WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss ◈
Chapter 94
──────
Each Side's Own Guess (1)
Ortes took the coat the president held out to him.
"Isn't this the coat you wear yourself, President?"
"There's nothing else for you to wear. What you've got on now is more like a pile of rags than an outfit, so you might as well wear this."
Ortes shrugged once and obediently put the coat on. It was one-size-fits-all to begin with, so it fit well enough.
"What did you tell the other directors before you came out here?"
"I just told them to handle things well on their own and left."
Good grief. Ortes let out a groan. Is the company actually going to run properly like that, President?
Karisia let Ortes's grumbling go in one ear and out the other, then asked,
"So how in the world did the partner company meeting turn into that disaster?"
"Ah."
Ortes rummaged through the tatters of his ragged jacket and pulled out a round object about the size of his palm.
It was Adusiam's core.
"Looks like it's a golem the Mage King made. This seems to be what summoned the Ten Towers here, but I can't come up with any other explanation for why Argyrion showed up."
"The Mage King?"
Karisia's interest was piqued, and she took Adusiam's core from Ortes's hand. Her mana dug through the core's structure, laying every detail of it bare.
"There's a limiter on its functions?"
"Yes. The limiter's only released with authorization from the Mage King himself, or his proxy. I figured I might be able to use it as a kind of detector for the Mage King's resurrection, so I kept hold of it."
Sensing Karisia's mana, Adusiam's core trembled.
『The Ten Commandments... White Light, detected... Permission to advance to a higher tier...』
The hand gripping the core tensed. Karisia's expression, which had hardened at the golem's voice, relaxed, and she tossed the core back to Ortes.
"For now, there are two groups this thing's set up to send a distress signal to. The Mage King's disciples, meaning the Commandment-holders. And the Mage King's kin, the same kind as this golem."
Ortes's eyes narrowed.
"Are you saying Argyrion falls under the second category?"
"I couldn't say that much. There's no way for us to know whether Argyrion came because they picked up that signal, or for some other reason entirely."
The cause Argyrion proclaimed might be connected to the Mage King after all.
It was an ominous sign.
Ortes decided to file this away as one possibility among many. He had no idea what Argyrion would ultimately do, but preparing for the worst case couldn't hurt.
Karisia took a needlessly deep breath and asked,
"So. Did you actually come away with anything?"
"Quite a bit, actually. Working as a fixer, I built up an eye for picking out valuable things. I made sure to skim off only the best of it."
Karisia, who knew at least roughly about Ortes's eyes, recognized his talk of an "eye for it" as his own brand of joke. She smiled faintly and changed the subject.
"Didn't the ancient spirit try talking to you again, like last time?"
"It probably didn't have the chance to. I didn't even handle anything properly, just shoved it all in wherever it'd fit."
Ortes's clothes, which looked less like an outfit than a shredded pile of rags, were actually a fairly high-end product. An item that made maximum use of barrier magic to significantly expand the capacity of its pocket-like storage compartments, and kept whatever was inside from slipping back out easily.
Even the fiber making up the clothes wasn't ordinary. It was woven from the silk of a giant spider demon-beast called an Arachnid, a material tougher than most steel.
Because of that, the total amount of sacred relics stored across Ortes's clothing right now was far greater than anyone could guess just by looking at it.
"Hm. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure they're still in good condition."
Having stuffed the clothing full and then dived straight into the fight between Argyrion and the Ten Towers, it was a reasonable guess that the relics had taken no small amount of damage, in proportion to how wrecked the clothes themselves were.
"Relax. As long as they're not completely crushed to dust, whatever divine power's soaked into them will still be there, and that's all that matters."
Ortes nodded. Magical theory relating to the artificial Decalogue wasn't his field of expertise, so if Karisia, who stood at the forefront of artificial-Decalogue research alongside Kaicel, said so, it was probably true.
The two of them kept up their small talk as they headed home.
* * *
The Ten Towers' Elders gathered together in one place. Not everyone had come, but even this many gathering at once was a record-breaking event.
"Tallo is dead."
"By Argyrion?"
"By the looks of it."
"Is that even possible?"
Ether Space erupted into noise. Even across the Ten Towers' long history, an Elder being killed for any reason other than a Succession War was an exceedingly rare thing.
"How many years has Tallo served as an Elder?"
"Ninety-two years."
"That's quite a tenure."
Among the Ten Towers' Elders, beings closer to magic itself than to humanity, there were monsters who'd lived and been called Elder for more than several centuries. Surprisingly, though, aside from a handful of extreme cases, the gap in strength between Elders wasn't actually all that large.
To be precise, roughly a century after taking office as Elder, their strength tended to level out at the top.
That was because it took, on average, about a century to fully develop every ability one grasped through the wisdom of the Ten Commandments. Beyond that point, one had to explore further on one's own, since only the Magic Tower Masters could access the deeper authority hidden within the Ten Commandments.
The deep core of the Ten Commandments. A realm beyond mere magic, the true domain of the Magic Way.
Excluding the rare exceptions who'd reached that unknown territory on their own despite not being Magic Tower Masters, and the newly-appointed Elders fresh to their post, there was no clear hierarchy of strength among the Elders.
Which was exactly why the news of Tallo's death was all the more shocking.
"I had thought Blasphemia was more than capable of handling them."
"According to Salmosia's report, it's not just Blasphemia, but Argos as well. In other words, it seems there are no small number of spies throughout Panoptes as a whole."
"This matter's grown too large to leave to a single subordinate organization any longer..."
The Elders each arrived at one unpleasant, frightening hypothesis tied to Argyrion's "cause." If that hypothesis held true, it would also explain the abilities Argyrion had shown, abilities that went beyond what a mere gathering of the Eroded should be capable of.
"Astral Marshal (天文官將)."
"Yes."
A young man, summoned to this gathering of the Ten Towers' most eminent Elders. He was the head of the observers belonging to Eidolon (εἴδωλον), the organization that watched over the extradimensional.
Even among those who belonged to Eidolon, the Astral Marshal was someone special.
Reading the stars' omens to divine the future, it was both the discipline closest to what superstition followers practiced, and a post tasked with tracing the echo of the Mage King, the figure the Ten Towers feared and revered above all others, and the very route of his ascension, a role that meant sharing in the Ten Towers' most closely-guarded secrets.
"What about the extradimensional vortex you've had under watch?"
"Movement from the extradimensional keeps steadily spreading. It's opening gates all across the world, attempting contact with apocalypticists."
"Is there any possibility an extradimensional being mimicked the Mage King and brainwashed Argyrion?"
"It's impossible to say for certain. It isn't out of the question for an extradimensional being who's picked up on the echo of the ascension to imitate the Mage King's actions. But across every observation we've made so far, no extradimensional being has ever behaved that way."
"But," the Astral Marshal began, then continued.
"To swear that because something hasn't existed until now, it never will, is the shortsightedness of a fool. If you demand I answer plainly, possible or not, then I would say it is possible."
"A remnant thought of the Mage King, then? Or an extradimensional being that's begun to understand humanity more intimately? Either way, it's certainly a fearsome enemy."
The Elders' opinions converged on one point. This wasn't a matter Blasphemia alone could hold back.
"We'll need to issue an emergency order to all of Panoptes."
"But didn't you say there are spies scattered throughout their ranks?"
"Eidolon is the only one whose purity is guaranteed. Hmm..."
Clap. Someone brought their hands together. A form made not of flesh and bone but of gathered dark-blue mist, no one knew how it had managed to produce a sound.
It was an Elder of the Jade Wind Tower.
"Let's do this. Argyrion's already leaked those lists, haven't they?"
A base tactic Argyrion had used to shake the magic world's foundations. The Elders nodded.
"We launch a full-scale investigation into every name on those lists. Any Magic Tower with nothing to hide will genuinely cooperate, and among Panoptes's own investigators, couldn't we flag whoever drags their feet as a risk?"
"Using the investigation itself as bait to sift out the dangerous elements? That's rather moderate, coming from you."
"It's not that my own philosophy, the more souls the merrier, has changed any. But whether it's an extradimensional being or the Mage King, it's an enemy the magic world needs to throw its full strength against, no question. Just imagine what a loss it would be if some loyal servant of the magic world got converted into a soul stone."
Opinions passed back and forth among the Elders through various channels. Some sent telepathy to one another through magic. Others simply talked via messenger through their mana proxies. Once their own back-and-forth settled, a large-scale operation to root out Argyrion's spies was resolved on.
As silence gradually settled over Ether Space, the Astral Marshal suddenly spoke up.
"Have the Magic Tower Masters given any instructions?"
"They seem to think Argyrion's threat is nothing much, compared to hunting down clues to the ascension. The Silver Iron Tower's Master apparently said, 'If you run into one of those angels again, please be sure to take it alive.'"
The Astral Marshal nodded.
The Magic Tower Masters still hadn't moved.
"I'll pass the word along to the others as well."
"You may withdraw for now. We'll announce what's been decided to the Panoptes council shortly."
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
