WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 414: Elder, Ain, Yeiling, and Human - 1

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The suspect in the Elder murder case: Lir Nightingale.

She had become Luscinia's Yeiling over ten years ago. The one who turned Lir into a Yeiling was her mother, Lily, who had become an Ain around the same time. It was said that Luscinia's "experiments" were behind the mother and daughter becoming an Ain and a Yeiling, respectively.

After that, Lily was executed while attempting to flee the Fog Duchy with several citizens. The citizens who fled with her were sent to the crusher.

...The crusher?

No matter how thoroughly I searched the documents, there was no explanation. It must have been common knowledge in the Fog Duchy, something that needed no explanation. I tried to ignore the ominous feeling the word gave me and turned the page. The first page contained only objective facts, but subjective judgments and testimonies began after that.

Then I could skim the rest. I could verify subjective judgments and testimonies myself.

My mind-reading was several times more accurate than anything written down.

"Father, what do you think of this new stepmother? Do you like her?"

"She's better than a self-proclaimed daughter who keeps trying to sell me off somewhere."

Hilde had somehow sniffed me out and come over, lingering nearby.

"Come on. You'd like it too, Father. Put your body to a little use, and you get two countries for free."

"If countries were actually edible, I might like it. Since I can't eat them, I'm not very interested."

"You say that like you don't care. Do you really think you can find the Demon God without a country's help?"

"I'd like to say I can manage just as I have so far, but..."

It was hard to deny.

Even reaching the Abyss had required me to risk my life. If anything had gone wrong during that process, either my plans would have fallen apart or I would have been in danger.

The same went for the Lord of Gold of the Lesser States and Claudia's lightning thief. It was difficult enough for me to cross this harsh land alone and safely approach the Demon God's core. What guarantee was there that I would make it back out in one piece? I had barely managed to stay alive by relying on Tyr or the regressor.

"It'll probably be difficult to approach the Demon God as a lone individual from now on. I'll give it serious consideration."

"Hehe. I'll look forward to it!"

"Don't expect too much. I haven't shown you anything, so I don't know what you're expecting from me."

"Because you're the King of Humanity, Father."

"That was ages ago. The King of Humanity stopped being a king in Year One. I'm an ordinary human."

The King of Humanity was a being once repudiated as king, torn to pieces, and stripped of all power. That being was not me, but if the King of Humanity had truly been capable of building an age of peace, it would not have been betrayed. If things had continued as they were in Year One, the country would have split apart.

Hilde was even more confident than I was.

"As the King of Humanity, Father, you can become 'any kind of human,' can't you?"

...Did Hilde know about my mind-reading? I read Hilde's mind, but fortunately, that was not the case. Hilde simply had pure, baseless faith in me.

"For a perfect country, Yuel had no choice but to shape every human into a brick and use them. But you don't have to do that, Father. Whether they're great figures or street thugs, you wouldn't care. You're the only one who can bind all kinds of people together!"

"What is with that look in Hilde's eyes...? It's strange..."

"Don't pretend you don't know! Just getting Shei and Tyrkanzyaka to stay in the same place is practically a great achievement!"

What was that supposed to mean? Those two had apparently gotten along well originally. It was a story from a previous cycle, before I was around.

"If we're going back to the military state, we'll have to investigate the Fog Duchy's murder case first. The sooner we uncover the truth, the sooner the trial will end. Hilde, you ran the military state's intelligence bureau like it was an extension of your body. Do you know anything?"

"What I know is the same as what you know, Father. You know where my information came from."

Hilde snatched the documents from my hand and quickly flipped through dozens of pages.

"The military state had a system in place, so I could gather a certain amount of information independently. But to obtain information outside the country, I had no choice but to rely on 'power.' The Fog Duchy can't be seen through power."

"Yet you put Tyrkanzyaka into Tantalus when you made it."

"Tyrkanzyaka was sleeping outside the Fog Duchy, wasn't she? Yuel wouldn't like darkness swirling in one corner of the country either."

As expected of someone who had once headed an intelligence bureau, Hilde's ability to compile and analyze information was no joke. Hilde finished reading the documents in an instant.

"No matter how I look at it, Lir Nightingale seems suspicious. If this were the military state, we'd have arrested her first. Is there anything more to investigate?"

"That's exactly it. I don't like that."

"You're a contrarian by nature. Now I understand why they call you a barbarian."

Hilde shut the documents with a clap, then grinned at me.

"Then who do you suspect the most, Father?"

"Of course I suspect this vampire too. She was surely deeply involved in the late Luscinia's death. But..."

I knew she was not the culprit because I had read her mind. Yet every circumstance pointed to her as the culprit. It was unnatural.

Which meant someone... had rigged it.

"Could she really have done all of this alone?"

When I casually raised the question, Hilde caught it as if waiting for it.

"You think there's someone behind her?"

"It's a reasonable hypothesis, isn't it?"

"I question your nerve instead, Father. You're going to search for the mastermind behind an Elder's murder in the Fog Duchy? If someone could harm an Elder and frame a Yeiling, they must be an Elder at the very least. And a lunatic capable of lying calmly in front of the Progenitor, at that?"

They would have to be insane. Still...

I grinned and asked back.

"Aren't you curious?"

"Hee..."

Hilde seemed a little restless too, tapping the documents for no reason and letting out a groan.

Hilde had handled deep, dark information in the military state and trusted facts more than circumstances. Lir was at a disadvantage where appearances were concerned, but in practical terms, it was nearly impossible for a Yeiling to kill an Elder. That remained true even if Lir was a genius who had surpassed bloodcraft's limits in another way.

Hilde was fully on board.

"Let's ask a nearby Elder first."

"Investigating an Elder, huh. Even ten lives wouldn't be enough."

"There's never enough life. Just like money."

That was how the small investigation team of Hilde and me set out to find an Elder.

The Fog Duchy bordered the sea.

There was sea on one side of the country and a mountain range on the other. It was a land where damp air created fog throughout the year.

It could not be called an easy place to live. Tigers roamed the mountains, and sea-beasts churned in the sea. Perhaps tired of lamb, hungry tigers occasionally made humans their dessert. Whenever a sea-beast so much as stretched, storms swept across the entire coast. The mountains and sea were treasure troves of resources, but the gatekeepers protecting those troves were powerful enough to threaten people's survival. Even the little land available for farming was plagued by fog.

It was because of such land that vampires could build a country there, and humans could accept vampire rule. The vampires used their strength to uncover those riches and bestowed them upon humans.

Thanks to that, the Fog Duchy's humans had gained pasturelands and mudflats. The mudflats, especially, were filled with things the sea had washed ashore and were the duchy's greatest resource.

About an hour east of the Castle of the Full Moon was a vast stretch of mudflat. Shells and seaweed washed ashore lay scattered everywhere over the salt-soaked ground. Hundreds of humans hurriedly gathered shellfish and seaweed with baskets and rakes.

Did money come out of the ground? No, money simply fell onto the mudflats. It was a land with a miraculous economy where you earned money just by picking it up.

The one managing this vast mudflat was...

"High tide's coming soon! Move it, you lazy fools!!"

Cabilah.

Elders did not often work directly. As an aristocrat and ruler of the Fog Duchy, Cabilah had diligently stopped here as soon as she arrived at the Castle of the Full Moon. With her arms folded and a sour expression on her face, she had grabbed one human and was berating the human.

"Are you picking those up for our sake? That's fodder for you people to eat! Put your heart into it! At this rate, even clams without legs will run away from you!"

"Lady Cabilah, there's still two hours until high tide..."

"Two hours? That's the time it takes to blink! Close your eyes and open them again, and most of this place will be underwater!"

"No. You can't judge it by vampire time..."

The bearded human was at a loss dealing with Cabilah's outburst. At a glance, she looked like a spoiled noble who had come out on an inspection and was throwing her weight around. In truth, that was exactly what she was doing.

Still, the fact that an ordinary human could keep talking back to that great and cruel Elder showed how familiar Cabilah was with humans.

Cabilah was not merely a loud, incompetent noble either. She suddenly furrowed her brow and looked toward the sea. The thick sea fog limited visibility. The horizon was nowhere in sight, and even the curves the waves drew along the shore could not be seen. Yet... there was something ominous in the black mist tinged with darkness.

Cabilah gave an order to her thrall.

"Cheisi. Bring me the screaming monkey."

"As ordered."

An Ain was an Elder's thrall. Even in the Fog Duchy, there were only around a hundred blood nobles. Depending on their field, they were powerful beings who could look down on even the Lords of the Lesser States or the military state's generals... yet even an Ain was no more than an errand runner an Elder could command with a tilt of the chin.

The vampire called Cheisi promptly handed over a small doll made of monkey bones. Without looking, Cabilah picked it up.

Blood Weaver Cabilah specialized in black magic-based puppetry. She filled the puppet with blood through bloodcraft. The bones absorbed the blood and began to move according to Cabilah's will. Cabilah whispered into the doll's ear.

"Scream, little monkey. Drive them all away with your noisy voice."

At Cabilah's command, the monkey-bone doll grinned and turned its head. Then it opened its jaw and screamed in a voice like scraping bones.

"Oooookiiiii! Run! Run-!"

The warning cry seemed to tear through their eardrums. The humans gathering shellfish reacted at once. Young and old alike tucked their baskets under their arms and ran for the highest ground they could find. Hurried footprints appeared across the mudflat.

"A tsunami is coming!"

"Everyone, run!"

The nearest seawater was still far from here. No matter how large the waves were, it was hard to imagine them covering this vast mudflat and reaching so far.

Yet... the reason this land, so far from the sea, was a mudflat soon became clear.

An enormous presence rippled beyond the fog. A massive wave, one better described as a tsunami, was approaching. It had already passed the shore and was bearing down with terrifying force, overturning the land itself.

It was not a natural phenomenon. Mother Earth, who created earthquakes and tsunamis, was innocent this time. This tsunami was a disaster caused purely by a single sea-beast.

It was the work of a sea-beast. Sensing the abnormal force, Cabilah asked.

"Cheisi. Did you see it? Was it an island whale? A cloud ray?"

"...I'm sorry. I sent my familiar that way, but it was swept up in the storm and fell. Please do not forgive my incompetence."

"A storm? Then it's a cloud ray. Of all things."

Cabilah frowned as if it were a bother.

The cloud ray was a legendary sea-beast said to raise cirrus clouds from the tips of its fins whenever it flapped them. It had struck the sea hard once, and the result had reached the land.

The sea shattered by the cloud ray's rampage flew through the air like fragments of glass. Spray poured down overhead. Unconscious fish fell among the salty droplets. Whether it was lucky or unlucky, a small child fleeing with the others was struck squarely by a fish and collapsed.

The child's parents stopped in panic and ran back. They threw away their basket and lifted the fallen child onto one parent's back. The tsunami did not wait and engulfed the family. At this rate, an entire family would disappear as food for the sea.

"Hmph."

Watching them, Cabilah slit open the doll's back and pulled out an enormous bone needle, thick as an awl. Holding it in both hands, she drove it into the ground while pushing her bloodcraft to its limit. The sharp bone needle dug deep into the mudflat and took root, like a sapling being planted.

Cabilah muttered.

"Dragonbone Wall."

Crack, crack, crack.

A massive spine rose from where the bone needle had been planted.

Vertebrae rippled across the vast mudflat. The ribs of a gigantic beast stretched outward, half-buried in the mud. The dragonbone, which had grown as if splitting the mudflat in two, became a breakwater and blocked the tsunami. The tsunami smashed against it and broke apart.

It did not stop the tsunami completely. Still, the current had been greatly weakened after striking the bones. The spray swept over the family, but they endured by clinging tightly to one another.

If high tide came, low tide followed. That was the law of nature. The tsunami that had surged in as if to overturn the mudflat gradually receded with time. Before long, the mudflat had returned to its original state.

Except for the spine of a massive dragon that had grown across it, splitting the mudflat in two.

If sea-beasts were frightening, then what was Cabilah, who had so easily blocked a sea-beast's attack? The humans whose lives had been saved by the Elder looked at Cabilah with reverence filling their hearts.

Cabilah, facing those who revered her...

"What? There's still two hours left? I've been doing this five hundred years longer than you have! You're livestock, so do as you're told instead of talking back every chance you get!"

She stomped her feet and screamed like a child. The reverence filling people's hearts quickly faded away.

Footnotes:

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