The Saintess and the Capitalist God
I began selecting items from the list of offerings, prioritizing those with high caloric density and ease of consumption.
A blue can of pork. A clear plastic bottle of water. And a bag of salty, crispy original chips.
I clicked on the three items and selected [Offer Tribute].
Tribute has been sent to the target location.
Click.
At that moment, a strange sound emanated from the corner of my room where the shelf stood.
Rustle. Thud.
It sounded like plastic crinkling. Still gripping the mouse, I turned my head slightly.
"What the... did a bug get in?"
Since my apartment was adjacent to a mountain—a place I’d describe as "nature-friendly" if I were being generous, or "bug-friendly" if I were being honest—the occasional insect was common. Under normal circumstances, I would have jumped up to check, but my focus was entirely locked on the monitor.
I dismissed it and turned back to the game.
Whoosh— Thud! Clatter.
A dull, rhythmic sound echoed. The air above the altar near where the nun was huddled in the game distorted, and three familiar objects tumbled out one after another.
The plastic-wrapped chips. The transparent water bottle. And the smooth, steel-cased pork can.
The nun gasped, staring at the bizarre objects that had fallen through a tear in reality. The rusted dagger she had been holding to her own throat clattered to the floor.
Her gaze locked onto the water bottle first. The water inside was crystal clear, shimmering in the transparent container—so pure and brilliant that its value was immediately apparent. Having gone without a drop of clean water for so long, her primal survival instincts flared.
Gulp.
I heard the sound of her dry throat swallowing hard. Startled, she clamped both hands over her mouth.
"W-will I be swayed by such material temptation! I serve the God of Light..."
Her voice, initially full of fervor as she tried to defend her name and faith, gradually trailed off. The chapel fell deathly silent. She simply stared at the altar, as if bewitched.
"Like a fish looking at bait on a hook," I chuckled, resting my chin on my hand. The problem was that the nun knew all too well that this was bait meant to consume her soul.
I needed a different approach. "I wonder if these are interactive."
I moved the mouse cursor and clicked the water bottle on the altar. Surprisingly, with a crackle, the plastic cap twisted open on its own.
Encouraged, I clicked the pork can and the snack bag. The tightly sealed steel lid of the can curled back like magic, revealing the pink flesh of the meat inside. The chip bag tore open with a rip-pop, spilling golden, oil-fried potato chips across the altar.
"Ah, the smell..."
The nun collapsed, letting out a pained moan. The salty scent of MSG and the smell of fresh water, released as the steel opened and the plastic tore—her body recognized them as absolute means of survival: real food and water.
She reached out with trembling hands, then flinched and pulled back, repeating the motion several times. After a fierce internal struggle, she reached into her robes.
Clink. A small, worn-out gold coin rolled from her tiny hand onto the floor.
"I have no intention of becoming your follower."
She avoided my gaze, stuttering as she continued. "T-this is a fair trade, nothing more. Since the world has already been ruined by Outer Gods like you, this gold is more useless than a pebble on the road. It suits greedy beings like you better than me."
It was an excuse, a desperate attempt to deceive the Outer God—or perhaps herself. She glared at the empty air, forcing a sharp look.
"I despise grotesque, alien Outer Gods like you."
With that, she moved frantically. She hurriedly capped the water bottle, scooped the chips back into the torn bag, and clutched the steel can to her chest like a treasure. Leaving the gold coin on the floor, she fled the chapel.
"Not as easy as I thought," I muttered, smacking my lips as I watched her back fade from the screen. "But for some reason, playing hard to get just makes me want to conquer her more."
Just then, a brilliant golden notification window popped up in the center of my monitor.
"Oh, the system is creative. Using the word 'deposit' for game points or cash currency?"
I laughed, clicking [Yes] without a second thought. It was just currency for the in-game shop or quest unlocks, surely.
Buzz- buzz- The moment I clicked, my smartphone on the desk vibrated violently.
"Huh?"
I turned on my phone screen and doubted my eyes. A pop-up notification from my bank app was staring back at me.
My mind went blank. "What is this? Is this a hack?"
My heart hammered against my ribs. The gold coin I had just clicked in the game had been deposited into my actual bank account as 500,000 won in cash. A chilling sensation struck my brain.
I sprang from my chair like a coiled spring and checked the shelf.
The number of items didn't match.
"Crazy..."
Had I finally lost my mind from living like a bat, swapping night and day, and chugging canned beer on an empty stomach? I raised my hand and slapped my cheek hard. The stinging pain proved it was real.
With trembling hands, I accessed the bank app. I transferred 10,000 won from the 500,000 won to my online pay account.
> Online Pay: 10,000 KRW charge complete.
It worked. The numbers on the screen weren't a bug or a hallucination. It was real money. I had sent items from my room into the game, and pulled gold from the game into my bank account. This could no longer be considered a game. It was reality—or rather, a different dimension, an otherworld.
My legs gave out, and I slumped back into my chair. "What is this... what on earth is this?"
While I sat there, unable to even breathe properly, staring blankly at the monitor, the scene shifted to the next sequence.
In the game, Aria had arrived at a ward where children and nuns, withered like dried fish, were gathered.
She carefully took out the snacks, canned meat, and water she had clutched so dearly. She crumbled the salty chips to feed the children and used her bare hands to scrape the pink pork from the can, smearing it onto the lips of the nuns.
"My goodness... Sister Aria, what is all this?" "Where did you find such precious food?"
People were amazed by the bizarre form of the food, but as the intense taste of meat and salt spread through their mouths, they wept and cheered. However, a single can and a bag of chips were nowhere near enough to fill the starving mouths of those dying of hunger.
Yet, those small scraps were breathing the warmth of life into the desperate ward where Aria’s lambs had been clinging to life.
After the distribution, Aria set down the empty can and bag, then picked up the water bottle. After sharing it with the children, only a mouthful remained. Only then did she moisten her own parched lips, letting out a small sigh of relief.
That desperate, noble altruism. I was overcome with a strange emotion watching her on the screen.
"She wasn't just a nun; she was a true saint."
For someone like me, who had been beaten down by the world and betrayed, leading to a deep distrust of humanity, seeing someone care for others so foolishly was quite a shock. But that heartwarming feeling didn't last long.
A sense of incongruity struck me, and I tore my eyes away from the monitor to look at my smartphone again.
"Wait, hold on. Didn't the system window say 1 don of gold was 500,000 won?"
I hurriedly opened my browser to check the real-time gold price. I doubted my eyes again when I saw the number.
"Crazy, it's 870,000 won! It was 850,000 won just yesterday, but the exchange rate is going wild, so it went up again?"
I was dumbfounded. The money that hit my account was exactly 500,000 won. A whopping 370,000 won had evaporated into thin air.
"I'm genuinely, deeply grateful for the money, but did someone skim off the top? Are they charging loan-shark-level exchange fees? Huh? This is infuriating."
The warmth of my previous emotion vanished, replaced by the cold rage of capitalism. I grabbed the mouse and opened the game's settings menu.
Whether the entity that gave me this insane opportunity was a god, a demon, or an Outer God, if there was a customer service center or a 1-on-1 inquiry board, I was ready to raise hell. I wanted to protest that this kind of fee structure was a scam that would make even loan sharks blush, but the settings menu only contained mundane options like graphics, sound, and key bindings.
"Haa... nowhere to inquire."
I let go of the mouse and leaned back into my chair. The anger soon shifted into cold, rational calculation. Even though a massive amount of money was being siphoned off as fees, the essence remained: Money.
I had just tossed out some canned food, snacks, and water that were rolling around my room, and I had earned 500,000 won in cash.
And it was perfect, tax-free, no-questions-asked money...
"If I earned 500,000 won by tossing out food that didn't even cost 10,000 won, what's the profit margin? This is..."
A mad, manic smile began to spread across my lips. The apartment mortgage that had been strangling me. The living expenses that were becoming increasingly bleak. And the cost of hiring a lawyer with the ability and will to crush my ex-girlfriend's false accusations and file a countersuit.
A lifeline that could flip this entire miserable reality in one go had fallen into the corner of my room.
"Perfect... This is truly the greatest opportunity for 'rice-farming' in my life."