As promised—perhaps even beyond what he had promised—the Helmeted Knight devoted himself to teaching Najin the sword. His enthusiasm was a far cry from the reluctance he had shown when Najin first proposed it.

“Your swordsmanship specializes in fighting humans. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a strength you can build on. On the continent, that alone would have been enough. You wouldn’t have had much occasion to fight immortals, monsters, or beasts there.”

He pointed at Najin’s sword as he spoke.

“But the Outer Lands are different. Most things here possess some form of immortality. The place is crawling with creatures that won’t die just because you cut off their heads or stab them through the chest. So what should you do?”

“Try harder to cut them?”

“Well, put simply, yes. I’ll teach you how to try harder—in other words, how you need to cut.”

How to deal with those who would not die.

“Sever the spine. Even if they regenerate, a severed spine will leave them helpless. Monster or human, it makes no difference. The most effective approach is to disable them that way, then hack them to pieces.”

The Helmeted Knight taught Najin how to neutralize their healing abilities. Nor did he stop at explaining. He took Najin to places inhabited by the Outer Lands’ magical beasts and demonstrated.

“Try it.”

“Like this?”

“No, strike deeper. Think of it not as felling a tree, but cutting out its roots entirely.”

“Oh. Like this?”

“Well, yes, that’s right. But you understood it after just a few words? I think it took me over a month to grasp that.”

“I’ve always been rather gifted.”

“Tsk...”

Demonstration, imitation, correction.

For a time, the Helmeted Knight passed on the fundamentals of the sword to Najin. Once those foundations were sufficiently solid, he began discussing swordsmanship.

“The swordsmanship I use seems to have become the basis for modern imperial swordsmanship. Show me the imperial swordsmanship you know.”

Najin demonstrated. After watching him for a while, the Helmeted Knight spoke.

“They’ve removed the parts that are difficult to imitate and rebuilt it around what’s easier to learn. Whoever did this was remarkably skilled. Do you know who created it?”

“It isn’t explicitly documented... but there is someone who has been teaching the imperial knights for the past hundred years or so.”

“Who?”

“Sir Gerd.”

“That fellow?”

He sounded somewhat surprised. Then he gave a disbelieving chuckle.

“Right. I did teach him the sword, too. I never imagined he’d still be putting it to use.”

“You were Sir Gerd’s master?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. He was using some bizarre swordsmanship that didn’t even suit him, so I told him to use this instead of that pathetic rubbish and taught him for a little while. That’s all.”

“Well, that aside.”

Muttering those words, the Helmeted Knight raised his sword.

“You seem to have learned all the fundamentals. Starting today, I’ll teach you imperial swordsmanship. Including every advanced technique Gerd left out of it.”

“I’m looking forward to that.”

“It won’t be easy to learn. Whatever you may think of me, this swordsmanship contains the essence of my three hundred years.”

Swordsmanship he had devoted his entire life to perfecting. He swung his sword to pass it on to Najin, who watched quietly. Then a thought occurred to him.

‘I’ve seen that swordsmanship somewhere before, haven’t I?’

But his memory would not extend to where, or precisely who had used it. Given his normally excellent memory, that was strange. It felt as though something was preventing him from connecting the two.

2.

“What’s that ring? Were you married or something?”

While they rested after the day’s training, the Helmeted Knight pointed at the ring Najin held. He usually wore it on a chain tucked inside his clothes, but before going to sleep, he would take it out and hold it for a few minutes.

He could feel its warmth when he held it.

“No. It was a gift.”

“A ring as a gift? Do you have a fiancée?”

“Someone did confess her feelings to me.”

“... Tsk.”

The Helmeted Knight’s voice instantly soured.

“Precocious little brat.”

“Exactly!”

For once, Merlin agreed with the Helmeted Knight, nodding vigorously. Najin shrugged.

“Isn’t nineteen old enough to be an adult?”

“I’m three hundred.”

“Have you never been in a relationship?”

“Now look here. You seem to be underestimating me. In my day, one glance from me would send even the most celebrated young ladies at a ball into fits. If a lady danced with me even once, she was guaranteed to be the belle of that ball.”

“Wow. Really.”

“You don’t sound remotely convinced.”

He sighed.

“I did have one relationship.”

The Helmeted Knight poked at the campfire as he spoke.

“Have you heard of Serena Pendragon?”

“Serena Pendragon... Wasn’t she a traitor? The one who persuaded the pillars of the Empire to try to overthrow it?”

“Yes. That insolent princess was my first love. We were lovers, too. Quite passionately.”

“Were you a traitor as well?”

“If only I had been, I wouldn’t be here doing this.”

He let out a long breath.

“I put the Empire on one side of the scales and her on the other. The result was clear. I was a hero of the Empire. I had to be. What else could I do? I had to give one of them up.”

He spoke calmly.

“I killed Serena with my own hands. That was my first and last romance.”

“You certainly had a fiery romance.”

“Didn’t I? Do you know what the astonishing part was? Just before she died, that damned princess whispered in my ear that she loved me. What a truly nasty woman. I’d believed she was trying to use me, that it had all been a lie... but apparently that wasn’t the case.”

He chuckled.

“Well, having a romance at least once is worthwhile. I hope things work out for you and the young lady who gave you that ring.”

“We aren’t together.”

“What? She gave you a ring and confessed her feelings, and you aren’t together? Listen, boy. Don’t you know what happens when you toy with a lady’s heart?”

“That’s not it. I’ve just put off answering...”

“Ha! You little bastard!”

Najin looked thoroughly fed up as the Helmeted Knight launched into a lecture on romance.

“I simply haven’t made up my mind yet. I don’t even know what it feels like to like someone. Wouldn’t accepting her feelings be disrespectful to her, too?”

“Aren’t you nineteen?”

“I am.”

“Shouldn’t you know all about that by your age?”

“I spent a long time living somewhere rather unusual, so I’m not very good with relationships.”

“Where did you live?”

“Do you know of the underground city of Atman?”

The underground city of Atman.

At those words, the Helmeted Knight tilted his head.

“That still exists?”

“Pardon?”

“Strange. It shouldn’t.”

“It was still there, intact. I left it just two years ago.”

“Isn’t that where the Hafen River flows?”

“Yes, that’s the place. Where the Order of Star Radiance’s main church stands.”

“That city caused plenty of controversy in our day, too. Why go to all that trouble instead of just killing them? People kept asking whether something was being hidden there. So we looked into it, and what do you know? They really had hidden something.”

‘Hidden something?’

Najin narrowed his eyes while the Helmeted Knight poked at the campfire.

“What was it?”

“A corpse.”

“Pardon?”

“They’d buried a star’s corpse there. I don’t know whose. It had eight stars, so it was certainly a Constellation, but we couldn’t tell exactly which one. Still, they seemed to be planning to do something with it, so the decision was made to dismantle the city...”

He tapped his helmet.

“As I remember it, that was roughly two hundred years ago. I naturally assumed they’d wiped out the city. I wonder why it’s still there.”

“If there was a star’s corpse... where was it? The landfill? The underground sectors?”

“I don’t know that much. I wasn’t involved in the operation.”

Najin had never heard this before, despite having investigated the underground city in considerable detail after leaving it. He would have to look into it once he returned to the continent, he thought.

“Well... if you lived in the underground city, you must have had a hard life. There’s no sky there, is there?”

“A ceiling blocks it.”

“If you were born and raised somewhere like that, your yearning for the stars certainly makes sense.”

The Helmeted Knight smiled bitterly.

“How ironic. You long for the stars more than anyone because you were born somewhere you couldn’t see them.”

“They say people desire what they can’t have, don’t they? I must have wanted the stars so badly because it seemed I could never have them, no matter what I did.”

“People desire what they can’t have...”

Perhaps those words had struck a chord. The Helmeted Knight repeated them to himself for a while, then gave a laugh like a breath he could no longer hold in.

“Yes. That’s true.”

What one could not have. Or what one could no longer have. Turning those words over in his mind, he caressed the sword secured at his waist.

3.

While learning the sword from the Helmeted Knight, Najin traveled throughout the Outer Lands. The knight encouraged him to see, experience, and learn as much as possible, and Najin followed his lead.

All those lessons were undoubtedly useful. New knowledge born of experience, and techniques born of that knowledge, steadily accumulated within him.

Then, one day during their travels through the Outer Lands...

“Well, who do we have here? The cowardly fugitive himself.”

While receiving a sword lesson from the Helmeted Knight, Najin encountered a man. His appearance was wretched. His untrimmed beard was shaggy, and his clothes were little better than rags.

The only thing about him that was not shabby was the sword at his waist. Stroking its hilt, he looked at the Helmeted Knight.

“A half-wit who can no longer even wield a sword presumes to teach someone else? The stars above must be laughing.”

“... Bernstein.”

“Don’t you speak my name with that filthy mouth, you monster.”

The man called Bernstein glared at him.

“My name isn’t so cheap that one of the Lost wandering this land because he cannot die—a mere monster—has any right to speak it.”

Bernstein ground his teeth. Flames flickered in his eyes, and profound anger filled his cracked voice.

“Why are you alive? Why is one of the Lost who should have died still breathing? Were you that desperate to live? So desperate you couldn’t give up even after what happened to you?”

“...”

“As if losing your entire order, suffering defeat, and kneeling before a devil weren’t enough, you actually fled and clung to life? You’ve dragged the Empire’s name through the dirt. I would have killed myself long ago. What, are you too frightened to do that?”

The Helmeted Knight remained silent.

Bernstein’s insults continued for some time, and the knight let them continue, as though he believed the man had that right.

“Seeing a monstrous bastard who abandoned knighthood strutting around in a helmet, pretending he’s still a knight—it’s laughable.”

“You sure do talk a fucking lot.”

“What?”

Of course, none of that was Najin’s concern.

At his words, Bernstein’s head whipped around. Meeting his furious glare, Najin spoke.

“Are you deaf? I said you talk a fucking lot.”

Najin did not remain silent.

He spoke in the Helmeted Knight’s stead. The knight tried to raise an arm, but Najin ignored him and stepped forward.

“You throw the word ‘knight’ around so freely. You must know a great deal about knighthood.”

“More than that monster does. I am a knight myself.”

“Then you must know the precepts of a knight, too.”

Najin slipped a finger between his wrist and his glove, then pulled the glove off and held it in his hand.

“An insult is washed away through a duel. Honor and pride are proven by the sword. I believe I’ve been insulted, so I’ll have to wash it away. My ears feel filthy.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“This knight’s pupil. An apprentice knight, you could say.”

The Helmeted Knight caught his breath at Najin’s answer.

Though he was teaching Najin many things, including swordsmanship, he had never called himself Najin’s master. Najin knew why he reacted that way.

He must have thought the title did not suit him. That he had no right to presume to teach anyone anything.

But Najin regarded the Helmeted Knight as his master. He had learned much from him. He had asked to be taught and received instruction. That already made the knight his master. And keeping his mouth shut and doing nothing while his master was insulted was no way for a pupil to behave.

SMACK!

The glove Najin hurled made a resounding noise.

“Najin.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“What else could throwing down a glove mean? I’m challenging you to a duel.”

CLANG!

Having given his name, Najin roughly drew his sword. Perhaps expecting him to charge immediately, Bernstein reflexively drew his own. But instead of charging, Najin stood where he was and sneered at him.

“Don’t you even know the precepts? Once I give my name, you’re supposed to give yours. Drawing your sword without even introducing yourself—are you really a knight?”

Bernstein ground his teeth.

“A brat with a clever tongue.”

“So, your name?”

“Bernstein. Sword of the imperial family, Bernstein of the Royal Guard.”

Najin and Bernstein pointed their swords at each other.

“I’ll knock that arrogant pride out of you.”

“You can say anything you like.”

Najin twirled his sword, adjusted his grip, and took his stance.

“I’ll split that mouth open for you.”

You could say anything you liked.

But Najin intended to do more than merely speak. He would move his body and make good on his words. So he swung his sword straight at Bernstein’s jaw.

It was such a clean strike that the watching Helmeted Knight could not help but admire it.