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

#044Reader Mode

#044

I decided to explore this branch of the library, kinda curious about their book sorting system.

I wonder how they organize them all?

Since it wasn’t a closed-stack system (a library management system where books are not freely accessible and are lent out through a specific procedure), I figured there must be some logical order to their placement, making them accessible without a librarian’s help.

After pulling out a few and comparing them, I realized they definitely weren’t sorted by topic.

Hmm, not in alphabetical order, either…

I frowned, stumped.

Surely they didn’t just put them on the shelves in whatever order they came in, right?

If they were using such a disheartening method of organization, then this smaller branch deserved divine punishment. How could such disorder be allowed in a place devoted to the God of Order?

…Let’s see if I can find any empty shelves around.

If books were just plopped down as they came in, there had to be some gaps for new ones.

I wandered through the aisles, eyeing the shelves for empty spots, feeling an eerie sense of deja vu.

This library… why does it feel so familiar?

Was there a scene like this in Heretic Slayer?

Sure, the game had a library, but it was the main one…

I wonder if they turned this branch into some kind of healing center too?

Heading upstairs, I reached the top floor, where the interior was covered in projected colorful lights – not exactly great for reading.

And there it was – the iconic large stained glass window.

In the game, a makeshift altar was erected right in front of this window.

The Altar of the Sick…

Plague victims were barred from the holy chapel, so they worshipped the God of Order here once the altar was built.

I could almost hear the agonized breaths, moans, and fervent hoarse prayers to the Lord…

That excellent opening cinematic scene of the plague-devastated Dark Realm really set the tone.

After the worship service, those less ill would help support the severely sick back to the infirmary. Those who died during the service were left behind.

In the game, the protagonist Athanas came here to move the bodies.

Only those with strong divine protection against infections could safely handle the dead. Still, it seemed like such a waste to task a paladin with transporting remains…

If I’m remembering correctly, wasn’t there a living person among them?

Athanas once mistook a death-seeking patient, pretending to be dead, for a corpse. The patient’s sudden cough revealed their ruse once he lifted them.

Almost taking a living person to the crematorium, Athanas hesitated as the patient pitifully begged to be left there, saying they were pretty much dead anyway.

But giving in to that kind of request would halve your divine power.

Suicide and assisting in it were forbidden by doctrine, so agreeing to the request is considered a breach resulting your divine power decreasing.

Players who make the mistake of saying ‘yes’ usually end up cursing and frantically hitting the reload button.

And then, of course, you’ve got the hardcore gamers who say ‘yes’ on purpose as a self-imposed handicap just for the extra challenge.

Anyway, simply transporting bodies didn’t truly kick off the story, so the Altar of the Sick was soon closed down.

I found myself staring at the vibrant stained glass for quite some time.

It was originally this brilliantly colored, huh?

In the game, it was always grimy with soot, so seeing it in its original glory felt strangely out of place.

After a bishop proclaimed he would bear all sins and suffocated the sick to death with smoke, it never regained its cleanliness.

That mass death was the spark. The living corpses imbued with the [Plague God’s] power began to roam the halls, triggering the start of the game’s first real battle.

If you did side quests or chatted with patients in the infirmary beforehand, some of these shambling living corpses were sadly familiar faces.

The ST Games developers who included such side quests were cursed for being Satan-like in their creativity.

I personally thought it was a good direction to get more immersed in Athanas’s journey.

When it was all a game, diving into these extras made sense…

The story progresses as Athanas, after clearing the area of bodies, encounters the bishop coughing up blood. Unaware of the full story, he moves to help him, mistaking him for a survivor, but recoils in horror at the sight of black ichor seeping from the bishop’s body.

The bishop, clutching his rosary, murmurs, “Lord, I did this for you…” His desperate prayers were cut short as the inky blackness pouring from him consumes the rosary and with a scream, his body morphs into a horrific monster…

Enter Bishop Andrea, boss number one in Heretic Slayer.

“Not killing the sick is a tactic of the Plague God to weaken us, so our duty is to kill the infirm, not care for them.” he ranted maniacally. “Someone had to do it. But why, Lord, why have you forsaken me?” Andrea continues to wail, as the player, controlling Athanas, hacks away at his corrosive black blood and health.

Once the corrosive black blood diminishes, Andrea, overtaken by madness, throws himself through the stained glass window.

Athanas rushes after him – using platforms to jump down, of course – only to find the Grey Saint Adelaide confronting the now deranged Andrea, murmuring prayers.

As Athanas moves to strike Andrea’s throat, the Grey Saintess intervenes, sending Andrea to the Lord’s afterlife with a Blessing of Absolution instead.

Her blessing, though condemning him to hell, fulfilled his last wish to face divine judgment by the Lord, rather than fall under the Plague God’s dominion.

Adelaide, as a half Saintess, knew that every use of her blessing meant blood would spill from her mouth…

Athanas, seeing Adelaide vomiting up blood, quickly takes out a handkerchief, but realizes his bloodied hands hadn’t kept it clean and tries hiding it again. Adelaide, noticing this, smiles gratefully and accepts the handkerchief regardless.

She whispers a prayer of purification over it, turning it pristine again, and then gently wipes Athanas’s face before cleaning her own…

I’ll never forget how Adelaide ended that scene saying…

“All of this blood should have come from me…”

I remember everything about the game so clearly.

I’ve only played [Heretic Slayer] about five times. So just around 200 hours, maybe?

Of course, the beginning of Heretic Slayer is more memorable because it’s so intense…

So this library was the original backdrop for Chapter 1.

By that point in the game, there weren’t any books left to clue me in.

The presence of the makeshift altar suggested the space wasn’t originally meant for worship. It never occurred to me there could be another library within the Church of Order, given the vastness of the main one.

Now that I think about it, on my second playthrough…

Bishop Andrea’s character stood out. Unlike the other bosses, there was a chance to persuade him before disaster struck, if you chose the right dialogue. He wasn’t someone vowed (promised) to serve the [Plague God].

If you explained the 1st playthrough’s events as a terrible nightmare of impending doom, Andrea would listen intently and vow to prevent such a future.

He’d then set the entire building on fire to prevent any ‘living corpses’ from rising.

In Andrea’s twisted fanatical view, the only ‘tragedy’ were the corpses becoming minions of an evil god. He remained convinced that the mass death of patients by his hand was the right thing to do.

A truly irredeemable madman…

Even while burning alive, Andrea still transforms into a monstrosity and hurls himself through the stained glass window, only to become harder to defeat with two new AOE attacks like splattering flame patterns and the ability to set his surroundings ablaze.

Aside from the Grey Saintess using a handkerchief to wipe off soot instead of blood, the storyline remained pretty much the same.

No, there is one additional thing.

If you explored the charred remains of the building, a hidden basement would reveal itself. But since the fire destroyed that level too, its contents remained a mystery.

Unless you go there before the fire starts.

In the next playthrough, early exploration of this hidden basement awarded an immensely useful ability, so helpful that even players who hate tutorial guides made sure to visit it right from the beginning.

This ability was…

Quicksave.

Of course, its official name wasn’t actually Quicksave, but you get the idea.

The ability was called [Retrograde] and it allows you to rewind time back one hour in exchange for a temporary reduction in stamina.

You might think, ‘Just a small energy penalty for such incredible power of reversing time?’ But by imposing even this penalty, Heretic Slayer uniquely burdened what was essentially a ‘reload’ function found in every game.

Of course, you can still reload the game without [Retrograde], but it only took you back to your last death, not a chosen save point which was always the last place you slept.

Death was basically treated like a bad dream in the game.

So players took naps before tough fights, spawning memes about Athanas always sleeping no matter the situation.

But that’s not the important point here…

Could [Retrograde] actually exist in this world too?

In the game, [Retrograde] is nothing more than a quick save feature to allow players to undo mistakes without restarting from the last death save point, at the cost of some stamina.

But in the real Dark Realm, what would [Retrograde] be like?

It would be ridiculously overpowered.

Imagine a guy wielding the exclusive power to rewind their own life.

How would you ever stand a chance against that?

Of course, [Retrograde] had an hour rewind time limit for the sake of balance. So if you trap someone in a situation they can’t fix within that hour, they’d have no choice but to self-destruct.

But that strategy only works if you know they’ve got it.

Without knowing about [Retrograde] being used, you wouldn’t even start thinking of countermeasures.

And if an Apostle of an Othergod gets their hands on [Retrograde]…

That would give birth to mega boss, a monstrous being with the power to save and reload reality.

Just thinking of that possibility made the back of my neck stiffen with despair.

…No, surely the [System] would have removed anything as absurd as [Retrograde].

Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if someone could reverse time by themselves?

There’s no god with [Time] as their governed domain, so it’d be crazy to have such a power remain in the Dark Realm…

Driven by curiosity, I headed back downstairs, eager to check the hidden basement for myself.

The door that needed an intense blast of heat to open…

If someone had forced it open like that, there’d be traces. It’d be impossible without scorching the seamless floor.

Descending deeper and deeper into the depths of the building, I hesitated at the top of the staircase that plunged into the basement’s suffocating darkness below.

It’s really creepy and ominous, isn’t it…