WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 510

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Hour of the Dog and the Wolf - 3

That day was one where dogs and wolves fought a war by proxy. Where the will to kill humans clashed against the will to save them. Where a promise long delayed finally found its moment after years of waiting.

Even on a day that historic, morning came the same as any other. The sun rose in the east, a rooster crowed, and humans woke from sleep cursing the dawn as they dragged themselves upright. The only real difference was that the cursing ran darker and longer than usual.

Ende had been too slow to respond to the wolves' speed. The booby-trapped front lines had retreated again and again until they pressed almost against the city walls.

But retreat is not necessarily a bad thing. A retreat that narrows the front and draws the enemy in is shameful, yes, but useful. Plenty of commanders have died in hopeless positions refusing to admit that, yet people still fixate on those two syllables, retreat, and point their fingers.

"The casualties were heavy. But because of that... the troops have gathered."

Freedom's other name is license. Ende had no real structure holding it together; it conscripted beastkin and handed each one a weapon and nothing more. The beastkin stood in formation by clan, armed with whatever gear they were used to.

Some wanted no part in the fighting, and some wanted to run. But the wolves' attack on Ende had removed the option of not fighting. Holding the line alongside a city was better than meeting a wolf pack out in the open.

"Behind the wall, at the very least, someone will be watching my back. That's what they're hoping."

Even freedom could not let go of the security a wall offered. Gruel nodded at Sapien's words.

"A pity. That hope will have to be broken."

"Gruel. Are you really going along with that plan of his? That isn't a plan at all. No real track record, nothing to recommend it. There's no reason to follow it."

Sapien offered the advice in earnest, but Gruel only waved it off with a calm smile.

"Seemed fine to me. What's the problem?"

"What's the problem? How is 'I'll leave it to the on-site commander's discretion' a plan in any sense of the word?"

Sapien's mind went back to the bewildering strategy meeting the day before.

"Everyone. Regrettably, we know very little about their plans or their strength. We aren't particularly stronger than them, we aren't faster, and we were even caught underprepared. If we try to play our hand here, we'll just steadily bleed chips until we're finished."

Not exactly a useful piece of honesty. Sapien had bristled. He knew they were underprepared. But if they had to fight regardless, the commander's job was to come up with something better than demoralizing the troops.

"So aside from the one part that matters, I'll leave everything else to the on-site commanders' discretion. Until a certain event occurs, do your best to survive on your own. Just keep the communication lines open."

And yet, for whatever reason, the Magician had volunteered himself as their strategist and offered no strategy at all. An irritated Sapien had answered back.

"If you have no plan, is there any reason we should follow your lead?"

"Just one. The one advantage we can actually choose to use is something only I control."

"And what's that?"

"When and where and how Azzy fights. Only I can decide that."

Sapien had nothing to say to that. They were the ones who had brought the King of Dogs, and the familiarity between them was plain. If orders had to be given, it was better for someone she already knew to give them.

Besides, it wasn't as though the other side was soft enough that he could simply take the King of Dogs by force.

"Until the King of Dogs and the King of Wolves come face to face, this battle will be about moving each other's pieces into position. Handle it well on your end. I'll check in often."

That wasn't a plan, it was a declaration. Follow it, and you were acting on your own initiative anyway; ignore it, and you were following it all the same. Trapped in an irritating no-win corner, Sapien had complained, but Gruel had liked it just fine.

"Not bad, is it? Better to do things my own way than to work from a lousy plan or grumble while following one."

"A lousy plan? And your great idea is just to charge? What if it goes wrong?"

"I'm the strongest in Ende. Whether it goes right or wrong, that's my responsibility. And if it's going to fall on me either way, I'd rather do things my way."

No sharp alternative was going to emerge from arguing. Unable to offer one, Sapien decided to respect Gruel's judgment, setting aside, for now, the thought that this too was simply following the Magician's intentions.

"I'll stay here. Leaving the base unguarded only adds risk with nothing to gain."

"I'm moving. Sitting on my haunches just means getting picked apart piece by piece until I'm hunted down."

The two headed off in the directions they each thought were right. Sapien was watching the Beast Faction warriors move out alongside the orc mercenary band, mulling over whether to put up more outposts, when a report came in.

"Sapien-nim. A group of dog-kin has arrived from outside the city. They say they fled from the wolves and want to fight alongside us."

Sapien narrowed his brow at the unexpected news.

"Dog-kin? Now, of all times? Who are they?"

"Unknown. I've never seen them before. Could they be from the Beast Faction?"

"How would I know. If they're Beast Faction, Gruel would recognize them."

A tribe driven out by the wolf pack and swept all the way to Ende, perhaps. He couldn't know anything from guesswork alone. Sapien set off walking.

"Any distinguishing features?"

"They all have short, glossy black fur. Pointed triangular ears and very short tails."

A description focused on fur, ears, and tail, the natural focus of any beastkin's report. If a fellow beastkin found them notable enough to describe that way, they must be quite distinctive. Sapien turned it over in his mind, and a memory surfaced.

"Like the Baskerville Family."

"The Baskerville Family?"

"You wouldn't know them. The most famous watchdog family in the Empire. They're dog-kin bred purely to hunt. From birth, a groomer comes to crop their ears and tails short, so the story goes."

The reporting beastkin quickly covered their own ears and tail.

"Ugh, that sounds painful just to think about! Why would they do that?"

"Drooping ears and long tails can become weak points in a fight. The idea is to remove them early."

"What? So humans shave their heads bald because someone might grab their hair in a fight, do they?"

"There are actually humans who do that, I've heard. Same principle, I suppose. But that's old history. These days it's more that the nobility simply prefers short ears and tails."

"They crop the ears and tails just to appeal to people? Why would anyone even want that?"

"It's imperial taste. Don't ask me."

"I cannot begin to understand it!"

"Don't try to understand it. Just accept it. That's the Empire for you. Though I've heard things are changing a bit lately..."

Sapien had been indulging a brief fantasy about how reassuring it would be if the Baskerville Family had actually shown up to help, and then let out a small, self-mocking laugh.

That's absurd. Am I so desperate that I'm daydreaming now.

It was just some dog-kin tribe from somewhere, coming to Ende to ask for help. Sapien followed his subordinate through the streets, lost in thought.

Come to think of it. Blue eyes said to hold the light of an azure flame, they said. I'd like to see that for myself. If I still have a chance left...

But Sapien did not know. That chance was about to arrive in the worst possible form.

Gruel and the Beast Faction advanced slowly. The Beast Faction warriors walked across the plain as casually as if they were out for a stroll. Once they crossed a couple of rolling hills, the familiar terrain fell away and an unfamiliar open expanse stretched before them. Then wolves began gathering around them one by one.

One of the Beast Faction warriors tensed briefly and glanced around.

"Hm. They're not attacking."

"They know we're not prey they're meant to handle. They're scouts, keeping watch until the larger pack arrives."

"I understand, but... even when wolves form an army, they fight the same way. Wolves will be wolves, I suppose."

Wolves do not form tight formations. They always keep spacing, driving their prey together. They press without letup, draining every last bit of fight from their quarry, then lunge for the throat at the most lethal moment.

An all-around assault on the city. Frighten them, split the group apart, then tear down the stragglers. That was unmistakably the wolf's way.

But Gruel disagreed with the warrior's assessment.

"Different."

"Sir?"

"The wolves aren't a pack anymore, they're an army. The prey isn't an animal anymore, it's a city. The scale has changed, and you think they're applying the same tactics straight across? That's actually proof that whoever is behind this isn't simply wolves."

And yet, deceiving the shepherds, exploiting a moment of carelessness, and striking all the way to the outpost in a single blow. That would be impossible without someone who understood how cities work.

"There's someone behind the wolves. We couldn't pin it down because we didn't know who. But now I think I do."

Shadows rippled around the wolves and figures emerged. Humans dressed in tunics walked through the wolves' ranks like shepherds, and the wolves, who should have been tearing humans apart, instead wagged their tails obediently and stepped aside.

The humans who stepped before Gruel had skin darkened by the sun. Among them, a bearded old man planted his staff hard into the ground and pointed it at Gruel.

"Gruel! You worthless thing. Even you, who should be the glory of beastkin, have decided to take the side of hypocrites in the end?"

"Since when do you get to point at me like that, you remnants of a dead country."

Just as they knew Gruel, Gruel knew who they were.

The Beast Faction is used almost as a synonym for savages. But the reason they are called the Beast Faction specifically is partly that they are beastkin, and partly that they were once a faction of a nation.

The Kingdom of Ten Thousand. A land of savagery where wild beasts and humans lived together, the nation that bore the sin of Sorcerer King Agartha.

The country where beasts and humans had mingled split apart and scattered. But the remnants remained. After Agartha's death, they had clung to survival deep in the southern jungles, harsh lands unfit for human life, the remnants of a dead nation, barely keeping the line alive.

The descendants of the priests had gone so far as to ally themselves with wolves, all to expand their reach.

"I had wondered. There's no one else who would pull something this mad, but you were always too weak to actually do anything. Still, acting without knowing your own limits is the truest kind of madness."

"Kahahaha! Sometimes only madness can pull a life out of the mud!"

"Madness is madness. It wasn't pulling you out of the mud. The mud just spat you out."

"Spat or pulled, we got a chance to end this miserable life, and that's enough! Whether the misery ends or the life does!"

Long ago, Sorcerer King Agartha committed a mad act. The fact that beastkin were its result was enough to give a rough sense of what kind of act it had been.

It had happened long before Gruel was born. He didn't know the details. But one thing he was certain of: even if beastkin carried Agartha's bloodline, it had never earned them anything like respect.

"You too. How long are you going to live as pork? Join us. We'll make sure you don't end up as someone's meal."

The priests who upheld the orthodoxy of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand saw beastkin as tools. The reason the Beast Faction had so many beastkin was that after the kingdom fell, those who had remained in those lands could not endure the discrimination and joined the wandering tribes.

Naturally, Gruel hated them. He had been holding back only because the plains' teaching said not to make enemies carelessly, but now that an enemy had been made, it was time for the other teaching: once someone earns your hatred, crush them so they can never take revenge.

"You think backing the King of Wolves lets you beat the vassal states and the Empire?"

Gruel dragged his foot slowly across the ground. The movement was small enough to look like nothing more than idle thought. The priests answered without bothering to raise their guard.

"Of course not. Beasts have their limits."

"Then who's behind you?"

"The great druid guards the forest and the plains. The great witch whispers the most wicked of knowledge. The Progenitor has sworn a bloody vengeance. The Beast King bares savagery before humanity. All these wills converge, and they will drive that arrogant civilization into ruin!"

The scale of it was so much larger than expected that it edged into the absurd. Gruel kept asking, steadily, still smoothing the ground with one foot.

"Did all of them actually promise to lend you their power? What's your basis for believing that?"

"Stupid child. Your view is as narrow as your breeding. Where else do you think they'd use all that overwhelming power they've gathered?"

"So none of them made you any actual promises."

"Promises are what you trust? We trust in the natural order of things!"

"Right, I suppose those grand figures wouldn't bother with something as formal as a promise to you. You're clinging to their trouser legs hoping they'll drag you along."

"...Better to cling to trouser legs while you still can, Gruel. No matter what you do... those ears and that tail won't disappear."

Beastkin will always be beastkin. They can never be the same as humans. Gruel privately agreed with that.

But what pig-kin wanted was not the collapse of order. Climbing order's ladder to stand at the top, that was the true desire of pig-kin. Gruel had come to Ende and understood it keenly.

Even Gruel himself, whether he had wanted it or not, was now serving as Ende's commander. All to produce an outcome he could live with.

"Do I need to take anyone's side. All I have to do is kill the ones like you first, the ones who keep trying to stick ears and a tail on others."

Gruel stopped smoothing the ground.

Heaven energy is the force that seizes the world. Energy control is the force that pushes and pulls the ground. Since both involve controlling something outside the body, the earth-heaven technique tends to be grouped together as one.

But there is a large difference between heaven and earth.

Heaven moves the world around the self. Earth moves the self around the world. The two are in fact the same, yet they feel entirely different. That difference seems trivial at first glance, but it had stood for a long time as an enormous wall.

Gruel had been stalled at that threshold for years. For a pig-kin who had lived a simple life, true realization was an impossibly difficult thing.

But through his struggle to break free of that stagnation, he had found his opening. A chance encounter with a rhinoceros, watching that overwhelming stamp of its feet, gave him the spark. From that insight, Gruel had grasped the principle.

Smoothing the ground.

The ground he smoothed came under his control. Having prepared it in advance, he could move his body freely across it, pushing and pulling as he pleased.

And during their conversation, Gruel had smoothed just enough ground to reach the priests.

The moment Gruel released his energy and set the principle free, the world lurched, and the priests' bodies were torn into hundreds of pieces and scattered through the air.

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