WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 266

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City of the Abyss, Artman (5)

The Lighthouse Keeper, Eurypylus, was an unusual Constellation.

In the past, he was a Constellation whose name shook the world.

He swept across the entire continent, put wars to rest, crushed demons crossing in from the Outland and fallen stars gone rotten, and carved out countless great deeds. To the Constellations who remembered that age, or had lived through it, the name Eurypylus was the symbol of strength.

Guardian, Eurypylus.

A hero who stood alongside the Lighthouse that Illuminates All Things.

He laid the foundations of the Starlight Order, and he liberated cities from oppressors hiding behind the mask of religion. That was the Eurypylus people spoke of, but at some point he shut himself inside the lighthouse. No matter what happened outside, he showed little interest.

Hundreds of years passed like that.

The heroes of Eurypylus's era went to the Outland, those who remembered that age died, and the stories about Eurypylus were reduced to records alone. Now, in this age where even those records had faded...

Eurypylus raised his weapon.

Shing.

A halberd nearly three meters long. Holding it in one hand, Eurypylus narrowed his eyes. Reflected in his gaze was his enemy. Or the being he had to stop.

The Lighthouse, a fallen Transcendent with nine stars.

Mordred, the Avatar Body of an eleven-star Transcendent.

Either one was monstrously powerful. Even if all Five Pillars of the Empire stood here together, the scales would still tip toward defeat, not victory.

A Constellation with eight stars had accumulated power for hundreds of years. The Constellation of Wishes had drawn wishes from countless humans cast underground, over centuries. Power forged that way went far beyond common sense.

Her stage, the entire giant city, surged like a living thing.

At the top of the lighthouse in the city's center, a flashing light swept through the city like a searing beam. Eurypylus silently watched that ray splitting the city in two as it came for him.

Then...

"..."

He moved without a word. The movement was not fast. It was slow. Eurypylus moved slowly and gripped the halberd tighter.

Tick.

The sound of a clock hand rang out.

That ticking should have been audible only to Eurypylus, but Najin, standing beside him, heard it too. Najin looked at him. Eurypylus spoke briefly.

"Fall back. You'll get caught in this."

The moment Najin took one step back.

Boom.

Cracks raced across the ground around Eurypylus. The cracks were not limited to the ground. The air warped. The earth caved inward, and the instant flying stones and broken city debris drew near Eurypylus,

Crunch, grrrr-crack!

They bent, snapped, shattered, and scattered.

No Authority and no magic intervened in that process.

Najin's eyes went wide.

It was not because he failed to understand what was happening in front of him. It was the opposite. He understood, and that was why he stared so hard. This was a phenomenon created by pure physical force, with no mana involved at all. Only then did Najin understand.

He understood why Eurypylus had answered, "That is why I left it behind," when Najin had asked if the Order was not the reason he lived.

And he understood what it meant for Eurypylus to consume the three hundred years he had accumulated.

Najin understood.

Crack, grrrr-crack...

Each time Eurypylus moved, the surrounding area, the entire city, shook. It felt like a giant moving its body. The moment he settled into position, Eurypylus burst forward, afterimages spraying behind him.

A city charging as one living creature to swallow Eurypylus, heat beams born from the Lighthouse, magic vomiting out from the Lighthouse's circles that filled the sky.

Eurypylus's response was simple.

One strike.

Eurypylus swung his halberd.

Ground the halberd had not even touched caved inward. Space bent along the halberd's path. Crushed and twisted under colossal force, and at the moment it reached critical mass, that force exploded outward as a shockwave.

Everything flying toward him disappeared in an instant.

In front of overwhelming physical force, magic lost meaning. The heat beam pouring from the Lighthouse scattered, and the city crashing down shattered into pieces. The shockwave turned hundreds of meters into wreckage and reached all the way to the Lighthouse.

"..."

The Lighthouse waved her hand and knocked away Eurypylus's strike. She checked the torn back of her hand, blood running down it, and curled up the corner of her mouth.

The two Transcendents.

Two Transcendents who had accumulated power in similar ways over similar spans of time looked at each other.

Snap, the Lighthouse flicked her fingers.

The earth shook, and fragments of the city surged into the sky. The rising fragments took the shape of lighthouses and lodged themselves overhead. The source of each lighthouse's light was none other than her nine stars.

Eight lighthouses embedded upside down in the sky.

And one lighthouse standing in the middle of the city.

Nine lighthouses illuminated Eurypylus at once.

2.

Before a scene that was not just overwhelming but transcendent, literally transcendent, Najin stayed silent.

'A being who can rival an empire alone.'

Najin felt the weight that one sentence carried.

Unmoving, the Transcendent who had chosen to remain still and watch, had moved. Both he and Najin knew what would happen when this movement ended. The overwhelming might on display came at the cost of Eurypylus's lifespan.

A storm raged.

A torrent of power crashed like waves.

Splitting, breaking, bending, shattering... in the middle of a battlefield where huge waves roared, Najin clenched his teeth.

'Eurypylus is strong.'

Powerful. Too powerful to be described by that word alone.

But the terrifying part was this.

The Lighthouse facing him was not falling behind at all. If this were only a battle between the two of them, the scales would not tip either way, but Najin could see it.

"..."

In the center of the city being reduced to rubble.

One being stood proud in the torrent.

The moment he took one step.

The balanced scale shattered. Every sense in Najin's body was sharper than ever, and his eyes read the near future. Najin's eyes turned bloodshot as he read the change Mordred was about to create.

Gritting his teeth, Najin made his decision.

What he could do.

And what he had to do.

* * *

Now that he was spewing out all the power he had stored, even Eurypylus himself found his own strength unfamiliar.

He had experienced this once before.

It was probably when he had first reached Transcendence. Transcendents often had a phase where they could not adapt to a sudden jump in power and failed to draw out their full strength. Eurypylus had been no different.

This was that same situation.

Three hundred years of accumulation.

Faced with that weight of time, Eurypylus felt his body creak. Power his body could no longer contain was spilling in every direction. As he felt his body eroding at high speed, Eurypylus gave a bitter smile.

...So this is how it ends.

But Eurypylus did not stop.

He could not stand by and watch an old friend go astray. Eurypylus moved as he swung his halberd. If he only had to fight the Lighthouse, it was manageable.

'The problem is.'

The star of Camlann floating in the sky.

The hole linked to the Abyss was feeding power to the Lighthouse. Mordred's gaze, staring down from that hole, pressed on Eurypylus's body.

Constellations of the Abyss were not on the same level as ordinary Constellations.

Like those who borrowed the Witch of Camlann's power, they possessed strength beyond imagination. Remembering his past battles against Camlann's cursed Forgotten Ones, Eurypylus clicked his tongue. Sadly, those had been Forgotten Ones, but what stood before him now was the infamous Rebel Knight.

The Rebel Knight, Mordred.

His Avatar Body, which had watched quietly until now, began to move. Eurypylus measured Mordred's strength.

No matter how much it was a star of the Abyss.

That was still a Constellation's Avatar Body.

Not the True Body. An Avatar Body was, by nature, only an inferior copy of the True Body. Of course, Mordred had ripped out his own heart and made it into an Avatar Body, but an Avatar Body was still an Avatar Body.

'If an ordinary Constellation made an Avatar Body, at best it would be a strong Sword Seeker that had not even reached Transcendence.'

But Mordred's Avatar Body was giving off the pressure of a Transcendent. At that fact, a dry laugh slipped from Eurypylus's lips. Then again, that level was fitting for the Witch's knight.

'But.'

Eurypylus tightened his grip on the halberd.

'In output, this side has the edge.'

If Mordred's Avatar Body was comparable to a normal Transcendent,

Eurypylus was a Transcendent who had accumulated three hundred years and was ready to die by burning through all of it. In terms of output, Eurypylus held overwhelming superiority.

He could sweep it away. He could erase it.

That was what Eurypylus believed.

His judgment was not wrong. If an ordinary Constellation had stepped into this place, it would have been thrown out by the aftershock from the power Eurypylus and the Lighthouse were unleashing.

If it had been an ordinary Constellation, yes.

Grip.

If there was one thing Eurypylus overlooked, it was the single sword in Mordred's hand.

The sword used when appointing knights of the Round Table.

Clarent, the Sword of the Round Table.

Also, the sword that had dealt Arthur a fatal wound a thousand years ago. People also called Clarent the Sword of Finality, the blade that drew the curtain on legend. Originally, it would have remained only a famous sword, but after being drenched in Arthur's blood and tempered as Mordred's star, Clarent had ascended into a Star Relic.

A sword infinitely close to Excalibur.

Mordred moved with Clarent in hand.

Before the shockwave smashing through the city and rushing in to swallow him whole, Mordred lowered his stance.

Then he kicked off the ground.

Ssshhhhh!

Mordred's figure shot forward like a streak of light. A hole punched through the incoming wave with a thud. Debris swept up into the torrent melted limply the moment it touched Mordred's charging body.

One second.

The time needed to cross hundreds of meters.

Mordred closed the distance in an instant and swung his sword. Clarent's pitch-black edge flashed. The red stars embedded in the blade pulsed like blood vessels.

Spin, crack.

Eurypylus reacted at once.

The halberd in his hand spun once. He caught Mordred's sword with the aura-wrapped shaft, and at the same time tried to sever Mordred's neck with the halberd's axe blade.

A perfect response combining offense and defense.

But Eurypylus saw it. In that split second, Mordred's eyes moved. Those eyes tracked the exact motion of the halberd blade that was about to sweep through his neck.

What happened right after that, Eurypylus could not understand.

Mordred's sword, which should have bent downward, rose. The halberd blade that should have cut off Mordred's head sliced only a few strands of his hair and cut empty air. Even in that shocking moment, Eurypylus did not panic and responded.

He twisted his body. He turned his neck. Mordred's rising sword nearly pierced one eye, but he stopped it at the cost of one ear.

What came after evasion was counterattack.

Eurypylus knew close-range combat was difficult with a halberd. He let go of the halberd with both hands and threw a punch. Slamming downward, he crossed both arms.

KWA-BOOOOM!

Mordred slid backward with the shockwave, but the one bleeding was not Mordred. Gripping his own hand, split cleanly down the middle, Eurypylus frowned.

Even in that situation, Mordred had raised his blade and placed it against Eurypylus's fist. Clutching the hand dripping blood and knitting the wound together with starlight, Eurypylus let out a long sigh.

"What a goddamn mess. Seriously."

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