WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 253

──────

The Land of Steel and the Faceless Humans - 2

In the military state, no one was allowed to commit a crime. Not ordinary citizens, not high-ranking officers, not even the owner of a landholding company.

If someone used power and status to satisfy personal greed, if someone who was not the military state itself still bled citizens dry to quench their own thirst, then on the night they sat on a pile of money and raised a toast, an uninvited guest would arrive.

The Public Safety Bureau, the military state's executioner with authority over the military police.

Once Yeonggwe, Zikhrund paid a visit, it was over. The evidence was already secured, and their status and assets had already been erased. Even the jackals who usually acted like they would do anything for them got one warning from Public Safety, turned pale, and kept their heads down.

People said a master's swordsmanship was so mysterious that the victim did not even realize they'd been cut. The same thing happened here. By the time someone noticed the Public Safety Bureau was watching, their arms and legs were already gone.

Even if they tried to resist out of desperation, the opponent was one of the Six Generals, at the peak of both force and authority. Even officers could not stand against his blade. The only feeling left to a criminal was regret for committing a crime in the military state.

But there was one fact nobody knew.

Before the Public Safety Bureau came, the criminal had already been visited by Zikhrund.

Though not in Zikhrund's own face.

Hustled along by "Kerafald," who said we had no time to waste, we were led deeper into the refinery.

It was an enormous factory. The outer walls were thick concrete, and giant chimneys spewed pure white smoke like volcanoes. For a building this huge, there was not a single window outside. Instead, dozens of vents and one massive steel door sat on the wall like a bad omen. The moment the thick door opened, heavy heat rolled out from inside.

Then the interior of the alchemic steel refinery came into view.

"The alchemic steel refinery is a massive facility that converts alchemic feedstock into alchemic steel. It is divided into three processes: decomposition, classification, and refinement. In the decomposition process, alchemic feedstock is broken down through Dialke, in other words, structural conversion. During that process..."

"Kerafald" launched into a know-it-all explanation to prove he was useful, but nobody cared. Everyone was too stunned by the scene in front of us.

Clank, clank.

Humans strung on chains walked along rails. Their left arms were raised over their shoulders, limp, and they followed wherever the hooks pulled them.

Their faces held no expression, no life. They did not even have the room to turn and look at unfamiliar intruders. They only walked to their assigned spots, then stood before rails carrying red molten metal, breathing like it hurt.

Then the chain jerked.

The end of that chain was connected to the biometric terminal. Like a fishhook through a fish's mouth, a hook hanging inside the terminal controlled human bodies through pain so constant it had become normal.

"Ugh."

With a dry cry, one laborer failed to resist the pull and reached out. In front of him sat half-molten alchemic steel pig iron. Steam still rose from it, and the hook dragged his hand toward it like a whining child throwing a tantrum.

Even a laborer hesitated at that moment. A living creature's instinct warned him not to approach glowing red iron.

But.

"Aaaaaaagh!!"

The chain yanked hard like a threat. The hooked tip bulged under his skin. Red creases rose on the pierced flesh and were shoved aside. It looked like someone was declaring that human skin was no different from cloth.

Overpowered, the laborer had no choice but to reach out.

Toward molten steel denser than flame.

His skin cooked. To resist the heat that would turn him into meat if left alone, he had to use alchemy.

"Set! Ri, Di, Dialke! Dialkeee...!"

Screams born from that horrific process rang out from every direction. Enough screams to produce the alchemic steel supplied across the military state.

Somewhere, someone had failed at alchemy. A horrible shriek sounded, and the smell of roasting meat spread. White steam burst up as bodily fluids burned, rose toward the factory ceiling, glanced once at where it had come from, then drifted far away with the wind and disappeared.

This was the military state's worst labor site, where people were not worked hard, no, squeezed dry, with survival and pain as collateral.

The alchemic steel refinery smashed every piece of common sense we had built so far, then stood on the rubble and mocked morality and justice.

"...Th-this. Th-this is. No, no way."

The princess reacted late because she needed that long to understand the whole system. She trembled in shock and revulsion.

"H-how can this happen? Just how big a crime did they commit? No, even if they did, this is...!"

The regressor, more used to scenes like this than the rest of us, only frowned.

"This is why I didn't want to come. Tch, it's just making me sick."

[...Even the human farms my thralls kept were not this bad. Humans sometimes show sides worse than vampires.]

If even Tyr, a vampire, judged it that way, there was no need to explain how brutal this horror was.

'When humans face an unfamiliar sight, they show new reactions. Humans are square boxes by nature. Invisible boxes that produce different responses depending on what gets poured in through two eyes and two ears. Unless you are a god, you cannot know what lies inside that dark box. But with enough observation, you can imitate it.'

As if testing all of us, "Kerafald" watched our reactions.

'Reaction check. Dangerous individual X shows familiarity. Has he visited the refinery before? If so, his negative feelings toward the military state are also explained. Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka, admiration...? Contempt? One thing is clear: her reaction is small, perhaps because she has seen a far worse blood-soaked hell. And.'

After glancing once each at the regressor and Tyr, "Kerafald" showed unmistakable interest in me.

"So, Hui?"

'Pied Piper of Hameln. What is your reaction?'

He showed the superiority of someone who had infiltrated a place this dangerous.

But that was only the role speaking, an act to justify what he was doing. Inside, he was watching me with a cold eye.

Why? There were this many dangerous people here, so why was he singling me out?

'Insufficient data. Power used, unidentified. Kerafald's explanation was that he was merely a bright student with no standout talent, but someone who beat the Six Generals for top rank and survived Tantalus... if I end this by calling him simple, there is no fun in digging deeper.'

Looks like weird beings liked me a lot.

All information in the military state passed through Yeonggwe once. He held first access rights to communications officer data, and there was even a dedicated communications headquarters that existed to assist him.

That was why someone who had gathered so much information paid attention to me, a patch of pure darkness on the map.

'He even made the Gunslinger betray the military state, and brought the Progenitor out of her coffin. Was that chance, or your ability? Show me, Pied Piper. Show me what trick you use to lure top-class monsters. Show me how important your role is....'

Right. If that was what you wanted.

Then I would show you.

A version of me completely different from normal.

"This country is insane...! What do you even think humans are?! How can you treat people like worthless tools?!"

Like I was raging at human rights trampled under the name of the military state, I raised my emotions and shouted.

The princess, already feeling something similar, agreed at once, but the regressor looked at me like I was strange.

"Huh? What's with you? Since when did you grow human compassion?"

"There are times for jokes and times there aren't, and this is not one of them! You saw all this too, Mr. Shei, and you still don't feel anything?!"

"Huh? No, I just... you were being way more emotional than usual...."

Because I was trying to fool Yeonggwe! Stop ruining it and stay quiet!

'Sense of justice? Did he oppose the military state over some half-baked moral drive? Hm. Judging from dangerous individual X's reaction, still not certain. Shall I test a little more.'

"Kerafald" added one more line while pretending to be oblivious.

"Uh, this is actually the better part...."

It was a perfectly calculated line. Exactly the kind of thing a careless "Kerafald" might say, and at the same time a trap dug just deep enough.

Inside, I cheered. If he was laying a trap, it meant he saw me fully as prey.

Then I had to act like prey. I stepped into his trap without hesitation.

"Kerafald, what does that mean? If this is the better part... what comes next? What's there?"

"The people handling this side, decomposition work, are relatively educated. They learned standard spellcraft and know alchemy, so they were given easier duties."

"Then what about the next process?"

When I asked, "Kerafald" answered like it was nothing.

"People who know nothing about alchemy work in the next process."

A contradiction. Alchemic steel was the result of alchemy. How could someone who knew no alchemy refine alchemic steel?

But "Kerafald" stopped explaining there. As if to say, figure out the rest yourself.

'He has not stood out in direct combat so far. A strategist role, perhaps. Let's test his ability.'

Sorry, but I had already passed that test by cheating. If you knew the answer, there was no problem I couldn't solve.

"Using alchemy when you can't use alchemy? That makes no sen-"

It did. There was one way to use alchemy without knowing alchemy.

That thing every military state citizen received after coming of age. One of the Seven Great Inventions of the military state, the device that performed alchemy fitted to your body when a clothing packet was slotted in.

I already knew because I had read his thoughts. Still, I gave the answer with a face that looked like I had barely reached it after deep thought and still could not believe it.

"The biometric terminal...?"

'Correct.'

"So you use the human body as a mold, and pour molten iron into it...?"

'To gather fragmentary information and infer that much. Hard to call him merely a bright student. Better to treat him as this group's strategist.'

"Kerafald" nodded, raising his assessment of me.

"Tch, so you knew. Well, I guess it was an easy question for the top student of every grade...."

Alchemy was a blanket term for processing one substance into another useful substance. Nothing special. Every living thing, humans included, practiced alchemy every moment.

We burned food to gain heat, refined leftovers into blood and flesh, then sent those through the body.

Life itself was the most complex alchemic activity in the world.

"Your answer is right, Hui. Life is alchemy's first element... so then using life itself to perform alchemy is possible too."

Beyond this door, there would be rows of humans packed in spaces as tight as cages. Their left arms, the ones with biometric terminals, would be bound outside iron bars, and red molten metal would keep flowing into them.

Unlike here, they would not be given even a speck of freedom.

Because they could still work without freedom.

I spat out one line.

"They're completely insane."

That part was sincere.

This refinery had not been built out of malice. Laborers suffered terribly as a result, but that was only a side effect.

The military state built this refinery for one reason: it needed it.

To fatten the country, it needed enough alchemic resources to fill it. And the only way to produce those resources was to overwork countless humans. So the military state exploited prisoners and made alchemic steel.

I looked at laborers screaming in pain. Their clothes were clean. Their skin and hair were falling out from stress, yet they had been fed enough to keep weight on. Even the chains binding them were spotless, not a speck of rust. If laborers forced to squeeze out magical energy died too fast, that was a loss for the military state too.

There was no malice there, no guilt, no hatred. Cold reason alone drove humans into suffering.

I finally understood why Kerafald could infiltrate a facility this important. Even officers, the high-grade workforce, would not stay sane if they worked as supervisors here, so they must have pulled in outside personnel too.

Then he got caught by Yeonggwe and became "Kerafald."

I shouted.

"Let's smash this place right now!"

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