WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 485: Going All the Way

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Gluta, the bull beastkin who ran Kitchen Gluta's kitchen and was also a well-known businessman in Ende, lived by diligence and good faith. As strict as he was with himself, he was equally strict with others. Thankfully, he did not treat his customers that way. Had he not chosen a line of work centered on serving people, he would have become an old grouch scolding everyone he met.

Even Gluta could not casually push around an elderly pig beastkin far older than himself.

"Mrs. Mig. Could you show some restraint?"

"Restraint? Is that something you eat?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Then go suck on some taffy! I've lived this way for eighty years. I'll keep living this way until I drop dead!"

She had already been middle-aged when Gluta was young. He had even eaten at her table once or twice. It was difficult to apply strictness to an old woman past eighty.

The old pig beastkin waved a ladle wildly over her head and shouted.

"My only crime is feeding homeless, starving children! If that's a crime, why don't you question your mother first, the way you're questioning me?"

"Isn't this more than simply feeding people?"

Gluta looked around Mrs. Mig's dining table. A railing had been fitted onto a household table, creating several seats. There were a little over ten in total. It was too shabby to call a restaurant, yet far too large for the home of an old woman living alone.

"You say you serve orc soul food, but Mrs. Mig, your home is clearly a restaurant. Beastkin come here, eat, and pay you for it."

"They get fed and leave a little food or pocket change behind!"

"Other restaurants selling meat are struggling because Orcma has targeted them. The only places still doing business are the tables of pig beastkin like you. I know that may not have been your intent, but it doesn't look good."

"You think I'm making even a penny? I'm barely scraping by day to day. What could I possibly have left over?"

"Recently, haven't pig beastkin been coming in groups to eat here?"

Clang.

Mrs. Mig threw the ladle to the ground. The small amount of thick stew remaining inside left a long streak across the rug. Panting angrily, she pointed at Gluta.

"So what? Am I not allowed to make a living? Who's going to hire an eighty-year-old woman?"

"...Well, that..."

"I can't even be used for meat anymore. I'm so old there's nothing to chew but bone! And even those have had all the marrow sucked dry, so they have no flavor left. The best thing I can do is die somewhere out of sight! Fine, I'm going to die anyway, so kill me now! Grind my bones into feed!"

Gluta knew her circumstances all too well and could not continue.

The havoc caused by the pig beastkin had passed the pig beastkin by. While other beastkin communities were being shaken apart, the pig beastkin community only grew more solid. Suspicious of that, Gluta had come to Mrs. Mig's table.

Put another way, he was only suspicious.

He had always known that Mrs. Mig ran a small restaurant. He also knew that if she quit, there was nothing left for her to do except die. Gluta was not cruel enough to tell Mrs. Mig to die.

But Gluta could not die either.

"Then talk some sense into your customers. I can't hold on like this any longer."

Mrs. Mig glared fiercely at Gluta before speaking.

"If I knew how to talk sense into people, my child wouldn't have died away from home like that."

Mrs. Mig had survived every kind of hardship, and she was not easily cowed. Gluta could say no more and left the table. Things would remain difficult for a while, but he would have to endure a little longer.

After seeing Gluta out, Mrs. Mig spat outside and closed the door.

"Damn it. What am I supposed to do...? Tch. It's a crime that I haven't died yet. A crime."

Gluta had been half right. Mrs. Mig was an Orcma collaborator, but a reluctant one. She kept telling herself that feeding them was something she had always done, yet she could not shake the feeling that she was getting involved in something dangerous.

"I ought to die peacefully. Tch, tch."

"Come on. No matter how old you are, you don't want to die."

Mrs. Mig flinched at the unfamiliar voice. At the table where she had spoken with Gluta only moments ago, where there should have been no one, an unfamiliar human was eating stew. He must have been starving, given how eagerly he shoveled it down. Blowing on a spoonful, he made a fuss.

"Ah, hot. It's delicious, but hot."

"What kind of rotten bastard steals someone else's food?"

She shouted while trying to sound calm, but the human casually rolled the stew around his mouth, savoring the taste.

"Huh? This is pork."

"You're stuffing your face without permission, and you're talking about meat?"

"How strange. A base supporting Orcma serves pork? Do Orcma forget their convictions when filling their own bellies, or are they being thoroughly fooled by a kind old grandmother?"

Her ominous feeling had become reality.

A human coming to a back-alley restaurant like this was strange from the start. Humans, fussy about hygiene and all that, had only one reason to take an interest in her.

The troublesome Orcma brats she fed and housed.

"Ah. Two pots? Pork for other beastkin, different meat for pig beastkin? Oh, I see. So there was a way to do it. That means you can monopolize and sell pork that has lost its buyers."

"Do youngsters these days have nothing better to do than spout whatever comes to mind? I've been eating pork for eighty years! I don't care about things like that!"

"Of course you don't. A pig beastkin living in an old house like this, how much meat could you have eaten in your eighty years? This must have started recently."

The human tossed aside his spoon and put his feet on the table. His leisurely movement made Mrs. Mig feel pressured, and she shrieked.

"My only crime is cooking for those with nowhere to go! If that's a crime, then fine! I should just die!"

"Do you really want to die?"

With a casual flick of his arm, a card embedded itself in the wooden table. Its trembling edge gleamed coldly like a blade.

Mrs. Mig drew in a sharp breath, and the human smiled at her.

"Don't worry. I don't care whether you're an elderly grandmother, a pig beastkin who has suffered through hardship, whether you had a pitiful past, or whether you're shameless enough to deny the obvious truth right in front of you."

Mrs. Mig was a reluctant collaborator. Naturally, there were others supporting her. People who supplied the pork, provided money, and established a contact network for use when necessary.

They probably were not Orcma's leaders either, but if I kept tracing things back, feeling my way up from the fingers, I would reach them eventually.

"Because before me, you're just another person."

"Stop talking nonsense and get out! Before I report you..."

"Haha. Wouldn't you report me to your Orcma children, or to the person who desperately begged you to keep their secret?"

Denying it meant she wanted to protect them, at least. That was all Mrs. Mig wanted, and why she kept denying everything. She stubbornly pretended not to know what I was talking about.

But I had already read every thought in her head.

No one could hide anything from me. The only exception was someone who forgot things as often as the regressor. Though they would end up forgetting what they were trying to hide too.

"How did you...!"

Without answering, I clapped my hands. Steel cards scraped against each other, sending up a brief shower of sparks. When Mrs. Mig, who had squeezed her eyes shut in terror, opened them again, I had already disappeared into Ende's chaos.

Around the same time.

Pig Safe, one of the most secretive places in the pig beastkin community.

Those with no money who suffered persecution naturally grew more closed-off. They could not even trust the money in their own hands. At the bottom, it was never surprising for someone to strike from behind and steal it.

Blood-related clans gathered together, hiding property that could be lost at any moment in secret hideouts of their own. They entrusted the safe to their most reliable clan member.

That was the pig beastkins' little bank, Pig Safe.

"Hmph. A 'table' was attacked?"

"The godmothers are trembling with fear. They convulse just from thinking about that unfamiliar human."

Society had developed to some extent, and financial knowledge had spread. Pig Safe was no longer as closed-off as it had been in the past. They had even learned how to invest money and turn a profit.

Their methods were simply a little dirty.

The safekeeper Shallok wrinkled their nose in displeasure.

"One? Just one human?"

"That's what we've heard."

"What did he look like?"

"Th-they said they didn't know..."

"An outsider? Could it be the one who recently moved into that mansion?"

Even in a city as large as Ende, word had already spread about the human who bought a mansion with an enormous sum of cash. When something strange happened, they could not help suspecting the unusual outsider.

But the subordinate shook their head.

"No. He looked different. More importantly, that man was in Oberli at the time."

"Hmph. So he wasn't out and about? You know what he looks like, yet you couldn't find him?"

An unfamiliar human was throwing the community into disarray. No one knew where he got his information, what abilities he had, or even something as basic as who he was. It was suffocating, like being lost in fog.

Above all, it had been too swift and too deadly to believe one human alone had done it. Even with help from an insider, it seemed impossible.

The safekeeper, troubled by an unpleasant premonition, sniffed the air.

"Release Fang. Pick the ones with sharp noses and tell them to catch that bastard."

"Yes. I'll pass it on. Then the funds..."

The safekeeper decided to open the safe to get rid of him. Taking out a key, Shallok inserted it into the safe's lock and gave a firm instruction.

"We can't give them much. We'll see how things go before deciding whether to add more. Tell them that..."

Click.

The moment Shallok turned and pulled the key at the feel of something catching, the safe collapsed with a crash.

When someone was too shocked, their body froze. The safe door slid weakly toward the safekeeper's rigid form. The steel safe that had always reliably protected pig beastkin money now shamelessly exposed its interior.

Hundreds of cards spilled across the floor with the safe door. It was as if the whole safe had been turned into cards, leaving only its outer skin behind. Once its supports vanished, the entire thing crumbled apart.

The safekeeper stared blankly into the safe. Instead of the alchemical coins that should have filled it, it was piled high with pork.

At the top of that hill of pork, a single smiling card greeted the pig beastkin as if mocking the safekeeper.

Whispers slowly spread through Ende. The frightened muttering of beastkin overlapped, gradually becoming a fear like some urban legend.

No one knew where he had appeared from, how he knew so much, or how powerful he was. No one could find the man tearing through Ende with the unknown as his weapon rather than raw strength. They could only repeat themselves blankly.

Yet those who had experienced 'it' even once all murmured the same thing, as though they had made a promise.

The Magician had appeared.

Footnotes:

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