I Pulled Out Excalibur Chapter 344

Interlude, Soone's Dream (1)

Najin had rarely dread.

To dream, you first had to fall into a deep sleep, and the environnt where Najin had grown up was not exactly suited to that.

When he was very young, he feared that sleeping too deeply might an waking up in the hands of traffickers. Then, after he began working as Ivan's hunting dog, the sheer number of grudges he had accumulated ant he always had to keep one eye open for ambushes, and there had been a few real ones. After he left that life, there was the constant threat of assassination from the Order, and once he reached the Outland, it went without saying.

He had spent nearly his whole life being hunted or exposed to danger, so deep sleep was a rare luxury. Even after every one of those dangers had passed, the habit clung to him, and he slept lightly more often than not.

Living that way, Najin had eventually beco a Transcendent.

A Transcendent who could function without sleep. One who no longer needed to sleep at all. Fittingly enough, it was only after his body stopped requiring rest that Najin could finally sleep soundly.

Even then, he almost never dread.

And yet lately, he had been dreaming.

"......"

Far too vivid to be a dream.

"...Why."

And a dream utterly unfamiliar to him.

"Why ? I still cannot understand why you chose ."

Watching the knight kneeling before him, Najin thought: this dream again.

2.

When had these dreams started?

Najin thought back. It must have been around that ti.

After his conversation with Bedivere at the Round Table, after the day he drove Excalibur into the stone, Najin had occasionally been visited by strange dreams.

Hazy scenery. A voice buzzing at the edge of his hearing.

The first few tis, he could not make out the content at all. Only the echo of a voice, "Why ?", reverberating in his ears. He had not thought much of it, but day by day the dreams sharpened.

He began to see the shape of a knight kneeling before him. The blurred surroundings ca into focus. Gradually, it stopped feeling like a dream and started feeling like reality.

Inside that dream that felt endlessly real:

"Why was it ?"

The knight on his knees was asking. Pleading, as if to say: is it not ti you answered?

'I... cannot speak.'

The sensation was exactly as it had been when he entered a star's tomb. All Najin could do was watch events unfold while lodged inside soone else's body.

Less a dream than soone else's mory.

He had been in a similar situation before. When he defeated the horn star Crünbell and received the star of Breakthrough, Najin had caught a glimpse of Crünbell's mories.

So whose mory was this?

As he turned that question over, the knight kneeling before him raised his head. He wore a helt of a distinctive shape, the kind that was hard to forget once seen.

The mont Najin saw that helt, and then...

"My king."

The mont the knight called him "king," Najin understood who he was possessing, and whose mory this was.

That knight was Lancelot. The helt matched the illustrations of Lancelot in the Chronicles of Arthur. And the only person Lancelot would address as "king" was one.

The Knight King. Arthur.

The instant that realization landed, Najin's mind snapped into clarity. He had no idea why he was glimpsing Arthur's mory, but that was not the point.

Arthur's mory.

A mory belonging to the person he had most admired. He had declared he would surpass Arthur, and there had been a ti when he had goaded Arthur with words like "man of the age", but whatever anyone might say, Arthur was the first person who had ever given Najin a dream.

The most precious thing young Najin had owned was a single book: the Chronicles of Arthur. He had read it so many tis over that he could tell you which page and which line any sentence ca from.

Now he was glimpsing the mory of that very hero. There was no way he would not be wide awake.

Najin fixed his attention on the scene unfolding before him.

"Please. An answer."

And then:

"Having you kneel like that puts rather ill at ease."

Najin's mouth moved.

More precisely, Arthur's mouth moved. The voice sounded gentle at first, but it carried a steadiness born of certainty, unshaken by doubt.

"Why not stand up?"

"Not until I have an answer."

"Well, who could ever break that stubbornness of yours?"

Arthur, who had been standing, dropped down in front of Lancelot with a thump. Lancelot startled. Arthur tapped his own temple twice with a finger.

"First, take that helt off. You look like you can barely breathe."

"This is..."

"I know your reasons well enough, but don't you think this sort of conversation is better had face to face?"

"......Understood."

Lancelot removed the helt. The face it revealed was nothing like the Lancelot Najin had pictured.

Who was Lancelot? The knight called the strongest alongside Galahad, the unyielding warrior who had cut down countless demons and fallen stars.

So naturally, Najin had imagined a rugged face. What the helt uncovered instead was a man with a soft, fragile-looking expression. His eyes lacked force. It was a face better described in thin, delicate lines than bold strokes.

"You asked why I chose you?"

"...Yes."

Lancelot spoke.

"I am, as you know, a criminal, my king. A man who committed a grave sin, who was placed in the Convict Unit as a result, and who must spend his life atoning there. And yet you chose ."

He could not bring himself to look directly at Arthur. Gaze cast down to the ground, he continued.

"Sir Bedivere, Mordred, Gawain... all the knights of the Round Table, save for , are radiant beings. Noble knights, righteous and willing to throw themselves into the ideal without hesitation."

"They are that."

"But... I am not. Do you not know it yourself? That I cannot beco as they are."

Lancelot pressed his right hand hard against his left, fingers clenching.

"They took up the sword for an ideal from the very beginning. They took up their weapons to protect sothing, or to achieve sothing. But I drew my sword simply to silence hunger. And in doing so, I went so far as to kill the person across from ."

"I know. You entered the Convict Unit to receive punishnt for that, didn't you? When I brought you out of there, I heard that story until my ears nearly bled."

"......And yet, why."

Lancelot groaned.

"Why did you seat at the Round Table? A sinner like , soone whose very nature is too wicked to belong among them?"

A story found nowhere else. Najin had searched every text related to Arthur, and he had never once co across the detail that Lancelot was a veteran of the Convict Unit.

"You asked the sa question the day we first t. Do you rember what I told you then?"

"...You said I would co to understand naturally."

"Yes. I said that travelling together would make it clear, in ti."

"I still do not understand."

"Then that mont simply has not co yet."

"Can you not just tell ?"

"I had wanted you to arrive at it yourself, but there is no reason I cannot."

Arthur raised a hand.

He raised it, and pointed it at Lancelot's eyes.

"I liked your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"Yes. Eyes that never stop doubting yourself. Those eyes that question whether what you are doing is right, those I liked."

Arthur smiled.

"Everyone around is certain. They believe in themselves without question and walk a straight path. I am not saying that is bad, but sotis, questioning things even once is necessary."

Is this road we are walking the right one?

Is this path truly the best?

Could even the lesser evil, chosen to avoid the worst, still fall short of what is truly best? Could the second-best we settled for, because the best was out of reach, still not be good enough?

"I needed soone by my side who would question things like that, and that person was you."

"For that kind of role, Mordred would be more..."

"That would be difficult. You know him. That friend believes everything I do must an sothing. It doesn't, in truth. Whereas you, how are you different?"

You question my choices.

You ask why it had to be you.

You demand reason from the road I walk.

"Life is the process of answering the questions thrown at you. The more questions, the better. Anguish and deliberation lead to choosing better answers."

"......"

"So you are a knight I absolutely need. In truth, all the knights of the Round Table are that. Every one of them has their own role. The point is, I did not seat you there out of pity. I did not give you that place because I felt sorry for you."

Lancelot was silent. Arthur spoke.

"Was that an answer? Probably not, fully. Because an answer must co from one's own thinking alone, not from soone else. An answer handed over by another holds no real value."

So then, Arthur smiled.

"Find your own answer in your own way. Until then, I will walk ahead, but one day I hope you will surpass . Not just you. I hope every knight of the Round Table does the sa."

Arthur rose to his feet and held out his hand to Lancelot, who was still on one knee.

"If you feel like you are losing your way, follow . I cannot say my road is the right one, but it can serve as a landmark."

"The road you walk is the right one."

"Is it? Whether it is wrong or right, no one can know. Only the result will say."

Having helped Lancelot to his feet, Arthur said:

"But whatever that answer turns out to be... if it ca at the end of anguish, surely it has so worth of its own?"

With those words, the vivid dream began to blur.

Ti in that fading dream moved quickly.

Then, at so point, it stopped. Inside the hazy scenery, Najin heard Lancelot's voice.

"I still cannot be perfect."

But.

"Even so, it seems there are parts of that are of so use."

Two knights stood there.

3.

Blink. Najin blinked.

Sunlight stread in through the window. He slowly sat up. Several days had passed since he subdued the Star of Omniscience and returned to the Empire.

"......"

Najin pressed a hand to his forehead. Dreams are like that, once you wake, the scenery fades. But even through the blur, so things stayed.

"rlin."

-Yeah. I'm here.

rlin materialized beside him at once. The "yeah" had co from sowhere inside him, but "I'm here" arrived from right beside him.

Perching on the edge of the bed, rlin tilted her head.

"What is it?"

"When I asked before what had beco of the knights of the Round Table, you said this: that all but Lancelot, Mordred, and Bedivere had died."

The mont the Round Table ca up, rlin's expression stiffened for just an instant. But she breathed out slowly and nodded.

"I did say that."

"And yet, when Sir Bedivere ntioned the knights of the Round Table who were still alive, he said the na 'Galahad.'"

"......"

"And when speaking of Sir Galahad, you described him as sothing difficult to explain, sothing that possessed ten stars but could never beco a Transcendent."

"I did."

Najin recalled the sight from the end of the dream, and the conversation he had once had with rlin.

"Well, it's a bit complicated to explain. It was an exceptional case. Galahad could never beco a Transcendent."

"Flawless, a human who gave up being human, a created being, a kind of stage prop......"

That was what rlin had said, once.

And rlin had said Galahad was dead, while Bedivere had said Galahad was alive. Neither of them was the type to speak a lie.

Then.

Najin arrived at a single conclusion.

"Is Lancelot Sir Galahad?"

The mont Najin said it, rlin's eyes went wide. Not the wide eyes of soone hearing a ridiculous guess, the opposite, a look that said: how did you figure that out?

"......I don't know how you worked it out, but."

A few seconds passed before rlin answered.

"You're right."

rlin said:

"Galahad is a double that Lancelot created."

From among all of Lancelot's deeds, the most perfect and most ideal ones, separated and shaped into a double.

That was the true nature of Galahad, the most perfect knight.