Imperial First Horn (3)
The Revelry Emperor's domain was fashioned after a nation.
At its center rose a towering fortress. From that castle that stretched high into the sky, six roads branched outward, and at the end of each road stood a city where laughter never ceased.
A band of clowns in full greasepaint struck up a tune. Their music had neither direction nor coherence. Each note wandered free of the rest, and the near-noise of their performance went on without end.
Against that discord — that din that could scarcely be called music — the clowns danced.
Even death cannot part us, so our story continues! The actor does not leave the stage. So clap. A new tale begins. Double over. Writhe. Clutch your belly and burst out laughing!
Ha. Haha. Hahahaha.
In her domain, the laughter never stopped. Everyone laughed with delight. They mocked one another's wretched faces and danced like fools, as if that alone were the only value they still possessed.
A nation where the laughter never ends.
With everyone smiling, what reason was there not to call this place paradise? The Revelry Emperor had named her nation Utopia.
Utopia. An ideal land.
Or La Mancha. Or Avalon. Or heaven itself.
"We're going in."
And now, there were those who set foot in that heaven. Swords and spears filled their hands. For visitors to paradise, their armament was rather grim.
"Break through."
Standing before the barrier, they raised their blades. The ward that ringed the Revelry Emperor's domain had already failed its purpose. All four of the court jesters who maintained it were dead.
Gerd's strike. The Sword Saint's blade. The Executioner's sword aura. Seongyuksin's pillar of light. Cypria's magic. Lauren Aresche's arrow…
Attacks from six directions, all at once.
With a sound like shattering glass, the barrier collapsed. Through the breach they poured — the Continent's finest, constellations who had weathered long years in the Outer Land — plunging into the utopia a demon had built.
Creak.
The heads of the clowns who had been laughing and dancing turned. Once, twice, three times around — and from their twisted necks the flesh tore open and blood spilled. The blood was green, and yellow, and blue. The clowns bled and laughed.
Welcome to Utopia!
In the heart of a city stained with paint and draped in mockery, the clowns and the constellations sworn to the Revelry Emperor charged the Imperial army.
War began.
At the head of the legions, Transcendents collided with Transcendents, and the domain shuddered under the shock. The knights' battle cries tangled with the clowns' peals of laughter.
And in the midst of that clamor, there was a place the uproar never reached.
Thud.
"…"
Najin and Gerd stopped walking.
Something barred their path. No one stood at that being's side. Alone, he held his ground, a single sword in his hand.
That was all they needed to know.
…Though it has long since been forgotten.
Two hundred years ago, in the age of war, those who stood against the Empire spoke with one voice. A monster lives in the Empire, they said. If you mean to bring the Empire down, you must face that monster first.
Transcendents, Reverse Stars, Fallen Stars, demons, witches — whatever their race or allegiance, those who met the being that guarded the Empire screamed, or sighed, or simply accepted death.
"No. Fall back."
"No, we can't win. That thing was never put there to be brought down. If you still order a charge, I'll have no choice but to charge you instead, Commander. I'd rather mutiny. The odds look better that way."
"Fuck."
"You ran into the Empire's monster? Pity. Treat it like a natural disaster. You don't prepare for that man — preparation doesn't work. There's a reason they call him the Second Coming of King Arthur."
War only continues when the balance of power holds. There is no reason to keep fighting a battle you can only lose, and if defeat is certain, raising the white flag early is the more profitable arithmetic.
And so the great war that had erupted when centuries of festering grievances finally broke open was brought to an end, absurdly enough, by a single hero. In return, the Empire bestowed upon that hero a title of the highest honor.
The Empire's First Horn.
Imperial First Horn, Alderan Basaglia.
Two hundred years had passed since then. And now, after those two hundred years, the Empire's hero — remade as a clown — stood blocking the Empire's path.
Some angers are cold.
Najin watched the Helmet Knight in silence. His body was a patchwork of sewn-together seams. That day, the Revelry Emperor had carved the undead Helmet Knight into pieces and dragged him back to her domain.
What had been done to him after that…
Najin could imagine it, but he refused to. It was too monstrous. And yet, looking at the Helmet Knight who stood before him now, he could not help but picture the manner of his rebirth.
Armor and helm stained with paint.
With every breath, paint seeped from his body. Splat. It fell and pooled at his feet. On the Imperial sword he had once cherished, the Empire's crest had been replaced by the Revelry Emperor's mark.
…Najin's eyes narrowed to slits.
In life, the Helmet Knight had wandered the Outer Land performing funerals for fallen knights, draping his body in the banners that bore their emblems. To any other eye they were nothing but ragged scraps stitched together — but to the Helmet Knight, those rags had shone brighter than anything else.
So long as he carried the knights' banners, he could still think of himself as a knight. So long as their pride walked with him.
And now? What clothed him was a gaudy cloak. The Revelry Emperor's sigil and streaks of paint fluttered on the wind.
…Najin's teeth ground together with a sharp crack.
The heart the Helmet Knight had crushed with his own hand — so he would not become undead, so he could fight Najin as an equal — the hole in his chest had been filled. What beat in that cavity now was a heart fashioned from the Revelry Emperor's star.
All of it.
Everything that made up the Helmet Knight standing before him felt like an insult to the life he had lived. Najin clenched his jaw until his bones ached.
As he had said — some angers are cold.
Rage that blunts reason had no place in this moment. Najin honed his fury to a fine edge.
Gerd was little different.
Bloodshot veins stood out in the old man's wide eyes. The hand that gripped his sword, the forearm that held it — veins rose thick along both, and around Gerd, uncontained mana spat and sparked like embers.
The old man's rage was still.
He did not lunge in madness. He did not howl. He did not put his feelings into words. That was how his master had taught him.
Shing.
He simply raised his sword.
"It's been a long time, Master."
What language could not hold, he poured into the blade. Sword aura surged up in a fierce tide as Gerd and Najin settled into their stances. Both of them felt it in their bones.
One step forward.
The moment that next step fell, it would come.
What would?
The answer arrived at once. The instant Najin lifted his foot, the air reversed. Far ahead, the Helmet Knight's form moved.
He leveled his sword horizontal and drew the sword-arm back behind him. His free hand settled atop the blade. The moment that hand touched steel, the sword flashed pure white.
Sword aura.
A man who should have been unable to channel mana after destroying his own heart — who should have been unable to wield sword aura at all — drew it forth. The pure white radiance soon mottled with paint, but the aura itself never wavered.
The unmistakable sword aura of a Transcendent.
Under the pressure rolling out from the Helmet Knight, Najin understood. He had half expected it, but the truth still struck home: the man they now faced was the previous Imperial First Horn, restored to near the height of his prime.
There was no time to wonder by what means the Revelry Emperor had revived him, or remade him into this form.
That was not what demanded focus.
Arm drawn back. Sword held level.
The instant he sensed the danger, Najin's sense of time slowed. The reversing currents of air, the Helmet Knight settling into position far ahead — Najin took it all in with both eyes.
Tuk. Tudududuk…
Slowly.
DRRRRRRRRRRR.
Around the Helmet Knight's blade, the air began to twist. Space groaned. The ground split; rocks and clods of earth leapt up and wound themselves around the edge. Even in the stretched-out crawl of Najin's perception, the process was fast.
An immense force compressed.
Wind coiled along the spinning sword aura.
To Najin's eyes, the Helmet Knight's body looked like a bowstring drawn taut — or a cloth saturated past its limit.
And then — twang.
He released the string. He wrung the cloth dry. The Helmet Knight thrust the arm he had drawn back. At a glance it looked like a simple thrust — but the power in that thrust was anything but simple.
The weapon was different, yet Najin recognized the technique at once.
Ramming.
Ramming, performed with a sword. The same Ramming with which the Helmet Knight had once raised storms from sheer physical force alone and scoured everything before him — even without wrapping his blade in sword aura.
And now, with sword aura sheathing the steel?
Ah — the sound escaped Najin unbidden. It was coming. A storm. A storm that would grind down everything in its path. Through his extraordinary dynamic vision, Najin's eyes could even glimpse the near future — but the gap between the future he saw and the present was vanishingly thin.
In a fraction of a breath, the future became the now.
Shattering the drawn-out stretch of his slowed time, the storm rushed in even through that sluggish world. The wind arrived first; the sound came after.
KAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAK!
It tore up the earth, reduced the boulders and terrain barring the path to dust, and fired itself forward.
The method of breaking Ramming that Najin had learned fighting Kruenbel would not work here. The speed was far too great to read the wind's grain and find a gap.
Najin gritted his teeth. The Helmet Knight was using sword aura now, unlike before — but Najin, too, was not the man he had been. It was time to show his master how far he had come.
Flash.
He dropped his stance and swept his sword upward in the same motion. Excalibur blazed. Unlike in the past, he no longer needed to hunt for the storm's grain. He could simply cut it.
A line of platinum-gold sword aura carved through the air.
CHAAAAAAAK!
And as Najin stepped forward through the split storm—
the Helmet Knight's sword had already flashed eight times. Eight storms crashed down on Najin across the span of a heartbeat. Despite the situation, Najin found himself smiling.
Right. To you, Ramming was never more than a check.
Kruenbel had maximized Ramming's power and made it his ultimate technique. Alderan had done the opposite — dialed the power down and used it as a probe. Recalling his old duel with the Helmet Knight, Najin steadied his breath.
The same situation as then.
But it would not end the same way.
Beside him came the sharp tak of a footfall — an old man's step. In that moment, no words were needed. As Gerd swung his sword toward the right, Najin took the left without hesitation.
They still had far too much to show their master to be stopped by a mere storm. Watching them carve through his Ramming, the Helmet Knight sank into a lower stance.
He bent one knee, set a hand to the ground, and rested his raised sword across his shoulder.
…Back when Najin had dueled the Helmet Knight, the man had made no effort to close the distance.
His body had already been failing. Violent movement would only destroy it further — so he had waited at range for Najin to come to him. He had no such need now.
KWAANG.
The moment his foot slammed down, the ground split open. Then he kicked off and ran. With every stride the earth cracked and shuddered — koong — and with every stride his speed climbed higher.
SWEEEEEEEK!
He became a single streak of light and fired himself forward. He had always crossed the battlefield on his own two legs, and he had never hesitated to hurl himself into the heart of the enemy.
One foe or two, hundreds or tens of thousands — numbers had never mattered much to him. If the enemy came as a wave, he would snort and dive into the middle of it. That was the man called Alderan Basaglia.
This time was no different.
He plunged between the two Transcendents. The instant he entered their reach, blades flew from either side for his head and his heart — and still he did not hesitate.
He brought the sword down from his shoulder.
A blade already piled with acceleration on acceleration carved a straight line —
not at Najin and Gerd, but at the ground beneath their feet.
KWAAAAAAAAANG!
The moment the tip struck earth, the ground erupted as if it had exploded. A vast crater opened around the point of impact, and from that crater a web of fissures raced out to swallow hundreds of meters in every direction.
And into those cracks, the Helmet Knight's sword aura seeped. Once inside, the aura became a storm.
The principle was the same as Ramming.
He had simply fired it into the ground instead of at his enemies.
Not a piercing thrust for a single point, but Ramming reshaped to blanket an entire area — a tactic he had favored in the days when they called him a war hero. The storm that detonated beneath the surface heaved rock and soil upward from below.
KWAAAAAAAAANG!
Centered on Alderan, the storm tore the ground free and flung it skyward. The earth under Gerd's feet collapsed; the ground Najin stood on was hurled high into the air. Sky and earth lost their distinction. The Helmet Knight had ripped the surface itself away until no one could tell which way was up and which was down.
Clods of dirt, boulders, and shattered slabs of land sprayed in every direction, cast toward the sky.
If the terrain is against you, change it.
How could anyone who could not manage even that call himself a Transcendent?
"…"
In the midst of that inverted world, only Alderan Basaglia held his place. His gaze fixed on his enemies. Behind the helm, a light flashed in his eyes.
…Alderan Basaglia was no lofty martial artist.
He was a man forged not in agreed-upon duels, not in well-ordered sparring grounds under settled rules, but on battlefields where blood flew. He had not walked the path of the sword to grasp its mysteries and thereby ascend. He had honed himself to win wars, and through that ascent reached Transcendence.
He was a hero born of war.
The virtue of a war hero is to break the enemy. To become a storm that sweeps through their ranks. To keep one more ally alive and kill one more of the foe.
So he would become a storm that raged.
So he would become a thunderbolt that struck.
To drive down among the enemy like lightning, to scour them like a storm — that was the Empire's hero. To the Empire's enemies, he was a walking natural disaster.
Come, enemies of the Empire.
So long as I stand, you will not pass this place.
The paint-stained ■■■ (■■■) shone.