Carpediem (4)
The only ones who can be measured against a Transcendent are other Transcendents.
It is a brutally simple truth. No matter how inexperienced in battle, no matter how comparatively frail a Transcendent might be, any discussion of their strength always carries the same preface:
Weak—compared to other Transcendents.
Because the sentence “a Transcendent is weak” simply cannot stand. Transcendence is, in itself, transcendence. They are beings who have stepped beyond every limit, unbound by common sense, divine existences that lie outside ordinary cognition—hence the name Transcendent.
Beings of pure transcendence, in the most literal sense.
For an ordinary mortal to face such a creature is a feat that borders on the impossible. Should a human who has never touched transcendence dare challenge one, the world would only laugh. A green brat who does not know the value of his own life.
Courage and recklessness are not the same thing.
And a mortal charging a Transcendent is unmistakably the latter—the kind of mistake only a youth who has yet to grasp his own measure would make.
So was he, right now, charging headlong at transcendence, no different? Najin shook his head at the question he had thrown at himself.
No. He did not think so.
Merlin.
—Yeah?
An explosion roared. The light-beams fired from the Pillar of Praise’s spear smashed into the earth and birthed the blast.
Can I do it?
—What?
Laughter rang out. Applause rang out. The clowns that the Sword Saint had already split open were crawling back up again, swelling into a cacophony.
—Well, if I’m being honest…
Blasts, noise, a shaking field of vision, choking dust.
—It’s hard, yeah? A Transcendent is a Transcendent. That constellation calling himself the Pillar of Praise doesn’t look particularly weak, either. Sure, the Sword Saint’s got your back… but still. It’s hard. Because a Transcendent is a Transcendent.
Najin paid none of that racket any mind. He listened only to Merlin’s voice.
So you think it’s difficult after all?
—Of course it’s difficult. But so what?
Merlin laughed.
—Out of everything you’ve ever done, what wasn’t difficult?
She laid a hand on his shoulder, then stretched out her arm and pointed forward with one finger.
—What meaning is there in an adventure without trials? What value is there in a life without challenges? You crash into things, you break, you fall flat on your face, and still you take one more step forward. That’s what living is.
The guide pointed the way he had to go.
—You think there’s a shortcut to transcendence?
Merlin smiled—like an adult watching a child, or a senior who had already walked the same road.
—The fastest path is the royal road itself. Yes. The very road you’re walking right now.
You haven’t gone wrong.
I, the greatest guide in human history, guarantee it.
—Go.
Najin drove his foot down hard.
—Just like you always have.
Just as he always had, he swung his sword.
Twenty paces left.
Najin ran. He ran with his eyes fixed only ahead.
Even before the light-beams the Pillar of Praise hurled, he never turned his gaze. There was no motion of evasion, no attempt to bat the beams aside.
He had no need.
Slaaaaaash!
Sword-ki streaked in from behind him and sheared the Pillar of Praise’s light-beam clean apart. The Sword Saint’s sword-ki. Caron had already told him: Run. I’ll open the path.
The Sword Saint, Caron, had made his choice.
Closing the distance on a body already stacked with wounds and exhaustion would be difficult. Better, then, to plant his feet and swing. He might not be able to finish it, but he could open a road that led straight to the Pillar of Praise.
Running that road was Najin’s part.
And that fact filled Najin with quiet joy.
Caron was not a man swayed by sentiment. Nor was he a man who let private feelings cloud his judgment. He had judged that Najin’s sword could deal meaningful damage to a Transcendent—and so he had given him the chance.
To be acknowledged by a Transcendent, to stand on the same battlefield as the Sword Saint and become a force that mattered—that filled Najin with fierce delight.
He poured on more speed.
Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen.
Step by step he closed the distance. Catching the Pillar of Praise’s attacks was the Sword Saint’s duty; carving through the clown horde and pressing forward was Najin’s. He accelerated still further.
What rose in his mind was the Sword Saint’s movement of a moment ago.
A flash—he dragged his light-wreathed blade low along the ground.
The instant Najin brushed past the pack of clowns, their arms and legs were sheared away. Fluid successive cuts carved the jesters to pieces. Footwork and swordsmanship locked together perfectly; even while swinging, his speed never faltered.
“Hah!”
Watching from behind, the Sword Saint barked a disbelieving laugh. He copied that after seeing it once? That was no technique a man learned so easily. Half absurdity, half pure pleasure tugged at Caron’s mouth.
So that’s how it is, is it?
Utterly out of place for the moment, Caron felt genuine joy. As if racing against Najin, he too increased his speed.
A flash.
For every single swing of Najin’s sword, Caron swung three times. Bundles of pure-white sword-ki batted aside every attack the Pillar of Praise sent toward the youth. Continuous flashes of light scoured the stage.
Dust billowed. The earth shook. Flash after flash flared as Transcendent and Transcendent clashed. And then—thud. The sound of Najin’s footfalls rolled across the field.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Leaping several meters with every stride, Najin opened his eyes wide. With those wide eyes he saw the path he had to take. Beyond the clown horde, the Pillar of Praise was now visible.
A court jester wearing a clown mask.
Apostle of the Revelry Emperor.
A being that had to die if the Revelry Emperor was ever to die. The moment Najin tried to take one more step toward the Pillar of Praise—when the distance had shrunk enough—he saw it through the shattered mask.
The Pillar of Praise’s smile.
The man drove his spear into the ground.
"Praise. Behold. Exalt."
Mana erupted explosively from the spear planted in the earth. Surging like a tidal wave, it swallowed everything within roughly ten paces of the Pillar of Praise.
"Revelry—my master."
This was the stage he had saved until the very last moment.
The Pillar of Praise—Akut.
A constellation of six stars, one of the Empire’s pillars for more than thirty years. As was usual with such pillars, information on Akut was well known.
That he was a constellation who wielded a spear.
That he could fire aura in the form of light-beams to snipe enemies hundreds of meters away; that when those beams struck they detonated in explosions several meters across.
And that his ultimate technique was to throw a spear condensed with aura, then control that spear freely for a full minute after it left his hand.
Every one of Akut’s abilities was public knowledge.
What that information lacked was any mention of “Akut’s stage.” Not because it had been omitted or hidden—simply because Akut had never once unfolded a stage. He had never been a constellation who clung to such theatrics in the first place.
Not every constellation spreads their mindscape outward to create a stage. Staging requires immense expenditure of mental force and mana, and there are plenty of cases where raising a stage grants no real increase in power.
Naturally the Empire had assumed Akut was one of those, and that was why he never used one.
…That judgment was not entirely wrong.
Akut’s stage did little to amplify his strength. Within his mindscape there existed only “himself, praising a fictitious being seated upon an empty throne.” Unfolding the stage did not make Akut stronger.
But.
Once he became an apostle of the Revelry Emperor, that stage gained meaning.
He no longer praised a fiction.
The throne was no longer empty. Seated upon it was a clown mask—the very symbol of the Revelry Emperor.
“……”
In place of his shattered mask, Akut fitted a clown’s mask over his own face. With that, the stage was complete.
Kyah-hah! Kyah-hah-hah-hah!
The Revelry Emperor had taken Akut as her apostle, and the bond resembled that of a cult’s god and its champion. The instant the stage finished, the starlight of the Revelry Emperor wrapped Akut’s body.
The expressionless mask’s mouth tore open at the corners.
Multicolored paint was daubed thickly over his form.
Laughing, Akut raised his spear. The one he fixed his gaze upon was Najin—the thorn in the side of his master, the Revelry Emperor.
If I kill that brat…
Her Highness will be pleased. For his master’s smile, Akut would do anything. Even if he himself became nothing more than a discarded piece, it did not matter.
Thud.
While Najin shortened the remaining distance, Akut charged to meet him. The space between them collapsed in an instant. Watching the youth still rush straight at him even in this situation, Akut let out a scornful laugh.
Foolish and green.
Did he truly believe he could face a Transcendent? Akut was one-armed and one-eyed now, his body stacked with wounds from the battle against the Sword Saint.
Yet even so, Akut was a Transcendent.
The gulf between Transcendent and mortal was not narrowed by such trifles. Watching Najin close in, Akut could not stop laughing. The sneering sound echoed. The stage painted in his master’s colors would swallow that boy whole—so Akut believed.
A flash.
Yet contrary to his expectation—
Sssssssssssssssssss!
The instant Najin’s sword flared, the paint daubed across the stage burned away as if evaporating. The starlight born from the stars wreathing Najin’s blade set Akut’s stage ablaze.
“……Ah?”
Akut’s eyes went wide.
He could not know it, but attempting to borrow the Revelry Emperor’s starlight against Najin had been the worst possible move.
Breakthrough. Indomitable. Dirge. Dalso.
Every star Najin had claimed in the Outer Land stood in direct opposition to the Revelry Emperor. And in the stories those stars carried, there always appeared someone who had stood against her. In their final moments they had made Najin a knight, and in their final moments they had resisted the Revelry Emperor.
Kruenbel. Alderan Basaglia. Blue Lance. Alonso Quijano.
The starlight they had bequeathed to Najin burned the paint. It carved a flaw into the stage Akut had raised. There was no chance the Sword Saint would miss that opening. The Najin who had been charging Akut suddenly dropped his stance low.
The moment Najin bowed his head, Caron swung.
Thousand Swords.
A horizontal streak of light leapt hundreds of meters and smashed into Akut’s spear. The arm gripping the weapon was flung backward; Caron’s sword-ki stripped away every scrap of paint and aura that had coated Akut’s body. It peeled the flesh and opened a gap.
And thus the heart was laid bare.
Toward that heart Najin took his final step. What rose in his mind were the thirty days he had spent swinging a sword beside the Helmet Knight.
“Drive your foot down as if you mean to root it into the earth.”
“Let the sword hang, and recall the basics.”
“From below to above.”
“In a single breath, without the slightest waver, powerfully—using the foot planted like a root as your axis.”
“That is the foundation of my swordsmanship.”
“You may not know it yet, but this is the foundation of a sword art with a very long history.”
He recalled it.
Najin swung the sword he had drawn back behind him.
From below to above—toward the sky.
He drew a single, unwavering stroke.
Now Najin knew as well.
The name of this sword art was the Triumphant Sword, the blade Alderan had reforged across the Empire’s eight-hundred-year history. And through his disciple it had become a sword that now boasted a thousand years—an emblem of the Empire itself.
“How about it?”
That was the sword Najin swung.
“Isn’t it magnificent?”
Indeed—it was a magnificent sword.
Against the Empire’s traitor, Najin swung the Empire’s foundation. He drove into the gap Caron had opened, tore the wound wider, and split the heart. The instant Najin’s blade touched him, Akut’s body burned pure white.
To cut down a Transcendent with nothing but his own sword.
Under ordinary circumstances, even with the Sword Saint’s aid, it would have been nearly impossible. Yet Najin did not regard the Akut before him as a Transcendent. What stood in front of him now was nothing more than a clown.
Not a Transcendent—a clown.
And if so, he could cut it.
Because the stars Najin carried were shining for the sole purpose of killing clowns.
Blood sprayed.
Through the flying blood Najin met Akut’s eyes. Where Najin’s gaze was calm, Akut’s pupils were stained with terror and bewilderment. He clearly did not understand what had just happened to him.
Najin made certain he understood.
The sword that had pointed at the sky.
Its tip reversed and turned downward. Before him stood both a traitor to the Empire and a demon contractor. Najin knew the sword that suited a demon contractor.
Atanga’s sword.
The blade he had inherited from Ivan—Najin swung it.
A knight’s sword split the demon contractor.