WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 398

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Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Perru's plea for the vampires to leave wasn't born out of simple hatred or fear.

"...What happened up in the clouds, I still don't fully know. As long as the vampires aren't showing their faces."

With the Golden Mirror gone and the Thunder Lord dead, having vampires appear on top of everything else would send the chaos spiraling beyond control. There was no hiding the fact that the Thunder Lord had been killed by vampires, but being attacked was a world apart from being subjugated.

"...I have no desire to be enemies with the Duchy. The Duchy is powerful and frightening. So please, just leave. You've achieved what you came for."

Vampires couldn't rule outside the fog anyway. They could wander sunlit land, but any castle they built there would crumble like sand when the sun came flooding in with the next high tide. No one would serve a lord who lost all authority every afternoon.

With the Golden Mirror gone, much of Claudia's geopolitical importance had vanished along with it. Perru pleaded earnestly with Tyr.

Naturally, Tyr was under no obligation to accept that proposal. She was easygoing about most things, but where the Sanctum was concerned, she was a different creature entirely. Even without dominating or subjugating the city outright, she had been quietly considering whether to at least carve a lasting fear into Claudia.

Not that she absolutely had to.

"Ugh, I'm dying."

I let my exhaustion show plainly and slumped against Tyr's shoulder. She startled and caught me.

"Hyu? Are you all right?"

"My body was already wrecked, and I forced it to keep moving anyway. I feel like I'm actually dying."

"What did you do to yourself? Did you take something?"

"Not exactly. I was unconscious, so I ran electricity through my whole body to force myself up. Same thing you did to your heart, basically."

It was considerably more precise and dangerous than that, but Tyr understood the general idea well enough.

She looked at the dried blood caked across the front of my shirt. Bloodcraft might have been able to return blood to my body, but Hilde had already healed the wounds well enough that they had closed. Without that treatment I'd have died, and there was no tearing my body open like dumpling skin to pour blood back in, so I was going to be living with anemia for a while.

"What should I... in a pinch, would you take some of my blood?"

"That would turn me into a vampire. You're not planning to let me die so you can bring me back as one, are you? Don't tell me that's why you didn't take me to a doctor earlier, just resting my head on your knee instead..."

I poked straight at the mark, and Tyr flinched. She denied nothing, and to change the subject she called for Valdamir.

"Valdamir."

"At your command."

"I will take Hyu with me to the Duchy ahead of the others. You remain here and root out whatever remains of the Sanctum."

Authority is relative, and a Progenitor outranks the Duke of Crimson Blood by enough margin to hand out assignments freely. Tyr issued the order. Valdamir accepted it, though not without a word of his own.

"I will follow as commanded, but if I may humbly offer my thoughts."

'Did I work too hard lately? I'm getting stuck with assignments again. What a pain. How do I talk my way out of this without rubbing her the wrong way?'

Even someone like the Duke of Crimson Blood apparently disliked being overworked. He thought faster than he had during the battle and found his excuse.

"Claudia is nearby, and it won't be difficult to return. Might it not be fine to leave things as they are for now?"

"Leave them alone? What if they sneak back in, patient as ever, and take root again?"

"Pulling up weeds once they've taken root is simpler than digging through the soil to pick out every seed, is it not? The future may belong to them, but time is on our side. A few years of watching won't cause any problems."

It was the kind of remark that laid bare just how differently humans and vampires understood a span of years. Tyr, equally unbothered by time, found herself persuaded. She gave an elegant nod, steadied me at her side, and turned to Perru.

"Very well. Perru, we'll leave. This is for Hyu's sake, but I'm also choosing it out of consideration for you. Otherwise there would be no reason whatsoever to leave this place unscathed."

"...Thank you."

"Don't forget it. For your own sake and this land's."

Tyr left her warning with Perru and raised a hand. At her call, the coffin that had been left on the far side of the Cloud Waterfall flew to her side. It was meant for me, since I could barely walk. Grateful as I was, I had to wonder why it had to be a coffin. I hoped it wasn't some kind of omen.

A thunderous crash sounded just then, and Lungken's massive frame dropped from the sky. He ripped off a fistful of his badly singed fur without a second thought and bellowed.

"Raaaaahhh! Who did that, who sent me flying?!"

"Lungken. We're going back. Get ready."

"What? Progenitor, I just got here?"

"Then how convenient. You can take the same road back."

Lungken clicked his tongue, looking dissatisfied. He clearly wanted to finish the fight he hadn't been able to settle, but at the Progenitor's command he dropped it at once.

Tyr sat beside me on top of the coffin and set it moving without so much as a glance behind her. The thick fog hung dark around us. With no sunlight to slow it, the coffin glided smoothly ahead.

"Wait!"

The regressor stepped into its path. She was still in the middle of sorting herself out.

She had shaken off Hilde and been trying to get closer when she witnessed the scene between me and Peruel. Peruel using the power of foresight was something she recognized from before her regression, but Peruel's attitude toward me was something she had never seen. The Steel Maiden, who had always been as unreadable as stone, had treated me with open hostility, contempt, and fear, and as though she found all of it completely natural. The regressor found that unsettling. The Holy Maidens with the gift of foresight had always been mysterious, composed.

'The King of Humanity? But that can't be right. The King of Humanity I saw, no, the King of Sin was...! I'm sure of it...!'

On top of that, learning that I, someone she had happened to meet and travel with, was actually the King of Humanity had thrown her nearly into a panic.

"The King of Humanity? You? You've been deceiving me?"

"I haven't deceived you. I never said I wasn't the King of Humanity."

Wordplay, and I knew it. I had done everything I could to hide it. With the King of Sin to be stopped, there was no way I could have just announced myself.

I hadn't wanted to be found out at all if I could help it. But since I had been, I might as well make use of it.

"It's not exactly the kind of thing you brag about. It only draws attention without actually helping anything."

"If it's really true, that you're the King of Humanity...!"

"Then what? Were you thinking of killing me preemptively?"

The regressor flinched. She hadn't gone so far as to feel killing intent toward me yet, but if killing me would make everything better, she wouldn't hesitate. That was what a regressor was.

She might even try once and see how things developed from there. So I needed to keep my distance. No telling what the next regression would bring.

"I wouldn't do that! I just, it's..."

"Enough. Hyu, let's go."

Tyr laid a hand over my shoulder and cast a cool look at the regressor.

"This was as far as our road with Shei went. We traveled together because the intention to protect the world was admirable, but it seems there was no place for us in the world Shei envisions. Just as the Holy Maidens had decided it. Then we part ways here."

The regressor wasn't good at lying. She couldn't boldly fire back that we were comrades, that nothing in the world would make her harm us. She knew she couldn't promise that.

'But if the world doesn't end! If Tyrkanzyaka doesn't march in blood, if the King of Wolves doesn't bare its teeth at humanity, I want to stay with you! That's the only way I won't have to point a blade at you later!'

The inner truth of it was honest and right, no mind-reading required. By ordinary standards, we might have been the ones in the wrong. Azzy, to whom civilization means nothing. Tyr, who tramples morality and dignity underfoot and laughs. Or someone like me, discarded by humanity and strange in my own way. Next to any of us, the regressor was closer to an ideal image of what a person should be.

The strange thing is that the most ideal human is actually the strangest thing of all. No such person exists in reality. The framework of ideals the Sanctum had built were precisely the kind of things that bind you harder the more impossible they become to actually embody.

Until she could bridge that gap, the regressor couldn't travel with us.

Tyr was there, and so were the Elders. Right now, even with the fighting ability she was so proud of, the regressor was at a disadvantage. She usually caught people off guard with information from past regressions, but the surprise attack had cost her most of that edge.

"Woohoo! We're finally parting ways, aren't we? What a relief. Shei never really fit in with you all anyway!"

Hilde had drifted over without anyone noticing and slipped quietly onto Tyr's coffin. The fight with the regressor had left plenty of small cuts and scrapes on her, but for someone who used energy, that barely qualified as an injury. Tyr watched with visible displeasure, though she didn't push her off.

"...That you tried to use me was unpleasant, but I'll let it go at that. Don't, however, assume everything will go exactly as you intend."

"Use you? This was a mutually beneficial arrangement! 'I' happen to be handling military state diplomacy at a fairly high level, you know? I don't pull shady moves where someone walks away taking all the losses! Especially not against vampires!"

"You don't need to press the point. I knew that well enough already. It's also why I kept your life intact, Holy Sword Corps or not, so hold that thought carefully."

The implication was that even the slightest shadow of doubt and Hilde wouldn't have made it out alive. Even at a threat like that, Hilde only smiled with her eyes and urged us on.

"Permission granted and everything settled, Father. Shall we go?"

Let's. We'd been wandering long enough, time to settle somewhere. I still needed time to fully make the Demon God's power my own, and I was long overdue for a little comfort with a solid backer to lean on.

"We imagined our farewell would come beautifully, perfectly prepared, but the world betrayed us as though it were the most natural thing. Take care, everyone. I hope we cross paths again when a new wind blows."

"No need for that. We won't be meeting again."

The Elder moved to the front before Tyr's coffin had even begun to advance. There was no one left to block the way, and anyone who tried would be finished long before they got close to Tyr. The regressor might have stood a chance if she had steeled herself fully, but she was still mired in confusion.

If we ever met again, she would have made up her mind by then. Hmm, that was a little frightening. All the more reason to stay close to Tyr.

And so, leaving behind the marks of battle, Hilde and I and the vampire company moved forward into the thick clouds. Into the Cloud Waterfall, where the land lay always in shadow. A cursed land where no sunlight reached, a paradise for vampires.

With the Progenitor's return, leaving a few behind in the Lesser States, we stepped into the realm of darkness.

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