I Pulled Out Excalib Chapter 242

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On Those Brave Yet Ridiculous Ones (5)

"A pleasure to meet you. My name is Don Quixote."

"Don Quixote? That's quite the unusual name."

Rocinante exchanged introductions with Don Quixote and shook his hand. Both men's eyes drifted naturally toward Najin. His turn to give his name.

"......"

He couldn't answer right away. He stared at Rocinante with a rigid expression. Rocinante. He knew that name.

「Run with all your might, Rocinante!」

The day he'd faced the Star of Scorn, that man had spurred on a hideous magical beast resembling a donkey while screaming those exact words. The name given to that grotesque creature was Rocinante.

"Do I have something on my face?"

"No. I was lost in thought for a moment."

Najin exhaled quietly. "I am Sancho, the Squire of Lord Don Quixote."

"Calling Sancho my Squire doesn't quite capture it. Sancho is my closest friend. We've been adventuring together for decades now."

Introductions done. Negotiations had always been Sancho's job, so Najin steadied his breathing.

"You said you were a Guide?"

"An adventurer, too. One who explores the Outland in search of Mystique."

"How do you know where we're going, to be offering yourself as a Guide?"

"I happened to overhear your conversation earlier."

Rocinante stroked his beard. "You mentioned searching for paradise. A heaven somewhere in the Outland. Forgive me for eavesdropping, but the subject caught my interest."

He tapped the table with a finger.

"Where is paradise to be found? Paradise is always a word pointing to an ideal place. Utopia, which also means a place that exists nowhere."

Rocinante's eyes narrowed.

"People searching for a place that doesn't exist, who've crawled all the way into the Outland to look for it."

"If you're planning to mock us..."

"Oh my! Why is this young fellow in such a hurry? Let a person finish."

The real Sancho would have tacked on "Not particularly young, though," but Najin said nothing. He was genuinely young, and even at Sancho's age, he'd still be on the younger side by Outland standards.

"I'm also searching for a place that exists nowhere. A kind of kinship, you might say. So will you let me join your journey?"

Najin looked at Don Quixote.

Don Quixote nodded.

"In all adventure stories, two is too few and four is too many. Three is just right. Rocinante, was it? I look forward to traveling together."

"Refreshingly straightforward. Very bold. How about a drink to celebrate becoming companions?"

"Not a bad suggestion."

Wooden cups knocked together. They drained the foaming beer in one go and pushed back from their seats.

"Speaking of which, Rocinante."

"Hm? Something you'd like to ask?"

"You mentioned searching for a Mystique that vanished tens of thousands of years ago. What Mystique is it, exactly? Is it the same one I'm thinking of?"

Before they set out in earnest, Najin pulled Rocinante aside for a quick word. A few things still nagged at him.

"What Mystique were you thinking of?"

"You know, the kind contained in a Masterpiece..."

"Ah, that's what you meant. That counts as Mystique, yes, but the kind I'm after is different."

"Different?"

"Yes. Put simply, it's the miracle of God."

Najin tilted his head at the word God.

"Were you part of an Order?"

"If you mean the Starbody, Starblood, or Starlight, no. I've never belonged to any such false orders."

A low chuckle escaped Rocinante.

"These days, mention God and nine out of ten people assume you're talking about the stars glittering up in the night sky. They think it refers to the patron deities of the three Orders. But what would those be? Nothing but hollow fakes, the lot of them."

Anyone affiliated with the Orders would have gone red in the face at words like that.

"The God I speak of is one who existed long before King Arthur's age, before the Witch of the Abyss or the First Star ever appeared."

"You mean the creation myths?"

"Something like it. An existence that, as the world grew and changed, was quietly filed away as fiction. The God I believe in is that kind of being."

He raised his staff.

"In the beginning, people believed in God. Even when God wasn't glittering in the sky to announce his presence, even without performing miracles, people believed. More fervently than they do now."

He wasn't old, and nothing was wrong with his legs. He didn't look like a mage who needed a staff's support. Yet Rocinante held one.

"That is faith. All the faith in the world today is nothing but falsehood."

"Why is that?"

"Because it expects a reward."

Rocinante planted his staff in the ground.

"Where does reward fit into belief? How can one who prays expecting something in return be called pure? Faith must spring from purity, a love that asks for nothing."

Staff in one hand, the other thumping his chest, Rocinante laughed.

"God is not up in the sky. God is in my heart. So I am a pilgrim walking a path of hardship to prove my faith, and an adventurer seeking proof of God's miracles."

And so, he said.

"This journey with you is also, in its way, a pilgrimage. How could I turn my back on people wandering in search of heaven? What kind of priest would that make me?"

"For all that, you did ask for something in return."

"God would overlook a single drink. If He's ever tasted a cold beer, that is."

Tap. He struck the ground with his staff and walked ahead. And so it began, the journey in search of utopia, of a place that exists nowhere. Of course, a Guide joining them didn't mean a path suddenly materialized out of thin air.

Where to go. In what direction. By what route.

Rocinante turned to Don Quixote with a question, as if plotting a course were exactly what a Guide was for.

"My lord Don Quixote, what is your reason for seeking paradise? You must have your own."

At that, Don Quixote produced the urn.

"Because I must bring them there."

"To give the dead a proper burial?"

"Not only that. I am Quixote. Don Quixote, the Ingenious Gentleman of Quixano. The people of the Quixano domain loved my adventures. They always cheered me on, and they were the dearest readers who first heard and read my stories."

Something had gone out of his voice as he said his own name, as if he couldn't be sure any of this was right. Still, Don Quixote went on.

"I must tell my readers the story to its very end. That is the duty of both an author and a storyteller, isn't it?"

His hands moved slowly over the urn.

"And Don Quixote's story must reach a happy ending. One that is joyful and lively, where everyone can close the book with a smile."

The Knights of La Mancha. Just as that novel had done.

"So I will carry them all the way to La Mancha, paradise and the end of this story, wherever it lies in the Outland. To a conclusion that everyone can accept."

The paradise Don Quixote spoke of wasn't simply an ideal place. The story's destination, a conclusion every soul could accept. That was what he called La Mancha.

"Then."

Then, Rocinante said.

"Simply arriving at the destination would hold no meaning. The path there must carry meaning in itself. A delightful adventure must unfold along the way, as you said."

He stroked his beard.

"I think I know what kind of road we should take."

A roguish grin spread across his face.

Rocinante stepped out with a bold stride.

Rocinante led the way, Don Quixote followed behind him, and Najin walked at the rear. Trailing the two of them, he thought.

So this was the adventure that had taken place more than four hundred years ago.

Anton Quixano had told him about it once, if only in brief. That his uncle, Alonso Quixano, hadn't always been quite so mad, and that while there was a ridiculous side to him, he wasn't a man who made a habit of mockery.

Najin watched Don Quixote's back.

Anton had been right. The Don Quixote Najin observed wasn't the type to mock or ridicule others. At most, he was a dreamer who cried out that the world needed more laughter, a man who simply wanted the world to be a more joyful place.

'But.'

Najin knew.

'He becomes the Star of Scorn.'

The figure of the Star of Scorn, Quixote. The grotesque beast he rode, Rocinante. The bizarre lance in his hand, Sancho.

「Laugh. Laugh and keep laughing! Until the world is swept away! In this world, the only thing of value is laughter!」

That image of the Star of Scorn charging forward with those words on his lips wouldn't leave Najin's mind. What had he seen, what had he endured, at the end of this journey, to have changed so completely? Najin had no way of knowing.

'Merlin.'

-Yes.

'If we changed the story's ending here, in the Stars' Graveyard, would it affect reality?'

-Making something 'as if it never happened' here won't undo it in reality. This place is nothing more than a stage recreated from the memories of stars.

But, Merlin said.

-For those entangled in this dream, it might carry at least a small effect.

She knew what Najin was getting at, what was turning over in his mind. Knowing that, she kept it brief.

-It won't be easy. Far more than you think.

'I know.'

-This stage has severe restrictions. If you stray too far from the flow of the story, there's no telling how it might change.

Your role could be stripped from you, and you'd be expelled from this stage. That was the possibility Merlin laid out. Najin went quiet. That couldn't happen.

An opportunity barely won.

Miss this one, and there was no knowing when the next would come. One chance. That was how he had to see it. Najin refocused on his goals.

'Find the Carnival King's weakness somewhere in here. And find a way to deal with Quixote.'

There must be a reason the Carnival King kept this place hidden, a reason she had stretched such a vast domain over it. Pressing on with those thoughts, a thread of doubt passed through him. A question almost too obvious to need asking.

'This is a Star's Tomb.'

La Mancha is a Star's Tomb. And in a Star's Tomb, there is naturally a central Constellation, and the stage unfolds around that Constellation.

'The center of the story is...'

Najin looked at Don Quixote.

'Don Quixote.'

Every story. Every spotlight. All of it pointed to Don Quixote. The protagonist of this Star's Tomb was Don Quixote. Then this place should have been Don Quixote's tomb.

'But...'

-The Star of Scorn is alive. Perfectly well.

Merlin, reading his thoughts, spoke.

-Now that I'm inside, I can see it.

'See what?'

-This place isn't a tomb built from a single Constellation. Not that a lone Constellation could build a tomb this vast to begin with. Not unless it were a Constellation at my level.

What does that mean? Najin asked.

Merlin pointed to the sky.

In the sky she indicated, dozens of stars were set like stones in dark cloth. The sight made Najin tilt his head. Wasn't it perfectly natural for stars to fill the Outland's night sky?

-Natural, yes. If this weren't a Stars' Graveyard.

Ah. The breath left him.

When he had entered the Star of Detachment's tomb, only the Star of Detachment's light had shone in that sky.

Then the stars shining here...

-A tomb built from dozens of stars.

Merlin said.

-That is the true nature of La Mancha.

Not a tomb where a single Constellation rests.

Not a Star's Tomb.

A Stars' Graveyard, where dozens of stars lie buried.

That was the true nature of La Mancha.

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