WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

Wizard of the Abyss

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 94 - Three Calamities (1)

My arm was broken, my entire body was covered in wounds, and my organs were crushed.

But I was still standing. That was the most important thing here.

Looking down at the Lump collapsed on the ground, clutching its stomach, I spat out some bloody phlegm.

"Ptoo."

I wasn’t doing it as a form of mockery; this stuff just kept welling up into my mouth.

My vision swam. The Water Partition was already clinging close to my skin, and the drug was about to demand its inevitable price.

After savoring my victory for a second, I felt my head spinning, finally sinking to the ground.

I felt like I was about to throw up. I dropped to one knee, one hand pressed into the sand below me, gasping for breath. About 10 minutes passed while I was in that state.

I heard crunching footsteps coming closer.

I let out a sigh of relief, thankful that I didn’t pass out before she came.

"...You’re late. What happened to Decay?”

"In the end, I couldn’t capture him. I hurried here as quickly as I possibly could afterward, but…”

Cold fingers touched my head.

The nausea ravaging my body eased a little. As I barely managed to suppress the urge to vomit, I could hear some awe mixed in Dercia’s voice.

"Unlike me, you truly managed to do it.”

"Seems like you didn’t think I could… Then why did you send me at all?”

"You look like you have forgotten, but I never intended to send you to fight. And to make one thing clear, I believed that you wouldn’t be defeated at least.”

"Really?”

"Yes. The Lump doesn’t possess a Great Realm, and its methods are limited to borrowing the power of other bodies. I judged that it lacked the power to kill you, now that you can freely manifest your Realm. However…”

Wearing a subtle expression on her face, Dercia pulled out her fountain pen and drew several lines in the air.

The Lump was completely turned black, then vanished, as if it had never existed.

She hadn't killed it. She must have sealed it somewhere to prevent it from committing suicide.

"I never imagined you would go beyond merely surviving against a Scarlet Abyss executive and actually defeat and capture one. You always exceed my expectations, Jern.”

"If I’d failed, it would’ve all been for nothing, so I gave it my all.”

As I awkwardly fixed my broken arm in place, something from earlier came back to me.

"Now that I think about it, that thing said something kind of strange.”

"What was it?”

"It claimed it never tortured me… and that all it did was throw the original the puppet was based on into a river. That’s me.”

"That must have been a lie.”

Dercia shook her head slightly, dismissing those words.

"At first, I thought you were simply a child cursed with absurdly bad luck. But rather than something with the odds of lightning striking a needle happening, it is far more plausible that they did something to you in your early childhood.”

"You think so?”

"What remains unclear is why they tried to make you fall before the age of 10—and what, exactly, was lost in the process.”

"I thought it might've been another executive, someone even the Lump didn't know about…”

"That creature seemed to hold quite the important position within Scarlet Abyss. It’s unlikely it was unaware of such matters.”

That certainly made sense.

As I nodded, Dercia looked down at me, her eyes narrowed.

"...But you’re injured far too severely. What exactly happened here?”

"It used the bodies of first-rate Knights it stole.”

"And that was a problem? I was told your senses were sharp enough to give you an overwhelming advantage against Knights.”

"...There were attacks it used I couldn’t avoid even if I knew they were coming.”

"Let’s get you treated first. We’ll talk about the rest later."

Dercia carefully examined my injuries, then suddenly lifted her fountain pen and let some ink fall onto one of my wounds.

"Ow. Isn’t dropping ink on an open wound going to cause an infection?”

"This isn’t ink.”

Swish—

She lightly rubbed the ink, and the wound it had dripped on was completely gone.

"...Huh?"

I was taken aback. Wasn’t healing magic supposed to not exist?

I looked at Dercia with slight suspicion. After the previous abduction incident, my trust in her had taken a small hit.

"You’re not like, shaving off my lifespan to heal me, right?”

"Look at my arm.”

Dercia held out her pale, slender arm.

There was a cut on it. Identical to the one that had just vanished from my body.

"This isn’t healing. I’m transferring the wound onto myself.”

"...I don’t know how this works, but please stop.”

I tried to stop her, feeling alarmed, but Dercia completely ignored me and dripped ink onto another wound.

"Think rationally.”

The injury carved into her arm healed in the blink of an eye.

"An elf’s natural recovery rate is incomparable to a human child’s. If someone must bear the damage, it’s far more efficient for me to do so.”

"So elves have exceptional regeneration too?”

"You didn’t know?”

Apparently, it was common knowledge that elves healed very easily in this world.

But still—

"Doesn’t it hurt?”

"I’m already accustomed to pain.”

I couldn’t shake off this uneasy feeling.

* * *

After finishing some basic first aid, we returned to the kingdom and went up to our assigned room on the highest floor.

It was already dawn.

"Since you’re both back safe and sound, I suppose things went well.”

"What about the prince?”

"He’s sleeping soundly right now.”

Ciel was twirling Rahyan’s hair playfully as he slept.

"I didn’t notice it when he was awake, but now that he’s asleep, he really does look exactly like you, Jern.”

She was right. With his expression relaxed while sleeping, our resemblance was uncanny.

As I was feeling strangely conflicted, Dercia snapped at me with an exasperated look.

"He’s still just a doll. Once this is over, it would only be right to dispose of it and tell the king the truth.”

"Huh? No, wait, that’s not right.”

I shook my head in surprise.

"Why dispose of him? Even if he’s a doll, he can think for himself, and he helped me. I want to just leave him as he is.”

"Jern, that doll stole your life.”

Dercia added, sounding completely dumbfounded.

"You could have lived a life without want as the prince of this small kingdom. That doll is standing in the place that should have been yours.”

"It wasn’t Rahyan who took it. It was Scarlet Abyss.”

"That’s true. But regardless, the position that doll occupies is rightfully yours, and it’s clear that you should reclaim it. Are you really planning to leave things as they are?”

"It’s been working just fine without me. There’s no reason to step in now and stir up conflict.”

"What about your parents? Are you saying it’s fine for them to live their entire lives never knowing you, believing a doll is their son?”

"It’s a little sad, but you have to think about it from their side too. Imagine how much pain they’d be in if they found out that the son they cherished and loved their whole lives was just a doll, and their real son is some sickly wreck barely hanging on to his life. Let’s just leave it.”

"Jern."

Dercia’s gaze turned cold.

"Just say that you don’t want to be a prince.”

"Yeah. I don’t. I really don’t.”

I absolutely hated positions that would burden me with responsibility, but positions that were nothing but responsibility were even worse. They were worse than the most horrifying torture this world had to offer.

Seeing my genuine disgust on my face, she sighed and nodded.

"If that’s how you feel, I won’t force you. To begin with, even if you did become the prince of this kingdom, it would likely bring more harm than good.”

As she said that, Dercia took out a small book from inside her robes.

"Then let us begin the interrogation.”

"Ah, yes.”

I forgot about all the pain in my body and focused.

The anticipation of finally learning fragments of my past mixed with the anxiety of wondering what exactly had been done to this body left me feeling strangely exhilarated.

Then, feeling like something was off, I asked,

"But…are we really doing this here? There are quite a few people outside, and it’s night, so wouldn’t it trouble them if we’re too noisy? Shouldn’t we go somewhere like an underground dungeon?”

"This interrogation will be a little different. Don’t worry.”

What did she mean by that? As I wondered about that, Dercia opened the small book and dripped ink onto a page.

"Where is the Lump?”

"It’s here.”

At first, I didn’t understand what she meant.

But when I got closer to her and looked into the book, I saw the ink writhing as if it were alive, forming letters, then words, then sentences, only to collapse and reform again.

Eventually, a single sentence surfaced.

[W H A T T H E F U C K I S T H I S P L A C E]

"...Master?”

I called out to Dercia, feeling anxious.

She replied nonchalantly.

"I’ve converted it into a record. It was quite difficult, but most certainly possible. No matter how much it screams, no sound will ever come out, so there’s no need to worry.”

Converted into a record. I looked at her with pity.

"When did you fall?”

"...This is clearly magic.”

"No, no matter how I look at it, this feels like the power of some Abyss Realm…”

"It’s the highest-tier magic among those I can use. I believe I once told you that I have already placed one of my feet firmly in the Heavenly Realm and that the difference between the Heavenly Realm and the Abyss Realm is simply whether you are the ruler of your world or its prisoner.”

I had nothing more to say to that.

Still, it was a truly unsettling ability, making me shift further away from her.

To imprison a person inside a book and turn them into a record. In a way, that magic suited Dercia like a glove.

"Let’s begin with the first question. We don’t have much time until it's fully digested.”

She lightly flipped through the book and began writing several commands in a language I couldn’t decipher.

"What did you ask?”

"I asked about memories related to your existence. Everything connected to that should soon surface.”

Not long after, the book opened to what looked like a transcript of various conversations between certain beings.

[We need to take over the cities? Why bother? Can’t we just kill everyone?]

[We need a sustainable base.]

[Why?]

[Because it’s necessary.]

It was a conversation between the Lump and another executive.

I couldn’t tell who the other person was. I could only guess that it might be Decay.

[I knocked out that prince and brought him along. Anything else you want me to do?]

[Hmm…Good work.]

[What? You’re just going to throw him in the river? Then I could’ve just killed him and brought the body.]

[I don’t trust you enough for something like that. I needed to confirm it myself.]

And then…

That was it.

"...?"

"?"

We looked at each other, confusion evident on our faces.

"Is that all?”

"...I told it to recount everything it knows about you. That should be everything.”

"So to sum it up..."

I was abducted purely to help establish a sustainable base.

And after that, once they created space to insert their doll named Rahyan, I was of no more use to them, so they just threw me into a random river.

Put more bluntly…

"I really wasn’t anything special, huh?”

I was kind of connected to Scarlet Abyss, but only to that extent.

They hadn’t tortured me, and they didn’t care about what would happen to me after.

So—the reason they failed to recognize me later was out of genuine ignorance.

All they did was throw me into a river. Of course they wouldn’t remember.

"...This doesn’t make any sense.”

Dercia staggered slightly as she sat down, seeming genuinely confused.

"Even if you weren’t important to them, I assumed Scarlet Abyss had tortured you, confirmed that you didn’t give them the results they wanted, and then discarded you. I believed that you had at least that much of a connection with them. But if even that didn’t happen…”

"...Then learning about my past got a lot harder.”

I let out a sigh while watching the deep-sea creatures drifting around us.

It seemed the reason for their existence had become even more obscure.

"Then what about this?”

"We’re not finished yet.”

She shook her head and began writing something else in the book.

"Even if it doesn’t know the cause, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t know what to do about this. I’m sure it definitely has some clues. I’ll search for everything related to your circumstances.”

With a grim, almost haunting expression, Dercia continued to write.

For nearly 10 minutes.

"—! Found it.”

At the same moment, another transcript appeared in the book.

[Creating the Three Calamities. That is our highest priority.]

"...Ah."

The Three Calamities.

I had heard that term a few times before. They had gone rambling on about whether I was one of them or not, so I came to the conclusion that the Abyssal Sea probably was one of those calamities.

An unidentified member of Scarlet Abyss continued speaking as if they were explaining things to multiple people at once.

[The stimulus needed to make a mage fall is ultimately an artificial burden. You need to grind down hundreds of mages, young children at that, to barely create one. That’s far too inefficient. It won’t get us anywhere.]

[Well, I disagree.]

[And why is that?]

[I mean, I get it. You want to spread a microscopic burden across the entire world.]

"..."

"..."

The transcript was still getting rolled out, but neither of us could just let that statement slide.

We looked at each other, realizing the scale of this discussion.

"Is that even possible?"

"...It’s impossible. But it’s clear that it’s what they’re aiming for…”

Regardless of the shock we were feeling, the transcript continued.

[But why do we need the Three Calamities specifically? They are basically just legends. Is there really a reason you need their burdens? I mean, if you just spread that bastard Decay’s burden across the entire world right now, you’d get a thousand people falling every day.]

[Lump, you stupid bastard. Microscopic burdens. Microscopic! Do you think spreading a Realm across the entire world is easy?]

[So what? Would it be any different if it were the Three Calamities who did it? Are they really that special? I mean, the only thing all those who awaken to the Grand Sea could do is probably fall a bit slower when they fall at most. Is it really worth hunting those things down?]

[Lump, I understand your doubts. You simply haven’t lived very long, so your knowledge of the Three Calamities is lacking.]

[Obviously. I’m not even sure if they really exist. And even if they do, I don’t see what sets them apart.]

[Given your level of intelligence, it’s probably best if I explain it in simple terms.]

[What?]

The transcript ended with the following words.

[You’re not wrong. Even the Three Calamities’ Realm wouldn’t produce very powerful burdens if they forcibly spread it across the entire world.

[Then what’s the point?]

[Because their Realms are inhabited by living beings.]

[...Living beings? What kind?]

[Who knows…]

[If they were to spread their burdens across the whole world, then regardless of their intensity, the world would become a place where life itself is a burden.]

[Those beings living in their Realms would become able to freely roam the real world.]

[That is what it means to live in the Three Calamities’ Realm.]

"..."

I silently stared at the deep-sea creatures drifting around me.

Even if I tried to deny it.

No matter how I looked at it...

...This really did seem to be about me.

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