Chapter 275: The Country of Steel and the Faceless Men - 16
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 275: The Country of Steel and the Faceless Men - 16
Through Synchronization Magic, all the Signallers became one. Through their Unique Magic, they felt the same things and shared the same information. With their reporting methods being so standardized, even their speech patterns had naturally grown similar.
It was enough to make one think the Military State had finally reached the point of mass-producing human beings.
But of course, that wasn't true.
If it were, why would they have locked the Signallers away in a windowless room?
“You Signallers can all contact each other! So why didn’t you help your comrade when she was on the verge of death?”
It was a moral accusation. Faced with such a thing for the first time in her life of confinement, IA hesitated for a moment before answering.
“That is the rule of the Signallers…”
“Shut up! We help the person in critical condition first!”
I cut her off, about to urge Y on with a look… but there was no need. Y was already administering the dose. Tilting the card I’d given her, she took the Nine of Hearts into her own mouth, then parted Z’s lips and let the liquid flow in.
Everyone fell silent, watching the two. Y, who had been so desperately pouring the medicine, suddenly convulsed… then collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
A few people stirred, but they were mostly from my side. Even as their comrade fell, the Signallers remained impassive.
“The claim that it was medicine was false.”
“Poison? Or some other drug?”
“This module has no means to resist an attack. Why resort to deception?”
“He is known in Amitengrad as a swindler. This must be an attempt to deceive this module.”
IA and the other Signallers were unfazed. Perhaps they had already considered this possibility. To them, Y’s collapse served only to reaffirm my hostile intentions.
But there was one exception.
“Liar!”
Only X strode toward me, seething with raw fury. Historia moved quickly to block her, but I held up a hand to stop her.
I have to make them think and judge for themselves.
“Did you… intend to dispose of us all from the beginning…? Are you going to continue your attack even after learning the Signallers’ true identity?!”
X alone unleashed her pure rage upon me. I could have toyed with her more, but there was no need to complicate things. I came clean.
“The potion I used was the Nine of Hearts, the Potion of False Death. It puts whoever drinks it into a death-like state for a certain period of time.”
“A death-like state? Why would you use such a potion…?”
“Becoming a sacrifice is the same as having your Spiritual World uprooted. She’s lucky to be alive, but she’ll die soon enough. In a situation like that, to restore the Spiritual World…”
I made a gesture of slitting my own throat.
“You know how your life flashes before your eyes? When you experience death, or a shock close to it, your entire life flashes before you in an instant.”
With any machine, if something gets stuck, stopping it and restarting it solves most problems. Humans are the same.
When a massive stimulus like death, or something close to it, sweeps through the body, the temporarily reset nerves revert to their original state, retracing the memories they’ve built up.
“So, thwack. If you die once and then wake up, a significant portion of the Spiritual World you’ve built throughout your life gets restored. It was necessary to induce that phenomenon, even if it meant using a drug. Why don’t you check for yourself?”
Dubious, X used her Unique Magic again. Unlike Y or Z, the Eimeder she had summoned had only opened a door, so she hadn't suffered any significant damage. Her relatively intact Unique Magic connected her, Y, and Z.
“…! The synchronization…!”
It was incomplete, but they were connected. A part of their Unique Magic that had been severely damaged just moments ago was now restored.
X realized I was telling the truth. In that same instant, every Signaller knew it was the truth. It was thanks to the synchronization. X’s attitude changed.
“…Thank you for your help.”
“It’s nothing. I just happened to have the right tool for the job, that’s all.”
A tool to pry you all wide open.
Hiding my true thoughts, I gave X a friendly smile.
“Please take care of those two. You seem to be the most trustworthy person here.”
Feeling a sense of gratitude, X laid the two of them down properly.
Whoever created the Military State had built a rather robust system. Ruling the nation using Signallers isolated from the world—from my perspective, it was quite impressive.
Of course, it was only impressive. A world ruled by a philosopher king. It was a very common concept. They wished for everyone to become such a ruler and stood above all others.
The Military State, filling that role with Signallers, was remarkable, but it still couldn't escape a fundamental limitation.
No matter how well-crafted it was, the Signallers were still human.
“More importantly, I’m suddenly getting angry. You! You dare call me a deceiver!”
I strode over to U and shoved my face toward hers. Suddenly the center of my attention, U flinched back, but I closed the distance faster and berated her.
“Who do you think you are to judge me? Do you think some back-alley swindler who just tricks and deceives people could have made it this far?!”
“Th-that is not so. However, according to the information this one has acquired…”
“Acquired information? I don’t know what information you’re talking about, but did you see and think for yourself? Can you explain my existence with just the information you’ve been fed?!”
U couldn’t offer any rebuttal and fell silent. Unusually for a Signaller, she took great pride in her work and felt even the smallest mistake as a deep humiliation.
Yes. This is it. The slight differences in feeling, even in the same situation. The trivial emotions. The small cracks that humans are bound to have because they are human, emotional, and impulsive.
Finished with my tirade, I began to walk slowly as I spoke.
“I have no intention of killing or harming any of you. In the first place, the reason I came here was to restore the value of humanity.”
Everyone heard what I said. The Signallers of a single module were synchronized in real-time.
But did they all hear it the same way?
“The Military State doesn’t care for its people. It only seeks to oppress, punish, and control. There is no compassion in its rule. It throws a mother who stole to feed her starving child in with heinous criminals, and if you dare to speak your own naturally formed thoughts, they crush you under their military boots if it goes against the State’s ideology. They don’t consider the heart behind the action at all.”
As I spoke, I walked slowly, and the moment I arrived in front of P, I whipped my head around and shouted.
“And the same goes for the Signallers, trapped in a tiny room, slowly dying!!”
“Eek!”
P, who was particularly sensitive to stimuli, was startled by my shout and fell on her behind. The only reason the Signallers could maintain their composure was because they communicated through golems. In the flesh, they were no different from ordinary people.
I shot her a mocking smile and then brought my face close to R, who was standing beside her.
“I cannot accept a country like this. A country with no accidental joys, no luxuries or pleasures like a fleeting night’s dream. A country where you can’t be moved by seeing someone, or change your mind on a whim. A country that considers the heart before judging the sin. A country where people come before rules. That’s the kind of country I want!”
“Why are you telling this one…?”
“Have you never thought about such things? When you punish a criminal according to military law. Someone who sold their conscience for a pittance, and someone who embezzled money to save a dying family member. Is it right to punish them both equally for the same crime?”
R was the one among the Military State’s Signallers who collected verdicts and precedents. She would take this more seriously. Little by little, I offered a different word to each of them. Like prying open a crack with a sharp skewer, wiggling it left and right.
“You are all wrong! I don’t know who taught you to be this way, but it’s completely wrong! Do you think you can be objective by surrounding yourselves with steel walls, speaking only through golems, and having furtive conversations amongst yourselves? No! That’s just negligence! It’s giving up! If you are the command center that moves the Military State, you must not give up on thinking!”
Perhaps sensing something was amiss, IA, who could be called the administrator of this module, stubbornly tried to cut me off.
“Your argument is meaningless. In that you cannot present a better alternative, your opinion is…”
“Shut up! I don’t care about the opinion of a bystander like you!”
I slapped her across the face without a second thought. IA collapsed again, a brief, wronged expression on her face.
Her Unique Magic was the type that bound multiple Signallers in close proximity… in other words, if this were a classroom, she was the class president. Her power was extremely potent at close range, enough to ensnare all twenty-five people here.
That’s why I won’t allow you to speak. I’ll pressure you so you can’t even get a word out.
How does it feel, about to burst with frustration? Good. That’s what I want.
“You talk too much. Ria, cover her mouth while I speak.”
“…Do you really have to go that far?”
“It’s necessary. If you won’t do it, I’ll just gag her.”
Deciding that covering her mouth was better than a gag, Historia moved behind IA and clamped a hand over her mouth. A restraint from one of the Six Generals was stronger than any straitjacket, and it possessed an intelligence that a mere straitjacket could never have.
IA was now completely immobilized, forced to do nothing but watch me speak.
“You are all doing a fine job. The fact that the Military State is still standing is proof of that. However, you are also human. And you are not always right.”
I raised my hand. The Ten of Hearts card I had broken earlier. It should have been red, but with all the liquid drained out, the card now held a pale gray heart. I picked it up with two fingers.
“For example, if I were to restore this card I just broke to its original state…”
But as I flicked the card a few times with my fingers, rolled it into a circle, and blew on it, the card was once again stained red.
Having restored the heart, I brandished it proudly.
“Do you have any idea what trick I just used? You, who have lived your entire lives inside that tiny room?”
It was a phenomenon that logic alone could not explain. A few of the Signallers felt something akin to a desire for observation… rather than mere curiosity.
The Signallers, who had spent their entire lives confined to a room, were voyeurs by circumstance. Trapped in a steel box without their golems, they connected to them and observed the world, even without being ordered to.
And the easiest people to fool with magic are those who have never encountered it before.
“There is no reason to pay attention. He has clearly employed a trick. There is nothing wondrous about it.”
Only one, S, tried to shut down the Signallers’ curiosity at its source.
But his method was flawed. To claim it was a trick was to halfway admit that magic existed. If he had simply shown no interest, it might have been different, but that kind of argument would only play right into my hands.