WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 474

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Dragon of the Abyss, Leviathan (7)

Come to think of it, it was a strange thing.

Dragons are indestructible, immutable, and eternal. If any concept stood as the polar opposite of such beings, it would have to be death. Every mystique a dragon possessed was intimately bound to undying existence.

Never changing.

Never crumbling.

Without end.

The mystiques dragons held were a direct negation of death itself. Death is to change, to crumble, to end. Dragons had fled from death by means of mystiques positioned at its exact opposite. So the concept of death simply did not suit a dragon.

'Sea dragons that swim the ocean, poison dragons that carry venom, thunder dragons that swallow lightning...'

Throughout history, dragons had existed with all manner of concepts at their core, yet none of them had ever held death. How could any creature hold a concept that contradicted the very mystiques its body was built from? As a matter of convenience, dragons that continued to move after death were called death-dragons, but strictly speaking, they had not truly held death. They had merely imitated it.

'But what about Leviathan?'

The horseman of death, Leviathan.

Leviathan was the master of death, one of the four concepts that symbolized the end. Just as Atanga the horseman of Famine wielded Famine, and Mordred the horseman of War wielded War, Leviathan too knew how to wield death.

'He holds a contradicting concept.'

Yet he does not wield it. Leviathan only swallows. He pushes everything into his own body and imprisons it in hell. Calling that an Authority felt like a stretch. Ordinary dragons, not just Leviathan, could do the same.

'Why doesn't he use it?'

Najin already knew the answer.

They were in conflict. The dragon, an undying being, and death, a concept belonging to the mortal, were crashing against each other inside him. It was only natural, given that contradicting forces had been stuffed into a single existence. It would be a power that could only be wielded by surrendering one side or the other.

"To use the Authority of death, you would have to deny eternity with your own hands. Am I wrong?"

The mystiques of a dragon would have to be negated. Immutability had already crumbled. What remained were eternity and indestructibility. Najin provoked Leviathan as though he had read the dragon's innermost thoughts.

"Leviathan, the indestructible king."

Najin smiled.

"You, who are no longer immutable, will soon cease to be eternal. And in the end, you will become mortal."

Well then, he said, and gave Excalibur a spinning readjustment in his grip.

"Until that moment comes, I'll keep you company."

"......Ha."

And the Conqueror King.

"Bwahahahahaha!"

Burst out laughing. Perhaps the sight of a hero advancing on him regardless had stirred memories of the past. He wiped the corner of his eye and roared with laughter. Mocking the foolish hero who knew nothing, the Conqueror King let out a short breath and raised one hand.

"One thing."

He held up a single finger.

"One correction."

The Conqueror King kept his index finger raised as he spoke.

"Dragons and death are not particularly opposed to each other. They are not contradicting existences, either. You think the two are in conflict and that is why he cannot use the power? Even Fafnir, the most arrogant of all dragons, never harbored such an arrogant thought. Bwahahaha!"

Whatever amused him so greatly, he could not stop laughing.

"A dragon is ultimately just a beast. What business does a mere beast have lifting its head toward a god? When a god grows enraged, there is only one thing a beast can do."

From the distant past, when a god grew furious, humans had always responded the same way.

"An offering."

An offering. Present a sacrifice. Bow your head before a god, offering up beasts or humans. Beg forgiveness, pray for blessing. When the heavens grow wrathful, beasts have always lowered their heads.

"It is not that the power cannot be used because they contradict each other."

The smile left the Conqueror King's lips.

"You must offer up mystiques powerful enough to escape death even for a brief moment, and only then can you borrow that power. The power of a god."

So Najin's words had been half right and half wrong.

It was true that one had to break one's own mystiques to use the power, but it was not a matter of surrendering one side. It was a matter of offering everything up as sacrifice. Just as humans had long presented offerings to borrow the strength of gods.

"If that is what you desire."

And in the far distant past.

The first king was also a high priest.

"If you wish so badly to challenge a god, I will give you exactly that. Come and face it."

The high priest stretched his hands toward the sky. In the past he had stretched out those hands to drag the Blight Star down from the heavens, but now it was the opposite. He raised both hands to hold the star above.

The Blight Star was the witch's eye.

The god's gaze reached its apostle.

The four flags held by the apostles of the end were originally the witch's power. The witch had parceled out her Authority among the horsemen. From among the concepts subjugated under the name of the end, she had chosen only the most powerful and fashioned them into flags.

Famine, conquest, war.

And last of all, death.

Among those, the concept closest to the end was, naturally, death. For death was the period at the close of all things, the end of life itself. To be close to the end was also to be endlessly near the power of a god.

"O God."

The man who had challenged a god, who had drawn a god's blood, now prayed to that god.

"Bestow your blessing."

In that instant, the dragon's inner world shook. The vast empire trembled. Shards of crumbled buildings began rising into the sky, and dark red cracks spread out from the Blight Star like fractures across glass.

Crack.

The sky shattered. Dark red blood poured down from beyond the fractured sky. Whatever that flowing blood touched was reduced to dust. Even the eternal empire that had kept breathing past death could not remain eternal before that blood.

A dragon flying through the sky touched the blood and was scattered into a handful of ash. A giant that had been rampaging with enough force to smash everything apart crumbled the moment the blood reached it. And that blood fell upon the Conqueror King's throne.

The Conqueror King did not crumble.

Because he was the indestructible king. Because he was the great monarch who had once made a god bleed. Because he had shouldered the weight of tens of millions of lives. Because he was a being equal to that weight, he could wield death. By offering eternity as the price, he seized death in his grasp.

The king rose from his throne.

Leviathan began to change.

First the eyes disappeared. Death has no eyes. It does not discriminate between its targets. Then the face. A face exists, after all, to let others know who you are, but death has no need to announce itself. Every creature in the world already knows death.

Creeeeak, creak creak creak...

Death is an undefeated warrior. It has brought countless great warriors to their knees. Death is a sage. Even those who had grasped the principles of life were fools before death. Death is the most feared of all things. No one has ever stood against it, only scrambled to flee from it.

This was true of Transcendents as well. Even a star could only delay death; one day death would come for them too.

"......"

The stars that had been fighting against the Conqueror King's forces all drew breath at once. They turned their heads and looked toward where Najin was. Darkness spread like mist, centered on the highest point inside the dragon's inner world, where the throne rested.

The natural predator of all living things was there.

No eyes, for there was nothing to see. No mouth, for there was nothing to say. No ears, for there was nothing to hear. And so faceless death, wrapped in darkness like armor, took a step toward Najin.

The king clad in death was coming.

The Conqueror King's army, which had changed under the light of the Blight Star, changed once more. They had been the Conqueror King's army, and when their king became an apostle of the Blight Star, they had become the Blight Star's army. So what were they now, with their king wrapped in death?

-■■■■■■.

They became the army of death. Transformed into the same form as their king, the army began its march. The tide of battle had reversed, and Najin let out a long, slow breath.

'That makes two.'

Immutability and eternity had crumbled.

'One left.'

All that remained was indestructibility.

Thud.

Najin stepped forward toward the indestructible king of death. There was no reason to start trembling with fear now. For Najin, who had always resisted and challenged death, confronting it was nothing new.

The Star of Challenge shone.

Before the overflowing death, Najin challenged it.

2.

The Authority of the end was hideously, terribly powerful.

It broke down a Transcendent's resistance and descended on everyone with perfect equality. Atanga's Famine Authority was proof of that. The Famine Authority made everyone who set foot on that land feel hunger and thirst.

And War? Mordred could ignite war alone. Every cursed one in the Abyss fought under his command, and even beasts without reason were an unbeatable army beneath Mordred's flag.

The Carnival King, conquest and plague both? Her overwhelming Authority had succeeded in deceiving even Merlin, if only for a moment. Her horror, nearly conquering the entire Continent beyond the Outland, needed no further elaboration.

So here.

The most powerful Authority, death.

What kind of being was the king who wore that death? To that question, Najin had no easy answer.

Crack.

Najin's body was thrown into the air by a blow he never saw coming. By the time his mind caught up, he was rolling across the ground. He did not even know what had hit him.

Shrrrrk!

He rose from the ground in a sliding rush and steadied his stance.

'No sound. No sign of approach.'

Of course. Death comes without sound. It strikes suddenly, with no warning at all. That is what makes death feel so cruel. The king clad in death was the same. In this darkness-smothered place, no shape was visible.

Flinch.

On reflex, Najin swung his sword. The blade made contact with something. He heard nothing, but the sensation of having deflected something definite remained. He realized he had knocked away something that had been coming to harvest his life.

'Cannot distinguish its form, cannot tell where death begins and where it ends, cannot see it at all.'

How was anyone supposed to fight something like this? He had every right to be frustrated, yet Najin was not. Because even without seeing, he could know.

Najin had always wagered his life.

He had challenged enemies at the boundary between life and death, faced death head-on, and won by evading the death closing in on him. Because he had always kept death close, Najin could sense it coming, at least that much, by instinct.

'Now.'

Here it comes. No avoiding it. Death is not something that can be avoided. Then collide with it head-on. No sound, but again the sensation of deflecting something came. Even that, however, did not last long.

His senses sank like something going under water.

His body grew heavy, like an old man standing at the threshold of death.

His Sword Aura dimmed.

Death is equal to all. No matter how great a warrior, before death they are no different from a dying elder. Like being dragged down into a swamp, this was the moment death reached to seize Najin's life.

With a hard grip.

Death was caught by Najin.

"Got you."

Not Excalibur. Najin seized death with his bare hands. Pulling death toward himself, Najin struck it with his bare fist.

Crack!

This time there was sound. Even if that sound was the cracking of his own bones, what mattered was that there was sound. Najin reset his bones and breathed out.

'Doesn't matter.'

It did not matter if his senses grew dull or his body grew heavy. When had it ever been any different? Fleeing from death had always been Najin's specialty. But right now, rather than fleeing, he had to choose a different way.

Face death. Feel it. Listen to it. Look at it.

Do that, and you feel it.

The cool chill reaching to steal away the warmth of life.

Do that, and you hear it.

The footsteps of death approaching through the dark.

"Ah."

Do that, and at last you can see it. Death approaching, its entire body adorned with the weapons countless warriors had driven into it. Seeing that figure, he finally understood. That was not unstoppable death. It was only a king wearing death.

For upon that head sat a crown.

Why would death need a crown? Toward the being that still could not let go of its attachment to being a king, Najin walked forward in bold, steady strides.

'So that is it.'

The death the king wore around his body was blocked by the crown and could not completely devour him from within. Seeing that, Najin was certain.

'That is your indestructibility.'

That crown was the last mystique remaining in Leviathan. The mystique of indestructibility was there. What needed to be done, then, was simple and clear.

'First.'

He would smash that crown to pieces.

3.

The battle continued both inside and outside the dragon.

A war that shook heaven and earth was being fought, and the Constellations keeping up their duel outside the dragon glanced upward.

"What is that over there..."

Something was flying toward them from the Abyss at great speed. A few Constellations with sharp eyes, or a few who knew their history well, recognized what it was.

"Fafnir?"

"The evil dragon, Fafnir."

"Isn't that the dragon Siegfried supposedly cut down?"

It was Fafnir. But not a trace of those proud scales remained. Only a dragon of bare bones was crossing the Abyss, coming toward them. Could this be reinforcements called up by the Dragon of the Abyss? Just as they thought that and moved to intercept it..."Wait."

Merlin stopped them. Watching the dragon flying toward them, she smiled. She had spotted a single human riding on its back.

"Right. You wouldn't want to sit still either."

Merlin was a guide.

A guide was someone who showed the way.

"If you mean to go,"

Merlin stamped her foot. Mana burst out and wrapped around the dragon's body. The dead wraiths of Leviathan that had been reaching to seize Fafnir were swept away by the wave Merlin created.

"I'll open the road."

With Merlin's help and nothing to obstruct the way, Fafnir charged. Without slowing at all, accelerating, even, Fafnir slammed headlong into Leviathan's head.

Crack!

That body made of bone could not withstand the impact and shattered. But in exchange, Fafnir had forced Leviathan's mouth open.

"Thank you, old friend."

Through the gaping mouth, through the shattering bones, a single human leaped inside.

The man who had once challenged the witch, Leviathan.

He hurled himself into hell.

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