WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 80

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To the Great Temple (1)

Ortes's expression, as he opened the door to the meeting room and stepped inside, looked far more at ease than before.

That is to say, at ease as far as Karisia could tell. No one else had the experience to distinguish so subtle a change in his expression.

Taking up his position behind Karisia again, Ortes bent at the waist and whispered.

"I've found a way. Argos intends to actively obstruct Blasphemia's movements."

Karisia kept her expression blank. That didn't mean she wasn't surprised.

It was just that this wasn't the first time, or even the second, that Ortes had stepped out for a moment only to come back with some outlandish piece of news.

"Go ahead and explain."

Ortes nodded and stepped forward with a heavy footfall. He worked his terminal, feeding data into the holographic projector at the center of the meeting room.

A map rose into the air. Arabel recalled the lay of the land shown on it. Unremarkable plains. A few relics from the ancient era had turned up there, at least.

But nothing with magical value, nothing that carried divinity. Pottery and carvings offering a glimpse of ancient daily life were about all there was, nothing that had ever shaken up academic circles or the auction houses.

"We have a collaborator inside Argos."

What was he talking about?

Ortes's words left the directors bewildered. Until now, the meeting had been proceeding on the premise of "the rising difficulty of the Divinity Investigation caused by Argos."

If he had a hidden contact planted inside Argos, the entire premise underlying the meeting collapsed.

"Until now, it was uncertain how far our collaborators would be able to help, so I hadn't factored it in as a viable countermeasure. But I just received word a moment ago."

A calm explanation followed. The collaborators Ortes knew of had succeeded in seizing control of internal opinion within Argos, and serious conflict was about to break out between Argos and Blasphemia.

"The area you're looking at now is part of that 'conflict.' As you can see, there's nothing here, but Argos is going to insist strongly that Blasphemia inspect this site."

It was empty, ownerless land, but broad in size at least. Even using every last bit of manpower Blasphemia could spare, it would take ten days.

Arabel understood the situation. Even if nothing much would come of it, ancient-era artifacts did turn up there, which was reason enough to request an inspection from Blasphemia, the group of experts in that era.

'They'll probably use some excuse, like a Magic Tower's records tied to Argyrion turning up an excavation plan for that plain, to make the request. And it won't be easy for Blasphemia to refuse, either.'

Both Argos and Blasphemia already knew perfectly well that nothing of real value would ever come out of that plain. This was simply a move to screw Blasphemia over.

"We'll use this window to push through as many Divinity Investigations as we can. I'll update Argos's deployment information as it comes in, but this time, I won't be accompanying the team to the site."

Ever since Dimedes's violent, sudden death, Ortes had always accompanied the directors on their Divinity Investigation field deployments. Was that policy being abolished now?

'Had trust in the directors' abilities been restored to some degree?'

Arabel shook her head. The directors' Divinity Investigations had always taken place under thoroughly controlled conditions. Their ability to respond to the unexpected still hadn't been tested.

If the policy hadn't changed because of the directors, then there had to be some pressing reason of Ortes's own for him to be absent.

"I need to attend a meeting with our 'collaborators.'"

Over the months since Hydra Corp's founding, having carried out the Divinity Investigation and any number of other duties, the directors believed they'd finally come to grasp the true capabilities of the two people who'd unified Etna City, Ortes and Karisia.

Setting aside individual combat strength, there were limits on the social side of things. That was surely why, instead of simply cutting the directors down, they'd taken them in and organized them into a company.

What one person could do and what a group could do were different things. Call it the efficiency of division of labor, maybe.

And yet, right now, Ortes had just pulled off a feat that went far, far beyond the category of "what one person could do."

When, exactly?

While overseeing the entire Divinity Investigation and going out on every single field trip, when had he possibly found the time to recruit people inside Argos?

'Did that even make physical sense?'

It simply wasn't a realistic allocation of time. It wasn't as if he lived a single day as forty-eight hours, all by himself.

Handling agents like that couldn't be done through data systems alone. It inevitably required meeting them in person, confirming their temperament and abilities directly.

As guildmaster of Etna City's information broker guild, Arabel knew that fact better than anyone.

A quiet clue about Ortes's true identity surfaced in her mind again.

'If a secret inspector was obstructing Blasphemia's own operations, there was only one reason for it: that Blasphemia itself had grown seriously corrupted....'

If so, were Ortes's collaborators other Blasphemia inspectors? Arabel glanced at Divius, said to have once been Blasphemia's body-modification specialist.

She'd have to set aside a day sometime to talk with him. Without knowing for certain just who it was they were really serving, she didn't think she could stand the fear of it.

'If I use the board meeting as an excuse, I could probably offload a few tasks....'

On top of that, she simply couldn't stand to take on any more work.

Arabel finished preparing to run from the work that was about to come crashing down on her.

* * *

Before I left, I called Arabel over and gave her a few instructions.

If I, the one overseeing the entire Divinity Investigation, was going to be gone, who else was supposed to lay out infiltration routes for the directors and coordinate their forces?

Arabel, who combined a flexible mind with quick improvisation and could take in multiple locations at a glance through her drones, was exactly the right person for the job.

Once the brief handoff was finished, I moved straight out to make contact with Demos.

What sort of place the Order of the Divine Name's "Great Temple" might actually be, I couldn't easily guess. But this was a strategic site important enough that the Order was mobilizing even its trump card, the spy inside Argos, just to try to reclaim it.

Give it a shake, and something was bound to fall out.

"You made it."

Demos looked at me and nodded. Mixed in around him were a few unfamiliar faces.

* * *

"Ah. New faces, I see."

The slit-eyed man. The peculiar gaze of the one who called himself nobody at all, Outis, swept over the priests.

The priest caught in that gaze felt as though Outis wasn't simply "looking" at them, but "seeing through" them. A sensation of having even the secrets buried deep in their heart taken apart, piece by piece.

It had been the same when they'd once met the bishop of Phoibos Proopsios. There was something in the eyes of prophets who saw the future that shook people to their core.

"You don't seem to be the ones who came to the gathering. Are you Demos's brothers, then?"

He wasn't really asking about blood relation. It was a question about brothers in faith, whether they worshipped the same god.

The Enyalios priest's body gave a small, startled shudder. Thought through calmly, it was a simple deduction. Priests traveling with Demos, easy enough to guess they served the same god, Enyalios.

But truth spoken from a prophet's mouth always felt heavy, somehow.

More than that, when it came from Outis, the man Demos had introduced as "the finest prophet I know."

"That's right. But you'd best watch your mouth."

Demos pointed a finger up at the sky. The place they'd gathered now was a busy street in a city ruled by some mid-tier Magic Tower. The noise of bustling passersby covered the Order's voices well enough, but the gaze of the mana drones the Magic Towers scattered around to keep watch on their citizens was always something to be wary of.

"Ha. Set your mind at ease. I'm watching everything, after all."

Outis's smile, so easily brushing aside that worry, felt less reassuring than it did frightening and strange.

Even granting that prophecy worked differently in many ways from other forms of sacred invocation, was he saying he was constantly peering into the future, right in the middle of a mage stronghold?

"So, Demos. Where is it we're headed?"

Demos looked around once. Even with his senses sharpened by Qi, he detected no drones, spirits, or any other of the mages' underlings.

Trusting his own senses, and on top of that, the prophet's calm assurance, he opened his mouth.

"The tail end of the Mythic Age. The last temple where the whole pantheon gathered to resist the Mage King."

"A god with enough authority to serve as the rallying point for all the cults to gather in one place. Aigio's temple, then?"

A dangerous conversation, one that would get them branded superstition-worshippers and hauled off on the spot if any mage overheard it. The Enyalios priests' faces turned pale.

"...Even the Mage King was wary of the twelve strongest cults, Aigio's included. That's why he struck and toppled them first, before anything else. The place where the cults gathered to resist to the very end was Pluton's Great Temple."

Hah. Ortes let out a low sound of admiration. So this was how he'd end up visiting Pluton's temple.

"I see. If it's Pluton, who doesn't belong among the Twelve Great Gods but holds a divine rank equal to theirs, then it makes sense they'd become the rallying point for the resistance. What about the other priests I saw at the gathering?"

"They're all setting out from different directions, each leading their own group. We move in at midnight."

Ortes nodded. Deploying this many priests. The Order of the Divine Name was clearly pinning enormous hopes on this liberation of the Great Temple.

"No matter how well Argos keeps Blasphemia occupied, there's no hiding all the divine power that'll be released once the temple's freed. We need to break every seal and recover the sacred relics within an hour."

"I'll take charge of the Bacchus cult's share."

Ortes leisurely made his position clear: Phoibos's own cult would recover Phoibos's sacred relics, so he had no interest in those. Since he was protecting the last priest of the Bacchus cult, he'd only take what belonged to her.

Demos shook his head.

"It's not just the twelve cults. There'll be relics from countless minor cults gathered there too. Think about dividing them up later, for now we need to recover everything we can see."

Ortes nodded, satisfied.

He could already picture, in his mind's eye, just how many sacred relics he might be able to embezzle.

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