WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person’s Viewpoint

Chapter 008

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A Monster Lives in the Basement

I was done for.

That was the conclusion I arrived at after careful deliberation.

It really did seem like I was completely done for.

The moment I stepped into the underground armory, regret came flooding in. I imagine even walking into the jaws of a whale would be less distressing than this. At least a whale did not subsist on human blood.

This was the nocturnal domain of a vampire, a creature that fed on human blood, a place she had made her home for decades on end. The moment I set foot inside, the blood moving through my body was no longer entirely mine. It lurched under my veins, pulled toward one side. The very thing that was supposed to be giving me life kept flinching and trying to break free.

Mind reading was not going to save me here. If the vampire decided to kill me in earnest, the instant she harbored that kind of killing intent, my body would be reduced to a desiccated husk before I could even think to resist.

Was the regressor all right? Given how keenly she sensed energy, she was probably feeling the pressure far more acutely than me.

"What incredible power. A force essentially unchanged from the last timeline. But this point in time is before [that incident]. Will she be more volatile here, or more restrained? Will Tyrkanzyaka before [that matter] was resolved still agree to lend me her strength?"

What incident? What matter? Would it kill you to stop thinking in terms only you understand and at least reminisce out loud once in a while?

"No point agonizing over it. I have not managed to recover enough power to stand against Tyrkanzyaka yet. If I die, I die."

Right. That was the limit. It had been conclusively proven that getting tangled up with the regressor was the worst possible approach. To her, this might just be one of countless lives she could afford to throw away and start over. To me, it was the only one I had.

You die and then you die again, was that the philosophy? If that was how she thought, no number of lives would ever be enough to survive spending time alongside her.

I turned my body around and headed toward the door.

"Well then, Trainee Shei. Since you are the one with business here, I will just be on my wa..."

Bang.

The steel door slammed shut right in front of my eyes. The seal pulsing with its eerie red light flashed before me as if to say, not a chance.

The regressor snorted at my blank, stunned expression.

"Sure. Bye. If you can actually leave, that is."

The way out was gone. Jet black darkness, the kind that swallowed even my own body, closed in around me. I let out a sigh and followed in the regressor's wake.

"Why? You were acting like you were about to leave."

"Now that I think about it, I should probably figure out why Trainee Shei is visiting the underground armory in the first place. Mind if I tag along for a moment?"

"Do whatever you want."

We were in the same boat at this point anyway, whether we liked it or not. The regressor gave a ready nod. I pressed one hand against the wall in the pitch black darkness and inched forward, feeling my way step by step. I could not see the ground beneath my feet, and the surface had a faint, treacherous slickness to it, so each single step demanded a considerable amount of concentration.

Great. There were going to be stairs soon. Was I really going to slide all the way down to the bottom? If a supposed military-state instructor went slipping around in an armory, I would be past the point of ridicule and straight into the realm of suspicion.

More to the point, how was the regressor going to manage in this darkness?

"Seven-Colored Eyes, open. Azure Eye."

At that moment, Shei pressed her fingers to her own eyes. Glittering tears welled up and began to burn with a deep blue flame. Even in a darkness that devoured all light, those blue flames traced the outlines of things around them.

"The fifth of the Seven-Colored Eyes, the Azure Eye, sees depth. Even the darkness gathered by a vampire is not enough to hide things from it."

What a variety of techniques she had. It was enough to make a person with nothing but mind reading feel genuinely hard done by.

The Azure Eye perceived the world as lines and planes. Fast-moving objects and softly curved surfaces were harder to make out, but the overall structure of a space could be seen through it even in complete darkness. Shei sent those blue-lit eyes sweeping around in all directions. A solid ceiling and walls hemmed in her field of vision on all sides. The only passage was the one leading downward. In her vision, a faint trapezoid shape appeared ahead, narrowing to a point like a very long ladder laid flat, the unmistakable shape of a staircase descending underground.

Without a moment's hesitation, Shei stepped toward the stairs. She went down two or three steps, then glanced back at me, just briefly.

"Let us see how well you manage in this darkness."

Thank you. For looking my way.

I had not even noticed it, but the stairs started right in front of me. And not just any stairs, either, one of the corners had crumbled off, leaving the edge half-broken away. If I had stepped down carelessly I would have tumbled all the way to the bottom.

What a relief. I carefully set my foot down to avoid the broken section. From ahead of me came a soft, sharp "tch."

"She saw through the darkness Tyrkanzyaka gathered? There is simply no reading that man. He looks like an idiot and yet he sees through both my Skywarbler and a vampire's darkness."

This was precisely why a person needed experience at the lower end of things. She had been running through timelines and meeting extraordinary people, Sword Saints and Holy Maidens and the like, for so long that she had lost all ability to gauge a genuinely ordinary person. This was exactly why common, everyday experience was so important.

At any rate, Shei and I made our way downward together.

"Why are you walking so close? It is grating."

The regressor was clearly bothered by how close I was staying, but I stuck to her side with stubborn persistence. I was borrowing her field of vision at this very moment, and if the distance between us widened, I might lose sight of the ground under my feet. Half-leaning on her in spirit, I followed her down the stairs.

We arrived at the underground bunker. Shei swept her blue gaze around the interior.

The armory, which could also function as a bunker in an emergency, had a long corridor with wide rooms opening off either side. Those cramped rooms had been designed for people to hide in and wait for rescue in the event of a crisis, but they already had a prior guest.

Shei's blue eyes fixed on the faint shadows peering at us from one of the rooms further inside. A large horse, its head nearly grazing the ceiling, was staring in our direction.

"One of her thralls? I heard she lost most of them in the great war. But it seems the blood horse Rallion is still alive and well."

What on earth were they doing with this underground armory. Why was a massive horse occupying an entire bunker room by itself. More to the point, a thrall living in a better room than me. I had rights, you know.

Shei's gaze lingered on the blood horse for a moment before she turned and walked on. I scrambled to follow.

At the far end of the long corridor was a door that did not belong.

The military state, which valued efficiency and rationality above all else, did not mix art with its doors and walls. A door's purpose was to open and close a space, and a wall's purpose was to divide one space from another, and anything beyond that was considered needless excess, so the logic went. They would sooner hang a separate ornament on a door or a framed picture on a wall before they would do something as inefficient and unproductive as carving sculptures into steel doors or painting murals directly onto walls. That kind of thing was treated almost like a sin.

And yet even the military state, it seemed, had felt the urge to pray before the progenitor.

Carved into that door, cast from solid steel, were images that would not have looked out of place as illustrations in a holy scripture. On the wall, a magnificent angel with great wings spread wide was painted blowing a trumpet. The trumpet was aimed directly at the door ahead, as though to say that any malevolent thing that opened this door and stepped out would be met with divine punishment without delay.

Sculptures and murals of the sort you would only expect to find in a church. The underground armory was dark, and yet the carvings and murals were unmistakably clear even to my eyes.

That was because, in this darkness, those solemn sculptures and sacred paintings were drenched in blood, shining crimson like a festival of red.

I looked at those paintings, and my head turned away on its own with a creak.

"Excuse me. Trainee Shei."

"What?"

"Shall we head back?"

"Are you scared?"

"Yes."

The regressor wore an odd look at my plain honesty.

No, this was just genuinely terrifying. I would honestly have preferred not being able to see it at all.

If the Sanctum had laid eyes on this sight, they would have dispatched inquisitors for blasphemy on the spot. But the moment they heard the name of the progenitor Tyrkanzyaka, they would cancel the dispatch just as swiftly and pretend they had seen nothing. Sending inquisitors would only amount to delivering a gift of their blood.

That was what the progenitor of all vampires was. Whether I was strong or weak did not enter into it; she was a being before whom fear was entirely appropriate.

Shei gave me a sideways look and said,

"You are more of a coward than I expected."

"It is precisely that which has kept me alive until now. Fear of danger is an indispensable part of survival."

"Is that so?"

"That is probably why I have died thirteen times."

Oh. When she put it that way. You could afford to die as many times as you liked. I suddenly felt deeply aggrieved.

"And you are scared, and yet you called her 'Elder.'"

"She is an elder, though, isn't she?"

"Good grief. I give up."

Saying she gave up was just her way of saying she would do as she pleased. Shei strode forward and laid her hand on the door. Without applying any real force, it swung open on its own, as though the jaws of a creature waiting for its prey had parted.

"Oh, for the love of. Mother Earth, have mercy on me."

Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. Whether you were inside the jaws or past the throat, it probably made little difference at this stage. Before the door could close again, I followed Shei into the final room.

A wall-mounted torch bracket, the kind that had grown a little antiquated in a modern era where artificial lighting was the norm, hung from the stone wall. It was a finely crafted thing, made by chiseling stone directly with iron nails and chisels into a birdcage shape, then inverting it. The nest-shaped carvings that covered it, each line cut by hand, had the soul of a master craftsman breathing through them, and from inside it looked as if a phoenix might spread its wings and soar upward at any moment.

Flames the color of blood, red as freshly drawn red, surged upward as if they longed for the sky. But their ascent was brief. This was the lowest place in the world, the underground floor of a prison deep in the Abyss. It was far too punishing a place for a flame to reach the sky. Tap, a flame touched the ceiling and crumbled apart, and its luminous remains scattered in all directions like sparks.

In their innocence, those flames found meaning only in their dying. The last room, dimly lit. The light that had scattered against the ceiling cast red shadows all around.

Thanks to that, I could make out the shape of the room.

The fact that everything was scarlet on all sides was not simply a matter of the flames being red. Blood. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in what must have amounted to several thousand liters of it. Ceiling, floor, walls. The room itself seemed to pulse like a great, living heart, with far too much blood churning and flowing through it.

And yet, for all the blood that was flowing, there was not the faintest trace of its smell. The smell of blood was part of blood itself, but here it fell under the progenitor's dominion. Unless Tyrkanzyaka allowed it, neither I nor the regressor would be able to smell even the blood's scent.

"What brings you to seek me out?"

At the center of the room sat a jet-black coffin, its body constructed from precious incense wood, painstakingly lacquered to a high finish, with a winged red cross carved into its surface, a piece of extraordinary craft. From inside it, a single voice flowed out.

The blood surged. The blood in my veins, which should have been devoted entirely to sustaining my life, tried to dash out barefoot to greet a beloved visitor.

Overwhelming power. The regressor, standing before it, was unfazed.

"Tyrkanzyaka, I have come to propose a trade."

She faced the vampire and spoke without flinching.

"Teach me bloodcraft."

Coming unannounced to ask to be taught a skill was the sort of thing that should have provoked outrage, and yet the vampire showed not the slightest surprise. She was accustomed to it. Over the span of a thousand years, the number of people who had come to her seeking something had long since passed four digits.

The power to control blood. A name she had not heard in some time. The vampire quietly asked back.

"Do you wish to become one of my kin?"

When someone became a vampire, receiving the Progenitor's blood into their body, the ability to govern blood came naturally along with it. From ages past, the number of those who had coveted or demanded the Progenitor's blood, lusting after immortality, had been beyond counting. With something faintly approaching tedium, the vampire asked whether this newcomer was yet another of those countless people.

But the regressor had no intention of becoming a vampire. Instead, she asked for something deeper, more fundamental.

"No, I have no interest in obtaining it that way. Teach me the technique you learned before you ever became a vampire."

For just the briefest instant, emotion stirred. Within that coffin, sharp shock and confusion rose up together. In that same instant, all the blood filling the room seemed to tighten and pull inward at once.

But the one she faced was a vampire who had lived for over a thousand years. A small thing like this was not enough to make her blood run hot. The vampire steadied herself and replied.

"How did you come to know that?"

The regressor faced the vampire. Thinking a thought that only a regressor could think.

"The you from last time told me."

With a smile, Shei slipped, just for a moment, into reminiscence.

Before the vampire had become a vampire, she too had been a human. In those days, the girl had been able to work with blood. Helping her father, a physician, diligently running the clinic alongside him, a small girl whose hands had been a gift to countless people. As a human, the ability had amounted to little more than staunching flowing wounds, but even that was more than enough to earn the smiles of those around her.

The vampire from a previous timeline had mentioned this in passing, advising Shei to learn from her, and then, quietly, had breathed her last, unmourned by anyone.

The reminiscence ended. I surfaced from it like something flung up from the deep sea, pressing a hand to my throbbing head.

So that was a reminiscence. It was fleeting and fragmentary, but it was not without its rewards.

I had managed to read a piece of the regressor's memory, and I had picked up a small piece of information about "the calamity" as well.

It seemed the calamity was definitely coming. A calamity powerful enough to fell even a monster like the progenitor Tyrkanzyaka.

"I will ask once more. How did you come to know that?"

"I could tell you, if you teach me."

"Bold indeed."

A short silence. Slow, unhurried thought. Countless musings brushed past and faded. Then, at some point, the vampire's attention turned to me.

"And what does that one think?"

Why, suddenly? I had been staying perfectly quiet. Why was she pointing at me? I answered flatly.

"Whatever you see fit, Elder."

"...Elder?"

Hmm? The blood just twitched. Was she offended? I spoke quickly.

"In terms of duty, rank takes precedence over age, so I will use the form of address appropriate to a trainee. However, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka is, well, somewhat advanced in years. The military state does not tend to issue particular directives or orders to trainees of advanced age. Neither do I, for that matter. As long as you do not leave the grounds of the facility, you are free to do as you please, so if you would like to continue lying here, there is absolutely no prob..."

Swish. Something dark and thin grazed my cheek. A hairline cut, nearly invisible. Through that gap, blood newly freed from my body drifted slowly toward the vampire, fluttering like a swallowtail butterfly.

I had not even seen it. There had been no killing intent, which was why I had not dodged it, but truthfully, even if I had tried to dodge, it would not have made much difference.

A chill ran through me. I took a sharp breath in and stopped talking.

From inside came a voice with a faint, restrained irritation to it.

"So. Old as I am, I am to stay in my room and not move?"

"No, nothing so dramatic as that. If you would simply continue as you have been..."

"I have no desire to hear that."

The lid of the black coffin opened. Just as the outside had been, the inside was filled with absolute darkness. And through that darkness, a pale, slender hand rose into the air.

The blood that had been drifting toward her landed on her hand. And then it seeped in, the way rain soaks into dry earth.

A faint sense of displeasure came from the vampire who had taken my blood.

"As I thought. Even this blood tastes of nothing. We are simply incompatible in every way. There is not a single thing I find agreeable about you."

But because of that.

Then the coffin raised itself upright. Lifting itself on a swell of flowing darkness, it faced me and the regressor directly.

"I take, by nature, only the blood of pure maidens. The blood of men like you is something I ordinarily use as... raw material."

The inside of the coffin remained dark. Only a pale hand with no warmth in it protruded through the gap. Into that same hand now drifted different blood, the blood Shei had shed to open the door.

The vampire moistened her hand with it and spoke.

"But yours is acceptable. For a man, that is. This is a first for me, drinking a man's blood of my own volition in all my years of living."

Well, that is because she is a woman. Even with that disguise, the vampire had apparently never even considered the possibility that the regressor might be female. Shei quietly clenched her fist at this positive sign.

The vampire said, with an unhurried ease,

"Very well. I will show you what you seek."

"Thank you."

"Having guests after so long is tiring. You may leave now."

The vampire said only that, and closed the lid of the coffin. The regressor, having received an affirmative answer, suppressed the urge to jump for joy and worked desperately to keep her expression in check.

"Yes! I did it! I never thought it would go this smoothly!"

Holding back her excitement, she asked carefully,

"When do we begin? I would prefer as soon as possible."

"Then, let us start when the next moon begins to wane."

That meant roughly a month from now. For the regressor, who could not afford to waste a single moment, this was simply not acceptable.

"What? That is too late. Start tomorrow."

"What is the great hurry? Starting now or starting a month from now makes little difference in the grand scheme of things."

"It makes a world of difference! The difference between heaven and earth!"

"Have patience. The waxing and waning of the moon is the goddess of night slowly opening and closing her eyes. A matter of that much time is what it takes to truly see things clearly."

And here the two of them were arguing again. Was it time for me to step in and break the deadlock?

"Now, now! Trainee Shei!"

I put on a tone of deliberate authority and stepped in front of the regressor to stop her.

"A month may feel like a long time to you, but to Trainee Tyrkanzyaka, who has lived for over twelve hundred years, it is no different from a single blink of an eye! Please be a little more considerate of the other person! Time may seem equal to everyone, but in truth it is more relative than anything else. For someone like her..."

"Would it kill you to be considerate of the other person for once?"

Hmm? What are you talking about? I was already being perfectly considerate. If I were not going out of my way to accommodate her, why would I be working this hard to keep her in a good mood?

While the two of us bickered back and forth, a slow voice drifted out from within the coffin.

"So. All my sluggishness is because I am simply too old, is that it?"

"No, I am not criticizing you particularly. I was trying to impress upon this rude individual the difference in life experience between you two."

"Very well. We shall begin first thing tomorrow, then."

While the regressor was basking in having gotten her way, the vampire added one last remark, settling her gaze on me as she did.

"Both of you."

"I beg your pardon?"

Why on earth was I included in this?

Just as I was opening my mouth to object,

"Now, out you go."

The world fell away. There was no other way to describe it. My body and the regressor's moved of their own accord. No, it was not that we had moved.

The walls, the floor, the door.

The corridor, the ceiling, the rooms, the stairs, all of it lurched and swept forward. The world rushed past us from behind to the front. Like watching a swift river flow past from a moored boat, dark and yielding liquid streamed past us both, retracing the path we had come along, and.

Before I knew it, we were standing at the entrance of the underground armory, without having taken a single step. The sound of the steel door slamming shut brought the world back into sharp, immediate focus.

"Unbelievable."

I had had the feeling from the moment we went in that I was walking into the jaws of a predator.

Literally speaking, in there was no different from being inside the vampire's own body. What had just happened was the vampire spitting us back out.

Shei shook herself off with the ease of someone entirely familiar with this sort of thing and said,

"Ha. What a sight. Were you startled?"

"Not particularly."

What had happened was simply that a terrifying monster had turned out to be an incomprehensibly more terrifying monster than I had initially accounted for. That was all. When I answered, the regressor covered her mouth and laughed, mocking me openly.

"Let me give you a piece of advice. In front of Tyrkanzyaka, it is best not to bring up her age. That is the nature of women's hearts."

The regressor said it with great satisfaction, then turned lightly on her heel and walked away. I watched her go through eyes that had gone utterly cold.

It was not as if I brought up her age because I was ignorant of how women felt.

Well, forget it. She had not explained herself to me either, so I saw no reason to explain myself to her.

I dusted off my hands and turned around. Goodness. My back was aching from all that tension. Maybe I would call it a day and head in early to rest. I should check the canteen for any leftover tins while I was at it.

Just as I turned to go.

"Woof."

A sound that should not have been there reached my ears. I slowly turned my head.

There, driven by a single-minded devotion to a game of fetch, having followed my scent all the way and dug through a pile of concrete rubble to retrieve a leather ball, was Azzy.

No. Surely not. Surely.

"Woof!"

Thud. The ball dropped. Right at my feet. And Azzy wagged her tail in slow, contented arcs and nudged the ball with her nose.

The message was unmistakable.

Throw it, human.

"Azzy."

I attempted a negotiation for the ages. The King of Dogs and one human being. A great effort to reach a dramatic compromise across the lines of species and kind.

"The thing is, I am really rather tired today. So, well."

"Woof! Woof!"

"If we could just... put it off a little..."

"Woof! Promise!"

Thwap, thwap. Azzy swatted her front paws in the air with a look of clear dissatisfaction. The force of it sent the hem of my clothes billowing. The way she kept getting closer made it very clear she was saying, if you will not throw the ball, these paws are going to come for you.

Where had she even learned the word "promise." Sigh. Who in the world had gone and taught a dog something as pointless as promises. You did not teach a concept like that to someone with no capacity to uphold responsibility. She could break a promise and I could not claim any compensation, but if I broke a promise, I was only handing her an excuse to throw a tantrum.

"Grr."

Exactly like this. I looked up at a sky I could not see and let out a long sigh.

"Fine. Sorry, shoulder. Let us see if we can wrap it up in under 250 throws today."

So this was what being strong-armed into something felt like. I picked up the ball. The sight of Azzy's face breaking into a wide, gleaming grin was profoundly irritating.

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