I Pulled Out Excalib Chapter 235

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On Those Curious Companions (3)

The sky whales lived by eating stars.

Feasting on the shattered remnants of stars and their light, the whales had left the ocean behind and made for the sky. They chose to swim not through the blue sea but through the pitch-black night sky, the Dark Sea.

At their head swam a single whale.

And there was one who had led that whale skyward.

A dreamer who pointed to the heavens and proclaimed that people could reach the stars. A navigator who steered a single vessel and guided the whales in their great migration to the sky. A king who planted his flag in skies no one had ever claimed and built his kingdom there.

The world called him by one name.

Icarus, the Heaven-Wandering Star.

"That's not wrong, but it's a very old story. That name was used about nine hundred years ago," Merlin had said once.

"By now, even the name Icarus is probably forgotten. The Heaven-Wandering Star became a Forgotten One roughly seven hundred years ago. Among the Stars of today, the Heaven-Wandering Star is... well. How do you even describe it."

She paused, searching for the right word, then snapped her fingers.

"A natural disaster. The most insufferable kind you'd never want to tangle with."

Recalling those words, Najin looked up at the sky. One, two, ten... roughly thirty whales falling in a cluster.

Flash.

The whales fed on stars, and their bodies were thick with starlight. Watching them scatter that light as they fell, it looked exactly like a meteor shower pouring down.

'Quite the sight.'

Breathtaking, honestly. If those whales hadn't been plummeting straight at him, he might have stopped to admire it.

'Not an easy start.'

Najin drew his sword. Once, back when he still traveled with the Helmet Knight and first looked up at the Heaven-Wandering Star's sky whales, he hadn't known the first thing about fighting them.

Not now.

Enough time had passed. He'd grown stronger and learned how to cut down enormous things. He couldn't fell dozens of whales raining from the sky all at once, but one whale bearing straight down on him, he could handle.

He was just about to move.

"As I said."

His companion Merlin caught his wrist. She shared thoughts with him, which meant she already knew exactly what he was thinking.

"The Heaven-Wandering Star is a natural disaster."

'You said that. So?'

"No one seriously tries to fight a natural disaster. If a storm's coming, you run, not stand and swing. Someone who has achieved Transcendence might be able to cleave through a storm, sure, but that's another matter."

She pointed at the sky.

"Even for those who have achieved Transcendence, the Heaven-Wandering Star is a natural disaster."

'That's...'

"Don't try to fight it. Run. Right now."

She shrugged.

"You'd need to be at least as strong as me to kill the Heaven-Wandering Star."

That strong?

Najin didn't quite grasp what Merlin meant. Sure, they looked powerful, but completely unmanageable felt like a stretch.

'Those thirty whales are really that dangerous?'

"Thirty?"

Merlin laughed.

A laugh of pure disbelief.

"Don't you mean three hundred thousand?"

That was when it happened.

Boooom...

The sky trembled. The ground shook. A strange sound, somewhere between a bell toll and a beast's cry, swallowed heaven and earth. Najin grimaced and pressed his hands over his ears. Even with his palms clamped tight, the sound still seeped through.

And when it finally stopped,

Splash.

Ripples broke across the sky. Najin raised his head. It might as well have been an ocean up there. The heaving night sky looked every bit like a dark sea, the Dark Sea.

Splash, splash, splash...

The whales that had been swimming through the depths of that dark night sea breached the surface one by one. Waves crashed. Foam churned, and the night sky splattered like thrown paint.

Only then did Najin understand.

Those thirty whales had been nothing but strays sunbathing near the surface. Whales, by nature, lived in the deep. And right now, every last one of those deep-sea creatures was surging upward.

Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands of whales.

Their combined cry shook heaven and earth.

"The Heaven-Wandering Star," Merlin said.

"A star that swims through the sky."

Tyrant of the heavens. Lord of the sky whales.

The army he led fell like a meteor storm.

What the hell. Najin swallowed the curse rising in his throat and whipped his head around. At least he wasn't alone here. Two Transcendents, there had to be some way...

"We're done for."

"Pardon?"

"We are absolutely done for, Najin."

Najin blinked. Yuel, standing beside him, wasn't even reaching for her sword. She'd sheathed it back into the air and was calmly muttering "we're done for" with no expression on her face. Said that deadpan, the words lost all sense of urgency.

"The Heaven-Wandering Star hates having its territory trespassed. Even that, though, depends on its mood that day. When it's in a good mood, it'll let you pass without a thought, but when it's in a bad mood it drops a few whales as a warning."

Najin glanced up at the sky.

A "few" was not quite the word he would have chosen.

"And right now the Heaven-Wandering Star is in a foul mood. Something must have provoked it. Most likely the Carnival King's doing."

She said that, then spun on her heel.

"Najin."

"Yes?"

"How fast can you run?"

"Reasonably fast."

"Good. I'll go first."

And then she ran.

Najin watched her disappear into the distance in seconds, blinking after her. Deja vu. He'd been in this exact situation before.

"Hah. A battle maniac, a killing machine they call her, and she's running with her tail between her legs? Even a stray dog would laugh."

The Star Incarnation clicked her tongue at Yuel's retreating back.

"So that's the infamous Heaven-Wandering Star? Ridiculous. What can a beast like that even do to me? It couldn't leave a scratch. My body is made of starlight."

"Those creatures," Najin said. "They're star-eating whales."

"What?"

"Their diet is stars."

The Star Incarnation blinked. Then the color drained from her face.

Patter.

Najin slapped a hand to his own forehead as he watched her bolt after Yuel. A sigh escaped him. Truly reliable Transcendents.

'Then again, who could handle hundreds of thousands of whales?'

"I could."

'...Right. Yes.'

Najin ran too. As whales began crashing into the earth ahead and tremors rolled through the ground, Najin cleared the Heaven-Wandering Star's territory.

「We're not running away.」

「We're charging forward in the opposite direction.」

Recalling the Helmet Knight's teaching, Najin charged ahead. After a long run, the three of them finally shook free of the whales and collapsed to the ground, breathless.

"What are we supposed to do about that." The Star Incarnation sighed.

"There's no detour on the map. We have to pass through the Heaven-Wandering Star's territory. I don't see any way to break through it, at least not from where I'm standing."

She was right. Najin couldn't see a way through either, not with hundreds of thousands of whales rampaging in there.

"I'd have to agree."

Yuel nodded.

"I thought the Carnival King would have prepared for this, given that the weakness of her closest confidant is hidden somewhere in there, but I didn't expect the Heaven-Wandering Star. This is a setback."

"Is the Heaven-Wandering Star the Carnival King's ally?"

"No," Yuel said.

"The Heaven-Wandering Star cannot be controlled. No reasoning to speak of, a natural disaster in every sense. Something that obsessively controls everything in its domain isn't going to follow someone else's orders."

"I'd stake anything on that. The Heaven-Wandering Star was a control freak in life, a tyrant. That won't have changed now that it's a Forgotten One, just repeating its old instincts without thought."

Then what were they supposed to do. To reach La Mancha they had to pass through that territory, no exceptions. Najin turned over everything he'd been told. Heaven-Wandering Star, control freak, whales, tyrant, Forgotten One... Forgotten One? His brow furrowed.

"Wait."

"The Heaven-Wandering Star is a Forgotten One, and a Forgotten One's basic instinct is to go after stars. That still holds?"

"It would."

"And the whales it commands are also star-eating whales."

"That's right."

"Then can't we use a star as bait and steer them away?"

At Najin's suggestion, Yuel stroked her chin.

"A reasonable guess. Worth trying. But there's one problem."

She pointed at herself, then Najin.

"Even if we shine our stars as brightly as we can, we won't draw the attention of hundreds of thousands of whales. For this plan to work, we'd need starlight bright enough to light up the entire area, something with an enormous amount of starlight, like Excalibur, or a being whose very..."

Yuel stopped herself with a short "Ah."

Her gaze drifted to the Star Incarnation.

"...whose very body is composed of stars. A being whose entire flesh is forged from starlight, for example."

"Seems like there's one right here," Najin said.

"I'd say the same."

Both of them looked at the Star Incarnation. She had been busy shaking the dirt from her hair and hadn't caught a word of the conversation. She tilted her head, brow creasing.

"What. That look. I don't like it."

Here it was.

An extraordinarily brilliant piece of bait.

"I'll curse you! I'll curse both of you!"

"Please be quiet."

"Enough, Star Incarnation."

"Noooooo!"

She screamed and thrashed. But the moment Yuel calmly rested her hand on her sword hilt, the Star Incarnation let out a hiccup and went still.

Taut.

Yuel bound her with rope, the Starblood Sect's rope for restraining criminals, impossibly tough and endlessly stretchable. Once it was tied around the Star Incarnation's body, Yuel shook out her limbs.

"Why am I being treated like this? I am the Star Incarnation. The idol of the Starbody Society, revered by countless faithful, a great..."

Najin and Yuel exchanged a glance and left the sobbing Star Incarnation behind. They took their positions.

Can a person fly?

The two of them were about to settle that ancient question here and now.

Boom.

Yuel stomped into the ground and broke into a run. The Star Incarnation, dangling from the rope, was yanked along with a strangled gasp. Rolling across the ground like a ball, she was hauled forward as Yuel entered the Heaven-Wandering Star's territory first.

Boooom...

The moment Yuel crossed the boundary, the whales came crashing down again, their cries filling the air. Just as they began to properly lower their altitude, Yuel swung the rope in a wide arc.

Ugh.

With a sound like every breath knocked out of someone at once, the Star Incarnation traced a wide half-circle at the end of the rope, bending like a whip cracking.

Then, thwoom.

Yuel hurled the Star Incarnation high into the sky. The rope uncoiled and kept going. A Transcendent's raw strength was something else entirely, and the Star Incarnation shot up, and up, and up... but to Najin's eyes, the altitude still fell short.

So he gave her a boost.

Charge.

He fired it not to pierce but purely to generate a shockwave. The burst of force shoved the Star Incarnation, sending her flying just a little higher.

Noooooo...

Her scream faded into the distance.

Flung high into the sky, the Star Incarnation shed tears and poured out starlight. Her body was made of starlight, flesh forged in the image of a star.

Star Incarnation.

True to her name, the starlight packed into her body was staggering. When she committed to releasing it, the entire area went blinding white.

A flash detonated high above.

The whales falling toward Yuel and Najin flinched and froze. Their heads turned back toward the sky. Up there blazed a meal they couldn't refuse, for creatures that lived by swallowing stars.

Boooom!

The whales surged back up into the sky. With the bait-drawn whales behind them, Najin and Yuel ran. The Star Incarnation was an outstanding decoy.

'So that's why he requested the Starbody Society's cooperation.'

The First Horn of the Empire had thought it all through.

Gerd's foresight left Najin genuinely impressed.

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