WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 413

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Land of the Abyss (6)

What manner of being is the Dragon of the Abyss?

Simply cataloguing its infamy would fill an entire book and still leave things unsaid. In mythology, the Dragon of the Abyss is described as follows.

「A wicked evil dragon that corrupted all dragons.」

「Wherever it passes, only the gouges of its scales remain. A greedy, arrogant beast that swallows everything whole.」

「Its trailing tail coils at the lowest place on earth, and its raised head touches the sky, so that its form is exactly like a tower reaching the heavens.」

A being of catastrophic scale, large enough to bridge earth and sky, that had corrupted every dragon, gnawed at the land, and pushed back the territory of humanity.

'And.'

A dragon that had defeated Siegfried, the Dragon Slayer, and could not be cut down even by Gramr, the sword that cuts through anything.

'The mightiest apostle the Witch of the Abyss possessed.'

That was how the Chronicles of Arthur put it.

The most powerful of the four apostles who would bring the end alongside the Witch. True to that description, while three of the apostles were hunted down and slain, the Dragon of the Abyss alone remained unbroken.

Reading those accounts, Najin had come to think of the Dragon of the Abyss as something incomprehensible, some vast and terrible thing that had existed since the very beginning.

'But......'

Najin looked ahead. There sat a king who had introduced himself as the Dragon of the Abyss. A being acknowledged by the absolute immortal god and made into a god of the earth. Leviathan looked at Najin and shrugged.

"You look like you have a great deal to say."

"Quite a bit, yes."

"How did you find the scene I showed you? Quite a sight, wasn't it? Tens of millions of humans, giants, and dragons, all charging forward for a single purpose. Something that will never happen again."

He could not deny it. The sight of every living thing on earth moving as one was beyond what the word magnificent could capture. Najin had thought at the time that nothing could stop that march.

And yet......

"And yet it failed."

The king said it lightly.

"Before a great god, every living thing on earth fell to its knees. The king of giants, who bowed his head to no one, pressed his forehead to the ground, and the immortal dragons were left to live forever with their flesh rotting away."

As if ten thousand years of history were playing out before his eyes at that very moment, the king smiled bitterly.

"And tens of millions of humans became one mass. Centered on the king to whom they had surrendered their freedom through a covenant."

In the scene the king had shown him, Najin had witnessed the moment Leviathan was born. Just recalling the sight of tens of millions of people melting down and transforming into a single existence was enough to turn his stomach.

"Why are you here."

"You mean why am I here, in this distant place, rather than inside Leviathan?"

"Yes."

"Thanks to the great Witch's blessing."

The king laughed, a low chuckling sound.

"Watch everything from a distance. Watch your people suffer. Watch the people who marched forward crying out for the peace of the world instead bring about the world's end."

He spoke as though reciting a song.

"What drives that dragon now is your hatred and your thirst for vengeance, the conqueror-king who built a single nation by sweeping across the entire Continent. Watch your past self, child."

"......"

"What drives Leviathan right now is Leviathan the Conqueror. The madman who, with the goal of opposing the Witch, swept across the entire Continent and left only a single nation standing."

"Then what are you now."

At Najin's question, the king fell silent. He looked around, glanced down at his own hands, then tilted his face up toward the starless sky before he spoke.

"A failure who poured seventy million lives into his cause and still lost. A kinslayer who slaughtered his own wife and daughter and son and even his granddaughter with his own hands. A monstrous tyrant who waged a war of conquest in the name of saving humanity, and failed even at that salvation."

Ten thousand years had passed since that failure. The king had survived all that time without going mad, unable to die, living through hell with his mind intact, and now his eyes had gone very still.

"The price of failure is steep. Young man."

The king's voice, which had been light until now, grew heavy.

"It doesn't end with your death alone. Death is, if anything, the lightest of punishments. Through my failure, I corrupted every dragon and every giant... and gave birth to beasts that still threaten humanity ten thousand years later."

The birth of the Dragon of the Abyss.

The corruption of dragons and giants who had once stood on humanity's side.

"And I gave the Witch reason to be vigilant. She must have thought: if all of humanity speaks one language, sooner or later another being like me will appear. They will all rally as one and march. That was what she felt, and so she tore apart every language."

She split the land, tore apart languages, and fractured civilization.

"How many languages exist in your era? In my era, there was only Critian. But......"

Not anymore. Now, dozens of languages existed across the Continent. Imperial was the most widely spoken, but there were many regions where Imperial did not reach.

"Not anymore. No."

The king dragged a hand down over his face.

"The screams of my people ringing in my ears? Difficult, but I can endure it. The pain I suffer? That too I can bear. But-but."

He looked at Najin.

"What I cannot endure is knowing that my people, my proud citizens, are dragging their descendants down and holding them back."

Countless heroes had fallen to their knees before Leviathan. Countless upon countless humans had been devoured by him. Stars that should have lit the way forward for humanity, Leviathan had toppled and swallowed more of them than could be counted.

"I'll say it again. The Witch of the Abyss was not made to be beaten. You saw it, so you know. Can you defeat a being like that? A god that brought tens of millions of humans, dragons, and giants all to ruin in a mere seven days......"

The failure who had once challenged a god posed his question.

"Can you defeat her?"

Can you be certain you won't end up like me.

2.

Najin did not answer Leviathan's question right away. Instead, he turned to Merlin.

'Did King Arthur ever hear this question?'

-She did. A thousand years ago, that man was here too, and she asked it of us when we entered the Abyss.

Arthur had received the same question.

That fact made Najin smile without thinking.

-Why? Want me to tell you what Arthur said?

'No, it's fine.'

He felt like he already knew without being told.

Najin knew Arthur's past. He knew what Arthur truly was. Arthur had dressed herself up in shining things, hero, king, but at her core......

「Oh, don't give me that load of nonsense.」

Arthur was a rebel at heart. The answer a one-of-a-kind madman would give was easy enough to guess. And Najin thought to himself that he was probably not so different.

"Well."

Najin drove Excalibur into the ground.

"I heard you out, and I understand what you're trying to say, but......"

Najin spoke.

"That's your story, isn't it."

"......"

The king's eyes narrowed.

"You're saying you and I are different?"

"Clearly we are, aren't we. We don't even look alike. I feel a bit awkward saying this, but you don't actually think we resemble each other, do you?"

Najin pointed at his own face, and the king let out a short, disbelieving laugh, as if he hadn't imagined he'd hear an answer like that.

"If that's how you're going to play it, I have something to say too. I'm old now, but back in my day I was quite something. Every bit as handsome as you."

"Hmm."

"What is that look for? Care to settle this?"

"Could you win?"

"Ha! Look at this fellow!"

The king, seeming a touch ruffled, swept a hand back through his hair. At that, Najin shrugged and spoke.

"You said you saw King Arthur."

"I did. A thousand years ago."

"Do I resemble King Arthur?"

"No, you're different. That man didn't look as carefree as you. She looked like she was carrying a great weight."

Najin nodded.

"As you said, King Arthur and I are different. In the same way, King Arthur and you are different. And I'm different from you too."

"What are you trying to say."

"That we're all different. That we lived different lives, hold different thoughts, and are walking different paths."

The lives lived are different. The thinking is different. So the paths walked must be different as well.

"Even if the goal is the same, the methods we try in order to reach it are different."

"......"

"Can I win? I don't know. That's something you can only find out by trying. It's too early to talk about success or failure at this point."

"Then......"

"Even so, there's one thing I can say with certainty."

Najin smiled.

"Even if I fail, I won't fail in exactly the same way."

Because.

"You, sitting right in front of me, and King Arthur, you're both telling me about the failures you lived through, aren't you?"

There are precedents. The moment Najin said that, Leviathan drew a sharp breath.

"I'm not a fool. There's no chance I'd fail in the same way. I'd fail at least a little differently."

That is how human history tends to work. From someone's attempt and failure, humanity learns. Looking at those who came before, learning from them, using them as stepping stones, the people of later generations leap toward a slightly higher place.

"You'll reach a higher place than us."

Using those who fell as stepping stones, one step forward.

"Well, that's all talk about what happens if I fail anyway."

Najin placed his hand on Excalibur's hilt with a thud.

"Haven't we been defeated enough already? Looking at it from the perspective of human history, it means we've done nothing but lose for tens of thousands of years......"

The stars carved into Excalibur glowed softly.

"By now, we're overdue for a win. No matter how strong the enemy, if you fight them tens of thousands of times you'll win at least once, and that once will be me."

"My, my."

The king laughed as though he couldn't help it.

"Despite your words, it sounds like you're actually convinced you'll win."

"Even if no one in the world believes in me, at least I believe in myself."

"Truly, you're a hopeless sort."

"If I were the sensible sort, would I have pulled this? It's a sword that makes your life incredibly hard once you draw it."

"Not one to let anyone have the last word, are you? Yes, that's how a hero ought to be. Stubborn, and once they've chosen a path they walk it without hesitation......"

Leviathan let his words trail off.

"You."

"Yes."

"What is your name?"

"Najin. Free Knight Najin."

"And your star's name?"

"Dawning Star."

"What is the dawning?"

Najin pointed at the sky.

"The light that heralds the end of night."

The Land of the Abyss is dark. A land where the sun, the moon, and even the stars do not rise. And so, in a land where tomorrow would never come for all eternity, Najin shone his star.

For now, it shone from the ground.

But someday, it would be a star that rose into the sky of the Abyss.

"It seems we've talked enough."

Najin rose to his feet.

"You had a reason for speaking to me and bringing me here. It wasn't simply to have this kind of conversation."

He pulled Excalibur free from the ground.

"You said to kill you."

"I did say that."

"What is the method for killing you?"

"To cut down the Dragon of the Abyss."

Najin grinned.

"Then I'll need to know your weakness. I'll need to know how to fight you. If I'm going to prepare even a little, that's what it comes down to, isn't it."

"A fair point."

"Someone once told me there's no one who knows their own weaknesses better than themselves. In that case......"

As if he had been waiting for exactly those words, Leviathan smiled too.

"Of course. I know them well."

The king nodded.

"But talking about it is far slower than trying it once. Would you like to experience it firsthand?"

"What do you mean by experience?"

"Leviathan is a dragon at its core, after all. It won't be Leviathan, but I can arrange a fight with a dragon that was once quite notorious in its own right."

He gestured behind him.

"Even in death it seems it couldn't forget the covenant it made with me. When I call, it willingly rises. A stubborn one."

Looking at the vast mound of bones, Najin nodded.

"Good training."

"If it heard that, it would rage. How dare a mere human use me as training material, it would grumble like that, and then in the end it would show up and give everything it had."

That was just the kind of being it was. Muttering that to himself, Leviathan rose from his seat. He placed his hand on the bone mound and whispered to the dragon's bones.

"Rise, old friend."

-......

"It isn't over yet. None of it."

At the call of the master of all dragons, the soul of a dragon long since crumbled stirred. That body had died, but the soul was bound to Leviathan, so as if answering its master's call, the ancient dragon's soul settled into the bones.

Foul water surged upward. The Cursed Ones of the Abyss swarmed over the dragon's bones. The Curse of the Abyss, standing in for flesh and muscle, anchored the dragon that had become one of the dead to the living world.

The evil dragon, Fafnir.

The evil dragon that Siegfried had cut down a thousand years ago rose once more.

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