WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 376

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Lightning Did Not Fall from the Sky - 1

Claudia's mornings come wrapped in water mist. The Cloud Waterfall tumbles down and collects in Claudia's reservoir, but part of it never settles, it spreads outward in every direction instead. That scattered vapor cools through the cold of night and beads into dew on the ground, lying quietly until the morning sun rouses it.

Then dawn breaks, and the dew rises once more into cloud, filling the air in a thick, drifting haze. Particular sorts of people would insist it isn't cloud but water mist, and they wouldn't be wrong, but from the perspective of a water droplet, what does it matter what you call it? The more important fact is that they float together.

Rumble, rumble, rumble. Three peals of thunder rang out in succession. Claudia's timekeeping used stored thunder as its chime, and this one announced that two hours had passed since sunrise.

I flinched on instinct and grumbled toward the window.

"Damn. What else would you expect from the city of clouds, telling time with thunder. At least nobody's sleeping through that alarm."

"Woof, woof. Scared me! Woof!"

Azzy and I had both been jolted awake well before this, and we complained in unison.

The heavy water mist swallowed the sun almost completely. They said the fog would thin and brighten past noon, but right now it was barely different from predawn. The lightning lamps sealed inside their glass globes shone brighter than actual daylight.

Because of this, Claudia's ordinary residents spent their foggy mornings indoors, and real daily life didn't begin until the afternoon.

"Perhaps it's the similar climate, but life here really does look like the Fog Duchy."

Tyr gazed out at the thick curtain beyond the window, lost in thought.

"The Fog Duchy is always full of water mist. Even at high noon you can barely make out shapes, which means that hateful sunlight never reaches us."

"That makes sense. Claudia sits just outside the Cloud Waterfall, close but still on the outer edge. The Fog Duchy is a land you can only reach by parting the waterfall and stepping inside."

More than here, not less. The Fog Duchy didn't earn its name for nothing. With the Cloud Waterfall as its permanent roof, the land stayed in perpetual shadow, which was precisely why vampires could walk around in broad daylight without a care.

"Looking at this scene makes me feel, truly feel again, how close we are to the Fog Duchy. Now that we've come all this way, would you not visit with me?"

"If what we need to do in Claudia goes cleanly, then probably yes."

A country of vampires. I had my own small curiosity about the place.

Tyrkanzyaka had once been a seed of the Demon God, but the Sanctum's blade had cut her down before she could bear fruit, leaving her twisted instead. She drifted through the netherworld as a spirit, a ghost rather than a god. Her power could no longer apply to all humans; in its place it warped into something else: a way of sharing her blood and creating an entirely new kind of being, the vampire.

Clearly human in origin, yet with an ecology too different from ordinary humans or beasts to call them the same thing.

At this point I found myself genuinely wondering. Did the Sanctum regret having brought vampires into the world, or did they count themselves lucky that no Demon God had appeared?

Probably the latter, I suspected.

"Hyu."

"Yes?"

Tyr watched me with a faint smile, then rested a hand on her chest and asked softly.

"Is there something in my country that you are searching for?"

'Something that the King of Humanity chases after so desperately he would turn the world upside down to find it?'

She didn't say it aloud, but the thought was certain in her mind.

Ugh. These days everyone and their dog seemed to know who I was. Azzy had known from the start, so she didn't count, but Hilde, and now Tyr too. A flat denial didn't work anymore, it had gone past the point where anyone would believe it.

Nothing to be done about it. Anyone who got tangled up with the Sanctum was going to figure out my identity sooner or later. I supposed I should be grateful the regressor still hadn't pieced it together. If she found out, the next cycle would be...

Never mind. I couldn't worry about things I couldn't control.

Whether or not I was the King of Humanity didn't really matter in the end. I was 'ordinary', after all. The reason I never went around announcing it was simply that there was no need to.

"I honestly don't know whether there will be or not. I'm not particularly fond of vampires."

"...Is that so?"

'An ordinary human fears vampires. Hughes, as the King of Humanity, would speak for all of them, so...'

Not a bad guess, but not quite right either. Vampires were still human, technically. It was just that..."Personally, Tyr is far more comfortable and familiar to me than any other vampire."

"I-I am?"

Tyr asked as if genuinely taken aback.

She had reigned as the Progenitor, the Sanctum's arch-enemy, the thing all humans feared. Words like comfortable and familiar were about as far from the life she had lived as words could get. She hadn't exactly sought it out, but death and slaughter had been constant, unremarkable occurrences at her side.

Even so. Even that was human.

Compared to other vampires, at least.

"Other vampires all have a master. You might call it a king, or a ruler, but as long as there's a higher vampire who is both their desire and their sovereign, there's nothing I can do with them."

The dominance a higher vampire exerted over a lower one was absolute. The way gravity-bound humans depend on the ground beneath their feet, the sensation of having every drop of blood in your body pulled toward a single source was something altogether different from mere admiration or loyalty. It was close to domination and subjugation, yet somehow even worse for not being simple puppetry. Dependence that bordered on subjugation, you might say.

That was why a vampire's thoughts could change so easily. No matter how carefully I cultivated a relationship with one, how well I prepared the ground between us, a single word from a higher vampire could overturn everything. Even a conviction held firm across hundreds of years could bend in an instant.

I had nothing to offer a vampire except for one thing, and so..."But Tyr is the Progenitor, and yet she is wholly herself, with desires that are her own. I find her far easier, many times over."

In that sense, the Progenitor of vampires was ordinary. She had lived a thousand years and more, but those were still her own desires.

'...That I am human. From anyone else I would have taken it as empty flattery, but hearing it from the King of Humanity, the feeling is different. Is that why the Lords of All Creation search for a King of Humanity...?'

Tyr let her gaze drift, then cleared her throat for no particular reason.

"Ahem. Comfortable, you say. Is that why you were so impertinent from the very first time we met?"

"Impertinent? You make it sound as though I'm some uncouth savage with no manners. Could you say familiar instead?"

"Very well. From the very first meeting you were familiar without a shred of propriety. Because of it we spoke more quickly, so I suppose I should say your impertinence did me a favor."

"To be fair, Mr. Shei deserves more of the credit. If Tyr had kept the underground armory sealed and gone on sleeping, we never would have spoken at all."

"That is true enough. When you trace it back, it all started because Shei stirred things up. Whether to be grateful for that, I'm not entirely sure."

Tyr gave a small laugh and turned her gaze out the window. Through the glass, the Thunder Wheel loomed so enormously that even through the fog its massive silhouette was unmistakable. Artificial lightning flickered from the slowly turning wheel.

It looked like preparations to kill the Sky God were nearly finished.

"By the way, Hyu. A servant of the Celestial God bowing before a human is a rare sight. Are you truly not going to watch?"

'If I know Hyu, he would never miss a spectacle like this.'

If it were real, I'd bring popcorn and camp out for the show. Even setting aside Tyr, who had her own personal grievances with the Celestial God, it would be worth watching on its own merits. But something was nagging at me.

I waved a hand.

"I'll sit this one out."

"Very well. Rest here, then."

'He must be planning something again, behind our backs. Whatever it is, I would gladly help, but if he won't say so, I won't press him.'

Already figured out? Was I getting too predictable? Given that Tyr had always been tuned in to my every move, it wasn't strange that she'd catch on.

'...And I, too, have things I have not said.'

Tyr glanced toward the Cloud Waterfall and smiled quietly.

The Thunder Lord's voice rang out across Claudia before the fog had fully lifted, strong and clear, reaching every corner of the city.

"Citizens of Claudia, stop what you are doing and listen. There is something you need to know."

At the great Thunder Lord's words, Claudia's citizens stopped in their tracks and turned their attention her way. The Thunder Lord waited until they had settled, then spoke.

"The Golden Mirror has stopped moving."

A ripple of unease spread through the crowd. Those who grasped what the words meant reacted with shock a beat later.

Why was Claudia the greatest city in the Lesser States? Its prosperity, fueled by the power of thunder, was part of it, but the biggest reason was that it was the only settled city in the Lesser States. Everywhere else was trampled by the Golden Mirror's wandering circuit. Claudia alone was land the Golden Mirror never set foot on, and that was why it had been able to accumulate the fruits of alchemy in one place over time.

But if the Golden Mirror had stopped, Claudia was no longer the only settled city in the Lesser States.

"A handful of brave lords and honored guests from outside these lands are the ones who brought it to a halt. Thanks to them, the Lesser States is now free from its shadow."

The Thunder Lord hadn't said the Golden Mirror was gone, probably to keep public feeling from lurching too wildly. The Lesser States had, after all, been a place that lived and breathed on the power of the Golden Mirror.

"Great changes will now come to the Lesser States. Claudia has long been kept from its full strength, pressed down by the Golden Mirror below and the Sky God above. Now it is time to break those chains and move forward."

It was hard to believe, but the Thunder Lord never lied. The greatest and most powerful Thunder Lord in the Lesser States was a perfect being, and a being like that had no need for something as petty as a lie.

"With the help of those who stopped the Golden Mirror, I intend to sever the long-standing curse of the Sky God. For the future of Claudia."

Only then did Claudia's citizens grasp the Thunder Lord's greater intention, and they cheered.

The address finished, and the Thunder Lord turned and walked. The thunder practitioners fell in behind, moving as one. Not at the Thunder Lord's level, but every last one of them wielded the power of lightning. Most had been deployed to reduce casualties in the coming fight against the Sky God.

'This got bigger than I expected. When I killed the Sky God in the previous cycle, I kept it quiet and handled it with as little fuss as possible. What happened?'

The regressor frowned at a situation that had broken from what she expected.

"...Isn't this a little excessive? You could just take out the Sky God quietly."

The Thunder Lord shook her head without hesitation.

"Under normal circumstances, yes. The situation is different now. The shock of the Golden Mirror's disappearance will reach people eventually. Ordinary people cannot absorb sudden change, so warning them in advance, even partially, minimizes the chaos that will come later."

"Ah, right. Because of the Golden Mirror."

'So that's why the reactions are different from the previous cycle. It's because the Golden Mirror is gone. So much has changed this time around. Well, the Demon God is gone now, after all.'

She thought back on what she had accomplished and felt a quiet pride in it. Much still remained, but there was a modest satisfaction in seeing steady progress all the same.

"You need to prepare as well, Golden Lord. You have an ability, and that means you stand with me to lead everyone. This will be the first step."

"...Yes."

Perru, who had been lagging slightly behind, clenched her jaw and fell into step beside the others. The Thunder Lord glanced at her unsteady gait and said, with mild disapproval.

"Your color isn't good. Someone who must lead others can't afford to be weak."

"Don't worry about it. That problem came from fighting the Golden Mirror, so it can be treated. I'll find a way to fix it."

"That's a relief, then. For now, let's focus on what's about to happen."

The two lords and one regressor set off for the Lightning Rod Tower to kill the Sky God. It was both the idol that embodied fear of the Sky God and the structure built to overcome it. They were going to sever that long-standing curse once and for all.

The space they left behind.

I walked toward the Lightning Rod Tower, step by step.

The Lightning Rod Tower. A massive structure reaching fifty meters in height. It wasn't simply there to absorb lightning strikes, inside, it housed a whole range of facilities that ran on lightning power.

The Thunder Lord had shown me the farm, but there was much more. A mill for processing the harvested crops. A smelter for forging lightning into steel. Workshops for turning that steel into all manner of tools, and more besides.

The resources produced inside the Lightning Rod Tower flowed down to the city below. With raw materials in generous supply, Claudia ran smoothly as long as there were people to work. Life was far more stable than wandering the wastelands of the Lesser States, which was why jackals without power or backing hoped to settle here.

The catch was that the Thunder Lord only accepted jackals who had children, so Claudia had filled with young couples with nowhere else to go and mothers with small children. Even they had to leave once the children were grown.

The city flourished, but most of its people were always ones who would leave someday.

Among them, those who did not leave were...

A guard spotted me and leveled their spear. A small bolt of lightning crackled threateningly in the split gap between the fountain-pen-shaped spear tips.

"Who goes there! Identify yourself!"

I ignored the terrifying lightning right in front of my face and walked calmly ahead, letting them see me.

Coming here yesterday with the Thunder Lord had been worth it. The guard recognized my face and lowered the spear.

"My apologies. What brings you here?"

"What brings me here? Didn't you just hear the announcement? The Thunder Lord said we're going to sever the curse of the Sky God."

I asked as if they ought to know already. Caught off guard, the guard stumbled over their words.

"W-well, yes, of course. The Thunder Lord departed via the lift. She took it to reach the top of the Lightning Rod Tower."

"Oh, is that right? I must have had it wrong. I thought you had to take the stairs to get to the top."

Being new to Claudia, I had gotten turned around. I was supposed to ride the lift with the Thunder Lord to the top of the Lightning Rod Tower, but I had walked in thinking there were stairs. The kind of ordinary mistake an outsider made when they had never encountered a lift.

The guard pieced the information together and came to understand me. More precisely, I had guided them to that conclusion.

"Sorry about that. I'm not familiar with the layout. Could you point me to the stairs?"

"If you wait, the lift will come back down."

"The stairs are fine. I'm already late and need to hurry. It won't make much of a difference."

That was a lie, of course. Stairs are humanity's worst invention, and climbing them on foot is barely better than self-inflicted torture. If you have a lift, you take the lift, no question.

I wasn't planning to go up, so it didn't matter.

"A master of energy wouldn't find stairs any trouble, I suppose. They're right over there."

"Thank you."

The guard pointed out the stairwell without a trace of suspicion. I dipped my head in thanks and, in plain view, walked toward the stairs.

Behind me, the loyal guard snapped to attention and called out.

"We're counting on you! The wish Claudia has carried for so long!"

"Don't worry. It'll be done before the day is out."

I gave a small wave, slipped calmly into the stairwell passage, and immediately sprinted down the stairs.

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