87. A Requiem for This Blasphemer!!!
87. A Requiem for This Blasphemer!!!
Priga, the guardian deity of the Empire, and the lesser gods beneath her.
Most people only knew that much about the religions in this world, and from the bits and pieces of news I'd heard, I vaguely understood that no Order except Priga's held any real sway within the Empire.
But in this climate, the Order Ja-seong belonged to was seeing such explosive growth that a cardinal had personally filed a complaint. The reason was that the being they were proclaiming as their Saint was receiving overwhelming support from the masses.
"H-Hello, everyone...."
And at last, the time had come to see whether putting a demon in the position of Saint was really the right call.
When the appointed prayer time arrived, Ja-seong brought me to the chapel and pointed out a girl standing before the congregation.
Nothing had changed since the last time I saw her except for the nun's habit she now wore—still that same small, fragile-looking young Demon.
"I-I'm Y-Yui, the S-Saint of the Mether Order. Pleased to...."
"Uwaaaaaaaah!!!"
The roar that erupted the moment they faced this girl could not be called jeering—it was a cheer.
As if the faithful, who should have been chaste, were truly venerating a Demon as their Saint.
"Saint Yui! Saint Yui has finally revealed herself!"
"Saint Yui is looking at us!"
"Saaaint! Saaaaaint!!"
A chaos of heat and uproar on the scene, a succession of shouts bordering on sheer madness.
Just hearing it made my skin prickle—it honestly felt like an idol concert packed with rabid fans.
Even though quietly leafing through scripture was supposed to be the common sense of prayer.
"E-Everyone, um. This is, first of all, prayer time, so please be quiet...."
"Saint! It is you who are our hope! You are the light and salt of this world!"
"If there were countless followers who adhere to you in this world, I would be one of them. And if only a single follower existed, that would be me!"
"Saint Yui! You are our god, the reincarnation of Lord Mether!"
Well, I mean... sure.
A Saint gets treated as a divine clone or an earthly incarnation anyway.
If you think about it, idols are also like gods or idols in that sense, so I couldn't exactly call this strange.
Even if feeling that toward a Demon—no matter how young—was definitely still weird.
"Uwaaah! We love you, Saint Yui!"
"...Love?"
At some point, a single questioning sound rose above the din.
And as if that were the trigger, the madness that had blanketed the scene abruptly subsided, and soon every believer began to focus their attention on that one man.
"You there! Did you just mutter the word 'love' while looking at the Saint!?"
"To harbor such vulgar feelings for that tiny, delicate Saint!"
"You blasphemous bastard!!"
Believers began beating the offending man with the scripture books in their hands.
As blood flowed from the man being beaten, I turned to Ja-seong, who was standing calmly with his arms crossed, and asked a question.
"Is that really okay?"
"It's fine. Law books and scriptures aren't legally recognized as deadly weapons."
That wasn't what I was talking about.
"Saint! We have apprehended this pedophile who dared gaze upon you with unclean eyes!"
But regardless of my bewilderment, they were entirely focused on their mission.
The believers forced the battered sinner to his knees and began shouting at the demon girl they revered as their Saint.
"Saaaint! Tell us with your own lips how this disgusting, filthy scum is to be punished!!!!"
"P-Punishment? I don't really know about that...."
"We apologize, Saint!!"
A believer promptly slammed his head into the floor before the trembling Saint.
He had done it so hard that his skin tore and blood flowed, yet the man began to weep piteously, as if in genuine repentance.
"I have often entertained the fantasy of stroking your hair and cheeks, despite being your faithful devotee! Please mete out the proper punishment to me, who dared to imagine laying a hand on your sacred body!"
"H-Huh? Th-That much is okay...."
"Ooh! What a profound apology!"
"But that doesn't change the filth within his heart! Prove your repentance by accepting your punishment!"
"Nay, how can a heart that has been tainted even once be purified by a single act of repentance!?"
"Then it's penance! Discipline him harshly so that he may withstand the fires of hell when the time comes for him to fall!"
The faithful ignored her words and steered the situation in their own direction.
While the young Demon watched, utterly at a loss, the believers surrounding the bloodied sinner brought over a heavy pot and set it before him.
"In the presence of Lord Mether, who guards over abundance and the home, and his living incarnation, the Saint, we ask! What is your name!?"
"I am Asei, a believer of the Mether Order!"
"Good, Asei! Are you prepared to taste hellfire!?"
Hearing his booming answer, the believers pulled something from the pot.
The pickled vegetables dripping ominously red liquid were a food known as 'kimchi' back in the world I used to live in.
"Gyaaah! Is this the spicy taste of the Hellfire Peninsula!?"
"Endure it!! The hell that awaits blasphemers is filled with far worse agony!!!"
"If you're going to fall to hell anyway, then steel yourself to withstand its heat—so you can show the blasphemers down there an even greater hell!!"
A sinner writhing after eating kimchi, and holy men and women tirelessly hurling encouragement and reproach at him.
As I stared blankly at the spectacle, Ja-seong, still standing with his arms crossed, spoke in a casual tone.
"It's one of our Order's specialties. That hellfire flavor is quite popular among our ascetics, you know."
"Ah. I see."
He was saying this was all part of sharing food with the poor, drawing from the food tourism experience he had with me back then.
But where did they get the napa cabbage for kimchi?
Did they raid the barbarians' vegetable gardens again to make a batch?
"With this, we have succeeded in purifying yet another unclean soul!"
"This too is only possible because the Saint is with us!"
"Ooh, Saint Yui, you tirelessly root out filthy beings again today!"
"N-No, I didn't do any...."
"Fear not, everyone! The Saint marches with us in our crusade!!!"
Even after two whole years, the young Demon was trembling, utterly lost, as if she still hadn't adapted.
Ignoring her reaction, the hundreds of faithful gathered in the assembly hall chanted in one voice.
"Touch her and it's execution! Roll call in hell!"
"Your voices are too quiet! Louder!"
"Purge them! Let every pedophile in this world hear our requiem!!!"
A roar loud enough to make the room shake.
Faced with this scene of madness, born from faith and hatred of pedophiles, the young Demon finally began to cry, overcome by terror.
"Uwaeeeng! I don't like this weirdness anymore!!! Lord Yasumo! Please save me!!"
Tears that should never be shed during sacred prayer, and the faithful screaming their fanaticism before her.
Witnessing the scene, Ja-seong gave me a thumbs-up, deeply satisfied.
"How about it, little brother! Plenty of believers with burning faith have gathered, just as I planned, right?"
"Yeah, well, you're not wrong if you classify madness as faith."
Was this another desperate struggle to survive a world spinning out of control?
Total chaos. Utterly chaotic.
****
Anyway, the fate of that young Demon and her madness-saturated Order was Ja-seong's business to handle.
To lift my own curse, I followed Ja-seong down into the ritual chamber located beneath the cathedral.
"If it's a curse cast by a vassal of the Corpse Lord, I think it would be wise for us to assist you...."
"Nah, this kid's held on well all this time, so a little help and it'll come right off. I can handle it alone, so you all can just leave."
"Yes, if you say so."
The believers bowed and withdrew one by one.
After that, Ja-seong guided me to lie down on the altar, and once I did, he took out his scripture book and began the preparations needed for the lifting.
"Hyosung, you don't know much about the god I serve, do you?"
"Yeah, well... I don't really know any religion except for Priga."
"I figured. Even though we're starting to make a name for ourselves, it's only just begun. Means there's still a long road ahead."
Ja-seong focused on flipping through the scripture in his hands, his eyes scanning the contents.
He might have a wild, reckless personality, but the moment he read the holy book, he became utterly solemn and weighted with gravity.
"To sum it up briefly... long ago, there was a kingdom as wealthy as the Empire. And before that nation fell to plague, the state religion it upheld was the Mether Order I serve."
"The state religion of a fallen kingdom?"
"Yeah, back then it was all about humble prayers for good harvests and peace in the home. But even after the nation that supported the Order collapsed, the people who didn't forget those teachings came into the Empire and kept that faith alive."
It lacked the ambition and might of Priga, the Empire's state religion, which sought to stand above all gods. Yet it had preserved its lineage to this day....
In a sense, it might have endured because the 'familiar sensibilities of the common people'—a good harvest, a peaceful home—couldn't be erased from people's hearts.
Perhaps, in this decaying world, there were more people who yearned for such humble comforts than for nobility or honor.
"And in this world, when your faith reaches the heavens in whatever form, you can shape that devotion into a light. Like this."
The moment he finished his prayer, a faint light kindled in his hand: divine power.
A panacea that healed all sickness and wounds except baldness, and a power that served as a marker of one's purity.
I could tell just by feeling the warmth of that light.
Whatever eccentricities he committed, they were all the result of following what he believed was right.
"Woo Hyosung, are you ready to lift the curse?"
Clutching that holy power in his hand, he readied himself to stretch his glowing hand toward me, lying on the altar.
"Hyung, can you really lift the curse?"
"What's so grand about lifting a curse? It's just a contest of whether the curse is stronger or my divine power is stronger. I'll overwhelm it with fighting spirit."
Those were truly reliable words.
Because in all my life, I'd never met anyone with more fighting spirit than this man.
"Alright, no point wasting time—here I go!! Grit your teeth!!"
Of course it was unnerving, but I trusted him too much to back out now.
Deciding to just go with it for now, I was focusing my strength into my lower abdomen when something suddenly crept up my spine and began whispering into my ear.
'To abandon my curse? Are you serious?'
Gorgon Zola.
The 'replicated ego' that bastard had left behind, preparing once again to toy with me.
'For a human, exerting one's will unceasingly is no easy task. But if you borrow my power, you can steadily receive the drive needed to sate your hunger.'
I couldn't deny that thanks to this curse, I'd managed to achieve explosive growth over the past three months.
Because no matter how desperate your purpose, it's inevitable that your spirit wavers, you grow satisfied with the present, and become lazy—as long as you're human.
A curse that constantly disciplined a heart prone to weakening might actually be necessary for my continued devotion.
'...Sorry, but my growth is my own business.'
But there was no such thing as a free lunch in this world, and this guy was just trying to use me for his own ends.
Now that I was aware of it, I couldn't let someone with such transparent intentions run wild.
Especially since I wasn't the only one being dragged around by his power.
'Kuhaha! Very well, you've held onto your consciousness this far. With that kind of mental fortitude, I'm sure you'll manage just fine even without my curse.'
As I steeled myself and resisted the whispers, Ja-seong, who had finished his preparations, began to bring his hand toward me.
That hand—filled with the divine power meant to shake this whispering loose from me once and for all.
'But it seems the child accompanying you feels differently.'
The moment I felt something anomalous begin to erupt from within my body, I snapped my eyes open and desperately tried to suppress the power surging out of me.
"Hyung! Get back!"
But fierce ripples of mana were already erupting from my body.
Ja-seong's body was thrown backward by the force and slammed into the wall with a loud Bang! As I pushed myself up, I stared breathlessly at the entity that had slipped out of my body.
-Why?
The faint voice was one I had heard before in a dream.
But the incomprehensible stammering from before was gone.
-Why, are you trying to lift the curse?
As if Gorgon Zola's curse, layered on top of my ability, was accelerating the child's mental growth.
"...Philoi."
-Daddy, you need to become stronger than you are now.
But growth was never solely a good thing.
-Because if you don't, you won't be able to kill Mom with your own hands.
The whisper that came with the power surging from the spear was more than enough to make me realize that.