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Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 401

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Arthurian Legend (2)

"Hold the Sword."

"You must hold that sword."

From some point onward, those words began to echo in Arthur's ears. When the voice came, Arthur tended to think two things.

'Like something out of a fairy tale.'

The first was that the situation resembled an epic tale. A great being whispering to someone who had resolved to become a hero, "You are destined to save the world," was practically a staple of the genre.

That was the first thought.

The second was this.

"Why me?"

Arthur dug a finger into her ear. Sneering at the voice insisting she must hold the sword, she stretched one hand up toward the sky. Her outstretched hand formed the shape of a mountain.

'Hold the Sword. I must hold the sword, it says?'

In short, Arthur raised her middle finger at the sky.

'What a load of garbage.'

If someone tried to force a Fate on her, Arthur was exactly the kind of person who would return the gesture. Screw that, she muttered under her breath, and walked her own road. She had grown up, technically, but she was someone full of stubborn, contrary spirit.

The voice, however, refused to give up on her.

From that day on, Arthur began to dream.

She dreamed of a deep forest, a blue lake, a boulder set within the water, and a sword thrust into that stone.

2.

This dream again.

Arthur let out a sigh at yet another repetition of a dream she had lost count of. She sat at the lakeshore, chin in hand, staring out at the center of the lake. A platinum-colored sword was planted there.

"Hold the Sword."

"You must hold that sword."

Given the context, the sword the voice spoke of was clearly that one. She had suspected as much from the moment the voice started, and the instant she laid eyes on the sword lodged in the stone, she recognized it at a glance.

Excalibur.

The Holy Sword that appeared across countless epic tales and myths.

Forged from a Star, shining platinum, called the Sword of Selection because the blade itself chose who could draw it. The Holy Sword that had seemed like nothing but legend was sitting right in front of her. So the thing actually exists.

"......"

Arthur stayed back and watched from a distance. He did not approach. A certainty kept circling in her mind that she could pull the sword free, and yet her feet would not move.

Because he was certain.

Intuition, instinct, premonition, no single word quite covered it. But something close to certainty kept circling in her head. The moment she drew that sword, her life would no longer belong to her.

Her Fate would be fixed.

The Fate she hated so deeply would take hold of her life and refuse to let go. That certainty was why she would not step closer. She simply watched the sword from afar.

The days repeated like that.

Then one day, dreaming the same dream again, Arthur sighed and tossed a question toward the sword.

"Why did you choose me?"

He had no idea.

"I'm not exactly built like a hero. I'm a long way from nobility or justice. By my own estimation, I'm closer to a brat throwing a tantrum at the world."

Chin still in her hand, she spoke to no one.

"I have no desire to save anyone, no desire to save the world. If anything, I don't much like people. I can't."

A humorless smile crossed her face.

"My parents hanged themselves in front of me. Every adult in that village refused to lift a finger, so a ten-year-old had to deal with the bodies alone. And what did they do after that? Pointed and laughed."

Arthur was exceptional. But that exceptionality was not something she had sought. She had been forced to grow up young. The world had not allowed her to stay a child.

Her parents had beaten her daily, and when the beating was not enough, they killed themselves in front of their child. The child left behind had to become an adult at age ten.

The girl was forced to grow up before her time.

And like most children who grow up too fast, Arthur had a great many grievances against the world. Quite a few. The misery of her childhood, her parents' deaths, all of it. Her stubborn, contrary streak came from that resentment.

"The reason I want to become a hero......"

Arthur narrowed her eyes.

"Is because that seems like the best way to tell the world to go to hell. Not because I want to save anyone. Because I want to take away every excuse from the idiots who believe in Fatalism. It's about as impure a reason as you can get."

She let out a hollow laugh.

"So why me?"

She asked the Sword of Selection.

"Why did you choose me."

No answer came. Arthur sighed, pushed herself to her feet, and woke from the dream. Another day began, same as the last.

Her routine was simple.

Wake up. Train. Then seek out the most destitute or dangerous place she could find, stay there a while, and solve whatever needed solving.

"Mercenary."

"Hero."

"Arthur."

"Adventurer!"

A chaotic age. The weak, protected by no one, looked to Arthur for help, and Arthur gave them what help they needed.

Sometimes she hunted down monsters. Sometimes she defended villages from whatever threatened them. Sometimes she threw herself into the most dangerous stretch of a battlefield to help the soldiers. It was not always anything grand, sometimes she found missing children, or taught young ones to read.

From age fourteen to eighteen.

For four years, not a single day off, Arthur kept to that routine. And somewhere in the middle of all that repetition, the alertness began to slowly drain from her eyes.

'Does this even mean anything?'

That thought had started creeping in.

A few incidents pushed it along.

"......"

"Oh. Mercenary? What are you doing here......"

"That."

"You mean this?"

A man holding a dagger dripping with blood scratched the back of his neck, looking sheepish. A body lay at his feet.

"Look, this guy wouldn't listen. I told him I'd let him go if he just handed some of it over......"

"And then?"

"We got into a bit of a scuffle. Then he pulled something out from inside his coat, looked dangerous, so......"

"So you killed him."

"Well, that's how it ended up."

Arthur drew her sword without a word. The person she had saved yesterday, she killed with her own hands today. That kind of thing happened often.

Around that time, Arthur came to understand something.

The world is not a fairy tale. Saving someone does not mean the story ends there. The person saved yesterday turning up as a corpse the next day was commonplace, and if that was the worst of it he could count himself lucky. More often, they became something worse, and killed or robbed someone else.

That was the age.

People killed people, robbed others, became villains without hesitation if it meant surviving.

"......"

The girl who had mistaken herself for a grown-up was becoming one in the truest sense.

She was growing up.

The childlike wonder she had once carried was fading. The belief that if she worked hard enough the world would change was dimming along with it. She was starting to understand that she was not special, that she was far too small a thing to change the world.

'None of this means anything.'

It was around the time she was beginning to doubt the point of everything. Around the time the alertness had left her eyes, and she was no longer dreaming of Excalibur, no longer hearing the voice, that she met someone.

"Oh, hero? We meet again!"

Arthur ran into a young man.

His face was familiar. Someone Arthur had once saved, in a small village somewhere. Arthur blinked at him, puzzled.

"Weren't you from the Tolson region?"

"That's right! You remember me. The one being chased by monsters back in Tolson, the one you saved. I can't believe you still remember!"

"And this is the Caldeson snowy plain. That's quite a way from home......"

"It is."

"Then why are you here?"

The young man smiled.

"Because I heard there were people here who needed help."

"......What?"

Arthur blinked.

The young man went on.

"Thanks to you, our village is doing a lot better. The crops are good since you drove the monsters off. Once things got livable again, a thought came to me."

He thumped his chest.

"I should repay my debt to you."

"......To me?"

"Yes. You saved my life when I would have died that day, and you asked nothing in return. I owe you a great debt. We men of Tolson are not the type to live with a debt hanging over us."

He gave a nod.

"So I have to pay it back."

"You don't have to. I wasn't doing it expecting anything."

"I knew you'd say that. You won't accept payment, so what else can I do?"

He flashed a confident grin.

"Help you with what you're doing."

"......"

"I won't be much use, but I can at least carry a bag, can't I?"

A chaotic age. Stars had vanished from the sky, and with them all things that shone. But for that very reason, those who did shine stood out all the more.

In the young man's eyes, Arthur blazed brilliantly.

And in Arthur's eyes, the young man shone as well.

At first Arthur assumed this was pure coincidence, one exception in the crowd. She had saved a great many people over the past few years, this was just one unusual case mixed in among them. But the world refused her that assumption.

"We meet again."

"Oh, you too?"

"Adventurer!"

"Hahaha, mercenary! Running into you here!"

"I've heard about you often. This is the first time we've actually met, though."

Others like that young man began appearing one by one. People saved by Arthur, or saved by people Arthur had saved, began showing up before her. They mimicked her, helping the weak and rescuing those in need.

Not many.

But not a handful, either.

Drawn to that light, they threw themselves willingly into the fire like moths to a flame. Most of them burned. They were not as capable as Arthur, and they died for it. But some survived and kept walking behind her.

"We meet again."

"Yes, we do."

It was the young man from before. The one she had saved back in Tolson. Arthur ran into him at some village, and they exchanged a few words.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Why do you keep doing this. Saving people."

"Didn't I say? To repay my debt to you."

"Is that all there is to it?"

"Well, not entirely."

The young man gave a faint laugh.

"I wanted to live a life worth admiring."

He said.

"Watching you, I kept thinking how admirable you were. Like a hero straight out of an epic tale. I wanted to try living like that."

"......It's not much of a life."

"No, it's hard. But isn't that what makes it worthwhile?"

"And is it? Do you feel like it's worth it?"

The young man gestured behind him. Arthur's gaze followed. Unlike her, most people were not so capable. What one person could not do alone, they did together. They gathered with those who shared their purpose and worked as a group.

"As you can see."

He gestured at the people following him.

"The fact that people have started following me means it probably wasn't completely meaningless."

"......"

"Just as I saw you and chose to walk in your footsteps, now there are people choosing to walk in mine. Then the people after them will look at this lot and follow. Give it enough time......"

He smiled.

"Things might get a bit more livable, don't you think?"

Arthur was quiet for a moment. Then she opened her mouth.

"Your name."

"Pardon?"

"What's your name?"

"Ah, my name, you mean."

The young man answered.

"Atanga."

3.

Meeting Atanga gave Arthur a great deal to think about. The fact that she could become someone else's Idol, the fact that the world was changing, little by little, because of her, she felt it.

"Things might get a bit more livable, don't you think?"

Turning those words over in her mind, Arthur smiled. She no longer doubted the point of what she was doing. Something had changed because of her, and knowing that, the alertness returned to her eyes.

Then, in the dream she began to have again.

Arthur stared at Excalibur for a long while. She had never once moved toward it before, but now she rose from her spot and walked to the water's edge.

'Why.'

The question would not leave her alone.

'Why did the heroes who came before draw this sword?'

There were things she had learned while dreaming. One of them was that she was not the first to face Excalibur.

There had been others before her.

People who had faced Excalibur and drawn it. But every one of them had been forgotten, swallowed by the dark. And they must have known that was how they would end.

Because Arthur knew it now too.

The moment Excalibur was drawn, what waited was ruin. That was a fixed Fate. She could feel it with certainty: the moment she drew that sword, nothing could ever change it.

Splash.

That was exactly why she wanted to understand. Knowing all of that, why, for what reason, had someone still drawn the sword? Carrying that question, she stepped toward the lake.

"Ah."

The instant she stepped into the water, she saw it. The reflection on the surface. It was the lives of the heroes who had come before. The memories of those who had once drawn this sword.

A future with nothing waiting in it but ruin.

Excalibur did not hide what end had come for those who drew it. Those who had come before Arthur, and those before them, had also witnessed how their predecessors had ended. Every one of them, seeing those terrible endings, had hesitated and pulled back.

"......"

Just like Arthur now.

But why.

Those who had backed away in hesitation would, at some point, wear an expression of calm. Then, with a bitter smile, or a resigned shrug, or sometimes a clean laugh, they turned back and walked toward Excalibur.

What was the reason.

Arthur understood it before long. She looked down at the surface of the lake. The lake that had shown the past was now showing the present, and beyond the present, the future.

......A boy's reflection appeared in the lake.

The boy in the reflection held a book pressed to his chest. On the cover were the words "Arthurian Legend," and the book was worn and tattered from having been read over and over. Clutching it as though it were precious, the boy looked up at the sky.

Perhaps he was looking at Arthur, who was looking back down at him.

A false sky. A ceiling covered in ore. Even while staring at a sky where no Stars could be seen, the boy was dreaming of Stars. Because the book in his hands had taught him.

Even if they cannot be seen here, out there beyond that sky, there are things called Stars.

Because someone had taught him that truth.

The boy.

Najin could dream of Stars even in a place where no Stars were visible.

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