WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 255: The Land of Steel and the Faceless Humans - 4

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The princess could no longer become king, and this country was no longer a kingdom. It was a military state, ruled by soldiers who forced peace upon people with guns and swords. In a place where everything happened under headquarters' command, it would be difficult for anyone to feel a sense of responsibility.

Yet the princess, the sole descendant of King Grandiomor and his queen, the culprits who had created this country, felt responsible. Not only for the remnants of the kingdom that had become the Resistance, but for every citizen of this country.

She could have taken my words as a joke, but the princess took them seriously and immediately rejected them.

"Stop trying to test me. Places like that need to disappear! Even if they're criminals, a hell that inflicts pain forever must not exist in reality!"

"You aren't even a king, yet you're very concerned about the lives of your people."

"I have no ambition to rule them! I'm only following what is right! Didn't Mr. Hui get angry after seeing what was inside?"

"Ah, that wasn't the part that angered me."

Barbarism meant doing everything one could do without hesitation. Civilization, in contrast, began by deciding what could not be done.

Murder was the obvious one, along with theft, threats, fraud, incitement, apostasy, rebellion, and so on. Sometimes a few things were left out, and sometimes strange new taboos nobody had ever seen before were added, but civilization was fundamentally about cutting something away from humanity.

In that sense, if someone asked whether I was barbaric or civilized, then despite how bad it sounded, I was definitely barbaric. I'd committed every crime I could.

Still, I was an individual. The influence a single person could have was limited. Even if I had caused harm, all people needed to do was catch and punish me.

I had actually been punished, so I was the perfect example.

But the military state?

"There have been people who acted horribly while attaching all sorts of bizarre excuses about the greater good and the country. But those excuses were still meant to defend their actions. This is different. This is real. It was done in the country's name, for the country. It even feels as though the country ordered it directly."

They built labor camps that exploited citizens. All for the state.

They ruled everyone with severe laws. All for the state.

They created every sort of invention and spread them widely, but anyone could tell they had not been made for the citizens.

Hooks driven through bio-terminals.

Restraint suits made from garment packets.

Standardized magic cast in exchange for one's body.

Compressed canned food that preserved nothing but nutrition.

Chimera beans made without any consideration for taste or happiness.

Thunderwheels that turned on their own, forcing humans to adapt to them.

Meta-conveyor belts built with blood, sweat, and corpses, running on humans used as lubricant.

The military state used some of them especially viciously, but all seven great inventions lacked any affection for humanity. Once everything else had been filtered away, only usefulness remained.

The princess agreed with me.

"That's right. Other countries are like that too, but the military state is especially severe. The only saving grace is that the punishments are so harsh that nobody can skim anything for themselves along the way...."

"Yes. Especially here. The military state won't tolerate anyone other than the military state committing crimes. Because the only thing allowed to commit crimes in the military state is the military state itself."

"...What? Crimes?"

"The military state has room to spare. It clearly has surplus resources it could distribute as wealth, happiness, time, or pride. But it never shares them. It just keeps stockpiling them."

The princess focused on my words, having already forgotten that she had snapped at me earlier.

"...Then Mr. Hui, you're angry at the hidden power that holds all of that in its hands and controls this country from behind the scenes?"

"Who knows? I don't even know who she is, where she is, or whether she exists. How could I be angry at her?"

"Ah, I'm sorry. Let me put it differently. You want to find the being that created all this, don't you?"

As though she finally understood, the princess curled her hand into a fist and struck her palm. The force with which she had argued back at me moments ago vanished completely.

I shrugged.

"More or less. But I've wandered the military state for months and lived in the capital for years, yet I haven't found her."

My kind of "finding" things, as a mind reader, was on another level. Even if she had concealed her identity and status and lived peacefully while pretending to be a commoner, her identity would be exposed the moment she met me.

Even if she had secluded herself in some secret base, if she had stepped outside even once, if she happened to meet me, if I had merely glanced at her from afar, I would have learned everything.

It didn't even need to be such a hidden ruler. Those in power inevitably had connections to countless people. If there had been anyone who knew even a little about her or had ever encountered her, I would have grabbed the end of that thread and patiently unraveled it.

...Well, I hadn't found anything in the end. It wasn't a goal important enough to risk my life over, so I'd been taking my time.

"So... that was why you tested me with a question like that earlier."

"Yes?"

A test? What test? I was a master at solving problems, but terrible at making them. I knew everything the other person knew, but I couldn't even think of things they didn't know. Whenever I made a problem, my lack of material showed immediately.

When I honestly asked what she meant, the princess looked at me as if I had said something strange.

"You didn't know how I, as a member of the Resistance, would react if I met that 'someone.' So you tested me by asking whether the refinery's existence was better for the Resistance."

'Of course. A companion of Mr. Shei would never say something so heartless. And I took it seriously for no reason! Yerien Grandiomor, you need to work harder!'

So that was how she took it. This princess really did see people in a positive light.

Then again, deaf people could not speak despite only being unable to hear, and blind people could not explain what color was. People became literally insensible to what they could not perceive.

In that sense, the princess, who had never been exposed to hostility, had never learned to be wary of it. She was mentally handicapped in one particular way, born without any sense of danger.

No, perhaps simpleton was a better word. What a simpleton.

"You're quite perceptive."

I nodded. It wasn't a bad misunderstanding. I'd wanted to awaken the princess's curiosity anyway.

That way, she would be more proactive when we infiltrated headquarters later.

The princess nodded bitterly.

"...You're amazing. I was so shocked by what was before my eyes that I couldn't think of anything else, but Mr. Hui wasn't consumed by what was happening and was already looking ahead.... Please forgive my shortcomings. Instead of being helpful, I only raised my voice."

No. The princess would probably be an enormous help.

The authority that made nobody able to feel hostility toward her. It had lost some of its shine because one madman who had driven gears into his own head nearly killed her, but I couldn't let such a ridiculously overpowered ability go to waste.

And besides.

"Well, forget it. We can only talk about that if we get out of here safely."

"What? Get out safely?"

'Isn't everything here already finished? If we destroy the refinery and head for headquarters... Ah, wait? Destroy it...?'

You noticed.

This place was a trap. And it was an especially nasty kind.

It would imprison us in a dilemma, not through strength or physical force.

The princess's face turned pale.

'How? How are we supposed to destroy it? Do we kill all the vicious criminals, or free the laborers? Who decides, and how?'

It was hard to notice from inside the refinery, because they were the ones agonizing over it. Those moving within a script might as well have no world outside the stage.

That was why the princess and I needed to leave.

I explained it to her.

"The alchemic steel refinery is a truly important facility. In some ways, it's an objective that must be protected even more than headquarters."

Alchemic steel might be a resource with plenty of stock, but it wasn't infinite. And even if a resource consumed everywhere were infinite, there would never be enough of it.

If production here was disrupted, every plan in the military state would be delayed. The military state ran with mechanical precision, so it would never want one of its most important gears to slow down.

"That's why the military state laid a trap here. And we walked right into it."

They would stop us here, even if it meant deploying a powerful asset like the Shadow Casket.

...Actually, I hadn't noticed it myself. I only realized after reading Shadow Casket's thoughts! Even I read that script and thought, Wait, is this serious?

"But there were no soldiers here! Mr. Shei checked before we came!"

"That's why it's a trap. There wasn't even a single person in a place that couldn't afford to be empty. If the military state regarded even its legions as expendable, it should have had a delaying force here to hold us up, even if only for a fleeting moment. Even if it's Tyr's night right now."

During the day, delaying forces had cut off roads and bombarded us from afar. They hadn't managed to delay us even for a few seconds, but that was the military state's way.

The princess's thoughts became tangled.

"Th-then... what happened? Did the Gunslinger lure us into a trap...?"

"No. Ria's suggestion was right. Thanks to it, instead of crushing us with overwhelming numbers and firepower, they're trying to lock us inside a crude trap."

Historia's strategy was extremely military-state-like. It was an efficient strategy: hide our movements, choose strategically important facilities, and strike first.

It was easy to read precisely because it was efficient. The moment we changed direction to destroy the automatic carriage assembly factory, the military state must have easily predicted our next target.

More importantly, Princess, the one who trapped us was the Shadow Casket Zikhrund, who extracted information from your companion Carapald. Where do you get off shifting the blame?

I couldn't reveal that I used mind reading, so I kept quiet, but if we were assigning blame, you would have been the first one put on trial.

Well, that wasn't important right now.

"This place is a stage. From the refinery's entrance to its deepest point, the route shows the party the horrible reality the laborers face. The process itself will leave them with an even greater dilemma. Should they kill everyone, free them, or leave them alone? Ria and Shei will clash, and Tyr and Siati will join in, making it even more chaotic."

Historia was, in her own way, a military-state general. As someone with the authority to order the deaths of subordinates who followed her, she would not value the lives of vicious criminals.

The regressor was moving to prevent the sins that would overflow in the future. Even she would not be able to immediately agree to kill countless defenseless laborers all at once.

Siati would prefer freeing every laborer, if only to take revenge on the military state. That would create even greater chaos.

Tyr, on the other hand, was detached from life and death enough to offer the option of turning everyone into corpse demons.

Zikhrund had likely separated me, the strategist, and the princess, who could eliminate the conflict itself, in order to deepen the chaos.

After buying time like that, just before we took action, he planned to surround and wipe us out.

"That really could be it! What do we do?"

Having considered the possibility, the princess spoke with a face drained of color.

"No! Mr. Hui, if you knew all of that, why did you come outside?!"

"Because the easiest way to ruin a prepared stage is for someone to intrude from outside it."

"What?!"

Magic and theater. Both prepared a stage for an audience. They also shared the need for acting.

But there was one difference: the obligation of the genre.

A play had to meet everyone's expectations in the end, while magic had to defy everyone's expectations. That difference in direction gave rise to all sorts of other differences.

The end was coming into view. The concrete outer wall that had seemed as though it might stretch all the way to the military state's border was finally ending, and we had arrived on the side opposite the refinery entrance.

Only then did I stop the automatic carriage.

"The refinery has no doors apart from its entrance. Therefore, this side, the farthest point from the entrance, is its deepest point."

The refinery had no other doors. Its walls simply stretched on like smooth skin. Remembering that we hadn't found even a side door on the way here, the princess looked puzzled.

"Why didn't they even make a side door? What if there was a fire...?"

"The building was separated into sections, wasn't it? They must have planned to isolate them with bulkheads."

"Then the people in the section on fire would have nowhere to run."

"Whoever designed this building must have thought that was better."

The princess looked shocked by my answer. Leaving her behind, I jumped lightly from the automatic carriage. As I walked toward one corner of the wall, I took out a card and flipped it over.

My favorite tool, the Diamond 1 skewer, greeted me with the same familiar feeling as ever.

"Long time no see, my friend. Did you miss me?"

"Woof! I didn't miss you! We see each other all the time! But I'm still happy to see you!"

I called my friend, and humanity's best friend came running instead. I waved Azzy away as she followed me.

"...Go get Nabi. She has work to do."

"Woof!"

Azzy immediately nodded and left to fetch Nabi's box. While I waited, I gripped the skewer in both hands and aimed it at the gray concrete wall.

"Hup!"

I thrust with all my strength. The skewer I drove forward with both hands dug fiercely into the concrete wall.

...About one centimeter.

"As expected of concrete. It won't budge with my strength."

Still, that was what earth arts were for. The technique that had been mistaken for divine power because I had been trapped beneath the Abyss.

I dragged the skewer hard across the wall. A small but sacrilegious scratch appeared on the smooth gray surface. I carved an irreversible mark, like graffiti left on a historical relic, the sort that only made me want to do it more.

"Ugh, this is harder than I thought...."

I moved the skewer in a circle to form a closed curve, then wiped away a bead of sweat and sighed. Dust rose from the gouged concrete.

All right, time to work. I placed my hand on the wall, took a deep breath, and focused. Recalling the distant, vast earth and my insignificant existence crawling atop it, I used earth arts.

Creak.

The section of earth I had marked with the skewer slid away when I pushed it with my hand, as though it had only been resting there.

The earth always seemed unchanged and eternal, but that wasn't true. It rose, sank, collided, and sometimes its skin swelled. Her divine body was material that changed just as a human body did.

Because Mother Earth, like a human, had a bright red liquid pulsing hot beneath her skin.

What we considered earth was really no more than a plate resting atop that blood. The plates flowed and moved along currents of lava blood, colliding and rising.

...The mountains we looked up at in awe were, from Mother Earth's perspective, no more than cracks in her skin.

No wonder she could become a Demon God.

"To cut through a wall so smoothly with nothing but a skewer...!"

'Mr. Hui simply never had the opportunity to show his strength. He was actually a master swordsman! His qi must have reached such a realm that it made no sound at all!'

The princess covered her mouth, amazed. She thought I had dug into the concrete with qi and cut it apart.

Do you not have any eyes? It's earth arts. If my qi had reached the realm where I could casually use penetrating force, would I be struggling like this?

When I pushed the wall harder with both hands, the cut-out piece slid inward and dropped with a thud. A heavy sound came from the other side, and pitch-black darkness showed through the round hole.

Good. This side was ready.

"Nyaah.... Let, let me go, nya. I, I won't move, nya...."

"Woof! No! Time to work! No work, no food!"

Azzy lectured Nabi on the importance of labor as she dragged her along with Nabi's nape gripped in her teeth. Nabi dug her claws into the ground and tried to resist, but against Azzy's strength, Nabi's claws could only resist like plows digging through soil.

Her claws were still sharp. They would be more than enough to tear things apart.

"Preparations are complete. I'll go in first, so bring Azzy and Nabi and follow me."

"Yes...!"

'It seems you have an exquisite plan! If I can be of help, I'll gladly assist you!'

The princess clenched her fist and carefully watched as I crossed through the hole. Heh heh, good. The more impressive you thought I was, the more you would follow my plan....

Huh? This wall was thicker than I expected. It was almost a tunnel. Was the hole too small...? Ah.

"Oh, I'm stuck! Princess, could you give me a push?"

'...You have a plan, right?'

You're already doubting me? If you're going to trust me, trust me properly! What's with this absurdly short shelf life?!

"Woof! Push! Heave-ho! Heave-ho!"

"Not you! Not you! Ack! Don't use your claws!"

Footnotes:

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