WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 343

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The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - 3

Nobody chooses how they're born. The same goes for the King of Humans. There's no such thing as a bloodline destined for kings and lords. I simply woke up one day and found out I was one.

You might think being the King of Humans is something grand, but a king without a country is just a lunatic who believes his own title. What about a King of Humans who's lost every last scrap of power? Just an ordinary lunatic with a slight talent for the things humans do.

So I had tried to live an ordinary life, finding small diversions and getting by.

The problem was that the world refused to leave me alone, and I ended up tangled among extraordinary people. I adapted, because that's what living things do, but my nature hadn't actually changed.

And now, out of nowhere, the Holy Maiden shows up to warn me. Says she'll deliver divine punishment with her fists if things go wrong. That's outrageous. It doesn't even make sense! Why should I get beaten to death!

Emotion surged up in me. I cried out with every ounce of aggrieved indignation I had.

"What exactly is it you think I'm trying to do? I was just trying to live a normal life and got dragged into something strange!"

"You dare deny it, after meddling with the Demon God's designation in the Abyss?"

"Demon God's designation? What's that? Is that something you eat? Who says I meddled with anything? Have you climbed inside my head and back out again? If anything, I'm the one who wants to take this up with the Celestial God! I was seized out of nowhere and thrown into the Abyss, where was my own will in any of that!"

"Stop playing dumb! You conspired with the sorcerer Lankart and..."

Peruel snapped toward a shout, then abruptly clapped a hand over her own mouth and muttered.

"...No. Reasoning with a savage is foolishness. I will not be swayed!"

"Swayed? You're calling the plea of an innocent lamb being swayed? Since when did the divine become so heartless?"

"Do not defile the name of the divine! Your actions have made everything perfectly clear!"

"I keep telling you, that wasn't me. I think there's some kind of misunderstanding between us, let's talk it through for a moment."

"Unnecessary!"

"Why not? Doesn't scripture say that the ability to converse with one another is the most noble gift granted to humanity? Something that precious deserves to be put to use."

"It is also the thing demons exploit most readily! I have nothing to say to you!"

Peruel kicked off from the ground and leaped. What looked like a casual stamp sent her body soaring. She landed already at the mouth of the street, turned, and pointed at me.

"This servant withdraws for today. But do not forget, there are always eyes watching you!"

"Why do you keep saying you're watching me? It's creepy. Are you some kind of pervert? If you're going to keep watching anyway, we may as well drop all pretense and be completely honest with each other. There are plenty of empty buildings around here, so let's just step inside somewhere and..."

Peruel jammed both hands over her ears and ran without looking back. I called out desperately, but those ears, wrapped in holy wrapping, let none of my voice through.

Hmph. What a shame. That was a chance to read a bit more of her thoughts.

My mind reading works on humans. The Holy Maiden is human, so her mind is readable. But I can't directly steal a glimpse of the futures she has seen. Just because a truth exists in the world doesn't mean every human can perceive it.

On top of that, the Steel Maiden's foresight was a particularly unusual kind, which made things even harder.

So I had needed to draw out information gradually through conversation. She's well-trained.

Thinking about it again, the world is deeply unfair. I have no power at all, so I rack my brain and use every trick available just to scrape by. Meanwhile, the other side arrives carrying destiny. And then they come after me, someone who has done nothing and was only ever swept along.

An act of God. In the most literal sense, from where I stood, it was exactly that.

Still, the fact that she came to warn me in person meant I could be certain, couldn't I?

That the Golden Mirror was also a Demon God.

I turned that thought over for a moment, then walked back out into the street as if nothing had happened. It sounded like she had warned me she'd kill anyone who stirred up chaos, but what did that matter. I didn't even know what counted as chaos, so I had no way of knowing where the landmines were.

That was when it happened.

Darkness rippled. A figure came racing through the shadow of a building, red eyes gleaming as it scanned the surroundings. Tyr, trailing that grim aura, drew near to me. Lips pressed tight, eyes fixed on something that had been here moments ago, she was terrifying enough to raise every hair on my body.

"Oh. Tyr. What brings you all the way here? You said you'd stay in your room because you hate the sunlight."

"I felt something unpleasant..."

Tyr murmured in an eerie voice.

"A sensation that grated on me to a horrible degree led me here. A feeling that I could not share the same ground as whatever it was. As though something was howling at me to trample it, kill it, take its blood... Hyu, did you not see something here?"

There had been something. The Holy Maiden had just been here to warn me. If Peruel had stayed even a little longer, I might have gotten a concrete answer today to the childish question of who would win in a fight between the Holy Maiden and the Progenitor.

Hmm. Curious as I was... I couldn't exactly watch the two of them brawl for weeks just to find out. I looked around with practiced innocence.

"There's only me here now. That's not me you're sensing, is it?"

"T-that can't be! It was a completely different category of unpleasant from you or anyone else here. Are you certain there was nothing?"

"I didn't notice anything. Maybe someone came by to bless me? What should we do about it? Tyr, could you wash it off with some of your darkness?"

"W-wash?"

Tyr hesitated. What was that about. What's wrong with a little darkness.

'Darkness is a part of me. To wash a body with it... you probably don't mean it that way, but it's a little embarrassing.'

"Actually, wait. Come to think of it, a blessing is a good thing, isn't it? Never mind. Let's leave it."

"Hold still."

Darkness swept over me like a wave. Tyr's darkness passed over like a breeze, without any real sensation, but having just read her thoughts, it felt somehow peculiar. Just a feeling, easy enough to ignore, but still.

Wrapping myself in her darkness might shield me from the eyes of "fate" for a little while. But it wouldn't last long.

No reason to drag things out. Let's go.

"Tyr. Shall we take a short walk? I know you hate the sunlight, but I'll hold a parasol for you."

"What?"

Clearly not expecting that, Tyr gave a small start, then cleared her throat delicately and extended a hand.

"It doesn't particularly appeal to me, but for your sake, I will allow it. Lead the way."

"You're in for something. I'll make it a memory you won't forget."

"Heh heh. So confident. What on earth are you planning to show me, building it up like that?"

I took her hand gently, accepted the parasol, and stood at her side with a smile.

"The cornfields."

Despite being closer to reeds than trees, corn has the audacity to grow as tall as it pleases, drinking up the soil's richness and hoarding the fruit of that theft deep in its pockets. A greedy creature, without a doubt. Though perhaps not quite as greedy as the humans who take it all anyway.

As we approached the cornfield, a man raised his hand and called out.

"Hey, stop there. This area is under the management of Suppression Lord-nim's Drum Company. I cannot allow further approach."

"Oh, good sir. I haven't been able to eat anything since yesterday. I'm so hungry I just wanted to take a single ear of corn. With this much here, surely one is fine?"

I made my most pitiful face and kept walking. The man paid no attention to my convincing performance and waved me off.

"If you want to steal, go pinch something from the outskirts like a proper jackal! This central area cannot be approached by anyone outside the Drum Company!"

"Monopolizing the food supply! Filthy bourgeois! Die! Knockout chop!"

I closed the last of the distance and drove a hand-chop into his throat. Hit without warning, he doubled over coughing violently and glared up at me.

"Hack! Guh! You coward!"

Hm, he didn't go down in one hit. Annoying.

"Knockout punch! For the record, I will keep hitting until you're unconscious. Please be a good sport and pass out."

I explained it helpfully and cracked him across the head. The decent Drum Company guard who had been stationed here under orders to stop anyone from turning into a homunculus crumpled under the repeated blows.

'Ugh... you little... just you wait. Once I catch my breath I'll call every last Company member here! You won't be walking away from this!'

Go ahead and bring them all. That's exactly what I want.

I parted the corn stalks gracefully and kept leading the way.

"Tyr, shall we?"

"Hyu. He still seems to be conscious."

"Leave him. No need to dirty your lovely hands on something this unpleasant. I'll handle it."

"Heh heh. I'll leave it to you, then."

Tyr laughed pleasantly and walked through the cornfield at my side. Every time a corn leaf threatened to brush her head, I pushed it aside and earned myself some points. Tyr seemed pleased by the small gesture and covered her lips as she smiled.

"Shall I pick one for you?"

"I cannot eat it, but let me have a look."

I snapped an ear off the stalk and peeled back the layers of husk. However tenderly corn wraps itself up, to a human it is nothing but thin resistance that only sharpens the appetite for conquest. I tore back each layer without ceremony and drew out what lay hidden beneath.

The kernels were plump. This corn was the very image of everything we imagine when we picture it at its finest.

"What a fine harvest."

"The kernels look ready to burst. Let me, I'll have a taste."

Freshly harvested corn is sweet even eaten raw. I took a firm bite out of the Golden Mirror's corn.

Extraordinary, just as I expected. Nothing like the chimera beans from the military state. Those sacrificed flavor for practicality, but this couldn't compare in either quantity or taste. Setting aside the Golden Mirror's curse, that is.

I was still savoring it when Tyr went pale and cried out.

"Hyu! I thought we agreed you shouldn't eat that!"

"A little is fine. It won't even be digested at this point, and my body is made up of things from outside the Lesser States to begin with."

"Even so..."

"I said it's fine."

If anything, I needed to eat some of it to achieve even a small degree of resonance with the Golden Mirror.

I chewed the corn carefully and swallowed it, Tyr's worried expression watching me the whole time. My indiscriminate stomach didn't bother to identify what had just been put inside it and got straight to work on digestion. True altruism in the most genuine sense.

I swallowed and gave my honest assessment.

"Delicious, but I'd better eat quickly. Corn loses its flavor once it's harvested."

"You haven't harvested it yet."

"It's as good as harvested. The Golden Mirror is an alchemist. Growing corn on this scale requires raw materials. Just as corn drinks up the soil's richness to bear fruit, the Golden Mirror would have drawn up every last bit of vitality this land had."

The soil was completely desiccated, crumbling to dust. Land that wasn't just barren but dead. Magic is a force that accelerates phenomena already present in the world, and alchemy is magic that transforms matter.

The Golden Mirror had probably compressed every mechanism that corn develops over months into a single instant. Through alchemy.

"It's still hanging on the stalk, but it's no different from lying in a heap on the ground already. Chimera beans wouldn't even grow in dirt like this, with neither water nor nourishment."

Hecto would know this perfectly well. If anything, he should be rushing to harvest. So why hadn't he?

I already knew the answer. I had read his thoughts. I knew what that one day he had asked for was for.

Tyr looked around and murmured,

"I cannot begin to grasp what sort of being this is. What is the Golden Mirror, truly?"

"Tyr. Do you know anything about the Demon Gods?"

It was an unexpected question, but she didn't ask for clarification. She thought about it seriously. Searching through her memory, Tyr seemed to find something and answered.

"Demon Gods... I have heard the name. They are what the Sanctum is so desperately trying to eradicate."

"You've never seen one?"

"I looked for them once, but it was difficult to even guess at their nature. The descriptions were all vague and hazy, and everyone said something different."

"Then let me tell you. A Demon God is a deity that has reached a great truth of the world."

Hmm, Tyr responded, small but unmistakable. Not a large reaction, but a good one. It felt worth explaining.

"And also a human."

This time she was slightly surprised, but she kept quiet and showed she was listening. Truly an easy person to explain things to.

"Tyr. I mentioned innate arcane before, didn't I? Innate arcane is the expansion of one's inner image."

"I remember."

"But there are two ways that expansion can go. Expansion of the subject, and expansion of the image itself."

I held up a finger.

"When the image is connected to an object, or to an object's function, say, when it takes the form of a distinctive tool like Maximilien's gears, that's when expansion of the subject occurs. The range of subjects is narrow, but the practitioner holds powerful dominion over that subject's function specifically."

In this case, distorting the subject causes the innate arcane to lose its grip. I had once sealed Maximilien's weapon by fitting small gears into the gaps between his larger ones.

Granted, that only works if I make direct contact with the subject myself, and with this feeble body of mine, that's not easy to manage.

"When the image is connected to a phenomenon, it's the opposite. When you're overturning the rules of a given area, you can't wield that same degree of direct dominion. But within the space under your control, the rules do change, for everyone, without exception."

Rowkett and Perru were that second kind. Rowkett converts all steel within a given range into explosives, and Perru accelerates the breakdown of all matter. Designating specific targets directly is difficult. What they alter is the rule itself.

My own ability sits awkwardly in between, even here. Stealing someone's ability only adds a slight nudge to its tendencies, never enough to fully cancel them out.

"That said, no innate arcane can directly alter another person's body. Another person's body is a self-contained small universe, completely isolated from the world. It is itself the most powerful innate arcane there is, and energy is the promise of absolute protection for that small universe. If magic is the expansion of one's image, then energy is the expansion of one's body. So even innate arcane finds it difficult to directly affect armor or weapons that have energy flowing through them."

"That would be why the knights of old could stand as equals against wicked sorcerers."

"Yes. The old saying that energy repels magic is not wrong."

An advanced lecture on energy and magic. Theoretical content that would have bored most people to tears, but Tyr found it genuinely interesting.

Late learners really are the best students. They know how precious knowledge is.

"Cannot directly affect another's body... that's what you said when you explained the homunculus dilemma."

"You remember it exactly. That's why I said the only ones who can be transformed through another's magic are the dead. Even if they don't die from it, a body that has lost that resistance can die at any moment."

"Then what does that have to do with the Demon Gods? Are the Demon Gods beings who have overcome that limitation?"

I shook my head. For a Demon God, something that trivial wasn't even an obstacle.

A Demon God's power could certainly produce that result if directed at killing a single person, but that would be like using a butcher's cleaver to cut a chicken. No, it would be like guillotining an ant. A complete waste.

"But there is a certain kind of innate arcane. The image that person carries is entirely their own... yet at the same time, it is also a great truth that runs through this world. A truth like that exists of its own accord, independent of any innate arcane, so its power resonates with the world itself."

Not life and death, but the standard by which they are divided.

Not dignity, but the faith that upholds it.

A Demon God crushes that small hope humanity has desperately held onto.

"The subject of its effect is all things in the world. The scope of its effect is the entire universe. There is no expiration. Even if the person dies. Because it existed during their lifetime, and it will continue forever after their death."

What existed before humanity. What exists regardless of humanity.

"That is a Demon God. A demon that has become divine."

Before a great truth, even the humans who pride themselves on being the masters of this earth are nothing but wind passing through.

And before that truth, humanity runs up against a new problem.

"Which brings us to a new question. If humanity is also part of this world... if we are one of the ten thousand things that follow its great rules?"

I parted the corn stalks and walked slowly forward. Tyr followed behind me as though in a trance. A few more stalks, and I felt it instinctively, the sense of arriving somewhere invisible.

This was it.

The Golden Palace where the Golden Mirror resided was right here, inside this cornfield.

"What is flesh, do you suppose?"

The moment I pushed aside the next stalk of corn, a sharp blade came flying straight for my throat.

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