Interlude: Stories (2)
Anton Quijano held eight stars.
The moment he heard it, Najin was startled—but when he thought it through, it was hardly strange at all.
Anton is a transcendent who's lived at least four hundred years.
On top of that, Anton had spent decades hunting witches and killing the transcendents tangled up with them. Once, almost casually, he had mentioned that the witches he had slain alone numbered in the dozens.
Even the weakest witch possessed strength on par with a transcendent. That fact alone meant the story only held if Anton was considerably strong.
And besides…
Najin thought back to a moment not long past—Anton flipping the Revelry Emperor off toward her star, the pure contempt of a man asking what the hell she was staring at. If the knowledge Anton held of La Mancha was truly a threat to her, the Revelry Emperor should have killed him or turned him into a jester ages ago.
And yet for four hundred years, Anton had walked free.
"Huh."
Understanding the situation, Najin let out a disbelieving laugh.
"So it wasn't that the Revelry Emperor left you alone. She couldn't touch you."
"Well, if that devil had gone all-in, I'd have been in for a hard time too. But the Revelry Emperor is a coward at heart. The kind who flinches the second she thinks she might take even the slightest scratch."
Anton shrugged.
"Killing me would mean accepting some losses. She didn't feel like it, so she left me alone. Besides—I fight dirty."
"Dirty…?"
"Not every fight can be honorable. Not every fight can be proud. Sometimes there's a fight you have to win, even if it means throwing all that away."
Do you know that kind of fight?
Anton asked with his eyes, and Najin nodded. He did. Plenty of them.
"A mud-pit brawl. The kind of free-for-all where you drag the other guy into a swamp so thick he can't tell front from back, or where to put his feet. That's my specialty."
"You were famous for that, weren't you? The Witch of Scorching Flame you killed was an eight-star witch herself."
Lapis, who had been listening, added that last part. She looked at Najin with a worried expression.
"Still—the Revelry Emperor. You sure picked a hell of an opponent."
"You know about her?"
"I've been around a while, haven't I? Long enough to remember what she looked like before anyone ever called her that."
Lapis closed her eyes, sifting through memory.
"Seven hundred years ago? Eight hundred? I saw a demon on a hunt once. No name, the weakest demon I'd ever laid eyes on… and it was trying to hunt a top-tier demon. I watched out of curiosity."
The absolute bottom of the ladder—something that barely held the shape of a demon at all. That, Lapis said, was what the Revelry Emperor had originally been.
"Demons are basically like dragons. Their strength is fixed from birth. And that strength is absolute—even if they grow, they almost never overturn a difference in rank. A lesser demon cannot beat a greater one, no matter what it tries."
And yet, Lapis went on—
"That demon I watched was the lowest of the low, and it still set out to hunt one of the highest. And it succeeded. Can you picture it? A creature that hadn't earned a single star, bringing down a demon with seven."
"…Is that even possible?"
"Of course not. Even if the number of stars isn't a perfect guarantee of strength, there is still a difference of rank. It's as absurd as a Sword Expert beating a Sword Master."
Impossible. And yet—
"That one did it."
"…"
"She laid traps. Contaminated concepts. Stirred up humans. Lured in a procession of star-eating beasts. And in the end, she brought a top-tier demon's star down. Then she tore into the corpse and gorged herself."
Lapis grimaced.
"It was revolting. Time passed, and before I knew it she was being called a mid-tier demon. Then higher. Then top-tier. And now they call her a Demon King—the pinnacle of every demon."
A creature born weak.
A species whose ranks were supposed to be insurmountable.
"Anton called her a coward, didn't he? He's right. The Revelry Emperor is a coward. But that doesn't mean she's weak. It's the opposite."
Lapis's voice turned to warning.
"A fearful creature has no choice but to be thorough. It prepares for every thing that frightens it, and those preparations become its tools. After living a thousand years, I can tell you—the truly terrifying opponents aren't the ones with overwhelming power."
She looked faintly sick at the thought.
"Humans who will throw everything away. Humans who cling and claw. Demons who will do anything to win. Hunters who set every trap imaginable before they ever start the chase."
As he listened, a face rose in Najin's mind—the man who had given him the hardest fight of anyone on the Continent. The ranger of the Techel Mountains: Kaufman Teosis.
"The Revelry Emperor's essence is that of a hunter. A schemer."
Lapis stopped mid-sentence and made a short sound of realization. Something had occurred to her. Her face went pale, and she shook her head.
"No. Let me correct that. Hunters like that are terrifying, but the most terrifying thing is something else entirely."
What is it? The question hung unspoken. Lapis pointed a finger at the sky as if she could barely stand to name the answer. Anton and Najin both followed the direction of her fingertip.
Eleven stars hung there.
The Mage of the Lake. Merlin.
Lapis's face had gone paper-white as she pointed at that constellation, as if she were genuinely frightened.
"This will never happen, of course, but—"
Her voice trembled slightly.
"It would be best if you never caught the eye of that mad—no. Of Great Constellation Merlin. Truly."
Not Merlin. Great Constellation Merlin. Najin glanced sideways at the Merlin standing right beside him. She blinked, then let out an incredulous little breath.
—Would you look at this one? Stick a few shards of ice in someone and suddenly I'm the crazy one.
Ice?
—Hm? Oh, right. Not that many, really.
Merlin spread both hands and folded her fingers one by one, counting under her breath—one, two, three—then nodded.
—About six? She had six stars back then. So I only stuck in that many.
…
—What? She was a witch.
Nothing. Never mind.
By Merlin's standards at the time, not gouging out the eyes and not ripping out the heart had probably counted as mercy. The Merlin of a thousand years ago that Najin had seen had been plenty vicious herself.
Gouging eyes, dragging people around by the hair, stacking corpses into mountains…
And hadn't she done the same to him the instant their eyes met? What the hell are you? Looking to die?
Fairy Merlin really was brutal.
As Najin was remembering the fairy Merlin who had seized him by the collar, the human Merlin narrowed her eyes.
—Fairy Merlin?
She tilted her head.
—What are you talking about? Are you saying I look like a fairy?
Not you.
—…There's another Merlin besides me?
There is. Something like that.
Merlin started shouting that that was nonsense, that there was only one Merlin in the world and the one standing in front of him was the real one—but Najin let it go in one ear and out the other.
A tower stood on a lonely island in the middle of the sea.
They would need to return to the coast again, so Najin and Anton had gathered at the island's shore and were busily carving wood—nothing more glamorous than reinforcing the sailboat.
"So, uh. This is a little awkward to ask, but—"
Lapis watched them with a dubious look.
"What exactly are you two doing?"
"Hm? Cutting wood."
"Carving timber."
"Yes, but why?"
"The sailboat's wrecked, isn't it?"
Anton and Najin pointed at the boat they had arrived in. The rough voyage had left it half destroyed. When something breaks, you fix it.
"You're going to ride that across this sea?"
"We rode it here."
"Got us here just fine."
Oarsman and captain both nodded.
Lapis pressed her fingers to her forehead and sighed.
"You two haven't forgotten who I am, have you?"
She snapped her fingers.
Trees along the shore tore free of the ground of their own accord. A few seconds later, a complete ship stood finished before them.
Najin and Anton's mouths fell open. They looked back and forth between the sailboat they had been painstakingly carving plank by plank and the vessel Lapis had conjured with a single snap of her fingers.
Then, like cavemen discovering fire for the first time, they both smacked their own foreheads.
"Damn it, Oarsman. In front of magic, we're nothing but ignorant primitives."
"I should've studied magic, Captain."
Two primitive swordsmen and one great mage boarded the ship and cast off. There was no need to row, no need to set a heading. Magic handled everything.
"…"
Robbed of their jobs by magic, the captain and oarsman sat huddled in a corner of the deck, looking thoroughly dejected.
"Oarsman. What are we even good for?"
"No idea, Captain."
Deep-sea beasts and reefs blocked their path from time to time, but unlike the first voyage, neither Najin nor Anton needed to step in. Lapis sat in a chair at the prow, and every time she flicked her fingers, the obstacles shattered into pieces and sank into the sea.
"By the way, Oarsman. What have you been sorting through this whole time?"
Anton pointed at the letters in Najin's hands. Ever since leaving the tower, Najin had been organizing a stack of letter-like papers without pause.
"Ah. These?"
Najin held up the bundle.
"Do you remember what you said when we first met, Captain? When you were introducing yourself."
"What I said? The greatest lover of the century?"
"Not that."
"The fool who lives on romance. The idiot who loved a witch—one of only three such idiots in the history of humankind?"
"Yes. That last one."
Najin nodded.
"Besides you, there were two left. This letter is connected to one of them."
"…What?"
"What do you mean?"
Lapis, her interest piqued as well, leaned in beside Najin to look at the letters. The moment she read the name written on the paper, her eyes went wide.
"Lena?"
As if she had just heard a name she had long missed.
Among the things Lapis had said in the Black Spire, there had been a line like this:
Lena, the witch who had loved a human.
Like Lapis—and before Lapis—she had committed the taboo of loving a human. Among witches, she was the one they mocked as a lunatic.
The moment he heard that name, Najin could not help but remember a certain witch he had encountered while climbing the tower.
A part of the story left out while he had been focused on Anton.
It had taken Anton roughly thirty days to break through the final floor. During those thirty days, Najin had not stayed at Anton's side the entire time. Simply enduring thirty days of doing nothing was no easy feat.
What's this, Merlin?
—Oh, that?
Wandering the Black Spire, Najin had often consulted the Merlin Encyclopedia for old stories. One day, while exploring the tower, he found a hidden room.
The Black Spire was, at its core, a prison.
And a prison, of course, had inmates.
In that hidden room sat a prisoner who had been locked away even longer than Lapis.
"…"
The prisoner's hair was red.
Her eyes were red as well.
"Roselyn."
In a voice long neglected—dry, cracked—the prisoner stared into empty air and murmured a name.
"My beloved child… Roselyn…"
A witch who had been endlessly repeating someone's name turned and looked at Najin. In those red eyes, he saw someone he knew.
The red-eyed mercenary. Roselyn Ascalo.
The witch who resembled her looked at Najin and whispered.
"Let me meet Roselyn."
The red-eyed witch pleaded.