Wizard of the Deep Sea

I stared at the blood that Great Void had become, my eyes widening.

Had I killed him?

Had everything really ended with that single strike?

[It would be wise for you to understand.]

No, it didn’t.

I glanced around nervously but saw nothing. And yet the voice of Great Void, who had clearly vanished before my eyes, echoed through the world like a lingering afterimage.

[Understand what it is you have always lived beneath.]

If I could hear him clearly enough to understand him, then he had to be nearby.

And yet I couldn’t find him anywhere. At least, not anywhere my Tide Sense could reach.

I instinctively looked upward.

"...That’s impossible..."

I’d witnessed countless bizarre sights.

Yet even I had never imagined something like the sight unfolding across the sky above me.

People in ancient times looked up at the night sky, connected a handful of stars together, and imagined constellations. They imagined that this looked like a scorpion or that looked like a water bearer.

Now, no imagination was required. The stars were connected into a shape so clear that anyone with eyes could see it.

Great Void existed in the heavens, his body made of stars.

'An illusion?’

The thought came with near certainty. Whatever trick he’d used, I assumed he had tampered with my senses.

But as though crushing my last remaining hope, the constellation slowly moved.

[I see. You wish to understand.]

The next moment…

The sky went black.

Every star lost its light—and when they lit again…

"?!"

There had been no warning.

No sound, no vibration, no sign whatsoever. A portion of the Abyssal Sea had simply been carved away.

An entire continent’s worth of space vanished, leaving behind a colossal hole.

At the center was a crater so vast it looked as though a star itself had fallen there.

[Do try your best.]

"Tsk..."

I formed another spear of pressure.

But my hand trembled. I couldn’t throw it. I had no idea who I was even supposed to attack, or where I was supposed to strike.

Throwing it at the sky would accomplish nothing except waste energy.

The moment I realized I had failed to trap him beneath the Abyssal Sea, everything had begun unraveling.

As I hesitated with the spear in hand, the thing that was Great Void moved first.

[You haven’t been able to land a single hit. Even now.]

-Creaaaaak...

A grotesque grinding noise echoed from the heavens. Meteor showers began falling from the sky. I didn’t even need Tide Sense to know what they were.

The objects slammed into the ground with deafening impacts. Then slowly rose to their feet on stone legs and began hammering at the earth.

[Shall we try again?]

The sky blinked.

[Hmm. Still not enough.]

The stars vanished, then shone once more. Each time they did, an area the size of an entire continent disappeared, carved away into some deep void where the seawater itself vanished without a trace.

-Blink, blink, blink.

The cosmic phenomenon repeated dozens of times like the idle whims of a child. The world was reduced to something resembling a sandbox that had been violently gouged apart.

I couldn’t resist. I didn’t even understand what he was doing. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

Before long, the world could no longer be called an ocean.

The Abyssal Sea—no longer existed either. The repeated erasures had removed so much seawater that only enough remained to barely reach the knees of an adult man.

As a result, every plan I’d made was shattered.

In a matter of minutes.

[You are exceptional. So surely you understand by now.]

"...What…are you……?”

[Look around with your power. What do you see?]

My Tide Sense already showed me the utterly ruined world.

The oceans were gone. The statues were producing Outer Gods. Every landscape had been flattened. I could do nothing but blankly stare at the scene. There was literally nothing else I could do.

Too far.

The distance between Great Void and me was far too great.

We practically lived in different realms. I could create life and I could drown the world in the Abyssal Sea. Yet beneath those thousands of stars spread across the heavens, I wasn’t even a speck of dust.

My lips trembled as I forced out a question.

"Why put on this act?”

[Act?]

"You were never injured."

At this point, I couldn’t convince myself he’d just suddenly recovered.

Great Void had been perfectly fine from the very beginning. Perhaps my master’s strike had once wounded him before he became something this vast. But now, and likely for a very long time, he hadn’t borne even the slightest scratch.

"Why? What was the point? With power like that, why waste your time? You…You could’ve killed me whenever you wanted.”

I couldn’t understand it. Why leave me alone?

Why keep making me believe I had a chance?

I blankly stared at the sky when—

[A simple amusement. I admit it is a poor hobby. But when conquering worlds, having at least one obstacle adds a sense of accomplishment.]

Great Void looked down upon me as though mocking me.

[And isn’t it amusing? A frog who believed it could someday leap beyond the well.]

The moment I heard those words…

I felt as though someone had thrown cold water over my head. For a moment, I simply froze. It wasn’t because of shock or because of anger at being mocked.

The reason was much simpler.

"No."

I shook my head.

That couldn’t be right.

"That’s a lie."

[Are you denying reality?]

"No, I’m looking at it rationally. Why are you so wary of me?"

[...Because you possess a world of that scale. Has that made you think of joining me?]

"Quite the opposite."

Even after everything was over.

Even in a situation where resistance no longer meant anything, I didn’t kneel.

Instead, I kept thinking.

"Great Void. You’re meticulous. You deceived even the First Mage and hid yourself away for hundreds, even thousands of years while waiting for your chance. You’re not the type to enjoy other people’s suffering or act irrationally. You’re the kind of bastard who thinks over every word and every gesture ten thousand times before making a move. That’s why you’ve climbed this high.”

[......]

I formed a hypothesis, then tested it.

"You pretended to be weak and deceived my master. Then you deceived me. You gave me time to prepare everything, and once you thought I’d swallowed the bait, you revealed your true self. There’s no reason for that. Mockery? You’re not stupid enough to wait 5 years just for some petty prank.”

[...]

I knew what kind of horrifying Outer God he was. That was exactly why I knew it was impossible that he’d wasted time for some trivial prank or some hobby.

There was something else. A reason he’d waited. A reason he hadn’t crushed a bug he could have flattened with a fingertip until the very last moment.

Great Void fell silent at my question.

As though selecting an answer, then reviewing it before speaking.

That caution gave me confidence.

"You."

In less than 5 minutes, everything I’d built had been trampled into dirt.

And even now, the statues continued their work faithfully, spewing forth Outer Gods.

Great Void had clearly won. There was probably no way for me to turn this around. Not even if I spent a hundred years thinking about it.

Which meant—what I was about to say was absurd beyond belief.

"...Are you afraid of me?”

Every one of Great Void’s actions pointed toward a single conclusion.

Precaution, vigilance, preparation, and absolute readiness.

His behavior went far beyond any of those words. He had responded with something bordering on paranoia, trying to crush my will so thoroughly that not a single variable remained.

That level of overreaction could only mean one thing.

Fear.

It was impossible to believe, and yet the only truth left.

After a long moment, the silence Great Void had maintained finally shattered beneath a laugh that seemed to shake the earth itself.

[Afraid? How amusing. A fascinating thought, though. I, who can count stars beyond counting, fear a puddle gathered upon the ground? Is that what you truly believe?]

"Yeah, because it’s the only explanation left.”

[How unfortunate for you. To fear a world so small that it cannot even cover my fingertip would be a contradiction. And even if I were afraid of you, what difference would it make?]

Great Void laughed as though the idea were ridiculous. As though it were beneath contempt. The constellation stretched itself across the heavens.

[Everything is over. You have no moves left. All that remains to you is a puddle not even a palm's breadth wide.]

"..."

It was true.

When I looked down, only a shallow layer of water remained. A depth barely enough to touch the soles of my shoes.

The only place that could still be called the Abyssal Sea was this tiny puddle. That was all the ocean I had left.

[Can you even call that a sea?]

"...No. I suppose you can’t."

I took a step forward and looked up at the constellation.

I wondered if this might be the last thing I ever did.

"But it’s still covering the world."

[...]

Great Void tried to decipher what I meant—but I was a little faster.

I moved the world through a puddle. I submerged myself in one puddle and emerged from another.

And this world was still covered in seawater.

I used that shallow ocean blanketing the world as a puddle.

Before he could react, I swallowed the world first.

[...A foolish thing to do.]

Great Void slowly grew more distant. The world was being consumed.

Into another Abyssal Sea. Into a place where other Outer Gods existed.

[So this is your final struggle? It changes nothing. This is merely a matter of time.]

Perhaps because he knew he was already too late, Great Void made no attempt to stop me.

Even if he tore apart the ground again, more than half the world had already crossed over. At best, all he could reclaim would be a crippled land with less than half of itself remaining.

"Yeah."

I nodded while watching him gradually disappear.

"I still have no idea why you're so wary of me. But if I find out, maybe something will change."

[And if it does not? Do you realize how absurdly optimistic you are?]

"Probably.”

This might be a pointless act.

Perhaps, Great Void was simply being cautious. Perhaps I was just refusing to face my own destruction, but—

"If I only acted when the odds looked good, I’d have hanged myself in that library years ago.”

As long as there was even the slightest possibility…

No, even if there wasn’t. I had no intention of giving up.

[...]

The last I saw was that constellation and its expression—

twisted by an emotion I couldn’t quite identify.

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