WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 49

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Elysion (5)

The Ten Towers' response was swift. They sealed off the infected zone with barriers and immediately began hunting for the culprit.

But what the Ten Towers hadn't anticipated was the movement of the hosts carrying silver thread. The instant one district was successfully sealed off, a bomb laced with silver thread went off in the next, still-unsealed district.

An attack that struck Elysion's security structure at its exact blind spots, as if mocking it.

In the finely engineered chain of events, the Ten Towers sensed an insider's hand. The suspects were obvious: survivors of the Golden Desert Operation. Traitors eroded by the extradimensional.

Whoever had filed the first report on the traitors would surely have a countermeasure already prepared.

Salmosia, the head of the Blasphemia Audit Office, was summoned before the Ten Towers' Council of Elders.

Salmosia watched the light shimmering before his eyes. The rift, warping and wavering reality, led into an Ether Space.

Eleusis, a form of Ether Space so high-dimensional that one could enter it with a fully physical, real body.

The Ten Towers' upper echelon, gathered together across a leap of space, were watching Elysion's chaos with evident interest.

"Salmosia."

"...Yes."

An elder of the Silver Iron Tower spoke.

"Didn't L13 warn us about a rebel faction founded by the Eroded? Did you fail to obtain intelligence on the plot to attack Elysion?"

"My apologies. We anticipated the possibility of an attack, but we were unable to confirm the target."

The elder hadn't summoned the Audit Office Head just to reprimand him. The silver thread writhing within Elysion.

It gave off no trace of mana, clearly a product of the extradimensional. The elder had trusted that some information on that peculiar metal would already have been gathered.

"How is the search for the rebel faction's base progressing?"

"We haven't found any further leads since L13's report. We put out a search for the mobile branches that vanished, but past a certain point, all trace disappears."

"Then it's likely they too possess an Ether Space that's reached Eleusis. We'll need to increase the personnel investigating zones adjacent to the extradimensional."

There were only so many ways to perfectly conceal massive equipment like a mana-engine train or an airship. They must have used extradimensional power to create an Ether Space capable of fully storing real, physical objects.

"Find the ringleader, Salmosia. The traitors your own people produced ought to be caught by your own hands, shouldn't they?"

With those words, Salmosia found himself back in the Audit Office Head's office. He had been expelled from the Ether Space.

Salmosia's hands moved briskly. That the traitors, fearing their base would be exposed, would try to divert attention with a terror attack was a scenario he'd already anticipated.

The problem had been "where" the attack would take place, but Blasphemia had the Ten Towers' backing.

All he had to do was station agents at every likely location.

『To the Blasphemia agent stationed in Elysion.

Root out the rebel faction hidden within Elysion.』

* * *

Things wrapped up faster than expected. I'd already gotten Lampades's contact information, so there was no reason to stick around the listing review hall.

I exchanged a few words with Karisia, then decided to go pick up Kyne. I couldn't ignore the chance she'd get caught up in whatever terror attack Blasphemia's traitor faction pulled off.

'No matter how capable those traitors are, they shouldn't be able to punch clean through all of Elysion's security.'

There's a huge gap between knowing the security details as a Ten Towers insider and actually neutralizing that security.

For one thing, once the Ten Towers knew the intel had leaked, they'd have already prepared countermeasures long ago, and even if the security structure somehow hadn't changed, the traitors would simply be outclassed.

Even if an attack did happen, it wouldn't take even an hour to put down.

...that's how it should have gone.

"Kwahahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!"

Why in the world am I watching some lunatic mage pour napalm all over the city streets?

* * *

K17, Niobe, gasped for breath. Stationed in Elysion, she'd moved the instant Salmosia's order came down.

'But my skill isn't enough to take down the traitors...'

Having accurately gauged her own ability, Niobe chose not to move aggressively to capture the ringleader, and instead decided to sabotage the traitors' plan.

Her calculation was that if the plan to spread silver-thread infection broke down somewhere, the ringleader would appear to correct it.

Once she caught whichever traitor showed up, other agents would come as backup, and all Niobe had to do until then was hold the ringleader in place.

But what appeared before Niobe wasn't a Blasphemia traitor. It was a traitor from Elysion's central guard.

"No, no, that won't do! Not when the right world is finally about to arrive!"

"Ngh...!"

At the feet of the red-cloaked mage cackling like a madman lay the bodies of guards who'd been his comrades mere seconds ago.

Rupaldon, a fire-attribute mage, was an apocalypticist. The Ten Towers knew perfectly well that apocalypticists had hidden themselves within their own organization.

There was a watch list of apocalypticist suspects, kept for close surveillance and, when necessary, purges. Blasphemia was originally meant to strike enemies outside the Ten Towers; enemies within were handled by a different organization.

But Argyrion's leadership had once counted among Blasphemia's own top-tier agents. Apocalypticists didn't care what means they used, sometimes even colluding with cultists of superstition. That was why agents with high enough clearance had had the chance to see that secret list.

The apocalypticist suspect list, which should have served the Ten Towers' safety, had instead become a recruitment roster for Argyrion. Rupaldon was an apocalypticist who'd gladly joined hands with Argyrion.

Argyrion had used Rupaldon as a leak of Elysion's internal information, then invited him to join their "grand plan."

The idea: use the sacred ground of Elysion as a gate to the extradimensional, the first step in a plan to bring the apocalypse down from beyond dimensions.

The moment Rupaldon heard Argyrion's plan, he resolved to cooperate wholeheartedly.

And that moment was now.

"Can't have the plan fall apart over something like this, right? Haha. Argyrion's esteemed Captain said Blasphemia would've had an agent standing by, just in case. And look at that, exactly as he said!"

The heavy weapon mounted on Rupaldon's body spat fire. Flame clinging to a sticky liquid, once it touched skin, wouldn't go out even underwater.

The only way to strip it off was to scrape the liquid from the skin with a blade. Rupaldon fired the auto-targeting liquid flame while chanting a spell of his own at the same time.

A line of fire formed from the tip of his staff. About three meters long, it became a whip that swept the surrounding area every time Rupaldon flicked his wrist.

"I was hoping to meet a somewhat more seasoned agent than some green little rookie!"

Niobe hastily activated the Magic Imprinting Cartridge issued to agents. A circular barrier spread out, centered on the user. A shield filled with water might buy her a little time against the fire's heat.

"This is exactly why it won't do!"

The flame whip's color changed. Fire that flared white-hot in an instant slammed into the water barrier. With a deafening roar, the water flashed into vapor in a heartbeat.

Instead of pulling out another cartridge or pouring more mana into reinforcing the barrier, Niobe rolled her body aside.

"Fire loses to water? Overwhelming firepower beats water every time."

The spot where Niobe had been standing a moment before was scorched pitch black. Not a trace of the spilled water remained.

"Silver. I need more silver."

Rupaldon looked toward the Museion admissions office beyond. Sacrifices, still immature and lacking in combat ability, yet with potential high enough that Magic Towers recommended them personally.

If the silver thread succeeded in reaching the students inside, the extradimensional descent would be pulled forward in an instant.

All that effort arranging the schedule so that he'd be posted on this exact patrol route at this exact hour was finally paying off.

"Pity, Blasphemia. Seems like all your friends are busy elsewhere, hm?"

Rupaldon closed in on Niobe, who held a Magic Imprinting Cartridge in each hand.

'Doesn't even have enough mana left to chant a spell herself. I'll finish this in one blow and get the silver thread into Museion-'

"May I ask you something?"

Rupaldon spun around. Someone had slipped past his own detection spell and gotten this close?

The weapon spat fire on reflex, the spirit intelligence's auto-targeting locking onto the source of the voice through its auditory sensor.

But there was no one standing amid the flames.

"Is this the Museion admissions office?"

The last thing Rupaldon saw was a single, bone-chilling smile.

The blade that pierced his heart was cold. Feeling the wound slowly grow hot, Rupaldon closed his eyes.

* * *

Niobe stared blankly into the flames.

Doubt came before relief at having survived.

That pallid skin, that face with no distinguishing features. The faint smile was exactly the face the secret inspector had claimed to have borrowed.

And yet somehow a familiar air lingered about him. The air of that senior who'd fooled her so completely.

"Ah, a pleasure to meet you. I've got some business at Museion, is all."

"Th-that face. Didn't you say it was fake?"

"Of course it is. This time I've come as an ally, you see. Normally I'd have to show up wearing a face nobody could recognize at all. But if I came in with a different face in a situation like this and said, 'I'm that same person from before, only this time I'm on your side,' that would blow one of my disguises too, wouldn't it? You have any idea how hard it is to put one of these together? Better to use them sparingly."

'Is that so?'

This being only her second encounter with a secret inspector, Niobe had no choice but to accept the excuse.

"I have received special orders to move the prospective students to a temporary shelter, in case the Museion admissions office gets targeted next. Niobe, why don't you withdraw from the scene for now."

* * *

This is going to drive me insane.

Why's that same Blasphemia kid from last time here again?

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