WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 384

──────

Lightning Did Not Fall from the Sky - 7

Even with most of Claudia's citizens gathered and watching, the two paid the crowd no mind. Their eyes held only each other as they closed the distance. It was the regressor who spoke first, out of that brittle standoff that felt ready to shatter at any moment.

"Enough already! Can't you set your personal grudge aside for even a moment! Everyone living on this land is in danger, seriously!"

Tyr scoffed.

"How naive. Cold and heat cannot coexist in the same place, and light and shadow must push each other out before either can hold its ground. The Sanctum and I cannot both occupy the same space without one erasing the other."

"That's just stubbornness! If it's about surviving, you can do anything! Bending a little isn't such a big deal!"

"Is this truly born of my own stubbornness, I wonder. If you're so curious why I act this way, why don't you ask your precious Sanctum."

"The Sanctum isn't here! Right now! I'm asking you!!"

The regressor screamed out her feelings and kicked off the ground. Jizan in the sheath, Skywarbler with the blade bared. She held the opposing pair together and drew with everything she had, aimed straight at Tyr.

Celestial Sword-Cudgel Style, Horizon Cleave.

The sword energy split the earth. Compressed space pressed against the ground and scattered a razor edge across everything. The blade of that vast space, cutting through all things, bisected the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka along with the earth beneath her.

Nothing was hard enough to matter. Tyr's body was cleaved, that immense force fired sharp enough to shatter a vampire's flesh apart, well, to everyone watching, that's what it looked like.

But the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka was not a being who could not be cut. She was a being who could not die no matter how many times she was cut. That was why she had been called the Knight-Slayer in ages past, yet now, having reclaimed her heart, she was stronger still.

As the sea does, her body, churning with vast power, sealed the gap and returned to what it had been. As if the cut of a moment ago had been an illusion.

'Reclaiming her heart didn't undo her regeneration. If anything, it's gotten stronger! Tch, she's become even harder to deal with...!'

While the regressor clicked her tongue, Tyr went pale and reached instinctively for her chest.

Not out of worry for where she'd been cut. The number of times the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka had been sliced by a blade was more than two hands could count.

But Tyr now had a complete heart, unlike before. Unlike the old days when she could throw her body around without a second thought, she now had to protect a heart she'd won back with such difficulty.

'Thank goodness... The card Hyu gave me wasn't damaged. I'll have to fight more carefully from here on. If that were ever to break...'

Deeply relieved, Tyr turned her quiet anger outward once more.

Claudia's water mist drifted in from the Cloud Waterfall and blotted out the sun. Thousands of Black Knights rose from Claudia's shadows and charged the regressor all at once. They were nothing but fodder in a straight fight, but in the dark there was no denying how much of a nuisance they were. They had to be dealt with regardless.

'Light is what drives back darkness. I'd rather not spend this power before I've fully drawn it in...'

Rather than dealing with the Black Knights one by one, the regressor chose a more direct route.

She gripped Skywarbler hard. She pressed further into the compressed space, drawing out again the flash hidden within that vast distance. Space warped, and lightning leaked through the gaps between her fingers.

'...But if the opponent is Tyrkanzyaka, it's fine to use it. Untamed lightning is wilder.'

A technique learned from the Thunder Lord in a previous cycle. The regressor hadn't fully mastered it, but she'd made it her own. The lightning sealed inside Skywarbler was set free.

In the blink of an eye, an entire unit of Black Knights took a direct hit from the thunderbolt and was erased, the shadows thinned, and the remaining Black Knights shrank back. Piercing light tore through the darkness.

A clash at the summit. A battle where powers that ordinary humans could barely begin to imagine were colliding.

The people who had thought themselves bystanders began to feel the danger and fled screaming. The thunder practitioners deployed lightning to build barricades and keep the battle's shockwaves from spreading outward. Small mercy that the two had moved far enough from the crowd that no greater chaos broke out.

Perru watched the two of them fight and muttered.

"...Why are those two fighting...?"

"Perru. Bear this in mind. Even for someone who isn't a man, there are moments that absolutely demand a fight. All the more so when you're a woman living as one."

"...?"

Don't try to understand it. Just feel it. It's not easy to explain anyway.

"...Aren't you going to stop them?"

"Me? How would I even do that? And why would I?"

I could step in, but what's the point of stopping them before they've vented everything? It'd just leave things half-done. If it's going to happen, better to let it cook all the way through.

Just then, something caught Perru's senses. Beyond the Cloud Waterfall, something with considerable mass was falling slowly, drifting down the way a feather rides the wind.

It was beyond the waterfall and therefore out of sight, but Perru's power, which corroded steel, fixed on its target precisely. Her gaze shifted.

'...A pile of steel, falling from the sky? Slowly, like it's riding the wind...? No, I shouldn't be worrying about that right now.'

No, I had a feeling she should be.

Perru was puzzled but on the verge of letting it go. I grabbed her and said.

"What just fell? Let's go check it out!"

"...Right now isn't exactly the time to be worrying about that."

"It absolutely is! What's the alternative, wading into those two? If you step between them, you won't even end up as ground meat. Better to find something else to do!"

It wasn't the most logical argument, but Perru had a weak sense of conviction and gave a reluctant nod. As she did, she turned one small question over in her mind.

'...How did she know something was falling beyond the Cloud Waterfall...?'

That's how I knew. I wasn't going to tell her, though. I followed Perru's senses toward where it had come down.

The Cloud Waterfall flowed on in silence. It was called a waterfall, but that was just a name for it, in truth it was water mist hundreds of meters thick. We'd been walking long enough that I found myself standing in the middle of a dense cloud.

Visibility dropped to nothing. Where cloud met earth it turned to running water, and the mud underfoot, sodden and clinging from all the moisture, grabbed at every step.

"...Watch your step. There are pits dug to collect water."

"You watch yours. You can barely walk straight yourself, and you're worried about me."

Perru looked a little stung, but it was true, so she closed her mouth and walked on in silence. After a while she glanced up and looked around.

"Where is it? I felt it somewhere around here."

"...Up. There."

Perru pointed upward.

A shadow fell across the dense cloud. A steel structure was coming down, less a fall than a glide, a slow drift. It swayed this way and that on its way down as if it thought itself a falling leaf. Steel or no.

I'd been waiting for it to hit the ground when I realized it was bigger than I'd thought and shouted.

"Move!"

"...Oh!"

I grabbed Perru and pulled her back a few steps. Then something came down, slower than expected, but fast enough to be dangerous if it hit. A heap of steel plowed into the mud. Parts broke apart and scattered from the force of the landing.

"So now scrap metal falls from the sky too. What is that thing?"

"...I don't know. Never seen it."

Fortunately the ground was wet enough that nothing bounced. I moved carefully toward the wreckage. It looked like... ribs. Steel ribs. Standing it upright, it would look like the upper body of a giant. Something unidentifiable passed for machinery at the head, and between the frames what looked like scraps of torn paper fluttered about.

Too elaborate to be a simple decoration. I pushed through the risk and rummaged through the wreckage, looking for anything that might be a clue.

There, at the topmost frame, a line of text caught my eye. I brushed off the caked mud and read it.

-Claudia Weather Alarm Ver. 11.6, Sleepless Old Man.

I was briefly at a loss for words.

What? A weather alarm? This enormous structure was just an alarm clock? What a pointless thing to build.

"...This is?"

"It says weather alarm. Did Claudia have alarm clocks?"

"...Claudia rings with thunder instead of bells. There are clocks, but... nothing this large. Never seen one like this."

"Why was something this large falling from the sky in the first place? Did someone prop it up there?"

Tch. I thought it was a clue, but it turned out to be completely useless.

I'd been sure there would be something here. Nothing at the Thunder Lord's secret quarters, and this bizarre thing that had dropped out of nowhere had nothing to do with that either. Two dead ends in a row. I kicked at the wreckage out of frustration and grumbled under my breath.

Just where is the clue to the lightning Demon God, anyway?

Deep in that thought, Perru tilted her head and lifted the golden bell.

"...I'll fix it."

"You don't even know what it is. Can you fix something you don't know?"

"...No. But there's clearly a damaged part I can see. If I restore it, maybe its original purpose will show."

Restore the missing and broken parts with the Golden Mirror's power and figure it out from there? Not a bad idea. Though I wasn't sure fixing a broken clock would make it tell time any better, if anything, it might cost us the two times a day it happened to be right.

Ding. Perru shook the bell.

The Golden Mirror had wanted to restore everything to its original state. The problem was that its target happened to be a nation, so it had become a monster that destroyed everything not of the Gold State.

But stripped of all those attachments and focused purely on that original desire, the relic now held only the power to return objects to their original condition. As for what to restore and how, that was left to Perru.

The power of a Demon God showed itself fully. Alchemy restored the broken and worn steel, reforged it, filled in what was missing. As the frame reassembled itself, the structure gradually took shape.

What the Golden Mirror's power restored was... something resembling something I had seen before. Perru spoke in a shaking voice.

"...The Sky God?"

A giant upper body holding an iron staff in one hand. A face that looked almost like an old man's. It held no lightning, but now that it had reclaimed its shape, it was hard to mistake for anything else.

Anyone would recognize it. This was the Sky God that had reigned above the Cloud Waterfall. The Sky God that had looked down over all of Claudia and hurled its spear of lightning.

This was the alarm? Claudia's great adversary had actually been an alarm this whole time?

Before my shock had fully settled, a line of text written into a corner of the Sky God's frame caught my eye. I walked over and read it.

-Creator: Frang, The Lightning Thief.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried