WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 467

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Age of Man (4)

Najin blew the horn.

Buuuuu......

The sound of the horn pipe rang across the Boundary Line between the Abyss and the Outland, between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Constellations who had been trading words or readying themselves for battle turned their heads. Not one of them looked back. The sound was coming from ahead.

The very front.

The front line, at the throat of the Abyss.

Najin stood there. Whatever happened here today, whatever calamity came crashing down on this place, he would be the first to bleed. That was the resolve he had settled into his chest, and he blew the horn with it firm inside him.

Buuuu......

The voices faded. Only the resonance of the horn pipe filled the air. Listening to the echo travel the full circuit of the battlefield and return, Najin lowered the horn.

"......"

He turned around. With his back to the Abyss, he looked out at the stars gathered on this battlefield. Letting his gaze sweep across them, he could see countless Constellations assembled. Unlike the Abyss sunk in darkness, this place was full of starlight.

Representatives of the Swordsmen, representatives of each order, the Empire's representative, representatives of various nations, nations long since destroyed, knightly orders that had vanished into the back pages of history, mercenary bands, the Continent's greatest merchant guild, the Mage Tower, mages representing each school of thought...

Beyond those, an enormous number of other representatives had gathered here. Steeling themselves against fear, they had willingly stepped onto the most dangerous battlefield there was.

Constellations who had always shone proud in the heavens, gazing arrogantly down at the earth, now stood with their feet on the ground rather than in the sky. Fitting of the word hero, they looked back at Najin with their resolve hardened.

...They had not always been heroes.

Not everyone gathered here had lived a life worthy of that name. There were those who had done wrong things to protect themselves, and plenty who had cast aside their convictions and ideals when reality pressed hard enough.

But at the very least, there had been a time when each of them was a hero.

The start of that journey had been noble. That was why they were drawn to the light the Dawning Star made. The Dawning Star called to mind the Constellations' original selves, the brilliant people they had once been.

"Aah."

Their past selves, or perhaps their ideals, spoke.

The stars listened to Najin's words.

"The Dragon of the Abyss. A mythical monster. One that has existed for thousands of years and has never once been brought down."

The mountain range was moving. The movements of that colossal creature shook the earth with each step. The rumbling drew closer, and the stars swallowed dryly.

"That is what we have to face."

It would be a lie to say no one was afraid. There was no knowing how to fight it. The only comfort, if there was one, was that the being standing at the very front was the Dawning Star.

"Countless heroes have been shattered before that dreadful dragon. Countless civilizations have burned to a handful of ash before that monster, and over the past thousands of years humanity has lost, and lost again. How many lives were swallowed up and erased by it? There is no counting them."

No one here was ignorant of that fact. Had not even King Arthur and Siegfried failed to bring it down? Even so, Najin deliberately called up the dragon's fearsome reputation before the fight. Was he trying to frighten them on the eve of battle? Probably not.

"It is the very symbol of the old age. The past should be a stepping stone for the future, yet that beast has dared to become a wall blocking humanity's path."

Then what was to be done?

"Smash it."

Najin smiled.

"Smash it, shatter it, and trample it into a stepping stone."

Simple enough. The past had no right to block the road the present was walking, and it could not do so.

"There is no need to go on about how massive it is or how terrible it is and tremble. What is the point of praising the greatness of something that is going to fall here today? If you want to praise it, wait until you're haggling over the price of its hide."

Laughter spread through the Constellations. Just a little, but the tension broke. Cries of the beast is getting uppity, a brainless dragon dares, that thing doesn't even deserve to be called the Dragon of the Abyss rippled through the ranks.

Perhaps it was just a struggle to push past fear.

As those voices died down, Najin raised his hand. He thrust it high into the air, clenched it shut, and in that instant Excalibur was drawn from the empty sky. Brilliant starlight poured over the assembled stars, and Najin declared:

"Today, we win."

Nothing more needed to be said.

They would fight without retreating, and they would win.

That was enough.

2.

It was coming. The Dragon of the Abyss.

The beast crossed through the darkness of the Abyss.

What had looked from a distance like a great mountain range still looked like a mountain range up close. The difference was that where mountains should have had trees and boulders and heaped earth, there were black scales gleaming slick in the dark.

Chaarrrrrrr......

The sound of scales splitting apart and snapping back together rang out. Each time it moved, the ground lurched and soil erupted upward. Massive craters carved deep into the Abyss did nothing to slow the beast's advance, and the tallest trees were crushed flat beneath its body and ground to dust.

Kukugugugugung!

Every canyon in its path collapsed into level ground. Death is equal to all things. It compresses everything, equally and evenly. Nothing is left in the wake of death's march.

Emptiness, spreading wide.

Nothing, leaving no trace.

Scattering void in every direction, death advanced. Watching that march, one of the stars said in a voice tight with dread:

"Dragons are supposed to be rulers of the sky, and yet the first dragon, the greatest of them all, crawls along the ground."

True enough. Dragons are rulers of the sky by nature, arrogant beings that soar the heavens and look down on everything below. Yet the ruler of those rulers was crawling? Someone tried to laugh at it, but even forcing the corners of a mouth upward produced nothing.

It crushed everything beneath it without ever needing to fly.

How could mere humans laugh in the face of death? No one had any chance of winning against it, and if the Dawning Star had not been here, the stars would have fallen backward.

"Ah."

"Aah......"

"It's raising its-its head."

"It's lifting its head."

"Ah."

And the Dragon of the Abyss trembled.

The scales shook. Soil erupted skyward. Far in the distance a storm broke, and something pushed its head out through the tearing gale. That was not a figure of speech. Through the bursting clouds of earth, the Dragon of the Abyss lifted its head.

The dragon rose.

The Dragon of the Abyss lacked the massive forelimbs and hind legs a dragon should have had. It had no wings to stir a storm. It was less like a lizard and more like a serpent, a serpent's body joined to a crocodile's head. The beast uncoiled itself.

The mountain range spread upward rather than sideways.

It rose. It kept rising. Without end it climbed toward the sky, and at last the beast reached the Blight Star hanging in the heavens of the Abyss. As though being stroked by its mother, it trembled as it soaked in the Blight Star's light and swallowed it down.

Thud, thud, thoom.

Dark red veins pulsed to life along the dragon's scales. It was a being called a calamity, something terrible, and yet it stirred reverence in people. A beast that joined earth and sky, a creature that seemed to belong only in myth. The stars watched its movements in breathless silence.

"......"

Even Transcendents who had lived for hundreds of years were equal before it. As they swallowed their breath, the beast lowered its head. Its eyelids parted and crimson pupils blazed. Those eyes fixed on Najin, and on the stars lined up behind him.

A brief stillness.

Then the beast drove its head into the ground. The scales moved fast. Jaws spread wide, the Dragon of the Abyss bored into the earth. Everything before had been the casual shifting of a body at rest. Now it was different.

It had recognized prey. A beast that recognizes prey moves quickly. To fill its hunger.

Kukugugugugung!

The ground shook. Mountain ranges heaved. The dragon came on like a flood tide, like a natural disaster. Even the creatures of the Abyss were scrambling to flee. And among them were giants as well.

-Woooooooo!

The primordial giants who had clashed with dragons constantly in the distant past, whose courage had survived even the curse that turned them into the dead, were screaming as they ran.

Thud, thud, thud.

They kicked off the ground with feet that should have been charging forward bravely, but their flight did not amount to much.

"Ah."

Someone let out a groan. The giants fleeing in a line had vanished in an instant. The dragon's jaws erupted from the earth, swallowed them whole in a single bite, and drove back underground. Not a drop of blood flew, not a scrap of flesh. Not a sound of chewing.

The primordial giants were erased from the world.

"...Who could."

A figure who had once been the High Priest of a certain order gazed at the dragon with hollow eyes and recited lines from a myth.

"Who could stand against it and come out unharmed? Who could force those jaws open?"

The stars could not bring themselves to rebuke the priest trembling and crying out in terror. The fear they had just shaken off came back larger as death drew near.

"Who on earth could contend with it? Born without the faintest knowledge of fear. Every powerful being buckles before it. The king of all arrogant things stands here."

No one beneath the heavens could do it.

Thoom.

Just as the priest made to cry out those words, Najin moved one beat ahead of him. The moment the spreading fear reached its breaking point, Najin exploded his starlight outward.

Dawn Sword.

Excalibur blazed. Najin raised his sword and brought it down toward the dragon coming on as one with the darkness.

Cutting Night.

Starlight carved through the dark. That was the signal. The Constellations who had been shaking in fear came back to themselves. Watching the fierce Sword Aura streak forward, they gritted their teeth, raised a battle cry, and held their ground.

Stars rose across the battlefield.

Each one alone was nothing before that vast darkness, but dozens, hundreds gathered become a beacon. Using his own starlight as a lighthouse, Najin lit up the dark.

Past and present.

Humanity of the old age and humanity of this age.

The age of myth and the Age of Man.

The king chosen by heaven, and the representative chosen by people.

Symbol against symbol, representative against representative, the born against the made, two beings whose very ways of existing were exact opposites turned on each other. That was more than enough to call it a war.

War begins.

Najin charged at the Dragon of the Abyss.

3.

The ground the Dragon of the Abyss had swept through.

A certain king who had been swallowed by the dragon but never admitted into death and spat back out pushed himself to his feet.

"......"

Leviathan saw it. The army he had once raised had turned and was now charging toward humanity. Watching the starlight bursting out beyond, he let out a low sound.

"Aah."

Even with that terrible scene before him, he could not close his eyes. He at least had to watch. Groaning, walking through the ruined land of the Abyss, he glanced back without thinking. From somewhere came the sound of bones clicking into place.

His eyes went wide when he turned around.

Then he laughed despite himself.

"I told you to rest, you needlessly industrious creature."

-......

"Yes, that's how you always looked at me in moments like this. Those eyes saying what do you think you'll accomplish on those pathetic, feeble legs of yours, and then you'd offer me your back."

Fafnir was there, nothing left of him but bones.

Killed by Siegfried, cut down once more by Najin, and still Fafnir had willingly pushed himself back up for the sake of his old friend. One broken wing hanging at his side, he struck the ground with his tail. As if to say, what are you waiting for, get on.

"Very well."

Leviathan climbed onto Fafnir's back.

"Let us fly, old friend."

He could at least watch.

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