The Abyss, the Girl, and the Lie (5)

“You did well on the last job. You wrapped it up nicely. For the next one, go here.”

“Yes, Father.”

I… had been raised as the descendant of an Abyss Hunter since childhood.

My ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mother had been born a shaman and had fought bizarre phenomena like the Abyss for a long time. Until the day I was born, my father had simply been the chairman of a mid-sized company. But from the moment I came into the world, the Abyss began to run rampant across the earth, and my mother was forced to wander from place to place to battle it.

In the course of that struggle, however, my mother was eventually consumed by the Abyss and could never return home. Shocked by her loss, my father closed his company and became an Abyss Hunter himself, devoting everything to tracing what remained of her.

Eventually he reached the Great Cavity, learned the truth of her death, and from that day forward offered his entire life to vengeance against the Abyss.

He studied countless spirit techniques and purged thousands upon thousands of large and small impurities. At the same time he raised me to become an Abyss Hunter capable of opposing the darkness.

I was proud of that father. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠honored him for refusing to crumble beneath the grief of losing Mother and for swearing to sacrifice everything for revenge.

That was why I, too, poured my whole being into meeting his expectations. I gave everything to achieve Mother’s revenge.

I accepted my innately deficient spiritual power and trained it until it swelled. I mastered every method of resisting the Abyss. In the end I even learned to locate its weaknesses and drive a weapon charged with spiritual power straight through them.

Father praised me for growing so well. Beneath his praise ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I drew closer and closer to Mother’s revenge, working desperately alongside him to uncover the Abyss’s fatal flaw.

At the end of that long road, the father who had finally located the Abyss Core spoke to me.

Though he had succeeded in finding the core, the years had taken their toll; he no longer possessed the spiritual power required to wield the divine instrument. So he asked me—still imperfect, yet overflowing with spiritual power thanks to years of relentless training—to drive the divine instrument into the core in his place.

I had no reason to refuse. I did not want to refuse.

The fact that he had brought out the divine instrument passed down through our family for generations meant the core was the true heart of the Abyss. Sever that heart, and the Abyss would perish.

If that happened, Mother’s revenge would finally be complete.

I received the divine instrument at once. Mother’s revenge, the annihilation of the Abyss, hovered right before my eyes.

I could not fail this mission. I could not make a single mistake.

Because the task was impossible alone, I needed allies. Having learned of the two beings said to be sealing the Abyss Core inside the Great Cavity, I began deliberately leaking information about the Abyss to the public so they would have no choice but to cooperate.

They had tried to hide the Abyss and turn the Great Cavity into an ordinary forest, but the mere fact that the Abyss slumbered there already made the place a living purgatory. It was time to stop concealing it and cut it out once and for all.

So I reached the Great Cavity and, upon meeting them—the two I had only imagined from second-hand reports—I felt it instantly.

Shinryong. How could a being possessing such vast and overwhelming divine power have failed to eradicate the Abyss?

No. She had clearly chosen not to eradicate it. This Shinryong definitely had some hidden scheme.

That was why rage surged through me the moment I stood before them.

This creature who had taken in one frail girl and dared to dream of an ordinary life while countless victims like me continued to be born—I burned to know why she would not destroy the Abyss.

But I endured. I was the successor of a proud Abyss Hunter lineage and the splendid eldest daughter of my mother, the revered first hunter. I held back, endured, drew out every secret they hid, gathered every piece of information, and the instant I secured the chance to hunt the Abyss I would reveal its existence to the entire world.

The coming Sunday, deep in the night beneath the risen full moon, the Abyss’s suffering would end.

“…I will trust you, Seha.”

This was my beloved father’s command, his mission, his request.

It absolutely could not fail. Absolutely. Absolutely.

With these two hands I would sever the Abyss.

It could not fail.

It absolutely… must not….

“Stop, this se—”

“Seha.”

“Seha, over here.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha.”

“Seha, over here.”

“Mom, Dad, I’m here.”

This was something I had never anticipated.

I had expected the Abyss to run rampant inside the Great Cavity; Hvedrung’s prophecy had lent weight to that prediction. But I had never imagined its reach would extend into the city itself.

The Abyss… I had sealed this much malice inside my barrier. How had it hidden so perfectly?

Could it have been suppressing everything, even its own breath, just for today—so I would never notice?

Just for today… Was Lee Seha the cause of all of it?

“Damn it…”

Having roughly grasped the situation, I poured divine power into the earth and summoned only the soldiers of azure light, preparing to teleport directly to where Lee Seha was. But the instant the soldiers appeared, the Abyss began to seethe.

I succeeded in shielding the shrine from the malice surging in from every direction. Yet the sheer scale of the entity that had torn half the seal away in a single breath must have reached the city, because erosions began breaking out across the urban districts.

The Fox Deity, the White Shaman, and many other guardian deities were still absent after the bizarre phenomenon they had displayed that day.

If I left the Abyss now rampaging through the city unattended, the consequences would be catastrophic.

In the end I poured even more divine power into Niyu’s sacred treasure until it overflowed, then wrapped the entire shrine and its surroundings in a curtain of divine power to delay the erosion as long as possible.

“I shall leave the rest to you, Niyu…”

I believed my faithful servant would handle it.

I teleported into the sky above the city and slowly surveyed the damage.

“…”

Fortunately the entity had only managed to stretch its grasp as far as the city. Cracks leading to the Abyss had opened here and there, but not a single wisp of malice had leaked through. The city remained peaceful.

So I released every last ounce of the vast divine power I had kept sealed for emergencies, bestowing upon the land the full mystery of the one and only gatekeeper on a scale never before seen.

The world that should have been wrapped in deep night was, in that instant, covered by a false sun of azure divine power and plunged into white night. A pale sun rose beside the moon, illuminating everything.

At the same time, every crack leading to the Abyss began to be sealed by azure light. The fissures that had nearly allowed malice to spill through were crushed along with the malice itself.

Yet because I had not used a mystery of this magnitude in so long, I could not leave the spot for quite some time. The technique had grown slightly unstable; I had to remain and carefully control the divine power before the false sun could be maintained for any real duration.

But just as the threat to the city began to subside—

“…Niyu!!?”

The link connected to my heart suddenly wavered. Even as I felt the false sun flicker, I could not stop myself from turning to look toward the forest.

That was when it happened.

“Ni———”

A deafening explosion roared. From the entire Great Cavity—including the direction of the shrine—an impossible mass of Abyss powerful enough to shatter my curtain in a single blow began to erupt.

Bottomless darkness surged in from every side.

I had collapsed on a cold, hard, perfectly flat floor and lost consciousness. Now I slowly opened my eyes.

“Where… am I…?”

There was no sign of Shinryong, no sign of her servant, no sign of the shrine.

I glanced at the divine instrument still clutched in my hand. Had I succeeded? Had the Abyss been destroyed? Vague thoughts drifted through my mind.

Then I heard footsteps approaching from afar. I turned toward the sound and witnessed something I could not believe.

“Seha.”

From the direction of the pond—no, from the exact spot where the pond should have been obliterated by the exploding malice—my father was walking toward me.

“Wh-what is this…? What’s going on…?”

My eyes trembled with shock as I stared at him. He spread both arms wide.

“Seha, you truly worked hard.”

“Thanks to you, I was finally able to obtain a body possessing truly powerful spiritual power.”

In that instant I could not accept the words coming from the man who wore my father’s face.

Father could not possibly be here. Such a thing should not exist. And what did he mean by “powerful spiritual power”?

It was impossible. Father had always told me my spiritual power was too weak and that I must train in martial arts. He had said that even without spiritual power, for Mother’s revenge I must at least grow strong enough to sense it.

Spiritual power… Wait. All those obsessive lessons about increasing my spiritual power—

“It’s… a lie…”

My hands began to shake uncontrollably. I pressed them against my chest as if to keep my heart from bursting and desperately shook my head.

This was all a lie. An illusion. A dream brought on by exhaustion. I tried with everything I had to deny the scene before me.

“No, it is real, Seha.”

But the figure walking toward me was not fake.

“Exactly two weeks after that woman died, your father was devoured in exactly the same way.”

The words it spoke were not lies.

“That face drowning in despair—ah, the malice that poured out of it was exquisite…”

Around that time I really had felt that Father had become strange. For several days I had sensed something was wrong.

“And in the end I caught your scent. I went mad trying to lure you all the way here with that delectable aroma of spiritual power.”

It had killed Mother. It had killed Father. And now it wanted to devour me.

“Pretending to be a father was rather difficult.”

Father—my father—

“No, it’s a lie———!!”

I refused with everything I had. I rejected the truth that was shattering my last hope into pieces.

With trembling hands I snatched up the divine instrument that had fallen to the floor and charged desperately at the thing wearing my father’s face, determined to destroy it.

“What…?”

The instant my fingers touched the final hope I had left, the divine instrument crumbled into darkness and poured through my hands like sand.

“Did you truly believe that absurd tale, Seha?”

The creature imitating my father drew closer, smiling as it dismantled the last fragments of my life.

“There has never been any divine instrument capable of cutting the Abyss! That dagger handed down in your family was nothing more than the spiritual weapon your mother once used~!”

I—

“Ahhh, hiding it from those two was truly exhausting~”

I—

“Thank you, Seha… our precious daughter.”

In this rotten world, what had I even been hoping for?

What on earth…

“Now, hand that body over to me.”

The thing that had reached me shoved me to the ground, wrapped its hands around my throat, and began to crush me.

Lying beneath the Abyss, being ground down, hearing that everything I had done until now had merely been playing house—

That every effort I had made for Mother’s revenge had been a lie.

That the revenge itself had been fabricated from the very beginning.

“Ugh…”

In the end I felt something deep inside my mind collapse. Not merely something—everything. I felt my very life being eroded and crumbling away beneath the Abyss. I felt my consciousness twisting, shattering, breaking apart in agony.

“Now I too…! That bastard———!!”

“Guh…”

The face that had never once shown such open ecstasy while pretending to be my father—twisted with madness and glee—was the last thing I saw.

“Fa… ther…”

Having lost everything, having failed completely, I remained caught ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the boundary from which it had already half-pulled my soul.

And then I lost consciousness.