WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 411: Land of the Abyss (4)

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"You said you committed a great sin?"

"I did."

"Did you commit a massacre?"

"How many does it take before you call it a massacre?"

"Well, I can tell you killed quite a few people."

The king gave a short laugh and stroked his beard.

"I only asked out of curiosity. Even if there were a precise threshold, I would never fall short of it."

"How many did you kill?"

"Hmm. Roughly five thousand, I'd say."

Five thousand dead. Enough to call it a massacre by any measure. But having recently watched Lancelot kill millions, Najin nodded without much reaction.

"Wait. Do I count the dragons and giants as well? That changes the number somewhat. I mean the ones from back when they could hold a conversation and actively mixed with humans, unlike now."

"Count them."

"You have a generous definition of people. Thank goodness you're no extreme bigot! Right then, let me see. Including them..."

"Actually, that's a tricky one. Should a dragon count the same as one human? I brought that up once and Fafnir threw an absolute fit."

Muttering to himself, the king began his calculation. He bent and straightened his fingers as he counted, never once stopping talking. Najin found himself in full agreement with Merlin's assessment that this man talked too much.

"Anyway, taking Fafnir's opinion generously into account..."

The hand stroking his beard went still.

He seemed to have finished.

"About seven thousand, I'd say."

"Seven thousand. You did kill quite a lot."

"Hm?"

"Pardon?"

Najin and the king tilted their heads at each other at the same moment. Then the king burst out laughing and shook his head.

"A slight misunderstanding. Not seven thousand, seventy million. I brought down several nations. There is no way I only killed seven thousand."

"......"

"It wasn't direct killing, but I drove them all to their deaths, so I would say that counts."

Najin's eyes narrowed. The man before him could be a braggart, but he did not look like he was lying. No swagger to it, either.

"I can see you don't believe me. That's because you don't know the age. There were simply far more people in my time."

The king shrugged.

"It was an era when dragons and giants walked alongside humanity and faeries ran free. Some called it humanity's own Golden Years. And as you can see from this place," he said, "it was an era when humanity's reach was being extended all the way to what you call the Abyss."

He pointed at the ground beneath his feet.

Beyond the Outland, reaching even into the Abyss.

There had once been a time, he said, when humanity's domain stretched this far.

"I was the king of such an age. The ruler of the greatest nation, the one who commanded every human being on this earth."

And, the king said.

"I was also the tyrant of the age, the one who drove eight in ten of that era's population to their deaths."

He stopped there. A look crossed his face like he had just caught himself, and he slapped his knee with a groan.

"Oh, blast. I went and gave it away. I meant to let you work it out yourself, but I got too carried away. Bear with me. It has been so long since I had someone to talk to, I suppose I got a little excited."

"The purpose."

"Hm?"

"What was the purpose? You could not have killed all those people for no reason. There had to be something you were trying to accomplish by driving eight in ten of the population to their deaths."

Something that terrible could not have been done without a reason. There had to be a goal. At the question, the king answered simply.

"Blasphemy."

He said it plainly.

"I wanted to pull down a false god. Without even knowing that everything was happening at the god's whim."

2.

"A god. Which god?"

"Well."

He raised a finger. The tip pointed toward the deepest reaches of the Abyss, the bottom beneath the bottom, the deepest pit within the Abyss. It was not visible from here, but it was clear enough what he was pointing at.

"The Witch of the Abyss."

"You tried to kill the Witch."

"I did. Though I will say this upfront: it was not for some noble reason like heroes such as you. Not that kind."

Then what, Najin asked.

"Revenge."

The king answered without any particular weight.

"A common enough story. Imagine a child who loses their parents and siblings to some vast power they cannot fight. What do you think happens?"

"Is the child an ordinary human?"

"An ordinary human. Unlike you."

"Then at first they would dream of revenge, but as time passes they would realize they cannot follow through, and try to build an ordinary life instead. The wounds would be there, but..."

"Yes. That is most people. I too was one of those ordinary people."

The king gave a small smile.

"As a child I dreamed of revenge, but by the time I was a young man, then a grown man, I understood how hollow that dream was."

The Witch of the Abyss was something like a god. Something like a natural disaster, he said.

"A flood kills your parents. An earthquake takes your brothers and sisters. Thinking of it that way, it is miserable, but barely bearable. The scars remain, but even so, you manage to get by."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Work hard, survive, find someone you love, marry, have children... I was trying to live that ordinary life when the god apparently took issue with it and decided to test me."

The king said it plainly.

"The Witch killed my wife. When I had barely survived that grief, she killed my daughter. Then my retainers, everything I held dear, she trampled it all, one thing at a time."

"......"

"She wanted to watch a man despair and break. She whispered that to me. And so I decided."

That I would never break.

That I would never give her what she wanted.

"After that, well, it is a dull enough story. One long trial of how cruel a man filled with poison can become, and how far he can go."

"And the result of that was driving seventy million people to their deaths. Is that what you are saying?"

"There is a fair bit left out in the middle, but in the end, yes. I challenged a god, committed countless sins along the way, and still failed and fell into hell. Sounds like something out of a myth, does it not?"

Najin looked at the man in silence. Still, to his eyes, the man looked completely ordinary. There was no hint of madness. His physical strength was ordinary too.

That was the biggest problem.

Najin could not understand how a man who was neither mad nor anywhere near Transcendent-level strength had managed to drive seventy million people to their deaths.

"Were you a Transcendent at some point in the past?"

"No. An ordinary human. No great swordsman and no great mage."

"A contract with a demon?"

"Why would I contract with something like a demon? If I was going to do that, I would have gone big and contracted with Fafnir. Well, I did make an arrangement with him, but it was closer to a trade. Not the form you are imagining."

"Then..."

"Ah, I think I know what you are getting at. Let me answer before we spend forever going back and forth."

The king shrugged.

"Young man, you are clearly a noble sort. Noble enough to pull Excalibur, and you must have walked into this filthy land because you carry a worthy purpose."

The middle-aged man offered a warm smile.

"If heroes like you live by what is noble in humanity, by goodwill, then people like me are the opposite."

He pointed at the ground beneath his feet.

"We live by what is selfish in humanity."

He gestured at the mud swallowing his feet like a bog as he spoke.

"Every human being is selfish. Heroes like you who throw their lives away for others are the extreme minority. Most people put their own safety first, and even those who help others only when they can afford to are rare. Most people think only of themselves."

'Where is he going with this?' Najin watched him with a puzzled look, and the king continued.

"Because we are selfish, conflict arises. Life is hard enough already, and then people start killing each other on top of it. Exhausting, isn't it? So one day, someone had a thought."

'Thought of what?'

"A world where an absolute ruler takes responsibility for everything."

"......"

"Set laws. Lay down rules. Bring order to a world full of chaos. A being of absolute power reigns as a god of the earth and governs it all."

The king smiled.

"Did you ask whether I contracted with a demon? Those who contracted with me might answer it that way. But from where I stood, at least, I was an ordinary human, and they simply contracted with a human."

He said it plainly.

"I made contracts with tens of millions of humans, hundreds of thousands of giants, and dragons. I will bring peace to this world. In exchange, hand your freedom over to me."

That was how an absolute ruler was born.

"This was the method I chose."

To oppose the Witch of the Abyss, an absolute, immortal deity, his chosen approach was simple.

"I figured that to stand against a perfect, immortal, and innate being, you do the opposite."

An imperfect, mortal, and made being.

"And yet an existence that has taken a seat comparable to a god's."

A Mortal God.

"That is what the Witch called me."

The Mortal King said it.

"Leviathan."

3.

"Is that your name?"

"Only what the Witch called me. My real name was eaten by the Witch, so there is no knowing it now."

The king's expression turned bitter.

"Regardless, I sought every means I could find. I did a number of things no person should do. I staked all those misdeeds as the price of killing the Witch and came within reach of success."

Failed in the end, though.

Muttering that, he raised one hand. He curled his fingers into a hook and drove them into his own eye.

"......"

Najin's brow creased as the king dug out his eyeball. He held up the dark red eye for Najin to see, palm open. It sat pulsing on his hand like a beating heart.

"The price for challenging a god was heavy."

A dark red eye.

The same eyes as the Witch.

"The god gave part of herself to the one who tried to desecrate her. Let her blood flow through my body."

With a wet sound the eye burst and ran down his hand. The empty socket filled with a new eye almost instantly.

"She denied everything I had built."

You shall be a complete being.

You shall be immortal, never aging, never dying.

You shall be an innate being who carries the blood of a god.

"Therefore, you are the same as me."

Denied. Through that denial, the king lost everything he had possessed. He held both hands out as if to show he had nothing left and gave a scornful laugh.

"I drove my son into hell, offered my granddaughter as a sacrifice, beat the ones I loved, pushed all of humanity and dragons and giants to their deaths, all to commit blasphemy against the god. And at the very end, the god whispered this to me."

"What a delightful story that was, child."

"She smiled as though nothing could be more enjoyable and gave me her blessing. As though it were a reward for entertaining her."

Because you wished to lose your mind, I did not let you lose it.

Because you wished for death, I did not let you die.

Because you wished to sacrifice yourself, I sacrificed everything except you.

"The reason I told you this long story is nothing special. It is a story I have always told those who set out to challenge the Witch of the Abyss."

Arthur had heard it. Merlin had heard it too.

"Thank you for listening to all of it. And if you do not mind, may I ask one thing of you?"

"What is it?"

"Would you kill me?"

No, he said, correcting himself.

"Would you let my people rest?"

"Your people, do you mean those creatures?"

Najin looked at the cursed ones, formless and shambling. There would be countless more inside that ruin. He gestured toward them when the king shook his head.

"They are only husks. The spirits and bodies of my people are somewhere else."

"Where?"

"I have given you enough clues. Work it out."

The king smiled bitterly.

"If you get it right, this time I will give you a proper reward."

"You already know the answer."

Footnotes:

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