The One Without a Self (3)
The Revelry Emperor was born a frail thing.
She belonged to the demon race, yet possessed none of the strength or authority that set her kind apart. Even hunting a single soldier who could not wield sword aura was, for her, a life-or-death struggle.
Born weak, the demon failed again and again. She lived by scavenging the scraps other demons had chewed and spat out. Surviving that way, she one day came face-to-face with a demon so vast she could scarcely believe they shared the same blood.
The Demon King, Baal.
The being who stood at the apex of every demon. The great devil who had forced every last one of them to their knees and claimed dominion over the Outer Land. Before him the Revelry Emperor could not even draw breath. Crushed by that overwhelming rank, she could only bow her head.
Baal walked with lofty indifference, his eyes surveying the world as though nothing in it could ever frighten him.
If I became that strong, would I never have to fear anything again? Is personal power truly everything? Gazing at Baal she dreamed. She envied the existence that had been born mighty and risen to the summit while she had been born weak.
“Hear me.”
Yet before long she learned the truth.
The summit she had imagined was worthless.
“So long as I live.”
A voice rolled across the Outer Land.
Its owner held Baal’s head in one hand. The meaning was simple: Baal, supposed to be immortal, had met his end. The severed face was painted with terror.
Even that mighty being who had seemed to fear nothing had known fear at the final moment of his life.
“Upon this earth there is no place for your kind to set foot.”
That day, in that instant, she understood.
The supreme strength of a single body is worthless.
No matter how powerful the existence, death comes. Even the transcendents who split earth and sky with a gesture eventually die, do they not?
Even the great devil Baal had died.
Even Arthur, who had slain the great devil Baal, had died.
All those who had flaunted their strength were dead. All those who had thought themselves strong had met wretched ends. Having witnessed every one of them, she thought:
Then the path I must walk is not that one.
Instead of honing herself she gnawed at the weaknesses of others. She dug pits, gathered forces, and, when she could, borrowed even human hands. Combat, after all, is relative. If I am not strong, I need only make my opponent weaker than I am.
Ten years, a hundred years, centuries passed.
She became strong. She became ruler of the Outer Land, collected hundreds of stars, and kept dozens of transcendents beneath her. No one ignored her any longer.
Yet she was still afraid.
She lived in fear, wary of the unknown, and because she was afraid she endlessly expanded her power.
She contracted with the Constellation of Oblivion. She stole knowledge from the Constellation of Omniscience. She knelt before the Witch of Kamran beyond the Outer Land and swore herself a servant. The Witch of Kamran laughed as though the world itself were tearing and said, “How interesting, child,” then gladly granted her power.
…And so a thousand years went by.
A thousand years later, though she had become an existence incomparably mightier than her past self—
Why, then?
At this very moment the Revelry Emperor felt as though she had returned to the past. Her gaze fixed on the knight standing before her. With trembling eyes she looked at Najin.
How… how is this possible?
She could not know. She could not understand. She had shown him a hell that would have shattered an ordinary constellation dozens of times over. Even a transcendent of the sturdiest mind would finally break if the starting point of his very existence were denied.
He should have collapsed long ago.
He should already have become a jester and been dancing.
Yet Najin had not broken. He had smashed the stage an 11-star constellation had poured her full power into creating. To the Revelry Emperor it was a sight beyond all comprehension.
…How had it come to this?
She had not grown careless. She had laid countless traps and grasped every means available. To the very last she had faced Najin with everything she possessed—even though she held more stars, even though she was stronger.
Her teeth ground together.
It was all because of that human.
That single human had ruined everything.
The Imperial First Horn and the Golden Horn Knights who should have fallen into her hands, the plan she had prepared for a hundred and fifty years—he had destroyed them.
He had dragged her from the shadows onto the stage. He had ruined the scheme to build a false kingdom of Londinel through the Blue Spear. He had ruined the plan to take the lighthouse hostage, drag the lighthouse keepers in, and overturn the continent. He had ruined the spies planted in the Empire. He had ruined the operation that would have used the Knight of Betrayal to conquer the north…
All of it had crumbled because of that one human.
The jesters she coveted had been stolen. Her plans had collapsed. Her identity had been exposed, her forces reduced, and even the jesters she had treasured were lost.
“Why.”
The Revelry Emperor’s voice boiled like fire. The face that existed only for mockery twisted. She spat the words as though chewing them.
“Why are you so—”
Born gifted. Selected by the Sword of Stars. As though every fate in the world revolved around that human. Why must the things she had prepared for centuries collapse at the hands of a human who had lived a mere twenty years?
“You seem to be under a misconception.”
Facing the Revelry Emperor whose bloodshot eyes glared at him, Najin lifted his sword with a sneer.
“Excalibur didn’t select me.”
The world’s fate did not choose me.
“I chose this path.”
I decided it with my own hands. Declaring that no vast current had guided him here, that he had reached this place by his own will, Najin leveled Excalibur at the Revelry Emperor.
The Sword of Selection pointed at the Revelry Emperor.
The Star Sword pointed at the demon.
The false night sky tore open and Najin’s stars shone.
2.
The realm of the transcendent, the Sword Master.
Najin had set foot there once before, yet not entirely by his own power. Even after reaching Full Bloom and possessing eight stars, one step had been lacking—and Excalibur had filled that step.
But no longer.
Star was firmly linked to star. The linked stars became a constellation, and the constellation became the path Najin had walked, the life he had lived.
By affirming himself as himself, Najin reached transcendence.
…Even as a half-complete transcendent he had displayed martial might that overwhelmed most full transcendents. What, then, of a complete transcendent?
Kuuung.
The Revelry Emperor saw the answer with her own two eyes. Dozens of transcendents charged Najin; the sword auras and magics they loosed poured toward him—
Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
—and vanished, swept away by a single stroke he swung with both feet planted on the ground. As though he would not grant even one second to the specters whose lives had been stolen, Najin raced forward.
The jesters’ regeneration could not keep pace with him.
Faster than they could regenerate, Najin scoured the battlefield. He raised his sword and drove it down into the earth. In that instant—kuuung—the ground for a vast radius shook. The heaving earth, the cracks racing across the stage.
Ramming.
Just as Alderan Basaglia had done, Najin wrapped a storm around his blade and slammed it into the ground. The storm that erupted from the very earth the jesters stood upon hurled them skyward.
Her teeth clenched.
The Revelry Emperor ground her teeth. The nature of the battle itself had changed. This was no longer the war of attrition in which victory had been certain. In the end she moved her own body rather than her jesters.
The god of stage machinery who had looked down from outside the stage stepped onto the boards.
Najin had dragged the Revelry Emperor onto the stage. She searched for means. Seeking to right the scales that had begun to tip, she tried to find an answer in the path she had walked for a thousand years.
…Najin’s sword flashed.
Should she pull him into another stage? No—impossible. She could no longer interfere with that story.
…Najin leapt through the scattering jesters.
Strengthen the jesters? Sacrifice several here and create a new court jester? No—there was no time, and even then she could not hold that human. Would she need a jester of at least the Star of Contempt’s caliber? But such a masterpiece could never be made so easily.
…The storm raged. It sliced the weapons of transcendents like paper and shattered head-on the ultimate techniques they had spent their entire lives refining.
She searched for means.
…Transcendents threw their bodies to seize Najin. Ankles, arms, shoulders—they flung their whole frames at him and clung, yet Najin did not stop.
The Revelry Emperor thrashed, seeking an answer in the thousand years she had walked, in her own life.
…Every time Najin’s sword flashed, jesters were carved into pieces. Had they blocked him of their own will he could not have broken them so easily. But now they were nothing more than the Revelry Emperor’s jesters. Najin was not so weak that those who had lost their will could hold him.
He was coming. He was drawing near.
Pssht.
A thin line of sword aura grazed the Revelry Emperor’s face. The mask she wore shattered. Blood ran down her cheek. She bit her lip hard.
The difference in the number of stars was meaningless in this moment.
No—to that human the number of stars was truly nothing more than a number. Every star he possessed was shining for the sole purpose of killing her.
Ah.
The Revelry Emperor sighed. The thing she had averted her eyes from for a thousand years—what remained at this final moment was that.
The strength of a single self.
Strength that borrowed no one else’s power.
The human driving her back with nothing but his own strength seemed to be telling her: the path you walked was wrong from the beginning, and my existence is the proof. That was what he seemed to shout.
At that cry the Revelry Emperor—
“Ha.”
—burst out laughing. Kakakaka, the laughter echoed. Did you think I would regret it now? Did you think I would accept that my path was wrong, that I am losing because I walked the wrong road?
Never.
I am not wrong. Do the countless lives I stole not prove that I was never wrong?
Cornered, the Revelry Emperor realized her essence.
In the end the Revelry Emperor was a demon. A demon is a being that fattens itself on human souls. No matter how many crowns she wears or how splendidly she adorns herself, her essence is no different from a beast that hungers for human flesh and spirit.
Krrrk, krrrrrk…
The gears that rose behind the Revelry Emperor began to turn. Following her fingertips the black curtain fused with her body rippled. Stars shone upon the black curtain that hid the night sky.
The lives and stars she had plundered.
The Revelry Emperor was a mage. And when the words “demon” and “mage” coexist, another word always follows.
Offering.
The foundation of black magic. By offering something up, one seizes power beyond what one possesses. Called offering, called sacrifice, called…
Burnt offering.
In that instant the jesters burst into flame. As though dedicating sacrifices to a god, the stars hanging upon the Revelry Emperor’s black curtain began to burn. Their flesh and souls, their lives and stars, burned while they screamed. The Revelry Emperor greedily swallowed those screams.
The number of gears floating behind her was ten.
Ten gears meshed.
At the fingertips of the great mage a single spell was completed. It was a magic she had never thought she would use—a magic that would undo the thousand years she had built as thoroughly as if they had never been.
But to live, what would she not do?
She need only begin again from the start.
Thus the Revelry Emperor completed a single spell. Burning hundreds of stars, offering the lives of dozens of constellations as sacrifices to empower it, she spoke the name.
Night Fall.
And then—kuuung.
The sky shuddered once, massively.
Immediately the stars hanging in the heavens became meteors and fell. Amid the dozens of stars pouring down as meteors, the entire sky itself began to descend toward the earth.
…To the very last, even at the end.
The Revelry Emperor clung to the path she had walked. She elevated herself by wringing out the lives of others. There was no compromise. This was the answer she believed in.
And Najin—
gazing at the falling night, readjusted his grip on the sword.
3.
The sky was falling.
The false sky began its descent. Hundreds of stars poured toward Najin like a meteor shower. It was a 10-circle magic Najin had never experienced, a magic further empowered by the offering of hundreds of stars.
Najin knew little of magic, so he could not grasp how extraordinary the spell truly was; yet had Merlin been present even she would have been unable to hide her astonishment.
The thousand-year life a single demon had built.
Najin took the flashing stars into his sight. Sword leveled at the falling night, he settled into his stance. Before a magic no different from the Revelry Emperor’s own self, Najin steadied his breath.
…As a complete transcendent, Najin could now see things that had been invisible.
It was the path unfolding before his eyes.
The path Gerd and Alderan had beheld with their own eyes in that earlier battle. The path Najin had only vaguely sensed. What countless transcendents called the path of the sword.
He closed his eyes, then opened them.
“…”
There he saw countless paths. The moment the sword-paths branching into dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands became visible, Najin could not help but smile. For the instant the paths appeared he understood.
Ah. Come to think of it, I never had a technique of my own.
He had learned techniques from excellent masters. He had made their lives, distilled into technique, into his own. Yet among them there had been no technique that belonged to Najin alone.
In a sense, until now Najin had possessed confidence, yet his own self had been absent.
Was that not the same as the Revelry Emperor?
That cannot be allowed.
Najin steadied his breath.
Using the techniques of the transcendents who had adorned his life as lanterns, he illuminated the path. At once the countless roads vanished, leaving only one.
Kwak.
The moment he reached toward that path, something settled into Najin’s hand. He knew what it was. He had felt the sensation eight times already.
The ninth star shone.