WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 443: Heaven-Defying Trial - 11

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If vampires had one bad habit, it was taking their time because they believed time was always on their side. Never pressed for time, they wasted a moment listening to what Cabilah had to say.

Lungken, who had been beating Tyrkanzyaka senseless, was no different.

"Snort! So he accepts challenges! I like that! I should've rammed him properly from the start instead of going easy on him because he's the consort!"

Setting aside that small regret, Lungken snorted again.

Boar beastkin were known for their narrow field of vision and headstrong nature, but Lungken had not always enjoyed fighting. Beastkin who picked fights recklessly had long since been killed, leaving only the comparatively mild-tempered to survive through natural selection.

Beastkin who inherited some traits of beasts had keen hearing and smell. Lungken had led others of their kind as part of a mercenary company, making good use of their strengths. Yet because they could not overcome the weakness of their narrow vision, they were used as a disposable pawn on one battlefield.

When their people were scattered and hunted like animals, Tyrkanzyaka came to collect the bodies. She gave Lungken her blood and made them an Elder. Under her command, they trampled both the army that had killed them and the army that had abandoned them.

Still, thirst remained in Lungken's heart.

Their keen senses vanished, leaving them able to smell only blood. They could no longer feel the dry wind stirring their fur, nor did they need to rub their itchy tusks against a tree. At first, they were pleased that so many bothersome things had disappeared. But once every inconvenience necessary for living was gone, all that remained was boredom and lethargy. The sharper their senses had been, the greater the emptiness they felt. Lungken sank into despair.

Lungken's blood stirred again only when bloody battles broke out. The reason was simple. Literally speaking, their blood was splattered where it had no business being.

So Lungken threw themself into endless battles.

"I gave a warning out of consideration for the frail human, but I guess it wasn't passed on! Hahaha, so challenges have to be accepted! Right! Even the King of Humanity is a beast-!"

With a powerful snort, Lungken challenged Tyrkanzyaka once more. This time, Tyrkanzyaka offered no real defense. She merely raised both arms to shield her head as she was thrown about. Like reeds swept along in a storm, Tyrkanzyaka was battered by Lungken's attacks.

As I said, vampires had one bad habit. They believed time was always on their side. Even if they were not ascetics like Dogo, they had a clear tendency to observe every attack and method their opponent possessed before acting. Perhaps that was the leisure afforded by immortals who did not die from injury. Or perhaps they simply enjoyed seeing and experiencing things.

The Elders watching Lungken and Tyrkanzyaka's battle realized it too late.

"...Lungken. Stop. That is enough."

"Stop? Grrr. Why should I?"

Lungken scoffed and charged at the Progenitor again. They were so violent and explosive that it was difficult for anyone else to intervene. The other Elders could only watch, unwilling to risk getting in Lungken's way.

...A tedious, meaningless battle where neither side could truly hurt the other.

"Leave this to Bakuta and me, then withdraw. Mindless fists without any authority cannot inflict any real harm."

Erjebeut's dominion or Bakuta's Gluttony could contend with the Progenitor for control. But no matter how fiercely Lungken fought, all they could do was hurt her a little.

Erjebeut recognized the meaninglessness of the battle and tried to stop them, but Lungken ignored her without a second thought.

"No, there is something! Causing pain!"

"Meaningless..."

"It has meaning! Pain changes people! Usually, getting hit knocks some sense into you!"

Thud, thud, thud. The attacks were monotonous and one-sided, painful but not fatal to a vampire. If Lungken's goal was simply to attack Tyrkanzyaka, it was a foolish attempt worthy of a boar beastkin.

But if they had another goal...

"Does it hurt? Then fight back! Give it everything you have-!"

"Lungken, you! Everyone, pull them away!"

"Do whatever you want! I only fight! Those worth fighting-!"

As though tempering steel, Lungken relentlessly beat Tyrkanzyaka with all their strength. The repeated pain raining down on her changed Tyrkanzyaka.

She bent her knees slightly, taking a stance better suited to withstanding impacts. Whenever she was struck, she moved subtly to lessen the pain. By properly combining her powers and bloodcraft, she forged herself into someone capable of standing against Lungken's immense strength. Tyrkanzyaka was not weak. Her raw strength already surpassed Lungken's. She simply lacked the means and techniques to use it properly.

Even with such a gap in strength, being beaten like this would kill anyone. But Tyrkanzyaka was the Progenitor of vampires. Even impacts that seemed to crush her entire body were healed in an instant. After hundreds of deaths, Tyrkanzyaka found a way not to die.

"Think! Progenitor, I know you have strength! Show everything you possess! I don't want to fight some unskilled version of you-!"

"You boar...!"

They were engraving the way to fight into her. Roughly, but certainly.

That did not mean Lungken intended to stay by Tyrkanzyaka's side and oppose the Elders. They simply enjoyed charging at the strong, even if they had to make their opponent strong first. Realizing that, Erjebeut regained her composure.

"I will not concern myself with Lungken. Let us go."

After watching for a moment, the Elders moved as one to reclaim the Progenitor's blood.

It was difficult to expect cooperation from vampires. Unless they were thralls ruled by the same suzerain, they did not work well together. Still, they never hesitated out of concern that they might injure an ally.

"Beastkin... you have it easy. Forming a species, something you take for granted, is a wish and a duty to some."

Rahu Khan leaped in with a huge spear aimed forward. A centaur alone was cavalry, turning even a simple charge into a mounted assault. Rahu Khan's spear became a single gust of wind, piercing through space and tearing apart the darkness surrounding Tyrkanzyaka. Something cracked, and Tyrkanzyaka's body was flung backward.

"Talker! You're interfering?"

"You are. The one who interfered."

Rahu Khan spun the massive spear like a windmill. A storm scattered above the four-legged lower body. Rahu Khan the Watcher, once the ruler of the wilderness who had swept across the world before falling because of an unavoidable problem of birth, spoke with firm resolve.

"Clan Chief abandoned duty. I protect the seed. Centaurs must save themselves."

"Grrr! To realize something so obvious only now-!"

While the two humans with beast blood bickered in the narrow corridor, Meurie drifted down beside Tyrkanzyaka like mist. Wrapped in thick darkness, Tyrkanzyaka looked like a pitch-black ball.

Darkness might be a power meant to oppose light, but it had now become dense enough for even the Elders to find troublesome. Yet it was not much of a concern for Meurie, the Ghost Dancer. Moving the blades as though dancing, Meurie pierced and carved through the darkness with crescent-shaped edges.

Meurie sent a voice through the gap that had been created.

"My heart is pounding-. Progenitor, were you truly betrayed by love? Abandoned by the lover who shared your heart? Ah, it is a comedy worthy of becoming a song-."

The darkness tried to shake Meurie off as though it did not want to listen, but the Ghost Dancer let it flow past with ghostlike movements. Tyrkanzyaka finally gave up on driving Meurie away and asked,

"...Meurie."

"Yes-?"

Within the rippling darkness, the wounded Progenitor spoke grimly.

"Are you enjoying this?"

"How could I be-. Or am I? I don't know-. I don't know!"

In contrast, Meurie spoke as though singing with a melody.

"The Progenitor, my heart, my queen, my faith, my everything, is showing such a miserably broken state-. It cannot be put into words. My heart races. Thump thump, whether it is immorality or excitement-."

"...What did you want to do?"

Meurie had called herself the Progenitor's dancer and contributed to the arts of the Duchy. It might have seemed absurd for an emotionless vampire to make music, but she had left behind plenty of music refined by that same coldness. Meurie had even used humans as an audience to observe their reactions.

Reflecting briefly on the past, Meurie brushed her lips and muttered.

"Dance, song, painting. They are all for 'showing.' I... I suppose I wanted to show my songs and dances to the Progenitor-!"

"...If you had brought me dance and music, I would have kept watching."

"You didn't feel them completely, like you are now-!"

Meurie moved both hands brilliantly. The ghostly blades carving through the darkness slipped into Tyrkanzyaka in strange ways. Her flesh split, revealing the Progenitor's true blood for a brief instant. It healed at once, but in that fleeting moment, the blood's dominion wavered, if only slightly.

The floor of blood Erjebeut had created did not miss that opening. The moment it sensed blood, it lunged forward like a ghost.

Even the smallest wound was still a wound. Bleeding on this ground was dangerous. Tyrkanzyaka let out a quiet groan as she watched Meurie's elegantly swaying blade, and Meurie cried out fiercely.

"Look-. That reaction! It is different! Look directly at my movements. When I perform my tricks, admire me and applaud. When I sing, hum along with me. That is what I wanted. I wanted a response that returned like an echo!"

Meurie shouted as though vomiting out the words and swung the blade. The tip moved beautifully and brilliantly, like a dance, making its path difficult to predict. Tyrkanzyaka lost sight of it for a moment, and as if it had been waiting for that opening, the blade drew a line across Tyrkanzyaka's arm.

Her arm flinched. Her lips pressed tightly together. A small groan escaped. Meurie relished every reaction and stepped in rhythm after Tyrkanzyaka.

"Let us dance together, Progenitor-."

Meurie was an eccentric vampire who tried to evade attacks. Others sneered at the excessive, useless movements, but against someone like Tyrkanzyaka, who possessed nothing but strength without technique, Meurie was like a bird impossible to catch.

Her body was cut. Attacking was not the point. As if the purpose was to move in harmony with the Progenitor, Meurie withdrew after every attack and pursued whenever Tyrkanzyaka retreated.

Her small body was not enough. Tyrkanzyaka needed another method to properly unleash that explosive strength. Even a simple technique that might not work against vampires, directly scattering her own blood outside her body. Tyrkanzyaka cut her finger as though loading a pistol, then aimed it at Meurie.

"Nom."

A boy suddenly appeared and gulped down Tyrkanzyaka's finger.

Bakuta the Blood Leech. A remnant of Gluttony. A monster from a deep swamp that devoured blood. His power was to consume other beings, especially blood, and use them as his own strength. Swallowing Tyrkanzyaka's finger whole like a predator, Bakuta worked his mouth with an ecstatic expression.

"Tasty... Mother's finger... One bite fills my stomach..."

It was the true blood of Tyrkanzyaka, the Progenitor. It could not be digested in a short time. If things went wrong, its power might spread through Bakuta's body and take control.

Yet before endless hunger, threats that would come later were pushed aside.

The finger regenerated quickly. But the true blood that had been "eaten" was still inside Bakuta. They fought fiercely over dominion, yet the power of Gluttony tried to digest even true blood.

Bakuta was intoxicated by the fullness filling his body.

"I am hungry... But thanks to this, I can feel full too... I am happy..."

He had wished to be free of endless longing, but vampire life had also taken away even the smallest sense of fullness. To be satisfied, one needed lack. One could not attain what one did not desire.

Bakuta was not the only one. All the Elders were the same. Like Tyrkanzyaka before her heart revived, they had broken their shackles, recalled their own small wishes, and run wild as they enjoyed their freedom.

"Hughes... Are you truly the king of all of them...?"

And Hughes was someone who would have welcomed that outcome. He had restored Tyrkanzyaka's heart and senses, and caused the Elders to remember their desires as well.

Thinking of the man she had believed to be her beloved, Tyrkanzyaka writhed beneath the continuing pain.

"Did you grant my wish too only because I am human? Does saying I am human mean I am not especially different?"

Hughes had told her that even Tyrkanzyaka, the Progenitor, was human. Tyrkanzyaka, who had longed for an ordinary life, had been happy to hear those words.

...But once she understood the meaning hidden in those cold, cruel words, shame and self-loathing came crashing down on waves of grief.

Even the relationship they shared, traveling together and spending nights together, was not particularly special to Hughes. Probably not even Tyrkanzyaka's precious, pure love.

"...Not once have you ever called anything special."

Everything humans could do was ordinary to Hughes.

Hughes was special to Tyrkanzyaka, but Tyrkanzyaka was not special to him. She was an ordinary human with ordinary concerns, and he had only answered her wish. Whoever it had been, whether an Elder, an ain, or a Yeiling, he would have earnestly granted that wish.

...Perhaps that was also why Finlay had been able to control Tyrkanzyaka, even a little.

If Finlay had not drawn Tyrkanzyaka's attention with lightning at just the right moment. If he had not stirred up an old wish again. If Tyrkanzyaka had not briefly let go of her will to control her own body.

If Hughes had not given Finlay the opportunity to fulfill that wish, perhaps it would not have happened.

It felt as though the world was collapsing. She had not revived to feel pain like this. She thought recovering her senses and emotions would make everything in the world joyful. Now, she did not even know what remained.

Hughes was not beside her now, either.

It hurt. Her heart felt as though it had been torn into thousands, tens of thousands of pieces. Her body had shattered and regenerated so many times that she no longer knew what pain even was.

They said life was pain. Since her heart had revived, Tyrkanzyaka had felt life more intensely than ever.

"...Hughes. Is this what you wanted? A world where everyone yearns for something."

And she developed a new desire.

She wanted to end this pain and find happiness and joy again.

Unlike when she had been complete as the Progenitor of vampires, the suzerain of the Elders, the Shadow Queen, and the Blood Sea. She wanted to live as a special human who simply possessed somewhat greater strength.

"Excuse me, Progenitor-? Your reactions have weakened-. Are you bored already-?"

No matter how much Meurie scratched her with the blade, there was no response. Had Tyrkanzyaka already adapted to the pain? Tilting her head, Meurie sheathed the blade and spoke as though testing her.

"It seems I need to present a more stimulating performance-. Shall I paint a picture over that white body? Drive blades through your hands and feet? Or perhaps-. Decorate the consort's corpse and turn it into a doll-?"

If the intent had been to provoke the Progenitor, it was a tremendous success. More than intended.

Tyrkanzyaka's eyes flashed. A moment later, a massive hand rose up and seized Meurie.

Footnotes:

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