WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 501: City of Free Beastkin

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Ende was a free city of beastkin. And like any free city, it had a fairly high crime rate. People cried that no one had the freedom to commit crimes, but strictly speaking, that was wrong. Everyone had the freedom to commit crimes. What mattered was whether they could be caught and punished for it.

Ende was a city where many different beastkin lived together. Clashes were frequent, and the means of resolving them were primitive. The city guard only stepped in after blood had been spilled, and when things became too much for them, the Obelisks used the recognized humans' authority to suppress the unrest. After several growing pains, Ende had found its own balance, with races and interest groups banding together into clans.

But crime always existed. People simply smoothed things over, settled matters within their clans, or let the city guard mediate and bury them. Wherever people lived, problems were bound to arise.

A healthy city did not mean that no problems arose. It meant that problems did not grow worse once they did.

Just like our bodies.

"Thief! Thieeeef!"

So if Ende had become such a mess, that meant it was no longer healthy.

"Catch that bastard! City guard!"

"Neigh. City guard, my ass. The Obelisks won't come either, will they?"

Horse beastkin were faster than other beastkin. Some might have the sensible idea of using that advantage to get a job, work hard, and earn money. But if you thought about it simply, stealing someone else's money and running away was the easiest way to make a living.

Especially now, when public order had collapsed.

"Those slow piggies are squatting over there, aren't they? With no guards or Obelisks, there's no way anyone can catch us! Freedom!"

The cow beastkin whose bag had been snatched by the pickpocket chased after the thief, only to fall over in the end. The horse beastkin, glancing back while fleeing, maddeningly stopped right there as soon as the cow beastkin fell.

"You bastard! Do you know I'm from the One-Horn Clan? Do you think you can keep living in Ende after this?!"

Even when the cow beastkin invoked the One-Horn Clan's name, the horse beastkin only snorted.

"No. I don't plan to."

"What?"

"You still haven't heard? The King of Wolves is going to attack this place! If you stay in Ende, you'll just become wolf food! The answer is to pull off one big score and get out of Ende! Hahaha!"

The horse beastkin mocked the other slowpokes and vanished into an alley, leaving behind news of the King of Wolves.

With the Obelisks and Oberli's dog-beastkin guards gone, the city guard had lost its authority. The lofty authority of the recognized humans, which had kept the flood of crime in check, was gone. No, now that a revolution had taken place, the humans living in Ende wore hoods to hide the fact that they had neither ears nor tails.

When the wall between Oberli and Ende collapsed, many things spilled out: wealth, power, secrets, and more. Having lost so much influence, Oberli could no longer exert any control over Ende.

"Urukpaing! Beastkin are looting the shopping district in groups!"

"What are you telling me for? Stop them!"

"We can't... There are too many!"

"Damn it! They're looting at a time like this? What kind of beastkin are they?"

"Mostly horse beastkin..."

"I knew it! We should smash every one of those bastards' ankles!"

"...A large number of orcs are taking part as well. When the horse beastkin start looting, the orcs crowd around and steal one or two things each. We're arresting more orcs than horse beastkin."

"Argh!"

The orc mercenaries moved alongside the city guard, but there was no way they would work well together. The city guard had neither the intention nor the reason to follow the orders of the poorly organized orcs in the first place. They responded to the same places, left the same places uncovered, and once the situation slipped out of their hands, they gave up altogether.

Amid the chaos caused by the gap in public order, Ende's citizens had no choice but to find ways to protect themselves.

"The sheep and cow clans couldn't endure the theft anymore, so they're organizing private armies and putting up fences!"

Ende was torn apart, clan by clan. The clans fenced off their own territories and blocked passage, trying to keep their members safe.

From a clan's perspective, it might have been the right thing to do. But from the city's perspective, it was like autonomous territories springing up everywhere, something that could never be allowed. Poina was horrified when she heard the news.

"The clans organized private armies? That's illegal! Ende severely restricts private armies for clans outside Oberli!"

"...Then what about us?"

"We're rightful members of Oberli!"

With the crisis at their doorstep, Orcma finally reinstated the Oberli guards. But when you got down to it, they had made the worst possible move at the worst possible time. The guards were pro-human, had truly been colluding with the recognized humans, and wanted to drive out Orcma, which had taken their jobs away, even if only briefly.

News occasionally came in that wolves had dragged people away outside, but it was swallowed up by the noise within Ende and faded into the background. As reports continued that preparations were underway, the fight against the wolves drew right up to their doorstep.

"Awooooo..."

A commotion could be heard outside. Most of it was human shouting, screaming, and groaning. I couldn't see clearly from inside the walls, but Azzy's ears and nose seemed to catch every sound.

I waved a hand at Azzy as she mournfully howled at the sky.

"Azzy. Stop howling so pitifully at the sky and come inside to sleep."

"Woof. Again. Humans fight again."

"That happens all the time. What's wrong with it?"

"Woof! But wolves come! Humans fight each other!"

"So you mean it's annoying that humans are wasting their strength fighting each other when they have a rare chance to fight wolves?"

I couldn't read a dog's thoughts, so I translated as carefully as I could. Azzy shook her head and barked.

"Similar, different!"

"Similar but different? What's different?"

"Wolves bad. Kill sheep, attack humans. Very bad!"

"Yeah. They're bad."

"Wolves bad! Humans good! But humans fight!"

"Ah."

Mind-reading didn't work on Azzy, but the language she used was the honest language of a dog. When I interpreted it as it was, I got the general idea.

"You're saying, why are good humans fighting each other when bad wolves are right outside?"

"Woof!"

Azzy nodded enthusiastically. And here I had wondered what it was. It was such an ancient question. I lay back down and answered.

"Seriously. What an obvious question."

"Woof?"

"Humans close by are worse to each other than wolves far away, I suppose."

When I answered as though it were only natural, Azzy tilted her head and asked.

"Woof? Humans good! Dogs good!"

"We'd have to hear the humans out on that. Humans like dogs, and dogs like humans, that's true. But humans dislike other humans."

"Woof woof? Why?"

"Because humans possess most of what humans need. It's easier to take them. The people who want to take them are always watching for a chance, and the people being targeted hate wondering who might come after them. So they have no choice but to fight."

"Awoo..."

In principle, Azzy might have been right. But reality was cold.

Azzy lowered her ears and tail, then barked into the empty air again. Her mournful howl was low, but it carried far. I picked at my ear and spoke to Azzy.

"Don't howl too much. Other dogs are crying when they hear you."

I wasn't just saying that. At that very moment, dog beastkin outside the door were being beaten to a pulp.

"Wait! We only came to see the King!"

"We are dog beastkin! You have no right to stop us from having an audience with her!"

"Are you really going to side with the piggies after seeing what has become of the city?"

The Oberli guards who had come to see Azzy protested fiercely, but it didn't get through to the regressor at all. She raised Skywarbler and muttered.

"I told you to get lost."

Thud, thud, thud.

The regressor knocked the dog beastkin down in an instant. After dragging the dog beastkin sprawled across the ground away, she returned and rubbed the back of her neck as though annoyed.

"Word has gotten around here too. Uninvited guests will come by every day to bother us. I'm starting to think we should move somewhere else."

"You chased them away? You could've at least heard them out."

"This is about fighting people. Azzy can only serve as a shield. That's what they came for."

The regressor answered indifferently, looking as though she no longer expected much or felt much disappointment.

The regressor's feelings had gone beyond mere irritation. Things were only irritating when they went wrong within reasonable limits. At this point, they weren't tangled. They had been a problem from the start. Naturally, the regressor's thoughts about Ende's situation had changed as well.

'Beastkin discrimination was always a problem. Before I regressed, beastkin sided with Sin and brought the end sooner. But seeing this mess, I don't even know how beastkin discrimination can be solved anymore.'

If it had been a problem she could solve by knocking a few people around, she would have done so. But the regressor knew it too. This wasn't a problem that an individual could ever solve by dealing with a few people.

At this point, it was a disaster on the same level as the King of Wolves. Rather than throwing a fit, the regressor was at a loss.

"Haah. It's completely ruined."

"What does it matter? It isn't that ruined."

She was being awfully dramatic. The situation wasn't that hopeless. I spoke casually to the regressor, who looked a little dejected.

"If things come to it, Shei, Azzy, Gruel, and I can go out and kill the King of Wolves ourselves. No matter how useless Ende is, surely it can at least serve as wolf food?"

The era of gathering an army and crashing headfirst into another was over. Now that energy techniques and arcane arts had spread widely, the easiest way to deploy military power was to send outstanding energy practitioners or mages with proper support.

Ende's forces were beastkin who had barely learned any energy techniques. At best, they could support Gruel. Then that was how they should be used.

"We can't leave everyone to die. The wolves are strong, and there are too many of them. The casualties will be enormous."

"Then let them run away."

"I should have had them evacuate from the start, but now it's already too late. On the broad, flat Enger Plain, only horse beastkin can flee from wolves. Whether they like it or not, they have no choice but to fight now."

"Then you got what you wanted. If they have to fight whether they live or die, whether they want to or not, they'll make plenty of bait and support."

The regressor's eyes widened at my carefree words, and she snapped at me.

"Is that something you should say?"

"Is it something I shouldn't? You were aiming for that too, Shei."

If her goal had been to save people, she would have evacuated them first. But she hadn't, had she?

No matter how powerful someone was, they couldn't fight a huge force without a city's support. No, they could fight, but it was strategically disadvantageous, so they didn't bother. Both Oberli before the revolution and the regressor had chosen to announce the coming fight as late as possible, so there would be no deserters or people breaking away.

"This happened because you helped the pig beastkin!"

"You liked it at first too, Shei."

"I didn't know it would get this bad!"

"Neither did I."

Who did this knowing? I wasn't a prophet. I didn't know what the future would bring. It was the same even now.

"Everyone did what they wanted. This is only the result. The orcs will have to choose whether to give up the power in their hands or fight and bleed to protect it."

"You know they can't do either. They'll hesitate until the wolves bite them to death."

"But what matters is that they can. Without this chaos, they wouldn't have had any choice at all."

The regressor kept saying it was ruined, but when I thought about it, there wasn't much difference. For all her fuss, it wasn't that ruined. I shrugged.

"Oberli would have decided to fight to preserve its power, while Ende's beastkin would have known nothing until the day before the battle, when they were dragged out without understanding what was happening. The slow, tasty pig beastkin would have died the most in the process. Their deaths would have been dismissed as necessary sacrifices to protect the city, and the pyramid would have been reinforced further with blood."

Even though the ones defeating the King of Wolves would be the regressor, Azzy, and Gruel. The bear always did the tricks while someone else took the money.

And the bear doing the tricks was worried about whether people would be okay.

"It would've been better if the humans had stayed in Oberli."

"How would that be better? You saw it earlier. The guards came looking for Azzy. Who do you think is behind those lackeys of the recognized humans?"

Whether the King of Wolves attacked or not, the humans were moving beneath the surface to reclaim power.

They were all the same. What could be done about it? I was human too.

Perhaps she didn't like my answer. The regressor's expression gradually soured. Narrowing her eyes, she put on a serious air and called my name.

"Hughes."

"Yes? That is my name, but why are you suddenly calling me by my name?"

Just hearing my name made me tense up and straighten my posture without meaning to. Why was she suddenly calling my name? It was scary.

Footnotes:

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