WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 437

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Starving One, Atanga (1)

The Witch gave her flags to four horsemen.

The Carnival King, who rode under the flag of Conquest, was defeated by Najin. Mordred, the horseman of War, was likewise brought down by his hand. Two remained.

Leviathan of Death.

Atanga of Famine.

Merlin had explained their Authorities to Najin once, long ago. Death's Authority was murky and hard to pin down, but Famine was simple enough to grasp. It carried the plain, unadorned meaning of the word itself.

Famine is hunger.

Everything that word encompasses is the Authority of Famine. No food, no water. The gnaw of an empty stomach, the burn of a dry throat. To waste away slowly under that gnawing and that burning, that is what the Authority of Famine does.

"About a thousand years ago, there was a black horse that rode under the flag of Famine. Wherever it ran, the earth went dry and crops shriveled up."

"Humans who entered its Domain clutched their empty bellies and starved to death. The Constellations didn't fare much better."

"A thirst that feels like your throat is on fire."

"A hunger that blurs your vision."

"You dry up and die inside that thirst and hunger. It just takes longer than it would for an ordinary person. The dying, though, that part is the same."

In a sense it's the most agonizing Authority there is, Merlin had told him. Death by plague, death beneath the hooves of War's warhorse, death swallowed by the horseman of Death, all of those happen in an instant.

But Famine dries a person out slowly.

It hollows them into their worst, most wretched shape, leaves them thrashing in agony before their eyes finally close. That was why it was the worst of all, Merlin had said.

Holding those words in mind, Najin looked ahead.

"......"

A vast wasteland stretched before him.

This entire land, as far as the eye could see and beyond, was the Domain of Famine. Thirst and hunger pressed in around him, and Najin furrowed his brow. He had not felt anything like this since becoming a Transcendent. It was a strange sensation.

'This entire place is the Domain of Famine.'

He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and kept walking.

Atanga, horseman of Famine.

He had to find the knight somewhere in this land.

2.

"I'm hungry."

"I'm thirsty."

"Ugh, now that you say that, so am I."

Plodding along, Najin and Merlin forced one foot in front of the other.

One day since setting foot in the Domain of Famine.

Both of them were grinding against a hunger that seemed designed to test the limits of endurance. At first Merlin had tried conjuring water to drink, and they had fished out a strip of jerky from a coat pocket to dull the emptiness, but...

'Not even close.'

Nothing worked. Drinking water didn't ease the thirst, it made it worse. Chewing the jerky brought no satisfaction, only more hunger piled on top.

In the first place, a Transcendent's body has no need to consume anything but starlight. Which meant the hunger they felt now was a thing of the mind. Not a problem of the flesh that could be solved by eating, but of the spirit.

'And we have to fight in this state.'

It was far worse than he had imagined.

"How did they beat it before?"

Back then, a thousand years ago, how had they taken down the horseman of Famine? At the question, Merlin wiped the sweat from her forehead and said:

"Siegfried drop."

"Ah."

Of course. Siegfried.

Najin was nodding along instinctively when Merlin let out a short laugh and shook her head.

"Joking. We didn't just send Siegfried alone. Even he had a hard time enduring this Authority."

"Him?"

"Yeah. Siegfried's body, well, you could say almost nothing leaves a mark on it, but as you're feeling right now, this isn't the kind of thing raw physical toughness can do anything about, is it?"

That was true enough. It was a matter of the spirit.

"We steered the horseman in a set direction, then threw in the knights with the highest burst firepower all at once, Siegfried included, and crushed it fast."

Siegfried's Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms. The Emission of starlight Arthur had spent ten days accumulating. Gawain's sun sword. Bedivere's descent. Merlin's Silence, and more.

They had herded it into position, concentrated maximum firepower, and ended it in a swift decisive blow, Merlin said.

"The longer it drags on, the worse it gets, several times over."

"That method won't work now."

"No, it won't."

The black horse that had borne Famine's flag before Atanga moved without pause, but Atanga's Domain was fixed. Drawing him out in a particular direction was simply not possible.

"And the range seems much wider than the previous horseman's was."

They had no choice but to fight Famine differently from how the Round Table had done it a thousand years ago. Not that the method was Najin's immediate concern, first he needed to actually lay eyes on the man.

"......"

There was no sign of Atanga.

A wind drove sand across the flats, narrowing visibility. Every step worsened the thirst, and his strength was bleeding away in real time, making each stride harder than the last.

Quick searching was simply not possible.

Dragging his heavy body along, Najin kept going.

"Huu."

The second day. Still nothing.

Only endless wasteland. Ignoring his tongue as it begged for water, Najin walked.

Thp. Drip. Drip drip drip.

The third day. Sweat kept falling.

With no water going in and sweat constantly pouring out, he began to wonder if he would shrivel up entirely. He glanced to the side and saw Merlin trudging along with hollow, sunken eyes.

"You're not conjuring water?"

"You're holding out, so I'll hold out too."

"That's actually touching."

"Right?"

He watched Merlin force a tired smile and nodded. At least it was better than bearing it alone.

The fourth day.

His body was slowly giving out. As time passed his steps grew sluggish. No strength meant no desire to do anything. Yet he had to keep moving. Holding his mind together, Najin walked on and on.

Day five, six, seven.

Day ten.

Ten days since stepping into the wasteland. Even standing still, the corners of his eyes twitched. His bone-dry mouth tasted of faint iron. Not even a hint of sweetness. Najin stopped.

How much farther did he have to go?

He glanced to the side. Merlin was barely lifting her feet, practically dragging them. Her color was poor. Her clouded eyes looked ready to shut at any moment.

'This place is hard on Transcendents. Maybe harder than on ordinary fighters.'

The longer a Constellation had been a Transcendent, the worse it would be. Because for Constellations, thirst and hunger were foreign sensations, things they might have felt back when they were still human, but not things they experienced anymore.

The strangeness itself made it more painful. Pain from a blade, pain from burning, pain from having the breath choked out, pain from having your very existence denied, every kind of pain imaginable, even Transcendents long accustomed to such things cried out here.

Those who had transcended the human body.

Paradoxically, this place made them feel the most human kind of suffering there was.

"Huu......"

Najin breathed out with effort. He had spent less time as a Transcendent than as a human, and even he was struggling. Someone like Merlin, who had lived over a thousand years as a Transcendent, was another matter entirely.

Kwiiing.

All the while she kept the search spell cycling at regular intervals. Even that was beginning to look like an effort.

"Merlin."

"Mm, mmm?"

"Get on my back."

"No, I'm fine......"

Ignoring her, Najin scooped her up and settled her on his back.

"You've been keeping that search spell going the whole time. I'll handle the walking, so put everything into that."

Call it division of labor. He gave her a small smile and set off with Merlin on his back. She gave in with a reluctant nod and kept the spell running from there.

Day eleven, twelve.

"Oh."

On the thirteenth day, Merlin spoke.

"Got a hit. Something reacted."

Najin quickened his steps toward where she pointed. After a while, beyond the drifting dust, he sensed a presence.

Thap. Thap. Thap.

He heard it too, footsteps striking the ground at a run.

"......"

Najin looked toward the sound. Someone was running there. Running at full sprint through a place where simply standing felt like an ordeal.

Flutter.

A coat rippled. Someone flashed past in front of him. Najin caught a glimpse of their clothing, of their face.

'A coat.'

The Free Knight's coat. Similar to the one Najin wore now, but not quite the same. There was no need to ask who wore a coat like that.

The first Free Knight. Atanga.

But Atanga looked nothing like what Najin had seen in Arthur's memories. Nothing at all. His skin had shriveled, flesh eaten away to nothing, bones pressing through. The shape Atanga had been reduced to was pitiful.

A hollowed-out man running across a wasteland.

He did not so much as glance at Najin. He only looked ahead and ran. Najin watched him pass, then looked down at the ground beneath his own feet.

Footprints.

He turned to look where Atanga was headed, then turned the other way to look where he had come from.

'There they are.'

Footprints.

Countless footprints pressed into the earth. Not marks laid down over a day or two, but tracks accumulated over tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of days. Footprints layered over footprints until they formed something like a single continuous line.

Where did it start, and where was it going?

Where did that line end?

The moment the question formed in his mind, Merlin sucked in a breath from his back. She had traced the line with her magic, following it to its origin and its end. She opened her mouth.

"Good lord."

Merlin groaned.

"It doesn't end."

Najin asked what she meant.

"There's no start and no end. It's a circle. A circle that wraps around this entire wasteland......"

No beginning. No end. Like a serpent swallowing its own tail, Atanga was running along a line that never terminated.

'When did he start?'

Probably on that day, a thousand years ago.

3.

This was not what he had imagined.

When Najin first heard that Atanga had become the horseman of Famine, he had assumed their fight would flow similarly to his fights with Mordred or Lancelot.

"There's no longer any way to have a conversation with him."

When he heard Leviathan speak of Atanga with what seemed like familiarity, he had simply assumed Atanga had become something like the mindless dead who had lost their will. He had never imagined the form in which they would actually meet.

How was he supposed to deal with this?

If the opponent still had a self and came at him with a weapon, he would break through head-on. If they carried a twisted conviction, he would smash that conviction. If they had lost themselves, he would batter their body with starlight until consciousness surfaced again.

That was how Najin had dealt with his opponents.

Together with the Star of the Funeral March, he had brought an end to countless of the dead and guided them to where they wanted to go.

'But this...'

He had no sense of what approach to take. Should he make Atanga stop running? No, Najin was certain that was not the right answer.

"......"

He stood still and thought. He turned the problem over, sifting through everything he knew about the man named Atanga, chewing on the existence he had glimpsed in Arthur's memories.

Time passed.

After long deliberation, Najin reached an answer.

"You know what."

"Mmm?"

"There's only one way."

Merlin blinked as Najin rose to his feet. Her eyes asked what he was planning. Najin grinned and stretched out his body.

"What method? What are you going to do?"

"When I think about it, everything I've done has been more or less the same. The methods differ a little each time, but if you ask what the root of all of it is, there's only one answer."

The attitude he took toward his opponents. In that, the stance Najin assumed was always the same. Because that was what his teacher had taught him.

"Fight in your opponent's Domain, by your opponent's rules."

That was what a knight had to do, to fight fair and square.

"Because that's Atanga's way."

Calling Ivan's teaching to mind, Najin loosened his legs. He bounced lightly in place and breathed out. His throat was still burning. His starved belly was screaming. Even so, he made himself move.

Thap.

And he took his stance. Right there where Atanga had run past him. He fitted his feet to the footprints pressed into the earth and steadied his breathing.

"Seems our senior wants to run."

Najin smiled.

"Shouldn't the junior tag along and keep him company?"

With those words, he ran.

In the Domain of Famine where even walking was an ordeal, Najin began to run.

Chasing after Atanga, somewhere far ahead.

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