Chapter 506: The City of Free Beastkin
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 506: The City of Free Beastkin
Ende is a city of free beastkin. And like any free city, its crime rate is rather high. People may cry that there is no freedom to commit crimes, but strictly speaking, that's incorrect. Everyone has the freedom to commit a crime. What matters is whether you can be caught and punished for it.
Ende was a city where different beastkin flocked together. Clashes were frequent, and the methods of resolution were primitive. The city guard only intervened after blood was shed, and if the situation was beyond them, Obelisk would step in to suppress it, backed by the authority of the officials. After several harsh lessons, Ende achieved a semblance of balance as beastkin began to form clans based on race or interest groups.
But crime always exists. It is merely swept under the rug through amicable agreements, internal clan resolutions, or mediation by the city guard. Wherever people live, problems are bound to arise.
A healthy city doesn't mean problems don't arise; it means the problems that do arise don't get worse. Just like our bodies.
“Thief! It’s a thief!”
So, the fact that Ende was in shambles must have meant the city was unhealthy.
“Stop that man! City guard!”
“Hee-hee. City guard? Don’t make me laugh. Even Obelisk won’t show up.”
Horse beastkin are faster than other beastkin. A conscientious beastkin might use that advantage as a competitive edge to find a job and work hard to earn money. But to put it simply, stealing someone else’s money and running away is the easiest way to make a buck.
Especially now that the city’s security had collapsed.
“Slowpoke Piggy is holed up over there, right? With no guard dogs and no Obelisk, there’s no way to catch us! This is freedom!”
The cow beastkin, whose bag had been snatched by the pickpocket, gave chase but eventually tripped and fell. The horse beastkin, who had been glancing back as he fled, mockingly stopped in his tracks the moment he saw the fall.
“You bastard! Do you know I’m from the One-Horn Clan? You think you can get away with this and still live in Ende?!”
Even when the cow beastkin invoked the name of the One-Horn Clan, the horse beastkin just snorted.
“Nope. Not planning to.”
“What?”
“Haven’t you heard? The Wolf King is going to attack this place! If we stay in Ende, we’ll just end up as wolf food! The smart move is to score big and get out! Hahaha!”
The horse beastkin vanished into an alley, laughing at the other, slower beastkin, leaving behind the news of the Wolf King.
With the disappearance of Obelisk and the Obeli guard dogs, the city guard lost its authority. The lofty power of the officials that had once kept the rampant crime in check was no more. In fact, with the revolution underway, the humans living in Ende now pulled their hoods down to hide the fact that they lacked ears and a tail.
When the wall between Obeli and Ende crumbled, many things spilled out: wealth, power, secrets, and more. Obeli, having lost so much of its strength, could no longer exert any control over Ende.
“Urukfang! Groups of beastkin are looting the shopping district!”
“What are you telling me for? Stop them!”
“We can’t… stop them! There are too many!”
“Damn it! They’re looting at a time like this? What kind of beastkin are they?”
“It’s mainly the horse beastkin…”
“Of course! We should break all their damn legs!”
“…A large number of orcs are also participating. When a horse beastkin commits a theft, they swarm the area and steal one or two things for themselves. We’re actually arresting more orcs than horse beastkin.”
“Aargh!”
The orc mercenaries moved with the city guard, but there was no way they could coordinate. The city guard had no intention or reason to follow the orders of the less-organized orcs in the first place. The two groups responded to similar areas and left similar areas unguarded, and when the situation spiraled out of their control, they simply gave up.
In the chaos created by the security vacuum, the citizens of Ende were forced to find their own solutions.
“Unable to bear the thievery any longer, the sheep and cow clans have begun organizing private soldiers and putting up fences!”
Ende was shattering, piece by piece, along clan lines. The clans erected fences around their territories, blocked passage, and sought to ensure the safety of their own members.
From the clans’ perspective, it might have been the right thing to do. But from the city’s perspective, it was the rise of rampant autonomous domains—something that should never be tolerated. Poina was horrified when she heard the news.
“The clans organized private soldiers? That’s illegal! Ende strictly limits clans, other than Obeli, from maintaining private armies!”
“…But, what about us?”
“We are a legitimate part of Obeli!”
With the fire at his feet, Okma reinstated the Obelisk guard dogs far too late. In hindsight, it was the worst possible move at the worst possible time. The guard dogs were pro-human, had been colluding with the officials, and had tried to oust Okma, who had briefly taken away their jobs.
News of wolves snatching people outside the city trickled in from time to time, but it was drowned out by the internal noise of Ende and faded away. With constant talk of preparations, the battle with the wolves drew ever closer.
“Awoooo…”
I could hear a commotion outside. It was mostly the shouts, screams, and groans of humans. I couldn’t see well from inside the walls, but it seemed Azzy’s ears and nose were picking up all sorts of noises.
I waved a hand at Azzy, who was howling sadly at the sky.
“Azzy. Stop your pathetic whining at the sky and come inside to sleep.”
“Woof. Again. Humans, fighting again.”
“It’s a daily occurrence, so what’s the big deal?”
“Woof! But, wolves coming! And humans are fighting humans!”
“So you’re saying it’s distasteful for humans to waste their strength fighting each other on the rare occasion they get to fight wolves, is that it?”
I can’t read a dog’s mind, so I tried my best to translate her thoughts, but Azzy just shook her head and barked.
“Similar, but different!”
“Similar but different? How is it different?”
“Wolves bad. Kill sheep, attack humans. Very bad!”
“Yeah. They are bad.”
“Wolves, bad! Humans, good! But humans, fight!”
“Aha.”
My mind-reading doesn’t work on her, but the language Azzy uses is the brutally honest language of a dog. Taking it at face value, I got the gist.
“You’re asking why good humans are fighting each other when the bad wolves are right at their doorstep?”
“Woof!”
Azzy nodded her head enthusiastically. Is that all? What an age-old question. I lay back down and answered.
“Honestly. Such an obvious question.”
“Woof?”
“It just means that the humans nearby are worse to each other than the wolves far away.”
When I answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Azzy tilted her head and asked.
“Woof? Humans, good! Dogs, good!”
“We’d have to hear the human side of that. It’s true that humans like dogs and dogs like humans, but humans hate other humans.”
“Woof woof? Why?”
“Because the things humans need are the very things other humans have the most of. It’s easier to just take them. The ones who want to take are always watching for an opportunity, and the ones who have things hate that someone might be targeting them. So they have no choice but to fight.”
“Awoo…”
In principle, Azzy might be right. But reality is a cold thing.
Azzy’s ears and tail drooped, and she began to howl at the empty air again. Her mournful cry was low but echoed widely. I cleaned my ear with a finger and said to her.
“Don’t bark too much. Your howling will make the other dogs cry.”
I wasn’t just saying that. In fact, right at that moment, outside our gate, some dog beastkin were getting beaten like, well, dogs.
“Wait! We only came to see the King!”
“We are dog beastkin! You have no right to prevent our audience!”
“Seeing the state of the city, you still intend to side with Piggy?”
The Obeli guard dogs who had come to see Azzy pleaded their case, but it was useless against the Regressor. She raised Chun-aeng and muttered.
“I told you to get lost.”
Thwack. Thump. The Regressor made short work of the dog beastkin. After dragging the sprawled-out beastkin far away, she returned, grabbing the back of her neck in annoyance.
“Word has gotten out about this place. We’re going to have uninvited guests bothering us every day. I’m thinking it might be time to move.”
“Did you chase them away? You could have at least heard them out, you know.”
“It’s a human conflict. Azzy would only be used as a shield. That’s what they came here for.”
The Regressor’s reply was indifferent. Her eyes showed neither expectation nor disappointment anymore.
Her feelings had moved beyond mere irritation. You get irritated when things go wrong to a certain extent. At this point, things weren’t just wrong; they were fundamentally broken from the start. Naturally, the Regressor’s approach to Ende’s situation had changed.
‘Discrimination against beastkin was always a problem. Before I regressed, the beastkin sided with the Sins, which hastened the world’s destruction. But looking at this mess, I don’t even know how to begin solving the discrimination issue anymore.’
If it were a problem that could be solved by getting rid of one or two people, she would have done it. But the Regressor knew. This was a problem that could never be solved by a single individual taking out a few key figures.
At this point, it was a disaster on par with the Wolf King. Instead of getting angry, the Regressor just looked troubled.
“Haaah. This is a total disaster.”
“What’s the big deal? It’s not that much of a disaster.”
She’s being so dramatic. It’s not that hopeless of a situation. I spoke nonchalantly to the somewhat dejected Regressor.
“If worst comes to worst, Shei-ssi, Azzy, Grul, and I can just go kill the Wolf King ourselves. No matter how incompetent Ende is, surely they can serve as wolf fodder, right?”
The era of gathering an army and crashing it against another was over. Now that Qi Arts and magic were widespread, the easiest way to deploy military force was to send a skilled Qi practitioner or mage with proper support.
Ende’s forces were just beastkin who had barely learned any Qi Arts. At best, they were support for Grul. So, we should just use them as such.
“We can’t just let them all die. The wolves are strong and numerous. The casualties will be immense.”
“Then let them run away.”
“It would have been better to evacuate them from the start, but it’s too late now. On the wide, flat Enger Plains, only the horse beastkin could escape the wolves. Now, like it or not, we have no choice but to fight.”
“You got what you wanted, then. Whether they live or die, if they have to fight, they’ll provide plenty of support, be it as bait or otherwise.”
As I spoke so placidly, the Regressor’s eyes narrowed and she shot back.
“Is that something you should be saying?”
“Is it something I shouldn’t? This is what you were aiming for, Shei-ssi.”
If her goal had been to save people, she would have evacuated them first. But she didn’t, did she?
Even the strongest warrior can’t fight a large army without the support of a city. No, they can fight, but it’s strategically disadvantageous, so they choose not to. Delaying the announcement of a battle as long as possible to prevent deserters was a method chosen by both pre-revolution Obeli and the Regressor herself.
“This mess happened because you helped the pig beastkin!”
“You were happy about it at first, too, Shei-ssi.”
“I didn’t know it would get this bad!”
“Neither did I.”
Did anyone know? I’m not a prophet. I don’t know what the future holds. It’s the same now.
“Everyone got what they wanted. This is just the result. The orcs will have to choose whether to relinquish the power they hold or to fight and shed blood to protect it.”
“You know they can’t do either. They’ll dither until they’re eaten by wolves.”
“But what’s important is that they can choose. Without this chaos, they wouldn’t have had a choice at all.”
The Regressor kept saying it was a disaster, but when you really thought about it, not much had changed. For all her fuss, it wasn’t that big of a disaster. I shrugged.
“Obeli would have decided to fight to maintain its power, and the beastkin of Ende, knowing nothing, would have been dragged out to fight at the last minute. The slow and tasty pig beastkin would have died in the greatest numbers, their deaths dismissed as unavoidable sacrifices to protect the city, further solidifying the pyramid with their blood.”
And all the while, it would be the Regressor, Azzy, and Grul who actually defeated the Wolf King. The bear does all the tricks, but someone else collects the money.
And the bear doing the tricks is worried about whether the people are okay.
“It would be better if the humans were still in Obeli.”
“Better how? You just saw it a moment ago. The guard dogs came looking for Azzy. Who do you think is behind them, the minions of the officials?”
Whether the Wolf King attacks or not, the humans are still moving behind the scenes to reclaim their power.
It’s all the same. It can’t be helped. They’re all human, after all.
Perhaps my answer displeased her, because the Regressor’s expression gradually soured. Her eyes narrowed as she adopted a serious demeanor and spoke my name.
“Hughes.”
“Yes? That is my name, but why are you suddenly…”
Hearing my name called like that made me tense up and straighten my posture without thinking. Why is she suddenly calling my name? It’s scary.