WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 395

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Interlude, Question (1)

Bedivere, the White Spear.

The most loyal knight, and the last to remain with the Round Table. True to that title, Bedivere was a knight who called to mind a calm, still surface of water.

Ordinary troubles never flustered him. Whatever happened, he would quietly read the situation before responding. A thousand years of living had put him through every hardship imaginable, and beyond that, every bizarre and inexplicable event one could conceive of.

Because of it, nothing could throw him off balance. Nothing could shake him. Bedivere had always taken pride in that. The ability to remain unshaken. Was that not the very disposition a knight ought to have?

'That should still be true.'

It certainly should be.

So why.

Fierce ripples were spreading across that still surface he called his heart. His pupils trembling was the least of it.

"Pardon? A moment, what exactly are you saying......"

He had to ask again. He simply had to.

Of the two people seated across from him.

One was Najin, the new master of the Round Table and owner of Excalibur. That one posed no problem. He looked no different from before.

True, within that short span of time he had somehow gained another star and reached ten, but that was a change Bedivere could accept with grace.

What was rattling him was the woman pressed right up against Najin's side. His longtime companion, the Round Table's guide, Merlin. The change that had come over her had left Bedivere unable to hide his shock.

"So then."

Bedivere took a slow breath. Quietly murmuring words like calm and composure to himself, he barely managed to open his mouth. Fixing his gaze on Merlin, he asked.

"Your other half, the one residing in the Eternal City, began deteriorating from a corrupted star into a Blight Star?"

"That's about the size of it."

Merlin smiled, bright and unbothered. From Bedivere's perspective, this was enough to make him want to tear his hair out. A Blight Star, of all things. That was the star the Witch of the Abyss possessed. The star so terribly malevolent that its mere existence hastened the end of the world.

"And yet that was......"

Handled this way and that, and for now it has been sealed. We are not sure when it might break loose, but it is safe for the moment. When he heard those words, Bedivere had to doubt his own ears.

That could be sealed? Constellations could be shared like that? No, even before that, a Blight Star could come into being that way? His own companion had become a Blight Star?

Questions chased questions. A thousand years of living had never prepared him to hear any of this, and as one staggering revelation followed another, Bedivere felt as though the back of his head had been struck several times over. Even for him, holding onto composure was no easy thing.

"A moment. Please give me a few minutes to collect my thoughts."

He pressed his hands to his head and worked through it.

Several minutes passed before Bedivere raised his head.

"Indeed. I understand it perfectly."

A lie. He understood nothing at all.

"So then......"

He did not understand it.

But in this case, there was something more important than understanding the situation. Bedivere steadied his breathing and looked at Merlin.

"How are you now, Merlin?"

He watched his longtime companion.

He knew her past. He remembered clearly the Merlin who had fallen apart after the Round Table's fracture and Arthur's death, the period when she had gone wild. She had felt hatred for everything in the world, and yet could not bring herself to destroy the things she had protected, and so she had tried to end the story with her own death.

The expression she had worn then. The screams she had let out. The eyes that had lost all their light. He still could not forget them. Back then, he had known no way to persuade her or comfort her, and all he could do was put things off. Nothing he could have said would have reached her.

All he could do was let her separate herself.

Watching her bury the self she had separated away, hiding all of it from the Merlin who had forgotten it happened, had been the only response available to him. It had always weighed on him like a stone.

"How am I?"

Perhaps because of that.

"Glad. A thousand years of waiting was worth it."

When he saw Merlin, who looked so much like the Merlin of that dark time, smiling brilliantly now that she had reclaimed every memory, Bedivere laughed before he could stop himself.

"That's a relief."

A genuine relief, he truly thought so.

"Then that settles it."

If she answered that way herself, everything else was secondary. Bedivere had no intention of interfering with the conclusion those two had reached.

"If you do not mind, could you tell me the whole story in detail? I am personally curious about that adventure of yours."

"With pleasure!"

As though she had been waiting for exactly those words, Merlin beamed and launched into the tale, chattering away. His calm fully restored, Bedivere listened at ease.

"Do you know what this one said?"

Ahem, ahhem. Clearing her throat, Merlin mimicked Najin's voice.

"I am your Companion, and that is enough. Enough reason for me to stake my life for you."

Bedivere's hand, which had been tilting a teacup to his lips, stopped. His head swiveled toward Najin with an audible creak.

"......"

"......"

The two exchanged a conversation entirely through their eyes.

Did you actually say that? I did say that. Did you mean it? I suppose I did. Are you prepared for what that means? Pardon?

Bedivere recalled something Merlin had once told him about her views on love. Merlin, who over an incredibly long stretch of time, more than a thousand years, had never once fallen for anyone or even felt a passing fondness for someone.

Having never experienced love, she carried enormous illusions about it, and because of that, the kind of love she spoke of tended to be quite heavy indeed.

'Surely not......'

Bedivere glanced at Merlin. She had always felt a strong fondness for Najin, but now she did not seem to have any intention of hiding it. Honey practically dripped from her eyes whenever she looked at him.

'Good heavens.'

Watching Merlin wear the expression of a girl head over heels in love, Bedivere swallowed dryly. He had never once imagined he would see that kind of look on his companion's face.

......She looks happy, so surely that counts for something?

Bedivere decided to step back from this particular matter. Was this not also something those two would have to work out for themselves?

2.

Roughly one year in outside time.

Najin had put in order everything left unfinished in the Outland and tied up every loose end that needed tying. He had brought down the Star of Omniscience, brought down Lancelot and Guinevere, fulfilled Kirchhoff's long-held wish, and finally kept his promise to the fairy Merlin.

Every task he had come to the Outland to do was done.

Now Najin held ten stars, and had grown to be equal to, or perhaps beyond, Lancelot, who had once been called the strongest of the Round Table.

"So then."

Najin said.

"I am thinking of challenging Camlann soon."

That was why he had come to find Bedivere. There was of course the intent to share what had happened and briefly reminisce, but this was the real purpose.

Bedivere, Knight of the Round Table.

The sentinel who had guarded the Boundary Line of Camlann across the past thousand years. He needed counsel from the one who, alongside Merlin, would know Camlann better than anyone.

"Time does pass quickly," Bedivere said with a wry smile.

Looking at this junior who had in just a few short years risen to stand on equal footing with him, he felt a complicated mix of emotions. Joy, anticipation, excitement, alongside worry and concern.

"The Abyss. The end of the world."

Bedivere began.

"The Outland is fundamentally a concept closer to a buffer zone sitting between the Abyss and the continent. What that means, in short......"

He drew a line with his finger.

"The Outland is a land built upon at least the foundations of the continent's rules. Certain concepts or rules are distorted or altered, but the underlying basis still follows the laws of the continent."

The sky is split and cannot be seen whole, but the sun still rises and sets. In certain terrains where the sky has not broken, like La Mancha, one can actually witness sunsets and sunrises.

Common sense may be shattered.

But the Outland still possessed a minimum of common sense.

"Yet."

Bedivere pointed to the other side of the line.

"The Abyss, that is, Camlann, is different. Its very foundation is not the continent. It is better understood as something entirely separate, another world altogether."

"Another world, you say?"

"Yes. Since you recently experienced a Blight Star, this should be easy to explain. Najin, what did the Blight Star feel like to you?"

Recalling his battle with Merlin, Najin answered.

"It felt like it was gnawing at my soul. Like iron rusting and corroding, my very existence was in decline......"

Bedivere nodded.

"That is precisely the nature of a Blight Star. And Camlann is a land that has been exposed to a Blight Star for a very, very long time."

The Blight Star the Witch of the Abyss possessed.

The land where the star of endings had taken root.

"Everything in that land is in decline. It falls, and it experiences a collapse it cannot escape. That is why it is the Abyss. It goes beyond losing one's memories and becoming among the dead, falling to an even deeper place."

One ceases to be human. Broken, twisted, collapsed, transformed into a grotesque thing that can neither die nor live.

"You have seen Siegfried."

Bedivere said.

"He is on the milder end of things. His body was ferociously resilient, and because of that, a thousand years still could not break his flesh."

Thinking back on Siegfried for a moment, Najin furrowed his brow. The milder end? That? The thing whose head had become a swirling mass of black flame? The doubt written on Najin's face drew a bitter smile from Bedivere.

"Merlin?"

"Sure."

At Bedivere's look, Merlin swept her fingers through the air. Her magic projected several images in front of Najin. Looking at them, Najin frowned hard.

"What are these? Monsters?"

"Human."

"Pardon?"

"Humans, I said. Transcendents who were swallowed by the Abyss."

If something with arms sprouting from every part of its body, including its eyes and nose and ears, could still be called human, then yes, these were human.

"People often think of Arthur as the first star, but we were not exactly the first."

Merlin said.

"Many stars existed before us. Even in a sky dyed completely black, there were points where the darkness was faint. Traces of stars that existed long ago, no doubt. Could there really have been not a single star across tens of thousands of years of history?"

They had existed.

"Countless stars, cities, people, all simply swallowed by the Abyss. The Abyss is something like the stomach of a monster that has devoured all of them."

The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay.

The place where the things she had swallowed were buried.

"Before challenging the Abyss, it would be best to spend some time standing watch at the Boundary Line. Better to understand what it feels like and what kind of place it is before you go in."

Both Merlin and Bedivere smiled, though the smiles were bitter.

"When you first encounter it, it's a bit, how do I put this."

As though struggling to find the right word, Merlin worked her lips for a long moment before finally managing to say it.

"Hard to get used to. In all sorts of ways."

3.

"Ah, one last thing."

After roughly settling on a plan going forward, Najin turned back to Bedivere just before getting up to leave.

"Do you know anything about a platinum-haired woman? There are rumors of someone wandering the Outland while holding Excalibur."

At Najin's words, Bedivere blinked.

"No. I have not seen anyone like that. I have heard the rumor, but... is it not perhaps an apparition? You are Excalibur's owner, after all."

Is that so. Najin took that in, then asked another question.

"Then, one more thing."

Since meeting her in the Eternal City, he had carried one particular question. Najin thought back on the Chronicles of Arthur he had read.

He had never given it much thought before, but looking back now, it struck him as strangely notable that no pronoun indicating a specific gender had ever been used for Arthur. Arthur was described simply as Arthur, and no document anywhere used expressions like "he" or "she."

Of course, Najin and most people assumed King Arthur to be male. In illustrations and statues Arthur was depicted as a man, and Arthur's manner of speech had been masculine as well.

But thinking back over everything he had experienced recently, Najin could not help but have one particular suspicion.

In the end, he put the question into words.

"Was King Arthur a woman?"

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