Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

After Damyu left.

I bound my entire body tightly to a nearby pillar.

I tied myself so tight it could cause necrosis. Only after confirming that I couldn’t even thrash around no matter how hard I struggled could I finally let out a sigh.

She would come.

She would definitely come. As I waited with that thought in mind—

Something moving entered my World.

“…”

“…”

And then.

My eyes met hers as she strolled into the garden.

Moonlight illuminated the space between us. After a prolonged silence, I spoke first.

“Are you not going to ask?”

“Hm?”

“I imagine you have quite a few questions for me.”

Why did you betray me? Was that your intention from the start?

I expected some rage-filled rebuke along those lines, but Dark Night tilted her head slightly as if she didn’t understand.

After pondering for quite a while, she finally spoke.

“Hmm… if I had to pick something, I’m curious how you were so certain you’d make the same choices even after losing your memories. I didn’t see that coming at all.”

“It’s a bit difficult to ask that of someone who’s lost their memories. I suppose my past self thought that given the same circumstances, I’d arrive at the same conclusions.”

I trailed off, buying time.

After all, she was the one who had to bear the Burden. The longer we talked, the more she had to pay for all the empty promises she’d scattered about.

That’s why I thought she’d most likely attack right from the start, but—

“Is that so? Oppa really is Oppa after all.”

Dark Night was perfectly calm. No, beyond calm—she seemed to lack even a basic understanding of the current situation.

Her gaze wasn’t even on me. The way she gently touched the roses in the garden made it seem like she didn’t consider me an enemy at all.

“Now that I think about it, you were always like that. Always somewhere I couldn’t reach.”

“Dark Night-nim. I understand that you don’t see this situation as a crisis.”

“Hm?”

“You’re from the Upper Tier, after all. You must have built up quite a lot over the years. This probably isn’t your first time dealing with something like this. Of course you’d have ways to handle it.”

I spoke calmly to Dark Night, who wore a puzzled expression.

“However, as ridiculous as it sounds coming from someone in my position, you shouldn’t have accepted me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It was already over the moment you consumed me. If you give up and hand over your position to me, I’ll at least spare your life.”

Dark Night blinked at my razor-sharp declaration, then—

She let out a small laugh.

“You’re smart, Oppa, so you should know—none of this really matters much.”

“…”

“Yes, I’ll have to move the Family members to different bodies. I’ll have to create new children too. It’ll take time. But in the end, I can rebuild everything.”

“And, well. To be honest, I think I only need to add a few more Family members now.”

Snap snap snap snap snap!

Thousands of threads wrapped around her neck snapped all at once, and those threads descended precisely toward me.

“Because I have you, Oppa.”

I had tied the ropes tightly. Even if I gave it everything I had, I could never undo them with physical strength alone, not even if I died and came back to life.

But the hand bound by threads squirmed and began to swell.

“!”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let a single hair on your head be harmed.”

Bang! Dark Night flicked her fingers lightly, and my hand escaped my will and easily snapped the ropes.

My arm, grotesquely swollen as if injected with some drug, radiated a sense of omnipotence. The kind of strength that could easily crush stone.

“Gah—!”

But that strength didn’t exist for my sake.

From the very beginning, I was a being bound by contract.

My body was not my own. It lightly wrapped around my own throat, making my head spin.

Dark Night watched and covered her mouth with slight concern.

“Just bear with it for a bit. As a special treatment, I’ll make you lose your memories every hour. That way we can live together as Family forever.”

“I’ll… pass…!”

I gritted my teeth and refused, then used something other than ropes to pin down my body this time.

“Huh?”

Dark Night seemed bewildered and kept trying to move my arm with her threads, but the overwhelming mass wouldn’t allow it.

Only then did the smile disappear from her lips.

“…You made a contract with me. You can’t possibly still have your World.”

“Well, seems you made a bit of a mistake.”

When I casually responded, Dark Night stopped trying to move my arm.

Instead, the threads flew toward somewhere else.

“Get out.”

“…Huh?”

“Get out of my Oppa’s body. Right now.”

What is she even talking about?

But judging from the subtle anger in her tone, she clearly wasn’t pleased that I was using my World.

The problem was what came next.

“…”

“…Oh.”

From where the threads had descended, something impossible began to crawl out.

They had been human—once. But every single one was missing their head, and their muscles had swelled so grotesquely that their clothes had been torn to shreds.

Naked. Three times the size of an average adult male. Moving on all fours.

Soaked in blood and dripping brain matter, they looked horrific enough that I’d believe it if someone told me they had just walked up from hell.

Looking at those monsters, a question naturally escaped my lips.

“Wait, you could do something like this too?”

“…”

Dark Night didn’t answer. She just glared at me with eyes dense with killing intent. The friendly demeanor from moments ago, when she had called me Oppa, was nowhere to be found.

Either way, it meant I couldn’t expect any mercy. I steeled myself as I watched the monsters slowly approach.

I couldn’t stop the water pressure crushing my body. If I did, my hands would immediately strangle my own neck.

But if I just stayed still, those monstrous creatures would knock me unconscious, and only a terrible outcome would await.

So I had to do it.

Now.

“Submerge.”

I blinked, and the World shifted.

The air became liquid, and all living things were burdened by mass before they could even act.

“…Kuh, kak.”

Unfortunately for them, they didn’t seem to have enough intelligence to comprehend what had happened.

The creatures that had been slowly approaching began to shrink. By the time they reached out their arms—or forelegs—toward me, it was already far too late.

Crack! Blood splattered from their crushed bodies and was about to touch my cheek, but instead dispersed into the water.

The rupturing didn’t stop at one. It repeated until every monster had burst and died.

I looked at Dark Night, hoping this might be the end.

“Th-this is…”

A vain hope. Dark Night was perfectly fine.

Instead, she looked around with a shocked expression, then raised her hand to feel the flow of the water.

“You have Ocean? No. No, wait…”

Crunch!

She wasn’t perfectly fine after all. When she reached toward me, her hand was instantly crushed.

I watched the carnage with a grimace. That must hurt.

“—The Deep Sea?”

But she seemed unfazed, withdrawing her crushed hand and muttering that word.

It was quite fitting. A dark ocean. I had thought it was a World that could be called something like that, but come to think of it, “Deep Sea” suited it even better.

“Hmm, Deep Sea. I suppose so. I didn’t know because I’d lost my memories.”

“That’s impossible.”

Dark Night shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it.

“How are you still alive? Void told me nothing can survive inside the Deep Sea.”

“I’ll say it again—I don’t really know because I lost my memories. But…”

This time, I looked at her crushed arm and asked.

“Now that you mention it, that’s great news. Think you can endure this?”

“…”

Suddenly, the threads binding her were torn away at lightning speed, flying off somewhere.

“How pathetic. Don’t underestimate me.”

The change was dramatic. Her arm healed in an instant.

Then she walked toward me as if it were the most natural thing in the world, not a trace of Burden to be felt. However—

“Gak, kek, kak…”

The monsters that hadn’t died yet were shrinking more and more with each step she took.

…Burden transfer. Dark Night had shifted all of the Deep Sea’s Burden onto those she had contracted with.

She extended her hand and a sword made of threads naturally formed, settling into her grip.

Thread-made or not, it was sharp all the same. The blade lightly touched my neck, grazing the skin.

Dark Night asked fiercely.

“What now?”

Unable to escape my own body, pinned down by water pressure, I couldn’t move an inch. Dark Night, moving freely through the Deep Sea despite having transferred her Burden.

Victory and defeat were all but decided. In truth, they had been decided from the start. If Dark Night had pulled out her threads and strangled me, I wouldn’t have lasted long.

But.

“So this is as far as I’ve come.”

I forced a smile.

The Burden was crushing me too, not just Dark Night, and her blade was cutting into my neck even now. But I smiled.

She looked displeased and tightened her grip on the sword.

“How long do you think you can last? It can’t be easy to offload my Burden.”

That was the truth of it. Dark Night had already lost most of her Family and her Livestock had died.

She was transferring her Burden to whatever remained, but she couldn’t hold out for long.

“Ha.”

Dark Night laughed in disbelief and pushed the blade deeper, scraping my neck.

“You’re one to talk? Even if I can’t last ten minutes, you won’t last ten seconds.”

“I suppose not. I don’t want to die yet—do you have any terms?”

“Swear that every hour, every day, you’ll sacrifice all your memories for me.”

“No.”

“Then there’s no other choice.”

The thread sword pressed harder against my neck.

“You’re not Oppa anymore. You were just a fake pretending to be him this whole time. I’ll kill you and transfer you to another body. That’s all.”

“No, Dark Night-nim. I am your Oppa.”

“…What?”

She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

I moved a thread with effort and stroked her cheek.

“Look at this. Didn’t I also receive the Puppet ability? I’m just trapped inside the Deep Sea, that’s all.”

“…Don’t insult Oppa any further.”

Spurt—blood burst forth.

“Then you’ve made a grave mistake.”

“Being deceived by you was my only mistake. I’m going to fix it now.”

“You can’t fix it. You shouldn’t have given me these threads. You absolutely, absolutely shouldn’t have. Didn’t I tell you earlier? It was already over the moment you consumed me.”

“…?”

Perhaps sensing something strange about me muttering so calmly even as my neck was being sliced open, Dark Night’s expression turned questioning.

And then her gaze shifted to the threads attached to my body.

Almost all of them had been severed.

Dark Night must have noticed by now. That those threads weren’t cut—they had been “connected” to something else.

“…Ah.”

Yes. A mistake.

Dark Night had done something she should never have done.

Even if she gave the ability to control things to everyone in the world—

She should never have given it to me.

“If I recall correctly, you said my World is the Deep Sea—”

I watched her slowly backing away, nodding gently with a soft smile.

“Then I suppose these things should be called Deep Sea Creatures.”

「…-.—–…—-!」

“You… little…”

Dark Night couldn’t take her eyes off the place where the monsters she had been commanding until just moments ago had been.

They were gone. They had crumbled away, leaving only bloodstains behind.

Devoured by even more horrific monsters.

She stared blankly at the grotesque creatures—massive things that could never be called fish—and uttered a single word.

“The Three Evils.”

Hmm. For some reason…

That term felt strangely familiar.