WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 286: The Blessed Nation, the Cursed Human - 9

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For a moment, the princess doubted her ears. She acknowledged that the military state was a country with considerable potential, but calling it a blessed country was a stretch by any standard.

With sorrow in her eyes, Yuel looked at the corpse lying behind the princess.

"He dreamed of a country without a king. He said that even without one, if everyone joined forces and moved toward the future, they could create a country where everyone would be happy forever. That was why he named this country the military state, a nation of the masses."

People sometimes jokingly called it a country of soldiers because soldiers ran it, though its original name meant a country of the masses. These days, I wasn't sure which interpretation was the joke.

"He was certainly no genius. He was weak and only made everyone worry about him. He tried to dress up his thoughtless actions as something charming. He lacked knowledge, and his vision was narrow. There were times when I nearly burst from frustration because no matter how much I explained, he couldn't understand. I often wondered what I had believed in to follow him here."

'She's speaking so harshly... but she's smiling!'

Despite her cutting assessment, Yuel's expression was soft, as though drenched in water. The princess firmly kept her mouth shut in case her thoughts slipped out.

That was a good choice.

"But if he had one virtue, it was that he never hesitated to accept something good. Especially the things called the military state's Seven Great Inventions. Tools humanity had created for humanity's sake, things that had never existed before. Every one of those seven inventions came about because of him."

Even the princess was surprised by that.

"The chimera beans, clothing packets, meta-conveyor belts... The War Hero created all of those...?"

"...No. Most of them already existed somewhere in the world. All he did was make the sights I had 'seen' into reality."

Yuel, who possessed farsight, saw everything in the world without leaving her seat. Among those sights were things the Sanctum considered taboo.

What worries the declining Church of the Earth Mother had fallen into.

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

What fruit ripened on the Tree of Corruption hidden deep within the forest.

Yuel had been certain. If every beautiful and good thing in the world were gathered in one place, something beautiful that nobody had ever seen would surely be born.

Then the Holy Maiden of Heaven would look upon her again. She would see the hope that began with Yuel and change her mind...

"He trusted me completely. Even when I told him things that seemed unbelievable after seeing them with my own eyes, he listened with sparkling eyes and without doubt. The two of us 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 good more widely? Even as we stepped on ashes, we chased the stars. The future was full of hope."

Every invention created by the military state had been revolutionary. I had wondered how they made them, but it turned out the Holy Maiden had spied on places all over the world and stolen what she saw.

Could they really call those inventions, then? I couldn't help thinking that.

"We built everything anew. We were slowly moving forward. Today was better than yesterday, and we fell asleep looking forward to a better tomorrow. There were exhausting, difficult days too. Whenever that happened, he came to my side and knelt before me. He said he was glad I was there. Glad that God had not abandoned this country and had sent down an angel. He said that thanks to me, today had ended successfully too..."

"War Hero's ideals were truly noble. I wish he were still alive."

The princess naturally steered the gradually wandering subject back to the present. Focus returned to Yuel's eyes.

"Yes. You should be grateful to him. His will and effort were real. You have no right to despise or dismiss them."

"Lady Yuel. But he is already dead. Those of us living now don't know what effort he made. I don't know what happened, but the military state today is a country without a trace of kindness."

Yuel furrowed her brow.

"Kindness... Is that what you seek?"

"Kindness is necessary! Look at the military state now. Nobody is happy, and nobody dreams of hope. Where did all the ideals he held go? Why are the inventions he spread being used not to add to people's lives, but as an excuse to take everything else away?"

Chimera beans were undeniably an extraordinary discovery. With them, nobody would suffer from malnutrition.

But they had not been added to meals. The military state gave people chimera beans and took every other taste away. In the military state, food other than chimera beans had become a luxury.

The same went for everything else. When clothing packets were introduced, clothes with aesthetic value vanished. Convenient, easily stored canned food limited cooking methods too. Luxury and pleasure gradually disappeared.

The princess had grown up in the military state, but she had also been cherished as a princess. Because she knew how precious even occasional pleasures were, she could acknowledge the military state without fully agreeing with it.

"That wasn't necessary! You could have left everything as it was and only added better things! If his ideals were noble, you should have treated people with even more kindness!"

"Kindness freely given eventually becomes a troublesome burden that must be dealt with."

"Pardon?"

"We had to rebuild a ruined country and create meta-conveyor belts. So we accepted followers of the Earth Mother."

"Yes. I heard it was the best choice the military state could have made..."

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

Goosebumps rose across the princess's body.

Yuel, who had been happily speaking of the past, had seemed immersed in nostalgia. That was why the princess had arrogantly rebuked her. If those memories were so precious, shouldn't she have protected them more carefully?

'No. She isn't someone who lives in the past... She threw the whole past away and moved forward...!'

"We tore down the temples."

Yuel muttered with lifeless eyes.

"Every temple that had lived off the Kingdom's kindness rose up at once. Devout believers joined forces and opposed the military state. Whenever an accident occurred during construction, they insisted it was the Church of the Earth Mother's fault. Some temples that had been colluding with others even helped the rebels. I 'saw' all of it."

By saw, she meant that she had witnessed every last detail through her farsight.

Wow, military state. I had wondered how it managed the chaotic political situation after destroying the Kingdom. With a cheating ability like farsight, it was certainly possible.

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

"I heard the temples were driven out because they refused to pay taxes..."

"We couldn't simply cast them out, so we attached all sorts of reasons. The country had to be rebuilt. Pay taxes. If you won't, then at least donate. Show goodwill toward this country. Naturally, the temples refused. Humans could not demand compensation from God."

"How could that be...?"

"Then we pressed them. Public sentiment was already on our side. We only needed a pretext. That was why I had brought in the Shadow Casket... There was also so much resentment toward God. A little fanning was enough. I drove them out with my own hands... Heh heh. What do you think? Isn't it impressive?"

After that persecution, temples that believed in the Celestial God disappeared from the military state. Those who remained cooperated with the Resistance and barely survived in the shadows.

How ironic. The Holy Maiden, proof that God existed and the idol of every believer, had personally driven them out.

"God must have left my side. But that was all right. He was beside me."

"Uh..."

"To introduce clothing packets, we destroyed textile shops. To teach standardized magic, we brought down mage towers. We gave real weapons to merchants who believed food shortages would become weapons of their own. Inside their bodies."

Yuel calmly confessed the rest of what she had done.

To introduce something better, what already existed had to be removed. That was where it began. But the Kingdom, which had ruled for over a thousand years, had left its old way of life deeply rooted even as the country was overturned. Humans did not change just because a king died.

Ordinarily, the military state could never have come into being. Corruption and graft. Noncooperation and rebellion. A chaotic political situation where nobody could tell enemy from ally would have overwhelmed it. People gathered in large groups could never solve the problems created by the size of those groups.

Still, the Holy Maiden had done it.

"...Even while hiding in the deepest place, I saw everything. I filled my eyes with every filthy thing in the world, and stained my hands with blood that would never wash away. He no longer asked why someone had to be killed or what crime they should be imprisoned for. If I pointed somewhere with bloodied fingers, soldiers carrying guns and swords ran there..."

"Yuel..."

"Even so, it was all right. The military state was still getting better, and he remained beside me. Even if things differed from what I had imagined, I could endure by looking at him. But... he died. Now I am alone. There is no one to set me straight. If I become this country's king... I will only follow the Kingdom's path. It will never become the military state..."

Yuel had been muttering words that sounded like a spell when she suddenly asked the princess a question.

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

Caught off guard, the princess gave an ordinary answer.

"...P-people? Without people to live in it, there is no country."

"Wrong. The opposite."

"The opposite? Then does it need beasts?"

"That would be better than humans. But that isn't it either. For a country to continue forever... it must be ruled by something that is not human."

That was why Yuel created beings like herself. To replace the Holy Maiden with farsight, she gave golems to communications officers with the ability to synchronize and sent them throughout the military state.

At first, the communications officers were not highly refined. The officers had begun training at a fairly advanced age, so they were incomplete. The system only functioned because Yuel involved herself deeply. Yet as officers who had been educated from a younger age received their commissions, the military state gradually became complete.

"Humans in groups can make even the most merciless choices without hesitation. Communications officers are like that. Soldiers who sit alone in dark rooms, yet share their thoughts with countless communications officers spread across the land. They are one person and a group at the same time, the essence of the military state. I entrusted the military state to them. Their abilities may have been lacking, but they ran it far more systematically. If we had not met today, the military state would have continued even without me."

Perhaps experience gave someone's words that much weight. Yuel, who had ruled a country, sounded more convincing than the inexperienced princess. Intimidated, the princess hesitated, unable to decide what to say.

There was no point in sending her here if she lost her nerve now. I spoke in the princess's stead.

"That's sophistry. If you deny communications officers a human life and use them like machines, does that make them no longer human?"

When I sneered, Yuel glared at me with the last of her hostility.

"To create an eternal military state, we must endure that much. You, the destroyer of civilization, could never agree."

"Stop trying to frame me. You make something strange, then claim it's civilization and more precious than anything else. Unfortunately, I have no interest at all in whether that's civilization or whatever. I can't see it or eat it, and it doesn't even truly exist."

Yuel flared up and shouted.

"The military state exists! It has existed until now, and it will continue to exist!"

"Even though you, the heart of the military state, have been checkmated?"

"It is different from the Kingdom. Even if you kill me here, the military state will continue. That is what the military state is! The system has already been completed. Communications officers in other modules will observe this result, revise their assessments, and make a new decision. That will be the military state's decision, and it will continue leading the military state!"

The military state would continue because everyone believed so?

Hmm. Certainly. If someone asked whether the military state existed, every human would say that it did.

"...If this new thing called the military state exists, if it is real."

Then what would it say if someone demanded that it take responsibility?

"It can take responsibility too, right?"

"Respons...ibility?"

Azzy searched for a king to claim the price of the promise she had made with the military state. To Azzy, a king meant an individual who could have great influence over many humans. When the individual she found said fulfilling the promise was impossible, Azzy gave up and withdrew.

Why?

The promise had supposedly been made with the military state, but the military state did not truly exist. That was why nobody in the military state took responsibility for the promise made to Azzy. The military state was not them.

"Siati's wish hit a wall. Siati hated the military state, but the military state did not actually exist. That is why Siati decided to make a fuss with that corpse instead. It is the only way left to ease even a little of what remains in Siati's heart."

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

Humans killed humans. It was as natural as humans giving birth to humans. Before anyone judged it with decorated words, it was something that clearly existed, and nature in itself.

That was possible. I had no regrets about that fact.

"But you still insist that the 'military state' exists. You said the orders that rule humans come from the 'military state.' Isn't there something strange about that? Isn't it unfair? A bounced check that exists when it rules, then disappears when it must take responsibility. Wow. What should we do about that?"

"Wait..."

"This is when you need hired muscle. People who aren't paid choose a representative and commission the job, you know? I came to collect as the representative of 'humans.'"

But if something was not human and was very good at killing humans, wasn't it humanity's enemy?

Huh. Then I had work to do.

Seriously, I was forced into retirement and still had to work. What a terrible job.

"There is no king here. Step aside now."

Footnotes:

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