WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 245

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Steel Has No Eyes

Maximilien was a master alchemist.

He could freely transmute alchemic materials of level three and below. If his fingertips so much as brushed a transmutable substance, the mana he sent into it instantly collapsed its structure, then rewove it into whatever he wanted.

By itself, that was nothing remarkable. Alchemy’s scale and speed were purely a matter of mana control. As long as you had the minimum fundamentals, alchemy was a straightforward, boring skill that responded only as much as the mana you poured in. And since you could not transmute objects infused with someone else’s energy or mana, it was even more limited.

But Maximilien’s alchemy was special. It came from a talent separate from mana capacity or physical strength.

A perspective that saw the world as a collection of gears. The intellect to build that view from the ground up. The will to imitate everything, even reason itself, with gears.

All of that fused into one being: a man great enough to raise a castle by himself from bare ground.

"Tch. Your naming sense sucks...!"

The regressor gripped Jizan and lunged forward. She meant to knock away the rampaging gears, but her trained instincts sensed danger.

Something was falling.

She looked up. A massive shadow spread over her.

"An arm of steel?"

Tiny gears crawled all over Maximilien’s body like diligent ants. Some were ant-sized, some as big as a human head. Gears pouring out from his whole body clicked together and formed a gigantic, grotesque arm.

Gears as muscles, gears as joints, gears as bones.

All kinds of gears assembled with uncanny precision into a single form. It carried that eerie beauty of a human body imitated in gearwork.

A shoulder gear spun. Tick, tick, tick. The rusted shoulder screamed, and a giant mechanical pillar nearly three meters long moved like a human limb.

A crude but striking machine arm. From it came the kind of metallic roar you might hear if waves crashed across a sea of iron spikes. Even the metallic foam held no chaos. The sound itself was heavy and stately.

Raising that steel arm, Maximilien cried out in delight.

"Dragon-Slaying Slash, was it? Fresh. Very fresh. I got good inspiration from it. Let me test it out!"

Gears spun, and the arm of steel slammed down at the regressor. A giant saw blade dropped over her head.

"Dragon-Slaying Slash is nothing like that!"

Facing that huge steel arm tipped with a saw, the regressor swung Jizan up to meet it. It looked as reckless as trying to stop a wave with a stick, but Jizan was the kind of stick that could do it.

Impact swallowed both sides. Shattered gears rained over the regressor, and the steel arm that bounced off Jizan shook Maximilien’s whole body. With a thunderous roar between them, both took one step back.

Maximilien changed the shape of the steel arm and said,

"The power of the Demon God! Excellent. Truly excellent!"

"I hate it!"

"Let us stake our lives and mesh together!"

"Stake your own life alone! I have no intention of dying to you!"

The regressor shouted back and tightened her grip on Jizan. Behind her, Maximilien’s Steel Newborn rushed past. Its scrape across the ground sounded ominous. At this rate, that steel saw wheel would hit the motor carriage.

In that brief instant, the regressor hesitated.

'I don’t have room to deal with toys made by the Halberdier! Right, trust my comrades! A toy like this can’t even scratch them!'

Huh? You trust us?

I appreciated that, but still.

The regressor’s trust came rolling toward me and the motor carriage in the form of a giant steel gear wheel.

"Whoa. What is that."

The steel wheel, red-hot from friction against the road, rolled in as if it meant to grind the world flat. Its overwhelming presence hit something primal in me and filled me with the urge to run.

The regressor’s trust was so heavy it was terrifying. If this was trust, then don’t trust me.

I checked the carriage’s condition. Thanks to the regressor wrecking it earlier while forcing it forward, the front section was a mess.

Luckily, this motor carriage had been built for combat, so it could keep moving as long as the power source stayed intact, even if the front got smashed. Tyr was supplying that power right now. In other words, it would not run dry.

"It won’t break just because we add one more thing."

Muttering that, I twisted the steering control.

Straight toward the steel gear charging at us.

"Hui?! That’s dangerous!"

Historia, riding in the carriage, shrieked at me, but I ignored her and pushed ahead. The steel gear wheel scraped across the carriage’s front again and again. Tatatatang, alchemic steel clanged against alchemic steel in rapid bursts.

But the motor carriage took only minor damage and easily endured the steel gear’s assault.

"It’s fine. Alchemic steel reinforced with Tyr’s power is roughly level four. A rushed level-three alchemic steel piece can’t even scratch it. You’d need something like an Azzy missile to break it. Like over there."

"Bark!"

Another steel gear wheel was already being stopped by an Azzy missile. Azzy dashed in and slammed its side with a heavy blow, and even that world-crushing wheel staggered helplessly left and right. Azzy puffed her chest out proudly, like she had protected us perfectly.

"Rotation is power in itself. A wheel spinning that hard carries inertia beyond its weight. It’s much easier to stop from the front than to knock aside from the side."

"Bark?!"

Azzy, who hadn’t known about rotational force, panicked when she saw the wheel still balancing even while wobbling.

Panicked enough to plant her front paws, twist her body, and throw a spinning back kick with her hind legs. Even a spinning gear wheel couldn’t withstand Azzy going all out with all four legs, and it crumpled badly before flying into the air.

See? If your body is good enough, your brain can take it easy.

"Well, same here. Tyr, can you hold out?"

[No problem. Though, a wheel rolling on its own... that is quite unique. I cannot imagine what such a thing is used for.]

"For crushing us."

[Ho. I see.]

Kiiiiik.

A battle between carriage and gear wheel. Normally, a collision like this should have dealt severe damage to both sides, but this one-Tyr-power motor carriage, with a body reinforced by authority and a vampire for an engine, kept advancing without caring about the impacts.

The saw blade pushed all the way between the driver and passenger seats, then fell silent after failing to break farther.

Spent, the wheel became an ornament embedded in the carriage’s front. But it was wedged too deep, and the handle no longer responded. The front wheel area, already at its limit, seemed completely crushed now.

Hmm. The front wheel was already wrecked anyway, so maybe I should tweak this a little.

"Good. Historia, come here for a second and grab the handle, then pull it out."

"...Wait! Hold on!"

The best way to make someone else take the wheel was to let go of it myself. The world needed one person driving, so if I abandoned that duty, someone else would have to take it.

The moment I let go and stepped out, Historia panicked and slid into the driver’s seat to fill the gap.

"Hey! How can you let go of the wheel like that?!"

"It’s fine. Someone else will grab it. Like you."

"You really do whatever you want...!"

"Oh, and the steering is broken right now, so I’m fixing it fast. Can you yank that out for me?"

"You’re going to fix the steering while we’re moving? In this wrecked state?"

Historia looked doubtful, but she still did as I asked. She crossed her legs around the steering column, then straightened her knees and ripped it out in one pull. The front wheel, now out of control, rattled like crazy.

Meanwhile, I pulled out my skewer and headed for where the spinning saw blade was lodged.

The structure wasn’t all that complex. Maximilien was a master of gearcraft, and he understood the truth that simpler designs gave better durability and utility. Whether you liked that or not was another matter.

"This is workable."

I wedged the skewer into a seam between gears. They said the eye of a storm was calm, but that calm was the stillness of power packed to the brim. The skewer shook like a sailboat tossed in a tempest.

"That gear wheel was made by Director Maximilien. Even you couldn’t understand its structure in such a short..."

You’d be right if we had found this thing on empty ground.

But this wheel was made by Maximilien himself. He had transmuted those gears and assembled this structure in one burst.

Thanks to that, I had picked up some of the structure while reading his thoughts. I couldn’t recreate it from scratch right now because I lacked mana volume, but I could rework what already existed.

"Rialke."

When I infused mana, the structure collapsed. I shoved the skewer in while reshaping it. I removed a few gears and jammed the power unit into the middle of the broken axle. The specs didn’t match, so it slipped out of alignment.

But forcing tiny mismatches into place through brute adjustment was Combat Alchemy. I gathered the mana I had preserved and forged it. I wasn’t creating from bare ground, only processing what was already here, but my mana still drained almost completely.

Lucky bastards with huge mana pools. Grumbling, I rammed the broken shaft in hard. Clunk, something locked into place.

It was only a temporary fix, but now the motor carriage had that dream machine look, with a giant rotating saw at the front instead of a wheel.

Historia frowned, reattached the handle, and twisted it. The saw blade shifted left and right with it. She muttered in disbelief.

"...Combat Alchemy. But without knowing the structure, you shouldn’t be able to use it."

"The structure is simpler than it looks. It only seems complicated because he stuffed in too many pointless gears. If the power source is strong enough, things run one way or another. Even ten percent efficiency works if the force is big enough."

And this motor carriage was currently running on a Tyr engine.

The saw blade spun again. This time it faced them, not us. Gears had no eyes, so they couldn’t distinguish their maker from anyone else. They only operated.

"So what are you planning to do with that saw? Ram someone with it?"

"Wow, that’s a great plan, Historia! I didn’t know that was an option!"

"What?"

She had meant it as sarcasm, but Historia had landed exactly on the right answer.

I was planning to hit Maximilien with this.

"A director with wheels on his feet is faster than a motor carriage. We can’t catch him."

"Then we increase output."

Unlike other power sources, ours got stronger the more you pushed it.

"Tyr! Time to move to phase two! Spin it faster now!"

[...Faster? But Hyu, no matter how much force I add, this is still turned by my own hands. As long as my body is human flesh, I cannot go faster than this.]

Fair point. Being strong wasn’t the same as being fast. Tyr’s power only worked inside her body, and maybe because of that, her movement speed wasn’t great.

To move fast, you had to explode energy to propel yourself, or grip the ground and pull. You couldn’t jump off yourself. No matter how strong Tyr was, those short, slender limbs couldn’t generate insane speed. Structurally inefficient.

In the first place, we had taken this motor carriage to overcome Tyr’s slow movement and the racial issue of the noon sun.

Still, there was one more thing to do. This wasn’t the carriage’s limit. Look at Maximilien. He rotated the gears spread across his whole body at will and kept up with the regressor’s rapid movements.

His gears did more than transmit force as they spun. Each one moved on its own with its own force, letting him move far faster than his original speed.

"Same goes for us! Tyr! If this carriage is a body, then those gears are no different from muscles! Move them like blood seeping into muscle and making it move. Grab each one and drive them!"

[Ohh. I see it now. I will try.]

The moment Tyr answered, darkness seeped into the carriage body.

Until now, Tyr had only reinforced the frame. She didn’t understand this structure and had never even considered moving it through authority. Well, I couldn’t talk. I hadn’t fully understood it then either.

But now was different. I was reading Maximilien’s thoughts.

"And spin all of it! From the central shaft to the wheel edges! Everything at once!"

[Thralls of darkness, I command you.]

A dim aura spread through the chassis. The motor carriage accelerated sharply. The headwind against my forehead in the front seat grew stronger.

I narrowed my eyes and aimed at Maximilien ahead. He was just about to clash with the regressor for the fifth time.

"Historia! You’re the one holding the wheel! Time to choose who we ram!"

"...Hui, do we really have to go this far? If we attack now, there’s no taking it back."

"It’s already too late anyway! You have to choose. If you don’t, we’ll just fight however we want and die!"

The regressor and Maximilien, both locked in battle, drew closer and closer. The motor carriage under vampire control charged in with far more terrifying momentum than before. With a vicious spinning steel saw mounted up front, no less.

Historia ground her teeth.

"...You and Siati. All of you, you only ever push to the end... You always try to settle everything no matter what. Why don’t you know how to stop at the right moment...?!"

"Didn’t you know? People throw themselves in harder when someone tries to stop them!"

Now we were right on top of them. There was no time left to hesitate. If she didn’t turn, we’d hit both.

After agonizing, Historia finally jerked the wheel hard.

The direction was... toward Maximilien.

'The director will absolutely kill Hui and Siati. But cutie at least won’t do that... as long as she can still stand on two feet. There’s no... other choice.'

The spinning saw hanging where the front wheel should have been surged forward with vicious force. In the middle of clashing with the regressor, Maximilien spotted the sudden incoming blade, and his eyes widened.

"M-my Steel Newborn... at me?!"

"Heh! How does it feel getting your precious gears stolen?"

Maximilien tried to dodge out of its path. But the regressor, who had been in that razor-thin standoff with him, didn’t miss the chance.

"Where do you think you’re running, you hunk of metal!"

She drove Jizan into the ground.

Jigon Style, Magnetite Blade.

The earth was the largest magnet in the world, gripping and shaking even things close to light. Jizan, the earth sword, had that same nature.

Gears fallen on the ground, iron dust from collisions, shards of alchemic steel, all lifted around Jizan. Metallic debris floated near it like loose threads connecting hilt to tip.

The regressor sent magnetism out and bound Maximilien. The gears covering his whole body reacted and were dragged with it.

"Stop right there!"

In one instant, a force bound his entire body. Caught by his own gears, Maximilien failed to break free in time. The motor carriage carrying the steel saw slammed into his rigid frame.

The spinning saw rammed his shoulder and chest. Thud, I felt a heavy impact through the front of the carriage, and torn strips of clothing scattered into the air.

I clenched my fist and shouted.

"Did we get him?"

Not even close. The saw was still spinning, and Maximilien was still moving normally while being ground by it.

Looks like the gears attached to Maximilien’s body were also made of level four... no, nearly level five alchemic steel.

"Uuuugh... Rialke...!"

Incredibly, Maximilien didn’t fall even after taking a direct hit from the motor carriage. Whatever its material strength, its mass was far lighter, yet one of the Six Generals could endure even that charge.

Even while being dragged by the carriage, he blasted mana through his whole body at the moment of impact. As the saw blade struck him again and again, that infiltrating mana finely disassembled the gears and dropped them to the ground.

Historia said, as if she had expected it,

"Director Maximilien is called the god of gears... no way a gear attack like this would work on him."

Maximilien panted harshly. Every breath turned the golden gears visible through his torn clothes with an irritating noise.

Tick, tick, tick.

The gears quieted for a moment. After roughly grasping what had happened, he raised his head with blazing eyes. Fully worked up, Maximilien checked what had attacked him and who was controlling it. Then his expression twisted.

"How dare you...! You modified my gears as you pleased and used them to attack me...!"

I had no idea how, but his lens aimed right at me with perfect accuracy. Feeling a chill, Historia lowered her voice and whispered.

"Hui, get behind me."

'The director hates it when a low-rank nobody with no power or authority interferes by their own will instead of just relaying orders. No, he doesn’t even acknowledge that subordinates can have a will of their own. If he attacks Hui... I’ll have to block it.'

His fight with the regressor had already been hard on Maximilien. Jizan was far heavier than all his gears put together, and even the strength he was proud of was useless before Jizan. Without the wit to create whatever he needed on the fly, he would have gone down long ago.

So Historia believed he was obviously enraged because someone had interrupted that tense battle that had been feeding his inspiration.

But she had one thing wrong.

This madman was the kind of being who tried to imitate even reason with gears. I couldn’t read him perfectly either, but as long as I fit him into that formula.

"My gears...! Taken apart one by one and grafted onto this cheap motor carriage...!!"

Growling as he replayed what had happened, Maximilien flashed me a broad grin.

"Magnificent! Truly magnificent!"

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