Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 226

Chapter 226: Rakshasa (12)

TL/ED – Miso

At first, I had worried a little about how to explain the situation to Dersia.

“Jern? I heard you went to catch the Assassin who hunted the Knight…”

But the moment she saw Agnes clutched in my hand, her expression twisted into something fiendishly murderous, and I let out a sigh of relief.

As expected, it seemed my master could recognize her own kind even when it was housed in a bird’s body.

Though the emotion didn’t appear to be the favorable sort.

“…Agnes. Without a doubt, the worst Assassin who was executed when I was young… This one cannot possibly be alive. We surely erased him in front of that tree. What method did he use?”

Dersia stared at Agnes, trapped in the birdcage, her eyes widening in disbelief.

If she was using a word like “erase”, it evidently didn’t simply mean he’d been killed, but Agnes pecked at the birdcage with his beak as if he found it amusing, and retorted.

“Those fools thought I only ever ate humans.”

“…”

Dersia’s expression filled with an even deeper revulsion. Seeing that I didn’t understand what he meant, she tossed the birdcage onto the desk and explained.

“He devoured another Elf, disguised them as himself, and then had them erased. Since we witnessed an Elf’s soul vanish, we were completely deceived. However corrupt he may be, to sacrifice an Elf like that… I can’t view it as the act of a sane being.”

“…Is it fine to kill humans, then?”

“Of course not. However short and fragile a creature’s life may be, killing a life meaninglessly is a sin. Humans too prey on beasts, but even so, they don’t set fire to the mountains to hunt them, do they?”

So we were lumped in with wild animals.

Unable to find anything to say, I watched as Dersia pulled a fountain pen from inside her robes.

“Still, it’s fortunate that you, Jern, have captured him now, late as it is. He must be executed.”

“Wait.”

Just as he had when I’d caught him, Agnes tried to beg Dersia for his life.

“If those are to be your final words, please keep them brief.”

“I know Secret Affairs that you and your disciple have no knowledge of whatsoever, matters that are certain to astonish the both of you. I’ll disclose them, on the condition that my life be spared.”

As expected of an Elf whose character was anything but ordinary, it seemed he hadn’t told me everything after all.

Dersia gave me a glance. She seemed to think we should at least hear him out, and I agreed.

Slipping the fountain pen back into her robes, Dersia crossed her legs, sat down, and lifted her chin briefly before lowering it.

“Choose your words carefully from here on. My master has no mercy. You really might end up roasted.”

“…I’d better address this to you, then. Your World, the Deep Sea, is no different from the world we live in now.”

“Ah, I know that. I’ve heard roughly that’s how it is, but it never really sank in.”

In other words, one of the Three Evils was the Deep Sea, and one was the world we currently lived in.

Honestly, it was meaningless enough to warrant nothing more than an unimpressed “ah, I see” and a shrug. When I wore an unimpressed expression that said, “if that’s all you’ve got, your bird-life is over”, Agnes chirped back as if he found it pathetic. [TL: The original uses a pun substituting the character 鳥 (“bird”) into the word 인생 (“human life”), producing “bird-life.”]

“I can roughly tell what you’re thinking. The Deep Sea and this current world of ours are so utterly different that, even knowing the fact, you can’t accept it. That’s the gist, isn’t it?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“The reason your Deep Sea and the current world differ is that every ‘possibility’ has been removed.”

“…Possibility? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The world originally held possibilities that turned any place into hell. The possibility that if you entered a forest, unidentifiable branches would coil around your neck; that if you slept in a cave, the exit would be sealed by the time you woke; that sunlight would melt your skin; that the ground would collapse the moment you stepped on it. There was a time when such things were simply common sense.”

Agnes murmured, gazing off into the distance as if recalling a memory from long ago.

The “possibilities” he was describing seemed, each one of them, to be the World of a Fallen.

“Suppose this. In such conditions, the only life that could exist was a handful of beings chosen through the cruelest survival of the fittest. Imagine a certain being, lamenting this, bound every possibility that robbed life together and made them vanish. What, then, should that one be called?”

“Creator? A god, I guess.”

“Indeed. Our Creator dismissed every World as falsehood and severed them from reality. As a result, life, including the Elves, was able to take root. In exchange, the god lost his omnipotence. The world became as imperfect as it was beautiful.”

Only then did his words click with what Void had said.

“Since the god is the First Wizard, and Wizards are those who inherited the First Wizard’s blood…”

“That is precisely why only Wizards can make contact with the Worlds he severed.”

I’d known the gist of this from my conversation with the Crimson Circle, but so that was the precise mechanism.

As I listened this far without looking particularly surprised, Agnes began to speak about the Deep Sea.

“However, there were two Worlds that even the being who created the Worlds could never touch. What you call the Three Evils. Earth became reality. What remained were the sky and the sea. And upon those, no hand was laid.”

“…Why?”

“You should know better than I. The Deep Sea is itself a possibility that rejects life. Any who fall into it cannot survive. If that were stripped away, the Deep Sea could not exist. The god was not so omnipotent as to make something that exists become nonexistent… Or perhaps there was some other reason.”

He shrugged his wings and answered as if he didn’t quite know himself.

“What matters is that the policy regarding the Deep Sea and the Celestial Sky was one of neglect. The Wizards who fell into other places survived under the name ‘Fallen’, but those who fell into those two places received no name at all. When a single possibility can kill even a well-trained Wizard, how could anyone survive in a place where thousands, tens of thousands of possibilities exist?”

“…”

“The Fallen that could be made from the possibilities of the Deep Sea alone would, in number, exceed every Fallen currently in the Empire combined. That is why the head of the Crimson Circle is such an abnormal bastard. That one is the sole being who flew up through the Celestial Sky and is still alive. And from that moment, it was over.”

“What? What was over?”

“This world.”

Agnes calmly pronounced the end.

“You too have striven hard, for a human. But that, the head of the Crimson Circle, is simply on another level.”

“I don’t care how monstrous he is. If I were going to give up over something like that…”

“No, that isn’t what I mean. I’m not talking about mere strength. With something like that, there are always variables. The problem is that the Creator’s intent went completely off the rails.”

When I frowned, thinking he was merely debating Void’s strength, he let out a dry laugh and countered.

“Consider it this way. Every single creature living within your Deep Sea, without exception, boasts monstrous strength. Why do you think that is?”

“Well, because if they didn’t, they’d die.”

“Precisely. Environmental pressure made them so. Living under thousands of tons of water pressure crushing them every moment, in cold, dark depths where one cannot see an inch ahead, forced to evade predators and hunt prey. That extreme environment pushed life to develop. The Creator did the very same thing. Leaving the Crimson Circle untouched was that.”

“…? What? Why? Wait, you’re telling me he knew about the Crimson Circle?”

That bastard called the Creator had known about the Crimson Circle and hadn’t wiped them out?

Even though the world was on the brink of destruction because of that? I was stunned, wondering what kind of nonsense this was, when he continued.

“Environmental pressure. Merely researching and advancing peacefully cannot take one to the summit. No, one would not even aim for the summit to begin with. The greatest enemy is, in essence, the greatest master.”

“Hey, that’s just unhinged grit-theory.”

Of course, given that this guy had apparently made our reality, I couldn’t really argue against him.

His method of producing successors was extraordinarily brutish. He felt less like a god and more like a coach running his charges into the ground.

“The Creator existed in this world for only the briefest slice of time. At the moment he made the world, he already knew his lifespan had no more than a few hundred years left, and the time to arrange things was far too little. Of course, he didn’t pull off such a stunt without any thought. In case the Crimson Circle grew stronger than expected, he crafted the things called Holy Relics, and set up various other safeguards besides.”

At his words, I glanced at my robe. It didn’t seem to have been much help.

“However, none of it came to mean anything. A situation the Creator had never foreseen came to pass.”

“I wasn’t asking him to be all-knowing, but for a god, he sure didn’t know much.”

“I’m not making excuses, but this truly was unavoidable. Who could have foreseen it? That the head of the Crimson Circle would be the first to reach the Celestial Realm.”

Celestial Realm.

Apparently it was this world’s original name, just as Deep Sea had been an original name.

But the Celestial Realm Agnes was speaking of didn’t seem to carry that meaning.

However, if it meant something else…

“What you just said.”

Dersia, who had been silently listening, spoke for the first time.

She didn’t seem to be in a very good mood. She rarely was, but now especially.

“Explain it. In a bit more detail.”

“Is there really anything to explain?”

Agnes let out a self-deprecating chuckle and laid it out obligingly.

“Void, that one, reached the peak of magic and became the guardian of this world that the Creator had desired.”

Hm.

Watching Dersia slowly lower herself into a seat with a dazed expression…

…it did seem that Agnes had kept his promise after all.

***

Celestial Realm.

A plane where it made no difference whether there were nine Stars floating in one’s eyes, or ten.

For a Wizard who had reached the Celestial Realm could create a world of his own, and the night sky of that created world would be strewn with Stars beyond counting.

Finding it too hard to look at Dersia’s stricken expression, I glared at the birdcage again and pressed him.

“That guy was a Fallen. If he’s Fallen, then whether he’d been in the Celestial Realm beforehand or not shouldn’t matter, right?”

“This is precisely why humans… You don’t understand what it means to have reached the Celestial Realm. It isn’t something that concludes with a simple rise in rank. It means one can knead the very concept of magic to suit one’s own taste. He may well have made it so that no being other than himself can ever reach the Celestial Realm.”

“…”

If that was true…

It would mean that even if we brought down the Crimson Circle, in the end there would be no Celestial Realm Wizard left to uphold the world, and it would collapse anyway.

The deletion of the victory condition. Lose, or lose more slowly.

As I failed to offer a quick reply, caught between two impossible options, Agnes clacked his beak as if taken by surprise.

“Honestly, I’m more astonished that the two of you didn’t already know this.”

“…Is that so? Personally, I can’t figure out why you’re so composed. The world’s ending, aren’t you worried? Have you lived so long that death doesn’t scare you?”

“Apart from the fact that I don’t particularly fear death, I have no desire for it. Had I wanted it, I’d have taken my own life the moment you captured me so disgracefully. I have always been struggling for survival.”

“What?”

“Why do you think I have always pressed onward, chasing strength? Why do you think I devoured Knights, Assassins, Wizards, even Fallen, all to grow stronger? Just to kill a few nobles?”

“…Don’t tell me…”

“I have been acting so that I might survive even should everything unfold according to the head of the Crimson Circle’s wish and the world revert to its primordial state. The matter of the Fallen was, likewise, chiefly about borrowing your hand to obtain what I wanted without provoking the Crimson Circle.”

Agnes had known all of this long ago, and had been reinforcing the individual known as himself over and over, determined to be the sole survivor.

As I pondered what on earth to do with this madman, he squawked.

“So, do you intend to keep me caged in here? Remember that I cooperated with you to the utmost, and that keeping me locked up holds little real meaning. If you release me, I shall not attack Knights again.”

“…”

I looked back and forth between the still-stunned Dersia and the birdcage.

If everything this creature said was true…

‘There doesn’t seem to be any way to turn it around…’

Essentially, from the very beginning. From the moment Void reached the Celestial Realm, everything had already been over.

I no longer even understood why the Crimson Circle had begun to stir at all. At this rate, couldn’t they have just sat still?

As I reviewed possibility after possibility, I noticed something rather peculiar and was thrown off guard.

…The shock wasn’t as great as I’d have expected.

I had been checkmated, an executioner was approaching with a raised blade, and yet I didn’t particularly feel that death had drawn any nearer.

Had I lost my mind? As I tilted my head, thinking it strange by any measure, a Deep Sea Creature swam past around my head.

Only then did I realize, and I let out a sigh.

“Well… from where I stand, not much has actually changed.”

“?”

Agnes cocked his head.

But truthfully, whether we defeated the Crimson Circle or not, my position wasn’t going to improve.

If what this creature said was true, then even in the primordial world the Crimson Circle sought, the Deep Sea would still be a place of unspeakable horror…

And I was already there, with no way to escape.

Thinking that way, a light laugh actually slipped out of me. I opened the birdcage door and seized Agnes.

“If we’re all going to die anyway, it won’t really matter if I spit-roast you into barbecue right here. Since we’re all doomed, I might as well have a taste of Elf for the road.”

“What more could you possibly want? I’ve told you everything.”

Whether he caught the scent of a deal in my tone, he sighed, yet showed a willingness to comply in full.

“You said a moment ago that besides the Holy Relics, the Creator left behind a few other safeguards, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But they are nearly in name only. When even the most threatening of them, the Holy Relic, turned out like that…”

“I’ll be the judge of that, so…”

From a death struggle where my own life was on the line.

To a death struggle where the fate of the world was on the line.

That or this: there really wasn’t much difference.

“Tell me everything.”