WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 451

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Sword Demon of the Abyss (3)

A wind made of Sword Aura swept through.

Slashes, thrusts, diagonal cuts, Middle Guard, Upper Guard, no direction, no shape was spared. Whatever weapon happened to be in hand was driven to its absolute limit.

Weapons that could not bear the force shattered.

Crack.

Through the fragments of breaking, splitting blades, Siegfried's grip closed on something new. A greatsword between the splinters of a shattered spear shaft, a longsword between the shards of the greatsword, in each fleeting instant, the weapon in Siegfried's hand changed.

The moment a blade is seized by the Sword Demon, even a branch that would snap in a passing breeze becomes a sword worthy of legend. Left to rust for years, edge worn to nothing, it matters not. That it is a weapon does not change.

Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms.

A storm of slashes raged. The ground was carved away. Carved earth was swept up by the gale and ground to dust. An expanse too vast for the eye to take in was painted over without gaps by Siegfried's Sword Aura.

"Ha."

A hollow laugh escaped through Najin's lips. The hand receiving the blows trembled. Cut down one and ten followed; deflect ten and a hundred slashes came after. Fighting back was out of the question. Even resisting, simply keeping from being swallowed by the storm, was all he could manage.

He was being pushed back. His body was sliding backward.

Pfft.

Blood trickled from his ear where a slash had grazed it. Sword strikes sweeping a range this wide, and yet each individual blow was razor sharp. Every time he caught a strike, his grip went numb.

Kakakakakakang!

Friction rang out again and again. A few seconds stretched on like an eternity. Through those few seconds Najin barely held back the laugh that kept threatening to escape, because somewhere in the middle of it, he had noticed.

This was not particularly an Absolute Technique.

The technique itself was certainly Siegfried's Absolute Technique, but the Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms unfolding now was incomplete. The weapons Siegfried was swinging at this moment could not withstand his full power.

Weapons that could not withstand it broke. Strikes that should have carried a hundred's worth of force were not even carrying half.

'He is not at full strength.'

And even so, it was this bad. Through the droplets of blood flying into the air, Najin gritted his teeth. To be overwhelmed by this much, how could he ever beat the man before him? He planted a step forward where he had been sliding backward and swung his sword.

The storm that had seemed like it would rage forever stopped.

What remained after the storm was Najin, catching his breath, and Karon, blood running freely from his forearm. Several wounds had opened, but none were fatal. Najin met Karon's gaze and settled into his stance.

...He was coming.

If Najin had announced the opening of the stage with Excalibur and the dragon-slaying star, then as if asking whether that alone was enough, Siegfried himself tore the curtain down.

...He was coming. The wrath of a god.

Fragments of shattered weapons scattered like starlight. The nearly thousand weapons that had once filled his Sanctuary were gone. Not a single one remained. Only when every last weapon was broken did Siegfried reach out and close his fist around empty air.

That was the signal.

Lightning struck. It plunged into Siegfried's hand, which he had stretched toward the sky. The flash came first.

Boom.

A beat later, a savage Thunderclap followed. What appeared alongside the lightning was the sword that symbolized divine wrath, a cursed blade that cut through all things.

Siegfried gripped Gramr.

In that instant, the momentum reversed. The current of the air shifted. The moment the Sword Demon raised the sword wreathed in crimson-black lightning, Najin's eyes went wide.

A chill. Goosebumps crawled up his spine.

Every nerve in his body, every sense, stood on end. As if a blade were already pressed against the back of his neck. And this was no illusion. A moment's lapse in focus and his head would fly. Najin swallowed dry and exhaled.

...Gramr was in Siegfried's hand.

In the hand of the greatest swordsman in human history, the sword that cut through all things. Najin understood what that single sentence meant better than anyone.

'So then.'

This was where it truly began.

The subjugation of the Sword Demon, Siegfried.

Curtain rise.

2.

Siegfried did not move.

He only stared at Najin, Gramr clenched in his fist. Even with Karon standing at his back, even caught between multiple opponents in a disadvantaged position, he did not stir.

As if inviting them to come at him from any angle.

There was no reason to refuse. Najin accepted the invitation and kicked off the ground. From behind, Karon slid forward and drove in. Nearly simultaneously, both swung their swords.

Swhoooosh!

Both were Transcendents, two of the three finest swordsmen across the Continent and the Outland alike. As if proving that reputation no lie, the trajectories carved by the two swords were immaculate. Beautiful, even.

Concise. Nothing wasted.

Before those flashing blades bearing down like lightning, Siegfried moved slowly. Tendons rose along his arms. The tattoo drawn in dragon blood blazed a vivid red. His heart gave one heavy beat.

Lightning flashed.

The sound that should have come with a sword swing was absent. Not even the sound of air being parted. The blade's glint came first. Sound followed after.

Kang, kaaaaaang!

Both swords were sent flying. The two perfect trajectories shattered with absurd ease. An enormous wall had slammed shut before them.

"Ggh!"

The sword's rebound wrenched his arm back. In that moment, the greater shock was Karon's. Without even turning to look, Siegfried had deflected an attack coming from behind with that much ease? But the surprise did not end there.

Boom.

Siegfried stomped the ground. The spreading vibration locked Karon's and Najin's bodies up for an instant. A human had stomped the earth, and yet it felt as though a giant had.

What followed was a sight that defied common sense.

A greatsword measuring several meters in length swung like a thunderbolt. Gramr's enhanced cutting power and the razor-sharp Sword Aura coiling around it cut through even the resistance meant to stop the blade.

What rushed in was a swift sword that sound itself could not keep up with. "Fast" alone was not enough.

The first attack had come from their side.

The wasted move had come from their side.

By the logic of swordsmanship, the next move should have been theirs to take as well, yet such common sense did not apply before Siegfried. Before a sword that left sound behind, Karon barely managed to react.

Kaaaaaang!

The Heart Sword held against Gramr. A thousand years of gathered faith made it possible. But even so, the shock could not be absorbed cleanly. Even having blocked it, the impact struck like a hammer blow.

Thud, his body lifted into the air.

Gritting his teeth against the shock, Karon saw it. Rather than receiving the blow as he had, Najin stepped forward toward Siegfried instead.

Kakakang!

Najin drove his sword in. He pushed his body into the trajectory Siegfried was carving. One step forward to slip a half-step clear.

'This is a speed he has already faced.'

The wall he had felt until he was sick of it, the gap he had lived through firsthand. There was no need to feel something a second time after feeling it once.

'And.'

Najin had not been idle. From the moment he first encountered Siegfried, he had grown through countless battles. It was time to show that growth.

He dissolved the boundary between sword and self.

The sword is the self; the self is the sword. If that was so, there was no reason he could not do with his body what the sword could do. Just as Excalibur accelerated by releasing starlight, Najin released starlight through his own body.

Tididididididit!

Platinum-colored particles burst across his body. Through the rising particles, Najin accelerated. Something he had once done unconsciously, he could now do by choice.

Kang, kaaaaang!

Sword met sword in rapid succession. Unlike before, when he had given up flesh for being unable to keep pace with the speed, the Najin of now kept pace with Siegfried. Slow, but not that slow. A mere half-step of difference.

That half-step might decide the outcome, but knowing that and still swinging the sword meant he could respond. Najin's eyes moved without pause, reading the trajectory Siegfried's sword carved.

Kang!

He missed, he read, and grimly pushing through the faint thread that still connected, he forced his body forward.

"Ggh!"

The moment Najin lost the rhythm and was pushed back half a step, Karon cut in from the side. Unable to match Siegfried's speed, Karon still caught his sword with experience accumulated over a lifetime.

'If you cannot receive head-on, go around to the side.'

He slid his blade and kept his feet moving without pause. Using the footwork that Sword Order children were jokingly said to learn before they could walk, Karon deflected the sword. Bloodshot eyes fixed hard on Siegfried.

He did not have the precise Future Sight that was Najin's specialty.

He did not have Najin's observational acuity.

But he had knowledge. The sword knowledge the Sword Order had built up over a thousand years was carved into his mind. He faced Siegfried with what he had made of himself.

Tap.

His breathing reset, Najin drove back in. The combined assault began. The sword paths Karon and Najin carved cut across Siegfried's sword.

They shattered. Cut apart with absurd ease.

Yet not all of them shattered.

For every few dozen exchanges, one strike drew close enough to brush Siegfried's body. It never quite reached him, but it forced him to move. Those movements piled up one upon another until a single gap was born.

Two swordsmen swung their blades against a great wave.

Refusing to be swept away, they swung without pause. There were moments when a current they could not cut through carried them back, but they did not drown beneath the wave.

"Najin!"

"I know!"

Karon, teeth clenched as he held on, drew out Siegfried's next movement. Knowing through their exchange what that movement would be, Najin worked to pry the gap wider.

'Look.'

Eyes wide, Najin read the sword.

As things stood, his Future Sight, normally his greatest strength, was of little use. Whatever futures Najin saw, Siegfried saw the same, and no situation arose where either side held an information advantage.

'He must look.'

Yet Najin did not stop looking. He did what he did best. He observed his opponent's movements, reading the shift of muscle, the manner and form of each swing.

Before him lay the answer.

A sword endlessly, perfectly complete.

Against the pinnacle that any swordsman should aspire to reach, Najin was being pushed back. Even with Karon's help, even with Merlin's magic pouring in without stop to support him.

Skrch.

The ice Merlin had conjured was cut away. Karon's sword was deflected with ease. A swordsmanship that must have been born so the weak could face the strong was being wielded by the hand of the strongest. Technique, strength, both surpassed this side in every way.

'There is no weakness to speak of.'

The opponent felt like he had none. No gap to drive into was visible. Standing before a great wall, Najin chose to smile rather than cry out in frustration.

Was this the first time or the second?

Opponents stronger than himself, opponents superior to himself, opponents with no weakness to find, opponents who cornered him even as they held the high ground... Najin had always faced opponents like these.

He had challenged them with his life on the line.

And in the end, he had caught them. Passed them.

'So look.'

The answer was right in front of him. He had thought his sword was sharp enough by now, but held up against the answer before his eyes, his own blade looked dull.

If it was dull, he would sharpen it.

He clashed swords. He discarded what was wrong. He shed unnecessary force and poured it into other movements. Without pause, Najin corrected his own form. He ground the blade sharp.

'One step.'

One more step.

'A little more.'

Najin began to grow. He stepped forward to catch Siegfried.

Siegfried noticed.

What Siegfried showed in that moment was unlike anything Najin had seen from any opponent until now. Every opponent he had faced before had been shaken by his rapid growth. Caught off guard. Unable to respond.

But Siegfried was different.

...Just as Najin was called an Incomparable Genius, Siegfried was the genius who had driven his own era forward. The monster no one had caught in the thousand years since.

Growing in battle.

Boom, boom, boom.

Was not Najin's alone.

Swhoooosh!

Siegfried swung his sword. The moment Najin tried to counter as he had been doing, tried to force a specific movement, Siegfried twisted the blade as if sneering at him.

The trajectory changed.

A sword entirely unlike anything shown until now unfolded.

Just as Najin had done, Siegfried adapted his swordsmanship on the spot to match his opponent. The suddenly probing sword caught Najin off guard. He shifted from counterattack to defense. The instant he barely caught the sword...

Thud.

Hidden in the blind spot screened by crimson-black lightning, Siegfried's foot shot out from the unseen angle and drove into Najin's abdomen.

"Guuh...!"

Breath burst from Najin's lips. Blood sprayed. His body lifted into the air, and Siegfried released the sword. He erased Gramr, erasing even the rebound that should have followed swinging a sword.

His extended hand split the air.

Siegfried's body was itself a weapon. Flesh that had absorbed even Leviathan, the horseman of death, and surpassed the limits of man beyond all reckoning. Siegfried's sharpened hand drove toward Najin's heart.

Karon tried to cut it off, swinging his sword, but Siegfried swung his other hand without sparing Karon a glance.

Thump.

The back of his hand smacked the flat of the blade and destroyed the sword path. As if to say that a trajectory seen several times over needed no sword to deflect. With nothing obstructing him, Siegfried reached out his hand.

The moment that hand was about to pierce through Najin's heart.

"Like this."

Siegfried could not pierce Najin's heart. Because something he could neither pierce nor shatter stopped his hand.

"That is how it is done, correct?"

After releasing the sword, Najin had re-summoned Excalibur in front of his own heart. He had mimicked the move Siegfried had shown just before. A split-second decision had let him avoid having his heart run through, but he had not fully blocked it either.

Crack.

Blood seeped from between his clenched teeth. His insides heaved. His body shook from the shockwave that had pounded through it, and Najin's brow furrowed.

'What is he doing right now?'

Because Siegfried's fingers, blocked by Excalibur after failing to pierce the heart, were moving.

'Surely not.'

By the time he guessed, it was too late.

Crack.

An inch punch. Siegfried's right hand, turned to a fist in an instant, struck Excalibur.

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