WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 371

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Whether God or Human

A massive Thunder Wheel spun in lazy circles, one side a quarter-submerged in the Cloud Waterfall. At the opposite end, the tallest Lightning Rod Tower of all pressed its tip lightly against the wheel's edge, as if pinning it down into the falls.

Below the Cloud Waterfall, a reservoir of pooled cloud haze made itself dimly known. Its full size was impossible to judge. The clouds, not yet dense enough to become water, simply trickled down along the ground and bled into the landscape.

Tyr had been watching the scenery in silence for a while. She took in the Thunder Wheel, a hundred meters across at the hub, at least, and murmured to herself.

"...The world has changed so much. When I used to pass through the Cloud Waterfall long ago, there was nothing like a watermill here."

The Thunder Lord answered even that aside, one detail at a time.

"The first Thunder Wheel was no bigger than an ordinary watermill. As people fleeing the Golden Mirror began gathering in Claudia, the city grew, and the wheel grew with it. Metal is easy enough to obtain in the Lesser States. Still..."

She gestured toward me and Azzy, who had both been hanging back at a considerable distance.

"Are you two still frightened of lightning?"

Frightened of lightning? Ha. What a thing to ask. I declared with full dignity:

"It's not just lightning I'm afraid of. I'm always afraid of any threat I can't control."

"Woof!"

That prickling sensation was still crawling across my skin. Azzy's fur had puffed out to lion-mane proportions. How was anyone supposed to feel comfortable here? Any survival instinct worth the name says get clear.

The Thunder Lord looked at the two of us holding firm and gave a nod.

"I understand. The power of thunder is far too raw and brutal for an ordinary human to handle. It's only natural to tremble if you're not at my level."

"Wow. Quite the ego."

"It's just stating facts for someone with every right to say them."

Not a trace of embarrassment in her. This was a new one. I had never met anyone quite this utterly certain of themselves.

"The area beneath the Thunder Wheel is where the power of thunder is strongest. Can't be helped. Rest wherever you like. As long as you don't step outside the Lightning Rod Tower, you won't be struck."

"Works for me. Azzy and I will wait here. We'll find somewhere that looks safe and stay put."

"Woof!"

"Come along, both of you. I'd like to have a look around too."

Conveniently, a square room had been cut into the wall of the Lightning Rod Tower. Sealed in iron from floor to ceiling, it looked exactly like a steel box, the kind that would come through fine whether lightning struck outside or a carriage rammed into it.

Azzy and I went ahead, and Tyr followed behind us. When she stepped in last, the Thunder Lord had been guiding the others but finally had a moment to glance our way.

"Wait. That's..."

'That's the lift to the top of the Lightning Rod Tower.'

What? A lift? What does that..."Woof?"

A red button was mounted just inside the entrance. Azzy stared at it, fixed, and then, as if in a trance, pressed it.

The steel door slammed shut. Azzy froze in surprise. The steel box lurched hard and began to rise.

"Woof woof woof!"

"Aaaah! We've been kidnapped!"

And so the three of us, me, Azzy, and Tyr, shot upward inside the lift. The ground dropped away beneath us at a very respectable speed.

The box climbed for a good while, then bumped gently against something with a soft thud. The lift came to a full stop, the door slid open, and we tumbled out like we were fleeing for our lives.

Tyr studied the lift with curious eyes.

"Some kind of device that creates movement without physical effort? Does it use magic, or someone pulling by hand?"

"Neither, I think. It looks like it runs on the power of the Thunder Wheel turning."

As if on cue, the tip of the Thunder Wheel grazed past the topmost floor of the Lightning Rod Tower in its rotation.

Up close, the great Thunder Wheel turning on the Cloud Waterfall was etched all over with fine ridges and notches. Meshed into those were clusters of gears, much smaller than the wheel itself. One of those gears drove the lift's pulley.

"So the Cloud Waterfall spins the Thunder Wheel, and whatever is connected to it rotates and passes the force along. The lift is just one application, it must be put to work in other places too."

The gears clearly ran to more than just the lift. The Thunder Wheel pierced right through the Lightning Rod Tower, so there had to be far more machinery inside. The tower wasn't simply a structure to survive lightning strikes. It was a device to convert them into power.

"Hmm. It reminds me of those gear toys I saw in the military state."

"Maximilien, who designed the military state, was originally from the Lesser States. He probably took his inspiration from right here."

A city powered by a Thunder Wheel over a hundred meters across, spinning without end, Claudia. Where he got the mental image was obvious without even looking. He had wanted something beyond merely supplying power. He had wanted to build a city where everything was made of gears. Including the people.

...Well. If that had actually worked out, he probably wouldn't have bothered coming to the military state.

Azzy pattered forward and looked around the top floor of the Lightning Rod Tower. She shook her head side to side, tapped herself on the head with one paw, gave a little hop, and then tilted her head with a puzzled air.

"Woof? Here... is fine."

"You're right. Normally the higher up you are, the more exposed you'd be to lightning."

Strange. Down at the base, my skin had been prickling like a bolt could fall any second. Now I had stepped onto a taller Lightning Rod Tower and the feeling was completely gone. Was this what the tower did?

I was still looking around in curiosity when, from across the floor at the junction with the Thunder Wheel, a cluster of young children spotted us and went wide-eyed.

"Huh? You're not supposed to be here!"

They were dressed much like the Thunder Lord, thick cloth wrapping their whole bodies in something like priestly robes. The children startled and came running.

"This is a place only Thunder practitioners are allowed!"

"No one without the Thunder Lord's permission may enter!"

They were quite determined about it, but their breathless chattering just looked endearing. Azzy saw them rushing over and barked a friendly greeting.

"Woof woof! Let's play!"

The two kids in front stopped short and went round-eyed.

"Oh? A beastkin!"

"Never seen one before! Want to play?"

"Is that really the time?!"

One girl scolded the others with an irritated look. Both kids, and even Azzy, wilted and drooped their ears. The girl let out a short sigh and spoke in a crisp, clear voice.

"I don't know who you are, but the Thunder Wheel is Claudia's most important facility. It's the first place the Sky God attacks! Ordinary people are not allowed anywhere near it!"

"We're not ordinary people. The Thunder Lord invited us personally."

"Really...?"

"Yes. If we were intruders, do you think the Thunder Lord down there would just stand by and watch? That powerful and great Thunder Lord?"

We hadn't exactly asked permission before coming up, but the Thunder Lord hadn't seemed bothered, so it was fine. The girl shrugged.

"That's true! The Thunder Lord is the greatest and most powerful human alive!"

"I can't say whether she's the greatest, but she's certainly strong."

"There's no one who can stand against the Thunder Lord, except a deity!"

"Hey, careful. You shouldn't throw that word around lightly."

The children had the Sky God in mind, but watch what you say. There is a vampire Progenitor standing right here who burns with hatred toward the Celestial God.

...Ah. Too late.

Tyr had noticed something. Her gaze settled slowly, like water going still. There, on the wrists of the children bundled up in their priestly robes, iron rosaries were glinting.

Oh no. This is dangerous. For now..."Does your great and powerful Thunder Lord fight the Sky God sometimes?"

Nothing draws children in like a head-to-head matchup. I got things rolling, and the kids answered with delight.

"Yes!"

"Who wins?"

"The Thunder Lord wins, but she says the Sky God just retreats each time and tells us not to let our guard down!"

"It disappears beyond the Cloud Waterfall and then comes back!"

"So we have to train harder, when the Thunder Lord gets old someday, we'll have to face it in her place!"

"But the Thunder Lord doesn't age!"

They rattled on happily now that they'd hit a familiar topic, but they had no idea. Their lives had just been in danger a moment ago.

Before things could go any further, I quickly steered the conversation somewhere else.

"That's strange, though. Why does the Sky God keep attacking this place? With someone as strong as the Thunder Lord here, that can't be easy."

The girl gave me a mildly dismissive look.

"Mister, do you not even know the story of the lightning thief?"

"More or less. Long ago, the lightning thief climbed the Cloud Waterfall, broke into the palace in the sky, stole lightning, and fled back down. That story?"

It was famous enough, and I could have read it from their minds. But that wasn't what I needed right now. What I needed was to get a little blasphemy out of their mouths. That's what saves their lives here.

"But the lightning thief was the one who did something wrong, wasn't it? It had nothing to do with any of you. So why is a god taking it out on you?"

"Why? Because the lightning thief hid the stolen lightning here in Claudia."

"The first Thunder Lord returned the lightning, but once lightning had dwelled in a land, its power stayed behind. The Celestial God took that as an affront and sent the Sky God to punish this land!"

This was bad. That name should not have come up. Better to just press ahead.

"The Celestial God really has no generosity. The lightning was given back, and it's still sending punishment?"

Tyr's mood eased slightly. The children, meanwhile, flinched and clapped their hands over their mouths.

"Shh!"

"The Celestial God will hear!"

"Divine punishment will come down!"

Oh, quiet down. The Progenitor is right here listening. You don't know it, but a Progenitor who could kill me at any moment is scarier than a Celestial God who might kill me someday.

"What if it hears? It's the truth."

"But still!"

"And it's hounding you for something that happened before any of you were even born, even after the lightning was returned. There's shameless moneylending, and then there's this."

"N-no, we..."

The children had seen the Sky God with their own eyes. They couldn't answer easily. They floundered.

Still, the faith here wasn't the blind kind you got from the Sanctum. There was a vampire nation next door and the Golden Mirror had been roaming the front doorstep. No temples could survive in a land like this; no priests dared visit. For people of the Lesser States who knew how to read profit and loss..."Think about it. Why would your great Thunder Lord fight the Sky God at all? Because the Sky God is the bad one. Isn't that reason enough?"

Set up as a question of trust in the Thunder Lord versus trust in the sky, the children came around more easily than I expected.

"...That's true. The Sky God is bad. It bullies the Thunder Lord."

"But the Thunder Lord also says this," another added. "That deities are different from humans. That the Golden Mirror and the Sky God are both beings you cannot defy, so you must always treat them with reverence."

"Both things can be true at once. Even a bad person, if they're strong enough and reckless enough, you bow your head first and go along. You don't avoid them because it's disgusting. You avoid them because they're frightening."

Like the Progenitor standing right beside me. You nearly died just now. You have no idea. The color has come back into her face, but still.

'Hyu worries deeply. As long as they don't express their faith in front of me, I don't mind.'

She'll kill anyone, young or old, the moment it shows.

Anyway. Having done a good deed that no one would ever understand, I felt a little relieved and said:

"So don't worry. The bad Sky God is going to be dealt with by the great Thunder Lord and our secret weapon..."

I was still mid-sentence.

The Thunder Wheel let out an ominous groan. At the same moment, current crackled across the surface of the Cloud Waterfall. As if something were pulling at the face of the wheel, the point where the Cloud Waterfall and the Thunder Wheel met blazed up in a seam of glowing lightning.

Then came that prickling feeling again, insects crawling over my skin, every hair on my body yanked upright all at once.

More than anything else, Azzy's fur, that living lightning detector, rose all at once. Not upward. Toward the Cloud Waterfall.

Ha. Couldn't even finish my speech properly. We'd just been talking about things we shouldn't have, and here it comes with no sense of timing whatsoever. I should have agreed with the children first and talked Tyr around afterward.

The girl had gone white as a sheet.

"It's the Sky God!"

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