WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 440

──────

Atanga (4)

Living as a Transcendent, one often finds themselves catching glimpses of another person's life without meaning to.

Because a star is a life.

In the process of claiming a star, of taking one by force, and very rarely, of receiving one as a gift... a Transcendent comes to glimpse the life of the star's original owner. Most Transcendents take little interest in those lives.

They are who they are, and you are who you are.

Transcendents are beings armored in firm self-conviction. Only those who have put down roots deep enough to remain unshaken by anything, who have built an unshakable sense of self as their standard, can become a Transcendent. Another person's life has no room to wedge itself in there.

So they let it wash past.

Even when they catch a glimpse of someone's life, they do not hold it deep inside, and they do not empathize with it. There is no reason to invite anything that might shake the self.

Take the star, but not the life.

Neither empathize with another's life, nor be swept away by it.

That is the common sense of Transcendents.

"Huu, huh..."

But there is one young man here, running hard, for whom that common sense does not apply. For Najin, who refused to stop his legs even as his breath grew ragged, those rules simply did not hold.

Najin had lived countless lives.

He had resolved the lingering regrets left behind by Transcendents. He had helped their bent and broken lives straighten out again. When they sealed themselves inside a grave where the same eternal hell repeated forever, Najin would willingly storm that grave and put a period at the end of their lives.

Through all of that, Najin had glimpsed their lives, remembered them, and at times had even become them.

He became the headless silent knight and fought the Carnival King. He became the knight who could only think of himself as a knight while wearing his helm, and fought the Carnival King. He became a hero who never wanted to be one, and a knight who lost his memories each day.

And that was only part of it.

Sancho, Don Quixote, Cheon Yuseong, Galahad, Lancelot, Guinevere, the Night Fairy, Arthur from a thousand years ago, Mordred...

And countless heroes beyond them.

He had glimpsed their memories and lived their lives. Through all of it, Najin willingly tore down his own walls. Without raising barriers, he took their lives in as though they were his own.

"It's a dangerous choice."

Merlin had said that once.

"Even if you become a Transcendent, the others are old stars who have lived dozens of times longer than you. Just in terms of time, hundreds of years is nothing to them."

"The time each of you has lived is different."

"We're talking centuries. A thousand years at the far end."

"Can you hold onto yourself inside that kind of wave?"

It was dangerous. So do not immerse yourself too deeply in their lives. You might end up confusing yourself with them. That was Merlin's warning.

"Even so."

And to that warning, Najin had answered like this.

"Someone has to remember them."

Receiving a person's starlight was the same as inheriting the life they had left unfinished. If that was the case, then remembering that life was only proper, wasn't it. At least, that was how Najin saw it.

"......"

Running, Najin looked down at his feet. Then he looked at the footprints stretching endlessly ahead of him.

Atanga's life was there.

The lifetime of a knight who had lived stubbornly was there. As though expressing the very word "lifetime," a life traced in a single unbroken stroke lay there in the shape of footprints.

Tap.

Walking and stepping in those footprints, Atanga's life came into view. Over long years, Atanga's star had crumbled and become fragments, scattered across this land. From that starlight, Najin had glimpsed Atanga's life.

What a stubborn man.

He did not know how to cut corners. Utterly rigid. He knew no other way. If he believed a path was right, no matter how rough that path was, he walked it first and thought later.

He falls.

He rolls across the ground. He gets covered in dirt. He gets torn and broken in various places, soaked in blood. And still he gets back up and walks, as though that much he can bear.

Where does he walk toward?

Atanga walked toward a star shining in the far distance. But he had no talent.

His martial aptitude was worse than a squire's. His feel for mana, his command of starlight, both were terrible. He endured trials that would have made an ordinary warrior a Transcendent several times over, and barely scraped into Transcendence only after going through it dozens of times.

An ordinary person walking an extraordinary path.

Calling it a path of thorns is not enough. And the world can be endlessly cruel to someone who has chosen the wrong road.

He groans, cries out, sheds tears.

As though those were the price of choosing to walk that path.

And yet.

Najin looked ahead. Atanga was still running there in front of him. A thousand years ago, hundreds of years ago, and now too, Atanga was still running.

What in the world is it for?

Najin traced that purpose, wondering what on earth could be worth enduring this much pain, and found himself laughing. There was no grand goal of saving the world. No defiant ambition to climb higher than Arthur, the way Najin himself had.

He was there to show something.

What, exactly.

For those who came after, to show that the right path was being walked. For those who went ahead, to show that nothing had gone wrong. For the latecomers arriving from a distant future, to point the way toward where those who came first had gone, he had stayed here.

A single signpost.

Watching Atanga's back as he ran ahead, Najin felt something close to awe.

"This is what it takes."

Breath swelling up, yet he had to get this one thing out.

"To be the most knightly knight."

Najin had traced Atanga's life.

And at the end of that tracing, he understood.

What he needed to do for this knight.

2.

Najin picked up his pace.

He kept his legs moving without stopping. His breath was heaving, his heart pounding loud enough to be a nuisance. How long had it been since he ran this hard? How long since he had felt hunger?

Tap.

He watched Atanga, who seemed about to come within reach but never quite did, still running ahead of him. A knight who had been running for nearly a thousand years.

Tap, tap.

Najin ran to catch him. Naturally, it was not easy. His body swayed with every step. The distance that seemed to be shrinking but never quite did was nothing but frustrating. Still, Najin pushed strength into his legs.

This is a relay race.

That was what Atanga had said.

Until the next runner appears, the one running ahead cannot stop. Otherwise you can't win the relay.

Relay, in other words, relay running.

Both words carry the meaning of "connecting." Because without connecting, there is no point. No matter how hard the lead runner pushes, if there is no one to carry on after, you cannot win the race.

That would not do.

Effort deserves a proper reward. The reward for a lead runner who gave everything is simple enough.

The star of Victory in Battle shone.

In the land of Famine, this dried-out earth, even running starlight was a struggle. The shining star did not dramatically accelerate Najin's movements. It was more like dropping a single bead of water down a parched throat.

Even that single drop was precious.

Najin increased his speed. He ran with his teeth clenched. The gap began closing, little by little. Atanga's cloak was fluttering right there in front of him.

Just a little more.

Thud, his body lurched and stumbled. A bead of sweat tracking down his forehead blurred his vision. Wiping the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, Najin ran.

A little more.

He recalled the meaning of running. Why he had run, Najin brought it back. To escape. After that, to give chase. And after that...

After that, what was it for?

What to do after catching up, well, there was only one answer.

Overtake.

Najin had no intention of stopping once he reached the longing he had chased. One step further, surpass the goal and push forward beyond it. That was the conviction sitting deepest inside Najin, and...

"Cross the line, Najin."

It was the teaching his master had passed to him. Come to think of it, so many things in his life had been tied to the name Atanga. His body was screaming, but a smile curled at the corner of Najin's mouth.

"Old man Hogel, what's an Atanga?"

A question he had once tossed at the blacksmith of the Underground City. The old blacksmith had grumbled his answer.

"Not a shred of flexibility, straight as an arrow, stiff as a board, and sometimes just plain stupid."

The old man had said it like he found them exhausting. He had spent his prime days hammering out their weapons, and now he shook his head as if he had heard enough to last a lifetime. But even as he said it, a smile sat at the corner of his mouth, just like Najin's now.

"That's exactly why you can't hate them."

"Anachronistic fools."

"The kind that make even an old man's heart beat faster just from watching them."

His heart was beating. A heart pounding like it might burst was not merely the result of pushing his body past its limits. Running after his far-distant senior, Najin laughed.

I expected to end up in a duel with you.

He had expected a clash of words, or to be the one returning to Atanga the honor and pride he might have forgotten. To shove the past he might have lost sight of back in his face.

I expected to be the one who made you a knight again.

That had always been what Najin did. He had assumed this time would be no different, and he felt embarrassed now at his own arrogance. Chasing after the back of a knight who had been doing what Najin had done for well over a thousand years, Najin spoke to himself.

How could anyone claim to make a knight of someone who was already a knight?

For once, every prediction he had made had been wrong, and Najin found himself smiling at that. He hauled in a breath, pushed his speed still higher, and at last caught up to Atanga.

Tap.

They ran side by side. Only then did Atanga look at Najin. Only one who had walked the same path and arrived at the same place could look out at the same view.

"Huu."

Najin did not stop there. He pushed a little faster still. He passed Atanga at last and stepped one stride ahead.

The next runner had passed the lead.

The lead runner and the following runner had crossed.

What came after that was obvious. It was the heart of a relay, the reason the word carried the character for "continue." Najin reached his arm back. He stretched his hand out toward Atanga.

Pass the baton.

The next runner you were waiting for has come.

3.

The moment he saw the hand extended in front of him, a light flickered in Atanga's clouded eyes for the first time.

...He was the horseman of Famine.

One who spreads famine should naturally be the first to starve. To feel an endless, never-filled hunger and spread that hunger to those around him, that was the duty of the one who carried the flag of Famine.

So Atanga had felt hunger.

He felt a thirst that burned through soul and body alike.

A thousand years of it. After a thousand years of unbroken hunger, Atanga's soul had already worn down to almost nothing. His body had withered, and the moment he stopped walking he would crumble. Until the moment of death there would be no release from the hunger.

Surely that was how it was.

Atanga looked ahead through blurred vision. A star was shining there. A warm starlight. A star that had no business existing in a place like the Abyss. That starlight drew out the last handful of soul remaining at the frayed edge of his worn-away spirit.

Ah.

Atanga reached back through what had happened to him.

Running.

Someone had passed him and moved ahead. Who was the one running there in front of him? Even through blurred vision, there were things he could make out.

The person was wearing the same clothes as him.

No, not exactly the same. The clothes carried the feel of time's passage through them. A cloak built on the foundation of his own but layered with added ornament, filled with things that spoke of the present age, fluttered in front of Atanga's eyes.

A flag bearing the crest of some knightly order, a flag bearing a pattern like a sunflower, a flag bearing the imperial crest... and above them, pauldrons shaped after a horned helm, from which those flags hung at the shoulders, came into his view.

Next he saw the man wearing that cloak.

A star. He could feel it.

A star he knew. A star he had been waiting for. In that moment, Atanga understood everything. The meaning of the hand extended toward him, all of it, every last thing.

The next runner had come.

You played your part splendidly.

Atanga took hold of the hand his junior, walking ahead of him, had reached back. The moment he took that hand, Atanga felt something strange. It should have been a thirst that could never be quenched for all eternity. A hunger that should have tormented him until the moment of death.

He felt none of it now.

Starlight wrapped around his starving soul.

The hunger that had tormented him for so long was gone.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried