Festival of Defying Heaven
The place Hwang Young-gyu took me, saying he wanted to redefine our relationship, was a café nearby.
I sent Choi Eun-ha and Lee Ha-ram, who had come to help, home first, and handed Yoon Soo-ah over to the Paranormal Administration Bureau people who showed up late. Watching those Bureau agents stand there, unable to make so much as a peep at Cosmos for openly livestreaming an exorcism, was quite the sight.
"Hey, wasn't that guy just on the broadcast?"
"Yeah, that's him. Master Kim."
"No way, for real?"
"Come on, that's gotta be fake. He's a YouTuber who got famous off that stuff."
"Well, my friend says he saw Master Kim doing a real exorcism down by the Han River, though?"
Because Cosmos had broadcast the exorcism of the Suicide Train so extensively, people who recognized me were muttering everywhere I went.
"Guess I can kiss going out in peace goodbye…"
"Hahaha, a national treasure's fame is the fate of the exceptional, as they say. Take your time getting used to it."
Hwang Young-gyu let out a hearty laugh.
Somehow, that laugh carried a sincerity that hadn't been there before. What on earth had changed Hwang Young-gyu's — no, Cosmos's — attitude like this?
Ding.
"Ah, right on time."
"Says who's coming… huh?"
Standing at the café entrance was a familiar middle-aged man.
It was Yoon Chang-sik, Yoon Soo-ah's uncle.
"Why is Yoon Chang-sik here…?"
"Because I'm a Cosmos man myself."
Yoon Chang-sik held out a business card.
No wonder the house was so ridiculously fancy — he was a Cosmos executive.
Wait, hold on.
If Yoon Chang-sik was Yoon Soo-ah's uncle, that meant he was Baek Gong-ju's son, didn't it?
An internal director at Cheokjin Hwasa, of all places, while his own mother ran the Bureau. This family was seriously crumbling from within…
'No, that's not the important thing right now.'
"So, what does an internal director of the great Cosmos Corporation want to say to me?"
Redefining the relationship — that phrase was, in other words, an admission that Cosmos had made friendly gestures on the surface while harboring hostility toward me behind the scenes.
"Allow me to take over from here. Until now, Cosmos — or rather, the department in charge of anomalies — has been laboring under a misunderstanding about you, Mr. Yi-yeon."
"A misunderstanding?"
"Yes. But thanks to recent events, that misunderstanding has been cleared up. So rather than our relationship as it stands, we'd like to build something more constructive—"
"Don't try to gloss over this."
I looked Yoon Chang-sik dead in the eye as he tried to slither past the issue like a snake.
For the record, lying doesn't work on me.
Because I'd already activated the Word Command Hacking Plan on the way over.
"Tell me exactly how Cosmos misunderstood me, and how you see me now that your attitude has changed so completely. No dodging."
Until now, I'd assumed Cosmos hostile toward me because of the mysterious site. But judging by Yoon Chang-sik's reactions, that wasn't the right answer.
I needed to know the real one.
"Hmm…"
Yoon Chang-sik took off the glasses he'd been fidgeting with and wiped them with a handkerchief. After a brief pause, he tossed out a question out of nowhere.
"How many Special-Grades do you suppose there are in the entire world?"
A question with no discernible intent. But I answered anyway.
"Maybe a hundred or so?"
With the world's population over eight billion, give or take, that felt about right.
"That's quite a lot."
Sixty out of eight billion sounds tiny, but when you imagine sixty people like Baek Gong-ju or Gong No-sa walking the earth, it was dizzying.
"Then here's my question. How many Special-Grades do you think there are right now?"
"Hmm, it's been ten years, so maybe sixty-five? Seventy, tops?"
"Wrong. Though the governments of the world and the Masquerade Alliance desperately hide it, according to the intelligence Cosmos has gathered, there are currently exactly twenty-seven Special-Grade psychics in the entire world."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
The number of Special-Grades had been cut in half in just ten years?
It was an unbelievable story. But the analysis said it was true.
"……So anomaly incidents have been ramping up, not just in Korea but worldwide, and they died fighting them off?"
"No."
Then why?
What could have halved the number of Special-Grades — the pinnacle of psychics — in a mere decade?
Yoon Chang-sik pointed a finger at the sky.
"The ones up above ran into a problem."
The ones up above.
It wasn't hard to guess what that meant.
Gods.
"As is the case with Baek Gong-ju — our mother — a great many Special-Grades are shamans who borrow power from those lofty beings."
The reason so many shaman-type psychics reach Special-Grade is simple: if the god backing you is high enough, reaching Special-Grade is comparatively easy.
"Thanks to that, shaman-type psychics have reliably filled the Special-Grade ranks across many nations for ages."
Even when a generation's Special-Grade shaman dies, if someone exists to inherit their god, a psychic of similar power takes their place.
I see. I'd never thought about it from that angle before, but if gods and the shamans borrowing their power were real, it made perfect sense.
Still, though…
'Must be nice as hell….'
Here I was, shitting blood trying to reach Special-Grade, and some people just get there with a 'snap, here's a ridiculously overpowered god for you~'?
Granted, they have their own efforts and struggles. But the fact remained that for them, the rank of the god they received mattered more than their own effort.
Yoon Chang-sik beamed, as if something delighted him endlessly.
A conversation that had sprung from Cosmos's misunderstanding of me. But it was genuinely interesting, and I was curious where it was going, so I tossed in an appropriate prompt.
"That's quite a crisis."
But Yoon Chang-sik reacted intensely to my offhand remark.
"No! Not at all! On the contrary, this is an opportunity for humanity! Master Kim, which do you believe is superior — gods, or humans? I believe it's humans."
He answered his own question without even waiting for my answer. The way he kept smirking was one thing, but he was abnormally wired.
"The enlightened ones of Buddhism, the yogis of Hinduism, the immortals of Daoism — all over the world, stories remain of humans who surpassed the gods. But at some point, that lineage was severed. Why do you think that was?"
"Hard to say?"
"Because the gods closed off and obstructed the potential of humans who might threaten their position."
Humans once held the potential to surpass the gods, but the door to that potential had been shut by divine interference. That was what Yoon Chang-sik was saying.
How did a story that started with Cosmos's misunderstanding of me balloon into something on this absurd a scale?
Yoon Chang-sik looked at me with eyes like some cult fanatic's and said,
"Now that the connection between heaven and earth is severed, this is the opportunity. A chance to escape the gods' long reign and for humanity to stand tall as human beings — and I believe the one who will take that first step is you."
"Um… so you believe I'll become an immortal, is that it?"
"Yes."
Yeesh, that was decisive. Firm as a rock, that one.
But well, I wasn't exactly against what Yoon Chang-sik was saying either.
For good reason — even I thought that with enough time, I could probably become an immortal. I was confident I'd hit Special-Grade within a year. No, within six months.
However…
"Why me, with all the existing Special-Grades still around?"
The shaman-type Special-Grades I could let slide as kites with cut strings — they'd already been touched by the gods' hands, after all, and hadn't Yoon Chang-sik said so himself?
"Are you planning to boil your soup with the remaining twenty-seven Special-Grades later?"
At my question, Yoon Chang-sik smiled crookedly.
"Certainly, at this point in time, they're closer to humans who will transcend the gods than you are… but they cannot. The psychics currently called Special-Grade can never reach the level of a human who has surpassed the gods."
"Why not?"
"Because in the process of reaching Special-Grade, they abandoned the mold of humanity. Gong No-sa is an easy example to understand."
Gong No-sa.
A madman who turned even their own name, age, and gender into uncertainty, made themselves into a jiangshi, and seized immortality.
Calling that thing human was indeed a stretch.
And Yoon Chang-sik was saying it wasn't just Gong No-sa — every remaining Special-Grade carried a disqualifying flaw of that same kind.
"Germany's Duke Alchemis modified his own body into an Adam Kadmon to reach Special-Grade, and Japan's Special-Grade had their family bloodline deliberately twisted and bred to wield stronger shikigami. And it's not just them — most Special-Grades are like that."
The gist of Yoon Chang-sik's words came down to this:
They gave up being human to climb higher.
But…
"That must not be. Only by advancing as a human, as a human being, can one surpass the gods. The ones called Special-Grade are fools who kicked away that qualification themselves… no, in truth, without resorting to such methods, they never could have reached Special-Grade at all. Do you understand? Of the eight billion humans alive right now, you are the only one walking toward the realm of a human who has surpassed the gods purely by human power alone."
So, putting Yoon Chang-sik's words into martial arts terms, it went like this:
The people currently called Special-Grade had trained in demonic cultivation to reach the realm of masters. But to ascend to the even higher realm of divine transcendence, demonic cultivation was actually a hindrance.
And among the current masters of the martial world, the one most likely to reach that transcendent realm without ever touching demonic cultivation — was me.
"I see."
"Yes?"
So I'm a human with the potential to surpass the gods?
Okay, sure. But what does that have to do with Cosmos?
"What does any of that have to do with Cosmos redefining our relationship? What does Cosmos gain if I become an immortal?"
It surely wasn't some naive 'he might get super strong later, better stay friendly~' mindset. The normal move would be to stomp out anyone who might become an obstacle once they grew powerful. The fact that they weren't doing that meant Cosmos wanted something from me when I reached the realm of the immortals.
"Sharp as ever. You've hit it exactly. You already know, Master Kim. The connection between heaven and earth has been severed, and the mighty gods and spirits are running rampant. The world right now is, quite literally—"
"The end times."
"Yes. But no age of ruin lasts forever. After an end comes a new beginning — and it falls to the human who transcends the gods to decide the shape of that new world. Just as the awakened man preached compassion, and the resurrected man preached love."
This is insane…
The scale and content of this story were so far off the rails I couldn't keep up at all.
I'm a clueless twenty-something barely six months out of the service, you know.
Why does everyone — this guy, that guy — expect so much from me?
More importantly…
'The verdict came back FALSE on the single most important thing he said.'
The simplest way to hide a lie is to bury it in the truth. The most important truth that Yoon Chang-sik — no, that Cosmos — wanted to hide was inside those words.
I chose my words carefully and opened my mouth.
"……Do I have to answer that right now?"
"Of course not. Take all the time you need to think it over. Although…"
Yoon Chang-sik glanced at the people around us who had recognized me and were whispering.
That look seemed to say, 'You're already in the same boat as us, aren't you?'
"Then, enough with the roundabout talk — tell me. What exactly did Cosmos mistake me for, that made you treat me as an enemy?"
"…I said the connection between heaven and earth was severed… but it isn't severed completely, not yet. Which means the gods are surely mounting their last struggle."
A last struggle, huh…
"Cosmos mistook you for a champion sent down by the combined power of the gods. We believed the reason for your impossibly rapid growth was divine backing."
A champion, huh… in a way, I suppose I am one. It's just that the ones who back and chose me aren't gods, but humans.
"But now we know. There is no shadow of any god upon you. You are… yes, a lantern born to end the age of ruin and open a new era."
"Don't hype me up like that, it's stressful."
I'm not all that, Master Kim or not…
And with that, the conversation about Cosmos's misunderstanding of me came to an end.
Cosmos, Jeong-myung-gyo, Gong No-sa, the Count of St. Germain. Of all the forces gunning for me, the most threatening one had turned ally — that much was good. Or, to be precise, it was still murky whether they counted as a firm ally, but whatever.
Regardless, I held firm to the terms I'd laid out beforehand.
No formal cooperation with Cosmos until they brought me the Flame-Tipped Spear in Gong No-sa's possession.
I stuck to that condition for three reasons.
First, obviously, to weaken the forces of Gong No-sa, the party with the deepest killing intent toward me of them all. Second, to buy time until I reached Special-Grade. And last, third — because I didn't know Cosmos's true objective, the one Yoon Chang-sik had papered over with a lie.
How the hell would anyone know when the end times would wrap up, anyway, for them to be spouting off about new worlds and whatnot? Even right now, anomaly incidents were overflowing through Seoul, and barely an hour ago forty passengers, myself included, had nearly been dragged to the afterlife alive.
And while it was just a gut feeling, this was probably only the beginning of the end times. The world was sliding further into madness by the day, with no end in sight.
Yet in the middle of all this, Cosmos alone was sketching out a world beyond an invisible end. The dubious goal, the lie — Cosmos was still hiding something.
Until I found out what, a full alliance with Cosmos was impossible.
"Very well. This actually gives Cosmos a welcome chance to show you our good faith, Master Kim. Then let's end things here for today. Simply clearing up the misunderstanding that Cosmos bore you any hostility is a major harvest in itself."
With that, the talk wrapped up, but just before leaving the café, something occurred to me.
"Ah… um, by any chance…"
"Yes? Did you have something to add?"
"Am I eligible to enter the lottery too?"
"…Pardon?"
"I was a passenger on the Suicide Train too, and I came out alive, so…"
"Ah……"
What? So what? Got a problem with that?
A lottery with a two-billion-won prize and one-in-forty odds — how was I supposed to sit that out?
Messiah of the new world or decider of the coming era or whatever — THIS I could not pass up!
On the way home, I turned my conversation with Yoon Chang-sik over in my mind.
A human who had surpassed the gods. And the world after the end times, decided by that human.
Both were stories of such insane scale that I figured actually grasping their meaning was a problem for the far distant future.
But I was wrong about that.
The moment I got back to my shabby little one-room, washed up in a hurry, flopped down, and checked my phone, I understood what it meant to change the world.
You have overcome trial after trial without pause, proving your worth again and again.
You have attained high cultivation, saved many, and carved your name into the awareness of countless souls.
You are not yet perfect — but you are qualified.
Rewrite the world in the form you desire.
"…Wait, weren't you supposed to change it AFTER the end times?"
…Well, come to think of it, you're supposed to finish the prep before opening hours, right?