WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 457

──────

Escape from the Principality no.4

Trudge. One step across damp earth. The soil grains pressed together underfoot, bearing my weight with collective effort. They would have needed a moment to breathe after I lifted my foot, but some quiet force lifted them instead, and the footprint vanished the instant I raised my heel, like a ghost dissolving into air.

"The merciful Earth Mother erases even the traces left behind by those who tread upon her."

Snap. A branch I brushed past drooped at the break. A moment later, a new shoot pushed out from the split and stretched into a fresh limb. The dense tangle of branches and leaves filled the gap more thickly than before.

"And nature, overflowing with life, mends the forest that wandering beasts have broken."

Earth arts and druidism. I was erasing our tracks using the remnants of two Demon Gods. Hilde watched me work and jabbed a finger in my direction, looking thoroughly put upon.

"That's cheating! You stomp around like you're announcing yourself to the world and then wipe it all away with Demon God power! I have to pour everything into each and every step, and none of that matters?!"

What did she mean? All I was doing was clearing footprints with earth arts and coaxing grass up with druidism. Why did that bother her? I pointed back at her.

"At least I'm using Demon God power. You accomplish the same thing through pure energy. Isn't that the bigger cheat? Demon God power is supposed to be the greater force, so why is it losing to energy?"

"Your power was handed to you for free. My energy came from over a decade of training and real combat! Of course it feels unfair!"

"Please. A Demon God is a single flower blooming from a genius who stood out even across thousands of years of accumulated human history. Comparing a few years of practice to that makes no sense."

"But it wasn't you who made it bloom!"

"I am the King of Humanity. Everything humanity has ever achieved counts as my own accomplishment. What's wrong with a king making use of what's his?"

"You've been absent this entire time!"

We dismounted when a suitable thicket appeared. I had rigged the horses to run on their own, but even so, an unguided horse was not going to keep following a road indefinitely.

It did not matter. We could hide our traces anyway, so simply leaving the possibility open in our pursuers' minds was enough of a gain.

"Hiding our tracks, or more precisely, erasing the ones you'd leave behind, was my biggest concern, but I'm glad it worked out! I actually considered whether I'd have to carry you, Father."

"Oh!"

"What do you mean, 'Oh'?! I wasn't going to carry you unless you completely ran out of stamina!"

"But you would carry me if I ran out? Wonderful. Even a real daughter of mine couldn't match your filial devotion."

"My devotion is running low, for your information."

"Filial devotion is a depletable resource? Your ancestors would weep to hear that."

"Did Father even have ancestors?"

Not really. I did not have a daughter either, for that matter. Depletable or not, Hilde's mine of filial piety had never been available for development. She was not my daughter, after all. Well.

The self-styled daughter, who had me beat by a fair number of years, grumbled and held her character.

"Even a well needs a little water at the bottom before anything comes up. Please refill this devotion before it runs completely dry."

"All right. Well done."

"Ahhhh. That was worth something."

While Hilde was still muttering, a faint thought reached me from beyond the ridge behind us. It was one of Baron Zenryu's direct-report Yelings, a member of the Dark Knights. Before the vampire could get us in his line of sight, I crossed quickly to Hilde and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Mph? Mph-mph?"

"Shh. Get down!"

Hilde had been tilting her head in confusion, but she picked up the ghost-like presence drawing near before long. Without needing to explain, I pulled her down with me as I dropped flat against the ground. Tendrils of vine rose silently at my will and wrapped us both in a dense curtain of leaves.

A short while later, that ghost-like presence swept past right beside us. Hilde and I held our breath as if we had agreed on it beforehand.

Vampires are not especially keen-sensed. They see through darkness far better than any human and can track blood with uncanny precision, but beyond that they are not particularly sensitive to other smells, faint body heat, or the warmth carried on an exhaled breath.

It would be a stretch to call that a vampire's weakness. Hilde and I were pressed close together, which made us easier to detect than usual, an ordinary human would have walked right past us in the brush too. It was simply a small disappointment: an energy practitioner would have noticed. Though in that case, I would have gone underground instead.

The vampire's presence receded. Once I was sure the distance was enough, I began drawing back the vines and pushed myself up. Hilde was curled on top of me like a cat, still feeling out the vampire's presence.

"See? You understand how impressive I am now, right? Come on, up you get."

"As expected of Father! My devotion has filled up a little!"

Hilde braced a hand on my shoulder and eased herself upright. She poked just her head out and scanned left and right before speaking with a puzzled expression.

"Only one tracker? Hmm. A search pattern like that doesn't accomplish much, does it?"

"It accomplished plenty. We almost got spotted, you know."

"That's not the point. The point is that one tracker passed right over us."

She rose slowly and continued.

"The virtue of a pursuit is numbers. You have to maintain a certain density to keep your quarry from slipping through the gaps. The moment even the suspicion that we might have walked past them takes root, the pursuit has already effectively failed. And no matter how I look at it, they simply do not have the numbers for that."

Of course they did not. This was the Fog Duchy, a land without sunlight except at the far edges of the north and south. The livestock and gathered goods made for a comfortable life, but the land could not support a large population.

As a country it would still add up to something if all gathered together, but still.

"The Duchy would rather not put humans into situations where they might get hurt. They're a precious resource."

"That line of thinking is already wrong to begin with. Holding people back from the fight because they might get hurt, where is there an investment without losses? You have to commit and push forward before anything comes of it!"

"That's a very military-state way of thinking. What a terrible country. I'd hate to live there."

"You can say what you like, but which countries have actually been wrecked? The Lesser States and the Duchy, yes? The military state and its communications officers are still standing. Your mouth says one thing but your actions say another, Father."

Hilde smirked. If anyone overheard that, they would think I went around making a mess of every country. All I did was pull off an ill-fitting coat.

"They swept through here once, so the net will gradually widen. They haven't gone further than us, but the mesh has grown looser, which makes slipping out easier. We could rest a little if you want. How is your stamina, Father?"

"Perfectly fine. Better to keep moving while it's still night."

"You seem remarkably sprightly. A little different from what I've seen of you so far."

Indeed.

Less effort than it should be. Normally after moving for a long time only the muscles I had been using got worn raw, leaving me sore and sluggish. Now it felt like something invisible was wrapped around my body, carrying me through each movement. Beyond that, I could picture in my own mind how my blood was flowing, how every part of my body was moving. Was this what Demon God power felt like?

It was not a perfect comparison, but in energy terms it was something like mastering the energy-sensing ability to its fullest. Without the output capacity a real energy practitioner would have, I was vastly weaker in practice, but the internal clarity was there.

"Is that energy I'm sensing? It's a little different from what I've observed before. Have you been hiding your strength all this time, or did you learn something in the Duchy?"

"Secret. No comment."

Close enough, but too tedious to explain, so I brushed it off. Hilde pushed her face toward mine and protested.

"Why not? What secrets could there possibly be between us!"

"Asking about someone's energy is rude even under normal circumstances. And anyway, Hilde is far more mysterious than I am, I've had all my cards on the table from the start."

"Me? What's mysterious about me?"

"Plenty. Energy, shapeshifting, holy power. You were Holy Sword Corps, then moved through an oracle to act in secret as one of the Six Generals of the military state. If that were a memoir, readers would wonder whether the author had a split personality. Doesn't that seem stranger than anything about me?"

The memoir comparison was purely my own impression. No matter how practiced at living a performance, when the narrator and manner of speech kept changing from one chapter to the next, even I would lose my mind trying to read it.

"Oh my. I didn't realize Father took such an interest in me. I thought you were ignoring me. That's actually a little nice to hear."

"Ignoring or otherwise, I never raised you in the first place. Why on earth do you call me Father instead of your actual father?"

When I asked what I had been most curious about, Hilde gave me an unreadable look and walked ahead. Showing me her back, she said:

"If I had ever had a father, would I have called anyone else Father?"

Interesting. Was she playing on having no parents to put me on the spot? Ha. I am the King of Humanity, an inherent orphan who simply materialized without any parents to speak of, just like the human species itself.

Sympathy appeals about having no parents do not work on me. I pressed ahead and probed freely into her background.

"Do you think I resemble your father at all?"

"No. Not any of them."

"Any of them?"

I started to wonder why she used the plural, and then a memory surfaced from what I had read before.

Hilde's mother had been a courtesan. If she had become pregnant without knowing who the father was, it would make sense not to know who he was. But that still did not explain why she called me Father. There was no explanation for that part.

No matter how long I thought back, I could not find a clear answer. Hilde herself could not even recall a proper reason for calling me Father.

Because I saw through her true self at a glance? If that were it, she should have called Yuel something like mother too. She had called me that back then without any real reason either.

Either way, this was something I knew from mind reading, so I could not bring it up directly. How to respond to Hilde's odd phrasing...

"Why do you use the plural for your father?"

"Who knows. Care to guess?"

Using the plural for one's father. Anyone who was not a mind reader would certainly wonder about that. This was my opening. I said aloud the answer that had formed in my head.

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but was your mother perhaps... something of a, well, a cocktail situation..."

The moment you realize you have misjudged is always the moment it is too late. Hilde spun around and stepped right up to me. She pressed close enough that I could feel her against me, and then pain shot through the top of my foot. She had stepped on it, hard.

Unable to make a sound for fear of the trackers hearing, I swallowed the pain in silence while Hilde leaned close to my ear and whispered.

"Even if it's the right answer, there are things you can and cannot say."

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried