Chapter 122: Neither Truth nor the Greater Good (3)
I revised my hypothesis about Argyrion. Carisia had told me a story about meeting Argyrion in Elysion.
‘At first, it seemed like he didn’t recognize me,’ she said, ‘but once we started interacting, his memory came back.’
Typically, an Eroder—someone whose mind has been consumed by the mana of the extra-dimension—becomes a mindless force bent on destroying the present world. It’s extremely rare for an Eroder to retain their sanity, and even when they do, it’s usually limited to tactical knowledge or magical expertise—anything that serves destruction.
There are a few, however, who manage to preserve both their memory and their intellect, despite the overwhelming influence of the extra-dimension. But if such Eroders were common, would the Ten Towers be so concerned about Argyrion?
The truth is, Eroders like Argyrion are not just rare—they’re exceedingly rare. The Ten Towers assessed Argyrion’s potential danger at the highest level. Better to overprepare and avoid catastrophe, even if it meant committing excessive resources, than underestimate him and suffer devastating losses.
But I had a slightly different opinion from the majority in the Ten Towers, one informed by my extensive experience living in the Eroded Zones of the extra-dimension and encountering countless Eroders.
There are different kinds of erosion.
When a person is alive and their mind is eroded by the extra-dimension, their consciousness resists the erosion. A chain reaction begins—an ongoing battle between the person’s sense of self and the extra-dimensional force trying to dominate them. Most often, the result of this struggle is the collapse of the self.
This is the type of Eroder people are most familiar with: a mindless, destructive weapon. The person’s core sense of identity disintegrates, leaving them capable only of reflexive destruction.
On the other hand, corpses do not resist erosion. The extra-dimensional mana seeps into a dead body much more easily. In this case, the mana, which replaces the departed soul, pieces together fragments of memory from the still-intact brain, creating a counterfeit soul—a kind of magical replica of the deceased’s mind.
This counterfeit soul can replicate much of the deceased’s abilities but is not truly the same as the person in life. The counterfeit always prioritizes the will of the extra-dimension.
It’s only natural that there would be gaps in the memories pieced together from a dead brain. However, if a catalyst is present—something strong enough to trigger a memory—some fragments of the original person’s memory may return.
I suspected that Argyrion’s officers were corpse Eroders.
The problem, though, was the mission during the Golden Desert Operation. Both Carisia and I had been focused on incapacitating the enemy and driving them into the extra-dimensional storm, rather than outright killing them.
‘Could it be that someone else? Perhaps a hidden traitor in the pursuit team killed them after we incapacitated them?’
If that were the case, I’d need to add a new assumption: a doomsday fanatic within Blasphemia who had the knowledge of how to create corpse Eroders, a rare phenomenon that only occurs under very specific conditions when fresh corpses are left in the Eroded Zones.
But the situation was bizarre enough to justify such a hypothesis. How could so many pursuers end up as self-aware Eroders? There was no magic I knew that could explain that.
Even with my trained eye, distinguishing between a counterfeit soul and a genuine one requires significant effort. It’s not something I can do in the middle of combat—it demands careful, focused observation.
Meanwhile, Sprigo’s ever-growing mass assaulted my mind with an overwhelming flood of information. It was like someone was digging directly into my brain. Still, I kept smiling.
The more I maintained my calm expression, the more their unease would grow.
I pierced through the fragmented surface consciousness Sprigo was projecting with his thousands of eyes, going deeper into the core of his being.
‘…No?’
My hypothesis was wrong.
A soul created by extra-dimensional mana is always subtly different from the body it occupies. The “colors” of the soul and the body don’t match. To use a metaphor of written language, the content may be similar, but the handwriting is different.
However, Sprigo’s soul, though tainted and muddied by extra-dimensional mana, matched his body perfectly. He still had his original soul and body.
The result was unexpected, but I couldn’t afford to keep the heightened awareness of my eyes active for too long. If I pushed it any further, I might pass out from vertigo before the fight even began. I had seen enough. It was time to shut off my vision.
***
‘We won’t meet again.’
There wasn’t a single naive mind present who would interpret those words as a simple farewell. It was a death sentence.
It was an arrogant declaration, but it was precisely this arrogance that brought Sprigo back to his senses.
The figure standing before him now was the enemy of Argyrion. The one who had single-handedly toppled Blasphemia…
‘No, wait.’
Sprigo recalled Halto’s careful explanation about the enemy.
‘There are two enemies.’
One is the Beast of White Light, and the other is this con artist.
Halto, Argyrion’s chairman, had given the man standing before him the dignified title of “con artist,” but to Sprigo, this bastard was just a filthy dog.
The difference between the two enemies—the “Beast” and the “Con Artist”—was simple.
The Beast was, in every sense of the word, a beast. It had faced off against Argyrion’s elite forces and had overwhelmed them with sheer magical power—a force of pure destruction.
The Con Artist, on the other hand, never used such brute methods. He hid himself obsessively and toyed with Argyrion.
In theory, the Beast, despite its overwhelming strength, shouldn’t have known how to hide itself. It was a creature of immense power, a giant whose every step left massive traces.
But everything changed once the Con Artist got involved. The Beast began lurking in the shadows, suffocating them with its presence. This was the fatal flaw in the plan when the White Light Tower first commissioned the hunt for the Beast.
「Con Artist. Where is the Beast you’ve been raising?」
As the first of Argyrion’s group to directly confront the enemy, Sprigo had a duty to gather as much information as possible.
He didn’t expect the nameless Con Artist to give up anything easily, but even a conversation could reveal clues.
‘It won’t be long before I secure enough output to send a message to the main forces…’
“Raising? Me?”
***
I was taken aback. The “Beast” he was talking about must have been Carisia, but how on earth could I be raising her?
If anything, the opposite was true. I was the one who depended on her for my paycheck.
“That’s ridiculous. You still don’t get it, do you?”
「Get what?」
“The one you call a Beast… I don’t control her.”
***
What nonsense is this?
This was the question floating through Gorgov’s mind as he found himself excluded from the conversation. That nameless impostor, the man Sprigo called a Con Artist, had clearly been entangled with Argyrion for a long time.
But how long, exactly? Gorgov couldn’t even guess. Despite being the first to awaken to the cause at Amimone Tower, even he had only learned of Argyrion’s enemies today.
“I serve her,” the Con Artist said, “as I have from the beginning. That has never changed.”
「What‥‥‥?」
“Haha. You called her a Beast and thought she was nothing more than an animal? How foolish.”
A thick, mocking smile spread across the Con Artist’s face.
“She is far more just than your so-called truth, and far greater than your so-called cause.”
「How dare you insult our cause!」
“There’s no need to fear something that hasn’t even entered this world yet, something still beyond the walls. The only one I fear is her.”
Orthes shrugged as he turned to look at Danao, who was still alive, his chest barely rising and falling.
Then he looked back at Sprigo. In the process of breaking down and analyzing Sprigo’s soul earlier, Orthes had uncovered Sprigo’s ploy.
Sprigo had been expanding his roots, trying to break through the extra-dimensional storm and relay information about Orthes to his superiors.
Orthes had suspected as much. Anyone who had suffered so many defeats at his hands wouldn’t be foolish enough to engage in idle conversation without a backup plan.
‘Halto… still remembers me?’
It was a surprising revelation. Despite Orthes’s talent for blending into the background and his faint presence—a trait made even more elusive by becoming an Eroder—Halto still harbored animosity toward him. And Sprigo, despite the risk, had decided to gather intelligence in the middle of all this chaos.
Even so, Orthes had played along. It wasn’t only Sprigo who needed time.
After all, the longer Orthes kept his eyes open, the more he could see.
By now, he had a full view of every part of Sprigo’s body, which was rooted all over Algoth City.
And within Orthes’s coat was an extra-dimensional artifact he had borrowed, one he had promised a friend he would use for a very special purpose.
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