Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 259

Chapter 259: Fake God (3)

TL/ED – Miso

They said that even a short while was enough to find a young person dramatically changed.

But the face reflected on the water’s surface right now wasn’t something I could just call “a little different.”

Because it had changed quite a bit. A taller frame, and a face that had grown somewhat more dignified.

It felt like at least several years had passed.

“Why are you so shocked now over aging a few measly years?”

Nightchase, looking exasperated, tugged at both of her own cheeks.

The cheeks that had stretched out like a human’s kept going, far past the point where any skin’s elasticity should have ended. They were practically made of clay.

“Just because you wear a human form, you think you’re really human? Once you can create matter itself, life and death all fall under your will. What reason do you have to fear the passage of time?”

“…That’s not what I meant.”

The fact that I had aged wasn’t really the issue.

The issue was something else.

“How much time has passed?”

“Hmm. I haven’t exactly counted.”

Cheon-hwa furrowed her brow as if pondering, then looked up at the sky.

“I remember it snowed five times.”

“You crazy-”

Cheon-hwa’s manner had been so utterly calm that I hadn’t even caught on.

This woman, this complete lunatic, had left me stuck in a lake for a full five years without bothering to pull me out, all on the grounds that I was just a clone.

Come to think of it, maybe she had assumed I was already dead. As my head went cold, a sudden question rose to the surface.

“…How is the world still standing?”

“Hm?”

“Five whole years. Does it even make sense that Void did nothing in that time and the world is still here? Ah, right. Now I get it.”

Having grasped the truth, I sighed, reminded once again that one really has to hear a person out to the very end.

“So you mean only my body’s time advanced five years? Not real time? Honestly, if you’re going to say something, say it properly. You scared the daylights out of…”

“It’s a relief you at least grasp that much.”

Cheon-hwa abruptly reached into her bosom and drew something out.

It was a grotesquely bent crown. As I looked at the crown adorned with silver and rubies, something stirred in me, something familiar, and I blinked.

“This…”

“The Empire’s crown. It was just lying around in the Capital.”

“……”

“Just as you said. Over five years, Void moved in many ways, and the scars he left behind remained.”

In a tone that was nothing but level.

“The world did not endure. A pity, really.”

That was the answer she gave.

***

It was said that in chaotic times, heroes worthy of those times would emerge.

No matter how dreadful the chaos.

Even in a situation where thirty percent of the world’s population had died, fifty percent of nations had fallen, and seventy percent of wizards had been taken, there were still those who rose above the rest.

Linmel did not much care for this saying.

Because in the end, the name that always came up was her own.

“Knight Commander Linmel, um, this…”

“I’ll look at it later. I have something to do right now.”

After lightly brushing off her pestering adjutant, Linmel sighed and stepped into the Capital’s training ground.

This was no time to fuss over trifles. The situation itself was pressing.

“Come on, try to make my grave!”

“…”

-Crunch!

“Ohhh…”

“I-is this what a fight between Knight Commanders looks like…”

A blood-spattered training session was unfolding in the training ground. Exactly as Linmel had wanted.

The difference being that the young trainees Linmel had actually wanted to train were huddled together watching a single sparring match.

And that sparring match was a live-blade slaughter scene between an exhausted-looking Karos and a delighted-looking Brimdal.

“Here we go again.”

Linmel sighed and pushed her way between the other knights.

The knights, who had begun turning around with looks that said “who the hell is shoving…” toward whoever was pushing from behind, went pale at the sight of Linmel’s face and parted to make way.

“K-Knight Commander Linmel, g-greetings, ma’aaargh!”

“What?! Commander! I-I finished my training and was just watching! I swear!”

From knights biting their own tongues the moment they saw Linmel, to knights snapping into crisp salutes.

Wondering inwardly whether these really were people who understood they might end up being the last generation of knights, Linmel soon took a step forward.

“Bwahaha, no matter how fast you are…”

“Sir Brimdal…”

That was all.

“Hm…?”

Before Brimdal could even register Linmel’s exasperated voice, he noticed that the sword he had raised felt strangely light.

Only then did he hear the click.

It wasn’t the sound of a sword being drawn. It was the sound of an already-drawn sword being returned to its sheath.

Only at the very end did he register the lump of metal falling to the ground.

And the young woman with a fiery expression jabbing her own chest with her finger.

“I! Told you! Not to fight my master in here!”

-Crumble…

Brimdal, who had been staring incredulously at his severed sword, finally looked at Linmel and frowned.

“Every time I see you, you’ve picked up something new. How did you slip past my subconscious?”

“Don’t change the subject!”

Linmel, acting as though the practically divine feat she had just demonstrated was nothing worth dwelling on, rattled off a string of rebukes at the flustered Brimdal.

“When you two fight, my trainees can’t concentrate, and Master, you’re just as bad. Why do you go along with it? You could just walk away!”

“…S-sorry.”

Karos, who had been standing dazed from the unseen strike she had just witnessed, though of course she had only confirmed that such a thing had occurred without actually perceiving it, hurriedly cleared her throat.

“It wasn’t that I wanted to do this. That madman… I mean, Sir Brimdal suddenly decided the trainees’ attitudes were rotten and tried to kill them. I couldn’t just stand by and watch…”

“When did I ever try to kill them? I was only trying to give them a proper education.”

“I saw plain as day that you were going for their necks with that sword. Don’t give me that bullshit.”

“Are your eyes broken? I was only going to leave a scar. From time immemorial, the moment a person starts bleeding from the neck, they instantly understand they’re in mortal danger, and from that point on they fight like their life depends on it. That’s when real growth begins…”

Listening to the two of them, Linmel gripped her sword hilt again and issued a warning.

“I don’t care what the reason is. Never! Never set foot in this training ground again. If the knights here all die too, we’ll be down to handing swords to stable hands.”

“Hmm, I doubt there’d be much of a difference.”

“Out!”

“Fine, fine.”

Brimdal grumbled as he picked up the pieces of his sword from the ground.

Then, looking at the cut surface, he frowned once more.

‘…Flawless.’

Cutting a sword with a sword was, of course, not something achieved through normal means.

Maybe if one side had been a low-quality blade roughly tempered from scrap iron, but Brimdal’s sword was a masterwork among masterworks that he had forged with his own hands.

And yet that sword had been sheared as cleanly as if it had been pressed out of a mold shaped exactly that way from the start.

Looking at Linmel’s sword as she drew it once more, there wasn’t even a trace of a nick anywhere to suggest which part of the blade had made the cut.

After confirming as much, Brimdal clicked his tongue and headed out of the training ground.

“…Gold that refines itself. If this isn’t dull, nothing is.”

“Huh? What are you on about? You just insulted me, didn’t you? If you want to spar that badly, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

“Don’t. Someone would die.”

I would, that is.

After Brimdal, swallowing those last words out of one final shred of pride, took his leave, Karos, who had been standing there with a slightly uncomfortable air, tilted her head.

‘Why am I…?’

When it came down to it, Linmel was her disciple.

Having been surpassed in skill, well, that couldn’t be helped, but as long as the master-disciple bond hadn’t changed, what master would feel uneasy standing in front of her own student?

She knew Linmel had been racking up so many accomplishments lately that her head was getting a bit big, but to make clear that the fundamental relationship between them hadn’t shifted, Karos pulled on her sternest expression and opened her mouth.

“Ahem, Linmel. You-”

“Master. Come with me.”

“…What was that?”

“It’s urgent. The ground caved in. They’re saying more than five of the wizards the Crimson Circle abducted Fell into the Abyss at once, and it had to happen right near the grain belt. If that area burns down too, the food supply is going to take a serious hit.”

“I-I see. But do I need to go? Guarding the grain belt was supposed to be your duty.”

“Yes. I’m not enough on my own. I need your strength, Master.”

“I-I see.”

A moment’s thought would have shown how strange it was that a monster like Linmel would call her in because she couldn’t handle a mere five Fallen, but Karos, flattered by the idea that such a fearsomely strong disciple still needed her, nodded along obediently.

“Very well. I shall help you.”

“Thank you, let’s go right now!”

“?”

Before she could say anything, Linmel grabbed Karos’s hand and hoisted her clean overhead.

Before Karos could even protest the treatment, which carried not a single shred of reverence for a master.

“Knight Commander Linmel. Urgent report. You really must hear…”

“I’ll hear it later! I’m really busy!”

Linmel took off at a sprint. On foot.

Many knights could run faster than a horse, but the reason they still rode horses was that maintaining that speed burned through a corresponding amount of strength.

But she didn’t feel that a little running of this sort had drained any of her stamina. So she abandoned horses and ran on her own two feet.

They arrived at the grain belt, dozens of kilometers away, in less than a few tens of minutes.

“Please keep watch around here so the Fallen don’t burn down the grain belt!”

“W-wait. Linmel, then what are you going to do?”

“There’s something I need to look for around these parts.”

Linmel kept her head turned toward the forest and deliberately gave no clear answer.

“…”

But Karos had already seen it hundreds of times. Exactly what Linmel was searching for when she spoke that way.

Five years.

Not enough to forget, then. Just as she was thinking that…

“So please, I’m counting on you!”

“?”

Karos frowned as she watched Linmel head off into the forest the same way she’d come.

Guarding the grain belt itself was fine. For her beloved disciple’s unattainable wish, she was willing to be saddled with the grunt work.

There was only one problem.

“She hasn’t even told me where she tied up the horses…”

Karos couldn’t make the return sprint the way Linmel could.

-It was the next dawn when she finally returned to the new Capital.

***

Sad as it was, Karos’s sacrifice had been meaningless.

“F-fuck! What is this! What the hell?! Why is the Sword Demon here of all places?!”

“Haaah…”

Linmel trudged along, dragging the false Cult Leader (who had been claiming to be the new world’s ruler) behind her, trussed to a pole like a hog.

It was a common occurrence. Survivors of fallen nations claiming to be the masterminds behind it all and gathering up exhausted people into their own little groups.

It was a crime that should have warranted immediate capture and the harshest sentence, but in the current state of the world there simply wasn’t enough manpower to spare on such things, so they had been forced to look the other way.

Linmel had thought that was the right call, too. Until she heard that this latest fake Cult Leader could move water at will.

He was indeed moving water at will. That is, if mixing metal dust into something that wasn’t even water but slime and shifting it around with magnets counted as moving water.

Oh, and aside from the fact that he was an old man in his seventies, nothing at all like Jern.

“Quiet down. You’re loud.”

“…”

After a few solid thumps on the fake Cult Leader, who had been squealing like a stuck pig, he fell silent in an instant.

He had gone very quiet, but that was nowhere near enough to lift Linmel’s troubled mood.

‘…He has to be alive.’

The world had been turned upside down, and countless renowned wizards had Fallen into the Abyss after overestimating their own abilities, or been captured and killed by the Fallen.

It had become a world in which, if a wizard didn’t show their face for so much as a day, the proper response was to pray for their soul rather than file a missing person report.

Even so, Linmel believed that a certain boy who had not been seen for five years was still alive.

Because if she didn’t believe, she felt she would lose even her reason to hold a sword.

“…Ah.”

-Thunk.

Linmel, who had somehow walked her head straight into the city gate, looked up at the pitch-black night sky and then climbed up the wall itself.

She could have simply asked them to lower the gate. But it was her own small consideration, not wanting to create more work for the guards at this hour.

As she vaulted over the vertical wall as if it were nothing, something came into her view.

“…Zzzzz.”

Her own adjutant, fast asleep.

Linmel frowned, then nudged her awake with her foot.

“Hwuck… oh, Commander! You’re finally back!”

“What about you? Why are you sleeping here?”

“Well, Knight Commander Linmel, whenever you go off to look for that man, you always come back at night and climb over the wall. I’ve been watching you for years now. It’s pretty obvious.”

“…Don’t call him ‘that man.'”

“And you’re in a bad mood. Same as always.”

Linmel glared, half tempted to give her adjutant a knuckle to the head as well-

“Oh right, that reminds me, I actually had something I wanted to tell you about that.”

She decided to hold off on judgment until she’d heard what came next.

“One of our knights was scouting the surrounding mountains and saw an extremely unusual terrain feature that hadn’t been there before.”

“What is it?”

“A lake. A lake, but… the guy must be a crazy bastard, because he said he was thirsty and drank from it.”

“He must be dead.”

When new terrain appeared, nine times out of ten it had been created by one of the Fallen.

Terrain that was not kind to humans. To approach such a thing carelessly was to pay the price.

Did this latest batch have no sense of danger at all? Just as Linmel was thinking that, the next words slowly froze her in place.

“No, he didn’t die. But apparently it was incredibly salty.”

“…What?”

“He said it was like drinking seawater. He brought some back, and when we boiled it down, sure enough, real salt-”

“Where.”

“Oh, it’s that big mountain in the northwest, you’d have to travel quite a way…”

Linmel tossed the false Cult Leader she was holding into the moat and leapt down from the wall.

“Oh, come on! There she goes again!”

‘The sea!’

A memory surfaced in Linmel’s head.

The memory of what kind of world Jern had been in, told to her by that Elf Wizard.

A distance that should have taken days to walk closed in an instant.

All manner of thoughts swirled through her mind as Linmel reached the spot and, without an ounce of hesitation, climbed the mountain and arrived at the lake.

“…”

It was a truly vast lake, glittering in an emerald hue.

So breathtakingly beautiful and wide that, had the circumstances been anything else, she would have wanted to dip her feet in.

-Splash!

“!”

And indeed, someone really was dipping their feet in.

Gripping her sword hilt, Linmel slowly parted the brush in the direction of the sound.

Her heart, rather than racing with hope, grew cold. This was hardly the first or second time.

‘This time…’

Slowly, parting the last of the brush, she fixed a sharp eye on the figure sitting at the lakeside.

“Hm?”

“…?”

Their eyes met.

For starters, it wasn’t Jern.

That alone erased the reason she had come all this way. It should have been a crushing disappointment, but-

Before disappointment, surprise hit her.

“Ahaha, what is this?”

“…”

“You look just like me?”

Because.

Her own childhood self was looking up at her, laughing as if delighted.