WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 442: Heaven-Defying Trial - 10

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Lungken's charge was devastating. Lungken burst forward in a spray of blood, tusks first, bearing down on the Progenitor. The sharp tusks descended upon the Progenitor's small body.

Lungken's charge was powerful but straightforward. It took no martial insight to read its path. The Progenitor chose to meet Lungken head-on, and the bloodcraft filling her body moved as she willed. The girl's fist shot toward Lungken's face.

It looked as though Lungken would turn the girl into a bloody pulp. Yet Tyrkanzyaka, who had separated herself from the world, was the more complete being. Her fist blurred for an instant, shattering Lungken's tusks and smashing Lungken's head halfway into Lungken's body. Squelch. Lungken's body crumpled into a grotesquely comical shape, like something from a cruel fairy tale.

Bang. Lungken flew back and crashed into the wall. The Castle of Blood screamed beneath the repeated impacts.

"Kh! Small fists, but they pack a punch!"

Still, Lungken regenerated in an instant and kicked off the wall. The broken tusks had already healed as though nothing had happened. Lungken wiped the nose and shouted.

"But I can feel your hesitation! Progenitor, is that all you've got?"

"Kh..."

Tyrkanzyaka's fist had dulled. There was only one reason: sensation and emotion. Everything Tyrkanzyaka had wished for was holding her fist back.

She could feel the pain of being torn by Lungken's tusks. It had lasted only a moment, but even that gap felt long. She was angry at Lungken, yet she could not summon the same fierce hatred she had felt when facing the Sanctum's servants.

Nothing went the way she wanted. Not the Elders, not battle, not love. The only thing she could handle as she pleased was her own body.

‘Was this... the life of ordinary people that I wanted?’

She had become weak. Compared to the Tyrkanzyaka of the past, who had possessed godlike power, she was so weak that the authority trapped in this tiny body seemed wasted. Having fallen into humanity, Tyrkanzyaka experienced helplessness for the first time.

‘If Hyu were here...’

Something flashed through Tyrkanzyaka's mind, and she shook her head. Had her heart weakened along with her body? Even if the King of Humanity were here, having lost his strength, he would only become a hostage.

"Have the spirit of a warrior! Progenitor, if you have strength, you may act as you please. If you do not, then fight and seize it!"

Lungken charged again. Once more, straight ahead.

This time, Lungken brought both hands down as if to crush her. It was slightly more skilled than before. Tyrkanzyaka tried to trust in her regenerative power and meet it head-on, but the pain she would feel flashed through her mind, making her flinch. She hurriedly pulled back the fist she had been about to throw and blocked Lungken's attack.

Seeing Tyrkanzyaka choose defense over confrontation, Lungken roared.

"Wrong!"

Once forced onto the defensive, it was difficult to strike back. Lungken shouted while hammering Tyrkanzyaka dozens of times. Having chosen to block once, she had no choice but to block the next blow as well. Her arms throbbed with pain as Tyrkanzyaka retreated again and again.

"Is that it? Is that all you've got? Fight properly!"

"Ugh...!"

Boom. Lungken's sudden kick drove into Tyrkanzyaka's abdomen. A dizzying pain, as though it had pierced through her stomach, made her suck in a breath. Compared to the attacks Tyrkanzyaka had inflicted on Lungken, it was a trivial blow, but sensation made it feel entirely different.

Tyrkanzyaka's body slid back. Battles between vampires often became grueling fights in which each side gradually wore down the other's control, but Tyrkanzyaka, having regained her senses, felt as though she would surrender to pain before that happened.

‘Could sensations and emotions truly be nothing more than burdens that make me weak...?’

Her resolve wavered. Even now, Tyrkanzyaka was seized by the desire to stop her heart. To escape this pain and danger for now, then think about what came after.

Lungken joyfully roared as they drove Tyrkanzyaka back.

"Good! This is a fight! Is it because I've cast off that shackle or whatever it was? I feel lighter than ever!"

"You... Lungken..."

"It's still not enough! More, more! Give it everything you have, Progenitorrrrr!!"

Bang, bang. Massive fists and kicks battered Tyrkanzyaka without pause. Lungken felt no pain. Lungken charged in with murderous force, uncaring even if Lungken's own body shattered and crumpled.

Unable to endure the pain any longer, Tyrkanzyaka finally reached for another power. Darkness gathered. She, who had once stood against the light, became an idol of darkness and wielded her authority.

Countless Black Knights, as though they had grown from the floor itself, rushed toward the Progenitor's enemy...

"Black Knights that cannot even be cloaked in blood energy. I cannot help but lament the sight of the Progenitor grown so faint-hearted."

The moment a Black Knight stepped onto the blood-covered floor, a red flower bud rose as though it had sensed it. The whirling bud engulfed the Black Knight. Snap. Erjebeut's folding fan closed, and the bud wrapped around the Black Knight before crushing it apart. With a single gesture from Erjebeut, the Black Knights scattered into dust.

The remaining darkness was drawn by Tyrkanzyaka's power and formed a wall between her and Lungken.

"This little thing!"

Naturally, a power meant to oppose the Sanctum's light was not particularly effective against Lungken. Lungken tore through it at once and drove blow after blow into Tyrkanzyaka's body.

Unable to hold out any longer, Tyrkanzyaka swung her arm. Her power remained unchanged, and Lungken was thrown back like a cannonball again. The attack meant little to a vampire, but Tyrkanzyaka needed that brief respite.

If she stopped her heart here...

She might be able to regain her control. Yet if she did so, Tyrkanzyaka would never be able to try reclaiming her heart again. She already knew the Elders would go berserk beyond her ability to handle.

She could execute every Elder, destroy this nation from the ground up, and then ask Hughes to restore her heart, but...

No matter how she thought about it, that was not a reasonable method.

...To begin with, could Hughes use that authority once more? This card was a fragment of Tyr from when she had been human, found by the King of Humanity. Whether she could throw it away and pick it back up like a toy was uncertain.

"We're fighting! Fo-cus!!"

The moment Lungken noticed she was thinking of something else during battle, Lungken charged like a boar. As though everything until now had been mere probing, Lungken tore across the ground with both hands and arms before slamming Lungken's entire body into Tyrkanzyaka. A small sound escaped her, not even enough to become a scream. Tyrkanzyaka flew back and embedded herself in the wall, overcome by dizzying pain.

Cabilah looked pityingly at the miserable Tyrkanzyaka as she staggered.

"Ah. My poor sister, who chooses pain and hardship for herself. You must realize that I alone truly think of you. Not the Elders, not Valdamir. Not even that man who is your consort... None of them put you first."

Even amid the uproar, Cabilah's muttering reached everyone's ears. Lungken and Tyrkanzyaka both paused and looked at Cabilah.

"...What do you mean? What does that have to do with Hyu?"

Receiving everyone's gaze, Cabilah casually summoned her Dragon Tooth Soldiers. It was an open secret that her Dragon Tooth Soldiers had been modeled after the Black Knights commanded by Tyrkanzyaka, the Progenitor. Because the gap in power was so vast, her cumbersome and weak Dragon Tooth Soldiers had been seen as little more than toys compared to Black Knights strengthened with blood energy. Yet Cabilah had not given up, refining and strengthening them for hundreds of years. There were no Black Knights left to compare them with now.

"Sister. You introduced that man to us as the King of Humanity, didn't you? Everyone treated that fact as unimportant, but they were far too insensitive. Only Valdamir and I paid close attention to what he was doing."

"...You were watching Hyu?"

"Watching? Hehe. Sister, there was no need. He never tried to hide his actions."

Pitying the Progenitor who had chosen love and been abandoned by the Elders, the small and ancient black mage recited what she knew.

"The King of Humanity. The embodiment of savagery that the Sanctum tried to exclude from humanity before we even existed. Sister, he... No, ‘that thing’ can never belong to you alone."

Black mages. Madmen who studied taboos forbidden to humanity. For Cabilah, who had become an Elder while still young, black magic was the only way to catch up with the other Elders, who had already been complete. Black magic, which used one's own body as a catalyst, was especially compatible with vampires. As she achieved results, the young and innocent Cabilah became even more engrossed in it.

The final Elder. Corruption imbued with true blood. The Great Witch of the South, closer to an ally than a subordinate, and the vampires' greatest supporter.

Cabilah had sought teachings from that Great Witch, the guardian of taboos, and witnessed forbidden knowledge.

"Do you know? The deeper they delve, the more black mages sense the shadow of savagery. Human sacrifice, offerings, cannibalism, curses, intercourse. Every act that uses the human body as its price, every act that affects the human body. Those things called taboos have existed since before any era's Year One. In the Age of Savagery, when every kind of beast lived together in packs and the King of Humanity walked about freely. And even then, the King of Humanity was king."

Cabilah recalled knowledge she had thought she would never need and muttered.

"He is neither good nor evil. The one who accepts everything humans do. No matter how horrible the act, even if it is treason against himself, he does not deny or stop it. The King of Savages. He is not your king alone, Sister... He is the king of us all, even if we do not accept him as king."

"What... are you saying...?"

"Ah, poor Sister. You are so fragile and innocent that you have been deceived by a wicked man. Do you still not understand?"

Looking at Tyrkanzyaka, who was gasping in pain, Cabilah laid out the cruel truth before her.

"He noticed the rebellion against you. Luscinia's idiots even dared to attack the Progenitor's consort. How they found the nerve to commit such a reckless act, I do not know. On top of that, they contacted the Elders and went around looking for those who would join them in defying heaven."

"Hyu was attacked? When?"

It was the first Tyrkanzyaka had heard of it. In the past, she had ruled the duchy as though it were her own body and knew every detail within it. Now that she had lost control over blood, she no longer had as much information as before. If she had known Hughes had been attacked, she would have been alert and responded somehow.

Perhaps because she had been driven into a corner, a small sense of hurt arose within Tyrkanzyaka's heart. Then...

"Sister. ‘When’ is not what matters. What matters is that he did not share with you what he experienced."

Cabilah drove the point home.

"He stood by and watched. He did not stop them beforehand or warn them not to do it. He even wandered around without a care after the attack. To accept something means to stand by and watch it. He accepted even the rebellion against you!"

She had never intended to reveal even this much. Like the other vampires, Cabilah had no emotions, so she had not realized that betrayal by one's lover could cause terrible pain.

Yet when she saw Tyrkanzyaka's expression collapse, though Lungken's attacks had not shaken her, Cabilah regretted it.

Ah, she should have told her about her lover's betrayal much sooner.

"Your man is not yours alone. He can never give you the love you desire. Never."

Perhaps Tyrkanzyaka's emotions had seeped into it. The darkness scattered ominously, as though it had lost its direction.

Footnotes:

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