WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
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◈ I Became the Slit-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss ◈
Chapter 97
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An Unexpected Visit (2)
Lampades's "soon" had, in truth, been closer to a ceremonial figure of speech. Visiting the domain where the Faceless Ortes lurked was something that demanded considerable resolve.
Since it was a matter tied to Astrape's future as well, he'd planned to prepare thoroughly before making the visit.
The message he'd sent this time was something like a quarterly business performance report, "we're currently conducting such-and-such research and have achieved such-and-such results, please refer to the attached documents for the current status of funding disbursement." It was nothing close to groundwork for a formal meeting.
But the situation had changed abruptly.
An Elder of the Silver Iron Tower had been killed. Not through some internal power struggle within the Ten Towers, and not because a soul had evaporated whole in a botched attempt at ascension.
An Elder of the Ten Towers had been killed by Argyrion.
Everyone had dismissed it as nonsense. However grotesque and uncanny the Eroded's power might be, the power of the Ten Towers, built up over thousands of years of history, was stranger and far less predictable still.
An Elder standing at the very peak of the Ten Towers' hierarchy, killed by some mere Eroded?
Even spreading a false rumor had its limits. A rumor this outlandish would only invite backlash. The "rational" judgment shared by most was that this was some reckless overreach by Argyrion, an attempt to shake the Ten Towers' authority.
But the world wasn't rational.
Photographs of a silver giant were uploaded across the Ether Network. Anonymously, of course, but mages could sense the shadow of Argyrion lurking behind that anonymity.
Several Apex Magic Towers with close ties to the Silver Iron Tower testified that an Elder named Tallo had vanished without a trace.
Countless mages' eyes turned toward the Ether Network.
If the Ten Towers had actively deleted the rumor and suppressed the news, that alone would have amounted to admitting the Elder's defeat.
There was a simple way for the Ten Towers to put the ugly rumor to rest. Send Tallo out in person, to prove he was alive and well.
But Tallo never once showed himself after word of his death began to spread. After several days of ominous silence,
the Ten Towers, rarely for them, issued an official statement.
The announcement opened with a startling admission: that an Elder of the Silver Iron Tower had indeed been killed in an attack by Argyrion.
They declared that Argyrion had colluded with ancient superstition followers, and proclaimed they would no longer treat Argyrion as a mere subversive faction.
It was a declaration that Argyrion and every one of its collaborators would be treated as public enemies of mage society.
Suppressing the truth would only breed greater suspicion, so the Ten Towers admitted Tallo's death. At the same time, they couldn't allow Argyrion to walk away with the record of having brought down an Elder single-handedly.
That was why they pinned a new charge on Argyrion, collusion with superstition followers. Folding in the wicked schemes of heretics carried down from ancient times lessened the weight of the defeat, while heightening the urgency of stamping Argyrion out.
At the same time, this also gave the Ten Towers grounds for the sweeping investigation they meant to carry out. It would make every group in possession of an artifact a target for inspection, not just the Magic Towers named on Argyrion's exposure list.
Whatever it was, if a group possessed an ancient artifact, suspicion could always be manufactured. Might this artifact have originated with the superstition followers? Might this be an artifact Argyrion supplied?
The Ten Towers now held a trump card they could swing at every Magic Tower in mage society.
Lampades's blood pressure spiked the moment he heard the news.
The Thunderknell Orb that Ortes had all but forced on him, half by intimidation, had Argyrion's technology grafted into it.
Actually, "grafted" didn't even cover it. The thing had been made by melting down, whole, one of the monsters that spawned Argyrion's silver thread. You couldn't tell by looking at it, but if it were ever caught in a deep audit by the Ten Towers?
The Magic Tower that had been Lampades's lifelong ambition would evaporate, tower and all.
Tearing at his hair, Lampades muttered blankly.
"What kind of situation is this..."
However he turned it over, if he got caught holding the Thunderknell Orb right now and the Ten Towers found out, Lampades Tower was finished.
Fortunately, he could roughly guess the timing of Panoptes's personnel dispatch for the Magic Tower audit. The best plan, for now, was to hand the Thunderknell Orb back to Hydra Corp for safekeeping and retrieve it once the audit was over.
The trouble was that Astrape, the very person who'd been given the Thunderknell Orb as a gift, got involved. The moment she heard he was visiting Hydra Corp, she'd eagerly made clear that she wanted to come along too.
Lampades's thoughts grew tangled.
'The accuracy of the extradimensional radar demonstration would definitely improve with Astrape there. Whatever it is Ortes is trying to search for out in extradimensional space, he won't be able to just cast us aside so easily if I bring Astrape along.'
Returning only the Thunderknell Orb might, from Ortes's perspective, look like a signal that he intended to refuse any further cooperation.
The Elysion terror attack had delayed her transfer into Museion somewhat anyway. Maybe using something like a Magic Tower exchange program as a pretext, and sheltering both Astrape and the Thunderknell Orb together, wasn't such a bad idea after all...
After much agonizing, Lampades gave his permission for Astrape to come along.
* * *
Ortes personally welcomed Lampades and the researchers under him. After assigning each of them their lodgings and going back over the schedule he'd already sent in writing,
he requested a private audience with Lampades.
'Here it comes...'
Lampades steadied himself.
Ortes was the kind of person who could say absolutely anything and it wouldn't seem strange.
He'd thoroughly concealed Hydra Corp's involvement while maneuvering Argyrion into actually killing a Ten Towers Elder, hadn't he. Even if he pulled out some ancient sect's sacred relic right now and said something like, "This time, the Ten Towers got the right answer," Lampades wouldn't be caught off guard.
Wasn't this Ortes, after all, the one who'd been called the most dangerous kind even among apocalypticists from the very start? There were even rumors that another apocalypticist who'd once traveled with him had grown so sick of him that he fled.
What story, he wondered, had Ortes called him here to tell?
'Maybe it'll just turn out to be some constructive talk, like an exchange plan to help Kyne and Astrape's studies along.'
Lampades let out an involuntary, hollow laugh. As if.
It seemed far more likely that Ortes would try to pressure him into joining some plot to overthrow the Ten Towers' entire system. Even if, by some chance, his own guess was right and Astrape and Ortes were blood relatives, Ortes didn't look like the kind of man who'd give up his plans easily.
'Right. Unless he's planning to wipe out mage society and then build some kind of ark for people to live in among the ruins afterward...'
Suppressing his emotions, Lampades headed for the reception room where Ortes waited.
"Ah, Lampades. My apologies for all the trouble."
What was he about to say? A heavy tension built steadily inside him.
Ortes brewed two cups of coffee, handed one to Lampades, and opened with,
"Would you happen to have contact information for some old friends of mine?"
"What?"
You have friends?
was what nearly burst out of him on reflex, but Lampades, with superhuman reflexes, managed to paralyze his own nerves with electricity just in time to stop his tongue from moving. Ortes, seemingly oblivious to Lampades's confusion, went on.
"Ha. Seems like all the friends I used to run fixer jobs with changed their numbers or something, I haven't heard a word from any of them. Shameless of me to ask, I know, but something's come up where I need their help."
Lampades cast his mind back over the rumors about Ortes from their fixer days.
The word "friend" didn't suit him at all. The way he used to throw himself into the most dangerous missions on the extradimensional frontier, as though possessed by something, made him look, at best, like someone with a death wish.
At worst, or looked at objectively, an apocalypticist.
He'd known, in a vague sort of way, that there'd once been a group trailing after Ortes. People the word "followers" suited better than "friends." But at some point, even that group had vanished.
"Knemon. You remember him, don't you?"
Of course he remembered. Knemon was an apocalypticist everyone in the fixer business knew of.
The eldest legitimate son of a Magic Tower that had fallen after an Apex Magic Tower stripped it of its magical patents. It was a common enough story among those who ended up throwing themselves into the fixer trade, but instead of trying to reclaim the patents or hone his own magic, he'd come to wish the whole world would simply end.
For Knemon, who carried a dangerous obsession with the extradimensional, to be drawn to Ortes, who roamed the extradimensional frontier, was, in a sense, an inevitable outcome...
But even Knemon's whereabouts had long since become a mystery. Hadn't he either been recruited into Ortes's secret organization, or eliminated by him?
"There's something I need to ask him. He was an extradimensional expert, after all."
'So Knemon fled to escape Ortes...!'
Lampades was just about to answer that he'd never once been in contact with Knemon and didn't even know the man, when-
Ortes started a call with someone.
"Ah. Yes, President. A Panoptes agent came by? Ah-ha. Right. There's nothing on our end that could raise suspicion, is there. That's why we volunteered for the integrity check. Better to get it over with quickly, don't you think."
News that Panoptes's Magic Tower auditors had descended on the place.
A flat assertion that there was no way "our side" had anything to hide. By rights, the inspectors dispatched from Panoptes would search only Hydra Corp, which had volunteered for the audit, and move on from there.
But what if Ortes reported that an outside mage currently visiting their tower looked suspicious?
It was an indirect threat.
If Ortes went looking for Knemon himself, the man would obviously just burrow even deeper into hiding, so Lampades was to find him and bring him here.
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