WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 428

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Traitor, Mordred (1)

Armor and helm are a knight's symbols.

Gleaming steel turns aside blades, spears, and stray arrows, and carries an intimidating weight all on its own. On the Continent, at least.

Past the border of the Outland, armor is nothing but dead weight. Setting foot in the Outland means a fighter has the skill of a Sword Seeker at minimum, and armor that can actually stop sword aura from someone of that caliber is rare. Dodging is simply cheaper.

The cost-to-benefit ratio is abysmal. No efficiency to speak of, and more often than not it gets in the way.

Even so, there are those who never take it off.

Even so, there are those who keep their helms pressed down tight.

People like that almost always fall into one of two camps. Either they cling to the armor out of longing for a brilliant past they cannot let go of, or they wear it to hide what they have become underneath all that steel.

So which was it, for him?

The thought drifted through Mordred's mind unbidden, and he let out a dry, humorless laugh. A pointless question at this point.

"I have something to ask you."

The weapons and armor stacked across the top floor began rising into the air. Mordred spoke.

"What is the Round Table to you?"

He already knew. Najin had defeated Lancelot. The weapons and armor of Lancelot and Galahad sitting here in this room were proof enough. If Najin had faced him, if he had inherited those stars, he must have felt something.

"Heroes who stood with Arthur," Najin answered.

Mordred scoffed.

"Old heroes. One a traitor, one a rebel, and the rest a pack of fools who turned their swords on themselves the moment their center was gone. Even Arthur, the center herself, failed in the end."

Najin's brow furrowed. Mordred caught it and pressed on with a sneer.

"So you think the Round Table was something noble."

"They were noble. A thousand years ago, at least."

"You see them as worthy of respect. I watched you pay your respects to them on the way up here."

"Because it's the right thing to do."

"No. It isn't."

Mordred said it flatly.

"They are failures. Losers who lost the war. Losers don't deserve respect. Never. Losers deserve contempt. Ridicule."

His voice rose.

"If you still think the Round Table were noble, if you still think they deserve your respect..."

Crack. Mordred clenched his fist.

"You die here today."

At the hands of the very people you admire.

Kugugugung!

The ceiling and walls of the top floor collapsed. Armor and weapons surged into the air and flew toward Mordred. He exhaled slowly through the rising cloud of dust.

Won't be taking this off again.

That's just how armor works. Difficult to put on alone, difficult to take off alone. That is why knights keep squires. Why they rely on their comrades. But there was no one left at Mordred's side.

So there was no need to ever take it off again.

Mordred struck his own chest. He activated every mechanical device the Witch of Puppets had implanted in his body long ago. The knight's pride about refusing to use anything born from a witch, anything twisted,that had been discarded long since.

The Witch of Puppets' craft. The Witch of the Abyss's Blight Star. The mana of this cursed land. The weapons stolen from the graves of his comrades, dug up from the earth with his own hands.

Mordred seized all of it.

2.

The air trembled. The ceiling and walls of the top floor crumbled, and dust billowed up in thick clouds. The ground shook beneath their feet.

Najin watched.

Crack. Crack crack crack crack crack!

Pipes burst from Mordred's spine. The cylindrical tubes were studded with dark red crystals,fragments of the Blight Star radiating a vile, oppressive energy. Conduits shot out from the tubes and began driving themselves into Mordred's body one by one.

His clothing tore and his upper body was laid bare.

Where a heart should have been, a dark red crystal sat embedded in his chest. It gave one deep, heavy pulse,and Mordred's flesh split apart.

The crystals blazed like fire alongside jets of steam. Mechanical devices whirred to life, wrenching his limbs outward, stretching them. Ripping through skin. Tearing muscle. Lengthening bone.

Through the split flesh, bone and blood vessels came into view.

Mordred had always been slight compared to the other Knights of the Round Table. Now that slight frame expanded. His height and build, once not so different from Najin's, swelled to something enormous.

What filled the gaps where flesh and bone had been pulled apart were hoses extending from the mechanical devices. They spread through his body like blood vessels, tangling into him, replacing muscle and vein.

The Blight Star embedded in his heart gave another deep pulse. Not human blood but the cursed blood of witches flooded Mordred's veins. Dark red mana flowed through the hoses like blood through a body.

Blood and muscle replaced. What remained was bone and flesh to hold the frame together. No need to look far for that. This place was already full of everything needed to complete Mordred's body.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhk!

Weapons and steel plate flew in from every direction and began covering his form. The armor of old comrades. Leather. Shattered plate. Shields. A massive battle hammer and a greatsword. A spear shaft. A longbow converted into a crossbow. Countless weapons and shields wrapped themselves around him.

All of it happened in a single moment.

The dust settled. What it revealed was not a human being made of blood and flesh.

A knight clad head to toe in steel stood there.

With every movement, pipes hissed and vented dark red steam. Red energy pulsed around the dark crystal jutting from the center of the breastplate.

One of the Four Heralds of Destruction.

Mordred, the Knight of War.

In war, victory is the only thing that matters. To achieve the objective, war recognizes no distinction between means and ends. The victor achieves the goal. The loser loses everything.

Those are the rules of war.

Psht. Clank.

Venting steam, the interlocked armor shifted and moved. Najin stared at Mordred and let out a short, hollow laugh.

"...Ha."

A crossbow on one shoulder. A battle hammer in one hand. A double-edged sword in the other. And that was only the start. Countless weapons bristled from his spine, and at his hip hung Clarent, Mordred's symbol.

The knights who had once held the thirteen seats of the Round Table,the weapons and armor that had defined each of them now adorned Mordred's body.

Weapons that would strain both arms to lift, Mordred gripped one-handed and settled into his stance without the slightest sign of effort. As if the weight was just right, he fixed his gaze on Najin.

Red eyes burned from within the helm.

No more talk. Nothing left to say. The moment Najin took his stance, Mordred moved almost simultaneously. He raised one foot and drove it down.

Thud.

The weight of all that steel ground into the earth. Cracks raced through the floor of the fortress. Stone fragments shot into the air. Foot planted deep, Mordred extended his left arm straight back behind him.

Steam erupted from his body.

Dark red vapor blazed like fire from his left hand, his left arm, his shoulder. The battle hammer in his left hand burned red.

Crack.

Mordred launched himself off the ground and charged. Fast, but not so fast the eye couldn't follow. Slower, in fact, than many of the opponents Najin had faced until now.

'Crushing everything with sheer weight, is it.'

That thought was still forming in Najin's mind when he moved to react.

Psht.

Steam blasted from Mordred's spine. Fire erupted wildly from the tubes embedded in his back, his arms, his legs, his calves. That fire became propulsion. Mordred accelerated.

Kakakakakakaka!

He no longer needed to move his feet. Each single step carried his body dozens of steps forward. He smashed through the ground and obliterated the flying stone fragments with his own body as he drove straight in.

By the time Najin's eyes went wide,

Mordred was already standing right in front of him. The blazing red battle hammer swept horizontally. A concussive burst of displaced air screamed alongside it. The hammer was already too close to dodge.

Crunch.

Najin gritted his teeth and swung Excalibur, wedging the blade between the hammer and his own body. The moment of impact shook him to the core. His entire body reeled, his vision lurched. The shockwave that burst from the collision point hammered into him.

His breathing broke. His stance shattered. The feet that should have been planted on the ground lifted into the air.

The instant Najin left the ground, Mordred vented steam and swung the hammer again, carrying the arc to completion,then let go. As if hurling it.

Najin, blasted sideways by the hammer, crashed into the wall. The impact boomed out. Buried in the wall, Najin groaned. He had barely started pushing the hammer off him when his eyes snapped wide.

The opponent had more than one weapon.

Najin kicked the hammer aside and pulled himself free from the wall. In that same instant, a dark red beam punched through the spot where he had just been standing. A flash that cut through the drifting dust. Failnot's arrow,the same one that had tormented him back in the Abyss.

Through the dust, Mordred was already lining up the next shot. This was different from that time. Dozens of beams fired simultaneously, all of them aimed at Najin's heart.

Shhhhhhhhhk!

Najin ran, the beams chasing him down. And that was not the only difference from before.

Thud.

Mordred gave chase. One arm firing the crossbow without pause, the other gripping a greatsword and drawing out sword aura. Even the finest marksman would struggle to aim on the move,but Mordred was not a marksman in any ordinary sense.

What he held was Failnot.

However he fired, the arrow would find its mark. There was no need to aim at all. As long as he had the intention to fire and pulled the trigger, the bolt would find its way to the target regardless.

"...Ha."

A short, involuntary laugh escaped. Watching beams bend in their trajectories and curve toward him no matter how they were fired, Najin tightened his grip on his sword.

Erratic. Impossible to predict.

His future sight showed too many possibilities. A sword swings. The hammer is thrown. A spear whips around and a punch follows alongside an incoming arrow. Tens, hundreds, thousands of possible futures spread before Najin's eyes.

Crack!

Even when sword met sword it was the same. Unlike Najin, who had focused on a single blade, Mordred was already reaching for another weapon the moment their swords locked.

An opponent wielding dozens of weapons at once.

And every single one of them was a Sacred Object that had belonged to a Knight of the Round Table. Weapons that ranked alongside masterworks, forged to completion by the lives poured into them.

This was not a fight against one person.

Najin felt it,the sensation of dozens of Transcendents, each supreme with their own weapon, charging at him all at the same time. A single legion. One human being moving like an army.

Clank. Psht.

And commanding that legion was Mordred. Eleven stars. Named the most troublesome opponent the Round Table had ever produced. A knight who bit and pressed like a beast. From behind the helm closing in through a cloud of steam, dark red eyes gleamed with savage intensity.

Crack.

Mordred shoved Najin back and closed his hand on empty air. The battle hammer he had thrown earlier came flying back in, aimed at Najin's spine. Najin reflexively moved to dodge,then understood immediately.

A mistake.

He should have deflected it, not dodged. Mordred caught the returning hammer and drove it into Najin's body. The instant it connected, his arm vented steam.

One more burst of acceleration.

Najin's vision swam. The arm he had raised to block snapped with a grinding crack. Arm broken, his body was driven into the wall.

3.

Najin seized his broken arm. He drew up starlight to reset the dislocated shoulder, then hauled himself upright from the rubble of the collapsed wall.

His vision swam. His head rang.

He slapped his own ear with his palm and spat out a mouthful of blood. Feeling came back. A long breath out, and he looked ahead.

Clank. Clatter.

Mordred was settling into his stance. Sword aura coiled and gathered around him, aimed at Najin. Ferocious sword aura churned and rolled along the greatsword's edge.

He was strong.

Only a handful of exchanges, but that was enough. Mordred fought nothing like Lancelot, whose every blow was perfect and composed. Mordred's attacks were raw.

He broke the opponent apart. Ruined them. Shattered limbs and tore at tendons to push them into a corner.

Less knight, more beast.

Always choosing the move best suited to bring the enemy down. Even now, that gathered sword aura was bait. The moment Najin had tilted his head back to react, a spearhead embedded in his own back went whistling past his ear and flew back to Mordred.

Shhhhhhhk, crack!

He caught the returning spear in one hand and swung the sword in the same motion. A massive wave of sword aura crashed down. Najin exhaled slowly and let it come.

Strong. Strong, but,

Slice.

Najin swept his blade in a light, unhurried arc and cut Mordred's sword aura clean in two. The halves split past him, raking shallow lines across both his sides.

"......"

The red light in Mordred's eyes contracted. Najin leveled Excalibur back at him. Platinum sword aura settled quietly along the blade like still water finding its level.

Strong, but not superior in every respect.

This was different from their encounter in the Underground City.

A great deal had happened since then. He had seen so much more, experienced so much more, and understood so much more. The stars carved into Excalibur shone, and Najin's mouth curved at the corner. Back then, with only three stars, you drove me to the edge of death.

That won't work anymore.

'Your eleven stars.'

The Witch of the Abyss's Blight Star.

'All those weapons. Everything you have.'

Use all of it. Squeeze every last drop out of yourself. There is no point to this fight unless I break you even with all of that. And if you haven't shown everything yet, I'll make you show it right now.

Dawn Sword.

Najin did not hold back. Bedivere had told him: no need to look behind you. Leave the rear to me, and just run with your eyes forward.

So there was nothing to conserve.

Through the settling dust, Najin's eyes went still.

Cutting Night.

Barely minutes into the fight, Najin unleashed his Absolute Technique.

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