Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

Becoming one with the Deep Sea is a sensation that’s truly difficult to explain.

If I had to describe it in a single sentence… yes, I suppose it would feel like becoming an impossibly enormous giant.

Looking down from an omniscient vantage point, I could perceive the lives within this narrow world as they spoke, feared, marveled, grieved, and rejoiced. If I wished, I could crush any of them with a single finger, and no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t imagine any of them being capable of harming me.

It was always like this. An overwhelming sense of omnipotence.

I had felt it during Deep Fusion as well, but whenever I lingered in a state like this, a certain thought would creep in from time to time.

What if this is the real me?

My small body, writhing in agony from a single light breath, seemed like nothing more than an incomplete lump of flesh, and discarding it appeared logically sound.

This was harder to endure than any Burden. Because it didn’t seem wrong, because it felt like if I simply surrendered myself as I was, I could escape from the entire Deep Sea just like that.

And most likely, that was actually true. “Ohhh…”

I gritted my teeth, resisted, and pressed the ground down deep.

The paradise that bastard had spoken of gradually sank deeper and deeper. In the process, the deer were crushed beyond recognition, and the rivers boiled over violently. The trees had already shriveled into unrecognizable shapes.

Void let out a gasp of delight as he watched the paradise he had spoken of slowly transform into a hell smeared with blood and mud.

I couldn’t have cared less. Even if it was an immortal space, as long as he was maintaining a sense of self…

“Found them.”

Thousands of meters away, I found Void, who had been watching me from over there. Voids, rather.

The Voids caught by Current Sense were not just one or two. They were smiling within this hell, all wearing the same expression, the same face.

-Crack! I crushed every last one of them.

“I see I was mistaken.”

Void’s voice did not cut off.

I couldn’t have cared less. I continued to crudely press down on and destroy the paradise.

“Let’s see how long you can keep hiding.”

“…”

It seemed Void had used some kind of trick to create an enormous number of spare bodies throughout this space called paradise. It was probably connected to that World of his. If he had used abilities of this magnitude in the real world, the Burden would have killed him, but he must have judged it wouldn’t be a problem here, where Burden didn’t need to be considered.

He had racked his brain in his own way, figuring that if he stayed out of direct sight and could avoid a direct hit, he could survive even within the Deep Sea…

A sound judgment. But he had made two mistakes.

First, that I too was free from the constraints of Burden.

And second, that his actions were as good as admitting he had no way to fight me and had fled.

“If I crush everything, you’ll have no choice but to come out eventually.”

An immortal space? It didn’t matter.

Being crushed rendered it all meaningless anyway.

If he revived, I would simply keep smashing until he couldn’t revive anymore.

-Thwack, crack, thwack!

“Let’s see, how many are left?”

Without resting for even a second, I pressed down on the paradise and found each of Void’s hidden bodies, grinding them to pulp.

There had to be an end. There was no way he had spread out a space free of Burden infinitely.

I could see Void’s voice gradually sinking.

“…Not many left.”

“Bullshit.”

I let out a scoff as I watched Void reply so casually.

“You haven’t counterattacked once, so you must not be too pressed for time.”

“I’m so pressed for time that it’s hard to even respond.”

“This is your whole purpose. You think I don’t know that?”

Void did not answer.

But Current Sense did not miss the meaningful smile that spread across the body I had just crushed.

“You’re hoping I’ll be devoured by the Deep Sea in this space.”

The reason he had provoked me from the very start and hadn’t mounted a single counterattack in the meantime.

And the reason he had brought me to a space where the Deep Sea could be fully unleashed was painfully obvious.

Run wild to your heart’s content. He had chosen this place with exactly that sentiment in mind.

Until I finally gave up.

Until I got drunk on this omnipotence and underwent Assimilation.

“You think I don’t know you’re trying to turn me into some other being that only has memories, like Puppet?”

“If I could manage it, persuasion would be the best option.”

Still tens of thousands of meters away, Void extended his hand precisely in my direction.

“Did hearing my story not change your mind at all?”

“Not in the slightest.”

-Crunch!

I answered by turning him into a splatter of blood.

“…Ngh.”

And then, as the range of Current Sense and destruction expanded to that extent.

The dizzying sensation flooding my head struck with even greater intensity.

A rapture felt upon transforming into an existence one step… no, dozens of steps beyond that of a mere living being, the kind that made physical pleasure seem base by comparison.

It was nearly impossible to resist. This was on an entirely different level from how I had used the Deep Sea before. I was now attempting to completely dominate an entire region.

And the fact that it was actually working made it even worse.

I clutched my head, forced back the thoughts dyeing themselves pink, and searched for more of Void’s bodies.

“I fail to understand. What you call resistance is quite… foolish.”

-Crunch!

“How is cutting the rope that’s strangling me resistance?”

-Crack.

“Cut yourself free. Become complete, and escape from pain.”

“No, this son of a bitch, seriously…”

He had hidden an absolutely insane number of them.

I felt like I had destroyed nearly three digits’ worth, and he was still perfectly fine.

“This is an entirely futile endeavor.”

“…”

Normally, having killed over a hundred of him, I might have dismissed this as bluster… but his tone was genuinely calm. He might have hidden over a thousand.

“Why do you refuse?”

Void tilted his head, asking as though he truly could not understand me.

“Wasn’t your goal liberation? Liberation from the Deep Sea?”

“That’s right. That’s my goal. And if you lot help me achieve it, I’ll happily join up.”

“If you accept the natural course, right now, this very moment…”

“I said I wanted to escape from the Deep Sea. When did I ever ask to be merged into one? I’d rather die than escape that way.”

When I laid it out bluntly and sharply, he shook his head as if there was nothing he could do.

“Then by all means, continue. How long you can endure will be an amusement in itself.”

“I was going to do exactly that. You heard me. I told you that you made a mistake.”

I clenched and unclenched my fingers, which were tingling with pleasure, and focused my concentration.

“You should never have brought me here.”

“Indeed, the Deep Sea is a truly formidable World. I’ve fully acknowledged that.”

“No, you don’t understand at all.”

“…?”

He hadn’t grasped it.

The fact that something like this was far from all the Deep Sea had to offer.

“…”

I looked up at the sky. Above me spread a murky, dark sea where not a single ray of sunlight penetrated.

How much did all this water weigh?

Hundreds of millions of tons… no, even billions of tons would be an understatement. An overwhelming mass.

Sometimes, that mass itself became a weapon.

“I never even imagined it before…”

A dog leashed to a chain cannot believe there is a world wider than that chain.

Even if the leash were undone, it would not leave its surroundings.

That was probably why it had taken me so long to realize.

If there were no restrictions on controlling this Deep Sea.

“…I can’t even fathom it.”

Why would I be unable to move it?

Currents churned violently, and small streams became rapids.

The rapids pulled the seawater along. The disrupted flow gave birth to a new wave.

“…!”

Void tried to do something.

But it was far too late.

-Rumble! A sound like lightning crashing echoed through the Deep Sea, and…

That overwhelming mass began to walk silently beneath the surface, crushing everything in its path.

“Gah, ghk…!”

I coughed up blood immediately. No matter how close to omnipotence I had reached, I had not quite touched true omnipotence, and along with the pleasure, Burden crept in little by little, pressing down on my body.

It was only natural. Even a truly omnipotent god would not be able to make such a spectacle happen easily.

“My, my.”

Void let out his dying words as he watched the paradise being crushed.

The seawater, which had at first simply walked, gradually accelerated.

The disrupted flow naturally made it so.

I observed him through my current sense as his expression turned to one of dismay, and lying face-down, I grinned as wide as I could.

“Hey, does paradise at least come with a seawall?”

To those who could not see, it would have appeared as nothing more than a bizarre spectacle of formless force reshaping terrain and flattening mountain ranges.

But I could see it clearly. The enormous wave.

A Tsunami within the Deep Sea.

“…My, this was something I did not anticipate at all.”

Void lowered the hand he had raised and let out a sigh.

It seemed he could see it too.

Its sheer size, swallowing the clouds in the sky.

***

The Tsunami destroyed everything equally.

The hidden Voids, the mountains, the rivers, the deer.

Nothing remained in its wake.

-Crrrrunch…!

I was catching my breath for about five minutes, looking at the sandy beach that had once been an open meadow, when.

“The Three Evils… truly a World in a league of its own.”

Void appeared, tearing open the empty air.

From his bitter expression and his missing fingers, I could tell.

This was his true form. If I killed this one, it would all be over…

“Gkh.”

But for some reason, my Deep Sea suddenly began to fade away.

It was the same bizarre ability that had erased my Deep Sea when we first met.

I gritted my teeth and condensed the air, and he looked at me with an expression of even deeper pity.

“Stop this. Within this world, your abilities are subject to the inviolable laws of the paradise.”

“…What?”

“That is the nature of this World. You broke the law, and you are paying the price. This place is not merely a different location. It is inside a different World.”

“That’s…”

I looked around. It seemed this place was not a continent but the interior of another World entirely.

So that was why it had been possible to use abilities without Burden, something that should have been impossible. It was not Void’s ability but this World’s ability; I had merely been forcibly summoned into this World.

“No, then when we first met too.”

“You thought you were in ruins, but that was the paradise. I guided you there.”

This piece of shit.

Deception was just second nature to him.

But the fact that he had revealed such absurd information meant I could prepare for it next time, and…

It also meant Void had made up his mind.

“Will you truly insist on maintaining your human body?”

He looked at me, practically pleading.

“You are a World. You have already become one. No matter how stubbornly you cling to a human body, you will only suffer and be annihilated… surely you know this. Why…”

“Haah…”

Regrettably, my defeat had been sealed from the moment I was brought to this place.

Still, if there was a silver lining, perhaps it was that he hadn’t won either.

Since I had ultimately not lost to the World, I could answer with a slightly lighter heart.

“I understand what you people want.”

“And?”

“It only made me more resolute.”

I had thought the Crimson Circle was simply a group of lunatics.

But they weren’t.

They were, in fact, a meticulously cunning and precise terrorist organization that wanted to appear like lunatics.

There was no coexisting with people like them.

The moment had come to add a new purpose beside liberation from the Deep Sea.

“After a little internship with you lot, I just feel like killing every last one of you.”

“Truly regrettable.”

Void pressed his temple and raised his hand.

“How long I’ll have to wait this time…”

“You won’t have to.”

-Crack!

“…Hm?”

Looking at the bewildered Void, I shot a Current straight through my own heart.

It was less pain and more an inability to breathe. In that state, I forced the words together and spoke.

“I’ll be… coming…”

Through my trembling vision, I could see Void’s face, looking bitter, regretful, and perhaps even anguished.

“…to find you all, soon.”

He…

“Of course, that must not be allowed to happen.”

…saw me off with those cryptic words as his farewell.