The One Certain of Himself (5)
The Star of Dawn rose in the false sky.
With a single sword, Najin carved his own constellation into the heavens, and the Star of Dawn, etched along the path of his blade, shone platinum. Looking at his constellation, Najin asked himself a question.
What is dawn?
It lights the dark night.
Then what is Cutting Night?
It cuts the night apart.
Dawn Sword, Cutting Night.
The sword that announced the end of night cut through the night itself.
Shhhhhhhhhhk!
A constellation was engraved across the night sky in a single line. With that nine-star constellation as its axis, the night began to split. The Carnival King's body burned in the heat and light cast by the stars. She tried to stitch her diagonally splitting body back together, but it was aningless resistance.
If the night had been cut, how could darkness remain?
Starlight burned the night away.
The hundreds of stars that had decorated that false night all fell. The endless laughter was gone. In the silence that followed, the night, stripped of everything that had adorned it, looked endlessly shabby.
The last eleven stars fell.
Beneath the splitting night, the Carnival King threw away even her true body and ran, trying to survive just a little longer. Wrapped in flas, she crashed and rolled across the ground.
"Ahh, ahhhhhh! Aaaaaaaah!"
Her form collapsed so badly she could no longer hold her body together, and she scread. She sared the paint scattered on the ground over herself, but it did nothing to put out the fire. Then, with a dry crack, both her legs crumbled.
The Carnival King fell face down. Using both arms, she crawled across the ground, trying to get even a little farther from Najin.
If she survived, there would be a next ti.
If she could get farther from death, the Carnival King could beco as ugly as she needed to. In that mont, she felt as if she'd gone back a thousand years. There she was, terrified, thrashing to get away from death.
Even after a thousand years, she was the sa.
She was still nothing but a weak being. Without decorating herself with other people's lives, she was nothing at all. The Carnival King kept crawling.
Tap.
Footsteps. Getting closer. Even through the pain of her burning body, the Carnival King struggled desperately. But there was no way she could escape that human, the one even dozens of Transcendents had failed to stop.
The Carnival King looked back.
"Ah..."
Her death stood there. Her gaze trembled as she looked at Najin, who had his sword pointed at her. The platinum blade was aid at her throat.
"You..."
With death right in front of her, the Carnival King trembled as she opened her mouth. To live a little longer? Or because she truly wanted to ask the one before her? Even she didn't know.
"Aren't you afraid of death?"
She asked the human who seed to lack even the emotion of fear. Najin answered.
"What being exists that feels no fear?"
Najin replied expressionlessly.
"Did you think fear and terror were your exclusive property, a weapon only you possessed?"
No chance. Najin snorted.
"Everyone feels fear. Everyone fears death. It's just that there are things you can only gain by stepping forward through that fear... things you can only protect that way."
Najin looked down at the Carnival King.
"That's why people move forward despite fear."
The being she had always looked down on was now one she had to look up at.
"It's not because I'm special, standing in front of you."
Behind Najin, fallen stars filled the sky. Looking at those stars, he continued.
"All the countless people you've trampled felt fear too, and still moved forward. So of them were probably so afraid they collapsed, but they were still the ones who tried to stand back up."
"Th, that..."
"Carnival King."
Najin asked her.
"Have you ever overco fear even once?"
No answer ca.
"I see."
Najin raised his sword.
"Then you're more pathetic than any star you've trampled."
The nine stars engraved into Excalibur shone. Star after star lit up, and a heavy sword-hum rang out.
The sword that killed immortal beings.
The demon slayer, Arthur's symbol.
Countless demons thought of Arthur the mont they saw Excalibur. But now, the Carnival King couldn't associate Excalibur with Arthur at all. In her shaking eyes, only Najin was reflected.
The man who had destroyed every plan she made, crossed every trap she set, and finally crushed her head-on. From him, the Carnival King felt an indescribable terror.
'Ah.'
On a stage once filled with laughter, there was no laughter now. There were no clowns left to dance and sing. On a stage filled only with silence, with nothing left to adorn herself, the Carnival King could no longer bear the na of king.
The demon of revelry let out a hollow laugh.
It was mockery too.
Not mockery of the one before her, but mockery thrown at herself. The demon of revelry's last words were a sneer.
As if he had nothing more to say, Najin swung his sword.
The blade cut through the demon of revelry.
It wasn't a particularly special story. A knight cutting down a demon was only natural, and Excalibur killing a demon was just as common.
Eleven stars fell.
2.
At so point, right before the Imperial Army's eyes, the clowns collapsed. As the soldiers saw them lt into paint and were about to shout an early victory cry, "Star of Dawn did it!", they suddenly saw it.
The night sky was falling.
The entire massive sky was crashing down. Hundreds of stars poured down like a teor shower. That teor shower was falling toward the center of the stage, the Carnival King's castle.
Hundreds of stars falling with the night.
Before that overwhelming sight, the Imperial Army went silent. Even the Transcendents couldn't move recklessly. To begin with, there was no way to set foot in that castle, which seed completely isolated.
All they could do was evacuate the army. How could anyone stop a falling sky? As they started to retreat, their steps stopped.
The stars were being cut.
Falling stars burst apart. They shattered and scattered light. Before long, stars were being sliced before they could even finish falling.
Even the Transcendents who had raised their weapons to delay the falling sky, even for a mont, stared up with mouths open. A storm had co out of nowhere and was sweeping the stars away.
What in the world was happening?
Only Gerd looked up and smiled. The old man understood at once. The storm that had just swept through the sky was the ultimate technique of the Triumphal Sword.
And then.
Dawn Sword.
A line of light split the sky. The light that split it soon beca a constellation and shone.
Cutting Night.
A single streak of sword energy split the night. The false night was cut away, revealing the real sky. It was still dark, but full of stars, so it wasn't lonely. In that cut-open sky, one star burned brighter than all the rest.
The Star of Dawn, the star that announced the end of night.
So Constellations marveled. So stood dazed and only watched. Sword Masters who had devoted their entire lives to the sword let out hollow laughs.
What was the extre swordsn pursued?
To pour their very selves into the sword, and reach a realm where they could cut whatever they wished to cut. In that single blade that split the night, they felt beauty.
It was an endlessly beautiful strike.
"..."
"..."
The Imperial Army stood in silence, staring up at the sky. Only after they saw the Carnival King's stars fall did they take a deep breath and turn toward the comrades who had endured that long, brutal fight with them.
Then cheers exploded.
Covered in blood, battered all over, filthy with soot and dirt, they still embraced their comrades and threw arms over shoulders without hesitation. The battle had been brutally hard. They had nearly died again and again, but they survived. And they had won.
Across the battlefield, still blazing with the heat of combat, their cheers rang out.
Everyone standing there, knight and mage, soldier and rcenary, Transcendent and ordinary person alike, felt the sa surge of excitent.
Because they knew by instinct.
They were standing in a mont of history. They felt they were standing as figures in the middle of a legend that would one day be recorded as myth.
Between the cheers, Star of Dawn's na was shouted again and again.
Even the commanders of each legion laughed or roared and joined that wave, and Yuel Razian smiled too. Countless people were startled at the sight of her smile, because she almost never smiled, but...
That story, another ti.
A small number of Transcendents, including commanders with lighter injuries, headed toward the Carnival King's castle.
To greet the hero of victory.
But it took them a little ti to arrive, and that little stretch of ti belonged only to Najin.
Najin walked through the castle, now turned into a wasteland.
Then he stopped before two corpses.
Thud. Najin sat down beside them.
"It's been a while."
Ivan, and Offen.
3.
With the Carnival King's death, the puppets she controlled returned to corpses. As Najin wandered among the bodies, he soon found the ones he was looking for.
A corpse slumped where it sat, head bowed.
It was Offen and Ivan.
From the rubble of the collapsed castle, Najin dragged over a suitably sized rock and sat beside them. Sitting there like this brought old mories back.
"Hey, Najin! Co sit over here too."
At the tavern, Ivan, laughing and talking with Offen, used to wave Najin over to sit by them.
Whenever that happened, Najin would drag over a chair and drop down beside them.
"This punk Najin works damn well. Better than Edgar by a mile, I tell you. Real sharp kid."
A hand that roughly ssed up his hair. A voice that smacked his back and shouted, "Have a drink too, you brat! Ah, you still can't drink yet? Owner, get him a juice!"
"So."
With a laugh, Ivan would ask Najin,
"You doing okay these days?"
What had he answered back then? He probably grumbled. Said yesterday and today were the sa. Said he was getting by.
"I'm doing great."
Not like back then.
"You'd be shocked if you heard how well I'm doing. If I want, I can even talk casually with the Emperor of the Empire, and even the Emperor can't treat carelessly. If I ask, it sounds like he'd carve off territory several tis bigger than the underground city and hand it over."
Najin smiled.
"I made good friends too, and I have a Guide and a teacher, and I know truly amazing people. There are even two people who like . I'm living this well."
If he said that...
"Don't skip training. A sword rusts in an instant."
It felt like he could hear Offen's voice.
Najin nodded with a smile.
"Of course. Ah, seriously. Offen should've seen the sword I swung just now. I wanted to ask what score he'd give it."
In front of those two, Najin wanted to show only his best side, but in the end, before teacher and parent, a disciple and a child were always kids no matter how old they got.
As if he had turned back into a child, Najin spread both arms, waved Excalibur around, and bragged.
No answer ca back.
Still, Najin felt as if they had burst out laughing.
"It's all thanks to you two."
It's late, but thank you. Truly.
Najin stood up.
Then he bowed his head before the two of them. As he did, he noticed the faces of Ivan and Offen, both with heads bowed.
"Ah."
The mont he saw their faces, Najin laughed.
Because both of them were smiling.
Najin let out a long breath. When he looked up, the stars were shining. He saw his stars, and rlin's constellation softly glowing as it wrapped around them.
Flash.
With blue light, she appeared before him. rlin looked a little tired. She checked Najin's condition, looked at the Carnival King's fallen stars, then smiled.
"So, how does it feel to beco a complete Transcendent?"
"As for how it feels..."
Najin smiled.
"I guess the sentence that follows 'Who am I?' gets one more line now."
"Hoo, I really, really, truly hate that, but only today I'll let it slide. Only today."
"Then I won't hold back."
Who am I?
As Najin started saying the long sentence that followed, he ended up laughing because even he thought it was ridiculous. rlin also laughed, looking dumbfounded.
On a stage where sneers had vanished, rlin and Najin talked and laughed for a while.
When a story drew its curtain, that was only natural.
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