WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
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◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss ◈
Chapter 66
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Negotiation (2)
I'd said, with a fair bit of confidence, that I'd try to bring Lampades over to our side, but turning his mind around was going to require Karisia's cooperation, no question about it.
The gift I'd originally meant to give him had gotten contaminated with impurities and turned into a hazardous substance. Something like that needed an archmage's skill to sort out.
An archmage like the president, to be specific.
I set the Thunderknell Orb, made by mixing Lord Thunderknell with the silver-thread worm and adding a few spoonfuls of my own effort, down on the desk, then rolled it toward Karisia.
Karisia caught it smoothly.
"A spirit compressed into the form of a tool. I've seen spirits processed into things like spirit intelligence or spirit venom before, but this one's unusual even among those."
Turning the orb slowly over in her hand, Karisia tilted her head once.
"But didn't you call it a talisman? This looks more like it's shaped as an orb."
"Impurities got mixed in during the crafting process. It was originally meant to come out finished as a pendant-style talisman.... But once it combined with the silver-thread worm, mother-body of the silver thread itself, it ended up taking an unexpected shape."
At the mention of silver thread, Karisia slowly poured mana into the Thunderknell Orb. The orb drank the mana in greedily, and at the same time converted the surrounding raw mana into the lightning attribute.
"The silver thread's properties really have carried over. Good. I'll process it so we can make use of them. I'll leave the scheduling and negotiations with Lampades Tower entirely up to you."
I bowed my head and turned toward the door of the president's office. Karisia would handle the rest just fine on her own, no doubt.
* * *
Lampades Tower was hosting an unseasonable visitor. Most people there were welcoming the outsider warmly.
"Do you know my mom, by any chance?"
"Excuse me?"
To be more precise, it was only that Astrape, the tower's youngest member, was welcoming him, and the rest were simply following her lead, pretending to.
"My mom. She used to live in Etna City. She has blonde hair, like me."
Ortes broke into a cold sweat. What in the world was she getting at? Sure, kids said strange things all the time, but did they usually go around asking after their own parents like this?
'Lampades! Lampades!'
Inside his head, he cried out the name of both this tower and his friend. But Lampades, supposedly in the middle of an experiment, still hadn't come down.
Left with no choice, Ortes decided to fall back on the most universal excuse available.
"Ha-ha. Actually, I've only just arrived in Etna City, you see. I'm still a newcomer, not even a year in. I don't have much acquaintance with the people who've lived here longer."
"I just moved in recently, so I'm not familiar with the area." A phrase with proven effectiveness for turning away any suspicious passerby who came up asking for directions.
Astrape tilted her head for a moment, then nodded once or twice and headed off for her magic training. Ortes felt relieved.
'So this is what people mean when they say talking to kids drains your soul.'
The mages of Lampades Tower could infer several things from that exchange. That Hydra Corp, despite having been founded so recently, had come all this way to offer gifts and patronage to another Magic Tower was, in itself, proof of just how formidable Ortes's business acumen must be.
A child's artless, innocent question. And in return, a businesslike implication.
He surely hadn't expected Astrape herself to catch the implication, so the words must have been aimed at the rest of Lampades Tower's mages instead.
The mages present were also the same ones who'd been protected by Karisia back in Elysion. Money and force. Having displayed both kinds of power, his ultimate intent wasn't hard to read.
'Submit.'
At least he'd had the decency to soften it while speaking in front of a child, small comfort as that was. The mages prayed their tower master would come back as soon as possible and drive out that peculiar man.
* * *
Lampades, for his part, pressed a hand to his forehead as he thought about Ortes, who'd shown up in person, exactly as he'd threatened, to press him for an answer.
'What in the world about my technique does he want so badly....'
Let's think about it from an apocalypticist's point of view. What could someone do with a method for finding safe extradimensional spaces?
Lost in thought, it didn't take Lampades long to work out Ortes's wicked scheme.
Being able to locate a safe extradimensional space necessarily meant being able to detect a dangerous one, too. And opening a door into one of those terrifying dimensions, wasn't that exactly what every apocalypticist dreamed of?
Lampades recalled the words Ortes's president had left him with. 'I know he isn't someone to be trusted.'
And, 'He's someone I chose myself.'
He'd been confused hearing it the first time, but now he could roughly guess what she'd meant.
She must have hired Ortes fully aware of how dangerous he was, meaning she was confident she could keep him under control. If that was true, then maybe she could control the reach and danger of this technique too.
Lampades had witnessed President Karisia's own ability firsthand back in Elysion, but he wasn't about to underestimate Ortes's cunning either.
No matter how he weighed Karisia against Ortes, he couldn't reach an easy conclusion. Considering the closeness Ortes showed toward Karisia, maybe her scheming ran a step ahead of his....
'In the end, I suppose I'll have to meet him myself.'
Lampades steeled his resolve.
He'd said he brought a gift.
It would be an undignified move, but if the situation grew dire enough, he could always find fault with the gift and send it back.
Astrape's future, the whole tower's future, mattered more than his own personal dignity, didn't it?
"This is an artifact I've prepared as a gift. It raises the efficiency of raw-mana-to-mana conversion to the extreme, reducing loss to zero."
"What?"
It was too precious a gift to refuse.
* * *
I could read the confusion written plainly across Lampades's face. Fair enough. It was only natural.
This was an artifact that flew in the face of ordinary magical sense. Normally, you could reduce the loss during raw-mana-to-mana conversion, but you couldn't bring it down to zero.
'Well, I suppose it makes sense, given it's something built on the Ten Commandments' own wisdom.'
I thought of the Ten Towers, the ones who'd taken down the Mage King, a man who'd have treated even this absurd artifact as a mere byproduct of his own wisdom. How had they even managed to kill him?
Ten Magic Tower Masters, each synchronized with a Commandment to bolster their own consciousness, apparently. If ten Tower Masters, all buffed by the Commandments, had ambushed him together and brought down the Mage King that way, it wasn't exactly implausible, I supposed.
"What in the world is that...."
Lampades's voice came out laced with suspicion. Fair enough. It was performance too good to believe on words alone.
"Of course, drawing out its true ability requires the wearer's own capability to back it up. Why don't you try pouring in some mana?"
Lampades cautiously took the orb in his right hand and let his own mana flow into it. First, the silver thread wrapped around the orb slowly unraveled and wound itself around his arm. Like a glove's skeleton woven purely out of wire.
Then the golden orb began to melt. Gold filled in the gaps of the silver framework. At last, a gauntlet of gold and silver, dazzling in its craftsmanship, wrapped itself around Lampades's right forearm.
Thunder howled from within that fist. Lampades was surely feeling a grip on raw mana more powerful than anything he'd ever felt before, the result of Karisia processing the silver thread's own raw-mana-accumulating properties.
The moment Lampades raised his arm, a whirlpool of mana began to churn around it. Fitting for a Tower Master's chamber, the mana that had filled the room was drawn into Lampades in an instant.
"It really is... exactly what it claims to be."
The moment he withdrew his mana from the gauntlet, it reverted back into the shape of an orb.
"It's called the Thunderknell Orb."
"How did you even make something like this... no, how did you get it?"
That was a rather awkward thing to explain. I ran a hand over my jaw out of habit.
"Heh. I got it through a fairly secretive route, but I suppose I could tell you, Lampades."
"Then you don't need to tell me-"
"Ha-ha. What are friends for? Just keep the secret, that's all I ask."
* * *
Lampades regretted his own rashness, his own greed. However precious that Thunderknell Orb might be, something with the same performance...
'I could never get my hands on one, could I.'
His reason as a mage held the irrational speculation back. Lampades forced his gaze, which kept wanting to drift toward the Thunderknell Orb, in another direction.
"This is an artifact excavated from the island of Crete. Though to be precise, I suppose I should call it a processed piece."
"Crete?"
He'd heard that name somewhere before. Recently, too....
"Toress Magic Tower's?!"
"Shh. Shh. I did say you need to keep this a secret, didn't I?"
Lampades trembled in fear. The final legacy of a Magic Tower an extermination order had just been issued against, on suspicion of allying with Argyrion. How on earth did that end up in Ortes's hands?
The theory he'd first arrived at during the Elysion terror attack, that even Argyrion might just be a decoy to conceal Hydra Corp, carved itself into his mind once more.
"Why would you bring something like that to us...."
"Ha-ha. Don't worry. It's a precious artifact, sure, but is it really more precious than a friendship, or the future of a talented mage?"
"No. No, wait. Our tower doesn't have anything worth giving in exchange."
Lampades struggled desperately not to accept the artifact. Its power was incredible, but the danger it would bring was just as fatal.
The moment he accepted the Thunderknell Orb, Lampades could be accused, at any time, of being entangled with Argyrion right alongside Toress Magic Tower.
Just as Lampades himself hadn't been able to guess where the artifact had come from, it would be difficult for anyone else to realize the Thunderknell Orb had been excavated from Toress Magic Tower's dig site.
The one exception was the man who'd given him the gift himself, Ortes.
By "gifting" this, Ortes would be holding the detonator to a bomb that could blow Lampades Tower apart into nothing.
"What are you talking about? This is simply a gift. It'd suit Astrape wonderfully, don't you think?"
"Something else, maybe...."
He had to stop this. He had to refuse. But Ortes was one step faster than Lampades, who was still trying to get the words out.
"Oh, come now. No price, no negotiation needed at all. They say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but this really is a gift with no strings attached."
You need only accept it.
Lampades slowly raised his head.
The Faceless Ortes was still smiling.
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