The Approaching Dawn (1)
The long night was drawing to a close.
Of course, no sun would rise over the Outer Land. Its skewed, riddled sky was nowhere near ready to receive the sun. And yet, even so, the dawn arrived.
The starlight of the Dawn Star dyed the heavens.
A soft radiance drove back the dark. It looked almost like a sunrise. Across the long fight and the long night, the soldiers of the empire lay collapsed from cheering themselves hoarse, and above their heads a star shone.
They thought of the one who owned that star.
Pillar of Dawn. Najin.
A figure who had appeared out of nowhere one day and, in less than two years, climbed to the empire’s summit. Needless to say, few had believed in him at the start.
Heroes who burst onto the stage like that are always dogged by envy, jealousy, and suspicion. What’s more, most of Najin’s feats had been accomplished in the Outer Land, so the question was only natural: So how great is this guy supposed to be, exactly?
Just because he held Excalibur.
Just because he possessed so many stars.
There were plenty who had simply been swept along into this battlefield thinking, well, he must be somebody. But after the war against the Revelry Emperor, the name “Dawn Star, Najin” had been branded hard into their minds.
He always stood at the vanguard. He always opened the path from the front, always threw himself into the most dangerous fields, always walked the hardest road. And at the end of it he had, alone, succeeded in subjugating the Revelry Emperor.
Who, after seeing that with their own eyes, would dare question his quality? It was not simply because he was famous, not simply because he had drawn Excalibur. It was the opposite.
Because he lives that way, he drew Excalibur.
That the one who walks the most dangerous road obtains the most was only natural. The empire’s knights—and even the constellations—could only huff a laugh and nod.
Of course, not everyone was feeling pure awe.
“Roselin?”
“…Ah. Yes, senior.”
“I hear you challenged the Pillar of Dawn to a match? Said you’d bet on who becomes a Sword Master first.”
“Ah, yes, that, um… yes. I did.”
“How do you feel now?”
“…….”
“Aigoo, why would you do that. If it were me, I’d have bitten my tongue from sheer shame.”
The mercenary senior she knew (now a knight of the imperial house) cackled, kakakaka!, and the sound circled Roselin’s ears. Other mercenaries clapped her on the shoulder—“Hahaha! Losing to a stronger man is nothing to be ashamed of, Miss Roselin!”—but it was no comfort at all.
“Half my body runs with the blood of a great hero, and the other half with the blood of a witch who ranks among the greatest of the great. I won’t be easy, you know.”
Her own past words circled her ears.
Roselin’s lips trembled.
Her bloodline was indeed great, and the talent she had been born with was nothing to be ashamed of anywhere. The problem was that her opponent was an unprecedented genius who had inherited the quality of the great hero from a thousand years ago.
“The higher the goal, the better, right?”
Too high. Far too high.
Roselin felt a “1 loss” being added to her record.
“Uwahahaha! You sure went all out!”
“…I knew he was a monster, but seeing it for real leaves me even more speechless.”
“Our defeat was nothing to be ashamed of, Gerald. Who in the world beats the owner of Excalibur? Oof, if we’d somehow won out there, that would’ve been a disaster.”
Klaus and Gerald, who had come under Najin’s banner, burst out laughing.
“…….”
And Griffin—the former knight commander of the Arvenia Ducal House, who had left the family without a second thought the moment Dieta took it over, become a free knight, and joined this war—looked up at the sky and offered a short salute.
“Uh, Anton?”
“What is it, Lapis.”
“Looking at that star is making me a little queasy. How do I put it… ugh, my stomach’s a bit…….”
Lapis had gone pale, complaining of trauma from her days as a witch, while Anton Quijano laughed. Gazing at the sky, Anton let out a long breath.
“Rest easy now, Uncle.”
Looking at the star of his uncle that now shared the Dawn Star’s constellation, Anton offered a belated greeting. Countless others looked up at the sky and spoke their own thoughts aloud……
“…Ah.”
Kirchhoff was no exception.
Watching one of the three constellations who had intervened in his homeland’s fall plummet from the sky, he muttered, “Finally.”
What Kirchhoff felt in that moment could be described at length—but that belongs on the next stage, not here.
“Uwahahahaha! So then, right there—”
“You somehow survived, didn’t you?”
“All thanks to this guy!”
One story had closed its curtain, and those drunk on victory laughed and talked. Yet even in that loosened atmosphere, a few could not smile. The old man standing here now was one of them.
“Come to think of it.”
Najin asked with a perfectly innocent face.
“I have more stars than you now, don’t I, Sir Gerd?”
Gerd’s expression hardened to stone.
2.
The ancient castle that had collapsed with the Revelry Emperor’s death.
Perched on the ruins, Najin was visited by the legion commanders. Surprisingly, the first to arrive was Gerd.
“Looks like you won.”
His body was far from whole. One shoulder hung half-severed and ragged; he was covered in wounds. Only emergency bandages had been wrapped around him in haste.
“And you, Sir Gerd?”
“My master’s sword is another matter, but I’m not so weak that I’d die to the blades of the dead who have lost even themselves.”
Meaning he had won. Najin and Gerd looked at each other and, without meaning to, laughed. Gerd rarely smiled, but just this once he could.
“Ah, Sir Gerd?”
Najin pointed a finger toward a corner of the ruins.
There, the severed head of the Revelry Emperor was impaled on a spear shaft. The human form had collapsed into nothing but a mask, but a head was a head.
“I keep my promises, don’t I? I cut it nice and clean and stuck it right there.”
“Excellent. Master will be pleased as well.”
Long ago Gerd had declared he would cut off the Revelry Emperor’s head and hang it from a pillar of the empire. Looking at the trophy Najin had brought, Gerd nodded in satisfaction.
“Master’s body will be laid to rest in the innermost part of the empire, where the greatest knights are buried. He is more than worthy of it.”
The Revelry Emperor was dead. The forgotten records would not return, but at least the distortions she had spread were gone, so from now on proper records could be left.
“It was long. Very long.”
The Helmet Knight had endured for a hundred and fifty years. The one who had upheld those hundred and fifty years was Gerd. And the one who had forged those hundred and fifty years into a single sword and driven it into the Revelry Emperor’s heart was Najin.
“Master will be glad of what his disciples have accomplished. He’ll laugh that hearty laugh of his and say he knew it, that any disciple of his should do at least this much, and clap us on the shoulder. It’s a little sad we can’t see that.”
“True enough.”
As they spoke, Gerd suddenly checked the bodies of Ivan and Oppen.
“Whose corpses are those?”
“The bodies of my godfather and my masters.”
“I see. I’ll order them transported with the highest honors.”
“Thank you.”
“No need for thanks. You are a pillar of the empire, and paying full respect to a pillar’s benefactors is only natural. Even without my order it would have been done. Don’t thank me for what is obvious.”
Gazing up at the sky, Gerd exhaled.
“Is that your constellation?”
Najin nodded, and Gerd said shortly,
“Beautiful. Symbolic.”
As he counted the stars, Gerd’s eyes narrowed for just a moment. Seven, eight, nine? Only a short while ago there had clearly been eight, yet Najin’s constellation had already become nine. Gerd’s breath hitched.
Only an instant, of course. Gerd was a seasoned soldier and a man of power, long practiced at hiding his emotions and his tremors. In a flash he locked his expression down.
“Hmph.”
The problem was that the person he was facing was Najin. Instant or not, how could one deceive a Sword Master’s eyes? In Najin’s pupils, the scene of Gerd’s eyes narrowing, of him swallowing a breath, flowed by in slow motion.
—Wait. You don’t mean……
Merlin was aghast.
Najin’s tongue moved.
“Hmm.”
Najin put on a perfectly innocent face.
“Come to think of it.”
He pointed at the sky as he spoke.
“I have more stars than you now, don’t I, Sir Gerd?”
He actually said it. That. Merlin smacked her own forehead with a sharp tak, while Gerd’s expression hardened to stone. Eyes that had not so much as flickered before the onslaught of the Revelry Emperor and the Helmet Knight now blinked.
Gerd’s stars: eight.
Najin’s stars: nine.
One more. One more. A flood of words and sentences flashed through Gerd’s mind. Until now he could still claim there were parts where he was clearly better than Najin. Even if the number of stars had been equal, Najin had been an incomplete transcendent while Gerd was a complete one.
……But now?
Najin had risen as a complete transcendent and possessed one more star than Gerd. On top of that, he had smashed the Revelry Emperor—who held eleven stars—head-on.
“…….”
Plenty of geniuses had overtaken him before, but this was a different story. The First Pillar of the Empire was a seat given only to the most outstanding person in the empire. So should he hand the seat over? Was this brat about to open his mouth and demand the First Pillar of the Empire? Was he dropping a subtle hint?
No. He didn’t seem like the type.
All sorts of stray thoughts swirled as Gerd looked at Najin. There sat Najin with an expression so utterly harmless it looked as if he had simply said it for the sake of saying it. If that was acting, then the name attached to his ninth star must be Acting.
“Haha. Just a joke. A joke.”
Najin waved it off.
“The number of stars doesn’t guarantee strength, and the First Pillar of the Empire is a seat that suits you, Sir Gerd. Who else would sit there but you?”
It’s too heavy a seat for me.
With that bit of banter Najin closed the conversation. He had briefly considered adding one more joke—Got a lot on your mind, do you?—but even he had his limits.
Najin was a man who knew how to keep the line.
“I just got my ninth star, so I thought I’d brag a little.”
“…It is something worth bragging about. I understand.”
That was how it went.
3.
The Revelry Emperor had been subjugated, yet even after her death there was a mountain of work left to handle.
Who was the Revelry Emperor? The demon who had sown chaos across the entire Outer Land, who had even stretched her claws to the Continent itself… a being who had left her name on every place she had not failed to touch and every chaos she had not failed to create. The aftershocks of such a demon’s death could not possibly be light.
And in the middle of all that—
“Huh?”
“Stars are falling… no, wait?”
“What is that? Some kind of whale going up into the sky……?”
“Wait, what?”
“Uh.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Eleven stars, plus the hundreds the Revelry Emperor had collected, plummeted and turned the night sky into a complete mess—that was just the bonus.
“Again! That bastard again! Again!”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“Twenty-one, sixty-two, four hundred twelve, five hundred eleven, six hundred—huff.”
“W-wait! You’ll get arrested for that! You’ll be arrested for insulting a Pillar! At least use the designation ‘the great and magnificent Sir Najin’ here…….”
“Fuck it, just arrest me then! I can’t live like this, I can’t live like this!”
“The Grey Tower wants to hold a dinner. Says if we don’t go now we might not get outside for a while.”
The Grey Tower and the imperial officers screamed, but it was not a particularly important incident. Their screams were buried under the victory reports ringing through the heart of the empire and the cheers and applause of its people.
And in the Outer Land—
“There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
A step away from the imperial troops busily cleaning up the situation.
“The Revelry Emperor was trying to lure out the Witch of Kamran, right? Thanks to that the witch overextended herself a bit, and with the plan’s failure as backlash, she’ll be quiet for a while. Meaning we’ve got some room to breathe.”
Merlin, fully manifested, pointed at the sky beside Najin.
“So she said she’d meet you while we have the chance.”
“Who, exactly?”
“The last knight of the Round Table.”
To be more precise, the knight who had remained until the very end of the Round Table.
“Bedivere.”
Ten stars were shining in the sky.