WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 499

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The Inverted Pyramid Crumbles Quickly

It was not a matter of being wicked or inconsiderate. They simply lived in entirely different worlds. To call their common sense twisted felt wrong, given how many people thought the same way. At some point it stopped being a question of right or wrong altogether.

They were just different. Stack blocks that different on top of each other and you get a tower balanced on a knife's edge, ready to collapse at the slightest nudge. Like right now.

"If you're so superior, then why are you cowering here like this?"

"Because beasts bit me. But this is over. Even if the mainland has let Ende slide, they won't tolerate an outright rebellion. Once the feudal lords are informed, they'll show what human power looks like."

Well, the feudal lords probably had no interest in pouring resources into this thankless piece of land either. They had bigger priorities.

"And if the message never reaches them, it's over, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Say I, out of concern for pig-kin rights, block your path right now and hand you over to Orcma. What good is your human superiority then? What good are the feudal lords?"

I smiled blandly. Welshi flinched and stepped forward, ears and tail stiff with tension. Duke Erectus said, as though he could not believe his ears:

"You, you'd sell me out? You'd throw your lot in with beasts?"

"Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn't. I'm just curious. What exactly is this human superiority you keep talking about? From where I'm standing, you look lower than just about anyone right now."

"Me?"

"Isn't that right? The public official who goes around puffing himself up about his own superiority is skulking around in a filthy state. If it weren't for the capable guard dog beside him, he'd have been caught long ago. Look, even now, you're leaning on Welshi."

The way he was plastered to Welshi's back looked less like master and servant and more like mother and son. If he'd had a mirror, he couldn't have argued with me, but Duke Erectus fired back easily.

"Welshi is my servant, and a beastkin at that. Of course she protects me."

"Nothing in this world is a matter of course. Just like the dominion you assumed was your birthright has now ended."

"That was only possible because those Piggy bastards stirred up the ignorant beastkin and ambushed us!"

"You're human, and you can't even out-manipulate them? On top of that, you fall apart the moment you're caught off guard? Is that the kind of gap that makes someone great or noble? You couldn't beat them in words, you couldn't beat them in force, you couldn't beat them in politics. What exactly do you have left? Self-congratulation?"

"You little!"

"I don't know whether humans are superior or not, but I do know one thing. If that's the standard, then you, having been beaten by orcs, are somewhere around beast-level yourself. Looking at you right now, I'd say that checks out."

Duke Erectus jabbed a finger at me and shouted something, but I brushed it off without a second thought and got back to the point.

"Ah. Truth is, I'm not particularly interested in you, Erectus-ssi. You're a bit tiresome, honestly. I came here because Welshi-ssi is the one I find interesting."

The dismissal seemed to sting worse than anything else. Welshi shoved her increasingly loud master behind her and stepped forward.

"If I satisfy that curiosity, will you let my master go?"

"Hmm? I had no intention of capturing him in the first place. Why would I?"

"You're on Orcma's side."

"No. I'm on the human side. And he's human too. I'll help him just as I'm helping the orcs."

"Help him?"

"Yes. You might agree in your heart, even if you won't say so out loud, but this is helping him. It's a valuable experience, isn't it?"

Welshi, for all her loyalty, could not bring herself to deny it. But she was not naive enough to take my words at face value either. She kept a wary eye on me and on our surroundings, doing her best to ignore Azzy panting happily nearby, and answered.

"What is it about me that interests you?"

"I'll grant that the pig-kin want their rights back. That's understandable. It makes sense that every beastkin believes all beastkin are equal. For a beastkin, that's natural. But what about you? You're beastkin yourself. Why are you protecting a public official?"

"Is that your question?"

"If the answer is 'because he's my master,' then that's not what I asked. I want to know what you're expecting from him."

She had been born a servant, raised to be one. An upbringing that bordered on conditioning had made Welshi someone capable of giving her life for her master.

But Welshi was still a person. She could not be following him and protecting him on blind faith alone, with nothing underneath it. Among all the peoples I knew, the only ones who had actually pulled off that kind of conditioning were the Sanctum, and even they managed it only through foresight, a dominion power of staggering scale. Comparing Duke Erectus to them would be an insult to the Sanctum.

"There is no reason behind serving one's master."

"I'm not asking for a reason. It's obvious enough from looking. A stupid master like that isn't particularly worth serving. But you're still following him, which means there's something you're expecting from him."

"You little wretch! What did you just say!"

Duke Erectus seemed to find being left out of the conversation harder to bear than anything else. But he was helpless. He could not stop me, and he could not stop Welshi from speaking.

"I mean it. I expect nothing from my master."

"You know how hollow it is to hope someone will change. But there's still something you want, isn't there? Pay, gifts, rewards, a little praise."

"Those things... I don't expect them anymore."

Not expecting something and not wanting it are different things. The wider that gap, the worse it aches. Welshi clenched her fist and said:

"My master is not a kind person. But even he... there were times he was gentle."

"When?"

"Long ago, when we were young. Children being trained as servants live and study at their master's side, so..."

The guarddog families stay by their master's side from birth. It is meant to build loyalty, to make the child recognize the master from the earliest age. Better to raise a well-bred dog from a pup than to bring in a grown one that has already seen the world.

"Even as a child he was difficult. When I told him I'd been learning energy and my body had gotten stronger, he came at me with a whip. When I dressed myself in clean clothes, he poured muddy water over me. He would laugh and laugh at me standing there, soaked and at a loss. He was always the one tormenting me."

Goodness. Rotten to the core even then. No redeeming qualities from the start.

"But... there were times my master was kind too. When I was having a hard time and sat crying in a corner, he used his own handkerchief to wipe my face. Once, when I lost a precious gift, he dug through the dirt with me to help find it. Those times, I was truly happy..."

Welshi had been recalling a version of him younger and purer, before that warped personality had fully hardened, and her eyes dropped with a quiet sadness.

"Looking back, across all those years, I can count those moments on my fingers. Still, there were times it was good. I don't expect it to be like that again. But even so..."

She still had that attachment.

Classic gaslighting. It had started so young that she had taken the mistreatment as ordinary life, left to treasure the rare flickers of kindness far beyond what they deserved. Like a single good deed shining bright against a hundred wrongs.

Looked at another way, though, even someone as rotten as him had apparently been something close to innocent once. She probably still hoped, somewhere inside, that he might be like that again.

What a sad wish. How would you ever make that happen? It would mean turning that awful man into a decent one. Changing someone else is not something I can do.

I was about to say something to that effect when Azzy popped up and barked.

"Same as me!"

"...Your Majesty?"

"Me too!"

Azzy smiled brightly and nuzzled her face against Welshi.

"Humans, fight each other. But tell Azzy, go bite! But promise, not keep."

She meant that the humans she cared about kept fighting among themselves, kept trying to use her as a weapon against other humans, and still refused to follow through on the promised fight with the King of Wolves.

Wow. That was genuinely awful. Whoever was responsible for that, it was not me. A King of Humanity drained of all his power has no bearing on the average human's conduct.

While I was quietly distancing myself from humanity, Azzy smiled her brightest smile at Welshi.

"Woof! Someday, keep promise! Because it's a promise!"

"Your Majesty..."

The same situation as Welshi. No, far larger in scale. Welshi felt that way toward her one master, but Azzy was like that toward every human being.

People are social creatures. Seeing Azzy, who had it so much worse than her, Welshi found a small measure of comfort. Then, feeling a brief pang of guilt for taking comfort in a king's misfortune, she asked:

"What if they never keep it?"

"Keep it!"

"What if they don't? What if your friends change their minds, or something urgent comes up and they just can't follow through?"

"Wait!"

"Until when?"

"Until?"

Watching Azzy tilt her head to the side, you could feel the cruelty of an open-ended promise. It did not even end with death. She would wander the world, starting over, until it was finally fulfilled.

It was something no ordinary being could fathom enduring. Only the Beast King could manage it, perhaps. Welshi pulled Azzy close and whispered:

"...I'm sorry, Your Majesty."

"Woof? Why?"

"No reason. Just, I wish I could fight the wolves at your side..."

She had someone she had to protect before Azzy. Of course, so did Azzy. Promises mattered to her, but Azzy protected humans whether there was a promise involved or not.

"It's okay! Protect humans!"

"Thank you, Your Majesty. My master is Duke Erectus. But my king is you."

Dog and dog-kin touched noses in a brief reunion. Though they shared the same plight, Welshi, whose situation was objectively better, grieved far more deeply than Azzy, who could not fully comprehend her own.

"How lovely. I'd like a servant like that myself."

Duke Erectus, startled by my sudden approach, nearly stumbled backward. I caught him and said:

"A little childhood kindness, and she tends to him this faithfully. That's a loyalty you'd never get from Azzy. Azzy bares her teeth and growls if you don't give her a piece of meat."

"And yet you're the one putting the King of Dogs to work."

"Azzy? Putting her to work? Ha, what a strange thing to say. Azzy is my friend. Friends can ask favors of each other, and help each other out. But the friendship stays the same regardless."

"Friends? With the King of Dogs?"

"What's strange about that?"

"The King of Dogs is a beast in human shape."

Oh. Now there was a perspective I hadn't heard in a while. Unlike the regressor, he was treating Azzy as a peculiar kind of dog. Then again, if he didn't count beastkin as human to begin with, treating Azzy as human would be the strange thing. Fair enough. I had to give him credit for consistency.

"I'm just as much a beast myself. What reason would there be that we can't be friends?"

"..."

He might have argued a moment earlier. But after listening to the exchange between me and Welshi, he had gone quiet with what looked like a great deal weighing on him.

"Even among humans, people aren't equal. Just as you and I are different. But even without being equals, you can offer comfort, or a word of praise, can't you?"

"...So. What do you want from me? Are you saying I should think of beastkin as equal to humans?"

What? Why would I want that? What you think is none of my business. As the King of Humanity, I can read beastkin minds, which puts them in the human category by my reckoning, but that only applies to me. If you believe otherwise, then that's your truth.

"No. Why would I try to change your mind? I have no interest in what you think or what you want."

"What?"

"None at all. Your wishes are too simple for me to find worth listening to."

Duke Erectus was not especially wicked or cruel.

From his perspective, beastkin simply were not human. Since they were not equal to begin with, nothing he did or did not do particularly mattered. You cannot expect to feel joy from being praised by livestock or a pet.

Perhaps that was why he had always wanted something more impressive to show for himself. Raising the King of Dogs, defeating the King of Wolves, something big enough for other humans to recognize and respect. And now, I supposed, he could add retaking Ende from the pig-kin to that list, though he seemed to have given up on that for the time being.

Duke Erectus simply wanted what everyone wants: to be recognized. The trouble was only that there were no humans around him whose recognition would mean anything.

So what did he need, results? Or humans who would watch him and acknowledge him?

"There is someone here who treasures a small childhood kindness this deeply and praises him for it. But you are not the kind of man who could be satisfied with that. Whether you even have the capacity for more is a separate question entirely."

Shift the thinking slightly, and Duke Erectus already had both things. A small good act, and a servant who had held it close all these years. The trouble was simply that he could not accept such a minor achievement as worth anything, nor acknowledge the value in a servant who was, after all, only beastkin.

Failing to find satisfaction in the present and always wanting more. There was nothing I could do about that. All I could do was wish him luck.

Detaining them and cutting off any message to the feudal lords was Orcma's job, not mine. I collected Azzy, who was saying her goodbyes to Welshi, and we slipped out through the shadowed back alleys. I did not bother reading where those two were headed. There was no need.

Before long we ran into the orcs maintaining the movement restrictions. I spotted Gulta at the front, building a wall of wagons, and strolled up without a care.

"Haven't found them yet?"

"We're tracking by scent now! We'll have them soon!"

Oh. Using beastkin noses to track the smell. Starting now?

I tilted my head.

"Hmm? What were you doing until now?"

"...We were working out how to do that!"

"Ah. Right. You might want to add that to the manual. Good luck."

So their response manual had disappeared along with Erectus. Even with Mayor Triber helping, little gaps like this kept appearing.

I was about to walk past when Gulta called after me urgently.

"Wait. Magician! Is there any way you can find them?"

"You mean their current location? Personally, I'd hire a beastkin with a sharp nose and have them track the scent."

It was a fairly pointed jab, but perhaps high-minded sarcasm was too abstract for Gulta. She lit up and asked:

"Oh! Do you know a beastkin with a sharp nose? Introduce me if you do!"

"...It's a bit late for that now. You'd be much faster handling it yourselves."

"Tch. Next time, speak up sooner!"

Quite the commotion for the middle of the night. At this rate, whether they could actually hold Ende and seize power was anyone's guess.

But it was their ideal and their dream. What was being tested was their capability. I would watch a little longer.

I turned to head back to the manor, and Azzy sniffed at something on her coat and asked:

"Woof? Smell, find?"

"No, don't."

If the wolves closed in right on top of us I could not afford to just keep watching, but a promise to Azzy came before whatever those orcs were after.

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