WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 352

──────

Skirmish (4)

Merlin's magic detonated at point-blank range.

The same spell that had once frozen everything within tens of kilometers in a single cast. Merlin's unique magic: Desolation.

Even at roughly half her full power, it had frozen Cheon Yuseong and hundreds of thousands of sky whales all at once. In Najin's estimation, this casting was every bit as strong as that, if not stronger.

Had she compressed the range to drive the output one step higher? Even standing outside the spell's radius, Najin felt the surrounding air turn horrifically cold-cold enough to sting the lungs with every breath. And if it felt like that to him, what did it feel like for Siegfried, who had taken it dead on?

His body was frozen solid white.

Frost coated every inch of him, and pale frost blossoms were still blooming across his skin. Given the spell's sheer force, it would not have been strange for him to simply die of cold right there.

'Not strange, but...'

Najin was certain. This would do nothing more than shackle him in place. It would not kill Siegfried. A decisive blow had to follow while the window was open.

Crk.

Gritting his teeth, Najin wrenched Gramr free from where it had buried itself in his body. He staggered back and forced air into his lungs. The moment he started moving, the wounds that had been locked shut by the cold tore open again. His severed collarbone and ribs ground into the surrounding flesh.

It hurt. Agonizingly so.

Sparks burst across his vision, and bloody foam pushed up between his clenched teeth, but Najin moved. He timed his sword swing to the moment Merlin began casting her second spell.

The Absolute Techniques of Transcendents closing in from every direction.

Merlin's magic, drawing in the cold of the surrounding air to detonate it.

Najin's sword strike, pushed to the absolute limit of his output.

Attacks carrying enough force to kill a Constellation dozens of times over converged in a single instant. Siegfried, facing every last one of them, kept his eyes fixed only on Najin.

And then.

Crack.

In that slow-crawling stretch of time, Najin watched cracks spider across the ice encasing Siegfried's body. He watched the frost blossoms that had bloomed over Siegfried scatter and fall.

The tattoos carved into Siegfried's body blazed with light.

Tattoos inscribed with the mythology of dragon-slaying.

Each one had been etched into his flesh after killing a dragon, marks earned across a lifetime of slaughter. They held a meaning beyond simple imagery. Completed by bathing in dragon blood, they carried an effect not unlike a deep curse.

"Warrior, sing your wrath."

The tattoos flared red. The instant they surged like flames, the ice encasing his body shattered into fragments.

Tsssssssssss!

Steam billowed up where the heat radiating off Siegfried's body met the ice. Through the rising steam, the light in his eyes flashed.

An instant later, Siegfried accelerated.

Having smashed the ice from his own body, he released his sword. Gramr dissolved out of its materialized form and scattered as lightning, and every scrap of frost clinging to the blade fell away at once.

Crck.

He kicked Najin away, more shove than strike. His kick landed before Najin's sword could reach him. The speed was such that the air only burst with a heavy thud after the impact had already happened.

"Gh, ugh..."

Najin's body shot away like a cannonball. The distance between them opened in an instant. As it did, Siegfried reached into empty air and swung.

Lightning fell. The wrath of a god descended.

Gramr appeared with the lightning and split Merlin's magic apart. The cold that should have exploded scattered entirely. The moment Gramr moved, Merlin instantly released her materialized form. Had she not, she would have lost an arm.

Boom.

Siegfried did not stop there. Having driven the two most dangerous opponents off the field, he lifted that same foot and drove it into the ground.

The earth heaved as though a giant had stamped down, and steam exploded off his body. The heat he was generating did not just melt the remaining frost, it made the air around him shimmer.

What followed, Najin saw.

Saw, but could not comprehend.

Karon's Thousand Swords, Gerd's Imperial Sword, the Star Incarnation's Aurora, and Yuel Razian's Dismemberment Slash all reached Siegfried at nearly the same moment.

Supporting fire from the rear-line Constellations, Absolute Techniques and ranged volleys, came right behind, and the sky above filled with spears and harpoon-arrows raining down in a dense curtain.

Dozens of Constellations poured out everything they had.

Even Najin was not confident he could survive a barrage like that.

"Nibelung warrior, sing your wrath."

For Siegfried, it was nothing.

2.

Siegfried swung Gramr.

In countless heroic tales and historical texts, Gramr was described as a longsword of roughly one hundred and fifty centimeters. The blade in his hand now was a greatsword that looked to be at least three to four meters long.

This was not a sword meant for killing humans.

It was the result of Gramr reshaping itself to match its owner's will, a will aimed at cutting down the dragons of the Abyss. The blade was thicker and longer than its original form, yet Siegfried's movements did not slow in the slightest.

Gramr cuts what cannot be cut and pierces what cannot be pierced. That deceptively simple mystery applies to everything without exception.

The blade parts the air. Whatever restrains it is severed. The moment that staggering mystery combined with Siegfried's transcendent physicality and the technique he had refined over a thousand years...

It produced things that stood outside the laws of nature.

Shck.

Gramr swung. Karon's Thousand Swords split apart without any resistance whatsoever. The moment the concentrated force holding the sword aura together was severed, the Absolute Technique the current Sword Saint Karon had compressed and launched vanished without a sound.

Dragging the casually swung blade, Siegfried reached out. A pillar of light fell toward him, the Aurora that the Star Incarnation took such pride in, and he caught it bare-handed. The essence of Aurora was, in the end, an immense quantity of starlight and condensed mana.

The body of a dragon resists mana.

It swallows starlight and traps it within.

The falling pillar of light was caught in Siegfried's grip. The explosion that should have detonated on contact was suppressed and never came. Still clutching the Aurora, he swung.

He had mastered every weapon ever forged.

Whatever his hand grasps becomes a weapon.

The Aurora was hurled toward the magic bearing down on him. The explosion it created swept through the incoming spells, and Gramr followed, cutting what remained in two.

Spell formulae holding mana in place were sliced apart. Siegfried moved through the spells detonating in midair around him.

Still, he did not stop.

He cut down the Dismemberment Slash Yuel Razian had launched and stepped forward.

That was one second.

Siegfried gripped Gramr with both hands and swept it diagonally upward. Gerd's Imperial Sword, which had been cutting along the ground toward him, was split in half. Through scattering sword aura and flying dirt, the Transcendents rushed him.

Karon, Star Incarnation, Gerd, Yuel Razian, Anton.

Five Constellations swung their weapons. Their Absolute Techniques had been stopped far too easily, but they did not hesitate. They drove straight at Siegfried.

And they saw it.

Siegfried, standing still in their midst, moving his eyes. Yuel and Karon both recognized that look. They had faced this situation before.

Eyes gazing not at the present, but at the future. Something alien, born from the fusion of a transcendent dynamic vision and a future sight that no ordinary Transcendent's foresight could match. Someone who moved his eyes exactly like that had been close to them.

Najin.

They felt something close to what they felt when fighting Najin. The difference was this: where Najin was still growing, the thing standing before them now was a finished existence.

Siegfried's scanning eyes went still.

He moved.

One sword swing, and all five attacks were shut down. No..."shut down" fell short of the truth. The moment anything touched Gramr, the Star Incarnation's pillar of light was severed. Karon's sword snapped. Gerd's sword was cut in half. Along with Yuel's sword, a large chunk of her shoulder came with it. Anton's sword was smashed to pieces.

One swing. Five Constellations, all bleeding at once.

Wounded and robbed of a second, they could not block what came next.

Crack!

At that instant, a spear shaft slammed into the flat of Gramr's blade. Gramr's edge cuts through everything, but its flat does not. That was known, yet no one had tried it, simply because almost no Constellation alive was strong enough to strike the flat and actually redirect Gramr's path.

One of those rare few entered the battle.

White Spear. Bedivere.

Having finished repairing the Camlann seal that Siegfried had cut through, he went straight to reinforce the Constellations. The moment Bedivere's monstrous strength, loaded behind his spear shaft, struck the flat of the blade, Siegfried's movement locked up with a sharp clunk, for the first time.

The ground beneath him cracked. Under the enormous force pressing down from above, Siegfried's sword paths wavered.

"Rotate out."

Bedivere threw the wounded fighters back and took their place.

"Fight in rotation. Not with the goal of wounding him. With the goal of holding on."

The ones thrown back received aid from Transcendents on standby and treated their injuries, while fresh Constellations stepped in to replace them.

None of them lasted five seconds before falling back.

If Bedivere had not intervened, they would not have been retreating. They would have had their heads taken. Dozens of Constellations were rotating through the fight, and Siegfried showed no sign of fatigue.

Boom.

Only Karon, whose wounds were shallow, stayed on the field, fighting alongside Bedivere. Bedivere felt a flicker of surprise watching him.

Karon had already faced Siegfried before. Because of that, he had a rough sense of how to fight him.

His equipment alone made that obvious.

Every time Karon's robe flared, a new sword appeared from within. He moved with the assumption that any weapon Gramr touched would be destroyed, juggling blade after blade, holding on through what looked like circus tricks.

Even so, injuries were unavoidable.

Covered in blood from head to toe, Karon's arm was finally cut off. The Constellations kept rotating, but the pace was quickening and the wounds were coming faster.

Flash.

Siegfried, by contrast, grew faster with every passing second as the heat of battle built in him.

'He is still terrifyingly strong.'

Bedivere thought it without saying it.

It was not simply a matter of those present lacking the skill to hold Siegfried in place. Even with exceptional ability, they had no means of blocking Siegfried's weapon.

When you cannot block your opponent's sword in close combat, the techniques available to you narrow to a handful.

And Siegfried was a Sword Saint.

An existence that unfolded tens of thousands of sword paths branching from four stances. The greatest swordsman ever, who had reached past the absolute limit of what a sword could be. Telling someone to face that with a limited set of techniques was the same as asking them to die.

'Which is why.'

Bedivere's eyes, as he held his ground against Siegfried, turned elsewhere.

There, a young man was coughing up blood and settling into his stance.

'There is no one else.'

You are the only one who can face Siegfried.

Bedivere struck Gramr and used the recoil to leap sharply back. As if trading places with him, a figure far behind kicked off the ground and broke into a sprint.

3.

Even Excalibur's regeneration could not close the wounds. Gramr had cut through everything, severing even the paths through which mana flowed inside Najin's body.

With Merlin's emergency treatment doing just enough to keep the wounds from tearing open further, Najin steadied his breathing.

The gap between himself and the great hero of a thousand years ago.

He was seeing it clearly for the first time. He had felt it in his own body and seen it with his own eyes. The vague image of Arthur he had carried until now came into sharp focus.

Far ahead of where he stood.

Arthur was there, at a distance.

Nine stars. Transcendence reached. And still Arthur was far away. And Siegfried stood in that same place.

Siegfried.

A terrifyingly, horrifyingly strong opponent.

'So this is it.'

Najin exhaled hard.

'This is Camlann.'

The opponent he would one day have to challenge.

Najin admitted it honestly. Since bringing down the Carnival King, he had grown a little too comfortable. With everyone around him constantly building him up, he had begun to see himself as one of the strong. He admitted that. He admitted he had grown just a little drunk on the sweetness of it.

Objectively speaking, Najin was genuinely formidable, strong enough that finding a rival within the Outland was nearly impossible.

But when the lens widened to include Camlann...

Najin was still weak.

There was still a long road ahead of him.

"Kgh, ptch."

He spat out a mouthful of blood and curled the corners of his lips upward. Right. Now it was finally starting to feel real.

'Merlin.'

-Yeah. I'm listening.

Najin made one request of Merlin. Hearing it, Merlin let out a breath that was equal parts disbelief and something like recognition, then nodded.

And Najin...

As he always had, he put the whip to himself. To challenge his own limits.

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