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Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 462

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Arthurian Legend (5)

On the day she faced Excalibur, Arthur saw it.

The end waiting for her.

She saw the ruin that lay in store. Even if she gathered the most beautiful things the world had to offer and used them to challenge the witch, she would lose. Swallowed by the Witch of the Abyss, she would sacrifice her own life to buy humanity a brief stay of execution.

"A scapegoat."

She was to be the sacrificial vessel, dying on behalf of all humankind.

"The moment I draw this sword."

The future she had seen would be fixed in place. She would live a life fate had forced upon her, dancing until her body shattered, a puppet on fate's strings, just as the Fatalists she despised above all things had always preached.

She knew this.

She had seen that future.

And Arthur drew Excalibur anyway. She accepted the fate pointing toward ruin. As the heroes before her had done, she had seen the future, and she could not look away from the eyes of a boy far in that distant future, gazing up at the sky.

"Keep watching the sky."

"Watch the sky, boy."

On that day she chose the road she would walk. Even if fate had laid the path before her, the decision to walk it was Arthur's own will.

"The stars will rise."

Someday she would fall, but let her fly as high as she could first. Let her hang her star in the very middle of that sky. Let her become the most brilliantly blooming flower of anyone, that was what she decided.

Drip. Drip.

And so, right now.

"Kuh, hk."

She met the ruin that had been waiting for her. Ruin wore the shape of a woman. Arthur knelt before the witch, who was wreathed in dark crimson shadow, blood streaming ceaselessly from her eyes and nose.

Splat.

It pooled where it fell. The price of facing a being she should never have looked upon, of raising her sword against one she should never have dared oppose. Spitting blood, Arthur lifted her head.

"......"

The witch stood there, looking down at Arthur in silence. She was a ruler who mocked all things in the world and ground them beneath her feet, yet in this single moment she did not mock Arthur. She only watched her with expressionless eyes.

"Child, let me ask you something."

As if she could not comprehend it.

"Why do you challenge me when you know you will lose?"

"......"

"You are not the first. Before you, before them, going back to the very beginning, those who have gripped that sword have always come to challenge me. I thought well of you all, so I showed those who drew the sword the future, hoping they would stop, and yet they always did it anyway."

The most terrible death awaits. A life of nothing but ruin. Even so, those who drew Excalibur had always challenged her. The witch questioned Arthur as though she genuinely could not understand why.

"Is there any meaning in your death?"

She asked as Arthur rose again.

"Is there value in a death no one will remember, in giving a world destined for destruction a brief postponement, in any of this? I cannot understand why you would stake your life on something so worthless."

The witch whispered.

"Do you remember the heroes who came before you? You wouldn't. You don't even know they existed. Do you think you'll be any different? You won't, child. You will be the same."

"I wonder."

Arthur stood and leveled her sword at the witch.

"It seems too soon to say that."

The tip of Arthur's blade was aimed at the witch's throat. The witch raised her hand and touched her own neck. Blood came away on her fingertips. Her eyes went wide, and then she burst out laughing.

"Yes. That was a poor choice of words."

The witch made a gesture. The darkness blanketing the whole world rippled around them, and she looked directly at Arthur.

"You are not the same as them."

Go ahead and dance until your body breaks.

I will keep you company until you crumble.

2.

Arthur Pendragon is strong.

Stronger than any hero humanity had ever produced. Not simply because no records from before her exist, but because even the Witch of the Abyss, who had witnessed every age, found her strength astonishing.

Throughout the tens of thousands of years gone by.

Setting aside the moments just before her birth, the only one who had ever wounded the Witch of the Abyss was the Mortal King, Leviathan. Even he had only made her bleed by uniting the living creatures of the entire Continent against her, not by standing alone.

Yet Arthur was challenging the witch alone.

Borrowing the strength of no one, holding nothing but a single sword, she stood against the witch.

She fell, tumbled across the ground, vomited blood, and still did not stop rising. In that darkness where not a sliver of light crept through, Arthur swung her sword without pause. She became the light herself and cut through the dark.

Pierced. Burned. Crushed. Broken.

Boom.

Each time she was about to topple, she would stamp her feet and force herself upright. Eyes fixed on the witch, she took one step toward her, then another. Watching her, the witch could no longer hold back a laugh.

"Remarkable."

Blood flowed.

"Truly remarkable."

Blood flowed from the witch, and from Arthur both.

"Every so often, children like you are born into the world. Beings that cannot be imagined or predicted. They produce miracles, just as you are doing right now."

Yet the difference in the blood being shed was plain.

"But it is not enough."

To draw so much as a single drop of blood from the witch, Arthur had to spill enough to pool on the ground. The witch's wounds were closing; Arthur's were not.

"Nowhere near enough."

The witch took a step forward. The starlight that had bloomed faintly in the darkness was swallowed by the dark and crushed to nothing. Watching a human resist the ruin closing in on her, the witch laughed as if she could wash the world away.

"I have watched your life. You who carried an age forward, hung the first star in a sky hidden by darkness, and gathered countless heroes to reclaim the lands of humanity."

The Witch of the Abyss is a being who feeds on stories.

"It was a beautiful story. Your life has value. Not a soul in the world will remember it, but I will remember your life. For eternity."

Countless hands seized Arthur. The moment they began dragging her into the darkness, the starlight that had died away erupted in a blinding flash. Cracks ran through Arthur's stars.

Starlight made by burning stars.

Using the flash that burst from a star on the verge of shattering as her torch, Arthur looked ahead. In the face of the death bearing down on her, she resisted. Knowing her own death was coming, she still did not stop.

She knew.

She knew she could not defeat the witch.

She had always known.

She had also known this end was waiting for her. Even knowing she would live a life bound by predetermined fate, Arthur had deliberately chosen this road. The things she hated most, the things that filled her with revulsion, she had borne them willingly.

If she had borne such a life willingly.

There had to be a reason for that endurance.

Arthur's lips curved up. She swung her sword and swept the darkness back. The momentum shifted, and surprise flickered across the Witch of the Abyss's eyes.

She had been forced into a destiny.

She had forced choices on her companions.

She had broken them, and been broken herself.

She had betrayed her companions' faith, broken her promise to Merlin, and used even their convictions as tools for a single purpose. Divided as it had become, the Round Table would ultimately move to fulfill her wish.

And at the end of all that, she stood here.

She had sacrificed countless things, and in the end sacrificed herself, to stand here. Because there was something that could only be achieved that way. For a single purpose, Arthur had thrown away her own life and everything around her.

"Child, no......"

The witch let out a laugh.

"You're mad, aren't you?"

"You couldn't get here without being mad."

Using her own stars as firewood, Arthur lit a blaze.

Consuming her lifespan, her soul, her very existence, the fire only grew. A brilliant starlight that even the darkness of the Abyss could not smother drove the dark back.

Boom.

Through the agony of her soul and body burning away, Arthur moved her feet. She challenged the Witch of the Abyss.

And so the battle continued.

In a darkness where even a single instant felt like an eternity, Arthur swung her sword.

One day, then two, then three.

Pressing toward the witch, Arthur smiled.

She knew.

She had already known she would not win. She knew that fate too, the fate that said she would lose. She had tried again and again to find a way to change it, and remembered that every one of those attempts had failed.

So had that trying been worthless?

No. Of course not.

The outcome would not change. The future in which she lost to the Witch of the Abyss would come true without fail, it was something close to a prophecy. But the path leading to that outcome, that she could change as much as she liked.

And...

The interpretation of that outcome could be changed too.

Four days, five, six.

What came to Arthur's mind was her conversation with Merlin. When she had asked Merlin about the prophecy, Merlin had told her about a wager between a demon and a knight.

"The knight lost to the demon."

"But the demon could not win against the knight either."

The prophecy that the knight would lose to the demon had not changed. Only, the demon had not won against the knight. Recalling that story, Arthur smiled.

"Witch of the Abyss."

Boom.

"You said it. That I would lose. That I could never win. That is what you said."

Seven days. Seven.

"Yes, it happened just as you said. I lost. I couldn't beat you. But..."

Arthur stood before the Witch of the Abyss at last, and smiled.

"Did you think I would lose alone?"

She laughed like a mischievous child and drove her foot down.

Clenched in her hand was a shining star.

...She was a born rebel.

If fate had forced some particular life upon her, she was exactly the kind of person who would raise her middle finger at fate no matter what.

"Can't have that."

She drove her star into the witch.

As if to say: go on, swallow it if you can.

Crack.

Arthur's star drove into the witch's heart.

3.

Arthur had driven her star into the witch.

She gripped it like a stake and began nailing it into the Witch of the Abyss. What she held were thirteen stars, thirteen nails, each filled with her own soul.

Crack.

Starting from Morgan's heart, into her arms and hands, her legs and feet, her head, across her entire body, Arthur drove her own life in one by one.

"Aha-ah ha ha ha ha ha!"

Watching Arthur nail into her body, the witch burst out laughing. This was a method she had never imagined; confronted with a future even she, who foresaw so much, had not foreseen, the witch howled with laughter.

Because she understood the plan Arthur had prepared.

Because she understood more deeply than anyone what Arthur had resolved to do, the witch could only laugh. A witch is ultimately the same thing as the Abyss itself. Nailing the witch here meant nailing the Abyss in place, fixing it there.

And that meant.

"Is this your way of asking me to fight you forever?"

As she was being nailed, the witch reached out toward Arthur. She touched the blood-matted platinum hair and smiled. The stakes driven into her body were, in the end, Arthur's own soul. Arthur had split her soul into thirteen pieces and nailed the witch down.

For this seal to hold.

Arthur's soul had to withstand the witch's darkness gnawing at it, endure without crumbling.

"Your soul, your stars, until every last one has crumbled away without a trace, you intend to fight me forever in this land where time does not flow?"

She's mad. No one could do this without being mad.

"This is hell, child. You won't be able to bear it."

"Probably not."

"Someday you will crumble. Very slowly, little by little. Even burning to death would be less painful than this. Can you endure the most terrible pain the world holds, the pain of being eaten away piece by piece?"

"A fitting punishment for someone who deceived her companions."

"How long do you intend to hold out?"

"For as long as it takes."

A deadlock. The moment the witch moved, Arthur's star fixed at the center of the Blight Star would tear the Blight Star apart. The reverse was equally true. The moment Arthur moved, her own soul would be torn apart by the Blight Star.

Neither side could move.

A stalemate.

If she was going to lose regardless, she would make sure the witch could not win either. With that single-minded resolve, Arthur had made her move, and the witch was impressed. A god applauded the tenacity of a human.

"Very well. Do as you wish. But you seem to have forgotten one thing, unlike me, you are human."

Unlike a god who can endure eternity.

A human soul cannot endure forever.

"You could hold out a hundred years, perhaps. Five hundred, if it's you. But a thousand? Could you still hold on after a thousand years had passed?"

Both Arthur and the witch knew the answer. She could not. Someday, after a thousand years had gone by, the witch would be freed. And in that age, Arthur would no longer exist.

"You are foolish, child."

The witch spoke with what seemed like genuine pity.

"You are a miracle this world produced. Looking back across tens of thousands of years, there has been no one like you. Across the entire history of this land, you are the only one who has ever pushed me this far, the only one who has ever had the possibility of killing me."

A possibility that had taken tens of thousands of years to appear.

"If someone like you dies, who will kill me? You don't think the seal will last forever, do you? At most, a thousand years."

A thousand years, a long time to some.

"A mere thousand years."

To the Witch of the Abyss, it was nothing more than a mere thousand years.

To one who had been calling for the world's destruction since tens of thousands of years ago, a thousand years was not so long at all.

"What do you intend to do after a thousand years?"

Even in her eyes, having lived since the most distant beginning, Arthur was something special. Because in all those tens of thousands of years, nothing like Arthur had ever appeared before.

The countless knights she had driven forward.

The many heroes Arthur had drawn out.

All the heroes of this age had gathered because Arthur existed, and had been born because Arthur existed. And if that center were lost? A thousand years would fall pitifully short. This had been the last chance the world had offered humanity.

"You have thrown it away."

A chance that would never come again. The chance that had appeared after tens of thousands of years of waiting had ended up buying nothing more than a thousand years. The witch sneered at that, but...

"What a ridiculous thing to say."

Arthur sneered right back.

"That is why you are foolish, Morgan."

Even as she crumbled, she smiled.

"The last chance the world gave humanity? Ridiculous. Humanity has never once received a chance from the world. We only ever seized it with our own hands."

She cried out.

"The age of myth when you, a god, ran rampant, the age of chaos when witches, demons, and dragons ran rampant, those ages are ending. By my hands, no one else's. This chaotic age has met its final curtain."

The most radiant star falls.

Among the falling stars, Arthur smiled.

"This is the age of man now."

The Outland and the Continent had been separated.

The dead would not be able to cross the Boundary Line.

Camlann had been sealed by Arthur.

The witch and the cursed ones could not encroach upon the Outland.

"Do not think the thousand years ahead will be the same as your stagnant tens of thousands, Morgan le Fay."

Arthur said.

"Humanity has lost its center, you said? You don't know what you're talking about. Humanity no longer needs a center like me. There are already waymarkers in that sky for them."

A sky full of countless shining stars.

The stars of the heroes who had been drawn to Arthur's star, who had followed in Arthur's wake, now filled the heavens.

"The sky is no longer dark. Stars shine across it in abundance. And stars are waymarkers-waymarkers for the countless heroes yet to be born."

As Arthur had done, as Atanga had done.

"Those who long for the stars, who are captivated by their light, who dream of becoming one, they will appear without end. And among them, there will surely come a blade that reaches you."

Losing every star, dying, Arthur smiled.

"Wait for it, Witch of the Abyss."

The flower who had climbed to the highest place knowing she would someday fall, who had bloomed most brilliantly knowing she would someday fade, smiled with complete satisfaction.

"Humanity will reach you, without fail."

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