WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 557: A Story from the Past. Man and Sin - 2

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Until now, these hands had devoured more than ten thousand humans. They were a beast that ate humans, humanity's predator and natural enemy. There was no need to fear the King of Humanity...

That thought had vanished long ago.

The King of Humanity was young and innocent. Yet despite her appearance, she was violent, powerful, and above all, clever. When Ankra lunged at her with their claws bared, she neither charged nor retreated.

She simply drew the hand axe at her waist and threw it.

Humanity's greatest trait was its use of tools. Their forelimbs were used to grasp things rather than walk. Unlike other beasts, which used their front legs to propel themselves, humans could pick up and throw other things.

Humans were not the only ones who used tools, nor was throwing exclusive to them. Still, it was a formidable power rarely found among beasts.

And the King of Humanity, even if she was not the strongest human, was a certain "concept" that encompassed even that. When it came to throwing, nothing could compare to her.

The ragged soldiers were swept away, their limbs torn off. Even powerful warriors who knew no death lost their will to fight before that unimaginable burst of strength. No, even if they had retained the will, their bodies had been shattered beyond any ability to act on it.

Ankra was no exception.

They barely avoided the axe that had felled the jungle, only for the King of Humanity's other arm to blur. It was a strike as though she had pinned the world to a cutting board and brought her weapon down upon it. At the same time, a fierce storm swept over Ankra's right arm.

"Khah! Khahhh!"

The axe spun sideways, grinding through Ankra's shoulder to their elbow. Blood evaporated where it touched them, sending red ripples through the air. It was destruction closer to pulverization than severing, with force that could scarcely be called a thrown weapon.

Ankra was flung away like the trash they usually discarded, rolling over and over across the ground. Unbearable fear filled their face.

"Your arm grows back quickly?"

In contrast, the girl before them, the little absolute being wearing the mantle of King of Humanity, stared at Ankra's shoulder with open curiosity.

Having devoured tens of thousands of humans, Ankra's body recovered quickly, and they could enlarge parts of it. Their transcendent vitality had played a major role in allowing them to rule the jungle through fear. It was useless now, but it bought Ankra precious time.

Time to plead with the King of Humanity.

"King of Humanity!!!"

"Huh? Me? Why?"

"Why? Why did you attack me?!"

At the unexpected question, the girl only widened her eyes in confusion. Her round eyes darted about like a beast anxiously watching for someone's reaction after doing something wrong.

"I had been living peacefully in this jungle! Raising livestock, hunting, living a fierce and fulfilling life like any other human! Until you came!"

Their words were not wrong. The dead might have thought otherwise, but they had lived their days in pastoral slaughter.

They hunted humans, caught them, killed them, and ate them. It could be condemned as cruel, but in a jungle full of beasts that were hard to catch and offered little meat, humans were excellent livestock. Ankra had simply eaten an exceptional number of them. Cannibalism was common in this jungle.

"And you, who had never once set foot in this jungle! Just because I ate a few people, you barged in and tried to kill me?!"

The King of Humanity had tried to kill them first, so Ankra had merely resisted. They had only fought against an invader. They shouted as they spat blood.

Yet the girl's disposition was far too different from Ankra's. Flustered, she scratched her head with the flat of her axe.

"Why? You were the one who challenged me first."

"Challenged...?"

"Yeah. You bared your teeth at me and tried to fight. So I fought you. That's all."

"What?"

Ankra was left speechless by how utterly different she was.

Ankra was the king of the jungle, and they had fought the King of Humanity, who could not accept their ways, with their fate on the line. Yet, from what she said, the reason they had fought was no more and no less than that they had picked a fight.

"Accepting challenges is a leader's job! I granted your wish!"

This was nothing like what the prophet had said. Ankra asked in a trembling voice.

"You didn't come to avenge the thousand people I ate...?"

"Huh? A thousand? Why would that matter? I just killed a thousand too."

It was true. Ankra had brought not only their ragged soldiers, but every ordinary soldier in their tribe. The King of Humanity had slaughtered them in an instant, without the slightest hesitation. If anything, she had looked pleased.

Ankra was confused. The King of Humanity was far stronger than they had expected, but also far more savage. She was one of their own kind. The reason Ankra had felt fear was that, as one of the same kind, they had realized the difference in their strength.

"Were you afraid of dying? Then why did you pick a fight with me? You were going to lose."

It was an arrogant declaration because it was such a simple fact. Their pride was wounded, but this was not the time to care. Seeing a thread of hope, Ankra hurriedly made an excuse.

"It was because of the prophet! She prophesied that you would attack me!"

"Whether you were egged on or deceived, you still picked a fight with me, right? You were planning to beat me. That makes it a challenge."

"It wasn't what I truly wanted! If you and the prophet hadn't come, I only wanted to keep living peacefully as I was!"

The slaves of the Ankha tribe would not have been included in that peace, but Ankra's words were undeniably true. The girl calmed the thrill of the hunt and murmured in a voice that sounded as though she had sobered up a little.

"Really?"

The hostility filling the jungle faded. The fear that had made every hair on their body stand up dispersed like mist. As Ankra, freed from death, hurriedly caught their breath, the King of Humanity withdrew her killing intent and turned away with refreshing decisiveness.

"Yeah. You're really scared, so you won't challenge me anymore. It's boring, but... if you're surrendering."

She seemed slightly disappointed and showed them her back almost deliberately, but Ankra had no thought of ambushing her. They had felt the gap between them.

More than anything, the King of Humanity's violence far surpassed Ankra's human-eating brutality. She did not retreat despite lacking a regenerating body. That sight broke Ankra's spirit.

'I still saved my life...! I can recover the strength I lost! As long as I live, I can plan for another day!'

Just as Ankra rejoiced in the relief of surviving, someone appeared beside the girl without warning.

"My King..."

The prophet. She read the signs of heaven, traced the earth's veins, watched the movements of celestial bodies, and predicted the paths of clouds and wind. The King of Humanity's Holy Maiden.

She had come to Ankra and told them that the King of Humanity would arrive soon. Most likely to draw Ankra and the King of Humanity into battle...

Rage surged through Ankra, but they were still before the King of Humanity. As they suppressed their feelings and bowed their head, the King of Humanity answered.

"Huh? What is it?"

"They must be killed."

A chilling sensation burrowed into Ankra's body.

Fear? It was different from that. It was neither the cries of a defeated loser who could only whine nor fierce killing intent directed at them.

It was as though she were reading out something already decided. A suffocating certainty that her declaration itself would become reality, that every path before them except death had been blocked. It seized Ankra by the throat and would not let go.

The girl tilted her head at the prophet's words.

"Kill them? Me? Why?"

"Because that is how things can stand upright, my King. This man-eater is a beast of sin who has filled this Great Forest with screams and pain. They quench their thirst with human blood and fill their belly with flesh, then establish and spread customs through those sins. Their existence is harmful. The very fact that they live and breathe is a sin. For humans to live as humans, beasts like them must be made as though they never existed."

It was denial beyond contempt and hatred. She sought to erase them from every branch reaching from the past, through the present, and into the future.

Cold sweat ran down Ankra's body.

"But they're human too?"

"That is why they must be cut away. If they were not human, we could simply make them an enemy. As an enemy, they would become a challenge to overcome, a trial to endure. But they are human... Though I do not wish to acknowledge it, they are one of our kind. For that reason alone, their sins become ours, weighing us down and staining us."

The girl picked at her ear as though uninterested.

"Sin? What's that? Can you eat it? I haven't seen any."

"My King. Our beautiful and violent King. Humans can see what cannot be seen. We look above us and learn. We look to higher places, admire and envy those there, and wish to become like them. That is why we need shining stars. We need a North Star to show us the way. We must erase that dark and vulgar thing, establish what is right and just, and lead everyone."

"Really? Then you kill them. You can, can't you?"

The King of Humanity said it casually, then turned away. Without the slightest attachment or concern for Ankra's life or death, the girl yawned broadly and walked off.

The prophet looked at her retreating back with a sorrowful, mournful gaze.

"I cannot. My King, you are the king of all humanity. You must do it yourself and show them. That is the only way humanity can change... My foolish, ignorant actions cannot become a shining star. I cannot become the path everyone follows..."

Ankra did not understand what she was saying. But they understood that those two were discussing their life and death. They felt bewilderment and rage as their fate was decided in a conversation between two people who had nothing to do with them.

The girl answered the prophet without much thought.

"Don't worry! Do what you want to do!"

Clenching a fist and raising it as though cheering her on, the girl cried out brightly. Yet it seemed to be a despairing conclusion for the prophet.

"Ah..."

Aiming at the prophet as she sighed deeply, Ankra slowly rose. Their body was covered in blood, but the body that had accumulated strength by devouring thousands had already regenerated.

"You deceived me. The King of Humanity had no interest in me at all!"

"My King respects humanity. Put another way, it could be called neglect... but that is the greatest respect such an absolute being can show the weak. Should I be happy? Or should I be sad?"

"But I survived! You failed. I only need to eat again to regain the strength I lost today!"

Ankra extended their claws. Nails as sharp and hard as a beast's gleamed coldly. They charged at the prophet, who stood exposed and defenseless.

"I'll eat you first!"

The prophet knew the King of Humanity. Yet the King of Humanity would not prevent this death for that reason. Certain of it, Ankra fixed their eyes on the prey before them to soothe their hunger.

Then a sharp killing intent pierced them. Sensing danger, Ankra twisted their waist with astonishing flexibility and blocked the blade rushing for the nape of their neck.

Metal scraped against claw, throwing sparks. Ankra was horrified by the heavy force pressing down on them. The female warrior whose ambush had failed clicked her tongue and kicked them.

Boom.

Ankra's body skidded backward with a tremendous impact.

"How dare you lay a hand on our Holy Maiden?"

She was a female warrior with the agile body and sharp impression of a black panther. Her hair was tied tightly back so it would not hinder her, and a quiver hung from her back. Daggers and throwing knives were tied around her waist and thighs, ready to be drawn at any moment.

Her body was well trained. She was certainly a formidable female warrior. Yet the impact Ankra felt in their hand was clearly strange. That strength, that weight, could not have come from such a body.

And a blade had pierced the claws that could fell trees. Ankra was horrified by its sharpness.

The female warrior pointed two daggers at Ankra.

"Holy Maiden. I just need to cut up their whole body and kill them, right?"

"Agartha. Be careful. 'That thing' will not die from having its body cut. To kill 'that thing,' which has consumed the vitality of tens of thousands, we must stop its breath two hundred and ninety times."

"Two hundred and ninety?"

"Originally, it would have needed to die more than a thousand times. If my King had not intervened, we would have collapsed from exhaustion first."

The prophet calmly spoke of the future, though two hundred and ninety was still a great number. After roughly calculating it, Agartha shook her head and raised her daggers again.

"So I just keep cutting them up?"

"Yes, Agartha. Kill it."

"By your command. I will make the Holy Maiden's future reality."

Agartha charged forward, flashing her two daggers in a dizzying display.

Sparkling motes of light fell from the sky. Agartha's daggers were fast, dazzling, and sharp. More than that, the invisible force covering the blades viciously sought Ankra's life.

Slash.

Blood sprayed from Ankra's neck and chest when they failed to avoid the blades in time. Agartha's daggers succeeded in taking Ankra's life.

Only once, though.

"You bitch...!"

Ankra changed tactics. Until now, they had dodged instinctively, but there was no need. They had confirmed that even being struck by the light-wreathed blades would not kill them. Now it was time to sacrifice flesh and seize bone.

With the blades lodged in their body, Ankra thrust out both arms. In the brief moment Agartha hesitated after burying her blades, they grabbed her wrists. Their strength easily overwhelmed hers. Ignoring her struggles to escape, Ankra exerted more force and twisted her wrists. Agartha's expression contorted.

At that moment, a slash like light fell across Ankra's arm. The swift blade wrapped in light cut through flesh and bone. Strength drained from their arm, and their body lost balance and pitched forward.

Agartha's face brightened.

"Grandiomor!"

"Didn't I tell you not to let your guard down? Even with qigong, they're the king of this jungle, said to have hunted even elephants. You should have been careful until we arrived."

He was a handsome man with a gentle impression. His appearance and inner self both seemed beautiful, with a softness that could embrace the world and a firm core beneath it. Even Agartha, who was accustomed to men, had a faint flush rise to her cheeks.

The hero Grandiomor. A handsome man with upright conduct and an even more upright face. His swordsmanship was excellent as well, so he had been chosen as one of the Warriors of the King. He too had arrived after the prophet.

Though it had lost its owner, Ankra's hand still wriggled as it pressed down on Agartha's arm. Grandiomor used all his strength to peel away each finger. Ankra's hand flopped about on its own before vanishing somewhere into the brush.

"Khahhh! You prey!"

Yet Ankra did not care. When they drew up their strength, flesh bulged and surged from the severed cross-section. The newly grown arm was larger and thicker than the last, as if several other arms had been woven together.

"I used ten at once! Let's see you take this!"

It was a secret art they had used only when wrestling elephants, rapidly consuming the lives they had devoured to gain terrifying strength. Their grotesquely thick arm targeted Grandiomor and Agartha at the same time.

Then it collided with a massive shadow that suddenly charged in. A long blade, larger than a person, engulfed Ankra. The clash of strength shook the air.

"Hnnngh!"

A huge man braced himself and swung his blade. After briefly wrestling with him, Ankra could not withstand the man's strength and was sent flying. They stopped only after knocking over two or three trees in the distance.

Agartha spoke irritably.

"Hangpae! You're late!"

"You were fast."

The man muttered briefly, resting the blade on his shoulder. Hangpae, the strongest human on earth. The pinnacle of raw strength, said to be unmatched by anyone aside from the King of Humanity. Even after sending the king of the jungle flying, he showed no sign of strain.

It was not simply that he was strong. Even someone born strong could not be stronger than Ankra, who had devoured tens of thousands of humans.

"Qigong. One pinnacle humanity can reach without interference from the Demon God, which I found across all futures. The limit that can be trained as a human."

The prophet stood before all of them and recited sadly.

"Even that could not reach the height of present sin. Our strength is, yes, weak. Against the shadow of sin that has overturned the world. Against the hell of shortcuts and heresies humanity has left unchecked. If we fight fairly, we lose."

Hangpae, who had listened silently to the prophet, bristled.

"Hey, Princess. You're saying I'm weaker than that thing?"

"Don't argue, Hangpae! It's a prophecy. Like the Holy Maiden said, if we fought it head-on, we would have lost. Whether from exhaustion or letting our guard down!"

"That would be you. Not me."

"What?! Are you looking down on me because I let my guard down for a moment?"

"Both of you, stop fighting. You know the best outcome is for my King to personally punish that demon. The Holy Maiden only sought a good outcome."

While the three warriors argued, Ankra writhed, blood dripping from them. Having exhausted their vitality while fighting the King of Humanity, they could not fight them.

They had to run. It would be shameful to flee from the Warriors of the King rather than the king herself, and the jungle would point fingers if word spread... but surviving came first.

Fortunately, their feet could not be that fast. Ankra straightened their knees in an instant and kicked off the ground on all fours. They dashed toward where they could sense no presence.

Watching Ankra flee like an insect, the three warriors spoke calmly.

"They're running."

"I guess their life was too precious. It won't matter."

"This too must have been in the princess's future."

Then Ankra slammed face-first into someone who suddenly appeared before them. The sloppy-looking man stared wide-eyed in surprise as he encountered Ankra. It was too unexpected for either of them to avoid the collision. They crashed head-on and bounced in opposite directions.

"Aah! That hurts!"

"Khk!"

So they had placed an ambusher here. Recovering their senses, Ankra saw their pursuer and attacked reflexively. If the man backed away, Ankra would flee. If he fought back, Ankra would bring him down. They could not run backward, so they had no choice.

But the man before them chose neither.

"Huh? Aaaah!"

The man panicked at the sight of Ankra and rolled across the ground. Ankra had not expected their opponent to throw himself down, and they got caught up in it and fell as well. Rolling pathetically along the ground, Ankra grabbed a vine and pushed themself up.

At that instant, something drawn taut snapped, and sharp iron stakes flew from somewhere and pierced Ankra's body.

Horrific pain followed. Ankra struggled to pull out the steel stakes piercing their whole body, but the reverse hooks on them only tore through them further. Even Ankra's grip could neither snap nor crush them.

How could iron be so sharp and hard? As they stared in horror, a woman with short blond hair under a hood stepped out from the brush.

"I told you to lure them in, not roll around on the ground. You nearly set off every trap."

"Ahaha... I ended up luring them in, didn't I? It worked, Elik."

"What does it matter if it worked? The whole process was a mess. We don't know whether the same method will work again."

The man scratching their head with an awkward smile looked thoroughly unreliable. In contrast, the woman called Elik moved as though she were an intricate mechanism clicking perfectly into place. Wearing an assortment of equipment, she pulled ropes with pulleys and machinery. Ankra was dragged away in pain so intense that it felt as though their body were being torn apart.

The man shouted toward the prophet.

"We got them! El, come here!"

The prophet and the Warriors of the King approached the incapacitated Ankra. Sensing death, Ankra panted and asked why the warriors were trying to kill them. Why the warriors hated them when they had never even met Ankra.

The prophet answered them.

"They devour a thousand people every year. Not because they are hungry, nor because it would be wasteful to discard them. Simply because the surrounding tribes will exhaust themselves producing children to offer as tribute. Long ago, after winning a war that decided their tribe's fate, they committed that atrocity only once. Yet they considered it tradition and repeated the horrifying atrocity every year."

Ankra shouted at the prophet in rage. They accused her of trapping them, of making them challenge the King of Humanity.

"Because that chain of sin was never broken, sin ultimately came to rule with the greatest power. It grew so strong that it could not have been cut away if my King had not come... and it spread even more evil."

Next, Ankra tried to persuade the warriors. The King of Humanity had forgiven them and spared their life, so the warriors should do the same.

"Even the bellies of old women who can no longer bear children are cut open and dead infants placed inside them, making them appear pregnant... because pregnant women count as two. Evils that exploit humans to deceive the number of humans. They exist and spread solely because of Ankra."

At last, they begged for forgiveness. Ankra pleaded for the warriors to spare them, promising never to do it again. Just as they had with the King of Humanity.

"It must not exist. We cannot turn away by saying we did not know. Ignorance and savagery cannot excuse this horrific sin. This is sin and taboo in itself. So it can never be done again... no, it must be erased entirely. It must be buried beneath sand and vegetation, so no one can even remember it."

But they were not the King of Humanity.

The prophet poured out terrible sorrow and regarded Ankra with an emotion beyond contempt.

"'This' does not exist in the future I will create."

The prophet raised two fingers before her eyes, blocking Ankra from her sight.

Crackle. Crackle.

Everything surrounding them began to twist and disappear.

Ankra was denied from the root of their existence. Every chain of causality connected to them was cut. Traces would remain, but they would no longer remain as fact. Ankra would fade from ancient memories and be forgotten.

Because the First Holy Maiden would bless everything.

As they were buried beneath the sand, Ankra felt boundless despair.

There were too many gods in this world.

Not fakes like them. Real gods.

Footnotes:

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