WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 87: Contingency...?

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The military state's back alleys were a merciless place where the inept couldn't survive. Did they think I, one of the old hands there, would meekly submit to the military state?

I had taken the risk of losing myself to revive Tyr's heart for this very moment!

"Tyr! Show them your power!"

Vampires might be indifferent to worldly affairs, but she wouldn't turn away from the person who had revived her heart. I sprang to my feet and shouted.

Tyr rose with me and stepped half a pace ahead of me.

"Yes. As he said."

A pitch-black parasol spread over my head. Tyr lifted the parasol slightly and leaned against me. Having made her intentions clear, Tyr looked down at the officer.

"I declare this here and now. If Hyu suffers even the smallest wound, if even a single drop of blood flows from his body... I will collect a blood debt from you and your country a million times greater than his."

The weight of a warning depended on how realistic it was.

You could threaten to kill every human in the world, and no one would be wary. It was obviously a bluff, and even if you meant it, you would fail.

But what if you pointed at a single person and said you would absolutely kill them? That person would have trouble sleeping at night.

That was why the Progenitor's warning carved itself so clearly into everyone's minds. Tyr had the power to carry it out.

Even the officer was overwhelmed by her presence.

"...He's a petty criminal. Progenitor, do you intend to make an enemy of the military state over one petty criminal?"

"Soldier, I ask you this. Are you prepared to provoke a nation simply to keep one petty criminal condemned?"

"The nation...?"

As the officer hesitated, the smoke that had engulfed the room began to churn. The hazy gray cigarette smoke stopped dead in the air, then turned black the moment it touched the vampire's aura.

The Progenitor of vampires possessed bloodcraft pushed to its utmost limit.

Yet that was not all.

For centuries, she had fought the followers of the Celestial God. Her blood energy had been scorched by light, her flesh burned by heat. Every time she drew blood from an enemy's body, countless members of her kin burned black and perished.

Those who had offered themselves to evil simply to survive vanished with nothing but agonized final screams. The Progenitor bore every echo they left behind.

At some point, she came to command darkness.

The shadows rejected by light.

Darkness filled the room. All of Tantalus began to tremble. Within it, only Tyr's dignified voice carried through the dark.

"I am the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka. The monster that devours the world, the Shadow Queen, and the beginning of all vampires. I am the vampire itself, and every vampire that walks the earth is my limb. I ask you again, soldier of the military state. Do you, a mere soldier, possess that much strength, authority, or resolve?"

"Ugh...!"

Even one of the military state's finest officers couldn't dare stand against that power and stepped back. The officer gathered what strength she could, yet all she could do was endure Tyr's sheer presence.

Even amid all that, under Tyr's parasol, I wasn't affected by her aura. Tantalus, which was supposed to imprison criminals, trembled in fear, but I was perfectly fine.

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

...This was strange.

Something felt heavy. Very heavy.

I'd expected her to protect me, but this was a bit much. I thought she'd stop at sternly warning them not to harm me.

"...I underst... No. I understand. I'll... bear that in mind."

The officer clicked her tongue and turned away. It was obviously an escape, but it was admirable that she had at least kept up appearances until the end.

The moment the officer fled, the aura filling every corner vanished. The roiling energy settled, leaving only Tyr and me in the room.

A brief silence followed. Tyr stared quietly at the door, then kept glancing at me. At last, she called my name a little awkwardly.

"Hyu."

"Yes?"

Why was she suddenly calling my name?

When I answered, Tyr smiled as though pleased.

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

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

"I prefer calling you Hyu."

"Why?"

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

"...Because I heard it from your own lips. Why? It's nice and short."

"Ah."

Heavy. Once again, it was so heavy it could have broken a scale's needle.

I could read minds, but I couldn't see the future. The choices a changed person would make and the feelings they would carry were unknown territory.

I'd thought she was a pushover, but I never expected her feelings to grow this heavy while I was unconscious. Maybe the blood channels blocked for twelve centuries had finally opened.

"Was that helpful?"

"Of course. More than enough."

There was nothing bad about it. The person in front of me was the Progenitor of vampires, a great calamity that appeared only occasionally in history books. If a walking legion like her had my back, that was good for me.

As I thought that, Tyr spoke in a slightly lower voice.

"If that soldier gives you trouble, tell me. I can erase one mere soldier without even leaving a corpse."

That was a little heavy too... Haha.

I waved my hand and trailed off.

"Come on. How can you kill people so casually? That's a dangerous thing to say. You shouldn't casually kill someone who wants to live."

Tyr asked, puzzled.

"Then does that mean it is acceptable to kill someone who lacks the will to live?"

"Well, wouldn't that be fine? Though why go out of your way to kill them?"

"You say strange things. Who would wish to die, and even if such a person existed, how would you distinguish those who want to die from those who want to live?"

"Normally, no one can."

"Then it is useless."

"Haha. Is it?"

I shrugged. Tyr wore a peculiar expression for a moment, then let out a hollow laugh.

"You are kind."

"Wow! That's the first time I've heard that since my mother disappeared!"

"...Didn't you say you were an orphan?"

"Yes!"

Tyr looked at me in disbelief as I answered brightly. She slung the parasol over her shoulder again and muttered,

"I understand. You mean I should not kill her. Even if great power were placed in your hands, even if you had the chance to wield it against those who oppressed you, you do not particularly wish to do so."

"She wasn't trying to kill me, after all."

"Judging by that rigid attitude, she does not seem likely to yield easily. She could mistreat you at any time."

"You never know what the future holds. How can you kill someone in advance just because there's a chance they might do that? That's barbaric."

Unless someone was violently schizophrenic, I could read their intent to kill me beforehand. It wouldn't be too late to deal with them then.

And besides... I had things to learn from that officer. I couldn't kill her yet.

I set that matter aside. Since we were alone, I asked Tyr what I had been wondering about.

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

"O-of course not! What could I possibly have done?!"

Where had her relaxed attitude from earlier gone? Tyr raised her voice instead. She was desperately trying to hide it, but it was no use.

'Phew. What a relief I wasn't caught. If he found that out...'

My mind reading was beginning to return around then. Let me see what she had done while I was unconscious.

I read back through Tyr's memories.

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

As Tyr reached out to help me up, she looked at my hand and stopped.

For some reason, she stared at it for a long while, then cautiously checked her surroundings.

It was the suspicious behavior a child about to steal something would show just before doing wrong. If someone acted that way in the back alleys, people would have crowded in, demanding a cut too...

Though Tyr could have knocked them all away with a single gesture.

In any case, after staring anxiously at my hand for so long, Tyr seemed to make up her mind and snapped her fingers into the air.

Darkness filled the room. It was the Progenitor's authority. Having hidden herself from the world's eyes with her supreme power over shadows, Tyr reached both hands toward my empty hand.

In the darkness, I reacted to the sensation.

"...Who are you?"

"Shh. It's me."

"Tyr?"

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

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

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The closer my hand came, the harder Tyr's heart beat. There were probably several reasons for it. Her body might have remembered the electric massage, and the card embedded in her heart might have been reacting too.

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

In other words, there was no comparison humanity's shallow history could dare offer.

From thump to thud, from thud to boom.

The small ripples that disturbed the surface became drumbeats that shook her entire body. Her heartbeat was so loud that the vibrations reached my hand.

As Tyr savored this proof of life regained, a thought suddenly came to her.

"Even this close feels like this. If it touched a little closer..."

It was already almost touching. What did she mean, closer? How could it get closer?

Ah.

Tyr's eyes gleamed ominously.

"Stay still, Hyu."

Back then, without a sense of self, I nodded despite my faint wariness. Tyr checked for prying eyes once more, then placed a finger on her chest and drew it downward.

Ah, wait. Don't tell me.

Tyr's finger sliced open the flesh of her chest and exposed what lay inside.

Even with her heart beating, bloodcraft had not gone anywhere. Even after opening her chest, though it took more effort than before, Tyr's blood did not flow out and simply lingered inside her.

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

"Hah..."

That was when I stopped reading her mind.

Normally, if you discovered something like a key person's weakness... You would think about what you could get out of using it...

For the first time in my life, I decided to bury this enormous secret in my heart.

Some secrets were not meant to be revealed.

'He isn't from the military state. That means he and the instructor who brought down Tantalus are different people! Tch, what a confusing mess!'

Gloomy thoughts drifted through the dark room.

'Right. Even the military state couldn't have corrupted Azzy and Tyrkanzyaka like that. They are extreme control freaks. They might have used it as leverage to threaten them, but sending them out to run wild would not be the military state's way. It isn't what they want, either.'

Shei pushed Skywarbler's blade at an angle. Sparks flew from the empty air as space rubbed against space.

Skywarbler was a sword without thickness. It was infinitely sharp and said to be able to cut everything that existed... Yet that wasn't entirely true. A biting wind could sometimes chill one to the bone, but that did not make it the sharpest spear in the world.

'The fundamental cause of their corruption was him... More precisely, the military state must have killed him, and the rest went berserk because of it.'

If the wielder lacked skill, if they failed to hold together the space forming the blade with qi, Skywarbler would be nothing more than a sword with only its hilt remaining.

Conversely, with enough skill from its wielder, it was a sword more powerful than anything in the world.

The regressor honed the blade in space stained by darkness. Sharpness returned to the space that had been slowly depleted until then.

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

'...The fact that he's an ordinary laborer is truly unexpected. I thought he was a prisoner impersonating an instructor. But a mere laborer? Or is even this deception...? Something capable of fooling even the military state's administration? Or did he trade places with a laborer named Hughes?'

It was unfortunate that the conclusion she reached was completely wrong, but it was still a sufficiently interesting subject for the regressor.

'I still don't know his identity or purpose... I don't know what he meant to do by captivating Azzy and Tyrkanzyaka.'

Her honing was complete. The regressor swung Skywarbler once through the air. The blade that could pry apart even the gaps in the wind lay quiet in the darkness.

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

Tick. The scale tilted.

Only slightly, but irreversibly.

The judgment made in one girl's heart was small, yet incomparably heavy.

Across every future to come, one being would now remain alive.

'I've gained something. Now.'

It was enough to take one more step forward than before.

It was enough to learn one more thing than before.

The path waiting ahead of the regressor was one of suffering, a road where she could die dozens more times and still never reach her goal.

The regressor smiled with a sense of accomplishment and gripped Skywarbler tightly in one hand.

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

Footnotes:

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