Rise of the OtherGod Apostle: Not a Cult Leader, but a Serf?!
#201
T/N: Thanks for the coffee Lady! May your pillow always stay cold ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა
#201
Whatever you’re about to do, stop.
Don’t.
Bad! Hands off!
I lunged, grabbing Callister by both arms to stop him before he could do something reckless.
Or at least, I tried to.
“Callister?”
His arms came apart in my hands. Like sand slipping through my fingers, he sloughed away until I was holding nothing but empty sleeves.
My heart dropped into my stomach. I dropped to my knees, frantically sweeping at the pieces of him scattering across the floor. No. Don’t go. You just told me you didn’t want to mix with those things.
I grabbed his fallen robe, hastily knotting the sleeves into a crude sack, and scrambled to gather him into it.
“Callister, no! Stop it! Just listen to me!”
But he kept spilling out. I couldn’t even get half of him inside. Desperate, I clamped the mouth of the makeshift sack shut and hugged it tightly to my chest.
I wanted to tell him there was no need for sudden, dramatic sacrifices. That we’d find another way.
“Don’t do things I didn’t ask for!” I shouted at the lumpy bundle. “I hate this. I hate things like this, do you hear me?!”
If this was still the Callister who was always trying to win my favor, surely that would get a reaction.
“I hate a Callister who doesn’t listen to me! Got it? You keep this up, and I swear I’ll hand the First Believer title and the Apostle position to Pandomonium!”
The squirming inside the robe finally stilled.
I let out a shaky breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, easing up my death grip just a little. Half of him was gone—his mass noticeably diminished—so I was left with a somewhat miniaturized Callister. But at least he’d stopped fighting me.
“Look, if you just say you’re sorry this time, I’ll let the whole thing slide…” I muttered, cautiously peeking into the makeshift sack.
There were arms in there.
Two and a half of them, to be exact.
“…Callister?”
“Hyung, look! Over there!”
Still clutching the bundle tight against my chest, I blinked and turned to where Pandomonium was pointing. The writhing heaps of Arms had stopped churning. Slowly, they reformed back into their original shapes.
They looked exactly like the ones in the robe.
A jolt of cold panic hit me. I can’t let them mix. If they got tangled together, there’d be no way to tell which one used to be Callister. My heart pounded against my ribs as I frantically knotted the top of the robe shut.
Whatever I’m holding right now is the real Callister.
He was Callister just a few seconds ago.
I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care what anyone else says.
This is him.
If I use what I’ve got here as the foundation, I can put him back together.
He’d come back as my Callister. The Servant bond between us was still intact, which meant the system still officially considered him alive. Granted, that same bond was currently pulsing from every single arm scattered across the ground… but still.
“Uh, Hyung? Are those things… cracking?”
Pandomonium’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. Slowly, I turned to look at the arms, my chest tightening. Jagged black cracks were splintering across the pale skin of the arms, looking exactly like the disturbing ones Callister had drawn.
Then, all at once, the cracks split wide open.
O.
O, o, o, o, o…
The sound that came out was strange and breathy, a whispery chorus of voices that sounded uncomfortably like my own. It seeped from the cracks, making my stomach lurch.
Panic rising, I whipped open Pandomonium’s status window.
“In One Ear, out the Other! No, wait! Activate Nope-Can’t-Hear-You!”
A system notification blared so loudly it rattled my teeth.
[SYSTEM: An ‘Intrusion’ has been blocked by the effect of ‘Heaven Above, Earth Below, I Alone Reign Supreme.’]
Goddammit. Would it kill the system to tone it down? Maybe censor Oblivion’s name while it’s at it? Instead, it was like having a ship horn blasting directly inside my skull. But even over the ringing in my ears, that unsettling “O” sound kept slipping through. Urgency spiked hard in my chest.
I can’t just sit here and let this sound keep going!
I was about to borrow Pandomonium’s Trait again when I realized there was no need to. Nope-Can’t-Hear-You was a skill that could be manipulated via “Distortion.” In that case, wouldn’t “Distortion” work even better?
Wincing and rubbing my pounding head, I reached in and pulled out the Distorted One’s holy relic: the purple poppy.
If only I can influence myself…
Then a “Distortion” cast by me should be able to affect me.
Ignore the soundwaves coming from over there.
The moment I ‘Distorted’ my perception, the screeching alert and flashing notification window vanished. The world plunged back into dead silence, leaving me lightheaded and off-balance, with nothing but a faint, high-pitched ringing lingering in my ears.
…Callister.
You don’t even like Pandomonium. So why go this far? You really didn’t have to do this.
[Fabio]
[Fabio]
[Fabio]
[Fabio]
⁝
[Fabio]
[Fabio]
[SYSTEM: Due to the effect of ‘Heaven Above, Earth Below, I Alone Reign Supreme,’ ‘Prayers’ will be displayed as text.]
The notification window flickered wildly as prayers flooded in.
[TIP: Several prayers say the same thing? Group them together and consolidate the text to keep your timeline neat and easy to follow!]
[TIP: Establish a prayer routine to attract an even greater flow of prayers. Perhaps your next sermon can spread the idea!]
…Haha.
I chuckled inwardly as I watched the prayer counter tick up like crazy.
It was Callister. He was sending prayers to me, even though he didn’t need to. He was already my First Apostle without having to go to such lengths.
Then again, getting the vice president position doesn’t mean squat if the whole company goes under.
Callister was fighting desperately to find a way for us to survive. Harder than I was, honestly. I had kind of already resigned myself to the situation.
Because there’s just no way I can actually win.
In a battle royale where only the last one standing survives, it’s impossible to make it through on sheer luck. That’s why my only thought was to delay the inevitable as long as possible. And if I could screw over a few bastards along the way, all the better.
But then…
「Nyapoleon: You snatched away what I was devouring in a single instant! 」
「Nyapoleon: Amazing! You truly never fail to exceed my expectations! 」
「Nyapoleon: How did you do it? No. I’ll figure it out myself. Please just give me a moment! 」
…Give you a moment?
Nyapoleon loved analyzing gameplay clips, especially from my main account. He’d write meticulously detailed posts breaking down my exact builds and strategies I used, and then he’d excitedly ask me to score his analysis.
Like a student waiting for his teacher to grade his homework.
So he really is treating this like a game.
But more importantly… what exactly does he plan to “figure out”? Does he intend to devour my Callister, too?
You fucking bastard.
A hot, ugly knot of rage suddenly twisted in my chest. That was the one thing I refused to let happen.
I’ll crush you first.
Okay, think. How do I screw over Mother God?
…Mother God is completely obsessed with me.
Under the current circumstances, that was actually a good thing. If I initiated a conversation with Nyapoleon, there was zero chance he’d ignore me. And if he happened to fall under my influence while we were talking? I could finish her off for good.
The Starry Sky hasn’t opened yet, which means destroying her holy relic alone should be enough to trigger a Game Over for him. There was no need to hunt down and kill every single one of Mother God’s units. Finding her holy relic was the solution. Destroying it would be enough to delay the inevitable.
But how do I find it?
…I have absolutely no idea.
For now, I’d focus on what I could do and let ideas come to me.
Clutching ‘Callister’ tightly to my chest, I pushed myself up off the ground.
“Pandomonium,” I ordered. “Tear this lab apart and bring me anything that has even a whiff of divine power on it. Anything at all.”
“Are you looking for something specific?”
“Nah. I’m just farming.”
My plan was to loot this place completely dry, right down to the floorboards. Even if I grabbed holy relics or talismans that were completely useless to me right now, I could always convert them into points by offering them as sacrifices.
The exchange rate is total garbage. We’re talking grinding-diamonds-into-graphite levels of bad, but that’s not my problem.
Right now, I actually need graphite, thank you very much. And since they aren’t my diamonds to begin with, I fully intended to happily grind away to my heart’s content.
I kicked open the nearest door and started snatching up everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Geez, these things are everywhere.
Disembodied arms were strewn all over the place, completely blocking the way. At first, I tried to be decent about it, moving them aside and stacking them into neat little piles to make a walkway. But the mounds kept slipping and collapsing, so I eventually just gave up and started walking right over them. It didn’t really matter; they seemed to fix themselves even if they snapped under my shoes anyway.
One room alone had eight distinct heaps of nothing but arms. Spilling off the bed, draped over the chair, wedged behind the door, piled on the desk, crammed under the desk… just heaps of arms.
Thinking about how every single one of these things used to be ‘Callister’ gave me a really strange, uncomfortable feeling.
Well. Still better than tripping over human corpses, I guess.
Naturally, right after having that exact thought, I swung open the next door, saw a dead man slouched in a chair, and I practically jumped out of my skin.
“GYAAH—fuck!”
Seriously, what the hell? Why is there an actual corpse in here?!
Who even is this guy? The Research Director’s body got devoured, so there shouldn’t be anything left of him. The head was slumped in a way that hid the face, so I was completely drawing a blank.
That is, until I noticed what the dead guy was holding in his lap. It looked familiar.
…Is that a Bunshinsaba board?
Well, a Ouija board, to be precise. It was the item ‘Callister’ had shown me when I first arrived at the Main Building, rambling on about the collective unconscious….
Come to think of it, didn’t the Research Director say there was someone he wanted to introduce me to?
Suddenly, the identity of our mystery corpse clicked into place. It was House Lizard. Or rather, Francesco Horreum. This was just the empty meat-suit he’d shed and left behind.
Does that make this board the Civilization God’s holy relic?
The instant I snatched the Ouija board out of the corpse’s hands, a system window dinged in front of my face.
[Would you like to use ‘I Will Answer Anything!’?]
I took a moment to read through the instructions.
Turns out, the Ouija board itself wasn’t the holy relic. It was the coin sitting on top of it. Flipping the coin yielded ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers, while writing a question on the board got you a detailed text-based answer.
Naturally, asking questions cost points. To earn those points back, you had to take whatever information the relic gave you and spread it around as far as possible.
…there’s actually a decent chunk of points left on this thing?
I honestly expected the Research Director to have blown through his points the second he earned them. Curious, I pulled up the transaction history.
[SYSTEM LOG: Spread the name of Oblivion +5]
[SYSTEM LOG: Spread the name of Oblivion +5]
[SYSTEM LOG: Spread the name of Oblivion +5]
[…Spread the name of Oblivion +5]
Ah. So that’s how he learned Oblivion’s name.
I pocketed the board and called Pandomonium over, telling him to grab anything radiating even a drop of divine power and pile it up on the makeshift altar. I went back to sweep a few more rooms, and by the time I returned, there was a pretty impressive pile of loot waiting for me.
There was just one minor problem.
“…Why did you bring the corpse here?”
“You told me to grab anything with divine power.”
I stared at it. I mean… technically, yes, that shed husk still had some residual divine power on it, but… I was about to perform a sacrifice ritual dedicated to myself. Offering up a corpse feels a little off, doesn’t it?
Then again, holy relics are basically just processed corpses to begin with, but still…
“And that’s not a corpse, by the way. It still has a pulse.”
“…Get it off the altar right now.”
No human sacrifices. I drew a hard line there; absolutely not happening.
The actual process for offering tributes was simple, mainly because I had designed it to be simple.
“I offer everything here to ‘Fabio.’”
All I had to do was hit ‘Accept’ on the incoming system prompt, and the transaction was complete. The moment I tapped confirm, the pile of holy relics on the altar either lost their divine glow, or just straight-up crumbled into ash as their structures gave out. None of the items were related to my specific Authority, so my overall rank didn’t go up, but I did rake in a substantial chunk of points. With this much, I could probably create a new Authority on par with Last Comment Wins.
The only problem was, I still had no idea what kind of power would actually give me a fighting chance against Mother God.
Maybe I should just ask the Ouija board?
I mean, that’s exactly the kind of thing I should use the remaining Ouija board points for.
[QUESTION: What should I do to become stronger?]
[ANSWER: Call my name.]
[E — N — R — A — S — E…]
Nope. I slammed my hand down and forcibly yanked the coin, which had been sliding itself across the letters entirely on its own, right off the board. The question was canceled.
“You’re the Rider of Civilization’s Helper, aren’t you?”
I gave the coin a flick. It landed squarely on heads: ‘yes.’
Honestly, I didn’t even need to flip the coin to figure that out. The damn thing had literally just tried spelling out the Rider of Civilization’s name right after telling me to “call my name.” It looked like once House Lizard became an empty husk, their Helper had to latch onto the relic like a parasite to survive.
So during the tutorial phase, these Helpers stay alive even if their player dies?
What is this, a cursed demon sword trope? It was basically just a sentient ego-coin roaming around looking for a new contractor. I briefly wondered if NPCs—or rather, Dark Realm natives—could even become contractors in the first place, but I brushed the thought aside. That really wasn’t important right now.
What did matter was the implication. Because if this Helper survived… that meant there had to be more of them out there.
More “holy relics” inhabited by watered-down versions of Othergods.
I set the coin back down on the center of the Ouija board. I knew exactly what I needed to ask.
“Tell me the locations of the holy relics for every single player who’s gotten a Game Over.”