WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 392

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Lightning Did Not Fall from the Sky - 15

I relayed the chaos outside to the lightning thief and kept going.

"Fighting for faith is fighting for faith. Fighting for the Progenitor and your kind is fighting for the Progenitor and your kind, plain and simple. If you're killing humans in the name of that, how does it become something done for humans? A sacrifice of the few? The only ones who get to enjoy tomorrow the same as today are the ones who didn't die today. There is no tomorrow for the ones who did."

I hurried to add more before the lightning thief could get a word in.

"Ah, I'm not criticizing anyone in particular. Animals killing each other is natural enough. Killing for food, for a mate, for territory, killing to get what you need, that's always been how it works. Nothing new there."

"You're actually condoning a massacre like that?"

"Does condemning it make it disappear? What changes if you scream at me from beyond the grave? The ones stopping that massacre out there aren't the Sanctum, aren't the vampires. Not you, already dead, and not me, standing here chattering away. Only the beast who loves humans is fighting desperately to stop the slaughter."

Who's better, who's worse. What the right thing to do is. Thinking like that is too far removed from the beast. Frothing at the mouth about how we shouldn't just stand and watch what's already happened is something even a hermit crab in a mudflat can manage.

"You want to save humans? Then prove it. Stake everything you have and use your power here, that's what I'm saying. You're dead, but a Demon God's mark is carved into the world, so you can still draw on your power, can't you?"

"There's no need. That's what Claudia's defense systems are for. Once those activate..."

"You mean the power the Thunder Lord can use? And who do you think she'll aim that power at? Does the direction of that power serve the 'humans' you have in mind?"

The Thunder Lord would almost certainly fire on me and Perru first. Elders can only die at someone else's hand, in something that amounts to assisted suicide, so she'd kill me first, the easier target. No question about it.

"If that's your will, I'll accept it. But don't go claiming you did it for humans afterward. I won't stand for that."

"I don't need your approval."

"Then let me put it differently. If you abandon them, you won't be able to approve of yourself, either."

Azzy and the regressor might manage, but Perru would die for certain if left alone. The power of Rustscale she was drawing on would eat away at the body the Golden Mirror had regenerated for her. Every human being lives on borrowed time, but Perru's end was far closer than anyone else's, and now that cruel clock was winding several times faster.

Time was running out. The choice had to be the lightning thief's to make. Realizing he was being tested in return, Frang gripped the kite string tight and said, "You're testing me?"

"You talk too much for a dead man. Decide quickly. I want to know what you actually mean when you cry out for humans."

Whatever he chose was fine. That was just how things were. But the lightning thief standing before me was his mindscape carved into the world. A mindscape read through mind reading can never lie, can never turn away from what is true.

If his real answer was faith, I hoped he'd hurry up and go back to the Celestial God.

"...What is your purpose, King of Humanity? Are you trying to drag this world back to a barbaric age? Back to the terrible time before Year One?"

"What am I, some kind of time-reversal practitioner? How would I even manage that?"

"Then what? Why do you go searching for knowledge about Demon Gods, knowledge that might corrupt humans? What are you trying to do?"

Of course, the part about not being able to lie applied to me just as much here. Though I'd been an honest person from the start, so no problem there.

"To remind people that humans are beasts."

I told him plainly, my tone level.

"Ideals, justice, truth, causes, morality. No matter how beautiful or magnificent they all look, in the end they're just tools humans invented for their own convenience. They use those tools to manufacture reasons to kill each other, and then do exactly that. If those things were real, I'd have to fight them on behalf of humanity, but sadly they live inside the human heart, where they can't be seen and can't be killed. Should I split open skulls and pull them out? Or kill every human to be rid of them? That's not something I can do, is it?"

Well, could I? Was the King of Sin exactly that kind of case? Not that it had anything to do with me, nothing I'd done or would do, so none of my business. Anyway.

"That we are not such magnificent beings. That we are every bit as worthless and lowly as any other beast. Not chosen by any god, with no right anywhere in the world to do with all creation as we please. That what we do is, at its core, no different from some midday animal rolling itself through the mud. To convince myself of that first, and through myself, to convince all of humanity."

That was why I was still the Beast King. I murmured it quietly and looked at the lightning thief. His face was a tangle of contempt, disgust, and unease.

I didn't feel too bad about it. That expression wasn't directed at me.

"...As I thought, I can't agree with you."

"You don't have to. I already know what you were trying to hide. The moment you showed up here, the secret was out anyway."

Why was he here to begin with? He had surrendered himself to a faith and chosen to be their instrument. He had agreed to send the lightning back to the sky and make it the Celestial God's property. He had agreed to have the tale of the lightning thief recast as the foolish story of a thief who stole from the great Celestial God. And yet his mindscape was here. What did that mean?

"When the lightning struck you, when it passed through your body along the kite string, what happened?"

"...!"

"What did you feel in that lightning that made you so terrified of its power becoming known? Why did you work to prevent the Lesser States' homunculi, who didn't even exist yet, from ever being born?"

The truth the lightning thief had wanted to hide. A man who hadn't feared even falling lightning shook with terror after being struck by it. Because he had glimpsed a secret that horrified him just to remember, a truth he should never have peeked at.

"The lightning you stole and gave to humanity was, in the most literal sense, only what came from the sky. But that's a tiny fraction of it. Because the real lightning was on the ground from the very beginning."

Lightning did not fall from the sky. It had been here from the start.

The lightning thief, Frang, had been struck by lightning. In the shock of what felt like a bolt going off inside his skull, he had understood something.

The hand and arm gripping the kite string trembled uncontrollably. His knees went weak, for all his remarkable wisdom and sharp reason. His bladder let go, and filth seeped across his body. This body made a spectacle of itself in a way that made a mockery of the sage who had honed both mind and flesh to their limits.

Frang understood. His wretched state went beyond his will, his faith, his convictions. The lightning was touching his body at something more fundamental than pain.

As if threads were pulling at every corner of his body to puppet him along, he realized that the lightning was moving him.

So that was why he had wanted to hide it. If you built a body from flesh using the Golden Mirror's alchemy, the senses and the mind animating that body could be breathed into it through lightning. That alone wouldn't be nearly enough, of course, but a sage who believed more than anyone in the purity of the mind would have recoiled from even the suggestion of such a possibility.

"Don't feel too wronged about it. It was a truth that would have come out eventually. The idea of running lightning directly through a body isn't yours alone. Though you're probably the only one who would volunteer for that."

"...As I thought, I cannot follow you."

Frang glared at me as though he might kill me, wound the kite string twice around his hand, and pulled.

It was like dragging lightning down from where it hid inside the clouds. The bolt that had still been distant came down after him. The innocent kite, guilty of nothing, was sacrificed to the lightning first, and the current flowing down the string scorched Frang's entire body. The current seeping in through his fingertips ground him down piece by piece.

Enough to kill an ordinary human dozens of times over, yet it had no effect on Frang whatsoever. Not only because this was inside a mindscape.

Because from the beginning, the two had been one.

"King of Humanity. I don't agree with your thinking, but this time I'll move as you intend."

He had become the embodiment of lightning. He reached out his hand.

What does the Progenitor mean to an Elder? A beginning and an end. The savior who rescued them from the brink of death, and the master of the second life who would one day reclaim it. A king to be loved and followed with every drop of blood in the body, a racial god to be revered and worshipped.

Vampires therefore do not believe in gods. No fool would choose Heresy when they have a real god moving right in front of their eyes.

"Don't do anything rash. Tyrkanzyaka will be here soon."

In that sense, Shei was an unbeliever, livestock presuming to speak a god's name. Valdamir couldn't decide whether to be outraged that this person had casually invoked the Progenitor's name as though she were a friend, or to hold off on the grounds that she might actually be one. He put off his judgment for the moment. There was still time to gather more information before deciding.

Valdamir turned his head and looked toward the other side. A structure the size of a hill stood looming in the direction of Claudia.

Shei had no means to stop the Steel Maiden and Tyrkanzyaka from fighting. No one could restrain either of them, both were close to invincible.

So Shei had separated them. She had driven the earth upward with Jizan and sent both of them sliding in opposite directions. Both Tyrkanzyaka and Peruel were monsters capable of shattering the ground itself, but even they could not stand without something under their feet. Bound by the inescapable logic of nature, the two slid apart.

That was how Tyrkanzyaka had arrived here. She had been scanning her surroundings, sharp and alert, when she spotted a familiar face collapsed on the ground and hurried over.

"...Hyu?"

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