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

#175Reader Mode

T/N: Thanks for the coffee Simi and Lunarisrequiem!

“Take my tithe. Take my tears. Take my will to do anything else but read. For the cult. For the cliffhanger.”

#175 

So, this was it. My last chance. If Pandomonium ignored even this desperate gambit…well, my next stop was Mother God’s horrifying afterlife. 

You’d think I’d be panicking, but a strange sort of calm had settled over me. Death, damnation… whatever. At this point, it was out of my hands. 

I was too drained to even keep my eyes open. I felt him take my hand, pressing it against his tear-soaked cheek as he nodded frantically. 

“Sowwy… sowwy…” 

That sound—him sniffling around a mouthful of blood-soaked cloth—was making my stomach churn. And beneath the whimpers, there was another noise, something wet and squishy. I really, really didn’t want to know what that was. I rested my free hand on his head, a gesture that felt like some kind of twisted benediction. 

“Pandomonium. If you accept, answer me with a clear ‘yes.’” 

“Yes.” 

“You will have no god before me. Do you swear it?” 

“Yes.” 

“Everything you are, and everything you have, belongs to me now. To command, to use, to discard as I see fit. Do you accept these terms?” 

“…Hold on. What do you mean by ‘everything,’ exactly?” 

Are you fucking kidding me? 

The little bastard was trying to haggle. He was actually trying to negotiate the fine print while I was bleeding out on the floor like a stuck dog. Of all the times to suddenly grow a spine, he picks now? 

“Your body, your power, your soul—everything!” I shouted until my voice nearly gave out. “Hand it all over, you fucking moron! And let’s be crystal clear: I’m not taking your soul because I want it.”  

I had to pause, gasping for air that felt thick as mud. “I’m taking it as collateral, pure and simple. A way to screw over your precious God of War. The second a better deity shows up for you to grovel to, I’ll excommunicate your ass faster than you can blink. The God of War already has first dibs on it anyway, so it’s not even technically yours to bargain with! This is industry standard! Just shut up and sign the damn contract!” 

“But… where will I go when I die?” 

“I literally just told you. I’ll excommunicate you out before then!” 

“But what if you don’t? What if I die while I’m still your believer, hyung?” 

“Then you’ll probably end up haunting me! Like some pathetic ghost chained to his necromancer, just floating around until I can scrape together enough power to build you a proper afterlife.” 

The edges of my vision were starting to fizzle and blur.  

“Are you seriously haggling over your ghost’s eternal afterlife while I’m bleeding to death on the floor? Do you want me to die?” 

“Yes,” he said, with the simple, brutal honesty of a child who wants something. 

He would actually let me die. All to find out where his ghost might end up. 

The sheer, breathtaking audacity of it all was almost beautiful. 

“Let’s try this one more time,” I forced out through gritted teeth. “Pandomonium. Do you consent to me having total ownership over everything you are?” 

“Yes,” he sobbed, the words tumbling out in a messy rush. “Yes, I agree to everything. Complete blanket consent.” 

Pandomonium was signing away his soul with less thought than someone gives to the terms and conditions on a new app. 

Whatever. It was done. He was mine now. 

“Good. Now pray to me.” 

He blinked at me like a lost puppy. “How…?” 

“Damn, I don’t know! Just close your eyes!” I snapped. “Put your hands together and wish for me to live. Pretend you’re blowing out birthday candles, whatever works!” 

Is basic prayer really this complicated? 

Pandomonium sniffled, squeezed his eyes shut, and pressed his palms together. He looked like a guilty five-year-old begging Santa for forgiveness after breaking a priceless vase. Absolutely pathetic. 

[SYSTEM: ‘Pandomonium’ has been deeply moved by your words!] 

[SYSTEM: Achievement update! A new chapter has been added to ‘Miracle of the Silver Tongue.’] 

[SYSTEM: Your rank has increased slightly.] 

Of all the fucking times. 

Too little, too late. My Persuasion skill might as well have been a paper fan in a hurricane. 

Focus. Powers first. Everything else can wait. 

A connection sparked between us, but it wasn’t some clean, divine current. It was a messy, chaotic flood. Accessing his abilities wasn’t like scrolling through a menu; it was like getting my head shoved into a hoarder’s junk drawer and being told to find one specific key. I pawed through the mental chaos, hunting for one name, one last desperate hope. 

Physical Restoration. Find it. Find it now. 

Maybe it’s because I was at the bottom of the divine food chain, but borrowing his power felt like trying to siphon gasoline through a coffee stirrer. I bet that bastard Roklem never had this much trouble. 

Finally. My fingers closed around it. 

Got it. 

There was no pain, just my vision tunneling to black. It was the exact feeling of a phone dying at 1%—that ominous fade from the edges that tells you that you have seconds, not minutes, left. 

Somehow, just before the screen went completely dark, I slammed the charger into the port. 

Ha… You worthless piece of trash, Pandomonium. 

Another minute and I’d have been sipping tea in Mother God’s twisted little afterlife. 

It wasn’t until the healing began that I truly realized how bad the state of my body had been in. The opium had been blocking everything. I started with the broken ribs, then moved on to the ruptured organs. The internal bleeding was nasty, but manageable—the blood, at least, had nowhere to go. 

External bleeding? That’s a different problem entirely. 

See, Restoration isn’t the same as Regeneration. Regen grows new cells to fill a gap. Restoration just hits “undo” on the damage. And you can’t hit “undo” on something that’s just… gone. It’s like trying to photocopy a page that’s already been ripped out of the book. 

And what was gone, apparently, was my right eye. 

I felt the empty space where it should be and let out a grim sigh.  

More importantly, this bastard’s prayer was fucking noisy. A constant, high-pitched whine of psychic noise. 

‘Don’tdie,Don’tdie,Don’tdie,Forgiveme,Don’tdie,Don’tdieDon’thateme,Don’tdie…’ 

Suddenly, the whole concept of “prayer hours” made a terrifying amount of sense. This constant stream of panicked mental vomit would be enough to give a god an aneurysm. 

The second this body is stable, I thought, gritting my teeth against the racket, I’m excommunicating him. 

“Alright, that’s enough!” I finally shouted, the sound echoing strangely in my own head. “Your prayer has been answered. I’m not dying, so you can stop the mental noise!” 

“Hyuuuung…” he sobbed, trying to press his messy face into my side like a gigantic, grief-stricken dog. 

“Get off me, you slobbering man-child!” I shoved him away and my eyes landed on a blood-stained shirt crumpled on the floor. His, probably. I picked it up between two fingers, the fabric stiff and grimy. 

Ugh, hygiene… 

“Your eye, hyung,” Pandomonium said, his voice thick with snot. “And your arm… why aren’t they restored?” 

“Not enough Faith Points generated yet.” 

“Should I keep praying then? Or I could bring you sacrificial offerings from outside—” 

“Are you out of your mind?!” I shouted, my head whipping around to face him. “Are you suggesting human sacrifices?” 

“No, no! Not humans! The turtles outside! Just the turtles!” 

“The answer is still no.” 

The very thought of it—of eating pieces of Records to grow this new godhood—was enough to make my skin crawl. It was a fast track to power, sure, but also a one-way ticket to becoming something that wasn’t me anymore. And even if Records was too contaminated to fight back, there was still the very real risk of being consumed because of it. 

And besides all that, a part of me just recoiled. I wasn’t letting something so foul become a part of me. End of story. 

I ripped a strip of fabric from the shirt’s sleeve and, ignoring the bloodstains, folded it into a crude eyepatch. 

“Where’d you learn do that, hyung? The scouts?” 

“No. Survival kits. Basic first aid.” 

“Still, that’s so cool. You always know—” 

“Shut up.” My voice was ice. “Don’t you dare start acting like we’re friends. Or has your brain already deleted the last ten minutes?” 

Pandonmonium looked genuinely baffled, like a dog that can’t figure out why it’s being scolded. “But… you already forgave me.” 

“I did what?” 

“You answered my prayer,” he said, his voice filled with a terrifying, unshakable certainty. “I prayed for you to forgive me. By answering, you did. That’s just how divine intervention works.” 

I just stared at him, my mind refusing to process the sheer, weapons-grade insanity of what he was saying. 

“Besides, you’re my god now, hyung. And I’m your believer. That means my sins are your problem now. You’re the one who has to carry them.” 

“That is, without a doubt, the most insane, backward-ass logic I have ever heard in my life.” 

Pandomonium just looked at me, his expression earnest. “Does that mean my prayer wasn’t sincere enough?” 

A fresh wave of psychic static slammed into me, and I clamped my hands to my temples. It was like someone was holding a megaphone to my skull and mashing the world’s loudest doorbell. 

‘Oh, Lord Fabio, please, please wash away my sins! I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you!’ 

“STOP! One more prayer out of you, and I am excommunicating you from this two-man-and-a-moron religion. You’re out. Banned for life. Got it?” 

An unnerving, blissful smile bloomed on his tear-streaked face. “So… if I stay quiet, you’ll forgive me?” 

“If you stay quiet, there’s a microscopic, purely theoretical chance I might consider forgiving you at some unspecified point in the distant future.” 

“I’ll take it!” 

Of course you will, you brain-damaged bastard. 

“And stop praying! The line is closed!” 

“…But hyung? I wasn’t.” 

A cold dread trickled down my spine. If it wasn’t him… 

Shit. Callister. 

I reached out with that new part of my mind and found him instantly—a panicked psychic flare, flickering like a dying candle somewhere inside the Main Building. He was close. Trapped on the stairs, caught in Reyes’s looping distortion. 

You poor bastard. 

I raised the purple poppy and swept it through the air. The world shimmered, and the image of the endless staircase fractured, shattering like a pane of glass. Where it had been, a shuddering, formless mass of particles crawled toward me, sobbing my name. 

“Fabio… Fabio… Fabio…” 

Pandemonium gagged, recoiling. “Shit, what the hell is that thing? It’s disgusting!” 

“Fabio… you can’t die…”  

The desperate voice emerged from the shapeless horror.   

“I’m here, Callister. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I knelt, reaching out to stroke his shifting, unstable surface. Crude limbs extruded from the mass, patting me down, frantically searching for wounds. 

“I’m fine,” I said softly.  

“I couldn’t reach you. Every step I took… you just got farther away…” 

“I’m not going anywhere.”  

But he is.  

The mass was already shrinking, threatening to destabilize completely. I focused that new, humming power inside me, letting it flow from my palm into him. 

“Ooh… what is this?” Callister’s voice grew stronger, clearer. “Fabio, it feels… good!” 

“Hyung, how are you doing that? That’s incredible—” 

“Pandomonium. Your cloak. Give it to me.” 

“Huh? Why?” 

“Because he’s naked.” 

A moment later, a small child stood where the mass had been, absolutely swamped in a cloak three sizes too big for him. The first thing Callister did after stabilizing was point an accusatory finger at Pandomonium like he was identifying a war criminal.  

“Fabio, I thought you were dead! That madman hacked me to pieces! We need to run!”  

“It’s fine. He’s with us now.” 

Callister stared, aghast. “I beg your pardon? You… you took him in?!”  

“He’s my servant now.”  

His little face crumpled in horror. “No! I’m not working with him! He’s terrifying!”  

“I completely agree.” 

“…Hyung.” 

T/N: Is it safe to poke my head out now? (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ) Sooo… how’s everyone doing? Feeling okay after that horrible cliffhanger? Hydrated? Emotionally stable? Awesome! Because I bring peace and comfort and totally no more cliffhangers in the future! Psh! Trust me! Absolutely none. Cross my heart, hope to—uh, let’s just move on. Peace offering below. You might need it:

🍵 Holy Tea Copium Blend

Ingredients:

Chamomile (to dull the edge of emotional damage)

Lavender (to stop screaming internally)

Lemon balm (because the cliffhanger sure left one)

One sacred tear (from your left eye, specifically)

🌙 Steep for 5 minutes. Sip while chanting “I love pain” until it feels true.