Interlude: On the Continent (1)
“Commander, what’s your dream?”
One day, while they marched through the Outer Land, Alderan paused at the question one of his subordinates had tossed his way. A dream, a dream… He traced back through old memories and let out a short, dry laugh. There had been one dream he had carried as a very young boy.
“To become a hero like King Arthur.”
When Alderan had spoken those words as a boy, the adults had laughed. They dismissed his dream as the reckless fancy of a child—something he would forget the moment reality set in.
But time passed, and now that he stood as the Imperial First Horn and a Sword Master of the Empire, no one laughed at Alderan’s dream any longer. It was no longer an idle fantasy.
The knights of the Golden Horn order who heard him answered with easy laughter of their own—“We knew you’d say something like that, Commander”—laughter free of mockery, the kind that said a man who led the Golden Horn Knights ought to aim that high.
“Ha, that’s our Commander for you. By now you could probably pull Excalibur itself, couldn’t you? I heard you almost got it halfway out when you were younger.”
Alderan waved their words away with a smile. He already knew the truth.
He was far stronger now than he had been then, yet even now he would never be able to draw Excalibur. Strength was not what the sword demanded. It demanded something wilder, something that could not be dressed up in lofty words like “qualification.”
Alderan had wanted to become a hero like Arthur.
But Excalibur wanted more than that.
It waited for someone who dreamed higher than the great hero who hung at the very peak of the sky—someone who would surpass Arthur and press on farther still, someone who possessed both the conviction and the raw capacity to do so.
Not a being who merely wished to become a hero equal to Arthur, but one who intended to climb higher still.
The moment Alderan sensed that truth, he also knew he could never be that person.
“I won’t be able to draw it. Excalibur.”
“If even you can’t draw it, Commander, who could?”
“Who knows. I’m curious myself.”
Alderan rose to his feet.
“I have no idea when that sword will be drawn, or by whom—but of one thing I’m certain.”
He settled his horned helm back onto his head and grinned.
“Whoever pulls that thing out is going to be an absolute bastard. The type you’d least want as a disciple. I almost feel sorry for whoever ends up as that brat’s master. They’re going to have one hell of a time.”
Anyone arrogant enough to think they could surpass King Arthur, and who actually had the talent to match that ambition, would of course be an insufferable genius. Whoever became that genius’s teacher would have their hands full.
While his men roared with laughter at the remark, Alderan shrugged and added one last line.
“Anyway, count me out. Absolutely not.”
Najin blinked slowly.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
He turned his head a fraction and saw warm sunlight streaming through the window—natural sunlight, the kind rarely seen in the Outer Land where only starlight filled the sky. Najin frowned.
His memories were hazy.
If he groped through the fog, the last thing that rose was Yuel’s back. He had strained every muscle in his eyes trying to stay conscious, but in the end he must have collapsed.
What happened after that? And where was this place?
It looked like an infirmary, yet he could not say exactly where.
“Ugh…”
Najin tried to sit up and failed. His entire body throbbed. The moment he winced, a brusque voice sounded beside his ear.
—That’s what you get for pushing yourself like that.
Najin rolled only his eyes toward the source of the voice. Merlin was perched on the edge of the bed.
—Your arm was about to fall clean off your shoulder, you know? Trying to imitate a Transcendent’s ultimate technique in that condition? Really? I swear, haah…
Merlin kept sighing and scrubbing her face with both hands. Even through the scolding, Najin could hear the relief threaded into those sighs—relief that he had opened his eyes at all. He managed a bitter smile.
Sorry.
—Oh, you’re real good with words, aren’t you?
She muttered that she couldn’t exactly hit him, then shook her head. Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at him.
—You were about to draw Excalibur, weren’t you?
…
Najin stayed silent.
—And you already knew that even if you had drawn it, you still wouldn’t have beaten the Revelry Emperor.
I knew.
—You also knew what would happen the moment you pulled that sword free, right?
He had. The instant he drew the blade, constellations many times more numerous than those who had gathered to kill the Revelry Emperor would have descended upon that land. Once he could barely imagine such a scene; after witnessing the Battlefield of Stars, he could picture it, however dimly.
A war that would literally turn heaven and earth upside down would have broken out. And in that war there would have been nothing he could do.
He had known it with his head, yet at the time the thought never surfaced. Or rather, he had simply decided it didn’t matter. White-hot rage had stripped him of reason—something he had never experienced before.
“…”
As Najin remained silent, Merlin let out a long breath.
—Still… considering how special the situation was, I’ll let it slide this time. It was a dead-end, and it came out of nowhere. I was preparing to descend myself.
I’m really sorry.
—If you know you’re sorry, then from now on you consult me first. You know how hurt I was back there? A lot?
Merlin rapped him lightly on the forehead, looking genuinely sulky.
—I feel the same things you do. I understand. So don’t you dare run ahead and leave me behind. I can put up with a lot, but not that.
It was her reverse scale.
—I’m your guide and your companion. Not some subordinate you drag around—someone who walks beside you. Got it?
Merlin leaned in. Her water-blue hair spilled forward like a curtain over his face until only her features filled his vision. Those piercing blue eyes were, for a moment, almost unnerving.
—Answer me.
Yes.
—Swear it. From now on we act together. Always.
I swear.
Only then did Merlin smile, satisfied.
—Good. Then I forgive you.
And then she added,
—You almost died more times than I can count, and watching you was pure hell…
Still, she whispered against his ear,
—You were magnificent. And I’m not saying that as Merlin your guide—I’m saying it as a Great Constellation of eleven stars.
A human who was not yet a Transcendent, a young star that had only just risen, had reversed the flow of the Battlefield of Stars. Merlin offered her praise freely; the feat deserved nothing less.
“Oh. Looks like you’ve come to.”
While he was still speaking with Merlin, the door opened and a familiar figure stepped inside—a woman with pure white hair. Yuel raised her one remaining hand in greeting.
One remaining hand.
One of Yuel’s arms was gone.
“I came both to explain what happened afterward and to ask you a few questions.”
Yuel dragged a chair over and sat beside Najin’s bed. Noticing his gaze fixed on her empty sleeve, she gave it a little shake.
“Ah, this is nothing. I cut it off myself.”
“……Pardon?”
“I was stabbed by the Jester Knight’s spear. The one he calls ‘Sancho’ is coated in an extreme poison; if I hadn’t severed the arm, the toxin would have spread through my entire body. The severed limb is undergoing purification at the Holy Blood Church’s main cathedral, so it should arrive in about a week.”
She spoke as if it were the most trivial matter in the world.
“Until then I’ll simply live as a one-armed woman. It’s no real inconvenience. Ring the bell by the bedside and a servant arrives at once. You should try it—quite convenient.”
There was indeed a small bell resting near Najin’s pillow.
“Where are we?”
“A church in a city near the Outer Land. Outside the Outer Land, in other words.”
So they were on the Continent after all.
Najin carefully pushed himself upright, propped his back against the headboard, and exhaled a long breath. His body still ached, but he wanted to hear this sitting up.
“May I ask what happened after that?”
“Of course. You were on that battlefield—you were its central figure. You have every right to know the outcome.”
She could have sent the report through someone else; that Yuel had come in person was itself an acknowledgment of the achievement Najin had wrought. He was the one who had dragged the Revelry Emperor into that place, and the one who had overturned the tide of battle.
“After you tore away the Revelry Emperor’s mask, the situation reversed. Led by Sir Kirchhoff, the constellations pressed her hard, and the advantage tipped. Realizing as much, the Revelry Emperor ultimately chose to flee.”
Together with Quixote, the Revelry Emperor retreated. In the process, Yuel said, they had inflicted meaningful damage.
“Quixote lost one star and suffered severe damage to another. The Revelry Emperor lost a total of seventeen stars, and eighty-four of her puppets were completely destroyed.”
She delivered the numbers without inflection.
“Even from a historical perspective this is remarkable. The last time the Revelry Emperor suffered meaningful harm was a hundred and fifty years ago. We still do not know who managed it or how, only that the records state her star trembled in the heavens.”
Najin already knew who had done it.
Listening, he opened his mouth.
“What became of Sir Alderan?”
“Alderan? You mean Alderan Basaglia? That man died long ago, did he not?”
Yuel tilted her head.
“……The knight whose helm I cut open. That one.”
“A knight? Ah—if you mean the corpse that went berserk right after you split its helm, it retreated with the Revelry Emperor. She dragged it away in pieces.”
Najin’s expression hardened like stone.
Reading that look, Yuel asked,
“Was he someone connected to you? Come to think of it, we suspect the Revelry Emperor’s purpose in appearing was that very corpse… which, given her nature, is astonishing.”
She stroked her chin thoughtfully.
“The Revelry Emperor never leaves her own domain. By temperament she is thorough, calculating—more a ruler than a warrior. She never takes unnecessary risks.”
Though she had existed for over a thousand years, records of the Revelry Emperor were absurdly scarce. She rarely showed herself, and even when she did reveal her true form, everyone present became jesters, leaving no reliable accounts.
Thus her descent this time was an anomaly—an event worthy of the constellations’ and the churches’ attention.
“For such a being to descend, and into a Forbidden Territory disadvantageous to herself no less, is extremely strange.”
Strange. An act that contradicted every historical record.
The Holy Blood Church had taken note of that aberration.
“We therefore conjecture that something was present which she had to obtain even at such risk—and that something was ‘the corpse she retrieved.’ That is the Church’s conclusion.”
Yuel looked straight at Najin.
“Do you know anything about that corpse?”
“Not a corpse. A knight.”
Najin spoke evenly.
“And he was my master.”
“Your master?”
“Yes. His name is Alderan Basaglia. He was the previous Imperial First Horn, and the Revelry Emperor erased every record of him.”
Yuel’s brows knit.
“Please say that again.”
“His name is…”
After listening to the end, Yuel tilted her head once more.
“Strange. To me it sounds as though you said, ‘His name is ■■■ ■■■■■. He was ■■ ■■■■■, and by ■■■ his ■ ■■■ were ■■■■■■.’ Some force is interfering.”
Najin wrote the words on paper and held them out. Again Yuel only shook her head.
“I cannot see them. I suspect a constellation’s authority. Similar phenomena have been recorded with the fallen kingdom of Rondinel and certain forgotten constellations. In such cases, even if one circumvents the seal and recalls the knowledge, distortion is applied. Better not to hear it at all.”
False information was worse than none.
Yuel fell silent for a moment and studied Najin. Outwardly his expression had not changed; his breathing remained the same. Yet she could feel it—thick killing intent rolling off him. Behind that blank face a fire was burning. She felt a faint regret that the dense murderous will was aimed at someone other than herself.
After a few more brief exchanges, Yuel made a small sound of recollection.
“Once you go outside, be careful.”
“Careful? What do you mean?”
“Things are about to become rather noisy.”
Najin cocked his head. This was the Continent, not the Outer Land. While he was still trying to parse her meaning, Yuel rang the bell she held. A servant entered; she gave an order, and moments later the servant returned with a newspaper.
Handing Najin the densely printed sheet, Yuel said,
“Read it and you’ll understand.”
Just how high your standing has risen within the Empire.