Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

I didn’t particularly feel any sense of kinship toward the Fallen.

But I still had enough compassion left in me, as a human, to show some mercy.

“Rest.”

-Crunch, crack!

I reached out and lightly burst the Fallen’s head.

The heads that had been groaning in pain… Latri, even now, said nothing in response as he watched the original owner of the body he inhabited being destroyed.

“Aren’t you going to stop me? If there’s a better body out there, now would be the time to switch over.”

“…Because I’m no fool. We have ears everywhere. I heard about what you did. So we’re basically rats trapped in a jar, aren’t we?”

“Well, pretty much.”

“Then what’s the point of resisting when you could kill us all with a flick of your finger? If you want to, go ahead. Do as you please.”

“…”

Latri, who had said this more cheerfully than expected, raised both hands as if to surrender.

What the hell is this guy?

I cycled through my Current Sense several times, but there was nowhere for them to run. Just as he’d said, bringing me here was no different from begging me to kill them.

And after all that, the only thing they’d prepared was this ridiculous attempt at persuasion?

Something this absurd actually felt suspicious. As I examined my surroundings more carefully, Latri, still with his hands raised, spoke up as if curious about something.

“By the way, mind if I ask you something I’ve been wondering about?”

“Go ahead.”

“I thought it was a pretty reasonable offer. Why did you turn it down?”

“Simple. Even if I brought you the corpses of the Crimson Circle, it wouldn’t help you.”

“Hm? Why not?”

“What’s the point of adding more small fry just to deal with small fry?”

In the end, the Crimson Circle’s biggest problem was the Great World.

Monsters who could single-handedly rewrite the laws of the world.

Everything else was just a side factor. At the very least, in that fight, there was no help I could expect from some petty Assassin group like this.

“To begin with, you killed Knights. Why should I cooperate with murderers?”

“You killed some of us too, didn’t you?”

“The scales still aren’t balanced. When mere Assassins kill even one Knight, wiping out the whole organization is what evens things out.”

“Haah…”

Latri sighed, as if realizing my resolve was firm.

“I see. What a shame… truly, what a shame.”

It was a sigh heavy with regret, resignation, and remorse.

-Something’s up. I immediately ramped up my Water Pressure.

“What we needed wasn’t a body, it was a head.”

“Don’t count your chickens. I wasn’t planning on giving you anything.”

Petty threats like that meant nothing. At the maximum output I could muster, I crushed down on every being inside the dark chamber.

-….CRACK! In an instant, every scrap of flesh turned into bloody pulp. At the same time, a Blood Scent thicker than before, along with shattered bones, registered on my Current Sense.

A dark chamber where I was the only thing left alive and moving.

After waiting inside for about a minute, I tilted my head when no sound followed.

“…That’s it?”

There was no resurrected Latri lunging at me.

No hidden poison sprayed out, no troops came rushing in.

In a single second, the Assassins who had been moving about in separate pieces had all become a handful of blood, stains on the dirt floor that would never rise again.

Unable to believe it, I scanned the dark chamber with Current Sense for a long while, but sure enough, no sound came.

‘Wait, did he really mean it was a shame?’

After looking around for some time, still unable to believe the situation, I finally left the dark chamber.

“So…”

Even after coming up, I remained deep in thought for a good while. That was how much the situation didn’t add up.

Was persuading me really their only plan, and when that failed, they just quietly accepted death?

They were too meticulous an organization for that.

There had to be something more.

Surely something…

-…Rustle!

“…”

As I mulled it over with suspicion, my Current Sense caught something crawling up from the hole of the now-finished dark chamber.

Only then did I let out a hollow, relieved laugh and turn my head.

Of course, it couldn’t end just like this.

‘Bring it on, whatever you are.’

I’ll end you in one strike.

I immediately invoked my Deep Sea and blanketed the area, then tilted my head when I saw that the thing crawling up was someone I’d never seen before.

“What is this?”

What came up was a small-framed man… no, a woman…?

Someone in their early twenties, wearing white burial clothes, whose gender was hard to determine from the face alone.

Hair, eyes, skin, all unsettlingly pure white.

But what was even more disturbing than that strange appearance were the eyes, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. Staring into eyes that resembled those of an insect, I found myself taking a step back without realizing it.

The insect-like figure whimpered as he climbed out of the earthen hole. From one look, his body clearly wasn’t in good shape.

Having barely managed to pull himself up, he stared at me intently, then abruptly fired off a question.

“Are you Jern?”

“What?”

“I asked if you’re Jern.”

“If you were down there earlier, you’d know.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t there.”

“Then where did you crawl out from?”

“Below.”

“…Never mind.”

What was I expecting? Whatever this unidentified creature was, as long as he was inside the Deep Sea, he was no match for me.

And I wasn’t foolish enough to show mercy just because he looked weak right now. The instant I clenched my fist, he jerked in midair and contorted grotesquely.

“Hm. What is this?”

“Water Pressure. Now, farewell.”

-Crunch!

The one who must have been an Assassin was crushed miserably without any resistance. Rather than the sensation of crushing a killing weapon, it felt more like simply squashing an ordinary human, to the point where I flinched.

With breath barely hanging on, he stared fixedly at me and nodded as if he’d understood something.

“…I, see. I understand…”

“What is there to understand?”

Eventually his breath stopped too, and after thinking for a moment, I hoisted the corpse over my shoulder and returned to the Knights.

The Knights, who had set up camp nearby and were anxiously waiting, brightened up and welcomed me the moment they saw me.

“Sir Jern! You’ve returned. What did you discuss with those cruel villains?”

“We didn’t really talk… they were spouting nonsense, so I just killed them all.”

“The best kind of conversation! What a relief.”

“…Though, it was so easy that something about it makes me uneasy.”

I sank into deep thought.

They had clearly known exactly who I was. The moment they brought me to their hideout, it was essentially the same as walking in with a bomb.

And yet, after an attempt at persuasion with almost no chance of success, they were all wiped out in the end.

…Why?

For what purpose had they done something like that? Of course, I knew they were a gathering of lunatics, but if they’d truly acted this self-destructively, they wouldn’t have earned the title of a legendary Assassin group in the first place.

“Something feels off.”

-Thud. I tossed the dead albino human onto the ground and scratched my head.

“Off, you say?”

“Yes. I think we’d better comb this whole area thoroughly. I can scan it myself, but I’d have to extend the range massively.”

“And how far would that be…”

“The entire forest across this region. I want every inch of it searched, without missing a single spot.”

I heard the Knights swallow hard.

But well, with my Current Sense combined with the Knights, it was a job that would take two hours at most.

“From here to here. I’m counting on all of you.”

“Yes. Understood.”

“Sir Jahan… Sir Jahan?”

“Ah, yes. My apologies.”

As I was organizing the search parties and giving orders, Jahan, who had been staring at the albino as if entranced, suddenly came back to himself.

His manner seemed a bit odd, so I pressed him on it.

“Do you happen to know this person?”

“Ah, no. For some reason, the face just seems familiar…”

“Familiar?”

“Yes. I feel like I’ve definitely seen it somewhere, but I can’t quite place where.”

Based on everything so far, the Rakshasa were parasitic creatures who severed body parts at random and fused them with other people’s bodies.

Being the kind of things they were, they might have borrowed a body Jahan knew. Though having a similar face was a different matter entirely.

“It’s probably nothing. If it were truly someone you knew, you would’ve recognized them at first glance.”

Or it was just a genuine mistake.

We split our forces and combed the area meticulously.

Using my Current Sense and the Knights’ Aura Sense, we searched so thoroughly that not even a single ant could slip through.

“Nothing!”

“Nothing here either. Sir Jern, have you found anything?”

“…Nothing at all.”

As expected, there were no stragglers. Even if there had been, the fact that we couldn’t find them after searching this long meant they must have fled long ago.

The Knights murmured among themselves with somewhat uneasy expressions.

“Hmm… so, is this really the end of it?”

“That would be the best outcome, but something still doesn’t sit right.”

“…”

Even in the midst of this, I rubbed my chin, lost in thought.

It ends just like this? Really?

Creatures that weren’t even human, who could stay alive with just their heads, going down this easily?

As I frowned with a thoroughly unconvinced expression, Jahan spoke to me lightly.

“It could be because the day is growing dark. It’s already early evening, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t really have anything to do with…”

“For now, let’s camp here for a day and search for traces again tomorrow morning. If we still find nothing, I think we can return and report exactly what we found.”

“Hmm. That sounds reasonable. Sir Jern, what would you like to do?”

Knowing my doubts still hadn’t been resolved, Jahan had made time for me.

I nodded and accepted gratefully.

“Let’s do that.”

***

Late at night.

To search again tomorrow, I needed to get to sleep early, but I simply couldn’t.

“What the hell are these bastards?”

What were they up to?

After clutching my head in thought for a while, I tried putting myself in their shoes.

If I were Rakshasa.

If I were one of those guys who thought only of becoming stronger and pushed everything else to the back burner, how would I act?

“…I have no idea.”

How was I supposed to understand those lunatics?

I frowned and let out a sigh, then realized there was no need to.

‘What have they been trying to do?’

Even if they were lunatics, if there was a consistent pattern in their past actions, I could predict their next move.

They had first obtained the Knights’ techniques.

Then they’d tried to seize wizards’ abilities as well.

They’d swapped their bodies for stronger body parts many times over, and once the concept of the Fallen emerged, they’d tried to add that too.

Looking at it this way, they were greedy to an absurd degree. They tried to shove in everything that existed…

…Everything?

“Ah.”

As I blinked, a phrase I’d heard earlier flashed through my mind.

[What we needed wasn’t a body, it was a head.]

I’d taken it as a simple threat.

But if I interpreted it as a genuine lament instead,

it meant they’d already gathered all the bodies.

…What kinds of bodies?

“Damn it.”

I immediately got up and started to head toward where the albino human I’d killed earlier was.

But I was a step too late.

-…BOOM!

“Wh, what’s happening!”

“Sir Jern! An explosion…!”

Startled by the sudden blast, the Knights rushed out of their tents.

What they saw was the albino human, body grotesquely twisted, floating in midair.

No- an albino ‘Elf’.

“…So this is how it works. Magic is a fascinating thing.”

The Elf, drifting in the air while watching the blazing flames, raised his gaze.

The number of Stars within his eyes kept increasing: one, two, three, four… relentlessly.

Only after reaching seven did it stop, and then, from among the Knights, he picked me out with precision.

“Jern, is it? There was something I couldn’t say before…”

“…Fuck.”

“It seems I need to take your head.”

The Elf said this as he lightly leveled the sword in his right hand.

…A Knight’s stance so perfect not a single imperfection could be found.

*****