WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 192: Say You Want to Live - 8

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'Urk.'

For a moment, Ulfen's consciousness grew distant. Blood sprayed, and their skull rocked. A numbing impact rang through their head before sweeping over their entire body, as if that alone had not been enough.

Ulfen somehow endured through sheer willpower and regained their footing. The distance they had worked so hard to close had opened again, but this was no time to worry about that.

Their entire body tingled as though a tiger stood before them. Ulfen had felt something similar before, in the Abyss.

It was the feeling of facing an overwhelmingly powerful opponent, someone against whom nothing would work, someone so far above Ulfen that they seemed to belong to an entirely different class of humanity.

A gap in strength so vast that even the will to resist became meaningless.

They felt that same thing from the young general before them.

'Should I have... run?!'

Yet it was already too late. Just as when they had faced the Magician, once they had entered their opponent's sight, resisting was the only right choice.

Ulfen steadied themself and raised their arm to grasp their short sword again.

Something flashed through their vision.

Then their left arm was severed.

Blood sprayed beneath their cloak as the section below their left elbow flew off at an unnatural angle. Ulfen watched with their own eyes as part of their body abandoned them.

Bang.

The gunshot came afterward.

The pain came much later.

"Ah, damn. That one finally hit."

At the end of that trajectory stood the Gunslinger, aiming her weapon at them. Blue flames rippled from the gun in her hand.

"Here's a simple rule. I ask, and you answer. Every time you don't answer, one of your limbs flies off. Easy enough for that worm-ridden brain of yours to understand, right?"

It was not gunpowder. Something at the level of gunpowder could never produce that much force.

The pinnacle of Bullet-Repelling Energy Art. Highly compressed energy was loaded into a bullet, then explosively expelled in an instant.

Gunpowder was weak. So she fired the bullet with energy.

The barrel could not withstand the impact. So she reinforced it with energy.

The recoil was too strong. So she canceled it out with energy.

Technique, principles, tools.

The strongest weapon, forged from energy that surpassed everything humanity had created, overcame even the Bullet-Repelling Energy Art.

It was called a gun, but in truth, it was no different from a spear. An infinitely long spear launched with the twitch of a finger.

Still, there was hope.

'...That was a bullet she just made. Which means that gun is empty. Then...'

It was their final option for survival. Even if they could not kill her, they had to wound her at the very least if they wanted to escape safely.

Then.

Ulfen thrust forward what remained of their left arm. They caught the flying limb with qi and charged, scattering its blood and presenting the gruesome cross section of exposed bone and muscle.

"Ugh. My stomach already feels bad enough...."

As she frowned like she was about to vomit, Ulfen lowered their stance and rushed at her with all their strength.

They extended the half-split short sword in their still-functional right hand. At the same time, they secretly drew the dagger they had hidden away for dealing with stronger opponents. Black smoke billowed from their entire body, and a sword with its blade painted pitch-black suddenly sprang out from the darkness.

A shadow sword meant to kill an unwary opponent at close range. A technique honed for murder alone, with another blade concealed beneath the shadow of the short sword...

...was crushed between the Gunslinger's elbow and knee.

Their right arm was shredded between her elbow and knee. It was not that they had lost strength. Their hand had simply become incapable of gripping anything, and the short sword and dagger slipped through their shattered fingers.

Pain washed over them. In contrast, the Gunslinger was indifferent even after breaking a person's arm.

"That's two limbs. Only your legs are left now."

Muttering to herself, the Gunslinger struck Ulfen's back with the grip of her pistol. She had only tapped them lightly, yet Ulfen slammed into the ground as though their whole body had been torn apart. It felt as if the earth itself had risen up and crashed down on them.

A military boot lightly rolled Ulfen onto their back. As they lay there with both arms reduced to rags, high buildings came into view, along with the Gunslinger's face looking down at them as though they were an insect.

"Feel like answering now?"

It was the arrogant attitude only an overwhelming powerhouse could show, looking down on everything in the world.

Ulfen's resistance had ended in vain. Sensing that everything was over, they coughed up blood and asked,

"...Cough. Why would someone like you come over something as trivial as the back alleys...?"

No matter how they thought about it, she was far too significant a figure to be dispatched because a few lower-class people had died. Someone this strong was surely a national asset, someone whose movements had to be treated with caution.

At Ulfen's question, the Gunslinger scratched her head with her gun.

"That's strange. I said I was the one asking questions."

"Promises should be kept," she muttered, gently pressing her military boot onto Ulfen's knee. Watching their mouth twist in pain, the Gunslinger spoke lazily.

"I'll tell you this one time, so answer my next question properly.... You know Hamelin, right?"

Of course they did. Ulfen nodded.

The military state's taboo. The incident where middle school students on the verge of graduation had died en masse.

Ulfen had intended to use it as bait to draw in the military state and clean up the back alleys.

They were just back alleys. A forgotten place where people abandoned by the world gathered, a place no one cared about. Ulfen had thought they could rule here like a king...

Then the Gunslinger spoke, and Ulfen realized they had misunderstood something all along.

"Hamelin. A garden of learning built on a low hill. That's my alma mater. Well? Are you starting to understand now?"

"...No way. You were one of Hamelin's last graduates...."

"Shut up. Next question. Lankart was the bastard who told you about Hamelin, right?"

Of course. Ulfen nodded.

Lankart was the one who had told them about Hamelin.

Colonel Lankart, another of Hamelin's last graduates.

A young madman who had arrived in Tantalus later than anyone else, yet had controlled the prisoners through all sorts of methods.

Sometimes with strength, sometimes with knowledge, sometimes with desire. The sorcerer had breathed new life into gloomy, stagnant Tantalus, and eventually even led them in a prison break.

Right before the escape, Lankart had come to see Ulfen as well. After staring at them for a long time as though considering their usefulness, he had said,

"Ulfen. I need capable subordinates. A great many of them. Someone as cowardly and gloomy as you... Hmm. You could barely manage to serve as our party's scout!"

"Whaaat? You want to return to the military state? You'll throw away the chance to become greater and crawl back into that tiny rat hole?"

"Haah. I never thought you were such a small-minded person with no sense of romance. I'm offering you a fragment of the power to change this world, and you'd rather be some back-alley boss? Seriously. Even a horse racing across the plains takes in land it has never seen before. Yet you want to bury yourself in a rat's nest and keep staring at the same scenery. Ugh."

"Ah, don't worry. I won't go around killing people one by one just because I'm disappointed. Why bother? It suits me fine if someone stirs up the military state's back alleys anyway."

"Want me to tell you one of the military state's secrets before you go? If you spread this around, the military state will go absolutely insane. How you use it is up to you."

The red-haired mage spoke as he recalled the past. Even a monster like Lankart seemed to have memories, and his eyes had been fixed on somewhere far away....

"Have you heard of Hamelin? Something very interesting happened there...."

"And second."

The Gunslinger's voice pulled Ulfen from their thoughts.

"Why did you spread that incident through Black Cat? Was that Lankart's order too, or did you act on your own?"

This time, Ulfen could not understand what she meant. They voiced their confusion.

"Black... Cat? You mean the Family's territory?"

"Yes."

"I don't... know what you mean."

"Hah. Are you going to play dumb?"

Crunch.

It felt as though a boulder had been placed on Ulfen's knee. As pain from their crushed joint tore through them, the Gunslinger's voice drilled into their ear.

"Black Cat is an exposé sheet that deals in gossip. It occasionally catches military corruption too, so naturally Intelligence keeps an eye on it. But if they wrote that name out in the open.... What the hell is that? It practically means they were calling for me."

"That... name...?"

The Gunslinger frowned and pressed them, as though telling them not to play dumb.

"Hui, the middle school's top student. I don't know what possessed Lankart to tell you even that. But if he gave you that bastard's name... You were being played from the start. It was no different from asking me to kill you."

Ulfen agreed that they had been played, but what the Gunslinger was saying was news to them. They answered in confusion.

"It's a name I've never heard before."

"What?"

"What I know is that their deaths were suicides. That they cursed the military state before dying. And that Lankart... had taken second place. Beyond that... he said it was up to me how I used it... so I made up the rest."

"That bastard was third! Other than that, it was more or less true."

Ulfen was not lying, and their sincerity showed.

The Gunslinger fell into thought after hearing something different from what she had expected. She scratched her head with the gun, rummaged through her pockets as though looking for something, then let out a deep sigh and clicked her tongue.

"Right, that isn't Lankart's style. And you people have no reason to do it. Then what? Who the hell was it?"

The Gunslinger was lost in thought, without even sparing a glance for Ulfen beneath her foot, as though they were a pebble by the roadside.

Yet Ulfen, treated like little more than a pebble, felt helpless rather than resentful.

'...I'm powerless.'

This was what Ulfen had realized in the Abyss.

In a world where one's station was decided, all resistance was powerless.

Talent, mystery, time. There was a wall that determined human strength, and it could never be crossed. Those who stood at heights that no amount of struggling could reach or overcome did not even bother looking down.

Perhaps someone could cross that wall and stand shoulder to shoulder with the absolute.

But only a select few were blessed that greatly.

The rest simply crashed into the wall and vanished.

For Ulfen, who had ruled as a shadow in their own way back in the kingdom, Tantalus's common sense had been unbearably difficult to accept. Like a believer realizing their god did not exist, Ulfen fell into despair and despondency.

The Abyss had been a hell that dragged Ulfen endlessly downward, true to its name.

Then one day, when the chance came to escape the Abyss,

Ulfen gave up on reaching higher and chose to rule over the weak instead.

Yet in the end, they had caught the attention of someone stronger and were about to die.

'I was mistaken when I faced the Magician. I should never, ever have confronted him head-on.'

The Magician was weak, but had deceived and tricked them with all sorts of tools. They had only clashed blades twice. If Ulfen had recognized his skill from the beginning and attacked with everything they had....

No, if they had not abandoned their own tactics while fighting him. The result might still have been similar, but at least it would have been better....

Something kept catching in their chest. No matter how hard they tried to remember what it was, Ulfen could only grope blindly, as though they had been cast into darkness....

Then, on the rooftop of a building that narrowed as it rose toward the sky,

I appeared.

Holding a staff and wearing a hat, I stood atop the rooftop railing. The Gunslinger, deep in thought, could not see me. From a place visible only to the fallen, I lifted my hat slightly and greeted Ulfen with my staff.

Ulfen let out a faint sigh.

"Ah."

I may have lacked their skill, but one person had won and the other had lost.

I had successfully escaped, while Ulfen lay defeated beneath a military boot.

If they wanted to survive, they should have lived more quietly. They were the one who had caused all this trouble.

Well, I would not brag about it. I had mind-reading, so it would not have been fair to compare us equally.

Still, one thing was certain.

You were the one lying there, but you were stronger than I was.

Footnotes:

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