WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 384

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Dream (4)

Birdsong drifted through the forest.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves, and Merlin stretched beneath it, arms thrown wide, shivering once before letting out a long breath.

"So. Shall we decide?"

"Decide what, exactly?"

"Isn't it obvious? The genre of the adventure we're about to have. Just the two of us. You can call it a scenario if you like!"

She clapped her hands together.

"Comedy? Romance? Drama? Any genre is fine. Anything but tragedy. The setting can be whatever we want, too. I have quite a lot prepared from the past thousand years."

Anything could be set. Najin tilted his head at the phrasing. What does that mean? Reading his expression, Merlin gave an ahem and shrugged.

"Who am I? A Night Fairy and a Grand Mage both. To a Night Fairy, a dream is... a blank canvas I can fill with whatever picture I want."

She gestured.

"And my computational power as a Grand Mage equals dozens of Constellations combined. What that means is, I have a canvas the size of the world and all the brushes and paint I need to fill every corner of it."

The landscape shifted with her gesture.

The forest became a village, the village became a city, and not an empty city, either. Streets spread open before them, packed with people coming and going, brushing past Najin and Merlin as they moved.

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter tangled together.

Flowers bloomed. Flowers fell. Rain poured down, then leaves came tumbling after, and the rain turned to snow that piled high and stretched into a snow field. The snow field melted back into a green meadow.

"Anything is possible."

Merlin gestured again and it all vanished, dropping them back into the forest.

"The sweetest wine in the world, the most delicious food, pleasures intense enough to melt your brain, the most perfect and beautiful city imaginable..."

She half-closed her eyes.

"Yes. I can make any of it."

People often compare a Constellation settled within their sanctuary to a god. Within their own domain they come close to omnipotence, after all. But listening to Merlin now, Najin thought to himself that the description fit one person above all others.

Her, and no one else.

Even nearing omnipotence, each individual Constellation has limits of imagination and computational power. In the end, they fill their sanctuaries with landscapes familiar to them, or steal the imagery of others, the way the Carnival King and Guinevere did, to furnish their domains.

Merlin was different.

A Night Fairy who lived in dreams had risen to the seat of Grand Mage. The talent for shaping dreams, the computational power of a Grand Mage, mana that no one save the Witch of the Abyss could match, all of those elements meshed together into a single result.

Inside her own dream, she could build a world. She could shape the grandest and most vivid dream imaginable, one indistinguishable from reality.

"It doesn't matter what we choose. At the end of the scenario, all I have to do is set down the Terminus Star. The ending isn't what counts. What counts is everything that happens on the way there."

It doesn't matter what.

Anything is possible.

"So what would you like?"

What do you want to be?

A god was smiling at Najin.

2.

What would you like.

Najin looked at her and opened his mouth.

"What does Merlin want?"

"Hm? Me?"

Merlin blinked. As if the answer had caught her off guard. She tilted her head, twirling a strand of hair around her finger as it slipped off her shoulder.

"I'm happy with anything. As long as it's with you."

She smiled up at him. Whatever pleased her so much, she kept breaking into a light, unguarded grin every time she looked at him.

"Then shall we figure it out together?"

"Together?"

"You waited a thousand years. That deserves the most enjoyable adventure possible. Not just enjoyable for me."

Merlin blinked a few times, then slowly nodded. Gazing at Najin with dreamy eyes, she moved her lips.

"You should be careful."

"Careful? Careful of what?"

"Just, smiling like that is dangerous. You don't go around smiling at other women like this, do you?"

"I don't smile this easily in front of other people. I don't relax like this either. It's because it's you."

"...Only for me?"

"Well. That's how it works out, I suppose."

Only for me. Merlin turned those words over, and something warm and sticky crept into her gaze. Her hair spilling loose, she leaned in toward Najin. A sweet floral scent swept over him.

Flinch.

A chill ran down his spine and Najin blinked. A sensation he had never felt before. Not the kind he was used to. Not the chill of his life being in danger, but a different sort entirely. Still, he let the tension go a moment later.

'It's probably nothing.'

With Merlin, what could possibly go wrong.

"Alright. Yes. Then let's figure it out together."

She breathed out as if she had barely held something back, then nodded. She clapped once, and a map materialized out of thin air.

"Let's start with the setting, shall we?"

She spread the map open.

"We could go on an adventure as we are, but both of us are already fairly complete, aren't we? Our existing backgrounds are too packed. There's no room to add anything."

Both Merlin and Najin had lived dense lives. As Transcendents tend to, they had passed through countless ordeals, and those ordeals had made them who they were. That was the problem, Merlin said. It left no room for fun.

"We've grown too strong. Setting up any kind of challenge for an adventure becomes nearly impossible. Picture it. Say we do a treasure hunt scenario on the Continent, starting from where we are now. What happens?"

"It would be over in an instant."

"Exactly. One detection spell and I'm done. Even if a dragon were guarding the treasure, you'd just cut it down. Where's the fun in that? No romance, either."

So, she said, pointing at the map.

"We establish a setting. We immerse ourselves in it, restrict our power to match it, and roleplay."

She pressed her hands together.

"Picture it. I'm a mage who learned magic under an eccentric old sorcerer, and you've fled into the woods because your mentor won't stop hounding you about your destiny to save the world."

Eyes closed, she spoke in a singing voice.

"Save the world? What is that, anyway? All I ever wanted was an adventure. To see landscapes I couldn't have imagined. To travel with companions I click with. Chasing that kind of extraordinary encounter, I head to a tavern. I'm going to become an adventurer! That's what I'm thinking."

The forest became a tavern. Her clothes shifted too, into robes a mage might wear. Merlin sat in a corner while the voices of adventurers filled the place with laughter and noise and boasting and the clinking of cups.

"That's when I meet you. In the tavern."

And across from her sat Najin.

"And I ask you: who are you?"

Najin rubbed his chin and thought over his backstory. Merlin had already slid herself right next to him at some point, pointing at the map to help him work out his character.

Fallen noble, thief with a reputation, legend of the back alleys—all sorts of colorful backgrounds got tossed around.

"When I think about it," Najin said.

"Yes. Listening."

"Both of us have lived special lives, haven't we? Full of nothing but special things."

"I suppose so. Hard to deny."

That was simply the truth. Both of them had unusual origins and had lived lives far from anything ordinary. From the moment Merlin stepped out of the Night Fairy's domain, from the moment Najin left the Underground City, they had been swept up in one incident after another.

A mission appeared. A cause appeared. They had adventured not toward small personal goals but carried along by vast, sweeping currents.

"You know what I loved most."

Najin suddenly recalled a conversation he had once had with Merlin.

"The adventure that was nothing special. That one was the most fun."

The adventure she had said she loved most. Thinking of it, Najin smiled.

"So what about the opposite? An adventure that's completely ordinary, with nothing special about it. An Adventure That Could Happen Anywhere—and for that very reason, paradoxically, one neither of us has ever experienced."

No distinctive backstory. Two perfectly ordinary adventurers meet in a tavern and form a party. They travel toward a small, trivial goal with no bearing whatsoever on the fate of the world.

"...An ordinary adventure?"

"Yes. An Adventure That Could Happen Anywhere."

Merlin turned his words over in her mind, then bowed her head. Then she burst out laughing. Clearly delighted. Hands clasped together, she said.

"That's too good. Two people who are nobody. No mission, no grand cause to save the world, no lofty ambitions... just setting out on an adventure in pursuit of simple fun. Yes. That's what an adventure should be."

Everything fell away and the world went white.

A space where only Najin and Merlin existed.

She stretched both hands out toward him. An invitation. When Najin took her hands, Merlin threaded her fingers between his.

Tight.

As if she would not let go, she interlaced their fingers, closed her eyes, and began to speak.

"I'm going to forget that I set this scenario. The world will move on its own without me directing it. Knowing everything in advance would kill the fun."

She split off her computational power.

"When I open my eyes, I won't have a Grand Mage's processing power, or the mana to cleave an ocean. I'll just be an ordinary mage. A mage who wants to go on an adventure."

An ordinary girl you could find anywhere.

"Same for me, I suppose. Someone who never pulled Excalibur, who isn't some once-in-a-generation genius destined to astonish the whole Continent. Just an adventurer you could find anywhere."

"This is too much, I love it."

Merlin snickered.

"Two nobodies setting out on an adventure. A first for you, and a first for me. An adventure that belongs only to the two of us. A memory that no one else shares with us!"

She said it aloud.

Her interlaced fingers tightened their grip.

"When we open our eyes."

A sweet floral scent swept in.

"We'll have the most wonderful adventure."

The sound of rippling water, and the world turned upside down.

3.

Najin closed his eyes and opened them again.

The place was a tavern. Old wooden boards creaked. Outside it was broad daylight with the sun at its peak, but like every tavern in a city of adventurers, this one had drinking well underway even at midday.

"Ha ha ha! You should have seen Rom's face! The guy stepped on a trap and went straight into the cesspit! God, I swear I can still smell it!"

"Brother! You promised you'd never bring that up again!"

"What secrets do we have between us?"

"Ahahaha!"

Laughter. The clamor of mercenaries. Adventurers rattling off war stories and swinging their cups. In the middle of the raucous tavern, Najin stood.

What was he.

An adventurer you could find anywhere. A young man who had only just decided to start adventuring. Ordinary to the bone, someone whose entire life would fit in a single paragraph.

'An adventurer with a knack for odds and ends and thinking on his feet.'

That was the premise.

His memories had not disappeared, of course. His sense of self had not vanished either. Najin remembered everything about who he really was and why he was here.

His mana and physical ability were restricted to the level of an ordinary human. Different from the Sealed City. Back then his physical abilities had been capped below Sword Expert, but his instincts and techniques had remained.

Not here.

Here Najin was not a once-in-a-generation genius. An adventurer you could find anywhere would have no business possessing abilities like that. Even his dynamic visual acuity was ordinary now.

'I can't track that?'

He watched a con man running a shell game, fleecing a new adventurer, and let out a wry laugh. Under normal circumstances he would have seen straight through the sleight of hand, but the Najin of right now had lost track of the man's fingers entirely.

It was a surprisingly fresh sensation.

'Excalibur.'

He could take hold of it if he chose. But that would be rude to Merlin, who was looking forward to this story. Najin simply enjoyed the constraints placed on him.

"......"

The boisterous tavern, full of laughing, shouting adventurers. His gaze swept across it and stopped in one spot. A woman was there.

A woman sitting alone with a robe pulled over her head.

She was staring straight at him. At the blunt attention, Najin shrugged a shoulder and walked toward her. As he crossed the room, he thought.

The dignity expected of a knight. The weight befitting the master of Excalibur. The authority of a pillar of the Empire. He set all of it down.

The person standing here now was Najin.

Just Najin. An adventurer who was nobody special.

Every burden that had pressed down on his shoulders was gone, and he breathed easy. Relaxed stride, and he crossed the room and dropped into the seat across from her.

"Staring pretty hard there."

"You were staring at me just as hard."

"Ah. Can't argue with that."

She pulled back her hood. Blue hair spilled down. She touched the Blue Knot tied at her neck and smiled with her eyes.

"I'm Merlin."

And your name?

"Najin."

After that they both burst out laughing, at each other's performances, and at the sheer pleasure of the whole situation.

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