Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 256

Chapter 256: Depth (23)

TL/ED – Miso

I reached out my hand, trying to control the Deep Sea that Mimicry was imitating.

“…Kuh.”

As expected, it was no use.

It wasn’t the cold, dark, heavy Deep Sea I knew. It was just a fake imitating it. And if it was a fake, I couldn’t dominate it.

[A fake, just as I thought.]

Through my fading consciousness, that mocking voice flowed in.

[If you had been the Outer God of the Deep Sea, mimicking the Deep Sea would have been a dangerous one-way road. But… you really are nothing more than a byproduct.]

“By… product…?”

[Indeed. The only thing you can handle is the Deep Sea that created you. A creature that governs no World of its own. You are not an Outer God. You are closer to an immune response that a World without an Outer God created to defend itself.]

Mimicry tightened its grip on my throat as it murmured.

[How far did you think you could deceive me?]

“…I never tricked-”

I twisted my wrist with all my strength, drawing the surrounding Sea Water toward me.

The Sea Water eroded Mimicry, which had taken the form of the Deep Sea. Only slightly, but a gap opened up.

A gap that meant death if I missed it. I shaped the Deep Sea into a cord and yanked my body through.

I could barely breathe again… though this was a body that didn’t need to breathe.

“-you, cough! You jumped to that on your own.”

I muttered into the unseen void.

My Current Sense still couldn’t pin down where it was.

It could be in the space I’d just escaped from, or right in front of my nose. The thought sent chills through my entire body. I was essentially sharing a space with an invisible murderer who could kill me at any moment.

And that murderer didn’t seem inclined to give me any time.

[You dare impersonate a god in my presence and still beg for mercy…!]

“…!”

Pressure.

This wasn’t the toying from before; I could feel a powerful pressure that truly meant to crush me to death.

But this time, I was ready.

[…Hmm. You used some petty cleverness.]

-Crack, snap…!

The Sea Water I had hastily drawn in and wrapped around myself was crushed in my place.

Scientifically, I, inside that Sea Water, should also have been crushed… but I could endure it. When I went around it this way, the intensifying Water Pressure wasn’t its but the Deep Sea’s, so I could withstand it with a Water Barrier.

It was the only way… and at the same time, suicide.

[And you are foolish, locking yourself in your own prison.]

“Tch.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t argue with that.

To survive the immediate threat, I had essentially crawled into the palm of its hand.

A Water Barrier can’t hold against Water Pressure forever. Even now, it kept increasing the Water Pressure, and all of it was bearing down on the Water Barrier.

-Creak, creak…

With the sound of something breaking, the pressure gradually grew stronger.

If the Water Barrier collapsed, I’d end up the same way in the end.

[Be crushed where you stand, human who impersonated a god…]

This was dangerous.

I furrowed my brow and quickly racked my brain.

In none of the assumptions I’d made was there any expectation that Mimicry could imitate a World. At most, I figured it could imitate a World’s abilities; if it could become a World itself, then that would make it a god…

…A god indeed. I had to admit my thinking had been shallow.

Escape was difficult in this situation. I was already at my limit just enduring the Water Pressure with all my strength; the moment I diverted any attention to creating something, I’d be reduced to pulp.

Was this the end?

Half resigned to my fate, I sighed and tossed out a question.

“There’s something I want to ask.”

[If you wish.]

“Aren’t you a little too stupid for a god?”

[…?]

“With a power like that, why haven’t you left? Even without me, there’s Sea Water all around you. You could just copy it and walk right out, right now.”

[In the world of an insignificant creature, nothing is deeper than the well it lives in.]

Mimicry answered mockingly.

[Whether I am water, air, or even the Deep Sea itself, none of that leads to a way out of the Deep Sea. What has sunk never rises again. Not even the Sea Water that makes up this very sea.]

“…”

-Crack, snap.

Together with the cracking sounds inching toward my end.

In the dark sea, I chewed over what I had just heard.

‘Even Sea Water can’t get out?’

I couldn’t agree with that.

I had definitely raced through the sea using Sea Water. The pressure had certainly been intense, but if this thing had truly transformed itself into Sea Water, it should have been able to escape this Deep Layer at the very least. Sinking back down afterward would be a different matter.

[After I kill you, I will find out how you opened that Passage. A hundred years, a thousand years; time is on my side in the end.]

At Mimicry’s threat, this time it was my turn to let out a hollow laugh and shake my head.

“Why do you think I let you see that method? Even with it, you can’t get out.”

[What?]

“Even if you can imitate everything, you can’t create a World capable of escape.”

[Do you have a reason to declare that with such certainty?]

“Because…”

Because it was something only I could do.

As I was about to answer that way, I paused for a moment.

…Something even Mimicry, which could imitate me, couldn’t do?

Did such a thing even exist? It was a god, and it had just become a World on its own.

And yet I had assumed, as though it were obvious, that even this thing which had imitated a whole World couldn’t replicate me as an individual.

What’s more, this conviction still hadn’t faded. Subconsciously, I knew that no matter what it did, it couldn’t open a Passage to escape.

‘Why?’

This unexplained conviction had a clear starting point.

When I first heard from Nightchase the method for escaping this Deep Sea.

Looking at that method, I had thought that even Outer Gods could make mistakes and be wrong. I had been certain that I wasn’t the one in the wrong; the gods were the ones using a flawed method.

Since when had a mere human become so arrogant?

As I frowned, Mimicry laughed as if it had expected this.

[Has the knowledge of your end driven you mad? Change your mind now and tell me how you opened the Passage. If you save me time, I will at least send you off peacefully.]

“…”

Whatever it said, I continued my line of thought.

Why did I think that Mimicry, capable of imitating anything,

couldn’t replicate just one thing, the human technique of opening a Passage? Even though I knew it could copy the powers of gods themselves.

“…Is that so? Maybe I really have gone mad.”

[…?]

When I agreed with a dazed expression, Mimicry too fell silent.

Instead of words, I showed it through action.

I reached out my hand, past the Water Barrier… past the Deep Sea I knew.

Toward the Deep Sea that Mimicry was imitating.

[What are you doing… Are you trying to hasten your end?]

-Crunch!

As if it found me laughable, Mimicry crushed my hand with Water Pressure.

My hand was pulverized in an instant, as if run over by a speeding eight-ton truck. Mimicry sneered at the sight.

[Or are you trying to repeat the same mistake?]

With my eyes slowly closing, I endured the agony of my hand being crushed and focused on what I had to do.

‘I have nothing left to lose anyway.’

Whether I died now or later.

I slowly felt the current.

In a Current Sense where nothing was visible, I struggled to see Mimicry.

…I struggled to feel the Deep Sea.

[An impossible task…]

There was nothing I could feel.

My hand, which had been shattered long ago, registered nothing but pain.

[….]

Then the pain disappeared.

Was it because even my sense of pain itself had vanished completely, or because adrenaline had flooded my brain?

Aside from a faint suffering, I still saw nothing.

[……..Whatever you’re trying to do, this is the end.]

-Crunch!

I heard the last wall the Water Barrier could hold come crumbling down.

Its Deep Sea closed in on me, little by little.

With the impatience of one trying to crush my body even a single moment sooner.

And yet my every nerve was still focused on my right hand, which had lost all sensation.

[You-]

As if rewarding my endless effort, ever so slightly.

[-did-]

Soft Sea Water brushed past my hand.

Sensation had long since faded.

What I felt was not my hand, but something else.

[-exist.]

Every Water Barrier vanished.

Mimicry should have crushed me to death long before.

It hadn’t. Or rather, closer to the truth, it couldn’t.

When I opened my eyes, the thing that should have been invisible was there before me. I could feel the emotions of this being made entirely of liquid.

Shock. And despair.

[Impossible.]

“I’d agree to some extent.”

[You… cannot exist.]

Its Sea Water was held in my grip.

I was controlling Mimicry, which had become the Deep Sea, slowly devouring it.

As that enormous body began turning into a part of me, Mimicry started convulsing.

[No…!]

Writhing its whole body, it struggled to abandon the Deep Sea form.

And at the same time, I realized why Mimicry hadn’t transformed into a World until it was certain I was human.

To mimic an Outer God’s own World in front of that very Outer God was tantamount to suicide.

An Outer God was the one who governed and ruled over all such Worlds. It was nothing more than placing one’s own leash into the opponent’s hand.

[No!!!!]

So Mimicry tried.

I wouldn’t allow it to transform into another World. It couldn’t have done so in the first place. My entire Current Sense was watching over every speck of it, so it was as simple a task as moving my own hand at will.

[I… am not the Deep Sea you were born from! I am a completely different, new Deep Sea!]

“I know. I’m watching.”

[For you to control me like this means that you…]

Mimicry finished its sentence in a tone that suggested even it couldn’t accept what it was saying.

[…are the Outer God of the Deep Sea?]

“…”

[-That can’t be! There is no such being that governs the Deep Sea! If one existed, it would have been devoured by its own World and died. The being ruling over such a vast, vast domain couldn’t possibly be a mere human! You, you are nothing more than a human!]

Since it wasn’t wrong, I shrugged and agreed.

“That’s what I used to think too… turns out it isn’t. Not for these things called Wizards, at least.”

[What…?]

“Haven’t you ever wondered? Why the Deep Sea has no Outer God.”

[That’s, well, obviously because none has existed for all that time…]

“And if one did?”

[If one existed… we would have known about it, one way or another, without fail.]

“Haa…”

Hearing that, I grew more certain and lowered my head.

“Void was hunting for a Wizard of the Deep Sea from the very start.”

[…?]

“Ever since he gained the abilities of a human who reached the Celestial Realm and decided the time was about right, he drowned every single Wizard he found, without exception. I used to think it was because they were Great Worlds, because he was one of The Three Evils. But looking at it now, there was a different reason.”

Mimicry didn’t seem to understand, but that wasn’t my concern.

One thing.

With just a single assumption, everything fell into place.

The reason I, a Fallen who by all rights shouldn’t be able to use Magic, could wield both the powers of the Deep Sea and Magic at once?

Because the Outer God of the Deep Sea could use Magic.

The reason no one knew the identity of the Deep Sea’s Outer God?

Because he had long since escaped the Deep Sea and been busy doing something out there.

The reason Void had been so frantic to find a Wizard of the Deep Sea?

Because he had been defeated by that very Outer God of the Deep Sea.

If the Outer God of the Deep Sea had left, everyone would have known, so why did no one know?

…No. The question itself was wrong.

Everyone already knew.

“You wouldn’t want to leave, even if you could.”

[Wh, what do you mean…]

“Out there, the place is crawling with things like me. The children spawned by the Outer God of the Deep Sea.”

That assumption was… The First Wizard.

…He was, in fact, the Outer God of the Deep Sea.