Wizard of the Deep Sea Chapter 9

TL/ED – Miso

It was only after my whole body was crushed that I realized I probably didn’t truly understand the situation I was in.

Of course, I knew I was in a very, extremely dangerous situation… but knowing something intellectually and experiencing it firsthand are worlds apart.

Honestly… I’m a little scared.

Realizing that the world could suddenly shrink and crush me without any warning makes me flinch even while walking normally.

It’s a terrible experience. At the same time, it was a beneficial experience that was worth going through.

Thanks to it, I was able to clearly set the direction I needed to head in.

“It’s fine.”

In the dark night, I lit up with light magic in the barn and ran my hands over my clothes.

However, the seams are different.

Since the clothes were made for janitors, there were signs that the slightly thick fabric had been forcibly stitched together, and these connecting parts were in a condition where even a little pressure could cause them to burst.

But my clothes were intact. What that meant was clear.

‘It only fucks me up.’

The pressure of the Deep Sea seemed to have a structure that ignored the clothes and only crushed my body.

If it ignores clothing, then it would obviously ignore armor too.

The plan to make a diving suit and endure was destroyed.

It was the easiest path… Clicking my tongue, I tightly secured the final strap that bound wood and scrap metal together.

My handiwork wasn’t exactly good, so the balance wasn’t perfect- well, it’s for a beginner, so this should be fine.

I lifted and set down a fairly decent-looking dumbbell, feeling its weight.

It was a little difficult, but not to the point where I couldn’t lift it.

“One, two, three, four…”

I hummed a tune as I lifted and lowered the dumbbell.

Why work out under the moonlight?

Since I couldn’t rely on armor, the goal was to build up my body to withstand the pressure of the Deep Sea.

Just hearing it makes it sound like the most moronic thing in the world. Even the greatest bodybuilder in Earth’s history would be crushed just like anyone else if dropped into the Deep Sea.

After all, the human body is made of flesh and bone, and there are limits to density. It’s not something that can be solved through training.

-If it were on Earth.

This place is different. Knights learn something called Body Reinforcement Art, and as the name suggests, they emit power not permitted to the human body and gain muscles capable of snapping swords.

Of course, knights obtain Body Reinforcement Art to learn swordsmanship with that power.

If someone without talent for the sword learns Body Reinforcement Art, they’ll just get sliced up by a knight who also learned it. They’d just become a strong sandbag.

I have no intention of fighting knights, so it doesn’t matter to me.

Now, just one thing. All I needed was the Body Reinforcement Art Training Manual, which costs tens of thousands of gold per volume and isn’t even available in the library.

And that problem was solved at lunch today.

More precisely, it was because it was solved that I could choose this path.

“Jern, do you think you can learn this?”

“…?”

At lunch today.

I returned to the Orphanage still dragging my aching body, and when I received the book from the Director, I silently gasped in shock.

That book wasn’t just any Body Reinforcement Art, it was a knight’s Body Reinforcement Art.

Even though the Princess sponsors our Orphanage, I know how much money goes into feeding dozens of children, so I couldn’t help but ask the always-frugal Director.

“Where did you steal this from?”

“W-what are you saying! I received it.”

“From who?”

“…Come here for a moment.”

The Director called me to the empty yard in the back and explained the situation in a secretive tone.

“Do you remember that, um… the knight visited the other day?”

“Yes. He came while I was away and gave a little speech to the knight hopefuls, right?”

There are many professionals who come to orphanages for volunteer work.

I’m not sure why they come. Judging from their sullen expressions while stating obvious facts and throwing out half-hearted words of encouragement, it’s definitely not voluntary. They must be getting some sort of credit. Or it’s a punishment.

Still, the kids at the Orphanage go wild. Every time those people come, they always bring expensive snacks that the children could never afford with pocket money. I’m not really interested, though.

“Well, that… the knight was giving a half-hearted speech as usual, but then, Linmel was swinging a wooden sword in the back.”

“And so?”

“He started watching Linmel intently… suddenly, his eyes went wide, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her for a long time. For thirty minutes. If Linmel hadn’t gotten tired and walked away, he might’ve kept watching even longer…”

“…”

I could more or less tell where this story was going.

The Director lifted the Body Reinforcement Art book with a serious expression.

“And then he handed me this book and said, [Give this to that child. If she catches my eye when I come back, I’ll support her.]”

“Support? Support what exactly?”

“Probably means he’ll give her full support to become a knight. The other teachers were motivated and have been eagerly teaching Linmel.”

“Ah, I saw Linmel get up early and pick up a sword this morning. So that’s why?”

“Yes, we tempted her with food to get her up a little early. We can’t miss this opportunity. It’s still hard to believe that Linmel, that small, young child, was born with the talent of a knight…”

The Director seemed truly surprised that not one of the bigger boys, but a 10-year-old girl had been chosen by a knight.

I wasn’t that surprised. I’ve seen it several times.

Linmel has talent. She understands the subtle truths of the sword.

She’s a true genius, unlike those freakish “chosen” wizards.

It’s not strange at all for a knight to be interested. In fact, if she’s showing promise only at 10 years old, you might even say it’s late.

Should I start getting on her good side early? While I was nodding at the thought, an obvious question came to mind.

“Wait, but why are you giving this to me? Shouldn’t you give it to Linmel?”

“…I did. I already did.”

The Director’s expression turned gloomy.

“Hmm, let me guess. She said it was too boring and didn’t want to do it?”

“I wish that were all…”

As I watched the Director sigh in despair, I tilted my head.

“Huh? If not that, then what?”

“Well… Linmel isn’t very good at reading.”

“?”

“She doesn’t not know how to read completely, but there are too many difficult words and complex sentences, so she says she can’t read it…”

…What?

But she’s 10. Does that make any sense?

Thinking she might just be a moron, I flipped through the Body Reinforcement Art book that was handed to me, only to realize… it wasn’t such a strange thing after all.

Words like “femoral region” or “gastrocnemius rupture”, it was full of terms that would be hard to understand even for an elementary schooler. No wonder she couldn’t read it.

“When we tried to teach her ourselves, she said she didn’t want to study something that would lead to learning the sword, so there wasn’t much we could do. But she listens to you well, so I was wondering if you could teach her… Are you busy, by any chance?”

“…No.”

After a moment’s thought, I organized my mind and gave a friendly smile to the Director, whose eyes were sparkling with hope.

“Don’t worry. I’ll study it well and teach her.”

“Jern…!”

That was what happened this afternoon, when I received the Director’s deeply moved gaze.

And now, since I obtained Body Reinforcement Art anyway, I decided to use it to overcome the water pressure. It’s the middle of the night.

“This should be enough.”

I pumped my muscles as much as I could and looked at my reflection in the well.

A human made of toothpicks. Not just slim, but scrawny. The price of skipping most PE classes, I guess.

Well, it should be fine if I learn Body Reinforcement Art. I let out a sigh and tried to imitate one of the stances from the book, then froze.

“…What is this?”

The stance shown in the manual was downright grotesque.

The joints were twisted in impossible directions, and the core idea was to perform strength training in that state.

The logic was that even the tiniest muscles in the body had to be trained so that you wouldn’t get injured later while learning the advanced Body Reinforcement Art-

But can this even be done? The pose was so acrobatic, it made me doubt.

After thinking for a moment, I shrugged my shoulders and slid my hand between my legs.

Gotta do what it says. I mean, it’s not like I’ll actually get hurt, right?

-Crunch!

The next morning.

“Hey, are you hurt or something?”

“Yes.”

Sunbae looked at me with a dumbfounded expression.

Since I was walking with a broom like a crutch and limping along, of course he’d be wondering what was going on.

Normally, I’d just say I was fine, but this was clearly beyond the point where a lie would work.

“But I’m okay.”

This wasn’t a lie either.

My legs… they hurt, but the rest of my body actually felt lively.

The basics of Body Reinforcement Art start with awakening all the muscles in your body.

Even now, walking feels strange. I’m only now realizing how many tiny muscles there are in my body.

It’s not a bad feeling. Rather, using parts I didn’t even know existed makes my body feel much lighter. It was worth sacrificing my legs.

“Hey…”

Instead of nagging as usual, sunbae covered his eyes with one hand and looked up at the sky.

…What’s with you?

“So… is it really that hard?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, we’ve only been cleaning together for two weeks, so it might be weird to say this, but… if it’s really too much, tell me. That director person, I’ll take responsibility and…”

Sensing danger, I frantically waved my hands.

“No! No, no, no, it wasn’t the Director who hit me. I just fell on my own. I swear.”

“…R-really?”

“Yep! I’m fine, so please don’t do anything like that. Seriously.”

I nearly turned the Director, my life’s savior, into a criminal.

Watching my sunbae still looking confused, I resolved to be more careful from now on. I’m still young, so people believe me way too easily.

“I’ll clean diligently today too, don’t worry!”

“What the hell are you saying? How are you gonna clean with a hurt leg?”

“I am fine!”

“I’m the one who’s not fine. Come with me.”

“…”

With a stern face full of a sense of duty, sunbae dragged me to a corner building on the Academy grounds, and even there, shoved me into something like an infirmary room.

“This is the staff infirmary, got it? Just get plenty of rest today. There are medicines and bandages here, so if anything feels wrong with your leg, say something. I’ll be cleaning in front of the building, so don’t even think about running off to clean!”

His tone was strict, but what he said couldn’t have been kinder.

“But…”

“Tsk. Taking care of a hubae is also the job of a sunbae. Got it?”

Wow, he really likes that role.

Completely crushing my final resistance, sunbae wiped his nose proudly and gently closed the door as he left.

I was left alone in the room.

Since he said he’d be cleaning right in front of the building, escape was impossible.

“Sigh…”

There were so many classes I needed to eavesdrop on today.

I decided to just do some self-study, thinking this must be punishment for throwing the Director under the bus.

Luckily, there were a lot of usable bandages. They had a good weight, perfect for practice. I held a bunch in both hands and dropped them one by one.

Countermeasure for when I get blown into the air by ocean currents.

Use the wind to slow the descent.

“This is hard…”

But maybe due to my lack of skill, it wasn’t easy to manipulate. The bandages I dropped just rolled normally on the floor.

It felt like using ocean currents would make it much easier, but that’s meaningless, I’m training the magic of the Material Realm.

I furrowed my brow and focused.

On the twelfth drop, I caught it.

-Whoosh. Right before hitting the floor, the bandage suddenly stopped and then bounced back into my hand.

It looked like a rubber ball. First success, maybe?

“Oh…!”

Feeling good as I recalled the sensation from a moment ago, I heard a small sound.

“…?”

I turned my head, and there was someone.

…Wait, why? What? I didn’t hear the door open.

A girl about my age, with short silver hair and big eyes, dressed in clearly high-end children’s clothes far fancier than mine, was looking at me with a half-shocked, half-confused expression.

Of course, I was the one most shocked. Our eyes met, and for about ten seconds, we stared in awkward silence.

“Uh, um…”

Just as I was about to say,

Who are you?

she beat me to it.

The kid pointed at me with her mouth half-covered and shouted,

“You just… used m-magic?! A janitor??”

Looking at the expression on her face, like she couldn’t believe what she saw, I calmly processed the situation.

Hmm.

My life is over.