WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 43

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Rest? (2)

"This is what came out of Sikton's brain."

What Divius held out looked like a writhing mass of fine threads. Maybe this was what it would look like, some old ghost story's distorted version of a horsehair worm.

The odd part was the color. It shone silver.

"That's silver."

"Just silver? As in the precious metal?"

"Yeah. The kind you'd use as a magic catalyst, or make into jewelry."

"Is it some kind of brain-hacking device, the sort the Silver Iron Tower uses?"

"I don't sense any magic in it, not even a trace. But it just... moves anyway. It's like magic."

That wasn't "like magic" in a good sense. A phenomenon outside the normal order. It was the kind of word you only reach for when describing something no one can explain.

Something that wasn't magic but felt like magic anyway. Plenty of esper powers like Qi or sacred invocation had once been able to rival magic, but by now all of them had faded, pushed aside by magic's dominance.

If a mage, in this day and age, called something "like magic," there was only one thing it could actually be.

"It is a product of the extradimensional, then."

Divius nodded.

"Looks like that thing crawled into his brain and was manipulating his emotions and perception somehow. Same with Dimedes's brain. Getting him blackout drunk to strip his guard down probably used Bacchus's sacred invocation, but..."

The mechanical arm hanging at the doctor's waist extended and dragged over the glass tube holding Dimedes's corpse.

"A small silver fragment turned up inside this guy's brain too. Seems like the sacred invocation alone was enough to finish the brainwashing on the other chimeras, but Dimedes was still a director even at his worst, so he must've resisted to the end, and that's why they had to shove this silver thread in."

I felt a sigh building in my chest. Was Bishop Sikton some kind of Eroded, too? Between him and the Blasphemia traitors, it felt like I'd been hearing about the Eroded strangely often lately.

"So one of the Eroded was hiding inside the order as well. That is an ominous sign."

"Calling Sikton himself one of the Eroded is a stretch. His body doesn't carry the extradimensional's particular wavelength. You should think of it as Sikton having had this thing injected into him by an actual Eroded."

That explained why Sikton had been so desperate to open a door to the extradimensional. Maybe some command, like "open a passage connecting to the extradimensional," had been programmed into him.

An Eroded scheming by using beings who weren't Eroded themselves, huh.

That was quite the coincidence. The Blasphemia traitors were exactly that kind of Eroded, the sort who acted through others.

"Got any idea what's behind it?"

What should I do.

My hesitation didn't last long. Something this important, I couldn't decide alone.

"I will discuss it with the president and let you know."

Sharing information that required security clearance always needed a superior's approval anyway.

* * *

There's something the two of us need to talk about. Come to my room once you see this. That was the message Ortes had sent.

Etna City was thick with acrid volcanic ash, so there was no such thing as crisp morning sunlight, but Karisia's mood couldn't have been more refreshed.

She washed up and got ready as fast as she could, then headed for the room next door. Ortes was sitting at his desk, checking Ether Network news through the holographic projector built into his gauntlet.

"Oh, President."

"Guess work's been fun for you lately? Calling me in on a rest day and everything."

The corner of Ortes's mouth twitched, just barely. That was the reaction he had whenever he was about to say something like "What are you talking about?" and thought better of it.

But Karisia didn't pay much attention to that.

When it was just the two of them, he'd complain about not wanting to work, and then go and shoulder the hardest tasks in all of Hydra Corp anyway. That was just who he was.

"Do you recall, when I reported on Blasphemia before, that I mentioned the 'traitor faction'?"

"The Golden Desert Operation participants. You mean the agents who fell into the extradimensional while fighting us, and came back as the Eroded?"

"Something like an extradimensional brainwashing device had been planted in Sikton's brain. We believe an Eroded was behind it."

Karisia understood everything Ortes meant, even the parts he hadn't bothered to spell out.

The Blasphemia elites who'd taken part in the Golden Desert Operation were working in the shadows to open a door to the extradimensional.

Ortes went on to lay out everything he'd heard from Sikton about the Order of the Divine Name, secrets that still couldn't be shared in front of the directors.

Having heard it all, Karisia nodded.

"Well, for now, it's good news. Let's hold off on telling the directors for a bit."

"You are calling this good news?"

"The Ten Towers just got two new enemies. Maybe we can move up the timeline on destroying the White Light."

Karisia's right hand started twirling a lock of her bangs, round and round. It was a habit that came out whenever she was thinking something through alone. By the time the strand had wound around her index finger past five turns or so, she opened her mouth.

"If we use the artificial Ten Commandments as a bomb and throw it at the White Light Tower-"

"No."

Ortes cut Karisia off flat. It was the kind of attitude neither of them would ever show at an official Hydra Corp function.

"I was joking."

"It did not sound like a joke to me."

Having loosened the tension a little with a joke, Karisia started calmly running the numbers. Since Ortes had gone in disguised as a secret inspector, information about the Blasphemia traitor faction had already reached the Ten Towers.

The traitor faction, too, would have realized their plot had been exposed, since the branch chief who was supposed to join them never showed.

An ordinary Eroded, one bent on blindly destroying everything the world was made of, would probably have lost too much of its mind to think this coolly. But the Blasphemia traitors seemed to have kept hold of a considerable amount of reason....

"When's the Ten Towers busiest these days?"

"They are busiest during any tower-wide event. Lately, that would be the practical assessment for the Magic Tower listing review, taking place in Elysion."

"That's when they'll come, then."

A terse sentence, stripped of every essential explanation, who, for what purpose. Between the two of them, that alone was enough to get the meaning across.

Compared to the full might of the Ten Towers, the traitors were the weaker side. Which meant they'd use the moment the Ten Towers were busiest to pull off something shocking enough to redirect all that attention, something like a terror attack. That was the reasoning.

The one who actually carried out the attack would be a puppet fed some kind of implanted command, just like Sikton this time. And even if they managed to track down the traitor-faction agent who'd made the puppet, they'd never find the traitors' real base, not with memory erasure and whatever else already taken care of in advance.

"Wasn't Sikton some kind of rehearsal for the puppet they'll use in the real attack? Killing two birds, doubling as a trap for whenever a Blasphemia agent came around investigating the Bacchus cult."

That was where Karisia's reasoning landed.

"...Should we hold off on attending?"

Ortes asked carefully. Karisia shook her head.

"Let's go. We should see the Ten Towers' overwhelming strength with our own eyes at least once. The moment we get there, you go make contact with the person you were planning to recruit."

Ortes nodded and pulled a crystal sacred relic from inside his coat. Karisia pushed the thing sitting on the table back toward him.

The two of them pushed the relic back and forth between them several times.

Ortes and Karisia stood up and each raised a hand.

Without a word, the shapes of their outstretched hands were different. Ortes held out paper, all five fingers spread wide. Karisia, a fist clenched tight, rock.

"...You cheated, didn't you?"

Not once, in all this time, had Karisia ever beaten Ortes at rock-paper-scissors. Ortes shrugged.

"Either way, please keep the crystal relic yourself, President. If I won fairly, then that is simply how things stand, and if I won by cheating, then a president who failed to notice the trick would be in far greater danger than I am."

* * *

Kyne struggled to calm her trembling heart. She'd already been shut up in this hospital room for two days now.

The meals that came were bland, but neatly presented. Still, there was no telling what might be mixed into them, so she hadn't even touched a bite.

She hadn't seen the slit-eyed man from that first day again since. Kyne swore to herself that when she did, she wouldn't waver.

Kkiiiing-

The door that had been shut swung open with a mechanical whir. Behind it stood the same slit-eyed man as before, and...

'Who's that...?'

Standing in front of the man was a beautiful white-haired woman. Something about the contrast between her crisply pressed black suit and her white hair gave off an air that pressed down on anyone nearby.

"President. This child is Kyne."

President. Kyne turned the word over in her mouth.

So that meant...

'That person outranks the slit-eyed man?'

"A pleasure to meet you, Kyne. First, please take a look at this."

The president took a seat in the chair beside the hospital bed and held out a stack of papers. Dense, complicated text covered every inch of it.

The Bacchus cult might be wanderers, but that didn't mean they lacked learning. Kyne had no trouble reading through the document's opening lines.

"A scholarship application?"

She read on to the next paragraph. Hydra Corp, hereafter "the Corporation." Scholarship applicant, hereafter "the Applicant."

Below the definitions, page after page laid out, in dense detail, everything the group called "Hydra Corp" was prepared to offer her.

"What does this mean?"

Kyne asked even though she already knew exactly what this contract was. It was a devil's contract, one meant to lock in, in far more concrete terms, the deal she'd already made yesterday.

Her question now was a pitiful little act of resistance, an attempt to buy herself even a moment more before that time arrived.

* * *

'Sign it already. Come on.'

I was rooting for Kyne to make up her mind.

Kyne's potential had already been proven. Give her just a year, and her talent as a mage would bloom overnight.

And once that happened, all the work of the Divinity Investigation Office would...!

I pictured a happy future and cheered inwardly.

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