WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 365

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Argonaut (5)

Swords clashing between them, Najin thought to himself.

This was the fourth duel with the Helmeted Knight.

The first had been fought not long after he set foot in the Outland. Looking back now, this whole story might as well have begun with that duel.

"Under the rules of the duel, I may demand three things of you. I will use the last of them now."

The second duel. A rematch fought at the victor's demand, and it had burned itself just as deeply into Najin's mind. Even without using sword aura, Aldaran had pushed him to the edge, shown him what the sword meant, what a Sword Master truly was. How could he ever forget that?

Neither the first nor the second time had Aldaran been in what could be called his prime. Only in the third encounter did Aldaran face Najin as he had been in his glory days, and yet...

'I wasn't alone back then.'

He had fought alongside Gerd. Even with Gerd at his side, it had been a brutally difficult fight. He had barely won, and only because of Gerd's help.

Now, the fourth time had come.

Kaaaaang!

Only here, in this fourth duel, could Najin stand on equal ground with Aldaran, blade against blade. Not one side weakened or broken, both at their absolute best, carrying the fight forward. No room for any excuse to slip in.

Kagagagak!

He scraped along the blade and stepped back, then lunged in deep with one great stride. Locked against Aldaran's sword in a contest of strength, Najin let the corner of his mouth curl up.

He was enjoying this. This moment, right now, was thrilling beyond words.

Trading blows one on one with Aldaran at full strength, Najin laughed. His arms went numb from swinging the sword, yet he could not wipe the smile from his face.

'Strong.'

He had known it, but yes, still strong. In feel, Aldaran seemed even stronger than the one he had faced in the Carnival King's domain. The sharpness of the blade, the weight behind each strike, was far from ordinary. Let his focus slip even slightly and the outcome could tip in an instant.

Even for Najin now, a complete Sword Master who had toppled the Carnival King and claimed his ninth star, the Helmeted Knight was no easy opponent.

That fact made Najin glad.

'What kind of teacher, in all the world...'

He stepped forward hard, pouring strength into it. He swung the sword according to the teachings Aldaran had given him. Kaang! The shockwave that burst at the moment of impact sent wind howling through the air.

'Even in death, you try to give new lessons.'

He had thought he had learned all there was to learn, yet something still remained. Najin let out a breathless laugh. But he was no longer only receiving lessons.

This duel could not end that way.

It must not become simply a sparring match between pupil and teacher.

This was a succession ceremony, where the next commander of the Golden Horn Knights proved himself to the predecessor. It was a place to show the heroes of the past, those who had protected the Empire a hundred and fifty years ago, that the Empire still stood. So he could not merely stand there accepting instruction.

A pupil must show their teacher growth, and in the end must prove they have surpassed the teacher. And what a successor owed a predecessor, what a later generation owed a figure of the past, was not so different.

So from here on, he had to show something different.

Thud.

Najin stepped back sharply and reset his stance.

His breathing changed. His grip on the sword changed. The placement of his center of gravity changed. No one here recognized the new form he had taken.

There was no way they could.

What Najin was showing now was neither Imperial Swordsmanship nor the Triumph style. It was a sword built upon both, built by Najin himself. Still unfinished, but taking shape as he climbed the Tower of Heroes, Argo.

Dawn Sword. The sword Najin had grasped the thread of during his battle with the Carnival King.

The one standing before him was Aldaran in his prime, but Aldaran was a being who had remained behind in the past. Najin, by contrast, was a figure of the present. After their third duel, Najin had faced powerful enemies and kept growing.

"Come to think of it, this would be a graduation, wouldn't it?"

Najin said it with a smile, then caught Aldaran's eye. The meaning in that glance was understood.

We've seen enough. Time to settle this.

Aldaran Vasaglia accepted the invitation. With a clank of armor, he straightened his stance.

"...!"

The moment they saw that posture, the Golden Horn Knights watching the duel quickly began spreading out.

It was coming. The Absolute Technique of the Triumph style.

Meeting that stance, Najin took his own. Countering Triumph with Triumph would have worked, but this was a moment that called for something beyond that. So Najin took a different form from Aldaran.

First Horn, Aldaran raised his sword high.

Dawn Sword, Najin angled his sword obliquely downward.

Stances shaped after their own names. The strikes that followed were equally filled with who they were. Aldaran brought his high-raised sword crashing down as if to cleave the sky, and Najin swept his lowered blade upward toward the heavens.

First Horn, Triumph.

Dawn Sword, Cutting Night.

Two Transcendents poured themselves into their swings. Through a flood of starlight, two sword strikes collided.

2.

The moment the two Transcendents swung, the tower shook not just on the 129th floor but all the way through. The outer wall of floor 129 blew apart from the wind pressure, and the air at the point of impact expanded and detonated again and again, shaking the ground.

And in that instant.

Crünbell saw it. The two sword energies meshed and fell into deadlock. Triumph, driven from above downward, and Cutting Night, swept from below upward, met in the middle and stopped.

Like two swords grinding against each other in a trial of strength, the two strikes devoured and pushed back at each other in turns.

But there was no subtlety to it. No tricks of twisting the trajectory, bending the sword path, deflecting and angling for a counter. Only a head-on clash.

Either shatter the opponent's technique.

Or be shattered yourself.

Neither yielded so much as a fraction, and the two techniques ate at each other from the front. Wind pressure burst dozens of times in a single instant, and Crünbell had to drive his spear into the ground just to hold on. The other knights were nearly flat on the floor, swept back by the force.

'I knew it, but still...'

Even for Crünbell, a Transcendent himself, the power was staggering. The idea that those two shared the same label as him felt absurd. He already knew the commander's strength well enough; what stunned him now was Najin.

Najin was meeting the Absolute Technique of the Triumph style head-on. The Absolute Technique of Aldaran Vasaglia in his prime.

'No.'

Not just meeting it. Najin's sword was looking past that, not toward a stalemate, but toward pushing back the opponent's blade and winning.

And then, Najin's sword surged forward.

Rather than simply stopping a sword energy that shattered everything in its path, he pushed it back. Only a hand's width, but that hand's width was enough to begin breaking the balance.

Ka, gagagagagak!

With a grinding shriek, a platinum-white sword energy swallowed Aldaran's snow-white sword energy whole.

Swick.

A cutting sound rang out first.

Chaaaaaaaaak!

A blaze of light followed. The Absolute Technique of the Triumph style shattered. Cutting Night pressed on past it and struck the ceiling of floor 129. At the moment of impact, it tore through the ceiling wall and launched into the sky.

Up in that sky, in the Sanctuary of Oblivion, Najin's star shone.

A constellation of nine. Beneath the starlight streaming through the gap in the broken ceiling, Najin smiled. What Cutting Night had cut was the Triumph style, and it had cut the sky itself as well.

"I win."

Najin said that, and.

"......"

Aldaran Vasaglia lowered his sword in silence and removed his helm. Beneath the helm was a human face. Not the face of the dead with eight eyes, but the Aldaran who had once been called a hero, standing there before him.

He laughed, a genuinely, warmly pleased laugh, and held out his horned helm to Najin. As if to say the next owner of this helm was him.

Najin shook his head at the offered helm.

Then he tapped his own pauldron with a fist. Thud.

"I already received that."

Tapping the Horned Helm, that symbol of glory, Najin drew a long breath. Then he gave a salute to Aldaran and the Golden Horn Knights.

"To the heroes who protected the Empire, I humbly say this."

He drove the Lance of the Crossed Star into the ground and gripped his pauldron and the Golden Horn Knights' battle standard tied to it.

"The Empire stands. Without compromising with demons or any other force, always with the word Best on its lips, it moves forward."

Just as you did.

The Empire has not forgotten its pride.

"My presence here is proof of that."

Before the salute from their successor, the Golden Horn Knights lined up and paid their respects to their new commander. With the sound of their horns as his send-off, Najin turned and walked toward the next floor.

"Najin."

At the voice from behind, Najin turned.

Crünbell was looking at him.

"You must have heard it from many along the tower..."

He smiled.

"We are people of the past. Stories with a period already placed at the end. This story needs no postscript."

Najin, who had stopped mid-step, broke into a smile.

"Was it that obvious?"

"Yes, very much."

"I did hesitate a little."

"There is no need to hesitate."

Crünbell, Aldaran Vasaglia, the Golden Horn Knights, and the heroes below them.

"The path you walk is right."

So go forward.

Crünbell said that, and Najin nodded and did as he was told.

Floor 129, cleared.

Having broken through even the 12th Tier, Najin walked toward the final floor.

3.

The 13 Tiers. Floor 130, the highest floor in the tower.

He climbed the spiral staircase leading there. As he climbed, Najin turned over everything he had experienced in this tower. He had met countless heroes, heard of their lives, listened to their stories, and witnessed the techniques they had built.

Experience, knowledge, conviction, values, skill.

From heroes forgotten by the history of humanity, Najin had learned a great deal. That learning, Najin carved into his stars.

"The only one left now is Galahad."

Merlin was at his side. Materialized, she was climbing alongside him toward the final floor.

"Nervous?"

"It would be a lie to say I'm not. Galahad, the Strongest Knight of the Round Table, a figure who seems to embody the very word 'perfection.' That's what's written about him, after all."

In the Chronicles of Arthur that Najin had read again and again, and in countless epic tales, the authors all said the same thing.

Galahad was a perfect being.

So perfect that he felt inhuman. So flawlessly constructed as a character that he seemed to exist purely to move the story forward. Galahad had that quality of something artificial.

"Galahad never fails. Galahad always wins. Galahad found the answer. Galahad, Galahad, Galahad..."

Stilted sentences.

Achievements that felt deliberately arranged.

"Galahad... succeeded in the quest for the Holy Grail."

"......"

"You said it before, didn't you, Merlin? That was where the tragedy began."

"I did."

The fracturing of the Round Table, the betrayal of Mordred and Lancelot, Arthur's death, the end of the journey, all of it had started from the moment Galahad completed the quest for the Holy Grail.

"Guinevere told me."

Climbing the stairs, Najin spoke.

"That Excalibur was made by the Witch of the Abyss, and that being chosen by Excalibur means... being chosen as a sacrifice to be offered to the witch on behalf of humanity."

Merlin was silent. It was a story she had already heard from Najin on the way up, and one that gave her much to think about.

"Is that why Lancelot betrayed them? Because he had come to know that truth through some means, probably the Holy Grail?"

If so, could it even be called betrayal. Could the act of trying to stop his king's death truly be condemned as betrayal.

"About that story."

Merlin spoke.

"That won't be the whole of it. It might be the truth, but not all of it. There are too many things that don't sit right if the entirety of our journey was one massive act of collective suicide."

She shook her head.

"The Arthur I knew was not the kind of person who would go quietly as a sacrifice when told 'you are fated to be offered up.' He was absolutely not someone who would move according to another's plan."

And, she added.

"More than anything, Galahad would never accept an ending like that."

"...What?"

"Galahad was the one who found the Holy Grail, right? And putting together the memories you saw and Guinevere's account... the first one to learn all of this was Galahad, wasn't it?"

That was right. Galahad had found the Holy Grail, and through it he had approached the truth. The tragedy had begun when Lancelot, who had absorbed Galahad, came to know it.

"Sustaining the world through someone's sacrifice."

Delaying destruction through someone's life.

"Galahad would never allow that. As you read in the epic tales, Galahad is a perfect being. A perfectly good hero must never compromise with reality. If the apocalypse can only be delayed by someone's sacrifice, then Galahad would sooner cry out for destruction."

An absolutely perfect hero.

"So if Galahad considered Arthur's actions 'right,' that means there is something more beyond it."

Something more than simple sacrifice.

"......"

Najin said nothing and simply kept walking.

"Whatever it may be."

The end of the staircase.

"We'll find out now."

The topmost floor of Argo. Floor 130.

It had no ceiling.

Ten stars shone in the open night sky. Beneath that brilliant constellation, a hero stood.

The most perfect knight, Galahad.

He was waiting for Najin.

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