Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

What I was concerned about was that this rat’s blood was acidic.

If this kind of blood was smeared on every wall, my hands and feet would melt on the way through.

I threw a small stone, and discovered something peculiar.

“…When was this done?”

It was dried up.

Except for the wall that the rat initially melted, the rest were dried and browned, reeking with a foul stench of decay.

So this hole was a shortcut that had been made in advance.

Also, where I would be imprisoned in this underground jail was completely random.

In other words, this meant they had done this to almost every cell. This couldn’t be just one or two cases.

It became clear once again that the organization Crimson Circle had been preparing for a very long time. Wasn’t it said to be a group that appeared only in fairy tales? I wasn’t sure if it was the same one, but if so…

I shook my head to rid myself of the stray thoughts. There was a bigger problem right now.

“Tsk.”

That I had to crawl through this horrible place myself.

Escaping from reality wouldn’t help. I squeezed my small body in and, holding my breath, crawled through the hole.

Fortunately, despite how it looked, the passage widened as I crawled. It became large enough for even an adult male to pass through, so aside from the stench, I could move more comfortably than expected.

Then, the next question arose.

Where does this even lead to?

Escaping the Capital of the Empire through this rat hole was nearly impossible anyway. Soon enough, the guard would notice my escape and sound the alarm.

At most, I had about 30 minutes left.

That meant there had to be something worthwhile at the end of this. With a hint of expectation, I reached the end of the hole and saw a small wooden door.

–Creeeak…

“Hmm?”

Instead of an exit, there was a similar earthen cave.

A faint light hanging from the ceiling, acrid air.

In this small cave, probably no more than a few square meters, a pale-faced man turned to look at me.

The man was squatting while holding a strongly smelling pipe in his mouth, and when he saw me, he had a blank expression.

“What, you really came.”

“Are you from Crimson Circle?”

“Well…”

The man dragged out his words, then went blank.

As if he had forgotten that he had just been speaking to me.

What the hell is this guy? I looked around the cave.

There were several wooden doors installed in the cave. It seemed they had made holes so that one could reach this place regardless of which cell they were imprisoned in.

And a huge pouch.

Pouches of herbs densely filled this space. In a place with no room to step, the man staggered up and picked up a portion of those herbs, stuffing them into the pipe.

Even though he hadn’t lit it, it burned and released a nauseating smell. Just inhaling the secondhand smoke made me feel dizzy.

“Haa…”

Watching the man sit back down, I was momentarily at a loss.

There was no other exit from here besides the rat hole.

And if all those rat holes connected back to cells?

“How long have you been here?”

“Mm, I don’t know.”

“…”

The man’s blank expression, the amount of herb he just used, and the herbs contained in just one pouch.

And from the empty pouches nearby, I roughly estimated.

This guy had probably been smoking here for years.

The end of the escape from prison was a more horrifying, enclosed space than the prison itself.

What the hell is this. As I looked around with a confused expression, the man glanced at me and nodded as if something came to mind.

“Right, that was the contract.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

The man beckoned with his hand. After hesitating and finding no other option, I approached. He bundled up some herbs from nearby and shoved them into the pipe.

One handful, two, three… almost an entire pouch.

Strangely, all those herbs fit inside the pipe. Watching in amazement, I saw him inhale.

“Don’t resist. It’ll be annoying.”

I blinked once.

As he exhaled, the depths of my Inner World filled with something thick and swelling.

Liquefied gas.

To interfere with my Inner World meant only one thing. I recoiled in horror.

“Great World? Why is the Great World here?”

“…Size alone is meaningless.”

The man’s smoke touched my body. At the same time, I felt a burning sensation, as if I were on fire.

When I frowned, he added,

“I told you not to resist.”

“I’m… not resisting.”

I gritted my teeth and answered, and he tilted his head.

“That’s true, then why is it so hard…”

“…”

I closed my mouth and endured the pain.

Soon after, my arm dropped with a snap.

“?”

No. That wasn’t it.

I thought it had been severed because it felt so light, but it was still attached properly.

It had simply become blurry. As if it had spread out into the world.

It didn’t take long for my whole body to become like that. Once I was in a ghostly, semi-transparent state, I stretched my body out in different directions and realized it.

I had now become something like smoke.

It was the strangest feeling. My body felt so light that I thought I could fly anywhere with just a few leaps, and that I could squeeze through the tiniest of cracks.

Hoo, in that moment, the man let out a small breath.

His breath turned dark blue and floated upward through a tiny gap in the cave ceiling.

“Follow that…”

Saying so, the man sat back down again and took the pipe into his mouth as if his task was finished.

Before leaving, I asked one last question out of curiosity.

“The guards will soon realize I’ve disappeared, won’t they?”

Instead of answering, he exhaled a second breath.

The breath became me. Smoke in the shape of my form was sucked into the rat hole I had come through.

An illusion? Even if I got discovered…

…there would be no way for this guy to not be able to get out.

I cast a quick glance at the man who no longer even looked at me, then slipped my body through the gap the dark blue breath had exited from.

Floating in the air came naturally. Once I slipped through the gap, I found myself in a small back alley.

The dark blue breath didn’t go anywhere.

It just soared straight up into the sky, then disappeared from view.

I hesitated for a moment, then kicked off and ran.

“…Huh.”

I had to admit it.

That smoker’s ability was something I deeply envied.

To freely fly through the sky with nothing but your body, the childhood wish I once had had come true, and it wasn’t something to be dismissed as just a childish dream.

It was a sense of freedom incomparable to when I’d been on a plane. No wonder people got into things like paragliding, I thought, as I looked down on the Capital, bathed in the light of countless lanterns.

But there was no time to get lost in admiration. The breath moved at a speed similar to the wind, and if I didn’t want to lose it, I had to go all out too.

My body scattered and reassembled several times. While I was able to move well, honestly, this was a difficult sensation to accept.

It felt like my ego was being scattered. If I were to separate and fall apart.

-it felt like two versions of me would exist, thinking different thoughts.

That wouldn’t be me anymore. I would disappear, and two new people would be born.

Is that why they don’t use that guy very often? Holding tightly to my consciousness, I followed the dark blue breath and arrived at a forest.

The breath scattered beneath a tree at the mountain’s peak.

“Cough, cough… ptooey!”

I spat on the ground while clinging to the tree.

Once I arrived at the destination, my body returned to its normal human form. What had just happened felt surreal, like a scene from a dream.

Yes, like something from a dream. How could a person fly through the sky or crawl through a gap thinner than thread?

If someone had to live their whole life in such a world,

“…It’s no wonder he seems so dazed.”

I could understand that guy’s blank expression.

At the muttered words I let out while steadying myself, a reply came back.

“Still, you’re better off than most. The weak-minded either scatter partway through or become wrecks once it’s over.”

“…!”

I quickly turned my body.

Up in the tree, a woman with a snake-like impression was perched on a branch, looking down at me.

A snake, quite literally. Her hair, bleached white and reaching her waist, red eyes, and black martial attire that looked like something assassins would wear.

Thin vertical pupils looked at me and smiled.

“People like that, we don’t want them. Our goal is to help each other survive, but if we have to keep helping broken junk unilaterally, what’s the point?”

“You were waiting for me?”

“Yeah. Decay specifically said it would be here.”

She leapt lightly from the tree and approached, reaching out a hand.

“Damyu. My world is a swamp.”

“A swamp?”

“Yeah, maybe calling it a quagmire would be easier to understand.”

Feeling the firm ground, I looked down at the hand she offered with a bright smile.

I didn’t take it.

“Jern, I don’t know my world.”

“Hmm, there are three things I want to ask.”

Damyu didn’t lower her hand, asking curiously.

“Aren’t you Jern Aspandil?”

“I’ve abandoned that surname.”

According to the setting, I fought with my master. I must not forget that.

After confirming the anger in my eyes, Damyu asked the second question.

“Why don’t you know your world?”

“Just as I said. I don’t know.”

“Really? But you naturally know where you are, don’t you?”

“No matter how many times you ask, the answer will be the same: I don’t know. What’s the last one?”

“My hand hurts.”

Her pupils widened like those of a beast.

“Not gonna take it?”

“…”

Looks like she won’t lower it until I do.

With no choice, I took the offered hand. It was a cold hand that didn’t feel like that of a living human.

The tense atmosphere from a moment ago instantly vanished, and Damyu smiled brightly again, shaking our hands up and down as she explained.

“Welcome to the group! Well, you’ll still have to take a few more tests. But I think you’ll pass.”

“Tests?”

“Yeah, tests. But you only have to do one! Decay vouched for you, after all.”

“Really? And what is that?”

“Hmm, what should it be…”

Tapping her chin in thought, Damyu casually threw it out like it was nothing.

“How about escaping from here?”

Before I could even process what she meant, I noticed something.

My height had shrunk.

Not just my height, but also the surrounding trees and rocks.

Everything was slowly sinking into the ground.

“Yep, you weren’t lying. You really don’t know. Alright, listen carefully.”

Damyu raised a finger and explained.

“Fallen ones are a world unto themselves. To make contact with their world? That’s the same as stepping into it. It’s something you should absolutely never do.”

“…”

“Well, some of the people in the Great World forcibly invite others in without even touching, by expanding their world’s reach. But only four people have reached that level, Decay among them. If you’re not confident, you shouldn’t touch.”

As I calmly listened to her explanation, I had already sunk to my knees.

Looking down at me, Damyu twisted her lips.

“If you were thinking something like, ‘It won’t pull me in if I stay still,’ think again. Aren’t you already sinking even though you’re not moving?”

“That’s true.”

“The test period is one month. For as long as my world remains, survive by any means. Run, climb, hide, even when you sleep. Everything around you will sink.”

I didn’t respond and fell into thought.

What is the purpose of this test?

Now that Decay had already scouted me, does the test even have meaning?

I thought again about the organization Crimson Circle.

A den of madmen and terminally ill lunatics who have decided to survive at any cost, even if they must abandon everything else.

Put simply, it’s hell. I couldn’t describe a place where cultists, sociopaths, and schizophrenics capable of easily destroying a city had gathered, as anything other than hell.

While I continued thinking, I sank up to my chest, making quite a ridiculous sight. Seeing me like that, Damyu frowned.

“…If you stay like that, you’re really going to die, you know? Inside there you can’t even breathe…”

“I get the gist of it.”

“What?”

“There’s no real test, is there?”

“…”

She looked down at me with a slightly surprised face,

“-Heh, guess you’re not a complete idiot.”

Then she squatted down and sneered.

“That’s right. Honestly, it was fucking annoying.”

“What was.”

“Who do you think you are? You weren’t even born among us, you don’t even know what your world is. And you’re a noble? Must’ve lived nice and easy, huh? Me? My mom dumped me in a swamp, and I survived three days eating a dog that was thrown out with me.”

“A dog?”

“Yeah. It was the creature I loved most in the world. Not anymore, though.”

It was hard to fully describe all the negative emotions on her face.

But I had somewhat expected it.

Excluding unique cases like Decay, this was the last refuge for those abandoned and broken, who gathered to survive.

Separate from their strength, their personalities had to be twisted far beyond normal, so much so that even Dersia would look tame in comparison.

“So get up already. Try struggling, like I did. You’ve at least got hope, don’t you? Maybe your world will grow deeper.”

The bubbling surface reached my chin.

Just as Damyu’s gaze began to show confusion at how I remained so calm, I opened my mouth.

“Looks like there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not a noble.”

“Yeah, I know. Just the disciple of some wizard, right?”

“No. I’m not even a commoner. Before I became Dersia’s disciple, I was an orphan.”

“Liar. How does an orphan meet a princess?”

Apparently, not everyone in Crimson Circle knew the full details about me.

Come to think of it, that was obvious. Crimson Circle only cared about Dersia. And strictly speaking, the only ones interested in me, her disciple, were Decay and Lump. Wihwa probably only knew I was the one who killed him.

On the contrary, the fact that Damyu even knew of me meant she held a pretty high rank within Crimson Circle. Though, even she didn’t seem to know all the details.

In that case.

I realized what kind of attitude I needed to adopt within Crimson Circle.

“You’re not expecting me to pull you out if it looks like you’re going to die, are you? If you die, I’ll just say you scattered in your smoke form-”

“Ha, haha…”

“…You’re laughing?”

There was a hint of killing intent in Damyu’s gaze.

I shook my head and apologized.

“Forgive me. I suppose I had some expectations.”

“What kind of expectations?”

“That someone from Crimson Circle might have a more- yes, a more impressive world.”

“…?”

“Calling something this pitiful a ‘world’… it just struck me as a little funny.”

I stepped forward.

There was no firm ground in the swamp. And yet, without a doubt, I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

It was a simple task. As the swamp sank, I stirred up the current to bring up sediment, creating a foothold I could step on.

One step. Then another. As I slowly walked back up onto solid ground, Damyu’s gaze filled with horror instead of killing intent.

“I’m jealous of you.”

“…This, uh, how- how did you-”

I had broken through the Burden that had driven Damyu to hell far too easily.

I brushed off my clothes, not even a speck of dirt on them, and quietly murmured as I saw her eyes tremble.

“With Burdens like this, life must be quite easy.”

If this place was filled with nothing but beasts anyway,

Then even if I came off a bit rude, it would be better to show who stood above whom in a world ruled by the law of the jungle.