WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 383

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Dream (3)

The Eternal City turned upside down.

Inside and outside, dream and reality, everything in sight flipped a full hundred and eighty degrees. Najin snapped his eyes open. Through the disorientation, the first place his gaze landed was Merlin.

"Merlin!"

She did not answer.

She had been staring blankly at the lake as if entranced, and then, with a splash, she fell in. Not of her own will, but as if drawn by some unseen force pulling her under.

"Damn it."

Najin kicked off the ground. A Transcendent with eleven stars would not drown in a lake, obviously. But Merlin's state just moments ago had been far from normal. And the lake that had swallowed her was churning violently.

Something was wrong.

The instant Najin moved toward the lake, he felt a presence at his back. He turned. Standing there was a woman with flowing platinum hair.

"You."

Najin's brow furrowed.

"Just who are you?"

Platinum hair and eyes like stars. At her hip hung Excalibur, not his, but the Excalibur from the age when Arthur had been its owner.

"A ghost."

The platinum-haired woman finally spoke. The moment those words left her lips, Najin's eyes went wide at the sound of her voice.

"Wait a moment......"

She shook her head at his flustered expression.

"I know you have a great deal you want to ask. A great deal you want to know. But it's too soon. Not yet. Everything has its proper order, doesn't it?"

She raised her hand.

"You have something you need to do first."

Her fingertip pointed at the lake. The lake Merlin had fallen into, which had gone from churning to outright boiling.

"......"

Najin said nothing. What came first and what could wait, there was no need to deliberate. Whoever this person was, nothing could take priority over Merlin. He let out a long breath.

"Will we meet again?"

"Oh, of course. You could even call it a certainty. Just not today."

The conviction in her voice was unmistakable. Not today, but someday they would meet without fail. In that case, there was nothing left to say right now.

Thud.

Najin turned and dove into the heaving lake. The platinum-haired woman watched him go, smiled, and dissolved into the convulsing city.

The place where the Round Table had mapped out the future.

The Eternal City, Camelot, turned itself inside out. Dreams became reality. Reality became dreams. In the sky of that reversing sanctuary, a single star blazed with cold, piercing light.

The Terminus Star.

The star that symbolized Merlin's mystique shone.

2.

When had it been? He could not remember exactly. It must have been before they had committed to going to the Outland, back when they were active in Cambria, the City of Opportunity.

"What was your most enjoyable adventure?"

"Yes. There are quite a few adventures recorded in the Chronicles of Arthur, aren't there? I was curious which one Merlin thought was the most fun."

Najin had read the Chronicles of Arthur over and over again, to the point where he could recall which sentence appeared on which page. He had practically memorized the whole book, and once he had asked that very question.

Which adventure had been your most enjoyable?

He had naturally expected her to name one of the grand, breathless adventures they had experienced in the Outland. But Merlin's answer was something else entirely.

"The search for Parshi's legacy."

"Parshi... you mean the ancient mage Parshi? The one who only exists as a legend?"

"Right. That Parshi."

Najin had blinked at that.

The story about searching for the legacy supposedly left behind by the ancient mage Parshi, that one did exist. It appeared briefly at the very beginning of the Chronicles of Arthur. It existed, but...

"He was a con man, wasn't he."

"He was, wasn't he."

"After all that suffering to track it down, wasn't everything he left behind complete junk? And the spellbook just said something like, the adventures you had on the way here are the real treasure!"

Merlin burst out laughing.

"You really did read the Chronicles of Arthur thoroughly, didn't you? Yes, that's right. Parshi was a con man. All the treasure we broke our backs to find was completely useless."

"And that was your most enjoyable adventure?"

"It was."

Merlin answered without a moment's hesitation.

"We explored forests and caves, asked questions here and there, gathered clues while poking around everywhere. We finally found the dungeon and came up empty-handed, laughed, made a racket......"

Her voice was bright with the memory.

"That ordinary little adventure was the most fun."

Not a story about saving someone, not the founding of humanity's last nation, not bringing down a demon lord, not the mythlike heroic tales of repelling the Witch of the Abyss and her dragon.

Just a plain, run-of-the-mill adventure that could have happened anywhere.

That ordinary adventure was the most enjoyable, the one that had stayed with her longest, so Merlin had said. Turning over that long-ago conversation in his mind, Najin opened his eyes.

Blink.

He opened them and the world around him was green.

A forest.

Towering trees stretched high toward the sky. Sunlight filtered down through the green leaves hanging from branches spread overhead like a net. A drowsy, languid sunlight.

Rustle.

Leaves swaying, birds calling intermittently. Najin slowly pushed himself upright. He had been sitting with his back against a tree. He looked around, then spoke.

"Merlin."

No answer came. He could not feel her presence within himself either. What was going on. He was about to call her name again when it happened.

"You called?"

Someone popped out from directly behind the tree he had been leaning against. The first thing that came into view was blue hair-hair that had faded from blue to something closer to sky-blue, rippling as she moved.

Following that rippling hair, he found her face. He would have seen it whether he intended to or not. She had shoved her face right up to his.

A rush of dizzyingly sweet floral scent brushed past his nose. Eyes the color of a clear lake were planted right in front of his own.

"...Merlin?"

"Yep, Merlin."

"The fairy one."

"Does that mean I'm as beautiful as a fairy? I suppose I am quite pretty."

She spun once in front of him. Her blue hair billowed with the motion. Draped in only a thin piece of cloth and barely covered at all, she tilted her head and smiled at him.

A smile that seemed to ask, well, what do you think?

He could not deny it was a captivating smile. Najin nodded and replied simply.

"It's been a while, Merlin."

"It has. It really has."

Merlin plopped herself down onto Najin's lap without ceremony. He felt no weight at all, far too light to be human. She closed the distance as though the concept of personal space simply did not apply to her.

Rustle.

She reached out and took his hand, lifting it. She pushed her fingers between his and laced them together, then smiled as if perfectly content.

"I really waited a long time."

She brought the raised hand to her cheek. She pressed the back of his hand against her face, eyes half-closed, and whispered from close enough that her breath reached him.

"It's been a thousand years, Najin."

The floral scent grew more intense.

The Merlin reuniting with him after a thousand years of waiting did not look the way he remembered.

3.

The fairy Merlin he remembered had given the impression of something precarious and forlorn, yet sharp as a blade honed to its edge. A being full of rage toward the world. A woman pouring out resentment from a deep-seated grudge.

That was the fairy Merlin he remembered.

But the one in front of him now was nothing like that. She still looked precarious, but the sense of a razor edge was gone. The blade had gone dull, no, the feeling was that there was no blade left at all.

A person worn all the way down.

She was completely different from the woman of the past who had seemed ready to grind anyone who touched her out of existence, eyes bloodshot with fury.

"......"

Najin watched her in silence. He looked at her smiling happily with his hand in hers, and then slowly pulled his hand free. As the hand she was holding disappeared, a small, mournful sound slipped from Merlin's lips.

"Excuse me for a moment."

He lifted her off his lap and set her down beside him, then took off the Free Knight's coat and draped it over her shoulders. She tilted her head, unbothered.

"What's this for?"

"I wasn't sure where to put my eyes."

"You can look. I don't mind."

"You might not, but the other Merlin would probably try to kill me over it. I'd be in for at least a few days of grief."

Merlin laughed and nodded.

"True enough."

She fumbled her way into the coat. She was far more mature-looking than the Merlin he remembered, but still smaller than him. Small enough that her hands vanished inside the sleeves, and she swung her arms around playfully.

"So. Could I get an explanation?"

As in, what exactly is going on here.

At his question, the fairy Merlin slowly opened her mouth.

"It's not a complicated story. For me it was a thousand years ago, but for you......"

"It was only a few years ago."

"Right, only a few years for you. Back then, I split myself in two. One half to live in reality, the other half to sleep inside a dream."

Najin nodded. That was what had happened.

"You said you had to, in order to separate the Terminus Star. So this would be the tomb where the Terminus Star is buried."

"Exactly. But a small, minor problem came up. I didn't expect it either."

Merlin said it while fidgeting with her sleeve.

"The Terminus Star is a star I can barely control even myself. It's not a proper star, after all. So naturally it started going wild on its own. I tried to bury it in the ground and it just wouldn't stay buried."

Still, she shrugged.

"But who am I? I'm the Grand Mage Merlin. Given a thousand years, there's no way I couldn't find an answer."

She placed her hand over her chest and said it with pride. The gesture looked like the human Merlin. Same roots, after all.

"I managed to seal it inside a dream. And I've been keeping watch over that seal. Until you arrived, specifically."

"Until I arrived?"

"Yes. I can't destroy the Terminus Star myself. But you can. Only you can. Because......"

She smiled.

"You promised me a future."

Death. A period at the end. An ending. Terminus.

To a Merlin who had resolved herself to die, Najin had spoken of a next. Had told her that a next existed for her story. And so to the Terminus Star, the very existence of Najin was something like its natural counter.

"So you don't need to worry. I've prepared everything, how to clear the Terminus Star, the path leading to where I sealed it, and all the things to enjoy along the way. You must have had exhausting, difficult adventures until now. This one will be different."

Merlin spread her arms wide. Like a child showing off to an adult, she smiled with pure delight.

"It's an easy, simple, even sweet adventure. Feel free to enjoy it like a vacation for once! There's nothing hard about it at all."

After saying that, Merlin peeked at Najin's expression. He watched her eyes waver with something like anxiety, and after a brief silence, he spoke.

"Merlin."

"Yes?"

"Where is the other Merlin?"

Merlin's expression stiffened. For just a moment her face went cold. She found her smile again quickly, but her voice carried just a hint of an edge.

"Don't worry. She's fine. We just swapped places, that's all. If you want, I'll swap back. Shall I?"

"If she's fine, that's enough."

Najin shook his head. With that, she relaxed again and asked, "Is that so?" She reached out a finger and poked him in the chest.

Even so, she said.

"I'd like it if you'd only look at me while you're in this dream."

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