WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 396: Even Heroes Wouldn't Have Wanted to Be Born in Troubled Times

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The Thunder God was an old fixture of Claudia. On days when the clouds were thick, it would creep over from the distant sea, peer around, then roar at the earth and rain down lightning. Thanks to the lightning towers and the Thunder Lord, it was not especially dangerous, but it was still a noisy old man that posed a threat.

Yet that was all intentional on the Thunder God's part. Faithful to its assigned role as an "alarm," it had never aimed its power at anyone. It warned people that lightning was coming, then let itself be outwitted by human ingenuity. Like the powerful but foolish giants from old tales.

[... . -]

That did not apply to the Thunder God now.

The Thunder God raised its spear.

The world trembled.

The hair on my body stood on end.

Tiny sparks danced over the dirt and rocks. The Thunder God's fury was searching for a sacrifice. All things held their breath and bowed their heads, waiting only for the supreme punishment to pass them by.

Gods had never once expressed their anger toward humans. If they had, this world would not have remained in one piece.

The Thunder God proved it.

[..-. .. .-. .]

The spear, more than ten meters long, heated until it shone pure white. Dirt and stones trembled, then rose into the air. At some point, the world seemed to stretch, and the spear became a single streak of light.

There was no thunderous roar splitting the world, no blinding flash that startled everyone. Even the power it had scattered across the world condensed into one point.

To throw its spear. That was its sole purpose.

There was not even a throwing motion. The light flashed, and before anyone knew it, the spear had vanished from the Thunder God's hand. The steel spear, now moving at the speed of lightning, was too fast for the eye to follow.

"...Woof?"

Azzy, who had been barking noisily, blinked. Lungken, who had been slaughtering humans moments ago, had vanished from before her eyes.

Instead, Lungken's arms and legs fell to the ground with dull thuds. The humans they had been holding fell with them.

I did not know how far Lungken would fly, but they were clearly closer to the Fog Duchy than Claudia now. Even an immortal Elder would need quite a while to restore their body and return to Claudia.

Perru, who had defeated the Elder, held out her arm and breathed hard. Vampires and humans alike had lost their voices as they stared at her. Perru looked at the devastation she had caused by unleashing the lightning.

A branching mark had been carved into the ground where the spear had passed. It was the trace left by the lightning spear tearing apart the earth. Thin strands of electricity rose from the shattered cracks like reeds. The lightning-saturated ground awaited only Perru's command.

At the center of everyone holding their breath, Perru panicked with a blank expression.

'...Huh?'

This was not what Perru had intended. She had only meant to restore the Thunder God with the Lord of Gold's power and frighten them. She wanted the Thunder God as it had originally been, noisy and threatening, nothing more.

Yet when she tried to restore it, an unknown power had interfered and caused an unexpected problem. The lightning thief had entrusted the power it had kept tightly hidden to Perru's will. Without realizing it, Perru had come to rule every bolt of lightning in this land.

And she had created a real Thunder God.

'...This isn't right.'

When someone fired a blank and a live bullet came out instead, the most startled person would be the one who pulled the trigger. Perru was exactly like that. When the Thunder God she had restored for intimidation sent the Elder flying, Perru was horrified by the uncontrollable power.

Perru's expressions barely changed even under normal circumstances, so even her startled face looked almost blank. With her lips pressed tightly together as she watched the Elder, she gave off the air of an absolute being detached from all worldly matters, as though she had expected this all along.

There was no time to correct that misunderstanding. Taking advantage of everyone's attention, Perru hurried to get to the point.

"...This is your final warning. Stop!"

It would not be entirely wrong to hear that as, If you don't stop, I'll make all of you look the same.

Now that she had proven she could do it, Perru's words were not a bluff but mercy. She was suppressing the power to overturn the world and twist its laws, giving them a chance to survive.

Not that she could properly use that power yet. It did not take refined technique to kill humans.

Still, there was one person here who possessed immense authority and had refined it with precise skill. The moment he sensed the new power while fighting the Steel Maiden, he moved without hesitation.

"Blood Mist."

Valdamir clenched his fist. The overwhelmingly powerful force burst even his clenched hand open, and droplets of blood scattered everywhere under the pressure. In an instant, a thick blood mist spread out and consumed the space. The fresh blood flowing from his body swallowed the pools of blood around him and gradually grew larger.

A life so close to death that it had become immortal instead. The Progenitor had been a seed of a Demon God, but she never fully bloomed and instead became a racial god. She established new rules that applied only to her vampires.

But establishing the rules did not guarantee that one would be the best at that game. Tyr had made them, but Valdamir had learned and honed their principles into technique.

In an instant, Cloud Waterfall was dyed crimson. Not a speck of sunlight entered the dark-red clouds, and the ominous stench of blood filled the air. A space created by vampires, for vampires.

Submerged within it, Valdamir moved through the blood mist. Only the red glow of his eyes lingered in the darkness, then Valdamir's form blurred.

It was not because he moved too quickly to see.

His body had melted into the blood mist.

Blood Ghost Shadow Step.

It had the name of a footwork technique, but it resembled swimming. To be more precise, it was closer to teleportation.

For vampires, the boundary between inside and outside was vague. Even when blood flowed or their bodies broke apart, they gave it no meaning. They bound themselves together and remade themselves through bloodcraft originating from the Progenitor's true blood. In other words, their origin lay in that blood.

So if they scattered their own blood like mist, the entire mist became the vampire's body and the domain of their power. Valdamir slightly shifted his center of gravity within his endlessly expanded self.

That alone brought Valdamir before Perru in an instant. Catching the greatsword flying after him, he muttered,

"You are wielding power you cannot handle."

A technique that let him disassemble himself before moving. It could not be followed or stopped. Perru reacted too late to even feel fear. Looking down at her eyes, filled only with confusion, Valdamir swung his greatsword downward with a blank expression.

He did not test whether she could respond. He did not even give her the chance.

But by reading thoughts, I could always tell my opponent's next move. Usually, I knew and still got beaten helplessly, but fortunately, I had a way to stop him this time.

The greatsword passed Perru's ear. A sound like the world being cleaved in two followed the wind, and a red sword aura left a huge scar on the ground. The greatsword split halfway through the earth.

A red greatsword that treated even solid ground as something it could cut. Yet Perru's blood was not on it.

The Duke of Crimson Blood's greatsword had missed Perru by a hair.

Valdamir looked at his right arm, the Elder's arm he had disassembled and reconstructed moments ago. A thin, threadlike strand extended from inside it. A line thinner and more delicate than a spiderweb flickered with a bright yellow glow.

What had pulled the right arm of the strongest Elder was a pitiful thread that looked unable to lift even a leaf.

Valdamir found the card at the end of that thread.

The Seven of Spades. The card worshipping the Thunder God had lightning coiled around it like a ball of thread.

The Seven of Spades, Lightning Skein. Like a reel used to wind kite string, it was a condensed mass of lightning formed from thin lightning threads wound thousands, tens of thousands... no, countless times beyond hundreds of millions and trillions.

Valdamir spoke with faint curiosity.

"So you are the one controlling the power."

Phew. I almost missed that.

I sighed inwardly in relief and denied it.

"No. It isn't my power. I'm borrowing it too."

Literally speaking, I was not the one who had made Valdamir's attack miss.

It was Valdamir's own power.

When Valdamir reconstructed his entire body, I scattered lightning threads through that location. Fine strands of lightning slipped between the blood as it joined together, then interfered and moved him when Valdamir tried to swing his greatsword.

If I could directly touch the inside of a body, even my pathetic magical power could make the Progenitor's heart beat, if only briefly. I knew that from experience.

And someone who had done it before was better at it. Now that I had the Lightning Demon God, I could control someone as long as lightning threads touched them.

Well, it was still a trick possible only through direct contact with the inside of the body. What idiot other than a vampire would let someone touch their nerves directly? And if they noticed and resisted like Valdamir, that was the end of it.

Valdamir clenched his right hand tightly. That alone snapped every lightning thread I had planted inside him. Having regained the freedom of his right arm, Valdamir rested his greatsword over his shoulder and looked back at me.

"Do you wish to die?"

A chilling killing intent swept over my entire body. As the strongest Elder unleashed his presence, even the hot blood coursing through me seemed to turn pale and hold its breath.

Even so, I did not lose my smile before Valdamir.

"You can't kill me."

After all, Tyr favored me.

I did not have to wait long. Tyr gave Valdamir a quiet warning.

"Valdamir. Restrain yourself."

Her quiet but firm voice told him not to act rashly. Valdamir immediately bowed his head.

"I understand, Progenitor."

The hostility vanished as though washed away, as if all his actions until now had been an act.

In truth, they had been much like an act. His actions, words, and even the force he gave off had all been meticulously calculated.

Valdamir would not need even a second to kill me here. If he moved the blood he had spread everywhere and squeezed my body, I would die spraying red juice like a pomegranate inside a press.

The same went for Perru. Perru, who had yet to fully grasp the Thunder God, did not have the power to stop an Elder's attack. Even if she had somehow deflected one strike, she would not have endured if Valdamir had insisted on continuing his assault.

In short, Perru and I were alive because Valdamir had not intended to kill us.

Valdamir did not act with a fixed purpose in mind. He had revealed killing intent toward me to confirm Tyr's true feelings, and he had attacked Perru because he genuinely sensed a threat. After assessing the situation further with his own power, he gave up easily. He had sincerely wanted to kill the Holy Maiden, but the moment he judged it impossible, he changed his objective.

They said people became more stubborn as they aged, but perhaps once they crossed a certain limit, they came full circle. Valdamir's judgment was astonishingly quick and flexible.

My favorite kind of person. As long as I read his mood and went along with him, there was nothing to lose.

"Let's calm down a little now, Tyr. We don't need to fight among ourselves, do we?"

Tyr still looked dissatisfied.

She did not hate Perru, but if Perru lent her strength to the Sanctum, Tyr could kill her without the slightest hesitation. Yet I had not only given Perru the Demon God's power, I was protecting her as well. By Tyr's principles, she should have been able to kill me too, but Tyr was deliberately pushing that possibility out of her mind.

She did not want to fall into that kind of anguish.

"Hyu. Are you taking their side? The underlings of the Sanctum, who sought to cast not only me but even you out of this world?"

Tyr's complaint carried deep resentment toward me for putting her in conflict.

I had loosened the line enough, so it was time to pull it back a little. People's hearts were like kites. Pull too hard and they plunged to the ground, but loosen the line too much and they flew away entirely.

"I don't know if I'm on their side, but I've never sided with the Sanctum. If anything, I want to get in the Sanctum's way."

"Then why are you stopping me?"

"Because the Sanctum wants them dead too."

Though I had not even pointed her out, Valdamir quietly turned his gaze toward the Steel Maiden. Peruel, who had been happily pounding Valdamir's body moments earlier, had stood idle at the most critical moment and was simply watching.

Without summoning angels or using divine power.

So you already knew from fighting her yourself, Duke of Crimson Blood? This person was no saint either.

In any case, since the Duke of Crimson Blood was too loyal to voice his thoughts, I advised Tyr in his place.

"The Steel Maiden intends to martyr everyone here within the clouds!"

Footnotes:

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