Wizard of the Abyss – Ch. 172

Wizard of the Abyss

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 172 - Resident (8)

I moved immediately.

"Wait here."

[...?]

Leaving the shark behind, I searched the surrounding area for other deep-sea creatures.

I wasn’t looking for another to enslave.

I was picking ingredients.

'Let’s start with skin.'

After a great deal of deliberation, I began selecting deep-sea creatures one by one.

The Slow Fish was a monster far beyond anything I could face at my current level.

But was it a monster from the very beginning?

Its species was different, of course, but reaching that state had to be the result of slowly hunting and growing by consuming other creatures.

If that was the case, then things became much simpler.

-Slice.

[...??!]

I found creatures with usable hides and lightly scratched them with my pressure blade. The Abyssal Sea itself took care of the rest, compressing them into balls.

The injured creatures flared up, trying to find me, but even the octopus that lived far deeper than these things had only sensed that I existed but not where I was.

At this depth, the odds of any of them realizing where I was were extremely low.

After several attempts, once I was sure it was safe, I continued hunting without hesitation, gathering the shrunken carcasses.

"Alright. This should be enough…"

With my arms full of compressed deep-sea creature balls, I returned to the shark.

"Here, eat this first."

[...]

The shark swallowed the offered carcass without a shred of hesitation.

And then…

[...Khg, Kehg, Khek.]

"?"

It writhed as if in pain, then coughed up blood.

Startled by this sudden turn of events, I tilted my head in confusion until the panicking creature stopped breathing.

-Crunch

As the dead body itself was compressed into a deep-sea creature ball, I looked again at what I had fed it.

Only then did I realize the truth.

"...No way, a pufferfish."

I had chosen it for its tough skin, but it seemed that even among these bizarre deep-sea creatures, pufferfish still carried lethal poison.

I wondered if there was any way I could make use of that. I set aside the clearly toxic pufferfish balls and brought in another shark, feeding them to another shark one by one.

Still, several died afterward.

Not from poison, but because the build was flawed.

"..."

One of them had grown teeth inside its gills, injuring itself every time it tried to breathe.

And when I saw one struggling as barnacle-like shells grew on its fins, making it incapable of swimming, leading it to slowly sink while flailing, I let out a sigh and withdrew the threads.

-There were duds.

'Shellfish have to be included.’

Eating something didn’t guarantee that the trait I wanted would appear in the way I wanted.

Barnacle armor was absolutely essential to my plan, but it needed to grow on the body. If it grew on the fins instead, their ability to generate currents became unstable.

During this process, I learned something new. Apparently, these creatures had organs somewhere in their fins that were responsible for using the power of the Abyssal Sea.

Worse still, traits that were harmless or even beneficial to the original creature could become catastrophic weaknesses when transferred to a different species.

When sharks kept dying every time I fed them jellyfish balls, I finally split one open before compression out of curiosity—I was horrified to find out that several of its organs had turned semi-transparent and liquefied.

It was a good thing that I didn’t try eating those jellyfish myself… 

In the end, I completely abandoned using those sharks.

They looked powerful from the outside, but they had zero growth potential.

If fed jellyfish, their organs would gelatinize and die. If barnacle shells were to grow on their fins, their abilities would vanish. There was always the possibility of teeth growing in their gills as well. There were just too many fatal flaws, so they didn’t fit my plan at all.

Still, it wasn’t a waste of time. By feeding them various deep-sea creature balls, I had managed to identify most of the traits each one carried.

Though, in the process, I kind of wiped out the local shark population.

"Was that a bit much…?”

I scratched my cheek as I looked at the hundreds of compressed shark balls floating around me. So numerous they couldn’t fit in my pouch.

By repeating the process of feeding them, observing the effects, releasing the thread, and killing them as quickly as I could, I had ended up exterminating most of them in under an hour.

They were quite numerous, but useless. Shaks were just too flawed. So I scattered them widely using the currents.

Within the range of my Tide Sense.

[...Food, fallen…]

[...death...]

[--, ----]

It felt like nearly every deep-sea creature at this depth had gathered.

So many species swarmed in, munching and swallowing the shark balls I had spread.

I examined them one by one, looking for something worth choosing. Something that could be useful to me.

......Hm...

'Nothing really stands out to me.'

There were plenty of interesting ones, but none looked superior to the sharks. Most were species I had already seen during my creature ball experiment.

Their traits weren’t anything special either. Just as I was considering whether to use sharks again—

"...?"

I noticed something usually interesting among the deep-sea creatures.

First of all, it was tiny.

The smallest deep-sea creature I had seen so far. About the size of a fist, it extended a tentacle several meters in front of it, dragging the balls that were about its size in, then promptly devoured them with its tiny mouth.

But the biggest, most striking difference was…

...It wasn’t hideous.

In a place where every single lifeform looked like something straight out of a nightmare, this one just had small black eyes and a pinkish body without any sharp edges or grotesque mouthparts. One could even call it cute. 

Honestly, it looked more like a plush toy than a deep-sea monster.

I remembered reading an article back on Earth. It was some kind of octopus…

"...Ah, a Dumbo Octopus."

Of course, it probably wasn’t a real dumbo octopus. As far as I remembered, it wasn’t the kind that could extend its tentacles up to three meters.

Intrigued by its appearance. I unconsciously drifted closer and fed it a few shark balls.

[...]

One, three, seven… It accepted everything I offered it. Considering that most creatures stopped after a few, and considering its small size, this thing was a real glutton.

It ate like a hamster, stuffing the food into its cheeks and swallowing it without chewing. By now, it had eaten dozens of times its own body mass and still looked perfectly fine. I was just starting to feel amazed when—

"...Huh?”

I noticed something strange.

Despite having eaten all that, it hadn’t changed at all. Confused, I grabbed my head and examined it more closely. That was when I spotted tiny teeth growing at the very tips of its tentacles.

So after eating that much, this was the only change?

It seemed that this dumbo-octopus-like thing had an absurdly slow rate of trait manifestation, which seemed to be its defining trait.

What kind of ridiculous ability was that? How did something like this even survive in this place? As I frowned—I noticed something else. Those tiny teeth were already starting to fade.

'I see.’

If it were merely slow to reflect traits, that would be worthless.

But if it was slow to manifest them and had a tendency to revert back to its original form, that would become a major advantage.

It meant giving up positive traits in exchange for also shedding negative ones.

The reason I’d only encountered “normal” deep-sea creatures so far—ones capable of functioning properly—was probably because all the others had already died.

For example, a shark that ate shellfish and ended up with barnacle armor on its fins. That thing died within five minutes. Naturally, I’d never get the chance to see one.

Honestly, it felt like the most common cause of death among deep-sea creatures was consuming something fundamentally incompatible with their own biology. So it wasn’t strange that a creature like this existed that chose this kind of evolutionary path.

A creature that, despite being weak and small, rejected all negative traits, having invested everything into survival.

That was probably why there were so few of them. In the vast range of my Tide Sense, I could only find about three.

Thinking that it was only natural given that their species favored a thin, stretched-out survival strategy, I nodded to myself, but then a bolt of insight struck me.

"...Wait."

Traits from deep-sea creatures appeared very slowly.

And they even diminished over time.

What had seemed completely useless suddenly appeared to me in a different light.

"..."

Perhaps.

I gently grabbed its head while the dumbo octopus continued swallowing those shark balls.

[?]

"Sorry, but you’re going to have a bit of a rough time."

[??]

Thinking about putting this thing through forced feeding, I felt like this might be the only way forward.

* * *

A few hours later.

I finished all preparations while looking at my Water Partition.

-Crack…

It gave off strange sounds, and I felt as if the surroundings had suddenly grown much closer. Of course, it wasn’t just a feeling.

There wasn’t much time left now.

30 minutes at most. Once that time passed, I would burst and die on the spot.

"Haah..."

I drew in a breath, steadying my trembling chest, and set off along the canyon.

At the same time, I gently patted the dumbo octopus on my shoulder that had swollen up so much it looked ready to explode at any moment.

[..........]

Oddly enough, this creature seemed incapable of speaking the deep-sea creatures’ language, but if it could, it would probably be screaming things like “The End! The End!” nonstop.

It had inflated to several times its original size since I first found it, looking as if it would burst if pricked by a needle, to the point where it couldn’t even swim anymore. Guiding it with the current, I kept it close at my side.

What I did was forced feeding, which could be seen as a rather unusual kind of torture. Honestly, I did feel a bit guilty, so I made sure it wouldn’t actually die.

Protecting both the dumbo octopus and the bubble that would allow me to return to the real world, I made my way back to the place where I had first encountered the Slow Fish.

It was time for the decisive battle.

'I’ve done everything I can.’

In truth, there was still a lot left undone, but I did my best within the time that remained.

All that remained was to draw the Slow Fish out.

But without bait like the whale, there was no way a creature that lived that deep would come up.

Which meant, as much as it made me want to die just thinking about it…

I had to do that.

[?]

To keep the dumbo octopus from panicking, I held it firmly with my right hand, then raised the current and cut my finger.

Following the sharp sting, blood oozed out.

"Please, come out already…”

Almost begging, I clenched my teeth and let a single drop of blood fall into the Abyssal Sea.

The blood spread so quickly that it almost seemed like it completely disappeared.

And…

[....!!!!!]

[[[--, --, ---, ---!!!!!!]]]

An explosive reaction followed.

It felt as though every lifeform’s Tide Sense in this world was turned toward me—across the entire range of my Tide Sense, I could see countless deep-sea creatures going berserk all at once.

Before, my Tide Sense hadn’t been sharp enough to truly grasp it, but now, seeing them rush in like fired missiles sent shivers down my spine.

What was I to these things? I was about to raise the currents, thinking I should at least warm up by fending them off…

[...]

[……..]

[...!]

But then every single deep-sea creature charging toward me froze in place.

As if an invisible cliff had suddenly appeared in the ocean.

The reason was simple.

-Click!

From the abyss I was staring into, I could hear a small sound reaching my senses.

A sound that made it impossible for any deep-sea creature to approach.

Suppressing my tension, I used the current to slice open the dumbo octopus’s belly.

-Pop.

[....!!?!?!?!]

The membrane I had created, meant to prevent the octopus’ stomach from absorbing the balls, burst apart.

I had physically stuffed it into the dumbo octopus’ stomach. Watching the creature convulse violently after swallowing dozens of deep-sea creature balls I’d prepared all at once, I forced the corner of my mouth to curl upwards.

"Let’s give it a try."

20 minutes.

That was all the time I had left until either the Slow Fish fell or I did.

_______________________________________________________________________