WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 403

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Sacred Body (3)

The woman who had introduced herself as Arthur's lingering soul.

A star was embedded in the nape of her neck. Too small and faint to be called a whole star, it felt more fitting to call it a shard of one.

So what star was it a shard of.

Given the circumstances, it was likely Arthur's, but Arthur alone had thirteen stars. Najin was still trying to narrow down which one when the answer came.

"...The Idol."

The voice was right beside him.

"The Star of Idol."

He glanced over. Merlin stood there, watching Arthur's lingering soul with a complicated expression.

"......"

She said those words and went quiet. Her face was the face of someone with too much to say and no idea where to start.

"Correct. This is a shard of the Star of Idol."

The ghost touched the shard embedded in her own neck as she spoke.

"A star bears witness to the life a hero has lived. You've probably read that line in an epic tale somewhere."

Najin nodded.

It was written in the Arthurian Legend, after all.

"As the saying goes, a star is that person's life. You could call it a part of what makes them who they are. So then, what happens when you take a shard of your own star and give it to a hollow doll?"

"It becomes a Double?"

"Something like that. Give away enough of it, and the Double might come close to the original, but then the original weakens in turn. That won't do."

The ghost pointed at herself.

"I received only a fragment of the Star of Idol, one of Arthur's thirteen stars. I'm lesser than a true Double, and the memories I hold are incomplete. What I have is only a small portion of the whole."

Even so, she raised her hand as she said it. Her outstretched finger pointed straight at Najin.

"But I know you."

The ghost smiled.

"I saw you a thousand years ago. I saw you staring up at the sky in a place where no stars could be seen. I saw a brash little upstart who had the nerve to call me a legend of the age."

She watched Najin with a teasing grin. Najin felt a small pang of guilt and quietly looked away.

"Of course, you've grown so much I almost didn't recognize you. You showed up wearing the Free Knight's coat, ten stars to your name, and on top of that, Excalibur itself has reshaped to fit your hand."

"That's how it turned out."

"The look on your face says you've been through a lot. How was it, the life you've led until now? Was it fun? Was it hard?"

How was the life you've led until now.

Rather than answer with words, Najin opened his hand. Hadn't she just said a star is the trail a life leaves behind? There was no need to dress his life up in long, pedantic sentences.

His stars said everything.

Ten stars rose above his palm. At the sight, she burst out laughing, as if that was exactly the answer she had been hoping for.

"Just as I thought."

She let out a long breath.

"Let me introduce myself again."

She rose from the stone she had been sitting on.

"I am Arthur's lingering soul, the provision Arthur left behind for this day she always knew would come."

Platinum hair cascaded down. Her foot touched the surface of the lake, and the soft sound of rippling water followed. Between those sounds, she kept speaking.

"Arthur's messenger."

Messenger.

"Caliburn."

The messenger gave her name.

2.

Arthur's lingering soul, and the messenger Arthur had sent ahead for whoever would pull Excalibur after her.

The messenger, Caliburn.

Having finished her introduction, she clapped her hands once, as if to say the real matter began here. The moment she clapped, the scenery around them began to shift.

"You must have glimpsed Arthur's memories before. Arthur herself intended that, after all. From Arthur's star embedded in Excalibur, you would have seen those memories, in the form of dreams."

Caliburn was right. Even before meeting Caliburn, Najin had dreamed of Arthur from time to time. The more he grew as a Sword Master, the more stars he gained, the more often those dreams came.

"You'd only start dreaming them after you had firmly established who you were, that is, after you became a Transcendent. Any earlier and the memories would simply sweep you away."

Every time Caliburn clapped, the scenery changed. It was proof that this was her Sanctuary. The landscape conjured by the Star of Idol was made of the memories Najin had seen.

Caliburn reached a hand into the current of Arthur's memories flowing past like a fierce river. The current caught her arm and wrenched it back. She pointed at it and laughed.

"If you aren't grounded in yourself, you get swept away. That isn't what Arthur wants. Having a strong enough sense of self that no matter what you see, you won't be swept under, that is the condition for viewing the memories."

That was the basic requirement.

"And once you satisfied that condition, the next part falls to me, as messenger."

"Your role being?"

"I am Arthur's first memory, the memory of Arthur at the moment she pulled Excalibur. In other words, I am also Arthur's starting point. Showing you that starting point was my first role."

Arthur had chosen to become someone's Idol. Caliburn held the memories of that moment, and by showing them to Najin she had carried out her purpose.

Najin had seen Arthur's beginning, had come to understand what resolve she drew the sword with, and had learned that his own existence had been there at that starting point.

But if showing the memory were all there was to it.

There would have been no reason to go through such a roundabout method. And yet Arthur had left behind a shard of her star. What was the reason Caliburn had waited here for Najin across a full thousand years?

"The second role is to put a question to you."

"To me."

"That's right. Arthur said to make absolutely sure I asked you this."

A question left behind by the great hero a thousand years ago.

And it was being asked by someone who held that hero's own memories. Najin steadied himself, mind and body, ready to give a proper answer.

"As Arthur's messenger, I deliver Arthur's words."

With that, Caliburn spoke the first words Arthur had left behind.

"Hear me, legend of the age."

That first line alone threw Najin's breath off. He blinked, and Caliburn, wearing a mischievous smile, pressed on.

"First star of an age without stars. The great hero who brought an end to the age of chaos. Who built the nation of humanity, who slew the King of demon beasts, who severed the heads of seven Demon Lords, who scoured the seed of evil from this land."

A long, long list of deeds followed. Merlin, listening from the side, pressed her palm flat against her forehead, but Caliburn paid her no mind and steadily recited every last one of Arthur's accomplishments aloud.

"This is me."

After a passage that could have filled several dozen pages of a book, Caliburn shrugged. Whose embarrassment was this, anyway. Not Najin's. Not Caliburn's either. The embarrassment belonged to Merlin.

Covering her face with both hands, Merlin muttered "I cannot believe this" and bowed her head.

Najin had briefly considered answering all of that with "who am I?" and just as quickly decided against it. If he actually did that, Merlin would probably start foaming at the mouth.

"As you can see, I am rather great. So great that no words could fully capture it."

Caliburn laughed the way Arthur laughed.

"So if you're going to call me a legend of the age."

A faint smile.

"You'll have to surpass me. And to surpass me, you'll need to do something I couldn't. I trust you know what that is?"

Najin smiled too.

He knew. Of course he did.

"Then you have two choices."

This was probably the real heart of it. At some point, Excalibur had appeared in Caliburn's hand, the same form as the Excalibur Arthur had once carried.

"Buy more time than I did. Make your own sacrifice, for the sake of a next that may or may not ever come."

That was the first.

"Or."

The second was.

"Throw the coin with the resolve to end it all. Heads, the world is destroyed. Tails, complete liberation from destruction. There is no middle ground. Either it ends, or it survives. Those are the only two."

A gamble with the fate of the world.

"Which will you choose?"

Two paths.

"That answer, I will hear at the place where I stopped."

Where Arthur had stopped.

The edge of the Abyss.

"Bring Caliburn there."

When that time comes.

"You will know everything."

3.

Bring Caliburn there.

Najin looked at Caliburn. She shrugged and pointed at the Excalibur in her hand.

"It means take this with you."

"And you?"

"This is also me, in a way. The sword is closer to my original form. It will be absorbed naturally into your Excalibur, so you won't need to bother carrying two swords around."

Caliburn said it plainly.

"As for why it's set up this way, ask the one who devised the plan. Ask Arthur, who rests in Mordred's Sanctuary."

"...Is she alive?"

"That I don't know. Only that she's in some in-between state, neither dead nor alive."

Beyond that, Caliburn told Najin a number of other things: her remaining roles, the relationship between the Sacred Body Church and the Star of Idol, the role of the Star Incarnation, and more.

But that could come a little later.

Those were matters to discuss with the Star Incarnation, not things to go into deeply right now. Merlin had been listening quietly throughout, and now she finally opened her mouth, breaking the silence she had kept all along.

"You said you hold Arthur's memories."

"I do."

"How far do they go?"

"Up to right after she pulled Excalibur. The memories from before she met you, Merlin."

"......"

After a pause, Merlin spoke.

"You."

To a past companion, not the woman herself, but a Double who would share her way of thinking, she asked.

"What was the Round Table to you?"

"I have no memories of traveling with any of you."

"But you knew."

Merlin said it.

"Back then, you saw the future. You knew what kind of life you'd live. That's why you often seemed more like a prophet than I did. Sometimes you acted as though you already knew it would turn out this way."

Merlin smiled, though the smile was a little bitter.

"Then the Round Table."

We.

"I."

I, she said, and looked at Arthur.

"Were we the fate you were trying to escape? Were we companions fate had bound you to, a guide fate had appointed, and so in the final moment you left every one of us behind and went alone?"

"......"

"If so, I can understand it. Why you left without saying a word at the end."

Merlin's expression turned hollow. Caliburn watched her for a moment, then spoke.

"As I said, I have no memories of being with any of you. But I did know what adventures were coming. If I were to put into words what I felt at the time..."

Caliburn smiled.

"I looked forward to it."

"......"

"I looked forward to the adventure with all of you. I looked forward to meeting the people I was yet to meet, dreamed of the conversations I would have with you, felt my heart race at the thought of the epic tale that would unfold under the name of the Round Table."

Because, she said.

"You were all more than I deserved."

The woman who held Arthur's memories spoke.

"I don't know why she made that choice. The future I saw and the history that actually happened were different. Still, one thing is certain, she didn't leave because she thought of you as nothing more than companions fate had assigned her."

"Then?"

"The opposite, I'd say."

The opposite, she said.

"She didn't want you entangled in her fate."

"......"

"She didn't want your lives to be swept up in hers and arrive at the same end."

She had wanted them to choose a different ending.

"Though from what I can see, that wasn't exactly a good choice either. There might have been a better one. Only, in that moment, it seems she believed it was the best she had."

Arthur had always acted as though she knew what was coming, had always moved with conviction. But in the end she was just one person. Merlin, who had been listening to all of it, let out a long breath.

Arthur had chosen to leave the Round Table behind.

That choice had fractured the Round Table, brought it crashing down, and broken Merlin. Or perhaps the breaking had already begun before that. Arthur's choice had only been the final blow.

And still.

Merlin resented Arthur. And yet she treasured the adventures they had shared, held close the brilliant days spent with the Round Table.

"......"

Merlin looked at Najin in silence.

Something in her gaze seemed to be asking for something. Najin reached over and took her hand. Merlin gripped it tight and smiled, just a little.

"I still resent you."

Merlin looked at Arthur.

"But I'll let it go with one punch."

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