Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

One question still remained.

How on earth did this thing awaken Water Barrier?

“Hey, wrap it around again… no, never mind. Don’t you dare.”

Seeing the black Current slowly enveloping Ji-eo’s body brought back a wave of PTSD.

If it started thrashing around, ignoring commands and all, there’d be no way to deal with it.

Squeezing out what little strength I had left, I moved to the spot where I could most easily pierce Ji-eo’s belly and stood before the eyeless creature, right in front of it.

[…!!]

It raised its pincers. As if readying an attack.

But it was slow. So slow that even the bumps on its carapace registered in my Current Sense, nothing like the Ji-eo that had displayed near-blinding speed just moments ago.

It would take a good thirty seconds for those pincers to reach my head.

I watched the display with indifference, then formed a Spear of Water Pressure.

I wasn’t cruel enough to toy with an opponent that could no longer fight.

[…eo.]

“?”

The Spear of Water Pressure, which even it must have known could cut through steel.

Upon seeing it, the creature suddenly let out a sound.

It could talk?

[Eo, it’s unfair, so I, won’t give up…]

“…What?”

[Unfair, so, I, won’t, give, up.]

It wasn’t just words.

Like that giant octopus, it seemed capable of actual conversation.

Startled, I withdrew the spear and hurriedly replied.

“Wait, you can talk? Can you understand what I’m…”

[Unfair, so…]

“…saying…”

[I won’t give up…]

“…”

No, it couldn’t.

It was just spouting random words like other Deep Sea Creatures, and they’d happened to fit the situation by sheer coincidence.

I let out a sigh and drove the spear back in.

[U-unfair.]

Crack.

Exactly three times.

That was how many strikes it took to punch a hole through Ji-eo’s soft belly.

The creature writhed in agony. Cracks began spreading across its carapace as it curled inward, gradually contorting.

Even without the Water Barrier, its outer shell was far from soft. No, it actually looked far harder than most Water Barriers. The Water Barrier hadn’t been for protection; it had given this Ji-eo the wings of blazing speed.

Right. Thinking about it that way, this absurd level of strength made sense. Originally, the price for that impossibly hard carapace and crushing pincer strength was a slow body, but the Water Barrier had solved that penalty, letting it convert all that raw power directly into speed and become a monster.

‘…But then, does that mean eating it won’t do much?’

Swallowing my unease, I waited until the creature compressed into a Ji-eo Pill.

Other creatures had been compressed in an instant, but this one took a long time, no doubt because of that hardness.

Eventually, it became a reasonably light Ji-eo Pill, about five centimeters across.

“Let’s see…”

I clutched the Ji-eo Pill and fell deep into thought.

This was something I absolutely had to think through before eating it.

“Is it even possible for a Deep Sea Creature to awaken magic…?”

The Abyss Realm is a Fallen’s World, born from the descent of a World.

A World belongs to a wizard. So ultimately, this meant the fish had awakened magic, but since it had no eyes, I hadn’t been able to check for stars.

On top of that, the World this creature had been using was unmistakably Water Barrier.

It looked slightly different, but it was mine. I didn’t want to believe that a World as specialized for the Deep Sea as Water Barrier could exist in someone other than me.

How? By what means?

‘If this really is the body of a wizard, I’d rather not put it in my mouth.’

Even setting that aside, if I had no assurance it would help, I couldn’t shove something of unknown nature into my mouth. You don’t drink seawater just because you’re thirsty.

If some bizarre trait manifested, like becoming that slow or having my hands turn into pincers, it would be a net loss. I’d only attempted this because I thought Ji-eo’s trait, which I hadn’t known was Water Barrier, might help with my Water Pressure.

But if I didn’t eat it, the whole reason for hunting it would be gone… As I deliberated, something caught my eye.

White bones.

“These are still here.”

This area was where I’d first seen Ji-eo.

The spot where that grotesque Whale, which had been pulling countless Deep Sea Creature corpses from its mouth and sweeping the floor, had been hunted by Ji-eo. The bones of the Deep Sea Creatures the Whale had spat out remained right where they’d fallen.

Shouldn’t the Water Pressure have ground them to dust and dissolved them into the water by now? As I stared at the bones with curiosity, something suddenly clicked in my mind.

‘Come to think of it, that thing was pretty strange too.’

I hadn’t given it much thought since Ji-eo had overshadowed everything, but the way it pulled corpses from its mouth to steal their food had been every bit as bizarre as Ji-eo.

I’d been too fixated on Ji-eo at the time to pay much attention…

Crouching atop the Canyon, I touched the bones, then swept my Current Sense over the tentacles that had been controlling them.

“…Huh?”

My Current Sense picked up something strange.

I lightly split a tentacle open with a spear and looked at what was inside.

At the center of the tentacle was a Thread.

…A white Thread, the exact same color as the one that had been tied around my finger.

“Could this be…”

As I touched the Thread, a chill ran down my spine at the all-too-familiar sensation.

There was no doubt. This was the Puppet ability.

That Whale had been using the Puppet ability to control Deep Sea Creatures. Just like me. It was such an obvious power that it was strange I hadn’t realized it sooner.

…But how had that creature done it?

As I mulled it over, a single possibility flashed through my mind.

Puppet and Water Barrier. If they were completely different Worlds, that would be one thing, but these two Worlds had something in common.

They existed within the Deep Sea.

“…”

Assimilation.

The Deep Sea sinks everything. If something had sunk into it, then it was a part of the Deep Sea.

Deep Sea Creatures could wield the Deep Sea. Because they were Residents of that World.

In other words, things submerged in the World called the Deep Sea would gradually become known to the Deep Sea Creatures as well…

They became traits.

“Holy shit.”

The profanity escaped on its own.

It was a hypothesis held together by little more than guesswork, but without something like this, there was no explanation for why Deep Sea Creatures used only Puppet and Water Barrier out of all the countless Worlds that existed. At the very least, the underlying mechanism had to be something similar.

Once my thoughts reached that point, the pill in front of me started to feel like a random loot box.

‘So eating this means there’s a certain chance I could gain Water Barrier.’

A certain chance.

Not exactly a reassuring phrase. My skin might turn into carapace. My eyes might disappear.

“…Doesn’t matter.”

That much was good enough.

I’d long since abandoned any desire to survive with my body intact.

Crunch.

I bit into the Fish Pill and swallowed.

The moment it slid down my throat, an intensely unpleasant sensation of it dissolving in my stomach washed over my entire body.

Soon, my body began to burn with fever.

“Ugh…”

Adding a fever on top of my already wrecked body made my mind hazy.

But I gritted my teeth, resisted, and endured. If I collapsed here, all that suffering would have been for nothing.

Thankfully, the fever subsided just as quickly as it had appeared.

And then, my vision vanished.

“?”

I’d had a flame lit with magic in my other hand. It was still there, yet suddenly everything I could see with my naked eyes had disappeared.

I tilted my head in confusion, then realized what had happened and scowled.

“No way, the eyes? That’s what I got?”

A dud. The worst possible dud.

It seemed Ji-eo’s utterly useless eyeless trait had manifested.

At least I had Current Sense, so it only amounted to losing my ability to see the world with my naked eyes. I sighed and pushed my Current Sense harder.

That was when I realized it wasn’t simply blindness.

“…Huh?”

Something around my body was different.

It seemed to be filled with some kind of dark water.

I hurried over to where Ji-eo had been.

One step, two steps, three steps… Even after walking for quite a while, I felt no resistance, and only then did it hit me.

“…The color changed.”

My Water Barrier, which had been transparent, had turned black. As if declaring that sight was no longer necessary.

Would this color persist on the outside too? That would be a problem, I thought, and cautiously raised my hand.

Water Barrier was still a World that belonged to me. If so, I should be able to control it.

As I felt along my Water Barrier and recognized it as my own, I was able to drain the black water out. In an instant, Ji-eo’s black color vanished, and my vision opened up again.

At the same time, the pressure I felt changed.

My body was light.

This wasn’t a sensation possible in the deepest part of the Deep Sea.

A sense of liberation I hadn’t even felt on the outside now washed over me in these deep waters.

“Haah…”

A sigh laced with relief escaped on its own. The gamble had paid off.

What I’d gained from hunting and killing Ji-eo was the Water Barrier it had wielded.

It seemed fate wasn’t so eager to let me die after all. I sat slumped in the Canyon for a while, catching my breath without even a moment to celebrate.

In the end, I’d charged in headfirst knowing nothing, and somehow managed to stumble upon a solution.

Of course, not all problems were solved.

No. If anything, even more problems had emerged.

‘So does this mean Deep Sea Creatures are going to start running around with Water Barrier and Puppet now?’

There didn’t seem to be many like that yet, but starting with Ji-eo and the Whale, countless creatures would awaken Worlds and become far more ferocious.

And all the while, I kept sinking deeper into the Deep Sea. Probably even now.

‘I want to rest, but…’

Time inside the Deep Sea was suffocating with pressure. Between the sleepless exhaustion and everything else, all I wanted was to collapse into a bed and rest for a while, but…

I had to check now.

What kind of hell awaited where I was falling.

Whether there were more creatures with Water Barrier, and whether I could hunt them down the same way to survive at even greater depths.

Only then could I go back and search for a more efficient solution. I forced my aching body upright and pushed deeper into the Canyon.

Deeper, and deeper still.

Blub, blub, blub…

The farther I descended, the fewer Deep Sea Creatures there were.

And proportionally, my jaw dropped further.

‘…This is incredible.’

Up until now, I’d compared my Water Barrier to a diving suit.

But after consuming Ji-eo’s, it felt like it had transformed into something closer to a submersible.

Granted, the pressure still intensified the deeper I went. But whereas before it had been the sensation of a diving suit being crushed, the pressure transferring directly to my body, now it felt more like being inside a gradually shrinking submersible, poked painfully by its edges.

The latter was still plenty terrible, but compared to the sensation of having my entire body wrung through a compressor, it was nothing. It even gave me the illusion that I could descend to the very deepest depths.

Yes, of course it was an illusion.

“Hmm…”

I’d been descending for a long time, but the Abyss was endlessly deep. At some point, I became certain that going any further would deal dangerous levels of damage to my Water Barrier.

Yet a smile crept across my face all the same.

This was a tremendous achievement.

‘At this rate, I think I could last more than half a year.’

I’d descended for nearly two hours and this was the result. No matter how fast I was sinking, there was no doubt I’d been granted an enormous amount of time.

And with the Empire’s Princess and the greatest wizard backing me, that amount of time would be enough to accomplish anything.

‘I think I’m starting to see what I should be aiming for.’

I felt like I’d finally found a clear path forward.

Deep Sea Creatures possessing Water Barrier. I’d caught just one, and already the results were this dramatic.

At first, I’d thought stronger Deep Sea Creatures would only work against me, but after seeing the effect, I couldn’t help but change my mind.

If I could keep descending deeper, track down the Deep Sea Creatures enduring those depths with Water Barrier, and hunt them… then yes.

Maybe I could reach the very bottom of the Deep Sea and still survive.

The most certain escape of all. Survival at the point where there was nowhere left to fall.

For the first time in the deepest, darkest place, I felt the flicker of hope.

[……………………………….]

The moment I was clenching my fists, lost in elation.

At the very edge of my Current Sense. Something registered in the deepest part of the Abyss.

“What’s this…”

The end of the Canyon.

The bottom.

I could feel it.

“…”

After a moment’s deliberation, I swallowed a World-Sealing Pill and pushed myself to reach the bottom, even if it meant overexerting.

Just in case it might be the end of the Deep Sea.

The odds were low, of course. I had no expectation of conquering the Deep Sea this easily, but since it was the first solid ground I’d encountered outside the Canyon walls, I couldn’t just leave it alone.

Splat.

The moment my bare feet touched the very bottom, I felt something sticky.

Other than that, it was just a floor with nothing else on it. I struck the ground a few times, then tilted my head when I realized it was softer than expected.

Whatever made up this ground clearly wasn’t ordinary soil. After a moment of thought, I formed a spear of Current.

‘Could this soil be something special?’

The soil at the very bottom of the Deep Sea.

If I brought it back, maybe Dersia could analyze it and produce some kind of result. With that thought, I lightly jabbed the spear in.

That instant.

“?!”

Rumble, rumble…

The opposite wall of the Canyon suddenly began to move.

At an insane speed. I leapt upward in a panic and stared in disbelief as the Canyon wall pulled away to the opposite side.

“What the… what is this?”

It wasn’t just the wall in front of me that had vanished. The entire surface of the Canyon walls began retreating from each other at tremendous speed, as if repelled by mutual hatred.

And that wasn’t all. The entire Deep Sea shook violently.

Unable to comprehend what was happening, I scrambled upward and activated my Current Sense.

Clutching a Bubble of Reality tightly, ready to escape at any moment.

“…?”

After confirming what my Current Sense told me.

At first, I couldn’t even recognize what I was looking at.

Truly, I couldn’t make any sense of it.

“…Huh?”

The floor of the opened Canyon.

That black surface was shifting and moving.

“Th, this…”

I clenched my trembling hands, my face drained of color.

Of course it was alive and moving.

A colossal eye.

That was what the bottom of the Canyon had been.

The Canyon had been nothing more than the eyelid of that being.

Its size was so incomprehensible that without seeing it firsthand, it would have been dismissed as a metaphor or a joke. Even my Current Sense, extended to its absolute limit, could only perceive the tiniest fraction of that eye.

[………………………………]

When that eye looked directly at me, and I watched its pupil narrow into a vertical slit, I finally understood.

What a foolish delusion I’d been living in.

“…It’s deep.”

The Deep Sea was deep.

Far deeper than I’d imagined.

Far, far deeper.