WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 48

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Elysion (4)

The terror attack began without warning. A passerby's body began to swell. The flesh ballooned upward until it couldn't withstand its own expansion, and burst.

Torn skin scattered in every direction. Red rain and flesh-colored rags blanketed the area. First came silence. Then screaming. Chaos erupted among the people drenched in flesh and blood.

But there were those who watched the screaming calmly, veteran mages, including Elysion's own security personnel.

Survive long enough as a mage and magical disasters like this stop being strange. The seasoned mages drew their equipment and moved to assess the situation.

Too weak to be a suicide bombing. For now, it looked more like a curse aimed at some specific grudge.

Two groups of mages moved first. The White Light Tower, specialists in the light-attribute mana that curse-breaking demanded, and, on the opposite end, the Black Darkness Tower, experts in curses themselves, wielders of dark-attribute mana.

The mages had just pushed the crowd back and were closing in on the scene.

The corpse stood up.

The two legs, sprawled on the ground after losing their upper body, shot upright. Something white and glistening writhed between the ruptured muscles. The mages instinctively threw up defensive spells and readied their attacks.

A beam capable of melting a human body in an instant gathered at the tip of a staff.

But the silver threads burst free before it could fire.

The standing legs crumpled as if collapsing, and something like white thread poured out through the gaps in the torn muscle. It looked like a colony of parasites shedding free of a host, blown up to human scale.

Those who'd been splattered with flesh when the first person burst were worse off. Silver threads embedded between the scraps of meat stretched out and burrowed into their bodies.

Those quick to grasp what was happening reacted at once, burning the threads off or amputating the affected limb.

But the unlucky ones, those who reacted too slowly, or whose threads had burrowed somewhere impossible to deal with immediately, like an eyeball, met a different fate.

The threads that had burrowed inside multiplied, drawing on the mage's own mana as fuel. Swelling, again.

That was how the flood of silver thread (銀絲) began.

* * *

'What in the world is happening?'

Had Elysion's mages built some grotesque bioweapon and let it leak?

The screaming had started outside the listing review hall. Several mages, bleeding, fled inside. The mages taking the test realized something was seriously wrong.

They joined forces and raised a barrier over the hall's entrance, so the chaos outside couldn't spread in.

That was when one of those who'd fled in began to swell.

The instant the silver thread was about to tear through the skin and surge out.

A beam of light shot in from somewhere. The beam, aimed precisely at the infected person, erased them without a trace...

It did not.

Only the silver threads vanished. As the silver threads filling the space beneath the skin disappeared, the skin sagged into a hideous, loose shape, like a deep-sea fish dragged up to the surface.

People looked around frantically, but no one had seen even who had cast the spell that stripped away the silver threads, let alone what kind of magic it had been.

No one, except Lampades.

The moment he'd heard something ominous from outside, he'd already been scanning the area.

Where was Ortes, who had left behind a warning as though he'd known this would happen?

Ortes was nowhere to be found. The only one left in the hall was Karisia, the president of Hydra Corp.

When the panicked crowd from outside finally came pouring into the hall, Lampades saw Karisia raise her right hand, sheathed in a black gauntlet.

Just as the host of the threads was about to burst, from the tip of her forefinger unfurled a magic so advanced that no one present could even begin to parse it.

'Why save them?'

If chaos was Ortes's goal, wouldn't it have been more useful to just let it happen? Lampades studied Karisia's expression.

Her golden eyes were shining.

'She's different from Ortes.... Well, of course she is. The man's got slit eyes.'

The atmosphere. Unlike Ortes, who never seemed to carry a shred of humanity, Hydra Corp's president felt human.

Still turning that difference over, Lampades realized at some point that the strange noise from outside had stopped.

Beeeeep-

An ear-splitting screech blared from the loudspeakers, the sound of a sound check before a broadcast.

「Greetings, fellow mages of Elysion. We come forward now to expose a secret the Ten Towers have kept hidden.」

Not a word had been said yet about the attack, but everyone who heard that voice knew instantly: whoever was broadcasting now was behind the terror attack.

「The Ten Towers have long preached to us of the danger of the extradimensional. That the evil writhing beyond it is a blight upon this world. They've slandered that blessing as a curse! But isn't that strange?」

Damn it. Lampades muttered under his breath. That opening alone was enough to guess who he was dealing with.

「If the extradimensional were truly dangerous, why does every mage dream of ascension? Look at the contradiction, speaking of transcending beyond this world while fearing the world outside. As the Ascended prove by stepping beyond it, the truth lies in the extradimensional.」

What a grotesque distortion of logic. Only someone who had gained the power to transcend the extradimensional's ruin could even attempt ascension, and yet this twisted mind had convinced itself that the truth lay within that ruin. The Eroded, or an apocalypticist.

In truth the two weren't all that different. The only distinction was whether the madness came from extradimensional contamination or arrived on its own.

「To hide this self-evident truth, the Ten Towers spread lies. Research into the extradimensional was monopolized in their hands! Fellow mages! Join us, Argyrion (ἀργύριον)! Gain new eyes and ears, and witness true wisdom!」

Lampades took a deep breath. Was that the group Ortes truly belonged to?

No. It could just as easily be the opposite. While the Ten Towers' attention was fixed on Argyrion, Hydra Corp could carry out its own wicked schemes without anyone in its way.

'Then is Argyrion just bait to cover for Hydra Corp? Or is it...?'

「Many of our fellow mages, moved by our cause, have offered up their own bodies and mana. Now we shall carry out the rite that frees this sacred ground of Elysion from the Ten Towers' rule-」

The Argyrion mage never got to finish. The loudspeakers cut out all at once. Elysion's administration must have wrestled the broadcast line back.

"Magic Tower Master. What should we do?"

"Wait here. This isn't the first terror attack on Elysion. The Ten Towers will soon-"

In that instant, Astrape, who'd gone to file the transfer exam paperwork, flashed through Lampades's mind. The girl was alone right now.

An ominous possibility surfaced in his mind. He checked his gear and his mana.

His remaining mana was under half. But he still had plenty of charging mana cartridges left, a habit left over from his days as an active fixer.

"Set up a defensive formation and wait here. If...."

Ortes's parting words. If things become too much to handle, seek out Hydra Corp.

Would Ortes really let Lampades Tower survive? Lampades believed he would. Hadn't Ortes seen enough use in Lampades Tower to at least try to broker an alliance with it?

But whether living as an apocalypticist's pawn or dying was the happier fate, that was anyone's guess.

Lampades's gaze turned to Karisia. At some point she had already gone to the host who'd been wrapped in silver thread moments before and was casting healing magic on them.

Organs and vessels already ruptured under the mass of silver thread. The skin, stretched to its limit, settled back into shape and restored itself.

Watching Karisia pour healing magic into someone she'd surely never met before, Lampades arrived at a theory.

'Maybe.'

Maybe Karisia was different from Ortes.

'My first impression of her was that she had no idea about Ortes's truth. I revised that once I heard her speak in the most Ortes-like way imaginable, but....'

In fact, her true nature hadn't been tainted by Ortes after all. That would explain why she was healing the victims like that.

'Or maybe Ortes simply hasn't shown his true colors to her yet. Hiding his identity behind clever words, brainwashing her into believing he's an ally.'

Lampades reached a conclusion.

"If a situation arises that the mages gathered here can't handle, go to the president of Hydra Corp over there, identify yourselves as Lampades Tower, and ask for help. But if the slit-eyed man comes near, don't respond to a single word he says. I'm going to find Astrape."

He decided to trust in whatever compassion and kindness still remained inside Karisia.

'Once I've brought Astrape back safe.... I need to warn Karisia that Ortes isn't someone to be trusted.'

My own life might be at risk. But that pure-hearted mage can't be left to be used as Ortes's pawn without even knowing it.

Lampades made that vow to himself.

* * *

Karisia examined the host who'd been infected with silver thread (銀絲) and thought.

'Hm. That silver thread's some kind of summoned creature, just as I thought. Whether it technically counts as living or not is beside the point, since a forced unsummoning spell works on it. And as long as it hasn't burrowed into the host's brain, healing magic still does the job.'

She ran a hand over her gauntlet.

'Argyrion, was it? They shouldn't be much trouble to deal with. I should let Ortes know when he's back.'

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