WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 446

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Special Instructor (5)

Karon is a Sword Saint.

On the Continent, he is counted alongside the executioner, the lighthouse keeper, and the Star Incarnation as an asymmetric powerhouse of each order. The kind of name that makes people take notice.

Expand the scope to the Outland, though, and the title of Sword Saint carries less weight than you might expect. Unlike the pillars of the Empire who made their names in the Outland generation after generation, the Sword Saints of history had little in the way of notable achievements. A few gained recognition during the great war some three hundred years ago, but that was ancient history.

"Sword Saint? A brat who hasn't even hit a hundred and fifty claiming mastery of the sword! Even a dog passing by would laugh."

Who exactly were the Stars living out in the Outland? The majority had been around long enough for their heads to go stiff along with everything else, relics who had spent centuries accumulating grudges. When a young person showed up with the title Sword Saint, it was enough to set those elders' teeth on edge.

You think you're good with a sword?

I've been swinging mine for centuries.

What are you supposed to be, kid?

That was the territorial hostility a Sword Saint had to face head-on. There was even an old saying: when a Sword Saint retires, tell no one in the Outland what you were called.

"Oh?"

And Karon, who had barely claimed the seat of Sword Saint before picking up a single blade and heading for the Outland.

"Then I'd ask for a bout."

He ignored every word of that advice. I'm the Sword Saint. You've got some skill with a sword? Let's see it. He challenged every Star and Constellation he encountered in the Outland to a sword duel, with one condition: whichever side used their Authority would lose.

Stars live and die by their pride. Against a youngster, there was surely no need to waste Authority. A few centuries of seasoning would be more than enough. Several Constellations took up Karon's challenge with exactly that confidence.

Every last one of them lost.

In the pure domain of the sword, even Stars who had lived for centuries could not beat Karon. After that, word spread of the feats and battles he had racked up in the Outland, and the reputation of the Sword Saint was rewritten entirely.

"The current Sword Saint is something else."

"After a gap of several centuries, someone truly worthy of the title has finally appeared."

"The youngest Sword Expert, Sword Seeker, Sword Master on record."

"An Incomparable Genius."

"The hope of the Sword Order!"

That was what people called Karon. For a time, on the Continent, the word Genius was practically synonymous with his name. His fame reached as far as the Outland.

'There was a time for that.'

Only a few years ago, at that. Pulling up the memory of his own past, Karon looked at what stood before him. A single Swordsman stood there, sword loosely in hand, pointed his way.

Young. Staggeringly young.

Not even half Karon's age, and he had been training with a sword for less than half as long.

'And the Realm?'

Impossibly high. When it came to a Constellation's rank, Karon couldn't even offer a business card in comparison. His opponent was a monster in his twenties with eleven Stars, and there was a vast gulf between them, Karon had only recently reached seven.

They said wins and losses were not decided purely by the number of Stars or the gap in rank, but.

There were limits to that reasoning.

'If they fought at full strength?'

He would lose without question. Without question meant exactly that: no matter what conditions were attached, he would still lose. Fight ten times and he would lose eleven.

"Ha."

Karon let out a short laugh.

"No matter how many times I think it over, I still can't quite believe it."

"Can't believe what?"

"When I became a Sword Master before fifty, and when I earned my sixth Star... the whole Continent turned upside down. Do you know what people were saying about me?"

Karon said it plainly.

"That I was a homunculus. An artificial being the Constellations had deliberately crafted. That there must be a secret workshop hidden beneath the Sword Order. That the mage tower was involved. That it was dark mage sorcery!"

"...My."

"Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? That's what actually happened. Every conspiracy theory you could imagine started circulating. The point is, the records I set were that shocking. The Continent was buzzing with talk of an Incomparable Genius."

Incomparable, a talent so exceptional it could barely appear in the world twice. Karon smiled, thinking of those who had plastered that label on him and declared it a record that would stand for centuries.

"Centuries, they said. It broke in under fifteen years."

The one who had broken it was standing right in front of him.

"Everyone around me says it was only natural for the record to fall, that the other party is the descendant of the great hero who pulled Excalibur, that there was nothing to be done about it..."

Karon's mouth curved up at the corner.

"But if I said I didn't care, I'd be lying."

He doesn't care. Remarkable. A fine thing. That was what Karon had always told people. And it was true that he generally avoided comparing himself to others. Even so, saying he didn't care at all would be a transparent lie.

He cared. About it.

But what Karon cared about was a little different from what the world assumed.

'The gap in rank doesn't bother me.'

Accomplishing great feats, saving the Continent from crisis more than once, bringing down multiple legendary Constellations?

Impressive. Karon meant that sincerely. He was genuinely amazed by everything Najin had built. He had no doubt that Najin was a greater person than himself, that Najin deserved every bit of the Incomparable Genius label.

Strength, rank, reputation, that Najin had surpassed him in all of those things gave Karon no particular discomfort. Well, the man's remarkable. That was roughly the extent of his feelings on it.

But.

'Better with the sword than me?'

The sword was a different matter.

'Someone half my age, who hasn't even been swinging a blade for twenty years, handles the sword better than I do.'

The exact same feeling that the Constellations Karon had knocked down over the years must have felt. Right now, in this moment, Karon was feeling it himself. He finally understood what those Stars who had given the old Sword Saints such a hard time had been feeling.

'I don't want to admit it.'

Whether it was true or not was beside the point. He didn't want to admit it. When it came to the sword, he didn't want to fall behind anyone. Didn't want to lose to anyone.

'I wanted to test it.'

He wanted to see for himself just how remarkable that sword was. Thinking that way, Karon had come to this duel with full seriousness.

"Then, without holding back."

Karon spun his sword and reset his grip.

"I'll ask for a bout."

The Sword Saint's blade caught the light.

2.

Sword Aura kept to a minimum. A duel focused on blade meeting blade, nothing else. No starting signal was needed. The moment one side extended their sword, that was the start.

Karon was the first to extend.

A Thrust. Najin watched the sword driving toward him, point first, with an unhurried eye. There had been a time when receiving that thrust would have demanded every drop of his concentration, but not anymore.

Clang.

A slight tilt of the sword knocked it away. Almost too easily. He didn't stop there. Najin followed through as naturally as water finding its course, and the blade riding out along the path of the deflected sword made Karon click his tongue.

Clang!

Karon stepped back once. He turned the exchange over in his mind, then reset his posture. A sharp kick off the ground and he drove in hard. In that instant, several trajectories appeared in Najin's field of vision.

Seven branching sword paths.

The moment Najin tilted his sword slightly, the paths ahead shifted again. The trajectory Karon's blade traced changed in response to every movement. Just as Najin could see ahead, Karon also possessed future sight.

Move and countermove.

The blades had not yet met, but in both their minds they had already clashed and separated several times over.

'Can you handle this one?'

'Easily.'

'Ha, what about this, then?'

No words passed between them. Nothing was said aloud, but the trajectories their swords traced were conversation enough. As if shouting, let's see if you handle this one so easily, Karon wrenched the path his sword was carving into a sharp, sudden curve.

Remarkable technique, indeed.

Abrupt acceleration, then a dead stop. Driving in through the blind spot. Probing for the gap in a breath, then a Thrust slipping through.

Clangclangclang!

Drawing out a parry. Nudging the opponent toward a specific Counter Technique. The moment that anticipated technique appeared, Wrapping around the blade to collapse the stance.

Posture shifted dozens of times per second.

From a sword that pressed down with crushing weight, to a thin blade drilling sharply in. From a Slash-focused style to a pure Thrust. From Upper Guard to Middle Guard, Middle Guard back down to Lower Guard.

Thousand Swords in the truest sense. A thousand swords.

To master a thousand sword styles and draw ten thousand forms from them, that was said to be the ultimate limit of the sword as the Sword Order pursued it. And yes, the man standing before him was worthy of being called the head of such an order.

Clang, claaang!

A style that forced moves on you without pause was difficult to deal with. Even from Najin's position, reading every movement, seeing the future ahead, it was difficult.

'If this had been before I set foot in the Abyss.'

The Najin who had spent his days in the Outland would not have easily found a way to break through the sword style in front of him. He would have tried to win by pressing down with raw output, or by making a bold gamble, trading flesh for bone.

But now, well.

Najin raised his sword.

As though responding to the movement, Karon spread out nearly ten sword paths. Najin swung his blade toward him. What followed, Karon witnessed with his own eyes, yet for a moment he couldn't make sense of it, and blinked.

Swept aside.

Every move Karon had prepared, Najin swept aside cleanly. A sword driving in from the flank, struck away with the same posture. Wrapping countered with identical Wrapping, broken in exactly the same way. He mirrored Karon's movements like a reflection.

Imitation, but imitation that didn't stop at imitation.

The same movement performed, and yet Najin's execution was cleaner. Karon broke into a laugh at the sight. So you understand the sword better than I do. Is that it.

'In that case.'

Try breaking this one too. With the corner of his mouth curled up, Karon spread the sword style he had spent his life honing. Broken, countered, swept aside, yet he didn't stop.

Claaang!

He knocked Najin's sword away at last. It had taken dozens of different techniques to knock away that single extended blade, but Karon felt no irritation at that fact.

"Ha!"

He laughed instead. The situation delighted him. There was no shortage of opponents stronger than him, but opponents who handled a sword better than him were rare. That rare individual was standing right in front of him.

As if refusing to let go until every card was on the table.

As if demanding to see everything the other held.

Karon gripped his sword tight at the sight of Najin shifting to offense and driving in sharply. Come to think of it, you were the same back then. From the very first time we met, you were always charging in like you wanted to clean me out completely.

'Now.'

Now the positions are reversed.

Just as Najin had learned the sword from Karon, now Karon was learning from Najin. What he felt in Najin's sword was swordsmanship he himself didn't know.

Karon had traveled the Continent and the Outland and mastered the majority of sword styles that existed today, but even he couldn't learn the sword styles of those who had been forgotten by history.

Najin, though, had learned them.

From the Helmeted Knight, from Blue Spear, from the countless people he had met in the Tower of Heroes. He had gathered a sword education that held its own against even Karon's Thousand Swords, and more than that, he pressed forward in ways Karon would never have imagined.

Clangclangclang!

Sword Aura grazed Sword Aura. Dozens of moves traded in a single second. To decide among those dozens of moves, hundreds of possible futures passed back and forth.

'What about this?'

'Unbelievable. Where did you even learn that style?'

'You haven't seen all of it yet.'

Blade met blade.

'Showing your hand this early would be a problem for you, wouldn't it? Weren't you the one trying to clean out everything I had?'

'Ha! I haven't shown everything either. You're not thinking this is all I have, are you.'

The learning was not only Karon's. Watching Karon counter the sword styles Najin showed him on the spot, Najin's own understanding of his sword deepened as well.

Refinement, Triumph, and breaking through.

Work that should have taken countless swordsmen and countless hours to accomplish. Two geniuses completed it in a matter of seconds. Two or three clashes of the blade and both of them had already thought of how to break the other's style.

In the repetition of that process, Karon understood something.

Why Najin was one step ahead. And why Najin could understand the sword more deeply than even Karon could.

'Ah.'

Not a difference in knowledge. Not a difference in experience. A difference in how they regarded the sword. Karon treated the blade in his hand as a sword. Najin did not. He handled it as though it were part of his own body.

No matter how skilled a Swordsman might be.

Against someone who saw no distinction between themselves and the blade, who refused to draw that line, losing was inevitable.

Shhhhh!

Karon knocked the sword away, stepped back, and steadied his breath. Then he did something Najin had not expected. He drew the blade across his own palm and pressed the open wound against the hilt.

"I don't know how you reached that Realm."

Karon's mouth curved.

"But if I do this, maybe I can get something close to the feeling."

The pulse of blood beating beneath skin, pressed against the grip of the sword. A desperate attempt to close even a fraction of the distance between himself and the blade.

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