Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 248

Chapter 248: Depth (15)

TL/ED – Miso

I stared blankly at the Deep Sea Creature, then raised my hand and gave a command.

“Let there be light.”

Even after a long while, the Deep Sea remained as dark as ever.

This doesn’t work, but I can create life? Dumbfounded, I let loose the Flying Fish that was flopping about.

The Flying Fish wobbled like a newborn fawn for a moment, then, as if it had never been otherwise, swam freely through the Deep Sea.

It looked as though it were trying to escape from me, but no matter how far it went, it stayed within the range of my Current Sense. And the Current Sense confirmed, time and again, that the thing was truly alive.

How is this even possible. Frowning, I repeated the same process and produced a second Flying Fish.

-Flop, flop!

“…”

Releasing the second Flying Fish, this time I tried to make one a little more carelessly. I didn’t carve out the blood vessels, and I sculpted the eyes a touch cloudy.

And it didn’t come to life. Just an ordinary Flying Fish sculpture. Nothing more, nothing less.

‘Is it because of the precision?’

After mulling it over briefly and trying similar things a few times, I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t actually become a god.

“So the Sea Water is the cause.”

An extremely precise Current manipulation ability. That much was essential.

But what actually breathed life into these Flying Fish sculptures wasn’t me; it was the Sea Water of this place.

When I examined the moment a Flying Fish came to life closely, I’d confirmed that life only took hold after the Sea Water had flowed into its blood vessels.

Half of me was relieved, and half of me was still horrified.

Because no matter how I looked at it, the fact remained that I had created life. Setting aside the eeriness of this place, it wasn’t something I particularly wanted to be doing.

But I couldn’t stop, either.

‘There’s definitely something to this.’

The Sea Water of this region just creates life for no reason at all?

There was no way. And even if there were no reason, there was nothing else I could do here that might bring about any kind of change.

If I made as many as I could, surely it would help in some way. I poured myself into making Flying Fish, one after another.

-Flop, flop..

-Flutter…

“Damn…”

And it turned out to be a far more tedious task than I’d expected.

The process by which life, that is, the Sea Water, took root was simply impossible unless the work was an extremely artistic piece. The thing seemed to come alive only when it was, quite literally, indistinguishable from a frozen living creature.

It demanded immense concentration and tired me out quickly, but a small mercy was that the warped sense of time here actually helped.

The once-quiet Deep Sea gradually began to fill with flopping Flying Fish.

When the count reached one hundred.

Something changed.

“?”

At the very edge of my Current Sense, I caught a reaction that wasn’t a Flying Fish.

Curious, I checked, and the absurdity of it made me frown.

“…What the hell is that?”

If it were a Deep Sea Creature, no matter how grotesque, it wouldn’t have surprised me. I’d seen plenty of horrid-looking specimens by now.

But this thing wasn’t a Deep Sea Creature.

In fact, it wasn’t even a fish.

[Grrrrk, rrrrrr….]

It had straight horns running down its spine, which made it hard to pin down, but if I had to say, it looked something like a giant Lizard, writhing as it cast off a sharp glare.

With bubbles frothing at its mouth, the Lizard had no gills anywhere I could see. It looked like it couldn’t even breathe.

Even so, it could apparently swim, because it began thrashing wildly in a desperate bid to escape the Deep Sea. As I made to move and figure out just what this thing was-

[Grk-?!]

“!”

This time, the Deep Sea itself changed.

The Water Pressure, which until now had been all but absent, began to grow stronger.

‘All of a sudden?’

Of course, at this level, no matter how much it climbed, it was all the same to me.

The Lizard, however, seemed to feel it quite differently.

[Gehhhh——-]

The thing that had been swimming just fine moments ago now wore an expression contorted in agony.

Driven to the brink of drowning in an instant, it thrashed about as though it would do anything to escape, but the Deep Sea showed no mercy to the Lizard, an obvious land creature.

Crushed by the steadily mounting Water Pressure, the Lizard eventually went limp and stopped moving.

“…”

At the same moment, the heightened Water Pressure returned to its original state.

As if killing that Lizard had been its sole purpose.

Approaching to at least examine the corpse, I soon realized that the other lives I’d been picking up with my Current Sense were gone.

‘…Damn it.’

All of the Flying Fish I had created were dead, drifting about.

…Crushed by the Water Pressure.

Bewildered by the sudden turn of events, I lost myself in thought as I watched the Lizard’s corpse gradually fade away.

For a land creature to appear suddenly in this Deep Sea, without any warning, was bizarre by any measure.

There was only one thing I could surmise: that it had something to do with my having continuously made Flying Fish.

As I began making Flying Fish again-

[Grrrrk…]

Just as I thought.

The moment I produced more than a certain number of Flying Fish, the Lizard appeared once more.

[Grrrk, gak?!]

I snatched the hissing thing by the scruff of its neck with a Current.

If this was the second, there would probably be a third too.

In other words.

“Should I start with a dissection?”

It was time to chew, tear, and savor every bit of the only change available to me.

***

A long while later: even in this space where the concept of time was hopelessly tangled, I could tell that the Deep Sea around me was now packed with chunks of ice.

“Let’s see…”

By now, even a rough attempt was enough to imbue them with life, so I focused on my thoughts while making Flying Fish with one hand.

It was always the same. One hundred.

Whether Flying Fish or anything else, the moment a hundred lives were born, the Lizard would, without fail, drop down. And it was always the exact same specimen as before.

That much was certain, since not a single scale’s arrangement differed from the previous Lizard. I’d dissected several of them, and even the layout of the internal organs was identical.

Its behavior, and the outcome, were always the same.

The Lizard’s arrival came hand in hand with rising Water Pressure.

And as a result, the thing crushed itself to death of its own accord. Along with my Flying Fish.

Then everything would reset and start over from the beginning.

In other words.

“What is this?”

I had no idea what kind of bullshit this was.

Why was it that creating a hundred Flying Fish made a Lizard drop in, perform its little suicide act, and then, when I made another hundred, the same thing turned up to do the exact same thing all over again.

I hadn’t only been repeating the same task. Once, I’d tried keeping the Lizard alive, but nothing much had changed.

The Water Pressure kept climbing until the Lizard died, and there was a limit to how long I could shield it.

It was a confusing situation, but one thing was certain.

‘So the Middle Layer wasn’t lying.’

At first I’d thought, since they couldn’t kill me or let me live, they were trying to trap me forever in some unidentifiable, strange space.

That didn’t seem to be the case.

This space carried a clear sense of purpose. The way it granted life, the way it endlessly repeated whenever certain conditions were met.

That gave me something to work with.

Just as the Middle Layer had said, I was currently undergoing a trial that tested some qualification of mine.

It was an extremely bizarre trial, so I had no idea what the question was, or the conditions, but in any case, passing this trial meant I could reach the Deep Layer, didn’t it.

The number of attempts seemed nearly infinite, so the possible approaches were endless. I’d already tried keeping the Lizard alive, so this time I planned to keep the Flying Fish alive.

“No, maybe I should stop making these.”

I released the ten or so Flying Fish I’d already made and tried making other Deep Sea Creatures instead.

Protecting a few would be one thing, but having to protect more than a hundred at once would be a real headache.

If possible, it would be nice if at least a few could survive the Water Pressure without my help, so I dug into my memory and crafted as many different kinds of Deep Sea Creatures as I could, one by one.

Jellyfish, turtles, Pufferfish… as I went on, the place ended up filled less with proper Deep Sea Creatures and more with plain old ordinary fish.

‘For some reason, I don’t feel like making those things.’

Then again, anyone who lived in the Deep Sea and wanted to make Deep Sea Creatures would have to be mentally ill.

Before long, the area was filled with a far more diverse collection of fish than when there had only been Flying Fish.

For this attempt, I decided not to shield any of them from the Water Pressure but instead let them all die, so I could see which one held out the longest. With that in mind, I birthed the hundredth life.

[Grrk-]

The instant I created that life, the Lizard fell again.

Paying it no mind, I observed the Deep Sea Creatures I had made.

The first to die were, predictably, the Flying Fish. They got crushed the moment the Water Pressure rose even slightly.

Next went the Pufferfish. Then the Crayfish, then the Anglerfish…

One by one, the Deep Sea Creatures were crushed in turn.

Astonishingly, the last one left was just an ordinary Jellyfish I’d thrown together. It writhed as if it might burst at any moment, yet in the end it endured right up until the moment the Lizard was about to die.

Inwardly impressed, I waited for the Water Pressure to return to normal.

But several minutes passed, and the heightened Water Pressure didn’t drop back down.

“…?”

The Lizard’s corpse, which by all rights should have vanished, didn’t vanish either.

It began drifting somewhere, as though it was supposed to. As I observed the corpse, I finally realized that it was sinking.

I could now tell up from down.

…Had I passed this so-called trial? I followed the corpse with that thought in mind, but nothing much had changed.

The corpse simply kept on sinking, almost endlessly, with no end in sight.

Still, any change in this situation was a positive sign.

“So this is how it works, huh?”

I had no idea what they were trying to test, but I understood the method.

I would create Deep Sea Creatures, and when another land creature fell into this place, the Water Pressure would rise.

If even one of the lives I’d created survived in that Water Pressure, I passed.

A simple rule. I still didn’t get it, though, and I was genuinely curious about what they wanted me to do.

The moment I figured out the rule, I began creating life again. This time, there was no reaction even after I had made two hundred Jellyfish.

And at exactly the two-hundredth, something different from the Lizard fell into the Deep Sea.

[Ki-]

This one wasn’t a fish either. It was some sort of cephalopod resembling a centipede with about five heads. Its faces looked human, which made it grotesque.

The centipede was in agony from the moment it landed, but it endured far longer than the Lizard had.

In Water Pressure that the Jellyfish couldn’t possibly hope to withstand.

“…Damn.”

It seemed the Lizard had merely been a test to make me understand how the trial worked.

Even after all the Jellyfish were dead, the centipede was still alive for quite a while. I forced one Jellyfish to stay alive, but when I released it after the centipede had died, it burst on the spot under the heightened Water Pressure.

And then the Water Pressure dropped back down. Apparently, forcibly keeping something alive like that didn’t count.

“Well, what do you want from me, then.”

If I tried to read the test-maker’s intent, were they simply telling me to create strong Deep Sea Creatures? Ones that could withstand the Water Pressure?

Then why on earth go to the trouble of throwing in those pitiful little lives. After mulling it over, I eventually gave up on solving it the straightforward way.

Make strong Deep Sea Creatures.

There was, in fact, a way.

A slightly… cheap way.

***

The creatures that fell into the Deep Sea had two things in common.

1. They weren’t fish.

2. The longer this trial went on, the longer they endured.

Number one wasn’t an issue, but number two was a fairly serious problem.

The first Lizard had thrashed and died the instant it fell into the Deep Sea, but the centipede that followed had endured for far longer, and the thing that came after it had moved around perfectly fine, and-

Now, it was openly displaying outright hostility.

[Shrieeeeeeeek–!!!!]

This time it was a giant eyeball with black hands haphazardly stuck to it, a monster that didn’t even seem to qualify as an animal, lashing out with its hands like a thing possessed.

It was clearly aiming for me. Its movement was fast enough that I could tell even within the Deep Sea. Fast enough that I could imagine just how powerful it must have been outside.

But just before those hands could reach me, they trembled and stopped.

The monster glared with its eyeball, trying to make sense of this unidentifiable force binding it: the Water Pressure.

It wasn’t my Water Pressure, though.

“The blood’s earning its keep.”

I watched with satisfaction as a variety of red-tinged Deep Sea Creatures tore into the eyeball and devoured it.

There was only one way I knew of to make strong Deep Sea Creatures.

Feed them good fodder.

And so, I’d been feeding them my own blood.

Watching those Deep Sea Creatures thrash about trying to devour me sometimes made me curious about how I tasted myself. I’d wondered just how effective it would be, but-

Seeing the ones that ate my blood casually wielding Water Pressure and Currents as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the effect seemed to go far beyond merely “good.”

Naturally, they withstood the Water Pressure with ease. It might have been growing stronger, but it was still at Surface Layer levels.

Now, as I birthed more than a thousand lives, I sank into thought.

‘I just keep repeating this?’

Every trial had a purpose.

What qualification of mine this trial was meant to test, I couldn’t tell at this point.

Well, I’d figure it out as I went, or so I thought.

It was right when I was creating the thousandth life.

“…”

A prickling chill ran down my spine.

A familiar sensation savaged my mind. The instinct ringing the alarm to flee right this instant, mixed sickeningly with the reason despairing that fleeing would be utterly pointless.

Not some mere centipede, Lizard, or unidentifiable monster, but a genuine threat.

Something I hadn’t expected to encounter in a place like this… no, that I had partly anticipated, of which this was-

A fragment.

[…]

[….]

Unlike the ones that had come before, it wasn’t alive.

But the Deep Sea Creatures scattered in fear from that piece of a severed body. They fled as far away as they could from the bleeding fragment slowly sinking down.

It was the right move. That fragment, no… that leg, was-

“…An Outer God.”

There was no mistaking it.

A size that could be mistaken for a continent sinking, and a presence that stopped the heart.

It was only then that I felt part of my curiosity being answered.

The purpose of this trial.

The reason this place had been so kind?

Because it was about to do something extremely unkind.

The reason it had given me so many chances to retry?

Because soon, a trial would come that I wouldn’t be able to attempt more than once.

The reason an Outer God’s leg had fallen?

-Because next time, it would be something other than a leg that fell.

I clenched my fist and looked up to the place from which the leg had fallen.

The question this trial was asking was a single one.

“…They’re asking me to prove it.”

To one who would visit the place where Outer Gods dwell.

Can you survive against an Outer God?

That had been the only question, from the very start.