I Pulled Out Excalibur Chapter 262

City of the Abyss, Artman (1)

A few minutes passed.

After a stretch of ti not worth describing, Najin dragged Berlot, who was barely clinging to life, toward the edge of the Underground City.

The place the Holy Knights had guarded.

The only way to the landfill.

Honestly, it was hard to even call it a path. It was more like a cliff, and below it there was only endless darkness.

"......"

Standing at the very edge of the Underground City, Najin looked down in silence. Even with eyesight close to that of a Transcendent, he could not see the end of the pit. The only thing visible was a workshop built on a jutting ledge near the cliff face.

Hakan the drug addict's workshop, now without an owner.

Najin had no way of knowing how far the pit continued below that.

"Huff, ngh, huff......"

Najin turned around.

He looked at the gasping Berlot with detached eyes, then tossed him over the cliff. Berlot let out one last scream. Even after that scream faded and disappeared, no sound of a body hitting bottom ca up.

Not after several more seconds.

Not even after several full minutes.

"So in the end, I won't know until I go in myself."

Najin let out a long breath.

"Fuu......"

The boiling emotions inside him quietly sank. His revenge was not over yet, but so of it had been relieved. Now it was ti to do what had to be done.

A Jester was hiding sowhere in the Underground City.

And if soone wanted to hide sothing, Najin thought the landfill was the only place it could be. He leaped toward the bottomless darkness. Clinging to the nearly vertical cliff wall, he descended.

"- Feeling calr now?"

"To so extent."

"- So, what are you planning to do now?"

What was he planning to do.

At rlin's question, Najin fell silent for a mont.

"First, I need to find out about the Constellation hiding in the landfill. Even if I do not fight it, I should at least confirm what it feels like."

"- And then?"

"After that......"

Najin trailed off.

"Honestly, I don't know."

"- You don't know?"

"I can't tell how far this connection goes, or where it begins and ends."

It was true that one of the Carnival King's Court Jesters was hiding in the Underground City. That alone made it certain that there was so kind of link between the Carnival King and the Starlight Order. But Najin could not tell how deep that link ran.

There were three top powers in the Starlight Order.

One was High Priest Orland, who oversaw external affairs and the Order's administration.

The second was the Starlight Order's patron deity, the Lighthouse that Illuminates All Things.

The third was the Lighthouse Keeper, Eurypylus.

Of those three, Najin was certain Orland and the Lighthouse were tied to the Carnival King. Their movents were suspicious, and nothing on this scale could happen without the patron deity's consent.

"That leaves the Lighthouse Keeper."

Lighthouse Keeper Eurypylus.

A Transcendent powerful enough to face the entire Empire if he chose to.

Najin could not read his intentions.

Why had the Lighthouse Keeper wrapped the Starlight Order's sanctuary in light and cut it off from the outside? What was he doing in there? Was he an ally, an enemy, or neither, just an observer? Najin could not grasp it at all.

"But one thing."

There was one thing he could be sure of.

"Everything changes depending on the Lighthouse Keeper's decision."

Depending on where the Lighthouse Keeper stood, the entire situation would turn over. Eurypylus was that kind of Transcendent.

"For now."

Najin looked into the endless darkness and went lower, and lower still.

"First, I confirm."

Whatever it was, he felt he could find a clue down there.

2.

Downward, downward, and downward again.

As he climbed down the cliff, Najin frowned. He had descended for a long ti, but there was still no end in sight. The darkness had no bottom and seed to continue forever.

A bottomless pit, a hole with no visible end.

It was literally a bottomless pit.

At first, foul slls rose from corpses, trash, and filth caught on protruding rock, but after he descended much farther, even that disappeared. No color, no sll, no sheen.

At so point, Najin began to feel a sense of wrongness.

A strange feeling. Fear crawling up his spine. The instinct that he was doing sothing he should never do. The certainty that he was approaching a place he should never approach. His instincts were warning him.

Do not go any lower.

Do not descend any further.

"- It's made to make you feel that way."

rlin grabbed Najin's hand. She told him what he felt was false, that the space itself was forcing that feeling on him. Najin steadied his breathing and kept moving down, and down again.

As he headed toward the bottom of the pit, a thought suddenly ca to him.

A story he had once read while investigating the Orders.

It was about hell as defined by human religion. The three major faiths of the continent now, the Starlight Order, the Starblood Sect, and the Starbody Society, each had completely different doctrines, yet for so reason all three shared one concept.

The definition of hell, where evil people fall.

The three Orders said this:

「Hell is the bottom of all things, the very lowest layer of the world, a place made to punish sinners with suffering. Neither starlight nor sunlight reaches it, and it is filled only with darkness.」

That was why the Underground City, Artman, was a kind of hell.

A hell made by the Starlight Order.

A hell made to throw sinners down and make them suffer.

"Then what is the place below that hell?"

Najin kept going down.

Maybe he was not descending. Maybe he was falling.

The three Orders said it. And religions older than those Orders said it too. Even older, the primordial religions that existed before all religions were born, before transcendent beings called Constellations appeared, also said it.

「Hell is a bottomless pit.」

「A hole without end.」

「An abyss, a chasm.」

Hell was the Abyss itself.

Why was that story coming to mind now? Because he was heading toward the bottom of a bottomless pit? That was not the only reason. Najin rolled the word around in his mind.

Abyss. When he heard that word, the first thing that ca to mind was not hell.

"rlin."

"- ......"

"rlin?"

"- Wait."

rlin spoke.

"- Wait, stop."

Her voice had gone rigid. Najin drove his sword into the wall and froze in place.

"- Sothing is wrong."

rlin's eyes trembled. It was rare to see her this shaken. She gripped her own arm hard with all five fingers and frowned.

"- Why is it here, inside the continent?"

She pointed downward.

"- Why is there an Abyss?"

The Abyss rlin spoke of did not an hell. The Abyss she ant had always referred to one place.

The Land of Camlann.

The land where Arthur's journey ended, and where Najin would one day have to go. The instant rlin muttered that:

Craaack.

The darkness of the Abyss opened its mouth toward Najin. At that instant, the cliff where his sword was planted collapsed without a sound, as if it had never existed in the first place. With nowhere left to brace himself, Najin fell.

"......!"

Najin's eyes widened. He reached into empty air, but grabbed nothing. He dropped at high speed toward the bottom. There was nothing to hold onto, so he could not slow down, and he could not stop the fall.

"- Listen carefully."

rlin reached out and grabbed Najin's face. Even through panic and confusion, she steadied her breathing and continued.

"- I don't know why the Abyss is here. I don't know, but from this mont on, you must stay sharp."

rlin looked directly into Najin's eyes.

"- Never lose yourself."

Najin plunged into the darkness.

3.

When he thought about it, it was strange.

Excalibur's starlight was not sothing that could be hidden by simply trying to hide it. Even in a place where no light entered and no light leaked out, Excalibur's starlight should still have been impossible to conceal.

Yet no one outside knew that Najin had pulled Excalibur. Even rlin only noticed after Najin ca back out.

Once, rlin had said this.

That it was strange.

She had expected that sothing unknown existed in the Underground City. But what existed at the very bottom went far beyond her imagination.

"rlin."

"- I'm listening."

As Najin fell, he realized at so point that his speed had slowed. At the sa ti, he felt a sensation that was both unfamiliar and familiar.

"This."

"- Yes."

"Isn't this the sa feeling as entering a Star's Tomb?"

The sensation he felt when entering a Star's Tomb. It was similar, but not exactly the sa. That was what Najin was feeling.

Then, in an instant, the darkness cleared.

What Najin saw as it lifted was a vast city.

Beneath the underground.

Beneath the very bottom.

The end of what should have been an endless pit.

A place where discarded things were discarded once more, a hell beneath hell. Najin arrived at the Abyss created by the Starlight Order.

* * *

Lighthouse Keeper Eurypylus rested his chin on his hand.

With his chin propped up, he recalled a distant past, a ti when the world had still felt sowhat worth living in. It was not pleasant to rember. Looking back now, it only felt absurd.

It had been a foolish and immature ti.

A ti when he believed things could change.

Lighthouse Keeper Eurypylus had once been called a hero. There was a ti when he led the charge while crying out for humanity's salvation. A ti when he traveled the world, calming chaos, putting wars to rest, and preaching balance.

Back then, he had been a hero.

So did any of that ever an anything?

"Not at all."

Eurypylus laughed.

"If it had ant anything, would I be like this now?"

There was no aning. No value.

No matter how hard humans struggled, they could not resist the great current. At best, they could only hold on to what was near them, and even that ended in failure.

The best thing was to let the world flow wherever it wanted. That was what Eurypylus believed.

Getting involved in worldly affairs only made a person wretched.

Living a long life did not make people wise, and it did not make them better than they had once been. Eurypylus did not consider himself wise.

Even so, wise or not.

Even if he was old, outpaced by the era, and past his pri, there were still things he could decide. After long thought, Eurypylus made his decision.

You really are becoming a nuisance.

Thinking that, Eurypylus gave a bitter smile.

"......"

Tick, tick, tick.

Listening to the sound of a clock in his ears, Eurypylus rose from his seat.

He defined himself through ti.

429 years.

The ti he had lived.

312 years, 3 months, 21 days.

The ti he had left.

Eurypylus raised his hand.

Tuk.

The ticking stopped.

As he stood and headed sowhere, soone asked where he was going. Eurypylus answered briefly.

"To et an old friend."

He took a step.

Toward Artman, the city of the Abyss.