WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 512

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Hour of the Dog and the Wolf - 5

When two fighters press in close and trade blows in a tangled mess, that's a dog fight. And as the name suggests, dogs are the ones who excel at it. In the tight intervals where reflexes and speed decide everything, dog-kin are born with an instinct for it.

Against anyone ordinary, Shei would have won. Setting aside whether the opponent was human or beast, the Heavenly Mirror, honed to the absolute limit a single living being could reach, struck back with reflexes that overpowered dog-kin. On top of that, the Heavenly Mirror promised near-perfect defense against any opponent Shei had faced before. Even if this was her first encounter with Blanca in this timeline, the regressor's body still carried the memory of fighting her across several previous lives.

"Tch...!"

Even so. Principle bent even the absolute.

"Blanca's principle isn't anything special. In terms of rank, it's the lowest of the low. But...!"

Principle activates on will alone. The mere possibility that an opponent can use it changes the entire shape of danger.

Blanca's principle was Were-Form. Claws that could grow and vanish at will, fur that lengthened and shortened freely. A principle that let her wield a beast's natural weapons however she pleased.

No different, really, from the druid power that came from a contract with a Beast King. A common enough technique.

"In a dog fight, she's basically a real dog!"

But anyone who had actually fought her knew. Pushing in while blocking strikes with bare technique and energy meant always having to leave extra space equal to the length of those claws and that fur. You never knew when the claws might shoot out and tear into you, or when the fur might grow up and block your line of sight. A single extra card dealt only to your opponent is an invisible pressure all on its own.

Of course, Blanca fighting Shei felt the same pressure from the weightless, invisible Skywarbler. But as a rule, the pressure you're putting on someone else never really registers.

"You've got a fine sword."

"Tch!"

Nails shot out sharp from the arm driving in close. Claws boosted by energy and principle moved at nothing short of lightning speed. Five slashing arcs fell on Shei as if Blanca's arm had stretched. Shei had kept that extra distance and slipped away through the Heavenly Mirror, then thrust Skywarbler straight back. The moment the invisible blade tried to bite into skin, fur grew up and wrapped around it.

Scrape. The energy-sheathed fur was sliced through, but Blanca took no damage at all.

Claws and fur. Offense and defense at the same instant. It brought on a particular helplessness, the feeling that without some sharp idea, there was simply no breaking through. The regressor was reminded all over again just how unreasonable principle really was.

Though, of course, Blanca felt exactly the same way about fighting Shei. The Heavenly Mirror, refined through lifetime after lifetime, was that suffocating. And as she had said before, the memory of being hit tends to linger, while the memory of landing a hit evaporates in an instant.

"Looks like you know my principle too. You must have taken an interest."

"Hmph. Don't flatter yourself over a few rounds!"

"Then you probably know why we became wolves, too."

She did, obviously. She had heard it until she was sick of it in her previous lives. And at this point in time, it probably wasn't much of a secret anyway. Confident it was safe to say, Shei called out.

"It's because you people killed humans!"

"...Do you know why?"

"Does it matter? The fact that you're killers is what matters."

At words she hadn't heard in a long time, Blanca smiled faintly.

Imperial citizens who didn't know the full story said exactly that and condemned the Baskervilles. Said there was no room for hunting dogs in this day and age, that even keeping such a family was corrupt from the start. That the very existence of a family like that had been the problem.

All while the ones who had trained them to kill humans were human themselves.

"Woof. We only follow our master's orders. Loyal dogs that we are, without a single question."

"Then you should have gone all the way and never questioned anything! If you were going to question it, you should have stopped biting people!"

"I suppose. Why couldn't we... stay dogs till the end."

Blanca Baskerville smiled with quiet sadness and glanced around her.

This had been a raid carried out with elite forces. Effective, yes, but only as long as Blanca could move freely. If they got stranded in enemy territory now with the outcome uncertain, it would be a massacre. The other side had Gruel.

Blanca spoke as though chewing and swallowing her own flesh.

"Three stay behind. Everyone else, fall back."

The Baskervilles nodded and withdrew in a single fluid motion. Shei felt a quiet relief inside. The Baskerville Family had been far stronger than Ende's forces, Obelisks included. If they had dug in and fought to the last, the damage to Ende would have spiraled out of control, so their willingness to simply pull back was almost welcome.

"I can finish things with Blanca here if I need to, but don't forget! My real target is the King of Wolves! I have to keep enough left for the ground-shake!"

While one Baskerville held Sapien off, the other two ran toward the city. It was nothing but a noisy rampage, as if daring someone to come kill them. Obvious, but there was no choice, someone had to stop a master of energy from beating Ende's citizens to death at random.

Glaring at the retreating Blanca, Shei shouted.

"Running away, are you!"

"Next time I'll come with our king, woof. We'll settle the score then."

"Come back when you're ready to die!"

The Baskerville Family, having cut down several hundred in a short span of time, withdrew like ghosts the same way they had arrived. Shei severed the arm of the Baskerville left behind to buy time and waited for a signal that wasn't coming.

"Not yet?"

Many winds collided with one another. I don't much like war, but I do like chaos. Each person carries their own wind inside them, all wrapped up together in a state where anything is possible, pushing forward. Amid thousands of tangled wills, in the end only the strongest ones remain, shining through.

Somewhat gloomily, though, this time I had to shape those wills to my own design. Sifting through the chaos, pulling out only the winds of people who wanted to protect the city, I let out a sigh.

Is this what war is? A fight where humans might be changed, and I'm the one doing the changing. This isn't a Beast King's work. It's just a king's.

As I brooded, Teia walked up beside me in her racing gear, murmuring to herself.

"So this is war~. Hmm, it's pretty scary."

She shuffled her feet on the bare ground as if trying to shake off the tension, but the noise and screams drifting in from outside seemed to throw her off little by little.

After a few deep breaths, she looked over at me.

"All ready?"

"Yes. Here."

I handed Teia a brown fur scarf. She turned it over in her hands, rough, crude-looking, made from raw fur, and asked with a skeptical expression.

"Hm? Is this a gift?"

"It's a muffler made from Azzy's fur. The sheep-kin collected it while cleaning."

"Oh. A scarf made from the King of Dogs' fur? What an honor!"

"If you wear that, the King of Wolves will chase after you like mad."

Teia, who had been reaching up to wrap it around herself, flinched and froze. That lasted only a moment. She let out a long breath and shoved the scarf around her neck. At least the inside had been finished, so it wouldn't scrape her skin.

She fiddled with it.

"Giving me this now means we're about to move, right? Where am I going?"

Instead of answering, I picked up a stick and drew in the dirt. Ende. The wolves. And a rough sketch of Gruel and the Baskervilles breaking out from their respective sides and charging toward each other.

"Because Sapien-gong held the main camp, the Baskerville Family came to raid it. Because Gruel charged, they sent their priest to respond. In the process of each side stabbing at the other's weak point, they're going for the front the Baskerville Family cleared, and we're opening a new front on Gruel's side. Right now, the forces on both sides are flowing in a circle around a single point."

"I don't understand any of that."

Teia tilted her head, having followed none of the battle situation, but the nice thing about a drawing is that you can look at it even without understanding it. She studied the sketch and pressed her finger straight into the center of the circle.

"Hee. It feels like I should go right to the middle~."

"Exactly. That's why the finish line keeps moving. I'll point you to the exact spot when the time comes, but the route to get there is yours to plan."

"No problem. I've got the whole area memorized."

Horse-kin had a particularly strong memory for geography. She wasn't going to get turned around and charge into the middle of the enemy camp by mistake.

The overview was out, so it was time to move.

"Let's head out. Azzy, the Oberli guard dogs, and I will escort you as far as the area."

"I'd be fine alone."

"We can't have the wolves wearing down your stamina before you need it. The lives of Ende's citizens depend on your hooves, your stamina, your focus."

I had thrown out a stock phrase to fire her up before sending her into the field, but Teia took it to heart.

"I like it here."

"Ende?"

"Yeah. It might sound like I have too much to be grateful for, but we only know running. We live to run and die to run. We grit our teeth through the heart-bursting pain and push past the other horses in the race. Everyone else becomes a backdrop for the one who finishes first."

Teia rubbed her foot slowly against the ground.

"I love running. But I don't think I can only love running. A place like this needs to exist, so that even the ones who don't want to run have somewhere to be."

Stepping forward into something that might get her killed wasn't only about confidence that she could never be caught. She had joined because she wanted to protect Ende, and because something had come up where she could actually help.

I didn't manufacture a wind out of nothing. That's the truth of it. Who would ever want death or destruction? Everyone wants to live well. I only gave strength to a wind that was already there.

"So your running ends up saving the horse-kin who don't want to run."

I had accidentally ended up cheering her on. Teia broke into a wide smile and held up a V with her fingers.

"Having at least one thing worth bragging about is nice! I'm fast, you know!"

Turning her nerves into a laugh, Teia walked out in front with a confident step. The Oberli guard dogs and the pig-kin followed behind her.

The wolf hunt had begun.

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