WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 346: The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - 6

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The first thing that struck me as strange was the low hill visible in the distance. It was an utterly ordinary sight, with a ridge stretching across the far end of my vision.

Except no such hill had existed before we reached the Golden Palace.

A sight invisible from outside. Was it real, or an illusion? For someone like me with no special abilities, I needed mind-reading to tell the difference.

But I had no way to find out now.

Because not a single person belonging to this Golden Palace was alive!

Hecto, the only human within the Golden Palace, pointed at me and spoke.

"Golden Lord. This is him."

Elik studied me closely. I calmly read her expression. Or should I call it its expression?

Residual imprints were not alive. They were still traces of people who had once lived, so I could learn quite a bit from them, but I could not read them as completely as living humans. In other words, my mind-reading was practically sealed right now.

Tyr had vanished, I was alone in the heart of enemy territory, and my mind-reading did not work. This was getting dangerous.

While I considered whether I should run, Elik took out a notebook, read something, and spoke.

"You said you came as an envoy for truce negotiations."

"That's right. It seems they don't want conflict on the Abyss Plains."

"...The land of opportunity that remains now that the Abyss is gone?"

She flipped through the notebook again and read something. No matter how I stared at the back of it, I could not see what was written inside.

If my mind-reading had been working properly, I would have read the contents of Elik's notebook, what she was thinking, and what she planned to do. I would have known what she liked and hated, and what had happened in her past. Yet Elik gave off no such response.

Only the cause of the Golden Kingdom's downfall long ago and her lingering regrets drifted through the air.

What exactly had happened? I wanted to know more, but mind-reading was useless.

While I thought, Elik finished making a judgment, or whatever passed for thought, and opened its mouth.

"Suppression Lord. What is your assessment?"

It did not seem strange at all for her to speak down to an elderly person. Even if she was a corpse, the corpse of a king carried authority.

Perhaps accustomed to that attitude, Hecto naturally addressed the much younger-looking woman with respect.

"I don't think it is a bad offer. It has been far too long since the Lesser States properly cultivated land. Even if we put seeds into the hands of those jackals now, they'd probably eat them in a single meal. Would it not be more reasonable to let the military state cultivate the land, then take a portion for ourselves...?"

"You are wrong."

Elik declared it without room for disagreement. Hecto pressed their lips together. While they watched her expression and tried to grasp the meaning behind the Golden Lord's words, Elik turned to me and held out one hand.

"The Abyss Plains were originally land of the Golden Kingdom. They have been since the Golden Kingdom's beginning, and they shall remain so."

The Golden Kingdom...? Why bring up a country that had fallen long ago?

"If you have not forgotten history, you will know that the House of Elik used the Abyss as a graveyard for failed works. Is that not so, envoy?"

Elik spoke proudly, as though she were still king. It was an excessively confident attitude for a king who had been "devoured" by the Lord of Gold.

Perhaps. If my guess was right...

But was it?

I took a deep breath.

I had to accept it. My reliable friend, mind-reading, had been with me all my life, but it was useless right now.

But mind-reading was not my only strength.

My mind-reading could not read anything besides human hearts, either. I could not read the thoughts of beasts, nor could I read tomorrow's weather. I did not even know what the seeds I planted today would grow into. I was not a prophet.

Still, humanity's true ability was not mind-reading. It was the power to use every available means toward a goal.

Humans investigate, dismantle, predict, and use the world. Even when they fail, they use that failure as a foothold and move forward again. Impossibility is a verdict reached only after every possibility has vanished and been carefully considered. Sometimes possibilities that had not existed before appear with time.

It was not too late to declare something impossible after proving it could not be done. Giving up in advance was what prophets did.

Let's try it. Starting with my hypothesis.

"That's true. The Golden Kingdom, the nation of craftsmen, had a custom of throwing ashes left after burning firewood and scrap metal that could no longer be reused into the Abyss. Between the Kingdom and the Golden Kingdom, it was the Golden Kingdom that took greater interest in the Abyss and exercised effective control over it."

"You know much."

"But that was only the story between the Golden Kingdom and the Kingdom."

The Lord of Gold was known as a mystery of the Lesser States, but that alone was not why it bore the title Lord of Gold.

Gold was the word that qualified his title. Lord meant a vassal of the king.

In other words, the title Lord of Gold itself contained the Golden Kingdom.

Why had it chosen that title? Perhaps the Lord of Gold still could not forget the Golden Kingdom. Or perhaps...

"The relationship between the Lesser States and the military state is precisely the opposite. After becoming the nation of alchemy, the Lesser States were too afraid of permanently losing alchemical cost to even approach it, weren't they? The military state invested in the abandoned land afterward and achieved results, so doesn't the military state have the larger stake now?"

"You call yourself an envoy, yet you mention only the points favorable to your country. Still, I shall point out your foolishness."

Who cared? It made no difference to me whether the Abyss Plains belonged to the military state or the Lesser States. What I needed now was information.

The Lord of Gold moved about, continually creating things. Yet everything it created was strange. The cornfield was one thing, but stone cities and towering ramparts were structures unsuited to current trends. Alchemy had advanced to the point that people argued walls were useless, yet the Lord of Gold, the very origin of alchemists, was building them.

The reason they existed might be that the Lord of Gold had made them. But the question of why the Lord of Gold made them still remained.

That question, too, could be resolved with one simple hypothesis.

"You are wrong. This place is the Golden Kingdom."

Perhaps the Lord of Gold...

Perhaps it was creating the Golden Kingdom upon this land.

"That's ridiculous. The Golden Kingdom was destroyed by the Lord of Gold."

"You are wrong. There is a king here, territory, and subjects who follow. They are the king of the Golden Kingdom, the territory of the Golden Kingdom, and the people of the Golden Kingdom. Therefore, this nation is the Golden Kingdom."

"King Elik of the Golden Kingdom is dead. By the Lord of Gold's hand! You are not King Elik!"

"I still exist. What would you call one who possesses the king's memories, appearance, and abilities?"

The most necessary element of the Golden Kingdom was none other than its king. To create the Golden Kingdom, the Lord of Gold must have first needed to recreate King Elik.

Good. I could roughly see the outline now. Golden Lord Elik was a homunculus, a creation of the Lord of Gold. That meant the Lord of Gold itself had to be somewhere within this space.

"I came to negotiate with the Lord of Gold, ruler of the Lesser States. Not with Elik, king of the Golden Kingdom. Call the Lord of Gold. I will negotiate with it."

Let's call the Lord of Gold. If I could see it directly, every mystery would be solved.

But Elik did not act as I expected.

"You have not a speck of manners. Very well. Then I shall make it clearer."

Elik extended her hand.

She transmuted the ground, and a huge spear rose from beneath it like a tree. Transmuting ordinary soil should not have produced costly alchemical steel, but this was the Lord of Gold's land. Outdated notions like equivalent exchange did not apply here.

Elik held the spear, more than twice her height, in one hand. The spear, forged from extraordinary metal, glinted coldly as it aimed for my neck.

"There can be no clearer declaration of war than beheading an envoy. I shall show you through action rather than words."

Huh? Had I pushed too hard? I asked her to call the Lord of Gold, and now she suddenly wanted to kill me. I must have touched a nerve!

"W-wait a moment. Think about who is behind me."

"It does not matter. I shall personally execute you."

"No, Your Majesty! Seriously!"

I was going to die at this rate. With mind-reading useless, I had no way to stand against that homunculus. If I had mind-reading, I could have escaped somehow. No, I would not have even asked her to call the Lord of Gold in the first place! Give me back my mind-reading!

That was when Hecto, who had been quietly listening, hurriedly tried to dissuade Elik.

"Please wait, Golden Lord. Their strength cannot be ignored."

'According to Verdigris Lord, Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka is among his companions. Vampires who exert dominion over blood are troublesome. It would be better to send him to the duchy peacefully, if possible...'

But Elik ignored even Hecto's advice and readjusted her grip on the iron spear.

"No matter who comes, it changes nothing. The Golden Kingdom shall endure forever as steel."

"Gh..."

Should I fight? I did not even have a diamond. How long could I hold out with cards and magic?

Just as I drew a card and prepared myself for a desperate fight, a clear bell rang out.

The sound was not loud. Yet from its full, resonant tone alone, I could tell it was a carefully crafted bell. If it had been made of iron rather than gold, it would have produced a harmony capable of stirring the hearts of those who heard it.

Elik's gaze turned. At the end of it was the slowly opening door of the village hall. An innocent voice came through the gap.

"Your Majesty! I have finished it!"

At the same time, a sensation seized me, as though everything in the world had grown distant.

It was not just a sensation. A thin but invisible barrier separated me from them. My hand could go no farther, as though the air had hardened into glass.

My voice probably could not reach them either. Maybe they could not even see me. As if my existence had been excluded from the world on the other side.

It was not my imagination. Elik and Hecto's expressions changed at his arrival alone. With a brilliant smile I had not seen until now, Elik welcomed the owner of that voice.

"Demo."

As she spoke the Lord of Gold's name.

Footnotes:

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