WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 295: The World Made of Gears - 2

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Maximilien was born in the Lesser States.

A nation where alchemy had rendered everything false. Even a pebble rolling along the roadside was an artificial object made by someone. The land where the Lord of Gold roamed was both a blessing and a curse. Humans lived crushed beneath gold.

It took less than a hundred years for nature, shaped by Mother Earth over hundreds of millions of years, to be buried beneath humanity's traces. In that country, where even richly ripened crops were steeped in metal poison, humans themselves were used as materials.

Because he had been born in the Lesser States, Maximilien survived.

Maximilien had no arms. Neither he nor his parents found it especially surprising. Someone born without arms would not know why people were supposed to have four limbs. Besides, the Lesser States was an unusual country where one out of every three children was born deformed.

Whenever the Lesser States lacked something, it filled the gap with alchemy. Even if it was the arm of a child who had not finished growing.

His parents, alchemists of modest skill, decided to make him prosthetic arms.

With far more enthusiasm than their abilities warranted.

The Lesser States was also a country where one out of every three children was born mad. Maximilien's parents were among them. From childhood, Maximilien received their burning attention as they subjected him to every conceivable modification.

Was it love? Obsession? Or perhaps the mindset of scholars driven to solve a difficult problem?

Either way, thanks to his parents' devoted efforts and the endless pain he endured, Maximilien awakened to alchemy. Using that knowledge, he made prosthetic arms for himself.

He wandered the Lesser States with gear-driven prosthetic arms and soon became famous.

No matter how excellent an alchemist was, it was difficult to produce whatever function was needed at any given moment. But Maximilien, for whom gears were practically part of his body, could make sturdy mechanical devices even from low-quality materials. People went wild for his creations, whose designs differed from the ground up.

Alchemy was honest. Under the law of equivalent exchange, no matter how desperately one tried to cut costs, one could not exceed the total amount of alchemical value. Those clinging to old methods could not compete with Maximilien.

With that advantage, Maximilien practically raked in money from across the Lesser States. In a country where alchemical value was truth itself, money was power. With immense funds, Maximilien founded a company and rose as a new power in the Lesser States...

Until the Golden Palace rejected him.

Once permission was granted, the jackals rushed in. Maximilien was an outstanding alchemist and knew his way around a fight, but the Lesser States was a nation of alchemy. No miracle would make the heavier side of the scale tilt the other way.

After a long pursuit, Maximilien had no choice but to flee across the border.

Then one day, he heard that his parents were looking for him. They had clearly been taken hostage. Ignoring it would have been rational, but to Maximilien, his parents were both teachers and benefactors. He could not leave them to die. He returned to the Lesser States of his own accord.

Under heavy surveillance, Maximilien met his parents and took gears from his pocket.

They said that in the Lesser States, when three children were born, one was deformed, one was insane, and one was a genius.

Sometimes all three were born in one person.

Maximilien hated his parents' incompetence and irritable tempers. Taking out their frustration on their child because an experiment had failed was something he could never understand. Other than that, he loved his family well enough.

Whenever the Lesser States lacked something, it filled the gap with alchemy. Just as his parents had done to Maximilien's arms, he tried to "fix" his parents' heads.

His parents could no longer get angry. One could not get angry if one could not think.

Unlike his parents, Maximilien did not shift the blame for failure onto someone else. He calmly admitted that he had fallen short, took care of everything around him, and left.

* * *

Just before the sharp saw blade tore me to shreds, a brown shadow fell beside me like a meteor. It was Azzy, who had been hiding until now. The King of Dogs, who could vent her anger freely against gears, leaped fiercely at the saw blade.

"Woof!"

Even Azzy was not stupid enough to sink her teeth into a sharp saw blade. Her target was not the blade, but the shaft connected to it. Azzy plunged straight into the Steel Beetle, bit down on the rotating shaft, and shook her head. She meant to tear the shaft out.

"Mm! Mm-mmm-mmm-mmm!"

Then she screamed while hanging from it.

Size was not always proportional to strength, but the Steel Beetle demonstrated the difference in weight class all too well. Azzy spun around with the saw blade.

"Azzy. Even you can't handle that with your strength."

Humans were not strong. Objectively speaking, compared to other beasts, there was not a single physical quality in which they excelled. Their skin was thin, their claws were round, and their bones were fragile. It was hard to imagine how they had survived at all.

But humanity's true strength lay in its ability to borrow strength from elsewhere.

They skinned other animals and wrapped themselves in their hides. They chipped stone and pulled out horns to use as claws. They cut down trees and twisted rope to replace their skeletons. Since the strength they borrowed was not their own, they could use it recklessly. If a tool broke, they simply made another.

By using tools, humans became the rulers of the land.

The Steel Beetle, greedily using the principles of the wheel and axle, multiplied force hundreds or thousands of times. Before the violence of numbers, even a Beast King could not endure.

Ah, except for the King of Humanity.

I reached toward the falling saw blade with Azzy hanging from it. My hand covered the side of the blade that could tear apart anything in the world in an instant.

By all reason, my hand should have been shredded.

Click.

My encounter with the saw blade ended with a quiet sound. The blade that had raged like a furious storm became a still object the moment it touched my hand.

"Mmm..."

Azzy let out a foolish whine as she dangled from the metal bar clenched in her mouth. Maximilien spoke into the silence.

"...So your provocation was not baseless. You can even control the Steel Beetle."

"If you can do it, so can I."

Unlike the automatic carriage powered by a thunderwheel, the Steel Beetle moved solely through Maximilien's ability. The rolling wheels, spinning saw blade, and even the joints connecting the gears all lay under his authority.

That was why I, using the same power, could exert the same level of control.

Maximilien twitched his fingers. Whenever he made a motion like scratching the air with his fingernails, the Steel Beetle writhed. It tried to escape my hand and move according to its true master's will.

But as long as I held it, it would not move. I was moving in direct opposition to Maximilien.

'We're evenly matched. He can't completely seize control. Is that all...? Then I have a chance.'

Tch. He caught on fast.

I had provoked him this much. It would have been fine if he had lost his reason. Was it because he had driven gears into his head? His emotions and reason moved separately.

"Isn't it ugly to get angry after being struck where it hurts?"

"I am not angry. You have the right to say such things to me."

Don't lie. You're angry. You're only holding on to your reason by turning the thinking gears in your head as hard as you can!

"You attacked me without a word and claim you're not angry. I find that hard to believe."

"It can't be helped. You have no intention of following me. But I need you. Since our opinions cannot align, we have no choice but to determine which opinion is stronger."

"Even if you drag me away, I can just refuse to cooperate."

"You may refuse to cooperate. But what about the King of Humanity?"

That would be troublesome too.

I was the King of Humanity, and even if I regained my power, my character would not become twisted and my personality would not change.

But I had no choice but to feel threatened, because humans had driven out their own king before...

"Perhaps the King of Sin will be more cooperative."

No matter how I thought about it, the King of Sin the regressor had seen in the future was surely the King of Humanity.

I was human. I was a beast. Beasts did not do things that would destroy the world. No, it was impossible in the first place. Beasts were part of the world too.

To destroy the world, I would first have to kill myself, but if I killed myself, I could not destroy the world. What a contradiction.

Yet they had apparently managed it. Impressive, you human bastards.

"I do not know much about the true intentions of the Lords of All Creation either. In truth, I had no need to know. My only purpose was to meet the King of Humanity. But... if you will not acknowledge me, I must seek another method!"

Maximilien raised his right arm.

Gears that crawled out from somewhere rolled over his body. Without needing to be assembled, they found their proper places and moved on their own. Steel meshed together with a heavy clank. A gigantic steel arm was completed in an instant.

Maximilien swung the steel arm at me.

I screamed.

"You said you were taking me with you!"

"Don't worry. Even if your limbs are ruined, I will fix them."

"I don't need that!"

Footnotes:

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