WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 477

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King of Beasts

The holy Enger Plain. A blessed land that had fed the continent throughout its long and storied history. So vast that the Empire and two principalities all lay across it at once, a breadth of earth that had been both the prize and the stage of countless conflicts.

Even the Enger Plain, which seemed to stretch all the way to the edge of the world, had an end. Keep heading south without any particular destination and the ground gradually dries out, a dusty wind carrying the smell of parched earth. The sun climbs ever higher until it watches over everything from above, the hot air rising to your chin and making each breath a little harder than the last.

Ende sat right at that boundary.

Word had it that further south lay an endless sea of trees, but for anyone who wasn't an adventurer, Ende was the last piece of land there was. That was especially true now, with the Gold State and the kingdom both gone and the flow of traffic between them cut off for the time being.

"This is Ende," the regressor said, gesturing toward the city spread wide before us.

The barrier surrounding it was closer to a fence than a proper city wall, built not to stop humans but to keep out beasts. Inside, though, the city was no different from the wild.

Houses thrown up however their builders pleased stood at mismatched heights like uneven teeth, and walls and rooftops alike were crammed with all manner of belongings. Roads split without warning and dead-ended wherever they felt like it. It looked as though the only thing anyone had planned for when building the city was potential.

The people passing through were just as haphazard as the buildings. Elsewhere you might tell people apart by hair color, length, height, or build, but in Ende you had to add ears and tails to the list. Round, pointed, long, folded, upright, lush, and more. Descriptors that would mean nothing applied to an ordinary human became points of character on beastkin, making eyes and minds work harder to take it all in.

That wasn't even the half of it. Beastkin fed up with the crowded streets leaping across rooftops was a perfectly ordinary sight, and the accidents caused by tails moving on their own were too many to count. People navigating by nose instead of eyes and walking straight into someone else were a common occurrence all over the place.

Ende, a city so chaotic that no one would look twice at whoever slipped into the crowd.

The regressor led me and Azzy to a large manor on the outskirts of Ende.

"You'll need a base of operations, so I bought a manor."

She said it the way you might mention picking up groceries, then pushed open the gate. The manor itself was worth a considerable sum, but what the regressor brought out was worth even more.

Elixirs, arcane tools, alchemic coins. Treasures every one of them, the kind that needed an auction to fetch a proper price. Resources enough to cause inflation in a city as large as Ende, handed over without a second thought.

"Here. I'm leaving the management of this manor to you. I'll supply as much funding and materials as you need. I can even introduce you to my contacts if you want."

What the regressor wanted from me in exchange for all this investment was, surprisingly, simple.

"Defeat the King of Wolves."

"...You're not thinking small, are you. This is hardly a sure thing."

"It's something that needs doing whether it's you or not. I just want to see what the King of Humanity and the King of Dogs will do. I'll help as well, but the methods and means I leave entirely to you."

Even with this many resources behind me, whether half of what I used to be was enough to stop the King of Wolves was an open question. Honestly, I wasn't confident. If I had my way, I'd put it off until I'd fully recovered my strength.

But the regressor had dangled something I couldn't refuse as bait.

"Then I'll show you every Demon God I know of."

"Really?"

"Really."

'I want to see what result this attempt leads to, for one thing. If Hughes defeats the King of Wolves properly as the King of Humanity, that's one great disaster removed from the picture, and I can fold it into a new routine for future regressions.'

So if things go sideways she just regresses? Tch. Must be nice, not having to worry about things going wrong.

'Showing the Demon Gods is fine. If I show all of them and he falls and becomes the King of Sin anyway, I can just lie about showing them next time and not actually do it.'

As if that would work. I'm reading your thoughts right now.

"All right. Take your time getting ready. I have things to do in Ende as well."

"What sort of things?"

"Investment. Business."

'Let me think. Before long, a cult will rise alongside the Rider of Plague, and the principality that seals its borders under the pretext of quarantine will clash with the Empire. I can't stop it, but I can reduce the fallout. The violet merchant guild that came to open new trade routes should still be in Ende right now, so I need to tell them about preventive measures and a cure and have them secure the supplies.'

My, she's busy. Being a regressor isn't something just anyone could manage, it seems. She really has been saving the world.

'Last regression I forgot, and couldn't stop the massacre that happened under the banner of quarantine. Don't forget this time.'

Take that back, you little wretch. Something that important, you keep track of when it matters.

The regressor tossed me a ring of keys. I caught it, and it was just as heavy as the weight of expectation that came with it.

"I'll leave it to you. Go ahead and do as you please, King of Humanity. And King of Dogs."

"Huh, the expectations are a bit heavy to carry, but, well. For the sake of a promise, I'll do it properly."

"Woof."

Azzy and I both nodded with resolute looks on our faces.

A month passed.

The regressor's furious shout filled the manor to the rafters.

"Get out of the house!!!"

When she had left to take care of business, she had caught me resting off the fatigue of the journey, and at that point the regressor had still been perfectly composed.

'Right. She's due for a rest. And even if she runs off with the money while I'm gone, that's all it amounts to.'

The ease of someone who can afford to be generous. The regressor left the manor in my care and went off to handle her affairs, with the added intention of testing me somewhere in the back of her mind.

What she didn't know, though, was this.

A full beast doesn't hunt.

About two weeks ago. The regressor came back after finishing one errand and tilted her head at the sight of me and Azzy sprawled out flat on the floorboards.

'...? Still resting? Well, she must be resting after getting some work done.'

She stayed briefly and then left again to do something else, and it was only around the third time she came back and saw the exact same scene that she finally grasped what me and Azzy had actually been doing.

"You haven't done anything!"

The manor hadn't changed much at all. The money in the safe had gone down a little, that was it. Azzy and I had used it to eat well and sleep well. We'd rested so thoroughly that we'd actually put on a healthy bit of weight.

"What are you two?!"

"Me? The King of Humanity."

"Woof, me, puppy!"

"That's not what I asked, you freeloaders! What exactly have you two been doing while supposedly getting ready to fight the King of Wolves?!"

Sprawled out on the floor as I was, I kept my expression resolute and answered.

"Stockpiling. In preparation for battle."

"Woof~."

"Stockpiling what?!"

The regressor came over and flipped the floorboard we'd been lying on. After a month of peace-soaked inactivity, the dog and the human failed to react to the sudden assault and flailed around helplessly. The regressor looked down at the two kings crawling uselessly across the ground and shouted.

"If you'd at least been training, that'd be one thing. You just stockpiled fat! What are you going to do?! Give the King of Wolves a tastier delicacy than usual?!"

"No, I just wasn't ready to take on the King of Wolves yet."

"I bought you a manor and gave you money so you could get ready! You said you were looking for the Demon Gods? Don't you need help?"

Honestly, I'd figured I didn't need to bother with the regressor's help since I could just read her thoughts whenever I needed to. I'd also had a small notion of simply pretending to work and running out the clock until she got back.

Still flat on the floor, not even thinking about getting up, I squirmed around and answered.

"But resting turned out to be just too comfortable, and, well. Before I knew it I'd sunk into a really, really deep rest."

"You sound like an unemployed bum! And you call yourself the King of Humanity?!"

"The unemployed are also human. The King of Humanity is thus the King of the Unemployed."

"Try being king of the hardworking for once!"

'I thought he might run away, but I never expected him to do absolutely nothing! Does he not understand how serious the situation is? Every second counts right now!'

Hmm. But think about it. You said the King of Sin will appear and destroy the world, right? Then as long as I'm alive, the King of Sin won't appear, so wouldn't the right move be to eat well, stay warm, and live a long, comfortable life?

"You weren't like this when we were in the military state! What happened to you?!"

"Well, when I was in the military state I was living pretty hard just to dodge their attempts to exploit me."

I glanced at the safe sitting in the corner of the room. The safe the regressor had left in my care was packed with alchemic coins, so no matter how much I spent, it barely made a dent. A spring that never ran dry. Of course I was going to use it.

"Ende is a free, wild city, and having money here opens every door. I was going around getting a sense of the place and happened to meet some really good people. They've been handling a lot of things on my behalf, which is maybe why I got a little, shall we say, lax."

The regressor's anger softened a fraction, and she looked at me with something like anticipation.

"So you did meet someone."

"Yes. Ende has no strict rules, and the residents all have strong personalities, so similar types band together in clans and lean on each other, right? The majority of Ende's residents are beastkin, and they break into large clans depending on what kind of beastkin they are. I went and made contact with them to get a read on the lay of the land here."

"Hmph. So you weren't completely idle."

"How could I really manage to do absolutely nothing? Anyway, I was going around throwing money at clans here and there to build connections, and then..."

That was when it happened. The sound of hoofbeats clattering toward us stopped in front of the manor. At the same moment, Azzy's ears stood straight up. The visitor halted outside the gate and called for me.

"Hughes-nim! Are you in?!"

"Speak of the devil. One moment."

Good timing. I got to my feet at a leisurely pace and walked toward the door. The regressor, who had been wearing a displeased look, seemed at least somewhat relieved to know there had been some minimal contact with the outside world.

'An informant? Instead of going to them she had them come to the manor. Well, even so, she couldn't really have spent this whole time just eating and lounging, could she?'

Hmm. Getting your hopes up this high is going to make it awkward when I let you down.

I opened the door. The freckle-covered young horse-kin girl waiting outside broke into a bright smile and called out cheerfully.

"Forward Delivery! Beef soup with boiled meat, three portions, right?"

"With the bone on the meat. Right?"

"Prrr! Of course! You've ordered so many times, I'd never get that wrong!"

Clack, clack clack. The horse-kin pulled the wrapped food out of her iron-sided bag and set it down in front of us. Azzy had already crept right up to my feet and was drooling, staring fixedly at the food.

Over the past month, Azzy had learned something. When the sound of hoofbeats stopped in front of the door, food was about to arrive. The moment the horse-kin set down the meat, Azzy snatched it up in a flash and got straight to work deboning it.

Thank goodness for the bone. Without it she'd have finished in three seconds flat and come after mine. This is exactly why you have to order bone-in.

"That'll be 40 Alke all together! Return the disposable alchemic container and I'll give you 1.5 Alke back!"

"Here you go. Keep the change on the return. I'm not worried about small change."

"As always, very generous!"

The horse-kin slung her bag back on and gave me a firm thumbs-up.

"Enjoy your meal! Forward Delivery, heading back!"

Her bag now considerably lighter, the horse-kin took off at a sprint. Da-dum, da-dum. The horseshoes fitted to her shoes made a sound just like actual hoofbeats. The leg strength of horse-kin runs several times that of an ordinary person, so without horseshoes their footwear wears through almost immediately.

Delivery really does mean horse-kin. I shut the door and came back with the food. The regressor, who had watched the whole scene from start to finish, was trembling with barely contained fury.

"...So. That's how I got friendly with clans that run various service businesses. Working together with them."

"Working together my foot! You found a lazier way to be lazy!"

She'd caught on.

The chapter title 백수의 왕 is a pun. 백수 (白手) literally means "empty hands" and colloquially refers to someone who is unemployed or idle, a layabout. Hughes riffs on this by saying 백수 또한 인간, 인간의 왕은 즉 백수의 왕: "the unemployed are also human; the King of Humanity is thus the King of the Unemployed (King of the Idle)." The title plays on his official title 인간의 왕 (King of Humanity) by substituting 인간 with 백수.

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