WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
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◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss ◈
Chapter 96
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An Unexpected Visit (1)
Vrooooom-
A familiar engine's rumble. Car wheels rushed busily along, and the city's murky air tickled his throat, same as always.
People walked along with their heads bowed, staring at something. Square panels held in each of their hands.
Smartphones.
Ortes moved along a street that had grown unfamiliar to him now, yet his body still remembered. It was the way home.
He punched in the passcode and opened the door.
"You're late?"
A familiar face stood there, one that had no business being there.
* * *
A sigh escapes me. I'd already suspected something was off, back when I first saw the cars and the people holding smartphones.
Still, this was awfully lazy, wasn't it?
"What exactly is this dream supposed to be?"
I pulled up a chair and sat down without much fuss. I could sense that this Karisia, or rather, the 'someone' wearing Karisia's face, was the one showing me this dream of Earth.
"My, what could have gone wrong? I built this entirely out of scenery most familiar and comfortable to you."
"Whatever you think you know, you are seriously mistaken. If a person comes home from work only to find their boss standing in their own home, that is not an auspicious dream (吉夢), it is a nightmare (凶夢)."
Is that so, she said, tilting her head in a very Karisia-like way. Somehow, the resemblance alone was enough to send a chill down my spine.
Actually, there'd been a far more definitive sign that this was a dream.
My eyes felt light.
None of that stifling pressure, like being chained down and forced to hold back. None of the pain either, like thorny vines tangling and tearing through my brain, that came whenever I pushed my eyes past their limiter.
There was no way my everyday life could feel this refreshing.
Realizing it was a dream because my eyes weren't straining, now that I thought about it, was a genuinely absurd reason.
"So. Who are you? A soul dwelling within a sacred relic?"
The someone wearing Karisia's face nodded without hesitation.
"That's right. I am an ancient priestess of Estia."
Estia. One of the Twelve Great Gods before Bacchus. Goddess of the hearth. Though "hearth" undersold it. Beyond the image of a kitchen's cooking fire, she also stood as a symbol of home, and by extension, of peace and tranquility.
Had there been a relic of Estia's among the sacred relics I'd carried out of Pluton's Great Temple?
After arriving at Hydra Corp, I'd passed out before I could properly gather my wits. There were so many relics, enough to look like a pile of junk, that guessing which one a ghost might be clinging to was next to impossible.
But once you knew the deity, you could usually guess the relic's shape. I ran through a few items that had some connection to flame.
"There was an oil lamp I'd set aside because it looked like a mood light, meant to use for indirect lighting..."
"Sorry?"
"No, never mind. I was talking to myself."
I organized my thoughts. The relic that had held Phoibos's spirit had looked at me and said I was "qualified."
"Are you here to judge my qualifications too?"
Estia's priestess shook her head.
"Strictly speaking, you aren't someone to be judged. It's because you already have the qualification that we old priests have been waiting."
A gentle, soft-spoken voice. It resembled Karisia's so closely that it grated on me regardless.
"Is it possible to change your appearance? Even in a dream, staring at my boss's face is making me a little queasy."
"That depends on your will, not mine."
Spoken like a riddle. I let out a sigh.
"That old man from the Phoibos cult, last time, went on about how he could not accept seeing Karisia's face, or something like that. It seems you have no such objection."
"The twelve sacred relics were prepared for you. You are their rightful, and only, heir. I have no intention of raising any objection to that right."
"Then you could have simply handed them over without a word and left. Why bother coming all the way into my dream?"
Karisia. No, Estia's priestess wearing Karisia's face turned to look out the window. The sights of Earth. Buildings lit up like a city that never sleeps, holding back the fallen night.
A bright red point crossing a night sky whose stars had been drowned out. Judging by the way it blinked, it had to be a plane or a satellite.
Somewhere, a rattling sound reached my ears, the echo of train wheels racing along a track.
"The world you came from. I wanted to see the other world on the far side of the extradimensional divide. And there's something I need to tell you-"
The world I came from, huh. My certainty was only deepening.
So the ancient priests had summoned me to this world after all. Come to think of it, the priest guarding Phoibos's crystal had also called it "something we summoned."
Though the question of how, exactly, I'd woken up over a decade before the original work even began, when the Mythic Age those ancient priests must have lived in was, at the very least, thousands of years past, still lingered unanswered.
"Your world's appearance differs from the scenery of my own era, but it resembles our world in the age you now live in. Whether that's the Mage King's influence, or simply the architectural style bound to emerge as cities grow more population-dense, I couldn't say."
The Mage King, here?
"It seems your curiosity has been resolved, so allow me to ask something in return."
Estia's priestess kept staring out the window without a word. Watching the people moving below, she murmured quietly.
"A world without magic..."
"Why did you people call me here? What is it you actually want?"
Only after hearing the question did Estia's priestess finally turn to look at me. The chair I sat in, the desk beyond it, the bleak, spare look of the single room I once lived alone in.
Estia's priestess faltered over something, then finally closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry."
"No, not sorry. As a basic human courtesy, if you are going to summon someone, should you not at least hand over some kind of manual?"
If you drag someone into this, there ought to be some manual explaining what he has to do to get back, right? Estia's priestess let out an uncertain "uh."
"That should still be in your memory, shouldn't it...?"
"All I remember is the plot of a novel where the Mage King runs wild."
Now that I thought about it, this too was a mystery. If the priests of the Mythic Age were the very ones who'd summoned me into this world, then what was the novel I'd read? What connection could there possibly be between this magic-ruled world and that novel?
"What exactly is the relationship between that novel and this world?"
"A novel...?"
Her expression said she genuinely had no idea what I meant.
"Damn it. Do you people not know everything either?"
"We each remember a different portion, according to our own roles. The one who knew the most would have been Phoibos's priest."
Ah, damn it. That old man went and left after saying all sorts of strange things.
Watching my face twist, Estia's priestess spoke as if whispering.
"...You are a soul from a world where neither magic nor any esper power remains any longer. It was precisely that kind of soul our plan required. This is everything I know."
Something in her words caught at me. "No longer remains"?
Did that mean magic had once existed on Earth too?
If I'd known this would happen, I should have opened my eyes properly the moment I met that ghost priest. What kind of picture had they been painting, exactly?
I pressed a hand to my forehead. Badgering someone who kept saying she didn't know didn't seem likely to produce anything constructive.
I recalled what I'd told Phoibos's priest.
"You have completed your task. Rest, however you all see fit."
Estia's priestess nodded and left one final message.
"Someone other than you is gathering the sacred relics. I can feel five souls screaming. One among them teeters as though it might vanish at any moment."
Wait, hold on.
"Those who kept watch over the hearth have completed their task. May peace be with you in the days to come."
"Tell me more about that, right now!"
* * *
Damn it. I woke to a pointlessly warm morning sun.
I should've told her to spill everything she knew, one by one, like Karisia would have, instead of telling her to rest...!
I saw the oil lamp sitting by my head. My eyes, opening gently, confirmed that the lamp was Estia's artifact.
Its function...
'It grants peaceful sleep to those who fall asleep warmed by its fire? Hardly suited for combat use.'
Now I understood why, in the original work, the Mage King never bothered with any relic besides Phoibos's. At best, it was an artifact for sound sleep, meaningless to someone like the Mage King.
Fair enough. Estia was never a goddess revered for battle prowess to begin with. Expecting combat authority from a goddess of home and hearth was a hope doomed from the start.
'Five souls, huh...'
It seemed to have been mixed in among the artifacts the Order of the Divine Name had excavated from Pluton's Great Temple. Was that why the man calling himself Pope had agreed to my excavation plan without much objection, to find that artifact?
I'd have to look into it if the chance ever came. I worked the gauntlet to connect to the Ether Network, and checked the mail that had piled up while I was out cold.
Checking work messages the moment I woke up, first thing in the morning. Something about that felt a little sad.
Two emails worth noting on the L13 account. One from Niobe, news of an emergency meeting for all of Panoptes. One from Demos, word that he'd made it back safely. And the Great Temple...
Wait. How did the whole Great Temple end up in their hands?
I felt a mix of outrage and disbelief. After all that hell I went through, I'd only managed to grab a limited number of artifacts, and the Order of the Divine Name just swallowed the entire Great Temple whole?
Forcing down my envy, I moved on to check the mail addressed to the Hydra Corp Divinity Investigation Office Head. Most of it was spam.
But one welcome name was mixed in among them.
Lampades. A short note saying he'd come visit soon.
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