Chapter 381 |
Dream (1)
"What's your dream, Merlin?"
"My dream?"
"Come to think of it, I've talked about my own dreams plenty of times, but I don't think I've ever actually heard yours."
"A dream, hm. Well, first off, killing the Witch of the Abyss. I can't stand breathing the same air as that woman."
"And after that? Once everything is finished, I mean."
"Mmm......"
Merlin chewed on her lip at the question.
She seemed to have something in mind.
"Good grief."
Merlin scooted over to him herself. She cupped her palm over his ear and whispered.
"Promise you won't make fun of me?"
"Hm? What are you about to say?"
"Promise you won't laugh."
"Sure, fine. I promise."
"All right then, my dream is......"
Merlin told him her dream.
The thing she wanted to do once everything was over, the wish that belonged to Merlin herself and not to the Grand Mage of the Round Table, she whispered it to him. Najin blinked when he heard it.
"Pfft."
And promptly burst out laughing.
"Hey! I told you not to laugh, you promised!"
"Sorry. It's just a wish I never would have imagined. Actually, now that I think about it, it's very much like you."
"Stop laughing. Stop it!"
Merlin pounded on him with her fist. It carried not a speck of mana, so rather than hurting, it only tickled. Najin turned the wish over in his mind. For a Transcendent with eleven stars, it was a remarkably modest thing to wish for.
"Want me to make it happen?"
"......"
"Why did you go quiet all of a sudden?"
"I, well, did you really think I was going to do this with someone else? Who else would I do it with? It's you."
"Fair point."
You're teasing me right now. Merlin gnawed at her lip and glared at him. He could tell she would genuinely sulk if he pushed any further, so Najin shook his head.
"I promise, then."
"Promise what?"
"That I'll make that dream come true."
"......Really?"
"It's not even a hard thing. Defeating the Witch of the Abyss is the hard part. Once she's defeated, what's left to struggle with? It's a simple wish."
The corner of Merlin's mouth twitched. She covered her lips with her palm and gave a short reply: "Well, if you say so." She was trying to hide it, but her feelings were written all over her face.
"You promised, right?"
"Of course."
"If you break it, know that I will beat you to within an inch of your life."
"So you won't actually kill me even if I break it?"
"I'll stop just before the dying part."
"Then I'd better keep it."
That was how that went.
2.
After clearing the Sanctuary of Oblivion, several things changed for Najin. The biggest change, needless to say, was gaining his tenth star.
Nine stars becoming ten.
Merlin had always insisted that nine and ten were different, and Najin understood what she meant now. The count had only gone up by one, but his rank as a Constellation had risen more sharply than at any point before.
The brightness of his stars, his Authority, the range of the stages he could unfold, every measure of his ability felt like it had jumped a full tier. But the change he felt most keenly of all was...
Kiiiiiiiiiiiing!
The change in Excalibur.
Even the smallest infusion of mana sent starlight erupting from the blade as if it meant to explode. Excalibur's output had always been proportional to its master's rank as a Constellation, but the jump this time was enough to catch even Najin off guard.
"Was it always this sharp?"
It wasn't just the output. The sharpness itself was something else. The keen edge radiating from the sword was on an entirely different level than before.
It had always been sharp enough to hold its own against other famous blades, but Excalibur's true nature was never really about cutting things. Strengthening its owner's body and stars, and severing whatever stood against the natural order, that was where the sword was built to excel.
Because of that, compared to a blade like Gramr, which was made purely to cut enemies down, Excalibur had always fallen a few tiers short as a straight cutting weapon. That had always been Najin's read on it.
"But now......"
That gap was narrowing. He could feel it.
Starlight flowing along the outer edge of Excalibur's blade was reinforcing its cutting power. He swung the sword through empty air and it made a different sound than usual.
Sskk.
Cutting nothing but air, and yet something sounded like it was being sliced. Najin swung a few more times, then stared at the blade. When he focused his gaze, he could see a different quality of starlight running along the edge of the steel.
It was not his starlight.
It was Lancelot's.
In his final moments, Lancelot had poured all ten of his stars into Excalibur. The star he had embedded into the sword for his king a thousand years ago, he had filled it to the brim with every drop of starlight he had gathered across those thousand years.
"......"
Najin's tenth star had certainly contributed to the strengthening, but what had sent the sword's cutting power surging was Lancelot's starlight. Najin's expression grew complicated.
Excalibur was a sword forged from stars.
And a sword that grew alongside its owner.
According to Guinevere, it had originally been made to select sacrifices for the Witch of the Abyss and to help her devour human history more easily. But that felt like it could not be the whole story.
A tool is, in the end, defined by how it is used. After long ages spent consuming the stars of heroes, after being forged by the stars of heroes, the Holy Sword had drifted far from its original purpose.
"Huu."
Najin let out a short breath and sheathed Excalibur.
Whatever the reason, Excalibur had grown stronger.
And it would keep growing stronger. As long as Najin did not stop growing, Excalibur would keep pace. Confirming that he was still moving forward, Najin opened and closed his fist a few times.
"Quite a bit stronger now, wouldn't you say?"
"Is that even a question?"
Merlin had been watching him train with her chin resting in her hand. She laughed like she couldn't believe he'd said that.
"You beat Lancelot in a straight one-on-one. Not through some trick or cheap move, not because of a favorable matchup, a fair duel. Right?"
"That's true. Though I'm not sure about the final blow."
"Even then, well... you didn't lose, did you? Even if you took that final hit, it was only a critical wound. You still won."
Najin nodded.
Whatever the final exchange had amounted to, Najin had shattered Lancelot's Absolute Technique and beaten him. The experience built through the Skirmish with Siegfried and climbing the Tower of Heroes had helped him in the fight more than he had realized.
"You beat the Strongest Knight of the Round Table. Even by the standards of the old generation, the only ones above you now are me, Arthur, and Siegfried."
Even measured against that era a thousand years ago, when powerhouses had swarmed everywhere, Najin had drawn close to the summit. The destination he had been aiming for was one step closer.
"......So."
Merlin, who had been watching him train all this while, slowly opened her mouth.
"You're saying our next destination is the Eternal City?"
"Yes. Before I seriously go after Camlann, I should finish what needs to be finished in the Outland first."
There was a promise to keep, too. Merlin watched him say that with an expression that was anything but eager.
"Right. We have to go. Can't keep putting it off forever."
"You don't look thrilled."
"Of course not. For me, that place is, how to put it, like a reverse scale. Somewhere I don't want to dig up, let alone face. Makes me wonder if that's why I cut those memories away."
Merlin sighed.
"Still, I can't keep it buried forever. And you'd go with or without my blessing."
"That's true enough."
"Hmph, of course it is. Then I'll go, I suppose."
With a small hop she jumped down from the wall and walked over to Najin's side. She grumbled a little but offered no real complaint beyond that. She knew it was a place she would have to visit someday, and there was no reason that someday couldn't be now.
"When are we leaving?"
Najin swung his coat over his shoulders and answered.
"Now."
Exactly as she'd expected. Merlin shrugged and took the lead. This time there was no need to research or pinpoint a location.
The Eternal City was a sanctuary Merlin herself had created.
Even if it had been severed from her, finding it was no challenge at all. Najin fell into step behind her as she led the way.
3.
There is a people who live in the night.
Beings who set foot not in reality but in dreams, who spend their whole lives dreaming. In the old fairy tales they were known as Night Fairies.
Night Fairies.
Creatures with a beauty like the first snow of the year, and a melancholy to match that beauty, and a fragile quality that made them seem as though they would melt away the instant they touched reality.
They had been driven to extinction by the Witch of the Abyss, as had so many other fairy folk. One lone survivor remained among them, but no record of that survivor existed anywhere. A certain scholar once said it made perfect sense that none could be found.
"Night Fairies are a people who live within dreams."
"There is no reason anywhere to forsake a dream filled with beautiful things and bother setting foot in a dirty reality. They can achieve everything they desire within a dream."
"A human, faced with the two choices of ideal and reality, must agonize and compromise......"
"But is there any reason a Night Fairy, who possesses the ability to achieve her ideals, would choose reality instead? Of course not. It is only natural."
They must have chosen dreams to escape a harsh reality. They live inside dreams, so of course they cannot be found. That was the scholar's conclusion.
That guess was half right and half wrong.
The last Night Fairy left in the world.
She lay with her eyes closed, dreaming. Her dreams reflected directly into reality. This world was hers alone.
Flowers bloomed. They faded. The sun rose and set again and again. A peaceful landscape appeared, full of people laughing and chattering, then a scene of carnage where all of them lay dead. Snow fell. Rain fell. A snow-capped mountain, a desert, a hillside blanketed in flowers, a bleak and empty wasteland......
And then everything vanished.
A period was placed on everything and it disappeared. At the close of the story, only she remained.
She was still dreaming.
Moonflowers bloomed in full across her bedroom. Petals drifted down over her bare skin. A sweet, thick fragrance dissolved into the air. The overwhelming scent filled the room and made her head swim.
With every breath her chest rose and fell. Nothing else moved at all.
An existence so faint it seemed she might vanish at a touch.
The only thing tethering her to reality was the Blue Knot. She gripped the Blue Knot tied around her neck and waited. She waited without end. She dreamed as she waited for the day he would come and find her.
Her name was Merlin.
Her physical body lay asleep in reality, but inside the dream her sunken eyes were fixed on a mirror. Overturned cups lay scattered around her. Surrounded by a space given over to indulgence, she stared at her own face in the glass.
Merlin smiled at the mirror.
It looked terribly awkward.
She had forgotten how to smile so thoroughly that she sat there pulling the corners of her mouth up with her fingers, staring at her own reflection.
This won't do.
I should be smiling when I welcome him.
Merlin practiced expressions in the mirror. She smiled, laughed out loud, cleared her throat and tried to look charming. Her heart fluttered at the knowledge that the thousand years she had promised were drawing near.
He is coming.
He is coming.
The one who had promised her happiness was coming to find her. A smile slipped from the corner of Merlin's mouth. She tilted her head, gazing at her reflection. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in waves.
The girl in the mirror was smiling like someone in love.
Ah. Right.
That was the one.
Amid the spilled cups, the incense candles lit for indulgence, and the tangle of every sweet fragrance imaginable, she smiled. She reached out and pressed her hand to her reflection's.
Just a little longer.
Just a little more, and she could bear it.
