WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 430

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A Distant Tale: The Progenitor, the Elder, and Blood

Dogo and Erjebeut had come at the Progenitor's command. The two Elders walked at a leisurely pace, letting the suspicious stares that followed them from every direction roll off without a care, drifting toward the Lightning Rod Tower as though out for an afternoon stroll. They might not know Claudia's layout, but predators that they were, vampires could always find wherever blood was flowing.

And when the smell was this thick and this heavy, there was no missing it. Erjebeut looked toward the tower, soaked in the iron reek of blood, and spoke.

"Dogo. Can you feel it now?"

"..."

Dogo did not respond. Erjebeut answered as if the silence were old habit.

"That's quite enough playing monk, isn't it? I won't argue with your vow never to speak to a woman even on pain of death. It's several times better than vowing to pester women even on pain of death."

Even after becoming a vampire, Dogo treated his ascetic precepts as part of his practice: he refused food and drink, refused to speak to women, refused to sleep on anything soft. He had carried his old teachings with him past death without a single amendment. It caused no particular trouble, since he had no appetite, no desire, and no need for sleep to begin with.

The Progenitor, of course, was the exception.

Watching him maintain his vow of silence, Erjebeut let out a quiet sigh behind her fan.

"However. If your old obstinacy causes you to fail in carrying out the Progenitor's command, your handmaiden may find herself holding you in 'contempt.'"

The noblewoman Erjebeut was a formidable blood mage said to have subjugated a thousand victims simultaneously, a record made all the more remarkable for having been achieved before she became a vampire. Among all vampires save the Progenitor, who was beyond any measure, no one could handle a greater volume of blood at once. She had also been accomplished in white magic during her life, and through blood magic had reached complete mastery of dominion and destruction.

Even Dogo could not simply ignore her. Had his interlocutor been a man, he could have answered politely or beaten them senseless, but with a woman, neither option was available.

"...The reverence I once felt toward the Progenitor, I no longer feel. I cannot begin to understand how this came to be. Even after reflecting and meditating alone, I could find no answer."

Dogo muttered it as though talking to himself. That it was the workaround he had devised to preserve his vow was plain as day. Erjebeut touched the folded edge of her fan to the corner of her lips.

"A wind has blown through the Progenitor as well. Her dominion itself remains intact."

"What manner of calculation and method might lead me to an answer? My shallow wisdom offers no path."

"A simple method, in truth. When your handmaiden turned her own strength toward the true blood, she could not leave so much as a speck of influence upon it."

Flowers carry thorns. A dangerous perfume drifted from behind that fan, enough to make even Dogo flinch.

To attempt to dominate the Progenitor's blood. Had it succeeded, it would have been outright treason. The moment the Progenitor noticed, she might have brought permanent death down on her then and there. Dogo fell silent. Not because of his vow, but because he had genuinely lost his words.

Erjebeut pulled her hat lower as though to hide her expression, and smiled behind her fan.

"And yet. It is certain the Progenitor has changed a little. Under normal circumstances, such an attempt would have been unthinkable, not merely undoable; even the will to try would never have formed."

"..."

"Now that curiosity is satisfied, shall we move on? I want to carry out the Progenitor's command and see her again as soon as possible. And perhaps... in the process, we may find something rare."

Erjebeut was about to walk forward again when she caught sight of Shei dropping down toward them and murmured, "It seems the squire who will escort us has come out to meet us."

Shei had jumped down ready to strike at a moment's notice. That killing intent was read before anyone else by Dogo. An instant before she landed, he pressed his palms together and took a combat stance.

"Dogo. Erjebeut. You're the Elders from the Fog Duchy, right?"

An impudent thing to say from someone that young, someone who was nothing more than food. Sparks flew in Dogo's eyes. He was a man from a distant past, rigid enough to keep his precepts even past death, and he did not tolerate a junior speaking to a senior with such casual disrespect. He opened his mouth to deliver a sharp rebuke.

"--Mm!"

Or tried to. If not for the strange resistance that stopped him short.

Shei glanced at Dogo's odd half-grunt with a puzzled look. She had prodded him a little to draw a reaction, and instead of reacting at all he had produced something that sounded like it got cut off in the middle. The unexpected response left her more puzzled than anything, and she pressed a little further.

"Did Tyrkanzyaka send you? What business does an Elder have here?"

Picking a fight with an Elder was easy enough. They were all fossils, frozen exactly as they had been a thousand years ago — a pack of devotees who would fly into a fit at the mere sound of the Progenitor's name. A poke at the Progenitor was all it took.

Or so she would have thought, but the reaction was oddly different. Rather than anger, Erjebeut dragged her closed fan slowly across her lips. Like savoring a taste.

"Hoho. What a delectable-looking little cherry."

"T-taste?"

Caught off guard by the unfamiliar response, Shei found Erjebeut closing the distance between them in an instant. The blood path. A technique requiring almost no movement of hand or foot, gliding along a road made of blood. It was fast, and more than that, the ghostly smoothness of the motion made Shei's skin crawl. She scrambled backward.

Erjebeut trailed a regretful hand through the space Shei had vacated, driven back by the Heavenly Mirror, and spoke.

"Such fair skin, and such a young face. That neutral air, with those small marks at the corners of the eyes as an accent. From scent to appearance, you are perfectly to your handmaiden's taste. I imagine you would be quite satisfying to bite."

Vampires had no appetite as such. But they did have preferences when it came to blood — how good it tasted, how suitable it was — and these led even vampires to be selective about who they fed from. With desire so faint, it made little real difference which blood they took, but among vampires there were Elders who simply enjoyed having preferences. Of the few pleasures left to them, feeding was the one closest to fine taste and connoisseurship.

The extreme expression of that was a favored concubine.

Erjebeut flicked her fan open, waved it idly, and continued.

"And so pure and healthy on top of it all. Blood that even the Progenitor would covet. Ah, there is still pleasure left in this world."

"I'm not here to fill a vampire's belly, so quiet down and state your purpose."

"Aah, yes. I did have something to do."

Snap. Erjebeut folded her fan in a single motion and said, with languid menace:

"By the will of the great and beautiful Progenitor, she who shall never change, we have come to deliver a command to Lir Nightingale: return."

"Just to deliver the command? Not to bring her back yourselves?"

"It is the same thing. There is no vampire who would refuse a command issued by the Progenitor herself."

There was. Shei knew that Lir had broken free of the shackle. If Lir chose, she could ignore even Tyrkanzyaka's command. And as long as patients remained, Lir would stay here. What choice she would make at this point, Shei could not say, but...

"Thinking about another woman right in front of me. I'll be cross with you, my sweet cherry."

"Who's your sweet cherry?! I have no intention of giving you so much as a drop of my blood!"

Shei snapped back, then paused to think. What mattered, in the end, was Lir's own mind. If Lir wanted to go, Shei had no grounds to stop her. But if Lir wanted to stay, then Shei would help with that.

"Fine. I'll pass it along."

"Excuse me? Pass it along?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. There are patients inside being cared for. I'll ask Lir what she wants and let you know..."

"--Mm!"

Thud. A powerful True Stance rolled through the ground. Shei braced herself against the alarming pressure radiating off Dogo. His expression did not change, but he vented his feelings through sheer force alone and bellowed:

"The Progenitor's command is absolute! Any vampire worthy of the name should come rushing out barefoot and kneel to receive it, so why does she not show herself?!"

It was unclear who exactly he was speaking to, but with that surging pressure behind it, that was a minor detail. Shei pulled Jizan free, quietly compressing Skywarbler behind her back.

The weakness of immortal vampires was an inborn insensitivity. Death being so far away, their sense of danger naturally grew thin, and that thinness dulled their instincts.

"Don't make a scene. Think for even a moment about who you are. Unless you want to make an enemy of all of Claudia..."

"On the path of ascetic practice, what is most necessary is indomitable spirit. Whatever obstacle life places before you, you must endure it and press on. That is the law!"

Another True Stance struck the earth. Bitter thorns. The stepping technique named for a path of suffering shook the ground and left bloody footprints in its wake. Stacked on a scale, the wizened old monk might weigh less than a loose brick rolling nearby, yet his every step carried a force that could shake heaven and earth.

The same origin as Erjebeut's blood path, but blood energy technique taken in an entirely different direction. Where Erjebeut was grand and elegant, Dogo was austere and brutal. Hard to believe they were the same kind of being.

"This monk is an ascetic, and at the same time the asceticism all living creatures must face!"

This was how vampires had survived against the Sanctum all those ages ago. Dogo took a step directly toward the Lightning Rod Tower, a step that could not be blocked.

"I will go. Come!"

Shei drew Jizan to meet him, carefully concealing within its shadow the force she had been quietly building.

'Blood Monk Dogo. He is extremely powerful, but there is one weakness.'

Not a natural weakness. An ideological one. Shei abandoned any thought of blocking or evading. Instead she poured every ounce of her strength and energy into her attack.

Dogo was an ascetic.

Those who whip themselves, who inflict suffering on themselves, seeking enlightenment through pain. That Dogo had chosen a vampire's life was itself a reflection of his beliefs. He believed life was suffering, and that a vampire's immortality was endless ascetic practice.

That was why Dogo wore only a single hemp robe that left most of his torso bare — to expose himself to the sun, to feel pain and discomfort through it. To him, pain was not something to be avoided but something to be accepted.

So Dogo did not dodge attacks.

He endured and absorbed them. Unlike Lungken, who relied on his regeneration and met force with force, Dogo's act of taking a hit was itself a technique and a goal in its own right.

Dogo was prepared to receive Shei's blow as well.

And Shei had 'lived through that before.'

That was different from merely knowing it. We call someone a genius when they can put what they know into practice on the spot. Learn through experience and you are talented. Struggle through failure after failure before barely grasping something, and you are a dull student.

Shei was a dull student. The only difference was that she had gone through the experience and the failure again and again, and come back each time.

"Haaaah!"

She folded even the Heavenly Mirror, a defensive technique, into her attack. The Heavenly Mirror, which had always been poised to respond and guard, relaxed its stance and wound itself around Jizan.

Shei, lacking talent as she did, was always one thin margin short of the line between life and death. Her attacks were blunt and her finishes were sloppy. Sheer ability had always been the reason she let enemies slip away despite having such tremendous power.

And yet, even someone like Shei had managed it once in a lifetime. A motion that would burn as a flashing memory for the rest of her days. The problem was the same one that plagued the untalented: it could never be summoned when she needed it.

The Swordmistress had pitied her for it, and dismantled a piece of her energy technique, rebuilding it into an offensive form. She carved the physical memory completely into the technique so that the strike could be reproduced at will.

That was the Heavenly Mirror, offensive form. Not flexible, but the force behind it was guaranteed. Shei's one strike in a lifetime. She called it back now.

"Celestial Sword-Cudgel Style, Taeguk!"

The tip of Jizan, released like a shot, traced a faint arc. Skywarbler, compressed to the extreme, was nothing less than a storm sealed into a single point, and its tremendous force made even Jizan tremble. Shei stretched her whole body forward and drove that storm into Dogo.

And Dogo braced to receive every last bit of it. His gaunt body neither resisted the typhoon at the blade's tip nor surrendered to it. It simply dissolved into the flow and became one with it.

Blood combat arts, Tempest.

Dogo and Shei collided, and blood and torn flesh scattered through the storm. A literal storm of blood swept through Claudia.

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