Prologue: You Awaken from a Long Dream
Najin's pupils trembled.
There was no way he would fail to recognize him. Standing before him now was Ivan. Not a hallucination, not some phantom illusion, but a man possessed of clear and solid form.
Why was Ivan here?
In the subterranean city of Atman, Najin had never found Ivan's corpse. Believing him lost beyond recovery—become part of the city of the Abyss itself—he had given up the search. So why, then, was Ivan standing here?
Cackle. Cackle-cackle. Cackle-cackle-cackle!
The Revelry Emperor's laughter rang through the air. A single sword thrust toward Najin as he faced Ivan. The strike was so slow he could have brushed it aside lightly, or even caught the blade bare-handed—yet the moment he confirmed the face of the one who held it, he could not.
It was Oppen.
Oppen, who had appeared alongside Ivan.
Najin's inner world shook again. The landscape of the subterranean city that had held him so firmly began to creak and shift under the sudden presence of those two.
The Revelry Emperor would never miss a gap like that.
Threads shot down from the sky and pierced Najin's stage. Her fingers dug into the seams. In that fleeting instant she had been waiting for, the Revelry Emperor unleashed her authority.
Adaptation.
Space groaned and warped around Ivan and Oppen. Taking their lives as her foundation, the Revelry Emperor unfurled her stage. She advanced the story, and over a tale already complete she scattered her own paints.
......Najin's self was firm.
That fact the Revelry Emperor knew well.
Even having risen to transcendence at a mere twenty years of age, that detestable knight's confidence yielded not an inch when measured against transcendents who had reigned at the summit for centuries. There was no crack for her power to slip through.
Because Najin's life had never been composed of his story alone.
The lives of the heroes he had known, their stars, their convictions, their values, their techniques, the answers they offered at the end of their days...... With all those countless things he had forged himself solid. With so many heroes' lives supporting him, he would not fall easily.
A figure who resembled the Revelry Emperor yet walked the opposite path.
To her he was nothing short of a natural enemy. And so she had sought a means. Though she held the advantage in raw force, she never let her guard down. Any variable could arise.
The answer she found was simple.
If that boy, too, propped up his life with the lives of others—yet not by seizing them and making them his own the way she did, but by respecting them and taking them as his milestones......
Then all she needed was to twist the ones who formed that starting point, was it not?
Najin's stage was the subterranean city of Atman. Many stars hung over Atman, but the Revelry Emperor knew what the very first of them to rise signified—whose life was held within that star.
Through the lighthouse that illuminated the Abyss, through spies she had scattered across the Empire, by every means available she had scraped the information together.
One-eyed Ivan.
In the end she had taken possession of that man's corpse. And with it, the corpse of the man called Mercenary Oppen, who could shake Najin just as deeply.
Cackle-cackle, cackle, cackle-cackle-cackle!
With that laughter the Revelry Emperor's hand moved.
The stage flipped. Countless stage mechanisms meshed with exquisite precision and began to bind Najin. Until now he had dismissed her stages with a curt This is not my story and blown them away—but he could not do so now.
The axis of the stage was none other than Najin's mindscape. Using his story, his life, the subterranean city of Atman as backdrop, the stage began to unfold.
Najin's own stage bound him.
Using Oppen and Ivan as mediums, the Revelry Emperor intervened.
And so the Adaptation began.
You awaken from a long dream.
Najin opened his eyes.
2.
You awaken from a long dream.
Your eyelids are heavy.
Your head is heavy.
You let out a long breath, rub your sleepy eyes, and look around. The first thing that meets your gaze is an alley littered with trash.
It is an alley thick with stench. Discarded refuse, shards of broken glass, and spent luminous ore roll across the ground wherever they please.
An alley of the subterranean city.
Yes. That is exactly what it is. An alley of the subterranean city—and, to be more precise, one of its most forsaken backstreets. You do not know where you were born, but this is where you were abandoned, so it may as well be your birthplace.
In that alley you open your eyes.
It feels as though you have dreamed an extraordinarily long dream. In that dream you were a peerless hero. Imagine—born in a subterranean city the starlight never reaches, destined to live the lowest of low lives—and yet you drew the holy sword of legend, Excalibur?
A sword no one had drawn in a thousand years, a sword even Sword Masters could not pull free, and you drew it.
The dream was so preposterous it left you almost speechless.
Dreams are mirrors that reflect a person's wishes.
In that sense, yes—it was precisely the kind of dream you would have. Dreams and reality are perfect opposites, after all.
I...
You possess no talent whatsoever. In a city built at the very bottom, abandoned once more even by your own mother. You have no distinguished bloodline. You were never raised with love. And even if you did have talent, this place would never afford you the luxury of letting it bloom.
You have nothing.
In the dream, your overwhelming talent caught the eye of Ivan, the ruler of the subterranean city, and of his old friend Oppen. They recognized your gift, trained you, and in the end laid down their lives for you.
Because of them your life could begin.
Because they pushed you forward you could leave this place, and at last become a hero recognized across the entire Continent.
What a beautiful story.
But reality... well.
"......"
You stagger to your feet.
Your appearance is wretched. Starved to the point of skin and bones, you wear not the splendid coat of a Free Knight but a ragged scrap of cloth. At your waist there is no Excalibur—no respectable sword of any kind.
You are an ordinary child of the sort found anywhere in this city. The kind of useless human who could vanish overnight without a single person caring.
Thud.
You step out of the alley. Beyond it, passersby frown at the sight of you.
The sky.
When you lift your head, what you see is a sky studded with luminous ore. No stars are visible. Even the blue sky you glimpsed in the dream is already fading. Dreams, once broken, are meant to blur quickly.
Something.
You begin walking without purpose. Perhaps because the dream was so happy, you find yourself doing something you never would have done. You head for the bustling district.
Even among humans who have fallen to the bottom, people still insist on ranking one another. That is simply what humans are. This place—the subterranean city of Atman—is no different.
If you have even a scrap of talent and find work, if you are lucky enough to catch the eye of one of the district rulers, you can live in the so-called busy center of the city. But a child like you, talentless and abandoned even by your parents, has no business setting foot there.
Cold stares. Eyes that look at you as if you were garbage. Glances full of open disgust crowd around you.
"......"
Ignoring them all, you walk on, as though searching for something. And so you arrive at a certain tavern. Voices drift from inside.
"Remember that time? Ha, I really was something else. I miss those days. I held my sword like this and shouted so proudly—If you know honor, come out and take my blade!"
"I've lost count of how many times I've heard that story."
"Ahahaha!"
Familiar voices, you think.
Familiar? What does that even mean?
You know the voices coming from within perfectly well—not because you have any history with them, but because there is no one in this city who does not know those voices.
Seated inside the tavern are One-eyed Ivan, one of the three rulers of the subterranean city, and his old friend Oppen. Around them, members of the Ivan Family laugh and tip their cups.
You approach them.
You approach, and—
"Ivan."
—you speak his name.
It is not a wise decision.
The moment the name leaves your lips, silence falls over the tavern as if cold water has been dumped across the room. Ivan, who had been drinking in good spirits, turns his head and looks at you.
A chill gaze.
Then he turns away again, as if you are of no interest. And because there was no need for him to act himself.
"This bastard's lost his mind."
The low-ranking members of the Ivan Family shove back their chairs. They seize the shoulders of the fool who dared speak the boss's name and ruined the drinking mood, and drag you out of the tavern.
They kick you. They beat you senseless and hurl you back into the alley you came from. Even then you keep looking toward the inside of the tavern.
But Ivan does not spare you a single glance.
Neither does Oppen.
"Remember that day? When you were still playing mercenary and ran into me."
"Worst first impression of my life. Some neighborhood thug looking bastard comes charging in yelling, 'My name is Ivan—I'm a knight!' It was horrific."
"Hahahaha! There was a bit of a misunderstanding back then."
They laugh and drink as if nothing at all has happened.
Of course they do.
To them you are a being not even worth a glance. In the dream they laid down their lives for you—but that was only a dream.
In reality you are nothing.
Not a pillar of the Empire, not a great hero, not some peerless genius who shattered every youngest-ever record, not even the one who drew Excalibur—only a creature crushed into the lowest of the low......
You are nothing more than that.
"No."
You......
"That's just the story you made up on your own."
Ah.
Right. Well.
You awaken from a long dream.
Again.
3.
You awaken from a long dream.
"Break him."
"What?"
"I said break him, Ivan. The kid has talent, but we're not great enough teachers to let that talent bloom. Better for him if we snap it here and now."
"......"
"You said it yourself. Cross the line and life gets hard. Planting false hope is worse than making him understand his place once and for all."
"...Huu."
"You going to do it? Or should I—"
"No. Oppen. I'll do it."
You awaken from a long dream.
"......Tsk."
In the middle of a spar with Ivan, you fail to receive his aura. Your sword snaps. One of your arms is sheared away.
"Well."
Blood pouring, a stifled groan tearing from your throat, you look up as Ivan's shadow falls across you.
"If you're going to break this easily, then breaking here is the right call. If you were never going to reach it anyway, giving up is easier. Damn it all, huu......"
You awaken from a long dream.
"Ha......"
"We all had dreams once."
"Me, your master, every soul who fell into this city... at one time, up above, we dreamed of climbing higher. We yearned to carve our own stars into that high night sky."
"But we only carved wounds we could never erase, and we fell into this city of sinners."
"Why?"
"Because we chased light that was far too much for us."
Druggy Hakan burst into laughter.
"So you're the same, brat. You'll collapse without achieving a thing. That light is far too bright for the likes of you to hold."
Her fingers sank into your throat. The means she had prepared over long years were not so crude that you, who had only just drawn Excalibur, could answer them.
"No matter how hard you thrash."
Crack—your neck broke.
"Your end is still this place."
You awaken from a long dream.
As you fled after drawing Excalibur, Oppen appeared before you. He blocked the path, dragging a palm down over his face.
"Why did you do it."
He asked you.
"Why did you draw it. Even if you could, you shouldn't have. It's still too soon. You can't handle it. That thing is far too much for you to hold right now."
With a pained expression he leveled his sword at you. Aura surged along the blade.
"I can't hide it anymore. I can't help you anymore. There's no other way. Najin. To every person, their own life comes first. So......"
The Church's dark agents closed in.
"This is the only method left to me."
Centered on Oppen, they drove you back. One blade, two—more and more of the assassins' swords pierced you until your consciousness blurred.
You died.
You awaken from a long dream.
Ivan looked down at you. Eyes cold and dead. In the end, at the final moment, he chose not to be a knight but merely a man swayed by desire.
"......I have to live too, don't I."
Life over honor and pride.
The sword of the subterranean city's ruler, who had abandoned being a knight, pierced the heart of your fallen body.
You awaken from a long dream.
"Do not cross the line."
You awaken from a long dream.
"Live as you were given."
You awaken from a long dream.
"Reaching for what you cannot touch only brings pain. A life content with what you are given is a happy one."
You awaken from a long dream.
"Do not stake your life on worthless things like honor, pride, or stars."
You awaken from a long dream.
You awaken from a long dream.
You awaken from a long dream.
Cackle.
You.
Cackle-cackle, cackle-cackle-cackle!
From a long dream.
Cackle-cackle, cackle-cackle-cackle! Cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle!
Awaken.
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Countless heroic legends tell the same tale.
That no matter where you stand, if you only look up at the vast night sky you will see the constellations. And that those constellations are the traces left by heroes who once raced across this land—the very substance of their lives.
All of that is a lie.
There are no stars to see.
There are no constellations here.
The glittering stories of heroes' lives lie far beyond the reach of yours.
This place is the subterranean city of Atman.
The people of the surface call it this:
The landfill.
The place where discarded trash is buried and forgotten.