WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 360

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The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - 18

A crumbled path opened before the Golden Mirror. Perru had carved it using Rustscale's power, and now she spurred Aurea harder. The horse charged forward in a wild gallop while Perru wrung her voice out through the jolting ride.

"...Golden Mirror!"

Even then, Perru had no intention of making an enemy of the Golden Mirror. If anything, her bearing was closer to that of a loyal retainer throwing her life down to stop her king from a catastrophic mistake.

The Golden Mirror was the god of alchemy. The creator of the Lesser States, its undisputed ruler in name and in fact.

Whether he wished it or not, he was the origin, the teacher, and the god of every alchemist alive. Perru, whose power negated alchemy, was no exception. If anything, she had loved alchemy so deeply that she had reached one of its peaks, and her loyalty to the Golden Mirror ran deeper than most.

She called out with everything she had to try to turn his heart back.

"...Please reconsider! They have done nothing wrong...!"

But her words did not reach him.

The Golden Mirror registered Perru's presence, but only because her ability was a threat. To the Golden Mirror, bent on building his Gold State, Perru and her power to unmake it was the first thing to be removed. He shifted his target to her and brought his godlike strength to bear on killing one single person.

A massive structure rose up in Perru's path as she raced toward the city. Round and pitch-black, forged from steel, its purpose was impossible to guess. Even I had no idea what it was, so all I could do was stay wary. I couldn't read the Golden Mirror's thoughts.

But the animal instinct still living somewhere in me was sounding an alarm.

That thing is dangerous.

Perru must have felt the same, because she turned her ability against the black sphere. Rustscale's energy began corroding the steel from the outside. But the moment her power made contact, the black surface swelled outward like an explosion in response.

"Watch out!"

The regressor shouted in alarm, but it was already too late.

The black sphere exploded. The force was in a different class from anything the Heatblast Lord's power could produce. A pressure wave spread out visibly to the naked eye and disgorged everything packed inside it. What had been sealed in the sphere was millions of razor-sharp steel fragments. Each one traced its own arc and drove itself into the ground.

Death spread. A rain of steel that turned anything it touched to a spray of blood. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the fragments hammered uselessly into the dirt, but that remaining fraction was more than enough to fill any death count. Even with Perru channeling her ability, she could dull the edges a little, but she couldn't stop the speed or the weight.

Patter, patter, patter. The sound of a hard monsoon hammering the earth. Every person the merciless drops struck had some part of their body blown open. Jackals trying to flee the city were cut down in droves by fragments raining on their heads. Before a Demon God, ordinary lives vanished like trash.

A horrific tragedy. What made it more horrific still was that all those countless deaths were nothing more than a side effect for the Golden Mirror. He had unleashed that rain of steel to kill one person: Perru.

The rain fell on Perru's head at a density that put every other spot to shame. Like water droplets from a burst balloon. She had no special equipment, no energy to draw on, no means to stop it. Aurea panicked and reared up on her front legs, but what good would that do.

The fragments swept down to kill Perru. At that moment.

"Woof."

Azzy leaped in like the wind. Fur bristling all over, she threw her whole body between Perru and the sheet of falling steel and took every hit.

The fragments were certainly lethal enough to kill a human, but they were nowhere near enough to hurt Azzy. Being mounted also kept Perru safe from the pieces that ricocheted off the ground. In one split second of help, death slipped past Perru.

Perru, her life saved by the narrowest of margins, turned to Azzy with gratitude.

"...Thank... you."

"...Woof."

But Azzy's face was not good. She stared blankly into the distance at the humans lying dead, as if her spirit had left her. Too raw a sight for a dog who loved people.

In the brief pause while Perru fell silent, the regressor came sprinting out, landed in front of Perru, and shouted.

"Rustscale Lord! Watch out! More are coming!"

The Golden Mirror's second attack followed right behind. The fallen fragments blackened, then each crumbled apart and billowed upward like smoke. Iron dust carried on the wind blotted out the view in an instant.

Rustscale's power could break structures apart easily enough, but pulling them back together was another matter. She couldn't crumble this fine dust into something that would simply clear away. Picking out only the attacks that gave Perru the most trouble told me the Golden Mirror was taking her quite seriously.

"He wants to blind us? Tch, iron dust of all things!"

The Seven-Colored Eyes couldn't see through metal either. While the regressor grumbled, I felt vibrations through the ground and shouted urgently.

"Shei-ssi, something's coming!"

"I know! Earth arts, heavy strike!"

A massive iron ball came bearing through the storm of steel. The regressor reacted instantly and batted it away with Jizan. There was a sharp metallic clang, and an iron ball the size of a person flew off like a baseball into the distance.

That lasted only a moment before the earth shook and the roar kept coming. One vibration, two, then more than anyone could count.

"Shei-ssi! There are hundreds rolling in!"

"Damn, the Golden Mirror must feel threatened! He's trying to handle us personally now, throwing everything at us without a second thought. Let's regroup!"

A Golden Mirror playing a role inside the Golden Palace would have sent homunculi to attack and nothing more. But the current Golden Mirror was wielding all the alchemy of every lord at once, directly. The scale and capability of it outstripped every other lord combined. A significant portion had been rendered useless thanks to Perru, without her, something far worse than fragments and iron balls would have come flying at us.

...Whatever the regressor went through in a previous loop, what on earth did she do. How did she survive it. Still no idea, even now.

The regressor grabbed at Perru to pull her away. But Perru gripped Aurea's reins and held her ground.

"...Wait. There are still people over there."

"Calm down, Perru. Anyone who could run has already run. The rest are beyond saving."

The people still in the city were those without the means to flee. Jackals with no mounts, or those left behind with fatal injuries. There was nothing more to be done for them.

Perru understood that in her head. But she couldn't accept it in her heart, and the reluctance showed.

Her spirit was noble, but it wasn't enough. I pressed the cold reality against her.

"Throwing yourself headfirst at the Golden Palace without a plan or the ability to back it up is your choice to make. That's your freedom. But keep this one thing in mind."

The Lesser States, a place that sat uneasily with words like belonging or loyalty. The people who genuinely wanted to save this broken country were few, and among them only Perru held both the will and the ability to do it.

In other words, if Perru died, the Lesser States were truly finished. No one, not even the regressor, would be able to stop the Golden Mirror then.

"If Perru fails, a disaster hundreds of times worse than this will fall on Claudia. Think it through coldly."

If you can put a value on a thing, you can put a value on a life. Perru, raised in the Lesser States, arrived at that calculation as naturally as breathing.

Were the lives of a few dozen people who were as good as already dead worth more?

Or was Claudia worth more, along with the tens of thousands of children who knew nothing of this, whose very foundation Claudia provided?

No question. The latter. Claudia wasn't all of the Lesser States, but losing Claudia meant losing the Lesser States' future. Perru lowered her head and turned her mount around. Aurea, who had been tossing her head nervously up and down, welcomed her rider's decision and fell in willingly.

While the regressor covered the retreat, Tyr wrapped us in darkness. Once we broke free of the Golden Mirror's gaze, the attacks eased. With enough distance between us, he turned back to clearing the city as if nothing had interrupted him. Before even a few minutes passed, every thought coming from the city went silent.

There hadn't been many left to begin with.

Only after putting a safe distance between us and the Golden Mirror did we have room to collect ourselves. Unlike Perru, Aurea hadn't been fully shielded by Azzy's body, and the horse had steel fragments buried in her at several points. Perru climbed down from the saddle and stroked the injured Aurea.

It depends on the breed, but a trained warhorse won't die from taking fragments like these. Still, a wound is a wound. A full gallop would be out of the question. I looked Aurea over from all sides and said,

"Pulling back doesn't mean anything if we have no way to stop the Golden Mirror. The horse is hurt, what do we do? Perru needs a living mount to reach him..."

Were we going to have to ride Azzy? Worth trying, maybe, but a dog doesn't carry people on her back. I was genuinely working through the problem when Perru murmured.

"...The Golden Ark."

"Pardon?"

Perru had placed the lives of the jackals on one side of the scale and the survival of Claudia on the other. Lords cheat the scale's readings, so the saying goes, but that only applies to alchemy. Perru had made the brutal choice, and the scale had tilted honestly.

But even when a scale tips to one side, the lighter end can't simply vanish without a trace. Perru, who had chosen, had to carry the weight of what she had abandoned. The king who kills others must use those lives as a foundation to sustain herself and her kingdom. As revolting and terrible as that may be.

That is the responsibility of a king.

Only gods are free from responsibility. Like the Golden Mirror, once you are already dead, no one can hold you to account for anything.

Perru had chosen. And to carry out her duty, for the sake of those who had died by her choice, she had found a chance of stopping the Golden Mirror.

A chance, of course, not a guarantee. She could fail. Within that uncertainty, Perru had found the one slim possibility, and with firm resolve she made her demand of me.

"...If we have the Golden Ark. I can reach the Golden Mirror. Help me."

Die alongside me, for the country's sake.

I, of course, had no intention of dying. I was just an animal, and that was exactly what all of humanity had wanted. What kind of idiot animal walks into a death trap on its own two feet.

"The Golden Ark is the Geraut the Golden Mirror built, isn't it? How would we use that to oppose him? Ram it straight into him?"

"...Yes."

Now that's a plan I can get behind.

You're not really an animal if you're not a little stupid about it. Fine, I'd help, as long as it didn't get me killed.

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