I Became the Servant of the Blind Wicked Woman

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Orthes suddenly appeared with an outrageous request.

Arabella didn't resort to a cliché response like, "What did you just say?" Instead, she prepared a more formal retort.

"Hacking the Phytos factory has been attempted several times during the artificial Ten Commandments incident. But the data in the factory is just the basic operating systems for automata. Nothing noteworthy."

"That's important. The operating systems of the automata are still being updated regularly, aren't they?"

Arabella, searching her auxiliary brain for information, nodded. The automata from the Phytos Tower were indeed regularly updated.

"But that's just a mechanical process done by the artificial spirits of the tower. There's no secret message from Kaicle in there."

Orthes merely shrugged and smiled. It was clear he wasn't going to change his mind.

She wanted to see that smiling face twisted in frustration at least once. Swallowing her desire, Arabella began her work.

***

Ether Space. A sub-reality formed by the accumulated echoes of magic, a place between reality and unreality.

Most magicians access Ether Space through meditation, using their spirit bodies, while a select few connect their brains directly to Ether Space.

Arabella was one of those few.

Connecting the physical body directly to Ether Space allows for much freer use of mana but also increases the risk of death.

Many magicians who had their brains fried while hacking into another mage tower's systems had tried this direct connection method.

In cases where the firewall was as advanced as the Ten Towers, it could destroy the physical body through the spirit body. Fortunately, Phytos Tower's firewall wasn't that advanced.

In Ether Space, Arabella appeared as a complete queen spider. Spider-shaped drones made from her flesh infiltrated the physical servers of the Phytos Tower to assist her intrusion.

As soon as four spider drones injected Ether virus toxins into the physical servers, the Phytos Tower's server activated its antivirus program.

That was the moment Arabella had been waiting for.

The antivirus program, manifesting in Ether Space as a wolf wreathed in flames, clashed with the virus, which appeared as swarms of spiders.

As the flaming wolf incinerated the spider swarms, the resources of the antivirus program focused on eliminating the virus.

Arabella's web caught the data stored in Ether Space at that moment.

She read, copied, and returned the data to its place. The antivirus program took about 15 seconds to incinerate all the spiders.

Having risked her life in microseconds during her time under the Lernian Tower, 15 seconds was more than enough for Arabella.

***

What should I do? I'm nervous.

Every word Arabella said, fused with the hyper-mechanic spider, shook my expectations.

Well, it's not like others wouldn't have thought of what I came up with five minutes after talking to Bertrand.

If it turns out my guess was completely wrong, then there's nothing left for me to do.

Ah, there's one thing.

Run to Carisia and ask her to find it for me. I don't want to think about the aftermath, but it's better than outright failing.

As I pondered how to plead to make Carisia feel sorry for me, Arabella finished her work and opened her eyes.

"That was much faster than I expected."

"The current Phytos Tower has no magician directly controlling the firewall. It's the limit of an unmanned tower."

Arabella shrugged and snapped her fingers. The cables connected to her spine detached one by one.

"Don't think about taking over the Phytos Tower itself with hacking. To do that, you'd have to hack the tower's core."

"Hacking the tower core connected to the aura of the Ten Commandments is suicidal. I know that well."

I'm not someone like Carisia. She only assigns tasks that humans can handle. Arabella, indifferent to my gaze filled with frustration, continued detaching her external computation device.

Coming down from the steel spider, Arabella tossed me a USB drive.

"Here. That's everything except for the control programs for the unmanned factory's machines."

Extracting information from Ether Space and viewing it is a simple task for magicians of a certain level.

For magicians. I'm not a magician, though.

I can do some basic magic with various tricks, including a magic engraving drive, but it still feels a bit unfair at times like this.

"Can I borrow a viewing tool? My workshop is still a mess."

"…You're cautious. Of course."

Why is she suddenly complimenting me? She's not mocking me for not being able to use magic, is she?

***

Arabella marveled at Orthes' paranoid sense of security. Did he think she might have installed malware on the magic engraving drive she gave him?

It was a choice considering the possibility of spyware being installed if he viewed it inside the tower's facilities. Given that he had recently submitted to Hydra Corporation, it was natural he didn't fully trust her.

But it felt a bit unfair to Arabella.

She had no intention of trying to inject malware. Since the day Orthes warned her, betrayal was not even an option for her.

She might not like his perpetual grin or fear the boss, but those were trivial complaints.

Her body, modified for Ether Space by the Lernian Tower, was inefficient. Even with full mana, she needed replacement power after about six hours of external activity.

Carisia could cut off the mana supply to the information guild's area, and Orthes already knew her identity. Arabella couldn't afford to displease them.

'The goal of becoming a new ruler seems too far-fetched…'

Arabella watched Orthes extract compressed Ether data from the magic engraving drive and project it onto a hologram.

Most magicians preferred directly accessing such data through neural interfaces rather than using external tools.

It was faster, more convenient, and allowed simultaneous processing of large amounts of information. Any magician attempting such things typically had some level of skill to block malicious information.

Yet, Orthes was accustomed to handling Ether data with external devices. Various hypotheses floated in Arabella's mind.

One. He was extremely wary of malicious code.

Two. He had a habit of creating backup data.

Three. He wasn't a magician.

The first and second were understandable as occupational hazards.

Magicians who dealt with concentrated information had likely seen corpses that had died from brain infections trying to breathe through their skin after encountering malicious code.

Mildly, they might lose a few days of memory before and after viewing the code. If that had happened, seeking safer methods to view information was inevitable.

'The third possibility…'

Arabella frowned. Honestly, it was the least likely.

But as someone dealing with information, she had to consider all possibilities.

'Come to think of it, I've never seen him use proper magic.'

He performed basic magic through the magic engraving drive, inflicting fatal blows. But his combat style seemed more akin to a warrior or assassin than a magician.

'Huh?'

Perhaps he really wasn't a magician. Even scouring the records of when Carisia and Orthes swept through the underworld of Etna City, there were no accounts of Orthes using powerful magic.

As Arabella meticulously reviewed her hypotheses, she recalled the final issue.

That faint presence. It couldn't be explained without involving magic.

'It would make sense if it were an artifact imbued with that kind of magic…'

What other abilities could cause such phenomena without being magic?

"Director?"

Orthes' voice pulled Arabella from her thoughts.

"Is there a problem with decompressing the data? It should be built to handle such loads."

"No. Among the basic installation files for the automata, what are these seemingly useless ones?"

Arabella, reading the holographically projected data, slowly shook her head.

"They're exactly what they look like. Useless dummy data. It's pre-installed for rolling back or updating the operating system, but it doesn't do anything under normal circumstances."

"I see."

Orthes began extracting only that dummy data. Watching his busy hands, Arabella carefully observed and asked.

"Are you unsure?"

"Director, what are you suddenly talking about?"

"In the meeting, you confidently said Kaicle is under the volcano, didn't you? But now you seem to be cautiously acting as if you know nothing."

It was a probing question to gauge Orthes' information sources. Both times, Orthes sought to verify the information himself.

This behavior is typical when one can't trust the information's origin. Depending on his answer, Arabella could narrow down the candidates for Orthes' information source.

"I'm 99 percent sure."

Orthes answered simply without hesitation.

'This throws off all my predictions.'

"If you're that sure, there's no reason to be so obsessed with cross-verifying, is there?"

A question subtly straddling the line between inquiry and provocation. Orthes' expression remained calm.

"Normally, I'd agree."

***

"It's about the boss's work. Anything less than 100 percent isn't acceptable."

What's this guy talking about now? Maybe he hasn't been properly reprimanded by Carisia yet.

To read over 200 fully translated episodes, patreon.com/Denji02