WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 67: Lunar Eclipse (5)
──────
Once again, she remembered her childhood.
She pictured the most peaceful days she had ever known.
Only smiling faces remained in those tattered, torn memories.
She loved that time.
“Your Highness.”
“Have you come to see His Majesty again today?”
A deep voice brushed her ear.
It belonged to a man with a rather magnificent mustache.
‘Jersian.’
He was one of the attendants who had always taken especially good care of her.
Whenever she skipped Bloodcraft class and secretly visited her father's office, he was always standing in a corner of the study.
“I seem to recall you were scolded for skipping class just a few days ago.”
“I’m always glad to see you, Your Highness, but Knight Lefil will scold you.”
“Hmm, I don’t think asking me to stop Knight Lefil would do much good.”
“To be honest, Knight Lefil scares me too...”
It was an ordinary conversation.
She would complain about class as she sat on the office sofa.
Whenever she pouted like that, he would bring her warm tea.
“Then... just for today, all right?”
“I’ll tell Knight Lefil you had your reasons.”
“But starting tomorrow, you’ll attend your Bloodcraft classes properly, understand?”
He made her promise, though she had no idea how many times she had already made it.
Even knowing she could not keep it, the girl obediently nodded.
As if pleased, he placed several cookies beside her teacup.
“This is... a little something for a good princess.”
Cookies he had baked himself.
She liked that.
Boring, drowsy, crispy.
She missed the rough textures of those memories.
For Carmilla, they were the days she wished most to return to.
“Your Highness.”
Jersian.
Several years later, the man stood atop an execution platform.
He was there to carry out the execution of Carmilla's father, the deposed king.
* * *
“...Jersian.”
Carmilla muttered blankly.
A broken scene from the past lingered in her eyes.
Regardless, the man calmly greeted her.
“Have you been well?”
“...”
“What a coincidence. I never expected to encounter you in such a remote village.”
The splendid mustache, the neat appearance, the formal suit.
Jersian looked exactly as he had in her memories.
Yet for some reason, Carmilla found him utterly unfamiliar.
Was it because his demeanor had changed?
“Honestly, I’m surprised. Even if you escaped to the Human Realm, I thought you’d die before long...”
Carmilla could not bring herself to speak.
The man who had led the execution on the day her father was placed on the scaffold.
The target of her revenge.
“...”
Several sentences tangled and twisted in her throat.
The ones she could not speak lodged there like thorns.
She stood frozen for a long while before finally forcing out only a few words.
“You... How could you...”
It was the question she had always wanted to ask.
A sentence she had chewed over, rehearsed, and resented again and again.
Perhaps because her emotions were surging up, her lips would not obey her.
Still, Jersian smiled as though he understood the question.
“How could I? Are you asking me why?”
She wanted to know.
All the girl received in return was a sneer.
“Well.”
“...”
“I thought this side held more promise.”
“...”
“The former king was far too soft. Harmony... it only sounds good. We vampires are the race that should rule the continent. Yet for hundreds of years, we had to remain where we were because of peace treaties and the like.”
“...”
“We endured that humiliation for far too long. We grew rotten in pointless comfort, until the kingdom became full of fools who babbled about harmony between races. Your father led them, along with those idiotic ancestors of yours. Yet your uncle alone had another proposal.”
Carmilla's uncle.
The man who had toppled the Blandir dynasty and founded the New Kingdom.
“He made me an offer. He asked whether I wanted to change this boring world, whether I wanted to carry on our ancestors’ will, which had been cut off hundreds of years ago. A world ruled by vampires. A world where inferior creatures lived as our livestock. Those words captivated me. That mindset a conqueror ought to possess...!”
“...”
“From that day on, my heart began to serve him.”
“...Since when?”
When had she been deceived?
“Just when... when did it all become a lie?”
Her words became awls, digging into her festering wound.
Memories that had once been precious leaked out like yellow pus.
The girl's vision blurred.
“All of it...”
Had it all been a lie?
The things you told me, the promises, the teacups, the cookies, the pinky promises.
Everything you had given me.
Had it all been nothing more than deceit?
Her wavering vision made her stagger.
Regardless, the man gave her a cruel answer.
“How long do you think he had been preparing this plan?”
“...”
“Fifteen years, no less.”
Fifteen years.
For Carmilla, that was half her life.
It was also around the time Jersian had begun spending time with her.
“Then, from much earlier...”
“Yes.”
“It was all a lie...”
“I approached you under his orders from the very beginning, Your Highness.”
Even the question she had clung to like a lifeline was severed.
Humiliation, helplessness, emptiness... all of it washed over her.
Through the hot tears streaming down her face, he smiled horribly.
“Thank you for being foolish enough to believe me.”
Mockery.
Carmilla could no longer hold onto her reason.
“How dare you...”
Something shattered.
Into countless pieces.
“Then... just for today, all right?”
“I’ll tell Knight Lefil you had your reasons.”
She did not want to believe it.
She did not want to face it.
“This is... a little something for a good princess.”
Yet the dream had finally ended.
The traitor stood before her.
The enemy who had murdered her father stood before her.
“How dare you!”
What did she want to hear from him?
That he had his reasons, that he sought forgiveness... did she want even words like those?
As tears fell down her cheeks, a red aura surged around the girl.
The Bloodcraft she unleashed with all her might formed a massive Bloodstorm nearby.
Kwooooo!
“Oh?”
“Traitor.”
“Surely you aren’t planning to challenge me, are you, Your Highness?”
“Traitor to the Blandir dynasty. Regicide. Jersian Delphirn!”
“You haven’t forgotten, have you? I was once considered one of the kingdom’s finest pure-bloods.”
“As the last princess of Blandir, I shall pass judgment upon your wickedness!”
“I thought you were getting too old for me to humor you.”
“Shut up...!”
Shwaaaak!
The Bloodstorm gathered at her fingertips and poured toward Jersian.
The blood condensed into a rain of scarlet spikes.
It was an attack driven by rage.
“Your Highness.”
But Jersian stopped her attack with a single gesture.
“I haven’t lived this long just to lose to a vampire much younger than me.”
Kwagagagak!
The girl's attack was stopped with absurd ease.
As though she had expected it, Carmilla was already preparing her next attack.
“Hup...!”
An arrow forged from blood.
At the end of the taut bowstring, crimson killing intent writhed.
Its lethal tip aimed straight for the man's heart.
-Blandir Style Bloodcraft, Sixth Form-
‘Piercing Kill’
Ping, shwaeaaaak!
The timing was perfect. The angle, too.
It was a strike that should have succeeded easily.
Yet Jersian caught the arrow where he stood.
Kwak.
“Oh, your skills have improved quite a bit.”
“...?!”
Kkudeudeuk.
Jersian snapped the arrow in half.
As though it had not even stirred him, his eyes remained cold.
Carmilla froze with her bow in hand.
Overwhelming force pressed down on her.
Her red eyes shook unsteadily.
“How...?”
Jersian was strong.
But he had never been this overwhelmingly strong.
He had lost every time he sparred with the former king.
‘Human blood...!’
He had consumed human Vital Blood.
To vampires, it was like a narcotic or stimulant.
The blood of humans with great refinement and intelligence produced the greatest effects.
“Ha... can you feel it? This overwhelming power?”
Jersian was many times stronger than Carmilla remembered.
Black-red haze writhed in every direction.
Excessive power seeped from him.
“Isn’t it ridiculous? They banned something this good over nonsense like dignity...”
The corners of his mouth twisted grotesquely.
“The former king truly was a fool. Everything your uncle said was right.”
Words that dishonored her father.
Yet Carmilla could not move carelessly.
Cold killing intent weighed on her shoulders.
‘This can’t be happening.’
The atmosphere was such that even a brief opening would get her killed.
Black fear slowly gnawed at her heart.
“Then... I should wrap this up. I’d like to play with you longer, but unfortunately, I have an important ritual ahead of me.”
Tak!
Jersian leaped forward.
Before Carmilla could even follow him with her eyes, he appeared right in front of her.
A Bloodcraft-forged fist struck her solar plexus.
Ppeoeok!
“Ghk...!”
“Your reaction is slow.”
Carmilla was sent flying back.
She barely regained her senses, but she could not shake off the pursuing Jersian.
The girl quickly unleashed Bloodcraft.
“Ugh, ngh...!”
-Blandir Style Bloodcraft, Seventh Form-
‘Crimson Blood, Half the Sky’
Even with her posture broken, she recreated the seventh form perfectly.
A black-red barrier wrapped around her entire body.
For a moment, it seemed she had defended herself safely...
“Did you think you blocked it?”
-Delphirn Style Bloodcraft, Eleventh Form-
‘Wild Dance’
Kwakwak!
The fierce barrage of punches crushed the barrier inward.
Crash! A fist burst through the shattered red light.
Carmilla could not react at all and took the hit cleanly.
Ppak!
“Ghk...!”
One-sided violence.
Blood dripped from her split lips.
“L-Lady Carmilla...!”
Alice tried to help in alarm, but she too was surrounded.
The vampires who had come with Jersian blocked every escape route.
She tried to break through, but it was beyond her.
The card soldiers clashed with them, but the difference in numbers gradually drove them back.
“Wait, e-everyone, hold on! Don’t let them break through...!”
The cards struggled against the horde of Ghouls.
At this rate, both of them would be killed without being able to do anything.
“Tsk, tsk... Is this really all you can do?”
Jersian stroked his mustache.
He clicked his tongue as though he was not even entertained.
Thud, ppeoeok!
Carmilla desperately tried to push herself up, but the follow-up blows struck her arms and legs.
Her strength gave out, and she collapsed in a heap.
“Ghh...”
Ppeok.
A light blow struck her face. For a moment, her vision went dark.
Even the tears streaming down her face rolled through the dirt and became filthy water.
The girl struggled to hold onto her wavering consciousness.
Between flickering scenes, only pained, ragged breaths escaped her.
‘The plan...’
The hour they had promised.
‘It feels like it’s already been a long time...’
There was no sign of Viktor.
Had something happened to him?
No, it did not seem likely that anything could happen to someone as strong as her loyal retainer.
As she gasped for breath, a dark thought whispered in her ear.
‘Or...’
Or had he abandoned her?
Had she been betrayed by someone again?
Everyone she had trusted, everyone she had cherished, had betrayed her.
Perhaps Viktor had abandoned his useless master and gone off somewhere on his own.
“Ha, ha...”
Breathing was difficult.
Her crying and groaning mixed together, dragging out into pitiful sounds.
She rolled around at Jersian’s feet.
“Human blood is forbidden. We will lose ourselves. All they did was spout that pathetic nonsense... and this is the result?”
“Ha, ngh...”
“This is why your father was a failure.”
Thud, thud.
Jersian looked down at her with indifferent eyes.
Not a trace of kindness remained in them.
Several more vicious kicks followed.
“Hmm.”
“...”
Carmilla finally went limp.
As though he had just thought of something good, Jersian pulled a canteen from his waist.
“I will make you an offer.”
Footnotes:
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