WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 480

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The End (1)

Leviathan's head came off.

It fell a long way before hitting the ground with a dull, heavy thud. The proud ancient dragon that had always craned its head toward the sky found its final resting place not in the heavens but in the blood-soaked mud below.

Drip, drip, drip...

The blood gushing from the severed stump broke apart into droplets and rained down. Dark crimson dragon blood fell like a shower. It soaked the scaleless body and pooled beneath.

Twitch.

The headless dragon's body went rigid. Then it convulsed and began to sway. Like a rubber band stretched past its limit finally snapping, a chain of cracking and breaking sounds rang out across every inch of the dragon's frame.

And then, thud.

Blood erupted from the entire body. As if boasting of everything it had held inside, it kept pouring without end. Along the long furrows the dragon had carved into the earth, blood gathered and settled.

A sea of blood. A true ocean made of it.

A mythic beast dies a mythic death. Some myths tell of dead gods whose bodies became mountains and whose blood became seas, and the scene before him was exactly that. Leviathan's death had made an ocean.

"......"

Najin watched in silence. The dragon that had kept thrashing even after losing its heart only met death after losing its head as well. That was Leviathan's end: laying its body down in the sea made from its own blood.

Several minutes passed.

The Constellations who had been watching with bated breath saw that Leviathan still did not move as time wore on. One by one they began to let out cries of victory.

"Waaaaah!"

One Constellation screamed like a fifteen-year-old boy and started throwing punches at the air. Under normal circumstances, someone would have told a Transcendent of several centuries to show some dignity. Not today.

Everyone was doing the same.

They shouted, they leapt in place, they grabbed onto each other and shed tears. Even Constellations who had been at each other's throats were giving thumbs-up or reaching out for awkward handshakes.

"Najin!"

He turned. Merlin was running toward him, her tattered clothes flapping. Her blood-stained blue hair swayed. She had not even thought to wipe the blood from her face. She just threw her arms around him.

Close enough to feel each other's heartbeats, Merlin pressed her face to Najin's with her arms around his neck.

No long speech was needed.

Their eyes met, and they both burst out laughing. They looked absolutely terrible, and they could each feel how elated the other was.

"Finally."

Merlin said.

"Finally, finally!"

The enemy she had failed to bring down a thousand years ago, the wall she had never been able to cross, she had crossed it now. Unable to contain her excitement, she kept laughing.

Najin looked around.

The other Constellations were no different. Their gazes drifted naturally toward him as the cheering continued. He was the central figure of this expedition, the one who had put everyone in a position to be standing here. If the failure of the hunt would have fallen on Najin, then the glory of its success belonged to him as well.

They were waiting for something.

Najin knew what. He smiled and raised Excalibur high. The blade caught the light above him, and the star of Victory in Battle shone brilliantly, as if announcing triumph in war.

"Waaaaaaaah!"

The roar grew even louder. Within it, Najin tilted his head back and looked at the sky. Stars were visible up there. He turned over in his mind the story contained in his twelfth star.

Dragons, by their original nature, were rulers of the sky.

Emperors, by their original nature, were the sky above all people.

Najin had brought the dragon down. He had dragged the emperor from his throne, and to all who had followed that emperor he had proven that the sky they believed in was wrong. In doing so, Najin had sparked a revolution on a scale without precedent in history and replaced the sky they knew.

So I thought it would be the star of revolution.

It was not. Evidently the world had focused not on the revolution Najin had ignited, but on the fact that he had brought the sky down. Perhaps what had drawn its attention was that he had killed something that should have been unkillable, thereby defying providence.

And so Najin's twelfth star was defiance of heaven.

Was it defiance of heaven because it defied the laws of heaven, or because it changed the role heaven had ordained? Both applied. Counting his stars, Najin smiled.

Either way.

Against the one last opponent still waiting for him, the twelfth star could be a sharp blade.

2.

"Come to think of it, what happened to the expedition members who went inside the dragon? They still haven't come out..."

At one Constellation's words, the crowd's eyes turned to Najin. Three people had gone inside the dragon, and only Najin had come out. He would know the answer.

Were they killed in battle?

The thought crept into the minds of the Constellations. Even though casualties had been almost none for a fight against a mythic dragon, they knew this was extraordinary luck. By rights, most of them should have died or become wraiths. That was the kind of battle it had been.

And the inside of the dragon was something else entirely.

A nightmarishly dangerous battlefield. Najin had made it out alive, but the other two dying in battle would not have been surprising.

"Ah, Kirchhoff..."

"His star has fallen."

"What a pity."

"Ah..."

Those savoring the joy of victory let out long sighs. But the sighs did not last. Someone confirmed that their stars had not yet gone out.

And then.

"Who said anything about dying?"

What would rank at the very top of things you should not do at a funeral: Kirchhoff, somehow having come back from the dead, came wading out of the sea of blood. Yuel was right behind him.

"Well, the first thing I saw when I got out was a sea of blood, so I was a bit surprised... but it would be embarrassing for a Constellation representing an entire nation to drown, wouldn't it?"

He shrugged. The Constellations burst out laughing and began chanting Kirchhoff's name. In the middle of it all, Najin looked past the crowd at Yuel, who was wringing out her soaked clothes.

"......"

"......"

A brief exchange of glances. Najin pointed to one side. Yuel nodded and moved somewhere out of the other Constellations' sight.

"It would be faster if I explained."

Yuel took the lead and spoke. She reached into her garment and set the Holy Grail down. They had used the Holy Grail against old humanity, so its interior should have been empty. It had been a power that could only be used once.

Yet for some reason.

The Holy Grail held considerably more of something than it had before. Not pure starlight. But not simply murky, either.

"You don't seem particularly surprised."

"I had a rough idea."

"Well. You were the one who devised this plan, so perhaps you saw this far ahead."

Najin shook his head.

"I only thought it might happen. Because if it was the Leviathan I had spoken with several times, I thought he would not let this opportunity pass."

"Faith. An uncertain basis, but for some people there is no better basis than that."

Yuel, who had experienced something similar herself, smiled faintly. She tapped the Holy Grail with her finger.

"An explanation is still in order, though."

She pointed at it.

"The tens of millions of souls that formed the interior of the dragon, the souls that had been bound to the Conqueror King, have been released from their contract. The very king who had contracted with them was the one who declared the Termination of Contract."

And that king had made a declaration to all of them.

The one who had tormented them was right here.

Their rage was justified, and their right to act on it was something that ought to be exercised.

"Thanks to that declaration, the tens of millions rose in revolution. They executed the king who had tormented them across long ages. Even if the driving force was anger, the act itself can be interpreted as something done for the sake of humanity."

Old humanity had lent their strength to present humanity.

They had built a stepping stone for those who would come after.

Their revenge carried that interpretation. And looking at the results alone, it was accurate. That had likely been Leviathan's aim all along.

"Heroes stood together and brought down a corrupt king."

That was the narrative now complete.

"After you stepped in, I began the separation."

Najin had understood that intention, and Yuel, present at the scene, had understood it too. The moment Najin stepped forward, Yuel acted immediately. The contract already fraying from the deaths of the Conqueror King and Leviathan, she dismantled it entirely.

She had separated Leviathan from the tens of millions of lives.

Originally, only Leviathan had been fused with the dragon. The tens of millions of lives had simply been drawn in because Leviathan held ownership over them. But the contract was broken and Leviathan had met death.

"The rights were returned. After that, separation is simple. Just sever the connection point, and that is all."

And so the tens of millions found freedom. They could find rest. After ten thousand years of suffering, they could close their eyes.

"So I made them an offer."

But there was another choice.

"Your revenge is not finished."

Yuel pointed at the sky.

"Your king was only manipulated by a god. The true source of all this is the Witch of the Abyss. The war your kind once waged against the witch ten thousand years ago is not over."

The one they ought to take revenge on was still out there.

"Will you accept rest here and now?"

Or.

"Will you see your original purpose through to the end?"

They were as close to the dead as anything could be. The endless years had burned away their will, their reason, every other feeling. Yet even so, hatred remained in them. They still wanted revenge.

Rightful revenge.

Yuel had extended that opportunity to them, and they had willingly taken her hand. Having explained this much, Yuel let out a long breath.

"The theme running through the Holy Grail is Tomorrow. For the sake of the future, for that single purpose, it can hold anything within itself. Even if..."

Even if what it holds are avengers with nothing left but hatred.

Yuel swallowed the rest.

It was something of a workaround, but Yuel had succeeded in placing them inside the Holy Grail. Replenished by their strength, the Holy Grail could be used once more. On a far greater scale than before, together with tens of millions of soldiers.

"......"

Najin was quiet for a moment, then let out a hollow laugh.

"Really."

A ruler leaves something behind through their death. Looking at what the greatest ruler in the history of humanity had left behind, Najin could only laugh.

The Mortal King, Leviathan.

It was the final blade left behind by the king who had challenged a god. A design that bordered on madness. When Najin had once explained the Holy Grail to him, had he already seen this far? Or was it the result of chance fitting itself together?

"Did I not say as much?"

It seemed like the former.

"That I would challenge a god in my right mind? Hardly."

He thought he heard Leviathan's laughter, and Najin could not help smiling.

3.

The horseman of Conquest, the Carnival King, had been conquered.

The horseman of War, Mordred, had been defeated.

The horseman of Famine, Atanga, had been satisfied.

And the last remaining horseman.

The horseman of death, Leviathan, had died.

Plague, war, famine, death.

All four horsemen who had ridden forth bearing the banners of the end had been brought down. Each had been stripped of the concept they embodied, lost their right to ride, and in the end been annihilated.

When all the horsemen stopped riding.

When every banner was broken.

When the world forgot the fear of the end, when it believed without doubt that the end could be overcome, when it believed that pressing steadily forward would see it through this ordeal.

Only then.

At the edge of the world, the end opens its eyes.

She ran her fingers over the Stake driven into her heart. She stroked it as though it were something precious, and with the lingering touch of a woman bidding farewell to a long-time lover, she lightly brushed the Stake.

The Stake crumbled.

It could no longer hold her.

"You said it to me that day."

She rose to her feet.

"That I should not think the tens of thousands of years I have lived until now would be the same as the thousand years about to unfold. That from now on would be the age of humanity. That one who could reach me would surely appear."

The end of all things rose.

"Very well."

The Witch of the Abyss opened her eyes.

"Let us see whether your death held any worth."

When someone asks what the end is, a god answers like this.

Yes. I am coming.

To announce the end you had forgotten, to witness your final moments, I am coming to you.

Morgan le Fay.

The one and only god descended upon the world.

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