Chapter 140: Turbulence (2)
Countless thoughts churned in Demus’s mind.
Who—no, what—is Carisia?
To make sense of this, Demus had to dig deep into his own past and confront a memory he’d thought buried.
It went back to when he’d been the head warrior-priest of the War God’s Cult. Back then, he’d recklessly attempted to assassinate a Tower Lord after the cult’s hideout was discovered, and its previous high priest was killed.
In a rare move, one of the Ten Tower Lords had led the raid personally. The reason for this unprecedented intervention by a figure far above the usual ranks of Blasphemia remained uncertain. Perhaps they were simply terrified of the latent power the Divine Cults still held.
When Demus returned, the sanctuary of the Enyalius War Cult was already in ruins.
Though younger and more hotheaded back then, Demus was still a formidable warrior, as he was now the War God Enyalius’s finest fighter.
From the few survivors, Demus gathered that the high priest had stood his ground against the Tower Lord. The critical detail was that they’d managed to hold out, albeit briefly. While the high priest sacrificed his life to buy time, the other members of the Enyalius Cult were able to escape.
The high priest’s self-sacrifice had inflicted a serious wound on the Tower Lord, preventing the Ten Towers’ forces from immediately pursuing the fleeing cult members.
Demus knew that a wounded lion was dangerous.
But a lion that healed its wounds was even more so, especially if it held a grudge.
This was why Demus had planned the assassination. At that time, he believed it was the only way to ensure the survival of the Enyalius Cult.
And then he had witnessed the power of the Ten Commandments.
“…It was more magic than human.”
It wasn’t so much that the Tower Lord commanded the Ten Commandments; it felt like the Ten Commandments were controlling the Tower Lord. An ancient magic that should have been lost to history erupted from the Tower Lord’s shattered limbs.
He’d been paralyzed by the sight, by the sheer density of mana that defied description. The unimaginable compression of mana shattered every object within its reach.
The Tower Lord, glowing in golden light, appeared less a person than a concentrated blaze in human form. Every step he took vaporized the very space around him into light.
Eventually, the Tower Lord seemed to float above the ground, a translucent, mana-filled zone forming a circle around him as if he were surrounded by an aura.
Demus had felt absolute despair at the sight of that golden being, able to wield boundless mana without limit.
The divine power in his body, and even the natural order of the world, seemed to curse that being. They screamed that such a creature would distort and crush all of creation into despair.
The only reason he’d survived was because of the intervention of the Tower’s elders, ancient figures who had dedicated themselves to studying the wisdom of the Ten Commandments through countless Tower Lords’ reigns.
They’d arrived to confront the Tower Lord, and Demus remembered snippets of their words.
“Foolishness… to connect with the Ten Commandments with an incomplete body….”
“Has he been consumed by the Dead King’s resentment?”
“Where is the intruder?”
Demus closed his eyes.
The sensation he’d felt from Carisia was similar to what he’d felt when he witnessed the Tower Lord in that transformed state.
But how could any human resemble a Tower Lord—or even the Ten Commandments?
He abandoned any attempt to comprehend Carisia’s nature. It was beyond him.
Instead, he thought about Orthes’s purpose.
Unless his senses were deceiving him, Carisia was surely connected to the Ten Commandments, or at least to the Ten Towers.
A being that would make an appropriate nemesis for the Divine Cult.
But was Orthes truly an enemy of the Divine Cult?
A sudden question arose from the depths of his mind. But Demus was a rational man; if Orthes had intended to destroy the Divine Cult, he’d already had countless opportunities to do so.
The fact that the Divine Cult had managed to reclaim the Temple of Pluto was evidence that Orthes was not their enemy. So, then…
“Why would he take in such a monstrous being?”
Assuming that Orthes’s ultimate objective didn’t conflict with the Divine Cult’s interests, then if Carisia were indeed linked to the Ten Towers…
Then the thought of Kynemon crossed Demus’s mind. Soon, she would take the position of Tower Lord of the Dark Tower, giving her a significant voice in magical society.
If, under the authority of the Dark Tower’s Tower Lord, word spread about “another successor to the Ten Commandments,” what would happen?
It would set off a storm that would shake the magical world, powerful enough to force even the Ten Towers to act.
Demus reflected on Orthes’s role in arranging the “gift of the Dark Tower.” Orthes had planned it, and Orthes had executed it. That was all.
If someone could gift a magic tower according to their will, what of the Ten Towers themselves?
“Could Orthes be planning to use the Ten Towers to dismantle the Ten Towers…?”
It was a terrifying thought, not because the mighty Ten Towers might be deceived, but because someone as powerful as Carisia was following Orthes.
With access to both divine power and magic, Orthes wielded the strengths of both sides.
Demus imagined what might happen if Orthes’s plan bore fruit.
There had been countless instances of challengers facing off against the Ten Towers, but there had never been a full-blown war between the Ten Towers themselves.
If such chaos, an all-encompassing war, were to erupt, could the magical society endure?
“To think he would bring about a war for the sake of the gods!”
Demus inwardly lamented.
That man should’ve served our god, not Phoibos.
Maybe he’d give Orthes a copy of An Introduction to the Art of War by Enyalius as a gesture of goodwill someday.
***
Lately, Demus had been strangely friendly.
Despite our rocky start, we’d managed to get along reasonably well, and now he seemed to feel some kind of strange camaraderie with me.
Since kindness, in moderation, is good for the soul, I accepted the various books Demus handed me without complaint.
Honestly, I had plenty of free time to read them. Ever since the multi-bodied Mental Parasite had gone into hiding, I’d run out of things to do in Algoth City. Using Argyrion’s whistleblowing tactic against them, I’d caught and locked up enough Argyrion collaborators to meet my quota of posing as a Blasphemia agent.
Carisia was in a similar position. Even after rooting out all the infiltrators, Argyrion’s headquarters showed no signs of exposing itself.
The indirect tracking method we’d tried using Silver Threads returned the same frustrating answer as the hunt for the Mental Parasite: “Target cannot be found. Please check your connection or verify the correct route.”
So, with little to do, we spent our days cheering on Kynemon and watching Kine’s impressive progress in her incantation studies.
I’d proposed to my boss that maybe we should hand things over to Kynemon and call it a day, but she’d just shake her long, flowing silver hair.
Her response was cautious: we’d withdraw only after the final round of the Selection confirmed Kynemon as Tower Lord. As an employee, I didn’t dare contradict the boss.
After several rounds of trials, Kynemon displayed her full potential and was easily selected as a finalist.
Today, at last, the final trial took place.
In this test, each remaining candidate paired up with one trusted mage from their tower to form a two-person team. Each team received a special emblem.
Then, the candidates were all placed within a barrier, with the proclamation that *“the candidate with the most emblems when the barrier is lifted will become the Tower Lord.”*
Officially, the test was to assess both a candidate’s personal skills and their ability to lead subordinates, but in reality, it was about choosing the best fighter or the person with the widest network.
After all, while the second mage was called a “guardian,” they could just as easily be a mercenary. Sponsors could “suddenly” bring in someone expelled from another tower to back their chosen candidate.
Initially, I’d intended to briefly step down from my role as Hydra’s chief secretary to support Kynemon directly, but both Carisia and Kynemon objected. Carisia argued that I needed to remain outside, and Kynemon reassured me to trust in her abilities. In the end, her companion was decided to be Kine.
“Why do you seem so uneasy?”
After seeing Kynemon and Kine off, I turned to Carisia.
“Do I look it?”
“Your expression is the same as usual, but your tone is just a little tense.”
Honestly, she wasn’t wrong. I was just reflecting on her tendency to want me nearby during times of uncertainty.
“It’s not something I saw in Phoibos’s crystal.”
Of course. If she’d had concrete evidence, Carisia would’ve told me immediately.
“There’s something strange in the flow of mana through the city. It’s not something that can be managed from within the arena.”
“Could it just be residual from the extradimensional contamination? Since the whole land was corrupted, it’s likely that some of it seeped in through the city’s mana veins. The mana core should purify it on its own, though.”
Carisia shook her head, turning her gaze away from the arena’s entrance and towards Amimone Tower in the city center.
“That mana core is what feels most ominous.”
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