WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 488: A Stage for All (4)

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"Gck, ghk, gck..."

Najin grabbed the passerby by the throat. The moment he lifted his fist, the man's feet left the ground.

"Kkgh, this, gck, let go..."

The man thrashed. He pounded Najin's arm with his fists, but Najin's arm did not so much as twitch. The man's face drained white. Najin watched in silence and thought.

He could kill him. Easily.

Nothing difficult about it, not from any angle. In terms of raw power, and in terms of authority. Najin was the pillar of the Empire and the heir of King Arthur. Under imperial law, he held authority on par with the Emperor himself. He had simply never wielded that authority until now, but there was nothing stopping him if he chose to.

What happened to someone who insulted the Emperor? What about someone who dared insult the Emperor's teacher, or his parents?

The answer was dismemberment for insulting the Empire's sun, and the corpse burned to ash without a proper burial. Accordingly, as someone accorded the same standing as the imperial family under imperial law, Najin had every right to execute the criminal before him on the spot.

Because this man had dared to insult him.

Dared to insult his teacher.

'I could kill him.'

No effort required. The man in front of him was no Transcendent. Left alone, he would suffocate within half a minute. The smallest squeeze of a finger and his head would separate from his neck.

Reasons to kill him.

Ways to kill him.

Both were in plentiful supply.

Reasons not to kill him, by contrast, were hard to come by.

"......"

Still gripping the man's throat, Najin scanned the crowd. Maybe he was searching, without realizing it, for something that would stop him. The faces staring back at him were full of terror. Which made sense. Najin was a Transcendent.

He could kill every single person here if he wanted to.

Were they only now grasping that?

A Transcendent gone off the rails leveling a city or two was not so unusual in history. There was nothing to guarantee it would not happen here again. The mob that had been shouting that dying today or dying tomorrow was all the same went completely silent the moment death came close enough to touch. Fear shut their mouths.

Najin felt something close to satisfaction at the sudden quiet.

"Kkrk, huk, hkk..."

The man's struggles were slowing. The fists beating against Najin's arm lost their strength. Just like that, still unable to find a single reason not to kill him, Najin was about to close his hand when a voice rose in his memory.

"Ruling through fear is one method too."

"Make a brutal example of one person, and stupid crowds tend to shut their mouths. There is no better technique for training beasts. In fact, it's the method I used for the past several years."

"Easy and simple."

The voice circled near his ear. Perhaps it was nothing but memory. Perhaps it was a story lodged somewhere inside his star. Whatever the reason, he heard it clearly.

"I regretted it."

"For a very long time."

"Are you confident you won't?"

The Warden of the Sealed City posed the question. Najin had no answer. The question did not change much for him. The situation was still suffocating, still offered no sign of resolution, no path forward.

But it gave him a moment to breathe.

Najin flung the man down to the pavement. A reason not to kill had just appeared. Right, there was no point letting some wretch like this go on troubling him even after death.

"Gkh, huhh, hkk..."

The man gasped for air, scrambling across the ground. His skin scraped raw and his bones probably cracked, but it was better than dying. Najin left him there with his terror-filled eyes and walked away.

Through the crowd.

His emotions were still churning, but he had not entirely lost himself yet. The Witch's hand pressed against his back, urging him forward, but she could not yet force his actions.

He walked and he thought.

About why he was shaking.

About why his emotions would not settle.

2.

Walking without direction, Najin came to a stop in the center of Cambria. More precisely, in front of the Dieta Trading Company building. He stood there a good while, in the place where he had once met Dieta and first taken work as a mercenary.

Dieta was not here now.

She was receiving treatment in the imperial capital. Like the others exposed to the Blight Star, she had fallen into a coma. If she were awake, if he could talk to her, maybe his chest would feel a little lighter.

"......"

Or maybe not. She had been played by the Witch too, and she might resent him for it. He let himself imagine the scene, and the corner of his mouth pulled into a bitter smile.

Dieta was unconscious. Yuel's whereabouts were unknown. Most of the Constellations he had known resented him, and those who did not were still avoiding any contact with him.

'And Merlin.'

She had always shown him the path, and now she was nowhere. Even their connection had been severed. He had no way of knowing where she was. Najin wandered, his guide lost to him.

He stood for a long time in front of the trading company building, once teeming with people, now empty as the world crumbled around it.

Tap.

How long had he been standing there? Najin turned at the sound of footsteps. A courier was making a delivery to a building no one visited anymore, still going about his rounds while the world fell apart.

Najin watched without a word.

Then his eyes narrowed.

The face was familiar. Searching his memory, he placed who it was. A child he had come across a few times in the plaza back when he still lived in the Underground City. A kid who used to gather discarded items and newspapers thrown away by knights coming down from the surface and sell them.

The child had grown since he last remembered, but the first thought was still that she was young. A girl who looked barely thirteen or fourteen.

"Oh?"

She noticed him too.

"Najin oppa? Ah, sorry. I should call you Dawn Horn-nim..."

"Call me whatever feels comfortable. It's fine."

"Really? Then, oppa, um..."

She scratched the back of her neck and gave him a sheepish smile.

"Do you remember me?"

"I do. Three of you used to sell newspapers in Artman's central plaza."

"Wow, you actually remember! I figured you'd have completely forgotten. You even bought us food back then. I was so grateful."

The fact that he remembered seemed to delight her. The girl grew animated, pointing at her courier's cap as she launched into her story.

"We said that back then, didn't we? That we wanted to be like you. So we were saving up to buy swords."

"You were."

"Turns out I had no talent for swords whatsoever. But maybe because I've been running since I was little, I had a talent for that instead. So I became a courier! Najin oppa used to do courier work too, didn't you."

He had, in a manner of speaking. Probably not the kind she was picturing, but he had posed as one often enough while serving as the organization's enforcer.

"Cambria's a long way from the Underground City."

"It really is! But you started here, right? People kept saying you left Artman and started your adventure here."

According to her, that was how it went. On the day Najin freed the Underground City, the girl had gained her freedom. She could have stayed in Artman, but she had chosen to come to Cambria instead. The City of Opportunity, where Najin had begun, and where she wanted to start fresh too.

"It wasn't easy, though. People here are picky about everything. I did odd jobs here and there, but nowhere paid properly. I was just about ready to give up and head back to Artman, and then..."

The girl pointed at her leather satchel. It bore a mark Najin recognized. The emblem of a particular trading company.

"I met this lady. Really beautiful, and she looked incredibly important. She asked where I was from, and the second I said Artman... she asked if I knew anything about Najin oppa, and whether I could tell her some stories."

Najin had a feeling he knew who that lady was.

"And then she gave me a letter of recommendation, just like that. Said it was payment for an entertaining story. I didn't know what to make of it at first, but she must have been even more important than I realized. The people at the biggest trading house in Cambria looked at me with wide eyes...'She recommended you?'..."

"She is quite someone, yes."

"Huh? Do you know her?"

"Very well. Brown hair, yellow eyes?"

"How did you know?"

Dieta, as he suspected. He had heard she liked to take walks through back alleys whenever she had free time. It seemed that was how she had come across this girl.

"So that's why you're working here?"

"Yes! I'm still just a courier, but the people at the trading company seem to like me. They said if I work hard enough, they might consider giving me a full-time position. And the pay is good."

"That's great. Eating well?"

"Incomparably better than back in the Underground City! Three meals a day as the baseline, and lately I even have snacks. Have you tried chicken skewers, oppa? They're so good."

"The ones from the vendor with the yellow cart?"

"Wow, you know that place!"

"Of course. I spent about a year here myself."

Sitting on the bench in front of the trading company, Najin talked with the girl for a while. She boasted about how she was living, said she had been keeping up with news about him, and went on about his life in return.

"Up until a few months ago, anyway."

She let out a small sigh.

"Things aren't like that lately. People are saying bad things about you, oppa. Saying the world is ending because of you..."

"Is that so."

"Ah, that is, um. Sorry."

"It's fine. They're not wrong. So what do you think? Does it seem to you like I made a mistake?"

He said it casually. At this point, one more person cursing his name would not change anything. He was just curious. How did a girl who had once looked up to him feel about all of this?

"Hmm."

Her answer was not what he expected.

"I don't really know."

"You don't know?"

"No. I mean, the world is like this, and my friends got badly hurt or sick, and work isn't easy either. I can't even look up at the sky anymore. It's hard, but..."

The girl chewed her lip.

"Even if I said it's all because of you, things outside aren't that different from the Underground City in the end, are they?"

"......"

"The one who got me out of the Underground City was you. The first star I ever saw was the Dawning Star. Honestly, there are times I resent you a little when things get rough, but I can't just blame you for everything. I genuinely don't know."

She gave him an awkward smile.

"Actually, I think I was a little mad at you before I saw you, but now that I have, I'm not really feeling it!"

Then she looked straight at him.

"What about you, oppa?"

"......"

"Why were you standing here for so long?"

Najin did not answer right away. Under normal circumstances he would have thought of something fine to say. Something spoken with full confidence. But not now, and in the end he opened his mouth slowly.

"Good question."

"Hm?"

"Honestly, I'm not really sure either."

He exhaled.

"I'm about to say something complicated, maybe hard to follow. Mind if I just talk it through?"

"I don't know what it'll be about, but sure!"

He spoke.

"I know people aren't in their right minds right now. I know the Witch is goading them. I know that what's being driven out of them in these extreme circumstances isn't their true feelings. So it's closer to a lie. I've been through something like this once before."

During the fight with the Carnival King.

He had faced a similar situation then.

"Still, I can't just ignore it."

The corner of his mouth curved, without warmth.

"Because I know. Not all of this is false. The feelings they have may be stirred up, but the situation itself is something that could really happen. No, it's something already happening."

Countless people were dying.

Countless people had fallen into comas.

Countless, countless things were crumbling.

"Everyone curses me. Everyone denies me. Everyone says I was wrong, that the world is ending because of me. They say I'm no longer a hero. That the world doesn't need a hero anymore."

All of humanity denied the hero.

"Honestly, I could live with that. I just need to not waver. I know I should hold my ground, trust myself, let those voices go in one ear and out the other. I know that's what I should do, but..."

His smile stayed bitter.

"It isn't easy."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't bear the consequences of my own failures."

"What does that mean?"

"Say you fail to deliver a letter. And that letter was so important that someone dies because it never arrived. How would you feel?"

"Ugh, I think I'd be really hard on myself. A person died because of me."

"Exactly."

Najin looked out at the crumbling world.

"When it's only my own life on the line, I don't hesitate. Whatever anyone says, I'll take the challenge. That's a problem I can take responsibility for myself. But..."

"But what?"

"My failures aren't mine alone anymore. All of humanity pays the price for them. Because the world will end."

He said it plainly.

"If I fail, everyone dies."

That could not simply be blamed on Najin alone. But he felt the weight of it all the same. Pulling Excalibur, carrying on the wishes of the heroes who came before, had meant inheriting their responsibility too.

"So I don't know."

He did not know.

"What I thought was the best path might not be. I thought there was another way, but now I can't even tell what that way might be."

Really, truly, he did not know.

"How do I get out of this situation? How do I break through this stage? Is this even a stage at all? The Witch has swallowed the whole world and made it her stage, how am I supposed to beat her? Is there even a way to win?"

None of it was clear. No clue about how to escape. He was not even sure it was a stage. He did not know where the Witch was. Did not know where to go. Everything was unknown.

And on top of all that, only more confusion.

The entire world had turned against him. The entire world wanted Najin to sacrifice himself, wanted his death. Their insults scraped against his reverse scale. Surrounded without a single ally, he still felt the weight of responsibility pressing down on him.

He was supposed to have Self-Confidence in himself.

"Is this truly the best path?"

That question went unanswered, and Najin sat with it, turning it over and over.

"Hmmmm."

And the girl.

"You know, oppa."

After listening to all of it, she tilted her head.

"Why do you feel responsible? Why are you even thinking about sacrificing yourself? Because you pulled Excalibur?"

"Because I inherited the legacy of the old heroes. Took on their wishes. That comes with the responsibility."

"Did they tell you to sacrifice yourself?"

"Not in those words."

"Then what did they say?"

"That they wanted me to build a better world."

Young children are innocent.

Their feelings shift moment to moment without warning, and they are nearly impossible to pin down. Unburdened by the tangle of social interests and human agendas, the questions children ask can sometimes feel like grasping at clouds.

"Then isn't that enough?"

But for exactly that reason.

"You built a better world. Isn't that at least what's happening? I've been having a really good time because of you, oppa! Eating good food, wearing pretty clothes. Well, lately it's been less fun for sure!"

Children's words can cut straight to the heart of things.

"I honestly can't fully understand the complicated stuff you're talking about, oppa. What's responsibility, what's a hero. I don't know any of that. It sounds kind of cool, but you look exhausted!"

"I am tired."

"Do you want to be a hero, oppa?"

"Hard to say. It's more like I became one. I didn't set out to be a hero from the start."

"Then what do you want to be?"

The girl who had once dreamed because of Najin now turned the question of dreams back to him.

"......"

She only asked the question.

Finding the answer was Najin's work to do.

Footnotes:

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