Excalibur

Excalibur is the golden sword carried by Roland during his confrontation with Jack, and its decisive significance lies in the way it converts royal authority into overwhelming, materially demonstrable violence. Roland uses it not merely as a weapon but as proof of his claim to judgment and kingship: when he denounces Selfia’s attack, he points the blade at Jack, and the weapon is identified as Excalibur. Its presence makes the encounter both a duel and a contest over political legitimacy, while its extraordinary properties make the result a threat to the entire battlefield.

Appearance and Association

Excalibur first appears as a golden blade in Roland’s hand. Jack recognizes it while facing the usurper prince in a devastated urban defensive line, where Roland presents himself as the model of a king: white-haired, red-eyed, and equipped with a fur cape that can harden like iron, artifacts that increase strength and create shields, teleporting boots, and a chest plate with an effect resembling the Savior chest plate Jack had removed from Hoffman. Among this collection of royal and military equipment, Excalibur is the most immediately legible emblem of Roland’s status, but it is also the object whose capabilities most radically exceed ordinary warfare.

The sword’s material behavior is visibly unnatural. When Roland points it at Jack, the blade warps the space through which it slices. That distortion marks Excalibur as more than a finely made weapon or ceremonial inheritance: the act of cutting appears to affect the surrounding world itself. Jack’s attention is drawn to the blade even while he is also watching the black-clad specter concealed behind Roland, creating a contrast between a conspicuous object in the open and a hidden power operating through shadow.

Use Against Jack

Roland deploys Excalibur in a battle already framed by accusation and betrayal. He calls Jack his traitorous sister’s attack dog and condemns Selfia for refusing his challenge while firing indiscriminately on the city with her navy. Selfia immediately orders her troops to prevent an enemy retreat, while Jack enters the ruined street and stands with his back toward Roland’s soldiers, who do not dare act against him. Excalibur therefore enters the scene as part of a confrontation in which military pressure, dynastic resentment, and direct combat converge.

Jack attacks first, vanishing in the fraction of a blink and closing on Roland with an outstretched palm aimed at the usurper’s face. Excalibur does not remain passive during this assault. Roland’s shadow produces dozens of crimson spikes that damage Jack’s mana barrier and force him back, and Jack’s cheek leaks smoke from a cut powerful enough to break through that protection. The sword is not explicitly identified as the source of the shadow attack, but its presence belongs to the same combat system of artifacts, skills, and concealed powers that makes Roland unusually difficult to reach.

The battle escalates when Lancelot appears before Jack with a floating fortress behind him and catches a golden spear close to Jack’s face. Jack is already moving sluggishly while his body expels foreign mana, and Selfia orders him to fall back. Instead, the conflict continues toward a direct exchange between Jack’s Manawraith Tempest and Roland’s ultimate sword technique. The sword thus becomes the instrument through which Roland transforms a hostile encounter into an attack capable of challenging Jack and Sahaqiel together.

Exaltation and Judgment Slash

At the climactic exchange, Roland invokes his authority in language of absolute dominion, declaring himself the one who topples mountains, the one who is king, and the one who casts judgment. He then unleashes Exaltation: Judgment Slash. The mana in the air becomes suffocating as Roland and Jack call upon the energy of the universe, and the world appears to answer both commands.

Roland swings Excalibur, and the golden weapon releases a beam of pure radiant energy that pierces the heavens. Jack answers with a hurricane manifested at point-blank range in the city center. The two attacks do not simply collide as ordinary projectiles; each remakes the surrounding environment. The storm tears away the nearby ruins, while Excalibur’s beam rises through the sky, extending the duel’s destructive scale beyond the combatants themselves.

The immediate result is a rupture in perception and landscape. All sound disappears, light is drained, and every shadow vanishes as a brilliant explosion rips the world apart. Excalibur’s attack is therefore defined by both radiance and negation: it produces a beam bright enough to pierce the heavens, yet the collision leaves the scene without sound, light, or shadow. The sword’s power is not decorative grandeur but a force that momentarily strips the battlefield of its familiar conditions.

Interaction with Anti-Army Power

The most important confirmed property of Excalibur is revealed in the aftermath of the explosion. Jack is left on one knee, clutching his left eye while blood falls onto the ruined paved road. Before him stands the shadow knight, nearly half of whose body has been destroyed. The knight has not faced Jack during the final impact; instead, the figure turned away from him and absorbed the brunt of Excalibur’s special properties.

Roland’s attack is especially dangerous because Excalibur’s properties have melded with Roland’s Anti-Army Skill. This combination cuts through Jack’s and Sahaqiel’s hurricane rather than merely resisting it. The sword’s effectiveness consequently depends on more than its own radiant beam: joined to an Anti-Army Skill, it becomes capable of penetrating a large-scale supernatural defense generated by two beings acting together.

That interaction also clarifies the weapon’s cost to the surrounding world. The sword does not simply defeat an opponent at close range. Its combined effect reaches through a city-center storm, pierces the heavens, and leaves Jack injured even after the shadow knight has taken much of the impact. Excalibur’s power is thus relational and cumulative, becoming most destructive when synchronized with Roland’s skill and directed against Jack and Sahaqiel’s shared force.

Narrative Function and Consequences

Excalibur gives physical form to Roland’s self-presentation as a sovereign who has the right to accuse, challenge, and judge. His rhetoric calls upon kingship, while the sword supplies the material answer to that rhetoric. The gap between Roland’s claim to be a king and Jack’s treatment of him as an enemy is expressed through the blade’s ability to make judgment appear almost cosmic: a personal accusation becomes a beam that pierces the heavens.

The weapon also governs the scene’s revelation structure. Jack initially concentrates on Excalibur’s spatial distortion and on the unknown specter hidden behind Roland. After the final clash, the nearly destroyed knight turns its head, and the green eyes settle on Jack. The damaged helmet has been shaved away, revealing that the specter Jack has been fighting is Mike. Excalibur therefore becomes part of the mechanism that exposes the concealed identity: its attack destroys the disguise while leaving Mike alive enough to address Jack as “H-h-hey... kiddo,” transforming the aftermath from a simple victory-or-defeat tableau into a recognition scene.

Excalibur’s consequences remain unresolved at the end of the supplied passage. Roland’s attack has severely injured Jack, pierced through the hurricane, devastated the city center, and almost destroyed Mike while revealing him. The evidence does not establish whether Roland retains the sword, whether Excalibur is damaged, or what becomes of Roland after the explosion. What it does establish is the weapon’s role as the decisive material force in the duel: a golden emblem of kingship that bends space, channels radiant energy, merges with an Anti-Army Skill, and changes the battlefield—and the identities visible within it—through destruction.