WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 570

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Cross-Dressing Is the Most Feminine Act

"---!"

"Grab her!"

"Ow! My nose!"

"Now you've got a hooked nose. More fitting for a witch."

When we returned to the World Tree's Spirits' Chamber, something had already erupted. The moans and screams of witches echoed through the air as brooms zipped about in a frenzy.

Nevida raised her hand. White feather moss burst into growth, and a moment later a witch came flying through the air and landed on the cushioned bed of it. Walpurgisnacht picked herself up with a grimace.

"Great druid. What you left in my care turned out to be rather more violent than expected."

Nevida had been away for barely a moment, and she had already tried to escape? Without even her arms? Nevida was genuinely impressed.

"To think she would refuse to give up even after losing both arms. A pleasant miscalculation."

"Pleasant for you, perhaps. I myself am not fond of surprises."

Walpurgisnacht frowned, reached into her cloak, and pulled out a bat, then scattered it into the air. The bat shot forward like a thrown stone, then all at once snapped its eyes open and spread its wings. Green eyes flashing, it shrieked ultrasonic pulses and swept into the caves of the great tree.

Witches were a secret society, practitioners of dark magic and hex-craft handed down since antiquity. They appeared naturally wherever humans gathered, and at times passed their knowledge and power from one person to another in a single day's tutelage.

Witches had many abilities, but the most famous was the familiar. Commanding small creatures like bats, frogs, and field mice and using them as magical conduits, that was a witch's power.

Walpurgisnacht linked her mind to the bat. Green eyes flashed, and the bat's senses flowed into her. Where any ordinary person would have found the bat's tangled web of perceptions impossible to parse, Walpurgisnacht interpreted them through instinct and experience alone.

"One moment. I'll see what's happening."

The bat's ultrasonic cries bounced off the walls of the tree cavern. A corridor of slanted lines, with no color or texture, took shape in Walpurgisnacht's mind. Someone was running down its deep, winding length. The silhouette was blurred, but the lopsided, unsteady gait told anyone who looked exactly who it was.

Fleeing without arms. She should be gathering her strength first. Was that the regressor's way, or just plain stubbornness?

Walpurgisnacht was tracking the regressor through the bat when she noticed something.

"...Hm. Nothing to worry about. It's handled."

"By you?"

"No. A bat couldn't manage that."

Witches were certainly useful, and could be formidable depending on the person, but familiars were not combat tools by nature. A frog or bat, however strong, could only be so strong.

A witch could take a larger beast as her familiar, but controlling a higher animal of that sort had a way of flowing back into one's own mind. The usual ceiling for a familiar was somewhere around a cat or a crow, and even those were avoided as too dangerous. The story of a senile old witch wandering the woods cawing like a bird was no mere legend.

Still.

"The elephant will handle it."

The one who had overcome that limit was what they called a great witch.

Puuuuuuu-.

An elephant's cry rang out from somewhere deep in the tree. At the same moment, the mental link with the bat severed. Through the ant-tunnel twists of the cavern inside the great tree, something enormous came surging. A storm of sound rolled through the passages in waves.

The Spirits' Chamber shuddered. Nevida said nothing and gave the small World Tree a gentle shake. The opening in the tree slowly widened, making room for what was coming.

What emerged through the gap was a young elephant. Young as it was, it was still far too large and far too clever a creature to have any business inside a tree cavern. Its trunk was curled around the regressor as it stepped slowly out into the open.

As ill luck would have it, the regressor had been in the middle of trying to kick Walpurgisnacht away and flee on nothing but her legs, only to come face to face with the great witch's elephant.

Walpurgisnacht removed her hat toward the witch riding the baby elephant and bowed her head.

"Good to see you, Master. Your unworthy student greets the great witch."

"Oh, y-yes. Walpurgisnacht. You've worked hard."

The witch with the gloomy expression atop the elephant spoke in a shrinking voice.

"Um. N-Nevida.... w-who's this man?"

One who held all knowledge in her head, all mystery clasped to her chest, all wealth in her hands. A deep and dark secret hidden in the jungle of the World Tree.

An Elder and a great witch who, at the end of a pact with darkness, had obtained even the blood of the Progenitor and made herself undying.

And the one who carried the direct lineage of the Warrior, who had once ruled the Kingdom of Ten Thousand.

Hexia Agartha, great witch. Master of all witches.

The great witch pointed at the regressor, pinned in her familiar's trunk.

"Th-this... where did you find her...?"

"That armless one entered the jungle of her own accord, alongside the one who accompanies me."

"N-no. Not her.... this."

The great witch drifted slowly toward the regressor. The regressor was still thrashing with what little strength she had left, but without her arms it truly was nothing more than kicking. The great witch extended a finger toward the regressor's face and asked.

"My mask. Why is it... on her?"

"A mask?"

Nevida, who did not understand what the great witch was referring to, asked in return. I felt the same as she did, but reading the regressor's thoughts, something clicked.

Hexia Agartha. The Warrior of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand. Direct descendant of Agartha.

And what the regressor had been wearing....

"Heh, hehe. So you took it without even knowing.... that's right, you're just so dense...."

The muttering great witch suddenly raised her fingernails and raked them across the regressor's face. A sharp, tearing motion cut across the regressor's features. Blood welled up and a vicious mark appeared on the regressor's face....

Or so it seemed. A thin layer of skin peeled away cleanly. The great witch held up the "mask" she had torn free with her nail. A thin mask covering the jaw and cheeks down to below the eyelids, with one striking mole on it.

"One of the three masks of Agartha, True. The greatest fragment of the Warrior, which changes the impression you make on others...."

The great witch calmly lifted it to her own face. She patted it against her skin, and the Mask of Agartha fused into place as though it had always been part of her.

At that moment, the impression the great witch gave off changed entirely. To me, with my mind reading, she looked the same as before, but Nevida and Walpurgisnacht caught the shift at once.

Walpurgisnacht gasped.

"...! The great witch appears... male...?!"

The great witch was a woman. Yet to their senses, the face before them read unmistakably as male. The gap between reason and feeling tangled their thoughts. Anyone who did not already know the great witch would have been genuinely fooled.

The great witch stroked her own face with deep satisfaction and murmured.

"Heh.... disguising herself as a man. To use something this precious for something so pointless.... no wonder there was none of that sour male smell...."

And with the mask gone, the impression the regressor gave off changed as well.

Even before, her features had been telling enough, if you looked. But now that the mask was gone, there was simply no room for misreading her. Her hair, grown out and unkempt from travel, now just looked like a short-cut woman's hair, and the long lashes hiding behind those fierce eyes finally made themselves known.

People do not look at the parts of a face one by one. They take it all in at once and remember the impression. The Mask of Agartha manipulated that impression itself. Once it was gone, the impression people had of the regressor returned to what it had always been.

"...T-tch!"

With her sex laid bare before everyone, the regressor bit her lip in frustration.

The great witch, delighted by the unexpected windfall, spoke to the regressor.

"Hehe, thank you.... why hide being a woman when it's such a waste...?"

"She would want to hide the fact that she is a wanton woman. How fitting, this is why the wanton woman kept her gaze fixed on her."

This is how she gets exposed? There's no wriggling out of this now. And of all people to be exposed in front of, it had to be Nevida, the holy maiden's greatest enemy!

I had always figured I'd lay it all out eventually, but not like this! I hadn't wanted it to come out this way! What do I do? Do I say I already knew she was a woman, or do I pretend to be finding out right now?

Whose cue do I follow? I'll read the regressor's thoughts first.

'...Worst case, worst case. Both arms torn off, captured in enemy territory. Being pushed around like a toy without any power. And now the mask is taken too....'

If you had both arms ripped off, were bleeding all over, and had been taken prisoner, despair would be the normal response. Especially if there was no realistic hope of getting out alive.

But for the regressor, not even death was the end. On the contrary, in a situation like this, death was a perfectly good way out.

'Before moving on to the next cycle, I just wanted to see what would happen to Hughes.... without both arms, this cycle is effectively over. No chance to reattach them, so maybe I should just use Heavenly Mirror to end it now, before I weaken any further....'

Fittingly ironic. The regressor was considering suicide with perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable optimism. I nearly nodded along after reading her thoughts, then caught myself and pulled back hard.

Stop that. If you die, everything goes back. The world resets!

What do I do? Play along for now. I pretended to know nothing and asked.

"Sorry, what? The Mask of Agartha? What is that?"

"It is a power that wicked Agartha tore from my very face and stole. True to her nature as the wanton woman's servant, she used countless faces to seduce, mislead, and deceive humans. That wanton woman used my power to conceal her true identity."

"Th-that's.... Nevida, the wording is a bit strong.... she is still my ancestor...."

The great witch's voice grew smaller and smaller. Nevida ignored her and let cold killing intent show through.

"Had I known she was the wanton woman, I would have found a way to deal with her when we met in the military state.... too late, but even now."

"W-wait! Hold on! Mr. Shei was actually a woman...! I had absolutely no idea!"

I did know. How could I not. She had been leaking signs everywhere. Honestly, even without mind reading, I might have wondered at some point.

But I couldn't tell the truth in a situation like this. I played dumb.

"Didn't you say once that you preferred men? Mr. Shei, was that what you meant all along?"

The regressor, caught in the trunk and unable to flee or dodge the question, trembled with shame and pain and looked away from me.

"...Ugh, what does that even matter."

"And the way you looked at me sometimes, that wasn't normal either?"

"What are you talking about! I never, I never did that!"

"And sneaking into my bed at night?"

"When did I ever, that was, that was an accident!"

I know. I read it with mind reading. But even if the regressor said so herself, it would sound like something else entirely to anyone listening.

I kept my expression firm and stepped in front of Nevida.

"Nevida. Do you remember what you said earlier, up above?"

"When you say up above."

You said it clearly, that if I needed women, you would provide as many as I liked. I hadn't expected things to turn out this way, but as it happened, there was now one more woman here. And one with close ties to me at that.

"Let Mr. Shei go. Or rather, give her to me."

"..."

Nevida recalled the conversation we'd had above and understood what I meant. Or rather, to be precise, she misunderstood. She grasped my intention to save the regressor, but got the wrong idea about the reason.

'The one who accompanies me seems to have considerable interest in that creature.... its existence is nothing short of disagreeable to me, but regardless, I am in the position of serving and attending to that one. I should give what is desired.'

I had no particular feelings for the regressor, of course. What would I want with a PTSD-ridden person whose fists moved faster than her words.

But if the regressor died the world would reset, so I, living in this moment, had to stop that as best I could. At least until I met the Demon God who dealt in time.

"With no arms, she is more than sufficient as a plaything."

"...Ha? What did you just say."

Nevida called up a thorn vine. It grew down from the ceiling and snaked forward like a serpent to coil around the regressor's throat.

"Urgh, aaah!"

Sharp thorns dug into the regressor's skin, drank the blood that welled up, and grew a little more. The blood that trickled down bloomed into a single red rose. Nevida looked down at the suffering regressor with cold eyes.

"If you wish to keep your neck, you would do well to serve faithfully. Should the one who accompanies me close this rose, those thorns will tighten around your throat."

With that cold pronouncement, Nevida snapped the rose from the vine and handed it to me. I took it with an uncomfortable look.

I hadn't meant that a leash was necessary too.... it made me feel like I was doing something cruel. I only wanted to keep the regressor alive.

Well. Either way, for now both the regressor and I had kept our lives. I'll call that a success.

'Just you try touching me. I'll kill you...!'

...Not quite there yet, apparently.

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