War (4)
The instant Carbin saw Najin’s face, his body went rigid.
A thousand thoughts tore through his mind in a single heartbeat. Why was this bastard here? Was he seeing things? But those questions did not last long.
“Long time no see, Carbin.”
Sunset-colored eyes. The moment those eyes met his, a single scene burned itself into Carbin’s mind.
“Sorry about this, Trixie.”
“If you run, it won’t end with just you.”
That day two years ago—the boy who had severed his comrades’ limbs and killed his boss. The memory of that monstrous figure made Carbin swallow hard.
“…What brings you here?”
“Speak comfortably. Comfortably.”
Najin clapped Carbin’s shoulder with easy familiarity and dragged him deeper into the tavern, dropping heavily onto a sofa.
“……”
Carbin shot him a sidelong glance, cold sweat running down his back.
That boy—no, that young man now—had left the underground city, and after that the place had been sealed off completely from the outside. Once, they had been able to hear scraps of news through people from the surface… but after Najin’s departure the Church had clamped down even harder.
Shadow agents and Holy Knights had been sent to make certain no information entered and none escaped.
So Carbin had no idea what kind of figure Najin had become out there, what names he was called by, or how far his strength had climbed.
“You said to speak comfortably, so I can ask freely?”
Najin nodded. Only then did Carbin exhale and sit across from him.
“Why’d you come back? Don’t tell me you got branded a criminal again and got tossed down here?”
“Hardly. To call me a criminal up there, you’d need someone on the level of the Emperor.”
“That’s laying it on thick. Or… is that just how it is after pulling Excalibur?”
Carbin gave a dry chuckle.
Excalibur. The word made Najin fall silent for a moment. Of course—everyone down here would know he had drawn it.
“So what’s the business? Come to punish the sinners of the underground city?”
Carbin swirled a cup full of cheap liquor.
“Or just to laugh at us?”
He drained the cup in one go and let out a long, alcohol-thick breath. The underground city had become a suffocating hell, and the one who had made it so sat right in front of him.
“Najin.”
He was afraid of the young man, but there were things he needed to say more than he needed to fear him.
“After you left, this place turned into hell.”
“……”
“Trap-spider Horce, Druggy Hakan—even that monster Ivan is dead. The three rulers who kept even a scrap of order down here are gone. What do you think happened?”
“…Ivan is dead?”
“Of course he’s dead. What kind of question is that?”
Carbin looked at him as if the answer were obvious.
“He pointed a sword at the Church. You think they let him die clean? One of their precious Holy Knights cut off both his arms, tore out his remaining eye, and hung him in the square. Tough bastard—took three full days to die.”
“…The body?”
“No idea. Probably dumped in the landfill.”
The landfill—the lowest pit of the underground city, where corpses and refuse were thrown, a place where every kind of dead thing mixed together.
“Me, though…”
Carbin stared into his empty cup.
“I resent you. Because you killed the boss I served? No—that doesn’t matter anymore. Because you wrecked the underground city? No, I don’t even care about that either.”
A bitter smile twisted his lips.
“My life was already fucked. Stuck in the gutter. Digging a little deeper doesn’t change much. Sure, living’s pure shit, but… that isn’t why I resent you.”
“Then what is it?”
“That goddamn starlight.”
Carbin lifted his head. His eyes were clouded with drink, yet something still burned deep inside them.
“I can’t forget the starlight you showed that day. Almost twenty years since I fell into this city—I thought I’d forgotten it all, thought I couldn’t even remember it if I tried… and then it came back.”
Sunlight. Starlight. The beautiful world above.
“Fuck.”
Carbin muttered.
“I want to see it again. I know I never will, but I want to. What I saw that day keeps flickering in front of my eyes and it’s driving me insane.”
Bottom-feeders. The only light granted to the people of the underground city was the dim glow of ore lamps. Until that day two years ago, people had taken comfort in the sunset-colored ore lamps. But the radiance that had flooded the city that day made it impossible to find comfort in those lamps ever again.
The artificial sunset of the ore lamps.
Dim, murky light.
They had seen a brilliance that could not be compared to such a thing. Knowing they would never see it again for the rest of their lives, the residents of the underground city still yearned for the light of that day.
“I started dreaming a dream that didn’t fit my station.”
A dream that didn’t fit his station. In Carbin’s muttering Najin heard an echo of someone else. He himself had once dreamed a dream that didn’t fit his station.
“Fuck…”
“Carbin.”
“What.”
Najin did not waste words.
“That thing you said about wanting to see the stars—can you handle it?”
“Handle it? What the hell does that mean?”
“Can you stake your life on it?”
Carbin blinked. Najin’s mouth curved into a smile. Then he made Carbin a single proposal.
Would he reach for the stars even if it killed him?
Or would he rot away day by day, drowning in liquor, and end his life just like this?
“……”
Carbin looked at the cup in his hand, then at the hand Najin held out. The hesitation did not last long.
Some time later, Najin stepped out of Carbin’s tavern. Turning over the information he had gathered, he walked on.
His reason for coming to the Lilac Tavern had been simple.
He needed intelligence, and from ancient times taverns had been places where every kind of news gathered. And in the Lilac Tavern, Najin had obtained far more than he expected.
“The Church’s shadow agents and Holy Knights are crawling all over the place. Not even a rat can slip out of the underground city.”
“There are a few Holy Knights mixed in too. The worst bastard among them… what was his name? Berlo. Yeah, that was it.”
“Why do I know all this?”
“Because those bastards use this place.”
The Lilac Tavern Carbin managed was no longer a place for the residents of the underground city. It had become a haunt for Holy Knights and shadow agents dispatched from the surface. Thanks to that, Najin had been able to pull a great deal of information from him.
“Hey… aren’t you worried about me?”
“What if I just spill everything to the Holy Knights who come here?”
To that question Najin had only shrugged and answered that Carbin could do it if he wanted. The choice was his. Carbin had only chewed his lip and said nothing more.
In truth, Najin did not care.
Even if Carbin told the Holy Knights, nothing of real importance would change.
Word won’t get out anyway.
Pulling his robe lower, Najin stopped. He had reached the central plaza of the underground city—once managed by Ivan, the place where Najin had drawn Excalibur.
The scenery had changed a great deal since then.
Every shop in what had once been the underground city’s only bustling quarter was shuttered. The brilliant ore lamps were all extinguished, and only silence hung in the air.
Najin moved on without a word.
No footfalls sounded. No presence leaked. The shadow agents stationed throughout the underground city failed to notice him even when he brushed past their very sides.
“……”
He stopped at the single passage leading to the surface—the elevator that stood in the heart of the underground city.
Najin climbed the wall of the tower-like shaft that rose straight toward the sky. When he reached a suitable height he drove his sword into the wall. With a soft slice, the blade carved out a section as easily as cutting paper.
Empty space opened before him.
Below, the elevator and the steel cables that held it came into view. Najin set his sword against the cables.
Tik. Tidick…
He had minimized his aura, yet the moment the edge touched them the steel cables began to snap with no resistance. When he had cut roughly halfway through, Najin extinguished his aura.
Now, the instant anyone above tried to raise the elevator, the cables would break. The sole path upward from the underground city was as good as severed.
The work finished, Najin leapt down the wall. It was not yet time to ascend to the surface. There was still something he needed to confirm here. Landing without a sound, he walked on, turning over Carbin’s words.
Ivan was dead.
He had met a horrific end in the plaza.
Najin had expected Ivan’s death, yet hearing of that brutal final hour still made his expression harden.
Not only Ivan.
Carbin had said Oppen had met a similar fate—that while ambushing the shadow agents heading for Ivan that day, his trail had been caught and he had been beheaded and displayed.
One man had orchestrated it all.
Berlo.
Holy Knight of the Church, Berlo.
Najin walked while turning that name over in his mind.
“Those bastards… for some reason…”
“Lately they’ve been guarding the entrance to the landfill.”
“It’s gotten worse recently. About a month now?”
“Like there’s something down there you shouldn’t see. Get anywhere near it and they just gouge your eyes out.”
It seemed the man he was looking for would be waiting at his destination.
The very bottom of the underground city—the landfill.
It had originally been Druggy Hakan’s territory, yet even Hakan had not claimed the absolute lowest point. Her workshop had sat midway down the chute where refuse, corpses, and filth were dumped.
She had intercepted the bodies thrown toward the “bottom” and used them as materials for her research.
So.
The deepest pit of the underground city, the place where discarded things were discarded once more, an abyss the light of the ore lamps never reached.
No one knew what lay there.
No one had ever cared to ask.
—Perfect place to hide something, wouldn’t you say?
Merlin had said, and Najin nodded.
He had a theory.
If a constellation was hiding somewhere in this city, it would certainly be at the bottom of the landfill.
Berlo, knight of the Church.
He had once belonged to the Atanga Knights, yet he had offered up his honor and pride to God and converted to the Church. Some might call that choice “devout,” but those who knew the truth only shook their heads.
Berlo had simply chased power.
He had abandoned the empty glory of an Atanga knight for something more practical and become a Holy Knight of the Church. There had been no faith, no conviction in the act.
He was Archbishop Orlan’s hunting dog, a limb that moved at the Archbishop’s command and would commit any filthy deed without hesitation. He believed following the powerful was the shortest path to power itself.
That choice had been half right and half wrong.
Seated as one of Orlan’s close aides, he had risen rapidly within the Church—until that day two years ago, when everything he had built was smashed to the ground.
“How could that be your fault?”
“Being played by a wicked man’s schemes was not your crime. A mistake, yes. A minor mistake. Isn’t that so?”
“But even without crime, one must still bear responsibility for a mistake. That is the rule, Berlo.”
Archbishop Orlan had buried Berlo in the underground city. Officially it was a posting, yet the order to remain here three hundred sixty-five days a year without returning to the surface was no different from being cast down.
Even the shadow agents dispatched here no longer obeyed him. They followed the orders of other Holy Knights who still traveled between the surface and the underground, not the man stuck in the pit.
Berlo ground his teeth. Everything that had reduced him to this state filled him with irritation. Even so, he carried out the Church’s commands, clinging to the belief that one day they would call him back. There was no other path left.
The bottom of the underground city.
The place the Archbishop called “the Abyss.”
Guarding the entrance to it was Berlo’s duty.
At least there’s one comfort…
Berlo glanced sideways.
Five knights recently dispatched by the Church stood there. Every one of them was a Sword Seeker-class powerhouse, top-tier Holy Knights ranked just below the captain of the Holy Knights.
Forces of renown even within the Church.
The fact that he stood here with knights of that caliber gave Berlo a measure of solace. Yes—he was carrying out an important mission. Were not those outstanding knights performing the same duty as he?
With that thought he stood watch—until a soft footfall reached his ears.
Berlo’s brow furrowed. What fearless fool would set foot in a place the Church had designated Forbidden Territory? Only recently he had made an example by gouging out the eyes of a child who had wandered too close.
His mood was already foul; finding a target for his frustration made the corner of his mouth twitch.
“How dare—!”
The instant Berlo opened his mouth to roar, he heard the sharp ring of swords being drawn behind him—kakang!
He turned. Every one of the top-tier Holy Knights had drawn their weapons and leveled them at the young man walking toward them. Tension locked their shoulders. They looked almost… nervous.
Why?
Berlo’s eyes darted in confusion. Why were the elite Holy Knights reacting like this? As a mere Sword Expert, he could not understand.
Then he understood.
The young man walking toward them lightly brushed his robe. In that moment the concealment magic woven into it unraveled, revealing its true form.
The Free Knight’s coat.
A garment permitted to only one person in the Empire, on this entire land.
Free Knight Najin leveled his sword at the Holy Knights.
When a Free Knight turned his blade on another knight, the reason was usually simple: that person had lost their honor, lost their pride, or was trying to reclaim something they had lost. The Free Knight gladly became their opponent.
This case was different.
Najin was not leveling his sword at “knights.”
He was leveling it at the false, the twisted, the wicked, the filthy. Cutting down what deserved to be cut was also a Free Knight’s duty.
“……”
Najin did not give his name.
They were not worth hearing it.