Rise of the OtherGod Apostle: Not a Cult Leader, but a Serf?!
#203
Translation spelling update: “보냐파르트” — “Bonyaparte,” keeping the 냐 (nya~) cat pun from the original. Since we already have Nyapoleon, naturally Bonaparte gets the same treatment. Don’t judge me, okay?? Translating name spellings is hard. 😭
#203
“Was the holy relic’s ability decided by a random roll of the dice too?”
[By no means! The God of Dice bestowed plenty of powers upon me. If only my former master hadn’t gone and tried such a reckless gamble…]
“What did that guy do?”
[He created a ‘Random Box.’ One containing a button that grants instant victory the moment you press it.]
“…And that actually worked?”
True to their nature as a god obsessed with randomness, the God of Dice possessed the power to create Random Boxes. Whatever came out was either a dud or a reward. The catch was that the odds of drawing a reward plunged to abysmal levels if the price paid was meager, or if the reward itself was exceptionally rare.
The defining feature of these rewards was that they could be anything. Well, anything within the System’s limits.
I once pulled the Saintess’s heart from one.
The idea had occurred to me when I realized that pulling a famous holy relic from a Random Box made it disappear from wherever it had originally been kept. If that was the case, then couldn’t you kill someone simply by opening a Random Box that required a living person’s organs as the reward?
So I bought a few Random Boxes with an Order believer’s “heart” listed as the reward. On the third pull, I got the Saintess’s heart. She just dropped dead. It was almost anticlimactic. The moment was turned into a viral clip, and “Death Gacha” immediately became the Dice God’s hottest new meta.
Never got that lucky again, though.
After more than a thousand pulls without getting what I wanted, all the fun had been squeezed out of it. So I gave up on the Random Box meta for good. Spending hours on a game only to come away empty-handed, over and over again… do that enough times, and anyone would get sick of it.
Even the times I did win didn’t really feel like wins.
Anyway.
The important thing was that a Random Box wasn’t a mechanism for creating items out of thin air.
So there really is something like a button that lets you win the game on the spot?
[…The vast majority of the powers bestowed upon me were spent as payment for that very Random Box. Including the very power to create Random Boxes.]
“Wow. So you’re completely screwed now, huh?”
Naturally, DicePlayGod hadn’t put any upper limit on the price. He’d assumed the thing would never actually be created in the first place. As a result, he’d ended up stripped of every skill he had, left with nothing but a single Random Box containing an absurdly low chance of an instant win.
If it were me, I’d just quit the game.
“Let me guess. He opened it and got nothing?”
[No. What came out was a button of unknown function.]
“A button actually came out?”
“Oh, are you guys talking about the time Dice God’s player went for that ultimate character-deletion gamble?”
Character-deletion gamble?
“He opened a Random Box and got this mystery button, but he had no idea what it did. So he said he was going to press it and announced the whole thing in the group chat. The guy even told everyone exactly where he’d be when he pressed it. Said anyone who wanted to watch could come by.”
“Did you go?”
“Me? Are you crazy? That would’ve blown my true body’s cover. No way I was going. But anyone who could send a clone or a follower probably went to watch. Word is House Lizard even showed up in person.”
“And? What happened?”
“DiceDude became a textbook example of what happens when a player gets a Game Over.”
…Didn’t they say that a player who gets a Game Over loses their identity as a player and turns into a raving lunatic?
I furrowed my brow.
“Then why is this die in the Cathedral?”
You just said other players were there watching.
Did some of them get captured by the Order too?
“Before the whole character-deletion gamble, that crazy bastard went and reported that a heretic gathering was about to take place here. Then the Inquisitors came storming in out of nowhere, and all hell broke loose.”
“…You’re kidding.”
[Indeed. That is exactly what happened. He even reported me ahead of time and submitted me as evidence! He declared me a holy relic steeped in power that had strayed from Order’s teachings.]
What a nutjob.
Was he trying to screw over the other players one last time on his way out?
And what if nothing had happened when he pressed the button?
Was he planning to defect to Order afterward?
“Everyone figured someone else had swiped it, but if it’s turned up here at the Cathedral, I guess the Inquisitors must’ve been the ones who found it,” Pandomonium said.
“No. Going by what this thing’s telling me, Dice God’s player handed it over to the Inquisition himself. Ahead of time.”
“…Why? Because he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else taking the relic from him?”
“Beats me. Though for something he went to all that trouble over, it turned out to be a die with barely any power left in it.”
I demonstrated three times just how unnaturally the die rolled.
After I explained the concept of the “True Random Number Generator,” Pandomonium cocked his head.
“It just gives you a random number? Then isn’t it basically just a regular die?”
[Just so! I am nothing more than an ordinary die!]
“Right. I’ve got no idea what we’re supposed to do with it, or whether it’s even useful. It’s still got quite a bit of divine power in it, though, so I figured I’d hold onto it for now and devour it later…”
“Hold on. I’ve got an idea.”
Pandomonium spoke up, his expression suddenly serious.
“What if we let the die decide what we do from here?”
“…And why would we do that?”
“If there’s no random element involved, you’re just going to pick the most rational option, right? Whatever you think is the best choice given our situation.”
“Obviously.”
“But what if the enemy knows you well enough to predict exactly what you’ll choose?”
Pandomonium launched into a full-on lecture about strategy games.
If you attack a location that’s obviously a key strategic point, your opponent will have seen it coming and prepared accordingly. At that point, the battle stops being about strategy and turns into a simple contest of strength. That’s why, every once in a while, you need to make a move your opponent would never dream of expecting.
“So you’re saying we should feint east and strike west?”
“More or less. Though, to be precise, it’s closer to secretly crossing Chencang… Either way, we’re at a disadvantage, aren’t we? We have no reason to split up and move independently, which means we’re basically playing chess with a single piece.”1
“So?”
Without warning, Pandomonium hoisted one of the unconscious people into the air and left them dangling upside down.
“Look.”
He loosened the person’s belt, and their oversized shirt slid down, exposing the skin beneath.
“What exactly am I supposed to be look—gah!”
The skin on their stomach began to squirm.
Something was moving inside them.
“I found this while farming earlier. No idea what it is, but Bonyaparte must’ve planted it in there.”
Pandomonium casually tossed the infected person a good distance away, then continued speaking as if nothing had happened.
“I figured you’d freak out, so I left it alone. For all we know, the moment whatever’s inside dies, he might be able to pinpoint our location.”
“…Good call.”
I rubbed both my arms vigorously, trying to get rid of the goosebumps prickling my skin.
What the hell had he stuffed inside that person?
I never did anything like this during my Wetopia run!
“But doesn’t that creep you out? You nearly jumped out of your skin when you saw those maggots earlier…” I asked.
“Sure. But wouldn’t it be way more disgusting once it actually bursts out?”
“…Isn’t whatever’s inside already disgusting?”
Pandomonium shrugged. “I don’t really care as long as it still looks human.”
So the God of War only got rid of his aversion to violence when it came to things that looked human?
So he wouldn’t hesitate when killing people?
I suddenly had the urge to chew the War God’s Helper to pieces.
“Anyway, as long as Mother God is after you, keeping our location secret should be our top priority. So I think we should move somewhere she wouldn’t expect. And we should do it fast. Somewhere she probably hasn’t prepared for yet.”
…He’s got a point.
We were currently in the Apostle Hall. We’d come here because the Answering Coin, the holy relic of “Rider of Civilization,” had told us there was another holy relic here. But even without that, there were plenty of reasons “Fabio” might come to the Apostle Hall. He could’ve rushed here to check on Casimir, returned to retrieve something he’d left behind, or come charging in to kill Nyapoleon.
When your options are limited enough, even the wrong reasoning can lead you to the right answer.
I asked Pandomonium, “So where do we go?”
“Could call Amaggedon and head back to our territory, I guess…”
I shook my head. “Let’s keep that as a last resort.”
“Hmm. No idea. Somewhere that’d be completely useless to us right now?”
Valentine’s prayer room immediately came to mind, but I dismissed it. It wasn’t exactly somewhere we could barricade ourselves in.
So what were our options?
1. Lay low somewhere.
Like Pandomonium suggested, we could roll the die and go wherever it told us to. Keep our heads down and avoid unnecessary risks until the Divine Punishment wore off and Pandomonium was back at full strength.
2. Hunt down another holy relic.
The useful holy relics with known locations revealed in the game had probably already been claimed by other players. So instead, we could search for relics whose locations weren’t known and use the “Answering Coin” to track them down.
3. Follow Nyapoleon’s trail through the Apostle Hall and launch a counterattack.
Nyapoleon had to have carried Casimir out of the Apostle Hall, which meant there should still be traces of where he’d gone. I could try to take out at least one of his units and get a better idea of how strong his forces were.
4. Go back to the Main Building.
The Main Building had a Barrier of Oblivion permanently active. Unless you had an exceptional Mental Defense skill, approaching it without taking precautions would be asking for trouble.
5. Head for the bell tower.
If I were Nyapoleon, I’d want to deal with the unit stationed at the bell tower, especially if the unit who’d rung the bell was Athanas.
Wouldn’t I want to find some way to bring him back into Mother’s embrace?
6. Leave the Cathedral.
I’d marked this as a last resort, but something about it felt right. It was exactly the kind of move they wouldn’t expect. Instead of sitting around and waiting for the Divine Punishment to wear off, why not get somewhere outside Order’s reach? We could even ask the coin to give us a specific destination.
Then, once the Divine Punishment was gone, we could come back and go after Mother God again.
I ran all six options past Pandomonium. As expected, his expression soured as soon as I reached the one I knew he’d object to.
“…Cross off number five. Why the hell is that even on the list?”
“Well, for one thing, Athanas has my pinky finger.”
“What? Then we need to go get it back right now!”
…It should be fine. Probably. There’s not enough of it to extract any useful biological data.
“Anyway, we’re letting the die decide, right?”
Before Pandomonium could start squawking at me again, I tossed the die.
- Translator note for the strategy nerds (and everyone else who is now wondering what the heck that means):
Both 성동격서 (聲東擊西) and 암도진창 (暗渡陳倉) are Chinese military strategy idioms. They’re basically different flavors of “Hey, look over there!” while you secretly do something else.
They’re pretty similar, but there’s a slight difference in how the sneaky business works.
성동격서 (聲東擊西) — “feint east, strike west”
This one is basically the classic “Look over there!” trick.
You make the enemy think you’re going to attack Point A, get them to scramble over to defend Point A, and then smack Point B instead.
In other words: fake attack over here → actual attack over there.
암도진창 (暗渡陳倉) — “secretly cross [the route to] Chencang”
This one is more “You thought I was taking that road? Lol, nope.”
暗渡 = secretly cross / sneak through
陳倉 = Chencang, a place in ancient China
The idea is to make it look like you’re pursuing one course of action while secretly taking a completely different route to your actual destination.
The famous historical example involves Han Xin. His forces made it look like they were repairing the plank roads leading toward Chencang, so naturally the enemy assumed, “Yep, that’s where they’re coming from.”
Meanwhile, Han Xin quietly took another route and attacked from somewhere they weren’t expecting. ↩︎