WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 340: Mosaic City

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The juggernaut came to an abrupt stop. Its prow shot upward as if it had struck a ledge, rattling the furniture and sending objects tumbling to the floor.

I had been sitting gracefully in a chair, drinking tea, but I spilled it all over the front of my clothes. The classic notion that water defeated fire was true. Hot water was hotter than fire.

"Ow, hot!"

I quickly shook out my clothes to cool the tea. Nature was mysterious. Just flapping my clothes around made the hot tea lose its heat in no time.

This was magic. This was nature. Using energy arts or magic just because something was hot was the strange part.

"Woof! Woof! Woof! An earthquake! An earthquake! Danger!"

"Azzy. This isn't the ground. There can't be an earthquake."

Azzy was still jumping around in fright. Had the juggernaut made the journey too comfortable until now? She seemed to have mistaken this place for solid ground.

"What? What's going on? It hasn't shaken even once until now."

The regressor asked the air, but Perru was the only one who could answer. Everyone naturally turned to Perru.

"...Probably."

Perru slowly walked over to the window.

The Golden Ark had small windows, but even those were covered by thick curtains thanks to Tyr's powerful resolve. Perru lifted one curtain slightly and looked outside.

Then Perru murmured.

"...We're close."

Perru tended to speak in short phrases, but this time, there was no need to explain what that meant. There was only one place we could be approaching in the Lesser States.

The Lord of Gold.

As though we had planned it, we left the cabin. We climbed the narrow stairs, stepped onto the deck, and looked around while squinting against the pouring sunlight.

Aurea was snorting excitedly at one end of the cramped deck. While Perru tended to Aurea, I slowly approached the prow. The view hidden beyond the Golden Ark's horizon gradually revealed itself.

"I didn't realize it because I've been cooped up in the cabin, but the scenery has changed quite a bit."

Once I reached the prow, I muttered as I looked over the sight before me.

An endless cornfield stretched across one side of my view. Corn tall enough to submerge a person up to the top of their head filled the landscape.

The cornfield along the edge had been dug up, perhaps for harvesting, but compared to its overall size, it was no more than a fingernail clipping. If all this corn were gathered, the Lesser States would not need to worry about food for years.

The sea of corn that had seemed as though it would continue forever suddenly ended at a certain point.

Beyond a small stone wall lay a city. It was a beautiful city made entirely of pure white stone, from its foundation to its rooftops. Aqueducts running across the buildings, winding roads, and a massive, magnificent palace in the distance. It was clearly a historic city left behind by a great civilization...

"This isn't the Golden Palace, is it?"

"...No."

"Then the Lord of Gold made it. This field and that city."

...If this had not been the Lesser States.

Looking at it again, I felt something strange about it. I did not need to search for the reason. The cornfield sitting openly beside the city was strange enough.

"This city has no planning whatsoever. He built a field that large where there isn't even any water flowing, right beside such a huge city? Within weeks, the field will wither away, and the city will become a breeding ground for disease and insects. What a waste of a city."

As I muttered, Hilde, who had been studying the city closely, added a comment.

"Is it, though~? The city doesn't seem like much of a waste either. It looks splendid and grand on the surface, but its sense of beauty is completely awful. Awful. The military state would be prettier!"

"I don't know much about art, but it doesn't seem possible for anything to be worse than the military state. Isn't this better than a country made of stacked square blocks?"

"Father has a completely awful sense of beauty too! You can't feel how unpleasant this is?"

A sense of beauty? Wasn't it strange to feel discomfort over something you could not even eat? Beauty was too subjective a concept. As someone who read minds, I did not have such standards myself. Unless it was universal enough that everyone would nod along.

"I'll give you a hint. Look at the pillars. Then you'll understand!"

As Hilde said, I focused on the pillars throughout the city.

Temple pillars. Bridge pillars. Building pillars. What each one supported differed, so the people who made them differed as well, and naturally, their methods of construction differed too. There might be fashionable styles, but even those varied. Even when looking at the same thing, people all reproduced it differently.

Yet this city was not like that.

They were the same. The bridge pillars, the temple pillars, the building pillars. Even the pillars placed along the roads just for decoration were all similar.

Their size, thickness, and minor patterns varied... but they did not seem to branch from the same root. They looked as though they had grown from the same branch.

"I didn't mind before you said anything, but now that you've mentioned it, it does bother me a little."

"That's not all. The patterns on the bricks. The way they were laid. The layout of the buildings. The shape of the districts. They're all the same. Repeated patterns. It's not just stale, it's grotesque."

Was that what this person had been looking at from the start? While everyone else looked at the city and cornfield, Hilde alone examined every pillar and pattern in the city. Should I call that sharp observation, or just a little creepy?

Whatever the shapeshifter's powers of observation were like, the more I listened, the more uncomfortable I became. The knowledge I gained by reading Hilde's mind did not affect me by itself. Still, every time I noticed what Hilde pointed out, my senses reported discomfort.

There were things you simply disliked without being able to explain why. This city was one of them. It was splendid, radiant, and grand, but every time I looked at it, it felt as though one corner of my vision was covered in a mosaic. It was hard to distinguish left from right. Small blocks looked identical to huge buildings. It was like looking at a forest where every leaf was made of mosaics.

Perhaps a sense of beauty was an extension of instinct like that. I shrugged.

"Well, what can you do? The Lord of Gold made this city alone."

The Lord of Gold's power was divine, but the world created by that power could only extend as far as the Lord of Gold's imagination. The Lord of Gold might be able to make all things in the world, but could not know all things in the world.

In other words, the flaws visible in this city were proof that the Lord of Gold was not perfect. Hilde noticed that fact and delighted in it like a child.

"The Lord of Gold may be a great alchemist, but he doesn't seem to be a great artist~. No matter how great he is, I suppose he can't do 'everything,' can he? Hehe."

Who in the world could do everything alone? The Lord of Gold was human too, that was all.

Still, Hilde's mocking attitude displeased Perru. Perru approached with a slight frown.

"...So. What will we do?"

"What do you mean, what will we do? We need to get to the Golden Palace... Ah."

Why had we come outside? The Golden Ark had suddenly stopped, so we had come out to find out what was happening. I had forgotten while sightseeing.

"...Look down."

Perru pointed beneath the stern. Wasn't it said that it was darkest beneath the lamp? We had been so busy looking at the scenery that we had failed to pay attention to what was right beneath our feet. Only then did we look down.

The Golden Ark was spinning its tracks uselessly with its prow lifted.

A lift with huge pistons on either side had dug beneath the Golden Ark and pushed it up. Its tracks had left the ground, so they could only scrape pitifully at the air.

No matter how advanced its substitution movement system was, it still moved by touching the ground. It could not move while floating in the air. So if you lifted the juggernaut, you could stop the juggernaut... That was common sense.

Except the target was far from ordinary.

"They lifted this huge chunk of metal?"

Why was the juggernaut called a juggernaut? Because it was a gigantic mass of metal that towered over most buildings. Inside were mechanisms only the Lord of Gold could design and create, all protected by alchemical steel of immense weight and strength that the Lord of Gold had personally refined.

It was naturally heavy, and there was no material in the world that could compare to its strength. Even an incredibly powerful lift should have collapsed under it instead of lifting it.

That lift was sturdy, but... the force produced by its pistons was astonishing too. It would be impossible with a mediocre ability. Could that be...

"...Atlas Winnie. The Suppression Lord's equipment."

Perru answered my question.

"...They stopped the Golden Ark. Maybe because they were afraid it would destroy the city."

Looking around, I saw jackals riding mounts and watching us from the side of the Golden Ark. I had wondered why there was no one in the city, but they must have already fled when they saw the Golden Ark.

"Well, from their perspective, it must have looked like some crazy chunk of metal was charging toward the city. Should we apologize and take a detour?"

"...No. We're here."

Perru stopped the Golden Ark. When Perru withdrew that power, a quiet ship horn sounded, announcing that the engine had stopped. The tracks that had been spinning furiously came to a halt. Before long, the Golden Ark lost power and cooled into lifeless metal.

Pshhh.

As if in answer, air hissed out from the pistons below. For a moment, I felt lighter, then the Golden Ark tilted sharply and slammed back down. The lift had stopped operating as well.

That ended the clash between the steel giants. It felt as though the world had become quiet for a moment. In the hollow silence, Perru spoke.

"...The Suppression Lord is one of the Golden Palace's closest attendants. The Golden Palace is near the Suppression Lord. We've arrived."

Footnotes:

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