WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 238

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On Those Brave Yet Ridiculous Ones (1)

A sky smeared with paint.

Heads rolling across the ground in fits of laughter, giants dancing without their heads, clowns appearing out of nowhere to play discordant music on their instruments.

This, that, everything tangled together into one unholy mess of a world, like a child's fever dream.

Grind.

Najin clenched his teeth. He had seen this landscape before. The first time he crossed paths with the Carnival King, and when the Helmet Knight's final moments were being mocked, the same scene had spread before him.

His sword hand tightened on its own.

This was the Carnival King's domain. Which meant the Carnival King had appeared here? No. There was no trace of that repulsive presence anywhere.

"Najin."

Yuel and Najin exchanged a look. No long conversation needed. They nodded and plunged straight in. Whatever else, they had to cross through the domain to reach La Mancha.

'And besides.'

He wanted this wretched sight gone from his eyes, even a second sooner. Wincing against the noise hammering at his eardrums, Najin swung his sword.

Yuel's blade, Najin's blade, and the Star Incarnation's fists joining a beat later all crashed into the Carnival King's domain at once.

The limbs of giants who danced on even without their heads flew through the air. The rolling, cackling heads were smashed to pieces. The clowns were cut down. Not an easy fight, but not a difficult one either.

There was just one problem.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

The battle wouldn't end.

Heads burst open, and still the laughter did not stop. Slice a giant's limbs to ribbons, tear the body apart, and what spilled out was not blood but paint. When the Star Incarnation finally squeezed a giant hard enough to crush it, the sound that came out was exactly like a balloon popping.

Pop. Bang. Pop!

The swelling bodies of the clowns split open. What flew out was not entrails or flesh or blood but confetti and sweets, the kind stuffed inside a party cracker.

"This isn't a battle," Yuel Razian murmured.

"It's a pantomime."

The laughter grew louder.

They couldn't hear each other anymore. Nothing but earsplitting laughter, filling every corner.

Ha ha ha, cackle, shriek, ahaha!

And then.

『Life is but a single play.』

『Not even death can lower the curtain.』

Snap. Someone snapped their fingers.

『The play must go on.』

Forever.

"We're screwed."

"Pardon?"

"We're screwed, Najin."

Najin blinked. Yuel, who had been standing at his side, wasn't swinging her sword. She was slipping her drawn blade back into thin air, muttering only that they were screwed. Not that the gravity of it landed much, delivered in that completely blank expression of hers.

"The Heaven-Wandering Star hates having its domain intruded upon. But that also varies day by day..."

"Wait. Hold on."

"What is it, Najin?"

Najin cut her off.

Something was wrong.

He left Yuel blinking after him and looked around. Then up at the sky. Hundreds of thousands of whales were swimming through it.

The Heaven-Wandering Star.

Deja vu hit him as the whales plummeted. He'd definitely seen this before. But more than that, why wasn't he surprised? This should have been his first time seeing it.

"For now... let's run. We need to get out of the domain."

That was the right call, Najin decided. Better to escape the Heaven-Wandering Star's domain first, then make a plan.

He ran alongside Yuel.

The Star Incarnation was grinning with arms crossed, ready to take on the world. Najin told it flatly: "Those whales devour stars. Still feeling confident?" The Star Incarnation's face went white, and it started running too.

They fell back. Then made a plan.

Far too naturally, the thought surfaced: couldn't they just use the Star Incarnation as bait? But the texture of it was wrong for his usual intuition. His usual instinct.

It had the ease of stating something already known. Something already lived through. That ease unsettled him.

The unease kept nagging.

Carrying it with him, Najin pressed on and arrived at the very edge of La Mancha. Giants transformed into clowns were dancing there. Another battle broke out.

'Again?'

His eyes narrowed at the word that surfaced in his mind. He glanced to the side. Merlin was saying something, but the words weren't reaching him.

Ha ha ha, cackle, shriek, ahaha!

The clowns' laughter drowned out Merlin's voice. It wasn't coming from outside. It was ringing from within Najin himself, swallowing even Merlin's words.

'It's those clowns in front of me.'

Clear them first. That's the priority.

Najin thought that, drew his sword, and moved. So did Yuel and the Star Incarnation. And so they fought 'again.' With each exchange, the laughter grew.

The laughter swallowed everything.

And then, with the snap of fingers, Najin's consciousness went dark.

Blink.

When he opened his eyes.

"We're screwed."

He was back at the very beginning.

"We're screwed, Najin."

The beginning? What did that mean. Again, what did again even mean? Hadn't they only just set out?

Ha ha ha, cackle, shriek, ahahaha!

Laughter rang through his ears. Because this was the road to La Mancha? The laughter was starting up this early. A difficult journey, by the look of it.

He ran from the Heaven-Wandering Star again.

The plan for Breakthrough came to him far too smoothly. He was certain following it would get them out of the Heaven-Wandering Star's domain. Where was that certainty even coming from? Najin asked himself.

'Because.'

Because this was something he had already done.

"......"

Right.

'Merlin.'

Already done.

'How many times has this been?'

Najin looked at Merlin. The laughter that had been walling them off from each other vanished at once. Her voice, when it finally reached him, was tired.

-You finally noticed.

As though she had been waiting for exactly that question, Merlin said:

-The seventh time.

The moment he heard it, everything came flooding back. Passing the Heaven-Wandering Star, clearing trap after trial to arrive at the very edge of La Mancha, only to face the Carnival King's domain and be sent back to the beginning.

Seven times. He had done it seven times.

Najin pressed his fingers to his temple. A headache surged. Frowning, he asked.

'I didn't notice?'

-I tried any number of times to tell you, but the perception itself seems to have a warp on it. You couldn't understand.

You had been treating the clowns' laughter ringing inside you as something 'natural,' Merlin said. You'd decided it was unavoidable because you were on the road to La Mancha.

That was the perceptual distortion placed on Najin.

And the stage effect that wiped away the memory of repetition.

The two layered together, and Najin had run the same journey seven times without knowing. A chill ran down his spine.

Goosebumps.

He'd thought himself resistant to mental interference. To being made to forget. He carried Excalibur, and Merlin traveled at his side.

But no.

As if laughing at that assumption, the Carnival King had locked Najin inside an eternally repeating stage. Sent him wandering a maze with no exit. Warped his perception with clowns, stole his gaze with stage lighting and direction, and burned his memory to ash.

Seven loops, just to notice.

Grind.

Najin set his teeth. Then clenched his fist, hard. Five stars flashed white.

The deja vu, the ability to notice the loop at all, came from the stars he carried. Among the stories that formed his stars were those who had 'broken free from lives of repetition and arrived at their destination.'

The stars carrying those stories blazed.

Their light washed away the contamination clinging to Najin's mind, and to Yuel's, and to the Star Incarnation's.

"Oh."

Belatedly, both of them came back to themselves.

"...This is absurd."

The Star Incarnation pressed hard against its brow, looking dizzy.

"Does this make any sense? Toying with someone who has achieved Transcendence this easily? Without us even noticing when we'd stepped onto the stage, or from where, it was that subtle?"

"Remarkable." Yuel's voice was steady. "I have immunity to mental interference, yet I hadn't expected it to simply warp perception itself."

She tilted her head.

"Troublesome. This is the seventh time, but there's no guarantee we'll recall our memories on the eighth. The distortion will almost certainly be stronger next round."

"......"

"The Carnival King won't leave a gap unplugged. We found the gap in seven tries this time, but there's no telling how many loops the next one will take. And at some point, stamina and mana will bottom out."

Even those who have achieved Transcendence don't have infinite stamina and mana. Even Anton Quixano, who had achieved Transcendence with seven stars, had grown so exhausted wandering the repeating dream that walking became a struggle by the end.

"So."

Yuel held Najin's gaze.

"We find a way this time around. Otherwise we'll be sealed in this maze for good."

Find a direction in a maze with no visible exit, where the existence of any exit at all was in doubt. In other words: find the path.

-This stage doesn't belong to the Carnival King alone.

So the Guide spoke.

Najin spoke her words aloud.

"This stage doesn't belong to the Carnival King alone. The Carnival King's domain is parasitic on La Mancha, a Star's Tomb grown to a grotesque, swollen size."

This was not the Carnival King's territory. Not its sovereign ground. And yet it could exert this much Authority because it was feeding off La Mancha.

"La Mancha is a concept drawn from a fairy tale called 'The Knights of La Mancha.' The domain Quixote must have built, from faithfully reenacting the journey in that story."

Najin reached into his memory.

"That fairy tale has a line. The line that is both theme and core of the whole story."

He spoke.

"La Mancha, the road to paradise is filled with hardship and trials. But as long as laughter does not cease, the journey continues. The Knights of La Mancha do not lose their laughter. Even in the most grueling moments, we press forward with a smile."

The words written in the original 'Knights of La Mancha.'

"The Carnival King has warped the story in this domain, this stage, in its own way."

"Warped?"

"Yes. Warped."

Merlin's clue, and the thread Najin had seized. Put them together, and a conclusion emerged.

"As long as laughter does not cease, the journey continues."

That one line. The line Quixote, the Star of Scorn, would have believed in before he ever became the Star of Scorn. The Carnival King had rearranged it as it pleased.

『As long as mockery does not cease, the journey repeats.』

That was the essence written into this stage.

"In the original 'Knights of La Mancha,' 'laughter' carries no meaning of mockery. In the midst of a grueling journey, if you don't lose your laughter, you might find a way to enjoy all of it. To endure it. It was a device for overcoming hardship."

But the Carnival King's definition of laughter was something else entirely.

"The Carnival King's laughter is mockery. The two kinds of laughter are nothing alike. What the Carnival King's domain has done is bind them together by force under the single word 'laughter'..."

Talking as they went, they pressed on. Through the Heaven-Wandering Star's domain, through the trials they had already cleared seven times over, until they reached their destination.

"Then there has to be a binding point."

They stopped. The Carnival King's domain stretched before them, giants dancing and singing. Najin steadied his breath.

"The 'laughter' that each domain speaks of means something different. Different, and yet they coexist. Which means there's a shared thread. Pierce that thread and the Carnival King's domain will collapse."

It would no longer be able to feed off La Mancha. Cut the point that bound La Mancha and the Carnival King's domain together, Najin said.

"Ah."

Yuel nodded.

"Is there a scene in 'The Knights of La Mancha' where laughter is used in the sense of mockery, Najin?"

"There is."

Najin pulled the spear from his back.

"The most famous scene in the story."

He aimed it at a windmill standing behind the giants, something he'd written off as background scenery.

「Look at those giants, Sancho!」

「Giants with four arms.」

「I'm going to run one through right now, so make sure you watch every second of it with your own two eyes.」

Don Quixote, spear in hand, charging at a windmill he had mistaken for a giant. Watching him go, Sancho burst into mocking laughter. What kind of person mistakes a windmill for a giant?

Laughter as mockery.

A scene where laughter was pure scorn.

The core of that scene was the 'giant' and the 'windmill.' That windmill hiding among the giants, mimicking one, was the binding point where the Carnival King's domain was anchored.

"Just in time."

Najin raised the Lance of the Crossed Star.

"I happen to have a spear."

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