At last they brought down the stars that followed the Revelry Emperor, slaughtered the demons, and set foot before the Revelry Emperor herself—only to realize in that moment that they had walked into a trap.
Oblivion and incineration.
Their entire lives were denied. The great deeds they had written vanished. No one would remember them any longer. The stars they had carved into the night sky lost their light and began to fall. The commander, Kruenbel, and a few others endured, but not everyone could.
His comrades became the dead. The comrades who became the dead became jesters of the Revelry Emperor. Kruenbel raged at that fact. He hated those who had stripped his comrades of their nobility. Kruenbel blew his horn trumpet with furious force.
To let the enemy know he had come.
Kruenbel advanced. He marched without stopping. Even as he was forgotten, even as he was erased from the records, even with a future of becoming one of the dead waiting for him, he advanced. Even if that place was a road leading to ruin, willingly walking it was the chivalry he spoke of.
"Ah, how utterly ridiculous!"
The Knight of Revelry mocked him. The Revelry Emperor prepared for Kruenbel an unending stage. Across a wasteland where the laughter of jesters and absurd songs forever rang, Kruenbel galloped. Erasing their laughter with his horn trumpet, Kruenbel advanced.
His head was severed. His body was burned. Holes were punched through him; he was carved into hundreds of pieces. Yet Kruenbel, who had ascended to the rank of constellation, replaced the severed parts with starlight and continued his journey.
The commander who had led him vanished. The comrades who had followed behind him vanished. Yet Kruenbel did not stop. The moment he himself knelt, the Golden Horn Knights would have yielded to the Revelry Emperor. That could not be allowed. The Golden Horn Knights were the Empire. So long as he wore the Empire's banner, he could never kneel.
Until no human part of him remained.
Until the lost head would regenerate no more.
After walking and walking through hell, he finally halted.
Kruenbel looked back. And he realized. Though he had walked forward across decades, he had not taken a single step—he had been nothing more than an actor upon the Revelry Emperor's stage.
He stood in place.
For decades, without taking even one step.
The hell he had crossed had been nothing but illusion.
Yet the wounds gained while crossing that hell remained. The severed neck would not reattach.
Then how much is reality and how much is illusion? Was my memory truly forgotten? In truth, were the Golden Horn Knights nothing but illusion as well? Where… how far…
Kruenbel could no longer be certain.
He could no longer distinguish how much was reality and how much was illusion. Once sprouted, doubt swallowed him whole.
Ah… ahhh…
Kruenbel screamed. Even three hundred seventeen beheadings had not broken his will, but the moment he realized the entire journey had been meaningless, Kruenbel broke.
Six stars fell from the sky.
The fallen stars were buried in the Graveyard of Stars.
The Silent Knight Kruenbel died, and only the Horn-blowing Star remained in his place.
"You fell to the Revelry Emperor?"
"What?"
"You and the Golden Horn Knights. I'm asking if the reason you were broken was the Revelry Emperor."
Najin rubbed his neck, frowning. Perhaps because the landscape he had seen in the dream had felt so overwhelmingly real, he kept checking whether his head was still attached.
"It was, yes."
"How did it happen?"
"You know how to twist the knife."
"Honestly speaking, I don't really understand. First of all, you're a Sword Master yourself, and that Kruenbel fellow was a transcendent, wasn't he? With six stars, no less. I don't know how many stars you have, but it couldn't have been fewer than that."
"True enough."
"So why?"
Knowing it was rude, Najin still asked.
The dream he had just had had only deepened his questions. At that, the helmeted knight finally let out a long sigh and spoke.
"The Revelry Emperor is a demon who embodies the concept of revelry. Revelry itself isn't much. Making things ridiculous is about all it does. The problem was that, upon gaining ten stars, that concept of revelry came to contain far more."
"Far more?"
"Theater. Stage. Performance. Mockery. Deception. Masks. Jesters. Hallucinations. Illusions. Dreams. Comedy. Tragedy. Play…"
He pronounced dozens of words one after another.
"The Revelry Emperor bound all of them under the single word 'revelry.' Her authority no longer merely makes people dance ridiculously; it has reached the point of denying an entire lifetime."
Something like this, for instance.
"She creates a stage and turns you into an actor upon it. A stage made of illusion—yet it is not illusion. Because it is a stage with substance, death there is death in reality. She blurs the boundary between reality and fantasy… confuses you as to how much is illusion and how much is reality, what is genuine and what is false. Deception."
"That…"
"Yes. She makes doubt take root. So that you can no longer be certain of yourself. And on top of that…"
He spat the words as if chewing them.
"The Revelry Emperor formed an alliance with a star that holds the powers of incineration and oblivion. The authority wielded by that unknown star can also be used by the Revelry Emperor."
The helmeted knight rapped his own head.
"She makes things forgotten, or makes one forget. Both are extremely effective means of attack in this Outer Land. The very story a star possesses is denied, and one is made to deny that story oneself. What happens then?"
"…You become one of the dead."
"Exactly. The Revelry Emperor leads her opponents into becoming the dead. Once they are the dead, she takes those she fancies as her jesters. She has been doing this for hundreds of years. Long before I set foot on this land, and after I did as well, the Revelry Emperor has been swelling her forces that way."
Najin swallowed hard.
"Isn't that… a serious problem?"
"It is a serious problem."
"Why doesn't the Empire act? What about the stars of the night sky? And the stars of the Round Table…"
The last example was also a question for Merlin. In place of Merlin, the helmeted knight answered.
"The Empire will have attempted to subjugate the Revelry Emperor. But no one remembers it. Not even I. The only thing I remember is the Golden Horn Knights, yet there must have been countless attempts before that as well. All of them simply forgotten."
He shrugged.
"The stars of the night sky will not act because they fear the Revelry Emperor. Against a constellation with ten stars, how could they? They are busy enough protecting their own safety. That leaves the stars of the Round Table. But… that is impossible as well."
"Why?"
"Because they must hold back the Calamity Star. Simply guarding the boundary line keeps them busy enough; they cannot be entrusted with problems inside the Outer Land."
Najin fell silent.
Watching Najin's complicated expression, the helmeted knight smiled bitterly and spoke.
"Is it very different from what you imagined? The Outer Land."
"Honestly, yes. It is."
Najin looked up at the sky.
He could no longer purely admire the stars shining in that night sky. Just as Merlin had said, they now looked like selfish stars too busy protecting their own safety.
At the very least, they seemed far from heroes.
Perhaps sensing something in Najin's eyes, the helmeted knight spoke quietly.
"Not every star in that night sky was always like that. They were not all like that from the beginning."
The helmeted knight looked up at the sky as he spoke.
"We came here believing we could become anything. Here we dreamed of becoming heroes. Well, we were all men of some renown on the Continent, weren't we? Everyone must have set foot in this Outer Land carrying grand dreams."
There were those whose lifespans had run out and who had been pushed onto this land. Such people were surely many. Yet even those, the helmeted knight said, had carried dreams.
"Long ago King Arthur pushed the boundary of the Outer Land outward, crossed the Outer Land itself, and at last reached Kamran. There she sealed the Witch of the Abyss who sought to destroy this world. Who does not know the life story of that great hero? We know it too. We also wished to become heroes like King Arthur."
Everyone did.
"To continue achieving great deeds, hang stars in the sky, and advance farther still. To go on and on… and stand upon the battlefield where King Arthur halted. Upon the stage the Hero-King prepared for us, to gladly achieve the same great deeds as she. Everyone came to the Outer Land imagining that."
But, he said,
"Reality was not so kind."
Everyone thought they would be different.
The Outer Land shoved reality into their faces.
They faced calamities that had brought countless heroes to their knees. They met walls that could not be surmounted no matter what. They could only confirm how great King Arthur had been in the past, and the gulf between that great hero and themselves.
"Before that gulf countless heroes groaned and compromised. On this land where even death cannot be rest, they chose to lift their feet and ascend into that night sky."
"…"
"Everyone simply found their own answer."
The stars of that night sky were not selfish from the start. They too had once been heroes.
"This place shoves reality at you. Not only here, of course. Again and again the world will shove reality at you."
He drew a line at Najin's feet.
"Stop here. Do not go farther. What spreads beyond is only a worse hell. Have you experienced many things inland and crossed over here? Here far more hells unfold. Far more horrific things abound."
This is the path a hero must walk.
"Do not cross the line. Halt. Abandon your ideals and accept reality. You have seen what becomes of those who live according to their ideals—will you truly walk that path? The Outer Land will constantly throw questions at you."
"So you're telling me to give up?"
"If that were giving up, would I be standing here like this?"
The helmeted knight shrugged.
"Well, the answer to that question is for you to give. No one else can give it for you."
The helmeted knight said,
"Agonize. Over what is right and what is wrong. How to advance. How far to hold ideals, and how far to compromise. Agonize without end."
Najin looked at the line the helmeted knight had drawn at his feet. A line. Do not cross the line. Stop here. He had heard words like those until they were drilled into his ears.
Do not cross the line.
Live as you are given.
Ivan had said that.
You think you're different? You're the same. The ones who fell here had dreams too. You think we were like this from the start? We… we also…
Druggy Hakan had cried that out.
It was not only those two. Countless people of the underground city had told Najin similar stories. We didn't want to end up like this either. Ideals are lofty and reality is heavy. To reach the high sky, the weight of reality chained to the ankles is simply too heavy; one only sinks.
In the end, you too will end up the same as us.
Najin looked out over the land of the Outer Land.
On this ground he felt a sense of déjà vu. A place where things pushed out and abandoned by the Continent piled up. A place like a landfill. It resembled Najin's starting point. Even the fact that there were those who dreamed even in a discarded place was the same.
The line drawn before him.
Let me correct myself, Najin.
Looking at that line, Najin unconsciously smiled.
Cross the line.
Reach for the place you cannot touch. Drive your fist into the faces of those who mutter that you should know your place. How far you can go is something only you know.
Najin rose to his feet.
Look to the heights and run. Climb higher, higher than anyone. You have the talent for it. Believe in the talent you possess.
And when you stand at the highest place, cry out:
That at your starting point, I, Ivan, was there.
Najin stepped across the line the helmeted knight had drawn. With a light laugh he said,
"I don't think there's any particular need to agonize."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. I already gave my answer a long time ago."
Najin tapped the sword bound at his waist as he spoke.
"You said you lost to the Revelry Emperor?"
"…It wasn't a complete loss. I put a hole through that Knight of Revelry bastard's eye, and I put a pretty little hole through the Revelry Emperor's heart as well."
"Still a loss, isn't it."
"Tsk."
"I'm going to win."
The helmeted knight fell silent.
"The more I hear the story, the more I feel that demon called the Revelry Emperor and I cannot coexist. She should have kept her villainy to a moderate level, don't you think?"
"You do know the Revelry Emperor is a constellation with ten stars, yes?"
"What of it?"
Najin shrugged.
"I'm nineteen with three stars. I don't see myself losing to some demon who lived hundreds of years and only managed to pile up ten."
At that answer the helmeted knight burst out laughing. Paying the laughter no mind, Najin continued.
"So, to raise my odds even a little—"
Najin drew his sword.
"Teach me the rest of the sword."
"Fine. I'll work you right up to the brink of death."
The helmeted knight raised his sword and beckoned.
"Follow me. Today will be harder still."