The Stars Shine (5)
There is a saying that a single look is faster than a hundred words.
It means that rather than wearing out your tongue with endless explanations, it is quicker simply to show someone once. In Najin’s judgment, the present moment was precisely that sort of situation. Those who have lost their qualifications and authority tend to grow long-winded in their efforts to package themselves, but…
One who already possessed both had no need to speak at length. All he had to do was demonstrate it through action.
“······.”
Najin raised Excalibur. The starlight it produced flooded the city. Though it was the dead of night, the streets became as bright as midday.
“Seize that bastard at once—”
Orlang’s shout to seize him immediately was swallowed by the awestruck voices of the citizens as they gazed upon the starlight. Next, Najin drove the Cross-Star Lance he had been carrying on his back into the ground.
The banner of the Imperial First Horn, bound to the shaft, fluttered in the air.
It was proof that he stood here in the First Horn’s stead—and that he stood here as the Empire itself.
“High Priest of the Holy Light Church, Orlang.”
Najin called out the name of the criminal.
Orlang’s face drained of all color.
“Guilty of colluding with a demon of the Outer Land, of serving the Witch of Camlann, and of plunging the Empire—and the entire Continent—into chaos.”
His fury was restrained. A voice cold and settled rang out across the city. Najin leveled the sword of stars at Orlang.
“Do you have anything to say?”
It is a frame-up! Lies! Baseless accusations! Even the Empire has no right to treat the High Priest of the Holy Light Church this way—! Orlang roared, veins bulging in his neck.
But the crowd had already turned away long ago.
No matter how lofty the prestige of the Holy Light Church, that prestige had never been built by Orlang alone. It had been accumulated over centuries through longing for starlight, through faith, through envy and reverence.
And now, right before their eyes, stood Excalibur.
A star that had shone for a thousand years.
That single blade—the most brilliant star, the very symbol of the greatest star—transcended every justification. Even the High Priest of the Holy Light Church was nothing more than a shabby, insignificant old man before Excalibur.
Pash-ssuk.
White powder drifted down from the sky. It looked like snow, or like starlight; it was the fragments of the barrier.
The barrier enveloping the Holy Light Church was collapsing.
With the deaths of the Lighthouse Keeper and the Lighthouse itself, the barrier crumbled and the view beyond was revealed. Surrounding the outskirts of the Church were the Empire’s knights. The moment they confirmed what lay inside the barrier, their eyes went wide.
The military banner of the Imperial First Horn.
The Free Knight’s coat.
And in his hand—Excalibur.
The instant they recognized Najin, the man at the head of the knights dropped to one knee. He was a knight who had served the imperial family his entire life, a man whom even the Royal Guard called “Elder” and treated with deep respect.
Schrantz, Elder of the Royal Guard.
A knight who owed a knee to no one save the Emperor himself—a man who had served the imperial family for nearly a hundred years and proven his unbending integrity—
Clank.
Without the slightest hesitation, he knelt before Najin. He bowed his head in reverence, paying no mind at all to the mud that stained his greaves.
“To the hero of the Empire.”
It was no empty formality. Even before the Imperial First Horn, Schrantz had never lowered his head this deeply. He was offering genuine respect to the being before him.
“I present myself before the greatest knight.”
Beginning with Schrantz, like a wave, every knight knelt toward Najin. Not one of them harbored the faintest doubt about the act.
It was simply what a knight was supposed to do.
The figure before them was not merely a young hero of the Empire. He was not a rising star under the protection of the Imperial First Horn, nor even a Free Knight. He was a being who transcended all of those things—who stood ahead of them all.
The successor of the Great Hero Arthur.
The heir of the Knight-King Arthur.
If one called oneself a knight, one owed reverence to the origin of every knight. While the Empire’s knights remained bowed, Najin looked at Orlang.
The shabby old man struggled to the very end.
He thrashed, mobilizing the Church’s dark agents still under his control and the holy knights who had shared his boat. Before that pathetic thrashing, Najin spoke only briefly.
“He colluded with a demon.”
Najin’s voice, cold as ice, rolled across the square.
“He joined hands with Camlann and sowed chaos across the Continent.”
The Empire’s knights raised their heads. They rose from their knees and, with a chorus of metallic rings, drew their swords.
“Cut him down.”
The knights roared and charged. The forces remaining within the Holy Light Church were considerable, yet before the Empire’s knights they were swept aside like chaff.
Najin could have subdued them alone without difficulty.
Yet he deliberately used the knights to crush Orlang’s faction—as if to declare that everything the man stood for had been wrong. Najin walked in a straight line toward Orlang.
“I am Klaus Aten.”
As he walked, Najin listened to the voices rising around him. A familiar voice rang out, strong and clear across the city.
“Commander of the Blue Wing Cavalry—Klaus Aten!”
One by one, the knights who had joined this operation as mercenaries supported by the Dieta Merchant Group revealed their names, as if there was no longer any need to hide.
“You branded us heretics and dragged our honor and pride through the mud—”
Klaus Aten shouted.
“—yet I never sank. I am the Blue Wing itself, and our honor never sank either.”
As he passed Najin, Klaus shaped a silent word of thanks with his mouth—gratitude simply for being allowed to stand in this place of vengeance.
Led by Klaus Aten, countless knights swept past. The demon hunter Gerald, the soldier Basaus Malek, the inquisitor Bashen Corte… those who had hidden within the Dieta Merchant Group, waiting only for this day, now swung the blades of their revenge.
And Najin—
Tak.
—walked toward Orlang, who stood at the center of it all, teeth chattering so hard they clicked together. No one could block Najin’s path. Who could obstruct the stride of a transcendent?
He stopped before Orlang.
“Orlang.”
“Hah… hahh…”
Orlang gasped for breath. When Najin took another step forward, the retreating old man caught his heel on a stone, toppled, and sprawled on the ground. Seated in the dirt, he looked up at Najin.
His pupils shook. His teeth would not stop rattling. Najin looked down at the terrified, trembling man.
“Do you know Ivan, knight of Atanga?”
Najin asked.
“Or the mercenary Oppen?”
Orlang strained every scrap of his memory for an answer. He could recite the names of countless power brokers and great merchants, even the names of their children—yet the names Oppen and Ivan meant nothing to him.
To Orlang they had never been names worth remembering. Even if he had known them once, he would have forgotten them.
A moment passed.
Orlang could give no answer. As if he had expected nothing else, Najin let out a short, hollow laugh. He brought the raised sword down. One of Orlang’s eyes was sliced open.
“H-hyaaaaaaaagh!”
The urge to carve the writhing, screaming Orlang into pieces right there was almost overwhelming, yet Najin restrained himself. It was not mercy.
Killing the old man in a single stroke here would have been too light a price for the crimes he had committed. Najin knew well that, for some people, death itself could become a kindness.
At Najin’s glance, soldiers bound Orlang.
He would be judged under imperial law, and the sentence would be carried out before the eyes of the people. A punishment so severe that even death would feel gentle awaited him.
2.
After Najin revealed himself at the Holy Light Church, the situation was resolved with startling speed. The leaders of the various nations, realizing they had been abandoned by the Revelry Emperor, abandoned command; soldiers and knights who had lost all will to fight surrendered.
In war some earn merit and some become heroes, but recording those deeds is the historians’ task.
The flames of a war that had been brief yet fierce died down.
“Do not punish those who surrendered. They merely followed orders. Simply do not let those who must bear responsibility slip away.”
At the Emperor’s command, the Pillars of the Empire moved.
They entered each nation openly through the main gates. With armies already collapsed, no one could bar the stride of a transcendent; the rulers of each land had no choice but to receive the Empire’s envoys with due courtesy.
Those envoys were at once messengers and reapers. Anyone who had danced with demons met their end that day.
The Empire demanded nothing further. It finished the matter with a single warning: it would watch the process by which new kings were chosen. Prolonged civil strife was precisely what the demons desired, and the Empire was both the center of the Continent and the focal point of humanity.
The Empire swiftly quelled the chaos.
Time flowed on.
The Revelry Emperor’s forces that had rampaged along the boundary of the Outer Land vanished without a sound, and her star—which had painted the sky like spilled ink—sank into quiet stillness.
Some said her carefully prepared plans, years in the making, had collapsed; that losing three of her Court Jesters had driven her into a corner. While a few constellations mocked her thus, the Revelry Emperor’s constellation shuddered.
Half of her scheme had failed.
The remaining half had succeeded.
She was a schemer and a strategist. Such people never stake everything on a single plan; they always dig a second pit, and a third.
Twinkle.
The Revelry Emperor gained a new star. No one could know what she had obtained, yet she had claimed what she desired.
The Star of Revelry became an 11-star constellation.
In the Outer Land, the greatest constellation of all shone.
…Time continued to flow.
Roughly a month passed.
The flames of war had died, and the winds of turmoil had settled. Though the bureaucrats remained busy with the aftermath, peace returned to the Continent. One by one people resumed their daily lives… yet there were those who could not.
“So let me get this straight.”
Warm sunlight, a lazy afternoon breeze.
On a day when everyone else was catching their breath—
“So, if I didn’t mishear you, that son of a b—ah, that magnificent Sir Najin obtained a new star? Meaning two of them in that short span?”
“Yes. Just before the war he had already set the record as the youngest 6-star.”
“And not long after the war broke out he became a 7-star?”
“That’s right.”
“······Fine. That much I can understand. He must have accomplished something remarkable in the fighting. But.”
In the hall where the Empire’s historians had gathered—
“Two of the Empire’s Pillars—the Horn of Praise and the Horn of Annihilation—fell, and the star of the Demon King of Grief, Carpediem, fell with them…”
“Correct.”
“The Lighthouse That Illuminates All Creation—actually a special star that should now be corrected to ‘the Lighthouse That Illuminates the Abyss’ because another star had been hidden—and the Star of Reverence belonging to the Lighthouse Keeper Eurypylos also fell.”
“And so on.”
“With one transcendent from each nation falling, that makes four more transcendent stars. So the total looks like this.”
“That’s the sum of it.”
At minimum.
At minimum, nine constellations had fallen.
Not nine stars—nine constellations.
And the “magnificent” Sir Najin had obtained two stars. The historians who had to record this fact quietly offered their respects toward the Gray Tower.
And also—
looking into the mirror, they offered their respects to themselves.
“If only it ended there.”
One historian stroked his scalp—luxuriant until two years ago, now perfectly smooth—and smiled. There was still one problem they had been postponing under the excuse of wartime urgency and mountains of more pressing work.
They could postpone it no longer.
They had to deal with the problem they had delayed again and again.
Before them lay a newspaper, and on that newspaper a short, bold line of text. The historians stared at that single sentence and burst into the hollow laughter of men who had lost their minds.
“So it was the great and magnificent Sir Najin who pulled Excalibur. My prophecy was right after all, wasn’t it? I never knew I had a talent for prophecy!”
Historian Durek wailed.
Recalling the night he had joked over drinks—“That bastard probably pulled Excalibur too, didn’t he, the fucker?”—Durek let out a scream.
“Good heavens! Good heavens! This is astonishing. So astonishing I can barely breathe!”
He truly could not breathe; with a series of choking gasps he collapsed. The others should have revived him, yet they decided it would be kinder to leave him unconscious, so no one woke him.
The magnificent and great Sir Najin.
Among the historians, “magnificent” and “great” had by now become approximate synonyms for “son of a bitch.” They slapped their foreheads. The war was over, but a new war was about to begin for the historians and the Gray Tower.
3.
Bathing in the warm sunlight, Dieta leisurely lifted her teacup. The motion was elegant and full of poise. She took a sip of the black tea that shimmered in the cup and smiled. She was seated in the garden of the Arvenia Ducal House.
It was hers now.
Head of the Arvenia Ducal House.
Duchess of the Golden Coin Eyes, Dieta Arvenia.
She sipped her tea with her usual smile and read through the newspaper. Yet if one looked closely, tea was dribbling from the corner of her mouth.
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da…
The fingers holding the cup were trembling as well.
“Najin?”
“Yes, Dieta.”
She looked at the young man seated across from her. With a perfectly ordinary, leisurely expression, as if nothing at all were amiss, he was popping sweets into his mouth—Najin. Dieta’s eyes, flicking back and forth between him and the newspaper, quivered violently.
“Th-th-th-this… what is this?”
“Ah, it’s nothing much.”
Najin reached into the empty air.
The moment he clenched his fist—
Excalibur appeared.
“Hic—hiccup. Hic… cup.”
Staring at Excalibur, Dieta’s breath caught. With a soft gulping sound, she fainted.