Krünbel was an exceptional knight. He was a man worthy of being called a model of knighthood, respected not only by his comrades but also by the imperial court. For he understood pride, honor, and the value of silence.

Krünbel believed that anything he said aloud must be upheld. He did not speak lightly, nor did he speak at length. His words were always brief and concise, confined to promises he must keep. That was why Krünbel was the Knight of Silence.

"A knight is one who does not yield."

That was Krünbel's answer when his commander once asked him, "What is a knight?"

"One who advances steadfastly without yielding. One who walks the righteous path without retreating. Even if that path leads to hell, a knight willingly follows it so long as it is right."

"Even in the face of unbearable suffering and adversity?"

"Yes. For a knight overcomes them."

Those were not empty words. Krünbel was a man who always upheld what he said, and he willingly put into practice the knighthood he had spoken of before his commander.

He hunted fallen stars that threatened humanity. He hunted renowned dark mages. He brought death to transcendent beings who had gone mad. And at the Boundary of the Outer Lands, he slaughtered the Empire's enemies.

He protected the emperor from the Pillars of the Empire who had risen against it, and led the Dawn War to victory by retaking the capital occupied by traitors.

He advanced, achieving countless great feats. He marched onward, wielding a bannered spear that bore the Empire's flag. He was the Empire's spear, its guardian, and its hero. On the day he followed his commander into the Outer Lands, the aged emperor even came in person to see him off in tears.

"Do not grieve over my departure. I am not leaving you. I will face the Empire's enemies in those lands beyond. I remain a knight of the Empire."

Before the weeping, aged emperor—an emperor who was still young and full of vigor in his memories—Krünbel knelt and swore an oath.

"Glory to the Empire. I shall venture a little farther, Your Majesty."

For his 150 years on the continent, he lived as a knight. No one could find fault with Krünbel's great feats, and those feats, carved into a monument in the deepest heart of the Empire, would be remembered forever.

That was how it should have been.

That was how it had to be.

The Outer Lands denied Krünbel's entire life. Slaying countless devils and granting fallen heroes rest, Krünbel marched endlessly onward. But he could not march forever.

The Emperor of Revelry and her knight, Quixote. The ruler of the Outer Lands barred the Order of the Golden Horn's way. Countless devils and Constellations who followed the Emperor of Revelry attacked them.

Krünbel fought valiantly. The proud Order of the Golden Horn would never yield. Look, was their commander not wielding his sword? Whenever he wielded that sword, they had always won. They had won gloriously. So march onward, Golden Horns... Crying out those words, Krünbel blew his horn.

They won the battle.

But they lost the war.

At last, they brought down the stars who followed the Emperor of Revelry and slaughtered the devils, setting foot before her. But in that instant, they realized they had walked into a trap.

Oblivion and erasure.

Their lives were denied. The great feats they had written vanished. No one could remember them anymore. The stars they had inscribed in the night sky lost their light and began to fall. A few, including the commander and Krünbel, endured it, but not everyone did.

Their comrades became Lost. Those Lost comrades became the Emperor of Revelry's jesters. Krünbel raged at that fact. He hated those who had robbed his comrades of their nobility. He blew his horn fiercely, to announce his arrival to his enemies.

Krünbel advances. He marched without stopping. Even as he was forgotten, even as he was erased from the records, even with a future as one of the Lost awaiting him, he advanced. For willingly following that path, even if it led to ruin, was what he called knighthood.

「Ah, how utterly ridiculous!」

The Knight of Revelry mocked him. The Emperor of Revelry prepared an unending stage for Krünbel. He raced across a wasteland where jesters' laughter and absurd songs echoed eternally. Drowning out their laughter with his horn, Krünbel advanced.

His head was severed. His body burned. Holes were punched through him, and he was hacked into hundreds of pieces. Yet Krünbel, who had risen to the rank of a Constellation, replaced his severed parts with starlight and continued his journey.

The commander who had led him disappeared. The comrades who had followed him disappeared as well. But Krünbel does not stop. The moment he, too, knelt, it would be as though the Order of the Golden Horn had surrendered to the Emperor of Revelry. That could never happen. The Order of the Golden Horn was the Empire. As long as he wore the Empire's banner, he could never kneel.

Until no human part of him remained. Until his lost head could no longer regenerate. After walking and walking through hell, he finally stopped.

Krünbel looked back. And he realized. Though he had walked forward for decades, he had not taken a single step. He realized he had been nothing more than an actor on the Emperor of Revelry's stage.

He had stood in the same place, unable to take even one step for decades. The hell he had crossed was merely an illusion.

Yet the wounds he had received while crossing that hell remained. His severed head had not reattached.

'Then how much is real, and how much is illusion? Have the memories of me truly been forgotten? Was the Order of the Golden Horn itself nothing but an illusion? Where, how far...'

Krünbel could no longer be certain. He could not distinguish reality from illusion. Once doubt took root, it devoured him.

Ah, aaah...

Krünbel screamed. Not even 317 beheadings had broken his will, but the moment he realized that his entire journey had been meaningless, Krünbel broke.

Six stars fell from the sky. The fallen stars were buried in the Graveyard of Stars. Krünbel, the Knight of Silence, died, leaving only the Star of the Horn in his place.

2.

"Did the Emperor of Revelry do this to you?"

"What?"

"The Order of the Golden Horn, including you. I asked whether the Emperor of Revelry was the reason you were ruined."

Najin frowned, rubbing his neck. Was it because the scenes in his dream had felt so real? He kept checking whether his head was still attached.

"That's true enough."

"How did it happen?"

"You're touching a sore spot."

"Honestly, I don't quite understand. To start with, you're a Sword Master, and wasn't Krünbel a transcendent being too? One with six stars, at that. I don't know how many stars you had, but I doubt it was fewer than his."

"That's true enough."

"Then why?"

Najin asked despite knowing it was rude. The dream he had just had had only deepened his questions. At last, the Helmeted Knight let out a long sigh and answered.

"The Emperor of Revelry is a devil who embodies the concept of revelry. Revelry itself isn't much. Making things ridiculous is about all it does. The problem was that, as she gained ten stars, that concept of revelry came to encompass more things."

"What sort of things?"

"Theater. Stages. Acting. Manipulation. Deception. Masks. Jesters. Hallucinations. Delusions. Dreams. Comedy. Tragedy. Amusement..."

He recited dozens upon dozens of words.

"The Emperor of Revelry bound them all together under the word 'revelry.' Her authority no longer stops at making someone dance ridiculously. It has reached the point where it can deny their entire life."

"For instance, it works like this. She creates a stage and makes you an actor on it. It's a stage made of illusion, but it isn't an illusion. The stage has substance, so death there means death in reality. She tears down the boundary between reality and illusion... leaving you confused about how much is illusion and how much is real. What is genuine and what is false. It's deception."

"That's..."

"Yes. She makes doubt take root. So you can no longer trust yourself. And on top of that..."

He spat out the words bitterly.

"The Emperor of Revelry allied herself with a star possessing the authorities of erasure and Oblivion. She can also use the authorities wielded by that unidentified star."

The Helmeted Knight tapped his head.

"She makes you forgotten, or makes you forget. Both are very effective means of attack here in the Outer Lands. A star's very story is denied, and the star is made to deny that story itself. What do you suppose happens then?"

"... You become one of the Lost."

"Exactly. The Emperor of Revelry steers her opponents into becoming Lost. Then she takes the ones she likes as her jesters. She's been doing it for hundreds of years. Long before I set foot in this land, and ever since, she has been expanding her forces that way."

Najin caught his breath.

"Isn't that... a serious problem?"

"It is."

"Why doesn't the Empire intervene? What about the stars in the night sky? Or the stars of the Round Table..."

That last question was also directed at Merlin. But it was the Helmeted Knight who answered in her place.

"The Empire will have tried to slay the Emperor of Revelry. But no one remembers. Not even me. The Order of the Golden Horn is the only attempt I remember, but there must have been countless attempts before that. They've simply all been forgotten."

He shrugged.

"The stars in the night sky won't act because they're afraid of her. What could they do against a Constellation with ten stars? They're too busy protecting themselves. That leaves the stars of the Round Table. But... that would be impossible too."

"Why?"

"Because they have to hold back the baleful stars. Keeping the Boundary secure must keep them busy enough. We can't leave the problems inside the Outer Lands to them."

Najin fell silent. Watching his conflicted expression, the Helmeted Knight gave a bitter smile and spoke.

"Are the Outer Lands very different from what you imagined?"

"Honestly, yes. They are."

Najin looked up at the sky. He could no longer feel pure admiration for the stars shining in that night sky. As Merlin had said, they looked like selfish stars too busy protecting themselves. At the very least, they seemed far removed from heroes.

Perhaps he sensed something in Najin's eyes. The Helmeted Knight spoke quietly.

"Not all the stars in that night sky were like that. They weren't all like that from the beginning."

He looked up at the sky as he spoke.

"We came here because we felt we could become anything. Here, we dreamed of becoming heroes. Well, we were all people who'd made something of ourselves on the continent, weren't we? Everyone must have set foot in these Outer Lands with grand dreams."

Some had been driven into this land because their lifespans were at an end. There were surely many such people. But the Helmeted Knight said that even they had harbored dreams.

"Long ago, King Arthur pushed the Boundary of the Outer Lands far outward, crossed the Outer Lands, and finally reached Camlann. There, he sealed the Witch of the Abyss, who sought to destroy this world. Who doesn't know the life story of that great hero? We know it too. We, too, hoped to become heroes like King Arthur."

They all had.

"We would keep achieving great feats, hang our stars in the sky, and venture farther. Advance and advance... until we stood on the battlefield where King Arthur had stopped. On the stage the Hero King had prepared for us, we would willingly accomplish feats like his. Everyone came to the Outer Lands imagining that."

"But," he said, "reality wasn't so forgiving."

Everyone had thought they would be different. But the Outer Lands thrust reality upon them. They faced calamities that had brought countless heroes to their knees. They encountered walls they could not surmount, no matter what they did. All they could do was discover how great King Arthur had been, and see the gulf between themselves and that Great Hero.

"Groaning before that gulf, countless heroes compromised. They chose to leave this land, where not even death could bring rest, and ascend into the night sky."

"..."

"They simply each arrived at their own answer."

The stars in that night sky had not been selfish from the beginning. They, too, had once been heroes.

"This is a place that thrusts reality upon you. And it won't just happen here. Again and again, the world will thrust reality upon you."

He drew a line at Najin's feet.

"Stop here. Go no farther. Beyond this lies nothing but a worse hell. Have you experienced countless things in the Inner Lands before coming here? There are still more hells here. This place is filled with greater horrors."

This was the path a hero must walk.

"Don't cross the line. Stop. Abandon your ideals and accept reality. You've seen what becomes of those who live by their ideals. Will you truly walk that path? The Outer Lands will ask you that question endlessly."

"Then are you telling me to give up?"

"If I could give up, would I still be here doing this?"

The Helmeted Knight shrugged.

"Well, you have to answer that question yourself. No one else can answer it for you."

He continued.

"Think it over. What is right and what is wrong. How you will advance. How far you will hold to your ideals, and how far you will compromise. Never stop wrestling with it."

Najin looked at the line the Helmeted Knight had drawn at his feet. A line. Don't cross the line. Stop here. Najin had heard words like those more times than he could count.

["Don't cross the line."]

["Live with what you're given."]

That was what Ivan had said.

["You think you'll be different? You're just like us. The people who fell down here had dreams too. You think everyone was like this from the start? We too, even we, like this..."]

That was what Hakan the Junkie had shouted.

It had not been only those two. Countless people in the underground city had told Najin similar things. It wasn't as though we wanted to be like this. Ideals soar high, but reality is heavy. The weight of reality shackled to our ankles is too great for us to reach the lofty sky; we can only sink.

In the end, you'll turn out just like us.

Najin looked out over the Outer Lands. He felt a sense of déjà vu in this land. A place where things driven out of the continent and discarded piled up. A place like a landfill. It resembled the place where Najin had begun. Even the presence of people who dreamed in an abandoned place was the same.

The line drawn before him.

["Let me correct myself, Najin."]

Looking at that line, Najin smiled without thinking.

["Cross the line."]

["Reach for places beyond your grasp. Punch the bastards muttering that you should know your place right in the face. Only you know how far you can go."]

Najin rose to his feet.

["Set your sights high and run. Rise high, higher than anyone else. You have the talent for it. Believe in your talent."]

["And when you stand at the highest point, shout it out."]

["That I, Ivan, was there at your beginning."]

Najin took a step over the line the Helmeted Knight had drawn. With a light laugh, he said,

"I don't think I need to think it over."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I already found my answer a long time ago."

Najin tapped the sword at his waist as he spoke.

"Did you say you lost to the Emperor of Revelry?"

"... It wasn't a complete defeat. I put a hole in that Knight of Revelry bastard's eye, and a nice hole in the Emperor of Revelry's heart too."

"But you lost all the same, didn't you?"

"Tsk."

"I'm going to win."

The Helmeted Knight fell silent.

"The more I hear, the more I feel that this devil called the Emperor of Revelry and I can't coexist. She should've kept her atrocities within reason, shouldn't she?"

"You do know the Emperor of Revelry is a Constellation with ten stars?"

"What's so impressive about that?"

Najin shrugged.

"I'm nineteen, and I have three stars. I don't think I'll lose to a devil who's lived for hundreds of years and only managed to collect ten."

At that answer, the Helmeted Knight burst out laughing. Unperturbed by his laughter, Najin continued.

"So, to improve my chances even a little..."

Najin drew his sword.

"Get back to teaching me swordsmanship."

"Very well. I'll work you to within an inch of your life."

The Helmeted Knight raised his sword and beckoned.

"Follow me. Today will be harder."