It Is a Knight's Duty, No, a Privilege! (3)
Goes without saying, but.
Those who reach Transcendence carry their own purpose. Call it a dream, a wish, or something grander, a fervent desire, a lifelong prayer.
Something that must be achieved without fail.
Or something that must be proven without fail.
To fulfill that purpose, humans train themselves. They fill what is lacking, stretch toward what is out of reach, and keep challenging their limits. Through that process, a tiny few rise to Transcendence.
The same was true of a certain knight who had reached Transcendence some two hundred and fifty years ago. He, too, had something he desired. He drove himself past every limit, and at the end of it arrived at Transcendence.
Aldaran Vasaglia, hero of the Empire.
When he reached Transcendence, he wished. To be a hero, to stand as a symbol of victory who always triumphed, and through that, to become a firm foundation for the Empire. Aldaran poured that wish into his sword.
「What is the Empire's hero?」
One who always wins.
「What does it mean to always win?」
One who does not stop, no matter what stands in the way.
「And what must one do not to stop?」
Call that a question?
Aldaran didn't open his mouth to answer. He simply smiled and swung his sword. A swordsman speaks through the blade in his hand.
First Sword.
Aldaran swung his sword.
Perhaps he swung himself.
Triumph.
One day, two hundred and fifty years ago, Aldaran completed the Triumphal Sword and reached Transcendence in the same moment.
Najin brought the sword down from high above.
First Sword. Triumph.
The Empire's sword.
Until now, all Najin had managed was an imitation of the Triumphal Sword's technique. He couldn't wield it the way the Helmet Knight or Gerd could. Of course he couldn't.
This is a Transcendent's technique.
A technique honed over a lifetime by someone who reached Transcendence through a single sword. It was only natural that he, still unable to touch Transcendence, couldn't wield it properly.
A technique that strains the body just from imitation. A technique sitting at a level still out of his reach.
But this moment was different.
Where before he had only ever imitated Transcendence, Najin had cheated his way inside it. Borrowing the power of the stars that made up La Mancha, he touched Transcendence for a brief window. The overflowing starlight filled in everything he lacked.
A Transcendent wielded Transcendence.
The Triumphal Sword was complete.
The moment he brought the sword down, all sound vanished. His vision went white. A brief silence, a heartbeat of stillness, and in less than a second the world went white. When the light faded, what Najin saw was a single streak of Sword Aura stretching from earth to sky.
The paint-stained sky tore open. The dark clouds heavy with paint burst the instant they met the Sword Aura. The paint that should have scattered in all directions evaporated on contact.
The Sword Aura swallowed everything in its path like a crashing wave.
Shattering. Slashing. Splitting. Bursting. Consuming.
Every one of those words fit that single strike. Like a ship cleaving through glaciers with its prow, the Sword Aura charged forward and crushed whatever stood in its way.
Crash!
The earth split. The paint scattered. With every inch the Sword Aura advanced, Don Quixote's stage shrank by the same measure, shattering like glass. The owner of that stage wasn't about to stand by and watch.
Neigh!
Refusing to be buried under the roar of the Sword Aura, a horse's whinny rang out. Laughter echoed louder. Don Quixote let out a wild cry and charged straight at it.
"Ahaha, ahahaha!"
He mocked until the very end, but the Sword Aura swallowed even that. The collision was over in an instant.
Crack.
Don Quixote's lance snapped. His armor crumpled. His helmet shattered, and his body was flung into the air. Swept up by the Sword Aura, he was hurled away. The Sword Aura did not stop.
What Najin had meant to cut was never Don Quixote himself.
What he wanted to cut was this ridiculous stage, and the merriment-stained paint of the Carnival King that had tainted Don Quixote's inner world. The technique of the Triumphal Sword accomplished exactly that. It had destroyed the stage given form by Don Quixote's Imagery.
The Transcendent's stage shattered into pieces. Split, cracked, and finally crumbled.
Watching a stage bring down its curtain, watching a world collapse, Najin let out a hollow laugh. Even he, the one who had swung the sword, couldn't quite believe it.
Borrowed Rocinante's acceleration, received the role bonus granted by the tomb's master, and on top of that, accepted the help of the stars making up La Mancha.
That was how he had barely scraped into the realm of Transcendence. Aldaran's strike, barely reproduced.
After seeing what that strike had made possible, Najin said, almost to himself.
"Good grief."
So this was the level you had reached.
Only now could he truly feel how weakened Aldaran must have been in that final battle, unable to call upon the stars. Still so far. Still impossibly far.
Najin let out a long breath.
The stars of La Mancha left his body. The sense of omnipotence that had wrapped around him was gone. Returning to the level where he was supposed to stand, Najin steadied his breathing. No point mourning Transcendence's departure. It had never been his to begin with, and for what he had to do now, the line between Transcendent and ordinary didn't matter.
"My lord."
Najin did what he had to do.
"Have you come to your senses?"
His body ached all over.
His arm felt broken. His ribs, too. His prized helmet was shattered and his treasured armor badly dented. Don Quixote lay on his back staring up at the sky and groaned.
That hurts. Damn, that hurts.
Come to think of it, something like this had happened before.
Don Quixote searched his memory.
Right. That time. When I charged at the windmill.
Back when he was still too green to call himself a knight. He had declared a windmill a giant and charged at it in the name of adventure. Hadn't he been just as battered back then? He smiled, recalling what was now a distant memory.
Right. And what happened after that?
Someone had helped him up as he lay groaning on the ground. Who had that been? It didn't take long to remember.
"My lord."
A shadow fell over Don Quixote.
"Have you come to your senses?"
Sancho stood there.
Don Quixote let out a quiet chuckle.
"Perfectly fine. A knight must never groan. Always like steel!"
"Is that so."
"Yes. But it seems I'm not quite knight enough yet, Sancho. It hurts. Damn, it hurts."
"That's what you get for doing reckless things."
Fair enough.
Don Quixote laughed at that.
"I..."
Don Quixote.
"I don't even know what I've been doing, Sancho."
Alonso Quixano groaned.
Until moments ago, he could not recall himself. But now he could. The mockery no longer rang in his ears, and the paint that had filled his head was washed clean away.
Yet there were still holes in his memory.
"Was every adventure I had a lie? Am I not Don Quixote at all, but still just Alonso Quixano? Nothing but a pitiful man who lost his mother and wasted away in a room, trapped in delusions?"
Alonso Quixano asked. Was his journey a lie?
"Whether you're Don Quixote or Alonso Quixano, I honestly couldn't say. That's something you'd have to decide for yourself, isn't it?"
Sancho answered.
"But."
He reached out his hand. Helped him up from the ground.
"As for whether that adventure was a lie, I think I can answer that."
Instead of words, Sancho pointed around them.
The paint that had clung to Don Quixote's Imagery had lifted. Through his Imagery, the paint that had stained La Mancha was gone as well. Look up and there was a bright blue sky. Look down and fields stretched out as far as the eye could see.
And the stars buried there, too.
Clear proof that could not be dismissed as mere lies. Only then could Don Quixote smile. But that smile didn't last long.
"Ah."
He let out a soft sound, like something had clicked. Don Quixote slowly closed his eyes, then opened them. What those eyes saw when they opened was not Sancho. He looked at the young man standing before him and smiled without meaning to.
A hazy smile. The smile of someone who had understood something.
"Right. I see."
It wasn't a lie after all.
"It wasn't a lie, but."
Don Quixote looked at Sancho.
Alonso Quixano looked at Najin.
"Sounds like a lie, though."
"......"
Najin stayed silent. He didn't know what to say to someone who had seen through what this place really was. But the worry was unnecessary.
"That doesn't matter."
He had already found his answer.
"Whether the story unfolding before me is a lie or the truth, it doesn't matter."
He looked up at the sky.
"Just as it never mattered whether the La Mancha we reached was truly heaven or not."
"...Is that so?"
"That's just how it is."
Alonso smiled, a little bitterly.
"So what if it's a dream? So what if it's a lie? Fantasy, delusion, what does it matter. In the end, you and I took something real from this adventure, didn't we. And above all else, this story..."
Don Quixote smiled.
"It's become something worth telling with a smile, hasn't it, Sancho?"
"Well. It was a bit rough for that. Plenty of holes punched through my body."
"Ahaha, fair enough. A bit rough for a smiling sort of story, I'll grant you that."
Still, Don Quixote lifted his broken lance.
"But wasn't it fun?"
"That, I can't deny."
"Then that's enough."
He tore the banner from the lance's shaft. A banner with a sunflower painted on it. Alonso pressed it into Najin's hands.
"Even if all of this is a lie, you can't say the effort you put in for me was a lie. For someone, this story was real. So that's enough. That's all it needs to be."
Satisfied with just that, Don Quixote straightened himself.
"What is a knight?"
A question thrown at himself. He cried out loud in answer.
"A knight, above all things!"
To dream the impossible dream.
To fight the unbeatable foe.
To bear unbearable sorrow.
To die for a noble ideal.
"To reach for the stars with faith."
Don Quixote let out a long breath.
In the original story of "The Knights of La Mancha
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