WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Ryuu

Editor: Ilafy

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 174

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About the First Horn (2)

Gerd Isabalt served the Empire for nearly two centuries. He was less a bureaucrat and more a soldier than a knight, prioritizing rules above all else, strictly controlling his emotions and actions.

No one had ever seen Gerd waver, not even when his own daughter and son, alongside other family members, joined the rebels, nor did he show a single sign of wavering when personally forced to execute them.

He’d simply swung his sword in silence—that is the sort of person Gerd was.

If the Lighthouse Keeper of the Starlight Order stood immovable, Gerd was unyielding. Never swaying, never wavering, he had kept his place for a very long time, as he had in the past and as he believed he always would.

Yet he could not remain unmoved in that single moment, for something stood before him that shook his entire life to its core.

Gerd’s eyes trembled. His lips opened and closed repeatedly, struggling to form words. The Empire’s First Pillar, who never faltered, was shaken. Staring at the single slash cut into the floor, that old man slowly raised his gaze to Najin.

“This… how…?” He was unable to form a sentence, managing only scattered words. The Pillar who always spoke with unwavering confidence was gone, replaced by an old swordsman who had just witnessed a sight he had yearned for across many long years.

“How did you… come to know this?” The fury and suspicion he had felt when Najin first uttered “Aldaran” turned to stunned disbelief. No complicated proof was required; no elaborate explanation needed.

Both Gerd and Najin were swordsmen—a swordsman proves himself by the blade. By wielding the Triumph Sword Style, Najin had shown he was qualified to speak of the First Horn.

Only then did the young man reply. “I served a knight out in the Outland, a man who wore a helmet at all times. He called himself Aldaran Vasaglia, the previous First Horn of the Empire…”

He removed the lance slung across his back and planted it into the ground. Tied to the shaft was the banner of the Golden Horn Knights.

“He told me he was the commander of the Golden Horn Knights. I was his squire as well as his student. He was the one who taught me the Triumph Sword. The lance, the banner, and the Triumph Sword you saw serves as my evidence.”

The expression that flashed across Gerd’s face could never be fully captured in words. For a brief moment that might as well have been an eternity to a Sword Master, Gerd finally managed to speak. “He… was alive? He taught you his sword art?”

“Yes.”

“That can’t be. His star fell from the sky so long ago. Every record and memory of him was erased. No constellation could survive such conditions. Even if he had, he’d have been reduced to a mere Forgotten One.”

Gerd struggled to force himself toward rational thought. Logically, everything he said made sense. There should be no way for a person or a constellation to endure when not a trace of them was left in the world, but the contradiction to that conclusion stood right in front of him.

The young man who possessed untainted memories of Aldaran Vasaglia proved Gerd had been wrong.

“Then how do you still remember him, and how can you use the Triumph Sword? I don’t understand. Just… how…?”

“How? He wasn’t a Forgotten One,” Najin said quietly. He gave a faint smile. “Until the very end, he remained a knight.”

“Let me tell you…” Najin continued. “Let me tell you of his final moments.”

Najin sat on a flat rock, coaxing a small campfire to life upon the grass and spoke across the fire, recounting to Gerd how he had met the Helmet Knight, what sort of conversations they had shared, what he had learned from him, and what he had experienced under him.

As Najin’s story went on, Gerd’s composure seemed to settle. That did not mean he felt no emotion—he sometimes laughed, occasionally looked astonished, and other times fell into deep silence.

“So he…” Gerd began.

“Yes?”

“He heard that I’d earned seven stars and was surprised? He said, ‘So the brat’s made it that far’?”

“Yes. He seemed genuinely delighted. Perhaps even a bit proud,” Najin added.

On hearing that, Gerd raised his hand and rubbed at his face without another word. “I see…” he muttered under his breath.

All that time, he had believed Aldaran to be dead. His old mentor, who had left for the Outland, must surely have met an ignoble, pride-shattering end. Such was his assumption; such was his despair.

No one remembered him. Although Aldaran Vasaglia was the Empire’s greatest hero, there were even rumors labeling him a mere rebel. The world wrongly believed Gerd himself had been the hero of the Dawn War, though Gerd knew the truth.

The real hero of the Dawn War was Aldaran Vasaglia; all Gerd had done was tidy up what remained.

For 150 years, he had lived weighed down by guilt at having stolen his mentor’s glory and crushed by the promise that mentor had left behind. He never forgot the Empire’s forgotten hero and spent a century and a half with that memory engraved in his heart.

He could no longer see Aldaran’s star in the sky, nor find any record of him. He knew his mentor had led a certain knightly order, but he couldn’t recall which one. The only memories he retained were that Aldaran Vasaglia was a hero of the Empire and that he wielded the Triumph Sword.

Thus, Gerd devoted his life to the Triumph Sword, determined never to let that exquisite blade art slip away from the world.

“Just once, kid, watch carefully.”

“Look close.”

“This is the Triumph Sword’s decisive technique.”

From that single glimpse in his youth, Gerd tried to replicate what he had seen. Driven by that ambition, he threw himself wholeheartedly into his training—spending 150 years doing so.

“One…” 150 years later, an ordinary-looking young man sat across from him. “Just one favor,” Gerd said. He gazed at the young man and asked, “Would you watch me as I wield my sword? Tell me, candidly, if my movements are correct, if they match his?”

A Sword Master asking a Sword Seeker for advice… He felt no shame in it, only quiet joy. At last, he could compare his answers to the original.

Gerd raised his blade, struck several times in sequence, and then launched into the Triumph Sword’s finishing move. His sword sliced across the single line Najin had gouged in the ground.

The First Horn—Triumph.

With a tearing sound, the turf split. When Gerd finished his final strike, he looked to Najin, eyes silently asking for an answer.

Najin only smiled. The smile said everything: ‘You already know.’

Gerd glanced at the mark he had left. It lined up perfectly with Najin’s own—a flawless match.

“…Ah.” The old man who had once glimpsed that ultimate technique realized his 150 years of effort had not been in vain and finally understood he had solved the problem correctly all along. 150 years after the fact, he held the evidence in his hands.

He laughed and remembered his teacher grinning at him. “So, brat, how was that? Not bad, huh?”

He laughed as though he could not recall the last time he’d felt so unburdened.

‘A hundred and fifty years later, and here you are, giving me the answer.’

When he recognized that his sword had been right all along, he realized he had achieved far more, long before that day, and that realization became a certainty—a confidence—in himself.

“…” Najin looked up unconsciously. Seven stars already shone above Gerd’s tower; an eighth had begun to glow among them.

“I owe you a tremendous debt. One so great I could never repay.”

“This came from your own realization, did it not?” Najin asked.

Gerd shook his head. “I’m the one who is grateful—to you, for granting me enlightenment, for giving my mentor an honorable final duel, for keeping the Triumph Sword alive and passing it on. I’m grateful for all of it.”

The Empire’s First Horn offered Najin a swordsman’s salute. He, who would not bow his head even before the Emperor, lowered his gaze in deference to Najin. “Though my mentor never truly found rest, I suspect his final moments were filled with a certain satisfaction.”

Gerd, paying his respects, clenched his teeth. “That leaves the rest to us, his disciples.”

He had already asked Najin who was responsible for what had happened to his mentor, who had thwarted his mentor’s peaceful end.

“All this time, I suspected there was a constellation wielding the authority of forgetting and incineration hiding in the shadows. I scoured the land for clues but found nothing. A star that erases even the memory of itself leaves scant trail, and it was tied only to Londinel.”

“I had more than enough anger and strength to wield a sword in that fury… but nowhere to swing.”

It was hard to unleash rage blindly with no known target, thus, Gerd’s wrath, lacking a place to strike, had festered deep within for countless years.

“But not anymore.” The old soldier’s banked flames rose to the surface, his gaze no longer dry and instead burning with fury.

“The Carnival King.” He spat out the name as though it tasted foul. Flames roared in his eyes, so fierce it seemed they might consume him and drive him into reckless motion.

Gerd did not let that anger swallow him. He had sat on the Empire’s highest seat for a long time. He was cunning, astute, methodical. He understood that, for vengeance, one needed a cool head more than a hot heart.

“You’ve come to me to ask for my aid in crushing the Carnival King, haven’t you? I’m guessing that was your aim?”

“Yes, precisely.”

“If I’d refused to lend my support, you planned to use your rightful claim?”

“That was the plan, but it appears I won’t have to resort to that.”

“Naturally. I’d do this even without anyone forcing me. This is my duty as someone who holds the title of Empire’s First Horn and bears my own name.”

The Empire’s First Horn declared, “As of this moment, you are under the protection of the Empire. By that, I mean myself, Gerd Isabalt.”

Because Gerd and the Empire were, in a sense, one and the same, it was hardly an exaggeration. Nobody would dare accuse him of arrogance, for the power he wielded outweighed that of most nations.

“So long as your sword points toward the Carnival King, I shall spare no assistance. Even if you act in ways that harm the Empire, I will stand by you, provided it serves the purpose of destroying her.”

Gerd had dedicated everything to the Empire, and now he was prepared to help even if Najin’s actions ran contrary to it. Najin wasn’t so dense as to miss the enormity of that promise.

“Whatever you might be hiding, and whatever you possess, none of it matters. The Empire’s First Pillar does not forget a debt. I do not forsake an oath. Keep that in mind. My tower is always open to you.”

He paused for a brief breath, as though concluding that topic. “Now, let’s talk about how we’ll kill the Carnival King. Gathering information must come first.”

“I’ve tried to look into it, but any relevant data has been largely erased or distorted. It won’t be easy…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Gerd said.

“Huh?”

“You stand before the Empire’s First Pillar.” He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “With a single word, a mere gesture, the entire Empire will start digging. Every scholar and mage in the Empire’s seven towers, every Pillar, will begin collecting every stray scrap of information on the Carnival King. I’ll make sure of it.”

The Carnival King had hidden in the darkness, carefully warping and erasing any record of herself, but Gerd declared that, starting then, he would drag her into the light, out onto a stage from which there could be no escape.

“When we mount her head on a pike before the First Horn’s tower, my mentor will surely be pleased. I very much look forward to that day.”