WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 374

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Who Gives Us Our Daily Bread

The frightened jackals protested.

"K-kill us! We were promised fair compensation!"

"It was a contract!"

I ignored them and spoke to Perru.

"Have they actually been useful to you? Are they even strong? The only promise worth trusting was the Suppression Lord's, and the Suppression Lord is dead. Whether they get paid or not is their problem to sort out, not ours. So why did they follow us all the way here just to cause trouble?"

I swept my hair back as if bored, and at that small gesture the jackals all flinched at once, shrinking in on themselves.

Of course, I was perfectly ordinary in terms of raw strength. I had no way to kill them all in an instant. But life has a way of borrowing prestige. Having been seen alongside the regressor and Tyr, I registered in their minds as something on the same level, a monster cut from the same cloth.

I laid the swagger on thick and looked down at the jackals like they were dirt.

"I haven't even finished reporting the whole affair to the Thunder Lord yet, and these people are already acting like they own a stake in it. You're still planning to divide up the Suppression Lord's assets and hand them some? You haven't changed your mind?"

This was the classic good cop, bad cop play. I was performing the villain role, acting as though I wanted everyone dead and Perru was the only thing holding me back, so that Perru would feel she owed her a debt of gratitude. Fine by me. Playing the villain was nothing new.

Perru caught on a beat late and played along.

"...A contract is a contract."

"Well, if that's what Perru wants, I suppose there's nothing to be done. But if they get in the way of things, we'll handle it ourselves. I don't particularly care what happens to the Suppression Lord's assets, but if they slow us down, I might start wanting to kill them all anyway."

"...If it comes to that, I'll deal with it."

"Fair enough. You'd make a cleaner job of it than I would. With your ability, you wouldn't leave a single bone fragment behind."

I kept running my mouth like I intended to kill everything in the world, and the terrified jackals fell over each other fleeing. It took less than a minute for all of them to scatter. I waited until the very last one vanished from sight, then said:

"That was helpful, wasn't it?"

"...Yes."

Perru gave a small nod. Honestly. If something was going to be this much trouble, she shouldn't have taken it on in the first place.

"So why did you take on the Suppression Lord's dying wish to begin with? You could have just walked away and played dumb."

"...Because it was a contract."

"If it's not a contract with me, you're allowed to ignore it, you know. Do you have to volunteer as a guardian of every contract you come across? It's more trouble than it's worth."

Perru let her gaze drift to the golden bell hanging at her hip.

"...The Golden Mirror entrusted this to me. If not me, then who would keep the promise."

A patriot, ladies and gentlemen.

With the Golden Mirror gone and the Suppression Lord dead, the Lesser States would soon be plunged into staggering chaos. The void the Golden Mirror left behind wasn't obvious yet, but that was only because the country was fluid, like a liquid. Once a hole opened and the water started leaking out, the whole nation would run dry before anyone noticed. When that day came, everyone would know it whether they wanted to or not. That the Lesser States was finished.

Still, it wasn't completely over yet. The Golden Mirror was gone, but his legacy remained.

"By the way, what exactly does that bell do? It's supposed to be the Golden Mirror's keepsake, but I can't figure out its ability."

"...I'm not sure. It seems to repair broken things."

Perru turned the golden bell over in her hands. Repairing broken things. Genuinely useful, but measured against the Golden Mirror's power to create nations from nothing, it seemed almost pitiful. I offered my honest advice.

"You'd better figure it out soon. For the sake of peace, if nothing else."

"He is right."

That was when it happened. A flash of lightning, and then the Thunder Lord was standing beside us, long hair streaming, as if she had simply always been there. She came to a stop with the last of the lightning still flickering at the edges and looked down at Perru with unhurried authority.

"...Thunder Lord."

"Whatever one might say of the Golden Mirror's character, his power was the power of a god that changed the world. You need not only to draw out the strength in that keepsake, but to build your own strength if you mean to protect it."

"...Yes."

"And to do that, you cannot afford to show weakness the way you just did."

The Thunder Lord's sharp words made Perru, who had been bowing her head low, flinch. The Thunder Lord pressed on without pause.

"A person seeking rest lies down in the shade of a great tree, not in a field of reeds. Just now, the reason they pushed you around is because they found you unconvincing. They sensed you might waver, and so they grabbed hold and shook. To overcome that, you need to show your resolve without blinking. Use force if you have to."

Using force, Perru could certainly drive the jackals away. The problem was that her power was tied entirely to destruction. One careless moment and she could crumble a piece of someone's body to dust.

That was why the idea of using her ability against people simply didn't occur to Perru. She muttered with no strength behind the words.

"...But my ability..."

"It's Rustscale's power, isn't it? So why are you skulking around with it? In a Lesser States soaked through with the Golden Mirror's poison, your ability is more feared than anyone else's. Use it."

But the Thunder Lord's thinking ran in a different direction from Perru's. The suggestion to crumble even humans if it came to it landed on Perru like a shock.

"...I can't use Rustscale's power on people."

Perru asked again, wondering if she had misread the intent, but the Thunder Lord tilted her head.

"The Golden Mirror used the people of the Lesser States as raw material, harvesting them like crops. Right or wrong, that is why the people of the Lesser States held him in awe. If you're going to declare yourself the Golden Lord of a Lesser States without the Golden Mirror, you need to show that level of power before anyone will respect your authority."

"...Did you not hate the Golden Mirror for feeding his crops to the people of the Lesser States, Thunder Lord-nim? Why would you say something like that?"

Perru respected the Thunder Lord, and it was precisely because of that respect that she questioned her intentions.

Claudia was the largest farmland in the Lesser States, a city built on that foundation to raise the children born within its borders. The person who built that system was none other than the Thunder Lord herself. She had produced clean, untainted food, free from the Golden Mirror's alchemy, for the children of the Lesser States who still had their whole lives ahead of them.

Beyond that, it was common knowledge that the Thunder Lord hated the Golden Mirror. So Perru had always assumed she produced food in order to free the Lesser States from his control.

But the Thunder Lord's response was nothing like what Perru had expected.

"You're right, I hate the Golden Mirror. But that's because he abused his power with no rules or principles to govern it, not because I deny his power or his achievements. My own body is made of his power, after all."

"...Your body, Thunder Lord-nim?"

"Yes. From the tips of my toes to the end of every strand of hair. My entire body is made of alchemic material. That's why I can hold thunder inside me and come through unharmed."

Well, it made sense. No ordinary human could take a lightning strike and walk away intact. The Thunder Lord's durability came from her body being composed entirely of alchemic material.

The crops the Golden Mirror had cultivated were all alchemic material, and a body built from digesting them took on alchemic properties. The defining characteristic of alchemic material was its high reactivity, its low resistance to outside interference. That was why the homunculi had been so vulnerable to Tyr's and Perru's abilities. The homunculi had called themselves perfect, but regardless.

The Thunder Lord, though, was no homunculus. She had been conceived in a mother's womb like any other person, but she had grown up eating the Golden Mirror's crops. In the womb and after birth alike. What had been fed to her was pure Golden Mirror harvest.

The reason disability was so common in the Lesser States was that reactive alchemic material mixed into the body and created conflict with it. But a person filled entirely with pure alchemic material gained a perfect body. No disability, no recurring illness, a chosen body capable of absorbing even a lightning strike and making it her own.

The flip side was that such a body was extremely vulnerable to Perru's ability, and to the Golden Mirror's power.

Perru startled and stepped back from the Thunder Lord. Not out of fear of her. Out of fear that Perru might inadvertently activate her ability and hurt her. She couldn't crumble someone she respected with Rustscale's power.

The Thunder Lord caught that in an instant.

'How dare you worry about me.'

Interesting person. She could shrug off having lightning stolen from her without batting an eye, but someone showing concern for her wellbeing was enough to make her angry?

Interesting was the polite word. The less polite word was unhinged. I decided it was best to keep a little distance.

"If you're worrying about me right now, you might want to remind yourself who you're standing in front of. I am the Thunder Lord. Do you really think you could hurt someone who shapes heaven and earth and commands the power of thunder?"

"...Ah. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize so easily! Honestly, how do you expect to get anything done with this little confidence? If only you had even half, a quarter, of that boy's nerve."

The Thunder Lord shook her head, and the gesture made Perru shrink even further. The Thunder Lord steadied her breath and continued.

"Let yourself be looked down on and you won't be able to do anything at all. Set rules and show what is right. Keep that possibility alive in the back of their minds at all times. If they stray onto the wrong path, bring punishment down on them. That is the duty of those who stand above others. For those of us who have been chosen, you and I both, it is a necessity."

"..."

Perru couldn't bring herself to answer. Deep down, she didn't agree.

The Thunder Lord's power was the power of thunder that made Claudia prosper. It never ran dry no matter how much she used it, and in most cases it benefited the city.

But Perru's power collapsed alchemic value. Whatever dressing she put on it, the more she used it, the lower the Lesser States' value would inevitably fall.

The two of them might never truly understand each other. Their situations were too different.

Silence settled between them. I had a feeling my standing there was only making things more uncomfortable, so I raised my hand.

"Anyway, now that things seem to be wrapping up here, could I slip past?"

The Thunder Lord turned her gaze from Perru and asked.

"Where are you going?"

"I was thinking of having a look around inside the Lightning Rod Tower."

"The power of thunder runs through the Lightning Rod Tower at all times. Wander in there without a guide and you'd get electrocuted without fail. Every single time."

...Good to know. I had originally planned to sneak in alone, look around, and pocket anything worth taking. I had almost gotten quietly electrocuted somewhere no one could see.

I let out a quiet sigh of relief, and the Thunder Lord glanced at her watch and gave a short nod.

"I have a moment to spare. I'll guide you myself."

"What? You personally, Thunder Lord-nim? There's really no need to go that far..."

The Thunder Lord didn't answer and simply strode ahead. She didn't doubt for a moment that I would follow.

Tch. There was no way to pocket anything with the Thunder Lord watching. I'd have to make this a completely genuine sightseeing visit. A total failure.

I swallowed the bitter feeling and fell into step behind her.

"This is the Lightning Rod Tower. A structure unique to Claudia, built to channel the lightning that falls from the Cloud Waterfall while simultaneously harnessing its power."

The Thunder Lord operated the lift herself and launched into an explanation I hadn't asked for.

"In Claudia's early days, the people carved into the mountain to make farmland. The power of thunder comes from the sky, and the land blessed by it was so fertile that anything you planted thrived. But... as the city grew, problems arose. Expanding the farmland meant going deeper into the mountain, and as you know, tigers make their home in those mountains."

Ugh. That particular animal had to come up. I hunched my shoulders without thinking.

The fact that clouds and lightning poured down through Claudia year-round was the peculiar thing. In ordinary circumstances, humans couldn't live in the mountains at all. What creature could sleep soundly while a tiger watched with wide-open eyes? Unless you had built a long and familiar bond with nature, the moment you started felling trees and tilling fields, you became prey. Tigers didn't eat grain.

"So instead of expanding the fields outward, they stacked them upward."

The Thunder Lord stopped the lift and threw open the door. The interior of the Lightning Rod Tower spread out before us all at once.

Inside the tower there were no visible walls, no pillars. What met the eye was a wide expanse of soil covering everything. Crops grew so densely on it that there was no room to step between them.

Water collected from the Cloud Waterfall ran along channels and soaked into the earth. From the dampened soil, the grace of the earth pushed upward and lifted its head. Grass and trees were the fruit borne when the Celestial God and Mother Earth became one, or so scripture liked to say. Those who ate of that grace were always to give thanks for the daily bread of today.

But could this place truly be called a grace of the Celestial God and Mother Earth?

Soil had been hauled in and packed only just deep enough to cover the roots. Layer by layer, one skin peeled from Mother Earth's body, laid across each floor of the soaring Lightning Rod Tower.

The sky was hidden behind the ceiling. But in Claudia, where clouds and thunder descended directly to earth, they had captured even the sky and hung it from the ceiling inside glass orbs. They had extracted the light of lightning alone, sealed it inside the glass, and set it to shine down on the crops in place of the sun.

Sky and earth alike, pulled from where they belonged and stacked up floor by floor. An artificial field. If the author of scripture had witnessed this, would they have recoiled in horror, or been impressed?

"This is why Claudia prospered."

The Thunder Lord said it without hiding her pride.

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