A pillar of ice reached all the way into the sky.

To be precise, it was shaped more like an iceberg than a pillar, with an unevenly broken surface and columns of ice jutting up at angles.

An ordinary human would have struggled to climb those pillars and that iceberg, but not Najin. For someone who could run up nearly vertical walls, a slope like that was no different from level ground.

Najin accelerated the instant his foot struck a slanting pillar of ice. Pushing off the ice and breaking into a run, he raised his head. His gaze settled on Ladon, frozen at the iceberg's summit.

Roughly half of Ladon's body was encased in ice. The entire iceberg shook whenever the dragon moved, violently shaking frost from his body. Feeling those tremors through the soles of his feet, Najin picked up speed.

ROOOOAR!

Ladon opened his maw with a hideous roar as he shook himself. He was preparing to unleash his Breath. But with cold filling the air and ice clinging to his mouth, the flames gathering inside were small.

The moment fire poured from that mouth—no, a beat before it—Najin made his decision. He thrust his longsword into its scabbard and gripped his spear with both hands. Then, rather than dodge, he leaped straight into the oncoming flames.

The Breath was weaker than before.

The protective barrier Merlin had made for him was still intact.

He could break straight through this. That was Najin's judgment. Stopping to sweep the Breath aside would only waste time. Had the Helmeted Knight been there, he would surely have chided him: "How can you call yourself a knight of the Order of the Golden Horn if you can't even break through this?"

'He'd be right.'

Charge instead of evade. When danger approached, the Order of the Golden Horn broke through it head-on. Najin sprinted with his cross-star spear leveled.

A lance charge.

There was no need for a warhorse. With superhuman leg strength, one could execute a lance charge without riding a horse.

WHOOOOSH!

His vision turned scarlet, but Najin paid it no mind. Steam rose from his body. Merlin's protective barrier peeled away, and flames caught on his body, but he paid that no mind either.

WHOOMPH!

Breaking through the Breath, Najin spun on the spot and swept his spear in a wide arc. The resulting blast of wind stripped the flames from his body. But that movement was not merely to shake off the fire. Carrying all the momentum of his spin into the spear, Najin hurled it.

WHIIIIISH!

The cross-star spear pierced the enormous chunks of ice collapsing and falling in the wake of Ladon's rampage. Najin ran along the path of the spear as it shot forward. Ladon, however, was not about to leave him alone.

Spreading his ice-encrusted wings with a snap, Ladon let out a monstrous cry. As if answering it, his scales shot out like arrows. Dozens, hundreds of scales, each the size of a human forearm, hurtled toward Najin.

With a clang, Najin drew his sword as he ran and swung it without slowing in the slightest.

Breakthrough.

His third star shone. He was charging straight toward an enemy, advancing while batting aside its attacks. With circumstances resembling those in which he had earned it, Najin's star burned all the brighter.

『Only head-on.』

Starlight pushed Najin forward from behind. When he thought he had taken one step, he had already taken two. The sudden increase in speed startled him, but he quickly adapted and swung his sword.

Advancing as he deflected the scales, Najin spotted the cross-star spear he had thrown earlier. Losing speed, it was slowly falling in an arc. He swept his sword wide one last time to knock away the scales, then reached for the falling spear.

He caught it firmly and twisted his body. Spinning once on the spot, he imparted that rotation to the spear. With a heavy thud, he planted his foot and thrust the spear forward, carrying that momentum with it.

Battering Ram.

The chunks of ice and feathers falling toward Najin were caught in the gale and shattered. A straight path opened ahead. Now, at most, only a few dozen meters separated him from Ladon.

Najin let out a long breath and steadied his breathing.

White mist streamed from his mouth as his lips curled upward. Ladon, who had torn away nearly all the ice clinging to his body, glared back with slit, bestial pupils.

He was within reach of Najin's sword—and Najin was within reach of Ladon's sweeping tail and claws.

The moment Najin adjusted his grip on his sword, Ladon roared and slammed down on the iceberg holding him captive. As cracks spread through it and fragments flew, he swept his arm across them, launching the chunks of ice toward Najin. Hurling everything in sight, Ladon began to move.

CRAAACK...

Cracks spread through the iceberg, and the ground shook each time Ladon struck it. That was what a dragon was: a being like a natural disaster, shaking the ground and setting the land ablaze with every movement.

Najin did not shrink in the slightest before such a being. He was not yet a transcendent being, but if he meant to reach transcendence, he could not afford to fear a mere disaster.

2.

Violet gazed into the distance.

There stood an iceberg towering into the sky, and on it, a young man clashing with a dragon. The young man did not flinch before the dragon, whose every movement shook the earth.

He shattered the chunks of ice Ladon hurled, cleaved the flames the dragon spewed with his sword, and charged toward him while dodging the tail that lashed like a whip.

SLAAASH!

He swung his sword, stripping away the dragon's scales and drawing blood. For a human, it would have amounted to a little blood seeping from a fingertip, but Ladon seemed unable to tolerate the fact that he was bleeding. He began thrashing all the more violently.

THUNK! THUNK! CRUNCH!

And Najin kept climbing over the dragon's scales, plunging his sword into the base of its wing again and again, as though determined to tear it apart. The insignificantly small human charged endlessly at a dragon dozens of times his size.

Watching him, Violet let out a long, anguished sigh.

"Ah..."

She groaned at the sight of Najin acting as a hero in her place. Each time he bled, she squeezed her eyes shut.

That was the truth of being a hero.

A hero's life was neither glamorous nor beautiful. Quite the opposite. It was miserable, desperate, and unbearably painful. Violet could find neither pleasure nor fulfillment in a life spent sacrificing herself for complete strangers whose faces she did not even know.

She was sick of it. It was exhausting and disillusioning.

Overcome herself and attain transcendence on a battlefield where her life was at stake? Temper herself by fighting powerful foes? What did any of that mean? Did she have to overcome it? What need was there to surmount an enormous wall, crashing against it over and over, breaking herself again and again?

It was nothing but pain. All of it. Every last bit of it.

She wanted to quit it all.

'Why do I have to sacrifice myself? Why do I have to protect these people? Why me? Why should I throw away my whole life and sacrifice myself for people I don't even know?'

She had those thoughts dozens of times a day.

That was why the very fact that people called her a hero filled Violet with disillusionment. How could someone like her be a hero?

'All heroes are lunatics.'

Even as she said it, Violet knew. Heroes were noble, beautiful people. Unlike a selfish, worldly person like her, they were pure and radiant through and through.

And so the title of hero did not suit her.

'I'm not a hero. I can't be one.'

Just as Violet was about to look away, a star flashed in the sky.

Turning her gaze as though drawn by its light, she saw Najin, still charging toward the dragon. His star shone all the more fiercely, as though telling her not to avert her eyes, but to look straight at him.

"..."

A small human fought against a dragon.

As she continued to watch, Violet felt a strange emotion. The way Najin fought was little different from how she herself had fought.

He bled and was thrown off, but quickly pulled himself together and charged at Ladon again. Against a dragon so tough, durable, and enormous, what mattered was not one powerful blow, but the steady accumulation of damage.

And as she watched him, she thought...

He truly looked like a hero.

Charging without retreat against a being dozens of times his size, he was more than worthy of being called a hero. The fact that she herself had done the same felt utterly unfamiliar to Violet.

["Do you know what the world calls someone who does good despite having no duty, no reason to do so?"]

The question Najin had asked.

["A hero. A knight, too."]

His voice echoed in Violet's ears.

["Aren't you already a hero?"]

["Denying it won't change that fact."]

Violet turned her gaze.

A sword lay there, carelessly discarded. A sword that had been with her for nearly a hundred years. That utterly loathsome sword lay there.

Violet looked at her hands.

Viola Ordina looked at the sword.

... The human mind is imperfect.

The world permitted the human body to transcend, but not the mind. And so humans agonize. They ask themselves questions and struggle to find answers.

It does not matter whether those answers are wrong or right.

The conclusion they reach for themselves will always be the right answer.

Violet made her choice.

Or perhaps it was Viola Ordina who made her choice.

3.

Ladon's wing was in tatters.

Planting his feet firmly at its base, Najin raised his sword high. Ladon thrashed, but Najin did not fall. With his sword held aloft, he opened his eyes wide.

The Sword of Unfolding Return, which he had learned from Alderan Basaglia.

Alderan had created that swordsmanship to cut what he could not cut. Its essence lay in compressing sword aura onto the blade to the utmost limit, maximizing its cutting power. Najin had never forgotten that essence.

A flash.

The instant the sword's tip gleamed, Najin brought it down. Like splitting a log, his descending blade cut deep into the joint connecting Ladon's wing to his back. Blood spurted like a fountain as Ladon thrashed. Flung off the dragon's back by that rampage, Najin tumbled across the surface below.

He drove his sword into the ice, carving through it as he tried to regain his balance. But the ice, already battered by repeated impacts, collapsed with a loud crack. With nowhere left to plant his feet, Najin dangled from the edge of the iceberg.

The human who had cut halfway through the base of his wing had left himself exposed. As though determined not to miss that opening, Ladon roared and swung a foreleg to smash the ice Najin hung from.

'A shame, but I'll have to drop down and try again...'

Clicking his tongue, Najin decided to let himself fall.

It would take a long time to climb back up, but he could see no way to evade that attack without falling. Just as he was about to pull his sword free of the ice and drop, it happened.

CRASH!

Cracks raced across a pane of glass between Najin and Ladon. Unable to break through the shattered pane, Ladon's foreleg bounced away. As Najin blinked, someone held out a hand.

"Take my hand."

The hand swiftly pulled Najin up.

Back atop the ice, Najin looked at the person who had offered him a hand and smiled without thinking.

"What? Why are you smiling?"

"I was just thinking that you came after all."

"Well, it turned out that way."

Half her hair was snow-white, the other half black.

She shuddered as she looked at Ladon before her.

"Ugh, I really do hate being a hero. How can anyone risk their life fighting something like that? Every single day, at that. No matter how I look at it, it's insane."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. That's why I can hardly believe I did this shit for sixty-seven whole years."

She sighed, letting her sword hang at her side.

"I hate it more than I can say, but..."

There was a look of relief on her face as she continued.

"I do want to retire in style. It is something I've done for sixty-seven years, after all. I'd like to make the ending a good one, at least. Then, when I look back, I can think, 'At least the ending wasn't bad,' can't I?"

Violet looked at Najin.

"What do you think? Is that a bit much? Too self-serving?"

Najin shook his head.

"Not at all. And what if it is self-serving?"

"Right?"

"So, what should I call you? Violet? Or Viola Ordina?"

At the question, Violet smiled and tied her hair into a single ponytail. Wearing it just as she did when she performed, she answered with a light laugh.

"Well, does it really matter which?"