WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 290

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The Road Leading to the Stage (1)

A meteor shower embroidered the sky.

Hundreds of thousands of sky whales put on one final flight with their master. Maybe it was their last voyage, and maybe it was also the adventure they had postponed again and again for 900 years. And the sky whales were not the only ones on that adventure.

The nation called Helios.

Everything the Heaven-Wandering Star had built up.

In other words, the life of the man called Icarus.

Carrying all of that, Icarus flew one last time. The boy who had once looked up at the sky and dreamed chose to die while flying through it. Until the moment he melted in the heat of the stars, Icarus reached out toward them, and he was able to smile.

...A meteor shower poured down.

Hundreds of thousands of streaks of starlight crossed the sky.

The end of the man who had been closer to the stars than anyone else was to become a star himself and fall. Scattering starlight, the Heaven-Wandering Star fell. Becoming a meteor that crossed the sky, he brought his life to a close.

"..."

Najin watched all of it.

The Heaven-Wandering Star, Icarus.

Born right after Arthur opened the Age of Man, he was the man closest to Arthur in the last thousand years. He held ten stars, and he was the Transcendent who had flown the highest.

'We're alike.'

As he watched the meteor shower fill the sky, Najin suddenly thought that he and Icarus were alike. They had dreamed similar dreams in similar circumstances, and run toward the same destination. That was why Najin could not tear his eyes away from Icarus's end.

A man who had ventured toward the stars, yet failed to reach them in the end.

'Maybe this is one of the endings waiting for me too.'

If so, did that life have no meaning?

Maybe it had none at all. He forgot himself and wandered for hundreds of years. In his final moment, he flew high into the sky, but still fell without reaching the stars.

It was a bizarre act, and a foolish act.

But not to Najin.

Watching the meteor shower fill the sky, Najin found himself smiling without meaning to. He remembered what Azure Spear once told him.

"There is no single greatest individual."

"Even if someone is outstanding right now, time will pass, history will pile up, and someone will use that person's achievements as a stepping stone to climb higher."

"So we are all stepping stones."

"Even if our lives are shabby, if children of later generations can learn something through us, wouldn't that still be a life with value?"

Like Icarus had once done, Najin reached out toward the sky. Someone else might call Icarus's life no more than a strange stunt, but Najin could not.

Clench.

Something was caught in Najin's hand. It was the first star Icarus had ever gained, and the one concept that pierced through his entire life.

The Star of Adventure.

It was Najin's eighth star.

As hundreds of thousands of meteors poured down with ten stars blazing overhead, Najin obtained his eighth star. He could have taken the Star Relic Icarus left behind as well, but that story could wait.

"...Hoo."

For now.

"Merlin."

"Yeah."

"Let's go. A little farther ahead."

It was time to move forward a little more.

2.

The battlefield was crowded with constellations that had descended either to kill Arthur's successor or to protect him. The Battlefield of Stars had been split by earth-rending, sky-cutting combat, then suddenly fell silent.

They stopped fighting and looked up at the sky.

They had no choice but to look up.

Bwooooooo...

With a pulsing roar that shook heaven and earth, all the whales that had been rampaging through the battlefield shot up into the sky. The constellations watched the Heaven-Wandering Star lead the pod and fly upward.

Some ancient constellations sighed in lament.

Some trembled in fear, saying the tyrant of the sky had returned.

Others simply marveled at the sight.

Then the fall of a star began.

A being that had reigned over the Outland as a natural disaster for hundreds of years. A giant constellation no one could defeat, one that had swept away countless constellations and was treated as untouchable even among Transcendents...

The constellation of the Heaven-Wandering Star was falling.

A Grand Constellation with ten stars was falling. With hundreds of thousands of meteors beside it, the Heaven-Wandering Star burned in brilliant white. At the very end, he met death not as a Forgotten One, but as a constellation.

A giant hole opened in the sky. It was the hole left behind by the disappearance of a Grand Constellation.

In that emptied sky, a new star rose.

"Hah."

One constellation let out a laugh.

"It seems the greatest knight has gained a new star."

At those words, the Transcendents standing with Najin gave hollow laughs, while the constellations that had descended to target him turned pale.

How long had it even been since he gained his seventh star, and now he had already gained an eighth? How could this speed make any sense? Wasn't something wrong...?

While thinking that, they still ended up admitting one thing in a corner of their hearts.

Bringing down the Heaven-Wandering Star was a feat worthy of that result. Bringing down a star that even Transcendents feared could only be called a great achievement.

"You're only going to do that much?"

Anton Quixano, drenched in blood and standing on the corpses of constellations, laughed. Unlike the others, Anton knew Najin well.

The feat that boy had achieved could not possibly be a simple subjugation. That boy had always given self-belief back to those who had forgotten themselves.

Anton could be certain.

In his final moment, the constellation called Icarus had been smiling.

"So."

With a sharp swing, Anton flicked blood from his sword and pointed the blade at the stars before him, as if telling them to keep going if they dared.

The tide of battle had already turned.

That was when a horn suddenly sounded from far away. A horn cutting across the battlefield. Several constellations shuddered. It sounded like the horn of the knight once called The Hornblower.

As if in response to that call.

Bwoooooooo...

Another horn sounded from beyond the Outland boundary.

The Heaven-Wandering Star was gone. The chaos of the battlefield settled. The tide had tilted, and the flow had reversed. The reversed flow was pushing back the Carnival King's army.

In other words.

It was the perfect moment for the imperial forces to intervene.

Shraaaaaak!

The instant someone crossed the Outland boundary, that person swung a sword. A massive Sword Aura that looked ready to reach the sky crossed the battlefield, sweeping away demons and the Carnival King's forces. That strike became a signal, and beams of light burst out one after another.

The continent's Transcendents jumped into the battlefield.

Led by the First Star, Gerd Isabalt, the stars of the continent began rising one by one over the Outland.

Star of Polar Night, Thousand-Sword Star, Heaven-Slaying Star, Eternal Radiance, Purity Star...

The core of this operation was to head for the Carnival King's domain while preserving allied power as much as possible. And Najin had fulfilled the first condition by subjugating the Heaven-Wandering Star. Gerd pointed his sword at the corrupted stars and shouted.

"Death to the enemies of the Empire."

"Death to those who do not die."

"Fear to stars that know no fear."

"Strike down the enemies of the Empire."

With that cry, the imperial army advanced. Their blades could not reach Transcendents, but the situation changed when Eternal Radiance and the other Magic Towers moved with them.

The circles of great mages clashed in the sky.

Mobile magic towers and artillery emplacements lined up in sequence, and magic began to settle into the knights' armor and sword tips. The constellations that had descended to the battlefield looked back, then burst into laughter and granted protection and blessings to the children of later generations.

The war had turned.

As the stars that had stood with the Carnival King frowned and began to flee, they realized even escape had become difficult.

Tap.

On the frozen ground opposite them, someone was walking over thin ice.

A Transcendent holding Excalibur.

The wounds they had inflicted earlier were nowhere to be seen. He looked fully recovered, and there was no sign he had exhausted his strength. Even after fighting the Heaven-Wandering Star, Najin looked not tired but stronger, and they grimaced in disgust.

Under the sky where the Star of Dawn, once made of seven stars...

No, now made of eight stars, was shining, they had no choice but to grind their teeth.

3.

Countless stars fell. It was not that the allied side took no damage, but compared to the enemy's losses, it was slight. In retreat, the enemy had to lose several Transcendents.

After the wave that had swept through finally settled.

Najin sat on the edge of a cot in the tent and took a short breath. They had only just stepped into the entrance of the Outland. The Carnival King's domain was still far away.

'And...'

"Their truly important forces still haven't shown themselves."

With a flash, Merlin materialized and sat beside Najin.

"Because the Star of Scorn didn't appear."

"Right."

The Carnival King's main forces, led by the Star of Scorn, still had not revealed themselves. More than that, the Carnival King had not intervened in the battlefield at all just now. Other than opening a hole in the sky to help the constellations descend, she had used no power.

She watched, without acting, as stars that should have been on her side died.

What did she want, and what was she watching, that she remained silent? Najin's brow tightened.

"We'll know once we get there in the end."

Those were things they could only learn after reaching the Carnival King's domain. The unease did not disappear, but Najin felt his heartbeat growing louder than that unease.

Not much time remained.

The Carnival King, who had once felt so far away, now felt right in front of him. Najin tightly gripped the Golden Horn Knights' banner tied over his shoulder.

Flap.

That was when someone entered Najin's tent.

"Kirchhoff?"

It was Kirchhoff, the Sword Master of the fallen kingdom, Londinel. After entering the tent, Kirchhoff suddenly noticed Merlin sitting beside Najin and opened his eyes wide.

"I greet the great archmage."

"Yeah, nice to meet you, last knight of Londinel."

At Merlin's words, Kirchhoff's body twitched.

"You know me?"

"Of course."

Merlin pointed at Najin.

"I travel with this kid, so if he saw it, I saw it too. And even aside from that, there is no way I wouldn't know you. I've heard your name plenty."

"This is... an honor."

"You came to talk with him, right? Go ahead. Don't mind me."

Kirchhoff nodded and looked at Najin.

"Well now, maybe I should be using formal speech. The last knight of Londinel greets the greatest knight."

As Kirchhoff offered a stylish greeting, Najin gave a bitter smile. Najin gestured for him to speak as usual, and only then did Kirchhoff exhale and open his mouth.

"Who would have thought you were the one who drew Excalibur."

"You don't seem that surprised."

"There are too many shocking things for this to top the list. What shocks me more is that you carry seven stars at twenty, no, eight."

"And so," Kirchhoff said.

"You brought an army from the continent."

"Yes. A force led by the imperial army, made up of famous mercenaries and knight orders from across the land."

"I can guess why you brought them in."

He nodded.

"To break the Carnival King's stage effectively."

"To break the Carnival King's stage, yes."

Najin and Kirchhoff spoke at the same time.

There was a reason they entered the Outland with imperial troops instead of a small elite made only of Transcendents.

"The Carnival King's stage is packed with the corpses of countless heroes. And she herself has over a hundred stars. A stage cast by a Carnival King like that... isn't the kind of stage individuals can oppose."

Kirchhoff spoke. As he said, the Carnival King was entrenched in her Starfield, and stepping into it was never going to be easy.

A Transcendent with eleven stars.

Najin glanced at Merlin. He did not know whether the Carnival King was as strong as Merlin, but she had the same number of stars. If a Transcendent of that rank deliberately spread a stage...

That would be a trial unlike anything they had faced.

"And the central point that will break through that stage will be you."

Kirchhoff pointed at Najin.

"That is what the imperial army is for. If countless soldiers look only at you, stare at your star, and pray, then you will never lose yourself."

The imperial army was playing a role like a congregation of believers.

Maintaining the path they carved open and supporting the Transcendents were part of it, but the most important role was reinforcing the stage of the Transcendents standing on the battlefield.

The will of a group.

Najin intended to forge that into a single sword and split the Carnival King's stage apart.

"That plan."

Then Kirchhoff spoke again.

"Londinel tried something similar too."

"...What?"

"And it failed."

Kirchhoff gave a bitter smile and pointed at himself.

"I'm the example of that failure, right in front of you."

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