WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 504: The End, an End to Everything (4)

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Humans find answers in the lives they have lived.

Najin was no different.

As Najin lay dying, he thought of Mordred. He thought of Anton and Lapis, who shared half a heart. Finding a clue in them, Najin made a choice.

He would make the Blight Star his heart.

It should have been impossible.

A Blight Star was, by nature, a star that announced an end. How could a star that existed for endings possibly replace a heart, the symbol of life? It was something that could never happen. As long as the Blight Star remained a Blight Star, it could never be done.

But Najin shattered that premise.

...In the end, the Blight Star was also a part of Merlin.

Najin did not deny that fact. He had stubbornly saved her when she begged him to kill her. He had abandoned the easy path, chosen the hard one, and accepted the danger of carrying the Blight Star with her.

Rather than choosing to kill the Blight Star.

He chose to be with it.

It was a foolish choice. A choice people would laugh at. Still, Najin chose it, and he had never regretted it for even a moment. No matter how many times he returned to that moment, Najin would make the same choice.

That was why the choice had value.

"You don't deny me."

Merlin smiled. She accepted a part of herself. Instead of suppressing the Blight Star, she wrapped it in her own Star. She whispered to it of all the stories she had lived through.

"How could I deny myself?"

Terminus, the Star that symbolized the period, her mystique.

Merlin had hated her own mystique until now. She had resented herself for bringing endings wherever she pleased. But she realized it now...

Terminus did not mean an eternal end. That was not what a period was for.

A period was there to bring the preceding sentence to a close.

Why bring a sentence to a close? Why end a story? There could be countless answers to that question, but at least Merlin thought this.

Now, she could give an answer different from the one she had in the past.

For a new beginning.

An ending was nothing more than a turning point.

The Blight Star burned white. Just as Najin had accepted the risk for Merlin, just as he had accepted his own change, Merlin willingly did the same. They moved their constellations for one another. Najin's constellation and Merlin's constellation locked together.

The Blight Star was bleached platinum.

Beneath the first Stars, something that had never happened before took place. He had achieved the impossible, and that made it a great achievement. Great achievements became Stars and were engraved in the sky.

Flash.

Najin's thirteenth star was completed. Starlight burst forth and drove away the surrounding darkness, while vitality flooded Najin's body, which had been on the verge of death. At the same time, the very rank of Najin's existence began to swell.

Twelve and thirteen were different.

Twelve was incomplete, but thirteen was a completed existence. The difference in rank that had stood between the Witch and Najin until now lost all meaning in that moment.

"...Impossible."

Blood vessels stood out in the Witch's eyes.

"How?"

Morgan's eyes shook. As though she could not understand, she stared at the Star that had regained its original color. The Terminus Star was no longer a Blight Star. It scattered platinum starlight as it took Najin's heart's place.

"You said it yourself."

Najin raised his sword.

"To kill you, I had to present something that had never existed before. That a superman who presented something new, something that had never existed, was your natural enemy."

The thirteenth star was engraved onto Excalibur.

The thirteenth star did not exist independently.

Only when his life until now, the story he had built, and the Stars he had engraved in the sky were woven together as one could the thirteenth star finally be completed. Put another way, the final Star was the theme that ran through Najin's life.

「Cross the line, Najin.」

「Don't force yourself into standards set by others.」

Whenever someone told him that was his limit, Najin crossed it for all to see. Whenever someone presented a benchmark, Najin surpassed it as much as he pleased. This moment was no different.

To a world that said he could not accept the Blight Star, that he would eventually be swallowed by the Terminus Star, Najin gladly raised his middle finger.

"This is my answer, Morgan."

The Star of Transcendence rose.

Then starlight flooded forth.

2.

The thirteenth star was complete.

The Wall between twelve and thirteen collapsed. Najin's Stars were complete. The moment he was reborn from an incomplete existence into a completed one, Najin began to see things he had not seen before.

The Witch's existence, for one.

The Witch, whose presence had only felt vague until now, became clear. To Najin's eyes, she looked like a great tree that had rooted itself throughout the world. A great tree that drew nourishment through those thick roots and kept growing without end.

A great tree that had grown for tens of thousands of years.

It was a horrifyingly immense existence.

Even after gaining his thirteenth star, the Witch's existence remained enormous. Of course it did. Was she not a being who had gained thirteen Stars tens of thousands of years ago?

But.

Najin smiled.

I don't have to look up at her anymore.

This was different from before. Unlike moments ago, when he had needed to look up at the Witch, he now stood on the same level as her.

And that was enough.

"You."

The Witch glared at him, her face stripped of all amusement. Anger showed in her eyes. Was she angry because he had gained his thirteenth star?

Probably not.

The Witch was furious that he had restored the Blight Star to its original form.

"You dare..."

"Your smile."

Najin cut her off. Tapping the corner of his mouth with a finger, Najin smiled.

"Your smile is gone, Morgan."

Her composure was gone. Her smile was gone. Pointing that out, Najin bent his knees. He drew his sword behind him and tightened every muscle in his body. Platinum starlight exploded around him.

Then, boom.

The instant he stepped forward, Najin vanished. He accelerated with the sound of something exploding. Even Merlin, who had barely managed to follow Najin's movements until then, lost track of him for an instant.

Shhhhk!

Like water splitting apart, Najin closed the distance in a moment and slid past the Witch. The Witch's eyes snapped around as she tried to swing an arm at Najin, only for her to realize too late that her arm was gone.

It had been cut off. When?

Najin had severed Morgan's arm as he slid past her. He had swung his sword so quickly that even Morgan realized it a beat too late. Dragging the blade low, Najin drove into Morgan.

Sorcery, Gaze.

Her bright red eyes tried to shake Najin's senses, but Najin moved faster. Excalibur shot straight forward and pierced the Witch's head. Najin twisted the blade that had gone through Morgan's skull.

Horn Charge.

The Witch's head exploded. All thirteen eyes were shredded by the storm. Najin did not stop there. He unleashed Horn Charge and swung his sword.

He cut.

He severed.

He hacked her to pieces.

In an instant, the Witch's body split apart and reattached itself over and over. Even as her body burst apart, the Witch tried to strike back, but Najin no longer let himself be caught so easily.

His senses were sharper than ever now.

The Blight Star's flames no longer burned his body.

The Blight Star's light no longer felt deadly.

In the process of gaining the Star of Transcendence, Najin had resisted the Blight Star and continued fighting while its flames burned his body. Now that he had crossed the Wall, he had gained resistance to the Blight Star as well.

Ah.

In other words.

I can see it.

It meant he could now do what he had been unable to do before.

Thud.

As the Witch's head began to regenerate, Najin reached out. He drove all five fingers into her regenerating head. Before, his fingers would have burned away, but now he could endure it.

Then he clenched his fist.

The Witch's head burst apart. Preventing her from regenerating, Najin continued his attack with Excalibur. He cut, crushed, stabbed, and hacked.

He was fast. Najin moved faster than ever.

Every time his blade flashed, the Witch's body split apart. Long platinum sword marks were carved across the night sea. Every time Najin took a step, the darkness that had tried to consume him burned away.

「You.」

The Witch's voice echoed. Blood scattered through the air froze in place. A vein extended from every drop of blood, and the Witch's body, which had been torn to shreds, became like a spiderweb. To her, flesh was nothing more than a shell.

「Do you know what you have just done?」

The Witch's body burst apart.

Not by Najin's choice, but her own.

Najin slid far back, brushed the soot off his body, and looked ahead.

The Witch stood there, having regenerated in an instant.

He had inflicted wounds that would have killed someone dozens of times over, yet the Witch still stood unharmed. Only the darkness around her had thinned a little. Najin shrugged at the Witch glaring at him with wide eyes.

"At least better than you do."

He could not know exactly, but Najin was certain.

He had just touched the Witch's reverse scale.

And Najin had always been good at getting under people's skin. Realizing this was the Witch's reverse scale, Najin did not miss the chance to use his specialty. He tapped his heart with a fist.

Flash.

The Terminus Star that had taken his heart's place scattered light. Pointing at the Star shining platinum as if to show it off, Najin pulled up the corner of his mouth.

"You bragged about living for tens of thousands of years and possessing every skill and piece of knowledge in the world..."

Najin sneered.

"But if you couldn't even see through my journey of less than ten years, those tens of thousands of years must have been truly valuable."

At Najin's utterly arrogant attitude, the Witch let out a hollow laugh. She ran a raised hand down her face.

The moment dark red eyes appeared between her lowered fingers.

"You."

The Witch's voice echoed.

"You won't die peacefully, even if you die."

Then waves began to rise.

3.

"If you are so confident, then turn it back."

"...What?"

"If the ideal world you speak of is so beautiful, if it shines brightly enough for you to move forward while burying all of this, then can't you accept this too?"

The Witch handed her heart to the fairy.

A heart glowing dark red.

Unlike the brilliant, beautiful heart the fairy possessed, it was an ugly heart that was dark and reeked of filth. The Witch handed the fairy her heart, dripping with blood.

"Why do only you want to enjoy beautiful things? Why do only you survive? Why do only you think you will win? And yet why do you speak of an ideal world? Who gave you the right to arrive there?"

The Witch asked.

She asked everyone gathered here.

"Why are only you beautiful?"

The Mother of All Abandoned Things posed her question. The king of the ideal world slowly opened their mouth.

"I never said we were beautiful, Morgan. I'm saying we will become beautiful from now on. We cannot leave things as they are. So that something like this never happens again..."

"Never again, you say."

The Witch burst out laughing.

"Then what will you do about this?"

Things that had died. Things that had broken. Things that had festered.

Pointing at them, the Witch spoke.

The things you turned away from.

The Witch's body was burning in fire. She had wanted to save her own kind. She had done nothing but cry out that they, too, were human. That was all. They had only wanted to live, yet her flesh burned. Her people were trampled beneath their feet.

"After committing so many sins, you still intend to ascend to the sky while saying only you are beautiful? Is it because everything beautiful, everything special, belongs only to you that you praise humanity's beauty so highly?"

A sneer.

"Why did you get to live while we had to die?"

And the festering Miasma.

"Accept it. Prove it. Show me that you can wash away the sins you have committed."

The fairy fell silent, and the Witch laughed.

"You can't do it. Can you?"

It is not only you. No one can do it.

There was no way they could.

Because something like that was impossible for anyone.

Author's Note

I'm a little late!

Footnotes:

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