WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 418

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Witch (2)

A star rose in the sky of the Abyss.

The star that appeared was dark crimson. Not a platinum star, but a Blight Star shining in dark red. The moment three Blight Stars freed from their seals rose into the sky, Najin saw it.

Flames erupting toward the heavens.

From the deepest pit of the Abyss, fire shot skyward. Black and red fire. The flames, the same color as the Blight Stars, became a massive finger, then a hand, and at last an entire arm.

An enormous fist closed around the sky.

Where the fingers pressed, the sky crumpled and tore, its center held fast in that grip. Watching the sky wrinkle like paper being crushed, Najin doubted his own eyes.

'What am I looking at?'

He could not make sense of it. What happened next was equally beyond him.

Rrrrrrumble!

The ground shook. As the sky crumpled, the earth began to crumple with it. Folding, buckling, rolling in waves, moving as it pleased. Najin had not taken a single step, yet the ground moved and his body moved with it.

He was being dragged toward the heart of the Abyss.

The middle tier of the Abyss, which had been a distant sight, and the spires marking its boundary rushed toward him at speed.

'No. Wait.'

The spires were not coming to him. He was being dragged toward them. Shock had slowed his read of the situation, but late or not, Najin acted.

Thud.

He kicked off the ground and leaped backward. He pushed off the folding, heaving earth, trying to open distance between himself and those spires. The gap refused to widen. Some invisible pull was hauling him in.

......It wants to drag me there.

Najin felt it in his gut. The Abyss meant to pull him into the middle tier,further still, all the way to the far edge of this land. It wanted to force an audience between him and this land's master. The earth itself was moving as though it had a will of its own.

"Merlin!"

-Just, a moment......

Merlin groaned, her physical form already dissolved. She had noticed before Najin did.

The Witch of the Abyss had moved.

Three of the thirteen stakes anchoring the Witch had crumbled away. A portion of the Witch had broken free at last. Merlin gripped the binding seal with everything she had, holding back anything more from slipping out.

But there was nothing she could do about what had already escaped. The dark crimson stars blazed in the sky.

"I have a rough sense of the situation."

Through the emotions flowing from Merlin, through her muttered thoughts, Najin pieced the picture together. He wrenched Excalibur free with a rough pull.

"Focus on your end. I'll......"

Merlin had to stop things from getting any worse. Then what did that leave him? Najin stared at the fist clenching the sky and ground his teeth.

"I'll find some way to run."

He had to escape from that thing somehow. Fighting was not an option. Running was the only way to survive. His reason screamed it.

His instincts, which sometimes delivered a different answer from his reason, gave the same answer this time.

'I cannot cut it.'

Not as he was now. He could not face it. That thing was not made to be cut in the first place. The same logic by which an offering made to a god could not presume to count the god as its enemy.

What was that thing made of?

Not bone and flesh. Not mana. Not starlight. Something more fundamental, more elemental than any of those. Only one arm had broken free, and already Najin could not properly perceive it.

"......Ha."

A hollow laugh slipped between his lips.

What on earth was it?

Even if he poured every star and every technique he had ever built into striking it, he doubted he could reach it. Something beyond the word immeasurable existed there.

That was a phenomenon.

The sun rises and sets. Every beginning has an end. Life carries death, and time flows forward. That thing existed in the same way such plain and obvious principles of the world exist. Before it, even a Transcendent was reduced to a mote of dust.

How was anyone supposed to cut that?

Drip, drip......

Blood ran from Najin's eyes and nose. Simply looking at it made his soul scream. His body locked up, breath forgotten.

-Najin.

Merlin's voice seized his reason. Najin drew up his starlight, burning away the black blotches spreading across his body, scorching the curse down to nothing.

Do what you can do right now.

Forcing himself to move, Najin got his legs working. He turned his back on the fist gripping the sky and started running. But that lasted only a moment. He realized he could not simply keep running, and bit down hard.

He sensed presences. Countless presences.

Najin looked back.

The Abyss was stirring at the Witch's call, she who was mother to every living thing in this land. The cursed ones flooded the earth. The beasts of the Abyss let out rolling, sequential roars, and the knights of death stamped their feet and began to march.

The Witch's army surged forward like a wave.

A dark crimson tide swallowed the land. Not the land alone. Raising his gaze, the sky held its own tide.

Witches.

The Witches had gathered at their mother's call.

2.

Ordinarily, Witches act alone.

Each one is fiercely individual, there is no commander fit to lead them, and each carries enough firepower to casually burn a city or two. Moving in a swarm is less efficient than moving alone.

They can burn more humans that way.

For that reason, cases where Witches assembled in one place could be counted on one hand.

"......"

And yet there they were, gathered in one place. The Witches that still existed were the ones who had survived Merlin, and those seasoned enough to have avoided being hunted across a thousand years.

They looked down at Najin.

Astride their broomsticks, their eyes burning dark red as they stared him down. The stars rising behind their backs averaged well over seven each.

'The most.'

He looked at the Witch standing at the front.

Ten stars shone behind her.

"Rena, Roselin's mother, said she ranked in the top five among Witches, didn't she? Then who are the other three?"

Najin had asked Merlin that once. Rena at her peak had been a nine-star Witch. Lapis had also been a nine-star Witch. Excluding the Witch of the Abyss, that put two more above them......

"Third was Malkuth. Mistress of the Black Spire. I killed her, so you don't need to worry about that one."

The Witch of the Abyss went without saying and could be set aside.

That left one. The most powerful Witch currently alive, excluding the Witch of the Abyss. About her, Merlin had said:

"The Witch of the Crown."

Najin opened his mouth.

"Kether."

The oldest Witch alive save the Witch of the Abyss, and Morgan's first child. Accompanied by dozens of Witches, she raised one arm.

Snap.

The moment she flicked her finger. Red rings floated up above the heads of the assembled Witches. Red laurel wreaths, woven from laurel branches, settled around the Witches' heads.

"A Witch for the Witches."

The mana of the Witches wearing the laurel crowns surged. Their starlight amplified, and the circles they had raised began to spin in furious arcs.

Screeeech, screeeeeech......

The Witches' fingers, staves, eyes, fingernails,every part of them pointed at Najin. Dozens of circles packed the sky. The rings grinding against each other soon began pouring out magic in flashes of light.

From the sky, the Witches.

From the ground, the Witch's army.

Heaven and earth blanketed in enemies, all of it aimed at Najin. Even the moving ground was his enemy. With everything in the world bearing down on him, Najin let out a short, hollow laugh and ran a hand over his face.

'The Abyss.'

This was the Land of the Abyss. Camlann.

Turn and run, and they would run him through. And there was no escaping this place.

"......"

So long as the Witch of the Abyss held the sky in her grip, fleeing the Abyss was impossible. Najin felt that by instinct. No one could leave this land without the Witch's leave.

In the end, only one path remained.

He gripped Excalibur with both hands.

"Huu......"

He breathed out and turned. Not to show his back to his enemies, but to face them. Najin narrowed his eyes, taking in every last one.

One path remained.

He had to buy time until Merlin found an answer, or until some other answer showed itself.

'Can I do it?'

He answered the question he had put to himself.

He had to.

Because if he did not, he would die.

3.

Kether, the Witch of the Crown.

Most of the Witches gathered beneath her crown had never faced Najin before. They had either taken heavy wounds from Merlin a thousand years ago and fled to the Abyss, or had been living relatively quietly in the Outland.

Not all of them, though.

Some had kept right on burning humans without pause, even with their stars shattered and their circles broken by Merlin.

Grind.

Ermina, Witch of Luminescence and Extinction, gnashed her teeth. She had faced Najin before. Back when Najin had first set foot in the Outland, she had crossed paths with him.

'That little bastard.'

The human who had put a wound in her shoulder. The one who had humiliated her, and for some reason she could not name had given her a maddening sense of familiarity.

When she had later understood the reason for that familiarity, no one would ever know how deeply she had regretted not killing Najin that day. The fact that she had let slip a perfect chance to kill Arthur's heir,the human that damned Merlin doted on,filled Ermina with a rage she could not contain.

By the time she understood, it was already too late.

Najin had grown strong. Ermina alone could never kill him now. She was not stupid enough to throw herself into a fight she could not win.

So she had waited for her chance.

Waited for another opportunity.

'And.'

That chance had returned to her this very moment. The blessing her mother scattered was taking root in her body. The crown bestowed by the Witch of the Crown was shoring up her circles.

The feeling of returning to her prime.

No,a sense of omnipotence beyond even that wrapped around her.

She could kill him now. Right now, together with her kin, she could burn that human to ash. She could have the revenge a thousand years in the making.

Luminescence and Extinction.

The magic that bore her name. The flames that had turned the sky red came plunging toward the earth. And in that moment, Ermina's eyes met Najin's.

"......"

A sensation like everything clouding her vision vanishing all at once. Ermina's red eyes and Najin's platinum eyes met.

'Ah.'

In that instant, Ermina knew.

Something had gone wrong.

But by the time she grasped her mistake, it was already far too late.

"......What?"

Najin disappeared from Ermina's sight. When she blinked, her broomstick gave a small lurch. Someone had put a foot on it.

A flash of light.

The next instant, the dozens of layers of protective magic wrapped around her were torn away like paper. No,they did not even tear.

Slash.

She was cut. Sliced through without a shred of resistance. What Ermina saw was a platinum blade passing through her body and out the other side, and Najin holding the sword that had done it.

Eyes cold enough to be frightening.

Ermina's body was split in two. An instant before the blood could burst from the wound, her broomstick lurched once more. Najin had kicked off and leaped away.

That was its final lurch.

Falling toward the ground, the last thing Ermina saw was a monster running wild among the Witches.

......Ermina had always been too late.

When her kin were being massacred by Merlin, when she was fleeing from that same Merlin, when she had seen through Najin's true nature,she had always been too late.

But not at the very last.

The first star to fall was Ermina's.

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