WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Ryuu

Editor: Ilafy

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 182

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The Knight Demon (3)

Hurling his sword into the sky, Najin drew his spear and gripped it with the same two hands that had held the sword, lunging forward. Every movement flowed seamlessly, like water.

Battle Ram…

The instant Najin thrust his spear, everything in the city stopped all at once. The city folding toward Najin and Argo, the wave of bricks and buildings, and even the rain of arrows pouring down—everything halted in place.

That frozen moment lasted only an instant, not a stop brought about by some magical device or Mystique. On the contrary, it was a state of deadlock created by forces and shock acting in the exact opposite direction. 

Naturally, that deadlock did not last long.

Dr-drdrdrdrdeuk…

The force bursting from Najin’s spear was stronger than the power folding the city. The scale, previously balanced, tilted toward him. The storm unleashed from the spear pushed the folding city back in the opposite direction.

Kagagagagagagagagak!

The wave of buildings and bricks was shredded by the storm; the rain of arrows scattered. Like a ship’s prow cleaving through waves or an icebreaker shattering a glacier, Battle Ram demolished every single thing obstructing Najin’s path.

Argo, witnessing the spectacle, widened his eyes, as did Schmitz and the priests of the Starbody Society standing behind him. Anyone would have the same reaction. If anything, not being astonished after seeing a city rushing in like a wave pierced with a single blow would be more strange.

Without a word, Najin reached upward. The longsword he had thrown high before using Battle Ram dropped precisely onto his outstretched hand. 

He clicked his tongue as he looked ahead.

‘If it had been him, he would’ve smashed even that bell tower. I’m not there yet.’

- The Hornblower, or the First Pillar?

‘Either one of them. I bet either would have skewered that bell tower too.’

- Both of them are Transcendents, you know.

‘So there’s still a long way to go.’

Merlin, seeing Najin’s expression and hearing his words, gave him a look that asked, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ 

Argo’s gaze from beside Najin was not so different. Of course, he couldn’t read Najin’s mind, but he could at least tell that he wasn’t satisfied with his own strike.

‘He looks displeased, like he thinks it’s still not enough.’ Argo looked ahead. There, the city road lay wide open. 

Looking at the boy who had opened a road straight through the center of Free City Pavane, Argo let out a small laugh of disbelief.

‘Not enough? That? From any angle, how could that possibly be lacking?’

He wanted to protest out loud, but there was no time for that. At the edge of his cleared view, right in front of the bell tower, a demon appeared—Knight Demon Orgis.

The moment Najin saw the demon’s true form, his expression twisted. 

‘So this is what it means to be a demon composed of knights?’ Najin instantly understood why it was called a knight demon. Orgis did not take on a human form. Instead, it looked more like a beast crawling on the ground. Unlike an ordinary beast that moved on four legs, Orgis had many legs—far too many.

Roughly forty legs sprouted from both sides of its body, made up of countless knights’ bodies, legs, arms, and heads.

A demon composed of knights, that moved using the limbs of knights, and was supported by knights—its very existence was a mockery and a derision of the concept of knighthood. 

Najin felt his neck muscles tense and grimaced. “Sir Argo…”

Najin and Argo’s gazes briefly met. No words were necessary. They both already knew the plan. Right after exchanging nods,  they started to charge forward.

As soon as Najin and Argo began to run, Orgis responded by moving as well.

There was no need to use all eighty legs just to walk. Humans lived on two legs, and beasts did fine on four. Almost as if jeering at them, Orgis put all eighty of its legs to use.

It looked like a rolling ball or a spider scuttling across a wall.

- Uuuugh, urgh!

Seeing how disgustingly it moved, Merlin gagged. 

As ridiculous and bizarre as that movement was, Najin could not deny how efficient it seemed. Dozens of hands grabbed hold of buildings, pulling its body forward, while dozens more feet kicked off the ground to accelerate.  In an instant, Orgis closed the distance and charged at him.

‘Left, right, diagonal, the spear, swords, flail, chains. Six from the diagonal, then seven, then three more…’ Najin’s eyes darted quickly as he calculated the directions of the dozens of arms and legs Orgis wielded; the weapons they held. The instant he prepared to move—

Thwak—

Additional arms and legs hidden on Orgis’s back extended outward. With twice as many angles of attack suddenly appearing, Najin frowned. It was too late to calculate. He moved his body first.

Seven spears lunged in, five arrows were released, eight flails, twelve longswords, five greatswords, three rapiers, and seven war hammers…

All of the attacks struck almost simultaneously. The spears thrust, the swords slashed, the axes came crashing down. Arms sprouting from Orgis’s back worked at longbows nonstop, loosing arrow after arrow, but those “arrows” were actually the longswords and rapiers the knights once held.

Kang, kagagagagang!

Each individual attack was not so impressive, but the synergistic force they created together could not be ignored. 

Although Najin was confronting just one demon, it felt as if he were battling dozens of well-trained knights coordinating a joint attack. Knights bearing different crests were united under the flag of the Orgis.

Their weapons no longer shone. They could not release Sword Aura or aura blades since they were merely corpses. Instead, they were infused with the magic the demon created.

That black, gleaming energy replaced the knights’ Sword Aura. Orgis’s demonic energy enwrapped the knights’ limbs and the weapons in their grasp, flaring darkly.

Najin’s expression fell as he faced them. Defiling and ridiculing the corpses, molding them into grotesque shapes—the demon before him made him recall a certain other demon: the Demon of Merriment, the Carnival King.

It was just the sort of thing that lunatic would do. Remembering the clowns she commanded, Najin ground his teeth. “Sir Argo!”

Argo slipped into Orgis’s flank. Exploiting the opening created by Najin’s defensive maneuver, he struck at Orgis, causing it to bleed, if only a little.

Tak, whoosh.

He twisted while slashing his blade. From the first strike, he moved on to the second. It was the swordsmanship of Atanga. Just as he was about to land a blow that would make the demon bleed even more, Orgis suddenly leaped backward.

In one bound, the demon widened the gap with dozens of legs; then roared and drove its limbs into the ground. The entire city gave a mighty pulse, as if it were alive.

Once again, the city began to “fold.”

Unlike at the start, it did not surge in like a wave. Rather, it seemed to guard the area around Orgis—buildings and bricks gaping wide like jaws, glaring at Najin and Argo, half-folded, leaving just a narrow gap.

Both men knew very well what would happen if they were caught in that gaping maw, sandwiched between top and bottom.

The knight demon had activated the power of Bookmark.

Argo gave a bitter grin. Some twenty years prior, he had faced almost the exact same situation. Orgis had spread the Masterpiece’s power around itself in precisely that manner back then, too.

“That thing.” Argo recalled what his comrade had said to him. “Couldn’t we actually turn the Bookmark against it?” Pointing to the knight demon, his comrade had gone on. “Let’s go, Argo.”

“Sure, you’re right. We’re weaker. Disgustingly weak. After all, that thing’s devoured seniors far stronger than we are, but is that a reason to back off?” Let me ask again, Argo. Does that sound like a reason for a Knight of Atanga to retreat? How could we call ourselves knights if we cowered because our enemy was strong? I’m a knight. How about you, Argo?」

Recalling that exchange, Argo smiled. He had been unable to answer his friend back then, but now… He looked straight ahead.

The foe was formidable. Even among Sword Seekers, the enemy was top-tier. The nightmare that day had returned far stronger than it was twenty years prior. Back then, it had only been folding wood and stone; that changed to an entire city.

‘All the better, really.’ Argo’s lips curved into a smile. He did not need to speak aloud. That time, he would give the answer he couldn’t give twenty years ago through his actions. He launched forward. Different from back then, when he had watched his comrade’s back as the man charged ahead, he took the lead himself.

‘I’m a knight too, Ivan.’ He wouldn’t let only Ivan become a knight. ‘This time…’ 

Sensing Najin running close behind him, Argo smiled.  “You, follow me.”

The 4th Masterpiece: Bookmark. After sacrificing dozens of knights, they finally discovered the activation conditions and powers it held.

By slipping something between the pages, like a bookmark, once the Masterpiece called “Bookmark” was wedged into something, its ability is activated. The problem was in the fact that its range of effect could be absurdly vast.

If the owner perceived a certain object as a “book,” then Bookmark could fold it, regardless of what that object was, as long as it isn’t a living being with a soul.

Since the area could expand arbitrarily wide based on that perception—be it a tree, a city, land, or even a village—the power alone was already dangerous enough. Still… if that were all, it wouldn’t have killed dozens of knights.

The reason dozens of knights died during the mission to recover the Masterpiece was the lethal ability Bookmark wielded when something was caught between the “pages.”

When an object was sandwiched between pages, the Bookmark defined that object as a bookmark as well. In other words, the moment something was wedged between what the user perceived as the pages of a book, it transformed into a bookmark, becoming a thin, flimsy cutout—a human-shaped bookmark.

The young girl who discovered the Masterpiece by chance dozed off thinking that her bed and blanket looked just like the pages of a book, as if she were lying between the covers.

“Mom, Mom? Mom, where are you?” As a result, when the girl opened her eyes, what lay beside her were the parents who had been turned into bookmarks. The same was true outside her village—a village filled with bookmarks. 

At that point, the Masterpiece began to rampage uncontrollably, perceiving the bookmark-filled village as “one entire book.”

That was the truth behind the Masterpiece recovery operation that cost dozens of knights and over a hundred soldiers their lives. It was also how they uncovered the power of Bookmark.

“They say that power ended up in the hands of the knight demon,” Ivan had commented. “If you watch that demon carefully, you’ll see it never folds itself into its own range. Ordinarily, the Masterpiece’s owner would be exempt from its own power.”

“A knight demon is ultimately an amalgamation of ‘knights’ corpses.’ It gains its strength from those corpses. We used to assume those corpses were just part of Orgis’s body, but maybe Orgis sees them as tools instead?”

“If so,” Ivan had said with a laugh, “Argo, we’ve got something we do quite well, don’t we?”

“Parrying.”

“Let’s deflect those ‘folding’ parts right back at him.”

Remembering that conversation…

Kakakakakang!

Argo deflected the arms and legs Orgis thrust at him—along with the spears and swords in their grips—all with a single longsword. In the past, handling even one blow had cost him a cold sweat, but he wasn’t the same, and he could parry three at once.

The swordsmanship of Atanga was designed to overpower the opponent head-on. Thus, parrying was a fundamental principle and one of its most crucial aspects.

Argo, having trained in that art, was of course proficient in parrying, but calling his parry merely “proficient” would be an understatement. After the failed pursuit of the knight demon long ago, he delved even deeper into parrying. For over twenty years, he was consumed by the parry. Two decades later, his parrying had reached a singularity.

Claaaang!

His parries did more than simply block or ricochet the opponent’s strikes—they expertly guided them to the exact point he aimed for.

The limbs Orgis thrust out, wrapped around Argo’s sword, bent in an unnatural direction. While the city’s “pages” attempted to fold over Argo, what ended up “sandwiched” between them was not Argo but Orgis’s limbs—those Argo had just parried.

Zzeok.

The “pages” clamped onto Orgis’s limbs. In that instant, three of the limbs making up its body flattened into thin slabs. 

Najin, seizing that moment, dashed in and cleanly sliced away the sections that had become bookmarks.

Cutting through demon limbs was hard, but slicing a bookmark was all too easy.