WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 597: The New Testament

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With "Big Sis's" death, this memory too came to an end. Had what had just happened truly taken place in the past, or had it been nothing more than a fleeting dream?

One thing was certain. This conversation had not changed my life at all.

It was merely a fragment that occupied "Big Sis's" memories. Nothing more than a clue that would let me understand her death and resonate with it more deeply.

When it came down to it, "Big Sis" was a thread severed by a blade. To connect what came after, I had to focus on the cut end.

She had died rather meaninglessly for a King of Humanity, but Beast Kings had always been like that. Stupid and simple, easily caught in traps or killed. "Big Sis" had been nothing more than a naive, stupid beast.

"That was rude! I may be naive, but I'm not stupid!"

"Huh? You were listening?"

"Big Sis" burst into my view from outside my consciousness. This much liveliness in an inner world? Most dead people were depressed or resigned, but "Big Sis" was almost shamelessly cheerful.

"Of course I was! They're my memories! You and El seemed to be connecting, so I watched quietly!"

"That's creepy. You could've come out and explained it."

"It wasn't creepy, it was considerate! I'd already had a long conversation with El, and everything after that was a conversation with you. I stepped aside according to ancient etiquette!"

She had already had a long conversation with El? She had stepped aside because it happened afterward? As I listened, I heard something I could not easily overlook.

"A conversation? When? All I remembered was going to the summit of Yulim and being blinded by the light."

"I didn't show you that. It was private, you know? You should respect that!"

What? She had not shown it to me? It wasn't as if I had ever asked anyone's permission before looking through their memories...

"And it wasn't really a conversation. El wove light into cloth and painted pictures to show me. Since it wasn't my memory, it's hard to show it to you."

After choosing her words for a moment, Big Sis clapped her hands and added,

"Just like how Shei's memories can't be read!"

Right. Well. I had tried not to think about it, but I could no longer ignore it.

I spoke awkwardly.

"You read me too, Big Sis."

Big Sis stared straight at me as she answered.

"Of course. You read me too, don't you?"

"I'm not protesting. It's just an unfamiliar experience, so it caught me off guard."

"You're uncomfortable with it."

...Well, perhaps a little. I had privacy too.

"Is it because your true thoughts are exposed? Do you want to hide them?"

Don't read them when you already know.... Well, complaining would not help.

I read Big Sis, and Big Sis read me. What we knew about each other was the same. After all, Big Sis and I were fundamentally the same being.

"Order is only a tool. Tools are useful. So order can be used well! That's what you think, isn't it?"

Of course. Tools were always necessary. If I had an inner standard called order, it became easier to judge whatever happened.

I could discard it when I did not need it, but I should use it when I did.

"You've never denied order. You're not a savage!"

Of course not. I was civilized. Savagery was just what they had decided to call me.

...More importantly, how much had she seen?

"I read your memories! From when you were a child, growing up among perfectly ordinary people, all the way through what you experienced while traveling."

She had stolen a look through my memories? I wanted to criticize her, but that was exactly what I did. Calling her out would just be spitting in my own face.

...Ptooey.

"Seeing things through an ordinary person's eyes was a fresh experience! Unlike you, I've never looked at people one by one so carefully!"

I could see why. As the King of Humanity, she could not pay attention to every single person.

"Your view was lower than mine, but it was that much deeper, so I could feel things better!"

She had experienced my life indirectly, as though reading a scroll.

As if she were reading a scroll aloud at Nevida's bedside, "Big Sis" recited in a clear voice.

"The country where you were born, the military state, was home to many humans. It wove an elaborate net, bound every person within it, and ruled them strictly. Everyone lived in fear of, and obedience to, an unseen order. You could have destroyed the very pillars holding up that net, but you did not."

It was not a country I liked, but its tool was sophisticated and systematic. It would have been a waste to destroy it carelessly.

So I entrusted it to someone who could use it better. AB would agonize and suffer at every moment of choice, but she would use it far better than Holy Maiden Yuel. Yuel, who had lost what mattered to her, had no joy left, while AB, who had found something precious, would find joy in everything.

"The Lesser States is a country of refugees who lost their homeland. The order ruled by the golden Demon God wandered about like the demonic beasts in that desert. Because the golden order created everything, no other order could be established. You destroyed the golden beast so another order could be built."

The Lord of Gold's Demon God was not creation. It was destruction. The Lord of Gold's perfect creations could not coexist with any human. Once it had been put aside for a while, humans would build an order that was not golden, but human.

That too was a tool. In the right hands, it was an all-purpose tool that could create what humans needed rather than gold. Perru, who ground everything to dust, would keep the balance.

"In the duchy, you gave the heartless sovereign her heart back and left. That was the most irresponsible thing! You made her heart beat, then left her like that."

Quiet. That place is only getting started. Tyr, who had no heart, was a god. Something emotionless and unchanging, closer to a phenomenon or a law.

The Elders beneath her, then the Ain beneath them, and even the Yeilings beneath them. They had been enslaved, unable to dream of even the smallest rebellion.

I liked Tyr, but an order that could not be rebelled against had no meaning. If the world changed and humans changed, order had to change too. Tyr wanted to escape that boredom as well, so it was a win-win.

"The order in the places you touched did not collapse. It only changed. It became more human."

After recounting the past, "Big Sis" considered me.

"So in the end, when you say order is a tool, you mean it is not order's fault, but the fault of the person who wielded it and hurt others with it, right? You left order in human hands."

I had not been defending order. Even now, if there was an order with no use, I would not hesitate to destroy it.

"What you hated was not order."

But if someone wielded order while claiming they followed something beyond their own will. If they claimed every wish and desire they spread across the world was unavoidable, something order had forced upon them.

"Even knowing they would be hated, they cast all that responsibility and guilt, pain and groans, blame and rage onto order, which was no more than a tool."

I only wanted to see what would happen when that lie was exposed and the order was broken.

"You despised the humans who held order."

It was not a matter of disliking evil people and liking good people. Both evil and good were parts of humanity.

But if someone wanted to pursue justice and avoid sin, they only needed to act that way.

They did something themselves, then claimed they had no choice. Claimed they too had merely been swept along by outside forces. Claimed they had only answered their beliefs and obeyed orders.

Even though they were part of the world themselves, they treated the world as the bad thing. Those people were strange.

If the world was bad, then humans were bad too.

"Little brother, you're strict and cold. You're telling people not to run away and to keep fighting."

Did I tell them to fight the world? I meant they should fight their own hearts and compromise where appropriate. The only truth in the world was the Demon God. My heart and the orders humans had made could both be wrong at any time.

"Okay. Thank you. I understand enough now!"

I had answered enough, had I not? This time, could I ask something?

"Of course!"

Why had Big Sis made that promise?

"A promise? Which one?"

The promise to give up all her power and become ordinary. The one she made with the First Holy Maiden.

"Ah!"

Did she remember? Big Sis had died just after they made that promise, leaving only the promise behind.

But the five kings divided even that power and qualification to represent humanity among themselves, leaving no reason for a King of Humanity to exist in this world. Much time passed, and the kings were driven out of every country, losing their representative status. I was born into this world without power, bearing only the qualification to represent humanity.

I took shape again within the inner world and spoke.

"So you're the one who made me this way, Big Sis."

She had made me live in this world as an ordinary person who had lost his power, with only mind-reading.

The First Holy Maiden had not made me lose my power. She might have known that I would come someday, but she would not have wanted me to become this way.

It was Big Sis who made me this way. Even the First Holy Maiden could not stop that wish. She had only succeeded in delaying it.

"Yes. That's right!"

"Big Sis" admitted it readily. When I silently asked why, she answered with slight difficulty.

"Because I needed a standard too!"

"A standard?"

"Yes! To me, every human is the same. They're all human."

She did not mean she could not tell humans apart. To "Big Sis," the King of Humanity, humans were like cells. Each was a precious part of her, perhaps with a slightly different role, but losing one or two would not cause much of a problem.

"But now, humans fight each other. They do not fight harsh storms or savage wild beasts, but other humans."

"Because the surface is humanity's domain now."

"And when they fight, they come to me. They ask me to stop their disputes."

The problem was that Big Sis's cells fought one another. Whose side could she take?

"I don't know whose side to take. They're both humans. But they want me to take a side. They say that's what a king should do. Everyone stops fighting and waits for it."

If a powerful being like Big Sis did not exist, they would fight each other, and the victors would hold festivals atop the defeated's corpses.

But as long as Big Sis existed, they could not do that. No matter how strong they were, they knew an absolute being existed. Big Sis was merciful, but she was a beast. If anyone bared their fangs at her, she would naturally punish them. Everyone had no choice but to obey her and watch their step.

Humanity's greatest strength was watching and learning.

Humans had learned of the existence of an absolute being called the King of Humanity. That was why no one could return to savagery.

"I'm special, so unlike you, I can't like or dislike a particular human. No matter how much they want that from me, I can't give it to them. I don't have the kind of standard you do."

When she returned from the "country" after defeating the monsters that harmed people in the borderlands, the countless requests Big Sis received were all like that.

People fought, argued, took, and killed. Humans hurt by other humans appealed to Big Sis. Grievances and accusations as numerous as humans themselves came to her.

She could do anything, yet she could do nothing. Just as she understood the monsters that harmed people in the borderlands.

She was like the omniscient, omnipotent God in the Bible. Perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful, and loving all humans, yet precisely because of that, she could only stand by and watch.

"But most humans want it."

But the world wanted Big Sis to intervene. Almost all humans belonging to the "country" believed in and followed her, and the "country," now entering humanity's autumn, held an enormous population.

More than half of all humanity.

The King of Humanity represented humanity. Most of humanity wanted it. Big Sis, the collective will of humanity itself, moved humanity's collective will.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Within that cycle, Big Sis found one answer.

"If I don't have a standard, I can make one!"

"What?"

"You, weak and insignificant as you are, are the standard I created!"

Footnotes:

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