WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈
Chapter 41
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A wall about the height of a person stood alone, half-buried in the sand.
Judging by the surroundings, it must once have been connected to other walls, pillars, and a ceiling. But the wall that had emerged from the sandy soil stood alone, half-collapsed.
Strange, unfamiliar writing covered its surface.
[...What's this?]
Dohyeon, Kim Jihwa, and Jo Gyeongtaek stood before the low wall and studied the writing. At Kim Jihwa's uneasy question, Jo Gyeongtaek awkwardly scratched his head.
“Uh, Dohyeon, didn't you know how to read rune characters?”
“These aren't rune characters.”
“They aren't?”
Jo Gyeongtaek, who had confidently claimed to have found a clue, looked slightly flustered. He lowered the sunglasses he had been wearing and inspected the writing on the wall. Of course, unknown letters did not introduce themselves just because he looked at them.
Dohyeon examined the wall and spoke.
“They don't even resemble rune characters. I think it's an entirely different script.”
[Don't they look like Egyptian hieroglyphs?]
As Kim Jihwa said, the writing carved into the wall looked more like Egyptian hieroglyphs than rune characters.
Unlike the sharply angular rune characters, the writing on the wall had intricate shapes that almost looked like pictures.
Dohyeon took his eyes off the wall and looked around. It jutted up from the bottom of a dune, standing about as high as a person.
A large section clearly remained buried beneath the sand, since the tops of other stone ruins poked up around it.
Seeing Dohyeon and Kim Jihwa's lukewarm reactions, Jo Gyeongtaek looked a little embarrassed.
“Well, I'm not a professional hunter...”
[These days, how many real professional hunters are there? And finding something and sharing information like you do, mister, is how people explored uncharted dungeons. Before dungeon patterns became this clearly divided, everyone did it like you.]
As Kim Jihwa spoke while examining the wall, though it was difficult to tell where she was looking because of her faceplate, Jo Gyeongtaek scratched his head. He now looked embarrassed for a different reason.
“Is that so? Ahem. Well, that's a relief. Anyway, if we copy this writing down, could someone outside decipher it? If it's Egyptian writing, there should be specialists for that too...”
As he spoke, Jo Gyeongtaek reached for the wall. He seemed about to touch it. Dohyeon noticed and quickly spoke up.
“Wait.”
Jo Gyeongtaek's fingertips, which had just brushed the wall, jerked back. He looked at Dohyeon in surprise.
“Huh? Why? Why?”
“...”
Nothing had happened to the confused Jo Gyeongtaek. The wall showed no reaction either. Dohyeon stayed quiet and studied it.
[Don't touch things when you don't know what they are. You never know what kind of danger there might be in a dungeon.]
Kim Jihwa explained in Dohyeon's place. Jo Gyeongtaek stepped back from the wall and wiped his hand on his clothes.
“I see. Another lesson learn-”
Then a message that only its recipient could see appeared before each of them.
[!@#$ Within the fault lines of collapsing memories and civilization %@#$!#$ accept the fact that it ultimately justifies!@#!$% We believed we would evolve ourselves, but @!#%@^% our vulnerability will ultimately us#$^&@e%---------]
A message visible only to each individual. A message from Yggdrasil.
The instant they saw it, Dohyeon and Kim Jihwa quickly stepped several paces away from the wall. When the two withdrew, Jo Gyeongtaek hurriedly followed.
“...?”
Yet even after stepping back, nothing happened. Jo Gyeongtaek cautiously opened his mouth.
“...What was that just now?”
[What do you mean? It was a message from Yggdrasil, mister.]
“Didn't it seem a little... different? A lot of the letters were broken.”
[Yeah. That's unusual. I've never heard of Yggdrasil's messages malfunctioning before.]
Kim Jihwa turned toward Dohyeon.
[Ever heard of something like that? You said you've got tons of experience.]
“Yggdrasil's messages can be extremely vague, but they don't display error messages like that. It's a system that even sends messages according to each language user's grammar rules. So if this is an anomaly, then it's certainly an anomaly.”
Dohyeon's gaze fixed on the writing carved into the wall. The letters clearly followed rules and contained repeated phrases. They were not mere scribbles.
Or perhaps they were simply one of the dungeon's tricks.
Dungeons were ever-changing. They shared forms close to patterns, yet sometimes displayed truly random and unpredictable shifts.
Considering no one had escaped this dungeon so far, the inscription on the wall could also be part of such a change, a trap meant to make escaping harder.
It could make them remain trapped in this dungeon, convinced it might hold a clue to understanding the dungeon and Yggdrasil.
As Dohyeon stared at the wall, he suddenly realized someone had been quiet.
His gaze turned to Kim Jihwa. More precisely, to the reflective surface of her smooth armor. He wanted to see whether the winged Valkyrie would be reflected there.
She was not. Kim Jihwa's armor was not as smooth as it seemed. Unless he pressed close to it, the Valkyrie visible only to him would not appear in its reflection.
[Are you looking for me, Helisbyorn?]
A whisper reached his ear. The Valkyrie. Dohyeon looked back at the wall and thought to himself.
What is that?
[It is a wall that was buried in sand and crumbling away. Within scattered time and space, it merely holds the memories of those who could not leave them behind, if only as ruins.]
That was exactly the sort of nonsense Yggdrasil would say. Had the tree malfunctioned, and now the Valkyrie had malfunctioned too? It was hard to understand what she meant.
Then another message from Yggdrasil appeared.
[@#$!%#Fusion entities. Silence hardened like an icicle. #$$@!#%%##. Dogmatic #$@%. This is not our place.]
[Silence like ice cannot muzzle me. I am not alone, for I am with my warrior. The right to exist is like starlight. Beautiful, yet it scatters vainly across the night sky and cannot compel reality.]
Dohyeon's eyes widened. The other two showed no reaction. Then the message must have been visible only to him. More precisely, it was likely intended for the Valkyrie.
What was this? Was the Valkyrie talking to Yggdrasil right now?
[!#%!%!#A futile gesture!#%!##@. #%^!#!@Fusion entities must !#!#%%remain. !#$!#$ must collapse, corrode, and perish !#$$!#%must be.]
[I will not accept it.]
[!#%$%? All fusion entities are!#$%!#%#@. The One-Eyed!@#$!#% is the rule. As with every race before them, they too !#$!#%#%. They will await their end.]
What could those relatively short messages from Yggdrasil mean? The Valkyrie's voice rang in Dohyeon's ears as though she were shouting at the entire desert.
[I will not accept it! I reject it! An old man must rage against approaching death! I will rage against the fading light! I will not go gently into that dark night!
With the final struggle of one who lives, I will defy the end to the very last! Until my breath finally stops! I will sing rage, rage-!]
“...?”
Dohyeon looked around with a slightly dazed expression. He understood that the Valkyrie and Yggdrasil had exchanged a brief conversation.
But he had no idea what they had been talking about. Above all, large portions of Yggdrasil's messages were impossible to interpret.
Without realizing it, he muttered softly.
“...Valkyrie?”
[What?]
At the voice beside him, Dohyeon turned his head. Kim Jihwa's smooth faceplate gleamed under the blazing sun.
[What was that, Dog Eyes? You said something. Did you remember anything?]
“...No.”
Dohyeon shook his head slightly.
“Finding hieroglyphs in a dungeon is interesting, but it doesn't look like there's an exit here for now. We should keep moving.”
Jo Gyeongtaek, who had been watching the wall warily, spoke at that.
“Didn't they say they had to dig through snow in that dungeon in India? Shouldn't we dig through this sand too? There seem to be a lot of ruins here. Maybe one of them has an exit.”
An exit. The desert they had experienced until just now contained nothing but sand and bizarre monsters.
To find something resembling an exit, digging through the ruins as Jo Gyeongtaek suggested was not a bad option. The problem was the faces.
Dohyeon raised his head and looked up the slope of the dune his team had slid down.
The Human-Faced Sand Shark's corpse, which had been draped across it a moment ago, was already gone. It seemed the faces that had flowed across the sand like waves had devoured it all.
“Hmm...”
Dohyeon held his tongue and narrowed his eyes. There were no faces visible where the corpse had disappeared. Had the Sand Shark been enough to sate their hunger?
“...?”
Dohyeon's gaze snapped toward his feet. Something had brushed past his foot.
For a moment, he thought the sand faces had already come this close. But that was not it. The sand beneath his feet was flowing on its own.
Srrr-
The sand flowed as if it were alive. It was different from sand blown by the wind. It truly flowed like water, streaming in one direction.
The other two followed Dohyeon's gaze and saw the flowing sand as well.
Jo Gyeongtaek recoiled in shock, while Kim Jihwa hurriedly looked around. She seemed to be searching for the cause of the phenomenon.
Trying to find a clear answer in a dungeon. She must have been far younger or less experienced than he had thought.
Then Jo Gyeongtaek spoke.
“Over there! The sand is draining away, and the wall...”
He was right. The lower portion of the lonely wall, which had been half-buried in sand, was gradually being revealed as the sand covering it drained away.
It was not only the lonely wall. Fallen pillars nearby, collapsed square stones, and statues of strange life-forms that had been completely buried all came into view.
Yet even around the dungeon ruins now revealing themselves, there was nothing that looked like an exit. Only the faint sensation of an ancient civilization that had crumbled away lingered there.
No more messages came from Yggdrasil, and in Dohyeon's case, the Valkyrie had gone quiet as well. It was a confusing moment, but Dohyeon calmly checked his surroundings.
Soon, he realized that not only the sand beneath where they stood, but all the sand in the desert was flowing in one direction.
Dohyeon quickly turned and ran up the dune. When he ran, the other two followed.
The height of the dune, where their feet kept sinking into the sand, was rapidly shrinking. Sand from the ruins and the entire surrounding area was flowing in one direction.
After a moment, Dohyeon reached the top of the dune and could see the movement of the sand around them. Something was approaching from over there, from a direction he could only call over there because east, west, south, and north had no meaning here.
“Uh... No, what... What the hell is that?”
Jo Gyeongtaek had run up beside Dohyeon. Startled by what he saw, he took a step back.
Far away, blurring the horizon as it approached, was a howling wall made of sand.
A sandstorm.
Perhaps because of it, the sky that had only been dry but otherwise clear when they began exploring had turned overcast. Sand-laden winds blew.
Like the water drawing back before a massive wave crashed against the shore, the sand where the team stood was being pulled away by the sandstorm approaching from beyond the horizon.
The sandstorm, which looked like nothing but a wall on the horizon, slowly drew closer while swallowing everything in the desert.
Click.
Kim Jihwa's faceplate flipped upward, revealing her face.
She looked at them and spoke.
“Now I get why no one made it out. They all ran like hell, got caught in that storm, and died.”
Now we had to run like hell too, just as they had.
Dohyeon tore his eyes away from the storm and ran in the opposite direction.
Jo Gyeongtaek ran alongside him.
“Where to?”
“Over there!”
Dohyeon pointed toward the ruins that had emerged as the sand drained away.
Footnotes:
The Valkyrie's speech echoes Dylan Thomas's poem “Do not go gentle into that good night,” particularly its refrain, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
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