WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 364

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

The death the Golden Mirror commanded closed in on Perru. Just before it reached her, just before death arrived.

The ceiling and the floor paused, for a very, very brief moment. In the Golden Palace, which moved according to the Golden Mirror's will, that could only mean one thing.

The Golden Mirror was hesitating.

He had seen something in the sight of Perru dying. He felt it, but he couldn't put the feeling into words. His original, Demo, had never understood humans either, and it would be asking too much of a homunculus built to restore the Gold State to articulate human emotion. Let me put it into words for him.

I couldn't read his thoughts. But you don't need mind reading to understand another person.

If the Golden Mirror was made in the likeness of a human, the same would apply to him.

"Something feels wrong to you, doesn't it?"

Innate arcane. Terminus of Gold.

I drew a card across the wall. The solid rampart sliced away like tofu. Only possible because this was the Golden Palace, because I could layer the Golden Mirror's own divine power on top of Perru's innate arcane.

Wielding both the power of creation and the power of destruction at once, I felt a faint thrill as I cut through the Golden Mirror's world and stepped inside. I walked deep enough that he couldn't look away, then spoke to him directly.

"A person who loved her country even knowing it was ugly and corrupt, who acted for that country's sake, then was abandoned by the very king she respected and trusted, left on the edge of death. Reminds you of someone, doesn't it?"

The reason the Golden Mirror couldn't kill Perru was simple.

The image of his own original, who had died in such wretched circumstances, had overlapped with her. Abandoned by the one he had trusted and followed, left on the edge of death himself, he felt a kinship with her.

The ceiling and the floor shuddered ominously. The Golden Mirror stalled, as if something inside him had broken. His voice dragged out, stretched thin. After a long silence he let one word slip, something that passed for an excuse.

[...They are different.]

"How are they different?"

[This country is not the Gold State. I am not her king. She, too, is in a different position from what I was. The differences... are too many to count....]

Of course. He hadn't regressed, so it couldn't be identical. If it were truly identical, it would lead to the same outcome.

But being able to name the differences proved that similarities existed. Whether he wanted to see them or not, he had no choice. Once you find something, it keeps catching your eye.

"That's a fair point. Shall I name one more difference?"

[...What is it.]

"The one making the choice this time is you, not Elik."

Having been through it once, he'd be more practiced. The world doesn't demand experience for nothing. What choice would he make, placed in that same position now?

"You were abandoned once and went through hell. You drove yourself into endless guilt. Even death couldn't offer you an escape from the pain. But in truth, that was a wrong the country committed against you. You were simply sacrificed for its sake."

Even with the Golden Mirror's power and Perru's innate arcane at my disposal, my own meager mana only stretched far enough to shift what a single card could reach. After an ordeal to end all ordeals, I had barely made it to the same floor, and I was trudging down a dark corridor toward Perru. I stopped a few steps short, wary of Rustscale's power doing me harm, and called out to the Golden Mirror.

"It's only natural to feel wronged when something is done to you, isn't it? So I've recreated the same situation. Now it's you who gets to decide whether to cast someone aside for your country's sake."

Labored breathing, growing slower. Perru's breath looked ready to stop at any moment. Standing over her, I pushed the Golden Mirror toward a choice.

"Decide what you're going to bring into the country you build, and what you're going to leave behind."

If he let Perru die, it would mean affirming the death that had come for him. If he saved her, it would mean leaving room for compromise. What would the Golden Mirror choose?

He didn't deliberate long. He couldn't. Perru's lifeline was a fuse burning down, and the decision had to be made before the end of it arrived.

Jingle. A bell rang. I saw the light coming from far down the corridor and smiled.

The Golden Mirror was walking toward us from a distance, bell in hand.

Even a Demon God who uses his own life and the lives of others as raw material cannot deny himself. The moment he saw himself in Perru, the outcome was decided. To abandon her here would be to affirm what had been done to him in the Gold State.

The Golden Mirror crossed the corridor in an instant. He set the golden bell at Perru's head and sat down beside her. Alchemical light shimmered across her dying body.

Perru's hands and feet, swept through by Rustscale's power, had gone pitch black. Her punctured lungs moved blood instead of air. Parts of her body that could no longer function. Cutting them away was the only solution, but the Golden Mirror filled them with something else instead.

He had already mastered the mechanical workings of the human body completely. His homunculi had been imperfect for other reasons, but in terms of function, the ones he made surpassed ordinary humans.

The homunculus Golden Mirror, moving by his own thought, was proof enough of that. Given only the will to move a body, his homunculi would be no less than the real thing.

The Golden Mirror used alchemy to restore what had broken inside Perru. As if to argue that a human was no different from a machine.

"...Ah. Ugh."

That argument was proven right when Perru opened her eyes. She gasped for breath and looked up at her king.

"...Your Radiance."

[Do not misunderstand. My intent to restore the Gold State has not changed. I have only kept your life intact.]

The Golden Mirror looked down at Perru with cold eyes.

[The restored Gold State will also need someone to carry my words beyond the Golden Palace. With the Suppression Lord gone, you will take his place.]

"...Hecto-nim."

[You, too, will need to comply. Alchemy is the force of change. Having filled your body with it, you will not be able to remain outside the Golden Palace for long regardless.]

Having replaced part of her body with something external, Perru was now a machine that required upkeep. From here on, she would only be able to live at the Golden Mirror's side.

But she did not fear him. Still barely conscious, she reached out and took his hand.

"...I thank you for your kindness. It is shameless of me to ask more when I have already been shown mercy, but."

Not to crumble him with Rustscale. Perru placed her hand over the Golden Mirror's and appealed to him.

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

[That is not possible. The Gold State will be restored.]

A firm voice. But having saved Perru, he had left himself an opening. Perru, knowing almost nothing about it, pressed into that opening anyway.

"...If there were a place for others in the Gold State you intend to build."

[They are not people of the Gold State.]

"...They lived on the Gold State's old land. They are the sons and daughters of its old people. They simply sustain themselves through alchemy rather than metallurgy. They are no different from us."

[There is a difference. They are not of the Gold State.]

The same cold, firm answer, over and over. Perru drew a ragged breath and asked.

"...If no one is here, how does it become a country...?"

[It does not matter. I will create them.]

"...Is a country filled with homunculi the Gold State? What is the Gold State...?"

[The Gold State is.]

The Golden Mirror stopped mid-sentence. Across the face of a being who had grasped one of the great truths and become a Demon God, confusion appeared.

The Gold State he had wanted to build was an ideal nation, one where diligent homunculi cultivated beautiful land. He had moved personally to hunt down and destroy every jackal gnawing at the country, to build a nation of eternal prosperity. Transmuting the entire Lesser States to do it.

[The Gold State is....]

But hearing Perru's question, he came face to face with a more fundamental one.

What was the Gold State?

"The Gold State? A phantom."

I had cheered him on, in my own way. I may have nudged him a little toward building it. But you can't know something is impossible without trying, so there's no helping that.

If you never attempt it, you never learn it can't be done.

"Somewhere along the way, humans started tying themselves to things they don't understand. Not just ideas like faith or good and evil, they'll define a country for themselves without even knowing what a country is. Having never properly seen it, never knowing what it truly is. No matter how loudly a creature that's no more than a beast cries out for something ideal, the fact that what it's reaching for is a phantom doesn't change."

Caught in doubt, the Golden Mirror searched my face for an answer.

[The Gold State is not a phantom. It genuinely existed.]

"I had to cheer you on because you believed it. Even knowing it was a wish bound to fail."

As I have said before, the Golden Mirror doesn't know what the Gold State is. He wanders the land claiming to build it, to fix it, not knowing what he's building toward. The greatest problem the Golden Mirror creates comes from that ignorance.

Even the Golden Mirror, who grasped one of the great truths and became a Demon God, cannot escape the vast illusion the first Holy Maiden created.

"Let me ask again. Have you ever seen everything that made up the Gold State? Did you take in every inch of its territory, every one of its structures? Did you ever interact with every single person living there? Did you ever grasp how it actually functioned?"

[You do not need to see all of it to build it. If you understand the principle that runs through it all.]

"Don't fool yourself. What you grasped is a single great truth. Do you think a truth of nature and a concept humans invented, a country, are the same thing? They're not. What kind of unifying principle could possibly emerge from something as haphazard as what creatures who are fundamentally animals cobbled together? That isn't the Gold State. Your Gold State?"

I answered him with something close to a sneer.

"It's just a name you stuck on the years when you were happy, something you pine for on your own terms."

If you're a beast, think like one. Try to think above your station and you end up mistaken.

"It's a box you use to sort your own feelings. Longing and happiness, love and friendship, all the good times you lived through, you label them the Gold State and pack them inside. The bad experiences, the painful memories, those get other names: guilt, responsibility, the Lesser States. You set them aside in a different corner. Then you look back longingly at that beautiful time capsule called the Gold State, watching it from afar. And somewhere in there, you start to confuse things."

Even the Golden Mirror, who became a Demon God by grasping a great truth, is still human. What humans create is imperfect, because humans are imperfect.

Even a relic shaped by that very truth is capable of a very human kind of delusion.

"What you truly want is the time when you were happy. But you believe that if you restore the Gold State, that time will come back."

It's sad. That time isn't coming back, no matter what he does.

"The Gold State is gone now. Queen Elik is gone, its people are gone, its identity is gone. Some of it you erased yourself. As long as alchemy exists, the metallurgy that kept the Gold State alive will never hold the same value it once did. The Gold State cannot simply return as it was."

What is already lost cannot be recovered. All the Golden Mirror can do is find a new happiness.

Something better would have to be found than fashioning a puppet of Queen Elik and seeking comfort from it. That kind of mental indulgence is no different from burning your happiest memories as fuel to keep yourself warm. The little match girl's flame looks warm enough, but open your eyes and it vanishes like a mirage.

"Come back to reality. Step away from the phantom. Look at what is right in front of you, listen to what you can hear. Listen to what the person who came all this way to reach you has to say."

The Golden Mirror listened.

Lords. Those who had carried alchemy forward. The Golden Mirror's disciples, and among the few beings capable of truly communicating with him.

Perru had spent every last drop of her life crawling to stand before him.

Whenever a disciple came to him, the Golden Mirror had made them a Geraut. Without asking for anything in return, he would gift them a machine full of imagination, designed perfectly around each disciple's ability.

What had that meant to him? Had he simply been following Elik's example? Or had he enjoyed it too?

A word spoken to no one returns to no one. Perhaps the Golden Mirror, too great to connect with most, had been glad to have the few people he could actually speak with come to him.

[...I think I understand, a little, why His Majesty kept disciples.]

He murmured it wistfully, then did something.

I couldn't tell exactly what. Not being able to read his thoughts left me blind to it. By the time I came back to myself, every surrounding surface was collapsing. The Golden Palace crumbled like a waterfall, breaking apart into fragments that poured down into the earth. As if the world itself were caving in.

Buried in the wreckage, I screamed inside my head.

Ah. So this is how much it hurts, not being able to read someone's thoughts.

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