WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 494

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf

A city demands enormous resources to sustain itself. Food, clothing, fuel, water, and more. Cities tend to plant themselves wherever resources are plentiful, but terrain that provides everything at once is rare.

So cities build the facilities to produce what they lack.

There had been no flocks of sheep in the Enger Plain, not originally. Only the strongest grazers survived its open expanse: sturdy water buffalo, swift zebra, resilient antelope. Sheep could graze this land for one reason alone. Humans raised them here.

The shepherd boy yawned wide and watched his flock drift across the pasture.

"Boring..."

Herding was work that fell mostly to dog-kin and sheep-kin. Dog-kin took to it without being taught, and sheep-kin were born with an instinctive bond to their animals. Experience could be accumulated, but that bond could not be learned, so Ende, with its abundance of capable beastkin, had chosen the high ceiling over the low floor.

A sheep-kin boy assigned to herd sheep looked out over the plain full of grass and animals and clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction.

"Better than something going wrong, I suppose... but it's so dull."

Herding had not always been such a dull profession. This was the edge of Ende. Stray lions and wild dogs appeared regularly, and waking each morning to find a few sheep missing was routine. Checking and mending traps, patching fences every single day, that was what normal looked like here.

But lately, nothing had happened at all. Strangely, uncannily nothing.

The shepherd boy scanned his flock again.

The sky over the Enger Plain in the dry season was wide and bright. Across the flatland, a slow battle played out between brown and green, and the green was losing ground as the flock worked its way through the grass. The sound of wind through the blades mixed with the contented bleating of full-bellied sheep.

Peaceful. Pastoral. Someone burdened by the world's worries might have found joy in all that peace. For a boy with big dreams, it was unbearable.

"Isn't anything interesting going to happen..."

Speak of the devil. The sheepdog napping beside him leaped to its feet. The shepherd boy felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He cupped his hands around his eyes and stared toward the horizon.

Far off, near the far edge of the plain, something with grey fur was moving toward them.

A wolf.

Dense fur. A lean body. The eyes that held cruelty in them seemed to burn with a fierce, feral light. It was still far away, but the sheep-kin boy felt fear and moved on instinct.

"Boy! Watch the flock for me!"

"Woof!"

Leaving the sheepdog in charge, the shepherd boy sprinted down the slope. He ran hard enough for his fur to fly out behind him, reached the guardpost, rang the alarm bell loud and long, and shouted.

"Wolf! There's a wolf!"

The guard station erupted into chaos.

The guards grabbed their weapons and came running. Armored in thick leather, breathing hard, they followed the shepherd boy's lead toward the pasture.

What they found was a flock grazing peacefully, and a sheepdog with its hackles up and its teeth bared.

The guards looked around.

"Where's the wolf?"

"It was right there, just now! Coming up from the plain below!"

The shepherd boy pointed far into the distance, but the wolf that had clearly been drawing closer had vanished without a trace. The guards, annoyed at having turned out for nothing, snapped at him.

"There's nothing here!"

"I saw it, I'm telling you!"

"Maybe you imagined it. Or saw something else."

"No! You think I can't tell the difference? It was definitely a wolf!"

"A wolf just pops out for a look and disappears? Does that make any sense?"

He appealed to them sincerely, but the guards only watched him with suspicious eyes. A wolf that has begun a hunt is relentless. It gnaws at your nerves and wears you down until you let your guard slip, then goes for the throat. It does not simply vanish in plain sight.

Burning with frustration, the shepherd boy turned to his partner.

"It was real! Boy, you saw it too, right?"

"Woof! Grrrr, woof!"

But only the Beast King could speak in human words. Even the sheepdog's agitation did nothing to convince the guards.

"Hmph. Fine. Have it your way."

The guards grumbled their way back to the station. No one said it aloud, but it was obvious they thought the shepherd boy a liar. He fumed at their attitude.

"A wolf actually came and this is what I get?! When the whole flock disappears, they'll blame me for it!"

"Woof woof!"

"Yeah. Good work, Boy. ...Still, what was that wolf, anyway?"

It had been closing in on the flock, then vanished the moment he stepped away. That was not wolf-like behavior. The Enger Plain was wide open. To hide on a flat expanse with no cover, an animal would need to retreat a long way off.

Coming in close and then just pulling back, animals did not move that inefficiently. They were not human scouts running some kind of deception maneuver, either.

The shepherd boy let his imagination wander.

"Maybe it got driven out of its pack. Came close, saw too many sheep, and turned back."

"Grrrr!"

"Or maybe it saw Boy looking so impressive and got scared off!"

"Woof!"

He went on for a long while, spinning theories about the mystery wolf. The sheepdog could not follow a word of it, but responded with great enthusiasm anyway.

Even so, the wolf's appearance had at least one benefit.

He was definitely not bored anymore.

Several days passed. The shepherd boy was yawning his way along the fence line when he spotted a wolf-shaped shadow shimmering in the distance again. Still far, but noticeably closer than before.

His stomach dropped. He ran for the guardpost at a full sprint.

"Wolf! There's a wolf!"

This time the guards arrived alongside an orc mercenary company. They came armed with gleaming weapons, snorting and looking around.

He wondered why pig-kin had shown up instead of the Obelisks, but Ende had always been short-handed. They must have been hired for wolf hunting. He was used to being behind on the news, so he let it pass without a second thought.

The orc mercenaries swept the area and asked.

"Wolf?"

"It was right over there, near the big boulder past the fence!"

The orc mercenaries looked toward the boulder. No sign of a wolf. They scrunched their already-creased faces further.

"Nothing's there. Sniff sniff. No smell of blood, either. Was there actually a wolf?"

"There was! It was standing right there, staring us down and swishing its big tail!"

He beat his chest and shouted the truth, but once again what came back was not praise for raising the alarm, only suspicious looks.

"Then see for yourselves! There'll be big wolf prints right over there!"

Fed up, the shepherd boy climbed straight over the fence. The orc mercenaries followed.

"It was huge and terrifying. So big it blocked out the boulder behind it! There should definitely be prints the size of a head in the dirt!"

Certain of himself, he led the orc mercenaries all the way to the boulder. The evidence would prove his case.

But against everything he expected, there was not a single footprint anywhere near it.

The mercenaries searched and came up empty. One of them spoke with a scowl.

"Nothing."

"Wha-what? That's strange. Why isn't there anything?"

"Must have panicked and imagined it. This is why a cowardly sheep shouldn't be doing herding work."

The accusation stung, but what truly tormented the shepherd boy was the injustice. He had told the truth and done his job faithfully, and somehow he had been turned into a liar condemned by everyone around him. That was what he could not stand.

"It was real! A huge wolf was standing right here, staring right at us!"

"Then where are the prints?"

"What, did the wolf use energy control to hide them?"

"Nonsense. A wolf that could use energy would've already carried this kid off."

"And wolves come in packs. Saying you only saw one is suspicious from the start."

"Maybe he saw the wolf you see three times before you die."

"Wouldn't last long then! Ha ha!"

The boy's only crime was doing his job. He had reported what he saw and relayed what he experienced, and somehow he had become a liar. Even one of the guards who had turned out with the mercenaries pointed a finger at him.

"Don't take him too seriously. This kid rang the alarm last time too and it was a false call. Probably trying to make fools of the new arrivals from the Piggy side."

One of the orc mercenaries turned a dangerous look on the guard.

"Piggy?"

"Ah, sorry. Orc... was it?"

"Watch your tongue. We of Orcma have been given authority to personally punish anyone who uses discriminatory language against us."

Either way, no more searching turned up so much as a wolf hair, let alone a print. The orc mercenaries unleashed a string of curses and rounded on the boy.

"If you call us out here on a lie again, you'll regret it."

"The wolf talk has everyone on edge already, and now the shepherd's causing scenes too."

"Standing in the middle of his flock, you'd think he was one of the sheep himself. How he manages animals smarter than he is, I'll never know."

"Sheep are famous for their bad eyesight. Scared out of his wits and seeing things, most likely."

He was sensible enough not to say that they were disgusting little Piggies themselves. He held his tongue and swallowed his fury until the mercenary company had gone.

"Damn it. The wolf was there. I only said what was true..."

In all his life, he had never felt so wronged, so choked with injustice. He had done nothing wrong, yet the whole world seemed to have joined hands to condemn him. No matter how loudly he cried out, he was only met with laughter and mockery.

The boy thought himself brave, and he considered crying a humiliation. Fighting desperately to hold back the tears, he sniffled and buried his face in the sheepdog's neck.

"I won't ring that alarm again even if it kills me. Just watch. When the whole flock is gone, then they'll wish they had believed me."

Animals could not speak in human words. But they could console a human heart.

The sheepdog said nothing and quietly nuzzled its owner as he dried his tears.

The next day came.

The wolf appeared again. The large black wolf kept the same distance as before, watching the flock.

Everything was the same as before, except the shepherd boy's response to it had changed. He ignored the wolf entirely and gathered up a bundle of hay.

"Woof! Woof!"

"It's fine, Boy. Let it take a few sheep."

"Woof! Woof! Woof!"

"Even if I ring the bell, no one's going to believe me."

"Woof! Woof! Woof! Whimper, woof! Woof..."

"No need to try to protect them. The whole place needs to be covered in blood before they'll believe anything was carried off."

The sheepdog was calling out desperately, and the shepherd boy was answering with cold detachment, when the barking stopped dead.

The shepherd boy turned at that ominous silence. The black wolf had come close without him noticing, and now it was staring straight at him. Its size, the sheen of its coat, it was unmistakably the same wolf he had been seeing.

Hanging from its jaws was the sheepdog, neck broken, dead without having managed any real resistance.

The flock caught the scent of blood and bolted in all directions. All around, prey was scattering in a panic, and still the wolf looked at nothing but the shepherd boy. Thud. The loyal dog's body rolled lifelessly across the ground. Only then did the shepherd boy understand his own situation.

The wolf had not been after the sheep.

It had been after the shepherd.

The wolf's hunt on the city had begun.

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