Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

Even after that, I kept on causing chaos.

“…Kyaaah! The hallway, in the hallway…!”

“What happened!”

“No, what is this now…”

Three days ago, I had written a sentence insulting the Emperor using blood.

The content was, ‘This sentence was written with the Emperor’s blood.’

Of course, I had actually used pig’s blood rather than the Emperor’s, but from the guards’ perspective, their hearts must have dropped.

And once they realized that the deliberate use of pig’s blood was itself a taunt, they called in wizards and tore the Imperial Palace apart, and…

Surprisingly, they produced a result. “…We’ve found the cause.”

“Oh, as expected of the Blue Magic Tower’s Tower Master. Who is the culprit! Are they inside this castle?”

“A pig from a nearby livestock pen secretly snuck into the Imperial Palace, evaded the sight of every single guard, came to this spot, then slit its own belly open, wrote this sentence, and vanished into thin air as if devoured by something.”

“?”

“I… I have no idea what kind of magic this is either…”

Of course, this only plunged the case deeper into mystery.

I let out a sigh of relief watching the Tower Master’s bewildered expression. If I had done it in person, I might have been caught. It was fortunate that I had handled everything from a distance.

“In any case, this wizard has learned Illusion Magic of at least the 7th Circle, on par with me… or perhaps above. And of a type completely unknown to the Empire.”

“…Are you saying there’s no way?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Illusion Magic of this caliber must consume an enormous amount of mana. If we station our Tower’s wizards throughout the Imperial Palace and catch that moment, we should be able to apprehend them.”

The confident expression of the Blue Tower Master lasted until a day later, two days ago.

“This time they set fire to the Imperial Archives! It was suppressed quickly, but it’s clearly the work of that assassin, so hurry and assemble the wizards!”

“Th-that can’t be…?”

His face went pale and the confidence vanished.

It couldn’t be helped, since this was still a time before the existence of the Fallen had been publicly announced.

A day after the Blue Tower Master’s defeat, the Imperial Palace made its decision.

“Never in my life did I think I’d enter the Imperial Palace as an Apprentice…”

“We are following an imperial decree. Stay alert at all times.”

They had summoned the majority of wizards from across every Magic Tower, filling the Imperial Palace with them.

That had been yesterday. The once quiet and spacious Imperial Palace was packed with countless wizards, turning it into quite a bustling place, if not quite the middle of a marketplace.

No matter how close to infallible my Current Sense was, there was nothing I could do against a bombardment of sheer numbers like this.

Because of that, the space where I could exist had become extremely limited. In rooms where there were no gaps in the ceiling, I had to hide like something out of an infiltration movie. I even wore a mask just in case, to prepare for any unexpected situation.

It was absurdly uncomfortable, but…

It was effective. The assassins had stopped coming.

The Emperor knew it too. That the current situation had far too many eyes watching. That even if he tried something, it would only mean shouldering risk, so if he were thinking rationally, this was the time to sit back and catch his breath.

***

For the first time in a while, Sharmia regained a measure of peace.

“The Imperial Palace has gotten quite crowded.”

“…It has.”

“But thanks to that, the attacks have decreased a lot. I wish it could be like this every day…”

The Head Maid was gently smiling as she brushed the Princess’s hair.

Sharmia’s head drooped forward with a nod.

“Y-Your Highness?”

The Head Maid caught her with a startled expression. The repeated assassination attempts had left the woman showing symptoms bordering on paranoia.

Sharmia quickly straightened up and shook her head, forcing a smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have dozed off for a moment…”

“…Are you perhaps feeling unwell somewhere?”

“Nothing like that… how do I put it, I’ve been having nightmares? So I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Sharmia furrowed her brow and tilted her head.

“Nightmares, you say? What kind of nightmares?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know.”

“…Pardon?”

“I feel like I experienced something before waking up, and I remember that it was absolutely horrible. But I can’t actually remember the contents.”

Sharmia scrunched her eyes and lowered her head once more.

“Anyway, it keeps waking me up in the middle of the night. Sigh…”

“…”

The Head Maid, who had been gazing down at her with a pained look, glanced around briefly. Realizing that the only people in this Dressing Room were herself and Sharmia, with only a knight standing guard outside, she carefully spoke.

“Your Highness. Have you ever had this kind of thought? It’s impudent of me to say, but… something like, what would your life have been like if you had been born a commoner instead of a princess?”

“Huh?”

Sharmia was so surprised she tilted her head back to look at the Head Maid, then replied with a puzzled expression.

“That really is impudent of you, Seril. If you say something like that in front of anyone other than me, you’ll be arrested for treason. You’d better be careful.”

“F-forgive me.”

“But yes. I have thought about it a few times.”

Fortunately, she spoke as if it were nothing, turning her gaze back to the darkened mirror and continuing offhandedly.

“All I’m taught to do is bring people to their knees, make them obey, appease them, and sacrifice them. Of course, someone has to do it, but… sometimes I feel a sense of futility.”

“…”

“Since you started with the impudent talk, Seril, I’ll say something I shouldn’t too. Sometimes I wonder, why did it have to be me? Oh, you absolutely must never mention this to Father.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

The Head Maid resumed brushing her hair, her hands trembling ever so slightly.

Afterward, once the two of them finished getting ready and left the Dressing Room, I hurried down from where I had been hiding in the ceiling.

It wouldn’t be long before wizards came to this room as well. I wiped the ink covering the mirror, then stared at it intently and quietly demanded.

“Sharmia, please come out already.”

Two weeks had already passed beyond the promised timeframe.

At this point, I wanted to see her even if it was the fake Sharmia. No matter that I was a Fallen, no matter that I was surviving through an information advantage, there was no guarantee I could keep hiding undetected while Tower Masters continued to roam about.

She truly needed to come. After thirty seconds of tapping on the mirror and pressuring her…

At last.

[…Jern. Can you see me?]

A hazy Sharmia appeared.

What was different from before was that only her face was visible, but still.

“Yes. Where have you been all this time? I waited so long and you didn’t show up, I thought I’d been abandoned.”

[I’m sorry. Every mirror was broken. I barely managed to find a hand mirror.]

“…What? If a mirror breaks, can’t you just make a new one?”

[No. The thing is, I can only see memories through mirrors that I, in the past, had looked into. It’s closer to the idea that a trace of memory remains in them…]

“I see. Let’s check that bread first.”

Sharmia held up a croissant.

I let out a sigh and covered the mirror as I spoke.

“First, what I’m curious about is why you didn’t tell me that the Emperor was trying to assassinate Sharmia.”

Sharmia spoke as if nothing had happened.

But with something this enormous going on, the fact that she had hidden it was clearly strange.

After hearing what I said, Sharmia…

[Huh? What are you talking about? Father was trying to kill me?]

“?”

She tilted her head as if she had absolutely no idea.

We exchanged glances for a moment before I spoke first.

“Most of the assassination attempts that the Princess suffered during her childhood were carried out by the Emperor. Do you remember when you were called by the Emperor to have tea after your tenth birthday celebration?”

[Yes. What about it?]

“Didn’t you find that you couldn’t bring yourself to drink the tea?”

[…Oh, yes. I think that’s right.]

“I stopped it. I saw him putting poison in it.”

[…???]

Sharmia tilted her head in utter disbelief.

[That doesn’t make sense. He was certainly a frightening person when I was young, but once I steeled myself and started taking on challenges, he spared nothing for me. In all the countless futures I experienced, Father never once turned against me.]

“The facts are what they are, so what can I say? Even now, to protect the Princess from assassination attempts, I’ve been writing in pig’s blood in the hallways to raise the alert level and all sorts of other backbreaking things.”

[…What are you doing! Wait, that was you, Jern? I thought some idiotic assassin had done that! Didn’t I tell you that you mustn’t change the past??]

“I’m sorry. But I had no choice. I am certain that if I hadn’t done this, the young Princess would have died without question.”

A rare look of shock crossed Sharmia’s face, and she pinched the bridge of her nose from beyond the mirror, sighing.

[Okay, I understand. But it would be best if you refrained from changing the future any further. We know the way out now, after all.]

“That’s welcome news. What is it?”

[Hold on.]

“What?”

[In the present reality, you haven’t died yet, Jern.]

“?”

[Dersia told me. She said that if you had died, her magic would have activated. That you weren’t dead to begin with…]

“But I clearly killed myself.”

[Where?]

“…Ah.”

Come to think of it, the place where I had died was that so-called paradise.

The immortal Purgatory that healed every wound and every pain.

I must have experienced only the sensation of death without actually dying.

And then, to erase me from the world since I couldn’t be obtained…

Sharmia had been used to seal away the end of my future, condemning it to becoming wreckage of the past.

Certainly. If the goal was to oppose The Three Evils, then making it so that such a confrontation never happened in the first place would be the most sensible course.

As I was nodding along, Sharmia continued.

[It seems like you have a place in mind. Anyway, the silver lining is that you were born with the Deep Sea as your world, Jern.]

“Why is that a silver lining?”

[Because if you’re unconscious, you’ll soon be crushed to death. Dersia told me that no matter what they do to try to keep you alive, rescuing a Fallen from the Deep Sea is an impossible task.]

“…”

It was a horrific thing to say, but it was also the truth.

Even if I were still alive, I would ultimately be crushed to death. The Deep Sea was not a world lenient enough to survive in just by staying still.

[When that happens, Dersia’s magic will activate, and everything will return to the way it was. What I want to ask is, how long can you hold out…]

This was something I knew well myself.

“No matter what, I won’t be able to hold out for more than a month.”

[I don’t doubt you, but are you certain?]

“Yes.”

If they kept me in the Artificial Paradise…

The paradise itself would be crushed and burst.

“That leaves two weeks. All I need to do is keep the young Princess alive during that time.”

[You can’t die either, Jern.]

“Understood. But… what do you mean all the mirrors were broken?”

[…It seems the Crimson Circle doesn’t want you coming back either.]

I clenched my fist as I looked at Sharmia’s grave expression.

Two weeks. I just had to endure that long.

“There won’t be any other incidents during that time, right?”

[Well, um, I sort of run away from home…]

“Hold on a moment.”

In the middle of the conversation…

I saw wizards approaching, so I pulled off the mask I was wearing and hurriedly stripped off my robe, tossing it up to the ceiling and making it stick.

Then I grabbed a broom that was nearby and started sweeping the floor with a bored expression.

“Hm?”

“Oh, good day.”

The moment the wizards entered, I hastily bowed my head and began sweeping the floor even more diligently.

An imperial attendant’s uniform, and a nondescript face you could find anywhere.

They didn’t spare me a glance, instead expanding their mana to scan the room. After confirming there was nothing out of the ordinary, they shut the door and left.

The wizards had arrived at the Imperial Palace on such short notice that they didn’t know all the attendants’ faces. I had been making good use of that fact.

“Phew, let’s continue.”

[…]

After the wizards left and I closed the door and looked at the mirror again…

Something was off about Sharmia’s face.

If I had to describe it, she looked like someone who had put on one shoe only to see a spider crawling out of the other one.

[J-Jern?]

“Yes?”

[What happened to your face?]

“Oh, I did a bit of disguising.”

Even if I was playing the part of an attendant, if the guards caught me, they might go, “Why is a kid this young…? Oh, it’s that guy!” So…

On top of dyeing my hair blond, I had used the cosmetics nearby to make myself look as plain as possible.

Did it look strange? I thought I had done a pretty good job.

As I was thinking that, Sharmia, who had been staring blankly at me for quite a while…

Wrote different words with a dazed expression.

[Um, I did explain that the future is already set and can’t be changed, right?]

“Yes. Of course I know.”

[And that acting with some purpose in the past is dangerous as well?]

“Yes.”

[…I should have put it more firmly.]

“?”

Unable to understand what she was saying, I tilted my head…

Then a sudden hypothesis struck me, and it felt like lightning had gone off in my brain.

No way.

“Have you, by any chance, seen me looking like this before?”

[…]

In that silence, I found my answer.

…It seemed that my disguised self had been someone that the Sharmia of the past knew.