WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 459

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Afterword, Preparation (3)

Razian closed her eyes.

The moment her eyelids fell like curtains and hid her pupils, something changed in her body. Her snow-white hair stirred slightly. The even, measured breathing she had maintained fell out of rhythm.

Not the breathing of a well-trained fighter, but the ragged, uneven breath of an ordinary person. Almost like a sigh. She left that sound behind her as she raised her hand.

Rustle.

Eyes still closed, she undid her hair tie. White hair spilled long down to the small of her back. Then she undid a button at her cuff and loosened the stiff, formal uniform of the order.

Blink. Yuel opened her eyes.

She stared at Najin, unblinking. He held her gaze without looking away. They stayed like that for a moment.

"Well, look who it is."

Eyes half-lidded, she tilted her head. Rustle,hair sliding aside to reveal red pupils that gleamed with something unsettlingly coy.

"Isn't it the Dawn Horn, whose face is absurdly hard to catch? Razian spent months waiting at the Boundary Line just for one glimpse of you, and never managed it. Not once."

"Hm."

"Do you have any idea how hurt she was? She wouldn't show it in front of you, so I'm complaining on her behalf. You could have at least showed your face before running off, you bastard."

She poked Najin in the chest with one finger.

As if daring him to make an excuse.

"Life's been a bit hectic these past few months."

"I know. That's the only reason I'm stopping at complaining. If you'd been avoiding her on purpose, my hands would be around your throat right now."

"Isn't that illegal? That's assault."

"Ha. I'm the lord,what are you going to do about it? There's a saying: when you enter a kingdom, follow its laws. I'm basically a walking one-woman state, so I am the law."

She had the force and the standing to genuinely be treated as a state in her own right. Najin was about to nod in agreement when Yuel snorted.

"I'm joking. Anyway, it's good to see your face after so long. Come around more often. I never thought that was what Dieta meant when she said, 'You'll get used to it. That's just who he is.'"

Haa. She let out a sigh and stood.

"Let's walk. We'll have plenty to talk about."

2.

Razian is the executioner of the Sacred Blood Church.

For the past several decades she had served in that role, acting as the church's asymmetric force. That had not changed, but...

When the personality of the Warden of the Sealed City emerged within her, a few things shifted.

One was that she gained a standard of judgment. The other was a restraint that held her back whenever she felt the urge to kill. She still executed those who broke the law, as before, but Yuel had a flexibility that Razian simply hadn't possessed.

"You broke the law, but you're a petty criminal. An impulsive act. If you do it again, I'll have your head,but for now, losing an arm will do."

"Wouldn't killing be easier and simpler?"

"Simpler, yes. But if you always take the easy route, society becomes a harsh place. This isn't the Sealed City. No need to live that bleakly."

Yuel had governed a domain and served as a judge for many years. She took over the evaluation of criminals on Razian's behalf and weighed the gravity of their offenses. The scale that had only ever measured innocent or guilty now had counterweights.

"This one's trying to talk his way out of it."

"Is he?"

"He's heard that you're reasonable now, that you handle things with flexibility, and he's opening his mouth to smooth this over."

"I see."

"I've dealt with types like this more than once or twice. Conversation happens between people,not with vermin like this."

"Then what do we do?"

"Do what you do best."

Naturally, quite a few brazen criminals tried feeding sob stories to the executioner after hearing she had grown more approachable, hoping to wriggle out of their situations. They met the executioner's merciless blade instead.

In any case, the Sacred Blood Church had received her change very positively.

The High Priest was pleased that Yuel was easy to talk to, and the church's patron deity, the Martyr of Thorns, didn't much care as long as demons were being killed.

"That's more or less how things have been," Yuel said, shrugging as they walked.

"The High Priest is delighted that I'm finally someone he can hold a conversation with, and when the patron deity saw me, he didn't say much. Asked me a few simple questions, nodded, then moved on with a 'become my apostle too.'"

"What did he ask?"

"Whether I hated demons. I said I did. He asked how much, so I told him they were vile bastards who go around tempting people, and he laughed and patted my shoulder."

Apostle, approved!

"Anyway, that's how I've been living. My goodness,the Continent got a lot better while I wasn't around, didn't it? In my day it was nothing but endless wars and chaos."

She had been walking at a leisurely pace when she stopped. Then she turned and looked back at Najin following behind her.

"I've roughly understood what you're telling me. You're going to hunt some absurdly dangerous dragon, right? And I understand that Razian is needed for that."

"It's not only Razian. You're needed too."

"Because I'm her other half?"

"That's part of it. But also because you're the Warden of the Sealed City."

Yuel had already heard Najin's plan. She tilted her head for a moment, then smiled as if it clicked.

"Ah, I see. So I'm a 'representative' as well?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Well, if that's what it is."

She breathed out slowly and nodded.

"I have no objection to joining you, of course. Hearing that it's a dangerously lethal battlefield where we might die doesn't stir much in me. Razian objecting would be another matter, but I have no reason to refuse."

Because.

"You've risked your life for me, again and again."

She gave a small smile.

"After everything you've done for me, how could I just shut my mouth and look the other way now? Legally speaking that won't do, and morally speaking it won't do either."

"You don't need to worry about things like that."

"No, I will."

One step. She moved toward Najin.

"If you say let's go, I'll go. The way you somehow managed to stay by my side when I asked you to be there... I'll do the same."

No objections. If he said go, she would go. That had been decided before she ever sat down to speak with Najin. So why had she seized control of the body and come to negotiate, acting as though she had complaints?

Tap.

As if to get to that reason, she closed the distance until she was right in front of him. She stopped there and reached out. White fingers brushed the hem of his coat.

"The thing is."

Past the free knight's coat, slipping inside.

"I don't have many desires. No real appetite for material things or power. There isn't much I want. Scholars tend to be that way. You have to find satisfaction in living lean, or you won't last long as one."

She tapped his shirt with a fingernail.

"Precisely because there's so little I want."

Tracing the button of his shirt with her nail, she looked up at him.

"When something does catch my desire, I want to possess it entirely. To hold it completely in my hands."

Any fool could understand what she was talking about. Najin was still working out what to say when Yuel smiled softly and shook her head.

"Oh, you don't have to answer. I know the situation. And in terms of order, it seems I'd be last anyway. I'm not shameless enough to tell people who are already there to clear out."

She let out a breath.

"This is just who you are. What can anyone do about it? I liked you because you're that kind of person, and liking you knowing all that just makes me the fool. And the one who went and charmed a fool like me is a madman."

Najin had enough sense to keep his mouth shut rather than say he had never charmed anyone. Staying quietly still, he watched as Yuel gave a small laugh and moved her fingers.

Up along the buttons.

She touched the collar where it met the back of his neck, tapping it lightly with her fingertips, eyes going half-lidded.

"The one who wants less has to be the one who gives ground, doesn't it? I'll give up on having you all to myself. If I tried that, I don't think the two women by your side would stay quiet about it."

She would step back one step.

That one step back, she took, then stopped. As if she had no intention of retreating any further.

"That's as far as I go."

Yuel grabbed Najin by the collar.

"I'm making a very large concession here. If one side refuses to give any ground and insists on having everything, there will be consequences. Understood?"

A smile,but behind it, a sharp-edged warning. That warning was not aimed at Najin. It was directed at a certain fairy who would have been listening to every word of this conversation.

"If you're curious just how far I can go and how much trouble I'm willing to cause, feel free to find out."

Yuel let go of Najin's collar.

"As I said once before."

I am, after all, quite a troublesome woman.

......Warden Yuel has joined the party.

3.

"That's more or less what happened."

"Ha ha ha ha! You really do live a dangerous life, don't you. Well, that's how it is with heroes. Whether you intend to or not, the things you're responsible for just keep piling up. What you'd call karma, I suppose."

"I didn't intend to accumulate any of it, but..."

"That's the thing,it piles up whether you mean it to or not. I wouldn't have expected it from you, but you're living up to your looks, aren't you? Then again, with a face like that, the fact that it's only this much is already quite restrained."

He stroked his beard and laughed openly.

"So, you're going to do it now?"

"That's the plan."

"My, my. Already? It feels like just the other day you came to the Abyss, and in that short stretch you managed to stir things up quite noisily."

He looked around as he spoke.

"Two of the Abyss's Horsemen have fallen, the witches have been buried..."

"Not in the ground. In water. A lake."

"Ah, right, right. Anyway, the witches are buried, and even that monstrous man has been brought down..."

He exhaled as if he couldn't quite believe it.

"Honestly, even having heard it and seen it, I find it hard to accept. How exactly did you beat Siegfried? He was,and I say this not without some hesitation,a truly monstrous man."

Najin agreed. Siegfried had been more dangerous than any opponent he had faced. That last time Siegfried rose again, even Najin had been shaken.

"Two remain, then."

"So it seems."

"The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay."

And.

"The apostle of death, Leviathan, and..."

He pointed at himself.

"The immortal king, Leviathan. That would be me."

"Doesn't that make three?"

"I appreciate you counting me and Leviathan separately, but I'll pass. We're essentially the same thing."

Leviathan gave a small laugh.

"You came to find me before the hunt. That means you have something to ask. You didn't come simply to announce that you're coming for me."

Najin nodded.

"You said once that you had challenged the witch."

"That's right. I did. Failed, but."

"You challenged the witch ten thousand years ago, and as far as I know you're the person with the oldest knowledge of history."

"That would be right. Call me a walking history book if you like! I don't know much about the Continent or the Outland, but everything that happened in the Abyss, I've witnessed."

A brief pause.

"Then let me ask you something."

Najin looked directly at Leviathan.

"The Witch of the Abyss. What exactly is she?"

"That's quite a philosophical question. If you ask it like that, I can only answer philosophically. I assume you don't want to hear something like she's an inescapable calamity, or she's death itself, or she's the underworld."

Najin thought for a moment, then spoke.

"Is the witch a Constellation, or is she a god?"

"Oh."

Leviathan smiled.

"Now that's a sharp question."

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