WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Ode of the Brave ◈
Chapter 40
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It was almost embarrassing to call it a village. It was an extremely tiny settlement in some remote place, likely not even listed in the lord's tax records.
There was only a single log-built temple and three or four scattered houses.
The temple that enshrined a god had not been made with expensive materials, but the builders' care could be felt in it. It looked straight and sturdy.
Yet someone had smashed things like the door and windows.
Light streamed through those broken places like the gaze of a god. Following that light inside revealed a sea of blood, with corpses sprawled everywhere.
They did not seem to have been dead long. Steam still rose from them in the cold air.
“Hey, when, when the promised day comes, the God of Judgment will punish you, you lot.”
A priest, bleeding all over and collapsed on the floor, dragged himself away from someone as he spoke.
Escape was clearly impossible, and the man who had reduced him to this state simply stood there and watched.
The man's sword remained sheathed at his waist, but he held something like a sickle in one hand. Thick blood dripped from it.
People often had faces that resembled animals. The man with the sickle had a large, jutting lower jaw that made him look unmistakably canine. Like a particularly vicious fighting dog. Yet his eyes were unexpectedly calm.
His face was covered in small scars, and one across his right eye stood out in particular.
The man spoke.
“When?”
“What?”
“When exactly is it going to punish me?”
“Wh-what are you talking about?”
“You don't understand plain speech. When I was young, I prayed every day for God's punishment to come down. I prayed for God to kill my fucking parents. Or kill me instead. But no matter how much I prayed, I was just ignored. So I killed them with my own hands. And then I realized something.”
“...”
“There is no god. Nothing even close.”
The man blasphemed against God with such ease, as though it meant nothing. The priest's eyes widened, as if that shocked him more than his present horrific state.
A demon...
“Even if I kill you, no divine punishment will fall on me. But if God has mercy, it came down on me. If it had come down on the other kids, you'd be begging them to kill you by now, not God.”
The man walked toward the priest. Squelch. His every step made a sound in the blood covering the floor.
As the man approached, the priest closed his eyes and prayed.
“O God, save this pitiful soul...”
“There is no divine punishment, and no salvation either. But salvation is the more fucking disgusting of the two.”
Whoosh! Thud!
The man's sickle buried itself in the priest's crown. The priest flopped like a fish. Then someone called to the man from outside the temple. It was a cheerful woman's voice.
“Shuti! Shuti! What's taking you so long?”
The man called Shuti was none other than Steiner the Mad Dog. The five of them must have been quite close, since they called each other by nicknames.
Steiner looked down at the priest he had killed. The sight of the man dead with a sickle embedded in his crown was reasonably satisfying.
But that pointless pleasure lasted only a moment. Steiner turned and left the temple. Three people had already finished their work and were waiting outside.
The woman who had called Steiner was dancing lightly, as though she was thrilled about something. Several pieces of skin were draped loosely over her body.
They were human skins, and the stitched-together pieces had strangely different colors and textures.
Yet the woman's own skin resembled that of a dark, warty toad. It was the result of training Mana Drive beyond all reason. The woman was Erze, the Skin Collector.
“Shuti, why did you take so long? Ohohoho. Look at this.”
She approached Steiner, raised her arm like she was showing off, and stroked it with her hand.
“Isn't it so soft? My skin's getting smoother and smoother. Ohohoho.”
“Yeah... Where's Tony?”
Tony was Reto's nickname. Reto the Experimenter, the necromancer among the Ernberg Five.
“That gloomy bastard said he'd gotten everything he came for and left first.”
The man dressed entirely in black from head to toe spoke. He was Ghost, also known as the Ghost Sword. Though anyone could see that he looked the most gloomy of them all.
“I said we should go to the meeting place after I was done. Didn't you pass that on?”
“Wasn't that your job?”
Ghost looked at Erze as he asked.
“Why would I talk to him? I thought Hati did it.”
The man called Hati was inhumanly tall and broad, like a giant from legend. The square shield beside him was as large as an ordinary person. He was Hanet the Iron Rampart.
Standing with his arms crossed and leaning against the wall, the top of his head nearly touched the roof.
“Why are you suddenly blaming me? And I did tell him.”
The three others, excluding Steiner, pushed responsibility onto one another. They were less organized than their reputation suggested. But they also seemed that much closer.
They had all come from the same Academy. Though they bickered, they were like brothers and sisters to one another. Perhaps they shared a bond even stronger than that of a real family.
There was only one serious problem. They had grown up without ever becoming proper adults, twisted beyond repair.
“Hati says he told him.”
“Hah...”
Steiner sighed. Then he spoke to Erze, who was closest to him.
“Eri, you go get him.”
“What? Me? Why?”
“That loser listens to you better than anyone else.”
“Ehehe, that's true. Being pretty is exhausting.”
Erze said this while spinning in place as though displaying her beauty. But she was the complete opposite of beautiful. She was grotesque, terrible, and completely insane.
“Then the three of us will move on ahead. Eri, I'm counting on you.”
“Okay...”
“Hey, Shuti, did you hear?”
Ghost asked just as they were about to leave.
“What?”
“They say heroes have appeared in Sigpringer recently. They're wiping out the Thieves' Guild and bandits, saving people. Without asking for anything in return. Apparently Hasphil is dead too. And Aunt Lily.”
Steiner seemed to think quietly for a moment, then casually said one thing.
“They must be some serious perverts.”
Saving others without expecting anything in return? By Steiner's standards, they were perverts he could not possibly understand. Particularly terrible perverts.
Ricart had never encountered terrain like this in either of his lives.
The moss-covered ground looked merely uneven, but when he stepped on it, it swayed as though there were water directly beneath his feet.
In fact, the ground could suddenly sink in and swallow someone whole, killing them in an instant.
On top of that, snow covered the ground, making it impossible to know where to step. It was a strange yet dangerous swamp.
It was hard to imagine where they could even begin searching for Reto's laboratory in this desolate wilderness.
The one fortunate thing was that it had not snowed recently, allowing them to find footprints. Judging by their size, they definitely belonged to the Nameless One.
“Oh? They're Mister's footprints.”
This time, Boribori noticed them before sharp-eyed Ricart did.
The footprints headed north. Ricart and Boribori followed the trail. The ground squelched beneath their feet with every step.
After walking for some time, the two boys came across an unbelievable sight.
“Grrrr...”
Rotting corpses were moving. There was not just one or two of them.
Some of the bodies scattered around still moved. No matter how one looked at them, they were corpses that should have been dead for a long time.
Their pale eyes rolled wildly, and some crawled sluggishly even though everything below their waists was gone.
“A, a necromancer...”
Boribori muttered. Faced with such an absurd sight, Ricart could not think for a moment. Was magic truly this terrible?
When he finally came to his senses and carefully examined the scene, the corpses appeared to have been attacked by some enormous beast. They had been crushed, trampled, and struck with an axe.
“It was Mister. He must have fought here.”
As Ricart spoke, Boribori immediately crossed the horrifying scene without looking back, following the footprints. Ricart hurried after him.
At some point, a pale mist began to form even though it was midday.
It was not thick enough to obscure the footprints completely, so they barely managed to follow them. The trail ended at a sinister-looking cabin. It stood on one of the few patches of firm ground in the swamp.
Ricart took the sword off his shoulder and held it in one hand, ready to draw it at any moment as he approached the cabin.
When he carefully opened the cabin door, which was not properly locked, he found another horrific and revolting sight.
All kinds of body specimens had been preserved in jars of liquid. Many of those jars had shattered, leaving their contents scattered carelessly across the floor. The liquid gave off a strange smell that stung his nose.
And on what appeared to be the necromancer's desk sat a severed head. It was Reto the Experimenter. The Nameless One had already killed him.
He must have looked grotesque even alive, but he looked even stranger in death. After what they had just seen, Ricart felt as though the head might suddenly open its eyes.
“He left it for us.”
Boribori spoke.
“Huh?”
“Otherwise, Mister wouldn't have cut off his head and put it here.”
“Maybe...”
Indeed, the Nameless One was not the sort of person to do something like this in a fight. That meant he had another reason, and Boribori's words seemed right.
But finding the Nameless One mattered more to the boys than taking the head.
And since this was an assassination request rather than the pursuit of a wanted criminal, they only had to kill the targets. There was no need to bring back a head. An ear, a distinctive feature, or an identifying object would do.
“Oh my, where did these little cuties come from?”
A cheerful woman's voice suddenly came from behind them. Ricart and Boribori spun around on instinct.
They saw a woman who looked like a toad. Not merely someone resembling one, but as though an actual toad had become human. And the woman wore human skin.
Ricart recognized her at once.
“Erze?”
“Oh? You know my name? Well, this beauty has to be famous.”
Erze displayed her ugly form with strangely elegant gestures.
“Where are the others?”
“Hm?”
“You're one of the Five, aren't you?”
“Sweetie, how could we always stick together? They're probably in Lindveil.”
Lindveil was where the Five had first committed a village-wide massacre.
Whether it was coincidence, cruel fate, or something more malicious, Lindveil was also the place where the Nameless One had once lived.
In any case, Erze casually revealed their secret meeting place. Perhaps she felt no threat at all from the two boys before her.
Or perhaps she had never intended to let them go.
“You two are a little old, but your skin is still quite nice. Hmm, I've decided. I'll add it to my collection. Aren't you grateful?”
Ricart and Boribori had never heard anyone call them old before. Everyone had always thought of them as young, but Erze apparently did not.
The toad-like woman gave a thick, greasy laugh and drew a sharp dagger. It was not an ordinary dagger, but something closer to a tool for skinning.
As she approached the two boys, she saw something beyond them. The head on the desk. Erze froze for a moment, then began to tremble.
“To, Tony?”
Usually, they ignored and bickered with one another, but it had all been cruel teasing. The Ernberg Five were family to her.
Erze could not accept reality. Then fury flared in her eyes, and her face twisted hideously. She was so ugly that she looked like the kind of thing one would fear seeing in a nightmare.
“What did you do to Tony...!”
Erze shrieked, but she could not finish.
Ricart and Boribori had immediately drawn their swords and thrust forward.
Clang! Crack!
Amazingly, both swords only damaged the skin she wore over herself, which had originally belonged to other people. They could not pierce her own skin.
Ricart's meteoric iron sword was such a fine blade that it did not break, but Boribori's mana-infused sword snapped in half.
Even though it could cut through almost anything.
It felt like striking a boulder with a sword. The violent vibration ran through Ricart's hand and rattled his bones. He frowned and hastily backed away.
In that moment, Erze charged at Ricart as if she meant to kill him.
“Ricky!”
Boribori cried out while clutching his injured wrist. But for a moment, Ricart thought Erze was playing around. Her attack was far too clumsy.
Had she lost control of her emotions after losing a companion? Was only her skin tough, while her martial skill was poor? Or was it a trap? Countless thoughts passed through his mind in an instant.
But Ricart, who had experienced more real combat than words could describe, found his answer even in that brief moment.
He let go of his sword, moved in a blur, and snapped the joint in her arm in an instant.
Crack!
“Aaagh!”
In that opening, Boribori leaped onto Erze's back. He wrapped his legs around her waist and clung to her like a turtle's shell. Then he put both hands into her mouth, seized her upper and lower jaws, and pulled them apart.
Mana flowed through his veins and into his muscles, unleashing monstrous strength.
“Ghhhk!”
Crunch.
“Aaaaagh!”
Erze's jaw dislocated, leaving her mouth gaping wide like a snake's. She thrashed wildly, but Boribori would not let go.
However, when Boribori finally tore off her lower jaw, he lost his balance and was thrown away.
Crash!
Boribori flew a considerable distance before springing back to his feet.
“Grrr...”
Erze could only make a faint sound like an undead creature. Having lost its support, her tongue hung limply below her mouth as she staggered away, trying to flee.
“Where do you think you're going?”
Ricart chased after her barehanded. Erze fled in terror, but Ricart was far faster.
He caught up with her in an instant, grabbed her leg and brought her down, then twisted her ankle.
“Aaaaaah!”
Erze writhed on the ground in agony. She tried to grab Ricart, but he had already leaped back out of reach. Then he pulled a dagger from inside his clothes and spoke.
“Are your eyeballs tough too?”
“Urrgh...”
“I hope they are.”
Without waiting for an answer, he drove the dagger into her eye with all his strength. When the blade pierced her eyeball and reached the soft brain beyond, Erze convulsed. Then she soon went limp.
Against an ordinary opponent, skin that swords could not cut through would have been more than powerful enough. But the two boys were not ordinary opponents.
“Huff, huff, huff...”
Boribori approached and looked down at Erze's limp body.
Ricart asked the panting Boribori,
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. What about you, Ricky?”
“Me too.”
“Then let's go.”
“Yeah.”
After taking proof that Reto and Erze were dead, the two boys immediately set out for Lindveil.
Even after killing Reto and Erze and completing the request, Ricart and Boribori's journey was not over. They had no intention of ending it yet.
Still, Ricart had one concern. It was not simply fear that the Nameless One would die. Ricart tended to accept death with detachment.
It was only that if the Nameless One punished himself to death like this, what meaning would there be in it, whether he achieved revenge or not?
Ricky from his former life and the Nameless One had lived under different circumstances, but there were undeniable similarities between them. Ricart feared that the Nameless One was following in Ricky's footsteps.
Because there was no salvation at the end of that path.
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