WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 481

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Reign but Not Rule

The plan was to use Ende's strength to hold back the King of Wolves. A solid strategy, but it had one precondition: nobody had actually asked Ende's opinion. Even if Ende was ready to fight the wolves, being ready and being willing were two different things.

The regressor got her things together and spoke to me.

"Today we're going to meet Ende's mayor, Triber. To warn him about the King of Wolves."

"Have a safe trip."

I gave a lazy wave from where I was sprawled on the sofa. The regressor narrowed her eyes and came around behind it. Then she flipped it over with her foot.

She shouted down at me as I flailed around pinned under the cushions.

"You're coming too! It'll be a lot easier to convince them if Azzy, the King of Dogs, is there!"

"Then just bring Azzy. Why do I have to go?"

"Someone has to keep an eye on Azzy. You don't have anything to do anyway!"

"Hitting me with facts like that really hurts, you know."

"I'll hurt you for real if you don't get up!"

It already hurt, being crushed under a sofa. Not that my complaints counted for anything. I let the regressor drag me off toward Ende's main street.

Ende, the free city of the beastkin. No tall walls, no imposing buildings. But even a city like that has its hierarchies.

And as is true in more than a few places, the people at the top of those hierarchies tend to live at the top, physically speaking.

Ende had a small hill. The first humans to settle there built on it, for one simple reason: height meant relative safety from the beasts.

As Ende's population grew, the city stopped being the kind of place that had to worry about beast raids. But in their place, those original settlers grew wary of the beastkin flooding in, or rather, not so much wary of the beastkin themselves as wary of the future selves who would end up mixed in with them.

That was how Oberli came to exist. An upper district with its own kind of order, set apart from Ende's chaos. Time passed, and they did eventually mingle with the beastkin, but Oberli remained a city within a city, distinct from Ende all the same.

Ende's mayor, Triber, was up there.

At the center of Oberli. In a solemn square paved with white brick, Triber welcomed the regressor.

"...Are you the one? The adventurer recommended by the violet merchant guild."

Wrinkles on an elderly person are natural, like rings inside a tree, but on a beastkin they look almost like the marks of something turning more beast-like. The folds that form as ears droop can't help but resemble an animal's face.

In that sense, the old man in front of us looked like a very old dog standing on two legs.

I should note, of course, that I had absolutely no intention of insulting dog-kin. That was purely a personal impression.

A man of some influence with ties reaching even to the imperial family, a battle-hardened old dog who had held his ground even in a beastkin city, he leaned on his cane and looked the regressor over steadily.

"The violet merchant guild doesn't give recommendations lightly, but even so, an adventurer this young... Very well. You say Ende faces a great crisis? What is it, exactly?"

"If it's Ende's crisis we're talking about, there's only one. You'd know it too."

Even in front of someone this powerful, the regressor's manners were nonexistent.

I'll give you that. You really are consistent, rude to absolutely everyone, no exceptions.

"The King of Wolves is coming soon. I came to warn you in advance."

Triber and the elder beastkin around him broke into murmurs. A few of them trembled. Knowing what's coming doesn't make it any less frightening. A familiar fear is still a fear.

Triber scanned the assembly and frowned, his face creasing deeper.

"...Do you have grounds for that certainty?"

Now. I'd been waiting for the cue, so I tossed the ball I'd been idly bouncing toward the center of the square. Azzy launched herself after it almost on instinct. She skidded along the ground, snatched it up, and tumbled head over heels.

Oberli's square was a solemn place where the city's ruling class held open councils. The staging: a barefoot girl comes crashing in and upends the whole mood.

"Perfect timing."

...Not my idea alone. It had been arranged with the regressor beforehand. I'd thought she hated this kind of thing, but she turned out to be more flexible than I expected.

A few of the beastkin looked annoyed, but a good number of dog-kin ears pricked up. Part of them-the beast part, recognized a king.

"Ah. Yes. The King..."

For beastkin, a Beast King is something genuinely hard to put into words. Not someone they know personally, not someone they're obligated to obey, and the Beast Kings themselves don't particularly try to rule anyone.

But a king is a king, all the same.

No proof required. No room for doubt. They simply know. Something passes between them.

That's what a Beast King is.

Triber slowly approached Azzy after receiving the King of Dogs. Azzy, friendly toward humans and loyal to dogs by nature, showed no wariness even at the sight of the old dog-kin. Triber watched her cheerfully shaking the ball clamped in her teeth and spoke, unhurried.

"...The last known sighting was in the kingdom. I'd heard all word of her stopped after the royal family disappeared and it became a military state."

"She was locked away in the Abyss. With the King of Dogs gone from the world, the King of Wolves wandered the plains without purpose. That wandering was what kept causing friction with Ende."

"Now that the King of Dogs has appeared in the world, the King of Wolves will start moving again."

"That's right. A clash is unavoidable."

The regressor delivered her verdict, an inescapable fate, to Ende's leadership. The mood was about to sink under its own weight when Triber straightened up and spoke.

"Then it's almost a relief. A fight with the wolves was always going to happen eventually. If we're going to fight regardless, better to do it with the King at our side."

A dog-kin who nonetheless carried faint traces of imperial lineage, Triber was political, reasonable, and cooperative all at once. He gripped his cane firmly and declared:

"Ende will honor the pact between dogs and humans."

"A wise decision."

"An obvious one as well. The King of Dogs is formidable strength in her own right. With the King of Dogs here to stand against the King of Wolves, our burden will be considerably lighter."

A faint smile touched Triber's face. He went down on one knee before Azzy and bowed his head.

"I am only half. For a king, I can kneel on only one knee. You are probably not accustomed to human ceremony, but... at least let me do this much."

"Woof! Ceremony, not important! Promise comes first!"

"I'm glad to hear that. Don't worry, Your Majesty. The promise will be kept."

Huh. For something the regressor planned, this is going smoothly. Well, no, everything up to now has been the strange part. This is normal. When you've already lived through it, you can simply try the approach that works from the start.

'I'm glad this one went smoothly. I didn't need to threaten them with anything else.'

Threaten? Someone as mild as this old dog-kin? So it wasn't always this easy. Of course it wasn't, with her involved.

Maybe it was the effect of receiving a king, but every dog-kin in the council agreed with Triber's decision. The beastkin who weren't dogs felt some unease but accepted it all the same. These were clan elders and widely respected figures. If it passed in Oberli, it was fair to say all of Ende had been persuaded.

There was one thing nagging at me, though.

With this many beastkin gathered, why were there no humans or Piggies in sight?

I was still wondering when one of the elders who had just caught word of things came over to Triber.

"Mayor Triber. A messenger from the violet merchant guild has arrived. You may want to see them."

"Good timing. Ende is Lilac Duchy territory, nominal as that may be. The fighting is one thing, but we'll still need supply support from the Duchy. And now the violet merchant guild's messenger is here as well..."

Muttering to himself, Triber glanced over at the regressor, a thought surfacing on his face.

"...Hmm. I have a strange feeling that I'm being maneuvered into a corner where fighting is my only option."

Sharp insight, for someone his age. The very person who had maneuvered him responded with complete composure and an outright lie.

"You're reading too much into it."

"Well, no matter. Would you like to join me when I meet the violet guild's messenger?"

"Sure. Hughes!"

My name at last. I'd finished my ball-throwing duties and was killing time at the edge of things, so I ambled in from outside. The regressor pointed at Azzy.

"Watch Azzy while I'm gone."

"What am I, some kind of babysitter?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of."

'It's not like you have anything else to do anyway.'

If you're going to take it back, take it all the way back! I know I haven't been doing much, but still!

Triber and the rest of Oberli's working staff headed off somewhere with the regressor. A few other beastkin peeled away too, leaving behind the ones who were purely delighted to have Azzy there. They held themselves to Oberli standards as a matter of dignity, but their ears and tails were nowhere near as composed as their better judgment.

"Growl... the King of Dogs. You live long enough and the day comes..."

"Isn't the King of Dogs spotted more often than most? Our King of Sheep, whenever sightings get reported, it's always some monastery or mountaintop, the biggest fuss imaginable."

"More often? The King of Wolves makes it so we can never even go looking! Most of the time we can't get anywhere near!"

Faint excitement threaded through their murmuring. After quietly reading through the beastkin's thoughts, I arrived at a conclusion.

How to put it. To beastkin, a Beast King is something close to a cult leader.

Beastkin have inherited the traits of beasts, but they aren't beasts. Their bond to a Beast King is naturally weaker than a true beast's would be. Life without a Beast King doesn't fall apart for them.

But when one is here, there's something warm and stirring about it, something that fills the chest and binds everyone together. Like right now.

I could see why the regressor had told me to bring Azzy along to build connections. Persuasion would be so much easier with her here.

Azzy felt it too. Normally she would have been rolling around with her ball, happy as ever, but right now she was looking at each beastkin's face in turn, eyes bright.

This wasn't the steady goodwill she showed humans as a matter of course. There was something fuller in Azzy's wide eyes and expression, something more genuinely felt.

"Lots of humans who'll keep the promise! You, will you fight with me?"

Azzy trotted over and tugged on a dog-kin's sleeve. It would be hard to say no to such an open, guileless question, and sure enough the dog-kin squeezed both fists and steeled themselves with resolve.

"Of course! Your Majesty, I am ready to fight!"

"Woof! Woof! Me too!"

"Same here!"

Maybe because there were so many dog-kin. Oberli's square filled with excitement and cheering the likes of which it had never seen. The dog-kin who had at least been maintaining some dignity started easing forward, hoping to get a hand on Azzy.

Plenty of people to watch her here besides me. But wait... I'm the King of Humanity. Why doesn't anyone do that for me? You're beastkin, sure, but you're closer to humans than anything else.

I was standing there by the entrance feeling a vague sense of being left out, watching what was essentially a mass fan meet-and-greet, when someone walked past me.

"Quiet down!"

Bang, bang. Someone slammed the iron gate hard, shouting in irritation. The sensitive beastkin all shrank back at once and turned toward the source of the noise.

The person who suddenly had every eye on them didn't seem to feel the pressure at all. If anything, they only grew more annoyed.

"Now I'm wide awake! Did you all go into heat at once? Why is it so loud today?"

"M-my lord... Today the mayor is hosting a council meeting."

"Since when does a council meeting turn into a choir? Don't they know how unpleasant their own voices are!"

The two groups missing from Oberli's square. Humans and Piggies. One of them had finally shown up, if a little late.

Seasons had turned, generations had changed, the wolves' threat had crept up to their doorstep, Ende had transformed into a beastkin city.

And still, at the very top of Ende, there was a human.

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