Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 168

WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

Wizard of the Abyss

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 168 - Resident (4)

Sometimes, I had thought about this.

Why was there nothing in the Abyssal Sea?

I mean, I had heard there were things like reefs and islands in the normal ocean, and while I wasn’t quite sure about that, there supposedly was debris drifting around even in the Abyssal Sea.

But in the Abyssal Sea that I had seen through my Tide Sense, there weren’t even drifting rocks, let alone ground to stand on.

It was just deep, dark water. No matter whether I looked down or up, the only thing I could feel was the endless depth of the water at the edge of my Tide Sense’s range.

Now, I finally understood why.

"...?"

After about an hour, a canyon appeared before me.

It was a black rock mass so vast it almost seemed endless. I rubbed my eyes (and even retracted and unfolded my Tide Sense) several times, unable to believe it.

"Wait, why wasn’t this here before?”

Sure, it was an hour away, but the idea that I had failed to sense something this huge just seemed absurd to me.

How far had I traveled all this time…?

...Ah.

'...Have I never moved in the first place?'

Now that I thought about it, all of my movement had been in the real world.

The Abyssal Sea and the real world were completely separate. I was the only thing that linked them, and even then, they weren’t actually connected.

So no matter how much I moved while in the real world, it was highly likely that I hadn’t moved a single centimeter in the Abyssal Sea.

I had been watching the deep-sea creatures drifting about, mistakenly thinking, ‘Oh, I’m moving too~’ all this time.

...But in reality, they’d just been approaching me.

"Hmm..."

That realization was more suffocating than I expected.

I began to seriously consider turning back now.

Up until now, I had believed I was exploring the Abyssal Sea. The reason I had decided to search for answers down here was because I had concluded that the vast expanses of the Abyssal Sea contained nothing but water and deep-sea creatures.

But that wasn’t actually true. Every time I entered the Abyssal Sea, I would just stand in place, completely motionless, except for a few moments where I would look around in the radius of 100 meters and then just mistakenly believed I had understood everything there was about this place.

But I was just a frog in a well who had no idea what lay ahead.

And how dangerous this place actually was.

But...

[...Close.]

That was precisely why there was something I could gain from this.

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve taken more time. I would have surveyed this canyon, returned, made a plan, and slowly explored its circumference. More precisely, I’d determine how far I could safely tread, then expand my Tide Sense to see what was around the place from that safe zone.

But I couldn't afford to do that now. Death was far closer than I had thought.

"Let’s go."

Steeling my resolve once more, I followed the anglerfish down toward the canyon and began seeing strange creatures I had never once encountered before.

"Barnacles...?"

No, should I call those barnacles or clams?

Seashells with grotesque coral-like shapes were licking and cleaning their own shells with what looked like tongues.

They had tongues. Clams with tongues. Long, crimson tongues that were disturbingly flexible.

And the purpose for them was rather obvious.

[Prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves! The end has come! Repent, though salvation will not come, of course! To seek salvation in the apocalypse…how foolish! If salvation existed, how could this be the end?!]

[Why save children? Children understand nothing! They cannot grasp existential fear of death, nor the despair of losing everything they’ve built! They do not even understand love! Kill the children first! They are those with the least to lose!]

They spoke in the language of the deep-sea creatures but with frightening fluency.

However, the content of their words seemed to have nothing to do with the Abyssal Sea.

My suspicion that something else had taught these creatures this language was quickly turning into certainty. At the same time, I couldn't hide my shock at what they were saying.

Were they doomsday cultists or something? Or had some lunatic drilled that speech into them?

As I tilted my head in bewilderment—

[It’s coming, it’s coming!]

[Mercy! Mercy!]

Suddenly, the clams went berserk, lashing their tongues out and attacking the anglerfish.

The anglerfish just casually bit through the tongues and spat out their purple blood with a ptoo.

The clams kept trying to bind it with their tongues, but the difference between them was quite clear. Most of the tongues were torn apart before they could even achieve anything.

This was the first time I had ever seen a deep-sea creature attacking another deep-sea creature. I wondered if it was because they were shellfish or something. Then I realized that they were closer to barnacles than clams, seeing that they were firmly attached to the canyon walls.

Other deep-sea creatures would eat crushed kin or devour eggs, but these things were fixed in place, so they couldn’t do that.

Their only way to feed was ambushing deep-sea creatures that wandered close. Normally, a lifestyle like that would mean starvation, but when I swept the area with my Tide Sense, I realized something. There were quite a lot of them.

No, most of the canyon walls were covered in them.

The reason they hadn’t starved was obviously because the deep-sea creatures frequently came to this canyon.

...But why?

Well, I’d find out soon enough. Dodging the lashing tongues, I slipped into the fissure in the canyon.

[...]

The moment we entered the canyon’s interior, the anglerfish began to tremble violently.

I ignored it, since it had exhausted its usefulness, and focused my Tide Sense on something else instead.

Then I immediately frowned.

"What is this…?"

I’d known when I looked at it from the outside, but this canyon was on a completely different scale that couldn’t just be described by the word ‘large.’

I couldn’t see the bottom.

Deep, deeper, endlessly deep. I couldn’t say for sure, but it felt like even if one inverted Mount Everest and drove it straight into this canyon, its peak still wouldn’t reach the bottom.

-Gooo…

I stared into the jet-black hole, so dark it deserved to be called an abyss rather than a canyon, before me and swallowed hard.

I didn’t want to go down there.

It wasn’t just a matter of preference but instinct.

The same primal reflex that made one close one’s eyes when something flew at one’s face was warning me not to go down there.

It probably was the same type of instinct that led me to grasp the ocean currents and water pressure. Something that every creature of the Abyssal Sea was born with.

The anglerfish trembling beside me was probably reacting like that because of that instinct as well. Thinking that, I turned to look at it—

[Ghk...Gugh...]

Half of the anglerfish’s body was gone.

I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

The anglerfish stained the sea with its blue blood as it tried to swim away, which, of course, was futile. Its tail and fins had already been torn off violently.

And a creature of the deep that lost its will to resist reached only one destination.

[Geh.]

-Cruuuuuunch!

The anglerfish compressed into a lump of meat no bigger than a fist so quickly that it barely even looked like it shrank.

My head went cold.

"Hmm."

Of course, I hadn’t just carelessly wandered into this place with my Tide Sense turned off or something.

My awareness had been spread wide, perfectly mapping even the small holes in the canyon for several hundred meters around me.

So unless the anglerfish suddenly decided to commit suicide, whatever killed it had casually pierced straight through my Tide Sense.

That wasn't all too impossible. Every being in the Abyssal Sea could use abilities similar to mine. If something hunted and consumed other deep-sea creatures down there, it would naturally know how to circumvent or destroy their Tide Sense.

And if it possessed that level of ability, then its own Tide Snes would surely be far more advanced than mine.

-Bang!

[...?]

My split-second decision based on instinct saved my life.

There was no warning, but trusting nothing except my judgment, I accelerated downward in an instant. At the same moment, the canyon wall I had just touched shattered.

A leg. An octopus’s leg.

The one strange thing about it, if you could call it that, was that it was excessively large.

"Are you fucking kidding me…?”

As I watched the thick, black suction cups, weathered by age, writhe slowly, I lifted my gaze toward where the leg was attached.

Something was rising from the depths of the canyon.

However, even the canyon’s vast width was far too small for that thing to pass through. Several legs, as large as a newly built apartment complex, rose up over the canyon’s edge.

This was the second time I’d seen something like that. The first time was at the orphanage.

I stared utterly shocked—

[-- ...---??? There...]

It spoke slowly.

[----... is.....---]

"..."

[--There is…]

A voice so terrifyingly heavy it seemed to crush the sea itself echoed through the depths.

The clam-like things that had been shouting nonsense moments ago clamped their mouths shut with all their might, refusing to utter a single word.

Every deep-sea creature near the canyon that had been within the range of my Tide Sense vanished in an instant.

It was the first time since I fell into the Abyss that my surroundings had gone completely silent—but I was not the least bit happy about it.

The legs swept across the canyon walls, as though searching for something.

Its way of speaking was so alien that even the interpretation ability I had gained from the Scarlet Abyss Sharmia barely worked, but from the few words I could understand, the conclusion was quite obvious.

It was looking for me, and that fact alone made it abundantly clear that I had to run away now.

But if it was looking for me…

—That also meant it didn’t yet know where I was.

"Yeah, I'm here.”

[...]

"Do you understand what I’m saying?”

It paused for a moment.

-Booom!!!!!

It slammed into another canyon wall.

The impact was so tremendous, the Abyssal Sea itself seemed to tremble. The shattered part of the canyon spewed out dust that clouded the surroundings until visibility dropped to absolutely nothing. The rocks that flew everywhere were each larger than a carriage.

I gritted my teeth, dodged, and let out a breath of relief.

"You chose wrong. And you’ll keep choosing wrong.”

Even a monster like this still couldn’t find me.

My existence seemed to be unnaturally difficult to perceive in the Abyssal Sea.

[...Gooood...]

One of its legs slowly descended downward.

Another leg crawled its way into the depths.

Only one leg remained.

[-- Correct...]

"What?"

[In the sea…you cannot find salt…you—are…already dissolved…]

What the hell was it saying?

I could understand its words, but the hostility directed at me was obvious, so this couldn’t be said to be a good situation.

Still, recalling how the deep–sea creatures had behaved so far, they were really stupid.

If you told them to bite, they would bite. If you told them to go, they would go. If you told them to speak, they would speak.

I mean, it was only natural since their intelligence was more or less that of a fish. So maybe this thing wasn’t all too different.

It was worth trying at least.

It was living with that colossal body in a far deeper layer of the sea than me.

And yet it survived.

That meant it harbored a secret.

One I had to absolutely learn.

"How are you alive?”

[...]

"With that size, at that depth, you shouldn’t be able to survive. No amount of having no bones would let you endure this kind of pressure. Tell me what method you are using.”

[...]

It didn't seem to understand, so I tried speaking in simpler words.

"You, normally, death? But alive. How?”

There had to be something that separated it from ordinary deep-sea creatures. There had to be some secret to it.

If it came down to it, I was prepared to fight just to find out. As I clenched my teeth and pressed it, it suddenly answered my question with a question of its own, its voice once again shaking the Abyssal Sea.

[Why...?]

[Why are you not completely dissolved…?]

"...?"

What did it mean by that? I tilted my head, then gritted my teeth and replied.

"I have no intention of dissolving."

Fusion. Becoming one with the Abyssal Sea.

That was what that thing seemed to be recommending to me.

"What I want to know is how to endure and to persevere even when it’s miserable. Not giving up, not accepting it.”

[.........]

The octopus remained silent for a very long time.

Long enough that I seriously considered just leaving.

[...--You.]

When it finally spoke again, it addressed me with something I couldn’t even pronounce. A sound that wasn’t meant for a human mouth to utter.

[Look around...]

"...Around me?”

[...Even the insignificant survive. Things smaller than you. Weaker than you …]

"??"

[What… is different…?]

...Certainly.

Unlike me, deep-sea creatures survived just fine without powerful Tide Sense or precise current control.

They didn’t look like they were suffering either, unless they were injured badly enough to burst.

Up until now, I had assumed it was just a matter of physical structure. But now that I thought about it, at this depth, in a place this crushing and hostile, whether you had bones or not shouldn’t even matter anymore.

And unlike me, who still partially belonged to the real world, those creatures lived here.

Why?

No, how?

As I was lost in thought, something brushed against my Tide Sense.

The corpse of the anglerfish that had just been torn apart had drifted until it touched the canyon wall.

[...]

-Slurp.

One of those shellfish creatures checked its surroundings and hurriedly swallowed it once it saw most of the octopus’ legs had descended.

It was something I had seen countless times. Normally, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but this time, something sparked in my mind.

"Wait, no way..."

[...]

When I turned back to look at it with disbelief in my eyes, the octopus remained silent.