WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 364: The King Who Kills Others, the God Who Kills Himself - Conclusion

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Death, as commanded by the Lord of Gold, approached Perru. Just before it reached her, the ceiling and floor stopped for a very, very brief moment.

In the Golden Palace, which moved according to the Lord of Gold's will, that could only mean one thing.

The Lord of Gold was hesitating.

He saw something in Perru as she lay dying. He felt something at the sight, yet he could not put that feeling into words.

Even Demo, the original he was based on, had not understood humans. Asking the Lord of Gold, a homunculus created to rebuild the Golden Kingdom, to discuss human emotions was asking too much. So I would put it into words for him.

I could not read his thoughts either. Still, telepathy was not necessary to understand someone.

If the Lord of Gold had been made in imitation of humans, the same would apply to him.

"Something feels wrong, doesn't it?"

Unique Magic, End of Gold.

I drew a line across the wall with a card. The sturdy wall was sliced apart like tofu. It was only possible because this was the Golden Palace and because I had applied the Lord of Gold's power to Perru's unique magic.

Able to wield both the powers of creation and destruction, I felt a slight thrill as I cut into the Lord of Gold's world. I entered the Golden Palace itself and spoke to him directly so he could not look away.

"Even if it was an ugly, filthy country, she loved it and acted for its sake. Then she was abandoned by the king she revered and followed, left on the verge of death. Doesn't she remind you of someone?"

The reason the Lord of Gold could not kill Perru was simple.

Perru reminded him of his original, who had died so miserably. Abandoned by someone he trusted and followed, on the brink of death, he felt a kinship with her.

The ceiling and floor shook ominously. The Lord of Gold stuttered as though something inside him had broken. His voice stretched out unnaturally. After thinking for a long time, he finally offered a single excuse.

[…They are different.]

"How are they different?"

[This country is not the Golden Kingdom. I am not her king. She, too, is in a different position from mine. There are… too many differences….]

Of course there were. Neither of them was a regressor, so there was no way everything could be exactly the same. If it truly were the same, it would lead to the same result.

Still, being able to point out several differences proved there were similarities as well. Whether he wanted to or not, he could not help but see them. Once you noticed something, it kept catching your eye.

"That's reasonable. Shall I tell you another difference?"

[…What is it.]

"The one making the choice is not Elik. It's you."

Having gone through it once, he would be better at it. The world did not seek out experienced people for no reason. What choice would he make this time?

"You were abandoned once and went through hell. You drowned yourself in endless guilt. You suffered without even death serving as an escape. But in truth, that was a wrong the country committed against you. You were simply sacrificed for its sake."

Even with the Lord of Gold's power and Perru's unique magic at my disposal, my feeble mana could only alter what a single card touched. After all that hardship, I finally made it to the same floor. I trudged down the dark corridor until I stood before Perru. Keeping several steps away in case Verdigris's power harmed me, I shouted at the Lord of Gold.

"You'd resent it if all you did was suffer, wouldn't you? So I recreated the same situation. Now you're the one who has to abandon someone for your country!"

Perru's ragged breathing gradually slowed. Her life seemed ready to slip away at any moment. With her before me, I pressed the Lord of Gold to make his choice.

"Choose what you will take with you and what you will discard in the country you create."

If he allowed Perru to die, he would be affirming the death that had come for him. If he saved her, he would be showing room for compromise. Which would the Lord of Gold choose?

He did not have long to deliberate. He could not. Perru's life was like a burning fuse, and he had to decide before it ran out.

Ding.

Hearing the bell, I smiled at the light approaching from the far end of the corridor.

The Lord of Gold was walking toward us from afar, holding a bell.

Even a Demon God who used both his own life and the lives of others as materials could not deny himself. The moment he saw himself in Perru, this result had been inevitable. If he abandoned Perru here, he would be affirming his own abandonment in the Golden Kingdom.

The Lord of Gold crossed the corridor in an instant. He placed the golden bell beside Perru's head and sat at her side. Alchemical light shimmered over Perru's dying body.

Perru's hands and feet, consumed by Verdigris's power, had turned pitch-black. Blood moved through her punctured lungs instead of air. They were body parts that could no longer function. Cutting them away was the only solution, but the Lord of Gold filled the gaps with something else instead.

He had already completely mastered the mechanical structure of humans. His homunculi were imperfect because they lacked in other areas, but in terms of function, they surpassed humans.

The Lord of Gold himself was proof. He was a homunculus moved by his own will. As long as a mind existed to move the flesh, his homunculi would be no less real than humans.

The Lord of Gold restored Perru's broken body with alchemy, as though arguing that humans were no different from machines.

"...Ah, ngh."

That claim was proven when Perru opened her eyes. Gasping for breath, she looked at her king.

"...My lord."

[Do not misunderstand. My resolve to rebuild the Golden Kingdom remains unchanged. I merely kept you alive.]

The Lord of Gold looked down at Perru with cold eyes.

[The reborn Golden Kingdom will need someone to carry my words beyond the Golden Palace. The Suppression Lord is gone, so you will inherit the position.]

"...Lord Hecto..."

[You will have to obey as well. Alchemy is the power of change. With a body filled by it, you will not be able to remain outside the Golden Palace for long anyway.]

Now that part of her body had been replaced with something external, Perru was no more than a machine that required adjustment. From now on, she would have to remain at the Lord of Gold's side.

Yet Perru did not fear him. Though her consciousness was still unclear, she grasped the Lord of Gold's hand.

"...Thank you for your kindness. It is shameless of me to ask after receiving your mercy, but..."

She had not taken his hand to reduce it to dust with Verdigris. Keeping her hand atop his, Perru pleaded.

"...Could you not extend that kindness to others as well...?"

[That I cannot do. The Golden Kingdom will be rebuilt.]

His voice was cold and firm. Yet because he had saved Perru, room had opened within him. Without even fully understanding it, Perru pushed into that opening.

"...If you make room for others in the Golden Kingdom you create."

[They are not citizens of the Golden Kingdom.]

"...They lived on the land of the old Golden Kingdom. They are the sons and daughters of its former people. They only make their living through alchemy instead of metallurgy... They are no different from them."

[There is a difference. This is not the Golden Kingdom.]

That cold, resolute answer had been repeated several times. Perru asked as she struggled for breath.

"...How can it be a country when there is nobody here...?"

[There is no need. I will create them.]

"...Is a country filled with homunculi the Golden Kingdom? What is the Golden Kingdom...?"

[The Golden Kingdom is.]

The Lord of Gold, about to answer, suddenly fell silent. A confused expression appeared on the face of a being who had awakened a Great Truth and become a Demon God.

The ideal Golden Kingdom he sought to create was a nation where diligent homunculi cultivated a beautiful land. He had set out to capture and kill every scavenger that gnawed away at the country, to create a nation that would prosper forever. He intended to transmute the entire Lesser States.

[The Golden Kingdom is….]

But after hearing Perru's question, he faced a fundamental doubt.

What was the Golden Kingdom?

"The Golden Kingdom? An illusion."

I had supported him, sure. I had even nudged him a little toward making the Golden Kingdom. But there was nothing to be done about that. You wouldn't know unless you tried it yourself.

You wouldn't even know something was impossible if you never tried.

"At some point, humans start desperately clinging to things they don't understand. Not only concepts like faith, good, and evil. They define what a country is however they please, even though they don't know what one is. They have never properly seen one or understood what it is, yet they speak of it as they wish. No matter how much animals cry out for an ideal, it doesn't change the fact that it's an illusion."

The Lord of Gold, swallowed by doubt, sought an answer from me.

[The Golden Kingdom is not an illusion. It clearly existed.]

"Because you believed that, I had no choice but to support you. Even knowing it was a wish doomed to fail."

As I said before, the Lord of Gold did not know what the Golden Kingdom was. Yet he wandered the country, saying he would make it and fix it despite not knowing what it was. The greatest problem he created came from that ignorance.

Even the Lord of Gold, who had become a Demon God by awakening one of the Great Truths, could not escape the immense misunderstanding created by the First Holy Maiden.

"Let me ask again. Have you ever seen everything in the Golden Kingdom? Have you taken in all of its territory and facilities? Have you spoken with every person in the Golden Kingdom? Did you understand how the Golden Kingdom functioned?"

[One does not need to see everything to create it. One only needs to understand the underlying principle.]

"Don't delude yourself. You have only awakened one Great Truth. Do you think a truth that makes up nature and a country, a concept created by humans, are the same thing? Not at all. How beautiful or sophisticated could something slapped together by humans, who are animals by nature, possibly be? Enough to have some underlying principle? That isn't the Golden Kingdom. Your Golden Kingdom?"

I answered him in a mocking tone.

"You've only named the days when you were happy the Golden Kingdom, and longed for them as you pleased."

Animals should think like animals. Instead, they tried to think beyond themselves and ended up misunderstanding everything.

"It's a box where you store your feelings. Longing, happiness, love, friendship. You call every good moment you experienced the Golden Kingdom and place it inside. You give bad experiences and painful memories other names, guilt, responsibility, the Lesser States, and set them aside somewhere else. Then you keep looking at that beautiful time capsule called the Golden Kingdom and longing for it. That's how you become mistaken."

Even after awakening a Great Truth, he was human. What humans made was not perfect because humans themselves were not perfect.

Even the relic forged from that truth made a human mistake.

"What you truly want is the time when you were happy. Yet it's as though you believe that if you rebuild the Golden Kingdom, it will all return."

Pitiful. It would never return, no matter what he did.

"The Golden Kingdom is gone now. King Elik is gone, as are the people of the Golden Kingdom and its identity. You destroyed some of it yourself. As long as alchemy exists, metallurgy, which sustained the Golden Kingdom, no longer has the value it once did. The Golden Kingdom cannot return as it was."

You could not reclaim what had already been lost. The only thing the Lord of Gold could do was find new happiness.

He needed to find something better than making a doll of King Elik and receiving comfort from it. Mental masturbation was no different from burning happy memories as firewood to warm yourself. A little match girl's flame might look warm, but when you opened your eyes, it was only an illusion that vanished like a mirage.

"Leave the illusion and return to reality. Look at what is before your eyes. Listen to what reaches your ears. Listen to the human standing close beside you."

The Lord of Gold followed my words.

The Lords. Those who inherited the advances of alchemy. The Lord of Gold's disciples, some of the few beings who could communicate with him.

Perru had given everything she had to reach the Lord of Gold.

Whenever a disciple came to him, the Lord of Gold made them a Juggernaut. He designed machines suited to their abilities, full of romantic appeal, and gave them away without asking for anything in return.

What meaning had that held? Had he only been imitating King Elik? Or had he enjoyed it too?

A monologue received no answer. Perhaps the Lord of Gold welcomed the few people who could still speak with someone as exceptional as himself.

[…I think I understand, if only a little, why Her Majesty kept disciples.]

Muttering those words as though longing for something, the Lord of Gold did something.

I had no way of knowing exactly what, since I could not read his thoughts. By the time I came to my senses, every scene around us was collapsing. The Golden Palace crumbled into debris and flowed toward the ground like a waterfall.

It felt as though the world was falling apart.

Buried beneath the wreckage, I screamed inside my head.

Ah, not being able to read thoughts could be this frustrating.

Footnotes:

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