TL/ED – Miso

Was it because she was used to Iabon, or was it for my sake?

Elysia absolutely loved my Deep Sea. So much so that she said she wanted to spend our entire vacation playing inside it rather than going out.

It was a good thing for me too, so there was no reason to refuse.

“Close your eyes for a moment.”

“Hm? Why?”

“…Sometimes seawater gets in your eyes.”

Every now and then, when things appeared that Elysia shouldn’t see, I covered her eyes.

I was diving into deeper waters every day. In that process, the deep-sea creatures living there had grown far more grotesque than expected, and sometimes even I flinched at the sight of them.

An octopus with suckers resembling human hands and feet was the kind of thing that could give even an adult nightmares. She was not yet ready to handle such a creature.

“So, how is it? Did you understand?”

“Hmm, hmmm…”

Elysia folded her arms and mulled it over, turning her head this way and that.

“I don’t really get it. It’s hard…”

“Yeah? What part don’t you understand?”

“Well, when I used my ability on other Fallen, I just got this instant feeling for what kind of world they were living in, you know?”

“…A feeling?”

“A feeling. I just knew. Like, oh, this person is suffering because of something like this…”

Elysia trailed off there, then her eyes lit up as if something clicked.

“Right, I think that’s it! Pain! I can tell right away when someone’s in pain. Because the place they’re in is really hot, or sticky, or something like that, and it’s tormenting them.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“But Jern, your world feels really peaceful.”

Elysia looked around my Deep Sea, now free of the octopus, with a puzzled expression.

“Peaceful, I guess? I’m not sure. What exactly is painful about this place?”

“Not being able to breathe, for one.”

“But you’re breathing just fine right now, Jern.”

“That’s just how it looks. I stopped breathing a long time ago.”

“Then what about me?”

“I brought air inside a Water Barrier so you could breathe. It won’t last that long, though.”

“When you put it that way, I suppose I understand, but…”

Elysia let out a sigh and clutched her head.

“In my head, aside from it being a little cold, all I can feel is that it’s just a dark, dark place. I can’t really tell beyond that.”

“Hmm, figured as much.”

I returned to the original world and released Elysia from my arms.

Naturally, an ordinary person without Current Sense couldn’t see anything if they entered the Deep Sea.

It was a pitch-black abyss in there. Unless one got close to the very few light sources, all that was visible was utter darkness.

That depth, the despair that came with it, couldn’t be felt, and there was no way to make her feel it, either.

“Wow… we really were in a whole different world. There’s nothing to do here, so can’t we stay a little longer?”

“If we stay any longer, we’ll fall off this carriage. Let’s save the details for when we get back.”

The carriage rattled over the unpaved road, jolting our backsides.

We were on our way back from a vacation that was short, if you could call it short. There was also the matter of the Holy Relic I wanted to discuss, even though nothing had been confirmed yet.

‘Well, real or not, it doesn’t seem like it’d hurt to look for them…’

But was there even a way to find them?

This robe had been found fairly easily, all things considered, but if they existed in forms like that tree root, gathering the relics would be practically impossible.

And… the mechanism of absorbing relics had its own unsettling aspects. This time it seemed like my robe had absorbed that root, but what if, the other way around, my robe got absorbed instead?

This thing was a precious item that reduced my Burden. It would be great if absorbing others reduced the Burden further, but unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have that ability.

“Come to think of it, Jern. How did you get the pearl from in there…”

I was entertaining those thoughts while half-listening to Elysia when,

-Screech!

The carriage stopped unnaturally.

“Huh? What’s going on?”

“A checkpoint.”

I already knew the situation through Current Sense, so I brushed it off lightly.

Lately, with the Crimson Circle causing chaos, new checkpoints popping up along every road had become a common occurrence. It wasn’t anything strange, and I was about to let it go when the window connecting to where the coachman sat suddenly opened.

“Um, Sir Jern, miss. I’m sorry. It seems we’ll have to turn back.”

“Turn back?”

“Yes. The soldiers say there are bandits lying in ambush up ahead.”

“Bandits?”

What was this about? Up until our trip here, this mountain hadn’t had so much as a deer, let alone bandits.

As I tilted my head in confusion, one of the soldiers from the checkpoint knocked on the carriage door.

When I opened it, the soldier seemed flustered to find only two children inside, but after glancing at the coachman, he quickly bowed his head toward me in greeting.

“How do you do, Young Master. Intelligence has come in that unidentified bandits are hiding in this mountain, holding civilians hostage and demanding ransom. Knights will be arriving soon to begin a full search, so I’m afraid I must ask that you turn back…”

“I’m a knight as well.”

I silently presented my seal.

“…Pardon?”

The guard’s face went blank as his gaze bounced between me and the seal, before he did his best to hide his disbelief.

“Th-ah, yes. Which knight order do you…”

“Jern Aspandal, member of the Wax Wings Knight Order. Formally, at least.”

“I-I see. But even for a knight, going alone would be dangerous.”

“Is that so? There must be quite a number of bandits, then.”

“It’s not so much that there are many, but there’s intelligence suggesting a Fallen is among them.”

“…”

If there had simply been a lot of them, I’d have had to get more blood on my hands than necessary, so I was going to just take the detour even if it meant being a little late. But the word “Fallen” made me slowly turn my head.

“Are they affiliated with the Crimson Circle?”

“Surprisingly, no. Apparently it’s a natural-born wizard who was identified as a Fallen within the empire and fled. Their goal is likely to make contact with the Crimson Circle. That’s presumably why they’ve been causing such a commotion.”

“Hmm…”

“It’s absolutely not that I doubt you, Sir, but given that they’ve remained uncaptured this long, I hope you’ll appreciate that the risk is considerable…”

“Duly noted.”

“Pardon?”

“Elysia, you stay here. Don’t come out, no matter what.”

After making her promise, I walked into the mountain.

The moment I set foot at the mountain’s entrance, I saw corpses.

“…”

Not right before my eyes, of course. If they’d been at the entrance, the soldiers at the checkpoint would have responded far more aggressively.

Around the mountainside, there were bodies everywhere with their insides torn open, and in the middle of them, an old man in rags was curled up like an animal, sleeping.

His hands and feet were drenched in fresh blood, and long fur and sharp spines had sprouted from his body.

“What is this…”

What kind of world turns someone into that?

I was taken aback by the half-human, half-beast figure, but the moment I set foot on the mountain, he sprang to his feet and began sniffing the air. When I confirmed that there was no trace of intelligence in those maddened eyes, I understood.

That man, no, that thing, had already been crushed and burst by its Burden.

If one who possessed a world of fire left behind a charred corpse, and one who possessed a world of the Deep Sea left behind only a flattened mass of flesh, then this one had left behind a monster, extremely dangerous to humans.

-Grrr. As it opened its mouth and drooled, I could see sharp fangs closer to those of a predator than human teeth.

The creature leapt nimbly into a tree, then scattered the surrounding corpses wildly, leaving trails of blood stretching far.

Then it began to wait. As if waiting for me to approach, staring in my direction.

‘So it still has some intelligence left.’

Given that the soldiers didn’t know about any of this, it must have been consumed by its Burden after entering the mountain.

The ones with it must have been the bandit underlings. In any case, I couldn’t just leave something like this roaming the mountain, so I walked toward the corpses as it wanted.

“…”

“I know you’re up in that tree. I also know you’re staring at the back of my head right now.”

I said this while pretending to be oblivious, but there was no reaction. Apparently it didn’t have enough intelligence left to understand human speech.

From the bristling of its fur and the sweat pouring off it in a frenzy, I couldn’t even guess what kind of being it thought I was. It seemed to have instinctively realized that fleeing from me was impossible.

So it was going for an ambush. A beast’s judgment.

To give it an even better opening, I trudged over to the remains of a burned-out campfire.

I turned my back to it and rummaged through a nearby bag as if searching, putting on a show of being completely defenseless. If I didn’t finish it in one shot, things would get annoying.

“Grrk, hng!”

-CRASH!

The tree where the sweat-drenched creature had been standing shattered, and all of that momentum was hurled straight at the back of my neck.

Its strength and speed were incomparable to any ordinary beast. Physical ability nearly on par with a knight. Paired with the advantage of a surprise attack, it was a monster that could easily kill less experienced knights.

However, my Current Sense had tracked every bit of it.

-CRACK.

“Kh…!”

The creature froze in midair, a bewildered expression crossing its face.

It looked confused as to why its claws had slashed the sky instead of my neck.

No matter that it was a beast, I had no desire to inflict unnecessary pain. There was no information to extract from someone who had already Fallen, so I simply closed my fist.

-Pop!

“Ah, mm…”

It died instantly, so there should have been no pain.

But the sight was quite gruesome. Enough to make me wince, and it reminded me all over again just how terrible my world was.

I resolved to just go with severing the head next time. As I was about to head back down to inform the soldiers, my body suddenly stopped.

“?”

My body moved against my will, like a puppet, heading toward the Fallen’s burst corpse.

Even as I panicked, I pieced the situation together. What was moving right now wasn’t me.

My robe was hurtling toward the corpse with frantic urgency.

Before I could even stop it, the hem of the robe touched the body. At that instant, the exact same thing that had happened with the root occurred.

-Slurrrp!

Like a man finding an oasis in a desert, it began gulping down the blood with desperate abandon.

‘There’s no way this is a Holy Relic.’

A mere Fallen’s corpse couldn’t be a Holy Relic.

I was watching it drink the Fallen’s blood with a grimace when suddenly the same strange phenomenon from before began again.

[Sa, sa…]

A voice started coming from the robe.

I had thought it was just the sound of fabric rustling against itself, but sure enough, it was forming words. Feeling my chest go cold, I responded.

“What are you?”

[Sa, sa…ve…]

“Are you the First Wizard? Were you dwelling inside the Holy Relics?”

It was a reasonable deduction.

If gathering all the Holy Relics would resurrect the First Wizard, then there was a strong possibility that the First Wizard had divided their own body and stored it within the relics.

Whether it was possible or impossible didn’t matter. It would be absurd to question such things of a being who was practically a god.

I braced myself, prepared to burn it the instant it tried anything, when the words it uttered finally became comprehensible.

[Sa, save.]

“Save what? What do you want me to buy?” [TL: In Korean, “사” can mean both “save (me)” and “buy,” which is why Jern misunderstands at first.]

[Save, me…]

“…?”

Right, I was expecting something like, “I am the First Wizard. I’ll devour you and resurrect as my true self,” so I froze for a moment.

Meanwhile, the fabric rubbed together even more vigorously. As if filled with rage.

[You, crazy, bas, tard. You, me, all year, long, wear, ing…]

“Uh, huh?”

[God, damn. There’s, a limit, to working, someone, to death…]

“…Could it be.”

Buried in what was more a litany of grievances than a conversation was something that cut to the bone.

“You’ve been sharing my Burden this whole time?”

[Ye, ah, you, son, of a, bitch.]

“…”

[At, at least, when you, bathe, take, take me off. A bastard, who lives, in the, Deep Sea…]

The rustling of the fabric gradually faded.

Only then, as if it realized something, the voice hurriedly blurted out information beyond mere complaints.

[The, the others, hurry, hurry, perishing.]

“Perishing?”

[Deep Sea, can’t, endure, long. Go deeper, perish.]

The message, formed only from fragments of words, carried unsettling content.

[Survival, blood, give me, I, can last, longer,]

“Yeah? And what can you do for me in return?”

In truth, losing a robe that reduced my Burden would put me in a difficult spot too, so I would have done anything to keep it alive. But it looked extremely anxious as well, so I figured I could squeeze something out of it.

Sure enough, the moment I took a sly attitude, the voice panicked and offered up a reward.

[Your, Deep Sea, something, inside it, I can help, you find.]

“What is it?”

[Wo, World-Seal, ing.]

“…?”

[The ingredients, for it, inside, the Deep Sea.]

After getting that far out, the fabric went limp.

There was no more sense of compulsion. It felt as though it had gone back to being an ordinary piece of clothing.

But something had changed, too.

“…”

I clenched and unclenched my fist, and a bit of color had returned.

The world felt a little less cold.

My Burden had decreased.

“Not bad.”

I smiled lightly and set off.

There was something I needed to do when I got back.

*****

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