WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 464

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The One Who Might Become My Father

Hm. Confessing here that her mother was a courtesan. No matter how I phrased it, anything I said was going to come out as an attack. I chose my words carefully and softened them as much as I could.

"So your honored mother chose a profession of selling love. How nice for you to have so many fathers because of it."

"Yes. Because of that I got to meet a father, which is really... wonderful."

"What are you talking about. I've never been to a place like that, and I didn't have the clout to keep a courtesan around! I was so broke I even took a part-time job at a host bar!"

If anything, I was the one being sold, not the one buying! ...Oh. Right. I had no room to look down on someone for being a courtesan. That was me spitting at the sky.

"Father didn't come as a customer, but as an employee. The establishment was testing the waters for a business catering to women, and instead he ended up catching the eye of one of the courtesans, so they threw him out on the spot."

"So that's the version now?"

"Because of that, 'I' ended up with... the finest father imaginable."

I do have professional ethics, for what it's worth. Even working at the military state's host bar, I never so much as breathed on anyone directly connected to my workplace. Hilde's story was absurd slander.

Still... I was beginning to understand why Hilde called me father.

"So your audience was your father. All that performing was to win approval from fathers who kept changing?"

"...Yes. The customers at the establishment came to see my mother. 'I' was a trace left behind by one of my mother's former customers, so fathers tended to want nothing to do with me. For my mother as well, my existence was a flaw, no different from something that dragged down her value and reputation."

"Rather dramatic of her, given that she's the one who gave birth to you."

"In the Empire and its vassal states that follow Celestial God doctrine, if a child is conceived, it must be born. Even in a brothel. Because of that, 'I' was born, but... for a child to survive, 'I' had to learn to please people."

Hilde murmured it while turning over memories she could barely recall.

"The first father couldn't stand the sight of me. He would grimace every time he saw me and wave me away. I didn't understand it then, but looking back now, I think it was the shame of never having possessed my mother. The only time that man ever smiled at me... was when 'I' called him father. A twisted smile, like someone drunk on victory..."

"Haha. Sounds like your first father was quite devoted to your mother."

"He said he had no wish to bring home a flower someone else had already cut, so he never formally registered her to the end."

"Damn. When there are this many parents, anything I say becomes a personal attack. What am I even supposed to do."

It felt like someone had laid a minefield and then told me to walk across it. I was stuck with no choice but to listen to Hilde.

"...'My' very existence is a flaw that belongs to my mother. Because of 'me,' the class of guests who seek her out drops, and her price falls. It would be better to keep me hidden if possible, but... scandal attached to a courtesan never disappears. As her bookings kept slipping, my mother grew furious. She said it was because of 'me.'"

"Hm. Couldn't it just be that time had passed and things depreciated naturally... though I suppose that would be rude to say?"

That must have been a little rude. Hilde pinched me in the side. She used no energy at all, but a pinch hurt just fine without it.

"The ones who were at least kind to 'me' were the fathers who came to see my mother. Fathers who tried to maintain their dignity on the outside used 'me' as a prop to display their own generosity. 'I' did everything I could to make myself agreeable to them. At least while they were there, 'I' could play at having a family."

"That's where Hilde's performing began?"

"...I suppose. Whether to call it performing or fawning. I had to perform so I wouldn't be abandoned by a father and wouldn't be a burden to my mother. For an authoritarian father I became an obedient, well-behaved 'me.' For a vain father I became a sharp, precocious 'me.' For an old father I became a clingy, spoiled 'me.'"

"They called for a courtesan and got an ideal daughter thrown in? That's not a flaw, that's a bonus feature."

It was my attempt at lightening the mood, but Hilde muttered it with self-deprecation.

"It was the ordinary process of a courtesan's daughter becoming a courtesan herself. If I had stayed there, 'I' might have ended up selling love just like my mother."

"That's fortunate, then. Ah, I don't mean to say your honored mother's profession is something to be avoided."

"Working at a theater troupe is far better treatment and far more freedom than being a courtesan tied to a brothel."

"Which beat am I supposed to follow here?"

Toward me as I grumbled, Hilde gave a small smile and whispered.

"...That's what I thought, but as father said, 'I' simply needed an audience. No matter how much skill and craft I learned, it meant nothing without someone to watch. Unlike other people, 'I' was not made of myself. I always needed someone to define me."

What Hilde performed was a past version of herself. From the moment she began performing up to now, she had deliberately forgotten everything she had lived through and forced that earlier self back into being. When she was caught up in an incident while performing and had to flee. When she took refuge in the Celestial God and served in the Holy Sword Corps. When she was summoned by the Holy Maiden and worked in the shadows as the Zikhrund. Having shed each previous role and returned to that purer, earlier self, Hilde stood at the starting point and whispered to me.

"Father can be that person. If father takes 'me' in. 'I' will become father's daughter alone. Not 'I' possessing father-father possessing 'me.'"

Fathers, audiences, the Celestial God, the Holy Maiden. Having made an audience of all of them, and been disappointed by all of them, Hilde now clung to me, the last one she had found.

"Whatever command you give, I'll follow it, and I'll serve father with body and soul. I'll become father's own Holy Sword Corps."

It meant leaving both the military state and the Celestial God behind and giving everything to me. I would gain a single slave, loyal and wholehearted. And one at the level of the Six Generals, at that.

The Zikhrund, who could transform into whatever shape I wanted, perform whatever manner of speech was needed, and slip into any place imaginable.

It was a bold temptation. The sincerity behind it made it more so. If I had been an ordinary person in the ordinary way, I might have accepted without thinking twice.

But unfortunately, I was a genuinely ordinary human being.

"Was this performance a biography of yourself? It was fairly striking."

My will only needs to move one person, and that's me. I had no intention of becoming a maker who dominated thralls the way vampires did. That would only waste what the thrall had to offer.

I pushed Hilde away gently and said,

"But if you're old enough, it's time to stand on your own. How long are you going to keep looking for a father? No matter how much a father dotes on a daughter, if she stays well past the age for independence and never leaves, there's nothing to do but watch with a heavy heart."

A firm refusal. Inside the blanket, Hilde blinked. Maybe she hadn't expected an offer that staked even herself to be refused this easily. She smiled with a quiet loneliness.

"...That's cruel. Can 'I' not satisfy you?"

"I'm letting you go because I am satisfied. The moment I can handle someone exactly as I please, the interest disappears. I cherish and love my own hands, but I don't think of them as interesting or wondrous. If actors moved the way I expected, why would anyone go to the theater?"

Some people seem confused because I carry the name Beast King. But the Beast King doesn't dominate beasts. The Beast King represents beasts, meaning the Beast King is the one driven by them.

A representative who handled the very beasts they represented as they pleased would just be manipulation. At that point, there would be no need for a Beast King in the first place.

As I answered calmly, Hilde suddenly seemed to remember something and asked,

"Father. You have no intention of becoming king of the military state, do you?"

Oh.

That cuts right to the heart of things, here of all places. I faltered for a moment, and Hilde quietly placed a hand flat against my chest and murmured,

"I've been watching, and I felt it. Father has no intention of ruling over anyone else. Only watching and looking on. That's why you have no attachment to anything. You set aside the military state without a second thought, and you left Tyrkanzyaka just as easily."

"That's..."

"You wouldn't even take 'me,' so there's no way you'd want a country. My plan was hopeless from the start."

Warmth slowly returned to Hilde's body. From the moment I refused her new role, she had been pulling her old one back on. She returned to the Hilde who was of the Holy Sword Corps and the Zikhrund and had followed the King of Humanity, and gave me a light shove. Unlike before, her push carried energy behind it, and I couldn't resist. I stumbled back.

Hilde draped the blanket over her shoulders, looked down at me with cool eyes, and said to herself,

"Father would prefer that 'I' use force and drag you back to the military state. Acting according to 'my' own wishes."

"It's not necessarily like that. I did have plans to visit the military state."

"But... you would never become king of the military state."

I couldn't deny it.

Right. If I had wanted to become king, I wouldn't have bothered handing things over to Captain AB and Historia and leaving. It's enough for me that humans are the ones who decide the fate of humans.

"If you had even lied and said you would take 'me,' things could have been easier for both of us."

"That would have made me uncomfortable, so I couldn't do it."

I answered her honestly as she spoke with quiet self-deprecation.

"Even if Hilde abandoned me, I couldn't afford to lose a great performer. Using a treasure of humanity for my own personal greed would be a waste."

"..."

It's a shame, but there's nothing to be done. That's what the Beast King is. Unlike what people generally believe, the King of Humanity doesn't rule over anyone. Unless people happen to feel as though they're ruling themselves.

That was the life of a being that existed naturally...

A sense of wrongness crept in again. What I had done was unavoidable, and it was a judgment befitting the Beast King, yet something that had taken shape inside my heart was tugging at me.

The last time I felt it I hadn't been able to identify it clearly, but... I was a mind reader. I knew better than anyone what happened inside a heart.

That was my heart.

My own heart, beyond my own control.

"Either way, father and I both have to escape the duchy. Like it or not, 'I' have no choice but to stay with father~. Tch. Awful."

Toward Hilde as she muttered with quiet loneliness, a word slipped out of me before I could stop it.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. It only makes things more miserable~. Go to sleep."

Hilde snapped at me coolly, then lay down on top of me just like that. She climbed on as if my body were a bed, curled herself up, and closed her eyes. Before long, the sound of soft, steady breathing reached me.

Sleeping in those clothes would give you a cold... I started to say it and stopped. What did it matter. She was using energy right now. She could sleep bare and be fine.

Steam rose from the flask heated by the power of lightning. Hot, damp air filled the small tunnel. Comfortable enough, I thought, to sleep with one furnace tucked close. I pulled the blanket over myself and settled in to sleep.

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