Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 243

Chapter 243: Depth (10)

TL/ED – Miso

Tentacles frozen white.

As I clutched my chest, which throbbed with a pain that felt about to burst, cracks suddenly began to spread through the space around the tentacles.

Mallo, startled by the strange sight, asked me a question.

[What on earth is that-]

“It won’t hold for long.”

[What did you say?]

Mallo looked around the tentacles, bewildered, and then cried out in shock.

[…You froze the entire surroundings!]

“Those things were a target too, but I guess it’s not going to work.”

I clicked my tongue and gazed at the now completely transparent surroundings.

What I’d done was simple. Using Current Sense, I had identified every place the creature’s tentacles occupied and frozen all of it. No matter how freely they moved, in the end they couldn’t pass through a solid. The moment the seawater froze, they were physically blocked.

On top of that, the ice of Decay had a hardness that wasn’t even comparable to ordinary ice. I’d thought it would hold up for a few hours at the very least, but…

The cracks were spreading exponentially. As if something was about to burst out at any moment.

‘Not right this second, though.’

I slowly stepped back, watching the chunk of ice that was nearly the size of a small fortress.

At the very least, it would hold for a few minutes. Despite the situation, a faint chill ran down my spine at what I’d just done.

…Had I ever been this skilled at handling Decay’s power? As I recalled, the most I’d ever managed was producing some small bits of ice.

Shaking my head, I pulled my thoughts together. Now wasn’t a time leisurely enough to dwell on such things.

“All right. Let’s try this…”

I forced the pain in my chest aside and focused on Water Pressure.

Far stronger and sharper than any Water Pressure blade I’d made before. Sharp enough to cut through anything.

This was the same Water Pressure that had torn through even the Middle Layer’s protective barrier. As I gradually shaped a Water Pressure blade, Mallo cautiously asked,

[Jern. Surely you’re not planning to take on the Sealed Realm with that?]

“Yeah. There’s no other way, so I have to use the sharpest thing I can.”

[I’m, ah, sorry to say this, but…it won’t work.]

“What?”

When I scowled at the sudden warning, Mallo explained calmly, as if there was nothing for it.

[Right now, you’re trying to use the weapons of a collective World against that very collective. It’s like trying to pierce an awl with a toothpick. I know how well you handle your own abilities, but no matter how fast a man can run, he cannot beat a horse in a race.]

“No, what even is a Sealed Realm, that something like that is possible?”

[Hmm. The Deep Sea you’re in right now is composed of things like Water Pressure, seawater, Deep Sea Creatures, and so on, is it not?]

“Right?”

[If the Water Pressure, the seawater, every single Deep Sea Creature, were all directed by precisely the same will and acted toward a single purpose, that would be like the World itself gaining a self. But you, by contrast, are someone who borrows the World’s power. You cannot possibly stand against it.]

I didn’t fully understand all of it, but the gist seemed to be that none of it, Water Pressure, Current, Current Sense, would work on the thing.

Considering that my Water Pressure and Current really hadn’t worked at all, and that even Current Sense, which detects the creature’s movements by sensing the empty space around it, had barely picked it up, it was probably true. Mallo wasn’t the type to throw out empty words in a situation like this.

‘This is troublesome.’

For now, in order to break down that thing’s Sealed Realm, I had to inflict some kind of wound on it.

But fighting in the Deep Sea using something other than the Deep Sea? Was that even possible?

While I deliberated, the time was steadily running out.

-….Crack!

“…Ah.”

Along with the sound of ice splitting,

what had happened just earlier flashed through my mind. When the creature had wrapped around me, I had escaped using a blade of wind.

I hadn’t been able to inflict much of a wound, but I had certainly cut into it.

Steeling myself, I let Stars rise within my eyes.

“No, but…”

Just two Stars.

There wasn’t much I could do with this. If the powers of the Deep Sea didn’t work, would magic enhanced by them work?

No, would even just enhancing it work against something like that? The chances were vanishingly slim.

Only one thing was certain.

It was better than doing nothing.

-Crrkkk!

[Khu, hk….]

The ice shattered completely.

At the same time, the now fully freed tentacles began to thrash in deep, swirling motions, visible even through my hazy Current Sense.

The Current generated by their movement alone made it hard to stay in place. I clenched my teeth, held my ground, and gathered every drop of Mana within my heart.

Dersia had told me that my talent as a wizard was at a wretched level.

Even with a lifetime of training, the highest I would ever reach was 3-Star. Right now, I was 2-Star.

Right now, those words felt incredibly meaningless.

From the moment I began gathering Mana with all my strength, a sense of omnipotence, as if I could do anything at all, washed over me.

[Jern? What in the world- you, what are you doing…?]

“…I have no idea.”

Mallo, watching the Deep Sea Water being violently sucked into my skin, asked in shock.

But I was just as bewildered. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

At first, I was simply gathering as much Mana as I possibly could.

In the past, I had only been a 2-Star vessel, so even though Mana flooded this world in abundance, putting in just a tiny amount filled me up completely. It had been a rather meaningless advantage.

But not now. My small vessel was being flooded with so much Mana that even the Water Barrier couldn’t hold it back. An enormous influx.

Even as I drew in the surrounding seawater and gathered the Mana myself, the amount that piled up, and kept piling up, was enough to bewilder me. Soon, I felt the sensation of blood bursting from my eyes.

“Ngh.”

I clutched at my eyes immediately. Capillaries had actually ruptured, and blood spread through the seawater.

It hardly mattered now, but as I slowly blinked, I caught my reflection in a piece of broken ice drifting nearby and clenched my teeth.

…The Stars swimming in my eyes had increased to three.

3-Star.

The rise in my magical level was reflected in my Water Barrier at once. Along with a feeling of breath rushing back into me, the Water Pressure eased significantly, and the range of my Current Sense, Water Pressure, and Current expanded several times over.

My senses reached far wider areas. I could feel the flow of Currents handled not by me but by other Deep Sea Creatures. I felt as if, should I want to, I could shatter even stone.

Along with an overwhelming sense of unease.

“Ngh, hmm. This…wait a moment.”

It was different from when I’d gone from 1-Star to 2-Star.

Far too different. Setting aside the convenient process where it simply landed in my hands because I wanted and needed it, the feeling wasn’t merely one of growing more familiar with the Deep Sea.

-Crunch, crrkk…!

“…”

Strange sounds were coming from inside my body.

The sound of bones shattering, of flesh and blood vessels rearranging. What was even more grotesque was that I felt no pain whatsoever.

As an odd sensation crept through my head and I clutched at it, Mallo cried out urgently.

[Jern! It’s coming!]

I was already in the middle of a fight.

This wasn’t an opponent that would back off just because I’d suddenly reached 3-Star. In fact, it was unclear whether the thing even had the intelligence to notice my state had changed.

A tentacle aimed precisely at my face. In the past, this would have been a situation requiring me to dodge with everything I had, but for some reason, my back naturally lay flat as I bent.

[Wha, what, Jern…?]

-Crack!

The tentacle grazed past above my head. It had aimed for my chest, but my body had folded back 180 degrees, like some kind of flip phone.

I felt my spine shatter. No, an ordinary person would die before they even felt that sensation.

But I was alive. As I straightened up perfectly fine, I couldn’t even feel that my bones had been broken.

“This is…”

[Ah, ahh, ah, ah…]

While I dazedly fingered my waist, dumbfounded by my own dodge, the Fish-Man pointed at me with its bony fingers, indifferent to my reaction.

Countless tentacles closed in on me. I had been about to create a wind blade, but realizing that this thing wasn’t something that could be stopped by mere cutting, I tried a different approach.

“Burn.”

In the dark Deep Sea, red flames bloomed.

Though calling them flames was an understatement, given how vast they were.

[….!!!!]

For the first time, I saw a change in the Fish-Man and its tentacles.

The tentacles that touched the flame recoiled in terror, like an animal encountering, for the first time, heat that could burn it.

Of course, it wasn’t really the heat that had stopped them.

“I had a hunch, but this is it after all.”

A faint smile crossed my lips as I made the flames grow larger.

My enhanced Current Sense had captured exactly what had happened the moment the flame touched.

The tentacle, made of seawater, had boiled ever so slightly the instant it met the fire.

At the same time, a small amount evaporated, and it ended up mixing with the surrounding seawater.

-…Splat!

“Oho.”

The Fish-Man made its decision quickly.

It severed the tentacle, the one that had boiled over even slightly, mingled with other seawater, and slowly begun to lose its strength.

So it really wasn’t a complete Middle Layer. For that, it was far too small, far too lacking. To be unable to handle even a little intruding seawater caused by a bit of heat, and to have to cut off its own arm because of it.

Since I had reached 3-Star by force, the most I could manage in Flame Realm magic was producing a light flame like this. Magic that was barely worth calling 2-Star, or even 1-Star.

But the Fish-Man began to back away through the Deep Sea.

The fear of loss, felt for the first time since becoming a Sealed Realm. It must have realized that it wasn’t invincible.

Naturally, I had no intention of letting it go.

“You hit me to your heart’s content, and now you think you can leave?”

I completely froze the area behind the fleeing creature, and the Fish-Man immediately shattered the wall of ice with its tentacles.

It was a movement that fully anticipated I would try to block it that way. No matter how quickly I conjured flames, it was determined to escape, no matter what.

That was exactly what I’d been counting on.

[…!!!]

“Got you.”

If Water Pressure didn’t affect it, then something else. I caught the shattered chunks of ice with Water Pressure and sent them flying.

Toward the Fish-Man’s body. At maximum speed.

-Crash!

[Khu…]

The Fish-Man’s body was buried under massive shards of ice and reduced to a mangled lump of flesh, but it didn’t seem to be dead. It twitched, and the tentacles, too, were still alive.

Still, in the end, the tentacles moved while attached to the main body. Which meant escape was no longer an option.

Perhaps realizing its end was near, the creature began its final struggle.

[Ga, ga….]

Front, back, left, right, above, below.

Sharp tentacles came rushing in from every direction it could manage. Their blatant aim was solely my life, and so I, too, fought back with the most underhanded move I had.

“Bloom.”

-Fwoosh!

Flames bloomed, not on the tentacles, but on the Fish-Man itself.

After all, the tentacles were attached to the Fish-Man’s body in the end.

[….!!]

The Fish-Man, feeling the sensation of being burned, something rarely felt down here in the Deep Sea,

let out a truly mournful wail.

***

The Deep Sea.

After every last tentacle had melted away.

“Phew, this should be enough…”

Only after I had wrapped Puppet threads around the Fish-Man’s entire body as tightly as I possibly could did I let out a sigh of relief.

What with the burn marks and the bruises from being battered by ice, it seemed to be completely unconscious.

Still, the moment it woke up, it would be captured at once. I just had to wait until then, and then head toward the Middle Layer.

Things had worked out somehow, or so I was thinking, when,

[…Jern]

Mallo, who had been silent for a while, spoke in a deeply subdued tone.

“What?”

[Right now, can you go back?]

It was a sudden question, but I answered as casually as I could.

“No, I can’t go back.”

[Then how do you intend to return?]

“By touching the bottom.”

When I said this while looking down at the deep floor, Mallo slowly bit out the words.

[…So that’s how it was. I knew it.]

“What, did you know?”

[You’d realize as much yourself, to some extent. You’ve cut yourself off in this World, with no way back. Am I right?]

“Yeah. There was no other way.”

There simply hadn’t been any other option.

Before I could even say that, Mallo let out a sigh.

[Listen well. You have changed.]

“I know. I didn’t want to do something this reckless either…”

[That isn’t what I mean. I mean you’ve truly changed. And you’re changing far faster than you think. Look. What is the difference between you and the Deep Sea Creatures?]

“…What? I can think.”

[There are surely Deep Sea Creatures who can think. There are even those who can speak. Is the difference simply that you are a little smarter and more eloquent than they are?]

“And I’m human. I’m different from those fish.”

[Jern. If you swim within the Deep Sea with no way of leaving, you are a Deep Sea Creature. And whether you wish it or not, you are becoming a being it is hard to call human anymore.]

“…”

Mallo didn’t seem to be joking.

I couldn’t brush it off lightly either. There were things that nagged at me.

[Look at that Anglerfish.]

Mallo pointed to an Anglerfish swimming close enough to be visible to the naked eye.

A monstrous Anglerfish with teeth bigger than the palm of a hand. Though by Deep Sea standards, it was on the cute side.

[They’re always like that. Unlike ordinary Deep Sea Creatures, certain parts of them are exaggerated to a grotesque degree. And every one of those parts is a strength of theirs. They are adapting to maximize their strengths in order to survive in this Deep Sea. The Real World is no different. Every World works the same way. It is not that only life suited to the World survives, but that only life that conforms itself to the World survives.]

“…So you’re saying.”

I looked down at my hand and asked back.

“The reason my magic just rose to 3-Star is-”

[The same as those teeth.]

With those words, silence followed.

I thought it over for a long, long time, then reached out my hand.

There was only one way to prove it.

[Jern. That’s…]

“I know. Just one finger.”

Reassuring Mallo, who sounded worried, I extended my pinky finger and…

slowly drew back my Water Barrier.

“…Ngh.”

Immediately, the finger turned a sickly blue.

And then. That was all.

Nothing else happened.

I slowly moved my pinky. Even within the Deep Sea, it was clearly twitching, moving.

This shouldn’t have been possible. My finger, right now, was literally being crushed under what amounted to tens, no, hundreds of tons of an apartment building, and yet it stopped at simply changing color.

I extended the range from the pinky to the ring finger, from the ring finger to the thumb.

[Jern…]

“Yeah, I’m starting to get it now.”

Looking at my right arm, now completely submerged in the Deep Sea, I let out a sigh.

Even as shameless as I could be, I couldn’t pretend something like this was possible for a human.

“I really am a Deep Sea Creature.”

Apparently.

It seemed I had quit being human without even realizing it.