WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 506: Human to Human

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"Phew. Raising hell feels great. Thinking about cleaning up afterward is daunting, though."

"Really? You'd actually thought about cleaning up afterward? You always charge ahead, so I thought you never had a plan."

"I've been much more methodical than you since coming to Ende!"

With everyone gathered in the plaza, Ende had become unusually quiet. The regressor and I walked down an especially empty street as we talked.

"Honestly, I wouldn't mind going to the Duchy. At this point, we don't need to worry about Ende's circumstances."

'Stopping the King of Wolves would have been much easier in the Duchy than in Ende. Once Ende fell, the Duchy gathered every force it had and fought the King of Wolves. Wanting to fight the King of Wolves in Ende is just my stubbornness.'

That stubbornness was damn persistent. Was it because she was a regressor? When she had no idea how events would unfold, she was aggressively proactive to an extreme. But once she had experienced something even once, she became quite meticulous.

Seeing how she had established connections with the merchant groups in Ende, contacted those at the top, and brought in the Beast Faction, I could really feel that she had regressed.

...Though maybe it was just routine. Either way, I understood that the regressor wanted to resolve Ende's problems as cleanly as possible.

"You're not going to abandon Ende, are you?"

"You said you had a plan. I don't know what else might happen here, but I mean to keep going to the Duchy as an option."

"You won't need to. I've finished what I needed to do with the pig beastkin. I told them that they, too, were human, so now we should let that fulfilled wish go."

There was nothing shameful about primal desires. What was strange was being unable to call something natural what it was.

They wanted to live better. They wanted what others had to become theirs. That was only natural, wasn't it? Yet some claimed humans were inherently superior to beastkin, while others said that because everyone was equal, it was only natural for people to hand things over. What a spectacle.

All I wanted was to strip away the wrapping around beastly desires. I wanted people to return to being beasts.

The regressor looked at me suspiciously.

"...You keep using that word as though it belittles humans."

"If you think it's belittling, Mr. Shei, then your expectations of humanity are too high. I've always been consistent."

"Well, even if you don't expect much, can't you at least demand a somewhat sensible response?"

"Even common sense differs from person to person."

"That's true, but there are things people share. That's why it's common sense."

"The moment there are differences, something is already out of place. In the end, someone has to correct those differences. That's what fighting is."

Argued into silence, the regressor tried to say something else, then let out a strained groan.

"So? What do we do to make those idiots come to their senses?"

"First, Mr. Shei, keep raising hell like you've been doing."

"How should I do that?"

"You don't need to think about it. Whatever you feel like doing, Mr. Shei, will be raising hell."

Natural talent and cultivated talent were different. No matter how much I racked my brain, I could never keep up with the regressor. So she should just do whatever she wanted.

The regressor narrowed her eyes.

"You've been saying things that sound like you're subtly putting me down."

"Not at all. They're here!"

The moment I shouted, several horse beastkin appeared before us. They really were fast. It had not been long since we escaped from the plaza by riding the wind, yet they had already found us.

"Found them! Over here! They're here!"

"Why, you...!"

"Puhi? I'm only a scout!"

The regressor released a fierce aura, and the horse beastkin ran off with their tails between their legs. They had only learned basic qi arts for running, but that alone made them fast enough to erase any desire to chase them.

"It'd be easier to kill them than catch them. Not that we need to!"

The moment the horse beastkin disappeared, several more beastkin rushed over. A cloaked beastkin who spotted the regressor and me shouted.

"Report to Chief Gruel! We'll hold them here!"

"The Beast Faction?"

There were not many people in Ende with strength comparable to the regressor. The reason I said not many was because of him.

Gruel. A pig beastkin who had reached the Principle.

The regressor gripped Skywarbler and tensed.

'Why is the Beast Faction here? Did they decide to stand with Ende this time?'

The regressor possessed overflowing qi and had mastered extraordinary qi arts, but she was still slightly inferior to a qi artist who had independently reached the Principle. It was a difference in talent, a difference in split-second judgment and instinct that could not be explained by strength or speed alone.

She had Skywarbler, Jizan, countless treasures, and all kinds of powers. It wasn't as though she would definitely lose in a fight. Still...

'This is troublesome! Fighting someone when I don't know whether I'll win or lose!'

The regressor raised her qi and shouted.

"Move!"

Heavenly Sword Technique, Meteor Shower.

Broken debris and chunks of rock rose into the storm. When the regressor wrapped herself in wind and swung downward, hundreds or thousands of fragments rained down on the Beast Faction warriors.

She had intended to disable them quickly, but the Beast Faction warriors were not so easily dealt with.

"Cloaks!"

The Beast Faction warriors immediately raised the leather cloaks they wore before them.

Thududung, thud, thud.

The leather cloaks sounded like drums. The debris, bounced away by their Rebounding Qi Art, fell weakly to the ground. They easily withstood the regressor's attack.

The warriors Gruel had personally raised did not fall short of the Obelisks. They had attained the Heaven and Earth branches of qi arts and, though they had not mastered the Water branch, had tempered their powerful beastkin bodies instead. In comparison, they were on the level of military state generals.

Their qi arts might have been below a general's, but outside fights between humans, the refinement of one's techniques was not much of a factor.

The same held true now. The regressor was the type to rely more on strength than qi arts.

"Tch! It would've been easier if you'd just fallen over!"

The Beast Faction warriors gritted their teeth against the heavy impact and shouted.

"Don't cross blades with him! He's an expert. Advance and retreat in a buffalo-hunting formation!"

"Thanks for recognizing my skill!"

Nobody had told her to, yet the regressor immediately charged forward. Watching her raise hell as instructed, I quietly looked at Azzy.

"Azzy. Shall we go?"

"...Woof."

Azzy nodded weakly. She seemed deeply hurt by what had happened earlier.

This was the plan. No, perhaps it was more a matter of how I felt.

Orcma's wish had been granted. They had gained the right to ruin things for themselves, just as humans did, and they were abusing that right freely. They said they would handle it themselves, so why should I interfere?

I wanted to see what the other side wished for now. If I granted that wish, I might be able to save the city.

"Hey? You are...!"

The moment one pig beastkin recognized me and pointed, I grabbed the finger and bent it backward. I seized the screaming beastkin and slammed them into the city wall.

My strength alone was not enough to break stone walls, but Earth Art made it possible. The wall caved in by exactly as much as I pushed the beastkin into it. The pig beastkin was perfectly embedded, as though they had always been one with the wall.

I looked around for my next victim.

"Next."

"U-uh... Intr...!"

Before the pig beastkin could finish shouting 'Intruder!', I threw a card.

Whoosh. The card, charged with electricity, lodged in the pig beastkin's shoulder. Blood spurted. For a beastkin from Ende, hardened by a rough life, it was no more than a scratch.

The problem was the bundle of lightning coursing through the beastkin's blood. Their body convulsed from the electricity running along their nerves, and they collapsed.

"My hand is faster than the eye. Not that this is the right time to use that line."

Shaking out my hand, I opened Oberli's gate.

With Oberli's leaders temporarily absent and the regressor raising hell in the middle of Ende, Oberli's defenses were weaker than ever. And Oberli contained a juicy prize that everyone coveted.

"Woof woof woof woof!"

"Rescue the recognized humans!"

The dog beastkin, including the Oberli guards, used this opportunity to attack Oberli. Proud and isolated Oberli suffered the humiliation of falling twice in a short span of time.

Oberli itself probably felt nothing about it.

The dog people attacked the pig people as though venting their long-held resentment. The pig people, who had been hastily gathered only to fill out the numbers, fell helplessly.

A coup that happened at a convenient time. I had not planned it. This, too, was something that would have happened eventually.

They were the same even in being overthrown. Human all the way down to their ruin.

"Magician... I'm not forgiving you! I'm only letting you go because you're with the King!"

"...Woof."

"No, King. I wasn't shouting at Your Majesty... Tch, anyway! See you next time!"

One of the dog people shouted as they led the others onward. Carried away by the momentum, they ran through Oberli's orderly streets and flung open the gates of every house. If they found recognized humans, they rescued them. If they found pig people, they swung their fists.

Those fists did not distinguish between age or sex. They only cared whether someone had pig ears.

Either screams or cheers rang out. More blood flowed than last time. Last time, only the recognized humans had been targeted, and the people carrying out the coup had not used violence against them.

"This isn't a place where piggies can set foot!"

"You liked acting like the owners, didn't you?"

They showed none of that restraint toward people with different ears. If anything, they carried out even crueler reprisals.

"...Awoo, awoo."

Azzy squeezed her eyes shut. From her perspective, last time had been much better. At least humans had not suffered then.

Well, I felt much the same. Weren't they getting a little too carried away?

The real strength belonged to someone else.

"Yelp, yelp, yelp!"

The anguished cries of dog beastkin echoed out. Before Oberli's prison, in the alley where many recognized humans had been confined, the dog beastkin who had rushed in to free them were swept aside like fallen leaves. Seeing their comrades collapse in bloody heaps, the Oberli guards cautiously backed away.

"What's wrong? Didn't you say this wasn't a place where piggies could set foot?"

A massive pig beastkin calmly walked out before them. Overwhelmed by the intense pressure, a dog beastkin with their tail tucked between their legs cried out desperately.

"S-stop! Didn't you hear earlier? If you keep resisting, it'll be treason against the Duchy...!"

"Go ahead."

The Beast Faction referred to nomads who roamed the Enger Plain. All kinds of tribes, races, and backgrounds were mixed among them, and they belonged to no nation. No matter how loudly another country cried treason, it was not much of a threat.

Besides, threatening someone who had reached the Principle with treason was laughably insignificant. Gruel snorted and raised his fist.

"Frightened beasts are only loud. Stop barking like dogs and show me your strength."

"Urgh...!"

As the dog beastkin around us all backed away, I, who had been standing still, ended up relatively far forward. Gruel spotted me in the chaos and spoke as though he had been waiting.

"I've been waiting for you, Magician."

Footnotes:

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