Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 292

Chapter 292: Deception (1)

TL/ED – Miso

I stared blankly up at the sky.

‘Is it even possible?’

If everything the Emperor said was true.

No, in a situation where it was certain to be true, I felt my will draining away even further.

If that collapsing sky reached all the way here, I had no idea how I was supposed to resist it.

What I should do, how I should go about it.

I was completely in the dark about all of it.

“…”

But then I gritted my teeth.

At the very least, one thing was certain. In a desperate situation like this, weak thoughts were utterly useless.

I looked at the Emperor sitting in the chair and made my request.

“Buy me some time.”

“…”

“If you’re the one who kept regressing Sharmia all this time, then surely buying a little time is within your power. Seems like even Void couldn’t crack that far, not right up to the end.”

The Emperor showed no reaction at all.

No reaction in a situation like this was as good as a refusal. In truth, I had all but asked him to die just now, so it wasn’t especially strange.

“It’s necessary. Please.”

“…Carrying out your request isn’t difficult. Halting him for three days, or even longer, wouldn’t be hard either. But I cannot accept the reason for it.”

Only then did he answer, raising a gaunt hand to show me.

“The reason I appeared was for the sake of your final moments.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I am a life that dwells in every place where the Creator’s blood exists. It was thickest in the Imperial Family, so I resided there, but you too are a Wizard. You inherited his blood.”

I blinked, and as I caught the meaning contained in those words, I frowned.

“…You were watching me too?”

“Whether I wished it or not, that’s how it works. And so I know you. I know you more intimately than you know yourself. Every effort you’ve made, every crisis you’ve faced, every result you’ve endured, I know all of it.”

For the first time, a faint trace of warmth crept into his tone, which until then had sounded almost mechanical.

“Though all of it was meaningless.”

“…”

Even if the conclusion was a little strange.

“Then why did you appear?”

“I wanted to comfort you.”

“…What?”

“I had to make you understand that your meaningless end, that all your flailing, had been pointless from the very beginning, and that everything had already been decided from the start.”

He claimed he wanted to comfort me while picking a fight in the same breath, and as I sat there dumbfounded for a moment, he added an explanation.

“I know you. If I didn’t explain this to you, you would die cursing yourself.”

“I don’t know what kind of lunatic you take me for, but I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“…A lunatic. That word fits perfectly.”

The Emperor suddenly let out a soft snort of laughter.

“Do you know which World draws in the most Wizards?”

“? No idea. How would I know something like that?”

“The Deep Sea. It’s only natural. In the end, Wizards are those who inherited the blood of the Creator, the Outer God of the Deep Sea.”

“…Does that matter? Aren’t they all going to die anyway?”

“They can be saved. I’ve even made their abilities manifest before. I made it so.”

“Ah.”

Right, of course.

If it was this being, who lived parasitically in the blood of every Wizard, then perhaps he could use some sort of ability to save a Wizard of the Deep Sea.

Then why didn’t he do it for me? As I harbored a slight sense of having been wronged, he continued.

“Perhaps, on the slimmest of chances, even one in a hundred million, if someone who had gained the Creator’s World lent a hand, the situation might change. That was my thinking. And it was greed.”

He bowed his head as if in self-reproach.

“Every one who became a Wizard of the Deep Sea wanted to know the truth of their situation. They sought an answer for why they had fallen into a hell like this. I never imagined that all of those who learned the answer would make the very same choice.”

“…They died, I take it.”

“There are certain truths that must never be known. The human mind is finite, and truths it cannot accept often bring suffering worse than death. The answer they wanted was that kind of thing.”

Saying this, the Emperor looked at me.

“That is why I never intervened with you either. Even though you were doing far better than I had expected. Even though, for the first time, I glimpsed something like hope. I didn’t want you, too, to learn these truths and collapse.”

“But I heard this truth of yours and I didn’t collapse.”

“I consider that a remarkable thing.”

The Emperor dipped his head slightly toward me as if in respect, then went on.

“But it’s too late. As I said, the reason I came to you was to make it possible for you to give up. For a human like you to struggle to the very, very end is far too painful to…”

“Hey.”

I cut the Emperor off midway. I couldn’t bear to keep listening any longer.

“Why don’t you knock it off?”

“…Knock what off?”

“Trying to make me give up.”

He’d fed me all these truths while pretending it was for my sake, and they didn’t seem to be lies.

But the conclusion was the same old ploy as Void’s.

He had no intention of helping. He was merely tossing out one reason after another for why I should give up.

I had no intention whatsoever of doing that, so I took a few steps back and glared at him.

“Do I look like an idiot to you? You pull the exact same stunt as Void, and what? It’s for the sake of my final moments? Do you expect me to fall for that?”

“…No. You look to me like humanity’s last hope.”

“Guess I do look like an idiot to you. Want to know how you look to me? Like you still regard that bastard as your master.”

He still regarded Void as his Creator, and for that one’s sake he was trying to make me give up.

That was the only way I could hear the Emperor’s words.

The Emperor shook his head, his face still calm.

“No. Void is already an entirely different being from the Creator. If anything, I regard him as an enemy. I do not serve him.”

“Then what’s your aim?”

-Bzzt.

A blade of Water Pressure leveled itself at his throat.

I didn’t particularly think he posed a threat, but if he really was in league with Void, there was no reason to keep him alive.

“Why are you trying to make me give up?”

“I am not trying to make you give up.”

The Emperor closed his eyes for a moment.

His expression was still calm. A perfect poker face that betrayed not a single emotion.

But, for some reason.

“…?”

“It’s to save my daughter.”

To me, he looked as though he were sobbing his heart out.

“When I regained consciousness, everything was already over.”

“Void had already completed his thorough preparations, and every Arrangement the Creator had laid down was in ruins. All that remained was me alone.”

“I hid within the blood of the Imperial Family, wandering here and there, until I hit upon a single method, and I carried it out.

“Sharmia. She was my method.”

“I don’t imagine an egg can break a boulder. But that was all I was able to do.”

“Hundreds of times, thousands of times, tens of thousands of times, I sent her back.”

The Emperor’s expression, which I had assumed I was only imagining, gradually began to genuinely contort.

“…The moment I realized what I had done was when Sharmia reached for a dagger to run it through her own throat. When I felt that hand trembling from within her veins.”

“What had I done?”

“Had I truly herded all the pain and anguish of every human being onto a single person and called that torture a solution?”

“But I couldn’t stop. I was made for this. I had to do everything within my power to hold back the collapsing sky.”

“The version of me from the past had judged that regressing the most efficient human dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, that shifting the suffering of all humanity onto one person, was the most proper way to keep humanity alive!”

-Slam!

The Emperor brought his fist down on the desk. Hard enough to bruise his knuckles.

“Resist, you say? Yes, resistance is possible. As much of it as you like. I can provide you with that time you want, endlessly.”

“All I have to do is kill that child.”

“Killing her over and over, and again, and again. I simply repeat what I’ve been doing all along. The only difference is this, that these would not be deaths meant to accomplish something, but deaths meant to maintain it!”

“This is the plan the past me devised. To make one human die for all eternity in order to sustain humankind. I could put it into effect even now. If I told Sharmia that annihilation was right at our doorstep, she would kill herself hundreds of millions of times over to hold this stalemate in place.”

The Emperor looked at me.

Only after I’d taken a step back did I realize it. That his gaze had overwhelmed me, if only for a moment.

“Never once have I stopped regretting how monstrous a choice I made. I’ve spent every single day in anguish.”

“…But now, at last, I can set her free. Because my judgment tells me that in a situation like this, there is no hope.”

“Even if I kill Sharmia to maintain this stalemate, even if I keep humanity alive that way, the moment you give up, everything ends.”

“Sharmia can be liberated. But if you don’t give up here and now, I will have to step back into that yoke.”

Thud.

He fell to his knees. His expression was no longer the cold thing of an Artifact, or of some Arrangement crafted by the Creator.

If I had to categorize it, it was the face of a father in utter agony.

“Please, do not resist. Wizard of the Deep Sea.”

“For my daughter’s sake, give up the World.”

It was heavy.

The Emperor’s expression and words, as he looked up at me with his face a wreck, carried a weight I couldn’t ignore.

“…I see.”

The Emperor, who called Sharmia his daughter.

As I thought of her, oddly enough, I felt a calm settle over me inside.

It felt as though one of the facts that had been troubling me had cleanly vanished.

“So I was right.”

“…?”

I let out a small laugh and crouched down, meeting the Emperor’s eyes.

“An Outer God, making people? Yeah, right. It’s all bullshit.”

“What do you…”

“What do you think? It means the you from before you started regressing Sharmia wasn’t a person at all.”

Life had no value whatsoever.

Just something a cup of seawater, or maybe half a cup, could produce, nothing more than that. That was how Void defined it.

There was a certain logic to it. After all, I was capable of that kind of thing myself.

But.

The one who had reached the conclusion of regressing a single human forever to sustain the world may have been a life, but it was not a person.

And what had turned that which was not a person into a person who regretted its own actions was, likewise, a person.

“Maybe only an Outer God can create life, but only a person can make a person. I think I finally understand a little why your Creator went to such lengths to protect this thing we call a person.”

The First Wizard was no lunatic who threw away his own life for the sake of a mere cup of seawater.

A person, and a cup of seawater. He must have given his life precisely because he knew the difference between the two.

The Emperor had shown me that.

I took hold of the shoulders of his dazed figure and knelt down in the very same posture.

“Sorry. I’ve got a request of my own.”

“What…”

“Grant me your daughter for just three days.”

“That… is…”

“I know.”

I looked at the Emperor’s face and spoke in earnest.

“If I lose, it won’t end at three days. Sharmia will take her own life over and over in a Purgatory she can never escape. Of her own free will, no one forcing her but herself. It’s a horrific thing.”

“If you know that, then why are you asking such a thing?”

“I’ll finish it in three days.”

“Wh-what…?”

“No matter what happens, I will bring down the sky and save your daughter within three days without fail. That’s a promise I can make.”

“…And you expect me to believe that right now?”

The Emperor’s expression changed strangely. It went beyond mere disbelief; it was the look of someone watching a child throw a tantrum.

“Do you think I want to kill that child, who has known nothing but suffering all this time, in the name of Liberation? I have agonized over this for a hundred times longer than you ever have. And yet…”

“If I fail, I’ll end it all with my own hands. I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill everyone else.”

“…”

“With my own hands, your daughter, the Director, my friends, my family, all of them. I won’t let Void defile a single one of them. Not one bit.”

I wasn’t saying it as a joke.

The Emperor searched my eyes. Then, as if he couldn’t comprehend it, he opened his mouth in bewilderment.

“Why would you go so far? You need only accept it. No one will blame you for it. Even I, who have watched everything you’ve done all this while, know that you have done more than anyone could.”

“I would, though.”

I shook my head, refusing to accept it.

“Because if I gave up here, I think I’d end up disappointed in myself.”

“…”

“I’m not asking anything of you. If you grant it, I’ll go to Sharmia right now. I’ll lay everything bare, explain it all the way down to the worst-case scenario, and then ask for her help. If she refuses, I’ll give up.”

“And if I do not grant it?”

I answered with a shrug.

“Then I’ll give up.”

“What…?”

“Because I’m a person too. I’m not enough of a devil to ignore a father begging me not to kill his daughter and raise my blade anyway.”

“I… call myself her father, yes, but… I am not so shameless as to truly believe I have any say. My permission is hardly…”

The Emperor said this and hung his head low.

“You’re right about one thing. You’re just a terrible father who only realized she was his daughter after he’d already cast her into hell. So, out of respect for you, I’ll rephrase my question.”

I met the Emperor’s crumbling gaze with my own.

“You’ve done enough all this time. From here on out, leave the rest to me.”

It was time to expose that bastard’s deception.

*****

Join our discord server: https://discord.gg/Bv5qu2Qbb

Join my Patreon to read more chapters: patreon.com/misoinapocalypse