WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 476

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You Fucking Racist

Beastkin.

Humans who inherited the traits of beasts.

Which beast that happens to be varies from one to the next, but it is common knowledge that most beastkin in human society are descended from livestock, creatures that have long been close to people.

And it is equally common knowledge that beastkin are treated according to whatever use humans make of the animal they came from.

Dog-kin. Sheep-kin. Cattle-kin. Horse-kin. Pig-kin.

There are many other kinds, but these five are the ones who have built lives inside human society. Their numbers are anything but small, and they are already woven too deep into the fabric of civilization to be torn out by force. Try to separate them and you would leave a wound behind, like yanking hair out by the roots from skin it has long since grown into.

But.

"King of Humanity. There's something I want to ask before we go."

'I need to know this ahead of time. How the King of Humanity treats beastkin will change my plans.'

Faced with the problem at last, the regressor let herself drift briefly into the past.

A future not yet come. In a world only she remembered. Humans and beastkin had fallen into deep conflict. Arguing over who started it was pointless, the differences present from the very moment of their creation had slowly cracked the foundation between them.

Well, most conflicts could be put down by force. So what if tearing things apart left a few wounds? As long as they weren't your wounds.

Humans handled it the way they always did. Brute suppression, crude and uncomplicated. Blood flowed, and the cries of beasts gradually faded.

The trouble was that around that same time, the King of Sin had begun to stir.

'Combined with the Beast King's affairs, it became the spark that let sin snowball. No matter which side you stood on, your blade ended up stained.'

The regressor shook her clenched fist once, cutting the memory short, and fixed me with a prickling killing intent.

"Do you treat beastkin the same as humans?"

"Pardon? Mr. Shei, what are you talking about?"

I answered that question with complete common sense.

"Treat beastkin the same as humans? The way you say it, it sounds like beastkin are something other than human. Wow. I really didn't think you were that kind of person."

"What?"

"Before we even get to beastkin being some kind of mixed existence, the 'kin' part of 'beastkin' means person. That says it all right there. You were going to save the world and stop the King of Sin, and it turns out you yourself are a discriminatory person."

"I'm not! I believe beastkin are equals, the same as anyone!"

"I don't even think in those terms. Just like I don't look at you and think, oh, a non-beastkin, non-vampire, non-mage energy practitioner."

There is something genuinely unfair about this. The moment you become conscious of a difference, you've already lost. Say there is a difference and you're a bigot. Say there isn't and you're a hypocrite.

'So the King of Humanity treats beastkin as fellow humans. Tch. I figured someone called savage would be more ruthless, but he's more principled than I expected. Would have been easier to deal with if he were actually barbaric.'

What do you take humans, or rather, beasts, for? Beasts are simple. They only attack creatures weaker than themselves, only when they're hungry, only when the conditions allow. They're nothing like humans, who bite at anything slightly different from themselves just because they can.

"Since you seem unfamiliar with the concept, I'll explain. Whatever comes first is a modifier; whatever comes last is the essence. Cow's milk and horse's milk may be different from each other, but in the end they're both still milk. Same with beastkin. Cattle-kin and horse-kin may differ, but they're all human."

"Why use milk as your example of all things?!"

"They all produce milk. That's the common thread. Chickens and ducks are livestock too, so why would there be fewer beastkin of those kinds?"

There's even the category of mammals. It was an honest answer that looked the facts squarely in the eye, but the regressor pulled a sour face as if she found it disagreeable.

"So why are you asking?"

"Because where we're going is a city where humans and beastkin live side by side, and at the same time stand at odds."

"Where?"

"The frontier of the Enger Plain. A city that sits at the boundary between farmland and open plain."

The Enger Plain lay further west than even the military state, at the heart of the continent. A historic land that had forged the Empire's supremacy.

And from that region, a city at the very edge of civilization came from the regressor's lips.

"We're going to Ende."

Ende, city of the Enger Plain. The boundary between the wild and the civilized. Above it, the Empire and its vassal states that had conquered the continent stood firm. Below it stretched the Wildlands, untouched by civilization's hand. As the frontline between savagery and civilization, that city was the perfect place for humans and beastkin to come to blows.

"Tell me exactly what we need to do there before you'll give us a clue about the Demon God."

"Some of the specifics may shift, but the basic idea is simple."

The regressor pointed back and forth between me and Azzy.

"You and Azzy. The two of you gather hunters and mercenaries in Ende and hunt the wolf pack roaming the Enger Plain. I'll help too, of course."

Azzy and I tilted our heads at the same time.

A wolf pack? For an ordinary human like me, a wolf pack was a genuine threat. But for Azzy, clearing out wolves was more like morning exercise. Nothing that needed to carry any real weight.

Given what the regressor had said, it had to be something more than wolves.

"The King of Wolves."

"Correct. A beast pack so powerful that instead of wiping them out, we have to worry about whether the city itself will survive. Lucky for us they're still just beasts. If the pack had organized itself and launched a coordinated attack on Ende, Ende would have fallen long ago."

The city falling? The regressor says strange things sometimes, but she doesn't make empty claims. So the King of Wolves really had that kind of power? A single beast?

Hmm. Maybe I had agreed too quickly. I was mulling it over when another worry surfaced.

"Wait. You said if the wolf pack organized and attacked Ende, the city would fall?"

"Yes."

"And you're sending me and Azzy to Ende?"

"Yes."

Long ago, there was a promise between dog and human: fight the wicked wolves together, and the dog would be humanity's friend forever. At first glance it sounds like a matter purely between humans and dogs, but there is a third party baked into that promise.

The wolf. Always the fierce and wicked beast that torments dogs and humans alike. The villain of the story, and precisely because of that, the one the promise cannot exist without.

Just as Azzy, King of Dogs, had gone searching for the King of Humanity to fulfill her promise, the King of Wolves also searched for the King of Dogs. To sink its teeth into a treacherous sibling and shatter the promise.

"The King of Wolves will come for Azzy. Which means... Ende gets raided by the wolf pack, doesn't it?"

"Maybe. But that's still the better outcome."

The regressor shrugged.

"Better than beastkin rising up from the inside and crowning the King of Wolves as their ruler, wouldn't you say?"

***

Where is the line between civilization and savagery? A philosopher might find it a pleasantly interesting subject to turn over with a drink, but any other scholar would point to the Enger Plain.

More precisely, to something in the south of the Enger Plain, a single peak that civilization had never managed to surpass. The reason no one dared name it outright was a mixture of fear and shame.

Fear, because of what lived there.

Shame, because of how many times humans had thrown themselves at it and been broken.

They had not even given it a name of its own. People simply called it the Mountain Lord's mountain.

"Since the old days. Since the time when this one smoked a pipe."

Dark night. In a mountain at night, where the rustling of insects and small animals should have filled the darkness, there was not a single sound.

Everything held still. Prey and predator alike pressed their heads low and trembled. Even the most oblivious insects held their breath. Even birds that flew free had bound themselves in place.

No one in this mountain could make a sound. No one could move so much as a muscle. All anyone could do was hold their breath and wait for this moment to pass.

This was the court of the Mountain Lord. All wild things would show their fear.

"Your wolf pack served as humans' lackeys, roar. Sniffing things out on behalf of those dull humans, barking to draw attention, you were nothing but a nuisance."

A tall hat on its head, a wide coat hung loosely from its frame. Black stripes spread from the sides of its face like whiskers. Its full orange mane bore proud black markings crossing it horizontally. It lay stretched across a boulder, a throat capable of calling down thunder and forepaws capable of shaking the earth.

The Tiger King, the Mountain Lord.

The apex of the land.

Ears folded back in barely-concealed irritation, both aimed at the uninvited guests standing before it.

"And now what nerve brings you here, demanding I join you in biting humans?"

Before the Mountain Lord stood several figures in human form, heads held high without a trace of submission.

The Mountain Lord was both terror and object of reverence to humans. A little further back in history, tigers had been called the kings of the mountain and given offerings at shrines. In the days when the southern barbarian nation, the Land of Ten Thousand Peoples, still stood, the Mountain Lord's Rite had been a grand ceremony presided over by the nation's king himself.

That mere humans dared look the Mountain Lord in the eye. By rights, their throats should have been torn out on the spot. But one figure standing before the Mountain Lord gave it pause, and however unwillingly, it restrained itself and offered courtesy.

The one facing it was also a king.

"Because you are not ready to fight!"

The King of Wolves bared its teeth at the tiger without hesitation. In those bloodshot eyes and those sharp fangs there was not a shred of deference, not a trace of fear. Nothing but savagery, and with that savagery the King of Wolves pressed the Mountain Lord hard.

"Awoooo! I am a wolf. Not a dog! I am nothing like that traitor, and nothing like a coward like you!"

"Roar, a coward? This one, a coward?!"

"Arf! You're looking for reasons not to fight!"

Even staring down a tiger's fury, the King of Wolves did not flinch.

"Tiger! What are you, fear or savagery? Or are you a cat that just rolls over for humans? Is all a tiger is supposed to do sit perched on one mountain and act like you own the place?!"

The Mountain Lord called the Tiger King was still a beast. Ranging across every valley and peak, ruling the mountain as its undisputed master, that was its life.

No, more precisely, it had never once thought about what else it ought to do. What more could a Mountain Lord possibly need beyond ruling its mountain? The Mountain Lord let out a bewildered roar.

"Grrrr! Then what more would you have this one do besides rule?"

"Fight!"

Against that, the wolf howled as if proclaiming a sacred calling.

"Bite! Tear! Rend! Devour! Your claws were made for tearing and your fangs for rending! Tiger! Humans keep expanding their territory. How long are you going to keep hiding like a coward?!"

"This one has never hidden! This mountain is this one's land! How is ruling a mountain hiding?!"

"Awoooo! That's exactly why humans hunt you!"

Thunder broke from a clear sky.

The Mountain Lord's furious roar shook every tree and made the earth tremble. Several of the beastkin who took it head-on fainted where they stood. Uncounted, but certain: some of the smaller and more unfortunate creatures living on that mountain must have died from the sound alone.

But the wolf saw nothing it cared about. With a savagery that had consumed even fear, it stared straight back at the tiger.

Wolves were strong, but not as strong as tigers. What the King of Wolves was doing now bordered on suicide. The Mountain Lord drew a long breath and turned a look of pity on the mad beast king.

"...Wolf. Is it savagery you are trying to become? Sharp claws and pointed fangs, is that what you want to be?"

Perhaps because the Mountain Lord's force had softened slightly, the King of Wolves also settled a little and spoke.

"Awoo. I don't know. But I have savagery in me. I have sharp claws and pointed fangs. And there is something I need to use them on."

"Your other half?"

"My opposite."

All beasts carry wisdom. Beasts too feel shame and the desire for revenge. They have the judgment to avoid a fight they could win but should not pick, and the resolve to throw themselves into one they cannot avoid.

The aged tiger had more than enough of that wisdom. It did not know exactly what the wolf before it was suffering, but it understood what had caused the suffering.

"Roar. Whatever humans have done to you, I don't know."

It is hard to feel anger toward someone who is missing something. The Mountain Lord chewed on a silver vine twig and murmured:

"If the time comes when this one must use its savagery, this one will leave it to you. That is a 'promise.'"

The Mountain Lord was undeniably a single apex. On the earth where it stood, no individual creature was more powerful.

But it was not the strongest.

Humans were the undisputed dominant species of the land, while the tiger merely ruled the mountain as its master. The number of humans a tiger had killed was far greater than the number of tigers humans had hunted, but measured against the sheer mass of humanity, that difference was trivial. On the contrary, tigers were being pushed back by humans, losing their ground inch by inch.

The only thing a tiger could call an enemy was humanity. A presence to be watched at all times.

And so the Mountain Lord made its promise to the wolf.

If the day came when it had to fight humans, it would stand at the wolf's side and fight together.

With the promise made, there was nothing left to discuss. The King of Wolves turned on its heel.

"Awoooo. That day will come soon."

That was the entire farewell. The King of Wolves walked down from the Mountain Lord's court with long, unhurried strides. It had achieved what it came for, and there was reason enough to feel pleased, yet the wolf's tail was still curled tight.

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