WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 331: Song of Verdigris and Heatblast - 3

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Just as I thought, the Heatblast Lord really was hot-tempered. They did not have a shred of self-control.

Their spiky hair was covered in round metal rings. Metal pieces hung from their hair, shoulders, and clothes, clattering whenever they moved. Their back bulged as though it were packed full of something. They scowled at me, then immediately pulled out a bomb.

It was a small cylinder about the length of a finger joint, with a short fuse. It looked tiny, but... they were one of the Lesser States' lords. It would not be that simple.

Holding enough bombs to overflow from both hands, they shouted.

"I'm Lord Rowkett!!! If your ears are plugged, I'll make new holes in them. Listen carefully!"

"People call you the Heatblast Lord."

"That's! What the idiots of the world! Call me as they please!!!"

"The point of a title is to tell people what to call someone when they don't know, right? So it fits."

The moment I finished speaking, every bomb in Rowkett's hands lit up. Hmm. That settled it.

I did not know who had given them the title Heatblast Lord... but they had definitely done it on purpose. Absolutely.

"Bombs exist to blow little bastards like you awayyyyy!!"

Unable to contain their anger, Rowkett hurled a barrage of bombs.

Heatblast Lord Rowkett's innate arcane turned iron into a combustible substance. Steel normally only blackened rather than burned, but when touched by Rowkett's power, it burst violently like popcorn.

Since it was iron, its destructive power was far greater than popcorn's. If they had ground it into powder and packed it into bombs... it would be even worse.

Oh. Was this really the time to think about that? I hurriedly shouted.

"Azzy! Dodge!"

"Muuuuuung!"

Azzy sensed the danger first and shook her head.

The massive cart spun in a circle around Azzy. The sudden evasive maneuver nearly threw me right out. Thank goodness I had secured myself beforehand. Otherwise, I would have been flung far away.

Azzy flung me and the cart aside, then took off running. A huge explosion erupted behind us. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of bombs went off at once, and scorching wind blasted against my back.

"Whew. You get heated and explode. You really are the Heatblast Lord."

"Shut uuuup! You think a bastard like you can provoke me?!"

Rowkett reached toward the four-wheeler they had been riding. Arcane power flowed from their hand and altered the vehicle's structure.

The cover came off, revealing hidden boosters. There were eight in all. An excessive number of boosters aimed backward at once and spewed raging flames. A long ship-horn blast echoed from the blazing pipes.

"A dog sled?! You only caught up to a quarter of my speed! Let's see if you can dodge my full power too!"

Kwoooong!

With the roar of a storm, Rowkett tore through the air.

How was that a vehicle? They were being blown forward by explosions. Maybe its top speed was even faster than Azzy's. Faster than the Beast King. Had humans really reached that point?

Of course, Azzy was a four-legged beast. If she made agile evasive maneuvers, she could easily leave them behind, but...

"Muuuuuung! Deadweight!"

If she did that, I would not be able to hold on. If she changed direction too quickly, I would roll across the ground with the cart and turn into a bloody mess. Azzy could not hurt a human, so she had no choice but to keep running.

But that was fine. Azzy was not the only one I had.

I screamed toward the sky.

"Hurry up!"

"I'm coming!"

The voice drew closer. Before long, the regressor landed in front of me with a thud. I signaled Azzy to stop, then shouted at the regressor.

"Why are you so late?"

"I ran over the moment I saw you! You should've told me first when you found the lord!"

"How was I supposed to know I'd find them before I found them?!"

"Then you should've said you were looking for them!"

Grumbling, the regressor pulled out Jizan and struck the ground. The earth touched by Jizan's path trembled and rose, forming a low wall. It would not be hard to climb over, but it was just high enough to trouble a wheeled vehicle.

"Who the hell are you?!"

Rowkett's four-wheeler changed the direction of its boosters before reaching the earthen wall. All eight boosters faced us, forming a wall of flame. Rowkett slowed down with reverse thrust and shouted.

Facing the screaming Rowkett, the regressor answered calmly.

"You're the Heatblast Lord, right? I have something to say."

"Don't call me the Heatblast Lord! How many times do I have to tell you that I'm Lord Rowkett?!"

"Ah, sorry. Got it. Lord Rowkett."

There was no particular meaning behind the regressor's answer. She simply assumed it was their name and called them that. Yet once they heard the title they wanted, Rowkett visibly calmed down and perched on their seat.

"Good. Speak."

What was with this person? Did they cool down as easily as they heated up? Their emotional heat capacity had to be close to zero.

Maybe weirdos really did understand one another. The regressor was having the friendliest conversation I had ever seen her hold.

"If you're a lord too, you know where the Golden Palace is, right? You said you were acting on the Golden Palace's orders."

"Hmph! Of course I do!"

"Good. Tell me where the Golden Palace is."

"What? Just like that?"

Rowkett waved a hand.

"If you put your proposal on one pan of a scale, it is only proper to put something on the other. If I give you information, what do I get in return?"

'Ah, right. The Lesser States always demanded payment for every little thing. I got confused for a moment.'

The regressor rummaged through her clothes and held something out. It was a faceted piece of gold, the Gold of Understanding.

"Here. This."

"...Do you not know what a scale is? You think the right to be personally executed by the Lord of Gold is payment? You cannot even tell the difference between rare and valuable. Put that cursed thing away!"

Rowkett recoiled in disgust. The regressor hurriedly put the Gold of Understanding back into her clothes, and Rowkett sighed.

"What you want is information. Then the other side of the scale must hold information worthy of it! Speak. If you have none, there will be no deal!"

"Ugh. Wait a second..."

Frowning, the regressor recalled what had happened in the previous cycle.

'Information, information... I don't remember meeting a lord called the Heatblast Lord in the previous cycle... Ah! Right! I saw propaganda saying the Gunslinger shot them down and killed them!'

Is that all the information you had, things from the previous cycle? It had not even happened in this cycle yet. How were you supposed to convince them with that?

The regressor blurted it out.

"You. You'll die when war breaks out."

"...What?"

"The war with the military state. If war breaks out like this, you'll probably be the first to die."

No. It had not happened yet. Could you really just say that?

"We're actually on our way to negotiate a truce. If the war stops, you won't die either. How's that? You get two things at once."

The regressor shrugged.

That was right. If the war stopped, the Heatblast Lord would not die either. To the regressor, who had personally experienced tragedy and returned, a truce was good for everyone. There was no reason not to make one.

The truth did not always move people's hearts, though. Just look at Rowkett, staring silently at the regressor.

"A truce? Is the military state proposing it?"

"Yeah. You could say that."

"And that's why you attacked my Dragonhawk Corps?"

"I didn't kill them, though. They were indiscriminately killing Lesser States people in the first place."

Rowkett looked around.

It was true that most of the Dragonhawk Corps had merely fallen to the ground. The regressor had only shut off their boosters to stop the slaughter, and Tyr was dragging Dragonhawk Corps members around to vent her anger, not actually killing them.

The ones attacking the Dragonhawk Corps now were the enraged jackals. They had collided while fleeing, so the Dragonhawk Corps had not suffered many losses yet.

Having grasped the situation, Rowkett stood up in their vehicle.

"Up until now, there have been hundreds of people who said they would kill me. They mocked my power and babbled that I was an idiot throwing money into the dirt. Do you know what I did to them?"

They did not wait for an answer. Rowkett stomped their foot hard. The rear seat of the four-wheeler opened, and hundreds of rockets rose into the sky in formation.

"I shoved rockets into their mouths and blew them up. Every last one."

The rockets streaked through the dark sky and exploded in midair. Thousands, even tens of thousands, of steel fragments packed inside them gave off sparks as they rained down. The steel imbued with the Heatblast Lord's power burned for no reason at all and was swept up by winds it created itself.

It did not matter if the boosters had run out of fuel. Now that the Heatblast Lord's power filled the entire area, this land was Rowkett's domain.

"This power of mine, united with the Lord of Gold's alchemy! The power to blow away every irritating thing!!"

Every stalled booster lit up at once. The Dragonhawk Corps members who had fallen to the ground rose into the air again through Rowkett's power, using the burning steel scattering through the air as fuel.

Against all that, Heatblast Lord Rowkett looked like war's raging inferno itself.

"War?! I'll die? Don't make me laugh! Nothing has ever been able to kill me!!"

The regressor answered without much interest.

"Then you'll die next time."

‘The Gunslinger's Principle, Zeroing, always hits. Even if they fly through the sky, they're slower than a bullet, so they'll definitely get hit. And if the Gunslinger had even awakened Gun-Sword Total Intent... that whole corps would fall like autumn leaves.’

The regressor had thought it through, but unfortunately, Rowkett did not have mind-reading. No, they were hot-tempered enough to burn even truthful words as kindling. The regressor's words were more than enough to ignite their rage.

"Then try killing me!!!"

Rowkett flung out their hands. Iron dust scattered through the air erupted and caught fire. The regressor hurriedly created a barrier of wind with Skywarbler and shouted.

"W-what?! Why all of a sudden?!"

In fact, if Shei wanted a truce, she had asked the wrong person.

"War will happen! Starting with your deaths, it will grow even fiercer!!"

Heatblast Lord Rowkett was a warmonger. They wanted war to break out more than anyone.

Footnotes:

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