Chapter 199 - The One Who Forgot (1)

Constellations could sense human wishes.

Merlin explained that they could perceive intense desires, wishes, and resentment as a kind of current.

-It's neither a clearly defined phenomenon nor an absolute one. It just happens sometimes. We have two examples right here, in fact.

Najin looked around.

They were in a wasteland. Merlin and Najin were the only intelligent beings within a radius of at least several hundred meters. Merlin laughed in disbelief as she watched him search his surroundings.

-Someone once said Arthur was just a man who rode the tides of his age.

Najin flinched.

Merlin gave him a sulky sidelong look.

-That's what you shouted at the sky.

"Well, that was..."

-I know. You didn't mean it. Anyway, you could call that a kind of hearing a 'wish,' too, couldn't you? When you shouted that, you wanted to leave the underground city and go outside, didn't you? You wanted to become a hero.

"I did."

-So that wish must have reached me because I have stars associated with heroes, paths, the outside world, and travel. Your exceptional potential probably played a part, too.

Merlin added that many factors affected it—the concepts embodied by the stars, the stature of the Constellation who owned them, the potential and circumstances of the person making the wish, and so on. As such, there was no precise way to define what circumstances led through what process to what result.

-In your case, it's Funeral Rites. To borrow your phrasing, you're probably seeing the wishes of people who want an end they can be satisfied with.

That was the current that had appeared before Najin's eyes.

Starlight flowed like slender streams of water. He walked with those currents as his guide. Indeed, following them had led him to Jowel.

-It'll help you, too. It's a way to strengthen the concept your star embodies and make it grow.

"I'm not doing it because I want anything in return."

-Still, it's nice to get something out of it, right? Anyway, I think this sort of thing is pretty good, too.

Grinning, Merlin said, "Ah, this way," and pointed. She guided Najin, who was still inexperienced at reading the currents of starlight.

-Hmm, hmm-hmm.

She even hummed as she walked beside him with a bounce in her step, looking plainly excited. The reason was easy enough to guess. Ever since arriving in the Outer Lands, hadn't she kept losing her role as his guide to one person after another?

Merlin had not forgotten the days when even her role as an adviser had been taken by the Helmeted Knight, leaving her a utterly useless spectator. Those truly painful days had dealt a tremendous blow to her pride...

But things were different now.

From now on, she intended to actively prove her usefulness. To make Najin unable to live without her. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at him.

She grinned.

While Merlin smiled deviously at the thought, Najin kept walking, thinking, 'There she goes again.'

Najin currently had two main goals.

One was to gain the strength to face the Emperor of Revelry; the other was to find the place called La Mancha. His greater aim was to kill the Emperor of Revelry, and his immediate aim was to pave a path to her.

'Even just to accomplish that...'

He needed to grow stronger. Much stronger.

With a clear goal in mind, he naturally picked up speed. Following the currents of starlight, Najin encountered the Lost and, sometimes, knights. He asked them questions.

"Do you know anything about La Mancha?"

A question to gather information.

"Who are you?"

And a question to give their final moments meaning.

Najin collected the answers to those questions.

"Yurik, a hunter of Aklem."

"Orem the Ascetic. Remember me that way."

"Bolam, a knight of Lukanov! Bolam the Brave."

"Setes. Setes the Piercer."

Each gave their name. Proclaiming the selves they wished to be remembered as, or wished to become, they met their ends. Najin traveled the Outer Lands, granting death to those who could not die.

Then, one day during his travels through the Outer Lands...

"..."

Najin stopped in his tracks. He had no choice. A powerful, surging current had entered his view.

A current far too fierce to ignore.

He walked toward the place where it converged, eventually arriving at a vast desert. An ocher wind laden with sand blew toward him. It was not a natural wind, but an artificial one someone was creating.

The distant whoosh of something slicing through the air seemed to be its source.

The star of Funeral Rites pointed toward the sound as well.

Walking toward it, over a low hill and along the wind blowing from beyond it... Najin found a young man standing there. In the middle of the desert, he was swinging a spear.

WHOOSH

As the young man made a broad sweep with his spear, his eyes met Najin's. Najin spoke first.

"Who are you?"

Who are you, to be swinging a spear in a desert like this? In answer to that question, the young man smiled sheepishly.

"I forgot. A long time ago."

2.

The young man who said he had forgotten his own name left Najin alone and returned to what he had been doing. That was to say, he kept swinging his spear. Standing in the middle of the desert, he swung it over and over.

"..."

Quietly observing his stance and the currents his spear created, Najin thought to himself.

That fellow was a transcendent being.

His reasoning was simple. Even after watching the man's movements several times at close range, Najin felt he could not imitate them. And since the only movements he could not imitate were those of transcendent beings, he concluded that the man before him was one.

-What kind of criterion is that...?

Merlin sighed in disbelief, but she did not deny it either.

'To be a little more precise...'

Najin narrowed his eyes.

'A being who was once transcendent, but has fallen.'

His technique was perfect, yet it felt as though something important was missing. In other words, he felt similar to the Helmeted Knight. He had the same air as those who had once been transcendent beings, only to lose their stars and fall.

WHOOSH

The spear's shaft cut through the wind. Its blade sliced through the air. Every swing left marks in the sand, but the blowing wind stirred the grains together and erased every trace.

"Whew."

After swinging his spear for a long while, the man lowered its shaft and looked at Najin.

"Forgive my rudeness. Even when a guest arrives, I cannot skip my daily routine."

"Your daily routine...?"

"Ah, swinging my spear is my daily routine. One I must follow without fail."

Stroking the worn shaft, he lowered his gaze. He seemed to be counting the time. Though keeping track of time was meaningless in the Outer Lands, he was trying to judge it nonetheless.

"The sun will set soon."

Nowhere in the Outer Lands did the sun rise. With the sky shattered to expose the night, there was no place for a sun. Yet he was looking up as though he could see one.

"The desert is dangerous at night. Why not rest a while before you leave?"

The moment he said that, the colors around them suddenly changed. Najin lifted his head to look up. Instead of the shattered, fractured night sky, he saw a sky awash in the colors of sunset.

'... How?'

As the desert took on the colors of sunset, Najin narrowed his eyes. He had experienced something like this not long ago. He murmured inwardly.

'A grave.'

The Graveyard of Stars. Something similar had happened in Violet's dream. Had he entered a Constellation's grave without realizing it?

-I don't think so.

Merlin shook her head.

-The fact that I haven't taken physical form proves it. But it does feel similar to a Constellation's grave.

She pointed at the desert.

-Because this entire desert is a single forbidden ground.

'Aren't forbidden grounds places that reject anyone trying to enter?'

-Most are. But this one is the opposite.

The opposite.

-It's a forbidden ground designed to prevent someone inside from leaving. And it targets just one person.

It was obvious who that one person was.

Najin looked at the young man before him. Wearing a friendly smile, he was lighting a campfire on the sand.

'Then this enormous desert...'

-Is a forbidden ground created to imprison that one man.

'By whom?'

-That much, I don't know.

A forbidden ground meant to imprison someone.

Merlin was saying this enormous desert was a prison built to hold that man. Did that mean he was that dangerous? Najin casually rested a hand at his waist, ready to draw his sword at any moment, and spoke.

"I'll take you up on that. May I rest here a while?"

"Ah, of course! Please, sit down."

3.

The sun set, and night came to the desert.

The man had built a small hut amid the cool desert winds. He brought a diary out of it and faced Najin with the book in hand.

"May I ask your name?"

"Najin. Najin, a free knight."

"Na, jin... Is this how you write it?"

He showed Najin the diary. Najin could not recognize the letters written there. They were different from those of the Empire's common language, which he knew.

-That's right. He wrote it correctly.

Merlin recognized them. When Najin looked at her, she shrugged and replied that she knew quite a lot.

"It seems to be correct."

"Good. Na, jin. Najin. And as for free knight... Please wait a moment."

The man quickly leafed through his diary. Stopping at a page, he read what was written there aloud.

"Free knight. A knight who serves no lord. A knight who does what he believes is right. A knight among knights... My, you are quite an admirable person!"

He spoke with admiration, apparently meaning every word.

"I envy you. Being able to introduce yourself with pride is truly a wonderful thing. I would like to introduce myself as well, but unfortunately, even I don't know much about myself."

"Have you lost your memories?"

"Well, I am losing them."

"Pardon?"

He scratched the back of his neck and smiled sheepishly.

"I'd like to talk with you at length, if possible, but now that the sun has set, I cannot. What a shame. I'll have to leave the pleasure of talking with you to tomorrow's me."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It would be quicker to ask tomorrow's me. Hmm, please wait a moment. The time I have left... Yes, this should be enough."

Even as he spoke with Najin, the man looked at the hourglass beside him. The grains of sand were falling swiftly.

"I don't know my name. What I do know is that I was a knight. That's what it says here."

He tapped his diary.

"And the first page says to answer like this when others ask about me."

Running his fingers over the diary, he spoke.

"A knight of Londinel. Yes, I was a knight of Londinel. Though I don't know whether I still am."

Londinel. Najin knew that name as well.

Londinel, the Forgotten Kingdom.

The homeland of the Sword Master Kirchhoff, a nation erased from history by a star possessing the authority of Oblivion.

"If you intend to spend the night here, and thus intend to speak with 'me' again in the morning..."

He spoke as he wrote in the diary.

"Would you tell me to turn to page 781 of this diary?"