I casually brushed off Arabella’s white sounds and moved all the data I left on dozens of production models at Pythos Tower into one folder.
If my guess is right, decrypting this heap of data in a specific way will reveal the regular reports Kaicle receives.
So how do I figure out that specific method?
“Please. Arabella, Director.”
“Yeah?”
I left Arabella’s hideout without looking back.
You know, work is all about individual strengths. I specialize in physical tasks, so it’s best to leave the jobs requiring expertise to the professionals.
From behind me, I hear some nonsense like, “The boss and the secretary are just as hot-headed!”
I must have misheard. Unlike Carisia, who blindly commands excessive work, I only ask within the limits of what’s possible.
I need to figure out the truth by the end of the month to crash the ritual at the beginning of the month.
There’s about three days left. With Arabella’s abilities, she should be able to find it by then.
*
Arabella gulped down water. With so many parts replaced by artificial ones, she could maintain life as long as her magic power was supplied, even without food or water.
However, right now, she craved the refreshing sensation of water. It felt like she was going to blow up from the heat inside.
“Damn….”
The reason I couldn’t just vent my frustration at Orthes was that, as he said, there was indeed something hidden in the information.
It wasn’t the latest encryption techniques used in the Great Temple. Quite the opposite.
It was an encryption using Holy Script (聖刻文字) said to have been used by the lost cult of the old gods. It was such a classic idea that it would never have crossed my mind.
In the first few days that the work was passed onto Orthes, Arabella had put a lot of effort into decrypting it, but no clues came out despite repeated attempts.
In a fit of rage, she input all the decryption methods from the Information Guild database into an automatic simulator, and to her surprise, she stumbled upon an encryption from the Ancient Era.
“Holy Script. A language that recorded the words of the gods.”
In the distant Ancient Era, there was said to be a technique called Sacred Command (聖令) that allowed one to perform miracles with divine power.
Now, those names have all faded into the waves of history.
“Come to think of it, using Sacred Command could explain Orthes’s presence without magic, right?”
As Arabella entertained the thought that Orthes might manipulate Sacred Command, she let out a hollow laugh.
That guy, a priest? If he regarded his boss as a god, that’s one thing, but he didn’t seem like the type to worship anything else.
Above all, it didn’t make sense that the gods would generously bestow their power on someone so wickedly hot-headed.
Calming her deep fury, Arabella made her way to Orthes’s room.
She wanted to throw the report in his face, but couldn’t bring herself to; instead, she cautiously handed over the paperwork.
Orthes read the report with a smile lingering on his face. That expression seemed to taunt Arabella with, “Wasn’t I right?”
That thought evaporated moments later in the conversation that followed.
“Just as I thought. We need to prepare.”
“Prepare? What, prepare to sell land?”
“No. A mage like Kaicle must have already made preparations for when someone invades like that. So, we will have to enter through the front gate that he has prepared.”
“The front gate…?”
Arabella recalled that Orthes had initially come to her saying that the monthly sacrifice ritual at Pythos Tower was suspicious.
“Are you planning on diving into lava?!”
Orthes shrugged his shoulders as if that were no issue at all.
No way…
That smile clearly came from satisfaction at not being wrong in his report to the boss. If he could get one step closer to Carisia’s objectives, he’d be willing to die for that loyalty—or rather, fanaticism.
A powerful mage could certainly survive even in lava. There’s even evidence suggesting that he would be transported to another location instead of sinking into the lava this time.
Even so, accepting the idea of voluntarily diving into lava was altogether a different story.
Arabella felt a chill running down her spine. What kind of method has Carisia used to create such extreme followers?
Was she going to end up like Orthes someday?
She was terribly afraid.
*
I cursed the destiny that had prepared such a situation.
From the moment I was awakened in this ridiculous world, I realized luck or fate was not on my side.
Still, I was prepared, but seriously diving into lava? Now that’s pushing it.
It’s been ages since I encountered something this nonsensical.
I couldn’t express my dissatisfaction regarding the company’s long-standing projects in front of the Director, so I desperately managed my expression, but seeing Arabella’s face subtly stiffen gave me doubts.
She might have caught on to my dissatisfaction, so I decided to make a preemptive move.
“Arabella, Director.”
“…Yes?”
“It’s a secret from the boss.”
We’re in the same position of having a superior, so please just overlook it this once.
*
As dawn broke, Orthes slipped in easily among the offerings arranged by the automatons at Pythos Tower.
The magic detection sensors were meaningless to Orthes, who lacked magic power. Most of the security prepared for mages had been neutralized.
He hadn’t brought a magic engraving drive out of caution, but breaking through security for offerings meant to be tossed into lava, especially in a non-core facility, posed no problems.
In the first production runs manufactured from dozens or hundreds of production lines, the various machines were packed inside shipping containers.
It was like being in a museum or a department store of automatons.
Orthes climbed into an empty powered suit.
“Feels like I’ve become the protagonist of that superhero movie wearing a steel suit. That guy struggled with cold, though, not hot.”
Rumble—
With a heavy noise came the vibrations from the shipping container. Transport was beginning.
As he got closer to the summit of Mount Etna, he could gradually feel the heat intensifying. Despite the fire essence being weakened, a volcano is still a volcano.
Inside the container, and again within the powered suit, the heat began to rise.
“Damn. What sort of hideout does that Kaicle guy have in a place like this?”
Orthes cursed the obvious lack of real estate sense as he felt his body start to tilt slowly.
It was time.
Orthes prepared to escape the volcano immediately in case he couldn’t enter Kaicle’s stronghold through lava diving.
Learning and improving upon various hybrid fighting techniques, the latent power within Orthes surged. He was ready to rip apart the powered suit and leap at any moment.
Thud, clack! Kiiing!
It was not about throwing the shipping container but tilting it to spill the offerings packed inside. Orthes felt himself freely plummeting towards the inferno.
A gust of wind swept through. The breeze that brushed over the lava added only a piece of heat rather than cooling his powered suit down.
As the massive chunks of metal touched the lava, melted rocks shot up towards the sky.
The temperature of the lava usually ranged from 800 to 1200 degrees. Iron melts at 1538 degrees.
It should be impossible to melt a magically enhanced special alloy with heat resistance and durability greater than steel.
But that was the story according to what Orthes remembered from Earth.
The heat lodged within Mount Etna easily began melting down the alloys of Pythos. Orthes was taken aback.
“No way?”
Could it be that even the hidden data in the automaton’s heap of data was a trick? The delusions of mad mages!
The face plate of the powered suit began to melt, and the incoming heat made Orthes’ eyes widen reflexively.
And then, in the next moment.
Orthes found himself standing on a smoothly polished obsidian tile where he could see his own face reflected.
It was Kaicle’s stronghold.
*
With his head lowered, Kaicle scanned the wreckage of machines with one sparkling eye. The scan was complete.
Through the melted scrap heap, brightly glowing orange parts emerged.
Those were the storage devices of the products he created. As he drew closer to collect the storage devices, a deep sense of gloom washed over him.
He couldn’t even sigh anymore.
This month would be just like last month. The report indicated that the products he created consumed the fire of Mount Etna diligently.
But even so, the products remained incomplete.
In theory, the amount of magic power had already been fulfilled, yet they wouldn’t function properly, and he endlessly hoped to find what went wrong and continued to sustain the magic supply…
As he thought all this and lifted his head, something obscured his view.
Kaicle’s magical perception device indicated no colors. Adjusting the field of view, he looked around.
“A person?”
He immediately began chanting a spell with his mouth while preparing a dual incantation with his hands, but the impending sense of futility stopped him.
“It seems the upper neighborhood has finally found me. Geryon? Or perhaps Lerunian? Or are you an outside force that has come from outside Etna City?”
“Out of those, the closest would be Lerunian.”
“What a disappointment. What you’ve been searching for, calling it the Artificial Ten Commandments, is a failure.”
Kaicle sat down on the floor.
*
No. What’s the deal with this guy?
The giant, who was probably twice my height, approached, giving off light from one eye, and upon seeing me, started lamenting his misfortune.
He invested years into making this, and now he was stuck without any progress to the next stage. If he’d known it would be like this, he might as well have kept a few of the ones who originally occupied the Great Temple as research slaves, he sighed like a true mage.
Maybe this could oddly be resolved through conversation? I thought about attracting him under the guise of “If you join our company, I can provide research personnel” while pretending to empathize and secure the Artificial Ten Commandments.
I agreed with Kaicle’s lamentation as the first step in building a friendly relationship.
“That’s right. Reproducing the divinity inherent in the Ten Commandments can’t simply be done with a lot of magic power, can it?”
The entire body of Kaicle, who had just been hitting the ground literally in regret moments ago, froze.
“You. How do you know that…?”
His magical sensing device started spinning wildly.
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