Chapter 322 |
The One Without a Self (1)
It was a long corridor.
As if it were the path to an audience with a king, a red carpet stretched down the hall. The corridor walls were crowded with banners.
Flags of nations, cities, and knight orders.
Najin walked through that corridor lined with symbols of everything the Carnival King had swallowed. At the far end, the Carnival King rose from the throne and walked toward him. They advanced straight at each other.
Tap.
At this moment, Najin's heart was utterly calm. Even face to face with the enemy he had hated for so long, he was steadier than ever. It felt as if everything had finally been settled.
There was no room for compromise or persuasion. No need for complicated plans, no need for strategy, no need to wonder what had to be done. There was only one answer, drive the sword in his hand through that demon's heart.
Simple and clear.
"Don't you think this is cowardly?"
"What is?"
"Mobilizing an entire nation just to deal with me? No, not even a nation. You moved the entire continent. All to kill one woman, me."
With slender fingers, she smoothed her skirt. Her voice was soft, and that thin, delicate tone brushed against Najin's ears.
"Not very knightly, is it, Greatest Knight?"
"Funny, hearing a demon lecture me on knightly conduct."
"This is a world where petty humans discuss providence, and even heavenly things gather to chatter about national affairs. A world where a human born at rock bottom talks about the sky."
She laughed.
"Compared to that, shouldn't people be able to overlook a demon, enemy of knights, talking about 'knightly conduct'?"
She tilted her head. Pitch black hair spilled down. Looking at the woman smiling with endless harmlessness, Najin answered evenly.
"I didn't move humanity to deal with you."
He pointed at the flags hanging along the corridor.
"I pulled in every nation to deal with what you stole from humanity."
Banners of every kind hung there. Flags of nations ruined by her hand, symbols of cities she burned, standards of knight orders turned into her clowns. As he pointed at them, Najin's eyes narrowed.
"None of this is yours."
"They are my spoils, won by my own hand."
"No. You never truly took them, not once. You couldn't make them submit, so you masked them and used them as clowns."
Najin tapped his shoulder blade with the back of his hand.
The battle flag of the Golden Horn Knights tied there swayed.
"You spent one hundred fifty years and still couldn't make a single knight kneel. You erased memories, twisted history, poured out curses, and still failed."
"......"
"I'll say it again. Nothing here belongs to you. In the domain you made, nothing can ever be yours. You called it cowardly to pull in the continent just to catch you?"
Najin gave a short snort.
The Carnival King's brow creased.
"You think far too highly of yourself."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Strip away what you stole from humanity, and all that's left is you. And one me is enough to catch one you."
"I see."
The Carnival King raised an arm.
Her pale finger pointed at Najin's heart.
"Then I suppose your companion is unnecessary."
Najin's companion. He did not need to ask who she meant. She was talking about Merlin. It did not surprise him.
The fact that Merlin was with Najin had already spread across the continent. There was no way the demon in front of him didn't know, and no way she hadn't prepared for it.
And more than anything...
"Doesn't the same go for you?"
Najin pointed his raised sword at the Carnival King.
"Apostle of the Witch of the Abyss."
The Carnival King's eyes curved like crescents.
2.
"Since when did you know?"
As if she knew denial was pointless now, the Carnival King asked instead of denying it. Najin answered briefly.
"City of the Abyss, Artman."
That was where his suspicion began.
Another city at the bottom of the underground city. In the City of the Abyss, Artman, created by the fallen Lighthouse, the Lighthouse that Illuminates the Abyss, Najin had felt something off.
The Lighthouse was a court jester of the Carnival King, but the one she was loyal to was not the Carnival King. It was the Abyss.
She had been corrupted by Camlann, worshiped Camlann's ideas, and during four hundred years in hiding, interacted only with Camlann. Even so, she shared plans with the Carnival King and accepted the Carnival King's deal. Najin didn't doubt the deal itself. He doubted the fact that the Carnival King had contacted the Lighthouse at all.
How did the Carnival King know the Lighthouse even existed in the first place? Even the Lighthouse Keeper hadn't known the Lighthouse had fallen.
That day, Najin and Merlin made one assumption. That the Carnival King herself had some kind of point of contact with Camlann. And that assumption...
"Ah, so it really was there."
...was dead on.
The Carnival King sighed.
"Even I never expected what happened there. I never thought things would unfold that way. I was sure the Rebel Knight would kill you..."
Her eyes narrowed.
"To think he failed. You somehow survived the Baleful Star, did you?"
The Carnival King remembered the countless things she had done to contact the Witch of Camlann, to draw that great witch's gaze. She did not bother putting those centuries of effort into words.
'I am not like you, someone born with talent and then chosen by a star through chance.'
She wanted to say that, but she didn't.
She simply tilted her head, as if to say, "So."
As her head tilted, the corridor shook. The entire old castle began to creak.
"So you learned all of that and still stood before me."
She pointed at Najin.
"And alone at that? May I understand it that way?"
"As you can see."
Najin shrugged. The Carnival King burst out laughing in disbelief. Not a fake laugh, but the dry laugh of someone who truly couldn't understand him.
Soon, she gestured.
The old castle groaned, and the ceiling tore away. A vast night sky appeared, and in its center the Carnival King's constellation shone. Eleven stars made it up.
Beneath her own stars, the Carnival King narrowed her eyes.
"Eight stars. A half made Transcendent who can only reach beyond by relying on Excalibur. For someone like you, there was only one way to surpass me."
She pointed to one corner of the sky.
"To receive the Round Table's aid."
Merlin's constellation hung there.
"Certainly, if that loathsome constellation descends here, this fight becomes difficult for me. And if I must face both Merlin and you together, all the more so."
A battle with defeat written all over it. The Carnival King would never accept such a battle without preparation. If she already knew, there was no way she hadn't prepared.
As if that preparation had been completed long ago.
The moment the Carnival King's stars shone, the sky rippled. Stars across the night sky began to be pushed away from her constellation. Merlin, standing beside Najin, narrowed her eyes, as if she had expected this.
-So this is how you play it.
The sky creaked. The Carnival King sent some signal, and in response, a certain star began to surge.
...The basis of war is to block your opponent's numbers.
Cut down your enemy's advantages, shave away what puts them ahead, and weaken them. The Carnival King stayed true to that basic rule. She had already prepared a way to make her enemy's winning card worthless.
"If your last resort is the Round Table,"
Beyond the creaking sky, one star revealed itself.
"Then my last resort is the Abyss."
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiik!
With a sickening tearing sound, the sky flipped.
What appeared was a black red star.
A star that should never be seen.
A star that should not exist.
A twisted star outside providence.
The Baleful Star of the Witch of Camlann, star of the Abyss, rose above the Carnival King's constellation.
The Carnival King's domain sat near Camlann's boundary line, and the entire domain was a single altar. Starlight strengthened inside that domain finally pulled in Camlann's star.
Just like what the Lighthouse of the Abyss had tried to do.
-......
Merlin's face twisted as she stared at that star.
The Baleful Star was warning Merlin. If she moved even a little, if the seal she held wavered even slightly, it would descend here at once through the Carnival King's star.
Come and stop me, child who belongs to neither side. Shouldn't you hold me back again, like that day? If you don't, I will trample everything you have.
Just like that day in the past.
As if whispering those words, the black red star shone with ominous light.
...This had been the trap the Carnival King prepared from the start.
If Najin, a being beneath her, had any way to defeat her, it would only be through Merlin's help. Now that option was sealed, Najin should have had no chance.
"Merlin."
That should have been true, and yet.
"Go. We finally won that fight, and if the sealing ritual gets wrecked and the Witch of Camlann breaks free, just thinking about it makes me dizzy."
So why?
"So go."
Najin had come here alone even knowing all of that. He was even trying to send Merlin away. He moved exactly as the Carnival King wanted.
As if it didn't matter at all.
The Carnival King's eyes slowly narrowed. Meeting her gaze, Najin spoke as if nothing were strange.
"There's nothing strange about it."
Hadn't he already said it?
"One me is enough to deal with you."
The blue light overlapped with Najin's soul vanished. At the same time, the black red star looming behind the Carnival King scattered beyond the sky. Now there was no one behind either of them.
Just two.
In the old castle where only the two of them remained, Najin let his sword hang and stepped forward. One, two, and on the third step he kicked off and started running.
"Carnival King."
"Star of Dawn."
They spoke each other's names. The eight stars engraved in Excalibur blazed brilliantly. At the same time, the eleven stars pinned to the Carnival King's cloak flashed.
"Did you enjoy your merriment?"
"Did you enjoy your illusion that night had ended?"
Questions thrown at the same time.
They answered at the same time.
Flash.
Their answers were not spoken with their lips. The Carnival King's stars shone, and a stage began to form. Najin's stars shone, and began driving away the darkness the Carnival King tried to cast.
In the end, these two would close the curtain on this story.
Not the many battles of Transcendents outside, not the clashes of mythical beings behind that stage. None of those. The fight here and now was the true climax of this drama.
The starlight Excalibur poured out.
Threads billowing from the Carnival King's fingertips filled the old castle.
3.
Most of the Carnival King's atrocities were carried out not by her own hands, but by the clowns she commanded. For ages, she had lured Transcendents, made them her clowns, and expanded her power that way.
Then what about the Carnival King's own combat strength?
Najin had once had a chance to confirm it. Not long ago, in Yuel's past, he encountered the Carnival King and blocked her attempt to interfere with the stage.
He remembered that fight.
It ended quickly when Yuel's explosion swallowed it, but even so, Najin had confirmed one thing.
'The Carnival King is, at her core, a mage.'
And all her magic started from a single thing.
Clap.
The Carnival King clapped. That was the signal. Mana spreading from her swept through space. The form of the old castle where they had been standing no longer mattered. The instant she clapped, the whole area turned into a vast field.
Her stage spread across the land.
By nature, a stage is the self.
A space where one can be sure of oneself, scenery that exists within oneself, an unfolding of one's inner image. That is what a stage originally is.
Cackle, cackle, cackle-cackle.
But the Carnival King's stage was different.
Bizarre and alien.
Splattered paint covered the field. The spreading paint became streams. Those streams spread like tree roots, like spiderwebs, across the land. Plants began to grow, feeding on the paint.
Sprouts broke through, stems grew, leaves unfurled, then fell into dead leaves, then withered into ancient trees.
Flowers bloomed, reached full blossom, withered, and fell.
All of it became graves.
Grave of Revelry, sword grave, Grave of Paintings... Somewhere in this wasteland lined with countless graves, laughter began to ring out. That laughter began with the Carnival King. She laughed and clapped.
【Life is a play.】
Arms rose from the graves. Those dried arms clutched what had once been most precious in their lives. For one, it was a sword. For another, an instrument. For another, a book, or magic, or life itself.
【I am a clown who dances forever.】
Dozens, hundreds, thousands of lives.
Lives the Carnival King had collected.
They handed their lives to her.
【I am everything.】
With thin white fingers, the Carnival King snatched a mask from a hand rising out of a grave. She stole it. The hand of the one whose life was stolen crumbled and collapsed.
Click, she placed the mask on her face.
In that instant, she was no longer herself. She was a woman, an old man, a child, a young man, everything.
She was everything.
And paradoxically, she could not be herself.
An actor on stage can play countless roles and become anything, but can never become oneself. That was why her life lacked a self. Even so, she reached Transcendence.
If I have no self, can't I stitch one together from others?
That was how she made a self to believe in, and that was her stage.
Najin unfolded his own stage as well.
The place where he was born and raised.
The place where all his stories began, where he first held a dream. In other words, the place where Najin first recognized himself clearly was Najin's stage.
The scenery of the underground city, Artman, spread out.
The two stages settled at once. Both were stages of Transcendents, yet their natures were utterly different. One built its life by stealing the lives of others. The other was adorned with the stars of those who lit up his life.
The way they lived, their beliefs, the elements that formed their lives, the conclusions they reached, every part of it was opposite.
And so, paradoxically, they understood each other's stage perfectly. If each took themselves as the standard and imagined the one thing they would never do, it became the opponent standing across from them.
Two Transcendents at opposite extremes collided.