WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 596: A Story from the Past. The Old Testament, Finale

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The First Holy Maiden wanted to create a framework for a world where humans could live in peace. She dreamed of ending an age where savagery and taboos surged like a flood and ushering in an era where people lived under order and followed its rules.

"But I, too, am only human. I suppose I could not fix the framework from within it."

"Don't be discouraged. Everyone comes to realize their limits. The more talented they are, the later it happens."

"Even after facing my limits and returning from countless futures, I still could not overcome that great wall. The only one who can truly achieve this order is..."

As if clinging to us, she looked directly at both me and 'Big Sister,' her eyes pleading.

"My king."

With the mighty authority of precognition, she had gained power close to omniscience. She did not need to involve herself so deeply with the King of Humanity. She could have slain the three monsters as she wished and built a great faction of her own.

Yet the First Holy Maiden, too, became one of the Warriors of the King and helped shape the world.

"The King of Humanity is perfect. Beautiful, intelligent, strong, and merciful. But those are not the only qualifications. The King of Humanity possesses the true qualification."

She had been after the King of Humanity from the beginning. Because she needed the King.

"The very fact of being the King of Humanity."

"Special. Unique. And... always existing, with no fear of ever being lost."

The King of Humanity was a conceptual being, one who strongly manifested humanity's traits as a species. And humanity's traits were exceptional intelligence, fine manual dexterity, powerful shoulders, and the ability to learn through observation and knowledge. The King of Humanity was promised to be a superhuman.

On top of that, upon death, the King would be reborn somewhere in the world. A flawless superhuman who would never truly vanish or be lost.

That was why the First Holy Maiden served the King of Humanity.

She did not merely master every kind of knowledge. She taught the King of Humanity.

Rather than dealing with the three taboo monsters herself, she had the King of Humanity punish them.

And in the end, she even knelt and pleaded.

To become the guardian of order and destroy evil.

But from what I had seen, she had failed spectacularly.

"Big Sister must have refused that in every future. Since this was the best future you chose."

"This was the gamble of my lifetime, one in which I staked everything. If we were bound to reach the end anyway, it was a sliver of hope staked on an unknown possibility."

"What?"

"This ending was chosen in the hope of a chance rather than the best future."

The First Holy Maiden muttered, then looked directly at me. She pierced through time, space, and even my heart as she asked.

"What do you think, my king?"

"What?"

"If you have lost all your power and stepped down from being king, leaving you as only an ordinary human. If you have learned the fear of death and suffering. If you know what fears ordinary humans carry with them as they fall asleep each day."

I had a promise. It was not mine, but Big Sister's, the one who had been stabbed to death here. It was a promise made not with either Big Sister or me, but with the concept known as the King of Humanity.

Some powerful being had torn away the King of Humanity's power and forced that promise into existence.

"If you know those who cannot believe that today, like yesterday, will return as an unchanging tomorrow."

"Are you asking me to take it on?"

"At the end of the future I saw, there is you. That means even the five qualified people I chose eventually fell without representing humanity. An age where order becomes a laughingstock and humanity is swayed by power. The King of Humanity will soon recover complete power."

The target had been the King of Humanity from the very beginning.

Whether it was Big Sister, me, or both of us.

"Will you become the true king and establish order in the world?"

The First Holy Maiden made that request of me, just as she had made it of Big Sister. All to protect humanity.

But my answer was already decided.

"I'm sorry."

My stance remained unchanged.

The focus in the First Holy Maiden's eyes shifted slightly. Was it nearly time for her precognition to end? I moved to a distance where she could focus on me and spoke.

"I can't let order stand above humanity. So I'll refuse your request that I uphold order. To me, order is a tool. When necessary, I'll repair it or replace it."

This was likely not a scene the First Holy Maiden had wanted to see. Her precognition was coming apart, and her eyes trembled slightly as well.

"The order I desire is not so harsh or strict."

"I know. But frameworks break someday. A Demon God might appear and twist the rules, or the world might suddenly change for no reason. The Sea Calamity could suddenly charge in and sink a corner of the continent."

"But there are values that do not change, even in such moments."

"Those values have to prove their usefulness. Neither you nor I determine their value. The people who need that tool do."

Humans were not the only ones challenged. Values and order needed to be challenged too.

If humanity was not perfect, then neither were the values and order created by humanity. If people thought them perfect and lived according to them, someday they would fall out of step.

"Even if you set rules, they will collide with something someday. Even if you establish order, it will collapse at some point. There are no unchanging values. Because the world changes."

The First Holy Maiden had now become as faint as a drizzle. Was the past I was seeing itself being affected? Or was the past changing?

The First Holy Maiden muttered bitterly.

"...Then the order I will establish, even by committing treason, will ultimately end in failure."

"What? Why would that be a failure?"

People really did see me as a savage, as though I were some complete barbarian.

When had I ever said order was useless? I said it was only a tool. And I liked tools. I carried all kinds of them around.

There was no city where I had broken and ruined its order from the beginning. I had simply found its gaps and exploited them. I used it a little more skillfully than others did, even if the result led to that order's collapse. I still acknowledged and followed order.

"When someone lives for a hundred years, people call it a good death. If someone lives for about a century, they have probably done many kindnesses and made quite a few enemies. But since they will soon die, who cares? They embrace all those debts of gratitude and resentment, leave their descendants in the world, then return to Mother Earth's embrace."

If humans were mortal, order was mortal too. Wasn't it strange to expect something extraordinary from a mortal thing?

"If an order has lasted for over a thousand years, and although people complained about it, it was still well regarded in its own way, then it can creak a little with age before being abolished and fading into history. Maybe that order will become the foundation of something better and greater."

You only had to replace it when the time came. There was no need to attach too much meaning to it.

"In the end, whether someone is oppressed or saved, it is because a human used it as a tool."

A craftsman made a knife, but that did not mean the craftsman bore responsibility for every death caused by it.

It was the same thing. You create an order, then take responsibility for every harm it may spread? That was ridiculous.

That belonged to the humans who held and wielded the tool. It could not be order's responsibility.

"In that sense, I support your wish too. There will be no tool that is eternally beautiful and beneficial to humanity. Still, it will be durable and useful enough to achieve the future you want."

The Sanctum would be created? An order fated to collapse someday would be built?

So what? Build it. Create it. Make a sandcastle that will soon crumble. Piece together a framework that will one day become ruins.

You could do anything. You had the power, and you carried that wish within you.

Those left behind would decide whether to use what you left behind.

"Even if it is a goal that can only be achieved by killing the innocent, noble, beautiful, and pure King of Humanity. If that is the only way to change the world."

It might have been cruel to say to Big Sister. It might have been unfair to the victim of that tragedy.

Still, a world where someone could commit treason was better than a world where no one could.

"Don't ask me. Ask yourself. Fulfill your wish. Just as Big Sister let the other monsters be, and just as she watched you until the moment before you committed treason."

It was a future she did not want, but I still encouraged her. I had no intention of following her path, but I did intend to let her follow her heart.

I placed a hand on the First Holy Maiden's shoulder. My hand passed right through her, but I patted at her shoulder and encouraged her with all my sincerity.

"Oh. Personally, I don't dislike the order you made that much. You didn't create it with bad intentions, did you? It's useful too. Although the order you made seems to dislike me."

A question suddenly came to me.

Had the First Holy Maiden foreseen what I had just said within this mental image? Or was this a conversation taking place before she had foreseen it?

Would this conversation truly reach the past? Or had the result already been decided, leaving this scene as one of the precognitive visions that brushed past the First Holy Maiden while we exchanged riddles?

The First Holy Maiden spoke as though my words were unexpected, though she had already resigned herself to them.

"...You are telling me to create an order you will not accept, my king."

"I told you. Order is only a tool. The order known as the King of Humanity is the same."

Even a conceptual being like that could become a tool for someone. Demon Gods were the same.

How to use what already existed was up to those involved. Both freedom and responsibility belonged to them.

"This is an order from the King. I permit it, so if you want to, give it a try."

A haze of light flickered. Big Sister's vision, filled with light, gradually receded.

Big Sister's memory was nearing its end. The prophecy would close here. I looked into the past, while the First Holy Maiden looked into the future. The conversation that crossed the time between us ultimately changed nothing.

"...Yet I still believe that there are unchanging values in this world that people must believe in and follow."

Still, we had each left behind something significant.

The First Holy Maiden no longer hesitated.

She could not cling to me or Big Sister. We had refused her.

But she could not give up either. We had not said she was wrong.

"Even if what I considered a duty that must be upheld is truly nothing more than savagery I forced upon others through my power."

It was an age of savagery. Knowledge did not spread easily, and humanity's ferocious nature bared its teeth throughout the world. Ferocity was contagious. Methods of killing others would be learned, developed, and spread even faster.

That was why the First Holy Maiden intended to establish great rules over Big Sister's corpse.

"For all the humanity of every future I have seen. I will move forward with faith alone."

Even if she did not know how this sin, covered in goodwill, would grow later, she would save the people of the nation and its frontier from conflict now.

The First Holy Maiden clasped her hands tightly and prayed, putting her whole body into it as though clinging on.

"My king. If this prayer reaches you, please."

Please preserve my wish.

Her final voice disappeared beneath the pouring light.

* * *

After her long prayer, El opened her eyes. Yulim's faint light seeped through her stiff eyelids. It was too hazy to call hopeful, yet too full to call despairing.

This faint light must have been El's essence. For some reason, she felt as though tears might come. In her sorrow, she moved her stiff body.

"...She moved!"

The voice was worn out from the long wait. Only then did El notice the Warriors of the King surrounding the altar. They were filled with anger, yet gripped by a strange fear.

"For fifteen days, without eating or sleeping..."

"W-what kind of... strange occurrence is this...?"

This was the site of treason.

El's five warriors had ambushed the King of Humanity. They had taken advantage of a moment of complete carelessness, blinded her with light, trapped her within an illusion, then struck with their peak qi arts.

It was a fatal wound. Yet the King had counterattacked the moment she was attacked. Weapons and bodies wrapped in qi were snapped and broken in an instant.

If not for the revelation El had sent, some of them might have died. But precognition was such a powerful authority. They evaded the futures of death through revelation and survived with grave injuries.

They had to flee. They pulled the weapons from the King of Humanity, fought the warriors opposing them, and escaped.

As planned in advance, while the five warriors fled, El knelt beside the King and quietly offered up a prayer. When she clasped her hands and closed her eyes, a faint haze of light surrounded them both.

"Keeper of Lore! You bitch!"

The warriors, enraged by their sovereign's death, approached. To question El about the King's death, they tried to pull her away somewhat roughly. No, very roughly.

Yet El remained where she was.

No matter how hard they pulled, kicked, or struck her with swords, she did not receive so much as a scratch. As though it had been promised that she would remain in that very time and place. As though she existed as an unchanging truth, just like the past.

No matter how the Warriors of the King vented their emotions, cursed, or attacked, El quietly continued her prayer.

For fifteen days, without eating or drinking, until the warriors watching her grew exhausted and fell away.

A miracle.

Authority like a miracle, something reason could never dare comprehend.

Every detail of the miracle she performed would be recorded, remaining as proof that gods existed in the world. Her own enemies would write it down.

"...From now on, I too must endure the countless sufferings I foresaw."

The moment El chose this path, she became a traitor to the King, and those who followed her would be persecuted. Her teachings would not be passed down in scrolls wrapped in silk, but scattered across half-baked bricks. Both her eyes would be torn out, and she would be dragged around nailed to a cross.

But El's teachings would spread to all people. While the Warriors of the King, having learned the taste of power, fought among themselves and brought suffering to the masses, those teachings would flow along their wounds and inscribe justice and morality. When that suffering reached its limit, the five warriors who stabbed the King of Humanity would return, having inherited a portion of that authority. Then the heavenly order El created would stand firm.

Until then, El had only one task.

She had to fill that empty sky with Demon Gods.

As El turned her gaze toward the sky, she suddenly saw Nevida. Though fifteen days had passed since the King's death, Nevida still displayed deep grief and burning rage. Looking at Nevida, who had become the embodiment of fury, El muttered bitterly.

"It will be... worth it."

Footnotes:

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