WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 421

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Elder, Ain, Yeiling, and Human - 8

My suggestion to hide Finlay hadn't amounted to much. Valdamir seated me across from him, propped his chin in one hand, and fell into thought.

"Finlay."

"Do you know him?"

"I do."

"Ah, a stupid question. He'd be a thrall of the Duke of Crimson Blood, after all."

Count Erte, who had been standing at attention beside Valdamir, stepped in with a quiet correction.

"Not because he is a thrall. His Highness is exceptional in his own right. His Highness knows the personal details of every vampire in existence. Elders, Ain, Yelings. And beyond that, how many twawit each Yeling commands."

Really? To that degree?

The Duke of Crimson Blood did not bother to deny it. Instead, after a long, focused pause, he spoke.

"Erte."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Count Erte lowered her head. Valdamir fixed his gaze on her and said coldly:

"Pull out your heart."

What? Pull it out?

Even as I was doubting my own ears, Count Erte didn't hesitate for a moment. By the time I collected myself, she had raised her hand and was driving it into her own chest. No scream, not one. She pushed through the blood spilling freely and tore out her own heart.

I asked in a fluster.

"Wh, what? Your own heart, just like that?"

He had just ordered a loyal subordinate to kill herself, yet Valdamir's feelings registered no ripple at all. In human terms, he felt only the mild inconvenience of clipping a nail and tossing it away.

"As you said, it would be better to keep Finlay's rudeness toward the Progenitor quiet. The surest way to silence a vampire is permanent death."

"What? It wasn't Count Erte who did anything, it was Finlay, a mere Yeling!"

"There is little difference. If a maker cannot be held responsible when a thrall commits an offense, then next time someone wants to commit a crime, they need only create a thrall and have it done for them."

"You're Count Erte's maker too! Are you passing the blame down now?"

Valdamir answered my needling calmly.

"Didn't Finlay say it himself? That starting a war requires the Progenitor's command, regardless of my wishes. That nothing could be decided until the Progenitor returned."

"How would you know he said that?"

"Because I told Erte as much."

Valdamir had wanted war, or something equivalent. But this country belongs to the Progenitor. Without the Progenitor's sanction, no state-level operation could be carried out.

"Finlay misunderstood what he heard from Erte. But to rouse a sleeping Progenitor and bring her forth, when exactly did vampires acquire the right to disturb the Progenitor's sleep?"

And Finlay, bonded to his maker, had heard those words and resolved to wake the Progenitor, then set out on a long journey. He believed it was his act of loyalty to Erte, and through her, to Valdamir.

Still, to execute even an Ain under collective punishment by association, that was something else entirely.

"She's your right hand!"

"She is my right hand, so I am the one who should cut it off."

Count Erte's fading vitality was draining away steadily. An Ain of her rank could keep blood circulating even without a heart, but Valdamir, her maker, was withholding permission to regenerate. A thread of bloodcraft was barely keeping her alive, and without Valdamir's mercy she would not survive.

Standing before that grim sight, all I could do was open my mouth.

"So much for vampires being immortal. How many have died lately."

"Things went exactly as you wanted."

"Excuse me? You're blaming this on me? Finlay practically killed himself. Count Erte you killed."

"There is also Jazra, Ain to Luscinia. Who died when you took the Progenitor out for a visit."

"I didn't kill him. Cabilah did! And I don't even have the ability to kill a vampire in the first place!"

Now they want to pin someone else's crimes on me. I may have done a few things I shouldn't have, but that doesn't mean I'm taking the fall for other people's sins. A long rap sheet is a liability, you know?

Valdamir studied me in silence. Cold sweat prickled at me, I had never been blamed for something by the ruler, well, administrator, of an entire country before, but who am I? The Progenitor's beloved consort. One who stands above the law, cherished by this country's god. Valdamir couldn't touch me even if he wanted to. Bold approach it is.

"You claim you had no intention of killing him? He pushed himself past his limits and died as a result."

"How am I supposed to stop people from getting themselves killed!"

After a long look at me, Valdamir suddenly dipped his head and said:

"King of Humanity. I offer my gratitude for reviving the Progenitor's heart. I had not expected a human rather than a vampire to fulfill the Progenitor's deepest wish, but if it is the King of Humanity, that much I can understand."

"Well, if you're thanking me out of nowhere, all I can say is you're very welcome."

"However. If you are truly the King of Humanity, you must speak for 'all humans.'"

A cold, sharp gaze cut straight into me. The sweat on my back was real this time, not for show.

I'll admit it. I hadn't read Valdamir's thoughts carefully enough.

A vampire's memory is too vast and layered to read easily. Try spending your whole life reading memories fifty years long at most, then sit down with a thousand years' worth all at once. Even the most devoted reader buckles when stacks of books twenty or thirty volumes thick pile up on every side. Reading several at once only makes it worse.

That's why I had been trying to read them one by one, making the rounds. But I had been beaten to it.

He found me first.

"To you, the King of Humanity, are the Ain and Yelings also human?"

I couldn't offer a false answer. As the King of Humanity, I had an obligation to speak on their behalf. I answered plainly.

"They are."

"Then to you, the Progenitor and Finlay would be equals. The Progenitor and every other vampire, the same."

The King of Humanity takes no one's side.

The Steel Maiden's last words before she left. Valdamir had taken those words more to heart than anyone. No, that framing isn't quite right. Even if the Steel Maiden had never said them, he would have investigated me anyway.

Valdamir simply wanted to understand me. He had to, before he could decide whether I was a danger or not.

I'll answer his questions honestly, then. Straightforwardly.

"Not exactly. Tyr is a little different from other vampires."

"Even though they're all human?"

"Being the same doesn't mean being identical. You and I are both human, but we're different."

That kind of vague answer wouldn't satisfy him. So instead I said:

"Return Count Erte to herself."

"Is that relevant to what we're discussing?"

"Let's find out."

Valdamir gave a nod. At that moment, the force binding Count Erte released. Finally able to command the blood around her own body, she moved quickly to reclaim it. A faint flush returned to her pale skin.

Having given Count Erte her life back, Valdamir looked at me again. He had done as I asked; now answer.

So I did.

"You've been investigating and observing me. Then you called me here and tried to have a conversation. Because that was the only way to understand me."

Valdamir was waiting for me to continue. When I didn't, he pressed.

"That much goes without saying."

"Maybe not. It might not be obvious if you've already decided in advance what 'human' means."

Mind reading is the one power that has stayed with me. The ability to read people. I'm not sure how the first King of Humanity came to lose his powers, but I know why only this one remains.

You have to read people before you can speak for them.

"The individual called 'human' has to exist first, before I can exist. The Beast King is the conceptual existence of beasts. Just as you watch what I do, speak with me, and then form your judgment about me, I also need humans as they actually are before I can speak for them."

That's why I was always going to end up at odds with the Sanctum. It's also why, the moment I sensed the Holy Maiden's shadow, I went straight to the military state's headquarters.

The Sanctum would permanently strip away everything they call sin. By erasing the future itself.

Well, when I actually got there, the military state turned out to be a little different from what I'd pictured, so that worked out fine. The Clairvoyant doesn't prevent sin so much as track it down after the fact. And even that had been handed over to the communications officer, so all I needed was to make a small adjustment there.

"But vampires subordinate to their makers have no choice that exists outside of that maker, do they? Like how Finlay absorbed your feelings and came all the way down to the Abyss to persuade Tyr. Was that truly Finlay's own will?"

Elders, Ain, Yelings. They are all human. But the boundary of what it means to be human blurs because of what vampires are. Their bodies and minds alike are bound to their makers.

So I have to verify. Whether what they want is genuinely their own will.

"Reviving the heart was Tyr's wish. And it was something I wanted as well. Only by severing the blood shackle could I confirm a vampire's humanity without interference. As a single human being, not as someone's instrument."

Tyr came to the Duchy with her heart restored but her dominion lost. Now vampires freed from the blood shackle could act however they chose. Not that they necessarily would, but the fact that they could is what matters.

Though thanks to that, I'm a little more in danger myself. Still, this is so much more human, isn't it? Compared to a whole country that is essentially the Progenitor's body, with every vampire moving automatically by the Progenitor's will.

"King of Humanity. A being who speaks for all humans. You would court danger for the sake of hearing a human's voice, even if that human brought ruin on themselves through something they couldn't handle?"

Having grasped what I meant, Valdamir murmured with a flicker of something new in his expression.

"Just as the Holy Maiden warned, you are an extremely dangerous being. You deny the system at its very foundation. The Beast King, is that why it's called barbarism?"

"Same could be said of you. A person who would abandon stable peace to start a war calling someone else barbaric."

He said that like it had nothing to do with him. But while you were reading me, I was reading you.

Valdamir's memories had been extraordinarily difficult to read. It wasn't only that there was so much to go through, as you'd expect from a vampire who had lived over a thousand years, it was that every one of those years had been lived fully.

"Duke of Crimson Blood. The most exalted of Elders. The only vampire whose whereabouts and identity are known simultaneously, because he has always held the position of Prince in the Fog Duchy. You have never gone into the long sleep. You slept in short intervals like a human and kept the country running."

Never gone into the long sleep. He had reigned as the Progenitor's First Sword and as Prince of the Fog Duchy. A thousand years. An expanse of time a human can barely begin to imagine, and he had lived every moment of it with the urgency of a man who might die tomorrow. Training, learning, mastering, governing, adapting. Fighting even against the inevitable tedium that any immortal must face.

In other words, Valdamir had lived a human life for a thousand years. Without feeling a single emotion, he had filled his days with diligence. That was also why his thoughts had been so hard to read. A book with not one drop of feeling in it, carrying a staggering amount of information, it was nearly impossible to pull out what you actually needed.

But now, sitting alone with him, reading his thoughts directly, I could see it clearly.

What Valdamir had done.

"You wanted change too, didn't you? That's why you killed Luscinia and made Lir Nightingale an Elder. Because Lir is a human who holds the power to sever the blood shackle."

The skin around Valdamir's eyes went another shade colder.

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