War (1)
The Demon King of Grief, Carpediem, had been subjugated.
The Pillar of Praise, Akut, had been subjugated.
With the annihilation of the domain’s master, the sky began to clear. The black veil parted. The laughter and applause faded away, and silence settled over the wilderness.
“……”
In that silence, Gerd rubbed his jaw.
“The Revelry Emperor’s constellation is a lie, and you tore aside the veil that hid it to see her true face. Do I have that right?”
“Yes.”
“The fact that you reached this place even though no one announced it outside, and the fact that you already knew Akut was a traitor—those are proof enough that the information is sound.”
Gerd nodded in satisfaction.
“Your merit is enormous. The discovery and conquest of La Mancha, and on top of that, exposing the Revelry Emperor’s weakness and rooting out a traitor… ‘enormous’ hardly covers it. I will report this part to His Majesty myself.”
He glanced at Akut’s broken spear still planted in the ground and muttered, “Conveniently, a seat has just opened.” Then, while recovering the corpse of the Annihilation Pillar—heart pierced clean through—he continued speaking with Najin.
“Two of the four Court Jesters are dead. One of the remaining two is the Star of Contempt. The problem is the last one. You said you saw that constellation as well?”
“I did, but it was one I’d never seen before. I don’t know who it belongs to.”
“Can you recall the shape?”
Najin nodded and drew the pattern in the dirt.
A constellation of nine stars.
Gerd, Caron, Uel, and Seongyuksin all stared down at it. None of them recognized it. They had never seen it either.
“Strange. A constellation with nine stars should be famous, yet this is the first time I’ve laid eyes on it.”
“Same here. I’ve never seen a star like this.”
Caron and Uel tilted their heads. Nine stars meant a considerable number of great deeds, and fame inevitably followed. Yet the constellation before them was truly one they were seeing for the first time.
I’ve never seen a star like this either.
Merlin sounded equally puzzled.
“……”
Najin stared at the stars in silence.
When he first saw this constellation, Akut’s betrayal had been so shocking that he hadn’t focused on it. Now that it was drawn out on the ground, something about it tugged at him.
It was a constellation he had never seen before.
It had to be.
Why does it feel familiar?
Najin frowned. A strange sense of déjà vu prickled at him. He was certain he had seen this pattern somewhere. But where? He dug through his memories.
Somewhere… definitely somewhere…
Then a voice brushed past his ear.
“Atman? That place still exists?”
“Strange. It shouldn’t still be there.”
The Helmeted Knight’s voice. A conversation from long ago, when Najin had spoken of his origins, suddenly rose to the surface.
“Hidden? What was hidden there?”
“A corpse.”
“What?”
“They buried the corpse of a star there. I don’t know whose. With eight stars it was definitely a constellation, but I never learned which one.”
The Helmeted Knight had told him that roughly two hundred years ago the corpse of a star had been discovered in the subterranean city of Atman. For some reason, no record of it remained in the present Empire. Even with Gerd’s help, they had found nothing.
“What did that star look like?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t part of the operation.”
The Helmeted Knight had never described its shape. Yet somehow Najin felt certain that the constellation before him was connected to that one.
The number of stars was different.
He had no way of knowing if the shape matched.
Still, his instincts insisted there was a link. Najin focused on every memory related to the underground city. He even closed his eyes and turned his attention inward.
The moment he concentrated on his inner world, his mindscape unfolded.
The landscape of subterranean Atman.
Having gained six stars and reached the realm of Blooming, Najin’s mindscape had more than doubled in size. It was now large enough to hold every street of the underground city. He walked through it.
Neither starlight nor sunlight ever reached the subterranean city, so every house hung ore lamps. The sunset-colored light spilling from those lamps painted the streets. People who had lost the sun remembered the outside world through that sunset glow.
In the underground city, the ore lamps were the stars.
Following those starlights, Najin lifted his head. When he looked up he saw his own stars hanging there. He extinguished them for a moment. With the stars gone, only the ceiling of the underground city remained.
“……”
The raw material for the ore lamps was luminous stone.
Those stones were embedded in the ceiling itself. As a child, Najin had often stared up at them and thought of stars. That was why, even inside his mindscape, he could reproduce the exact positions and shapes of every ore lamp.
He had always looked at the sky.
He had always drawn stars from those luminous stones.
One of his childhood pastimes had been connecting the stones on the ceiling into constellations. And back then he had noticed something.
No matter where I start or end, the same shape always appears.
No matter the starting point, the pattern that emerged was always uncannily the same.
He recalled that shape now.
And opened his eyes.
On the ground lay the nine-star constellation he had drawn. The two patterns matched perfectly. Najin’s narrowed eyes flew wide.
“The underground city.”
He spoke.
“It’s the subterranean city of Atman.”
Najin explained. That he himself had been born in the underground city. That he had once spoken with the Helmeted Knight. That he had seen this exact constellation there.
Even as he spoke he clicked his tongue inwardly.
Even to his own ears the story sounded far too convenient. If the last Court Jester was hiding in the underground city, it implied that the entire Holy Light Church might be a traitor to humanity.
The largest of the three star churches.
And the one toward which Najin had shown open hostility.
It was common knowledge that Najin harbored resentment against the Holy Light Church—he had openly clashed with a Lighthouse Keeper in public. So, in his own estimation, his words could easily be taken as a smear campaign against them.
And I have no real proof.
His only evidence was the eyewitness claim of “I saw it.”
Suspicion was the natural response. Najin looked around at the transcendents watching him. He was about to swear that however false it might sound, it was the truth—when Gerd spoke first.
“No other evidence?”
Gerd looked him straight in the eye. The same cold gaze as always.
“…None.”
“I see. Then are you certain?”
“I am.”
“Then that settles it.”
Settles it? Settles what?
Najin blinked. Gerd jerked his chin.
“We go. To the headquarters of the Holy Light Church.”
“…What?”
“You said a traitor to humanity is there. What other reason do we need?”
“But the evidence—”
“You are certain, are you not?”
Gerd frowned as if Najin were asking something absurd. Najin glanced around. The other constellations wore similar expressions. They were startled by the possibility that the Holy Light Church might have colluded with a demon, yet none of them doubted Najin.
Of course they don’t. Not after everything you’ve done.
Merlin’s voice cut in.
Hey, aren’t you undervaluing your own record a little too much?
What do you mean…
Forget everything else for a moment. Let’s just list what you’ve done most recently.
He had shattered the Revelry Emperor’s mask. He had uncovered the fact that she was distorting the Empire’s history. He had taken part in the groundwork for her subjugation and seized the weaknesses of both Quixote, the Star of Contempt, and the Revelry Emperor herself.
And he hadn’t stopped there.
Today, on this very field, he had arrived with Seongyuksin and Uel just as the subjugation was about to fail. He had turned a battle that nearly cost them the Empire’s First Pillar and the Sword Saint into a victory. That merit was undeniably his.
After achievements like that, why would anyone doubt you?
Evidence was unnecessary.
Everything Najin had done already served as evidence.
“……”
Only then did Najin understand. He had already climbed high enough for this. A wry smile tugged at his lips, and he answered, “All right.”
They were just about to move when Carpediem’s stage finally dissolved completely and the night sky returned to normal.
Flash.
The stars above began to flicker one after another. Seongyuksin, Uel, Gerd, and Caron all stopped at the same moment. They listened to the voices of other stars sending signals to their own. Then, one by one, their faces twisted.
“Looks like things just got a lot more complicated than expected.”
Caron muttered.
“The Sword Church has been attacked. The Kingdom of Latua invaded the Church’s holy ground and killed a number of priests.”
“The Holy Blood Church is the same. It’s Xantium on their side.”
“The Holy Body was not attacked. However, the High Priest was assassinated—by demon contractors.”
Every gaze naturally turned to Gerd.
Gerd’s expression was darkening.
“Latua, Xantium, Balvidia, Gobel. Four kingdoms have formed an alliance. They have declared war on the Empire. The full details are unclear, but…”
Blood vessels stood out in Gerd’s eyes.
“It seems the Pillar of Praise had been preparing this from the start. The tower of the Pillar of Praise—the third pillar—has exploded. An explosion on the scale of an eighth-circle spell went off in the middle of the Imperial Capital.”
The explosion, and the moment the capital’s security faltered because of it, had been the signal for the assaults. Confirming the signals from his subordinates, Gerd spat the next words.
“His Majesty is currently in critical condition.”
Attacks timed precisely for the moments when the central figures of each power were absent. There was no need to wonder who stood behind the simultaneous strikes.
The Revelry Emperor.
High in the sky, the Star of Revelry was shining.
In the heart of the Imperial Capital, the sudden explosion of one of the five pillars shut down every artifact within several kilometers.
The massive mana storm tore holes in the security network surrounding the Imperial Palace. Assassins and black mages poured through those gaps, and for the first time in history the Emperor of the Empire bled.
The attackers were eventually suppressed by Imperial knights and the fourth and fifth pillars…
But Emperor Eldwin of the Empire had fallen into critical condition.
He was burned, poisoned, and riddled with stone fragments from the blast. The arm he had raised to shield his face had withered black.
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty, you must not move yet! You need rest—”
“Poison was on the assassins’ weapons. Your Majesty, we must extract the poison first—”
Yet Eldwin rose from the bed only an hour after being laid upon it. Ignoring every protest from his retainers, he summoned the Empire’s officials to one place.
He headed for the throne.
This was no time to lie in bed.
One of the Empire’s pillars had betrayed them. An attack had struck the moment the Empire’s First Pillar was away. And as if that were not enough, neighboring kingdoms had declared war on the Empire.
“Ha.”
Eldwin let out a hollow laugh. The rage boiling in his blood burned hotter than the pain in his body. With a wide-sleeved robe covering the arm that still dripped pus and a mask hiding his burned face, the Emperor seated himself upon the throne.
To show that he was unharmed. To show that the Empire still stood.
Once he had grasped the full situation from the throne, Eldwin laughed again. He laughed so hard the palace itself seemed to float. The first words he spoke were these:
“These bastards must think the Empire is a fucking joke.”
He crushed the declaration of war in his fist.
“King Arthur founded the Empire for the sake of humanity and, until the day she departed for Kamran, left us with one charge: protect humanity. The Empire must be the center that unites all of mankind. That is the covenant. The covenant that every soul who sits upon this throne is bound to keep.”
But, Eldwin smiled.
“Black mages are not included in the humanity King Arthur spoke of. Those who collude with demons are not included either. Why? Because they are not human. They are beasts.”
He tore the declaration of war to shreds.
It had been filled with the ridiculous claim that the Revelry Emperor should become the new center of humanity.
“The beasts have bared their fangs at the Empire.”
He rose from the throne.
“Summon every knight.”
The Emperor’s voice rang out.
“From this moment the Empire will annihilate everything on the continent related to demons. Do you understand? Annihilate.”
Anyone who had colluded with demons, contracted with them, or given them even the slightest aid—kill them without exception. Reduce everything connected to them to ash.
Those who bared their fangs at the Empire would pay the price.
“I declare the opening of war.”
The Emperor declared war.
The Royal Guard, the Imperial knights, every man and woman in the Empire who bore the name of knight was conscripted. They were knights, and a knight was obligated to answer the summons of the Emperor—descendant of the Knight King.