Rebellion Rising from the Depths: Mocked by the Hero Who Impregnated My Childhood Friend Before My Very Eyes. - Chapter 8: True Name: "Causal Retribution"

True Name: “Causal Retribution”

The one who had been supporting the Hero… was me.

That fact remained etched deep within Noah’s chest, sharper than the frigid air at the bottom of the abyss.

He lay prostrate at the entrance of the hall, unable to move for a long while. With every ragged breath, his broken ribs creaked, and the metallic tang of blood clung to the back of his throat. His right leg refused to move properly, and the fingers mangled by torture throbbed with a feverish swelling. His wounds hadn’t vanished. His hunger and thirst remained at their breaking point. The reality of being at the bottom of the Abyss hadn’t changed one bit.

The only thing that had changed was how he saw himself.

I am not incompetent.

The final echoes of his father’s voice lived on in the depths of his mind.

And now, here in this abyssal hall, he finally knew.

The burden he had been forced to carry wasn’t pain that was simply shoved into him to vanish without meaning. It was all still there. To whom the wounds belonged, whose curse it was, and the price paid by those who escaped—it had all been recorded within him since the very beginning.

Noah lifted his left hand.

Even in the dim, bioluminescent glow of the moss, the crest engraved on his palm was clearly visible. Red-black lines formed a circle, with a mark like a rift at its center. It wasn’t a wound. The moment he touched it, he knew it was a pigment that would never wash away. A faint, lingering warmth radiated from it.

An ember.

That silhouette of light from moments ago had certainly called it that.

One of the fragments of the “Vessels” that had shattered here long ago.

Noah traced the crest with his fingertips. A dull throb pulsed deep within. In that instant, he felt the patterns on the stone floor give a slight, rhythmic beat.

The hall was silent once more.

The ley lines that had glowed red moments ago were now submerged back into the black stone. Even the central pedestal looked like nothing more than an ancient altar. If someone had told him it was all a dream, he might have believed them; the Abyss had grown cold again, as if nothing had happened.

But there was proof it was no dream.

The crest on his palm.

And the sensation settled deep in his chest.

The residues of pain felt slightly more orderly than before. It was as if the things that had been messily crammed into him were now lined up and sunk into a deep trench. It was still heavy. It was still agonizing. But the sensation that they would all riot at once and shatter his heart had faded.

Noah Clinthed his teeth, propped himself up on his elbows, and managed to force his body upward.

“…If… I am to live.”

His raspy voice was swallowed by the stone.

First, he had to make sure he didn’t die here.

If he was to cling to his father’s words, that was his only path.

He scanned the far reaches of the hall. Pale moss clung to the walls, castling a thin light across the ground. Behind the pedestal lay the wreckage of collapsed pillars and a stone basin, like a small birdbath, buried in the debris. From a crack in the ceiling, water fell—drip, drip—into the dish.

The moment Noah saw it, his thirst returned with a searing vengeance.

He crawled toward it. His breath hitched repeatedly and his wounds reopened, but he finally reached the edge of the basin. A small amount of clear water had pooled at the bottom. It was different from the muddy sludge he had tasted before reaching the hall. This water was untainted by the rot of the Abyss, holding only the chill of the stone.

Noah scooped it up with both hands and brought it slowly to his lips.

It was cold.

It brought pain just passing through his throat. But this time, he didn’t vomit. Another sip. Then another. He knew he’d lose it if he drank too much, so he let it flow in bit by bit. He felt his parched throat finally returning to that of a human being.

After steadying his breathing, Noah tore a strip from his tattered tunic and wrapped it around his fingers. The task of resetting the two bent digits was pure hell. Biting down on a piece of cloth, shedding a mixture of sweat and tears, he forced them straight. A dull crack echoed, and his vision exploded in white.

Still, he had to do it, or he would die.

He secured them with cloth, then moved to wrap the wounds on his arm and flank. The bleeding didn’t stop completely, but it was better than letting it pour out. His right ankle screamed at the slightest touch, but it didn’t seem broken—just severely swollen.

As he finished his makeshift first aid, a wave of crushing fatigue washed over him.

He leaned against the wall, his eyes fluttering shut. But he felt that if he slept now, he would never wake up. Sleeping at the bottom of the Abyss was little different from simply becoming a corpse.

It was then that he noticed something in the corner of the hall.

Human bones, half-buried in the moss.

No, not just one. Beside a collapsed pillar, the remains of several people lay scattered. Scraps of leather armor, rotted cloaks, fragments of old vestments. They all belonged to different eras. But they shared one thing in common: they had all managed to reach this hall, only to perish here.

A chill ran down Noah’s spine.

This was not a place of salvation.

It was a place where the embers of shattered Vessels came to sleep.

That meant many had reached this point and still failed to survive.

Near the knees of one of those skeletons—a set of bones leaning against the altar—lay a thin metal plate. Noah crawled closer and picked it up. It was rusted, but fine engravings remained on the surface. At first, he couldn’t tell if they were letters or just a pattern.

But the moment the crest on his palm pulsed with heat, the lines formed meaning.

‘Record, Measure, and Return.’

It was a short sentence.

Beneath it, more frayed engravings followed.

‘The True Name of the Vessel is—’

Only the final part was deeply etched. As if to ensure it would never fade, as if a blade had been driven into the metal over and over again.

‘Causal Retribution.’

Noah’s breath hitched.

Though he hadn’t spoken it aloud, those four characters dropped into the back of his throat like liquid fire.

Causal Retribution. (Inga Hankan)

It wasn’t some cheap title like “Proxy.”

He wasn’t just a convenient trash bin meant to accept other people’s wounds and end there.

Record. Measure. Return.

That was the essence.

That was the True Name of his power.

“…Causal… Retribution.”

As he repeated it in a raspy whisper, the crest on his palm gave a slight throb.

It happened in that instant.

From beyond the hall, across the narrow passageway, came the sound of something scratching against stone.

Noah looked up reflexively.

Slither… slither… Something heavy was scraping against the rock. It wasn’t the sound of the carrion-eaters from before. This was stickier, a crawling sound. In the darkness of the passage, a slick shadow moved.

Next came two glowing eyes.

Low to the ground. Approaching with a belly-crawl.

Noah gripped his chipped dagger and pressed his back against the wall. He held his breath. But the creature had undoubtedly caught the scent of blood drifting from the hall.

The shadow slid into the moss-light.

It resembled a lizard. But no ordinary one. Its torso was as large as a dog’s, and its black scales were peeling in places, revealing grey flesh beneath. Its belly was unnaturally bloated, while its ribcage was sunken—a grotesque sight that looked as if it were rotting while still starving. Purple saliva trailed from the corners of its mouth, causing the stone to hiss and bubble slightly wherever it fell.

Poison.

And not just any poison. A venom of the Abyss, ripened alongside miasma.

It wasn’t alone. Two more slid out from behind it, as if pushing through the narrow passage. The sound of their bellies dragging was sickening.

“…This is the worst.”

Noah spat the words out quietly.

Three of those things, when he could barely even walk.

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity. But the luxury of laughter vanished instantly as the lead creature leapt with unbelievable speed.

By reflex, he thrust his dagger forward.

The blade bit shallowly into the scales. He felt the impact, but it didn’t stop the beast. In the next heartbeat, its fangs sank deep into Noah’s left forearm.

“ーーgh!”

A scream escaped him.

The pain of flesh being torn was secondary to the horrific chill that flooded in immediately after. The purple venom raced through his veins, spreading from his arm to his shoulder and chest. The area around the wound went numb instantly, followed by a searing hunger that gouged at his stomach.

Hungry.

He was starving with freakish intensity.

It was different from the hunger he’d felt until now. It was a maddening craving, as if his insides had become a void and his stomach was trying to devour itself. Every breath cracked his throat, and the impulse to gorge on anything in front of him surged through his entire body.

Starvation Poison.

That was the only thing he could call it.

Noah slammed his elbow into the beast’s neck, somehow prying it off. Blood and purple fluid sprayed from his arm. The lizard landed on the floor and began licking the fluid with a long, thin tongue. The other two spread out to his left and right, closing in to block any escape.

His legs wouldn’t move.

His arm was numb, and his head spun.

The poison was too fast.

At this rate, he wouldn’t last a minute.

Is this the end? a calm part of his mind wondered. He thought it was a fitting way for someone like him to die at the bottom of the Abyss. His father’s grave had likely been desecrated by now. Leon was out there, continuing to play the Hero with a straight face. Lydie was probably smiling by the side of glory.

The moment those images crossed his mind, something submerged deep in his chest throbbed violently.

The crest on his palm burned.

Suddenly, the world was filled with lines.

From the lizard’s throat, a toxic purple thread extended. That thread pierced Noah’s left arm at the wound, flowing into his body from there. He saw another—a muddy, ochre-colored mass. Hunger. The maddening curse of starvation that the monsters of the Abyss forced upon their prey. That weight, too, had become a thread digging into Noah.

He could see it.

He could see the things that had been forced upon him.

‘Record, Measure, and Return.’

The words of the engraving he had just read echoed in his head.

Return.

Noah’s breath whistled in his lungs.

Can I do it?

Really?

Is this not just a power to receive, like that ember said?

The lead lizard leapt again. Its red-black maw closed in. There was no avoiding it.

In that instant, Noah thrust his left hand forward.

The crest on his palm took on a blood-like glow.

“—‘Causal Retribution’!”

Naming it was almost pure instinct.

In a flash, the piercing purple threads reversed their flow.

The venom that had been flooding into Noah’s arm receded all at once, as if time were winding backward. The wound itself remained. The fact that his flesh had been torn did not vanish. But the “venom forced upon him by the lizard” alone traced its way back to where it belonged.

And that wasn’t all.

The ochre mass of hunger was flipped back as well.

The lead lizard froze mid-air.

The next moment, it let out an impossible sound from the depths of its throat and crashed to the floor. It writhed as if trying to tear open its own belly, frothing purple bubbles from its mouth and clawing at the floor tiles. Its stomach convulsed, bulging outward from the inside before finally collapsing with a wet crunch.

It had succumbed to its own poison.

It had been consumed by the hunger it tried to impose.

The causality had been returned in its entirety.

Noah gasped.

He did it.

He truly returned it.

But there was no time for relief. After a moment of hesitation, the two lizards on his flanks hissed in rage. It seemed their instincts, dulled by miasma, had been violently triggered by the abnormal death of their packmate.

One crawled in from the right, the other circled from the left.

Noah regripped his dagger. The numbness in his arm hadn’t fully faded. His body was at its limit. Yet, he was fundamentally different from the man he was moments ago.

He could see them.

Around these two as well, muddy threads were tangled in multiple layers. The poison they forced on prey, the rot of the carrion they had eaten, the dregs of the Abyssal miasma they had accumulated. Every bit of it was still tied to them.

One lunged.

Noah couldn’t move, so he turned his palm toward it instead.

“Return.”

His voice was a mere rasp.

But the crest answered.

The blackened threads snapped taut and pierced the monster’s chest. In the next breath, black rot erupted from the gaps in its scales. It was bathed in the very rot-poison it had been spreading around itself. The lizard twisted in mid-air, thrashing with such violence it nearly bit off its own tail as it hit the ground. Rotten blood sprayed, and its flesh disintegrated before his eyes.

The final one finally seemed to understand the danger. It let out a low growl and began to back away.

You think I’ll let you go? Noah thought.

The emotion was so cold it surprised even him.

Before, he could only think of surviving. But now it was different. This thing tried to eat him. It forced poison and hunger upon him. His body understood, even before his mind did, that it was only right for it to be returned.

Noah dragged his aching leg and took half a step forward.

The crest on his palm was hot.

“Your hunger, your poison… it’s all yours.”

He focused on “grasping” the threads extending to the last lizard.

The next instant, the lizard’s eyes went wide. Its jaws snapped at empty space, and it slammed its head against the floor. Its belly shriveled to its limit, while its throat bulged unnaturally. Consumed by its own hunger and scorched by its own venom, it went still after a brief convulsion.

Silence fell.

The only things remaining in the hall were Noah’s heavy breathing and the sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance.

For a while, he couldn’t think.

Leaning against the wall, he desperately Clutched his dagger as his fingers threatened to go limp. His heart was racing. Perhaps the poison hadn’t been completely purged, as his arm was still tingling. But the maddening hunger that had felt like it was devouring his stomach had receded significantly.

The wounds didn’t heal.

If he was cut, he stayed cut. If he was bitten, the torn flesh remained torn.

But the poison, the curses, the hunger, the fatigue, the price—if it was a “weight that was not originally his,” he could return it.

That was ‘Causal Retribution’.

Noah pressed his trembling hand against the bite wound on his left arm. It was bleeding. It hurt. But it was not an unbearable pain. Having poison versus not having it was the difference between heaven and earth.

“…I can return it.”

The voice that escaped him was close to a laugh.

He could return it.

The things he had been forced to take, the things he had to carry and suffer under, the things that had worn him down…

Suddenly, his heart gave a pulse.

Noah looked up reflexively.

He saw it.

Threads of something that wasn’t inside the hall.

Reaching far upward. Beyond the ceiling of the Abyss, stretching much, much further—a thick, black-red bundle. It was so thick, so dark, and so intertwined that he knew instantly it was different from the rest. Wounds, curses, fatigue, backlash, price. Countless records were bundled together, connected somewhere like a single, massive rope.

He didn’t even need to think about who it belonged to.

Leon.

The bundle of causality leading to that man.

A weight identical to the years Noah had been forced to carry stretched straight from the bottom of the Abyss to somewhere in the Royal Capital.

His breathing grew erratic.

Instinctively, he reached a hand toward that bundle.

He wanted to return it.

Right now.

Everything, to that man.

The cursed heat in his left shoulder, the blood he had vomited, the pain that broke his knees, the nightly fevers, the wounds he endured to pay for his father’s medicine, the agony of being mocked… all of it.

The crest on his palm flared violently.

Simultaneously, a pain like a stake being driven into his brain shot through him.

“ーーgh!”

Noah fell to his knees. His vision warped. He could see the threads. But they were too far. Too thick. He sensed intuitively that if he touched them now, the mere backlash would strip away his consciousness.

I can’t.

Not yet.

In his current state, dying at the bottom of the Abyss, he couldn’t possibly reach it.

His teeth ground together in frustration.

But at the same time, something resembling hope truly ignited in his chest.

I can reach it.

Even if he couldn’t now, the threads were there.

They hadn’t vanished.

He hadn’t gotten away.

No matter how much Leon played the Hero, the things forced upon Noah remained connected to that man.

It is all recorded.

And one day, it can all be returned.

That fact was more vivid than any light in the Abyss.

Noah stayed with his hands on the floor for a while, steadying his breath. Eventually, the swaying of his vision subsided. The heat of the crest on his palm cooled.

Before him lay the carcasses of the three Abyssal Lizards.

I did this.

It wasn’t an accident.

It wasn’t a prayer or a miracle; he had returned it with his own hands.

The realization sent a chill down his spine. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t afraid. A power that had only ever been about enduring had now returned to the opponent with clear killing intent. There was a coldness to it that made him not want to think about what would happen if he used it on a human.

But more than that, he felt a sense of conviction.

It’s only natural that it be returned.

If you forced it on someone.

If you stole.

Then it is only right that you pay the price.

Noah looked down at the lizard corpses, then picked up the metal plate from the altar again. He traced the engraving ‘Record, Measure, and Return’ with his thumb.

“…A True Name, huh.”

Muttering it to his own power felt strangely right.

It wasn’t a miserable, convenient name like “Proxy.”

‘Causal Retribution’.

The power to return causality.

The power to return what was forced upon him back to its original owner.

Noah stood up slowly. His right leg throbbed, and he nearly collapsed, having to steady himself against the wall. But he stood. For the first time since being dropped into the Abyss, he felt he was standing by his own will.

Far beyond the hall, the cry of a monster echoed again.

This wasn’t the end.

The hunger, the miasma, the pathless Abyss—nothing had been resolved yet. First, he had to survive this place. Beyond that, he had to find a way back to the Royal Capital. He had to keep himself together until he could reach Leon’s causality.

It was far.

Abysmally far.

But he could no longer be a man who simply sank.

Noah walked to the entrance of the hall and looked toward the narrow passage. The darkness at the bottom of the Abyss waited with an open maw. He didn’t know what lay ahead. Food, a clue to an exit, or further hell.

Still, he had to go.

He looked down at the crest on his palm.

The heat ignited once more.

That heat was not agony. It was like a fire burning in his chest in place of a heart.

The corners of Noah’s lips quirked slightly.

It was a cold shape that couldn’t quite be called a smile.

“…Just you wait.”

He knew exactly who those words were meant for.

Leon.

Lydie.

The people who laughed at him as incompetent, trampled over him, let his father die, and threw him into the Abyss.

Looking up, far in the distance, he could see the grey slit of the sky. Above that was the Royal Capital, the glory of the Hero, and a world still laughing, knowing nothing.

Noah looked up, glaring at that narrow sky.

The voice that came from his throat was surprisingly quiet.

“I’m returning it all.”