WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
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◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss ◈
Chapter 67
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Negotiation (3)
Lampades had, with great difficulty, gotten Ortes to leave. It was breathing room he'd bought only after wrapping "give me a moment" in every polite variation he could think of.
The Thunderknell Orb was dangerous, far too dangerous. But it was every bit as powerful as it was dangerous.
"A gift for Astrape, is it...."
If someone donated a powerful artifact to a Magic Tower, the user chosen for that artifact would, as a rule, be the tower's own master, the finest mage the tower had.
But Ortes had declared it "for Astrape."
'There's an intention behind this.'
It couldn't be something as laughably simple as wanting to nurture Astrape's magical talent.
But Lampades couldn't begin to guess what that intention actually was. He'd examined the Thunderknell Orb for any hidden mind-control spell meant to brainwash its user, but he'd found nothing resembling a trap.
"Now that I think about it, didn't Astrape say something odd?"
He ought to hear that story for himself. Lampades sent for Astrape.
* * *
The reception room I'd come down to wait in had, courteously enough, coffee and biscuits laid out.
I was busy demolishing the snacks when I heard footsteps approaching from a distance. That particular clack of heels. Factor in the weight you could infer just from how loud the steps were, and there was no mistaking it: Lampades.
His face had an oddly worn, fatigued look to it.
"...I know this'll sound strange, but let me ask you something."
"Of course. I'll answer anything I'm able to."
"Are you really a stranger to Astrape's mother?"
I nearly dropped the coffee cup in my hand.
Wait, why is that coming up again, here of all places?
Lampades slowly opened his mouth.
"Astrape says she lived alone with her mother in Etna City. At least as far back as she can remember."
Her mother had been a skilled mage, one who'd taught Astrape the fundamentals of magic while telling her she needed to keep it hidden as much as she possibly could. And she'd told her something else, too....
"That even if things are hard right now, someday her father, or her father's friends, would come to help her? That's what she said she'd heard?"
"That's right."
I shook my head. The timing had lined up strangely well, here and there, but I wasn't some Daddy Long-Legs type of benefactor.
Astrape's escape from Toress Magic Tower hadn't been the result of good will, it was the product of coincidence and self-interest. Rough luck for a kid pining for her family, but I had no connection whatsoever to Astrape's past.
"I saw the pendant Astrape's mother is said to have left her. It had a crest carved into it, the kind no one who studies lightning-attribute magic and its history could fail to recognize."
"Oh. If there's a marker like that, maybe her father can still be found after all. That's a relief."
I made agreeable noises out loud, but my head was spinning. Damn it, if Astrape goes flying off over this, I'm going to run short on ways to talk Lampades around.
"No. He can't be found. That Magic Tower's already gone."
"Gone?"
Was there any reason to remember a Magic Tower that had already failed? I ran through the list of fallen towers, calling to mind the ones that still carried real renown, or whose founders had pioneered some notable spell.
Among the towers that had worked with lightning-attribute magic...
"Manubia. They once challenged the Yellow Thunder, back in the day."
A memory surfaced from the original novel, of how the Talisman of Thunderknell had shown the highest compatibility with Astrape back when she was still a child who hadn't even undergone proper modification surgery yet, higher than even Toress Magic Tower's own master, whose magical ability would have far outstripped the Astrape of that time.
Huh?
* * *
Lampades watched closely for Ortes's reaction. The moment he brought up the name, the hand holding Ortes's coffee cup trembled.
It was a lapse the Ortes of any ordinary day would never have let show. Lampades became certain: Ortes knew something about Astrape's past, about Manubia Magic Tower.
Ortes ran a hand along his jaw and asked back.
"Manubia Magic Tower's fall was ages ago, wasn't it? Even by the records, its last Tower Master would have lived over a thousand years back."
"That's right. Manubia Magic Tower's last Tower Master. Lord Thunderknell, Keranos. His final movements are unclear. He kept relocating the tower's base, mana core and all, over and over, until he finally vanished, and the name Manubia Magic Tower disappeared from history along with him. My guess is that Astrape's father is a distant descendant of some mage who fled when Manubia Magic Tower fell."
Ortes let out a hollow laugh. He'd already learned, carved into his bones on the island of Crete, just how much of the world's truth the original novel had failed to capture.
Still, to think a secret history like this lay behind Astrape's compatibility with the Talisman of Thunderknell. Even for Ortes, this was genuinely unexpected.
'Here I'd thought her talent was just ridiculous because she was the leading heroine.'
"If that's the case, then Astrape would end up the sole mage carrying on Manubia Magic Tower's own lineage of learning. Someone with the potential not just to inherit your magic, Lampades, but to bring it to even greater heights."
"Yes. That's... true."
Lampades turned his head aside for a moment and took a slow breath. 'Lord Thunderknell' and 'Thunderknell Orb.' There was no way to hear those two names side by side and not notice the connection between them.
The ease with which Ortes acted like he hadn't even noticed something so obvious had to be a poker face concealing his own unease. The strange reaction he'd shown the instant he'd heard about Astrape's mother only confirmed it.
In truth, Lampades hadn't told Ortes everything Astrape had told him.
The part he'd left out was what had happened while Astrape was held captive by Toress Magic Tower's slave traders. The unbelievable testimony that Ortes had gone looking for her.
Lampades couldn't even picture Ortes going out of his way to save someone.
'Let's think through why he'd have acted that way.'
Two possibilities surfaced in Lampades's mind. One ominous, one uncertain.
The ominous reason was, obviously, that it had all been a scheme to use Astrape. If that were true, then Ortes had to be either closely tied to whatever had caused Astrape's father to go missing, or...
He was the very cause of that disappearance.
Was it really a coincidence that Hydra Corp had built a branch in Etna City, the very city where Astrape and her mother had once lived?
And why, of all days, had Ortes just happened to be waiting the exact day Astrape arrived in Elysion?
There were too many threads worth suspecting.
Then there was the uncertain reason.
'Is Ortes Astrape's father?'
An image of Ortes back in Elysion came to mind. He'd shown a warmth toward Karisia, a human closeness, that seemed almost impossible to square with someone called 'the Faceless Ortes.'
Ortes seemed to extend total, unreserved trust to anyone who made it inside the line he drew around himself. It was just that the line itself was endlessly picky about who got to cross it.
'I heard he didn't threaten Astrape either, back when they were waiting together in the lobby. If Astrape happens to be someone inside Ortes's line...'
Then the reason he'd handed over the Thunderknell Orb, after revealing it was something excavated from Toress Magic Tower, changed entirely. Not a leash meant to control Lampades through the orb's origin, but a safeguard, in case Lampades ever tried to exploit Astrape.
Lampades had always thought of Ortes as 'a man incapable of having a family.' But in a situation this strange, doubt was inevitable.
Wasn't this, after all, a case of Manubia Magic Tower's final artifact being delivered straight into the hands of the last mage to carry on its legacy?
How could an outsider have known that Astrape carried on Manubia's lineage in the first place? The only answer Lampades could come up with for that question was that Ortes must have already known Astrape from some point in the past.
The Thunderknell Orb was far, far too precious an artifact to burn away as a mere leash.
And yet, calling it pure good will felt just as wrong, not when the one who'd given it was Ortes, of all people.
Lampades sorted through the chaos in his head. However he looked at it, Ortes intended to dump that damnably precious gift onto Lampades Tower regardless.
If that was the case, shouldn't he at least secure the upper hand in this situation?
"Astrape's quite taken with the Thunderknell Orb. And just as you predicted, her compatibility with the artifact really is exceptional, beyond anything I've seen. I'll gladly accept your gift."
"That's wonderful to hear. The president will be pleased too."
"The prototype extradimensional radar's nearly finished. Once it's complete this time, I'll come visit your branch at Hydra Corp myself."
He'd go to Etna City in person and chase down whatever clues there were about Astrape.
Whether that unease over 'Astrape's mother' had been the grief of a man who'd failed to look after his own family, or the slip of a villain trying to hide his crime, he'd find out then.
* * *
I chatted with Kyne about how nice it would be if she and Astrape got along once they met at Museion, playing the doting parent for once, out of season as it was.
Though realistically, Kyne's whole plan was to stand out at Museion, get scouted by Black Darkness Tower, and come on as a trainee mage there, so the two of them probably wouldn't have much spare time to run around together.
'Well, whatever works. No harm in her having a friend or two her own age.'
Lampades had gone so far as to say he'd bring the prototype extradimensional radar to Etna City himself, so that piece of business was, more or less, wrapped up.
'Now, then....'
I read through the holographic message projected from my gauntlet.
『The Order of the Divine Name wishes to meet with you.』
Time to get ready for a business meeting with the order.
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