WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 74: Tyrkanzyaka's Book - Old Testament (Part 1)

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The deepest part of the underground armory. The final chamber, where grotesque statues worshipped darkness.

A sinister air hung over the room, and the air itself seemed dead and still. It was so quiet that not even the wind made a sound.

Beneath pitch-black darkness, where I could not see an inch ahead, a girl lay in an expensive incense-cedar coffin as though it were a bed. Her pale silver hair spread loose around her. The vampire rested with both hands neatly folded, calmly watching me without a sound.

The vampire lying primly in the coffin spoke with innocent curiosity.

"Will this really work? Don't I need to expose my heart?"

"You don't need to expose your heart yet. Hold this instead."

I placed a card in the vampire's hand. She looked over the one of hearts and smiled pleasantly.

"It happens to be a heart. What is it, some kind of talisman?"

"No. Say hello to it. From now on, it will be Trainee Tyrkanzyaka's new heart."

"Mm?"

The vampire looked at the card again, but could find nothing unusual about it. I let out a hollow laugh and explained further.

"Of course it isn't a real heart. I prepared something with a similar shape to help with the suggestion. Hold it tightly in both hands and press it to your chest."

The vampire followed my instructions without the slightest hesitation.

There was a time when I wished everyone in the world would obey me. Yet now that someone like that was right in front of me, it felt terribly uncomfortable.

Maybe it really was best to live using nothing more than mind-reading.

"All right, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Close your eyes and breathe out comfortably. Relax your body so your blood can flow quietly... Though I suppose I don't need to tell you that."

A vampire's blood flowed quietly anyway. I should worry about myself instead.

I took a deep breath. Tension I had not felt in a long time gripped my whole body. It was hardly a welcome guest, but I had invited it myself, so I had no choice but to receive it.

I settled at the head of the incense-cedar coffin, as close to the vampire's head as possible. Our faces were close. Even in the absolute darkness, her crimson eyes glowed red.

Meeting those eyes, I gave her a brief explanation.

"Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Your heart does not beat, but you can move your blood. In effect, you do not need a heart. Even if you regain one, none of your abilities will disappear. In a sense, you are wishing for something useless. Do you still want to regain your heart?"

"...I do."

"Why?"

"Because I want my heart to act against my will."

It sounded contradictory. Yet it held the vampire's deeply rooted wish.

"Why? When you resent someone, isn't an ability that lets you cut them away without pain a good thing? It is an ability not only ordinary people, but rulers especially, would covet."

"Are you still trying to test me after all this?"

The vampire spoke with feigned anger.

"I was human once as well. Though I left that time behind, it still pulls at me after countless days and nights. That brief time, like a spark, has faded with distance, but in the end, it was what made me who I am. I was able to change because my heart did not follow my will... After I died, no matter how hard I tried, I could no longer change."

"Is that so?"

I already knew, but I answered as though I did not.

The vampire's goal was not to move her blood. She could already control it as she pleased, and if she wished, she could grind apart her original heart and make another in exactly the same shape. She could even make her own heart beat simply by squeezing it herself.

Having reached the pinnacle of bloodcraft, she was practically a creator when it came to her own body...

That was precisely what Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka hated.

She could not use her power of control to create something beyond her control, so she could not help seeking a way from others again and again.

"All right. Request accepted. I will grant your wish."

Wishes were meant to pass by like the wind, but sometimes they lingered and accumulated like this.

As someone with mind-reading, I sometimes opened the windows of people's hearts as I pleased, only to be struck head-on by such wishes.

This time, it got me too.

I closed my eyes and sank deep into the darkness within.

A faint candle lit the darkness.

In the shabby library packed with books of the forgotten, there was a small candle prepared for the librarian. A dim candle that could barely illuminate the page before one's eyes. It was a small light that distinguished the books from the one guarding them, allowing the librarian to become a caretaker.

I lifted the candle. It was fragile and faint, as though it could go out at any moment. A slender flame that seemed as if a single gust of wind might extinguish it.

In contrast, the book before me was thick and heavy. Even an encyclopedia would not be so vast. A single volume that seemed to contain an entire epic. To read it all by this tiny candle, I would need dozens more like it...

Yet I did not need a librarian to do what I intended now.

Looking down, I could only read the words written in the book. That made it objective, but...

Then I could not know the chill soaked into the paper, its faint scent, the marks pressed into it, or what it wished to leave in the margins.

So, for a moment, I decided to stop being a librarian.

I blew on the candle.

With a puff, the flame vanished in an instant.

And darkness filled the world.

On a moonless night when even the moon had turned its head away, there was not a speck of light in the world. Those afraid of darkness hid inside their homes, lay in bed with their eyes closed and hands clasped, and prayed only for it to retreat.

On such a pitch-black night, a father and daughter walked down a dark road, pulling a cart.

There were two kinds of people who traveled at night.

Those urgent enough to risk the threats lurking in the darkness.

Or those who hoped the darkness would conceal both their faces and their sins.

These two belonged to the latter.

"Tyr, I'm sorry. For dragging you into something like this..."

At her father's low voice, the girl brushed away the darkness from her face and smiled brightly.

"It's all right. If I think of it as a walk at night, it's actually nice. You know I like looking up at the night sky."

Yet both the girl and her father knew that smile was for him, not herself. With a face clouded by guilt, the father silently pulled the cart.

The wooden cart moved smoothly and quietly. Its wheels had been wrapped in leather, and its squeaking axle heavily greased so it would not make a sound.

They meant to hide even the smallest noise.

What terrible sin had they committed to move with such care?

The answer was inside the cart.

Inside the swaying cart, covered by a single blanket...

Lay a corpse buried the week before.

A lifeless body found rest in the embrace of Mother Earth.

Thus, disturbing that rest was considered an extremely wicked act.

And if that was so, what of damaging a body that had been dug back up? It went without saying. Only a death meant to serve as an example to everyone, such as stoning or burning at the stake, awaited them.

Yet there were always those who committed sins.

"Tyr. Look. This is how the paths where blood flows are laid out."

The father peeled back the corpse with a knife. Unlike butchering meat, it was all the more horrible and revolting for the difference.

He removed layer after layer, from skin to muscle. Once the skin tightly wrapped around the body was removed, a sticky membrane lay beneath it. Only after cutting that membrane with a knife and tearing it apart did the real work begin.

When he forcibly pulled apart the bones covered in fascia, organs filled with dead blood greeted them. They were decayed or damaged, so they could not be handled carelessly. He carefully cut them out or pushed them aside as he moved deeper into the body.

Then came the exposed heart and blood vessels.

Lifting a blood vessel with a long rod, the father spoke.

"This is the heart. It is the root of our bodies and the place that makes blood clean. All blood begins here. When the heart beats, blood leaves and travels throughout the body. Blood leaving the heart travels on the inside, while blood returning after circling the body travels on the outside. That is how the body forms one great loop and circulates."

She had heard it dozens of times already, but her father always emphasized it whenever he examined a new corpse.

The girl could have recited every word her father said on the spot, but instead of pointing that out, she simply nodded.

"But I still don't understand what happens in between... It seems the blood coming in gathers in the organs for a moment before leaving, but it is difficult to confirm in a body that is already dead. I need your help, Tyr."

"All right."

The girl extended her hand without any sign of reluctance. Then something astonishing happened.

Bright red blood began to rise from within.

Blood that had hidden deep inside the body in the unprecedented event of death. Stiffly congealed blood awoke at the girl's call and slowly began to move.

As she drew the blood up, the girl asked her father.

"Should I push it in this way?"

"Please do. I'm always grateful, Tyr."

Unlike children her age, who played in the dirt, the girl had dug through graves and corpses with her healer father. There, she gained a strange power.

The ability to control blood.

It was little more than the power to stop bleeding from a scraped wound, but it was exactly what her father had desperately wished for.

The father, who had been reluctant to let his daughter take part in his crimes, did not refuse her help after that day. He could not. Her ability was that special and that useful.

Of course, the girl helped her father without the slightest reluctance.

"If I let the blood flow along this path, that is enough, right?"

"Yes. If you push the blood in, I will see whether it gathers in the organs."

The father, already a fairly capable healer, began improving by leaps and bounds after a certain day. His reputation grew so great that people even came from neighboring villages to seek him out after hearing of him by word of mouth.

He quickly became the pride of the village, and the villagers were quietly proud of him as well.

"...Your mother died because her lungs filled with blood. More precisely, the path through which the blood needed to leave was damaged. This shell had holes in it like coarse hemp cloth..."

Whenever the villagers introduced the father, they never failed to mention how his skills had improved immensely after he lost his wife to an unfortunate illness.

A pitiful wife with a chronic illness died, and afterward, her healer husband awakened. What an easy and beautiful story it was.

"Tyr, if we gain the ability to find damaged blood passages and heal them... We can conquer disease."

But the girl, who had watched her father more closely than anyone, knew.

That awakening had been built upon a mountain of corpses.

"We can erase from the world... the disease that killed your mother."

A strange madness and longing mingled in the father's eyes as he said it.

The father was a healer.

Even calling him a physician did not quite fit. In an age when people lived according to whatever work came to them rather than choosing work suited to a profession, every village tended to have one or two people in complicated roles.

Tyr's father was one such person. The seventh son of a noble family that was not particularly wealthy, all he inherited from his family was a handsome face, refined speech, and knowledge amounting to a few books. They were useful for surviving in the harsh world in precisely that order.

While wandering, he fell for a woman from a certain village. They grew close, married, and settled down there.

He taught the village children, treated the sick, and volunteered to negotiate whenever something happened in the village. It did not take long for him to become part of the community.

Yet the woman had suffered from a chronic illness for many years. After giving birth to a child, her condition only worsened. The knowledge he had gained from a few books was not enough to save her. The time of sorrow only drew closer, never retreating.

One night, as cold snow fell, the girl's mother scattered red blood across the softly piled snow. Fierce winds concealed the father's grief-stricken cries.

That was when the father began handling corpses.

At first, he acted in secret from the girl. Yet after her mother, who had run the household with tenacity, passed away, the girl naturally took over those duties and quickly noticed her father's transgression.

Naturally, the girl feared her father at first. Watching him dissect and dismantle corpses was difficult to accept, even if he was family.

But she could not abandon her father, her only family. So she endured it and stayed by his side. At some point, she began helping him.

Was it because she was still young, or because she learned under such a father? That was when it began.

The girl's thoughts slowly started to change.

Other than committing the bizarre act of dissecting corpses, her father was a very admirable adult. He cared for injured people, healed them, and was respected by many.

He handled more corpses than anyone, but he had never killed anyone himself. He saved patients.

Digging through corpses was a grave crime. Even if he were branded a devil's spawn, he would have no defense.

But if it could save people.

Bodies that were already dead, bodies that would be torn apart by beasts or gnawed on by insects and mold anyway. If her father used them to save people who were dying.

Who could blame him?

Around that time, the girl began controlling blood.

And she became not just her father's assistant, but his equal partner.

Footnotes:

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