Hero (2)
An ice pillar that reached all the way into the heavens above.
To be precise, it was less a pillar than something closer to an iceberg—its surface irregularly sheared away, its ice columns thrusting up at slanted angles.
An ordinary human would have found scaling those pillars and the iceberg itself a grueling ordeal. For Najin, it was nothing of the kind. To someone who could sprint up near-vertical walls, a slope like that was little different from level ground.
With a sharp tak, he set his foot on a slanted ice column and accelerated at once. Kicking off the ice, he began to run, lifting his head as he climbed. His gaze locked on Ladon, frozen solid at the iceberg’s summit.
Roughly half of Ladon’s body was still encased in ice. Every time the dragon shook free the frost clinging to its scales, the entire iceberg shuddered. Feeling that tremor through the soles of his feet, Najin poured on more speed.
——————!
Ladon, still thrashing ice from its body, loosed a monstrous roar and opened its jaws. The motion of a breath attack. Yet the cold saturating the air and the ice still glued to its maw kept the gathering flames from swelling to full size.
The instant fire began to belch from that mouth—no, a beat earlier—Najin made his decision. He drove his longsword home into its scabbard and seized the spear with both hands. Then, instead of dodging, he hurled himself straight into the onrushing torrent of flame.
A breath weaker than the last.
Merlin’s barrier still holding.
This much, he judged, he could punch through head-on. Stopping in place to bat the breath aside would only waste time. Had the Helmet Knight been standing here, he would surely have scolded Najin: If you can’t even break through something of this level, how can you call yourself one of the Golden Horn Knights?
He’s right.
Charge instead of evade. When crisis comes, smash straight through it—that was the way of the Golden Horn Knights. Sharpening the Cross Star Spear to a lethal point, Najin raced forward.
Lance charging.
No warhorse needed. With transcendent leg strength, a man could complete a lance charge without ever mounting a steed.
Hwaaaaaaah!
His vision drowned in crimson, but Najin paid it no mind. Steam billowed from his body; Merlin’s barrier peeled away and flame licked across his skin—yet that, too, he ignored.
Tuhwak.
Having driven through the breath, Najin spun in place and swept the spear in a great arc. Wind pressure tore free the fire that had clung to him. The motion was more than simply shaking off flames. Using the rotational force he had generated with the turn of his body, Najin hurled the spear.
Ssweeeeeeeek!
The Cross Star Spear punched through the colossal ice shards collapsing and falling because of Ladon’s thrashing. Najin sprinted along the trajectory the spear had carved. Ladon, of course, had no intention of letting him pass unchallenged.
With a wet chwak, the dragon unfurled wings still caked in ice and bellowed. As if answering that roar, its scales shot forth like arrows. Dozens—hundreds—of scales the size of a man’s forearm came screaming toward Najin.
Kang. Drawing his sword mid-sprint, Najin swung without slowing in the slightest.
Breakthrough.
His third star blazed. Charging the enemy head-on. Deflecting attacks while driving forward. When circumstances so closely mirrored the moment he had gained the star, the light it shed burned even fiercer.
『But only from the front.』
Starlight shoved him from behind. He thought he had taken a single step; he had already taken two. The sudden surge of speed startled him, yet he adapted at once and kept swinging.
Batting scales aside as he advanced, Najin caught sight of the Cross Star Spear he had thrown earlier. It was losing velocity, tracing a gentle arc as it fell. With one final, sweeping cut that cleared the last of the scales, he stretched out his arm toward the descending spear.
Kwak.
He seized the shaft and twisted his body hard. Completing a full revolution in place, he loaded the spear with rotational force. Then, with a heavy kuung, he stamped the ground and thrust the spinning spear forward.
Ramming.
Ice shards that had been falling toward him, feathers, everything—were smashed to powder by the storm. A straight path opened. The distance remaining between Najin and Ladon was no more than a few dozen meters at most.
Huuu. Najin exhaled a long breath and steadied himself.
White vapor curled from his lips as the corner of his mouth curled upward. Ladon, having nearly torn free the last of the ice binding its body, fixed him with a beast’s slit-pupiled glare.
Close enough for Najin’s sword to reach.
Close enough for Ladon’s thrashing tail and claws to reach as well.
The moment Najin adjusted his grip, Ladon roared and slammed its body down upon the iceberg that still held it. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ice; fragments leapt skyward. With a sweeping motion of its foreleg, Ladon hurled those ice shards at Najin. Flinging everything in sight, the dragon began to move in earnest.
Jjeojeok······.
The iceberg split further. Every time Ladon smashed down upon it, the earth itself shook. Such was the nature of dragons. With every motion they made the ground quake and the land burn—living natural disasters.
Before such a being, Najin did not flinch even a fraction. He was not yet a transcendent, but anyone who meant to reach transcendence had no business fearing disasters.
2.
Violet gazed into the distance.
There rose an iceberg thrusting high into the sky, and upon it a youth colliding with a dragon. Before a creature whose every shift of weight made the earth tremble, the youth did not shrink back even slightly.
He shattered the ice shards Ladon flung, cleaved the belching flames with swings of his sword, slipped past the whip-like thrashing of the tail, and charged the dragon without pause.
Chwaaaaaaah!
A slash stripped scales free and drew blood. To a human it would have been no more than a fingertip nicked and beading red, yet the very fact that it bled seemed unbearable to Ladon; the dragon began thrashing with even greater fury.
Kwak, kwak, kwadeudeudeuk!
And Najin never stopped. He kept climbing the dragon’s scales, driving his sword again and again into the base of its wing, intent on tearing the wing itself to shreds. That insignificant speck of a human flung himself relentlessly at a dragon dozens of times his size.
Watching that sight—
“Ahh······.”
—Violet let out a long, aching sigh.
At the image of Najin becoming the hero in her place, she made a sound of pure pain. Every time Najin bled, she squeezed her eyes shut.
This was the truth of a hero.
A hero’s life was neither glorious nor beautiful. Quite the opposite. It was wretched, desperate, and agonizing beyond measure. In a life spent sacrificing oneself for complete strangers whose faces one would never know, Violet could feel neither joy nor any sense of fulfillment.
She was sick of it. Exhausted. Disgusted.
Surpass yourself on a battlefield where lives hang in the balance and rise to transcendence? Temper yourself by clashing with mighty foes? What did any of that even mean? Did it truly have to be overcome? What necessity was there in crashing against a vast wall again and again, shattering again and again, just to climb over it?
It only hurt. Everything did. Truly everything.
She wanted to throw it all away.
Why do I have to sacrifice? Why do I have to protect these people? Why? Why must I throw my entire life away for people I don’t even know?
She had thought it dozens of times a day.
That was why the very fact of being called a hero filled Violet with revulsion. How could someone like her be a hero?
Every hero is a lunatic.
Even as she said it, Violet knew the truth. Heroes were noble beings, beautiful beings—pure and radiant in ways utterly unlike her own base, selfish self.
So the title of hero had never suited her.
I’m no hero. I could never become one.
The instant Violet tried to look away—
A flash.
High in that sky, a star glittered.
Drawn by the light, she turned her eyes again and saw Najin still charging the dragon. As if telling her not to look away, to watch properly, Najin’s star blazed even more fiercely.
“······.”
A tiny human stood against a dragon.
Continuing to watch that struggle, Violet felt a strange emotion rise. The way Najin fought was not so different from the way she herself had once fought.
He bled, was flung aside, yet immediately gathered himself and charged Ladon once more. Against a tough, hard, colossal dragon, what was needed was not a single overwhelming blow but the steady accumulation of wounds.
And watching that form, she thought······
That figure truly looked like a hero.
Charging without retreat against a being dozens of times larger—there was nothing wanting in calling that a hero. The fact that she herself had done the same for so long felt suddenly alien to Violet.
The question Najin had once thrown at her.
That voice lingered in Violet’s ears.
Violet turned her gaze.
There lay a single sword, tossed carelessly aside. The blade that had shared nearly a hundred years with her. A sword so dreadful it made her skin crawl rested there.
Violet looked down at her own hands.
Viola Oldina looked at the sword.
······The human mind is incomplete.
The world allowed a human’s body to transcend, yet refused the same grace to the spirit. And so humans agonize. They hurl questions at themselves and thrash about in search of answers.
Whether those answers are wrong or right does not matter.
The conclusion one reaches for oneself is always the correct one.
Violet chose.
Or perhaps, Viola Oldina chose.
3.
Ladon’s wing hung in tatters.
Bracing his feet firmly against the base of that wing, Najin raised his sword high. Ladon writhed, yet Najin did not fall. Sword held aloft, he opened his eyes wide.
The Triumphant Sword he had learned from Alderan Basaglia.
The Triumphant Sword was the style Alderan had forged in order to cut what could not be cut. Compressing aura into the blade to its absolute limit, maximizing cutting power—that was its core. Najin had never forgotten that essence.
A flash.
The instant the tip of the sword glittered, Najin brought it down. Like splitting firewood, the descending blade carved deep into the joint connecting Ladon’s back and wing. Blood erupted like a fountain; the dragon thrashed wildly. Thrown free by that frenzy, Najin tumbled across the ice.
Chwaaaaaak—he drove his sword in to steady himself, but the ice, already weakened by accumulated impacts, gave way with a sharp jjeoeok. Footing gone, Najin dangled from the edge of the iceberg.
The opening left by the human who had severed half its wing base. Determined not to miss it, Ladon roared and swung a foreleg, intent on shattering the glacier to which Najin clung.
A pity, but once I fall I’ll just have to—
Clicking his tongue, Najin resigned himself to the drop.
Climbing back up would take time, yet he saw no way to evade that attack without falling. Just as he was about to pull his sword free and let go—
Jjaenggeurang—a sound rang out.
Cracks raced across the glass pane that stood between Najin and Ladon. Unable to smash the shattered pane, Ladon’s foreleg rebounded. As Najin blinked, someone thrust a hand toward him.
“Take it.”
With a sharp tug, the hand yanked him up.
Standing once more atop the glacier, Najin looked at the one who had offered that hand and, without meaning to, smiled.
“What? Why are you laughing?”
“Just thinking, so you came after all.”
“Well. Looks that way.”
Half pure white hair, half pure black.
She looked at the Ladon before them and shuddered.
“Ugh, I really do hate heroes. How does anyone risk their life fighting something like that? Every single day, no less. No matter how I think about it, that’s not sane.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Which is why I still can’t believe it. That I did this damn work for a full sixty-seven years.”
She let out a long sigh and let her sword hang low.
“I loathe it with every fiber of my being.”
Yet her expression held a strange sense of release as she spoke.
“Even so, I find myself wanting to retire in style. After sixty-seven years of this, I want the ending to look good, at least. That way, when I look back, I can think, ‘Well, the last part wasn’t so bad.’”
Violet turned her eyes on Najin.
“What do you think? Is that too much? Too vulgar?”
Najin shook his head at her.
“Not at all. And even if it is vulgar, so what?”
“Right?”
“So—what should I call you? Violet? Or Viola Oldina?”
At the question, Violet laughed and gathered her hair into a single tail, tying it down. Binding her hair as she did when she played the piano, she answered with a light smile.
“Well, either one is fine, isn’t it?”