WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss
Chapter 23
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Blasphemia Branch (3)
“Goddammit.”
Nardanit spat out a curse. At that point, I sensed something strange.
‘Huh? Usually when the inspection team shows up, they don’t curse-’
Don’t they try to stall by groveling first?
Cursing the inspection team so openly like that.
‘Has this bastard really been up to some shady business behind the scenes?’
That only happens when there are actual, undeniable irregularities.
***
Nardanit looked at L13, who had revealed his identity, Ortes.
A seasoned Blasphemia agent confident enough to state his name. Someone like that had come to meet him alone under the ridiculous pretense of being a straggler from an ancient time.
What did that mean?
“...So you already knew and came. You made it all the way here with that absurd excuse of being a straggler.”
“Haha, I have no idea what you mean.”
The moment he revealed his identity as a secret inspector, Nardanit understood everything.
This man had come having already identified the traitorous activities of the Charlotte branch.
‘But I’m not sure how much he knows.’
If he truly knew everything, he would have initiated combat as soon as the one-on-one situation was created.
But just because the full truth wasn’t revealed didn’t mean Nardanit’s crisis was over. The moment the database was opened as requested, the inspector would read the absence of budget between the gaps in the files.
What would happen next was clear. A purge.
Nardanit had expected the agent coming to this position to be one of three things: incompetent, cowardly, or unfortunate.
In fact, it was none of the three. An executioner wearing the mask of the unfortunate.
Against an incompetent who couldn’t even be summoned to the war against the monster, or a coward who fled from that war, he might have been able to persuade them to side with him, or force them onto his side.
If it were a truly unfortunate straggler through no fault of his own, instead of recruiting them, he could have sent them back to headquarters with a suitable excuse and hidden the truth.
Even if they somehow noticed the treason, if he could stage an ‘unfortunate accident,’ he could handle a single ordinary agent.
But that thing was a prepared executioner. Blasphemia’s finest, ready to start a fight at any time, in any situation.
Nardanit slowly, very subtly, began to draw up magical power. He had to deliver the greatest shock in the first strike. For the sake of his comrades’ future.
Ortes was merely bewildered by the branch chief Nardanit’s ominous demeanor.
‘What’s this? A branch chief is running a side hustle?’
‘The Blasphemia agents I’ve fought so far didn’t have such shallow loyalty.’
“Now, now, Branch Chief. Let’s calm down and talk.”
“Aren’t you tired of being loyal to the old men of the Ten Towers? How long must we live like this?”
Nardanit scoffed at the persuasion that clearly had no intention of letting him live. How many years had he spent in Blasphemia? He knew those tactics well.
Inspectors do not tolerate traitors. Even if he declared full surrender now and provided a list of accomplices, the reward would be a swift death or worse, imprisonment beneath a Magic Tower as a living computing device.
“The Ten Towers treated us worse than dogs. Who was it that bled fighting that monster? Even though Blasphemia was annihilated generation by generation, no one compensated us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Shut up! You despicable bastard. An inspector sitting in that position couldn’t possibly not know! The blasphemous monster born from the White Light. Because of it, we-!”
Nardanit vented his wrath. The Ten Towers, especially the White Light Tower, did not want their shame exposed to the world.
The most covert armed force at the Ten Towers’ disposal was, of course, Blasphemia. But even they had missions whose truths were concealed.
That mission, handed down from the White Light Tower, was one such case.
Blasphemia was deployed into the mission with only the explanation that it was an embodied being bearing divinity.
Most of the front-line agents were annihilated.
The fact that the embodied being was first observed in the White Light Tower’s laboratory only became known after the situation reached a catastrophe. Even the White Light could not hide the truth from the other Ten Towers forever.
The Ten Towers agreed to use Blasphemia’s full strength to erase that existence.
In the end, the embodied being’s life response had not been observed since the great clash, but the price left Blasphemia with irreversible damage.
“You mean the Golden Desert Operation. Many agents died.”
“Many agents died? They were all the pride of Blasphemia! Do the old men describe the ruin of Blasphemia’s future in such terms?”
***
I remained silent.
‘That many didn’t die in the Golden Desert Operation….’
I had merely made them go missing using a coincidental extradimensional storm.
Those who drifted beyond the barrier of the extradimensional usually return to reality after a certain amount of time.
This was because the mana inherent in living beings protects them from the extradimensional, and they are also drawn back to their original dimension like a magnet.
Of course, there are cases where side effects such as panic disorder or amnesia occur during the return from the extradimensional to reality. But generally, the purer and stronger one’s mana, the higher the probability of having no return side effects or weaker intensity.
So the vivid anger displayed by the branch chief was quite unexpected to me. Blasphemia being this weakened was beyond my predictions.
I needed to know how a traitor had appeared in Blasphemia. If I could grasp the internal situation of Blasphemia, and further, the Ten Towers, destroying the White Light Tower’s Ten Commandments might become much easier.
The best move to extract information at a time like this is-
“Hmph, is that what the returned ones say? Surely you don’t believe they are the same as before they disappeared.”
Time for a word-salad buffet.
I started throwing out ‘words that sound impressive at first glance.’
‘The Returned’ referred to those who were caught in the depths of the extradimensional and became eroded beings with their very souls stained.
It was also the least likely candidate for whoever was inciting Blasphemia's rebellion.
‘Mages of that level would have managed their own bodies before falling into the depths.’
After all, the world draws on them naturally when they try to use magic. No way they drifted that deep.
Throwing such an obviously wrong answer usually invites the other party to mock your ignorance. I planned to gather clues from that conversation-
“Knowing that much, and still you didn’t draw your magic? Arrogant.”
Wait, why is that actually true.
***
Nardanit seethed with calm rage. Having grasped all the facts, was he engaging in conversation like this to mock them?
“The returned comrades told us. To strip away the hypocrisy and pretense of the Ten Towers and establish a new order.”
“That’s absurd. Are you serious? You must be well aware that the Eroded are not the same beings they were before.”
“No. Who was it that shouted about the dangers of the extradimensional? Wasn’t it the old men of the Ten Towers? We have been deceived all this time! By the folly of the old men who hid the truth!”
Ortes felt deep dismay. To think that among those he had clashed with in the desert, there were humans who had become Eroded and returned.
And not just rampaging madly before being caught and killed, but moving so systematically to overthrow the Ten Towers? Persuading and subverting uneroded humans?
Nardanit caught Ortes’s dismay.
Though he couldn’t read the emotion because the smiling face never wavered even in this moment, it was certain that for some reason, the secret inspector was hesitating.
He immediately constructed a spell with the magical power he had been gathering.
The cables in the engine room clung to his entire body. The mana supplied directly from the mana core of the mana-driven locomotive aided the execution of the grand spell.
His hair moved, drawing complex geometric figures. The biofiber hair adhered, forming metaphysical symbols, and mana circulated through them, completing a spell of destruction.
The branch chief’s authority was activated. The limiter of the mana-driven locomotive’s mana core was released, synchronizing with Nardanit. The spell he had prepared spread across an even larger scale throughout the locomotive.
Nardanit’s best move.
To bury the truth of his comrades, to blow up this locomotive, himself, and the inspector, all together.
He saw the inspector gripping a high-frequency blade. A pathetic resistance.
Even if he cut off his own neck, it was too late. Ortes might be able to block the spell, but he couldn't cancel the command already fed into the mana core
Crunch!
But the blade of the high-frequency blade did not head for Nardanit’s neck. The blade dug into the floor of the locomotive.
‘What is he doing?’
The blade Ortes had stabbed reached even the pipeline through which the mana core circulated mana. But attacking there now wouldn’t change anything.
He saw Ortes insert a Magic Imprinting Drive into the hilt of the high-frequency blade he had planted.
Only then did Nardanit understand what Ortes was trying to do.
“Magic interference? Ha!”
A technique that shakes the structure of a spell by casting a similar type of spell at exactly the same timing when a spell is being executed.
But it was impossible.
The effect of magic interference increases the more precisely the timing matches, and the larger the mana volume of the spell being interfered with, the lower the effect.
To interfere with a spell capable of blowing up an entire locomotive, the magic had to be used with absolutely zero margin of error.
Nardanit began the countdown to the great explosion.
‘Three, two, one.’
At the very end.
Ortes opened his eyes.
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