EP.296 A World Made of Gears - 3
The giant steel arm approaching forward. An overwhelming sense of weight is felt. My frightened body trembles involuntarily.
‘Let go of the sawblade, or take the hit while holding it. It’s a binary choice. How will you respond?’
If I let go of the sawblade, it will strike my head down, and if I keep holding on, the steel arm will crush me. There is no correct answer to this forced binary choice.
I chose a different option.
I hooked my fingers on the inside of the sawblade. The outside is sharp, but the inside is dull. Careful not to get cut, I grabbed it and stole Maximilian's inherent magic doctrine to use it.
Inherent Magic Doctrine, Gear Maiden.
A world made of gears. Touch one, and all connected gears move simultaneously. There are no ‘imperfect’ concepts like power sources, friction, or gear wear.
In the world of gears, there are only two states:
It turns, it doesn't turn.
Taking advantage of the moment Maximilian focused his attention on his arm, I turned the sawblade in the opposite direction. My body was swiftly pulled up. My arm trembled from the excessive pressure. Even though it's not bladed, the sensation of my fingers being crushed is vivid.
Fortunately, thanks to the medicine's effect, it doesn't hurt. Thanks, drugs. I'll be counting on you often in the future too.
‘Skillful. But that ability is originally mine.’
Maximilian wasn't just watching either. The moment he glared at me through his monocle, the sawblade stopped abruptly. My ascending body floated in the air following inertia.
A dizzying sensation as if gravity had disappeared. But coming this far is enough. I took out two cards from my bosom.
Diamond 2 and 8. Multipurpose Grappling Hook and All Things Long and Thin.
I connected a wire to the grappling hook and threw it towards the steel beetle. I pulled hard on the grappling hook caught on the gear. I don't have superhuman strength, but it's enough to adjust the direction of my fall.
My body drew a parabola downward and reached the side of the steel beetle. Before crashing, I stretched both legs and stepped on the gears. The moment my feet touched, I moved the gears with Maximilian's inherent magic doctrine. So that only the gear I stepped on turns upward.
The gear faithfully fulfilled its role in its place. The gear, shaped like a giant water wheel, turned, carrying my weight. It felt like the ground beneath my feet was throwing my body. I balanced myself and strode upward. After all sorts of acrobatics, I reached the back of the steel beetle.
Behind me, I heard Maximilian's voice.
“Your combos are skillful. Turning the gears is a technique hard to easily mimic. Are you not simply stealing the inherent magic doctrine?”
Right after the voice was heard, a giant hand struck down beside me. The impact shook the ground beneath my feet. When I quickly backed away, I saw that the hand, made of scrap iron and gears, was scraping the steel beetle. Sparks flew as the convex and concave parts interlocked. After a little friction, the steel hand became one with the steel beetle.
Maximilian pulled his arm and leaped up in a single breath. The height I had struggled to climb up was caught up in just 1 second. It felt almost futile.
“Even so, I'm no match for you.”
“I've lived my whole life with gears. Compared to that, you used this ability for the first time just now. Is that also the ability of the King of Humans?”
It's probably thanks to mind-reading, but let's not bother telling him that. I nodded.
“Humans are animals that use tools, aren't they?”
“The King of Humans is one who skillfully uses all tools. This isn't necessarily limited to tools, is it? Alchemy, qigong. You are remarkably skilled at all of them.”
His gaze turned to my cards. Maybe because he's an alchemist, he instantly grasped the essence of alchemy contained in my cards.
“But compared to your proficiency, the creations are disappointing. You merely shaped alchemized steel without any function. Is that all there is to it?”
Tch. Does he know how much mana it takes to bestow functions with alchemy? Ah, he probably does know. Since he himself is the strongest alchemist of the Military Nation.
Give me your mana and I'll make them better. Grumbling inwardly, I unfolded another card and asked.
“Should I show you others?”
“You should. If you want to survive with your body intact.”
If you want it, I'll do it. Now, let the magic show begin again...
Just as I was about to, Maximilian reached out without warning. The giant steel hand following his command tried to grab me. If I get caught by that, I'll end up like minced meat in a grinder.
But the place I stood on was atop the steel beetle. All the footholds are gears. Like before, I'll turn the footholds to move my body...
I tried to, but the gears don't move. My body, failing to keep up with the thought, stumbled.
‘You won't be able to escape the same way. Just as you did, I too can stop the gears you move.’
His situational awareness and response are too fast. Even a rotting Six-Star General is still a Six-Star General. While possessing overwhelming power, he gradually reduces my options and pressures me.
In the blink of an eye, the steel grip filled my vision. Getting crushed means severe injuries. Getting caught means no future. I must evade, but having lost control of the footholds, I am currently stumbling.
When the plan goes awry, I panic and my judgment is delayed. Fighting the strong, even that brief opening is fatal. Missing the only chance to overcome the crisis, the steel hand swept over my body....
‘Is this it?’
Right now, thinking that, is the chance.
Having induced complacency, and with his vision obscured now. As if I had been waiting, I reached out my hand.
Hundreds of gears exist right before my eyes. The majority are simply added to increase destructive power, but there are also important gears that form the basic skeleton. If one didn't know and looked, they wouldn't be able to tell them apart at all, but thanks to reading the designer's thoughts, I know exactly.
Catching the target, I took out a card.
Diamond 1, Pickpocket's Pick. Holding it in a reverse grip, I stabbed it in at an angle. It went in aiming for the gap between gears, then bent like a fishing rod under the pressure applied by the steel arm and twanged, bouncing out. Blood is visible as if my grip was torn, but thanks to that, one gear popped out. Beyond the skin, the skeleton is visible.
It's no different from pickpocketing. Strip away the shell, and lay a hand on the most important object. Without a moment's hesitation, I reached my hand inside.
Maximilian can freely turn the gears, but if that were simply all, it would just keep idling. To wield power properly, a fulcrum, a center, is necessary.
Naturally, the fulcrum is his body, and for that, Maximilian embedded gears in every corner of his body.
In other words, that steel arm is connected to his body.
Put differently, I can also destroy his body through the gears connected to him.
Reach.
The gears overflow. A wave of steel sweeps over my body. The rotation can be stopped, but it cannot eliminate even the inertia. The accelerated steel heavily battered my body.
If it were even a little later, my whole body would be crushed. Before that.
My fingertips touched the skeleton.
A steel hand mimicking a human body. The framework forming the skeleton, from the extremities to the center, his ability reverses direction. The moving gears stop one by one. Finger, wrist, elbow, shoulder... I sequentially stopped all the devices turning at the joints. And the steel arm he created ended there.
But the gears do not end.
Maximilian cauterized his flesh and drove steel into his shoulder to attach the prosthetic arm. On the surface of the junction, there are gears to control the prosthetic. From there newly beginning, I capture the network of gears extending throughout Maximilian's entire body.
“Found it.”
Even while my body was being crushed by steel, I tightly gripped my hand.
Inherent Magic Doctrine, Gear Maiden.
‘What's happening? My senses...?!’
By the time he realized it, it was already too late.
The target is all gears connected to me. Including the ones inside Maximilian's body, I command them all. A command as powerful as it is simple.
Turn in reverse. Until you break.
‘----!!!!’
The steel arm exploded.
The components making up the arm rotated arbitrarily in different directions. Misalignment, distortion, malfunction, and runaway. The steel arm, having developed every possible problem a mechanical device could have, shattered into pieces and bounced off in all directions.
The steel arm that tried to pounce on me divided into thousands of gears and crashed into me. Small as they may be, they are all alchemized steel of level 3 or higher. The high-density metal tore my skin and struck my head. Some gears even rolled over my body.
My body rolled backward from the impact. My back that hit the ground is stiff, and various parts of my arm ache from being crushed. Surely the drugs I took earlier should still be in effect. My flesh must be sensing a crisis and crying emergency.
It's fine.
Because I'm still alive.
The steel arm exploding at the last moment was huge. As the binding force weakened, the impact was scattered here and there. Thanks to that, the crisis of being crushed to death ended at just the pain of my whole body aching. A very positive outcome.
The problem is.
“Yes, that's it! I finally understand!”
Maximilian is also alive.
I failed.
No, half was a success. Maximilian's prosthetic arm was nowhere to be seen, and his exposed left side was dyed bright red. The hemorrhage caused by all the gears inside his body running rampant was visible even outside the skin.
But he didn't die.
Maximilian saw exactly what I was trying to do and responded quickly. Because he severed the connection before the gears could grind his body up, he barely managed to save his life. And that was a reflexively thrown response. What a monster.
He opened his mouth. Seeing fresh blood spurt from his mouth, it seemed he was still alive too.
“You can only control the gears that touch your body. Right?!”
...He figured out my weakness even while almost dying.
The earlier statement about a fulcrum applying to me as well. My body must ‘contact’ his inherent magic doctrine to steal his ability, otherwise I can't even use it.
But I don't want to tell him, so should I try to bluster?
“No.”
“You try to hide an obvious truth! If you could control gears without touching them! My own limbs would have strangled me already! Just like you tried a moment ago!”
Tch, he's quick to catch on. Above all, making a judgment in that brief moment and dealing with it decisively is what makes him troublesome.
“Climbing onto the steel beetle was for that reason too, right? If you step off, the steel beetle at a distance will only follow my commands! You moved the battlefield over here on purpose, pretending to run away! Am I right?”
I had no choice but to admit it now. I nodded obediently.
“You didn't become a Six-Star General with just raw power. Unlike Historia.”
“Haha! That's my line. King of Humans, they say you've lost most of your power, but you're absolutely not an easy opponent! It feels exactly like fighting myself!”
“I feel similarly. If we limit it to the concept of gears alone, you are superior to anyone else.”
I said it with sincere honesty.
He is growing every moment. Limiting it to the concept of gears, Maximilian has reached the pinnacle of humanity. I thought there was nowhere further to go, but even now he develops further.
“In a world made of gears, you are the pinnacle of humanity. The step you take forward is a step no one else has walked. If you pioneer a new horizon, that will immediately become a domain conquered by humanity. Though only in the field of 'gears', that is.”
It's the highest praise I can give. It was also an unexaggerated sincerity.
Maximilian, who had been listening with a blank expression for a moment, soon burst into roaring laughter.
“Hahahaha! How moving! I've never needed anyone's approval, but this brings me more joy than any praise I've heard in my life! As expected, is this the King of Humans!”
“Well, I've been kicked out as the representative of humanity, so I have no credibility.”
“Just get your power back!”
“Haha. I said I don't want to. Even if I do, I won't do it with you guys. Who knows what you'll do to my body.”
Even if it's a wish, I can't grant a wish to do as it pleases with my body. The most basic instinct of a living being. The homeostasis trying to protect myself is still present now.
Because the King of Humans is a beast before being a king.
“And there's more I want to tell you... I'll tell you right before I kill you.”
“There will be no such chance. I've figured out your ability. I just need to deal with it so you can't approach.”
Maximilian lifted the prosthetic on his left arm in an awkward posture. Clank, clank. The arm-shaped prosthetic reassembled, and a long groove was carved from the elbow to the back of the hand. As the end opened, it took the exact shape of a bowgun.
No, it was a bowgun itself.
A fingernail-sized gear rolled in by itself and settled into the groove. At Maximilian's command, the small gear idled while hanging in the groove. Viiing, the wind noise is so loud it's hard to believe a tiny gear made it. If that accelerates along the groove, the gear will fly at me at a speed comparable to a bolt.
Maximilian aimed the hastily constructed bowgun at me.
“Can you use Bullet Deflection Qigong? Well, it doesn't matter. I have enough ammunition, so I'll just shoot until it's depleted. Now, if you have anything left to say, spill it.”
I can't use it in the first place because I lack qi. Pointing a gun at a person and threatening them. Truly a proper means of conversation.
I grumbled and overlapped the cards. One Diamond and ten Clovers. I made a deck with a total of eleven cards and lightly shuffled them.
“No. A magician's trick is originally something that shouldn't be revealed even with a knife at the throat. So I won't tell anyone but a tight-lipped person. For example, like General Ebon.”
Maximilian also remembered General Ebon, the lord of all creation. He asked back.
“General Ebon. A nostalgic name. From what I heard, he is in the Abyss....”
Then he trailed off. Recalling the information, Maximilian glared at me with sunken eyes.
“The tight-lipped person you mentioned must be someone about to die. Did you kill him?”
“I didn't kill him, but I was beside him at the time. If you want to hear my eulogy, please die by my hand. I'll recite it to you until you die.”
“...Conversely, if I torture you to the brink of death, I might be able to hear it.”
“Good mindset. Try it.”
I said so and pulled the top card with both hands.
Diamond Queen. Queen of a Thousand Cloths.
It was as if an unrealistically small folded blanket had unfolded. I wrapped the Queen of a Thousand Cloths around myself like a cloak. A cozy touch envelops me.
Queen of a Thousand Cloths. A slightly warmer, slightly tougher, slightly more concealing highest-grade cloth. However, that is not merely all. If that were all, there would be no reason to extol it as the Queen of a Thousand Cloths.
The true ability of the Queen of a Thousand Cloths is the power to contain mana. Even if it is light, if it is made of mana, it perfectly confines it. Enough to bestow a pitch-black darkness upon a vampire who detests light.
I fastened my collar and declared.
“I will resist with all my might.”