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

#189Reader Mode

T/N: Thanks for the coffee nem! Blessed be thy username. May your donation echo across the HappyHappy Cult. I shall now toil in your name. ✨✨

#189

It wasn’t Athanas. It was me.

Past “me” had completely lost it. Just rambling, not even hearing the insane things coming out of his mouth.

Get used to killing me?

You said that to someone with Retrograde?

Was he out of his mind?

…Well. Yeah. Obviously.

It was his first time seeing someone die right in front of him. That kind of shock alone is enough to wreck anyone’s Mental Power stat. Then, on top of that, the killer tells you, all casual, that he has Retrograde, and that he did it for your sake?

That’s enough to guarantee a mental breakdown.

But it’s fine, right? This moment isn’t real.

Once Retrograde activates, everything resets. The body disappears. The trauma vanishes. Even the memory of the murder gets erased.

…Except the killer remembers everything.

That’s the problem when your Mental Power is dangerously low. Your brain latches onto the immediate. You can’t see past the now. Your thoughts get painfully short-sighted.

I stopped reading and sighed.

No matter how scared I was, using powers not sanctioned by Order in front of someone with Retrograde…

I don’t have the right to criticize Athanas for being inexperienced. Not when I was handling the situation just as badly.

Forced Persuasion might be subtle. It doesn’t leave bruises or scars you can point to. But if you keep hitting someone with it again and again, they’re going to notice eventually. That creeping sense of violation? You can’t ignore it forever.

What if the Heretic Slayer eventually figured it out? Realized some crazy heretic was brainwashing him, planting thoughts that weren’t his?

Well… I’m still alive, so I guess that didn’t happen.

I grabbed the next page.

This loop starts exactly the same. Athanas kicks the office door open, same as before. Even my thoughts are identical, word for word.

That’s how loops work. The only thing that changes is what the Retrograde user decides to do differently.

This time, his sword misses Andrea’s neck and stabs straight through the back of the chair. Then he drives a second blade in sideways, pinning Andrea in place.

It’s like he’s mounting a butterfly for display.

If Andrea so much as flinched, he’d slit his own throat.

Not a bad restraint method, honestly. Except it didn’t stop the snake from slithering out of Andrea’s sleeve. The purple serpent straightened, rigid as a spear, eyes locked on Athanas.

Athanas flinched, then moved fast. He grabbed the empty chair next to me, threw it over his shoulder, and ran out the door.

…Wait. Did he think the chair was me?

Past the doorway, the hallway was gone. In its place was the staircase to the basement. Athanas didn’t even seem to notice the layout had completely changed. He just stormed down the stairs like nothing was wrong.

Meanwhile, ‘I’ stood there like an idiot, watching him go.

How do you even begin to explain this kind of thing?

Yep… so that’s the result when you don’t have a mental defense trait. The Distorted One is a huge headache to deal with.

While ‘I’ was still hesitating at the top of the steps, Andrea started yelling behind me:

「“Fabio! You must not go down there! Athanas only approached you to deceive and use you! That man is—”」

Yeah, yeah. Betrayal, manipulation, doom. Got it.

‘I’ ignored Andrea’s ranting and swung the heavy poker at the thing trying to distort my thoughts.

Damn. Poor little guy.

All it was trying to do was cast a distortion to make me desperate to stay by its side. It was just a snake, small enough to hide in a sleeve, so I crushed its skull on instinct. The thing went limp instantly.

‘I’ didn’t stick around to see if it was still alive. I dashed down the stairs before Andrea could break free and get in the way.

Down in the basement, the chair Athanas had “kidnapped” was tipped over on the floor. And there he was—standing completely still, one hand covering his face in that classic, ominous tragic anime protagonist pose.

「“Athanas!”」

…Seriously? He saw that scene and still ran in?

Is ‘my’ Mental Power actually worse than I thought?

The question suddenly bugged me.

Even if his Mental Power wasn’t completely depleted, he was still making some impressively terrible decisions.

How do you even fix that kind of user error?

Maybe try thinking before you act?

「”Aagh! Shit!”」

…Yeah, saw that coming.

He knew distortion causes people to lash out at anyone nearby. So why the hell did he touch him?

‘I’ screamed just as Athanas slashed a deep cut across my hand with his dagger.

Watching it play out now, I just felt… weirdly detached. Good thing remembering pain isn’t the same as feeling it. My own scream sounded kind of excessive, honestly.

Is this the loop where I die?

「“…Fabio?”」

That’s when Athanas dropped the dagger.

Wait, what?

Did the distortion wear off?

「“Fabio, is that you?”」

Hm. Guess not. The way Athanas was reaching out, fumbling at ‘my’ face like he couldn’t quite see me properly… that probably meant I still didn’t look human to him.

「“Did I… hurt you?”」

‘I’ gritted my teeth, forcing myself to breathe evenly.

「Don’t react. Don’t feed the Distorted One. I can’t let Athanas can’t feel ‘disappointment.’ I can handle this. I have to handle this. It’s fine. No fingers lost… right? Some aren’t moving, but whatever. I can reattach them. Worst case, I grow new ones. So…」

…I did my best not to think about what the Blessing of Pain Relief was actually made from.

「“I’m fine. That doesn’t matter right now.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“Athanas? Why are you—”」

‘I’ froze, completely flustered, as Athanas suddenly pulled me into a hug.

A hug. Now. Of all times.

Really? This was when he decided to do this?

「”This is my fault. I wasn’t strong enough. Next time, I promise I’ll definitely…”」

‘I’ didn’t catch the rest.

Before I could ask what he meant, Athanas activated Retrograde.

Just like that. He reset here?

I frowned.

Even if the run was screwed, Athanas should’ve just played it out. The stamina cost is the same whether you go for a minute or an hour, so cutting it short is just a waste. I thought he got that, but maybe not.

What really stumped me, though, was how he recognized me while the distortion was still active.

I hesitated, thinking it over before picking up the next page.

I wished I could see what was going through Athanas’s mind, but all I had were ‘Fabio’s’ memories. Nothing from his side of it.

Was it because of the blood on his dagger?

Technically, if you have a piece of my body, you get the ‘Heaven Above, Earth Below, I Alone Reign Supreme’ effect.

But in the game, just getting splattered with blood wasn’t enough to trigger a trait transfer. If it were that easy, players would’ve abused that immediately. You’d just keep someone with great traits nearby as a walking blood sprinkler for easy buffs.

…And then it hit me.

That was the same day Athanas gave me Valentine’s reliquary. I’d find out later he’d hidden a piece of his own flesh inside it. And the reliquary had that weird passive effect: you could feel the pain of the person you loved.

“…Is Athanas in love with me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

A long, awkward silence followed. I felt… nothing. Just an odd sense of acceptance.

“…So that’s how he knew it was me. Huh. Makes sense now.”

I always thought being able to feel your lover’s pain from afar sounded like a deeply unhealthy mechanic. A little too close to emotional torture.

But for someone with Retrograde?

It’s an advantage. You can rewind time and stop them from ever getting hurt in the first place.

As long as they’re within an hour’s travel range, anyway.

But paired with real-time tracking of their location? That turns the Blessing into an incredibly powerful utility. If it didn’t require actual love to activate, it would be ridiculously overpowered.

“…What about spiritual love? Like the selfless kind, wanting to save someone’s soul?”

“Valentine is the god of lovers.”

“Your point?”

“If that kind of pure altruism counted, they’d call Valentine the god of love, wouldn’t they?”

“……”

So Agape doesn’t qualify?

Then what kind of love does?

Eros?

“… Are you saying Athanas is sexually attracted to Fabio?”

House Lizard gave a quiet laugh.

“Physical attraction can be part of love, sure. But people can lust after someone they don’t love, and they can love someone deeply without wanting to sleep with them. Humans are a little more complex than basic mammals.”

“Then what is it? What kind of love does Valentine accept?”

“People have been trying to define Valentine’s requirements for ages. But no one’s managed to nailed down the exact criteria.”

I frowned, but House Lizard kept going.

“But in your case, I don’t think we need to debate semantics. It’s pretty much a textbook case of love. Whether we’re talking about Athanas’s feelings or yours…”

“… My feelings?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying I’m in love with Athanas?”

“That’s right.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“……”

When the hell did that happen?

Why? How? How did I not notice?

I clutched my head, which had conveniently chosen now to start throbbing.

“…This honestly feels like I’m under some kind of weird status effect.”

“You think love is a status effect?”

“What else would you call it?”

It was an ongoing mental debuff that caused persistent emotional abnormalities. If that didn’t count as a status effect, then I didn’t know what did.

People spend most of their lives in a stable, ‘not-in-love’ state. Love, when it hits, destabilizes everything like your mood, thought process, and decision-making. It’s basically an affliction no one bothers curing because they don’t realize they’re compromised.

But when you look at it objectively, love was definitely…

“I’m only asking out of curiosity. You seem to treat ‘love’ as a problem to be solved.”

“…Not always. But in this kind of situation? Yeah. Kind of.”

House Lizard smiled faintly.

It could read my thoughts, so it knew I wasn’t being entirely honest.

Look, I don’t think love is some kind of curse or fundamentally awful. People fall in love all the time. It happens.

But it can’t happen with Athanas.

Even if I were fine working long-term with a Retrograde user, love is too volatile. Too messy. If you want a relationship to last, you need trust, mutual understanding, and emotional stability. Not romance.

Love would only make things worse.

Serotonin levels drop when people fall in love. And serotonin is what keeps your mind balanced. Without it, everything gets amplified—your mood, your fears, your neediness.

Just look at how lovesick people obsess over their lover nonstop. They overthink. They spiral. One wrong look and suddenly it’s jealousy, paranoia, irrational guilt. You might as well call it a diagnosable condition.

Thankfully, we never realized how we felt about each other and made it official.

If Athanas finds out how I feel about him…

“Just a small spoiler. Athanas already knows you’re in love with him.”

“…When did he find out?”

House Lizard didn’t answer. It simply slid a page toward me.

I stared at it.

If it’s recorded here…

That means Athanas used Retrograde to erase the moment completely.

But… why?

Isn’t realizing you love each other supposed to be the happy ending?

So why would he erase that from my memory?

It’s not like I couldn’t handle being in love. If I really couldn’t accept it, I would’ve just used Forced Persuasion on myself. Written something like “What I feel for Athanas is definitely not love” onto the scroll and moved on.

Was that what he was afraid of?

Was Athanas trying to stop me from using Forced Persuasion on myself again?

I exhaled slowly and reached for the next page.

Then—

“……”

I stayed silent for a long time.

My brain was just spinning, going round and round without actually getting anywhere.

“…Didn’t you say you could answer any question?”

“I did. As long as it’s within my ability. Oh, and for the record, tomatoes aren’t actually that high in iron. Broccoli has nearly twice as much.”

“…Tell me Oblivion’s true name.”