Whom to Worship
“I don’t know…… how long I’ve been living like that…… It feels like a few years, at least…… but even I can’t say for certain…….”
Aisil sat perched on the threshold, stumbling over the words. He stared blankly at the ruined turbine with eyes full of crushing regret. Then he squeezed them shut, as if the life he had lived until now had become something he could no longer bear.
Minel spoke quietly.
“What exactly is a priest?”
At the question, Aisil’s eyes flew open. He swept a frantic look across the wrecked space and answered in a rush.
“Th-this is bad. If we d-don’t evacuate, the S-Sludge will…….”
“I already took care of all of them earlier.”
“Ah…… I-I see. That’s a real relief.”
Aisil let out a long breath of relief, then looked at the people with pity. In the wreckage where nothing remained intact, they were suffering from a terrible thirst—not for water, but for electricity. They clustered around the power lines as if electricity itself were the entire reason for their existence. Whenever a spark jumped, they shoved and struck one another, glaring as if ready to kill.
In truth Aisil was no different from them. If anything, he was worse. Without the trickle of electricity Minel had been feeding him, even coherent thought—let alone a normal conversation—would have been impossible.
As Aisil watched the sparks flicker here and there, a yellow light began to seep into his eyes. Minel eased Silence a little farther from the wire. Aisil jerked in shock and stared at him.
“Th-the electricity…….”
“Control yourself.”
“…….”
“Or I stop giving you any more.”
At Minel’s flat refusal the old man clenched his teeth and forced down the rising excitement as hard as he could. The Wildness in his eyes faded. Sitting still, Aisil almost looked normal. But the truth was simpler: he was nothing more than an addict who would throw himself at electricity the moment he got the chance.
Minel brought Silence back to the wire. The measured reward softened Aisil’s expression at once.
“Life here is…… hell. A hell you can never escape…….”
“I can tell just by looking.”
At Minel’s words, fat tears began to roll down Aisil’s cheeks.
“Hic. If I… if I hadn’t been fooled by those words… if I just hadn’t taken the baptism… I wouldn’t have ended up like this… Hic. Sob. If only I hadn’t done it back then… Hic.”
Minel answered with open disbelief.
“Didn’t you make new converts yourself?”
“Th-that’s… well… that is… hic… sob-sob.”
He kept wiping at his tears with both hands, looking almost childishly clumsy. A sudden suspicion made Minel ask,
“How old are you?”
Aisil could not stop crying; his voice came out thick and broken.
“Th-the age I remember is n-nineteen.”
“Nineteen?”
“Yes…….”
Outwardly he looked well past sixty. Half his hair was gone; what remained was pure white. His skin was a map of deep wrinkles. None of it was natural aging. Years of being struck by lightning every hour had simply worn the body out.
Then Aisil’s head snapped up and he turned to Minel.
“N-now that I think of it… I… I did the same to your companion…….”
Deep guilt flooded his face. Minel glanced at Hina; she gave a small nod.
“She has lightning immunity. She’s fine.”
“I-I see. Th-thank goodness. Once you’ve received the baptism… there’s no going back. Never…….”
Aisil’s eyes went hollow again. Watching the crowd that still drifted after every spark, fresh guilt rose in them.
“Why make new converts if you resent it so much?”
Aisil pressed his lips together and swallowed hard. Only after a long moment could he force the words out.
“Because… Lady Urare is pleased by it.”
“Is that all?”
“…….”
Aisil rubbed both hands over his head as if in pain. The last of his white hair stood out in every direction.
“P-please… give me electricity…….”
“…….”
“More… more, please. Electricity…….”
He buried his face between his knees and wailed. For him the only way to silence the endless guilt was the Wildness that lightning brought.
Minel felt no sympathy. Guilt was an emotion he barely possessed—perhaps not at all. But he understood the mechanism perfectly. His father had always explained it in terms he could grasp.
When the body hurts, the signal that arrives is pain. Likewise, when the soul hurts, the signal that arrives is guilt.
Pain can be forgotten by greater pain. When the soul’s agony grows too sharp, a person will do anything—even invite bodily pain—just to drown it out. Aisil was reaching that limit.
Minel cut straight to the point.
“What do you gain by making new converts?”
“…….”
“Answer and I’ll give you more electricity.”
Aisil’s jaw trembled; then the promise of more power made his eyes flare open. He looked up at Minel with pupils faintly tinted yellow.
“Sh-she grants us lightning…… l-lightning so powerful you can’t even imagine it…….”
“…….”
“Completely different from the lightning we taste in the ordinary services. Once you’ve tasted it even once… you… you can’t…….”
Just imagining it seemed to fill him with bliss; pleasure flooded his eyes and the light of reason began to drain away. Minel pulled Silence from the wire again. Instantly Aisil’s face twisted; he shot to his feet as if rage itself had erupted.
“G-give me electricity right n——”
Minel returned Silence to the wire. Power flowed; Aisil’s expression went slack and drowsy in a heartbeat. Minel pulled it away once more. Now deep sorrow settled over Aisil’s face. Heaven and hell, all on a single current of electricity. Free will—the foundation of personhood—had been completely erased.
“Calm down and sit.”
“…….”
“Sit and I’ll give you electricity.”
Aisil’s whole body shook; at last he sank back down. Minel kept his word and restored the current. Aisil exhaled as if a weight had lifted.
“Are there other priests besides you?”
“Y-yes… there are.”
“How many?”
“Last I heard… one hundred twenty thousand.”
For a moment Minel thought he had misheard. He had to ask again.
“One hundred twenty thousand? You’re certain?”
“They announce the number at every Grand Service. It stays right around one hundred twenty thousand.”
“Have you seen that many with your own eyes?”
“Ten thousand at a time. They gather ten thousand for each service…….”
Nothing in Aisil’s eyes suggested a lie. He had no reason to invent one. Add the ordinary believers under those hundred twenty thousand priests and the total would climb into the millions. Something like that could never have grown naturally. Someone had deliberately built this system on the 3rd Floor—almost certainly a very old survivor.
“Have you ever seen Urare yourself?”
Aisil’s face lit up like morning sunlight. Drool spilled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke.
“Only once… the day I first became a priest. Heh-heh-heh. Sh-she was truly… beautiful. A goddess with the face of heaven itself.”
So the cult leader was a woman? Should he trust an addict’s words at face value? Minel narrowed his eyes, weighing the risk, then asked carefully,
“What did Urare say to you?”
“Ah… she asked me to continue the services well from then on…… I heard that holy voice with my own ears…… It still rests deep in my heart…….”
“Did she also tell you to take more new converts?”
“Ah, those words came from Urare’s Spokesman. Everything—how to conduct the services, how to manage them—I learned from the Spokesman.”
The existence of a formal office called Spokesman suggested a more organized hierarchy than Minel had expected. Guiding millions of believers would require something close to a national administration. No small undertaking. What, exactly, was the prize?
“Earlier, steam was rising from your bodies. What was that?”
“Steam?”
“When you turn the turbines to generate electricity.”
“…….”
Aisil only stared at him blankly. Minel had assumed language always worked in the Backrooms; the grip of a false religion was apparently stronger than he thought.
“During the services.”
“Ah! That is our sin.”
“Sin?”
Aisil answered with absolute conviction, every word crisp and clear—the exact opposite of the pitiful figure of a moment before.
“Lady Urare’s lightning burns all things. The only ones who can survive it are the believers she herself has chosen.”
“…….”
“Yet even in a believer’s heart, crooked thoughts still remain. That is why we hold services at regular intervals—to burn those crooked thoughts away and offer up pure devotion to Urare.”
“…….”
“It is not steam. It is the joy and gratitude that rise when our sins are burned. Lady Urare’s lightning, which burns even the evil within the soul, is wondrous…….”
Minel pulled Silence from the wire. The old man’s face went gaunt again. Minel’s voice was ice.
“Cut the crap. It’s just addiction.”
“…….”
Aisil’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. With reason restored, he knew perfectly well how hollow his own words had been.
Minel thought it through. Directly confronting whoever had built this vast cult system on the 3rd Floor would be foolish. Even with power it was questionable; without power, the only sensible course was to avoid it entirely and reach the 4th Floor. The cult would certainly have sealed every route upward in some fashion. To break through, he needed to know exactly how much of Aisil’s testimony was true and how much was not. Yet even a priest like Aisil seemed to live under heavy information control.
In this situation there were only two ways to obtain solid intelligence: infiltrate the cult itself, or explore the 3rd Floor independently. If Aisil’s description was accurate, the cult already ruled the entire floor at a national scale. Wandering alone would yield little information—and might put them face-to-face with an old survivor they could not possibly handle. At best that meant death; at worst, a life as ruined as Aisil’s.
“Aisil.”
“Yes.”
“The worship hall is wrecked.”
“Yes.”
Minel jerked his chin toward the front. The temporary structures had collapsed and the turbine itself was smashed beyond repair; some response was inevitable.
“What happens next from above?”
“T-technicians will come to fix it. That’s what happened the last time it broke.”
“Technicians? Who are they?”
“Th-that’s… c-classified…….”
Minel pulled Silence from the wire, seized Aisil, and dragged him back inside the house. Cut off from electricity and sealed indoors, Aisil’s face flooded with despair.
“N-no. No. O-open it. Open it. P-please. Please.”
He lunged for the door; Minel subdued him and flung him against the far wall. Aisil ignored the impact and charged the door again. The light of reason in his eyes was already fading. If he could only taste lightning again, there was nothing he would not offer, nothing he would not do—a pure fanatic.
“Hina. Take that out.”
Hina understood at once and drew an item from her inventory. In that instant the entire emergency corridor flooded with blue light.
Zzzzt-zzzzt-zzzzt!
Zzzzt-zzzzt-zzzzt!
A heart large enough to fill a palm, neither metal nor living flesh. It was the heart of the Shocker.
Aisil’s hand, already on the door, froze in midair. As if entranced he turned slowly.
“Ah…… aah…… aah…….”
He sank to the floor in rapture and began to prostrate himself before the Shocker’s heart. Minel sat down in front of him and met his eyes. In a low, quiet voice he murmured,
“Now do you get a sense of who you should worship?”
Staring into the blue lightning, Aisil’s eyes rolled completely back.
“Th-there’s one method. The High Priests carry prayer beads with them…….”
After that his mouth began to move without rest.