WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 405

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Interlude, Tea Party (1)

There is a gathering called a tea party.

"A gathering where guests are invited to enjoy tea and refreshments."

At first glance, that is how it would be introduced. And when most people read that description, they picture a scene of cheerful laughter, lively chatter, and pleasant small talk.

That image is half right and half wrong.

On the surface, it holds true. To the eye, guests sit in a peaceful atmosphere, savoring sweet tea and fine refreshments while trading trivial bits of daily gossip. But as with most things among the nobility, peel back a single layer and...

"Oh my, so Merlin-nim did something like that?"

A war blazing with sparks is underway beneath.

"How fascinating. Might I hear the details? Star Incarnation-nim."

Dieta smiled brilliantly and clapped her hands together with a bright snap. It was a smile of breathtaking beauty, yet for reasons she could not quite name, the Star Incarnation felt a chill run through her at the sight of it.

"Uh, um...?"

Her words stumbled along with the chill. The Star Incarnation let her voice trail off and quietly lowered her gaze.

The first thing it landed on was the tea table, spread with fragrant black tea and an assortment of fine, sweet refreshments. Even the Empire's staff officers, who trudged through life with perpetual scowls carved into their faces from endless all-nighters, would surely feel those furrows smooth right out at the sight of such a spread.

Shifting her gaze a little further, a well-kept garden came into view. Birds perched on the branches and chirped, and the sunlit scenery was thoroughly peaceful. Serene was the word that fit it best.

A lovely view. Sweet tea. Delicious refreshments.

With all these fine things set before them, why were those two wearing such expressions? The Star Incarnation's wandering gaze made a full circuit and came back to where it had started.

Stare.

Which is to say, she found herself looking directly into the eyes of Dieta and Yuel, both of whom were watching her without blinking. The Star Incarnation swallowed involuntarily, her throat dry.

Did I say something wrong?

It did not feel like she had.

All the Star Incarnation had done was mention, in passing, that Merlin had been frequently close to Najin during their travels, occasionally riding on his back or sitting in his lap.

"The details, as such... well, there is not much more to tell. I was not keeping a close eye on them."

The Star Incarnation had her own sense of danger. She felt instinctively that pursuing this topic further was hazardous. She could not say why, but that much was clear.

"Is that so?"

"It is."

So can I get back to drinking my tea now? I would like to eat that pastry too. The Star Incarnation worked her lips and cast a sidelong glance at the refreshments on the table before Dieta.

...In truth, a tea party was less a social gathering than a form of noble information warfare dressed up as teatime. The Star Incarnation, for her part, had come purely to enjoy the tea and refreshments. Was the word "tea party" not right there in the name? She was the sort to stay faithful to what was written on the tin.

Slide.

Dieta pushed the plate of refreshments toward her, and only then did the Star Incarnation break into a little smile and begin nibbling at a biscuit.

"Well, Merlin-nim is the guide, so I suppose that sort of thing might just happen between a guide and her companion. Being a guide and all."

"Yes. It would hardly be strange."

Dieta and Yuel spoke with a deliberate emphasis on the word "guide." They had originally been rivals circling Najin, wary and at odds with each other, but now that a third party had entered the picture, things were somewhat different.

A newly prominent rival. Merlin.

What sort of person was she? Someone who spent twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, at Najin's side. There had always been signs of something there, but she had not been forthright about her own feelings, so she had never quite developed into a love rival.

Recently, however, something must have happened, the way Merlin treated Najin had shifted.

The last time I saw them together...

Dieta recalled her recent meeting with Najin. She had reached out to straighten his collar as she always did, and Merlin, standing a few steps away, had watched her with an expression of clear displeasure.

That much was the same as usual.

The problem came after.

On the way out, Merlin had made a point of stepping up to Najin right there in front of Dieta and, with her own hands, brushing off the part of his clothing that Dieta had just touched.

"Why are you doing that, Merlin?"

"Hm? Nothing, something got on it."

As if erasing a mark.

Then Merlin had glanced back at her, and Dieta still remembered that look. It had been a gaze that warned: do not touch what is mine, do not cross that line.

The moment she saw it, Dieta was certain.

An enemy.

A rival had appeared, one who intended to snatch away a prize Dieta had already claimed for herself. Her instincts as a merchant, and as a woman, rang out in alarm. A formidable opponent. This would be a harder fight than the one with Yuel, she sensed.

...When she thought about it, that made sense.

Unlike herself, who was separated from Najin by physical distance, this rival was with him around the clock. They said the right amount of distance between a man and a woman mattered, but the sheer volume of time spent together carried its own undeniable weight.

How was one supposed to deal with a rival like that? Should she forget trying to outmatch the total hours spent and instead gamble on a single, intense impression? Dieta's mind was spinning fast through those calculations when it happened.

"These refreshments are delicious too. Come to think of it, Merlin-nim seems to enjoy sweets as well. What if we sent some as a gift? She would certainly like them."

The Star Incarnation, still picking through the biscuits without a thought in the world, opened her mouth. Naturally, neither Yuel nor Dieta paid her much mind. Expecting to give some polite, dismissive reply along the lines of "that sounds lovely," Dieta opened her mouth.

"She even took the cookies the Dawn Horn was eating, and I mean cookies already in his mouth at that point."

She had been about to speak.

"...Pardon?"

Whatever she had meant to say was gone, and a faint breath of air slipped between Dieta's lips instead. What did I just hear? What was that? Dieta's eyes wavered.

Like a precision machine struck by an unexpected error, every motion in Dieta's body locked up in sequence. The graceful tilt of her teacup. The practiced performance of her expression. Both stalled, then began to fall apart entirely.

She was not the only one.

Yuel's head slowly tilted to one side. Through the silver-white hair spilling loose, her eyes fixed on the Star Incarnation with unblinking intensity. The look said: choose every word from this point very carefully.

"Mm, this one is good too."

The Star Incarnation, naturally, was too absorbed in the refreshments to notice the change. She hummed to herself and went on sampling each variety of biscuit in turn.

"When you say she took them, how exactly do you mean? I am having trouble picturing it. Do you mean she put her fingers into his mouth? Or..."

"Ah, she seemed to have been thinking about that at first, but when the Dawn Horn refused, she just reached out, took his face in her hands, and then..."

"And then?"

"Took it with her mouth. She must have really wanted it."

A cookie already in his mouth, taken mouth-to-mouth. Even from the Star Incarnation's sparse account, the picture of what had happened formed with perfect clarity in Dieta's mind.

"And what does that mean?"

"It means their tongues touched, wouldn't it. Good lord. What the hell."

"......"

"Someone's been at this for years trying just once, getting nothing but 'what are you doing?' ten times out of ten, barely managing it for the first time only at the very end, you know?"

Yuel, too, after receiving a description of events from a certain warden of the Sealed City, found herself sharing much the same sentiment as Dieta. And with that, the two of them began to short-circuit.

"That's it. We're going. Yuel."

"Where?"

"Where else? We need to go bite that bastard's tongue off."

The warden of the Sealed City, who in a situation like this should normally have been the one grabbing Yuel by the scruff of the neck, was instead currently shoving her forward from behind.

"Hmm, hm-hmm."

Unaware that she had just detonated a bomb in the middle of the duchy, the Star Incarnation sat sipping her black tea without a care in the world.

Delicious.

The refreshments were good.

2.

"Hey. You know what?"

The uppermost floor of the Dawning Tower, one of the five pillars surrounding the Imperial palace. The office of the Dawn Horn. Najin looked up from the Special Unit's reports he had been reading.

He found himself looking at Merlin, who had been standing at his back doing something with his hair. Their eyes met, and Merlin grinned and tapped his forehead lightly with her fingertip.

"You look really good when you're working."

"What is that supposed to mean, all of a sudden."

Najin laughed, not quite believing what he had heard.

"By that logic, I'm always working. And strictly speaking, my real job isn't paperwork, it's what I do out in the Outland."

"You look cool when you're fighting too, sure. But you always end up hurt. Torn up everywhere."

Merlin touched the corner of his mouth.

"Wasn't this all torn up not long ago?"

"It heals fast enough. What of it."

"Still."

Pat, pat. She kept fussing over his face, and Najin could tell she would just keep going if left to it, so he caught her by the wrist.

"I need to work."

"I know. Work then."

"So stop pulling my hair. It's distracting."

"Okay, I'll make sure not to distract you."

No mention of stopping.

Leaving Merlin to her own devices, Najin turned his attention back to the documents.

Ever since he had stood watch at the boundary line of the Abyss, the currents in the Outland had begun to shift. Reading through the reports on those changes, Najin thought to himself.

Soon, most likely.

The Abyss reacted acutely to Excalibur. The binding seal Arthur had put in place was imperfect, existing only by virtue of being maintained by the Round Table. Over the past thousand years it had held without incident, but...

Going forward will be different.

Change had begun the moment Najin pulled out Excalibur. The binding seal, which had held without the slightest tremor, had started to shake. Cracks formed. There had been several instances of the Witch of the Abyss's power reaching beyond the barrier and affecting what lay outside.

The closer Najin drew to the Abyss.

The further his story moved forward.

The strain on the binding seal would become immense. He could not say exactly why, but sealing the Abyss must have required certain conditions and a certain price.

And those conditions...

Would include Excalibur. The further Excalibur's owner advanced, the more the binding seal would tremble. Najin found himself recalling the words Arthur had once passed on to him.

Sacrifice yourself to carry it forward to the next generation.

Or gamble the fate of the world.

You will have to choose one of those two paths. Najin had a rough sense of what that meant. And what lay ahead as well.

"......"

He was deep in that rather weighty contemplation about the fate of the world when it happened.

"Um, Dawn Horn-nim?"

His adjutant called to him. Najin raised his head and looked at her. She wore a fairly complicated expression.

"What is it?"

"You have visitors."

"I have no scheduled appointments today."

Unscheduled visitors were ordinarily turned away by the adjutant before they ever reached him. The fact that she had not managed to do so meant the parties involved were significant enough to warrant it.

And in this empire, the number of significant figures who could show up at Najin's door without prior arrangement could be counted on one hand. The Emperor of the Empire, the First Horn of the Empire, and a handful of Transcendents or imperial pillars with personal ties to Najin.

"It is the Duke of the Amber Eye Pillar and the executioner of the Sacred Blood Church."

Najin nodded at the adjutant's words. That meant she was to show them in. He could not think why those two would come to see him, but they must have had good reason.

With that, Najin did not give it much more thought.

What trouble could there possibly be?

Turning it over in his mind, he could not identify anything particularly concerning.

"......"

And yet.

Why was his instinct trembling, faint but unmistakable? Why did a vague unease crawl up his spine for no reason he could put his finger on? Najin absently scratched the back of his neck and let out a slow breath.

Probably just his nerves. He had been fighting one grueling battle after another lately, grinding himself down without rest, and his senses must have started misfiring.

Why feel a sense of crisis when there was nothing to trigger one? He clearly needed to rest properly for a while. Thinking that, Najin leaned back in his chair.

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