Knights of La Mancha (2)
La Mancha.
It was the paradise where Don Quixote and his companions reached the end of their journey. Don Quixote was the one who discovered La Mancha, but he never forgot the promise he made to his friend long ago.
A wild promise that he would gift him a domain.
But after achieving sothing as absurd as reaching a paradise that should not exist, there was no reason not to keep an absurd promise too. Don Quixote kept his word to Sancho, his dearest friend, his squire, and his irreplaceable companion.
That was how Sancho beca the Lord of La Mancha.
Sancho Panza, Lord of La Mancha.
Even if the concept called La Mancha was stained, even if the Star of Mirth had degraded into the Star of Scorn, even if Don Quixote's story had been twisted and distorted...
The fact that Sancho was the master of La Mancha never changed.
Sancho and Najin shared a promise. Najin had not forgotten it, and he knew exactly where to use the one chance he had received then.
"I, Sancho, master of La Mancha, swear it."
And Najin felt it by instinct.
"La Mancha will answer your call without fail."
Now was the mont to use that chance.
"Sancho Panza."
The flag of La Mancha tied to the Lance of the Crossed Star fluttered wildly. No wind was blowing, yet the flag roared and snapped.
Then.
Bwooooooo...
A horn rang out from sowhere. It was the horn that announced battle, the horn that announced deploynt, and the horn that announced assembly. The instant that sound spread, Najin felt stars rising behind his back.
War Banner of La Mancha.
Another na for a lord was warlord.
Najin naturally let go of his banner lance. Even after he released it, it did not tilt. Soone else had caught it.
"La Mancha."
Soone stood beside Najin.
He did not need to turn around to know who it was.
"Does not forget its promises."
Sancho Panza. The ruler of La Mancha raised the Lance of the Crossed Star with La Mancha's flag bound to it. At that mont, starlight burst from the flag. Like fireworks exploding, the light shot in all directions, then ford human shapes.
And then.
"I was having a good dream, and you still had to wake . What fun adventure did you prepare this ti to wake us in such a hurry?"
A voice.
"I never expected to sleep peacefully in the first place. Who is our lord, after all? Is he not that eccentric who suddenly grabs our shoulders, shakes us, and says, 'I just had a brilliant idea, this adventure will surely be delightful as well,' then points at so random destination?"
"That is part of his charm too."
"Cannot deny that, hahahaha!"
Voices.
"Ah, that is definitely true. Then we smile helplessly and ask, what kind of adventure is it this ti, Sir Knight?"
"The barber will sigh."
"And the gardener will obviously ask, 'So, are there flowers there?'"
Their laughter.
"Heh. It has been a while since I woke up, and now I want a drink. Anyone got liquor? I will handle the snacks! I have endless adventure tales."
"I am sick of hearing your stories."
"A truly enjoyable adventure stays enjoyable even after hearing it hundreds of tis. Hahaha!"
"My goodness. I cannot believe I would be happy to hear that drunken voice. Living long really does show you strange things."
Laughing and chattering, voices of banter rang out at different pitches.
"Still."
"Mm."
"Yes, I suppose."
"Right."
Their eyes settled.
"We have sothing to do first."
"It is not too late to chatter about afterstories once we have seen the finale through. No, it has to be that way."
"Talking afterstories in the middle of a play is tacky."
Tap.
Soone struck a staff between them.
"Well said."
The one who approached Sancho was an old man.
Even after reaching Transcendence and becoming young, he still deliberately used magic to wear the appearance of an old man, an oddball. Rocinante, the mage of Acceleration, spun his staff once.
"It would feel incomplete if the lead of the stage were missing, no?"
He pointed his staff at Najin.
Through Sancho, they had all seen it.
How that young man nad Najin had changed La Mancha, a place that had felt like an endless nightmare.
"..."
They were silent, but their eyes held reverence, respect, gratitude, awe, and above all, deep affection. Najin was no longer an outsider to them.
Those were the eyes they gave a comrade.
Feeling that gaze, Najin ended up smiling. Only now did he fully understand Sancho's words that what happened in La Mancha had not been aningless.
"Najin."
Sancho smiled while gripping the flag.
"We do not forget your efforts. We will never forget the astonishing adventure you carried out in La Mancha."
Countless Transcendents stood behind him.
The barber, the gardener, naless stars, the princess trapped in the tower, the Transcendent who longed for death, the star that longed for rest, the thief who dread of becoming a hero, the star that wanted to see a flower field one last ti. And beyond them, countless more stars.
At the very front of them all, Sancho opened his mouth as their representative. Looking up at the sky, he shouted.
"No one dares speak of your qualifications. I, the master of La Mancha, and the stars that built La Mancha testify to your qualifications."
That alone blocked the Carnival King's sche to drive Najin out. What the Carnival King insisted was that Najin had no right to stand on this stage, that he was a character who did not belong in La Mancha.
But Sancho answered that claim.
Who dared speak of La Mancha's qualifications before him? He himself would prove this man's qualifications.
"You called this place a stage, clown?"
Sancho Panza burst into laughter.
"If so, then all the more, you cannot drive this man out."
The actors of La Mancha lined up behind Sancho raised their voices in their own ways. So stamped their feet, so laughed out loud, so slamd their weapons down.
"The one who decorated La Mancha's finale!"
Through those cheers, Sancho shouted.
Like soone introducing the lead actor of a play.
"The one who turned a story that almost ended in tragedy into cody. The one who gave honor to those who lost honor, pride to those who lost pride, dreams to those who lost dreams..."
And.
"Laughter to those who lost laughter."
Sancho thought it was the only role that could be given to the young man in front of him. Before saying that role aloud, he had to smile.
A play called La Mancha.
A nightmare repeated for hundreds of years.
A story that had ended in tragedy had reached a completely different ending through the young man before him. It was the ending Sancho and his companions had longed for without rest. La Mancha decided to accept that ending as true history.
"What a story that sounds like a lie."
"But that part does not matter."
Whether it was truth or falsehood, reality or dream, none of that distinction mattered.
"What if it is a dream? What if it is a lie? What if it is fantasy, or delusion? In the end, is the realization you and I gained from this adventure not real?"
"And above all, this story..."
Because their captain, their lord, their teacher, their knight, their benefactor had said so.
"Did it not beco sothing worth talking about with a smile!"
Because it was a story they could tell with smiles.
Which side to choose was obvious.
So, with the ending reversed, a new role was prepared in the play called La Mancha.
"Najin."
Sancho spoke that role's na aloud.
"Free Knight, Najin."
The one who made a knight worthy of the na.
The knight who would close this story as a cody.
Whoosh.
Sancho handed the banner lance to Najin. Originally, standing at the front with La Mancha's flag flying was Don Quixote's role. Right now, with him standing on the opposite side, the one who could take that place was not Sancho but Najin.
Najin took the Lance of the Crossed Star and exhaled.
At this mont, Najin did not need to act. The role he had been given was himself. So he moved the way he always did.
Boom.
The instant Najin slamd the banner lance down, the Knights of La Mancha burst into laughter. As if they had waited only for this mont, they drew their weapons. Stars flashed behind Najin.
"Don Quixote."
Najin's sword pointed at Quixote.
"What is a knight?"
At that question, Quixote, the Star of Scorn, answered with a sneer. As if the question was not even worth answering. As if he had never thought deeply about it once.
Then the answer from this side was simple.
Quixote, Star of Scorn.
Your failure to answer this question will beco the reason for your defeat.
2.
Strictly speaking, La Mancha, the stage of Quixote the Star of Scorn, was not a geographic place na.
His stage was a single story.
The adventure tale of wandering in search of La Mancha, that long adventure itself, was what the Star of Scorn used as his stage. So the La Mancha he unfolded was not a place na but a play.
A play is fiction by nature.
But Quixote had repeatedly moved fiction into reality and built his dream in the real world. The stories he had built up supported his stage like pillars.
【Life is a play!】
【So laugh and make rry.】
【Until the very mont the curtain falls on the stage.】
And so the stage spread by the Star of Scorn was on a completely different level from the stage spread in La Mancha long ago by the "incomplete Quixote" Najin had faced. Hundreds of years had passed since then, and the Star of Scorn had been completed, with the Carnival King supporting him.
Here, everything beca truth.
The boundary between dream and reality blurred.
False and real could not be distinguished.
All clowns rising from the Star of Scorn's stage beca real. Every one of them dancing in clown masks was a Transcendent, one of the La Mancha expedition who had traveled with Quixote.
They did not fall.
They did not die.
They always reached the ideal land.
As long as Quixote, master of the stage, believed that, they could never be defeated. The script of the arranged stage did not allow the protagonist's defeat.
That was exactly why the Star of Scorn was so powerful.
From the mont his stage combined with the Carnival King's domain, he was no longer an individual. He beca a clustered body of Transcendents, fighting alongside dozens of immortal Transcendents.
To beat a Quixote like that.
Najin recalled what the First Horn of the Empire and rlin had said once.
"You either mobilize enough Transcendents to crush the immortal Transcendents by sheer numbers."
Or else.
"You smash the entire stage in one shot with output on Icarus or Aldaran Vasaglia's level."
Both were impossible for Najin.
So he chose a third path.
La Mancha would confront La Mancha.
A path only Najin could choose.
And this is the opening you missed, Carnival King.
The Carnival King had wanted to make Quixote the Star of Scorn's strength her own, so instead of turning Quixote into a Forgotten One, she chose to reinterpret his story.
It was a choice very fitting for the Carnival King. If she left the core of the story intact and only twisted the ending into her own shape, she could wield Quixote's power without loss.
But that point acted as a weakness right now.
Because she had not changed La Mancha's core, the narrative she had scattered through this stage also applied to "La Mancha's army led by Sancho." The dagger she had prepared to kill Najin changed direction and aid straight at the Star of Scorn.
"Here, in La Mancha, they will never break!"
The immortal army and the immortal army clashed.
"You are alone."
Unlike the Star of Scorn, the protagonist of this stage, you have no knights who follow you.
"You cannot defeat them!"
The Carnival King's narration, so certain of Najin's defeat, shattered the mont Sancho appeared. Her sche, the stage she had produced, and the narrative she had assigned all broke apart.
From now on, no one could know.
How this story would end, how it would unfold.
"Rocinante!"
"Ah, of course, I am ready."
At Najin's shout, Rocinante struck his staff. Najin was not flustered by the Acceleration Rocinante created. He had already received that magic once.
"Run, run!"
"Let's go!"
"For Sir Knight!"
"For our lord."
"He really was not the type to smile like that before."
Najin was not the only one running under Acceleration.
Whenever Rocinante struck his staff with a tap.
Sancho charged with a sharply raised spear he had drawn from sowhere, the barber lifted giant scissors, and the gardener raised a great scythe. As if used to Rocinante's Acceleration, none of them panicked at their increased speed as they raced through the battlefield.
Tap, tap, tap.
Each ti the staff struck, the Constellations kicked off the ground and ran. The charge that began with Najin at its head soon beca a march with dozens of stars.
On the opposite side, Quixote was charging too.
"Run, Rocinante, run!"
Rocinante transford into a demonic beast and snorted, and the spear that had beco Sancho's twisted body scread. Drawn by that scream, the Transcendents in clown masks sprinted forward.
It was like a mirror set in the center of a battlefield.
Though they wore clown masks, Transcendents with identical faces, identical builds, identical weapons, and identical Authorities rushed at each other.
Only three were different.
Quixote, the Star of Scorn, Rocinante the donkey, Sancho turned into a spear.
Najin, the Star of Dawn, Rocinante of Acceleration, Sancho Panza the Lord.
"Hahahahaha!"
No, perhaps.
"Co along, Sancho, run, Rocinante."
"And my dear friend, Najin!"
Four.
The Star of Mirth shone.
In the end, the one thing that decided this story was the duel between two people, the Star of Dawn and the Star of Scorn.
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