WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 744: Episode 30: Twelve Zodiacs (6)

──────

The possibility of a nebula.

I read the message over and over.

My heart pounded deeply. There wasn't even an Incarnation who had become a Constellation yet, and we already had the possibility of a nebula.

Could this also be the effect of the newly budding fable?

The voices of my delighted companions drifted over from afar.

"A new fable is budding?"

"Could this be..."

"All that effort putting pandas in whenever we repaired a fable paid off."

"Do you really think that's why?"

It was a fable neither Han Suyeong nor I could write.

A fable found in neither TWSA nor ORV, one that only those who had read it could create.

That fable was slowly sprouting before our eyes.

「Those who wanted to see the story of a very "large house."」

A certainty like Fate came over me.

Someday, I would write down their story. I would crudely render the emotions and scenery of this moment in clumsy sentences.

I gripped Unbreakable Faith.

"Junghyeok, protect the Brick House."

For the story that would someday be written, I had to wield my sword now.

I had to protect this moment.

When I slowly blinked, the sounds around me vanished. In their place, I heard only the chatter of fables.

[The effect of your Exclusive Attribute has activated!]

Some fables were familiar, while others were strange. There were unsettling fables and sorrowful fables.

「I hate pandas.」

「I want to be like a panda too.」

「We can defeat those southern bastards and steal their fables.」

「I don't actually want to do that.」

There was also a fable drifting through the bears' depths.

A fable that had stirred the bears' desires.

[The Fable Fragment Fanning the Flames continues its story.]

「Fanning the Flames.」

That was the identity of the Fable Fragment that had moved the bear beastfolk.

Someone must have used this Fable Fragment to fan the bears' desires and lure them here.

I carefully examined how the Fable Fragment had spread.

The Constellation Bear Who Spares Those Who Pretend to Be Dead and the other bear beastfolk were all affected by this Fable Fragment.

「Yet there was one bear unaffected by this Fable Fragment.」

The moment it met my eyes, it turned and began to run.

[You have activated the item Sylphid’s Leap Boots!]

[The item's performance has been halved by a Scenario effect.]

That didn't matter, even at half strength.

[The Constellation Abyssal Black Flame Dragon opens his eyes wide!]

[The Constellation Reclining Dragon is impressed by your judgment!]

Fortunately, it wasn't that fast.

It had run into a dead end.

I swung Unbreakable Faith at it without hesitation.

Pop!

The bear's appearance changed.

A mouse the size of a small child stood there.

[The Constellation Nail-Eating Rat looks at you!]

"Twelve Zodiacs."

There was no doubt.

It was the Rat of the Ja zodiac branch, one of the Twelve Zodiacs.

I tensed, then tightened my grip on my sword hilt.

If it really was one of the Twelve Zodiacs, it had to be at least a Historical Constellation.

Bear Who Spares Those Who Pretend to Be Dead, who had been rampaging through the clearing, was also a Constellation, but it wasn't a proper Historical Constellation.

The Twelve Zodiacs were different.

A true Historical Constellation.

It was an opponent I couldn't handle in my current state. All kinds of thoughts raced through my mind.

I had expected the Twelve Zodiacs to be involved, but I hadn't expected one of their Constellations to show up in person.

Should I run?

Or should I strike with everything I had before it revealed its true power?

What if I used a fable?

What if I used Kim Dokja's fable residing in "Heir to an Eternal Name"?

Or...

[W-wait a second...]

Unexpectedly, the mouse spoke first.

[Don't hurt me! I didn't come here to fight!]

"What?"

Something was strange.

It used a constellation's declaration and Indirect Messages, and the sensation I felt from it was clearly that of a Constellation. How could a Constellation have so little Status?

[I-I was only watching! I was curious about what kind of people you were...]

Now that I thought about it, it was strange that there had been no backlash despite a proper Constellation appearing with its Incarnation body.

This was the eighth Scenario area. If a true Historical Constellation had released its original power, the Scenario should have exploded long ago.

Yet there wasn't even a hint of a Plausibility Backlash nearby.

"Don't lie."

[I-I'm telling the truth!]

I said whatever came to mind to buy time as I observed it.

Nail-Eating Rat's Incarnation body was a tiny mouse. No matter how much I sharpened my senses, I could barely feel any fighting ability from it.

It wouldn't have been wrong to say its Status was nearly at symbolic-form level or lower.

What was its goal? Why had it appeared here in an Incarnation body like that?

I narrowed my eyes.

Behind me, I heard the screams of brown bears.

My companions had finally begun driving the bears back. Looking over the dead bears' bodies, I said,

"This was your doing, wasn't it? You used a Fable Fragment to control the bears. Are you all going to keep playing dumb?"

[Th-that might be true! But I wasn't the one who ordered it! I swear!]

[The Constellation Nail-Eating Rat cries that it is telling the truth!]

Nail-Eating Rat was terrified to a strange degree.

I glared at it and said,

"You didn't do it?"

Nail-Eating Rat nodded enthusiastically.

"Then why were you here?"

[I told you earlier! I just wanted to see you all for myself...]

"Tell me properly."

As I stepped closer and pointed Unbreakable Faith at it, Nail-Eating Rat let out a squeak and hurriedly continued.

[A-actually, I came to ask for an alliance. You guys are going up to the next floor too, right?]

"An alliance?"

Nail-Eating Rat's eyes rolled wildly from side to side.

[You plan to fight the Twelve Zodiacs, don't you?]

"You're one of the Twelve Zodiacs too."

[That's true, but I'm different. I mean, I...]

A strange feeling came over me.

Nail-Eating Rat.

Come to think of it, this Constellation had been watching us since the beginning.

It had even appeared during my patron selection.

Which meant it had been watching my companions' and my story for a very long time.

That meant...

"You..."

The pieces of a puzzle slowly came together in my mind.

There had been a few Constellations I had suspected from the beginning, those that displayed behavior patterns clearly different from TWSA or ORV.

Nail-Eating Rat was one of them.

Perhaps it had found some hope in my tone, because it nodded eagerly.

[R-right. I'm the same as you. I also...]

As if it had made up its mind, it squeezed its eyes shut and began to confess.

[I am also a Reader like you...]

"Found you, Kim Dokja."

A voice radiating icy killing intent.

Killer King, covered in the bears' blood, stood there. He aimed a bowgun brimming with black Mana and said,

"Move. I'll kill that rat."

[Eeeeeek!]

The startled mouse quickly hid behind me.

I held Killer King back and continued.

"Wait a moment, Killer King. This one..."

"Nail-Eating Rat. It's one of the Twelve Zodiacs."

"I know that. But this person..."

"A Possessor like us."

As though he already knew, Killer King didn't lower his bowgun. A dangerous fighting spirit boiled from his entire body.

"It's from the Five Poisons Association."

The Five Poisons Association?

"Have you already forgotten what happened in the Dark Fold?"

I hadn't forgotten. Of course I remembered.

It was where I had first met Killer King and his siblings. I had fought Incarnations sent by a Constellation from the Five Poisons Association there.

The one who had sent those Incarnations had also been a rat.

Plague-Calling Rat, was it?

[N-no! I'm not with the Five Poisons Association! It's true!]

"That's a lie. It knows we can't use [lie detection] here and is trying to deceive us."

[I'm telling you, I'm not! This is so unfair!]

"I saw you exchanging Indirect Messages with Constellations from the Five Poisons Association before."

At Killer King's words, Nail-Eating Rat's eyes rolled again.

[N-no. Fine, I did talk to them a little! But I'm really not with the Five Poisons Association!]

"No more questions. Die."

[Eeeeeek!]

Just as I wondered whether I should stop Killer King, Nail-Eating Rat, pale as a sheet, curled up and shouted.

[Damn it! It's over! The Five Poisons Association you know is already finished!]

For the first time, Killer King's movements stopped.

"What does that mean?"

[T-the Five Poisons Association you know doesn't exist anymore! So stop going on about the Five Poisons Association!]

Come to think of it, I hadn't seen any Constellations from the Five Poisons Association lately.

Killer King glared at it for a long time, then slowly lowered his bowgun.

"Explain."

Already worked up, Nail-Eating Rat muttered things like, "This is why I didn't want to come," then shouted tearfully.

[This is really unfair. I really didn't do anything! I wasn't the one who moved the beastfolk! I only came to tell you, to tell you all, just how much I...]

Thud.

A heavy tremor echoed from somewhere.

[How much, how muuuch, ah, ah, aaah...]

Nail-Eating Rat's lips twitched as it suddenly began violently tearing off and eating its own nails.

[C-coming. It's coming. That thing's coming. That thing's coming.]

It?

[Com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com com.]

Nail-Eating Rat's eyes rolled completely white, and it soon collapsed.

Killer King checked its pulse.

"It isn't dead. But..."

"Something's wrong."

The sounds of weapons that had filled the clearing until then had completely vanished. The beastfolk's screams and shouts were gone too.

Killer King and I ran toward the clearing.

The beastfolk who had been swinging weapons at each other were still there.

They had neatly set their weapons on the ground, pressed their foreheads to the earth, and turned their palms upward.

As if serving their god.

Even Bear Who Spares Those Who Pretend to Be Dead was lying quietly on the ground as if it were dead.

It was an unpleasantly bizarre sight.

"Kim Dokja."

Killer King's voice trembled.

He had been looking at the sky, and he pointed at something. A swirling portal hung high in the heavens.

A portal leading to the upper floor had opened.

It was the portal that had appeared during "The Three Little Pigs." That time, the pig Constellations' symbolic forms had crossed through it.

Then what had crossed over this time?

I heard something approaching from behind us.

【Protector.】

Lycaon, who had maintained a small Incarnation body while sitting cross-legged, returned to his original form.

【Run away immediately.】

Then a fable began to echo from somewhere.

「...I won't eat you.」

The voice of a very old fable.

「...Delicious.」

A chill ran through me, as if someone had gripped my heart.

My feet wouldn't move.

Until now, I had met several Constellations. I had fought an Outer God, and I had even seen Ares, a fabled-grade Constellation.

So I had secretly believed I had nothing to fear from the Twelve Zodiacs.

But...

「If you give me a rice cake.」

The moment I saw the shadow of a gigantic Constellation, easily over a hundred meters tall, I cursed my own lack of imagination.

Red eyes gazed down at us from above the immense shadow covering the surface.

That was really one of the Twelve Zodiacs?

「I won't eat you.」

Its markings burned like flames.

A fable echoed at irregular intervals.

I thought I knew who it was.

The shadow slowly lowered its head toward me.

Sparks burst violently through the air. Cold sweat formed on the back of my neck. Blood flowed from my nose as my heart seemed to tighten.

I knew instinctively.

「That is a god.」

A Historical Constellation had descended in a form close to its true body.

But how?

The pig Constellations had needed to cross over here as symbolic forms. How could this Constellation descend in its original state?

It would have been impossible without a Plausibility justification.

「A Plausibility justification.」

I bit my lip and looked up.

Its eyes were right before me.

"Rice Cake-Eating Tiger..."

Only then did I realize why it could come here.

"Do you want to take me to the Twelve Zodiac Ball?"

It was because of me.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried