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

#200Reader Mode

T/N: SCATTER, YE LITERALISTS! Before you stands your greatest nightmare: The Localizer!

Does the sentence flow too well? Did I swap a culturally specific idiom for an English equivalent? MWAHAHA! If you want to catch me red-handed, you have but one choice: FLEE TO RIDI! Buy the raws! Shower the author with 5-star reviews (or else!) and gaze upon the original text! Only then can you return here to confront me about my crimes against direct translation. I’ll be waiting in the comments, plotting my next liberal interpretation! You’ll never take me alive!!!

TLDR without villainous monologuing: If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m not a direct translator. Sometimes I translate the text as written; other times, I focus on its essence and localize it for a smoother reading experience. It all depends on the vibes. Most of my changes involve “show, don’t tell,” especially in emotional moments and fight scenes. If this offends you… FLEE!

#200

「Nyapoleon: I’ve been all over the Cathedral collecting items from Heretic Slayer. Farming holy relics, securing top-tier units, you name it. You, however, were nowhere to be found.」

「Nyapoleon: Don’t insult my intelligence by claiming you were prioritizing chipping away Order’s points over gearing up. The person I admire is no fool. So the only remaining possibility is that you’ve been afflicted with Order’s ‘curse’.」

「Nyapoleon: A rather time-sensitive curse, I’d wager. Something that needs fixing before the multiplier runs out.」

My stomach dropped as his messages flooded the chat. He was backing me into a corner, and I couldn’t even type a response back.

「Nyapoleon: Let me guess. You’re trying to lift ‘Divine Punishment,’ aren’t you?」

Shit.

「Nyapoleon: Well? Am I right? :)」

It was like playing poker with one card while he had X-ray vision. The game was unfair from the start. Even with a garbage hand, you at least need a few extra cards to bluff with.

「Pandomonium: Yeah, you got me.」

「Pandomonium: Caught a Divine Punishment debuff. If it triggers, I’m sent straight to Order’s hell. You know how it goes.」

「Pandomonium: So that Cult Leader position you’re so eager to give me? Gonna have to wait till I sort this out. Isn’t that what you exist for, after all? To wait for me?」

「Nyapoleon: Is that really necessary?」

「Pandomonium: Goddammit, I knew it. It was all a lie, you son of a bitch.」

「Nyapoleon: No. I meant there’s a far more efficient solution. Divine Punishment binds to the body, not the soul. We simply destroy your current vessel before the timer runs out and the curse triggers. The debuff clears on respawn. Simple.」

「Nyapoleon: Ah, perhaps you’re unaware of the arrangements Mother has made for you? That could be the case. The moment you die, you will be reborn in a new body Mother’s prepared. One far superior to what you’re using now.」

「Pandomonium: I don’t need any of that crap.」

「Nyapoleon: It’s just that… if this arm is truly apart of you, then your ‘Happy God’ doesn’t seem to cherish you much. It’s almost pitiful. It makes me sad, really. :((((」

「Nyapoleon: How heartbroken Mother must be. She has prepared a veritable feast of upgrades for you, and yet you insist on scuttling around trapped in a shell as weak as a soft-shelled crab.」

The hell kind of analogy is that?

「Nyapoleon: Someone with such soft flesh should know better than to wander in the open. At the very least, you should have the decency to be poisonous.」

[Nyapoleon: Oooh, unless you want to be eaten? Forgive me. I don’t wish to kink-shame. I’ll be more respectful of your tastes going forward.」

「Pandomonium: The fuck is wrong with you? Who the hell WANTS to be eaten?! No one would nerf their own durability just for that.」

「Nyapoleon: You’d be surprised how many people are into that. Nothing to be ashamed of.」

「Nyapoleon: But if that wasn’t your intention, then why did you have to taste so delicious?」

「Pandomonium: …You ate it. You actually fucking ate it.」

「Nyapoleon: Not you, precisely. A maggot that had taken on your form. But yes, I ate it.」

「Nyapoleon: The sensation… it felt like being a baby crab spider. ::::)))」

What the fuck does that even mean?

「Nyapoleon: Oh. It seems the connection doesn’t reach you directly. It stops at your arm. That’s not part of you, is it? It must be a separate entity from the rest. A clever little shield you secured for basic protection at least.」

「Nyapoleon: What a shame.」

「Nyapoleon: I wanted to devour every last bit of you, right here and now…」

A cold weight settled on my chest, making it hard to breathe.

What do I do? What the hell do I do? There were simply too many ‘Nyapoleons.’ He’d admitted to five, which meant there were probably at least ten. The second we jumped one to beat the hell out of, our position would be blown and every other Nyapoleon would know exactly where we were. Then they’d either descend on us like a swarm or scatter like roaches, and either way, his ‘Ledeia Slugification’ plan would continue uninterrupted. It’s a lose-lose scenario.

And that doesn’t even account for the Divine Punishment…the clock was still ticking on that.

While I was frantically racking my brain, a tug on my sleeve pulled me back. Callister was looking up at me, his expression anxious.

“What’s happening? Please tell me what’s wrong.”

Right. He couldn’t see the chat. I took a moment to wrestle the shrieking mess in my head into something coherent, then explained the situation.

“A worshiper of the God of Mutation is trying to create a new Ledeia by devouring the former Research Director…”

But there were too many of him to take down. Dozens, maybe. And if he seized control of ‘Colomba?’ while we were busy playing whack-a-cat with his copies, my one chance to get rid of the Divine Punishment was gone for good.

The Tutorial Emergency Rescue System stretched the flow of time; it didn’t stop it. If I couldn’t find a way out before that window closed, I would lose Pandomonium.

Saying it all out loud didn’t help. It just made everything sound more hopeless.

“Couldn’t we ask him to cooperate by saying this will steal power from Order?”

“It’s not that simple. What that lunatic ultimately wants is me.”

I tried to find a way to explain Nyapoleon’s particular brand of insanity without sounding as unhinged as he was. How he saw me as some kind of messiah and that his entire goal was to install me as the Cult Leader of the freaks. And that he was the type of guy who would happily burn the world down to make it happen.

“To him, my death isn’t a problem since I’d just be reborn among them. So he won’t hesitate to attack me. And because he mistakenly believes I’m the target of Divine Punishment, he’ll try to ‘rescue’ me by killing me first so that I don’t fall into Order’s hands.”

Callister just stared at me. “Fabio, how do you keep attracting these terrible people?”

“…I have no idea.”

I pulled up Columba?’s status window, eyes narrowing. The HP bar was draining slowly, but steadily. Something was busy munching away at it, all right.

Okay, what’s the play? What move do I even have left?

It felt like the board had been wiped clean of all but two options: Order’s hell on one side, ending up in Mother God’s belly on the other.

Fuck, this is a shitty game.

If it were just a game, I’d have rage-quit and uninstalled ages ago. If it were just my life on the line, I might have given up already.

But it wasn’t. Not anymore. Other lives were depending on me.

Honestly, a part of me thought, so what? If that bastard Pandomonium ended up in Order’s hell, or started calling some eldritch horror “Mommy,” well, that was partly his own damn fault, so I could live with that… but…

“Hey, Fabio. It’s going to be okay.” Callister’s hand patted me gently. “We’ll find a way. Just breathe.”

His earnest attempt to comfort me made my stomach tighten with guilt.

“System…. No, honorable System. Please help me.”

There has to be some kind of rule against pitting the rank 1 player against the rank 16 player, right? Some kind of handicap for a matchup this lopsided? Throw me a goddamn bone here.

Damn it, just let me live!

As if summoned by my pleas and curses, a System window popped up.

[TIP: Accepting a follower with high notoriety can negatively impact the reputation of your entire cult! To mitigate this, you can sever the connection to any problematic or detrimental followers at any time via ‘Excommunication’ function. Why not prune your flock of an unhelpful, malicious member today?]

“…What a load of dogshit.”

I’d find a tip on how to suffer less hell more useful than this.

“What did the System say?” Callister asked, brow furrowed.

“Nothing. It was nothing.”

“It told you to excommunicate him, didn’t it?”

I stared at him, caught completely off guard. “What?”

“You dismissed it instantly,” he reasoned, his gaze steady, “so that means it was an obvious solution, but one that solves nothing since you won’t say what it was. And the most obvious solution to our problem is getting rid of him. Excommunication.”

What’s gotten into him?

Callister tightened his grip on my leg, glaring daggers at Pandomonium.

“If you had a shred of conscience, you’d leave on your own!” he spat.

“Good thing I don’t have one, then.”

“Even if it gets Fabio killed?”

“My hyung already said it himself. If I go to hell, he’s right behind me. What good is a plan if there isn’t a single unit capable of carrying it out for him? In a strategy game, a king with no pieces on the board is already a dead man.”

“No. You’re just a parasite. You know Fabio’s too kind-hearted to abandon you, so you’re clinging to him, forcing him to risk everything to save your worthless hide!”

The lazy smirk finally slid off Pandomonium’s face, his expression darkening. “Watch your mouth, you little worm.”

“Why? Because it’s true? Because you’re nothing but a coward and a monster? You piece of trash!”

I let out a loud, deliberate sigh.

“Both of you. Stop. Callister. We don’t have time for this. I’m not excommunicating him. I can’t. End of the discussion. Understood?”

“…Fabio, have you forgotten what that thing did to me? That lawless brute strung me up in mid-air and tore me apart. That demon stomped me into the ground until I couldn’t regenerate anymore. You went through something similar too, didn’t you?”

“I said, that’s enough.”

“No matter where we go, you’d be better off leaving that thing behind.”

“That’s my call to make.”

“So that’s your final answer. You’re not going to abandon him.”

“That’s right.”

Callister fell silent for a moment, his grip on my leg loosening. When he spoke again, the fire was gone. “…If it was me under that divine curse, Fabio… would you have made the same choice? Would you fight this hard for me?”

Where is this coming from?

Does he think I’m playing favorites? Was that what this was about? Did he think I was choosing Pandomonium over him?

No, but seriously, what the fuck do you want me to do?

The real problem was never whether I should abandon Pandomonium. It was that the bastard wouldn’t let himself be abandoned. He was the kind of guy who, if you told him to get off the lifeboat, would punch a hole in said lifeboat just so you couldn’t leave without him. If ditching him were actually possible, I would have at least considered it.

Callister, on the other hand…

“…If it were you,” I said, pulling him into a hug. “I’d have to choose differently.”

I felt him stiffen in surprise.

“You’d try to sacrifice yourself before I even had the chance to excommunicate you, so I’d have to hold onto you just to stop you.”

“Fabio…”

After saying that much, he should stay quiet for a while.

The words seemed to work. He went back to clinging, and with him placated, my mind returned to the board, cycling through the possibilities as I held him in my arms.

As Nyapoleon had said, there were other ways out. Simply switching bodies was one option. Or Pandomonium could try to outrun the curse, making a break for a domain outside Order’s reach. Hopefully he could make it there before the timer ran out and Divine Punishment strikes. With his horse, he just might manage to survive.

Or….

I could just have him kill himself before the timer runs out.

As long as his soul wasn’t destroyed, he could be revived eventually. The loss of the ‘Marcello Teres’ stats would be a shame, but right now, he was a double-edged sword. Too sharp, too heavy, and not truly mine to swing.

It might be better to put him in a vessel that couldn’t resist me instead….

“Fabio.”

Callister whispered to me in a low voice.

“When you hold me like this… you feel so incredibly big.”

“…I see.”

“Being small had its perks. I loved how much gentler you became with me. How you treated me like a child who needed looking after. I loved it so much I even thought that I wouldn’t mind staying like this forever. Never growing up…”

Okay, that’s a bit much.

Callister loosened the arms he had wrapped around me, leaning far enough back to meet my eyes.

“But all that joy I felt in those moments, as immense and precious as it was, is nothing compared to the fear of not being able to protect you.”

“…Callister?”

A sudden sense of foreboding came over me.

Why would he say that?

Don’t say things like that. That’s the kind of line that gets its own full-page panel right before a character does something stupidly heroic. That’s a death flag if I’ve ever heard one.

“Fabio.”

Callister’s expression hardened into a resolve I’d never seen on him before.

“The next time we see each other, I’ll be sure to greet you by saying it’s our tenth time.”

T/N: (≧∀≦)ゞWoohoo! We officially hit 200 translated chapters! Working on Othergod has been a long, occasionally stressful, but super fun ride. I’ve definitely made mistakes along the way, so thank you all for being so incredibly patient with me.

I really didn’t expect this novel to blow up the way it did, especially since it deals with evil cults and strays so far from the usual school-life, modern, or world-hopping BLs. Fabio also completely breaks the mold of the typical gentle, delicate bottom. (Honestly, looking at both him and our slightly insane Seojun, it’s obvious I have a type, lol). Fabio is jaded, cynical, pessimistic, a bit delusional, and kind of a jerk. If you put him in literally any other story, he’d probably be the villain, or at least the main antagonist. But for all his rough edges, he isn’t heartless. Buried beneath his fear and negativity is a stubborn sense of kindness. No matter how hard he tries to shut it out, he continues to care about what happens to others.

That complexity is exactly why I fell so hard for the story. Fabio, Athanas, Callister, the crazy fun side characters! And the cool world-building too! I loved it so much that I decided to share my noob translation with you guys even though I originally had no plans to. It makes me so happy to know there are so many other weirdos who are just as obsessed with this novel as I am!

Thank you all for the love and support. Thanks for all the fun messages, the crazy theories y’all are cooking up in the comments, and the NU reviews (yes, even the mean ones from the jerks).

Here’s to hundreds more chapters! <3