WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss

Chapter 13

──────

Looking for the Lost Kaicel (3)

After appropriately brushing off Arabel's nonsense, I moved all the data left on dozens of Pithos Magic Tower's production models into a single folder.

If my prediction is correct, decrypting the combination of this dummy data through a specific method will yield the regular report Kaicel receives.

How to find that specific method?

"I'm counting on you, Director Arabel."

"Excuse me?"

Without looking back, I slipped out of Arabel's hideout.

As with any task, there's a matter of aptitude. My specialty is bruteforcing things with my body, so it's only right to leave matters requiring specialized knowledge to the expert.

Behind me, I heard what sounded like nonsense muttering: "The president and the secretary are exactly the same in temperament...!"

I must have misheard. Unlike Karisia, who indiscriminately orders excessive workloads, I merely 'request' within reasonable limits.

I need to verify the truth by the end of the month to insert myself into the ritual held at the beginning of next month.

About three days left. With Arabel's abilities, she should be able to figure it out by then.

***

Arabel gulped down water. With so many parts of her body replaced with prosthetics, she could sustain life activity without any intake of moisture or food, as long as mana was supplied.

But right now, she craved the coolness of water. It felt like she was about to burst into flames from the inside.

'Damn it...'

She couldn't just keep cursing Ortes, because there really was information hidden there, just as he had said.

It wasn't the latest encryption techniques used by the Apex Magic Towers. Rather, it was the opposite.

Encryption using the Sacred Engraving Script (聖刻文字), supposedly used by the long-vanished sects of the old gods. It was such a classical approach that it would have been impossible to conceive.

For the first few days after having the task dumped on her by Ortes, Arabel had put her heart into attempting decryption, but no matter how many times she tried, no clue surfaced.

Out of frustration, she fed all the decryption methods in the information guild's combined database into an auto-simulator and ran it. To her surprise, it caught an encryption so old it was measured in centuries.

'Sacred Engraving Script. The language said to record the words of the gods.'

In the distant olden age, there was said to be a technique called the Holy Decree (聖令), which performed miracles by receiving the power of the gods.

Though those names have all faded into the waves of history now.

'Come to think of it, if it's the Holy Decree, it could explain Ortes's presence without needing magic, couldn't it?'

For a moment, Arabel considered the possibility of Ortes handling the Holy Decree, then laughed dryly.

A man like that being a priest. Unless he considered his own president a god, he didn't seem like someone who would have faith in anything else.

Above all, it didn't make sense that the gods would look favorably upon that vicious temperament and grant him power.

Suppressing her deep-seated anger, Arabel headed toward the office of Ortes, who had dumped the work on her.

She wanted to throw the report in his face, but unable to do so, she carefully handed him the stack of documents.

Ortes read through the report with his characteristic smile. To Arabel, that expression looked like a provocation saying, 'Wasn't I right?'

That thought evaporated moments later in the ensuing conversation.

"So that's how it was. I'll need to make preparations."

"Preparations? For what. Digging the ground?"

"No. A mage of Kaicel's caliber would have prepared countermeasures for that kind of infiltration. So I'll need to enter through the front door he prepared."

"Front door, you say…."

Arabel recalled that Ortes had originally come to her suspicious of the Pithos Magic Tower's monthly burnt offering ritual.

"You're planning to dive into lava?!"

Ortes shrugged as if that was hardly a problem.

'No doubt about it...'

That smile was definitely one of satisfaction that his report to the president had been correct.

A loyalty, that would accept death itself as long as it meant getting one step closer to Karisia's goal. No. Fanaticism.

A powerful mage could certainly survive even in lava. In this case, there was also circumstantial evidence that instead of simply sinking into the lava, he would be transported to another location.

Still, so willingly accepting a lava dive was a different story entirely.

Arabel felt a chill run down her spine. What method did Karisia use to create such an extreme follower?

Would she herself end up like Ortes someday?

The thought terrified her.

***

I cursed the fate that had prepared for such a situation.

I knew from the moment I opened my eyes in this godforsaken world that luck or fate or whatever was never on my side.

Still.

I had steeled myself, but actually diving into lava? There are limits to everything.

It had been a while since I faced such an absurd situation.

I couldn't voice my complaints about something related to the company's long-cherished project in front of a director, so I desperately controlled my expression. But given the subtle stiffening of Arabel's face, I'm not entirely confident.

She might have noticed my dissatisfaction, so I decided to do some preemptive damage control.

"Director Arabel."

"...Yes."

"This is a secret from the President."

We both serve the same boss, after all. Just look the other way this once.

***

Taking advantage of the pre-dawn hours, Ortes slipped easily into the area where Pithos Magic Tower's automatons had lined up the offerings.

Sensors detecting mana were meaningless to Ortes, who had none. Most of the security systems designed to counter mages were neutralized.

As a precaution, he'd left the Magic Imprinting Drive behind. But this was an unmanned facility, and the offerings were just scrap bound for the lava, not a core installation. Getting past their security was no problem.

The first production units of each model, manufactured from dozens or hundreds of production lines, were stored inside container boxes.

A scene like a museum or a department store of automatons.

Ortes climbed into an empty powered suit.

'Feels like I've become the protagonist of that superhero movie who ran around wearing a steel suit. Although that guy struggled with the cold, not the heat.'

Vrrrooom-

A heavy noise accompanied vibrations traveling up through the container box. The transport had begun.

As they neared the summit of Mount Etna, the heat gradually grew stronger. However weakened the volcanic activity, a volcano was still a volcano.

Inside the container, and inside the powered suit, things began to heat up.

'Damn it. What did that Kaicel guy have to go and build his hideout in a place like this for.'

Cursing Kaicel's real estate sense, which had clearly fallen to the ground, several times, Ortes slowly felt his body tilt.

This was it.

Ortes began preparing an emergency escape from the volcano in case even the lava dive failed to get him into Kaicel's stronghold.

A patchwork Qi art, learned and stolen and refined from a dozen sources, drew out Ortes's latent power. A stance ready to tear apart the powered suit and leap out at any moment.

Clank, thud. Screeeech!

Rather than throwing the container box itself, it seemed they were tilting the box to pour out the offerings loaded inside. Ortes felt himself in freefall toward the pit of fire.

A gust of wind. The wind that had grazed the lava only added another layer of heat instead of cooling the already scorching powered suit.

As the massive lumps of metal touched the lava, molten rock sprayed toward the sky.

Lava runs about 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius. Iron melts at 1,538. Nowhere near enough to melt a magic-forged alloy built to outlast steel.

That's nowhere near enough to melt a magical special alloy with heat resistance and durability exceeding steel.

But that was a story from the Earth Ortes remembered.

The volcanic fire dwelling in Mount Etna began to melt the Pithos alloy without difficulty. Ortes was stunned.

'No way?'

Could even the data hidden in the automaton's dummy data have been a trick? The paranoia of mad mages!

Heat rushed in through a gap where the powered suit's faceplate had melted. Ortes reflexively opened his eyes wide.

And the next moment.

Ortes was standing on obsidian tiles polished so smoothly he could see his reflection.

It was Kaicel's hideout.

***

Walking with his head bowed, Kaicel swept his gaze over the wreckage of machinery with his one glowing eye. The scan was complete.

Through the piles of molten scrap metal, parts glowing brightly in orange were visible.

The storage devices of his creations. As he approached to retrieve the storage devices, he was overcome by a deep sense of gloom.

He couldn't even manage a sigh anymore.

This month would be the same as last month. The report told him that his creations had faithfully absorbed the volcanic fire of Mount Etna.

Yet despite that, the work remained unfinished.

The mana was there by theory, more than enough. Yet the thing still wouldn't activate, and so he kept feeding it more, praying he'd find whatever was wrong...

As he was thinking this and lifted his head, something blocked his vision.

Kaicel's artificial eye read mana as color, and on this figure it showed nothing.

'A person?'

He immediately began preparing a dual chant, reciting a spell aloud while forming hand seals, but then stopped, overcome by a wave of uselessness.

"So you finally found me from the surface, did you. Geryones? Or the Lernian? Or an external force that came looking from outside Etna City?"

"The closest among those would be the Lernian, I suppose."

"Too bad for you. What you've been searching for, calling it the artificial Ten Commandments, is a failure."

Kaicel slumped to the floor.

***

No. What's with this guy.

The giant, who looked about twice my height, had approached while emitting some kind of light from one artificial eye, and the moment he saw me, started lamenting his fate.

A mage-like lament about investing years into creating this thing only to make no progress to the next stage, and about how if he had known this would happen, he should have kept a few of the original occupiers of the tower alive as research slaves.

At this rate, I might actually be able to resolve things through words. Something like, 'If you come under our company, I'd be willing to provide research personnel,' while pretending to sympathize, and then lure him in to secure the artificial Ten Commandments.

As a first step toward a friendly relationship, I offered some appropriate sympathy for his words.

"I can imagine. Reproducing the divinity inherent in the Ten Commandments isn't something that can be achieved simply by having a lot of mana, is it?"

Kaicel, who had been metaphorically beating the ground in regret just moments ago, froze completely.

"You. How do you know that...?"

His artificial eye began to spin wildly.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried