WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur
Chapter 479
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Beast (12)
Leviathan paid the price of the pact.
The man whose life God had denied, who had been made immortal against his will, touched mortality at last in his final moment. After ten thousand years of death fleeing from him, he had finally managed to catch up to it.
The Mortal King was dead.
He had not left his throne until the very end. He had not set down his crown. He met death as a king. He closed his eyes not as a human but as an apostle of a witch, sinking with the Authority of death still clasped in his hands.
A capable ruler knows how to make use of even his own death.
In life he had become a wall blocking humanity's path forward, but in death he left behind a staircase leading to what came next.
"......"
And here stood someone climbing that staircase.
Shing.
Blade raised, Najin fixed his gaze on Leviathan.
'The Authority the horseman of death possessed has been stripped away.'
The mystique a dragon was meant to carry had crumbled.
'Leviathan is a being formed from the union of the Mortal King and the First Dragon. Two existences made into one.'
Leviathan's inner self was the Mortal King.
Leviathan's outer shell was the First Dragon.
'Now that the king has met his death, what remains is......'
Only the First Dragon. Leviathan.
Little had been revealed about this existence. Leviathan himself had described it as "a being of unclear substance," one that had slept through long ages.
"Fafnir mentioned something like that."
"The master of dragons. The king of dragons."
"He said there was indeed an individual called the First Dragon, but no one knew where it was. Some said it had fallen asleep at the edge of the world. Others said it had become the mountain range encircling the world at the dawn of the first year."
A something that existed but had no substance. The Witch of the Abyss had brought that something here through some means and fused it with Leviathan. She had given it the name Leviathan and given it form.
But now, with the Mortal King dead.
The dragon could no longer hold its shape. The anchor that had kept it tethered to the world was gone, and the First Dragon began to shudder and thrash. As creatures facing death tend to do, this was something close to desperate flailing.
Drdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdddd!
But if that body was comparable in scale to the mountain range encircling the world, then that desperate flailing was more than threatening enough. Every time Leviathan's tail lashed the ground, the world shook. When it swung that serpentine trunk, towering canyons were flattened to plains.
"Haa."
Watching it, Najin laughed despite himself.
'Hard not to.'
There was not a shred of the dignity a dragon was supposed to carry. The mystique was gone. The dignity was gone. Even the indestructibility was gone. Could something that had shed every symbol of dragonhood truly be called a great existence?
'No.'
Najin shook his head.
That thing was nothing but a beast.
It might have been great once, but now it was a beast that had fallen to the ground. Look at it thrashing in fear of the death closing in. The sight of it flailing and scattering its own flesh was nothing short of pitiful.
'Then.'
Cut it down, and that was that. It didn't matter if its scale was comparable to a mountain range. The fact that its hide was tougher than anything in the world, that the bones beneath were hard enough to resist any blade, none of that meant anything to Najin now.
If he meant to cut, he would cut.
The sword he had learned from Siegfried was exactly that kind of sword. Steadying his breath, Najin started running across the surface of Leviathan's violently heaving body. His body was battered beyond measure from the unrelenting chain of battles, his stamina scraped to nothing, and yet......
Tap.
Strange. His mind had never been clearer.
Najin ran across Leviathan's surface as though it were level ground, the dragon rolling like a fierce wave beneath him. His steps were light. His thoughts were sharp. Was it because the Dragon Slaying star was shining brighter than ever before? That didn't seem to be all of it.
"Aha."
Climbing up the dragon's body, Najin glanced up at the sky without thinking and found himself smiling.
His constellation of eleven stars.
A twelfth was being born there.
He couldn't yet know the name that star would carry, but he would find out soon enough. Trailing starlight, Najin sprinted.
-------!
A roar tore from the dragon. The whole air trembled. As if determined not to die quietly, Leviathan drew in a vast breath. The breath was coming. Leviathan opened its jaws with the force of something about to expel everything inside itself.
Fire poured out.
It had been aimed at Najin alone, but Najin didn't swing his sword. There was no reason to spend strength on this, and no reason to break his form. Because Najin wasn't exactly fighting alone.
Crack.
The sound of something splitting reached him from somewhere. A familiar sound to Najin. A single streak of Sword Aura grazed past him. Before the fire could reach Najin, a single straight line split the flames in two.
Imperial Sword, Triumph.
Gerd's sword strike clove the fire apart. Behind it, a pillar of light from the Star Incarnation blasted the flames open. Even so fire remained, but there was no risk of it burning Najin's body.
Flick.
The snap of a finger, then blue droplets rose around him. No need to look. Merlin's magic. Her voice rang in his ear.
"You know what I'd say, right?"
Keep your eyes forward and run, same as always.
Boom.
He did. Najin picked up speed. The droplets evaporated. Wrapped in steam, he pushed faster still. He burst through the fire with his bare body. Najin ran, skating across the dragon's hide.
And he was not the only one running.
Najin saw it. Dragon blood erupting far in the distance. There was a person running toward him from the other side, sword driven into the thrashing dragon's body.
"Ha."
Najin burst out laughing.
'You said you wanted no part of this, and here you are out front, enjoying it more than anyone.'
No need to say who. The Sword Saint, Karon. Wanting to cut what even the great grandmaster of that esteemed order could not cut, he was running toward Najin from the opposite side. The paths they ran were different, but the direction was the same.
A brief exchange of glances.
That was enough.
Both Najin and Karon sprinted toward the dragon's head.
2.
The Constellations gathered on the battlefield watched.
Thud, boom.
A mythic beast running wild.
CRAAAAASH!
The beast facing death twisted and thrashed more violently than it ever had, heaving the ground apart and splitting it open. The Constellations, unlike Najin, could not bring themselves to see it as pitiful. Every time Leviathan moved its body, the earth was gouged deep. Everything was made flat.
A destroyer of civilization. A terrible calamity that leveled everything humanity had ever built.
Even the blood Leviathan had shed so far would have been enough to fill a river, and still it raged on. A dreadfully powerful existence.
Powerful as it was.
They felt awe at the sight of it, but no fear. What drew the Constellations' eyes was not the dragon's greatness, but the human daring to challenge that greatness.
"Dawning Star."
"There, over there."
"Running."
"He's running."
The Dawning Star was running.
A human being was running across the body of an enormous dragon.
Of course, against Leviathan's massive frame, Najin's presence was insignificant. Small. Absurdly small. Barely visible at all. And yet every star gathered here could tell exactly where Najin was.
Because a star was shining.
Platinum starlight was stamped like footprints. The footprints kept going. And kept climbing higher.
"Now."
The Constellations who had been thrown from Leviathan's body as it raged and had pulled back to regroup found themselves clenching their fists without thinking. Watching Najin sprint on a battered body, they dragged their own exhausted frames upright.
"Now."
"Now."
One by one, they rose and started moving.
"Help the Dawning Star!"
"Run!"
"This is the end, just a little more!"
They began to run after Najin. The starlight the Constellations gritted their teeth and unleashed hammered into the dragon's body. Wanting to be even a small help, they fired their Absolute Techniques. Whether those attacks were doing much damage hardly mattered.
"RAAAAAHHHHH!"
"Go, go! Hit it!"
They simply crashed into the dragon's body, wanting to do something, anything. Those whose weapons had broken swung their bare fists.
"I am a warrior... a glorious death in battle-!"
"If you have the breath for pointless speeches, throw a punch instead, you thick-skulled savage!"
"I'll remember that."
"Oh, for the love of, this is getting awkward......"
"Run, comrades!"
Stars shone.
"Casters, throw some magic!"
"Throw it on me! I'll punch through!"
"The tail! The tail's coming! Where's the First Horn of the Empire?!"
"He can't move right now, form the barrier! Damn it, they said that great shield couldn't be broken and now it's cracked!"
"I'll hold it."
"No, I will."
"I will, personally!"
Stars shone.
Tap.
Trailing stars, Najin ran. He ran and kept running. Eyes fixed on nothing but what lay ahead, he sprinted. The head of the largest beast in the world was almost within reach now.
The dragon's head was in sight.
Staring at the dragon's head, still covered in scales that hadn't been stripped clean, Najin took what would be his final step. Thud, his footprints pressed into the shaking dragon's body.
Thunk.
In that moment everything stopped. Najin's sense of time stretched out without end. The cries of the stars, the dragon's roar, every sound vanished. In that silent world, Najin moved his sword.
He poured the Dragon Slaying star into the blade.
A sword honed to kill dragons.
He thought of the Swordsman who had sharpened his entire life to a fine edge in order to cut down dragons, in life and even in death. The starlight that Swordsman had handed to Najin shone brighter than ever, working to fulfill its old master's wish.
Thousand Stars.
Thousand Swords.
The exact same instant Najin raised his sword, Karon raised Gramr from the opposite side. Their eyes met. In that drawn-out moment, the same inner world was held in both their blades. The sword they called to mind was Siegfried's, but the way each of them rendered it was different.
Ten Thousand Radiances.
Ten Thousand Forms.
Two Absolute Techniques were loosed toward the dragon's neck.
3.
Thousand Swords, Ten Thousand Forms. Karon's Absolute Technique could not cut a wide area all at once. It simply cut a single target cleanly and with certainty. It made a deep wound. The sword Karon had completed in order to cut down Siegfried was a single straight line.
The line touched the back of Leviathan's neck.
The hide tore open. The fierce flash of light stripped away every scale that hadn't yet been torn free and carved deep into that hide. Blood erupted like a fountain. It hadn't reached the bone, but it opened a path for the sword that followed.
Najin's sword strike ran along that line.
Thousand Stars.
Shining stars were here. Countless, countless stars gazed at Najin. He wove those stars together and drew a single straight line.
SLAAAAAAASH!
The line hurtled along the path Karon had made. It skipped over scales, crossed through hide, and met the bone laid bare beneath. The instant the Sword Aura touched the dragon bone, Najin twisted the blade.
Ten Thousand Radiances.
Sword Aura exploded from the line. The Sword Aura bursting in every direction hacked apart the dragon's neck. It tore through the hide. It gnawed into the thick bone. Blood sprayed like a fountain. The dragon that had swallowed countless lives over ten thousand years now disgorged every one of them in this moment.
Drdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdddd!
Leviathan resisted.
As if it refused to die this way, as if it refused to bow its head, it writhed. It reared its head back while spraying blood like a fountain. It swallowed the light the Blight Star produced, trying to use it as a substitute for its own blood, bones, and hide.
Crack.
The thick tangle of bloody vessels, the vessels through which the Blight Star's light flowed, grasped desperately at the falling head, trying to keep it in place. They sought to mend the gap, to bind it shut again. The clotted vessels looked like a tough knot that would refuse to snap or loosen.
It looked like a decent enough response.
But it was a mistake.
A being that had borrowed the Blight Star's power. A being trying to replace its own body with the Blight Star's light. One trying to form itself from that terrible starlight as blood.
Najin had already faced something like that before.
The Victory in Battle star shone.
His completed twelfth star shone.
Swick.
With a light flick of his sword, Najin severed the Blight Star's starlight holding the head in place. The clotted vessels parted far too easily. The arrogant beast that had tried to hold its head high until the very last, the king of every arrogant thing in this land, finally bowed its head.
The severed dragon's head fell.
Scattering blood all the way up to the sky, Leviathan fell. An inescapable fall, its head dropping toward the Abyss. Death had finally caught up to the beast that had spent so long running from it.
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