WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 306: Stake (4)
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At the camp, everyone except the night watch was asleep. It was the hour before dawn, and the blizzard seemed to scrape across the continent.
Corporal Mathieu stood with their rifle pointed into the darkness.
The camp was a fair distance from the border trenches, so there was no need to be quite so tense.
Rustle...
At the sound of someone approaching, Mathieu hurriedly raised their rifle.
“Halt!”
The footsteps stopped ahead.
“‘Bell tower’!”
At Mathieu's challenge, the answer came back.
“...‘Birch tree.’”
The correct response.
As Mathieu lowered their rifle, the figures slowly came into view.
Step. Step.
Machetes. Rifles. Mortars. Bundles on their backs.
And stakes.
It was that stake unit again.
“...”
Their leader, Appen Kondo, stopped in front of Mathieu.
“Keeping a good watch, I see. Anything unusual?”
“A peddler stopped by for a while.”
A peddler. Appen repeated the word, frowning.
“They were from Ganyu.”
The Keinos members exchanged glances. Someone gave a quiet laugh.
“We'll take over. Baptiste!”
A tall man called Baptiste took Mathieu's place.
“Go inside and rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mathieu entered the camp too.
The junior officers and several soldiers inside saluted Keinos.
“You're here!”
“Commander Appen!”
The Izenheim soldier Renault was the first to hurry over and start talking to them. Mathieu couldn't hear much, but Renault pointed at Mathieu while whispering a few words. Appen Kondo glanced their way too.
Mathieu simply gave a bitter smile.
They had a good idea what Renault was saying.
“They always stick to their own, don't they?”
Beside Mathieu, Joel, who had enlisted at the same time, pointed at Renault.
“I heard that Appen fellow's Izenheim too.”
“They've been persecuted for so long. It's probably a defense mechanism.”
“...Or maybe they did things that deserved persecution?”
Mathieu glared at Joel, who changed the subject.
“Oh, right. Where'd you put that pistol and belt the peddler said they'd captured? I bet we could sell them for a good price. Captured Imperial stuff has a damn good reputation these days.”
Guns stamped with the mark of the Imperial factory Aternum were treated as luxury goods. Apparently, various western nobles paid high prices for them.
“The company commander confiscated them.”
“...Oh, fuck. That bastard swiped them again? Seriously.”
“The commander said they'd be passed on to the higher-ups.”
“You believe that?”
Legend had it that anything the company commander took away with the words “I'll pass this on to the higher-ups” never reached those higher-ups, and never came back either.
“Ugh... Let's go. Those people always bring something good to eat.”
Mathieu followed Joel.
* * *
Whoooooosh!
On a ridge lashed by the blizzard, I stood at the edge of a cliff and prepared to drop. The camp's lights glimmered faintly in the distance.
This was called a “BASE jump.”
A drop made by jumping from a high point on the ground.
Compared with a drop from the sky, the height was extremely low. There were only a few seconds to spread your magic wings, and the wind changed direction along the terrain. Even among knights who had mastered drops, only a few could do it.
And, not to brag...
No, actually, I was bragging.
Whoooooosh!
In a blizzard like this, I was the only one who could make a BASE jump.
So Leon and Tiana approached on the ground.
“Entrance. Cleared.”
Tiana's voice.
“Guard post. Cleared.”
Leon's voice.
The two had slipped into the camp Keinos had entered. The blizzard made it easy.
Tap.
I set a foot on the cliff's edge.
Whoooooosh!
The wind seemed to push against my back. I released mana into the current, bringing its flow under my control.
“...Haa.”
I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky.
I could still see the moon.
* * *
Late at night, in a log cabin at the Prozen camp.
A modest party was underway with the venison, jerky, and precious beer Keinos had brought.
“Renault. Did you say you were from Deluc?”
Appen Kondo asked the soldier.
“Yes, sir. That's right. I lived there with my family.”
“Which sanctuary?”
“Elle.”
Mathieu watched their conversation.
They were talking about Izenheim matters that only other Izenheim would understand. Even the tones of their voices were subtly different.
“My father already knew when the Empire swallowed Genson. He knew our Prozen would be next... But the politicians wouldn't listen. They might as well have been deaf.”
Beside Appen, Renault filled his glass and pushed plates toward him like some sort of pet dog. Appen kept chuckling, as though he found Renault endearing.
“Hey.”
Just then, Meki, one of Keinos's hulking members, lifted their chin and glared at Mathieu.
“You think the stakes are a bit much?”
Of course. Renault had already spread the word.
“...”
Appen and the other Keinos members turned their eyes toward Mathieu. Meki frowned.
“You know what those Imperial bastards are doing.”
“That's exactly... why I said it.”
Mathieu set down their glass.
“That's why?”
“Yes. I know what crimes they're committing.”
They classified fellow human beings as subspecies, locked them in Camps, stole their property, and forced them to work. Countless people had died that way.
They had started a war on absurd grounds and bombed Prozen.
“...But...”
Mathieu gave a bitter smile and fiddled with their beer glass.
“If we drive stakes through people like that, aren't we becoming just like them?”
Whoooooosh...
The raging blizzard filled the silence.
“Heh.”
Suddenly, Appen gave a quiet laugh.
“I understand. Those Imperial bastards deserve to be impaled, but actually doing it isn't a pretty sight.”
He took a cigarette from inside his coat and put it between his lips.
“But there's no other way to deal with them. If you cling to morality against people who have none, you'll only die.”
Fssst. Appen lit his cigarette and pointed at Mathieu.
“Even so, I'm glad there are soldiers like you. Hold on to that belief. And stay alive.”
For a moment, Renault looked dissatisfied. Mathieu said nothing.
Whooo... oo... oo...
Then the blizzard broke off unnaturally.
“...?”
They paused.
The sound of the wind had stopped.
Appen Kondo and every member of Keinos grabbed their weapons at once.
An ominous tension stretched on...
Shwaaaaaah!
The log cabin's roof and walls split apart.
Two shadows rushed through the flying debris.
“...!”
Startled, Mathieu toppled backward, chair and all.
Meanwhile, the helmeted shadows cut down the soldiers.
Shraaak!
Joel reached for a rifle and lost an arm. Renault's leg disappeared.
There was no time to scream, let alone raise a gun.
The figures moved so fast that only afterimages remained. Mathieu couldn't even see them, yet their comrades kept falling. The cabin filled with blood, snow, and the smell of beer.
“So you've come!”
Appen and his unit already had their weapons drawn.
They even smiled as they welcomed the attackers.
Clang!
Their bodies swelled with mana. Their massive frames grew larger.
Lying flat on the ground, Mathieu watched the superhumans fight.
Craaaash!
Appen caught a knight's sword with his machete.
No, he pushed the knight back.
The knight flew into a log wall, struck it, then sprang up again.
Claaaang!
The other knight killed Appen's subordinates.
The knight's blade cut through necks, pierced chests, and stabbed knees.
Yet they didn't die.
They rose again, coughing up blood.
Shraaaak!
An arm was sliced off by the knight's sword.
But bone grew from the stump, followed by flesh.
When a head was cut off, nerves, muscles, and blood vessels bloomed from the severed neck like tangled threads, weaving themselves into the shape of a face.
“...”
Mathieu couldn't begin to understand what they were seeing.
Shraak! Shraak! Shraaak!
Appen Kondo laughed.
No matter how many times the knights' swords killed them, they rose again.
Then another Keinos member, Batista, who had volunteered for night watch, rushed in from behind and brought a machete down at a knight's back. The knight twisted aside, but the blade scraped the helmet.
“...Hahaha!”
Eleven Keinos members and two knights.
For a moment, the battle reached a lull.
“You've walked into a trap.”
As Appen Kondo spoke, Meki rose behind him, pressing a hand against their severed neck.
“You will 'not'... be 'let'... 'go,' kni-i-ight.”
As that strange voice came out, a dangling cheek reattached itself. A burst eyeball regenerated grotesquely.
“Hahaha!”
Appen smiled and stepped forward.
He swung his machete hard.
Claaaang!
The knights said nothing as they blocked his machete.
They only glanced up at the sky from time to time.
The roof had already been blown away in the battle, leaving the blizzard to pour in freely.
And then...
Whoooooosh!
A flash of silver.
Rrrrrumble!
An immense mass of pressurized air plunged straight down.
An air current like a pure white avalanche “pushed” against Appen Kondo's neck.
Cr-cr-crack!
Appen's face bent backward.
It burst under the pressure.
...
His ruined face rolled across the floor.
Tap.
A man landed softly.
“...”
“He” looked around the cabin.
The instant Appen Kondo died, Keinos stopped.
Those who had been rising no longer rose.
The cheek stopped reattaching itself. The regenerating eyeball stopped halfway through.
One after another, they collapsed and became corpses.
“What the hell was that thing?”
Words in the Imperial language came from inside a knight's helmet.
“I was watching from above.”
The blond man answered.
“I could see threads of mana linking them together. They were all tied to one of them.”
He pointed his longsword at Appen Kondo's head.
“This one was the stake.”
“...”
Perhaps sensing Mathieu's gaze, the knight turned toward them.
A man with blond hair and golden eyes, lit from behind by the moon.
“Ghh. Urrrrgh...”
Their comrades were groaning nearby.
Some soldiers were still alive. Some of their comrades had survived.
Joel and Lucas.
And Renault...
Shweeek!
Renault had just been killed by the knight.
The blond knight drove his sword through Renault's heart.
Step.
The knight approached Mathieu.
Mathieu raised their rifle on instinct.
“Good to meet you.”
“...”
Mathieu flinched, their body trembling.
Hearing him speak the Prozen language had startled them.
“A-are you... a knight?”
“Yes.”
They could communicate.
Mathieu took a deep breath and slowly spoke.
“Why... Why did you attack us...?”
“First, we're at war. Just as you can attack us at any time, we can attack you at any time.”
“...”
“Second, anyone who drives stakes through people should be prepared for retaliation.”
The cycle of hatred Mathieu had feared most.
Whoooooosh...
Amid the swirling wind, the knight suddenly pointed at Mathieu's rifle.
“Aren't you going to shoot?”
Mathieu bit their lip. Their trembling finger rested on the trigger.
...They couldn't bring themself to pull it.
“I don't think shooting you would kill you...”
Instead, they spoke in a hoarse voice.
“But I'd certainly die.”
He nodded, as though that went without saying.
“But if I die, I can't save my comrades.”
Joel and Lucas were bleeding, but still breathing. Still moving.
“...I have to save them.”
Their only hope was to appeal to his conscience.
Such a weak, fragile plea.
“...”
Inside the shattered cabin, the knight studied Mathieu's face.
He stared for a long time. Then, at some point, he smiled quietly.
Moonlight seemed to rise from that smile.
“...Let's go.”
The blond knight straightened up.
“I'm not really in favor of that.”
One of the helmeted knights still gripped a sword and glared at Mathieu.
“The price of a life has already been paid.”
At those words, the knights left Mathieu behind.
Step. Step.
The snow was painting the world white.
Watching their retreating figures...
“‘The price of a life has already been paid...’”
Mathieu memorized the unfamiliar sounds of his final words.
...
When Mathieu opened their eyes, they were in a military hospital.
They lay in a bed, with Joel and Lucas on either side.
The two looked at Mathieu and smiled in gratitude.
Mathieu didn't remember it clearly, but later heard that they had loaded the pair onto a sled and walked through the blizzard to a nearby guard post.
Things grew complicated afterward.
Keinos's deaths and their war crimes were covered up, but Mathieu was told that the Prozen government would award them a medal.
“...They let us live. They could have killed us.”
An investigation also began into who had been behind the attack.
Mathieu recounted everything that had happened that day.
“No. His jaw was a little slimmer.”
They spent all day helping the investigators create a facial composite.
“Yes. From there... His eyes were a little more elongated. The nose is about right. The proportions of his forehead and chin... No, smaller.”
The figure in their memory was hazy, but lit by moonlight.
A face that had burned itself deeply into their mind.
“Yes. That's him.”
The moment the composite was complete, the artist's hand began to shake violently.
The artist even dropped the pencil.
“...What's wrong?”
The investigator watching from behind looked horrified too. They hurried out of the room together.
The next day, Mathieu had a different investigator.
The questions changed.
Mathieu was moved to a private room, and a guard appeared outside the door.
Mathieu had no idea why any of this was happening, but learned the reason from Joel, who came to visit that night.
“Mathieu! That knight you saw!”
Joel waved a newspaper with their remaining arm.
It carried a black-and-white photograph taken on the balcony of Bolska's presidential palace.
“Do you know that knight's name?! Huh?! The knight who came after us that night was...!”
Joel shouted the knight's name, sounding excited, astonished, or perhaps terrified.
“Maximilian Ebenholtz...”
For a moment, Mathieu's mind went blank too.
* * *
Meanwhile, in the Empire's underground city.
Filty's studio.
“...”
Filty sat slumped on the floor.
All sorts of paper and paints lay scattered beneath her easel. The pictures she had just drawn stood out clearly, their surfaces dry.
“Uh...”
She stared blankly at her comic, then picked up the newspaper clippings, magazines, books, and lecture transcripts scattered around her.
Among them were papers published by Leutern II and other researchers, as well as reports measuring the water content of Izenheim hearts.
And there were the many strange forms drawn on her canvases.
The so-called “Izenheim mutants” she had seen while following Maximilian's movements.
At some point, Filty had begun to question just what Maximilian was.
He bought land as though he already knew where the mana stone deposits lay. He succeeded in every business as though he had seen the results beforehand.
Cola, nylon, penicillin.
Not a single failure.
There were also many things about Maximilian that seemed odd for a racist.
He was fond of the Yaken, loved dogs, returned prisoners, and sometimes spared enemy soldiers.
The only people he refused to forgive were, very specifically, the Izenheim.
As for the reason, Maximilian himself had said...
“Oh, come on! Hey!”
At the sudden shout, Filty flinched and turned around.
“...Hm?”
Her manager frowned, waving an envelope.
“I brought them. The autopsy records for the Izenheim who died recently. Every last one I could find!”
Filty hesitantly took the envelope.
“But why do you need these for your writing? We barely even have paper to print the comic on because of the war.”
“...It'll end someday. I'm getting ready for that.”
“Well, I suppose that's true.”
Filty quickly read through the documents her manager had brought.
“But... this really is science, right?”
The water content of Izenheim hearts.
Her manager gave a hollow laugh.
“Yes. Apparently, it's the same in almost every autopsy. Plenty of researchers in Prozen and Hailand have even published papers saying it's true. There are a few exceptions, but...”
“...”
Filty put down the documents.
She sank into thought.
Something about what she was feeling was “wrong.”
She knew it couldn't be true, yet every hole in the logic, every leap in reasoning, would disappear if “those words” of Maximilian's were true.
That claim that he was a chosen regressor, which had sounded like the ravings of a complete lunatic...
“Hey?”
Filty looked down at her drawing.
“...Ebenholtz.”
“Yes?”
Maximilian.
What if, just what if, Maximilian really knew “something” the rest of humanity didn't?
“...Please deliver a letter from me to Maximilian's house.”
Now, she wanted to have an honest conversation with him.
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