WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 592

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A Story from the Past. The Old Testament - 4

A passing wanderer had brought peace to the snow mountains. The long winter was ending, and spring would come even to the distant frontier peaks.

The many women who had been held captive by the giants wept and gave thanks. The humans of the snow mountains, freed from the giant race, lit great fires for the first time and danced and sang.

She had cleared away the layers of sin heaped upon that land and promised a future, yet 'Noona' did not much dwell on it. If anything, the king's warriors were celebrating more than she was.

Amid everyone's cheers, 'Noona' departed the snow mountains, leaving behind the great achievement of having annihilated the wicked giant race.

The next destination was the jungle. The jungle, a treasury of countless lives, held enormous potential sleeping within it, but that potential did not belong to humans alone. In the land of the World Tree, every manner of beast lived in fierce competition.

Competition meant eating and being eaten. The jungle teemed with fruit, tree roots, insects, and small animals, and humans were plentiful enough that they ran into each other constantly. Even among the same species, or perhaps precisely because they were the same species, they were that much more dangerous as rivals. In the jungle, humans killing and eating one another was entirely commonplace.

The victor, decided after so much eating and being eaten: Ankra, the thousand-eater of the Ankha tribe.

Ankra had eaten humans to eliminate her rivals. After enough eating, she developed a knack for it and learned how to make the life force she consumed her own. Thanks to Ankra's methods, the Ankha tribe flourished with each passing day.

Yet even as their numbers grew, the Ankha tribe tried to keep the number of humans they consumed at a fixed rate out of habit. Eating a thousand meant that more than a thousand were being born, but even that number was not enough to meet the Ankha tribe's demand.

The strong, beautiful, wise, and merciful King of Humanity visited the jungle. Humans who had been fleeing from Ankra ran to the one who had come from beyond the plains and pleaded with her. Kill Ankra, they begged. Strike down that wicked cannibal, they begged. 'Noona' went to meet Ankra then and there.

Ankra had heard rumors of the King of Humanity and decided to strike first. She dared to deceive and lure the King of Humanity, intending to encircle her and consume her through Gluttony.

But that level of Gluttony fell far short. Ankra was defeated by 'Noona' in a thoroughly disgraceful fashion. 'Noona' had shown mercy and let her live, but for reasons 'Noona' never learned, Ankra vanished from the jungle.

A legend of the one who had come from beyond the plains spread widely through the jungle. Now, in this land watched over by the great ginkgo, a blessing would take root.

In the desert where the demon beast Baphomet made her home, black water welled up from the earth, carrying within it the vital energy of the most ancient life.

The primordial great beasts. Ancient creatures that had ruled this land in a past so distant that humans could not begin to imagine it.

The black water was the essence of life that had formed as those primordial great beasts, sleeping in the Earth Mother's embrace, crumbled and dissolved over the ages.

Drinking the black water granted tremendous life force, but in exchange the rampaging power invaded the body and caused it to transform. Poison and medicine at once, curse and blessing at once, the black water was a resource that inspired fear whether you used it yourself or watched someone else use it.

And it was humans, too, who used that resource best.

The mother of demon beasts, Baphomet. A human who had been lucky enough to discover a hidden black pond deep inside a cave and had claimed sole ownership of it. She had treated her chronic ailment with the black water, and then puzzled over how to keep this resource from being taken by other beasts or humans. Weak as she was, with no one to rely on, she put her wits to work and built traps.

Beasts that came as if drawn by the smell the black water gave off were caught in her traps and broken down for parts. Their flesh became food, their sinew became cord, and their bones were ground to powder.

Working through beasts one by one like that, Baphomet stepped into dark and shadowy sorcery. It was a primitive hex targeting life itself, what would later be called black magic.

Using the black water as a conduit, Baphomet learned black magic and grafted beasts together to create demon beasts. The black pond became a spawning pool that bred monsters. The demon beasts hunted other beasts and dragged them back, tearing off their limbs and throwing them into the black spawning pool to be turned into demon beasts themselves.

Regrettably, the material humans are easiest to work with is other humans. The demon beasts actively targeted humans, and humans had to hide and hold their breath as still as the dead just to stay alive.

Those demon beasts were fearsome and powerful, yet even they did not reach the King of Humanity.

The King of Humanity and the king's warriors arrived in the desert and hunted the demon beasts with ease. Demon beasts were not human, and 'Noona' showed no mercy to demon beasts that charged at her without knowing their place. Designed with fighting instincts stronger than survival instincts, the demon beasts shattered like eggs thrown against a rock.

The humans of the desert, freed from the demon beasts, left words of praise for 'Noona' carved into stone and sand. They treated the noble visitor from the east with the utmost courtesy, sang tales of heroism, and inscribed stories into the constellations.

Having lost the majority of her demon beasts, Baphomet knelt before 'Noona.' Unlike Yotun or Ankra, she submitted in complete sincerity and presented 'Noona' with the black water as tribute, a sign of submission, an offering to the king.

Rather than drinking the black water of unknown nature, 'Noona' learned how to refine it and work with it. She left Baphomet where she was and departed the desert.

Of course, the mother of demon beasts, stripped of her demon beasts as she was, disappeared before long.

It had been nearly ten years of travel. The harsh journey had taken its toll: some of the king's warriors had died or departed, new warriors had joined, and the group had changed.

The great mountain that seemed to hold up the sky, Bullaksan.

The ginkgo, blessed by earth and sky, the World Tree.

The legacy left behind by the primordial great beasts and kept in the Earth Mother's embrace, the black water.

Seeing and experiencing so much, the king's warriors had grown enormously. The lore-keepers who handled knowledge had written hundreds of new scrolls, and the warriors had gained the ability to work with life force through battle upon battle. The technique that would later be called energy spread among the warriors.

It was around that same time that the great druid Nevida gained some kind of insight.

When 'Noona' returned having accomplished those great deeds, what greeted her and the warriors was a form of 'country' none of them had ever seen before.

In ten years, the 'country' had flourished beyond all expectation.

The king's warriors who had not been able to follow 'Noona' had each returned to their homelands and built lives there. Strong and wise, the king's warriors had become rulers and governed their people.

The rulers who had taken power first worked toward the revival of their towns. They settled wanderers, cleared land, enacted laws, and built order. Towns became cities, and in their drive to grow larger, they swallowed surrounding towns and expanded without end, until they ran up against other territories.

Their counterparts were also king's warriors, the same as themselves. Warriors could not fight each other, so the cities stopped expanding and turned their attention elsewhere. But by that point there was no land left to take. Wherever you looked, all that stood nearby were cities claiming that land as their own.

The pressure to expand outward failed to reach its goal and began to create friction with other cities instead. Warriors who had once pledged loyalty to the same king now regarded each other as enemies.

And so the 'country' became a vast empire governed by several hundred rulers.

The king's warriors, who had expected a warm welcome, were thrown off by the wholly unfamiliar reception. It was nothing like the past, when they had been welcomed wherever they went. Try to pass through any great gate, and armed humans came swarming out with spears leveled at them.

Pointing spears at the King of Humanity? Baffled beyond words, the warriors grabbed the nearest lore-keeper and demanded an answer.

"What happened while she was away?"

"...They became sea-beasts that crawled up onto land."

As always, the lore-keeper gave the answer that fit the question, whether the listener understood or not.

Sea-beasts can only live in the sea. If a sea-beast crawled onto land, it would be unable to support its own immense body and would tire and die.

The new 'country' was a sea-beast that had crawled onto land. It was an order too vast for the humans of that era to bear, but it managed to hold its shape by a thread thanks to knowledge and power that exceeded what they should have had.

"The reason they have not yet been crushed to death under their own weight is because of her. The boundless grace she left behind still remains, propping them up just enough that they do not have to kill each other."

There was only one reason war had not broken out between the rival cities.

The King of Humanity.

They called themselves rulers, but in their hearts the loyalty toward the King of Humanity remained. Aware of 'Noona's existence, someone so plainly greater and wiser than themselves, they had been holding their actions in check.

Even amid mutual antagonism and territorial disputes. If 'Noona' returned, she would resolve all these conflicts. She would judge rightly. They had been waiting for the king's return, trusting in that.

A situation that defied all understanding. The lore-keeper El knelt before 'Noona.'

"My liege. Please hear my final plea."

The lore-keeper gripped 'Noona's trouser leg. She pressed her lips to the back of her foot, clasped her ankle, and shed even the detached composure she had always kept. The lore-keeper pleaded with the King of Humanity.

"My liege. This is the last chance. You must build order anew. Now, at the close of this founding year, when civilization has reached a turning point, humanity's only enemy now is other humans. The giants were the same. The cannibals were the same. The demon beasts were the same. Humans will now use their strength and wisdom to kill other humans."

What the lore-keeper feared was not giants, not cannibals, not demon beasts. What she feared was the way those things had treated humans.

'Noona,' too, through journey after journey, was beginning to dimly understand what it was she herself wanted.

"My liege. I, El, plead as your warrior. Give me your command. In the king's name, let me end all this strife and build order anew. With your command, I can do it."

A king's warrior could not presume to direct the king. The King of Humanity was perfect. An imperfect being had no right to comment on a perfect one.

But a king could give a warrior a command.

The right to ask the liege to command something of oneself. The lore-keeper exercised the precious right that the king's warriors had earned through great and painstaking effort.

Let me put an end to the strife that was about to erupt. Command me, in the king's name, to build order and rule the empire.

To El's sad plea, 'Noona' listened, understood her heart fully, and answered.

"Do it yourself."

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