WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 255

──────

Carpe Diem (5)

The Empire's sword cut down the Empire's traitor.

A knight's sword cut down a demon contractor.

Najin's blade swung twice, and twice it split the heart of the Praise Horn. Blood burst from the torn heart, and Akut could not hide his shock.

How?

He could not understand how the heart of a Transcendent like him had been cleaved by the sword of a mere mortal. He also could not understand why the power granted by his master, the Carnival King, did not work on the boy before him.

The paint burned away. Pure starlight scorched the Praise Horn's body. The moment he put on that mask, Akut had borrowed the Carnival King's power, and the Carnival King's essence was demonic. Najin's Sword Aura was its natural opposite.

The soul of a Transcendent who borrowed demonic power caught fire.

Akut screamed as his soul burned. He dropped to his knees and clawed at his own body. The scream of a Transcendent rang out, sharp and high... but it did not last long.

"Ah..."

Akut raised his head. A boy stood over him. With cold, sunken eyes and a face close to expressionless, Najin looked down at him.

Akut, once praised from the highest seat of the Empire, had to look up in his final moment at a mortal who had not even touched Transcendence.

That was Akut's end.

His body collapsed. The soul that had borrowed demonic power burned away. He died without even becoming a fallen star.

Flash.

Six stars dropped from the sky. The falling stars shattered into fragments and scattered. Death was always quiet, and even the death of a Transcendent was no loud spectacle.

"Hoo..."

Najin let out a long breath and sank down where he stood. Exhaustion crashed over him. Was it the price of pushing his body too far? His heart pounded like mad, and his eyelids trembled.

'Normally...'

Najin thought as he gasped for breath.

Normally, this was a fight he could never have won.

He only won because the Sword Saint had helped him, and because he had a clear compatibility advantage against Akut. If Akut had not leaned on the Carnival King's power at the very end, it would have been a much harder battle.

"Still."

Merlin sat beside him and smiled.

"At least you confirmed that your sword can reach a Transcendent, right?"

Najin gave a short laugh.

Yeah, Merlin was right. Even without imitating Transcendence, his sword had reached one. Turning that fact over in his mind, Najin exhaled slowly.

He had killed one Jester.

Inside Carpe Diem's domain, he could not see the night sky change, but many things would have shifted.

'They must have shifted.'

But it still felt too early to breathe easy.

"..."

Najin looked toward the center of the stage. A place covered in pitch-black curtains. Fighting was still raging there.

Carpe Diem, Demon King of Lamentation.

The owner of this stage had not fallen yet.

2.

Carpe Diem, Demon King of Lamentation.

A Transcendent with eight stars.

She had existed as a Demon King for at least five hundred years, a notorious demon who had carved deep scars into human history.

A demon who rose to Transcendence by deceiving tens of thousands of believers.

How many people had she broken? How many cities had she burned? How many nations had she ruined? Carpe Diem, who fed on the screams, sighs, and lamentation of humankind, had spent centuries growing larger.

A Demon King who devoured humans, cities, and whole nations.

Her strength came from screams, and her stage was always full of them. Humans hung upside down on inverted crosses, moaning in agony, and they were the source of Carpe Diem's power.

Scream. Lament. Despair.

Carpe Diem loved the screams people made when they surrendered. She adored the groans they made when they fell into despair. Every scream made her feel vividly alive.

"How laughable."

Carpe Diem sat on her throne with her chin on one hand and smiled.

"You tried to face me with only four Constellations? Sadly, one is dead, and another was your enemy. Do you think adding two new stars will change anything?"

She flicked her hand.

Krrrm!

Each gesture pulled lightning from the sky. Carpe Diem was a Demon King that fed on religion, and she delighted in torturing her believers. Because those believers saw her as a god, her torture became divine punishment in their minds.

"No. Not at all."

On this stage, Carpe Diem was no different from a god.

Black lightning rained endlessly over a stage planted with inverted crosses. Every time lightning struck a cross, the screams grew fiercer, and the lightning grew thicker.

"Ah, this is driving me insane."

The Star Incarnation was too busy dodging lightning, and Yuel was not much different. They had jumped onto the stage to support Gerd, but both of them belonged to religious orders, and this stage matched them very badly.

A demon that fed on religion, that corrupted religion,
a demon worshiped as a god by humans.

Carpe Diem, bearing stars tied to all of that, was practically a natural enemy to those two Constellations. Yuel had it a little better, but for the Star Incarnation this place was close to hell.

"Tch."

The Star Incarnation frowned. She had expected bad compatibility, but not this bad. The exhaustion that hit right after using Aurora piled on top of it, and she let out a breath.

A worst-case opponent.

An opponent with no chance of beating by normal means.

Even so, she had jumped onto this stage. The Star Incarnation was not suicidal. She was not so full of grand duty that she would throw herself into a hopeless fight. She stepped onto this battlefield because she believed there was a chance.

"..."

Her eyes turned to Gerd.

Unlike her, who kept kicking off the ground to evade and slip past lightning, Gerd moved in silence. Lightning struck or did not strike, and he just kept walking forward.

Krrrm!

His sword swung faster than the lightning could fall and split the bolts apart. Torn bundles of lightning battered his body, but Gerd's expression did not change at all.

'That old man is a monster.'

Even as an ally, the Star Incarnation looked rattled.

Gerd, a Transcendent even among Transcendents.

In her view, among all Transcendents on the continent, Gerd was the one she least wanted to fight. This was beyond simple questions of who was stronger.

"Sir Gerd."

The Star Incarnation signaled him with her eyes. Gerd gave a small tilt of his chin. He understood. Yuel and the Star Incarnation split left and right and dashed out.

Lightning still crashed down.

Gerd advanced toward Carpe Diem at a pace neither slow nor fast. Whatever blocked his path, he never stopped. Crosses, hills, falling lightning, he cut them all apart and stepped forward.

Krrrm!

Lightning flashed again and again. He swung his sword and broke the bolts, but that did not mean he was unharmed. Even so, his face stayed blank, and his steps never stopped.

"How boring you are."

Watching Gerd approach, Carpe Diem frowned with her chin still propped in her hand. She raised her arm.

Her stars lit high above.

There were reasons she had not been subjugated despite ruling as a Demon King for over five hundred years, reasons she remained intact after trampling the human world beyond counting.

"You are only an individual."

Carpe Diem pointed at Gerd.

"But I am not. I am a symbol!"

The star of Worship blazed. Carpe Diem, worshiped by tens of thousands, was like a god and the symbol of a massive cult.

"Child, how many years have you lived? One hundred? One hundred fifty? You dare challenge me with only that much time?"

The star of Reign blazed. She was one who had reigned as a Demon King, as a king, for over five hundred years.

"Do you know how many humans I killed in those five hundred years, how many cities I crushed, how many nations I trampled?"

The star of Massacre blazed. The screams of those she had crushed for five centuries echoed out.

"Do you know how many humans knelt to me, how many cities surrendered to me, how whole nations became ash?"

The star of Submission blazed. Massive pressure slammed down on Gerd, as if ordering him to kneel, as if commanding him to bow before a king.

"The screams echoing here prove it."

The star of Lamentation blazed. Lightning grew even more violent and slammed down at Gerd in bursts. Kneel. Bow your head. Admit defeat. Scream. The stage forced those demands on him.

"All humans knelt before me. Do you think you are any different?"

It forced him.

"You are no different from the rest..."

"You're noisy."

Gerd did not kneel.

"No matter how many humans you killed."

The old man kept walking forward, expressionless.

"No matter how many cities you crushed, how many nations you overturned, why should I care?"

"...What?"

"I am not included in the humans you speak of. The cities you speak of do not include imperial cities, and the nations you speak of do not include the Empire."

The First Horn of the Empire spoke.

"The Empire has not knelt before you, so why should I kneel?"

Gerd swung his sword.

The lightning split without a sound.

"You said you reigned as king for five hundred years."

Gerd swung again.

The pressure around him was torn into pieces.

"A thousand."

Gerd spoke with a mocking snort.

"The Empire has stood at the summit of the continent for a thousand years."

Put five hundred years before a thousand years of history, and all it earns is ridicule. Gerd lifted his sword toward the Demon King who called herself a symbol. A star shone from the blade he raised high.

"I am the First Horn of the Empire."

The star of One Horn shone.

The star of First shone.

Thud, Gerd drove one heavy step forward.

First Horn stance.

The air trembled. Space vibrated, and the whole stage shook. Eyes wide, Carpe Diem slashed her hand through the air. Dozens of lightning strands braided together and crashed toward Gerd.

Krrrm!

The area turned black. The lightning was strong enough to erase everything without a trace, yet even in that downpour Gerd did not flinch. He simply took it with his body.

Lightning spears pierced, seared, and burned his whole body, but his stance did not waver. Expressionless, Gerd brought his raised sword down.

"I am the Empire."

First Horn, Triumph.

3.

The instant Gerd brought his sword down, the change could be seen even outside the curtain around the stage.

Flash.

A descending Sword Aura split the sky and shattered the curtain. It swept over the crosses on the stage. It broke every black bolt called divine punishment and smashed Carpe Diem's Imagery into pieces.

Carpe Diem's stars, and her Imagery, burned to resist Gerd's Sword Aura. They struggled to break the Sword Aura filled with Gerd's own Imagery.

But they could not break it.

Gerd's Imagery was sturdier than Carpe Diem's.

Gerd viewed himself as the Empire.

He believed that he was the Empire itself, and that unless he was defeated, the Empire could not be defeated. That was not belief in the usual sense. To Gerd, it was as obvious as sunrise and sunset.

Because in his mind, that was what it meant to be the Empire's hero, the Empire's first pillar.

That swollen ego was Gerd's strength.

A human ego that saw itself as a nation with a thousand years of history could not be overcome by a religion with barely five hundred.

Craaack!

Carpe Diem's Imagery split apart. As it split, her true face emerged. The beautiful woman had only been the image imagined by followers who had once worshiped her as a god.

"How dare you, how dare...!"

What appeared as the stage collapsed was a hideous form.

Closer to a monster than either human or beast. Her beautiful voice was gone too. With a ragged voice, Carpe Diem shrieked.

She swung her hand to rip Gerd apart for destroying her stage. In her fury, she failed to notice something.

Her stage had been torn open.

Her Imagery had shattered.

In other words, the compatibility had reversed.

"Aurora."

As if they had waited for this exact moment, a pure white pillar of light crashed down. A sword cry like a scream swallowed Carpe Diem's voice. The Star Incarnation's pillar of light and Yuel's Sword Aura shredded Carpe Diem.

Yet Carpe Diem endured even that.

She was a demon. A Demon King. Fundamentally immortal, so even Transcendents' attacks did not kill her. Carpe Diem was sure she could drag this into a long war of attrition and kill them all. She thought even if she died, she could drag them down with her.

Drawing on the Carnival King's starlight, Carpe Diem fought like a cornered beast.

But her enemies kept increasing.

It was not three stars gathered to kill her. It was five. Carpe Diem noticed the last two too late. She noticed them, but she still thought it was fine.

'What can one wounded, exhausted star and one brat who hasn't even reached Transcendence do?'

It was not a wrong judgment.

More precisely, it stayed right until she saw the Sword Aura erupting from that brat's sword.

Flash.

A golden star gleamed on a base of pure white Sword Aura. It was Najin's well-known Sword Aura. But that was only because Najin had separated it on purpose. Now there was no need to separate it.

The demons had already branded him.

There was no need to hide anymore.

Najin revealed the Sword Aura he truly had.

White and gold mixed together. The Sword Aura that merely resembled starlight now became complete starlight itself. A platinum-gold Sword Aura entered Carpe Diem's vision.

At that moment,

Carpe Diem's body went rigid.

She had no choice but to freeze.

That platinum-gold Sword Aura was etched into every demon's soul. The Sword Aura of the butcher who achieved the contradiction of killing the unkillable demons, who once erased more than ninety percent of all demons on this land.

It made the Demon of Fear tremble in fear.

It made the Demon of Death die.

It made the Demon of Domination kneel.

The moment that natural enemy of demons appeared, Carpe Diem's soul shook. She had reached Transcendence and become a Demon King, but her essence was still demonic. And demons could never forget that name.

Arthur.

Arthur, the demon butcher.

Before that starlight Sword Aura Arthur had wielded, the Demon King of Lamentation was reduced to nothing but a demon. Carpe Diem, Demon of Screams, screamed in terror.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried