WETRIED TRANSLATIONS
Wizard of the Abyss
[Translator – Aren]
Chapter 8 - Survival (4)
After a week, a kind of routine had settled in.
I woke up at 5:30 am, when all the other kids at the orphanage were still fast asleep.
Breakfast wouldn’t be until 8. Still, when I went to the dining hall, there were always warm bread and soup left in a basket.
I could only ever be grateful to the director.
Even though I woke up early, I didn’t actually have that much time, so I immediately headed out after I stuffed the food in my mouth—
"Hrm...Morning, Jern.”
"...Linmel?”
She never woke up at this hour.
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Linmel had a dark wooden practice sword hanging from her waist.
Since the others should still be asleep, I couldn’t help but stare at her in puzzlement.
"I’ve got somewhere to go. Why are you up so early?”
She yawned, covering her mouth with the blade she had casually drawn, wielding it in one hand with the deftness I wouldn’t have expected a ten-year-old to have.
"I have to practice with this. Yaaaawn…”
"A sword? Why?”
"Dunno…”
Seeming to still be half-asleep, Linmel shuffled off toward the training hall.
I was curious, but I had plenty to prepare for today.
Deciding to ask about this later, I checked the schedule I had taken (or more like copied down by hand) from the notice board.
'Looks like six children’s classes will be held today.’
I was going to attend every single one of them.
I put on my janitor’s uniform that I had kept hidden in a neighboring building. Thanks to Aunt Annelin’s tailoring, it finally fit me perfectly.
Heading to the square early, I did some prep work until I saw my senior dragging himself toward me with his usual lazy gait.
He was always early. Just not as early as me.
Spotting me sitting by the fountain, he tilted his head and asked.
"What the hell? It’s still early, you know? Why’ve you been coming out so soon lately?”
"The sooner I start, the sooner I finish.”
"...Well, fair enough. Smart kid.”
Like that, I followed behind my ever-sarcastic senior to the Academy.
As soon as we arrived in the designated cleaning area, I turned towards him with sparkling eyes.
He eyed me suspiciously before giving me a stern warning.
"Today’s the north area. Don’t you dare disappear like last time, you hear?”
"Yes!"
"Bathrooms are inside, so use those.”
"Yes!"
"Right… Anyway, just be careful. You seem to be underestimating this Academy, and if you slip up here—”
Maybe he had been worrying a lot after I vanished without a word last time, seeing that he kept rattling off one warning after the other.
"Yes, I’ll keep it in mind!”
"Good. Let’s give it our all.”
After giving him an enthusiastic answer, he seemed satisfied enough to leave me here and head towards his own area.
I spent five minutes pretending to clean, carefully surveying my surroundings. The moment I was sure no one was around, I swept the ground with the current.
I had already gotten used to this. It took me less than thirty seconds to gather all the trash in one place.
And now, I didn’t even need to throw it away myself.
"Let’s see…”
Would this work?
I gently brought my fingers together.
The gathered trash slowly began to rise into the air.
To an outsider, it would look like I was using telekinesis. In truth, I was simply making things around me realize that they were submerged even without touching them.
I stirred the currents, making ripples, and when the ripples touched an object, they would recognize that they were in the sea, causing them to float.
These were the two types of magic I had been given in exchange for being born in the deep sea, doomed to an unavoidable death.
That part hadn’t changed. Only now I could add buoyancy as well as somewhat manipulate the current.
Two different applications. The floating trash drifted right to the bin.
The moment I stopped manipulating the current—
—Thunk, thunk. The trash fell squarely into the trash can.
"Nice.”
I brushed off my hands with a satisfied smile on my lips.
It wasn’t all that useful. Heavy things still sank, so I could only make light trash float like this.
And even then, this floating was incredibly slow and more like drifting. If there was one advantage…
It wouldn’t stop.
Once, I tried to make an object rise without stopping my current manipulation, just to see what would happen. It had floated all the way to the clouds, disappearing from my sight.
Which probably meant…
If this world truly was the sea, then I really was sitting at the very bottom of the deep sea.
So deep that things given buoyancy would take hours to reach the surface.
Of course, once they were out of my current’s reach, they’d just fall somewhere else.
"...What a fate I have."
I couldn’t help but feel a bit impatient.
It didn’t really change anything, but I still hurried toward the children’s class.
"Ahem, ahem…”
By now, I had gotten quite good at pretending to be a janitor.
The kids were still laughing and running around before class, while the teacher really struggled to corral them. I just naturally swept the floor as the lesson began.
"Today we’ll learn the basic Ignition spell used to light lanterns!”
"...Ugh."
Bust.
I sighed, moving somewhere else.
There was still time before the next class, so I decided to study on my own.
I slipped into an empty back room of a classroom, piled up some straw just in case, and made my 109th attempt.
I focused on the straw, drawing up my mana.
"Ignite."
-Fwooosh...
I let out a sigh as I stared at the thin wisps of smoke rising up from the straw.
I had already realized this in the last lesson, but there was no denying it now.
No matter what else I might learn, I-I certainly would never be able to use fire magic.
I could easily handle spells of other elements, but anything to do with fire, no matter what it was, never seemed to work…
Why…? The hardest part of all of this was that I just didn’t know why.
It probably was because there was no way that one could start a fire while underwater.
So, in other words, this lesson was completely useless to me. My time was better spent studying something else.
"Divide."
-Tak.
This time, I murmured softly while looking at the straw, and the bundle split cleanly in two as if it had been cut by a blade.
It was a wind-type spell that I had been focusing on lately. If compressed like this, it could be used as an attack, but that wasn’t my goal here.
Wind, of course, also included air. If this abyssal ocean tried to seal my breath, maybe this could be of use somehow.
It might also turn out to be completely useless, but then I’d just come up with something else later.
For now, trying everything was what mattered.
I had lost track of time while researching wind magic when…
"...!"
A sudden chill ran down my spine.
I heard a sound. I immediately whipped my head around.
Thankfully, nobody seemed to be there.
"Phew…”
I guess I must have been mistaken, even though I clearly felt someone watching.
I sighed in relief and gathered the straw.
Destroying all evidence of my actions was my top priority.
It was something I had to keep in mind no matter what—eavesdropping on lessons like that was a serious crime.
Of course, they wouldn’t punish a small child too harshly. At worst they’d spank me and ban me from ever entering the Academy grounds again.
But being banned from the Academy now would mean the end of my last desperate struggle to survive.
* * *
"...Just now, that kid…”
* * *
After the classes, I headed to the library.
I couldn’t just give up on the only wizard that might answer my questions just because she made me feel a bit uncomfortable.
"What on earth did you do?”
...Except in the end I ended up being questioned in return.
Dercia had been groping my body as I struggled to twist myself out of her grip.
"I just did it. I’ve even manifested a mana circle, so it can’t be that strange, right?”
I held up my palm.
A gentle breeze blew, ruffling my collar.
It wasn’t anything special. While magic was already fascinating enough on its own, what made this even more astonishing was my existence at the bottom of the sea.
Anyone could send out a puff of air from their palm. In fact, the kids in the children’s classes had succeeded within fifteen minutes.
...It took me twenty.
Dercia shook her head, as I had misunderstood what she meant.
"Other mages live in this world, but you live in your other world. Even if you’ve managed to manifest a mana circle, the fact you can learn so freely makes no sense. You must under some kind of burden in some way…”
Dercia looked at me with the same curious gaze one might give a monkey whose nose was bigger than its hand.
But instead of her stare, I focused on her unsettling words.
"Huh? A burden?”
"Yes. Something tells me you are carrying one.”
"Ah, right. I can’t gather mana the normal way.”
"What do you mean by that?”
"It’s… seawater, I guess? I have to fill my lungs with it. It actually feels like I’m drowning every time I do it.”
"What a ghastly method. But that isn’t what one would call a burden. In fact, it could be considered more of a blessing. Even though your mind hasn’t yet fully adjusted to your world, you can at least borrow materials from it.”
That wasn’t something I could just slide, so I fiercely snapped back.
"Hold on, wait a second. Lady Dercia, you’re saying that way too lightly. Have you ever drowned before? It’s really painful. This can’t be called a blessing.”
"You should be glad. If your inner world had been a burning forest, your intake method might have been to char every inch of skin instead.”
"..."
That chilling statement made my skin crawl.
Dercia calmly observed me and continued.
"I don’t know the full extent of your inner world. But whatever world it may be, it won’t escape the law of causality, so you’d best be aware that the price will come for you eventually.”
"Won’t I just die from the pressure before then?”
"Hmm..."
After thinking for a moment, Dercia nodded.
"You’ve hit the nail on the head. That’s a very real possibility.”
“...”
As I had suspected, she was the type who would never give out empty words.
Trying to hide the sigh that forced itself out of my mouth, I asked what I had been meaning to.
"I get it. Anyway, why can’t I use any fire magic at all? Is that normal?”
"Huh? What are you talking about?”
Dercia asked, her face looking honestly dumbfounded as if she couldn’t even understand my very words.
"It just doesn’t work.”
"That makes no sense. You can use every other magic, yet you can’t use fire?”
"How’s fire supposed to burn underwater?”
"Then how does wind blow underwater?”
"Well..."
I couldn’t give her an answer.
Sure, I had my currents, but that was more like water flow than actual wind.
Strong gusts of wind underwater would just turn into bubbles and rise to the surface normally…
Huh?
"You’re right. Why doesn’t it work?”
"Hmm. I need to see the problem for myself first. Would you mind trying to use it?”
"Ah, okay."
I tried to ignite fire magic on my palm for the 110th time.
-Fwoosh!
"...So it does work."
"...It works?"
Just like that, as easy as lighting a stove, flames bloomed on my palm, making my 109 failures seem like lies.
I stared dumbly between Dercia and the tiny flame.
"Why does this work?”
"I’m sorry, but the only answer I can give you is because it does.”
"..."
Huh.
I stared down at my palm and suddenly ‘realized’ something.
Maybe this underwater world, though incredibly similar to an actual ocean, wasn’t truly the deep sea, but rather—
"Ah."
The moment my thoughts reached that point, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
"Urgh...Khuk, cough."
"What’s wrong?”
Out of nowhere, it felt as if a mountain of heavy boulders had crashed down on me.
The pain was excruciating, like every inch of my body had been bound in ropes and slowly wrung dry. It came without a warning, just instant agony.
"..."
So this was what people meant when they said it hurt so much that they couldn’t even scream.
I slowly fell to my knees as I was being crushed alive…
My vision went white, and then—
"Damn it!"
Pop, with a sharp sound, the flame before me vanished.
Only then did I return to reality.
"U-uwaaaaaaargh…!!!!!”
At that moment, the voiceless agony became a loud scream.
Dercia snapped her fingers. Instantly, a familiar pressure crushed my entire body again.
However, this time, it was completely devoid of malice.
"Calm yourself. I’m not trying to kill you. If you pull away from that pressure too abruptly, your body will collapse. You need to withdraw slowly, so endure it.”
"..."
I nodded without a word.
Over the next five minutes, Dercia steadily reapplied pressure.
As it gradually lifted, my breathing eased a bit. At some point, it was as though I hadn’t nearly died just a minute ago.
"Haah, haah, cough! What the hell was that?”
Now back to myself somewhat, I retched and forced words to leave my mouth.
Rather than my body hurting, it felt more like my mind had been completely drained.
"First, calm down. You just had a close brush with death, so you’re not entirely lucid yet.”
"...Got it.”
I wiped my mouth, stood up, and got a rag to clean up what I had thrown up.
Dercia watched me with slight surprise.
"Hmm. For someone who barely managed to survive a near-death experience, you’re rather composed.”
"If I don’t figure out what just happened, I will really die the next time. I have to stay calm.”
The terror of the realization that I could die instantly anywhere, even in the safest of places, was incomparable to anything.
Not even a murderer charging at you with a knife came close to it.
That fear was so overwhelming that it crossed some sort of limit that it made me stay calm, as if I had been doused in cold water.
Seeing my cold expression, Dercia gave me a small nod.
"You were on the verge of realizing something just now, weren’t you?”
"...Yeah."
"That’s forbidden. Don’t continue that line of thought. And never attempt to manifest a flame spell again. Don’t ask me why either. You’re clever enough, so I trust you understand what I mean.”
"Yes."
"Then you should be safe, at least until the proper time comes. And, this is just my personal opinion, but…”
Dercia chuckled slightly.
"It was a mistake to tell you that you lacked talent. I take it back.”
"Huh, really? You mean I do have talent?”
Maybe this wasn’t the best time to be excited about that, considering I had nearly died just now, but hearing one of the Empire’s greatest wizards say, ‘You have talent,’ had quite some impact.
"No, you have no talent for magic.”
"..."
"However, as a wizard, you have a talent none could ever hope to match.”
Wasn’t that the same thing?
"I have no idea what that means.”
"You’ll find out one day.”
With a snap of her fingers, Dercia burned away the vomit staining my clothes. She seemed almost happy as she murmured.
"But for now, it’s something you mustn’t know.”
... It was the first time ever since we met that I saw a smile on her lips.
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