Chapter 137: Proxy War (5)
Nastion explained the situation to the Parasite. Somehow, he couldn’t say exactly why, but the various divisions of the Divine Cult had united to begin their pursuit.
“So, he really is a demigod!”
The Parasite exclaimed confidently. Though Nastion believed such a thing impossible and thought it should never come to pass, all signs pointed to Orthes being a manifested demigod.
Yet, Nastion’s rational mind couldn’t accept the arrival of a demigod as plausible.
It wasn’t that Nastion himself had the power to predict the birth of a demigod or to see through the providence of gods beyond the extradimensional realm.
But the Ten Towers could.
The Eidolons, who divided Panoptes into three factions, were the very ones tasked with monitoring the heavens.
If a demigod had truly descended, the Ten Towers would have already declared a state of emergency and, with their immense power, resolved to destroy the demigod before he could unleash his might.
All signs indicated the presence of a demigod, yet the one group who should have reacted first was not making a move.
Nastion shared his doubts with the Parasite, his temporary ally.
“Does it really matter if Orthes is a demigod or not?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’ve told you all along. Even if he’s not a demigod, he’s still a comparable threat. Is there any difference in danger between a true demigod and one who can do everything a demigod can?”
‘The Parasite is right,’ Nastion thought. ‘Whether or not Orthes is a real demigod, if he can perform all a demigod’s feats, how is he any different?’
In fact, there was a difference.
The Ten Towers hadn’t detected him.
An entity possessing the powers of a demigod, yet not a demigod, so that even the Ten Towers could not sense his existence.
This made him even more dangerous than a true demigod.
‘The best card we have right now is still a false god.’
The strength of a false god would be limited by the quality of the core containing the Parasite’s consciousness.
While any material with a sufficiently high mana storage capacity, like the magic core from the Dark Tower, would suffice to attempt the transformation, an ideal vessel would require a physical body with overwhelming magical ability, like Carisia’s.
Of course, Nastion had no way to prepare such a “perfect vessel” as the Parasite envisioned. If the ideal vessel were the same as the second adversary Argyrion’s leaders mentioned, then such a body would only exist once in this era.
Instead, Nastion offered the Parasite a fortified mana core.
Just as Orthes had once fused the Thunderstone Lord with Silver Threads to create the Thunder Jewel, Argyrion had also devised a method to enhance Silver Threads.
The result was a synthesis of mana core and Silver Threads. Though this unnamed artifact wouldn’t quite reach the power of a fully ascended false god using an extraordinary mage’s body, it would far surpass any standard mana core.
Satisfied with Nastion’s explanation, the Parasite accepted the synthesized mana core containing the Silver Threads.
“…But there’s a problem.”
Even at that moment, the Cult’s hunters were scouring every corner of Algoth City, relentlessly hunting down the Parasite’s physical hosts. The number of bodies the Parasite had been forced to detonate was already well into the double digits.
If the Parasite attempted to transform now, it would naturally become vulnerable. Although it could use some magic while in its cocoon, and the shell would be tougher than ordinary metal….
“But this is the Divine Cult we’re dealing with. And it’s not the impoverished, diminished Cult of recent times—they’re using incantations as freely as they did in their prime.”
If the shell encasing the Parasite proved harder than steel, the Cult would bring in priests of Polyphron, the god of blacksmiths, to melt it down.
If the Parasite burrowed underground, priests of Kydaria, the earth goddess, would await it there.
And if the Parasite blocked every traceable path?
Then the priests of Phoibos would be called upon. They would deploy the unreasonable power of prophecies and revelations to find the Parasite.
A Cult wielding divine power without constraint was an extremely malicious enemy.
Nastion considered the situation. If he wanted to ensure the Parasite’s safe transformation, it would have to leave Algoth City altogether. It needed to be far enough away that, by the time the trackers arrived, the transformation would already be complete.
But even this solution had its problems.
The greatest issue was timing. If they fled far enough to complete the transformation before the pursuers caught up, the distance would also mean a longer return to Algoth City.
While they journeyed back to the city with the false god, Orthes would have already secured the Amimone Tower unopposed.
Spatial magic could almost eliminate travel time, but the Ten Towers posed an obstacle.
Algoth City, the venue for the Tower Lord Selection, was under the supervision of the Ten Towers’ overseers. The Divine Cult might be able to conceal traces of divine power with their own dark methods, but any spatial magic would have to bypass not only the overseers but other layers of surveillance as well.
The very structure of the Amimone Tower itself.
The true purpose of a magic tower was to prevent extradimensional incursions. The Amimone Tower’s mana core, operating autonomously, would be primed to sound an alarm at the slightest detection of spatial distortion. And any alert from the core would prompt the overseers to request immediate support from the Ten Towers.
Nastion examined the problem in depth.
To obstruct Orthes—and his ally, the Divine Cult—they needed the power of a false god’s transformation.
But to achieve the transformation, they had to impede Orthes.
It was an endless loop of contradictions.
An impossible trap.
“…Wait.”
The Ten Towers.
Yes.
Who said the Ten Towers were only Argyrion’s enemy?
***
An anonymous letter arrived at the administrative office overseeing the Amimone Tower Lord Selection.
The letter exposed suspected traitors using relics secretly.
And right in the middle of the hit list, as expected, was the Hydra Corporation’s name.
…But Nastion’s plan did not yield the intended results.
***
“What the hell….”
Nastion’s shadowed form writhed in frustration. This was a calculated move using the Ten Towers’ sensitivity to traitor organizations.
The list he’d drawn up contained a careful balance of truth and deception—enough to prevent the authorities from dismissing it as entirely false. At first, it appeared to work, with a few Tower Lord candidates detained and some of their sponsors scrambling to flee.
However, the primary target, Orthes of the Hydra Corporation, was only subjected to a few perfunctory inquiries before being released. Surely he was the most suspicious one, given his ties to the Divine Cult!
‘Did he anticipate this and prepare in advance…?’
But how?
How could Orthes have anticipated and prepared for a plan Nastion had devised and executed on the spur of the moment? Did a new prophet emerge from the Cult of Phoibos?
Something monumental had shifted within the Divine Cult. Nastion feared that a transformative wave had swept through without anyone noticing.
***
The Tower Lord Selection had taken a muddy turn, with suspicions of treason thrown around at both candidates and their sponsors.
But I wasn’t worried.
Hydra Corporation had already completed a thorough purity inspection. It had been around the time I’d asked Lampades to find Kynemon. Our company had already undergone an audit.
The only inconvenience was that Carisia, summoned as our representative, had to deal with the nuisance.
Still….
“They tried to pull a fast one, didn’t they?”
This “traitor investigation” didn’t mean much for Hydra Corporation; we’d been preemptively certified as clean.
The real problem was that the Ten Towers had summoned a significant number of Panoptes agents to act as ideological police for purity inspections.
“We’ve been careful to use incantations outside the city to avoid the overseers’ eyes, but… now Panoptes agents are visible all over the city.”
Demus, who had temporarily paused his pursuit of the Parasite, clicked his tongue in irritation. With this political maneuver filling Algoth City with mages, the Divine Cult could no longer act freely.
“They went this far… I didn’t expect it.”
It was an utterly shameless move. This was the desperate struggle of the weak, yet here Argyrion was resorting to it.
“Quite the precarious situation.”
“Do we just lay low and wait for the storm to pass?”
But.
“Precisely because of this situation, there’s a method we can use.”
After receiving the tip about the traitor organizations, the Ten Towers had urgently deployed Panoptes-affiliated mages near Algoth City.
And who were these mages stationed in Algoth City?
None other than Niobe, sent on a special mission by Salmosia.
Niobe, having witnessed the extradimensional storm, had urgently requested reinforcements from Blasphemia. Though the issue was relatively resolved, these forces had now shifted to search for traces of Argyrion in Algoth City.
In other words, the Panoptes mages scattered throughout the city included Niobe and the Blasphemia operatives.
If Argyrion called the Ten Towers’ shadow upon us with this complaint, I’ll show them how power collusion looks when it backfires.
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