WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 421

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Witch (5)

Sword Demon of the Abyss, Siegfried.

Once a great hero who had held twelve stars and stood shoulder to shoulder with Arthur, he was a being who could not endure a thousand years and fell into decline.

"I say 'fell into decline,' but a more accurate way to put it is that even the Abyss couldn't do anything with him."

Couldn't do anything with him? Najin tilted his head, and Merlin had told him this once.

"You've seen the Cursed Ones of the Abyss, so you know, life inside the Abyss can't hold its original form. It breaks down, blends together, melts away, until the existence itself grows faint."

If not that, Merlin let out a sigh.

"They get caught by the Witch of the Abyss and become puppets. They end up no different from slaves bending to the witch's will."

The fate of those trapped in the Abyss is fixed. They either become something no longer human and are absorbed into the land of the Abyss, or they become the witch's slaves.

"But."

But, Merlin said.

"Siegfried is the exception."

He did not meld into the Abyss. Nor did he become the witch's slave. The Abyss may have worn down Siegfried's soul, but it could not crumble his body.

"His soul was worn away, but his body wasn't worn down in the slightest. If anything, it grew stronger with time. Drenched in the blood of the Cursed Ones of the Abyss, swinging his sword, and swinging it again and again......"

For a thousand years, the Abyss could not make Siegfried submit. What was born from that was a Sword Saint gone mad.

"And at the end of it all, he became what he is now."

The Sword Demon of the Abyss.

A ghost that missed its time to die, sword in hand, cutting down everything in sight without distinction.

"Truly a monster of a man."

Even a thousand years ago.

And now, still.

2.

He put distance between them. Back turned to the enemy, Najin sprinted with everything he had. The dignity of a knight, the Helmeted Knight's teaching that a knight must carry himself proudly even in retreat, Najin shelved all of that for this one moment.

Shouldn't surviving come first? A truly great knight knows when to fall back.

Thinking those useless thoughts, Najin ran with every last bit of strength. From behind came screams, the repeated crack of things detonating, and swallowing all of it, thunder crashing on without pause.

After running hard for some time, when enough distance had opened up ,

Fwoooosh!

Najin slid along the ground and spun in place, tucking his body behind a large boulder. He needed a moment to catch his breath.

"Hah, hah......"

Gasping, Najin clutched his chest. His heart was hammering wildly. The mana and starlight he had wrung to the very limit had hit rock bottom, and his overworked body had reached its limit as well.

His body was going cold. The heat of battle faded, and the pain came crashing in behind it. Broken fingers, torn skin, a pierced back, aching arms and legs.

Going to die, honestly.

Brushing soot from his body, Najin let out a long breath. He peeked his head out and looked back toward where he had fled from, toward where Siegfried and the witches were clashing.

"......"

The moment he saw it, Najin's eyes wavered, then went wide, then the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Huh..."

A hollow laugh escaped his lips. He couldn't help it. What was unfolding before him could only be described as absurd.

Lightning struck.

Lightning was striking.

Thunderclap after Thunderclap rang out through the heart of the Abyss without pause. Each time the lightning crashed, dozens of streams of sword energy swept across the ground. With flashes of dark crimson lightning, Siegfried's silhouette flickered in and out.

Flash.

Even with Najin's visual acuity, following those movements was difficult. What his strained eyes finally caught was the image of the Sword Demon crossing the battlefield as a single bolt of lightning. Where he passed, a dark crimson line was drawn across the earth.

Shhhhhhiiiiing!

The beasts that touched the line evaporated. Heat shimmer rose from the scorched air. Through that shimmer, Siegfried pulled his arm back.

And then, with a heavy thud ,

He hurled Gramr. Several meters long, it was thrown spinning like a discus, and it sliced through the bodies of the witches who had been dropping toward Siegfried like bombs.

A swordsman threw his sword.

The hand that threw it held nothing. What was he planning? Was he going to summon it back as he had before? Najin guessed at his next move, but every guess missed the mark.

Siegfried seized the magic falling from the sky with his bare hands. He grabbed a massive pillar of light and swung it.

The moment magic the witches had fired was caught in Siegfried's grip, it became a sword. Whatever its type or shape, anything seized in the Sword Saint's hands became a weapon. Siegfried swung the magic and leaped.

He charged the witches with his bare hands.

Crack.

He crushed heads, tore off arms, and swung those torn limbs as weapons. The defensive magic layered dozens deep shattered like glass the instant Siegfried threw a punch.

Thwoom.

Nothing more than a punch, and the air exploded. When a witch's body blew apart in fragments, Siegfried was already somewhere else. With each crash of thunder, his silhouette scattered afterimages and vanished.

......He hunted the witches with his bare hands.

This was the man who had stripped dragon scales bare-handed and torn apart a dragon's maw. To him, a sword was something to cut down his opponents a little more easily. Without one, Siegfried's body itself was close to a weapon.

That is.

Less human than beast.

But the witches were no pushover either. Regenerating endlessly, they charged at Siegfried. Najin watched in silence as an immortal army that would not die and a ghost that had survived a thousand years in the Abyss tore into each other.

Explosions rang out. The detonations the witches set off in exchange for their own lives hammered the ground. Flames rose high into the sky.

Shhhweeeeeen!

Cutting through the fire, Kether flew at high speed. Dozens of witches formed a column behind her. Circles were woven along the trajectory they flew, and magic poured down.

Not magic to kill Siegfried.

Magic to bind his feet, to break away from this battlefield however they could. But despite their efforts, Siegfried's feet were not bound. Shredding the magic pouring onto him with his bare hands, Siegfried roared.

A force surging in like a wave.

Immortal beings that would not die no matter how many times they were killed.

Witches trying to pin down his feet.

As if all of it grated on him, as if he would not be satisfied until he had cut down every last one of them, Siegfried's muscles contracted. White light flashed in his eyes as he reached a hand into empty air.

Grab.

With a crack of lightning, Gramr appeared in the fist Siegfried closed around nothing. Gripping Gramr, he settled into his stance. The tattoos carved into his body in dragon's blood blazed red.

Ah.

At that moment Najin got to his feet. He kicked off the ground and started running. He had put enough distance between them, but a conviction came over him that he needed more.

Something is coming. Something is coming.

Trusting his instincts, Najin ran. The moment he took his first step, all sound vanished. At the second step, a flash burst out from behind him. At the third step, the fourth, the instant he threw himself into a full sprint, the ground shuddered with a deep boom.

Right after, a blast of wind pressure exploded outward.

Knocked off balance by the gust, Najin rolled across the ground. He rolled once, slid back to his feet, and turned around.

"......"

Najin couldn't react at all.

What is that?

Najin was a Sword Master too. To his eyes, trained to the extreme of the sword, he could see the paths a sword had taken and the sword paths it would take. So what his eyes were showing him now were undeniably sword paths.

They must be.

Even seeing it, Najin could not understand.

He could not bring himself to recognize those things as sword paths. Just what paths could one look at and swing a sword along to produce something of that shape.

"You asked about the Sword Order's Absolute Technique?"

"Well, this isn't something you can learn just by trying, and I haven't completed it myself, so I can't really teach it. Only one person has ever completed it."

The Sword Saint of the Sword Order, Karon.

Words he had spoken drifted past Najin's ears.

"A Sword Saint needs to master every sword art that exists in the current age. You have to understand every sword, be able to wield it, and make it your own."

"When you reach that point, a technique is completed."

"Thousand Swords."

"It means a thousand swords."

That was the name given to Karon's Absolute Technique.

"But Thousand Swords is only part of that technique. Think of it as a preparatory motion. What follows Thousand Swords is the true Absolute Technique of the Sword Order."

"In all of history, only one person."

"Only the first Sword Saint could ever wield it."

Najin recalled the name given to that technique.

"Ten Thousand Forms."

Master a thousand swords.

Weave ten thousand stances.

"Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms."

And with a single swing, all things can be cut down.

"......"

The world as Najin's eyes saw it was pure white. The heart of the Abyss, nothing but darkness, was dyed white. Najin realized that everything entering his vision was a sword path.

Everything was being severed.

Cut, split, swept away and scattered.

He glimpsed a realm impossibly far beyond his own. He watched Siegfried's sword, forgetting even to breathe. And then a thought passed through his mind.

Every technique has a purpose.

Even the most basic sword art has a purpose. Deflect the opponent's attack, drive into an opening, create an opening in the opponent, seek a counter, every technique is completed with some purpose in mind.

Horn Charge is for carving open a path.

Triumph is to raise the morale of allies, to show them that victory will be theirs.

Cutting Night, too, has its purpose in the act of cutting through the night.

Then what was the purpose of that technique. What in the world was it made to cut down. A sword that severs an area of that scale in a single sweep, a range so wide it can't all fit within one's field of vision, what was it for.

The answer came to Najin almost immediately.

A colossal existence. So enormous it cannot be taken in at a glance, so large that one must cut down a wide area at once just to deal any damage. Such a being existed in the Abyss.

The Dragon of the Abyss.

This was a technique made to cut down the Dragon of the Abyss.

......The lightning.

The lightning struck.

The lightning that struck without stop was still trying to cut something. To cut what could not be cut, Siegfried had wandered the Abyss for a thousand years.

To cut the dragon.

To cut down the Dragon of the Abyss that he could not cut that day.

3.

Siegfried raged for a long while, and the thunder did not stop for a very long time. At the end of the battle that went on without end, the immortal force finally fell apart.

The army scattered in every direction.

The witches dispersed as well, and Kether succeeded in fleeing after throwing a handful of witches out as bait. But her crown had shattered from regenerating endlessly.

She could no longer command the witches.

There were still witches searching every corner of the Abyss in pursuit of Najin, but one or two witches were not enough to catch him. One of them met a permanent death at Najin's hands, all her stars shattered.

After holding on for some more time ,

-Now.

Merlin had succeeded in suppressing the Binding Seal.

Having suppressed the Witch of the Abyss's power, Merlin tore open a hole leading out of the Abyss. Najin squeezed out what was left of his strength and moved his feet.

No, he tried to.

Eeeeeeeek.

He heard a sound of something being drawn taut. The sound of a bowstring being pulled tight, as if it might twang at any moment. At that unnerving sound, Najin's head whipped around.

Someone stood on a cliff.

Someone clad head to toe in armor stood there.

Not ordinary armor. An existence covered in iron-plated armor with countless weapons bolted on, a frame several times the size of a human's, it was staring down at Najin.

Eeeeek, eeeeeeeek.

The crossbow mounted to its shoulder was being loaded. Gears meshed and interlocked as the armor moved. From the cylindrical barrel embedded in its back, dark crimson flames vented like steam.

The instant their gazes met, Najin understood with sudden clarity.

It's different from back then.

A different appearance than when they first met, different from that time when he had stood with nothing but a single sword in hand, but the moment their eyes crossed, Najin was certain.

"...Mordred."

The traitor who betrayed the Round Table.

The apostle of the Witch of the Abyss.

Mordred leveled a bow at Najin.

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