WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 76

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The Butterfly Effect of Troublemaking (2)

My head started spinning. Standing behind the Audit Office Head was a kid awkwardly rocking on her heels, waving a hand up in a timid greeting, and yes, that was the Niobe I knew.

But why on earth was this man Salmosia popping up here. I'd only ever seen him in the personnel roster I found while infiltrating Blasphemia's archive.

Salmosia started by inspecting my skin-layer tissue, the same procedure I'd gone through entering the Charlotte branch. I'd told Divius in advance and come wearing artificial skin, so there was no risk of being found out.

"Do you remember the address you used to report Nardanit's betrayal?"

"A randomized address hidden in database slot BS 52:5. It is a dedicated address connected to the Audit Office Head's office, refreshed daily, so there is no fixed format."

Salmosia nodded firmly and held out his hand.

I accepted the handshake. No assassination curse suddenly triggered from the ring on Salmosia's finger.

"I've been waiting eagerly to meet you. Getting to meet an inspector whose whereabouts had gone completely dark again... that's a rare thing indeed. Truly worthy of the Audit Office's finest agent."

"You flatter me. I have simply been fortunate enough to survive, and I have been struggling to track down the traitors' trail ever since."

A few things became clear from his reaction just now. Either Salmosia already knew the excuse I'd given Niobe, that "this face is just a fake one for infiltration," or disguises for infiltration were such a routine thing among secret inspectors that L13's changed appearance simply wasn't something worth suspecting either way.

I couldn't sense any other presence besides Niobe and Salmosia within my field of view. Which meant this meeting itself wasn't some Blasphemia trap set to capture me.

Salmosia took a seat inside the safe house and gestured for me to sit across from him. I shook my head.

* * *

"I appreciate the gesture, but I will not be sitting. This area is within Argyrion's zone of activity, and you are a critical figure, Audit Office Head. It is my duty to stay ready in case they strike."

It was a fairly rigid show of vigilance. Salmosia thought highly of L13's attitude. This was another kind of test too, one to gauge whether, in the midst of acting alone, the agent had forgotten his duty as an operative.

Most of the intelligence Blasphemia had gathered on Argyrion so far had come by way of this very L13. That kind of vigilance was surely the secret behind how L13 kept coming back from dangerous intelligence missions with all four limbs intact.

"Fine. Then listen standing, if you like. Just as you told Niobe, the apocalypticists inside the Ten Towers are a serious threat. But for now, they're still within a range we can handle."

With L13 practically single-handedly shouldering the job of gathering intelligence on Argyrion, the rest of the inspectors had gained at least a little breathing room to handle new work.

There were plenty of cases where a tip on Argyrion's presence turned out to be a dead end once they arrived on scene, but that was still far better than the alternative of having to gather intelligence from scratch.

Salmosia used that spare capacity to launch an internal audit, aiming to weed out the spies hiding within Blasphemia. Because the audit had been announced on a large scale, the spies' movements had grown cautious.

"The Audit Office is throwing everything it has into weeding out these subversives. I know the burden of your Argyrion investigation must be heavy, but hold on, the time for our counterattack will come soon."

"When you say 'soon'.... does that mean there is some threat outside the range we can handle, and that is why we cannot move to a counterattack right away?"

L13's counter-question came fast. The skill with which he'd picked up on the double meaning buried in that one sentence was impressive.

He must have spent at least several years dedicated entirely to tracking Argyrion, work that called for survival and combat skill far more than eloquence or conversation. Salmosia had worried his social faculties might have gone rusty from it, but that worry, it seemed, had been groundless after all.

Salmosia, quietly satisfied, lowered his voice a notch.

"Yes. There are those we can't lay hands on directly."

Ortes narrowed down the candidates that Blasphemia would find awkward to deal with. Blasphemia moved in the shadows, but its authority was hardly small. Its core mandate was hunting superstition, so throwing its weight around at mages in general wasn't easy, but conversely, the moment even a single thread tied a Magic Tower to superstition, even a fairly formidable Magic Tower had to bow its head.

'Since Blasphemia's a secret organization, it can't just openly reveal its true identity in most situations. When it needs public credibility for outward-facing activity, does it operate under the name Panoptes (Πανοπτις)?'

Panoptes meant "all-seeing," in other words, the Watcher. Within mage society, they served a role close to that of a public security bureau or police force, agents acting on behalf of the Ten Towers.

On the Ten Towers' actual, true organizational chart, Blasphemia really was a sub-organization under Panoptes. Blasphemia's cover identity, as it turned out, wasn't entirely a fabrication after all.

There was one more secret body under Panoptes dedicated to maintaining the Ten Towers' order.

Eidolon (εἴδωλον). Those who held back extradimensional overflow and "corrected" apocalypticists.

"Is it Eidolon, then? I'd assumed, since Argyrion's traitors are our own, that they wouldn't get involved."

"No. They're actually cooperating with us enthusiastically. At the Panoptes council the Ten Towers' elders themselves attended, they backed our side too. The problem is Argos."

Argos (Αργος) handled exactly the kind of work you'd picture when you think "public security police." Unlike Eidolon or Blasphemia, they were an officially recognized police force, not a secret one.

They were the ones who could officially designate mage criminals and put out warrants for them, or formally punish acts of treason so massive they went beyond what Blasphemia or Eidolon could quietly "handle" on their own.

The work most people pictured when they thought "Panoptes," surveillance of the Magic Towers, arresting criminals, that was actually Argos's job.

"Argos? Isn't the division of duties something the Ten Towers themselves approved? How dare they!"

"Of course, they can't obstruct us openly. But."

Salmosia tossed a black cube onto the table. A hologram unfurled above the die-shaped object, a map marking the areas where recent reports of Argyrion sightings had come in.

"While re-searching the Argyrion sighting sites, we found something unpleasant. The seals on several of the ruins Blasphemia had under watch had been damaged."

Ortes's expression stiffened. Was it Hydra Corp's doing? Or the Order of the Divine Name's? Given how openly they'd been attempting grave-robbing, getting caught eventually had always been a given, but he hadn't expected it to happen this fast.

"Continuous sabotage, taking place in the surveillance gap that opened up while we poured our manpower into tracking Argyrion. Argos is clearly behind it."

Salmosia didn't catch the shift in Ortes's expression. Partly because he was absorbed in his own account, but fundamentally because the faint smile fixed on Ortes's lips never wavered.

Not many people could have caught a shift in emotion from nothing more than the flicker in his slit-narrowed eyes.

"Is there a particular reason you suspect Argos rather than the superstition-followers?"

"Isn't it simple? How could a bunch of superstition-followers possibly know our operational intel down to the detail and go damage the seal sites near our operation areas?"

It was an answer brimming with certainty. Ortes could feel the kind of conviction Blasphemia held toward the cults of the vanished gods, confidence that the cults, hunted down for the past century, could never dare stand against them.

Argos, Eidolon, and Blasphemia all belonged to Panoptes. To prevent clashes between them and keep cooperation running smoothly, operational intelligence was shared, if only in a limited way, among their upper ranks.

"The spies inside our own ranks can be ruled out, they can't move carelessly now that the audit's begun. Eidolon's focused on other matters and doesn't have the manpower to spare for sabotage across such a wide area. That leaves only Argos."

Ortes listened closely to the high-level information the Audit Office Head was letting slip. If Eidolon was busy elsewhere, that meant something unusual was showing up in the extradimensional. Perhaps it was even some magical sign hinting at the Mage King's return.

"I hesitate to ask, but does Argos have any reason to slander us?"

"Ha. They've always been a greedy lot, haven't they. It's probably out of a desire to grip all of Panoptes in their own two hands. A few apocalypticist guards played their part in the mess during the Elysion terror attack too. They'd love to shift all the blame our way, since Argyrion's Eroded were, after all, our own people."

"I see...."

'But investigating the ruin sites was either the Order of the Divine Name's doing, or my own company's.'

It was a fairly reckless piece of reasoning. However fierce the power struggles inside Panoptes might be, they were all, in the end, organizations under the Ten Towers. Surely they wouldn't openly sabotage each other like this.

But it worked in Ortes's favor if Blasphemia's suspicion pointed somewhere else entirely, so he made no effort to push back on it.

"Or."

At that moment, Salmosia's voice dropped even lower, so quiet it was almost inaudible.

"Or perhaps there are traitors just like ours planted inside their ranks too, no small number of them. Sitting far 'higher up' than some low-level Elysion guard."

'Ah.'

Salmosia was deep in suspicion.

Within Blasphemia, a traitor at the executive level, like Branch Chief Nardanit, had turned up.

That alone had revealed how powerful Argyrion's persuasion truly was, potent enough to reach not just low-level members but executives too.

At the same time, among the guard personnel stationed at Elysion, in other words, Argos's own low-level members, there had also been traitors.

It had come to light that Argyrion could plant traitors not only within Blasphemia, but within the other branches of Panoptes as well.

So how, then, should he interpret the current situation, sabotage so precisely targeted it could never have happened without access to Blasphemia's operational intel?

Salmosia had concluded that 'an apocalypticist, secretly operating as an executive within Argos, was moving to sabotage Blasphemia.'

"Now I understand why you wanted to meet with me like this. I will do everything in my power to find the informant."

A fresh piece of troublemaking had come knocking, all on its own.

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