Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

Snow Mountain, and the Spire beside it.

But unlike the peak of Snow Mountain, which was clearly visible, the top of the Spire was hidden in the clouds.

Even looking at it again, it was tall. Absurdly tall.

“What in the…”

“…”

The sheer, seemingly endless height of the Spire.

Balkan frowned as he craned his neck to look up at its peak.

“I’ve never seen a tower like this. No, I’ve never even heard of one.”

“You’ve spent your whole career inside the Capital, so wouldn’t that be expected?”

“…Elf wizard, the duty of a Guardian Knight is not simply standing watch at one of the Capital’s gates.”

He shot Dersia an irritated glare.

“Our mission is to repel every enemy of the empire that could potentially reach the Capital. Naturally, monitoring the entire empire on a daily basis is a given. Yet despite having combed every corner of the empire, I have no memory of ever seeing a spire like this.”

“I see. Jern, do the Upper Tier reside inside that thing?”

“The one called Cheon-hwa is always underground, but the others drop by occasionally.”

“So Decay may or may not be there.”

“I’ll check now.”

I turned my Current Sense toward the Spire and scanned it.

Then, at results different from what I had expected, I narrowed my brow slightly.

“…Decay isn’t here.”

“What about the other Upper Tier members?”

“None of them. Though, there are quite a lot of dogs being kept in there.”

Normally, that massive Spire would have held only a handful of people, myself included.

But now it was packed with hundreds of occupants.

All of them Fallen.

Lower Tier.

“…Ah, I see.”

Dersia nodded as soon as she heard the situation.

“No matter how hardy the Fallen are, they couldn’t survive in a frozen wasteland this harsh. It seems they brought every last one of them inside.”

“Hmm…”

The way Brimdal looked at the Spire changed.

He stroked his beard with a faintly eager expression, as though his blood was already boiling.

“W-wait, hold on.”

While I was thinking about what to do next, Balkan cut in with a look of genuine shock.

“The Lower Tier, meaning, every single Fallen under the Crimson Circle’s command, is inside that Spire?”

“Yes. That seems to be the case. Though the Upper Tier themselves aren’t here. I’m trying to think of where Decay might have gone.”

“…And you’re just going to leave?”

“Pardon?”

Balkan pointed at the Spire in disbelief.

“What I’m saying is, if we burn down that cockroach nest right now, the Crimson Circle is finished.” 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

“The Lower Tier is just a small fraction of the Crimson Circle despite their numbers. Even if we slaughtered every last one of them, it wouldn’t deal a significant blow.”

“But the ones causing the most damage to the empire are those very bastards! I’m telling you, now is our chance to…”

He trailed off mid-sentence, realizing something, and scowled.

“…Wait, why am I even discussing this with you? Dersia, Sir Brimdal. What do the two of you think? Surely we must go in.”

“How suddenly formal of you. As Jern said, that Spire is more trouble than it’s worth. There’s nothing to gain from attacking a Spire without the Upper Tier inside. And if we sustain any injuries, it’ll cause problems for the long journey still ahead of us.”

“Well, I’d love to go a round with these Fallen myself, but… isn’t our mission to stop this blizzard? We should stay focused on the objective. Tch.”

“Damn it… then at least call for reinforcements…”

“The reason we’re moving in such a small group isn’t just for speed, but primarily for the element of surprise. There’s no reason to kick the hornet’s nest and let Decay know we’re coming. Is that explanation sufficient?”

Unfortunately for him, no one was on his side.

When Balkan clamped his mouth shut in the face of Dersia and Brimdal’s logical rebuttals, I shrugged and tossed him a few words of consolation.

“Still, I think we do need to make contact with the Spire. There might be someone in there who knows where Decay went.”

“Contact?”

“Yes. We grab a few of them and ask. Though, we’ll need to do it quietly so it doesn’t look like our doing.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult.”

Crunch. Dersia took a step toward the Spire.

I shook my head and stopped her.

“Your magic is too flashy, Dersia-nim, and it leaves traces. If you wait at the carriage, I’ll handle this with the knights and come back.”

“…I’m not limited to loud magic, you know.”

“I’m aware, but we also need someone to watch the carriage.”

A fierce blizzard was raging. With Current Sense, there was no chance of losing track of the carriage’s location, but if it happened to blow away, that would be a real headache.

More importantly, Cheon-hwa could still be hiding somewhere in the Spire. She wasn’t showing up on Current Sense at the moment, but she had always been in the Spire.

If we went in, there was a chance of running into her. And in that case, Dersia wouldn’t hesitate for a single moment before killing Cheon-hwa.

Not that I felt any particular sympathy. Regardless of how she had treated me, Cheon-hwa was still a villain beyond redemption.

But still.

‘…There’s something I need to ask her.’

The fact that Deep Sea Creatures possessed some kind of linguistic system, and that understanding it was absolutely necessary. The conclusion itself seemed sound, but it wasn’t something one would normally arrive at.

She knew other things about the Deep Sea. Things I needed to find out.

Keeping my true intentions hidden, I walked through the snowfield with Balkan and Brimdal, when Brimdal suddenly spoke up.

“Ahem, Je… no, Fallen boy.”

“Yes, Sir Brimdal.”

Going out of his way to call me that was even stranger.

“Just out of curiosity, is there anything to watch out for when fighting the Fallen?”

“Nothing special. Just don’t think of them as fellow human beings.”

“Hm?”

“There’s nothing strange about a tiger having claws or fangs. The Fallen are the same. They carry a separate weapon called a world, and since you can’t know what it is until you experience it, as long as you keep that in mind, there’s nothing to worry about. Really, unless they’re Upper Tier, the whole fight comes down to an information gap.”

At minimum, it wasn’t a level that could challenge a first-rate knight like Brimdal.

Before long, I reached the Spire’s wall and ran a much more precise sweep of Current Sense through every corner of its interior.

[Damn it, how long do we have to stay here?]

[No idea, probably at least a month, right?]

[At least they’re giving us World-Sealing Pills on schedule, so there’s that…]

As I suspected, the Upper Tier had put them in there.

But since it was dinnertime, there was far too much chatter. Countless conversations blended together, making my head feel cluttered.

It was hard to process that much information all at once. At the very least, I needed to figure out who knew something about Decay…

“Jern?”

“Please wait a moment.”

Steeling myself, I raised my Current Sense to the same level I had used when I was in the Deep Sea.

Whine… Instantly, a ringing filled my ears, and the flood of overlapping voices slammed into my brain all at once.

[Ialreadyit’stimesincethe pillwentwentcame-]

“Guh…”

Fragments of sound, utterly stripped of their original form. Before pushing Current Sense to its maximum, it had felt like standing in a room full of radios all playing at once. Now, it was like having a recording of countless layered voices jammed directly against my eardrums.

But the agony was worth enduring.

[So, orders came down from the Upper Tier…]

[Decay-nim…]

I could distinguish them.

Slowly growing accustomed, I was able to pick out the information I wanted from the fragments of sound.

My headache worsened each time, but I managed to latch onto voices that contained the words “Decay” and “Upper Tier”.

“A-are you alright?”

“…Yes.”

I had practically collapsed with my head nearly touching the ground, and Brimdal clicked his tongue as he helped me up.

“Found them. On the seventeenth floor, fourth room, there are some who claim they received a mission from Decay.”

“How many?”

“Four total. It’s pretty high up, so we’ll have to climb the wall…”

“That’s no problem at all.”

Thunk. Brimdal drove his greatsword into the wall as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Hrrgh… hah!”

Boom! Then, using nothing but grip strength, he launched himself upward, bounding up the wall in great leaps.

After repeating this several times, he reached the spot I had pointed out. Balkan watched with an unimpressed look, then tapped the heels of his boots.

Shing. Blades extended from his heels.

“Where exactly?”

“There, that way.”

Balkan walked along the wall as gracefully as if it were flat ground.

Partway up, he turned back to look at me as though something had just occurred to him.

“Go fetch a rope from the supplies. I’ll pull you up.”

“Ah, that’s alright.”

I pressed my feet against the wall too, just like Balkan, and locked them in place with Water Pressure.

Then I lifted one foot and repeated the process, managing to do more or less the same thing without any blades.

“…”

“Something wrong?”

“…No.”

Balkan stared at me and my shoes with a bewildered look, then headed for the designated section of wall.

“Should we do this quietly? Or…”

“Let’s get it done in one go. The blizzard’s loud enough to muffle the noise.”

“Now that I like.”

Brimdal grinned, raised his greatsword, and brought it crashing down on the wall.

CRASH!!!

With a thunderous impact, the stone wall shattered like it was nothing.

“Wh-what…!”

“Who the hell are you?!”

Thud, thud… Beyond the demolished wall of the room, one Fallen was slumped unconscious with his head buried in the rubble.

He had been standing right against the wall Brimdal destroyed. The remaining occupants totaled six. They had been mid-conversation in the same room when the wall suddenly exploded, and they looked thoroughly rattled.

“Which ones do we keep?”

“That one, the guy casually drinking over there. Keep him and deal with the rest.”

“You bastards…!”

The Fallen assessed the situation quickly.

One of them rushed for the door handle to raise the alarm, while the rest raised their hands.

Not knowing what kind of world a Fallen possessed until they showed it firsthand was the greatest advantage the Fallen had. A lethal opening move that had to be taken blind.

Balkan and Brimdal responded with the most efficient and effortless countermeasure.

“For beasts, they bark far too easily.”

Their forms blurred.

A burst of speed unique to knights, so fast that even Current Sense couldn’t track it.

A faster opening move. By the time the Fallen tried to do anything, their outstretched hands had already been sliced clean off.

Slice!

“Ah…”

They probably meant to scream.

Unfortunately, the hands were severed only because they happened to be in the path of a blade aimed at the neck.

Blood mingled with the blizzard howling through the breached wall.

Splat.

“…”

I swallowed hard at the sight.

The monstrous strength that severed hand and neck in a single stroke, the speed of it, all things I already knew about.

If there was anything different from before, it was this:

‘I think… I can almost see it.’

Brimdal’s movements, which had once seemed impossible to track even with Current Sense.

The overwhelming power that could sever a person’s head and leave it sitting atop the neck as though nothing had happened.

Just barely, just slightly, they were registering on my Current Sense.

Of course, maintaining Current Sense at its maximum was unsustainable. Since there was no longer any need to push it that hard, I released it, and time, which had seemed to slow, accelerated once more as hands and heads dropped to stain the floor.

I’d have to clean all of that up. As I was frowning at the mess, Balkan turned his gaze toward the door.

“…Hm?”

Then he noticed the unconscious Fallen and tilted his head, looking mildly surprised.

“Why did that one faint?”

“Must be a coward. Good thing we stopped him from getting out.”

The truth was I had choked him out with Water Pressure to keep him from escaping, but I played innocent without missing a beat.

“Let’s throw all the bodies outside for now. We can’t afford to be discovered.”

“…? Sure.”

Balkan gave the unconscious Fallen another odd look, but tossed the leftover remains outside regardless.

The snow would cover the traces. The problem was this hole in the wall…

Unfortunately, there was no real way to disguise it.

“If we scatter some rocks nearby, think they’d buy that the blizzard flung a rock through the wall?”

“You think a disguise that flimsy would work?”

“We only need to keep up the charade until we find Decay. And this one knows about Decay. He was going on about receiving orders and whatnot. Once we track Decay down, nothing else matters.”

“Fair enough. Is this room soundproof?”

“At least there are no other Fallen nearby. Even if we make a bit of noise, no one should come.”

“Good. I’ll handle the interrogation. Hey, wake up.”

Balkan nudged the unconscious Fallen awake with his boot.

“Gah, ugh…”

The man clutched his head and rose in agony, then froze when he saw the razor-sharp blade leveled at his throat.

Balkan opened his mouth with a look of undisguised contempt, as though he were looking at vermin.

“From this point on, if you mix even a shred of lies into your answers, I will kill you. If you want to live, answer yes or no. Do you know Decay’s location?”

“…”

“I’ll ask again.”

“Kh, hk…”

When the Fallen kept his mouth shut, Balkan drove the blade deeper without an ounce of hesitation, drawing blood.

“Do you know where Decay is?”

“…”

The Fallen trembled under the razor-edged threat, his lips quivering, then…

“…I, I knew it.”

“What?”

“I was right… I was right!!”

He screamed like a madman, his face flushing red.

Even with death staring him in the face, he fought back violently. Balkan, thrown off by the reaction, pressed the blade harder with growing fury.

“Right about what?”

“You, all of you. Decay sent you, didn’t he?”

“…?”

“I knew it, you sons of bitches…”

The Fallen protested with tears streaming down his face, looking genuinely wronged.

“Now that we’re no use anymore, he’s come to kill us all!”

“…”

It seemed like…

We needed to hear this man out.