WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 402

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Arthurian Legend (3)

Arthur stared at the surface of the lake as though something had bewitched her. The boy reflected there was looking upward. He looked up, but what waited above him was not the sky.

A ceiling embedded with ore.

A ceiling decorated with minerals that resembled stars but could never become stars. The boy reached toward the faint light those stones gave off. In a place where no stars could be seen, the boy was dreaming of stars.

......What kind of age was that.

What situation the boy was in, what life he had lived, none of it was something Arthur could know.

'But.'

One thing she could tell.

The boy's eyes shone as he gazed at that false sky. Just as her own eyes had shone, long ago, when she looked up at the heavens.

"Ah."

Arthur broke into laughter before she could stop herself.

"So that was it."

A long-held question shed at last, she laughed freely. Everything made sense now. She looked at Excalibur, planted in the center of the lake.

The Star Sword glowing platinum.

That thing was no Holy Sword. It had nothing to do with something so beautiful. It forced Fate on whoever drew it, demanding they destroy themselves for the sake of this world... if anything, it was closer to a ritual tool for selecting a Sacrificial Vessel.

"........."

Looking at the past reflected on the lake's surface, she could see what ends those who had gripped that sword had met. They lived lives worthy of being called heroes. They saved people, received admiration, became hope and kept moving forward.

Then they were offered to the witch.

By giving their lives as tribute to the witch, they delayed the world's destruction. Ten years, fifty years, thirty years, a hundred years, sixty years, seventy years... spans of time that were small if you called them small and long if you called them long, and for those spans they had willingly thrown their own lives away.

No one remembers them.

At the end, destruction waited.

A wretched end, devoured by the witch, soul and all, annihilated without a trace.

Knowing all of that, they had still chosen to draw the sword. Arthur had never understood their choice until now. Now she could.

'They must have seen it too.'

Seen what.

'The future.'

Just as she was looking at that nameless boy now, the people before her must have looked at the future. Which meant she, too, had once been someone's future.

Someone, somewhere.

Had looked at none other than the Arthur of this very moment and decided to draw Excalibur. At that realization, Arthur laughed despite herself. Are you serious. You placed your hope in someone as crooked as me? You would have heard every last grumble I muttered to myself here.

'You heard all that, and still drew the sword.'

Arthur smiled, bitter.

"A bunch of idiots."

Just what corner of this godforsaken world did they find so worth loving that they poured out even their souls trying to keep it alive? Nothing but idiots. Weren't they bigger lunatics than even she was?

And yet.

Arthur was crossing the lake. Splash, her feet broke the surface as she walked toward its center.

"Can't see a thing, you bastard."

The boy in the far future raised his middle finger at the sky.

"A lucky child of fortune, born in the right era."

"If you'd been born in my time, you'd have been nothing."

"Bitter about that? Want to argue with me?"

"Then come down here and strike me with divine punishment."

Watching the boy grumble and carry on, Arthur laughed out loud. As though nothing in the world could be more delightful, she laughed to her heart's content for the first time in ages.

"Yes."

The boulder at the center of the lake.

Arthur stopped before the sword planted in it.

"You said there are stars to see."

"That you see stars wherever you look."

"Stars cannot be seen."

"None at all."

"Nothing can be seen at all."

"Nothing can be seen. The sky is dark. A world where every star has vanished is nothing but dark, and people cannot dream of tomorrow. It is a world where dreaming is no longer possible."

"........."

"But you dream."

Arthur looked at the boy.

She saw the book he clutched to his chest, titled "Arthurian Legend." A single book worn ragged by years of handling. Reading that book, the boy must have nurtured his dreams.

If a person can dream even in a place where no stars are visible.

Then that place is a world at least somewhat better than this one.

A smile rested at the corners of her mouth. Toward the boy who had called her a lucky child of fortune, toward the boy declaring he would climb higher than she ever had, she let out a quiet, scornful laugh.

"Go ahead and try."

I will hang a star in the highest place, let's see if you can surpass me. I will make a star that shines there for decades, centuries, a thousand years to come.

Thud.

Arthur seized the sword. The instant she gripped Excalibur, countless scenes flickered past her eyes. They were the future she was about to live, the Fate forced upon her.

Clank.

Those countless scenes became chains that wrapped around Arthur's body. Fate was being imposed. Excalibur asked her once more: did she truly intend to accept this Fate?

"No."

Arthur swung her arm as though throwing off the chains coiling around her. Accepting the life of a hero was one thing, but living out a given Fate was not in her nature.

She was still, to the core, a rebel.

If she lived only as she was told, she would be nothing more than the lucky child of fortune that boy had described. That kind of life she could do without. Being devoured by the witch and vanishing, remembered by no one, she had no intention of settling for that.

If she had decided to live as a hero.

'Then I go all the way.'

She would carve her name into this world. She would build something no one would ever dare to surpass. Among all the idiots who had ever drawn that sword, she would become the greatest idiot of them all.

"Look at the sky."

Scrape, the sword began to pull free from the stone. Platinum starlight flooded over everything, and Arthur raised her head.

"Look at the sky, boy."

Arthur drew Excalibur.

"A star is about to rise."

In a world where stars had vanished, she chose to become a star herself. So that in the far future, even in a place where no stars could be seen, the boy would still be able to picture them.

Starlight overflowed.

2.

Starlight overflowed.

Najin looked at his own hands. The Excalibur he had been drawing out transformed into starlight and filled the space around him. Within that starlight, Najin saw Arthur's life.

These were memories he had glimpsed in fragments before.

Shattered pieces, seen occasionally through dreams, those memories of Arthur. Only now could Najin look at her life properly. He learned what state of mind she had set out with, where that starting point had been.

"......Ha."

And Najin laughed. Just as his own starting point had contained Arthur, Arthur's starting point had contained him.

A flood of memories poured in.

Arthur had chosen to become a hero. She shaped herself into one and chose a life of being worshipped as an Idol that others looked up to. She corrected her manner of speaking. Corrected her bearing. She honed herself until she became a symbol.

Star Light.

Draped in starlight, she became the greatest Constellation.

Star Blood.

And yet being human, she sometimes bled. Without losing her human heart, she kept those who could counsel her close by her side.

And.

Star Body.

Perfect, worshipped as an Idol. Having driven an entire age forward to its end, Arthur became something no different from a god. Having attained every one of those qualities, Arthur made a single choice.

"You must be watching."

She spoke to Najin, who was watching her life. From the distant past, she smiled toward him, a smile she had never shown her knights, the very smile she had worn on the day she drew Excalibur.

"I don't know what kind of world you're in."

She walks forward.

Ahead of her lies the Abyss.

"But, as Atanga said, it must be a better world than this one. Unlike the past, there should be stars in the sky. With stars as guideposts, people should be able to dream."

The Crimson Blight Star churned. The Cursed Ones of the Abyss came charging at Arthur. The dragon of the Abyss, the Witch of the Abyss, knights of death, all of them surging to consume her, and Arthur walked through it with ease.

"As promised that day, I hung a star in the highest place."

She drew her sword.

Even within the darkness of the Abyss, Excalibur shone.

"So now it's your turn."

Arthur.

"You said you would climb higher than me, didn't you, boy."

The girl who had once raised her middle finger at the world was now shouting at it.

"Go ahead. Give it a try."

It won't be easy. The memory cut off unnaturally amid her laughter. But the last image of Arthur that Najin had seen was somehow different from what he had imagined.

Not the retreating figure of someone braced for death.

Not the image of someone accepting a given end.

Only after glimpsing her memories could Najin understand why Merlin had reacted the way she did upon hearing the truth about Excalibur.

"The Arthur I know is not the type to quietly accept being told, 'you are destined to be offered as a Sacrificial Vessel.'"

"Arthur was never someone who moved according to another person's plan."

Merlin had been right. Arthur was the sort of person who, upon hearing the word Fate, would raise her middle finger without hesitation. Then what choice had Arthur made in that final moment? What came after the memory cut off?

He had just begun to wonder about that.

Splash.

A ripple stirred somewhere nearby.

"Everything has its proper order."

Najin turned toward where the voice had come from.

"You can't see what comes next yet. Because memories come from stars in the end... and the star of Arthur held within Excalibur is not complete."

A woman sat on a boulder there.

A woman with platinum hair hanging loose.

The same one he had encountered in the Eternal City not long ago was resting her chin in her hand, looking at Najin.

"The final star is with Mordred."

She said.

"You'll only be able to see it after you defeat Mordred and take the star of Arthur he retrieved from the Abyss."

Their eyes met. When they did, she shrugged.

"We've met before."

Not referring to the Eternal City of a short while ago.

"We first crossed paths no less than a thousand years ago. One-sided on your part, granted, but from where I stand you're quite a familiar face."

"You are."

"Ah."

"Who are you?"

She answered.

"As I said. A lingering soul."

A lingering soul, a spirit left behind.

Then left behind from what.

"Arthur's lingering soul."

The soul Arthur had left behind smiled at Najin. She lifted her hair, baring the nape of her neck that had been hidden beneath those long platinum strands.

There, a fragment of a star was embedded.

The Star of Idol.

The star the Sacred Body Church had kept for a thousand years.

3.

"Merlin."

"What, Arthur."

"You introduced yourself as a prophet when we first met, didn't you? Said you could see the future."

"Did I?"

"Then why haven't you been looking at the future lately? Was it that you dislike the future being fixed?"

"That's part of it."

In the distant past, Merlin pointed at Arthur and said.

"When you're around, I can't see the future."

"What?"

"No, that came out a little strange... it's that when the light Excalibur creates is nearby, the future stops being visible?"

"You can't see it. The future?"

"Right. Isn't it just because the thing is so unusual?"

"........."

"Why? Is there something you suspect?"

"Ah."

Arthur laughed.

"Too many things, honestly. Still, one more question, if someone wanted to change a fixed future, how would they go about it?"

"Hmm. Changing the outcome itself is hard, isn't it? Once a future has been observed, some similar result tends to emerge no matter what. Though there was exactly one time a prophecy went strangely off course."

"What kind of case was it?"

"A knight asked me to read their future. It was before a battle they had absolutely no way of winning, and they pleaded so desperately I ended up going through with it."

Merlin let out a sigh.

"Defeat was the result, naturally. The prophecy was something like, 'you will be defeated by the demon, and you will lose what you hold dear.' But."

"But?"

"When I checked later, the resolution turned out a little strange. The defeat did happen. What was dear to them was lost too. Whether you could call it a true loss, though, is another matter."

"What do you mean?"

"The opponent was a high-ranking demon. The knight had no means of defeating a demon. So there was absolutely no way, under any circumstances, that the demon should lose........."

Merlin tapped the table twice.

"But the demon didn't win either."

"What?"

"The knight ended up in some state between alive and dead, grabbed onto the demon's leg, and refused to let go. Maybe the idea was: even if I lose, I won't hand this demon a victory. In the end the demon couldn't devour the knight's soul."

After years of careful preparation, the prey the demon had invested so much in was ultimately beyond its reach. For the demon, that was as good as a defeat.

"The knight lost to the demon, but the demon lost to the knight as well. You could call it a loophole in the prophecy, interpretation is everything. Because in the end, the knight achieved their purpose."

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