Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 224

Chapter 224: Rakshasa (10)

TL/ED – Miso

No matter how thoroughly I had resolved myself to die, I had no intention of putting a living human, or rather, a living elf, into my mouth.

When I refused with genuine revulsion, Agnes tilted his head as if he was the one who couldn’t understand me.

“Why do you refuse? You have no other recourse right now.”

“What the hell does that have to do with me gobbling you up?”

“Obviously, you have to exercise your Domain as a Resident.”

I opened my mouth to argue back, but the sight of that serene expression made me frown.

There was something about his words that caught my attention.

His tone, as though he believed something would change if I ate him…

He wasn’t wrong. I did have the ability to manifest a Deep Sea Creature’s form on my body after devouring one.

The problem was…

“…Just how much do you know?”

This bastard hadn’t even noticed that my World was the Deep Sea.

So how did he know that devouring Deep Sea Creatures would grant me a portion of their abilities?

Despite the situation, my suspicion made him sigh, and he suddenly conjured a white sphere on his palm. The thing shimmered like a bubble and writhed as though it were alive.

“If eating something resembling a human body is too repulsive for you, then at least swallow this. It’s no different from devouring me, but if you refuse, there’s nothing for it.”

“…”

“It’s coming soon. Decide.”

Current Sense told me the last line wasn’t a threat.

[The time… has… come………]

Those grotesque legs were already within range of my Current Sense.

It seemed they hadn’t fled all that far after all. Or perhaps that Outer God was simply obscenely fast.

I gritted my teeth and swallowed the white sphere, and the change was immediate.

Agnes, standing before me, began to splinter apart, then dissolved like tissue paper dropped in hot water and vanished.

In his place, a strange sensation took root in my head. As if I had suddenly grown a tail, I became aware that I could do ‘something.’

More precisely, I could plant something.

Plant what?

“Ugh…”

The thought wouldn’t complete itself. As I clung to consciousness through a splitting headache, thoughts I had never had before began surfacing.

[The Outer God cannot kill me.]

[Its goal is capture. It cannot afford to destroy the passageway that has barely managed to appear.]

[Given this premise, it absolutely cannot reveal its true form.]

[An Outer God is born when a single entity achieves balance equal to the World itself. It is the nonexistent floor of the Deep Sea. It is Depth itself, a living Burden, the most dreadful Burden of all.]

[If the Outer God rises, the floor of the Deep Sea rises with it. The Depth rises. The place where I stand becomes the new floor of the Deep Sea. Relatively speaking, I plunge to a greater Depth.]

[The floor is a space that exists solely for the Outer God. I cannot endure it. I die. It loses its passageway. It fails its purpose.]

“What the fuck is…”

Knowledge I had never possessed started rising in my head.

Memories that weren’t mine. Agnes’s, most likely.

Did that mean I had inherited his memories, then? When I tried to recall his memories from his elf days, nothing surfaced, as if telling me not to waste my time.

Yet all the while, memories relevant to this fight kept pouring in.

[The Outer God’s legs are organs originally meant to endure far deeper within the Abyss.]

[It has extended them upward. It has defied the Burden. It reaches toward the surface.]

[The Outer God has rebelled against the Deep Sea, with which it had until now coexisted by maintaining a balance of power. It intends to use me, an exit, to escape the World.]

[The World will not forgive this. Its Apostles, who wield Divine Authority within their own territory, meaning the Outer God’s legs themselves, will only be able to use abilities calibrated precisely to their current Depth.]

[Conclusion: I must determine the range of their Current Sense. And I must flee beyond it.]

“This goddamn bastard…”

Agnes was blending my memories with his own, surfacing only what I needed for the current fight.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, though it was helpful.

Promising myself that once all this was over, I’d cut open my own frontal lobe if that was what it took to pry this bastard out, I swam through the Deep Sea with everything I had.

It was the fastest speed I could manage. But the legs always stretched out just slightly faster than me, chasing me down.

‘Just how long are these things?’

Each one a length that defied human comprehension. Feeling as though mountain ranges were pursuing me, I fled for my life.

Yet not only was I failing to escape beyond their Current Sense, I was gradually being overtaken. It couldn’t be helped. They were faster than me.

Just as I was thinking I’d have to intercept them, another memory surfaced.

[Attack is meaningless. The things that appear to be legs are only shaped that way; they are something else entirely. No matter how much I slash or sever them, it makes no real difference.]

[If they are faster than me, I must change tactics. Not to repel them through attack, but to find a way to prevent their movement altogether…]

“I got it, so shut up already!”

I stopped swimming, gritted my teeth, and fixed my gaze on the leg that had now closed to half the range of my Current Sense, then cooled my chest.

With the sensation of being utterly alone in this world… nothing happened.

Of course. It wasn’t as if I could perfectly wield Decay’s ability, so freezing something that massive was out of the question. Even Decay himself probably couldn’t freeze that thing if he were here.

Instead, I created ice. A tremendous amount of it.

Really, an absurd amount.

“Guh…”

With a pain that felt like it would tear my chest open, a sharp crack…

Thousands of blocks of ice formed, filling the Deep Sea.

They latched onto the legs hurtling toward me at insane speed and slowed them down, if only slightly.

Not by much. Of course, I wasn’t planning to end it with just this.

“Perfectly gathered…”

I frantically scoured the Deep Sea and searched for the schools of Deep Sea Creatures fleeing from the Outer God.

Big or small, they all scrambled away in sheer panic, creating quite a spectacle. That panic had produced a procession of fleeing Deep Sea Creatures, and among them were whales of staggering size.

I immediately undid the ring made of thread and took control of those whales.

The order I gave was simple.

“Push those ice blocks with everything you’ve got!”

Even as I issued the command, I felt a flicker of unease. Would my control really be able to override even their terror of the Outer God?

The result, astonishingly, was success. Four whales in total, without the slightest resistance, slammed their bodies into the ice blocks and pushed with all their strength to block the Outer God’s legs from advancing.

With countless shards of ice clinging to the legs and massive whales shoving against them, the legs’ speed noticeably slowed.

[Far from enough. There’s a high chance this will only buy time.]

[I need a means to bind the legs more decisively.]

“…”

But Agnes, or rather his memories, ruled it insufficient.

Even I could see it. The time these creatures bought wouldn’t be enough for me to put real distance between myself and it.

After thinking for a moment, I muttered to myself.

“From what I heard earlier, it doesn’t sound like that thing is the only Outer God around.”

[Outer God is the title granted when one, descending to ever greater Depths, resist the Deep Sea again and again, and finally reach the place where other Outer Gods dwell and join them.]

[And I am not the only one who has fallen into this Deep Sea. Hundreds of millions, billions, hundreds of billions of lives have reached the Deep Sea and sunk, and at least a handful have touched the floor. That one is not the only Outer God.]

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

I immediately fixed a direction and started swimming.

Along the way, as if it had grown annoyed, I felt the Outer God’s leg gently wrap around one of the whales blocking its path.

It was just that, a single motion.

[….!??!?]

The whale was flattened as though caught in a hydraulic press, crushed into paste, and broken free of my control.

It was dead. The leg shook off the remaining ice and regained its original speed, surging after me again, and another memory rose in my mind.

[If possible, I must rise higher. In doing so, I impose a stronger Burden on it…]

“I’ll figure it out, so stay quiet for a bit.”

Renewing my vow to tear him out no matter what, I arrived at the first place I had ever traveled to after gaining the ability to move through the Deep Sea.

The Canyon was still there.

“…Haah.”

After a brief deep breath…

I began racing toward the floor of that Canyon.

Without stopping, without rest.

The Burden grew heavier and heavier, squeezing my chest, but I refused to halt.

[Descending is the worst possible choice. The closer I get to where it is, the more the restrictions the Deep Sea imposes on it diminish. Conversely, the Burden I bear deepens. Which means, in a situation that was already dire…]

“It gets harder. I got it.”

Perhaps it was impatient, because the memories kept urging me on. I ignored them and reached the floor of the Canyon.

True enough, the Outer God’s leg moved far faster now.

It seemed a bit plumper too. And, oddly enough, it was turning darker.

It really wasn’t an ordinary leg, it seemed. Eyelids were gradually forming over the suckers, and as they drew closer, lines appeared across them and began to part.

At greater Depths, the suckers were transforming into eyes.

“Truly disgusting.”

If there was a silver lining, unfortunate as it was…

It was that I happened to have an eye down here too.

“Go on, have fun with your new friend.”

Crack!

I slammed the floor with Water Pressure with everything I had.

[………………………………]

Rumble rumble rumble…

With the sensation of something soft and squishy being pierced… a tremor large enough to be mistaken for an earthquake rolled out, and afterward, the Canyon slowly began to open.

It opened its eye. Its body was probably still anchored in the deepest place, but because of its sheer size, its head alone had been forced up to this relatively shallow Depth.

Another Outer God’s eyelid slowly rose.

I seized the opening and launched into the most earnest self-promotion of my life.

“Hello. I’m the only way out for you to escape into the Real World.”

[……………..]

I had no idea whether it understood my words. No idea whether it was even listening.

But of one thing I was certain: the pupil that had been rolling about every which way, a pupil as vast as a sizable city, was now looking directly at me.

“But here’s the thing. I’m about to die.”

Since it showed no further reaction, I resorted to a slightly stronger measure.

The surest way to announce myself.

Slash!

I sliced my wrist and let my blood bleed out into the Deep Sea.

The change was dramatic.

[[Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah….!!!]]

Its iris contracted to a size I couldn’t believe.

From the size of a village, to the size of a carriage.

At the same time, something began rising from within the Deep Sea.

A speed that defied belief. It looked like this one was extending something resembling legs too.

Crunch!

[…..!!]

That small iris, which had been fixed wildly on me alone, suddenly rotated to look in another direction.

At the other Outer God’s legs racing toward me.

They too were tremendous in scale, but compared to this eye, they were nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

The iris turned red as it fixed its gaze on them…

Pop!!

The legs burst with a thunderous boom. Simply from being looked at.

“Hmm.”

What, was that thing a microwave? I quietly eased back and avoided its line of sight.

Unfortunately, it seemed it had no intention of finishing things there, because more legs began rising.

Except this time, they were looking at the iris, not me.

And the iris too, was looking at the legs now, not me.

I watched the heated gaze passing between them and slowly backed away.

“Well, have fun, you two. Don’t mind me.”

Abrupt as it was, the meeting had been a success.