WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Ryuu

Editor: Ilafy

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 194

──────

Hero (3)

Viola Oldina did not tie her hair back. Her pitch-black hair cascading freely, she swung her sword.

Violet, on the other hand, typically tied her white hair into a single ponytail. With her hair gathered, she tapped away at the piano keys.

Najin looked at the one standing before him, perhaps Viola Oldina, perhaps Violet. Half her hair was black, half was white. She wore it in a single ponytail and held a sword in her hand.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter either way, does it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a shrug, as if it were a trivial detail. Najin nodded in agreement.

“I’ll take the left side.”  

“Then I’ll go right.”

No other words were needed. Najin angled himself toward Ladon’s left wing, which was already half-severed, while Viola—or Violet—shifted her stance to face its right wing, gripping her sword.

A brief moment of silence followed.

As if to shatter that hush, the blue sky rippled. Already cerulean, it turned an even deeper shade of blue in one small patch. The instant a single raindrop fell from that lake-like sky, Merlin’s magic came together.

Swaaah!

A torrent of rain poured down and froze the moment it struck Ladon. The raindrops seeping into the wounds Najin had carved out solidified and wrenched the injuries open further. Red-stained ice, infused with blood, flowered across its body in patches.

“——————!” Ladon roared in pain, its cries echoing wildly as Najin and Viola launched themselves forward.

The Star of Dawn, made of four stars.

The Star of Detachment, made of six stars.

Two constellations shone in their own colors.

Both Najin and Viola were swordsmen. They knew the method to slice what normally could not be sliced, and they had the skill to make it reality.

Najin wielded the Triumph Sword style he had learned from the Helmet Knight; Viola wielded a Sword Aura like fragments of broken glass. While Merlin’s magic held Ladon in place, the two relentlessly targeted its wings—the standard tactic for hunting a dragon was always to rob it of flight.

Chwaaack!

Blood spattered. Though trivial in volume compared to the dragons massive body, toppling a giant began with small steps.

Psshk!

They slashed at the wings, carving fresh wounds, Merlin pried those wounds open. Frozen by the cold, they never had a chance to heal. No matter how violently Ladon thrashed and roared, its half-frozen body was too sluggish to catch them.

They peeled away scales, stabbed inward to widen the gashes, and sawed through bone and muscle. The moment Ladon’s tattered wings went limp, the two wasted no opportunity. Sliding in smoothly, Najin drove his sword into Ladon’s left wing. Nearly at the same time, Viola attacked from the right, her blade flashing. Their strikes landed at almost the same time.

On one side, a Sword Aura gleamed like a constellation, and on the other side, a Sword Aura shattered like splintered glass.

The left wing was severed; the right wing smashed apart. Scarlet blood sprayed everywhere. The wings dropped to the ground in tandem, and Ladon bellowed in agony.

“Now!”

“Now, Merlin!”

The iceberg began to collapse. With a rumbling, the section of ice where Viola, Najin, and Ladon all stood fell to pieces—Merlin had demolished it because they no longer needed that foothold.

Wingless, Ladon could no longer fly or evade the crash. The dragon, once called the lord of the skies, became a mere beast after losing its wings. Fragments of the iceberg shattered, and the dragon, suspended hundreds of meters up, plummeted. 

Watching Ladon’s descent, Viola burst into laughter. That dragon she had so feared, that monster she thought would forever torment her… Seeing it plunge toward the ground filled her with a sense of joy. She noticed the quiver in Ladon’s eyes, the fear flitting across those dull-yellow pupils. It was terrified of falling.

Viola was not. She descended, yet she felt no fear. She had fallen countless times already. Having experienced it time and again, she felt more familiarity than terror, and it was that sense of familiarity that allowed Viola to take a step forward.

Kicking off a falling chunk of ice, she hopped from fragment to fragment, bounding closer to Ladon. Rather than resisting the fall, she merely accepted it. For her, gravity was no longer a frightening force dragging her down, but a hand pressing gently at her back.

Ladon hit the ground first. The impact of a colossal dragon smashing into the earth caused a quake-like tremor. Dust blasted into the sky, and a thunderous boom echoed like a stockpile of explosives going off.

Amidst it all, tViola launched herself off her last ice foothold. Without slowing one bit, she swung her sword down at the fallen Ladon like a club.

Her strike slammed into the dragon’s spine. Its back caved in, sending cracks radiating out. Blood fountained up; scales flew high into the air. Ladon convulsed violently, trying to steady itself from the crash.

“Najin!” Viola shouted, leaping back from Ladon. Ascending in a great bound, she glanced up at the sky.

The stars were shining.

Challenge, Breakthrough, Indomitable, and…

Dragon-Slaying.

No longer in the night sky but in the sword wielded by a human, the stars gleamed.

Najin hung upside-down from a falling slab of ice, bracing himself. Suddenly, he kicked the ice away. The impact shattered the frozen block completely, sending flecks of snow spraying through the air as he shot forward like a meteor.

The First Horn…

The scales Viola had peeled away revealed Ladon’s exposed spine. Najin aimed straight for the thick bone.

The Triumph…

His blade, gleaming with the star of Dragon-Slaying, cut Ladon in half.

His sword tore through flesh and muscle, severing the spine. Even after cleaving Ladon in two, the remaining force carved a line across the ground. The dragon gushed blood from the gaping wound, letting out its final gasp.

At the end, all Ladon felt was fear that this would be true death—no regeneration that time; no future rebirth. A dragon, unacquainted with mortality, trembled at the approaching oblivion.

Its moan hung in the air, then abruptly ceased. Ladon’s life ended.

“Huuuk… Huuu…” Najin stood on Ladon’s back, breathing hard, his sword still raised. For a body that had yet to reach true transcendence, mimicking the feats of a Transcendent took a heavy toll. Overcome by the backlash, he wobbled and tumbled off the dragon.

Viola caught him before he hit the ground. “Goodness! Goodness!” She whooped in joy, hugging Najin tight, bouncing in place with a bright smile. “We really did it! Really! An immortal dragon! How? How in the world did you pull that off? Truly…”

She gasped and released Najin. Stepping back, she straightened her hair, suddenly self-conscious. She glanced away as though embarrassed and inadvertently locked eyes with Merlin, who stood frozen with arms outstretched, clearly planning to catch Najin herself. 

Merlin’s eyes flared with the resentful gaze of a guide whose role had been stolen. 

Unnerved by that glare, Viola quickly turned away again.

“Didn’t I say I’m good at killing dragons?”   Najin gathered himself, swaying slightly, and spoke. “What do you think?”  

“Seriously, do you even need to ask?” Viola gave him a disbelieving laugh. How could he wonder that, after what she just witnessed? He was magnificent, more so than words like “cool” or “amazing” could capture. Embarrassing thoughts crowded her throat, but she left them unspoken and simply chuckled. “Really.”

With the nightmarish presence that had tormented her for so long gone, her smile shone brighter than ever. “Truly, Najin. I really want to say tha—”

Just then, she felt something off. “The nightmarish being that plagued me for so long…” She repeated the words mentally and felt an uneasy dissonance. While she had fought Ladon for sixty-seven years, it seemed more like hundreds—ten times longer. That feeling of incongruity stemmed from something else: Ladon’s death, the resolution of her lingering regrets, and a shift in trajectory.

Suddenly, she realized it was all a dream. For countless centuries, she had repeated it. The memories she had forgotten at every month’s end rushed back in waves like a lantern show. 

Viola’s bright expression froze. Her face twisted, her eyes quivered, her breath stuttered.

“Ah…” Viola Oldina let out a groan. Violet gave a bitter smile. “I see.” As she awoke from the dream, her gaze grew hazy. “So that’s how it was.” Only for a brief moment. Viola closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and reopened them with a gentle smile, a look of relief and weightlessness. “Now that I think of it, it was too much like a fairy tale. A hero swoops in at just the right moment when I’m cornered? Reality doesn’t work like that.”

Violet sighed, disappointed. Hanging her head, she looked up again with a face that seemed ready to cry at any moment.

“You…”  

“It’s fine. Really, I’m okay. Truly.” Violet shook her head firmly. Then she exhaled in quick, shallow bursts and rubbed the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “Najin?”  

“Yes, Violet?”  

“Well. The hero’s retired now, so you’re calling me Violet again? I like that. Anyway, Najin…” Violet turned toward him. “Do you like the rain?”

At that very moment, rain began to fall. It was not Merlin’s magic that time. For Violet, the rain was always a refuge, its sound a gentle lullaby that soothed her heart.

She longed for that refuge, so the rain poured. With Ladon gone, the dream was fully under her control.

“Well, I don’t dislike it.” Seeing the faint smile on her face, so faint she looked ready to vanish, Najin nodded.

“Then shall we take a little walk?” Violet forced a smile. “There’s a lot I want to talk about.”