WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 465

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Abandoned in the Mountains

Food tastes best when you're most starving, and sleep is sweetest when you're most exhausted. I was lying flat on a blanket spread across the tunnel floor, and yet I was savoring a comfort the world might never offer me again.

Of course I was. The fatigue pressing down on me was three days' worth, all released at once. Hard not to feel refreshed after that.

Feeling light doesn't come from carrying nothing. You have to pick something heavy up and then set it down before you can truly feel the difference. Humans are creatures of adaptation, every sensation is relative. Feeling considerably lighter, I sprang upright.

Wait. Light?

Strange. I was fairly sure Hilde had been sleeping nearby last night. So why no sense of that familiar weight beside me?

The reason was simple. Hilde was gone.

Out somewhere? Without me? What on earth could she have found?

With a faint twinge of curiosity, I threw back the blanket and reached for my clothes, and that was when I spotted a small scrap of paper tucked into my biometric terminal. I couldn't have slipped it in there half-asleep, so Hilde must have done it. I unfolded the crumpled little note and read.

[Dear Father. Your snoring is too loud to sleep through! Your daughter is setting off to find her own life. So please go and live yours, Father. Don't miss me. That is all.]

Who snores? And she'd been putting on that whole "searching for myself" performance all this time anyway, so why the dramatic exit now? On top of that, I'm not her father. And I'm not going to miss her. How many errors can a few short lines contain.

I was picking the letter apart line by line with cool precision when I had the sudden feeling I was missing something important. What was it? This letter sounded an awful lot like she was announcing she'd be acting separately from me from here on out.

"Wait. Did I just get abandoned?"

Looking at it any way I could, that was exactly it. Reading the context of the letter, it was unmistakably saying: I'm leaving you behind, so take care of yourself.

Unbelievable. This has to be a joke. I'm an ordinary, fragile person. Without a guard I can't even run from an Ain, let alone an Elder! Dumbfounded, I turned and looked toward the tunnel entrance.

It's a prank, surely. Any moment now she'll come crawling back through saying "just kidding!" Right, just as I expected...

"Oh! A rat hole!"

A different girl came in. From face to disposition she was the complete opposite of Hilde, a mountain village girl born and raised nearby who had every intention of staying that way. She'd spotted the tunnel from outside and cried out, but didn't come any closer. Instead she called back over her shoulder.

"Mister! I found a rat hole! A really big one!"

"Matilda! Don't go any closer, just stay put! Yeling Biritear said not to approach carelessly before nightfall!"

"Why? I can catch rats too!"

"A hole that big didn't let in an ordinary rat! Get back! We're watching, hurry!"

The girl looked disgruntled, but thankfully she didn't come any closer and withdrew. Saved. That ought to keep me safe until nightfall.

No, wait.

Nightfall meant even a Yeling was more than I could handle. When dealing with vampires: daytime. That's already an ironclad rule.

If I truly wanted to escape, I'd have to burst out of this tunnel right now. But there was a problem.

I am weak against fighting multiple opponents at once.

One-on-one, I can catch someone off guard. Many-on-many, I can slip through the chaos and hide in the gaps. But many-on-one is a different story entirely. My fighting style is all about playing the numbers, landing a surprise with a hidden card is the only thing I've got.

And the most important thing in a numbers game is having the numbers. Even the best card player can't win when the deck is already stacked against them. The count of cards you can play changes entirely.

My opponents here are ordinary villagers who've entrusted their safety to vampires. Amateurs who barely know how to fight. For a professional like me, an amateur's ignorance is the most dangerous thing there is. Escaping unharmed from a dozen or more men swinging spears without knowing where the blade is even pointed is close to impossible, all the more so if they're surrounding the tunnel entrance.

So the one option left to me right now.

"Up!"

Better to punch straight through the earth above and break the encirclement that way. Simple as that. Fortunately I wouldn't have to pass through the Yeling's cabin, a short sideways shift with earth arts would do it.

Earth arts aren't all-powerful, of course. I can't manipulate soil like playing in a sandbox. When I borrowed the power of Jizan I could split the ground and all that, but without it my earth arts are average at best, which is to say, limited to burrowing through dirt like an earthworm without disturbing the surrounding structure. Laughable, but useful enough. I carved a passage angling upward from the tunnel, pushed the soil gently aside, and crawled on my knees at speed.

Perhaps it sensed my movement. A vampire's thoughts reached me from somewhere above.

'Moving through the earth. Like a rat. I never imagined the rat would literally have a rat's abilities.'

Hmph. And what are you going to do about it? What can a Yeling, barely able to exert real force under sunlight, actually do? I snorted and pushed the earth upward with earth arts. Morning sunlight flickered through the cascading soil.

'Did you think five hundred years of living would leave me without an answer to something this simple?'

Hm? Like what?

I tried for a moment to read Biritear's thoughts, but the Yeling's response was faster than my mind reading.

Damn it, that's vampires for you. Old ones are hard to read all at once.

Of all things, she'd spent all that time running her dominion through the building itself.

The vampire's cabin had a log frame with hides stretched over it to block out sunlight. Biritear bled into the interior of the building. Just a Yeling, but moving a house was within her reach.

Grrrk. The cabin scraped across the ground and shifted. The soil suddenly bearing that enormous weight came crashing down on my head. Sitting still would mean being buried alive. I shoved the dirt overhead with everything I had and shot upward through it.

And there, waiting in front of me, a girl in a sundress let red eyes gleam in the shadows.

"There you are, little rat."

The village headwoman, Yeling of the blood leeching bloodkin, Biritear. I greeted the vampire I'd suddenly come face to face with in a friendly manner.

"Squeak."

"You have time to joke. An ability to swim through earth, a Lesser States alchemist? Or the Church of the Earth Mother? ...No."

Headwoman Biritear reached out and took up her weapons. A fork and a knife, closer to tableware than actual arms, but for the blood leeching clan whose every fight is a meal, nothing suits them better.

"Could we, uh, put those away and talk first?"

I was trying to get to my feet when Headwoman Biritear came at me with the fork and knife reversed in her grip.

"Fine. We can talk. Let me just get you on the hook first."

Damn it!

The opponent was a Yeling. A vampire of the blood leeching bloodkin with fearsome strength and undying endurance. Her bloodcraft ran on the weaker side, as befitting the blood leeching clan, but whatever blood she'd claimed as her own she could control completely, a powerhouse comparable to a general by military state standards.

Unlike energy that wraps the body, a vampire's bloodcraft is life itself, which makes it extraordinarily stable. A general making full use of energy and equipment would probably hit harder in a burst. But unlike a general who could die from a well-placed blow, a Yeling doesn't die.

Even the shadow I'd fought in the military state had been far stronger than me, yet it still had to probe cautiously. Approaching without knowing my abilities could be dangerous. Headwoman Biritear had no such need.

There was no danger to worry about.

"If you don't resist, I'll settle for just eating your right arm."

"My right arm again?! Why does everyone in this world want my right arm so badly?!"

My scream meant nothing as the knife swung toward my shoulder. I was reading her thoughts, but the speed left me barely enough time to respond. Until now someone stronger had always been there to protect me, but now I was alone.

Damn it. After everything I did to keep this arm. I have to block this somehow!

But my pitiful body didn't quite move the way I willed it to, or wait.

"Huh? It moved."

Thunk. My hand caught Biritear's wrist. Considerable force behind it, but my hand was only sliding back gradually, still holding its ground.

I'd read the opponent's thoughts and reacted on instinct, and it actually kept up. Until now, reading was one thing, but matching someone in speed and strength was a separate struggle.

Probably the Demon God's influence. Come to think of it, my body has been moving a little more easily lately.

"Your mouth wasn't the only thing with room to spare."

"Yours could stand to have a bit more room too. We've got time, so how about we put these sharp things away and have a proper conversation? Not that I mean a kiss, before you get any ideas."

I threw in a little joke, but it didn't land particularly well with the vampire. Headwoman Biritear twisted her wrist immediately. The knife, denied its original target at my shoulder, angled its edge toward my arm instead.

An attack aimed at drawing blood rather than dealing a blow. And if blood was drawn, it was as good as over. Wounds opened by a vampire don't close easily.

I shook off Headwoman Biritear's hand and fumbled at my waist. Usable cards: a skewer and two steel wires. Why do I have so few. I made a private vow to resupply someday and hurled them all at her. It was a desperate bid to keep her at bay, but vampire that she was, she kept coming with the cards lodged in her body as if she hadn't noticed.

Just run. I vaulted over the vampire's chair and made for the wall. The vampire followed at a leisurely pace.

"Running will get you nowhere. This cabin won't open until I allow it."

"What thief asks the owner's permission before breaking out? Goodbye!"

Whatever she said. I pressed the Demon God's card loaded with Elixir against my palm and slammed it into the wall. The Golden Mirror's card converts all matter into cards, that applies just as well to a vampire's cabin. This is the power of the Demon God. Witness it clearly.

Right at that moment, dozens of cards burst from the point where my hand met the wall, rushing out like a flood. Part of the cabin was converting into cards. But the result I wanted didn't come. The wall that should have crumbled into cards was still standing.

"Did I not say so. You entered with my permission, but you cannot leave without it."

Headwoman Biritear murmured, clenching an abundance of blood energy in her fist. Blood spray from her was cycling wildly along the walls of the building. My card had converted part of the cabin, but in that same instant the blood flow gathered and sealed the gap.

The blood leeching bloodkin's ability is Gluttony. Among bloodcraft techniques, it is especially difficult to manifest outwardly. So I had let my guard down a little, but reading Headwoman Biritear's thoughts right in front of me, I finally grasped what she had done.

Over a long stretch of time, Headwoman Biritear had distributed and embedded her dominion throughout this cabin, making it into something like an extension of her own body.

"The moment you stepped inside, it was over. You are in my stomach."

Plates, chairs, a great iron pot and a poker. Every piece of furniture in the cabin began to move, slowly and steadily, as if alive. The witch's cottage from a fairytale might look something like this. Furniture that had received a share of her blood pressed in around me, little by little.

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