WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 297: The World Made of Gears - 4

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Rrrrrr.

The bullet gear spun furiously, scraping groove after groove. It accelerated along the evenly cut channel in an instant and flew straight at my face in the blink of an eye.

Still, I could see it, so it was not as fast as Historia's energy bullets. If that heavy gear hit me, though, the impact would be enormous.

‘Shoulder.’

My ability was mind-reading. I knew where Maximilien was aiming and dodged a step ahead. The gear swept past where my shoulder had been, stirring up a whirlwind.

If it had been Historia, it would have hit the moment she fired, so I never could have dodged it... but against Maximilien, who did not specialize in projectile weapons, this much was easy.

‘You can dodge one. Impressive skill... Then how about a hundred?’

Huh?

Dozens, then hundreds of gears crawled up Maximilien's entire body. It looked as though insects were covering them. The gears that reached their shoulders rolled down along the contours of their body. Lining up in orderly rows, they reached their wrists and loaded themselves into the bowgun one by one, accelerating along its groove as before.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

There was no target this time. Maximilien intended to scatter gears everywhere with a swing of their arm. Blind fire backed by sheer power, without any mind games at all. Mind-reading was useless against that.

Tch. A technical fighter should rely on fierce mind games and a hidden trump card, not this kind of brute force! Since I was fighting a battle I could not win, I called my faithful sandbag.

"Azzy!"

"Woof!"

The King of Dogs answered my call.

Azzy had struggled her way up the Steel Beetle, and before she even had time to catch her breath, she leaped toward me. Her head snapped sideways as she arrived in front of me. The flying gears vanished into her mouth as though being sucked in.

Crunch, crunch.

Every time Azzy chewed, sparks flew from between her teeth. Every gear Maximilien used was made from at least Level 4 alchemical steel, but before Azzy's teeth, they were nothing more than slightly hard dog treats.

No matter how many Maximilien fired, they only had two hands. Azzy picked out every gear flying toward me with uncanny accuracy and chewed them apart.

The barrage ended. Azzy spat out the last gear, raised her tail stiffly, and let out a long howl.

"Awooooo!"

The King of Dogs. Humanity's old friend was still on my side. She could not bite Maximilien to pieces, but at least she would protect me from dying.

What did you think? This was the power possessed by the King of Humanity...

"A half-baked being who cannot even reveal this much."

Maximilien muttered quietly and spread both hands.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

The ground beneath my feet shook. The Steel Beetle vibrated violently. Azzy was terrified by the sudden earthquake.

"Woof! Woof woof! The ground's moving! An earthquake!"

"It isn't an earthquake! The Steel Beetle is shaking!"

"Woof? Beetle?"

"No, it is an earthquake!"

After giving Azzy a rough explanation for her confusion, I searched for the source of the shaking. The Steel Beetle itself was not moving.

For someone like me, whose raw power was simply lacking, a massive weapon was more troublesome than anything else. Maximilien had been careless until now, so they had not tried it, but if the Steel Beetle simply charged at me, I would face a tremendous threat to my life.

That was why I had climbed onto the Steel Beetle, restraining Maximilien so they could not move it.

"I'm definitely stopping it, so how...?"

Maximilien kindly gave me the answer.

"The Steel Beetle stores countless spare gears for emergencies. It seems you cannot control those, since they do not reach you."

The only gears available to me were those I was in contact with.

If two gears meshed together, they were no different from one large gear. Their operating principles were the same. Therefore, I could control gears that interlocked with each other, and I had even used that property to attack Maximilien.

But I could not reach gears scattered about at random. They had nothing to do with me right now.

Maximilien, unaffected by conditions like mine, could command them. For example, like this.

"What kind of way is that for gears to move?!"

The source of the shaking soon revealed itself.

Hundreds, thousands of gears rolled along the side of the Steel Beetle. They were not moving while meshed together. They were simply rolling like ordinary wheels, spinning as they went, without any special control.

It looked like a swarm of thousands of ants rushing in. Violence through numbers.

"Can the King of Dogs save you again this time, I wonder?"

Damn it. I could stop their rotation if I touched them, but there were not just one or two. The speed they had gained while rolling would still strike me. I had to intercept them before they arrived.

Desperately, I shouted.

"Azzy! Kick them all away!"

"...Woof."

Azzy made the dumbest face I had ever seen. Was that what she did when faced with an impossible demand? Her canine intelligence probably could not think of a way to overcome this.

That meant a human had to shine here.

I pulled out a card. A Clover card. The suit containing disposable magic. It was the final card I had saved and saved, the last resort that would protect my life.

Magic was irreversible. Unlike tools, magical energy could not be recovered once used. Using a Clover meant permanently losing part of my assets. Even now that I had decided to use it, my hand trembled.

Still, it was better than dying. It was not like I could take it to my grave.

I poured magical energy into the card and flicked it. The sealed energy responded to mine and glowed. Holding the card between two fingers as it emitted a bluish light, I said,

"Set."

Military state standard magic was based on black magic, using the body as both medium and sacrifice. It damaged my body, but it was easy and quick to activate. A simple chant consumed the magical energy in my body and created a useful effect.

There was an opposite concept, white magic. This was classic magic, using an object imbued with magical energy as its medium and drawing a magic circle to invoke a phenomenon.

As befitted classic magic, it had a good selection of effects but was difficult to use in real combat. Drawing magical energy from something else made it slow to activate and required advanced formulas. Since objects containing magical energy were expensive too, it was classic magic in the truest sense, something only those with plenty of time and money could enjoy.

Yet there were people in this world who treasured their own bodies more than money, and I was one of them.

Just before the light exploded, I threw the card. It was the Six of Clubs. It cut through the air and landed in the middle of the gears. For a moment, it spun there like a top, as though resisting them.

But a single thin card was too fragile to fight steel, especially when the numbers were so uneven. The spinning card was soon swallowed by the wave of steel...

Now.

I pointed a finger and shouted the activation phrase.

"Acus Liter!"

The Six of Clubs contained an enhanced version of the condensation magic favored by the military state.

It drew in the water in the air that responded to magical energy. Ordinary condensation magic was lucky to gather enough water to wet one's throat, but mine was custom-made, so it was somewhat more forceful. To put it simply, it could crystallize even water vapor immediately.

After a flash of light, a pure white storm swept through the area. Magical energy stretched in every direction like a spiderweb, dragging in the water it caught. Ice crystals formed in an instant and seized the rolling gears.

It held enough magical energy to turn a human into an ice statue. Restricting the gears' movement with it should have caused quite a problem.

As I expected, Maximilien was quite startled.

"Magic?! Could it be...!"

...Though the reaction went in a slightly different direction.

‘Only that?’

The sound of ice being gnawed away came from every direction. Though covered in ice, the gears spinning by themselves did not stop. They scraped away and devoured the ice blocking their path. Shattered ice fragments glittered in the air.

Before long, most of the gears broke through the frozen field.

My magic had bought about three seconds. Even that was mostly thanks to the gears slipping helplessly on the ice.

Trying to hide their disappointment, Maximilien shouted,

"Is that the trump card you hid? Mere magic? You know magic cannot defeat innate arcane!"

Did they think I used it because I didn't know that? It was all I had! I didn't have innate arcane! It wasn't like the King of Humanity could have something unique to himself!

Tch, so little tricks would not work against one of the Six Generals after all. I would have to be satisfied with buying three seconds. While I had them, I ran for it, leaving Azzy to cover my retreat.

"Azzy, I'm counting on you back there!"

"Woof! Yelp! Woof!"

Pained cries came from behind me, but I did not know anything about that. Azzy was snatching up gears like she was catching rats, only to occasionally howl when one of Maximilien's fired gears struck her. I did not see it, so I had no idea what was happening.

The most dangerous thing for me was the gears Maximilien fired. Getting out of their line of fire came first. Once I reached the edge, I threw myself over and clung to the side.

I was sighing in relief when I heard the clatter of gears turning. Looking up, I saw dozens of gears pursuing me along the edge.

Azzy, you useless mutt! You let some get through!

"Tch! They're really persistent!"

The gears poured down at me. They were only dropping under their own weight, but even that was troublesome for me. They would hurt, obviously, and if the impact made me fall from here, the Steel Beetle would return to Maximilien's control.

I had to prevent that. If Maximilien regained control of the Steel Beetle, even Azzy would not be able to handle them.

I ran along the protrusions on the side. Gears rained down behind me. I barely dodged, but a few landed on my cloak and wrapped around it, jerking my body backward. Gears rolled down on top of me while my posture was broken.

I hurriedly reached up and caught one.

A rapidly spinning gear was no different from a throwing star. Catching it barehanded would shred my palm from the force of its rotation. It had already completely wrapped itself around my cloak.

Before its teeth could tear me apart, I removed its rotation with Maximilien's innate arcane. The gear that had been thrashing around while pulling at my cloak became docile the moment it touched my hand, settling into my grip with a click.

I could cancel its rotation, but not the speed it had gained before then. A heavy impact ran through my arm. It felt like catching a ball someone had kicked with all their strength.

"I can control rotation however I want, but I can't do anything about inertia. Does that mean as long as it follows the concept of gears, nothing else matters? It's a little unreasonable, but..."

It was unreasonable because it was innate arcane. Tch. Compared to innate arcane, which imposed its own rules on the world, mind-reading felt like nothing. Could someone give me a better ability...?

Wait. Rules. I could use that.

I fiddled with the gear. I had considered throwing it away, but it would only continue chasing me. Grumbling, I inserted the gear into a suitable spot in the wall. It went quiet like that. I kept fleeing, dodging or catching the gears that fell after it.

After I had been running for some time, Maximilien's thoughts reached me from above.

‘The King of Dogs is certainly troublesome. She does not try to attack me, but she is carefully destroying each gear. If I make contact, the King of Humanity will turn it against me. If I do not, the King of Dogs blocks me. Troublesome.’

So I was not the only one having a hard time. That was a little comforting.

‘Without the Steel Beetle, I cannot properly subdue the Beast King, yet the King of Humanity is sealing the Steel Beetle... Was the Beast King always such a troublesome existence...? Wait, the Beast King?’

Perhaps the only piece that could break this deadlock. Belatedly, Maximilien remembered her existence.

The King of Cats, Nabi.

"King of Cats!"

You noticed late, Maximilien.

I had not forgotten Nabi from the start.

"Nabi isn't coming."

Clomp, clomp.

The sound of hobnailed military boots echoed over the concrete floor. Iron struck dry ground in a slightly dragging rhythm.

Long black hair braided down her back swayed behind her. She approached with a strangely listless gait, wearing a weary, exhausted expression.

Her eyes looked worn down by fatigue and stress. At this moment, though, she must have been very happy.

"Hoo..."

That was because she had a magical herb leaf cigarette in her mouth. Not an ordinary one, either, but a special cigarette made from the leaves of the World Tree.

Historia exhaled a long stream of smoke and muttered with a dazed expression.

"This is nice... My arm doesn't hurt, and my head feels clear. It feels like my energy is coming back..."

Footnotes:

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