WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 302: The Gear in My Head

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Maximilien quietly steadied themself. Their mind turned my words over while their body brought its ruined state under control. The gears inside them, which had been thrown into disarray, slowly began to fit back together.

Their joints creaked as they resumed functioning. What little blood remained gathered in their head. Their reason, hazy as though shrouded in fog, flickered as it tried to regain its clarity.

‘You say I was trying to become a god?’

Maximilien snorted, then suffered a headache from the shock. They had reached the point where even the force of their own breath could hurt them.

Despite being in such a miserable state, their mind did not stop. Tick. Tock. The gear at the center of Maximilien’s head slowly turned.

‘I have never believed in gods. From the day I was born without arms, I never once relied on anything unseen. Prosthetic arms supported me, and alchemy guided me. No god ever watched over me. There was only me.’

No matter how deadly the crisis, their brain kept working. It was not a matter of will. It was a matter of function.

Because Maximilien had embedded gears in their own head.

The small device they called a Thinking Gear did not think for them, despite its name. If anything, it was closer to whipping the brain into action.

It forcibly crammed blood into their head and pressed down on their brain. It shut down the parts crying out from exhaustion, then connected emotion and reason whenever needed.

So even when tired, hungry, or in pain, their brain did not dull. Fear, rage, and confusion could not interfere with their thoughts. Even if the Beast King howled, their body moved, disregarding even the princess’s authority. If necessary, they acted, even if it came close to a taboo.

That was how Maximilien earned the right.

The right to move by their own will alone, regardless of fate or limits.

‘...You are mistaken, King of Humanity. I have no need to become a god.’

“I am already the god of my own life!”

Maximilien exercised the right they had earned. By their own will, they extended the prosthetic arm whose grotesque framework was exposed.

“I only wished to give others a chance! Those who lack that right! A chance to become masters of themselves!”

Even with their body in ruins, innate arcane could be used as long as they had the will. Maximilien focused, and the gears that had stopped began turning all at once.

The steel beetle broke its long silence and twisted its body. I had been suppressing it until now, but now that I had stepped away, there was no one left to stop it. The massive weapon, powerful enough to overwhelm even the King of Dogs through sheer force, creaked as it tried to unleash its remaining strength...

That was all.

“‘Right’ sounds nice, but aren’t you framing it entirely to suit yourself? To sum it up, you were trying to put gears inside other people’s bodies, weren’t you?”

I shrugged.

The steel beetle’s stretch stopped with a creak. If machines could suffer total paralysis, that was what it would look like. Unable to use its tremendous power, the steel beetle convulsed in agony.

Maximilien tried again and again to move it, but every attempt ended in failure. The exoskeleton surrounding the steel beetle would not move at all.

“I only had a normal reaction to that. What person would sit still while someone said they were going to put gears inside their body? They would resist desperately. It probably isn’t just because they’re afraid.”

I pointed at the steel beetle so Maximilien could see it clearly. Tiny gears had been wedged between the enormous gears that made up its exoskeleton.

Two interlocking gears turned just fine. But what if you inserted another gear so it touched both at once? What would happen if all three interlocked?

They would not turn at all.

If one gear turned clockwise, the gear meshed with it had to turn counterclockwise. That was the basic principle of gears. But if there was another gear meshed with both of them, that gear would have to turn both clockwise and counterclockwise.

A contradiction.

“Look at the steel beetle. When an odd number of gears forms a loop, they stop like that. Something as simple as this makes gears useless. You might use them, but nobody else can. No, they won’t.”

“Urgh...!”

“Give up now. You have no moves left.”

Until just moments ago, they had at least had gears to throw. They had mana to use alchemy. They had protective equipment to defend their body.

That was only until Historia’s Gun-Sword Total Intent struck them. Now, they were no more than a living corpse fitted with a prosthetic arm.

I walked toward Maximilien, step by step. A few gears lay scattered around, but that small a number was hardly a threat. Gears, too, were only worthwhile when linked together.

They had no means of stopping me. An ordinary person could be crushed with a prosthetic arm alone, but unfortunately for them, they were facing me. If my hand touched their body, I would use their innate arcane to turn every gear inside them backward.

Including the Thinking Gear.

As though they had given up on everything, Maximilien lowered their head and staggered.

Just two steps remained. That was all the distance between us. With two steps left before death, Maximilien grabbed their right arm with their left. The prosthetic arm shook violently. At a glance, it looked as though they were trembling in fear.

“No! I will not stop!”

That could not be it. The prosthetic arm’s vibration was a death rattle before it came apart. Crack. The connection between their right arm and shoulder came undone, and their left arm finally tore their lifelong rival, the right arm, from their body.

Maximilien gripped even their own arm as a weapon and swung it with a desperate cry.

‘If I lack something, I will fill it. If it breaks, I will fix it. If it is inadequate, I will improve it. If it is impossible, I will make it possible! I will not stop!’

Who would expect someone to tear off their own arm and swing it? It was a sudden quick-draw strike that exploited a gap in my awareness. Even injured, Maximilien was a powerhouse who had reached the Six Martial Stars. The speed of their swing, using their own arm as an axis, was enormous. The gears attached to the prosthetic arm clattered as if trying to bite into me.

But I was a mind reader. The more carefully calculated the movement, the more clearly I could read it.

Instead of dodging the swinging left arm, I reached out my hand. Compared to their prosthetic arm, my hand was painfully slow, but speed was relative. My fingers would touch it first, before it hit my face. The prosthetic arm and my hand crossed paths, and the tip of my fingernail caught a gear.

The battle that had dragged on so tediously ended there. Maximilien’s body froze upright, as though preserved in a photograph.

Inertia carried the prosthetic arm into my cheek, but that was all. Feeling its cold touch against my face, I muttered.

“...I was going to turn everything backward and break it, but you managed to stop the gears even then.”

Just as I could stop moving gears, Maximilien could do the same. The instant they sensed the gears inside their body malfunctioning, they stopped them all.

It was the best response they could make. Not that it changed the situation.

“Even so, you can’t move when gears are spread throughout your entire body. All you can do is buy a few seconds before you die.”

Just as expected, strength drained from their body. With the gears stopped, their body could no longer support itself.

I had no intention of dismissing that. No, I wanted to applaud them for squeezing out every last move until the end. But I would let go if I clapped with my hands, so I made clapping noises with my mouth instead.

“Clap, clap, clap. You really are amazing. I’m not trying to deceive you or mock you. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. You were an incredible and honest person to the very end.”

Objectively speaking, it made no sense for me to lose.

Besides wearing prosthetic arms, Maximilien had filled the inside of their body with gears to strengthen it. That made them incredibly durable and allowed them to move on equal footing with generals trained in energy arts. Apparently, they could not be bothered explaining that part, so they had pretended to be an energy artist who had mastered the eight trigrams on their own, and claimed their ability to control gears was Li.

In any case, I had begun with conditions so favorable they were practically unfair. I only had to touch them to win. Having powerful allies like Azzy and Historia was a bonus.

No matter how weak I was and how Maximilien had reached the Six Martial Stars, this battlefield was not just tilted in my favor. It had been completely flipped over. Maximilien’s skill alone was what had dragged such a disadvantageous fight this far.

“Your direction was just too far off. Those who reach the Demon God naturally change other humans. They do not struggle against them. But you tried to struggle against every other human. Even going so far as to fight a proxy war against me.”

Keeping hold of the prosthetic arm with one hand, I drew a card with the other. Diamond Ace, the Versatile Skewer. I used what little mana I had left for alchemical transformation. A familiar sensation filled my palm.

I gripped the skewer in reverse and raised it to Maximilien’s head. Maximilien’s thoughts had almost stopped as well, yet their bloodshot eyes instinctively followed the skewer’s tip. Even now, life instinctively guarded itself against death.

“Goodbye, Maximilien. I’ll only affirm your wish. I’ll remember the dream that could not come true. I may not grant your wish, but I’ll write that such a wish existed in one corner of the columbarium and preserve it there. The King of Humanity acknowledges you. Maximilien, you were not a god, but you were not a cowardly warrior.”

After offering a brief tribute, I moved my hand. The skewer dug into their temple.

Thunk. I felt it pierce something hard...

I tilted my head. The skewer I had clearly aimed and swung at their head had stabbed something else.

A tree was growing there.

At some point, a tree had burst through the concrete floor and risen up to block my skewer, its branches swaying gently.

The situation was so still that it felt as though the tree had been there from the beginning, and I had simply failed to notice it before swinging my skewer.

That was impossible.

This was the military state. Its headquarters had covered the ground in concrete and cut down every tree long ago, even trees useless as firewood. There could not be a tree in this land where concrete had been piled in place of soil, and bricks in place of trees.

Even if there had been one, few kinds of trees could grow through concrete this thick. Even if it were one of those, there was no way it could grow as tall as a person in just a few seconds!

This was clearly an artificial phenomenon. Someone had grown a tree to protect Maximilien. Whether that was even possible was another matter.

But who?

“Forgive me, my king.”

The answer came from underground.

At first, it was a sprout. Then it was a sapling. In only a few seconds, what had been a sprout became a large, towering tree before me.

It was the stillest explosion in the world. Nature’s explosive, with green smoke and brown flames, covered me in the blink of an eye.

Footnotes:

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