WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 63

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Grave Robbing and Theft (6)

By the time I reached the assembly point, the two monsters were closing in on each other, with the fixers caught in between.

One was the mass of silver thread that the Argyrion mages had, until moments ago, been handling with some degree of composure.

The other was...

A lightning giant. Inside its massive form, which looked as though it were made of storm clouds, lightning coiled and writhed, letting out shrieking roars. Each time its body twisted and bent, thunder rolled out. Proof of overwhelming mana.

'...What is that.'

Judging by the fixers' positions, they looked like they'd just fled from something. This thing must have crawled up from the deep layer. That, if anything, was what confused me.

'There wasn't anything like that when I came out, was there?'

I hadn't properly surveyed the deep layer, but there certainly hadn't been anything that looked this insanely dangerous at a glance!

If something that dangerous-looking had been down there, I'd have backed off first, artifacts or no artifacts, and worked out a proper plan.

I fell into thought. How had something like that come bursting out?

There was only one suspect. The far chamber at the bottom of the deep layer. Whatever had been sealed inside it.

'But...'

The moment I'd perceived it, I'd shut my eyes to keep my brain from overloading, but I could tell that its seal had been a fairly stable structure.

Toress wasn't exactly some small, inexperienced magic tower. Unless they'd ignored the entire excavation procedure and torn the seal open by brute force, whatever had been inside it shouldn't have gone berserk.

"Stop the silver-thread worm, now!"

A sharp voice cut through my thoughts while I was still lost in them.

* * *

The silver-thread worm that Argyrion and Toress Magic Tower had desperately tried to restrain had thrashed more than enough by the time it was dragged to the open ground at the assembly point. It had swung its silver threads like something gone mad, lashing out at anything it could absorb mana from.

The Argyrion mages had tried to bind it down with telekinesis, but they couldn't catch every single thread. In the rampage, the engines of the ships moored at the island of Crete had been destroyed, the silver threads had sensed the mana stored in their engines and burrowed straight in.

In the process, the silver-thread worm had managed to regenerate most of the threads it had lost. The Argyrion mages, meanwhile, had already burned through more than sixty percent of the mana they'd gained from the blessing of "the cause" just trying to hold that massive mass down with telekinesis.

Even so, they judged the situation had turned in their favor. If the fight had continued inside the ruin, the worm's regeneration would have outpaced their own attrition. And if the silver threads had ever breached the ruin's mana core itself, it would have become a catastrophe beyond anything they could handle.

But once they'd dragged it out to open ground with no mana source left to absorb, it became a fair fight.

The blessing of "the cause" had advanced not just their mana reserves but the very wisdom with which they wielded magic. If they threw everything they had into it, the worm, no longer able to keep regenerating, would soon be subdued.

What shattered that expectation was the lightning giant that had crawled up out of the deep layer.

Overwhelming mana could be felt within the giant. If the worm absorbed the mana that made up the giant's body, the mages present would have no way of stopping it on their own anymore.

The worm, too, sensed the mana radiating off the giant. Following the instinct etched into its very being, it turned its threads toward the giant.

What made it truly ironic was that the lightning giant, Lord Thunderknell, thought exactly the same thing. The immense hunger within him recognized the pure raw mana inside the worm. If he devoured all of that raw mana, he might finally quiet this ancient hunger.

The two great beasts had come to see each other as prey. It was a dreadful situation.

Because no matter which one won, there'd be no hope left for the mages on the island of Crete.

Lord Thunderknell raised a hand to the sky. Something like ash rose from his body and climbed skyward, staining the clouds black. Then came a low rumble.

The sky groaned, and a violent downpour began. Flashes of light burst inside the storm clouds as lightning gathered.

Compared to Lord Thunderknell's sophisticated, magical assault, the worm's strategy was simple: close the distance and absorb.

The worm flailed its threads out indiscriminately, devouring anything with mana that touched it. The mages instinctively understood that they couldn't let either monster feed on the other.

They fought desperately to keep the balance of power even. When Lord Thunderknell seared the worm with a spear of lightning fire, they blew apart his right leg; when the worm bound his arm in threads, they severed the strands.

The fight between the two monsters had to end only after they'd worn each other down as much as possible.

In the middle of that relentless struggle, Karuto spotted a silhouette in the distance.

The Blasphemia agent who'd driven the silver-thread worm here. He was standing on a ridge.

'That's him. If we take him down, we can seize back control of the worm!'

Karuto, an Argyrion mage, moved with grim resolve to cut down the Blasphemia agent.

Of course, Ortes didn't know any magic for controlling the silver-thread worm at all.

* * *

"Oh? What seems to be the matter?"

The bastard answered with a sly grin. Karuto raised a hand and leveled a gun at him, a mana gun that charged a mage's own mana into its rounds before firing.

'No reaction to a threat like this? Then he must be equipped with some kind of automatic defense artifact...'

True to a former Blasphemia agent, Karuto's judgment was quick. Even among automatic defense artifacts, the way each one blocked an attack varied. He needed more information.

'Is the artifact a portable model? Or an area-based, stationary defense type?'

"What do you mean, what's the matter? Can't you see this catastrophe in front of you?"

"A catastrophe, is it?"

The Blasphemia agent, still wearing that same grin, looked down at the scene where Lord Thunderknell and the silver-thread worm were locked in their bloody struggle. While the fixers scattered and fled in every direction, Toress Magic Tower and Argyrion, unable to abandon this ruin, stayed behind to hinder the two great beasts.

That chilling grin let Karuto realize two things.

'He didn't move from the spot, just turned his head. A stationary defense type. Firepower on the level of a mana gun won't break through it. I need real magic.'

The first was the artifact's type.

"You... you want everyone dead."

The second was that Blasphemia agent's disposition.

That agent wanted every one of them dead: the traitorous Argyrion, the Toress Magic Tower that had allied with the traitors, and the fixers and mercenaries who'd collaborated under Toress's banner.

Toress Magic Tower, fine, maybe. But condemning fixers and mercenaries who knew nothing about any of this to death without mercy was a kind of madness hard to put into words.

A blind killing intent aimed at any enemy of the Ten Towers. It was fanaticism, pure and simple.

'But if he'd set up a stationary defense artifact...'

The mage who'd been controlling the worm must have taken backlash damage when it was forcibly dragged out of the middle layer. Wounded badly enough that maneuvering while controlling the worm was difficult, he'd have instead chosen to stay put in one place and focus entirely on control.

He must be resolved to erase an enemy of the Ten Towers even at the cost of gladly accepting his own death.

"You don't value your own life at all...!"

Karuto feigned being overwhelmed by the agent's madness and took a stumbling step back, a natural-looking gesture meant to buy time. In that interval, his auxiliary computation device wove the spell together.

The instant a signal surfaced in his mind telling him the spell had finished loading, he launched the attack, so as not to give the bastard any time to cast a spell of his own.

If he could just take this one down, his comrade Lugret could recast the control spell on the worm and turn the situation back around!

* * *

'Ah. So that's what a "silver-thread worm" is. That's what they call that mass of silver thread.'

The Argyrion mage conjured dozens of flames in midair and fired them off.

If things had been the way he thought, if I'd actually been too occupied controlling the worm to move properly, I wouldn't have escaped that blast. I'd be dead.

But I'm not a mage.

From the moment the Argyrion mage approached, my guard had already been up at full alert. The instant I saw the telltale sign of a spell forming, I readied a counterattack.

His attack and my dodge happened in the same instant, crossing each other. His eyes went wide with disbelief. In that flicker of confusion, in the gap before his mind could snap back into the fight, my high-frequency blade cut his body clean in half.

"You... you're not a mage...?"

The Argyrion mage collapsed without finishing the sentence.

The immediate threat was dealt with, at least.

'Now what?'

The silver-thread worm was rampaging under no one's control, and the lightning giant was, just the same, something no one could rein in either.

I looked down toward the entrance to the deep layer.

'What in the world did those Toress bastards think they had going for them, to crack open the room that thing was sealed in?'

They must have had some kind of confidence to break the giant's seal in the first place.

I ran for the deep layer. Fortunately, the giant had smashed through every trap and maze on its way up, opening a new, straight-line path connecting the far chamber to the entrance.

'Please let there be something down there, anything!'

* * *

The situation was desperate. Right after one Argyrion mage vanished, telling a companion, "I'll go take down the one behind this, so the moment control over the worm slips, you cast the control spell," the mages hit their limit.

They simply couldn't stop the two great beasts from colliding head-on.

Storm clouds heavy with thunder swallowed the worm, while silver threads bored into the giant's body. It was a grotesque tangle of each eroding the other.

Footsteps sounded somewhere in the distance. Lugret, who'd been waiting for Karuto, turned her head.

The one emerging through the storm clouds was not the person she'd been waiting for.

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