Want to read ahead? Join my Patreon for just $7 to get early access to all upcoming chapters!
> Patreon/NegativeTranslations
─────
"You can always choose to refuse," Lucian mumbled, making no effort to stop Bheara from aggressively squishing his cheeks.
He was thick-skinned anyway. Letting her vent a little frustration was a fair trade.
"Are you looking down on ?" Bheara huffed, finally releasing him. "I may have been outplayed, but that's on my own incompetence. I accept the loss. Speak."
"Imagine you are riding in an out-of-control carriage, and you approach a fork in the road," Lucian began, a faint smile playing on his lips. "On the main path ahead, five people are tied to the tracks. If you do nothing, the carriage will crush them to death. There is a second path, but it requires you to actively divert the carriage's direction. However, there is one person tied to that path. The question is: what do you choose?"
Bheara's eye twitched violently. Was this how her questions sounded to other people?! No, she wasn't nearly this malicious! She had never forced soone into a dilemma where both choices resulted in the slaughter of innocent people! No matter which option was chosen, it was a brutal psychological torture session for the person pulling the lever.
This was the classic Trolley Problem from Lucian's original world. In the canon storyline, Hedin of the Freya Familia faced a very similar, agonizing dilemma. He chose to save his allies, which directly resulted in the civilian shelter he was ant to protect being blown to pieces. It was a thoroughly sickening situation.
"You're deliberately making things difficult for ," Bheara groaned, rolling her eyes before sinking into deep thought.
She wasn't the type to throw a tantrum and flip the board. The core dilemma of the Trolley Problem was absolute; desperately digging for a magical loophole to save everyone was a coward's cop-out, and beneath her dignity. She had to address the core philosophy. Do nothing, and let five die? Or intervene, and actively sacrifice one to save five?
After a long silence, she finally spoke. "I would do nothing."
"As expected," Lucian nodded, completely unsurprised.
"You think so too?" Bheara raised an eyebrow. "Or do you have a 'better' answer?"
"There is no 'orthodox' answer to this," Lucian shook his head. "The first option belongs to the self-preservation camp. The second option belongs to the utilitarian camp."
The carriage losing control was a complete accident. It wasn't the passenger's fault. Refusing to intervene ant the resulting deaths were a tragedy born of circumstance. But pulling the lever was a deliberate action. Pulling that lever ant committing preditated murder, fully aware that an innocent person would die by your hand. Yes, doing nothing resulted in five deaths, but it remains an unavoidable accident, not murder.
If Lucian were genuinely forced into this scenario, he would side with the self-preservation camp. That is, assuming the five people were complete strangers. If they were friends, family, or people he cared about, the question transford into pure, agonizing psychological torture.
The utilitarian camp suffered from a fatal flaw: human lives cannot be quantified and compared on a spreadsheet. Kiritsugu Emiya made this catastrophic mistake. If human lives were rely numbers on a scale, terrifying scenarios could easily beco reality. Imagine a hospital with five world-class geniuses—individuals who could genuinely propel human civilization forward. One needs a heart, one a liver, one a lung, one a spleen, and one a kidney. At that exact mont, you—a completely healthy, average person of unremarkable intelligence—walk in for a routine checkup. The doctors decide to sacrifice you to harvest your organs and save the five geniuses...
How is that any different? Soone like Kiritsugu Emiya would not hesitate to sacrifice the average person to save the five geniuses. But adopting that philosophy creates a world where the value of a life is strictly dictated by utility. The lives of the poor and the average would be utterly aningless, completely monopolized and harvested by the elite.
Sacrificing one to save five looks logically correct on paper, but it only satisfies the imdiate benefit. The person who pulls the lever must shoulder the cri of murder, the agony of moral condemnation, and the horrifying precedent it sets for society's future. Once that mindset becos the norm, it paves the way for infinitely darker and more systemic atrocities. The self-preservation camp avoids this entirely. Yes, five people die, but it remains a freak accident. The only thing you suffer is a minor bout of survivor's guilt.
"So, you're in the self-preservation camp," Bheara deduced. "But tell , what's your unorthodox answer?"
"I am in the self-preservation camp," Lucian confird with a nod. "If I were actually trapped in the carriage, I wouldn't touch the lever. But if soone walked up to on the street and posed this question as a hypothetical... I would tie them to the tracks, and run them over first."
"Hahaha! I knew it!" Bheara burst out howling with laughter, clutching her stomach. "You really are fascinating!"
"There is nothing fascinating about psychologically torturing people," Lucian said, shaking his head. "I despise that kind of sick amusent. Like I said before, if soone tries to interrogate my conscience, I'll make sure they don't have a heart left to beat."
Bheara found him fascinating not because the Trolley Problem itself was fun, but because of how Lucian approached it. She perfectly understood the subtext. He wasn't just giving a funny answer; he was issuing a polite but firm warning: Stop playing your twisted mind gas with . If she tried to test him again, there was a very real chance he would literally tie her to the ground and run her over. It was a sha she had to stop, but after being countered twice in a row, she knew when to fold her cards. Trying to outplay him was pointless.
"Go ahead, take the Spring of Life," Bheara said, her gaze softening. "Though I have to ask... how on earth did you convince Hephaestus to break her sacred rules for you?"
"I suppose it's because I'm a complete anomaly," Lucian replied seriously, looking her straight in the eye. "Can I trust you?"
"You can."
The light shining within Bheara's eyes was the absolute, pure radiance of divinity. When a god swore a solemn vow with that light, they would never, ever break it. Since Bheara said he could trust her, she was absolutely trustworthy.
"Then I suppose it's ti I show you my biggest secret," Lucian smiled gently, offering his hand.
Bheara took it. The world around them instantly warped and twisted, seamlessly depositing them into an entirely alien dinsion.
"This... how is this possible!?" Bheara gasped, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated shock.
She could vividly feel the fundantal shift in reality. They had crossed from one dinsion into another. And with her hyper-perceptive nature, instantly analyzing the core fabric of this new space was trivial. More importantly—the oppressive, omnipresent gaze of the World Correction Force, the absolute law that monitored their divine power, was completely gone!
"Is this an entirely different universe?" Bheara turned to Lucian, her voice trembling in disbelief. "No, wait... this environnt is artificially constructed. Don't tell ..."
"Spot on. You really are perceptive," Lucian chuckled softly. "As you can see, I forged this world with my own hands. I plan to place the Spring of Life directly in the center, utilizing it as the core water supply for the Divine Court, ensuring that anyone who enters this realm is invigorated by its pure vitality."
"You're the amazing one here!!" Bheara shrieked, her voice pitching up like a screaming marmot.
In the canon storyline, rely witnessing Haruhi's level-boosting magic was enough to send Bheara into a spiral of confusion. Discovering Lucian's absolute domain elevated that shock by a factor of a thousand. What he had accomplished was sothing even the gods couldn't do!
While gods possessed the authority to manipulate the world's laws, their power was not strictly infinite; they were bound by the absolute limits of their specific Authorities. For example, the Dungeon was considered an entity of equal standing to the gods, yet despite being a mystery, it still physically resided within the Lower World's dinsion. There was only one true, absolute dinsion that existed completely separate from the mortal plane while sharing its origin point.
Heaven. The Inner Sea of the Planet.
─────
Support this fanfict by leaving Positive Review, Comnts, and Power Stones.
For Advance Chapters:
> Patreon/NegativeTranslations
User Comments
0 comments from readers