WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 301

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Interlude, The One Who Abandoned Memory (1)

Don Quixote's story came to an end.

Najin had been the actor on that stage, the scriptwriter, and its only audience member, and he silently watched the final moment. The curtain dividing the seats from the stage came down.

The stage curtain fell.

As it descended, Don Quixote's stage, and his body, turned to starlight and crumbled away. A certain knight who had wandered through a nightmare for three hundred years smiled at the end. As he stepped down from the stage called life, he wore a satisfied smile.

The moment Najin saw that smile, he knew.

Maybe... no, definitely.

He would never forget that smile. Not because he had an exceptional memory, but because it was that intense.

"......"

Najin stood in silence before the stage whose curtain had fallen.

Then he raised his hands and applauded.

A great actor's exit deserved applause. The clapping continued for a while. Until now, Najin had never known what expression he should wear in moments like this.

Regret. Bitterness.

And yet, a strange sense of relief.

He felt emotions too tangled to name with a single word. Watching someone's final moment was like that. Until now, he had always worn a conflicted expression at times like this, but at least now he knew what face he should make.

「Smile, boy!」

「If life is one stage, there is no reason not to smile!」

Remembering Don Quixote's words, Najin smiled. He was still not used to smiling, so it looked awkward. Awkward, but still natural.

"It was a pleasure sharing this with you, Don Quixote."

With those words, Najin turned and walked away.

The stage was over.

Now it was time for him to become the lead, not a supporting role or a spectator. Najin's story was not over yet.

Tap.

He stepped forward with force.

* * *

At some point, Kirchhoff stopped his sword.

He had been cutting through clowns rushing in like waves, but for a moment he lowered his blade and exhaled the breath caught in his chest. He had not given up resisting, nor was he too exhausted to keep swinging.

The wave had simply stopped.

The clowns had started thinning out from a certain point, and now they were frozen in midair, as if they had no attention to spare for Kirchhoff. Or as if something had gone wrong with the being supporting this stage.

Then, pop.

The clowns burst apart. They could no longer keep their form and spread out like paint. Watching that, Kirchhoff blinked, then laughed out loud.

Looks like that boy pulled it off again.

Kirchhoff was right. Before long, light burst up from below. From the place where paint had pooled, from the place where the core of this stage had been, a beam shot up and reached the sky.

And one constellation fell.

The fallen star belonged to the Star of Scorn, but it was not the Star of Scorn everyone knew. The star that fell and shattered was the Star of Mirth. A falling star should not look beautiful, yet this one somehow did.

Starlight scattered everywhere.

Kirchhoff looked toward the place where the starlight had surged. A boy was walking out from there. When the boy met Kirchhoff's eyes, he gave a faint smile and raised his sword.

The Star of Dawn shone.

Its starlight, now even fiercer, lit the whole area. The Carnival King's paint, now without a center to hold it together, evaporated the instant that starlight touched it. The paint covering the sky was pushed back as well. The Star of Dawn announced that the long night was over.

It was time to wake from the nightmare.

The constellations trapped in the Stars’ Graveyard began emerging one by one, drawn by the Star of Dawn's light. Those awakened constellations woke the knights, and the knights woke the soldiers... and so the Imperial Army, trapped in a nightmare, opened its eyes.

And Najin.

He raised his head and looked up at the sky.

All four Jesters had been subjugated. There was nothing left to shield the Carnival King's star, so her constellation was spilling down from the sky.

A constellation grotesque beyond words.

One step forward.

Najin gripped Excalibur tightly.

2.

After the situation was brought under control, the Imperial Army chose to rest for a while. They had wandered through the Stars’ Graveyard until both mind and body were drained, and after marching for ten days and nights without rest under the Carnival King's scheme, the backlash had finally hit.

Not everyone had Najin's terrifying recovery, and even Najin clearly looked exhausted.

Thump, Najin dropped down where he stood.

"Hoo......"

Sitting on a suitable rock, he caught his breath. His whole body ached. His injuries had healed, but his mind was tired, and after forcing his recovery ability so hard, his eyelids trembled.

"Of course you're tired."

Merlin lightly thumped Najin's shoulder with her fist. As if giving him a massage, she reached out and pressed his shoulders and the back of his neck.

"You ran wild in a Stars’ Graveyard where dozens of constellations were rampaging, fought the whales of the Heaven-Wandering Star, broke through the Great Labyrinth Daedalus, and after all that, you fought a duel with the Heaven-Wandering Star."

That schedule alone was enough to make anyone sick, but Merlin sighed and muttered, "And that's not even all."

"Your mental strength got shaved down nonstop by the Carnival King's Authority, you burned through every star you had to resist it, and then in that state you still dueled the Star of Scorn on his stage?"

Merlin let out a dry laugh. The two of them talked as if this were normal, saying things like, "This one was especially rough," and, "Right? Honestly, I thought we'd lose at least one arm or leg this time," but...

"......"

Those watching their conversation from a distance could not even manage a dry laugh. They stayed silent.

The constellations who had never seen Najin in person understood he was extraordinary, but deep down some of them had still thought, Isn't he gaining stars so fast because he pulled Excalibur?

Excalibur was that special as a Star Relic.

So they had believed Excalibur played a huge role in the boy's abnormal growth, but after witnessing Najin's life directly, they could not think that way anymore.

What being in this world lived like that?

If that was what it took to have eight stars at age twenty, they would rather be satisfied with life as it was. Thinking that, the Transcendents shook their heads. Only now did Najin's absurd growth speed start to make sense to them.

"Merlin."

"Yeah."

"About this time..."

"Say it."

Najin stopped mid-sentence and closed his mouth.

"......"

He remembered the Merlin the Carnival King had acted out.

The scene Najin pictured in his head appeared just as clearly in Merlin's mind, and she gave a bitter smile.

"It was dangerous."

Merlin nodded.

"Even I didn't expect it to be this tricky. I can't even guess when or where she started extending her claws."

Even if the Carnival King had appeared not in her true body but only as a mental form, she had still managed to deceive even Merlin. For Najin, that landed hard.

To Najin, Merlin was someone unshakable.

She was the one who gave him the right answer no matter when, no matter what happened. Seeing that person shaken shocked him more than he expected. As if she noticed his gaze, Merlin sighed and hooked an arm around his neck.

"Still, not bad. You caught it right away."

"Because we're connected."

"Yeah, and one more thing."

With a faint smile, Merlin poked Najin's side with her elbow.

"The version of me the Carnival King acted out pissed me off, but it probably wasn't that different from me."

"...What?"

"You said if you grabbed my throat, I'd smack you and send you flying. That I wouldn't do that."

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you think?"

Merlin squinted and glared at him as if to say, Do I really have to spell this out too? Najin tilted his head, and Merlin sighed like there was no point saying more.

Then, smack!

She slapped Najin's back and stood up.

"Anyway, that aside."

Merlin held out her hand to Najin.

"Brace yourself."

Things were about to get harder.

At her words, Najin nodded. Just as she said, to challenge the Carnival King, one major trial still remained.

The First Horn of the Empire, Aldaran Vasaglia.

The Carnival King still had one trump card left in her hand.

3.

Transcendents do not really need sleep.

They do not need to eat or drink either, and can gain enough strength to stay active just by bathing in starlight.

Only those who had become Transcendents recently still ate, drank, and slept out of habit.

Najin had not been a Transcendent for long, but he had spent a long time in the Outland, so he was used to not sleeping. But for some reason, while lying in the barracks to rest, he felt his eyelids grow heavy.

Was it mental exhaustion?

Was it physical fatigue?

He did not know why, but as drowsiness washed over him, Najin closed his eyes for a moment. Just as he was about to doze off.

Tap.

Someone touched him.

Not just once, they shook him awake. Had someone come to see him? Najin blinked and pushed himself up.

No, he tried to.

"......"

Najin blinked again. He had to. Someone was sitting right beside him, looking down at him.

Red eyes gleamed between long eyelashes. White hair, fallen forward as she lowered her head, brushed Najin's face.

It was Yuel Razian, the Inquisitor General of the Starblood Sect.

"If you stay there, I can't get up."

"Ah, pardon me."

Yuel lifted her head. Najin slowly sat up. He asked with his eyes what she came for, and Yuel moved her lips for a moment.

Najin's eyes narrowed.

He could not claim to know everything about Yuel Razian, but he had interacted with her often. And the Yuel Razian he knew never hesitated. She was direct, the kind of person who said whatever came to mind without filtering it.

That kind of person was choosing her words.

After a long hesitation, lips moving as she thought, Yuel Razian finally spoke.

"Najin."

"Yes. I'm listening."

"Would it be alright if we talked for a moment? Other than you, I couldn't think of anyone else to talk to."

Najin slowly nodded. He stood, drank a cup of water, then gestured for her to continue. After a long silence, Yuel opened her mouth.

"A dream."

She said it.

"I had a dream. The others say they wandered the Stars’ Graveyard, but for some reason I wandered inside my own dream."

A dream, she said.

"It was a very old dream. So old that I think it was tied to my own past, one even I had forgotten."

Yuel's eyes sank.

"In that dream, I chose something. I gave something up, let something go, forgot something, and longed for something."

Her voice trembled a little as she said that. For Najin, it was bewildering. Yuel, who had always seemed stripped of ordinary human emotion, was showing a human side.

"I don't know what I discarded, what I gave up, or what I let go. But there is one thing I can be sure of."

Yuel's lips moved.

"I ended up with a question about my own past, something I had never once been curious about. And my past self..."

Yuel tilted her head slightly. Her pure white hair spilled down. As if she herself could not understand, she placed a hand over her heart.

"Looked at me and said this."

She said,

"Did you obtain the Star of Forgetting?"

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