Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

After entering the Deep Sea and coming back out.

Every now and then, a thought would cross my mind.

Now that my Water Barrier had grown much thicker and I could wield the power of deeper depths…

Maybe, just maybe. Could my fangs finally reach the Heaven’s Judgement Knights, or those who lived at even greater heights, the ones I’d never dared to challenge before?

When I brought it up to Dersia, this was the answer I got.

“It’s hard to say.”

“What?”

“Your Current Sense is undeniably a superior ability, one without equal. However, a slight flaw exists in the fact that the one wielding it is you, Jern.”

She casually continued with words I thought were a bit much. “In the end, even if you can sense it through Current Sense, reacting is the problem. If another knight gained Current Sense, they could dodge a sword strike right in front of their nose. But if you were attacked by a knight within a certain range, your head would fly off at the same moment you reacted.”

“As I expected.”

I wasn’t disappointed. I’d already anticipated as much.

But Dersia didn’t stop there. She slowly rested her chin on her hand.

“Still, yes, if it’s the current you… with that level of Current Sense, if you can observe your opponent and wait for an opening.”

“You should be able to recognize the moment a single ambush would succeed.”

At the time, I didn’t quite understand what that meant.

Not that an ambush would succeed, but that I’d recognize the moment it could succeed.

‘…So that’s what she meant.’

I swallowed hard as I watched Balkan’s head roll across the ground, slowly staining the snowfield.

It was only an instant, but as I watched Balkan turn his back, I felt it.

His muscle fibers, the angle of the embedded sword, the hand he extended, the tips of his moving feet, the direction of his gaze… with all of it laid bare before me.

No matter how fast he was, as long as it wasn’t several times faster than a loosed arrow, there would be one decisive cut that would land without fail.

I felt that moment within my grasp.

“…”

-Thud.

Watching Balkan slowly collapse face-first to the ground, I quietly clenched my teeth.

Had I killed an innocent knight?

Or had I correctly solved Dersia’s puzzle?

The moment I decided that if it was the former, I’d pin all the blame on that damn elf, the fallen Balkan’s body began to writhe grotesquely.

At first I thought it was rigor mortis, but…

“…Gkh.”

When I saw it slowly begin to move, picking up its head, I let out a sigh.

It seemed I’d gotten the right answer after all.

“You crazy son of a bitch…”

Lump, having taken Balkan’s form, glared at me while holding Balkan’s, no, his own head.

It was a thoroughly bizarre sight, a head with no neck attached, blood streaming down, opening its mouth to produce sound. He drew his sword with a mix of half disbelief and half fury, and asked.

“Are you insane? Do you have any idea what it means to kill a Guardian Knight? It’s the same as declaring war on the Empire.”

“Her Highness the Princess has been looking out for me in certain ways, so…”

I spoke while crushing the ground where he stood with Water Pressure.

-Boom!

“Oh my, how dangerous.”

But perhaps because he possessed the body of a Guardian Knight, he easily slipped backward to dodge, then flashed a sleazy grin.

“…a certain degree of discourtesy can be forgiven.”

“You really have gotten more accustomed to the Deep Sea. Maybe I should’ve killed you sooner.”

“Don’t take me for a fool. You never could have killed me.”

From the moment Lump had met me, I was always at Dersia and Brimdal’s side.

Even if I failed to notice an ambush, those two would. If he’d drawn his sword on me during this journey, Lump would have been dismantled into a lump of flesh on the spot.

“There was exactly one moment you could’ve killed me, right when we first arrived at this mountain… but you didn’t.”

“Heh, defeat stings quite a bit, you know.”

Lump had fought me before. In a knight’s body.

Back then, he was able to spot and deal with the Water Foam that preceded my attacks.

Having that experience, in the carriage he realized my Current Sense range had increased dramatically. And after confirming it once more through a stitch test, he must have become certain of one thing.

I spoke a sentence that even I could tell was laced with confidence.

“Smart choice. Ambushes don’t work on me.”

“…”

To be precise, it was only possible while my Inner World was deployed.

But Lump didn’t know that. He’d been under the misconception that I possessed the ability to foresee any knight’s attack, so instead of ambush, he’d apparently chosen to lure me.

-Boom, boom! After dodging several bursts of Water Pressure, he flashed a revolting smile.

And spoke even more revolting words.

“Hmm… no matter how I think about it, you and I are alike.”

“That’s the most disgusting insult I’ve ever heard.”

If it was a provocation, it worked. As I deployed Water Pressure in every direction to crush him with full force, Lump retreated and muttered.

“Going to deny it? Fine by me. But from where I stand, we look no different, both of us killers who follow orders.”

“…What?”

“That’s right, your master got the answer. I’m Lump. But you know… up until then, I was also Balkan.”

“…”

“You know me.”

He muttered with that revolting smile on his face.

“Balkan was a real person. I left this guy completely untouched for years so he wouldn’t be detected by the Priestess’s prophecy. Until you killed him. He was the real Balkan, and you killed him after seeing something your elf master left behind, didn’t you?”

“…”

“In the end, the two of us are no different. We both kill people on someone else’s orders.”

Lump roughly placed his head back on top of his neck. It stuck as if glued, and blood slowly trickled down, staining below.

Looking like a well-made Halloween decoration, he extended his hand and made a serious demand.

“Deep Sea, how about joining us? A new world where you can achieve anything you desire…”

“What a joke.”

“…What?”

“You think I killed you just because Dersia told me to?”

It was true that Dersia had informed me Balkan was an enemy.

But I had no right to pass judgment on someone based solely on another person’s word.

No one does.

I acted because I was certain.

“You might not realize it, coming from whatever garbage world you crawled out of. This Burden isn’t normal.”

“…?”

“A world blanketed in snow that never melts, sure, that’s within the realm of possibility. But spreading a delay in cognition over this wide an area? That’s impossible.”

A Burden on par with or exceeding my Water Pressure.

Even when I first noticed it, I’d found it strange that such a range could blanket the entire world.

If something like that were truly possible, then destroying the world would be a trivially simple matter.

There was a hidden secret.

“You moved Decay here.”

Lump could use his ability to transport Upper Tier members.

He’d sent Decay the same way when we first met.

“While I was digging through the ground, you seized the moment I left my Current Sense range, transformed into Decay, and cast the Burden.”

The Burden had appeared only after that. If it were truly proportional to distance, I should have felt it gradually intensify the closer I got to this mountain.

Of course, there’d been no such sign at all.

“Yes, Dersia told me. But I didn’t just believe it. I assumed the possibility it was true and worked from there. And as a result, several inconsistencies fell into place.”

“…”

“This was my judgment. I didn’t follow anyone’s orders. Satisfied?”

“…Tch. I knew this kind of thing wasn’t my style.”

Lump seemed to realize that further persuasion was pointless. He scratched his head, let out a sigh, and then… vanished.

“?!”

I immediately pushed my Current Sense to its absolute limit and swept the surroundings. Faint footprints appeared, and I could detect Lump’s movements.

But despite that, his figure remained invisible. It was camouflage so perfect it sent chills down my spine.

“Ambushes don’t work, you said. That’s true. If it were a knight, they couldn’t reach your body.”

“This bastard…!”

Balkan hadn’t been lying.

His stealth skills far surpassed those of any ordinary knight.

‘No problem.’

It was fine. If he couldn’t touch my body, it was all for nothing anyway.

I immediately deployed my Inner World and released the Current Sense I’d been suppressing, without any restraint whatsoever.

Current Sense began tracking Balkan with even greater precision. If he approached, I could crush him instantly.

However…

“But, this guy isn’t a knight.”

-Fwip!

“…Ugh!”

Balkan hadn’t closed in at all.

Instead, he was launching something from long range at tremendous speed. I barely managed to catch it with Water Pressure and examined it. An ice spike, crafted from snow.

‘…He compressed the snow.’

Sharp spikes then poured in from every direction without pause.

-Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

I was catching them one by one with Water Pressure, but realizing this would go on forever, I simply pressed Water Pressure down onto myself.

“Oh ho?”

“…”

It was as effective as it was painful.

Every spike flying toward me froze in midair and hung limp, and even if Balkan approached, he’d meet the same fate.

I’d succeeded in defending, but Lump just grinned at his leisure and chattered on.

“Not bad. But will that really be enough?”

“…Enough for what.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd? The elf and the dwarf. Neither one has shown up.”

Lump was grinning slyly, and infuriatingly, he was telling the truth.

Indeed, Dersia, who had been fighting Decay, had vanished somewhere, and Brimdal hadn’t arrived.

Something had clearly happened. I needed to regroup with them.

“Well, I’d love it if you just stayed like this.”

Moving unpredictably to avoid being caught by my Water Pressure and tossing meaningless spikes, Lump pinned me down as though that were his sole purpose.

This was bad. In the end, this was Decay’s domain. Staying still only put me at a greater disadvantage.

“Whew…”

I paused to take a breath, then checked the range of Lump’s movements.

Would this work?

‘Probably not…’

Then I’d have to make it work.

“…?”

Suddenly, the snow-covered ground began to sink.

Lump stared in bewilderment at the ground gradually caving in beneath him, then his face twisted with alarm as he immediately leapt backward.

“You crazy bastard, do you have a death wish?”

“Beats me.”

“What?”

“Let’s find out right now.”

Using Current Sense in Inner World state without any limits in this world had felt like my brain was about to burst from the overload of information.

Then what would happen if I activated Water Pressure in Inner World state without any limits?

I’d never tested it before. Unlike the former, where the worst case was a headache, the latter was directly tied to my life.

And my life was my favorite thing to gamble with.

“Shit…!”

Realizing he couldn’t escape the collapsing area no matter how far he leapt, always a hair’s breadth short, Lump spun around and charged straight at me.

But it was far too late. Watching Lump rush toward me, I murmured quietly.

“Be crushed.”

-Crack, cr-cr-cr-crack!!!!

Beside the black line Dersia had carved, a dot appeared.

The base of the mountain, stripped of snow, was colored the same shade as the line due to the rotted trees.

“Blurghhh…”

I retched everything I’d eaten onto it.

It wasn’t by choice. The sensation was like having my entire body wrung out like a rag, far beyond the level where I could decide to endure it or not.

Drip, drip… Watching the tears of blood that flowed on their own and the bloodshot tips of my fingernails, I muttered.

“…Manageable.”

My condition was at its worst.

But considering the sight I’d created, I’d gotten it for an absurdly cheap price.

A massive cavern lay submerged in darkness.

Walls of snow over a dozen meters tall cast their shadow. That was how deep the snow had been piled, and the sheer cliff-like walls, carved away except for the part I’d pressed down, clearly marked the extent of the range.

Turning my gaze forward, I saw Lump, who’d been charging and got crushed mid-stride, spitting blood and gasping violently for air.

“Gah, hck… you… you crazy bastard… khaha…”

He burst into laughter while lying facedown, as if he’d given up.

“You did this… across this entire range… all of it…?”

A radius of several hundred meters.

His question was whether I’d applied enough Water Pressure across all of it to kill a knight of Balkan’s caliber.

I slowly nodded in confirmation.

“Seems so.”

“Should’ve killed you when I had the chance…”

“If you’re going to regret it, do it fast.”

I raised a hand that felt ready to burst and aimed it at him.

“Yeah? And what are you going to do?”

“…”

“You can’t kill me anyway… heh, heh…”

The situation had come full circle.

Crushing him to death would be easy enough for me now.

But it was meaningless. He would have hidden another body somewhere nearby.

Neutralize Lump without killing him… but how?

It would be nice to knock him unconscious, but he still possessed a knight’s body. Even with what strength he had left, the moment I tried anything, he had more than enough to take his own life.

Then I’d have to face Lump again in a fresh knight’s body while I was in this wretched state.

In the end, it was a matter of location. If his goal was to keep me pinned here, breaking free would be difficult.

‘Is there no choice but to kill him quickly and move before the next Lump shows up?’

A plan left to chance. Utterly pointless if one of his bodies was somewhere nearby.

But staying put wasn’t an option either. I slowly began building Water Pressure, about to give him exactly what he wanted.

Then.

Lump suddenly grabbed his own neck.

That alone wouldn’t have been strange. He could have been trying to kill himself, figuring I was about to knock him out.

“…?”

But Lump’s expression was wrong.

Even though his own hand was gripping his own neck, he was trembling, as if he couldn’t comprehend what he’d just done.

“You…”

“So this is it.”

Before I could even form a question, he spoke.

“What?”

“This must have been the resolution His Majesty desired.”

…In a voice of utmost gravity and resolve.