WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 452

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Sword Demon of the Abyss (4)

A spear-hand strike, fingers driven to a point, aimed straight for the heart.

Even with the thrust blocked, he showed not the slightest surprise. He continued his assault as naturally as water flowing downstream. The outstretched fingers curled inward and folded into a fist.

A fist.

Najin had never trained formally in hand-to-hand combat, but he knew the basics. For a punch to carry real force, the arm had to pull back before extending, or the body had to rotate into it. At this distance, some preparatory motion was absolutely necessary, and that motion would be an opening.

Dozens of Counter Techniques rose to mind. In the slowed flow of his heightened perception, Najin braced to counter, but a moment later, he realized.

There was no preparatory motion. None at all.

Siegfried did not pull his arm back. He did not rotate his body. The hand that had been extended forward, the one pressing against Excalibur's blade, simply pushed forward one more time.

An inch punch.

The blade Najin had raised before his heart let out a dull ring and shuddered. But the blade was not the only thing that shuddered.

Crack.

Any true master of close combat knows to bypass armor and deliver the impact directly into the body beneath. Even with the blade in the way, the shock transmitted straight through the steel and into Najin's flesh.

Siegfried possessed a body that transcended human limits.

With nothing more than a bare-handed strike, he was a monster capable of bursting the bodies of ordinary Transcendents. Those fists and kicks had hammered Najin one after another, and even Najin could not come through that unscathed.

His vision blacked out for an instant.

His body lurched. A pain like his lungs being wrung dry seized him, and his breath was driven from him against his will.

"Gh, ugh."

His airborne body fired off like a cannonball. Siegfried's figure grew distant. Distant, but his presence only swelled larger as the gap widened.

Thud.

Siegfried stamped the ground and set his stance. He gripped the empty air and swung his arm. In that moment, a long streak of Sword Aura blazed and shot toward Najin in a flash of light.

Not just once.

He swung, and swung, and swung again. There seemed to be no recoil from any of it, as though recoil had no business existing.

No.

Najin caught it a beat late. The recoil was not merely absent in appearance, it genuinely was not there. His hand was empty when he began to swing, and empty again when the swing finished.

The sword existed only between those two moments.

Gramr flickered in and out of Siegfried's grip like lightning, there and gone in the same breath. Because the sword was absent at the starting point and the ending point, almost no recoil was generated. No recoil meant no need to reset his stance.

Shaaaack!

And so dozens of streaks of Sword Aura arrived aimed at Najin with only the thinnest sliver of time between each one. His battered body groaning, Najin twisted in midair and swung his sword.

Grgrgrgrgrk!

It was being stripped away. The Sword Aura wrapping Excalibur was carved off in chunks. Every parry sent Najin further up into the air. With no ground to plant his feet on, he could put no real force behind his blade.

That was the moment.

In the empty air where nothing should have been, something touched the soles of his feet. A coolness that cut through the heat scorching his body. Ice, conjured by Merlin.

, Now.

A shared thought, unspoken. Najin knew what Merlin was about to do. Merlin knew what Najin was about to do.

Click.

At the snap of her fingers, shards of ice rose and lined themselves through the air above. The moisture Merlin had been scattering throughout the battle had frozen into crystals. Ice fragments glittered, filling the entire field of view.

Then they were fired at Siegfried.

He swung his sword. He threw his fists. Bare-bodied at times, he smashed every last fragment apart. An attack this crude could not scratch him.

"I know. Of course I know."

Merlin breathed out.

She knew that monstrous man well. There was a reason he had always been called the natural enemy of mages. She knew full well that no careless spell would leave so much as a mark on him.

She knew, and she did it anyway.

When Merlin, who hated wasting her magic, chose to spend her mana this freely, there was always a reason. She was buying time.

Just a few seconds.

But those few seconds were precious to Najin. He steadied his stance, settled his breathing, and snapped his eyes wide open. Bloodshot, he fixed his gaze on Siegfried.

Hanging upside down from the ice.

Steam rose from Najin's body. His coat whipped violently in the air. Through the shattering ice fragments, through the curtain of rain falling from the sky, Najin and Siegfried's eyes met.

Crack.

The moment Najin kicked off, the ice shattered into pieces. He fired himself back into the battle like a streak of light.

2.

A driving rain was pouring from the sky.

Merlin's magic. Her sorcery, centered on water and ice, grew stronger the more moisture was in the surrounding air.

Shhhhhhhh!

The hammering downpour beat against the earth. Raindrops bounced back up. But there was one place those drops never reached, exactly where Najin and Siegfried were standing.

Every time their blades met, a burst of wind pressure exploded outward.

The blast swept the raindrops away.

Though the rain fell without stop, the ground beneath their feet was bone dry. The wind pressure stripped away the moisture, and the heat generated by the clashing Sword Aura, the heat rising from Siegfried's body itself, evaporated what little remained.

Crack.

On that parched earth, they swung their swords. Every time their blades collided, Najin felt the shock ring through his entire body.

Close.

Death was close.

This one I block. That one I dodge. This one, this one......

Death was surging right in front of his face. It felt like walking a tightrope. Even in a single instant, he was forced into dozens of choices. And no matter which choice he made, it turned out to be the wrong one.

Being led. Being pushed back. If I get pushed back, a big technique comes. After that, what then?

A swordsmanship that forced the opponent's movements through sheer mastery of the blade, slowly cornering them the way a drizzle soaks through cloth before you notice it. The origin of that style was none other than the man standing before him, the first Sword Saint, Siegfried.

One moment it seemed like brute force crashing down, and the next the sword came flying in on an impossibly complex trajectory that was hard to follow even with the eyes.

Technique, strength, speed.

All of it in perfect harmony. Every time their blades met, Najin's body shook.

I have Merlin supporting me.

Merlin's magic patched over that shaking. The unrelenting covering fire raining in from every direction steadily dragged at Siegfried's feet.

And the Sword Saint's backup as well......

Breathing hard, Karon pushed in and caught Siegfried's blade one exchange at a time. Even with both of their support, Najin felt himself struggling. He had prepared multiple strategies, and still it was grueling.

His heart pounded hard.

Through the struggle, Najin swung his sword. As he pushed his senses to the limit and kept swinging, he was unmistakably growing.

Faster. More.

Siegfried was the finest teacher imaginable for Najin, who learned by taking lessons from his opponents directly. Simply watching and parrying the swordsmanship of someone at such a towering Realm was enough for Najin to grow. Even now, his blade was sharpening.

Heat rose in his body. His movements quickened.

Economy, efficiency, redistribution of force, feint and reality, he rebuilt and refined the finer points of the sword he had believed he already understood, and optimized them. The Growth was astonishing in its speed.

"Ggh, kk......"

Fast, but almost impossible to see from the outside.

Because the opponent before him was keeping pace.

Every enemy Najin had faced until now had failed to keep up with his rapid Growth and shifting movements. They had shown openings. But not this man. Siegfried never once allowed Najin to pull ahead of him.

He kept pace. He closed openings. He read and dismantled Najin's sharpened technique on the spot, pressing back against every new edge Najin found.

So this is how it felt.

The feeling that everyone who had ever faced him must have known, Najin was now experiencing himself. A hollow laugh escaped him, completely out of place.

Clang, clang, claaang!

But what did any of that change?

Thud!

Cutting through the blizzard Merlin's scattered magic had conjured, Najin lunged forward. Even as Siegfried refused to let him pull ahead and blocked each attempt, Najin did not stop. He picked up speed. His body was moving before his thoughts could form.

There. I can see it.

Just a little. Just a little further.

Something, almost visible.

One step from a breakthrough. The clue to taking that step shimmered right in front of him. Reaching for it, Najin moved with more daring.

Ah.

Breakthroughs come in a single instant.

How to move the sword, how to breathe and plant the foot, Najin's body moved on its own before conscious thought could catch up. Action came before calculation or judgment.

Clack.

Gramr flowed along the flat of Excalibur's blade. Not a parry. A redirect. Using the opponent's own force against him, Najin finally slipped his blade through and drove in close.

And then, schhk.

For the first time, Najin's blade touched Siegfried's body. They crossed and swept past one another, and in that instant, no blood flew from Najin. Blood flew from Siegfried.

A long cut opened across his side.

For the first time since the battle began, Siegfried bled. Not a fatal wound, but a genuine strike, enough to be called an injury. After landing that blow, Najin hauled in a ragged breath.

What just, how did I do that?

He had done it unconsciously. Tracing back the sensation from a moment ago, Najin turned his body around.

"......"

His eyes met Siegfried's.

In that instant, Najin had the strange impression that Siegfried had broken into a smile. His face was swathed in darkness like the night sky, nothing visible but his eyes. There was no way to confirm an expression.

And yet he looked like he was smiling.

There was no way to know why.

But the reason did not matter, because the movement Siegfried made immediately after was something Najin understood. It was the movement of a man who now considered his opponent a true equal.

Ah.

Something is different. A single-minded intent, the will to cut the other down even at the cost of being cut and broken himself.

A chill ran down his spine.

Every nerve in his body stood on end. His instincts rang louder than they ever had. The moment Najin reflexively chose to evade, that choice was a mistake.

One mistake leads to the next.

Karon drove in from the flank. Before Najin could stop it. And in that moment, Siegfried cleared away the one disrupting this fight, in a way unlike anything he had shown before.

He took the Heart Sword through his body.

He let Karon's blade cut through the skin of his back. Blood jetted from the gash along his spine, but it was not deep enough. That was because Siegfried had pushed into Karon the instant their blades connected.

Gramr fell toward Karon.

Najin struck the flat of Gramr from the side, the only reason Karon was not cut in two.

Schhk.

The right arm holding the Heart Sword was severed. Blood scattered wide. The pain of losing his arm locked Karon's body rigid. Siegfried kicked him. As though there was simply no need to use a sword on someone who had already lost theirs.

......As was said before.

Siegfried possessed a body that transcended human limits. It was only because Najin was himself a Transcendent that he could endure those strikes.

To put it another way.

Any Transcendent who was not Najin could not endure them.

Thud.

The kick landed in Karon's side and it burst. With a sound like compressed air exploding, Karon's body was shot backward like a cannonball. Blood erupted. Things that should not have been forced out, things that should not have poured free, poured from his body.

Najin's eyes went wide.

The instant his head turned reflexively toward Karon, Siegfried swung Gramr at Najin. The sword came down like a thunderbolt and drove him back.

Distance opened between them.

Damn.

The gap Najin had been grinding to close with gritted teeth had split wide open. The disruption that had been buying him time was gone. The moment there was nothing left to occupy Siegfried's blade, Siegfried set his stance.

Not the stance for swinging a sword.

The stance for gathering power.

Siegfried seized lightning.

Crimson lightning, the symbol of divine wrath, ran wild. Sword Aura without any restraint surged and writhed. Like roots driving down through the earth, or branches stretching high toward the sky, the lightning-shaped Sword Aura spread in every direction at once.

Najin knew that stance.

Because he knew it, he kicked off the ground and ran.

Teeth grinding, he closed the distance. That sword could not be allowed to swing unimpeded. But all that effort was made meaningless, because Siegfried was faster.

In time that flowed slow as syrup.

Only Siegfried moved as though the current of time had no hold on him at all. He had swung this sword more times than could be counted. In performing that motion now, no one alive was faster.

Flash.

The lightning streaks spreading in every direction suddenly stopped. Then, as if time were rewinding, they were pulled back into Gramr's blade. The rampaging Sword Aura-a staggering volume of it, was forcibly compressed and sealed into a single sword.

A brutally reckless use of mana by any measure.

Any ordinary masterwork blade would shatter under mana handling that savage. Even Sacred Objects carrying the starlight of a Constellation would break before the power could fully gather. The weapon's lifespan would run out before the force was properly contained.

But Gramr held.

It contained the power completely.

The compressed Sword Aura pulsed white. In a flash of pure white light, Siegfried swung his arm. Toward Najin, who had charged in trying to disrupt that motion, he brought himself around.

He swung once.

He drew a single line.

But to swing that one strike, Siegfried had compressed Sword Aura that branched into ten thousand paths. Using himself as the vessel, he sealed ten thousand forms inside. The moment he swung, everything sealed within was released.

There is no need to swing a thousand swords.

One need only contain all of that within a single blade.

Thousand Swords, mastering a thousand blades.

Ten Thousand Forms, weaving ten thousand stances.

Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms.

With that, even death itself could be cut down.

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