WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 87

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Contingency...?

The military state's back alleys were a ruthless place where the unskilled could not survive. Did they think I, an old fixture of that place, would quietly bow to the military state?

I had revived Tyr's heart while risking the loss of my own self for this exact moment.

"Tyr! Show them your power!"

Even if a vampire did not care about how the world turned, she would not ignore the one who revived her heart. I sprang to my feet and shouted.

Then Tyr rose with me and stepped half a pace in front of me.

"Yes. As he says."

A black parasol cast shade over my head. Tyr tilted it to shelter me beneath it. After signaling her intent through the parasol, she looked down at the officer.

"I declare this here. If even a small wound appears on Hyu's body, if even a single drop of blood flows from him... I will collect a blood debt from you and your nation a million times over."

A warning's weight depended on how real it was.

No one felt threatened by someone barking that they would kill all humanity. It was obviously a bluff, and even with the will to do it, they would fail.

But what if someone pointed to one person and swore that person would die no matter what? The one targeted would lose sleep every night.

That was why the Progenitor's warning seared itself into everyone. Tyr had the power to carry it out.

Even the officer was shaken by that force.

"...He is a petty criminal. Progenitor, are you planning to make an enemy of the military state over one petty criminal?"

"Soldier, let me ask you. Are you prepared to clash with your own country just to keep one petty criminal branded a sinner?"

"The country...?"

As the officer hesitated, the smoke that had filled the room began to churn. The hazy gray cigarette smoke froze in place, then turned pitch-black the moment it touched the vampire's aura.

The vampire Progenitor, her power was bloodcraft at its peak.

But that was not all.

For centuries she had fought the Celestial God's believers, her blood aura scorched by light, her flesh burned by heat. Every time she drew blood from an enemy body, countless thralls burned black and crumbled away.

Those who had offered themselves to the demonic just to survive vanished, leaving only agonized death throes. The Progenitor had carried every echo they left behind.

At some point, she had come to wield darkness.

The shadow that light rejected.

Darkness flooded the room. Tantalus itself began to tremble. In that storm, only Tyr's solemn voice rode through the dark.

"I am Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka. The monster that will swallow the world, the Shadow Queen, and the beginning of all vampires. I am the vampire itself, and every vampire that walks this earth is my limb. So I ask again, soldier of the military state. Do you, a mere soldier, have that power, that authority, that resolve?"

"Urgh...!"

Even a military state officer, one of the best among them, could not dare face that force and stumbled backward. She strained herself, but all she could do was endure Tyr's sheer presence.

Meanwhile, I stood under Tyr's parasol and felt none of it. Tantalus, the place meant to cage prisoners, shook in fear, but I was perfectly fine.

With my arms crossed and a broad smile on my face, I thought:

...This was strange.

Something, something felt heavy.

I had expected her to protect me, sure, but this was a bit much. I thought she would stop at issuing a stern warning not to harm me.

"...Fine, I understa- no, I understand. I will... keep that in mind."

The officer clicked her tongue once and turned around. Anyone could see she was fleeing, but it was almost admirable how she kept her pride to the end.

As soon as she ran off, the pressure that had filled every direction vanished in an instant. The surging aura quieted, and only Tyr and I remained in the room.

A brief silence. Tyr stared calmly at the door, then kept glancing at me. After a while, she called my name a little awkwardly.

"Hyu."

"Yes?"

Why my name all of a sudden?

When I answered, Tyr smiled as if pleased.

"Hehe. So you turn around for this name too. Then is your original name Hughes?"

"Yes. I'm registered under the name Hughes."

"I prefer calling you Hyu."

"Why?"

Tyr hesitated and fumbled for a moment, then snatched the parasol from my arms and muttered:

"...Because I heard it directly from your own lips. And, well, it is shorter."

"Ah."

Heavy. I felt it again, heavy enough to break a scale needle.

I could read minds, but I could not see the future. What choices a changed person would make, what emotions they would carry, that was unknown territory.

I had thought she was a bit easy, but I never expected her feelings to grow this heavy while I was unconscious. Maybe twelve centuries of blocked blood had suddenly burst open.

"Well? Did it help?"

"Of course, more than enough."

It was not a bad thing. The one before me was the vampire Progenitor, a great catastrophe seen only now and then in history books. If she, a walking legion, backed me up, that was good for me.

As I thought that, Tyr spoke in a quieter voice.

"If that soldier causes you pain, tell me. A single soldier can be erased without even leaving a corpse."

Even if that was a little heavy... still. Ha ha.

I waved my hand and trailed off.

"Come on. You can't just kill people carelessly. That's dangerous talk. You shouldn't kill someone who wants to live."

Tyr asked, puzzled.

"Then if they have no will to live, do you mean it is acceptable to kill them?"

"Well, maybe that would be fine? Still, I don't see why you'd have to kill them anyway."

"You say strange things. Who wishes for death? And even if such a person exists, how would you distinguish one who wants death from one who wants life?"

"Usually, nobody can."

"Then it is useless."

"Ha ha, maybe it is."

I shrugged. Tyr made a strange expression for a moment, then let out a dry laugh.

"You are kind."

"Wow, first time I've heard that since my mom disappeared!"

"...Did you not say you were an orphan?"

"Yep!"

Tyr looked at my bright, cheerful answer in disbelief. She slung the parasol over her shoulder again and muttered:

"Understood. You mean I should not kill. Even if great power were placed in your hands, even if you had the chance to strike those who oppressed you, you still do not seem inclined to do so."

"He didn't try to kill me or anything."

"From that stiff attitude, he does not look easy to bend. He may treat you carelessly again someday."

"No one knows the future. If you kill someone in advance just because there's a possibility, what then? That's barbaric."

Unless someone was in a full psychotic break, I could read murderous intent toward me in advance. Handling it then would not be too late.

And... I still had things to learn from that officer. I could not kill him yet.

I set that aside for the moment, and since we were alone, I asked Tyr something I had been curious about.

"By the way, while I was out, did you really do nothing? You're really not hiding anything from me?"

"O-of course! What would I even do?!"

Her relaxed manner from earlier had vanished, and she raised her voice instead. She was trying desperately to hide it, but no chance.

'Phew. Thank goodness I wasn't caught. If he found out that....'

My mind reading was starting to return now. Then shall I read what she did while I was unconscious?

I traced through Tyr's memory.

Not long ago, Tyr had been sitting next to me in my room. She had been getting ready to feed me breakfast while my sense of self was blurred.

She reached to lift me, then looked at my hand for a moment and stopped.

After staring at my hand for a long while, Tyr glanced around.

It was the suspicious look of a child about to steal something, the kind people showed right before doing something wrong. In the back alleys, if someone acted like that, others would swarm in and demand a cut too...

Though with one gesture from her, they all would have dropped.

Anyway, after fidgeting and staring at my hand that long, Tyr steeled herself and flicked her finger in the air.

Darkness flooded the room. It was the Progenitor's authority. Using her supreme control of shadow to blind the world's eyes, Tyr stretched both arms toward my empty hand.

In the dark, I reacted to that touch.

"...Who are you?"

"Shh. It's me."

"Tyr?"

"Yes. Tyr. Stay still for a moment."

After quieting me, Tyr began to carefully pull my hand toward her chest.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The closer my hand got, the harder Tyr's heart beat. There were probably several reasons: her body had memorized the electric massage, and the card embedded in her heart was likely reacting too.

Either way, my hand to Tyr was like a magnet, a heater, or a drug.

In other words, there was no comparison for it in humanity's shallow history.

From thump to pound, from pound to boom.

The small ripple that shook the surface spread into a drumbeat that rattled her whole body. The pulse was so strong even my hand felt the vibration.

As Tyr savored that proof of life she had regained that way, a thought suddenly crossed her mind.

"If it is like this from only getting this close, then if it touches a little closer...."

It was already almost touching, so closer how? What was she saying?

Ah.

Tyr's eyes flashed ominously.

"Stay still, Hyu."

Back then I had no self, but I still nodded with a little caution. Tyr looked around once more, then placed a finger on her chest and drew it downward.

Ah, wait. No way.

Tyr's finger split open the skin on her chest and exposed the inside.

Even with her heart beating, bloodcraft did not go anywhere. Though it took more effort than before, her blood did not spill out even with her chest opened; it only swirled within her.

Then my hand moved closer to Tyr's heart, inside that opened chest...

"Haaah...."

Around then, I stopped reading.

Normally, when I read an important figure's weakness, I should think about how to use it and what to squeeze out of them.

For the first time in my life, I decided to bury this massive secret in my chest.

Because some secrets in this world should never come to light.

'He's not from the military state. Which means the instructor who brought down Tantalus and him are different people. Tch, stop being so confusing!'

Gloomy thoughts flowed in the dark room.

'Right. Even for the military state, there is no way they could corrupt Azzy or Tyrkanzyaka like that. They're extreme control freaks. They would rather blackmail with that leverage than make them rampage and release them outside. That's not the military state's way. Not what they want either.'

Shei pushed Skywarbler's blade diagonally. Sparks burst from empty air as space scraped against space.

Skywarbler was a blade with no thickness. So it was infinitely sharp and could cut all that existed... at least that was the claim, but not quite. A harsh wind might chill your bones, but that did not make it the sharpest spear in the world.

'The root cause of the corruption is him... more precisely, the military state killed him, and then the rest must've rampaged.'

If the wielder lacked skill, if they could not hold together the space forming the blade with energy, Skywarbler would become nothing more than a hilt with no sword.

On the other hand, with enough skill from the user, it became stronger than any sword in the world.

The regressor honed her blade in that darkness-stained space. Its edge returned to the space that had been wearing down little by little.

Sharpening both the blade and her mind in the dark, Shei repeated her thoughts.

'...An ordinary laborer was really not what I expected. I thought he was a prisoner pretending to be an instructor. But just a laborer? Or is even this a deception...? Something that can fool even the military state's administration? Or did he swap places with the laborer named Hughes?'

Sadly, that conclusion was wide of the mark, but for the regressor it was still a very interesting subject.

'I still don't know his identity or his goal... I still don't know what he wanted by captivating Azzy and Tyrkanzyaka.'

The honing was done. The regressor swung Skywarbler once through the empty air. The sword that slipped even through cracks in the wind stayed silent in the dark.

'Still, it's fine. I still can't trust him, but at least I know his death is the trigger for the tragedy. From now on, I just need to set things toward keeping him alive.'

Tick. The scale needle tilted. Small, but irreversible.

The judgment made in one girl's heart was minor, yet incomparably heavy at the same time.

Because in every future to come, one existence had just gained a chance to stay alive.

'I've gotten results. Now.'

She only needed to move one step farther than before.

She only needed to learn one more thing than before.

The regressor's path was torment anyway, a road where even dying dozens more times would never reach the goal.

Smiling with satisfaction, the regressor gripped Skywarbler tightly with one hand.

'I can die to my heart's content.'

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