Cambria, the City of Opportunity.

Inside the carriage bound for Cambria, Najin watched the scenery drift past. Sunlight shone down languidly. Perhaps because autumn was giving way to winter, the streets were filled with fallen leaves of every color.

'Are those fallen leaves?'

“Hmm? What do you... Oh.”

Only belatedly understanding Najin's murmur, Merlin trailed off. Having lived his entire life in the underground city of Atman, he could never have experienced autumn, nor could he have seen fallen leaves.

Najin gazed silently out the window.

Everything was new. Just when he thought he had grown accustomed to something, another unfamiliar sight appeared. The blue sky, the green fields, the colorful fallen leaves... The surface was awash in colors he had never seen in the underground city.

It was wondrous, and beautiful.

For a while, those unfamiliar sights colored the boy's eyes. Then a cold sunset filled them. His sunset-colored eyes narrowed. Clearly, wandering the outside world had been enjoyable.

'Enough to let my guard down like that.'

Najin recalled his battle with Kaufman, the moment the man had ambushed him. The slightest mistake would have killed him on the spot. Yet at the same time, he thought he had grown far too relaxed.

He had forgotten that he had pursuers, that he could be targeted anywhere, at any time.

Busy growing accustomed to unfamiliar things, he had forgotten what mattered most. Ivan would surely have clicked his tongue if he had been watching. He should never have let that happen. He should never have lowered his guard in the first place. Najin instinctively knew that the vigilance he had possessed upon first leaving the underground city had faded considerably.

'It's ridiculous.'

Najin smiled bitterly.

'Here I am taking a breather when I haven't even become a Seeker, let alone a Sword Master.'

Merlin fell silent.

She told him that wasn't true, but her voice did not reach him. The image of himself pierced by Kaufman's arrow, and...

Yuel Razian. The sight of the order's executioner raising her sword was seared into his mind.

When Yuel Razian unleashed her killing intent, Najin had seen a vision of his own head being severed. His senses, sharpened to their limit, had shown him the future. Even after seeing it, naturally, he had no way to respond.

Death. Such a simple death.

The battle with Kaufman. His encounter with Yuel.

Those events were enough to remind Najin of what he had forgotten: the very simple fact that his head could fall anywhere, at any time.

“Hah...”

Najin exhaled at length.

'I've heard the Order of Star Radiance also has someone as powerful as a Sword Master, called the Lighthouse Keeper.'

“Yes, it does.”

'Will that person come to kill me?'

“No. That's impossible.”

Merlin's answer was categorical.

“The Lighthouse Keeper can't make a move. That person is a special being, so the moment they act, the stars take notice. The moment the Lighthouse Keeper moves, the entire world will be watching you both.”

And if that happened, Merlin said...

“The moment you draw Excalibur there, everything turns upside down. The Order of Star Radiance is trying to kill Excalibur's wielder. There's no way its patron deity doesn't understand the implications of that single sentence.”

The Lighthouse Keeper was akin to an apostle of the Lighthouse, the ruler of the Order of Star Radiance. The moment it was discovered that the order's patron deity had sent her apostle to crush Excalibur's wielder...

“The stars would have grounds to intervene.”

“The conditions for a Constellation's descent are quite complicated, but in this case, the conditions allowing stars to descend into the inland would be met.”

The stars' intervention.

It meant making an enemy of the entire world.

“That wouldn't be good for you or the Order of Star Radiance. That place would immediately become the Battlefield of Stars.”

A war between stars seeking to kill Arthur's successor and stars seeking to protect him.

“There are no winners in that war.”

“Things might be different once you become a Sword Master and possess a star... But that's how it stands now.”

Both Najin and the order would simply be destroyed.

“But the order would fall first.”

One thing was certain: the order's destruction would precede Najin's. Losing everything she had built—Merlin said the Lighthouse would never choose such a path.

“I don't really understand this situation in the first place.”

“I've assumed those bastards in the order were acting on their own, but by this point, that bitch must know too, right?”

She knew, yet still involved herself in this affair.

Merlin gave a disbelieving laugh at that.

“Even blaming it on her subordinates acting without permission and disposing of them wouldn't be enough at this point. Why would she do this?”

“Does she intend to pick a fight with the Round Table? An idiot with a mere eight stars, obsessed with playing at religion? The Lighthouse I know isn't a star with that much nerve.”

Najin, who had been listening closely, spoke.

'In the end, what I have to do is the same.'

His goal remained unchanged.

Apart from the Lighthouse Keeper, the order had no other fighters at the level of a Sword Master. Those who remained were merely comparable to Sword Seekers.

Hadn't Ivan said as much from the start?

Once he became a Sword Seeker, even the order would be unable to ignore him and would agree to negotiate. Of course, the situation had changed somewhat, but the essence of the plan remained the same.

'Become a Sword Seeker.'

Not stop at grasping a fragment, but advance beyond it.

To become a Sword Seeker, he had to completely dismantle and reconstruct his sword aura. Only through that process could he obtain sword aura in the form best suited to containing his mental image.

Where did he stand now?

He had reached a fragment of that realm, but had yet to reconstruct his sword aura. Against a fully realized Sword Seeker, he was at a disadvantage. He could hardly count on another lucky outcome like his battle with Kaufman Theosis.

「I am only the beginning.」

「They'll keep coming for you until you're sick of it.」

Kaufman had certainly said that.

More people would come after his head, and sometimes he would have to prepare to fight several at once. There was a good chance their ranks would include fighters as strong as Kaufman, or stronger.

He could not go on like this.

He had to become a Sword Seeker.

Even a day sooner.

2.

Red-rank adventurers enjoyed a great many benefits, including private training rooms.

These rooms were operated under the Central Guild's management. Available only to adventurers of Red rank or higher, they were so well equipped that even knights serving noble houses were widely rumored to covet them.

And, naturally, it was difficult to find anywhere else to train freely without worrying about prying eyes or exposing one's techniques. It was all too common to discover a suitable forest, only for it to become a popular training spot crowded with people a few days later.

Thus, adventurers of Red rank and above often used the private training rooms, chatting in the corridor that doubled as a lounge, lined with the rooms' doors.

“So, as I was saying...”

Today, the adventurers gathered in the lounge had their eyes fixed on one particular training room. They continued chatting, stealing glances at its firmly shut door.

“He's been at it since yesterday?”

“Yesterday? My friend, he's been doing that for a whole week.”

A middle-aged adventurer whose back was covered in scars gave a disbelieving laugh.

“You know I use the training rooms at dawn, right?”

“Of course. You've been saying you're going to tear up your muscles before heading to work at your mercenary company for years now.”

“Right. So normally, when I come here at dawn, I'm the first one in. The others don't start trickling in for another hour or two.”

“And?”

“And for the past week, that young man's always been here before me. That room's always lit. Once, I came an hour earlier, and he was still here.”

An adventurer listening in joined the conversation.

“He's at it at night too, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You wouldn't believe the banging and smashing. I use the room next door, and the noise is killing me. Whatever he's swinging around so violently, just hearing it gives me the chills.”

There was no need to ask what the noise sounded like. They could hear it even now. The sounds of something being smashed and split apart rang endlessly from beyond the firmly closed door, despite the soundproofing.

“He's been doing that for a week?”

“Seems like it.”

“Now that's stubborn dedication.”

The adventurers marveled.

They, too, were accomplished fighters who understood what it meant to immerse themselves in training. Occasionally, when they wanted to clear their heads, they would shut themselves in a training room for a day or two...

But they did not normally do so for an entire week.

Much less with such ferocity.

“His name...”

“Ivan, wasn't it?”

“The one who recently reached Red rank...”

The adventurers mulled over the name of the young man using that room. He had recently been making a name for himself in the adventurers' city, so there was no one who hadn't heard of Ivan.

Then why was he doing this?

“Why's he training like that?”

“Wouldn't it be because of that thing recently? You know.”

“Kaufman...”

Kaufman Theosis, the White Horn-ranked adventurer.

While Cambria was in an uproar over the announcement of his death, Ivan, who had participated in the same mission, had shut himself in a training room for over a week.

The adventurers could only vaguely surmise that Kaufman's death had affected him deeply.

CREEEAK.

As they whispered among themselves, the training room's door opened. A wave of hot air rushed out, and Najin stepped outside. Wiping away his sweat, he filled his empty water bottle and went straight back inside.

In the process, the adventurers saw beyond the open door, into Najin's training room.

It was filled with sword marks.

Traces of frenzied sword swings covered the room. The ceiling, the walls, the floor—and the central wall used as a target had been deeply gouged.

Considering that the staff cleaned and repaired the rooms every day, and that the central wall was built from ore famed for its hardness, it was truly astonishing. The adventurers fell silent for a moment, at a loss for words.

At last, someone spoke.

“He's insane.”

No one disagreed.

The sight beyond that open door was certainly not something a sane person would have created.

3.

Late in the evening—only after midnight did Najin finally leave the training room. Walking through the cold air, he thought he could eat something light, get a little sleep, and head out again.

Listening to his internal monologue, Merlin could hold back no longer.

“Enough already. How long are you going to keep this up?”

'I have to become a Sword Seeker, don't I?'

“I know. I know, but...”

Merlin sighed.

“I understand you're in a hurry, but this isn't helping. You can't reach that realm by training so mindlessly.”

'It must still help somewhat.'

“This is driving me insane.”

Even as he walked home and spoke with Merlin, Najin kept every nerve honed to an endlessly sharp edge.

So he could respond immediately if an assassin came.

He held his sword close not only in the training room, but even while sleeping... In effect, he was getting no proper rest.

It was just like when he had first left the underground city.

Seeing his once-relaxed vigilance surge even higher than it had been then, Merlin clicked her tongue. At this rate, he would break. But this was not a habit that could be corrected in a day or two.

Najin.

The boy born and raised in the underground city.

The nature of a hound raised in the alleys where children abandoned a second time lived, within an underground city where those already discarded were cast down, did not easily disappear.

He had been the same while working as Ivan's hound. A trivial mistake. A threat to his life. Approaching death. Whenever he experienced such things, Najin would drive his body almost pathologically hard, honing his senses to a razor's edge.

Because that had kept him alive.

Because it had enabled him to defeat stronger foes.

Those intense experiences from his childhood never left his body. He might forget them for a while, but he could not let them go. Watching the memories flashing through Najin's mind, Merlin sighed.

CLINK.

Still clutching his sword, Najin caught some sleep. As soon as he woke in the early dawn, he headed straight for the training room.

“Busy already, before the sun's even up.”

Najin stopped walking.

The dawn streets were still dark, the sun yet to rise.

“You certainly make it hard to see you.”

Someone sat on a bench outside the training rooms. She stood and pulled back the hood she had worn low over her face. Light brown hair fluttered in the wind.

“Honestly, would it hurt to come and see me first once in a while? I told you to have a safe trip, didn't I? Then surely you could come by when you get back, just to tell me you made it home safely.”

Grumbling, she approached, grinding the fallen leaves beneath her feet. Stopping in front of Najin, she half closed her bright yellow eyes.

“Don't you think so, Najin?”

She whispered his name after making sure no one was around.

“What brings you here so early? Trading Company—”

“My name.”

“... Dieta.”

“Do I need a special reason to stop by? It's not as if we're mere acquaintances.”

Dieta shrugged.

“It's nothing much.”

She took Najin's arm and tugged him along.

“Come somewhere with me.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, come with me.”

Dieta insistently pulled him by the arm. Though he could easily have shaken her off, Najin could not bring himself to do so. There was a carriage waiting where she led him.

Standing before it, Dieta twirled her hair around her index finger.

“... I'm asking you on a date.”

Apparently embarrassed even by her own words, her face had turned bright red.