WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 431

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Traitor, Mordred (4)

Bedivere glanced back.

A star was shining there.

His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the Star of the Round Table rising over the center of the sanctuary.

"......"

A familiar star. A star he had missed. In that starlight, Bedivere could make out the faces of old comrades, the bright days they had shared flickering through his mind like something half-remembered. Days that had long since become distant past.

The Round Table had fractured.

Stained by betrayal and rebellion.

Even so, Bedivere could not help but miss it. He could not simply hate them. They were comrades who had covered his back, who had crossed through death with him time and again. It was not easy to turn cold toward people like that.

Flicker.

His own starlight was woven into the Star of the Round Table as well. Bedivere had been part of it too. The weapon he had lost in the Abyss so long ago was shining there now.

"You......"

He could see Mordred rampaging, wielding the weapons of the Round Table. He could see Najin standing against him. Bedivere watched them for a moment, then turned his back on both.

Grip.

He tightened his hold on his spear and threw himself against the knights of death closing in. Driving them back, and back again, he let out a long breath.

"What on earth are you looking at?"

2.

Time moved slowly.

It always did when you were deep in a fight. The mind stretched time thin, and inside that drawn-out moment every motion seemed to inch along at a crawl.

And yet.

Najin found it strangely hard to register that time had slowed at all. Because his own movements were still fast. His arm swept out trailing platinum particles. Excalibur cleaved through the air.

Slice.

Sound followed a beat behind. By the time he heard the ring of the sword cutting through air, he was already moving into the next strike. That fact caught him off guard.

'Fast.'

His movements were fast, as if time had never slowed to begin with. Had something gone wrong with his senses? No, a stone chip spinning upward was drifting back down at a crawl. His perception of time was still stretched thin.

Mordred's movements were the same. Not slow, but not startlingly quick either.

His senses were fine.

It was simply that his own movements had gotten faster. Fast enough to feel fast even inside drawn-out time. Najin had experienced this before.

'Siegfried.'

A swordsman he could not follow with his eyes even when his perception of time was stretched to its limit. Fighting to survive that battle, Najin had scrambled and stumbled into some new threshold without meaning to.

In that moment his body had accelerated, and his senses had failed to keep pace with a frame that had suddenly gotten faster. For just an instant, he had matched something close to Siegfried's speed.

It had happened against Lancelot too.

Standing at the edge between life and death, Najin had stepped one stride further ahead. The experience of his body ending up somewhere beyond what he expected of himself. The same thing was happening now. Pushed to the absolute limit, he felt that sensation again.

'Ah.'

Three times now. Once was chance, twice was luck, but three was something else. On this third time, Najin understood exactly what was happening to him.

Sword and body were being recognized as a single thing. Whatever he could do to wrap sword aura around a blade, he could do the same to his own flesh.

...... Sword aura slices through even the resistance of air with its cutting force, driving forward. That is why a warrior who commands sword aura strikes so much faster than one who does not.

Slice.

Swinging the sword, Najin watched platinum particles rise off his body. Those particles were doing the work of sword aura. The same way Siegfried had done it, Najin's own body right now was nothing less than a single sword.

He was not pushing through the air.

He was cutting away everything that tried to hold him back, and his body was surging forward through the gap.

'So this is what it feels like.'

Recognizing his own state clearly made the movements feel natural. The senses that had been struggling to keep pace with his faster body began slowly finding their footing, gears clicking into alignment.

Click.

Najin took one step forward.

Mordred's eyes contracted at the sudden shift in Najin's speed.

Fast. Sharp. Razor-sharp.

Every short sword flying toward Najin was cut down. Nine became eight. One of Mordred's weapons was gone. The moment Mordred swung the greatsword, before it even finished tracing its arc, Najin's blade caught it and struck back.

Clang.

The thin edge of Excalibur wrapped around the greatsword and knocked it aside. Najin drove his foot into the exposed breastplate. The size difference between them was several times over, yet the breastplate buckled with a crunch.

Skreeeeeee!

Mordred skidded backward, then stamped the ground to arrest himself. He hammered his own chest. At this rate he was losing ground. Push the speed higher. The mechanical device lodged in his chest burned hotter.

Hsssssss.

Steam vented without pause. Mordred's star began to groan. The force his flesh could not contain was being held in place by the power of the machinery. The Blight Star began eating into Mordred's body.

No matter. Eat your fill.

Dark red veins stood out across his whole body. Through the hoses, dark red blood circulated at a furious pace. Steam pouring off him, Mordred charged.

He swung the greatsword. He drove out the spear. He rolled across the ground and slammed his greaves into Najin's body, threw his fist. Sword, spear, anything usable, he used. Erratic attacks came storming in, and Najin answered them.

On a battlefield dense with variables, Najin peeled them away one by one.

He knocked the greatsword flat, then cut along its deflected path and drove forward. He brought the sword's pommel down to stop the fist coming at his stomach. Against an opponent who demanded dozens of choices every second, Najin pruned away the weapons like cutting branches from a tree.

Slash.

The greatsword was cut away. The spear shaft snapped. Swords said to be unbreakable were smashed apart again and again. Round Table weapons shattered, and through the starlight scattering from the wreckage Najin pressed himself in.

Strike, pummel, shatter, cut.

He whittled Mordred down steadily, but his own body was not unscathed. Mordred was whittling him back. Blood and viscera sprayed from a torn side. A broken bone fragment punched into his lung and his breathing stuttered.

Sun sword, Solar Fire.

Galatine and Excalibur met. One exchange, two, three, nearly a dozen and a half clashes, and a crack ran through the sun sword. Najin had swung wide with the intent of shattering Galatine outright.

Mordred threw Galatine away.

The instant Najin cut the thrown sword from the air, the blade burning searing red shattered.

BOOM!

Heat that had built up through every clash of swords, heat pouring from Mordred's body, the scorching air of the battlefield, all of it compressed until it was ready to burst and then released at once. The heat freed itself in the shape of a great sun and swallowed Najin whole.

Caught in the explosion, his skin burned. His body, struck directly by that sun, screamed. Searing pain sent sparks cascading across his vision.

His breathing broke.

Kgh. Hack.

It felt as though his throat was packed with black ash. One arm was charred black and he could no longer grip the sword with two hands. He could barely draw breath. Najin grabbed his own throat and was trying to cough out the ash when ,

Boom.

Mordred smashed the ground and lunged. He had already stepped outside the blast radius before the sun erupted, and now he vented steam and drove himself at Najin.

Every weapon was gone.

All he had left was Galahad's battered Cross Shield, hanging in pieces. Was he planning to beat Najin down with his fists?

'No. Not that.'

There was one weapon he had never drawn since the fight began. The sword tied at Mordred's hip. And that sword was not where it should have been.

A hand pulled back behind him.

From the sword in that hidden hand, a dark red sword aura erupted. Black threads rooted themselves into it and spread across the aura like vines. A sword wrapped in dark red sword aura. Najin knew what that sword was.

The Sword of Endings, Clarent.

The cursed sword that had ended Arthur's story. Only after losing every weapon of the Round Table did Mordred finally draw his own. Najin clenched his jaw and set his stance.

One arm hanging dead and charred.

Gripping the sword in one hand, he threw himself at Mordred. The platinum sword aura that resembled starlight and the dark red sword aura that resembled the Blight Star collided.

3.

A Transcendent's weapon holds a life within it.

The life lived, the great deeds... the star.

A weapon with a star dwelling inside becomes a Sacred Object, a thing that stands as the symbol of a Constellation. The Sword of Endings in Mordred's hand was no different. It was the weapon that symbolized his life.

The Sword of Endings, Clarent.

It had not always been a cursed sword. Once, it was the sword Arthur had bestowed on Mordred the day he became one of Arthur's knights. Mordred turned over the memory of that glory. Then came another memory, the day this sword became cursed.

"......"

The day the King departed alone into the Abyss, Mordred understood the time had come. He raised rebellion. He stood in the path of his own comrades and made sure no one could reach the Abyss.

Because no one could be allowed to interfere.

He could not stop Siegfried, but he held back every other soul. Worn down and broken, Mordred walked toward the Abyss. He walked, and walked, until at last he arrived.

"Ah, you finally came."

Arthur was there, propped against a rock with her body half spent, breathing in short ragged pulls.

"...Did I arrive too late, my King?"

"No, your timing was right."

"Did you accomplish... your purpose?"

"Somehow."

Arthur gave a faint, tired smile and pointed toward the crater of the Abyss. The screams of the witch pinned down within it, the rage she spewed, shook the Abyss to its foundations.

A single human had brought down a god.

It was not something Mordred could simply admire. The price of challenging a god had been too devastating.

"......"

His throat tightened. Mordred walked slowly forward and knelt before Arthur. Arthur looked at him and smiled, faint as a dying ember.

"Why do you bow your head, Sir Knight?"

"I......"

"You did everything you could. No one did anything wrong. Everyone gave their best, and it was precisely because of that that we were able to reach this place. So there is no need to make that face."

Blood came up. Arthur was moving toward death. The Blight Star driven into every part of her body was eating at her soul. Left like this, she would be consumed by it and die.

That could not be.

Arthur must not be killed by the witch. The hero who had pulled an era forward could not be allowed to fall to the Blight Star. She had to meet her end at the hands of a rebel.

"Mordred."

Mordred lifted his head. His eyes and Arthur's met.

"I keep giving you nothing but the hardest roles."

"......Not at all."

Mordred rose to his feet. Arthur, whom he had always looked up at from his knees, he now looked down at from a standing height. The Clarent in his hand trembled faintly.

The rebel brought his sword down on his own king.

Words of denial left his mouth. Negating the King's great deeds, mocking them, Mordred drove the sword down. With the sword Arthur had given him, he cut Arthur down.

The star of Betrayal shone.

Mordred opened his eyes, that memory still turning behind them. The stars he carried blazed fiercely. The dark red sword aura of Clarent surged and amplified. The pipes driven into his body spewed flames that resembled sword aura.

Hsssssssssssssss!

Steam erupted. Mordred moved his protesting body. The skin exposed through gaps in his shattered armor was warped. Veins bulged. Flesh melted. The mechanical device replacing his heart pounded as if it might burst at any moment.

All of it was hideous.

Unlike Najin, who came sprinting with brilliant platinum sword aura scattering off him, Mordred's sword aura was murky. Gripping a cursed sword, he swung an awful star's sword aura.

Clang, clang, claaang!

Sword met sword. The helm shattered. Through the broken visor came the sight of Mordred's face, teeth ground together hard enough to crack.

Clank, hsssssss!

He swung the shattered right arm. What remained of the broken iron plate, the tattered Cross Shield, he thrust forward to catch Najin's blade. With the other hand gripping Clarent, he wrenched the sword aura up to its limit.

The instant he caught the sword, the shield shattered too.

All he had left now was a single Clarent. The stars of the Round Table had gone dark. Other stars began to shine.

Negation. Counter-Heaven. Endings.

And.

Betrayal.

The rebel swung his sword.

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