Chapter 81
The two grimoires Ian possessed were Touch of Re-Creation and Deep Sea Travelogue.
Neither of them was a normal grimoire.
Touch of Re-Creation was written by the Outer God called Reconfiguration of All Things.
Deep Sea Travelogue was written by the Outer God called the Master of the Outer Sea.
Of the two, the one Ian had encountered first was Touch of Re-Creation. Since it was the grimoire that had led him to become a mage, Ian was personally more attached to Touch of Re-Creation. It wasn't that he disliked Deep Sea Travelogue; if he had to choose, that was simply the one he preferred.
In fact, if you thought about it normally, that was only natural.
Touch of Re-Creation, which had no effect on its owner, and Deep Sea Travelogue, which threatened to eat him if it got hungry. If you had any sense at all, which of the two would you side with?
Of course, re-creation magic wasn't completely free of side effects. If used for too long, it caused headaches, nausea, and dizziness.
But it didn't seem worse than being on the verge of death.
Naturally. An illness that could be suppressed with medicine was better than deep-sea monsters that threatened to devour him alive.
Even so, Ian chose Deep Sea Travelogue over Touch of Re-Creation because only Deep Sea Travelogue had faintly revealed the Outer God's form.
‘The form reflected in the Watcher.’
Ian still remembered the black-haired girl reflected in the Watcher's lone eye when he summoned it while escaping from Johan General Hospital.
It was impossible to recall her exact appearance. Her face had never been fully visible, and below her neck all he could see was an inky-black shadow.
Thanks to her small shoulders, long hair, and the pronoun ‘she’ written in the grimoire, he knew the Master of the Outer Sea was female; otherwise, Ian wouldn't have known her gender for certain.
By contrast, what about Reconfiguration of All Things?
The designation for Reconfiguration of All Things written in Touch of Re-Creation was also ‘she,’ just like the one written in Deep Sea Travelogue. So Reconfiguration, too, was clearly female.
But he didn't know the most important thing: what she looked like. He didn't even know the slightest trace of her appearance.
Eyes? Nose? Mouth? Did she even have those to begin with? What color was her hair? What about her eyes? Was her body shaped like a human's?
“…….”
He didn't know a single one of those things. In that state, he couldn't just suddenly ask Reconfiguration of All Things to make one.
How was he supposed to make something when he didn't even know what it looked like? No matter how great a sculptor Pygmalion was, he couldn't sculpt a being he knew nothing about. Even if he forced something out, how was that any different from looking at a watermelon and calling it an apple?
So he had no choice.
……So Ian used that reasoning to soothe Touch of Re-Creation. Touch of Re-Creation whimpered softly in his bag as it was petted.
[Mmm.]
It sounded like it would let him off just this once.
For some reason, it felt like a first wife forgiving her cheating husband, but Ian forcibly pushed the thought away.
‘For now, I should take good care of Touch of Re-Creation too.’
Just as he was thinking that and swinging his leg idly, Pygmalion, who had been carefully carving the statue, set down his hammer and nails and wore a satisfied smile.
“It's done, mage.”
“Already? You're quick.”
It had only been five minutes since he asked for the carving, yet Pygmalion had completed it in that short span.
As expected of a master craftsman, his hands were incredibly fast. No, maybe he had used some mystical power to speed himself up.
Whatever the reason, it wasn't that important. Ian closed his bag, tidied up, stood up, and checked the time.
‘About three minutes left, I guess.’
It wasn't much time, but it was enough to inspect the statue. Ian rolled the stiff wrist he had gotten from all that stroking of the grimoire and stared past Pygmalion's back.
Behind Pygmalion's gray body.
A statue of a girl stood atop a small display cabinet.
Her expression was blank, and her long hair flowed black and glossy. Her red eyes glimmered eerily, like a pool of blood. Her snow-white skin shimmered even paler in the light from the ceiling lamp.
“……Hah.”
It looked more like a living being than a statue. All it had were the upper parts of her thighs, her pelvis, upper body, arms, and head, but even so, the statue had gained life and was breathing. The slight rise and fall of her chest was proof of that.
“I carved the internal organs, nerves, blood vessels, tendons, and all the other parts a human needs. It's a shame I couldn't make the legs, but well. It's the client's request, so I have to honor it.”
Pygmalion said. He stepped aside, looked back at Ian, and grinned.
“Take a look. This is your wife now.”
“…….”
It wasn't as if he intended to make a figurine or statue his wife, but Ian didn't object and instead slowly approached the statue.
Viewed up close, the statue was no different from a real person. Pores and hairs and the like had all been rendered in meticulous detail.
“I didn't know you were into women without legs, but... well, there's beauty in that in its own way. I respect it.”
Ian ignored the bullshit Pygmalion was spouting beside him.
Ian stood before the statue and swallowed hard as he met her red eyes.
‘……So this is the Master of the Outer Sea.’
He knew it wasn't complete. He also knew there was a strong chance it differed from her true form.
But the form reflected in the Watcher and the statue before him were not all that different. If you compared only their outward appearance, you could safely call them identical.
‘It doesn't have that overwhelming sense of pressure I felt back then, but that's unavoidable.’
At the time, the Master of the Outer Sea had briefly revealed her true form through the Watcher's eye.
By contrast, this was just a simple statue. It had been granted life, and its outward appearance was the same, but at the end of the day, its essence was inorganic matter. There was no way it could produce phenomena on the level of an Outer God.
Still, it was enough to properly confirm her appearance. From now on, he could just think of her as having roughly this image.
“Mm?”
Ian nodded, meeting the statue's tilted gaze.
Then the grimoire in Ian's hand vibrated briefly.
“Mmm.”
Before Ian could even react, the grimoire moved on its own and flew up over the statue's head.
There wasn't even time to react when Ian's eyes went wide and Pygmalion raised his brows at the unexpected turn of events.
Pthunk!
The grimoire plunged straight into the statue's chest and shattered the ivory.
“……!”
“Damn it!”
Ian was stunned, and Pygmalion spat out a curse. Regardless, the grimoire crushed the ivory and drove itself deep into the place where the heart had been.
As it fully replaced the heart's place, black seawater began to seep out little by little from the grimoire's cover.
Gurgle...!
The familiar sea of the outer cosmos made Ian's face stiffen, and Pygmalion's movements froze in instinctive fear.
“…….”
“……Uaaah. Ah, uuaaah…….”
By then, the three minutes of spare time had long since passed. Yet Pygmalion did not harm Ian at all, instead chattering his teeth and shaking all over as if he had witnessed something he couldn't possibly defy.
By contrast, Ian was perfectly fine. He stared at the statue shrouded in black Outer Sea without any mental confusion or physical trembling.
The sudden turn of events. Black seawater spilling out despite no magic being used. The frightened reactions of everyone except Ian, especially the fearful reaction of Mystery itself.
A familiar sense of déjà vu washed over him. This was surely just like when the Master of the Outer Sea first revealed a fragment of herself through the Watcher's eye—
“Ahaha.”
The moment he thought that, a clear laugh came from the direction of the statue. Ian instinctively whipped his head around, and a small hand that shot out lightly pressed both his cheeks. His cheeks caved under the force, and his lips puckered.
A ridiculous sight. But the situation was anything but funny.
“Mmph?!”
Ian, flustered, rolled his eyes to look at the owner of the hand. The statue, its chest pierced by the grimoire, was gazing at him with a look full of mischief and affection.
“My love.”
Its mouth opened slowly. A red tongue showed between red lips, and its body slowly began to collapse from the bottom up, as if even speaking one word was too much for it.
But the statue—or rather, whatever was borrowing the statue's body—smiled brightly without a care.
“This body is far too lowly to bear me.”
“…….”
“I only packed in about a fingernail's worth of consciousness by human standards. At this rate, it's unusable.”
She exhaled warm breath into Ian's face, then planted a kiss on the bridge of his nose. Then she smiled shyly.
“But there's no reason to ignore the chance, is there?”
“……You.”
“My husband. My consort of the Outer Sea. My first love.”
‘She’ smiled sweetly and forced Ian's mouth open with her thumb. Then she caught his tongue with her finger and pulled it straight out.
“I'm waiting for you.”
“Mmph……!”
“However, I'm not especially patient. Much less so if there's a rival.”
She smiled softly and bit down hard on Ian's trapped tongue with her teeth. A little blood welled from the wound, and she drank it as she smiled brightly.
“I want to possess you. I want to mark every inch of you as mine.”
“…….”
“But I'll hold back. You'd hate it, after all. For now, I can be satisfied with this.”
“……Ugh.”
“Take care. I'm always watching.”
She smiled bashfully as she sucked up the drop of blood from the tip of Ian's tongue.
The next moment, the statue completely collapsed, and the grimoire fell to the floor.
[……]
The grimoire lay limp like a corpse, showing no reaction at all. Judging by how the title on its cover had blurred, it seemed the grimoire had overdone it a little too. Perhaps it wouldn't be able to use magic for a while.
“…….”
It was a serious matter, but he wasn't composed enough right now to worry about it. Ian wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, picked up the grimoire, and sat down heavily.
‘……Love is heavy.’
Ironically, that was the only thought that came to him.