Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 238

Chapter 238: Depth (5)

TL/ED – Miso

For a while, I clutched my splitting head, and only after some time did I finally pull myself together and sort through the situation.

“So that’s why…”

The reason the Deep Sea Creatures went berserk the instant they spotted me.

More precisely, the reason they thrashed into convulsions the moment a single drop of my blood spread through the Deep Sea, was something I was only now figuring out.

My pheromones must have been truly unbearable to them.

“Ugh.”

As I was mulling it over, the throbbing headache dragged me back to reality.

It was an absurd fact, but the same went for me.

If anything, it was essentially my own body odor, and yet just inhaling my own pheromones stirred up emotions I had never felt in my life.

Awe, rage, bloodlust, boundless euphoria. I had never done drugs, but if I went and bought the cheapest, nastiest thing available and tried it, I imagined it would feel something like this.

Still, I couldn’t keep plugging my nose the whole way, so I spent several minutes calming myself down and getting used to the pheromones I was leaving behind.

“No good…”

Sadly, since this wasn’t really a scent in the ordinary sense, it didn’t look like I’d ever truly get used to it.

I let out a sigh and just shook my head, making a conscious effort not to inhale the pheromones.

‘First things first, I need to get my abilities back.’

I couldn’t avoid using pheromones entirely.

Feeling my head throb every few moments, I began hunting by following the trails left behind by pheromones I had never encountered before, in other words, by new Deep Sea Creatures.

-Crunch!

[…Gurk…]

[…!!]

Thankfully, the pheromones never once lied.

Whenever I followed one, I’d find its owner before long, and I was able to reclaim my abilities through them.

What’s more, the more Deep Sea Creatures I hunted, the sharper my sensing ability became, until I could even gauge how far away something was just from the concentration of pheromone it had left behind.

“Alright, I’ll catch this one, then next is…”

I studied the countless pheromone trails threaded through the sea and worked out the optimal route in my head.

After that, there was no stopping me. Once I started moving along those planned routes, I hunted and devoured more than fifty Deep Sea Creatures in just three hours.

As a result, my abilities were restored to about seventy percent of normal.

“Phew.”

Much better.

With a satisfied look, I stretched out my body and sensed the now far more comfortable Deep Sea through Current Sense.

My Current Sense had expanded enough that I could now detect new species without relying on pheromones. More importantly, there was no longer any reason I’d be ambushed out of the darkness.

Only now did it feel like my long-shut eyes had finally opened, and as I was letting out a breath of relief, something struck me as off.

‘Why am I doing so fine?’

Squinting, I opened and closed my hand over and over, staring at it.

Nothing really hurt. The Burden was manageable, and there was no resistance at all when I moved.

That was the problem.

It had to have been well over ten-odd hours since I entered this Deep Sea. And during that time, I’d kept descending to greater and greater Depths.

Before, I had been able to endure ten-odd hours too, but in the process, the Burden would grow stronger and stronger, and by the time I pushed through it, I’d be under enough Water Pressure to fracture every bone in my body.

But right now,

“…this feels way too comfortable.”

It wasn’t that there was no Burden. The Water Pressure still bore down heavily on my entire body, and the deeper I went, the stronger it got.

But the Burden that piled up over time was gone.

If I had to judge it, this was a good thing. It meant the time limit had vanished.

And yet, for some reason, a sense of unease rose in me.

Was the Deep Sea really such a lawless place that it would suddenly start rewriting its own rules like this?

The rules that hadn’t budged a single time in all my previous dives all seemed to have gone askew during this particular descent.

Deep Sea Creatures that could detect me, the removal of the time limit, pheromones, and me being able to feel them…

“No clue.”

Thinking on it now wouldn’t give me any answers.

I let out another sigh and opened my nose once more.

First I had to fully recover my abilities, then I could think about it again. Right now I was only at seventy percent.

As I was tracking pheromones in that state, another headache stabbed through my skull.

“?”

By now, after all the hunting, my pheromone-detection ability had reached a fairly high level. High enough that I could tell when something hundreds of kilometers away had passed through a spot days earlier.

And through that sharpened nose of mine, I caught a raw but unmistakable Blood Scent.

It wasn’t the scent left behind by the garishly colored, bizarre blood of Deep Sea Creatures. It was the kind I used to smell often in the Real World, the blood of humans and animals.

There was a human somewhere in this Deep Sea? As I tilted my head in thought, a possibility crossed my mind.

‘Come to think of it, besides me, if there are other people who’ve fallen into the Deep Sea, wouldn’t they leave Blood Scent behind?’

Though they’d be crushed instantly.

If it was the scent left by corpses like that, well… that made sense.

I had been about to brush it off, since I could feel even things very far away.

[Is anyone there.]

A will began to seep through within the Blood Scent.

[Is anyone… there…]

“What is this.”

I frowned and plugged my nose.

There was a will coming through within the Blood Scent.

In other words, pheromones.

Not a human’s.

***

Blood Scent that was also pheromones.

What that meant was clear.

Pheromones left behind by a Deep Sea Creature that bled human blood.

[Is anyone there. Someone who can understand and follow.]

“…”

And it was asking to be rescued, no less.

Which meant that, unlike the other Deep Sea Creatures, it had intelligence.

I hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out how to handle this strange situation.

It wasn’t as if this creature itself was unusual. I already knew of beings that lived within the Deep Sea yet could converse and speak.

‘Outer God.’

But would an Outer God call for rescue?

Thinking rationally, it might simply be trying to hunt whoever was foolish enough to read the will in that Blood Scent and come looking.

But this Blood Scent was flowing in from the side rather than from deeper down. From a place too shallow for an Outer God to be.

“Hmmm…”

Or maybe it was reverse fishing.

Just as people up on the surface cast their lines down into the sea, the creature might be trying to fish from below, sticking out a limb from the deeper Depths to angle toward shallower waters. That was a real possibility too.

Of course, I couldn’t be sure of anything until I saw it for myself.

[Is anyone there…]

Pheromones, in the end, were less a two-way communication tool than a one-way message transmission mechanism, so there was no way to infer more information than what was carried in the scent itself.

The call was mine to make.

In the end, I scratched my head and started moving.

“Tch, it’s not like I know anything either way.”

At the moment, from my perspective, I was only feeling alienated by a Deep Sea that had completely transformed.

Even if checking out that Blood Scent produced new questions, nothing much would really change.

[Gaaah…]

On the way, I hunted Deep Sea Creatures too, collecting Deep Sea Creature Pellets and pulling together as much of my ability as I could.

The closer I drew, the thicker the Blood Scent grew.

[Is anyone there.]

[Is anyone there.]

[Is anyone there…]

As though crying out for rescue with everything it had.

The feeling that it was a trap only grew stronger. Anything that could call for rescue like this had to be a fairly powerful being, so there was no way it was weak enough to be dying at this sort of Depth.

Just in case, I wrapped my body in Water Pressure ahead of time and arrived to find… a volcano.

“Well…”

A truly colossal volcano whose base didn’t even fit into my Current Sense. Black stone and a crater, with what was clearly boiling, scalding water gushing from that crater.

Around it, all sorts of peculiar creatures writhed and formed an ecosystem. Once upon a time I would have marveled, but having already gotten the gist of things back in the Canyon, I scowled deeply.

This was probably the back of some massive creature too, or something along those lines.

Was this the one giving off the Blood Scent? Wondering that, I took a closer look, and it seemed that wasn’t the case.

The Blood Scent was wafting out from somewhere on the mountain. I carefully drew closer to the source, spreading out my Current Sense.

The Currents flowed, and they traced out the shape of the mountain. A cave sat halfway up its side.

Through a crack in the cave, which was blocked off by a massive boulder, enough blood was oozing out to be visible to the naked eye.

“…”

I cautiously approached the mouth of the cave.

Since I had already mostly settled on the possibility that this was a trap, I didn’t get too close. That was because my Current Sense didn’t reach inside the cave.

As if some first-rate knight were lying in wait inside, my Current Sense detected only empty space. Even though it was clear that something was in there.

Should I strike first, or wait and see? While I was mulling it over, I started by just letting some words slip out.

“Are you the one who’s been calling for help in there?”

[…]

“If you’re trapped and can’t get out, I’ll break that stone. If you’re behind it, get clear.”

I compressed Water Pressure as much as I possibly could.

The moment the sharp blade of Water Pressure began grinding against the stone, a hurried reply came from within.

[Wh… o…]

It was as if something with an unbelievably short, thick tongue, a mouth shape ill-suited to imitating human speech, was forcing out words.

[Who… is it…]

Well, that was just how Deep Sea Creatures tended to pronounce things, so I didn’t think much of it.

Instead, I eased off the Water Pressure cutter and answered again out loud.

“You called me here, so you answer first. What kind of thing are you, and why are you in a place like this?”

[…]

“Not going to answer?”

When I brought the Water Pressure cutter back up to the boulder,

a response came back that I hadn’t expected at all.

[…Turn back.]

“Huh?”

I had been expecting an attack next, so the abrupt brush-off made me frown.

I thought it was just something said in passing, but then the Blood Scent suddenly vanished, and even the remaining crack was sealed shut.

No attack came no matter how long I waited. The sheer finality of the dismissal left me dumbfounded, and I scratched my head.

Not a trap? I’d come here ready to face whatever it was, even if it was an Outer God’s trap.

It felt too odd to end things here, so I pushed once more.

“Hey, you’re the one who called, what’s with the attitude? Do you know how far I came?”

[…]

After staying silent for a few minutes, the thing eventually opened its mouth, as if reluctantly giving in to my persistence.

[You are not the one I seek. It’s too late.]

“…What?”

[You have already Fallen. You are the same as me…]

-Grrrrk…

The stone cracked open slightly, and the thing poked its face out a little.

It was a sight more grotesque than any Deep Sea Creature.

A face covered in Barnacles, tentacles crawling out from between burst eyes, countless tentacles sprouting from its head. A body of jelly-like substance… and a human face.

[Turn back, seek your salvation somewhere other than where I am.]

“Fuck me…”

I felt goosebumps rise all over my body as I took a step back.

I could tell, both instinctively and rationally.

This guy,

‘Even Master might not be able to save this one…’

…was my sunbae.