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

#167Reader Mode

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

#167Reader Mode

#167

My hand flew to my mouth a moment too late. Warm vomit oozed between my fingers, trailing down my wrist in viscous rivulets.

Shit.

What a joke. This is humanity’s brilliant evolutionary response to absolute horror? Reality does that sick little tilt, your SAN drops, and your body’s grand solution is to… empty your stomach. As if puking somehow grants you a survival advantage. Instead, you’re just left there, doubled over, vulnerable and reeking—practically gift-wrapped for whatever nightmare you’ve stumbled into.

“Fabio, are you alright?” Callister’s voice cut through the haze. “Do you need something to clean up with?”

“Yeah…”

All I wanted was to get this mess off my hand so I could wipe my eyes. They wouldn’t stop streaming—purely physiological, not emotional. My body betraying me in yet another useless way while my vision transformed everything into a hellish, watery smear.

I groped through my memory: had I ever given him anything practical, like a handkerchief? Probably not. Damn, was he actually going to offer me his cloak? Because that would be—

His bare hand wrapped around mine.

“What are you…?”

“Stay still, please.”

“Callister, I don’t—”

“There. All clean!”

I stared at my hand. It was spotless. Not just wiped down—completely clean. My gaze darted from him to my skin and back again, unable to process the impossible.

How the hell was I supposed to process what just happened? It was as if thousands of tiny… somethings… had swarmed over my palm. Not just moved—devoured. Like microscopic, ravenous mouths consuming every trace of vomit, leaving nothing but unblemished skin in their wake.

Don’t think about it.

It was just… like one of those high-tech nanoscale cleaning devices you see in targeted ads that follow you across every platform. You know, the ones with all the microscopic bristles working in perfect synchronization, allegedly purifying every square millimeter of surface. Perfectly normal. Definitely not alive. Just some cutting-edge hygiene tech I hadn’t heard about.

A fancy cleaning tool. Nothing more.

“Oh, you missed a spot.” Callister’s gaze locked onto my mouth, pupils dilating slightly.

I panic-wiped my sleeve across my lips, acid still burning on my tongue.

“Actually, I’m good! Totally fine. No need for… whatever that was. Got it handled.”

His expression crumpled with disappointment. “A shame,” he murmured, eyes never leaving my mouth. “I could perform a much more thorough cleaning, if you’d allow me…”

Good grief.

The look on his face… like a disappointed pigeon watching someone walk away with their sandwich. Did he seriously view human vomit as some kind of delicacy? Pro tip for passing as human: maybe remove ‘consuming peoples’ bodily fluids’ from your acceptable list of energy sources.

Still, his disturbing eagerness had one upside: it completely short-circuited the guilt spiraling through my consciousness. Just moments ago, I’d been drowning in the nauseating realization that this whole nightmare—these abominations walking among us—might somehow be my fault. The very thought threatened to evacuate whatever acid remained in my hollow stomach.

No. Stop that.

My role in this disaster was minimal, if anything. Nyapoleon’s disgusting pivot to harvesting humans as raw materials had absolutely nothing to do with me. Even if he’d never seen my strategy guide, he would’ve inevitably went down this same corrupted path. It was hardcoded into Mother God’s system—a foundational mechanic, not some obscure exploit I’d accidentally found out about.

Hell, if I’d never even launched Conclude, Nyapoleon would still be out there, commandeering some innocent person’s body, birthing those atrocities from human flesh. This particular brand of existential horror was queued up to play out long before I ever clicked “start.”

“Fabio, you don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine,” I lied through gritted teeth.

Damn.

The only reason I was struggling—the only reason I wasn’t dissecting those bird entrails with clinical, scientific detachment—was because my Mental Power was scraping rock bottom. If I’d managed to hit triple digits, I’d be reverse-engineering whatever unholy chimera Nyapoleon had spawned into existence. Instead, here I was, fighting back dry heaves like some newbie.

The dining hall doors groaned open, thankfully interrupting my spiraling thoughts.

“Athanas! Ow—”

An invisible barrier pressed against my body the instant I crossed the threshold—sharp and electric, like brushing against a live wire. I stumbled backward, clutching my chest.

Seriously? His barrier works on me too?

I stood there, lungs burning and vision spotty, as Athanas rushed to my side, his features tight with concern. “Fabio, are you alright?”

When his palm touched my cheek, I flinched away from the shocking cold. His skin felt like he’d been holding fistfuls of snow.

The blood was gone from his face. He must have cleaned up after dealing with the MotherGoose. But his cheeks blazed an angry pink against his pale complexion, as if he’d been standing in a winter storm. The contrast made him look feverish, despite the unnatural chill radiating from his skin.

“What about you?” I scanned him for wounds. “You’re not hurt?”

“Handled it easily, thanks to your advice.”

“And the people inside?”

“All safe.” His eyes held mine steady. “I checked—everyone’s still breathing. You can rest easy now.”

The knot in my chest loosened. Thank god. Casimir was alive. Even if Nyapoleon hadn’t gotten as far as extracting biological data, I’d been terrified she might have simply… stopped breathing during the ordeal.

So now what?

“How many people are we dealing with?”

“Seven pulled from the stomach. Another sixty or so unconscious throughout the building.”

Nearly seventy people.

My stomach dropped. That was far more than I’d expected. So much for evacuating everyone to the Apostle Hall—that plan was dead in the water.

“That barrier you used for me… is it possible to extend it around the entire Dining Hall?”

Athanas shook his head. “The barrier’s extremely weak. Barely strong enough to keep these pests out, let alone anything bigger.”

That’s even worse.

A useless barrier would be one thing, but this? This was a liability. If part of Nyapoleon’s surveillance network suddenly went dark, we might as well paint a giant neon sign saying ‘SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY HERE.’ He’d know exactly where to find us.

The real problem with my Utopia strategy was its built-in inefficiency. According to the doctrine, you only received your perfected afterlife body after complete digestion. Every single particle had to be processed. And that took time.

Even if Nyapoleon wanted to massacre everyone at once, he was limited by stomach capacity. His creatures’ stomachs could only hold so much, and consumption had a cooldown period. Imagine the injustice of it—dying, only to be denied entry to ‘heaven’ because you were only ninety percent digested. Could anything be more unfair?

Sure, you could try to cheat the system. Pre-grow extra stomachs to increase capacity. But those hungry, aberrant creatures would be impossible to hide from Order’s watchful eyes.

Which meant… the MotherGeese and BabyGeese were decoys. Had to be. Classic misdirection—wave the flashy, noisy threat in one hand while the real horror happens slowly, quietly, somewhere else entirely.

But misdirection for whose benefit?

I shoved the question aside. Trying to map out a psychopath’s game plan was like trying to navigate a burning maze with half the map missing. Waste of time.

We couldn’t just stay here. Playing guard duty wouldn’t cure whatever insidious contamination was working its way through these people. Meanwhile, Nyapoleon would establish new feeding grounds elsewhere. Each location meant more biological data harvested, more power accumulated. He’d grow stronger while we sat on our hands.

Maybe we could at least relocate the worst cases, like Casimir, to the Apostle Hall. If my read on Nyapoleon was right, he’d stockpile weak units rather than waste digestion time on them immediately. Low-stat prey wasn’t worth the time investment.

That’s what I hoped was true, anyway.

But even that is a stopgap. We need a stronger barrier.

The thought, like a struck match in the dark, sparked a memory: the Astrolabe. Order’s most sacred relic, supercharged with an Archbishop’s power. Anyone could trigger it to establish a Sanctuary and create an unbreachable safe zone.

“Athanas, can you use this?”

His eyes widened slightly as I pressed the star clock into his hands.

“I can,” he said carefully. “But are you sure? Do you want to declare Sanctuary here?”

The weight of the decision settled between us. I worried at my lip, running scenarios. Our single best defensive asset, our get-out-of-hell-free card—was this the moment to cash it in?

“No. Not yet.”

Sanctuaries were for last stands. For when you’d drawn your line in the sand and decided this was where you’d either live or, more likely, die. We weren’t there yet. We still needed mobility—to scout, gather information, figure out exactly what Nyapoleon had unleashed. The Astrolabe was our panic button, our nuclear option, and you didn’t waste nukes on a ‘maybe.’

After some discussion, we agreed on a compromise: move only those who’d been inside the creatures to the Apostle Hall. Everyone else would stay put behind whatever barricades we could cobble together.

“The creatures lack eyes and ears,” Athanas explained as we wrestled furniture against the doors. “Even basic obstacles should slow them down.”

“Hope so.”

Seven people, three of us to carry them. I was already dreading the inevitable back-and-forth when Athanas produced a massive tablecloth from god knows where. We bundled everyone together, creating the world’s grimmest package. We must have looked ridiculous, like JRPG characters awkwardly hauling some fallen party member’s oversized, misshapen coffin through a dungeon.

I still couldn’t see Casimir’s face… I tried not to think about what state she might be in.

After we’d hauled our grim cargo into the Apostle Hall’s relative safety, Athanas said something surprised me.

“I… I need to rest. Just for a moment.” He leaned heavily against the cool stone wall, breathing hard.

Callister spun around, his expression incredulous, almost offended. “Are you serious? Right now? Fabio and I are both significantly weaker than you, and we’re managing. What kind of protector are you supposed to be if you can’t even—”

“Callister,” I said, cutting him off before he could really get going. “Enough. Hush.”

The words came out sharper than intended, but something was wrong. Athanas looked gray beneath his pale face, sweat beading on his forehead despite the hall’s chill.

“Forgive me, Fabio.” His voice was strained. “The contaminated Holy Flesh… it’s affecting me more than I anticipated.”

Shit.

Of course. His mental defense relic wasn’t some perfect immunity. The contamination was working on him too—slower, subtler, but just as relentless.

“You know, Fabio,” Callister said, a sly, almost predatory smile tilting his lips as he looked from Athanas to me, “in a crisis like this, don’t I seem like the more reliable option?”

I gave him a flat look. “Absolutely. And since you’re clearly so capable, you can handle the rest of them yourself.”

“What!” His face crumpled, the picture of affronted disbelief. “But… at least stay and keep me company while I work? It gets so terribly lonely, doing everything alone.” He even managed a pitiful little pout.

“Nope. You’re on your own, big guy.”

“Then promise me something first.” He crossed his arms, planting his feet like a petulant child. “Or I’m not taking another step. Not one.”

I exhaled slowly. “What now?”

“Promise me,” he said, his gaze suddenly sharp, intense, “you won’t make him your Servant.”

Come again?

“I’m not planning to turn Athanas into my Servant, Callister.”

“Promise it!” he insisted, stepping closer. “You’re promising, right? No sharing of bodily fluids with him?”

Bodily fluids?

Did contracts work with substances other than blood? The thought of a saliva-based ritual made my stomach turn. If someone asked me to drink divine spit for a conversion ceremony, I’d lose both my faith and my breakfast.

Though historically, it might make sense. Before proper fermentation techniques existed, people broke down starches with saliva—chewing grains, spitting the mash out, brewing crude alcohol from the results. Sharing that enzyme-laden concoction probably held deep ritual meaning in ancient times.

But surely that didn’t extend to making out with your god for a stat boost…

Right?

“Fine. I promise. Happy now? Get moving.”

“Yes, Fabio!” Callister practically glowed. “Back in a flash!”

He bounced away like an overgrown puppy, leaving behind a silence that made Athanas’s labored breathing painfully obvious. In just those few minutes of bickering, he’d slumped further down the wall, eyes shut, face slack with exhaustion.

This is bad.

We’d be wading through contaminated Holy Flesh everywhere we went. At this rate, Athanas would collapse before we finished our first scouting sweep.

If only I could share my immunity like a wireless signal. Broadcast “Heaven Above, Earth Below, I Alone Reign Supreme” to party members within range. Like those group buffs in MMOs.

Actually…

I could cut off a piece of myself and turn it into a protective relic. It wouldn’t be as strong as direct consumption, but it’d give him some resistance to the contamination.

My hand wandered to my left shoulder, tracing the boundary where my arm was severed.

Damn it. Should’ve kept the arm when I had the chance. What a waste of perfectly good relic material.

Quick footsteps pounded back down the hallway. Callister skidded into view, panting.

“Fabio! Did you call me? Is something wrong? What do you need?”

“I didn’t—” The words died as my eyes caught on Athanas’s left hand, slack against his thigh. To his missing his pinky finger.

“Actually,” I said slowly, making a decision, “yeah. I did call you. Come here.”

***

My fingers barely grazed his reliquary when Athanas’s eyes flew open—alert, impossibly blue, and locked directly on mine. We stared at each other, locked in a silence so thick and uncomfortable you could have spread it on toast.

“You’re awake,” I stated, the words feeling ridiculously obvious even as they left my mouth.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to slip you something while you slept. Clearly that didn’t work.”

Does he have some kind of built-in alarm system?

I had barely touched the damn thing before he caught me.

Athanas’s gaze dropped to his left hand. A crease formed between his brows as he registered what was wrong.

“My finger—”

“I had Callister use Blessing of Healing on it.”

The restoration was temporary, hours at most, but better than nothing. People seriously underestimated how much losing a pinky messed with your grip. We were talking at least a 10% drop in combat effectiveness, and Athanas fought ambidextrously. He needed every advantage.

His eyes moved from his restored pinky to my closed fist. “What are you holding?”

Good question.

What did you call a severed finger offered as protection? A talisman? A deeply disturbing friendship token?

Instead of trying to explain, I just opened my hand.

All the blood drained from Athanas’s face. He stared at what lay there—my pinky, cleanly severed at the joint.

“I thought it might help with the contamination…”

The silence that followed was glacial. His gaze could have frozen blood.

Why is he so angry?

I thought Dark Dark Realm natives supposedly valued symbolic body parts as gifts. Wasn’t this Favorability 101 with them?

Unless my status outside Order makes this offensive?

“Athanas, this isn’t a violation of Order. I know my blessing doesn’t come from Order. And yes, technically, neither do I. But Roklem’s own doctrine permits using Othergod remains if they serve Order’s purpose. Think of it as… an unconventional tool. Just hold onto it for now.”

His expression remained carved from stone.

“I’ll dispose of it properly when this is over.”

“Right now—”

“Actually, that’s not even important!” I blurted, desperate to escape this conversation. “While you were unconscious, I figured out something crucial.”

I turned to the window, mind racing. Less than an hour had passed since Casimir left, and that nagging detail finally crystallized—the thing scratching at my awareness like a splinter.

Silence. No bells. Not a single chime since she’d taken off.

The bell ringer must be contaminated too.

The Cathedral bell tower was one of the church’s most sacred relics, not just there to track the passage of time. Their sound marked the boundaries of Order’s protection, declaring everything within earshot as holy ground under divine watch.

In Conclude, Athanas had fought a path through hell itself to reach those bells. As the Heretic Slayer, ringing them had been his defining moment.

“I know exactly how we should use the Astrolabe.”