WeTried Translations
Translator: Goku
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Villain Perfect for Leveling Up
Chapter 049
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49. Ill-Fitting Shoes (6)
The prison was filled with air heavy with moisture.
To the point where, with every step, both dust and moisture clung to the soles of my shoes.
“…Let’s focus.”
Passing through the entrance where no presence was felt, a wide corridor revealed itself.
On the floor, a high-quality carpet woven from linen had yellowed from lack of care over a long time.
I wondered if this vanity-filled interior was the bare minimum image needed to uphold the pretext of a political prison.
The thought barely crossed my mind when the floor suddenly sank with a clatter, and I nearly lost my balance.
Clang-!!
“Kugh…!?”
A massive arrow shot from the wall pierced my chest, sending me rolling across the floor.
A hole in my lung let out a gurgling breath.
I knew there was an arrow trap in this corridor.
It was just that the high-quality carpet had hidden the trigger mechanism, making it impossible to know which floorboards to be wary of.
Leaving behind the blood that cascaded like a waterfall from my pierced chest, I tore the high-quality carpet to shreds with Freud’s Fang.
On the bare floor revealed between the shredded carpet. There was a tile with a different design from the ordinary limestone tiles.
When I pressed the tile with my hand, an arrow shot from the wall and embedded itself in the opposite wall.
“…….”
With the certainty that the arrow trap could be easily bypassed as long as the carpet was gone, my body turned cold.
《 Resurrecting at checkpoint. LOADING… 》
“…Let’s go.”
The second attempt began.
The Bastille Prison was such a vicious dungeon that I remembered passing through it back in my game days by brute-forcing my way with an overwhelming level of 999.
“…….”
Steeling my heart not to waver, I carefully touched my chest plate with my hand.
“…It’s fine.”
I had worried I might revive with the armor half-destroyed, but thankfully, the armor shone perfectly, just as when I first received it.
Taking a light breath, I headed back to the corridor with the arrow trap.
“There were more trap panels than I thought…”
Once I fully removed the carpet laid on the floor, I could see quite a number of trap panels.
I realized that my first attempt, which had made it about halfway down the corridor, was very lucky.
Walking carefully to avoid stepping on the panels, I reached the end of the corridor.
“…This is the end here.”
By carefully distinguishing the floor panels, I easily cleared the first arrow trap section.
As if the carpet had indeed been laid to cover the trap panels, the corridor had no carpet at all once it ended.
Beyond that, there was an automatic elevator that rotated like an escalator.
A structure where platforms were pulled by chains and spun around.
I had to ride that platform to go up to the next floor.
“The red platform was the trap…”
Just then, I picked up a small pebble lying on the floor and threw it onto the red platform of the elevator.
With a clattering sound!, the platform’s lock released, and the floor suddenly gave way.
“…Just as I thought.”
There were sharp spikes in the sunken floor. If I had boarded the red platform without knowing, I would have become a hedgehog.
I boarded the next platform of a normal color that came up, and reached the 2nd floor.
“…….”
Upon reaching the 2nd floor, a thin bridge barely wide enough for one person to stand on came into view.
A bridge that seemed like you could cross it just by keeping your balance, but in reality, it was a vicious mass of traps.
The moment you step onto the bridge, giant blade pendulums descend from the ceiling.
You have to cross the bridge, getting past the pendulums that swing at random speeds, ignoring any rhythm.
Hearing only this much, it sounds fairly easy.
“…It’s because it drops you after a while.”
If you don’t cross the bridge within the time limit, the bridge literally does a full rotation and drops the player onto the spikes far below.
The vicious level design unique to souls-likes, I set foot on the bridge where the developers’ malice exploded.
Soon, giant blades descended from the ceiling and began swinging in all directions.
Pendulums swinging at speeds that ignored the laws of physics, and pendulums whose left-right swing speed was off-beat.
“…My luck is too bad.”
It wasn’t impossible to get through, but the timing was so difficult to catch that I couldn’t recklessly lift my foot.
The ticking sound of a clock echoed from somewhere on the wall, as if urging me to cross the bridge right now.
“…Hah!!”
Since it wasn’t like I only had one life, I steeled my resolve and ran with a running start.
Passing the pendulums that savagely sliced through the air by a hair’s breadth, when I had almost reached the end of the bridge-
Kugugugu-
“Damn it…!!”
Of all times, the time limit ran out and the bridge rotated to drop me.
I threw my body forward to somehow cross the bridge, and barely managed to reach out and grab the railing, hanging on.
But because the distance was short, only my index and middle fingers hooked onto the railing.
Before I knew it, my fingers had slipped completely to the outside of the railing, on the verge of plummeting into the abyss at any moment.
“……!!”
Just then, I remembered a skill I had forgotten, and immediately transformed Freud’s Fang into a basket-hilted sword, shooting the blade like a snake to wrap around a pillar on the inner side of the railing.
The blade wrapped around the pillar contracted all at once, pulling my falling body upward.
“…I had forgotten about this.”
Climbing onto the railing through quick improvisation, I looked at Freud’s Fang, whose blades were gathering together.
I made a mental note not to forget that I could fly to any place as long as there was something to grab onto, then headed to the next location.
“Cough… Cough….”
In a cavern near the area where prisoners were held, a single knight was dying, both arms severed, bleeding.
From the design of the armor and the shoulder epaulets, he seemed to be one of the imperial guards who had entered here with the Emperor.
“…Heh heh.”
Having dimly spotted me, he laughed like a madman.
“Who would have thought the Emperor had such a vile hobby… heh heh heh heh…”
Lifting his severed arm, he soon had his body swallowed by a gear wall, crushed directly into the meshing gears.
Blood and crushed flesh burst brutally from inside the armor, drenching the floor.
The dying knight’s last words, his body pinned to the wall, were far too ominous.
…The Emperor’s vile hobby. And the knight with both arms severed.
Grrrr!
At that moment, both walls began to slowly close in on the space.
The gears, stained with bright red blood, spun fiercely to devour me.
I fixed Freud’s Fang onto a door where a faint light was leaking through, and charged straight ahead.
As I sprinted through the wide cavern at overwhelming speed, the gear walls fully compressed, causing a massive tremor.
“I need to hurry…”
This was no time to be thinking impressions like how I had easily cleared the hardest trap.
If Carmen was with the Emperor right now….
Dodging a spinning blade that suddenly popped out from the wall as if sliding, I sped through a narrow corridor.
As I emerged from that narrow corridor, a massive ball began rolling from behind me with a huge tremor.
At a speed impossible to avoid even with a full sprint, I shot my blade at a ceiling lamp and hung from it.
“…….”
The massive ball rolled completely past the corridor, kicking up dust and a strong gust of wind.
There were no more traps after this.
All that remained was the labyrinth leading to the detention area.
Landing lightly on the floor, I ran toward the Emperor, where Carmen was, without looking back.
* * *
The deep layers of the prison, where not even light entered.
“…I can’t understand why Theodore didn’t sell you to me.”
“……Father saw through it long ago that a piece of trash like you is worthless.”
“I like the spirited look. It’ll be fun to break, I suppose.”
A man with thin limbs but a grotesquely protruding belly laughed heartily and lifted Carmen’s chin.
His ten fingers were covered with an incongruously large number of rings.
The man full of vanity, the Emperor, wore a sinister smile.
He stroked Carmen’s wrists and ankles, bound in shackles, exchanging glances as if measuring something.
“Bring me one with good hand-feel.”
“…Yes.”
He took a dagger from the knight holding a torch by his side.
“Haa…. I love this moment so much….”
The Emperor had realized his own nature when, as a child, he saw a woman whose legs had been severed after being hit by his carriage.
Acrotomophilia.
A sexual fetish otherwise known as amputation fetishism.
He cared nothing about the world. He only enjoyed cutting off the limbs of those with beautiful hands and feet.
And finally, he was excited by the fact that he could defile the woman at the peak of the beauty he had longed for.
“…Let’s start with the feet.”
The dagger blade glinted sinisterly in the torchlight, and his gaze turned to the worn-out shoes Carmen was wearing.
“Why were you walking around in such garbage shoes? It would be prettier to bare them….”
Thud!
A dull impact struck the Emperor’s face.
It was because Carmen had swung her foot while snarling.
“They’re not garbage.”
Carmen growled.
“A gift from him…. Say it’s garbage one more time, and I’ll kill you.”
The confusion and fear caused by her father, who had gone mad from the Abyss, kept constricting her.
After escaping through the shortcut, she never took off these shoes.
Even though the ill-fitting shoes chafed her insteps and ankles, she absolutely never did.
The warmth of him, who had put the shoes on her even after being slapped on the cheek. The drive of him, who had embraced her to save her. The strength of him, weaker than anyone else yet stronger than anyone.
…Because it had the effect of calming her twisted inner self.
“…How dare you.”
The Emperor, his face struck and flushed bright red, clenched his teeth.
“How dare you kick His Majesty’s sacred face!!”
His grotesque face, with its crooked teeth and underbite, became even more grotesque as the Emperor glared at Carmen.
“…Trample her.”
He soon gave the command with eyes filled with rage, and the three knights guarding his side all trampled Carmen at once.
A thudding sound echoed through the prison, but Carmen never screamed.
Bruises formed over the bright red whip scars that had already been etched in.
Carmen’s head, crushed under the knights’ strength, gradually wilted.
Then, as she went limp and a drop of blood flowed from the corner of her mouth, the Emperor raised his hand.
“Stop. I’ll handle the rest myself.”
The Emperor reached out his thin hand and cut the shoes Carmen was wearing.
As the tightly knotted laces and leather were severed, her pale soles were revealed to the world.
The moment Carmen witnessed the shoes tumbling and rolling on the floor, her pupils shook violently, as if an earthquake had struck.
* * *
A prison where not a single ray of light entered.
Standing there, I closed my eyes and began to move as if controlling the protagonist in a game.
Go straight. When you hit a wall, move right.
Keep going straight and you’ll find stairs. Go down.
Once down the stairs, find the stairs again using the same method.
After descending about three more floors in that manner, a faint ray of light became visible in the pitch-black prison.
-The sound of flames consuming oil, and the chilling sound of a blade cutting through skin accompanied it.
“Now that face is worth seeing…!”
The moment a man’s voice, unpleasant just to hear, echoed through the prison underground, the thin thread maintaining my reason snapped.
The brass-colored blade stirred up a blue wave.
The knights who detected my approach toward the Emperor all drew their swords at once, but it was already too late.
Like a snake shooting venom into its prey’s eyes, a fist wrapped in poisoned blade reached them.
The torch held by a knight fell to the floor, and whenever a dull noise occurred, the flame flickered faintly.
I broke the arm of the knight holding a sword, and shoved the sword I had taken into the mouth of the one charging at me.
Grabbing the head of the knight who began to fight back with martial arts after taking a stance, I let the blade seep into his mouth.
Eyes, nose, mouth, ears.
The blade passing through every orifice ground away his face.
Lifting the knight’s limp head, his spine soon snapped and came out with it.
Freud’s Fang, moving like a living snake, returned to its place and coiled around my arm.
“Eeek?!”
I stepped away from the site of the knights’ massacre and took one step toward the Emperor, who was crawling on the floor.
The sticky sound of footsteps from the blood on my shoes made the Emperor’s movements even more pathetic.
To stop his useless escape, like a fat toad swimming in the sea, I immediately grabbed his hair and lifted him.
“Kiiik!! Spare me! Please!! I am the Emperor!!”
The Emperor, not even understanding his own situation, screamed in a disgusting voice.
“I will give you anything you want!!! Money?! Honor?! Women!? Anything you say, kiiick!?”
I opened his mouth with my left arm.
“Ugh!! Squeak!!”
Freud’s Fang, coiled around my left arm, moved like a snake and wriggled into the Emperor’s mouth.
The Emperor, gurgling and spitting bloody foam, twisted his limbs at impossible angles from the pain of his internal organs being ground away.
Before long, the Emperor’s eyes, which had been twisting his body, rolled back, and he went limp.
Piercing through his grotesquely swollen belly, Freud’s Fang burst out, taking a different form from the basket-hilted sword, like donning a gauntlet, and coiled around my arm.
“…Carmen.”
Turning my gaze, I approached the bound Carmen.
As if she had been waiting, her trembling hand placed itself on my cheek, and a coldness colder than that of a dead person was conveyed.
She looked at me with jewel-like eyes.
Clang!
The shackles binding her limbs were easily shattered, but she could not stand.
“…….”
The wound on her ankle had turned the white skin inside out, and blood was flowing.
Soon, Carmen’s soft lips parted, singing a cruel truth.
“You have come….”
‘Who are you….’
“You have come all the way to this wretched place.”
‘What business do you have in this wretched place.’
“If you are a traveler who has come again…”
‘If you are a traveler passing through this place….’
“Would you listen to my story…?”
‘Please tell me your story.’
The dialogue I had heard in the game and her current voice overlapped simultaneously, forming a discordant harmony.
Because I was late….
“…I should have returned your shoes earlier. I’m a little late.”
…Her legs could no longer be used.
Carmen wiped the blood on my cheek with a gentle touch.
“In truth…. I was so afraid.
Because I… merely used you, Dean.
…I know you hate me.
I told you the truth, but you didn’t believe me, and I killed you.
You cared for me as if we weren’t enemies….
My lingering attachment and desire for revenge from the 1st Playthrough, before the regression, no longer exist.
My father is mad but alive. And my mother’s grave was not desecrated.
The legs to walk the world, and the hands to touch flowers and your face, were also fine.
…Not the legs anymore, though.
I think all of this… is the retribution for what I have done. …Hehe.”
Letting out a self-deprecating laugh at the fact that her leg ligaments were severed and she could never walk again, Carmen toyed with the tears flowing from the corners of my eyes.
“I have been watching all of Dean’s actions.”
“….”
“Being forgiven by the snow woman, fighting the First Hunter…. Gaining the trust of the eagle and the horse. All of it.”
I set down the sandals I had tied at my waist in front of her.
“My foot size is smaller than this.”
Whether the size was different from what I remembered, the newly purchased sandals didn’t fit her feet either.
“They’re ill-fitting shoes… but still, thank you.”
Her pink hair fluttered, and the scent of blood rushed in.
The taste of her blood was cold and fishy.
“This is… my repayment for the gift.”
Carmen, who pressed her glistening lips to mine once more, caressed her sore ankle.
“…Let’s go.”
I lifted her onto my back and rose from the spot.
Not long after I distanced myself from the light source where the flames were dying out, the Emperor’s body, its internal organs all ground away and dead, twitched.
“Aren’t you going to finish him off?”
“Not now.”
“…Hmm.”
Carmen let out a weak nasal sound and pressed her lips to my cheek.
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