Knight Demon (1)
Najin had finished preparing to leave for the Outer Land.
There had been a few matters to settle on the Continent, and after spending about three weeks in the capital he had handled most of them. He had told the current Empire's Greatest about the former Empire's Greatest and asked for cooperation; Gerd had accepted Najin's proposal.
Leave the rest to me.
You do what you need to do.
Gerd had said as much, and as if to prove it was no empty boast he was stirring up the entire Empire. Leaving the Continent in his hands would be enough.
As for the Holy Light Church as well…
There had been gains. Recalling his conversation with the Lighthouse Keeper, Najin ran a hand over his sword hilt.
The Lighthouse Keeper Eurypylos was clearly a powerhouse. A being whose very existence served as a balancing weight, with martial might comparable to the entire Empire. Whether they would clash or cooperate was still unknown. As Eurypylos himself had said, they would only know when the situation arose.
But Najin always had to prepare for the worst.
A scenario in which he clashed with Eurypylos. Picturing it in his mind, Najin exhaled a long breath. The road ahead was still long. But the direction was clear. What he had to do remained unchanged.
Shall we go?
……
Merlin?
……Why.
Did I do something wrong? What's with you?
I'm not mad, okay?
Merlin was sulking in a peculiar way, and Najin tilted his head. Ever since he had said his goodbyes to Dieta that morning, Merlin had been like this, and since she refused to say what was bothering her, Najin could only feel frustrated.
That girl.
Dieta?
I don't know. Anyway, that girl… no. Forget it.
Though she had spoken the name several times, Merlin still referred to Dieta as "the merchant" or "that girl." Merlin glanced at Najin's nape and grumbled. It was the spot where Dieta had buried her face during their light farewell hug before parting.
……
Staring silently at the spot, Merlin suddenly climbed onto Najin's back. There was no sense of weight. Resting her chin on Najin's shoulder, Merlin gestured for him to set out. He didn't know why she was acting this way, but her mood seemed to have improved a little.
Just as he was about to board the carriage, someone was waiting for Najin in front of it.
Two crossed swords with a shield drawn above them. A man in armor engraved with a distinctive crest waved at Najin. He had a frank, open impression, and it was a face familiar to Najin.
"Sir Argo?"
Argo, knight of Atanga. A man he had crossed paths with early on during the Demon Knight subjugation.
"It's been a while. Nameless boy."
"I didn't come looking for you for anything major. I've come to make you a proposal."
"A proposal, you say?"
"Yes. It brings back the past. From when you were still a mercenary in Cambria… though calling it the past when it was only half a year ago is a bit much."
Argo looked at Najin as if he found it absurd.
"Back then you took an Atanga commission and subjugated the Demon Knight Bernhaigen, didn't you?"
"I did."
"This is similar. We've discovered traces of a Knight Demon we let slip long ago in the Outer Land. I'm thinking of proposing we subjugate that demon. What do you say?"
Not Demon Knight, but Knight Demon.
Najin tilted his head.
"Knight Demon? Is that different from a Demon Knight?"
"A Demon Knight is a knight who contracted with a demon. A Knight Demon is a bit different. It's a demon that devours knights' corpses and imitates knights. There was a large-scale subjugation on the Continent once, and it's a demon we failed to take down."
Argo briefly explained about the Knight Demon, and as Najin listened quietly he caught his breath at a certain point. He couldn't help it.
"Back when I was still an Expert, I pursued it with my seniors and peers, but we lost it. Several Atanga knights lost their lives to that demon, and one more became a criminal because of the incident that arose from that pursuit."
Saying so, Argo listed the names of the knights who had participated in the operation one by one.
"Marcel, Yuric, Heblit, Oshuwell…."
And.
"Ivan."
The moment that name was spoken, Najin's breathing faltered. Argo was a martial artist of about Sword Seeker rank, so he could have noticed the disturbance, but he pretended not to, casually rubbing his chin and closing his eyes.
As if reminiscing about the past, he spoke with his eyes closed.
"It's embarrassing to admit, but for the Atanga Knights, the 'Knight Demon Pursuit' remains a blemish. There aren't many operations that failed so miserably, and all the more so because the cause of that failure lay within."
And so, he added.
"At last an opportunity to wipe away this stain has come. That's why I wanted to propose it to you. Care to join us?"
The moment Ivan's name came up, the answer was as good as decided. Najin nodded.
"Having the word 'knight' in front of 'demon' doesn't sit well with me. Wouldn't it be a bit better if we knocked that 'demon' word off?"
"That's you, all right. We speak the same language."
Najin and Argo grinned at each other. After a light handshake with Argo, Najin boarded the carriage with him.
"Come to think of it, you seem to have caused quite a stir in the Outer Land. Your reputation is spreading far and wide, isn't it? I heard you went toe-to-toe with a Demon King who had ten stars… am I supposed to believe that?"
Argo pulled some preserved rations from his pocket. He casually offered Najin a snack and gave him a look. The road to the Outer Land was long—how about spinning some interesting tales? Chewing on the jerky, Najin willingly opened his bag of stories.
"The first one I met after entering the Outer Land was Graf, a knight of Kurtan named Graf."
"A knight of Kurtan… Ah, Atanga has one knight from Kurtan as well. He'd love to hear this. So? What happened to him?"
"Uh… I don't think he'd love hearing it."
Najin shared the stories with a bitter smile.
The tale of a knight reduced to a dead man, the knight who sought to fulfill his duty even if it meant becoming one of the dead, the silent knight, the knight in the helmet, and so on. He condensed the experiences from the Outer Land appropriately as he spoke.
Having heard the whole story, Argo let out a long breath. "Hoo…"
"You've been through quite a lot in just four months, haven't you? Though I suppose you need to go through events of this scale to hang two stars in such a short time."
Argo nodded.
"That knight in the helmet—I personally respect him. I don't know much about the Outer Land, but I've carried out operations there often enough to know. How cruel that land is, and how infinitely cruel it can become."
Anyone who has experienced the Outer Land even once learns it whether they want to or not. That land is not a sacred battlefield where stars clash, but a tomb of stars where stars are buried.
"A human who lost all his stars lasting a hundred and fifty years in that land? And not letting go of his honor and pride for those hundred and fifty years is truly…."
Truly, he laughed.
"Magnificent. A truly magnificent story. I rather like the expression 'human triumph'—doesn't this story fit that perfectly?"
"He was an incredible man."
"It feels a bit shabby following such a magnificent story, but I do have a tale worth telling as well."
The carriage jolted with a clatter.
"The Knight Demon. A story about the one we'll be subjugating this time. The Knight Demon's individual name is Orgis. Its ability is simple. It takes parts of the bodies of those it has swallowed as its own… Originally, demons like this need their first button done right. If you snip the bud at the start, they're nothing special."
But, Argo said.
"That beginning was the problem. The start wasn't good."
"The start wasn't good?"
"Of all things, the first thing Orgis swallowed was a human who had become one with a Masterpiece."
Masterpiece. Weapons imbued with Mystery.
Having fought a black mage who wielded such a weapon, Najin knew full well how troublesome an opponent with a Masterpiece could be.
"Which Masterpiece was it?"
"It's a Masterpiece you know well too. It's the most infamous Masterpiece there is."
Argo held up four fingers.
"The 4th Masterpiece, Bookmark."
He added.
"It's famous as the Masterpiece that caused the unprecedented incident where a young child killed a Sword Seeker."
What is the most useful Masterpiece?
Answers to this question diverge. Some would name the 16th Masterpiece, Unquenchable Flame; others the 27th, Rag Cloak.
Then what is the most powerful Masterpiece?
This question too would yield various answers. People would compare based on the direction of that power and its usefulness.
But to the question What is the most dangerous Masterpiece?, everyone answers with one voice.
The 4th Masterpiece, Bookmark.
The first to discover the Bookmark was a young child from a small village. A girl who found the ornate Bookmark in an old library regarded it as something of a treasure. Without a second thought she brought the Bookmark home, slipped it between the pages of a fairy tale book, and closed the book.
Book. Bookmark. Closing the book. Slipping it between.
Without any thought, the girl fulfilled the conditions to activate the Masterpiece. She paid a steep price for her ignorance. That day, three hundred twenty-four villagers vanished overnight.
A Sword Seeker was dispatched to handle the incident, but the moment that Sword Seeker approached the girl crying alone in the village, he too vanished.
In response, knights were dispatched in squad units to recover the Masterpiece, but the casualties of that operation far exceeded expectations.
Just realizing the Masterpiece's activation conditions cost eight knights their lives; another thirty-two to roughly guess the Mystery imbued in it; twenty-eight more to faintly grasp the Mystery. And even more soldiers had to die.
Three hundred twenty-four villagers dead.
Sixty-eight knights dead.
One hundred seventeen soldiers dead.
In the end the Bookmark was said to have been recovered, but…
"That's a lie. The Bookmark was never recovered."
Argo declared flatly.
"Black mages intervened during the recovery. They attacked the soldiers who had suffered unimaginable losses and had no strength left, seized the Masterpiece, and fled. Originally that escape should have failed, but coincidence piled upon coincidence."
The black mages fleeing with the Masterpiece hastily summoned a demon. A demon to reinforce their power. That summoning should have failed, but because of the overlapping coincidences a demon was summoned imperfectly. An ancient demon, at that.
The ancient demon, Orgis.
If successfully summoning it was the black mages' luck, the fact that the summoning was incomplete was their misfortune.
Because the summoning was incomplete, only a fragment was summoned—yet the original being's rank was so high that Orgis was not controlled by the black mages. On the spot the demon swallowed the black mages who had summoned it. Along with them it swallowed all the corpses of the sixty-eight knights and soldiers killed by the Masterpiece.
In the process, "by chance" Orgis swallowed the Masterpiece, and that was precisely the problem. Demons are beings originally composed of Mystery. When a being of Mystery swallowed a Masterpiece imbued with Mystery, a change occurred.
Coincidence upon coincidence, and coincidence again. When coincidence overlaps three times, it can no longer be called coincidence. Inevitably, Orgis transformed into something entirely different.
A demon composed of dozens of knights.
The birth of the Knight Demon.
"How dare it desecrate knights' corpses and insult their names? It was intolerable. Immediately Atanga and countless other knights launched a pursuit, but… the result, well, was disastrous."
Argo smiled bitterly.
"In that pursuit the Knight Demon swallowed about thirty more knights and fled. Roughly half of those thirty corpses belonged to Atanga Knights. I have a duty to give those friends their funeral rites."