WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 500: Interlude, One Step Forward (8)
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Humanity answered, and God listened.
“Human nature, is it?”
The Witch turned Najin's answer over in her mind, then smiled. It was not a mocking smile, nor was it a hollow laugh. She smiled gently and tilted her head. Black hair spilled over her shoulder.
“An impressive answer.”
She did not deny Najin's words. There was no need to. She had not asked that question to decide who was right and who was wrong. She simply smiled.
“But it is not new.”
“Figures.”
“Your conviction, the way you have lived, even your very existence. None of it feels particularly new to me.”
The Witch tilted her head a little further.
“You uphold honor. You refuse to lose your pride. You cry out for righteousness. You save people. You protect beautiful things. You move forward, calling for a better tomorrow...”
Her eyes curved.
“Familiar words.”
Tap.
“They could only be familiar.”
Tap.
“Arthur, who came before you. The countless children who held me back before that child appeared. Leviathan, ten thousand years ago... Even the one who first made me bleed tens of thousands of years ago spoke words much like those.”
Tap.
“To me, they are familiar things.”
She tapped the nape of her neck with a finger.
“So let me ask you, how do you intend to kill me?”
As if daring him to cut her if he could, the Witch smiled as she tapped her exposed neck with slender fingers.
“Didn't you say that you could kill me with something that had never existed before? I don't sense anything new in you.”
“Who knows? I'll have to find it from here on out.”
“So you have no plan?”
“Something might come to me.”
The Witch asked, and Najin answered.
The two spoke with ease, as though they were old friends. As their conversation continued, neither attacked the other nor prepared to defend themselves.
There was no point in that anymore.
They would kill each other. There was no room for compromise in that, and nothing would change through conversation. Since they were exchanging questions and answers with the conclusion already set, neither had any reason to raise their voice.
“I answered your question, so let me ask one as well.”
Najin raised a finger. Pointing to the dark crimson Star shining near her, he spoke.
“What is your Star called?”
“Some call it the Primordial Star, but that is its old name. It is the End Star.”
“What is the end?”
“The end of all things. Eternal darkness.”
The Witch looked at Najin.
Najin looked at the Witch.
“What is dawn?”
“The star that heralds the end of night.”
Dawning Star shone within the space cast by the star of endings. The twelve Stars rising behind Najin drove back the approaching darkness. Gripping Excalibur, Najin exhaled.
Who was the opponent he had to face from this moment onward?
The first god, and the Witch who had blanketed the entire world.
The True Body of the most terrifying Star.
Even King Arthur, as great as she had been, could not defeat her. All Arthur could do was exploit an opening and seal her away. Looking at the enemy before him, Najin spoke inwardly.
‘Merlin, let's make a bet.’
-A bet? Out of nowhere? At a time like this?
‘Precisely because it's a time like this.’
Najin curled up one corner of his mouth.
‘King Arthur took seven days to seal the Witch, right?’
-That's right.
‘Then six days should be enough.’
Merlin blinked.
-First, what exactly takes six days?
‘What else? Six days to take the head off that Witch grinning unpleasantly over there. That will prove I'm greater than King Arthur.’
-...What?
‘Maybe five days.’
-You're making jokes at a time like this...
‘Four days.’
Merlin finally burst out laughing. The tension left her shoulders. Standing beside Najin, she let out a breath and tossed out a light answer.
“Three days.”
“That's a little tight.”
“So, are you not confident?”
Najin snorted and took his stance.
“Confidence is all I've got.”
The campaign to subjugate the Witch of the Abyss began.
2.
The battle began suddenly.
Blink.
The Witch closed and opened her eyes. A breath slipped through her lips, and her hair shifted slightly. It was such a minute movement that Najin only noticed because he was watching every one of her actions.
“...!”
Yet the result brought on by that motion was anything but minute. Every one of Najin's senses sounded an alarm.
Najin swung his sword on instinct.
Sparks burst in midair. A grinding screech rang out as something scraped against his blade. Mana sharpened to a razor edge. Najin narrowed his eyes at the mana that resembled sword aura.
Slash!
He had cut through the sword aura. Yet this was only the beginning. The Witch had not moved a finger or taken a step. She had only closed and opened her eyes, then taken a short breath, but magic had already manifested.
A witch was a being loved by magic itself.
If such a being gained divinity, it would not be strange to call her the god of mages.
To the Witch of the Abyss, magic was no different from breathing. That was not a figure of speech. It was truly so. Every small motion she made, exhaling, tilting her head, blinking, was part of the process of building magic.
“...Ha.”
Najin could not understand that process. He was not a mage. Merlin, standing beside him, understood exactly what the Witch was doing.
Morgan completed by breathing alone the sort of complex magic formula that countless mages would have to put their heads together to calculate with the support of the Mage Tower. Even to Merlin, likely the greatest mage after Morgan herself, that processing speed was grotesque.
Impossible.
Merlin's calculations were fast as well. Yet this could not simply be called fast. If Merlin were drawing ten lines at once with ten fingers, the Witch was drawing a hundred lines with those same ten fingers.
Flash.
Then the spells scattered light.
Najin kicked off the ground and slid away, while Merlin moved at the same time. Blood vessels stood out in Merlin's wide eyes. Her circles spun wildly. Ten gears whirled as though they would break apart, throwing off Sparks.
“So you call that a circle? How crude. Magic is meant to be mystique.”
The Witch sneered at Merlin's circles.
“You are using magic incorrectly.”
The Witch was telling Merlin, the mother of magic, that she was using magic incorrectly. Only she could make such a criticism. The Witch stepped forward and raised her hand. Red lines surged along her fingers.
“Magic is mystique. It is something that cannot be understood, and because it cannot be understood, it cannot be recreated, learned, or imitated. It is the product of the unknown.”
Space shook. Sound tore apart. The Witch's voice echoed in several overlapping layers. Everything Merlin saw was mixed into chaos.
“That is why it is called law, a law of nature.”
The Witch brought her thumb and middle finger together.
“If it can be calculated, processed, learned, and recreated... how can that possibly be mystique?”
Snap.
The moment she flicked her fingers, the scenery shattered like a pane of glass.
Everything in sight broke into pieces. Merlin's magic detached from space, and every scrap of knowledge Najin had built up became wrong. The unknown presented by the Witch swallowed Merlin's knowledge.
And Merlin...
“Bullshit.”
She scoffed and stomped her foot.
Thump.
A wave burst outward from where Merlin had stomped. The cracks spreading like fractures across glass were blocked by the wave Merlin created.
“If what I use isn't magic, then is that thing you use magic? There is a limit to the nonsense you can spout.”
Merlin swept back her hair.
“Why not call primitive people making fire with flint magic too? They don't know the principle or the process, but the result happened somehow. Isn't that mystique as well?”
She was the Grand Mage who had defined mystique.
“Something anyone can use if they know how is greater than something only special beings can use.”
Merlin had refined magic, once treated as something unknown, so humans could use it. She had laid the foundation for circle magic and made magic, once belonging to the Witch, into something humanity possessed.
“Go ahead. As much as you like.”
Merlin extended a hand.
“I'll calculate it and recreate it for you.”
Use it as much as you wished. Scatter all those mystic things you spoke of. Merlin would drag the things the Witch called unknown into the realm of the known.
Crack.
A ray of light shot toward the space shattering like glass. As something broke with another crack, Najin stepped forward. Just as Merlin found a way through it in her own way, Najin moved in his.
“Go ahead. As much as you like.”
The Witch smiled as she watched them.
The battle had only just begun.
She had many talents. Too many to count. Everything humanity had discovered, unearthed, and developed over the past tens of thousands of years, the Witch could do just the same. Everything that existed on this land was practically hers.
Clench.
Watching Najin charge at her, the Witch grabbed the empty air. When she reached into the void, the darkness filling space willingly made a weapon for her. The instant Najin saw its shape, his eyes widened.
“What you can do.”
A sword.
A weapon of the same shape as the one Najin held.
“I can do as much as I please.”
Dawn Sword, Cutting Night.
Flash.
Najin's Absolute Technique, the skill that symbolized Najin, took shape not in Najin's hands but at the Witch's fingertips. A massive Sword Aura fell toward Najin like a guillotine.
3.
No one knew her name.
At the moment the King of Avalon was about to undergo Ascension.
No one gathered there knew the name of the Witch who blocked the king's path. In that beautiful place celebrating the king's Ascension, they felt only disgust that such a hideous being had appeared.
“Why is the Witch here?!”
“How dare she come to a place like this on such a joyous day...”
“How dare a whore of the dead block the king's path? Move aside. I will cut her down.”
“Your Majesty! Give the order!”
The king's warriors growled as though they would draw their swords at once. The sages showed their displeasure, and the king's people turned their eyes away from the Witch in disgust. Everyone saw her as something filthy and wicked.
Except for one person.
The woman meeting her gaze.
The King of Avalon.
“You finally came.”
She looked at the Witch.
The Witch looked back at her.
“So it came to this.”
“Why did you come here?”
“Because I have something to say to you, and because I made a promise. You know that better than anyone, don't you?”
“...Do we have to do this? It is one step forward. Just one step. If we take one more step, the world you and I wished for will come. Can't you wait just a little longer? To you and me, it would only be a moment.”
Was the king showing kindness even to that terrible Witch? As her people and retainers were moved by this, the king continued speaking.
“It is one step forward, Morgan.”
At that moment, her people blinked.
The word Morgan, spoken by the king, clearly referred to the Witch. The king had said it while looking straight at the Witch before them. That was why the people could not help but be confused. The retainers looked at each other.
It was not because they had learned the name of the Witch no one had known. Nor was it because they finally knew what to call that terrible being. That was not why they were shocked.
There was only one reason.
Morgan.
That was the king's own name.
“Can you not give me a little more time?”
The King of Avalon.
The Night Fairy, Morgan le Fay.
“I have given you enough. More than enough.”
The Mother of the Dead.
The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay.
“This is where we end.”
Two beings split from one existence faced each other.
Author's Note
I'm about ten minutes late...!
Somehow, we've made it to Chapter 500.
When I first started writing I Pulled Out Excalibur, I clearly swore, “If it gets too long, it'll be exhausting, so this time I will absolutely finish it in 350 chapters!” Yet when I came to my senses, it had become 500 chapters.
Hmm. Why does this not feel unfamiliar?
Wait, I feel like I had similar thoughts while writing my previous work too...
Footnotes:
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