WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 222

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A Story of the Past, Pied Piper of Hameln - Finale

“He killed the chief instructor... an officer... a colonel. What do we do?”

“That bastard deserved to die! Rikk and Kantana are dead too! If you kill people, then you should die too!”

“What are we supposed to tell Hameln, no, the military state? Are rescuers even coming? Did they abandon us here...?”

“If we explain it properly, maybe we can still fix this?”

“More importantly, what even is this taboo? What kind of taboo made the chief instructor try to kill us?”

“Idiot, you fought without even knowing that? Hui explained it earlier. The vampiric magic circle!”

Seventeen died in the beast attack, and fifteen more fell in the battle against Nicholas. The losses were enormous, but honestly, what they had done was an absurd feat.

Even seasoned hunters back off first when they face frenzied deer and prowling wolves.

And a colonel stood just below general rank. Their strength varied, but they were still hardened soldiers. Unless you were a gifted officer cadet, an ordinary military school graduate was no match for one.

But they had lost far too much to celebrate.

“...Everyone, shut up.”

After finishing first aid, Siati gripped the cloth-wrapped stump and raised her head. Everyone went silent. Of the survivors, the one who had lost the most staggered toward me.

“Hui. I... don’t trust you. We ended up like this because of you.”

I heard the others stir, but I nodded as if I understood. Siati continued, face pale.

“But your orders weren’t wrong. We made it this far by following them. So... tell me. What do we do now?”

Siati asked in a dark voice. There wasn’t even a speck of hope in her hollow eyes.

Right now, what she needed was simply an arrow pointing her somewhere.

But I was someone who couldn’t move without wind. I looked into her empty heart and asked,

“What do you want me to do?”

“Anything.”

“It’ll be easier to decide if I know what you want. Do we run to survive? Or do we risk our lives to expose Nicholas’s corruption? Which do you want?”

After I asked, Siati slowly came back into focus. Her empty eyes filled with burning hatred.

“If I tell you what I want, can you do it?”

“As much as I can.”

“I want the military state to collapse.”

Siati answered at once.

“I spent my whole life doing exactly what they told me! Work, learn, get scolded, study, take tests, get evaluated. I tried to become even a little more useful to the military state. Even when my parents died, I endured it. Even when I was sick, I endured it. Even when it hurt, I cried in secret and kept going, trying to earn better evaluations so I could do something! But this!”

Her emotion-soaked scream reached more than a hundred kids, and through them, it reached me, the one who read the wind. Siati gripped her missing right arm even tighter and screamed.

“This isn’t right! You can’t use people as materials...! No matter how useless we are, no matter if we’re just common level twos...!”

To the military state, anyone level two or below was replaceable at any time. People whose absence meant almost nothing.

So they threw them away.

They left the officer academy promotion candidates behind and brought only the desperate ones. To use as materials.

That meant these kids really had been abandoned by their nation. The military state itself had proven it: people like you don’t matter.

“...But no matter how much we scream, this country won’t hear us. Forget compensation, they’ll kill us to shut us up. Just like Nicholas said, we’re worthless to the military state.”

When Siati finished, the kids listening dropped their heads. Her furious outburst forced them to face the reality they had been trying to deny.

In the end... the military state would bury the Hameln incident. So everyone dies. No one survives.

That simple, brutal fact.

“Want to become useful?”

Right then, someone stepped out from among the kids. Startled by the sudden presence, they flinched. The red-haired boy walked forward at ease, as if he had been there from the start.

A few recognized him.

“Ran...cart?”

Rancart didn’t answer. He didn’t even turn his head. He just walked straight toward me, eyes fixed only on me, without checking his footing once in this forest.

Yet half a step ahead of him, a vortex formed on its own, parting brush and scattering dust. It was as if the world itself was clearing his path.

The military state’s first mystery. A boy with a strategic-grade innate arcane. A born mage.

Rancart Spendrai.

Standing alone in clean clothes in a forest littered with branches, Rancart suddenly started clapping.

“Amazing. Truly, genuinely unexpected. I thought maybe, but I never imagined you’d kill Nicholas and devour him.”

While everyone stood speechless at his sudden appearance, Rancart stopped his forceful applause and frowned.

“But still, Hui, you know this too, right? Nicholas is too different from you. He was old, worn down, and even his energy type and energy volume were different from yours. Extremely, terribly inefficient. Even if you devour him with Gluttony, your ability won’t change dramatically.”

“Rancart. How long are you going to repeat what everyone already knows?”

I snapped irritably, and he flinched mid-sentence. I crossed my arms and pressed him.

“You like efficient conversation, Rancart. Don’t tell me you doubted my intelligence enough to start from the basics.”

“Ah, uh, um.”

“Just get to the point. I’m tired.”

“Ah, okay. Sorry.”

Cowardly apologizing, Rancart got straight to it without a moment’s hesitation.

“Devour the ones that are left.”

A conclusion reached through several leaps. But since I had mind reading, I understood him at once.

They were doomed either way. Even if I didn’t kill them, the military state would. So instead of letting them die meaninglessly, kill them on top of the taboo formation array and turn them into my power. Efficient.

On top of that, biologically they were the best materials, perfectly matched to me. Unlike Nicholas, Gluttony would work more smoothly on them. If not now, devouring them later would be meaningless. So do it now. That was his point.

Naturally, Siati, who had just survived by a hair, reacted violently.

“Rancart! I only thought you were an unpleasant bastard. You’re Nicholas’s lapdog too...!”

“Shut up, idiot. You think I’d serve a loser like that?”

Irritated, Rancart snapped his head toward her. In that instant, an overwhelming pressure crushed Siati. Her face twisted in pain. Rancart’s innate arcane had reached where she stood.

Space warped.

Near Rancart, things moved fast. Farther away, they moved slowly. Everything in the world, even the air, swirled to the right at different speeds. In that distance-shifted current, Siati felt searing pain, as if someone were gripping and tearing her body apart.

“Ugh, aghhh!”

Siati screamed. But even her voice sounded strangely far away. Inside an innate arcane that twisted space, even sound lost its path.

After subduing Siati without lifting a finger, Rancart turned back to me.

“If you don’t want to dirty your hands, I, yes I, can do it for you.”

“That sounds bothersome.”

“So what? It’s for a friend. I can tolerate this much trouble.”

Of course, the “friend” Rancart meant was only me.

The kids screamed and tried to save Siati, but they couldn’t even get close. Even reaching out an arm brought pain like it would be torn apart.

You couldn’t cut straight through a storm in a teacup. You had to go at an angle. But who could know how? Who could see through that maze of swirling space in one glance and break through?

Impossible. Without his permission, no one could approach or retreat. Not even me.

The world of a right-hander.

To him, the world was like water swirling to the right. The law of the world. Its current. If you didn’t follow it, you collided, got dragged in, and sank in bubbles.

Rancart, master of that world, tightened his force as if he might twist Siati apart at any moment and said,

“Oh, and for the record. Like you said, even if you interfere, I can shake you off and kill all of them. I’m not like Nicholas. You probably have your own hidden trump cards, Hui... but they still won’t reach me.”

Rancart warned me that unlike Nicholas, he couldn’t be talked down. His eyes gleamed with interest and curiosity.

Like he wanted to see what I would do.

But.

“Rancart. Don’t be boring.”

I said it flatly, annoyed. Rancart looked puzzled.

Sure, I listened well to other people’s winds. But that didn’t mean I indulged every childish demand from someone who wanted to be entertained. It was a pain.

“Didn’t I already test you and Nicholas and give you my answer? You want the same answer again? Where did the Rancart Spendrai go, the one who whined about getting the same problem with only the constants changed?”

“No, no. I...”

“You’re controlling your power on purpose so it hurts but won’t kill. That’s a threat. You know it won’t work, so why waste mana? Stop annoying me and pull the spell back.”

Rancart obeyed for now. The force that had been tearing at Siati from inside and out vanished, and she collapsed to the ground. Pained whimpers leaked from between her face and the dirt.

“Then what are you going to do? Rescue ships and instructors are coming. Interrogate just a few people here and they’ll figure out everything fast. Once the report goes up to command, the military state’s ‘rational’ judgment will obviously be...”

“Didn’t I tell you not to repeat what we both already know?”

“Ah, right.”

He didn’t trust rationality himself, yet kept trying to test it. When would he realize those tests were irrational too?

After shutting him up, I summarized simply.

“So this is what you mean. There’s no other way to break this deadlock. Or maybe there is, but you, Rancart, couldn’t think of it. So you’re curious how I’ll break it. Right?”

“Not exactly... wait. You can break this situation, this deadlock?”

“Situation, deadlock. If you don’t understand, shut up and watch. Why do you keep cutting in and muddying the water?”

After dressing him down one more time, I waved my hand.

“Go clear what’s blocking the river. I have something to do downstream.”

“Even then, rivers end in the sea. As long as primal terror, sea fiends, live there, escape is impossible anyway...”

“Again with what everyone already knows.”

At my irritated expression, Rancart clamped his mouth shut and hurried to the riverbank.

My request was almost unreasonable. Whether he obeyed was entirely up to him, and refusing wouldn’t have hurt him at all.

But once he agreed to watch without interfering, he had to grant this request.

He had become curious about how I would respond, and that bound him to help with the setup.

Not long after Rancart reached the riverbank, harsh cracking sounds rang out. The driftwood pile damming the river shattered at once. What had been impossible even with over a hundred people clinging to it was effortless before Rancart’s innate arcane.

Magic. A mystery that overlays new rules onto the world. To someone who could control that at will, driftwood held together by structure and weight alone was easy to destroy.

“Siati!”

“...Tch, yeah. One person... is better than a hundred, right.”

With her friends supporting her, Siati barely managed to stand. With a pale face, she gave a smile like she had given up everything.

“...Still. At least... we have a path now.”

“Rancart...! Even if not a friend, I thought you were at least one of us!”

Kerafald, once a follower of Rancart but now bound by deeper ties, exploded at the sight of Siati’s injuries. Forgetting completely that he had once both admired and feared Rancart’s magic, he shouted,

“Everyone, help me! I can’t stand this unless we hit that son of a bitch back at least once!”

“Stay... still. Hah. Compared to losing an arm, this is nothing.”

Panting as she held Kerafald back, Siati repeated in a fraying voice.

“What I just went through is what all of us will go through from now on. Better get used to it, ngh. The military state, anyone... they won’t help us. They won’t even care.”

The kids lowered their heads miserably.

If they couldn’t handle even one Rancart, they had no chance of enduring what came next.

They had barely driven off that colonel through a prepared trap and the brave sacrifice of fifteen people... but if the military state used its full force, one hundred thirty students, nothing but losing lottery tickets, would be uprooted like weeds and thrown away like trash.

Someone shouted.

“Fuck...! What did I do wrong?!”

The battle high faded, and only bitterness remained. Pain and grief forgotten in the heat of fighting came rushing back, the brief spark went out, and darkness rolled in.

They had nowhere to go. They couldn’t even hide in wasted time. Another enemy called the rescue ship was drawing closer by the minute.

All of them had lost their way, lost where to go, lost even hope and will, swallowing their fury in silence. And even then, they wished someone would light the path.

If the authority of the Celestial God faith had reached this place, they would have prayed to God. Save us from this ordeal and lead us to heaven.

But in this world, there was neither heaven nor hell. Death was the simplest end imaginable.

Heaven, hell. Belief processed to be easy to swallow was artificial. And the artificial was imitation, a lie. Nothing more than something that kept the good inside and excreted only the bad.

“Go to hell....”

Even so, I had to answer that wish.

In the middle of a crowd that had lost even hope, where no one could think of a road and only desperate desire remained in their hearts.

I put the cold whistle to my lips.

The rescue ship wasted time near the piled driftwood.

There were clear traces that the children had stayed there, but the kids themselves were nowhere to be seen. Judging from the signs, they had been attacked by beasts and fought a fierce battle. Bloodstains were everywhere, and marks showed something heavy had been dragged toward the riverbank.

In the middle of that, someone recognized sword marks carved into the trees and cautiously pointed it out. They said Chief Instructor Nicholas had swung his blade there. His opponents seemed to have been a coordinated group of regular soldiers, probably students.

The instructors were thrown into confusion, then anger, and hurried the search.

Nicholas had no reason to attack children in a place this remote, but the children had every reason to attack Nicholas.

The trainees in graduation practicum were failures weeded out of competition, students confirmed at level two. The instructors concluded they must have held grudges against top student Hui or Chief Instructor Nicholas and resorted to threats or assault.

Either way, the need to hurry had increased. The rescue team split into a camp search team and a downstream river search team. Since one section of the driftwood pile had collapsed, they considered the children might have gone downstream.

As the rescue ship moved downriver, they reached a downstream garrison and got witness reports. The children, divided across several rafts, had passed the post and gone all the way to the downstream city.

They couldn’t exactly complain and ask why they hadn’t been stopped. Chief Instructor Nicholas or not, middle-school instructors ranked below a garrison commander. And this was an internal Hameln matter, not directly tied to the garrison.

The instructors saluted and were about to head farther downstream when,

“By the way, did you give them another strange order? They were rowing while singing your school anthem....”

A huge uproar broke out in the lower Hameln River.

The Hameln River was not large, but that made it a good place for people to live. Narrow rivers were safer, too, because terrifying sea fiends were less likely to swim upstream.

A drifting group came down that river. Children divided across several large rafts.

-On the low hill stands the hall of learning. Oh, embrace of Hameln.

To the whistle’s rhythm, children with hoarse throats tore at their voices as they sang. It was more horrifying than any desperate scream. Civilians grimaced and turned toward the riverbank.

-Burning all blood and sweat, we strike down our enemies...

Onlookers crowded the bank, disgusted and curious. Had some tasteless instructor given another bizarre command? they wondered.

Beeeeep.

When the boy on the front raft blew his whistle, something strange happened.

The children rowing got to their feet. They looked at each other once, clasped hands tightly, and moved to the edge of the raft, still singing.

-For a radiant nation, we march and offer our lives....

No matter how big it was, a raft was still a raft. It looked hard enough to keep your balance, let alone walk. Yet the children supported each other and calmly removed their stiff military boots on the swaying logs. Bare feet settled onto rough timber.

Someone groaned.

Not the children. They were still singing.

Among the onlookers, one person with an overactive imagination gave a disbelieving laugh. No matter what, that thought was too unrealistic.

How could that many people....

Mist rose over the river, giving it an eerie air. Cool water sounds ran through blurred vision. The wind against their faces felt cold.

-Forward... forward....

Singing the refrain, the children walked forward hand in hand. To the raft’s edge. To the point where one more step would leave hard timber and tread soft water.

Only then did the crowd realize something was wrong and shout in panic. But their voices never reached the singing children.

At dawn, pale sunlight filtered through fog onto the river. The current ran rough, no light reached them, and their faces did not reflect on the surface.

But it didn’t matter. Right beside them, all they had to do was turn their heads, and there were faces just like their own.

And so, singing the last line together,

-Into the future of the military state....

They sank beneath the cold, deep river.

Only then did the song stop.

-Command to Hameln Middle Military School. Determine the truth and report it as quickly as possible. Locate survivors and interrogate them to uncover intent.

Emergency. Emergency. Determine the full details as quickly as possible. Command headquarters is also conducting an independent investigation....

....

....

....

-Correction.

From this moment, activate Level 5 information control.

Lock down Hameln.

I repeat. Lock down Hameln.

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