WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 469

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Dragon of the Abyss, Leviathan (2)

Mystique is, by nature, the exclusive domain of certain races.

There are dragons, born silver-spoon mystics with three mystiques already in their blood. There are witches, who earn mystiques through the paths they walk in life. And there are demons, bound entirely by mystique. That "certain group of races" does not include humans.

Humans are not born with mystique. It is not granted to them, and they are not bound by it. Mystique is a blessing the world extends, yet the world extends nothing to humans.

But every so often, they appear.

"Yuel."

"Yes, Najin."

Humans who carry mystique.

No one knows why they come to possess it. A whim of the world, perhaps, or something humanity wrested away with its own hands, or maybe a selection by the concept itself. No one can say.

"I'll leave it to you."

"Leave it to me."

What matters is that these people know how to wield mystique, and that they dig deeper into it than any creature born with a body and soul suited to the task.

Yuel Razian, standing here now, is exactly that.

She had never truly understood her own mystique. She did not know why she possessed such a power, nor where it had come from. She had no memory of her past.

, Razian.

'Yes, Yuel.'

, You swing the sword. I will handle the dissolution. I may not know how to wield a blade, but dissolving things, that I know well.

Not anymore. She knows her past now. She knows where her mystique originated. She understands the method she once used to dissolve her own body and the Blight Star. Because of that, Yuel understands her mystique.

Wielding a power blindly and wielding it with a true understanding of how that power works are two entirely different things. That the latter is both more efficient and more devastating goes without saying.

Tap.

She ran across the dragon's scales. Sprinting along the creature's immense body, Razian swung her sword. There was no need to pack her Sword Aura with density. She stretched it thin instead, spreading it as far and wide as possible to cut away as much as she could.

The mystique of Dissolution settled into her Sword Aura.

Razian swings the sword. Yuel aims the mystique with precision. The Sword Aura, released with a sound like a human scream, swept across the dragon's scales.

Screeeeeeeeeeee!

Her Sword Aura is not as fierce as Najin's, not as razor-sharp as Karon's. Against the dragon's scales, cutting through its hide, tearing its flesh, she would fall short. But if the targets are humans screaming while fused into the Dragon of the Abyss...

Shk.

No other Transcendent is more effective than Yuel. The mystique she carries was Leviathan's very reverse scale.

Dissolution: the act of unraveling something bundled or bound together into separate pieces. The mystique Yuel possesses is the concept of "loosening what has been bound." Against a beast woven together from tens of millions of lives, Yuel's mystique is more lethal than any poison.

Given the sheer difference in scale, dissolving the very essence of Leviathan is impossible. But the wraiths jutting out through his scales, those she could dissolve as many as she liked.

Swhoooooooosh!

Yuel swept past the Constellations who had been struggling against the arms and legs seizing them from between the dragon's scales. Her Sword Aura swept through, and when it did, severed wraith limbs tumbled across the ground.

She sprinted like a blade parting a current.

The freed Constellations drew out their starlight and hammered the dragon's body, while Yuel cut away every grasping arm and leg trying to catch them by the ankles.

"......"

Najin did not watch Yuel. He had entrusted it to her, and so he simply believed in her. His eyes were fixed solely on the dragon's head.

The change was only just beginning.

While Leviathan roared hard enough to send the ground rippling, Najin raised Excalibur. This was where it truly started. Now it was time to show humanity's representative from the old era, the one wearing the skin of a beast.

'Show what?'

The advancement of civilization.

The civilization humanity had built over the past thousand years.

2.

The Dragon of the Abyss shuddered.

Even as it reared its head and roared, Leviathan's movements changed. Where before the dragon had coiled and churned through the earth, now it began thrashing wildly in every direction.

That enormous body and tail whipped and writhed.

A torso the size of a mountain range cracked like a whip, obliterating everything it touched. The sheer act of moving its body summoned storms and upended the ground. A scene that seemed ripped straight from mythology.

And the stars stood against that myth.

"Next, next!"

"Breaking off!"

"There, a scale fell away! Dig in!"

Stars that had looked down on the world with arrogance were now riding the dragon's body, swinging their weapons until their arms felt ready to break. The haughtiness of stars who once commanded their apostles with a gesture was nowhere to be seen.

No dignity. No imposing presence. No ceremony.

Like ordinary people, they swung their weapons with everything they had and cheered wildly over something as small as prying away one scale among countless thousands.

"Move so you don't get in the Dawning Star's way! Get out of the way there!"

"Formation, hold the formation!"

"Covering you!"

"Tail, the tail is coming! Barrier, barrieeeeer!"

They threw aside even the decorum of Constellations, screaming and tumbling across the ground as they scrambled away in undignified chaos, or barely dodging attacks while clinging to another star.

"I'll ask you for this one, Star of Heavenly Slaughter!"

"The surface is bubbling here! Arms are erupting!"

They called on other stars for help. They narrowly escaped crises by borrowing mages' spells. Even Constellations who had been at odds due to opposing Authorities pressed their backs together and swung their weapons side by side. Grudges that had festered for centuries shrank to trivialities in this moment.

Flash.

From high above, the Star of the Round Table shone down, the Dawning Star's constellation casting its light upon the stars below. One Constellation caught in that starlight burst out laughing without meaning to.

"Let's gooooooo!"

One Constellation let out a battle cry and charged, just as they had when they first earned their star. And they were not alone. Countless stars stirred memories of when they had burned brightest and moved their bodies accordingly. In truth, right now they were shining more brilliantly than at any moment before.

Each individual attack amounted to very little.

But when many stars gathered together ,

When dozens and hundreds of stars came together, those attacks carried weight. Cycling through charge and descent, the Constellations drove into the dragon's body with everything they had.

"......"

And among those stars, certain ones stood out. The ones who had crossed paths with Najin at some point. One old man planted himself in front of the dragon's massive thrashing tail as it surged forward. He raised his sword high toward the sky.

Imperial Sword.

The First Horn of the Empire, Gerd, swung the Imperial Sword. With a thunderous boom, a massive Sword Aura slammed into the dragon's tail. The trajectory of the swinging tail was deflected, and it hammered back into the dragon's own body instead.

"Huu."

His face expressionless, Gerd exhaled and moved with the Empire's stars at his back. He is the Empire's representative. The sword swung by the representative of the Continent's greatest nation cut just a little sharper than the blades of the other stars.

The dragon's blood sprayed up.

Yuel ran across the dragon's body, her form spattered with the blood raining down. The representative of the Sacred Blood Church was soaked in dragon's blood, while the representative of the Sacred Body Church was not idle either.

Aurora.

Where the scales had been torn away, the Star Incarnation's pillar of light drove down. As the dragon's body heaved and lurched, stars latched onto that pillar of light and began hammering it like striking an anvil.

"Drive it in!"

"Pin it down!"

"Charge! Here! Right here!"

The Constellations tore away the scales and the Star Incarnation drove the pillar of light into the gap. Over that pillar of light, stars descended again and again, pressing it deeper.

Crack.

The dragon's spraying blood froze mid-air and tore through flesh. Through the places where scales had been stripped away, magic rained down and painted the sky. Mages' spells could not pierce the dragon's scales, but where scales had already fallen, that was a different story.

Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaang!

With a thunderous roar, the Constellations' unique magic struck the dragon's body. As Leviathan thrashed and rolled, stars on the verge of being crushed or swept away were caught by spells and pulled clear of the battlefield.

Grrrgrrgrrgrr.

Perhaps the stars battering the dragon's body had grown irritating. When they refused to be shaken loose, the dragon began regurgitating what it had swallowed, vomiting the dead up through the surface of its scales. Stars that had once been consumed by the Dragon of the Abyss clawed their way up from hell.

, Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!

They screamed as they threw themselves at the stars. Cursed stars. Already unkillable, and on top of that connected to the Dragon of the Abyss, they were hideously difficult to deal with.

"Finally, something worth cutting."

But they still held human form. And for one person, that made them easier targets than anything. Robes billowing, a figure slipped through the cursed stars like water, and a beat later their bodies split open.

Karon, the Sword Saint, shook Gramr clean.

Dragging Gramr, with a cutting power that could rival Excalibur, Karon began carving through the dragon's body. He sprinted forward, stripping away scales as he went, and Constellations latched onto the places he had cleared.

When an exceptional individual opens the way, it falls to ordinary people to widen and reinforce that path.

"Anton."

A woman who was no longer a witch yet still loved her broom smiled from atop one, riding through the air.

"One big hit."

"Ah, with this one?"

Anton went wild, gripping the blade she had forged with her magic. Using the starlight Anton scattered as a fuse, Lapis, who shared a constellation with him, activated her spell.

Circle Nine magic, Giant's Footfall.

Wherever Anton's foot landed, shockwaves burst out. Mana exploded, and a colossal amount of physical force hammered the dragon's scales. Powerful enough on its own, but that was only the setup.

"......"

Hovering in the air beside Lapis was another witch. Rena, the Witch of Solitude. One of the five most powerful witches alive, diminished over the past few centuries, but a Grand Mage still.

She thought back to the past.

To the battlefields she had fought on alongside her partner.

Albert, champion of the Allied Nations, had carried Echo. To fight beside him, to back him up, Rena had created a single spell. She smiled as the memory came back to her.

"It's been a while since I've used this."

Snap. She flicked her finger.

Unique magic, Reverberation.

The shockwaves Lapis's magic had generated repeated "again." Dududududung! The cascading shockwaves rolled out one after another, and the direction they were aimed toward was where a certain mercenary stood, sweating despite herself, clutching a masterwork.

Half human, half witch.

Roselin, the red-eyed mercenary, gritted her teeth and brought her masterwork to bear. The masterwork once wielded by her father, and Rena's husband. Echo. The effect that masterwork carried was simple, and devastating.

Echo rang out.

The shockwave that had already reverberated once echoed again. A shockwave doubled and redoubled exploded outward in every direction. The dragon's body shuddered and rolled, and in the very heart of those shockwaves, a knight leaped in. The knight's hands held the Blue Spear.

Kirchhoff, the Grand Culmination.

The Last Knight of Londinel had recovered every lesson Blue Spear had ever taught him. He had even managed to learn Blue Spear's Absolute Technique, piecing it back together from his own memory and with Najin's help. He leaped into the echoing shockwaves and swung the spear shaft.

Blue Spear's Absolute Technique, Azure Hydrangea.

The shockwaves ringing out in every direction, he gathered them into a single point. He drove that concentrated force into the place where the dragon's scales had been stripped away. With a deafening crack, the dragon's body caved inward. Blood erupted and scales shattered to pieces.

Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaang!

The attacks were landing.

The stars' attacks were making the Dragon of the Abyss bleed.

"Something must seem strange to you."

Najin, who had gathered those stars and brought them to this place, looked straight at the dragon and spoke.

"Attacks that should not be getting through are getting through. Normally, only someone exceptional enough to pull an age forward could make you bleed. Yet somehow, all of them are making you bleed."

It would seem strange.

It would feel wrong.

'Why is this?'

Najin put the reason into words.

"Because the age has changed."

The reason the Dragon of the Abyss had been impossible to deal with in the past was that humanity had not yet advanced far enough. A thousand years ago, human civilization was in decline compared to the old civilization. There was simply no comparison to be made.

The old civilization that Leviathan represented.

That civilization had flourished and prospered. Under the rule of Leviathan the Mortal King, all races had become one. In that age, a great nation existed that had unified countless states, and centered on that nation, humanity had advanced.

But when that age came to a close.

Human civilization entered a long decline. Languages were torn apart. The sky was swallowed by darkness. Whatever nations were built crumbled quickly. Humanity without a center endured a long dark age.

"Because the age is changing."

That had been true until a thousand years ago.

Humanity, pushed to the brink of extinction, found a center in Arthur. With Arthur at the heart, humanity drove back the darkness, built nations, and began restoring the civilization that had crumbled. They cultivated the land, laid roads, and wrote laws.

Arthur had sown the seeds.

He had bought time for the crops to grow.

The seeds had taken root across a thousand years, borne fruit, and scattered countless seeds again. Where barren land had once stretched, a dense forest now stood thick with trees.

"Because this is the Age of Man."

The Age of Man. The civilization of humanity now can stand equal to that of the old era. To prove exactly that, Najin had gathered the stars and come to this place. The stars had rallied again under Najin's name.

Only now had the balance finally been matched.

They had earned the right to face Leviathan, the old civilization.

And so the battle was only now at its true turning point. Having earned the right did not mean victory was assured.

Crack.

Leviathan opened its maw. Flames gathered in that enormous mouth. Heat blazed wildly out through the gaps between scales. As heat haze rose in waves, a sun took shape inside Leviathan's jaws.

A fireball the size of a city.

Even compressed as it was, the colossal sun seethed and boiled, evaporating every last trace of moisture in the surrounding area.

The prelude to a breath attack.

It was coming. The dragon's iconic assault. How much destructive power a breath fired from a body that size would carry, he did not even want to imagine. Nothing would be left in the path of those flames.

"What are you going to do?"

"What do you think?"

Najin gripped Excalibur in front of that sun. Merlin, standing at his side, let out a helpless laugh yet did not move away from him.

"Cut it, of course."

"If you cut it, I'll put it out."

Two constellations, each made of eleven stars.

Both burned brilliantly.

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