WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 275: The Land of Steel and the Faceless Humans - 16

──────

The communications officers had all been synchronized through synchronization magic. Through their innate arcane, they felt the same things and shared the same information. Since their reporting methods had been standardized, their speech patterns had naturally come to resemble one another as well.

It was enough to make me think the military state had reached the point of mass-producing humans.

But that couldn't be true.

If it were, would they have needed to lock the communications officers in windowless rooms?

"You can communicate with one another! Then why didn't you help when your colleague was at death's door?"

It was a moral accusation. IA, facing one for the first time in her life after being confined in a room, hesitated for a moment before answering.

"That is a communications officer's rule..."

"Quiet! The urgent matter comes first!"

I was about to urge Y on with my eyes, but there was no need. She was already administering the medicine. Tilting the card I had given her, she held the Heart 9 in her mouth, opened Z's mouth, and let the liquid flow in.

Everyone fell silent for a moment and watched the two of them. Y desperately continued feeding Z the medicine when, at some point...

She convulsed violently, then crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

Several people were shaken, but most of them were on our side. Even as one of their colleagues collapsed, the communications officers remained calm.

"The medicine was a lie."

"Poison? Or a drug?"

"This module has no means of resisting a surprise attack. Why would you lie?"

"He is known as a swindler in Amitenggrad. He must be attempting to deceive this module."

The communications officers, including IA, stayed composed. Since they had already considered this possibility, Y's collapse only reaffirmed their belief that I intended to attack them.

There was only one exception.

"Liar!"

X alone strode toward me in a fury. Historia quickly moved to block her, but I stopped her with a hand.

They needed to think and judge for themselves.

"Did you... intend to dispose of all of us from the beginning? Even knowing what communications officers truly are, do you still intend to continue your attack?"

X alone poured out her pure anger at me. I could have teased her further, but there was no need to complicate matters. I came clean.

"The potion I used was Heart 9, the Potion of False Death. It puts whoever drinks it into suspended animation for a set period of time."

"Suspended animation? Why would you use such a potion...?"

"Becoming a sacrifice is like having your mental image ripped out by the roots. They've somehow managed to stay alive, but they will die before long. To restore their mental image, though..."

I made a gesture of cutting my throat.

"You know how people say their life flashes before their eyes? When death, or a shock close to it, hits them and everything they've experienced in life flashes through their mind at once."

When a device gets stuck, shutting it down once and starting it again resolves most problems.

Humans were no different.

When death, or a massive stimulus close to it, sweeps through the whole body, the neural pathways that had been briefly reset return to normal and restore the traces of memories formed up to that point.

"So, if you die once and wake up again, a good portion of the mental image you built up throughout your life is restored. We needed to cause that phenomenon, even with medicine. Why don't you check for yourself?"

Still doubtful, X used her innate arcane again. Unlike Y and Z, the Eimeder she summoned had only opened a door, so she had not suffered much damage. Her relatively intact innate arcane connected her to Y and Z.

"...! The synchronization...!"

It was incomplete, but they were connected. Parts of their innate arcane, which had been severely damaged only moments ago, had recovered.

X realized I had been telling the truth. At the same time, every communications officer learned it was true.

Thanks to synchronization.

X changed her attitude.

"...Thank you for your help."

"It's fine. I just happened to have the right means available."

The means to dig into all of you.

Keeping that thought to myself, I gave X a friendly smile.

"Please take care of those two. You are the most dependable person here."

Feeling grateful to me, X immediately laid the two of them flat.

Whoever had built the military state had created a fairly solid system. A method of ruling the military state through communications officers isolated from the world.

Even I found it impressive.

Of course, that was all it was.

A world ruled by philosopher-kings was an extremely common concept. Everyone wanted to become a philosopher-king and stand above all others.

The military state had filled that role with communications officers, which was impressive in its own way, but it still could not escape one fundamental limitation.

No matter how well they were made, communications officers were still human.

"More importantly, I'm suddenly angry. You! I heard you called me a deceiver!"

I strode toward U and thrust my face close to hers. U flinched backward at suddenly receiving my attention, but I moved faster and pressed her.

"Do you even know who I am to judge me? Do you think some swindler who cheats people in back alleys could have made it this far?!"

"Th-that is not so. However, according to the information acquired by this officer..."

"Information you acquired? I don't know what that information is, but did you see it and think about it for yourself? Can the information you encountered explain who I am?!"

U could not offer any rebuttal and closed her mouth. Unlike most communications officers, she took pride in her work, so even that small mistake humiliated her.

Yes. This was it.

The slight differences in how they felt about the same situation. Minor emotions. The small cracks humans could not help having because they were emotional and impulsive.

After I finished berating her, I spoke as I walked slowly through the room.

"I have no intention of killing or harming any of you. In the first place, I came here to restore the value of humanity."

Everything I said was heard by all of them. The communications officers in a module were synchronized in real time.

But did they all hear it the same way?

"The military state does not care for people. It only seeks to oppress, punish, and govern them. There is no human warmth in its rule. A mother who steals to feed her starving child is imprisoned alongside violent criminals, and if someone speaks a thought that naturally arose in their mind, they are crushed beneath military boots if it opposes the military state's ideology, without any consideration for the feelings behind it."

As I spoke, I slowly walked across the room. The instant I reached P, I snapped my head around and shouted.

"The same goes for communications officers slowly dying while trapped in narrow rooms!!"

"Ahh!"

P, who was particularly sensitive to stimuli, was so startled by my shout that she fell onto her backside. Communications officers could maintain their composure because they communicated through golems. Without them, they were no different from ordinary people.

I gave her a mocking smile, then brought my face close to R's.

"I cannot accept a country like this. A country with no joy that comes by chance, no luxury or pleasure like a one-night dream. No being moved by someone, no whims that make you change your mind. I want a country that considers the heart before judging the crime. A country where people come before rules!"

"Why are you telling this officer...?"

"Have you never considered such things? When punishing criminals under military law, one person sells their conscience for pocket change, while another briefly diverts money to treat a family member on the verge of death. Is it right to punish both of them the same way for the same crime?"

R collected judgments and precedents among the military state's communications officers. She would take it more seriously than the others.

Little by little, I gave each of them a different word.

When driving a sharp skewer into a crack, you had to pry it apart and shake it from side to side.

"You are wrong! I don't know who taught you to become like this, but you are completely wrong! Do you think surrounding yourselves with steel walls, speaking only through golems, and whispering among yourselves in the dark will make you objective? No! That is neglect and surrender! If you are the command center that moves the military state, you cannot give up thinking!"

Perhaps because she was beginning to sense something, IA, the administrator of this module, stubbornly tried to interrupt me.

"That is a meaningless argument. Since you cannot present a better alternative, your opinion..."

"Shut up! I couldn't care less what a bystander thinks!"

I slapped her across the face without warning. IA fell again, wearing a wronged expression for a brief moment.

Her innate arcane was the type that bound several nearby communications officers. In other words, if this were a classroom, she was the class president. Her authority was extremely powerful at close range, enough to bind all twenty-five people here.

That was why I would not permit you to speak.

I would pressure you until you couldn't utter a word in the first place.

How was it? Frustrating enough to make you want to die, right?

That was enough.

"You talk too much. Ria, cover that person's mouth while I speak."

"...Do we really need to go that far?"

"It is necessary. If you won't do it, I'll just put a gag on her."

Thinking it was better to cover IA's mouth herself than let me use a gag, Historia moved behind IA and covered her mouth. The restraint of the Six Generals was stronger than most straitjackets, and unlike a straitjacket, it had intelligence.

IA could no longer move at all and could only watch as I spoke.

"You are doing well. The fact that the military state is still standing proves it. But you are human too. You are not always right."

I raised my hand. It was the Heart 10 card I had broken earlier. It should have been red, but the liquid inside had drained out, leaving the heart a pale gray. I held it between two fingers.

"For example, if I restored this broken card to its original state..."

I shook the card between my fingers a few times, rolled it into a tube, and blew into it. The card turned red once more.

Having restored the heart to its original state, I waved it proudly.

"Do you think you, who have lived your entire lives inside those narrow rooms, know what I did?"

It was a phenomenon that could not be explained through logic alone. Some communications officers felt something closer to an urge to observe than curiosity.

The communications officers who had spent their entire lives locked in rooms were voyeurs by conditioning. Without golems, they were simply trapped inside steel boxes, so they connected to golems and watched the world even without being told to.

And the easiest people to fool with magic were those encountering it for the first time.

"There is no reason to pay attention. It is clear that he used a trick. There is nothing remarkable about it."

Only one person, S, stepped forward to cut off the communications officers' curiosity at its source.

But the method was wrong.

Claiming it was a trick was half an admission that magic existed. If they had not been interested in the first place, it might have worked, but such a claim only gave me an easy target.

Footnotes:

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