WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 230

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Chairman, Dieta (4)

A duel trial, held at the very heart of the Empire.

With Najin at the center of it, not a single seat in the gallery was empty.

Not just nobles and gossipmongers, either. Knights had come in great numbers, senior officers and household commanders from prominent orders who had made the trip specifically to see the fabled Free Knight's skill with their own eyes.

They sat with arms folded and watched.

Eighteen when he made Sword Seeker. Nineteen when he was granted the title of Free Knight. Now a young man carrying five stars.

None of them truly doubted his ability. How could you doubt someone backed by Sir Gerd, the First Horn of the Empire, and by the Emperor himself? No one had any intention of diminishing accomplishments written into the stars above. But.

Understanding something in your head and genuinely accepting it are two very different things.

Most of Najin's achievements had been made in the Outland.

For knights whose lives had been spent on the continent, what Najin had done in those distant lands was nearly impossible to picture. What was a Forgotten One who had lived for hundreds of years? A beast that devoured stars? A being of Transcendence commanding hundreds of jesters? The images refused to form. It felt like trying to grab at fog.

Knights who had ventured into the Outland even once understood exactly how extraordinary those feats were. Those who hadn't, who had never set foot past the continent's edge, couldn't feel it. The scope of Najin's accomplishments, how great they truly were, simply didn't land.

And so they concluded.

Impressive, certainly. But still a Sword Seeker.

At the end of the day, he occupied the same bracket as them. Surely the gap between Sword Seekers couldn't be that vast. He'd reached the Sprouting threshold, so he was probably upper-tier among them. That was the most generous conclusion they could reach.

Not entirely wrong, as assessments go.

Nor were they looking down on him.

Objectively, Najin had reached Sword Seeker less than two years ago. Calling him upper-tier among Sword Seekers was already generous, a compliment paid in deference to his title.

Four Sword Seekers on the Arbenia side, they'd said? Should make for a decent fight.

A few of the watching knights thought as much. Most people make sense of things within the frame of their own experience. That conclusion felt perfectly natural to them.

And so.

Boom!

The moment the duel began and Guyot slammed into the wall, every one of those eyes snapped wide open.

"What..."

"Just now?"

"Did I miss something? What just happened?"

"I couldn't follow it either."

"What on earth..."

They murmured among themselves, wide-eyed. Something had happened that fell entirely outside their understanding.

Guyot, a knight of Arbenia.

He had reached Sword Seeker over ten years prior, famous for grinding down opponents above his weight class and dragging every fight into a war of attrition. Among knights, he carried the dubious distinction of being the man least anyone wanted to face in a duel.

Toughness. Tenacity. A jaw-locked, relentless refusal to let go.

That was what had made his name. And Guyot had gone down in a single blow. The eyes of the watching knights flickered. Most of them hadn't even been able to track the strike Najin had thrown.

The starting signal dropped.

Almost simultaneously, Guyot was launched like a cannonball into the wall. That was all that remained: the result. Everything between had been cut out clean, as if snipped away with a pair of scissors.

Silence in the upper gallery.

Only those who had been Sword Seekers for a long time, officers from renowned orders who had seen far too many fights, could follow what Najin had done. The moment the match began, Najin had closed in on Guyot. The instant Guyot raised his shield, Najin's sword came up in an upward cut. No special technique. No subtle principle of the sword.

Just basics.

The most fundamental strike imaginable. Yet the force behind it was anything but light. In a single blow, Najin shattered the shield Guyot was so proud of, then used the recoil of his Sword Aura to send him flying into the wall.

All of it in under a second.

"Hah."

A few of the veteran knights let out short, hollow laughs. Some stroked their beards and exhaled with a disbelieving huff. Some shook their heads. Some just nodded. The same thought moved through all of them.

Not a word of that young man's reputation had been exaggerated.

If anything, it had been understated. The rumors surrounding Najin had fallen short rather than gone too far. This was a duel where neither man sought to take the other's life, so Guyot had only ended up slammed into the wall. Had it been a fight to the death...

Dead.

Being able to shatter a shield in one blow meant being able to cleave through one in one blow. In a real battle, from the opening moment, Guyot's head would have been airborne.

Over in an instant, the first duel was done.

Silence settled over the gallery. Najin calmly flicked the tip of his sword and stood waiting, expression flat, eyes cold and still. He watched the Arbenia knights waiting for their turn.

Prove it. That you are knights.

The moment those gazes met, the Arbenia knights understood what that look meant. Standing before them was a Free Knight.

The kind of existence that makes a knight a knight.

The Free Knight was posing a question.

Are you knights?

Then reclaim the honor you lost when your lord was disgraced. Not by enduring. Not by surviving long enough to hand the baton to the next man. Come ready to die. Climb onto that stage and pour everything out.

That's what he demanded of them.

Harsh.

But that's what proof has always required.

Najin's gaze drifted past the waiting knights and settled, naturally, on the figure at the very end.

Knight Commander Griffin.

Only Griffin was looking back at him directly.

The duels continued.

After the first fight, the Arbenia knights changed their approach. Najin's ability had blown clean past anything they had imagined.

"What sort of monster is that man?"

"Watch your tongue. There are ears everywhere."

"No, monster is exactly right. Guyot went down in one hit. I saw it with my own two eyes and I still can't believe it. We know him better than anyone, don't we? We know exactly how stubborn that man is."

"If you mean the one over there foaming at the mouth, yes, we know him well."

"This is insane. What kind of Sword Seeker does something like that? This is just..."

Holt, the next knight in line, shook his head. He wasn't a man who cared much for pride or honor. All he wanted was the comfortable life the Duke's household paid for to stretch on forever.

Their honor as knights had been insulted?

So what.

Honor didn't put coin in his pocket.

With that settled comfortably in his chest, Holt walked out onto the arena floor with no sharpness to his posture. Loose, unhurried, the air of a man who just wanted to wrap things up and go home. If Guyot had held on longer, maybe he could have done something. But...

'If even Guyot goes down in one shot, there's no answer here. Do I really need to bother?'

If he was going to lose anyway, better to lose without getting too roughed up. Stay respectable. Don't make it embarrassing. With that still sitting warm in him, Holt opened his mouth.

"Arbenia's knight, Holt."

"Free Knight, Najin."

Najin's brow furrowed.

He adjusted his grip on his sword with a slow roll of his wrist. The duel began a moment later, but unlike before, Najin didn't move. Sword hanging loose at his side, he just stared Holt down.

'He's telling me to come first.'

After a brief hesitation, Holt charged.

Bang!

He pushed off the ground and came in hard. To the untrained eye, Holt's speed looked fast and his movements looked like full effort. The veteran knights in the gallery clicked their tongues.

"Ruining a perfectly good duel."

Najin felt the same.

He didn't grant Holt the dignity of a proper counter. One sidestep, a tilt of the body, and Holt's thrust slid by. Then his hand shot out and closed around the wrist holding the sword.

Left hand gripping Holt's wrist, he reversed his own sword in his right and swung the pommel like a hammer. The longsword's pommel came down onto Holt's elbow.

"Ugh...!"

A crack. Holt's arm bent the wrong way. As he tried to swallow the sound, Najin kicked him in the stomach. Disarmed and winded, Holt rolled gracelessly across the arena floor.

......

Najin, expressionless, tossed the dropped sword back to Holt's feet.

Pick up your sword and stand up.

Or walk out of this arena yourself.

His stare made it plain: he had no intention of respecting someone who hadn't come to this duel as a knight. Holt, clutching his bent arm, ground his teeth, picked the sword up from the ground, and charged again.

Crack. Crunch. Smash.

Every limb broken, Holt was carried out.

"Arbenia's knight, Konef."

The next knight trembled but bit down and came at Najin anyway. There was real resolve in him, a clear will to land at least one blow, and so Najin answered that resolve with one clean strike.

Three bouts, over in the blink of an eye.

One opponent left.

Griffin stepped onto the stage.

Griffin had fought Najin before.

Back when Najin was still a Sword Expert, before he'd made Sword Seeker, Griffin had faced him. That encounter was still vivid, clear in every detail.

And so was the exchange they'd had.

「I won't ask your name.」

That was what Griffin had said to Najin then.

「The Duke has ordered me to kill you. I am simply carrying out that order.」

「Even so, I say this.」

「Because I respect your choice.」

He had been on a mission at the time, yet the boy standing in his path had stirred no anger in him, no irritation. That feeling hadn't changed even now, after the mission had failed and he'd borne the consequences. The will that boy had shown, the choice he had made, both deserved to be respected.

There had simply been a difference in their positions.

Time had passed. A rematch had come. Griffin steadied his breathing. That unremarkable boy had become a young man whose name rang across the entire continent. To the Free Knight, Griffin spoke.

"I am Griffin."

He struck his chest with a thud.

"Knight Commander Griffin, of Arbenia."

"Free Knight, Najin."

Najin returned the greeting with a sword salute.

After the exchange, Griffin pressed his helmet firmly down over his head. The light in his eyes stilled beneath the visor.

The starting signal dropped.

Without hesitation, Griffin unleashed the most powerful technique he possessed.

Thud!

The foot he planted was the deep root of an ancient tree. His body, anchored to the earth, was the trunk. The sword raised toward the sky was a reaching branch.

The swordsmanship of war hero Arta Trigadian.

Red Sword Aura filled with the Imagery of a thornbush flooded the stage. No thought of conserving strength, no consideration of limiting his output, no reluctance to bare his techniques before the crowd. None of that crossed his mind.

Only everything he had.

You asked me to prove a knight's honor.

My honor I cannot prove.

For that is determined not by me, but by the lord I serve.

'So what I can show...'

Griffin swung the enormous thornbush through the air.

'Is only my pride.'

At the sight of those waves of thorns crashing in, Najin smiled for the first time since the duels had begun.

Boom.

He stamped the ground.

The Lance of the Crossed Star, driven into the earth and left untouched through all three duels, answered the stamp of his foot and sprang up from the ground into the air.

Snatching the lance and thrusting it forward were one motion. By the time it was in his hand, the technique was already complete.

Ramming Horn.

A storm raged from the spear's tip.

Crash!

Against the raging gale, every last thorn snapped. Red Sword Aura scattered in every direction like the broken branches of a felled tree, and Najin flung the spear upward and began to run at Griffin.

"Hrgh..."

Swept by the gale and slammed to the ground, Griffin rolled and came back to his feet. Gritting his teeth, he rooted himself into the earth once more and drew out his Sword Aura.

The same situation as that old duel.

But the positions were reversed.

Back then, Najin was the one taking on the Challenge of the impossible. Now it was Griffin. Gone was the usual stillness, the composed, rigid manner he always carried. Griffin let out a fierce roar and swung his sword at Najin.

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