WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 74

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Future Planning (2)

"Shouldn't you bring up something else first? Like whether the Mage King's resurrection is even real to begin with, or why I have kept it hidden until now?"

"Oh, are you serious right now?"

Karisia asked in her usual unbothered tone, the same one she might use for 'Did you eat breakfast this morning?' I nodded, sour-faced.

"...Yes. It is the truth. At least, I am certain of it."

"Then is there any reason to keep worrying over other things? Not unless hearing why you hid the prophecy would actually help us defeat the Mage King."

It was an unexpected show of trust.

"But, did you hide it on purpose? That stings a little. Is there anyone who trusts you more than I do?"

There was a faint trace of laughter in her voice. It was a remark heavy with joking, but I didn't let my guard down. Now that Karisia had something to hold over me, it would come back around later as several times the workload.

"It was not intentional. I did think I would tell you eventually...."

"But?"

"I forgot."

Karisia's stare was sharp enough to sting. She gave a soft "Hm," a strange smile playing on her lips, then shook her head.

"You're not the type to lie, after all. The Mage King, huh."

"Are you not afraid, President?"

"He's someone from thousands of years ago, isn't he? Before fear or dread even comes into it, he just doesn't feel real to me. And he's been defeated once before, too."

I could hear Karisia murmuring to herself, deep in thought, musing that a bomb was, as always, probably the surest bet.

Seriously, why does she love explosions this much?

What set this round of bomb talk apart from the others was that this particular proposal actually seemed worth thinking over seriously, even for me. As a means of bringing down that overwhelming Mage King. If we set off an artificial Ten Commandments right at the site of his resurrection, was there a real chance of taking him down?

According to the original work's description, the moment right after his resurrection was, without question, when the Mage King would be at his weakest. Even so, his terrifying command over mana and his control over magic would probably still be beyond anything common sense could account for.

If I timed it to detonate the Ten Commandments bomb at the exact instant of his resurrection, even the Mage King probably couldn't walk away without a wound he couldn't ignore....

In the original work, the moments right after the resurrection weren't given much page time at all. He opens his eyes, rages at the betrayal, and in that fury, heads toward the strongest source of mana he can sense, meaning to punish his disciples, only to look up at a skyscraper glittering with the neon-mana signs of 2077 and go 'Huh?', and that's where the prologue ends.

After that, the Mage King wandered the world gathering information, laid out his own plans, and worked toward reclaiming the Ten Commandments. Chapter 1 picks up some time after all that.

In other words, the novel never even specified where the resurrection took place, and on top of that, the Mage King left the resurrection site almost immediately.

"Assuming the Mage King isn't braced for an attack, we should be able to deal him considerable damage."

"You're not saying you could kill him, though?"

"That would be because I have never actually seen him in person."

From Argyrion to the Order of the Divine Name, the shape of this world had already diverged from the original work in plenty of ways. It was more than enough to convince me the flow of the world wasn't following the novel's script anymore.

Even so, the reason I couldn't afford to let my guard down around the Mage King wasn't because he was the protagonist, it was because he was the strongest mage in the world.

"Since there's still time before that, I would rather deal with the more pressing matters in front of us before the Mage King. First, we need to hear back from the Order of the Divine Name-"

Vzzzt.

A vibration hummed, and a hologram unfolded above the gauntlet. A message had come in to L13's account. The name in the sender field looked like a meaningless string pulled at random from some number generator.

The Order of the Divine Name.

Just as I was about to open it, the vibration buzzed again. Niobe's mail address.

The Order of the Divine Name and Blasphemia. Word had come in from both at once.

I looked at Karisia, and she nodded. With her permission granted, I read quickly through the messages.

* * *

Ortes was scanning through the messages with his usual, unbothered look. Karisia's thoughts, meanwhile, had grown tangled.

The Mage King's return, an event of that magnitude. And Ortes had brushed the whole thing off with a simple "I forgot."

Rationally speaking, Ortes had no reason to lie to her. And yet, at the same time.

'Does it even make sense to forget something like that?'

It was the kind of thing that couldn't help but raise doubts. Ortes might have a somewhat impulsive streak, but he wasn't the type of person to lose his head badly enough to forget something that important.

To be precise, he hadn't forgotten the fact of the Mage King's return itself. He'd remembered it well enough to bring it out as a bargaining chip in his negotiations with the Order of the Divine Name, hadn't he?

He'd merely forgotten to tell 'her.'

'No, but how do you even forget something like that?'

Rather than voice her frustration to Ortes, Karisia chose to weigh the impact this would have on the state of the world instead. If the Mage King wielded his own authority freely, the Ten Towers would have no choice but to either bow before him or stand against him.

There could be no reason for his return to the world other than the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Towers, unable to give up the Ten Commandments, would inevitably choose to fight.

The decisive factor that had let the original ten disciples defeat the Mage King in the first place was the Ten Commandments. Betrayal, joined with the Ten Commandments' boundless mana. Without either one, bringing down the Mage King would have been impossible.

As she called up that fragment of the ancient past, a pain like a laceration tore through Karisia's mind, an agony that felt as if it were ripping her open down to the marrow.

Before she'd met Ortes, it had been a pain she was used to. Karisia kept her composure and gathered her thoughts.

Thinking of it like a seesaw made it simple. No matter how hard the other side tried to lift you, the weights had to be matched first. A counterweight capable of standing against an overwhelming existence like the Mage King. Without the Ten Commandments, the Ten Towers had no strength left to oppose him.

"Break the White Light first and then deal with the Mage King, or bring down the Mage King first and then break the White Light...."

It was a fork in the road for the future.

So long as the resurrected Mage King wanted the Ten Commandments, and Karisia held to her greater purpose of destroying the White Light, a collision with the Mage King was inevitable too.

"Is there really any need to handle those two separately, though?"

It was Ortes who answered her muttering to herself.

"What?"

"I have been thinking about it since I heard your artificial Ten Commandments bomb plan. If we do end up having to actually use it as a bomb, on the off chance."

A light flickered in Ortes's eyes. Karisia tried to read what lay behind that gaze. Just as Ortes often tried to read Karisia's own thoughts, Ortes's inner mind remained a mystery to her too.

"Should we not get the greatest possible effect out of a single detonation? I was thinking, if the Mage King comes in person to reclaim the White Light, we could simply set it off right in front of the Ten Commandments at that moment."

"...Are you serious?"

At Karisia's dead-serious question, Ortes's face twisted into a look of wronged innocence.

"No. It is only because you kept talking about bombs, President, that the idea occurred to me."

Ortes went on stringing together excuse after excuse, insisting he wasn't fond of crude methods like bombs. Karisia watched him and let out a small, amused smile.

"Let's set that aside, talk of a future that hasn't even arrived yet. What was the Order of the Divine Name's reply?"

Ortes, who'd been grumbling about something, straightened up and adjusted his posture.

"It is the second-best outcome. For whatever reason, they've come forward offering to actively cooperate in recovering sacred relics as well. Perhaps that impious plan of the Pope's calls for sacred relics too."

"And so?"

"It means we can now use both Blasphemia's database records and the ancient ruin sites the Order of the Divine Name has on record as targets for the Divinity Investigation."

Ortes laid out his plan.

The Order of the Divine Name knew Ortes as someone inside Blasphemia. Under the pretext of telling them which locations had the thinnest Blasphemia surveillance, he could get them to hand over the location data for the ancient temples the Order kept on its own.

Within Blasphemia, his L13 identity as a secret inspector was still valid, and Niobe, his contact channel with them, was still active too. That meant he could get his hands on at least part of Blasphemia's own surveillance data as well.

"This alone will not be enough, though. But there's also the location data on Argyrion that the Order of the Divine Name will track down and pass along to me."

Tracking Argyrion down through magical means was next to impossible. That was because its members had themselves once been Blasphemia agents, the foremost experts in magical pursuit.

There's no prey harder to hunt than a hunter.

But the Order of the Divine Name could call on sacred invocation. If the sacred invocation of the god of archery or the god of the hunt, or one of Phoibos's prophecies, could be brought to bear, finding Argyrion wouldn't be difficult at all.

What if, under L13's name, Argyrion sighting information got passed along to Blasphemia?

Blasphemia would have no choice but to send that region's agents out. And that would leave a gap in their surveillance over the Order's ruin sites there.

The Order of the Divine Name would use that gap to gather up sacred relics.

Put another way.

"By supplying Argyrion's location data, I can move Blasphemia, and by pointing the Order of the Divine Name toward whichever ruin has the weakest surveillance, I can steer the Order's own movements as well."

"The Order of the Divine Name and Blasphemia, huh. Any ruins outside both their spheres of influence would then fall entirely to Hydra Corp."

Ortes gave a satisfied nod. He'd pulled off the tightrope walk between Blasphemia and the Order of the Divine Name flawlessly.

"It is time to begin the Divinity Investigation in earnest."

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