WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster

Chapter 006

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Carmilla's Night (3)

""......""

For a moment, nobody could speak.

Nothing about the situation made sense.

Carmilla wore the same blank, hollowed-out expression as every assassin in the room.

"......It blocked?"

A stunned murmur.

Eyes wavering.

'The God-Slaying Bow's stake hit and he's still standing...?'

A boy who had appeared from nowhere.

Just before Carmilla's execution, he had materialized straight out of thin air.

"It seems I've interrupted at a rather critical moment."

The mask.

A mask smiling in that grotesque, frozen way.

"I hope I haven't caused any offense?"

The boy's manner was perfectly composed. As though nothing had happened at all.

Clatter.

At the jester's feet, the deflected arrow rolled across the ground. Damaged by the impact of the discharge, its tip had half melted away.

Hiss.

The floor scorched black where it landed, like lava had touched it. Whatever bubbled and seethed there was unmistakably the stake's divine power.

""......""

The assassins swallowed. Dry-throated, every one of them.

A hit like that, and not a speck of dust on his clothes.

What kind of situation was this.

How had he deflected a stake.

Who was he, and where had he come from.

Pointless questions swarmed through their heads.

"Everyone's gone quiet. You were all talking quite a lot just a moment ago."

""......""

But that wasn't even the half of it.

Before any of that could register, something else had already closed around the backs of their necks.

'What the...'

Instinct.

'This pressure, what IS it...!'

Killing intent.

A savage aura poured off the boy in waves.

Just locking eyes with him was enough to make the skin crawl, like insects were marching across every inch of their bodies. Like small teeth were gnawing, stripping the skin clean off.

"Urk, ngh..."

The assassins, frozen solid.

The first to pull himself together was the captain. He bit down hard on his tongue, snapped himself awake, then wheeled on the others and shook them out of their daze.

"Get it together, you idiots!"

Nothing had changed.

Some strange figure had shown up, yes, but their mission was still the princess's execution.

"Why are you scared?! We go back empty-handed, we're all dead anyway!"

The king wouldn't forgive failure. Not one of them. There was no retreat for assassins.

"Screw this, he's nothing! He's just one guy!"

"Must've gotten lucky with that one move."

"Just kill him and be done with it!"

Those shouts shook the rest back to their senses.

Blades slid free from their sheaths, one by one. Spears and swords in every hand.

"Drawing weapons out of nowhere. How terribly rude."

"Don't let your guard down. Two go in at once."

The jester reacted with theatrical, exaggerated surprise, fingers tracing idly over his mask.

"Not very gentlemanly of you."

Crying or laughing, it was impossible to tell. The sound sat somewhere no category could reach.

Five to one, and the assassins felt like the ones outnumbered.

"Get him!"

"Raaaah!"

The standoff shattered on that command.

Two broke from the pack and charged.

Slash!

Flashing blades split the air.

"Oh dear."

The jester shuffled on the spot, footwork jerky and halting, like he genuinely didn't know what to do with himself.

For vampires, it was the strangest footwork they had ever seen. Steps so chaotic they were impossible to read.

So the assassins decided it was mockery. A taunt.

"This insolent little--!"

"How dare a lowly human--!"

Blades pouring in. Before they knew it, the assassins were almost on top of him.

That's when it happened.

Crackle!

Something snagged. The jester's movement cut out completely. Then, with a burst of white noise, he flickered, stuttered.

Gone.

"......?!"

"He disappeared--?"

The next moment.

"Frightening, isn't it."

The jester reappeared behind them. A mask surfacing from completely outside their field of vision.

"What--?!"

"Is this really any way to go around carrying things like these."

Before the assassins could react, the jester's hands closed around their arms, more precisely around the swords they were gripping. His fingers made contact.

"Allow me to trade those for something nicer."

The weight in their hands turned strange. Wrong. Light.

They weren't holding swords anymore.

Well. Technically swords, but obviously not the same shape.

Balloons.

Balloon swords.

The weapons they'd been gripping swapped out for toys in an instant.

"What is this--!"

They spun around in confusion, but the jester had already put a wide gap between them. The original swords were gone entirely, vanished without a trace.

The boy spread his hands open wide.

"Ta-da, it's magic!"

Breezy. Then his hands brushed together, casual and indifferent.

The atmosphere was about as musty as the sewer air around them.

"Since you're all carrying such fine weapons now, I suppose I ought to match the occasion."

Thud.

The jester's empty hands were suddenly holding something.

A stake.

An arrow forged of silver and dyed with sunlight. Had he picked up the one left discarded on the floor? Even shattered to pieces, each fragment was nearly the size of a decent dagger.

"Silver, sunlight, and a stake. Weren't those a vampire's weaknesses?"

The jester, grinning wide.

"How convenient. This one's got all three."

"Damn it, kill him--!"

That was it. The vampires couldn't hold their nerve any longer.

The assassins kicked off the ground and closed the distance in an instant, surrounding him on all sides. Every instinct said they had to strike first.

Pointless.

Crackle!

The jester fell into that same clumsy footwork again.

No.

Not just once.

Crackle!

Crackle!

Crackle!

He blinked in rapid succession, and every time his body flickered, he reappeared from a different direction around the assassins.

Behind. Beside. Above. Sometimes through the very wall itself.

"Got you."

Thud.

His technique was nothing elaborate. He stepped back and drove the stake's tip into each of them in turn. Clean and simple.

But it was plenty.

"Ugh, gaaah! My, my leg--!"

"My hand's melting! It's melting off--!"

"Hot, it's hot--! AAAGH!"

The stake.

Even without being loaded into the God-Slaying Bow, it was already a formidable weapon on its own. Against vampires, it was a matchup bordering on catastrophic.

The jester picked them off, one by one.

"Kugh, ghhk--!"

Thud.

Another vampire crumpled to the ground, limbs wrapped in searing flame.

"Now it's just you left."

"I... ah..."

The last one standing was the captain.

Sprawled on his back, staring up at the jester from the ground. His face had gone deathly pale.

The mask tilted forward in a slow, unhurried bow.

"Something the matter?"

Bringing them roughly to the same eye level.

The mask was smiling.

"You were threatening to kill me just a moment ago, weren't you?"

"......"

"Now then, your prey's right in front of you. Don't want to miss your chance, do you?"

The jester closed the captain's hand around a sword himself. As though inviting him to drive it into his own throat.

The captain couldn't move.

"Go ahead."

"......"

Blinking eyes.

Breath shaking, ragged. He couldn't bring himself to look away from the jester. Not even for a second.

The chill pressing down on him, the dread, the fear, all of it swelled past the point of control.

His throat closed.

"Ha ha, you're trembling quite a lot."

His throat

closed.

"Haah, haah..."

"Just breathe. I haven't done anyt#~?%??hing y--"

The jester's voice shattered into pieces.

The captain's vision warped and buckled.

The mask.

That smiling mask.

The grotesquely curved corner of that mouth tore open wide.

"There's no need to be so frightened, we can still have a civil con>{@}versa#@$????????<RunRunRunRunRunRunRunRunRunRun......>"

The pitch-black mouth fell open, and what lay inside was larger than the sewer itself.

Within it, swarming tentacles.

Slick things, licking at the captain's cheek.

A landscape of writhing horror, splitting the mind open.

The world tearing itself apart in every color.

Eyes.

Blinking in the middle of it all.

Eyes, wide and red among the tentacles.

Eyes watching the captain.

Watching eyes.

Watching eyes.

Watching

eyes.

"By any chance."

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"?denethrgiF uoy ereW"

A world turned inside out.

Spinning, spinning, shattering to nothing.

His mind caved past the point where consciousness could hold on.

"Ah, ngh..."

Terror at its limit breaks the mind.

The captain's eyes rolled back, and he passed out.

Hissss.

A thin trickle from his pants ran down and mixed with the sewage below.

***

"Oh, I broke him."

Been getting a lot of use out of it, though.

I looked down at the unconscious assassin and muttered to myself.

"Were you really that scared?"

Vampires and stakes really didn't mix. All I'd done was hold it up in front of his face and say a few scary things, and he just collapsed on the spot.

I got up.

"Phew..."

Exhausted, head to toe. My back was soaked through with cold sweat, and I was covered in blood on top of that. My vision was still swimming, probably from all the blinking.

'I'm dead tired.'

At least the item had kept me from getting hurt. I gave today's MVP a little tap.

[Evil God's Mask]
-Effect: Negates attacks directed at the wearer three times. Activates only while equipped.
-Remaining charges: 2/3

Without it, that stake would've gone right through me.

I wiped the blood off the mask, then turned to face the reason I was here.

"Princess."

Carmilla.

She was sitting slumped on the ground.

"......"

No answer. Just sitting there, holding her breath.

She looked terrified.

'Well, she almost died. Can't blame her.'

I headed over with every intention of cheering her up.

"There we go, this jester has taken care of all the nasty assassins."

Rustle.

Out of my inventory I pulled a balloon flower bouquet and held it out to her. Gifts were the best way to stop someone from crying. Everyone said so.

There was a little blood on it, but, well.

Gifts are about the thought, not the thing.

"Shall we be on our way?"

"......spare."

A low, barely-audible murmur from Carmilla.

Looking closer, she had tears streaming down her face.

"Spare, spare me..."

"Pardon?"

Her shoulders were shaking.

The fear in those red eyes was pointed directly at me.

"I... I want to live..."

She'd been crumbling since the assassins took her. Now she crumbled further still, pressing herself into the ground like she could disappear into it.

I had absolutely no idea what to say.

"Please. Please spare me..."

"Huh."

What.

Why is she doing this all of a sudden.

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