The Sword Master Who Amounted to Nothing (3)
A voice reached him.
Draw the sword.
It was not Merlin’s. The sound rose from within Najin himself—less the voice of any particular person than a kind of revelation, an instinct given form.
You can draw the sword.
The same voice he had heard two years ago on that day.
Najin let out a long breath.
He was a wreck. He felt as if he might collapse at any moment. The floor was stained dark red with the blood he had spilled, and the deep gashes in his arm and shoulder looked ready to tear free altogether.
And yet—why?
His mind was clearer than it had ever been, his vision razor-sharp. Najin saw it: the starlight spreading around him. He glimpsed the landscape born of sword aura that had passed Blooming and reached the realm of Full Bloom.
And Najin laughed.
Because beyond that aura, the scenery of the world came into view.
With his newly widened sight he confirmed where he stood—and that was why he could not help but laugh. Coincidence, or inevitability? Driven back again and again, Najin had somehow arrived at the very heart of the underground city.
The center of the underground city. Atman’s plaza.
The place where Najin had once drawn Excalibur.
“……”
Najin looked at Mordred. Mordred looked back at him. Clarent hanging at his side, the knight stood still and opened his mouth toward Najin.
“You.”
Mordred asked the question.
“Do you believe you are worthy?”
The voice was different. Not the voice that had hounded him, driven him to the brink of death, and mocked him for lacking the right. Until now Mordred’s words had been one-sided; this question alone was not.
A question that seemed to wait for an answer.
Mordred stretched out a finger and pointed at Najin.
“Excalibur selects a hero. The hero chosen by Excalibur stands for humanity, and as humanity’s representative challenges the Abyss.”
He spoke.
“To take Excalibur in hand—to wield that sword—means that. Do you understand what it means?”
Mordred’s eyes narrowed.
“Arthur led countless knights. To light the darkness that covered the world, she used Excalibur as a lantern and hauled an entire age forward. As humanity’s representative she gathered her people and guided so many.”
Countless knights, soldiers, heroes, and the Round Table had charged into the dark behind Arthur.
“And still Arthur failed.”
The knight who had witnessed that failure from the closest place of all spoke on.
“Even Arthur failed. Can you truly surpass her? Unlike Arthur—who was complete, unshaken—you are incomplete, immature, and merely dragged about by Excalibur……”
You, he said.
“Do you truly believe you are worthy?”
Instead of answering, Najin reached into the empty air.
He seized the hilt of Excalibur.
As if bound by chains, as if driven deep into stone, Excalibur still would not come free. To draw it, something else was required.
Now Najin understood as well.
Why Excalibur had refused to be drawn.
Because I had no conviction.
To Najin, Excalibur had always been a last resort, a kind of cheat. Only when he met an opponent he could never overcome by his own power, only when he stood before a trial he could not possibly handle, did he reach for Excalibur. And even in those moments, some part of him thought, without quite realizing it:
This isn’t a victory I earned.
I didn’t overcome this with my own strength alone.
I borrowed Excalibur’s power, used a cheat, leaned on strength that was never mine.
That had been the truth.
Excalibur was not his power. It was the sword Arthur had completed, a blade that held Arthur’s story, a symbol of Arthur herself. To swing Excalibur was the same as borrowing Arthur’s strength.
So.
Excalibur was not Najin’s sword.
Because Najin himself had unconsciously believed as much, Mordred’s declaration had bound him. It was not only the authority Mordred wielded; it was also that Najin had no answer to the question Mordred kept throwing back at him.
Yes. Maybe you’re right.
He had spoken of surpassing Arthur, yet deep down he had still thought of himself as borrowing Arthur’s power, still treated Excalibur as something that did not belong to him.
Just as Mordred said, he had merely been selected by Excalibur.
Perhaps he had no right to wield this sword.
Najin accepted Mordred’s charge. He admitted that part of what the knight pointed out was true.
He accepted it—
But that was neither surrender to Mordred nor an admission of his own defeat. It was only so he could acknowledge it and step forward.
“……”
If Excalibur was Arthur’s.
If the constellations embroidered upon it belonged to Arthur and the Round Table, if he was only borrowing their stories, if he was only leaning on the sword Arthur had finished……
Najin smiled.
He had no need of any of that.
With a sharp grip he clenched the hilt hard. His sword aura began to coil around Excalibur.
In that instant Mordred’s eyes flew wide.
Merlin’s did the same.
Those who had belonged—and still belonged—to the Round Table understood at once what Najin meant to do.
2.
Still gripping Excalibur.
In time that had slowed until it seemed to stop altogether, Najin thought.
If this was not his sword—if it was a blade forged of Arthur’s stars—then he had no use for such a sword. Najin had no intention of repeating the history of a thousand years past, and no intention of being satisfied with rising only as high as Arthur.
What he wanted was higher still.
When you stand at the highest place.
Because he had promised.
Cry out from there.
That I was here.
That Ivan, knight of Atanga, was here.
The promise made in a place where no stars could be seen.
The goal he had sworn at the starting point of the journey.
Returned to the origin, Najin recalled his past, turned the starting point over in his mind, and faced himself.
Najin’s mindscape expanded.
Perhaps because that expanded mindscape stained everything around him, or perhaps it was only an illusion—before Najin stood a child. Dirty clothes, a face smeared with blood, clutching a storybook to his chest as if it were treasure.
The child asked him.
Are you having an adventure? An adventure greater than Arthur’s, more splendid than Arthur’s? Have you become the one I dreamed of being?
To the question his past self had thrown, Najin lifted his head.
Stars shone.
And the stopped time began to move again. The moment Mordred’s eyes bulged and he tried to close the distance, Merlin stepped between them, as if to say she would not allow the interference.
……Mordred had said it.
What Arthur had possessed, and what Najin lacked.
That no one followed him.
That he had no knights, no companions. That he was far too frail a being to stand as humanity’s representative.
Don’t make me laugh.
Najin snorted at Mordred’s words.
None? Why wouldn’t there be any? They were right here.
The stars Najin carried began to shine. In the underground city where only a false sky and false stars had ever glowed, Najin’s stars rose. Six stars lit him. In that instant the Excalibur clenched in his hand shuddered hard.
Gwooong.
A vast resonance swept the entire underground city. Like a bell, like a heartbeat, and with that peal Excalibur’s form began to change.
Not ending with Arthur’s story, but moving on.
Using the history that came before as a foothold toward something higher.
As if it had been waiting only for this moment—for Najin to cry out just so—Excalibur wrapped itself in starlight. Excalibur was a sword forged of starlight, a sword that grew alongside its master. The star-blade that had long ago met the end of its tale now reached its turning point.
Arthur’s constellation, set in the heart of the blade, was pushed out toward the edge.
The star of the hero who a thousand years ago had led an age gladly became nourishment for the one who came after. As if that was what it had always wished, Arthur’s star became a vessel ready to hold a new one.
A pure white blade.
Upon that pure white edge where no star and no story had yet been written, Najin’s stars began to be carved.
The great hero who had engraved thirteen stars—Arthur.
The story that began with Arthur.
There was a boy who looked up at the sky because he admired Arthur, who wished for an adventure more splendid than Arthur’s. The boy was born in a place where stars could not be seen, and in a place where stars could not be seen he dreamed of stars.
It had been a life of no consequence.
A life of no consequence that, whenever and however it ended, no one would ever notice.
The boy who lived that way met someone.
His first star.
He taught the boy what it meant to challenge. He taught him how to face things head-on, and the heart that leapt into hard things. Cross the line, he had said—and to the boy he had always been the starting point.
The Star of Challenge shone.
The boy challenged and challenged again. No matter how dangerous the task, he threw himself into it, and to achieve great deeds he challenged the limits of his own self. And so the boy achieved great deeds.
The Star of Dragonslaying shone.
Whatever obstacle barred the way, he did not stop. He did not flee; he faced it head-on and took one step forward. When something blocked the path, the boy smashed every barrier and advanced.
The Star of Breakthrough shone.
It was a hard journey. Hardship and trial crashed down. The world demanded that the boy kneel. But the boy saw them: a knight who fought against Erosion, a hero of the empire who never once knelt. The knight in the helm taught Najin an unyielding, iron spirit.
The Star of Indomitability shone.
He saw the broken. He saw those who, though broken, still endured. He met the undead wandering the Outer Land, the musician who repeated an endless month, the spearman who lost every memory with each new day, the human who loved a witch, and the witch who fell in love with a human. Najin guided them to the places they longed for.
The Star of Funeral Rites shone.
He met a knight who declared the world short on laughter and vowed to make stories worth laughing and talking over. From the knight who never lost his smile to the end, Najin learned laughter. He realized that laughter was a brief rest that let a hard life be endured.
The Star of Chatter shone.
Najin drew the sword upon which six stars shone.
The chains that had bound the blade snapped without strength.
The Knight of Betrayal had said it. You were only selected by Excalibur; you have no right. Empty as you are, you do not wield the sword—you are merely wielded by it.
To those words, Najin answered.
Excalibur did not select me.
I chose Excalibur.
The Star of Selection rose.
The moment the seventh star appeared, every star and every story held within them was carved into Excalibur. Star linked to star and became a constellation.
What was completed was a new constellation.
Najin drew his own sword, upon which his own stars had been engraved.
With a majestic peal of bells, Excalibur came free.
Starlight flooded forth.
The flooding starlight drove back the dark.
Najin raised Excalibur high toward the sky. Thirteen stars formed the outer edge of the blade; seven stars filled its heart. The star-forged sword of stars blazed brilliantly.
A swordsman who had reached Full Bloom.
One wall still stood between him and the rank of Sword Master, yet in the moment he gripped Excalibur, Najin was a transcendent. Najin, who had set foot upon transcendence, opened his eyes.
The star-blade proclaimed it.
The beginning of a new history.
3.
The sound of things breaking, tremors that shook the city, the uproar of vast beings running wild—at all of it the residents of the underground city hid themselves in deeper places.
As always they bowed their heads, looked not at the sky but at the ground, and curled their bodies small. Praying that the chaos would pass quickly. Praying that the beings from the upper town would not punish them, they hid and hid again.
It had always been so.
They had always had to be so.
It was not only those who had fallen here because of crimes. In the underground city there were also those who had been framed, and children who, simply because they had been born here, would never be able to see the stars for the rest of their lives.
They had forgotten how to look up at the sky.
Some did not even know that such a thing as stars existed.
They only accepted what was given and lived, looking not at the sky but at the ground, staring at the line drawn beneath their own feet—lives of no consequence.
Those who lived that way bowed their heads today as well. Tomorrow, the day after, until the day decades later when they died.
It was just as they, who would live that way again today, bowed their heads and curled their bodies even tighter that a vast wave—gwooong—swept through the underground city. Those who had kept their heads down lifted them without thinking.
A resonance they had felt once before.
Carefully they raised their heads. They straightened shoulders that had been hunched. They opened windows that had been shut tight.
Stars were shining.
It was the light they had seen two years ago on that day.
“……”
As if bewitched, the residents of the underground city of Atman began to step outside one by one. Beneath the ore lamps that hung pitifully from every house, they looked toward the high place.
Stars were shining.
At the center of the underground city, right in the middle, a star had risen.
It was the starlight they had seen two years ago, yet it was different from the star of that day. One, two, three…… seven stars were shining. The brilliant starlight lit the underground city.
A city that for long ages had been sunk in darkness.
A night that had come so long and so deep that no one could know when the sun might rise—or whether it would rise at all—a city that could only wander forever through night alone. Dawn arrived there.
The Dawn Star rose.
In a city where stars could not be seen, stars shone.