WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 583

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Noise Marketing

'Hmm. Normally I should be the one to step in, but... if I barge in while those two are mid-fight, it'll draw too much attention. They seem to have their own energy going. Their own circumstances. And I'm keeping my identity hidden. Best leave it to Walpurgisnacht.'

So that was why Walpurgisnacht had come. The great witch had called her. Summoning a busy subordinate all the way out here just because she felt awkward approaching on her own. Remarkable, really.

Collected by Walpurgisnacht, I was transported back up to the Spirits' Chamber. Under what felt like the gaze one reserves for a walking disaster, I smiled sheepishly and spoke to Walpurgisnacht's projection.

"Thanks for the help. You're being pulled in all directions, must be rough."

"What worries me is that it seems one more headache has just been added to the pile."

A pointed look came through even from a projection. I let it roll off me.

"Probably because you're too dependable for a witch. Take it easy every once in a while."

"There is too much that needs doing. As there is right now."

"My, my."

"This is not something to brush off with 'my, my.' Please watch your conduct. All sorts of people gather in the World Tree's shadow. Beyond the tree's residents, there are those who come seeking the great druid's teachings, a witch's medicines, or rare flora and fauna that grow only here. Among them, some may hold a grudge against you, or harbor ambitions of their own."

"Like Blanca?"

The projection rippled for a moment.

"...Similar, yes. The difference is that she has Nevida's backing."

"You mean the Lords of All Creation?"

Walpurgisnacht's answer came slowly enough that I could feel the pause even through the projection.

"Yes. Them."

"Them? Does that mean you're not one of the Lords of All Creation?"

"I am, at most, one individual human. I have only the obligatory curiosity that any person would feel toward the King of Humanity."

"And no particular wish to ask of the King of Humanity?"

"...Of course not."

"Oh? That answer came slowly."

"There is one thing I would like to ask, but it hardly rises to the level of a wish. It is merely a question."

Walpurgisnacht cut off my line of questioning and turned away, as though she had said all she intended to say. An uncomfortable silence drifted through the air while we rode the water channel.

The regressor, meanwhile, was deep in thought.

'Why did Hughes go and do something so pointless? In the end, there was nothing to be gained from this whole venture, was there?'

Nothing to be gained? We experienced plenty of things. You were there too, what are you complaining about?

'Hughes does like watching people. Wherever he's gone, he's always found a way to talk with whoever lives there. But it can't have been just sightseeing. What was Hughes actually trying to do? Should I ask him?'

Go ahead. Ask. I'll answer.

'No. We're being watched either way. Hughes can't tell me, and even if he did, I can't just take it at face value. Let me think about what comes next instead. If he revealed his identity to Blanca... what does that actually accomplish? All it did was advertise that the King of Humanity is here. Surely that can't be the point.'

Ha. What an imagination.

...I genuinely cannot tell if her intuition is good or terrible.

***

The Kingdom of Ten Thousand had fallen, but it had not disappeared. What burned was the World Tree, and the loss of the Warrior and their inner circle had erased the kingdom's center of gravity. But the Kingdom of Ten Thousand had always been a loose assembly of clans and tribes, so its shape remained. Several tribes still observed its customs, still pledging loyalty to Hexia Agartha, last of the royal line.

The chieftain of the Anub tribe, loyal hounds of the Agartha house, a tribe composed entirely of dog-kin, pricked his ears at the unexpected news.

"What? The King of Humanity? Can this be true?"

"It is! I saw him with my own two eyes!"

"But are you certain it was the King of Humanity?"

"Well... not certain, no. But I overheard the Night Witch and the Black Dog talking! They said King of Humanity!"

The Black Dog meant the Baskervilles. Just as the Anub tribe were loyal hounds to Agartha, the Baskervilles were loyal hounds to the imperial house. It gave the Anub tribe a strange sense of kinship toward them.

"The Night Witch said so? Then the great witch must know as well. Worth confirming, certainly. Well done, Cario. Your quick instincts served you well."

Cario, who had brought the news, wagged his tail with pride at being recognized. The chieftain, though, could not smile as easily as that.

There was a smell. The smell of a flame that could set this entire jungle ablaze. He took pride in himself as a chieftain responsible for his whole tribe, and as a loyal retainer who had inherited the spirit of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand.

"The King of Humanity. If those words are truly true. The world is about to shake."

He could not begin to gauge how sweeping the change this news would bring.

Still, even through unease and fear, he had to act. That was what it meant to be chieftain. Anub stroked his chin and muttered.

"Perhaps this is for the best. It may be the very chance to sweep away every last rebel still lurking in this land."

***

"...That's exactly what they'll be thinking. Those idiots, the Anub!"

The news had not reached the Anub tribe alone. A confrontation that dragged away half the people living in the World Tree's shadow was far too loud a spectacle to quietly contain. An outright advertisement would have drawn less attention.

"If they think the King of Humanity is going to become their king, they're fools. The King of Humanity is a king for humans alone! Not for Agartha, and not for you beastkin!"

The old Kingdom of Ten Thousand had collapsed just as it was. The tribes that had been hostile to Agartha were left standing, the same as those who had been friendly.

Agartha had one day created beastkin without warning. The beastkin suddenly dropped into the world needed food, shelter, a place to live. Agartha had doted on them and gave them a corner of prized open land, but there is no such thing as truly empty land in this world. Whether it is a plot of earth or the inside of a person's heart.

Tribes that had quietly thought of that land, and of Agartha's favor, as their own had spent years nursing quiet resentment and hatred.

Some of them had thrown in with the rebellion and played a part in bringing the Agartha dynasty down. Not that they had actually wanted the Kingdom of Ten Thousand to fall.

"A true King of Humanity would never recognize mixed things like beastkin as human. The Kingdom collapsed precisely because creatures like the beastkin were let in and mingled with the rest! This is our chance to build a true human nation!"

Those who had once lived under a nation understood deeply how intoxicating that kind of power could be, and how badly you needed strength to hold a jungle together. Even hundreds of years after the Kingdom fell, they still longed for what was gone.

"Move out! To where the false World Tree stands!"

***

"...What was coming has come. In the land where sin planted its seed, the fruit has now ripened. The Tree of Corruption will be made whole, the fruit of good and evil will appear, and the juice of sin will flow."

And the great jungle was not home only to the descendants of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand.

A young girl walked among dozens of trees growing on a low hill. She stroked their branches, spread like human arms stretched wide, and whispered to the trees in a voice that held grief.

"Long ago, Sorcerer King Agartha lay with the Beast King and gave birth to the beastkin. Every birth ought to be a blessing, but the Warrior made that birth into a terrible corruption through personal greed and stubbornness. It was... something that should never have existed in this world."

The great trees that had grown in the hot, humid earth were living objects of faith, the products of nature itself. To druids who revered nature, the jungles of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand were a land overflowing with blessing.

But the World Tree, the blessed ginkgo, burned and was gone. And when the Root Tree grown by the great druid rose in its place, what the druids felt was endless despair and resignation.

"...A corrupted great druid. A mad great witch. And on top of that, countless witches and warriors. They are powerful... and we are powerless."

Great druid Nevida. Teacher to all druids from the most ancient of times, who had preserved nature and passed down the druids' teachings. She had loved nature and made pacts with every manner of Beast King, and she had been a model and a pride to all druids.

When she declared that she would raise a new World Tree to replace the burned ginkgo, every druid lent their strength to the effort. They gathered the trunk and leaves of the dead ginkgo and brought them to Nevida.

What was born, though, was not a World Tree that would color the world with beautiful ginkgo leaves. It was the accursed Tree of Corruption, bearing different flowers and crops on every branch.

After that, the druids turned their backs on the Root Tree. They became wardens of the forest and never stopped watching it.

"We are those who have kept the tradition. Those who carry within them the sin of this land. And those who have sworn it will not be repeated."

There is a story that each living creature is allotted a fixed number of heartbeats. It comes from the observation that short-lived creatures tend to have faster hearts. A mouse the size of a finger beats its heart more than nine hundred times a minute, and spends its entire life searching for food just to sustain that pace.

By contrast, a tree with no heartbeat and no movement can live for something close to eternity. Whether natural death even exists as a concept for trees is unclear. They simply exist, like features of the landscape.

Some people see a fleeting beauty in beasts that burn through everything in a short time. Others feel awe before trees that stand silently in the same place forever.

Druids were the latter. Beings who revered the slow, vast cycles of things, cycles too immense for human senses to fully grasp. At the end of endless reverence and inquiry, druids had come to occupy one link in that cycle themselves.

"...Arise. For the World Tree. For nature. And for the natural order we are sworn to protect."

A druid who had made a pact with a tree could live for hundreds of years. By synchronizing themselves with the tree, they could pass something close to eternity without consciousness or sensation.

It was nothing more than being alive while doing nothing, so even druids did not recommend the practice. But a druid who had cause to pass on their memories and knowledge would choose that method.

The trees moved.

The Forest of Knowledge. Druids from the distant past who had uncovered the sin of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand and worked to sever it. Those who had chosen to become trees, fleeing the great witch's pursuit, preserving what they had witnessed, woke now from their long sleep.

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