WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 44

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Rest? (3)

"What does it mean, you ask?"

The president asked back, her voice gentle, and that same gentleness only put Kyne more on guard.

After all, this was the person the Office Head of the Divinity Investigation Office himself served. How could she not be on guard?

Even as Kyne trembled, doing her best to put on a defiant front, Karisia had no trouble reading the fear of Ortes in her eyes.

'Would you look at that, seriously...'

Sighing inwardly, Karisia gestured to Ortes.

"Yes, President."

"Step outside for a moment."

"Excuse me?"

Despite Ortes's question, Karisia said nothing more. He knew from experience that when Karisia's mind got set like this, there was no moving her.

"Then, Kyne. I hope you have a pleasant conversation with the president."

Ortes left the hospital room, his farewell delivered with an utterly suspicious expression. That left only Kyne and Karisia behind. Karisia snapped her fingers.

An intricate magic circle wrapped around every surface of the room, floor to ceiling, without a gap. The golden magic circle glowed, reflected in Kyne's eyes.

'Not that I actually needed to show her the circle at all.'

But seeing it with her own eyes would put this poor kid a little more at ease, wouldn't it?

"The Office Head of the Divinity Investigation Office can't hear anything said in this room now."

"What?"

Karisia shrugged.

"Kyne. Office Head Ortes of the Divinity Investigation Office has placed great expectations on your talent."

"I... already know."

"No. You do not understand. Ortes genuinely thinks you might turn out to be one of the key forces in the fight against the Ten Towers."

Kyne wondered when Ortes had even seen enough of her to form such strong conviction. But that small question mattered far less than the resignation and despair welling up inside her.

'Heh heh heh. If you want your family's bodies returned to you, you had better perform well on this mission.'

That was the Ortes Kyne pictured in her head, murmuring those words as he sent her off to war against the Ten Towers.

"Is that why you gathered up every body from the order in one place? So you could release them one by one, every time I fight and win you a result? You didn't need to put a leash on me like that...!"

Karisia couldn't decide whether to sigh or burst out laughing.

'Right. Combine Ortes's way with words and that face of his, and sometimes you get genuinely disastrous results.'

"At the very least, I have no intention of handling you that way."

It was hard to believe those words came from the president of the very man who had tempted her like the devil himself. Kyne stared up at Karisia, dumbfounded.

"Honestly, the Ten Towers are formidable. As you put it yourself, someone fighting on a leash, moving only out of passive obligation, would only get in the way."

Until now, Kyne had recoiled at the thought of a future where she'd be dragged into battle on a leash. And yet somehow, even now, with Karisia telling her that she wasn't needed in the fight against the Ten Towers, that same recoil rose up in her all the same.

That much made sense. All Ortes had done, the day before, was force her to face head-on a grief she hadn't even realized was inside her.

Kyne had never had a reason to resolve or erase her desire for revenge.

The Ten Towers were the reason the Bacchus cult had spent all this time fleeing and wandering the world, and her desire for revenge against them hadn't vanished. It had only been smaller than her grief, hidden in its shadow.

"That is why I intend to offer you an opportunity."

"An opportunity?"

"Whether you will simply become a corporate scholarship student of Hydra Corp, or truly join hands with us in every real sense, that is the choice before you. If you choose to remain a plain corporate scholarship student, it will be enough for you to achieve results at Museion Academy and serve as our advertisement."

Karisia added that even in that case, Kyne's family's remains would be preserved intact and eventually handed over to her. Kyne waited for what came next, her heart trembling.

"But if you truly join hands with us to stand against the Ten Towers, Kyne, you will have to stake your life on it. At the same time, we will prepare a reward fitting for the effort."

Life. Kyne mouthed the word silently to herself.

Talking with Karisia felt strange. Even though she was being far more direct about the risk to Kyne's life than Ortes had ever been, somehow it felt more trustworthy.

Maybe it was because, unlike that suspicious slit-eyed man whose thoughts she could never read, this was someone she could actually talk to.

That was probably part of it, at least. Kyne calmed her unease and thought it through.

Ah.

The reason she trusted Karisia more than Ortes was simple. It was the situation just now, when Karisia had sent Ortes out of the room.

There had been a hidden meaning in the words, "At the very least, I have no intention of handling you that way." Karisia had made it clear that her own intentions differed from Ortes's.

That hinted at some quiet friction between the two of them. If the president trusted Ortes completely, she would have no reason to pursue a different path from his.

Kyne decided that even if Karisia wasn't exactly her ally, she was still someone more trustworthy than Ortes.

Watching her, Karisia thought to herself.

'You get these every once in a while... this kind. Hm.'

'People whose brains are just that innocent.'

* * *

Maybe thirty minutes had passed since I started waiting outside. Karisia finally emerged from Kyne's room.

"How did it go?"

"I gave her a bit of time to think it over. She needs to decide whether to just stay a Hydra Corp corporate scholarship student, study at Museion, and go straight into a job afterward, or actually stand against the Ten Towers for real."

"Simply thinking it over alone would hardly let her grasp the Ten Towers' true strength, though."

"That is why I intend to bring her along on the day of the listing review. She needs to see with her own eyes exactly what the towers she vowed to take revenge on truly are."

I found Karisia's attitude here rather interesting.

Wasn't this a strangely generous condition, coming from the vicious boss who had wrung every last drop out of her own employees until now?

Going by how she usually worked me, I would have expected her to start one-on-one magic lessons with Kyne this very day, cram the basics into her in a single day, and then have her doing self-study right up until bedtime.

"Did something happen?"

"She's not the first kid who's ever thrown herself at the Ten Towers swearing revenge, you know."

It seemed like some fellow feeling, one revenger recognizing another, had drawn an unusual reaction out of Karisia.

"I at least had you, but that kid has nothing."

It was Karisia paying me a compliment I hadn't earned. I just laughed it off. I could hardly claim I had ever been much help to her. She had been a fully finished mage from the very start.

"Now I can actually get some real rest."

"Yes. Me too."

"Excuse me?"

At my question, Karisia just stared right at me. Her golden eyes felt sharper than usual today.

A rest day spent with my boss, President? That is a little cruel of you.

...But I didn't have the nerve to actually say that out loud. I rubbed my temple once and headed for my room instead.

I could hear Karisia's footsteps following behind me.

Whatever. Let me just get today's job done first, sorting the wanted list of Magic Tower fugitives by district, and think about the rest after.

No, actually, I should finish assigning the fugitives to whichever director's organization matched them best before I stop.

* * *

While Ortes sat at his desk doing paperwork, a hobby he would never admit to enjoying, Karisia watched from his bed.

Without even turning around from the hologram and the keys he was typing on, Ortes asked.

"President. Do you find watching this sort of thing entertaining?"

"Yes. Very much so."

Ortes sighed. Did people up at the top get some kind of dopamine rush watching their underlings work?

He changed his mind a moment later. Since Karisia had already come all the way to his room, he might as well consult her about their next course of action.

"If the conflict between the Blasphemia traitor faction and the Ten Towers escalates after the listing review, we could use the opening to move the divinity investigation forward more easily."

"We probably aren't the only ones thinking that way."

The Order of the Divine Name. Karisia had her guard up against the movements of that ancient order, one long buried in history.

She had no idea exactly what plans they were working toward, but as long as Hydra Corp kept collecting sacred relics of the gods, a collision was only a matter of time.

"How would you like us to act, if we end up encountering them?"

"Do whatever you think is best."

Karisia answered without a moment's hesitation. To her, it was simply obvious. Whatever Ortes chose was always the best choice.

Ortes felt like tearing up at that answer. He had been hoping for at least some kind of concrete work directive. Guess he was starting from scratch again this time too.

'Someday, once the Divinity Investigation Office actually gets some staff, I'm dumping every bit of this on them and doing nothing but signing off on paperwork.'

Working from the fugitive data, Ortes finished a customized response plan matched to each director's organizational capabilities and uploaded it straight to Hydra Corp's internal Ether Network.

He looked back over the uploaded document once more and smiled, satisfied.

It was pride, the pride of being, unlike Karisia, the kind of considerate employee who actually prepared concrete work directives.

It was a smile that gave no thought at all to the fact that today was a rest day, or to how the directors would feel about work directives the Office Head of the Divinity Investigation Office had uploaded under his own name on their day off.

* * *

Tailored to Arabel's abilities, her list, filled entirely with Ether Space criminals, ran several times longer than any of the other directors'.

It was an assignment built around the fact that, while other criminals needed to be tracked down in physical reality, the ones Arabel had to catch could be captured as astral bodies through hacking inside Ether Space itself.

"Aaaaaaugh! Come on! On a rest day!"

Arabel despaired at the sheer volume of work she had been handed.

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