WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 472

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Dragon of the Abyss, Leviathan (5)

The moment Najin spoke that word..."revolution", the Conqueror King's lips twitched.

He tilted his head back, shoulders shaking, one hand pressed to his forehead as laughter burst out of him.

"Ugh, hahahahaha!"

The sound rang through the chamber. He trembled with it, as though he simply could not hold it in. But this was nothing like the easy, light laugh Najin knew from Leviathan. The Conqueror King's laughter was soaked in mockery.

"Revolution. Did you just say revolution?"

What is a revolution? People call the overthrow of an old order a revolution, but trace the word to its roots and it meant the changing of heaven's will. A king of old was the agent of heaven's mandate, and to replace a king was to change heaven itself.

And so the Conqueror King laughed.

Who dared change the will of heaven? Heaven belonged to God, and God meant the Witch of the Abyss, and the great, wretched God had decreed Leviathan as emperor.

"You seem to be under some misapprehension. Heaven has never once belonged to humanity. It has always been God's, and God is eternal, indestructible, and absolute."

A man who had challenged a god and lost. A king who had every one of his values stripped from him as the price of that challenge, remade into something immortal, innate, and complete. A king who knelt before God with his head bowed in submission. That king's lips split wide.

Revolution. What a laughable word.

Thrashing about without the faintest idea of his own station. A mere human daring to defy heaven's will. The Conqueror King propped his chin on one hand and raised an arm.

"I am Leviathan."

Emperor of the Continent. Conqueror King.

"Do you know how many rebellions I weathered while unifying the Continent? How many rebel armies I crushed? How many revolutionary fires I stamped out?"

Najin shrugged at the question.

"Should I?"

"You will. You'll understand what it is you're challenging."

"People who already failed always say that. Keep telling me what I need to know. Funny sight, honestly."

The Conqueror King's eyebrow tilted. Whether he cared or not, Najin read the reaction and pushed further, his voice sharpening to a sneer.

"That's your limit. Not mine. Or what, you failed, so everyone else will too? Is that what you're trying to say?"

Provoking an opponent had always been one of Najin's best tricks. He made no effort to hide his grin in front of the Conqueror King. The shameless, swaggering confidence of the Conqueror King looked fairly ridiculous compared to Leviathan, who agonized and reflected on his own failings.

"The delusion of a man who doesn't know his place."

Najin threw the jab straight at the greatest emperor who had ever lived: know your station. The Conqueror King's brow creased, as though he couldn't have imagined receiving an answer like that.

"Look. With your own eyes."

Najin gestured toward the empire.

"Your empire crumbled. The territory fractured, the languages splintered and were forgotten, and not a single trace of the Conqueror King survives anywhere on the Continent today. Because you swallowed it all. Even your own people."

No territory. No ruins. No people. No civilization, and no evidence anywhere that the nation had ever existed. All because of you.

"Even so, I acknowledge you as the past. What you challenged wasn't worthless. To be more precise, it isn't you as the Conqueror King I acknowledge, it's Leviathan the Mortal King."

So.

"If you're the past, then be a proper stepping stone."

Najin smiled and stepped forward. Boom, the ground shook from where his foot came down.

"I'll use you to climb somewhere higher."

There was nothing left to say. The moment the Conqueror King swung his arm, the great empire lurched into motion, and the moment Najin moved, starlight erupted from him.

The duel began.

A duel between the countless representatives of present humanity and the Conqueror King who stood for the old. Outside the dragon, the cheers of the stars echoed. Inside the dragon, the fiercest battle drew its curtain.

2.

Transcendents are often compared to nations.

Naturally so. A powerful Constellation carries might that can genuinely rival a country, capable of single-handedly accomplishing what would take tens or even hundreds of thousands of people working together.

There had, in fact, been someone like Icarus in history, someone who alone built a nation from nothing, so comparing a Constellation to a country had always been a favorite expression among scholars.

So then.

The reverse held as well. If a powerful Transcendent could be compared to a nation, then a great and mighty nation could likewise be likened to a Transcendent.

"......"

Najin looked ahead.

Here stood the largest nation in all of human history. So enormous that its population numbered in the tens of millions, dozens of times the size of Londinel at its peak, and its scale dwarfed every other country he had ever seen.

Tens of millions of people, and beyond that...

Not only humans, but giants, dragons, fairies, and countless other races whose names he didn't even know. It gave off the sensation of facing a colossal Transcendent.

...Of course, this was only a metaphor.

In any fight between a nation and a Transcendent, the Transcendent had always held the advantage. A Transcendent's power was concentrated in one individual, while a nation's power was distributed among many. Different people held different thoughts, and that bred friction. That was common sense, the common sense that should, by any normal measure, have held true.

Kugugugugung...

The problem was that the nation standing before him now was about as far from common sense as anything could be. The nation's territory, its waters, its skies, all of it writhed and pulsed like a living creature.

And every last bit of it belonged to one person.

Because that had been the terms of the contract.

Leviathan had contracted with every human being of that era.

From newborns who had only just entered the world to the elderly waiting out their final days. From the weakest of the sick to the most powerful Transcendents. From races with barely a glimmer of intelligence to dragons whose minds surpassed even humanity's...

Every thinking creature of that age had made a contract with Leviathan. He had guaranteed them their lives in exchange for all their rights, transferred entirely to him. So everything in the empire was Leviathan's, his arms, his legs.

"Hear me."

The Conqueror King opened his mouth. The entire empire trembled at his command. Some rejoiced. Some roared with fervor. Some laughed with a wildness that cracked their faces open.

The king issues his command.

The king commands us.

The empire that still breathed even in death still revered Leviathan. Even though he had cast them into hell, their lord was still Leviathan.

"Cut them down."

The command was short. There was no need for lengthy explanation. Just as one does not explain to one's own arms and legs why they should move, Leviathan gave no reasons.

Only the order to cut them down.

One sentence was enough to move an entire nation.

-Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!

-Ah, aah, aaaaa!

-Aaaaaaaaaa!

Screams turned into battle cries. Battle cries became screams again. Both echoed together as the Conqueror King's army convulsed. Those who had melted into buildings and become one with the stone, the giant fused with the Bell Tower, the liquefied dragons circling the sky, every last one of them threw themselves at Najin and his two companions.

The largest nation in history moved as a single body.

Any leader from any era would shudder to witness it. From the lowest to the highest, all of them carried out the sovereign's command as equals.

Drdrdrdrdrdr!

And it was not only the thinking beings merged with the empire who moved. The land of the empire itself was moving. The ground folded and surged forward like a crashing wave.

Quite something.

Najin steadied his breath.

So this is the army that made the Witch of the Abyss bleed.

All of humanity moving as one. Beyond obsession, there was madness in it. Even giants and dragons, natural enemies, were cooperating. Those arrogant dragons flew in carrying giants on their backs.

Shhhhhhhhk!

The giants riding the dragons hurled enormous spears. What were less spears and more iron pillars came flying straight at Najin. Every time one buried itself in the ground, a boom rang out and the earth shook.

Flash.

And through their ranks, Transcendents advanced, trailing stars stained black. Old Transcendents of the ancient age. Warped beyond recognition, their original forms lost, they marched.

No, they would be stronger than they once were. By becoming apostles of the Witch of the Abyss, they had gained access to the Blight Star's power, and they had become one with the original dragon. Charging toward an immortal, eternal army, Najin let his sword hang loose.

If these ones made the Witch of the Abyss bleed...

Then they were more than enough to put him to the test. Sharpening every sense, Najin threw himself into the army. The surging tide of bodies swallowed him for a moment.

Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!

Like a blade splitting water, a platinum Sword Aura cleaved through the army. Najin ran wild against an entire nation. The iron pillars the giants hurled were swallowed by his Sword Aura before they ever reached the ground.

That guy, was he always this fast?

Kirchhoff, running in Najin's wake, was stunned. He had known Najin was strong, but the improvement over just a few months was startling.

Even compared to when they had brought down the Domain of Forgetting.

He had only gained one or two stars since then, but the sharpness of his technique and the precision of his movement were in a completely different league.

Slash.

Every time the sword swung, things invisible to the eye were cut away too. Even when the army stacked dozens of layers of shields, not one stopped Najin's blade. That infamous Sword Demon of the Abyss had probably fought exactly like this.

But...

Kirchhoff knew. Yuel knew. Najin knew.

The Conqueror King's army was not just this.

What they had seen so far was the army the Conqueror King had fielded, a human army raised in its time. But the Leviathan of now had a god at his back. The one who had once plotted rebellion against a god now moved with a god behind him.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

An ominous pulse reached them from somewhere.

Then, with a crack ,

The sky of the dragon's inner world split open, and the Blight Star rose. The Witch of the Abyss's star. The moment that dark red star climbed into view, the bodies of Najin and the other Transcendents began to seize up.

The terrible starlight produced by the Blight Star.

That sinister light fell across Leviathan's army. Najin had seen something like this before, back in Cambria, when they hunted the Red Dragon. A Red Dragon on the verge of death had been struck by the Blight Star's light and evolved without warning.

These ones now were the same.

The moment the fight began, the Conqueror King had laid every card on the table without holding anything back. As if there were no point in concealing anything. Crushing them at full force from the very start was the most effective strategy, and he knew it.

-Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Battle cries became screams, and screams became battle cries again. Both echoed together as the Conqueror King's army warped. Najin watched and let out a short laugh.

"Aah."

So the true colors are finally coming out.

In that case, it was time to play the hand he had been holding.

3.

"Kirchhoff."

"Yeah. I see it."

Kirchhoff let out a dry laugh. Quite the thing to witness in one lifetime, he muttered, shrugging his shoulders.

"Good grief. They're playing dirty. I know a single Transcendent can match tens of thousands, but even that has limits. This many, and powered up by the Blight Star on top of it?"

"It'll be in the tens of millions."

"Violence through sheer numbers! Absolutely shameless."

The two of them kept talking, tossing words back and forth. Even in the middle of all this urgency, neither showed a hint of panic. If anything, they seemed relaxed.

"Since they went and played dirty first..."

"Since they led with sheer numbers..."

Both grinned with the same mischievous look.

"Guess we have to play dirty too."

"Play dirty? Isn't this just meeting them on equal terms? They dragged a god's power into what should have been a noble duel between old humanity and present humanity, so we have no choice but to match that with something similar."

"Quite right. That's the Dawning Star for you. Can't argue with that logic."

Yuel stared at the two of them with the eyes of someone watching something very strange. What on earth were they doing in front of that terrifying army? The question only lasted a moment. She watched Kirchhoff pull something from inside his coat, and understood.

"Aah."

She nodded.

"So that was why there were three of us."

Why only three had entered Leviathan's body, Yuel, Kirchhoff, and Najin. The answer was in Kirchhoff's hand. The Conqueror King had played his hidden card, so they had no choice but to play theirs.

The platinum chalice. The Holy Grail.

The Sacred Object they had obtained in the Domain of Forgetting, the provision the past had left for them. Kirchhoff raised the Holy Grail. Before the surging army, it began to shine, as though it knew this was precisely the moment it was meant to shine.

...The Holy Grail required three people to activate.

The Sanctuary of Oblivion was divided into three sections, and the Holy Grail was the same.

Nation. Commoner. Hero.

Those who had broken through each respective domain, who had received the delegation of its representative or been acknowledged by them, all had to agree before the Holy Grail would finally activate. And here, all three of those people were gathered in one place.

The Inheritance Star, which carried on the will of the Commoner, shone.

The Grand Culmination, which had inherited the stars of the Nation, shone.

The Dawning Star, which carried on the wish of the Hero, shone.

And finally ,

The Star of Tomorrow, aligned with the Holy Grail's purpose and holding the desperate wish of those whose souls rested within it, shone. Lighting the way forward with the Star of Tomorrow, Najin opened his mouth.

"Tomorrow."

Just as the Conqueror King's command had been short, Najin's declaration was short too.

"For a tomorrow better than today."

No persuasion needed. No explanation needed. At those words alone, they would move gladly. The moment Najin finished speaking, starlight burst from the Holy Grail.

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