WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 414

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Land of the Abyss (7)

The evil dragon, Fafnir.

The evil dragon that had once made the entire Continent tremble with fear rose to its feet. Of course, the Fafnir of today carried none of the majesty it once had.

The golden scales Fafnir had been so proud of, the vast wings that had cast shadows over the lands of men, the thick hide that had deflected spears and blades, none of it remained.

Blood and flesh belong to the living. The dead who long ago perished and became bleached bone are not permitted such things. What remained was nothing but a bare skeleton. The cursed ones had latched onto those bones, fixing them in place and binding them together.

A death-dragon, dripping black filth.

The bone dragon, nothing left but its skeleton, stared down at Najin. No draconic intelligence, no majesty, just an unspeakably hideous wreck. It was an insult to dragonkind and no fit treatment of the dead.

"What a stubborn old friend."

Leviathan watched his ancient companion come back to life and smiled bitterly. No intelligence could be felt from Fafnir at all. His body had long since died and crumbled away, and Fafnir's soul, worn down by its inability to leave this cursed land, was now little more than a flicker.

"What do you think a dragon is, human?"

Even so, Fafnir answered his companion's call.

"You think a dragon and a primitive species like yours are the same? We never break a promise. We don't betray our companions the way you humans do."

"A promise is always kept."

"That is what it means to forge a covenant with a dragon. You may be proud of it, human. It means I, Fafnir, will be your eternal companion."

Ten thousand years had passed. His spirit and body had worn away, and he had been reduced to little more than a beast. Yet Fafnir had not forgotten the promise he had made with Leviathan.

"I'm counting on you, old friend."

No answer came. Fafnir lowered its gaze. From between the bleached bones, eyes blazing red fixed on Najin.

"Ha."

Najin let out a short laugh.

The sheer size of it refused to fit within a single glance. Even tilting his head back, the dragon's head was nowhere to be seen, and he had to step far back before he could meet its eyes.

The dragon Siegfried slew.

It was the dragon Siegfried had only managed to kill after becoming a Sword Master. Put another way, this was the dragon that had beaten Siegfried more than once.

The white dragon, the red dragon, and Radon.

Najin started comparing Fafnir to the dragons he had faced before, then stopped. There was no point comparing. The only one that could even come close in terms of sheer size was Radon, who had swollen to infinite proportions inside Viola's dream.

"Huu..."

He let out a long breath and adjusted his grip on the sword.

Merlin.

, Yeah.

How long did it take Siegfried to bring down Fafnir?

, Ten days and nights, I think. He settled it on the tenth day, if I remember right. Jumped into its mouth and blew the heart from the inside.

Ten days and nights.

Najin curled the corner of his mouth into a grin.

It came back as bare bones, so it should be weaker than before, right?

, Probably.

Then cut two days off.

Najin began folding his fingers one by one. He compared the number of stars Siegfried had possessed at the time to his own, folded another finger, and nodded.

"Three days."

Three fingers remained.

"Three days should be enough to finish it."

Muttering to himself, he reached into his coat. A moment later, with a metallic rasp, a chain slipped out from inside. It was an artifact he had personally commissioned from the Platinum Tower Master.

"You want me to make this?"

"This reference material you sent me... isn't that the thing those lunatics use? The chain corps, or whatever they're called, the ones who hunt wyverns bare-handed."

"Since the Dawn Horn asks, I'll make it. But I can't be held responsible for your safety."

An artifact that discarded all safety concerns and focused purely on durability and tensile strength. Its design was naturally modeled after the chain stakes the chain corps used.

A tool invented so that humans, who could not fly, might fight wyverns and dragons high in the sky. Of course, the Najin of today could cut down enemies dozens or even hundreds of meters overhead while keeping his feet on the ground, but...

That's not efficient enough.

Against ordinary wyverns that would do, but against something as formidable as the Fafnir standing before him, the situation was different. Even Transcendents sometimes had to rely on old methods.

"What do we do about the stake end? The chain stake in the reference material is made for wyvern hunting, so it doesn't need to be all that sharp, but..."

"The Dawn Horn isn't going to use this just for hunting wyverns, is he?"

"Then the stake needs to be sharp enough to pierce a Constellation's or a dragon's scales. That means it would have to be at least Sacred Object or masterwork quality. Do you have a spare masterwork lying around?"

Najin shook his head at the Platinum Tower Master's question. No stake was necessary. As she blinked at him, he showed her what he intended to use as the stake.

"Ah."

"Right, that makes sense. You do have that with you, Dawn Horn. In that case, you don't really need a separate stake at all."

"So I just need to make it connect to that, then?"

Chrak! Najin began wrapping the end of the chain around Excalibur. The chain had been designed to lock onto Excalibur, and once it was secured tight, Najin rolled his shoulders to loosen up.

"Hm."

Leviathan had been watching him. "What is that thing?"

"Oh, this?"

With the chain secured, Najin started swinging Excalibur in wide circles by the chain.

"There's nothing better for catching things that fly."

2.

Fafnir began to beat its wings.

It had lost its flesh and blood, true, but Fafnir was still a mighty dragon that had devoured countless stars. A dragon that had reached Transcendence could take to the sky with nothing but bone wings, even stripped of all its flesh.

Shweeeeee!

When the wing bones moved, a gale slammed outward. The ground heaved, and Fafnir's enormous body began to rise.

"You're not going to move?"

"Not yet."

Leviathan watched Najin loosening up with unhurried calm and blinked. Fighting a dragon in the air was enormously difficult. And yet he was letting it fly? Did he have some plan in mind?

"A dragon isn't a knight. It's not going to come down and duel me fairly on the ground, is it?"

"That much is true."

"Then I have to wait for it to climb high enough. That way the practice will actually count for something."

Leviathan let out a short, incredulous laugh.

"You'll get caught in the blast. Are you sure you want to stay here?"

"Who's worrying about whom, now. I can't die even when I try. Don't bother worrying about me, worry about yourself. The fire Fafnir breathes is dreadfully hot."

Even at Leviathan's warning, Najin only shrugged. Some time passed, and only when Fafnir had risen hundreds of meters into the sky did Najin settle into his stance.

The dragon looked down at the human.

The human looked up at the dragon.

A staple scene in countless epic tales. A human standing against a great dragon floating high in the sky. Turning that image over in his mind, Najin started spinning the chain rapidly.

Shweeee!

Excalibur, hanging at the chain's end, carved through the air. The thick dust blanketing the ground began to clear. Excalibur spinning at speed almost looked like a platinum-colored disc.

And then, with a deep crack ,

High above, Fafnir's jaws opened wide. A maw large enough to swallow an entire bell tower whole, and into that maw, red-hot fire began to gather.

A breath.

The traditional weapon of dragonkind. Even the breath of a low-ranked red dragon carried power comparable to a sixth-circle spell. What, then, of the breath of this enormous dragon that belonged in myth?

Kreeeak, kreeeeeak...

The air itself was warping from the buildup alone. Tremendous waves of heat gathered and bent the landscape. The flames compressed to their limit shifted from red to orange, from orange to yellow, then to white.

Fafnir unleashed the white flames.

It was less a breath of fire than a bolt of light. The pure white flash breathed out from hundreds of meters above changed from white to blue by the time it reached the ground.

A vivid blue flash.

As the torrent of fire bore down on him, Najin drew one last breath and held it. The flames swallowed his silhouette for a moment.

A thrown blade.

A single beam of platinum light pierced through the flames. Shot in a straight line from the ground toward the sky, it punched through the fire and split the air. Drawing a platinum arc as it climbed, it reached Fafnir at last.

Then, with a heavy crack!

Something drove hard into Fafnir's bone. Even as a death-dragon, Fafnir's dragon bones were extraordinarily hard. An ordinary Transcendent's attack could not so much as scratch them, so how had this happened?

The answer was simple.

Najin was no ordinary Transcendent, and what he had thrown was no ordinary weapon. The beam of light was Excalibur itself. Clutching the chain connected to Excalibur in one hand, Najin looked up.

"......"

His body burned in the flames as he fixed his eyes on Fafnir. What was he planning? As if in answer to the dragon's stare, Najin stamped his foot.

Thud!

The Lance of the Crossed Star, buried in the ground, leapt into the air. He snatched the spear tip as it flew true toward him and, in the same motion, pivoted. One full rotation in place. The Free Knight's coat snapped and billowed as Najin drove the spear shaft into the ground.

Horn Charge.

A storm exploded outward. The oncoming flames were pushed back. He drove the fire away, and in the same instant used the recoil from the storm to launch himself skyward.

A Transcendent's leg strength combined with that gale sent him flying dozens of meters with ease, but even so, he could not reach the sky in a single leap. Najin knew that as well as anyone.

That's what the chain is for.

He yanked on the chain in his grip. Using the tension of the chain pulled taut, he accelerated. Faster and faster, shooting toward the sky like a streak of light. Rising into the heavens with a human body, he steadied his breathing.

Closing the distance was the first step.

After that, he would need to learn how to sever those impossibly hard dragon bones.

Ah.

As Fafnir grew closer, Najin found himself smiling. For some reason he felt certain he could cut through those bones. It would not be much different from hunting wyverns or hunting the red dragon.

Sever the wings. Bring it down.

Pull the lord of the sky down to earth and take it apart piece by piece. Najin knew that method well.

Because.

He had experience killing an immortal dragon.

The dragon-slaying star began to shine.

3.

"Well, well."

Leviathan let out a hollow laugh.

He had been caught in the breath and incinerated to a handful of ash, but his regeneration outpaced the scattering of cinders, so he had been able to watch the whole thing unfold.

What he saw was, even by the standards of someone who had witnessed countless things, rather striking.

A human who could not fly was challenging the lord of the sky. Without a mage's assistance, without a fairy's blessing, relying on nothing but a single chain to close the distance to a dragon. Leviathan had never seen anyone fight a dragon quite like that.

"Out of his mind."

High above, the human and dragon collided.

He watched it, transfixed.

Even reduced to bare bone, Fafnir was still a dragon. That enormous frame, the sight of it in flight with bone wings spread, stirred something in Leviathan. Memories of a brilliant past. Of a time before everything had broken.

"Did you ask me once why I helped your kind?"

He had put that question to Fafnir once.

Why do you help humans? You always say, as if by habit, that humans are weak, insignificant, worthless creatures you hold in contempt, so why help them?

"What a dull question."

Fafnir had snorted and answered like this.

"As you say, your kind are weak."

"Born weak and insignificant through and through. Frail, quick to fall, quick to break, and they die of old age before they can even survive a hundred years."

Always the same refrain.

"But every so often, one appears."

"A human who overcomes that inborn weakness, refuses every temptation, and manages to set foot in the same place as me."

"A human who shines like a star."

Fafnir, seated in human form on a railing, swirled a cup of wine and let out a long breath.

"And then there are humans who, even knowing they cannot overcome that weakness, even knowing they are fated to age and die in the end, still try to challenge the sky while remaining weak."

Fafnir looked at Leviathan.

"They scream. They writhe in agony. They kill their own kind with their own hands, murder even their own kin without mercy, and regret every bit of it, yet still do not stop."

"For a single purpose."

"They spare no means, no method. They do whatever it takes, become whatever they must, and in the end they even try to persuade me."

Fafnir burst out laughing as if at something absurd.

"From the perspective of a dragon, born perfect and living perfectly, you humans are incomprehensible creatures."

"Incomprehensible, and therefore interesting."

"Interesting, and therefore captivating."

"The story of a madman who, trapped in a human body, tries to challenge the gods themselves. How could I not want to be part of it?"

Clink. Their cups touched.

"Therefore."

"There is only one thing you must swear to me, you, a mere human who dares to fly higher than me."

Fafnir smiled.

"Do not forget your purpose."

"As long as you do not forget your purpose, I will be your wings for as long as you need."

"If a human body cannot fly, then I will gladly become your wings. So lift your head. Look not at the earth but at the sky."

"It suits you far better."

Leviathan looked up at the sky.

His old companion was still flying up there. The stars that had once shone alongside Fafnir were gone.

But a different star was shining.

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