WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 683: An Eraser in the Regressor's Head

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The scroll lost its light. At the same time, the world creaked slightly. Somewhere, a massive axis twisted, and Pride began to fall to judge humanity's pride.

"I never thought the decision would come so quickly. Still, now that you're aboard the Ark, this is the right time. Better for Pride to fall now than after you've stepped off the Ark, isn't it?"

It was a reasonable judgment. If Pride could be dropped as easily as anyone could eat cake, it was better for me to drop it while aboard the Ark.

"I should prepare to launch the Ark again. Since I'm already here, it would be wise to take some of Celsius's residents aboard as well. The Arcane Federation should be relatively safe from Pride's impact, but we'll need fools to handle the chores anyway. No need to do the same work twice."

"You'll be busy from now on."

"Not at all! I'll have far more leisure than before. I no longer need to worry about Pride!"

I stopped the Demon King as the figure laughed heartily and turned to leave.

"Before you go, please call my companions into this space."

"You'll see them after I leave!"

With that, the Demon King departed. The space split apart by the Demon King reconnected, revealing Shei and Lankart. Lankart recognized me and spoke.

"Oh? Hui. You saw this scroll too? The contents are fascinating. Gravity magic and spatial magic are bound together. It's as though they share the same source."

"I saw it."

"According to the principles written on this scroll, a gravitational anomaly must occur wherever there is a spatial anomaly."

"Like the floating castle."

"Right. But I didn't feel any gravitational anomaly when the Demon King moved."

"That's probably because it's innate arcane."

Innate arcane was the act of turning one's mental image into a law. Being utterly personal, it deviated far from ordinary laws. The Demon King's spatial distortion was likely that sort of power.

Still, that was all it was. Innate arcane that failed to reach the laws of the world faded like mist or remained only as a relic. Only the Demon God was carved into the world itself. Magic began only upon reaching the Demon God's seat, and mysteries were analyzed and made part of academia.

The Demon God was the horizon of knowledge. A flag showing how far humanity had advanced.

That was why.

"You can't contain innate arcane in a scroll. Is the knowledge in this scroll the Demon God's?"

It became scholarship, technology, and magic. What this scroll contained was the Demon God's knowledge.

The Demon God must have been someone who had touched upon the secret of space.

"No wonder the Red Tower Master searched for the Demon God's relics. Looking at what's written here, spatial magic might be incredibly easy if you understand geometry. The idea itself is difficult, but a seventh-tier mage could probably drop a meteor without much trouble."

"What?"

Shei, who had been staring blankly at the scroll with a sour expression, reacted. She lacked the knowledge to understand the scroll, but she had listened closely to everything we said.

"You can easily drop a meteor? Who can?"

Lankart shook the scroll.

"Anyone, as long as they have the knowledge. According to what's written on this scroll, anyone can call down a meteor if they know its coordinates and can use gravity magic. Calculating where it will land would require rather detailed calculations, though. Just as the White Tower Master said, this really could become a switch that destroys humanity."

"What...! Hand over the scroll, quickly! I'll destroy it!"

"Hey. Don't touch it. If the scroll gets torn by mistake, the meteor will fall."

"Just as Ruel said! A scroll like that can't be allowed to exist! Magic that drops Pride? This is better. The Demon King must have given all of us a scroll. Since we're here, we need to deal with all of them! Hughes...!"

Shei urged me to help with her eyes. Then she saw my scroll, torn into two pieces. She fell silent and hesitated.

"Huh? Hughes, your scroll is...?"

That's right. I tore it. I tore my scroll in half.

How about it?

Even with the end before you, would your thoughts change? Or would you remember?

'Hughes would never do that... He's not the kind of person who would want to wipe out the surface with Pride. Why? Why would he?'

Was that not enough? Strange.

If Shei truly knew more than what I had read through mind-reading, and if she even knew that I could read minds... there was no way she wouldn't know the truth about this scroll.

How could she think such a shameless lie? You helped me see this scroll too, didn't you?

"Don't misunderstand, girl. The magic written on this scroll isn't magic that drops a meteor. There's no way a single scroll could drop a meteor."

Because this scroll was...

"Magic that holds a meteor in place so it doesn't fall."

"Magic that keeps a meteor from falling...?"

"Yes. This scroll contains the formula that prevents Pride from falling to the ground. If you tear it, the formula stops working. Pride then falls to the surface."

As Lankart said, a single scroll couldn't possibly drop a meteor. It didn't contain enough mana for that. Still, it could easily interfere with or disrupt magic that already existed.

The scrolls the Demon King had distributed were switches that could destroy humanity. But a switch was only a switch. It wasn't the switch that caused the explosion, but the powder keg connected to it. What use was there in blaming the switch while leaving the powder keg alone?

Pride was already falling. The collision had only been delayed for a long time.

"Huh? Then who on earth cast such magic...?"

"For fuck's sake. Do I have to spell even this out? Does this woman not think with her own head?"

"Easy, Lankart. Calm down."

She might truly not think with her own head. I wasn't being sarcastic. I meant it.

"Someone who knew of Pride, was well versed in spatial and gravity magic, and could wield immense mana... It was probably the Demon King."

"The Demon King was holding Pride back...? Why?"

"I don't know. Perhaps the Demon King was saving it for a better time. Or..."

Perhaps the Demon King had been protecting the world from Pride. Not the Demon King, but a hero who saved the world.

I didn't know. I couldn't read the Demon King's true intentions either. This was all speculation. What mattered was this.

"What matters is that the Demon King had already intended to let Pride go. That's why the scrolls were handed out so openly."

"Then we just have to recover them quickly!"

"It's already too late. A scroll has been torn, and Pride is falling. We have to stop it somehow."

"How are we supposed to stop that?! Pride is a massive meteor more than two kilometers in diameter! It's moving incredibly fast, and it's filled with mana! Ngh. Is this because we came up here? Should we not have come up, just as Ruel said?"

"If we're going to stop it, we need your help, Shei."

"Stop Pride...? How? I can help with anything, but there's no way I can do it with my strength."

Shei seemed to be panicking, fidgeting as she considered countermeasures. I calmly read her thoughts. Yet I couldn't find even a fragment of thought about Saint Rene's relic.

There was no connection in Shei's mind right now between Skywarbler and Saint Rene's relic, even though it was something she should have remembered.

All right, then. What about this?

"Skywarbler. The sword you carry is Saint Rene's relic, isn't it? We need its power over space."

My eyes met Shei's. Her eyes didn't widen, she didn't panic, and she didn't avoid my gaze. She simply answered as though she had forgotten, then remembered when I mentioned it.

"Yes, that's right. You mean the holy relic? Certainly, Saint Rene, a great figure of the Arcane Federation, would have been connected to Pride as well..."

Her reaction was similar to someone remembering something they had forgotten. She was deliberately blocking off her memories. Only when I brought it up did her thoughts continue. I didn't know whether those memories were in this body or beyond time.

What a strange way to hide memories. Was the foolish side Shei had shown until now a side effect of deliberately blocking her memories? No. That couldn't be it. If she had blocked them deliberately, she surely would have felt something was wrong, but there had been no sign of that.

Rather, perhaps she could live normally even with her memories blocked because she was foolish.

"Hey. Wait a second."

Lankart was the one left dumbfounded. Lankart gave a hollow laugh.

"Saint Rene? That person was a spatial mage in the Arcane Federation, as famous as the Demon King. They say Saint Rene surpassed even the Demon King when it came to creating subspaces. You had the relic of such a historical mage?"

Shei didn't even think she had been found out. She calmly revealed Skywarbler as if taking an object from her pocket.

"Yes. This."

"I thought it was a sword inhabited by a wind spirit, but it was Saint Rene's relic? What the hell. Why are you only saying that now?"

"Did I need to say it?"

"Not exactly, but..."

Lankart scratched his head roughly, then asked me as though demanding an answer.

"Hui, what is that woman?"

I didn't know. She probably didn't know either.

Who she was right now.

"Shei. Please open Skywarbler. I need to see Saint Rene's relic."

Skywarbler was Shei's strongest weapon and the beloved sword she had never let go of through countless regressions. It would have been natural for her to be somewhat wary if I had seen through its identity and asked to see it.

"Okay. Here. I'll open Skywarbler. I'll suppress it as much as possible, but be careful."

Yet Shei didn't hesitate when I asked to see it. She gripped Skywarbler with both hands. Her fingertips seized the compressed space in midair and pulled it open.

Creak, creak.

A scream-like sound came from the twisted space. The invisible sword Skywarbler opened, leaving a long scar in the air. Inside was a strange subspace that retained an air of mystery.

"Rene should be inside. Holy relics preserve their thoughts completely, so be careful. I don't know what it might do."

Of everything Shei had shown so far, this was when she seemed most like a regressor. She knew how to do this and still hid it so well.

I couldn't make use of mind-reading anymore. Once people reached a certain level, there was no one it worked on.

Well, it wouldn't be fun if there were an invincible ability. There had to be a thrill in overcoming it too.

"I'll be back."

First, the Demon King. I squeezed into the rift Shei had opened.

Footnotes:

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