WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 363

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The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - 21

Every time the regressor's battle cry rang out, the Golden Palace shuddered. Homunculi swarmed in from every direction, raining down attacks and trying to force their way into the Golden Ark, but the moment any of them crossed inside, darkness surged up and swallowed them whole. Through all of it, the Golden Ark kept grinding forward, driving itself into the Golden Palace. Like something trying to topple a castle.

Even mythic battles seemed to break out in surprisingly mundane ways. Just like now, we had come here to negotiate a peace agreement, and somehow ended up in a fight.

I had no particular desire to throw myself into that mess, but the meeting between the Golden Mirror and the Rustscale Lord was another matter entirely.

"Hilde. Let's go."

"Over there? Oh, um. Father. Do we really have to?"

"Yes. We really do."

I said it flatly. Hilde let out a long, deflated sigh and pressed down on the pedals. The two-wheeler picked up speed with each pump of her legs.

Humans really are the most convenient power source. Energy gives you decent speed, and the voice recognition and self-steering are especially useful.

"Faster! Go faster!"

"I am! Trying!"

I kept pushing Hilde along with my mouth and used my mind reading at the same time. As the Golden Palace drew closer, the thoughts of those moving inside began to filter through.

The Golden Palace was as good as the Golden Mirror's own body. Every material inside shifted and moved according to his will.

The regressor and Tyr had followed the Golden Ark in through the Golden Palace's hull and were met with attacks from every direction at once. The floor surged upward, the ceiling came crashing down, and traps of every conceivable kind flew at them from all sides. They were being hammered by every weapon a human mind could dream up, and they were struggling to keep up.

Even through all of that, Perru, who had bored her way inside, kept pushing forward without stopping.

The floor and ceiling pressed in, trying to crush her between them. The moment she sensed it, her innate arcane crumbled them both apart. The ceiling caved in. The floor gave way. So Perru dropped, but she was not ground to paste.

A spring loaded with sharp points shot out to tear her apart, only for the rusted body to fail under its own tension and shatter before it could reach her.

A spiked iron ball swung through its arc toward Perru, but the weakened chain snapped and sent it rolling away in the wrong direction.

That was only the beginning. Mirrors placed at intervals throughout the palace to ward off vampires lost their sheen in an instant. Weapons with razor edges crumbled apart from their thinnest sections first, like glass.

If the Golden Mirror's palace was a product of alchemy, Perru was alchemy's end. Not overwhelming in force, but she dismantled every intention the Golden Mirror had as she pressed deeper in.

'...I expected this. The Golden Ark, too, was made by the Golden Mirror. Get too close and it will be consumed as raw material....'

Striking the Golden Palace itself was pointless. No matter how much you broke, the Golden Mirror could simply rebuild it. Still, Perru had chosen to ram inside for two reasons.

One was to reach the Golden Mirror quickly.

The other was to drive the blast furnace that powered the Golden Ark directly into the interior of the Golden Palace.

'...The Rustscale furnace. The only tool that can contain my power, the power that collapses everything.'

The Golden Mirror bestows gifts on the disciples who come to him. He gives them equipment that lets them draw out their innate arcane to its fullest, tools that let them use it at two hundred percent. That was the Geraut: the Golden Mirror's gift to a lord who carried his legacy forward.

But even the Golden Mirror had spent a long time in thought when Perru stood before him.

Perru's innate arcane was a force that brought materials to ruin. What conceivable tool could harness a power that negated matter itself? Everything the Golden Mirror tried to create would simply collapse when Perru's ability touched it.

'...There was even talk of killing me, back then.'

One lord had argued that Perru's power, which denied alchemy, was an ill omen, and that it would be better to be rid of her before she became a problem. But the Golden Mirror paid that suggestion no attention and kept making one thing after another until he overcame the limits of her ability. Day after day, without stopping.

What the Demon God finally produced after all that struggle was the Rustscale furnace, a black box closer to glass than steel, its structure as unreadable as its composition.

Because breaking it was irreversible, Perru had never been able to work out what lay inside. One thing she knew for certain: as long as there was material left inside to break down, it would never crumble. The Golden Mirror's mastery was great enough to transcend even contradiction.

She imagined that for the Golden Mirror, even that long process of trial and error had been a pleasure, a source of contemplation and fresh inspiration. For someone who lacked for nothing, that kind of stimulation was all that remained.

And yet even a simple act of contemplation could be, for someone else, a precious gift.

'...Golden Mirror.'

The Golden Palace rearranged its structure again. As if it had decided that attacking Perru directly wasn't working, it shifted to a different approach.

The floor disappeared. Perru's foot found nothing, and she staggered and fell down into the corridor below. Sharp iron spikes bristled at the spot where she was going to land.

Against that kind of attack, her power alone was no help. But she hadn't come empty-handed. She reached inside her chest and pulled out a small white orb and crushed it.

A wind orb the regressor had given her. A storm exploded outward and shoved her body sideways. She misjudged the force and slammed her back into the wall, but even that was better than landing on spikes. Barely clear, Perru scattered Rustscale's power around her and walked deeper in.

[This is difficult.]

A voice filled the corridor. Perru looked toward where it had come from.

"...Golden Mirror."

[To deal with mercenaries, I need my functions. But with you here, I cannot function properly. Crude as it may be, I may have no choice but to collapse the Golden Palace entirely.]

He intended to make the Golden Palace Perru's tomb if it came to that. She had expected as much. Against alchemy, her power was absolute, but she herself was a fragile human. If the Golden Mirror decided to kill her by other means, she would not survive it.

Even so, Perru had come here. To protect the Lesser States, yes, but that was not all of it. Hugging the Rustscale furnace to her chest and walking the endless corridor stretching out before her, she called out to the Golden Mirror.

"...Can we not... be enough for you?"

Lords could speak with the Golden Mirror. Their mental images were rooted in him, which made them the only ones capable of genuine communication with a Golden Mirror who was now nothing but a mental image himself.

Perru's words reached the Golden Mirror's mental image. It responded.

[What do you mean?]

"...We have revered you. We are not the Gold State, but in the Lesser States your power and greatness are simply known. And yet... were we so lacking that you could not remain with us?"

Perru's words carried sadness, but the Golden Mirror answered without warmth.

[I never commanded you to revere me. It was you who came and settled in my Gold State without permission. It was also you who took my things and sold them without my leave.]

"...We did it to survive."

[And so now I am killing you.]

Logic that only a god could speak, one who had passed beyond life and death. Perru swallowed once and said:

"...Even if we were only scavenging what you left behind, we were always grateful to you."

[I did not ask for that.]

"...Not one person ever dared claim a king's title while you were here."

[That was only natural.]

"...We were your people."

[I did not regard you that way. My country is the Gold State and the Gold State alone.]

The closer she got, the clearer his voice became.

Perru's power, which broke down matter, acted as a probe searching for the Golden Mirror, the same principle as the Golden Ark. The Golden Mirror's own power radiated outward from his relics, so Perru could follow her own ability like a thread leading straight to him.

Whether or not it was intended, she was instinctively drawing closer to the golden bell. Even as she approached, she kept talking.

"...We have nothing to offer you. You are complete in alchemy. You have reached a height no one else has. All we can do is revere you and follow."

But she was not saying this to set up an ambush. Right now, Perru's desire to ask the Golden Mirror something was far greater than any desire to attack him.

"...To us, you were our ruler, our teacher, our god. We thought of you that way... and still we were not enough to be your people."

Even those heartfelt words drew a cold answer from the Golden Mirror.

[That belief was yours alone, something you invented without asking me. I am a man of the Gold State, and I have only one king. I am not a king but a minister. I am one who tends the land his king left behind for a time.]

A king needs his people. He needs people to farm in his place, to work in his place, to die in his place. Only with that can he truly be a king.

And so a king treasures his people. Because he needs them.

He had died and become a Demon God, and he needed nothing. Because he had killed even himself, he could discard everything else without a second thought. Even an entire country.

Perhaps that was why gods were merciless. Perru, who now understood that she had been abandoned, swallowed the tears rising inside her and asked her god one last question.

"...And we were not included in that land."

The Golden Mirror considered it briefly before answering.

[That is correct.]

Perru's steps stopped. She lowered her head and sat with the despair, then set down the Rustscale furnace she had carried all this way.

Collapsing matter accelerated the collapse of other matter. The blast furnace had been fed countless loads of alchemic steel as fuel to drive the Golden Ark, and now it was dense with Perru's accumulated power.

'...Years of gathered Rustscale energy.... Will this be enough.'

Because breaking it was irreversible, she had never been able to dismantle or empty it. Now Perru reached into her chest and drew out a red orb and placed it on top of the furnace.

It was called a lava tear, a stone excavated from a volcano and processed through special means to concentrate heat inside it. Even in the Lesser States, where alchemic value inflation ran rampant, it sold for a considerable price. Perru had kept one on hand for emergencies, and now she poured her magic into it.

The orb shattered and vivid red lava poured down over the furnace. The burning liquid spread wide across its surface, devouring the outer shell with greedy heat. The furnace reddened and glowed, and then, unable to hold against that heat, it began to melt.

One drop of lava sank deepest of all and punched a hole through the furnace. In that instant, a malevolent power sealed away for years pried at the weakened seal and came seeping out.

Rustscale's power had not failed to work on the furnace. It had simply never been able to touch it, because of the furnace's particular structure.

But once the lava had melted through, the seal was broken. Years of Perru's accumulated power came flooding out, devouring even the seal that had held it captive.

'...Even if it doesn't work. This is all I can do.'

It was no longer even fragments. It was a mass of corrosive liquid, moving like fluid. It did not touch the floor, the instant it did, it collapsed the floor beneath it and fell through like a waterfall.

The spreading corrosion was even more destructive. It grew in volume as it descended, turning everything it touched into the same state as itself. Rustscale's power swelled in an instant and began to stain the Golden Palace.

"...Hah, hah."

Even being near it as it ran down with gravity was enough. Perru's hands and feet were turning coal-black. Her breathing grew ragged. She hadn't even touched it directly, but the sheer proximity was tearing her body and organs apart.

[Impressive. To resist me until the very end.]

Perru answered between gasps.

"...For the Lesser States."

[But you have forgotten something.]

Even as the poison devoured the inside of the Golden Palace, the Golden Mirror spoke as if none of it mattered to him.

[That I made even that furnace.]

The Rustscale power that had been boring through the floor as if it meant to dig an Abyss stopped at a certain point. It did not move, as if a wall had blocked it.

Perru, coughing in pain, understood what had happened a beat too late.

The place where she was standing was made from the same material as the furnace she had brought in.

[I did it once already when I built the Golden Ark. What is done once can be done again. The first time is always the hardest.]

"...Ah."

This place, no, the entire Golden Palace, was a seal built to contain Perru and her power. She had thought she was penetrating deeper. Even that had been the Golden Mirror guiding her along.

With Perru falling into despair, the Golden Mirror explained with the calm patience of a teacher addressing a student.

[Your power has a countermeasure. The problem was the mercenaries you brought. The weapons meant to kill the mercenaries became useless against your power, and the countermeasures meant for you were broken by the mercenaries. To resolve that problem, I needed to separate you from them.]

"...So the fortress was..."

[Your mercenaries were dangerous. They required caution.]

Whether her spirit had broken or whether she had simply hit her limit, Perru could hold on no longer and collapsed. The Golden Mirror's cold voice reached her as she lay there gasping.

[Impressive. But this is where it ends. If the Lesser States meant that much to you, disappear along with them.]

Perru had no moves left. She didn't even have the strength to use her innate arcane anymore. She lay with her eyes open and watched the ceiling draw slowly closer.

Moving at the Golden Mirror's will, the ceiling would come down and meet the floor. Whatever lay between them was of no concern.

Perru would vanish from the world without even leaving a body behind, reduced to scraps of flesh and blood. Perhaps her fate had been decided from the moment her god abandoned her.

And so, just before death closed in.

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