The Knights of La Mancha (3)
At the instant of collision, a thunderous roar burst forth.
The ground shuddered, and the sound of space itself creaking and tearing rang out on every side. It was only natural — this was a battlefield where dozens of stars clashed.
Two stories collided upon a single stage.
Two tales, two endings. Over which ending befit a play called La Mancha, the actors swung spear and sword. On a stage where the exploding din erased even the laughter, Najin kicked off the earth.
He canceled the immortal army with an immortal army.
He canceled the Revelry Emperor’s narration with Sancho’s.
Every scheme the Revelry Emperor had prepared to ensure his certain defeat, Najin canceled one after another. What remained after the cancellations was a single constellation — the Star of Contempt.
“Uha, uhahahahahahahaha!”
The constellation came charging with a burst of laughter.
He had heard that Quixote had lost one star before, yet seven stars now floated at the man’s back. To him the world was nothing but a play, and the Revelry Emperor — narrator of that play — could grant Quixote as many stars as she pleased.
“La Mancha — upon this stage where you are the protagonist, you may grow as strong as you wish. You return to the moment you shone brightest!”
The pupils the Helmeted Knight had stolen from the Star of Contempt were restored. The seven stars rising behind him blazed fiercely.
“Dulcinea watches over you.”
“A knight always promises victory to his lady.”
“You do not lose.”
Upon the stage called La Mancha, Quixote could grow as strong as he desired. Even after canceling his most powerful weapon — the Knights of La Mancha — the scales still tipped toward the Star of Contempt.
He had to break the Star of Contempt. Quixote.
On the stage where the man was the protagonist.
The moment he collided with the Star of Contempt, Najin felt a sting in his grip. Heavy. As if the entire world were pressing down on him, he shook off the crushing weight and steadied his breath.
My opponent is the Star of Contempt — Quixote.
Among all the transcendents Najin had ever met, this was the constellation who commanded the most powerful stage. And the one supporting that stage was the Revelry Emperor herself, a constellation of eleven stars.
I have to defeat the stage’s protagonist upon the stage itself.
Of course it was difficult. Horribly difficult — and that was exactly why it was worth challenging.
The star of Challenge blazed.
Najin adjusted his grip on the sword and charged. The Star of Contempt likewise pulled Rocinante’s reins taut and came thundering in.
“Run, Rocinante!”
Acceleration. Residual images stretched the Star of Contempt’s body long and thin. Like a single streak of lightning, he was shot forward.
Shweeeeeeeee!
A speed even Najin’s dynamic vision nearly lost for an instant. He abandoned the idea of seeing and reacting. Reflexively he raised his sword.
Kagagagagagak!
The Star of Contempt scraped past the flat of Excalibur and was gone. Only afterward did the air-splitting roar arrive, the wind pressure of that charge battering Najin. Behind him came a KWAANG! like a massive harpoon burying itself in the earth.
Fast. And it did not stop at a single blow.
Heeeeeee!
The donkey’s snorting cry rang out. After a lance charge at that velocity, gaps should have opened — yet Rocinante, bearing the Star of Contempt, wheeled in place as if physics itself did not apply.
Then — Bang!
He kicked off the ground and shot forward at once. Yes — rather than “galloping,” the word “shot” fit better. A lance charge was a cavalryman’s killing blow, yet to the Star of Contempt it was no different from lightly swinging a sword.
Meaning he could unleash them in succession.
In the space of one of Najin’s breaths, Quixote launched five charges. Against the thrusts that sought to sever the gaps between breaths, Najin moved.
His grip on the sword stung. The wind pressure from every collision should have stolen his balance, yet he drove his feet into the earth and held.
As expected — different.
The Don Quixote he had faced in La Mancha had been incomplete. Compared to that, the opponent before him now was Quixote at the height of his prime and beyond. The speed was on another level.
But.
Najin swallowed a breath. Matching the Star of Contempt’s charge that sought to cut his breathing short, he kicked off the ground and drove straight into him.
You are not the only one who has changed.
Najin, too, had ascended to transcendence.
Unlike the days when borrowing the power of the stars had been the most he could do simply to endure, the Najin of now could answer Don Quixote’s movements without borrowing anyone’s strength.
Counter. The sword rising from below shoved the Star of Contempt’s lance tip aside. Immediately the man slid into a sideways pivot — yet as if he had known it all along, Najin never shifted his gaze and simply swept the blade horizontally.
Jeok.
The flow broke. At the same time Najin clenched the sword hard. Constellations flared along the blade.
Sprouting — the bud put forth a shoot.
Blooming — the flower opened.
Full Bloom — the blossoms scattered.
Eight stars blazed at Najin’s back. Watching Najin accelerate as if to seize the reversed flow and make it his own, Quixote burst into laughter.
And then—
“You recall.”
“The glorious moment you pierced the giant!”
The stage of the Star of Contempt — the pages of the story named La Mancha — began to turn.
2.
La Mancha, the stage of the Star of Contempt, was a single story.
A play woven from the adventures he had lived.
Even in the days before he became the Star of Contempt — when he had been the Star of Laughter — he had used his stage this way.
“A ridiculous charge!”
“Yet that charge is swift.”
“Swift, and sharp.”
In a single instant—
“······!”
Najin lost the Star of Contempt’s movement. By the time he came to himself, the man had already scraped past him.
“Your lance grazed the giant’s leg. Only because the giant happened to lift its foot.”
“Yet your lance most certainly ‘grazed’ the giant’s leg.”
Puk — Najin’s calf burst open. Bloodshot veins rose in his eyes. Excalibur’s healing power mended the wound at once, yet the opponent would never miss those few seconds.
“You charge toward the giant that has lost its balance.”
“You pierce the fallen giant’s head!”
Najin flung himself sideways in an ungainly tumble. Even if he had to roll across the ground, he had to choose evasion. Yet when he saw Don Quixote’s lance tip curve toward his head, Najin understood.
Certain hit.
The “narration” ringing across the stage had rewritten the Star of Contempt’s lance into a weapon of absolute certainty. Evasion was impossible. Rolling up from the dirt, Najin swung his sword.
Kaaaaaaang!
He blocked with Excalibur, yet his body slid backward in a long skid. He had lost the flow he had seized. Once again the Star of Contempt claimed it.
“You recall.”
The pages of the story turned.
“The moment you kicked off the whales of the Heavenly Star, the glorious strike you delivered from above as you leapt down from the whale!”
Paint splattered across the stage. The scattered colors became whales drawn like a child’s crude doodles. Whales rose wherever the hooves of Rocinante, bearing the Star of Contempt, touched the ground, and using them as footholds the man soared high into the sky.
And a star shone.
“You shot forth like a falling star.”
As if a star were plummeting, the Star of Contempt came streaking down on a diagonal. Clad in starlight, the figure of that descent lacked nothing of a meteor.
Evasion — impossible.
Najin clenched his teeth and set his stance. The stance of the Triumphant Sword. Unfortunately there was no opening to unleash its secret arts. He answered with the fundamentals of the Triumphant Sword alone.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
At the moment of impact, dozens of meters of ground caved in. As if a meteorite had struck, a vast crater opened. In the heart of that crater Najin gritted his teeth, pouring everything into stopping the lance that sought to pierce him through.
Chiiiiiiik.
Heat seared his flesh. The moisture in his body boiled.
“Rocinante, run, run, run!”
As if to crush Najin flat, Don Quixote drove the lance down. The light bursting from his body intensified. Rocinante was kicking off empty air, yet the whales forming beneath every step became the ground itself.
Udeuk, eudeudeudeuk.
He was being crushed. The sound of bones grinding reached his ears.
What it means to face the protagonist of the stage.
He had to feel that truth in his very bones. Najin changed his thinking. Until he “took” the blow, that attack would not end.
Then—
Najin twisted his body. The instant the Star of Contempt’s lance, aimed at his heart, scraped past his ribs, he accelerated.
He kicked off the earth. He swung sword-ki raised to its absolute limit.
In the same moment the Star of Contempt’s lance pierced Najin’s body, Najin’s rising blade carved through the man’s shoulder.
Chwaaaaaak!
The blows crossed; Najin and the Star of Contempt scraped past each other. Najin clutched the hollow where bone showed through his ribs. The Star of Contempt, laughing madly, reattached the shoulder half-severed from his body.
Cheolpeok.
Paint flooded over the Star of Contempt’s form and restored the wound. Upon the stage, the Star of Contempt could always return to a perfect state.
Najin, by contrast······
Chiiiik.
With the sound of searing flesh, meat filled the gap. Not only Excalibur’s regenerative power — the narration upon this stage that “the Knights of La Mancha do not fall” had settled into Najin’s body as well, making it possible.
Even so, it was slow.
The lance forged from Sancho was interfering with the regeneration. From the festering, rotting wound a mouth sprouted and leaked a cackling “kahl-kahl-kahl-kahl” of laughter.
Chwaak! Najin had to carve the entire wound out with his sword.
His body throbbed.
Excalibur’s regeneration demanded the expenditure of mental strength and stamina. Najin steadied his breath and raised his sword. Across from him, the Star of Contempt was already turning the pages of the story once more.
Shweeeeeeee!
He charged. Watching the oncoming Star of Contempt, Najin’s eyes narrowed. How was he supposed to break this? Upon this stage Merlin could not aid him. She had not been assigned a “role.”
But she could still advise.
—Stay calm.
Merlin’s phantom seized Najin’s hand. Quieting his heart, he traded blows with the Star of Contempt. Pierced, cut, piercing in return.
Kang, kaaaaang!
With pure skill, Najin was enduring the stage’s correction that the Star of Contempt deployed. Yet a limit would come. He realized that if it became a war of attrition, his side would begin to fall behind.
Pabababababak!
Lance blades thrust in continuous succession. He parried dozens of lines, yet two or three remaining strokes grazed him. Mouths bloomed on the flesh the blades had touched and burst into “kahl-kahl-kahl!” of laughter. Attacks that polluted the flesh and gnawed at the mind.
Even a graze forced him to carve the wound away.
In pure skill, Najin held the advantage.
Yet the correction laid upon this stage — the stage the Revelry Emperor herself sustained — was far too overwhelming. Here, Najin could not unfold a stage of his own.
“The Star of Contempt becomes terrifyingly strong upon his own stage.”
“And with the Revelry Emperor sustaining that stage, upon it he is nearly invincible.”
“Ah, of course — I won.”
“So you can win too.”
The Helmeted Knight’s voice rang in his ear. To his master’s claim that one simply had to smash the stage in a single blow, Najin had asked for a more realistic method.
The answer the Helmeted Knight had given to that question.
Turning that strategy over in his mind, Najin exhaled.
Time.
He needed a little time. If he could have just enough to collect himself and observe his opponent, he could find the answer.
More than anything, what bothers me is that Star Relic.
The Star of Contempt was draped in Star Relics.
Unlike ordinary relics, these had been ground from the flesh of constellations themselves. Rocinante and the lance in his hand were examples. The places the lance pierced festered and hindered regeneration.
Najin possessed no such Star Relic.
At least none he could use in this battle.
But.
He had a comrade who could fill a similar role.
“Run, Rocinante!”
The moment the Star of Contempt prepared to charge once more—
“You called, my lord?”
A voice came from the rim of the crater. With a sharp ttaak of a staff striking the ground, the mounds of earth filling the pit surged upward.
And then—
Bang, bang, bang! Someone kicked off the rising earth and shot into the crater. The trajectory was thinner than the arc the Star of Contempt drew — and for that thinness, sharper.
“My lord.”
“Sancho! It’s Sancho!”
“Yes. It is I.”
With a bitter smile Sancho shoved the Star of Contempt aside. In the opening that created, Rocinante seized Najin and hauled him up, speaking briefly.
“You need not be swept along by the story.”
“Pardon?”
“Are you not also one of the Knights of La Mancha?”
Rocinante gave a short laugh and clapped Najin on the back.
“Here you are neither the devil to be struck down, nor the giant, nor the monster. You are a free knight. Remember that.”
Supporting Sancho, he shot Najin a look.
“I cannot buy you long. The leading role in this story is not ‘us’ — it is you.”
Najin turned the old man’s words over carefully.
3.
Sancho threw himself at the Star of Contempt to buy Najin time to gather himself and steady his breath. Surely a youth like that would find the answer soon enough.
“Sancho! It’s been so long — let us set out on a journey together! A delightful adventure awaits us!”
At the laughing figure of the Star of Contempt, Sancho clenched his teeth. The breath, the voice, the smallest gestures of the man stained by the Revelry Emperor — every one of them insulted the existence that had been the Star of Laughter.
It was insult. It was desecration.
Gripping his spear and charging his dear friend, Sancho felt only bitterness. He should have done this long ago. He should have beaten sense back into his lord if he had to, and if that had been impossible, he should have ended that life with his own hands.
He should have — yet he had not.
Because he had been afraid. Afraid of ending his lord’s story with his own hands, of killing his friend. And because if he ended it that way, he did not think he would ever be able to laugh again.
Sancho had paid a dear price for that hesitation.
He knew what deeds his transformed lord had committed, what sins he had stained himself with. That was why Sancho clenched the spear harder.
“You were never that kind of man.”
You were not that kind of human.
“You never laughed like that.”
Spitting the words as if chewing them, Sancho thrust the spear. Of course it was nothing more than a stall. Sancho could never kill Don Quixote, could never bring him down.
Sancho’s story had already ended.
He wished to send his lord off with his own hands, yet he knew it was impossible. Even so, the reason he thrashed like this — the reason he and the Knights of La Mancha had repeated the nightmare for more than three hundred years upon the stage called La Mancha — was······
Because they had been waiting for someone.
Someone who would end the long nightmare.
Someone who could take this story that had closed as tragedy and finish it as a comedy full of laughter and chatter.
Waiting for a being whose very existence was uncertain, and who even if real might never reach this place, Sancho and the Knights of La Mancha had endured centuries of nightmare. Turning those years over in his mind, Sancho found himself smiling.
Because he felt it.
The star blazing at his back.
The star of the hero who had appeared before them as if to end the long nightmare, as if to split the night and announce that morning had come.
He is coming.
The Hero of this story.
“My lord — do you know?”
Barely receiving the Star of Contempt’s attack, buying time even as his arm was pierced through, Sancho cried out.
“Sometimes even the protagonist—”
The protagonist always saves others. Don Quixote, too, had always saved someone. Yet in the final moment, when he himself had fallen into crisis, no one had been able to save him.
Because in that story there had been only one hero.
But no longer.
After long years of wandering, Sancho had found it.
“—can be saved by someone else.”
An instant before Sancho’s body could be run through, Najin swept past his side. Catching the lance that sought to pierce Sancho, Najin stepped in close.
“The land of the giants, where the giants stamp their feet!”
“There you take the giant’s body······”
Once more, the instant the Star of Contempt tried to open a page of the story, Najin’s body accelerated — as if he had already grasped exactly how to dismantle that tale.