TL/ED – Miso

When I actually thought about it, I hadn’t rested for a single day since falling into this world and being trapped in the Deep Sea.

One might wonder what kind of rest was possible with a Bomb Necklace hanging around my neck, but even so, hadn’t I been pushing myself too hard? As I sat with those thoughts, gazing at the window of the rattling carriage, something felt familiar.

‘That carriage from back then.’

It was the small carriage tailored for children, the one Elysia used to ride often.

I had ridden in it before, too. Though the window was much lower than I remembered.

-My eye level had changed.

They say children grow a handspan taller every time you look away. Even with hundreds of millions of tons of seawater pressing down above my head, my growth plates had apparently been hard at work.

As I idly ran my hand down the window, lost in sentiment, I heard my fellow passenger snoring.

“Zzz…”

“Has she grown too, I wonder.”

I looked at Elysia, sprawled asleep on the carriage seat, and smiled with a tinge of bittersweetness.

The city of Iabon was one of many cities where Alletus served as Lord. Of course, he couldn’t manage even a remote city like that directly, so a proxy lord existed in his stead.

Elysia said she used to visit often when she was younger, so I decided to leave the guiding to her.

I could have assigned other ladies-in-waiting instead, but Elysia was so insistent that there was no helping it. Alletus had given his permission, too.

I still wasn’t sure whether now was really the time for me to be leisurely taking a break. But the moment I casually brought up the topic of rest, Sharmia had immediately called for a carriage, so it seemed the people around me felt differently.

‘It’s probably nothing major, but there’s something I want to check.’

Rationalizing it to myself like that, I leaned back in the seat, and the small window where the coachman sat slid open.

“Young Master, we’ll be arriving in Iabon shortly. Could you wake the Young Lady?”

“Got it… Oh, it’s quite a pretty city.”

“Pardon?”

When I let out a small sound of admiration after hearing the coachman’s words, he tilted his head and asked again.

“Well, we’re still on the other side of the hill, so it shouldn’t be visible to the naked eye…”

“I was looking at a guidebook.”

“Ah, I see.”

In reality, I had confirmed it with Current Sense.

It certainly wasn’t a very large city. Still, the charmingly designed buildings and well-maintained roads gave it a definite resort-town feel.

At the main gate, besides us, there were several other people who appeared to be tourists coming and going. The line was quite long and I thought we might have to wait for a while, but before we even joined the queue, guards came rushing over to escort us.

“Welcome, Young Lady! You must be tired. We’ve heated the water for you.”

“Yaaawn… mm…”

Elysia, who still seemed half-asleep, answered groggily. Then another guard approached and spoke to me in a hushed voice.

“You must be Sir Jern? We’ve been informed. We heard you have something you’d like to check in Iabon…”

“Yes. I heard there’s a Red Hot Spring behind the mountain here. Is that right?”

“The Red Hot Spring…? Ah, you mean that one. Unfortunately, it’s not red at the moment.”

“…?”

I tilted my head, confused by what that meant, and the guard hurriedly added an explanation.

“The spring water is so clear and transparent that you can see straight to the bottom. But the fallen leaves from the surrounding trees are all a blood-red color, so in autumn, the bottom gets buried under red leaves and it looks red. It truly does look red in autumn, but the rest of the time it’s just a transparent hot spring, so…”

“Ah, I see.”

Well, if the hot spring were actually red, nobody would get in. It would be sealed off for being a bad omen.

I hadn’t actually come to soak in the hot spring, so I gently shook my head and added,

“That’s fine. I just wanted to take a look. Could you show me the way?”

“Of course, sir. We’ve already notified all the soldiers and caretakers in advance, so please feel free to use the area as you wish.”

The perks of noble backing, I supposed.

Elysia was snoring away softly and didn’t seem like she’d be able to come along, so I sent her to the lodging and walked toward the north gate leading to the mountain behind the city, accompanied by the guard.

I could have taken a carriage, but I also wanted to see what kind of city it was with my own eyes.

As I strolled along, taking in the sights, the guard smiled and asked,

“Is the city to your satisfaction?”

“It’s a beautiful city. Everyone looks happy.”

“It’s all thanks to you, Sir Jern.”

“Pardon?”

“Since the city lives off tourism, we were hit the hardest by… well, by what Crimson Circle did.”

“Ah…”

“It’s not that the hot springs go cold in winter, but the problem was that the snow wouldn’t melt. We were worried sick that all the hot springs might freeze over… Thanks to you, everyone can breathe easy now.”

Well, Decay’s Extreme Ice hadn’t merely covered the capital, after all.

I nodded along, and before long we arrived at the mountain behind the city. The guard opened the gate with ease and led me to the hot spring.

“This is the Red Hot Spring. As you can see, it’s still transparent for now.”

A natural hot spring, large enough for three or four people.

I scanned the surroundings and activated Current Sense as I made my request.

“Thank you for the tour. Would it be all right if I look around on my own?”

“Of course. I’ll be waiting down below, so if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”

After the guard descended through the gate by the hot spring, I swept over the nearby trees one by one with Current Sense.

But I found neither a tree matching the description of a staff, nor anything else of note.

‘So it was just a fairy tale after all?’

Just in case, I slowly began pulling up tree trunks one by one using Water Pressure.

-Crrrrack…

“…It actually works.”

I hadn’t really expected it to, but whether it was because my Water Pressure output had gone overboard, or simply because the roots were weak…

The soil clinging to the slowly rising roots was brown, every last bit of it.

Pulling any further would kill the tree, so I sighed and carefully lowered it back in.

If the same tree that Crimson Circle had possessed existed here too, I should have seen white soil. Unless I had made some kind of mistake. It must have just been a fictional detail from the fairy tale.

‘Then again, maybe they took that tree from here…’

If so, it was even more meaningless. It would mean everything useful had already been taken.

I came back down the mountain empty-handed, and the guard was waiting with a somewhat startled expression.

“Um, that, just now…”

“Ah.”

The guard, who had been standing by the gate, must have seen the trees being lifted.

“The trees weren’t harmed. I just had something to check.”

“That’s not what I… Ah, understood.”

The guard swallowed hard and closed his mouth.

He looked like he had a lot to say, but he also seemed to realize it wasn’t something for a guard to be asking about.

***

“Oh, you’re awake?”

When I returned to the lodging, Elysia was up, her cheeks puffed out.

A pat on the head settled her down quickly, though.

“Now that you’re awake, want to take a stroll around the city? We haven’t gotten to hang out in a while. Oh, and are you keeping up with your magic lessons?”

It had been quite some time since I’d last seen Elysia. Even though the fairy tale’s contents had turned out to be false, I approached her warmly, intending to make it up to her for a while, but she gently shook her head.

“Mm, it’s okay. Could we maybe just stay at the lodging today instead of going out?”

“Hm?”

The Elysia I knew would have immediately begged and pleaded to go play.

I tilted my head at the sudden change, but readily agreed.

“That’s fine by me. Is there something you want to do?”

“…Yes.”

Elysia, wearing an expression of resolve, looked me straight in the eye.

“I’ve been practicing magic. I want you to watch.”

“O-okay?”

I was caught off guard by how serious she had suddenly become, but also curious about what this was about.

“Sure, I can do that. But why didn’t you ask me to watch at the Imperial Palace?”

“They might find out if I did.”

“…What?”

“Dad, and that mean elf. And the other mages.”

Elysia spoke as if sharing a secret, then trotted over and pulled all the curtains shut around the room.

She sat back down in front of me and opened her mouth as though she had something important to say.

“Jern. I heard about… the thing called Fallen. Right?”

“Well…”

A heavy topic had come up out of nowhere.

Then again, it wasn’t something that could stay hidden. The nobles all already knew what I was.

“That’s right. Sorry for keeping it from you. The truth is, I’m not really a mage, I’m…”

“Jern is a mage!”

“…Anyway, I’m a Fallen.”

Elysia, who had shouted at the top of her lungs, soon swallowed hard and asked,

“So, about that. What kind of world do you live in, Jern?”

“It wouldn’t be interesting even if I told you.”

“I want to know.”

She pulled her face close enough for our noses to nearly touch and widened her eyes, so I had no choice but to gently grab her cheeks, push her back slowly, and answer.

“I live under the sea.”

“Under the sea?”

“In the Deep Sea. Hmm, how should I explain this… Ah.”

Glancing around for a moment, I opened my World and sank into the Deep Sea. I had spotted something nearby that would work for an explanation.

When I returned to the Real World, Elysia, who had been bewildered by my sudden disappearance, jumped in shock.

“J-Jern? Why did you disappear?”

“I just went to the bottom of the sea for a second.”

“…Whoa! Can other Fallen do that too?”

“No. Only Great Worlds can do that… Anyway, look at this.”

I showed the wide-eyed Elysia a small chunk of ice.

Inside it, frozen from who knows where, was a clam no bigger than my palm.

“Watch closely.”

-Crack!

I shattered the ice chunk using Water Pressure and handed her the clam inside. Elysia carefully received it with both hands.

The sturdy clam wouldn’t open its shell, but it couldn’t resist the current anyway.

-Crrrk.

Elysia had been staring at the clam with a face full of curiosity, but when she saw what was nestled inside the flesh, her already large eyes grew even wider with astonishment.

“A… a pearl…?”

I had been lucky with this particular clam; it happened to hold a pearl.

Lucky, I supposed, though come to think of it, every clam down there seemed to have a pearl inside.

“Pretty, right? I live with creatures like these in a place where…”

“Jern, this… this is way beyond pretty.”

“Huh?”

I had just grabbed a random clam from the sea floor to explain what living underwater was like, but Elysia was turning the pearl this way and that, examining the inside of the shell too, pouring out her amazement.

“Look at this. It’s the biggest and roundest pearl I’ve ever seen in my life. Even the pearl necklace I got for my birthday was smaller than this! This is the kind of top-grade pearl that gets presented to the Imperial family…”

“Oh, really?”

“And this shell, too… What is this? How long did this clam live? Even clams said to be 300 years old don’t have patterns like this… A, a thousand years? Is that how old it is?”

Something like that, perhaps.

True to her noble upbringing, Elysia was well-versed in gemstones, and to her eyes, this unremarkable pearl and clam apparently looked like extraordinary treasure.

I didn’t particularly care about gems and was watching her reaction without much thought, when something flashed through my mind.

‘…Come to think of it, I can bring things out now.’

It wasn’t just deep-sea fish. Other materials from the Deep Sea could be frozen and safely extracted too.

Before, even the smallest clam would have flown into a murderous rage the instant I put it inside a Water Barrier, so bringing anything out had been impossible. It would have been like stuffing piranhas inside a wetsuit.

Even if I dominated one with Puppet, would creatures that loathed my very existence really stop for a single thread of control? At the very least, for someone like me who would die from a single bite, it was a bridge too dangerous to cross.

And bringing out dead ones wasn’t an option either, since the moment they died, the Water Pressure would crush them into nothing more than a tiny speck.

In a world of magic, gems and rare materials had plenty of uses.

Maybe I could find something even more useful in the Deep Sea. As I was lost in that thought, Elysia snapped back to her senses and discreetly slipped the pearl into her pouch with a little cough. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

“A-anyway. So you live in an ocean like that. Okay, got it.”

“Yeah. It’s more livable than you’d think.”

“-But you still want to get out, right?”

Elysia steered the mood back on track as she asked.

“If I had to say?”

“I can help you.”

“Just hearing you say that is enough…”

“No, really! I really can help!”

When I tried to brush it off with a warm expression, Elysia shook her head in refusal.

“I was there when they revealed that you’re a Fallen. All those times Jern suddenly disappeared, or showed up hurt, or was fighting strange people… every time that happened, I had no idea why. Not the slightest clue.”

“That’s…”

“I know. Still. All that time, not knowing any of that and just asking you to play… I felt so stupid. Jern must have had his own circumstances, and I…”

“No, it’s fine, really.”

Just bringing Elysia and Alletus together had been more than enough.

I was about to say that, when Elysia met my eyes and gently took my hand.

“…!”

I was startled. Not because of the act of holding hands itself.

It was a small, soft hand. But that wasn’t all.

Elysia’s hand felt as though it were on fire, burning hot.

And yet, my hand wasn’t burned. The sudden reflex that comes from grabbing something scorching didn’t kick in either.

Of course it didn’t. In reality, her hand was nothing more than an ordinary temperature.

But in the Deep Sea, in this cold, everything I touched was first chilled by that frigid water before I could feel it.

Elysia’s hand was as if that process had been…

“Maybe the curse I received existed for this very moment.”

…erased entirely.