WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 289

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Cheon Yuseong, Icarus (9)

When he was young, Icarus hated the ground.

He hated gravity for pinning him to the earth. He hated the adults even more, the ones who raised their voices just to claim one more inch of that cramped land.

A city full of discarded trash.

A city choked with trash. A city where every direction was trash, so no one could ever have a wide view. Icarus was born in that city, where standing still was enough to make breathing hard. He grew up there too.

Then, around age ten.

Icarus climbed a cliff. Branches scratched him, he fell over and over, got covered in dirt, but still he climbed to the top. And when he did, he saw an open view for the first time.

"Ah."

The trash piled up by humans had not reached the field above the cliff. Across that vast field, he saw the sky. The blue sky was hidden by nothing and blocked by nothing.

The sky was free.

A boy who longed for freedom naturally came to long for the sky. Looking up at it, he dreamed one dream. He dreamed of flying freely through that sky.

Sparkle.

Icarus remembered the dream he had as a child. His body started moving slowly. With hazy eyes, he wandered through that dream.

'I wanted to fly.'

He wanted to fly freely through that sky and touch the stars.

'So...'

He set out on an adventure. He traveled the continent with his friend. Icarus began recalling forgotten memories one by one. It felt like moving forward while feeling his way along the walls of a giant labyrinth.

Where should he go?

What had he done next?

Whenever he asked himself that, a ball of thread shimmered before him. Drawn by that shining thread, Icarus kept walking. As long as he followed it, he never got lost in the tangled maze.

He dreamed.

Inside the dream, Icarus roamed free.

He traveled through every kind of city. He visited water cities, port cities, and free cities, all the places he had wanted to see since childhood, and experienced countless things.

"Adventurer!"

"What's that, Icarus?"

"Listen, Daedalus. Doesn't adventurer sound great? Adventure! It means exploring the unknown while risking danger. Aren't adventurers the freest people in the world?"

The star of adventure glittered.

It was the first star Icarus ever gained.

"My name is Icarus. One day I'll reach the highest point in the sky. Remember my name, princess of a foreign land!"

"You are amusing. Is that why you broke into my room?"

"No. The reason is this. I heard rumors all over your kingdom. They say a princess dying of illness wants to fly."

"..."

"Do you want to fly?"

"Can you grant my wish?"

"I asked if you want to fly."

He took the nodding princess by the hand and flew with her through the sky. On a night when the moon shone bright, she achieved the wish she had longed for. While the kingdom's knights stared up in panic, her laughter echoed through the air.

Not long after, the princess died of her illness.

But until the day she died, she smiled whenever she spoke of flying with Icarus.

A man, her father and king of that nation, swore that Icarus would forever be his dearest friend and benefactor. That kingdom raised a statue of Icarus.

"Now then, to the Great Ruins next."

A dream.

"Run! Don't look back, just run!"

"Fuck, what's behind us?!"

"What else? A monster that the archmage prepared for us. And it is horrifyingly ugly too!"

"This is driving me insane."

He dreamed.

In that dream, he was free.

"Time to set out again."

He could leave whenever he wanted, go anywhere, and fly as far as he pleased.

The stars of adventure, freedom, travel, and flight shone.

The boy grew into a youth. The youth grew into an adult. The boy who had become an adult looked at himself. He had grown strong. Strong enough to fly higher, strong enough to sweep aside anything that blocked his path.

"..."

The grown boy looked up at the sky.

If he wanted to fly, he could.

It felt like he could fly farther than ever before.

'Higher than ever...'

To fulfill the dream he had as a child, Icarus took a step. He tried to beat his wings toward the sky. Then, with a metallic clank, something seized his ankle.

When he looked back, there was a chain.

Countless people, countless lives, the children he had taken in, their descendants, those who had shared his cause, all were looking at him.

Dream and responsibility.

After weighing the two, Icarus chose responsibility. The boy who became an adult gave up his dream.

"Ah..."

Icarus smiled bitterly.

He knew what would come next.

He walked.

He walked toward the end waiting for a bird that had given up life as an adventurer, abandoned its dream, and lost its wings.

Tap.

The people he had tried to protect, the people he had loved, pointed spears and blades at one another. Icarus could take neither side. Were they not all like family to him? He could not cut one side away.

They died. Then died again. By outside enemies, by those within, what he had guarded crumbled one piece at a time.

And in the end...

Crack.

By his own hand, everything he had built collapsed.

"So that's how it was."

He stopped walking with a tap.

"..."

A young man stood there, silently watching him. A young man brighter than anyone, freer than anyone. Seeing him, Icarus burst into laughter.

Because that young man looked like him.

More precisely, like the boy he used to be.

At the end of the path, Icarus turned his gaze forward. A shining star was there. It looked close enough to touch if he reached out.

Whoosh.

But Icarus lowered his hand. That star was not his, and not the one he had sought.

"That is a splendid star."

"Is it?"

"It truly is. I had forgotten my dream for nearly a thousand years, and now I remember it again because of that star."

Icarus smiled bitterly.

"May I ask your name?"

"You mean the name of that star?"

"I want to hear that too, but I want to hear your name as well."

"Najin. And the star's name is Requiem."

Najin. Icarus rolled the name on his tongue, then looked down at his own body. From the moment his memories returned, his body had started falling apart.

Crumble.

His fingertips scattered into dust. Maybe that was only natural. His body had already become a dead thing centuries ago. The moment memory and starlight filled that shattered vessel, his flesh could no longer endure the power.

Facing his approaching extinction, Icarus stayed silent.

After recalling everything, he looked at the chain lodged in his heart. The chain stretched far away, connected to Helios's old castle. It was the chain he had never been able to undo.

Clench.

Icarus grabbed the chain.

2.

"What is your dream?"

At Icarus's question, Najin blinked. It was not what he expected to hear. After a short silence, he answered.

"To carve my star at the highest place."

"The highest place? Higher than King Arthur's star?"

Najin nodded.

"Ahahaha!"

Icarus laughed out loud. Still laughing, he brushed back his hair and nodded deeply.

"Dreams should be big. I had a dream like that too, even if I never reached it."

Cheon Yuseong, Icarus.

He was the first Transcendent to appear after King Arthur vanished into Camlann, the hero who first carried the era after Arthur's disappearance, and the one who came closer to Arthur than anyone else over the last thousand years.

A Transcendent who had flown to the highest heights.

Yet in the end, a man who had fallen.

He looked at the junior standing before him. As a senior who had walked this same road one step earlier, what should he tell him? Icarus started to speak, then closed his mouth. The youth before him was already shining brighter than he ever had.

"Why didn't you kill me?"

He only asked a question.

"If you carry that sword, killing me would have been much easier and simpler."

"That would have been easier."

"Then why?"

"Because there is no romance in that."

Najin smirked and snapped his fingers.

The star of Banter sparkled.

"And it would not become something worth telling with a smile."

A trivial reason. But everything starts from trivial things. Seeing Najin talk exactly like his younger self, Icarus laughed again.

"That is certainly a convincing reason."

"So."

Najin pointed at Icarus.

"What are you going to do now?"

Instead of answering, Icarus turned around.

A ruined nation, the tragedy of destroying with his own hands what he had protected, and the past of wandering for centuries after losing his memories...

Icarus did not look away from any of it. He faced what he had done head-on. Then he gave his answer. A smile spread across his lips.

Clench, he gripped the chain even harder.

Instead of breaking it, he pulled it toward himself.

"I thought it was too heavy for me to fly."

That was what he had thought.

"But now, this weight feels just right."

The chain binding him now had no meaning left. Everything he had tried to protect was gone. Helios had fallen, and all his people were dead. No responsibility remained for Icarus anymore.

Even so, he did not let the chain go.

Letting it go would mean denying half his life. He refused to deny himself.

"You said that star's name was Requiem?"

"Yes, Requiem."

Pointing at the star that let him keep his sanity and slowed his erosion, Icarus spoke.

"Come to think of it, I still never held my nation's funeral. I never gave it a proper ending. This cannot be called a good story as it is."

Icarus curled one corner of his mouth.

"Will you help me?"

"Of course."

Najin snapped his fingers. As the Star of Requiem shone even more fiercely, Icarus let out a long breath.

He chose his own end.

Grateful to the youth before him, and to the one true friend who left him a gift to the very end, grateful for all of it, Icarus looked up at the sky.

A star that was worn and crumbling, yet still shining.

'Just one last time.'

Icarus made his star blaze.

Cheon Yuseong, the Heaven-Wandering Star, shone.

3.

In his final moment, Cheon Yuseong reclaimed himself.

He remembered every forgotten memory.

His body was crumbling, but for one last time he could wield power equal to his prime.

Icarus chose how to use it.

All ten of his stars began to break apart. Squeezing out every last bit of starlight within them, Icarus unfolded his stage. He had seen himself as an adventurer and a navigator, and he believed he could sail freely to any horizon.

To him, the world was the sea.

【Ocean of All Phenomena】

At the center of a world where everything had turned into sea, Icarus spread all five fingers wide.

A ten-star Constellation.

A man who had once stood closer to Arthur than anyone.

A torrent of power, utterly different from the Icarus Najin had just faced, surged and rolled. The whole world heaved violently. Not only the largest whale, but the whales scattered across the entire battlefield swayed heavily.

"Come to think of it, I failed to keep my promise to you too."

Icarus looked at the largest whale and smiled bitterly.

"Will you let me keep it now?"

The whale frozen by Merlin's magic began to rise, shaking off thin ice. The pulse of the whale thundered out. Icarus smiled.

"Yes. Let's do that, my friend."

He swung those outstretched five fingers toward the sky.

As if hauling up a net.

Then everything rose.

The elements that made Helios, the nation called Helios, the largest whale, the big and small whales that had migrated into the sky after it, and the hundreds of thousands of whales scattered across the battlefield, all of them rose.

Nothing could hold them down.

Riding atop the largest whale's head, Icarus pointed to the sky.

"Time to set out, my friends."

Icarus shouted.

"Let's fly as high as we can, as far as we can."

His extended fingertips were pointing at a star.

"Until we touch it!"

It was Arthur's star. Pointing at the place he had targeted since childhood, Icarus cast his very first spell.

Wings of Icarus.

The spell that became the origin of all flight magic in later ages, humanity's first leap toward the sky. As if replacing a bird's broken wings, huge wings sprouted along the whale's spine. They were only forms made of mana, illusions, but that did not matter.

"Icarus, isn't the core of that wings spell you developed telekinesis and forcefields? Why do the wings need to appear at all? It hurts efficiency."

"Ha, the reason is very simple."

"What's the reason?"

"Because it looks cool!"

Icarus lifted the corner of his mouth.

Then the whale beat its wings.

Despite that massive body, the sky whale shot upward at high speed. Its fins pushed aside the sea-made world, air rippled, and wind split like rushing water. Icarus soared toward the sky.

The altitude climbed. Everything on the ground began turning into tiny dots. Still Icarus did not stop.

He did not fly alone.

He rose with his nation, his friends, his one true companion, and even the things that bound him.

"Why do you think flying is such an achievement, such a magnificent thing?"

"Because gravity exists."

"Flight is beautiful because we rise while resisting that great force that binds us and pins us to the ground."

If he could not endure even this weight, how could he call himself Cheon Yuseong? Icarus looked at the nation flying beside him.

Helios, the nation that had been closest to the sky.

If Helios deserved any funeral at all, Icarus thought this was the only one that fit. Not a water burial. Not cremation. Not burial in earth, and sky burial was not to his taste either.

Icarus kept ascending.

He climbed while embracing everything.

A nation that had the freest adventurer as its king, yet in the end was never free. At least in its final moment, Icarus wanted Helios to be free.

Unable to withstand the star's heat and the Stellar Pressure created by the stars, the city crumbled. Helios scattered as starlight. That scattered starlight became a cluster of stars and clung to the fins of Icarus and the sky whales.

As if declaring they would remain with their king to the very end.

Linked to the fins of hundreds of thousands of whales, the starlight cluster drew a glittering trail.

It was a sky meteor, Cheon Yuseong, the Heaven-Flowing Star.

Icarus did not stop climbing higher. The higher he rose, the more his body crumbled. One by one, everything adorning him was stripped away.

His crown, his royal robe, his scepter, his insignia, every jewel and ornament shattered.

After all that breaking and breaking, what remained was this.

The shabby coat he had worn since his adventurer days. With that ragged coat fluttering, Icarus smiled. By now, he looked like a youth again. Pointing at the sky, he shouted.

"Higher!"

As if they had waited for this day, the sky whales roared.

Buuooooooo...

Their pulses rang out.

Even as starlight melted their wings, even as their bodies crumbled under Stellar Pressure, they flew toward higher ground.

Hundreds of thousands of whales became starlight.

Hundreds of thousands of streaks were embroidered across the sky. Leading those countless meteors, Icarus headed for the heavens. It was his final flight, and his final challenge.

He knew.

In the end, he would never reach that star.

He knew he would shatter under its pressure and heat. He was already broken, no longer someone worthy of being called a hero, and could not reach Arthur's star.

But none of that mattered.

What mattered was that he was challenging the sky. That he was flying toward it.

A thousand years had passed since Arthur ended the age of chaos, and in that thousand years no one had reached Arthur.

And the one who flew closest to Arthur was Icarus. He knew it was time to hand that title to someone else.

The young man watching him from below.

With help from the starlight Najin created, Icarus flew to the highest point he could possibly reach. Until the instant all his stars shattered, he could still smile.

"Ah..."

To the very end, Icarus reached his hand toward the star.

He never touched it in the end.

But he was satisfied with that final journey toward the stars.

With hundreds of thousands of trails, Cheon Yuseong, the Heaven-Wandering Star, became a meteor shower.

Under a sky where stars poured down like rain,

Najin reached his hand toward the sky.

Clench, something was caught in his hand. It was the Star Relic the Heaven-Wandering Star left him, and Najin's eighth star.

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