WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 296: The World Made of Gears - 3

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A huge steel arm bore down on me. Its overwhelming weight was palpable. My terrified body trembled on its own.

‘Either let go of the saw blade or hold on and take the blow. Two choices. How will you respond?’

If I let go of the saw blade, it would crush my head. If I kept holding on, the steel arm would pulverize me. There was no right answer to the two choices my opponent had forced on me.

So I chose a third option.

I hooked my fingers around the inside of the saw blade. Its outer edge was sharp, but the inside was dull. Careful not to cut myself, I gripped it and stole Maximilien's innate arcane.

Innate arcane, Gear Maiden.

A world made of gears. Touch one, and every connected gear moves at once. There are no “imperfect” concepts there, such as power, friction, or worn teeth.

In the world of gears, there are only two possibilities.

Turn, or do not turn.

While Maximilien focused on the arm, I spun the saw blade in the opposite direction. My body was abruptly pulled upward. The pressure made my arm tremble. The edge was not sharp, but I could clearly feel my fingers being crushed.

Fortunately, the drugs kept it from hurting. Thanks, drugs. I’ll be relying on you from time to time going forward, too.

‘You are skilled. But that ability was originally mine.’

Maximilien did not simply watch. The moment he glared at me through his monocle, the saw blade stopped dead. My rising body continued on momentum and floated into the air.

It was a dizzying sensation, as though gravity had vanished. Still, I had come far enough. I pulled two cards from my coat.

Diamond 2 and Diamond 8. A multipurpose hook and all things thin and long.

I connected a wire to the hook and threw it toward the Steel Beetle. The hook caught on a gear, and I yanked hard. I did not possess superhuman strength, but I had enough to adjust the direction of my fall.

My body drew a descending arc toward the Steel Beetle's side. Before I struck it, I stretched out both legs and stepped onto a gear. The instant my feet landed, I used Maximilien's innate arcane to move it, making only the gear beneath me rotate upward.

The gear faithfully performed its role. The enormous, waterwheel-shaped gear turned while carrying my weight. It felt as though the ground beneath my feet was flinging me upward. I kept my balance and ran up in great strides. After all sorts of acrobatics, I reached the Steel Beetle's back.

Maximilien's voice came from behind me.

“You are skilled at chaining actions together. Even if one can turn gears, it is difficult to imitate such a technique so easily. Do you steal more than innate arcane alone?”

The instant I heard his voice, a huge hand slammed down beside me. The impact shook the ground beneath my feet. I quickly retreated and saw that a hand made from scrap metal and gears was scraping against the Steel Beetle. Sparks flew as their protrusions meshed together. After a little friction, the steel hand became one with the Steel Beetle.

Maximilien pulled on the arm and leaped up in a single motion. He caught up to the height I had struggled to climb in just a second. It was almost absurd.

“Even so, I can't do it as well as you.”

“I have lived with gears my entire life. You, on the other hand, used this ability for the first time only moments ago. Is that also an ability possessed by the King of Humanity?”

It was probably thanks to mind-reading, but there was no reason to tell him that. I nodded.

“Humans are animals that use tools.”

“So the King of Humanity is skilled at using every tool. This is not limited to tools alone, is it? Alchemy and energy techniques as well. You are remarkably skilled with all of them.”

His gaze shifted to my cards. Perhaps because he was an alchemist, Maximilien instantly grasped the essence of the alchemy contained within them.

“But compared to your proficiency, your work is disappointing. You shaped alchemical steel without giving it any function. Is that truly all?”

Tch. Did he know how much mana it took to give something a function through alchemy? Ah, of course he did. He was probably the military state's strongest alchemist.

Give me some of your mana, and I'll make something better. Grumbling inwardly, I spread another card and asked,

“Want me to show you something else?”

“You had better, if you wish to survive uninjured.”

If that was what he wanted, I would oblige. Now then, let the magic show begin again...

Before I could, Maximilien thrust out an arm without warning. The huge steel hand obeying his command tried to seize me. If that thing caught me, I would end up like minced meat in a grinder.

But I was standing atop the Steel Beetle. Every foothold was a gear. Just like before, I could rotate the ground beneath me to move my body...

I tried to, but the gear did not move. My body, unable to keep up with my thoughts, stumbled.

‘You will not escape the same way. Just as you did, I can stop the gears you move.’

He understood the situation and responded far too quickly. He was one of the Six Generals for a reason. Despite possessing overwhelming strength, Maximilien steadily reduced my options and pressured me.

In the blink of an eye, the steel hand filled my vision. If it struck me, I would be seriously injured. If it caught me, there would be no future. I had to evade it, but I had lost control of my footing and was stumbling.

When plans went astray, panic delayed my judgment. Against a powerful opponent, even that brief opening was fatal. I missed my only chance to overcome the crisis, and the steel hand swept over my body...

‘Is this all?’

The moment he thought that, my chance came.

I had lured him into lowering his guard, and now my view was obscured. As though I had been waiting for it, I reached out.

Hundreds of gears lay before me. Most had been added simply to increase destructive power, but some important gears formed the basic framework. Someone without that knowledge could never tell them apart, but I knew exactly which was which because I had read the designer's thoughts.

I spotted my target and pulled out a card.

Diamond 1, a pickpocket's skewer. I held it in a reverse grip and thrust it in diagonally. It slipped into a gap between the gears, then bent like a fishing rod under the pressure of the steel arm and sprang back with a twang. Blood was visible, perhaps from a tear in my palm, but one gear came loose. I could see the framework beneath the outer layer.

It was no different from pickpocketing. First, I had to peel away the outer shell and then touch what mattered most. Without a moment's hesitation, I reached inside.

Maximilien could turn gears at will, but if turning gears were all he could do, the gears would only spin uselessly. To properly wield force, he needed a central point to serve as support.

Naturally, that support was his body. To achieve that, Maximilien had embedded gears throughout it.

In other words, that steel arm was connected to his body.

Put another way, I could destroy his body through the gears connected to it.

Reach it.

Gears flooded forth. A wave of steel swept over me. I could stop the rotation, but I could not erase momentum itself. Steel already moving at speed hammered heavily against my body.

If I was even a little later, my entire body would be crushed. Before that happened...

My fingertips touched the framework.

A steel hand made to imitate a human body. From the bones forming its structure, all the way from its extremities to its center, his ability traveled in reverse. The moving gears stopped one by one. Fingers, wrist, elbow, shoulder... I shut down every device turning at each joint. The steel arm Maximilien had made ended there.

But the gears did not.

To attach the prosthesis, Maximilien had burned his flesh and driven steel into his shoulder. Gears for controlling the prosthesis covered the surface of the joint. From there, I detected a network of gears beginning anew at the attachment point and extending throughout Maximilien's body.

“Found it.”

Even while the steel crushed my body, I clenched my hand tightly.

Innate arcane, Gear Maiden.

‘What is this? My senses...?!’

By the time he realized, it was too late.

My target was every gear connected to me. Including those inside Maximilien's body, I gave them all a simple but powerful command.

Turn in reverse. Until you break.

‘----!!!!’

The steel arm exploded.

Every part forming the arm spun wildly in different directions. Misalignment, twisting, malfunctions, and runaway movement. Every problem that could befall machinery occurred at once, and the steel arm shattered into pieces that flew in every direction.

The steel arm that had been about to crush me split into thousands of gears and crashed into me. They were small, but every one was alchemical steel of at least level 3. Dense metal tore my skin and struck my head. Some gears even rolled over my body.

The impact threw me backward. My back ached from hitting the ground, and my arms hurt wherever they had been crushed. The drugs I had taken earlier should still have been in my system. It felt as though my body sensed danger and was sounding an alarm.

It was fine.

I was still alive, after all.

The steel arm exploding at the last moment had helped greatly. Its weakened cohesion scattered the impact in every direction. Thanks to that, the threat of being crushed to death had been reduced to throbbing pain throughout my body. A very positive result.

The problem was...

“Yes, that is it! I understand at last!”

Maximilien was alive too.

I had failed.

No, I had half succeeded. Maximilien's prosthetic arm was nowhere to be seen, and his exposed left side was stained bright red. The bleeding caused by every gear inside his body running wild was visible even through the skin.

But he had not died.

Maximilien had seen exactly what I was trying to do and reacted quickly. He barely survived by severing the connection before the gears could grind his body apart. And that had been an instinctive response. What kind of monster was he?

He opened his mouth. Bright blood spattered from it, so it looked as though he was still alive too.

“You can only control gears touching your body. Is that right?!”

...He had even noticed my weakness while nearly dying.

What I had said earlier about force needing a center applied to me too. My body had to be in contact with another person's innate arcane for me to steal and use it.

Still, I did not want to tell him that. Perhaps I should deny it.

“No.”

“You think you can deceive me over something so obvious?! If you could control gears that were not touching your body, my own limbs would already be strangling my neck! Just as you attempted moments ago!”

Tch, he was quick. More than that, it was difficult that he could make a judgment and respond decisively in such a short moment.

“That was why you climbed onto the Steel Beetle, was it not? If you step away, the distant Steel Beetle will follow only my commands! You pretended to flee so you could deliberately move the battlefield here! Am I right?”

I had no choice but to admit it now. I obediently nodded.

“You did not become one of the Six Generals through strength alone. Unlike Historia.”

“Ha ha! That is my line. King of Humanity, you may have lost most of your power, but you are by no means an easy opponent! It feels as though I am fighting myself!”

“I feel something similar. When it comes strictly to the concept of gears, you are better than anyone else.”

I said it with genuine sincerity.

He was growing every moment. Limited to the concept of gears, Maximilien had reached the peak of humanity. I had thought there was nowhere further to go, but he continued to advance even now.

“In a world made of gears, you stand at humanity's summit. Every step you take is one no one else has walked. If you open up a new horizon, it will become territory humanity has conquered. I mean only in the field of gears, of course.”

It was the highest praise I could offer. It was also sincere, without exaggeration.

Maximilien listened with a blank expression for a moment, then burst into laughter.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! How moving! I have never needed anyone's recognition, yet this brings me more joy than any praise I have received in my life! So this is the King of Humanity!”

“Well, I was kicked out of my position as humanity's representative, so I have no credibility.”

“Then regain your power!”

“Ahaha. I told you, I don't want to. Even if I did, I wouldn't do it with you people. How could I know what you would do to my body?”

Even if it was a wish, I could not grant one that would let others do whatever they wanted with my body. It was the most basic instinct of a living creature. The homeostasis that sought to protect myself still remained.

The King of Humanity was a beast before he was a king.

“And there's something else I need to tell you... but I'll tell you right before I kill you.”

“You will never have that opportunity. I have understood your ability. I only need to prevent you from approaching me.”

In an awkward posture, Maximilien raised the prosthesis attached to his left arm. Click, click. The arm-shaped prosthesis reassembled itself, and a long groove opened from the elbow to the back of the hand. Its end opened up, taking the shape of a crossbow.

No, it was a crossbow.

A gear the size of a fingernail rolled into the groove on its own and settled there. At Maximilien's command, the small gear spun freely while suspended in the groove. Whiiir. The sound of wind was deafening for something made by such a tiny gear. If it accelerated along the groove, the gear would fly at me at a speed comparable to a bolt.

Maximilien aimed the improvised crossbow at me.

“Can you use the bullet-repelling energy technique? Well, it does not matter. I have enough ammunition. I will keep firing until your energy is spent. Now, if you have anything left to say, say it all.”

I could not use it in the first place because I lacked the energy. Pointing a weapon at someone to threaten them. What a proper way to hold a conversation.

Grumbling, I stacked cards together. One Diamond card and ten Clover cards. I made a deck of eleven cards and lightly shuffled it.

“No. A magician cannot reveal a trick even with a blade at their throat. That is why I only tell people with sealed lips. Like Lieutenant General Ebon, for example.”

Maximilien also remembered Lieutenant General Ebon of the Lords of All Creation.

“Lieutenant General Ebon. A nostalgic name. I heard he was in the Abyss...”

Then he trailed off. Having recalled the information, Maximilien glared at me with darkened eyes.

“The person with sealed lips you mentioned is someone about to die. Did you kill him?”

“I did not kill him. I was beside him at the time. If you want to hear my eulogy, die by my hand. I’ll recite it until you die.”

“...If I tortured you until you were about to die, I might hear it instead.”

“That’s a good mindset. Try it.”

As I said that, I gripped the top card with both hands and pulled it open.

Diamond Queen. Queen of Cloth.

It was like an impossibly small folded blanket unfurling. I draped the Queen of Cloth around myself as a cloak. Its soft texture wrapped around me.

Queen of Cloth. The finest cloth, a little warmer, a little tougher, and a little better at concealing things. But that was not all. If that were all it did, there would be no reason to praise it as the Queen of Cloth.

The Queen of Cloth's true ability was the power to confine mana. Even light could be perfectly trapped if it was made of mana. It could give pitch-black darkness to vampires who hated light.

I drew my collar closed and declared,

“I’m going to resist with everything I have.”

Footnotes:

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