WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 304

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Sealed City (2)

Several heads hung in the square.

Blood dripped from them, and the blood that fell ran through cracks in the stone floor. The channels originally dug to keep rainwater from pooling were now carrying blood instead.

"......"

Najin stared at the heads in silence. Maybe it was an occupational habit. To his eyes, the cut surfaces were sloppy. Jagged and rough, as if the executioner lacked strength and had to hack several times before finally severing the neck.

"Looks like your executioner isn't very skilled."

"Sorry about that. I'm not very skilled."

"Excuse me?"

Yuel, standing beside Najin, shrugged.

"I could appoint a separate executioner, but it works better when I do it myself. It shocks the citizens more."

"......"

"Ah, our City Lord is scary as hell. Better not get on her bad side. Better crawl and behave. That's what they say. A ruler needs to be at least a little frightening."

Muttering as if imitating the citizens, Yuel swallowed and tilted her head. Her snow-white hair slipped down, and between the strands, her red eyes gleamed.

She looked him over from low to high.

Then, with her face angled toward his, she tossed out a question.

"So, you seem used to killing people. I brought you here to scare you a little... but you're not shocked at all. You even looked at the cut and judged it like, 'Wow, the executioner here is fucking trash.'"

"I didn't put it that way."

"Close enough. So what, did you make a living outside beating people to death?"

Beating people to death.

Najin gave a short laugh.

"I did beat people up. People who were barely people."

"Then maybe you were a mercenary."

"I was, once."

Najin casually brushed his coat. The outfit of a Free Knight. He usually hid his identity, then at important moments, one dramatic flutter of this coat would make people's eyes go wide.

Wait, you're Najin, the Free Knight?

The Free Knight who appeared for the first time in a thousand years?

Lately, he'd picked up even more labels too: youngest whatever-star, owner of Excalibur, greatest knight, and so on... but either way, once people saw his clothes, they would smack their foreheads in shock.

Of course, this was from before he'd made his name, but still, the Free Knight's outfit was famous, wasn't it? It was a way to announce what kind of person he was. As Najin kept fluttering his coat for no reason, Yuel narrowed her eyes.

So she recognized it.

Just as Najin was about to introduce himself with a "Yes, that's who I am."

"What are you doing? You're kicking up dust. Stop."

"...What?"

"No, I get it. You wear nice clothes. Were you some noble? Hah, fuck. No wonder you looked a little different. So what about it?"

Yuel waved dismissively.

"I'm the City Lord here. Whatever you did outside doesn't mean shit here. If you're expecting noble treatment, give that up now."

"No, that's not what I meant..."

"Then what did you mean?"

"You don't know these clothes?"

"Do I need to?"

Yuel tilted her head.

Najin fell silent.

-Pfft.

And then.

-Pff, hah... hah, hahahahahaha!

Merlin clutched her stomach and rolled on the ground.

She smacked the floor with her palm as she burst into laughter. Najin had tried to pull the "Do you know who I am?" move, only to get hit back with "Who are you supposed to be?" and Merlin couldn't hold it in.

"...I've done a bit of everything."

"Good. Then I hope your outside experience helps you find a decent job."

Yuel took one step forward.

As if they'd been waiting for her, aides and attendants rushed out from the Lord's Keep to wait on her. Yuel handed her coat to them, then looked back.

"What's your name?"

"Najin."

"Right, Najin."

Yuel looked at him and said,

"I hope we don't have to see each other often. If you see my face, there's a high chance you've broken the law, and that means you've done something worthy of getting your head hung in that square."

Her voice was rough, but her face stayed expressionless.

She frowned at times, but still showed little emotion. Yet that face gave Najin a strange sense of dissonance.

If the Yuel he knew was someone devoid of emotion,

then the past Yuel standing before him now...

"I hope you adapt well to this city."

felt like someone hiding her emotions.

2.

He spent several days in Sealed City.

Merlin said the time ratio on this stage was set absurdly high, so he didn't need to worry about time passing outside. Najin moved slowly through Sealed City, gathering information and reading the situation.

First point.

Where was the Yuel who entered with Najin?

"She's merged with the past Yuel."

From the past Yuel, Najin could feel Yuel's presence, faintly. He guessed all her memories and abilities were locked.

She couldn't even recognize him after he'd practically pasted "I'm Najin" on his forehead. And this Yuel, working as City Lord, looked like an ordinary person who hadn't even reached Sword Expert, much less Sword Master.

"And that's not true only for Yuel."

That was the second thing he discovered.

There wasn't a single Sword Expert in this city. Everyone was ordinary. Ordinary people who couldn't properly handle mana, let alone Sword Aura.

To Najin, that was strange.

Sword Experts were not common, but in a city of over a hundred thousand people, having none at all was abnormal.

"As if only those kinds of people were selected and kidnapped."

Najin kept clenching and unclenching his hand.

He was under restrictions too.

On this stage, where Yuel's past was the main story, there were no powerhouses freely unleashing Sword Aura. The power Najin carried didn't fit this stage.

He could use it if he wanted to.

But the moment he used Transcendent power, he would obviously be thrown out of the stage. Save it for a decisive moment. Najin finished his assessment.

"Then it makes sense."

-What does?

"Why she didn't recognize my clothes. Maybe it's because only ordinary people are gathered here, or maybe the stage itself is distorting how people perceive me. Like a special role such as the Free Knight doesn't fit this stage."

-Uh-huh, maybe.

"What's with that look?"

Merlin gave him a lukewarm stare. Mm, sure, if you say so. I understand everything. That's what the look said. For some reason, Najin felt irritated.

-So what are you going to do?

What was he going to do.

Najin touched his chin.

"I need to approach Yuel. Either way, this story revolves around her."

And he had to find it: the part the Carnival King had hidden in this story, and the moment of contact with the Star of Forgetting. To do that, he had to stay close to Yuel.

Najin turned the objective over in his mind and nodded.

-Right, sure. So how?

"I'll figure that out now."

It sounded easygoing, but several methods were already taking shape in his head. No matter how many restrictions were piled on him, Najin's senses hadn't gone anywhere. He even found this body, reduced to ordinary human capability, strangely fresh.

"If someone punches a hole through my body here, do I die?"

-Normally, people die when there is a hole in their body.

"Ah, right."

He was walking through the city, thinking over methods, when his steps suddenly stopped.

A crowd was flowing in one direction.

Najin listened to the voices in the murmuring crowd.

"Heard the Howard brothers finally did it."

"They crossed the line at last."

"So what did they do this time? Weren't they always picking crimes right on the edge?"

"The City Lord let it slide, since they hadn't crossed the line."

He listened and joined the crowd. From what he heard, the Howard brothers had committed a crime and were dragged to the square.

The citizens stopped in front of the square.

Two men were bound and kneeling in the center, with guards beside them. Those had to be the Howard brothers. Najin could hear the clacking of their teeth from where he stood.

"Ah."

"She's here."

"The City Lord is here."

The noisy crowd fell silent in an instant. Someone was walking out of the Lord's Keep.

It was Yuel, City Lord of Sealed City. The coat she wore, symbol of the city's ruler, flowed behind her.

Tap.

With steady steps, Yuel stopped behind the Howard brothers.

"Otto Howard."

Tap.

"Uben Howard."

After calling their names, Yuel continued in a flat voice, like a judge reading a sentence.

"Theft, assault and battery, escape. Normally, crimes that would end in imprisonment... but now there's one more."

Tap. Yuel tapped the written judgment with her finger.

"You got into a fight with a shop owner, beat them, and nearly killed them. If a guard hadn't found you and stopped you, that shop owner would have died on the spot."

On the word death, Yuel put force into her pronunciation.

"In this city, murder is a grave crime never forgiven under any circumstances. It remained an attempt, but that doesn't make it easy to overlook."

The sound of teeth clattering.

"Death penalty."

Yuel held out her hand to the soldier beside her. He knelt on one knee and offered his sword. Taking the sword, Yuel reached out.

She grabbed Otto Howard by the hair and forced his head up. Bound hand and foot, made to kneel, he begged. I'm sorry, City Lord, I lost my mind, I wasn't myself, please just one more chance... Yuel looked down at his pleading face without expression.

Then, hard.

"Ghk, ugk, khk..."

Still gripping his hair, she drove the blade into his neck. Even with the body held in place, severing a human neck by hacking down is not easy. In a posture that unstable, it was even harder.

Especially for someone who had never learned the sword.

Yuel moved the blade expressionlessly.

Even generously, it couldn't be called skilled. It was the movement of a complete beginner who didn't know how to handle a sword at all.

"Kkh, khhk..."

Otto Howard died slowly.

Over a long stretch of time, Yuel severed Otto's neck. The cut was jagged, and Otto's face was twisted in pain. She even impaled the severed head on a spike and set it in the square with her own hands.

"Next. Uben Howard. Same charges."

A scream. Noise of thrashing and cursing. The awful scrape of fingernails on stone. Then wet choking sounds as a blade sank into a throat. Uben ended up the same as his brother, his head displayed in the square.

Yuel carried out every step without expression.

Blood splashed her face. Blood coated her hands in sticky strands. Her white hair was stained red in places where blood had sprayed.

"Hoo."

She raised her head as if none of it mattered. Slightly out of breath, she exhaled and looked over the citizens gathered in the square.

Each person who met those red eyes flinched.

Because he was mixed in among them, Najin could hear their whispers.

"She's a complete lunatic."

"No blood, no tears. I heard she even executed the nanny who raised her, no exception. With her own hands."

"That's why she's City Lord, isn't it?"

"A ruthless absolutist. The kind of person you could prick with a needle and not get a drop of blood."

They traded insults, but what moved among them was fear, fear of their City Lord.

A lord who personally cut off criminals' heads with an expressionless face was more than enough to terrify people.

"Follow the law. That's all I ask."

Leaving those words, she returned to the Lord's Keep.

As if nothing had happened.

Everyone either looked away or lowered their heads, afraid to meet her gaze, or maybe they just lacked sharp eyes, so they missed something. Najin saw it.

After she handed the sword back to the soldier, in that brief moment when she shoved her hand into her coat pocket,

Yuel's fingers were trembling.

"......"

Without a word, Najin started walking.

3.

On the rooftop of the Lord's Keep, Yuel sat on a bench with her hands plunged into a basin full of water, scrubbing like mad. Her lips trembled.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

Muttering curses, Yuel tried to scrub the blood off her hands. But blood that had seeped into the gaps under her nails would not come out easily. Or maybe it already had, but to Yuel, her hands still looked drenched in blood.

"Ugh," she dry-heaved and lowered her head.

White hair fell down. Staring at those bloodstained white strands, Yuel let out a hollow laugh.

"Hah."

Exhaling slowly, she pulled her hands from the basin. With those trembling hands clenched tight, she walked to the railing. Leaning her upper body on it, she pulled a cigarette pack from her chest pocket.

Tap, tap. She struck the pack irritably to shake one out, but nothing came. She crushed the pack in her grip, and one popped out...

"Ah."

It fell over the railing. Her last one. When life was fucking miserable, even small things turned fucking miserable. Thinking that, Yuel brushed back her hair.

"Hoo..."

She was about to let out another sigh, she had lost count by now, when it happened.

"Hup."

A voice came from right below.

Yuel blinked and looked down.

"...What are you doing?"

"You dropped this. Looking for it?"

Najin was there, hanging from the wall of the Lord's Keep and holding the cigarette she had dropped, as if catching it had been easy. Yuel blinked. Najin climbed the wall smoothly and landed beside her.

"Hah..."

"Here."

"Thanks, I guess, but breaking into the Lord's Keep is a major crime. Is your life not precious to you?"

"I hear that a lot."

Yuel put the cigarette between her lips and lit it. She took a long drag, exhaled, then leaned on the railing and looked at Najin.

"Did you see it?"

"See what?"

"Never mind. If you didn't see it, then..."

"You mean when you were scrubbing your hands like crazy in the water? Or when you were dry-heaving? Or if not that, when your hand was trembling before you shoved it into your coat?"

"So you saw all of it. Fuck."

Yuel dragged a hand down her face.

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