WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 131: The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 3

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"...I thought that might be the case. So you were connected to the Sanctum."

A brief flash of hostility passed through Tyr's eyes as she looked at the regressor. It was instinctive.

Hatred and animosity, soaked into her blood and carved into her bones, welled up like an instinct.

If Tyr's heart had still been stopped, she might have joined Jiseon in attacking the regressor. But even so.

"...You were pure, despite all that. What are you, I wonder?"

They had spent a long time together. Shei had shown Tyr many sides of himself.

During that time, Tyr had never felt hostility or contempt from the regressor. Only a clumsy sense of familiarity that had made her give a hollow laugh.

Three months. To Tyr, it was no more than an instant, but for someone whose heart had begun beating again, it had been enough to leave a deep impression.

So Tyr decided not to involve herself in that fight.

See, regressor.

I understand what you were worried about, but I told you Tyr wouldn't interfere.

The immortal, who had landed in the sea of blood with Callis, felt the raging wind and muttered.

"Hmm! I thought you might be connected to the Celestial God because you use the power of the sky, like wind and clouds!"

"The authority wielded by the Sanctum is not the Celestial God's. The Celestial God has never bestowed any power upon humanity."

Tyr had clashed with the Sanctum more than anyone else in her life. Her words carried that certainty. Tracking the invisible sword with blood-red eyes, Tyr continued.

"They call themselves followers of the Celestial God, yet they revere the First Holy Maiden more than the deity itself. Every woman called a Holy Maiden after her bore titles like prophet or seer."

"Oh? Now that you mention it, that's true! Wouldn't that make them even more remarkable? It means they built such great prosperity without divine authority!"

"The authority of the Time-World Aspect, which sees through time and the world, is even more absurd. Hmph. Cowardly wretches..."

Perhaps her resentment remained even after her heart had begun beating. Tyr muttered with clear contempt.

"Anyway, Shei cannot be a seer. Since the First Holy Maiden was impaled on the cross-shaped stake, only women can become Holy Maidens. Unless Shei has been hiding his sex... Unless...?"

Just as Tyr tilted her head at the thought that had suddenly struck her,

"Grrrrrrr!"

Azzy, hanging from a support like a bat, barked furiously. To Azzy, who instinctively recoiled from human corpses, this entire place probably looked like a minefield.

They were already corpses, so stepping on them or smashing them would not cause much trouble. Still, there was no need to make her come down when she hated it so much.

"Right. Stay up there. Don't come down if you don't want to..."

"Grrrrrrrrr!"

But Azzy was not barking simply because she disliked corpses.

Something stirred among them. One of the searchlights quickly swung over at the sign of movement and illuminated it.

Thanks to that, I clearly saw a corpse in loose clothing brace its hands on its knees and rise.

I wasn't especially grateful.

Death was an involuntary act: the cessation of life and the blurring of one's boundary with the world.

A corpse that had died and returned to the world should not be able to move on its own. Its skin was supposed to be gnawed away first as it became one with the world.

In other words, that staggering corpse was doing something absolutely unbefitting of a corpse.

"For fuck's sake."

I grimaced at the corpse committing the number one thing you should never do in a graveyard: rising again.

"A vengeful spirit. Well, with three hundred thousand of them, it would be stranger if there weren't one or two vengeful spirits."

Tyr did not seem particularly concerned.

This was why the Earth Mother Faith and buriers were needed, and why the faith had once enjoyed great prosperity.

Sometimes, a corpse filled with resentment retained lingering thoughts, which could move or transform the dead body. You could call it a primitive form of body-mediated magic unleashed just before death.

Lingering thoughts could not be stronger than a living person, so most were simply exterminated. Still, dealing with corpses that moved again was deeply unpleasant and inconvenient, so people paid buriers to lay them to rest.

Underground, where even living people could not escape, lingering thoughts would only stir briefly before fading away.

"It is insignificant. Wait a moment."

Of course, it was insignificant to the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka, the world's worst vengeful spirit, who had been buried alive and returned to the world in the body closest to a corpse.

"I will not even need to use my own power."

Tyr waved her hand.

A faint shape flickered in the darkness. At that moment, a black sword tore open the vengeful corpse's stomach.

It was a Black Knight.

After pulling out its sword, the Black Knight kicked the corpse behind the knee, making it collapse to its knees. Then it cut off the corpse's head. Slash. The severed head vanished beyond the searchlight's reach.

I applauded the Black Knight's performance.

"Wow! Black Knight! Your first big performance of the season! Maybe you'll finally shake off your reputation as a mere power benchmark and a salary thief!"

"...As if a Black Knight would lose to something as insignificant as a vengeful spirit."

Come to think of it, Black Knights were a kind of vengeful spirit too. The lingering thoughts of knights Tyr had killed. So naturally, a knight would be stronger than some ordinary soldier...

That was when something grabbed the Black Knight's ankle. The Black Knight lowered its black helmet, then fell as the hand yanked its foot.

Countless hands appeared above it. Fingers crawled over the Black Knight's body like a swarm of ants, tearing, pinching, and scratching at the darkness. Restrained all over, the Black Knight struggled before breaking apart strand by strand and turning to dust.

Under the searchlight, only hands remained.

Everyone fell silent for a moment. Then, with a cold expression, I took back what I had just said.

"Never mind. Disappearing after dealing with one body is a pretty pathetic record for a knight. How about we stop calling them Black Knights and call them Black Grunts? No, 'black' sounds too strong, so let's call them Dirt Grunts instead."

"Is this really the time for wordplay? Stay by my side. It is not dangerous, but something is wrong."

As if adding to Tyr's words, an alarm rang throughout Tantalus.

Waaang.

The sharp, artificial noise stabbed at my ears.

The searchlights gave up on tracking anything further. There were too many human shapes, and more than one or two things were moving.

Instead, the searchlights blared as they steadily widened. Their arrow-sharp beams spread out, and lights rose from Tantalus's rim at the same time.

I had thought the daylight lamp was the only proper illumination, but apparently I had been wrong. Small lights hidden along Tantalus's rim rose all at once. Each was much dimmer than the daylight lamp by itself.

Yet when all the lights along the rim turned on together, dazzling light flooded the Abyss.

A low ceiling. Shadowless light shining from sources surrounding us on every side.

Now I could see the mountain of corpses clearly.

A mountain made of clothes, flesh, arms, legs, and the occasional head. Human bodies piled atop one another to form rounded ridgelines. It had gone beyond horrifying. It only gave me the sick feeling of looking at cheap art.

Before I could linger on that disgust, something more horrifying appeared before me.

Along the shoreline of the filtered sea of blood surrounding the mountain of corpses, corpses in loose clothing began rising all at once.

There were enough vengeful spirits to call them an army. Tyr looked tense as she faced them.

"...It is bright. Difficult to use shadows. But."

The sloshing blood rose at her call.

After her heart began beating, Tyr could no longer wield bloodcraft effectively outside her body. But she could control blood this close to her.

Tyr floated a crimson sphere of blood in the air and said,

"Stay by my side, Hyu."

When she snapped her fingers, a fan-shaped wave of blood rose and swept away the corpses in an instant. The corpses possessed by vengeful spirits did not even leave behind traces that they had existed.

Even so, Tyr could not relax.

She was not afraid of the vengeful corpses. She was afraid I might get hurt.

"I will protect you no matter what."

That was reassuring. I gave her a thumbs-up and shouted.

"Black Roses are better than Black Knights, no, better than Dirt Grunts!"

"You really have no sense of tension at all!"

Over there, Callis and the immortal were fighting the corpses possessed by vengeful spirits. The immortal threw punch after punch, and each blow shattered corpses or sent them flying.

But the matchup was not in his favor. The immortal did not tire, but he only had two hands. Even if one punch occasionally dealt with three corpses, dozens more crowded in during that gap. He had no choice but to be pushed back little by little.

Having someone to protect made him even more cautious. The immortal shouted.

"Callis! Stay by my side! Don't stray from me!"

"No! I'll join the fight too!"

"What do you mean, join the fight when you're injured? I don't tire, so don't worry! Those things aren't worth a single punch!"

Callis abruptly yelled back.

"Idiot! That was all an act! Please start catching on already!"

"What?"

The time the immortal hesitated became the distance the corpses closed. Biting her lip, Callis inserted a military gear packet into her bio-terminal.

"Call to Arms!"

Click, click.

With an alchemical glow, a steel gauntlet wrapped around her left arm. After equipping her military gear, Callis threw a punch at an approaching corpse. Crack. The corpse's skull broke, sending teeth flying. Callis caught a tooth in her right hand and quickly slotted it into the groove on the back of her gauntlet.

Then she aimed it and shouted.

"Set, re, re, re, Pascal, gun!"

The groove should normally have expelled steam. Instead, compressed air violently propelled the tooth.

Thoom.

It was a kind of air gun. The tooth shot forward like an arrow and struck an approaching corpse in the head. Crack. The corpse's neck bent slightly backward.

That was all. The corpse walked forward again as if nothing had happened.

"Tch! It doesn't fit the specifications! It's too light as well...!"

"It is a tooth, is it not?"

"Perhaps because they've been dead so long, their teeth are soft and have no alchemical resistance! In that case!"

'Improvised alchemy!'

Callis clenched and opened her right fist. Teeth transformed by alchemy appeared. Their shapes and sizes varied, but their thickness was uniform.

Callis loaded a tooth ground to exactly the right size into the groove and fired it. Whoosh. A small gust of wind, even softer than before.

"Gun!"

The tooth pierced straight through an approaching corpse's right ankle. The corpse lost its balance and fell.

"I will assist you!"

"Ah, um. Do not overexert yourself."

She had not had much chance to shine among monsters until now, but a prepared officer was a precisely designed machine of war. If she couldn't manage this much, the military state would be in trouble.

Of course.

No matter how capable she was.

"Heavenly Sword Technique, Thunderbird!"

"Earth Mother!"

She could not compare to those two.

Flash.

Lightning crashed down. A bright yellow bolt beginning at Skywarbler fell toward Jiseon.

Jiseon evaded it by lowering her body and leaping. Her speed was slow compared to lightning, but the lightning could not track Jiseon, who had become one with the earth.

Boom. When Jiseon stomped, vibrations ran through the corpses. They spread like ripples, gathered beneath the regressor's feet, and corpses erupted from that spot.

A corpse flew toward the regressor with the speed of a shot put. Whether by accident or intent, its spinning arm aimed precisely for the regressor's side. The regressor lightly lifted herself, stepped gently on the corpse, and leaped once more.

'Tch. Has she already adapted to this earth of corpses? I thought I would have the advantage because there is no ground beneath our feet...!'

"Did you think you would have the advantage because this ground is not made of soil and stone?"

Jiseon saw through the regressor's thoughts.

"The earth is originally the body of Earth Mother. Even if something trivial lies upon it, all of it comes from the earth. I do not distinguish between types of ground!"

"You're so impressive, really...!"

The regressor grumbled as she landed on the inverted ceiling. Her refined energy allowed her light body to walk on the slanted ceiling as though it were solid ground.

Jiseon could probably do something similar, but she would not be as nimble as the regressor. Above all, earth arts required one's feet to touch the ground...

It did not take long to learn that was a misunderstanding.

"There is no sky in this place either. Just because the enormous earth has become the ceiling does not mean it will favor you!"

Speaking firmly, Jiseon thrust her fingers into empty air. Tendons stood out at her fingertips.

If you only looked at her, you might have thought she was miming. She seemed to be exerting force against nothing.

But it was not mime. Mime was pretending something existed when it did not.

"Rage!"

Jiseon's power was truly being exerted.

Her hand swung as if it had grabbed hold of something. At the same time, the concrete earth of the ceiling split into a grid, and square blocks attacked the regressor. The earth obeyed Jiseon's will even though her feet did not touch it.

'She can do this much without Jizan!'

Should I say the blocks rose upside down, or that they fell?

Either way, hard, square-cut concrete grazed the regressor. Though she hastily jumped to avoid a direct hit, the shock ran through her body.

"Tch...!"

Nowhere she could place her feet was safe. The regressor breathed heavily as she landed far away.

Jiseon, on the other hand, walked forward looking exactly as she had when she first stepped onto the ground.

"It is disheartening, Grand Warrior. Do you lack ability, or do you lack hostility? Why do you block my path when you lack one of the two? A sense of duty? Or is this the only road toward the future you desire?"

Jiseon looked at the regressor with a somber gaze.

"If you do not intend to fight, I ask that you step aside. I do not wish to fight one who bears no hostility toward me."

The regressor replied.

"...The people you will face will not bear hostility toward you either."

"Then they will move aside on their own. I only intend to demand answers for sin. They must reveal every bit of the wickedness they hid and atone for it."

"They will not step aside. They will have a duty to protect their holy ground. Just like you."

A clash between duty and duty. Was that not another name for pure tragedy, neither good nor evil?

With her poor way with words, the regressor somehow conveyed that meaning.

Jiseon frowned briefly, but her deliberation did not last long. She had already reached her conclusion.

"...Then I will simply remove them and continue."

"Exactly. That is why I am trying to stop you. You... Right. You will not fall, even if you have to knock everyone else down."

That was the regressor's duty to protect the future. She raised her sword again. As if she had steadied herself, the tip of her blade no longer trembled.

Jiseon watched her resolved opponent with dry eyes, composed her own feelings, and calmly declared,

"I will go up there and seize the Great Master's relic. It is as natural as a rolling rock, so if you stand before me, make sure you are prepared for what that means."

It was clearly directed at the regressor. A kind but firm declaration telling her to make a definite choice rather than maintain an ambiguous attitude.

"You will not be able to stop me without breaking me."

Then the one who would not fall climbed the mountain of corpses.

Straight toward the summit.

Footnotes:

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