WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 354: The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - 12

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It was all for the Gold State.

It was all for Her Majesty.

It was all... for that beautiful smile the Ironblood King wore so awkwardly.

So how had it come to this?

A blade hung around his neck, and shackles bound his feet. The heavy iron ball dangling from the blade's tip was agony in itself. His arm felt as though it would be torn from its socket from holding the iron ball, but he could not let go. If he did, the weight threatening to rip off his arm would move to his neck instead.

A sharp spike stabbed into his back. His body reacted before he even felt the pain. Though exhausted, Demo took a step to avoid it. The spike followed a beat later and stabbed him again.

Covered in tools designed solely to inflict pain and despair on people, Demo walked barefoot across the land of the Gold State.

Curses rang out. Stones flew at him. People rushed at him with shouts of hatred and attacked with daggers. The soldiers escorting him only pretended to stop them as they watched. His wounds steadily multiplied until Demo looked no different from a walking corpse.

His screams of pain did not last long. After more than five hours, he could no longer distinguish himself from the pain. Perhaps he had been with pain since the day he was born.

I want to rest. I want to escape all this pain. I would rather die and be free.

But Demo could not even turn away from those thoughts.

He was the one responsible for bringing the once-glorious Gold State to this state.

They said money could not buy happiness, but without money, one could not be happy. A person needed at least a little breathing room to be happy. In the harsh reality of life, money was the only means of creating that room.

Demo had made gold for a country where everyone could be happy. So the entire nation could prosper.

That was how it should have been.

By the common sense he knew, that was right.

Demo looked around with dim eyes. Collapsed walls. Burning homes. Screams and sobs spilling out from every direction. An old farmer with a worn hoe painfully tilled fields that had once been plowed under beneath the weight of gold's value. Yet soil poisoned by metal had already reached its deathbed. No matter how carefully it was tended, it gave no response.

The beggars sitting in the streets were no better off than Demo. With cracked throats, they begged for a shred of mercy as they held out empty bowls. The bowls were made of gold, yet could not promise a single meal. A grain of rice was more precious than a gold coin.

Did the mother clutching her dead child's body and wailing love it as the being that had once been her child, or as food for several meals?

Poverty of gold. The most dreadful event in the Gold State's history had come to pass. The greater problem was that no solution even came to mind.

There was no future. The past had been erased as well. After making a contract with the devil, they had sold eternity in exchange for their once-glorious days.

The Gold State had become a hell made of gold.

And the thing that had created this hell... was alchemy, which created gold.

If he had never created alchemy, this tragedy would never have been born. The cruel truth that his great discovery had been the devil's knowledge tormented him to the core.

Thud.

Something struck Demo in the temple. His head swayed for a moment. It did not hurt. His body, already drained of all strength, had begun accepting pain as something chronic.

With unfocused eyes, Demo looked at the object that had hit him. It was small for its weight, yet its brilliant shine magnified its value beyond measure.

Gold. A golden coin, named after its own color because no other name could contain that light, rolled across the dirt.

A gaunt woman approached him as he stared at it emptily and shouted.

"This is because of you...! If it weren't for you!"

Was gold something so useless? It could not even become a meal for that starving woman and had been thrown like a stone. It was not even very useful for throwing at someone. A jagged rock would have hurt more.

Gold that could neither be eaten nor used. Once, people had been blinded by its shine... but now it was no different from trash that ate away at the earth.

Then what had he been making all this time? Rather than making everyone rich, had he been making everyone poor?

"Give it back! Give it back!"

The woman's cry was a meaningless grievance. Once something had happened, no amount of screaming or weeping could undo it.

But then.

A memory flashed through Demo's mind like a lantern in the dark.

'Restore it with the gold you made.'

The Golden Mirror's second task. The trial that had led him to create alchemy.

More difficult than creating something was returning it to what it had been. The words of the king he adored were engraved deep in his heart. A final spark of vitality entered his dying body. As his mind grew dim, Demo repeated what he had to do.

...Let's restore it. The Gold State. For our king.

It was not difficult. He had done it once already.

Alchemy had been created to restore things from the beginning.

But could he really restore it? Could he return this hell to the Gold State that had once been beautiful and prosperous? Could he bring it back to a nation of artisans and technology, where everyone worked together under a great king?

He was bound like this, suffering at death's door.

Demo had little time. He was dying now. Even if he used every moment he had left, even if he squeezed out every last drop of strength, he could only make one thing.

Then, if he could only make one thing, why not use alchemy to create something that would return this nation to how it was?

Demo stopped walking and closed his eyes. With death close at hand, his remaining time was short. Kneeling, Demo formed an image in his mind.

Everything was made of tiny blocks. Gold, steel, even grains of sand. Every block was of the same kind. The only difference was how they were stacked.

As they piled up differently, layer upon layer, the world filled with countless different things. Nothing appeared alike, but if one looked closely, all things began the same way.

That house, the land, the lonely tree standing there, the stream flowing beneath it. The wild animal drinking from it.

Even people.

Demo did not know what form it would take. Yet it would wander the Gold State forever and restore this cursed land to what it had been. It would make the country beautiful again and present it to his king.

As the Golden Mirror, servant of the king.

The image in his mind swelled like a monster. The power to alter all things now reached toward its master, seeking to grant the dying man's final wish.

Innate Arcane. Elixir.

When I came to, I was in a small workshop.

Elik, once king of the Gold State, had many disciples. She had given them space within the palace and cared for them. In rooms with small workshops attached, her disciples honed their abilities.

This room was full of memories for the Golden Mirror in many ways. Above all, it was the room he had once filled with a single gold coin.

At its center, a young man sat before a golden bell.

It was the Golden Mirror, a little older than when I had seen him outside. Like when he died, he wore a blade around his neck and shackles on his feet. Considering this was a space within his mind, it seemed that even in death... he considered himself a criminal.

"...Who are you?"

The Golden Mirror spoke slowly without lifting his head. I shrugged and sat across from him.

"I'm an ordinary thief. I came to steal a relic. So, is there no trial or test here?"

"...There is no such thing. I have no lingering attachments."

Even as he spoke, the Golden Mirror continued staring intently at the golden bell. It was the steel bell he had turned directly into gold, a symbol of his most brilliant memory.

The first gift that had connected his pure self to her.

He claimed to have no lingering attachments while they practically dripped from him. There was a limit to how much one could lie.

"If you really had none, a lingering thought wouldn't remain. Why not tell me about it?"

"I explained poorly. No one can resolve my lingering attachment. It would be the same even if you brought me a fake resembling Her Majesty. The real Her Majesty cannot return."

He was opening up quite well while saying that. Then again, lingering thoughts existed because they wanted someone to understand them, so there was no way he would not speak.

It would take time, but once I had reached this place, I would read everything eventually. I carefully considered the image in his mind and continued.

"You know she can't return, so why are you guarding this palace? Is there any reason to protect a palace without an owner?"

"Because I must set every one of my sins right."

"Sins?"

"Yes. Sins. The sin of leading a glorious nation into war and making all people suffer through poverty of gold."

The Golden Mirror spoke as though confessing.

"The Gold State was a paradise. A nation of steel where exceptional artisans worked throughout the land under the reign of the great King Elik. I was the one who cast that lively, bright nation into the abyss. If not for me, it would never have happened."

"Because you mass-produced gold?"

"...Yes. Gold only has value because it is rare. Yet I created gold without knowing even that simple truth. Again and again. It was not enough to do it with my own hands, so I even trained other alchemists."

If there had only been one Golden Mirror, perhaps matters would not have grown this severe. But the Golden Mirror sincerely believed gold would make the nation rich. That was why he shared such precious knowledge so generously.

He had probably been imitating Elik in that as well, but unlike a king's authority, which was limited to the individual, alchemy belonged to the Demon God. Gold spread beyond control.

The Golden Mirror stared at the golden bell with a haggard face.

"I am a great sinner who led the nation to ruin. To atone for this sin, I must remember the Gold State. I must create it. I must restore it. Even if it is no more than a record."

That was why the Golden Mirror created the Gold State within the reach of his own hands. He recreated the Gold State at what he believed had been its most glorious moment.

A grand castle. A thriving city. Even fertile fields. Though the Gold State had vanished into history, the Gold State had always existed within the Golden Palace. It was a country made by only one person, so it had all kinds of flaws.

I see. Golden Mirror. Your wish was to make the Gold State again. That was all well and good, but...

Hm. Was that really all? Was this your best?

Before getting to the point, I offered a little casual comfort to make the conversation friendlier.

"It wasn't your fault. No one knew that having more gold would make people poorer instead."

"Stop offering comfort you do not mean. Not knowing does not make me innocent. I deserve their resentment."

Comfort I did not mean? What was he talking about? I might bluff, but I did not say things I did not mean. I was honest with myself.

"Do I sound like I'm talking nonsense? No, not at all. I don't resent you. If anything, I'm grateful to you."

I meant it. This was much better. The Golden Mirror was hundreds, no, thousands of times better than a Great Master of the Abyss who had hesitated needlessly and lost his life for nothing.

Because he had done it. Unlike that Demon God, who had hesitated until his choices were taken away and nothing but regrets remained, he had ultimately achieved something through human accomplishment!

"Thanks to you mass-producing gold, there's one more thing humans can do!"

Footnotes:

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