WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 536

──────

A Story Left Behind. Master and Dog

Ende had been saved by its hero, but the city had no room to notice he was gone. The sweetness of victory bought it a few hours of forgetting, nothing more. The moment the anesthetic wore off, screams and noise broke out across every corner of Ende.

Oberli was no exception.

"Kill them! Kill them!"

If the beastkin of Ende had learned one thing from Orcma, it was the picket protest. A rebellion could be crushed and a petition ignored, but this was far more awkward to deal with. Push back by force and those numbers would tip straight into a riot, Orcma all over again. Leave it alone and sympathizers would start to gather. The guard dogs of Oberli and the security forces had no choice but to stand there and watch.

The beastkin of Ende, riding high on their momentum, raised their pickets and shouted at Oberli's walls.

"Where else do you give invaders a warm bed and a hot meal and patch them up?!"

"If we were beastkin they'd have strung us up already! Are you going easy on them just because they're human?!"

"Drag them all out and execute them!"

"Offer them to the tiger!"

Oberli had become a cauldron of chaos.

The King of Wolves had been driven back, but the conflict was far from over. Ende had bled through its resources and food in wave after wave of fighting, and to keep its people from losing the will to struggle, there was nothing left to do but stoke the fires of hatred. So Oberli made sure all of Ende knew about the Duchy's cowardice, fanning their outrage.

The plan worked. That was the problem, it worked too well.

On the other side of a single wall from a crowd packed dense as storm clouds, one human was shouting inside Oberli's conference room.

"Mayor Triber. Does any of this make sense to you? Beastkin creatures howling for the execution of humans?!"

Travel north from Ende and you reach a river that never runs dry, and beyond it the broad plains it blesses. Unlike the hot, humid south with its alternating floods and droughts, the north is mild country, land that seems made for farming.

Three vassal states share a stake in that territory, and the jockeying for position never lets up. Floods wash out the borders, and lords change hands even more often than that.

Among them, Baron Itton, loyal servant of the Lilac Duchy and lord of the southern stretch that controlled the road into Ende, had come upon hearing the news. His stated reason was to help Ende through its crisis, but everyone knew he was the Duchy's mouthpiece.

He had heard the noise from outside and raised his voice.

"I came here to help Ende through its suffering. And now I find not only that the Duchy's proud Black Tiger Corps has been reduced to this, but that they are being persecuted by beastkin on top of it! How am I supposed to report this?"

"Shut that mouth, human!"

It was an extremely human thing to say, but the beastkin, who had been stringing together one incident after another in their minds, had stopped holding their tongues. The clan chiefs of Oberli had not torn Baron Itton limb from limb, not because he was human, but because the clan chiefs were comparatively civil people.

The clan chiefs bared their teeth and shouted.

"You lot attacked first! We were ambushed while we were still dealing with the wounded after driving back the King of Wolves! You should be grateful we let you live, where do you get off making threats?!"

"Want to end up as tiger feed yourself?"

Fierce shouts rang out from every direction. Any sensible person might have shrunk back from that savage atmosphere, but Baron Itton lifted his chin without a trace of shame and answered.

"And where is your proof?"

"What?"

"You expect me to believe the Black Tiger Corps attacked you first? The Linked Blade's elite soldiers, of all people, what possible reason could they have had to attack you? If you're going to make up an excuse, at least make it a believable one!"

The sheer shamelessness of it left the beastkin speechless. The wounds on the backs of those who had been attacked directly had not even finished healing, and Baron Itton was already talking whatever nonsense came to mind.

"The Black Tiger Corps came to help Ende, and in the process they suffered a Tiger Calamity! The responsibility falls on you! Stop trying to push it onto someone else!"

For Baron Itton, it had been a bolt from the blue all the same.

The Duchy's elite force, the Black Tiger Corps, had passed through his domain a few days ago, and now word came that they had been wiped out in a Tiger Calamity. The Duchy had lost a limb without even seeing the blade coming. He could no longer be certain which way the Duchy's fury would turn once it found itself suddenly maimed, or whether his own head would survive the process.

The only way for him to keep his title, his territory, and his neck was to push the blame onto Ende.

"If someone had to die, it should have been you, not the Linked Blade! The Mountain Lord swept through here, so why is Ende the only place still standing?!"

The beastkin huffed and snorted in fury. The beastkin of Oberli were comparatively composed and tended to run older, but beastkin were still beastkin. If those sturdy frames chose to act, they could use Baron Itton's limbs as toothpicks.

In the midst of that powder keg, a quiet voice cut in.

"Because they dared to insult the Mountain Lord."

The voice belonged to an old, wrinkled dog-kin, and it was calm but firm.

"The Linked Blade was, well, very rude. Far more than you, Baron Itton. They called beastkin beast-ears and assumed we were naturally obliged to cooperate with them. And that assumption translated immediately into action. But who could have known? The Mountain Lord had hidden himself among the beastkin and was watching quietly."

"The Mountain Lord was among you?"

"So he was. But the Mountain Lord is a proud and august being. He saw no reason to leave a human who dared to speak down to him uncontested. He did not stop until he had killed the Linked Blade and cut down the Black Tiger Corps soldiers who resisted."

He had nearly turned on the beastkin of Ende as well, but Mayor Triber saw no reason to mention that. It was better to let them assume the Mountain Lord was on the beastkin's side.

"And you just stood there and watched!"

"Would you have stood against the Mountain Lord, Baron Itton?"

"Of course! I would never yield to some savage beast..."

Baron Itton stopped mid-sentence and clamped his mouth shut. He was a lord of the Enger Plain himself.

The old saying that a tiger appears when you speak its name tends to become literally true when it comes to the Beast King. That was why the Mountain Lord was not a being you invoked carelessly, even in empty words.

He had too much to lose for courage. Rather than risk calling the Mountain Lord's name, Baron Itton reached for a different thread to pull.

"That still does not excuse what those people out there are doing, calling for prisoners to be executed!"

Mayor Triber did not answer easily.

The Black Tiger Corps had struck first, and the beastkin of Ende had been badly shaken by the sudden betrayal. When they grasped the Black Tiger Corps's true intention, to drive the beastkin out of Ende entirely, they had burned with outrage.

But that was all unofficial. All the other side had to do was deny it and the argument fell apart. And even without a denial, beastkin outrage was hard to find sympathy for. The assumption that beastkin were lower class ran too deep.

"Brutally executing prisoners has been forbidden by both the Empire and the Sanctum since the tyrant king fell! Are you trying to create a second Abyss?! The Sanctum will condemn your atrocities!"

And when the lower class turned savage and killed prisoners, it became something not even the Empire could overlook, doubly so for an Empire built on the condemnation of the tyrant king's crime of massacring hundreds of thousands of captives.

Mayor Triber answered.

"...We have no intention of killing them."

"Hmph! The beastkin piling up out there like storm clouds do not look like they feel the same way! Then again, I suppose you can't expect them to know history from before they were born!"

Baron Itton surged back to full confidence, leaping to his feet and bellowing.

"I don't know what sort of 'accident' occurred here, but release the prisoners immediately and hand them over to me! Otherwise, I will personally see the beastkin here brought to account for their crimes!"

The beastkin were already seen as savage. If they broke the order established by the tyrant king's fall, the condemnation would be swift and certain. Ende could not stand against the Duchy alone. If it earned censure from the Empire or the Sanctum, collapse was the only road left.

Just as Mayor Triber was struggling for an answer..."What a racket. Does Oberli ever have a quiet day lately? A man can't get any sleep."

A familiar voice cut through, the kind you were used to hearing but wished you weren't. Duke Erectus, who had been chased out by Orcma and had only barely managed to return, walked into the conference room looking exactly as he always did. He let out a wide yawn as he entered, as though he had just woken up.

Baron Itton recognized the face of a public official.

"Duke Erectus! Finally, someone worth talking to. These beast-ears have been going on about..."

"The one making noise, as I said, is you. Baron Itton."

Duke Erectus dug a finger in his ear and shot back with undisguised irritation.

"They call me the water duke, but I'm still a duke. Ende is my domain. You show up without even a letter of notice and start causing problems? Baron Itton, is this the manners you take such pride in?"

"The situation was urgent, I had no time to send word! That aside, this is not the moment for that! What are you going to do about the beastkin outside?!"

Baron Itton pointed beyond the wall. The beastkin were still protesting out there, still shouting words like kill and execute loudly enough for everyone inside to hear. There was no mistaking that for Ende's public mood.

Duke Erectus replied with complete indifference.

"Oh, that? Leave it."

"Leave it?!"

"An animal barks when you keep it. What do you expect? Learn to live with it. What is it you actually want?"

"Learn to live with it? Beastkin demanding a public execution of prisoners?"

"If a dog you keep barks fiercely, are you going to charge it with attempted murder? Come on. There's a limit to how petty your objections can get. Complain that an animal is making noise and who's going to take your side?"

The man was dismissing that entire mass of beastkin protesters as not even human. Baron Itton lost his words entirely. He had been ready to pick apart any ordinary excuse, but Duke Erectus had stepped one pace further outside the expected frame.

"They got stabbed in the back by the Black Tiger Corps. It's like someone whipped a beast across the spine right after a fight, when it was already on edge. Of course it's going to bristle and bark at every human it sees after that."

"The, the history of the tyrant king..."

"I know it. But it's only natural that they don't, no one ever taught them. I don't make a hobby of teaching history to dogs."

It was a plain statement, treating the beastkin as animals kept in his care. Baron Itton wanted to argue back but could not find the logic.

Were beastkin human? Some of the polite ones might say yes, but ask whether they were equal to humans and most would shake their heads. Baron Itton was among that majority, for reasons that were frankly economic: treating that many beastkin workers as equals to humans would cut into the margins.

Now Duke Erectus had simply classified them as animals he kept, and Baron Itton had nothing left to say. Advocating for beastkin rights at this particular moment would have been absurd even by his own standards.

"If you've understood, sit down and stop muddying the point. I'll tell you, sometimes I genuinely cannot follow the logic of Duchy nobles. If you're going to treat beastkin as animals, then treat them as animals. You treat them like animals but demand human responsibilities from them. What exactly do you want?"

"Well..."

"If you have someone to take your grievances out on, that's me. Fine. Now, where were we? Go ahead and tell me."

Baron Itton, somewhat deflated, poured out a stream of self-exculpating statements to the effect that none of the recent events were his responsibility. His words were rambling and long-winded, but the will behind them was unmistakable: he wanted distance between himself and the unprecedented catastrophe of the Black Tiger Corps's annihilation. His desire for Ende to be cast as the villain, for the sake of his own safety, was written plainly across everything he said.

Mayor Triber watched it all and felt something complicated settle over him.

He had been born a beastkin. His father had been a distant branch of the imperial family, but that counted for nothing, he had been abandoned, cast out, made unwelcome anywhere in the Empire. The vassal states were places where imperial bloodlines fetched a good price, and Triber had used that as leverage to carve out a corner of power for himself.

As mayor of Ende, Triber had nursed a dream. A world where all beastkin lived in peace. A world where they had the same chances as humans.

A world where everyone could eat at the same table, and no one would find anything strange about it.

But perhaps Triber had been wrong from the very start.

Humans were not superior and beastkin were not inferior. Both sides simply wanted to avoid being trampled by someone else's injustice. The unluckier one ended up facing real injustice and disappearing.

Humans and beastkin had been sitting at the same table from the beginning, not smiling warmly at each other, but twisting their faces with contempt, fighting to grab food off each other's plates.

Maybe even the dream of sitting at the same table as humans had been stubbornness born from inferiority. Humans were not exactly known for getting along with their neighbors either.

In that sense, as he had said, humans were beastkin too.

Triber had sunk into that bitter thought when..."Welshi!"

Duke Erectus bolted upright. He had spotted Welshi, his guard dog, hovering near the entrance to the conference room, and went straight toward her with long strides.

"I told you to stay in bed. Your wounds aren't fully healed yet!"

His tone was reproachful, but his face and every movement were soft in the way they would be toward a beloved pet. Welshi had been waiting outside so as not to interrupt the meeting, but once Duke Erectus went over and pulled her in himself, she had no choice but to come inside.

Welshi pushed him back. Her owner's constant fussing was becoming a burden.

"The King took care of my wounds before he left. I'm fine now."

"Internal injuries take time. You don't move until you're fully healed."

"I've trained in energy, so any further treatment would do nothing for me. The doctors went back to see their other patients anyway."

"What? Those quacks just left on their own?"

"Not on their own. I told them I was fine."

"You say you're fine and that's supposed to be enough? The nerve. Who do they think lets them live in a city with no humans, playing doctor? I'll go right now and..."

Welshi said it plainly.

"Master. I know my own body better than anyone."

"...Fair enough. Tch. You've trained in energy. I get it."

The owner's fussing ended there. Welshi let out a quiet breath.

Since Welshi had nearly died taking a blow meant for him, Duke Erectus had completely changed how he treated her. He had never been exactly stingy before, but now he seemed ready to cut out his own gallbladder if she asked, and the man who should have been guarded was spending more and more time at the side of his wounded guard dog.

It was only natural treatment for someone who had given her life to save him, but the luxury was something Welshi had never known, and it weighed on her. She wanted to return to her normal duties as quickly as possible.

"Worry about yourself first, Master. It's not safe for you to be wandering around alone in all this chaos."

Facing her, Duke Erectus looked distinctly strange.

He was the same man who had shot back at Baron Itton without pause. He was not one to fall silent where he could keep talking, and yet in front of Welshi he stood there fidgeting. He turned it over for a while before he spoke.

"I don't want you protecting me anymore."

The unexpected notice of dismissal had Welshi looking up at him.

"Did you find another guard dog to replace me?"

"Of course not! You're my only guard dog. It's just, well. You've gone through a lot protecting me. I think you should stop doing that."

The words carried an intention clearly different from dismissal, but Welshi, sadly, lacked the delicacy to catch it. No one could really blame her. If blame was going to land anywhere, it belonged with Duke Erectus, who had made a habit of taking the whip to Welshi whenever he was bored. That was the debt he was paying now.

Welshi lowered her ears and her tail a little and answered.

"...So I'm dismissed, then. I suppose I'll need to find something else."

"No, I said it's not dismissal! Just listen for a second!"

Neither of them paid any attention to the others in the room. Welshi and Duke Erectus kept bumping up against each other, awkward and mismatched, but neither looked away.

Triber watched them and felt something complicated again.

Maybe he had been wrong from the start in a different way. Rather than building a world where humans and beastkin could eat the same food at the same table without anyone thinking twice about it, perhaps the wiser answer was what those two had found: simply finding the person you needed most.

Triber felt like he was crumpling up the years he had spent and tossing them in a rubbish bin. But rather than regret, what he felt was a clean, pleasant lightness.

He did not have much time left, but there was plenty still to do. Triber was grateful that he still had a chance to do any of it.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried