Chapter 323 |
The One Without a Self (2)
Yuel Razian looked up without thinking.
When had it started? Maybe it had only been an instant, but it was likely the moment the Baleful Star spread across the night sky.
From that moment on, the Carnival King’s entire domain began to shake. The buildings that had filled the territory melted into paint and ran in streams, and the laughter and discordant music that had echoed through the city streets collapsed into static in an instant.
A few Constellations screamed that this was the Carnival King’s trap, but Yuel did not see it that way. To her, this was proof the Carnival King had run out of breathing room.
‘She no longer has the spare power to maintain this fake paradise.’
That was the right way to read it. Breaking the magic formula that had reinforced the domain played a part, but the decisive trigger was probably that one Constellation who had just leaped into the Carnival King’s castle.
The center of the domain, the Carnival King’s castle.
Paint gathered there as Yuel stared up. Overflowing paint surged and swallowed the castle. A massive black curtain descending from the sky wrapped around it. It was complete isolation from the outside.
Yuel could not know what was happening in there. Her instincts were only sounding an alarm. She was not the only one who felt the omen.
The Constellations staring at the castle narrowed their eyes.
Even while sweeping aside the incoming clowns, their gazes stayed fixed on the castle. They had no choice. A force strong enough to overturn the whole battlefield in an instant was swirling in there.
But unlike their fears, that power did not turn outward.
It only raged inside the curtain, inside the castle.
Because this stage existed for one person.
Kiiiiiiiiiiik!
A tearing sound rang out. Paint whirled, lightning flashed, space creaked. Even the stars in the night sky hesitated to approach and shifted away, leaving a massive blank in the middle of the heavens.
Two constellations occupied that blank.
The Star of Dawn and the Carnival King’s star thrashed as if they would devour each other.
2.
Mana was spiraling.
Najin could see mana being sucked into the Carnival King, not because his eyes were special, but because such a colossal amount of mana was moving that a flow no one should have been able to see had become visible.
A being who had lived for at least 800 years.
A demon that had surpassed the limits of its species and reached Transcendence.
A Constellation with eleven stars revealed every bit of her full strength. The stage the Carnival King unfolded as her first step was closer to creating an entire world.
‘There’s no end in sight.’
The Carnival King’s stage stretched past the horizon. Najin knew by instinct that even if he ran all the way there, he still would not leave the stage.
‘And on top of that stage...’
The Carnival King became something like a god. Not as metaphor or exaggeration, but in the literal sense. Every rule and law of this world would be rewritten by her.
There were not many ways to resist that.
His own stage was not as vast as hers, and not mighty enough to rewrite the world’s laws, but Najin had one place where he could anchor himself and avoid being swept away by the torrent.
He did not need to spread it wide. If he did, it would only weaken and be eaten away by the Carnival King’s stage.
‘A space where I can plant my feet.’
That was enough.
Flash.
In the starlight Excalibur gave off, Najin’s shadow stretched long. That stretched shadow held the scenery of Underground City, Artman. It was Najin’s past, and the story he had built proved his existence.
With Excalibur held upright, Najin moved.
How long had he waited for this moment?
How desperately had he dreamed of this day, the day he would face that damned demon’s True Body?
That was why he sharpened his senses even more. As if he would allow not even one mistake or one opening, his eyes sank colder than ever.
【Laugh, dance, until the world is swept away!】
And then the Carnival King's voice rang out.
【Life is a play.】
The things clutched by the arms rising from graves, those shriveled arms, began to shine. Swords shone, spears shone, instruments began to play, and books opened.
The lives stolen by the Carnival King and collected by her began telling their stories. Najin understood how her stage worked.
【Not even death can be the end, so raise the curtain.】
It was practically a giant Star’s Tomb.
The place where the stars she had collected for over 800 years were buried was her stage, and on that stage the Carnival King was the bard singing their stories, the actor performing them, and at once the novelist and the playwright.
『Five hundred eighty-three years ago, in a village called Lucefel, there lived a mage named Altart.』
『She hated farewells. She never wanted to part from anyone at all. Because farewells are sad!』
『A certain god whispered in her ear.』
『Then turn everyone immortal! If you do, no one has to part, and everyone can be happy forever!』
The necromancer’s story unfolded. Following behind her came her family and friends, decayed, festering, rotted away, turned into the dead.
『There was a woman named Arta.』
『Her life was nothing but guarding the Sacred Tree. She gave up her life to protect a tree that was neither holy nor useful, and she regretted it.』
『Why should I offer my life to this worthless thing?』
『A certain god whispered to her.』
『Then skewer everything. The tree, the people who believe in the tree, the priests who pray to you, skewer them all equally on thornbushes!』
Fruit hung on the thorn tree that should have borne none. The fruit was human heads. Arta Trigadian rose with that thorn tree hung with heads.
『Kimburga Alzen, who could protect nothing!』
Guardian Kimburga Alzen.
『Saphia, flower stained black.』
Saphia of the Hundred Blossoms.
『Rekdyr, conqueror who conquered nothing.』
Conqueror Rekdyr.
『A certain god whispered.』
『That the only value in life is laughter.』
『So, laugh.』
『Laugh, mock, chatter, and sing!』
The heroes whose lives were stolen by a demon came back as clowns. On the black curtain the Carnival King spread across the sky, on that fake night sky, their constellations hung.
Each one lit their own star and began their own stage.
Countless stories unfolded.
Countless heroes sang.
Their lives, the tragedy that met them at life’s end, and in every one of those tragedies, some god had intervened, and that god had urged them to do one thing: laugh.
“...”
The lives of Transcendents that had ended in tragedy unfolded. Watching them rush at him, Najin stayed silent.
...Merlin’s voice could no longer be heard.
A sudden emptiness brushed Najin. Ever since he had left the underground city, one corner of his inner world had always held space for Merlin.
Now that place was empty.
Merlin had left to suppress the Witch of Camlann the Carnival King had pulled in. With Merlin gone, Najin stood alone on the battlefield. Feeling strange about that fact, Najin thought:
Maybe this had been necessary.
For Najin, there had always been a “next.” Even if he made a mistake, even if he was defeated, even if death cornered him, there had always been one hidden move that could settle all of it at once.
‘Merlin’s True Body descent.’
Of course, sure ruin waited afterward, so he had treated it like a move that might as well not exist, and he had still fought each moment ready to risk his life, but...
‘Even so, it was there in one corner of my head.’
The knowledge that in a worst-case moment there was insurance that could save him once. As long as he kept that fact in mind, he could never truly stand independent. He would be no different from a child in a guardian’s arms.
...He could not stay like that forever.
Thud.
Najin stepped forward. He kicked off the ground and started running. Inside, he was quieter than ever.
The one who had always shown him the road.
The one who had pointed to where he had to go.
The one who had always pushed him from behind, she was not here.
So now that he was alone, Najin thought: if he lost the moment Merlin left, he would have no face to show her. In that long sentence where he kept shouting “Who am I?” every time, he could not add the line “carried Excalibur and got stomped by a demon.”
A small laugh slipped out of him, utterly out of place.
‘That can’t happen.’
He filled her absence with confidence in himself. Had not the best Guide told him he could trust himself a little more? Recalling Merlin’s voice, Najin steadied his breathing.
With Excalibur’s support, the young star that had reached Transcendence through a shortcut began to shed its old skin.
The desperate struggle to survive his death battle with Mordred, what he had felt watching Icarus’s final moments, the fragment he had seized in his duel with Don Quixote, the optimal sword path he had found in his sword fight with Aldaran...
Everything he had learned through life after life.
Using all of it as nourishment, Najin’s soul prepared to leap one stage higher. He had already gathered more than enough experience.
What remained was to make it truly his.
One step forward.
Eyes wide open, Najin dove into the torrent the Carnival King had created.
Slowly.
He began to see what he had not been able to see before.
3.
On the stage she had spread, the Carnival King’s gaze was no longer bound by her own body.
The countless actors dancing on that stage were her eyes, her ears, and her mouth. The sun, moon, and stars floating in the sky could also become her eyes.
“...”
Like a god, the Carnival King looked down from the sky and took in the world she had made at a glance.
The stars buried here numbered 656.
The number of Constellations was 98.
These were the stars she had collected for nearly a thousand years, their stories, and the actors she possessed.
Or perhaps they were herself.
Rustle.
The hem of the Carnival King’s clothes and the cloak over her shoulders flowed down as a night sky. 656 stars shone, mounted on her garments, and 98 constellations flashed across the false night sky she had made.
Ninety-eight actors told the stories of their lives.
They sang of lives reduced to mockery.
From behind the black curtain, the Carnival King moved the threads draped over their bodies. Ninety-eight puppets danced by her will. In this moment she was a Sword Master, an archmage, a divine archer, a saintess, and a knight.
【I am everything.】
Through ninety-eight pairs of eyes, the Carnival King looked at Najin.
A human scattering that loathsome light of Excalibur. Watching that human swing his sword as if he meant to face ninety-eight Constellations alone, the Carnival King narrowed her eyes.
『You are a royal soldier who invaded the “Village of Immortals” created by “Altart”! You killed and killed and tortured the immortals until they could no longer keep their reason!』
『You are the enemy of “Arta Trigadian” who rushed in to trample her Sacred Tree!』
『You are the bandit who murdered the daughter “Kimburga Alzen” most wanted to protect!』
The Carnival King assigned Najin a role. She assigned him a narrative and endlessly staged battlegrounds tilted against him. This was one stage, and she was the scriptwriter.
Ninety-eight stories.
The many villains in those stories.
The protagonist’s nemesis, target of revenge, obstacle to purpose, enemy who must fall for the story to move.
She marked Najin as that kind of enemy and fed power into her actors’ stories. Ninety-eight stages began pressing down on him at once. Any normal Constellation would have fallen to its knees under that pressure.
...The star of Indomitable shone.
Najin did not kneel.
He smashed the role given to him, tore apart the stages trying to crush him, and took a step forward. Boom, he slammed the ground, drew his arm back, and threw his spear.
The spear wrapped in storm swept through the stage.
Golems summoned by archmages and countless swords slamming down from above stopped the Lance of the Crossed Star Najin fired. The spear stopped only after shattering thirty-one greatswords. Hidden behind the wall of swords was a mage.
The spear aimed at the mage had been blocked.
But a hunter never lets prey escape.
Right after that, with a heavy crash, the wall around the mage shook. Seen through another set of eyes, Najin had crossed hundreds of meters in an instant, seized the spear stuck in the wall again, and reached it.
He swung the spear.
He swung it with the wall still skewered on it.
The wind pressure tore through the area. The mage’s body was shredded, and a hole opened in the middle of the battlefield. Constellations rushed to fill that hole, and Najin began rampaging like a storm.
...Watching it was absurd.
Even to the Carnival King, who possessed eleven stars and had gathered countless Constellations, Najin’s existence sat outside common sense. A hollow laugh slipped from her lips.
Eight stars were not a small number.
Among Transcendents, that was still upper tier.
Even so, there was always a line. If every eight-star Constellation could do this much, the Carnival King would have turned to a handful of ash long ago.
Crack, slam, kraaaash!
Watching that human tear through the Transcendents, she could not help thinking of someone. In Najin, the Carnival King saw Aldaran Vasaglia.
「Did you really think this was enough to stop me?」
Aldaran Vasaglia had walked toward her while smashing every one of her clowns. Arms severed, body pierced through, half his head burned away, legs cut off, all his comrades dead, and still he had not stopped. He had reached her in the end and pierced her heart.
That knight’s form, like a living nightmare, flickered before her eyes. A smile spread at the corner of the Carnival King’s mouth.
It had been 150 years since then.
For those 150 years she had feared beings like Aldaran Vasaglia. Even if she had failed to make him her clown, she had learned something from that battle.
Rustle.
The threads tangled around the Carnival King’s hand twisted chaotically.
Yes, she admitted it. He was strong. So terrifyingly strong that even if this fight kept going, he would endure, and endure again.
But how long did he plan to endure?
This was her stage.
Her clowns could be revived without end. They could be replenished without end. Not even death could stop their stories. Did he plan to drag this fight on forever? Until his Guide returned? Or until the extras below this stage came to help him?
Neither.
He could not do that, and he was not the type to move that way. He had his own hidden move too. Something that would pierce her stage, and pierce her.
She knew him well.
He seemed reckless, thoughtless, impulsive, but behind that, she was certain he always had something that only he trusted completely.
...The Carnival King’s eyes curved.
And he was thinking the same thing. That she had hidden something. That this could not be the end. That he could not relax for even a moment. That he could not miss even one detail. That was what he was thinking.
Yes, absurdly enough.
They knew each other very well.
Najin was strong. Horribly strong. Not just in force, but in the way he was certain of himself. No matter what role she forced on him, he crushed it away, saying, "That is not my story."
But tell her.
...A crooked grin twisted across the Carnival King’s mouth.
Could he deny even this as not his story?
...The Carnival King moved her hand. The tangle of threads at her fingertips pulled something out.
It was not a star.
Not a Constellation.
Not even a Forgotten One.
To become a Forgotten One, it had to have had a star, but this miserable being had not even possessed one.
A pitiful thing unfit to stand on a battlefield of Transcendents.
A thing that would be chopped to pieces with one gesture from a Transcendent.
That thing passed between Transcendents. It stepped in front of Najin, who was raging like a storm, and blocked his path.
Ordinarily.
If Najin had not been on guard.
If he had been careless for even a second.
If he had not been checking every Transcendent’s face in front of him, recalling their stories, calculating the best way to break each one.
In other words, if his focus had been even slightly less sharp.
He would have swung his sword before seeing that figure and blown it away. He would have treated it as just another clown mixed into the Transcendents and ignored it.
But Najin had honed his senses to the limit. Eyes wide, missing not one small movement, he felt that this being was wrong and looked carefully.
And then Najin saw.
He truly saw.
The one standing there. A shabby man crossing through the Transcendents and blocking him. He saw the sword the man swung. It was a familiar sword, and a nostalgic one.
At that instant.
Najin’s sword was blocked.
The same sword that it took more than a dozen Transcendents rushing him together to stop was blocked by the blade of some miserable man.
Not because the man was strong.
That shabby man had no Transcendent technique, had not even reached Sword Seeker, and at best possessed skill in the upper range of Sword Expert.
Even so, his sword blocked a Transcendent sword.
Not because of the Carnival King’s stage.
It was because Najin’s shadow, the place where Najin stood, the scenery of Underground City, Artman, Najin’s own stage where he was certain of himself, was making that man’s sword stronger.
Najin’s eyes shook.
Without meaning to, he spoke the man’s name.
“...Ivan?”
And then.
Kakakakak, kaka, kakakakakakak!
The Carnival King’s laughter rang out.
For the first time, Najin was shaken. His stage wavered. In that moment when he showed an opening, the Carnival King did not miss it.
“I knew you would notice.”
“I believed you would never miss this gift I prepared.”
Merriment, Theater, Acting, Role Assignment, Direction, Hallucination, Illusion, Comedy, Caricature, Tragedy, Stage...
The Carnival King’s own stars, and the stars she had collected, began to shine all at once. They flashed violently as if they had waited only for this moment.
Then came her tenth star.
Script.
A story was created. Dozens of flashing stars were bound into a single Authority. The Carnival King’s threads fell over Najin’s body. She unfolded a story titled Najin.
Finally.
Her eleventh star shone.
Adaptation.
The Carnival King’s hand moved. Her pale, slender fingers became a fountain pen and began adapting Najin’s story. Its first line was this.
【You awaken from a long dream.】