Chapter 317 |
First Horn of the Empire (3)
The Carnival King’s domain resembled a nation.
At the center stood an ancient castle. Six roads branched out from that towering fortress, and at the end of each road was a city, each one overflowing with laughter.
A band of clowns performed in full makeup. Their music had no direction and no coherence. Every sound drifted apart from the others, and the performance, closer to noise than music, went on without end.
Against that dissonance, against that noise too crude to call music, the clowns danced.
“Not even death can part us, so our story goes on! The actors never leave the stage! So clap! A new story begins! Crawl! Steal! Clutch your belly and burst out laughing!”
Cackle, cackle, cackle cackle cackle.
In her domain, laughter never stopped. Everyone laughed happily. They mocked each other’s appearances and danced like fools, as if that were the only value they could ever possess.
A nation where laughter never ceased.
Utopia.
Or La Mancha, or Avalon, or Heaven.
“Move in.”
Now, people stepped into that heaven. Spears and swords were in their hands. For visitors entering heaven, they were armed viciously.
“Break through.”
Standing before the barrier, they raised their swords. The barrier surrounding the Carnival King’s domain had already lost its function. All four Jesters needed to maintain it were dead.
Gerd’s strike, the Sword Saint’s blade, the executioner’s Sword Aura, the Star Incarnation’s pillar of light, Cipria’s magic, Loren Aresche’s arrow...
Attacks hit from six directions at once.
With a crash like a window shattering into fragments, the barrier broke. They charged through and entered. The continent’s greatest powerhouses, Constellations who had survived in the Outland for ages, all leaped into the demon-made utopia.
Creeeak.
The heads of the laughing, dancing clowns turned. One full turn, then two, then three. Flesh split on their twisted necks, and blood poured out. The blood was green, yellow, and blue. The clowns bled and laughed louder.
“Welcome to Utopia!”
In the middle of the paint-stained city, a city decorated with ridicule, clowns and Constellations sworn to the Carnival King rushed the imperial army.
The war began.
With corps commanders at the front, Transcendents clashed with Transcendents, and the aftershocks shook the domain. Knights’ battle cries mixed with clowns’ laughter.
In the middle of that deafening war,
Tap.
there was still a place the noise did not reach.
“......”
Najin and Gerd stopped walking.
Something stood in their way. No one stood beside that figure. Alone at its post, it held a single sword in one hand.
Nothing else was needed.
...It was forgotten now, but once,
about two hundred years ago,
in the age of war, those who opposed the Empire all said the same thing. There was a monster in the Empire. If anyone wanted to destroy the Empire, they had to face that monster first.
Transcendents, Inverse Stars, Fallen Stars, demons, witches... no matter the race, no matter the allegiance, whenever they faced that being who protected the Empire, they screamed, sighed, and some quietly accepted death.
“That one is impossible. Retreat.”
“No, we can’t win. That thing was never left there to be defeated in the first place. If you still order a charge, I will have no choice but to charge at you, Commander. I would rather commit treason. I think the odds are better that way.”
“Fuck.”
“You met the Empire’s monster? Then think of it as running into a natural disaster. You can’t prepare for that man, no matter how you prepare. There’s a reason they call him the reincarnation of King Arthur.”
War could continue only when power was balanced. There was no reason to keep fighting a battle where you only got pushed back. If defeat was inevitable, surrendering as quickly as possible was the better calculation.
And so the great war that erupted after problems piled up for centuries ended, absurdly enough, because of one hero. In response, the Empire granted that hero the highest title of honor.
The first horn of the Empire.
First Horn of the Empire, Aldaran Vasaglia.
Two hundred years passed after that. Now, two centuries later, that imperial hero who had become a clown stood in the Empire’s path.
2.
Some anger was cold.
Najin stared silently at the Helmet Knight. His body was covered in patchwork seams. That day, the Carnival King had cut apart the raging Helmet Knight after he turned into a Forgotten One and dragged him into her domain.
What must have happened after that.
Najin could imagine it, but he chose not to. It was too horrible. Yet looking at the Helmet Knight standing before him now, there was no way not to imagine how he had been “reborn.”
Armor and helm stained with paint.
Whenever he breathed, paint leaked from his body. Splatter, it dropped, and a puddle formed at his feet. On the imperial sword he cherished, the Empire’s symbol was gone, replaced by the Carnival King’s emblem.
...Najin’s eyes narrowed.
The Helmet Knight used to roam the Outland, hold funerals for fallen knights, and wear on his body the flags marked with their emblems. To others, it looked like patched-up rags. To him, those rags shone brighter than anything.
When he carried those knights’ flags, he could think of himself as a knight. It felt like the pride of those knights stood with him.
But what about now? Draped over him was a flashy cape. A cape stained with the Carnival King’s emblem and paint fluttered in the wind.
...Najin’s teeth ground together with a hard crack.
The heart the Helmet Knight had burst with his own hands, to avoid becoming a Forgotten One and to balance their duel, had been restored. What beat inside that hole now was a heart made from the Carnival King’s star.
All of it.
Everything that made up the Helmet Knight now felt like an insult to his life. Najin clenched his jaw so hard it went numb.
As said, some anger was cold.
This was no time for anger that numbed reason. Najin honed his anger into a sharp edge.
Gerd was not much different.
The old man’s wide eyes were bloodshot. Veins bulged in the hand and forearm gripping his sword, and uncontained mana sparked around him like embers.
His anger was quiet.
He did not lose himself and rush forward. He did not scream. He did not spill his emotions through words. His master had taught him otherwise.
Shing.
The old man simply raised his sword.
“It has been a long time, Master.”
He poured feelings words could not carry into his blade. As Sword Aura surged violently, Gerd and Najin corrected their stances. They felt it by instinct.
One step forward.
The moment they took one more step, it would come.
‘What?’
The answer came at once. The instant Najin lifted his foot, the air changed violently. Far away, the Helmet Knight moved.
He held his sword level and pulled the arm gripping it behind his back. His free hand rested on top of the blade. The moment his hand touched it, the sword flashed pure white.
Sword Aura.
He should not have been able to use mana after bursting his original heart. He should not have been able to use Sword Aura. Yet he drew it out. The pure white Sword Aura soon became stained with paint, but it did not waver.
A clear Transcendent’s Sword Aura.
The pressure spreading out from the Helmet Knight made Najin realize it instantly. He had hoped not, but what they had to face now was the former First Horn of the Empire, close to his prime.
There was no room to think about how the Carnival King had revived him, or how she had remade him into this form.
That was not what mattered.
‘Pulled-back arm, level sword.’
The moment he sensed danger, Najin’s sense of time slowed. He fixed his eyes on the changing flow of air and the distant Helmet Knight settling into stance.
Tick, tukuduk...
Slowly.
Ddddddddddd.
Air began to twist around the Helmet Knight’s blade. Space creaked. Split earth, leaping rocks, and clumps of soil wrapped around the blade. Even in that stretched, slow-moving perception, the process was fast.
A massive force compressed.
Wind coiled around the rotating Sword Aura.
In Najin’s eyes, the Helmet Knight’s body looked like a bowstring pulled to its limit, or cloth swollen with water.
Then, thwung.
He released the bowstring. He twisted the cloth and wrung out the water. The Helmet Knight thrust forward the hand he had drawn back. At a glance it looked like a simple thrust, but the power in it was anything but simple.
The weapon was different, but Najin understood what technique it was instantly.
Shock Ram.
It was Shock Ram executed with a sword. The Helmet Knight’s Shock Ram had once created storms through sheer physical force alone, without coating the blade in Sword Aura, shredding everything nearby.
Then what was it now, with Sword Aura added?
“Ah,” Najin let out without thinking. It was coming. A storm. A storm that would grind down everything in its path. Najin’s eyes, sharp enough to glimpse even the near future, saw what was coming, but the gap between that future and the present was far too short.
With only an instant between them, the future became the present.
Crushing his stretched perception of time, the storm rushed forward fast even in that slowed world. Wind came first, sound followed.
Kagagagagagagagagagagak!
Grinding the earth, turning boulders and terrain into dust, the storm shot forward.
The method Najin had learned against Crunbelle, reading the wind and finding a gap in Shock Ram, did not work here. It was too fast for that.
Najin clenched his teeth. The Helmet Knight now used Sword Aura unlike before, but Najin too was no longer who he had been then. It was time to show his master how much he had grown.
Flash.
Dropping his stance, Najin snapped his sword upward. Excalibur flashed. Unlike the past, Najin no longer needed to find the storm’s grain to cut it.
A platinum Sword Aura traced a single line.
Shraaaaaaaaaak!
As Najin stepped forward through the split storm,
the Helmet Knight’s sword had already flashed eight times. Eight storms, each separated by a hairline delay, crashed down on Najin. At that sight, Najin laughed despite how little it fit the moment.
Right. To you, Shock Ram was only a pressure tool.
Crunbelle had maximized Shock Ram’s power and made it his supreme technique, but Aldaran lowered its power and used it as a control tool. Remembering his old duel with the Helmet Knight, Najin steadied his breath.
The same situation as then.
But this time would not be the same.
A footstep sounded beside him, tap. It was the old man’s step. In this moment, no words were needed. The instant Gerd swung to the right, Najin took the left without hesitation.
They still had much to show their master before being stopped by mere storms. As they sliced through Shock Ram, the Helmet Knight lowered his stance.
He bent his knees, placed one hand on the ground, and rested his raised sword on his shoulder.
...Back when Najin had dueled the Helmet Knight, he had not bothered closing distance.
His body was already broken, and moving too violently would break it further, so he had waited at range for Najin to approach. But now he had no need to do that.
Boom.
The moment he stomped, the ground split. Right after, he kicked off and ran. Every step cracked the earth and shook the land with a heavy thud. Every step added more speed.
Sssshhhheeeeek!
Becoming a streak of light himself, the Helmet Knight shot forward. He had always crossed battlefields on his own two legs and leaped into the center of enemy lines without hesitation.
Whether there was one enemy, two, hundreds, or tens of thousands never mattered much to him. If enemies came crashing in like a wave, Aldaran Vasaglia was the kind of man who would scoff and jump straight into its center.
This time was the same.
He leaped between the two Transcendents. The instant he entered, blades flew from both sides, aiming for his head and heart, yet he did not hesitate.
He brought down the sword resting on his shoulder.
Acceleration stacked on acceleration, and his sword carved a straight line.
Not toward Najin and Gerd, but toward the ground beneath their feet.
Kwwwaaaaaaaaaang!
The moment the sword tip touched the earth, it exploded. A massive crater formed where the blade struck, and cracks spread from that crater to cover hundreds of meters.
Then the Helmet Knight’s Sword Aura seeped into those cracks. The seeped aura soon became storms.
The principle was the same as Shock Ram.
He had only fired Shock Ram at the ground instead of at his enemies.
A modified Shock Ram, not meant to pierce a single point but to cover the entire area. It was a tactic he used often in his days as a war hero. Storms erupted from beneath the earth, lifting rocks and soil upward.
Kwwwaaaaaaaaaang!
The storm raging around Aldaran scooped up the ground. The earth under Gerd collapsed, and the ground Najin stood on was hurled high into the sky. The line between sky and earth blurred. To make it impossible to tell what was up and what was down, the Helmet Knight tore up the terrain itself.
Mounds of dirt flying in all directions, boulders, earth shattered and thrown skyward.
If the terrain was unfavorable, then he just had to change it.
How could anyone call himself a Transcendent if he could not even do that?
“......”
With everything overturned, only Aldaran Vasaglia held his position. His gaze fixed on his enemies. A light flashed from within his helm.
...Aldaran Vasaglia was not a lofty martial artist.
He was not born from strict rules, polished sparring grounds, or agreed-upon duels. He was forged on battlefields where blood sprayed. He was not someone who walked the sword’s path to understand its mysteries and reached Transcendence that way. He honed himself to win wars, and through that he reached Transcendence.
He was a hero born from war.
The virtue of a war hero was to break the enemy. To become a storm and sweep through enemy ranks. To save one more ally, to kill one more enemy.
So he would become the storm that surged.
So he would become the lightning that struck.
The Empire’s hero was the one who fell among enemies like lightning and swept them away like a storm. To the Empire’s enemies, he was a walking natural disaster.
Come, enemies of the Empire.
As long as I stand, you cannot pass this place.
The paint-stained ■■■(■■■) shone.