WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Alyo
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving Among the Anomalies ◈
Chapter 89: The World Beyond the Right Eye - Constellations of Justice, Social Destruction
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‘It’s finally beginning.’
The Chief Justice held the Balance of Good and Evil in his arms.
He didn’t remember how it had happened, but he had finally gathered enough good karma to realize his ultimate goal.
『I will summon higher-dimensional judges who are just, wise, and capable of understanding humanity.』
At last, he activated the Balance of Good and Evil.
Just as he had studied beforehand, his mind was drawn somewhere, and soon cast into the middle of space.
‘I have to find them.’
It was the space between dimensions.
Amid countless dimensions, his mind felt as though it could be torn apart at any moment.
‘For humanity.’
A world where good people were rewarded.
A world where evil people were punished.
‘For a world set right.’
He summoned the compass.
The compass linked to his mind worked perfectly even here, moving in search of what he desired.
‘Damn, why won’t the direction stay fixed?’
Infinite dimensions meant there were infinitely many beings that fit his wish.
The needle would not settle, so the Chief Justice added a new condition.
‘The closest place to me from here!’
The needle stopped.
As he moved in that direction, he soon came upon a dimension.
『Ah, I’m bored.』
『Is there anything fun to do?』
『I want a dopamine rush, but there hasn’t been any juicy bait lately.』
Their conversation and reactions seemed human.
They certainly understood humans, but their atmosphere was far too casual.
‘Will these really do?’
Had the compass broken?
Enduring the pain, he decided to look for another dimension.
『Huh? Someone’s spying on us?』
『One? No, two? One is certain, but the other’s kind of unclear.』
『What does it matter whether it’s one or two? We’ve got bait! Woohoo!』
At that moment.
Countless eyes glared at him.
『Oh! Earth? Humans? There’s a ridiculous amount of information here!』
『You were looking for higher-dimensional beings to judge the people of your own dimension?』
『Ah, we are just and fair, lol. You came to the right place.』
『There’s too much information. Can someone give me a three-line summary?』
In an instant, they learned about humanity. They recognized not only the location of his dimension, but even Earth’s civilization.
『You said you were looking for beings who would judge humans wisely and justly, right? We’ll do it.』
『Open the portal! Let’s gooo!』
『But you know, looking at what you’ve done, you’ve committed quite a lot of bad deeds. You killed good people because they might be spies, and killed evil people at will under the pretext of saving them.』
『Ugh, if you can kill people at will just because they’re evil, why does the law even exist?』
『Vigilantism is bad. Do you think society would tolerate that?』
『If you committed evil deeds, you should be punished, right?』
『How many people have you even killed? And you led an organization too? That’s organized crime, so there should be an enhanced sentence, right?』
They spoke.
『We are the Constellations of Justice.』
『So we’ll judge your sins now.』
『Murdering numerous people, organized crime, private judgment, all together...』
The Chief Justice’s mind and body were dismantled.
『The death penalty.』
* * *
『Ugh, we finally got through.』
It happened suddenly.
『Why was the passage so narrow?』
『For real. It took a whole day to get through because of it.』
Voices rang in everyone’s minds.
The voices that had suddenly begun speaking made an announcement just as abruptly as they had appeared.
『All right, quit talking. Let’s get to work quickly as the Constellations of Justice.』
『You criminal bastards, life’s been good for you until now, hasn’t it? You’re all dead.』
The changes came swiftly.
The first place they appeared was a courtroom.
“Therefore, the defendant is sentenced to one year in prison.”
『Hey, is this right?』
“!?”
『No, this person has three prior convictions for drunk driving. Then they drove drunk again and caused an accident. Nobody died, but someone was injured badly enough to need four weeks of treatment, and they only get one year in prison?』
They interfered with the court’s ruling.
『People like this never repent. Even if you put them in prison, they’ll get out and drive drunk again anyway.』
『Right. Why waste money putting them in prison? No, they’re not even worth keeping alive. They’ll drive drunk again and kill someone next time, won’t they?』
『Therefore, our verdict is?』
They also carried out the sentence themselves, on the spot.
『The death penalty!』
The repeat drunk driver’s body burst like a balloon.
『Ugh! A fraudster? You scammed people out of a hundred million won? Death penalty for you too!』
『You beat someone up after drinking? They needed eight weeks of treatment? Death penalty!』
『Distributing pornography online? You get the death penalty too, punk!』
The bodies of countless defendants on trial burst apart and died.
It happened not only in Korea but around the world, and before a day had passed, its scope expanded.
『Is there any reason to keep people with criminal records alive?』
『It’s a fact that people with criminal records are more likely to commit crimes again, right?』
『Leaving dangerous seeds in society is a crime too. We should just kill people like that.』
This time, people with criminal records began to die.
『Hey, are we killing them too easily?』
『True. If they burst to death all at once, they don’t even know they’ve died.』
『If they harmed others by committing crimes, it’s only right that they die painfully. They should suffer every pain imaginable before they die.』
Some suddenly burned to death.
Some were drowned alive.
Some died after their skin was flayed away and salt was scattered over their entire bodies.
『Ugh! That’s refreshing!』
『This is justice!』
『Wow, society is finally running properly!』
Countless people trembled in fear.
The Constellations spoke to humanity in kindly voices.
『Hey, hey, don’t be scared. We’re not bad people.』
『Right, we’re the Constellations of Justice. We’re only punishing bad people.』
『Why? Why are you so scared? Do you have a guilty conscience? You’re afraid because something is weighing on your conscience, aren’t you?』
People could no longer live normal social lives.
『Hey, you bastard! We caught a jaywalking pest! People like you harm decent drivers! Death penalty!』
『Public urination? Do you have no shame? Wow, what’s the point of you being alive? Just die.』
『Fare evasion on the subway? Tax thief! Die!』
They never forgave even minor crimes.
『Shouldn’t we retry the people in prison too?』
『True. They should be properly tried too, right?』
『Retrials, let’s gooo!』
Within a day, every prisoner in the world had died.
『Whew! Now that’s catharsis!』
『For real, lol. We don’t have to waste taxes imprisoning criminal bastards anymore. How great is that?』
It became a world without a single criminal left.
Then one of the Constellations of Justice spoke.
『But you know, there’s such a thing as criminal DNA, right?』
『Ah, I’ve heard of that. A bastard’s child is a bastard too.』
『The children of criminals are highly likely to become criminals too. Why else would they say beans grow where beans are planted, and red beans where red beans are planted?』
『Let’s kill the children too. We’ll cut off the criminal DNA.』
They enacted punishment by association.
『Right! The families of fraudsters should not just lose their children. Their other relatives should all die too!』
『True! They must all have lived in luxury on the money that fraudster bastard earned. It only makes sense to kill every last one of them!』
『Should we wipe out the fraudsters’ nine kin groups?』
『Let’s wipe out the nine kin groups of every criminal.』
The criminals’ families died.
Even distant relatives who had never seen the criminal’s face were not exempt.
『Should we read their faces too?』
『Read their faces? Why?』
『No, they say a person’s life is written on their face. If you read faces, can’t you roughly predict what kind of life they’ll lead?』
『Oh, then we can use face reading to eliminate the seeds of people who will become criminals in the future?』
People who resembled existing criminals also died.
According to them, face reading was science.
“Stop this!”
A lawyer stepped forward to stop them.
“Your actions are nothing but merciless violence! The law must be fair and impartial, administering different punishments according to the nature of the crime! Why do you treat killing as the answer to everything?”
『...What?』
『What the hell is this bastard saying?』
『Huh? A lawyer? Are you defending criminals right now?』
All the Constellations of Justice descended on the lawyer.
『Hey, then could you forgive someone who beat up your mother if they were a criminal?』
『Could you forgive a fraudster who took all the money your parents saved over their entire lives?』
『Could you forgive someone who caused your father a traffic accident, even if it was drunk driving?』
『This bastard is talking big because it isn’t happening to him, isn’t he?』
『Hey...』
All the Constellations of Justice shouted as one.
『Imagine it happened to your family!!!』
As every Constellation’s voice became one, the lawyer could not withstand their power and burst to death.
『Let’s judge lawyers while we’re at it.』
『They’ve gone crazy over money and defended criminals all this time, right? There’s nobody as evil as lawyers.』
『Every lawyer who has ever defended a criminal dies.』
Every lawyer in the world died.
『Peace has finally come.』
『Mm, this is peace.』
After countless people had died, every society on Earth was cut off and brought to a halt.
Most of those who remained were good people, but they were too afraid of being implicated in a crime and killed to move.
『Why is everyone so quiet?』
『True. Why is it so quiet?』
Even if they had no intention of committing a crime, humans could not accept the risk.
『Did we kill too many?』
『But they were all criminals. Society can only run properly this way.』
People could not drive because they feared causing an accident through their own fault.
They could not cross roads because the light might change while they were crossing, causing them to be treated as jaywalkers.
No one could date because they feared that sex with their lover might be treated as sexual violence, or that if they were actually sexually assaulted, they might somehow be judged guilty of making a false accusation.
『Ah, I’m bored.』
『This is dull. Isn’t there anything to get our dopamine pumping?』
『True. Aren’t there any surviving remnants of that Foundation or whatever?』
『We killed them all last time.』
『What a shame!』
More than anything, people feared the risk of punishment by association.
Even if they lived good lives, they would die if someone in their family, or a relative whose face they had never seen, committed a crime.
『...This seems ruined, doesn’t it?』
Even if the probability was exceedingly low.
Humans always lived while aware of that possibility.
『...True.』
Six months after the Constellations of Justice descended, two-thirds of humanity had died.
One-third had been killed by the Constellations of Justice. The other third consisted of people who died because they could not receive treatment after the infrastructure was destroyed, those who starved to death, and those who committed suicide from extreme stress and fear.
『It’s completely ruined, isn’t it?』
『Ugh, how many years will it take to restore this?』
『Won’t it take at least a hundred years?』
The Constellations of Justice fell silent.
Then someone cried out among them.
『...Wouldn’t it have fallen apart even without us?』
『Right. Looking at it, society was already a complete mess.』
『Well, it was going to collapse anyway. It just collapsed a little earlier.』
They left Earth.
『Ah, I’m bored.』
『Isn’t there anything to get our dopamine pumping?』
『Give us some juicy bait.』
All that remained was a ruined human society where everything had been cut off.
* * *
『...』
“I know them.”
I told the Chief Justice what I knew.
“They call themselves the Constellations of Justice, but they have another name: the Community Constellation. They possess immense power, but they don’t take responsibility for it. They simply wield it.”
The Constellations of Justice.
Their motif was public opinion in online communities. According to their creator, they were “an Anomaly made after seeing the comments posted in online communities whenever an incident occurs.”
‘But they’re somewhat different from what I know.’
In the game, the Constellations of Justice had been a single Anomaly.
That was why they fled as soon as people gathered and formed public opinion against them, and why they were only Danger Grade.
‘But beyond the right eye, there were multiple identical Anomalies.’
Instead, as the Constellations of Justice formed public opinion, they ran even more rampant than in the game and destroyed everything.
After hearing my story, the Chief Justice spoke.
『Thank you. Thanks to you, I understand what I must do.』
“How will you proceed?”
『I must try. Since you’ve told me the future, I now know that I only need to avoid them. Doesn’t that mean my chance of success is even higher than before?』
The Chief Justice activated the Balance of Good and Evil.
『I will certainly succeed.』
A moment later.
His body crumbled into dust and vanished.
“This is bad.”
It seemed he had failed.
‘He must have prepared, yet he still failed.’
I took a picture of the dust piled on the wheelchair with the enhanced Polaroid camera.
On the back of the developed photograph, I wrote a title.
[The End of Conviction]
Perhaps the Constellations of Justice had recognized the Chief Justice in advance because I saw the future through my right eye.
‘The Munchkin Mary Sue Constellation and Dr. Janus had noticed the gaze of the right eye too, hadn’t they?’
That might be why, the moment he connected, they found the Chief Justice first.
In any case, now that things had turned out this way, I needed to prepare.
“Was it twenty-four hours?”
The time it took for them to cross over?
Footnotes:
“Nine kin groups” is a traditional expression for collective punishment extending across an offender’s broad family network.
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