Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

The Subjugation Force was assembled with the knights I wanted.

However, the Knight Commanders didn’t come. Naturally so, since they were in positions to give orders. They lent out their knights but didn’t come in person.

With one exception.

“Sir Jahan, why have you come?”

“Haha, I wanted to be of help to you, Sir Jern.”

The hearty Knight Commander, who had shown signs of liking me from the very start, said this with a booming laugh.

He had made such an earnest appeal about wanting to come that I’d had no choice but to bring him along.

Well, a Knight Commander would be more useful than the regular knights anyway. Chatting with him for a while, I made my way toward the last place where we’d made a deal with Rakshasa.

I’d thought we might be ambushed, but nothing happened during the journey there.

Right, nothing, until we arrived.

“…Blood Scent.”

“Yes. I caught it too. Let’s go right away.”

The moment we arrived, the stench of death hit us instantly. Running with the knights whose faces had hardened, we reached the place, and…

A grisly scene lay before us.

“To commit such a cruel and savage act…”

“Tsk, it’s hard to watch.”

Each of the knights furrowed their brows and shook their heads, surveying the carnage with pitying looks.

Indeed, the butchered corpses gathered together by body part made for a sight grotesque enough to induce nausea.

“Sir Jern. So you do think this is the work of Rakshasa?”

Jahan asked with a grimace.

After briefly examining those body parts, I shrugged and answered.

“Yes, well… if you really have to ask?”

“I thought as much. What will you do?”

“We’ll have to bury them before we go.”

At those words, the Knight Commander’s expression softened with a hint of warmth.

“Indeed, we can’t leave them like this. To lay the souls of the dead to rest…”

It seemed he was seriously misunderstanding something.

I immediately drew the dagger I was carrying and hurled it at one of the pieces.

-Thunk!

Nice shot.

A resentful, still-open-eyed head had a dagger planted in its forehead, and blood streamed out.

As the knights stood there dumbstruck, mouths hanging open, I was the first to speak.

“What a filthy hobby. Get up.”

“…Hmm. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who was wary of a corpse.”

The face with the dagger stuck in it produced a voice in an instant, letting out a small chuckle.

I’d seen this with Aksha too, but how did they make sound without any lungs?

“Wh-what the-”

“Am I dreaming right now…”

As the corpse pieces slowly began to move and piece themselves together, the knights watched the scene with eyes wide open.

Hands that leapt across the ground on their own, rolling heads, walking feet, all gathered together to form four ordinary-looking people. A farmer, an old man, even a small child, the sort one might see anywhere.

They looked so plain that no one would have been able to pick them out from a village crowd. Among them, a heavily wrinkled old man walked up with a friendly smile.

“So you must be Jern. How did you know?”

“I happened to run into one of your comrades recently.”

“…That’d be Aksha. And we picked out the finest we could for him too. Pathetic thing.”

As he naturally closed the distance between us, the knights finally came to their senses and drew their blades.

“Halt! Come any closer and we’ll cut you down!”

“Sir Jern! Please step back!”

“I’m fine. For now, just surround the perimeter. It looks like he has something to say. We can kill them after we’ve heard it out.”

“Hmm…”

When I raised my hand and waved the knights off, the old man stroked his chin with an amused look.

“Far younger and far shrewder than I expected. How did you figure out we meant to talk?”

“If you’d come to fight or to assassinate, there’s no way only the likes of you would have shown up.”

“Ho, you’re quite confident.”

“It’s a logical judgment. I hear you lot are madmen who’ll mix and study anything to get stronger.”

I didn’t know what method Rakshasa had used, but they had succeeded in granting Aksha the abilities of a Fallen.

It was something even Dersia hadn’t been able to do. Which meant sufficient research on the Fallen had been carried out.

“Then you must also know what I am.”

“…”

When I lightly pinned down the old man’s arm, his expression turned cold.

“Four of you isn’t nearly enough. If you’re sane, you didn’t come to fight.”

“Yes, that’s right. I’d like to talk. First, would you mind removing this restraint?”

“No. If you slip up even slightly, I’ll pulp you instantly. So no, I can’t do that.”

“Haah…”

The old man let out a sigh and, as if there was nothing else for it, spoke up.

“There seems to be a small misunderstanding between us, and I’d like to extend an invitation.”

“Invitation? Where to?”

“Deva. Our headquarters, if that gets the point across.”

“Hm. That much I can manage.”

The plan was to go there and kill them all anyway. When I readily accepted, the old man broke into a wide, gummy smile.

“However, Jern. You must come alone.”

“There’s no point in listening any further.”

Jahan immediately clenched his teeth and stepped forward.

“That’s essentially a demand for a hostage. Let’s slaughter these bastards and hunt down this Deva place…”

“Knight. Don’t worry. Dull-witted fools like you wouldn’t understand, but we can’t kill that man Jern. He himself probably knows.”

That was true.

But there was no way the same rules would apply in a headquarters where who knew what had been done.

I tilted my head in disbelief and asked.

“And why exactly should I accept this invitation?”

“Well, if you’re that uneasy, we’ll offer ourselves up as hostages as well.”

-Crunch. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the old man thrust his hand into his chest.

A blood-drenched heart was extracted. The problem was that the old man still hadn’t died, and the heart was thumping away outside his body.

“These are our hearts. Even we can’t live if our hearts burst. We’ll entrust them to you, so…”

“Oh? Shall I test that?”

-Crunch!

I immediately burst the heart the old man had taken out with a blast of Water Pressure.

The old man’s face drained of color in an instant. He looked at me with a sour expression, then clutched at his throat, thrashed in agony, and- collapsed to the floor.

“…”

Looking through Current Sense, this time he really had become a dead corpse.

As I stared in disbelief, the farmer-looking Rakshasa assassin who had been silently listening beside him stepped forward and pulled out his own heart.

“Proof enough? I’d rather you not burst mine.”

“What if I burst every one of them until all of you die?”

“Then you won’t be receiving our invitation. For your information, Deva isn’t in this area. You won’t find it no matter how hard you search.”

“Hm…”

“You see, our numbers aren’t exactly large. If you were to kill all of us here, Rakshasa would suffer an enormous blow. In that case, we’d have to go into hiding for a while to prevent further losses.”

-Crunch, crunch, crunch.

The other Rakshasa assassins also tore out their hearts without hesitation and tossed them over.

“So consider this our repayment for the knights we killed, and make your choice. Will you kill us all here and put an end to it, or will you accept the invitation?”

They had come here prepared to die.

Certainly, killing four Rakshasa members and going back wouldn’t be nothing in terms of results.

But any of them whose roots weren’t pulled out would keep watching for an opening from somewhere.

That was what bothered me most. I sighed and tossed the hearts carelessly into my Workshop.

“Fine. I’ll go alone.”

“Sir Jern!”

“Don’t worry. No matter what situation comes up, I can at least get myself out.”

That wasn’t an empty boast.

Even if they’d tampered with Fallen, in the end they weren’t at a level to match me.

***

After being led away by Rakshasa and separating from the knights.

The Rakshasa assassins walked along with expressionless faces, then found some abandoned house and went inside.

Inside was a small underground door. Incredulous, I asked again.

“I thought you said Deva wasn’t in this area?”

“That was a lie.”

“…”

Should I just flee, now that I knew the location?

Thinking this over, I considered the possibility that they might abandon the place and flee as well, then sighed and descended underground.

The place I reached after crawling through a narrow earthen tunnel wasn’t so much the headquarters of a legendary assassin group spanning several hundred years as a massive dark chamber filled with stagnant air, as though a mutant mole had dug it out.

Of course, since I had Current Sense running, I could see everything inside.

“…Disgusting.”

Nothing beyond that came to mind.

The chamber was filled with a stench. And no wonder, since there wasn’t a single living person inside.

There was no furniture, no lanterns, nothing that would be needed for a human to live.

All that was there were pieces of corpses.

What was different from before was- the sheer scale of it.

Tens of thousands of legs and feet, arms, heads, tongues, and every sort of organ were moving slowly through pools of blood, producing clacking and squelching, bursting sounds.

It was the first time I’d ever wanted to switch off Current Sense. Though even so, the scene burned into my mind wouldn’t fade.

“Sorry for showing you such a filthy sight. This is more comfortable for us, you see.”

As I covered my nose, a handsome youth with long blue hair suddenly appeared beside me and apologized with a gentle smile.

“Are you the leader of Rakshasa?”

“There’s no concept of a leader here. But in terms of setting our objectives, well… it’s similar, I suppose. Call me Latri.”

“What the hell is all this mess?”

From seeing Aksha survive with only his head remaining, I’d already roughly guessed they had the trait of being able to detach their bodies.

But these corpse pieces were something I could hardly bear to look at with both eyes open.

“Ah… I’m not all that fond of it myself, you know.”

Latri scratched his head and sighed, then waved his hand to send the moving pieces away.

“Every person has different talents. It can’t be helped.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

When the absurd answer made me scowl, he laid out his philosophy a little more helpfully.

“In the end, talent can’t help being tied to the body, right? So if you borrow a talented body and attach it in place of your own, you can borrow that talent to a degree, even if not perfectly.”

“Are you insane?”

“Take it up with my ancestors, not me. At first they went with a sort of cyborg approach, just cutting off an arm and replacing it with a sword… but in the end they realized they couldn’t beat talented humans that way, so they shifted to this method. It’s unsightly, but what can you do.”

Letting out a dry laugh at his tone, which genuinely sounded resigned, I scanned my surroundings.

There was no escape route. Not for me, and not for them.

If this was all there was, it would end faster than I’d expected, but- there was still something I needed to find out.

I slowly stepped closer to Latri, who seemed to feel more goodwill toward me than I’d anticipated, and asked.

“So, what’s the reason you invited me to this dump?”

“Did you know? The empire has made deals with us before. They tried to borrow our techniques to make their knights stronger. We gladly agreed.”

“I’d prefer you answer the question I actually asked.”

“The point is that both sides profited from it. The empire created those things they call Heaven’s Judgement Knights, and we learned the knights’ techniques and grew stronger still.”

Even in the face of the sharp threat, Latri kept smiling and said only what he wanted to say.

“I apologize for using somewhat extreme methods and harming your knights. But we can cooperate in a way that benefits both sides.”

“Oh? Go on.”

“It’s faster if I show you.”

“…?”

The Rakshasa clapped his palms. Then something began to approach from far off.

For something he was presenting so proudly, it was just a severed wrist carrying about five heads.

“Ugh, uhh…”

“Kuh.”

“Heh heh, heh…”

Heads that were giggling vacantly as if out of their minds, choking, or groaning in torment.

What were these things? Why was he showing me this? As I examined the heads with those thoughts- a chill slowly crept down my spine.

These ones.

Weren’t Rakshasa assassins.

“You, don’t tell me.”

“Here, watch.”

With a face as innocent as a child showing off a trick to its parents, Latri scratched his palm.

“…Gh, gyaaah, gyaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

The head that had been giggling vacantly suddenly began shedding tears of blood and writhing in agony.

At the same time, the blood flowing from Latri’s palm slowly returned to its place, and the wound began to heal.

“Well? Useful, isn’t it?”

“…”

“Rakshasa and Fallen bodies have remarkable compatibility, you see. In the end, it’s the original body that bears the strain.”

Only then did it hit me. Rakshasa wasn’t receiving something from the Fallen.

It was, quite simply, the Fallen’s body itself.

Rather than discovering the Fallen after the Crimson Circle became active and forming a symbiotic relationship with them-

they were simply hunting Fallen one-sidedly and using them.

“Are they alive?”

“They can’t be allowed to die, after all.”

Latri, who had been smirking slyly, soon turned serious and muttered.

“I said we could cooperate, didn’t I? We’d like you to keep the Fallen you hunt at the Crimson Circle alive, as much as possible, and hand them over. The Crimson Circle targets you lot, so no matter what we do, we can’t get to them.”

“And the price?”

“We’re assassins, so in the end, killing someone is the only thing we can offer.”

He shrugged and replied with a smirk.

“The extermination of the Crimson Circle and every Fallen affiliated with it. Would that do?”

“Interesting.”

“Heh, I’m glad I kept the knights out of this. I had a feeling you’d be someone I could reason with.”

I had only one thing to say in return.

“What’s really interesting is how badly you’ve misjudged your own position.”

“…What?”

Rakshasa-

were far stupider than I’d thought.