WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 391: Lightning Did Not Fall from the Sky - 14

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Once known as the Verdigris Lord and perhaps soon to be known as the Golden Lord, though that was far from certain, Perru was simply Perru for now. She trembled at the carnage unfolding before her.

Value was collapsing. The principle of value that had once delighted her, frustrated her, and become her faith was declaring a tragedy. The Thunder Guardians were losing their lives like alchemical steel being consumed by Verdigris.

"...No."

Dozens had already died. Around a hundred more were wounded, all bleeding from injuries that would not heal. At this rate, the grim statistic of casualties equaling deaths would become reality.

"...This can't be happening."

A corpse was worth less than a human because life had been taken from it. It was a simple calculation, but that made it all the clearer. Too clear for her to look away from or delude herself about.

The vampires' arrival had bought her a chance to flee, but Perru wanted to spend that precious time defending the value she believed in.

Perru staggered to her feet. Compared to the vampires, she looked frail to the point of pitiful, but she did not care. With trembling hands, she did what she could.

She grasped a golden bell and shook it with all her heart.

"...Lord of Gold."

A small chime answered Perru's will.

Unbelievably, Lungken was winning their contest against the Juggernaut. The Juggernaut's advance had already stopped, and the front wheels that had tried to crush Lungken hovered slightly above the ground, spinning uselessly. Lungken shouted with brimming confidence.

"Ku-ha-ha-ha! So light!"

Blood coursed violently through their body. Their powerful hind legs swelled like a beast's. For an ordinary human, it would have been the signal the body gave just before death, but for Lungken, who had died once before, it was proof of life. The closer they came to death, the more life they regained. A true berserker.

Blood-soaked Lungken pushed the Juggernaut back. A mass of steel as heavy as Mount Tai defied gravity. Lungken was literally unleashing enough strength to uproot mountains and overturn heaven and earth.

The Thunder Guardians screamed. The Juggernaut, the essence of alchemy, and Claudia's thunder. Their combined power was being overwhelmed by a single Elder. Along with the Juggernaut, their faith was about to be overturned. Feeding on the humans' fear and screams, Lungken took another step forward...

Then Lungken heard a faint chime. They had only just turned their ear toward that foreign sound spreading through the chaos of the battlefield when...

The Juggernaut activated.

Every Juggernaut was a creation of the Lord of Gold. They were the pinnacle of alchemy, driving a Lord's innate arcane to its limit. The Iron Worm Lord, the Juggernaut's former owner, had died, and the Thunder Guardians had modified the legacy he left behind. Yet the performance they produced did not even reach thirty percent of its original potential. The Lord of Gold, however, was the founder of alchemy and could reproduce a Lord's innate arcane.

It was not using the dead Lord's innate arcane. It was reproducing the same function and performance through alchemy. The founder of alchemy could make that possible.

The heart of the Juggernaut, which had died with its former owner, began beating again. The Thunder Guardians were greatly flustered as the Juggernaut moved on its own. But they could not have been as startled as Lungken.

The Juggernaut, which had been rolling on wheels, suddenly stretched its body like a caterpillar and crushed Lungken beneath it. Blood splattered from beneath the armored vehicle.

At the same time, Cabilah slipped.

Cabilah had been sitting on a Dragon-Tooth Soldier as though it were a chair, watching the massacre. While she elegantly drew blood, the Dragon-Tooth Soldier supporting her vanished. Cabilah experienced gravity in an entirely different way from Lungken and fell to the ground.

Cabilah landed hard on her backside, dumbfounded. She had not even withdrawn her power, so who had erased the Dragon-Tooth Soldier from so far away? It was not caution toward that inexplicable power that filled her expression.

"Making me look so ridiculous...!"

Furious at the very fact that she had landed on her backside, Cabilah looked around. Dragon-Tooth Soldiers crumbled helplessly, and the Thunder Guardians charged at her with cheers. Mere fodder did not even enter Cabilah's sight. Her senses, sensitive to arcane power, found Perru beyond them.

Perru, holding a golden bell, was the source of all these changes. Realizing that, Cabilah stretched out her arm and shouted.

"I'll wring out your blood to make up for ruining my Dragon-Tooth Soldiers!"

Cabilah aimed at Perru, shouted sharply, and clapped her hands.

As the Thunder Guardians finally moved past the Dragon-Tooth Soldiers to attack Cabilah, the scattered bone fragments and blood beneath their feet exploded. Hundreds of bone shards flew out, trying to punch holes through human bodies.

Yet the bone fragments quickly lost their sharpness, and the blast was weaker than calculated. Verdigris's power had eaten away even at the explosive force. The shards could not pierce the Thunder Guardians' recoil energy technique and bounced away.

"Aaah! This is so annoying!"

Cabilah stomped her feet like a child, but assessed the situation with instinctive calm. She did not know exactly what that power was, but it was destroying the Dragon-Tooth Soldiers and even the spears carried by the Thunder Guardians. It was collapse that did not distinguish friend from foe. Cabilah judged it to be a power that neutralized weapons, a fairly reasonable conclusion. If so, the solution was simple. Attack directly with the body.

Cabilah did not want to move personally, though, so she shouted toward Lungken.

"Lungken! I've finally found a use for you! Catch that bitch!"

"Interfering in a fair fight, how cowardly-!"

Lungken crawled out after losing to the Juggernaut and charged with bloodshot eyes. The Juggernaut hurried after them, but it was far too slow. Lungken had only lost because they had engaged in a contest of strength they never needed to. With comparable power and a body hundreds of times lighter, they were too fast for the Juggernaut to catch. In the blink of an eye, they reached Perru's side. Perru gasped in surprise.

"Verdigris Lord...!"

A Thunder Guardian stepped in front of her. Instinctively, they had realized Perru's power was their only way out. It was ironic that this led them to choose death, but the Thunder Guardian thrust a spear at Lungken.

It was feeble resistance. Lungken snorted and charged as if a spear striking them did not matter. Whether it hit or missed, Lungken would trample Perru and the Thunder Guardian in one motion.

If not for the interference from the side.

Lungken was knocked down. An unidentified attacker struck their flank, bending their body sharply. The attacker did not stop there, pushing harder and sending Lungken flying into the distance.

As they rolled together, the attacker bit deeply into Lungken's shoulder and threw them around in every direction.

Like a beast.

"Hngh!"

Even with the world turning upside down around them, Lungken clenched their fist. They stretched out a thick arm and struck the attacker's abdomen two or three times with tremendous force. When the jaws locked onto their shoulder still did not loosen, they grabbed the attacker's leg and slammed them down, ready to tear off their own shoulder entirely. Boom. The attacker landed on their back, yelping as they rolled across the ground.

Ears and a tail clearly unlike a human's. A dog beastkin. That only raised another question. What kind of dog beastkin could toss Elder Lungken, the strongest boar beastkin and humanity's terror, around like a toy?

Lungken's eyes widened as they saw the beastkin who had attacked them. Recognizing their opponent's identity by instinct, Lungken roared happily at the sight of a worthy rival.

"King of Dogs!"

Ptui. Azzy spat out vampire blood and howled in disgust.

"Awoooooooo-!"

"So you're my rival! Good, you should be at least this strong!"

All beastkin were descendants of the Beast King. Creations born from the terrible sin committed long ago by Queen Agartha. Perhaps beastkin felt an inexplicable longing when they saw the Beast King because their roots were connected.

That feeling was far from Lungken, though. Their blood had undergone an irreversible change long ago. Lungken built up a great surge of blood energy and shouted at Azzy.

"You are not my king-!"

"Woof! Grrrrrrr!"

Azzy answered with a savage growl.

She turned away from fights between humans. She did not intervene because she could not hurt either side. Yet she held vampires to a harsher standard. Was it because vampires were alien, or because they could not be hurt no matter what?

Because she loved all humans, the King of Dogs joined the battle to stop the tragedy of humans dying.

Azzy and Lungken fought, tearing apart everything around them. Whenever their bodies collided, it sounded like a drum the size of a house being struck. Azzy tore off Lungken's limbs and chewed through the bones, while Lungken used their remaining limbs to smash Azzy's head. When Azzy endured that blow and pinned Lungken down with her forepaws to tear them apart, a newly regenerated arm struck her in the side and sent her flying. Both soaked in blood, they clashed again. Feral roars and madness swept through the battlefield like a storm.

Had Lungken been a little smarter, or a little more cowardly, the fight would have ended quickly. All they had to do was pick up any nearby human and use them as a shield, and Azzy would have been unable to do anything. But Lungken stubbornly insisted on fighting, as if the fight itself were a blessing to them.

Crimson Duke Valdamir understood the situation but did not stop Lungken. All Elders were equal. Just as siblings measuring themselves against one another were all equally children in their parents' eyes, the Elders who had received true blood directly from the Progenitor might have an order, but no hierarchy. This was Lungken's life and death, so Valdamir respected it.

Instead, Valdamir asked the Thunder Lord held in one hand.

"The King of Dogs. A pitiful being rendered helpless if humans are used as shields. That cannot be the measure you prepared. What else is there?"

[For... vampires like you...!!]

"A pointless question."

There was no need to ask. If he tried to kill her, he would find out soon enough. It was fine if the prepared measure never appeared and she died as she was.

Valdamir immediately acted on that thought. Gripping the Thunder Lord's neck tightly as though holding a chicken for beheading, he swung a greatsword with his other hand. The greatsword, as large as a person, came down to cleave through the Thunder Lord's body.

"Heavenly Sword Technique, Lightning Strike!"

At that moment, a bolt of lightning fell. Lightning reclaimed from the Thunder God struck both the Thunder Lord and Valdamir. It was power for the Thunder Lord and an attack for Valdamir. Valdamir could have taken it head-on, but paused to consider, then changed the sword's direction and knocked the attack away.

"Is this it? The measure you prepared?"

The regressor, Shei, was still confused. Events that had slipped by without her realizing it were spiraling out of control. Tyrkanzyaka and Peruel had fought, and immediately afterward, the vampires of the Fog Duchy attacked Claudia. Perhaps both sides could have become allies. If she could not reconcile them, she could at least have mediated between them and kept them from meeting until they defeated the King of Sin. The picture she had drawn in her mind dissolved and vanished.

It was still all right. Shei was a regressor. She could learn more, then do better in the next cycle with that information. In that case, in this cycle...

"...Crimson Duke. Do not act rashly. Wait for Tyrkanzyaka. It can still be undone."

Even without knowing anything, she would do what she believed was best at that moment. Shei stepped in first to stop the fighting.

Footnotes:

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