Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 229

Chapter 229: Flower (3)

TL/ED – Miso

The sensation of slowly sinking, as though through tofu, continued for some time.

Then, at some point, a sudden feeling of weightlessness came over me and my vision flashed bright.

“Oof.”

About three meters in midair.

Landing lightly, I swept my Current Sense around with my fists clenched. Once I confirmed there were no enemies or traps for the moment, I let out a sigh of relief and looked around.

The underground of the melted stone. I had simply assumed that was where I was, but I was wrong.

It was a completely different world. Though a mountain was a mountain, there were no trees, no stones, no wild beasts. There wasn’t even a single common stream.

All that existed was flowers.

Flowers of every color and kind were in full bloom, giving off a scent so thick it stung the nose.

“What is this?”

Clutching my throbbing head, I spread my Current Sense further out.

It was something I had somewhat expected, but even when I examined all the way to the limits of my Current Sense, there was no space without flowers blooming. A place where, if you took a step, you had no choice but to trample a flower.

Beautiful, but at the same time bizarre. Having confirmed that much, I immediately heightened my guard and covered my nose.

If it was this peculiar, it couldn’t be a simple space.

It was, without a doubt, a World.

Being inside a World I couldn’t counter was, in itself, as dangerous as things could get. Even more so if there was a strong chance the master of this World was Cheon-hwa.

‘I don’t breathe, but just in case…’

I pulled out a long handkerchief, fashioned a makeshift mask, and tightly sealed my mouth and nose.

Just because they were flowers didn’t mean I should dismiss them. The first thing that came to mind was the possibility that this was a space where flowers bearing deadly poison, or carnivorous flowers that drained nutrients, might exist.

If it was the latter, then it would make sense why Cheon-hwa required Sacrifices. Quietly crushing the flowers under my feet with Water Pressure, I fell into thought for a moment.

Being summoned into a World without the owner’s invitation was impossible.

The one who had brought me into this World was Cheon-hwa. She knew I was alive, and even so, she had invited me and trapped me here.

Why she had gone to the trouble of bringing me in, whether she thought herself stronger than Decay… I couldn’t say for sure.

What mattered was that my being in this place now was the result of Cheon-hwa’s judgment.

Staying still like this was probably exactly the picture she liked best.

“…Sounds like she’s confident.”

So it comes down to this, huh.

In any case, to learn about the prophecy, a fight was inevitable. No matter how favorable the battlefield was for her, it couldn’t be avoided.

Drrrk. As I drew out my Water Pressure, the flowers gradually began to bow down as though a violent typhoon were blowing.

It wasn’t that I had begun applying pressure. They were simply so weak and soft that even the slightest change in humidity made them hunch their bodies over completely.

‘I guess I’ll start by getting rid of them all.’

Since it was clearly a World related to flowers, crushing them all should change something.

That was where I would begin. I clenched my fist.

And then,

“AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

“GKAAAAAAAHHH…!”

“Cough, kkh…”

“?”

Groans filled with pain began to reach my ears.

Carnivorous flowers? Thinking that, as I looked at the ones that had let out those groans, I managed to find a total of three flowers.

A lily of the valley. A violet, a dandelion.

Ones that looked no different whatsoever from the surrounding flowers were shaking their leaves this way and that in pain, crying out in agony.

“Please!! Don’t do this! It hurts so much!”

“What the fuck, why are you doing this? What did we ever do wrong?!”

“Aaagh… agh…”

In this sprawling garden, only three blossoms had been crushed and cried out in pain.

I immediately scooped up their roots with Water Pressure and brought the flowers before my eyes.

“What are you?”

“You blind?! We’re flowers, flowers! Never seen one before?”

The violet hurled rage at me with violent intensity, spraying pollen. When I grimaced and grabbed its stem, it writhed and thrashed like a worm.

“You, you’ll be in big trouble if the Gardener finds out what you’re doing. I’m her favorite flower!”

“Is that so?”

If the Gardener was Cheon-hwa, then it had value as a hostage. I stuffed it into my pocket and turned my gaze to the more compliant flowers.

“I don’t need more than one hostage. I won’t ask again. What are you?”

“F-flowers…”

“Just flowers…”

“You weren’t flowers from the start, were you?”

“U-um. The one you just stepped on was my mother… as in, the one who gave me pollen so I could be fertilized…”

…I lifted my foot slightly off the lily of the valley I had been trampling.

“I-it’s fine! Since it’s a wind-pollinated species, I’ve never even seen her face. Please, spare me…”

The lily of the valley and the dandelion began trembling, as if they wanted to live.

Looking at them this way and that, they had no combat ability whatsoever. Of course, I wasn’t letting my guard down, but no matter how thoroughly I examined them with Current Sense, if these things were the enemy, even a small child could easily kill ten thousand of them in a day.

Grasping my throbbing head again, I asked another question.

“So you’re saying you were flowers from the start? Then who taught you the concept of what a flower is?”

“The Gardener… told us we were flowers…”

This had to be Cheon-hwa.

“Did she tell you why you can speak and think when the other flowers can’t?”

“She said it’s because we’re flowers that the Gardener invited from the outside world.”

“…?”

“A-and, we’re the only ones in this garden, but there are more in other gardens. If you don’t kill me, I’ll tell you everything.”

“Fuck! Hey, don’t act like a traitor! Kill me! Go on, try and kill me!”

From within my pocket, the violet was thrashing and shouting.

I pulled the opening shut tightly so it couldn’t even speak, then gripped the lily of the valley’s stem.

“Don’t try to lie. You said you’re a flower from the outside world, so what do you mean you were pollinated here?”

“Hiiik! I mean, our bodies are here but our souls come from outside… B-but! I don’t remember a single thing about what I did out there! If I did something, I’m sorry! It was probably another flower, not me! I know of over a hundred lilies of the valley alone!”

Pollination, outside, soul.

The Fallen. Sacrifices taken even from humans who weren’t Fallen. Humans who died on Cheon-hwa’s orders. Countless corpses. Cheon-hwa’s location.

As I chewed over all the circumstances, my face slowly twisted.

“You… are you a Fallen?”

“Y-yes?!”

It wore a puzzled expression, as if asking what that was.

“Have you lost all your memories from outside? You don’t have a single one?”

“Yes…”

I stared at the flowers blooming in full across the garden for a long while, then let out a hollow laugh.

Why did she need so many flowers?

Because the answer came to me at once.

“…These are all reserve bodies. No… Plant Bodies.”

Cheon-hwa.

It seemed she intended to turn every human on the continent into a flower.

***

“H-here is where the others of my kind are. There are really a lot besides me. The lily of the valley you saw before probably wasn’t me…”

Following the guidance of the lily of the valley, which reminded me of someone, I headed toward the place where the flowers with distinct personalities, known as Human Flowers, for short, were said to be.

My Current Sense, capable of counting even the number of strands of hair on someone’s head, detected countless flowers turning their petals in my direction the moment I showed my face in the garden, as if something seemed off to them.

“What is it? The Gardener has changed?”

“Idiot, why would the Gardener change. It’s just some other person.”

“But the other people the Gardener brought were all dead.”

“Is there any guarantee that someone moving around is alive? They could be dead and still living.”

Just listening to them talk with one another, although they were somewhat simple, it wasn’t much different from humans conversing.

Mental age of about seven or eight, perhaps. I furrowed my brow, recalling the young children who had been in the basement of the Spire.

Apparently taking that as the prelude to a massacre, the lily of the valley began to speak up while trembling all the while.

“U-um, but. The Gardener might be coming soon. If you really kill everyone here, it could cause big trouble. I don’t think that would be good.”

Letting it go in one ear and out the other, I sat down nearby and organized my thoughts on the situation.

‘I might as well consider all of these to be humans.’

If she only accepted Fallen, maybe not, but according to Damyu, human corpses were also traded.

Based on what the lily of the valley had said, these flowers didn’t number in the mere tens or hundreds. Probably in the thousands, and if you added in the other flowers, it would easily exceed tens of thousands.

If you totaled up the number of people slain by the Crimson Circle in places unknown to us, it would likely come out to around that figure.

Even if not all of them, it seemed the majority were living their lives here as flowers.

Whether this could even be called living, I didn’t know.

The important thing boiled down to one point.

‘I can’t see the purpose.’

What benefit could be gained from this?

These flowers were nothing more than useless scraps of vegetation. Even if she grew a million of them, they couldn’t oppose me.

More than anything, what the lily of the valley had just said was bothering me.

“What’s this about the Gardener arriving soon?”

“T-the Gardener comes once every week. She collects the dead people gathered in the place where I was, adds more new flowers, and then leaves, over and over.”

“So she’s not here right now?”

“Y-yes! When she arrives, we can tell.”

“If you’re lying…”

“It’s really true!”

The words of the lily of the valley, which was flapping its leaves up and down to prove its innocence, grated on me terribly.

Because it meant I had simply fallen into this World through a passage, not that Cheon-hwa had specifically invited me.

That was impossible. It would be like a human companion suddenly appearing in my Deep Sea. If this were Cheon-hwa’s World, she would have had to invite me.

Which meant this World wasn’t Cheon-hwa’s.

And now it wasn’t even certain that the so-called Gardener was Cheon-hwa either.

After mulling it over, I roughly planted the hesitating lily of the valley nearby, then pulled out the bad-tempered violet I had stashed in my pocket.

“Hey.”

“You fucking intruder piece of shit, who do you think you’re calling…”

Unlike the naive lily of the valley, this one instantly resisted and thrashed about.

I let it convulse for a while and, once it had settled down a bit, pressed it down with Water Pressure.

“What do you know about the Gardener? Tell me everything.”

“Kh, khk. Like I’d tell that to you? Why the hell would I?”

The violet stood its ground even in the face of death. Thinking it impressive that a mere flower could possess such spirit, I shrugged.

“Yeah? Then it can’t be helped.”

When the violet glared at me (or so it seemed) in puzzlement at the sudden disappearance of the Water Pressure, I lit a small flame on my fingertip instead.

“…!!!”

Its reaction was dramatic.

The one that had been so brazenly defiant even in the face of death froze up like ice the moment I moved the hand holding the flame toward the flower.

“You see, I have business with this Gardener fellow.”

“…”

“If you won’t talk, then, well, I’ll just have to make as big a mess as I can before she shows up.”

“D-don’t do that.”

“This place is nothing but flowers. I wonder just how far one little flame will spread.”

Even as the flame drew gradually closer to the ground, it held out for a while, but,

Whoosh.

“…You fucking bastard.”

The moment one flower began to singe, it finally bowed its head.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

I asked, without lifting the flame from above the ground.

“Tell me everything you know about this Gardener person. Including her objective.”