WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 150: The Road Flows with the Traveler - 6

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Humans are creatures who sleep.

Sleep is something every living thing inevitably needs. It can be postponed, but never refused forever.

Even in the middle of a flowing road.

Being able to sleep while traveling is both a blessing and a curse. Even in circumstances like these, humans still have an obligation to sleep.

I was groaning from the rough vibrations shaking my entire body when it happened.

"Wake up. Wake up..."

A hand urgently shook my shoulder as a voice whispered in my ear.

Ah, what is it? Don't interrupt my sweet sleep. The poor quality of my sleep could only be made up for with quantity.

I twisted in my sleeping bag and muttered.

"Just ten more minutes..."

Then came words that jolted even me awake.

"...It's bandits. Wake up."

"Huh? Bandits?"

The Meta-Conveyor Belt and highway bandits.

There was an enormous gap between those two words.

Long ago, there had been a foolish invention called railroads and trains. Two rails of steel, intended as a well-meaning path to heaven. They built roads of iron and had vehicles run over them.

They soon vanished into history. Passing beasts would bite the rails out of curiosity, enemy spies disguised as beasts would carry out acts of terror, and highway bandits with too much time and not enough money would attack them.

Compared to that nonsense, the Meta-Conveyor Belt was practically a perfect invention.

Even those with malicious intent could not damage it. Even if they destroyed part of the road, it would simply keep flowing or repair itself. To truly stop its flow, they would have to be prepared to dig up the entire ground.

It was synonymous with impossibility.

Getting onto the belt was difficult too. Unlike a train that stopped and spun its wheels if someone blocked the tracks, the flowing ground calmly continued on its way, unconcerned with whatever stood in front of it.

Even if a cliff collapsed onto it, the road would not be blocked. It would simply keep flowing with the cliff on top, so people had to move with the ground instead.

Finding a target was difficult as well. The Meta-Conveyor Belt carried countless goods throughout the military state. Unlike railroads, where every passing train was a treasure chest, there was no way to know what cargo was in which container without eyes that could see through them.

On top of that, the people using these roads were usually soldiers.

Say they somehow overcame all those obstacles and stole something. Congratulations. Now they just had to jump off, their bodies exhausted and heavy packs strapped to their backs.

By then, the horses or carriages they had arrived on would be far behind them.

The military state's troops would be waiting instead.

That was why highway bandits on the Meta-Conveyor Belt were something only an organization powerful enough to dream of overthrowing the state would attempt...

For example, the Resistance.

Huh?

"The Resistance?"

"Assessment, affirmative! They're falling from above right now...!"

Just as the captain said that,

"Yaaah!"

A battle cry rang out overhead.

Dawn had not fully broken yet. We were passing through a valley, so morning came late. Half-asleep people rubbed their eyes and looked around through the dim mist.

But the intruders came from above.

Nearly ten people poured down in the distance, their bodies suspended from ropes.

They must have practiced beforehand. The ropes traced precisely calculated paths, turning at the last possible instant before their bodies struck the ground and matching the belt's speed. They brushed down onto the belt, released their ropes in unison, and rolled across the ground.

Each rose with a rifle and bayonet in hand.

Only one landed without a gun, using a long spear to scrape along the ground and slow his descent.

The Resistance members climbed down the ropes as lightly as monkeys, aimed their weapons in every direction, and shouted.

"Nobody move!"

Seriously? What kind of worthless idiots were attacking us now?

I quietly watched the pups blocking my way.

"Hands up and get on your knees!"

I obediently did as they said. Guns had no hearts, after all.

When their attention turned toward her, the terrified mother tightly embraced her son. She was trembling so badly that she was nearly sobbing.

The man with the spear, who seemed to be their leader, smiled reassuringly at the mother and son.

"We are the Resistance. Friends of the people. We have no intention of harming civilians like you."

As he spoke, the other Resistance members behind him used large axes and tools to break open the cargo. The tightly sealed container shattered, revealing several neatly wrapped boxes inside. Most of the Resistance members, except their leader, picked up lamps and went inside.

The leader kept his spear raised and counted the people.

"Two civilians. One engineer. Over here..."

"We're civilians! Civilians! We're on our way home to Amitenggrad!"

I spoke before the captain could say anything. With my shabby clothes and the captain still wearing only a shirt, we looked exactly like civilians.

The Resistance leader looked around and muttered.

"No soldiers? Well, there wouldn't be any soldiers headed this way right now."

'That was why we took advantage of this opening. We got lucky.'

The leader relaxed his guard slightly, though his sharp eyes still swept the area.

"Stay still. We are the Resistance. We are reclaiming the kingdom's rightful property."

The old engineer caught up in the raid asked,

"The kingdom?"

"That's right. Everything in the military state originally belonged to the kingdom. We are taking back what the military state unjustly occupies."

The Resistance, which sought to overthrow the military state, was made up of all kinds of people.

Knights from the old kingdom, spirited young people, and those cast out by the military state. They had different reasons, but in the end, they were all people who could not live under the same sky as the military state.

Naturally, the largest faction among them was the knights, the old era's ruling class.

The king's spearmen.

It was only natural that the knights, who possessed wealth, power, influence, and military strength, became the center of the movement.

"The military state cowardly struck while the regional knights were defending their own territories, bringing down the country. If all the regional knights had gathered at the royal castle, the revolt of those rabble would have ended as nothing more than a minor disturbance. How was that any different from having our country stolen from us?"

Knights were the kingdom's ruling class, as well as the lords of their territories.

Many knights had been elsewhere during the coup. When the military state seized power, they either resisted it or went into hiding with their money and retainers. That strength became spearheads aimed at the military state, leaving it severely shaken inside and out during its early days.

Now, of course, only the Resistance was shaking.

In any case, Lord Baltsroy, the dissatisfied Resistance leader, gave off a sharp presence.

"What would ignorant country folk know if I explained it to them? Just as you did when the kingdom fell, stay quiet and hold your breath. Country folk who know neither honor nor glory..."

Lord Baltsroy watched us with a knight's arrogance, not moving so much as a finger while the other Resistance members searched the container.

As if someone as noble as him could never do such menial work.

The noise inside the container gradually grew louder. The captain beside me flinched.

'This officer may be a communications officer, but I am still a captain of the military state. I must fulfill my duty.'

Huh? Why all of a sudden?

Wait. No, right? She wasn't about to do what I thought she was, right?

'I may be a communications officer, but I am nevertheless a captain. I cannot overlook rebels taking military state property.'

My hopes were crushed as the captain, her resolve firm, rose to her feet. She tried to insert a clothing packet into her bio-terminal.

Just before Lord Baltsroy, who had noticed something amiss, could move his hand,

"Aaaah!"

I quickly grabbed the captain and rolled across the ground. I seized her fist so she could not open it, covered her mouth with my other hand, and pinned her beneath my weight.

The captain struggled beneath me and cried out.

"Let me, mmph!"

"I'm sorry! Our Bbi has an anxiety disorder!"

No, was she actually insane?

Our opponent was a knight who had once belonged to the kingdom's ruling class. Even a captain who had risen through the normal ranks would stand little chance. How was a communications officer, a captain in name only, supposed to fight one? Was she going to scream into his eardrums? Well, that might have given her a chance!

As the captain and I wrestled, Lord Baltsroy pointed his spear at us.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't mind us! She has episodes! I hold her down for times like this! Argh!"

Damn it, she bit me. Still, I gritted my teeth and covered the captain's mouth.

The captain beneath me gave an inaudible cry.

'Let me go! I am a soldier of the military state! I must fulfill my duty!'

There were different kinds of duty. This would be a pointless death! Why were you trying to step in when you couldn't even fight? Did you want to die?

'The moment I am discovered, I must either kill myself or kill the person who found me and kept me alive. That is the duty of a communications officer entrusted with the most important secrets!'

Wait. Why bring that up now?

...Ah. Surely not.

'Yet I have not fulfilled my duty until now. Excited by the thought of coming out into the world, I have delayed the moment of choice I would one day have to make. I looked away from my duty. But I cannot do that now.'

Tch.

Damn military state. What had it done to make people like this?

'If I die while resisting the Resistance, then I will also have fulfilled my duty. Then I need not agonize any longer. This is your only chance to live. Let me go!'

The captain made up her mind and tried to shake me off and stand.

Before she could, the old engineer rose to his feet.

The engineer looked at the Resistance members dismantling the container and at Lord Baltsroy with the weary expression of someone exhausted by life's hardships.

"...You called us ignorant?"

Despite the guns trained on him, the engineer moved.

The only difference between the captain and the engineer was that I was beside the captain to stop her from doing something crazy. Facing the Resistance, the engineer muttered with all the sorrow of his life in his voice.

"My older brother died during construction of the Meta-Conveyor Belt. He fell into the flowing ground, and his whole body was crushed to pieces. Seeing a person ground up alive... I can still see it clearly. Whenever I have time, I walk along this belt under the excuse of repairing it and remember my brother. I still... resent the military state. The military state that took my brother and his colleagues through reckless construction."

"Oh? They say weeds grow even in mud. It seems someone has finally come to his senses."

Lord Baltsroy was delighted to hear criticism of the military state. There was nothing better for getting close to someone than insulting the same people.

"Would you perhaps join the Resistance? The Resistance always welcomes technicians like..."

"Even so. No matter how much I resent the military state."

The engineer's wrinkled face twisted viciously. Every mark of hardship on his face seemed carved with blazing fury.

Filled with hatred and contempt beyond measure, the engineer clenched his teeth and answered.

"It's a hundred times better than a kingdom run by bastards like you."

"...What?"

Cracks formed in Lord Baltsroy's expression.

Even facing the knight's killing intent, the engineer let out a scream condensed from years of bitterness. It was the fading cry of someone who remembered the age before times changed, an era of hatred and duels.

"Yeah, you filthy bastards! My brother died while working as a carpenter. It was a horrible death, but at least it wasn't humiliating! It's still better than you dog bastards strutting around as knights and killing people like they were toys!"

Lord Baltsroy's face turned red at the insult. Gripping his spear shaft so hard it looked ready to break, he strode toward the engineer.

"...It seems you wish to die."

Even as he faced the knight's killing intent, the engineer strained the veins in his neck and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Yes! Kill me! You kingdom dogs who sided with scum! Kill me like you killed my father and mother! Go on, kill me!"

"If that is your wish."

Lord Baltsroy removed his glove and threw it before the engineer. The leather glove struck the ground with a wet slap.

The era of the kingdom, when knights ruled.

An era when strength itself was national power and authority.

There had been laws even then, but they were rarely enforced. Instead, trials called duels were common.

They would test their strength against one another, and the victor would have everything. The victor was truth and justice, and this was carried out in the name of God.

Lord Baltsroy threw down his glove, gripped his spear with his bare hand, and aimed it at the engineer.

"A duel, worm. Take up a weapon."

The military state prohibited private duels. Citizens born after the military government's rise did not know what duels were or what they meant.

But those who had lived since the days of the kingdom instinctively trembled at the sight of the institution that had claimed the most lives in the kingdom.

The engineer flinched in fear, and Lord Baltsroy recited an abbreviated version of the formal words of a duel.

"Challenge me. Victory is justice itself, and the victor shall surely be blessed by the Celestial God."

"What blessing? If God's will is for thugs to run wild, then that god is nothing but a god of thugs!"

The engineer gathered his resolve and shouted.

"...You are an ignorant fool who does not even know the etiquette of a duel. If you had at least accepted it, I would have let you die peacefully."

Whoosh.

The spear cut through the air. Lord Baltsroy took the stance of a savage beast and glared at the engineer as though he intended to devour him.

"I will tear off your limbs one by one. Roll across the ground like an insect, begging for mercy as you die."

The spear came closer and closer. Faced with death, the engineer staggered back with trembling eyes.

But he did not regret it.

The military state had brought down a kingdom he hated so much that even chewing it to pieces would not have satisfied him. That was why, though he had suffered a great tragedy because of the military state, the engineer could not hate it. He had only stored up his resentment and walked the Meta-Conveyor Belt for nearly twenty years.

At the end of his life, he had finally released that hatred and bitterness. The flames that had wandered through him, unable to find anywhere to go after their target disappeared, had finally poured out.

The old engineer would have no regrets if he died like this.

He would not die, though.

'No! With the general away, there is no one who can stop the rebels!'

Ah, captain. The same went for you. Even if you had stepped in, you wouldn't have died.

Why did she think the general was away?

"Your right arm first."

Lord Baltsroy's spear moved. I thought its tip had only trembled slightly, but the spearhead rose like a snake and was already touching the engineer's body.

A swift, stealthy thrust whose beginning and end could not be perceived.

"Yawn."

Then the spear was violently knocked away.

Lord Baltsroy staggered back, his palm torn open. He looked down at his hand in disbelief, then opened his eyes wide and aimed his spear toward the direction the attack had come from.

"Who are you?!"

"Me, you bastard."

A presence appeared.

The veil of energy concealing him vanished, and he emerged as though a curtain had been drawn aside.

One of the military state's Six Generals, its foremost fighting force.

Partlaxion, the traitor knight who had killed more knights than anyone else, stood before the Resistance.

Footnotes:

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