WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

Wizard of the Abyss

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 100 - Three Calamities (7)

What worried me most was the clearly acidic properties of the rats’ blood.

If all the walls were smeared with that stuff, my hands and feet would melt away before I even made it halfway through.

I tossed a small stone in as a test and discovered something peculiar.

"...When did they do this?”

It was dried.

Except for the section of wall the rats had just melted through, the rest of the passage was coated in dried, browned residue, giving off a foul, putrid stench.

Which meant this tunnel had been prepared in advance.

And the location of my cell within this underground person had been completely random.

In other words, they’d done this to nearly every cell, not just one or two.

I realized once again how long the organization known as Scarlet Abyss had been preparing for this. I’d once dismissed them as something out of far-off legends, but if this organization was really the one from the history books…

I shook my head, clearing my mind. There was a bigger problem right now.

"Tsk."

I had to crawl through this horrible tunnel myself.

Even trying to escape reality wouldn’t be of much help. I forced my small body into the opening, held my breath, and crawled through.

Fortunately, contrary to its appearance, the tunnel widened as I advanced. Before long, it was wide enough for even a grown man to pass through. The stench aside, it was easier to move in than I had expected.

Which raises the next question.

Where the hell did this lead?

There was no way this tunnel would somehow lead outside the imperial capital. And soon enough, the guards would notice my escape and raise the alarm.

I had maybe 30 minutes at best.

Whatever awaited me at the end of this tunnel had to be worth that much. With a hint of anticipation, I reached the end and found a small wooden door.

-Creeeak...

"Hmm?"

Instead of an exit, there was another similar cave.

A dim lantern hung from the ceiling, the air acrid.

Inside the space that couldn’t be larger than a dozen square meters, a pale-faced man turned to look at me.

He was squatting there, holding a pungent-smelling pipe. When he saw that I was here, he just stared at me blankly.

"Huh, so you actually came.”

"Scarlet Abyss?”

"Who knows…”

The man trailed off, his expression completely blank.

It was as if he had already forgotten that he had been talking to me at all.

What the hell was with this guy? I looked around the cave.

Several wooden doors lined its walls. It seemed they had dug tunnels from multiple cells, all leading to this place.

And then there were those huge sacks.

The pouches packed to the brim with herbs almost filled out the whole space. The man staggered to his feet, grabbed a handful of herbs, and packed them into his pipe.

Even though the guy hadn’t lit them, the herbs started to burn on their own, releasing a nauseating scent. Just breathing it in secondhand was enough to make my head spin.

"Haah..."

Watching the man sit back down, I felt some confusion.

There was no exit here other than the crawlspaces.

And if every one of those crawlspaces connected to prison cells…

"How long have you been here?”

"Hmm, no idea.”

"..."

The man’s vacant expression, the sheer amount of herbs he’d just smoked, and the sack piled around him.

Taking the number of empty sacks around him into consideration as well, I had arrived at a rough estimate.

This guy had been sitting here, smoking, for years.

Escaping the prison had only led me into a space more terrifying than the prison.

What the hell was this? As I continued to scan the room in confusion, the man glanced at me, then nodded as if he had just remembered something.

"Ah, right. That was the deal.”

"What?"

"Come here."

The man waved his hand. I hesitated at first, but seeing no better option here, I approached him. The man grabbed some herbs and packed them into his pipe.

One handful, two handfuls, three handfuls…almost an entire sack.

Yet somehow, all these herbs fit inside the pipe. As I watched in amazement, he inhaled deeply.

"Don’t resist. It’s a pain if you do.”

I blinked once.

The moment he exhaled, the Abyssal Sea filled with something soft and swelling.

Liquid gas.

The fact that something was interfering directly with the Abyssal Sea could only mean one thing. I stepped back in shock.

"A Great Realm? Why is someone with a Great Realm here?”

"...Size alone doesn’t mean much.”

The man’s smoke touched my body. A searing heat followed instantly.

My face twisted as he added,

"I told you not to resist.”

"I’m… not resisting.”

I pressed out those words between my grinding teeth. He tilted his head at that.

"Huh, then why is it this difficult…?”

"..."

I kept my mouth shut and just endured the pain. Soon, my arm fell off.

"?"

No. That’s not it.

I thought it had fallen off because it felt so light, but it was still attached.

I had just faded. Like it was dissolving into the world itself.

It didn’t take long for the rest of my body to follow. By the time I realized it, I had become translucent, like a ghost.

I had become something like smoke.

This sensation was incredibly strange. My body felt lighter than anything. It felt like I could fly anywhere with just a few leaps, slipping through even the tiniest cracks.

-Hoooh

Seizing that moment, the man released a small breath.

That breath turned a dark blue and rose through a narrow crack in the ceiling of the cave.

"Follow that..."

As if his job was done, the man slumped back down and resumed smoking his pipe.

Before leaving, I asked one last question.

"Won’t the guards notice I’m gone soon?”

Instead of answering, he let out a second breath.

That breath turned into me. Smoke shaped like my body was sucked back into the crawlspace I’d come from. A decoy?

Even if they noticed…

...There was no way this man wouldn’t get away.

I glanced at him, who no longer paid me any heed, one last time, then slipped my body into the gap the dark blue breath had exited through.

Floating came naturally. Slipping through the crack, I found myself in a narrow back alley.

The dark blue breath didn’t scatter.

It shot straight up into the sky—and vanished from sight.

I hesitated for a moment before kicking off the ground.

"...Wow."

I had to admit it.

I was rather envious of that smoker’s ability.

My childhood dream of flying freely through the sky—something I had dismissed as childish fantasies—was finally realized.

This pure sense of liberation was incomparable to riding an airplane. Looking down at the capital, its countless lanterns weaving a tapestry of light, I finally understood why people pursued things like paragliding.

But I couldn’t afford to get lost in the moment. The breath moved with the speed of the wind, so I had to move at full force just to keep up.

My body scattered and reassembled itself again and again. Flying was good and all, but this sensation was quite hard to endure, to be honest.

If I were to scatter and fail to reassemble, I felt like I would split into two people with separate thoughts.

That would no longer be me. I would vanish, replaced by two new individuals.

Was that why they didn’t make use of that guy often? Clinging desperately to my sense of self, I followed the dark blue breath until I reached a forest.

At the peak of a mountain, beneath a single tree, the breath dispersed.

"Cough, cough…Ptoo!”

I landed hard, grabbing onto a tree and spitting.

The moment I reached this place, my body had returned to that of a normal human again. What had just happened felt unreal, not unlike a scene from a dream.

Yes, a dream. How could someone fly through the sky and squeeze through narrow cracks like that?

If I were to live in a world like that my entire life—

"It’s understandable, I guess…"

I finally understood why that guy was so dazed.

As I muttered to myself while steadying my breath, someone answered me.

"Still, you did better than most. The mentally weak ones scatter halfway through, or turn into wrecks afterward.”

"...!"

I abruptly turned.

Atop a tree, a woman who gave off a snake-like impression sat perched on a branch, looking down at me.

Snake-like in every way. Bleached-white hair flowing down to her waist, crimson eyes, and—wearing a black garb like something an assassin would wear.

She smiled, her thin, vertical pupils staring at me.

"Those kinds aren’t a fit for us. Our goal is to benefit mutually from each other, so why would we take in useless trash that needs unilateral support?”

"Were you waiting for me?”

"Yeah. Decay told me to wait here.”

She hopped down lightly and approached, extending her hand toward me.

"Sunken Mire. The world is a swamp."

"---A swamp?”

"Yeah, a quagmire—might be easier to understand.”

Smiling brightly as she felt solid ground beneath her feet, she held out her hand toward me.

I didn’t take it.

"Jern, I don’t know my world.”

"Hmm, I have three questions for you.”

Sunken Mire didn’t lower her hand. Instead she asked curiously.

"Aren’t you Jern Apsandil?”

"I abandoned that surname.”

According to the setting, I had fallen out with my master. I couldn’t forget that.

Seeing the anger flickering in my eyes, Sunken Mire asked her second question.

"Why don’t you know your own world?”

"Like I said, I don’t know.”

"Really? But you should naturally know where you are.”

"No matter how many times you ask, the answer won’t change. I don’t know what I don’t know. And your last question?”

"My hand hurts."

Her pupils dilated like an animal’s.

"Aren’t you going to take it?”

"..."

It seemed she wouldn’t lower it unless I did.

With no other choice, I grabbed her slender hand. It was cold. So cold that I doubted it was that of a living person.

In an instant, the menacing atmosphere vanished. Sunken Mire beamed again, swinging our joined hands back and forth as she spoke.

"Welcome to the group! Well, there are still a few more tests left, but I think you’ll pass.”

"Tests?"

"Yeah, tests. But you only need to take one! Decay vouched for you after all.”

"Really? What is it?”

"Hmm, what should it be…”

She tapped her chin in thought, then casually tossed it out.

"Escaping from there?”

Before I could even process what she meant, I noticed something was wrong.

I was getting shorter.

Not just me. The trees, the rocks around me…

Everything was slowly sinking into the ground.

"Yeah, you weren’t lying. You really don’t know. Then listen carefully.”

She raised one finger as she explained.

"The Fallen are worlds. To come into contact with them, with a world, is the same as seeping into their world. It’s absolutely forbidden.”

"..."

"Well, some of those with Great Realms can expand their worlds so much that they forcibly invite others without direct contact. But only few people, including Decay, have reached that level. If you’re not confident, you shouldn’t touch anyone.”

By the time I calmly processed her words, I was already sunken up to my knees.

Sunken Mire looked down at me and twisted her lips into a smile.

"If you’re thinking that you won’t sink further as long as you stay still, you should think again. You’re sinking even when you do nothing, right?”

"That’s true."

"The test period is one month. While my world is maintained, survive however you can. Run, climb hide, or even sleep. Everything you stand on will make you sink.”

I didn’t answer right away and just pondered.

What was the purpose of this test?

At one point, Decay had already decided to recruit me, so did a test even mean anything?

I thought again about what kind of organization Scarlet Abyss was.

A den of terminally ill madmen determined to survive at all costs.

To put it simply, it was hell. I couldn’t describe a place where fanatics, sociopaths, and schizophrenics capable of casually wiping out entire cities gathered together as anything but hell.

While I was thinking about these things, I sunk up to my chest, making me look quite ridiculous. Seeing this, Sunken Mire frowned.

"...If you stay like that, you’ll actually die, you know? Once you submerge completely, you won’t even be able to breathe—”

"I get it now.”

"What?"

"There’s no test, is there?”

"..."

She stared down at me, surprise evident on her face, and then—

"---Heh, I guess you’re not a complete idiot after all.”

She squatted down and sneered at me.

"Yeah. Honestly, I just hated this.”

"Hated what?”

"What do you think you are, anyway? You weren’t even born among us. You don’t even know what a ‘world’ is. And you were a noble, on top of that? You must’ve lived quite the cushy life. You know, my mother dumped me into a swamp. I survived three days eating the dog that was dumped there with me.”

"A dog?"

"Yeah. The living thing I loved most in the world. It’s gone now.”

It wasn’t easy to put into words all the negative emotions mixed into her expression.

But I’d expected something like this.

Except for odd cases like Decay, Scarlet Abyss was a final refuge where abandoned, broken people gathered just to survive.

Regardless of their strength, it meant only those so twisted that even Dercia would look cute by comparison could exist there.

"So get up already. Struggle like I did. At least you still have hope, right? Your world might get deeper.”

The ground bubbled up to my chin.

When Sunken Mire noticed that I remained absolutely calm, confusion crept into her. That was when I spoke up.

"You seem to be misunderstanding something. I’m not a noble.”

"Yeah, I know. You were just a mage’s disciple, right?”

"No. I wasn’t even a commoner. I was an orphan before I was Dercia’s disciple.”

"Bullshit. How does an orphan end up meeting the princess?”

It seemed not everyone in Scarlet Abyss knew everything about me.

Thinking about it, I guess that was only natural. The one they cared about was Dercia. If anything, only Decay and the Lump paid attention to me, her little pet disciple. They probably believed that Illusory Flower had been killed by her as well.

In that sense, Sunken Mire seemed to be a fairly high-ranking member within Scarlet Abyss. Even she didn’t know the details.

In other words…

I finally understood what stance I needed to take inside Scarlet Abyss.

"You’re not expecting me to pull you out if you're about to die, right? If you die, we’ll just say you dispersed while in smoke form—”

"Hah, haha…”

"...You’re laughing?”

Sunken Mire’s eyes filled with killing intent.

I shook my head and apologized.

"Sorry. I just had some expectations.”

Even if it made me look a little rude, in a world ruled by survival of the fittest, it seemed better to make it clear who stood above whom.

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