Ch.166Creating the Truth (1)

Revolution. An unfamiliar word. But not one I didn’t know. I had heard it somewhere before. Niobe searched through her dim memories.

It was from the early ideological education in Blasphemia, during history lessons. A prologue now passed down as myth, not covered in depth. The history before the Ten Towers were built.

The Mage King shattered the palace of vice established by the old regime—those now called superstition followers—and established a new system.

Their power was literally bestowed by the gods. It could be called the Mandate of Heaven. Those who held absolute power gradually festered, and society rotted and collapsed.

That’s when the Mage King appeared. Standing against the clergy who had ruled from the heavens, he united various forces and disseminated magic to counter the holy paths and holy spirits, which were the standard formats of supernatural abilities at that time.

A turbulent time when society, institutions, and the entire system itself were shaken.

A radical resistance against established power.

The process of breaking the old, rotten Mandate of Heaven and innovating to create a new era.

The Ten Towers called it Revolution.

“Senior… Do you really understand what it means?”

Revolution begins with replacing the previous mandate—the paradigm governing contemporary society. If the Mage King’s revolution targeted the priestly class that monopolized divine power…

“Of course I do.”

The revolution Ortes was plotting would be directed at the Ten Towers that monopolized the Ten Realms.

“Miss Niobe. Do you have a dream?”

Dream.

Niobe was a simple person. Her reason for applying to become a Blasphemia agent?

She was hungry, and Panoptes provided food and lodging to volunteers. Fortunately, the old belief that age doesn’t matter in the pursuit of magic ensured she wouldn’t be rejected from recruitment due to age restrictions.

And then, by chance, her talent was discovered. Her sensitivity for detecting sacred objects and her ability to withstand Blasphemia’s body modification surgeries meant she was assigned as a Blasphemia agent rather than a common Argos grunt.

Therefore, her immediate dream was liberation from both the worry of food and the worry of survival. Life as a Blasphemia agent meant no concern for food but plenty of concern for staying alive.

So Niobe wanted to someday prove herself as a Blasphemia agent and become a member of the Ten Towers. It was rare but not unheard of for exceptional field agents to be specially recruited into the Ten Towers.

Some refused such honorable transfers and aimed for higher positions within Blasphemia, but not Niobe.

She thought she could only dream after that. The first moment when she could shed her worries about basic survival and truly begin her own life.

A small hope that she might learn magic not as a means of struggle acquired from a humble life, but as something abstract from fairy tales and legends that could make reality more beautiful than it currently was.

The magic accessible to her, trained as a Blasphemia agent from a young age, was merely a tool. A versatile tool usable anytime, anywhere. A means of killing and oppression. That’s what magic was in her hands.

That’s why she believed the magic of the Ten Towers would be different. Just as she believed life in the Ten Towers would be different from what she had known so far, the magic there would surely be different from the magic she knew.

It was an illusion.

Behind the illusion lay reality stained with dried blood.

So Niobe couldn’t answer when Ortes asked about her dream. Because she realized her dream had collapsed before she could even reach the starting point, that perhaps dreams could be uglier than reality.

“It seems difficult for you to speak. Then I’ll go first.”

Niobe studied her senior’s expression. Still hard to read. His narrowed eyes made any attempt to read his emotions meaningless. Ortes began speaking with his usual calm smile.

“I wanted to change the world.”

“What?”

“This world. Extra-dimensional threats approach moment by moment, but the Magic Towers don’t move. They provide only minimal containment through mana cores, then wash their hands of it. At first, I thought it was because the Towers lacked the capacity.”

The old order’s priests, the apocalyptists. Perhaps the Towers’ resources were being depleted to stop those outside the norms of magical society. If so, couldn’t the world improve if the resources the Towers spent on such threats were minimized?

“That wasn’t it. At least, I pride myself on having made considerable achievements in tracking Argyrion, but I’m not sure if I’ve contributed to fundamentally improving the components of this system.”

From the Ten Towers to the True Magic Towers, from the True Magic Towers to the Magic Towers, from the Magic Towers to the mages. And finally to ordinary citizens. The chain of domination continued endlessly. The lives of citizens at the very end of the chain remained unchanged.

Ortes calmly recounted the desperate struggles or resignation of people seeking to obtain the privilege of magic.

“And now, finally, the truth has appeared before our eyes. The Ten Towers never intended to use their resources ‘for a better world.’ In a way, they’ve been remarkably consistent. For thousands of years, their essence has been that of ascetics seeking to reach ascension.”

“…So?”

“It’s simple. Let’s change it.”

Ortes showed another piece of paper. It was a calculation of the immense magical power of the Ten Realms based on the magical output of the Ten Towers.

“Everyone knows that the Ten Realms have infinite magical power.”

“But what’s not well known is what would happen if that infinite magic weren’t monopolized but opened up. Theoretically, the magic of the Ten Realms could turn the entire world into an extra-dimensional clean zone like Elysion. And that’s based on conservative estimates. If we designed grand magic worthy of that immense power, we could create far more radical results.”

Niobe thought she understood the meaning of Ortes’s “let’s change it.” Most of the magic extracted from the Ten Realms is used for researchers within the Ten Towers.

The immense magic used in pursuit of ascension—

“Let’s release it into the world. So that the name ‘Ten Towers’ no longer exists.”

“Is that possible? To do something like that, you’d need to get your hands on all the Ten Realms. As you know better than I do, we’re up against the Ten Towers.”

“There is a way possible only now.”

Ortes slowly explained his plan. A succession battle using the Ten Towers’ expedition. Thus obtaining the Ten Realms and, instead of wasting their magic on indefinite ascension, using it for this world.

Niobe weighed the possibility. At least one thing was clear to her: now was the only time a revolution could occur. Only during this period when most of the Ten Towers’ combat power would be projected into the Argyrion expedition could people rise up.

But Niobe was still skeptical. Even if, by some chance, they got their hands on the Ten Realms. Still.

“Would the owners of the Ten Realms give them up so easily?”

“It would be difficult. Unless it’s someone who’s already exhausted with this society and power.”

Ortes added a few words. He said that being a greedy person, he couldn’t become the leader of the revolution and guide everyone. It might be better to find a leader among anti-magic activists, but the entire leadership of the revolution couldn’t be filled with anti-magic activists either.

They might not use the Ten Realms for people but might destroy them instead. Someone else was needed to stand as an equal and restrain their unilateral actions.

Someone who, as a mage, knows the usefulness of the Ten Realms, while simultaneously being indifferent to the power they bring.

“A mage who’s indifferent to the Ten Realms? You’d have a hard time finding someone like that even if you searched the whole world.”

Niobe bowed her head with a bitter smile. In the end, without proper leadership, the revolution would become a repetition rather than the downfall of the old system. Did her senior have limitations too?

Niobe waited for her senior’s response to her negation. However, even after a considerable time had passed, no voice was heard.

Was it inevitable resignation? Niobe raised her head. The talk of revolution had seemed like a dream, but that’s why it was impossible. Suddenly, her eyes met Ortes’s.

Niobe could feel a firm resolve in Ortes’s gaze. The silent look conveyed his intention more effectively than any eloquence.

“M-me?!”

“At least Miss Niobe has no desire for power. A truly rare virtue. I believe you can relinquish it because you dislike power.”

Ortes quietly pulled another bundle of documents from his chest.

“This is a plan to take control of Blasphemia.”

“…”

“Until now, magical wisdom has only flowed from the upstream—the Ten Towers—downward. We now seek to destroy the distinction between upstream and downstream.”

The turbulence of the era approached before her eyes. Niobe neither accepted the paper nor turned away from it, just staring at Ortes.

“If there’s no upstream or downstream… what happens then?”

It was a question about the blueprint for the world after the revolution. Her senior, perhaps also tense, took several breaths. At the end of his contemplation was a careful but confident declaration.

“We will create one vast sea, where all streams exist at the same level.”