EP.287 Blessed Nation, Cursed Humans - 10
The princess doubted her ears for a moment. She too acknowledged that Gun-guk was a nation with considerable potential, but calling this Gun-guk a blessed nation was a leap both objectively and subjectively.
Yuel looked at the corpse lying behind the princess with sorrow in her eyes.
"He dreamed of a nation without a king. He said that even without a king, if everyone could unite and march toward the future, they could create an eternally happy nation. So he named this country Gun-guk (群國), the nation of the masses."
Since soldiers were running the country, it was also jokingly called the nation of soldiers (軍國), but its original name was the nation of the masses (群國). Lately, however, I'm not sure which one is the joke.
"He certainly wasn't a genius. He was so weak that he only caused everyone worry, and he tried to cheerfully package his thoughtless actions. He lacked knowledge and had a narrow perspective, so there were times I almost burst with frustration because he wouldn't understand no matter how much I explained. I lamented what I could have possibly believed to follow him here."
'She says all that... but she's smiling!'
Compared to her sharp assessment, her expression was as soft as if soaked in water. The princess clamped her mouth shut, lest her thoughts leak out. It was a good choice.
"Still, if he had one merit, it was that he had no hesitation in embracing good things. Especially the so-called Seven Great Inventions of Gun-guk. Tools forged with goodwill by humans for humans, unprecedented tools. The creation of the Seven Great Inventions was entirely his achievement."
The princess was also surprised by these words.
"Chimera beans, clothing packets, the meta-conveyor belt...? You mean Gun-woong made all of that...?"
"...No, most of them were things that existed somewhere in the world. What he did was simply make reality out of the sights I 'saw'."
Yuel, who possessed the Clairvoyance, saw everything in the world from where she sat. Among them were things tabooed by the Holy Empire.
What kind of anguish the declining Earth Mother Goddess Cult had fallen into.
What humans had built by a waterfall pouring down lightning.
What kind of fruit hung on the Tree of Depravity hidden within the water sea.
Yuel had confidence. If she gathered all the beautiful and good things in the world, a beautiful result unlike anything seen before would surely be born.
When that time came, even the Heavenly Saintess would look again. She would see the hope that began with Yuel and change her mind...
"He believed in me completely. Even things I saw with my own eyes and couldn't believe, he listened with sparkling eyes, without a doubt. We talked late into the night. If we used this, how could we use it better? How much should we make, and how should we distribute it to spread the power of good further? Even while standing on ashes, we chased the stars. The future was full of hope."
The inventions produced by Gun-guk were all revolutionary. I wondered how they were made, and it turns out the Saintess observed from here and there and stole them.
Then shouldn't we not call them inventions? I had that useless thought.
"We created everything anew. We were gradually moving forward. Today was better than yesterday, and we fell asleep looking forward to a better tomorrow. There were tiring and hard days too. When that happened, he would come to my side, kneel down, and sit. He said he was glad I was here. He was glad that God hadn't abandoned this country and had sent down an angel. Thanks to that, we successfully finished another day too..."
"Gun-woong's ideals were truly noble. It would have been wonderful if he were still alive."
The princess naturally steered the gradually digressing topic back this way. Yuel's focus returned.
"Yes. You should be grateful to him. His will and effort were real. He absolutely shouldn't be despised and ignored by you."
"Lady Yuel. But he is already dead. We who live in the present don't know what efforts he made. I don't know what happened, but the current Gun-guk is a nation without any kindness."
Yuel narrowed her brows.
"Kindness... Are you pursuing such a thing?"
"Kindness is necessary! Look at Gun-guk now. No one is happy, and no one dreams of hope. Where on earth did his ideals go? Why were the inventions he popularized used as an excuse to take away everything else, instead of being added to life?"
Chimera beans were certainly an outstanding discovery. With them alone, no one would suffer from malnutrition.
But they were not added to meals. Gun-guk gave chimera beans and took away other flavors. In Gun-guk, any food other than chimera beans became a luxury.
It was the same for the rest. As clothing packets were introduced, clothes with aesthetic value disappeared. Thanks to canned food with excellent portability and storage, cooking methods were also restricted. Luxury and pleasure gradually faded away.
The princess grew up in Gun-guk, but she was raised with utmost care as a princess. Thanks to that, knowing how precious the occasional joy was, she affirmed Gun-guk but couldn't completely agree with it.
"There was no need for that! You could have just added better things while leaving everything else as it was! If his ideals were noble! You should have treated them with more kindness!"
"Kindness given out of good intentions eventually becomes a headache you have to deal with someday."
"Pardon?"
"We had to rebuild the broken country and create the meta-conveyor belt. So we accepted the Earth Mother Goddess believers."
"Yes. I heard that too. That it was the best choice Gun-guk made..."
"What did we have to do first? Can you imagine?"
Instantly, goosebumps rose on the princess's body.
Yuel, who was cheerfully talking about the past, seemed to be immersed in memories. So the princess had somewhat arrogantly reprimanded Yuel, saying that if those memories were so precious, she should have protected them more.
'No. She's not someone who lives in the past.... She discarded the past and moved forward...!'
"We destroyed the temples."
Yuel muttered with eyes that had lost their light.
"All the temples that had been living off the kingdom's kindness rose up in unison. Devout believers united and opposed Gun-guk. If an accident occurred during construction, they pinned the blame on the Earth Mother Goddess Cult. Some temples that were in collusion even helped the rebels. I 'saw' all of it."
That 'saw' means she saw each and every thing without missing a beat with her Clairvoyance.
Wow, Gun-guk. I wondered how they cleaned up that chaotic political situation after destroying the kingdom. With a cheat ability like Clairvoyance, it's doable.
"I didn't want to do that either. But there was only one way. It was the most rational and fast... the only way out. So I did it. Even while betraying my faith."
"They say you expelled the temples because they didn't pay taxes..."
"I couldn't just kick them out, so I attached various reasons. The country must be revived. Pay taxes. If you don't want to, then at least pay donations. Show goodwill to this country. Naturally, the temples refused. Because humans must not demand a price from gods."
"No way."
"Then we pushed them from there. The public sentiment was on our side anyway. We just needed to attach an excuse. That's why we brought the Ark... There was also plenty of resentment toward the gods. A little fanning the flames was enough. I cast them out with my own hands... Hehe. How is it? Amazing, right?"
At the end of such persecution, the temples believing in the Heavenly God Religion disappeared from Gun-guk, and those who remained barely survived in the shadows, cooperating with the Resistance.
It's ironic. The Saintess, the proof of God's existence and the idol of all believers, personally cast them out.
"God must have left my side. But it's okay. Because he was by my side."
"Uh..."
"To introduce clothing packets, we destroyed fabric shops. To teach standardized magic, we tore down magic towers. To merchants who believed their insufficient food would become their weapon, we gifted real weapons. Inside their bodies."
Besides that, Yuel calmly confessed her track record.
To introduce something better, the things that previously existed had to be erased. That's where it starts. But the kingdom, which had reigned for over a thousand years, had its previous life deeply rooted even while the country was being overturned. Humans didn't change just because the king died.
Originally, Gun-guk would not have been established. Corruption and irregularities. Non-cooperation and rebellion. It would have collapsed, unable to overcome the chaotic political situation where it was impossible to distinguish between enemies and allies. People who form groups can never solve the problems that arise from the size of the groups they form.
Still, the Saintess accomplished it.
"...Even while hiding in the deepest place, I saw everything. I took in all the filth of the world, and stained my hands with indelible blood. He, too, no longer asks why they must be killed, or what crime they must be imprisoned for. If a blood-stained finger points to a place, soldiers with guns and swords rush there..."
"Yuel..."
"It was still okay. Gun-guk was still improving, and he was still by my side. Even if it was different from what I had imagined, I could endure by looking at him. But... he died. Now I'm alone. There's no one to set the direction right. If I become the king of this country like this... I will only follow in the kingdom's footsteps. It will never become Gun-guk..."
Yuel, who was muttering words that sounded like an incantation, suddenly threw a question at the princess.
"Do you know what is needed for a country to last forever?"
Flustered by the sudden question, the princess gave a conventional answer.
"...P-people? Because if there are no people living, there is no country either."
"Wrong. It's the opposite."
"The opposite? Then do you need beasts?"
"It would be better than humans. But that's not it either. For a country to last forever... something non-human must rule."
So Yuel created a being that resembled her. To replace the role of the Saintess with Clairvoyance, she gave golems to signal soldiers with synchronization abilities and sent them throughout Gun-guk.
The first signal soldiers were not highly complete. The signal soldiers who undertook training at a fairly old age were incomplete, so it was a structure that barely worked only when Yuel intervened quite deeply. However, as signal soldiers educated from a younger age were commissioned, Gun-guk gradually reached completion.
"Humans who form groups make even the most ruthless choices without hesitation. The signal soldiers are like that. Soldiers who sit alone in a dark room but share their thoughts with numerous signal soldiers spread across the country. One, yet a group—the essence of Gun-guk. I entrusted Gun-guk to them, and though they might lack ability, they ran Gun-guk much more systematically. If it weren't for this encounter today, Gun-guk would have continued even without me."
It seems the words of an experienced person carry that much weight. More than the inexperienced princess, Yuel's words, who had ruled a country, were more persuasive. The intimidated princess couldn't choose her words and hemmed and hawed.
If she loses her words here, there's no point in me sending her. I spoke on behalf of the princess.
"That's sophistry. You take away human life from the signal soldiers and work them like machines, so they become non-human?"
When I sneered, Yuel glared at me with her last remaining hostility.
"If it's to create an eternal Gun-guk, that much must be endured. But you, the destroyer of civilization, will never be able to agree."
"Stop framing it like that. You guys make something weird and just claim it's civilization and more precious than anything else. Too bad, I don't care at all whether that's civilization or whatever. Because it can't be seen, can't be eaten, and doesn't even actually exist."
Then Yuel snapped and shouted.
"Gun-guk exists! Until now, and in the future!"
"Even though you, the core of Gun-guk, have been checkmated?"
"It's different from the kingdom. Even if you kill me right here, Gun-guk will continue. Because that is Gun-guk! The system is already complete. Signal soldiers of other modules will observe this result, revise their evaluations, and make new judgments. Then that is Gun-guk's judgment, and it will continue to lead Gun-guk!"
Gun-guk continues because everyone believes so?
Hmm. Certainly. If you ask whether Gun-guk exists or not, all humans would say Gun-guk 'exists'.
"...If there is something new called Gun-guk, and it actually exists."
But what if you demand that Gun-guk take responsibility? How would it answer?
"It can take responsibility too, right?"
"Respon...sibility?"
Aji sought the king to collect the price of the promise made with Gun-guk. To Aji, a king means an individual who can exert great influence on the majority of humans. When the individual she found declared they could not fulfill the promise, Aji gave up and retreated.
Why? Because it was a promise made with Gun-guk in words, but in reality, Gun-guk doesn't exist. So no one in Gun-guk took responsibility for the promise made with Aji. Because Gun-guk is not themselves.
"Siati's wish hit a limit. She hated Gun-guk, but that was actually because Gun-guk didn't exist. So Siati changed her mind to throw a tantrum over that corpse. Because that's the only way to slightly unravel the remaining knot in her heart."
The person who designed Gun-guk was human. The parts used were human. Human signal soldiers give orders to human soldiers, and human soldiers rule human citizens. Humans imprison each other, make each other work, and execute each other.
Humans kill humans. It is as natural as humans giving birth to humans. Before evaluating it with embellished words, it is something that clearly exists and is nature itself.
That can happen. I have no regrets about that fact.
"But you still insist that 'Gun-guk' exists. You said the orders that rule humans are given by 'Gun-guk'. Then, isn't that strange? It's unfair, isn't it? A bounced check that exists when it's time to rule, but disappears when it's time to take responsibility. Wow. How are you going to handle this?"
"Shut..."
"What's needed at times like this is a collection agency. People who can't get their money often appoint a representative and entrust it to a collection agency, right? I've come to collect as the representative of 'humans'."
But if something that is not human kills humans very well, isn't that an enemy of humans?
Huh. Then I have to work.
Come on, having to work even after being forcibly retired. What a lousy workplace.
"There is no king here. Step aside now."