Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 270

Chapter 270: The Ark (1)

TL/ED – Miso

“Mom, what’s that?”

“Hush, don’t look straight at it! You could go blind.”

“There it goes again… damn it…”

The moment I returned to the present Capital, I felt a gloom in the air that hadn’t been there during my last visit.

There was only one cause. The Stigma Dersia had carved into the sky.

To a person, everyone was staring up at the long black line visible even against the dim sky, letting out sighs heavy with despair.

“In the old days, even in a situation like this, people would’ve just shrugged it off and thought, ah, some wizard’s playing a prank.”

As we walked down the main road, Linmel wore a bitter expression and watched the citizens nervously bolting their doors shut.

“Ever since the Capital was destroyed last time, and since the Fallen ran wild and threw everything into chaos, everyone’s gotten sensitive to changes like this. Especially anything happening in the sky.”

“It shows.”

Even without bothering to use Current Sense, I could feel the gloomy sense of defeat that had spread across the entire city.

Of course, not everyone was steeped in that emotion. A few Knights were hurrying off somewhere even in the dead of night. Their movements, free of any waste, were swift and precise enough to make clear this wasn’t their first or second time facing an anomaly like this.

“I’ll go report what that thing really is. Your master, um…”

“Don’t say she’s dead. Just say she was wounded too and is resting up. That’ll be better.”

“Okay! Got it. Where will you be, Jern? Do, do you maybe want to come over to my place?”

“No. With the sky like that, you never know. I’ll be resting at the lake behind here.”

“…All right. I understand…”

Seeing Linmel off as her spirits flagged, I looked up at the sky once more.

The fact that the wound carved into Void’s body had begun to appear in the sky meant that he had begun to completely dominate this world’s sky.

If there was one thing I could count as a small mercy, it was-

‘It’s still faint, at least.’

The reason the line was distinguishable from the night sky was that it wasn’t as dark as the night sky itself.

It was far fainter than the ink I had seen. In other words, there was still time left.

Though it was bleak that there didn’t seem to be much of it.

“Still trying to do something?”

From inside the cup, Nightchase tossed out a mocking remark in a languid voice.

“It’s too late. That’s actually a relief. At least you can chalk your defeat up to being too late.”

“It’s not too late. Time’s just running short.”

I sealed the mouth of the cup and made my way toward the outskirts of the Capital.

I’d told Linmel I’d be resting, but there was no way I could truly relax in a situation like this. From here on, I had to use every second, no, every five seconds, as if I couldn’t bear to waste a single one of them.

There was a person I needed to meet first, no, something resembling a person.

Current Sense blanketed the Capital.

“…What the hell, this guy.”

I found him, but he was in a strange place.

Why would he be somewhere like this? Tilting my head, I created a puddle on the ground.

The moment I threw my body into that puddle, a foul stench hit me at once.

Pinching my nose and grimacing, I looked at the Dwarf sleeping against the wall without a care in the world.

“Hmph, hkk…”

Brimdal lay there utterly at ease, still gripping his sword. After glancing around for a moment, I flicked a few droplets of water and tossed them into Brimdal’s wide-open mouth.

“Why are you sleeping in a place like this? Wake up.”

“Kch, kch- what, ptui!”

Brimdal was far more startled than I’d expected.

Before he even realized it was me, Jern, his face went pale as he scanned his surroundings, and then, upon seeing me, he furrowed his brow.

“…What is this…”

“It’s been a long time, Brimdal. Have you kept well?”

“….”

Even at my warm greeting, Brimdal glared at me, boring into me for a long while.

It was as if he were trying to gauge who I was.

Roughly anticipating what would come next, I let out a sigh and scratched my head.

“If you’re about to tell me to prove I’m not a fake, then yes, I’ll explain. Just say the word when you’re ready.”

“…No.”

Brimdal sheathed his sword, still not letting go of his guard.

“There can’t be many children who can wear an expression like yours, as if they’ve already seen the whole of life. Jern, it’s you, isn’t it.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“-Though it seems you’re not human, either.”

Brimdal threw out a rather sharp sentence.

A Knight of his caliber, it seemed, could pick up on my transformation right away.

“In all my life, I’ve never heard of, never seen anyone who could slip past my Aura Sense and come right up to my face. Even less someone I can’t sense in the middle of a conversation, even while watching with my own eyes.”

He came over, roughly grabbed my head, groped at it this way and that, and let out a gasp of astonishment.

“What in the world! To think I can’t feel a thing even while touching it like this… What on earth have you become?”

“I became a god of another world, that’s what. I’m now the concept of a living, moving Deep Sea.”

“Mm, I don’t know what you’ve become, but I can tell at least that you’ve lost your mind. You seem to have spent five years learning some bizarre Magic, but do you even know what’s become of this world in the meantime?”

“…Why were you here?”

Cutting him off, since the explanation looked like it would drag on, I prompted him, and Brimdal scrunched his face up.

“I’m being punished. Honestly, all I did was try to nurture a little hope for the future.”

“Punished?”

“Yes. They told me to keep watch here so the Fallen don’t get into the waterways, but it’s practically revenge. Bah, petty little things.”

“I don’t know what your punishment is, but you have to come somewhere with me, starting now.”

“What? What punishment. No, wait, did you come find me the moment you arrived here? If you were expecting a warm welcome from me, you’re out of luck. There’s no shortage of folks looking for you right now, so go meet them, quick.”

“I’d love nothing more than a touching reunion myself, but I really have no time right now. There’s probably less than a quarter of a year left. First, I’ll do what needs to be done.”

“…”

At my heartfelt plea, Brimdal took on a somewhat serious expression and gave a slight nod.

“Out with it.”

“Introduce me to some friends.”

“…Friends?”

“Yes. Your Dwarf friends. That race that lives digging in those caves.”

“First, let me make two things clear.”

Brimdal extended his index and middle fingers, then folded the index one down.

“First, those things aren’t my friends, they’re my enemies. If I go to them, they’ll try to kill me.”

“I see. And the second?”

“The second is just a curse. If I had to pick something, it’d be a question about why you’re looking for those bastards.”

“Because I need to dig into the ground.”

“Dig into the ground? I was wondering what you were going on about.”

Brimdal wore a triumphant smile and drove his sword into the floor.

“That much I can manage just fine on my own. Give me one hour. I’ll dig a hole deep enough to bury this whole building.”

“I can do that in three seconds. When I say I need to dig into the ground here, I don’t mean I’m just going to make some hole that’s only deep and wide.”

I shook my head and corrected Brimdal’s understanding.

“I mean I need a deep underground city where every single person living in this world can breathe, eat, and live normally without any health problems for at least several months. And it absolutely cannot be just a few dozen meters down; it has to be several hundred meters deeper than that.”

“…What?”

Listening to me, Brimdal tilted his head partway through.

“Do you even understand what you’re saying right now?”

“Yes. I understand. To put it more precisely, it has to hold up without any issues even when all the land in this world is submerged under seawater.”

“…”

Wearing a dumbfounded expression, he soon scratched his head and explained as if gently scolding a bit of a fool.

“Jern. Listen carefully. A large-scale undertaking like that has never once happened among the Dwarf race in all the time we’ve had beards. And above all, even if every last Dwarf devoted themselves to nothing but that work, it would take, forget one year, a good ten years to barely pull it off. It makes no sense.”

“It seems Dwarves are far more capable than I’d thought.”

I’d been expecting an answer along the lines of it being impossible even after a hundred years.

Hearing it could be done in a mere ten years made me all the more certain.

This work had to be entrusted to Brimdal. Having confirmed that my expression was insanely serious and held not even the slightest hint of a joke, Brimdal asked back with a fed-up look on his face.

“I don’t know how you took what I said, but-”

“I’ll help.”

-Trickle, trickle, trickle…

When I raised my hand, a few drops of water fell.

Brimdal looked at the floor with an expression of wondering what this kid was up to, and then-

-Boom!

“What in the…?”

Seeing the deep hole that those mere few droplets had dug into the ground like madmen, he blinked, his eyes wide.

“Try throwing a stone.”

The flustered Brimdal stood frozen for a moment, then picked up a pebble from nearby and tossed it into the hole.

No sound came for a long while. Only at the five-minute mark did the faint sound of a water droplet, one no ordinary being could ever hope to hear, finally reach us.

“You…”

Only then did Brimdal truly see me.

That this was a miracle no mere Magic could ever produce was something he, a Dwarf who had spent half his life digging into the earth, could not fail to recognize.

“What did you become before you came back?”

To the question he asked almost in a whisper, I answered with a shrug.

“I already told you earlier.”

“…Then… are you serious? That you have to build an underground base to hold every single person that exists right now, that?”

“Yes. If possible, I’d like it to be able to take in animals too. If there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll help anytime.”

“Hngh…”

Brimdal began to seriously think over the answer to my question, folding his arms and deliberating again and again.

But the answer he came to was the same.

“I’m sorry, but persuading them is impossible. At least, it won’t work through me.”

“What, why?”

“When I, ahem… left that group, I did a number of things, and those things were the sort the bastards wouldn’t take too kindly to-”

Brimdal averted his gaze and tried to change the subject.

“If we put it in Empire terms, what level of criminal would that make you?”

“Mm, about Regicide, I’d say.”

“…”

It seemed Brimdal had been a far worse troublemaker than I’d thought.

‘What do I do?’

I wracked my brain for a moment. There was the option of coercing the Dwarves with my power, but the chances of that backfiring were far too high.

Above all, this was work the Dwarves needed to feel the necessity of and carry out themselves. If there were even the slightest problem, every human would drown.

The work had to be done on terms both sides could accept as much as possible.

“Well, I can at least guide you there, so you’ll have to figure out the persuading on your own.”

Brimdal replied nonchalantly, as if he’d done nothing wrong. As I was thinking I might smack him now that I had the strength for it, something occurred to me.

“…So, Brimdal, you’re certain you committed something as big as attempted Regicide of the Emperor?”

“It was the recklessness of youth. A shameful memory.”

“So right now you’re quite a major enemy to the Dwarves?”

“Hm? Yes. That’s right.”

“Are the Dwarves clear about who they owe and who’s wronged them?”

“Of course. We never forget what must not be forgott-”

Brimdal nodded proudly, then suddenly realized something and froze, looking my way.

“…”

“…”

Our eyes met, and we knew each other’s thoughts.

“Brimdal. For the sake of the world, please sacrifice your body just this once.”

“No, you crazy little-”

Brimdal grabbed for the hilt of his sword.

My finger flicked a touch faster.