WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 374

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Strongest Knight of the Round Table (4)

Lancelot's helm is unusual.

It was never meant to protect his head. It was closer to a mask, something to hide his face behind. He concealed himself beneath iron.

The habit had followed him since his days in the Convict Unit.

A convict could not show their face. That was the rule of the Penal Battalion. Even if you distinguished yourself on the battlefield, you could not leave your name behind, and the moment you removed the iron mask, no one would recognize you.

Lancelot had liked that rule.

He was not a man worthy of praise. His very roots were filth. So he had always operated with an iron mask and armor covering him, even after becoming a Knight of the Round Table, even after being called a hero. That never changed.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

But not now.

Thunk.

Now he could not. The shattered helm and iron mask clattered to the ground. Lancelot stood bare-faced. He drew a long breath, closed his eyes, and opened them. Looking ahead, he found the successor holding Excalibur.

That starlight.

That platinum starlight would never let him run. Would never let him look away. Just as the king he had served once refused to let him bow his head, the successor who had inherited that will refused it too.

"What is it that you fear so greatly, knight?"

The king's voice rang in Lancelot's ear. A conversation he had once shared with the king came back to him.

"You fear you might sin?"

"You fear walking the wrong path."

"Ah, yes. That is indeed something worth fearing. Feeling that fear is a good thing."

"But anything taken too far stops being good."

Arthur's laughter. The image of the king smiling and clapping him on the shoulder flickered before his eyes.

"Doubting yourself and fearing your own strength, those are admirable things. But sometimes you must take a step forward with everything you have."

"So when the moment comes that you must step forward, step without hesitation. It is all right to be wrong. It is all right to choose the wrong path. If you truly do end up choosing the wrong one..."

Lancelot lifted his head.

"Then I will set you right."

Raising his head, he could see Excalibur. Looking at the successor who held it, he found Arthur's face overlapping with his.

"......"

He blinked, and Arthur was gone.

The king who would set him right was gone.

The king was dead. The knight who had served that king had strayed so far he could no longer even be called a knight, only an ugly sinner. The glorious time had become the past, and what remained at the end of it was a wretched present.

And yet Lancelot was still alive.

Someone asks him why. Why are you still alive? You will never shine the way you once did, so what reason is there to drag out a shameful life? What purpose could possibly be worth committing sins for?

Now, Lancelot could answer that question.

'For tomorrow.'

For the tomorrow that would someday come.

"Heir of King Arthur."

Lancelot opened his mouth.

"What stands before you is a sinner."

The sinner spoke.

"I, Guinevere, all of us walked the wrong path. We chose this path knowing it was wrong. There is no excuse for that, none whatsoever."

He had killed people. He had brought nations to ruin. He had stolen heroes' lives. He had preserved their lives and memories here in this sanctuary. He had driven the sword they lifted back into the ground.

"This city is an ark to prepare for the future where you fail. That is what Guinevere would have told you."

"That is what she told me."

"Every word of it is true. To be precise, it is an ark for humanity to escape the tomorrow where annihilation has already been decided."

His sword still driven into the earth.

Like a knight guarding this land, Lancelot cried out.

"If you fail, the world will be destroyed. The Witch of the Abyss will swallow the entire continent, and the world will have no way to escape annihilation. This is a decided future."

Lancelot stared directly at Najin.

"When that day comes, we will seal all of humanity here. After pressing every human's memory into the ark, Guinevere's self-destruction will complete it."

Najin narrowed his eyes. He knew well enough what kind of space was created when a Constellation took their own life.

"...Tomb of Stars."

"Yes."

Lancelot confirmed it.

"When that comes to pass, no tomorrow will ever arrive here. Instead of a tomorrow where annihilation is certain, humanity will be able to remain in today, forever."

"The Witch of the Abyss won't leave this place alone."

"That is why Galahad exists. Supported by the entire sanctuary, Galahad will struggle eternally. Together with the memories of the heroes stored here, he will guard this place."

That was the truth of the Sanctuary of Oblivion.

The ark. Only now did Najin understand why Guinevere had described this place that way.

"Remaining in today to escape a tomorrow where annihilation is certain, is that the plan you built?"

"Yes."

"To prepare for a future where I have failed?"

"I have no intention of joining King Arthur's lunatic plan with its odds of success hovering near zero. We prepared for the future in our own way."

Lancelot said this and sneered at Najin.

Najin frowned at that sneer.

"You cannot accept this outcome?"

"How could I possibly accept it."

"Then break me."

Gripping his sword, Lancelot cried out.

"Break me, the guardian of this land!"

He pulled the blade free from the earth. His voice rang through the entire Sanctuary of Oblivion. Standing upright on the shaking ground, he declared to Najin:

"Kill this extraordinary murderer who massacred millions. Step on my corpse, steal my star, and bring this sanctuary down with your own hands. Take the starlight sustaining this sanctuary with your sword."

He leveled his blade at Najin.

"Hold a Knight of the Round Table accountable for his sins. No one in this world can hold me accountable. Only you, who have inherited King Arthur's will, can call me to answer for what I have done."

The air trembled with every word Lancelot spoke.

"If you cannot."

Cold eyes. A cold voice.

"If you fall to me here and now, I will set the plan in motion at once. If you cannot even beat me, there is no way you can beat the Witch of the Abyss."

A blade leveled at him.

"Prove that you surpassed what we were."

Eyes carrying conviction, belief, resolve.

Najin looked into those eyes for a long moment, then let out a slow breath.

"In the end."

He let Excalibur hang loosely at his side.

"This is no different from climbing a tower."

Unlike Lancelot, who made no effort to hide his hostility, Najin's expression was strangely clear. As though he had finally understood everything.

'In the end, it is exactly like climbing a tower.'

Najin realized there was a single theme running through the whole of the Sanctuary of Oblivion. Turning it over in his mind, he became certain of what he had to do.

"Lancelot."

Najin touched the corner of his own mouth.

"That habit of sneering when you lie. Looks like you still haven't fixed it."

Flinch. Lancelot's eyes shifted just slightly. They had to. Because he had heard those exact same words before, from his own king.

"You have a habit of letting a sneer creep in when you lie, knight. I'm not sure whether that sneer is aimed at yourself for telling the lie, but it is not a pleasant thing to see."

How does he know that, Lancelot thought, and he touched the corner of his own mouth. Recalling the moment he had sneered, Lancelot let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

"Even so, nothing changes."

"I know."

The stars carved into Excalibur shone. Gripping Excalibur, its blade filling with platinum sword aura, Najin said:

"I will break you here."

As the heir of King Arthur.

"I will prove that I am more capable than you were."

As a successor who stands here having walked over the past you all built.

"I will prove I surpass the king you served. Are you ready, Lancelot?"

"Those are my words to say."

No more words were needed.

Lancelot's star blazed. Najin's star blazed. The two of them kicked off the ground and charged at each other. This was different from before. Lancelot, who had discarded his shield, no longer fought like a machine.

He bore down. He broke. He crushed and demolished.

To match Lancelot's brutally, overwhelmingly offensive movements, Najin too began to slowly change.

Tick, ti-di-di-di-dick...

Like a bird breaking free from its shell, something began shifting inside Najin's body. The change didn't feel entirely unfamiliar to him. Platinum particles scattered as Najin's movements started gaining speed.

Just like when he had fought Siegfried.

2.

The Sanctuary of Oblivion began to shudder.

The earth groaned, and the streams running through the sanctuary reversed course. Guinevere was the first to notice the change, and she couldn't help but laugh.

There was only one cause.

He who had been lying dormant in the deepest part of the sanctuary had opened his eyes. Because he had risen to the surface, the river that had been flowing toward him had begun to flow backward. It seemed the king's successor who had come to this land had succeeded.

...Ah, Guinevere breathed.

She looked up at the sky.

Lancelot's eleventh star was rising there. The star he had carefully kept for this day. It stood at odds with this sanctuary and the plan they had built. Its very presence was making the sanctuary creak and strain.

"Who are you looking at, witch."

Something forced her gaze back down from the sky. Guinevere lowered her eyes to block an incoming sword strike.

Kirchhoff was charging at her.

Grand Culmination, a single star formed from countless stars gathered together. That star now truly held an entire nation within it. Carrying every memory that made up Londinel, Kirchhoff swung his sword.

Everywhere his blade swept, blue flowers bloomed. Amid those scattering blue petals, Kirchhoff swung his spear and sword at the same time.

Blue Spear, Kirchhoff.

Londinel's most noble knight carved through Guinevere's magic. Through the gaps he opened, someone else pressed in. White hair drifted across Guinevere's vision.

Yuel Razian.

One hand held the blood-soaked Code of Law, the other a sword. She swung the blade. Her right eye belonged to the Warden of the Sealed City, and her left eye belonged to Yuel Razian, the executioner of the order.

Two and yet one, she thrust her sword at Guinevere. The expression on Guinevere's face as she blocked was complicated.

Before losing her memory and after.

Guinevere had never been able to accept the version of herself from before her memory loss. Yet the woman in front of her was accepting her own past self. Guinevere said nothing.

Finally, Guinevere looked at the one supporting the two swordspeople. Merlin, watching from a distance. Seeing Merlin looking so different from the Merlin in her memories, Guinevere's lips moved silently.

'So in the end, you made that choice too.'

The Merlin Guinevere knew was not there.

She had been beautiful, and as beautiful as she was, desolate.

The fairy who had tried to make a dream real rather than chase an illusion was not standing there. What stood there was only a human with both feet planted in reality.

...Each of them, in their own way, had prepared for what came next. Each had given their own life meaning.

Only Guinevere had been left behind, alone.

She recalled the past when she had faced the Witch of the Abyss. Standing alongside Lancelot, the Knights of the Round Table brimming with hope that they could truly save the world, before all of them, the witch had appeared and laughed.

"A love between a witch and a human."

"Child, did I not tell you clearly? At the end of that story there is only tragedy. Your true nature lies in hating this world. Live as you were born to live. Trying to resist the fate you were given will only exhaust you."

"Your story will end in nothing but tragedy."

It would come to pass as her mother had said. This story would end in tragedy whether it succeeded or failed. When a human and a witch become entangled, the ending is always tragedy.

That was what she was thinking, when Merlin, who had not cast a single proper spell this whole time, reached her hand toward the sky. What is she trying to do? She shouldn't be able to do anything beyond dividing the sanctuary. The moment Guinevere wondered that.

Crack.

The barrier wrapped around the Sanctuary of Oblivion peeled away.

Of course the act itself meant little. All it had done was allow free passage in and out, and who would be coming into this sanctuary now? The ones standing here were extreme exceptions. The moment anyone set foot in this sanctuary, they were fully exposed to the Authority of Oblivion.

There was no being in the Outland who could endure exposure to a ten-star Constellation's Authority.

Whoooosh!

Someone came flying into the sanctuary. Guinevere frowned and counted the figures pressing in. Four, and one of them was not even a Constellation. Who in the world?

The moment her Authority moved to envelop them.

Guinevere's body went rigid.

"Well now."

A voice rang out from high above. A man was falling toward the ground, holding a woman in his arms, his coat whipping hard in the wind.

"So this person was the first? I said I couldn't find a trace of them no matter how far I dug through the records... well, I suppose it takes this level to lead the pack of the world's greatest fools."

"Quiet, Anton."

"You're the one who should be embarrassed."

Anton Quijano and Lapis.

The third human and witch to break the Taboo.

"Yee-haaaaaaa!"

"Rena, please just stay still! We're going to fall!"

"It's fine, it's fine! Your mother knows her magic well enough. After meeting my daughter for the first time in several hundred years, do you think I'm going to die falling before we've had a proper talk? I'd die too frustrated to die!"

A woman riding on her daughter's back, waving her arms with gleeful abandon, and the mercenary carrying that woman while breaking into a cold sweat.

Witch of Solitude, Rena.

Red eyes, Roselin Ascalo.

The second witch to break the Taboo, and her daughter.

"...H-how?"

The first witch to break the Taboo stared at her juniors with wide eyes. For the first time, bewilderment crossed her face.

"Who knows?"

Merlin grinned, just like Najin.

"My companion says it is a gift prepared for you. A gift you could never lay a hand on."

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