WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 442

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Heaven-Defying Trial - 10

Lungken's charge was devastating. He burst forward in a spray of blood and drove his tusks straight at the Progenitor. Those sharp tusks came crashing down on her small body.

His charge was powerful but straightforward. No study of martial theory was needed to read its direction. Tyrkanzyaka chose to meet it head-on, and the bloodcraft that filled her body moved as she willed. The girl's fist swung toward Lungken's face.

To any outside eye, it looked as though Lungken was about to grind her into a bloody pulp. But Tyrkanzyaka, who had drawn a line between herself and the world, was more whole than she appeared. Her fist blurred for an instant, shattered his tusks, and drove his head halfway inward. With a wet crunch, Lungken's body crumpled into something grotesque, like a figure from a cruel fairy tale.

Boom. He bounced off the wall. The castle of blood screamed under the repeated impacts.

"Hmph! Small fist, but it bites!"

Lungken regenerated in an instant and kicked off the wall. His broken tusks had grown back as if they had never shattered. He wiped his nose and bellowed.

"But I can feel the hesitation! Progenitor, is that truly all you have?"

"Ngh..."

Tyrkanzyaka's fist was dull. The reason was no mystery. Sensation, emotion. Everything she had so desperately wanted was pulling her fist back.

The pain where his tusks had torn into her was real. A flash of a moment, but even that gap was too long. She felt anger toward Lungken, yes, but nothing close to the fierce hatred she had felt going up against the Sanctum's servants.

Nothing went as she wanted. Not the Elders, not the fight, not love. The only thing she had ever been able to move at will was her own flesh.

'Is this... the ordinary life I wanted?'

She had grown weak. Compared to the Tyrkanzyaka who had once held godlike power, the authority confined to this small body felt like a waste. Reduced to something human, Tyrkanzyaka felt helplessness for the very first time.

'If only Hyu were here right now...'

Something flickered through her mind and she shook her head. Had her body grown weak, and her heart along with it? Even if the King of Humanity were here, a man stripped of his power would be nothing but a hostage.

"Carry the soul of a warrior! Progenitor, if you had strength before, then fine, but if you don't have it now, you must fight and seize it!"

Lungken threw himself in again. Head-on, as always.

Instead of tusks, he came down with both hands, looking to crush. A little more technique than before. Tyrkanzyaka tried to meet it, trusting in her regeneration, but the thought of the pain that would come made her flinch. She pulled back the fist she had been extending and blocked instead.

Lungken roared at the sight of her choosing defense over offense.

"Wrong!"

Once driven onto the back foot, striking back becomes near impossible. He bellowed and hammered into her dozens of times. Having chosen to block once, she could only keep blocking. Through the aching pain spreading up her arms, Tyrkanzyaka gave ground again and again.

"Is that all? That's everything you have! Fight me properly!"

"Ngh...!"

Thwam. An unexpected kick from Lungken buried itself in Tyrkanzyaka's abdomen. A sharp, dizzying pain tore through her gut and she sucked in a breath. By any measure of the blows she had dealt him, it was a trivial hit, but sensation changed how much it cost her.

Tyrkanzyaka's body slid back. A fight between vampires usually became a grinding war of attrition, each gnawing away at the other's dominion. But Tyrkanzyaka, who had only just reclaimed her senses, looked likely to surrender to the pain long before that.

'Are sensation and emotion truly nothing but a burden that makes me weak...?'

Her resolve wavered. She was seized by the urge to stop her own heart right now, to survive this pain and crisis and leave the rest for later.

Lungken roared with delight and kept pressing her back.

"Yes! Now we're talking! Is it because I've thrown off that shackle? I feel lighter than ever!"

"You... Lungken..."

"Still not enough! More, more! Give everything you have, Progenitorrrr!"

Boom, boom. Massive fists and kicks pounded into Tyrkanzyaka without pause. Lungken felt no pain. He came at her like something that wanted to kill, uncaring whether his own body was broken and ground to pieces.

Unable to endure the pain, Tyrkanzyaka reached for another power. Darkness gathered. She who had stood against the light became the idol of darkness and exercised her authority.

Countless Black Knights, seeming to rise up from the floor itself, rushed toward the Progenitor's enemies...

"Black Knights without even a coating of blood energy. Your handmaiden... cannot help but despair at the sight of a weakened Progenitor."

As the Black Knights stepped across the blood-soaked floor, crimson flower buds rose to meet them as though sensing their presence. They spiraled upward and encircled the Black Knights. Snap. The fans folded shut, and the buds wound tight around each Knight and crushed them to nothing. At a single gesture from Erjebeut, the Black Knights crumbled to dust and scattered.

What darkness remained was drawn by Tyrkanzyaka's power and became a wall between her and Lungken.

"Out of my way!"

Not that it helped much. The ability meant to counter the Sanctum's light was no real obstacle to Lungken. He tore straight through it and kept driving blows into Tyrkanzyaka.

She endured as long as she could, then flung her arms wide. The raw strength was still there, and Lungken went flying like a cannonball again. It was a meaningless attack against a vampire, but Tyrkanzyaka needed even that brief breathing room.

If she stopped her heart here.

She might recover her dominion. But the moment she did, there would be no trying to reclaim a heartbeat. She already knew it ran out of control to a degree no Elder could contain.

Kill all the Elders. Destroy this entire country and then ask to have it undone... No matter how she looked at it, that was not a reasonable approach.

And besides, whether Hughes could exercise that authority again even once was another question. This card was a fragment of the Tyr who had been human, something the King of Humanity had found. Whether he could throw it away like a toy and pick it back up again at will was anyone's guess.

"You're in the middle of a fight! Focus!"

The moment Lungken noticed her thoughts had wandered, he charged like a boar. As though everything until now had only been a probe, he dropped low, clawed at the ground as he came, and hit her with his entire body. A sound escaped her that was not even a proper scream. Tyrkanzyaka bounced away, her vision swimming with pain, and slammed into the wall.

Cabilah watched the Progenitor stagger in misery, and her expression was something like pity.

"Oh. Poor dear Sister, choosing pain and hardship for herself. You really must understand that the only one who truly thinks of you is me. Not the Elders, not Valdamir. Not even that man who is your consort... you are not his first."

Even amid the uproar, Cabilah's murmur reached everyone's ears. Both Lungken and Tyrkanzyaka paused and looked at her.

"...What do you mean? Why would Hyu..."

With everyone's eyes on her, Cabilah produced her bone soldiers without the least change in expression. That her bone soldiers were modeled on the Black Knights the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka commanded was an open secret. Because the gap in power was so vast, bone soldiers enhanced with blood energy were little more than toys by comparison, fragile and cumbersome. Cabilah had never given up on them, refining and strengthening them over centuries. There were no Black Knights left to compare them to now.

"Sister. That man... you introduced him to us as the King of Humanity. Everyone dismissed the fact as unimportant. We were all far too oblivious. Only Valdamir and I watched him closely enough to notice what he was doing."

"...Are you saying you had Hyu under surveillance?"

"Surveillance? Kihit. Sister, there was no need for that. He didn't even bother hiding his tracks."

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 incarnation of savagery that the Sanctum sought to drive out from among humans, before we even existed. Sister, he... no, 'it' cannot ever belong to you alone."

Black mages. Madmen who pursued the taboos humans were not permitted to touch. Cabilah had become an Elder young, and black magic was the only path she had found to close the gap with Elders who were already complete when she arrived. Black magic, which used one's own body as a catalyst, suited vampires well. As results came in, the young and pure Cabilah fell deeper into it.

The last Elder. Peruel, who bore the true blood, she of ambition. Less a subordinate than an ally, the great southern witch who was the greatest friend vampires had.

Cabilah had sought learning from the great witch who guarded the forbidden, and what she witnessed was knowledge that should never have been touched.

"Do you know? The further black mages dig, the more they sense it without realizing, a shadow of savagery. Human sacrifice, offerings, cannibalism, cursing, Coupling. Every act that uses the human body as payment, that works upon the human body. The things called taboos have existed since before any origin. In the age of savagery, when every kind of beast lived together in packs and the King of Humanity walked freely among them. And the King of Humanity was king then, too."

Cabilah murmured, recalling knowledge she had set aside as something she would never need.

"He is neither good nor evil. He is the one who affirms everything humans do. No matter how terrible the act, even if it is rebellion against himself. The King of Savages, who does not deny or prevent. He is not Sister's king alone... he is the king of all of us. Whether or not we accept him as our king."

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

"Oh, poor Sister. You are so soft and so naive that you keep being fooled by wicked men. Can you really not see it yet?"

Watching Tyrkanzyaka gasp in pain, Cabilah laid out the cruel truth piece by piece.

"He noticed the betrayal aimed at you. Luscinia's idiots even dared to attack the Progenitor's own consort. How they ever had the nerve to do something so reckless. And on top of that, he was going around approaching the Elders, looking for those willing to plot rebellion alongside him."

"Hyu was attacked? When?"

She had never heard this before. Once, Tyrkanzyaka had commanded the Duchy like an extension of her own body and known its every detail, but now that she had lost dominion over blood, she no longer had that reach. If she had heard that Hughes had been attacked, she would have sharpened her guard and found some way to respond.

Perhaps it was the corner she had been driven into. A faint stirring of hurt rose inside Tyrkanzyaka. And then..."Sister. 'When' is not the important thing. What matters is that he did not share what happened to him with you."

Cabilah drove the point home like a nail.

"He allowed it. He didn't move to stop it beforehand, didn't even warn anyone. And after the attack, he wandered around as if nothing had happened. To affirm is to allow. He affirmed even the betrayal aimed at you!"

She hadn't meant to reveal all of this. Cabilah, like the other vampires, had no emotions, and so she hadn't grasped that a lover's betrayal could cause such terrible pain.

But watching the expression crumble on Tyrkanzyaka's face, a face that had not broken even under Lungken's blows, she regretted it.

Ah, she thought, if she had known it would come to this, she would have told her about the lover's betrayal much sooner.

"Your man is not yours alone. He can never give you the love you want. Not ever."

Perhaps because Tyrkanzyaka's feelings bled through into it, the darkness scattered in all directions, wild and without purpose.

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