WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 355

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The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - 13

Had my words landed so strangely? The Golden Mirror lifted his eyes from the bell and looked up at me, slow and deliberate.

The Demon God who created alchemy. The great giant who turned the world on its head. He was human, yet a Demon God who had altered this world irreversibly.

And yet, even for a Demon God, no matter how great the achievement left behind.

A human was still a human. Even the Golden Mirror.

The childlike face I had glimpsed from outside. Pour two decades of time over it, work in suffering of every imaginable kind, and this was the face you got. The face of a young man worn down and in pain, too ordinary for a Demon God.

Because he was human, too.

"Nobody knew. Before you pulled off that insane feat, nobody in the world knew gold could be so worthless! And when more gold was produced in a single year than had ever existed in all of history combined, what that would do to a country, to an economy, even less! Not even the Sanctum's prophets, who could see the future! They could only 'see,' not 'understand,' so there was simply no way for them to know!"

Even prophecy requires comprehension. If you see something but don't understand it, if you can't interpret what the sight means, knowing is impossible. The Holy Maiden was human too, for that very reason.

A Demon God unlike any that had ever existed before was beyond what even the Sanctum's Holy Maiden could see through. The most she could do was respond after the fact.

If even the Sanctum, which absorbed the sins of all people, was limited in that way, what could anyone else be expected to do?

"Ignorance is not a sin."

The Golden Mirror didn't quite grasp what I meant. He took my words for comfort and shook his head as if declining them. Did he think I was the gentle sort?

"You think I'm saying it's not a sin? No, it's different. To know that an act is a sin, the act has to exist first. You found the act that might become a sin. Before you do something, you don't even know whether it exists. To know, you first have to look. You have to lift the veil of ignorance and find it. Like the primitive humans of long ago, if you want to know what gold is, you have to dig the gold up first."

"And yet countless people died as a result. Terrible tragedy unfolded. An entire country fell into ruin."

"Kik! You're saying the Gold State collapsed because you discovered alchemy?"

Even a Demon God couldn't escape arrogance, apparently. Or maybe it was precisely because he was a Demon God that he was this arrogant?

If it had been real, I wouldn't even bother arguing. I laughed until my sides ached.

"You are genuinely full of yourself. Not even a human king is this arrogant. Is it because you're a Demon God? Are you going to swallow every sin committed in the Gold State and crown yourself its King of Sin? No, you already tried to, didn't you? That's why you wander the Lesser States wearing the name Golden Mirror."

Everything is his fault? Was he running for king of all humanity? He did make the gold, that much was true, but taking responsibility for every sin that had ever happened in the Gold State. Setting aside whether it was right or wrong, was it even possible?

I laughed and choked on it for a long moment, then forced the sound down. Not out of consideration for the Golden Mirror, but so I could keep talking.

"What sins, exactly? Did you plow up the fields yourself, saying you wanted to build a gold workshop? Did you then murder the colleague who suggested building it once the food ran out? Did you eat your own kin when starvation became unbearable? When the curse of gold became known, did you hoard all the physical goods and hide them away instead of telling everyone, squeezing out only your own gain? Did you forge iron weapons and stage a coup in the chaos to seize power? Did you incite the maddened populace and kill the alchemists, stripping away any chance of reversal?"

Just reading what lived in his mind painted a picture like this. The things that had actually happened in the Gold State must have been worse, and far more numerous. A true hell on earth, born from within.

Who could have imagined it? No invading army. No terrible disaster descending from outside. That a country could tilt toward ruin from nothing but the curse of gold.

And yet.

"Is all of that your fault? Do you think being called a Demon God and built up like that actually made you omnipotent? Do you think you're some absolute sovereign who arranges life and death, who bends even humans to your will?"

Not every sin that appeared could be the Golden Mirror's sin.

"Speaking as the king of humanity: you weren't needed for any of it. Those were humans too."

No matter who they were, to me they were all the same humans whose thoughts I could read, and that was what made me ordinary.

No, anyone at all, to me, was ordinary.

"It just so happened that the Gold State was a nation full of merchants, sharp-eyed and quick-witted when it came to self-interest. The result of everyone doing their absolute best to profit in the moment. They rode the blessing of gold for all it was worth, then abandoned it the instant it turned into a curse. That was also the Gold State's collective choice. If there is a sin of ignorance, it belongs equally to them."

A quick afterthought, in case I was misunderstood.

"Though I'll say this, I'm not particularly fond of the concept of sin that the Sanctum invented. Sin is a bit too extravagant a notion for beasts, isn't it?"

Humans were beasts and I was their king. So whoever they were, whatever they did, I affirmed it all. Wherever the wind blew.

Whether he had only now begun to understand me, the Golden Mirror responded slowly.

"...I..."

"Don't misread this. I'm not saying it to comfort you. I'm saying it for the tens of thousands of humans you dismissed. You saw the people of the Gold State as puppets without a will of their own, people who would die without being able to resist the great tide, fate or whatever you call it. Kk. That's why the world you made looks like this."

I smiled and spread both arms wide. This was an inner space, so nothing was visible, but outside there was certainly the Golden Palace. The shape of the ideal Gold State he envisioned.

Crops ripening full across every field, a grand city holding beauty and practicality in equal measure. Walls raised to hold back enemies, as though to sever the world entirely.

But inside those walls, there were no people.

That was where it showed.

"Plain as day. The Gold State you made. Nothing but homunculi. And even then, only the homunculi of lords who share some of your mindset and resemble your inner image have a fragment of reason, the rest are puppets that can only follow orders. Which makes it all the more absurd. You see every person in the Gold State as a puppet without a will of their own, and then you go on about how precious the Gold State is!"

"...That's not true!"

"Then prove it."

When I snapped the words out, the Golden Mirror looked up at me, shrinking slightly. But some pride remained, because he reached out a hand and made something.

The shape was Elik's. Elik as he imagined her, rendered in fine detail, her figure and the beauty of her face brought to the fore.

I scoffed.

"Does she have a conscience? What about that looks like a person? That's a body pillow you cuddle when you sleep."

"I, I have never done anything of the sort!"

"Well, I understand the urge to show her off. She is well made, I'll grant that. But it's only the surface, isn't it? Does that 'Your Majesty' show any sharp insight? Does she grasp every technique in the world the moment she lays eyes on it? Or does she look at you with just a trace of awe and, maybe, envy?"

The Golden Mirror pressed his lips shut.

He knew. He knew better than anyone. That the Elik who always wore a gentle smile on the outside was a forgery.

I dug into the sore spot.

"If you only need the body, that might be enough. But can you call that thing 'Your Majesty'?"

"I know! I know! No matter how many times I make it, I know it isn't real!"

The Golden Mirror shot to his feet. The blade hanging at his throat lurched, and the iron ball rolled and clattered. Bound in restraints that looked barely survivable, he raised his voice in his own defense.

"Even so, it's different. That I cannot make a human, it's not because I think little of them. I, I simply couldn't understand them."

"You just confessed it yourself. That you can't understand other humans. If you don't even understand them, how would you know their sins? You don't know what sin is."

No one had the standing to claim another's sins in the first place. The Golden Mirror's case didn't even serve as a cautionary model. No one else could do something similar. He might be made a scapegoat and punished for it, but that was a separate matter.

The Golden Mirror collapsed back down, his energy spent. He stared pitifully at the golden bell again. Not because he'd lost interest in me the way he had before, but because he could no longer bear to meet my eyes.

"One thing I don't understand. When I made gold, they cheered. Everyone held me up as a hero. Those who received gold bowed their heads and gave thanks again and again. So how did it come to this."

"It's quite something, not understanding humans at all, yet insisting that their unknowable actions are your responsibility. You remind me of a self-proclaimed expert who passes judgment on something they've never studied. Not knowing anything at all, why are you the one saying it's your fault?"

"But everyone said it was my sin. They said I had brought on every last one of these tragedies. Even His Majesty!"

He broke off there as if something had surged up in him, then cried out in anguish.

"Her Majesty Elik, who taught me everything when I had nothing and supported me without fail! Even she commanded my death! Because I had committed a sin deserving of death, because paying for it with my life was only right!"

Of course he wanted to believe that. Otherwise he would have to doubt himself, and the queen Elik he had revered like the sky itself.

But that wasn't it. Sin was just a name attached in hindsight. Human behavior followed motives more instinctive and primal than that.

I said it plainly.

"No. She simply needed someone who would take on all the blame and die for it."

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