WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 286

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The Blessed Nation, the Cursed Human - 9

The princess doubted her ears for a moment. She, too, acknowledged that the military state had considerable potential, but calling it a blessed nation was a leap, objectively and subjectively.

With grief in her voice, Yuel looked at the corpse lying behind the princess.

"He dreamed of a country without a king. He said that even without a king, if everyone united and moved toward the future, they could build a nation that would stay happy forever. So he named this country the military state, the nation of the masses."

Since soldiers ran the country, people jokingly called it a nation of soldiers, but its original name was the nation of the masses. These days, though, I couldn't tell which one was the real joke.

"He definitely wasn't a genius. He was so weak he only made everyone worry, and he kept trying to wrap thoughtless actions in cheerful words. He lacked knowledge, his perspective was narrow, and there were times I almost burst from frustration because no matter what I said, he couldn't understand me. I even regretted following him and wondered what I had trusted in."

'She's saying all that... but she's smiling!'

Compared to her sharp words, her expression was soft, as if dampened by water. The princess clamped her mouth shut so her thoughts wouldn't slip out. Good choice.

"Still, he had one strength. He never hesitated to accept good things. Especially the things now called the Seven Great Inventions of the military state. Tools made by humans for humans, out of goodwill, tools that had never existed before. The seven great inventions all came from him."

Even the princess looked shocked.

"Chimera beans, clothing packets, the Meta-Conveyor Belt...? The People's Hero made all of those...?"

"...No. Most of those things already existed somewhere in the world. All he did was make the scenes I 'saw' into reality."

With Clairvoyance, Yuel saw everything in the world from where she sat. That included things the Sanctum treated as taboo.

What troubles the fading Mother Earth Faith had fallen into.

What humans had built at a waterfall where lightning poured down.

What fruit grew on the depraved tree hidden in floodwaters.

Yuel had been confident. If she gathered every beautiful and good thing in the world, surely an unprecedentedly beautiful result would be born.

When that day came, she would see the Sky Saintess again. The Sky Saintess would see the hope that began with Yuel and change her mind...

"He trusted me completely. Even things I saw with my own eyes and still found hard to believe, he listened to with shining eyes, without a trace of doubt. We talked late into the night. If we used this, how could we use it better? How much should we make, and how should we distribute it to spread goodwill farther? We were stepping on ashes, but we still chased the stars. The future was full of hope."

Every invention the military state produced had been revolutionary. So that was how they made them. The Holy Maiden peeked around and stole them.

Then maybe they shouldn't be called inventions at all. I idly thought that.

"We rebuilt everything from scratch. We kept moving forward. Today was better than yesterday, and we fell asleep looking forward to an even better tomorrow. There were exhausting, difficult days too. On those days, he came to my side and knelt. He said he was glad I was there. Glad that God had not abandoned this nation, glad an angel had been sent down. Said we had ended another day successfully because of me...."

"The ideal the People's Hero held was truly noble. I wish he were still alive."

The princess naturally steered the drifting conversation back. Yuel's focus returned.

"Yes. You should be grateful to him. His will and effort were real. You must never despise or dismiss them."

"Yuel-nim. But he's already dead. We who live now don't know what efforts he made. I don't know what happened, but the military state now is a country without kindness."

Yuel frowned.

"Kindness... are you pursuing something like that?"

"Kindness is necessary! Look at the military state now. No one is happy, and no one dreams of hope. Where did all the ideals he held go? Why were the inventions he distributed used not to add to life, but as excuses to take everything else away?"

Chimera beans were definitely an outstanding discovery. With just that, no one would suffer from malnutrition.

But they weren't added to meals. The military state gave people chimera beans and took away every other flavor. In the military state, anything besides chimera beans became a luxury.

The same went for everything else. Once clothing packets were introduced, clothes with aesthetic value disappeared. Thanks to portable, storable canned food, recipes were restricted too. Luxury and joy slowly vanished.

The princess had grown up in the military state, but she had also been cherished as a princess. Because of that, she knew how precious occasional moments of joy were, so while she acknowledged the military state, she couldn't fully agree with it.

"It didn't have to be like this! You could have left everything as it was and only added better things! If his ideals were truly noble, then you should have treated people with even more kindness!"

"Kindness handed out as charity becomes a headache you have to deal with later."

"What?"

"We had to rebuild a broken country and build the Meta-Conveyor Belt. So we accepted Mother Earth devotees."

"Yes. I heard that too. That it was the best choice the military state could make...."

"What do you think we had to do first? Can you imagine?"

In that instant, goosebumps rose on the princess's skin.

Yuel, speaking cheerfully about the past, had looked drenched in nostalgia. So the princess had scolded her a little arrogantly, saying that if those memories were so precious, she should have protected them better.

'No. She's not someone who lives in the past... she's someone who threw it all away and moved forward...!'

"We destroyed the temples."

Yuel muttered with lifeless eyes.

"Every temple that had lived off the kingdom's kindness rose up at once. Deeply faithful believers joined forces and resisted the military state. Whenever an accident happened during construction, they pinned the blame on the Mother Earth Faith. Some temples tied to them even helped the rebels. I 'saw' all of it."

When she said saw, she meant she saw every last bit of it through Clairvoyance.

Damn, military state. I had wondered how they managed the chaos after toppling the kingdom. With cheat-level authority like Clairvoyance, yeah, that was doable.

"I didn't want to do it either. But there was only one way. The most rational and fastest... the only path left. So I did it. Even if it meant betraying my faith."

"I heard the reason you drove out the temples was that they didn't pay taxes...."

"We couldn't just throw them out openly, so we piled on reasons. The nation has to recover. Pay taxes. If you don't want to, then at least donate. Show goodwill to this country. Of course the temples refused. Humans must not demand payment from God."

"How could that be..."

"Then we pressed harder. Public sentiment was already on our side. We only needed a pretext. That's why I brought in Yeonggwe.... There was already plenty of resentment toward God too. A little fanning was enough. I drove them out with my own hands... heh heh. So? Impressive, right?"

After that persecution, temples of the Celestial God Faith disappeared from the military state, and those who remained barely survived in the shadows while cooperating with the Resistance.

What irony. The Holy Maiden, proof that God existed and the idol of all believers, drove them out herself.

"God probably left my side. But that was fine. He was still by my side."

"Ah...."

"To introduce clothing packets, we smashed cloth shops. To teach standard spellcraft, we tore down mage towers. To merchants who believed food shortages could be their weapon, we gave them real weapons. Inside their bodies."

After that, Yuel calmly confessed the rest of what she had done.

To introduce something better, what already existed had to be erased first. That was where it began. But the kingdom, which had ruled for over a thousand years, still had deep roots of its old way of life, even as the country was turned upside down. People didn't change just because the king died.

Normally, the military state would never have come to be. Corruption and graft. Noncooperation and rebellion. A chaotic political field where no one could tell enemy from ally. It should have collapsed under that. People in a mass can never solve the problems created by that very mass.

Still, the Holy Maiden did it.

"...I hid in the deepest place, yet I saw everything. I filled my eyes with every filth in the world, and stained my hands with blood that would never wash away. Even he stopped asking why someone had to die, or by what crime someone had to be imprisoned. If I pointed with bloodstained fingers, soldiers carrying guns and blades ran there...."

"Yuel...."

"But that was still fine. The military state was still improving, and he stayed by my side. Even when reality differed from what I had imagined, I endured by looking at him. But... he died. Now I'm alone. There's no one left to correct my direction. If I become the king of this country like this... we'll only repeat the kingdom's path. It will never become the military state...."

Muttering words that sounded like a spell, Yuel suddenly threw a question at the princess.

"Do you know what a country needs to continue forever?"

Caught off guard, the princess gave the obvious answer.

"...P-people? If there are no people left, there is no country."

"Wrong. The opposite."

"The opposite? Then does it need beasts?"

"Better than humans, maybe. But not that either. For a country to continue forever... it must be ruled by something non-human."

So Yuel created beings like herself. To replace the role of the Holy Maiden with Clairvoyance, she gave golems to communications officers with synchronization ability and sent them across the military state.

At first, the communications officers weren't very complete. Those who entered training at older ages were imperfect, so the system only barely functioned unless Yuel intervened deeply. But as officers trained from younger ages began receiving commissions, the military state was gradually completed.

"When humans form a mass, they make even the cruelest choices without hesitation. Communications officers are like that. Soldiers alone in dark rooms, yet sharing thought with countless officers spread across the land. One person and a mass at the same time, the essence of the military state. I entrusted the military state to them, and though their capability was lacking, they ran it far more systematically. If not for this meeting today, the military state would have continued even without me."

Maybe words from someone with real experience carried that kind of weight. Compared to a green princess, Yuel, who had actually ruled a nation, sounded more persuasive. Intimidated, the princess fumbled and couldn't find what to say.

If she lost her words here, there was no point in sending her. I spoke for her.

"That's sophistry. If you strip communications officers of their human lives and work them like machines, does that make them non-human?"

At my sneer, Yuel glared at me with the last of her hostility.

"If it's for building an eternal military state, we must endure that much. You, destroyer of civilization, could never agree."

"Stop forcing that frame. You people make something weird, call it civilization, and claim it's more precious than anything else. Too bad, I don't care at all whether that's civilization or whatever. You can't see it, you can't eat it, and it doesn't even truly exist."

Yuel snapped and shouted.

"The military state exists! It has existed until now, and it will keep existing!"

"Even after its core, you, got checkmated?"

"It's different from the kingdom. Even if you kill me here, the military state continues. That's what the military state is! The system is already complete. Communications officers in other modules will observe this result, revise their evaluations, and make a new judgment. Then that judgment is the military state's judgment, and it will keep leading the military state!"

So the military state continues because everyone believes it does?

Hmm. Sure. If you asked whether the military state existed, every human would say it did.

"...If there is some new thing called the military state, and it really exists."

Then what if you demanded it take responsibility? How would it answer?

"It can take responsibility too, right?"

"Res...pon...sibility?"

Azzy looked for a king to collect payment for the promise made with the military state. To Azzy, a king meant an individual who could exert massive influence over many humans. When that individual she found couldn't fulfill the promise, Azzy gave up and withdrew.

Why? People called it a promise with the military state, but the military state itself didn't actually exist. So no one in the military state took responsibility for the promise made with Azzy. Because the military state was not them.

"Siati's wish hit a wall. She hated the military state, but in truth the military state didn't exist. So Siati changed her mind and decided to throw a tantrum with that corpse. Because that was the only way to loosen the knot left in her heart, even a little."

The one who designed the military state was human. The parts used were human. Human communications officers gave orders to human soldiers, and human soldiers ruled human citizens. Humans imprisoned humans, worked humans, and executed humans.

Humans killed humans. It's as natural as humans giving birth to humans. Before dressing it up with words, that was real, and natural in itself.

That could be so. I had no complaint about that fact.

"But you still insist the 'military state' exists. You said the orders that rule humans come from the 'military state.' Then isn't something strange here? Isn't it unfair? It exists when it rules, then disappears when it's time to take responsibility, a bounced check. Wow. How do you even do that?"

"Wai..."

"This is where hired muscle comes in. You know how people who don't get paid pick a representative and hire enforcers, right? I came to collect as humanity's representative."

But if something isn't human and is very good at killing humans, isn't that an enemy of humanity?

Huh. Then that meant I had to work.

Unbelievable, I had to work even after being forcibly retired. What a terrible workplace.

"There's no king here. Step aside now."

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