Argonaut (5)
Blades locked in a grinding clash, Najin thought.
This was his fourth duel with the Helmet Knight.
The first had come not long after he set foot in the Outer Land. Looking back now, the whole story might as well have begun with that bout.
By the rules of the duel, I can demand three things of you. I will use the last of them now.
The second duel—the rematch demanded by the victor—was burned just as deeply into his mind. Even without sword aura, Alderan had driven him to the brink and shown him what a sword truly was, what a Sword Master truly was. How could he ever forget that?
Neither the first nor the second had seen Alderan at his prime. Only in the third had he faced Najin as he had been in his glory days…
But I wasn’t alone then.
He had fought alongside Gerd. Even together they had barely scraped out a win against a terrifying opponent. Gerd’s help was the only reason they had survived.
And now the fourth.
Kaaaaaaaaang!
Only now, in this fourth duel, could Najin meet Alderan as an equal. Neither of them broken or diminished—both at their absolute peak. A fight with no excuses left to offer.
Kagagagak!
He scraped along the edge of the blade, stepped back, then drove forward again with a heavy stride. Still locked with Alderan, testing strength against strength, Najin felt the corner of his mouth curl upward.
It was fun. This moment was pure joy.
Facing a complete Alderan one-on-one in a true contest of swords, Najin laughed. His arms ached from the force of every swing, yet he could not hide the grin.
Strong.
He had known it, but still—strong. Stronger, by feel, than the Alderan he had met in the Revelry Emperor’s domain. The sharpness of the blade, the sheer weight behind it—none of it ordinary. The slightest lapse and the fight would end in a single breath.
Even for Najin—now a true Sword Master, nine stars bright after defeating the Revelry Emperor—the Helmet Knight remained a difficult foe.
And that fact filled him with delight.
What kind of master, even after death…
He planted his foot and put power into the step. Following every lesson Alderan had once drilled into him, Najin swung. Kaaang! The shockwave of colliding blades whipped the air into a gale.
…still finds new lessons to teach me?
He had believed he had learned enough. There was always more. Najin let out a breathless, incredulous laugh. But he was no longer only the student.
This duel could not end that way.
It could not remain a simple spar between master and disciple.
This was the succession rite in which the next commander of the Golden Horn Knights proved himself before the previous one—and the moment the Empire showed a hero of a hundred and fifty years past that it still stood unbroken. He could not simply receive instruction.
A disciple must show growth to his master. In the end he must prove he has surpassed him. The same held for a successor before his predecessor, for the living age before the heroes of the past.
So from this moment on, he would show something else.
Thud.
Najin stepped far back and reset his stance.
Breath, grip, center of gravity—everything shifted. No one watching recognized the new form.
How could they?
What Najin now revealed was neither Imperial Sword nor Triumphant Sword. It was the blade he had built upon those foundations—his own. Still unfinished, yet taking shape with every floor he climbed in the heroes’ tower, Argo.
The Dawn Sword. The sword whose first thread he had seized in the battle against the Revelry Emperor.
The man before him was Alderan in his prime, yet he remained a being fixed in the past. Najin belonged to the present. Since their third duel he had faced stronger foes still, and he had continued to grow.
“Thinking about it, this is basically a graduation ceremony, isn’t it?”
Najin smiled as he spoke and gave Alderan a look. The Helmet Knight understood at once.
We’ve seen enough. Time to settle it.
Alderan Basaglia accepted the proposal. Armor clattered as he straightened into his own stance.
“······!”
The Golden Horn Knights watching the duel scrambled back, putting distance between themselves and the two combatants.
It was coming—the ultimate technique of the Triumphant Sword.
Najin settled into a stance of his own to meet it. Matching Triumphant Sword with Triumphant Sword would have been fine, but this was the moment to show more. So he took a form different from Alderan’s.
First Horn—Alderan raised his blade high.
Dawn Sword—Najin lowered his blade at an angle.
Stances shaped after their own names. The strikes that followed would carry their very selves. Alderan brought the sky-piercing blade down. Najin drove the slanted blade upward toward the heavens.
First Horn—Triumph.
Dawn Sword—Night Severer.
Two transcendent beings swung themselves. Between flooding starlight, two lines of sword aura collided.
The instant the two transcendent blades met, the entire tower shook beyond the 129th floor. Outer walls of the floor burst under the pressure of the wind. Air at the point of impact expanded and detonated again and again, rocking the ground.
And in that fraction of a second—
Kruenbel saw it. The two auras locked, stalled. Triumph crashing down from above and Night Severer rising from below met in the middle and stopped dead.
Like blades grinding in a contest of strength, the two streams of aura tried to devour and shove each other aside.
There was no clever swordplay here. No twisted trajectories, no bent paths, no subtle deflections seeking a counter. Only a frontal clash.
Shatter the opponent’s technique—
or be shattered yourself.
Without a single step of retreat the two techniques chewed at each other head-on. Even in that brief span the wind pressure erupted dozens of times. Kruenbel drove his spear into the floor and barely held. The other knights were nearly crawling, shoved flat by the gale.
I knew it, but…
Even to Kruenbel, himself a transcendent, the power was appalling. That these two could be classed as the same order of being as himself felt almost absurd. He had always known the commander’s strength; what stunned him now was Najin.
He was taking the commander’s ultimate technique—Alderan Basaglia in his prime—straight on.
No.
Not merely taking it. Najin’s blade was already looking past the clash. Not cancellation—victory. Driving the other blade back.
And then Najin’s sword surged.
It did not stop at blocking the aura that shattered everything it touched; it shoved that aura forward. Only a hand’s breadth—but that hand’s breadth broke the balance.
Ka—gagagagagagak!
With a grinding scream, platinum-white sword aura swallowed Alderan’s pure-white light.
Seogeok.
The cutting sound rang first.
Chaaaaaaaaaaaak!
A burst of radiance followed. The ultimate technique of the Triumphant Sword shattered. Night Severer did not stop. It slammed into the ceiling of the 129th floor. In the instant of impact the ceiling walls collapsed and the aura shot upward into the sky.
There, in the Sanctuary of Oblivion, Najin’s star shone.
A constellation of nine. Beneath the starlight pouring through the ruined ceiling, Najin smiled. Night Severer had cut the Triumphant Sword—and the sky itself.
“I won.”
Najin said it simply.
“······.”
Alderan Basaglia lowered his blade without a word and removed his helmet. The face revealed was human—not the eight-eyed visage of the dead, but the Alderan who had once been called a hero.
He laughed. A laugh of pure, genuine pleasure. Then he held out his horned helmet to Najin, as if to say the next owner was him.
Najin shook his head at the offered helm.
Instead he rapped his own pauldron with a fist—thung.
“I already received that.”
He struck the Hornhelm, symbol of glory, and drew a deep breath. Then he offered a formal salute to Alderan and the Golden Horn Knights.
“To the heroes who once guarded the Empire, I dare to say this.”
He drove the Spear of the Cross Star into the ground, gripped his pauldron and the golden standard of the Golden Horn Knights bound to it, and spoke.
“The Empire still stands. It has never compromised with demons or any other power. It still speaks of the greatest good and presses forward.”
Just as you once did.
The Empire has not forgotten its pride.
“I am the proof of that.”
Before the salute of their successor, the Golden Horn Knights formed ranks and paid homage to their new commander. To the sound of their golden horns, Najin turned and walked toward the next floor.
“Najin.”
The voice from behind made him look back.
Kruenbel was watching him.
“You’ve heard it many times while climbing the tower, but…”
He smiled.
“We are people of the past. Stories that already have their period. This tale needs no extra footnotes.”
Najin, who had paused mid-step, laughed.
“That obvious?”
“Very.”
“I did hesitate a little.”
“There is no need to hesitate.”
Kruenbel, Alderan Basaglia, the Golden Horn Knights, and all the heroes waiting below—
“The path you walk is right.”
So go on.
Kruenbel said it, and Najin nodded and obeyed.
Floor 129 — Complete
Having broken through the twelfth stratum as well, Najin set his steps toward the final floor.
The thirteenth stratum—the 130th floor, the very summit of the tower.
Najin climbed the spiral stairs that led there. As he climbed he turned over everything he had experienced inside Argo. He had met countless heroes, heard their lives, their stories, and witnessed the techniques they had built.
Experience, knowledge, conviction, values, skill.
From the forgotten heroes of human history he had learned a great deal, and he had carved every lesson into his own stars.
“All that’s left is Galahad.”
Merlin walked beside him. Fully manifested, she climbed toward the final floor with Najin.
“Nervous?”
“I’d be lying if I said no. Galahad—strongest of the Round Table, a man who seems to embody the word ‘perfect.’ That’s how every book describes him.”
In the biographies of Arthur he had read again and again, and in countless hero tales, every author agreed:
Galahad was a perfect being.
So perfect that he scarcely felt human. He almost seemed like a character invented solely to move the plot—an artificial existence.
“Galahad never fails. Galahad always wins. Galahad found the answer. Galahad, Galahad, Galahad…”
Artificial sentences.
Achievements that felt artificial in their perfection.
“Galahad succeeded in the Grail Quest.”
“······.”
“You told me once, Merlin. That was the beginning of the tragedy.”
“I did.”
The fracture of the Round Table, Mordred and Lancelot’s betrayals, Arthur’s death, the end of the journey—everything had begun the moment Galahad completed the Grail Quest.
“Guinevere told me something.”
Najin spoke as they climbed.
“Excalibur was made by the Witch of the Abyss. To be chosen by Excalibur means… you are the sacrifice offered to the Witch as the representative of humanity.”
Merlin stayed silent. She had already heard the story while they climbed, and it had given her much to think about as well.
“Is that why Lancelot betrayed them? Because he learned the truth somehow—probably through the Grail?”
If so, could it even be called betrayal? Could an act meant to prevent his lord’s death simply be condemned as treason?
“About that story…”
Merlin finally spoke.
“It won’t be the whole truth. It may be true, but it can’t be everything. There are too many pieces that don’t fit if our entire journey was nothing but a grand suicide play.”
She shook her head.
“The Arthur I knew was not the sort of great soul who would quietly accept being told, ‘You are destined to be the sacrifice.’ She was never someone who moved according to anyone else’s plan.”
And, Merlin added,
“More than anything, Galahad would never have tolerated that ending.”
“······What?”
“You said Galahad found the Grail, right? Put together the memories you saw and Guinevere’s words… that means Galahad was the first to learn the whole situation.”
Yes. Galahad had discovered the Grail, and through it he had approached the truth. Lancelot, who had absorbed Galahad, learned it next—and that had been the start of the tragedy.
“Sustaining the world through someone’s sacrifice.”
Delaying ruin with someone’s life.
“Galahad would never accept a story like that. Just as you read in the hero tales—Galahad is a perfect being. A perfectly good hero must never compromise with reality. If the end can only be postponed by someone’s sacrifice, then Galahad is the kind of existence who would rather call for destruction itself.”
An extremely perfect hero.
“If a Galahad like that judged Arthur’s actions ‘right,’ it means there was something more.”
Not simple sacrifice—something beyond it.
“······.”
Najin fell silent and simply kept walking.
“Whatever it is—”
The end of the stairs.
“—I’m about to find out.”
The summit of Argo. The 130th floor.
There was no ceiling.
An open night sky blazed with ten stars. Beneath that brilliant constellation stood a single hero.
The most perfect knight—Galahad.
He was waiting for Najin.