WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 47

──────

Hey guys, quick announcement before the chapter! We're hosting an original webnovel contest with a $1000 prize pool, a chance to publish your novel on WeTried, and lifetime free reading access for the top two winners!

There's also a participation prize of 500 coins for everyone participating.

If you've got a story sitting in a folder somewhere, or have been wanting to try writing one, we'd love to read it. You only need your first 10 chapters, and you have until 1st January 2027 to submit. New writers are welcome too!

Full details, rules, and how to enter here! https://wetriedtls.com/announcements/webnovel-contest

Feel free to send this to anyone you know who writes. Enjoy the chapter!

If you have any questions, please join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried

──────

Elysion (3)

Karisia studied the dark elf Ortes had introduced as a "friend."

The scar cut horizontally across the bridge of his nose was unusual enough, and so was the blade-antenna grafted on where an elf's characteristic long ear had been cut away, but what was truly strange was that Ortes had called him a friend at all.

'Compared to the introduction...'

He somehow seemed frightened.

Karisia tilted her head and decided to try exchanging a few words with him. He wasn't just Ortes's friend, after all. He was someone she'd been told was worth recruiting for the sake of Hydra Corp's purpose.

"A pleasure to meet you, Lampades. I am Karisia, president of Hydra Corp."

Lampades's face went suddenly pale, and he looked up at Ortes.

It was a reaction Karisia couldn't make sense of.

"Ah, I see. It is a little similar to how I spoke back in my working days. I suppose after so long together, we have come to resemble each other."

Ortes said it lightly. Hearing that, Lampades swallowed once. Try as he might to hide it, the sign of tension was unmistakable.

"It's... a pleasure to meet you too, President Karisia. I'm Lampades, of Lampades Tower."

"Naming your tower after yourself. That takes some confidence."

It was a light joke, but Lampades's reaction was anything but light. He glanced toward Ortes, holding his breath, reading him without so much as turning his head, using only his eyes. It was the kind of technique warriors used to gauge distance from an ambushing enemy.

The explanation Karisia was hoping for came from Ortes instead.

"Ha, ha. He was simply doing me a favor. I asked him, if he ever succeeded, to treat me to a meal someday, and to give the tower a name that would be easy to find."

Lampades nodded.

"That's right. Though I never expected this one to actually come looking for me."

Karisia thought to herself.

'That's not the kind of tension you'd see between friends...'

* * *

At Karisia's very first words, Lampades felt Ortes's shadow fall over her, deep and unmistakable. It was a realization that bordered on horror.

Grown alike after spending so much time together? What a funny thing to say.

Ortes hadn't changed one bit. Which meant the one who'd undergone the change could only be this person called Karisia.

By the Ten Commandments and the great Mage King, Lampades swore he had never once seen Ortes speak to anyone with such warmth.

Beneath Ortes's calm courtesy there had always been something like a blade's cold edge, drawing a firm line between himself and everyone else. But in the way he spoke to Karisia, astonishingly, there was something that felt like intimacy.

Lampades knew of one factor capable of producing a change that dramatic. People who had families, people who'd had children, sometimes became entirely different people from who they'd been before.

But he couldn't imagine Ortes as someone capable of building a family.

'Then the answer is...'

An ideological successor.

Karisia might be Ortes's heir. A second Ortes.

'The most convincing theory about Ortes's true identity, back when he was still active...'

An apocalypticist.

Eschatology came in many branches, but if he had to name the single most well-known one, it was the theory of an apocalypse brought by the extradimensional.

(TL Note: eschatology is the study concerned with the ultimate destiny of the individual soul)

"Doomsayer" grew straight out of that same root.

People who believed that the Magic Towers would one day reach the point where they could no longer hold back the extradimensional flood, and that an unavoidable end would follow.

And those who went beyond merely believing that theory, who worshipped it outright, those were the apocalypticists.

Beings who took the world's ending as their own guiding principle, who weren't Eroded themselves and yet still longed for this world's ruin.

Ortes had always chosen jobs, even on the front line, that took him deep into the heart of the extradimensional. It was only natural that some people came to see him as an apocalypticist enthralled by the extradimensional itself.

But no one said it out loud. What if you went around saying that, and one day Ortes turned up on the very same job as you?

That would be the end of you. Lampades could name at least three fixers off the top of his head who'd died on jobs alongside Ortes for exactly that reason.

'Has the Faceless Ortes finally found his successor?'

And on top of that, commanding a company-scale organization called Hydra Corp?

Lampades's mind raced faster than it ever had. Hydra Corp. The disappearance of five fixers, Ortes included.

'That's it. The Magic Tower's side, wary of Ortes, staged a false job to have him purged. The real assignment, given only to the other four and hidden from Ortes, must have been his elimination...!'

But the job failed. Far from eliminating Ortes, the other four fixers were the ones cut down instead.

'But Ortes was wounded too, and went into hiding for a long time after. Having learned the limits of what one person could do alone, he decided to build an organization of apocalypticists...'

And so the organization called Hydra Corp was born. A name plucked from myth, whose venom even the gods were said to fear, surely chosen with the Ten Towers and this world itself as its target.

Lampades drew in a breath.

Right now, he was standing face to face with the leader of a secret society, and the mastermind behind her, whose goal was nothing less than the end of the world!

Fear and a sense of duty rose in Lampades's chest in equal measure. Just as he opened his mouth to speak,

"President. Allow me to explain this friend's field of research."

"W-wait a moment."

Ortes's words came out ahead of his.

"As you can see, Lampades has a deep fondness for 'machines.' He came to believe that mechanical measurement could analyze the mana in the atmosphere far more precisely and in far more detail than any conventional mage's senses ever could."

* * *

On Earth, there were once scientists who, while trying to solve a problem of noise picked up by an antenna, stumbled onto evidence of the Big Bang. Traces of the Big Bang had drifted through the universe as electromagnetic radiation, and the antenna happened to catch them.

Lampades's methodology worked much the same way. His theory held that the fine-dimensional noise mages couldn't measure carried within it traces, each one distinct, of the extradimensional.

The extradimensional was, at once, a place of erosion and danger, and a golden land of inexhaustible mana.

Sort through the fine-dimensional noise to find a safe extradimensional space, then build a passage connecting to it and usher in a golden age that would surpass even the Mage King's own reign, that was Lampades's dream.

I'd focused my attention on the method for analyzing this fine-dimensional noise.

To analyze this noise, you first had to filter out every existing source of interference, including mana of the Ten Commandments' own properties, and leave behind only what came from the extradimensional itself.

Among those existing interference factors, naturally, was "divine power." Which meant the technological framework needed a filter capable of detecting and screening it out.

That made it an ability that could not have been more useful to a divinity investigation.

There was no telling where the Ten Towers' eyes and ears might be lurking in Elysion. Because of that, the explanation I'd given Karisia left out the parts directly tied to the divinity investigation, but that alone had been enough for her to grasp my meaning.

"Oh my. Lampades Tower's technology would be of great use to our company's business."

"Thank you for saying so. But our tower's technology isn't finished yet..."

This guy. He's always had a strangely low opinion of himself. This was exactly the moment to speak up with some confidence.

I added one more word, for my friend's sake.

"There is no need to worry, Lampades. I personally vouch for your skill."

* * *

Don't.

Don't vouch for me.

Lampades felt a cold sweat break out.

He tried desperately to steer the conversation elsewhere.

"So. Is your visit here about the listing review too? Have you already gone through registration?"

Karisia shook her head.

"I have applied for the listing review as well, but I am not counting on this particular opportunity. I came, in a way, to see the grounds while filing a transfer application for one of our corporate scholarship students to Museion."

'They've sent a spy into Museion itself...!'

This went beyond simple espionage. It might be a means of quietly recruiting the magical world's most gifted talents.

Lampades trembled with fear, but there was nothing he could actually do about it. He had no evidence to back up his own deduction.

'At the very least, I should warn our own scholarship student...'

"What remarkable talent! Our tower's scholarship student is transferring to Museion as well, it would be nice if the two of them became friends. What's the name?"

"Kyne. Her name is Kyne."

* * *

Kyne stood before the Museion transfer officer, demonstrating a simple bit of magic. Hydra Corp had only just registered as a company this year, so her records couldn't be fully trusted on their own.

What the transfer officer found most suspicious was the state of her prosthetic hand. A left hand, fitted onto her right arm.

Any decent company would have gotten her a proper replacement the moment they noticed the mismatch. If this was a sign of child abuse, it needed to go up the chain right away.

Kyne looked down at her prosthetic hand.

This was proof of cherished memories.

Though their life had been poor, the hearts of the Bacchus cult people who had cherished each other were held inside this hand.

At the same time, it was proof of loss.

The one remaining fragment of a happy time that would never come back.

The instant she became aware of those two conflicting feelings, The Black Darkness's mana came pouring out of her. A mage's strong emotion was, above all else, an efficient magical catalyst, and her prosthetic hand was the medium that activated it.

An output no one would have expected from a child. The officer, worried about a magical runaway, was about to shout "Stop!" but Kyne finished casting first.

Beneath a deep, dark night sky, faint stars twinkled. A large-scale illusion spell given shape through dark-attribute mana.

"Oh...!" A degree of polish unbelievable for someone so young. Impressed, the officer asked carefully,

"If it's not too rude, may I ask why you keep that prosthetic hand?"

"...It's a keepsake."

An answer heavy with feeling. The officer apologized and accepted the documents.

A pair of eyes watched Kyne as she answered, quiet and composed. A golden-haired child, scholarship student of Lampades Tower.

Astrape.

* * *

Lampades, having somehow bought himself some time against Ortes, who wanted to sign a technology partnership right then and there, let out a sigh.

'I need to tell Astrape, absolutely no getting close to that Kyne kid.'

No. I should just tell everyone at our tower to be wary of Hydra Corp altogether.

As Lampades hurried to slip away, Ortes came up to him.

"For this listing review, either draw it out for as long as you possibly can, or finish the test as quickly as you can."

"What?"

"I am telling you this as a friend. Either stall for time so you have mana in reserve, or end the test early so you can recover it."

"Are you telling me to fail on purpose?"

"I am telling you to keep enough strength in reserve to protect yourself."

Ortes wore a smile whose meaning was hard to read.

"No. The strength to protect your tower's people. If it ever becomes more than you can handle, come find Hydra Corp."

With that, Ortes turned and left.

Having heard so ominous a prophecy, Lampades shook his head clear and headed for the listing review hall.

Right now, he had to focus on his own work.

He might have felt more than a little pushed into it by Ortes, but founding a magic tower had always been his own dream.

* * *

'How could this...?!'

It was one hour later that a terrorist organization flying the banner of Anti-Ten-Towers struck Elysion.

'Did he know the attack was coming? No.'

Surely not.

The one behind the attack was...!

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