WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 45

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Elysion (1)

Ortes's work distribution was rational. The skill with which he'd picked out a suitable opponent for each team, matched to the abilities of the subordinates under each director's command, was nothing short of extraordinary.

Of course, the workload itself was nothing ordinary either.

The difficulty of catching any single fugitive wasn't especially high. The number of employees required had been calculated precisely according to each fugitive's rank, and dispatching exactly the number written down was usually enough to guarantee success.

Under normal circumstances, the directors would have rounded up criminals at a leisurely pace, working their subordinates without much strain. Skilled mages were rare among criminals, after all.

Crimes of necessity? A mage with a Magic Tower's backing rarely fell into financial hardship unless they took up gambling.

Violent crimes like murder? A talented mage could get most crimes committed within their own Magic Tower's sphere of influence smoothed over by the tower's power.

That was precisely why most fugitives were mediocre mages with no Magic Tower behind them. Ortes personally handled the special high-risk criminals that required a director's own involvement, so apprehending fugitives had become, in effect, simple labor.

The time limit was the real problem, though.

Ortes had demanded results within the narrow window before the listing review's paperwork deadline. The daily arrest quota he'd calculated struck a remarkably deft balance, wringing out the maximum possible labor intensity while still, just barely, preserving the organization's capacity.

"Ha, haha..."

Arabel cheered, at long last, that the long stretch of labor and endurance had ended.

In truth she had no strength left to actually cheer with, so she settled for feeling a little pleased on the inside.

'The paperwork's in, and now the president and Ortes are heading to Elysion to attend the practical assessment in person....'

The two people in this company who loved work the most were about to disappear.

For a while, at least, she'd be free.

* * *

At the meeting held the very next day after all the paperwork requirements for the Magic Tower listing review had been met, Karisia laid out a chilling prophecy.

"During the divinity investigation in which Dimedes died, the Office Head of the Divinity Investigation Office uncovered one fact."

Divius let out a low "oh" of surprise. This had to be about that silver thread embedded in Sikton's brain.

Divius clearly remembered being told they'd share it once he'd consulted with the president first. This was the moment one thread of the secret shared only between the president and Ortes finally unraveled to the directors as well.

"It is that the secret organization the Ten Towers command is, for whatever reason, in the middle of a civil war."

Even to Arabel, who still held onto Nardanit's dying words that Ortes was Blasphemia's secret inspector, this was unexpected news.

'It wasn't just... some branch chief's embezzlement scandal?'

Something was happening. An upheaval shaking the Ten Towers' rock-solid hierarchy.

There had been, on rare occasions, cases of one school toppling the existing school that held a Commandment and inheriting the name of that Commandment and its Tower.

But this wasn't a succession war fought over a Ten Towers seat, not a fight between someone trying to rise into the Ten Towers and someone trying to defend their place there. A civil war breaking out inside an organization that already belonged within the Ten Towers' own fence?

Even in Arabel's own database, it was without precedent.

"That traitor faction will actively sabotage things to keep their base hidden. It is certain that some major incident will occur during the listing review, and we can expect scattered terror attacks across various regions."

Cryton's face went a sickly shade of gray. More than half of Etna City's new construction right now had his hands on it somewhere.

If a terror attack struck Etna City and damaged those buildings, he'd be the one sent in to rebuild them, too.

At the thought that he might have to build everything he'd already put up all over again, from scratch, Cryton's vision went white.

"Etna City is comparatively out on the periphery, so the odds of a terror attack reaching us are low, but please prepare for it as thoroughly as you can."

* * *

Karisia had chartered the entire first-class car of the mana-engine train bound for Elysion.

Partly because she disliked the crowds, and partly because there were things they needed to discuss with some degree of secrecy.

"Kyne."

"Mm."

Ortes felt a kind of disappointment, watching Kyne stick close to Karisia's side instead of his.

'Come to think of it, I'm the one who saved her, and yet she's oddly wary of me....'

If Kyne had heard that thought, she'd have found it absurd.

"As I told you beforehand, I intend to act apart from the president at the listing review's registration desk. Once you have finished registering for the transfer exam, please return to the president's side as well."

He didn't bother explaining exactly why she needed to stay close to Karisia. He'd already explained plenty before they boarded the train, and even with the whole car chartered, there was still a real risk that anything said inside could leak to the Ten Towers.

"And is your control over your 'power' coming along well?"

Kyne nodded. She spread out both her hands, each one a left hand. From the mechanical left hand fitted onto her right side came a strangely vivid scent of grapes.

From the other rose a dim, black mana. Despite the mutually exclusive nature of mana and divine power, she'd succeeded in wielding both at once, proof of the exceptional mana control Kyne possessed.

Ortes found the current situation hard to make sense of.

'That's odd. She should have resented Bacchus enough by now to have drained her divine power dry.'

Unless her past had been unusually twisted away from the original story, the way Karisia's own history had diverged from becoming the White Nameless.

But the point at which Ortes himself had brought down Sikton had come far too late.

Every last person in the Bacchus cult had already fallen brain-dead by then. Her resentment toward Bacchus shouldn't differ at all from how it went in the original.

After a moment's thought, Ortes's conclusion was simple. It was a positive change, so there wasn't much point agonizing over it. If she didn't resent Bacchus, didn't that just mean Kyne's despair was lighter now than it had been in the original?

'Probably thanks to having an adult around, I'd guess. Even if she can't rely on them completely, it still beats being alone.'

Ortes didn't know that Kyne prayed every day for the peace of the family Bacchus had taken captive.

More precisely: he didn't know she was praying for the eternal rest of the very family he himself was holding hostage.

* * *

Elysion. Paradise of mages.

The whole panorama came into view beyond the mana-engine train's window. The massive spire at the center was the very tower the Mage King was said to have used when he made his bid for ascension.

The dome-shaped veil draped over the city, radiating out from that spire, was a mana-scattering phenomenon (散亂) formed as residual mana from the Ten Commandments converged on Elysion.

Ten strands of mana, each carrying a different attribute, collided and canceled each other out, reverting back into pure mana.

It was a membrane of mana holding every attribute in even balance, a symbolic boundary dividing Elysion's inside from its outside.

The closer the mana-engine train drew toward Elysion, the more Kyne felt a suffocating tightness in her chest, as though she couldn't breathe.

It was the mana saturating the air. A region whose mana density ran far thicker than even most extradimensional erosion zones, so dense it felt almost like being submerged underwater.

Karisia took hold of the mana around Kyne and thinned its concentration, just in the space immediately around her. Then, so that Kyne, gasping for breath, could calm herself, she pointed off toward the window and the distance beyond it.

"Look, over there. Take slow, deep breaths while you do."

Karisia's fingertip wasn't aimed at Elysion's interior, sealed off behind that thick barrier. She was pointing at the fields of Elysion spreading out in the far distance.

There, fresh greenery waited.

Not some grotesque meadow warped by extradimensional forces.

Not a cursed plain steeped in the writhing foam of the extradimensional.

Just as it was, land where green plants grew thick and unbroken, that was what lay there.

The plants caught the sunlight and shimmered, each in its own shade of green. The green painted by the overlapping, interwoven shadows of leaves catching the sun's glimmer shifted its hue with every passing moment.

For the first time, Kyne realized that the color lumped together under the single word "green" could hold so much variety.

Farther out, golden wheat fields rippled in the wind, swaying together like dancers in a single wave. It was a sight Kyne had never once seen in her whole life, spent fleeing from place to place with the Ten Towers on her heels.

That scenery stretched all the way to the horizon. Like an emerald inlaid with gold, Kyne thought.

It was the kind of vivid, living nature she'd only ever heard of in old stories.

"It's a sight you can only see in Elysion. Growing crops at all is possible anywhere within a Magic Tower's sphere of influence, but there's nowhere else that can farm on this kind of scale except Elysion's fields."

All of that scenery belonged to the Ten Towers.

Kyne thought back on the wandering life of the Bacchus cult. Their ability to use divine power had kept them from dying, but the lives of people who fundamentally couldn't settle in any city were barren ones.

Clatter! The mana-engine train came to a stop.

Ortes rose from his seat and opened the door. Karisia walked toward the open door. Kyne, who'd been lost for a moment in memories of the past, gave her head a shake and dashed after her.

* * *

Nothing much happened on the way to the Magic Tower listing review venue. Given what kind of place it was, there was so much to see even with my eyes shut that my head started to ache a little, but this much I could handle.

"Well then, I will go look for a friend of mine."

"Come to think of it, I never heard about this friend of yours. What kind of person are they? A man, a woman?"

"A man. A rather peculiar-looking dark elf. An elf who cut off his own ear and had some kind of pointed antenna device implanted in its place-"

"...That person, over there?"

Where Karisia pointed stood a dark elf with a horizontal scar across the bridge of his nose. His copper skin and silver hair were about as stereotypical a dark elf appearance as they came, but instead of the elongated ears typical of elves, a blade antenna sat where his ear should have been.

He looked like he'd just resolved some urgent matter, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Oh."

I let out a low exclamation.

Found him right away.

* * *

Lampades thought.

'Not here. Not here. He's not here. Thank god....'

That remark from that day really had just been a passing whim, after all. There was no way that man would come all the way to Elysion just to see him.

Surely he wasn't checking the list of Magic Towers registered for the listing review every single month, either.

For the rest of his life, there was no way he'd ever cross paths with that man again.

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