WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 450

──────

Sword Demon of the Abyss (2)

Siegfried, the Sword Demon of the Abyss.

He recognized every target that entered his field of vision as an enemy. The cursed things of the Abyss, witches, Constellations, old comrades, it made no difference.

If he could see it, it was an enemy.

Only that, though. Recognizing something as an enemy.

He did not necessarily fight with any resolve to kill. It was no different from a wild beast attacking intruders who had stepped into its territory. The fact that said territory stretched for kilometers in every direction was a dark joke, but still.

'Sometimes he lets them go.'

How else had Kether managed to survive her encounter with him? If the Sword Demon had truly wanted to kill the witches, Kether would never have made it out alive. There was no shaking off that pursuit.

But Siegfried had not bothered to give chase.

When a pack of demon beasts that irritated him appeared nearby, he shifted his gaze toward them and let the witches go.

'That is why.'

Najin had noticed this and thought it through.

'That is why it would be meaningless.'

He had made his choice. What Najin wanted was a duel to the death with Siegfried. An all-out fight. To get that, he needed Siegfried to see him not as a mere intruder but as a worthy adversary standing on equal ground.

And.

'The dragon-slaying star.'

Najin already knew how.

'Excalibur.'

He shoved before Siegfried the things Siegfried could neither ignore nor overlook. The eye-light blazing in Siegfried's gaze flickered intensely, pulsing stronger than the sparks flying from blade meeting blade.

The flow of air reversed.

The pressure flipped in an instant. A crushing weight bore down on the area all at once, and Siegfried's Sword Aura began to crackle like a Thunderclap.

Najin had touched Siegfried's reverse scale.

And as a dragon whose reverse scale has been struck will always do.

'He is coming.'

Siegfried perceived Najin anew. Not as an intruder who had stepped into his territory. Not as a mere enemy or a beast to be chased off. As a target that had to die, no matter what.

The moment their eyes met, Najin smiled.

"Yeah. This is it."

An instant later, Siegfried accelerated. Still locked blade to blade, still braced in that grinding contest of strength, he kicked off the ground and charged.

Rrrrk!

The earth tore away beneath his feet. Through the shower of flying stone, Siegfried swept his sword in a wide arc. Like something caught on the sails of a windmill, Najin was flung outward along the path of that sweeping blade.

His feet left the ground.

He was thrown into the air.

Losing the ground underfoot was normally a severe disadvantage for a swordsman, you could not properly put your weight into a strike. Being hurled into the air meant being left wide open.

Najin did not resist. He let himself be thrown.

Siegfried fixed his gaze on Najin floating in midair. He snatched a weapon out of the air and began to swing. The weapon could not survive a single swing and shattered, but from within the fragments of the bursting blade, a bolt of Sword Aura like a lightning strike shot out.

Watching the Sword Aura bearing down on him.

Najin twisted his body. He extended his foot toward empty air.

'Now.'

In that instant, the empty air where Najin planted his foot froze solid and became a foothold. As though she had understood his intent exactly, Merlin snapped her fingers.

Crack.

Najin kicked off the ice and leaped. He drove himself straight into the incoming Sword Aura. It grazed his ear. The chilling scrape of a blade, Sword Aura surging like lightning flashing past right in front of his eyes, and yet Najin kept his eyes wide open.

Claaang!

A sword swung to cut through the Sword Aura met Siegfried's weapon head-on. Siegfried was not holding Gramr right now. The longsword, something a long-dead Constellation must have once carried, could not hold up against both Siegfried's Sword Aura and Najin's, and it shattered.

Through the fragments of the shattered longsword, Siegfried reached out. He caught a spear falling from the air. One hand on the spear, the other seizing a greatsword.

A flash that drove straight through in a line.

A sword strike that swept across a wide plane.

It felt like two Transcendents combining their attacks. The moment Najin caught that, Siegfried already had another weapon in hand. He never used a weapon twice.

Because the moment he swung once, it broke.

The weapons could not hold up under his strength and shattered. He seized another from among the flying fragments. Weapons changed hands several times within a single second.

Spear, longsword, greatsword, hammer, halberd, axe.

What made it truly terrifying was that Siegfried had mastered every one of those weapons. He drew performance from each past its limits. If it broke in the process, that did not matter.

This place was his armory.

Over a thousand weapons, and Siegfried handled them all freely. It was no accident that certain Constellations called him a Weapon Master.

'This feels like being swarmed by several Transcendents at once.'

Najin took them all. He wrapped his blade around the longsword's arc. He wedged his sword against the halberd's axe blade to redirect its path. He struck the hammer across its face. Against the thrusting spear he twisted his body and cut through the shaft.

His eyes moved frantically. Reading the trajectory of every weapon, Najin exhaled.

He could see it.

Unlike back then, now he could see it.

'And.'

There were a few other things different from back then. With Siegfried's full attention fixed on Najin, Najin was not exactly fighting alone.

Merlin was watching him.

Thin ice spread outward from where she stood. Past Merlin as she prepared her magic, someone kicked off the ground and came running. He opened his mouth, lodging what sounded almost like a complaint with Siegfried, who recognized only Najin as an enemy.

"My junior colleague came all this way and you can't even spare him a glance."

A presence closed from behind, yet the Sword Demon did not react. He was focused entirely on Najin. Perhaps that was natural. An ordinary Constellation swinging a sword could not even scratch Siegfried's body, and if the distance closed he could deal with it then.

As if he had expected exactly that.

Karon gripped the tightly fitted scabbard. Other hand on the hilt, he drew the sword. The blade came out smoothly, without the slightest catch.

A blade that should have scraped against its scabbard made no sound at all, even though it was a forceful drawing of the sword. Only when the blade had fully emerged did the Sword Cry ring out at last.

A low resonance.

The moment he heard that Sword Cry, Siegfried's body reacted. He threw Najin off and spun around. His gaze fixed not on Karon but on the sword in Karon's hand.

The Heart Sword.

The blade bound by a thousand years revealed itself.

2.

The Sword Order was founded by Siegfried, the first Sword Saint, but the one who took on its practical management was his greatest disciple, Dietrich.

Dietrich of Bern.

Siegfried's only disciple.

Countless swordsmen had sought instruction from Siegfried, and countless had dropped out before three days were through. Even the longest-lasting had not made it to a month, yet Dietrich followed Siegfried for more than ten years.

He endured Siegfried's rough-edged character.

He endured training that was barely worth calling training.

As a result, Dietrich received Siegfried's swordsmanship. More accurately, he was beaten enough times that he naturally came to understand it on his own, but however it happened, Dietrich was the only swordsman who had ever mastered the Sword Saint's technique.

"You really are a stubborn one."

"That's rich, coming from you."

"So then. Can you break my arm yet?"

"Measured against when we first met, yes. The arm? If it were the you from back then, I could break all four limbs. But now... well."

Dietrich glared at the Sword Saint with undisguised distaste. He had grown too, but it was nothing compared to what Siegfried had achieved over those ten years. Staring up at the Sword Saint who had climbed to such an impossibly high place, he shrugged.

"It would be hard."

"You're not saying it can't be done."

"If I pushed myself further, I could reach it eventually."

Dietrich let out a sigh.

"But you have no intention of giving me that time, do you, teacher."

"So you're finally calling me teacher."

"Are you going to hell?"

"I have to. That damned woman is calling me."

He breathed out as he watched his teacher walk willingly into hell. Dietrich knew there was no way to stop him. That was simply the kind of man his teacher was.

"Teacher."

"What is it, you little wretch."

So Dietrich smiled.

"Siegfried."

"Dietrich."

Master and disciple, and a friend of many long years.

"I will be waiting."

"I will wait for you."

A duel challenge thrown down a thousand years ago. That challenge was never answered in Dietrich's lifetime. He never managed to cross to the other side of the Abyss's seal.

Frustrated by that.

Dietrich did not give up.

He took the swordsmanship he had learned from Siegfried and broke it down into something more accessible, then spread it across the Continent in stages. He gathered the swordsmen drawn by those sword manuals, trained them, and built a system to train more. In other words, he laid a foundation that could be carried forward to future generations.

Siegfried had blazed the trail.

Dietrich cultivated the land that had been blazed.

From the first Sword Saint to the second, from the second to the third, the seat of Sword Saint passed on and the Sword Order grew.

Time passed.

The barren wasteland became fields. Trees began to grow in those fields. Some were small. Some became great trees. Where great trees fell, their bodies became nourishment and new trees grew in their place.

As the years kept flowing.

A forest took shape.

In a forest packed dense with countless trees, naturally there would always be a great tree that reached higher than the rest. That great tree bore the name of Sword Saint. And those Sword Saints had a last wish passed down through every generation.

"The Sword Order has a long-cherished wish."

These were the dying words of Dietrich, the second Sword Saint.

"The true identity of the Sword Demon of the Abyss is the first Sword Saint."

"Some say our long-cherished wish is to free that Sword Saint. To give him rest."

Dietrich burst out laughing at the moment of his death.

"What a joke."

Not salvation. Not rest. What he, and those who carried on his sword, had to accomplish was one thing.

"Break that arm."

"Strike down the first."

"That is the tribute we offer to him."

For the sake of that wish, Dietrich left his last words, and using his own soul, his body, and his star, he forged a single sword. He himself had not managed to land a blow on the man, but he wanted to be part of the moment when that damned man finally took one.

He became the mold from which the sword was shaped.

"What shall the name of this sword be?"

Dietrich smiled at his disciple's question.

"My teacher once told me there was a realm even he had never reached. He said he doubted it even existed, but that far off in the distance, he could just barely see something. Let us use the name of that realm."

"What is that name?"

"Heart Sword. The sword of the heart."

The foundation of the Sword Order, the mold of the Heart Sword, and as the years passed, faith accumulated. Hope was poured into it. The long-cherished wishes of swordsmen who dreamed of the ideal of the sword were poured into it.

And so the Heart Sword was completed.

A thousand years passed.

The Heart Sword came to rest in the hands of the most outstanding talent the Sword Order had ever produced. In Karon's hands, accompanied by a low resonance of the Sword Cry, the Heart Sword's blade was revealed. The revealed blade was pure, unblemished white.

A sword forged for no purpose other than facing Siegfried.

It might be inferior to Excalibur, inferior to Gramr, but the human obsession contained within it was more than enough to be called mystique. For one brief moment, Siegfried's attention was stolen by the Heart Sword.

Tap.

As if declaring that was not all, Karon pressed in. He drove a sharp thrust forward. Siegfried snatched a longsword floating in the air and struck back. In their earlier fight, that alone had pushed Karon back several steps.

Not now.

He wrapped the blade around the strike. Deflected it. Caught the blow. Not as smoothly as Najin, but he had caught the Sword Demon's strike.

Clang!

Sparks flew. Blade crashed against blade, Sword Aura ground against Sword Aura, the ring of steel filled the air. The Heart Sword pressed in, and Najin's sword flashed to strike at every opening without missing one.

Sharp. Sharp swordwork.

Taking the combined sword dance of two people, the Sword Demon's eyes contracted. Each time the clash of blades rang out, his pupils deepened.

Thud.

The opposite of those deepening eyes, his heart began to beat loud. Blood moved fast.

Thud, thud, thud.

Siegfried's heart surged violently at the sight of these two humans raising their swords against him.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

Emotion had burned to ash. His will had crumbled. Swallowed by the underworld once, he could no longer be called one of the living.

And yet.

He was a swordsman.

Called a Sword Demon, a sword-wielding ghost, he still had not let go of his sword. Only the sword made his heart beat. With that beating heart, the tattoos carved across Siegfried's body blazed a scorching red.

He stamped the ground.

The shockwave that burst out swept both Najin and Karon away. As they were flung back into the distance, Siegfried swung his arm.

Wind roared.

The weapons that had earlier been thrown into the sky came plummeting down. He caught them as they fell. The catching, the swinging, and the weapon reaching the end of its life were all nearly simultaneous.

The wind roared.

With the roaring wind, Sword Aura was shot out. Fast. Impossibly fast. Najin, one instant too slow to respond, swung his sword. Karon drove in. But neither could stop the movement.

Clang, clangclangclangclang!

One sword strike caught. Multiple strikes caught, then dozens caught, deflected, redirected.

But there was no end to it.

Catch one and ten came. Catch ten and dozens more. Catch dozens and hundreds of slashes surged in.

At last the roaring wind became a storm.

Dozens of weapons shattered. Hundreds of slashes tore the air apart. As if even that was not enough, the Sword Demon caught the weapons falling again and swung, and swung again. From dozens to hundreds, the slashes numbered in the thousands and then the tens of thousands.

Thousand Swords.

A thousand weapons became a thousand swords.

Ten Thousand Forms.

A thousand swords extended outward in ten thousand shapes.

A storm of slashes carved the surrounding area to pieces.

The Absolute Technique that burst forth at the very opening of battle swept through the Sanctuary.

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