Chapter 366 |
Argonaut (6)
The top of the Argo, the Tower of Heroes.
The tower's peak brushed against the sky, and in that sky burned Galahad's Star. A constellation made of ten stars. Beneath that constellation, someone stood.
A knight in full armor.
Black plate covered every inch of his body, and an iron mask had been fitted over the helm, making his expression impossible to read. The engravings carved into the armor caught the starlight and glinted, yet the sight carried no sense of the sacred.
There was no life in it.
It looked like a stone statue.
A presence that called to mind a guardian statue that had stood unmoved in the same spot for decades, centuries. Najin had just set foot on the 130th floor, and he stopped walking for a moment. His first thought was simple: was that thing even alive?
......clank.
"A pleasure, heir of the great king."
The voice rang off the iron mask before reaching him, and it was refined. The resonance was calm yet carried real weight, the kind of voice a renowned orator or a battlefield commander might possess.
"I am Galahad, a knight who once sat in the Thirteenth Seat of the Round Table and was charged with the search for the Holy Grail."
Galahad's bow was courteous, but it was the courtesy one knight showed another, not the deference owed to a liege. Before a liege, a knight was meant to kneel on one knee. He still stood on both feet, regarding Najin.
"......"
A brief silence. Najin spoke.
"Where is Lancelot?"
"Beyond this place, at the last river where all memories gather and flow. He is waiting for you there."
"Why are you here?"
"Because someone is needed to rally the heroes."
No hostility came from Galahad. He answered Najin's questions with mechanical precision.
"Lancelot believes he cannot be the one to rally heroes. He considers himself something dirty and clouded, unlike heroes who shine brilliantly."
"......"
"That is why Lancelot placed me here. He believes the captain of the Argo, the ship that carries the Argonauts, must be the most perfect hero."
"You seem to think differently."
"My thoughts are not what matters."
Galahad said it plainly.
"I deny it, yet I am also a part of him. I respect his decision."
He gestured at the ground beneath his feet.
Pointing at the tower beneath him, the tower imbued with the lives of so many heroes-he spoke.
"Because I, too, am a being of the past."
He was no different from the heroes imprisoned here. That was what his words implied. Najin frowned.
"Galahad."
"Yes, heir of the king."
"I do not believe that what Lancelot and Guinevere have done is right."
He had seen it all as he climbed the tower.
The forgotten heroes. Lives that had once burned brilliantly, then vanished into the back alleys of history. He had listened to their stories all the way up here.
"Whatever their cause, this method is wrong."
"Is that so."
"I will bring down the sanctuary of Oblivion, and I will hold Lancelot and Guinevere accountable. That is what I believe I must do."
"Is that your choice?"
Najin did not answer.
Instead of words, he leveled his sword at Galahad.
"Yes. So."
I will pass through you to reach them.
"......"
Even with a blade pointed at him, Galahad did not reach for the Cross Shield planted in the ground beside him like a gravestone. He simply kept watching Najin. With the iron mask hiding his face, there was nothing to read.
"Pick up your weapon."
Najin said it with Excalibur still raised. After a short silence, Galahad spoke.
"What is a weapon to you?"
"A means to open a path, and a means to prove myself."
"I see. Then asking me to pick up my weapon means asking me to prove myself."
Galahad shook his head slowly.
"I can neither prove myself, nor is that what a weapon means to me. To me, a weapon is for protecting, and for striking down the enemies of humanity."
So, he said.
"I cannot pick up my weapon."
"Why not."
"As I said, you are not my enemy. You are not an enemy of humanity, and there is nothing I need to protect from you."
Did that mean he would simply let Najin pass? No. To Najin's eyes, that was not it. To get through this floor, he had to earn a defeat from Galahad somehow.
That was the rule of the Argo.
Najin found himself recalling the stories heroes had told him as he climbed this tower. Among them were those who had once challenged the 130th floor, and to a person they had described Galahad the same way.
"I had no idea how to win against an opponent who had no will to fight. And swinging a weapon at someone who offered no resistance wasn't something I could bring myself to do."
"Sir Galahad doesn't regard me as a worthy opponent. Not because of a gap in ability, he simply doesn't perceive me as an enemy at all."
"Beat on him for ten days and nights and he does die, sure. But it's meaningless. Death has no worth in this tower. You have to make your opponent acknowledge defeat... yet even I, the one who killed him, couldn't be certain of my own victory. So how would that ever work."
Galahad did not resist.
He simply stood there. No matter who challenged him, no matter who swung a weapon at him and struck him down, he did not even defend himself.
He only stood, holding his place.
Watching that figure of utter detachment, Najin's eyes narrowed. He had heard about this, but seeing it in person was still something else.
If that's how you want to play it.
He had no intention of being polite either. Najin lifted Excalibur, the blade he had aimed at Galahad.
Then, with a firm thrust.
He drove it into the ground. He pulled off his Free Knight's coat and draped it carelessly over the hilt. The meaning was plain: Najin was no longer acting as a knight, or as the heir of King Arthur. He walked straight toward Galahad.
"Come to think of it."
Najin reached out toward Galahad's helm. He grabbed the iron mask covering the knight's face with his bare hand.
"Isn't it proper to talk while looking at each other's faces? We should at least observe some basic decency. You and I both."
"......"
"Let's get a look at you."
Crack. Najin's fingers dug into the iron mask. He put force into it and the mask began to buckle inward.
"Do not do that."
"Then pick up your weapon."
"I cannot."
That answer drew a short laugh from Najin.
"The hell you can't."
"......"
"Do you know what goes through my mind when I look at you, and Lancelot, and Guinevere?"
A little. No, quite a lot.
Najin was angry. His brow was furrowed. Veins stood out at his temple, and the tendons in his grip and forearm were pulled taut.
"Are you the only ones who are noble?"
Najin said it.
"Are you the only ones who are special? We have grasped the truth. We have come to know what others do not. Therefore, we will prepare for what comes next. You decide that, and that's the end of it?"
Galahad was not the only one hearing those words.
-......
Merlin had not materialized. Inside Najin's inner world, she sat perched on a wall of the Underground City, listening. She knew where Najin's anger came from.
It had not come on suddenly.
It had begun after confronting the Merlin of the past in the Black Spire. Every time he heard the story of the Round Table from the Merlin of the present, every time Merlin showed a reaction of pain, a question had built up somewhere deep in Najin.
"Without any explanation."
It had started as a question.
The closer he came to the tribute/offering, the more that question turned to anger. Guinevere and Lancelot, carrying themselves as though only they were special, and Galahad before him now, moving the same way. Najin felt a deep revulsion at all of it.
"Not even trying to persuade anyone. Just deciding on their own, acting on their own, and ending the story on their own."
Najin let out a short, contemptuous laugh.
"What an arrogant lot. You, and Lancelot, and Guinevere, and Arthur."
Flinch. Merlin caught her breath. Galahad, who had shown no reaction to anything until now, went rigid.
"Mordred is better, honestly. At least he explained why he led his rebellion and why he rejected Arthur before he acted."
Galahad reached out. He grabbed the arm Najin had pressed against his iron mask.
"You do not yet know the truth."
Galahad's voice rang out.
"To insult someone's life without knowing it in full is wrong. Take that back."
"And do you know it in full?"
Najin pressed harder.
"While you made your decisions and spent a thousand years shut away in a place like this doing things like this."
Najin's voice seethed.
"Do you know the heart of Sir Bedivere, who stood guard over the Round Table in silence for a thousand years in your place, after all of you threw everything aside and ran? What about Merlin, who heard no explanation at all, who resented you yet still said she hoped there was a reason?"
"......"
"The Merlin of the past, who had even resolved herself to die because of what you lot did, was that the choice she made because, unlike you, she wasn't noble enough? Not special enough?"
One step. Najin took one more step forward. He was angry, but he was not being swept away by it. He had not lost sight of his purpose.
For a moment, Najin called up an older version of himself.
The self before he was a knight. The bedrock of himself, his own essence. He took hold of it. It was the face of the foul-mouthed, graceless boy who had survived in the Underground City.
"Who do you think you are, to try to Select people?"
Najin spat it out like something bitter.
"Stop acting like you alone are carrying the world on your backs. While you were in here debating the Lesser Evil, the ones who actually kept the world going for a thousand years were Merlin and Bedivere."
Crack.
"Stop pretending you alone are noble. Stop pretending you alone are special."
That was the sincere part.
"Ha."
What came next were words he did not mean.
"Looking at this, I can see how it all went wrong."
Najin as a knight could not speak falsehoods, but the hound who had lived in the Underground City could put lies in his mouth as easily as breathing. Najin silently apologized to Merlin in advance.
-Suddenly? Why?
Merlin sounded caught off guard. Najin drew a breath. Then, with a smirk, he opened his mouth.
"No wonder it ended in failure. Take a journey with garbage like this, and of course Arthur was going to fail."
Words vicious enough to make the mind go blank. Even Galahad was left without a response, and Merlin's eyes went wide.
Crack, creak!
The moment Galahad's grip on his arm went slack, Najin shook the hand off and wrenched the iron mask away. Only a piece of it came free, but that was enough. Through the gap, Galahad's eyes were exposed.
"Ah. Now I can finally see you properly."
There was emotion in those eyes.
Najin pulled his lips into a crooked grin.
"A weapon."
Najin stepped back. He returned to where he had been, picked up his coat from the hilt and put it back on, then pulled Excalibur from the ground and leveled it at Galahad.
"Is a means to prove myself, and a means to prove that my words are right."
Sword leveled, he taunted the knight.
"Well then."
Najin tilted the tip of the blade.
"Do you have a reason to pick up your weapon now?"
2.
If you want to prove my words wrong, you will have to pick up that weapon. That was the declaration Najin had essentially just made. It was a provocation.
Words no knight of the Round Table could let pass.
And the one who had said them was the heir of King Arthur himself, the one who had drawn Excalibur. The heir of King Arthur had insulted a knight of the Round Table, and beyond that, had spoken of Arthur's failure. If the insult had been aimed only at Galahad himself, perhaps that might be overlooked. But this...
The moment his king was insulted, Galahad could not let it go. That was the point Najin had exploited.
-You really...
'You know I don't mean a word of it.'
-I swear you're going to drive me mad.
Merlin stared at him as if she could not believe what she had just heard. Her expression was complicated. Najin had said terrible things, but those terrible things had been said for no one but her.
Whether she should be pleased about that or not.
While Merlin was still trying to sort herself out, Najin raised his sword. If Galahad still showed no reaction after all that, Najin intended to ignore him completely.
If even after all this he just sits there above it all, that detached look on his face...
Then he would no longer be worth dealing with.
"Those words are wrong."
Good that it came to this.
Galahad responded.
"As I said before, you can only say such things because you do not know the truth. You..."
"A knight."
Najin cut him off.
"Washes away insult with a duel."
Before the most perfect knight, Najin spoke the knightly code.
"And proves honor and pride with a sword."
Prove it with action, not words. There would be time enough to talk after the duel. Najin drew a clear line: he had nothing more to say to Galahad as things stood.
"......"
If you want me to listen, you will have to accept the duel. You will have to pick up that Cross Shield.
And.
Galahad finally moved. He reached out and gripped the Cross Shield planted beside him. At that moment, the entire tower shuddered, all one hundred and thirty floors.
Rumble, rumble...
The topmost floor of the trembling tower. As the shockwave radiated outward, the Strongest Knight of the Round Table raised his weapon.