Reverse Heaven Ritual [2]

A dry, clinical message — every trace of its usual playfulness stripped away.

Which could only mean this so-called Reverse Heaven Ritual was something serious.

“What ails thee? Thy countenance is grim.”

Krrrrr?

Fey poked her head out of the water glass she'd been lounging in, while Wang Lingguan, still sprawled across my studio floor in his half-translucent form, tilted his massive head in confusion.

“No, it's... it's nothing.”

Saying that, I selected YES.

The moment I did, everything around me plunged into absolute blackness.

“What the—!? Wang Lingguan!? Fey!?”

At the same instant, a crushing pressure slammed into my entire body, as if I'd boarded a plane — no, a rocket. My knees nearly buckled, and I barely held myself upright.

“Ugh...!”

If I, with my superhuman physique, was struggling this much, an ordinary person would have been pulped on the spot.

About a minute passed like that — and then the pressure vanished without warning.

“Hahk!”

The tension draining out of me all at once, I collapsed to the floor, and only then did it dawn on me to look around.

“What is this... where am I?”

This was not the cramped, gloomy one-room I'd been sitting in. And naturally, Fey and Wang Lingguan were nowhere to be seen.

“...An anomaly domain...? No, something's different...”

Around me stretched an endless plane of water, its surface so flawlessly clear it held the blue sky like a mirror. And I stood alone upon that water.

“It's like a salt lake from a nature documentary, blown up a few hundred times...”

I was still racking my brain to get my bearings when—

Shuaaaaaaaah!

Something began surging up from beneath the water.

“...An altar?”

Rising out of the water was a colossal altar. And in its wake, religious icons and symbols from East and West alike began thrusting up from the depths one after another.

Doom-doom-daaan!

Ti-ri-ri-riiing!

Then, to complete the tableau, musicians with veiled faces rose from the water and began to play. The music they wove — a riot of instruments from every corner of East and West — should have clashed horribly, and yet, strangely, it all fit together.

One look at the scene told me everything.

Just as the name promised, this was a rite. A sacrifice. A ceremony.

“Excuse me...? What is this place?”

I approached the musicians and tried talking to them, but... no answer came. I examined the statues and symbols of the various religions too, but nothing in them stirred any particular feeling.

Which left only one option.

“I suppose I'm meant to go to that altar.”

A square, pitch-black altar that matched neither Eastern nor Western design — it could have passed for a piece of contemporary art. Steeling my resolve, I walked up and stood before it.

The instant I did, the music changed. What had played until now had merely been the prelude — this was the main movement. Only fitting, really, now that the high priest had taken his place at the altar. Not that I'd ever volunteered for the position. Dongbin's Dao Study Room explained what the Reverse Heaven Ritual was — but not a word about what I was actually supposed to do.

“...Rewrite the world, huh...”

Muttering the explanation back to myself, I unconsciously rested my hand on the altar.

In that moment—

Keeeeeeeeeeeng.

The altar shuddered. What I had taken for one massive slab of black stone was in fact composed of countless tiny cube-shaped crystals. And in the same breath, the altar began pouring information directly into my skull.

“Guh—!”

The flood of data came so fast and so violently that my head felt ready to split open. But after roughly a minute of it, I finally understood what the Reverse Heaven Ritual truly was.

The ritual that rewrites the world.

It meant exactly what its name said.

“...Holy...”

This rite defied the very principles of reality, forcibly overwriting the world with a new law of its own. And the instant I grasped that, the word that leapt to the front of my mind was Narrative Coercion.

Narrative Coercion — the power by which urban-legend anomalies force their own story onto their victims. But for all its absurdity, this ritual wasn't mere spiritual force; it demanded a special price in exchange.

And that price was Cognition.

Cognition — the very same faculty by which a mind understands and comes to know a thing or phenomenon. In this case, though, it wasn't about what I perceived. What mattered was how much the people of the world recognized me. Narrative Coercion, after all, only takes hold once an uncountable mass of people is aware of the story. Here, what needed to be recognized wasn't a narrative at all — it was my existence itself.

And I had already accumulated quite a considerable store of it. I'd appeared on personal streams and terrestrial broadcasts alike, over and over. It was only natural.

Love it or hate it, I was a genuine influencer now.

“Well... let's test it, shall we?”

Dongbin's Dao Study Room — and every other site, for that matter — had never once lied to me. But this time, I simply couldn't bring myself to take it on faith. Since this was a trial run, I composed my Narrative Coercion using the smallest possible outlay of Cognition.

Shwarararararararak!

The altar quaked once more, and the tremor rolled outward across the water. The ripple spread farther and farther across that endless mirror of a surface. And long after the wave had faded beyond sight, the musicians lifted their voices in chorus.

The world went dark once more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— and in the blink of an eye, I was back in my studio apartment.

“.........”

Two months had passed since my discharge, two months stuffed to the brim with every flavor of the unnatural, and even I couldn't tell whether that had been a dream or reality.

“What ails thee, to go so vacant all of a sudden?”

“Fey... how much time has passed since I said it was nothing?”

“? Ten seconds? Fifteen? It has not been half a minute, at most.”

“...Is that so.”

By my own internal clock, the time I'd spent inside the Reverse Heaven Ritual was — even on the most conservative count — well over twenty minutes.

So time flows differently in there? Or did I just experience some massively compressed sensation?

A flicker of doubt crossed my mind — what if all of it had been a hallucination? — so I checked my phone. The message from Nikola's Hyper-Radio Communication was still sitting there.

“All right... let's verify it first.”

“Venturing out?”

“Yep.”

“Then bring We along. We are bored.”

Krrrrr!

Fey zipped through the air and burrowed into my collar, while Wang Lingguan rolled upright off the floor.

“Suit yourselves.”

With the two of them in tow, I stepped outside — and ducked into the nearest convenience store. It being late evening, the part-timer was bored out of his mind, watching a video on his phone. And by pure coincidence, the video he was watching was footage of me exorcising the Suicide Train.

“Oho~ Thou art quite the famous personage now, art thou not?”

Fey was grinning ear to ear like it was the most delightful thing in the world. Honestly? Being this famous was getting stressful. Well — water under the bridge at this point, wasn't it? A monster train erupting out of the Han River in broad daylight, exorcised with arrows of light. In this day and age, hiding something like that was impossible. Worse, Cosmos had broadcast the whole thing live and shoved it down everyone's throat with a viral marketing blitz, so the internet was currently in a full-scale meltdown over it.

“That would explain why my Cognition stockpile got so fat.”

Nursing a feeling I couldn't quite put into words, I grabbed a few bottles of beer and carried them to the counter.

Tap.Beep.

The part-timer put his phone down and scanned the barcodes.

“Excuse me.”

“...Yes?”

“By any chance... do you not recognize me?”

“Huh? Uh...”

The part-timer trailed off, evasive — even as his abandoned phone played a close-up of my face on its screen.

“What manner of foolery is this? Why doth that fellow fail to recognize thee?”

“Ah — sorry, almost forgot to check your ID there...”

Just as Fey said, the part-timer looked me dead in the face and registered absolutely nothing.

“ID confirmed. Would you like a bag?”

“Please.”

And so I walked out of the convenience store with my bagged beer.

“...It's real.”

Cold sweat slid down my back a beat too late, and goosebumps crawled up my arms.

“Thee — what in the world hast thou done?”

Fey asked, eyes shining with curiosity rather than alarm.

“Let me double-check a few ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠more things, and then I'll explain.”

For a more rigorous test, I moved to the commercial district around Sillim Station.

“Round two, let's go! Round two!”

“Yeeeeeesss!”

“Huuuuuurgh—!”

It was Friday night, and the streets around Sillim Station were drowning in people. I wandered the district for a good while. Not a single soul recognized me. That settled it. The Narrative Coercion I had offered up to the world through the Reverse Heaven Ritual —

— was genuinely in effect. You know how those stories go, right? The celebrity looked so different in person from how they appeared on screen that nobody recognized them. My Coercion was built on exactly that kind of anecdote. In other words: as long as I wasn't on a screen, no one would ever recognize my face.

Incidentally...

I could switch the damn thing off and on at will. For a second I reached to terminate it, feeling like I was doing something I had no business doing — then remembered I was standing in the middle of the Sillim nightlife district.

“Nope. Not doing that.”

Even the bar right next to me was, at that very moment...

“Bullshit, that was obviously staged!”

“It was NOT staged! I saw it with my own eyes! The subway shot up out of the Han River, and Kim the Exorcist shot it down with a glowing bow and killed it!”

“Heh heh heh heh, there this asshole goes again.”

“No, seriously, I saw it too — from a distance, but still.”

They were making a racket about me, of all things. Knowing full well none of them could see my face anyway, I still tugged my hoodie down over my head and headed home, feeling strangely self-conscious.

Once I got back, I sat down at the entrance and thought.

“Thee. So what in heaven's name was that just now? Thou didst not even cast a spell, and yet not only that part-timer — no one at all could recognize thee. Wherefore?”

I explained everything I'd experienced to Fey. When the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠story was done, her eyes went wide with genuine shock.

“Such absurdity...”

A fair reaction, all things considered. Because the truth was...

This is just straight-up reality manipulation, isn't it?

The Narrative Coercion of urban-legend anomalies had always carried a whiff of that, sure. But this was on another level entirely. Look — blurring people's recognition, dulling their perception? Simple enough with basic sorcery. This was nothing of the sort. What if, instead of people can't recognize me unless I'm on a broadcast, I'd imposed something like anyone who lays eyes on me goes mad or dies?

As an extreme Coercion, it would devour an ocean of Cognition... but flip that around, and it means that with enough Cognition, it's possible.

For the third time today, goosebumps prickled up my spine. Narrative Coercion can be resisted by espers gifted with spiritual power — but ordinary people can't resist it at all. And a sufficiently powerful Coercion can't be shrugged off even by espers.

“This is insane... so THAT'S what it meant — rewriting the world however I please.”

Narrative Coercion wagered against the world itself. It really was, just as Cosmos said, the act of bending reality to my will.

And I was the only being in this entire world who could do it.

At the same time, I finally understood why those sites had chosen me. Because I had seen it, buried in the information the altar poured into my skull. Engraved in its deepest recesses were four golden narratives. And glimpsed within those four golden narratives were Lü Dongbin, Solomon, Nikola... and Paracelsus.

Which meant those golden narratives were ones they had carved. In other words, they were saying to me: engrave the golden narratives we have written into this very world.

That was what they wanted from me.

The problem, though...

“...is that the price is absolutely brutal.”

The Cognition required for my little <You Look Quite Different in Person Than on Broadcast?> and the Cognition required to write those four golden narratives weren't even measured in the same units. Same story when compared against everything I'd stockpiled so far. Could I actually gather Cognition on that scale?

“...Well. I suppose I'll just have to try.”

Exorcism streams fill my Cognition — and my merit points along with it. The proof: the moment my Suicide Train broadcast ended, a new post had opened up for me. More than that, though — the golden narratives were, in themselves, a chance to transcend the end of the world.

I may put myself first in this world, but that's precisely why I'd rather this world didn't end. The world has to keep existing for me to exist, no?

Cosmos had spoken of what comes after the end times as if it were a foregone conclusion, but honestly...

At the rate things are going, the world will end before we ever get around to whatever's supposed to come after the end times.

Which meant that, all arguments aside, my job didn't change: find the anomalies, exorcise them, broadcast it. Until now that had earned me money and merit points — from now on, it would stockpile Cognition too. Fortunately, there were two heavyweight anomalies waiting right now to tighten up my merit points and Cognition in a hurry.