City of the Abyss, Atman (6)
What a goddamn mess. Really.
Eurypylos dragged in a breath and took stock of the situation.
Bad. It was truly, thoroughly bad.
The Lighthouse was firing beams of light. Enduring the heat rays cast down by the eight inverted lighthouses hanging in the sky was hard enough on its own—and Mordred’s clone was hardly content to stand there and watch.
There was no time to weigh options.
Eurypylos gripped his halberd in both hands.
In that same instant, six more halberds rose behind his back. Halberds forged from the star he carried. With seven in all, he moved.
Whoosh.
The moment Eurypylos swung, the six accompanying blades moved with him.
KRA-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK!
A storm carved through the city. Smashing the lighthouses floating overhead, Eurypylos advanced.
Kiiiiiiing—!
Six halberds moving at his will, and the one clenched in his hands. All seven swept toward the charging Mordred. Seven tangled trajectories. Seven storms cracking like whips in the same heartbeat.
Mordred, mid-charge, stopped dead.
Standing still, he moved his sword.
Before seven branching halberds, before seven storms, Mordred’s blade began to draw its path.
…Mordred had been a Knight of the Round Table.
The Round Table, where the greatest and most noble knights had gathered. When people asked who among them was strongest, the names that rose to the tongue were Lancelot, Galahad. But if you asked the fallen stars who had lived that age who they least wanted to face at the Round Table…
After Arthur, the answer was always the same man.
Mordred.
The knight who rebelled against the world. Mordred.
Mordred’s sword was like a beast. Where Arthur’s blade had been clean, beautiful, restrained, Mordred’s ran wild—clawing, rending, tearing. The man himself had been born contrary to the bone, and his sword was no different.
The beast ran free.
Clone or not. Weakened or not.
His skill never dulled.
A savage light flared in Mordred’s eyes, and his sword accelerated. Along the arc of Clarent, the blade he held, a sword-aura the color of blood sprayed free.
The storm was torn apart.
First strike—three of the seven halberds snapped.
Second—two of the remaining four shattered.
Third—one more.
In less than a second, in a true blink of an eye, the sword flashed three times, and six of Eurypylos’s halberds broke. All that remained was the one in his hand.
Eurypylos did not care that the others had shattered. He still held one.
The instant his halberd drove to bisect Mordred’s body, Mordred offered his own flank. He was certain he could take Eurypylos’s head before his own body was cut in two.
Give flesh to break bone.
That was Mordred’s arrogance—and his certainty. Even if he surrendered an arm, it would not stop him from cutting down Arthur’s heir waiting behind.
But Eurypylos had no intention of simply letting his head fall. Even if it cost him his neck, he meant to cleave Mordred in half, and he poured power into the halberd.
Eurypylos aimed at two things at once.
The Mordred before him, and the Lighthouse standing behind.
To cut both at once—or, failing that, to deal wounds fatal enough to wreck their plan. It was the optimal choice, but not the best. Because the moment Mordred offered his side, the hand he thrust out clamped onto the shaft of the halberd.
He could not stop the weapon’s motion entirely, but he could bleed off its force. In that fraction of an instant, countless moves and decisions flashed past one another.
Eurypylos saw the result.
His own head falling. And his halberd failing its purpose. The moment he tried to thrash free of that future—
Tak.
A variable intervened.
Suddenly—or as if it had been waiting there all along—a sword thrust in from Eurypylos’s flank.
The blade’s speed was slow.
Not fast, but a strike slipped in on perfect prediction.
In a battle between transcendents, the change that single sword could make would be slight. At best, a shove to the back. A span of a hand, a single step—far too slight to decide victory or defeat.
Shwaaaaak—
But the worth of a strike is not measured by its power. It is measured by the change it creates.
In that sense, the blow Najin drove home was priceless.
The future Najin had read with bloodshot eyes.
The optimal instant, wrung from every sense he possessed.
Najin’s sword smashed into Mordred’s. It was the best strike he could give—and the moment the blades met, he felt as if his body were being torn apart.
Craaack.
The rebound hurled Najin’s body away. But his blow succeeded in shifting the path of Mordred’s sword. A change of only a hand’s breadth. Yet that hand’s breadth saved Eurypylos’s life.
Seok.
Half the throat was cut, but not severed. The shockwave from Eurypylos’s remaining halberd flung Mordred far. Mordred’s flank was deeply gashed as well.
The same strike reached the distant Lighthouse, forcing it to gather itself.
And so, a brief stalemate.
Eurypylos clamped one hand over his bleeding throat, sealing it, and looked back.
There, buried in the rubble, was Najin.
“…….”
A moment’s thought.
Then Eurypylos made his choice.
Strong. Filthily strong.
Najin tried to rise from the wreckage, then gritted his teeth when he realized his arm was shattered.
He had succeeded in creating a change.
But it was only temporary. The situation remained overwhelmingly against them. He tried to shove the pile of debris off his body, but strength would not come.
Just taking a single hit, and it was this bad.
While he struggled—
Kugung.
Someone lifted the rubble away.
Eurypylos.
Seeing him standing there with the debris in his hands, Najin swallowed hard. Throat half-severed, body covered in wounds—yet Eurypylos’s face was expressionless.
“I have a plan.”
He spoke.
“This is between me and the Lighthouse. I’m sorry it dragged an outsider in. I tried to play the hero, but handling both at once is, well—difficult.”
He gave a bitter smile and pointed at the sky.
The hole to Camlann opened above them.
The light of the Abyss leaking from it was still reinforcing Mordred’s clone and the Lighthouse without pause.
“A clone grows weaker the farther it is from its constellation. This place is already an environment similar to the Abyss, and a passage straight into the Abyss is open—but……”
He jerked his chin.
“If you get outside, things will change a little. And I am going to close that passage no matter what it takes. So……”.
“I understand.”
“You answer right away. It won’t be easy, you know?”
“If I fail, the world ends, doesn’t it? I don’t think this is a situation for weighing easy against hard.”
The Lighthouse Keeper laughed, half incredulous.
“I like that kind of bluntness.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Who’s worrying about whom here… Well. What choice do I have? I have to be all right. This is why you choose your friends carefully. Pick the wrong ones and life becomes a real pain.”
He grumbled and let out a long sigh.
“Najin.”
“Yes, Eurypylos.”
“To you, I……”.
Whatever he had been about to say, Eurypylos closed his mouth. Then he smiled, bitter again. He clapped Najin’s shoulder twice and swallowed the rest of the words, as if they were something he must not speak.
“Clench your teeth.”
“…What?”
As he said it, Eurypylos seized Najin by the nape and spun in place.
Tuhwak.
He hurled Najin high into the sky. As Najin shot upward at speed, Mordred’s gaze turned skyward as if by instinct. Mordred’s purpose was to kill Najin. Eurypylos was only an obstacle in the way—so his eyes followed Najin without thought.
And Eurypylos did not miss the opening.
Kwang.
In a single breath he closed the distance. Having thrown everything into the charge without a thought for retreat, Eurypylos’s ankle, his calf, burst under the force. Sacrificing one leg bought him the chance.
With everything he had left, Eurypylos drove the halberd upward.
Mordred reacted at once, yanking his sword back into a guard—but from the start, Eurypylos’s aim had never been to cut him down.
Kaang—the instant Mordred’s blade met his halberd, Eurypylos unleashed his power.
Compressed aura detonated.
Eurypylos’s remaining arm shattered under the force as well.
KRAAAAAAAAAAANG!
A savage shockwave, and the wind pressure it birthed, blasted Mordred skyward. The moment Najin and Mordred’s forms rose into the air, Eurypylos exhaled a long breath.
Even as the Lighthouse’s heat ray punched through him, he swung the halberd toward the heavens.
A strike with everything left.
Across the ceiling of Atman, the City of the Abyss—already riddled with accumulated damage—cracks raced. With a sound like a pane of glass shattering, a small hole opened to the outside.
The wind pressure Eurypylos had created flung Najin and Mordred out through that hole.
“Kh—koff.”
Body pierced by the heat ray, coughing blood, Eurypylos let out a long breath. Forcing a smile, he spoke to the Lighthouse standing far away.
“Now we can talk properly.”
“…….”
“Don’t make that face. This is between you and me, isn’t it? A story the two of us have to finish. Isn’t that so?”
Unable to bear it any longer, the Lighthouse opened its mouth.
“Why go this far? I was the one who cried out for the world’s salvation. You only followed me. Since when did you love the world enough to do this……”.
“You seem to be under a misapprehension.”
Eurypylos staggered, then set his stance.
“I am hardly a good man. I don’t love the world either. Salvation? Don’t talk nonsense. I never cared about any of that to begin with. The world is packed full of filthy bastards—the longer you live, the more it just makes you sick.”
“Then why?”
“You really have to ask?”
Eurypylos gave a short, sharp laugh.
He raked his blood-soaked hair back from his face.
Because of you, you damned woman.
Eurypylos kicked off the ground.
Breaking the stage and out into the open.
Back the way he had come, shoved upward on the wind, Najin narrowed his eyes.
There was Mordred, who had followed him outside. He had no thought of turning back. He stared this way as if he wanted nothing more than to kill Najin as soon as possible.
Until now he had attacked Eurypylos only because getting past him to reach Najin had been difficult. Now that he was free of Eurypylos’s reach, the tip of Mordred’s blade was aimed solely at Najin.
His expression said he could not care less about growing weaker with distance from his true body. Had he even grown weaker at all? Even after escaping the City of the Abyss, the murderous presence pouring off Mordred was unchanged.
Not easy. Hard. A fight he could not win.
But.
Najin spun his body once in midair.
He drove his sword into the cliff face.
The cliff leading down to the City of the Abyss—the same cliff he had climbed down earlier—and Najin began to run along it. Behind him came the sharp tak of Mordred kicking off the rock.
Which is exactly why it has to be done.
Racing the near-vertical cliff as if it were flat ground, Mordred swung his sword at Najin. Najin met the blade and clenched his teeth.
Excalibur had said it was not his.
Had said he was not worthy.
“Bullshit.”
Maybe it was coming home. Something of childhood roughened the words that left his mouth of their own accord. Najin twisted the corner of his lips up.
Even without that, he was a peerless genius.
Najin’s sword-aura surged.
A blade-light shot through with platinum. The instant it met that light, blood vessels stood out stark in Mordred’s eyes.