WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 435: Recess

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Even a one-day recess could feel unsatisfying to humans. Trials needed to be handled carefully, but for impatient humans, even a day was a long time.

For vampires, though, a day was little more than a short break to go out and drink blood. Promising to meet again soon, the vampires leisurely left the hall.

At least, a few Elders remained.

"Progenitor. I must step away for a while. Please permit me to take my leave first."

"You seem to have urgent business. Go and see to it."

"You honor me."

Valdamir was the first to leave the hall, and the other Elders followed, looking vaguely dissatisfied. Before long, only Tyr, Lir, and I remained.

Tyr looked around the empty hall, then relaxed her solemn expression.

"You overcame that difficulty splendidly."

"It wasn't much of a difficulty. At worst, what would happen to me? Lir would die."

The moment someone else bore the risk, this became entertainment. Without anything at stake, there was no tension.

Even at my honest answer, Tyr smiled faintly and praised me.

"Hehe. You speak as though you don't care, but I know why you wanted to save her. As the King of Humanity, you like those who save humans."

"No? I don't particularly like them."

"There you go again. You may have been difficult about it, but you helped Shei a great deal. And you volunteered to help Lir even though you had only just met her. Do you think I've watched you for so long without knowing that much?"

Had I? It wasn't that I liked people for saving humans. I just wanted to watch their wishes a little longer. Even if she had been a murderer instead of a healer, as long as she didn't try to kill me, I would've watched her first.

The problem was that they usually tried to kill me.

Tyr seemed to be misunderstanding something. What should I do about it? Should I correct her?

"...Or is there another reason? Did you perhaps have improper intentions?"

"No. Thinking about it, I guess you're right."

It was better not to correct her. Obviously.

Tyr turned toward Lir. Lir was still lying prostrate in the hall alone. No one had ordered her to be taken away or told her to move, so she remained where she was.

"Lir Nightingale."

"Yes, Progenitor."

"What follows will be a test of your qualifications. Everyone will test and judge whether you are worthy to inherit my true blood, and whether you possess the strength to do so."

Then Tyr trailed off and glanced at me.

"If I could learn of your abilities beforehand, it might make their judgment a little easier."

She had phrased it indirectly, but she was offering to get our stories straight in advance in exchange for saving Lir. Since I was taking Lir's side, Tyr was lending a hand as well.

There was no real difference between a ruler's mercy and a dirty backroom deal. They were the same thing.

Of course, I wasn't the only reason. Tyr might have felt a slight kinship with Lir, who healed humans through bloodcraft, having once walked a similar path herself. If Tyr had still retained her blood control, this trial might never have taken place. Every vampire under her blood control would have felt something similar toward Lir.

Hmm. That was true.

There had been a reason the Healer Sage survived in the regressor's future.

At this point, it was safe to say the Healer Sage would survive. Lir, however, looked indifferent.

"...I have no talent worth presenting."

"No talent? I heard that no Elder can match your ability to save humans."

"I'm not saving them. I have no interest in their lives. I only involve myself in their deaths. It's similar to killing them."

"Killing them?"

"Yes."

Tyr tilted her chin, demanding an explanation. Lir answered.

"I have no interest in their lives. Humans live as they please and die as they please anyway. I've decided not to care how they live or how they die. I will only involve myself in their deaths."

"Keeping them from dying is saving them, isn't it?"

"Progenitor. Do you know the easiest way to save someone?"

"What is it?"

"Kill the murderer. Or swear that you will kill the murderer."

She was still young, yet she had grasped the heart of it. It sounded like an unusual perspective, but it was common sense that held true anywhere in the world. It was also why murder was considered evil in every country and society.

Kill the murderer.

That unwavering promise created order. Within a sturdy order, humans could live.

"But I won't care even if they're murderers."

Lir made that vow without emotion.

"Even if someone I save becomes Father's toy and suffers, screaming for death. Even if they become material to fatten Father or something to amuse him. I will heal my mother."

Father saw humans as things to be repaired. Drawing blood, tearing flesh, and cutting bone was his trade. Elder Luscinia had not been satisfied with modifying the ain under him, so he had laid hands on humans as well.

Even his beloved concubine and daughter.

Lir inherited the Elder's blood and learned from what he did, unwillingly gaining exceptional medical skill. That skill was used mostly to treat her mother.

Only a bloodless, heartless vampire could do such a thing. Luscinia conducted forbidden experiments to break the shackle, and was killed as a result.

So that was what had happened.

But.

The culprit was Valdamir. Everyone was accusing Lir, and she believed it herself, but something had happened within the gap in their perceptions.

"There's something strange about this person."

Maybe I could uncover that gap now.

"How does that count as killing people? She's just softhearted and can't accept people's deaths. Why give it some grand reason? Is this adolescence?"

Tyr, who seemed to have had a similar impression, nodded in agreement. It would've been simpler to say it was human affection, but she kept piling reasons onto it until the picture became strange.

The Healer Sage was far colder than I had thought.

"I did become a vampire around that age. There may be some lingering influence."

"See? Saying that honestly just makes it stranger!"

"It's true. Besides, I was in a position where I had to ask such questions. The humans I saved soon ended up in the same state again."

True. If an ordinary child living in the military state had such concerns, I would've told them to wake up from their dream and face reality.

Lir had grown up as an Elder's daughter, and her reality had been drenched in blood. It made sense.

"Wouldn't Luscinia have listened if you told him?"

"When I protested to Father about it, he said he would remove my worries and turned me into a vampire."

"I'm sorry. Your family was even more of a disaster than I imagined."

The more she spoke, the deeper the mire became. Did the Healer Sage have to be driven into such an extreme situation to become this twisted kind of being?

"I don't know about my past self, but I can no longer feel compassion. So I need to establish principles that will move me. If I don't give myself those reasons, I will eventually forget why I move at all."

Just as Tyr hated the Sanctum, Lir had made it a principle. That way, she could heal every human equally, regardless of who they were.

That was why she became the Healer Sage in the regressor's future. She must have gone around saving humans with unchanging stubbornness.

Which made me wonder even more. Reading through her memories once again, I asked,

"Did you really kill Luscinia?"

"Yes."

Surprisingly, she meant it.

Then it was true. After Luscinia's long efforts, she escaped the shackle and tried to kill him.

Yet Luscinia had been killed by Valdamir.

There was only one reason for the difference in perception. Lir had failed to kill Luscinia.

"Did you have the ability to kill Luscinia?"

"Yes. Certainly."

...It wasn't impossible.

Lir had been cast out of the shackle because its bonds had been twisted and distorted. She could never have achieved it if Luscinia had resisted, but with his tacit permission, it might have been possible.

No matter how strong someone was, they would die if they did not resist.

But.

"One last question."

If she had the ability and still failed, there was only one reason, wasn't there?

"Do you really hate your father? Someone like you?"

Even Lir couldn't easily answer that. No matter how coldly someone examined themselves, they might not understand their own heart.

Vampires placed reason before emotion. They had no whims. Their nature of neither dying nor being injured had made them closer to phenomena than humans.

The same was true of Lir and Tyr, who had escaped the shackle and were no longer subject to their blood master's orders. They needed some reason to act.

Still, they were human.

"Humans are more consistent than you think. It's hard to be kind to every other human while hating only your own father. It's also strange to say you will heal everyone who is dying while trying to kill only your own father."

I read human hearts. It looked impressive, but it was limited to humans. I couldn't recreate everything they saw, the smells they breathed in, the tastes they savored, or the sensations they felt through touch. Those things didn't remain in memory.

Only the parts remembered after being filtered once remained for me to read.

Hearts weren't perfect, so I, who read hearts, wasn't perfect either. If I had been, I would've known exactly what Luscinia thought, how he acted, and how he died.

But I knew Lir's heart before me.

"Did you really want to kill Luscinia?"

I knew where her stubborn, twisted kindness came from.

"...I don't know."

Lir calmly faced her own heart. A vampire's coldness allowed her to look upon even the deepest emotions inside herself with detachment.

"Even if I longed for affection, he turned me into a vampire. I can't feel any affection at all."

Lir carelessly gathered her belongings. A bag containing sharp scalpels, forceps, and scissors. The things needed to stitch humans back together.

In Luscinia's hands, they had been used to create pain. In Lir's hands, they were tools to lessen it.

"Even if I wanted to save him, he wished to die himself. I had no choice but to kill him."

Pain could only be felt while one was alive. Luscinia had been surprisingly accustomed to keeping humans alive. Every bit of the Healer Sage's detailed knowledge of the human body and its functions had come from her father.

What was a parent to a child? Someone they could hate or resent, perhaps. But at the very least, a parent held a large part of their life.

Whether they wanted it or not.

"Even if I loved him, he ordered me to hate him. So I hate him."

Luscinia, her father and blood master, made up most of Lir. Because of him, she walked paths she never wanted to take.

The life of a vampire. The life of an Elder killer. And even the life of an Elder.

"He gave me nothing I wanted. Then I have no choice but to hate him."

After gathering all her things, Lir gave Tyr a deep bow.

"Thank you for helping me, Progenitor's concubine."

"It's nothing. Let's say I saved one person."

"No. I mean for revealing everything concerning my father. I'm satisfied now that everyone knows he was someone who deserved to die."

It might have been different then, but the hatred she felt now seemed real. After sincerely thanking me, Lir withdrew, leaving Tyr and me alone.

"...So we never did see what kind of ability she possessed."

"True. An ability to heal people wouldn't be very useful to vampires anyway."

"Why not bring someone in and injure them?"

"In front of all those vampires? Is this a slaughterhouse?"

"She would be bringing them back to life. If anything, wouldn't that make her more like a veterinarian?"

"Calling her ability veterinary work makes her sound a little less qualified."

I wondered whether the Healer Sage could prove her worth among the Elders, where monsters with epithets like Puppeteer and Blood-Soaked abounded. It wouldn't be easy.

Tyr spoke as though reassuring me.

"Why would she be any less qualified? My concubine is human as well. Having a skilled doctor nearby would not be a bad thing."

...The Healer Sage should be grateful to me. Without me, she wouldn't have survived this easily.

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