WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 71: Puppet Progenitor and the Unpleasant Puppet Show (Finale)

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Crackle.

An electric current shot from the tip of the skewer. It flowed through the true blood, pierced the Progenitor's heart, then spread through her veins to every part of her body.

Thump.

The vampire's body reacted strongly to the familiar shock. Her lips parted slightly, and a groan escaped her. It was the exhilarating pleasure flowing through her heart, a sensation her body had already learned.

It drew the vampire's reason up from deep beneath sleep.

At the same time, Finlay began screaming like mad.

"Arghhhhh!"

Blood writhed throughout Finlay's body. It looked as though thousands of earthworms were crawling beneath his skin. Blood streamed from his nose, and the capillaries in his eyes burst, staining them red.

The blood in his body scattered in every direction. As Finlay crawled across the floor in terrible agony,

the vampire's heart began beating again.

Focus returned to her hazy eyes. Her pupils turned bright red, like a sunset settling within them. A little life returned to her doll-like face.

As the writhing blood and darkness fell silent, waiting for the Progenitor's return,

the vampire slowly began to move.

"I had a dream."

The fight was over.

Rallion abruptly stopped fighting. Enraged, Azzy tore Rallion's body into dozens of pieces, but this time, Rallion chose not to regenerate and instead flowed toward the vampire. Once Rallion reached her, Rallion collapsed as though drained of strength.

"For a moment, I thought I had achieved my dream. Yet it slipped through my fingers so quickly. I wanted it so badly, so badly, that I sought a way to have it."

"Your sleep-talking was pretty bad. Why sleep in a coffin when you have a bed?"

The true blood lodged throughout the regressor's body flowed out. It drifted quietly through the air before flying into the vampire.

Having recovered, the regressor walked toward us through the motionless Black Knights.

"Was it a delusion? Did I covet something I should not have dared to desire, a life that was lost? Was wishing for it alone a sin against God?"

"No. You only caused me trouble. I taught you so diligently. Do you have any idea how miserable it makes me feel to see a trainee doing everything I told her not to do? You sinned against me before you sinned against God."

The vampire murmured with darkened eyes.

"Tell me. What did I do wrong? Dreaming? Wishing for something?"

"Well, there are a lot of things, but the biggest one is this."

I raised a finger and pointed at her chest, where every rib was exposed.

"How can someone who claims to be modest walk around with her chest completely exposed? It's embarrassing to look at. Please take better care of your conduct."

My answer was completely outside the vampire's expectations. I had read her mind, so I knew.

Startled, the vampire's eyes widened before she gave a small laugh.

"Hehe. You've seen it countless times, so why make such a fuss?"

"I don't mind if you only do it in front of me. That's a charming point."

"Ahahaha!"

The vampire laughed loudly. She laughed until it looked as though tears she could not shed had welled in her eyes, then belatedly covered her mouth.

"I'm sorry. I shall restrain myself from now on."

"You'll have to put in a lot of effort. You've already lost a huge amount of points with me. Not just with me, either. With everyone else too."

For a moment, the vampire looked around.

The small sun floating in the air, the blood energy and darkness scattered everywhere, the shattered Black Knights, and the wounded, limping Rallion.

The regressor approached while clutching her chest, Azzy's clothes were a mess, and even the earthfolk's arm had turned black.

After taking it all in, the Progenitor murmured with a faint smile.

"That is rather regrettable."

Then the vampire flicked her finger.

Finlay's interrupted screams resumed. The only reason Finlay's screams had not been heard until then was because the vampire had not allowed him to scream.

The Progenitor spoke coldly to Finlay, who rolled across the floor.

"It seems much time has passed. Now even reverence is defined as one pleases. Well? How was it, the experience of moving me, even if only for a moment?"

"Progenitor..."

Finlay raised his head, panting. His jaw had sunken in from his missing teeth, his cheeks had turned black, and the veins in his body were still jumping wildly.

Looking up at the returned Progenitor, Finlay desperately cried out.

"It is true that I have committed a sin beyond my ability to bear, Progenitor! But please listen! You must go to the surface! We desperately need you! The deepest blood, the one who can lead us all as one!"

"I will not go."

"Why? Why not?"

"There were several reasons, but one was added recently."

The vampire gathered her parasol again and looked down at Finlay with glowing red eyes.

Those eyes had briefly held warmth when they looked upon her kin, but toward a traitor, they were endlessly cold.

"Because a servant who wished for that deceived me, that wish shall not be fulfilled."

Finlay's already horrific face grew even more twisted with despair. For a moment, he denied the situation. Soon, he turned those scraps of emotion into rage and spat them out.

"Why?! Progenitor! Why won't you help us?!"

Even faced with that unreasonable anger, the vampire showed no emotional disturbance. The Progenitor, whose heart had stopped, answered coldly without the slightest tremor.

"I am not one who exists to help you. You did not help me either."

"Everyone is waiting for you! You made us, you made this blood, you are like our very root! You must lead us! To victory, to glory!"

"What I gifted you was only an extension of life. Victory, glory. I do not recall promising such things."

Finlay's expression went blank.

What one gained by becoming a vampire was a reprieve from death.

Instead of a beating heart, they received the Progenitor's power and moved their blood through bloodcraft. That was why vampires, despite facing death once, could still walk the earth.

The vampires multiplied in that way, hid among humans, worked in the shadows, and came to be called nobles of the night. One great vampire even became the ruler of a duchy.

But.

The Progenitor had never promised them any of that.

"We revered you! Then why aren't we repaid?!"

Reason did not always follow logic, and the more desperate one's circumstances became, the more extreme one's thoughts tended to grow.

Finlay spewed words without any logic behind them, as though throwing stones at random and expecting them to strike something.

Of course, none of it reached the Progenitor who had lived for twelve hundred years.

"You are noisy."

Snap. Finlay's voice cut off. His mouth opened wide, but no sound escaped through the gap.

"Even your breathing irritates me."

His breathing stopped.

"Even making your body move with my authority."

The blood flow that had been sustained through bloodcraft stopped as well.

In a single instant, every function that made up Finlay's life ceased. Only his eyes rolled wildly. Fear came a little late simply because he had not understood what was happening.

Only then did Finlay face his death more objectively.

'No. If I die like this... My Blood Lord, my kin, the vampire race...'

"Even your ignorance of your own place and your foolish rampaging. All of it."

Snap. When the vampire flicked her finger, blood began to swirl at Finlay's shoulder.

The blood spinning fiercely within his veins grew stronger and sharper. It ground away flesh as it expanded.

Then Finlay's right arm burst apart.

Not even permitted to scream, Finlay only widened his eyes and writhed in pain.

'Ghk, ghk. Wh-why? It hurts so much. I am a noble of the night!'

But the pain was not over.

He still had one arm and two legs remaining.

Snap.

The blood pooled in his left arm ground through the inside of his body like saw teeth. Finlay tried to twist as he screamed mentally, but he had not even been allowed to move. His body only trembled helplessly.

Snap.

This time, it was his left leg. His veins snapped apart one by one and ran wild on their own. The veins lashed around like whips, tearing through his entire body. Drops of blood seeped through the gaps in his skin.

'It hurts! Gah, huff! It hurts, it hurts!'

Snap.

Finally, his right leg. This time, the droplets of blood sharpened like needles and burrowed through his body. The pain of needles roaming through his veins left Finlay half out of his mind.

Before long, when all his limbs had fallen away,

Finlay, half out of his mind, repeated only one thought.

'I... was not wrong... Someone had to do it...'

His final death rattle to protect his mind. The one rope he clung to in the end, to preserve his dignity at the very last moment.

The vampire felt not the slightest pity even as she looked at Finlay writhing like a bug. She simply continued with what she had to do.

"And the fact that you are still alive. It is unbearably irritating."

As the vampire moved to kill Finlay immediately, I stopped her.

"Wait a moment, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka."

A strange urge came over me.

When you were young, didn't you have a little mischievousness in you?

What would happen when a single ant fell behind a marching line?

How hard would you have to shake a spider dangling from a thin web before it fell?

How much further would a worn, rotten rope need to be pulled before it snapped strand by strand?

"Hello, Finlay."

Sorry, Finlay.

But before you go, you should be honest with yourself.

"I gave you a chance too. Everyone here had a chance to choose. Yet you made the stupidest choice of all."

'...I did it... for my kin...'

"But you know, don't you? You had a chance to turn back halfway through. You clearly realized that. Even if you went to the surface with Tyrkanzyaka and returned to the Fog Duchy... Trying to control the Progenitor, a mere Yeiling daring to do such a thing, would be an unforgivable crime."

'...I know. My life... doesn't matter...'

"An excuse that you did it for your kin. I like it very much. But let's be a little more honest, shall we?"

The last rope he was barely clutching even at death's door.

But knowing what it truly was, I could not bear to leave it untouched.

"When you deceived and tried to control the Progenitor, you didn't think at all about the safety of the Blood Lord you claim to revere and serve so faithfully, or the kin you wanted to make great even at the cost of your own life, did you?"

'...What?'

At last, you were looking at me.

I smiled and asked the vampire in an exaggerated tone, as though I were putting on a play.

"Trainee Tyrkanzyaka! Finlay has committed the grave crime of daring to covet the Progenitor's power! This is the first and most horrific act of insubordination in vampire history! Then how should Finlay, who committed such a grave crime, be punished?"

The vampire answered as though I had asked something obvious.

"Extermination of the bloodline."

'...Extermination of the bloodline?'

Through his fading reason, those words were etched clearly.

Extermination of the bloodline. A dreadful, merciless punishment filled with the intent to completely wipe out a bloodline, to sever it at the root.

It existed in the Duchy but had never actually been carried out. Yet Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka spoke of it simply.

"A servant dared to try to control me. The crime of a servant against blood of a higher line is paid by that servant's Blood Lord."

What Finlay did not know was this.

Twelve hundred years ago? No, even only a few centuries ago, extermination of the bloodline had been a very common punishment.

'W-wait. No way.'

It seemed he finally understood what he had done.

This was why generation gaps were terrifying.

To give him a more accurate account, I asked the vampire.

"Then what happens to Count Erte?"

"Is Count Erte not Finlay's Blood Lord?"

The vampire had a heart that did not beat. Twelve hundred years ago, in that era of chaos and darkness, she was born. Once as a human, then once more as a vampire.

The Progenitor pitied the fate of those she had made. She pitied those unable to face the sun and scorned by humans.

But pity did not lessen sin. Nor did it reduce punishment.

"Then that Blood Lord must disappear. Valdamir will be disappointed."

A cold declaration.

Finlay trembled as he felt the ruthlessness within it.

'No.'

Finlay's eyes widened as he shouted. His mouth was closed, so it was only within his mind.

'Even if you are the Progenitor, you cannot kill an Ain so freely! She is a distinguished servant of the Duke of Crimson Blood! It was, it was only my own decision! My Blood Lord...!'

He denied it.

'How can a Progenitor who has never even shown herself do whatever she wants to a distinguished servant of the duchy!'

He grew angry.

'Please! This was my own decision. My kin did nothing wrong!'

He begged.

But those desperate thoughts reached only me.

I crouched beside him and spoke.

"Finlay. You knew the answer. When you made up your lies, you comforted yourself by saying this was all for your Blood Lord and kin."

Caring for others was a very good thing, but it had one problem.

People often used it as a reason to justify themselves, then neglected what they supposedly cared about so deeply.

So saying it was for his Blood Lord was only a psychological tool. Like a saw or a hammer.

"Then why didn't you think about what would happen to your Blood Lord and kin if you were discovered? Did it never occur to you? Was the future too horrible for you to consider? Or perhaps it simply wasn't that important to you?"

It had not been that important. Because Finlay's true feelings were this.

"Because I'm such an awesome vampire that I can control the Progenitor. Because I became a god, even if only for a moment. You probably didn't think about your kin at all."

His body trembled. Fear filled Finlay's eyes. His limbs were all gone, but his mind, still unable to accept that fact, reached out toward me. In his illusion, a desperately shaking hand stretched out. That hand grasped mine and begged.

'No! No, no! No!'

"Goodbye, Finlay. Your love, reverence, and loyalty were the sort of feelings that blinked out for a moment. Well, it can't be helped. People have the wonderful ability to erase things that aren't very important to them from their minds."

'Ah. I...'

"Still, you achieved something no one else ever had. A servant controlled the Progenitor. It will surely remain in history forever. Though your bloodline will not."

'Was I simply blinded?'

"Send him off, Tyrkanzyaka."

Then Finlay's thoughts stopped.

As the vampire withdrew the remaining authority, his extension of life expired that day.

I closed Finlay's eyes. It did not mean much. His body soon crumbled away like dust.

Still, I paid quiet respects to the soul that had finally managed to be honest at the end.

Silence followed. The light from the artificial sun shining in the air faded, and dusk began to fall.

The untimely funeral ended, and I rose to my feet. The vampire, who had waited quietly until I moved, spoke to me.

"I will pass judgment on Finlay's bloodline slowly. We cannot go to the surface immediately, can we?"

Pass judgment?

What did I care?

It was not as though I wanted to kill all of Finlay's kin. I only wanted him to recognize his true feelings.

If anything.

"Um, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Did you know?"

I was against guilt by association.

"Collective punishment was abolished recently."

"What?"

"These days, people almost never punish families just because one member committed a crime. There are cases where people repay debts jointly, but still."

The vampire was enormously shocked. She regularly encountered new techniques, but changes in moral values were much harder for her to accept.

Having learned this new knowledge, the vampire widened her eyes and asked.

"Then how are crimes punished? And if someone flees like Finlay, cutting off their own tail, how can they be held accountable?"

It was a pure question, asked with sparkling eyes.

If I answered them one by one, I would probably have to explain for days again, so I answered vaguely.

"I wasn't the one who abolished it."

Footnotes:

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