Chapter 588: Noise Marketing
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 588: Noise Marketing
Hmm. Normally, I should be the one to stop them… but interfering while those two are fighting would draw too much attention… They look so energetic, too. And they have their own circumstances… I’m also hiding my identity… I’ll just leave it to Walpurgis…
I wondered why Walpurgis had shown up, and it turns out the Great Witch summoned her. Calling a busy subordinate all the way out here just because she felt awkward starting a conversation herself. Truly remarkable.
Collected by Walpurgis, I was transported to the floor of the Human Regime. Feeling her illusion’s gaze on me, as if I were a troublemaker, I offered an awkward smile and spoke.
“Thanks for the help. You must have it rough, being dragged around everywhere.”
“I am concerned that my troubles have just increased by one.”
I could feel a sharp glare from the illusion. I brushed it off lightly and replied.
“Is it because you’re too reliable for a witch? You should take it easy.”
“I have much to do. Like this.”
“Oh, dear.”
“This is not something to be dismissed with an ‘oh, dear.’ Be careful how you act. Many kinds of people reside in the shadow of the World Tree. Besides the tree’s inhabitants, there are those who come seeking the teachings of the Great Druid, a witch’s potion, or the rare flora and fauna that grow only on the World Tree. Among them could be people who bear you a grudge, or those with ambition.”
“Like Blanca?”
The illusion flickered for a moment.
“…Similar, yes. The difference is that she is sponsored by Lady Nevida.”
“You mean the Human Regime?”
Walpurgis’s reply was so delayed I could feel the hesitation even through her illusion.
“That is correct. Them… yes.”
“Them? Does that mean you aren’t part of the Human Regime?”
“I am, first and foremost, a single human being, with merely a perfunctory curiosity about the King of Humans.”
“And you don’t want anything from the King of Humans?”
“…Of course not.”
“Huh? That was a slow answer.”
“There is one thing I would like to ask, but it is not so grand as to be called a wish. It is merely a point of curiosity.”
Walpurgis dismissed my words and turned away, as if she had no intention of answering further. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air as we rode the ‘tube.’
Meanwhile, the Regressor was deep in thought.
Why did Hughes do something so pointless? In the end, we gained nothing from this venture, did we?
What do you mean, gained nothing? We experienced all sorts of things. You were there too, so why are you complaining?
Hughes does like people-watching. Everywhere we’ve gone, he’s always struck up conversations with the locals. But he wouldn’t have done that just for the spectacle. What was his intention? Should I ask?
Go on. Ask away. I’ll tell you.
No. We’re being watched anyway. Hughes can’t tell me, and even if he did, I couldn’t take his word for it. Let’s just think about what will happen. By revealing his identity to Blanca… what’s the benefit? All he did was advertise the appearance of the King of Humans, right? Surely that can’t be his goal.
Ha, honestly. The things she worries about.
…I can’t tell if her intuition is good or bad.
*
Manguo had fallen, but it had not vanished. The World Tree was what burned, and with the annihilation of Muhu and her inner circle, its focal point had evaporated. But Manguo had always been a loose confederation of clans and tribes, so its structure remained. Some tribes still followed the customs of Manguo, pledging their loyalty to the last royal, Hexia Agartha.
The chief of the Anub tribe—loyal hounds of Agartha, whose members were all dog beastkin—pricked up his ears at the unexpected news.
“What? The King of Humans…? Is this true?”
“It is! I saw him with my own two eyes!”
“But are you certain he is the King of Humans?”
“Well… no. But I overheard a conversation between the Witch of the Night and the black dog! They called him the King of Humans!”
The black dog would be Baskerville. Just as the Anub were the loyal hounds of Agartha, Baskerville had been the loyal hound of the imperial family. For this reason, the Anub tribe felt a strange sense of kinship with Baskerville.
“The Witch of the Night, you say? Then the Great Witch must know as well. This is certainly worth investigating. Well done, Kario. Your quick thinking has served us well.”
Kario, the one who brought the news, wagged his tail, proud to have been acknowledged. The chief, however, could not smile so easily.
He could smell it. The scent of a flame that would burn this jungle to the ground. He was a man who took pride in his duty as chief responsible for his tribe, and as a loyal vassal who had inherited the spirit of Manguo.
“The King of Humans. If those words are true… the world is about to be shaken.”
He could not fathom how great a change this news would bring.
Yet, even amidst his anxiety and fear, he had to act. That was the duty of a chief. Stroking his chin, Anub muttered.
“This might be for the best. It could be a chance to wipe out the traitors remaining in this land.”
*
“…is what they’re probably thinking. Anub, those foolish bastards!”
The news hadn’t only reached the Anub tribe. The incident, which had dragged in and pitted most of the people in the World Tree’s shadow against each other, was too clamorous to be covered up. An advertisement would have generated less buzz.
“They’re mistaken if they think the King of Humans will become their king. The King of Humans is for humans alone! Do you think he’ll become the king of you beastkin, not just Agartha?”
The old Manguo fell just like that, leaving behind not only the tribes favorable to Agartha, but also those who were hostile.
One day, Agartha suddenly created the beastkin. These beastkin, abruptly dropped into the world, needed food, clothing, and shelter. Agartha, who cherished the beastkin, granted them a corner of a vacant lot she treasured, but there is no such thing as a truly vacant lot in this world—be it of land or of the human heart.
The tribes who had secretly considered that lot, and Agartha’s favor, to be their own, began to harbor resentment and hatred.
Some of them joined the rebellion and helped bring down the Agartha dynasty, though they themselves had not wished for the fall of Manguo.
“A true King of Humans would never recognize something mixed like a beastkin as human. Manguo fell because things like beastkin were mixed in! This is our chance to build a true nation of humans!”
Those who had once been part of a nation keenly understood how sweet its power was, and how necessary a force that could unite the jungle was. Even hundreds of years after Manguo’s fall, they longed for the past.
“Let’s move out! To the place of the false World Tree!”
*
“…What was to come has come. On the land where sin sowed its seed, the fruit has now ripened. Now the Tree of Corruption will be made whole, the fruit of knowledge will open, and the juices of sin shall flow.”
And the great jungle was not inhabited solely by the descendants of Manguo.
Among dozens of trees growing on a low hill, a young girl was strolling. Gently stroking a branch that resembled an outstretched human hand, she whispered to the tree in a voice tinged with sorrow.
“In the past, Muhu Agartha consorted with the Beast King and gave birth to the beastkin. While all birth should be a blessing, Muhu, through personal greed and obstinacy, turned that birth into a terrible corruption. It was… something that should never have happened in this world…”
The vibrant, giant trees that grew in the hot, humid land were objects of faith in themselves, products of Mother Nature. To the druids who revered nature, the jungle of Manguo was a land overflowing with blessings.
But when the World Tree, the blessed Ginkgo, burned and fell, and in its place grew the Tree of Genesis created by the Great Druid, what the druids felt was endless despair and resignation.
“…But there is a fallen Great Druid, and a mad Great Witch. And with them, countless other witches and warriors… They are powerful… but we are helpless.”
The Great Druid Nevida. Teacher to all druids, who had protected nature and passed down the druidic teachings since time immemorial. A lover of nature who had forged pacts with all manner of Beast Kings, she was the paragon and pride of all druids.
When she declared she would bring forth a new World Tree to replace the one that had burned to death, all the druids lent her their strength. They gathered the trunk and leaves of the dead Ginkgo and brought them to Nevida.
But what was born was not a World Tree that would paint the world with beautiful ginkgo leaves, but a cursed Tree of Corruption that bloomed with different flowers and crops on every branch.
After that, the druids turned their backs on the Tree of Genesis. They became guardians of the forest, watching over the Tree of Genesis ceaselessly.
“We are the ones who have kept the traditions. The ones who preserve the memory of this land’s sin. And the ones who have sworn to prevent its repetition.”
There is a story that every living being is allotted a finite number of heartbeats. It’s a tale born from the fact that creatures with shorter lifespans have faster heartbeats. A mouse the size of a finger has a heart that beats over 900 times a minute, and to fuel that energy, it spends its entire life searching for food.
In contrast, a tree, with no heartbeat and no movement, can live for a time close to eternity. For a tree, for which the very concept of natural death is uncertain, its existence is like that of a geographical feature.
Some may find an ephemeral beauty in the beast that burns through everything in its short life, while others may feel a sense of awe for the tree that silently guards its place for eternity.
The druids were the latter. They were beings who revered the slow, immense cycle, a cycle unfathomable to human senses. And at the end of their endless reverence and inquiry, the druids came to occupy a link in that very cycle.
“…Arise. For the World Tree. For Mother Nature. And for the providence of nature that we must protect.”
A druid who has made a pact with a tree can live for hundreds of years. They assimilate themselves with the tree, spending a near-eternity without consciousness or sensation.
Because they are merely ‘alive’ and can do nothing else, the druids do not encourage this act that twists providence. However, a druid who must pass on their memories and knowledge for some reason will choose this path.
The ‘trees’ moved.
The Forest of Knowledge. The druids who, in the distant past, had discovered the sin of Manguo and severed it. Those who had chosen to become trees to escape the Great Witch’s pursuit and to pass on the knowledge of the sin they had witnessed—they now awoke from their long slumber.