WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 58

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Grave Robbing and Theft (1)

Karisia, still pressing at her temples, finally spoke.

"What kind of artifact is it? An Antiquity? A Relic?"

For convenience, they were all lumped together and called artifacts, but strictly speaking, there were two kinds. The first was Antiquity, an item crafted by human hands.

Artifact itself was simply the general term for anything magic-imbued; Antiquity was the more specific name for the rare pieces among such items that had endured across a long span of time, distinguished by their unrivaled craftsmanship.

Second: things magic itself couldn't reproduce. Objects created by gods or dragons, for instance, fell under the name Relic. Most of the sacred relics kept by the various orders of the vanished gods qualified as Relics.

"An Antiquity."

The artifact suited to Astrape wasn't going to be some god's sacred relic. Granted, according to the information stolen from the Blasphemia branch, there were a few ancient ruins left standing where a sacred relic might well be hidden.

But this wasn't the moment to actually use Blasphemia's information. If we got caught by Blasphemia mid-dig, they might mistake us for Argyrion and come after us.

The information about the artifact I meant to find this time actually came from the original novel.

It was the artifact the original story's Astrape had used, so of course it would suit her.

"The Toress School is currently excavating several ruins from the ancient Mage King era. One of them holds an artifact called the Talisman of Thunderknell."

In the original novel, Astrape gets sold off to the Toress School and put through one modification surgery after another, all in service of the School's long-cherished project: building a backdoor that could secretly access the Ten Commandments.

The Toress School poured every artifact it could spare into her modification, treating it as an unavoidable sacrifice on the road to creating the perfect Ether hacker.

Among all the artifacts they owned, the one powerful enough to sit at the very core of that modification was the Talisman of Thunderknell.

A magitech prosthetic body normally needs periodic mana recharging. A sufficiently powerful mage could manage some self-charging, but a drop in sustained combat endurance was the natural result.

The artifact that let a magitech prosthetic body overcome that limitation was the Talisman of Thunderknell, an ancient artifact that, under the right conditions, could supply an endless stream of lightning-attribute mana.

Karisia tilted her head at my explanation.

"Why hasn't anyone found something like that until now? An artifact that keeps steadily giving off mana should've been easy enough to track down."

"The Talisman of Thunderknell's performance scales with how well its wearer can master raw mana."

Mana was, fundamentally, a consumable.

A mage's own soul could generate mana on its own, but this natural recovery varied enormously from one mage to another, depending on individual condition and constitution.

Mana potions or manastones could supplement it, but consumables came with a limit to how much a person could carry.

That was why combat mages trained in mana absorption for quick recovery, converting the raw mana that saturated the natural world into usable mana.

The recovery process through mana absorption broke down into three broad stages.

1. The mage seizes control of the raw mana within their range of influence.

2. The seized raw mana is converted to match the mage's own mana attribute.

3. The converted mana is absorbed.

In steps two and three, the raw mana-to-mana conversion and the absorption itself, some loss was unavoidable, which was why the general consensus held that this method of mana absorption had its limits.

The Talisman of Thunderknell was an artifact that optimized both the conversion and absorption processes so their losses approached zero.

In other words, as long as the wearer's grip on raw mana was strong enough, it could supply more mana than was being used at every single moment, making something close to a perpetual power source possible.

Thankfully, limits on an individual's total mana capacity, and the recovery time needed for converted ambient mana, meant it couldn't actually stockpile mana without limit.

If that had been possible, Karisia would've said, without a moment's hesitation, "Let's turn this into a bomb, shall we?"

"I see, then. With no wearer, just lying there dormant like this, its conversion and absorption functions are probably switched off. It stands to reason the Toress Magic Tower would be having trouble tracking it down."

"Yes. The other Magic Towers are still fully preoccupied with Argyrion's terror attack on Elysion, I'd expect. I intend to use this window to secure the artifact before the Toress School does."

* * *

Karisia summoned Arabel.

Arabel realized she was slowly growing used to being called in by her boss in the middle of the night, and despaired at herself for it.

'I shouldn't be getting used to this. Damn it.'

But the moment that handed Arabel an even deeper despair came the instant she stepped into the president's office.

"Oh, you got here quickly. Thank you, given the late hour."

That was because Ortes, not just Karisia, was also in the president's office. Every instinct in her screamed a shrill warning: this meant overtime, no question about it.

'If you knew it was this late, you shouldn't have called me in the first place...!'

But warning or not, there was nothing Arabel could actually do about it. What was she supposed to do when the president herself had summoned her?

At a normal job, she might have thrown down a resignation letter, but unfortunately, Hydra Corp was a lifetime-employment company that didn't permit resignations.

"Director Arabel. Do you have any information on the Toress Magic Tower?"

"Ah. You mean the ones Cryton used to deal with? Didn't you personally wipe out that whole branch yourself?"

"There has not been any particular connection between Etna City and the Toress Magic Tower since then, but it looks like one's about to form."

Ortes's sly grin. Arabel's mind spun into knots. Argyrion's terror attack was spreading across the entire Ether Network by now.

And in the middle of all that, a Magic Tower that Blasphemia's secret inspector was apparently about to visit, of all things?

'Don't tell me the Toress Magic Tower's joined hands with Argyrion? No, realistically, that'd be way too big a risk to take....'

"What kind of information do you need on the Toress Magic Tower?"

"The ruins they are currently excavating."

"Ah. That one's easy."

Ruin excavation was the kind of business that was hard to keep secret even when you tried. For one thing, the manpower needed for a dig alone was a problem.

Unless it was some remote backwater like an extradimensional danger zone, marching a large crew of people out there was bound to draw attention.

And if a Tower, worried about burning through its own mages' manpower, hired fixers or mercenaries instead, keeping it secret became even harder.

Arabel waved a hand once, and a holographic list appeared. The Toress Magic Tower currently had three ruins under excavation.

"Going by the style, one's presumed to be a temple from the Mythic Age. The other two look like ruins from the Magic Age."

The Mythic Age. The era before the Mage King's arrival, when magic didn't exist yet and only sacred invocation did. What followed was the Magic Age, the era the Mage King opened and his ten disciples brought to flourishing.

Privately, Arabel had assumed Ortes would want information on the Mythic Age ruin. If there was a ruin likely to catch the interest of Blasphemia's secret inspector, the odds favored the Mythic Age over the Magic Age.

But Ortes was looking only at the information on the two Magic Age ruins.

* * *

Which of the two was the right answer?

My head spun with confusion. Damn it. Since it was an artifact tied to mana, I was sure it wasn't the Mythic Age one, at least.

'Guess I'll just have to pick blind?'

"Office Head Ortes."

While I was agonizing over the two candidate sites, Arabel's voice reached me.

"Yes?"

"So, why exactly are you looking into information on these ruins?"

"Ah...."

First, I checked Karisia's expression. The partnership with Lampades hadn't been finalized yet. Even the reason for going to Elysion was, officially, framed as preparation for Kyne's Museion admission.

I couldn't leak a deal that was still being handled in secret without the president's consent.

A slight dip of her chin. Karisia nodded, meaning she'd leave the decision to me.

I chose my words carefully.

* * *

"There is a strong chance that one of these two ruins holds an artifact that would be especially useful to the Divinity Investigation."

A truly random excuse, I thought even as I said it. If it were a sacred relic, wouldn't the odds obviously favor the Mythic Age?

"To be precise, it is not the artifact itself so much as a secondary effect that would help the Divinity Investigation, but I will leave the explanation there for now. It's just that nothing's confirmed yet."

Arabel's thoughts raced. Not the artifact, a secondary effect.

Nothing confirmed yet.

And Blasphemia's secret inspector....

"So the Toress School really is dealing with Argyrion, is that it?"

"Yes?"

Unmistakable bewilderment. Seeing that reaction only gave Arabel more confidence. Wasn't this the first genuinely human reaction those inhuman slit eyes had ever shown?

Delighted by Ortes's confusion, Arabel launched straight into explaining the answer to the puzzle she'd just solved in an instant.

It was pure instinct, born from the sheer joy of finally being able to fluster, even for one second, the boss who'd been steadily working her to the bone all this time.

"Not the artifact, but a secondary effect being useful, that means the excavation itself, the situation of it, is what actually matters. Ruin excavations, by nature, involve a lot of outside personnel coming and going. Even if a bunch of unfamiliar mages suddenly show up, it won't look out of place."

Which made the Toress Magic Tower a fitting place to hide Argyrion's people.

"Um, Director Arabel. Is Argyrion not currently just known as a group of the Eroded? Would anyone sane even try to negotiate with the Eroded?"

Arabel scoffed.

"Of course that's how they're known. But isn't the truth that they're actually an organization made up of Blasphemia's own traitor faction?"

Ortes recalled that, before they'd left for Elysion, Karisia had explained Blasphemia's traitors to the Directors.

It had been a moderate, need-to-know explanation, though, so the detail that they were traitors and the Eroded both had been left out!

'Explaining that in detail would mean getting into Karisia's and my own past, so that's a part I really can't get into....'

"It's common knowledge that ordinary Eroded can't be reasoned with. But if word got out that these particular ones can actually be reasoned with, I imagine the Magic Towers would respond differently."

It was well known that the Toress Magic Tower had long had its eye on the Yellow Thunder Tower's seat. Though its influence was too weak to even really count as the second power among the lightning-attribute schools, so the Yellow Thunder Tower itself hadn't paid it much mind.

"Argyrion probably revealed their identity first and proposed the deal. Something like, 'We'll give you information you can use to your advantage in the Succession War against the Ten Towers, so cooperate with spreading silver-thread hosts.' It's an open secret that the Toress Magic Tower buys slaves from all over the world. Using that supply network would be a huge help in deploying silver-thread hosts."

Blasphemia would obviously be watching excavation sites tied to superstition closely, so those sites would be ruled out as a meeting point for a deal with Argyrion.

Arabel delivered her final conclusion.

"So you found out about a secret pact between the Toress School and Argyrion, and the plan is to catch them in the act to expose it, right? And it's not confirmed yet because you haven't actually verified their little honeymoon relationship for yourself."

If he really was a Blasphemia inspector, he couldn't just sit back and watch an act of treason like this unfold, surely. Arabel declared it with total confidence.

Ortes covered his mouth with one hand.

'How in the world did she arrive at a conclusion like that...?'

"No, that's not it. It's a completely different reason, actually."

"Then what exactly is your actual purpose in going, in that case?"

"For now, I am not able to give you an answer."

Arabel heard that famous deflection of his and nodded, satisfied. For the first time, it felt like she'd won.

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