WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 478

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Leviathan (11)

A contract has value only when the promise within it is kept.

Guarantee what you swore to guarantee.

Honor what you swore to honor.

In exchange for that fulfillment, people stake their rights, their property, even their own lives as collateral. The key distinction, though, is "collateral," not "payment." If the contract goes unfulfilled, all of it must be returned.

Here is a contract that stretched across ten thousand years.

The king promised a better future. He swore to bring down the evil god that toyed with all living things and to bequeath a beautiful world to the children who came after.

"I pledge my loyalty."

"I will make this contract."

"If the future you envision is truly that beautiful, I have no reason to refuse. I will make this contract."

"I, Titan, King of Giants, shall sign. From this day forward, the giants shall be your dearest allies and your comrades in arms."

Countless heroes joined that cause. Contracts were forged across every race, from the highest to the lowest, until this was truly a covenant made with all people.

Yet the king failed to keep his promise.

He neither guaranteed what he had sworn to guarantee nor fulfilled what he had sworn to fulfill.

By rights, there was no reason for this contract to continue. The contract was over. The collateral held in trust should have been returned. That was the right thing to do, and yet the contract endured through ten thousand years. The reason was simple enough.

"It is not over. Nothing is over."

It was because of the Conqueror King.

He claimed the war had not yet ended. The story was not finished, and because he remained emperor and their representative, the contract was still valid, he insisted.

"Hear me."

So the contract could not be severed, and yet...

"The ancient contract is severed."

The Conqueror King had been consumed by death and was gone.

The indestructible had become mortal.

The king, now capable of dying, made his declaration.

"Take it. The reward owed by this contract. The rightful rights you should have enjoyed long ago."

The end of the contract.

The Return of Rights.

-......

In that instant the empire fell utterly silent.

Not a sound could be heard. The cries of tens of millions of souls, the ringing clang of their weapons cutting through the air, the roars they had been raising, all of it vanished. Their movement stopped as well.

The stars who had been fighting against them stood in bewilderment, and from somewhere came the sound of a chain coming loose with a clank.

And then the change began.

They were souls who had suffered for ten thousand years, unable to die properly. Ground down across that span, they could no longer form coherent thought. The only thing left in them was hatred. Hatred toward the existence that had made them what they were.

That hatred turned toward the witch, and toward the king.

One was a god; one was a king.

Of the two, the closer one stood right before their eyes. The king who had broken his promise, who had not fallen into hell, who had made a pact with the god and survived, he was right there. Proximity breeds deeper hatred than distance ever could.

-Aaah, aaaaaaaaah!

Screams. War cries. Hatred boiling over.

-Aaaaaaaaah!

The direction their weapons pointed changed. Tens of millions of souls, every last one, stopped charging at the empire's enemies and turned inward, driving toward the empire itself. Straight toward the origin of all this, they surged.

Treason.

Treason deferred for a full ten thousand years had come at last.

"Bwahahaha!"

Watching tens of millions of rebels charge toward him, the king burst out laughing. He laughed aloud as though some great weight had lifted from him. Then, without a word, he walked toward the highest point of the empire. He walked with more dignity than he had ever shown.

The death he wore willingly became his staircase.

Taking death as his steps, he climbed to the top of the altar. Crown pressed down on his head, he took his seat on the throne, the seat above all, above every living thing. He did not flee before the approaching death.

"......"

Leviathan looked at Najin in silence.

Both Najin and Leviathan understood.

There was no cause to this treason. It could not be called revolution. The souls worn down through the long years had no will of their own, and what filled their raised weapons was nothing but hatred. A treason born from hatred alone could have no "after."

It was nothing more than revenge without a cause.

But if, perhaps ,

If a hero happened to be among this wave of treason, if some noble soul yearning for a better tomorrow were caught up in it and took that flame of treason in hand, if this treason could serve that hero...

"Najin."

Was that, then.

"Is this revenge, or revolution?"

Leviathan asked the question. Najin gave no answer. He only raised his sword. He lit the path to the throne with the Star of Tomorrow.

Then it was revolution.

The hero's presence gave the treason a cause.

In that moment, a narrative was granted to the revenge of those souls: "For a better tomorrow for all humanity, old humanity willingly lends its strength." The stars who had been fighting against them stood confused for a moment, then joined the tide.

Old humanity and present humanity fought as one.

Past and present worked together to drive out a king who had gone wrong. Old humanity, pressed into service as the witch's limbs for ten thousand years, could, in the very last moment, stand on the side of humanity.

"Aah......"

At that sight, Leviathan smiled with deep satisfaction. To Najin, who had brought this story to completion, he called out with as much reverence as he could summon.

"Go, hero of this age."

Toward the tomorrow you envision.

Stepping past my failure, forward.

2.

It is not a god who kills a king.

Nor a hero.

Nor any remarkable being standing apart from the rest.

Kings have always been killed by the people. By subjects, by commoners, by the weight of numbers. All a hero needs to do is open the way. That role, Najin had performed brilliantly.

He had shattered the mystiques of immutability, eternity, and indestructibility.

He had made the king into something that could die.

What remained was the people's share. Leviathan, now a mortal being, would meet his end at the hands of none other than his own subjects. Leviathan himself had wanted that. It was how he would pay for his sins.

"Go, hero of this age."

Leviathan pointed toward the way out.

This place was no longer Najin's stage.

Leviathan was a being formed by the union of the First Dragon and the Mortal King. The two had been bound into one, which meant bringing Leviathan down required killing both.

"What remains..."

Najin gave a short nod and moved.

"...is the fallen beast."

The interior space was already beginning to collapse. Najin swung his sword lightly to split the boundary dividing the inside of the dragon from the outside. A path out opened. Somewhere above, the dragon's belly must have been sliced open in a long gash.

Before stepping outside.

Najin looked back at Leviathan one last time. He sat on the throne, waiting calmly for his end.

"......"

There was much that could have been said to him.

"You held together the tens of millions of subjects who, after losing their ruler, would have gone on a mindless rampage. You turned them from enemies into allies and gave them a narrative. They will be a strength, perhaps not only for this fight, but for what comes after..."

He could have spoken of how extraordinary the choice had been.

"The Leviathan outside, thrashing as it dies and scattering death in every direction, is the same. It cannot wield that death. You hold it, because you intend to meet your end together with the Authority of death."

He could have gone on at length about how much easier that choice had made this battle.

"Far more stars will survive than anyone anticipated. Far more will emerge with their strength intact."

He could have spoken of what would follow because of it.

But.

"......"

Najin said nothing. He kept his silence. That was not what Leviathan wanted. He did not wish to be praised. He wanted to die not as a wise king but as a tyrant.

Only then would his subjects' rebellion carry any worth.

Najin respected that wish. Without so much as a small salute, he turned his back on Leviathan and walked away. From behind him, beneath the sound of laughter, a quiet voice drifted to him.

"Thank you."

-Aaaaaaaaaah!

In the place where Najin had been.

-Aaaaaah!

Tens of millions of footsteps took his place. They trampled the imperial palace with mud-caked feet. They defiled the altar that only the emperor could ascend, and pressed on toward the throne where the emperor sat. They roared and drove their weapons home.

Leviathan's body was pierced.

Pierced, run through, slashed, burned, trampled, torn apart. Yet Leviathan did not die easily. Even made mortal, he was still an apostle of the Witch of the Abyss. He regenerated again and again, absorbing blades and spears into his body.

"......"

He did not move from the throne. Even though he could have resisted, could have reduced everything before him to dust with a single surge of power, he did not. He simply closed his eyes and savored the exquisite pain.

It was coming. Death was coming.

He could feel his life being chipped away.

The death he had waited so long for arrived wrapped in pain. Eyes closed, braced to receive it, he heard a roar echo in his ears. A familiar and dear roar.

"Ah, yes. You were still here."

He opened his eyes. There stood the old friend who had promised him hell. She had flown high and proud to reach him, and now she walked toward him in human form.

Arrogant, yet never contemptuous.

Dismissive of humans, yet never ignoring them.

The dragon who had willingly become wings for humanity came to stand before her old friend and keep a promise. She still meant to keep it, even when the other side had broken theirs. At that sight, Leviathan could only smile bitterly.

"Dragons do not break their promises."

"Unlike you humans."

Her voice seemed to reach him.

Fafnir drove a fist through Leviathan's heart.

The dragon kept the promise.

Because humanity had also kept its promise by not forgetting its purpose until the very end.

3.

The collapse of Leviathan began.

Change swept through everything.

The stars fighting the dragon outside felt it first. Every scale left on the dragon's body was falling away, and the body itself had begun to melt. The dragon's screams echoed out.

Death began to eat into the dragon's body.

A being that had been immortal was becoming something that could die. The Constellations shouted and pumped their fists.

"We got it!"

"Next, the next phase!"

"Get ready!"

But none of that meant the fight was over. The stars knew it too. They had been briefed on the plan beforehand, and they knew a long and brutal battle still lay ahead.

Someone would die.

Perhaps all of them would.

Having come prepared for that, the Constellations swallowed hard and fixed their eyes on Leviathan. From here on, the beast facing death would begin to thrash and scatter death in every direction. Where that Authority would reach was anyone's guess.

A tense silence settled over them.

Something was off.

The stars started to feel it.

"...Has anything actually changed?"

"What about the Authority of death?"

"Can anyone feel the Authority?"

Time passed and still the Authority was nowhere to be seen. Leviathan was swinging its tail wildly and slamming its body down, but nothing about it seemed different from before. Where had that terrible Authority of death gone?

"It's coming."

And then-the one star who understood what was happening.

"It will come."

Merlin smiled and pointed at the dragon's belly.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhrk!

At that moment the belly was torn open in a long slash. Through the spray of blood erupting outward, Najin burst out from inside the dragon. Against the sheer size of the great dragon, his body was no more than a single point, yet his presence did not yield by even a fraction.

Shing.

Najin took his footing on the body of the thrashing dragon and raised his sword. Platinum starlight exploded outward. Trailing that starlight, he lifted his head and locked his gaze on the screaming dragon's head, its jaws wrenched open wide.

The Mortal King had met death at the hands of the people.

Then at whose hands would the dragon meet death?

Killing a dragon is a great feat. And those who accomplish great feats are called heroes by the world. In countless epic tales and stories, slaying a dragon and achieving a great feat had always been the hero's role.

Here stood the foremost of heroes.

Najin unleashed the starlight he had been holding back for this moment.

The star for slaying the dragon.

The star Najin had won, the star honed razor-sharp by a swordsman who had spent his whole life for the sole purpose of cutting down dragons.

The Dragon Slaying star shone.

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