WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 245: Steel Has No Eyes

──────

Maximilien was a master alchemist.

He could freely refine alchemical materials of level three or lower. Once an alchemizable substance touched his fingertips, mana would seep inside, instantly break down its structure, and reconstruct it however he wished.

That alone was not particularly remarkable. The scale and speed of alchemy were purely a matter of handling mana. With only the most basic foundational knowledge, alchemy was an honest, boring technique that reacted according to the mana poured into it. It could not even transmute objects imbued with someone else's qi or mana. How powerless was that?

But Maximilien's alchemy was special. It came from a talent separate from his mana reserves or physical strength.

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

All of that combined made him the kind of great man who could build a castle alone on bare ground.

"Tch. What terrible naming sense...!"

The regressor gripped Jizan and lunged forward to knock aside the rampaging gear. Her honed instincts, however, sensed danger.

Something was falling.

The regressor looked up. A huge shadow stretched over her.

"A steel arm?"

Tiny gears crawled over Maximilien's body like diligent ants. Some were as small as ants, while others were as large as a human head. Gears emerging from all over his body clicked together, forming a gigantic, grotesque arm.

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

Gears of every kind fit together with exquisite precision to form a single shape. It possessed an odd sculptural beauty, like a human body imitated with gears.

The shoulder gear turned. Tick, tick, tick. The rusty shoulder screamed, and a massive mechanical pillar nearly three meters long moved as though it were a human arm.

It was a mechanical arm with rugged beauty. From it came the sound of waves crashing across a sea full of iron nails. Even its metallic foam had none of the usual clamor. The sound itself was heavy and solemn.

Raising the steel arm, Maximilien shouted with delight.

"Dragon-Slaying Slash, was it? How refreshing! You've given me good inspiration! Let me try it out!"

The gears turned, and the steel arm came down on the regressor. A gigantic saw blade dropped over her head.

"Dragon-Slaying Slash is completely different from that!"

The regressor swung Jizan upward to meet the enormous steel arm fitted with a saw blade. It looked like the reckless attempt to block a wave with a stick, but Jizan was a stick capable of doing exactly that.

The impacts collided. Shattered gears rained over the regressor's body, while the steel arm knocked away by Jizan shook Maximilien's entire body. With a deafening crash between them, both sides stepped back.

Changing the shape of his steel arm, Maximilien shouted.

"The Demon God's power! Good. Very good!"

"I hate it!"

"Let us stake our lives and engage!"

"You can stake your life alone! I have no intention of dying to you!"

The regressor shouted back, gripping Jizan. Behind her, the Steel Newborn Maximilien had created rolled past. The sound of it scraping along the ground was deeply menacing. At this rate, that steel wheel fitted with saw blades would attack the motor carriage.

For a brief moment, the regressor hesitated.

'I don't have the breathing room to deal with a madman's toy! Right, trust my companions! A toy like that can't even scratch them!'

Huh? Trust us?

I appreciated that, but...

The regressor's trust appeared in the form of a massive steel gear rolling violently toward me and the motor carriage.

"Wow. What's that?"

The steel wheel, glowing red from friction against the road, rolled toward us as if it meant to crush the world. Its overwhelming presence stirred primal fear and strengthened my urge to flee.

The regressor's trust wasn't just heavy. It was terrifying. If this was how it was going to be, please don't trust me.

I checked the motor carriage's condition. The front had been horribly smashed after the regressor forced it forward and wrecked it earlier.

Fortunately, the motor carriage had been designed for combat, so it could still move as long as its power source remained intact, even if its front was destroyed. Tyr was providing that power source right now.

In other words, it would not run dry.

"It shouldn't break if we add one more thing here."

I muttered and twisted the controls.

Straight toward the steel gear approaching us.

"Hui?! That's dangerous!"

Historia, who was riding in the motor carriage, cried out in a shrill voice. I ignored her and pushed forward. The steel gear scraped repeatedly against the front of the motor carriage. Alchemical steel struck alchemical steel in rapid succession.

Still, the motor carriage only suffered minor damage and easily withstood the steel gear's attack.

"It's fine. Alchemical steel strengthened by Tyr's power is roughly level four. Improvised level-three alchemical steel can't even scratch it. It'd take something like an Azzy Missile to break it. Like that one over there."

"Woof!"

Azzy was blocking another steel gear with an Azzy Missile. She sprinted over and slammed into its side with a bang, making the steel gear that looked ready to swallow the world wobble helplessly from side to side. Azzy puffed out her chest proudly, as though she had protected us perfectly.

"Rotation is power in itself. A wheel spinning that powerfully has more inertia than its weight suggests. It's far easier to stop it head-on than knock it aside."

"Woof?!"

Azzy, who had not understood the power of rotation, panicked when she saw the gear maintaining its balance despite wobbling.

She panicked enough to plant her front paws on the ground, spin around, and use a spinning back kick with her hind legs. Even the rotating gear could not withstand Azzy's sincere strength, the strength of all four paws. It crumpled miserably and flew into the air.

See? When your body is strong, your mind can take it easy.

"Well, the same goes for this side. Tyr, can you hold out?"

[There is no problem. Still, a wheel that rolls by itself. What a rather unique object. I cannot imagine what it is used for.]

"Crushing us."

[Ho. I see.]

Screeeech.

It should have been a collision that severely damaged both the motor carriage and the gear. Yet the one-Tyrpower motor carriage, its body strengthened by an Authority and powered by a vampire, kept moving forward without caring about the impact.

The saw blade reached between the driver's and passenger's seats, but failed to tear through any further and fell silent.

The exhausted gear became an ornament lodged in the front of the motor carriage. It had sunk in so deeply that the steering controls no longer worked. The already damaged front axle seemed to have been completely crushed now.

Hmm. The front wheels were already ruined anyway. Maybe I should fix it up a little.

"All right. Historia! Come over here for a moment and pull the steering wheel out."

"...Wait! Hold on!"

The best way to make someone else take the wheel was for me to let go of it. Someone had to drive, so if I abandoned that duty, somebody else would have to take it.

The moment I let go and stepped out, Historia slid into the driver's seat to fill the empty spot.

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

"It's fine. Someone besides me will hold it. You, for example."

"You're so reckless...!"

"Oh, and the steering wheel is broken, so I'm trying to fix it quickly. Could you pull it out for me?"

"You're going to fix the steering while we're moving? When it's this badly broken?"

Historia was doubtful, but she obediently did as I asked. She crossed both legs around the steering column, straightened her knees, and pulled it out in one motion. The front wheels, having lost control, rattled madly.

While she did that, I pulled out a skewer and headed toward where the rotating saw blade was lodged.

The structure was not terribly complicated. Maximilien was a master gear craftsman, and he understood the truth that simpler structures had better durability and utility. Whether he liked that truth or not was another matter.

"I can work with this."

I inserted the skewer into a seam between the gears. They said the eye of a storm was calm, but that calm held an unmoving presence filled with immense force. The skewer shook like a sailboat adrift in a storm.

"That gear was made by Director Maximilien. Even you can't understand its structure in such a short time..."

I wouldn't have been able to, if I had encountered this device on bare ground with no one around.

But this gear had been made by Maximilien. He had created this structure in an instant while refining the gears.

Since I had read his thoughts, I knew a little about its structure too. I didn't have enough mana to recreate it from scratch right now, but I could modify something that already existed.

"Rialke."

Mana flowed into it, and the structure collapsed. I forced the skewer into the gaps as though shaping it. I removed several gears and inserted the power unit into the center of the broken axle. The dimensions did not match, so it sat crookedly.

But Combat Alchemy was the art of forcefully adjusting tiny mismatches that refused to engage. I gathered up my saved mana and forged it. I wasn't creating something from bare ground, only modifying what was already there, but my mana was drained completely.

It must be nice to have lots of mana. Grumbling inwardly, I shoved the broken axle into place. Clunk. It engaged.

It was only a temporary measure, but now the motor carriage had taken on the dream-filled appearance of having a huge saw blade in place of its front wheels.

Historia frowned, reinserted the steering controls, and turned them. The saw blade changed direction from side to side with the movement. Historia muttered in disbelief.

"...Combat Alchemy. But you can't use it unless you know the structure."

"The structure is surprisingly simple. It only looks complicated because there are lots of useless gears in it. As long as you have enough power, it'll turn somehow. Even if the efficiency is only ten percent, all you need is enough force."

And this motor carriage was now powered by a Tyr engine.

The saw blade began to spin again. This time, it faced them instead of us. Gears had no eyes, so it could not tell its creator apart. It would only operate.

"So what are you going to do after attaching that saw blade? Ram someone with it?"

"Wow, that's a really good plan, Historia! I never thought of that!"

"What?"

She had meant it sarcastically, but Historia had landed on the perfect answer.

I intended to hit Maximilien with it.

"The Director has wheels on his feet. He's faster than the motor carriage. We can't catch him."

"Then we'll increase the output."

Unlike other power sources, ours produced more power the more you urged it on.

"Tyr! It's about time we moved on to the next stage! Spin it faster!"

[Faster? But Hui, no matter how much force I use, I am turning this by gripping it with my hands. As long as my body has human flesh, it cannot move any faster than this.]

True. Being strong did not necessarily mean being fast. Tyr's strength was only effective within her body, and perhaps because of that, she was not very fast.

To move quickly, you had to explode your energy and push your body forward, or grip the ground and pull yourself along. Just as you could not stand on yourself and jump, Tyr could not reach tremendous speed with her thin, short limbs, no matter how strong she was. Structurally, it was inefficient.

We had ridden the motor carriage in the first place to overcome Tyr's slow movement speed and the racial problem of the midday sun.

Still, there was more to do. This was not the motor carriage's limit. Look at Maximilien. He was turning the gears spread across his entire body at will, keeping up with the regressor's quick movements.

The gears did not simply turn and transfer force. Every one of them had its own power and moved on its own, letting him move far faster than his original speed.

"The same goes for us! Tyr! If this motor carriage is a body, every single one of those gears is no different from a muscle! Just like you move by letting blood seep into your muscles, grab them and move them!"

[Ah. I understand now. Let me try.]

The moment I heard Tyr's answer, darkness seeped into the body of the motor carriage.

Until now, Tyr had not understood this structure, so she had only strengthened the carriage's body. The thought of moving it with her Authority had never even occurred to her. Well, I couldn't say much. I hadn't fully understood it back then either.

But things were different now that I could read Maximilien's thoughts.

"And spin all of them! From the central axle to the edges of the wheels! All at once!"

[Servants of darkness, I command you.]

A murky aura wafted from within the motor carriage. It accelerated sharply. The headwind struck my forehead in the front seat with greater force.

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

"Historia! You're the one holding the wheel! It's time to decide who we're going to ram!"

"...Hui, do we really have to go this far? If we attack him, there'll be no turning back."

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

The regressor and Maximilien drew closer as they busily traded blows. The motor carriage under the vampire's control charged forward with far more terrifying momentum than before, a vicious rotating steel saw blade fixed to its front.

Historia gritted her teeth.

"...You, Siati, all of you just keep pushing to the very end... You're determined to settle things somehow! Why don't you know when to stop at the right moment...!"

"Didn't you know? People only throw themselves in harder when someone's trying to stop them!"

We were right on top of them now. There was no more time to hesitate. If she did not turn, we would hit them both.

After hesitating, Historia sharply turned the wheel.

Toward Maximilien.

'The Director will definitely kill Hui and Siati. But Cutie won't, at least... If I have to stand on my own two feet, there is no other choice.'

The rotating saw blade hanging in place of the front wheels surged ahead with horrifying momentum. In the middle of his clash with the regressor, Maximilien's eyes widened when he spotted the suddenly approaching saw blade.

"M-My Steel Newborn... is coming for me?!"

"Hah! How does it feel to have the gear you were so proud of stolen?"

Maximilien tried to move out of its path. The regressor, who had been facing him at close range, did not miss that chance.

"Where are you running, you hunk of metal?!"

The regressor drove Jizan into the ground.

Earth Sword Style, Magnetic Sword.

The earth was the largest magnet in the world. It could seize and shake even things approaching the speed of light. Jizan, the sword of the earth, possessed that same nature.

Gears that had fallen to the ground, metal powder produced by the collision, and fragments of alchemical steel floated toward Jizan. Metallic debris drifted around it as though loose threads connected its hilt and tip.

The regressor extended magnetic force and bound Maximilien. The gears attached all over his body reacted to the pull and were dragged toward Jizan.

"Stop right there!"

A force that bound his entire body in an instant. Caught because of his gears, Maximilien could not escape in time. The motor carriage fitted with the steel saw blade slammed into his rigid body.

The rotating saw blade rammed into his shoulder and chest. A heavy impact struck the front of the carriage, and torn scraps of clothing scattered through the air.

I clenched my fist and shouted.

"Did we get him?"

Not even close. The saw blade was still spinning, yet Maximilien continued moving just fine while it ground against him.

The gears added to Maximilien's body must have been level-four, no, nearly level-five alchemical steel as well.

"Uuuugh...! Rialke...!"

Amazingly, Maximilien did not fall even after being hit by the motor carriage. Whatever its strength, the motor carriage had far less mass. Yet a Six-Star General had the ability to withstand even its charge.

Even as he was dragged along by the motor carriage, he released mana from all over his body at the moment of impact. Whenever the saw blade struck him, the mana that seeped in broke the gears apart into tiny pieces that fell to the ground.

Historia muttered as though she had expected it.

"Director Maximilien is called the god of gears... An attack with a gear like this was never going to work."

Maximilien panted. Every time he breathed, the golden gears visible through his torn clothing turned with an irritating sound.

Tick, tick, tick.

The gears slowed for a moment. Once he had roughly grasped the situation, he raised his head with blazing eyes. Excited beyond measure, Maximilien looked over the thing that had attacked him and the people controlling it. Then his face twisted.

"How dare you...! Modify my gears as you please and use them to attack me...!"

I did not know how he had figured it out, but his lenses pointed directly at me. Sensing danger, Historia lowered her voice and whispered.

"Hui, get behind me."

'The Director hates it when someone beneath him, someone with no power or authority, interferes of their own will rather than delivering an order. No, he does not even acknowledge that those beneath him can have a will of their own. If he attacks Hui... I will have to stop him.'

Even without that, the fight against the regressor had been difficult for Maximilien. Jizan was much heavier than all of his gears combined, and the strength he prided himself on was useless before Jizan. If not for his ingenuity in creating whatever he needed at the moment, Maximilien would have fallen long ago.

He had been interrupted in the middle of a tense fight that inspired him. Naturally, Historia thought he would be furious.

But she had something wrong.

This madman was someone who tried to imitate even reason with gears. I could not read him perfectly either, but as long as I fit the situation into that formula...

"My gears...! You disassembled every single one, then attached them to this cheap motor carriage...!"

Growling as he retraced what had happened, Maximilien gave me a wide smile.

"Remarkable! Truly remarkable!"

He was acknowledging me.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried