WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 575: When I Grow Up, I'll Be the Demon God

──────

Click, click, click, click.

The gear wheelchair moved smoothly down the wooden corridor. It climbed over small steps by catching its gears against them, and whenever the slope changed, the gears shifted to level it automatically. It had far too many functions to be called a simple wheelchair.

As I guided the wheelchair someone had given us, I muttered,

"These gears..."

"It must be that man. Halberdier Maximilien."

The regressor grimaced.

One of the military state's Six Generals, Halberdier Maximilien.

And an executive of the secret society, the Lords of All Creation. The King of Gears.

The regressor clicked her tongue as old memories surfaced.

"The Lords of All Creation... Tch. We're even at the Tree of Corruption. This puts me in an even worse mood."

"When have you ever been in a good mood?"

"What did you say?"

The regressor shot me a sharp glare. She had downed an entire bowl of elixir, so she seemed to have recovered some strength. When you're hurt, medicine does the trick.

"What can we do? Anyone dragged here against their will would be in a bad mood. But, Shei, why are you going off on your own?"

"What? What are you talking about? You're the one pushing me. How am I supposed to go anywhere by myself when I can't use my arms?"

"I'm not pushing the wheelchair right now."

"Huh? But I'm moving?"

Exactly. I wasn't pushing, but she was moving.

I stared blankly at the wheelchair rolling away, then jolted and chased after it. The wheelchair was moving on its own without any power source!

"Shei! Slow down! Trying to get there a little sooner might send you to an early grave!"

"I didn't do anything!"

The wheelchair carrying the regressor took curves on its own and found its way by itself. I hurried after her. I chased the rolling wheelchair around a corner and through a door, entering a spacious room.

[Squawk! You're here!]

A red-feathered parrot was waiting for us there.

"Welcome! I've been waiting for you!"

And just as expected, Maximilien, one of the military state's Six Generals, was there. He could freely manipulate gears within his range. He brought the regressor's gear-made wheelchair before him and examined it from every angle.

"You were here too! I heard you lost your arms. Did you get them reattached? What a waste! If you'd left it to me, I could've given you gear prostheses sturdier, more systematic, and more sustainable than your arms!"

"Halber... dier...!"

"What do you think? Want to take your arms off again and replace them even now? I'll personally teach you how to use the prostheses! Once you get used to them, they'll be much sturdier than your arms!"

The Halberdier swept aside his cape and pulled out a gear saw. Its sharp blade spun with a terrifying whine. Maximilien was as self-willed as Nevida, if not more so. Out of genuine goodwill, the Halberdier was about to carve off the regressor's arm.

Before the blade could slice into her shoulder, I thrust out my hand.

"Ugh. Do you have any idea how much work it took to fix that? You're trying to cut it off without permission?"

Scrape.

Blood splattered from my hand as it caught against the saw blade. For a moment, fresh blood sprayed everywhere. Then every drop that had spilled returned to my hand, while the saw blade stopped with a clunk, as though something had caught in it.

Stealing Innate Arcane. I stole Maximilien's innate arcane and stopped the blade from spinning. Looking at the motionless saw, Maximilien smiled as though he had expected this.

"King of Humanity. It's been a long time. This is our first meeting since you and Major General Historia tore my body apart, isn't it?"

"If not for Nevida, that would've been our last meeting. What a shame."

"Thanks to that, I had to replace even more of my body with gears. It was quite a struggle!"

"You wanted to replace the human body with gears, didn't you? Your wish came true."

At my chilly answer, Maximilien asked,

"My wish? I wanted to change the King of Humanity."

"The King of Humanity represents humanity. If you change yourself, you may someday change humanity too, and that would be reflected in a change in me. But changing me won't change humanity. What you were doing was no different from manipulating a graph."

"Hahahaha! Is that how it is? Ah, I understand, more or less!"

Was he broad-minded, or simply insane? Maximilien laughed it off heartily, then held out a gear toward me.

"What do you say? I heard the Demon God dwells within you now. Wouldn't you like to test gears while you're at it? I ask out of pure curiosity!"

"No."

"You won't accept gears? You're strict with me."

"And you can't. The Demon God already dwells in my body."

After coldly shutting Maximilien down, I placed a hand on the regressor's wheelchair. Maximilien's innate arcane, Gear Maiden, controlled every gear within range. In other words, it could not control anything that was not a gear. I tightly gripped one gear, then let go. The chunk of metal that had once been a gear turned into cards and scattered to the floor.

"Oh? What's that?"

Ignoring Maximilien's curious gaze, I said to the parrot,

"You never told me there'd be an auditor, Great Witch."

[I didn't know either! Squawk! That thing made such a fuss about having to see you! It's no help at all!]

The parrot scattered feathers and shot Maximilien a displeased look. He answered calmly.

"What does it matter? Don't be so hard on a fellow failure."

[Squawk? Failure?]

"Aren't we both failures who could not reach the Demon God? We should put our heads together and work as one to reach the Demon God somehow. Why are you trying to monopolize the chance to speak with the King of Humanity?"

[Squawk, squawk! I'm not like you! I made a major contribution to creating the Tree of Origin!]

"If that were truly so, you would've become the Demon God. Yet wasn't it the Progenitor who became one?"

The moment Maximilien casually mentioned Tyr, an eerie scent of blood filled the room. The parrot's neck creaked as it turned toward him, its eyes blazing.

[Don't... mention Tyrkanzyaka... in front of me....]

"An emotional response is unhelpful. The Progenitor recently became the Demon God. Naturally, we should analyze the case, shouldn't we?"

Something appeared between the halves of the beak as it opened and closed, spitting out rage. It was no illusion. Something was crawling up from deep within the parrot's esophagus.

A thin, pale finger.

The protruding index finger forcibly grabbed and pulled the beak apart. The parrot's beak opened so wide it looked ready to split.

The pale, slender finger emerging through the gap pointed at Maximilien.

[Shut up!]

Where the finger pointed, Maximilien's chest caved in by the length of a finger joint. Blood spiraled above his heart.

Heart Destruction. Black magic, and likely a form of high-level black magic beyond anything I could even imagine. Black magic, originally closer to a curse, had difficulty exerting physical force. Yet the darkest and strongest black magic was power in itself. The absurd force of that curse pierced Maximilien's heart.

It was far too lethal a strike to call a prank.

Still, the fundamental principle of black magic was identity, and Maximilien's body had already departed from the ordinary.

Clatter.

Several dozen tiny gears fell from the front of his clothes. Frowning, Maximilien said,

"What are you doing? Stop it. I only repaired that recently."

Maximilien had replaced a large portion of his body with gears, so even that deadly black magic left him unharmed. It had struck him, but that was all. The gears still pulsed at a steady rhythm.

An annoyed voice came from the parrot.

[You replaced even your heart with gears now? Is there even any human part left in your body?]

"I didn't replace my heart. I only changed things so that gears perform what the heart does."

[That's the same thing.]

"It isn't. I only focused more on the functional side of the human body. You may disapprove, as one who believes in the blind watchmaker known as the Tree of Origin. But in the end, haven't all the things used here been touched by a repairman's hands?"

The fallen gears spun upright and rolled back to Maximilien's feet. He pressed the scattered parts back into his body.

"You, as the Great Witch, are surely well versed in the Tree of Origin. Yet I too have seen and learned much as a member of the Lords of All Creation. I also know how careless and insincere a blind watchmaker the Tree of Origin, the great principle that ultimately created humanity, truly is. The Tree of Origin did not create humans with intent. The human body has countless limitations. It is frail and inefficient."

Having said that much, Maximilien looked at me.

"King of Humanity. Am I wrong?"

"No. You're right. This body wasn't made with divine intent."

What an obvious thing to say. Maximilien was right. Anyone could understand that by thinking it through properly.

"Then why won't you accept gears? I ask out of pure curiosity."

Why else? What an obvious question. As I pulled the regressor's wheelchair toward one side of the table, I answered,

"It's normal for the world not to go your way, Mr. Maximilien. That's why you can't become the Demon God."

[Squawk, squawk, squawk! Serves you right! Squawk!]

The parrot clutched its stomach and laughed at what I said. Doubt appeared on Maximilien's face.

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. The world doesn't cater to our convenience in the first place. The most efficient and rational method? That's a way to live in accordance with the world's laws, not a way to make those laws. You're trying to judge things by reversing cause and effect."

The Demon God was a law of the world. Calling it a law did not mean it was like the laws of a nation. A nation was made by humans, of humans, and for humans. The world simply existed.

"The problem is that you're trying to make rules that obey rules. If obeying well is something to be proud of, then keep living that way. The problem comes when you try to go in circles."

I wasn't the Demon God either. Yet among all those beasts, only humans had reached the Demon God. Because of that, even I, who could handle the Demon God, conceptually understood what it was.

It felt like I was giving a lecture for the first time in a while. With a parrot and a gear doll before me, I began to explain.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried