WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 463

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ep.0

The Witch of the Abyss was nailed to hell.

Now the witch could hear nothing. She could not see, could not feel, could not even draw breath. Ordinary humans call this state death, but that is a concept that applies only to humans.

The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay.

She was a Transcendent in the truest sense, a god born from the wishes of humanity's earliest ancestors. Death was not a concept permitted to her. And so, even skewered by thirteen stakes, she remained alive.

"Aah."

Arthur had known the witch could not be killed. She had known, too, that she would lose to her. Because she knew, she was certain.

This was the right answer.

'This is the best path.'

Even in defeat, she would not go down alone. She would grab hold and drag herself along, ugly and graceless, clinging to the witch's ankles. Arthur didn't fully understand what meaning lay in that ugly struggle.

"......"

She slowly pushed herself upright. Blood poured from her body. Excalibur, having spent all its starlight, no longer healed her wounds. Likewise, Arthur's body, which had burned even its own life away, would not recover.

She had drawn out the stars that should have protected her body.

She had forged the soul that should have dwelled within her into the stakes.

What remained of Arthur now was a handful of ash. The last embers clinging to the residue of everything she had burned would gutter out at any moment. Gathering that ash and fanning the dying flame, Arthur forced her body to move.

'Slow.'

Even a single step was an effort. A distance she could have covered in one stride at her best now took dozens, hundreds of steps.

"......"

Perhaps it was because she moved more slowly than usual. She had always sprinted forward with her eyes fixed straight ahead, but now, with death closing in, she found herself looking up at the sky without thinking.

"Ah."

And then she laughed.

She couldn't help it. She had seen with her own eyes what she had managed to do.

The darkness that had draped over the sky was lifting.

The sky of the Abyss was still dark, but it was only the Abyss that was dark. The witch's darkness that had blanketed the entire world was being slowly pushed back. The sky over the Outland had grown just a little brighter, and though she couldn't see it from here, the sky over the Continent was surely turning blue.

What was there, where the darkness had been pushed away?

Stars.

The night sky was full of them. The stars of the heroes who had risen up with Arthur at their head. Counting the stars, Arthur stretched her hand toward the sky. The sky she was thinking of now was the sky of the past.

The sky from when she had just begun her journey.

Back then, the sky held nothing but darkness. The Crimson Blight Star stirred ominously and looked down on humanity. Beneath that dark red sky, people did not dare look up. They could not dream of tomorrow. They could not speak of a life worth living.

But now......

What was the sky like now? Stars hung there. A sky filled with stars was beautiful. Looking up at them would not bring a curse down on a person's head. The stars did not punish those who dared to look. If anything, they shone more brightly, wanting to be remembered for their stories.

"......"

Right in the middle of those stars, at the highest point of all, Arthur's star was shining. Those stars were empty shells, of course. The Authority that should have filled them was being spent to bind the witch.

'It isn't falling.'

Only the shell should have been left, yet Arthur's star refused to descend. Turning the question over, Arthur found the answer quickly.

"So it's you."

The Star of Idol shone in the sky. It was the fragment of her star she had left behind on the Continent. She was still the idol of countless people, something close to a symbol of hope. A great many humans on the Continent still worshipped Arthur.

What filled the hollow inside her star was wishes.

The wishes of untold numbers of people were holding Arthur's star up, keeping it from falling. An idol must not descend. There was no need to do anything special. Shining there was enough. That alone fulfilled the role.

A small, quiet laugh, and Arthur took a step.

Feeling death drawing near, she stepped lightly, and even as blood poured from her wounds she smiled. She walked for a long time like that, and when she finally emerged from the pit of the Abyss, she leaned her back against a boulder and sat down.

Here would do.

Now she only had to wait for Mordred to come. She didn't know when he would arrive, but it wouldn't take long. The same was true of the time she had left.

"......"

In that brief remaining time, Arthur looked out at the world.

The age of myth, when the Witch of the Abyss ran rampant as a god, was fading. The age of chaos, when demons and the dead invaded the Continent, was fading too. Camlann and the Outland had been separated, and the Outland and the Continent had been separated as well.

The age had changed.

It had changed, and it would continue to change.

At the turning point where one age met its final curtain and a new one began, Arthur smiled. What would the age to come look like? She didn't know. No one could know. It would be an age that not even the Witch of the Abyss, not Arthur, not Merlin, not any prophet had anticipated.

If that was so, then as the one who had opened that age, she ought to give it a name. She didn't deliberate long. The name had been decided from the start.

"The Age of Man."

Murmuring the words, Arthur reached out her hand. Just like the boy she had once seen in a vision of the future, reaching toward the sky, she reached out too. She raised only her middle finger and grinned.

She was a contrarian at heart.

True to that nature, Arthur had carved out her own life by her own will, and she alone had been its master. At least in her final moment, she had thrown off every fetter.

"Are you watching?"

She spoke.

"You're watching, aren't you, you little runt."

You'll tell people I was a child of fortune. You'll have the audacity to say you'll climb higher than me. Then you'll have to take responsibility for those words. With a touch of spite and a voice full of joy, Arthur called out.

"Go on and try to surpass me."

It won't be easy, boy.

2.

Time in the Abyss had stopped, but.

Only the Abyss had stopped.

"......Why."

"Why did you finish it alone, on your own terms, without a single word? You could have told me."

Time flows on. Even after Arthur's death, time moved steadily forward. Standing before the fractured Round Table, Merlin ground her teeth. She wept and resented Arthur, though she could not bring herself to hate her. She spewed out emotions that had nowhere to go and raged.

Countless demons and witches fell.

The Star of Endings rose in the sky, but through some series of events Merlin separated herself from it. She stood watch over the Binding Seal, waiting for a distant future whose coming she could not know.

"This is where I belong."

"There's still a promise I haven't kept."

Siegfried remained in the Abyss. He swung his sword again and again, guarding everything Arthur had left behind.

"You have gone, my king."

"I hope you achieved what you wished for."

Bedivere, having returned Excalibur, quietly kept watch over the Round Table. Imagining a future where a new king would appear.

"My king, I......"

Mordred struggled. He was tormented by the fact that he had killed his own liege and blamed himself for it, but in the end he sealed his lips.

"Is this your plan?"

"If this fragile sandcastle, the kind that crumbles when the waves come, is the future you wished for, then I will build the walls."

"What comes after your failure."

"And hoping that you do not fail."

Lancelot built walls. By raising a wall made of bodies and memories, he reinforced Arthur's plan.

"If that is what my liege chose."

"If that is what you wished for."

"Then I."

"Personally, I."

"I."

"Your humble servant will honor that wish."

The Knights of the Round Table gave their lives. Each offered their star to the constellation of the Round Table, then closed their eyes.

"Aah."

And so time flowed on. At the end of that long stretch, peace arrived. Now that no one had to fear the witch any longer, human civilization began slowly advancing forward.

"I am Icarus!"

"The freest adventurer in the world."

Following in Arthur's wake, a star appeared. At the end of his journey he fell, but he had expanded the stage of humanity into the sky. He showed how far a person could fly, and laid the groundwork for flight magic that would carry on for generations.

"The age has changed, my dear subjects."

"We cannot follow the old laws forever. The age when great Arthur and the heroes held sway is over. We must adapt to the changed times."

"In honor of Argebtz."

"Effective today, I put forward the Argebtz Special Act."

Kalitz Pendragon, the fourth emperor of the Empire, revised the laws to match the times. He made it mandatory to report the appearance of warriors at the level of Sword Seeker and above, and extensively rewrote the laws that had been made in an era when strength was law.

As the age changed, so did the law.

A changed world required changed laws. Institutions were established and law drew its fences. Under clear regulation, humanity advanced more rapidly.

"Kill the demons."

"Those of you who despise demons are my friends and my comrades in arms. I grant you my strength."

People rose up to hunt the demons invading the Continent. The order that had been training inquisitors and the bands of demon hunters joined together, and the Sacred Blood Church was born. They pacified the chaos on the Continent by slaying demons.

"We need an educational institution for mages."

"They must learn."

"Before becoming mages, they first have to become human beings, don't they? A mage can easily fall into the thinking that being able to use magic makes them different from other people. That is the danger."

"I will build it."

"An educational institution for mages. A Mage Tower."

Someone built a Mage Tower. They educated mages and, drawing on the magical framework Merlin had built, laid the groundwork for learning it more accessibly.

"What do we call this?"

"A workshop."

"A workshop for alchemists."

Imitating the Mage Tower, workshops for alchemists appeared. Similar educational institutions took shape one by one. Large and small problems arose, but given enough time, they were resolved.

"I intend to build an academic city."

"Children must learn!"

"Learning should not be a privilege granted only to the special few. The opportunity to study must be open to everyone. Instead of blaming children for the mistakes they make, we should look at the circumstances that left them no choice but to make those mistakes."

"The city's name will be Arcana."

"Will you join me in my dream, everyone?"

Someone dreamed a beautiful dream and built an academic city. Because of that city, many scholars were born. Those scholars went on to establish their own institutions, spreading knowledge and contributing to the advancement of scholarship.

Countless civilizations rose and fell in turn. Countless theories were proposed and proven in turn. Through that process, humanity advanced slowly forward. Technology developed, ideas developed, morality took root, and humanity began to achieve things worth calling civilization.

From time to time war broke out, and people killed and were killed.

But when the fires died down, laws were made. To ensure such tragedies were never repeated, humanity used the past as a lesson and made gradual corrections.

"I will open the way."

Every so often, extraordinary individuals appeared in the world, geniuses, people worthy of being called heroes, and pointed humanity in the broad directions it needed to go. What they burned their lives to accomplish passed on to those who came after. Humanity cultivated the ground those pioneers had broken and made it firm.

Forward, and forward again.

Time flowed without end. Time in the Abyss had stopped, but time in the Outland had not. The same was true of time on the Continent. Everything changed as time passed, but there were also things that did not change.

"This is the trial of the Sword of Selection."

Excalibur, appearing once every thirteen years, was one of them.

"Draw the sword."

The Sword of Selection gave everyone the right to challenge it, but no one could draw the blade. Because the sword could not be drawn, the story that had stopped a thousand years ago could not begin.

Ten years passed. A hundred years.

Hundreds of years went by.

"You, what's your name?"

"Najin."

"So that's how it is."

One day, after a thousand years had flowed past.

"How about coming under my wing? I'll make sure you eat and have a place to sleep. Pretty good terms, if you ask me."

"Letters."

"What?"

"Teach me to read too."

"Ha ha ha ha ha! Look at this kid. Fine, I can manage that much. First I'd better find something you can actually read, let's see... this one should do."

A boy born in a place with no stars encountered a star.

"What's it about?"

"What do you think? The story of the greatest knight in the world."

"How do you read the title?"

"Chronicles of Arthur."

The boy turned the first page of the Chronicles of Arthur.

Tick.

As human civilization advanced, the clock of someone who had long stood still began to move again.

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