WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 241

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The God Who Rode Down on Gears

I saw water flowing beneath the broken road. It was a waterway supplying the Inner Circle.

It wasn't very wide, but that didn't matter. A motor carriage couldn't jump it. In the middle of the chaos, the regressor shouted.

"The road split! What is this? I didn't sense anything strange...!"

"Leader! Orders!"

"You only call me leader at times like this...! Tch, wait!"

The regressor spun Jizan in her hand and slammed it into the floor of the motor carriage. The whole carriage shook violently, and Jizan pierced through the bottom to strike the ground. Krrrk, I heard steel scraping earth.

An unintended second brake had appeared, and the motor carriage went out of control. I clutched the wildly jerking steering handle and yelled.

"Aaaah! The carriage's going to break apart!"

"Emergency! Don't talk to me!"

With Jizan still planted in the ground, the regressor stirred it in a small circle. A tiny round ring bloomed from the sword tip. The ground rippled; as the heaviest sword in the world swayed smoothly, the earth swayed with it.

I slammed the pedal and shouted louder.

"Hold on, everyone! We're falling!!"

"We're not falling, we're rising!"

The regressor screamed back and released all the ground she'd been dragging in one burst.

Jigon Style, Ground Swell.

I glanced behind us and saw the road we'd crossed crumpled into a bizarre shape. Like bunching up a soft blanket with a long pole. Anyway, with the regressor's Jizan at its peak, the crumpled ground heaved upward all at once at her gesture.

At that moment, in the front of the motor carriage, the passenger seat and driver's seat, which had always seemed inseparable, suffered a permanent parting. The regressor's Jizan tore straight through the middle.

But I couldn't complain. Because of that swing, a temporary bridge rose over the broken span.

"Step on it...! Huh? You're already stepping on it?"

You should've said that sooner! If I couldn't read thoughts, I'd be slamming the brakes right now! Fine. You can feel some fear too.

"Oops! This was the accelerator, right?"

"Then what have you been doing this whole time besides driving?!"

"Accelerating! Anyway, Azzyyyyyyy!"

"Woof!"

Rrrrumble. The motor carriage, pushed to the limit, shrieked. Then it charged toward the improvised slope, preparing to leap while testing every limit it had.

The good news was that the regressor had split the front, so the wheels lifted a little.

The bad news was that splitting it had also bled our speed.

Boong. The motor carriage floated in a moment of weightlessness it would never feel again. For an instant, gravity seemed to disappear. The world felt agonizingly slow.

The motor carriage had been built on the assumption of a strong, systematic road network. When that premise collapsed, it fell apart pitifully, just like any other logic built on a broken assumption.

Before the jump, it had looked terrifyingly powerful. At its peak, it was pathetically slow. We were clearly going to nose-dive into the drainage canal before reaching the other side.

Before the regressor could pay the price to use another power, I screamed for another source of thrust.

"Azzy!! Push! Dog sled!!"

"Woof woof woof!"

Azzy, running after my call, kicked off the ground and leaped. Then, bang, she kicked the cargo bed hard.

Powered by a charging dog, the motor carriage gained dramatic acceleration. Crack, and with that sound, the truck shifted about a meter sideways in midair. My neck and lower back jolted like a badly made doll's.

But... we cleared the canal! I only turned my head to look back at Azzy, who'd made this feat possible.

"Woof?"

After spending all her strength pushing the motor carriage, Azzy flailed in midair with nowhere to step. Our eyes met as she started to fall. The way she paddled at empty air was pitiful.

"Farewell, stepping stone...."

"Meeeeeong!"

Azzy dropped straight into the canal. Still, she'd probably pop back out soon enough.

Right now, we were the real problem.

"Landing!"

I shouted and ducked into the shadow below the driver's seat.

Hiding in a cramped spot right before impact is stupid. Unless there's a vampire nearby who can control darkness.

As I shoved myself into the shade where sunlight couldn't reach, soft darkness wrapped around me.

That wasn't a figure of speech. This darkness was literally soft.

Crunch.

My body jolted with the landing, but there was only slight dizziness. None of the impact that should have followed came.

The darkness cradling me whispered in my ear.

[What a brutal way to do things. Hyu, did we truly have to drop like this?]

"We're expecting a long fight. Better this than using darkness in broad daylight. The cargo bed's fine, right?"

[Do not worry. Within darkness is my domain. Not a hair on them was harmed.]

Nabi and Siati in the cargo bed seemed fine. I nodded and stood again.

[But what happened? Did the road suddenly break off?]

"Rather than breaking off, it was cut."

[By whom?]

I didn't need to answer. The regressor answered for me.

"Halberdier!!"

About 2.4 kilometers away, in a space even my mind reading could barely sense, someone in a monocle was watching us. I couldn't see him clearly. But the regressor's Seven-Colored Eyes could.

Maker of all weapons, designer of all armaments. A monster of understanding. A creator.

The alchemist closest to the Philosopher's Stone. The King of Gears.

Halberdier, Maximilien.

He looked like an innocent child, but he twisted his lips in a smile and silently mouthed words to the regressor staring at him.

'Level 1, pass.'

The regressor flared at that testing smile. She stepped onto the motor carriage and shouted.

"That bastard...! A trap!"

"A trap? You mean he cut the bridge in advance?"

"No! He...! He saw us from that distance and cut it then!"

How he could cut a bridge here from that far away was answered immediately.

"With gears installed in this ground!"

Clack. Clack.

Maybe awareness affects perception. The moment the regressor said it, I heard metal teeth meshing near my ears. No, I had already been hearing it.

It's just that the noise was everywhere, as if tens of millions of ants were scraping at once, so it hadn't stood out clearly.

Before we realized it, we'd arrived on ground made of gears.

The military state was a fragile nation founded through civil war. To save this newborn country, the hero who led the coup, the military state's greatest commander, gathered talent from all over the world.

Peerless Spear and War Mage had been key figures since the kingdom era, and Gunslinger was a pure military-state native. Those three of the Six Generals were homegrown.

In contrast, the latter three Six Generals were outsiders from foreign lands.

Halberdier, Maximilien.
Yeonggwe, Zikhrund.
Heavenlink, Eimeder.

The Six Generals shrouded in mystery, people barely knew who they were, why they came, or what powers they had.

But after living in the military state for twenty-five years, rumors were inevitable. If you inferred from what they'd done there, you could roughly guess their abilities.

Halberdier Maximilien was the director of the Military State Weapons Development Bureau.

A master of standard spellcraft, an energy practitioner who had grasped principle, and an alchemist who had reached the highest realm.

Because weapons and equipment he made were everywhere on the market, anyone in the military state had seen his name at least once on a tool they used and marveled at its complexity.

The one who makes all things. His ability was...

"Gears! As long as a gear doesn't break, he can turn it! No matter what!!"

"What do you mean, no matter what?!"

"Exactly what it sounds like! No matter how massive the thing on the other side is, it'll mesh and turn! As long as the teeth don't break!"

Say you have a tiny gear the size of your palm. Mesh it with a few others, then stack progressively larger gears, and just by turning that tiny gear you can cause huge changes, like moving a giant's arm...

That story only works under childish assumptions: no friction, and gear teeth that are both light and strong.

But someone existed who could make about half those childish assumptions real.

Halberdier Maximilien could turn gears right up to the instant their teeth snapped. So the sturdier the gear, the higher its alchemic level, and the stronger the force it produced.

And Halberdier was the military state's best alchemist. In the field of gears alone, he might even have been the best in the world.

A simple, one-dimensional force. The ability to turn a round steel wheel with ridged teeth, vague enough to make you question whether it even counted as principle.

But when that was backed by his talent as an alchemist and his understanding as a master designer...

'If this were just a combat ability, maybe...! But he solves everything with gears, so I don't even know what form he'll take this loop!'

He could make anything with gears.

Kkiiiik. Beneath the metallic noise of finely engineered gears, I heard a dissonant sound, like something being dragged by brute force.

The regressor sensed it. At the same moment, I sensed danger too and moved the steering handle.

"Watch out!"

But we were already too late. The moment I started to understand, the change that began from his gear passed through dozens of gears and steel rods, ending with something bursting up from beneath the road under us. I wrenched the steering handle, but our movement was off because the regressor had damaged it earlier.

Then again, what was the point of me reacting? The motor carriage couldn't.

Crack.

The front wheel was crushed outright by an instant barricade rising from below. If I compared it to a person, it was a perfect uppercut. The motor carriage took it clean and lurched hard.

The one lucky part was that the regressor had already split it in half, reducing the force. Pull a rag, and it tears; it doesn't drag the whole body with it.

Whew, thank...

"It's too early to relax, Hui."

I turned toward the voice beside me. Unlike me, on the verge of death, Historia and the Princess rode calmly past us on Selphy.

Historia and the Princess on the white horse hadn't had as much trouble as we did. The drainage canal was too narrow to call a river. Once Selphy reached the edge, she lightly hopped over it and then trotted to catch up with us.

Unlike a motor carriage, a horse could jump!

"A horse really has it easy! My carefully driven motor carriage is literally on a thorny road, and that horse is totally relaxed!"

Historia's arms were tied, so she looked like she might slip off any second, but she rode with exquisite balance. Maybe this was nothing to a martial master of her level.

Even on a violently shaking horse, Historia seemed more worried about me.

"...I told you. Hui, the dark side of the military state would be gloomier and stronger than this."

"I'm feeling that right now!"

"Halberdier... Director Maximilien's hobby and specialty is fitting things together with gears. Inside his domain, even Uncle Patraxion has trouble predicting the outcome. Outside it isn't easy either."

"No, stop telling me what everyone knows! Give me a solution!"

'It's fine. It's still fine. You don't earn a Six Generals seat for nothing. At this level... there is still room to negotiate.'

What do you mean, room to negotiate, all by yourself? Look at your own situation first. You're following us with both arms tied up. If you want to negotiate, do it with us first, not the military state.

"If mediation is needed-"

"If you don't speak right now, when we leave this country I'll spread it everywhere that the mysterious perverted female master who fought while tied up was actually you."

At my stern warning, Historia's mouth snapped shut. That alone wasn't quite enough to rattle her, but luckily my ally was nearby.

"Wha? Pe, pervert? Hey! Take that back! Gunslinger-nim isn't a pervert! She fought for us!"

"Fighting with only your legs while both arms are tied is perverted enough as a stunt."

"What do you mean, stunt! It was so cool! That upright posture, those long flexible legs! That incredible balance! If you knew even a little martial arts, you'd be impressed too!"

"I don't know martial arts, but her shamelessness is impressive. Looking like that and still so proud. Is that rope a mask or something?"

"Both of you, stop."

The Princess spoke heatedly, but words without malice sink the deepest. The liquid that seeps deepest into the body is clear, clean water. Historia couldn't hold out any longer and surrendered.

"...It's simple. The easy way is to get out of the gears' range of influence, and the hard way is to break the gears themselves."

"Oh!... no, wait, isn't that obvious? Run or break? That's your advice?"

"No matter how skilled Director Maximilien is, he can't easily transmute level 5 alchemic steel. Even level 4 needs prepared materials, and alchemic steel made at the fingertips is mostly level 3."

"Level 3 alchemic steel is still steel! More than enough to crush people!!"

While we wasted time on barely useful advice, doomsday arrived. The rattling thunderwheel of the motor carriage let out its final death cry.

One of the Seven Great Inventions of the military state: the self-rotating thunderwheel. In a water-starved nation, they commercialized it through sheer desperation, even at the cost of angering the Sanctum.

It stored the power of lightning and spun on its own, fixed in the center of the motor carriage, driving the front and rear wheels at once. One thunderwheel powered the entire carriage.

Anyway, the thunderwheel, which had somehow kept spinning despite all the damage so far, finally fell silent from the diagonal impact rising from below.

The motor carriage moved forward on inertia alone now. But I could tell it was slowing, because Selphy was gradually overtaking me.

As if she'd just remembered, Historia added,

"Ah, and the motor carriage was made by the Director too. If he did something, the motor carriage might have broken."

"The most useful thing you've said today, at the most useless timing possible?! You're a spy too!"

Spy or not, she was one of the Six Generals from the start.

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