Wizard of the Abyss – Ch. 188

Wizard of the Abyss

[Extra Novels]

Chapter 188 - Oblivion (13)

"..."

There was no need for me to activate my Tide Sense.

When I lifted my head, I could already see countless white specks embedded across the sky.

The blizzard that had been pounding down from above was completely frozen in place. It looked as if time itself had been sealed in ice. I was left speechless when I suddenly realized how unnaturally silent everything was and slowly swallowed.

It felt as though I were the only being left in the world.

That, however, was just an illusion. The moment I took a single step, a clear, bell-like chime echoed through the air.

-Deng...

"?"

A thin thread was buried beneath the snow.

The moment it was disturbed, it rang a bell. 

Some kind of trap that was most likely meant to summon someone. Tensing up, I spread my Tide Sense everywhere, and sure enough, I heard the soft crunch of footsteps approaching.

Thinking it might be Decay, I prepared for combat but then caught a familiar presence in my Tide Sense and let out a sigh of relief.

Dercia appeared from a distant hill.

"Master, you were here after all…?”

I was about to greet her brightly when something about her appearance made me tilt my head in confusion.

It wasn’t anything drastic, but she was dressed far more practically than usual. Instead of her familiar robe, she was wearing a fluffy, white fur coat.

"...Jern. I thought you’d come here.”

Letting out a sigh that was half-resignation, half-lament, as if she'd known I’d come, Dercia slowly descended the hill.

"Yes. Where is this place? Just a moment ago, I was talking with Decay, and then when I came to my senses again, I suddenly ended up here. Also, did you bring that coat with you?”

She was the same person who had stubbornly worn that light robe even when entering this frozen wasteland.

Noticing that the shadows under her eyes seemed deeper than usual, I asked, my head tilted. She sighed in exasperation.

"A lot has happened. Would it be alright if I explained after we reached the shelter?”

"Shelter?”

"It’s nothing grand. Just a small mound of snow.”

Wondering what she meant, I followed after her and found myself staring at a castle.

A white, classical mansion straight out of a movie.

"Erm, huh…”

Was calling this a mound of snow humility, or just a bad joke?

Standing before the entrance of a massive mansion carved entirely from snow, I muttered without knowing what else to say.

"You really put a lot of work into this.”

There was no way something this large could have been made overnight. Though with her magic, that certainly was possible.

Why she made it, though, was another question.

Dercia didn’t seem proud of it at all. She led me into what seemed to serve as a reception room (after lightly probing with my Tide Sense, I realized nearly every room in the mansion had been fully constructed) and calmly sat down at a table made of ice.

"When you have nothing to do for three years, you end up focusing on things like this. It’s just a trivial hobby.”

"Three years? What do you mean by that?”

A sudden discrepancy in time.

An uneasy feeling surged up inside of me as I asked, and Dercia met my gaze and answered.

"You must have seen the sky. The snow that was falling and then suddenly froze in place.”

"Ah, yes.”

"What do you think caused that to happen?”

"...Acceleration of cognition. That was my guess.”

The opposite of deceleration. If cognition could be slowed, I concluded that it could certainly be accelerated as well.

Excessively accelerated thought produces a result similar to deceleration.

One could perceive everything, understand everything, but since only one’s cognition was accelerated, one couldn’t affect reality in any meaningful way.

By that logic, it was no different from deceleration. If slowed cognition led to slowed action, then from Decay’s perspective, those movements would look like a turtle’s crawl.

Likewise, if cognition was accelerated excessively, then no matter how desperately one tried to move, an absurd amount of time would pass before that action was reflected in reality.

That was the feeling I got while looking at the frozen snowflakes and the blizzard that seemed as though it had been paused.

As if the world itself were moving forward while remaining completely still.

But if that were all, then our current situation would make no sense at all.

"You’re about half right.”

Dercia nodded slightly and began to explain the situation.

"Jern. Right now, we are dreaming. Assuming we define a dream as something meaningless and futile.”

"...A dream?”

"A dream in which you die if you fail to wake up.”

"Then…are we asleep?”

After saying those ominous words, Dercia paused for a moment, then added clarification.

"No. That’s not quite it. A more precise term would be…a revolving lantern. Yes, that fits better.”

Those weren’t comforting words either.

As I tilted my head in confusion, she sighed and looked out through a window made of ice.

"Do you know about the brief moment where people see a revolving lantern showing their life just before freezing to death? Their entire life unfolds before their eyes all at once, and without exception, they fall into a hypothermic state. You cannot stop your eyelids from closing through sheer will, and you never wake up again.”

"So that’s the situation we’re in right now.”

"No, we are thinking, acting, and aware that this palace is strange. That means we have not frozen to death yet…”

She spoke quite firmly, then clenched her lips before continuing.

"The one who is currently having this experience is the other party.”

"Then…”

As realization dawned on me and my brow furrowed, Dercia nodded in agreement.

"Yes. We are currently inside Decay’s revolving lantern.”

The final dream experienced by someone freezing to death.

That was the last puzzle Decay had been hiding.

* * *

Trapped inside a dream.

Before I could even begin to process that absurd statement, Dercia said something even more unbelievable.

"As I mentioned earlier, I was trapped in this space for three years. At first I thought that it was just my consciousness moving within an accelerated world, just like you did.”

"W-wait a moment.”

She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world, sipping an unidentifiable tea from an ice-made cup. Watching her, I couldn’t hide my confusion.

"You were alone in this place for three years?”

"Time does not flow normally within this revolving lantern. It may sound strange, but…”

"More importantly, were you alright? I mean, mentally. Didn’t you suffer from instability, or loneliness, or anything like that?”

"...Jern.”

Most people would go insane almost immediately if trapped alone in this white prison for three years.

It was a question born from genuine concern, but Dercia set her teacup down and replied with an incredulous look.

"Three years may be a long time for humans, but for my kind, it isn’t particularly long. Do I appear mentally unsound to you?”

"You don’t seem any different than usual.”

"Exactly. There is no need to worry about me.”

...An elf really was an elf.

Even after being trapped in this snow world with nothing but white scenery for three full years, she remained completely unaffected. It was a stark reminder that Dercia belonged to an incredibly long-lived race.

"Regardless, there were far too many things that could not be explained by a simple acceleration of cognition. Why could I move normally? If time were truly frozen, I should not have been able to leave any traces, yet footprints remained in the snow. And most importantly, why does nothing exist beyond this snowy mountain range?”

"What?"

"No matter how long I walked, I could never leave the mountain range. The Dwind Mountains are vast, but not that vast. This space is formed as something endlessly repeating.”

She spoke calmly, then met my gaze and stated plainly.

"From that, I traced the structure of this world backward. The world, the Fallen, and—what kind of burden would someone like Decay bear in exchange for wielding a world of such vastness?”

"And that burden…is this place.”

"Yes. Decay is trapped within an eternal revolving lantern, a purgatory that neither ends nor allows escape.”

The final dream of someone freezing to death.

A countless number of moments of one’s life flashing by in less than a single second.

I wondered what it would feel like to experience that not for just an instant but for a lifetime.

Suppressing the discomfort creeping up my spine, I listened as Dercia continued in a serious tone.

"The problem is that Decay’s dream is not a happy one.”

"That much is obvious.”

"The burdens are still crushing you, right?”

She was right. I could still feel the cold gnawing at my flesh.

"Enduring the burdens in a space you can never escape, again and again, with no solution in sight. Eventually, Decay’s revolving lantern becomes our revolving lantern. No matter how happy the life reflected within it may be, its final moment always converges on freezing to death in these mountains.”

"..."

I silently looked up at the sky above the mansion.

The snowflakes hung there, as if waiting to fall to the ground, making the entire world feel like a painting.

"Is there a way out?”

"There wasn’t. Until you arrived.”

Dercia muttered calmly.

"If we are to search for a way to escape, we need to find Decay, who is dying somewhere in this world.”

"What?"

"After all, we were invited into this purgatory in which Decay is trapped. Somewhere within these snowy mountains, Decay should be stuck, neither fully alive nor fully dead, maintaining this world. If we find that body and sever its breath, we should be able to return. Simple as that.”

"Aha."

If this world was a dream Decay was experiencing, then Decay had to be within it.

In every dream, the dreamer was present. That was what Dercia meant.

Just as I began to feel a spark of hope, having found a possible path forward—I sensed something was off about this.

The difficulty of the task and the elf standing before me didn’t match up.

"...That sounds too simple. Is there more to it?”

"Hmm, is there a problem with that?"

"No, not exactly, but…”

I looked Dercia over and asked.

"I mean, you said you were trapped here for three years, right?”

"Indeed."

"Of course, my Tide Sense may be slightly superior to your methods of detection.”

But even taking that into consideration, three years was still quite some time.

"If you couldn’t find Decay in that amount of time—just how vast is this mountain range?”

I was confident that if one gave Dercia three years, she could comb through at least half the continent.

Which meant this revolving lantern was even larger than that.

I asked that question with that concern in mind, and Dercia answered without the slightest change of expression.

"Jern. Within this revolving lantern, there exists one burden that doesn’t greatly affect you.”

"Huh? What burden?”

"You can’t gather mana.”

"...?"

"It seems this palace is less a true world and more the dream of a lunatic. For that reason, mana does not accumulate. That restriction doesn’t apply to you, since you replenish yourself by breathing in the water of the Abyssal Sea, but things are different for me.”

"Erm…Then you’re saying…”

"Yes. At present, I am an ordinary person incapable of using magic. That is why even three years was barely enough to investigate a single mountain. Without you, it would have been impossible.”

Dercia was unable to use magic.

That was quite shocking. But something else struck me even harder.

I reexamined the decorations and carvings left within the mansion and the doors rendered with unsettling detail, then asked with a trembling voice.

"Master. There’s something I’d like to ask.”

"Yes. Go ahead.”

"...When was this mansion completed?”

"Hmm."

After thinking about it for a bit, Dercia answered.

"I began construction one month after arriving. It was finished about a week ago.”

"..."

A great many words rose up my throat, but I swallowed them all.

"Follow me.”

After Dercia finished explaining the situation, she led me to a mountain of moderate size within the range.

From its peak, the sheer scale of the Dwind Mountains became painfully clear.

A mountain beside a mountain, beside yet another mountain.

The snowstorm obscured the view so effectively that I couldn’t even see them all.

Dercia wrapped her coat tighter and spoke with a hint of worry.

"We have a time limit. After three years, even I can no longer endure this palace with nothing but my body. It will be difficult, but you must search all of these mountains within at least a month.”

"Hmm..."

"I am aware that this is an unreasonable request. However—”

"No, it’s not really.”

I gazed down the mountain range for a moment, then gave her a slight but confident smile.

"He’s not on this mountain.”

"...What?"

"I just checked. On the way up.”

In this world, nothing was moving.

Which meant the only things caught by my Tide Sense were Dercia and myself.

—No matter how far I expanded it, there was no headache from tens of thousands of sounds or movements crashing into my mind.

"I think I can finish within a week.”

This wouldn’t take as long as I’d expected.

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