WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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

Chapter 85

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The Great Chaos (2)

"What... what did you do!"

...?

The priest of Pluton's sudden burst of fury left me bewildered. Surely she wasn't about to claim, at this point, that the golem was the Great Temple's private property and demand I pay for it.

"Please calm yourself, Priest. I've done nothing at all."

I spread my clasped hands wide to either side, the traditional gesture for showing you're unarmed. Then I added a peaceable smile on top, crafting the picture of someone entirely harmless.

"As you saw yourself, all I did was strike down an intruder."

"An intruder, you say...?"

The priest of Pluton murmured, dazed. I had no idea what could possibly have shocked her so badly.

Could she have used some soul-reading sacred invocation and actually seen where my soul had come from? Was that why she looked this shaken, having glimpsed Earth and this world's original work?

"Priest. Did you perhaps see something?"

"What?"

"Inside my soul. What did you see?"

A pro really was a pro, I guess. To think she'd managed to trace my soul's point of origin, something I hadn't been able to dig up no matter how much I'd busted my ass searching these past few years.

That fussy, combative reaction from a moment ago made sense now, too.

If her whole fate turned out to be laid out and prophesied down to the last detail in some internet novel, or in this world's case, an Ether Net novel, she'd have every right to despair.

But no. The original work had already been twisted past all recognition by this point. It made far more sense to think the novel had been built on this world, rather than this world having been built on the novel.

Working off that logic, I'd been busy preparing some comforting line like, 'Prophecy doesn't decide everything. Our lives are more than a mere record,' when a bolt of news dropped out of a clear sky and struck me down.

"No. I wasn't talking about your soul."

"...Pardon?"

A hollow deeper than mere disappointment.

Hope that had swelled up. Then, exactly as much empty space as that hope had occupied. In its place welled up some bitter feeling hard to put into words, filling the gap hope had left behind.

I'd thought I'd given up completely on getting home after years of getting knocked around out here, but I guess some scrap of expectation I hadn't quite managed to let go of had still been hanging on.

I have a warm place to sleep now, food to eat today, enough money to take care of myself.

At the same time, I've also got more than my fill of pressure, from a world that could tip straight into apocalypse if I'm not careful, and from the sheer weight riding on these damn eyes of mine.

Made me want to go stretch out flat on my bed in the room next to Karisia's and just lie there.

I got my expression back under control fast. It wouldn't do to snap at a business partner just because my own personal business had gone sideways. That's not what a professional does.

My smile had probably vanished for two or three seconds there, but it was dark, so let's hope she hadn't gotten a clear look.

"Then what did you mean, just now?"

"Argyrion is here."

"Pardon?"

Ah. Could it be because that golem, Adusiam, happened to be silver-colored?

The first thing "silver" brought to mind these days was Argyrion's silver thread. Had she mistaken Adusiam for some deluxe model of it? Did she think that because I hadn't finished it off fast enough, it had sent some kind of distress signal to Argyrion and given away the Great Temple's location?

It was a situation ripe for misunderstanding. Why did that thing have to be silver, of all colors. As far as I was concerned, this was just unfair.

If Adusiam had actually tried to send a signal anywhere, I'd have finished it off faster. Or blocked it beforehand with Spell Formula Overwriting, at the very least.

A pretty awkward misunderstanding. Best to clear it up right away.

"I don't know why Argyrion would have arrived here, but it has nothing to do with m-"

"And a mage from the Ten Towers, too."

"What?"

* * *

"Judging by the size of that esper field, it's an Elder at the very least. Perfect! Only one of the Order's own representatives stepping forward can make a mutual kill possible!"

Kore shouted, half wild with it. With a Ten Towers Elder here in person, a retreat without casualties was no longer possible.

Kore, the only member of the Order's temple-reclamation team who could detect intruders in advance. Outis, who had held her attention perfectly and stalled for time, all this while.

This had been a well-laid trap. To both Argyrion and the Ten Towers, the Order of the Divine Name was a target marked for execution.

If Outis really was the being she suspected him to be, then this had been an exquisitely calculated maneuver.

The strategy Outis had proposed to the Order came down to two points: weaken Argyrion through the Order itself, and leave the actual disposal of Argyrion to the Ten Towers.

He'd also told the other cults he'd give them the "sacred relics he'd gathered." On the surface, that looked like it would strengthen the Order, but the crucial part was that he was the one who'd gathered them.

It meant he could control whatever relics the Order ended up receiving.

But reclaiming Pluton's temple must have been outside Outis's own expectations.

The Order's remaining strength had grown far beyond what Outis had planned for. Which meant, if he wanted the balance of power to match his original calculations, some appropriate pruning would be necessary.

Something like exposing them to a pincer attack from a Ten Towers Elder and Argyrion both, engineering a situation where one of the major cults' own representatives had no choice but to be sacrificed.

"The Order's overgrown strength gets trimmed down to a reasonable size, and the Ten Towers walk away thinking Argyrion's joined hands with heretics. How truly cunning...!"

Kore's shout was both a deliberate provocation and a way of venting her own fury.

If she wanted to minimize casualties here, it was right that she should be the one to die. The time she could remain in this world as a spirit wouldn't be long, but it would be enough to stall the enemies outside and get word of the truth to the rest of the Order.

Outis rubbed at his jaw, thinking hard.

'Was that provocation too transparent...?'

He must have fought more priests than anyone else, back in the Mythic Age. Of course he'd already know a priest of Pluton could leave a lingering spirit behind.

"Hm. I'll admit that, given the circumstances, it might look like I'm a Blasphemia spy."

"What?"

'He says that, after everything, at a time like this?'

Kore hadn't been suspecting Outis of being some mere Blasphemia superstition-hunter.

Something far, far greater than that. Something she could hardly bring herself to put into words.

A fragment of "the vanished mage."

Something like the discarded husk of a body the vanished mage had shed on ascending, or a fallen fragment of his soul....

'If this were the vanished mage's own full, undiminished power, he wouldn't need to resort to scheming like this in the first place.'

"But Priest. I'm someone who'd genuinely be in trouble if the Ten Towers discovered me. Please believe me."

"What do you mean by that-"

"As a token of trust, I'll reveal my name to the Order's members. You said the more clues you have, the more precise a sacred invocation reading a soul's color becomes, didn't you? My name is Ortes. Please, see for yourselves whether the color of my soul lies closer to your side, or the Ten Towers'."

Kore reflexively invoked her sacred invocation. But what she saw remained exactly the same as before.

A blue glow.

'No. If anything, it seems to have gotten brighter...?'

She tried to say something, but was simply swept aside by the force of Ortes striding forward.

"Ah. Before you head back up, take the sacred relic in the center of the room. It should help."

Ortes rattled the words off like machine-gun fire, then turned his back. After hacking Adusiam apart a few more times until only its core remained, he snatched the core up and dashed away.

'What was that?'

It was a situation she genuinely couldn't make sense of. Why on earth would he vanish like that without even incapacitating her first?

He clearly had some purpose in mind. Some grand plan she couldn't yet begin to guess at.

In that brief instant, Kore agonized over it dozens of times before deciding to follow Ortes's instruction. She could see the trap plainly, but if she wanted to learn his purpose, she'd have to throw herself into the trap anyway.

In the deepest darkness of Pluton's Great Temple lay a shattered blade.

Kore recognized what it was in an instant. Damaged and broken as it clearly was, the divine power still lingering within it belonged unmistakably to Pluton.

It was the Great Temple's emblem, the scythe of Pluton.

"Why this?"

She sensed nothing like a curse on it.

Whatever power remained in the shattered emblem was probably nothing but dust compared to its original state, but even so, it could still serve as a medium to access the temple's core authority. Power to change her current situation had just landed in Kore's hands.

Something beyond simply running from the Ten Towers' pursuers...

Kore forced down the thought before it could spiral further. Wasn't the Order's survival the one thing that mattered right now?

Whatever intentions Ortes might have, she had to use this emblem now.

The broken scythe's blade. Kore drew it across her own palm. The divinity within the ink-black blade, now soaked in blood, resonated with Kore's own divine power.

Every level of the temple began appearing before her eyes all at once.

* * *

Tallo, Elder of the Silver Iron Tower, launched his own limbs outward. The 360-degree omnidirectional cameras mounted on those limbs, capturing everything from thermal infrared to multiple layers of sensor imaging, transmitted straight into Tallo's brain.

Spare enchant-ware that had been hovering around him slotted into the now-empty sockets. Unlike the reconnaissance enchant-ware he'd just launched, this was combat-grade.

Tallo went back over the contents of the emergency message that had just come in.

"The old king's legacy has summoned us... huh."

Funny, all of it. That an artifact of the Mage King still remained. That the artifact had reached out for help to the very people who'd killed him.

"Still, interesting. To think the Mage King left behind an artifact other than the Ten Commandments."

Tallo's left arm, autonomously scouting the temple's interior, picked up a life-form. Reshaped into something like a glove, the arm crept closer unnoticed and fitted itself onto some unlucky soul's hand.

Then the liquid spirit-intelligence metal built into it was injected. Spreading through the bloodstream and racing through the whole body in an instant, the liquid metal spread through the victim's entire body, putting the victim's flesh under Tallo's control.

That was when Tallo felt something go wrong.

In response to the liquid metal, "the brain" itself began fighting back.

The cerebral cortex reared up like some golem made of flesh, trying to crush the liquid metal outright.

But that was a hopeless effort. Why else would it be called "liquid," after all? The liquid metal slipped calmly out of the brain's crushing attack and sharpened itself into something like an awl.

Before the advance of the spirit-intelligence metal under Tallo's command, the brain was shredded apart in no time. Tallo couldn't hide his laughter.

"Ha! The Eroded, is it? Now this is interesting!"

A body shaped like a human's, but with internal organs clearly no longer human at all. The Eroded, pickled through and through by the extradimensional realm. The Eroded, quietly excavating ruins instead of some sudden burst of destruction, of all things?

This had to be Argyrion, the thorn in Blasphemia's side.

"Those poor bastards have made it all the way out here.... Argyrion's already at a disadvantage as it is, they can't afford to sink manpower into digging up some worthless artifact for no reason. Do they actually think some secret weapon that could flip the whole war is sleeping inside those ruins?"

A shame, really.

Whatever artifact was sleeping in these ruins, it was going to end up in his own hands regardless.

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