48. Inside the Historical Remains

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48. Inside the Historical Remains

A few days after obtaining the cooperation of Grandpa Ganash――
I was toiling away at the daily excavation of the historical remains.

The area of each layer shrunk as we dug deeper, and I thought that at this pace, it wouldn’t be long until we reached the depths of the historical remains.

And then finally, I discovered a residential area-like floor inside the historic ruins.

It probably wasn’t even 10 tatami mats in size.
It was furnished in an European-esque style that was a little old-fashioned, and somehow there were even taps and a shower room.
Weathered blankets were neatly folded and piled up on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

There were leather-bound books were lined up on the bookshelves mounted on the wall.
As far as I can confirm from the titles, they appear to all be complete literature sets and history books that the study in the Corbette Village estate also had.
As for what the estate didn’t have, seemly religious-related books stood out.
I collected 2, 3 volumes of noteworthy books and stored them in Melby’s dimensional storage.

However, I felt a little uneasy inside this room.
It had a fantasy-like aura at first glance, but it felt somewhat unbecoming of what I know of Marquekt’s culture and civilisation.

“……Melby, what do you think?”

“Hmm…… It seems a little unusual somehow?
These are called… taps?
We never came across these kind of artefacts in the towns and villages we visited until now, right?
Master had knowledge of plumbing, but it was thought to be technology that perished a long time ago.”

“When looking at the fireplace and furnishings and such, I think they appear to be at a similar level to this world though.”

“There’s a sense of dissonance even regarding those.
Roughly speaking, they are certainly similar, but stuff like the design trend differs slightly.”

Although Melby and I were both puzzled, I examine the inside of the room.

“……hm?”

I saw what looked like the cover of a book underneath the decaying blankets on the sofa.
When I carefully moved the blankets away to have a look, it turned out to be a diary or notebook.

I slowly open the notebook(?).

Then, what appeared inside made me speechless.

“……What’s the matter, Ed? Why are you so silent?
Huh, woah, what is this?
They look like… letters, but they’re not ancient magic symbols, nor are they part of the common language of Marquekt today.
This many wave-like letters, I wonder if you can even read them properly…….?”

“……Alphabet……”

Right. The notebook was written using the alphabet from my former world.

That said, it wasn’t English…… This is probably German.
When I flip the page, there is writing on the reverse side of the page, and this was, for some reason, in English.
The English writing seemed to be at a level I could read even with my unreliable English proficiency.

And, this is only a guess but the German and English writing probably had the same contents.
It seemed the skill compensation from [Cryptanalysis] was applied, so when I tried to decipher it while comparing the English and German writing, I was able to understand the meaning as it was.
As far as I was able to decipher, it doesn’t seem like there’s any difference in content between the German and English.

Thus, I continued reading the English side.
It’s likely that that’s the reason the owner of this notebook wrote these memoirs in two languages.
If English was their native language they would have just written in English, so the one who wrote these memoirs is probably German.

In other words―― this means that there was a person who reincarnated in Marquekt from Germany.

I continue reading the memoirs while translating the gist of it for Melby.

As we advanced through the memoirs, both Melby and I became taciturn.

Written there was a tale full of the deceit and weaknesses of a man who continued to trifle with lives in wickedness――.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

It seems the author of these memoirs, Helmut Heydrich, was born in east Germany.
He was born at a time when Germany was enveloped in the deepest despair――Right, it was Germany during the interwar period of Nazi domination.

Mr Heydrich’s family was apparently engaged in a small factory business.
Due to the munitions provided by the Nazis, his family was well-off, and Mr Heydrich was able to advance to the engineering department at university.

Then one day, he fell in love with a girl.
Proudly dressed in the uniform of the Hitlerjugend (Nazi Youth Organisation), he whispered sweet nothings to the girl but she gave him a cold glance and ignored him.
He gnashed his teeth in disgrace for the first time in his life.

The next day, he witnessed her taking a stroll with a young man.
He investigated the young man.
The man was a Jew.
He informed the Gestapo that the girl was having a rendezvous with a Jew.
He gloated when he saw the Gestapo take that Jewish man away.
He thought the nuisance had disappeared.

However, a short time afterward, the girl was taken away by the Gestapo.
The man had been the girl’s second cousin.
In other words, the girl also carried the blood of a Jew.
From that point on, the girl never returned to the town again.

After losing the girl, Mr Heydrich involved himself with the activities of the Hitlerjugend.
He monitored people who seemed as though they might secretly be Jews and informed the Gestapo.

He wanted to believe that his actions hadn’t been wrong.
He wanted to believe that he had discarded his silly love for the motherland.
Hence, Mr Heydrich continued his activities as Hitler’s hands and feet with a bloodcurdling vigour.

And alongside his university graduation, he was assigned to be a technical officer in the Schutzstaffel.
Even in the Schutzstaffel, he stood out conspicuously and was entrusted with one of the extermination camps established in east Germany before long.

He worked earnestly even there.
He devised a scheme to disguise the gas chambers as a shower room and personally received praise from the Führer himself.
As a technician, he would brainstorm about efficiently disposing of those “lives that were unworthy of living” until late at night every day and implement them.

They would dispose of those who would harm the health of the German nation, but when it had started to become a daily routine, Mr Heydrich reunited with that girl.

Like Mr Heydrich, the girl had already reached the age to be called an adult.
The girl-turned-woman had been loaded onto a freight train packed with people with no room to breath as though they were objects and sent to the extermination camp under his management.

The woman remembered Mr Heydrich.
When she saw Mr Heydrich, who had become the commandant, the woman grew wide-eyed in dumbfoundedness―― then turned her damp eyes to him so as to seek help.
In those eyes dwelled the desperate hope of someone who had found life in a fatal situation.

Mr Heydrich rebuffed her fawning eyes with indifference.
Mr Heydrich had the woman sent to the gas chamber, killed like an insect, and her corpse tossed away like garbage.
He watched without moving an eyebrow as the young Schutzstaffel members pissed in the hole her corpse was thrown in as a prank.

That night, he had a strange dream.

In that dream, “something” that proclaimed to be Monguenues, an evil god of the underworld, conferred an ambiguous message to Mr Heydrich.
The message gradually took shape when he woke up in the morning.

――If you kill another five thousand innocent human beings, I will grant a wish of yours.

Having comprehended the message as thus, Mr Heydrich thought it was impossible.

It wasn’t because he thought he couldn’t kill that many people.
He just thought the ones he was killing were human beings with sin.
He firmly believed that in this world, there was a race whose birth itself was a sin.

While thousands of deaths were caused under his responsibility, he had thought that he was righteous.

However, even Mr Heydrich’s life as commandant came to an end at last.
The Soviet army was approaching the extermination camp under his management.

The central government ordered him to blow up and dispose of the extermination camp.
Naturally, it was in order to destroy evidence.

Mr Heydrich thought that he had done nothing to be ashamed of whatsoever, but he also wanted to avoid being pursued in post-war court-martial.

He used the prisoners to proceed with the preparations to blow up the establishment.
But the prisoners revolted at the very end when they understood their fate.
It had been difficult for the few Schutzstaffel members who remained in the camp to suppress the revolt.
However, Mr Heydrich accomplished it with his indomitable fighting spirit.

Nevertheless, it was already too late.
The Soviet army surged forth in great numbers and encircled the camp.
The Soviet army, as though thinking of the Schutzstaffel members hastening the destructive blast, immediately bombarded with tanks.

The Soviet tank shells destroyed Mr Heydrich’s castle.
The ones who could still move among the prisoners scrambled to escape.
The Schutzstaffel members subordinate to Mr Heydrich also fled, but they were soon cornered by the Soviet army and surrendered.

During that, Heydrich, who had been issuing manifestos in the office until the end, died from the tank shells that flew into the office―― or should have.

When he arose, Mr Heydrich found himself in an unfamiliar space.
Everywhere was deep, everywhere was dark; the darkness of ignorance.
“Something” with a strong presence was there.

――Evil god Monguenues.

The evil god of the underworld that he thought had been a delusion brought on by a bout of imagination and thus forgot about was there.

The evil god told him.
The evil god told him that he had fulfilled the contract.
The evil god said that the number of innocents killed under Mr Heydrich’s supervision was ultimately 35, 409 people.
The evil god stated that he was satisfied with that number.
And, he said that it was regrettable to let such evil go to waste.

But Mr Heydrich did not understand.
He objected to the evil god, saying that he was not evil.

The evil god laughed.
Then, said it was fine.

Afterwards, he ordered.
He ordered Mr Heydrich to reincarnate into another world, Marquekt, and devote himself to evil.

He threatened to torment his soul for eternity otherwise.
Then, he actually inflicted part of that torment upon Mr Heydrich’s soul as a demonstration.
Feeling agony that grated his soul, Mr Heydrich nodded unhesitatingly.

Having reincarnated in Marquekt, Mr Heydrich chose the Sonoraat Kingdom as his stage of misdeeds.

Widespread recession, unemployment; problems of the masses. Falling national prestige and military threats.
The Sonoraat in those days was very similar to Germany back when Mr Heydrich was born.

Mr Heydrich laid waste to the kingdom to his heart’s content.
He formed the religious organisation <Yatagarasu> and utilised the propaganda methods he experienced in the Nazi Schutzstaffel to incite mutual hatred among the citizens of Sonoraat, inducing them to kill one another.
The inhabitants of this world who were untarnished by government propaganda fueled the conflict amusingly and killed each other―― or so Mr Heydrich wrote.

Incidentally, <Yatagarasu> was apparently derived from the holy bird worshipped by the people in the east region next to Sonoraat.

Mr Heydrich called himself a sage who came from the east and planted the concept of dividing the discontent Sonoraat citizens into “ethnicities”.

Within the span of several years, the Sonoraat citizens who possessed many views about pedigree, descent, and race split into over 10 tribes, sects, and races and started thinking of ostracising one another from Sonoraat.
Mr Heydrich indirectly, sometimes very conspicuously, continued to instigate them so they would carry out ethnic cleansing against each other.

Then, a hero saw traces of the evil god in the devastated Sonoraat and appeared, but Mr Heydrich laid a trap and killed him, then dedicated the hero’s head to the evil god.

But while he was doing that, Mr Heydrich had been suffering from pangs of conscience.

The evil god, Monguenues, had said that Mr Heydrich was evil.

Ironically enough, the one who had exposed Mr Heydrich’s “justice” and pointed out that he was evil had been none other than the evil god, Monguenues.

As he lived his life over after being reincarnated, Mr Heydrich bitterly reflected back on his own actions from his previous life.
In his mind, the only thing that rose to the surface was that tanned girl’s look of disdain.

There was no doubt that the Nazis that Mr Heydrich had joined had already perished.
Because the Soviet army had already invaded even the camps in East Germany where Mr Heydrich was.
Presumably, the Führer would have also chosen his own death and be subjected to the gallows.
Depending on the situation, the German nation he believed in might also be dissolved by other nations.
Everything he believed in turned into froth and was destroyed.

What remained afterwards were the bitter memories of that day from his youth.
The failures of that day, when he flew into a jealous rage and snitched on the girl, driving her to her death.

Because he didn’t want to acknowledge that miscarriage as a mistake, he joined the Nazis to deceive himself, frantically continuing to try to justify the him of that day by killing a lot of humans by himself.

He was able to clearly understand that through being reborn.
Even though he knew he wouldn’t be forgiven, Mr Heydrich wanted to apologise to the girl.
However, that girl had been killed by none other than Mr Heydrich himself.

Mr Heydrich demanded that the evil god interfere no further, using the decapitated head of the hero as compensation.

Unexpectedly, the demand was swallowed.
There was originally a promise to grant his wish if he satisfied the conditions; the evil god simply carried out that promise.

Mr Heydrich discovered one of the historical remains of the ancient magic civilisation and established it as his home.
And there, he constructed a modest workshop and while reminiscing about his father’s back from his previous life, he swung his mallet, operated the machinery, and one by one, produced various articles that would be useful in life.

Even modest things were fine.
As long as it could make up for some of the evil he had spread because of his weakness.
With those thoughts, Mr Heydrich planned to bring the various goods he made to town and put them out for sale.

However, Mr Heydrich was afraid.

He was a great sinner in his former world, and even in this world he was a hero-murdering apostle of the evil god.
He didn’t know when the next hero would catch wind of him and come to kill him.

In addition, by keeping the promise, the evil god Monguenues might be better than Stalin, but that guy’s true nature was “Evil”.
He might become displeased about his meagre atonement and send in assassins to kill him.

When he thought that, he couldn’t even work up the motivation to take the daily necessity goods he painstakingly made out to town to sell.

Mr Heydrich despaired, but even so, dying was scary, and over ten years passed with him unable to commit suicide.

Escalating his daily goods production, combined with his own originally developed magic, he became able to even make the components for railroad tracks and passenger cars.
However, as expected, he didn’t possess the courage to show it to the public.

At the same time, Mr Heydrich also dabbled in the chemosynthesis of poisons.
He tried to make the gas once used in the gas chambers in the extermination camp, Zyklon B ――Hydrocyanic gas.

Mr Heydrich left these words in such a mental state:

“Just about everything were half measures.
At this age, I still understand that no matter how much I disliked it, I was missing the thing known as courage.
It was probably for this reason that I yearned to be the hero depicted by the Nazi Germanic peoples and was enthralled.

I never once wanted to be evil.
However, my weakness compelled me to be evil just by living.
As I was weak, evil was born in me just by living.
Further evil was brought forth by me trying to escape that evil.

I hated anything and everything about my second life.
Just me being alive itself was detestable.

Even so, I couldn’t leave things this way.
The fact that I couldn’t leave was seen through by the evil god, and while under threat, I gave birth to hell in this world.

Aah, why is hell always produced before me.

Muttering that like it was someone else’s problem, not accepting it objectively as it being impossible for anyone but me to have caused the hell, I desperately search for “Evil”.
‘The Nazis were at fault. The evil god was at fault.’ As I say that, I am able to forget my own wickedness.

Thinking back upon it, I had been living with my eyes turned away from my own evil all along.
As a result, a majority of the lives that ran through hell could feel exhilaration as though they were in a dream or the middle of a movie.

That being the case, I wondered if, conversely, the spineless me could face the “Evil” overflowing in my body and settle things if it were in the middle of a dream or a movie-like production.

I made a dramatic stage as though it was for the last scene of a movie, and in a comical manner, I killed myself using automated devices.

Just like―― Right. It was similar to the prisoners of the camp whom I killed in the same manner as an assembly-line system.
Or like that girl I possessed feelings of young love for.

As a clincher, I guess a very tiny bit of courage did well up when I hummed the war song of the SS……”

Then, finally, came the day of his last moments.
When Mr Heydrich finished concluding his memoirs, he shut himself in the stone hut constructed in this underground space, and with the machinery he personally put together, he took a shower with hydrocyanic gas.

The man who kept running from his sins and death died in the bottom of a cellar in another world.

Even these historic remains where Mr Heydrich made his home blew up along with the gas spraying, and the majority of it became buried underground.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

Both Melby and I were speechless.

Mr Heydrich had been a pitiful man who continued to be led around by a great evil.

But on the other hand, Mr Heydrich himself gave rise to calamity and was only fitting to be called a great evil.
Furthermore, it was in both Germany in his previous life and in the Sonoraat kingdom of Marquekt.
In both places, the worst, evil deeds that couldn’t avoid capital punishment if brought to court, accumulated repeatedly.

Everything was due to Mr Heydrich being weak and cowardly―― such things were simple, but, well, I myself probably couldn’t claim to have no relation to such cowardice and weakness.
If I were also to be driven by jealousy, I too would overlook my own weaknesses.
Mr Heydrich’s weakness was a weakness also had, like we were all in the same boat.

No―― that wasn’t it.
Mr Heydrich lost to his own weakness.
Trying to escape from the guilt of betraying the girl he liked to the Gestapo, he accumulated sin after sin.
The Nazis and the evil god took advantage of that gap in his heart.

As I read the memoirs, I could understand both his distress and egotism but―― besides being able to understand, what I should achieve was not empathising with him and being drawn in, but it possibly to brush it aside saying, “I’m different,” even if that might be called heartless.
Since the era I was born in was different, I might ought to judge him as a hindsight and protect my own standpoint instead of sympathising with him, who should have been just a lower middle class citizen.

……Putting that aside, the reason artefacts that didn’t match the civilisation level of this world were in these historic remains was clear, thanks to this.

Moreover, as a result of the search, I discovered a few batteries and what appeared to be gun components.

Beside the guns were about a hundred bullets.
I don’t intend to try using these bullets that have been neglected for over half a century, but I collect them as production samples for later.

There was also gunpowder that hadn’t been turned into cartridges but it had been exposed to moisture and was now useless, so I decided to leave it here.
If I took everything, the field supervisor might suspect something.

The interior room also had what appeared to be large machinery.
However, it seemed to be something used in conjunction with magic, like what was mentioned in the memoirs, so I couldn’t really grasp its usage with just this.
It looks like a gargantuan iron bobbin though, so I think it’s likely to be a rolling mill for making rails……

At any rate, I finished collecting anything that would be dangerous if passed over to <Yatagarasu>.
All I have to do now is to give this place up to the field supervisor.

The fact that the man who continues to be a weak evil across the world is sleeping further underground, I should completely forget about it and let it remain like this with no one knowing.

I wonder why Mr Heydrich left behind memoirs.
In addition, I wonder why he even purposely included an English translation.

It’s likely so that someone might understand and pardon his sins even a little, but――
I don’t have any reason to cooperate with that plan of Mr Heydrich’s.

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