WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Order

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Chapter 90: Dickens (2)

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Rumble.

A heavy tremor rolled through. Sonia stumbled a little and caught herself against the wall.

"What, is this an earthquake?"

"No. The Starwave has started moving."

"Starwave? That snake from before?"

"Yeah."

"It was big, but... does a snake crawling around cause earthquakes?"

"A starwave is a snake that moves underground. What we just felt was probably the tremor from it burrowing through the ground."

Sonia narrowed her eyes and stared at Elbridge.

"How do you know about Starwaves?"

"Read it in a book."

"..."

A faint tremor continued.

No windows meant no way to check outside. But it wasn't hard to guess how things were going.

Elbridge closed his eyes for a moment, focusing on his senses, then spoke.

"The Starwave seems to be moving this way. Bad luck."

Sonia answered, "That doesn't sound like a matter of luck."

Elbridge looked at her. Sonia added one more thing.

"Earlier. Didn't you say starwaves hate fire?"

"Ah."

Only then did Elbridge remember that Rombel had set a fire on his way out.

Given how limited the Starwave's movement options were, it made perfect sense that it would head this way.

Not much time left.

Sonia asked Viscount Dickens, "Dad. Tell me. Who did this to you?"

Sonia stared at Viscount Dickens's mouth. But his mouth didn't move.

Elbridge looked at Viscount Dickens's eyes instead of his mouth.

The moment he saw those brown eyes, he understood. Viscount Dickens had no intention of telling Sonia who was responsible.

Wretched as his state had become, Viscount Dickens was still a father.

Viscount Dickens wanted his beloved daughter to stay out of a dangerous fight.

Rumble.

The ground shook again.

Viscount Dickens's office trembled faintly, and then the ceiling tore open. Blood flowed from the split.

"Dad!"

Along with it, the orbs unstably embedded in the ceiling shook precariously.

Viscount Dickens's grotesquely deformed arm flailed slowly.

But that wasn't enough. An orb lodged near the tear slipped loose from the ceiling and fell.

"Hup!"

Elbridge threw himself forward and just barely caught the orb.

But faint smoke was leaking from its edge.

Sonia recoiled. "What, is it cracked? It's cracked, right?"

She hadn't seen wrong. A thin crack ran across the orb.

But Elbridge didn't answer. He studied the orb quietly instead.

'Strange.'

No dust had gathered around the cracked part. If anything, the dust clung to the opposite side, the smooth, polished side.

Elbridge lifted the orb and compared it to the spot it must have originally been lodged in.

Certain now. The cracked part had been buried inside the flesh that made up Viscount Dickens's ceiling.

Elbridge said, "This didn't just crack now. It was already cracked."

He reached up to the ceiling and pulled out another orb, one that was shaking as if it would drop any second.

Same as before, the second orb had a faint crack running through it too.

Elbridge looked at where the orbs were most densely embedded. Then he checked where Viscount Dickens's two arms were.

Just as he thought. The orbs were concentrated in the space between the deformed arms.

'Viscount Dickens...'

A scene naturally formed in his mind.

A knight hugging a cracked seal tight to his chest, trying to hold back the smoke leaking from the orb. He must have known something was wrong with his own body and still refused to pull back.

'...Damn it.'

Elbridge asked Sonia, "Sonia. Can you seal this crack shut?"

Sonia shook her head.

"It's not that simple. To recover a seal that's already partly broken, you'd need something powerful enough to overwhelmingly suppress the demon."

"I see."

Rumble.

The tremor drew closer.

Elbridge and Sonia had little time left now.

Elbridge stood before Viscount Dickens's eyes.

Viscount Dickens wanted his daughter, Sonia, to go on living without ever knowing who was responsible.

But Elbridge had to find out who it was. Even if that went against Viscount Dickens's wishes.

Elbridge asked, "Viscount Dickens. Who set the trap for you?"

No answer.

Elbridge said, "The Antlers Church."

Elbridge's eyes stayed fixed on Viscount Dickens's brown eyes.

Anyone with a strong enough will could keep their mouth shut and guard a secret.

But eyes were different. Unless someone was specially trained, they couldn't control the emotion held in their eyes.

'Not the Antlers Church.'

Elbridge said, "The Echoes of War Church. The Order of the Laurel Wreath."

Same as before, no particular reaction.

"The Order of the Bloodstained Spear."

The instant he said that, Viscount Dickens's eyes, which had been drifting slightly all along, went still.

People sometimes deliberately controlled their eye movements, not wanting their true feelings to show.

But an unnaturally motionless gaze was itself proof that the other side was hiding something.

Swish.

Elbridge shifted his body slightly.

A person's eyes naturally reacted to something moving. But Viscount Dickens's eyes didn't react to Elbridge's movement. He was deliberately staring into empty space.

Elbridge murmured, "The Order of the Bloodstained Spear, then."

The eyes still didn't move. But Elbridge didn't miss the way the eyelids widened just a fraction more.

Hatred and fury boiled up in Sonia's voice.

"Dad. Bloodstained Spear? Did those bastards do this to you?"

Viscount Dickens's eyes kept staring into empty space.

That unnatural gaze gave Sonia her certainty. Her body trembled faintly with hatred and fury.

Elbridge thought, 'How far up does this go in the Order of the Bloodstained Spear? High Paladin Cowin? The senior paladins? Or all the way down to young paladins like Felix?'

No way to know. That was a question to answer slowly, later.

Crrrack-

The tremor had grown too strong to ignore now.

The Starwave was tearing through the ground below, closing in.

The chaos a Starwave carried was 'movement.'

Everything around a Starwave moved. Sleeping people woke. Animals fled.

Even things that shouldn't move, moved. Buildings swayed, the ground split, sturdy pillars collapsed.

That was exactly why a Starwave, with no claws to dig through earth, could still move underground.

A Starwave swam through churning ground the way a fish swims through water. It needed no malice. A city could collapse for the simple reason that a Starwave had passed through.

The walls and ceiling tore open here and there, blood flowing from the wounds.

A dozen or so cracked orbs came pattering down, starting to give off smoke.

'Damn it.'

Viscount Dickens's mouth kept moving without stop.

Go. Sonia. Go. Sonia. Go. Sonia. Go, Sonia. Go. Sonia.

It wasn't a simple instruction or plea.

Craaack-

The lord's office, Viscount Dickens's flesh, began writhing and contracting.

Sounds of something breaking, something crushing.

Elbridge understood what Viscount Dickens intended.

A little more delay, and a dozen more demons would wake. There was no way to stop it.

Just as Viscount Dickens had used a human body to hold back the broken seal, he meant to keep holding it back to the very end. To buy Sonia even a little more time to escape.

But Sonia still had no intention of moving. As if she meant to end her life alongside her father.

That was why Viscount Dickens's eyes turned toward Elbridge instead of Sonia.

Then his mouth moved.

I'm asking you.

Elbridge clenched his jaw and grabbed hold of Sonia. He tucked her under his arm again, just as before.

"We're leaving."

"No, no! Dad's still—!"

Sonia thrashed. But Viscount Dickens's brown eyes smiled softly.

Elbridge, Sonia still tucked under his arm, ran through the door and into the corridor.

Sonia twisted her head back as far as it would go. The space beyond the door. Viscount Dickens's office. Viscount Dickens, shrinking further and further in on himself. Blood and flesh mixing together, swallowing up every last bit of open space.

A sight grotesque enough that even a nightmare would struggle to conjure it.

Still, Sonia reached her hand toward her father's final form.

"Dad, Dad..."

Elbridge ran down the turning corridor. He kicked off the ground. Before long, the view outside the lord's castle came into sight.

What the Starwave had made of the world was different from what the black giant, the flower demon, or the God of Flowing Water had made of it.

Ka-BOOM-

Dickens Viscounty churned like a wave made of solid rock.

The crows' talk had been dead right. Today was their final peak season. Dickens Viscounty was about to vanish, down into the earth, into old records.

Massive boulders flew in every direction like scattered pebbles.

Elbridge held Sonia tight and kicked off the shuddering ground, running.

'Which way should I go?'

Just then, the Goddess of the Rusted Shield delivered an oracle.

- East. Elbridge.

No time to hesitate. Elbridge ran east. He cleared the half-collapsed Inner Rampart in a single easy leap.

Before he knew it, his body was wrapped in a pale, hazy light. The goddess's divine power was protecting him.

'Delayed Death.'

A divine power that let him survive as long as his brain and heart weren't destroyed.

A divine power reserved only for life-or-death battles now wrapped around Elbridge's body. But-

'Still not enough.'

Craaack-

The ground twisted and crushed itself without pause. Ordinary earth rippled and rose as high as a city wall, and boulders the size of houses scattered like gravel in every direction.

When a slab of ground as big as a decent building came flying toward them, Sonia let out a shrill scream.

"Aaaahh!"

"Close your eyes!"

Elbridge kicked off the ground and leapt, landing on a fragment of shifting earth and leaping again.

He bounded from one heaving slab to another. Balancing on the razor's edge, a boulder two or three times the size of a human head came flying at him. He deflected it with his shield.

Clang!

There was no time to dodge something the size of an adult's fist.

He just closed his eyes a little and took the hit with his body. Blood flowed. But thanks to the goddess's power, there was no risk of instant death.

- Move, Elbridge.

Elbridge moved.

Every single moment was a life-or-death judgment call, one after another. A hollow laugh nearly escaped him.

'And to think this is all the result of movement with no malice behind it at all...'

For now, his superhuman reflexes were enough to dodge the rocks and rubble. But there was no guarantee he could get out of Dickens Viscounty in one piece.

Sonia, with no goddess to protect her, was in even greater danger. One wrong hit from a rock the size of an adult's fist and she'd die.

What worried him more wasn't even the flying debris and rock.

A crack, born from the twisting ground, opened up right in his path.

Craaaack-

Beneath the twisted ground, a black snake swam like a fish through the earth.

White starlight, beautiful as the Milky Way, flowed across its scales.

'A Starwave.'

Seeing a Starwave again after so long filled Elbridge with awe rather than hostility.

Just as it had, long ago.

Elbridge lifted his head. In the distance, he saw buildings on fire.

Sure enough, the distortion the Starwave had caused hadn't reached the burning buildings yet. If they made it that far, they'd clear the worst of it.

The problem was the massive crack the splitting ground had opened up.

"W-what do we do?"

Even now, that crack in the surface kept widening.

A bottomless abyss gaped open, waiting for prey.

Elbridge gauged the distance to the far side of the cliff.

'If I sprint at full speed, I can clear it. For now.'

The problem was that sprinting at full speed was impossible.

Even now, slabs of rock kept erupting all around them, debris scattering in every direction. Even Elbridge couldn't run in a straight line under these conditions.

He wished Sonia could cast a spell or something, but right now she was too shaken, too shocked, too far past her senses to think straight.

'Why did the goddess send me east? Should I turn back? If I go back, will I find a way through? Is this really the last way through?'

While Elbridge's throbbing head churned through the decision over and over,

from between the massive clouds in the night sky,

someone was watching him.

A presence beyond the clouds spoke to Elbridge.

- Just trust it and run. Idiot.

The unexpected oracle rang out loud and clear.

It was a voice he'd never heard before, but Elbridge recognized the god at once. He'd exchanged words with them once before, through a mutual connection, hadn't he?

'The God of Fox Rain.'

For a moment, Elbridge thought of the God of Flowing Water.

When a heavenly god intervened too directly in the mortal world, danger followed.

Which meant, in other words, that the God of Fox Rain was prepared to take on that risk just to step into this situation.

'Now is the time to trust.'

Elbridge ran straight for the massive crack splitting the ground.

Sonia, half out of her mind, thrashed.

"You, you, what are you trying to do!"

No time to answer.

Craaack. The ground twisted again. Rocks bigger than a human head scattered in every direction as the earth broke apart.

But unlike before, the twisting ground and the flying rocks didn't block Elbridge's path.

An unnatural stroke of luck. Like running between raindrops in a downpour, maybe.

'So this is the God of Fox Rain...'

The short run-up ended.

Thmp-

Elbridge kicked off the ground and leapt for the far side of the sudden cliff.

Sonia screamed in a shrill voice.

"You're insaaaaaaane-!"

Elbridge glanced down while airborne. A pitch-black abyss gaped open below, waiting for him and Sonia both.

He wasn't usually afraid of heights, but right now his hands and feet had gone numb.

The short glide ended, and Elbridge's body just barely reached the far edge of the cliff.

Thud-

It wasn't a clean landing.

Elbridge rolled twice across the ground. Sonia, thrown loose somewhere along the way, tumbled a couple of rolls of her own.

Elbridge stumbled up and looked back.

Beyond the abyss, the far side of the cliff still churned with the starwave's movement. But this side, separated by the abyss, was strangely calm.

Elbridge stood beside a burning building and stared quietly at the far side of the cliff.

And a moment later.

A dozen or so demons burst through the lord's castle and rose into the night sky.

Sonia sank to the ground as if her legs had given out, staring at the sight.

Elbridge didn't know much about Viscount Dickens.

A murderer who'd gone to a small, nameless village, lured in the innkeeper's son, and killed him.

But also a trusted knight and lord. Sonia's father. That was all he knew.

Elbridge wondered. Had Viscount Dickens lived this life without regret?

Surely not.

That was why Elbridge murmured, "...May your next life hold no regrets."

They'd only cleared one hurdle. Safety was still far off.

Elbridge grabbed hold of Sonia again with his sturdy arm and ran on through the burning ruins of Dickens Viscounty.

Footnotes:

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