Chapter 311: We Are All Our Own Hostages
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 311: We Are All Our Own Hostages
What are the qualities a hostage should possess?
They should be important or symbolic to the other party, or the very act of taking them hostage must be a card that can be used for pressure. There are many such factors, but above all, they need to be somewhat weak. A hostage you can’t use when you need to is as useless as money you can’t get back when you want it.
In that sense, Historia is in many ways unqualified to be a hostage. The moment Historia, who bears the moniker “Daughter of the Military State,” is captured, the State’s morale will plummet. But more importantly, she is far too strong. With the majority of the Six Generals gone, how much of a loss would one have to endure to capture or kill Historia?
The one singled out, Historia, sat in silence, lost in deep thought. The Regressor answered, perplexed.
“…You’re going to take the Gunmaster hostage? Is that even possible? And why?”
“You’re wrong. Historia isn’t the hostage.”
Hilde’s smile vanished. Leaping from my lap, she landed on the round table and pressed the bio-receptor on her wrist. The loose clothes she wore instantly shrank to fit her small frame.
“The hostage is the Military State. To serve as the final bastion for this pitiful nation on the verge of collapse, we need Gunmaster Historia of the Six Generals. With Warforger Maximilien, Zigrund, and Eimeder either gone or absent, the State could crumble at any moment without Gunmaster Historia.”
Surprisingly, the Military State possessed all the qualities of a good hostage. If it collapsed, the world would be thrown into chaos. If left intact, it would be a reliable ally to me. And depending on how it was handled, it could either fall to ruin or be revived in an instant.
An entire nation as a hostage. The scale of it was hard to grasp. But considering its internal state, why did I find myself nodding in agreement?
“Of course, I’m not saying it won’t collapse just because Historia is here! It’s just that if Chief Command has no forces it can deploy at will, its influence will be zero! Your communication network would also hit its limit in no time, Father! So, what do you say? Will you accept, Father?”
But what did I care? I shrugged.
“Asking me is pointless. You should be asking Ria. Ria, are you willing to be a hostage?”
“…”
“She says she needs time to think. I suppose that’s understandable.”
I relayed the message on behalf of the silent Historia. Hilde pressed again.
“Even if the Military State is destroyed?”
“Do you know what I’ve said most often while living in the Military State? ‘I wish this damn country would just go to hell.’ It seems the day has finally come to make that wish a reality.”
“Amazing! The rise and fall of a nation doesn’t even make you bat an eye. That’s my father for you!”
Hilde squealed, praising me to the skies. Tyr, who had been watching this farce, covered her mouth again as an even greater misunderstanding began to bloom.
‘The way she so naturally calls him ‘Father,’ how perfectly they’re in sync…! Looking at them now, they do seem to resemble each other…! Is she truly his child? Then, just how old was he when he got married…!’
No, that’s not it. If anything, Hilde is older than me, so I would’ve had to go back in time to before I was born to have a child.
But watching her dig her own hole is a little amusing, so I’ll just let her be. After all, Tyr is the one misunderstanding, and Hilde is the one who’ll be in an awkward position. I can just sit back and watch.
“Alright. In any case, let’s continue this conversation after we’ve rested a bit. That is all.”
As I made the declaration, Tyr cautiously approached Hilde. Gracefully gathering the hem of her skirt with one hand, she curtsied.
“A pleasure to meet you, child. My name is Tyrkanzyaka. The world knows me as the Progenitor of Vampires, an unworthy title, but Hu helped me greatly in the Abyss, so do not be alarmed. I swear on my blood, I will not covet yours.”
‘Huh? Why is she suddenly acting like this?’
Ah, Hilde blinked, flustered. It seems even that woman can be caught off guard.
However, being an excellent actress before she was a shapeshifter, Hilde adapted to the situation with ease.
“A pleasure to meet you, Tyrkanzyaka. I heard Father was greatly indebted to you.”
“It is little compared to what I received, but we are companions who rely on each other. You may rely on me as well.”
“Wow! That’s so reassuring! I’d love that!”
…I trust you can handle this, Hilde. Just don’t make the mistake of calling her ‘Mother.’
Leaving the two of them to their spiraling misunderstanding, I turned to the Regressor.
“Well, putting that aside for a moment. Shei. You have to admit it now, right? How hard I’ve worked. I work my fingers to the bone, and no one even acknowledges it.”
The Regressor glared at me resentfully before turning her head away sharply.
“…Fine! Thank you! I’m really glad you’re here!”
“Seriously. It’s like pulling teeth to get a thank you. If possible, please express your gratitude in the future before I have to ask for it.”
“I said thank you, and you’re still complaining! If you had just told me a little sooner, I wouldn’t have been so worried!”
The guilty one is always the loudest. She complains even when I ask for what I’m rightfully owed.
And it’s not like you told me anything, either.
“Shei. When Ria and I were confronting Maximilien, I tried to talk to him to buy some time.”
“Ah, you said you fought that guy, right?”
‘That Warforger bastard loves to run his mouth. He’s definitely the type to get caught off guard and take a hit.’
“Yes. When I brought up the King of Sins, Maximilien said something strange. He said there’s no way the King of Sins exists. He asked if I was perhaps referring to the King of Humans.”
I carefully broached the subject. But the Regressor shook her head firmly.
“No. The King of Sins is the King of Sins.”
“But he said that sin isn’t a beast, right? That the only beast that possesses sin is the human, so the King of Sins must be the King of Humans.”
“No. The King of Sins is not the King of Humans. They’re two different beings… They have to be.”
Hoh.
So that’s how it is. The Regressor, who is usually a terrible liar, made that declaration without batting an eye.
The King of Sins is different from the King of Humans. It wasn’t that she believed it. She wanted to believe it.
In other words, she didn’t believe it at all.
She knows quite a bit about the Beast Kings and the secrets of the world. But she desperately averts her eyes from the conclusion that the King of Sins must be the King of Humans. She keeps insisting on it, so much so that she’s even deceiving herself. Because…
‘The being I have to face… I don’t want to think that it’s the King of Humans… the king who represents all of humanity. Because then… it would mean that humans were abandoned by their own kind. Including me…’
If she didn’t believe that, she felt her will would break.
It was purely a matter of her own feelings. Well, I can understand that. Motivation is incredibly important, after all.
“Hmm. I see. If you say so.”
“You believe me?”
“It’s not a matter of believing or not. It’s not like I have a choice but to follow you, is it? You say the world is going to end. It’s hard to believe… but you also know far too much, more than any ordinary Saintess. Even if you don’t explain things well.”
“Ah, w-well, that’s…”
“And if I stick with you, I tend to get something out of it. Look at this time alone. I just tagged along, and in the midst of all the chaos, I managed to secure a connection with the Military State’s Chief Command. Crisis is opportunity. It’s a feat that would have been impossible in the back alleys.”
“That’s what was important to you?!”
“It’s possible you’re a very nasty con artist, Shei. But that’s fine. So what if it’s a world-class scam? If I can get something out of it, it’s a win for me. With scams, you usually get more by playing along than by exposing them.”
“…Now I’m starting to wonder if I can trust you.”
The Regressor shook her head. Then, she suddenly looked at me, lost in thought.
‘Come to think of it, Maximilien asked if Hu was the King of Humans. It was a half-baked conclusion just because Azzy was nearby, but what if…’
This was the moment I’d been waiting for. I could finally confirm it.
The fact that I am the King of Humans is, in any case, true, and there have been quite a few signs. Yet the Regressor, who should have been the first to know this secret, hadn’t noticed at all. From the first time I met her until now, not for a single moment had the possibility even crossed her mind.
I found that strange as well, but I soon came up with a hypothesis. If this hypothesis was correct, it would explain why the Regressor didn't recognize me.
However, to confirm this hypothesis, I had to walk a bit of a tightrope. Above all, I needed to pull the keyword ‘King of Humans’ from the Regressor’s memory. And if possible, without revealing my own identity.
‘The King of Humans… No, that can’t be right.’
It took a rather roundabout way, but I had finally gotten the chance to test my hypothesis. The Regressor began to drift into that distant memory.
‘Because I saw the King of Humans… no, the King of Sins, with my own two eyes.’
And the Regressor’s recollection followed.
*
The King of Sins appeared. And in less than a day, a nation fell.
The Sanctum was the first to realize this and proclaimed it to the world. Humans, weary from their wars of mutual slaughter, stopped fighting and gathered their strength to defeat the King of Sins.
Perhaps they had just been waiting for an excuse to stop the war. If things had continued as they were, their own nations would have been destroyed long before humanity went extinct.
In any case, the King of Sins was an immensely powerful being. Not only that, but humans tainted by sin offered themselves to the King, even knowing they would die. The King of Sins personally executed them, chewing on their hearts as they advanced.
What a horrifying existence. They called themselves the King of Sins, an evil befitting the name.
The masses were enraged by the atrocities committed by the King of Sins. That rage was applied retroactively, and they came to believe that the various disasters and tragedies born from their own wars were also the King’s fault. To hold the King accountable for every sin ever committed, humanity marched.
However.
The sins that humanity had ignored until now… were far too great.
“You yearned for your souls to be eternal, to be judged after death according to good and evil. But that is the most terrible of lies.”
That was not human. It was sin in human form, a calamity. The personification of death.
“There is no heaven, no hell in this world. The god you cry out to does not exist in the sky above.”
Lightning rained from the sky. The earth refused to support humanity. Those who had never stumbled in their lives tripped on flat ground, and those who swung their swords at phantoms stabbed their comrades. Beasts born from fruit and predators surged forth like a tidal wave. The technology developed to kill beasts was twisted in bizarre directions.
Blood and flames erupted. Screams and thunder echoed. The smell of burnt flesh rose with the black smoke. Electrocution, immolation, exsanguination, fatal falls, crushing, explosions—every imaginable form of death was put on display across the battlefield in the form of corpses.
In the center of it all, the King of Sins walked, using death as a footstep.
“There is no hall of warriors for those who died fighting honorably, no paradise prepared for those who suffered, no sanctuary in the clouds. After death, there is nothing.”
Warriors who had distinguished themselves in battle, heroes who had led impossible fights to victory, recluses who had hidden away from the ravages of war. The strong, armed with treasures and relics and wrapped in the blessings of wisdom, charged toward the King of Sins.
They all died.
They were no match. The King of Sins laughed at the masterpieces created by the human race and shattered them one by one. With every flash of the scythe, someone’s head fell to the ground.
Shei was no different.
Jizan was broken. Chun-aeng was shattered. Her crushed leg was numb, and blood poured from the hole in her body.
Unlike the others, Shei was still alive, but that was only a matter of ‘still.’
“All that exists is a single, abandoned ossuary.”
The King of Sins pulled out their scythe. Blood gushed from someone’s corpse. Thud, thud. The footsteps of calamity, searching for its next victim, turned toward Shei. She gripped the hilt of her broken Jizan, desperately forcing her drooping head up.
Before Shei’s eyes, there it was.
The calamity created by humanity, the King of Sins.
“I am the world’s smallest ossuary. The library that mourns the forgotten. When you issued promissory notes you could never repay, I was the undertaker who gathered them as burial goods.”
Messy hair stuck out here and there. Jet-black eyes that seemed to have glimpsed the abyss of humanity. A face tattooed with blood, wearing someone’s skull as a helmet. A wildness, like that of a beast’s child, was prominent.
And yet, even that appearance was hauntingly beautiful.
Her head wanted to droop. From exhaustion? No, her instincts, faced with such majesty and dignity, were commanding her to bow her head. They were screaming at her to surrender and beg for her life, for this was an enemy she could never defeat.
She wanted to fall to her knees right then and there, but Shei gritted her teeth and resisted the command. A born rebel, she defied her instincts and met the King of Sins’ gaze.
This life was not the end. She had to see more, burn more into her eyes. For the sake of the next timeline.
—However.
“Even if you have a next time, I will return.”
The words, as if spoken with her regression in mind, were enough to make even Shei lose her composure and freeze. A groan escaped her parted lips.
“…Ah, ugh…”
“Go and tell them. Your justice is bankrupt, and I will soon come to collect. The justice and morality you cried for, using the future and fate as collateral, have finally hit rock bottom.”
Not even death could be an escape. The world beyond was not safe. The Regressor finally understood her fate.
Her regression… would continue until she defeated the King of Sins.
Fear washed over her. A threat that not even death could shake. A wall she had to overcome.
The destination she found at the end of her exhausting, overwhelming, and lonely regressions… was so very far and high. So much so that she couldn’t imagine ever reaching it, not in a lifetime, not even if she walked for eternity.
However.
Even so.
Instead of giving up, instead of collapsing in tears, Shei glared at the King of Sins.
“Hmph… Spouting a bunch of nonsense I can’t even understand…”
Because she was foolish enough not to predict the obvious outcome. Because her insight was so shallow she couldn’t even grasp the gap between them. Because she was so stupid she wouldn’t know how hard a wall was until she slammed her head against it.
Shei gripped the broken Chun-aeng with her bare fist.
“Someday, I’ll shut that mouth of yours… Just you… wait.”
The King of Sins was silent for a moment. Was it a laugh at her foolishness, or a sign of respect for humanity?
At the end of the silence, the King of Sins smiled faintly.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Immediately after, the scythe moved. In that timeline, that was the last thing Shei saw.
*
Hmm. Right.
I expected as much, but that’s definitely the King of Humans. They seem incredibly strong, but there must be some reason for that. In any case, that is the King of Humans.
But no matter how I look at it, that’s not me. The face, the build, the gender—all the opposite of mine.
Hmm.
‘…It’s not the King of Humans. It can’t be. He looks nothing like that thing from back then.’
When a Beast King dies, another is born somewhere in the world. The newly born Beast King is a separate entity from the previous one. They may carry the same promise, but aside from that, their memories, appearance, and personality are different.
So… in other words.
It means that the ‘me’ of the previous timeline is dead.
When? Where? How? I don’t know. But considering what the Human Regime and the Sanctum are up to, it wouldn’t be strange for me to die in any number of ways.
They say I’ll die in a year. They say the world will end in ten. My life has been spoiled for me.
Of course, the fact that I’ll die in a year hasn’t been confirmed. But I was certain. After all, if the King of Sins is going to destroy the world in ten years, then I have to die before that.
Thanks to the Regressor’s appearance, I escaped the Abyss… but because of that, I’ve become deeply entangled in a much larger current. I won’t be able to live a normal life anymore.
Dammit. I wanted to live a normal life, but it seems I can’t be normal if I want to live. But what can I do?
The world ending is not what I want. The extinction of humanity isn’t either. I don’t know what atrocities were committed to make the King of Humans initiate a species-wide self-destruction, but I have no intention of doing that yet.
Nevida, the Sanctum, and a few others might think differently… but that’s their problem.
Just like the Regressor, I have no choice but to struggle to survive.