Chapter 209 - The Romanticist (4)

Most people in the Outer Lands were broken.

At least, the people Najin had met were. Some suffered from erosion, some gave up something precious to avoid that suffering, and some simply went mad. The Outer Lands were full of people broken in their own ways. The land itself forced them to become so.

"Hahaha! Row! Put your back into it!"

But this man... how should he put it?

Najin watched Anton point at the raging storm and burst out laughing. He certainly seemed out of his mind, but he didn't seem broken.

'He said he was already a transcendent being four hundred years ago, so he must be around five hundred. And he's spent most of that time wandering around looking for a witch...'

Considering that, Anton Quijano seemed far too intact. There was no sign of erosion anywhere, nor did his abilities seem to have deteriorated. The man before him was unquestionably a transcendent being.

SPLAAASH!

Every stroke of his oar raised waves, and Najin had to sweat buckets to keep pace with him.

"Could you, row, a little, slower?"

"Why? Tired already? You're out of breath!"

"You're, a transcendent being, but..."

"Can't hear you! Strong currents! The waves are drowning you out! What good is an oarsman with a voice like that?"

This man. Seriously.

Najin gritted his teeth and shouted as he rowed.

"You may be a transcendent being, but I'm not!"

"Oh, dear. But that hardly seems like my problem. Keep up."

Fucking hell. Najin swallowed the curse rising in his throat and kept rowing. At first, Anton had matched his pace. But after Najin pierced a wave with Battering Ram, Anton had given him a meaningful look and started rowing at full strength.

As if to say, Surely you can keep up with this much, you greenhorn?

"Hah, haaah..."

Panting, Najin rowed as though his arms would tear apart. The sailboat carrying the two of them cut through the water, shooting forward like an arrow.

"Here it comes! We're ramming it!"

A whale loomed ahead, its jaws wide open.

Najin had never seen a whale on the continent, but he doubted their teeth were quite that sharp and vicious.

"More speed, oarsman!"

Najin was horrified to see Anton charge straight toward those teeth without slowing down at all.

"What are you planning to do?!"

"What do you mean? I told you. We're ramming it!"

"This is a sailboat, not a warship! Don't you have enough common sense to know it'll smash to pieces if we hit that thing?!"

"Ah, right. So it is."

"You crazy bastard. Seriously."

With the crashing waves drowning out his voice, Najin naturally grew louder. Shouting, he hurled the spear he had been rowing with at Anton.

"Oh, another oar."

"Row by yourself for a moment!"

Anton neatly caught the spear and held an oar in each hand, then resumed rowing with gusto.

SPLAAASH!

As the sailboat raced through the water, Najin drew the sword at his waist.

Najin planted himself firmly on the violently pitching bow and summoned his sword aura. Extending the flashing aura, he opened his eyes wide. Just as the whale's vicious teeth were about to splinter the sailboat, his sword moved.

A flash.

The sword aura swept away the whale's teeth. Without slowing in the slightest, the sailboat plunged into its mouth. Najin, however, had absolutely no desire to tour the whale's stomach.

"Hup!"

Exhaling sharply, Najin swung again. Sword aura erupted from the tip, shredding the whale's inner flesh and cutting through its outer hide as well. Apparently unprepared for its swallowed prey to carve up its body, the whale let out a scream.

GWOOOOOO!

That was none of Najin's concern. As blood spouted like a fountain from the newly opened hole in the whale's back, the sailboat carrying Najin and Anton escaped through it.

"Whew. Feels like we've been exploring a cave."

Watching Anton catch his breath and pretend to wipe away sweat, Najin had to resist the urge to punch him in the face.

"Isn't there, you know, a more normal way to do this? Please, could you try using a little common sense..."

"What is common sense? Knowledge shared by most people. And you and I aren't most people! We're transcendent beings. Transcendent beings have their own ways of doing things."

"I'm not a transcendent being."

"Oh, a trivial distinction. You're close enough. Doesn't that make you an honorary transcendent being? Don't let common sense bind you, boy."

Defying common sense and smashing it to pieces was something of a hobby for Najin, but beside a true madman, his own madness was insignificant. He glared at Merlin, who was cackling beside him, and sighed.

So that was how he wanted to play it.

Najin exhaled and swept back his wet hair. After tightening his hair tie and loosening up his body, he took his oar back from Anton.

"Hey, Anton."

"Call me captain, oarsman."

"Fine. So, Captain? Did you just say we don't need to be bound by common sense?"

"Of course. Are you finally beginning to understand me?"

"Then we ought to change how we row, too. Isn't what we're doing perfectly conventional rowing?"

What did that mean?

Just as Anton was about to tilt his head, Najin stamped his foot down at the stern instead of taking his seat. As the sailboat rocked violently, he spun his spear and brought it into position.

Its angled tip pointed toward the sea's surface.

"Hold on tight."

"Huh?"

Battering Ram.

CRAAACK!

Najin unleashed Battering Ram at the water.

2.

"Oarsman."

"Yes, Captain."

"I was wrong."

"As long as you understand."

Looking like a drowned rat, Anton wrung out his clothes and raised the white flag. Faced with true madness, he had been defeated.

"Let's save that technique for special occasions. Say, when we need to jump over a reef a few dozen meters high. No, let's not do that. Better to break it whenever possible. I'll break it."

"Didn't you say you enjoyed adventure? I suppose flying isn't quite to your taste."

"Listen, nobody enjoys being launched dozens of meters into the air with nothing but a sailboat to cling to!"

After experiencing a flight that could be called long or short, courtesy of the storm created by Battering Ram, Anton had gone deathly pale. It wasn't an easy experience even for a transcendent being.

"Right. Let's take it easy with the rowing for a while. Talk a little, like we did earlier. Yes, let's do that."

That was welcome news. Najin massaged his aching arms and began rowing slowly.

"Captain. There's something I'd like to ask."

"Oh? What is it? If it's about the story of Lapis we left unfinished earlier..."

"Not that. When we first met, you called yourself the lover of the century, didn't you?"

"Ah, of course. There's no lover like me."

"Then here's a question for the lover of the century. What exactly is love?"

What was love?

It was a question Najin had long harbored.

"I don't really understand what makes that damned thing called love worth risking your life for, or giving up absolutely everything. You know, there's plenty of that in fairy tales and heroic stories."

Throwing everything away for love. Abandoning one's homeland, honor, pride, and even convictions. Najin couldn't really relate to any of those acts. Especially when such seemingly foolish deeds were dressed up as something glorious.

"From what you see in stories, it's practically hypnosis. People become someone else entirely when they fall in love. What on earth is it?"

What was love?

It might have been an embarrassing question, one that invited ridicule, but Anton Quijano gave it serious thought. He even stopped rowing for a moment, stroking his chin before he spoke.

"Have you never been in love?"

"Never."

"Then I suppose you've never confessed your love to anyone. Has anyone confessed to you?"

"Once."

"Well, with that face, it'd be stranger if no one had. Anyway, what is love, you ask? An interesting question."

Anton grinned.

"Well, yes. Like you said, perhaps love is something close to hypnosis. Even those brilliant geniuses in the mage towers become the world's greatest fools when they fall in love. And the most solemn, coldhearted knight will make a fool of himself for his lover."

It robbed people of their judgment.

It rendered objectivity and rationality trivial, and made even a person frozen cold blaze like a roaring fire.

"That is love."

"You mean it makes you stupid?"

"Ah, you're not wrong. But calling it that takes all the charm out of it, doesn't it?"

Anton Quijano spread his arms wide.

"Some call people in love stupid. They mock them as ignorant and foolish. Sometimes they even pity them. But I'm the opposite. Quite the opposite."

"The opposite?"

"I pity those who have never felt this joy. Those who have never experienced true love."

"You see, love..." he said in a singsong voice.

"You see only one person, and everything else disappears. Your heart pounds so fiercely it feels ready to burst, and every sense sharpens for that one person alone. And then you realize something."

"What?" Najin asked, and Anton smiled.

"That I could be this passionate. That I could burn this fiercely. Only then did I truly feel alive. It was the moment my empty life gained meaning."

He firmly grasped the oar he had set down.

"Life gains vitality. You find a purpose. You feel there's nothing you couldn't do for her. An endless sea like this is nothing."

With a dashing expression, Anton continued.

"Love is the greatest magic, boy. The most primal and greatest magic of all, making what is impossible for humans possible."

He rowed.

"The supreme magic, beyond even the Witch of Camlann, the world's most powerful mage."

His face was brimming with life as he rowed. Najin felt he understood, at least a little, why Anton had not become one of the Lost, why he had not suffered the slightest erosion.

Indeed, it would have been stranger for erosion to visit someone so vividly alive. Najin rowed with an incredulous smile.

"I'd like to try it, too," Najin murmured. "This thing called love."

"I eagerly await the day it comes to you. Truly."

The lover of the century rows.

He sails across the endless sea.

For the woman who asked him to find her.

3.

Their voyage continued for days.

Rowing, hunting monsters, and occasionally smashing reefs, Najin and Anton sailed across the sea. Even the continent's finest navigator would have screamed and shaken their head at the sight of the Outer Lands' waters, but the transcendent being and the honorary transcendent being crossed them with nothing but a little sailboat.

Of course, it wasn't easy even for them.

"The boat, has, capsized! That's why I kept telling you to row more slowly!"

"Hahahaha! Glub, pffft!"

Their boat overturned, throwing them into the sea.

"Every sailor ought to know how to sail through a storm. Say, oarsman. Doesn't it tempt you? The title of master navigator who crossed a storm of upward-striking lightning in a single sailboat. It certainly tempts me. A sailor must dream big."

"Were you a sailor?"

"No? I was a nobleman. Why would I sail a boat?"

"..."

"..."

"I'm firing Battering Ram."

"Uh, wait..."

BOOOM!

They literally jumped over whirlpools and storms where lightning struck upward.

"A whale! It's a whale! Chaaaarge!"

"That's a kraken, Captain."

"Charge anyway!"

They fought a kraken large enough to swallow an entire castle, cutting through the dozens of tentacles it lashed at them. Through adventures as ridiculous as they were grand, Anton and Najin continued across the sea.

How long had they been sailing?

"There it is."

In the middle of the fog-shrouded sea.

"That's the destination I told you about."

Najin and Anton could see their destination, too.

The thick fog obscured their view, but they could make out a few faint shapes. An isolated island lay in the middle of the endless sea.

"..."

Without discussing it, both naturally looked up. They gazed at a structure built on the island. It was a tower. A spire soaring so high it seemed to touch the sky.

Pointing at the spire, Merlin spoke.

"A tower created by the Witch of Camlann. A spire built to punish sinners. It's where confined witches are imprisoned."

The Black Spire.

That was its name.