Ch.65Negotiation (1)

My head was throbbing.

This was beyond a simple headache. I could feel the burst capillaries, unable to process the violent flood of information coming through my eyes.

Damn it. Blood was streaming from my eyes and nose.

It reminded me of when I was being chased by Blasphemia.

The pain accumulated through my eyes was even worse than being electrocuted by the Thunder Lord’s internal lightning.

‘Still, this is better than that life-or-death struggle with Blasphemia in the desert…’

I looked at the orb in my hand.

Inside the brilliantly golden sphere, I could glimpse an endless torrent of swirling lightning. The result of a rough sealing without proper stabilization.

Yet that power wasn’t leaking outside. The silver thread membrane absorbed the lightning that seemed ready to explode at any moment, circulating it back inside.

With each strange cycle, the silver threads surrounding the orb writhed.

It looked as if they were still alive and moving.

If I were to view this orb as one giant eye, the condensed lightning inside would be the iris, and the attached silver threads would be blood vessels.

‘This isn’t a proper artifact.’

It wasn’t meant to create such a precarious balance between two living organisms.

What I wanted was nothing more or less than the performance of the original Thunder Lord’s talisman.

Compared to the original, this one might have enhanced mana-magic conversion speed thanks to the addition of silver threadworms.

But this thing could get me devoured by silver threads or fried by leaking electricity if used incorrectly.

‘This won’t do. I need to take it to Carisia and ask her to fix it.’

I tucked the Thunder Orb (Noemyeongju) into my chest and looked back.

In the distance, fixers were approaching, and the mages of Torres Magic Tower were trembling.

How should I handle this?

***

Lugret witnessed him tucking the ominous orb into his chest.

From the moment he approached the Thunder Lord’s feet, a possibility he had considered resurfaced.

This smiling man might not be a mere Blasphemia agent.

They don’t act like that. Blasphemia agents, who operate to protect the Ten Towers’ self-preservation and maintain the system, prefer verified methods—in other words, stable approaches.

Having once been a Blasphemia agent himself, he could be certain.

The near-madness this man had just displayed…

‘An apocalyptist.’

Those who could smile even as the flames they scattered to destroy the world consumed themselves. Only such people could make such a destructive choice.

And still smile.

The man who had been at the center of thunder until moments ago had burns all over his clothes. The flesh revealed through his charred and torn garments was completely damaged.

Yet the faint smile on his lips remained.

The blood trickling from his eyes must be the aftereffects of magic pushed beyond its limits. The smiling man raised his hand and wiped his face. Rather than clean, his face appeared pale or blurry once the blood was wiped away.

A strange impression that seemed ready to evaporate at any moment, even as I looked directly at him.

Looking around, Lugret sensed that the Torres mages had already lost their will to resist. They must have concluded there was no point in opposing this formidable mage who had single-handedly ended a battle between two forces of nature.

The part of him that followed “the cause” sounded an alarm. That thing shouldn’t exist in this world.

He had to defeat it here and now.

Slowly, he reviewed the situation. It was impossible for a single mage to develop magic to control silver threadworms at this point. From obtaining silver thread samples to having enough time—everything was lacking.

That meant he must have received the magic from someone or something.

Even in Arguirion, those who handled silver threadworms were limited. If someone had approached to learn control magic, there should be records. Naturally, no mage matching this man’s description existed in Arguirion.

If it wasn’t independent development or information leakage from Arguirion, then the only way this man could have acquired control magic was through Blasphemia.

A cold fear rose in Lugret. An apocalyptist had infiltrated not some subcontractor organization, but Blasphemia itself?

Hiding his true colors so perfectly that he received cutting-edge confidential magic?

As he suppressed his fear and searched for an opportunity to attack, the smiling man turned his gaze toward the Torres mages.

“People of Torres Magic Tower. You’ve gone too far. Not only collaborating with the perpetrators of the Elysion terror but causing this magical disaster as well.”

His admonishing tone, continuing to imitate Blasphemia, essentially contained a death sentence for Torres Magic Tower.

Lugret saw hope in this provocative declaration. Excessive pressure on people tends to cause a reaction.

Summary execution was the principle for enemies of the Ten Towers. But would the Torres mages, who were enchanted by the Ten Realms enough to ally with Arguirion, die so obediently?

Right now, the mages were intimidated by the overwhelming might the smiling man had just displayed. But if they escaped their fear and thought rationally for a moment, they would realize that such massive magic must have consumed an enormous amount of magical power.

If they realized this and began to resist, they could stop this evil apocalyptist.

The smiling man’s gaze shifted to behind the mages.

“Fixers and mercenaries, did you sign your contracts knowing that Torres Magic Tower had allied with Arguirion, a dissident organization of the Ten Towers?”

Lugret understood the smiling man’s intention.

“I am an agent dispatched from the Ten Towers with the authority to pass immediate judgment on the current situation related to Arguirion. If you wish for leniency, show it through your actions.”

The smiling man had no intention of dealing with Lugret and the Torres mages himself.

He planned to have the fixers and mercenaries who had fled throughout Crete Island carry out the execution.

‘This cunning…!’

Elimination was now impossible. If he had his full magical power enhanced by the blessing, it might have been different, but facing that apocalyptist plus the fixers and mercenaries in the current situation would be suicide itself.

As Lugret was about to flee, a cold blade pierced his back.

“Kuhk!”

“P-please spare me! I’ll tell you everything I know!”

The one bowing before Ortes while trembling was Smichia.

He was a Torres mage who had been acting as an interviewer for the Crete Island excavation team.

***

After Smichia stabbed Lugret and threw himself to the ground, the Torres mages followed suit, begging for their lives.

The reason for this sudden change of allegiance was simple. The person with the highest authority among the mages dispatched to Crete Island had already been burned to death by the Thunder Lord.

The remaining mages were either those who had been pushed out of internal politics and couldn’t participate in the Thunder Lord excavation or those who had fled from the depths while facing the Thunder Lord.

They knew better than anyone that they couldn’t defeat the Thunder Lord even if they died and came back to life.

Rather than opposing a mage who had defeated such a Thunder Lord, it was better to betray their colleagues and superiors in hopes of living a little longer.

Behind the prostrating mages, fixers and mercenaries were pointing their weapons. Ortes raised his hand to stop them.

“Very well. Then please testify, without omission, about what happened.”

***

“…That’s what happened.”

It was Ortes’s report after returning from his business trip. On the hologram video that Carisia had turned on, an emergency notice was scrolling by, announcing that an official subjugation order had been issued against Torres Magic Tower.

“So the silver threadworms went berserk, destroying the communication relay… and you gathered the remaining personnel on Crete Island and handed them over to the nearest magic tower before returning?”

“Yes. I tried to contact Blasphemia to dump the cleanup on them, but the communication equipment wasn’t working properly. I had no choice.”

Saying this, Ortes continued his explanation.

To prevent tracking, he didn’t visit the magic tower directly but used a fixer as a messenger, and while leaving a message to pick up the Torres personnel tied up on the outskirts of the city, he used the identity of a Blasphemia inspector, so there was nothing to worry about, and so on.

Carisia pointed to the email log that appeared on Ortes’s gauntlet-type communication device.

“What is this?”

“Ah. It’s a record of conversations with the priest of Enyalios I had recruited earlier. I received a text while waiting on the outskirts of the city to hand over the Torres mages.”

『I’m not sure how the vote will turn out. The Divine Faith seems to think it’s reasonable to leave Arguirion alone if they can blind the eyes of the Ten Towers.』

『There are also suspicions about whether you’re really Phoebus’s prophet. Some even think you’re a spy from the Ten Towers.』

『Only those who have met a prophet in person can feel the prophet’s unique dizziness. It’s shameless to say this, but if you could show evidence of being a prophet…』

Evidence of being Phoebus’s prophet meant prophecy. Ortes shrugged once.

“I told them that Torres Magic Tower would soon receive a subjugation order for allegedly allying with Arguirion. I thought they might suspect that this was information I could only obtain as a Blasphemia insider, but fortunately, they seemed to believe it.”

They had no choice but to believe it. The alliance between Torres Magic Tower and Arguirion was a fact unknown even to Blasphemia.

“The Divine Faith will soon clarify their stance on Arguirion. But there’s still time before the order’s vote concludes. In the meantime, I’ll reconsider the recruitment of Lampades.”

***

The fixers climbing back up from the depths of the ruins slowly distributed their remaining food.

Their bodies were exhausted, but their minds were clear.

The air quality had changed. They would soon reach the surface!

Those who had discovered Outis’s shell had been in the depths for several hours, perhaps even days.

At first, they too had tried to return to the surface immediately. But as they carefully felt their way through the passage.

Kwarrung! Kuaaaaaaak!

A dissonant mixture of thunderous sounds and human screams was faintly heard. Soon after, the entire deep level shook, followed by the sound of something collapsing.

They could easily guess what had happened. As Outis had prophesied, something terrible had been unleashed.

The unleashed calamity was sweeping through people. The fixers had survived thanks to being isolated in darkness.

But at the same time, their original exit path had been blocked. With magic, they could forcibly clear the debris, but…

They feared the traps that might be hidden among the debris and being caught by “something” that might follow the magic.

After the roaring stopped and silence continued, the fixers resolved to climb to the surface after two meals in the darkness.

They weren’t planning to use the passage they had originally used to explore the depths. That place, which had become the epicenter of the prophecy, could have changed in unpredictable ways.

They decided to use their skills as ruin explorers to bypass the collapsed passage and pioneer a new path. It was more like fixers to challenge until the end rather than die in darkness.

“I see it! I see light!”

A comrade at the front shouted. Even the fixers who had been reinforcing the passage they had come through rushed over to break through the ground.

Finally, the brilliant sunlight soaked their hair.

As the fixers savored the surface air, they looked around. Something was strange. The signs of destruction were understandable, but…

There was no human presence at all.

Searching the entire Crete Island, they couldn’t find any trace of people. One of them muttered blankly:

“Outis (Ουτις)…”

A being named “No one.”

But not even that “no one” remained on Crete Island.