Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 254

Chapter 254: Depth (21)

TL/ED – Miso

The sky split apart.

Beyond the gap, a colossal red eye, roughly the size of a decent-sized village, began swiveling about, searching for something.

One such eye, two, three…

Dozens of them. They slowly punched through the sky and began to observe.

“…First time I’ve seen it.”

Nightchase swallowed dry as she stared up at the sight.

“That thing, so that’s what it looks like.”

Tentacles slowly extended out from between the red eyes, reaching down from above, and slowly touched the deep sea.

At the same time, a slowly spreading Current Sense brushed across my body.

[!!!!!]

The dozens of red eyes that had been swiveling in every direction all snapped toward us at once.

Then every tentacle took on purpose.

To restrain me.

…Or, to kill me and take the corpse.

“-Where do you think you’re going.”

Before I could do anything, Nightchase frowned and stretched out her hand.

The twitching tentacles were instantly sucked away to somewhere, leaving only their cross-sections behind.

Blood gushed from the red cross-sections, and watching even those bloodstains being wiped away by the deep sea, I asked, curious:

“What did you do?”

“Isolation.”

Even as she said it, Nightchase kept straining to close her world while picking off the rushing tentacles one by one, and shouted up at the sky.

“Back off! Whatever grudge you have with this guy, that’s none of my business. But dragging us into it, that’s something I can’t let slide. You dare follow me, and try to demolish this world I barely managed to put together? Have you lost your mind?”

[…]

“I don’t want to see this through to the end either. If you back off now, I won’t ask any more, kyaaa!”

Mimicry answered with Water Pressure.

I yanked Nightchase, who had instantly dropped to her knees and was being slowly crushed, toward me, and eased the pressure off her. Eyes wide, catching her breath, Nightchase,

“This, this %#$&!”

Took on an appearance like some fierce, malevolent deity, and spat out what sounded like cursing in some Outer God language that even I, who could now understand it, couldn’t make heads or tails of.

I calmly explained the situation to her while adjusting the Water Pressure to help her settle down.

“Talking won’t work. If we don’t fight, you and I are both finished, all the same.”

“You, you, what the hell are you? Why is that thing throwing such a fit?”

“Don’t know. I’ll have to ask after we pin it down.”

“There’s no way that’s possible.”

I suppose being called a god isn’t just for show: even in a state of fury, her response was rational.

“I told you. Mimicry is…”

“I know. Under normal circumstances, even the two of us combined wouldn’t be able to do anything. But this isn’t normal circumstances, is it?”

Tearing down the wall between worlds.

No matter how hastily a world had been thrown together, it couldn’t be easy. Doing it while the owner was actively blocking the way was like forcing one’s hand into a hole full of thorns.

And on top of that, the place it was forcing its way into was the world I had created. My domain.

“And you saw just now, right? There’s no other option. Either spend another hundred years building a world inside the Water Pressure, or pin Mimicry down. Choose.”

“…”

Nightchase looked back and forth between me and Mimicry, seemingly hesitating.

Of course, there was only one option.

“…Explain everything when this is over.”

“Sure.”

Nightchase clenched her small fist again and glared up at the sky.

“I clearly gave you a chance. You chose all of this!”

The surface of the deep sea rippled.

-Grrrrrnnnnch!!

“Oh.”

I let out an involuntary sound of admiration.

Until now, only the tentacles approaching us had been ground down, but the moment Nightchase put her heart into it, every tentacle that had touched the surface, regardless of size, was sliced clean in half.

The calm surface had taken on cutting power similar to a blender. As I watched the surface gradually being dyed red, I started to wonder whether she could handle this on her own.

“Be careful, you don’t know what’s coming.”

She, with that anxious-as-ever face, looked up at the surface as she spoke.

“That thing has swallowed countless Outer Gods. If it’s coming at us seriously, it’ll start pulling them out soon.”

Before her words even finished.

Suddenly, one tentacle that hadn’t touched the surface began to writhe in agony.

More precisely, it was as though one side of its skin had cramped up.

-Riiiiip!

“…What is that.”

From the torn skin, lips, a tongue, teeth: in other words, a mouth, took form.

The enormous mouth, the size of a small lake, sang something in a tone of agony, as if a knife had been driven into its throat.

[This world, a frozen, lifeless hell of cold,]

Then the air froze in front of it, and a massive spear made of ice slowly took shape.

What it was meant for was clear. But Nightchase tilted her head with a puzzled look.

“Just an ice spear? Why bother with something like,”

“…Extreme Ice.”

“Ah.”

At my mutter, Nightchase’s expression turned to one of sudden realization, and she snapped her eyes wide open.

“Tch, no!”

But the ice spear had already been hurled and was sinking into the sea.

-Splash! With an enormous spray of water, the submerged ice spear slowly began to corrode its surroundings and freeze them.

Nightchase tried to grind down its remnants somehow, but it wasn’t enough. The fragments were scattering further still, freezing the sea.

Watching the surface freeze and disappear, she gritted her teeth.

“Damn it…! He said he’d never swallowed Extreme Ice, but it was a lie! He was planning to swallow me too one day, that #%!% bastard…!”

“Looks that way.”

“Why are you telling me this so late? No, more importantly, how do you even know about Extreme Ice…”

I answered Nightchase’s question with action.

I stretched out my hand, gripped the area near my heart, and pulled up the emotion.

In truth, there was no need to pull it up. The hostility had been overflowing for a long time already.

-Crrrk…

“…Huh?”

Slowly, the ice was covered by ice, and then melted away and vanished.

Watching it blankly, Nightchase looked at me as though she couldn’t believe it.

“E, Extreme Ice? You’re Extreme Ice? No, that can’t be. Then you’re… uh, Mimicry?”

“Snap out of it. Mimicry’s right over there.”

While I was trying to calm down a clearly stunned Nightchase, the tentacles, as if blocking Extreme Ice meant nothing, kept opening their mouths.

[This world, a furnace where life burns and blazes,]

[This world, a tomb where disease spreads disease and there is no place to flee,]

[This world, an abyss where the ground gives way beneath your feet,]

“…There’s no end to it.”

Just how many worlds had it swallowed?

I’d happened to have Extreme Ice on hand and had been able to block it, but the rest were things I had never swallowed. If the thing set its mind to burying the deep sea, there was nothing I could do.

“Is cutting off its limbs even doing damage?”

“Probably not. It’s just a small loss of body. He can probably grow them out almost infinitely.”

The deep sea continued to be polluted and eroded.

If this had truly been the deep sea it might have been different, but as an artificial place I’d built within the Deep Layer, it lacked sheer scale.

Watching the endlessly rushing tentacles, I quietly opened my mouth.

“Nightchase.”

“Ugh, what. I’m busy keeping it from getting close.”

“Earlier you said you have an Isolation ability, right?”

“…Yeah. What about it?”

“Just for one moment, that’s all I need. Isolate that thing in another world. Somewhere that isn’t here. Can you do it?”

“What’s the point of that?”

Nightchase furrowed her brow as if she didn’t understand.

“You can see for yourself, he’s a master at breaking through worlds. Even if I do isolate him, it’ll just drain me, and he’ll be out in no time.”

“Nightchase.”

Through the long, bitter history I had with Mimicry, what I had been able to figure out about him was extremely limited.

But if there was anything I could piece together from those limited facts:

It was that he was underestimating the deep sea.

The Outer Gods didn’t know about the deep sea.

“I have a method.”

I looked down at Nightchase as I would at Linmel.

Nightchase still hesitated, as if she couldn’t believe it.

It was a brief hesitation.

[This world, nothing but a wavering afterimage. Behold the lie that has been reflected.]

The next moment,

As if everything had been a lie, every trace of Mimicry vanished.

The tentacles, the red eyes.

All that remained to prove he had been there were the cracked fragments of sky. The blood-colored sea returned to blue, and Deep Sea Creatures swam about playfully here and there.

In the now-quiet deep sea, a sickly voice echoed.

“What’s next?”

Nightchase, even in Linmel’s form, had grown so visibly tired that her face had gone pale, and she sank down where she stood.

“It won’t hold for long. What are you going to do?”

“Simple. Now send me there too.”

“…What?”

“Let me settle this with him face-to-face.”

Nightchase blinked for a moment, then immediately howled fiercely.

“Are you out of your mind? What kind of plan is this! You’re just going off to die!”

“It costs you nothing. It’s obvious he’s after me anyway. So I’ll let him have me.”

“You’re sacrificing yourself or something?”

“Do I look like that noble of a god?”

I scoffed and replied.

“I know better than you how monstrous he is. I also know I can’t beat him.”

“Then why…”

“There’s only one option, isn’t there. I’m going there to make him self-destruct.”

To Nightchase, who was still hesitating, I delivered one last thing.

“When this is over, I have something to say about your plan. See you then.”

“…Sounds like you’re not without a plan.”

Nightchase, who had been giving me an exasperated look as I matter-of-factly talked about what came after, eventually let out a sigh and raised her hand.

“I’ll pray for your soul. The dumbest Outer God in the world.”

The world flickered.

I could have refused, but I accepted.

When I blinked my eyes open again, no light was visible at all.

Darkness, silence, the occasional sound of bubbles.

Just as I was wondering whether this guy had banished me out into the deep sea,

[…How long it has been…]

I heard a familiar voice.

[…So very long, so long, maddeningly long, until you came to this place…]

A heavy, cracking voice.

Even within that solemn voice, the trembling rapture couldn’t be hidden.

Within my Current Sense, something appeared.

It was sometimes a wriggling worm, an overflowing fragrance, a winged lion, sometimes a human.

My Current Sense wasn’t malfunctioning.

Rather, my Current Sense, having reached the level of an Outer God and grown extremely precise, was identifying my opponent accurately.

The opponent was simply everything.

[Aaahhh…]

Something that looked like a tentacle stretched out.

But it warped as it touched something. It wasn’t anything I had done.

Nightchase had laid down an invisible barrier between me and Mimicry. To keep him from approaching me.

I told her to just throw me in. What’s with the consideration?

[Just a little longer, I must wait…truly, just a moment…]

Even watching part of himself warp on that surface, Mimicry kept clawing at the barrier and leaving marks on it as if it were lovable.

The sweet gaze, like one looking at a beloved lover, sent goosebumps over my entire body. I couldn’t stand it any longer and spoke first.

“There’s no need to wait.”

[…?]

Feeling Mimicry tilt his head, I created a Spear of Water Pressure.

A clear declaration of combat.

Mimicry took it as something else.

[Heh heh hah…]

A satisfied laugh.

It wasn’t mockery. A martial arts world champion doesn’t mock an elementary schooler putting on gloves. He just laughs because it looks cute.

It was that kind of laugh.

[Come…my Liberation…show me everything you have…]

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

[…]

-Slash!

The spear lightly grazed skin.

My own skin. Soft, plump red drops of blood spread out into the deep sea.

Casually, I gathered up the blood and held it out.

“You wanted this so badly, didn’t you? The Deep Sea Creatures were having quite the fit over it.”

[………]

Mimicry’s laughter stopped.

A silence that felt like measuring something.

It wasn’t reason enough for me to stop talking.

“You figured you couldn’t escape with just the pieces the Deep Sea Creatures had taken. You’d need to swallow me directly to feel right about it. So how about it: me, half a god now. Don’t I look delicious?”

[…..I see…….]

“Well, your effort is admirable.”

I handed that mass of blood directly over to Mimicry.

Through the barrier and beyond.

Mimicry, who I had thought would gobble it up greedily, kept his silence as he stared at the drop of blood.

It was a very brief silence.

[What are you, thinking…]

“What, scared I might have laced it with poison? Is there a poison that even works on an Outer God?”

[…]

“If you don’t want to eat it, then drink it,”

When I tried to draw the drop of blood back,

Instantly, as if such a thing had never existed, all the blood in the water evaporated.

[Oh, ohhh…]

That was the start.

Fragrance, animal, human, temperature, time.

The variety of all those things Mimicry had been slowly began to shrink.

Fragrance and temperature vanished.

Time vanished.

Animal vanished.

What remained was human.

A specific person I knew very well.

[Ah, ha, “ha, ha…”

“…”

The voice of a god was demoted to actual human vocal cords.

It felt like looking in a mirror. Of course it would, because I was right there.

“This is, the Outer God of the deep sea. The power even that hateful sky couldn’t deal with…”

Jern.

In other words, I was there.

Wielding Water Pressure as if it were the most natural thing in the world, creating Deep Sea Creatures.

Mimicry, dyed with madness, clenched his fist and looked up at the sky.

“I can feel it. A way out of this place…!”

“Oh, congrats. So. Are you going to spare me?”

“…You wished for survival.”

Mimicry, with the smug expression of someone who had finally caught on to something, looked at me.

“In the end, a human body. Not immortal, so it feared death after all…”

“Right? It would be a lie to say I don’t fear death.”

“Be at ease. You shall receive that price and live forever, within me.”

Mimicry stretched out his hand.

The strongest Water Pressure I could muster mixed with his power and formed a vortex.

Well, that was to be expected.

If a few drops of blood had reduced him to that, of course he’d want to chew up the body itself.

I lifted both hands as if begging for mercy and continued.

“I heard from Nightchase. The method she planned to use to escape this deep sea.”

“…?”

“And hearing it, I thought it was a little strange. But once I knew you were Mimicry, and that you wanted to escape by eating me, it got even stranger. How?”

At first, I’d thought he was trying to escape by creating bubbles of Real World air.

But that wasn’t it. What he wanted was to break through outside the deep sea; he had no interest whatsoever in the Real World.

If he had had that kind of greed, he wouldn’t have been trying to kill me, the Wizard of the Deep Sea, but rather trying to obtain things from the Real World.

To begin with, these guys didn’t even know the Real World existed.

Nightchase, seeing that no more Outer Gods were coming down, had been guessing that Void must be dead.

Yes, guessing.

These guys really didn’t know a lot of things, and were operating under all sorts of mistaken assumptions.

“When I thought it through carefully, I figured it out. It was so absurd to me, I figured surely these so-called gods would have to know about it.”

“…What are you saying.”

“You said it yourself just now. The Outer God of the deep sea.”

I slowly shook my head.

“There is no Outer God in this deep sea. What the Deep Sea Creatures swallowed weren’t Outer Gods of the deep sea, just pitiful wizards who got submerged in the deep sea.”

“…?”

“Well, saying this probably means nothing to you. You don’t even know what The First Wizard is. That humans are falling into something like the Outer God of the deep sea: isn’t that about the level you took it as?”

Mimicry’s face twisted.

Either he didn’t understand what I was saying, or he was no longer comfortable listening.

Water Pressure crashed down on my body.

“Ggh.”

Instantly, with the sensation of my ribs being crushed, I coughed up blood.

At the tremendous power. On one knee, I smiled and replied.

“Just, know this much.”

“…”

“I’m not the Outer God of the deep sea, nor its ruler. I’m just, a prisoner, the same as you. Even if you swallow me, your Burden isn’t going to vanish.”

“……”

“And on top of that, I’m a different class of prisoner from you, the kind serving life: the most hated, most reviled by the very thing called the deep sea.”

Wizard of the Deep Sea.

That was the name of the existence most hated by the deep sea.

“You… picked the wrong one to copy.”

“Shut up…”

Mimicry, who had been pulling out more Water Pressure to try to kill me, glared with bulging eyes.

“Aaa, aaagh…!!”

Soon dark red blood poured from the corner of his mouth.

Watching him, trembling cluelessly, his crumbling body, writhing in pain, I gave him advice as a senior in the field.

“First rule of living as a Wizard of the Deep Sea: never use more Water Pressure than your body can handle. Because the same will come back on you.”

“………….”

Mimicry looked down at his own body, and his hand began to tremble.

“Sorry if I tricked you. But what can you do.”

I shrugged and looked up at the sky.

“Now go on, get out. You never know. Maybe I lied, and the moment you step out, you won’t feel any Water Pressure at all and the entire deep sea will be yours.”

If only he’d buy it.

“Ah, ah…”

Sadly. He didn’t seem dumb enough to fail to notice that his entire life had been a fraud.