WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 684: Story of the Past. Witch Hunt - 1

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The freezing northern lands lay empty.

Beyond the boundary where civilization met the cold, the frigid earth stretched endlessly white, without a blade of grass or a single tree. No bustling sounds of life reached the plains. Only the light was restless, bending, shattering, glittering, and bouncing across the snowfields as though it had slipped its reins.

An unwelcome guest arrived there.

Refugees fleeing the Counterfeit Gold War.

The Counterfeit Gold War had broken out during the dawn of alchemy. Its cause was trivial. A dispute began when people claimed that the currency used as payment by the Marigold vassal state had in fact been duplicated through alchemy.

There was some truth to the accusation, and the Marigold vassal state's response became the spark. Their answer implied that nobody could tell real gold from fake gold anyway. The conflict spread like fire through dry straw.

Later historians called it a war started for the most shameless of reasons, but that incident had only been the fuse. A fuse that was bound to burn someday.

The Demon God that had led the Golden Kingdom to ruin cast its enormous shadow over the world.

Even the two vassal states that dominated the western continent were weak and helpless before such great change. Distrust in existing values. Fear of alchemy. Confusion and conflict. Losses caused by change. Everything became a problem and descended upon the vassal states.

Skills blacksmiths had refined for decades became useless, and currency lost its credibility. Everyone hoarded goods in their warehouses, unwilling to bring them out. Peddlers wandering from town to town starved to death, while even the vassal states' merchant companies collapsed overnight. Once the flow of money stopped, every part of the vassal states began to rot.

Poverty amid abundance. An order built upon gold crumbled in an instant. The higher it had risen, the longer its fall. The Marigold vassal state, which had once made fortunes running dozens of merchant companies, saw the entire nation plunge into an abyss of debt.

The easy way to solve a festering problem was to create an external enemy. The vassal states blamed every problem on the Marigold vassal state, believing the world would return to normal if they simply destroyed it.

That belief was realized in the worst possible way.

War revitalized the wartime economy. War was an abyss that devoured resources. Provisions, weapons, and lives were consumed madly, allowing stagnant money to flow again. Trust was unnecessary under a wartime system. There was only the struggle to escape death.

The wartime economy saved millions of lives. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers bled and died on the battlefield, but compared to the whole continent, that was a minor matter.

The war, driven by necessity, grew fiercer every day. Countless refugees fled from it. Yet the other vassal states, already thrown into confusion by alchemy, had no room to accept them. With no other choice, the refugees crossed the lands of the Seven Vassals and headed for the uninhabited lands of the Northern Sea.

Alchemists who had been cast out, technicians who had lost their jobs, witches and druids whose forests had burned down. They too became refugees and settled in the lands of the Northern Sea.

“Alchemists aren't allowed into our village!”

Bang.

The door slammed shut in the travelers' faces. A bitter wind struck the firmly closed door.

This land of bitter cold was not forgiving enough for people to fight among themselves. Such treatment would have drawn scorn even from other refugees.

But alchemists were different. Who had started the war? Hadn't it begun because alchemists copied gold and enjoyed wealth and luxury? The refugees all hated alchemists.

The traveler pounded on the door and shouted.

“Hey! We aren't alchemists. We're scholars! We learned alchemy as part of our education!”

“How can wicked sorcery like alchemy be part of an education?”

“It’s easy once you learn it! And it’s quite useful. Don't you need fuel too?”

“How could we trust anything handed over by alchemists? What if the things you offer turn into sand overnight?”

The door did not open. Shivering in the cold, the scholars spoke.

“Tsk. This is why ignorant people are hopeless. They don't even know how alchemy works!”

A scholar could not help taking an interest in alchemy. Alchemy was the study of the origin of matter. It was mysterious, scholarly, and above all, useful.

Telescopes, beakers, flasks, tweezers, and more. With simple engineering techniques and mana, all manner of experimental tools could be made with ease. Scholars learned alchemy as part of a well-rounded education and systematized its knowledge.

Yet the madness of war was far too great to calm with reason. It was an age when even a renowned scholar could be plunged into molten iron for the crime of having studied alchemy. Even children of noble houses had to flee to the lands of the Northern Sea to survive.

Fahrenheit folded her arms and muttered.

“I can't understand their judgment at all. They're treating a group of a little over ten alchemists this badly? What would they do if alchemists attacked?”

Celsius hurriedly stepped forward.

“N-no, Fahrenheit. If you did that...”

“I don't mean that I would. I simply question the basis of their judgment.”

Alchemists could make weapons even with their bare hands. They were not alchemists, nor did they intend to use force, but what if the situation had been a little more desperate?

“If we really were alchemists, openly antagonizing us wouldn't be a good choice. We could grow angry at such treatment and attack. A small village like this couldn't withstand us.”

They had the ability to reduce the village to ashes and take only what they wanted. They simply chose not to. There were many reasons.

Alchemists already had a bad reputation. It was best to avoid becoming public enemies by adding further notoriety to their name.

Besides, in the lands of the Northern Sea, where it was difficult to remain outside for long, the distance between villages directly affected every traveler's chance of survival. Destroying one village would only make the next stretch of the journey more grueling.

There were plenty of reasonable reasons like that. Still, there was a far more fundamental and important one.

“But we won't do that. Though they're in difficult circumstances and have briefly forgotten the words of the Bible, they surely know better than anyone that people must help one another.”

“Sister Rene.”

“I'll try persuading them again. If a missionary speaks to them, they'll lower the walls around their hearts and welcome us.”

“If Sister steps in, everything will be resolved easily. Tsk. Must we rely on authority to persuade ignorant people after all?”

That was because they were, for the most part, good people.

Refugees were not the only ones who banded together to survive. Scholars also sought out others of equal intellectual standing and gathered together. Intellectuals driven from the Empire and the Seven Vassals, people educated enough to study alchemy as a hobby, formed a group.

Among them, the most famous and exceptional group of scholars was Babel, gathered through Sister Rene's introduction.

They were all teachers, and they were all students. Scholars who had devoted their lives to study had mastered their own fields, but in other fields, their knowledge was no more than that of an enthusiastic amateur.

Now that scholars had gathered in the lands of the Northern Sea, desperately putting their heads together to survive, humanity was taking a huge step forward from a place half a step beyond the Empire and the vassal states.

And among even Babel's finest, there were two people who could be called extraordinary.

“Since Sister Rene stepped in, the door will open soon.”

One was Rene, the nun who had achieved outstanding scholarly accomplishments and brought together these countless geniuses.

The other was...

“Hey, assistant.”

“Yes! Professor Fahrenheit!”

“Bring Professor Principia.”

“Yes! Professor! It's time to get up!”

The small child called an assistant scampered to the cart and woke the scholar sleeping curled up inside. After some mumbling, a man with crooked glasses came over with a long yawn. Supported by the assistant, he staggered forward, looking frail and unreliable.

But that was only his appearance. Fahrenheit, Celsius, Pascal, and even several other renowned scholars stepped aside before him with respect.

A scholar among scholars, who embraced Babel's geniuses.

He was the man called Principia.

“This entire space is the relic.”

Saint Rene, a mage who controlled space. Her relic was grand enough to be space itself.

The wind blowing through it was cold, and snow crunched beneath my feet on the frozen ground. My shivering body instinctively sought the security of a solid roof.

Yet when I looked upon the clear night sky glittering with starlight, every regret over lacking a roof vanished. It was so beautiful and mysterious that I found myself hoping, in a good way, that morning would never come. In that vast sky, that boundless emptiness, how could humans be so small and insignificant? How much knowledge would we have to gather, how high a tower would we have to build, to reach its end?

Should we feel sorrow at how much we did not know, or joy at how much there was to learn?

Perhaps in those early days, beneath the clear skies before the Arcane Federation had even been founded, Rene's inner world had been filled with that empty space.

Reading the relic's memories, I watched the beginning of it all. Babel, a gathering of scholars unlike any in history. And among them, the unusual scholars Rene and Principia.

“Is that the Demon King?”

Saint Rene's relic was connected to both the Demon God and the Demon King. The only clue and power that could overcome this crisis had been so close by. What a ridiculous coincidence.

...Though Shei had probably prepared it in advance.

“I don't know if it's because it's a holy relic or because it's Rene's subspace, but the inner world is clear. Does it want to show me something? Let's see.”

The door opened. Saint Rene, kind and beautiful, carrying the Sanctum's authority, received the villagers' hospitality as though it were only natural. The scholars entered the house one by one, and I followed them into the next scene.

Footnotes:

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