WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 308

──────

What She Wished For (1)

In Sealed City, there was no difference between day and night.

The sea of night covering the sky was always pitch-black. Day and night were marked not by a rising or setting sun, but by the ticking second and hour hands.

Tick.

The clock in the office pointed to 2 a.m. Every light in the city was out, but a soft glow still leaked from the top floor of the Lord's Keep. Yuel sipped her tea as she sorted through a stack of documents.

Then, suddenly, she looked at the window.

Was he not coming today? It felt like she had not seen him in days. Just as that thought crossed her mind, a shadow fell over the window. Knock knock, a familiar tapping on the glass. Hiding her joy, Yuel walked over and opened it.

Wind rushed into the office.

Taking in the cold air, Yuel leaned against the frame. When she tilted her head back, he was there. Najin sat on the windowsill with his coat fluttering, and Yuel smiled.

"What brings you here this late?"

"I figured you would still be awake."

"Well, that's true."

Yuel shrugged and pulled him in. Like he was used to this by now, Najin took off his coat, draped it over one side of the sofa, and sat down.

"Here."

As if she was used to it too, Yuel handed him a teacup. She no longer sat across from him. She dropped down beside him and let out a breath.

"I have a lot I want to say."

Leaning back into the sofa, she spoke.

"Thank you."

She did not say what she was thanking him for, and Najin did not ask. Looking down at her own teacup, Yuel gave a bitter smile. This silence felt comfortable to her.

"From now on, I decided not to wonder what you do outside, or what you really are. I do not think I need to know."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. What's the point of figuring out who someone is when he beats Sword Experts barehanded, without sword aura or mana? You're probably a man with a lot of stories."

That kind of thing no longer mattered much. Resting her head against the sofa, she closed her eyes. Breathing out slowly, she spoke.

"Thanks to you, we put this down early. We would have needed several times more manpower, and even then we were considering dragging those beast bastards in as troops... because of you, it all got handled much more easily."

The city was still chaotic.

People were still killing people.

"But at least I got to catch my breath."

Because Najin had stepped up, Yuel could pause like this and chat with him. That brief rest felt precious to her.

"..."

"If there is something you want to say, say it. What is it?"

"City Lord."

"Call me Yuel. I am sick to death of that City Lord title."

"Yuel."

"Yes, Najin."

"This city..."

Najin began.

"It is probably..."

"A testing ground built by a Transcendent."

Yuel answered before he could finish. Najin looked at her in silence, and she took a sip of tea with a bitter smile.

"Isn't this a place built by some fucking mighty god, one of those Transcendents or Constellations?"

"You knew?"

"I suspected it. I became sure recently."

Build a city, kidnap over a hundred thousand people, and throw them into it. It sounded like something crazed dark mages would do, but the scale was far too massive for ordinary humans.

"I do not know much about Sword Experts, Sword Emperors, or Sword-whatever. But my guess is this kind of bullshit is not something you can pull off just by swinging a sword well. It would take something like those Transcendents hanging in the sky."

"...That is not what I meant."

Najin shook his head.

As Yuel said, that much could be guessed. What Najin focused on was the word testing ground.

"Ah."

Yuel sighed.

"You are sharp."

"You knew?"

He asked again.

Her eyes darkened.

"Same answer as before. Yes, I suspected it. I became sure recently."

"How?"

"Najin, I told you before. I used to be a mathematician."

She set down the cup and looked at him. Her eyes were full of mixed feelings.

"To be honest, calling me just a mathematician undersells it. I was pretty outstanding. Ever heard of the Ivory Tower?"

"I have. A tower of scholars."

"Yeah. It is embarrassing to say myself, but... the Ivory Tower gathers the top scholars on the continent. Meaning it's a tower full of people with insanely good brains."

Remembering the past, she let out a soft breath.

"Me? I climbed pretty high there. In other fields, maybe not, but when it came to calculations, nobody could match me. My calculation speed was the fastest."

She flicked her fingers quickly.

"Even those old geezers who bragged about being the best in the tower would stare at me and scream, You can do that in your head? You solved this in seconds? Watching those old men sit up straight in shock was so much fun."

Maybe because of that, Yuel said, looking at Najin.

"It was only natural that I ended up facing one of the Ivory Tower's hardest problems. I heard it was commissioned by an insanely important patron of the tower..."

Yuel pulled out a document and started writing equations. In an instant, the page turned black with numbers.

-This is...

Najin had no knowledge of mathematics, so he could not read it, but Merlin beside him seemed to recognize it. Mages were scholars by nature, and magic formulas had plenty in common with mathematics.

"This was it."

By the time Merlin's expression turned serious, Yuel's pen stopped. She tapped the paper.

"When I was one step away, just one step, from reaching the answer, I was dragged into this city."

"What is this?"

"I do not know either. It was a problem where you derive the correct answer from fixed conditions, variables, and environment... but if I explain the whole process, it would just be tedious and pretentious, right?"

Yuel moved her pen again.

"After I fell into this city, I had no room to think about it again... but recently, some very familiar numbers started floating in front of my eyes."

The city's population. The number of new people periodically dropped into it. The number of killers. How many they killed, and how many they had to kill to reach Sword Expert.

The moment she checked those numbers,

Yuel suddenly remembered the unsolved problem she had been working on before she was abducted. The breathing room Najin gave her let her challenge it again.

A problem she had almost solved already.

Once a few fixed numbers appeared, deriving the answer was not hard. She wrote the result on the page and tapped that number with her fountain pen.

"172,398."

"..."

"It matched this city's population exactly."

The population fluctuated.

But whenever new residents were dropped in, the population always settled back to 172,398.

"87."

The number needed to reach Sword Expert.

"4,591."

The number needed to reach Sword Seeker.

"172,397."

The number needed to become a Sword Master.

"That means this city itself was a giant testing ground meant to create a single Transcendent."

2.

After hearing Yuel, Najin stayed silent.

No need to learn mana control, no need to grasp the principles of the sword, no need for ultimate technique or sword imagery. Just kill enough humans and absorb their souls, and you can rise to transcendence.

A theory proposed by some mad Transcendent.

The number required by that theory was 172,397, matching the city's population minus one.

Why did they set the number so exactly?

Najin felt he knew the answer. He himself had one foot in transcendence, and he knew there were multiple ways to reach it.

So,

"I am not sure why the numbers are so exact, why there is no margin..."

"There had to be none."

Najin answered Yuel's murmur.

"A Transcendent must be certain of the self. That is the foundation of transcendence. Through intense belief in oneself, a Transcendent achieves ascension of the soul."

Yuel blinked, and Najin continued.

"But there is another way."

"Another way?"

"You can confirm yourself through others. There are Transcendents who solidify themselves through the fear and terror others feel toward them."

The Carnival King was an example. She had no true self, and completed herself through others' belief and concepts.

"This city..."

Najin swallowed his words.

"It is closed. Impulses are hard to suppress, and emotions are amplified."

A sealed space. One hundred seventy thousand trapped humans. Violence and murder born from impulse. But what Najin focused on was that last part, amplified emotion.

"Fear, terror, hatred... and the intense emotions that spread at the moment of death. The setup maximizes the effect by concentrating all of that on one human."

That was the testing mechanism prepared in this city.

If so, the exact numbers were also part of the mechanism, and Najin could guess why.

"Then the reason the number is exact..."

"As I said, this city is closed. You cannot leave until you die, and in the residents' minds this place is now a disconnected world."

If one person killed every human in a world except themselves, this was no longer just about whether they transcend.

Something else would be born.

Najin's instincts told him that. What would be born that way was different from a Transcendent. Even imagining what Authority and concept that being would hold felt revolting.

-Star of Omniscience, Hermann.

Merlin spoke.

-That lunatic used to repeat one line like a habit. I remember because she said it in front of me too.

She continued.

-"The one who is to be born must destroy one world. The moment a human destroys the world that imprisoned them, they leap into a place no one else can reach."

Then she added,

-"Some Transcendents are strong and some are weak. Where does that gap come from? It comes from the shape of the world each of them recognized."

Najin stayed silent.

Merlin frowned.

-That lunatic was obsessed with creating her Apostle until a few hundred years ago. Then at some point, she vanished.

That was why, when Merlin materialized, she asked Yuel if she knew Hermann. In Merlin's eyes, Yuel had proven Hermann's theory and was exactly the kind of Apostle she would covet.

"Ah."

After hearing Najin, Yuel laughed.

"So this whole city."

"..."

"Really is a fucking livestock pen built by some mighty Transcendent, then. If the result is a god who kills every other human and stands alone in the world... I do not know all the details, but that sounds horrifying."

Even after hearing the truth, she looked calm. Najin stared at her, asking her intent with his eyes. Yuel shrugged.

"Honestly, now that I know, I feel better. So if I kill everyone except me, I can leave this city?"

"Are you going to do that?"

"That is how it will end, in practice."

Yuel answered bluntly.

"No one can kill in this city. That is the law. Do you think I will just watch someone murder hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then a hundred thousand people?"

"Fuck that."

Yuel sneered.

"I will never allow it. Do you know how my godfather, that damned old man, built this law? Do you know how I have protected it? I cannot watch that happen."

"Then what will you do?"

"Nothing changes. Same as now."

She touched the law book placed in the most visible spot in the Lord's Keep office and spoke.

"I will execute those who break the law. Only I will stain my hands with blood."

It might take months, years, decades.

But one thing was certain...

"This city will die slowly."

"..."

"There will be no beast who kills everyone here and escapes. If there is an end at all, it will be one human who killed all the beasts, then dies as a human."

Yuel held the law book to her chest.

Her fingers were trembling.

"That is the role given to me, the City Lord of this city."

Even if the blood of a hundred thousand stained her hands, she looked ready to swear she would never let go of that law book. Najin watched her in silence. Her hands shook, but she did not release it.

Even after realizing her life had been toyed with by a Transcendent.

Even while that Transcendent forced her to become a killer.

She still raised her middle finger at the sky and squeezed out a mocking grin. Saying fuck you, she glared upward.

"You think I will let things go your way?"

The killer you want will never be born.

I will live as a human and die as a human.

"..."

Yuel looked at Najin. She had shouted confidently at the sky and declared her resolve, but fear and uncertainty still showed in her eyes. Fear of the future she had to endure.

It was only natural. The future Yuel was a Transcendent who could cut through dozens or hundreds of meters with one swing, but the Yuel here was an ordinary human.

...Yuel was just a human.

If she did not eat or drink, she died. If she did not sleep, she got tired. If something pierced her, she bled and died. A human you could find anywhere. Not a Transcendent, not even a Sword Expert, just a human.

A human who shook, hesitated, and sometimes felt afraid.

That ordinary human looked at Najin.

Only then did Najin understand the role given to him in this city.

...Thinking about it, it was strange.

In every Star's Tomb Najin had entered, he was given an important role. Even when no role was given, his power was not restricted. But the moment he entered this city, he was dropped to the level of an ordinary person.

Why?

Don Quixote, the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, had always played the role most needed in countless stages. Because of that story, the Star of Jovial Laughter helped Najin play the role most needed on any stage.

At first, he thought this was a stage restriction.

It was not.

The protagonist of this stage wanted it.

"..."

Najin looked at Yuel, who was looking at him. Trembling eyes, trembling lips. She could not easily speak, but Najin felt he knew what she was trying to say.

She did not ask for much.

She was cynical and pessimistic. She did not expect a prince or hero to appear from nowhere and save her. She expected nothing from the world, and only tried to fulfill her own responsibility.

Even she had one wish.

She did not need a hero. She did not need overwhelming force. She did not need a sage to lend wisdom and solve everything. She expected nothing that grand.

What she wanted was only a companion.

Someone to listen to her story, to look past the City Lord mask, and hold the hand of Yuel the person, not Yuel the City Lord. That was all a lonely woman had wished for.

"Yuel."

Najin held out his hand. Yuel looked at it and lowered her head. After several minutes that felt like an hour, she finally opened her lips.

"...Will you come with me?"

"Of course."

"You must not fear me, avoid me, or keep your distance. No matter what I do, I want you to understand there was a reason for it."

"If it looks really wrong, I will stop you."

"Ah, so you will not let go."

Head still lowered, she rubbed her face with her palm. When she looked up again, she wore her usual slightly teasing smile, though the corners of her eyes were a little red.

"You will regret it."

"I do not think so."

"..."

"Seriously," she muttered, lowering her face again.

Then she reached out and grabbed Najin's hand. Her pale, slender fingers pressed down on the back of his hand.

"I will not let go."

"My hand hurts."

"Don't whine. I will never, never let go."

Yuel pulled on his hand.

At a distance where their breath touched, she looked straight into Najin's eyes.

"So watch me."

She whispered in his ear.

"Whether I can die as a human."

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried