“Everyone, listen!”

Richard Paulsen slammed his shield into the ground.

BOOM!

The earth shook. It was not as powerful as the dragon’s footsteps, but the reverberation was enough to make the hunting force turn around.

Having drawn their attention, Richard thrust out his hand. Pointing toward their destination, he shouted with the veins standing out in his neck.

“Clear a path.”

Battlefield orders should always be simple and forceful. Richard had carried out countless operations as a knight commander. His voice and gestures had the power to lead others.

“Clear a path for the Nova!”

Najin stood directly behind Richard.

His battered body was covered in wounds. He looked precarious, but the sword in his hand still shone. Trailing radiance, he adjusted his stance.

The White Horn adventurers saw him.

The knights saw him.

Only Najin’s attacks worked against the red dragon. That boy alone had the potential to turn the situation around. Everyone knew it, for they had seen him make the dragon bleed.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

No further orders were needed.

All that remained was to prove themselves through action.

Richard began running at the head of the charge. With heavy strides, he rushed toward the red dragon. Najin followed behind him.

『————————!』

The red dragon, too, had instinctively realized that Najin posed a threat—that his sword aura was dangerous. It turned toward Najin, who had stubbornly risen once more to charge at it.

Ignoring the White Horn adventurers scratching its scales, it opened its jaws wide and roared at him.

That radiance—the radiance clinging to that sword—rankled. It was a nightmarish light etched into its soul. The light possessed by the human who had cast it beneath the earth and sealed it under stone pillars. Feeling fear and rage in equal measure, the red dragon exhaled the breath it had drawn in.

Breath.

Flames burst outward in a fan like a flash of light. At that instant, Richard slammed his shield into the ground at the head of the charge. Blue mana surged over the rare-metal greatshield, a full two meters tall.

He envisioned a steadfast fortress wall. The moment his mental image enveloped his shield, Richard became a wall. Sheltering behind him, Najin watched the flames split to either side, unable to melt through the shield.

“Hot!”

Richard laughed as he shouted.

“But bearable!”

He pushed the greatshield forward.

Dragging it across the ground, he began to advance. Though its edges melted and burns spread over his forearms, he pressed forward instead of retreating.

As though determined to keep his promise to clear a path.

After Richard had taken six steps, the flames subsided. He pointed toward the landscape, still distorted by lingering heat. Before he could shout, “Run!” Najin had already raced past him.

Najin ran across the scorching ground.

But the red dragon’s struggles were not over. As though warning him to stay away, it spun and lashed its tail like a whip. Najin moved to dodge, only to realize he could no longer leap as he had before. His ankle had already reached its limit.

Running was all he could manage.

He could not kick off the ground and jump.

Then did he have to take it head-on? He could think of no way to deflect that tail. But he need not have worried.

TWANG!

A harpoon shot forth with the vibrating bowstring of an enormous bow. The mages serving with the knights reshaped the ground. All of it slowed the approaching tail. Only a little, but...

“Grizel!”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Now!”

That delay mattered. Three adventurers sprang into the air from the ground the mages had reshaped. Their blades surged with mana condensed to its utmost limit as all three swung at the dragon’s tail together.

CRACK!

Bashen Corte’s greatsword and Grizel Paramelt’s halberd struck the dragon’s tail. Then Roselin swung Echo, carrying their mana.

SCREEEEEEE!

With a deafening crash, the dragon’s tail was driven back for the first time. As the dragon staggered off balance, Najin gritted his teeth and accelerated. The path was open. He saw an opening. This chance would never come again.

He sprinted toward the dragon’s jaws.

2.

The place Najin had pointed to was the dragon’s mouth.

From the outset, his destination had been inside those gaping jaws. It was not a method an ordinary person would conceive of. Anyone who knew the nature of dragons would be even less likely to consider it.

For inside a dragon lay an entirely different world.

Until it met its death, a dragon harbored another world within its body, and its mouth was the only passage into that world. Anyone who set foot there met a horrific death.

Their flesh crumbled and their soul was dismantled.

The dismantled soul was absorbed by the dragon, becoming part of it.

That was how a dragon fed and digested its prey. Anyone swallowed by a dragon became part of it and lived forever. Unable to find rest, they continued an immortal existence in agony.

‘But that’s not all.’

When Merlin had told him this, Najin had asked a question. If a world existed inside a dragon, wasn’t it like a mental image? And if so, wouldn’t that mental image have a center?

Merlin had confirmed his guess. With a reluctant expression, she had answered him.

Within that inner world lay the dragon’s source, and destroying it would kill the dragon. But it was not a method people normally used, she had said, and only one person in history had ever succeeded.

[“There was someone who thought of the same method as you.”]

[“An idiot called the Dragonslayer did it.”]

According to Merlin, he was the greatest idiot in the world. According to everyone else, he was a great hero who had slain more dragons than anyone and fought alongside Arthur.

[“The first Sword Saint, Siegfried.”]

The first Sword Saint, who founded the Order of the Sword.

Countless bards had sung of how he leaped into an evil dragon’s mouth and shattered its source. That heroic tale had endured to the present day, a thousand years later.

That was why, when Najin pointed at the dragon’s mouth—when Richard pointed at it and ordered them to clear a path—everyone gathered there realized what Najin intended to attempt.

Though they laughed incredulously and called it madness, called it suicide, they willingly cleared the way for him. The odds were slim, but success would overturn the entire situation.

He would recreate the legend of dragonslaying.

Among the many great heroes, the Sword Saint alone had followed Arthur and reached the same destination as him. Najin intended to attempt the feat that man had achieved.

‘Under normal circumstances, I’d never have used this plan.’

But with things as they were, this was the only way.

He would die anyway if this continued. At the crossroads between life and death, Najin chose to take on the challenge.

Najin glared at the red dragon. Its eyes, stained red by the witch, had regained their original black, and they were fixed on the radiance he had kindled. With a roar that threatened to rupture his eardrums, the dragon lunged at him.

As though it meant to swallow that light.

‘If you can swallow it...’

Najin, too, charged at the dragon.

‘Go ahead and try.’

His sword trailed light. The constellation coiled around it stretched out with his strides. His gaze was fixed on the dragon’s jaws. Without hesitation, he plunged toward the abyss within that gaping mouth.

Cutting through the red dragon’s tongue and scraping its teeth, Najin planted his foot at the tongue’s root. He took another step toward the abyss beyond.

... A feat, by its nature, was something won by those who turned their backs on life and stepped toward death.

At this moment, Najin accomplished a feat.

He had always challenged powerful foes, overcome his own limits, and at times endured a transcendent being’s flames. Now, not content with making a fully restored dragon bleed, he had gambled on leaping into its mouth.

Of course, none of these feats alone was enough to become a star. Taken individually, they might not even qualify as feats. Perhaps they were merely fragments of a star...

But the moment they were united by the theme of “challenge”—the moment those feats, great and small, merged into one—they became a feat worthy of the heavens’ attention. The heavens acknowledged the achievement of a human who had challenged himself and overcome his limits. A star rose in Najin’s own stellar domain in the sky.

A nova was born.

A new star shone brightly in the night sky.

Despite obtaining the first star he had so desperately desired, Najin did not realize it. He was merely bewildered by the strength suddenly filling his dying body. Dismissing even that as a final desperate surge before exhaustion, he hurled himself into the abyss.

Beating the shit out of this fucking lizard came first.

That thought alone filled his mind. And then, as he entered the abyss, an entirely different world greeted him. Before his eyes stretched the red dragon’s mental image—its world, engulfed in flames.

“Merlin.”

Then Najin shouted.

“It’s safe here, right?”

“Do you even need to ask?”

Merlin had allowed this insane plan because this was where Najin could use his greatest wild card.

A place where he need not worry about anyone watching. A place that could hide starlight, if only briefly. An entirely different world, completely isolated from the outside. And thus, a place where Najin could reveal everything he possessed.

Pointing at the source in the very center of the red dragon’s world, Merlin shouted.

“Cut it down.”

Instead of answering, Najin grasped the empty air.

His eyes turned platinum, and the constellation engraved on his wrist shone brilliantly. Neither the light nor the heat of the flames filling the dragon’s world could compare to the starlight forming a sword in his hand.

The boy grasped the Sword of Stars.

Over Excalibur, the Sword of Stars, platinum sword aura that pierced Mystery bloomed in brilliant radiance.

And at that moment, the first of the thirteen stars engraved on Excalibur’s blade began to shine.

3.

The red dragon’s inner world.

At the center of that place filled with raging fire lay the dragon’s source—its heart. The moment he pierced it, the red dragon would meet its death.

But at the same time, Najin understood why piercing a dragon’s source within its inner world was lauded as a feat—and why the great hero Siegfried alone had succeeded.

SSSSSSSSSS!

His flesh burned. Fire clung to his skin. Immense pressure crushed his body. This world existed solely for the red dragon, and naturally, it rejected outsiders.

The dragon had begun to digest him.

He was burning. The moisture in his body evaporated. Unable to withstand the pressure, his soul screamed. Pain unlike anything he had ever felt—pain on an entirely different scale—assailed him. His body, already driven to its limit, writhed in agony.

GRIND.

Najin clenched his teeth and forced his eyes wide.

Blood flowed from his eyes. Even as it evaporated, he tightened his grip on Excalibur. Relying on its restorative power, he approached the dragon’s source.

If you can digest me—if you can swallow me—then go ahead and try.

Let’s see which is faster: you digesting me, or me piercing your heart.

THUNK!

Eyes wide, Najin drove Excalibur into the dragon’s heart. The blow lacked enough force to cleave it in two. But he had no intention of stopping here.

If once wasn’t enough, he would strike ten times.

If ten wasn’t enough, he would strike a hundred.

The platinum sword aura enveloping Excalibur pushed back the flames and scattered light. Then, as though answering the will of the master it had chosen, the first star engraved on its blade shone.

By obtaining a star, the boy had proven himself worthy.

The first power, now unsealed, enveloped Excalibur.

* * *

Nayuta, master of the Gray Tower, groaned.

Without warning, the witch’s constellation had thrown the heavens into turmoil. Constellations reeled in confusion, and stellar domains collided, leaving the sky in chaos.

“Cough, ack, ugh...”

Having looked at the witch’s constellation without disabling her star-reading spell, Nayuta had been forced to cough up blood. She wiped the blood flowing from her eyes with a handkerchief, downed a potion, and steadied her breathing.

A major event. A historic event had occurred.

Not long ago, the drawing of Excalibur had turned the sky upside down. Arthur’s and Merlin’s constellations had stirred, and now even the witch’s constellation? It felt as though historic events simply would not stop.

‘Fuck. I’m in no position to give Cypria grief about working herself to death...’

Was being master of the Gray Tower not a cushy job after all? What kind of historic event happened every few months? Groaning, she got up.

She had work to do regardless.

She had to observe the tangled heavens again and report every change the witch’s constellation had caused. This was not something she could gloss over.

“...”

After gazing at the stars for a long while, Nayuta suddenly tilted her head.

“What’s that?”

Her gaze was fixed on a star hanging in one corner of the sky. Had there been a star like that there? Had the shifting constellations pushed it aside? No, she didn’t think that star had been there...

She cast observation spells one after another.

Enhancing her eyes with magic and analyzing the flow of the heavens, she looked at the star again.

It was a nova.

A star that had never existed before had suddenly appeared. New stars did occasionally emerge like this, but something was strange about this one. Nayuta sensed something amiss.

A star shining far too brightly.

And beside it, new starlight was gathering.