Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

I immediately sprang into action.

“Wait here.”

[…?]

Leaving the Shark behind, I scoured the area for other Deep Sea Creatures.

It wasn’t that I wanted to put another one under Servitude.

I was picking out feed.

‘Should I start by choosing some with good hides?’

After much deliberation, I selected the Deep Sea Creatures one by one.

Ji-eo was a monster. It was far beyond anything I could handle. But had it been a monster from the very beginning?

Of course its species was different to begin with, but the reason it had reached that level was surely because it had slowly hunted other living things and grown over time.

If that was the case, then this became simple.

-Scritch.

[…??!]

I tracked down creatures with useful hides and nicked them lightly with a Current. The Deep Sea took care of compressing the rest on its own.

The attacked Deep Sea Creatures flared with bioluminescence and tried to find me, but even the Octopus living in those depths had only managed to sense that I existed without pinpointing my location.

The chances of anything at this depth detecting me were extremely low.

After several attempts, once I realized it was safe, I hunted without hesitation and gathered the corpses of Deep Sea Creatures.

“Good, this should be enough…”

I collected the remains of the Deep Sea Creatures, now compressed small enough to fill both hands, the Deep Sea Creature Pellets, and brought them back to the Shark.

“Here, eat these first.”

[…]

The Shark swallowed the Pellets I held out without a word of complaint.

And then.

[…Gurk, kurrk, keck.]

“?”

It writhed as if in agony, then vomited blood.

What was this? Bewildered by the sudden turn of events, I was tilting my head in confusion when the creature began convulsing before going still.

-Crrrk. Watching the dead body compress into a Deep Sea Creature Pellet, I took another look at what I had just fed it.

Only then did I understand what had happened.

“…Oh, it was a Pufferfish.”

I had fed it to the Shark because it had a pretty tough hide.

Apparently Deep Sea Creatures weren’t entirely different from their originals, because the Pufferfish-shaped one seemed to contain a lethal poison.

Could it come in handy somewhere? I stashed away the Pufferfish Pellets, now confirmed to be poisonous, and put another Shark under Servitude to begin feeding it Pellets one by one.

But several more died after that as well.

Not from poison, but from build problems.

“…”

I watched one sprout teeth on its gills, cutting itself every time it breathed.

And another, with Clam shell armor growing on its fins, unable to swim, gradually sinking while thrashing helplessly. I let out a sigh and withdrew the Thread.

There were duds.

‘I absolutely need to feed them Clam, though.’

Just because something ate a Pellet didn’t mean the traits would manifest the way I wanted.

The Clam’s shell armor was essential to the plan I was formulating, but if it grew on the fins instead of the body, it made the creatures’ ability to generate Currents extremely unstable.

In the process, I learned something new. It seemed these creatures had the organ responsible for using Deep Sea abilities attached somewhere on their fins.

On top of that, some Deep Sea Creature Pellets carried traits that were perfectly fine for the original creature but became devastating drawbacks for a different species.

Every time I fed a Shark a Jellyfish Pellet and it died, I wondered what was going on. When I split one open before it could be compressed, I found that several internal organs had turned into a translucent liquified state. A chill ran down my spine.

I was glad I hadn’t acted on the thought that Jellyfish seemed safe enough to try eating myself.

In the end, I scrapped the idea of using Sharks.

They looked like the strongest option within the range I could handle, but they had zero growth potential.

Eating Jellyfish turned their organs to jelly and killed them. Clam growth on the fins eliminated their abilities. Teeth sprouted on their gills, and so on. On top of all that, they had countless other weaknesses that made them completely unsuitable for my plan.

But it wasn’t a waste of time. By feeding them various Deep Sea Creature Pellets, I had confirmed almost all of the individual traits each one carried.

There was the minor issue that I had wiped out nearly every Shark in the vicinity in the process, though.

“Maybe I went a little overboard…”

I scratched my cheek as I looked at the hundreds of Shark Pellets floating around me, far too many to fit in my pockets.

Repeating the cycle of feeding, observing, confirming, stripping the Thread, and killing as fast as possible, I had ended up slaughtering most of the Sharks in under an hour.

There were a lot of Pellets, but not much use for them. Sharks had so many drawbacks that I couldn’t even use them as feed.

So I scattered them far and wide with a Current.

Within the range of my Current Sense.

[…Food, dropped…]

[….Death…]

[–, ….]

I wouldn’t be surprised if nearly every Deep Sea Creature at this depth had come swarming in.

That was how it felt as countless species flooded toward me, chewing and swallowing the Shark Pellets I had scattered.

I examined each one carefully. Looking for one I could choose. The one that would be most useful.

…Hmm.

‘Nothing stands out.’

There were plenty of curious ones, but none that seemed notably better than the Sharks. Most of them were ones I had already seen during the process of making Deep Sea Creature Pellets.

Nothing had any remarkable traits either. Just as I was wondering if I should go back to tinkering with Sharks…

“…?”

I spotted something extraordinarily unusual among the Deep Sea Creatures.

First of all, it was small.

The smallest of every Deep Sea Creature I had seen. The fist-sized thing extended a tentacle toward a Shark Pellet roughly its own size.

The tentacle stretching from that tiny body reached out nearly several meters. After pulling the Shark Pellet in, the creature immediately swallowed it whole with its minuscule teeth.

But the most distinctive thing about it, by far, was…

…it wasn’t hideous.

It might seem like a strange thing to note, but considering that every single living thing in the Deep Sea without exception was the stuff of nightmares, this creature, with its small black eyes, pinkish body, and a mouth that was neither sharp nor grotesque, was genuinely cute, making it an extremely unusual specimen.

No, it looked more like a stuffed toy than anything else.

I even recognized it. I remembered seeing a related article back on Earth. What was it called again, some kind of octopus…

“…Ah, a Flapjack Octopus.”

Of course, it probably wasn’t an actual Flapjack Octopus. From what I remembered, the real ones didn’t have tentacles that could stretch out to three meters.

Drawn in by its unusual appearance, I approached without thinking and tried feeding it a few Shark Pellets.

[…]

One, three, seven… it ate everything I gave it. Considering that other creatures stopped after a few and given this thing’s body size, it was an incredible glutton.

The way it ate was like a hamster stuffing food into its cheeks, casually shoving the Pellets into its mouth and swallowing without even chewing. I was starting to feel impressed that it looked perfectly fine despite having eaten dozens of times its own body weight when…

“…Huh?”

I noticed something strange.

Despite eating that much, there was no change whatsoever. Puzzled, I grabbed its head and examined it from every angle, eventually spotting tiny teeth that had grown on the tips of its tentacles.

So after eating all of that, this was the extent of the change?

It seemed that the Flapjack Octopus’s defining trait was an absurdly slow rate of trait absorption.

What kind of trait is that? How has this thing even survived? Just as I was furrowing my brow, I saw even those teeth gradually disappear.

‘I see.’

If it were just slow absorption, there would be no advantage at all.

But if absorption was slow and the creature also had a tendency to revert to its original form, that became a significant advantage.

Because in exchange for giving up beneficial traits, it could also reject detrimental ones.

The reason I had only encountered functional Deep Sea Creatures so far, ones that could actually move and behave properly, was probably because every creature that couldn’t had already died.

For example, a Shark whose fins had been armored by eating Clam would have certainly died within five minutes. Naturally, I would never have seen it.

Given that I suspected the leading cause of death among Deep Sea Creatures was eating something biologically incompatible and falling apart, it wasn’t strange at all that a Deep Sea Creature with this kind of evolutionary strategy existed.

Weak and small, but surviving by rejecting everything harmful, a life form that had invested everything solely into survival.

Perhaps because of this, Flapjack Octopuses were extremely few in number. Within this vast range of my Current Sense, I could find only about three.

Just as I was nodding to myself, thinking it made sense for a species that had chosen to spread itself thin and long…

Lightning struck in my mind.

“…Wait a moment.”

Traits from other Deep Sea Creatures were reflected extremely slowly.

Furthermore, absorbed traits diminished over time.

These facts, which had seemed completely useless, suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

“…”

Perhaps.

Lost in thought, I reached out and picked up the Flapjack Octopus by the head as it was busy swallowing Shark Pellets.

[?]

“Sorry, but I’m going to need you to suffer a bit.”

[??]

Force-feeding this creature might be the only way forward, I thought.

***

Several hours later.

I finished all my preparations and stared at the Water Barrier.

-Crrrrk…

An eerie sound rang out, and the surroundings felt much colder. Of course, it wasn’t just a feeling.

There was no time left.

Thirty minutes at most. Once that time was up, I would simply burst and die.

“Phew…”

I drew in a breath, steadied my trembling heart, and set off along the canyon.

At the same time, I stroked the Flapjack Octopus perched on my shoulder, swollen to the point of bursting and quivering uncontrollably.

[………..]

This creature seemed to be a species incapable of speaking the Deep Sea language, but if it could have spoken, I was sure it would have been screaming something like Doom! Doom!

Convinced that a single prick of a needle would make it pop, I used a Current to guide the creature, now swollen to several times its original size and unable to swim, keeping it stuck to my side.

The force-feeding had indeed been a form of torture, just a rather unusual one. I did feel a bit guilty about it, so I had taken every care to make sure it didn’t die.

Like that, guarding the Flapjack Octopus and the Air Bubble that would take me back to reality, I made my way back to the place where I had encountered Ji-eo.

It was time for the decisive battle.

‘I’ve done everything I can.’

In truth, there was still plenty left to do. But I had done my best within the time I was allowed.

Now I just needed to lure Ji-eo out.

But without bait on the scale of a whale, there was no way I could draw out a creature living in such depths.

So, even though I hated it so much I could die…

I had to do it.

[?]

Holding the Flapjack Octopus in my right hand so it wouldn’t go into shock, I stirred a Current and sliced across my own finger.

A slight sting, and blood seeped out.

“Please, come out quickly…”

Nearly praying, I gritted my teeth and let a single drop of blood flow into the Deep Sea.

The blood spread so fast that “disappeared” might have been the more accurate word.

And then.

[….!!!!!]

[[[–, –, —, —!!!!!!]]]

An explosive reaction erupted.

It felt as though every Current Sense in the world had turned toward me. Across every inch of my Current Sense’s range, countless Deep Sea Creatures began reacting with violent, frenzied intensity.

Before, my Current Sense had been too weak to fully perceive it, but now, watching them charge at me like launched missiles, goosebumps crawled across my back.

What on earth was I to these things? Just as I raised a Current to respond, thinking I might as well use this as a warm-up…

[…]

[…….]

[….!]

Every single Deep Sea Creature that had been charging at me stopped dead in its tracks.

As if a cliff had materialized in the middle of the Deep Sea.

The reason was simple.

-Snap!

From the abyss below, deep in the ocean where I was staring, a small sound echoed outward.

A sound that prevented any Deep Sea Creature from coming closer.

Hiding my tension, I split open the Flapjack Octopus’s belly with a Current.

-Pop.

[….!!?!?!?!]

The membrane I had created as an Air Bubble inside the Flapjack Octopus’s stomach, where I had physically stuffed the Pellets to prevent absorption, burst open.

Watching the creature begin to convulse as it swallowed dozens of Deep Sea Creature Pellets I had blended all at once, I forced the corners of my mouth upward.

“Let’s give this a shot.”

Twenty minutes.

That was how long I had until I either brought Ji-eo down or died.