Chapter 302 |
Interlude, The One Who Abandoned Memory (2)
There was a woman named Yuel Razian.
Sword Master, Great Warrior of the Thorned Martyr, Inquisitor General of the Starblood Sect, Heaven-Slaying Star, butcher. With so many titles and so much infamy, she was naturally famous. Her looks had likely played a part in that fame as well.
One of the three Sword Masters who represented the continent.
The symbolic weight of being the Starblood Sect's Inquisitor General.
Her notoriety as a blood-crazed killer.
No one else drew this much attention. So it was only natural that information about her spread quickly. A fair amount of information about Yuel Razian was known across the continent.
But that only applied to information from after she began to stand out.
The further back people tried to trace her past, the fainter the trail became until it vanished. Not because someone had deliberately hidden or erased it, but as if it had never existed to begin with, there was simply no information about her past.
『A ghost roams the Dawn War.』
『A girl with pure white hair wanders the battlefield. She kills routed soldiers. She survives by tearing apart and eating corpses. If you meet her, run without looking back.』
『Estimated, Sword Seeker.』
Just eyewitness reports from the Dawn War.
There was nothing from before that. Even when imperial historians tore through records like madmen, even when the Empire's elite intelligence agencies searched with full rigor, they could not dig up a single grain of information about Yuel Razian's past.
As if she had never existed in the first place.
No one knew Yuel Razian's past.
And.
"I do not know my past."
That no one included Yuel herself. She let out a short breath, then began to speak.
"When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a wasteland. I did not know why I was there, or what I had been doing there. I knew nothing. The only thing I remembered was my name."
Yuel. Her real name, excluding Razian, her baptismal name.
That was the only memory she had of her own past.
"I have never questioned what I lost. I have never been curious about what kind of person I used to be. Because it is meaningless to me."
"Meaningless?"
"My memories evaporated, but my emotions remained, faintly."
She placed a hand on her chest as she spoke.
"My past self did not regret that choice. My past self believed that choice was correct, and felt joy, relief, and pride in having made it."
She had discarded her memories with her own hands.
And the person she used to be had judged that as the right answer.
"I trust only myself. If my past self said that was the right answer, then it is unquestionably the right answer. A settled conclusion, a certain answer. There is no meaning in looking back at something that does not need to be revisited."
Yuel stopped there and swallowed.
She bit her lip.
The usual Yuel would have ended with firm conviction, but the Yuel now added one more line.
"But..."
She looked at Najin.
Her eyes were trembling.
"I do not think I can say that now."
"..."
"I saw my past. It was blurry, so I could not tell clearly, but I understood at least the emotion my past self felt."
"What emotion?"
"Fear."
Yuel pressed hard on her own forearm. The fingers digging into her arm trembled.
"My past self was afraid. Afraid of something. Terrified of something. I started to question what it was that frightened me so much, and..."
Yuel pointed at herself.
"The hole drilled into the deepest part of my soul. I looked into that hole."
A hole drilled into her soul.
A hole her past self had likely made. Yuel looked into that hole in her dream, and...
"There was something there that I never should have seen."
"What?"
"I remember what Merlin said before. Even if it had a cooperative relationship with the Carnival King, the Star of Forgetting would never intervene."
Najin turned his gaze. At some point, Merlin had materialized beside him. Her eyes narrowed.
"I did say that. So?"
"Yes, and you added this. The Star of Forgetting dislikes having its existence exposed, and only moves when someone approaches its information."
Merlin nodded.
Yuel let out a short breath and said:
"At the very edge of that dream, blurry as it was, I saw it."
She spoke briefly.
"The true body of the Star of Forgetting."
That was the moment.
The ground shook with a heavy boom.
2.
Najin rushed out of the tent. He was not the only one. Countless knights and Transcendents were already outside.
They stood there in a daze, staring up at the sky.
Some laughed in disbelief. Some collapsed where they stood. Najin looked up in silence.
And he understood why they had reacted that way.
...Originally, the Outland sky was broken.
Like shattered glass, pieces of the sky had been torn away in places, and behind those torn gaps lay pitch-black night. Because most of it was broken, the Outland sky was always night, and the stars had always been the ones that lit it.
But not now.
Eyes appeared beyond the fractured sky. They blinked along the cracks carved across the heavens. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of eyes blinked at once as they looked down at the ground.
Those eyes were watching the imperial army.
As if searching for something.
Faced with a sight that overwhelmed even Transcendents, Najin understood by instinct. Those eyes were the Authority of the Star of Forgetting. The moment it sensed its information had been exposed, it was identifying the area so it could erase that information.
"Hah."
A laugh came from somewhere.
Najin turned toward the sound.
"Right. It looked like that back then too."
Kirchhoff, Sword Master of the Forgotten Kingdom.
He was looking up at the sky and letting out a dry laugh. But only for a moment. Soon he ground his teeth and lowered his head, as if refusing to look any longer.
"Close your eyes!"
Kirchhoff shouted.
"Lower your heads. Close your eyes and do not meet their gaze. Do not look at anything. If you saw it, forget it. Do not treat it as important, and do not question it!"
A brief exchange of eyes with Najin.
Najin nodded, then he and Kirchhoff sprinted through the imperial ranks. Grabbing the heads of knights who seemed entranced and about to look upward, forcing them down, Najin clenched his teeth.
Because he could already tell what was happening.
As Gerd finished grasping the situation and joined in to bring order, Najin approached Yuel and grabbed her wrist. Keeping her head lowered, Yuel let him pull her along.
They soon arrived at the command tent.
It was where the Transcendents leading the army had gathered. The Empire's pillars, including the First Horn of the Empire, were there, and Najin gave a short explanation.
"So what the Dawn Horn is saying is... the Carnival King has now pulled in the Star of Forgetting? Through that woman over there?"
Eternal Radiance, Cipria, frowned.
"How?"
"Just before I defeated the Star of Scorn, everyone else was trapped in Star's Tomb. That was the trap the Carnival King had set."
"It was."
Najin continued.
"But this case was different. While everyone wandered in Star's Tomb, for some reason the Sect's Inquisitor General said she wandered through her own memories instead. Setting aside how that was possible..."
Tap. Najin touched the table.
"Unlike the others, this was a trap designed to target only one Transcendent, Yuel Razian."
And once Yuel got caught in that trap, she became a walking bomb. More precisely, she became bait to summon a being that could instantly shatter the entire war situation.
There was no way this was a coincidence.
The Carnival King knew the connection between Yuel and the Star of Forgetting, and by some means dragged up a past that even Yuel herself had forgotten. It induced her to recall the Star of Forgetting's form.
"..."
"..."
When his explanation ended, silence filled the tent. Pressing her fingers hard against her temples as if her head were throbbing, Cipria spat out:
"I want to ask if that is even possible, if it makes any sense at all, but this is not a situation where we can argue that. It already happened, and we need to solve it."
Cipria raised two fingers.
"First, exile Yuel Razian. That absurd monster, whatever this Star of Forgetting is, is focused on her, right? We can send her somewhere far from here, somewhere that cannot affect the army."
That was the first option.
She folded one finger down.
"Second, kill Yuel Razian."
"..."
"Ah, of course that means we cannot avoid friction with the Starblood Sect. But that is still much simpler than fighting an eleven-star Demon King and, on top of that, the Star of Forgetting, whose star count we cannot even identify, while also dealing with the traitor of the Round Table."
Eternal Radiance, Cipria Gachevskaya, was a mage.
As the master of the Platinum Tower, the Empire's core, she was excellent at weighing losses and gains. To her, the way to handle this situation was simple, if brutal.
In both options, Yuel Razian died.
She knew this too. Yuel Razian was a major combat asset, and excluding her was a massive loss. But if they did not exclude her now, the whole force could be wiped out.
A commander was one who made decisions.
Cipria raised her hand.
"What will you do, Inquisitor General of the Sect?"
"...I believe that is a rational decision."
Yuel nodded. It just took slightly longer than usual for her to do so.
"And compared to fighting all of you and surviving, I judge that facing the Star of Forgetting gives me a better chance of living. Yes, I will leave."
Yuel said that and stood up.
The moment she moved to leave her seat.
Najin grabbed her wrist with a hard grip.
"...?"
Yuel blinked.
"Najin? What does this mean?"
"Wait."
Najin said:
"Please wait a moment."
"Dawn Horn, there is no time. We do not know when those blinking eyes in the sky will fall. Right now we have to..."
"Just a moment."
Najin raised his hand and stopped Eternal Radiance. Najin also agreed that exiling Yuel was the rational decision in this situation.
The least bad option, when no best option existed.
Najin understood what it meant to sit in a position where you had to make choices like that. But apart from that, his instincts were ringing an alarm.
This was the wrong answer.
It was not an emotional judgment. Najin had always made fast decisions by relying on instinct and intuition. He skipped the middle process and reached the answer, then acted on that instinct.
Until now, when he had been moving with just Merlin, he had not needed to explain the process. Merlin had understood his intentions and intuition even without words.
But now was different. Now Najin sat in a seat where he had to explain that middle process. He had to persuade the people in this tent.
As Najin sorted through his thoughts, someone spoke.
"You said you are the master of the Platinum Tower? What you said is rational."
Merlin materialized beside Najin and sat down.
Cipria drew a sharp breath at Merlin's appearance, but given the circumstances, she slowly nodded.
"But did you think the Carnival King did not account for that?"
Merlin glanced at Najin, as if saying she would put his thoughts into words for him.
"The Carnival King never digs only one trap. She also designs how the other side will respond to that trap. You should know that from experience, right?"
Traps layered two deep, three deep.
"If you want to break those traps, you have to strike where she does not expect it. You need a completely different move, one the Carnival King did not predict."
Merlin pointed at Najin.
"And this kid has always broken the Carnival King's traps that way. If you want to catch the Carnival King, I think the key is not rational judgment, but an unexpected variable."
That variable was sitting right here.
Najin had proved it with his actions. He was the one who exposed the Carnival King's existence. He was the one who had pushed the Carnival King this far.
"..."
Cipria stayed silent.
Then the old man who had remained silent all this time spoke.
"Najin."
First Horn of the Empire, Gerd.
The old man looked straight at Najin and spoke.
"Two days."
He said:
"That is the original time we were supposed to stay here and rest."
As always, the old man did not speak long.
"For two days, the sky will not fall. I will make sure of it. So during those two days, do what you can do."
Gerd stood.
"If it is still unresolved after two days, I will personally cut down Yuel Razian. Is that acceptable, Eternal Radiance?"
"...If Merlin is speaking this strongly, there must be a reason. I have no objection."
Gerd gave a glance.
Najin gave a short salute, then left the tent with Yuel.
3.
"Najin, that was not a rational decision."
Yuel spoke briefly.
"It is uncertain. A risk you did not need to take. It would be correct for me to leave. That is the answer Eternal Radiance and I reached."
"It is the wrong answer."
"There are no wrong or right answers in this world. There are only choices that are rational and reduce losses."
Yuel spoke quietly. Looking straight at Najin's hand holding her wrist, she continued:
"And me leaving can definitely reduce losses."
"That is true."
"Then why choose this difficult road? I do not understand. I thought you were a fairly rational person."
Instead of giving a long reply, Najin smirked. Rational, huh.
"I do not know. I think both you and I only have the minimum amount of rationality."
"What?"
"We look rational, and we sound easy to reason with, but when the important moment comes, do we not both act on impulse?"
Najin and Yuel were the same. They looked like people who pursued rational choices, but when truly critical moments came, both of them moved the way they wanted.
"You said there are no wrong answers or right answers?"
"I did. The world is..."
"There are better answers."
Najin cut her off.
"There have to be. Better answers."
Where Najin led Yuel was far from the tent. The place where he had just fought the Star of Scorn. The place where the imperial army had fallen into a trap, Star's Tomb.
A graveyard lined with countless graves.
Without hesitation, Najin headed toward the grave where Yuel had been asleep. On each grave in Star's Tomb sat an object symbolizing that person's life.
On one grave, a spear. On another, a sword. On others, paintings, sheet music, instruments, crowns...
Passing through those endless rows of graves,
Najin stopped before one.
A bloodstained code of law lay there.
The grave where Yuel Razian had wandered.
Probably the grave where her past was buried.