Chapter 359: The King Who Kills Others, The God Who Kills Himself - 13
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 359: The King Who Kills Others, The God Who Kills Himself - 13
Were my words that unreasonable? The Golden Lord tore his eyes from the bell and slowly looked up at me.
The Divine who created alchemy. A great giant who upended the world. He was human, yet he was a Divine who had irreversibly changed this world.
But even upon becoming a Divine, no matter how great his achievements… a human is still a human. Even the Golden Lord.
I remembered the younger face I'd seen outside. Add twenty-odd years and a world of terrible suffering, both physical and mental, and you would get the face before me now. The face of an exhausted, tormented young man was far too ordinary to be called a Divine.
Because he, too, was human.
“No one knew. Before you pulled off that insane feat, no one in the world knew that gold could be so worthless! And they certainly didn't know what would happen to a nation and its economy when more gold was produced in a single year than had ever existed before! Not even the future-seeing prophets of the Sanctum! They only knew how to see, not how to understand!”
Even prophecy requires perception. If you see something but don't understand it, if you can't interpret what the vision means, you can't truly know. Because the Saintess, too, is only human.
That's why a Divine, a being that had never existed before, couldn't be fathomed even by the Saintess of the Sanctum. The most she could do was react after the fact.
If that was the case for the Sanctum, which absolves the sins of all, what could be expected of anyone else?
“Ignorance is not a sin.”
The Golden Lord didn't quite understand my meaning. He took my words for comfort and shook his head in refusal. He must have thought I was being kind.
“You think I'm saying you're not guilty? No, that's not it! For an act to be considered a sin, it first has to exist! What you did was discover an act that could be a sin! Before you do something, you don't even know it's there. To know, you have to find it. You have to pull back the curtain of ignorance and discover it. Just like primitive humans in the distant past—to know what gold was, they first had to mine it!”
“Even if it meant countless people would die, terrible tragedies would occur, and the nation would be plunged into sorrow?”
“Pfft! You think the nation fell just because you discovered alchemy?”
I guess even Divines can't help being arrogant. Or maybe he's this arrogant precisely because he's a Divine.
If it were true, I wouldn't say a thing. I clutched my sides and laughed.
“You are unbelievably arrogant! Not even the King of Humans is as arrogant as you! Is it because you're a Divine? Are you trying to swallow all the sins of the Golden Empire and become the King of Sins? No. You already tried to, didn't you? That's why you're wandering the Fallen Dominion, calling yourself the Golden Lord!”
Everything is his fault? Is he running for the title of King of Humans or something? He created the gold, sure, but taking responsibility for every sin committed in the Golden Empire? Forget right or wrong—is that even possible?
I stifled my laughter, which had been coming out in choked bursts. Not out of consideration for the Golden Lord, but so I could keep talking.
“What sin? Did you plow over the fields to build your alchemical workshops? When the food ran out, did you murder the colleague who suggested building them? Unable to bear the hunger, did you resort to cannibalizing your own kin? When the curse of gold became known, instead of telling everyone, did you hoard the physical assets and hide them away to maximize your own profit? Did you use the chaos to seize power, making weapons from iron and staging a coup? Did you incite the maddened populace to kill the alchemists, robbing everyone of the chance to turn things back?”
If this is what I could read from his Spiritual World alone, then far more terrible things must have happened in the actual Golden Empire. A true hell on earth must have been born.
Who could have imagined it? The nation wasn't brought to its knees by an invasion or some terrible disaster, but by the curse of gold.
And yet.
“You think all of that is your fault? Just because they call you a Divine, do you really think you've become some omniscient, omnipotent god? Do you feel like you're some absolute being who governs life and death, bending even humans to your will?”
Not every sin that came to light could be the Golden Lord's.
“Let me tell you as the King of Humans. Your guilt is unnecessary. Their actions… that's what it is to be human.”
No matter who they are, to me they're just another human whose thoughts I can read. And that makes me ordinary. No… to me, everyone is ordinary.
“It's just a shame the Golden Empire was a nation full of merchants, sharp-witted and quick to see a profit. What happened was the result of each of them doing their best to secure their own advantage. When the blessing of gold came, they rode the wave for all it was worth; the moment it became a curse, they abandoned it. That was a decision made by all the people of the Golden Empire. If there is a sin of ignorance, then they are just as guilty.”
Ah, in case he got the wrong idea, I quickly added, “Of course, I'm not particularly fond of the concept of 'sin' that the Sanctum came up with. For beasts, sin is far too great a luxury, don't you think?”
Humans are beasts, and I am their king. That is why I affirm everything they do, no matter who they are or what it is. Whatever their desires may be.
Perhaps finally beginning to understand ‘me,’ the Golden Lord responded slowly.
“…But.”
“Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying this to comfort you. I'm saying it for the tens of thousands of people you've dismissed. You saw the people of the Golden Empire as nothing more than scarecrows without a will of their own. As beings who would simply die, unable to resist the grand tide of fate. Heh. That's why this world you've created is such a mess.”
I sneered, spreading my arms wide. We were in his Spiritual World, so I couldn't see it, but I knew that outside this space was the Golden Palace—his vision of an ideal Golden Empire.
Fields overflowing with ripe grain, a magnificent city that was both beautiful and practical. The walls, built to repel enemies, looked as if they could shut out the entire world.
But…
There were no people inside.
And that says it all.
“It's so obvious. This Golden Empire you've created. It's filled with nothing but homunculi. And even among them, only the homunculi of the Primarchs you can talk to, the ones with similar Spiritual Worlds, possess a sliver of reason. The rest are just puppets who can only follow orders. That's what's so ridiculous. You see all the citizens of the Golden Empire as will-less puppets, and yet you talk about how precious the Empire is to you!”
“…That's not true!”
“Prove it!”
At my shout, the Golden Lord looked up at me, slightly cowed. But with his pride still intact, he reached out and created something.
It was the form… of Elric. Specifically, the Elric of his imagination, exquisitely detailed, her beautiful face and figure accentuated.
I snorted.
“Have you no shame? How is that supposed to be a person? It's the pillow you hug to sleep at night.”
“I-I've never done such a thing!”
“Well, I get that you want to show her off. You did a good job. But that's just her appearance, isn't it? Does that ‘Majesty’ of yours display sharp insight? Does she understand any technology the moment she sees it? Or does she look at you with a gaze of slight awe… and jealousy?”
The Golden Lord clamped his mouth shut.
He knew. He of all people knew it best. That the Elric outside, the one with the ever-gentle smile, was a fake.
I twisted the knife.
“Well, if all you need is a body, I suppose that's enough. But can you truly call that thing ‘Your Majesty’?”
“I know! I know it! No matter how many times I try to create her, I know she's not the real thing!”
The Golden Lord shot to his feet. The blade at his neck rattled, and the iron ball rolled away. Even in restraints that looked difficult to move in, the Golden Lord raised his voice in protest.
“But it's not like that! The reason I can't create humans isn't because I look down on them. I… I just… failed to understand them.”
“There, you've admitted it yourself. You can't understand other people. If you don't understand them, how can you possibly know their sins? You don't even know what sin is.”
No one has the right to demand atonement for sin in the first place. In the Golden Lord's case, his situation can't even serve as a cautionary tale, because no one else could ever do what he did. He could be punished out of spite, of course, but that's a different matter.
The Golden Lord collapsed, strength leaving him. He stared miserably at the golden bell once more. This time, it wasn't out of disinterest in me, but because he couldn't even withstand my gaze.
“I just… I don't understand. When I created gold, they cheered. Everyone praised me as a hero. Those who received it bowed their heads and thanked me endlessly. So how did it all turn out like this?”
“For someone who doesn't even understand people, this insistence on taking responsibility for their unpredictable actions is truly perverse. You're like a self-proclaimed expert passing judgment on things he knows nothing about. If you don't understand anything, why are you blaming yourself?”
“But… everyone said it was my sin. They said I was the cause of this whole tragedy! Even Her Majesty…!”
The Golden Lord choked on his words, overcome with emotion, before finally crying out in anguish.
“Even Her Majesty Elric, who taught and supported me when I had nothing! Even she ordered me to die! Because I had committed a mortal sin, and it was only right that I pay with my life!”
He would want to believe that. The alternative would be to doubt not only himself, but King Elric, the woman he worshipped like a god.
But that wasn't it. ‘Sin’ is just a label applied in hindsight. Human actions are driven by far more instinctive, primal reasons.
I stated calmly, “That's not it. She simply needed someone to take all the blame and die.”