WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Reeters

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 198

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The Free Knight (3)

A single glance around was enough for Jowel to know he was not at the Northern Frontier Line. Rather, he stood far deeper in the Outland—an inner land he had never seen before.

He next saw the Forgotten Ones previously pursuing him. Yes, they had been chasing him, but that was not the whole story. Jowel just grasped that he had been leading them.

‘Pierce, Orante, Baz…’ Peering more closely, he recognized his sub-commanders and comrades mingled among the horde.

Finally, the truth struck him. He was already dead. He, who had so feared becoming a Forgotten One—or worse—had been roaming the Outland as that very thing.

He closed his eyes and opened them again. There were the withered, rotting fingers of a swollen corpse—a wraith that should have died yet could not. 

A dry laugh leaked between his cracked lips. “So that’s how it is.” He fixed his gaze on the star glowing in Najin’s hand, the Star of Requiem. The star allowed him to still feel like himself. Memories rose as the fog in his mind cleared, and he gave a bitter smile. “I was never among the living.”

That day, he had sacrificed himself to buy his comrades time to flee. The sacrifice was futile since a grotesque clown in a warped mask had slaughtered them all anyway.

They creaked and shuffled, comrades turned Forgotten Ones. His hollow laughter echoed in his ears as he stared at them. The last thing he remembered was the clown stepping toward him. Surely, his life had ended there.

“How long… how long has it been?”

“Roughly half a year.”

“Half a year… six months? Ha! Sir Najin, you are astounding. Three more stars in merely six months?” He slapped his knee and laughed. “Small mercy, that. When I saw you had gained three stars, I feared a dozen years had gone by… but half a year? Merciful indeed, merciful.”

Najin stood in silence.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine.”

“Can you remove the mask?”

“Of course. I was about to. This damned thing is stifling.” He touched his face. A moment prior, the mask had seemed fused to his skin; the instant his memories returned, it peeled away as if it had never stuck. “Sir Najin, do you know what this mask is?”

“I do.” Najin explained the Festival of Revelry, the clowns, and the puppets. 

Jowel let out a long breath. “So I really had become a devil’s marionette. How disgraceful.” He exhaled slowly and met Najin’s eyes. “What happens to me now?”

“You have two paths.” Najin raised two fingers. “One, remain as you are and wander the Outland as a clown. I would then treat you as such and hunt you.”

“And the other?”

“I perform your funeral so that you may meet the end you wish.”

“Why give me the choice? You know which I’ll pick.”

“Because the choice only matters if you’re the one making it.” Najin smiled. “At the final moment, I ask you all one question…” Star of Requiem in one hand, he looked into the eyes of the undying knight. “Were you a knight?” Every knight knew the line—the words King Arthur had left behind. Najin added a single sentence. “What do you wish to remain as?”

Jowel bowed his head, raised a withered hand, and swept it over his ghastly face. His fingers trembled. “I became a squire at seventeen and lived more than a century as a knight. I cannot claim I was a knight every instant, but I strove to be one in every moment.”

The hundred-and-twenty-two-year-old knight spoke through a sob. “I wished to be a hero. That was beyond me. Then I wished at least to be a competent knight whose name rang on the battlefield. That, too, proved difficult. Nothing ever went as I hoped.”

Such had been his life. “From the moment I set foot in the Outland, it worsened. Nothing bowed to my will; countless forces out here tossed me about.” He slowly lifted his head. “If nothing else, for the very last time, I would have it my way.”

His dead body was shriveled and broken, his unmasked face was hideous, yet his eyes shone. “I wish to die as a knight.”

Jowel rose, Najin rose with him.

“I am Jowel, knight of House Drevy.”

“I am Najin, Free Knight.” After a brief sword salute, both drew their blades. “Sir Jowel, you know the saying that honor and pride are like harsh liquor?”

“Of course. Famous words in the Outland.”

Fine to drink, yet brutal when the stupor breaks.

“Then, shall we share one last cup?” To a man who wished to die while still dreaming, Najin was gladly willing to pour that liquor. The sword holding the Star of Requiem glimmered. 

Jowel burst out laughing. “Hahaha! To be offered a drink by a hero like you? An honor. How could I refuse?” He lifted his sword. Aura spilled in soft light—paltry beside Najin’s, but glowing in its own hue. “I am prepared.”

“As am I.”

The duel was brief. With how massive the gulf between Najin and Jowel was, it was more a rite than a contest. Steel met steel a handful of times—more an exchange, each accepting the other’s technique—then it ended.

Najin’s blade slipped into Jowel’s heart—gentle, but sure. Though pierced, Jowel smiled. He was a man who had set down every burden. “Thank you…” Those were his final words. “Thank you, Sir Najin.” In his last breath, he had died a knight. Grateful, he closed his eyes.

His body crumbled to powder. Had he remained a clown of the Festival, his end would have been wretched, and even a heart-piercing blow would not have granted release, as was the nature of clowns.

The Star of Requiem in Najin’s hand leaped over the Festival’s power and bestowed a complete death. Thus, Jowel found rest.

Najin lowered his sword. Below lay Jowel’s blade. The man left no corpse, yet he left his sword.

Najin scooped earth with bare hands, heedless of the dirt staining his clothes, until he’d heaped up a small mound and planted the sword atop it.

Jowel’s grave—a mound with a sword. With a short salute before the grave, Najin finished the requiem. In its own way, it was a funeral. 

Only then did Merlin, silent during the ordeal, speak.

– Requiem indeed, in every sense.

As though seeing Najin anew, she prodded his side with a grin.

– Tell me, how much do you know about Free Knights?

“I know they were the honorable knights who served beside King Arthur, owing allegiance to none but their own creed.”

– Right, and let me add one more thing… they’re the origin of the Knights of Atanga.

Knights among knights, they were guardians of honor, pride, and the very code that gave the word “knight” its meaning.

– Did you know? Atanga was actually a Free Knight.

“Pardon?”

– The name grew so famous it became a by-word, but it all started from a single person.

“That… I’d never heard.”

– Hardly common lore.

The first Free Knight, Atanga—so Merlin said.

– He was a knight who made other knights truly knightly. If Arthur, the King of Knights, pointed the way forward, Atanga was the pillar that kept them standing.

– Those who fell chasing Arthur, those who surrendered, those who broke… Atanga lifted them all, offering them the chance to be knights again.

You are a knight. Rise. This place is too paltry to end your journey.

– So he said, and raised them. Perhaps that is why, though no unparalleled fighter, Atanga was called “the knightliest knight,” outshining even the famed Round Table.

Merlin clapped Najin’s shoulder.

– If Atanga could see you now, he’d be proud. You are the very image of the ideal knight he dreamed of.

Najin let out an involuntary laugh. “If so, I’m glad. Come to think of it… how was Sir Jowel still lucid? Usually, once you’re turned into a clown, that’s it.” The question had just occurred to him. Even as a Forgotten One wearing a mask, Jowel had conversed naturally, and Najin had felt no strangeness.

– Normally, you’d be right. Haven’t you guessed?

Najin nodded—he had a notion.

“Because of the Star of Requiem?”

– Exactly. From the start, your fifth star was deeply entwined with the Festival.

So it was. The star had nearly been completed during his journey with Helmet Knight, finished when he gave those who had forgotten themselves the end they once longed for.

– The story inside that star… its very meaning runs counter to the Festival. Owning the Star of Requiem is, in itself, a denial of the Festival’s existence.

The Festival jeered at others’ last moments and insisted the play never ended, even in death, condemning its victims to dance forever as clowns.

Najin’s fifth star said otherwise. A hero deserved a death befitting a hero; the fallen must be laid to rest where they belonged, not wander the Outland as the walking dead.

They were stars in opposition—utterly contrary

Najin felt it in his bones: Requiem would be the secret move to cast down the Festival. He tightened his fist around the star and stepped forward. “For some reason,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes, “when I hold this star, I can see something.”

– What a coincidence. I was about to say the same.

Merlin shared his sight; Najin’s eyes were hers. Peering through them, she discerned a faint current.

What current?

Both could hazily tell. When Najin grasped the Star of Requiem, he saw the stream woven by those who yearned for requiem, interlaced, twisted this way and that. Following it was difficult for him.

– This way.

Merlin knew how to snatch that flow. She was a guide, a mage who could seize the current and carve a path.

– Come on, to the next.

Merlin pointed Najin down the road ahead.

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