WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 399

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Sacred Body (2)

"We've arrived. This is the Old Holy Site of the Sacred Body Church."

Najin stopped and looked around.

The first thing that caught his eye was a ruin built of pure white ore. At least several centuries must have passed since any human foot had touched this place, yet the ruin had held its original form. As though the flow of time had simply passed it by.

The surface of the ruin caught the starlight and glittered platinum. Najin walked toward it, toward the ruins that shone like stars themselves.

"The High Priest of the Sacred Body Church told me something," he said. "That the roots of the Star Body lie here. That if I came to this place, I would find what I was looking for."

"If the old man said so, it's probably true."

"Do you know something about it?"

"Me? No. I told you. All I know about this place is that it's where new Star Incarnations are born, and where Star Incarnations who have fulfilled their role close their eyes."

The Star Incarnation shrugged.

"And memories of being born... I don't have any. Just a vague impression that something was flashing with light. By the time I came to my senses, I was standing in the main church of the Sacred Body Church."

Star Incarnations were said to emerge fully grown at birth, already in possession of a perfect body, yet it seemed the memories from right after that birth remained hazy. Najin did not press further.

He would find out soon enough.

"This way."

The ruin had a complicated layout, but the Star Incarnation navigated it with ease. She mentioned having made the trip several times while accompanying ascetics, and she led Najin to a particular spot.

"This is where the ascetics hold their worship services. Going any deeper than this is considered taboo even for high-ranking priests. So this is as far as the public area goes."

A space decorated with stone statues and murals.

The Star Incarnation walked a circuit of the room, then smiled.

"But the place you're looking for, Dawn Horn, is just a little further ahead. Let me think. It's been a while, so I need to jog my memory a bit......"

She tapped the back of her hand along the wall as she went, and eventually murmured, "Ah, here we go," pressing down on a protruding brick. After doing that a few times, one section of the wall groaned open.

"In we go."

They followed the passage down a long way, and at the end of it stood a single iron door, firmly shut.

"This is where Star Incarnations are born. It's closed because the time hasn't come yet."

The Star Incarnation pressed her palm to the iron door and pushed with real force, but the door did not budge even a fraction. Najin's brow furrowed.

'It won't open even with a Transcendent's strength.'

A door like that shouldn't exist. If something that shouldn't exist does exist, there was only one reason for it.

"It's a star domain."

He pressed his palm to the iron door and felt starlight through it. The door itself, and by extension the entire Old Holy Site of the Sacred Body Church, was halfway in the nature of a star domain.

Not merely sacred ground. Ground that bore the blessing of some great star.

'The constellation affiliated with the Sacred Body Church is......'

Najin glanced at the Star Incarnation.

'Only the Star Incarnation, isn't it.'

She shook her head at that look.

"It's not my star domain. Mine is at the main church of the Sacred Body Church, not here."

"Then what blessing is resting on this place?"

"That I don't know either."

She knocked on the iron door a couple of times.

"Nobody knows what's on the other side. It opens when the time comes for a new Star Incarnation to be born, and when that happens, a signal goes to the Sacred Body Church."

Until then the door stays shut, she said. Najin stared at it in silence for a while. By her account, this door would not open for another thirty or forty years.

He had no intention of waiting that long.

Najin reached into the air and closed his fist. The moment starlight gathered and took the shape of Excalibur, the Star Incarnation blinked.

"Why Excalibur?"

Instead of answering, Najin pointed at the iron door. The starlight blooming over his body was a bonus. Just drawing out starlight made the air across the entire area tremble, and cold sweat ran down the Star Incarnation's spine.

A ten-starred constellation. The Dawning Star.

She knew that strength well. Not long ago, she had witnessed Najin's power with her own eyes during his battle against the Sword Demon of the Abyss. Now, as the Dawning Star drew on that power, a sense of crisis gripped her.

"Wait, what are you trying to...?"

"I was thinking I could probably break it if I tried."

"You're going to break a ruin that's been standing intact for nearly a thousand years? This is the most important place in our church? Are you out of your mind, Dawn Horn?"

"I'll cut it cleanly."

"You've completely lost it. No. Absolutely not!"

Eyes wide, the Star Incarnation grabbed Najin's arm and hung off it. She wailed about how she would definitely get scolded by the High Priest if she let this place get destroyed, how an outrage like this was unforgivable, clinging to him with everything she had.

......She couldn't bring herself to actually attack him, so hanging onto his sleeve was the best she could manage.

What followed was a struggle too undignified to call a fight between Transcendents. Let go. I won't. Why are you grabbing my hair. Then you let go of Excalibur. And on and on. It was a spectacle that was rapidly eating away at the dignity of both constellations in real time.

Grrrrk.

Fortunately for them both, it didn't last long. The firmly shut iron door suddenly began to tremble.

"Huh?"

The Star Incarnation, who had been yanking on Najin's hair, blinked.

"What. Why is that opening?"

"Let go of my hair."

"There's no way it should be opening right now?"

"I said let go. Three, two, one......"

"Something's weird... AAAAAAAAAH! Why did you hit me!"

Having shaken the Star Incarnation off, Najin looked back and forth between the slowly opening iron door and the Excalibur in his hand. He brought Excalibur close to the door.

Grrk!

The iron door shuddered hard. Trembling as though responding to Excalibur, it swung wide open. The moment it opened, just for an instant, Najin could see what lay within.

'......Stars?'

But that too lasted only a moment. An intense light burst from the other side. Platinum-colored starlight bright enough to blind even a Transcendent's eyes slammed into him. In that instant, he recognized a familiar sensation.

A sensation he had experienced any number of times.

The sensation of stepping into a sanctuary, or a Tomb of Stars.

2.

Nearly a thousand years had passed since Arthur opened the Age of Man.

Over those thousand years, countless orders and sects had been born and extinguished in cycles. Through schisms, through the temptations of demons, through a hundred other reasons, they rose and fell, dissolved and formed again.

Three sects had always held their ground through that chaos: the Sacred Body, the Star Blood, and the Star Light.

These three survived without disappearing even as time flowed on. Their principal deities changed, their doctrines changed, but the names of the sects themselves never did.

Because they were a symbol.

Star Light was the light a star must carry.

Star Blood was the blood a star bleeds.

Star Body was the unyielding flesh a star possesses.

The three aspects an ideal being must embody. In the religion that had existed even before the age a thousand years ago, these three aspects had been held most sacred, and that tradition carried on.

When Najin had once heard this story from Merlin, a question had come to him.

If the three elements that formed the most ideal being had each been separated out to give birth to the three sects that existed today... then who was the single being they pointed back to?

The answer wasn't hard to find.

'The starting point of the three sects.'

The answer lay there.

Tracing the three sects back to their starting point meant going back a thousand years, and that era was still an age sunk in darkness. Looking up at the sky, no stars were visible. Every hero was dead, and the stars that had lost their light no longer listened to human wishes.

Prayers went up, but no one answered them. There was no hope. Only cold silence, darkness, and screaming.

That was what that age was.

In that age, there was a being who became a star of their own accord. A being who became a new first among heavens from which all stars had vanished, a being that was itself a symbol. For the people of that time, that being must have been no different from a god.

In the present, that meaning had changed. Each of the three sects had taken their own principal deity, and each doctrine had drifted far from the original, but......

Trace the roots of the sects far enough back, and she is there. The god worshipped by everyone of that age. A being that was worshipped, given faith, that answered every wish directed toward her. That being's name has not been forgotten even a thousand years later.

Arthur.

The great hero, Arthur.

So perhaps what now unfolded before his eyes was inevitable. That was what Najin thought.

Blink.

He blinked and adjusted to the light, then looked around. The Star Incarnation was gone. The pure white ore that had formed the ruins was gone too. What his eyes showed him was the scene of a forest. Leaves rustled in the wind.

And the soft sound of water rippling.

A lake sat in the depths of the forest. Shallow, the water no deeper than halfway up a person's legs. In the middle of it, a boulder sat.

"......"

Najin looked at that boulder.

More precisely, at the sword thrust into it.

"Merlin."

"Yeah."

The voice came from right beside him. Merlin, fully materialized, wore a complicated expression as she looked at the same thing Najin was looking at.

"I don't know why a sanctuary like this exists here, but."

Yeah, she nodded.

"Right."

Merlin's finger pointed to the sword buried in the boulder.

"That's Excalibur. This is the place where Arthur drew the sword, and it's also where I returned Excalibur a thousand years ago."

Where every story had begun.

And where that story had ended.

Of course, this was not actually that place. Only Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table knew where the real location was, and it lay somewhere different from here. This was nothing more than a sanctuary that reproduced the scenery of that place.

The reason for it, he did not know.

Splash.

Najin stepped into the lake and walked toward the boulder where the sword was thrust. A strong intuition told him he should.

"I haven't heard this in a while."

"Heard what?"

"This voice."

Najin gave a small smile and touched the side of his head.

"Draw the sword."

The voice telling him to draw the sword was there.

The same voice he had heard four years ago on the day he first pulled out Excalibur. The same voice that had spoken to him when he returned to his homeland to face Mordred.

He reached out toward the sword buried in the boulder at the center of the lake. Not his own Excalibur. Arthur's Excalibur. The moment his hand closed around the hilt.

"......"

The Excalibur within Najin resonated. The stars of Arthur held inside it began to ring. As though responding to another star just like themselves.

And then.

"Countless epic tales speak of it."

A soliloquy rang out beside Najin's ear. It was not his voice. Thinner, and yet carrying weight.

"In the distant past, there were things called stars. That humans who achieved great deeds could carve a star into the sky."

Words that resembled a soliloquy Najin had once spoken himself.

"In the far past, the sky."

Yet somehow different.

"Was not as dark as it is now."

Someone else's memory flowed into Najin's mind. There was no need to ask whose memory it was. He understood without thinking.

It was Arthur's memory.

3.

Countless epic tales speak of it.

In the distant past, there were things called stars. That humans who achieved great deeds could carve a star into the sky.

In the far past, the sky.

Was not as dark as it is now.

"......"

The girl lifted her head and looked up at the sky.

The sky above was dark. Nothing but a darkness that held nothing occupied that space. Stars did not shine, swallowed by the dark until even their shapes could no longer be made out.

All because the witch had consumed them.

The witch who hated and despised and scorned humanity had not permitted any evidence that humanity had ever lived upon this earth to remain. She swallowed all the footprints the heroes had left behind, all their stars, and draped her own robes across the sky.

So that no one could look up at the heavens.

So that no one could carve a star into the heavens.

The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay, would not permit humanity so much as a single star, not so much as a handful of starlight.

So the sky the girl looked up at now was a false sky. The real sky would exist beyond that darkness, and the black heavens that surged like a dark sea were nothing but the witch's deception.

......Some say this.

That gazing up at the sky, people dream.

Then.

Because the sky could not be seen, did people no longer dream? Did they speak only of the brilliant distant past, unable to speak of tomorrow? Living lives filled with nothing but deception, were they meant to shut their eyes to it all?

The girl reached her hand up toward the sky.

Still, no stars were visible.

In a place where no stars could be seen, the girl dreamed of stars.

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