Skirmish (1)
His mind was a tangle of thoughts.
"…"
Najin pressed his fingers hard into his temple, sorting through the scenes he had witnessed in the dream.
Lancelot was a knight.
Even if it had begun as atonement, Lancelot had clearly been a force for good. He had lived as a knight should, acted as a knight should, and after meeting Guinevere, he had walked a path worthy of the name hero. He had possessed honor and pride. He had been a knight who deserved to be called noble.
Even after carving out only his "perfect parts" to create the being known as Galahad, he had remained precarious—yet he had never abandoned the life of a knight. Because he had constantly doubted himself, Lancelot had, paradoxically, always chosen the right path.
And that was precisely why Najin could not understand how Lancelot had committed the treason of "betraying the Round Table." The only clue was the moment when Lancelot, searching for the missing Galahad, had seen something and burst into laughter as if he had gone mad on the spot.
…In the end, it was a question he would have to confirm for himself.
Lancelot and Guinevere. They had committed sins, suffered for those sins, and sworn to devote the rest of their lives to atonement… so why had they destroyed an entire nation? Why had they slaughtered millions? He needed to know the reason.
That was what Najin thought.
"Is that so…?"
Merlin, having heard the entire story from Najin, stroked her chin and slowly nodded.
"Whatever the reason, the fact that Lancelot is a sinner doesn't change. The fact that he's the Round Table's most horrific traitor doesn't change either."
But—Merlin's expression turned bitter.
"Separate from the unforgivable things he did, I hope the motive is at least something I can understand. I don't want to think he did it for no purpose at all."
Having said that much, Merlin let out a long breath. Najin watched her complicated expression for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.
"About Lancelot."
A question he had meant to ask someday.
"I know he's strong, but… how strong, exactly?"
"Hard to say how he is right now, but speaking in terms of his prime… hmm."
Merlin splayed all ten fingers wide.
"At his peak, Lancelot was an eleven-star constellation. One has fallen now, so he's probably at ten."
She gave a little flick of her hand.
"Among the constellations you've fought so far, there have been about three with ten or more stars, right?"
"The Wandering Star Icarus, the Constellation of Omniscience Hermann, and the Revelry Emperor—those three. There's Mordred too, but the circumstances were special, so we'll leave him out."
"Right. So how did it feel fighting those three?"
"Hermann was already broken, so set him aside. The Wandering Star and the Revelry Emperor…"
Najin folded his fingers one by one, frowning.
"They were strong. The Wandering Star was that formidable even as a dead man, so if it had been his prime, a fight wouldn't even have been possible by the standards of back then. Even now he'd be a tough opponent."
"And the Revelry Emperor?"
"…"
Najin fell silent for a moment.
"She was troublesome. Horribly so."
Even Najin, who possessed massive resistance to mental attacks, had been caught by the Revelry Emperor's authority more than once. When he had been seized by the scenery of the underground city, he had truly nearly submitted.
"I went in as prepared as I could be, and I still almost lost. It felt more like I overcame her through a matchup advantage than anything else."
"To put it bluntly, it was an unfair fight from the Revelry Emperor's side too, wasn't it? Every scheme she'd prepared got smashed to pieces."
Of course, that was all just her karma catching up.
Merlin said as much.
Najin had smashed every tragedy the Revelry Emperor had orchestrated on his way to her. By laying the Helmeted Knight, Don Quixote, and all the other jesters whose lives she had toyed with to rest—by walking the hardest road toward her—the narrative woven into Najin's sword had finally reached the Revelry Emperor.
"Calling it a simple matchup advantage is a bit much, but either way, the subjugation itself was closer to 'exploiting a weakness,' wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Pretty much."
"And even so, it was a brutally hard fight."
Merlin raised a finger.
Then she drew a slow circle to the right.
"The Revelry Emperor held eleven stars, but she specialized in 'conceptual combat' that used authority and stagecraft more than raw martial power. Mental attacks were her mainstay—and the fact that she still had that much force behind them made her a mighty constellation."
Her finger stopped, then swept the other way, drawing a circle opposite to the Revelry Emperor's.
"Lancelot is the exact opposite."
"Opposite how?"
"His authority and stage are nothing special. He doesn't fight by unfolding a personal domain. He doesn't drag star concepts into combat either. He fights with nothing but the pure martial power of his own body."
Blue mana rose from Merlin's fingertip.
The blue mana took the shape of Lancelot and began to move. A knight gripping a greatsword advanced. The knight's movements were simple.
Thoom.
He swung his sword, shoved the enemy with his shield, struck, then brought the blade down. Straightforward—and without a single opening.
"No real weaknesses. No matchups to exploit. He just comes at you head-on, stubborn and direct. Simple—but that simplicity is how he piled up eleven stars."
No cheap tricks of stealing stars. No shortcuts of wringing knowledge from countless experiments and vast numbers of humans. A knight who had gained eleven stars through nothing but the frontal assault of pure skill.
"He's strong."
Merlin declared it flatly.
"Not by your standards. By mine."
"…"
"If you fought Lancelot right now without my support, you would lose for certain. This is different from the Revelry Emperor."
Different from when you could exploit a weakness. Even with my support, I couldn't guarantee victory unless I descended in my true body. Merlin cut the matter off cleanly.
As if there was no room for disagreement.
When Merlin spoke with that much certainty, it meant a fight that a few variables would not overturn.
"Lancelot is the strongest knight of the Round Table."
Gawain, Knight of the Sun. Tristan, the peerless archer. Mordred, Knight of Blind Faith. Bedivere of the Hundred-Man Spear…
In a Round Table crowded with powerhouses, if you set aside Arthur and Merlin, the one called strongest was Lancelot. Even the prideful Gawain had never denied that Lancelot was the strongest.
The enemy you must face from now on is that kind of existence.
Before Merlin, who said as much, Najin was silent for a moment—then smiled.
"I'm finally starting to feel it for real."
"Feel what?"
"That I'm getting closer to the Abyss."
The place where Arthur's story had ended. The place where no next chapter had been written for a thousand years—where the tale had stalled. He could feel that he was drawing near the final chapter of Arthur's life.
"Funny. Just a few years ago you were a brat, and now you're saying things like that."
"From your perspective it's fast, but for me it's been a long—"
"No?"
Merlin cut him off. She suddenly shoved her face close to his and smiled.
"It's been long for me too. Unlike the thousand years I just wasted, these past few years have actually been fun."
"Then I'm glad."
Najin offered a fist; Merlin's bumped against it with a soft tap. The two of them were discussing plans for facing Lancelot and what they would need when—
"So about this part, Merlin—"
"…"
"Merlin?"
"Ah. Yeah."
Merlin abruptly stopped moving.
She stared into empty air, her face twisting, then let out a long sigh.
"Well. It was about time. Things had been quiet lately, so I thought…"
"…What is it?"
"It's a bit long to explain. Let's just go out. Bedivere will be looking for us."
"Sir Bedivere?"
Merlin nodded.
"You said just now that you could feel yourself getting closer to the Abyss, right?"
"I did."
"You were right. Might as well experience it firsthand—they've even come out to greet us."
To Najin, who was tilting his head, Merlin said:
"The Abyss has begun expanding its domain."
Meaning the Cursed Ones have crossed the boundary line.
2.
Arthur's story had ended, and most of the Knights of the Round Table had met their deaths… yet the stars that had once gathered beneath Arthur's banner still remained at the Round Table.
The Round Table where the stars of past heroes slept.
Using those stars, the Round Table had carried out several duties over the past thousand years. The foremost among them was maintaining and repairing the seal Arthur had left upon Camlann. The second was the occasional work of purging the Cursed Ones that tried to cross the Abyss's boundary line.
The far edge of the Outer Land.
The frontmost line, where the boundary dividing the Abyss from the Outer Land lay.
The stars of the Round Table kept their posts there, forever watching the Abyss's boundary. That was why the Round Table's other names were the Watchmen of the Abyss, or the Wardens of the Abyss.
"The boundary line of the Abyss has begun to move."
The watchman Bedivere spoke.
"There are various factors, but the main causes are likely the recent fall of multiple stars in the Outer Land and the stimulation the Witch of the Abyss received from the battle with the Revelry Emperor."
At those words, Najin flinched. The one who had brought down multiple stars in the Outer Land was none other than himself. Seeing that, Bedivere gave a wry smile and shook his head.
"I am not blaming you. It was necessary work, and Camlann has always attempted to expand its domain periodically. An event that would have occurred soon enough has simply been brought forward a little."
More than anything, Bedivere continued,
"It has been a common occurrence over the past thousand years. Of course, the scale is larger this time… but they must have sensed that the age itself is in upheaval."
At the far edge of the Outer Land—the place called the Final Land—Najin gazed at the boundary line that cut between the Outer Land and Camlann. The boundary Arthur had forged by staking her own life; a vast iron cage that imprisoned the Abyss's principal figures.
Even at a considerable distance, he could feel the surging power of the red-black Calamity Star seething beyond the boundary. Najin swallowed hard.
"What happens when the Abyss's boundary is pushed back?"
"The Outer Land's boundary gets shoved far outward."
It was Merlin who answered Najin's question.
"You've seen cases where the Outer Land's boundary line suddenly expands deep into the Continent, or even swallows territory whole, right? Most of those are problems that arise when Camlann's domain expands."
Merlin sighed as if she were thoroughly sick of it.
"For the past thousand years, the moment things get even a little unstable—or when some major incident in the Outer Land scrambles the constellations—they try to cross the boundary. If you don't deal with those Cursed Ones in time, the Abyss's domain just expands outright."
While Merlin spoke, Bedivere casually swung his arm. Something black that had poked its face across the boundary burst with a wet splat.
"Have you seen the Cursed Ones before?"
"I've seen fiends similar to that."
Najin recalled the fiends from the Black Spire. Bedivere answered briefly, "Their essence is probably much the same."
"Their essence is those buried in the Abyss—people who existed in ages far older than the thousand years we were active. The humans of the old generations that the Witch of Camlann swallowed whole."
Once, the Witch of Camlann had swallowed nine-tenths of the world, and everyone who lived on that land had become the dead. That was the essence of the Abyss's Cursed Ones.
"…"
Najin looked at the boundary line.
There, the dead made of red-black sludge were slamming their heads against the impassable wall, clawing at it, and screaming.
-■■ah, ■■■ah■■■■■, aaa■■!
-■■■■■■, ■■■■■■.
Once human, they were now nothing but wraiths whose sole remaining purpose was to expand the Abyss's domain and dye the world red-black. They screamed.
The Cursed Ones of the Abyss.
Unlike the prisoners sealed within the Abyss, they were not strongly affected by the seal. In times like this, when the Outer Land was badly shaken, they crossed the boundary and blackened the Outer Land. Hearing the explanation, Najin's expression grew complicated.
"You will grow used to it."
So saying, Bedivere clapped Najin on the shoulder.
"And for now, the situation is favorable."
Bedivere looked back.
Unlike the past, when only the Round Table and a handful of cooperating constellations had to hold the line, ranks of constellations now stood behind Najin.
Until now, demons and beings like the Revelry Emperor had obstructed any aid to the Round Table… but with the Revelry Emperor dead, that was no longer the case. With no one left to hinder them, countless constellations had been able to gather at the far edge of the Outer Land.
After surveying them, Bedivere turned his gaze back to the boundary.
Creeeak, creak-creak-creak…
The boundary that had been letting through one or two at a time was beginning to groan. Before long, hundreds of thousands of wraiths would pour forth. Watching that sight, Bedivere's eyes narrowed.
"…"
Because he had found something.
"That is—"
And he was not the only one who had found it. Najin stretched out a finger and spoke.
"What is that?"
Beyond the boundary, the wraiths were fleeing from something. Screaming as if begging for their lives, they slammed their heads against the line. Najin's eyes narrowed as he spotted the "something" they were running from.
Someone was rampaging.
Inside the Abyss, drenched in the blood of the Cursed Ones, someone was swinging a sword.
"Sword Ghost."
Merlin said.
"The Sword Ghost of the Abyss—Siegfried."