EP.268 A Story from Afar. Behind the Stage
What would a lamb dragged to the slaughterhouse feel?
Humans are not lambs, so they cannot know. However, the laborers of the Alchemical Steel Refinery who had barely survived moments ago were likely feeling something similar.
The death presented by the refinery was like a blade slowly approaching, aiming for the neck. In that it was slow and easy to understand.
A hook digging into the arm drags a human. When the dragged person disappears beyond the furnace vomiting fierce heat, from beyond it, blood-frothed screams boil up and vanish with a 'pop' like bursting bubbles. The alchemical steel furnace, having swallowed one human, is unsatisfied and pulls the hook again to put the next victim in its mouth.
It was easy to understand, with many clues, and plenty of time to interpret them. Without needing to engage in high-level intellectual activity, most laborers realized they were walking toward death.
Even those who had cried out to be killed rather than suffer in the Alchemical Steel Refinery felt an instinctive revulsion toward this kind of death.
Is it because of a conservative tendency to not accept death in any way other than what they imagined? Or because they only said the words, but were not yet ready to accept death?
Anyway, the refinery revealed its terrible secret and fully played its role as a penal mechanism. It drew both blood and tears from murderers evaluated as bloodless and tearless, made nonbelievers who had never prayed in their lives put their hands together and repented, and even gave the will to live to those who had committed crimes out of despair after losing the will to live.
Thus, while the laborers were facing a slow and calm annihilation.
As if prayers reached the heavens, someone broke through the ceiling and jumped in.
Shei aimed at the furnace with a pitch-black club. Facing heat that could melt even steel and red molten iron, Shei protected herself with Qi and swung down Jizan.
Jigon Style, Splitting the Red Sea.
The black slash created a red wave. The bright red molten iron split to both sides. The heavy molten iron waved and tried to fill the gap again, but since it wasn't a real sea, it couldn't defy Jizan's repulsive force. The molten iron clung to both walls like a frightened child.
In the sweltering heat, Shei peeled off her sweat-soaked clothes and surveyed the floor. As the officer had told her, there was a giant magic circle on the furnace floor.
Heat is the power to change. Remove heat from molten iron, and it becomes solid metal. That magic circle was the type that sent the extracted heat elsewhere. That heat would be used to melt alchemical substances.
"To put a magic circle on the floor... Tch, they made it disgustingly well."
Shei clicked her tongue at the malicious design.
The weakness of a magic circle is the magic circle itself. The physical durability of the magic circle is also a problem, but if one interprets its structure, not only can it be easily destroyed, but it even has the potential to be reversed.
However, to see the magic circle of the alchemical steel furnace, one must empty the furnace where molten steel sluggishly sloshes.
But if the furnace is emptied, there is no need to interpret the magic circle. Because the need to destroy it, and of course the value of reversing it, disappears.
It was a truly efficient method, befitting the Military Nation.
"Jizan!"
Still, to Shei, a regressor who had conquered everything through dozens of regressions, this much was easy. Shei simply destroyed the magic circle. The furnace, having lost its outlet for the heat, shook violently. Shei tried to pull her body out before the molten iron rushed back in.
At that moment, Shei discovered a small, hidden magic circle inside the broken one.
Ominous and repulsive just to look at... A pattern of a large circle made of ancient character strings destroying and swallowing the border of the small circle.
Forbidden Formation, Gluttony.
An ancient spell that uses humans as material. A symbol of barbarism. Something designated as taboo after humanity became the lord of all creation. The most common, and therefore most terrible, pattern of Gluttony glowed ominously.
It was a taboo that ordinary people would never even encounter. However, for Shei, who had fought against the threat of annihilation numerous times, the Forbidden Formation of Gluttony was encountered so often that she was starting to get attached to it.
"...Come to think of it, the Military Nation had this, but never used it even once."
In every timeline, the Military Nation faced many crises. There were times when the command collapsed and a new regime was established due to the regressor's knowledge and the Resistance's machinations, and times when they waged war only to be destroyed by a regressor joining the opposing side.
At each of those times, the regressor gave various help to either the Republic that made the Princess its leader, or the New Kingdom that enthroned the Princess as Queen.
However, at no point did she hear that the laborers were consumed by the annihilation device through Gluttony. She only encountered information that such a device existed.
Even that, she let in one ear and out the other like a ghost story.
"...Well, it's probably not for a good reason. It must be a rational choice."
The Alchemical Steel Refinery was a goose that lays golden eggs. If they slit its belly, cursed blood iron or other high-cost alchemical steel might pop out immediately, but in the long run, the Military Nation's war-waging capacity would decline. Thinking rationally, there was no reason to kill people to make iron.
If so, a question arises here.
"Then why... did the Military Nation create something like an annihilation device?"
The answer did not come easily. Even after coming out of the furnace, even while hearing the cheers of the surviving laborers, Shei kept thinking.
Just why did the Military Nation create an annihilation device it wouldn't even use?
"Get lost, you beast-like bastards! Ptui. To think I have to jump in myself to save these kinds of guys...!"
Captain Toruk approached, ruthlessly shoving the laborers aside. The laborers scattered left and right, screaming and cursing. Captain Toruk, who reached Shei in an instant, spoke with a highly displeased look.
"Hey, kid!"
"Who are you calling a kid?!"
"Should I call you an adult then! Anyway! What the hell are you doing right now?"
Feeling caught, Shei hesitated for a moment. That was because she was secretly destroying the facility a bit too much without the officers knowing.
If the Alchemical Steel Refinery was destroyed, the Military Nation's war-waging capacity would drop significantly. Therefore, Captain Toruk and Shei had agreed to avoid destruction and focus on rescuing the laborers. Of course, Shei didn't have even a speck of intention to keep that.
Anyway, the person most capable of destroying facilities here was Shei, who possessed Jizan. If she made the excuse that she put a little too much force into it, what could they do? If it came to a fight, she would win anyway.
Shei decided to act a bit more shamelessly.
"I destroyed the furnace, why? That much was agreed upon, right?"
They wouldn't be able to confirm that she even smashed the magic circle. Shei answered with that calculation.
"Not that!"
However, Captain Toruk's business was not that. He fumed and pointed his finger inside.
"Right now, the presences inside the refinery are gradually decreasing. This isn't just happening here! The same thing is happening all over the refinery! While we're saving dying humans, their numbers are decreasing! Are you sneaking them outside?"
A different matter. Shei, having received the query, briefly recalled her actions.
Was she sneaking laborers outside? No.
Did she have any intention of doing so? No.
Recollection finished. Shei shook her head without hesitation.
"I don't know anything about that."
"Then who is! Releasing the trash of this society outside!"
Even if he asked, it was something Shei didn't know either. Originally, rescuing each and every dying human was left to Tirkanjaka. Because the Progenitor Tirkanjaka, who maneuvered the Black Knights like her limbs, was rather more suited for lifesaving.
It was ironic that she, who would be the first picked if choosing the person who had killed the most humans, was optimized for saving people. But perhaps life and death are attached like two sides of a coin.
Ending her deliberation, Shei waved her hands dismissively.
"Tell Tirkanjaka."
"...Hmm!"
However, Captain Toruk clearly showed difficulty to the point it was fully visible to Shei. Shei found it strange as she watched him hesitate.
"Why? Are you scared of Tirkanjaka or something?"
"...Cough!"
"Huh? Really?"
Shei asked again, thinking it couldn't be. To that, Captain Toruk avoided her gaze without giving a definite answer.
Captain Toruk had a lot he wanted to say. During the Kingdom era, when temples were built everywhere and everyone worshipped the Celestial God. The Progenitor Tirkanjaka was another name for terror.
Knight Slayer. One-Woman Nation. Queen of Night and Shadow.
From the distant past to the present, she led her cursed body and destroyed temples. She killed priests crying out the name of God, trampled temples, cursed faith, and led her sinful body.
Countless heroes sacrificed their lives to stop her, but their heroic attempts only added another stroke of blood to the history of the Progenitor Tirkanjaka. The Progenitor marched with an army of blood, scattering blood and death.
If it hadn't been for the blessed Enver Great Plains. If it hadn't been for the shadowless land that takes three days to cross... the Holy Palace might have collapsed at least once from the Progenitor's endlessly repeated marches.
The Kingdom fell and the Military Nation was established, but the humans filling it hadn't changed. The fear of vampires... though perhaps not as much as before, was still firmly etched in their minds.
Even just now, didn't they try to trap the Progenitor in a trap made of light. For Captain Toruk, an old-timer, that action would be insufficient even if subjected to bloodletting by hanging upside down with holes drilled in one's veins.
Of course, for Shei, who was born after the Military Nation was established and hadn't learned that kind of fear, it wasn't to that extent. Shei asked.
"Don't tell me, you mean to ask me to ask her for you because you're scared?"
"Khhm!"
"Come on. At a time when every second counts..."
Shei tended to comply with honest requests for now. If there was no particular reason not to do it, she did it first. Because to change a future with no answers, doing something was always better than not doing it.
Anyway, asking about the progress was necessary. Deciding to make Captain Toruk owe her a favor for now, Shei took a deep breath and called the name.
"Tirkanjaka!"
[Did you call?]
The darkness answered first from the shadows. And she appeared later. Tirkanjaka, who appeared as if stepping out of a shadow cast on the wall at the far end of the corridor, slowly approached Shei and Captain Toruk.
The Progenitor Tirkanjaka was expressionless. She didn't seem to feel any particular emotion toward the Military Nation, which had driven her into a trap of light, nor toward Captain Toruk, who had pressed them. Rather, she personally graced them with her presence to listen to the story with her still elegant demeanor; who would see her as a monster mad for blood?
"They say the laborers are disappearing, do you know anything?"
[Well. I do not know well. Perhaps, terrified by the impending tragedy, they are hiding somewhere very tightly?]
It was clearly an evasion. Judging by her attitude and tone, she definitely knew something.
However, a lie everyone knows can also be an expression of strong will. Tirkanjaka did not allow rebuttal, and that will was sufficiently conveyed.
The enraged Captain Toruk gathered strength throughout his body.
"...Just you wait!"
He said and turned back.
Tirkanjaka held a faint sneer as she watched Captain Toruk flee as if his tail was on fire.
[What a pitiful and wretched fellow. How ridiculous is the back of one conflicted between fear and pride. I am pleased.]
"Pleased? Why?"
[Unlike you, those who fear me do not bother me, so it is comfortable, is it not? I tend to let such people live longer.]
"Hmm. I see... Huh? Then what about me?"
Tirkanjaka continued with a gentle smile.
[How could the world be of one color. Those who do not fear me do not leave me lonely, so I also need them.]
"Well, thanks... But why are you letting the laborers escape?"
[Is there a problem?]
"No, there isn't. It's rather good. It'll take a while for the Military Nation to clean up this mess. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just curious."
[That is...]
He secretly requested it, but having come this far, it couldn't be hidden anymore. It was better not to forcibly hide a secret that would be revealed anyway. Just as Tirkanjaka was about to open her mouth to say something, the face of the one who had requested that of her finally appeared.