Omniscient First-Person’s Viewpoint - Ch. 295
Maximilien was born in the Fallen Dominion.
In a land where alchemy made all things false, even the pebble by the side of the road was artificially created by someone.
The land where the Golden Lord himself roamed was both a blessed and cursed land.
There, humans lived under the weight of gold.
It took less than a hundred years for the Earth, crafted by Mother Earth over billions of years, to be covered by human traces.
In the Fallen Dominion, where even the luscious crops were tainted with metal poison, humans themselves were used as materials.
Thanks to being born in such a place, Maximilien survived.
He was born without arms.
Neither he nor his parents were particularly surprised.
To someone born without arms, having four limbs was not something they would understand.
Moreover, the Fallen Dominion was a peculiar place where one in three births would result in a deformity.
In the Fallen Dominion, anything lacking was compensated by alchemy, even if it was an underdeveloped child’s arm.
His parents, who were relatively skilled alchemists, decided to create prosthetic arms for their child with perhaps too much enthusiasm.
The Fallen Dominion was also a country where one out of three births also resulted in madness.
Maximilien’s parents were such cases.
From a young age, Maximilien received intense attention from his parents and underwent all sorts of modifications.
Was it love, obsession, or perhaps the determination of scholars burning with the challenge of solving an enigma?
Regardless, thanks to his parents’ immense efforts and enduring endless pain, Maximilien mastered alchemy.
With that knowledge, he created his own prosthetic arms.
Wandering through the Fallen Dominion with gear-driven prosthetic arms, he quickly became famous.
No matter how skilled an alchemist was, it was difficult to implement necessary functions without extensive preparations.
However, Maximilien, who considered gears a part of his body, could create sturdy machinery even with low-quality materials.
People were fascinated by his works, which were fundamentally different in design.
Alchemy was straightforward.
According to the law of equivalent exchange, no matter how hard you try, you cannot exceed the absolute value of the alchemic value.
Thus those who stuck to traditional methods couldn’t compete with Maximilien.
Armed with the competitiveness of his products, Maximilien practically raked in money from all over the Fallen Dominion.
In a land where alchemical value was the ultimate truth, having money equated to power.
With enormous funds, Maximilien established a company and emerged as a new rising power in the Fallen Dominion…
Until the Golden Palace rejected him.
When his permit was denied, the jackals came after him.
Though Maximilien was a skilled alchemist and experienced in combat, the Fallen Dominion was a land of alchemy.
Miracles do not occur when the other side of the scale is heavier.
After a long chase, Maximilien was forced to flee across the border.
Then, one day, news arrived that his parents were looking for him.
It was obvious they had been taken hostage.
Ignoring the threat would have been rational, but to Maximilien, his parents were his teachers and benefactors.
He couldn’t leave them to die, so he returned to the Fallen Dominion.
Under heavy surveillance, Maximilien met his parents and pulled out a gear from his pocket.
There’s a saying that in the Fallen Dominion, when three children are born, one is deformed, one is a madman, and the other a genius.
Sometimes, all three are born as one.
Maximilien despised his parents’ incompetence and neurotic personalities.
He couldn’t understand, by any stretch of his imagination, how they could take out their failures on their own child.
However, he still loved his family.
In the Fallen Dominion, anything lacking was compensated with alchemy.
Just as his parents had “fixed” his arms, Maximilien decided to “fix” his parents’ heads.
They would never be able to get angry again.
After all, you can’t get angry if you can’t think.
Unlike his parents, Maximilien didn’t shift the blame for his failures.
He calmly acknowledged his shortcomings, cleaned up everything around him, and left.
***
Just before the sharp saw blade could tear me apart, a brown shadow fell beside me like a meteor.
It was Azzy, who had been hiding until now.
The King of Dogs, who could freely unleash her fury on gears, leaped fiercely at the saw blade.
“Woof woof!”
Azzy wasn’t foolish enough to use her teeth against a sharp saw blade.
Her target wasn’t the blade itself but the axle connected to it.
Instantly digging deep into the Steel Beetle, Azzy bit down on the rotating axle and shook it furiously, trying to tear it off.
“Woof! Woof woof woof woof!”
And then, while hanging on, she let out a scream. Size doesn’t necessarily correlate with strength, but the Steel Beetle demonstrated a power befitting of its weight class.
Azzy was spun around along with the saw blade.
“Azzy, that’s too much for you!”
Humans were not strong.
Objectively speaking, compared to other beasts, they didn’t have any particular physical advantages.
Their skin was thin, their claws were dull, and their bones were fragile.
It was a wonder they managed to survive at all.
But humanity’s true strength lay in its ability to gain power from other sources.
They skin other animals to clothe themselves, carve stones and horns to make claws, and cut trees and weave fibers to make up for their fragile bones.
The strength they gained was not their own, so they could wield it recklessly.
Tools could be replaced once they were broken, after all.
By using tools, humanity became rulers of the land.
The Steel Beetle, which greedily exploited the principles of the axle, multiplied its power by hundreds or even thousands of times.
Even the King of Beasts couldn’t withstand it.
Of course, that excludes the Human King.
I reached out to the falling saw blade, with Azzy hanging onto it.
The saw blade, capable of shredding anything in an instant, was now under my hand.
If things followed the natural order, my hand should be shredded.
– Click.
Yet my encounter with the saw blade ended with a quiet sound.
The frenzied blade became still the moment it touched my hand.
“Woof…”
I heard the stupid whimper of Azzy, still dangling above.
In the silence, Maximilien spoke.
“…It wasn’t an empty provocation after all. To think you could control even the Steel Beetle.”
“If you can do it, so can I.”
Unlike automaton carriages powered by Thundergear, the Steel Beetle moves solely by Maximilien’s ability.
The gears that roll, the saw tooth that spins, and even the joints that connect the gears are all under his power.
Therefore, I can exert the same level of control since I use the same power.
Maximilien twitched his fingers.
It was as if he was scratching the air with his nails.
Each time he did, the Steel Beetle twitched, trying to escape my grip and move according to its true master’s intent.
But as long as I held it, it wouldn’t budge.
I was precisely counteracting Maximilien’s movements.
｢It resists. I can’t fully wrest control from it. But this should be enough… The odds are in my favor.｣
Tsk, he caught on quickly.
After provoking him this much, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to lose his temper, but maybe it’s because he has gears in his head.
After all, his emotions and logic are working separately.
“Isn’t it too unsightly to lose your temper after being accurately called out?”
“I’m not angry. Though, you do have the right to say that to me.”
Don’t lie.
You’re angry.
You’re just using your Gear of Thought to keep hold of your reason!
“Attacking me without a word and then saying you’re not angry? That doesn’t seem likely.”
“What choice do I have? You have no intention of following me, but I need you. Since our opinions don’t align, we have to settle this by seeing whose opinion is stronger.”
“Even if you drag me along, I might not cooperate.”
“You might not, but what about the Human King?”
That would be a problem, indeed.
I am the Human King, and even if I regain my power, it won’t twist my personality or change my character.
However, the reason I can’t help but feel threatened is that humanity has a history of driving out their King with their own hands…
“Perhaps the King of Sin would be more cooperative.”
After all, the King of Sin that the Regressor saw in the future is likely the Human King.
I am human. I am a beast.
Beasts do not bring about the end of the world.
In fact, it’s impossible.
Because beasts are part of the world’s natural order.
To bring about the end of the world, I’d have to commit suicide first, but if I commit suicide, I can’t destroy the world.
What a paradox.
Yet it still happened. Humans are indeed remarkable.
“I don’t know what goes on in the minds of the Human Regime. In fact, I never needed to. My goal was to meet the Human King and that alone, but if you don’t acknowledge me, I’ll just have to find another way!”
Maximilien raised his right arm.
From somewhere, gears crawled out and rolled up his body.
Without needing to be assembled, the gears found their place and moved on their own.
The steel meshed heavily.
In an instant, a massive steel arm was formed.
Maximilien swung the steel arm at me.
I screamed.
“You said you’d take me!”
“Don’t worry! I’ll fix you up even if your limbs get broken!”
“No thanks!”