WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 457

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Afterword, Preparation (1)

What comes after death?

That question has been posed throughout the countless ages of human history. It is, by nature, a deeply philosophical and religious concern. One could say without exaggeration that religion and philosophy themselves developed out of the effort to answer it.

'Mmmm.'

And now.

'Well then.'

Karon, the Sword Saint, had fallen into very philosophical reflection. He had spent his whole life keeping philosophy and religion at arm's length, but even he could not manage that here, in what appeared to be the afterlife. He thought he had died, yet his consciousness persisted. It seemed there was indeed something on the other side of death.

'So it is not endless nothingness? Then those ancient religious types were right? Heaven and hell...'

Karon blinked. His consciousness continued, however faintly. The pain he had felt moments ago was gone. Only a cool chill remained. The temperature of the underworld ran a bit cold, apparently.

So was this heaven, or hell?

The scenery was a bit much for heaven. The sky was pitch black and everything around him was dim. Dust drifted through the air. Not exactly a pleasant place to live. Hell, then? As hell, the scenery fit well enough.

'Did I really live that badly?'

He had not done anything wicked enough to deserve hell. The standards must be stricter than he expected. Disappointing. If he had known it would come to this, he would have lived a bit more virtuously. He was deep in this earnest moral reflection when a voice reached him.

"Are you alive?"

A familiar voice.

"Well," Karon said, "seeing you here, this place is clearly not hell. I might belong here, but if even you ended up in hell, who among the living would ever make it to heaven? A heaven that refuses people has no meaning. Then is this heaven? It's awfully bleak for heaven..."

"Pardon? Have you lost your mind?"

"The way you talk to your teacher tells me hell suits you just fine. Ah, so this is hell after all!"

Najin patted Karon's cheek. Tap, tap. It did not hurt, but it was annoying. Karon's face scrunched up.

"What are you doing."

"You're not dead, so try to collect yourself."

"Not dead?"

"Would a dead man's mouth be moving that much? I've seen my share of funerals, and you don't appear to qualify yet. Don't worry."

Only then did Karon look down at his own body. Most of it was frozen. That was what the chill had been. The dulled senses made sense too, with his body in this state.

"What is this?"

"Thank Merlin. You nearly died from blood loss. She barely managed to keep you alive."

Where Najin pointed, Merlin lay on the ground with Najin's coat draped over her. The faint sound of her breathing reached them. Not dead, then. She had simply collapsed from exhaustion.

"It's only first aid, though."

"My body wasn't in any condition for first aid to matter. My arm was gone. My organs were ruptured."

Injuries that would not have looked strange if they killed him outright. The first aid might have let him move a little longer, but among fighters that was well known as the final flare before death,one last burst of brightness right before the end.

"If things had stayed as they were, you would most likely have died, yes?"

"If they had stayed as they were?"

Najin started to point at the sky, then realized no stars were visible here, and let out a short breath instead.

"You had seven Stars, didn't you? You gained one during the campaign against the Carnival King, so I remember it being seven."

"Was it?"

"Congratulations on your eighth Star."

"...What?"

Karon blinked, then turned his focus inward. He counted the Stars hanging in his inner world.

One, two, three... eight.

Eight. A newly risen eighth Star was shining there.

"Wh,huh, gah, ugh."

The shock made him gasp so sharply that he started choking. He looked ready to keel over on the spot. Since Merlin had barely managed to keep him alive, letting him die for such a ridiculous reason would have left Najin unable to face her. He quickly drove his fist into Karon's solar plexus.

"Gack! Urk, ow!"

"Breathe."

"The student beats his teacher! Breaking my arm wasn't enough for you! Ow, ow!"

"You've got the energy to complain, so I'd say you're doing fine."

That was the shape of it. By gaining his eighth Star, Karon's rank as a Constellation had risen, and the mana and starlight he had burned down to nothing recovered, if only a little. That was what had pulled him back from the edge, Najin explained.

"So I really did come back from the dead."

"That's right. It was close."

"You're remarkably calm about it."

"I believed you wouldn't go like that."

"Good of you."

The two of them laughed.

"So then."

"Yes."

"We won, it seems."

"It worked out that way."

"How was the first Sword Saint?"

Najin let out a breath and shook his head.

"What can I say? There's strong, and then there's that. I lost count of how many times I almost died. Look at this,see the cuts all over me? My fingers still won't fully open."

"He was terrifyingly strong."

"Still..."

Najin reached inward and touched his Stars. The Dragon Slaying Star, honed to a razor's edge, shone there. Feeling Siegfried's obsession embedded within it, Najin smiled.

"I learned a great deal from him."

"Same here. Nothing sharpens you faster than throwing yourself into a life-or-death situation,that's for certain."

Siegfried had given them teaching. Even at the very end he had been a Swordsman, and he had died a Swordsman to the last. The words he left behind were etched deep into both of them.

"Truly."

Karon exhaled slowly, and the words the second Sword Saint of the Sword Order had left behind came to mind.

"The Grandmaster is a man who does as he pleases."

"Beats people as he pleases."

"Imparts lessons as he pleases."

"And then goes wandering off to some distant place, as he pleases."

Recalling the record Dietrich, the second Sword Saint, had left about the Grandmaster,those phrases that described the first Sword Saint,a smile worked its way free from the corner of his mouth.

"Consistent to the end."

Right to the last.

A thousand years later, on a certain day.

The Sword Order had fulfilled its long-held wish.

2.

There was an afterword.

The Sword Demon had been defeated,and yet, because he had been defeated, a few matters now needed to be handled.

"So then."

Karon, who had barely recovered enough strength to sit up, spoke.

"What do you plan to do with that?"

Where he pointed, a single sword was thrust into the ground.

Gramr. The sword that signifies the wrath of God.

Siegfried's body had vanished, but the divine sword that was practically his other half had not disappeared with him. It sat embedded in the earth at an angle, completely motionless. Somehow, it looked like Excalibur driven firm into a stone.

"They look alike."

Najin murmured it without thinking.

"Alike, you say... ah, you mean the Holy Sword you carry?"

"Yes. It seems to be waiting for its master."

"Can you pull it out?"

Najin stared at Gramr. Could he? He probably could, if he tried. Unlike Excalibur, Gramr demanded no particular qualification.

"I could pull it out if I tried."

Gramr does not refuse a swordsman's touch.

It only tests whoever would become its master.

A sword like an untamed wild horse. If it judged that whoever held it was unworthy of wielding it, Gramr would cut down even its own master. Given that its most recent master had been Siegfried, the bar was admittedly high,but Najin was more than enough to clear it.

He could pull it out. But.

Najin shook his head.

"It's not a sword I need."

"Don't need it? You're saying you have no need for a sword that can cut through anything in the world? Even in a Sword Seeker's hands it would make a Sword Master work for it."

Najin wordlessly reached into the air. Excalibur flashed into his grip. He gave it a small flick and smiled.

"I already have one."

A sword engraved with his own constellation, strengthened by his own Stars. A sword that grew alongside its master. Excalibur's cutting edge no longer fell behind Gramr's.

"Picking up Gramr now would only get in the way. I've never felt much pull toward dual-wielding anyway. Why swing two swords? Better to put everything into one."

Besides, Najin added, pointing at Karon.

"There's already someone it suits."

"...Me?"

"Yes. It's the sword left behind by the Sword Order's Grandmaster. I'm not so lacking in manners that I'd take a sword carrying the Order's entire history."

"Ahem, well, if you put it that way..."

Karon nodded, as if he had been waiting for exactly those words. Half afraid Najin might change his mind, he moved toward Gramr without delay. He was a Sword Saint, yes, but before that he was a man,and men carry a lifelong longing for the legendary sword somewhere in their hearts.

A legendary sword spoken of in the same breath as Excalibur, one with the attribute of cutting through anything?

Any man who could resist that was no man at all. And Karon was very much a man. He all but snorted with eagerness as he reached out toward Gramr, and then..."Ah, before that."

He stopped. He glanced back at Najin.

"You're not planning some cheap trick where you offer it and then take it back, are you? I trust you wouldn't."

"Come on, what kind of person do you think I am? Nothing like that. I just have a small favor to ask."

"...A favor?"

"Yes, nothing major."

Najin pointed toward the mountain ridge.

"I trust you'll help me with that as well. We fought through mortal danger together, didn't we? Comrades should look out for each other."

What was that. Karon turned toward where Najin was pointing and swallowed hard. There in that distant mountain range, something enormous stirred.

Leviathan, the Dragon of the Abyss.

Even at this distance it would not fit within a single glance. Karon swallowed dryly and asked again.

"Hunt that. You're saying we should hunt that."

"We have to hunt it."

Said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well... I suppose I figured it might come to this."

Karon laughed, incredulous.

"I'll help. The Grandmaster would want it too."

With those words, Karon gripped the sword. Gramr resisted for just a moment, then came free in his hand.

Shing.

No lightning struck. The Sword Aura did not run wild the way it had when Siegfried held it. Only its shape began to change slowly, shifting to resemble the sword that lived inside Karon's heart.

"So that's it. So this is how it feels."

"What's your impression of holding a legendary sword?"

At Najin's question, Karon's mouth curved up.

"What's there to say?"

Felt incredible.

3.

"You really are consistent, Siegfried."

The place where Siegfried had met his end.

Merlin looked at the earth where he had accepted his death. They had bickered constantly and quarreled at the drop of a hat, but Siegfried had been her dear friend and fellow warrior.

At the death of her friend, Merlin grieved.

At his finally being set free, she was glad.

When the brief moment of silence was done, Merlin snapped her fingers. A promise she had once made with Siegfried came back to her.

"Words for a gravestone?"

"What a morbid thing to bring up... Ha. I'll definitely outlive all of you, so I'll carve the inscriptions on your gravestones myself."

"Then what would you carve on mine?"

"Nothing."

"Leaving words on a gravestone is something only people who couldn't say what they needed to while they were alive do. I'm not one of those."

Arrogant,but so bold and lively that even the arrogance felt charming.

"Still, if I had to leave something."

"This would do."

Mana gathered at Merlin's fingertips. Reaching deep into the earth, to leave a mark that no passing years could bury, she carved the words herself.

"Get lost."

"My death belongs to me."

"Don't you dare cry in front of my grave."

As she carved that epitaph, Merlin found herself smiling without meaning to. She knew exactly who those words were meant for.

"It would be Arthur."

At the death of a beloved knight, a fallen comrade, Arthur never allowed herself to cry. She would recite a quiet, composed eulogy for them. But that was only the face she showed the world.

In the deep of night, when every funeral rite was done and the last mourner had gone,Arthur would finally allow herself to weep before a gravestone. She would take their deaths into her own heart and carry the weight of them as her own.

Few people knew this about her.

Because Siegfried had been one of those few.

Because he had seen it with his own eyes, he had left this epitaph. If he happened to die first, Arthur would surely stand weeping before his grave. He had needed to leave him something to send him away.

"Truly."

Merlin smiled, a sad, wry curve of her mouth.

"Rest well, Siegfried."

The carving finished, Merlin rose.

"Merlin."

"Mm."

"Let's go."

On to the next stage.

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