Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 262

Chapter 262: False God (6)

TL/ED – Miso

“Could you send word to the place where my Master is?”

“It’s possible. But…”

The Princess trailed off.

“She probably won’t answer. We’ve tried to make contact with Sir Dersia countless times over the years, but it never got through.”

“Just in case, I’d like to ask you to try one more time.”

By all rights, the proper course would be to persuade my Master somehow.

But the situation had changed. Perhaps she saw the firm resolve in my expression, because Sharmia smiled faintly and nodded.

“All right. If any reply comes back, I’ll pass it along to you right away.”

“Thank you.”

I left the Imperial Palace at once and headed for the place where Linmel had told me to wait, and Nightchase poked her head out of the cup she’d been sitting in.

“Nihility, huh. That’s a World I’ve never even heard of…”

“You don’t know it?”

“At least it didn’t exist in the World I came from. It’s nothing to worry about too much. Worlds are always springing up anew.”

Then again, this one had fallen for it when I told her I was the Outer God of the Deep Sea Creatures.

But Nightchase let out a low groan, as though something was nagging at her.

“Hmm… still, it’s strange that Void would discard it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Right now Void is swallowing up the Fallen, the other Worlds, at random, isn’t he? So what do you think his goal is?”

“He said he wants to regress to the Primordial Worlds.”

“Of course he does. Only, in those Primordial Worlds there’d be no god but himself.”

Nightchase wore a gloomy smile as she sneered.

“His desire spills over so plainly you can see right through it. He wants to govern every last speck of the World himself. To be the one and only existence: that’s the wish every god holds in his heart.”

“Disgusting. So what about it?”

“You still don’t get it? What I don’t understand is why someone with that kind of desire didn’t devour your friend.”

“…?”

Devour. At the chilling word I knit my brows, and Nightchase went on calmly, as if there were nothing odd about it at all.

“Why so shocked? It’s something you’ll have to do too. A Fallen is a World without an Outer God. An ownerless treasure, a fortune just waiting for you to reach out and take it. If you truly want a war with Void, you absolutely have to swallow them up. And it looks like a few have already been taken.”

“…”

“Think back. There’s surely a reason Void didn’t subjugate your friend. There’s no way he felt threatened by a mere human, not even an Outer God. When you think about it that way, there’s no need to go poking the hornet’s nest. Leaving her be might be…”

“No.”

I cut Nightchase off sharply as she slyly steered toward her real point.

“This is something I have to do.”

I felt no guilt.

I’d had to descend into the Deep Sea. It was the only path open to me.

But I did feel responsibility.

If Elysia, fragile as she already was, Fell because she believed I had died, then I was clearly the one who had set it in motion.

“I’ll find Elysia, and if she can be saved even in her Fallen state, I’ll save her.”

“And if you can’t? That looks far more likely to me.”

Nightchase looked me over with a small snort of laughter.

“Going to put her out of her misery, then?”

“If I can’t save her, then I’ll have to find a way to save her.”

“…Are you playing with words?”

“I’m serious.”

If I’d given up on something just because it couldn’t be done, I should have hanged myself the moment I dropped into the Deep Sea.

Reading the look in my eyes, Nightchase soon wore an expression like she’d bitten into a bug and retreated back into the cup.

“You’re still human. I’ve learned a fact I didn’t even want to know.”

“That’s mockery, isn’t it? It’s a pretty pleasant fact to me, though.”

While we exchanged that light banter, I went back to the place where I’d parted from Linmel and waited a moment, and Linmel appeared with a composed look, as if nothing at all had happened.

“…Linmel?”

“Hm?”

Of course, it wasn’t truly as if nothing had happened. For some reason, a few droplets of blood were spattered on Linmel’s Armor, on the gauntlet part.

But when Linmel gave a very casual wave of her hand, the droplets vanished, and the gauntlet returned to a gleaming state, as if it had just been polished a moment ago.

Deciding to simply pretend I’d seen nothing, I broke the silence.

“I just came back from an audience with the Princess. Sorry for going ahead. She called for me first, you see.”

“Oh, so that’s it. It’s fine! It’s fine, but, you didn’t talk with the other Knights, did you?”

“? No.”

“Phew, thank goodness…”

“…Why?”

“It’s just, I wanted to be the one to introduce you first.”

Come to think of it, should I let the people I knew find out I’d returned?

I could do that later. First I brought up the urgent matter.

“Let’s save the introductions for later. Right now I need to meet Elysia, so I’m heading to the Capital first.”

“Hmm…”

At that, Linmel made a slightly troubled expression.

“…Jern. The Witch you know, Elysia, has probably changed quite a lot.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

If it was a question of being changed, I was the one who had changed the most.

After all, I had gone from human to Demi-god. Going from Wizard to Fallen was nothing at all by comparison now.

But Linmel shook her head lightly, as if that wasn’t what she meant.

“To be honest, I don’t really want to let you meet the Witch of Nothingness.”

“Because you think I’ll lose to Elysia?”

“No, Jern, you’re the greatest Wizard in the world. You won’t lose to a Witch.”

“Th-thanks?”

I wasn’t a Wizard anymore, though.

“It’s just… I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. I don’t really like that.”

“…?”

What was she talking about?

As I tilted my head in puzzlement, Linmel nodded as if she’d made up her mind, then answered.

“I’ll come with you too. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Will that be all right? You said you’re the Knight Commander. Don’t you have a lot to do?”

“No problem! Master will handle the busywork for me.”

So Karos was here too. Then maybe it wouldn’t be much of a problem.

After saying that boldly, Linmel immediately led over two horses from nearby and handed me the reins.

“Let’s hurry. We can’t let Master find out.”

“…?? You said Master would handle the busywork for you.”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Wasn’t that the arrangement? Asking Karos to fill in for you while you’re gone…”

“There’s no way she’d allow it. She really hates it when I go out.”

“Then what do you mean she’ll handle the busywork for you?”

To that question, Linmel answered without a moment’s hesitation, as if it were obvious.

“If I’m not there, someone has to do it, so it’ll probably be Master, right?”

“…”

I looked at Linmel, who had grown so dignified.

A beautifully grown Knight that anyone would glance at least once.

“Ah, something’s coming. Let’s go!”

…On the inside, though, she didn’t seem to have changed much.

***

The road to the Capital took about three days.

If I’d used my Authority, or if Linmel had carried me on her back and run, we could have gotten there far faster, but as long as we didn’t know where Void’s lackeys might be, I wanted to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible.

In the course of that journey, I came to understand what it meant for this world to have been turned upside down.

“Physical… huh.”

Linmel looked at the mountain jutting up into the sky as though it were a familiar sight.

Literally: mountains turned upside down, their entrances beginning from some root in the sky and their sharp peaks touching the ground, dozens of them.

As I struggled to find words for the sight, like dozens of enormous funnels stuck into the air, Linmel gazed at the flat land around us and spoke.

“That used to be a mountain range that existed there normally. At some point it got sucked up into the sky.”

“…Sucked up?”

“Yeah. And it’s not just the mountains.”

When Linmel pointed somewhere, there was a blue pillar there.

It was only after I used my Current Sense to look a little closer that I could make out what it was.

-Whoooosh…

It was a river pouring down from the endless heavens.

It looked like an unreal waterfall, or perhaps a pillar of water rising from the ground. As I stood there aghast, unable to figure out where on earth all that water was being supplied from, Linmel let out a sigh.

“After you disappeared, the Capital fortified itself thoroughly. Defenses that could repel any enemy that came, and enough food stored to last for years. Anyone would have thought it was truly an invincible fortress. I thought so too, until a volcano got sucked up into the sky.”

“…”

“Burning stones rained down without pause, and flaming sulfur and chunks of lava fell, destroying buildings and killing people. Thankfully, the Princess somehow caught the Foreboding and set up evacuation routes in advance, so we managed to keep the damage to a minimum, but.”

In other words.

It meant that even with the Princess’s Regression ability, it had been impossible to come through that catastrophe without losses.

Knowing and yet being unable to stop it. Well, that made sense. How exactly was anyone supposed to stop sulfur falling from the sky?

“But the damage wasn’t small after all.”

Linmel’s expression grew a little gloomy, and she hung her head where she sat on her horse.

“After that happened, the people, they scattered.”

“…”

Linmel didn’t explain in much detail, but it was enough for the picture to form in my head.

Preparing for every possible situation in a Capital with what anyone would call perfect defenses, only for meteors and rains of fire to fall from the sky and reduce the city to ashes in an instant.

Even the most committed atheist would mistake it for the wrath of a god.

And it wouldn’t even be a mistake.

“Still, the Princess rallied the remaining troops and people well. Now we could flee faster even if the same disaster came, but how long are we supposed to keep running? We can fight any strong opponent you like, but we have no idea how to deal with lava falling from the sky.”

“There’s no need to run anymore.”

I patted Linmel’s drooping shoulder to reassure her.

“I wasn’t just playing around for those five years, you know. That fellow up there in the sky playing his tricks: I’ll bind him up and drag him out in front of you without fail, so I’ll leave the beating to you.”

“…Yeah, got it! If that’s the case, just leave it to me!”

As I watched Linmel, cheerful again as though her gloom had never existed.

The full view of the Capital began to register on my Current Sense.

“…Hm?”

“Huh?”

The Capital was more intact than I’d expected.

I’d been expecting a scene reduced to ruins by volcanic rock formed from hardened lava and collapsed buildings, but no matter how I looked at it, it was the same Capital from my memory, without a single trace of burning.

When I looked over at Linmel, I could see that even she, with her sight that already far surpassed any human’s, was bewildered.

“What is this? It was in ruins right up until I left. Did someone rebuild it? No. There’s no way…”

“Hold on a moment.”

I brought Linmel to a stop and examined the Capital more closely with my Current Sense.

There really wasn’t a single speck I remembered being changed. It was exactly the Capital I remembered.

“Ah, but it’s not exactly the same.”

Linmel narrowed her eyes and examined the Capital, offering an opinion that was the complete opposite of mine.

“That shop had closed down, and that fountain had been demolished, but here it is again… whoever rebuilt it, they must have used an old map.”

“…”

Feeling something uneasy, this time I tried to look toward the library.

“What the…”

Something was blocking my Current.

I knit my brows. Of course, if I wanted to break through it, I could.

But to do so, I’d have to draw out and reveal part of my Authority as an Outer God. That wasn’t a good idea with eyes hanging up in the sky.

As I reluctantly set about dismantling it slowly, Nightchase, who hadn’t said a single word in three days and had been tucked away in my pocket, poked her head out.

“Turn back.”

“What?”

“Good grief, even something like that… I see. So that’s what they used to make this place.”

A bit of contempt, a bit of disgust, a bit of shock.

Wearing that kind of expression, she stared at the Capital.

“Now I understand why Void spat it out. Swallowing something like that would be a loss.”

“Stop being cryptic and tell me everything you know.”

I grabbed Nightchase with my right hand, pulled her out, and lifted her by the scruff while she still wore Linmel’s appearance.

Dangling there, Nightchase shrugged just as she was and replied.

“I was mistaken. This Nihility, it’s a World that existed back in my time too. It just didn’t have a name then.”

“…What?”

“That’s simply a state where there’s no World. An empty space, a void.”

Nightchase glared at the Capital and spat the words out as if grinding them between her teeth.

“I don’t know what it was you were trying to save, but if you want to go in there, you’d better be prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“Prepared to be Assimilated into that Nihility. Especially for an incomplete Demi-god like you.”

“…”

Only then did I think I understood why Void hadn’t swallowed Elysia, and hadn’t killed her either.

“A trap, is it.”

“That’s right, you fool.”

He had known I would go to save Elysia.

Knowing all of this, too.