Chapter 150: The Tin Knight and The City of Scales (10)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 150: The Tin Knight and The City of Scales (10)
“That’s right! All this talk of punishment is just a sham! In the end, it’s innocent if you’re rich, guilty if you’re poor! It’s a wicked law that’s only merciful to the wealthy!”
“People call the restaurants of Justitia fighting pits. That’s because when arguments break out over food and drink, fists and swords fly before words. No matter the crime, the conclusion is always, ‘So what? I can just pay for it.’ As a result, the powerful and wealthy don’t hesitate to use violence. Is this truly what a just society looks like?”
“Justitia is not a garbage dump! Why must we watch criminals from all over the continent swarm and fester here?!”
“And are the scales really that fair in the first place? Who guarantees that fairness?”
The citizens gathered in the square rose as one, echoing the words of the prophet Sophia, their fiery passion and thunderous roars poised to overturn Justitia… but no such thing happened.
And it was only natural.
It wasn't as if the others were unaware of the problems with the scale system.
It was impossible for the city’s own citizens not to have realized the issues that Sophia, who had been in Justitia for only a few days, could point out.
But even knowing, they remained silent.
They feared the authority of the Kingdom of Heaven.
“……”
Thus, despite knowing Sophia was right, the citizens did not respond.
They all kept their mouths shut or averted their gazes, as if afraid to meet Sophia’s eyes.
Those who had come from other continents and had only a superficial knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven chimed in, agreeing that her points seemed plausible or watching with intrigued eyes, but they were a mere handful.
Sophia paid their cold reaction no mind.
She lowered the megaphone in her hand and spoke to the Tin Knight.
“Sir Tin, I believe this is enough for today.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists he wants to play the minigame a little longer!]
“Isn't it more fun to move on to the next, harder stage than to keep playing the same difficulty over and over?”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ frankly agrees that she has a point!]
The Tin Knight, who had been continuously evading the guards trying to seize him with acrobatic movements, gave a light flick of his wrist.
Simultaneously, Sophia’s body shot up into the sky.
“Wh-whoa!?”
“Look, over there!!”
What goes up must come down.
The crowd gasped in horror at the sight of Sophia, who looked as if she would crash into the ground at any moment, but the Tin Knight effortlessly snatched her from the air.
A movement so nonchalant yet so exquisitely gentle that it negated all impact, and Sophia’s feet landed on the ground as naturally as if they had been there all along.
With a composure unthinkable for someone who had just been launched to the height of a two-story building, Sophia bowed to the crowd.
“Thank you for indulging my humble talk today. I will see you again tomorrow, same time, same place. Until then.”
With that, she turned on her heel and began to walk away.
The guards stared blankly after her, but an official of Justitia, Porcher, quickly moved to stop her.
“W-Wait a moment!”
“Hm? Yes, what is it?”
Porcher was struck speechless by her utterly calm reply.
Struggling to keep up with the sudden turn of events, Porcher regained his composure with the self-control of a third-year civil servant.
“What is it? What is the meaning of this disturbance?”
“Hm? I checked the laws of Justitia beforehand. Did any of my actions violate the law?”
“Of course they did—!”
Porcher, about to say ‘yes,’ froze.
There were none.
No matter how he racked his brain, he couldn't think of a single law that could punish Sophia’s actions.
But she had made statements that disregarded the scales, the very foundation of Justitia. If he let her go so easily, Porcher himself would face severe repercussions.
“…Ahem! Yes, the guards attempted to restrain your actions, yet you ignored them and continued your behavior, did you not? That is a clear offense!”
Porcher raised the scale hanging at his waist.
The small, ivory-colored scale was one of the terminals connected to the emerald scale in the city center.
He declared Sophia’s crime to the scale, and its pans tilted slightly, just barely.
Porcher consulted the law book he carried with the scale, then spoke with a scowl.
“Your penalty is to write a statement and one hour of detention.”
“I am curious about Justitia’s prisons, but I have a book to read after this. May I pay the value instead?”
“…Five coppers.”
“Yes, here you are.”
The coins Sophia handed him were placed on the scale, where they vanished in a flash of light.
Leaving a final “Keep up the good work” for the strangely sour-faced Porcher, Sophia departed.
The onlookers watched her go with peculiar expressions.
“What was she trying to do in the end?”
“Who knows? Maybe she just wanted to talk back to the higher-ups?”
“Hah, she’s got some nerve. The Lord of Justitia may be lenient with civilians, but his authority is nothing to scoff at, rivaling that of most marquises and counts.”
“But didn’t she say she’d be back tomorrow?”
“No way. She was probably just saying that.”
“Putting aside the content of her speech, her attitude was refreshingly bold to watch.”
“You can say that again. My heart dropped when she fell at the end.”
People gathered in small groups, chattering about the incident.
However, their voices were neither loud nor serious.
They were wary of the scowling faces of the official and the guards, and Sophia and the Tin Knight’s performance had been too comical to be discussed with any real gravity.
But.
“Yes, everyone. Thank you for coming again today. I see some new faces, as well as some I remember. Either way, I am grateful.”
One day passed.
“Well then, let’s get started for today. Do you all believe the value of an object is always the same? Can grain from a bountiful year be bought with the same currency as grain from a famine? Is salt near the sea the same price as salt deep in the mountains? The ‘value’ judged by the scales includes an individual’s personal wealth, and I wonder how it accounts for such fluctuations in value.”
Two days passed.
“Good day, Official Porcher. Working hard again, I see. Ah, a noise complaint was filed? I understand. I’ll pay the fine before I begin. By the way, where is the person who filed the complaint? What, retaliation? No, nothing like that. I was just thinking that since they suffered damages, they might need compensation. Paying a fine to the scales doesn’t mean the money goes to the victim, after all. Oh, how can you trust my word? Of course you can. I can just declare it to the scales. You look pale, are you feeling alright? Overworking is bad for you. What’s that? The scales are not a convenient lie detector for personal use? I see.”
As this continued for more than three days, people could no longer ignore Sophia’s words.
They no longer dismissed her speeches as mere bravado or jokes.
It wasn’t because her words were shockingly new.
Nor was it because her words held a profound truth that left everyone in awe.
It was just one thing they realized.
“What? You mean you can just say things like that out in the open and be fine?”
Like cotton soaking up dew, slowly, bit by bit.
The invisible ceiling that had been pressing down on people’s minds began to crumble.
*
“What in the world are you people?” the young necromancer, now just a head, asked in disbelief. Dorothea answered bluntly.
“What do you mean, ‘what’? We’re just travelers.”
“I didn’t realize ‘just’ could be used to describe something like this.”
The young man was dumbfounded.
Several days had passed since he’d been reduced to this grotesque state. With no hands or feet, all he could do was watch and listen, and he had his bone mouse friends to bring him news.
And from what he had observed over the past few days, the actions of Sophia and the Tin Knight could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called sane.
“Aren’t you afraid of the Kingdom of Heaven?”
“Is that something the person who tried to throw a curse bomb at a priest of the Kingdom of Heaven should be saying?”
“It’s natural for a cornered mouse to bite a cat, but a mouse that walks up to a lounging cat and starts dancing on its hind legs is just insane.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
Faced with her genuinely uninterested attitude, the young man was once again at a loss for words.
“More importantly, explain this part again. I get putting the bone inside the inverted animal heart, but the trick to shrinking it afterward is—”
“For that, you do this—”
In truth, Sophia wasn’t the only strange one.
This fellow practitioner named Dorothea was, in the young man’s eyes, an endlessly bizarre existence.
In terms of her ability to control mana and her sense for learning and using magic, she was talented enough. Of course, evaluation was relative. Considering that necromancy was a field where those without money or talent desperately flocked to use magic somehow, Dorothea was gifted enough to be called a genius. She would have likely been in the upper-middle ranks even if she had studied another school of magic.
However, there was one thing.
Her mana capacity was less that of a genius and more that of a natural disaster.
At least among all the people the young man had ever met, there was not a single one who could compare to Dorothea in terms of mana reserves.
‘No, there was one. One of the four magic towers I saw in the Magic State had a similar feel.’
Recalling the incomparably majestic structure he had witnessed once in the past, the young man couldn't help but let out a dry laugh.
A magic tower was, in itself, a massive mana-generating engine, a refinery that absorbed natural mana, and a collection of countless magic tools.
To put it in physical terms, it was like a single warrior playing tug-of-war with a ship powered by hundreds of rowers and the force of the wind, and not being dragged away but actually holding their ground. And on top of that, her recovery speed after expending such power was astonishingly fast.
“Have you ever even experienced running out of mana?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s merely an expression of envy. You can ignore it.”
“…It’s not like I haven’t. I’ve deliberately exhausted it to the bottom just to test my limits, and I came close to depletion once when I had to reboot that tin can I found in storage.”
“Nonsense. There’s no way activating a single magic doll would consume that much mana.”
Dorothea just shrugged without answering.
The young man didn’t press further. It wasn’t a question he had asked with any serious intent anyway.
Just as he finished imparting his final piece of knowledge to Dorothea and she had fully absorbed it, the bone mice he had released brought him some strange news.
Dorothea, who seemed to have a similar surveillance network, approached the window and looked down.
Someone bearing the mark of a winged monkey on their shoulder was approaching the inn, leading a horse.
The horse was enormous.
Its height at the withers alone was 2.2 meters, and its thick, powerful build, rather than a sleek one, exuded an overwhelming sense of pressure. Even its slow walk was enough to make people nearby nervously step aside.
However, in contrast to its perfectly proportioned, beautiful body, its eyes held not a spark of life.
“Looks like my order finally arrived. Now I can leave whenever I want.”
“Is that the horse-shaped golem you ordered from the Alchemists’ Association? That’s something they don’t give out to just anyone. You were lucky to get it.”
“I know, right? I was going to give them an earful if that letter of introduction turned out to be useless.”
“?”
“Anyway, I’ve received the magic, and the payment is complete, so our deal is done. I’m heading out of the city now. What about you? If you want, I can give you a clean end as a final courtesy. I think it’s better than being captured by some nasty folks and turned into a spectacle.”
For an offer to end his life, her tone was remarkably indifferent.
Just what you’d expect from the legendary practitioner’s apprentice, the young man thought with a bitter smile.
“No, thank you. Thanks to you, I’ve resolved my lingering regrets and left behind what I needed to. Now, I can focus on my own personal score to settle.”
“Alright,” the witch acknowledged curtly and left without a moment’s hesitation.
The young man, now left alone, silently stoked his resolve, surrounded by his skeletal mice.