WeTried Translations

Translator: Joy

Editor: Joy

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Damned Transmigration

Chapter 54

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Usa~

Black eyes blinked behind the holes of a bone-white mask.

Down in the alley, the man who had been stomping a child into the gutter was now writhing on the ground himself, clutching a shattered leg. A figure in a low-drawn hood stood over him, a masked woman at his side.

The sight made Biyeon touch her own mask, a reflexive gesture. In a city so steeped in sin, faces were liabilities. Hoods, hats, and simple cloth wraps were common enough, but some went further. Some even wore human-skin masks, taking on new faces entirely.

People had their reasons. They most simply didn't want to be seen, and Biyeon was no different.

Seven years ago, a fire had claimed her skin, the flames so fierce they had seared her vocal cords and left her face a ruin of scar tissue. The mask she wore to cover the mess was a blank, featureless thing, a void where a face should be.

‘What is that?’

The other woman’s mask was something else entirely, throwing Biyeon off.

It was a fox mask, painted like something from a clown’s act or a travelling theatre. It hid her face, yes, but it read more like a brazen declaration.

A roar went up from the alley.

The injured man’s cronies charged from the shadows, surrounding the hooded man and his foxy companion. The air thickened with a torrent of gutter-filth curses.

Biyeon paused, watching from her perch. In this city where only the strong survived, even these back-alley thugs were at least 3rd-Circle.

It was none of her business and she had no reason to intervene, but the incessant, filthy shouting was beginning to grate on her nerves. For someone of her power, wasn't annoyance reason enough to act? Biyeon leaned forward, just a fraction.

Thwack!

A flat, ugly sound cut through the curses. One of the swaggering thugs was airborne, kicked so hard he slammed into a brick wall and crumpled to the ground.

It was impossibly fast. Even watching from above, she caught only a blur. Biyeon’s expression hardened behind her mask and she leaned further out over the sill.

Another thug lunged, a hand-axe swinging. He moved with the grubby confidence of a seasoned street-fighter, his form commendable for a 4th-Circle brawler.

The hooded man’s kick was faster. A single, sweeping motion folded the man in half.

It was over.

The remaining cronies froze, their bravado evaporating as they shuffled backwards. The hooded man showed no interest in them. He helped the small child to his feet, spoke a few quiet words, and then walked on as if nothing had happened.

“Hoh.”

A voice murmured beside her. Sword Shadow had materialised from the darkness. He stroked his chin, his eyes glinting.

“The Foul Village has its share of interesting characters, it seems.”

“…”

“How much did you see?”

“I saw his legs move. I couldn't follow the footwork.”

“His robes are too large; it would be difficult from this angle. What if you had been standing before him?”

Biyeon’s gaze remained fixed on the two departing figures, picturing it. If she had been the one in that alley…

“If I wasn’t watching for it from the very start,” she admitted, “I wouldn’t have seen it at all.”

“There is the Moonlit Reveller, of course, but masters of kicking arts are rare, even within the Demonic Cult.”

Sword Shadow’s gaze followed hers.

Biyeon’s brow tightened at the name. For any member of the Cult, the title left a sour taste.

“He seems proficient with his fists and palms, too.”

Beneath the hem of a sleeve that swayed with his gait, she saw a thick, muscular forearm and gnarled, powerful-looking fingers.

Scrape.

Her nail dragged across the smooth surface of her mask.

The unexpected display of skill had lit a competitive fire in her gut. He hadn’t projected any internal energy, relying purely on physical technique, which made his rank impossible to pinpoint. At least 4th-Circle, though. At least.

‘Hmm…’

They weren’t far. She could catch up, request a formal duel, or she could just pick a fight.

‘A pity.’

Her hand fell from her mask. If not for her master’s orders concerning the Withered Crone, she would have already been down there, satisfying this sudden urge. For now, her hands were tied.

‘Perhaps, before I leave this rubbish heap, I’ll look for him.’

If she could deal with the Withered Crone quickly enough, then maybe afterwards…

***

As they walked towards the slums, a low voice drifted from beneath the fox mask.

“You’ve changed. You weren’t like this two years ago. How to put it, Lord Crimson Foot? You seem… heavier.”

“Heavier?”

“Your tone. It’s got this unnecessary gravity to it, this pretension. And that grim expression is practically cemented on your face.”

‘The facial modification technique has its downsides,’ he thought.

While the disguise held firm, it had the minor side effect of leaving his features feeling stiff. The technique was his own creation, a martial art that forcibly reshaped facial muscles and bone.

He’d imagined it as a kind of aggressive, internal cosmetic surgery like acupressure, Botox, and fillers all rolled into one. A certain rigidity was unavoidable.

“It’s not as if I enjoy looking like this.”

“I can forgive the expression, but it’s your way of speaking that’s the real issue. Have you not spoken to anyone for the last two years?”

“There wasn’t much opportunity.”

He was a wanderer. He never stayed in one place long enough to forge the kind of connections that required conversation.

“I got into a lot of fights. Got stabbed in the back more than a few times.”

“And has this pretentious act of yours stopped any of that?”

“I was betrayed quite spectacularly just before coming here, actually.”

It had been some low-level Haomun agent he’d been dealing with for six months.

The man had promised an introduction to the Branch Master in Panteleon’s outer district, so Yuri had paid him, run his errands, and even completed quests for no reward. That bastard was the entire reason he was broke.

Then, on the day he was meant to receive the introduction, the man had changed his tune. No letter without more money.

“I thought he was a decent fellow.”

“Most of the Haomun are utter bastards,” Haryeong replied, clicking her tongue.

Yuri glanced at her.

The fox mask was absurdly conspicuous. Through the crescent-shaped eyeholes, her gaze was as placid and emotionless as ever. He’d half-expected her to relax her guard behind a mask, but apparently not.

“Why did you pick that one, anyway?”

A simple cloth would have sufficed, but she had insisted on a full mask. He still couldn’t fathom why she’d chosen one so theatrical.

“Because it’s smiling.”

The answer caught him off guard.

“As you know, Lord Crimson Foot, I don’t smile often.”

“You could just… smile.”

“It’s not that simple.”

He couldn’t see her face, but her tone shut the conversation down.

‘Your martial art is similar to the Dang Family’s Style of Merciless Assassination, but different,’ the Blood Fiend had told him back in Logos.

‘You try to hide it, but you are brimming with emotion.’

‘The Dang Family…’

He knew the name. The Black Dragon Society, Salhomun and the Dang Family had all been in the game, though this world’s reality had its own twists. In the game, the leader of both Salhomun and the Dang Family had been the Dark Emperor, Dang Ji-hu.

He was a Level 83 nightmare, an NPC who could stack you with so many poisons and damage-over-time effects that resistance stats became a joke, and whose hidden weapons would tear through your health bar no matter how high you pushed your evasion.

Seronis had no formal class system. You were what you wielded and what you learned.

Pick up a sword, learn a sword style, and you were a swordsman. Simple. Yet there was a certain allure to the idea of a rogue or an assassin. The community forums had been full of players who had built their characters around that concept.

Cat Panties had been one of them.

Whether a he or a she, Cat Panties had been utterly obsessed with another player: USAUSAMI₍ᐢ.ˬ.ᐢ₎.

They were similar in many ways, which probably fuelled the obsession. The nauseating ‘nyan’ Cat Panties tacked onto every sentence was a direct rip-off of USAUSAMI’s own ‘usa’ verbal tic.

But their Original Character, their OC, was all their own.

USAUSAMI’s OC was a cute girl with rabbit ears. Cat Panties’ was a cute, short-haired girl with cat ears.

Apparently, Cat Panties had been using that character for years, long before they ever ran into USAUSAMI. Their devotion to their OC was their defining trait, pouring money into commissioning art.

Every time they rolled a new character in Seronis,
Every time they learned a new skill,
Every time they upgraded their gear,
Every time they respec-ed their build,
Every time they downed a boss, a new commission would appear.

The quality of the art grew, and the OC grew with it, evolving from a collection of JPEGs into something that felt alive. The cat-eared girl in her underwear was soon holding a weapon, then clad in armour. She was depicted using sword styles, dying, and being reborn.

‘Cat Panties is the pretty ninja Hokage-nyan!’ they would post.

‘Nin-nin! Fireball Jutsu-nyan!’

After cycling through countless builds, Cat Panties had finally settled on a ninja concept and Lee Su-hyeok, as UrMumSpammer, had been the one who’d given them advice, pointing out the best skills for the agility and evasion builds a proper ninja needed. From that, the pretty ninja Hokage was born, perfected after endless grinding of the Dang Family for rare skill drops.

When Su-hyeok saw the final character build, alongside a new illustration of the cat-girl OC perfectly decked out in her end-game gear, he had felt a strange surge of pride.

The fact that the game’s Dang Family had been driven to extinction dozens of times and hundreds of its NPCs slaughtered to achieve it hadn’t really been his concern back then.

‘Could it be?’

In this world, the current head of Salhomun and the Dang Family was the Poison King, Dang Yu-shin. He was the son of the Dark Emperor, Dang Ji-hu, who had mysteriously gone into seclusion twenty years ago.

The Raspion Family massacre, the attack on Orca… the timing lined up. If FS was involved in the massacre, then maybe another transmigrator was behind the Dark Emperor’s disappearance.

Maybe Cat Panties.

“Brother Crimson Foot, what are you thinking so hard about?”

Haryeong’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Just… possibilities.”

Another one surfaced.

Haryeong was from the Dang Family, and from the way Guzen had treated her, she had to be from the main line.

Su-hyeok had drawn the short straw and ended up in an orphan’s body, but who was to say others hadn’t been luckier? A transmigrator could have easily landed in a prestigious family.

Haryeong was in her twenties, he guessed, and had been 5th-Circle for at least two years. Could she be a transmigrator?

“Cat Panties?”

Through the eyeholes of her mask, he saw Haryeong’s eyes turn to ice.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“My mistake.”

‘Yeah, right.’

It was a stupid long shot. He was grateful for her mask; seeing that reaction on her bare face might have actually hurt. As it was, his own face was burning with embarrassment.

“What kind of mistake leads a person to say ‘Cat Panties’?”

“We’re here,” he blurted, quickening his pace.

Among a row of dilapidated shacks, one stood out as slightly less wretched than the others.

A mage whom the locals called ‘The Pointing Flame’ lived there. He’d shown up in Sector 4 three years ago and earned his name by incinerating a group of thugs with a simple point of his finger.

From the intel Mak-cheol had gathered, this man fit the profile: looked to be in his thirties, likely a 5th-Circle mage.

Whether he was a transmigrator was another question entirely.

“What’s the plan?” Haryeong whispered.

“Surprise attack? It’s the smart move against a mage. Give them time and they become a problem.”

“I’m not here to fight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m going to talk to him first. You wait here, ma’am.”

The title still felt strange on his tongue, but it was better than the alternatives.

He scanned the shack. As expected, it was warded with various spells, but nothing on the scale of Elena’s mansion. The wards were confined to the doors and windows.

He could probably break them, but he’d try words first.

Yuri walked towards the shack slowly, making no effort to conceal his presence. A stealthy approach would only put the man on high alert.

“Stop.”

The door creaked open. The Pointing Flame had long, greasy hair and a short, untidy beard. A sour reek of alcohol rolled off him. He looked rough, well over thirty.

“Don’t come any closer,” he slurred, raising a finger.

Drunk or not, he was a 5th-Circle mage, and he had reacted instantly to Yuri’s presence.

“Never seen you before. What do you want?”

“Are you The Pointing Flame?” Yuri asked, enunciating clearly.

“I am.”

The man’s eyes were narrow and wary. Yuri could see mana coalescing at his raised fingertip.

“I came to talk.”

“I’m not interested in talking to a stranger.”

“How else do we stop being strangers?”

“Don’t be a smart-arse, kid. Piss off. If you’ve got something to say, say it from there.”

The Pointing Flame’s brow furrowed, and the mana at his fingertip began to pulse.

Yuri took a slow, steadying breath. He had prepared for this, but saying it out loud still felt utterly insane.

[Usa.]

“…?”

[I’ve come from the Rabbit Star to meet you-sa.]

The Moonlit Reveller was a living, breathing transmigrator detector, but he was too famous. Imitating his quirks would prove nothing.

But Yuri knew another detector: USAUSAMI₍ᐢ.ˬ.ᐢ₎.

His ridiculous verbal tic was an instant tell, a piece of cringe so potent it transcended language barriers.

[Answer me-sa. Don’t you recognise me-sa?]

If the man wasn’t a transmigrator, what was the worst that could happen?

He had a new face, a new name, and he was using different techniques from his Thunder Cloud days. If this was a bust, he’d get a decent fight out of it, then move on to the next candidate.

Rattle enough cages and eventually someone would come looking for him. A newcomer making this much noise was bound to attract attention.

[If you don’t answer, I’ll have to return to the Rabbit Star~]

“Kuaaargh!”

The Pointing Flame let out a strangled scream, his finger jabbing violently towards Yuri. In that single, fleeting moment, Yuri saw pure, undiluted terror flash across the mage’s face.

KABOOM!

A streak of crimson tore through the air, and the world in front of Yuri erupted in a wall of fire.

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried