On Those Both Valiant and Ridiculous (1)
A sky smeared with paint.
Heads rolling across the ground in peals of laughter, giants dancing on even after losing their heads, clowns appearing from nowhere to scrape instruments into jarring discordance.
The world—everything thrown together into a complete mess—looked exactly like a child’s dream.
Najin ground his teeth. He had seen this landscape before. The same scenery had unfolded the first time he faced the Revelry Emperor, and again when the Helmet Knight’s final moments were desecrated.
Strength poured unbidden into the hand that gripped his sword.
This was the Revelry Emperor’s domain. Did that mean she had appeared here? No. He could not sense that utterly repulsive presence.
“Najin.”
Yuel and Najin exchanged a glance. No long conversation was required. They nodded once and plunged straight into the Revelry Emperor’s domain that stretched before them. Whatever else, they had to cross it if they wanted to reach La Mancha.
And…
He wanted that grotesque vista gone from his sight even one second sooner. Frowning against the noise that hammered his eardrums, Najin swung his blade.
Yuel’s sword, Najin’s sword, and the fist of the Star Incarnation who joined them a beat later all slammed into the Revelry Emperor’s domain.
Limbs of headless, still-dancing giants flew through the air; the laughing heads that rolled across the ground were smashed to pieces; the clowns were beheaded. It was not an easy fight, yet neither was it a hard one.
There was just one problem.
Kka—kkakkkakkkakkak!
The battle refused to end.
Even after the heads burst, the laughter never stopped. Even after the giants’ limbs were minced and their bodies carved apart, what sprayed out was not blood but paint. The Star Incarnation’s face twisted; she simply crushed a giant in her grip. Poong—the sound of a balloon popping rang out.
Pung, poong, pung!
The clowns’ swelling bodies burst. What flew free was not entrails, flesh, or blood, but the sort of confetti and candy one might find inside fireworks.
“This is not a battle.”
Yuel Razian murmured.
“It is a clown show.”
The laughter swelled louder still.
They could no longer hear one another’s voices. Only the laughter that threatened to tear their eardrums filled every space.
Kkakkkak, kka, kyarreuk, ahaha!
And then—
『Life is but a single play.』
『Even death cannot bring down the curtain.』
Snap—someone flicked their fingers.
『The play must go on.』
For eternity.
“We’re fucked.”
“Excuse me?”
“We are fucked, Najin.”
Najin blinked. Yuel, standing right beside him, was not even swinging her sword; she was calmly sheathing the blade she had drawn back into empty air—while muttering that they were fucked. Of course, delivering the word “fucked” in that utterly flat tone robbed it of any real gravity.
“The Heavenly Flowing Star despises having its domain trespassed upon. Still, even that depends on the day—”
“Wait. Wait a moment.”
“What is it, Najin?”
Najin cut her off.
Something was wrong.
Leaving Yuel blinking behind him, he turned and surveyed their surroundings, then looked up at the sky. Hundreds of thousands of whales were swimming there.
The Heavenly Flowing Star.
As the whales plummeted, a wave of déjà vu struck him. He was certain he had seen this exact scene before. More than that—why was he not surprised by any of it? This should have been the first time.
“First… let’s run. We need to get out of this domain.”
Escape first—that was Najin’s judgment. Leave the Heavenly Flowing Star’s territory, then form a plan. That felt correct.
Najin fled with Yuel.
To the Star Incarnation, who was confidently flashing a grin that said Come on, try me, Najin snapped, “Those whales swallow stars. Are you sure you’re ready for that?” Her face went paper-white in an instant, and she started running too.
They withdrew. Then they planned.
The thought rose in Najin’s mind with unnatural smoothness: Just use the Star Incarnation as bait, right? It was nothing like his usual intuition or gut feeling.
It felt as natural as speaking of something already known, already lived. That very naturalness set his nerves on edge.
The unease never left him.
Carrying that unease through the journey, Najin arrived at the very threshold of La Mancha. There, giants twisted into clowns were dancing. Battle with them began once more.
Once more?
The word that surfaced in his mind made Najin’s eyes narrow. He glanced sideways. Merlin was saying something, but the words would not reach him properly.
Kkakkkak, kka, aha, kyarreureuk!
The clowns’ laughter buried Merlin’s voice completely. That laughter was not coming from outside. The laughter ringing inside Najin himself swallowed even Merlin’s speech.
It’s because of the clowns right in front of me.
Clearing them out came first.
Thinking that, Najin drew his sword. Yuel and the Star Incarnation did the same. And so they fought “again.” The longer the battle lasted, the louder the laughter grew.
Laughter swallowed everything.
Then, with a sharp snap of fingers, Najin’s consciousness blacked out.
Blink.
When he opened his eyes—
“We’re fucked.”
He was back at the beginning.
“We are fucked, Najin.”
Beginning? What did that mean? And what did “again” mean? Hadn’t they only just started the journey?
Kkakkkak, kka, kyarreuk, ahahahaha!
Laughter echoed in his ears. Was it because this was the road to La Mancha? Already the laughter was starting. This would not be an easy journey, it seemed.
They fled the Heavenly Flowing Star once more.
The plan for breaking through the ordeal rose far too smoothly. If they moved according to that plan, they could escape the domain—he was certain of it. Where did that certainty come from? Najin asked himself the question.
Because…
Because he had already done this.
“…….”
Yes.
Merlin.
He had already done it.
How many times is this?
Najin looked at Merlin. The laughter that had stood between them vanished in an instant. Only then could he hear her voice—laced with exhaustion.
-Finally noticed, huh.
She spoke as though she had been waiting only for that question.
-The seventh time.
The moment he heard the answer, Najin remembered everything. How they had passed the Heavenly Flowing Star, leapt over trap after trial, reached the threshold of La Mancha—only to face the Revelry Emperor’s domain and be sent back to the start.
And how they had repeated it seven times.
Najin pressed his temple. A headache crashed over him. Frowning, he asked Merlin,
I never noticed?
-I tried to tell you over and over, but some distortion was clamped onto your very perception. You couldn’t take it in.
Merlin explained. He had simply accepted the clowns’ laughter ringing inside him as “natural.” He had decided it was inevitable because this was the road to La Mancha.
That was the perceptual distortion laid upon Najin.
And the stage effect that made him forget the fact of the loop.
Those two forces stacked together had made him repeat the same journey seven times. Najin felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Goosebumps rose.
He had believed himself resistant to mental interference and memory erasure. He carried Excalibur, and Merlin traveled with him.
He had been wrong.
As if mocking that very belief, the Revelry Emperor had trapped him on an eternally repeating stage. She had made him wander a maze without exit. She distorted his perception with clowns, stole his gaze with stage lights and direction, and burned his memories to ash.
It had taken seven regressions before he noticed.
Grind.
Najin clenched his teeth. Then he clenched his fist hard. Five stars flared pure white.
The reason he could feel déjà vu, the reason he could finally notice the loop, lay in the stars he carried. Among the stories that formed his stars were several of those who had broken free of repeated lives and reached their destination.
The stars that held those stories blazed fiercely.
That fierce starlight washed the contamination clinging to the minds of not only Najin but also Yuel and the Star Incarnation clean away.
“Ah.”
A beat late, the other two also came to their senses.
“……This is absurd.”
The Star Incarnation pressed hard between her brows as if dizzy.
“Does this make any sense? To toy with transcendentals this easily? So cleverly that we never even noticed when or where we stepped onto the stage?”
“Remarkable. I am immune to mental interference, yet I never expected perception itself to be twisted.”
Yuel added. She tilted her head slightly.
“Troublesome. This is the seventh iteration, yet there is no guarantee we will recall our memories the same way on the eighth. Most likely a far stronger distortion will be applied.”
“…….”
“The Revelry Emperor will not leave a loophole unplugged. We found this one on the seventh pass, but who knows how many more loops we will need to find the next. And eventually stamina and mana will run dry.”
Even a transcendental did not possess infinite stamina or mana. Anton Quijano himself—once a seven-star transcendental—had worn himself out inside a repeating dream until, at the very end, even walking had become a struggle.
“Therefore.”
Yuel looked Najin straight in the eye.
“We must find the method on this iteration. Otherwise we will be sealed inside this labyrinth for good.”
Inside a labyrinth whose exit could not be seen—whose very existence was doubtful—they had to find a direction forward. In other words, they had to find the path.
-This stage does not belong to the Revelry Emperor alone.
And so the guide spoke.
Najin carried her voice out through his own mouth.
“This stage does not belong to the Revelry Emperor alone. Upon the bizarrely swollen star tomb that is La Mancha, the Revelry Emperor’s domain is parasitizing.”
This was not her territory. Not her fief. The reason she could still wield such overwhelming authority here was precisely because she was parasitizing La Mancha.
“La Mancha is a concept that originated in the fairy tale The Knights of La Mancha. It is the domain created by Quixote when he reenacted the journey inside that story exactly.”
Najin searched his memory.
“That fairy tale contains this line—the theme, the very core of the story.”
Retracing the memory, he spoke.
“La Mancha: the road that leads to heaven is filled with hardship and trial. Yet so long as laughter does not cease, the journey continues. The knights of La Mancha never lose their laughter. Even in the most crushing circumstances, we advance while laughing.”
The line written in the original of The Knights of La Mancha.
“The Revelry Emperor has twisted the story contained in this domain, this stage, into a form of her own.”
“Twisted?”
“Yes. Twisted.”
The clue Merlin had thrown him, and the thread Najin had seized—combining the two, he reached his conclusion.
“So long as laughter does not cease, the journey continues.”
That single sentence. The sentence the Star of Contempt, Quixote, had once believed in before he became the Star of Contempt. The Revelry Emperor had rearranged it however she pleased.
『So long as mockery does not cease, the journey repeats.』
That was the essence laid beneath this stage.
“Originally, the ‘laughter’ in The Knights of La Mancha did not mean mockery. It was used as a device for overcoming hardship—if one never lost laughter even on a crushing journey, one might come to regard everything as joy.”
But the laughter the Revelry Emperor defined was different.
“Her laughter is mockery. The two laughs are of entirely different grain. Forcibly binding them together under the single word ‘laughter’ is what her domain is doing…”
While speaking they continued the journey. They leapt over the Heavenly Flowing Star’s domain, vaulted the trials they had already repeated seven times, and arrived at their destination.
“In that case, a binding point must exist.”
They halted. Before the place where giants danced and sang—where the Revelry Emperor’s domain unfurled—Najin steadied his breath.
“The meaning each domain assigns to ‘laughter’ is different. Yet they coexist. That means there is a common point. Pierce that common point and the Revelry Emperor’s domain will collapse.”
She would no longer be able to parasitize La Mancha. They had to sever the point that bound La Mancha and the Revelry Emperor’s domain together, Najin said.
“Ah.”
As if she finally understood what he was driving at, Yuel nodded.
“Is there a scene in The Knights of La Mancha where laughter is used in the sense of mockery, Najin?”
“There is.”
Najin drew a spear from his back.
“It is the most famous scene of all.”
What Najin aimed the spear at was the windmill that stood behind the giants—something they had dismissed until now as mere background.
「Behold that giant, Sancho!」
「A giant with four arms.」
「I shall pierce that giant from this moment forth, so watch my valorous figure well with those two eyes of yours.」
Don Quixote, mistaking a windmill for a giant, seizes his lance and charges. Watching him, Sancho cannot help bursting into laughter laced with mockery. Who on earth mistakes a windmill for a giant?
Laughter used as mockery.
A scene employed as derision.
The core of that scene was none other than “giant” and “windmill.” The windmill standing mixed among the giants, mimicking them—that was precisely the binding point of the Revelry Emperor’s domain.
“Conveniently.”
Najin raised the Cross-Star Spear.
“I happen to have a spear of my own.”