WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 399: A Tale Left Behind: The Place They Left

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After the vampires disappeared, Cloud Waterfall was filled with nothing but blood-soaked silence. It seemed the vampires had taken not only lives and blood with them, but even the noise.

Those still able to move struggled to pull the wounded from among the corpses, but their movements were sluggish, as if all their vitality had been drained away. The Thunder Guardians attended to the living and the dead.

"Thunder Lord..."

Of course, there was one thing harder to come to terms with than anything else.

Thunder Lord Elkid lay dead, split in two. Dried flesh showed through the blood crusted over her body. She looked less like someone who had died than something that had broken down.

Not that repairing her would bring her back to life.

Shei, who had once been Elkid's companion in a timeline that no longer existed, looked down at her with bitter eyes and murmured.

"Elkid was part of the Holy Sword Corps..."

The Holy Sword Corps existed in all sorts of forms throughout the world. Some did not even know they belonged to it. Fate chose them.

In one cycle, Shei herself had been appointed to the Holy Sword Corps. Excited by the sense of belonging, she had truly believed she was one of them at first. Regression was too mysterious an ability to explain without calling it divine power.

After several cycles, she learned just how alien that power was. Still, the comfort she had found among the many different powerful people gathered in the Holy Sword Corps had remained with her.

Perhaps that was why she had felt close to Elkid.

Shei gazed at Elkid's corpse with a bitter expression. Long ago, she had apparently grieved when a companion died, but after so many regressions, all she felt now was a little regret. It had happened too often, and they would return when she regressed anyway.

Rather than standing blankly like Perru, Shei raised a more practical question.

"Why did she awaken at this exact moment...?"

She could roughly guess why.

It was hard to believe, but Hughes, whom she had happened to meet in prison, claimed to be the King of Humanity.

The King of Sin was one branch of the King of Humanity. The dregs cast off as humanity, a life born of chaos, separated good from evil.

She did not know how it happened, but in the future, the King of Sin, an incarnation of a concept, would be born.

Perhaps through the King of Humanity.

That was what Shei knew, and she had been acting according to the Sanctum's will to prevent the King of Sin's descent. If the King of Humanity had appeared, the Sanctum's frantic reaction made sense. He could have been the King of Sin.

"It probably wasn't a lie. He revived Tyrkanzyaka's heart, and Peruel said so too."

If that was true, it was truly unfortunate.

The King of Humanity's appearance had triggered a reaction, only for it to provoke Tyrkanzyaka. Hilde's schemes during that process had caused Shei to fall out with them as well. She had intended to stand against the Sanctum and mediate the conflict in this cycle, but things had strayed far too far from the plan.

"Then Hughes is the King of Humanity before the King of Sin. That means his age... Ugh. Didn't the King of Sin emerge the same way a Beast King is born?"

Still, perhaps even this was an opportunity. Knowing that Hughes was the King of Humanity was a clue she could hardly trade for anything else. It more than made up for the plan going slightly wrong.

As always, the regressor comforted herself by telling herself this hardship would nourish the next regression.

And it would.

Feeling a sliver of hope, Shei suddenly had another question.

"...Then why didn't the Sanctum foresee Elkid's death?"

Tyrkanzyaka's darkness interfered with foresight. Even if they could not see what lay beyond that darkness, they would certainly know the darkness was there. Why had they sent Elkid and Peruel there of all places?

Unlike her other questions, this one did not yield an easy answer.

As the regressor furrowed her brow and pondered it, a black shadow approached from behind.

Both hands gripped a sharp spear tightly.

"Haah!"

A spear carrying lightning flew toward Shei's unguarded back. It was a fearsome surprise attack, infused with the principles of an internal art as it shot forward.

It would have been, if this were Shei from eight cycles ago.

Heaven-Reversing Boundary.

The internal art that made her body react to the future through experience moved Shei's body. Its effect resembled combat foresight, yet its nature was entirely different.

Shei twisted and stretched out an arm. The spear and her arm crossed. She reinforced her arm with internal energy, coiled around the spear like a snake, and pulled.

The shaft of alchemical steel snapped into three pieces.

Shei spoke indifferently to the Thunder Guardian standing there in shock.

"What? Why'd you suddenly attack me?"

They were on entirely different levels.

The opponent was a warrior who could stand against vampires. The Thunder Guardian trembled helplessly. Though the Thunder Guardians had trained their entire lives, they had been unable to do anything in the battle moments ago.

All they could do was shout with raw emotion.

"You, the monsters you brought killed the Thunder Lord! My comrades too!"

Shei was used to hearing this sort of resentment.

"If you mean the Elders, I didn't bring them."

"What's the difference? If you hadn't been here, none of this would have happened!"

The regressor knew that desperate cry well. She had seen enough people searching for somewhere to shift the blame whenever something happened.

As she considered whether to ignore or subdue him, another Thunder Guardian appeared and stopped him.

"Stop! He helped us."

"Helped us? Claudia treated them as honored guests and showed them every kindness! They repaid that kindness with betrayal!"

Thunder Lord Elkid had been part of the Holy Sword Corps. Before that, she had also been the Thunder Lord.

It was difficult for a leader to earn a favorable judgment from those they led, yet the Thunder Lord seemed to have managed it. The Guardians were ready to swear vengeance for her.

It was meaningless to hold Shei responsible when she had tried until the end to save Elkid, but no persuasion would get through to people overcome by emotion. Ordinary people needed something to cling to.

Rather than waste her effort, Shei answered with sarcasm.

"I'm sorry. You'd be satisfied if I brought Elkid back to life, but I can't do that..."

The moment she began to speak, lightning flashed.

At the same time, Elkid's eyes flew open.

Before anyone could process what was happening, Elkid rose in an uncanny, creaking motion, like a puppet controlled by strings. She paid no mind to the split flesh visible between the dried bloodstains.

Even Shei, who was accustomed to the deaths of former companions, was startled by a dead companion moving again. She stumbled back in shock, feeling a touch of fear.

Then she realized there was no life in Elkid and narrowed her eyes.

"What? Black magic?"

Black magic was magic that used living beings as mediums, the counterpart to white magic, which used objects as mediums.

A living body created its own small world, isolated from the outside. Even though it was physical, it carried meaning all its own. Black mages destroyed those small systems of life and used that power to bring strange miracles into reality.

Naturally, and cruelly, the human body was the easiest thing for humans to use. Since ancient times, black magic had required human corpses or bodies destined to become corpses. Its brutality had earned it contempt and persecution.

That was not something anyone had forced into existence. It was an entirely natural response.

Shei felt the same. The thought of using human corpses disgusted her, as did the thought that her companion's body was being desecrated.

"Did Cabilah leave black magic on her? What terrible taste!"

"...No."

For some reason, Perru answered.

Perru let out a deep breath and raised a hand. Threads carrying a mysterious power drifted through the air like clouds from her fingertips. When she moved her fingers, lights flashed from the threads in response.

A moment later, hundreds of bolts of lightning ran along Elkid's wounds and were drawn into her body.

The lightning flowing through her veins was clearly visible. For a moment, as though the lightning itself were her soul, light seemed to return to Elkid's eyes.

Having finally found the culprit, Shei asked.

"Rustscale Lord? What are you doing?"

"...I'm trying to repair the Thunder Lord."

Shei frowned at Perru, who spoke as if she were repairing a machine.

"What? Repair her? How?"

Perru could sense both the mysterious threads and the power of thunder within the Thunder Lord.

She had learned alchemy and mastered her innate arcane. That was why accepting the Golden Mirror's power had not been difficult at all. The Demon God Elixir touched Perru's innate arcane, allowing its power to take shape in a way she could understand.

But the Demon God Lightning Skein did not belong to Perru.

The power had chosen her, but Perru had almost no knowledge of how to use it. She only understood it to a limited extent where lightning and alchemy overlapped. If she wanted to wield that power more skillfully, she needed someone as well versed in it as the Thunder Lord.

Perru reached one conclusion.

If she could revive the Thunder Lord with the Golden Mirror's power, she could overcome the chaos that had come to Claudia and learn to use that power properly.

That was why Perru had asked Tyrkanzyaka to leave. The vampires would prevent Elkid's resurrection and bring chaos to Claudia. She had needed to get them away with any excuse she could find, and with Hughes's help, she had succeeded.

He had urged Tyrkanzyaka to leave this land.

It was not speculation.

Hughes had not made a show of it, but he had actively given his power to Perru. He had even prepared an environment where she could use it.

Others might not have noticed, but the one who received that power knew better than anyone.

Perru did not know what the King of Humanity was testing, or what he wanted her to do with this power.

Still, Perru had a principle.

No matter the situation or what others expected, she would uphold her own principle.

To make the world more valuable.

"...The Thunder Lord was made. Alchemy and the power of thunder formed her body and mind. It's complex and difficult to understand, but the Demon God's power might be able to repair it."

If the living held more value than a dead corpse, then reviving someone through alchemy was worth attempting.

No matter how those around her looked at her, Perru truly believed that and acted on it.

Far away, a Holy Maiden closed her eyes.

Reality had once been the future. In the past, the Holy Maiden had clearly seen this future.

She had wished that the Thunder Lord would not die.

Or perhaps that everyone there would die instead, so that the moment when humanity's dignity was tested would never come.

Only a god could move the future as they wished. Unfortunately, the Holy Maiden was not a god.

Foresight showed the future, but it could not move it at will. The moment the Holy Maiden tried to intervene, the future she had touched became twisted.

The Holy Maiden could only feel pity and grieve.

Footnotes:

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