Chapter 296: Deception (5)

TL/ED – Miso

I gathered the equipment Elysia had given me and set out to find Azrael.

'He's probably still keeping watch over them.'

Every elf was mindless.

To restore the mindless elves, I needed the memories Azrael held.

If there was one problem, it was that when I moved all of humanity to the Underground Cities, I never once moved Azrael.

Assuming he couldn't possibly be dead, the only way he could have survived was-

The same method I'd used, most likely.

"..."

I sent my Current Sense down beneath the earth.

Pushing Sea Water into the ground, I caught every last faint tremor and searched for open space. For who I was now, it was a fairly easy task.

Before long- I knew my instinct had been right.

'Found it.'

An underground cavern, was it?

The fact that he'd hidden away in a place like this meant he'd probably anticipated what was coming. Or else Dersia had tipped him off.

I threw myself into the pool at once and moved into the cavern.

-Splash!

"..."

The moment I emerged from the pool-

soft soil met my feet.

I looked around and was a little surprised. It was far more spacious than I'd expected. A space the size of a small city, and no matter how I looked at it, it didn't seem to have formed naturally.

The floor of that cavern was covered in deep soil instead of stone.

And right in the very center of that soil.

An old man was digging at the ground with a hoe.

"Heave-ho..."

-Thunk!

Even though I'd risen up out of the ground, he only glanced over once before returning to his hoeing.

Azrael.

Since he showed no particular interest in talking, I approached first and struck up a conversation.

"It's been a while."

"Hmm, has it? When you've lived this long, you stop feeling the passage of time."

His tone was as listless as ever, like a man who'd already seen all the world had to offer. Nothing much had changed.

"Where are the elves who were with you?"

"All dead. That's why I'm digging graves right now."

...For a second, I actually believed him and got a shock.

But soon enough I realized that couldn't be true and frowned. There was no way this self-proclaimed keeper of the elves would kill every last one of them.

Still, he hadn't come into the Underground Cities I'd built, and I hadn't been able to find him either- he must have hidden the elves away by some means.

I shrugged, went to his side, and picked up a hoe.

"I'll help."

"...What?"

"My master was an elf too. You could say I'm indebted to your kind, so I can do at least this much."

-Chop, chop!

As I struck the ground with the pickaxe, he blinked at me, then pulled some seeds out of his pocket and scattered them over the soil.

"...What are you doing?"

"Truth is, the grave-digging was just a figure of speech. The world's turned out like this, and I can't go around wasting time on idle nonsense like that. A man's still got to eat, hasn't he."

"No wonder. I was wondering why anyone would dig a grave with a pickaxe. It's not even a shovel."

I sighed, set down the hoe, and stretched out my hand.

"Move aside."

-...Rrrrmble!

In an instant, the entire floor of the wide cavern flattened out as though a tractor had swept across it.

Six seconds. That was how long it took for land that would take one man days to till to become fertile soil.

Azrael wasn't particularly surprised. He just tossed the pickaxe aside and grumbled as he scattered the seeds from his pocket.

"If you were going to do that, why not from the start? Why bother with the hoe?"

"I didn't want to dig graves with power like this."

"Why not?"

"It felt a little blasphemous. Those elves are, in effect, dead by my hand, and to dig their graves with the very power that did it..."

"Oh, spare me the theatrics. If you were going to think that way, you should have just not turned the world into this mess in the first place."

I watched Azrael sowing his seeds at a leisurely pace and let out a quiet laugh.

"If I hadn't, there wouldn't even be a space like this, you know?"

"You seem to think you know everything."

Azrael answered in an even lower tone.

"Perhaps nothing at all would have happened."

"...What?"

What kind of bullshit was this.

While I stood there unable to grasp what I'd just heard, he went on.

"Perhaps, even if Void had descended, the world might have carried on just as it was. Those Primordial Worlds he spoke of might have been more livable than you'd think."

"Are you in your right mind? No, I already knew you weren't... but I didn't think it was this bad."

"Heh, yes. The odds would have been low. But what does that matter now, when everything is already over."

"..."

He went on quietly scattering seeds, then abruptly spoke again.

"Go back. I don't know what you came here hoping for, but I have nothing to offer something like you. What could a being that soars so far beyond comprehension possibly want from a pitiful Shaman like me."

"I want your help."

"With what?"

"From here on, I'm going to fight a battle to buy the last bit of time against Void. For that, I need your strength, and the strength of your elves."

"I already told you. Didn't I say they were all dead."

As I watched Azrael shrug, something suddenly came to mind.

"The Savior the elves wait for. The elf who'll one day prove that they're lives worthy of existing. What exactly was that?"

"That story ended a long time ago..."

Azrael sighed as though slightly irritated and replied.

"It was quite literally just the hope for an elf who could gain power without Falling into the Abyss. An elf's lifespan is nearly infinite. And so the more time passes, the more the odds of Falling into the Abyss grow exponentially. That's why they longed for an elf who could reach the peak of power without Falling, one who would tell them how it was done."

"..."

"Since I alone had honed a different path, that of Shamanism, and had no chance of Falling, I came to keep their memories. That's all there is to it. Now that the Savior never appeared, right to the very end, it's a tale there's no longer any need to know."

"Then why didn't you wake them, even now?"

If what Azrael said was true, then those elves had craved life and offered up their own memories.

Yet Azrael had left them mindless without waking them, right to the very last moment. Even though elves who'd been driven to the brink of Falling into the Abyss might mount a meaningful counterattack if they recovered their memories.

"They offered up not their memories but their lives. They asked that if there was no way to solve it, I kill them instead. And I never found a way to solve it."

"Hmm."

I thought it over for a moment, then asked.

"Would I not do?"

"What are you talking about."

"By your own account, the elves offered up their memories out of fear of what comes after the Fall into the Abyss. Because with an infinite lifespan they were certain to Fall eventually, and they dreaded the wretched thing they'd become afterward."

"...That's right."

"I'm the answer to that. Me, standing here perfectly fine even after Falling into the Abyss."

Azrael stopped scattering seeds.

Then he shot me a look, as if the whole idea was absurd.

"You can't be the solution. Become an Outer God, you mean? You think everyone could rise up out of the ground the way you did? You're nothing more than a single, wildly peculiar anomaly."

"No, I'm not saying they should become Outer Gods."

I shook my head, denying it, and answered.

"I'm saying they should resist to the very end."

"What did you say?"

"It's true that I became an Outer God, gained power, and escaped a situation that would have killed me. But before that, and after it too, my goal was always the same."

"..."

"I want to survive. I want to survive that thing called Void. And if possible, everyone I know along with me."

"As I thought, that's not an answer that can be a solution."

Azrael turned away again and scattered more seeds.

"I can't fathom how great the suffering you endured in the Deep Sea was. But the time you held out was only a few years, wasn't it. For the elves, their lifespan becomes a shackle. The greater their power, the longer they endure, and the longer they suffer."

"I envy that. To be able to resist for such a long time."

"Are you mocking me?"

"It's a request."

I stepped closer to Azrael and grabbed the seeds in his pocket.

When he flinched in surprise and stepped back, I scattered those seeds across the ground.

"Honestly, I know it too. The odds are slim. But it isn't that they don't exist. They're there, for certain."

"You're deluding yourself."

"Maybe. But I don't care if it's a delusion. I'm going to struggle to the very end. And for that, I need your help. Because it seems I can't do it alone."

"You are a monster beyond comprehension. And you're trying to fight an even greater monster. Ants like us have no place in a fight like that."

"Then I'd gladly borrow even an ant's hand."

"...There's no reasoning with you."

Azrael sighed, then scattered his seeds again.

"In that case, I have a condition."

"What is it?"

"Meet Void and tell me what it truly is."

"...?"

Azrael looked at my bewildered face and pressed on, unyielding.

"Let me tell you one interesting fact. Void is not Heaven. You're mistaken about what that being is."

"Uh, um..."

"Believe it or don't, it makes no difference. But this is my one condition for helping you. If you come back knowing the truth, then I'll know you're sincere..."

"No, I've already met it."

"...??"

To Azrael, whose expression said he couldn't make sense of it, I scratched my head and answered.

"That thing isn't Heaven, it's the Heaven above Heaven. It governs the entire universe, apparently. I managed to seize Heaven itself, but from higher still, it came pouring down..."

"W-wait."

Azrael stared at me with a look of disbelief.

"You saw it? There's no way that thing would have let you live..."

"It's embarrassing to admit, but I wasn't even a match for it. I ran with my tail between my legs. I did buy a tiny sliver of time, though."

"So then, you know? What that thing truly is? And you've even faced it?"

"That's right?"

"Do you mean to say you've realized that even if every Outer God in all these worlds pooled their strength together, they couldn't do that thing the slightest bit of harm?"

"Hmm, yeah, that does seem about right."

"...H-have you lost your mind?"

Azrael stopped scattering seeds altogether and looked at me with eyes full of dread.

"Everything you've said, all of it, you said it knowing the true nature of this Void? Knowing what it is you're up against, and after facing it in person, you can still say things like that?"

"...What's so strange about it."

"You're an Outer God. However far gone your mind is, you'd understand far, far better than any human what that thing is."

Fear, horror, disbelief. It was a gaze in which all of those were mixed together.

"How... how can you even try to fight it. How can you not give up. Are you sane?"

"Well, you see..."

Void could not be fought.

Even an Outer God of the Deep Sea, even a being greater than that, became smaller than a single grain of sand in a desert before it.

And yet.

The small child who had once sunk into the Deep Sea had felt exactly the same way.

"I survived the Deep Sea. As a child."

"..."

"And this time, as an Outer God of the Deep Sea, I'm going to defeat Void. Impossible, you say? Difficult? I know."

I looked at Azrael and gave a faint smile.

"Because I've already done it once."

What has been done once can be done twice.

That was my conviction.

⚬──────────✧──────────⚬

Join our discord server: .gg/96hMXymzMP