WeTried Translations x Flame Comics
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 155: Funeral Procession (1)
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It was the night before the Siege of Saint Matilene began.
“I became a priest because I didn’t want to fight...”
Eugene lamented as he paced along the gallery. Beyond the tall spires of the Palais de Royale, the vast plains of Saint Matilene were packed with an overwhelming number of military camps.
The fortress would fall if those people simply started walking this way. The disparity in troop numbers was far beyond any level at which a defense was possible.
“Seriously, this difficulty is insane.”
How was this an early-game quest? Was this really acceptable for a first-year quest? Or was it because he’d followed Ivan around? Some kind of level scaling?
Eugene grumbled to himself as he inspected the soldiers’ equipment and checked the gallery’s defenses. He couldn’t sleep.
War was only fun when experienced through games or movies. Once someone was thrown into the middle of it, it was less thrilling than horrifying. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“You don’t seem able to sleep.”
“Ah, Oscar.”
Eugene tried to avoid looking at him. Oscar approached from the entrance to the spire. Standing beneath the torchlight, his face was hidden in shadow.
This was uncomfortable. Eugene gave a slight nod and made to leave, but Oscar spoke from behind him.
“Has the Lord said anything about the battle to come?”
“...The Lord doesn’t convey messages that way.”
“Is that so.”
Oscar turned away in an even voice. He hesitated for a moment, as if there was something he wanted to say but could not bring himself to say first.
“Has the Lord perhaps... told you anything else...?”
“About what?”
Oscar began to speak with great care, then squeezed his eyes shut and stepped back. His lips moved soundlessly several times before he lowered his head again.
Soon, his expression was firm again.
“No. It’s nothing. Get whatever sleep you can.”
“If what you wanted to ask was that...”
“No. Don’t tell me. I’ll hear it after today is over. For now... isn’t this when we need hope most?”
Oscar turned and left. His heavy footsteps echoed across the gallery’s solid stonework.
Eugene watched his retreating back for a moment before turning his gaze toward the plains beyond the fortress.
“Ha...”
The problem was that he knew all too well what Oscar had wanted to ask, and what he feared.
Eugene raked his fingers through his hair, then lowered his head with another sigh.
[Ivan Petrovich Yermof]
[Character: Affinity toward Gilles Ver de Etakrikh]
[76 (Very Favorable)]
[This value can no longer fluctuate due to the target’s death.]
“Seriously, this difficulty is insane.”
Eugene spent the night awake, just like everyone else behind those walls.
Ep. 25. Funeral Procession.
Rain always seemed to fall at moments like this. Was that another cliché? Ivan hoped it was not. It would be too cruel, as if the world itself had wanted that man dead.
Ivan stood in the rain, watching the funeral procession.
“Grant them eternal rest.”
“Lord, let perpetual light shine upon them.”
Behind the knights walking through the downpour followed a massive coffin.
Rain-soaked standards hung limp. Etakrikh’s banners marched quietly behind the coffin.
“We praise You. We praise You. We praise You.”
“To You shall all flesh come.”
“Grant them eternal rest.”
“Lord, let everlasting light shine upon them.”
The funeral procession, which had continued all the way to Saint Charlemagne Cathedral in Saint Matilene, stopped before the cathedral cloister.
The old king rose in the rain. Dismissing the guard officers holding umbrellas over him, he leaned on his cane with trembling hands.
After walking to the front of the coffin, he quietly made the sign of the cross and spoke in a low voice.
“Tilles’s greatest knight has gone to rest. Neither before nor ever after shall there be another knight greater than you.”
He lifted a pure white lily and cast it onto the coffin. Following ancient custom, he bowed his head and withdrew. Soon, he sank weakly into his chair.
Attendants hurried over and raised umbrellas above him. The final raindrops of autumn felt as though they could cut through flesh.
One by one, Tilles’s surviving high nobles spoke their farewells and cast lilies onto the coffin. Gilles Ver’s coffin soon became splendid in its colorlessness, as though it had welcomed an untimely spring.
When the nobles had finished laying their flowers, a woman emerged last, clinging to Oscar.
Odelia de Etakrikh, Duchess of Etakrikh, staggered forward, her face paler than the lily in her hand.
She swept her gaze over the gathered crowd, then stepped forward with the lily in her trembling hand. Walking over the hill of flowers, she stopped before the coffin.
“Ah... ah... Ver... Ver...”
As she lowered the lily, she crumpled and collapsed over the coffin. The hand that stroked it was pale.
Her sobs continued for a long time. Everyone lowered their heads and waited for her to speak.
“You idiot... I told you, we should run. That we should leave everything behind... I told you that. I... I told you... So why, why...?”
“Mother.”
“This country, that title, that honor...”
Odelia crushed the snapped lily stem in her fist and lightly struck the coffin with it.
“I never needed any of that to begin with... You were all I needed...”
“Mother. Father would want to go with the memory of your smile.”
“Ver... How am I... how am I supposed to live now...?”
“Mother, the weather is terrible. Father’s getting soaked.”
Oscar raised an umbrella over Odelia’s head. He helped her back to her place. Odelia sobbed against his chest.
Ivan let out a sigh as he watched them. Every hero’s death came in a different form, but the grief of those left behind always looked the same.
“Sir, you should say a few words too.”
“I should.”
Dmitry, who had been holding an umbrella, stepped back.
“Do not mourn those who have gone before.”
Enrika’s voice rang in Ivan’s ears. Ivan shook his head, thinking he simply could not do that.
Rain ran down his cheeks. Even the cold downpour could not cool his fevered mind. He stepped forward.
Time passed. The sun wheeled overhead, the seasons returned, and time passed on.
In the meantime, many people departed and never returned.
Now, one by one, those who remembered that era, that era which had shone even in the darkness, were disappearing.
“Gilles Ver. My old friend.”
He walked, one step at a time through the rain.
The crowd parted. A vicious killing intent slowly seeped from Ivan’s body, far beyond what ordinary people could endure.
A superhuman’s killing intent could harm people. Yet the killing intent of some who had received specialized training carried a far more tangible force.
Agents who had to conceal their killing intent even as they killed came to harbor it in a coiled, condensed form. Killing intent as thick as an old, potent poison.
When they finally failed to control it, the killing intent that emerged carried a toxicity beyond that of an ordinary superhuman. People clutched their chests and parted to either side of him.
A path opened toward Gilles Ver’s coffin. Ivan continued forward.
“Do not mourn those who have gone before.”
“For you, too, stand in the same ranks as them.”
He stared at the flower-covered coffin and thought.
You unlucky bastard. Now I’ll never be able to beat you again.
He sensed soldiers approaching. Behind the soldiers trying to stop him, Elizaveta’s voice rang out.
“Tilles shall not interfere with his right!”
At Elizaveta’s cry, Krasilov’s soldiers raised their weapons. When Tilles’s old king waved his hand, the soldiers bowed their heads and stepped back.
In the silence that returned, Ivan searched inside his coat and took out a small insignia. The symbol of the Annihilation Unit, the last one remaining. He had never been able to throw it away after his discharge.
-Clink.
When he turned over the steel-forged insignia, he saw the name engraved on it.
[Colonel Ivan Petrovich]
He placed it on the coffin with its pin facing down.
-Thud.
He drove the insignia into the coffin with his fist, again and again, until it was firmly embedded.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Like the pounding of a heartbeat.
“Speaking for the current generation, Ivan Petrovich Yermof. Back then and now, you are still a member of the Hero Party.”
Thud. Thud.
He struck it until it could go no deeper.
“You’re timid to the bone. Have some confidence. Otherwise, how can I trust you with the kids?”
“The previous generation will bear its own burden, scout of the Hero of the current generation.”
“Set aside the previous generation’s burden, and carry on its duty.”
“Light the way forward for this generation.”
When he finally stopped striking, Ivan looked down at the coffin and nodded.
“I promise.”
I will make sure no one in this generation has to mourn another.
So when they met again someday, they could finish the conversation they had not been able to finish then.
Ivan turned and left. Dmitry gave a bitter smile and held the umbrella over his head.
“Grant them eternal rest.”
“Lord, let endless light shine upon them.”
“The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.”
“The righteous shall not fear evil tidings.”
The funeral hymn ended. The Defender Duke’s funeral was over.
In a rain-soaked October, alongside Tilles’s war.
* * *
“Say that again.”
Ivan asked the soldier lying in the hospital bed in a low voice.
The soldier wearing a Capital Defense Force uniform hesitated, terror written across his face, then squeezed his eyes shut.
“Who did what, and how?”
The soldier was the only one to return alive from the Vernini Mountains. Everyone else from the Eastern Knights and the Capital Defense Force who had advanced into the mountains had burned in a dragon’s maw.
“I-I... I only... told you what I saw...”
“Then tell me again.”
At Ivan’s question, the man shrank back. Ivan’s gaze was too dreadful for an ordinary soldier to endure. The man cautiously looked around, then continued in a small voice.
“The... the Hero appeared... and killed His Highness the Grand Duke.”
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Footnotes:
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