Who Am I? (2)
Caron, master of the Sword Church and Sword Saint.
There were many titles for him.
Najin had claimed most of them by now, yet Caron had once been called a once-in-a-generation genius. Before Najin’s arrival, Caron had held the titles of youngest Sword Expert, youngest Seeker, and youngest Master.
Master of the Sword Church.
The man who had mastered a thousand sword arts.
The Thousand Sword Star bore countless epithets, but those who truly knew Caron—and the Sword Church—spoke of him this way:
A man mad for the sword.
The Sword Church had always been a gathering place for freaks ready to grind their entire lives into the blade. The mindset of the man who had climbed to its absolute peak could never have been normal.
“I can kneel, too.”
Caron meant every word. He had no choice but to mean it.
It was Excalibur. Not just any sword—Excalibur!
The legendary holy sword once wielded by King Arthur herself, the star-forged holy blade. Every swordsman had dreamed of it at least once: the greatest of all famous blades. If there was a chance to touch that holy sword, kneeling was a bargain price.
And why stop at the knees?
He could bow his head as well.
What was the big deal?
In Caron’s mind, a Sword Saint was someone who would willingly bend knee and lower head for the sake of the sword. The moment he started to drop to his knees in earnest, Najin broke into a cold sweat and stopped him.
“You don’t need to kneel. I don’t have a hobby of making my master kneel. So please… just…”
Najin guided Caron back into his chair, then sighed and closed his hand on empty air. Excalibur, normally stored in the void, flashed into existence.
“Hah—”
Caron sucked in a breath. Even with its light restrained, Excalibur shone like a star. His pupils trembled as he beheld the star-blade resting before him.
“It’s different from when it was stuck in the stone.”
“It seems to have changed to suit me.”
“It didn’t shine like this back then, either.”
This was not Caron’s first time seeing Excalibur. He had seen the copies that appeared across the continent and had even tried to draw them. But this was his first time seeing the original.
It was different. The smooth, perfectly straight blade and the sharp edge it carried existed on another plane entirely. The very nature of the metal itself was like a star—resistant to the profane, severing the false.
A holy sword. It was a holy sword in every sense of the word.
Caron asked with his eyes.
May I hold it?
Najin nodded. In unqualified hands it would scatter into starlight if swung, but simply holding it was fine—just as Merlin and Bedivere had done.
“Ahh…”
The instant his fingers closed around the hilt, tears streamed from Caron’s eyes. While Najin stared in bewilderment, Caron wept tears of pure rapture. When a person sees something too beautiful, they simply cry.
“This… this is a work of art.”
“Pardon?”
“Can a single sword truly be this beautiful? Even the master smiths called geniuses, even if they spent their entire lives hammering iron, could never forge a blade like this. Is it a miracle born of chance? The harmony of principle itself…?”
Caron spent a full ten minutes pouring out praise for Excalibur before he finally calmed down. Najin recalled something Caron had once said—“Among the transcendents of the continent, I’m probably the most normal one”—and wore a complicated expression.
I really don’t think so.
“Hah. Thank you. That was a magnificent sight.”
“Yes, well…”
“And.”
Caron leaned back against the chair.
“It seems I’ll be traveling with you before long.”
“…”
Najin understood what he meant.
They would of course subjugate the Revelry Emperor together, but Caron was speaking of something beyond that. The first Sword Saint who dwelled in Kamran, beyond the Outer Land.
The Sword Ghost of the Abyss—Siegfried.
Caron’s goal was to free that man, and Najin himself felt the need to meet him as well.
“Then let’s meet again soon.”
As if seeing Excalibur had truly been his only purpose, Caron rose the moment his business was finished.
“Ah.”
Just before leaving, something seemed to occur to him. He turned back to Najin.
“Be careful of Yuel.”
Caron looked at him with almost pitying eyes and gave his shoulder a couple of pats.
“She’s been waiting for you. Eagerly.”
It was not good news. Not in the slightest.
Dieta, Duchess of Golden Eyes and mistress of Arvenia, had carefully screened her visitors, yet the number that remained was still considerable… and every last one of them was a figure capable of shaking the Empire. That much went without saying.
Of course, not only the great and powerful came to see Najin.
A few people with whom he had built ties—and who also had connections to Dieta—could still be granted a brief audience.
“Bravo, bravo, bravo! This is how investment is supposed to be done. I knew it from the start. I said the greatest knight of all would surely accomplish something magnificent like this!”
Marquis Edelmar was one such visitor. He arrived bearing the most expensive wine in the territory, chatted at length with Najin and Dieta, then left after loudly declaring his ambition to take his theater troupe all the way to the imperial capital.
“…”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Um, so… I reached Blooming not long ago, right? That was a pretty high realm in its own way.”
“Yes, I saw. You did it right in front of me.”
Roseline, who could no longer bring herself to speak casually to the current Najin and was therefore using formal speech, fidgeted as she continued.
“Sir, you were clearly still at the Sprouting stage back then, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“And now… what did you just say you are?”
“Full Bloom.”
“…”
“And when I hold Excalibur, I’m a Sword Master.”
“What the fuck, how does that even make sense?!”
Formal speech abandoned, Roseline finally wailed. Her face flushed bright red as she seemed to recall the words she herself had once spat out.
I’ll compete with you. Me? I’m not some easy woman. Half my blood is from one of the greatest witches in the world, and the other half from a famous hero—think you can handle that? Ha, keeping up with me is going to be rough, ha…
That was what she had said in the past. And the young man standing before her now? The owner of Excalibur who had proven to the entire continent that he possessed the same caliber as the great hero of a thousand years ago.
“Aaaaaaaaargh!”
After screaming her throat raw, Roseline left. Tonight her blanket would have to endure the kicks of a Sword Seeker at the Blooming stage.
A few others came after that, but those stories are best left as brief interludes. Among the throng of visitors, only two more tales were truly worth telling. One of them belonged to Argo, knight of Atanga.
“I greet the greatest knight.”
Argo saluted Najin and then burst into laughter. The fact that he himself had conferred knighthood upon the greatest knight who drew Excalibur was a lifelong point of pride.
He also spoke of how Ivan’s false charges had been cleared. It was, perhaps, an inevitable outcome.
The Holy Light Church could never escape punishment. Its high priest had been corrupted, and the revelation that the order had colluded with the Revelry Emperor and with Kamran itself ignited public fury. The Empire decided to make an example of the Holy Light Church.
The emperor himself issued the command. Amid the chaos left by war, the Holy Light Church found itself facing the Empire’s knights. During the investigation nearly the entire upper echelons of the order were executed, and the Holy Light Church effectively disintegrated.
The faithful left without a home were absorbed into either the Holy Blood Church or the Holy Body Church. On the site where the Holy Light Church’s main cathedral had stood, only a single lighthouse remained.
A memorial to the Lighthouse Keeper, Eurypylos.
Though most of the order had fallen, Najin had personally petitioned the emperor that Eurypylos at least not be branded a traitor. The emperor had readily nodded.
And so the matter was closed. As the order crumbled, every convict was re-tried. Most of them were found to have been falsely accused and regained their freedom… among them Ivan and Oppen.
The two men who had been cast into the underground city for the crime of insulting the Church had their honor restored through Najin.
Though their bodies were never found.
“…”
Najin bowed his head before the graves made from their keepsakes. Oppen was recognized for the service of “teaching Najin the sword” and granted a place in the imperial public cemetery reserved for national heroes…
Ivan, his honor restored, was granted a resting place among the knights of Atanga. After visiting Ivan’s grave with Argo and speaking with him briefly, Najin remained alone before the tomb.
“Ivan.”
A sword-grave fashioned from Ivan’s own blade.
Najin gave a short laugh and sat down in front of it.
“A lot really has happened.”
Where to even begin?
“I guess I should start here. I managed to escape thanks to you, Ivan, but… damn, living wasn’t easy. No status, no money…”
Before the sword-grave, Najin recounted his adventures.
“I went to Cambria. You know Cambria, right? The City of Opportunity! That’s where it all started.”
The story that began with you.
“And who am I, after all? Ivan’s hunting dog, right? Mercenary work turned out to be pretty similar, actually. So I did this and that, and my rank shot up like crazy. Oh, and I hunted down that demon knight while I was at it. You know what I said there?”
And the adventure that could only begin because of you.
“‘I am the squire of Ivan, knight of Atanga.’ Damn, that line still hits even now. Not bad, right?”
Najin spoke with a smile.
The star of Dalso—the Star of Laughter—glowed softly.
“I killed dragons. Two of them, no less!”
The tale of dragon-slaying.
“Next… let’s see. I crossed into the Outer Land. It was pretty different from what I expected. I went through some hard times. But I also got to meet some good people…”
The stories of overcoming hardship.
The stories of indomitable will.
The stories connected to the funeral rites.
And the adventure tales worth telling with a smile.
“That’s how it went.”
Najin spoke on.
“I drew Excalibur again, finished everything, and completed my revenge.”
The stories continued until the sun set, yet they never quite reached an ending. Perhaps that was only natural.
“I’ll save the rest for next time.”
Because Najin’s story was not yet finished.
His star had not yet been hung in the highest place, and the ending of the tale was still far away.
“I’ll come again, Ivan.”
Turning his back on Ivan’s grave, Najin walked on.
To move on to the next stage.
He had closed the previous scene with a flourish—“to move on to the next stage”—but not every story can end so neatly.
“Oh, good to see you, Najin. I’ve been waiting.”
Najin looked at the woman standing before him. Iron bars separated them, yet given who she was, those bars might as well not have existed.
Snow-white hair. Crimson eyes the color of blood.
If one were to name the beauties of the Empire, she would always place within the top three. Her appearance alone approached perfection—and here she was, pounding on the main gate of the Arvenia ducal house in broad daylight.
Yuel Razian, Executioner of the Holy Blood Church.
She gripped the iron bars of the Arvenia gate with both hands and leaned her face toward Najin.
“Would you mind opening the gate?”
If you don’t, I’ll smash it open.
Her eyes said as much. A faint madness shimmered in those crimson pupils.
Najin slapped his palm against his forehead with a sharp smack.