WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 232

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Chairman, Dieta (6)

The reception room was packed with visitors who'd come to see Najin after the duel. The line stretched down the corridor and out the building doors, because it wasn't just the nobles and enthusiasts who'd watched the fight, knights had come too.

"That was truly a magnificent duel!"

Najin exchanged a few words with each of them.

At first it was mostly nobles, but as the line wore on, the number of knights grew. Knights well into their thirties and forties gazed at Najin with eyes shining like children's and shook his hand.

In some ways, that was only natural.

To a knight, the Free Knight was a goal every one of them had dreamed of at least once. When someone you idolized in childhood suddenly appears in front of you, anyone turns back into a child. Shaking Najin's hand, the knights each recalled a certain saying.

"A Free Knight is the one who makes a knight worthy of the name."

The knights who had watched today's duel truly understood what those words meant. A duel that set the heart ablaze, a duel that brought back the ideals they'd long since forgotten.

"Balthar, commander of the Orleans Knights."

Najin looked at the knight extending a hand to him.

Balthar, commander of the Orleans Knights.

A knight Najin knew well. A knight who had operated along the boundary between the continent and the Outland for several decades, stacking one achievement on top of another. A hundred and some years old this year, if Najin recalled correctly. He shook hands.

"It was a duel that set the heart ablaze. My admiration didn't stop for a single moment. A knight washes away insult through a duel, those were your words, Sir Najin, and I agree with them wholeheartedly."

Balthar gave a deep nod.

Utterly satisfied. That was the only way to describe his expression.

"In particular, that final strike of yours was truly... as a swordsman before anything else, it commanded my respect. How can someone so young wield such a heavy sword? If you don't mind my asking?"

"Of course."

The weight Balthar spoke of was not the physical force of the blow. He was speaking of the years, the conviction, the Imagery embedded in that sword. Najin nodded.

"It's a sword I learned from a knight who wandered the Outland for a hundred and fifty years. My sword, and at the same time, his."

"My, is that so. That fine person would surely be overjoyed to see you now, Sir Najin. It was a splendid sword."

Balthar stroked his beard.

"As the name 'knight' grows cheaper by the day, it is truly fortunate that there are knights like you. Young knights will surely learn something from watching you. They say a Free Knight is the one who makes a knight worthy of the name, but I also think of them as a lighthouse."

"A lighthouse, you say?"

"Indeed. What is a lighthouse? It lights the path in darkness so thick you cannot see your hand in front of your face, a guiding presence that shows the way forward. To knights, you are precisely that kind of lighthouse."

A lighthouse. The image of Eurypylus the Lighthouse Keeper surfaced briefly in his mind, and then Najin smiled.

"To think I would witness a duel this stirring when I'm past a hundred and on my way out. That this worn-out old frame can still beat this loudly, I'm just grateful to feel it at all."

Balthar had called himself worn-out.

To the eye he appeared no older than a man in his thirties or forties, but the age he spoke of was not of the body. He was talking about the spirit, and the erosion that had begun creeping in little by little.

"What are you saying?"

Najin tilted his head, even though he understood perfectly well what was meant.

"Sir Balthar, old? You're still going strong, aren't you?"

"Ha ha! I'm grateful for the kind words, but I am quite old at this point. However I may look, I turn a hundred and thirteen this year. The erosion is settling in, so it seems I'll be heading out to the Outland before long."

"You're being far too modest. Just five years ago, didn't you subjugate a top-ranking demon?"

"Hmm?"

Balthar blinked. He hadn't expected that to come up.

"You know about the Iron Demon subjugation?"

"How could I not? The Shurason subjugation. Your operation, a joint campaign carried out by six knight orders, wasn't it?"

Najin described the Shurason campaign in detail. He mentioned how Balthar had used the terrain to his advantage, how he had used loose earth to bind the demon's Authority before bringing it down, and smiled.

Not empty words. Not flattery.

Najin had idolized knights since childhood, and after leaving the underground city he had sought out the exploits of countless knights. Balthar's story had been among them. Just a few years ago, Najin had been reading those stories and dreaming of knighthood himself, and so every word he said now carried genuine feeling.

"And it wasn't only the Shurason campaign, was it? The manhunt for the demon contractor Gehel, the defense of the trading city Osirim, the dark mage heretic extermination..."

Balthar's eyes went wide. With every operation Najin named, the corner of his mouth twitched. He could barely contain it.

For the Free Knight, the knight among knights, to acknowledge him like this, what knight wouldn't be overjoyed?

"Erosion is not proof of aging. It's the signal that a new adventure is about to begin. So rather than dying, Sir Balthar, aren't you simply standing on the threshold of one?"

"Ha ha ha ha!"

Balthar burst out laughing.

Balthar wasn't a man who laughed easily. The composed, serious knight almost never let his dignity slip, and yet now he slapped his own knee and roared.

"You're turning this old man into a knight all over again. Yes, you're absolutely right. There are people in the Outland who have lived as knights for hundreds of years, and here I am calling myself old over barely a hundred and thirteen? I was thinking about it all wrong."

He gave Najin a salute. A little deeper than when they had first met, and with proper form.

"If we should meet one day in the Outland, I hope to have the honor of fighting by your side."

"You're welcome any time."

After shaking hands, Balthar departed.

A few more knights came and went after him. After a long while the queue finally ended, and Najin rose to his feet. Then he stepped outside.

"Do you have a moment?"

Griffin was standing outside the building.

Najin looked at him and smiled.

"I was wondering when you would come."

"I am Griffin."

Those were his first words.

Najin didn't say something dull like "I know." Griffin had always introduced himself as "Griffin, commander of the Arbenia knight order," but now he had said simply "Griffin."

It meant he had come to speak not as a knight of Arbenia, but as Griffin alone.

"May I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"I would like to ask what Sir Najin, the Free Knight, considers a knight to be."

What is a knight. A question Najin once would have answered without hesitation, but not now. He answered the question with a question.

"What does Sir Griffin consider a knight to be?"

"...I."

Griffin exhaled.

"To me, a knight is a sword that serves its master with absolute loyalty. A sword that does not question the master's decisions, does not doubt them, does not presume to judge, but simply follows orders."

That is not a knight's view of what a knight is.

That is a noble's view.

Griffin knew that too.

"I don't think this is wholly right. But it is what I was taught, and how I have lived. For more than eighty years now."

From fourteen, when he became a squire, to now at ninety-six.

Griffin had lived that way.

"I saw the previous head of the Arbenia family, and the one before that as well. Fine people, both of them. I swore my loyalty to them. That I would protect Arbenia, that I would repay those who took in someone who had been nothing."

"Is that so."

"It is. Beyond right or wrong, I simply decided to live that way."

He looked up at the sky.

"I know that the Arbenia ducal house is on the verge of ruin. That it will not last long, and that the coming collapse is beyond my power to stop."

Even so, he said.

"I will remain a knight of Arbenia until the very end."

Follow the master's will. Do not doubt. Do not judge. Do not resent or curse the master either. Only stay until the end. That decision would not change.

But.

But, he said.

"I found myself wondering something, out of nowhere."

He looked at Najin.

"Have I already drifted too far from what a knight should be?"

Griffin smiled bitterly.

"Somewhere along the way I became less a knight and more a sword. A sword that swings when its master points it. I don't think that's wrong, and I do believe there is a need for something like that. But now, after eighty years of living this way, I find myself feeling like something was missing."

"What is it you feel is lacking?"

"That I never became anything more than a sword."

Gazing at the street in the fading evening light, Griffin let his thoughts drift. Najin had no way of knowing what he was remembering, what old scenes were playing out behind those eyes. He only added one thing.

"It is not too late."

"Not too late, but I have come too far."

"Is that so."

"It is. Trying anything new at this point is past me. What I can do now is hold on until the very end. I intend to be faithful to that role."

But...

He murmured that and looked a little further ahead. Past the horizon where the sun was going down, a little further still.

"When I have been punished, when I have fulfilled my responsibilities, when I have seen every role through to its end and am finally free of it all..."

He pointed at the horizon.

"I would like to go there."

He was pointing at the Outland.

Griffin's eyes, fixed on the Outland, held a faint light. Years of dust had settled over them, impurities had clouded them, but underneath there was still a raw gem, one that could still catch the light.

"It seems you don't need my answer."

"What do you mean?"

"You already know the answer, Sir Griffin. You simply haven't acted on it yet."

Najin stepped past Griffin and turned back. He tapped the hilt of his sword.

"Knight Griffin."

The Free Knight looked at the aged knight.

"I will be waiting."

Griffin's eyes went wide. Then he smiled bitterly. He gave Najin a salute. There were no more words he could offer right now.

But the next time they met.

By then, there would be words to say.

"About three months left."

"Until what?"

"Until I become a Duchess."

Najin blinked.

"A Duchess?"

"It's complicated to explain, but simple when you sum it up."

Dieta swept her hair back and smiled.

"I did what I do best. Made an offer to the Duke, and set things up so that every circumstance made it impossible for the Duke to refuse."

She tapped the table.

A contract lay spread across its surface.

"Najin, do you know what the virtue of a merchant is?"

"Selling things for the highest price?"

"That's one of them. But a merchant isn't only in the business of selling, are they?"

A merchant buys and sells.

"Buy something valuable cheaply, and sell it for as much as possible. That's the foundation of what a merchant does."

Just as Najin had shown the foundation of swordsmanship in the dueling grounds, Dieta was showing nothing more than the most basic of basics.

"A fine piece of property came up at a low price. So I snapped it up right away. Looked like it was going to be worth a great deal more later."

She handed Najin a business card.

"It's been a while since I've introduced myself by this name."

The card did not read only "Dieta."

"Dieta Arbenia."

The family name she had once erased with her own hands.

Now, Dieta had carved it back in, again with her own hands. In a slightly different way from before.

"I am to be the next head of the Arbenia ducal house."

Dieta's trading company had lent the Arbenia ducal house an enormous sum of gold coins. And as collateral, she had not asked for much. Only the right to enter the succession contest herself.

Every circumstance had made it impossible for the Duke to refuse.

The fangs of the snake that swallows gold had found the ducal house's throat.

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