WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur
Chapter 415
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Land of the Abyss (8)
Hanging from a single chain, Najin shot upward several hundred meters into the sky. Wind hammered his ears without stop. His coat snapped and thrashed in the rushing air.
Fafnir drew closer.
Their eyes met for only an instant. Then, thud, Najin's feet touched down on Fafnir's body. Balanced on thick dragon bone, he steadied his breathing. First, at least, he had managed to climb onto the dragon.
So what came next?
Sever the wing bones. Shatter the dragon's skeleton, stack up damage, and send it crashing to the ground. The most efficient approach took shape in Najin's mind without effort.
But.
Thinking it and doing it were two different things. Dragon bone this solid would not break so easily. And there was no chance the enemy would sit still and wait.
Even the lesser dragons he had faced before, ones that didn't begin to compare to Fafnir, had fought back by firing their scales. Fafnir would be worse. No question about it.
Even stripped of its blood and flesh and the scales that were a dragon's pride, Fafnir was still a dragon. It had been killed by Siegfried the Dragon Slayer, yes, but put another way, it had lasted the better part of ten days against that Siegfried.
Crack. Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
An arrogant dragon does not leave a human standing on its back. Bone and bone began to heave and thrash. They ground against each other like waves, joints locking and flexing.
If I misplace even one step, I'll be ground apart.
It looked like a crusher. One wrong foot in the gaps between those bones and he would be shredded like paper fed into a machine.
"That's only if I misplace a step."
Bracing on the surging bones, Najin reached out. He seized the hilt of Excalibur, still buried deep in the dragon bone, and wrenched it free with a crunch. He gripped the drawn sword and narrowed his eyes.
Read the moment the bones lock together. From the irregular motion of the joints, find the pattern. Seeing a few seconds into the future, Najin exhaled. A white puff of breath escaped from between his teeth.
Then, crack.
He kicked off the bone and ran. His body shot forward like a shell, sprinting across Fafnir's frame. Wherever his feet fell, a trail of platinum light streaked behind him.
Kgagagagagagak!
Excalibur bit into the dragon bone. Sparks flew in all directions. The platinum sword energy refused to scatter against the bone's resistance, steadily gnawing through joint after joint. There was no elegant sword technique in it.
Not a blade for humans. A blade for cutting beasts.
Wedging the sword into the gaps between bones and prying them apart like a butcher boning a carcass, Najin's blade dug into Fafnir's skeleton. One of the joints he had hacked apart, he stomped down on with his heel.
Crack.
The severed bone plummeted to the earth. A length of dragon bone several meters long fell and struck the ground with a deep, rolling boom, while Najin's eyes narrowed a little further.
Certainly.
He had cut away a bone. But looking ahead, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of joints still stretched before him. At this rate, ten days wouldn't be enough.
"......"
Standing on the dragon's bones and looking out across the distance, it almost felt like being on top of a massive island. The job ahead was to bring this island crashing down.
Najin had given himself three days.
It was right then that he reset his stance.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Fafnir's bones let out a tremendous noise. Until now it had been shaking its body to throw Najin off, but this was different. The bones began to curl inward.
As if the whole body were coiling tight.
In that instant, a vision of the next few seconds flickered through Najin's mind. He immediately drove Excalibur in deep. Chak, he seized the chain in a white-knuckled grip, and the future he had foreseen became the present.
Boom!
Fafnir, coiled as tight as it could go, snapped its whole body open in a single violent burst. Every joint spread at once and a pressure wave erupted. A storm. The ground hundreds of meters below was stripped away by the blast, so anyone standing on the dragon's body had no chance of coming through unscathed.
The shockwave flung Najin clear.
Chhrrrkk!
The chain snapped taut in an instant. Suspended in empty air with nothing to stand on, Najin clenched his teeth and refused to let go. The storm raked across him again and again. Skin split. Blood sprayed.
And then.
Fafnir, body now unfurled, looked at Najin. Crack, its jaws opened wide and fire gathered inside.
Here it comes. The breath.
But this was different from before. Not a wide sweep of flame meant to scorch everything in range. This fire had one purpose: to burn a single human being. Fafnir bit down hard on the fire pooled inside its maw.
The compressed flame tore apart.
Instead of a single stream, fire burst outward in every direction. Like an exploding firework, white-hot rays of heat scattered all around. The difference from a firework was that every one of those beams could punch straight through Najin's body.
Pfft.
One ray grazed his side and punched a hole through it. No blood flowed. The flesh seared shut the instant it was pierced, organs cooked, bleeding stopped. The agony was hideous enough to send sparks across his vision. Even so, the smile never left Najin's lips.
So this is how high-ranking dragons fight.
This too was experience. And Najin knew that experience made him stronger.
Thud, thud, thud......
His heartbeat climbed. Blood moved faster. Heat rose across his body and Najin's eyes snapped open. He yanked the taut chain hard and thought of a certain knight.
A knight who had charged fearlessly into enemies and pierced them through.
The Star of Jovial Discourse shone.
Its starlight appeared beside Najin in the shape of that knight. The knight gripped the lance shaft alongside him. The Lance of the Crossed Star shone brilliantly, drenched in starlight.
-Run with everything you've got, friend!
It sounded almost as though a voice had spoken. Laughing, Najin became a single bolt of light and fired himself forward. He punched through the heat rays bearing down on him and sprinted across empty air. With nothing solid underfoot, he accelerated, then accelerated again.
-Pierce the enemy through!
Because the starlight gave him a stepping stone where there was none.
Then the Star of Breakthrough blazed. Starlight wrapped around the Lance of the Crossed Star like a storm. A great horn cry rang out, and Najin threw his eyes wide open.
First.
He would slam that jaw shut, the one spitting all those heat rays.
2.
Viewed from the ground looking up, what was happening in the sky above appeared to be nothing more than flashes of light.
Heat rays lashed out in every direction. Cutting through them, a single beam of starlight shot through like a meteor. The moment it collided, the dragon's jaws were wrenched wide open and fire that could not be contained exploded again and again.
A small human was holding their own against that massive dragon.
"......"
Leviathan watched in silence.
The one clashing with the dragon up there was a single human being, but to Leviathan's eyes, it did not look like one person. The stars that young man carried were each shining in their own right.
One moment there was a bold burst of laughter.
Then a horn rang out.
At one point the melody of some beautiful instrument floated through the air.
Then the singing voice of a bard.
Stars, each carrying their own story, shone. Born in different places, living in different ways, holding different convictions and different values, and yet they all shone beneath the name of the Dawning Star.
"Ah."
Leviathan laughed before he could stop himself.
"You and I are different."
"Even if we both fail, we won't fail the same way."
Indeed. The young man had been right. That one and Leviathan were different. Their purpose might be the same, but the roads they had walked were far too different. Leviathan felt that truth deep in his bones.
"......"
He too had gathered countless people under his name. He had bound tens of millions of humans, hundreds of thousands of giants and dragons into one and built a shining army. But Leviathan had chosen to force them to their knees rather than persuade them.
Give me your freedom.
In exchange, I promise peace to this land.
Words like those were how he had broken them, how he had made them bow under the banner of a greater cause. Leviathan could never have been a hero. He was a ruler.
"Different."
But what of that young man? That young man had no army of tens of millions. He had not broken anyone to his will. People were simply drawn to the life the young man had lived, and had begun following him of their own accord.
The bonds formed that way were fierce beyond measure.
They did not break easily, and they burned brighter than anything else. The proof was Fafnir, who had answered Leviathan's call even after ten thousand years had passed.
"Different."
Leviathan smiled, and it was a bitter thing. He watched Najin shining like a star in the sky above.
The fight went on and on.
One day passed. Countless bones fell toward the earth. Fafnir's fist struck Najin down and he crashed into the ground, but he wrenched his dislocated shoulder back into its socket with a grinding pop and leapt skyward again.
Two days. Whenever he had a moment, Najin listened to Leviathan describe how to handle Leviathan, the creature, and tried to apply what he learned. It was not easy. On the second day Najin was knocked to the ground more times than he could count, lying there with broken bones and ragged breath.
"I'm starting to get a feel for it."
Even so, he never stopped smiling. As if he was enjoying himself, as if he couldn't wait to test what he had just learned, Najin pulled himself together each time and kept fighting.
Thud, crash, thud!
The count of falling bones grew. Now Fafnir's altitude was beginning to drop as well.
And on the third day.
Crack.
Najin severed every single joint making up the wing bones. The moment Fafnir lost its balance, one wing completely gone, Najin took his stance.
First Horn.
The stars shone and Najin's sword energy vibrated powerfully.
Triumph.
The instant a single sword strike slammed into Fafnir's body, every joint began to buckle. Bones bent. Fractured and sheared away. The sword marks carved into Fafnir over those three days, the accumulated cracks, all split open at once.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
The one remaining wing snapped off. Countless joints flew outward in all directions. Fafnir buckled in midair and fell toward the earth. With a tremendous impact, a cloud of dirt and dust billowed high into the sky.
The dragon, lord of the sky, fell and struck the ground.
The human, who lives with feet on the earth, hung in the sky above.
Their positions reversed, Najin pulled his arm back. In his hand was the Lance of the Crossed Star.
Javelin Throw.
The lance drove down like a bolt of light and buried itself in the dragon's spine. The dragon bone, already hacked apart, could now be pierced by a thrown lance. It would not deal serious damage, but that was never the point. The point was to fix the lance in place.
A chain hung from the end of the lance. Gripping the far end of that chain, Najin looked down at Fafnir.
Crack.
Fafnir made its last stand. It hauled itself upright, lifted its gaze to Najin, and roared. Wreathing its body in flame, scattering breath attacks, it threw its jaws wide open.
Najin smiled as if that were exactly what he had wanted.
He did not dodge.
Head-on, pulling the chain taut, Najin dropped toward the ground. He split through the breath, the heat rays, the pressure wave Fafnir threw at him. A platinum meteor plummeted straight down.
Ting, ting, ting...
Excalibur rang out again and again as the constellation carved into the blade lit up one star at a time. With each star that shone, the sword energy amplified. When all ten stars blazed at once, it no longer looked like sword energy. It looked like a bolt of platinum lightning striking down from the heavens.
The Star of Dragon Slaying shone.
It split the flame. It sheared through the talons Fafnir swung at him. Najin cut down everything standing in his path, then leapt straight into the open maw.
Shhhk.
A sound of clean severance rang out.
From high in the sky down to the earth, a single line was drawn. The fire Fafnir had been belching skyward, the dust, even the very landscape was cleanly halved. The head of Fafnir, at the end of that line, was no different.
The dragon's head was split in two.
In that final moment, Fafnir's gaze did not turn toward Najin. It turned toward Leviathan, who had been watching from nearby. Even transformed to bare bone, those eyes held the same light they always had.
"......Ah."
Meeting that gaze, Leviathan smiled.
"This is enough, old friend."
Rest now.
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