WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 77

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The Butterfly Effect of Troublemaking (3)

Salmosia made his way out of the safe house, slowly. Slowly, that is, only up until the moment he crossed the threshold. The instant his form passed beyond the doorway, it began dissolving into thin air, as though melting into the empty space beyond.

'Spatial magic....'

Spatial distortion invites extradimensional interference, which makes it an advanced magic no one uses carelessly. It had to be magic drawn from some special artifact issued to him as a high-ranking officer of Panoptes.

"Oh. Have you been well, senior?"

Left behind in the safe house, Niobe gave an awkward greeting. I answered in kind, careful not to raise any suspicion.

"Yes. For a field agent, having both arms and both legs still attached already counts as doing well enough. And you, Niobe?"

"There's a document I was told to hand over once the Audit Office Head got back. You know what to do after reading it, right?"

"Yes. I'll handle it appropriately."

The bundle of documents Niobe handed over held a list of those suspected of being informants within Argos's executive ranks.

'Now I understand why Salmosia told me to open this only once he was gone.'

They were only suspected of being informants, based on circumstantial suspicion rather than hard evidence. Wasn't this, in effect, the Blasphemia Audit Office Head illegally leaking another organization's personnel records?

On paper, it had been handed over through Niobe, basic groundwork laid so that if things ever went sideways, he could deny any connection to it himself.

Reading and disposing of it on the spot was the rule, so the odds of it ever leaking outside were vanishingly small, and yet he'd still bothered preparing this kind of insurance. Should I call that caution, or just habit?

"Will you be deployed into the field right after this, Niobe?"

"Huh? No. My job now is reporting on you to the Audit Office Head directly. Guess you could call it an unintended fast-track promotion, straight under the Audit Office? I'm still listed on paper as personnel assigned to the Argyrion tracking operation, just so I could come here, but I'll be heading back soon."

Salmosia had called her "Niobe," not by her codename K17. It showed just how much recognition she'd earned within Blasphemia.

It wasn't quite the shape I'd imagined, but I did have a source with easy access inside Blasphemia.

Might as well ask a few things while we're already meeting.

* * *

The conversation with her respected senior opened with a gentle reprimand.

"Niobe. It seems you went and reported news of me straight to the Audit Office Head."

"Huh? Yeah. It was intel you found, wasn't it?"

L13 let out a soft sigh. Niobe had no way of knowing it, but the gesture was entirely deliberate.

"When I passed that information to you, it was so you could use it to climb into a position of real influence, one with enough standing to help you weed out the reactionaries I told you about beforehand. Reporting straight to the Audit Office Head, though... that was a risky move."

"Risky, how?"

"If a low-level agent who'd have no reason to ever get close to the Audit Office suddenly meets the Audit Office Head face-to-face, and then a hunt for traitors kicks off the very next day, don't you think anyone who knows the circumstances would find that suspicious?"

Ortes pointed out just how dangerous Niobe's move had been. It would have been safer, he said, to wait until she'd secured enough standing that meeting the Audit Office Head face-to-face wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

But in the same breath, he added:

"It was a courageous thing to do. It's rare to find someone who chooses the right path over their own safety."

"Th-thanks...?"

Niobe's shoulders, which had drawn halfway in on themselves, straightened back out. A swell of pride rose up from somewhere deep inside her. Ortes waited for the right moment, then went on.

"In your view, Niobe, how many people like that, people of genuine principle inside Blasphemia, people both you and the Audit Office Head can actually trust, would you say there are?"

"Well... for one, everyone inside the Audit Office is trustworthy, at least...."

Ortes committed the list of "trustworthy people" Niobe named carefully to memory. They were the people he'd need to avoid when recruiting insiders within Blasphemia down the line, and, in the same breath, the people who'd stand on his side whenever he was acting as L13.

"So there's no one who stands in clear opposition to the Audit Office Head, is that right?"

"Right. The Chief, our top authority, is still in seclusion, and the Deputy Chief's seat is vacant. So I guess you could say there's simply no one whose authority matches or outranks the Audit Office Head's."

The Chief, still in seclusion. Ortes found himself thinking of Blasphemia's Deputy Chief, the one he'd once faced as an enemy.

The one who'd been sent in as supreme commander of the Golden Desert Operation. Haltos, wasn't it? It seemed Haltos had never made it back from the Golden Desert Operation.

'Had no successor been chosen after Haltos? Or had one been chosen and then the post fallen vacant again. Either way....'

A realization struck Ortes like a bolt of lightning. Argyrion's core executives were, every one of them, Eroded former members of Blasphemia, the very ones he and Karisia had flung out into the extradimensional during the Golden Desert Operation.

If they'd carried the same chain of command they'd had before becoming Eroded straight over into Argyrion, then odds were good that Argyrion's leader was Haltos too.

'Could I turn this to my advantage, maybe?'

Salmosia's suspicion of Argos. And Haltos, likely sitting somewhere in Argyrion's leadership. Two threads circled through Ortes's mind.

Ortes gathered his thoughts and put together a line to close the conversation.

"Share what I tell you only among people you can genuinely trust, so far as possible, but if the day ever comes when you have to suspect even them of betrayal, don't hesitate. Contact me at once."

Niobe nodded, her face set. She could hardly imagine what it must feel like for L13, fighting on the front line closest to Argyrion, people who'd all once been fellow soldiers.

"Well then, I'll take my leave. I hope we meet again next time, both of us still in one piece."

* * *

"Director Neiro and Director Divius both completed the Divinity Investigation safely and have returned. That said, we have confirmed that Blasphemia has become aware of the Divinity Investigation. I will work out a countermeasure."

Back from the investigation, Ortes met with Karisia alone, as he always did. His report on the Divinity Investigation came with an addendum this time, on his contact with Blasphemia.

Once he added in his deduction about Argyrion's leadership, the meeting ran later than usual.

"Haltos, huh...."

Karisia wound a lock of hair from the right side of her forehead around her index finger and began twisting it. From that alone, Ortes could tell she was sorting through old memories.

"Even the intel we pulled from the Blasphemia branch was pretty limited when it came to the higher-ups. And I don't recall ever fighting him myself, out in the desert."

"I didn't fight him head-on either. He would only get in my way a little, each time I tried to push through toward you."

That was how they'd stalled for time until the extradimensional storm arrived, at which point Karisia evacuated them both using spatial magic she'd prepared in advance.

The plan had been for the spatiotemporal imbalance the spatial magic caused to bring the extradimensional storm in far sooner than it otherwise would, forcing Blasphemia's pursuit squad to retreat.

It had worked, though it worked so well that Argyrion ended up appearing instead.

"There doesn't seem to be any way to draw Haltos out right now. So, what are you planning to do about Argos?"

"Yes. Blasphemia handed me a list of suspected informants."

"If you want to drive a wedge between the two groups, you can't just interrogate whoever looks suspicious, can you?"

Karisia's question.

There's nothing unfair about a suspicious person getting hauled in for looking suspicious. But when someone everyone can see is hardworking, honest, upstanding, gets hauled in on suspicion, people feel that's an injustice.

If Ortes wanted to properly stoke conflict between Argyrion and Argos, the best move was to pick someone completely above suspicion.

So that Argos would burn with anger over a comrade being framed.

But Ortes shook his head.

Ortes thought Salmosia was overestimating Argyrion's reach by a wide margin. The only reason Argyrion had ever been able to make contact with Blasphemia's executives in the first place was that Argyrion's people had originally been Blasphemia insiders.

'Even when corruption breaks out in the military, it's usually confined to one branch, army, navy, or air force. It's rare for the army and navy, or the navy and air force, to team up and commit malfeasance together, right?'

Even if they were technically part of the same broader organization, Argos and Blasphemia were independent bodies. It would be hard for them to fall into sync with each other.

Unless, of course, the extradimensional had handed Argyrion something like a hypnosis app....

"Detaining just one person isn't enough. Whatever else happens, they've got the pull to smooth over holding one or two people."

Once Blasphemia had someone secured as a suspect, they could manufacture endless grounds for suspicion around them. Short of a summary execution, any protest from Argos would run straight into the excuse that it had all been legitimate work, carried out under reasonable suspicion.

"The best thing for stirring up conflict is the mere existence of a secret."

Ortes slowly laid out the seed of discord. The ripples a concrete fact could cause had clear limits.

"'Blasphemia's Attempted Illegal Surveillance of Argos'.... that has a nice ring to it as a headline. If word reached Argos that such an 'attempt' had been made, how furious do you think they'd be?"

But suspicion works differently. Since no one actually knows just how far Blasphemia's surveillance plans went, or where they started, it can be inflated as far as anyone likes.

"An attitude of trying to hide the secret will only stoke even greater public outrage. Though if I pass this along to Argos right away, Salmosia might grow suspicious of me, so I will need to work out the specifics of how to carry it out."

Ortes turned his mind to how he might get this information out to Argos.

His plans began to unravel the moment an urgent bulletin slammed through the Ether Network.

『List of Magic Towers Affiliated with the Argyrion Coalition』

It was a bombshell revelation, one set to shake the very social order of the Magic Towers.

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