WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 63: The Homunculus Dilemma

──────

Skin burned, and blood boiled.

Shei frowned as she watched the lightning she had created. As though Tyrkanzyaka's small body were a lightning rod, bolts pouring from the dark clouds ran through her and sank into the earth. It looked as though she were training beneath a waterfall.

But the pain beneath it could not even be compared to a waterfall.

That torrent of lightning did not merely flow over the skin. It coursed through the entire body.

Blood vessels, muscles, flesh, blood, nerves. It raced through them wildly as though they were straight roads, wrecking everything in its path.

Being pierced all over by tens of thousands of needles? Even that could not compare. A single bolt of lightning was faster, finer, and more powerful than any needle.

"If it hurts, scream! If you keep enduring it...!"

Even Tyrkanzyaka, accustomed to pain, would not be able to withstand it for long. Shei sensed it instinctively and gripped Skywarbler tightly, ready to cut off the magic at any moment.

Then.

"I can certainly feel pain."

Tyrkanzyaka remained calm.

Skin burned. Nerves scorched. An immense current of lightning born from Skywarbler used the vampire's body as a needle and burrowed into the earth.

"But it is only pain."

The lightning could not harm the vampire.

Bloodcraft, the power to control blood, had already reached the very ends of the sky. It went beyond simply making things move. It could shape flesh and restore the body.

As long as blood touched her, as long as any blood remained, no one could harm her.

And a sea of blood accumulated over twelve hundred years was not so insignificant that lightning from a single cloud could damage it.

The lightning ended. Fragments left after it had all been discharged occasionally leaped through the air. Yet Tyrkanzyaka did not have a single wound. No lightning-shaped scars that should have formed, no unpleasant smell of scorched flesh, no blackened blood appeared.

Tyrkanzyaka had contained it before any of that could happen.

"It is certainly stronger. Yet something is lacking."

Tyrkanzyaka coolly evaluated the lightning that had run through her as though she were an examiner.

"It does not reach my chest, my heart. I feel only a little pain."

Tyrkanzyaka spoke with obvious regret. Shei felt uneasy.

Was it because the Progenitor had endured her lightning? No. Shei had not even used her full strength, and Tyrkanzyaka had taken no precautions at all.

The unease came from somewhere else.

It was the way Tyrkanzyaka spoke as though she had been struck by lightning before, and the way she compared it to something else.

"...Has that man ever done something to you?"

"That man? Ah, you mean the instructor."

Tyrkanzyaka spoke with unbelievable composure for someone who had just been struck by lightning.

"Come to think of it, we do not even know his name. There are so few people in the Abyss that we never bothered asking, but perhaps it is time we got to know him...."

"Don't change the subject. Did you ask him to run electricity through you too?"

"You are perceptive."

Tyrkanzyaka gathered the darkness again and formed a parasol. Resting it lightly on her shoulder, she answered.

"Yes. I have relied on him several times."

"Several times?"

"He was skilled and delicate. He was not powerful, but he had talent. When he touched my heart with his fingers, the heart that had stopped would beat again for a very brief moment."

"...We're talking about electricity right now, aren't we?"

Shei started to question her, then caught something in Tyrkanzyaka's words and asked again.

"Wait, what? Your heart beat again?"

"Yes. Briefly, but clearly. Too briefly to mistake for anything else."

"How did he do it?"

"Hmm. It is a little embarrassing to say, but since I have already told you this much, there is little point in hiding more."

Tyrkanzyaka briefly explained what had happened. She had sought out the instructor after seeing the earthfolk revived and asked him to run electricity through her chest. Afterward, she had requested massages again and again because she wanted to feel her heart beating, even for a moment.

After understanding the whole story, Shei replied.

"So the reason the two of you have only been meeting alone until now...."

"I was asking for massages. I troubled him often."

"Ugh. Then that means...."

Shei held her head.

Where was she even supposed to begin explaining? She could not easily reach a conclusion.

Tyrkanzyaka might be a vampire, but she had exposed her heart to someone who was both an alchemist and a mage. How little sense of danger did she have? It was enough to understand why the instructor had held a class on danger awareness....

And that instructor too.

Even if she had asked, how could he do something like that? Controlling another person's body with magic was taboo.

So far, he did not seem to have done anything particularly bad. Level 0 arcane barely avoided that taboo, and someone as powerful as Tyrkanzyaka did not seem likely to fall victim to anything easily.

Still, Shei could not completely trust the instructor.

Because some terrible event that was certain to occur in the future had not happened yet.

"Tyrkanzyaka. If you meet the instructor next time, ask him this."

That was why Shei had to test him.

The person currently closest to the Progenitor's heart, Tantalus's instructor.

Whether he had malicious intentions, or whether it was simple kindness.

"The Homunculus Dilemma. Ask whether he knows it."

If he explained it readily, she could at least believe he possessed the bare minimum of awareness.

* * *

"...You suddenly come here and ask. Pardon? The Homunculus Dilemma?"

"Yes."

The Homunculus Dilemma was something like a cautionary tale.

Why had the regressor told Tyrkanzyaka to hear that story from me?

She could have told Tyrkanzyaka herself, so there were only two possibilities if she went out of her way to send her to me.

Either she had no confidence in her storytelling and dumped it on me.

Or it was a warning meant for me.

Hmm. In the past, I would have assumed it was a warning and kept my distance, but lately, the first possibility had begun carrying a little more weight. She really was terrible at talking.

This was why first impressions mattered. Absolutely.

"It isn't a particularly pleasant story. It's more like a ghost story with no clear origin. Do you still want to hear it?"

"Should a listener choose the content of a story?"

"If you say so. All right, I'll tell you."

I threw the disc far into the distance and began.

There was once a father with a sick child.

The father traveled through cities seeking renowned doctors, but no one could accurately identify the child's illness. It was what people commonly called a rare disease. In those days, it was sometimes called a curse.

The only difference was whether doctors felt troubled or afraid. Even famous physicians slammed their doors in his face, and every time, the father's head drooped helplessly.

The child's symptoms worsened as the child grew. Unable to bear watching the child sob in pain every night, the father ignored everyone's objections and sought out a mage deep in the forest.

The path to the mage was long and difficult. Trees and bushes claimed every empty space, looking less like plants than loosely built walls. Every step through them left scratches all over his body. The father hacked at branches with an axe, held up a small lamp, and kept walking in the direction the smoke drifted.

After several hours, a small cabin appeared beyond the dense forest. Having found the mage's home, the father immediately knocked on the door.

The mage listened to the father's desperate story in silence. When they finally spoke, they told the father in an ominous voice to bring the child.

Perhaps because it was his last hope, the father readily nodded when he heard that his child could be made healthy again, without much suspicion.

The father returned home, carried the sick child on his back, and retraced the path he had taken. He crossed that long, difficult road once more, with a child groaning with fever strapped to his back. It was a forced march exhausting enough to make him collapse, yet even through his fatigue, one thought came to him.

He was glad he had passed through this path before.

If he had not cleared away the branches during those two trips, every scratch on his own body would have been on the child instead.

He arrived at the mage's home with the child on his back. In the dark of night, the mage laid the child on a bed. Then the mage shut the door after telling the father to return in three days. The father dragged his exhausted body home.

Clearing away the remaining branches as he went.

As promised, the father visited the mage's home three days later. The moment he stepped into the cabin, he saw an unbelievable sight.

The child ran into his arms with a lovely smile. The sickly pallor was gone, as was the face twisted in pain. Seeing that innocent smile, the smile a child should have, made the father happier than he had ever been. He paid with the money he had raised by selling everything he owned, then walked home holding his healthy child's hand.

One day, a year later, the father looked at his healthy child and decided to visit the mage again. He wanted to tell the mage how much the child had grown, and how grateful they all were. Once again, he took the child's hand and visited the mage's home.

A year had passed since he had walked that path. The branches had grown thick again, as though mocking the labor he had put in before. But the father was not worried. Unlike before, the child was healthy enough to endure a few scratches.

Perhaps because the father led the way, the child passed through the thickets without receiving even the smallest cut.

The mage happened to be away. The father waited, but as the sun sank beyond the western hills, he grew anxious. The child was still energetic, but worried that the child might be tired, the father dared to open the door and enter the home.

That was when he heard a faint moan. Wondering whether there was another patient, the father suddenly felt a sense of dread, and his face stiffened.

Sadly, premonitions of disaster had a way of being uncannily accurate. Life was naturally more sensitive to danger.

The moan sounded far too much like the sound his child had made a year ago, sobbing in pain. The only difference was that it sounded weaker and more agonized.

As though possessed, the father followed the sound and opened a thick iron door in the basement.

And he saw it.

A child hanging by a few strings, trembling in pain without even the strength to cry out.

The child the father loved so dearly had been messily dismantled with saws and knives, as though parts had been removed and used somewhere else....

"That's the sort of ordinary ghost story it is. Later, mages who loved naming things gave it a grand nickname, saying the story contained the truth of magic."

Azzy came back carrying the disc. I calmly took it from her, threw it far away again, and continued.

"Magic is the manifestation of one's will. It releases one's own world, one's own principles, into the world. That's why it can only be deeply personal."

I could read thoughts, but the only magic I could use was the Level 0 formal arcane available to everyone. Magic born from personal experience could not be reproduced even through mind-reading.

"That's why magic cannot heal another person's body. If it does heal them, it is no different from discarding the original body and making a new homunculus, just like in the old tale.... That is the meaning behind the grand principle called the Homunculus Dilemma."

I believed that was enough explanation. The vampire was not an idiot.

No, was she an idiot? Who asked someone to strike their body with lightning? Thunder suddenly cracked, and I got startled and dropped to the ground before I even realized it.

Watching the disc return, I finished speaking.

"You have a good student. He was clearly worried about Trainee Tyrkanzyaka."

"...Yes."

The vampire accepted that, then withdrew without another word. I watched her leave, but Azzy pestered me, so I had to throw the disc again.

Hmm, was using a disc really a good thing? It just felt like my working hours had increased, and nothing had particularly improved.

"Woof!"

Right. If I built up some goodwill now, there might come a day I could use it. I should put up with it a little longer for that day. This was a savings plan.

Though I didn't know whether it would ever mature.

"Oh, come to think of it, she didn't ask for a massage today."

Had something gotten into her? She seemed a little upset after yesterday's lesson, so I had been going to cheer her up before she started sulking.

I hoped she wasn't sitting alone in her little room, sinking into strange thoughts.

She would be fine, right? No matter how foolish she was, she wouldn't do anything more idiotic than getting struck by lightning, would she?

The disc came back again. I looked down at it quietly, then simply rolled it along the ground.

Azzy barked in dissatisfaction.

* * *

"I have made my decision, Finlay."

"Progenitor...."

A voice full of emotion echoed out of the darkness. Finlay let out a tearful cry of awe. If he had not been a vampire incapable of crying, tears would already have been falling from his eyes.

The Progenitor, Tyrkanzyaka, sat quietly and watched him. Solemn words flowed from her bloodless lips.

"The two of them could not show me a way. They only said it was impossible. It is clear that they cannot accomplish it."

"It is because they are not nobles of the night. What could commoners bound to life possibly know?"

"I do not believe it either. How could one who has died regain a heart that beats as it pleases? That is why I have only half believed your claim that my kin possess a method. How could those who move by my authority revive me?"

It was a reasonable point.

Confronted with the Progenitor's question, Finlay lowered his head once more.

"Progenitor, time has passed. The world has moved on, and everyone has found their own methods. Blood magic has become stronger than at any other time in the world. Unlike ordinary magic, it is sorcery shaped from life and blood. If it is that, something those ignorant commoners cannot know and must not know, then it will be able to restore the Progenitor's heart."

It was a lie.

Finlay told a lie never permitted to a kin without changing his expression.

He felt no tension or excitement. He too was a vampire whose heart had stopped. Of course, he felt guilty for deceiving the Progenitor, but he could repay that with death later.

And Finlay was certain. This lie would lure the Progenitor outside.

Besides, who knew? The Elders and Ain of the Fog Duchy, powerful and wise vampires, might discover a way to restore the Progenitor's heart.

Could commoners dare to know the secrets of bloodcraft? They knew nothing. It would be a hundred times better to leave this place and be with vampires than remain here with them.

That was why this was loyalty. Though Finlay had deceived the Progenitor, he remained loyal to her.

At least, he could deceive himself that way.

The Progenitor watched Finlay in silence before speaking a beat later.

"I will believe you once. Restore my heart with that method."

"Understood! Once we ascend to the surface, I will take responsibility and..."

"Now."

"...Pardon?"

Finlay asked foolishly.

"Use the method you know. Failure is acceptable. I am the root of all of you, and my authority is stronger than all of theirs combined. If the blood magic you use is sound, I will recognize its potential."

This was bad.

If Finlay could sweat, his entire body would have been drenched by now.

Right now? She wanted him to demonstrate it?

It was impossible. He had made it up on the spot.

His shallow lie was about to expose its vulgar nakedness before the eyes of proof.

Finlay lowered his head even further and pleaded.

"But, Progenitor. I possess no great knowledge of blood magic. I fear my poor magic may harm you."

"It does not matter. Did I not say I only wished to see the possibility? If you have seen that magic, you should at least be able to imitate it."

The Progenitor's command was absolute. Finlay had to obey. But because he had lied, he had no ability to carry it out.

What should he do? Should he confess that he had lied, then pay the price for deceiving her?

No. If that had been his intention, he should not have lied in the first place.

He was already riding a tiger's back. All that remained was to run, wherever the end might be.

Clouded eyes flashed in the darkness.

"I will obey, Progenitor. However, my power is insignificant. If your authority remains intact, I will not be able to exert any power at all. Therefore..."

In truth, Finlay was deeply versed in blood magic. His specialty was domination. The authority to carve a mark of fresh blood and control something with his own blood.

Though he was only a lowly Yeiling, if the Progenitor allowed him even the smallest opening, he could do it.

"Please set aside all your authority for a moment, and reveal your heart before me."

It was irreverent, but not impossible.

As the Progenitor wished, she would gain a heart that beat as it pleased, without following her will.

It certainly would not beat according to the Progenitor's wishes.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried