Ch.140Turbulence (2)

Countless thoughts churned in Demos’s mind.

Who was Carisia? No, what was she?

Demos recalled that feeling of despair from long ago. To discuss how he came to stand before the Ten Commandments, he needed to go further back into the past.

When he became the leader of the War God’s combat priesthood, he had once boldly attempted to assassinate a Tower Lord. It was after the church’s hideout had been discovered and the previous high priest killed.

Remarkably rare, one of the Ten Towers’ Lords had personally led the campaign. He still couldn’t be certain why such a powerful figure, far beyond Blasphemia level, had taken direct action.

He could only guess that perhaps they had feared the ancient power of the Divine Name Church.

By the time Demos returned, the Enyalios Church’s sanctuary had already been reduced to ruins.

Just as he was now the greatest warrior of the War God Enyalios Church, back then Demos was also strong—younger and more spirited, but also foolish and inexperienced.

Demos gathered testimonies from survivors.

The high priest of that time had fought against the Tower Lord. The important point was that a proper battle had taken place. While the high priest sacrificed his life to buy time, the Enyalios Church members were able to escape.

The high priest consumed his own life force to inflict a fatal wound on the Tower Lord. Because of this, the Ten Towers’ forces couldn’t immediately pursue the fleeing church members.

As Demos knew, a wounded lion is dangerous.

But a healed lion was even more dangerous. Especially when that lion remembered its grudge against those who had wounded it.

That’s why Demos had plotted to assassinate the Tower Lord. At that time, he believed it was the only way to ensure the Enyalios Church’s survival.

And then he witnessed the power of the Ten Commandments.

‘…It was closer to magic than human.’

It wasn’t the Tower Lord controlling the Ten Commandments, but rather the Ten Commandments controlling the Tower Lord. Great magic that should have been buried in history was emanating from the Tower Lord’s fragmented limbs.

His body froze. The dense magical power was beyond overwhelming. The pressure of the impossibly compressed magical power crushed all matter within its influence.

The Tower Lord, dyed golden, appeared less like a human and more like radiance compressed into human form. With each step they took, the surrounding space evaporated into light.

Eventually, the Tower Lord seemed almost to be floating. A circular void formed around their physical body. That transparent space was filled with magical power.

Facing this scene, Demos felt despair. Witnessing the golden mage using limitless magical power indefinitely.

The divine power dwelling in flesh, the providence of this world, cursed it. It cried out that this was the despair that twisted, crushed, and distorted all creation.

He survived only thanks to the Tower’s elders, particularly those strange beings considered ancient.

Elders older than the Tower Lord, living histories who delved into the wisdom inherent in the Ten Commandments even as the Towers that inherited them changed.

They appeared and confronted the Tower Lord. Demos still remembered fragments of words they had shouted.

‘Connecting to the Ten Commandments with an injured body, what foolishness…’

‘Caught in the Death King’s delusions.’

‘Where is the intruder?’

Demos closed his eyes.

The sensation he felt from Carisia was similar to when he witnessed the radiant Tower Lord.

But how could a human be similar not just to a Tower Lord, but to the Ten Commandments?

He gave up trying to deduce Carisia’s true nature. It was a subject beyond Demos’s understanding.

Instead, he thought about Ortes’s purpose.

If his senses weren’t suddenly malfunctioning, Carisia clearly had some connection to the Ten Commandments, or at least to the Ten Towers.

An entity that could rightfully be called the Divine Name Church’s archenemy.

Was Ortes an enemy of the Divine Name Church?

A question suddenly raised from deep within his mind. But Demos was a rational person. If Ortes had wanted to annihilate the Divine Name Church, he’d already had many opportunities.

The fact that the Divine Name Church had recaptured the Great Temple of Pluto proved that Ortes was not their enemy. Then…

‘Why would he take in such a dreadful being?’

Let’s assume Ortes’s ultimate goal doesn’t conflict with the Divine Name Church’s interests. If Carisia is connected to the Ten Towers…

At that moment, Knemon flashed through Demos’s mind. He would ultimately become the master of the Magic Tower and gain considerable influence in magical society.

What if, in the name of the Magic Tower Lord, stories emerged about “another inheritor of the Ten Commandments”?

This would be another upheaval that would shake the magical society. A wave strong enough to make even the Ten Towers raise their heavy bodies.

Demos organized what he had heard from Ortes about the “Magic Tower gift procedure.” Ortes had initiated it and Ortes had concluded it. That was all.

If someone could gift the Magic Tower according to their will, what about the Ten Towers?

‘Is Ortes planning to use the Ten Towers to bring down the Ten Towers…?’

This was truly a terrifying scheme. Not because it was effective enough to deceive the mighty Ten Towers, but because Carisia, who possessed such immense power, followed Ortes.

Ortes essentially held both divine power and magical power in his hands.

Demos imagined what would happen if Ortes’s scheme bore fruit.

There had been countless instances in history of challengers facing the Ten Towers, but there had never been a war beyond conflict between the Ten Towers themselves.

If such chaos, a great war that would engulf everything, were to come, could the magical society withstand it?

‘To instigate such a war for the gods!’

Demos lamented inwardly.

That friend should have served our god, not Phoebus.

I should give him Enyalios’s Introduction to War Studies sometime to foster friendship.

***

Lately, Demos has been strangely friendly.

We’d always gotten along fairly well apart from our rough first meeting, but suddenly he seemed to feel some strange sense of kinship with me.

Since goodwill is healthy food as long as you don’t take too much, I accepted the various books Demos gave me without complaint.

In truth, I needed those books to pass the time because I had so much of it to spare.

After the multi-account-trolling mental parasite disappeared, I had nothing to do in Algoth City. I’d already met my quota for impersonating Blasphemia agents by using the Argyrian exposé against them to catch their infiltrators.

Carisia also had nothing to do. Even after uprooting the infiltrators, Argyrian headquarters didn’t reveal themselves.

Indirect tracking using silver threads yielded the same result as tracking the mental parasite: “Target not found. Please check your connection or verify the correct path,” was the priests’ repeated answer.

So the two of us were just passing time by cheering on Knemon or watching Kine’s rapidly improving magic demonstrations.

I had already suggested to my boss, “Shouldn’t we just leave this to Knemon and go home?” but my boss just shook his abundant white hair and refused.

His cautious position was that we should withdraw after the final battle concluded and Knemon’s appointment as Magic Tower Lord was confirmed. As a salaried employee, I couldn’t go against the boss’s wishes.

After several tests, Knemon demonstrated his skills fully and was easily selected as a final candidate.

Finally today, the last test was held.

It was a test conducted in pairs: the remaining candidate plus one guard mage from the Magic Tower whom the candidate trusted. Each participating team was given some kind of token.

All participants were driven into a barrier with the declaration that “the candidate whose team has collected the most tokens when the barrier is lifted will become the Magic Tower Lord.”

Though it was packaged as a test measuring the Tower Lord candidate’s individual skill and leadership of subordinate mages, it ultimately meant selecting the person who fought best or had the widest connections.

The term “guard mage” sounded nice, but candidates could potentially hire mercenaries from somewhere. Sponsors could also “suddenly” bring in previously expelled Tower mages and assign them to their sponsored candidates.

Originally, I had planned to temporarily step down as Hydra Company’s chief of staff and register with Knemon’s Magic Tower, but I was refused. Carisia restrained me saying, “You need to be outside,” and Knemon said, “Trust my abilities,” so Kine was ultimately chosen as his companion.

“What are you so worried about?”

After seeing off Knemon and Kine, I turned to Carisia.

“Does it show?”

“Your expression isn’t different from usual, but your tone has subtly hardened.”

That wasn’t true. She just recalled my psychology when I particularly wanted to keep her by my side.

“I haven’t seen anything in Phoebus’s crystal.”

I figured as much. With Carisia’s personality, if she had any confirmation, she would have told me already.

“The magical power flowing through the city has become somehow impure. It’s not something that can be dealt with inside the test venue.”

“Isn’t that because the extra-dimensional containment operation isn’t finished yet? The entire land is contaminated, so it might have leaked slightly through the city’s magical conduits. I think the magic core will purify it automatically.”

Carisia shook her head. She turned her back to the test venue entrance and glared at the Amymone Magic Tower in the center of Algoth City.

“…That magic core is what feels most ominous.”