WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 375

──────

Strongest Knight of the Round Table (5)

Love between a human and a witch is Taboo.

Its end is nothing but ruin, and its story is destined to close in tragedy. If it does not end in tragedy, I will see to it myself that the ending is made tragic by my own hand.

The Witch of the Abyss had spoken those words.

And the history of humanity had proved them true.

Even between humans of the same kind, understanding one another is hard. They hate each other. They quarrel without end. If that is already the case among the same race, then a love between witches and humans, whose very roots are steeped in mutual hatred, could never take hold.

Witches despise humans.

Humans fear witches.

A human who once sang of love betrayed a witch. A witch who once whispered sweet words killed a human. Unable to bear the eyes of the world, unable to understand each other's values, and for countless other reasons, every such relationship has crumbled to ruin.

Officially, only three humans ever fell in love with a witch, but there had been others before and after. They simply ended things with their own hands before any proper bond could form, and so left no record behind.

And here.

By coincidence, or perhaps by inevitability, three witches who had fallen in love with humans gathered in one place. Women recorded in history as fools who broke the Taboo. The eyes of the woman who held the first place among them were trembling.

"How."

The first witch to fall in love with a human, Guinevere.

Her story had ended in tragedy.

From the moment they faced the Witch of Camlann, their story began to fall apart. Lancelot ultimately chose his own ideals over Guinevere. The only choice left to Guinevere had been to fall into ruin alongside him.

Neither Lancelot nor Guinevere could cast aside the self for the other's sake. Lancelot was a knight to the last, and Guinevere was the Witch of Forgetting to the last.

That was why their story ended in tragedy.

"It's fine now. Put me down."

"You still can't walk properly. Stay on my back."

"My, are you worried about me? Even like this, your mother is quite strong, you know. I was on roughly the same level as Lapis over there. I fought an entire kingdom in wars measured by the century, I'll have you know."

The second witch, Rena.

The Witch of Self-Sufficiency, her story had also ended in tragedy. Yet even if their story was a tragedy, it was not without worth. They had created the miracle of a child born between a witch and a human.

They had left a precedent for the fools who would come after. A thread of possibility: that if a witch was willing to give up being a witch, to deny herself, something might continue on to a "next."

"So this is the face of the remarkable person who did this madness first. I have already paid my respects to the second senior, so I ought to show respect to the first as well."

"Anton? Could you put me down soon?"

"Ah, she was so light I had quite forgotten I was carrying her at all. Of course, Lapis."

And then, the third.

"You asked how? Senior."

Anton Quijano and Lapis.

Anton wore a fine smile and, with Lapis's hand clasped in his, drew his sword. Performing a sword salute with the blade made from Lapis's blood, he spoke.

"Love begins with yielding, after all. Testing how much of yourself you can give away, that is what love is. Is it not love when two entirely different beings work to fit themselves to each other?"

Anton had cast aside his convictions for Lapis's sake. He had erased his hatred of witches. He gave up being a knight, gave up being a man of vengeance, and changed his entire set of values from the root.

Lapis, too, had given up her mystique for Anton. The Witch of Distrust gave up distrusting, gave up being a witch. For four hundred years she had trusted Anton.

"A relationship where each can give up everything for the other, and where one fills in what the other has cast away."

As much as Anton gave up, Lapis drew closer to him, and to the trust Lapis sent his way, Anton gladly answered in kind.

"I know no other way besides that."

"Well, I've never thought about any other way."

As a result, their story did not end in tragedy. On a small hill in the Outland, they tended a garden and strung together happy days, one after the next.

The third story to reach an ending that was not tragedy.

A happy ending arrived by using the first and second as stepping stones. That story, Guinevere could never erase.

"Because if you tried, you would have to erase your own story as well."

Merlin said.

"My companion put it this way. If you could have erased everything, you could have erased the very fact that a first one ever existed. So why did you leave that behind?"

It was a gap Najin had found.

The Star of Oblivion had erased every trace of herself with thoroughness. Yet the one fact she did not erase was that there had been a witch who loved a human. She could have erased it. She chose not to.

"You wanted to leave it."

And she must have wished for something.

"You left it hoping that whoever came next might succeed. You wanted a different ending, didn't you?"

Merlin pointed at the fools gathered in this place.

"Try to erase it if you can."

In that moment, you would be denying yourself. And if a Constellation denies the Constellation itself, all that waits at the end is ruin. Merlin said as much, and before her, Guinevere bowed her head. Her shoulders trembled with her head still lowered.

She burst out laughing.

Guinevere raised her head, laughter still on her lips.

"Truly."

She wore an expression that looked ready to shatter at any moment.

"You haven't changed at all, Merlin. You still see straight through people."

2.

The moment Lancelot began to fight with his full strength, the tide shifted. Ferocious. Sharp. Wild. Those plain words could not capture the force bearing down on him.

Boom!

He closed the distance without hesitation. Lancelot charging forward while splitting the ground apart looked exactly like a beast. Every time he swung his sword, the air burst with the crack of a parted wind, and the ground where the blade landed caved in with a thunderous crash.

Ziiing.

Each time Najin caught the blade, his whole body shook. Every step Lancelot took made the hair on Najin's back stand on end.

'He's strong.'

Truly, terrifyingly strong.

The mechanical Lancelot had already been formidable, but that was nothing compared to the man who had now discarded his shield. The sword of a Lancelot who had set aside all doubt about himself was heavier than anything.

Crack!

The moment he caught the greatsword swung like a club, Najin's body was hurled into the air. He slid far back, and from the distance Lancelot came charging, launching sword aura as he ran. Even mid-sprint, he kept swinging and firing bursts of it.

One, seven, fifteen, twenty, thirty...

Dozens of sword aura attacks came surging in. Najin cut them down. He deflected, knocked aside, and severed them, steadying his breath. The light scattered by the sliced aura hung like fog all around, and through that fog a greatsword came closing in on his face.

Kaaang!

Against Lancelot, who had closed the distance in an instant, Najin ground his teeth. He caught the sword. With bloodshot eyes he read the enemy's movements. He hammered his body to its limits and drove himself against the wall.

Nine stars and ten stars are different.

There is a clear gap between nine and ten.

Merlin had said so, and until now Najin had not understood exactly what that difference was. But he felt he understood it now. He drove himself into the wall he could see right before him, again and again without relenting.

The wall he had glimpsed in the fight against Siegfried.

Siegfried and Lancelot stood beyond that towering wall. Only by crossing it could he take hold of the tenth star. So what did he need right now?

Kaaang!

Catching the sword, Najin thought.

That up to this point, he had lacked experience. He had gone through many intense experiences, but he had never had the chance to slowly refine his own life and convictions. Above all, Najin realized he had not had enough time to wrestle with things deeply.

Because the time he had lived was short.

The realm that other heroes had climbed over hundreds of years, Najin had reached at only twenty years old. Even counting the time spent inside the Tomb of Stars, Najin was still in his twenties.

'Absolute time is lacking.'

Time does not guarantee growth. But there are things one can only know after time has passed. The insight an old person gains in the twilight of life, looking back on the years lived, is something only time can bring.

Twilight had not yet come for Najin.

But humans learn from the lives of others. Climbing the tower where heroes had gathered, Najin had witnessed the twilight of countless people. He had seen their convictions, seen the years they had lived, and seen their struggles.

And the answers they had drawn from the end of those struggles.

Taking all of them as teachers, Najin stepped forward. Boom! The moment he planted one firm step, platinum-colored particles burst fiercely from his body.

Tik tik tik tik tik tik tik!

Lancelot's eyes narrowed at the constantly flickering starlight. Without noticing the change, Najin took one more step forward. His body accelerated.

Faster. Speed rising. The sword grew sharper.

Shk!

Lancelot's armor was cut and fell away. The sharp strikes that had landed two or three times out of ten swings leaped to five, then seven, then nine. Now every attack was sharp and fast without exception. Lancelot laughed inside.

Good. Then I'll show you something as well.

Lancelot drove himself just as hard. Meeting Najin head-on as he strained to surpass his limit, Lancelot swung his sword with bloodshot eyes. Steel rang without pause, and sparks flew.

...So many, so many people.

Heroes or not, so many people had passed through the history of humanity. They rose as suns, set, and met their twilight.

'The sun rises. It sets. Night comes.'

When the sun sets, darkness follows, but likewise, tomorrow always comes as well.

Tomorrow, tomorrow's sun will rise.

New heroes are born by using the past as a stepping stone.

"May tomorrow be better than today."

"May tomorrow be more peaceful than today."

Najin had seen it. People who longed for tomorrow in a city where tomorrow would never come. He had placed their lives into his own star.

'Ah.'

Into Najin's left eye, which had once been run through, starlight welled up. Through the flickering starlight, Najin saw something.

'I can see it.'

A sword path. An impossibly clear sword path.

He walked along it.

The sound of his sword cutting through the air was different from before. His body moved faster. The movement he pictured in his mind and his actual movement matched precisely.

The tenth star was complete.

Above, Najin's new star rose into the sky.

Tomorrow.

The star pointing to a bright tomorrow was carved into Excalibur. Excalibur, now holding ten stars, shone even brighter. The sword came in half a beat faster than Lancelot had expected and cut across his body.

3.

Blood sprayed. A long sword mark was drawn across Lancelot's chest. Blood streaked from the open wound, but Lancelot's expression did not change.

As if to say a wound this slight could never stop him, he swung his sword in a wide arc. Najin was struck by the greatsword and slid far back. The two stood apart, looking at each other.

Only now had they reached equal footing.

Lancelot settled into a stance. Najin did not recognize it. But he had heard of it from Bedivere.

Lancelot's swordsmanship.

A style built up in the Convict Unit and completed through a long journey. He disliked giving names to his techniques, so they had none. Only the nickname given by the Knights of the Round Table existed.

The Unfailing Sword.

After wielding the Unfailing Sword for so long, it had become part of Lancelot's own body. He was able to place the nature of the Unfailing into his sword.

Kiiiing!

Sword aura erupted like an explosion. The ashen sword aura leaping upward turned white, blazing. Pure white flame swallowed the grey. Drawing that sword aura burning like a fierce fire, Lancelot leveled his greatsword horizontal.

The air trembled. The sanctuary shook, and cracks split the ground. Without even swinging the sword, the mere tremors of its prelude made space groan.

It was coming. The Absolute Technique of the Strongest Knight of the Round Table.

To meet that Absolute Technique, Najin settled into his own stance. The stars carved into Excalibur began to shine one by one. Ten stars connected into a single line.

Breath settled.

The churning sword aura became one with the blade.

And then, silence came.

A silence that arrived without warning. Barely more than a second of silence, but in a battle between Transcendents, that is a long time. Shattering that eternal-feeling silence, the two swung their swords.

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