TL/ED – Miso

In the end, I never stopped by the library.

Mallo’s nagging left me no choice but to descend into the Deep Sea.

[In a situation where we don’t know when the Crimson Circle will make their move, the Creator demanded that we exercise our own judgment. He wanted us to possess intelligence and act on our own initiative.]

-Gurgle…

As I swam through the Deep Sea, pitch-black as always, scanning it with Current Sense, Mallo kept poking me in the shoulder.

“That kind of stings. Could you stop poking me?”

[…Sorry. Just let me borrow a little.]

Judging by that timid tone alone, Mallo seemed closer to a mosquito than one of the guardians of the world that the First Wizard had arranged.

After piercing my skin with a thread and drawing out a bit of blood, Mallo perked up considerably and continued the explanation.

[For that purpose, He gave His own blood, and in return granted eternal life along with the power to fulfill one’s purpose. Using blood as a medium, He made us into artificial, no, divinely crafted True Blood Bearers.]

“What does that have to do with needing to find Decay right now?”

[What you need to focus on is the fact that what the Creator bestowed upon us was not any kind of magic, but merely a single drop of blood. His blood is not something that can be contained. What slumbers within your Deep Sea is essentially tens of tons of gunpowder given without purpose.]

“Could it explode?”

[Perhaps. It might simply remain dormant, or it could develop a will of its own… or it might turn out to be none of those things. No one knows. If anyone can understand that, it would be you.]

“…I think I get it, a little.”

The terror of the unknown.

The fact that a monstrous liquid capable of turning humans into tools and sustaining life for thousands of years lay submerged in the Deep Sea was, in its sheer unpredictability, more dangerous than a guaranteed catastrophe.

There was no way to deal with it other than simply finding it quickly and getting rid of it.

‘The absolute worst case would be Decay using that blood as a catalyst to resurrect, but…’

Honestly, it didn’t seem likely that Decay possessed power that absurd.

If it had that kind of power, it would have resurrected ages ago and tried to kill me already.

[Have you found it?]

“No, not yet.”

I was sweeping every corner of the Deep Sea with Current Sense, rummaging through it thoroughly, and had even tied threads to Deep Sea Creatures and sent them out with orders to return immediately if they spotted anything strange like Decay.

But I couldn’t find so much as a trace. If it had been easy to find, I would have found it long ago.

“Are you sure Decay has that Holy Relic?”

[I’m certain. If you had possessed the Holy Relic from the start, I would have noticed when you bled. You were always bleeding, after all. It was after you fought that Fallen of the Crimson Circle. Ever since then, I’ve been sensing True Blood.]

“…You really are useless. How did your fellow relics even get captured by the Crimson Circle? Seems like the Creator cut some corners.”

When I thought about it, the biggest problem was that these things the First Wizard had scattered across the world to protect it had failed to do their job. Far from protecting anything, they’d gotten themselves captured by the Crimson Circle and turned into ticking time bombs meant to hunt me down.

As I grumbled away, Mallo tried desperately to defend itself.

[He did His absolute best. If we had awakened and stood alongside the True Blood Bearers against the Crimson Circle… then those creatures would have had no hope whatsoever. Even if they grew dozens of times stronger and drove us to the brink of defeat, when that time came, we would have used our own judgment to resurrect Him…]

“And all of that failed.”

[Th-that was because of the traitor.]

“…What are you talking about?”

[Yes. Originally, the existence of us Holy Relics was meant to be kept strictly confidential. But the Crimson Circle hunted us down and destroyed us with brutal efficiency. Let me say this upfront: we are beings that cannot be identified by any means. No matter who comes along, unless we reveal ourselves first, we cannot be recognized.]

“And you’re saying that’s because of a traitor?”

[Yes. I suspected Sacred Soil. It was the one we had absorbed. But if it wasn’t Sacred Soil, then who on earth…]

“Shh.”

While Mallo was lost in thought, a shark I had planted a thread on began approaching rapidly from the distance.

I had told them to return only when they found something unusual.

Meaning this one had, from a Deep Sea Creature’s perspective, spotted something strange.

“Tch, finally found it.”

[Be careful. His True Blood is unpredictable.]

“Unpredictable? What do you mean?”

[I mean it reacts easily to stimulation. And this Deep Sea is…]

Mallo deliberated for a long time before finally managing to form the words.

[A world where there is nothing but stimulation.]

“…”

That was hard to disagree with.

Following the shark in a hurry, something began entering the range of my Current Sense from far away.

At first, I mistook it for another canyon.

But once I got close enough to see clearly, it didn’t take long to realize it was something entirely different.

“…A volcano?”

[??]

Mallo, unable to use Current Sense, didn’t understand what I was saying.

But it really was, truly, a volcano. The only difference from an ordinary volcano was that its base was so enormous it was beyond the reach of Current Sense, and it was made entirely of ice.

[At the very least, it’s clear that thing called Decay is involved.]

“I definitely do not want to fight that thing again…”

With a sigh, I entered the crater.

Before long, just like with the Puppet, I was able to find a corpse.

“…!”

Right in the center of the wide-open crater, with no lava in sight, I found Decay’s corpse drifting silently.

I approached cautiously and placed my hand on it.

-Crack.

“…What?”

Something different from the Puppet happened.

The corpse, which should have been made of flesh and blood, began to crack and then crumble apart.

Reduced to powder in an instant, the remains were swept away into the Deep Sea.

At the same time, I felt a chill spread through my chest. When I raised my hand and moved it around, nothing had physically changed, yet something felt different.

A strange sensation, as if something new were within reach. As if I had grown a tail.

Just as I was about to try and figure out what it was firsthand, Mallo shouted.

[There it is! Was it called Pure Silver?!]

Decay’s corpse had left behind a necklace adorned with platinum and rubies.

I snatched it up quickly, and Mallo let out a sigh of relief.

[…Thank goodness. There’s nothing wrong with its appearance, at least.]

“So we’re done?”

[Yes. All I can say is that we were incredibly lucky. Shall I give it a little blood and ask what happened?]

“Hey, not my blood. That hurts.”

[Don’t worry. With your blood mixed with True Blood, even the tiniest amount… hold on.]

Mallo suddenly stopped mid-sentence and muttered.

[If Pure Silver is intact, then why is there True Blood in your blood… could you bring Pure Silver up to my collar for a moment?]

“?”

When I held the necklace against the collar, Mallo rubbed against it for a moment before letting out a pained sound.

[…We’re too late.]

“What?”

[It’s an empty shell. The True Blood has already dissolved entirely into the Deep Sea. And it happened a long time ago.]

“Hmm, well, it’s still not the absolute worst.”

All things considered, the situation wasn’t that bad.

Decay hadn’t resurrected. The odds were slim, but if all the True Blood had produced was this ice mountain, then that would be the end of it.

Mallo still seemed to find it strange, trailing off uncertainly.

[But it’s odd… if the True Blood had spread, there should have been a change in the Deep Sea that even you could notice. You don’t feel anything at all?]

“Nothing seems particularly different.”

[…Then there are only two possibilities. The first is that the only change the True Blood caused is this single volcano made of ice. That would be the most optimistic scenario.]

“And the second?”

[…]

After a moment of silence, Mallo spoke.

[Something absorbed all of that change by itself.]

What that even meant.

Just as I was about to ask for more detail.

[-! Get out of the way!]

“Tch, I see it!”

I immediately generated a Current with all my strength and escaped the crater.

A maw swallowed the volcano whole.

To be precise, the crater had been the maw. Just before I got out, dozens of teeth that had sprouted from the crater walls closed in like a blender, trying to crush me.

A split second later and I would have been eaten alive. In the process of escaping, Mallo’s collar got slightly torn.

[Ugh…]

“You okay?”

[This much can be repaired. But… wh-what in the world is that…]

Mallo stammered, staring at the thing I had mistaken for a volcano.

-Creak, creeeak… Hundreds, thousands of eyes began opening across the volcano’s surface.

The mouth that had been the crater opened wide, revealing sticky fluid and rows of razor-sharp teeth. The eyes blinked, surveying the dark Deep Sea, then slowly moved.

I put words to what Current Sense had revealed to me.

“…It’s a Barnacle.”

[…What?]

Obviously, it was no ordinary barnacle.

Normal barnacles weren’t that large, didn’t have eyes on their shells, and weren’t anywhere near that enormous.

Most importantly, they didn’t have legs like those.

“Damn…!”

Escaping the maw didn’t mean I was safe. I recoiled in shock, barely dodging the sharp tentacles that shot toward me.

Covered in barbs so dense that a single coil around anything would guarantee death, the horrifically long tentacles were snatching up the surrounding Deep Sea Creatures at random and stuffing them into its maw.

The shark I had brought along became its meal too. But that wasn’t the real problem.

“…It can see me?”

There was one thing that set this creature apart from every other Deep Sea Creature.

It was targeting me.

That meant it could see me clearly. Even the colossal octopus hadn’t been able to do that. I muttered in disbelief.

“What is this thing? How can it see me?”

[It’s detecting the True Blood.]

“Yours?”

[No, yours. Whose blood do you think I’ve been drinking?]

“This is really, really bad.”

Dodging tentacles one after another, I realized this was a far more serious problem than I’d thought.

The whole reason I’d been safe in the Deep Sea all this time was the fundamental premise that Deep Sea Creatures couldn’t detect me.

If even one creature existed that could sense me, that alone made things incredibly horrifying…

[That’s not all. Look over there.]

“At what…”

I looked in the direction Mallo tugged my collar, and realized the tentacles weren’t just shoving Deep Sea Creatures into the mouth.

Other tentacles were pulling them back out. Whole and unchanged from when they’d been swallowed.

They were even still alive. It was regurgitating what it had eaten. Unable to fathom why, I examined the spit-out creatures with Current Sense and grimaced.

Every single one of the regurgitated Deep Sea Creatures was covered head to tail in barnacles. Tiny barnacles.

Each of those little barnacles also had a single eye on top, so the creatures that came back out had become beings covered in eyes all over their bodies… grotesque beyond description.

But the grotesqueness wasn’t the only problem.

“Don’t tell me those things…”

[Yes, it seems you can see it too.]

The regurgitated Deep Sea Creatures were, with the eyes on those barnacles, staring at me.

Unmistakably in my direction.

[Its goal of survival isn’t survival, but proliferation.]

A Barnacle volcano that bestowed the ability to detect cloaked beings.

It needed to be dealt with immediately. The problem was, even now, the Deep Sea Creatures boring holes through me with their stares were deeply unsettling. Above all, the tentacles it fired were absurdly threatening.

“Tch…!”

Left with no choice, I reversed the world once more while all those tens of thousands of eyes watched me.

-Whoosh… Amidst the cascading seawater, the sun revealed itself again.

Collapsed on the meadow, I stood up and shook my entire body vigorously, flinging off the water.

“This is truly the worst. I need to go back in and destroy it right now.”

The existence of something that could mass-produce Deep Sea Creatures capable of recognizing me meant, as ridiculous as it sounded, that the Deep Sea was no longer safe.

No matter what it took, it had to be erased.

[I agree. But how?]

“…”

Bring down that enormous mountain. While other Deep Sea Creatures are hunting me.

No matter how much stronger I’d become, destroying a mountain was close to impossible for me.

That’s right, for me.

“It’s not like there’s absolutely no way.”

[…What are you planning?]

When I smiled more lightly than expected, Mallo asked with evident unease, and I answered.

“A while back, I brought someone into the Deep Sea.”

I was no longer alone.