WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 482

──────

Rule but Not Reign

Beastkin were born into slavery. After the fur-bearing Holy Maiden appeared, beastkin slavery was abolished, but a life does not change in a single instant. The old arrangement simply passed down the generations under a different name.

Loosely speaking, I had benefited from that history too. The delivery system. You pay in coin, but using horse-kin as errand runners is a time-honored tradition.

At any rate, much had changed over the years, and the most conspicuous of those changes was the dog-kin.

Even back in the days of slavery, dog-kin had been popular. Loyal, friendly, useful, and endearing. Any household worth calling comfortable kept one or two as a matter of course.

After slavery ended, demand for dog-kin stayed high across the board. Butlers, guards, attendants, odd-job workers, and more. Whatever the name or the arrangement, they were always the beastkin closest to humans.

Ende, the beastkin city, was apparently no different.

A neatly dressed human strode in with a dog-kin attendant at his heels. It did not seem like a welcome entrance. Most of the elder beastkin present showed clear signs of alarm.

"Duke Erectus. We were in the middle of a meeting. Official notices were already sent to every public official in Oberli."

"I don't read those. There's something more important, isn't there? Does sending a notice mean you're allowed to bark up a storm? Here, in the dignified halls of Oberli!"

Oberli was the city built by the first humans to settle this land. Their descendants were human too, the ruling class that had inherited rights to this territory for generations. Some had returned to their fiefdoms out of fear of the King of Wolves, but others had stayed and kept their grip on power.

Duke Erectus was one of them. Even the clan heads deferred to him: the man who ruled this city.

"We have a guest present. For Oberli's own sake, please compose yourself."

Even the mention of a guest did nothing to soften Duke Erectus. He responded with his usual arrogance.

"A guest? Someone I need to know?"

"We don't have full details ourselves, but they're said to be a benefactor of the violet merchant guild, recommended personally by the guild master."

"The feudal lords' patron guild?"

Even he could not simply run roughshod over someone from outside his domain. Duke Erectus clicked his tongue, looking displeased. His gaze drifted around the room, and something else caught his eye.

"What's this? A beastkin I haven't seen before."

"Woof?"

Duke Erectus had taken an interest in Azzy. Their eyes met, and Azzy offered him the same goodwill she gave everyone.

"Woof! Will you keep the promise too?"

"You're addressing me like that? Ha. Do you have any idea who I am, you mangy dog-kin?"

"You, human! I know!"

The dog's way of talking is hard even for me to follow. For Duke Erectus, a man stuffed to the bone with pride, it must have been completely incomprehensible. He let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

"What a perfectly dog-like dog-kin. I like that energy. How about I take you as my attendant?"

The beastkin in the room flinched. He was saying it without knowing Azzy was the King of Dogs, but even so, proposing to make a Beast King your attendant was a fairly staggering thing to say.

The dog-kin attendant at his side felt the same. She moved quickly to head off her master.

"Master, one moment! That person is--!"

"Welshi. Who said you could butt in?"

Duke Erectus cracked his whip and cut her off. But the dog-kin named Welshi, to her credit, held her ground and kept pleading.

"That's the King of Dogs, Master. She came to fight the King of Wolves, so she won't be able to serve you."

"King of Dogs?"

I could only wonder how he normally carried on. The moment the warning actually got through, a collective sigh of relief went through the beastkin present. Wanting to make the King of Dogs your attendant had apparently been one step too far.

But it was too early to relax. Duke Erectus had simply shifted his interest to Azzy directly.

"Oh-ho. King of Dogs or not, she doesn't look much different from a regular dog-kin. Welshi. Is the King of Dogs strong?"

"Yes. She's a Beast King."

"Stronger than you?"

"I couldn't begin to compare."

"But she's tame, isn't she? She would be."

"Yes. The King of Dogs will never harm a human. Not any human, no matter who they are."

"I like the sound of that. Pity she can't harm my enemies."

Duke Erectus seemed to have found genuine interest. He picked up a ball Azzy had been playing with earlier and tossed it. Azzy's instincts kicked in and she bolted after it, snatched it up in her mouth, and came bounding straight back.

Duke Erectus watched the thoroughly dog-like behavior with real fascination.

"Hmm. She's just a human-shaped dog, isn't she? Nothing but ears and a tail. A dog that actually fetches is so much better than a beastkin who argues back."

"I'm sorry, Master."

"Good, that's all I need. Right, I've decided. She stays at my estate until it's time to fight the King of Wolves."

Despite Welshi's efforts, the runaway train had left the rails after all. At the official declaration, the beastkin shot to their feet in protest.

"Wait, Duke Erectus! Her Majesty goes wherever Her Majesty chooses!"

"Why?"

"Because--!"

Duke Erectus was already picking at his ear as the objection stumbled to a halt.

"She's not going to stay in some cheap inn, is she? My estate is far better for it, wouldn't you say? There are dogs there, and plenty of beastkin. And above all, there are humans. Dogs like humans, don't they?"

"The one who brought Her Majesty here is the person recommended by the violet merchant guild!"

"What if she just trots off after someone else while I'm not watching? A dog has to be kept properly, on a proper leash."

A leash, for the King of Dogs. He had just confessed out loud, in front of everyone, the very idea I had once tried and failed to execute myself.

Tsk. What a piece of work. If he saw Azzy as purely a dog, the way I do, that would be one thing. But this one doesn't think of Azzy as not-human while also thinking of her as a dog!

"If you lot stay quiet, she'll follow me along. Come along, King of Dogs. If you want that promise, or whatever it is."

"Woof? The promise?"

"That's right. Put another way: if you don't come with me, I can't keep it."

The sheer audacity of it finally pushed one of the dog-kin forward. Public official or not, the beastkin of Oberli were not easily cowed. They squared up to Duke Erectus, tails stiff and bristling.

"Duke Erectus! That matter has already been decided!"

"It was decided while I wasn't there."

"Then you should have been there! You can't just stand with your hands behind your back every time and then throw a fit afterward!"

Under normal circumstances they wouldn't have pushed this far, but this concerned the King of Wolves and the King of Dogs. It was serious. Every dog-kin in the room pushed back against Duke Erectus.

The resistance was fierce. No matter how much power Duke Erectus held, he alone could not reverse the will of this many people. Frustration boiling over, he let his emotions flow straight into his arm and swung the whip. Not at them. At Welshi, his own attendant.

Crack. The sound split the air and raised the hairs on my neck. Welshi knew full well her master's blow was coming down on her. She gritted her teeth and endured it.

"Quiet! When I! Talk! No one! Listens!"

Thwack, crack, crack. The whip came down hard. Welshi bore it in silence, but the sharp sounds made every beastkin in the room shrink into themselves.

And Azzy, watching a dog-kin suffer right in front of her, grew visibly distressed.

"Woof! Woof!"

"What? Are you the King of Dogs looking out for a dog?"

Duke Erectus caught his breath, riding the feeling of having won.

"That's right! If you do what I say! I'll stop the hitting--"

"What are you doing while I was gone?"

That was when it happened. The regressor dropped from the sky and landed lightly on the ground. She had just arrived and didn't know the full details, but with a sensitivity sharper than any beastkin's, she had already caught the smell of something foul.

Duke Erectus looked at the regressor who had fallen out of nowhere and frowned.

"And who's this? There's an awful lot showing up in Oberli today."

"You tell me. Explain what's going on."

"What do you... Oh. Are you the one? Recommended by the violet merchant guild?"

The regressor didn't look wealthy, but she carried herself in a way that was plainly not ordinary. Duke Erectus tilted his chin up and spoke.

"Good timing. I'd like to take charge of the King of Dogs on this end. You'll have plenty to deal with anyway, and we need to fight together, better to coordinate in advance, right?"

"Azzy?"

"That's her name? Yes."

The regressor's gaze moved between his whip and the beastkin woman covered in red marks, back and forth. Her mood was deteriorating by the second.

"What does that have to do with whipping a beastkin?"

"Oh, don't mind that. My attendant was getting a little out of hand, so I was correcting her behavior."

Duke Erectus being human was fortunate. Had he been a beastkin, he would have had his tail between his legs by now without a word. But his ego seemed to have numbed his instincts, because he still hadn't noticed the killing intent the regressor was radiating.

"Someone like you?"

The words caught Duke Erectus off guard.

"What did you say? Did you just say 'someone like you' to me? A public official?"

"Does being human save your life?"

There are grades even among people who run recklessly off the rails. The regressor was at the very furthest extreme of that scale. Duke Erectus's only real mistake was failing to see it in time.

'Stirring up conflict, discriminating against beastkin, and now touching Azzy? No reason to leave him alive.'

Before anyone could say a word, the regressor moved. She kicked Jizan up from the ground, caught it again at her shoulder, wrapped it in airflow, and swung in a single fluid motion. Space buckled and carved a comet-like arc straight toward Duke Erectus.

No words needed. The regressor didn't bother with that kind of deliberation. She had simply judged the thing in front of her to be an obstacle, and now she was clearing it.

Jizan, wrapped in its storm, was lethal even to graze. Only with death directly in his face did Duke Erectus see his life flash before him. Human or not, against that kind of overwhelming force, a life was a trivial thing.

An attack that drew no distinction between gender, race, or rank cut through the bigot.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried