WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 355

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Preparation (1)

"Who are you" almost slipped out. The words rose all the way to Najin's throat before he barely swallowed them back. His head understood that the woman in front of him was Merlin. Accepting it was another matter entirely.

Who was Merlin?

Take a girlish face that looked about sixteen or seventeen, mix in an imp's mischievous grin and a healthy dose of haplessness in equal measure, and that was the Merlin Najin knew. Not that even that version lacked for looks, she was more than striking enough to put the celebrated beauties of the continent to shame...

But Najin never paid much attention to appearances, and the average around him, himself included, ran so high that Merlin had never especially stood out.

Now, though.

A woman who looked somewhere in her early to mid-twenties. Fully grown, the girlishness stripped away. Not a trace of playfulness or haplessness anywhere, just a woman who looked somehow fragile, as if she might shatter at any moment.

Even Najin's gaze caught on her briefly. Merlin carried a strange, suspended quality about her, something that called to mind a snowflake, an ice crystal, a thing that would dissolve the instant a finger touched it.

Her hair fell across his face. Through the curtain of it, only her eyes were visible. Pale blue, the kind that seemed to pull you in.

"......"

A brief silence. Najin was about to draw breath when the corner of Merlin's mouth twitched.

"Pfft, bwahahaha!"

She burst out laughing.

"What, is it that strange? Hmm? New and surprising?"

She poked him in the forehead with one finger, grinning. The haplessness that had been nowhere a moment ago came flooding back into her smile all at once, and Najin felt the tension drain out of him.

'Yep. That's Merlin.'

The familiar haplessness showing through an unfamiliar face. Najin let out a long breath and pushed himself upright. His body was not quite ready to stand and walk, so he settled for lifting his upper half and leaning back against the pillow.

"So. What happened to this look?"

"This?"

Merlin smoothed her lengthened hair with one hand. Waves of it slid over her fingers.

"You remember the spell I cast back then?"

"The Abyss one, the one that makes the sea?"

"Yeah, that. It's my own original magic, same as Silence. A spell I invented myself."

Elite mages sometimes created their own spells. Merlin was no different, and the Abyss was one she had developed a thousand years ago.

"With original magic, you draw on your own mental image when you cast it. So it naturally reflects the emotions and imagery from when you created the spell..."

Merlin gave a bitter smile and looked down at herself. It was her past body, specifically, close to what she had looked like just before the journey ended.

"My mental state when I made the Abyss spell was pretty terrible. If other spells are white paint, sky blue, bright colors like that, then the Abyss is black. A very, very deep black."

One drop and it would dye the water pitch-dark. The Abyss was a spell fueled by hatred, resentment, and a burning desire to see the target suffer, which was why its effects lingered so long, Merlin explained.

"So it looks like I briefly reverted to what I looked like back then. This is a soul-body, not my True Form. It's how I picture myself."

"I see."

Najin listened quietly, then said nothing, just stared at her. She did look like the fairy Merlin he had seen in the Black Spire. The atmosphere around her resembled that one too.

She probably developed the spell around the same era.

The gaze seemed to weigh on her. "What, is it weird? Hmm, it does take a little while to get back to normal..." she muttered, twisting her hair between her fingers, and for the first time Najin could feel something from her that was usually absent.

Anxiety. Restlessness. Grief. Hatred.

The emotions she must have felt when she created the Abyss spell. The emotions that would have stained her mind during the years she spent scattering it across the world.

Watching her try to hide them, Najin exhaled and opened his mouth.

"Merlin."

He looked at her and asked simply.

"Are you okay?"

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"Oh, just, various things."

"...Is it showing that much?"

"A little."

I really can't hide anything from you, can I, she muttered under her breath and sighed. She tilted her head slightly and worked her lips.

"Hey, um."

"I'm listening."

"Can I hold your hand?"

"Why are you asking now? Since when did you ever ask before taking it?"

Najin held out his hand. Merlin hesitated and dithered, so he reached over and grabbed her hand without waiting. She flinched, shoulders jumping, and glanced up at him.

She was being more careful than usual. As if reluctant to make contact. Najin understood why.

'Our emotions are connected.'

And contact strengthens the connection. She was worried her messy feelings might drag him down with them. Having seen straight through her, Najin smiled faintly.

"Like you've ever shown me only the good stuff."

"What?"

"You worry too much."

At his unconcerned tone, Merlin worked her lips for a moment, then let out a long sigh.

"What was the point of agonizing over it, then."

"What point? You're just Merlin. Hapless Merlin."

"What? Hapless? Are you done?"

She grumbled, but she looked happy. She had been sitting at a distance, and now she slid right up against his side. Leaning her head on his shoulder, Merlin murmured in a small, fading voice.

"...Thank you."

Najin said nothing. He just smiled at her as she fidgeted her fingers, trying to work them between his and lace them together.

2.

The next morning.

"Forget it."

"Forget what?"

"I said forget it. Everything I did yesterday."

"Forget what, exactly?"

Unable to meet his eyes, her ears flushed crimson, Merlin looked mortified. Najin tilted his head.

"The part where you asked if you could hold my hand? Or the part where you struggled desperately to lace your fingers with mine? Or the part where you sobbed and said you didn't want me to leave..."

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Merlin shrieked and slapped her hand over his mouth. Pointless resistance, of course.

"How are you feeling?"

"...Better. Thanks to you."

She said it with her head down, refusing to look at him. The memory of spending the entire previous day clinging and whining at Najin must have surfaced, because she buried her face in both hands.

"Anyway, yesterday was a special case. I'm not normally like that. You know that, right? I am a proud, flawless, thorough, clear-headed mage. I'm not that emotional as a rule. Yesterday was just unusual."

Proud, flawless, thorough, clear-headed mage, who exactly are you describing, was a comment Najin barely held back. Saying it out loud would definitely have sent Merlin into a genuine sulk.

"If that's what Merlin says, then I suppose it must be true."

He changed the subject.

"About Siegfried, what happened after that?"

"It wrapped up cleanly. Because you held on, the Boundary Line at Camlann barely shifted, and the Outland's Boundary Line saw almost no change either. Bedivere was pleased."

Even with Siegfried running rampant, it ended at this level, frankly remarkable, Merlin added.

"So. How did it feel to fight Siegfried?"

"Don't even bring it up. It was awful."

Najin grimaced.

"His speed was hideous, he was absurdly tough, and his technique goes without saying... and that kind of person was carrying Gramr on top of it, which cuts through anything. It made me wonder whether they actually intended for anyone to beat him."

"We said something similar back then. He was just out-of-spec in every way, Siegfried."

Still, Merlin said.

"You landed a hit on him at the end, though. That final moment, just for an instant, you moved exactly the way Siegfried did."

"That's exactly the problem."

"The problem?"

"I managed to do something in that moment, but I have no idea how I actually did it. There was a flash, like a light went off in front of my eyes, and then..."

He had stepped into some realm without knowing it, but the insight dissolved just as quickly as it had come. The accumulated injuries and the heat of battle had left him in no shape to think straight, and his memory of it was hazy.

"But you've done it at least once, so won't it come easier next time? What matters is that it happened."

"I suppose it might."

Walking with Merlin, Najin went back over the fight with Siegfried. A terrifyingly strong opponent, one who gave him a clear sense of the level he would have to face going forward.

He glanced at his side.

Merlin was there, a little taller than usual, wearing the same face as the fairy Merlin. Najin directed a question at her.

"Merlin, could you beat Siegfried?"

"Not alone."

She answered without hesitation.

"In raw scale, we'd probably be close. But Siegfried is a natural predator to mages. He can take most spells with his bare body, and anything too dangerous he just cuts with Gramr. Worst possible matchup for a mage."

The words came from Merlin, whose pride and confidence in her own abilities were boundless. Not alone. That one sentence said everything there was to say about Siegfried.

"A natural predator to mages."

Najin turned the phrase over in his head and asked.

"The Witch of Camlann was a mage too, wasn't she?"

"A mage, technically. Loosely speaking."

"......"

Najin was quiet for a moment. Siegfried was already that powerful, with an ideal matchup against mages on top of it. And yet even Siegfried had been unable to endure the Abyss and turned into a monster.

Najin sketched the scene in his mind. Arthur and Siegfried at the vanguard, the knights of the Round Table gathered in one place, Merlin backing them, all of them facing a single enemy. He could not easily picture anything stopping them. He could not picture them losing, either.

'And yet...'

They lost. Decisively. Arthur could only trade his own life to seal the Witch of Camlann in the Abyss. The Witch of the Abyss had brought every last one of them to their knees.

How?

"We felt the same way."

Merlin read his thoughts and answered with a bitter smile.

"Not for a single moment did we think we would lose. Everything was going well, and we believed without a doubt that we would reach our ideal."

"......"

"Then we encountered the Witch of the Abyss once, and every plan we had was in pieces."

"What exactly is the Witch of Camlann?"

What kind of being could have defeated all those shining heroes? At the question, Merlin murmured, "What kind of being, huh."

"The Witch of Camlann is a star who has lived for tens of thousands of years, and a star who erased the entirety of the history humanity had built over those same tens of thousands of years."

Human history did not begin a mere thousand years ago. Humanity had existed before that, formed nations, accumulated history.

But all of that history was gone.

Wiped out by a single witch.

"The only thing known about her is a name."

Merlin said.

"Morgan le Fay."

The one who corrupted the oldest dragon, who spread hatred like a plague through the witch race, who burned every last fairy in the world and annihilated the mystical.

And.

"A being who holds the mystery of the End."

The first witch, and at the same time the witch of the End who heralds the closing of all things.

That was the last enemy Najin would have to face.

"......"

After a brief silence, Najin nodded.

The Witch of the Abyss. The Dragon of the Abyss. Mordred. Siegfried. Lancelot and Guinevere. He turned over the faces of the enemies still ahead of him, then shifted his gaze not to the distant future but to the present.

What did he need to do right now?

The answer was simple.

3.

The fight with Siegfried had given Najin a great deal to think about. The feeling it left him was the same as when he had first set foot in Cambria, and when he had first set foot in the Outland.

From the Underground City to Cambria.

From Cambria to the Outland.

And now, from the Outland, back toward Camlann.

Before stepping onto the next stage, he had to settle the matter tied to Lancelot, but from where Najin stood, that too was closer to Camlann territory. Lancelot would be a powerhouse on par with Siegfried, if not quite at the same level.

"So."

Najin said.

"The way things are now isn't going to cut it. That much is clear."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I need to prepare properly before going in. There are things I've come to understand, things that feel almost within reach... I need to confirm those, too."

He rolled his shoulders and looked ahead.

"So I have a request."

"You mean this."

Thud. The man standing before Najin brought his spear shaft down lightly. A heavy resonance spread through the sanctuary.

The White Spear, Bedivere.

With the fight against Lancelot approaching, Najin had asked Bedivere for a sparring match. No one knew the Round Table better, and no one could demonstrate that knowledge through movement the way Bedivere could.

Facing a knight of the Round Table, Najin began to spar.

And a month passed.

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