WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 42: How to Hide a Corpse

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Night had fallen, and the daytime lights were off. In the pitch-darkness, only faint night lights illuminated the world. The prison corridor looked as though someone had laid carbon paper over the world and shaded it in with a pencil, leaving only black outlines. The darkness was so deep that, if you were not careful, you would not notice even the wall directly in front of you.

Within it, a man moved without making a sound.

He had a large bundle slung over his back, with arms and legs bent at grotesque angles protruding through the gaps in its knots. They bent in ways a normal human body never could, angles possible only if the limbs had been attached somewhere other than a vertebrate's proper joints.

Or if the limbs had been severed altogether.

Anyone who saw him carrying a dismembered body would have assumed he was trying to hide a corpse. He should have been seized at once and questioned about his crime, but the veil of darkness hid both his figure and his sin. What could not be seen was no crime. Taking advantage of the night, he went undisturbed by anyone...

"Woof? What's that?"

"Shh. Azzy, go away for a bit. It's a surprise gift."

"Woof? A gift? Mine?"

"As if."

Undisturbed by any 'person,' he hid the dismembered body somewhere secret.

"Woof!"

"Don't dig it up! Hey! Don't eat it! Bad!"

He hid it. Anyway, that was what happened.

Another peaceful day. I gathered the trainees and stood before the blackboard. When I reached for some chalk, I found the box empty and pointed at the regressor.

"We're out of chalk. Trainee Shei, could you get some from the cabinet in the back?"

"Do you have to make me do it?"

"You're close. Please."

"Tsk. Fine, if you're asking."

The regressor sauntered toward the cabinet with a delinquent's swagger. Slowly, I counted her steps.

One. Two. Three. Ta-da.

Just as I had planned, the regressor flung open the cabinet door.

At that instant, a body with grotesquely bent limbs and twitching vivid red muscles sprang out. Its face, tongue lolling as if dead, met the regressor's eyes before slowly toppling toward her along with its severed limbs.

A grotesque corpse appearing without warning or context. Anyone with ordinary courage would have fallen over in shock.

The regressor faced it impassively.

"Heaven-Reversing Boundary."

As if this was nothing worth being startled over, she kept her expression blank and pushed the collapsing corpse away with one hand...

'Aaaaah!'

Only her expression remained blank.

Unlike her calm outward appearance, the regressor screamed mentally in surprise. When the corpse's detached right arm twitched, she shuddered and hurriedly shoved it back inside.

'That scared me...! What is this?! Why is something like this inside the cabinet?!'

She was making a huge fuss internally, but none of that emotion showed on the outside.

The regressor's technique, Heaven-Reversing Boundary, engraved particular movements into the body so it could respond reflexively in any situation. It activated even when she was horrified by something unexpected. Though her heart was pounding wildly, her body, forged through countless trials, maintained an unshakable mind. No, an unmoving body.

The regressor glanced at me and spoke evenly.

"There's a corpse inside. Hey, do you know anything about this?"

'...Since when was a corpse in here? Don't tell me it's been here since I first arrived. Th-that's creepy.'

What? She pulled herself together quickly. Tsk. I thought she'd be more surprised. It had been my masterpiece surprise box, yet all that preparation had been for nothing.

Swallowing my disappointment, I answered as calmly as though I knew nothing.

"Huh. Since when has that been in there?"

Azzy perked up her ears and stood.

"Woof! I know! Yesterday..."

"Hah! How dare a beast interrupt while a human lord is speaking?!"

I clamped a hand over the witness dog's mouth and waved dismissively.

"It seems someone hid this corpse in the cabinet. We should investigate. Trainee Shei, could you take it out for a moment?"

"This?"

"You're close. Please. You aren't afraid of corpses, are you?"

"That's true."

The regressor casually shouldered the corpse. To look at her, she seemed completely unfazed. Her thoughts were mostly steady too.

They said the mind followed the body. Without that Heaven-Reversing Boundary, she would have made an embarrassing spectacle of herself. What a shame.

"There."

The regressor laid out the immortal's dismembered body. I bent down and fitted the limbs together right in front of her. I put the tongue I had pulled out the previous night for dramatic effect back in place, then restored the right arm whose fingers I had tied one by one in case it resisted.

As the pieces came together and gradually took the form of a person, the regressor's gaze darkened.

'It wasn't a corpse. A huge, muscular man with dark skin... It's definitely that immortal.'

Oh. Finally.

I had not hidden the immortal in the cabinet solely to startle the regressor. That was only a secondary goal.

According to her memories, in every previous cycle, this immortal had apparently survived until the end... Naturally, since he was immortal.

In the previous cycle, while searching for information, the regressor met the immortal and heard a rough account of what had happened in Tantalus. Then, to obtain more accurate information, she infiltrated this place herself.

That was all I had been able to read. Her recollection had ended, so I had no way of knowing what information she received from the immortal or what happened in the previous cycle. It would have been nice if I could read all her memories from that cycle, but for some reason, I could only see it through the regressor's recollections.

So, to learn why I died, I had to bring the immortal before the regressor. That way, even a small clue might crawl out of her head.

The regressor asked in a more serious voice.

"Has this immortal been here the whole time?"

"Who knows?"

"Impossible. Injuries like these would have bled. Tyrkanzyaka couldn't have failed to notice."

The vampire answered her question herself.

"No. If they are whom I think they are, even I would not have noticed."

The vampire, still using her coffin as a chair today, looked indifferently at the body with its limbs torn off.

"They are earthfolk from somewhere on the grasslands."

"Earthfolk?"

"Since we are both immortals, we call them earthfolk to distinguish them from ourselves. They call us blood wraiths. We are not particularly close. They see us as cursed, and we cannot take their blood either."

The vampire raised a hand. A crack in the coffin opened slightly, and bright red blood seeped out. It crawled toward the immortal as if it would devour him at any moment.

But the moment the blood touched the immortal's body, it rapidly lost its strength. The red blood turned black, crumbled like sand, and fell to the floor.

"Their flesh resembles Mother Earth. They attained immortality after offering their entire race as human sacrifices. Their flesh is sand, and their blood is mud. Their bodies are extremely impure and filthy, fit only for them to contain. Therefore, even when their blood is outside their bodies, it is unaffected by my bloodcraft."

The vampire wrinkled her nose slightly and shook her hand. The blood, except for the parts that had crumbled like sand, returned to her side. She flung it away as if she had touched filth.

The regressor nodded.

"...I understand. Then no one knows how long this immortal has been here."

Hearing the regressor's murmur, Azzy straightened up and spoke.

"Woof, I know! Yesterday..."

"Hah! How dare someone with a two-digit IQ speak in a three-digit club! Even a schoolhouse dog listens politely for three years. How dare a mere prison guard dog open her mouth?! Ten years is too soon for you!"

"...Grrrr."

I thought Azzy liked me a little less now. I would have to brush her fur for at least an hour later to barely make up for it.

Still, keeping her quiet came first. The regressor quickly lost interest in Azzy and me.

'What nonsense is he doing to Azzy now...? Whatever. It's not as if that man's strange behavior began yesterday.'

This was why one's usual conduct mattered. Even when you did something insane, people let it pass without much suspicion. My efforts to behave bizarrely all this time had paid off.

'The immortal comes first. He seems critically injured. Can he even wake up? It would be different on the surface, but this is the Abyss, cut off from its veins. It'll be difficult for him to recover on his own.'

The regressor looked doubtfully at the immortal. Though immortals regenerated easily even from mortal wounds, there was no way to restore them in the Abyss.

'Maybe if he had Mother Earth's blessing... If he consumed a massive amount of crops, perhaps. But I don't know how long it would take. Should I use a potion? If that changes things from the past, the information I have will become meaningless.'

No wonder he had been eating bean porridge by the potful, something no ordinary human could stomach. It had been to regenerate his injuries.

Originally, I had only intended to show him to her and leave it at that. Hmm. Given the situation, should I try waking him up?

Fine, I decided. I waved a hand toward the regressor.

"Trainee Shei, who likes men, stop staring at a man's body with such lecherous eyes and return to your seat."

The regressor, lost in deep thought, suddenly staggered. She barely caught herself before falling, then shouted at me.

"W-What are you talking about all of a sudden?!"

"Though this man is unconscious, leaving him exposed to the heated gaze of another man who likes men seems a bit inappropriate."

"What heated gaze?! I'm normal!"

"What? You like women? Then what was that about washing Azzy yourself last time? When you washed Azzy, did you scrub away not black grime, but black desires?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Right, of course not. Because you like men."

"Th...!"

As the regressor fell into a contradiction she could not refute, her face turned red.

The vampire tapped the desk with her parasol.

"Enough."

She opened the parasol slightly and hid her face behind it. A somewhat embarrassed voice came from behind it.

"I will vouch for him. As you asked, I watched last time. While Shei washed the King of Dogs, he only seemed troubled and showed no particular interest. His claim that he likes men is probably true as well... Oh my."

"Wait, Tyrkanzyaka!"

"It's all right, Shei."

Unable to meet her eyes, the vampire showed only her lips and defended the regressor with a warm smile whose meaning I could not understand.

"I have thought deeply about this. Is not your inclination also a part of you? Though you have abandoned the heavenly order of harmony between yin and yang, I too am a monster who defies heaven. We are both beings the Sanctum cannot accept. It is not for me to blame you."

"I'm not like that...!"

"I'm all right. I understand."

Having decided to accept the other person completely, the vampire smiled so gently that even the foul-mouthed regressor could not argue.

There was no escaping now. The regressor shut her mouth tightly, her face bright red.

'I might as well tell them I'm a woman now...! No! I can't do that. If I say I'm a woman at this point, it'll look like I lost!'

Her pride had formed in a truly strange direction. She considered being cornered into revealing a truth a defeat.

From my perspective, having read every one of her thoughts, it was rather amusing.

Well, she did not know I could read minds. I could keep reading her thoughts and teasing her like this.

'Besides, with the Mask of Agartha I got from the treasure vault, I made sure my first impression always came across as male. The only way to break that suggestion is to take off my clothes... But I absolutely refuse to do that, even if I kill someone!'

I had wondered why such a sloppy disguise had not been exposed. So it had been another incomprehensible treasure. There were all kinds of strange things in the world.

Wait. What? Even if she killed someone? Not even if she died? Who was she going to kill?

I hurriedly stepped in to settle things.

"All right, all right. That's enough of that! Let's revive this immortal who suffered such an unfortunate accident!"

...Fine. I would stop teasing her. Graciously giving the regressor a way to escape, I pointed to the immortal lying there with all his limbs torn off.

Footnotes:

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