WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 410

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Land of the Abyss (3)

A perfectly intact human being stood in the middle of hell.

"I am the king of this land. I have lost my nation and my people, but a king remains a king. Regrettably so."

Najin's eyes narrowed as he studied the middle-aged man before him. A human could exist here, but the problem was the word that had to be placed in front of this one.

Perfectly intact.

He was intact. Eyes, nose, and mouth where they should be, arms and legs properly attached, not some grotesque mass of several people kneaded together. Just an ordinary human with all his limbs.

"I cannot remember the last time I saw an intact human here. Until about six hundred years ago, one or two would still wander in now and then, but at some point the visits simply stopped. The Outland must have grown a harsh place to live as well."

It was not only his appearance that was intact. His breathing and his voice were too. Hard to say for certain at a glance, but on the surface his mental state looked perfectly sound.

"Hmm, no answer. Can you perhaps not speak Crit? Wait just a moment. A friend who visited before taught me a language... ahem, ahem."

The middle-aged man cleared his throat.

"Greetings, foreign knight. I am the king of this land."

Whoever had visited him six hundred years ago had apparently been from the Empire. Hearing the old Imperial tongue, Najin gave a nod.

"Greetings. I cannot speak Crit, but I understand it well enough. I was lost in thought, forgive the slow reply."

"Oh, an Empire man. Unexpected, though. Are there still places that use Crit? Even by the standards of a thousand years ago, there could not have been many left."

"I happen to know the old history rather well."

Najin let out a small, dry laugh, not a boast. He genuinely knew the old history well. He had no choice. More than once or twice he had become one of the people who lived in that era and experienced it firsthand.

"Ha ha ha! A rare guest indeed. Would you mind walking a bit? This place is, well..."

The man glanced around.

"Not exactly suited for conversation."

"Then would you give me just a moment?"

Najin pointed to the writhing cursed ones of the Abyss nearby. If he did not finish them off properly, they would revive.

"I have yet to finish up here."

"I would not recommend it."

"...Pardon?"

"Never mind. Do as you like. Seeing it once is faster than hearing it explained a hundred times."

The man stepped back a few paces. Leaving him to wait, Najin re-gripped his spear shaft. If he narrowed his eyes, he could make out the connection points linking the cursed ones to the Abyss, something like blood vessels, or the roots of a tree.

Connection points tethering them to this land. Severing those connections was the only way to kill things that belonged to the Abyss. He had learned that much from guarding the Boundary Line of the Abyss and fighting countless cursed ones.

Kill them once, kill them again...

The roots showed themselves the moment the creatures tried to regenerate. Cut those roots and they stopped coming back. Najin wrapped his spear blade in starlight and moved to sever a connection point.

Fwoom.

He cut, but it did not sever. Like trying to cut a stream of water with a blade, he had clearly made the stroke, yet dark liquid flowing in from somewhere sealed the gap back together.

-■■, ■■■■ah, aaah■■ah.

-■■■■■■ah, ah■■ah.

The ones dripping black ichor grabbed at Najin's collar. As if begging him to kill them, they clung to him. Najin's eyes narrowed.

"They cannot be cut."

"My subjects are a stubborn sort. The ■■■ people were strong by nature, you see. No one imagined they would still be resilient in that state."

The middle-aged man shrugged and came closer.

"Come now, friends, must you clutch at a guest like that? Let go, all of you. You are staining the gentleman's coat."

Tsk, tsk. Clicking his tongue, the man swatted the cursed ones away from Najin one by one. No mystical technique behind it, just roughly the amount of force you would use to peel a small child's hand free.

And yet, remarkably, the cursed ones seemed to understand. They began letting go of Najin.

"Forgive them. They have not seen a living person in some time, so they were simply glad. My apologies."

"...They understand speech?"

"Not speech, exactly. Even so, when I give a command they at least make a show of trying to obey. That they still honor the king's authority in that state, quite a devoted loyalty."

He muttered that it would have been nice if they had listened before it came to this, and let out a sigh.

"Then let us walk."

There was a suitable place nearby to talk.

2.

Only a few days had passed since he entered the Abyss, yet in those few days Najin had come to be certain of several things. One of them was this: no person could live here.

It was a problem that came before any talk of a harsh environment or dangerous creatures lurking about.

This place was different from the Outland.

Physical strength, mental fortitude, the lofty standing of a Constellation, unshakable self-certainty, none of those things guaranteed survival here.

"......"

Without a word, Najin raised his hand. He pushed back the Free Knight's coat, pulled off his glove, and stared at his bare hand.

Kee■■ik, kee■■■■gik.

Dark blotches were scattered across his skin like spots. They writhed and gnawed into him. Only a few days here, and the stains had already spread past his hand and were creeping up toward his forearm.

Sssssssss!

When Najin drew up his starlight, the stains scattered in wisps of smoke as though burning away. A temporary measure, nothing more. Given time they would gnaw at him again, and they would keep forcing him to spend starlight without end.

No stars rose here. He could not replenish what he spent. Keep burning through starlight with no way to refill it, and the outcome was obvious.

The starlight would run out. Resistance would become impossible.

That would be the end of it. Unless he left the Land of the Abyss, the dark stains would swallow him whole one day. They would coat him entirely, collapse his flesh, and reduce him to the same crawling form as the cursed ones below.

That had been the fate of countless Transcendents from ancient times, more than a thousand years ago.

The Witch's Curse.

Najin turned the words over in his mind.

Even with the Witch of the Abyss sealed, the seal was not complete. Miasma seeped through the cracks and lay thick over the Abyss.

No matter how powerful a Constellation, prolonged exposure to that miasma would break them in the end. Even Siegfried, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Arthur, had broken.

But.

Najin looked at the middle-aged man walking ahead of him.

This man who called himself king. He had clearly spent a very long time in the Abyss, and yet he was intact. He did not appear to hold any great reserve of starlight, and he certainly did not look like a Transcendent.

He is human.

An ordinary one at that, the kind you could find anywhere. He looked like a Commoner, not even an Expert, let alone a Sword Master. So how was a human like that walking around the Abyss without a scratch?

"Merlin, do you know this person?"

-I have seen him once before.

To keep her starlight consumption down, Merlin spoke to Najin as a whisper rather than manifesting physically.

-He was here a thousand years ago too. Right around this spot. I ran into him back when we were pushing the Abyss back.

"So at that time he was already..."

-Yes. Same introduction as now.

That he was the king of this land.

-I cannot say the exact year.

Merlin said.

-Do you remember the Bridge Leading to the End?

"Oh, the one above the Sanctuary of Oblivion?"

-That one. He once told me he built that bridge during his reign. If that is true, then...

She gestured at the perfectly ordinary-looking middle-aged man walking ahead and added:

-He is from roughly ten thousand years ago.

"......"

Najin went quiet.

Ten thousand years.

Not a span of time easily imagined. The Empire's history ran just over a thousand years. This was a being who had lived ten times that. A hollow laugh escaped him.

"Ten times the lifespan of the oldest person I know. I cannot quite wrap my head around it."

-And who is that oldest person?

"Who else?"

-......

While Merlin debated whether to materialize and strangle him, Najin asked his question.

"So what kind of being is he?"

He deliberately used "being" rather than "human." Merlin caught the intent and made a complicated face.

-It would take a while to explain...

She sighed.

-Just hear it from him directly. He will answer everything on his own without you even asking. The man talks an awful lot.

At that moment, the king ahead stopped walking.

"Here we are. This spot is perfect for receiving a guest. The demon beasts never come near this bone graveyard."

Najin looked where the man was pointing. A vast field of bones jutted from the earth. Staring at a ribcage the size of a magic tower, Najin blinked.

Not human bones. The shape was too disturbing to belong to any giant either. Studying what he guessed were dragon bones, Najin opened his mouth.

"Those bones..."

"Oh, those belong to a friend of mine. Originally quite a wise creature, but spending time around me made it foolish. This is why you have to choose your friends carefully."

"Your friend was quite large, it seems."

"As big as it was, it ate all sorts of things with great enthusiasm. Then it swallowed something it should not have, well. Tsk, tsk."

Crash! Thunder boomed somewhere far in the distance.

"Ah, right on cue. Do you see that lightning over there?"

Dark crimson lightning. The king pointed to flashes flickering in the distance. Najin gave a nod.

"That is Siegfried."

"Oh, you know that name. Everyone calls him the Sword Demon of the Abyss or some other grim title. Regardless, my friend swallowed that ill-tempered one and ended up like this."

Najin stopped and turned to look at the king.

"Then your friend was..."

"Fafnir."

Tap, tap. The king knocked on the great rib and laughed. Najin could not laugh. He knew the name Fafnir.

The evil dragon, Fafnir.

A name once burned into humanity as a symbol of terror. A dragon that had toppled countless nations and reigned as lord of the sky, before finally being brought down by Siegfried's hand.

"......"

Looking at the vast field of bones, Najin let out a dry, humorless laugh.

"You seem to have lived quite a long time."

"Far too long. I would quite like to die now, but the Witch of the Abyss will not permit it. I live on without being able to die."

The king gestured.

"Sit down. That bone over there is surprisingly good for it."

3.

"Judging by that coat, you would be a Free Knight. What brings you to this land? As far as I know, a Free Knight is a being who makes knights into knights."

The king's first question was about the purpose of the visit.

"There should be no knights here."

"There is one, is there not. Mordred."

"Hmm, calling that one a knight is a stretch. You came all this way to meet Mordred?"

"That is one of my purposes, yes, but..."

Rather than explaining at length, Najin chose a simpler and more effective approach. He reached into the air and closed his fist.

Starlight condensed into a single sword.

The moment the king saw Excalibur, his eyes went wide.

"Does that answer it."

"...Ah."

The king's expression grew complicated.

"It does. More than enough. Anyone carrying that sword would have reason enough and more to come here. So at last the successor to King Arthur has appeared."

"You knew King Arthur?"

"Of course I did. I have never seen another person shine quite like that. And I know that sword well, I could not help but know it."

The king smiled, a bitter twist to it.

"My son pulled that sword once."

"...Pardon?"

"Well, it was not in the magnificent form you are holding, of course. If it had been, he would have pulled it eagerly enough. He went wild over anything impressive."

Najin's eyes narrowed.

The king met his gaze and shrugged.

"He kept refusing to pull it, so I threatened him, told him that if he would not, I would personally kill his wife and daughter. He stared at me as if he could not believe it, so I cut off one of his granddaughter's fingers."

Najin stiffened.

"Then he glared at me as if he wanted to kill me, and finally pulled it. If only he had done it sooner. I have a memory of struggling to comfort the crying granddaughter afterward."

"......"

"Oh, do not make that face."

He shrugged again.

"Surely you did not think I was an ordinary human? Surely not. This is hell. A person who has lived ten thousand years in hell could not possibly be ordinary."

Do you know anything about religion?

Najin nodded at the question.

"Then this will be easy. Though honestly, it is common knowledge even without knowing religion. What do religions call those who fall into hell?"

"Sinners."

"That is right. Sinners. Only those who have committed acts too monstrous to be judged by human law fall into hell and suffer there for eternity."

The king pointed to himself.

"And I am in hell. I have been here for ten thousand years. So then, what more need be said."

He pointed behind him.

The ruins of what had once been a nation sat there. In the Abyss, where everything ran together in chaos, those ruins alone remained unmixed. As if even filth had its hierarchy, as if nothing wanted to swallow that place, even the mindless demon beasts left it untouched.

The one who had been master of that nation was sitting before Najin. The king touched his own dark crimson eyes and spoke.

"It means I committed a spectacularly wretched crime. Care to guess? Guess correctly and I will give you a reward."

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