WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 435

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Turning Point (3)

Demons fear Arthur.

The reason was simple enough: Excalibur, the blade she carried, could royally screw them over, and Arthur herself was a monster on top of that.

Throw her into a pit of fire, hack her apart with a mob, ambush her with everything you have, and Arthur simply would not die. Watching her charge through her own blood and tear out throats regardless, it was hard not to think the same thought every time.

Why won't that bastard just die?

The feeling humans had fighting demons, demons felt the exact same way when fighting Arthur.

"There is no place for you to stand on this land."

A monster of a woman running wild with a mythic weapon, stirring up her kin with promises of killing every last one of them. Watching close to eighty percent of your own kind get ground up in the process had a way of creating fear where none had existed before.

And so "Arthur-phobia" became engraved into the deepest part of every demon's soul. It was an affliction that made them convulse and scream at the sight of anything connected to Arthur. But anyway.

If that was the case for demons, what about the witches, who had stood in much the same position?

For witches, the story was a little different.

Arthur was certainly hateful to them as well. She had killed no small number of witches, and in the end she sealed the Witch of the Abyss herself, the mother of all witches. But it remained hatred and nothing more. What they felt toward Arthur never quite reached the territory of fear.

Because.

"You know, I..."

There was a different existence engraved into the witches' minds.

"I want you to suffer."

The one who had killed the most witches of all.

The Wizard of the Lake, Merlin.

The terror carved into every witch's memory.

Even Lapis, who was no longer a witch, could not bring herself to meet Merlin's eyes. Rena, the Witch of Solitude, was the same. And for good reason.

They knew exactly what had become of their kin who had once raised their heads without knowing how high the sky was.

Eyes were plucked out simply for making eye contact. Those who dared to oppose her sank beneath the water. Malkuth, a witch with nine stars, was drowned without mounting any real resistance. Elite witches in formation fell in miserable ruin.

"Not even stupid, just..."

Above all else, what was most terrifying.

"No progress at all."

Merlin denied the very foundation of what witches were as a species. Why were witches called witches? It was not for nothing that the word for demon was woven into their very name.

Witches are beloved by magic.

They are born with the gifts of a Grand Mage and master magic without any particular effort. To witches, magic is as natural as breathing, natural, intuitive, and entirely within the realm of the everyday.

It was supposed to be impossible for a human who calculated their magic to ever catch up to a witch. That was the unwritten law of the magical world.

Snap.

That had been true, until Merlin appeared.

Submersion.

The moment Merlin snapped her fingers, the air grew heavy. Heavy as if it had drunk in water. And this was no illusion. Moisture became droplets, droplets became streams, and streams poured into streams until they overflowed.

It all happened in a single instant.

The vast sky overhead filled with water in a heartbeat. Merlin descended lightly onto the surface of the lake that had spread out to replace the heavens. She walked across the water like a fairy dancing on its surface.

Splash.

The countless spells fired at Merlin were swallowed by the water. Ice lances, beams, flames that could melt permafrost, every last one sank into the flooding lake.

"Ah..."

"Aaaaaah!"

The witches' eyes wavered. Moans escaped the lips of witches dragged back through their nightmares.

Merlin denied what it meant to be a witch.

She had not cut down the magic with a sword or spear. She was not borrowing the power of artifacts, relics, or masterworks. She held no mythic weapon in her hands, and she had not invoked any star Authority.

It was pure magic.

She overwhelmed them in the same domain, the same field. Every spell was swallowed. Not a single one reached Merlin as she strolled across the water's surface.

"......"

Looking down at them, Merlin waved her arm without a word.

Snap. Snap.

The witches' teeth clacked together. Trembling with instinctive dread, they watched. Water crashing down. A staggering volume of it, enough to swallow an entire city whole, filling their vision as it fell.

How were they supposed to deal with this?

Too wide to flee. Too formless to block, and they had no idea where to even begin. The witches had been through something like this before.

It was a scene familiar to them.

A flood that had swallowed their kind again and again. A disaster made of water, bearing down on them.

Roaaaar!

The witches were engulfed. Sound drowned with them. Vision vanished in white foam and any sense of direction broke apart. Up and down became meaningless. When you could no longer breathe and instinct forced your mouth open, that was the end.

The water moved like something alive, seeping into the witches' bodies. Through open mouths, eyes, ears, and noses it drove inward and tore apart their mana circuits.

So they could never use magic again.

It stripped the magic from them, reducing them to nothing but ordinary creatures. And so the witches fell. They sank. In the end, they were submerged entirely.

Crash!

Some witches did manage to respond. Those who had encountered this kind of magic before, witches who had faced Merlin a thousand years ago and survived. Kether's elite unit forced their way through the flood and broke free.

"Huu, huh, huuuu..."

Gasping, Kether swept her hand. The red chains connected to her fingertips dragged the witches who had sunk beneath the water back up by force.

Click.

Looking at her limp kin, Kether ground her teeth. Without the blessing of immortality, that single attack would have cost her close to seventy percent of her witches.

Whoosh.

Kether raised her head and looked to the sky. There she was, exactly as she had always been, looking down at her. Kether's teeth ground together.

"Merlin."

"Yeah, why are you calling me?"

"You, because of you..."

Kether's eyes burned a deep, glistening red. Kin had died. You took so many things from me. That was what her eyes said.

"......"

In Kether's hatred-filled eyes, Merlin saw her past self. In the old days, she would have found Kether's reaction absurd and said something like this.

What you took from me, what was taken from humans, have you already forgotten all of that?

She would have raised her voice and ground her teeth saying it. But now Merlin made no such effort. The witches were still hateful to her, but anger no longer ruled her. She remembered what it had been like when she was swallowed by her emotions and ran wild.

"Sure."

Traveling with Najin, Merlin had changed too. She knew now how to make someone even angrier, how to get under their skin. She had learned it from her Companion.

"I killed them. What are you going to do about it?"

Merlin grinned. Smiling like Najin, she propped her chin on her hand and pulled the corner of her mouth up.

"I gave you a thousand years and you still couldn't get revenge, you haven't grown at all, what should I even say..."

Pfft.

"Yeah. Nothing special."

No wonder I couldn't even remember your name.

Kether's mind went completely white at Merlin's sneer. Rage that bleached everything out. An instant later, an enormous surge of heat radiated out from Kether.

Hissssssss!

The water left on her body evaporated. Pouring out heat, Kether scattered her magic. Witches could not stay dead in this place. Then she would kill her as many times as it took to tear that arrogant face to pieces. Kether took flight with fury.

"See?"

Merlin was still relaxed. Chin propped on her hand, looking down at the witches, she smiled.

"You don't even know what's behind you, and you think charging straight ahead will get you somewhere?"

Behind. The moment Merlin said that word.

Flash.

A platinum streak split through the rear of the witch formation. At the platinum starlight that burst from behind them, Kether spun around.

"Twinkle twinkle little star."

Najin, having sung the song all the way to the end, was shrugging his shoulders. He lowered his sword, said "ah," and spoke briefly.

"Come to think of it, I'm not exactly a little star. I am modest, but excessive modesty looks a bit off, doesn't it?"

"...What?"

"Witches who have lived at least a thousand years have ten stars each. If I, with eleven, go around calling myself a 'little star'..."

Hmm. Najin nodded.

"That looks a bit off, doesn't it? Should I change the lyrics and call myself a big star instead?"

Those absolute sons of bitches, the pair of them.

The back of Kether's neck prickled.

2.

A mage and a knight are a proven combination.

Front line and rear, each covering the other's weaknesses and handling most situations with flexibility. There is a reason the Imperial Army has always deployed mages and knights together. It is a combination tested and proven over a long history.

And here.

A knight with eleven stars and a mage with eleven stars, both alike. One was the heir of the greatest knight who ever held Excalibur; the other was a Grand Mage worthy of being called the strongest mage in human history.

On their own, either of them would have been nearly impossible to find a weakness in.

Now that the two were moving as one body, the sense of sheer injustice the witches felt was beyond words.

Shhhhhheeeeaaak!

A platinum sword aura carved through the witch formation. It broke their lines and disrupted their spellcasting. The moment they tried to fire off an incomplete spell in a hurry, Merlin would snatch control of it away as if to mock them for calling that sorcery.

Magic detonated in the air one after another. Through the flowering blasts of fire, Kether flew at high speed.

Shrieeeek, she cut through the air and hurled witches at Najin like living bombs, but.

"Since when was that magic."

The instant Merlin snapped her fingers, the witches exploded faster than Kether had expected. Stumbling from the blast, Kether bit down hard on her lip.

Outrageous. Merlin alone was already more than she could handle, but she could not afford to keep her eyes fixed on Merlin.

That human below, taking his stance.

The energy pouring off Najin was not ordinary. It had only been a few months. In those few months Najin had grown explosively, and watching his movements Kether felt something unfamiliar: bewilderment.

Spin. Tap.

Najin kicked off the ground and began to run. His movements were hard to follow with the eye. All she could do was track the platinum particles he scattered as he moved, chasing his trail a beat behind.

Fast.

Dangerously fast. Had she not gained altitude when she did, the sword Najin swung would have cut her. The blade's edge was nothing like before either. An absolutely razor-clean line of sword aura had grazed her hair as it passed.

Through his battle with Mordred, Najin had grown.

It was not simply that he had gained another star. The way he moved his body, the way he traced his sword paths, as a swordsman, he had risen to a higher level entirely.

Skk.

The sword he wielded now was sharp beyond measure. The spells aimed at Najin split apart. The tip of the blade that had split hundreds of beams in a single stroke was perfectly still.

"What the..."

Kether knew one other person who could do something like that. Recalling that name, her mouth went dry.

Siegfried.

Kether revised her assessment of Najin's threat level upward. In only a few months, Najin had grown into someone who could stand alongside Siegfried.

...Dangerous.

Merlin and Najin moved as if they were one body. Without a word spoken between them, they seemed to know exactly where the other was headed and what the other was about to do, drawing the exact same picture in perfect unison. Through the magic Merlin scattered across the sky, Najin ran freely in every direction.

Tap.

Ice crystals formed beneath Najin's feet as he leaped into empty air. Kicking off each crystal, he kept leaping. With each jump, a single platinum streak drove itself into the witch formation.

Snap.

Each time Merlin snapped her fingers, witches froze one by one. Submersion was a threatening spell on its own, but escaping it did not mean it was over.

The droplets that had clung to their bodies when they went under.

Every single one of those droplets was Merlin's mana. Nothing is easier for a mage than reading their own mana, and right now Merlin's field of vision showed her the exact position of every marked target.

She knew where the enemies were and where they would move. All she had to do was shoot.

Snap.

Witches froze. From their heads, their hearts, their eyes and noses, flowers of ice bloomed. Ice flowers that had bloomed using the witches themselves as soil scattered through the air.

Mage and knight ran wild.

Witches fell, one by one. The threat closing in from above and below like a tightening grip made Kether's mouth run dry. She had been using fury to mask her fear.

The howling, the grinding of teeth, the way she spat Merlin's name out like a curse, all of it was an act she put on to keep from looking at the fear beneath.

Now that she could do none of it.

Kether felt afraid.

Merlin, still looking down at her, finally let the smile drop from her lips. Eyes without a trace of emotion. Cold, ice-blue eyes looked at Kether.

And then. Snap.

A snapping sound.

Clink.

Kether's vision went dark. Like a frozen pane of glass shattering to pieces, half her vision split apart. Her eye had frozen solid and shattered. Merlin's ice flower had bloomed directly over Kether's eye, cutting through dozens of layered protective spells.

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

Kether screamed at the hideous pain, and a platinum streak shot toward her.

Flash.

Excalibur carved through Kether's body.

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