Chapter 244: Depth (11)

TL/ED – Miso

First of all, there was one thing that troubled me most.

“Will this body hold up out there?”

Generally speaking, Deep Sea Creatures could only live within the Deep Sea itself.

Of course, this place wasn’t an ordinary deep sea… but since I had to return eventually, I worried that going back outside might cause my body to burst from the pressure difference.

[Outwardly, you don’t seem to have changed all that much, so…]

Mallo trailed off, unable to speak with full conviction.

[Conversely, that means once your appearance does start changing, the situation will be serious.]

“My appearance?”

[Yes. Right now, since you’ve only just entered the Deep Sea, the changes won’t be very large. But if you adapt to the level you’re worried about, your outward form will surely change as well. That moment would be the moment your life ends.]

“…Adaptation, huh.”

I sighed and looked around me.

All the things around me that had felt strange ever since I entered this Deep Sea-

The reason new sensations had suddenly appeared, and old abilities had vanished, came down to one thing.

“I never wanted to become part of such a horrid world. Maybe I should have asked Cheon-hwa a few more questions.”

Because I had become a Deep Sea Creature.

These were all things that had come about because I had become one of their kind.

It wasn’t an especially pleasant fact.

[…Perhaps this was that Cheon-hwa woman’s plan all along.]

As I thought it over, Mallo began muttering to himself.

“What was?”

[Frankly, it’s impossible for you to fully transform into a creature of the Deep Sea. Humans can swim in the ocean, but no matter how much they swim, they don’t turn into fish.]

Hearing that, I remembered something Cheon-hwa had been preparing.

A pond meant to artificially recreate the Deep Sea, or something along those lines.

[Simply giving up on returning to your World wouldn’t be enough. The one who dropped you into the Deep Sea must have engineered things to end up like this.]

“Then things just got better than they were before.”

[…What? No. The opposite.]

Mallo asked back, puzzled, as if to say what on earth I was talking about.

[You’ve been deceived! She must have schemed to drown you in a Deep Sea you could never escape, and then thrown you in exactly as planned.]

“That’s what I thought at first too, but hearing what you said, I don’t think that’s it.”

The fact that Cheon-hwa was hostile to me amounted to saying she was following Void’s orders.

But if I died here in the Deep Sea, the Fallen of the Deep Sea would vanish from the outside world.

That would be extremely inconvenient from Void’s perspective. He’d finally obtained the World of the Deep Sea, and now he’d have to grind down Wizards all over again for ages.

And what if, even after expending every last Wizard, he couldn’t obtain another Wizard of the Deep Sea?

“His plan would fall apart. If she were really Void’s underling, there’s no way she’d do something like this.”

[…You have a point.]

Just dropping me into the Deep Sea, rather than killing me here outright, would create absurd variables.

Mallo nodded the collar of the robe in agreement as he listened.

“If this isn’t a variable but the path Cheon-hwa intended, things get easier. I just have to follow it.”

There was nothing left to hold me back.

I raised my threads and pulled the Fish-Man up to his feet.

[Ugh… uhh…]

Now that the domination had run its course, he was entirely under my control.

At last, the path to the Middle Layer had opened. As I was thinking that, Mallo cautiously asked a question.

[But Jern. There’s still one problem left.]

“Hm?”

[Are you going to be all right where your body is concerned? Even if Cheon-hwa isn’t on Void’s side, she isn’t on yours either. That’s surely why she didn’t warn you about what to watch out for before dropping you in here.]

“Well… I suppose so.”

Certainly, if she’d known everything, she could have said something.

The fact that she hadn’t suggested she wasn’t fully on my side either.

I shrugged and made the Fish-Man move.

“Nothing to be done about it.”

[What?]

A change of species?

I just had to think of it as one more Burden being added.

In fact, compared to the Burdens I’d dealt with so far, this one was almost touchingly kind. I just had to make sure my outward appearance didn’t start changing.

“All I can do is finish this fast.”

***

The entrance to the Middle Layer, the false floor of the Deep Sea.

Once I arrived at the place covered in fine, white sand, I immediately dug up all the sand around me.

With my strengthened Water Pressure and Currents, it was an easy task. Standing on the now-bare transparent floor, I drew out the Blade of Water Pressure.

Mallo, who had been quietly watching, seemed curious about this transparent floor and asked,

[What are you doing?]

“Fishing.”

[…What?]

The Middle Layer was, ultimately, a sediment layer.

A place where lives that had failed to endure and dissolved into the Deep Sea sank and accumulated due to differences in density.

If, after piling up endlessly, it had eventually come to possess a single self-awareness, then…

I only needed to target that one self.

‘Last time, it took about thirty seconds for it to come bursting out the moment I cut it.’

So this time, faster.

Schick. I sliced the floor open just slightly with the Blade of Water Pressure.

A hole just big enough for one person. The moment such a hole appeared, I shoved the Fish-Man, who was standing there blankly, inside.

After the Fish-Man went in, I quickly sealed the hole. I even used my abilities to stitch it shut as best I could.

“Let’s see…”

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

And then, thirty seconds.

Fortunately, the Middle Layer didn’t surge back up. The Fish-Man was sinking quietly into the depths of the Middle Layer, and the Puppet thread tied to him was still connected.

Sliiide. The way the thread slowly extended told me the Fish-Man was sinking deeper and deeper.

[What in the world is this…?]

“Shh. I’m getting a bite.”

Just as Mallo, exasperated, was about to ask what this was supposed to be…

Roughly three minutes in, the thread pulled taut.

It was natural for new sediment to accumulate atop a sediment layer.

The Middle Layer judged the Fish-Man’s corpse to be just another grain of sand settling on top, and swallowed it.

That was only natural. After all, the Fish-Man had imitated the Middle Layer’s domain, however imperfectly. When something like that suddenly arrived, of course it would be swallowed first and questioned later.

Like bait on a fishing line.

“Ugh…”

The Fish-Man slowly dissolved and became a part of the Middle Layer.

Still under my control, of course.

The price for that was nothing short of harrowing.

[Jern? Jern!]

Drip, drip drip…

When my nosebleed began pouring down like rain, Mallo cried out in alarm.

I’d been about to say I was fine, but the dizziness in my head made me clamp my mouth shut. If I moved even a little, I felt I might throw up.

[You absolute madman… so this is what you meant by fishing…!]

Mallo seemed to have finally grasped what I was doing and expressed his shock.

It was a simple matter. The Middle Layer’s defining trait.

That is, the fact that everything within it merged into one. I was using that.

‘If it actually devoured things in the normal sense, this would have been useless, but…’

Puppet was not Horsehair Worm.

If I had taken control of a rabbit and that rabbit was eaten by a wolf, that was the end of it. The thread tied to the rabbit didn’t transfer to the wolf.

But the Middle Layer was different. It was an aggregation of countless lives, meaning the eater and the eaten all became the same single self.

If the Fish-Man, while under my control, joined the Middle Layer, my Puppet would bind the Middle Layer itself.

The crux of this plan was just one thing.

Whether I could pull it off.

“…I didn’t think it would be this much.”

The result was respectable.

Threads were being sucked into the tiny crack in the floor without pause. I had already fed in enough thread to control five Whales, but…

The rate at which they were being consumed didn’t change. Nor did the price exacted from me.

It was a tremendous stroke of luck that I’d reached 3-Star and that Puppet had grown stronger. Even so, it wasn’t nearly enough.

Ping!

[Damn it…]

In the end, the threads reached their limit.

The voracious Middle Layer had devoured every last thread, and yet hadn’t even been brought a quarter of the way under my control.

[Did it fail?]

“I’ll have to find out from here on.”

I slowly steadied my mind and concentrated.

I had clearly used far less thread than would be needed to dominate the Middle Layer.

But it had still been used. After all, the Puppet had successfully transferred from the Fish-Man to the Middle Layer.

In the end, what mattered was how much had taken hold.

Schick. I cut another hole in the floor, peered inside, and gave a command to the Puppet.

“Come out.”

[…]

The dark, transparent floor of the Middle Layer remained still.

Pitch-black darkness, without even the faintest ripple to suggest anything had happened.

After waiting about five minutes like that, I clutched my head and let out a sigh.

Should I have prepared more thread before attempting this? No, if I were at the level of 4-Star, scales would already be sprouting all over my body.

As I thought that and was about to rise to my feet…

…Krrumble…!

[?]

“…An earthquake?”

The Deep Sea was shaking.

I was momentarily bewildered. Naturally, the Deep Sea had no natural disasters.

The Deep Sea itself was the disaster, so what more could be needed? In that sense, the floor beginning to tremble was not a natural occurrence.

Wondering if it might not be an earthquake but rather countless Deep Sea Creatures moving all at once, I looked down at the floor…

[…Jern, did you cut that?]

“…No.”

Crrrack!

Countless cracks were spreading across the ceiling of the Middle Layer, on the verge of tearing wide open. Even Mallo could see them: deliberate lines etched into the transparent floor.

Then, from those cracks, seawater of a different density came gushing out.

[This… this…!]

[…! …!!]

“Whoa.”

For a moment, I forgot the situation entirely and looked around in astonishment.

The seawater, which should have been nothing more than water making up the Deep Sea, brushed past me and conveyed something that wasn’t temperature, wasn’t pressure, but a strange feeling all its own.

As if emotions had been packed into the seawater itself.

If that impression was correct, the emotion held within was, without a doubt, rage.

[Who…]

[How dare…]

[What is…]

Seawater laden with countless emotions filled the area in an instant and pressed down on everything around it.

It felt like being trapped in the middle of a furious crowd. The pressure left me unable to breathe… and it was a physical pressure.

“So it took, after all…”

Feeling the Water Pressure beginning to crush my entire body, I forced a smile.

To the naked eye, nothing was visible, but my Current Sense saw it clearly.

Seawater filled with emotion was gathering, merging into a single colossal wave.

[….You]

[You-]

[You bastard…]

And weaving through that wave were strands of white thread.