WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 453

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Which Comes First, the Many or the One?

This is genuinely no joke. How did things end up like this. I had expected to be cooped up for a while, but if that while was a vampire's while, we were talking years.

I needed to find a way out.

"That said, I can't exactly sit around doing nothing, can I?"

[And what is it you intend to do now?]

She flares up the moment I mention doing something. Saying I'm going somewhere is out of the question. Instead I moved close and draped an arm lightly around her, and I felt Tyr's mood ease just a little.

Once upon a time she'd have gone on about how shameless it was to touch her like that. Tyr really has changed.

"I suppose there's nothing much to do anyway. I'll stay here and play with my doll. There happens to be a perfectly good doll right here."

[That one is yours, so you may do with it as you please.]

"I tried doing as I pleased, but separation anxiety flared up, so apparently I can't."

[It depends on how you use it. Everything has a proper way of being used, does it not.]

I sat Tyr on my lap and combed through her hair with my fingers. Even for a vampire, it seemed there was no avoiding tangles after a fierce battle. I worked them out one by one and asked, almost as if confirming something.

"Tyr."

[Speak.]

"You want me to change, don't you?"

I had already changed Tyr. Even if she herself had wanted it, the fact that I was the one who actually changed her didn't go away. That too had only been possible because I had lost my power and become ordinary, but.

Tyr turned her head slightly and asked.

[If I wished it, would you change?]

"I'm sorry."

The Beast King is a Speaker for all beasts. It isn't quite the right comparison, but the Beast King is something like the shape that forms when you take a poll of every beast alive and give it form. That's why strength is required, I suppose. For some reason I don't fully understand, I've lost that strength, but.

Tyr turned away from me in response to my apology and spoke.

[There is nothing to be sorry for. Just as you are as you are, I too act according to my own stubbornness.]

"I really am sorry."

[I said there is nothing to be sorry for.]

"That's not what I'm sorry about."

The hair was done. I wrapped my arms around Tyr from behind and pulled her close, my hands still buzzing faintly with static. My hands rested against her chest and Tyr didn't resist, just quietly accepted it.

'Tying Hyu down like this... this isn't exactly the ideal relationship everyone would envy, either.'

Tyr laid her hands over mine and fell into thought.

'But no matter how bad a situation to live together in, it's still better than parting from Hyu. I'm sorry, Hyu. For making you suffer under my selfishness.'

"...For using my goodwill this way."

A Demon God is an awakening that brings great change to the human species. Something into which supreme knowledge has taken form.

And an awakening that deals with the human body itself might seem trivial next to the great laws of nature, but for humans, there is nothing more important.

"Set, Frang."

Lightning struck within my hand. A pulse of flickering light resonated with Tyr's heart.

Tyr felt her body stiffen abruptly. For a single moment, control of her body slipped away from her. Sensing something wrong, she tried to rapidly restore herself through bloodcraft and reclaim that control.

She failed. Heart 1, the card embedded in her heart, resisted Tyr's bloodcraft for just a moment. Her hands lurched and trembled against her will. I tightened my hold on her and, lightning in hand, poured it through her body.

Tyr's body was functioning perfectly. The problem was that it was functioning far too well.

'----!!!'

"For an ordinary person this would be too much of a shock, but... you're Tyr, so you'll be fine."

Sensation is the window through which we receive the world. The light that flows in through that window, the sound, the temperature, the vibration, all of it changes us.

But a window is not a hole blown open.

Every living thing is born with an instinct to protect itself. The world is death. Disease, insects, blades, sunlight, curses. Everything that can alter and damage the body comes from outside it.

Life is the act of maintaining the difference between oneself and the world, and death is when the world and the self finally become one. To resist change is what it means to be alive, and when that resistance stops, death follows.

The human body opened windows to respond to changes from outside. But it placed glass over those windows to keep that change from entering. The world we see is nothing more than information filtered once through glass, processed into something harmless.

And that follows the laws of lightning.

The lightning I hold flows through the path. The lightning paths etched across every part of Tyr's body were paths I carved. Tyr cannot resist. Her body may be hers, but the paths were carved by me. The windows in the window frame were opened by me.

The homunculus's dilemma. When you build your body by borrowing another's power, this can happen.

That's why I hadn't wanted to do it if I could help it. I was afraid I'd end up using it this way someday.

'------!!!!!'

Tyr's thoughts stopped. Into that blankness, a tide of sensation came crashing in. Sensation amplified to the extreme loses the distinction between pleasure and pain. It swept Tyr's thoughts aside with an overwhelming presence and took over her body.

The last time I'd touched her like this, I used just barely enough of the Demon God's power, about the same magnitude as the lightning that flows through my own body. But what I was using now was ritual magic. An electrical discharge too weak to even call offensive, but when you run it directly through the nerves, it delivers sensation thousands of times beyond what one would ordinarily feel.

Bloodcraft, authority, neither can be used without consciousness to begin with. If you overwhelm someone before they can even register what's happening, even the mightiest authority becomes meaningless.

She could stop her heart right now, go back to being a dead body, and block it. But Tyr would never choose that path.

[----!! ----!]

I cupped Tyr's face with one hand. With the other I held her body tight. I filled every one of her senses with myself. Sensation alone amplified thousands, tens of thousands of times over.

Tyr's soft body stiffened rigid as a plank of wood. Muscles tensed to their limit held her upright. Her back arched like a bow, and she gasped for breath as though hyperventilating. With each breath she drew in my scent and shook all the harder.

Every sense she had was in an extreme state of amplification. Touch, taste, smell, all of it was driving her mad. Her mouth hung open and her tongue slipped out limply.

[Ha-up, hu-up. Hgh, hrrrgh!]

A torrent of sensation that would shatter an ordinary person's mind came crashing through her. But a vampire capable of regeneration would restore even burned-out nerves without fail. Tyr couldn't escape it and couldn't grow accustomed to it, and she trembled and wept inside a pleasure she couldn't break free from.

She was already incapacitated, but Tyr was too strong for me to let my guard down. I pushed her senses past what even I might call excessive.

Because this was my first and last chance.

How much time passed, I don't know.

When I came back to myself, her body was soaked through. Tyr had never let anything flow from her except blood, but the full-body torrent of sensation had wrung out sweat and tears alike without distinction. Sounds that were neither quite crying nor screaming spilled from her open mouth.

Fortunately, her body was unharmed. Then again, I had only amplified sensation, not delivered much actual shock. The force I have is far too meager to hurt the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka.

I kept my guard up and carefully lifted Tyr. Perhaps from having her senses amplified so far, when her clothes brushed against her skin she convulsed at even that. A helpless little sound dribbled from the corner of her lips along with saliva.

I laid the exhausted Tyr flat on the bed and whispered.

"I was going easy on you that time too."

Tyr stared blankly ahead, eyes out of focus. I thought she might be looking at me, but when I moved, her gaze didn't follow. She had lost consciousness entirely.

Nothing to be done about it. She would have grabbed me if she'd been conscious. This was the best I could do.

"Thank you. But... even so, I can't grant the wish that I should change. I'm the Beast King too. The moment I change must be the moment humanity changes."

Wishing to change oneself, that's fine. If one has sufficient will and capability, I can honor that.

Wishing to change another person, that's none of my business. The other person has wishes of their own, and those have nothing to do with one's own will or effort. All one can do is try to persuade them. I don't get involved in that.

But if that other person is me, I resist.

Because I'm a mind reader. Wishes can actually change me. So I have to resist. Otherwise I'll be pushed and pulled in every direction until I become nothing at all.

That's a complicated way to put something simple. Think of it this way: if someone harbors a wish for me to die, I can't kill myself just to honor it, can I? Protecting myself comes first.

...A wish to be loved isn't quite that extreme, but changing me is the same thing.

All right then. I did beat Tyr once, at least. Not something I can brag about anywhere, but still.

What, a cowardly victory that relied on authority? Then Tyr can come at me without her bloodcraft too.

Anyway, no presences nearby. Tyr had wanted somewhere without other people, so I'd brought her to a villa a little apart from the castle. That worked in my favor as well. It would take Tyr some time to come to her senses and understand what had happened.

I turned my back on the dark room, opened the door, and stepped outside.

[Don't go.]

That came with no presence, no thoughts at all. I spun around in shock, but Tyr was still lying there unconscious, exactly as I'd left her. When I checked with mind reading, there were no thoughts to be read.

But Tyr's shadow was alive and moving like a person, and it caught hold of me.

[Where are you going? Don't go.]

Tyr's shadow. The assemblage of bloodcraft made in her image through her authority was clutching at me and whining like a small child.

I couldn't read its thoughts. That thing wasn't human. It was an assemblage of authority-a being Tyr had created by reinterpreting her own body through her authority in order to exert her power. Too much like Tyr herself to call a thrall, and too far changed to call human.

"But can I really call this not human?"

I reached a hand out toward the shadow. Beneath the skin, I could feel blood pulsing. I couldn't read the shadow's thoughts, but I could tell that something tremendous in the way of force and authority was packed into that body.

A homunculus? No, slightly different. A homunculus structurally reproduces a human, but this shadow reproduced one functionally. Those red eyes were unmistakably fixed on me, and blood was carrying force throughout that vast body. The power it held was beyond any comparison with a homunculus.

"Humans are beasts. Whatever can be done, they can do. I didn't know they could do something like this."

An assemblage of authority that Tyr had created to exert her power fully. Give that form outside the body and what emerges looks almost human. Being a made tool, it differs from a person in significant ways.

But someday this power will reach what a human is. When that time comes, drawing lines between beasts and species really will stop meaning anything.

I shook free of the shadow and said.

"Let me go."

[Can't go.]

"I'm going."

[You don't like being with me?]

"No, I like it. But I don't like only being here."

[I don't like it either. I don't want to be alone.]

Ugh. I had half expected it, but I never truly expected the shadow to move on its own. I took out my Spade 8 and pressed it against the wall like a stamp. The wall caved inward and a stack of cards came pouring out through the gap.

Cards are nothing more than thin scraps of metal. A pitifully trivial result to call the authority of a Demon God. But the Golden Mirror's authority begins from these trivial little scraps.

Alchemy, magical energy that transforms all things. I swept the cards as they cascaded down. Alchemical light flashed, linking and binding the cards to each other.

Cards are materials. The Golden Mirror's awakening started there. Diversity exists because structures differ, not because the elements that compose them do. What matters, then, is not what something was born as, but how it gets put together.

Cards that should by rights have scattered one by one became a single saber. I leveled the improvised blade at the shadow and said.

"I have to go."

[To do what?]

"To keep up with humanity."

[Why?]

"Because it keeps moving further away. So I have to run hard to keep pace. If I don't... beings that stand at the boundary, like you, will be left behind."

Could I beat the shadow with my current strength? Impossible. If I threw every last bit of the Demon Gods' power into it I might manage to escape somehow, but let's keep swinging the blade as a last resort.

The shadow didn't seem to feel threatened, but it clearly felt my intent. Tyr's shadow stepped back a little and said.

[You're trying to leave me behind.]

"I never said that. I'm not leaving you behind, and I'm not leaving Tyr behind either."

[You really won't leave me behind?]

"I haven't left you behind. I know Tyr. And I know you too, as Tyr's power. I won't forget you, ever."

Nearly a thousand years of bloodcraft, refined and mastered by Elders and vampires. The authority Tyr built from all of that. The shadow of a Demon God possessing every human function.

Something just barely keeps it from being a Demon God, some tiny single thing, though I'm not sure what it is. My guess is that it's a question of the power's particularity. Tyr used her authority for herself, and so Tyr's awakening was not directed at all of humanity. It is precisely because it was particular that she could not become a Demon God.

Because it was not directed at all of humanity, I can't use it either. Same as energy or magical energy. Unfortunate, but even this counts as a gain.

[Then.]

That was when it happened. The shadow moved toward me without warning. Not just no presence, no hint of anything at all. A mind reader who can't read thoughts is pathetically helpless, I realized belatedly, as I always should have known. I reacted too late, tried to swing the saber, and the shadow had already swallowed me whole.

Darkness wrapped around my arm and I was pulled somewhere. My head entered the shadow's mouth, then was sucked in and gone. Darkness poured into my body through every opening. It felt as though the shadow was merging with me.

My vision went dark. My body floated. With mind reading useless and darkness wrapped around me, I couldn't feel anything at all. The only world allowed to me now was my own paltry flesh.

In a world where I couldn't even breathe, right around when I was steeling myself for the worst, a cold sensation flowed through my veins.

Through blood vessels so thin it would be an insult to compare them to thread, cold spread. A chill dissolved into those vessels, almost declaring: here, this is where your blood is. Blood that had made a quick circuit from fingertips to toes came flowing back to the heart. The heart reacted violently to the cold, and that cold energy came surging toward my lungs like a swift current breaking in waves.

And then the darkness slipped back out of my body.

My vision returned in an instant. I stumbled backward, and the shadow rippled before me. The girl's shadow made in Tyr's image had left something inside me and then separated back out.

The shadow spoke.

[Take it with you.]

"What? What did you put inside me?"

The shadow didn't answer. Sinking and dissolving back into the darkness, it returned to Tyr's side. I couldn't read its thoughts, so I would have to figure out for myself what it had done. Handing a problem that requires self-reliance to someone whose whole life is built on having the answers handed to him is cruel.

At least what the shadow had left wasn't all that difficult to work out. Which made it all the more puzzling.

"This is... me?"

The body Tyr knows best is her own. The fact that the shadow she made in her own image speaks and acts on its own already says a great deal about the depth of that understanding.

And the second body she knew best was mine.

I am not a vampire. Tyr has never dominated my blood.

But Tyr was the Progenitor. Living together, watching, sharing bodies. Tyr had quietly observed me. She had felt the blood pulsing just beneath a layer of skin. She had felt the warmth the body carried and heard the beating of the heart.

Tyr had the ability to come to know my body, and she had plenty of opportunity. And her will to understand it was greater than anyone's. It wasn't something she planned, exactly, but Tyr had come to know my body as well as I knew hers.

What the shadow had passed on was my body, shaped out of Tyr's love and attention.

But.

"But this isn't something belonging to humanity. It's my body."

Knowledge so personal it can't become the property of all humankind. That means I, as the King of Humanity, can't use it. It's not for nothing that I can't use energy or magical energy. Those two forces, the extremes of individual cultivation, are powers of the individual, and are not permitted to me as the Beast King.

So this knowledge Tyr passed on to me is appreciated, but it's completely use,

Suddenly my left wrist burned hot. Something had entered the biometric terminal etched in back in the military state. When? How? I had no time to think about that. Through the sharp stabbing pain, I carefully drew out the thin card that had been inside. The card with my blood on it was something I'd seen countless times, which made the wrongness of it stranger still.

Surely this can't belong to a Demon God, and yet why is it here.

I slowly turned the card over. Spade 6, and on the idol's card, red letters were glowing.

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