Chapter 31: 30. Abyss
1.
Yuna’s VPN was ultimately blown to pieces by the censorship.
[No, no, no, that can’t be true!!]
There was no use denying reality. It wasn’t as if we had some brilliant solution.
Well, damn it. I’d become a dwarf living in the Outer Tower.
"Just kidding."
It wasn’t really Yuna’s fault, either.
If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have known about the disguise—not even in my dreams.
"The location data definitely says the Inner Tower, right?"
[Yeah, yeah, yeah... I really scrubbed it thoroughly...ㅠㅠ]
Then, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Let’s try bluffing our way through it first.
Still, those ■ symbols keep appearing in the middle of things.
Was the signal bad where dwarves lived? The messages looked corrupted.
I felt like it had been the same when I opened that document before, and it even gave me a slightly ominous feeling.
"I live in the Inner Tower, though?"
First, try bluffing.
Yuna typed it up immediately.
[Sun Dwar■]: Ah! Is that ■ so?
It was still a godawful error-riddled message, but...
[■un Dwarf]: Then, when do you plan to ■ enter the Inner Tower?
Damn, it didn’t work.
They had some serious stubbornness. Not wavering in the slightest.
I had a feeling bluffing wouldn’t get us anywhere.
They seemed incredibly forceful, somehow.
I had a feeling that whatever I said now, I was about to get shaken down.
In that case, I’d answer this question with only the bare minimum of information.
"Could you please just get to the point?"
It was a little rude, but this was the right move.
[Sun Dwar■]: Hm.
[Sun Dwarf]: Is that ■ how you’re going to be?
"What kind of dwarf goes ‘hm’ like that?"
The interjection was kind of strange. It felt like the image of dwarves I had in my head was falling apart.
Let’s not answer anymore. They’re testing the waters, testing the waters.
"And what are you going to do if I am?"
But then—
[Sun Dw■rf]: Do you know ■ a way to enter the Tower without ■ obtaining the qualifications to climb it?
Flinch.
"Huh...?"
[...Wait.]
I might be a kid who didn’t know how the world worked, and there was plenty I didn’t know, but...
"That’s not something you’d say to a dwarf, is it?"
Why would a dwarf born inside the Tower need to climb it in the first place?
It wasn’t that I wasn’t curious about what they had said.
It was actually quite interesting. But it was as though they already knew I couldn’t enter the Tower.
"Yuna."
[Yeah.]
"I’m a little scared here."
[I’m analyzing every possibility I’ve observed.]
Yuna became incredibly calm and composed in an instant.
Which meant the situation was that strange.
Just how much did they know about me right now?
And was the person on the other end really even a dwarf?
[I can’t know everything.]
[What we know for certain is that these messages are being sent from the Inner Tower.]
[Even if you were exposed as much as possible, the only information about you would be that you live outside the Tower.]
And now there was another question.
"Doesn’t that black-square error message look like the one we saw before?"
[There’s no problem with the connection right now, though.]
Then...
"Let’s block them."
Let’s block them immediately and eliminate every variable.
Ah, wait. One final test, then.
Let’s ask just this one thing before cutting them off.
If they really were a Sun Dwarf, they would surely be able to answer this question with their eyes closed.
"Set the furnace blazing~ and hammer the steel~"
[Oh?]
"...Send it."
It was the dwarven traditional anthem I’d listened to for the past four hours.
According to Kim Yujin, it was something on the level of Korea’s national anthem to Koreans.
Even if we sent just this without a word—
If they were a real dwarf... there was no way they wouldn’t know the next line.
I’d memorized every verse after only four hours.
I swallowed as I waited for a reply.
If they sent back something completely unrelated here...
One...
Two...
Five seconds. At least within five seconds.
"...Hammer it a thousand times~ quench it ten thousand times~"
Anxious, I quietly hummed the next line without realizing it.
And then—
【Dwar?!$%■?】: This is !$%fun■.?
Twitch.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
"Block them, hurry!!"
[Aaaaah!!]
I slammed the button in the upper-left corner of the DM window.
[
■■■■■]
Would you like to block this user?
"Do it! Do it!"
You have blocked [■■■■■].
"..."
I dragged a hand down my face.
I had just experienced the greatest fear of Lionel’s life.
For reference, the fear that had now been bumped down to second place was disposing of the spotted cow’s dung when I’d first arrived in this world.
When I closed the block window—
[■■■■■]: This is fun.
[■■■■■]: See you again later.
"..."
The name had been completely blacked out.
As though that had always been its name.
With trembling hands, I scrolled up through the chat.
[■■■■■]: Ah! Is that so?
[■■■■■]: Then, when do you plan to enter the Inner Tower?
[■■■■■]: Hm.
[■■■■■]: Is that how you’re going to be?
[■■■■■]: Do you know a way to enter the Tower without obtaining the qualifications to climb it?
Every message we had exchanged until just now had returned to normal.
The only thing that had changed was the name.
Stunned, I sat in my chair and stared blankly at the sky.
Why was I being put through this ordeal when I’d been so happy about gaining a potential ability...?
I felt like I’d had a similar experience before.
This unease, this unidentifiable chill.
More precisely, I had opened a document that felt similar.
"Yuna, could you pull up just the name of that document I opened last time?"
[🔒] [■Λb■y■■s5■]
Oh, this.
It was the document I’d thought belonged to the Sun Dwarves.
I had opened this document. It had definitely looked like it was from the Sun Dwarves on the surface.
"Don’t open it yet."
[Abyss...?]
"Abyss?"
[If I force myself to read it... ABYSS. It’s Abyss.]
I was good at English, so I knew what abyss meant.
The abyss. A bottomless depth.
What a name.
"Yuna, I’m scareeed."
I had a powerful feeling that I shouldn’t get involved with it.
Enough that I wanted to crawl into Dolores’s arms and bawl my eyes out right now.
Mommy, please get rid of the scary thing.
Still, I had to do what I had to do...
I steeled myself and called Yuna.
"Abyss... Ha, could you look that up for—"
That was when it happened.
"...Abyss?"
"?"
A familiar voice chimed in from behind me.
I turned my head...
There stood a woman with flowing purple hair and an enormous ribbon pinned to the back of her head.
It was Isabella, her bright eyes wide and sparkling.
They were exactly the same eyes she’d had during that chess opening.
"..."
"..."
"...Abyss?"
"...Something like that."
I tried my best to evade the situation, but...
"Lionel, you did just say ‘Abyss,’ right...?"
"..."
Isabella covered her mouth with both hands.
She even seemed slightly moved.
What was that reaction?
An ominous premonition came creeping up my spine.
Then—
[I just looked into Abyss. Apparently, it’s fundamentally a highly legendary concept.]
[It’s based on the idea that the Tower doesn’t only have floors going upward, but downward as well.]
[No one has ever been there, but there are records saying unknown mana and energy have been observed.]
[There’s supposedly a school that studies it in an attempt to draw dimensional power from that abyss.]
"..."
[People call them ‘Abyss Scholars,’ and the most famous among them is...]
[Isabella...]
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I slowly turned my head.
At some point, Isabella had moved right in front of my face, her eyes shining brightly.
"Just as I thought, Lionel...!"
"No. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but that’s not it."
"You didn’t even answer me back then..."
Whoosh.
My small body was lifted into the air.
Every time this happened, I resented how small I was.
Plop.
I was placed right on Isabella’s lap.
I ended up looking exactly like I was being held in her arms.
"So Lionel really wanted to become my disciple?"
"No, I didn’t."
"Your mind and body are always honest..."
Isabella lowered her voice to a whisper beside my ear.
"...Do you want to know what Abyss is?"
She tilted her head slightly.
"A world where everything is inverted, below rather than above. That is the Abyss."
I remembered completely ignoring her and turning her away at the door a few days ago.
Feeling a little indebted, I eventually spoke calmly with her.
Honestly, I was curious too.
After all, it was better to be pursued by Isabella’s acquaintance who lived in the abyss than by some bizarre, incomprehensible horror.
"...Then have you ever been there?"
"No."
"...?"
As if rejecting my expectations, Isabella calmly shook her head.
"I’m researching it diligently!"
"...Ah, I see..."
She clenched both fists and her eyes sparkled.
[But... I don’t think you should dismiss her as pathetic, either.]
[She’s supposedly the first climber to discover and research the concept of the Abyss.]
[...The person you’re sitting on.]
The soft woman I was sitting on seemed, at least, to be a pioneer of knowledge.
I respected that, then.
Knowledge pioneers were bound to have a hard time.
[Looking at the assessments of Isabella, they say she’s an incredibly frightening and sharp person...?]
That couldn’t possibly be true.
It had to all be lies.
"If you ever have questions about the Abyss, contact me."
"Yes... I will..."
In truth, it was impossible for me to ask any more about the Abyss right now.
Me, who hadn’t even climbed the Tower yet.
‘I got a message through the Tower’s messenger. What do I do...?’
It wasn’t as if I could say that.
Since there was no immediate problem at the moment, I supposed all I could do was wait and see.
She really must be an impressive person.
Just as my opinion of Isabella was about to rise majestically—
"...But you came by once before, didn’t you?"
"...Huh? Yeah, I did."
"I’m sorry about then. I was really busy."
"Mm?"
Isabella tilted her head...
Then she gave a faint snort.
"...A great mage doesn’t dwell on such things."
"Oh..."
She was more magnanimous than I’d expected.
"You ignored me for exactly around 27 minutes and 31 seconds, and even stitched up your stockings about 181 times while disregarding what I said, but those are only trivial matters."
"..."
I was already starting to feel tired.
While my energy was draining away in real time—
Isabella suddenly turned her head.
"Anyway, Lionel, can I take it that you’re my disciple now?"
"No."
I smiled and shook my head.
This person really didn’t listen to others, huh.
I understood. As some lofty great mage, she probably wasn’t likely to display outstanding interpersonal skills.
"I’m Dolores’s disciple."
"..."
For a moment, Isabella’s eyes turned melancholy. Then she looked away.
Sliiide.
Her hand reached toward the gloves on the table.
"...These are gloves Dolores used to wear?"
"I-I suppose they are?"
Flinch.
I unconsciously averted my eyes.
She couldn’t find out that I’d made them.
Of all things, this woman had clearly seen me stitching up stockings just a few days ago.
"She said there was a hole in them... so I sewed it up for her."
"Then I should try them on."
Before I could stop her, she put on the [Apprentice Blacksmith’s Warming Gloves].
"How do I look? Do they suit me?"
Still holding me tightly, she showed off each hand in turn.
But in front of my eyes—
─────────────────
[Apprentice Blacksmith’s Warming Gloves] [★☆☆☆☆]
[Unique Equipment] [Compatibility] [9/40]
[Enchantment Level: +16]
─────────────────
[They will not cause harm, but there is no reason to wear them.]
[...There is ‘definitely’ someone else they suit.]
─────────────────
There was that brutally honest compatibility score of 9.
Unable to read that out loud, I...
"Yes, well, they suit you."
gave her a suitably soulless compliment.
Fwoosh.
"Oh, it even makes fire. That’s fascinating."
While she held me and enjoyed the first use of the enchanted gloves...
Creeeak.
The door opened.
"..."
I made eye contact with Dolores, who had opened the workshop door.
"My gloves. My Lionel."
The temperature inside the workshop instantly—
"Put them both down."
—dropped.
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