I Became the Narrow-Eyed Henchman of the Evil Boss – Chapter 165

Chapter 165: Exposing the Truth (2)

Tock. Tock. Tock.

Niobe tapped her foot anxiously.

As a Blasphemia agent, she had been trained to strictly control her emotions.

Displaying one’s emotions was supposed to be a calculated move — a psychological tactic to create a false impression for the negotiation partner. This was a basic skill for Blasphemia agents, who often had to infiltrate anti-establishment secret groups like cults of superstition.

Niobe had climbed the ranks at lightning speed, and as such, she had been especially thorough in reviewing her training to avoid being seen as incompetent. She remembered every lesson, including the nonverbal cues and subverbal communication techniques.

But the nervousness she was displaying now?

This wasn’t calculated. It was pure, raw emotion.

“Senior…”

The idea that her former senior, someone so thorough in carrying out assignments — even purging former colleagues without hesitation — might betray Blasphemia and the Ten Towers? The mere suggestion of it felt surreal.

Her mind tried to reject it.

But doubt lingered. What if Senior L13 had been recruited by Argyrion?

No. She cast that doubt aside.

Wasn’t he the one who handled the biological disaster that Argyrion unleashed on Algoth City and Amimone Tower?

Niobe took a deep breath and scanned her surroundings.

They were far from Elysion, on the outskirts of magical society. The town had its own local Magic Tower, but it was a plain, unremarkable place with no notable achievements.

The coordinates her senior had sent led to an ordinary cafe. The most “unique” aspect of the place was the abundance of private rooms, catering to those who preferred a quiet space.

Niobe waited in one of those rooms for about 10 minutes.

Click.

With no sound of the door opening, her senior, L13, simply appeared.

“Ah, sorry to keep you waiting,” he said as he sat down.

“Senior…”

The two sat in awkward silence. The weight of the matter was too great for either of them to find a comfortable starting point.

In the end, it was her senior who spoke first.

“They found a reliquary in this region, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, that’s the official reason for my assignment here. I checked it out, but it’s nothing special. It probably had power back in the day, but it’s mostly deteriorated now.”

“Ha, I see. That’s fortunate, then.” L13 chuckled.

He tapped the table lightly. “I prepared something just in case. Since you’re a high-ranking officer, you can move more freely than most. But if you don’t have a position like ‘Special Inspector,’ wandering around aimlessly draws suspicion.”

“Prepared something, huh?”

Niobe tilted her head. Was he implying that he’d personally secured a reliquary without handing it over to Blasphemia?

That was no small matter.

While Blasphemia did allow its most loyal and skilled agents to utilize reliquaries, that usage had to be officially sanctioned. Unauthorized possession of a reliquary was an entirely different matter.

“When you’re chasing down Argyrion, you come across plenty of relic fragments. Most of them are hollow shells, barely worth the effort of collecting. So sometimes, I make use of them.”

Silence hung between them for a moment.

“…So what do you want to talk about?”

L13’s smile grew sharper.

But Niobe didn’t see joy in it. It looked more like the face of someone struggling to bring up an uncomfortable topic.

“Let’s start with Algoth City. We worked together there, didn’t we?”

Algoth City. Twice, L13 had lent her his strength.

The first time was against a coalition of Amimone Tower’s traitors and Argyrion’s extra-dimensional infectors. The second was during the battle against the biological disaster Argyrion had sent to destroy everything.

Every single time, she’d watched L13’s back.

She never once felt that he had stolen her credit.

Rather, she felt guilty. She’d watched him bear the burden of dangers and hardships that should have been hers.

Niobe lowered her head. She knew it wasn’t the proper posture for a conversation. But right now, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes.

Even if he spouted nonsense about betrayal, if she looked him in the eye, she feared she might believe him.

“…Then again, with his squinty eyes, can you even see them?”

“I started having doubts after subduing Amimone Tower’s Tower Master,” L13 said.

“Doubts?”

“Doubts I’d had for a while, but I’d been too busy to confront them. I was constantly preoccupied — fighting old acquaintances takes a lot out of you, after all. I didn’t have time to think. But after the Amimone Tower incident, I couldn’t look away anymore.”

“What kind of doubts?”

“‘Why?’”

Niobe’s head tilted.

“Why would people like the Amimone Tower’s Tower Master — who held high status as Argos investigators — side with Argyrion? That fundamental question.”

Motivation.

It was a question of motivation.

“At first, I wanted to bury it. I was too busy to dwell on it. But after Amimone, I realized I’d been ignoring something big.”

The traitors from Amimone were different.

In other betrayals, the turncoats were often people who’d been pushed to the fringes of magical society. People with grudges.

But the people at the top of the Regular Magic Towers had no reason to betray.

They were already at the summit of magical society.

There was nowhere higher for them to go.

“…Except for the Ten Towers,” Niobe muttered.

“Exactly,” L13 said.

“So you’re saying they used Argyrion as part of a succession war?”

“No.” L13 shook his head.

“Amimone always prioritizes self-preservation. They wouldn’t risk rebellion just for some higher position. If they did, that wouldn’t be enough to explain it.”

For a brief moment, a blue light flickered beneath his squinted eyes.

Too fast to be certain it had even happened.

“Argyrion cries out for ‘truth’ and ‘righteous cause.’ That caught my attention, so I started digging into the Ten Towers’ history. I found something.”

L13 placed a slip of paper on the table.

It looked like a hastily scribbled memo.

One sentence.

One short sentence.

But its weight was enough to shake the foundations of magical society.

The Mage King was murdered.

***

“What… What the hell is this?!”

“Shh.”

L13 placed a finger over his lips, gesturing for silence.

Niobe immediately understood.

This was why he’d brought a handwritten note instead of storing the message on a magical device.

This message must not be recorded.

Niobe’s breath grew short.

Her heart pounded as she asked, even though she already knew the answer:

“Who…?”

“Who else? The people above Blasphemia. The ones with the strongest artifacts in the world.”

“Do you have evidence?”

“Not yet. But Argyrion might. I only managed to find this small piece of the puzzle. If I’m right, they definitely have something that convinced even high-ranking defectors to believe in them.”

It all made sense.

If word got out that the Mage King had been murdered, the entire foundation of the Ten Towers would collapse.

The Ten Tower Masters, heirs of the Ten Disciples, would be seen not as successors, but as accomplices to murder.

“…So now what, Senior? You’re gonna join Argyrion or something?”

“Not a chance. They might talk about justice, but they’ve crossed too many lines.”

“Then… are you just gonna keep living as you have? Pretending you don’t know? I… I can’t do that! I believed in the Ten Towers! I believed in them as the guidepost of our society!”

Her lips quivered.

Her hands trembled.

The weight of all her past deeds pressed down on her.

Everything she’d done might have been nothing more than an extension of that original betrayal.

“What are you going to do, Senior? How are you going to face this horror?”

She was waiting for his answer.

The answer of a man who had been the paragon of Blasphemia.

L13 looked at her and smiled.

“Indeed. The Ten Towers are the guidepost of magical society.”

“…Huh?”

“And if the guidepost is broken, we fix it.”

His eyes narrowed as he uttered a single question.

“How do you feel about revolution, Niobe?”