TL/ED – Miso
After Damyu left.
I bound my entire body tightly to a nearby pillar.
I tied myself so tight it could cause necrosis. Only after confirming that I couldn’t even thrash around no matter how hard I struggled could I finally let out a sigh.
She would co.
She would definitely co. As I waited with that thought in mind—
Sothing moving entered my World.
“…”
“…”
And then.
My eyes t hers as she strolled into the garden.
Moonlight illuminated the space between us. After a prolonged silence, I spoke first.
“Are you not going to ask?”
“Hm?”
“I imagine you have quite a few questions for .”
Why did you betray ? Was that your intention from the start?
I expected so rage-filled rebuke along those lines, but Dark Night tilted her head slightly as if she didn’t understand.
After pondering for quite a while, she finally spoke.
“Hmm… if I had to pick sothing, I’m curious how you were so certain you’d make the sa choices even after losing your mories. I didn’t see that coming at all.”
“It’s a bit difficult to ask that of soone who’s lost their mories. I suppose my past self thought that given the sa circumstances, I’d arrive at the sa conclusions.”
I trailed off, buying ti.
After all, she was the one who had to bear the Burden. The longer we talked, the more she had to pay for all the empty promises she’d scattered about.
That’s why I thought she’d most likely attack right from the start, but—
“Is that so? Oppa really is Oppa after all.”
Dark Night was perfectly calm. No, beyond calm—she seed to lack even a basic understanding of the current situation.
Her gaze wasn’t even on . The way she gently touched the roses in the garden made it seem like she didn’t consider an enemy at all.
“Now that I think about it, you were always like that. Always sowhere I couldn’t reach.”
“Dark Night-nim. I understand that you don’t see this situation as a crisis.”
“Hm?”
“You’re from the Upper Tier, after all. You must have built up quite a lot over the years. This probably isn’t your first ti dealing with sothing like this. Of course you’d have ways to handle it.”
I spoke calmly to Dark Night, who wore a puzzled expression.
“However, as ridiculous as it sounds coming from soone in my position, you shouldn’t have accepted .”
“What do you an by that?”
“It was already over the mont you consud . If you give up and hand over your position to , I’ll at least spare your life.”
Dark Night blinked at my razor-sharp declaration, then—
She let out a small laugh.
“You’re smart, Oppa, so you should know—none of this really matters much.”
“…”
“Yes, I’ll have to move the Family mbers to different bodies. I’ll have to create new children too. It’ll take ti. But in the end, I can rebuild everything.”
“And, well. To be honest, I think I only need to add a few more Family mbers now.”
Snap snap snap snap snap!
Thousands of threads wrapped around her neck snapped all at once, and those threads descended precisely toward .
“Because I have you, Oppa.”
I had tied the ropes tightly. Even if I gave it everything I had, I could never undo them with physical strength alone, not even if I died and ca back to life.
But the hand bound by threads squird and began to swell.
“!”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let a single hair on your head be hard.”
Bang! Dark Night flicked her fingers lightly, and my hand escaped my will and easily snapped the ropes.
My arm, grotesquely swollen as if injected with so drug, radiated a sense of omnipotence. The kind of strength that could easily crush stone.
“Gah—!”
But that strength didn’t exist for my sake.
From the very beginning, I was a being bound by contract.
My body was not my own. It lightly wrapped around my own throat, making my head spin.
Dark Night watched and covered her mouth with slight concern.
“Just bear with it for a bit. As a special treatnt, I’ll make you lose your mories every hour. That way we can live together as Family forever.”
“I’ll… pass…!”
I gritted my teeth and refused, then used sothing other than ropes to pin down my body this ti.
“Huh?”
Dark Night seed bewildered and kept trying to move my arm with her threads, but the overwhelming mass wouldn’t allow it.
Only then did the smile disappear from her lips.
“…You made a contract with . You can’t possibly still have your World.”
“Well, seems you made a bit of a mistake.”
When I casually responded, Dark Night stopped trying to move my arm.
Instead, the threads flew toward sowhere else.
“Get out.”
“…Huh?”
“Get out of my Oppa’s body. Right now.”
What is she even talking about?
But judging from the subtle anger in her tone, she clearly wasn’t pleased that I was using my World.
The problem was what ca next.
“…”
“…Oh.”
From where the threads had descended, sothing impossible began to crawl out.
They had been human—once. But every single one was missing their head, and their muscles had swelled so grotesquely that their clothes had been torn to shreds.
Naked. Three tis the size of an average adult male. Moving on all fours.
Soaked in blood and dripping brain matter, they looked horrific enough that I’d believe it if soone told they had just walked up from hell.
Looking at those monsters, a question naturally escaped my lips.
“Wait, you could do sothing like this too?”
“…”
Dark Night didn’t answer. She just glared at with eyes dense with killing intent. The friendly deanor from monts ago, when she had called Oppa, was nowhere to be found.
Either way, it ant I couldn’t expect any rcy. I steeled myself as I watched the monsters slowly approach.
I couldn’t stop the water pressure crushing my body. If I did, my hands would imdiately strangle my own neck.
But if I just stayed still, those monstrous creatures would knock unconscious, and only a terrible outco would await.
So I had to do it.
Now.
“Subrge.”
I blinked, and the World shifted.
The air beca liquid, and all living things were burdened by mass before they could even act.
“…Kuh, kak.”
Unfortunately for them, they didn’t seem to have enough intelligence to comprehend what had happened.
The creatures that had been slowly approaching began to shrink. By the ti they reached out their arms—or forelegs—toward , it was already far too late.
Crack! Blood splattered from their crushed bodies and was about to touch my cheek, but instead dispersed into the water.
The rupturing didn’t stop at one. It repeated until every monster had burst and died.
I looked at Dark Night, hoping this might be the end.
“Th-this is…”
A vain hope. Dark Night was perfectly fine.
Instead, she looked around with a shocked expression, then raised her hand to feel the flow of the water.
“You have Ocean? No. No, wait…”
Crunch!
She wasn’t perfectly fine after all. When she reached toward , her hand was instantly crushed.
I watched the carnage with a grimace. That must hurt.
“—The Deep Sea?”
But she seed unfazed, withdrawing her crushed hand and muttering that word.
It was quite fitting. A dark ocean. I had thought it was a World that could be called sothing like that, but co to think of it, “Deep Sea” suited it even better.
“Hmm, Deep Sea. I suppose so. I didn’t know because I’d lost my mories.”
“That’s impossible.”
Dark Night shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it.
“How are you still alive? Void told nothing can survive inside the Deep Sea.”
“I’ll say it again—I don’t really know because I lost my mories. But…”
This ti, I looked at her crushed arm and asked.
“Now that you ntion it, that’s great news. Think you can endure this?”
“…”
Suddenly, the threads binding her were torn away at lightning speed, flying off sowhere.
“How pathetic. Don’t underestimate .”
The change was dramatic. Her arm healed in an instant.
Then she walked toward as if it were the most natural thing in the world, not a trace of Burden to be felt. However—
“Gak, kek, kak…”
The monsters that hadn’t died yet were shrinking more and more with each step she took.
…Burden transfer. Dark Night had shifted all of the Deep Sea’s Burden onto those she had contracted with.
She extended her hand and a sword made of threads naturally ford, settling into her grip.
Thread-made or not, it was sharp all the sa. The blade lightly touched my neck, grazing the skin.
Dark Night asked fiercely.
“What now?”
Unable to escape my own body, pinned down by water pressure, I couldn’t move an inch. Dark Night, moving freely through the Deep Sea despite having transferred her Burden.
Victory and defeat were all but decided. In truth, they had been decided from the start. If Dark Night had pulled out her threads and strangled , I wouldn’t have lasted long.
But.
“So this is as far as I’ve co.”
I forced a smile.
The Burden was crushing too, not just Dark Night, and her blade was cutting into my neck even now. But I smiled.
She looked displeased and tightened her grip on the sword.
“How long do you think you can last? It can’t be easy to offload my Burden.”
That was the truth of it. Dark Night had already lost most of her Family and her Livestock had died.
She was transferring her Burden to whatever remained, but she couldn’t hold out for long.
“Ha.”
Dark Night laughed in disbelief and pushed the blade deeper, scraping my neck.
“You’re one to talk? Even if I can’t last ten minutes, you won’t last ten seconds.”
“I suppose not. I don’t want to die yet—do you have any terms?”
“Swear that every hour, every day, you’ll sacrifice all your mories for .”
“No.”
“Then there’s no other choice.”
The thread sword pressed harder against my neck.
“You’re not Oppa anymore. You were just a fake pretending to be him this whole ti. I’ll kill you and transfer you to another body. That’s all.”
“No, Dark Night-nim. I am your Oppa.”
“…What?”
She looked at as if I’d lost my mind.
I moved a thread with effort and stroked her cheek.
“Look at this. Didn’t I also receive the Puppet ability? I’m just trapped inside the Deep Sea, that’s all.”
“…Don’t insult Oppa any further.”
Spurt—blood burst forth.
“Then you’ve made a grave mistake.”
“Being deceived by you was my only mistake. I’m going to fix it now.”
“You can’t fix it. You shouldn’t have given these threads. You absolutely, absolutely shouldn’t have. Didn’t I tell you earlier? It was already over the mont you consud .”
“…?”
Perhaps sensing sothing strange about muttering so calmly even as my neck was being sliced open, Dark Night’s expression turned questioning.
And then her gaze shifted to the threads attached to my body.
Almost all of them had been severed.
Dark Night must have noticed by now. That those threads weren’t cut—they had been “connected” to sothing else.
“…Ah.”
Yes. A mistake.
Dark Night had done sothing she should never have done.
Even if she gave the ability to control things to everyone in the world—
She should never have given it to .
“If I recall correctly, you said my World is the Deep Sea—”
I watched her slowly backing away, nodding gently with a soft smile.
“Then I suppose these things should be called Deep Sea Creatures.”
「…-.—–…—-!」
“You… little…”
Dark Night couldn’t take her eyes off the place where the monsters she had been commanding until just monts ago had been.
They were gone. They had crumbled away, leaving only bloodstains behind.
Devoured by even more horrific monsters.
She stared blankly at the grotesque creatures—massive things that could never be called fish—and uttered a single word.
“The Three Evils.”
Hmm. For so reason…
That term felt strangely familiar.
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