Rise of the OtherGod Apostle: Not a Cult Leader, but a Serf?!

#130Reader Mode

#130

Thinking I could handle this maniac might be the biggest blunder I’ve ever made.

Stay calm. Think it through.

Nothing irreversible has happened. Yet.

If Nasir figures out the effects of distortion and reports it to Casimir…

Casimir will come looking for me, won’t she?

I’ll have to come up with some excuse for her. Somehow.

“Alright, I’ve got a lot of questions for you.”

“Ask away! I’m all ears!”

Let’s start with the basics.

“So, the day the starry sky opens is the winter solstice, December 25th, right?”

“Yes!”

“And that’s when the tutorial ends? When you can make a contract with an Othergod?”

“Yes.”

“What about the Celestial Observatory of Reverse Heaven? Is it in the same place as it is in the game? Is that where the contract happens?”

“Nope, not there.”

“…Not there?”

“The contract altar’s location is different for each player.”

Right. That makes sense. If the altar was in just one spot, ending the game would be a walk in the park.

The Order could just storm the place and wipe out every player at once.

But shouldn’t I have known this already?

This is basic information. Not telling me is practically saying, “Hey, don’t even bother trying to play.”

Even if quitting wasn’t on my mind, how am I supposed to get anywhere if I don’t know this?

Happy God, you bastard…

Did you abandon me out of fear of Mother God?

Or was it because you thought the game was over once I died and respawned at Mother God’s Basecamp?

Is that it, Happy God?

Even if Happy God hadn’t ditched me, I would have, but this is still pissing me off.

“Alright then, where’s your altar?”

“I don’t know!”

“…Is that… okay?”

“No it’s not that. My Helper just told me, ‘I will never tell you where it is.’”

Makes sense. This guy would absolutely blurt out the location by accident, triggering a Game Over immediately.

“My Helper did mention that if I die by suicide on Christmas Eve, I’ll automatically resurrect at my altar. Since the holy relic is stored there, I guess it keeps me from losing the game entirely. But if I die before Christmas Eve, I’ll be buried there until then. Haha.”

The Distorted One is somewhat impressive.

Its distortion works so that, even if its Cult Leader unit is a complete blabbermouth, there’s no instant game over.

To deceive someone, you have to stay a few steps ahead.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some secret plan in place that even Reyes has no clue about.

“What about the contract itself? Do you know how to make it?”

“You need to meet certain conditions by the day the starry sky opens. Then, you just have to be at the altar with the holy relic.”

“Conditions?”

“For me, I have to gather enough ‘disappointment’ from 10,000 people.”

Ten thousand? In the Dark Realm’s medieval setting, with a sparse population spread out across remote farming villages, that’s a daunting number.

Just encountering 10,000 people in this world would be harder than meeting a million in ours.

And it’s not just meeting them; you have to harvest their disappointment. That’s practically impossible.

Even if the requirement was simply for 10,000 people to know Reyes’ name, it would still be a Herculean task.

“Is that even possible? Isn’t that kind of harsh for a contract condition?”

“I’ve already met it!”

“How?”

“I’m from the House of Floren!”

…Was there some major scandal with the Floren family?

Something big enough to make 10,000 people despair…

I racked my brain but came up empty.

“What exactly is the power of the Floren family?”

“The ability to make flowers bloom.”

Flowers…

That jogged my memory.

Floren, the God of Flowers, serves as the right-hand deity to Egus, the God of Fertility. The Floren family oversees the fertile grain region southeast of the capital’s church, but compared to Egus, Floren is a minor deity. Few people reach out directly to Floren, so their influence is minimal.

Even in the grain-producing region, their impact is just a sliver of Egus’s reach.

As I delved deeper into my recollection, I realized Floren’s power was even less impressive than I remembered.

After all, what’s the use of making flowers bloom?

It’s not as if they can make flowers sprout from barren soil; their ability only encourages the flowering of plants that are already partly grown.

It’s an ability best suited for gardens, not for kingdoms.

Forcing flowers to bloom on an underdeveloped plant is akin to a death sentence: it’ll bear no fruit and will likely wither soon after. Other than nudging blooms to open a bit sooner or later, this power does more harm to plants than good.

So naturally, the Floren family’s main trade became beekeeping, adjusting flowering times to suit the needs of the bees.

This reminds me of my “There’s No Such Thing as a Useless Power” guide.

“…Did you use scorched-earth tactics in territorial warfare?”

“Scorched-earth tactics?”

“I mean, did you force plants in enemy land to bloom?”

Pushing plants into bloom during the wrong season spells disaster for them.

Imagining fields in full bloom under a blanket of snow… a grim omen that everything there is about to die.

Maybe it’s my recent farming experience talking, but that’s a terrifying thought.

Crops I’ve nurtured, bursting into bloom too soon, only to die before I can save them…

“So you know about it! The ‘Winter Flower’ strategy! It’s actually mentioned in a guide by that 8-letter player. Isn’t he a little scary?”

You’re one to talk.

“…Wouldn’t anyone think of that? Sure, using Floren’s power that way is unusual, but the idea itself seems pretty straightforward to me.”

“That might be true for one or two things. But that 8-letter player figured out dozens of things no one else had even thought of and he actually had the skill to pull them off! No normal person would be that committed.”

Hearing this, I felt a pang of embarrassment.

Why did I take this game so seriously…?

“The God of War’s player claims that famous guy is basically the closest thing to an Othergod.”

“What?”

Is that bastard slandering me now?

“So, are the God of War’s player and this 8-letter player close?”

“He said they’ve met in person and are practically like brothers.”

“And he’s positive this ‘Insanity’ player is the 8-letter guy?”

“Absolutely. He claims that if his ‘brother’ ever forgot he was human, he’d be exactly like Insanity, who supposedly lost all humanity from obsessing over the game.”

Unbelievable.

If someone you meet doesn’t act like the “brother” you know, wouldn’t the logical conclusion be, “Oh, must be someone else”? But no. He assumes, “This guy’s personality must’ve completely mutated in Dark Realm.”

“What else did he say?”

“He said ST Games probably released the game just to find people like him. The rest of us? We’re just background extras and collateral damage. So his advice is to forget about winning and go bunker up.”

What nonsense.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to make everyone focus on Insanity so he can stab us all in the back later.”

“…Do you know him well?”

“Well enough. He’s a seasoned gamer. If you’d ever browsed the strategy sites, you’d know exactly the type.”

“Are you two close?”

“No.”

I’ve already mentally cut ties with him.

A guy who’d throw his own brother under the bus to win a game. He’s the one who should’ve been chosen by the Distorted One.

“…I don’t post or comment online. Never met up with anyone I met on the internet either.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. If I was close to him, I would’ve started chatting with him ages ago.” I paused, noticing Reyes’ pupils narrowing into sharp, vertical slits. “But if you think about it, aren’t you the one closer to him? You’ve talked to him directly plenty of times, right?”

“We’re not close! We even blocked each other!”

Reyes jumped up in outrage.

“I only have Fabio!”

“…And you’re all I have, too.”

At least, among the players I know.

For now, anyway.

I reached over and patted Reyes on the head, watching as his violet pupils softened back to their usual shape.

“Hehe…”

Do creatures end up resembling their masters?

Reyes really was like the snake, through and through.

“So, did you actually devastate the farmlands with that ‘Winter Flower’ strategy? Who were you targeting?”

“Those who refused to worship the God of Fertility.”

“I suppose, even without blessings, fertile soil is still fertile soil. The crops would grow regardless of who they pray to.”

Egus, the God of Fertility, could withhold their blessing, but they couldn’t directly ruin a harvest. That power had belonged only to their twin, Nellos, the God of Scarcity and Famine.

But Nellos was dead, killed by Roklem.

“Exactly. Egus doesn’t have the power to punish people outright. That’s why they loved the Winter Flower strategy so much. It finally gave them a way to make others fear their wrath.”

“…So, to bring despair to thousands, you must have made an awful lot of flowers bloom.”

“Oh, you should have seen them!” Reyes’s eyes sparkled with genuine delight. “They were beautiful and absolutely breathtaking. I wish I could’ve shown Fabio…” He sighed, grumbling about the game’s lack of a screenshot feature, as if that were the true tragedy—not the suffering of thousands beneath those vibrant, deadly blossoms.

“Those people don’t have a choice anymore. They have to believe in Egus. No matter what they plant, it’ll grow, only to wither away before they can ever harvest it.”

…What options did those farmers have? They might survive one failed season, pushing through a hard winter. But when every planting dies the same death, season after season?

Sooner or later, they’ll break. They’ll kneel, desperate, pleading for Egus to lift the curse, just for a taste of hope.

But what happens after that is even crueller.

Egus’s blessing can bring dead plants back to life.

But the “fruit” these plants bear is a lie.

The fruits look healthy, normal even, but they contain sterile seeds, seeds that will never sprout again, no matter how carefully they’re planted.

The people of that land lose more than a single harvest. They lose the seeds their ancestors preserved and passed down through generations. Their ability to sustain themselves… lost forever.

Funny enough, I used a similar strategy once when I played with the Distorted One.

In that run, I pretended to be Nellos, the twin of Egus and God of Scarcity and Famine, as I devoured the Dark Realm.

Egus had a deep love for Nellos. So when they heard their deceased twin’s voice whispering for revenge and urging them to turn against Order, Egus didn’t think twice. They were ready to burn it all down in response to the call.

All Egus needed was a weapon, something to channel that immense resentment.

So the method of attack I gave Egus was called ‘Terminator Seeds.’

These seeds were like the “non-replantable” ones from conspiracy theories—an urban legend about genetically modified seeds that compel farmers to repurchase every season.

But in the Dark Realm, that urban legend became reality.

Once those Terminator Seeds spread, no region could withstand or resist Egus.

That run wrapped up quickly.

By starting as Egus’s right-hand man, I got to skip over all the tedious early game grinding to build influence. And when I finally revealed the truth that I was never actually Nellos and betrayed them… the rush of points I earned felt so sweet.

“Apparently, that strategy was also based on something the 8-letter player came up with,” Reyes remarked.

Well, of course it was.

So, Reyes had taken inspiration from my gameplay.

The thought made me feel a little indignant.

Shouldn’t he be paying me royalties for using my strategies this much?

“Insanity keeps saying we should be paying him royalties if we’re going to use his strategies this much.”

“.….”

This impersonator bastard?