WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 453

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Sword Demon of the Abyss (5)

Future Sight was useless in this fight.

The reason was simple: the opponent could see the future just as clearly as Najin could, which meant their Future Sights cancelled each other out. Knowing that, Najin had fought Siegfried looking only at the present, not the future, letting his sword move from what was in front of him rather than what was coming.

But even that luxury was gone now.

The instant Siegfried settled into his stance, Najin felt death in his bones. Every nerve stood on end. At the border between life and death, his senses expanded beyond his own will. Information he had been blocking came flooding in all at once.

And so Najin saw a few seconds ahead.

White.

The future he glimpsed was pure white. The entire world was dyed a blinding white. His Future Sight, which was supposed to read the sword paths his opponent was tracing, had gone white. The answer to that question was simple enough.

Every last bit of it was the trajectory of a sword.

Countless sword strikes, tangled together, had dyed the world white. How something like that was even possible, Najin could not begin to understand.

'Ah.'

There was no way to break it.

No way to dodge it.

No means of blocking it existed.

No way to change the future closing in on him.

'I have to think.'

A person staring death in the face scrambles. They rack their brain. They search everything they have built for an answer. But no answer can be found anywhere. After desperately hunting for a way out, only one path shows itself.

'Don't slow down. Crash straight into it.'

Challenge it. Break through it.

'Use a sword that will never break as your shield and endure.'

Faced with the death bearing down on him, Najin struggled.

And then.

Siegfried swung his sword.

The trajectory the blade drew was unremarkable. Clean and simple. A single horizontal line cutting straight across, one of the most basic slashes any swordsman learns first. But the aftershock that line produced was anything but simple.

Compressed Sword Aura was released.

A thousand swords held back inside a single blade, ten thousand trajectories traced by those thousand swords, a torrent of force packed into one straight line, all of it was set free.

Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms.

Not bound by the form of a thousand weapons. All of it poured into a single blade and swung. Done that way, even death itself could be cut down.

Everything.

Everything in sight split apart.

The ground was torn to ribbons. Ribboned earth shot into the sky. What shot skyward shattered and shattered again until it scattered as dust. As though still not satisfied, the released Sword Aura kept multiplying.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands...

At last Najin's field of vision turned white. Even the radiance Excalibur produced was buried beneath that pure white sword light. He was being cut. He could not tell where, or how deeply.

Cut. Cut again and again.

The star of the Unbreakable shone. Najin barely held on to his slipping consciousness. The moment he let go of it, the moment he let go of his sword, it was over. Najin clenched his teeth. Through the gap between his locked jaws, dark red bloody foam welled up.

'Hold on.'

His body moved without conscious thought. Action outran judgment. He fought desperately to find a way to stay alive, and through that struggle his sword grew faster than it had ever been.

Still not enough.

Still he could not reach Siegfried.

Shaaaaaaaaash!

The sound followed half a beat later. A violent, tearing screech hammered his eardrums. Every part of his body groaned and creaked, but Najin refused to close his eyes. Even when one eye was cut and half his vision flooded red with blood, he kept watching until the very end.

This was a technique that held Siegfried's entire life within it.

Najin witnessed it.

In his dimming consciousness, one question drifted through his mind. What was this technique for? What did it exist to cut? What had driven him to forge a sword capable of slashing the world to pieces?

'...To cut.'

To cut death.

To cut down the underworld he could not escape from.

'To cut the Dragon of the Abyss.'

The moment he understood that.

A flash of light swallowed Najin whole.

2.

The storm that had seemed eternal finally quieted.

A brief silence arrived.

The storm had calmed, but Najin could not move a single muscle. Just clinging to consciousness was all he could manage. His one remaining eye trembled faintly.

Whether he was standing, whether he had already collapsed face-first on the ground, whether his head had already come off, where he had been cut and how deeply.

He knew none of it.

"Kuh, hah..."

When he opened his mouth, dark red clots of blood dropped out one after another. He could not breathe. Each breath produced a wet, gurgling sound as bloody foam rose. Every time he blinked, the floor rushed closer.

Thud.

Najin's body pitched forward. He landed in a pool of blood with a wet splash, droplets spraying up around him. The smell of blood. The smell of iron. There was no way to hold onto consciousness.

'Get up.'

Even his awareness flickered in and out. His vision blurred. Consciousness sank. The death that had arrived was eating him alive.

...He had received Siegfried's Absolute Technique.

Siegfried was the swordsman who had reached the highest realm in all of human history. Najin had witnessed that swordsman's Absolute Technique and had even managed to receive a portion of it. Through that process, Najin had seized a fragment of understanding.

He had touched a realm he had never reached before. He had set one foot inside it.

If he could stand again.

If he could survive this place.

Najin would definitely reach Siegfried.

But all of that was meaningless speculation. The approaching death was trying to swallow his body whole.

"...!"

From far away, something that sounded like a scream reached him. Someone was calling his name in a voice being torn apart. A cold chill settled around Najin's body, different from the cold that comes from losing too much blood.

Ice. His wounds were freezing over.

Merlin.

He could hear Merlin's voice. She had placed herself between him and the approaching Siegfried, scattering her magic. Her voice rattled Najin's body awake. Right. There was no way he could close his eyes here.

Grrrrnd.

He clenched his teeth. Bloody foam rose as Najin forced his body to move. He pressed a hand to the ground and tried to push his broken body upright. The movement was sluggish. Impossibly slow.

'Move.'

Please move. Merlin could not hold out against Siegfried for long. Their matchup was the worst possible. He was the one who had to do this. He was the one who had to get up.

'Hurry.'

But his body had barely enough breath to keep him alive. That he was alive at all was already a miracle. As though asking for anything more was too greedy, his body simply refused to respond. Najin whipped himself with urgency and tried to force movement.

And that was the moment.

Najin, who had barely managed to lift his head, saw it.

Siegfried turning to look back.

Siegfried, who had been walking toward him, stopped mid-step and turned his head. For the first time, he looked behind him, staring at someone standing at his back. Najin looked in the same direction.

There stood the Sword Saint.

The Sword Saint was pointing a sword at the Sword Demon.

3.

One arm had been cut. His side had been torn open. From the split flesh of his gut, organs and blood streamed out without pause. If Merlin had not frozen the wounds shut with emergency treatment, Karon would have headed straight for death.

But Karon knew.

It was only a detour, not an escape. He was still going to die. Face-down on the ground, cheek buried in a pool of blood, Karon groaned. With death this close, he looked inward at himself.

Representative of the Sword Order.

Sword Master.

Sword Saint.

The titles that decorated him came to mind. Hollow. He swept them aside. Once all the useless things were cleared away, only one thing remained. A single, plain, shabby, almost pitiful sword.

A person grows honest before death.

What he looked back at was himself.

Having looked at himself, Karon then looked forward.

"......"

There were beautiful people there. People wielding beautiful swords, shining brighter than anyone else. Beings who deserved every right to be called heroes. Heroes recorded in the history of humanity, and heroes who would yet be recorded there, were fighting in that place.

Far away. They were fighting far away.

A storm of swords raged.

Flashing sword light burst out without pause.

Then it came. The realm Karon had so desperately wanted to reach unfolded before him. Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms, woven from a thousand blades into ten thousand shapes, swept across the area. It was a sight beautiful enough to sting the eyes.

Karon had longed for that beauty.

From the day he had seen the sword marks carved into the Sword Order's hall, he had wanted to become like that beautiful sword.

"......"

Through blurred vision Karon looked at what lay in front of him. One arm severed. A single sword leaning at an angle where it had been driven into the ground. The Heart Sword, the Sword Order's greatest treasure.

And that sword was beautiful, no question.

A sword holding a thousand years of unfulfilled longing. The sword of an ideal that countless swordsmen had dreamed of. Karon too felt it was beautiful.

'So that was it.'

Karon laughed. He should have understood the moment he felt that beauty. Because that was the word farthest removed from himself.

Karon did not particularly think of himself as beautiful.

Far from a noble hero. No grand conviction to save the world. No resolve to protect anyone. He did not dream of a better tomorrow. He was a selfish human being who cared only for himself.

At his core, that was what he was.

'An existence that is not beautiful, chasing something beautiful. No wonder there was a gap.'

He faced that gap. By facing it, Karon could finally look squarely at the sword before him. The Heart Sword was a sword of the heart, a sword that took whatever form Karon envisioned.

The Heart Sword's form changed.

A rough, plain sword without beauty. It was the first sword Karon had ever held. The sword the young Karon had gripped back when he swung a blade for one reason alone: to beat his opponent.

Clack.

Gripping that sword, he stood up. Only by holding that rough, plain, graceless sword could he think of the sword as himself. The moment the sword felt like part of his body, things that had been invisible became visible.

Tap.

He took a step. The step was light. His blurred vision cleared. Karon could see more than he ever had before. So this is how that bastard sees the world, he thought, and a dry laugh slipped from the corner of his mouth.

Walking. One step after another.

As he walked, Karon recalled the sword he had just witnessed. The Absolute Technique of the greatest swordsman who ever lived. He chewed on it. Of course Karon did not have Najin's gift, the ability to take apart an opponent's technique, analyze it, and reproduce it. One viewing was not enough to fully understand that skill.

But.

Even so.

Karon was a Genius. His path was different from Najin's, the road he had walked was different, but he had lived his own life all the same. He had gained understanding. He had accumulated experience. He had mastered countless sword techniques and swung his blade more times than he could count.

'Did all of that mean nothing?'

It could not. Those years had value. To prove that value, Karon raised his sword.

The Sword Saint leveled a sword at the Sword Demon.

The current Sword Saint pointed a sword at the first Sword Saint.

Only then did Siegfried look at Karon. He stopped moving toward Najin and stared directly at him. Karon walked forward under that gaze. One step, two steps, and on the third he was running.

Clash.

Sword met sword, struck apart, met again, over and over. With one arm gone, it was easier than just before. His body felt light. Karon laughed as he traded blow after blow.

'Still towering high.'

Better than before, but still not enough.

Admit it. You cannot beat him. He accepted that. And once he accepted it, other things became visible. For instance: Najin behind Siegfried, trying to push himself up off the ground. Merlin, preparing her magic.

Right. He could not win, but...

'There is something he can show.'

Had that bastard not called him his teacher? Had he not said the swordsmanship learned from him had been useful? Hearing that back then, Karon could not shake a certain discomfort. He had never given any proper teaching.

As a teacher, he had been lacking.

Even so, if that arrogant student of his, the one who had broken his teacher's arm rather than showing any respect, thought of him that way.

'Then I had better show him something.'

For just a moment, Karon's and Najin's eyes met. Karon twisted up the corner of his mouth and settled into his stance.

The Star of a Thousand Swords shone.

The Transcendent who had admired the first Sword Saint's blade so deeply that his own star had been given that very name stood there and laughed. Before the thing he had longed for all his life, he laid out his own life. A technique completed only now, only in this moment of finally facing himself.

Thousand Swords.

Accumulated experience, a life lived, a thousand blades.

Ten Thousand Forms.

The life he had lived bore fruit at last.

Shhhk.

A sword is oneself. Using himself as the medium, Karon unleashed everything he had built. A flash cut loose. A burst of light exploded out. Unlike Siegfried's technique, which hacked apart everything in the area, Karon's technique had only one target.

Because that was what this sword was made for.

He knew nothing of the fate of the world. He had no conviction. What was there for him to protect? He did not know such things. If he could beat the opponent in front of him, and through that prove his sword, that was enough.

Stubbornness.

The Sword Saint's stubbornness reached the Sword Demon at last.

「Why am I doing this, you ask?」

「Because this pisses me off.」

「The grand patriarch of the Sword Order, that illustrious man, I need to break at least one of his arms before I'll feel any better.」

Dietrich, the second Sword Saint.

His unfulfilled longing, spanning a thousand years, was fulfilled at last by the hands of a Sword Saint.

Schlick.

A long streak of blood flew from Siegfried's arm. The Sword Demon's arm, cut nearly halfway through, bent at the wrong angle. It would not kill him, but it was not shallow enough to ignore.

The Sword Saint's sword had reached the Sword Demon.

'Did you see that.'

Karon knew Najin's gift. A monster who remembered everything he saw, studied it, and could do more than imitate the lives opponents had lived, he could reproduce them entire. Karon knew that gift.

'You must have seen it.'

Because he knew that gift.

Because he had experienced it firsthand while teaching Najin, he trusted him. If he showed the same answer reached not once but twice, and reached through completely different methods.

'You'll find it.'

An answer better than mine.

Crack!

Karon was sent flying by Siegfried's sword and rolled across the ground. But he had accomplished what he set out to do.

He had bought time.

He had given a lesson.

"Honestly."

Najin forced himself up through clenched teeth. Spitting blood, he laughed in disbelief.

"You are a teacher, aren't you."

What remained was the student's share.

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