The Path Carved Toward One Enemy
The Revelry Emperor’s domain is hidden.
As you well know, her domain is shielded by four Forbidden Territories. By ordinary means you could never breach them—you would not even find the domain itself.
Yes. Exactly so.
Impossible by conventional methods, yet you employed means far from conventional. One by one you hunted down her court Jesters.
The Demon King of Grief, Carpediem.
The Third Pillar, Akut.
The Lighthouse That Illuminates the Abyss, Ariel.
You toppled Demon Kings who had lived for centuries, and even the two transcendent beings the Revelry Emperor had secreted across the Continent. Who could have imagined it? Plans layered across hundreds of years crumbling before a youth of barely twenty!
The Revelry Emperor’s Forbidden Territories lie in ruins.
They can no longer conceal her domain.
Thus revealed, the Revelry Emperor’s domain sits in the deepest reaches of the Outer Land. Whether you name it the deepest heart or the farthest edge is your choice. Most simply call it this:
The land closest to the Abyss.
Her domain is there. Yes—the place you are heading for now. Of course the road into the deepest Outer Land is merciless. A few soldiers vanishing without a sound would surprise no one. Every undertaking exacts its price.
Uneventful hours pass.
At this pace you will soon reach the Revelry Emperor’s sanctuary. The journey proceeds smoothly.
“······.”
And you.
You look back along the road you have walked.
Who are you?
Najin.
Yes. That is your name. Only two syllables, yet you carry far more titles: Free Knight, Pillar of Dawn, heir to the greatest knight of all.
Yet something feels strange when you consider them.
Every title you bear seems fashioned for a single opponent. Does it not?
“Merlin.”
“Hm? What?”
“Doesn’t something feel off when you think about it?”
“Off? What does?”
You rub your chin.
“The Revelry Emperor. Every one of my stars seems unnaturally perfect against her.”
Yes. Precisely.
It begins with the rank of Free Knight. You watched the Revelry Emperor mock the final moments of knights. You saw her desecrate their lives. Those scenes decided you.
You would let knights die as knights.
You would let them close their eyes as true knights.
Was that not why you became a Free Knight? And it was not Free Knight alone.
“Unyielding. Dirge. Laughter…”
The stars you won in the Outer Land are the same. Blades honed for one purpose only: to kill the Revelry Emperor.
Your life runs in a straight line toward her. A true nemesis. If your life were a story, the woman who would close its final page would have to be the Revelry Emperor.
…The end?
You tilt your head.
Is something wrong?
Why must my ending be the Revelry Emperor?
Because she is your nemesis.
I still have a next…
Every thread of your tale points to her. You have sharpened your entire existence for her alone. Even against a demon of eleven stars the weapons you carry are lethal.
The arrow is nocked.
All that remains is to loose it.
There is only one target the arrow will strike: the Revelry Emperor’s heart. No other mark is required. Erase everything else from your sight.
Ah. Of course.
You feel no strangeness at all.
Your eyes, your ears, the tip of your sword are fixed solely upon—
“Najin.”
A sudden grip.
“Merlin?”
“Stay still.”
Merlin reached out and seized his face. Both palms cupped his ears, sealing them as if to shut out every sound. She pressed her face close.
Their gazes locked.
Close enough that breath mingled.
Only Merlin’s deep-blue eyes filled Najin’s vision. A soul body should carry no scent, yet from her rose the smell of water’s edge—the clean fragrance of a forest after rain.
“Look at me.”
Her voice alone reached him. Slender fingers tapped his cheeks—once, twice. Then she stepped nearer still.
And pressed her forehead to his.
Forehead to forehead she spoke without speaking. Words were unnecessary; she could send her voice straight into him.
Close your eyes.
He closed them.
Exhale.
He exhaled.
Dive. All the way to the deepest place of your mindscape.
Merlin is suspect. Doubt her. Nothing says her every word must be true. Najin ignored the clutter of thoughts. Doubting Merlin was the one thing he would never do.
He obeyed.
Eyes shut, he sank into himself.
When the closed eyes open, the place is an underground city.
Najin stood in the subterranean metropolis of Atman. The instant he entered he felt the change that had taken root inside him. From the city’s farthest edges something was rippling.
Paint.
The Revelry Emperor’s paint was gnawing at Atman’s outskirts, slowly devouring its way toward the center. He had seen this landscape once before.
“La Mancha.”
In the Star of Laughter’s La Mancha the same thing had happened. Najin frowned. When had this begun? He steadied his breath and tried to push the paint back, but it would not yield.
The paint had sunk roots deep into the mindscape.
It had not yet reached the heart, yet at this rate it was only a matter of time.
“Slowly.”
A firm squeeze on his hand made him look aside. Merlin stood there, gripping him tightly.
“First, stay calm.”
“Merlin.”
“Yeah.”
“What… is this?”
With her free hand she dragged her palm down her face.
“I don’t know the exact moment. When, at what point, how it caught us—I have no idea. What’s certain is that it’s a trap designed with terrifying precision.”
She clicked her tongue.
“You know Excalibur carries resistance against mental domination and control. It can even push back the Witch of the Abyss’s mind magic, so that should tell you enough. But what’s on us right now…”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Isn’t magic that touches the mind.”
“What? What do you mean—”
“How do I put this?”
She nodded to herself.
“The way we perceive objects, interpret information, arrange it into conclusions—every step of that process inevitably carries subjectivity. That’s simply human.”
“Right.”
“The Revelry Emperor is touching that. Narrowing your field of vision, limiting the information you receive, guiding your judgments in a chosen direction.”
She waggled her fingers.
“And one step further.”
A flick.
“If you treat the world as a novel, she’s rewriting the narrative sentences that link dialogue to dialogue. Like moving the pieces from outside the board.”
“Is that even possible?”
“It is—inside a Star Tomb.”
Najin fell silent. A Star Tomb: a space a star creates solely for itself. Inside such a place anything became possible. Even Ladon, once a mere dragon, had swollen into a great dragon that could stand beside Merlin.
“Then we’ve already entered the tomb?”
“That I can’t say for certain. Whether we’ve stepped into the tomb, or whether this is possible simply because we’ve entered her sphere of influence—I can’t judge accurately.”
Merlin admitting ignorance was rare. Najin’s eyes sharpened further.
“Don’t tell me.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re caught too?”
She exhaled a long breath.
“Until now I existed only inside your mindscape, so affecting me was impossible. But the day you fought Mordred I took physical form, remember?”
“You did.”
“From that day on I often walked beside you in the flesh.”
“You did.”
“That must have been the problem. Probably.”
She bit her lip hard.
“Playing with power like this against my true body is impossible. The mana in my flesh and my resistance would shatter it. But… when I’m only a soul body, things change.”
A soul body whose output was locked to the same level as Najin’s.
A soul body left defenseless against outside stimuli.
“I’m not so weak that I’d fall easily, of course. Still, it seems both of us misjudged her.”
They had underestimated how far the Revelry Emperor could reach. In a way it was arrogance—carelessness.
…And even that carelessness might have been guided.
There was no way to know from which moment she had begun to intervene. Najin clenched his teeth until they ached.
“What do we do?”
“If we step outside again, both of us will fall back into the trap. Our thoughts will be steered in a set direction.”
“······.”
“She’s expanding her influence cunningly, from the tiniest details. She seizes the flow of thought before we even notice.”
Merlin traced a pattern in the air.
A meticulously wrought magic circle bloomed into existence.
“I say this as a great mage: even for someone of my caliber this is no simple feat. It demands absolute concentration. One slip and the entire structure collapses—work of extreme precision.”
Dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of cogs meshed and turned. A single gap would bring the whole apparatus down.
“A small gap.”
She tapped the circle. One cog shifted a handspan, opening a hairline crack. From that crack the mechanism began to grind, slowing.
“We have to force that gap wider.”
“And then?”
“We shove something through it.”
Najin did not ask whether they could succeed.
It was something that had to be done.
He nodded and steadied his breath. While the Revelry Emperor’s paint continued its slow advance, he drove his feet hard into the ground so he would not be swept away.
When the closed eyes open again—
Najin’s vision begins to overturn.
Fireworks seem to burst inside his skull. Multicolored sparks leap and scatter. It feels as though someone has cracked open his head and poured paint straight in. The color of the sky, the color of the earth, the texture of the ground underfoot, the weight of the air, its density, its temperature—everything churns into chaos.
And.
You open your eyes.
You pause to catch your breath and order your thoughts. Tension, no doubt. Having sorted them, you confirm that your resolve remains unbroken.
Strong resolve.
Unshakable self.
For a transcendent, nothing matters more. You still hold conviction. The road ahead is long. You must quicken your pace.
“······.”
You say nothing.
Your expression is strange.
Is something troubling you?
“Merlin.”
“Yeah.”
“You can hear me?”
“I hear you.”
······.
“This isn’t easy. My head’s spinning. I can’t even tell where anything is.”
“Looks that way.”
“Am I walking?”
“Yeah.”
“And my hand?”
“Holding a sword.”
“Good.”
You open your eyes.
“No need. I’m watching for you.”
“Yes, Merlin.”
You open your eyes. The voice in your ears is false. You are accepting information twisted by the Revelry Emperor. Everything is a lie. Open your eyes and face reality.
You must confront what is real.
Open your eyes.
“Merlin.”
“I’m listening.”
You hear no sound at all.
“I can’t hear well.”
“······.”
“You’re holding my hand, right?”
A firm squeeze.
“Where are we?”
······Haa.
All right. I understand.
Like that.
Time flows. Najin walked and walked.
Something led him. Eyes closed, he followed the pull on his hand. The sensation was wrong. He should have been holding Merlin’s pale, slender fingers, yet his palm burned as though seared by fire. He felt skin charring.
He ignored it. Ignored it and kept walking.
Then, at some moment—
Everything returned to normal.
The sounds that had crowded his ears receded. The feeling in his hand settled. Someone cupped his cheek. Slowly, Najin opened the eyes he had kept shut.
The veil cast by the Revelry Emperor fell away.
What met his gaze was a vast wilderness stretching to the horizon. He looked back. Behind him the Imperial soldiers lay collapsed.
They were not dead.
Every one of them slept. The moment Najin drew Excalibur and settled into stance—
“Eyes.”
Merlin, standing at his side, smiled.
“They’re open?”