WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 268: A Distant Tale: Behind the Stage

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How did a young lamb being dragged to the slaughterhouse feel?

Humans were not lambs, so they could not know. Still, the laborers at the alchemic steel smelter who had barely survived moments ago were likely feeling something similar.

The death the smelter put on display was like a blade aimed at the throat, slowly drawing closer. It was slow and easy to understand.

Hooks buried in their arms pulled people in. Once someone was dragged away and vanished beyond the blast furnace belching red-hot heat, screams laced with bloody foam would boil up from the other side, then disappear with a pop like bursting bubbles. Unsatisfied after swallowing one human, the alchemic steel furnace pulled another hook and fed its next victim into its mouth.

It was easy to understand, with plenty of clues and more than enough time to make sense of them. Without any difficult thought, most of the laborers realized they were approaching death.

Even those who had screamed for someone to kill them rather than leave them suffering at the alchemic steel smelter felt an instinctive revulsion toward this death.

Was it a conservative instinct, refusing to accept any death other than the one they had imagined for themselves? Or had those been mere words, and they were not yet prepared to accept death?

Either way, the smelter fulfilled its role as a punitive institution by revealing that terrible secret. It drew both blood and tears from murderers judged to have neither, made unbelievers who had never prayed clasp their hands and repent, and even restored the will to live in those who had committed crimes after giving up on life.

And so, while the laborers were being slowly and calmly massacred.

Perhaps their prayers reached the heavens, because someone crashed through the ceiling and leaped inside.

Shei aimed Jizan, her black staff, at the blast furnace. Before heat capable of melting steel and red-hot molten metal, she protected herself with qi and brought Jizan down.

Earth Staff Style, Parting the Red Sea.

The black strike raised a red wave. The molten metal split to either side. Heavy liquid metal surged, trying to fill the gap again, but since it was not even a real sea, it could not overcome Jizan's repulsive force. The molten metal clung to the walls on both sides like a frightened child.

Amid the searing heat, Shei peeled her sweat-soaked clothes away from her body and examined the floor. Just as the officer had told her, a massive magic circle lay at the bottom of the furnace.

Heat was the power of change. Remove heat from molten metal, and it became solid metal. That magic circle had been built to send the extracted heat elsewhere. It would then be used to melt alchemical materials.

"They put the magic circle on the floor... Tch. It's disgustingly well made."

Shei clicked her tongue at the vicious design.

The weakness of a magic circle was the magic circle itself. Its physical durability was one issue, but once its structure was analyzed, it could easily be dismantled or even used against its creator.

Yet to see the magic circle in an alchemic steel blast furnace, one had to empty the furnace full of sluggishly sloshing molten steel.

But once the furnace was empty, there was no need to analyze the magic circle. There was no need to break it, nor was there any value in using it against them.

It was an efficient method, fitting for the military state.

"Jizan!"

Still, something like this was easy for Shei, a regressor who had overcome everything through dozens of regressions. Shei simply destroyed the magic circle. The furnace, which had lost the opening through which its heat escaped, shook violently. Shei was about to pull herself out before the molten metal rushed back in.

Then she found a small, hidden magic circle inside the broken one.

A large circle of ancient characters, ominous and unsettling at a glance, broke through the edge of the smaller circle and swallowed it.

Forbidden Magic Circle, Gluttony.

An ancient sorcery that used humans as materials. A symbol of barbarism. A practice forbidden after humans became the lords of all creation. The most common, and therefore most terrible, symbol of Gluttony glowed ominously.

It was a forbidden art ordinary people would never even encounter. But Shei had faced the threat of destruction several times, and she had encountered Gluttony's forbidden magic circle so often that she had almost grown fond of it.

"...Come to think of it, the military state had this and never used it even once."

The military state went through many crises in every regression. There were times when its headquarters collapsed due to the regressor's knowledge and the Resistance's sabotage, allowing a new regime to take power. There were times when it started a war, only to be destroyed after the regressor joined the other side.

Each time, the regressor helped the republic led by the princess, or the new kingdom that had enthroned the princess as its king.

Yet Shei had never once heard that they had consumed laborers with an extermination device. She had only learned that such a device existed.

Even that had passed through one ear and out the other like a ghost story.

"...Well, it probably isn't for a good reason. It must simply be the rational choice."

The alchemic steel smelter was a golden goose. Cutting open its belly might immediately yield costly alchemic steel like cursed blood iron, but in the long run, it would weaken the military state's ability to wage war. Rationally speaking, there was no reason to make iron by killing people.

That raised a question.

"Then why... did the military state make something like an extermination device?"

The answer did not come easily. Even after leaving the furnace, even as she heard the cheers of the surviving laborers, Shei continued thinking.

Why had the military state made an extermination device it would never use?

"Get lost, you animals! Ptui. To think I had to come here myself to save trash like you...!"

Captain Toruk shoved laborers aside without mercy as they approached. The laborers scattered to either side, screaming and cursing. Captain Toruk reached Shei in an instant and spoke with a deeply displeased expression.

"Hey, kid!"

"Who are you calling a kid?!"

"Should I call you an adult, then?! Anyway! What are you doing right now?"

Shei hesitated for a moment. She had something to feel guilty about, since she was secretly smashing up far more of the facility than necessary behind the officers' backs.

Destroying the alchemic steel smelter would greatly weaken the military state's ability to wage war. Thus, Captain Toruk and Shei had agreed to avoid unnecessary destruction and focus on rescuing the laborers. Of course, Shei had not the slightest intention of keeping that agreement.

After all, the person best at destroying facilities was Shei, who wielded Jizan. If she claimed she had simply put a little more strength into it, what could they do? She would win if they fought anyway.

Shei decided to be a little more shameless.

"I broke the furnace. Why? We agreed that much was fine, didn't we?"

They would not be able to confirm that she had destroyed the magic circle as well. That was the calculation behind Shei's answer.

"Not that!"

Captain Toruk had not come for that. Panting furiously, they pointed deeper into the smelter.

"The signs of life inside the smelter are gradually dwindling. This isn't only happening here! The same thing is happening throughout the smelter! We're rescuing people who are about to die, but their numbers are going down! Are you sneaking them outside?"

That was a different matter. Having received the inquiry, Shei briefly reviewed her own actions.

Had she smuggled the laborers outside? No.

Had she intended to? No.

That concluded the review. Shei briskly shook her head.

"I don't know anything about that."

"Then who is it? Who's letting this scum of society loose outside?"

Even if they asked, Shei did not know. To begin with, she had entrusted rescuing each dying person to Tyrkanzyaka. Tyrkanzyaka, the Progenitor who controlled Black Knights like her own limbs, was better suited to saving lives.

It was ironic that one of the first names to come to mind when asked who had killed the most humans was best suited to rescuing them. Perhaps life and death were joined together like two sides of the same coin.

Having finished considering the matter, Shei waved a hand.

"Ask Tyrkanzyaka."

"...Hm!"

Captain Toruk, however, showed obvious discomfort, enough for Shei to see it plainly. Shei looked at them, confused.

"Why? Are you scared of Tyrkanzyaka?"

"...Ahem!"

"Huh? Really?"

Shei asked again, wondering if that could really be true. Captain Toruk did not give a clear answer and looked away.

Captain Toruk had much to say.

Back in the kingdom's days, when temples stood everywhere and everyone worshipped the Celestial God, the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka was another name for terror.

Knight Slayer. A one-person nation. Queen of Night and Shadows.

From ancient times to the present, she had dragged her cursed body along as she destroyed temples. She killed priests crying out the name of their god, crushed temples, cursed faith itself, and carried on with her sinful body.

Countless heroes had given their lives to stop her, but their heroic attempts only added another stroke of blood to the history of the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka. The Progenitor marched with her blood legion, spreading blood and death wherever she went.

Had it not been for the blessed Enger Great Plains, that shadowless land which took three days to cross... the Sanctum might have fallen at least once to the Progenitor's endlessly repeated marches.

The kingdom had fallen and the military state had been established, but the humans who filled it had not changed. Their fear of vampires might not have been as strong as before, but it was still deeply imprinted in their minds.

They had even tried to trap the Progenitor in a cage of light only moments ago. For Captain Toruk, a person from the old days, that act was not something even an execution that pierced the veins and hung the criminal upside down to bleed dry could atone for.

Of course, Shei, who had been born after the military state was established and had never learned that kind of fear, did not feel it to that extent. She asked,

"Don't tell me you're asking me to ask her because you're scared?"

"Ahem!"

"Seriously. We don't have time for this..."

Shei was the sort to grant an honest request first. Unless there was a particular reason not to, she did it. To change a future without answers, doing something was always better than doing nothing.

In any case, asking for an update was necessary. Shei decided to make Captain Toruk owe her a favor and took a deep breath before calling the name.

"Tyrkanzyaka!"

[Did you call?]

Darkness answered first from the shadows.

Then she appeared. Tyrkanzyaka emerged from the shadow cast on the wall at the end of the corridor, as though stepping out of it, and slowly approached Shei and Captain Toruk.

The Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka was expressionless. She seemed to feel nothing in particular toward the military state that had driven her into a trap of light, nor toward Captain Toruk, who had tried to pressure its officers. Instead, she had personally deigned to come and hear them out with the same graceful bearing as ever. Who would take her for a monster maddened by blood?

"They say the laborers are disappearing. Do you know anything about it?"

[Who can say? I do not know. Perhaps they are terribly frightened by the tragedy ahead and hiding somewhere very, very well?]

It was an obvious evasion. From both her attitude and her tone, she clearly knew something.

Still, a lie everyone knew was also an expression of powerful will. Tyrkanzyaka allowed no objection, and that will came through clearly enough.

Captain Toruk tensed their entire body and said,

"...Just you wait!"

Then they turned and left.

Tyrkanzyaka watched Captain Toruk make a hasty retreat, a faint mocking smile on her lips.

[Pitiful and wretched. How comical is the sight of one torn between fear and pride. I liked it.]

"You liked it? Why?"

[Unlike you, those who fear me do not trouble me. Is that not convenient? I tend to let such people live longer.]

"Uh-huh. I see... Wait. Then what about me?"

Tyrkanzyaka continued with a gentle smile.

[How could the world have only one color? Those who do not fear me do not leave me lonely, so they are needed as well.]

"Well, thank you for that... But why are you letting the laborers escape?"

[Is there a problem?]

"No, there isn't. It's better this way, if anything. It'll take the military state a long time to clean this up. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just curious."

[That is...]

He had made the request in secret, but now that things had gone this far, it could no longer be concealed. A secret bound to be revealed was better not forced into hiding.

As Tyrkanzyaka opened her mouth to say something, the person who had asked her for that favor appeared.

Footnotes:

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