Free Knight (1)
Funeral Procession — the fifth star Najin had obtained.
It was a word that meant carrying a body to the place where the dead rightfully belonged: burial, funeral rites, interment. Similar enough to those. But as he looked up at the star hanging in the sky, Najin read a slightly different meaning into it.
The place where one ought to be laid to rest.
It did not simply mean a grave. He took it as the end one was meant to meet. A proper death. The ending one had wanted. Granting a final moment a person could look back on and feel satisfied with — that was what Funeral Procession meant to Najin.
The Outer Land, where a proper death was never granted.
A land crawling with the undead because of it.
A hell where even rest was denied.
In a place like this, the meaning of the Star of Funeral Procession would never be small. Najin gazed at the star shining overhead and said nothing. A heavy, unsettled weight sat on his chest; he pressed a fist hard against his heart as if that might ease the tightness.
Still not used to it.
Every time he parted from someone he had formed a bond with, every time he witnessed their end, he felt his heart grow heavier. Perhaps that was inevitable. In a way, he had buried their existence inside his own chest.
He pressed harder.
Najin touched the hair tie at his temple.
The Star Relic left behind by the Fallen Star.
He still could not say exactly what power it held. He only had a vague sense of it. He tightened the knot a little more, then let out a long breath.
The hero, Viola Oldina.
The pianist, Violet.
Najin looked one last time at the headstone carved with both names, then turned his back and walked away.
2.
After gaining his fifth star, there were a few things Najin came to understand.
—Usually once you hit around six stars, you end up a transcendental, right?
The first was the relationship between stars and transcendentalists.
—Not every transcendental has six or more, but anyone with six or more is a transcendental. Ah, wait — not all of them. There have been a few exceptions over the last thousand years. You could count them on one hand.
“What about me?”
—You’re probably going to be one of those exceptions. You’re still a long way from becoming a Sword Master, aren’t you?
Most people who reached five stars were either close to becoming transcendentalists or already were. Najin was the exception. The speed at which he piled up great deeds far outstripped the growth of his realm.
—There was even someone who held ten stars and still wasn’t a transcendental. Only one in history, though.
“Who was that?”
—Galahad.
A name Najin knew.
A Knight of the Round Table — Galahad.
Aside from Arthur herself, he had been called the strongest of the Round. Strong enough that the stories said he could face every remaining knight of the table at once and still win.
“Really? In the fairy tales he was always described as a transcendental.”
—He just wasn’t one. He was still stronger than most of them. Ridiculously strong, actually.
“Then why?”
—Mm, it’s a bit complicated to explain. He was a special case. Galahad could never become a transcendental, period.
Najin tilted his head.
Merlin muttered to herself about how best to put it, rubbing her chin.
—Absolute perfection. A human who abandoned being human. A manufactured existence. A kind of stage prop…
She weighed the words, then made a complicated face and shook her head.
—It’s too messy to explain, and even if I did you wouldn’t really get it. What I was trying to say is that stacking great deeds usually turns you into a transcendental, but it doesn’t always. You following?
Najin nodded.
A human became a transcendental only after sublimating their soul. Najin had piled up deeds equal to any transcendentalist’s, yet his soul was not fully mature. He knew that himself.
—Well, you’ll get there if you climb step by step, right?
The road was long, but the longer the road, the more carefully one was meant to walk it. Hadn’t the Helmeted Knight said something similar? When you rush, even the things that should work stop working.
Najin tried not to grow impatient.
That was the first thing he learned.
The second came from the mouth of the person who came looking for him.
“A pleasure to meet you, Sir Najin. I am Soles, attendant to Lord Gerd of the Empire’s First Horn.”
The woman who introduced herself as Soles had somehow managed to track him down across the vast Outer Land. Even Najin found it surprising. She had simply appeared, produced the emblem of the Empire’s First Horn, and announced that Lord Gerd had sent her.
“Originally I was meant to find you eleven days ago, but your trail vanished abruptly in this area, which delayed my visit. I apologize for that.”
Soles bowed, then looked him over steadily.
“If it is not too forward, may I ask where you were in this vicinity?”
“I spent a short while inside a constellation’s tomb.”
“Ah. That would explain it. My abilities do not reach that far.”
“May I ask something as well? How did you know where I was?”
“That is classified, so I cannot explain in detail, but I employed both my mystery and a Masterpiece.”
Hearing that, Najin suddenly remembered a conversation he had once had with Gerd.
There’s a way to get word to you no matter where you are.
When there’s information worth sharing, I’ll contact you myself.
So this woman was that method.
It seemed to fit. Soles cleared her throat and began.
“After a month of investigation, we have succeeded in uncovering meaningful information regarding the Revelry Emperor. I am here to share it with you.”
Najin’s eyes narrowed at once.
The name alone had drawn a reflexive reaction. When he nodded, Soles began her report.
“Across five hundred years of imperial history, there are seven hundred eighty-one incidents whose records were unnaturally erased. Of those, seven hundred fifty-four are connected to the Revelry Emperor. We have successfully reconstructed the outlines of roughly two hundred by cross-referencing contemporary accounts.”
She did not bother reporting how far the imperial historians’ hairlines had receded in the process, or how many locks of hair had been sacrificed. Necessary casualties.
“The records that helped most were the minutes left behind by a knightly order that used horned helmets as their symbol. The order’s name itself has been erased and cannot be restored, but according to what they left behind…”
It was unmistakably the Golden Horn Knights.
Najin bit down hard on his lip.
“At present, confronting the Revelry Emperor inside her own domain is all but impossible.”
“…Impossible?”
Najin ran through what he already knew of her. The Revelry Emperor lived sealed inside her territory. She hated showing herself, refused to step onto the stage. A true black curtain — the power that worked from behind the scenes. She only appeared when victory was already certain, and she held more than a hundred stars as spare lives. A being who never, ever risked her own neck.
If that is her main stage, the domain she hides in, of course it will be difficult.
He had expected as much, yet the details that came from Soles’s mouth far exceeded his imagination.
“Multiple Forbidden Territories exist within the Revelry Emperor’s domain, layered one upon another, and every one of them is for her alone.”
Forbidden Territory.
A place that weakens, erodes, and breaks any uninvited guest. According to Soles, the Revelry Emperor’s domain contained anywhere from dozens to a hundred of them.
“Facing a ten-star Revelry Emperor inside that many Forbidden Territories is effectively impossible. To make it possible, you would need intervention from constellations on the level of the Round Table… which, of course, is also nearly impossible.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“The knightly order that left those records used a method of drawing the Revelry Emperor out. But given her recent injuries, she will be even more cautious. Lord Gerd judges that luring her outside will be difficult.”
So what method, then?
“Lord Gerd proposes dismantling the Forbidden Territories.”
Gerd had chosen the direct approach.
“Among the Forbidden Territories blanketing her domain, there are key ones that serve as centers. Break those, and the rest will collapse of their own accord. A path into the Revelry Emperor’s domain will open.”
“How do we break them?”
“Simple. Kill the constellation who created each one — the master of that Forbidden Territory.”
Soles spread her fingers, then folded her thumb so four remained.
“The Revelry Emperor has four constellations known as her Apostles, or Court Jesters. They are her strongest jesters and the centers of her Forbidden Territories.”
“Court Jesters.”
“Yes. Court Jesters. The identities of two remain unknown, but the other two have been confirmed.”
She folded two more fingers, then closed the last two one by one as she spoke.
“One is the Demon King of Grief, Carpediem.”
Najin already knew who the other would be.
“The second is the Star of Contempt — Quixote.”
The Knight of Revelry, Quixote.
That monstrous existence was burned into Najin’s memory. As he tightened his grip on his sword hilt, Soles cleared her throat again.
“A message from Lord Gerd.”
She did her best to imitate Gerd’s voice.
“I will kill Carpediem. You track the Star of Contempt, Quixote. He has something that could be called a weakness. Find it.”
Soles pointed at the ground.
“Somewhere in the Outer Land there is a place called La Mancha. The clue will be there.”
La Mancha. Najin turned the name over in his mind.
“That is the end of the message. Next is an item Lord Gerd instructed me to deliver…”
She produced a wooden case from her coat and handed it over.
Najin opened it, blinked, then broke into a laugh. Of course. Exactly the thing he needed. He nodded.
“Please tell Lord Gerd I am grateful.”
3.
“Hah—hrrk—haaah!”
The knight Jowel ran until his lungs felt ready to burst.
Thud, thud, thud!
He never looked back. He simply ran and ran.
It was an undignified, graceless sprint that had nothing of a knight about it, but Jowel had no room left to care about appearances. He focused only on running.
Why? How did it come to this?
He kept asking himself how everything had twisted so badly.
He had originally volunteered for the front lines. Past a hundred and twenty years of age, no longer able to remain on the Continent, Jowel had chosen the battlefield. Better to die gloriously fighting demons than wander the Outer Land until he became one of the undead.
Even he had thought it a rather fine choice.
Having already fulfilled a knight’s duty on the Continent, he would continue serving humanity by fighting demons even after leaving for the Outer Land. What a splendid decision. Jowel had been drunk on his own choice, drunk on his own honorable, proud self.
And someone once said:
In the Outer Land, honor and pride are strong liquor.
Intoxicating while you drink, agony once you sober up.
“Huff, hah, hah!”
Exactly so.
Still running madly, Jowel glanced back. A massive beast, undead, every kind of monster was pouring after him. He instantly regretted looking and squeezed his eyes shut, pouring everything into the next stride.
Why? Why had it come to this?
The battlefield he had volunteered for was nothing like he imagined. The fighting there was of an entirely different order from anything on the Continent. As a Sword Seeker, Jowel had always been the brilliant knight who made his presence felt no matter the fight back home.
Not here.
Here he was a common soldier, or something less. In a war where demons rioted whenever they pleased, where undead who had once been transcendentalists interfered, where monsters ran wild, he was nothing more than one more body.
There was no honorable end here.
No beautiful death.
And of course no rest.
He had wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to flee to. Worse, the scrap of pride that insisted a knight must not run had kept him from running.
He endured for a long time. Today, out on a scouting mission with his comrades, they ran straight into a pack of beasts and undead. Terrified companions. Death already certain. In that moment Jowel thumped his own chest and shouted in a shaking voice:
L-leave this place to me and run!
I’ll draw their eyes. You report it. My legs are still fairly quick, you know.
He made the declaration, pulled up his starlight, and started running. The undead and monsters naturally chased him, and the situation had arrived at this.
“Hrrk!”
Now, legs ready to snap from the endless sprint, Jowel regretted the choice. Why had he done it? To save his comrades? No — he knew better. He was not that noble a man.
He had simply wanted to die looking cool.
He had seen too many people crushed under demons, smashed by the undead, dying like dogs. Their deaths were worthless and meaningless. And he knew that if he stayed on this battlefield long enough, he would end the same way.
If that kind of death was waiting anyway… wasn’t a handsome sacrifice to save his comrades better?
That was all he had decided.
But with death closing in second by second, fear flooded him. The image of being chewed alive by those undead filled his mind, and he could not stop the sobs.
He did not want to die.
What was that damned honor and pride worth?
What was a fine ending even for?
Running, still running, Jowel at last tore off his armor and flung away sword and shield for the sake of one more stride of speed. The moment he was about to cast aside the last scraps of honor and pride and scream in pure ugliness—
Thud.
Footsteps sounded from somewhere ahead.
Jowel lifted his head.
A young man was walking toward him from the opposite direction. One hand held a sword; the other gripped a spear shaft. Jowel’s eyes narrowed as he took in the youth’s clothes.
That outfit… he had seen it somewhere.
It was not the uniform of the knights stationed on the front. Where had he seen clothes like that?
“Ah.”
A short sound of recognition escaped him.
He had seen it in a history book as a squire. The dress worn by the free knights who rode with King Arthur a thousand years ago. So why was a knight wearing that standing here? Wasn’t that the sort of thing that only appeared in fairy tales?
Perhaps it was a hallucination he had conjured to scold himself for throwing away honor and pride.
Thud.
No. The young man had substance, and he was still approaching. Looking closer, the free-knight attire was not quite the same. A pauldron shaped like a horned helm sat on one shoulder, and a battered, unidentifiable military banner was fastened there as well.
Even while running for his life, Jowel forgot the situation long enough to throw a question at the youth in front of him.
Who are you?
The young man answered briefly.
“Najin.”
Free Knight, Najin.
Then he brushed past Jowel and charged straight into the undead horde that had been chasing him.