WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 373

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Dividing an Inheritance Is a Grave Affair

What does a god feel when someone steals lightning right before its eyes? Hard to say, but whatever it felt couldn't have been worse than what the Thunder Lord felt just then.

The emotion the Thunder Lord felt watching the lightning get taken wasn't anger, or even a sense of betrayal. It was bewilderment. When someone is that brazen about theft, it loops all the way around to absurdity. Well played, regressor. Lesson learned.

The lightning that had reversed up the Cloud Waterfall flowed into the Sky God. The branches of the bolt had slashed through the Sky God's form, and for a moment its outline blurred, as though it might simply retreat. The Thunder Lord watched and spoke.

"Normally, the Sky God retreats after taking back returned lightning. But..."

The Sky God only blurred briefly, without vanishing. Its color faded considerably. It gazed down at them for a moment, then sank away beneath the Cloud Waterfall, as if extinguished.

"Because of your interference, it will return before long. You did something quite reckless on your own. I trust you have some explanation?"

"Not quite an explanation."

The regressor jumped lightly down from the Thunder Wheel and said, "If I want to kill the Sky God, I have to draw it here first. Sending it all the way back means it won't come again for a while. I just didn't want to waste the time."

"You are confident."

"Because I can do it."

'I've done it in a previous run, after all.'

The regressor's social instincts were extraordinary. She could gamble her life against someone she had met only that day. Stealing openly from someone's face could easily make you their mortal enemy, and it wouldn't be strange at all.

'She has such certainty. She must be a chosen human, the same as us.'

Yet somehow the Thunder Lord found the audacity rather endearing. Even after losing half the power the city had stored, she was standing there smiling like nothing had happened.

So there were people in the world who were actually compatible with the regressor. You really did learn something new every day.

The Thunder Lord spoke warmly to the children who had been guarding the Lightning Rod Tower.

"Jeri. Tibi. Alka. Well done. The Lightning Rod Tower needs repairs, so please contact the maintenance crew."

"Yes! Of course!"

The children bowed to the Thunder Lord with something like reverence and hurried off toward the lift. The Thunder Lord watched until they were completely gone, then said, "We burned through what was stored in the Thunder Wheel, so there's very little lightning left. If you don't kill the Sky God, Claudia will take serious damage. From the moment you stole that lightning, whether we like it or not, we have no choice but to work with you."

"But if the Sky God dies, Claudia gets to live in peace forever. Isn't that a worthwhile gamble?"

The regressor's shameless answer drew a quiet smile from the Thunder Lord.

"You mean that even a human like me must take a gamble to kill a god? Heh. My blood hasn't run this hot in a long time."

She muttered it half to herself, then stamped hard on the Lightning Rod Tower. The thunderforce that had spread to the ends of her hair drained down through her feet into the tower below. Her long hair settled as she returned to her usual bearing. She coolly narrowed her eyes and pointed at the regressor.

"I'll accept the gamble. I have no intention of losing. But you have to carry equal risk."

"Equal risk?"

"Until the Sky God is dead, all negotiations stop. Ceasefire talks, anything else, everything."

Wait a moment.

It was good she hadn't immediately lunged at the lightning thief, sure, but just because the regressor had done it before didn't mean killing the Sky God would be simple. And stopping all negotiations on top of that was going to be a problem.

Before my worry could even land, the regressor answered without hesitation.

"Looking forward to it."

"You should not be looking forward to anything!"

Hilde, who had heard the whole exchange, cried out and stamped her feet.

"What is this? Shei, do you actually intend to stop this war?"

The regressor answered calmly. "Of course. If I deal with the Sky God, the Thunder Lord will actively support whatever we need. The negotiation will go better from there."

"That is not negotiation! Thinking, 'she'll help us out of goodwill~,' is not negotiating, it's flattery! Why are you loading up on unsolicited gifts? Are you courting the Thunder Lord?"

"What? No!"

"Of course not! You like men!"

The regressor blinked at the unexpected jab and answered, "That's beside the point. I just figured that if I fulfilled the Thunder Lord's oldest wish, getting help later would be much easier."

"Shei, you have absolutely no sense for politics, do you? The Thunder Lord runs an entire city. What guarantee is there that someone who owes you a small favor will necessarily help you? Why give first?"

"Then what should I have done?"

"You set conditions ahead of time, get a promise of more in return, and then magnanimously eliminate the Sky God as though doing them a favor! You might not get what you want if you're relying on goodwill alone!"

From the military state's perspective, Hilde was right. Entirely from the military state's perspective.

But the regressor clicked her tongue and replied, "The Sky God is something I'm killing for myself, not for the military state. You don't get to claim a price for it. I give what I choose to give."

Up to now they had traveled together for the sake of a ceasefire with the Lesser States. But the regressor was fundamentally not on any nation's side, and in the military state's case, even less so than with others. If the military state ever came to blows with another nation, she would cheerfully take the other side.

And Hilde, who had just realized that, let her expression go carefully still. She tucked the small bit of honest feeling she had shown back behind her mask, and "Hilde" performed herself as she spoke.

"Hmm~. It sounds like the military state has made itself a little too disliked to be Shei's friend~."

"Obviously. We were enemies to begin with. The military state even threw me in prison."

"I know~. There's some history between us, so I thought, just maybe. It seems that was my mistake~."

Hilde shrugged as though she had lost interest and moved off somewhere.

"Hilde? Where are you going?"

"Shei doesn't seem like a reliable card to play, so I'm going to do what the military state does best and gather information through shadier means~."

She waved a careless hand without looking back and drifted away. The regressor stared after her with a puzzled look, then pointed in her direction.

"What's her problem? Is she sulking?"

"Yes. Probably."

"Tch. Thin-skinned."

"And you're not thinking things through."

"What?"

"That's not the important thing right now. Mr. Shei. What was that just now? Was that actually the Sky God?"

The regressor had been giving me a suspicious look, but she shrugged and answered, "You've mostly figured it out. Yeah. That's not a Demon God, and it's not a true Sky God either. It looks terrifying and powerful from the outside, but it's essentially just a manifestation of thunderclouds and lightning. It doesn't go beyond what ordinary lightning is capable of."

"Then it's a fraud."

"Not quite a fraud. It was at minimum formed from the fear and faith people have toward lightning. And lightning being what it is, that Sky God has enough power to genuinely be afraid of."

A false idol? Hold on.

I quietly pushed my Spade card further into my pocket and asked, "A false idol?"

"You probably know the concept. A being formed from human fear. Unlike a Demon God, its power comes not from knowledge but from ignorance and dread, the same as the King of Wolves or vampires."

"Ah, right."

I nodded along. Okay, that's what she's talking about.

"Vampires originally had only bloodcraft, didn't they? But after warring against the Sanctum and becoming a symbol of terror, they gained the power to command darkness. Wolves were the same, just one ordinary beast among many, but their cruelty spread so widely that they became the natural enemy of humankind. That Sky God is the same: a being born from the awe Claudia has accumulated."

'I heard it directly from the Sanctum, so I'm certain. They told me that when they handed me Skywarbler and Jizan.'

I had only half believed it, but now it was confirmed.

Those Sanctum bastards had been spinning stories for the regressor too, apparently.

Not that the regressor was wrong. After humanity became the dominant force on earth, strange things had begun happening throughout the world. One species had grown too vast in power, reshaped the world at will, and transformed the land into something almost like a human plaything.

The Beast King was the clearest example. That one of a species' representative rulers had taken human form was one of those strange occurrences. Events like that were happening all over the world, so what the regressor was saying was true enough.

Still, the Sanctum had no business saying it. They were the ones who caused it.

Anyway. I let out a quiet breath of relief and said, "That's a relief. I was afraid we were picking a fight with another monster like the Golden Mirror."

"Hardly. Lightning isn't a Demon God. That thing is just a phenomenon."

"Ha. Who knows. A Demon God could pop up from somewhere unexpected."

"Worrying is its own kind of hobby. There can't be that many Demon Gods in the world."

Right. There shouldn't be. That's how it ought to work.

The regressor declared with full confidence, "Either way, you don't need to worry about this one. I can handle it all myself. You just relax and enjoy the sightseeing."

"Those are the least reassuring words I've ever heard."

It was unsettling, but nothing urgent needed my attention at the moment. And it wasn't as though I could wrestle a cloud.

I might as well take a look around the city of clouds and see what it was made of. I stepped outside with a considerably more relaxed air.

Claudia had a peculiar layout, buildings clustering together in tight bunches beneath tall Lightning Rod Towers. The First Lightning Rod Tower, where the Thunder Lord resided, was the largest of all, and it monopolized the entire supply of thunderforce that the Thunder Wheel generated.

I was thinking about taking a closer look inside the Lightning Rod Tower when I spotted Perru. She was surrounded by a pack of jackals who had followed her there, and she looked thoroughly at a loss.

"When exactly will we be receiving the Suppression Lord's funds?"

"You're not going to drag this out and never pay us, are you?"

"...Well. The Sky God... the Thunder Lord has been very busy..."

"Do you take us for fools? We grew up in Claudia too! The Sky God visiting is a yearly thing!"

"You're saying you can't hand over anything for the time being? How is that any different from saying you won't pay at all?"

The jackals were demanding the Suppression Lord's inheritance and making a scene. But with everything pressing down on them right now, Perru had no room to deal with it. With the very fate of a nation at stake, something like an inheritance had been pushed so far down the list of priorities it had nearly fallen off.

Which was exactly why the jackals were pressing like starving animals. Every moment they didn't have it in hand, the odds grew worse.

Tch. With the common sensibility I had, I understood the jackals perfectly well. That didn't stop me from clicking my tongue as I walked toward her. She had been floundering, and she went quietly relieved the moment she saw me approach. If she couldn't talk her way through it and wasn't willing to use force either, it was always going to end up like this.

"You saw, Perru? What did I tell you?"

"...Huh?"

The best scene partner is someone who doesn't talk much. I can steer the conversation wherever I want. I scratched the back of my head like this was a bother and said, "I told you these jackals were useless trouble waiting to happen, and offered to take care of them before we reached Claudia. You said there was no need for that and turned me down. And here we are."

"...?"

Perru tilted her head. She had never heard any of this before. Of course she looked confused, I had only come up with it just now.

"Y-you're going to kill us?"

But the jackals, who had just been hit with news like a thunderclap, finally received some urgency on the topic of manners and pulled back.

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