WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 587: Never Think of a Pink Elephant

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A stroll atop a deer wasn't bad. I enjoyed it.

I set Shei down and climbed off the deer. It would be better for her to escape and move freely, but there was nothing in it for me.

"I've heard enough. I'll be going now."

Just as I gave a casual wave and turned to leave, someone grabbed the hem of my clothes.

Who was clinging to me so pathetically?

"...Huh? Hughes, are you really leaving?"

I turned to find Shei clutching me with wide eyes. There was no strength in her trembling hand, but her feelings held me more tightly than her grip did. I changed my mind and kindly explained.

"Yes. I've heard everything there is to hear, and I know everything I need to know. Now I should act as you all wish."

"Wish...? These people came here to stop Nevida."

"Yes! Exactly. They came to ruin Nevida's plan. Put another way, their goal can only be achieved if Nevida's plan exists."

Sustaining one's life by using the power to turn into a tree was not an act druids recommended either. It went against the natural order.

That was not all. Rebellion had always been taboo, and burning the World Tree was the worst sin a druid could commit.

"Humans being born from fruit. Because of that one fact, they betrayed their ruler, destroyed a nation, burned the World Tree, and made the great witch who helped them out of goodwill suffer from guilt. Is there anything there that isn't taboo? Is any of it the sort of thing someone deserves praise for doing?"

Who decided what was and was not allowed? Humans did that too. The druids had decided.

Rebellion? It was acceptable.

Burning the World Tree? A price worth paying.

If it could prevent humans from growing on trees, the druids had decided to transcend every one of those taboos.

"They're all taboos! The druids committed every one of those atrocities, even though they were all equally taboo. All because they wanted to prevent just one thing: humans being born from meat fruits! They threw everything else away for that one thing!"

After raising my voice as much as I could, I pretended to grow somber.

"...But Nevida was too powerful, no one would listen to the truth, and despite abandoning everything they held dear, the Tree of Corruption still stood strong. So they hid beyond time and waited for this day alone."

"This day..."

"Yes! This very moment, when Nevida is trying to revive the King of Humanity! They waited to interfere when Nevida's grand plan bore its great fruit!"

They had been waiting for me.

Their goals differed, but these people had also eagerly awaited the King of Humanity. Perhaps they had been waiting for me even more eagerly than most of the Lords of All Creation.

"Now that I've appeared, their wretched persistence has finally been rewarded. But what will happen to them if we escape like this? If they escape successfully, they'll lose their wish and drift aimlessly. If they fail, they'll die for nothing. I'm sorry, but that isn't your wish, and it isn't mine either. It isn't even Nevida's wish, waiting over there for the King of Humanity."

Shei looked a little confused. Not because she could not understand my words rationally, but because they were difficult to accept emotionally.

"Th-that means, Hughes, you..."

"Yes! It's no fun if a wish comes true too easily, is it? Taking me and running away isn't even your true wish. It's only a stopgap measure! Shouldn't we achieve it in a more dramatic, more fundamental way?"

"What are you going to do?"

The answer was simple.

Their wish and that side's wish. Nevida and the Lords of All Creation, who wished for the king's return, and these druids, who wanted to prevent that at all costs.

There was only one way to grant all their wishes.

"I declare it here. As the King of Humanity, with the strength of your wishes behind me! I will go to the top of the Tree of Corruption!"

I raised one hand above my head and shouted loudly enough for the whole forest to shake.

"Those who want to stop me, stop me! Those who want to help, help me! There isn't much time left. The moment I reach the end, the true King of Humanity will be revived!"

The druids who had brought me here, the great witch who had blocked our way with the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, and even Shei, who had been with me until moments ago, all fell speechless.

Shei seemed the most shocked of all. Her fingers, which had only been twitching before, were moving quite well now.

Nenyaph was the first to move. She approached me and asked with an incredulous expression.

"How can this be? Though we betrayed our ruler, it was to preserve the proper way of humanity. How can the King of Humanity compare that to a mere rebellion?"

"The proper way of humanity? Who decides that?"

"Humans do. A human must uphold certain principles, even without making promises in words or proving them through deeds. The late queen conceiving beastkin children in countless meat fruits was a taboo that distorted humanity itself! It was something that must never have happened!"

"Yes. That was what you wished for. And you acted according to what you decided. You did what you believed was right, so there is no problem, correct?"

I smiled happily at Nenyaph.

Don't misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing you. I was praising you.

Hadn't you destroyed countless orders to protect the one thing you decided on? If that wasn't savagery, what was? I liked that sort of thing too.

"A wish not to think of a pink elephant can't come true. Because that wish can only exist once you've thought of a pink elephant. It's the same thing. If you want to stop a taboo, the taboo has to happen first!"

"That is sophistry! Our wish can only be perfect if the taboo does not exist!"

"Is that really so? When the Tree of Corruption grew, when you heard rumors that the King of Humanity had appeared, when the taboo was about to repeat itself... Weren't you truly happy? Didn't you feel overwhelmed, thinking that the time had finally come?"

"Th-that...!"

Nenyaph and the other druids could not give a clear answer to my question.

They were guardians of the forest who had waited, making a single purpose their reason for existing. The fulfillment they felt at the moment they could carry out that purpose was real too.

Still, Nenyaph could not easily admit it.

"Then what of our wish? What of the wish for which we endured centuries of hardship and pain, turning into trees to prevent the desecration of humanity? Where has it gone? Can it never come true?"

"It's right there. In your hearts. In the bows and arrows in your hands."

If they wanted to stop it, they could shoot me with an arrow. If they could kill me, Nevida's plan would be delayed for quite some time.

Nenyaph's eyes wavered as she understood what I meant. I grinned and tapped my chest.

"As long as I'm alive, the King of Humanity can be revived at any time. The surest method would be to drag me somewhere secluded, kill me, and bury me where I could never be found. Ah, turning me into a tree in the first place would have been better."

"We never intended to do that."

"You never intended to? That makes sense. If you had, there would have been no need to bring me all the way here. But if you're forced into a situation where you have no choice, will that method truly not occur to you? Don't answer no. You already destroyed a nation and even burned the World Tree."

Well, it was probably true that they had not intended to kill me. Escaping together would steal more of Nevida's time than killing me would.

This druid probably could not ignore moral considerations either.

"This is consideration for you as well, Nenyaph. I'm fairly ordinary, but I won't die at your hands."

At my confident declaration, Nenyaph clutched her chest and replied.

"...We may disagree on that point."

Oh? She seemed confident. Still, the situation was not favorable for the druids.

Amid the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, a black jaguar sprang from the darkness and pounced on one druid. At the same time, Shei kicked a druid who had quietly been nocking an arrow.

Several short impacts rang out in succession. Then the parrot and Shei spoke.

[I will not stop you from leaving, Nenyaph. But know that this is my final mercy.]

"Lay even a finger on Hughes, and I'll kill you."

Tense urgency filled the darkness. Nenyaph still had some kind of conviction left, but there was no chance of killing me before Nevida arrived while fighting both the great witch's Night Parade of a Hundred Demons and Shei.

Nenyaph did not want to do it that badly either.

After calculating the situation, Nenyaph gave a hand signal to stop. The druids who had been preparing to attack halted when they saw it.

"Stop. The King of Humanity has decided not to accompany us."

"Nenyaph! What do you mean? If we leave like this, we cannot stop the Great Druid's sin!"

"That is correct. What we must fight is the Great Druid's sin, not the King of Humanity. And if we fight both at once, we will die miserable deaths."

"We are not afraid of death!"

"Neither am I. Death does not frighten me. But failing to stop the sin the Great Druid will commit frightens me. If that happens, even in death, we will not be able to lie beneath the World Tree's roots."

The druids did not accept it, but regardless, they could not stop me in this situation. The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons looked ready to tear them apart at any moment.

Still unconvinced, the druids slowly began to walk away.

In the midst of that, Shei unconsciously guided the deer over to my side. It was so natural that I almost climbed onto it without thinking.

"No, Shei should go with them."

"Why?"

Why? You had nothing to do at the Tree of Origin. I was going to revive the King of Humanity, and you weren't going to sit by and watch that happen. You'd probably act up again, get an arm torn off, and die.

"So you can come stop me too."

"...Can't you just not revive the king? You can do that."

...Was she asking whether I really had to revive the King of Humanity?

Certainly, if my wish had been the same as Shei's, I might have tried to resist too.

But Nevida would revive the King of Humanity by any means necessary. Nevida could threaten me with force or control me against my will. If that happened, I could not resist. If that was the strength of the wish, I had no choice but to move.

"I don't think I can do that. I don't have anything like regression. If I want to survive, I have to do as Nevida says."

Whether I liked it or not, I was a being moved by wishes. I would end up following them.

Even more so when this many wishes had gathered here.

And above all...

This was the only way to break through this situation.

"Go on."

I pushed Shei's back.

Shei glanced at me several times, but she had no choice either. The option of killing me when it came down to it had now disappeared from her mind.

"...I'll come back."

"Don't come back with half-hearted resolve."

I waved and turned away cleanly. I did not look back.

Instead, I strode forward, deliberately stomping loudly enough for the whole jungle to echo.

The great witch's Night Parade of a Hundred Demons did not pursue the druids. It gathered around me instead, surrounding me like an escort and matching my pace.

As I slowly walked through the beasts, I sensed a strange presence. After identifying the other party through mind-reading, I raised my voice and called the name.

"Did you hear that, Nevida?"

The forest stirred. Some of the densely packed trees seemed to shift aside, and then Nevida appeared as though Nevida had been part of the trees from the beginning.

The parrot flying beside me spoke awkwardly.

[...I didn't report it. Nevida noticed on her own.]

"I know. I didn't betray anyone or run away, so I have nothing to be scared of."

This way, Nevida could not pursue them either.

To Nevida, they were nothing more than bothersome insects. Nevida had only one wish: the revival of the King of Humanity. Everything else was extra.

Nevida could not risk missing the long-awaited king's return while dealing with insects, so Nevida had no choice but to follow behind me. That was why Nevida understood my intention better than anyone.

"My lord. Did you wish so dearly to protect that girl?"

"Huh? Why?"

"Had my lord not made that declaration, I would have killed them all. Was that not why my lord did so, to stop me?"

"Oh, no. If I really wanted to protect Shei, I would have desperately begged you to spare her life at least."

Nevida looked at me with an expression too simple to read. Nevida slowly said,

"...Even now, I can kill them all."

"Really? Well, do as you wish."

"Would that truly be acceptable?"

"Why would it not be? If that is the conclusion you reached after thinking and thinking, guessing at my intentions, and expanding upon your thoughts, then I have neither the reason nor the power to stop you. I'll simply go with the flow of wishes."

Do whatever you want. How could I stop a Demon God, the strongest being in this world?

Stop keeping me on edge as though begging you would make you change your mind. It was already out of my hands.

As I hurried my steps toward the Tree of Origin, Nevida turned away, as though giving up.

"But if that is my lord's will, then I shall not do so."

"Wow, thank you for showing mercy. To repay that kindness, I'll work even harder!"

I did not look trustworthy at all, apparently.

Still, Nevida.

"Do you not trust me? Are you curious about what I'm plotting? How unfortunate, but you cannot read my mind. Then what should you do? Control me? Whether you accept it is up to you."

In the end, it will happen as you wish.

If that wish is true.

Footnotes:

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