WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 551: Old Means Worn Out

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"I've been waiting..."

"Heavenly Sword Technique."

Slash.

The regressor didn't wait for the black mage to finish. Lightning coursed through her body as she severed his neck in an instant. It was a strike that cut through the very moment itself. Even as Mugul's head fell, his mouth kept moving.

"...You. One who came from beyond the steppe. You probably won't answer, but let me ask you one thing."

"Thunderbird."

Crackle!

Lightning flashed through the wound and burned the black mage's body away. Burns spread along his veins, and Mugul's body crumbled like trash.

Rather than relax, the regressor sharpened her killing intent even further. This was probably another puppet anyway.

"How did you find this place? People from beyond the steppe shouldn't even be interested in it."

"I heard you were trying to resurrect an evil god."

"Lord Ankra? Certainly, he is a being feared even by those beyond the steppe... But you have no reason to concern yourselves with him, do you?"

The regressor sent a gust of sword wind toward the voice. A mountain-sized pile of bones split in two with a single strike, and bone dust scattered down like snow. She frowned at the collapsing heap.

'He's hiding inside the bone altar. Tch. When I look through humans with the Green Eye, they appear as bones. The black mage probably didn't plan it that way, but hiding among all these bones makes him difficult to see with the Seven-Colored Eye.'

"This is a barbaric land where people kill and are killed. Even the Queen had her face torn apart and died. A land filled with curses and superstition. Your people have come here countless times, yet they always left with nothing more than a few coins in their hands."

The black mage's voice came from the bones. The countless bones in this altar were his mouth and hands.

'The altar is imbued with magic power too. Unless I destroy all these bones, it won't be easy to find and kill the black mage himself.'

"I pride myself on having great ambitions, but I don't aspire to conquer the lands beyond the steppe. Whether it's possible or not, that would be unrealistic. The Great Steppe is too vast, and what lies beyond it is too far away."

The regressor thrust Skywarbler toward the voice, but it pierced only an empty pile of bones. As though mocking her, the black mage's voice came from behind her.

"The opposite is true as well. This land is too far away for you. Whatever happens here isn't your concern, is it?"

"Whether it's my concern or not doesn't matter. Trying to awaken an evil god is the problem."

"A problem? You speak as though you are the king of this land."

Mugul hid his presence in the darkness and let only his voice carry.

"You don't care for the people of the jungle or feed them, yet you intend to interfere with how they live? Do you know the humans who carry the souls of beasts? Do you know those horned sages? Do you know the witches who command dark and powerful magic?"

"I do."

"But it seems you have little interest in those who can't survive without relying on that power."

Black mages used humans as materials. That was why they excelled above all others at using the human body and mind. Realizing the regressor wasn't motivated by profit, Mugul instead tried to provoke her sense of justice.

"This ancient land. In a place where powerful beasts and great spirits live and breathe, humans are nothing more than insects. There are only two ways to survive here: rely on that power, or overcome it with the strength of humans alone."

"So that's why you use humans as sacrifices?"

"They're lives that would die like insects anyway. I gather them and add their strength to humanity's instead. You could call it a sacrifice."

"Oh, is that so?"

The regressor wasn't someone who would be swayed by such trivial words. She snorted.

"Then you can be the sacrifice this time. Your life is no different from an insect's life to me, so I'll collect it instead."

"...All talk, when you can't even find my presence."

"Your presence? You're somewhere around here, aren't you? Then that's enough."

Holding Jizan in a reverse grip, the regressor drove it into the ground. That alone caused a small earthquake to shake the jungle covered in grass and earth. Feeling the ominous tremor, Mugul shouted.

"What are you doing?!"

"Earth Staff Style, Ground Tremor."

The regressor pulled Jizan as though drawing out a stake driven deep into the earth.

The ground rose with it. As if all the dirt and rock around the area had clung to Jizan, the very earth was pulled free and heaved like a volcano.

The regressor stood atop the rising ground and pulled Jizan. As Jizan came up, so did the earth. A mystical feat that completely ignored action and reaction.

When the earth's labor ended, a fifty-meter stone mountain had been born in the dark jungle. Like a newborn child, the mountain trembled and cried.

"Urgh...! What is this?! Why do you possess such immense power...?!"

Only then did Mugul understand how far outmatched he was. Hidden somewhere within the bone altar, he hurriedly gathered his magic power and cast a spell through the bones.

"Restless souls, soothe your spirits with the blood of the living!"

The piles of bones rose all at once. Human hand bones leaped up on their own and flew toward the regressor. Tens of thousands of dead reached out, longing for the lives they had lost.

Then the mountain overturned.

A colossal tidal wave of dirt and stone swept over the bone altar. A tidal wave would have been disastrous even if it had been made of water, but this one greedily swallowed the world in earth and rock. Bones shattered wherever it touched them. They snapped apart and crumbled into tiny pieces, becoming part of the soil and sand.

The bones of beasts born from the earth returned to the earth. The sinful altar built from human corpses over thousands of years was buried beneath sand and soil in an instant.

Having buried the traces of sin along with the black mage, the regressor dusted the dirt mixed with bone powder from her clothes.

"Come out if you don't want to die."

"Cough! Cough, cough!"

Before the tidal wave of earth could sweep him away, Mugul, who had been hiding among the bones, fled into a secret passage.

'I can't go up! I'll die immediately. I have to dig deeper!'

The secret passage had collapsed and twisted under Jizan's power, but Mugul was still one of the greatest black mages. When he chanted toward a nearby spine and ribs, the spine slithered deeper into the passage like a snake. The ribs literally became the passage's framework, and Mugul slid down through the gaps between them.

"That...! I need a living sacrifice ritual. Unless I summon Lord Ankra himself, I can't stand against that monster!"

Mugul desperately hurried forward, talking to himself, then suddenly stopped.

'Could... Lord Ankra really defeat that monster...?'

In truth, even Mugul didn't know exactly who Ankra was or what power Ankra possessed. He only knew the tales. Long ago, before the Queen came, an evil god had ruled this land, governed more than a hundred tribes, and devoured more than a thousand people.

Ancient humans might not have been weak, but could Ankra really defeat someone who cut the wind and shook the earth?

'No, Ankra has to win. Otherwise, everything I've done until now will become meaningless. I can't fail to defeat just one person from beyond the steppe! How could I ever reach the pinnacle of black magic?'

Steeling himself, he reached the underground prison, threw open the iron door, and shouted.

"Sacrifices, listen! Offer your deaths to me! With your fleeting lives, I shall summon the evil god!"

'I haven't gathered a thousand yet, but numbers only hold ritual significance. Five hundred should be enough! If I use the lives of all the remaining sacrifices...!'

Mugul intended to perform the final ritual with freshly killed corpses, but he came face-to-face with me in the blood-soaked prison. I waved at him with a tired expression.

"Ah, welcome."

"So you were here."

"That's right. And this is where you end."

"Hmph. You're the one who ends here. Did you think I cast the Curse of Frenzy without making preparations?"

Mugul swept his gaze across the collapsed sacrifices and smiled wickedly.

"I arranged for others to kill the sacrifices, so their resentment would pass to you. These corpses will become the evil god's body! Thank you for killing them for me. In return, I'll send you off without pain!"

He spread his palm and drove it into the ground. The tattoos carved into his arm writhed and connected to the floor as bloodstains flowed toward his hand. The sacrifices' blood drew a magic circle around Mugul's arm, covering the prison floor.

"This place is both a prison and an altar for sacrifices! At the boundary between life and death, I call upon the remains of the god scattered throughout this jungle! Ankra, dwell within this death...!"

Hummm.

Strange magic power flowed through the fallen sacrifices. Blood flowing from Mugul tried to seep into them, as if it were attempting to bind the corpses together.

Unfortunately for him, his magic power couldn't reach them.

"They aren't dead."

That was because all the sacrifices were alive.

The dead couldn't resist magic power. The living could, at least at first. Resisting every outside interference and attack to protect oneself was the foundation of life. The black mage's magic power was strong, but he had to kill the sacrifices before he could take control of their bodies.

And I hadn't killed them.

"What?!"

Only then did Mugul properly assess their condition. Most of the sacrifices had nearly passed out or were groaning in pain. Poison and drugs had seeped deep into them, and the Curse of Frenzy had seriously damaged their bodies and minds. It wouldn't have been strange for them to die at any moment.

"Ugh..."

"M-my head feels like it's splitting..."

"Save me! Save me! Aaaaah!"

Still, they weren't dead. Mugul sensed the faint vitality lingering within them and stared in shock.

"H-how? How are they alive?"

"Because they aren't dead, they're alive."

"The Curse of Frenzy makes its victim go mad and attack everything around them until they die! I stripped away their reason with poison and drugs, turned them half into corpses, and had black magic consume them! These things aren't supposed to be alive!"

"Are you the only one who can use black magic?"

"What?!"

"I used it too. I used my blood as a medium and infused them with magic power, controlling their bodies... so they could act according to their own will."

It hadn't required much magic power. Mugul had already done the work with his own magic power. I only changed its purpose slightly.

Instead of dying and becoming sacrifices, they would cling to life and move as they wished.

"I-impossible!"

"What is?"

"Black magic suppresses and controls human will! I broke and crushed their wills once already. You can't restore that!"

"Why not? If it suppresses and controls, then you can suppress and control them so they regain their own will."

"That is a contradiction! Even if you reattach a branch once broken, it's only a branch you attached. It is completely different from the original branch! The moment your will intervenes, their wills might as well be gone. It is impossible for them to regain their own will!"

Was a black mage still a mage, after all? Even in this crisis, satisfying his curiosity seemed more important. Explaining it wasn't difficult, but I wasn't sure he could accept it.

"It is possible. For me."

That was possible because I was the King of Humanity.

I wasn't another person. I was the King of Humanity, the Speaker of the species, and someone who could read their wills and desires exactly through mind reading.

That was why I could return their lost sanity exactly as it had been.

"Because their wishes are my wishes. The black magic I use produces the exact opposite effect of ordinary black magic. It makes humans act according to their own wishes... You could call it the normalization of the abnormal."

"That makes no sense...!"

"Nothing is more meaningless than debating whether something is possible after it has already happened. More importantly, are you all right with this?"

Faint shadows appeared around Mugul. Before he could react, spearheads made of bone pierced his body. Mugul coughed up blood at the sudden attack.

"Urgh...!"

"Revenge, sorcerer!"

While Mugul's attention had been turned to me, the barbarians who had been held as sacrifices fulfilled their wishes. Their eyes bloodshot, the barbarian warriors tore Mugul apart as they shouted.

"You said you'd spare my family if I became a sacrifice without resisting!"

"You moved my body as you pleased and defiled the spirits...! I curse you! Become leopard dung!"

"Kikikik! This is revenge for turning us into puppets!"

Deep resentment shredded Mugul's body. Mugul, who had appeared in person rather than through a puppet, collapsed onto the cold floor with fatal wounds.

I walked toward him, stepping through the spreading blood.

"Now it's your turn to fulfill your wish, Mugul."

I didn't remember him ever introducing himself, but I called his name as though it were natural. Mugul looked up at me, his dying body trembling.

"A wretched body and pitiful strength. You were much weaker than everyone else, so you longed for power and wanted to become an evil god, didn't you? But even if you summon one through sacrifices, it won't become yours."

Sacrifices were nothing more than a coward's idea, conceived to shift the cost of black magic onto someone else. A gamble without risk could never offer a great return.

"The essence of black magic is using your own body. Real black magic creates miracles by offering yourself as the price. Now, everything is ready. An altar, a sacrifice, and death."

This was the altar he had prepared in advance.

The sacrifice was Mugul himself.

And now, if he couldn't summon the evil god, Mugul was finished. Forget the end of the world. If he wanted to escape his own end, he had no choice but to call the evil god into his body.

"I'm curious about the evil god too."

I wanted to know what it really was.

Moved by my words, Mugul desperately clenched his fist. He gathered the blood flowing from his body, smeared it across the stone floor, and chanted.

"De sula alhanan tam. Ankra, Ankra. I have emptied the cold vessel, so enter the empty vessel!"

The final stage of black magic was offering oneself as the sacrifice. It was far more powerful and profound than using other sacrifices. Using his flowing blood, life, and approaching death, Mugul called upon the shadow of the evil god spread throughout the jungle.

"Gah?!"

"That ominous presence...!"

As people backed away from the surging magic power, I carefully watched Mugul. I didn't know what the evil god was, but could it truly be resurrected? Was it really a being no different from a god?

I read the changes occurring within Mugul, then tilted my head at the strange sensation.

"Kha, hahaha!"

Vitality returned to Mugul's dying body. Suicide prayers called offering rituals had far more failures than successes. If they really granted power, black magic wouldn't have remained a fringe practice.

Yet somehow, Mugul succeeded.

"It worked...! Thank you, whoever you are. It seems this was the answer! Great power can't be gained without casting oneself away!"

Though blood had already poured from him, his body showed no signs of trouble. It seemed to be functioning under entirely different principles.

Mugul gripped the bone spear lodged in his body and crushed it. It was monstrous strength, impossible to believe had come from his skeletal arms. Feeling the overflowing vitality, Mugul burst into ecstatic laughter.

"Thank you! You were an auspicious sign! At last, I have gained the power to become a god!"

"Are you satisfied now?"

"Of course! Completely satisfied! With this power, I'll slaughter those lofty druids and filthy beasts, then reign over this land as its true god...!"

Strange. Did power really come just from belief? Was it truly a god similar to the Celestial God?

But Mugul had far too little understanding of that power for that to be true. If power arose from such vague belief, the Kingdom of Ten Thousand would have become a land of monsters.

Was there no other example? I thought I needed to watch a little longer.

"First, I'll kill you humans from beyond the steppe!"

Mugul snapped the iron bars as though showing off his overflowing strength, then approached me. The sacrifices recoiled in terror at his dreadful presence. Satisfied by their reaction, Mugul shouted.

"Become an offering to the evil god...!"

"Ah, there you are."

The regressor burst in from above, smashing through the ceiling. Jizan fell onto Mugul's head.

When two large rocks crush an insect, it vanishes without even retaining its shape. As though it had fled somewhere.

Something similar happened to Mugul. Caught between Jizan and the stone floor, his body burst apart from the back and was mercilessly crushed. Even the evil god's power was helpless before the solemn weight of the earth. Before he could boast of his great power, Mugul became a handful of blood.

It was a somewhat empty end. Then again, if the evil god had been that powerful, it wouldn't have vanished and would still be throwing its weight around.

Blood splattered in every direction. Chunks of flesh scattered like dust. Even amid that gruesome death, the regressor deflected the blood with qi and approached in spotless clothes.

"I can't believe he fled underground in the middle of all that. Anyway, I sensed something strange. What happened?"

"Nothing particularly special."

"Really? Then that's... Huh? What? Everyone's alive and well. Weren't they frenzied?"

"I used a bit of power."

"You can calm a frenzy too?"

"Black magic is a human technique too."

"Even so, calming frenzied humans... Well, fine. All's well that ends well."

The regressor casually let it go, then looked around and tilted her head.

"Is that it?"

'This was the ancient evil? Even if I received a blessing, that was too easy. Trials have never been this easy before...'

I didn't know whether this was the ancient evil the Holy Maiden had spoken of either. But there was still work left to do.

"Mr. Shei. It isn't over yet."

"I knew it. What's left?"

I pointed at the barbarians still lying throughout the underground prison.

"We have to send these people home."

"Ah."

Faced with cleanup work greater than the battle itself, Shei let out a long groan.

Footnotes:

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