WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 79

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Countermeasure Meeting (2)

"I imagine you've all seen the news posted to the Ether Network by now. It seems Argos is going to get involved in the hunt for Argyrion as well."

Right from the opening, Kaicel's expression darkened. The other directors, by contrast, didn't seem to feel nearly as much urgency as the gravity of the situation should have called for.

The only director wearing a face like death was Arabel. Given that she was the one who filtered and dug through information directly, she seemed to have an instinctive sense of just how far a scandal of this size could ripple.

'Even setting aside Bertrand and Meconion, who usually just operate inside Etna City, that none of the other directors feel any sense of crisis either....'

What was this. Did they all have some hidden confidence I didn't know about?

Neiro was the first to speak.

"But Office Head. In the end, isn't this just a story about the burden growing heavier for, well... Argos, and Blasphemia, that relic-crackdown squad? For those of us who operate by dodging that crackdown squad, doesn't this actually work out in our favor?"

The full picture of Blasphemia, which the directors had first been told was just some "subcontractor of the Ten Towers," had since come out in more detail: those who policed faith in the vanished gods and confiscated sacred relics.

There was still plenty hidden, but it was an explanation easy enough for the directors to accept. Even though the existence of ancient-era sacred relics had quietly become known, rumors like that never lasted long. Posts on the Ether Network had a habit of vanishing before anyone noticed. It wasn't hard to guess that someone within the Ten Towers, or magical society more broadly, was systematically cracking down on sacred relics.

"That could be so. At first, anyway."

Who would take the lead in the cooperation between Argos and Blasphemia hadn't been decided yet. Whether Argos would only step into the Magic Tower investigation, or whether it would join the Argyrion hunt as well, those questions were probably still at the discussion stage.

Two groups that didn't mesh well together could sometimes be even more sloppy than a single one moving alone.

But.

"Until now, Blasphemia alone made up the entire encirclement around Argyrion. Even with just that, if there'd been sufficient information, dealing with the silver thread early would've been possible. As you all know well, Argos is magical society's police force. The manpower it can mobilize is on an entirely different order of magnitude from Blasphemia's."

A low, heavy sigh rumbled out, hffff-uu-. Bronze-scaled skin pulsed. From the mutant giant's dragon head, a question came, halting and effortful.

"The numbers... are going to grow?"

"Yes, Director Talos. If Argos throws its manpower in in earnest-"

I calculated the possibilities of what would happen if Argos's manpower were added onto Blasphemia's encirclement. Even assuming, as Salmosia feared, that no one within Argos was actively trying to sabotage Blasphemia, friction between two separate groups working together was only natural.

If Argos ended up seizing control of the Argyrion encirclement, it might station Blasphemia as a nominal auxiliary while excluding it almost entirely from the actual operation.

Blasphemia's manpower, left with nothing to do and floating idle, would probably get slapped with flowery labels like "maintaining security in the operational zone" and shoved off to guard the perimeter of some nearby ruin instead.

For small-time operators like us, that would be a major blow.

"It seems both the quality and quantity of the surveillance net are going to spike. There won't even be much need to tell the two apart. The quality of surveillance tends to scale directly with the number of watchers. Unless Blasphemia comes out completely uncooperative toward Argos, I don't think we'll be able to keep running the Divinity Investigation at as relaxed a pace as we have been."

"Hm...."

Kaicel stroked down his beard. As the creator of the artificial Ten Commandments, he was the one in overall charge of the process that extracted the divine power held within sacred relics and injected it into the artificial Decalogue.

"How far along is the Decalogue's completion?"

Karisia's first question, after listening in silence the whole time.

"Even generously, it's under thirty percent. Calculated strictly, more like twenty percent. The path of ascension.... The goal is to find the starting point of a route leading to some metaphysical location where the vanished order's god, or the Mage King, might dwell, but we haven't even secured output enough to reach the World Wall yet."

"It's surprising you've completed even twenty percent. But if things continue as they are now, I don't know how long it'll take to guarantee even thirty percent completion."

"Yes. Since this research depends more on the quality of relics than their quantity, if we had roughly ten of those crystal-like relics you and the Office Head brought back before, President, we could probably get all the way to the verge of completion in one leap."

The moment I heard Kaicel's words, an inward groan burst out of me. Putting me on the same level as Karisia!

He could have just mentioned Karisia alone. Knowing how exacting she could be, it wouldn't have been strange for her to immediately turn it into a rebuke, something like, so it's "President" with all due respect, but not "Office Head" too?

But contrary to expectation, Karisia only creased her brow once. Maybe it was because the situation was too urgent for anything more.

"That relic's function is far too useful to burn through. We'll need to look into a new sacred relic."

An artifact on par with Phoibos's crystal, was it.

It was an item that even the Mage King in the original work rated as "usable." Granted, that was under the limited circumstance of the Mage King himself having lost his power, but the very fact that it earned that high an evaluation at all was unusual.

An artifact of that caliber would either have been recovered by Blasphemia long ago, or else be sitting crushed under a seal powerful enough to keep it off their detection net entirely.

'Which means either raiding Blasphemia's database, or getting the Order of the Divine Name's cooperation....'

No. If we get the Order's cooperation, smuggling it back to our side would become nearly impossible. What I need is a way to get only the location of the sealed ruin out of the Order, nothing more.

Only now catching up with the situation, the field-operations directors' faces darkened. What was I supposed to do about this.

'Should I actually go rob a Blasphemia warehouse?'

No. That really would be going too far. If I went that reckless, Blasphemia might sound the highest level of alert, screaming that "that guy from the past is back!"

Though actually, back then it was Karisia that Blasphemia had been wary of, not me, so it'd have to be "she's back," not "he's back."

In the middle of the meeting, still dragging on, my gauntlet buzzed.

* * *

A glance passed between Ortes and Karisia. When Karisia gave a nod, Ortes stepped out of the meeting room for a moment.

It was unusual.

For Ortes to leave Karisia's side in the middle of a meeting. He was the type who, even with a seat prepared for him, never sat down, standing steadfastly behind Karisia instead.

Leaving the directors' curiosity behind him, Ortes checked the message he'd received from Demos.

『I've confirmed the opening you made for us. The Order of the Divine Name intends to use this chaos to carry out the Great Temple Liberation Operation. You've earned the right. If you wish to take part in the Great Temple Liberation Operation, come to the place we made contact before...』

Ortes read over the opening of the message closely, again and again, but the content never changed. Demos, it seemed, genuinely believed that Ortes was the one who'd caused the whole Magic Tower exposure incident.

'How does he manage to misunderstand things that badly?'

Setting his bewilderment aside for the moment, Ortes turned his focus to the Order's plan. Now that the matter had grown this large, the Order too would surely guess that Argos was about to start moving on a massive scale.

So how exactly had the Order dealt with the reinforced surveillance net?

『We have our own spy inside Argos. You probably already knew, but it's thanks to the skill of Elimon's priests.』

He hadn't known. Ortes ran back through what he knew about Elimon.

Goddess of pleasure and eros. The method used was probably a honey trap mobilized through sacred invocation. In a way, it was only natural that the Order would infiltrate Argos.

They couldn't infiltrate Blasphemia itself, a secret organization. So the judgment call was to dig in through some other branch of Panoptes, the parent body Blasphemia belonged to.

By planting an agent inside Argos, relatively easier to infiltrate, they could pull in Blasphemia's information at least indirectly. It was probably the fruit of an effort made for the entire order's survival.

『If we use them to obstruct Blasphemia's movements, we can carve out an opening to attempt the Great Temple's liberation. Knowing the Order has a spy hidden inside Argos and actually making use of it are two different matters entirely. To think you engineered a leak this massive, one that lets Argos exert real influence over Blasphemia. As a priest of the war god, I admire your strategic vision.』

Ortes let out a hollow laugh. The situation had gotten so tangled it had actually swung in his favor.

'So it wasn't an Argyrion mole, it was an Order of the Divine Name mole that turned up after all.'

Salmosia's suspicion, that Argos was systematically obstructing Blasphemia, had turned out to be real.

Except the one pulling the strings behind it wasn't Argyrion, it was the Order of the Divine Name.

'I knew it. There was no way Argyrion could be manipulating Argos, not unless they had some kind of hypnosis app.'

Elimon's sacred invocation could be seen as a kind of hypnosis, in a way. And unlike Argyrion, whose identity had already been exposed by the Elysion terror attack, the Order was surely still keeping its status as an enemy of magical society hidden.

Ortes began arranging his words so he could dress up this new information properly before reporting it.

An unexpected stroke of good fortune.

* * *

Haltos, Argyrion's leader, read slowly down through the documents. Fortunately, most of the situation was unfolding just as he'd intended.

"It's fortunate our collaborators inside Argos have been doing faithful work."

"Yes. The most important Apex Magic Towers slipped completely clear of the surveillance net."

In the exposure list that Nastion, acting on Haltos's instructions, had carefully fine-tuned, the most important collaborators had been left out entirely. With attention drawn toward the other Magic Towers, they'd been cleared completely off the list of suspects.

"What came as a surprise was the response from inside Argos itself. Beyond just our collaborators, there turned out to be executives who actually welcomed the chance to stand against Blasphemia."

"That's Blasphemia's original sin, isn't it. Dressing itself up as the one carrying out the Ten Towers' most secret mission was always going to breed resentment. And with its incompetence exposed at Elysion on top of that, it's only natural people would want to take this chance to knock it down a peg."

"In that case.... Should we try recruiting more of those who hold that kind of resentment?"

Nastion drew something like a square box out of the wavering shadow, a device that projected a holographic image.

Haltos, after a moment's thought, shook his head.

"No. There's no need to add more comrades right this moment. If they accept the truth, that's one thing, but those who can't accept it, we'll inevitably have to remove, won't we. Argos being united in opinion internally is more than enough as it is."

The hologram inside the device Nastion had drawn out wasn't any ordinary image.

It was the truth-bearing radiance. Any mage who let that light fall on their eyes came to receive the "truth."

Mages who witnessed the truth reacted in one of two ways.

They either denied the truth and turned hostile, or they joined Argyrion.

A day would come when the truth was revealed to the whole world, but now, when they hadn't even climbed onto the same battlefield as the Ten Towers, wasn't that time.

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