WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 380

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Interlude: After Killing the Sky God

The lightning was fading.

The thunder that had seemed ready to swallow the whole world had shrunk to the level of a bass drum. The Sky God, which had poured down through the Cloud Waterfall as if to split Claudia open, was now screaming with only scattered bolts remaining to its name.

[-!]

The Sky God's roar dwindled by the moment. In inverse proportion, the citizens of Claudia who had come out to watch erupted into cheers.

The voices of countless people surged up as if they might blow the Sky God back into the sky on their own. The Sky God, which had loomed over humanity with such arrogance, now thrashed desperately, swallowed by clouds. It was getting hard to tell which one was the god and which was the human.

Shei pushed her wet hair back and muttered with a hint of dissatisfaction.

"Strange. I'm clearly killing a false idol, but it keeps looking like I'm picking on someone weaker than me."

If the Sky God was a god, then what was Shei, standing on the clouds and devouring it?

Lightning was swallowed by Jizan. Thunder was cut by Skywarbler. Nothing the Sky God possessed could harm Shei, who wielded heaven and earth in her two hands. Its very existence was dissolving into her strength.

The Sky God stretched out an arm as if in resentment and let out a howl.

[---!]

"You keep yelling something, but I can't make out a word of it. So just give up."

Shei raised Jizan and Skywarbler with their hilts facing each other.

Lightning is a single line moving between sky and earth. All lightning gathers beneath it. The Sky God, which had ruled from its strange palace beyond the Cloud Waterfall for so long, was being made to surrender to its own nature.

Celestial Sword-Cudgel Style, Lightning Feed.

The Sky God's entire body seeped into the narrow gap between Skywarbler and Jizan. Even diminished, it was still a materialized bolt of lightning. Its power was enormous, but the space between two Demon Gods had more than enough room to hold it all.

The small bolts making up its divine form, the torrents of power that reached to every finger and toe: all of it merged into one great current and flowed into Shei's two swords. Its existence melted away.

[....]

The Sky God's scream, which had threatened to tear the world apart, grew quiet by degrees. The Sky God that had been groaning in agony was now small and frail, a pitiful thing. Even so, it stretched out its arm with desperate longing, as if searching for something, as if it had left something precious far below.

But it couldn't reach. This city of clouds, ringed by lightning rod towers, only used lightning and refused everything else. A single bolt that broke away from the Sky God touched a lightning rod tower and vanished.

"Come in."

Shei twisted Skywarbler. Without drawing on any extra energy, lightning rose naturally in the space between Skywarbler and Jizan. At the same moment, every last remnant of the Sky God was pulled into that gap.

From now on, Skywarbler and Jizan were bound together by an invisible thread of lightning. Shei would be able to move one just by holding the other.

Shei let out a long breath. The satisfaction of finishing a task, the sense of achievement from taking another step forward, the pride of having helped a town in trouble. On top of all that, she had earned the Thunder Lord's wholehearted support, so everything ahead looked smooth.

Only the sound of the people below cheering remained, ringing upward. Lighter than she could remember being in a long time, Shei descended with a bright look on her face.

"Phew. It's done! The Sky God is gone!"

Tyrkanzyaka was waiting at the lightning rod tower. She had been watching with both fists clenched from the moment Shei began absorbing the Sky God, and now she was cheering for Shei more enthusiastically than anyone else.

"Remarkable. To conscript the Celestial God's servant with your own power! This is a feat unlike any other, an act that smears mud across the Celestial God's face!"

"Ah, I wasn't really trying to do that..."

The reason was a little different, but it was awkward to explain. Shei made a point of glancing around.

"By the way, where's the Thunder Lord?"

"Said something came up and disappeared. I cannot begin to imagine what business could be more pressing than the spectacle before us."

"What's going on? Did someone break into their house?"

"Would that really be the reason? A thief in the house is far less dangerous than a Sky God in the city."

Shei had to agree. What thief could possibly be more dangerous than a god throwing lightning around?

So that was the thing. If the Thunder Lord had disappeared, there had to be a reason, but Shei couldn't even guess at what it was. Above all, this had never happened in any of her previous cycles.

She murmured to herself without meaning to.

"Strange. This has never happened before."

"This has never happened before?"

Shei, who had usually traveled alone and wasn't in the habit of minding whether others caught what she said, didn't realize Tyrkanzyaka had heard her until a long moment had passed. She waved a hand and covered herself.

"Ah, no. It's just that surprising. When a city is dealing with something like the Sky God, its ruler should stay and watch to the very end."

"...It is unusual."

'Phew. That was close. I need to be more careful. I'm not exactly a Holy Maiden, but I can't go letting on that I can see the future. They'll start treating me like one.'

Tyrkanzyaka was giving her a suspicious look, but Shei didn't worry too much about it. They were quite close now, but a few cycles back she had been an unstoppable catastrophe, and in another cycle an outright enemy, and in yet another they had been companions sharing words at the end of the world.

To Shei, a person was a many-faced thing, past and present living side by side. How do you treat someone who was once an insurmountable wall, once humanity's enemy, and once an irreplaceable ally?

The answer was not to worry too much about it. Or more precisely, she couldn't afford to worry with any great care. Other people's feelings shifted constantly, and unlike some, she had no mind reading to fall back on.

That kind of outlook didn't tend to attract companions, but this time around at least, the situation was better than usual.

'At least with Hughes around, handling people is so much easier. The number of times I've had to threaten someone at swordpoint has gone way down. Used to be I had to swing Skywarbler or Jizan and cut something every time I needed to persuade anyone. I should treat him a little better next cycle.'

The regressor was in the middle of that private gratitude when it happened.

At the top of the lightning rod tower, the pulley holding the lift began to spin. At the same moment, the lift shot upward at tremendous speed. It hit the top of the tower almost like a collision, and a familiar figure staggered out.

Shei recognized the face and blinked.

"Huh? Hughes?"

Blood ran from a gash on his head, trailing a line all the way to his jaw and dripping from there. He staggered as if from an injury, kept throwing quick glances back the way he had come, and then came running toward her with urgency.

Tyrkanzyaka stepped forward to meet him.

"Hyu? What happened? Did someone attack you?"

"Yes... but that's not the point, just a moment. I have something I need to tell Mr. Shei!"

"Shei? Do you have nothing to tell me?"

Tyrkanzyaka asked with what sounded like a slight hurt, but even she was startled by what came next.

"About the Thunder Lord's true identity! She isn't just a lord!"

Words Shei had never heard across any of her cycles. She was already jumping down toward the lightning rod tower when a possibility occurred to her.

"The Thunder Lord jumped down to the ground a little while ago. Did you cause another incident?"

"Ugh, that's one way to put it. Or maybe not exactly."

"It was you! I was wondering why the Thunder Lord suddenly did that!"

She chided him for trailing off with that awkward look and moved toward him. No particular wariness. They saw each other every day, and it would be stranger to be wary. Like Claudia and the Sky God, familiarity wore suspicion thin.

"Anyway, what's the Thunder Lord's true identity?"

"It's a little hard to say with Tyr... here."

"You're leaving me out?"

Tyrkanzyaka made no effort to hide her displeasure at that. He read the room, sighed as if he had no choice, and went on.

"I can't hide something this important. I'll come clean. The Thunder Lord, she's actually a member of the Holy Sword Corps."

"The Holy Sword... Corps?"

The bombshell landed without warning. Both Shei and Tyrkanzyaka couldn't help but react.

The Holy Sword Corps. The Sanctum's direct military order. To Tyrkanzyaka they were vermin that kept coming no matter how many times she killed them, but to Shei they were irreplaceable allies.

Shei had served in the Holy Sword Corps once. It was a title the Sanctum had handed her in name only, but through it she had learned many things, the world's secrets, the existence of the Demon Gods. She didn't know every Holy Sword Corps member spread across the world, but she had been close with the core unit.

Even so, learning that the Thunder Lord was actually Holy Sword Corps came as a surprise.

Not noticing the displeasure clouding Tyrkanzyaka's face, Shei showed a faint trace of pleased recognition.

"The Holy Sword Corps? Taking that at face value, how did you find out?"

"That's because I... ugh."

A drop of blood fell into his eye mid-sentence. It blocked his vision, and he missed his step. He lost his balance, and his body tilted toward Shei.

He was the taller of the two. Stumbling while stepping toward someone, it was only natural he would fall in her direction. They had been together long enough to build up a real familiarity. Without any particular suspicion, Shei moved to catch him.

And in that moment, Heavenly Mirror reacted.

Silver flashed. Shei arched her back and released a burst of energy, kicked off the ground, and put sharp distance between them. Two scratch marks were carved long across the top of the lightning rod tower.

The warm, peaceful scene of a Sky God's death, and the moment it ended, taut tension wound through the air. Shei grabbed the torn edge of her clothing with one hand and fixed her gaze on him.

"...You."

"Oh dear. I was only planning to hurt you a little. Your reflexes are way too fast."

He was not Hughes.

One wipe across the forehead erased the blood. The skeletal frame shrank and contracted, and hair came loose and fanned out wide.

Hilde, dropping her disguise, smirked and looked Shei up and down with sly eyes.

"Was that combat precognition? Or just ordinary precognition?"

"It's a technique I developed to deal with people like you."

"Surely not. Is it a technique from those who seek to touch the sky through energy?"

The last place Shei had expected that to come up. Her face tightened.

Shei had many enemies, and she had many allies. But no enemy had ever bored this deep, and no ally had either.

She should have been more careful. Zikhrund, of military state intelligence, Hilde. Going by Hilde now and playing the role of a mischievous traveling companion, she was one of the Six Generals and the most dangerous figure in the military state.

Hilde noticed her expression tightening and looked genuinely impressed.

"I'd heard something like that existed. Didn't think it was real. Hmm, fascinating. But anyway!"

She clapped her hands together and turned toward Tyrkanzyaka.

"Tyrkanzyaka. There's one more thing you need to know!"

"I thought you seemed a little off for Hyu. So it was you after all. That was too far."

"That's just how 'I' am, takes after my father! But is the mischief-maker over there the only one with something to hide?"

Laughing pleasantly, she held out the silver knife that had sliced across Shei's chest. Thanks to Shei's fast reaction, it had barely managed to cut through a single layer of clothing. No blood on it, but it had accomplished what it set out to do.

Because from the beginning, that knife had been meant to cut Shei's clothing.

"Look! 'I' personally cut it open so you can get a good look!"

Shei felt the absence a moment too late.

Shei's clothes were made of fabric that let energy flow through easily, because something too rigid would become a cage that bound her instead, and that applied in the other direction as well. A blade filled with energy had cut through her clothes without much trouble.

That was all. She wasn't hurt, and Heavenly Mirror had reacted, so it was nothing more than a torn chest. A meager result for what was supposed to be a decisive surprise attack.

But the problem was that it happened to be her chest.

"Look, everyone! Believe it or not, Shei, who we have all been thinking of as a pretty-faced young man!"

The most lethal moment, and the knife had hit exactly where it needed to. It was only a torn piece of clothing, not a real problem in itself, but the real problem was that the lie hidden beneath the clothing was now on display.

Through the gap in the torn fabric, the skysilk wrapped across her chest was visible. A band wound around the midline of her upper body, and beneath it a rounded shape pressed outward with unmistakable presence.

Skysilk. A precious, durable cloth that barely stretched. Shei, who moved violently in battle, wrapped herself in skysilk to keep her chest from shifting. Wound tight enough, it was all she needed to pass as male. And cloth bound across the chest could only serve one purpose. That was even more true when a woman's curves were plainly visible beneath it.

"She's a woman!"

Hilde spread her arms wide and cried out like an actress hitting her climax.

In one sense, even this was not so catastrophic. She had only hidden her sex. But both Shei and Tyrkanzyaka knew that Zikhrund's trap did not end there.

"Experiencing things not yet experienced, knowing things that shouldn't be known, versed in every kind of secret. And still so young, on top of all that? And she went so far as to hide her sex just to infiltrate Tantalus? Why would she do that?"

This was why she should have stayed alone.

Traveling with others carried too many dangers. Not just the danger of someone betraying her and turning enemy, but the danger even when they remained allies. If a trusted ally abandoned her, or fought with her and left in disappointment ,

Even when a new cycle began and her body reset, the pieces of herself she had given away stayed worn down.

"Everyone knows, don't they? The answer is, she was hiding the fact that she's the Holy Maiden! Yes! Shei! That, no, she! She's the Holy Maiden!"

How she had been found out didn't matter right now. What mattered most in this moment was the one person standing here who hated the Holy Maiden more than anyone and held a fierce killing intent for her.

Shei braced herself and turned to face Tyrkanzyaka.

At some point Tyrkanzyaka had stopped asking questions. She stood quietly watching, parasol resting against her shoulder, and now she gazed back at Shei in absolute silence, her face utterly expressionless.

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