A Formula Written in Blood (4)
“That ended faster than I expected.”
Yuel blinked as she stepped into the sanctum. The first thing that greeted her was Jeklin on his knees and Najin standing over him without a single wound, sword leveled at the man’s throat.
“And this one is…?”
“No idea. Looks like one of Hermann’s apostles. He started shooting arrows the second he saw me, so I subdued him.”
Jeklin’s lips twitched. His face screamed Who the hell broke in first?, but he lacked the courage to voice it.
“Name.”
Najin asked it curtly.
Jeklin wore a look of pure dissatisfaction, yet the moment Excalibur flashed he opened his mouth in a hurry.
“…Jeklin. Sentinel Jeklin.”
At the name, Yuel let out a short “Ah.”
“A constellation who was active roughly six hundred years ago. He remains in the Order’s records. He served as a ranger of the Campbell Kingdom and has a history of shooting down several demons.”
“You know of me?”
“Yes. My Lord remembers every star that has ever slain a demon even once.”
Having said that much, Yuel tilted her head.
“I do not know how he became an apostle of the Star of Omniscience, however… Najin?”
“Yes.”
“You have not a single scratch. The time it took to subdue him was also short. Remarkable. Might you tell me how the battle unfolded?”
Najin did so. It had not been a particularly complicated fight. When the explanation ended, Yuel regarded him with an even more peculiar expression than before.
“So.”
She tilted her head again.
“Against a sniper whose maximum range exceeds forty kilometers—and who appears to possess an authority of absolute accuracy—you simply closed the distance by running and subdued him?”
“I tried snatching and breaking the arrows too, but after a while I figured just running would do the job, so I did that.”
“…In terrain like this?”
“There were plenty of things to step on and jump from.”
Yuel’s expression grew more complex still.
In her judgment, the transcendent called Jeklin was clearly a constellation of considerable strength. A sniper who could fire “inescapable” arrows from dozens of kilometers away? The description alone made him an opponent of nightmarish difficulty. All the more so in a domain that favored the archer, where he already held the high ground.
Without the support of a mage-tower master or heavy bombardment, even Yuel would have struggled. She would have been forced into a long, grinding fight—or risked serious injury to close the gap.
“Hmm.”
Of course, from Jeklin’s perspective the fight must have been equally unfair. What is the weakness of constellations who specialize in extreme-range sniping? Their power drops with distance; they cannot deliver a truly decisive blow from afar.
So either they pierce a vital point with the first shot…
Or they steadily accumulate damage until the target’s movements dull, then deliver the finishing stroke. That is the sniper’s way.
Neither worked on Najin.
His reflexes and dynamic vision stood in a class of their own even among transcendents. He would never simply take an arrow aimed at a vital spot. And even if one lucky shaft struck an arm or leg, Excalibur’s regenerative power would erase the wound in moments.
To defeat someone like him by physical means required either consecutive strikes powerful enough to sever limbs outright—or ending it in a single blow.
Against a nine-star constellation, no less?
Yuel doubted whether any being in the Outer Land was even capable of that. Offering Jeklin a look of mild sympathy, she shrugged off her coat and spread it across the ground with a snap. Then she began rummaging through it.
Najin watched. “What are you doing?”
Yuel blinked. “Hm? Did we not just capture an apostle of the Star of Omniscience?”
“We did.”
“If you kept him alive instead of killing him, there can be only one reason. We are going to extract information.”
Arrayed across the coat were implements clearly meant for interrogation. Selecting a few, Yuel strode toward Jeklin.
“Even constellations share the same basic bodily structure as humans. That means human methods of torture work on them. And one of an Inquisitor’s primary duties is extracting information from demon contractors and black mages.”
She lifted a stake.
“Leave this to me.”
This field was her specialty.
“You think I’ll open my mouth for that kind of torture? I am a constellation of pride. Do not imagine the methods that work on black mages will work on me.”
Jeklin snorted.
“You will never loosen my tongue. Kill me instead. My loyalty to Lady Hermann is steel that no force can rust or shatter—”
Exactly ten seconds after those words left his lips, the laugh vanished from Jeklin’s mouth and was replaced by a thoroughly human scream: Kyaaaaaaaah!
Najin examined the tools Yuel had laid out on her coat with genuine interest. He had no particular hobby of torturing people, nor did he take pleasure in the process… yet he was hardly a novice. Back in the underground city, Ivan and Oppen had taught him more than a few methods. Recalling those lessons, he put questions to Yuel from a purely academic curiosity.
“What is that one for?”
“Ah, this is used to fix the subject in place like so.”
Yuel demonstrated. Jeklin shrieked, “Kyaaaaah!”
“Oh. And this?”
“This is used like this… Would you like to try?”
“Shall I? Like this?”
“From there, at this angle…”
Yuel wrapped her hands around Najin’s and carefully adjusted the angle. Jeklin’s screams grew correspondingly refined.
“Like this?”
“Exactly. You learn quickly. Excellent. Would you care to try this as well?”
“Nice. How does it work?”
Like a child proudly showing off her toys, Yuel introduced one instrument after another, demonstrating several right before his eyes.
-Ugh.
Merlin, watching from the side, shook her head. Whether she approved or not, the interrogation continued a little longer until Jeklin finally cracked.
“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything! Everything!”
“Already? Would you not like to hold out a little longer? I have not finished introducing the tools yet…”
“I said I would talk!”
Yuel smacked her lips as though disappointed. Jeklin glared at her with the expression of a man who had just discovered a genuine lunatic; the glare had no effect on the already-mad Yuel.
She moved calmly to the next stage.
Question one: Are you Hermann’s apostle?
“I am. She gifted me a fragment of truth, and I vowed to become her sentinel.”
Question two: What are you doing here?
“I am guarding the path that leads to her sanctum. For the record, the place where I was stationed—if you go just behind it there is a large pit. Lady Hermann’s sanctum lies within.”
Jeklin began volunteering information he had not even been asked. Holes were opening all over that loyalty of steel.
Question three: How long has Hermann been inside?
“About a hundred and fifty years, I believe. She came to me in a ruined state and made a request. She said she needed to prove something, that it would take a long time, and that I was to keep every outsider from this place.”
“Do you know what she is trying to prove?”
“I was not told.”
“Then what is her condition inside? As her apostle, can you not check?”
Jeklin was linked to Hermann. Such links were rarely one-way. If he wished, he should be able to sense her state.
“That is impossible.”
Jeklin frowned.
“She gave me a strict warning never to look this way, never to try to touch her presence.”
“Is that so?”
Yuel raised the stake again.
Jeklin flinched and clicked his tongue.
“Tch. Fine. Wait.”
He closed his eyes and reached his mind somewhere distant. After a length of time, the body of the still-closed-eyed Jeklin began to tremble violently.
His eyes snapped open. The whites were bloodshot, the pupils blown wide. Blood began to stream from them.
“Ah… aah? Ah. Aah.”
His body shook like a broken doll. Fluid poured from his nose, mouth, and ears—not blood. Things that should never leave a body were leaking through every orifice.
“Hihk, hihk, hihik!”
Head thrashing, he burst into laughter and toppled sideways. Najin seized him by the hair and hauled him upright.
Eyes rolled back, drool stringing from his lips. He did not look dead, yet he did not look alive either. Merlin materialized beside Najin and flicked Jeklin’s brow with a finger, frowning.
“Well now.”
She clicked her tongue.
“Kid, his brain’s melted.”
“…What?”
“I said his brain’s melted.”
She pointed at the fluid still dripping from Jeklin’s nose, ears, and mouth. Understanding, Najin clicked his own tongue.
“What the hell did he see that just looking at it did this?”
That was the question they would have to answer next.
Najin rose and gave his sword a light swing. The sheer cliff face Jeklin had been guarding split open, revealing a path that led downward.
A long road stretched into darkness without end. How far it ran, no one could say. Najin stood at the mouth of the path that almost certainly led to Hermann’s sanctum.
“So the Star of Omniscience’s sanctum lies at the end of this road. Understood.”
Yuel stood beside him. She narrowed her eyes at the lightless corridor; the bracelet on her wrist chimed softly as it swayed.
“Najin.”
“Yes, Yuel.”
A brief exchange of glances. Then the two of them walked into the dark. In the heavy gloom Najin drew Excalibur. Even its starlight could not be wholly swallowed; the path became visible.
They walked the single road whose end no one knew.
One step, two steps, three…
And then, at some point, sound vanished. Their footfalls no longer reached their ears. The light of Excalibur wavered. Space itself was distorted—a barrier wrapping the constellation’s sanctum, rejecting all intrusion from without.
Najin prepared to cut through it. Yuel stopped him, as though there were no need. The moment she laid her hand upon the barrier, it swallowed her whole—and Najin, whose hand she still held, with her.
The Constellation of Omniscience, Hermann.
Though her update had halted a hundred and fifty years ago, she was a constellation who once bore ten stars and was called by the name Omniscience itself. And omniscience had, since ancient times, been regarded as a mark of divinity.
Omniscience.
To know all. To know everything without exception.
What, then, did the sanctum of one who bore such a name look like?
The Revelry Emperor’s mindscape had been a vast mausoleum lined with masks made for her alone. Don Quixote’s had been a stage upon which the adventures he suffered in the Outer Land were performed. Najin’s own mindscape held the landscape of the underground city that was his beginning.
And the sanctum of the Star of Omniscience? What form did the domain of a constellation with so arrogant a title take? The question Najin had once idly wondered about was answered now.
“….”
When he came to himself, Najin was falling.
From the highest heavens, straight down.
Looking up as he plummeted, he saw a sky composed of tens of thousands, hundreds of millions, trillions of gears. The heavens that ought to have held beauty and mystery had become a precision machine repeating the same motion without end.
Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack…
Without rest the gears turned, driving the world. There was no unknown there. Mystery itself was absent. The rising and setting of the sun was the result of exact calculation; the shining of stars, the coming of day and night—all were nothing more than the movement of those gears.
A sky that was an infinitely precise mechanism.
That was Hermann’s mindscape and sanctum, the shape of the world she had created. Yet that precision had been granted only to the sky.
When he turned his gaze to the ground, it was filled with discarded things. By-products judged useless for constructing the world, leftovers from the making of the machine, piled layer upon layer across the earth.
Countless cities lay there.
They were Hermann’s experimental grounds, factories for forging new gears that would one day adorn that sky. Toward those innumerable cities Najin fell.
And the master of this world confirmed the presence of the guests who had entered her domain. The gears that blanketed the sky began to turn with violent force.
Clackclackclackclack!
Then, all at once, the motion stopped with a jolt.
Space twisted.
Sucked into the distortion, Najin’s fall ended. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, the gears were gone. What filled his vision was a clean alleyway and the landscape of a city that felt somehow familiar.
Swaepedosi…? No.
It shared a similar form with the Closed City, yet the buildings Najin remembered from Swaepedosi had never been this neat or this clean. Those had been steeped in the passage of years.
A city that looked newly built.
Waking in one of its alleyways, Najin first checked on his companions.
Merlin?
-Yeah, I’m here.
Merlin was accounted for.
That left Yuel, but there was no need to check. They had entered holding hands. When he lifted his arm he found her still gripping his hand tightly.
“….”
Her expression, however, was strange. Yuel frowned, narrowed her eyes, then crumpled her face entirely—an expression she never wore under ordinary circumstances.
“What the fuck is this bullshit…?”
The words themselves were ones she would never normally speak either.
She broke off mid-mutter and looked at Najin. Their eyes met; she blinked, then checked the hand still locked with his, then the fingers that had gone so far as to intertwine. Having confirmed all of that, she nodded.
As though she had perfectly grasped the situation, she smiled with sudden clarity.
“It’s a dream. Fuck.”