Interlude: Someone's Dream (1)
Najin had rarely ever dreamed.
To dream, one first had to sink into deep sleep—and the world that had birthed and raised him was no place for peaceful rest.
As a small child he had feared waking among human traffickers if he let himself sleep too soundly. Later, once he became Ivan’s hunting dog, the enemies he had made were many and sudden; he had to stay alert for ambushes (and more than a few had come). After he reached the surface, the Church’s assassins kept him on edge. In the Outer Land there was no need even to mention the danger.
Having spent nearly his entire life either hunted or exposed to peril, he had seldom been granted the chance to sleep deeply. Even after every threat had been cleared away, the old habit remained; he still drifted only into the lightest of slumbers.
Living like that, he had eventually become a Transcendent—a being for whom sleep was no longer necessary, who could act without rest. Ironically, only after his body no longer required sleep could Najin finally sleep soundly.
Even then, he almost never dreamed.
And yet, for some reason, he had been dreaming of late.
“······.”
A dream far too vivid to be called a dream.
“…Why.”
And a dream that felt utterly foreign.
“Why me? Even now I cannot understand why Your Majesty chose me.”
Looking at the knight kneeling before him, Najin thought, This dream again.
2.
When had these dreams first begun?
As far as Najin could recall, it had been after that day—after he had spoken with Bedivere at the Round Table and driven Excalibur into its stone. From then on, strange dreams had visited him from time to time.
Blurred landscapes. Voices buzzing at the edge of hearing.
For the first few nights he could make out nothing of the dream’s content—only the echo of a single question ringing in his ears: Why me? He had thought little of it, yet day by day the dream grew clearer.
He began to see the knight kneeling before him. The hazy scenery sharpened. Slowly the dream began to feel less like a dream and more like reality itself.
Inside a dream that was all too real—
“Why was it me?”
—the kneeling knight kept asking the question, pleading now, as if the time for an answer had long since come.
I… can’t speak.
It was the same sensation he had known when he entered the Tomb of Stars. All Najin could do was inhabit another’s body and watch the scene unfold.
This was less a dream than someone’s memory.
He had experienced something similar once before. When he defeated the Horn-blowing Star Kruenbel and received the Star of Breakthrough, he had glimpsed Kruenbel’s memories.
So whose memory was this?
While Najin was still turning the question over, the knight kneeling before him lifted his head. The man wore a helm of unique design—once seen, impossible to forget.
The instant he saw that helm, and the moment the knight called him—
“My King.”
—Najin understood whose body he inhabited and whose memory this was.
The knight’s name was Lancelot. The helm matched the illustration of Lancelot printed in the chronicles of Arthur. And there was only one person Lancelot would ever address as King.
The Knight-King, Arthur.
The realization jolted him fully awake. He still did not know why he was seeing Arthur’s memories, but that no longer mattered.
Arthur’s memories.
Memories of the very figure he had once admired more than any other. He had declared he would surpass King Arthur; he had even, in his brashness, called her a mere storm of the age. Yet no matter what anyone said, Arthur was the one who had first taught him how to dream.
As a boy, the single most precious thing Najin owned had been a worn copy of the Arthurian chronicles. He had read it so many times that a single phrase was enough for him to name the page and the line.
To be allowed to peer into the memories of the hero he had yearned for—how could he not snap to attention?
Najin fixed his gaze on the scene unfolding before him.
“Please… answer me.”
And then—
“Having you kneel like that is rather burdensome.”
—Najin’s mouth moved.
More precisely, Arthur’s mouth moved. The voice was soft at first hearing, yet it carried an unshakable certainty.
“Why not rise?”
“I will not rise until I hear your answer.”
“True enough—who could ever break your stubbornness?”
Arthur, who had been standing, simply dropped down to sit in front of Lancelot. While the knight startled, Arthur tapped her own temple with a finger.
“First, take off that helm. It looks stifling.”
“This is—”
“I know your circumstances well enough, but conversation of this sort is better held face to face, don’t you think?”
“······As you wish.”
Lancelot removed the helm. The face that emerged was nothing like the Lancelot Najin had imagined.
Who was Lancelot? The man called, alongside Galahad, the strongest of knights—a rigid, upright warrior who had swept away countless demons and fallen stars.
Najin had expected a rough, weathered visage. What appeared instead was a man of almost delicate features. There was no force in his eyes; his face seemed drawn in thin, fine lines rather than bold strokes.
“You asked why I chose you?”
“…Yes.”
Lancelot spoke.
“I am, as Your Majesty well knows, a sinner. One who committed so great a crime that I was placed in a convict company, where I was meant to atone for the rest of my life. And yet Your Majesty chose me.”
He could not even meet Arthur’s gaze. Eyes fixed on the ground, he continued.
“Sir Bedivere, Mordred, Gawain… every other knight of the Round Table is a radiant being. Good men, noble knights who would gladly cast their bodies away for an ideal.”
“They are that, yes.”
“But I… am not. Your Majesty knows this, do you not? That I can never become like them.”
Lancelot clenched his right hand tightly with his left.
“They took up the sword for an ideal from the beginning—to protect something, or to achieve something. I took up the sword merely to silence hunger. And in the process I even killed men outright.”
“I know. That is why you entered the convict company to receive punishment, is it not? I heard the tale until my ears rang when I brought you out of that place.”
“…And still, why?”
Lancelot’s voice was a low groan.
“Why seat a sinner like me—whose very nature is wicked—at the Round Table among them?”
A story that had never appeared in any book. Najin had scoured every text concerning King Arthur, yet he had never once read that Lancelot had come from a convict company.
“You asked me the same question the day we first met. Do you remember what I answered then?”
“…That I would come to understand it naturally.”
“Yes. I told you that if we traveled together you would come to know it in time.”
“I still do not understand.”
“Then the moment has simply not yet arrived.”
“Can you not simply tell me?”
“I had hoped you would realize it yourself, but there is no harm in speaking.”
Arthur raised a hand and pointed at Lancelot’s eyes.
“I liked your eyes.”
“My eyes, Your Majesty?”
“Yes. Eyes that never stop doubting themselves. Eyes that question whether what they are doing is right. Those eyes pleased me.”
Arthur smiled.
“Everyone at my side is certain. They never doubt that they are right; they simply advance, pure and straight. I do not say that is a bad thing—but sometimes it is necessary to doubt, even once.”
Is the road we walk truly right?
Is this path truly the best?
Even the lesser evil we choose to avoid the worst may still be only the second-best path we settle for because the best is out of reach.
“I needed someone at my side who would doubt for me. That someone was you.”
“If that is the case, then Mordred would be far more—”
“That would be difficult. You know him. That friend believes everything I do must hold some meaning—even when it does not. Compared to him, what of you?”
You question my choices.
You ask why it had to be you.
You demand reasons for the road I walk.
“Life is the process of answering the questions cast before us. The more questions, the better. Agony and deliberation lead us to better answers.”
“······.”
“That is why you are a knight I must have. In truth, every knight of the Round Table is the same. Each of them has a role that only they can fill. I did not seat you there out of pity, or because I found you pitiable.”
Lancelot fell silent. Arthur spoke on.
“Is that answer enough? Probably not. An answer is something one must reach through one’s own thought, never something given by another. There is no value in an answer handed to you.”
So, Arthur smiled,
“I hope you will find your own answer in time. Until then I will walk at the front—but one day I hope you will overtake me. Not only you. I hope every knight of the Round Table will do the same.”
Arthur rose and held out a hand to Lancelot, who still knelt on one knee.
“If you fear you may lose the path, then follow me. I cannot claim my road is the right one—but it can at least serve as a single milestone.”
“The path Your Majesty walks is right.”
“Is it? Whether it is wrong or correct is something no one knows. Only the result will tell us.”
Having drawn Lancelot to his feet, Arthur said,
“But whatever that answer may be… if it is an answer reached after agony, then it holds a worth of its own, does it not?”
With those final words the once-vivid dream began to blur.
Time inside the fading dream raced forward.
Then, at some point, that rushing time stopped. Within the hazy landscape Najin heard Lancelot’s voice once more.
“I still cannot become perfect.”
And yet—
“Even so, it seems even I have a useful part.”
There stood two knights.
3.
Najin blinked.
Sunlight spilling through the window touched his face as he slowly sat up. Several days had already passed since he had subjugated the Constellation of Omniscience and returned to the Empire.
“······.”
He pressed a hand to his forehead. As dreams always do, the scenery faded the moment he woke. Yet even within the blur, certain memories remained.
“Merlin.”
-Yes. I’m here.
Merlin materialized at once beside him. The “Yes” had sounded inside his mind, but the words “I’m here” rang clearly from right next to him.
Perched on the edge of the bed, Merlin tilted her head.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“When I asked you before what became of the knights of the Round Table, you answered that everyone except Lancelot, Mordred, and Bedivere was dead.”
The moment the Round Table was mentioned, Merlin’s expression tightened for an instant. Then she let out a long breath and nodded.
“I did say that.”
“But earlier, when Sir Bedivere spoke of the living knights of the Round Table, he spoke the name ‘Galahad.’”
“······.”
“And when you spoke of Sir Galahad, you described him as something difficult to explain—an existence that possessed ten stars yet could never become a Transcendent.”
“I did.”
Najin recalled the final scene of the dream and the conversation he had once shared with Merlin.
“Mm, it’s a bit complicated to explain, but it was an exceptional case. Galahad could never become a Transcendent, after all.”
“Perfect and flawless. A human who abandoned being human. A manufactured existence. A kind of stage prop······.”
Merlin had said as much once before.
And though Merlin had claimed Galahad was dead, Bedivere had spoken of him as living. Neither of them was the sort to lie.
Then—
Najin reached a single conclusion.
“Is Lancelot Sir Galahad?”
The moment he spoke the words, Merlin’s eyes flew wide. It was not the look of someone hearing an absurd guess—it was the opposite: the look of someone wondering how he could possibly have known.
“…I don’t know how you figured it out,”
After several seconds Merlin answered,
“but yes.”
She said,
“Galahad is a clone Lancelot created.”
A clone formed by separating only the most perfect, most ideal of Lancelot’s own achievements.
That was the true identity of Galahad, the most perfect knight.