WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 461

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Arthurian Legend (4)

A flower bloomed in the Abyss.

A red flower.

The cursed land of the Abyss cannot bring life into being. By that logic, no flower should ever bloom there. Yet one did. Coincidence stacked upon coincidence. Something close to a miracle.

And yet.

The flower was fading even as it bloomed. The Abyss is a land where all things fall, and a freshly opened bud was no exception. She watched the petals come loose and drift down.

"......"

There was far to go. She had no time to sit and admire a flower. Even so, she stood there for a long while, staring at it.

Arthur held the red flower in her gaze.

Knowing it would fall tomorrow, the flower still bloomed today. Petal by petal it lost its color, rotting and crumbling away, but while it bloomed it was more beautiful than anything. Arthur stood in that spot until the flower was gone.

No red flower lasts ten days.

All things wither in the end.

"Still, nothing blooms more beautifully."

Because it knows it will fall. Because it knows it will fade before long. That is precisely why the red flower blooms so beautifully. Hoping someone will look at it. Wanting to be held in someone's eyes.

The red flower bloomed beautifully.

Arthur smiled without a word and walked on.

Now it was her turn to become a flower.

2.

Atanga had hidden Arthur's body.

With Atanga defeated, there had been an opportunity to confirm the body's location, but Najin had put that off once. For no particular reason, really.

'After bringing down Siegfried.'

It just felt right to him, meeting her only after he had defeated every enemy Arthur herself had been unable to. So with Siegfried gone and only the Dragon of the Abyss and the Witch remaining, Najin judged this the proper time.

Countless puzzle pieces, shattered into fragments.

The time had come to place the final piece.

"Should be around here somewhere."

He had been following the path revealed by Atanga's death. Now Najin stopped walking. The footprints had run out.

"The trail ends here."

"It doesn't end. Looks like it was hidden. To keep the vermin from finding it."

The vermin Merlin meant were witches. Even while the Witch of the Abyss had been sealed, other witches had been creeping around, poking into this place and that.

"Can you take out Excalibur?"

Najin did as she said. When he drew Excalibur, Merlin tapped the flat of the blade with her finger. She tapped the spot on Excalibur's outer edge where the Star of Idol sat, among the thirteen stars engraved there, and kept at it for a moment.

Glimmer.

Starlight bloomed. It pointed down at the ground below. Merlin gestured downward, and Najin nodded and began to dig. The land, turned to wasteland by the Authority of Famine, crumbled apart like sand under his hands.

Fsssh......

He dug. At some point his hands touched something solid, and sand came pouring down through the gap. There was a space below, a round hollow, a tunnel of no great size.

"......"

Najin went silent the moment he dropped underground. He had no choice. Flowers were blooming down there. How? The Abyss was cursed land, and cursed land could not grow flowers.

"I think I understand."

Merlin had followed him down and seemed surprised as well, but after glancing around she spoke.

"It looks like he found this space first and then spread the Authority of Famine over the top of it. Sand over the entrance, the horseman of Famine pacing around above, not hard to see why no witches or demon beasts would ever find it."

Atanga had wandered above this place to keep it hidden. No need to ask what could be worth all that.

Red flowers bloomed in full glory underground.

The body laid to rest at their center answered the question.

"Here you are."

Merlin's eyes went still.

"Arthur."

She was there, in the heart of the flowers.

The great hero, Arthur.

She was sitting with her back against a small gravestone. What caught the eye first was platinum hair that fell to her waist, and after that came the clothes stained red.

Clothes and armor soaked in blood.

The armor that had once been the symbol of the Knight King was shattered, and what lay beneath it was no different. The marks of a fierce battle remained exactly as they had been left. Broken, pierced, torn, burnt, scar upon scar.

"......"

Merlin pressed her lips together tightly.

Arthur had faced Morgan alone, and in the end she had succeeded in sealing her, but she had not been able to escape death herself. That much Merlin had already known.

Only.

She had not known how Arthur met her death. She had never seen Arthur dying with her own eyes. Now she knew. The body before her and the scars left on it told her whether she wanted to know or not.

"You didn't die right away, did you."

She would have gone somewhere with those wounds still open. Not collapsed and bled out where she stood, but moved while bleeding. The wounds torn open and left to fester proved it.

"You kept moving. Must have walked a long way."

Because she could not die at the hands of the Witch.

"Until she reached Mordred."

Merlin crouched and looked at Arthur's body. The scar over her heart was a sword mark, the trace of a blade run through.

Witches do not use swords.

The final blow that ended Arthur's life as the Blight Star ate her away had not been the Witch's work. It had been Mordred's sword. Refusing to leave behind a story where humanity's hero died at a witch's hands, she had driven her dying body across the Abyss.

Merlin imagined that moment and fell silent.

"......"

She had resented Arthur, but she could not keep doing so in front of her body. Standing before the remains of the dearest friend she had ever had, Merlin's shoulders shook.

"Najin."

"Yes."

"Go look. I'll stay here."

Najin was the only one who could glimpse Arthur's memories.

"Go and then tell me."

Merlin smiled, and it tasted bitter.

"How Arthur met her end."

Najin nodded and gripped Excalibur. The Star of Idol shone. The stars within Excalibur lit up and flooded the underground hollow with light.

Star resonates with star.

A handful of starlight had remained in Arthur's body. The faint remnant was drawn toward Excalibur's glow. Holding the resonating blade, Najin moved to the other side of the gravestone Arthur leaned against, sat with his back to it facing the opposite direction, and closed his eyes.

His consciousness sank.

Najin glimpsed Arthur's final memory.

3.

She had lived a brilliant life.

At least, that was how it would look to others.

'Someone who succeeded at everything, who lacked nothing as a hero, perfect, ideal.'

A life that could not have been more fitting as an idol for others. The Star of Idol she had been given proved as much. Looking back on her own life, Arthur found herself smiling without meaning to. She could not help it.

"I said I hated it most."

She had once told Siegfried. What joy could there be in a life spent running a road someone else had laid down? What appeal could a life of going wherever it was pointed hold? She despised, more than anyone, those who lived that way.

She had said that.

To Siegfried, or perhaps to herself.

'And I hated it more than anyone.'

Yet she had chosen exactly that. She had accepted the fate given to her. She was a fish caught on the hook of the future she had seen when she first stood before Excalibur.

'I saw all of it.'

What choices she would make, who she would meet, what adventures they would share, what farewells would come......

'All of it.'

The shape of herself betraying the trust of the comrades who followed her, herself making a cruel request of them, and even her own destruction, everything, Arthur had seen in advance.

Because that was the fate confirmed for her.

A story already decided cannot be changed.

No amount of struggle changes a fixed destiny.

The process might shift, but the outcome does not. It felt like being a puppet dancing on a stage where someone had written the beginning and the end in advance. What made it worse was that Arthur herself had accepted every one of those choices.

Even without having seen that future, she would have made the same ones. Because she had believed it was the right thing to do.

"I would have been better off not seeing it."

Arthur felt a deep weariness with her own life. At the same time, she could not deny that her life had been worthwhile.

Even knowing everything in advance.

Every moment she had given everything she had, and alongside her comrades she had pushed through battlefields with her life on the line. Knowing something and living it are simply different. The adventures shared with her comrades had been nothing less than joyful, even knowing how they would end.

The gap between the future she already knew and the future as it arrived.

The space between events that were certain to happen, the stories that filled that space, she had loved them without reservation. Drinking and talking with Merlin, adventures in Cambria, Siegfried saying ridiculous things to her face, the bets she had made with the Knights of the Round Table......

She smiled, remembering happy days.

If she could go back, she would pull Excalibur again.

She felt weariness, but no regret.

"......"

She smiled, and it tasted bitter. The time was drawing close. Galahad had the Holy Grail in his hands. Lancelot, who would go to find him, would realize her plan. From there, everything would fall apart.

It cannot be changed.

She knew it was a future that could not be changed.

Even if she stayed and explained everything herself, the future would not shift. The Round Table would fracture in the end, and might fracture even more terribly. Arthur did not want her comrades to die hating each other.

Better they blamed her.

Blame me, the one who deceived you.

With that wish, Arthur rose from her seat. The time had come. The joyful adventure was over. The moment she rose from the throne she felt how light her body was. She moved her arms and laughed without meaning to.

"Of course."

Because for this final part, there was no need to be an idol.

No need to perform the role of great hero.

No need to be the Knight King.

"So that was why."

Arthur walked, simply herself. She pushed aside Lancelot, who moved to block her path.

"You may blame me if you wish. But if you do, you will have to blame yourself as well. You were the one who chose me, knowing I would try to ruin your plan......"

"I think you've misunderstood something."

"What... do you mean......?"

"I don't blame you. I don't blame Mordred, or anyone else. Who would I even blame?"

Not once have I ever blamed any of you.

"I only ask that you carry on what comes next."

You will blame me for asking something cruel of you.

"You're leaving."

"So it seems."

"......"

"I leave the rest to you, Mordred."

"May you achieve what you desire."

She passed Mordred.

"Don't go."

"......"

"Don't go, Arthur. You promised. You said knights don't break their promises. You said clearly that if you went, you would go together, that you wouldn't leave anyone behind."

Merlin was calling to her. If she turned back now, Merlin would follow without a moment's hesitation. Arthur turned away from her. She had to remain in this age.

She walked, leaving her comrades behind.

"I am not your knight, Arthur."

To the very last.

"I have no reason anywhere to follow your orders. A request is another matter. So ask me."

To the very last, she left her back to that one who always did as he pleased.

Watching them grow distant, Arthur thought.

As expected, she was a wretched person. She forced cruel choices on those who had followed her, carried forward on the strength of some grand ideal. Even if they had chosen of their own will, Arthur did not deny that their choices were because of her.

Tap.

Sacrificing and being sacrificed, demanding.

Tap.

Breaking and being broken.

Tap.

Knowing the stage had a fixed beginning and end, Arthur had danced on it until her body gave out, and at last she stood before her.

"So you've come all this way, child."

Her enemy.

"You cannot know how long I waited for the day I would meet you. How much I longed for the day I could swallow your story. I was waiting for this very day."

"What a coincidence, Witch."

The moment she would throw off her own role.

"I was waiting for this day too."

The corner of Arthur's mouth curved up.

Not the great hero. Not the Knight King. Arthur, who had cast everything off, returned to where she had started. The rebel who had once raised a middle finger at a wretched world laughed.

No red flower lasts ten days.

Then.

This last bloom would be the most radiant of all.

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