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Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 471

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Dragon of the Abyss, Leviathan (4)

Indestructible King, Leviathan.

The greatest emperor in all of history was there. He looked down at Najin from his throne. Najin, having set foot in the empire of the ancient humanity, looked back up at him.

'Dark red.'

Eyes the same color as the Blight Star. A dark crimson gaze that resembled a witch's, deeper and richer than any other witch's. Even Kether's red eyes, which had earned her the status of elder among witches, would pale to nothing before Leviathan.

The appearance was similar enough, yet Najin could not for a moment regard this figure as the same person he knew. Where the Leviathan he had met laughed easily and tossed out jokes, the emperor seated on that throne offered not a single crack. Not even a hint of one.

If the Leviathan Najin had encountered carried a human side to him, then the one on that throne was precisely the opposite.

'Leviathan the Conqueror King.'

An iron-blooded sovereign who had ground every living thing on earth into the machinery of a single purpose, who had sold the lives of tens of millions as the price of a challenge against a witch. His eyes were cold to the bone, as suited a ruler who counted people not as people but as numbers.

"Is that the 'emperor'?"

"...Good grief."

Yuel and Kirchhoff, standing at Najin's side, swallowed dryly. Their bodies were shielded by starlight, but there was no escaping the pressure that bore down on this enormous space.

An empire that breathed even in death.

People screamed, plastered against the walls of buildings. A giant fused with a massive bell tower pounded its fist against the bell that occupied the place where its head should have been. Clang, claaang, clang, and beneath the bell's relentless tolling, the screams wove themselves into a kind of harmony.

There was only one name for a place where the dead suffered forever.

"Hell."

Kirchhoff muttered it. And indeed, he was right. This was hell. No other word came to mind, and in truth none was needed.

The Dragon of the Abyss was the horseman of death, an apostle who bore the Authority of death. What else but hell would serve as a prison for everything swallowed by death? The hell the Witch of the Abyss had fashioned wore, almost laughably, the shape of a nation built by human hands.

"......"

Najin took in the hellish landscape.

"Leviathan."

He dared speak the emperor's name aloud.

At that instant, a sudden hush.

Every sound that had been pouring through the empire vanished in a single moment: the bell's tolling, the screaming, the very breath of the empire itself. Those who had been screaming shut their mouths as though they had never made a sound, and turned their heads toward Najin.

, ......

Countless gazes. Countless ears. All fixed on him. They bared their hostility toward the arrogant human who had dared speak the emperor's name without even a title of respect, as if ready to cut him down on the spot.

The reason they did not act immediately.

The reason they did not cry out.

Was simply that their master had not yet spoken. They held their silence, waiting on the emperor's command. Put another way, a single casual gesture from the emperor would turn them into his spears and swords and send them charging straight at Najin.

'Tens of millions of them, no less.'

Najin pressed on through the taut silence.

"As the representative of the ancient humanity and the pillar of the old civilization, as the emperor of a great empire unlike any in history, I have a question for you."

Najin curved the corner of his mouth upward.

"Are you still an emperor?"

Leviathan said nothing. As though the question wasn't worth answering, he began to raise his hand, and Najin got his next words in one beat ahead.

"An emperor is the master of an empire. To be the master of something means, in the end, that your worth is defined by what you possess. Is the worth of the empire you possess not exactly the worth of the name 'emperor'?"

Najin took one step forward.

"And yet, hm."

He glanced around at the empire with a smirk, as if he had already seen enough. The atmosphere grew uglier, but he paid it no mind.

"What of the people who should make up this empire? Not a single one. Nothing but corpses that died long ago. No, corpses would actually be better. A corpse at least doesn't drag the living down by the ankles. A nation crawling with the dead who already died once? Even by the standard of unprecedented things, this qualifies."

Tap.

"Then what of the empire's territory? That too is effectively nothing. All you've done is transplant the image of its most prosperous age into an inner world. There's no substance to it. A nation that exists only in hell."

People and land both, half of nothing.

"And still you call yourself emperor?"

No, Najin caught himself.

"Do you still call yourself the representative of humanity?"

An empire filled with nothing but the dead.

Territory that exists in hell and nowhere in the real world.

Granted, an emperor who held such a nation could exist. If he believed himself to be emperor, then emperor he was. But Najin knew. Leviathan could not say that. Because in a question-and-answer exchange between them long ago, when asked "what is an emperor?", he had answered like this.

"An emperor is the master of an empire."

"An empire is the center of humanity."

"Therefore, an emperor is the representative of humanity."

To him, emperor and representative of humanity were one and the same. That was precisely why he had become emperor through pacts with countless people, by receiving the transfer of their rights. To act as proxy for humanity's rights, one had first to be their representative.

"Ah."

At Najin's provocation, Leviathan opened his mouth. He met Najin's smirk with one of his own.

"Trying to play word games?"

"I'm stating facts."

"Even if it is a fact, what matters is who says it."

Leviathan was not some dreamer who bandied about ideals. Nor was he some sage who weighed right and wrong and handled everything uprightly.

He was an emperor. A conqueror king.

Leviathan had killed countless people for his cause, sent them to their deaths, driven them into hell, a tyrant, and in another word, a man of power. Even when the other party spoke the truth, turning that truth into falsehood whenever it served no benefit to the nation was exactly the kind of thing a ruler did.

"Do you have the standing?"

So he asked.

"Are you a noble? A king of some nation? An emperor, perhaps? Can you move all of humanity with a single word?"

Leviathan smiled.

"I can. Even the mightiest of stars follows my word. If I order someone to die, a warrior who has never known defeat will gladly do so. Even an old man bedridden without the strength to lift a plow, waiting only for death, will rise at a single word from me and take up a weapon."

The empire began to stir. Tens of millions of voices roared in agreement with the emperor. Clench, the moment Leviathan closed his fist, they fell silent.

"Tell me."

The emperor looked down at Najin.

"Can you do the same?"

"I have neither reason nor need to."

Najin worked his fingers into the gap between his gauntlet and his wrist. With a flick, he pulled the gauntlet free and held it in his hand.

"I have my own way of doing things. You may not know this, being a man from the old days, but have you heard of trial by combat?"

"What is that?"

"The humanity of the current age elects representatives to act on their behalf. When neither side can afford to yield, those representatives settle the matter through a duel. Some would call it barbaric, but so what?"

Najin threw the gauntlet.

"If the other side comes at us barbarically, we have no choice but to respond in kind."

He threw it toward the great empire.

"Najin, the Dawning Star."

His hand closed around empty air. Platinum starlight burst forth and Excalibur settled into his grip. At the flooding brilliance, Leviathan's eyes narrowed.

"As the representative of heroes, the captain of the Argonauts, and the representative of all those who have fallen and all those who have endured, I declare."

Excalibur blazed. The tip of the sword, holding within it the starlight of heroes, pointed at the empire entire, or more precisely, at Leviathan seated at its peak.

"A duel. Leviathan."

Najin declared a duel against the ancient humanity as a whole.

As the representative of heroes.

And the declaration did not end with Najin.

"As the representative of Commoners, of ordinary people, of the crowds whose voices were too small and so were always buried, I declare."

Yuel, the warden who had led the common people in the Domain of Forgetting and in the Sealed City, declared as their representative.

"As the representative of Londinel, and of the great and small Nations that vanished into the back pages of history, I declare."

Kirchhoff of the Blue Spear, representative of Londinel and recipient of the rights transferred by forgotten nations and domains, declared.

"I declare a duel."

"A duel is declared."

Representatives of heroes, nations, and commoners stood here. And their procession did not unfold only inside the dragon. The three who stood in this place did so simply because they were capable of enduring the dragon's interior. Outside the dragon, representatives also existed.

When someone fired a signal flare, declarations of the duel began to ring out from both inside and outside the dragon.

2.

A moment after the three of them, Najin included, had leaped into the dragon's interior, Merlin, connected to Najin, detonated a signal outside. The instant the Constellations saw the starlight streaking upward with a crackling sound, they drew in a breath.

And then it began.

"I am!"

The stars' declaration.

"Krevol, representative of the Fang Warriors of the Turek Great Plains! As representative of the Great Plains warriors, I declare a duel!"

That one warrior's thunderous cry was the signal, and then all at once the Constellations raised their voices and drew up their starlight.

"Cryce, representative of the Red Shield Order. I declare a duel."

"Ledegard, representative of the Stoyanova Mercenary Company. I declare a duel."

"Hilde, representative of the Blue Rose Order. I declare a duel."

"Ahahahah! I declare on behalf of the free people of the Allied Nations! I, Drot, will act as proxy for your rights. A duel, Leviathan!"

Sacred Objects in hand, personal symbols clutched tight, they declared one after another. Some were representatives of knightly orders, some of mercenary companies, and some raised their voices as representatives of free people.

"A duel."

"Declared."

"A duel......"

"I, representative of the gladiators."

"I declare!"

"As representative of the Emission school, as tower master of the Red Mage Tower."

"I declare."

A representative of gladiators, a tower master who led a school of thought, countless more, all declared as representatives of something. With each declaration, Leviathan's shedding accelerated. The scales that made the dragon what it was began to fall.

Because they had defined Leviathan as "the representative of the ancient humanity." His existence, already stripped of several scales and growing blurry in its identity as a dragon, was shaken. A dragon whose mystique of immutability was already broken could change without limit.

Representative of the ancient humanity.

A beast bound to tens of millions.

As declarations continued against that beast, those Najin had brought to this place opened their mouths in turn.

"As representative of the swordsmen, I declare."

Karon, the Sword Saint, raised Gramr.

"As representative of merchants, as the master of a great trading company, I declare."

Dieta, the Snake That Swallows Gold Coins, who had spread her golden chains all the way to the Outland.

"As representative of the knights of the old Round Table, I declare."

Bedivere, who embodied the Round Table of the past.

"I'll declare as representative of the mages."

Merlin, who had defined magic and laid the foundations of modern magical theory.

"I declare as representative of witches who sought the Taboo!"

"I declare as representative of the romanticists."

"I declare as representative of the half-bloods."

Lapis and Anton, Rena and Roselin.

"Representative of Britain."

And at the destination of their declarations stood the empire's representative. The pillar that had upheld the empire through long ages, the elder who had received the empire's symbol from the emperor himself.

"I, Gerd, the First Horn of the Empire, declare."

Gerd, the First Horn of the Empire, raised his sword.

The empire's stars ranked behind him let out a roar.

"A duel to the ancient humanity."

And glorious victory to the empire, to the current humanity.

The Imperial Sword, Triumph.

With Gerd's Triumph leading the charge, the Constellations' momentum turned on its head. Constellations were first-rate warriors, but also outstanding hunters. An outstanding hunter never surrenders the initiative.

The momentum tilted.

The Constellations charged at the dragon, which had faltered for just a moment. Countless stars blazing, Absolute Techniques erupted both inside and outside the dragon.

3.

"The times have changed."

Najin raised Excalibur and spoke.

"The past is brilliant. Everyone has a past that was glorious. They say the past gets romanticized, but that expression only holds because the past stays in the past."

He fixed his gaze on Leviathan.

"If a rotten old representative still has its hands wrapped around the ankles of humanity......"

Najin gave a short laugh.

"Well, what can you do?"

Something repeated countless times throughout humanity's long history, and proven remarkably effective over the past several hundred years. History has a word for that method.

"Revolution."

Revolution. Heaven and earth are overturned.

To a dragon that, though a beast that flies through the sky, dares also to rule the ground beneath it, Najin leveled the blade of revolution.

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