WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 83

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The Prelude to Chaos (2)

The silver monster with a unicorn's head closed in on the enemy at speed. The silver brass instruments that formed its limbs were playing rapidly.

It wasn't playing for anyone to hear. In fact, the sound of its performance was inaudible to human hearing.

Ultrasonic waves, like a bat's, sound beyond the range of human hearing. The magically tuned ultrasound seeped into every corner of the Great Temple, reflected back, and returned to the silver monster.

It was magic that sensed what lay where, in advance, through the echo of sound. Though inaudible to human ears, that melody, undeniably real, carried within it a curse of decay and dullness.

An invisible ensemble the monster wove together. The monster knew a curse this weak alone couldn't fell the temple's intruders.

But the monster had no intention of destroying every intruder alone.

Once its master's disciples and kin arrived, though, the enemies would realize their strength had weakened far below normal, and panic.

That one moment of confusion would be enough.

Once its master's disciples arrived, they would unlock its functions, and before their overwhelming magical might, the temple would return once more to the silence its master had decreed.

Just one thing. An alien divinity unlike anything witnessed even in ancient times, that was the problem.

The monster's master had always been wary of the unknown, and that instinct had passed directly down to the monster as well. It intended to deliver the best surprise attack it could manage.

It didn't need to neutralize the variable outright, not right away. All it needed was to make the variable waste time, wary of an ambush in the dark.

The scenery around the monster rippled. Its body was no longer silver but the same ash-gray as the temple walls sunk in darkness. A perfect mimicry of its surroundings, magic even modern camouflage magic would struggle to match.

The variable had stopped moving, at the temple's innermost depths.

That was where the Great Temple's emblem lay, the one its master had destroyed with his own hands.

What if, by some chance, this figure wielded a sacred invocation capable of restoring the destroyed emblem, or a Holy Decree (聖令) that surpassed even a sacred invocation's level?

Then Pluton's Great Temple would once more become a rallying point for old enemies, and bring ruin down on its master's grand design.

The monster's movements grew urgent.

The monster, melting into the thick-laid darkness,

came face to face with a blue gaze, glowing eyes fixed on it.

* * *

How?

That was the monster's question.

That gaze was looking straight at it. Glowing irises locked onto the sockets of its eyes, unblinking.

There was no flaw in its camouflage. Through its own power over sound, it had erased even the sound of its own footsteps. Anyone piercing the darkness with their sight would see only a wall; anyone listening for footsteps would hear only the wind.

Was this the tracking-of-prey invocation held by a priest who served a god of the hunt? It couldn't have seen the monster before, so how could it have known to track it in advance?

An instinct long unused, for many long years, rang out in alarm. It had to flee at once, or fight.

It parsed its instinctive fear with logic. If it fled, that figure would surely alert the other enemies to the anomaly. Its master's enemies would slip away, just as they always had, since ancient times.

If it fought now, it could buy time until reinforcements arrived.

"Adusiam, is that correct?"

The monster, Adusiam, shuddered.

"I find you quite interesting."

The nameless variable murmured, soft and smooth.

"An ancient golem forged by the Mage King. Made using a mage from before the Ten Towers system even existed. I never imagined I'd see one here."

Kore was watching the scene unfold.

* * *

The innermost depths beneath Pluton's Great Temple. Four passages led there in all. While Ortes and Adusiam stood near the east and west passages, watching each other, Kore watched the standoff from the north passage.

'This spot is a blind spot for both of them....'

It was certain the monster couldn't perceive her. That was Pluton's own sacred invocation, the invisible veil, at work.

Being "invisible" didn't simply mean visual concealment. It was closer to a power that hid one's very existence from the world.

Pluton was the god who governed the underworld. A sacred invocation symbolizing "unseen death," the kind that could strike anyone, anywhere, without warning.

But unlike the monster, Outis might be able to see through her sacred invocation. So Kore hid carefully in the darkness of the passage.

She couldn't see the shape of whatever held mana, but she could sense its presence through her sacred invocation. It stood right in front of Outis.

Then Outis opened his mouth. The same easy, unbothered tone she'd heard at the meeting.

"Adusiam, is that correct?"

He knew its name.

No answer came. Outis went on calmly, as though he'd expected as much.

"I find you quite interesting. An ancient golem forged by the Mage King."

Something like that, here in Pluton's Great Temple? Kore was startled, but quickly worked out an explanation for herself. The Mage King was a careful man. He must have placed it here as a kind of alarm, one that would signal an attack if the Order's resistance ever tried to free the temple.

What she couldn't make sense of, instead, was Outis.

That a guardian created by the Mage King himself had been placed in the Great Temple was information not even Pluton's own priestess knew.

No, actually, it would be strange for the gods' own people to know at all. The Mage King must have set that golem up as the temple's guardian only after the siege over the Great Temple had ended.

Who had been at the Mage King's side when he crushed the Order's largest resistance force?

Only the Mage King's disciples. The very founders of today's Ten Towers.

Kore shook her head. That Outis's true identity might be a Ten Towers spy was the worst case she could imagine.

But it was also the least likely one. If he really were a Ten Towers spy, he'd have had far too many chances already to scheme the Order of the Divine Name into total annihilation.

'Outis did say he'd operated inside Blasphemia.'

He might have gotten information about that golem from Blasphemia. This Great Temple of Pluton's was sealed by some special method even the Ten Towers couldn't undo, but if a golem like this one had turned up in some other temple Blasphemia had investigated, it wasn't an impossible story.

"Made using a mage from before the Ten Towers system even existed. I never imagined I'd see one here."

There was something chilling about how casually he laid out Adusiam's construction history.

"I can see everything, so why don't you come out."

Kore flinched, her body trembling. Outis's gaze was still fixed toward Adusiam. So why did those words feel aimed at her?

A low hum, a wave of raw mana rippling through the darkness. Magic.

It wasn't something detectable by ear or eye. Only a faint eddy in the esper field let her guess a spell had triggered at all.

Before that invisible attack, Outis merely tilted his head slightly, unbothered.

Krrsh...

The temple wall struck by the attack crumbled to dust and disappeared. Outis nodded and said,

"A compressed sonic round? So the principle is that on impact, it vibrates at the target material's own natural frequency and pulverizes it in an instant. That's a more modern idea than an ancient one. Are you sure you're a golem manufactured dozens of centuries ago?"

Outis raised his blade. Kore sharpened her vision to make out shapes in the darkness. Even though she couldn't see the golem itself, she could trace the path of its movement through the dust it kicked up and the wreckage it left behind.

And what that trajectory meant was clear.

Adusiam was being hunted down by Outis.

For some reason, the sonic rounds Outis had just described weren't damaging his blade at all. He interfered with their trajectories using a strange swordsmanship, pressing Adusiam back with them.

Every deflected sonic round flew straight to wherever Adusiam's own esper field could be felt. Adusiam was about to be killed by its own magic.

It looked almost like deliberate mockery. Kore found herself overlapping the moments of chasing Outis, throwing open door after door only to come up empty, with Adusiam's current situation.

But this was far more relentless than her own case had been. He didn't even move from where he stood, only swung his blade, turning the attacks back on their owner.

A relentlessness that meant to grind you down with nothing but your own magic. As if he meant to teach a dog that dared bare its teeth at its master the true difference in rank between them....

* * *

I fiddled with the high-frequency blade's output control.

It was a relief that the magic this thing used took the form of compressed sound-wave projectiles. If it had been the reckless type that goes, 'I use sound waves, so I'll charge straight in at the speed of sound!', I'd have had a much harder time.

The underlying principle of the sonic-round magic itself was simple. Pulverization through a target's own natural resonant frequency.

And my blade was a high-frequency blade. A tool that boosted cutting power through ultra-vibration. Adjust the ultra-vibration's output at the right timing, and I could offset the sonic round's vibrational shattering just fine.

With something like this, closing the distance was actually the more dangerous option.

Adusiam fired its sonic rounds using the instruments built into its own body. To put it another way, if it was willing to risk self-destruction, it could unleash sound waves from its entire body the instant I got close.

I had no reason to do something stupid, like get caught up in the other side's own self-destruction.

I calmly deflected the sonic rounds while thinking about how I'd get that thing back to Hydra Corp.

According to what my eyes were telling me, Adusiam currently had its higher functions locked.

That was exactly why I hadn't smashed it to pieces the moment I noticed it. Unlocking its higher functions required authorization from its creator or the creator's proxy, and right now, there was no Mage King around to unlock Adusiam's functions.

Put another way, if this thing's "function unlock" ever became possible, that would mean the Mage King had returned.

'I should just take it home and rig it into a Mage King's-arrival alarm.'

* * *

A flash of silver light rose before Pluton's Great Temple. Out of a gaping rift torn in the open air, figures clad in camouflage-spelled combat gear began walking out.

"A comrade's distress signal was sent from here?"

Argyrion had arrived.

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