Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

Sometimes, I’d had thoughts like that.

Why is there nothing in this Deep Sea?

I mean, a normal ocean floor has reefs, or islands, and though I didn’t know much about it, I’d heard that even the deep sea has drifting debris.

But in the Deep Sea as seen through Current Sense, there wasn’t so much as a piece of drifting rock, let alone solid ground to stand on.

It was just deep, dark water. That was all. Whether I went down or up. At the edge of my Current Sense, there was nothing to feel except depth.

I finally understood why.

“…?”

After about an hour had passed, a canyon appeared.

Canyon might be the word for it, but it was really a mass of black rock so impossibly vast that its end was nowhere in sight. I couldn’t believe my own two eyes (and Current Sense) and bumped into it several times.

“No, why was there nothing all this time?”

Granted, it was an hour’s distance away, but the idea that I had failed to detect a canyon this enormous was absurd.

After all the distance I’d covered…

…Ah.

‘…I never actually moved from the start, did I?’

Thinking about it, all my movement had been in the Real World.

The Deep Sea and the Real World are entirely different worlds. The only thing overlapping between them was me, and in truth, there was no connection.

So while I was in the Real World, whether I moved or not, the chances were high that I hadn’t budged even a single centimeter in the Deep Sea.

All this time, watching other Deep Sea Creatures pass by, I’d been under the illusion of, “Oh, I must be moving too.”

…The reality was that the Deep Sea Creatures had simply been approaching the spot where I was.

“Hmm…”

This was a far more suffocating realization than I’d expected.

Maybe I should just go back. That thought began to seriously take hold.

All this time, I’d believed I was exploring the Deep Sea. My decision to look for a solution within the Deep Sea had also been partly because I’d concluded that this vast ocean contained nothing but seawater and Deep Sea Creatures.

But that wasn’t the case. What it meant was that, aside from a few brief moments since fully entering the Deep Sea, I’d been sitting still in one spot, surveying maybe a hundred meters around me at best, and deluding myself into thinking I understood everything. A frog in a well.

I had no idea what lay ahead.

Or how dangerous it might be.

But.

[…Close.]

And for that very reason, there was much to gain.

Normally, I would have taken more time before diving in. I’d have confirmed the canyon, gone back, drawn up a plan, and explored methodically. More precisely, I would have established how far was safe and used Current Sense to search outward from within that safe radius.

I couldn’t afford that now. Death was far closer than I’d thought.

“Shall I go?”

I steeled my resolve once more and followed the Anglerfish down toward the canyon, and there I saw peculiar organisms I’d never once encountered before.

“Barnacles…?”

No, should I call them barnacles, or clams?

Shellfish with shells that jutted out grotesquely like coral were squirming, licking their own shells clean with their tongues.

They had tongues. Clams. And they were long, crimson red, and moved with startling flexibility.

The purpose of those tongues was all too clear.

[Prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves! The end has come, repent! Of course, salvation will not come! Seeking salvation in the apocalypse, you fools! How can an apocalypse that offers salvation be an apocalypse at all!]

[Why save the children? Children know nothing! They cannot even fathom the existential terror of what comes after death, nor do they feel the grief of losing everything they’ve built! They haven’t even understood love! Kill the children first, for they are the ones with the least to lose!]

They could fluently articulate the things Deep Sea Creatures spouted.

The content certainly had not even the slightest connection to the Deep Sea, though.

My suspicion that something else had taught these creatures to speak grew even more certain, and at the same time, I couldn’t hide my bewilderment at the content.

What, was there a meteor impact or something? Or did lunatics teach them this?

As I was tilting my head in disbelief…

[It comes, it comes!]

[Mercy! Mercy!]

Suddenly, the clams lashed out their tongues in a frenzy, attacking the Anglerfish.

The Anglerfish casually bit through the tongues and spat out their purple blood.

The clams kept trying to ensnare the Anglerfish with their tongues without rest, but the difference in species was too great; most of the tongues simply snapped, and that was where it ended.

It was my first time seeing Deep Sea Creatures attack other Deep Sea Creatures, so I’d been wondering if it was because they were shellfish, but then I noticed that they were more like barnacles, firmly anchored to the canyon walls.

While other creatures devoured pressure-crushed kin or chewed on eggs, these things were rooted in one place and couldn’t do any of that.

Their sole means of feeding was catching whatever Deep Sea Creatures happened to wander by. Normally, living like this would mean starving to death, but… a sweep with Current Sense revealed quite a lot of them.

No, they covered the majority of the canyon walls.

The reason they could survive without starving was that Deep Sea Creatures must frequently visit this canyon.

…But why?

That was what I needed to find out. Dodging the assault of tongues, I slipped into the gap of the canyon.

[…]

The moment I actually entered the crevice of the canyon, the Anglerfish began trembling violently.

Whether it trembled or not, the creature had served its purpose, so I paid it no further mind and cast out my Current Sense.

And immediately, I grimaced.

“What the…”

I’d known from outside, but this canyon was on a scale that couldn’t simply be dismissed with the word “vast”.

There was no visible bottom.

Deep, and deep, and deeper still. I couldn’t be sure, but I could imagine flipping Mount Everest upside down and plunging it into this canyon, and its peak still wouldn’t touch the bottom.

A low rumble echoed… I stared down into the abyss below the canyon, a hole so pitch-black it truly deserved to be called an abyss, and swallowed hard.

I did not want to go down there.

It wasn’t simply a matter of preference. Instinct had intervened.

The same kind of primitive reflex that makes you close your eyes when something flies at your face was warning me not to descend.

An instinct born from being a life of the Deep Sea, the same class as Current and Water Pressure.

The Anglerfish was likely trembling beside me for the same reason. Thinking that, I turned to glance at it and…

[Guh… ack…]

Half its body was gone.

“…?”

For a moment, I couldn’t process the situation.

The Anglerfish painted the Deep Sea with blue blood, thrashing in an attempt to swim. Naturally, its tail and fins had all been brutally torn away, so the effort was futile.

And a life of the Deep Sea that had lost the ability to resist reached its one inevitable destination.

[Ge.]

With a sickening crunch, almost instantaneously, the Anglerfish compressed into a lump of meat so small it was barely visible.

My head went cold.

“Hmm.”

Of course, I hadn’t been carelessly sweeping my Current Sense upon entering a place like this.

My Current Sense had been perfectly mapping every crevice of the canyon within several hundred meters around me.

Unless the Anglerfish had suddenly decided to kill itself, whatever had killed it had effortlessly slipped past my Current Sense.

That wasn’t strange in itself. Every life of the Deep Sea could use the same abilities I had. If there was something in this Deep Sea that hunted and devoured prey, it would naturally know how to circumvent Current Sense.

And if it possessed that level of ability,

it would undoubtedly be able to spread its own Current Sense far thicker than mine.

CRASH!

[…?]

A split-second decision saved my life.

There had been no warning whatsoever, but trusting nothing but my judgment, I immediately accelerated and dove downward. At the same instant, the canyon wall where my hand had just been resting was smashed apart.

A tentacle. An octopus’s tentacle.

If there was one notable detail, it was, predictably, that it was absurdly enormous.

“Son of a…”

I watched the writhing suckers, their grimy black surface showing the weight of ages, then traced the tentacle back to where it was attached.

Something was rising from the depths of the canyon below.

But even the canyon’s massive width was far too narrow for that thing to pass through. Several tentacles, each as large as a newly built apartment building, jutted above the canyon’s rim.

It was only my second time seeing something like this, after the one at the Orphanage.

As I stood there, unable to contain my shock…

[–, ….—??? …There it is…]

The thing spoke, very slowly.

[—-….There….—]

“…”

[–is, here…]

A horrifically heavy voice reverberating from the depths of the sea.

The clams that had been chattering away instantly clamped their shells shut with all their might, not uttering a single word.

The Deep Sea Creatures that had been within range of my Current Sense near the canyon vanished in an instant. It was the first time my surroundings had gone quiet since I fell into the Deep Sea, but I felt not an ounce of relief.

Tentacles swept wildly over the canyon as if searching for something.

The creature spoke in a language so alien that even the interpretation ability I’d obtained from Crimson Circle’s Sharmia barely worked, but the words I could understand were enough to infer its meaning.

It was searching for me.

That fact alone was as clear a signal as any that I needed to run immediately.

But if I turned around the fact that it was searching for me,

it meant it didn’t yet know where I was.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

[…]

“Can you understand what I’m saying?”

The thing hesitated for a moment, then…

CRASH!!!!

It struck the wall of the canyon.

The blow was tremendous enough to shake the entire Deep Sea. Dust from the shattered canyon engulfed the area, turning everything so hazy that I couldn’t see an inch ahead, and the chunks of rock sent flying were each larger than a carriage.

I gritted my teeth, dodged, and let out a sigh of relief.

“You picked wrong. And you’re going to keep picking wrong.”

Even a monstrous creature like this ultimately couldn’t find me.

Within the Deep Sea, I seemed to be an absurdly difficult target to spot.

[….Yesss…]

One tentacle gradually sank back down.

Another tentacle crawled its way back down into the canyon as well.

Only one remained.

[–, …correct…]

“What?”

[In the sea…you cannot find salt…you, –are…dissolved…]

What was it saying?

Could we actually communicate? I could make out the words it spoke, but it also seemed brimming with hostility toward me, so the situation was hardly favorable.

Still, recalling how the Deep Sea Creatures had behaved so far, they were remarkably stupid.

If I told them to bite, they bit. If I told them to go, they went. If I told them to speak, they spoke. Their intelligence was on par with fish, so that was only natural. Wouldn’t this one be similar?

At the very least, it was well worth trying.

That colossal body, and the depth at which it seemed to dwell.

And yet it was still alive.

This thing had a secret.

A secret I absolutely had to uncover.

“How are you still alive?”

[…]

“With a body that size, at that depth, there’s no way you could endure it. Being boneless isn’t enough to survive at that level of pressure. Tell me what method you’re using.”

[…..]

Perhaps it didn’t understand. I tried simpler words.

“You, normal, death? But alive. How?”

Surviving at that depth, with that massive body, there had to be some secret beyond what ordinary Deep Sea Creatures possessed.

If push came to shove, I was willing to fight to find out. I clenched my jaw and pressed the question, when suddenly the creature rumbled through the Deep Sea again, answering my question with a question.

[Why…?]

[Why do you not dissolve completely…?]

“…?”

What was that supposed to mean? I tilted my head in confusion, then clenched my teeth and answered.

“I have absolutely no intention of dissolving.”

Assimilation. Become one with the Deep Sea.

That was what the creature was suggesting.

“What I want to know is how to endure, how to hold on even when it’s miserable. Not how to give up and accept it.”

[………..]

For a very long time,

the octopus was silent. So long that I began to wonder if I should just leave.

[…–child.]

When it spoke again, it addressed me with something, some –, a word I couldn’t even begin to pronounce.

[Look around you…]

“…Around me?”

[…Even the lowly ones survive, the — smaller and weaker than you…]

“??”

[What is…different…?]

…True enough.

Unlike me, Deep Sea Creatures survived just fine even without a particularly high level of Current Sense or Current control.

They didn’t even seem to be in pain. As long as they weren’t injured and ruptured.

Until now, I’d simply assumed it was due to their body structure, but thinking about it, at a depth this extreme and terrible, whether or not something had bones was no longer the deciding factor.

And unlike me, who at least lived in the Real World, those creatures lived right here in the Deep Sea.

Why?

No, how?

As I pondered, something registered on my Current Sense.

The carcass of the Anglerfish that had just been torn apart had drifted against the canyon wall at some point.

[…]

A clam that had been watching the situation saw that most of the octopus’s tentacles had withdrawn, and hurriedly swallowed the carcass.

It was something I’d seen so often that I barely gave it a second thought, but then a spark went off in my head.

“No, don’t tell me…”

[…]

When I turned back with disbelieving eyes, the octopus remained silent.

As if confirming that my thought was correct.

“Seriously?”

[Eat…]

…Driving the final nail in.