WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 698: Man vs. Meteor - 6

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The mindscape was vast and dark.

A night on the Northern Sea, where even the wind had fallen asleep. The clouds had settled coldly, and the land was flawlessly clear. On sleepless nights, people passed the time gazing at the sky. They reached toward the untouchable heavens and counted the stars.

"Professor! Watch out!"

But if you looked only at things too far away, you failed to see what lay beneath your feet. Compared to that clear, boundless sky, the ground was rough and uneven. One wrong step, and you would fall into a pit.

"I told you to watch where you were going. You can see through the movements of the sky and stars, yet you can't even see what's under your feet. What kind of ordeal is this?"

I could hear the assistant laughing mockingly. Embarrassed and flustered, the professor made excuses. He said he had been too busy discerning the vast, important movements of celestial bodies to look down at his feet. And that the truths of those celestial bodies mattered far more than some trivial pit.

[But in the end, the secular world caught me by the ankle.]

Within Pride, Principia, the Demon God of universal gravitation, conveyed his mindscape with a weary air.

Principia was a great scholar. He had been a member of the Imperial Academic Society, renowned enough to be invited by dukes to lecture. Even the Holy Maiden had requested an audience with him because of his research into light, and his name was known across the continent. Ordinary people heard the name Principia and felt proud.

Even he could not escape the tide of the times.

Alchemy had destroyed the Golden Kingdom far away. Faced with new knowledge, people did not know what to make of it. The Marigold vassal state, a commercial nation, especially had to respond more quickly than anyone else.

The Marigold vassal state appointed the renowned scholar director of its Mint and sought a way to use alchemy. Principia, an exceptional scholar, found one far too quickly.

The Marigold vassal state used alchemy before anyone else and amassed greater wealth than any other nation.

In return, it soon became the enemy of the entire continent.

[No matter how I thought about it, currency reflecting alchemical material value was the easiest and best solution. But they said alchemical currency was too slow to produce, so in the end, my homeland chose gold coins made from counterfeit gold.]

The Mint burned and collapsed. Banknotes, reduced to scraps of paper, scattered through the air. People carrying sickles and farming tools rioted, burning alchemists and merchants along with the money.

[Director of the Mint. They said it was a cushy post reserved for old-timers waiting out their days in the back room. They must have known from the start that I had devoted myself to alchemy. I should never have taught them the counterfeit-gold formula. Because of that, I couldn't even defend myself and became a fugitive.]

Principia tossed the apple upward and caught it again. The bright red apple slowly fell under gravity. The moment he caught it, the mindscape the Demon God showed me changed again.

It was the land of the Arcane Federation. A country beneath a vast, starlit sky, empty but with all the more room to fill because of it.

[After barely escaping through one route or another, I thought I might live a new life here.]

Then an army invaded that land. Tens of thousands of soldiers ravaged that pitiful, fragile place, claiming they had come to capture and kill alchemists.

[The Empire and the vassal states were intoxicated by the enormous consumer economy created by war. That was why they invaded this insignificant land. War, for that reason alone.]

"That's right. Counterfeit gold flooded the world with currency, leading to overproduction of goods. War was probably the only way to burn it all up in a short time."

[But that was no different from counterfeit currency. A foolish method that would soon be exposed.]

Principia looked at the soldiers and the rulers beyond them with contempt.

[There is no war solely for consumption. If they truly needed consumption, they would have thrown the goods into a fire. Enemies, territory, victory, spoils of war. A war without those guarantees is meaningless. So the Empire created an enemy for itself.]

Of course. Even if it was a war born of necessity, it was still war. It needed suitable rewards and achievements to continue.

[Even after destroying my homeland, they were not satisfied. They invaded this weak, pitiful land as well. Once again, I was caught by the ankle. I should have been seeking truth, yet I was calculating meteorite trajectories. How pointless.]

It was a world where knowledge immediately became power. They would not leave Principia alone, someone versed in both alchemy and magic. The filthy secular world kept catching him by the ankle.

[I simply cannot understand human foolishness. They must know that I will drop meteorites. Yet they do not seem to know those meteorites will fall on their own heads. Why do they not stop, even after seeing that power? I warned them enough.]

A lament flowed from the Demon God's lips.

Principia had dropped meteorites on the enemy forces, but only where they were needed and only in the necessary amount. It was a calm, rational attack, and considerate at the same time. If he had not cared about casualties, he would have simply annihilated the army.

This was the Demon God's consideration and mercy.

Yet humans could not recognize even that and continued clinging to him.

[And the Gold Duke... To think that the person I once served and respected was one of those fools. That was my greatest mistake.]

The Gold Duke had stabbed Saint Rene at the end, then killed Principia as well. Principia, who had died without knowing why, must have found it absurd. He could neither understand nor want to understand that madness.

[I am sick of the secular world. Even if no one understands me, I would rather rise into that universe and be alone.]

Principia let the apple hang from his hand as he muttered weakly. Once he had finished complaining, I asked him.

"You suffered in the secular world and felt deeply disappointed. You were betrayed even at the end, so I thought you might destroy this land by dropping the meteorite. I thought that might be possible."

A Demon God too brilliant for the human world, disappointed in humanity, might seek to destroy the lower world. I had thought that scenario was possible. What Principia and Saint Rene had gone through was that miserable.

"But when I thought about it, the meteorite has never fallen on the mainland. People say Pride is going to fall, but it never did, even after you died."

If he had died, he should have lost control at that moment. As the Gold Duke had intended, the meteorite should have struck the Empire and the vassal states alike. But that never happened.

"You stopped the meteorite from falling even after death, didn't you?"

There was only one reason. The Demon God had continued preventing the meteorite from falling even after his death.

Principia spoke to me with the same weary expression.

[Because I promised to.]

"To whom?"

[Bishop Rene.]

Thud. The apple fell once more, and this time the mindscape showed Principia and Saint Rene's final meeting.

[She persuaded me, and I agreed with her judgment. Then I had to follow it.]

"But you died."

[That was an unavoidable circumstance, not a reason to revise my judgment.]

He died because he let his guard down. His head fell to the ground. Yet a Demon God was etched into the world. Even on the brink of death, his power and mindscape remained as one axis of the world.

[There are countless people in this world. Perhaps even one of them may already have discovered the existence of aether. Perhaps someone talented enough to study my research and advance it further will appear. Since I cannot deny the possibility Bishop Rene spoke of, I chose to follow her judgment.]

Even as he died, Principia kept his promise. He stopped the meteorite that had begun falling far away and returned it to its original orbit.

[Then someday, someone will discover the existence of aether. Academia will place that person aboard the floating castle and send them here, to prove that Bishop Rene's judgment and my waiting were not wrong.]

"Academia?"

It was the Demon King.

The Demon King had kept fostering mages, going around questioning people while saying there were no absolutes, and operating the floating castle. Somehow, it had all been consistent.

Could it be that his attempt to drop Pride had nothing to do with the world's destruction or anything like that...?

[Could you be the human who has found that answer?]

Principia asked me. He did not look particularly expectant. For a moment, I wondered whether to tell him. Then I shook my head.

"No. I can't give you that answer, because I've already read it."

[If you have read it, that means you know the answer.]

"Yes. I ended up learning it here, by meeting you."

It was a little funny, though. Saint Rene had agonized over it and studied so desperately. She found a clue to aether, proved that even a Demon God was not perfect, and told him to reconsider his judgment.

"Because you had already discovered that aether does not exist, hadn't you?"

The Demon God had already found the answer.

"Aether is an unknown substance that fills the world like water. If aether existed, that would mean absolute space and absolute time existed. Everything would use aether as its standard."

The Demon King had always said there were no absolutes.

It was not some worn-out phrase telling people to consider differences in perspective. It had been a purely academic statement.

"But aether does not exist. There is no absolute standard. The laws of nature are the same for every observer. In other words, that is what it means to say there are no absolutes."

[The principle of relativity. That is what we call it.]

So this was a test. It was a question presented to the world by a genius who had advanced more than a hundred years beyond his time alone.

That was the foundation that had allowed him to go beyond the motion of objects and interfere with space and time as well.

"Why didn't you tell Saint Rene that you had already learned aether did not exist?"

In truth, he had not needed to be persuaded by Saint Rene. He had already found the correct answer. Honestly, even if he had gathered anyone from that era, they would not have surpassed the Demon God.

Yet the Demon God chose to stop. The reason was...

Having had his true feelings exposed, Principia let out an awkward sigh.

[It would have embarrassed her.]

Footnotes:

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