WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Prince of Rage ◈
Chapter 104
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“Twenty years, just the two of them? It’s a wonder they lasted that long.”
By the burning logs in the fireplace, the old innkeeper spoke with an expression that seemed unpleasant, or perhaps bitter.
After he began, his son, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, continued.
“At some point, she started to hate men. No, perhaps despise them would be more accurate. She used to help them well enough, but in the end, only venom remained. It’s been about ten years since anyone could even speak to her.”
“Judging by the method, it didn’t seem to be her first time. You didn’t know?”
Valerie asked once he had regained his composure.
When they searched the house while collecting the bodies, they found many strange bottles. They were probably drugs meant to make people lose consciousness.
The innkeeper’s son thought for a moment, then spoke with an embarrassed smile.
“We kept quiet about it. Most of them were wandering thugs, you see. They’d live off her, beat her day after day, leave, and then another man would come and beat her again... There were too many men passing through for a single night to count. Then, at some point, I think she lost her mind. It wasn’t simply that poverty was a crime. I think she went mad because she had nowhere at all to turn. No one wanted to go near her, and I was no different. But I never thought a tragedy like this would happen... Ivan was my childhood friend. I really didn’t think he would come back. Truly. No father, a mother selling her body, strange men coming in to beat her, a younger sister growing up... Who would want to return home?”
The village was small and secluded, and everyone was too busy surviving to interfere. It seemed they had pretended not to know that the old woman killed travellers and robbed them.
Most of the dead had merely been passing thugs and scoundrels, so the villagers felt less guilty about it. Some may even have thought they deserved it.
Valerie did not want to blame the women for their inhumanity or immorality. Doing so felt as though it would dilute this disaster, this tragedy.
It was simply something that needed deep thought. Why had such a tragedy befallen Ivan? What had he done wrong?
At times like this, it felt as though there really should be a god. Someone Valerie could grab by the collar and demand an answer from.
The innkeeper watched the thoughtful Valerie quietly before speaking.
“There used to be rangers here. They were taken away during the war and never came back. There’s no way of knowing whether they lived or died, or earned a fortune and settled elsewhere. Ivan’s father was one of them.”
“That’s true, but this place is unlike an ordinary farming village. It wasn’t somewhere people simply farmed. It was a smuggling route. Merchants came through, as did thugs. There were merchants like thugs and thugs like merchants. But the real problem is that smugglers no longer use this road. There are no customers, and the only ones who occasionally come through are scoundrels.”
The innkeeper and his son seemed to have different opinions, but they were both right in the end.
“Thank you for the bath, the meal, and help with the funeral. I’ll take Ivan’s money.”
The funeral had only consisted of the three of them digging a grave, burying the dead, and setting up a gravestone. They brought up old memories and spoke words they had kept buried for too long.
Valerie rose from his seat. He was armed and wore a sword, and because the money was tainted by misfortune, neither the innkeeper nor his son objected to him taking Ivan’s money.
He had paid generously for the funeral and other expenses, so they had no complaints. If anything, they considered Valerie a good man. He had taken care to collect the bodies despite having no connection to them.
Outside, the sunlight was bright, but there was no warmth in it. Even the sunlight seemed frozen by winter. Valerie’s breath naturally billowed out in thick clouds.
The tip of his nose and his cheeks quickly turned red. As he headed toward Ivan’s house, he saw the freshly made graveyard nearby. Regin and Snow stood there.
Ivan, his mother, and his younger sister had been buried together in a single grave. The gravestone read:
<At last, reunited. Never to be parted again.>
Let what should be buried remain buried. That was the thought behind the inscription, and Valerie’s wish.
“Whew, I finally bottled it all up.”
Though he had not sweated, Regin wiped his brow. He held a glass bottle containing a sticky-looking black vapor that moved like smoke.
“What’s that?”
“This is mana. It’s been a while since I saw anything this concentrated, so I think I’ll need to dilute it for quite some time. Left like this, it would cause more harm than most curses.”
Valerie knew nothing about magic, but he could tell that the substance in the bottle was a mass of all kinds of negative emotions.
The long humiliation, misery, and despair the mother and daughter had endured. Their choice to abandon their humanity. The tragedy of failing to recognize their son and brother in the end.
Valerie did not know whether they suited a funeral, but he placed bouquets of white camellias and yellow adonis flowers on the grave. It was difficult to find flowers in winter.
Then he helped Regin onto Snow before mounting behind him. He looked back at the grave for a moment, then turned away and set off.
He believed heaven existed within life, and that belief had not changed. Still, he felt there should also be a heaven after death.
Only then could there be an answer for why something so terrible had happened.
Was it irrational to hope that, even in death, they would escape all anguish and tragedy and meet happily as a family?
Life and fate were incomprehensible bundles of contradictions to begin with.
Like the village Valerie had passed through, much of the borderland between Nearcaster and Aldincaster lay beyond the reach of a lord’s rule or administration.
Areas without clear borders usually bred disputes, but this place felt less like contested land and more like a region forgotten or abandoned by both sides.
Mountains of uncertain height stretched on, while primeval forests blocked the reach of civilization. The Antler Alliance had not abandoned this route without reason.
It was not entirely uninhabited, however. Small villages dotted the land, faintly connected by side paths, or not connected at all.
The isolated environment sometimes gave rise to unusual customs and sometimes revealed the depths of human nature.
Keeping its secrets, the primeval forest remained silent forever.
The broadleaf trees had shed their leaves for winter, exposing bare branches, while firs and pines stayed green no matter how cold it became, like an unchanging vow.
Somewhere in that mixed forest was a small spring that seemed to hold the clearest water in the world.
Water fell with a trickle and flowed gently, so it had not frozen even in the middle of winter. It was cold enough to ache in one’s bones, though.
Valerie washed his hands and face there, scooped up water to drink, emptied his waterskin onto the ground, then refilled it from the spring.
The freezing water he drank and washed with left him sharply chilled inside and out, clearing his mind.
His eyes were calm, but they sometimes flashed sharply, as though blades lay hidden within them.
Nearby, Regin crouched with his back turned, fiddling with something as he had been doing for a while. Then he suddenly spun around.
“Ta-da! Look at this!”
He had apparently been making an earring. With it on, his pointed ear looked as small as a human ear. An amber-like stone hung from the end of the short earring.
“It’s pretty.”
“Right?”
“Come here. Let’s wash up.”
“Huh? I don’t need to wash.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Why?”
Valerie leaned over, grabbed Regin, and pulled him closer. Regin did not struggle to refuse, but his face clearly showed his displeasure.
“The water’s cold. Prepare yourself.”
“That’s why I wasn’t washing, idiot.”
Even so, Regin stuck out his face, and Valerie carefully washed his face, behind his ears, and down his neck with spring water.
“Blow your nose.”
Honk!
Valerie even cleaned Regin’s nose, wondering what he was doing. Still, it was a luxury Regin could never have enjoyed as a human.
Regin was both a friend and a guest. A guest who had come to visit the human world for a while. Valerie felt that he needed to look after him, and Regin was the only one for whom he went this far.
Valerie wiped his own face roughly with his sleeve, but dried Regin’s face with a clean cloth.
Valerie casually swept back his slightly damp bangs. His straight forehead and elegant nose stood out, making his face seem to shine.
Perhaps wanting to imitate him for no reason, Regin swept his own hair back as well, but it only made him look cute.
Valerie put Regin on Snow and walked while holding the reins. There was a path, but roots jutted from the ground and stones stuck out everywhere, making it as rough and uneven as a mountain trail.
Sunlight slipped through the branches and shone on them.
The crisp air unique to the primeval forest filled their lungs. It cleared their minds and made them feel energized despite the cold. The forest might have held terrible secrets, but it did not harm people by its nature.
It was always people who lost their way.
After walking for around two hours, they saw something like a watchtower on a mountainside. There were no guards there.
It was impossible to tell whether it had been abandoned or the guards were neglecting their duty, but Valerie sensed someone hiding in the nearby brush. An ordinary person would not have noticed, but Valerie did.
There was no hostility, and the hidden person seemed more afraid of Valerie. He considered passing by, but decided he should at least see who it was.
“Hey. I know you’re there. I won’t hurt you, so stop wasting time and show yourself.”
“...”
“Show yourself before I count to three. Otherwise, I’ll stab my sword into those bushes. One.”
The moment he counted one, the person emerged.
It was a young man. He had bags woven from plant stems over both shoulders, and judging by the herbs inside, he appeared to be an herbalist.
Looking fearfully at the huge warhorse, Regin riding atop it, and Valerie, he said:
“Elves?”
“Hey! Watch your mouth!”
At the word elf, Regin immediately shouted from Snow’s back. His face turned red in an instant. He looked thoroughly enraged, though Valerie could not understand why.
“What’s wrong? Calm down.”
“Calm down!? That bastard called me an elf! How dare he compare me to those rotten mosquito bastards! Do you want to die!? Huh!? Want to die with your asshole sealed shut!?”
To be precise, the herbalist had called Valerie an elf, not Regin. Yet merely hearing the word made Regin furious, and he could not calm down.
When he actually raised a finger to use some nasty magic, Valerie hurriedly grabbed his hand. He then lifted Regin down at once.
The herbalist could only stare in frightened confusion.
“Gah! I’m so mad!”
Regin clung to Valerie’s leg and cried. He was not truly crying, but he looked close to tears from indignation.
“Sir, just go.”
Valerie said to the herbalist.
Still dazed, the man rolled his wide eyes before speaking.
“If you go down this path... the Sword Demon lives there... You look like travellers, so please take another road.”
“A Sword Demon?”
“Yes. Not long ago, he wiped out an entire bandit hideout by himself. With one sword. You never know what might happen to you, so it would be better to go around...”
“Hmm. Thank you for the warning, but I don’t see any route here that could be called a detour. I’ll handle myself, so be on your way.”
This was little more than a rough mountain trail with no proper road. Trying to take another route might only get them lost in the forest. Valerie intended to follow this path south.
“I warned you. Be careful.”
Seeing that Valerie was armed, the herbalist thought he was overly confident. Still, there was nothing to be done if he wanted to risk his own life.
The herbalist looked at the boy wearing an earring, clinging to Valerie’s trouser leg and glaring at him with unnaturally large eyes. Then he backed away and soon vanished into the forest.
“To think he would offer me the worst insult. I should have made him pay...”
Regin muttered. Valerie ignored the warning and continued onward.
“Let’s go.”
After they passed the empty watchtower and continued along the path, they soon came upon what looked like a bandit hideout. Bodies lay scattered everywhere. Some had been stripped of their weapons and clothing, as though someone had looted them.
Yet not everything had been taken. It seemed people feared the Sword Demon. The closer they came to the hideout, the more bodies still wore something.
Valerie scanned the surroundings and roughly counted the bodies. There seemed to be around twenty. Their frozen, bluish state made it difficult to determine the exact time of death.
Valerie usually estimated time of death by examining insects such as maggots and beetles, but there were no insects in winter.
There were only signs that birds had pecked out their eyes and lips, and most of the bodies were like that.
The sight of twenty hollow corpses missing only their eyes and lips was certainly horrifying.
But bodies killed in battle did not frighten Valerie at all. He had seen far worse.
Without fear, he approached and examined them closely. All had sword wounds. Most seemed to have been killed with a single cut or thrust to a vital point.
“This is enough to earn someone the name Sword Demon.”
Valerie admitted the herbalist had not exaggerated. That did not mean he was afraid.
It resembled Valerie’s own swordsmanship from the past. A simple style that aimed only for vital points and brought down an opponent in one strike.
Now, he cut down everything within reach, so his style had become rougher than before.
Valerie stared at the hideout before entering. Most of the fighting had apparently taken place outside, so there were not many bodies within.
Several hut-like buildings stood there, all abandoned with their doors open. Valerie looked inside through the open doorways.
Then he found someone crouched in a corner, hugging a sword.
Dead or alive? There was no fire inside despite the winter cold, and there was no telling how long the man had been sitting there.
Valerie approached, opened the door, and went inside. After quickly scanning the room, he studied the crouching man in the corner. Dirty hair and a beard.
Valerie bent down to see whether he was alive or dead. In that moment, eyes flashed beneath the man’s bangs.
Thinking the man was about to draw his sword, Valerie gripped his own sword in a reverse hold, ready to draw it. But he did not.
The other man had not drawn his sword.
Slowly, he raised his head. Something about him seemed familiar, and Valerie narrowed his eyes as he looked closer. Then someone came to mind.
“You’re Karlek or something, aren’t you? An Einheri?”
Valerie had met Karlek twice before. The first time was the day the Duke of Nearcaster was murdered. The second was shortly after Valerie returned from slaying the dragon, when he killed two Einheri.
He had planned to deal with Karlek last then, but Karlek fled and escaped death.
“...”
Karlek looked dazed and did not answer. Then, with one last word, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed onto his side.
“Water...”
“Isn’t he less a Sword Demon and more of an idiot?”
Regin said from outside, where he had been peeking in.
Valerie was dumbfounded, but he decided to save him for now. It was strange. The last time they met, he had wanted to kill Karlek, yet now he was saving him.
It was also strange that Karlek had clung to consciousness until the end, then relaxed and collapsed upon seeing Valerie.
No, perhaps meeting here in the first place was strange and bizarre.
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