WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 512: Dawn, the Star That Heralds the End of Night (2)

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Dawn carved through the night.

Cutting Night.

A star rose along the sword's path. The trajectory stretched to the edge of the horizon, then burst into light where sky and earth met. It looked like daybreak.

Dawning Star illuminated the sky like a rising sun.

Dawning Star, the Star That Heralds the End of Night.

The long night was over.

The dark sky brightened. The pale light of dawn slowly drove back the darkness. The shadows that had covered the sky receded, revealing a clear blue expanse. The night sea, once stained dark red, now gleamed blue once more.

Shhhhk!

Hearing the cutting sound a moment later, Morgan looked down at herself.

Her waist had been severed. Her body had been cut in two.

She had been slashed hundreds, thousands of times before, but this strike was beyond comparison.

She had been cut.

The very foundation of her existence.

Najin had not cut only Morgan's body. Far deeper than that, he had carved a line into the Witch's foundation. It had not been a lucky strike. Najin knew exactly what he had wielded.

It was the Heart Sword.

It was a Realm whose existence had once been uncertain, but Najin had seen it. At the end of his life, Siegfried had wielded the Heart Sword. Najin had witnessed the Sword Saint's strike, which cut what could not be cut without cutting what should have been cut.

Because he had seen it, he knew it existed.

Because he knew it existed, he could reach it.

'Because I could reach it.'

He could transcend.

Najin cut what had to be cut, and even cut what could not be cut. Along with Morgan's flesh, he severed her foundation. The shadow vanishing in an instant was proof enough. A hole had opened at the center of Morgan's sanctuary.

"H-how?"

Morgan rejoined her body. Yet the sword marks carved into it did not disappear. Her very roots had been cut. Like a shattered pane of glass, cracks began spreading from the sword mark across Morgan's body.

The absolute, immortal, perfect god was no longer here.

Her absoluteness had been denied. Her immortality had been cut. The hole had made her incomplete, and she was no longer flawless.

Above all, the one denying Morgan's very existence stood before her.

Fourteen Stars.

A human who had gained a fourteenth Star.

It was impossible.

She had once sat upon the Sky Throne. She knew that thirteen Stars were the end, that existence was completed with the thirteenth Star, and that there was no after.

It should have been so.

Then what was that human before her?

Splash.

Najin took a light step forward.

His foot landed on the blue sky. He left a footprint upon the sky, no longer dark now that morning had come.

"I told you, Morgan."

He held a Star in his hand. Gripping a constellation sharpened like a blade, Najin spoke.

"I'd cut you down."

Something was different.

Morgan sensed it.

The being before her was her natural enemy. He was special. He had revealed something that had never existed in this world. Before her stood a being armed with things no one knew, no one had uncovered, things no one had dared define.

A true superman.

A superman who would never lose his brilliance stood there. Watching the Transcendent who had finally surpassed even himself, Morgan shuddered, trembled in fear, hated him, rejoiced, and finally burst into laughter.

Ah, it was you.

You were my end.

But one could not welcome the end simply because it had arrived.

Just as humans had resisted the end, Morgan squeezed out everything she had left. Like humans struggling to achieve their goals even as approaching death chased them down, she resisted.

Human and god.

God and god.

God and human.

Their positions had turned full circle, and the two stepped toward each other.

Morning came wherever Najin stepped. Night came wherever Morgan stepped.

Each was the other's natural enemy.

Beings that could never coexist.

End Star and Dawning Star shone in their own colors.

2.

Enlightenment came in an instant.

The moment he came to see himself as a Star, enlightenment suddenly arrived. Enlightenment might come in an instant, but what was needed for that instant was a lifetime. Every experience he had lived through and every action he had taken had become a stepping stone.

Using his own life as a stepping stone, Najin reached Transcendence.

Enlightenment came in an instant, but every moment made up that instant. Najin felt that separating the two was meaningless.

'I don't need it anymore.'

He no longer needed a sword.

Everything he held was a sword, and he himself was a sword. There was no need to seek something sharp. The sharpest sword in the world was right here.

Fourteen Stars, fourteen swords.

The moment he took a step, Najin naturally understood. Where he needed to step, where he needed to swing his sword, how he needed to hold it, he understood all of it in a single instant.

It was not because he had eyes that could see the future.

He had piled instants together and reached eternity. Then was not an instant itself eternity? Even the dullest Swordsman, if given endless time, could learn how to evade an attack and how to counter it. If even a fool could do that, what of a Genius?

Najin made his decision in an instant.

The sword paths that had branched into hundreds, thousands of routes narrowed into one. Najin walked along that single path. Each step he took became the trajectory of a sword.

With a light sweep of his arm.

Shhhhk!

The scenery split diagonally apart.

The flames rushing toward Najin were cut apart. The grasping hands emerging from within them were swept away as well. The fire and heat that had troubled Najin until now could no longer affect him in any way.

The darkness draped across the sky was no different.

The light of the Blight Star tried to swallow starlight, sever the connection between Stars and humans, and weaken Constellations. It no longer worked on Najin. Of course it did not. There was no way to separate a being that shone on its own from the Stars.

"Ha."

Watching Najin, the Witch laughed.

She was now feeling the same thing that the heroes who had faced her for tens of thousands of years must have felt.

Nothing could reach him.

A casual swing of his arm split the landscape. No matter what magic she scattered, no matter how she aimed for his blind spots, no matter how carefully she devised her answer, it became useless before him.

He neither dodged nor deflected it.

He strode forward from the front and shattered everything.

Dawn broke over the dark night sky.

Once dawn came, darkness could only fade. Every time Najin took a step, morning grew brighter. The darkness that had covered the sky for tens of thousands of years burned away in the coming dawn.

"Don't make me laugh."

The Witch of the Abyss, Morgan le Fay, stamped her foot.

Before her stood a superman.

Everything the Witch had forced upon heroes until now was now being forced upon her. Nothing that had ever existed could stand against him. Of everything she had accumulated over tens of thousands of years, not one thing could reach Najin now.

...An arrow she had fired by imitating the finest archer among humanity over the past tens of thousands of years was caught in Najin's bare hand. He swept aside a rain of arrows fired faster than light with a single motion of his arm.

...She imitated the tyrant from the hell she had witnessed, who had impaled countless prisoners on Thorn Trees and killed them. Thorn Trees surged up, forming a wall. They tried to block Najin's path.

But that was useless too.

Everything split apart.

If Najin wished to cut it, he cut it. The starlight in his hand extended without limit and reached without limit.

Innate Magic, Abyss.

It tried to drag Najin into a mire, but the moment the mire swallowed him, starlight burst forth. Thousand Stars, Ten Thousand Radiances. Unable to swallow the erupting starlight, the Abyss spat Najin back out.

Tap.

Dawn drew near.

Once dawn had come, night would end and morning would arrive. That was how each day repeated itself. An inevitable tomorrow, one that nothing could stop, would come.

At that fact, the Witch laughed and raked her own body with her nails.

"Why are you the only ones..."

She spat out her festering hatred.

"Why are you the only ones allowed to become beautiful?"

The human who had failed to become beautiful, who had finally been denied even by herself and become the Witch, spoke.

"Don't turn away. You'll leave all of this behind and insist on reaching your ideal world? I won't allow it. At least that much..."

"I'm sorry, Morgan."

Najin cut her off.

"Who's turning away?"

Morgan fell silent at those words.

...Najin was not the one turning away.

Najin was walking straight toward the Witch. Without looking away even once, without avoiding her gaze, he faced the Witch before him. From beginning to end, Najin had confronted the Witch head-on.

...The one who had turned away was Morgan herself.

She was the one denying the truth plainly before her eyes.

Realizing that, the Witch laughed.

"...Ha."

That was right. That human had always been like this.

From the beginning, even after seeing her past, even after experiencing all of it, he had not turned away. He faced her directly and walked toward her. Even after seeing all this, he did not waver and called out only one answer.

I will cut you down, Morgan le Fay.

Only now did the Witch of the Abyss understand what those words meant.

"You're saying you'll cut through all of it?"

The Witch asked.

"Everything accumulated over tens of thousands of years, all of it? My hatred, the sins you built up, every evil deed?"

"Yes, as I said."

"You're insane."

She gave a hollow laugh. It was something even the half of her that had once been King of Avalon, of the ideal nation, had failed to accomplish. In the final moment, she had turned away from herself. The one who had claimed the beauty of humanity had ultimately been swallowed by malice.

Not even the strongest Constellation, not even Avalon’s queen who had hung the first Star in the sky, had accomplished it.

The Witch laughed at Najin, who said he would cut through the malice that had grown ever more terrible over tens of thousands of years. Seeing that he did not hesitate to challenge her until the very end, she let out a long breath and raised her chin.

"Go on, then. As much as you want."

Perhaps that was the answer she had wanted all along.

"If you can."

The letters carved into her body shone.

They were curses, and wishes.

They were the final words left behind on this land by those who had wished for its end, humans abandoned even by other humans as they died. The Witch had carved their last words into her body. The letters covering her body were the grudges she had preserved.

The Star of the End shone.

The Star that had expanded and grown for tens of thousands of years began to contract. Light gathered into a single point. The Witch grasped the Star, compressed through repeated contraction, and glowed dark red.

She could not defeat Najin anyway.

Even so, the Witch did not forget her wish. She remembered those who had wished upon her. So until the very end, she wished for one thing.

The end. An end to everything.

Like the humans she had watched, like the humans who had challenged her, the Witch made one final move with her life as the price. She would erase the being before her in exchange for her life. She would leave a scar upon this world that could never be erased.

Space warped around the Star, which had contracted to its limit.

The Star's form began to collapse.

The instant its form completely broke apart, the immense power within it would erupt.

Najin had seen this before.

Some Stars chose a magnificent explosion instead of death by falling. An explosion blooming in exchange for everything they had. Najin knew a woman who had driven a Transcendent with ten Stars to death with only one Star.

An explosion like that would occur now, though on a scale beyond all comparison.

An explosion the Witch of the Abyss would create in exchange for her life.

The explosion of the greatest Star.

That was the final thing Najin had to cut.

3.

The Star, compressed to its limit, spewed light.

Dark red radiance burst in every direction.

Space warped, cracked, and began to collapse. The moment it exploded, this entire area would vanish without a trace. Not just this area. The Star had once been large enough to swallow eighty percent of the world. Its explosion would turn this land into hell.

It would not destroy everything completely.

But it would transform it into something infinitely close to destruction.

It was the Witch's final means, one she had never chosen because she had needed to witness the end with her own eyes. The grandest explosion created at the price of her life.

Facing that explosion, Najin turned around.

"Merlin."

"I was wondering when you'd call."

Merlin, exhausted to the point of collapse after holding the Witch back until Najin returned, took Najin's hand.

"A self-destruct attack at the very end? She really is a Witch. Look at her being this vicious until the last moment."

Grumbling, Merlin looked ahead.

There was a Star about to explode.

From now on, that Star would release everything. The hatred it had built up, the despair it had endured, the sins of humanity it had swallowed, every grudge accumulated over tens of thousands of years.

Merlin could not even guess how terrible that would be.

An explosion created by thirteen Blight Stars.

Rather than trembling before the supernova, Merlin smiled. Then she handed her Star to Najin. It was a Star they could share because Najin had contributed to its birth.

Terminus, and Transition.

They would place a full stop on the story that had not ended for tens of thousands of years, meet a turning point, and write a new story unlike any that had come before.

The Star that announced that beginning needed no introduction.

Just as he had written the next chapter of the Chronicles of Arthur, Najin carved his own story into the book called the world.

Dawn.

The final technique of the Dawn Sword required no sword.

Footnotes:

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