WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 394

──────

The Human Who Drinks Blood

Hilde had been watching the regressor throughout their travels. Tyr was ancient and powerful, but more than that she was already famous, practically a walking natural phenomenon by this point. There was little reason to study her further, so Hilde had kept me and the regressor in her sights at all times, probing us with small tests and watching how we responded.

Her observation bordered on research. Build, background, personality, voice and verbal habits, gait and energy. She took each detail apart, studied it piece by piece, and layered it over herself. She picked relentlessly at whatever made a person unmistakably themselves, then used it to make others mistake her for that person with even greater conviction.

In the process she sometimes uncovered secrets the other person had buried. Learning the regressor's true gender was no different. Hilde had managed it precisely because she had played the role of the regressor herself.

"Shei's weak point is clear. One-on-one combat. Not the kind of battle where power meets power and the world splits open, but fighting among people, among humans. At that, she is merely somewhat talented."

The regressor was undeniably strong. But whether because she leaned so heavily on relics, she had gaps when facing ordinary humans. They say a cleaver meant for an ox makes poor work of a chicken, so how much harder must it be to catch the small humans living within the world using a sword forged to cut between heaven and earth. That was probably why the regressor had looked uneasy facing Partlaxion the Absolute Sonata and General Historia. Against someone who had attuned to the principle of the world, that gap would only widen.

Hilde hadn't attuned to any such principle, but she had been Holy Sword Corps. Faith had given her miracles that stood on equal footing with it.

Her faith happened to be mutable, which meant the holy sword she manifested changed shape freely.

"In that case..."

Two short blades came flashing in, angled to hook along the regressor's arms. Instead of meeting Jizan directly, they caught the hand holding it; Skywarbler was met at the hilt and forced into a contest of strength. At the range where breath nearly mingled, where short blades held every advantage, Hilde threw move after move and exchanged strike after strike. The regressor barely kept up, catching each blow with Heavenly Mirror and setting up a counter. Then, in the gap before the counterstrike could land:

"I" am Historia. General of the military state. Quasi-explosive diffusion technique.

A jolt. The regressor's muscle memory fired before Heavenly Mirror did. A dizzying sense of déjà vu built from lives lived and relived across regression after regression.

Always keeping the blade's tip aimed at the enemy as the central fighting style, that was how the military state's General Historia primarily fought. Historia wielded bayonet-and-blade technique, keeping a powerful shot as a trump card to hold the high ground. It didn't even need to be fired. Just demonstrating the force the quasi-explosive diffusion technique could produce, keeping the muzzle in a position where it could fire at any moment, was enough to force a one-sided disadvantage on the opponent.

Hilde was now executing Historia's fighting style exactly. The regressor's instincts fired. She twisted her body and poured energy into Skywarbler. At the same instant, Hilde's holy sword blazed and burst outward like an explosion. Both blades stretched long and grazed past each other. The mid-air collision knocked both weapons' trajectories off course.

"This is, the General's technique-!"

"Oh my. You handle that quite well."

Different from Historia's technique. Explosive diffusion replaced with the body's own elasticity and the holy sword's detonating force; instead of speed, it tore at the opponent with sheer sharpness. The reach was shorter too, if the regressor stepped back two paces, the blades probably wouldn't reach.

Different, but the underlying principle was nearly the same. Close enough that even the regressor felt the déjà vu.

"We're just getting started. Pay attention! If you miss again, this holy sword will be found lodged in your forehead!"

Lungken charged straight into the crowd. No more warnings. No more bestial howling. He put the Progenitor's orders ahead of whatever thrill the fighting brought him, swinging his arms in wide sweeping arcs, trying to catch as many as he could in each pass.

Humans were dying. Azzy had no intention of allowing that. She howled and lunged at Lungken's back.

"No time for you, King of Dogs-!"

At that moment, Lungken thrust out a thunder practitioner he hadn't quite finished killing, dangling the person in front of him like a shield. The figure swayed limply in his enormous fist. A shattered arm, crushed legs, barely distinguishable from a corpse, yet still breathing. That alone was enough to stop Azzy's feet.

"Woof! Woof woof!"

Azzy bounced in place with a terrified look, barking frantically, as if begging him to stop the slaughter and turn his attention her way instead.

Lungken ignored her howling. Faithful to Tyr's will, he chased after the humans trying to flee.

"I'll deal with you later-!! After I've carried out every one of the king's orders!"

Every time Lungken acted in accordance with the Progenitor's will, darkness crept further around him. The Progenitor's power, the very darkness that shielded vampires from the cursed light of the sun, bestowed its grace. With that darkness around him, his blood energy suffered no harm even under direct sunlight. He swam through the faint rays filtering down without so much as a twinge of resistance.

With every last drop of his strength available to him, Lungken poured it all into carrying out the Progenitor's commands. Blood raged through him like a storm.

Elsewhere, Valdamir raised his greatsword. Wreathed in crimson blood energy, he stepped forward to begin the slaughter. That was all, and already the space where humans could survive shrank. The blood energy, honed razor-sharp and churning in coils around him, was a storm with blades hidden inside it.

Even through the killing, Valdamir murmured calmly.

"Good meeting, it seems."

That was the extent of his commentary. Time to work.

Valdamir kicked off the ground. The red mist rippled faintly, and between one moment and the next he was already standing in the middle of the crowd. The thunder practitioners who had rushed forward to protect the Thunder Lord flinched at the enormous figure that had materialized from nowhere, and before they could react they were swept up in the slash the crimson greatsword unleashed. Blood crashed through them like a wave. Of all of them, the only one who managed to respond to the Duke of Crimson Blood in time was the Thunder Lord herself.

[...Duke of Crimson Blood!]

The Thunder Lord swung lightning with her charged arm.

In that instant her body merged with the bolt and launched at comparable speed. Sacred lightning compressed and compressed again, charged enough to burn even blood energy to black ash. An attack the Thunder Lord had deliberately closed the gap to prepare, had allowed herself to be grabbed to set up, because no ordinary power could ever kill an Elder. Heaven's punishment fired to strike the Elder down.

The force that moved all of Claudia, swung for the sake of killing one vampire.

But one step ahead, Valdamir moved first. He slid the greatsword's handle inside the bend of the Thunder Lord's arm and gave it a small twist. The greatsword became the axle and spun, their positions wrenched askew, and the Thunder Lord's attack went wide and punched through empty air. White lightning streaked down the Cloud Waterfall. The city's power bled away for nothing.

No matter how immense a force, if the one wielding it is human, human technique can overcome it.

Crimson Duke Valdamir had been called a genius from birth, and then, dying, had received true blood and spent centuries building strength and experience. By technique alone he had already reached the furthest limit a human could touch. He did not absorb that enormous force with his body, he deflected it. And even that was only a small splinter of the technique the Duke of Crimson Blood possessed.

[Ah.]

A different class entirely. Strength and technique both lived somewhere far beyond reach. If an immortal monster honed technique as well, how was any ordinary human ever supposed to stand against it.

After the Thunder Lord spent that burst of force came the exhaustion that followed, the unavoidable opening before she could fill herself again. Valdamir stepped into it. He gripped the flat of the greatsword in his hand and gave it a short push. Even an attempt to defend was useless; the Thunder Lord's arm was already bent the wrong way. A single motion, fluid as water, broke the guard and tore through the body.

The Thunder Lord's shoulder split halfway open. Bright red blood soaked into the greatsword's edge. She grabbed the flat of the blade with her other hand and tried to push it away.

"Sturdier than expected."

That was all he said about it. If the Thunder Lord was sturdier than expected, he simply needed to push harder than expected. Valdamir's greatsword drew on blood energy and began to gnaw through the Thunder Lord's body. Blood Horse Technique. The way a blade presses through ice and melts it apart, the greatsword carved through her arm and kept advancing. Only a matter of time before it cut all the way through.

Then something caught the Duke of Crimson Blood's energy sense. An enormous current he could not resist crushed down on the space he occupied. He was one step from killing the Thunder Lord, but he let go of the greatsword without hesitation and threw up his arm to block an attack he couldn't yet see.

Boom. The arm wrapped in blood energy exploded. Through the spray of scattered blood, a small cloth-wrapped fist appeared. Valdamir recognized who it was and narrowed his eyes.

"The Holy Maiden?"

"..."

That durable body didn't last even a moment. Not a matter of strength or technique, something on an entirely different plane, a miracle, lived inside that fist. Valdamir read the situation without letting his calm crack, gripped the greatsword's handle short, and struck at Peruel. A blow polished smooth with practice, concise and crushing, drove toward Peruel's abdomen.

Thud. The greatsword that had looked certain to pierce her bounced back on its own. Even with the force of a collapsing building behind it, not a single mark appeared on Peruel. Her skin didn't even dent. The strongest Elder's strike, delivered with no small portion of his real strength, had failed to alter the outcome foretold by her self-prophecy. Peruel's existence was already determined.

"In that case, I cannot kill you. It seems to be fate."

Valdamir accepted that fact. The mountain-steady quality of his movements changed. He lowered his stance and held the greatsword short. Not fleeing, the fighting spirit in him hadn't faded. Peruel saw the blood-soaked blade still aimed at the humans and closed her fist as she spoke.

"Fate... can be changed. As it is being twisted right now. But you, vampire, cursed creature, have neither the power nor the right to change it."

An Elder's immortality was formidable, but it was not perfect the way the Progenitor's was. Blow the head apart, pulverize the heart, cut it all to pieces and scatter them into a sunset sea, and there was no surviving that. Her goal was the Duke of Crimson Blood, to crush that accursed strongest of vampires underfoot. Peruel had chased down the image of herself she had seen in the future through her self-prophecy.

A blow that words like strong or solid could not begin to describe. Something beyond that, an irresistible strike. It was already fate, already truth. Faced with that attack, Valdamir...

"No! I have to be the one to stop the Duke of Crimson Blood! No matter who else comes-!"

Yielded.

He did not resist Peruel's foresight, which could not be resisted. He fitted his own body as an axle inside that current. When Peruel's fist moved to pulverize his arm, he used his own body as a lever and sent the force blasting in a different direction. Their two wills caught against each other, and the blood-red greatsword moved along a trajectory no one could have predicted. It spun wide, the red blade sweeping in a broad arc as it came down.

At the end of that arc stood the Thunder Lord. The wounded lightning angel saw the greatsword bearing down to split her skull only too late. She no longer had the strength to block it.

The greatsword cut through the Thunder Lord's body. The blade drove in at the shoulder, reached the chest, and pulled free. Not a moment of hesitation in the cutting. Unable to kill Peruel, Valdamir kept his distance as though retreating and harvested the lives of the wounded with cold precision. Peruel's foresight was entirely her own, she could not see into the Thunder Lord's fate. She had lost the Thunder Lord helplessly, and she turned to Valdamir and shouted.

"Fight back! If you truly wish to escape your terrible fate!"

Valdamir ignored the provocation as though it weren't worth a response. Instead he raised his leg and brought it down on the human groaning beneath him, letting that serve as his answer. Warm blood spattered across Peruel's face.

Furious, Peruel unleashed killing blow after killing blow, but Valdamir handled each one calmly.

Whatever came straight at him he simply took. A fist too strong punched cleanly through Valdamir's body without stopping him at all. Even with a hole opened in him, the Duke of Crimson Blood went on quietly harvesting humans.

Wide sweeping attacks were no better. His energy sense read them and he turned their force back against her. When Peruel tried to shatter the greatsword he gave it a slight twist; head and heart he shielded even at the cost of other parts of his body. Even as Peruel broke him apart he regenerated and calmly slaughtered the guardians.

The regressor's assessment had been right. Not one person standing here could stop the Duke of Crimson Blood. Worse, his killing was clean and without waste, fast and quiet. No uproar like with Lungken. Everyone Valdamir passed fell to the ground with some part of their body opened up. Even with Peruel right there, it was still that bad.

And the one person who could have at least grabbed the Duke of Crimson Blood by the ankle, the regressor, was pinned down by Hilde, who had by now shown every card she had. No one was going to survive this.

That was why Perru moved.

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