WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 106

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Beast, Beast King, Human - 2

Two claws packed with blue aura tore through the world. Shei blocked the rapid chain of slashes with nothing more than light twists of her wrist.

Skywarbler was a weightless sword, but it carried inertia only for Ebon, and only one-sidedly. She had clearly been blocking the claw on his left, yet one turn of her wrist changed the blade’s direction and sent it straight for his skull. Because of that, even while attacking with one hand, Ebon had to keep the other free to defend at any moment.

“An invisible weapon. At first I thought it would be a real headache.”

In a way, it was better that Skywarbler was invisible. If he had not focused on Shei’s wrist from the start, his head would have split before he even noticed the sword’s secret.

Cursing that absurdity, Ebon said,

“It is certainly a weapon far too fine for you.”

“What would that tiny brain of yours know? It’s ten times better than you think.”

Shei sneered and unleashed sword qi.

Celestial Sword Qi, Tailwind.

From that moment on, the wind smiled only on Shei. Skywarbler fell wrapped in air. The sword had no weight, but the vibrating wind itself was force.

“Khk!”

Ebon crossed both claws and caught Skywarbler. Six blades clashed against a single sword and shook violently. He shoved both arms forward and knocked Skywarbler away.

He had blocked it, yes, but the moment he used both hands for defense, he had already lost the exchange.

Shei smirked. Ebon ground his teeth.

“Even with your body wrecked by a Beast King, you still move like this!”

“Ah, this?”

Still smiling, Shei tilted her head. At that moment, bloodcraft activated, and the blood that had spilled out returned to her body.

Ebon shouted in shock.

“It was fake?!”

“No, not fake. I just recovered a moment ago. I really was hurt.”

That gave Ebon no comfort at all. If she could pull blood back in and heal wounds, even a little, then his tactic of building advantage with claw scratches was much harder to use.

“That King of Cats took plenty of hits and still didn’t run. Looks like you trained Nabi well. Thanks to that, I took a few hits I didn’t expect.”

“You’re awfully proud for someone relying on random tricks.”

He had no choice now. He had to use his second power. Ebon twisted his left wrist and muttered,

“Call to Arms, Set.”

In that instant, the compact war-suit built into his left claw docked into his biometric terminal. The terminal, now swallowing magical energy, began to glow.

Clack, clack. A steel frame settled into place along his skin. Between the struts, level 3 steel plates filled in, lit by alchemic radiance.

It was not a transformation. Magical energy and alchemic light flowed through the Archi Avatar, so even in the middle of combat, Ebon finished equipping his war-suit.

Wearing a steel helmet, Ebon snapped his head. Skywarbler, aimed at his skull, bounced off the single horn mounted on his helm. Seeing unfamiliar gear, Shei knocked him back with wind and retreated to inspect his equipment.

Ebon muttered confidently.

“General-star gear, Unicorn.”

From the claws on both hands, to gauntlets, to a chestplate with pauldrons, to a helmet and a horn built for impact, not decoration. It was equipment made specially by the military state for Ebon alone, guarding his upper body while adding another means of attack.

Ebon explained to the silent Shei. His voice rang beneath horn and helm.

“You should understand this. Claw combat has one weakness: you must put your head forward. Until now, if you targeted my head, I had to guard or evade. But now that I wear this war-suit, that weakness is gone. All that remains is offense. Well? Can you stop me?”

Shei tilted her head. Her face was full of confusion.

Ebon smiled in satisfaction, but unlike what he expected, Shei’s doubt was not about his strength.

“Yeah, this is my first time seeing that war-suit. You didn’t steal it, did you? Or is it such junk they were about to scrap it?”

Sometimes hearing something too ridiculous makes patience stop working. Ebon, hit with a rude and bizarre suspicion, snapped and shouted in a way uncharacteristic of him.

“Of course not! I am one of the military state generals, and my war-suit is equipment permitted only to generals! Just as each star stands alone, each general’s war-suit is unique!”

“Then why? Last time, there wasn’t any general with a stupid war-suit like this. What is this? Don’t tell me you weren’t the main culprit either.”

“…What are you talking about?”

But Shei’s question was one the current Ebon could not answer. She forgot even the fight and murmured to herself.

“Instructor. Male. One of those Lords of All Creation types pushing that ‘humanity’s great wish’ thing. Knew immortals existed, thought maybe only an immortal could stop it, and brought a Beast King.”

Fragmented clues spilled from her mouth.

After hearing that, Lieutenant General Ebon asked with a darker gaze,

“…Humanity’s great wish? You bastard, what do you know?”

Shei could have answered, but had no intention of answering. She only kept talking to herself.

“And two women too. Not sure if Azzy was included, but it’s also unclear whether the lieutenant colonel was there at the time, so forget that. Still, all the circumstances line up perfectly.”

Shei kept piecing things together, then snapped at the one puzzle piece that would not fit.

“Then who the hell trashed the Abyss into that mess?! Those Lords of All Creation freaks call themselves beast experts, so why did they turn Azzy into that state? And where did all those corpses come from?!”

Their information crossed, but did not connect. Shei’s questions were beyond Ebon, and Shei had no intention of resolving Ebon’s.

In this case, the one who gained a new objective was Ebon. He struck his claws together, then slowly dragged them edge to edge. Sparks spat from the blades with a metallic screech.

“Looks like I need to cut off your right arm and interrogate you before you’ll talk. Don’t worry. I’ll leave your left arm with the biometric terminal intact. I’ll need that side for torture.”

Bad memories flashed through Shei, and her face twisted hard. Even when horrifying, PTSD-worthy memories surfaced, one of her strengths was that irritation came first.

At least, for a regressor.

“Maybe you should worry about your own horn.”

“Nothing you fear will happen. The rest is level 3, but this horn alone is level 4 alchemsteel. Try not to get impaled and die by mistake. You still have much to tell me.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean that thing on your head.”

Shei smiled ominously. Her hair crackled with sudden static.

Too late, Ebon noticed Skywarbler shaking in a dangerous way. He also noticed it had darkened, like a storm cloud.

“Doesn’t it look perfect to get hit? A thunderbird looking for somewhere to land likes sharp points.”

Ebon sensed danger, but before he could react, Shei’s attack was complete. She drew her finger downward and released her power.

Celestial Sword Qi.

Thunderbird.

As if it had been decided from the start, as if no other possibility existed.

A single bolt of lightning dropped onto Unicorn’s horn.

“Kuaaaaaaagh!”

Electricity surged through Ebon’s body. Trembling violently, he steadied himself and spread energy through his whole body.

military state standard energy, Geon Form: Repel, Deflect.

Bullet-deflecting energy rose across his entire body. With that outward force, he shook off the lightning for an instant, planted his legs, and pulled up more energy.

standard energy, Gon Form: Flow.

He rooted his legs to the ground and spread energy outward, sending the lightning into the earth in a flash. The crackling current digging into him sank downward in an instant.

After pulling off that feat, Ebon gasped.

“Huff. Huff.”

Even so, this was a devastating loss. He had been forced to deploy energy techniques back to back, not to evade the attack, but simply to endure it. The stamina drain was severe.

As Ebon tried to recover, Shei mocked him.

“Looks like you somehow managed Geon and Gon. So, did you grasp Kan? Or do they still make people generals these days if they only reach Gon?”

“Khk… You just got lucky and picked up a good artifact! Don’t act like you’re above me just because that thing gave you an edge!”

Ebon shouted to buy recovery time. But contrary to his expectation, Shei’s face twisted sharply.

“Gear carry?”

He had not said it exactly that way. But whatever instinct she reacted to, Ebon could neither deny it nor answer, and stayed silent. Shei huffed in fury, gripped Skywarbler, and glared at him.

“You called it gear carry, didn’t you?”

Her hostility swelled. Sensing it, Lieutenant General Ebon hurriedly raised his claws.

Shei gripped Skywarbler with both hands, wrapped her arms around it, and raised it behind her shoulder. At the same time, she drew energy up through her entire body.

All the vitality overflowing from countless treasures and miracle medicines flowed into Skywarbler.

In that split second, wrapped head to toe in terrifying power, Shei shouted at Ebon.

“Stop calling it gear carry, you bastard! I can beat a lieutenant general even without Skywarbler!”

Heavenly Mirror.

The ultimate defensive energy art, engraving motions into the body in advance so even sudden attacks are naturally redirected.

But there was no reason those engraved motions had to be defensive only.

There are far more kinds of offense than defense. They need more variety, and must adapt to the target. So for preloaded forms like Heavenly Mirror, defense is overwhelmingly more efficient.

In fact, that was what Heavenly Mirror had originally aimed for.

Still, maybe… maybe it was fine to include a few attack forms. If they were motions that did not depend too heavily on context, maybe five.

That was what Shei thought, and did.

One of the five attack forms she had stubbornly created: left diagonal slash.

Skywarbler tore through space with heavy force. The sword had no weight, but once filled with vitality, that became power.

The blade packed full of blue energy was the only sky spread open inside this Abyss. Impossible to resist, impossible to block.

“Deflecting energy…!”

Ebon flared his energy to the limit to protect himself.

But before such overwhelming force, the only thing sent flying was his claws.

Unicorn’s horn, made of level 4 alchemsteel, snapped. From pauldron through chestplate, Skywarbler carved a huge line across him. It even cut through the energy inside, drawing a blue diagonal across Ebon’s body.

Blood burst out. Ebon staggered backward.

Shei paused briefly from the reverse motion of Heavenly Mirror’s attack form. But now that distance had opened, she chose not to pursue and watched him instead.

He survived a fatal wound only thanks to bullet-deflecting energy. Because he had spread it across his whole body, the moment he was cut, his body was knocked back, and his ribs stayed out of Skywarbler’s path.

The wound was already severe, but at least he had kept his life.

Ebon spat blood and lamented.

“…Damn it… Sunderspear… You dropped… a monster like this… without even neutralizing it….”

Shei muttered indifferently.

“If you knew that, you should’ve prepared better.”

Ebon laughed. He laughed for a long while, then coughed up blood. Covering the surging blood with one hand, he muttered,

“Haha… I even brought the King of Cats…. What more preparation… was needed?”

Shei did agree with that much. If the Lords of All Creation had brought a Beast King at all, they had clearly put effort in. Anything beyond this would have been power meant for an all-out war, not something a lieutenant general could use for personal business.

Still, from his position, Lieutenant General Ebon had used every tool available to him. His authority as a lieutenant general, the people he had fostered and recruited, mana herb, even his adjutant.

“And yet… all of it blocked… by one variable….”

Muttering emptily, Ebon released Unicorn. The shattered metal stayed lost, while the remaining alchemsteel turned into streams of light and gathered into his left arm.

With a small click, the chipped war-suit packet popped free. A general’s war-suit was both an identification seal and a weapon stuffed with military secrets. If defeated, locking it back into packet form to prevent technology leaks was considered a soldier’s duty.

Just as Ebon took it with trembling hands,

a dry crack came from inside the war-suit packet, like a jewel shattering.

Then broken gem fragments dropped at Ebon’s feet.

Ebon’s eyes widened. He had not heard wrong. They were twin resonance gems.

If one breaks, the other breaks too.

“What’s that?”

Shei’s question reached him, but he had no duty to answer.

An answer would come soon anyway.

Kihaaaaaaaak!

From far away, Nabi’s scream rang out. Not a simple hiss, but a howl laced with madness.

Startled, Shei snapped her gaze toward the building interior.

“What is that? Feral surge? No, doesn’t feel like it…?”

“Kh, kh, kh.”

Used to this kind of thing, Ebon understood exactly what had happened.

The process of taming Nabi had been difficult, time-consuming, and dangerous.

Even humans addicted to drugs were dangerous. So what if the addict was the King of Cats?

At first, Nabi accepted mana herb greedily, thinking it was a gift. But when withdrawal hit hard, Nabi sometimes attacked the mana herb handler, stole whatever remained, and ran.

Whenever the handler died like that, Ebon immediately cut off the supply.

Once the mana herb ran out, Nabi would eventually slink back. Threats, pleading, sometimes even tearing the whole base apart, none of it could find herbs that were not there. Twisting in withdrawal, Nabi engraved one fact deep inside: Ebon was the only one who supplied mana herb.

After keeping Nabi desperate for a long time, he would finally provide it again, and make Nabi accept that if it stole mana herb, it would never receive it again.

Again and again, over and over.

Because of that effort, Nabi came to associate “handler’s death” with “loss of drug.”

For Ebon, and for the colonel, that was not a bad setup.

At minimum, the colonel’s life would be safe from Nabi, and if the colonel died, Nabi would go berserk and reduce everything to scorched earth. It was solid insurance for both.

“…Ha. So ‘that one’ built even this…. Really, even worse than me.”

But some being backing the Lords of All Creation had turned even that into a trigger.

If Ebon lost, something had clearly been planted inside the colonel, now Ebon’s only adjutant, to send the King of Cats berserk. Most likely something that would react when the gem broke and tear up the body from inside.

Probably in a way that spread blood scent as much as possible.

“Still, thanks. Because of this….”

As Nabi went berserk and Shei’s gaze flicked away for just a moment,

Ebon bit down on the mana herb he had slipped into his mouth earlier while pretending to wipe blood from his lips. The packet split, and the mana herb inside was made with catnip.

More precisely, made with king catnip and specially crafted with dried World Tree leaves.

It spread through his mouth.

Ebon muttered bitterly.

“Khkh. I didn’t want to use this….”

Tick.

Flame sparked from his fingertip. He was a close-combat fighter, but he still knew level 1 daily magic as basic education.

“Set, Ri.”

Ignition, Ignite.

A combination of fire’s Fahrenheit and wind’s Pascal. The fire in his mouth spread like wildfire, then flared all at once, using mana herb as fuel.

Shei, who had looked away briefly because of the King of Cats’s feral surge, frowned in confusion.

“Huh? You set your own mouth on fire? What the hell are you doing…?”

Ebon himself gave the answer.

“Kihyaaaaak…!”

His pupils narrowed into vertical slits. His hair stood on end. His posture dropped naturally lower, his claws grew a little, and in a human body he released something close to feral surge.

Only then did Shei realize what he was.

“You…! Cat beastkin…!”

Instead of an answer, black smoke streamed from Ebon’s mouth. Smoke from burning mana herb carried stimulation dozens of times stronger than mere scent. If a cat beastkin inhaled it, they forgot pain, reclaimed beast blood, and entered feral surge.

Its addictiveness was vicious and its aftereffects severe, so even the Lords of All Creation did not particularly recommend it.

But if someone chose to use it at the edge of death, what was impossible then?

Even as flames burned through his mouth, Ebon shouted.

“Kihyaaaak! No! I am not a beast! I am human--!”

Ebon lunged. This time on all fours, faster and lighter than before.

Shei had faced this exact kind of state in a previous cycle: feral surge without loss of intelligence. The beastkin who escorted the Beast King, humanity’s greatest enemy, had looked exactly like this.

“I thought your attack pattern was strange…! So that’s why the King of Cats followed you! Nabi thought you were the same kind! But your ears and tail, how…!”

Shei quickly scanned Ebon, and then she saw it.

In the part where the helmet had vanished, inside his raised hair,

a crusted scar where something had been cut off.

“Your own ears…! You insane… bastards…!”

She could not finish the sentence. Ebon’s claws crashed in like a real cat now, far stronger and far trickier than before.

Against Ebon, charging while burning away everything he had, Shei entered round two.

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