WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 482

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The End (3)

Every person is sentenced to death the moment they are born.

When most people come to understand that their lives are finite, they accept it as something they cannot change. But a few spend their lives chasing every possible means to overcome that finitude.

Warriors and mages are the clearest example.

They temper their bodies. They drink miraculous elixirs. They hone their martial arts or their magic, straining to push their realm higher, because reaching the level of a Sword Seeker and beyond means they at least won't die of old age.

But they are still just as finite.

They won't age to death, but they erode toward it. Once they pass 150 and can no longer live on the Continent, they are driven out into the Outland, and no one at merely Sword Seeker caliber can survive the Outland forever. Their stars crumble and wear away, and eventually they die.

That is why humans dream of Transcendence.

A superman.

A Transcendent who has stepped beyond the boundaries of humanity. The Constellations who have carved their stars into the night sky and live on forever. They are near-immortal, beyond killing by ordinary means, and they endure as themselves across vast stretches of time. That countless ordinary people envy such a life goes without saying.

How sweet it must be, to be freed from a death sentence already passed. How peaceful, to live without worrying about dying of old age, or dying from a wound, or dying of sickness.

And so the Constellations live their lives bathed in the longing and admiration of countless ordinary people.

"Ah. Ahhhh......"

Because of that, Transcendents sometimes fall into a delusion.

"Aaaaaah!"

They come to believe they are beings that cannot die.

"Ah, ahh, ahh, ahhhhh!"

That they are special, different from everyone else. They delude themselves.

Splat.

To correct that delusion, a god had descended upon this land.

Splat, splat, splat......

The dark crimson blood drenching the Abyss was apparently not satisfied with that. It was reaching out to devour the Outland too. Like ink dissolving into clear water, the sky of the Outland began to stain from its outermost edges. The stars stationed at the fringes of the Outland screamed and crumpled where they stood the instant that blood touched them.

Blood poured from their eyes, their noses, their ears, their mouths. They collapsed in agony, as though ten thousand insects were gnawing through their flesh from within.

Panic spread.

Screams echoed.

And to the witch, those sounds were a sweet hymn. She hummed along to them. The melody drifted from far away, deep in the darkness-shrouded Abyss.

Tap.

It was not only singing that reached them.

Tap.

Footsteps. Not the click of heeled shoes. The distinct sound of bare feet pressing against the ground and lifting away. Even as the Constellations screamed, that sound came through with perfect clarity.

Tap.

Blood streaming from their eyes, the Constellations turned their heads. They looked toward the source of the sound as if something had seized their minds. A human silhouette wavered in the darkness. With every step it took, the darkness shuddered.

Then the god revealed herself.

Hair cascaded down over a body of pure white. The falling hair became clothing that wrapped around her. Across the bare skin visible in the gaps, red writing was packed in dense lines, the languages of countless civilizations.

She had carved human language into her body, but every human who looked upon it felt a profound sense of violation. It was a desecration of the written word. Letters developed for communication and record, pressed into the witch's flesh like specimens, had served their final purpose.

La la la, la la, la.

The sweet singing stopped.

Splat.

When she stepped forward, blood flowed. Blood running through the dark ran dark crimson. In the darkness, a Blight Star rose.

Everyone stared at the god.

A brief silence.

Someone opened their mouth.

"The witch......"

The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay.

2.

The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay.

The most terrible calamity recorded in the history of humanity had appeared. The stars could not understand how she, who should certainly have been sealed away at the deepest reaches of the Abyss, had come to be standing here.

When Leviathan dies, she is freed from her seal.

That much they knew.

The problem was that the witch had moved far too quickly. How could a being only just released from her seal already be standing here? Was there any precedent in history of her moving this fast? There was not. The witch had always devoured humanity slowly, unhurriedly, but with absolute certainty.

'But she is here. Right here.'

That woman is the witch. There was no room for doubt.

Then was she a Double of the witch? A puppet woven from the darkness overflowing this place, conjured to show itself to the stars gathered here? That interpretation was more rational.

Rational, yet the stars could not readily accept it. Not their minds but their hearts refused.

'A puppet they conjured, that thing?'

Something radiating this much oppressive force, really?

"......"

The Constellations' eyes shook wildly. Transcendents who normally held perfect command over their own bodies, yet in this moment they did not. Their flesh broke free from their control and began reacting on its own.

Their eyes trembled. Their jaws chattered.

Upper teeth and lower teeth collided ceaselessly, and cold sweat poured down their spines like rain. They could not form a judgment. Their thinking had seized up in the face of a terror they had never experienced before.

Grit.

Some broke free of that paralysis faster than others. Najin ground his teeth and stamped the ground. He didn't know what the right answer was in this moment. But he knew clearly what the wrong one was.

"Retreat."

Facing that being here, now, in this state.

That was certainly the wrong answer.

"Retreat! Right now......"

Najin ordered them to run. But before his order could reach them, some of the Constellations had already surrendered to their instincts and moved. His voice never reached their ears.

"Ah, ahhhh, ahhhhh!"

Screaming, they threw themselves at the witch in front of them. Fear had paralyzed their reason, and the instant their eyes met hers, they could think of nothing else to do. They poured out every ounce of their power without restraint.

Starlight flashed. With ferocity enough to burn their own stars to nothing, they unleashed their Absolute Techniques toward the witch.

Spears and blades gleamed. Magic scattered. The Absolute Techniques of Transcendents capable of facing an army alone, of challenging whole nations, blazed out with tremendous force. The Absolute Techniques they unleashed looked powerful even to Najin. And they were powerful. But......

"You sometimes call yourselves supermen. You treat that word lightly."

The witch made no movement at all.

"But tell me, are you truly supermen? Can you truly say you have surpassed the boundaries of humanity? I think not. A superman must be special."

Simply.

"But you, well. You may be outstanding, but you are not special. You are only a little more outstanding than ordinary people......"

She gave a light wave of her hand.

"Are you not ordinary people yourselves?"

Excellence is relative. The witch sneered at the Constellations who had called themselves "special" based on that relative gap. In front of the most outstanding being in the world, their excellence was bound to lose all value.

Before the witch, Transcendent and ordinary human were no different.

Crumble, crumble, crumble.

The Transcendents' Absolute Techniques lost their color. Lost their light. They crumbled apart, stripped of worth. Everything those Transcendents had built over the full span of their lives meant nothing before the witch. A simple wave of her hand was enough to strip their entire lives of value.

"There is no value in the ordinary."

She took one step forward.

"If you wish to oppose me, show me not excellence but something special. Something that has never existed in this world, something unknown, something undisclosed, something no one has yet measured, only something like that will not fade before me."

She received the Constellations' weapons and blades with her bare body. Stabbed, slashed, hacked to pieces, yet her body showed not the slightest change.

"What wounds me is not countless spears and blades. Nor the blades of warriors who have never known defeat, nor the grand explosions your civilization has produced over long ages. Are such things not all 'things that already exist'?"

The sight recalled Leviathan in the past. An ancient dragon of terror that no method could wound. Yet those gathered here had defeated Leviathan. They had killed an undying existence.

How? By targeting his weakness.

Leviathan was a collection of ancient civilization. Because of that, presenting the developments of the current civilization exposed his weakness. The advancement of humanity was effectively Leviathan's reverse scale.

But.

The Witch of the Abyss was different.

"Nothing that already exists can make me bleed."

She stated her own weakness aloud. As if daring them to try, she burst out laughing.

Her weakness was not the advancement of humanity.

Nor the civilization humans had built and passed down generation after generation over long ages. Every method Najin and the heroes had used until now could not reach her. Because those were already-existing methods. She wanted something "special" that had never existed before.

"One who has never existed before. One who will never exist again."

A true superman, in the deepest sense of the word.

"Only one who has truly surpassed can kill me."

She looked at the stars rushing toward her. She looked at the stars assembled in this place and glimpsed their lives. At the end of it, the witch let out a short sigh.

"There is no such person here."

The witch raised her hand. She seized the face of a Constellation who still had a sword buried in her body and was trembling with fear. The way one might stroke a child's face, she gently pressed her fingers against the Constellation's cheek.

The Constellation's head vanished.

The headless body was eaten away by the darkness wrapped around the witch and disappeared. That was all. The life of one Transcendent who had lived 476 years ended just like that.

"You are not the one."

The witch gave a light wave of her hand.

A Transcendent who had lived 782 years turned to ash the moment her finger touched them.

A Transcendent who had lived 411 years, one who had perfectly systematized existing magic and been called a sage, was torn into thousands of pieces and ceased to exist the instant her fingernail grazed them.

A fierce warrior who had lived 651 years, a great Transcendent who had declared they could stop anything, had every bone in their body shattered and met death the moment they brushed the witch's sleeve.

A veteran hero who had lived 537 years, without managing a single proper sword swing, swelled up like a balloon and burst with a ridiculous pop, ceasing to exist.

"You are not the one."

There was no blocking it. No time to block it. The moment her hand drew a complete arc through the air, something swept through the bodies of the Constellations rushing toward her.

Their upper halves vanished.

The Constellations, only legs remaining, stopped where they stood. They met death without time to resist.

Of course they had been prepared to die. Everyone gathered here had been. They had come knowing they might die fighting Leviathan. Even if the subjugation succeeded and they survived, they were beings who had willingly resolved to lay down their lives for humanity.

But being prepared to die.

Did not mean they had anticipated this kind of death.

The death they had envisioned was magnificent, fighting heroically to the last and finally falling, becoming a stepping stone for those who came after. They had come here expecting a final end worthy of heroes.

"This is not the role meant for you."

But look. There was no worth in their deaths. No magnificence. They were simply crushed and gone. If they had brought a frail, powerless old person here in their place, that person would have met the exact same death.

"Opposing me is not the role of the common people. What you can do, well......"

Like soothing a small child, the witch whispered softly.

She lifted someone's hand that had been hanging from her hat. A hand severed at the wrist. The hand was pressed palm-to-palm, mid-prayer. She held that clasped fist lovingly against her own face, and smiled.

"Pray. Believe that your ordinary lives hold worth, and pray to me. That is the only fate you are able to choose."

So many, so very many Constellations.

Those who had called themselves Transcendents, supermen, were reduced to mere ordinary people before a god. And ordinary people could never oppose a god.

"Ahh, ahhhhh......"

Fear spread. Emptiness spread with it. Gripped with terror, the Constellations began to run. They broke from the battlefield following the order to retreat. They could not dare oppose that being. They had no choice but to flee.

The witch let the terrified ones run.

She simply walked after them, unhurried, at her own pace.

"Ahh."

And there was someone blocking her path.

"Yes, you have the right."

It was Najin. Gripping Excalibur hard enough to crack it, he planted himself in the witch's way. The witch let out a small laugh at the sight. Even if everyone here lacked the right, could she really say the same of him?

Boom.

Najin stamped the ground. He detonated his stars more fiercely than ever before. One, two, three... twelve. Twelve stars in all shone brilliantly. The starlight pushed back the encroaching darkness and brought the witch's footsteps to a halt.

Starlight flooded out. Najin's starlight drove back the darkness the Witch of the Abyss had brought with her. Gripping Excalibur, Najin let out a long breath.

Excalibur, a starlight even the witch could not devour.

A sword forged from the lives of heroes.

Of everyone who might stand before the witch with this sword in hand, only Najin had the right, only here, only now. He leveled the sword toward her and managed a faint smile.

"Seems even our great god is in a hurry. Coming to find me the moment you broke free from your seal."

"Ahh, of course."

The witch smiled.

"How I have coveted your stars. They are beautiful. In a certain sense, more beautiful than Arthur's. You have gathered everything that shines brightest in this world and come to stand before me."

Her eyes half-lidded.

"But."

Her head tilted.

"Is that all you have?"

The half-open eyes widened. The moment she opened them fully, Blight Stars opened their eyes in the darkness. Just as Najin shone his stars, the witch shone hers.

Darkness flooded out.

3.

Underground City, Artman.

The city that had once been called that was no longer truly underground. On that day, Najin had brought the ceiling crashing down, and the wall that blocked out the sky was gone.

Many things had changed in the Underground City since then.

Those who had committed truly terrible crimes were transferred elsewhere, but those who were innocent, or whose offenses were minor enough that they were judged to have already been sufficiently punished, were given freedom and compensation. Some of them left the city, but others chose to remain in the Underground City.

It had become decent enough to live in, now that the ceiling was gone.

And no small part of the reason was that once word spread that this was where the Dawning Star had been born and raised, scores of tourists poured in and the place became a tidy source of income.

Who could have imagined it?

That a prison city holding criminals would become a tourist destination. At any rate, for those reasons and others, quite a few people remained living in the Underground City.

"Bwahaha! Old man Hogel, have you seen this? That Najin rascal's gone and gotten himself another star. Can you believe it!"

"I saw. I can read a newspaper too, so there's no need to come charging in here making a racket about it. How many times do I have to say it?"

"You think that's the only reason I came? Obviously it's this, right? Came to knock back a drink."

"You should have said that first, you fool."

And so they rejoiced as if it were their own story, watching the young man who had once stayed in their city become a hero and stack achievement upon achievement. Najin's most passionate admirers were Karvin, who ran a tavern, and the old blacksmith Hogel.

"I made that rascal's sword. Without that sword, who knows what would have become of him. Heh, making a sword for the heir of the king? Not even those master craftsmen born to the trade could claim a feat like that!"

"Bwahaha! I went up against the magnificent Lord Najin himself and lived to tell the tale! Quite the courageous battle, it was. Yes indeed, no doubt about it."

They often laughed and talked about the things tied to Najin. Today was no different. News that Najin had earned his twelfth star had them raising glasses together.

After a little while of that.

"Hmm, but old man."

"What."

"Doesn't it seem a bit dark outside? Should still be broad daylight. Kind of like the old Underground City used to be......"

It was exactly as he said. After the ceiling came down, morning had come to the Underground City, and then daytime, and then evening. Strange at first, but they had long since adapted.

And right now it was the middle of the day.

Meaning it should have been blazingly bright outside. Yet it was dark out there, as if night had arrived. Karvin was tilting his head in puzzlement when it happened.

"Hmm, odd. Is it going to rain?"

That was when old man Hogel walked over to the window.

He stopped.

The old man staring out the window went rigid. A moment later he drew the curtains. He blocked out every scrap of light and bowed his head. His eyes were shaking wildly.

"W-what. What's wrong with you, old man."

"......Karvin."

The old man said in a trembling voice.

"Don't go outside. Keep your head down."

"What kind of sudden......"

"Now!"

The old man's eyes were bloodshot red. Karvin saw the veins standing out sharply in those eyes and dropped his head. What on earth was happening outside?

And then the screaming started.

Screams spread from every corner of the city. Don't look at the sky! Keep your heads down, bury your faces! Soldiers' voices cried out amid spreading chaos.

People collapsed.

Bleeding, necks twisted, they fell.

......In the sky above the Underground City.

No, in the sky above the Continent.

A single line was drawn across the heavens. Black hair cascaded from that line and covered the sky. Hair falling like a waterfall blotted out the sky above the Continent. Above the line, not hair but a hand reached outward, its shape like the brim of a hat.

And then, crack.

Between the strands of hair, red eyes opened. Thirteen dark crimson Blight Stars rose into the sky above the Continent.

A false god swallowed the heavens.

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