The Patron of the Ruined Castle
Aja-ja-jat! It hadn't even been that long since the 500,000 won hit my account. Yet, my bank balance had already plummeted back to its usual pathetic state. I’d gone on a spending spree at the speed of light the moment I opened my delivery apps and online shopping sites.
In my heart, I wanted to run outside right now and grill some high-quality Korean beef from the butcher shop, but my ankles were shackled by invisible chains. I could have left my phone at home and snuck out for a bit, but there was no reason to take that kind of risk. After all, isn't this the perfect capitalist society where everything is delivered right to your doorstep with just a few clicks?
I swept all sorts of items into my cart on a large grocery delivery app. From Australian beef to fresh milk, eggs, sweet chocolate, and various breads. These were luxury groceries I would normally only stare at, my hands trembling from the reality of being broke. I also ordered plenty of daily essentials like shampoo and toilet paper.
Of course, this massive expenditure wasn't just to fill my own hungry stomach. It was a thorough business investment to win over those demanding beings on the other side of the monitor who hadn't fully surrendered to me yet. To completely seduce those excellent livestock—no, those beings—who spat out 500,000 won after that damn commission, I had to generously scatter this much bait.
After finishing the payment, I sat back in my computer chair and checked the game screen. The nun and the children were huddled together in the narrow infirmary, their exhausted bodies fast asleep. There didn't seem to be any events happening right away.
My gaze lingered on the top right of the screen.
[Divine Power Points: 0 (LOCKED)]
It was a UI menu firmly locked with padlock and chain icons. I still didn't have a clue where or how to use these "Divine Power Points." They were likely a special currency that would unlock once I made those refugees completely my own and forced them to offer me blind prayers. Even if I couldn't use them right now, they would surely be useful later when the shop function opened or when I upgraded my powers as an Outer God.
As I stared blankly at the screen, a strange question suddenly popped into my head.
"But why me, of all people?"
It was true that I was a hardcore veteran gamer who had mastered every genre imaginable. But the world is vast, and crazy people are everywhere. There were plenty of truly talented gamers out there besides me.
There were physical monsters who could turn a malicious hacker flying through the sky in a modern warfare game into a pancake by backing up an armored vehicle. There were intelligent, malicious killer players who would catch me—the one dancing and teabagging while mocking the killer—in a cleverly hidden ankle trap and hang me on a hook. There were even veteran streamers in strategy simulations who, instead of using the hammer-and-anvil tactics they were supposed to, would just mass-produce anvil units and beat the opponent's hammer to death with sheer physical force.
With all those talented people who defied human imagination, why did such a miracle come to my room-corner monitor?
I pondered it for a while and then let out a self-deprecating laugh. Perhaps my desperate circumstances were the biggest qualification for this game. A person who couldn't even step outside due to a false accusation, socially isolated to perfection. Someone who couldn't even protest after having a wicked commission fee taken out. This desperate reality, where I had no choice but to fully immerse myself in the despair of an alien world and obsess over it like a madman, might have been the perfect spec for a room-corner patron.
"Let's stop with the useless thoughts."
I shook my head, rubbed my bloodshot eyes, and stood up from the computer chair. The refuge in the game was quiet, and there was still time before the grocery delivery arrived.
My head was pounding as if it would split from staying up all night.
I needed to get some good sleep first so I could push through the next quest with a clear head.
I walked to the bed and collapsed onto it.
As I stared at the ceiling where sunlight poked through the curtains and tried to close my eyes, a Japanese light novel with a similar setting that I’d read in the past suddenly came to mind.
A pretty fun novel about someone acting as a god while raising an other-world village from their room.
I had liked it, especially since there weren't many novels in that genre that hit my specific tastes.
However, I had ruthlessly dropped that novel around the second volume.
"Why did that author lose their mind there?"
The core of the work was the thrill of being treated like a god in another world with trivial modern items. But the protagonist put aside the god-playing and territory-building he was supposed to be doing and suddenly started crawling outside to fight real-world yakuza.
The genre suddenly turned into a real-world battle story, and I deleted the bookmark without looking back, disgusted by the terrible development that betrayed male readers for the sake of money, akin to a sudden BL drift.
"I must never live like that. Why would I have any reason to throw punches outside?"
I couldn't even leave the house anyway. I planned to quietly suck the honey offered by the other-worlders on the other side of that monitor from this small, safe corner of my room.
I vowed to walk the path of perfect, safe profit-making, dominating their faith with overwhelming wealth and power.
With that, I drifted into a deep sleep, picturing a sweet future where I’d won the lottery of a money-duplication bug.
The murky river surrounding the old castle. Hundreds of Kappa were still camped there. Those bizarre water demons, with plates on their bald heads and shells on their backs, prowled around the castle walls, constantly churning the water.
"Aja-ja-jat!"
One Kappa let out a strange cry and defecated yellow waste into the river. The excrement they left behind wasn't just filth.
These deformed creatures, created by the power of an Outer God, were nothing less than poison that defied the providence of this world, Eden.
As soon as the yellow waste touched the water, the river erupted in black bubbles, becoming even more lethal. Even as it diluted with the slowly flowing river, the water became discolored and gradually contaminated.
Alien and disgusting beings. In the days when the order and peace of Eden were intact, this would have been a landscape one couldn't even imagine.
An era when the gods of the Pantheon kept their eyes wide open. In those days, such lowly monsters that dared to defecate in the sacred river would have been exterminated within a day.
An era of glory where champions favored by the gods or great Chosen were active everywhere. If it were them, they would have smashed the heads of the Kappa with sacred hammers the moment they discovered them, shouting, "I will not forgive the vermin that defile my heart!" And that day, the Kappa subjugation quest board at the Eden Adventurers' Guild would have been neatly stamped with a three-skull difficulty completion mark.
But the situation was different now. The gods of the Pantheon were completely blocked, as if someone had cut their cosmic internet cables. A helpless silence where no messages or powers could be sent down to the lower world.
The continent's champions and half-breed children, who had boasted invincible martial prowess while constantly linked to the gods' power, were reduced to mere mortals once that connection was severed. They had either died miserably as meat shields in the first offensive of the Outer Gods, or if they were lucky enough to survive, they were in a miserable state, hiding in deep underground shelters, barely clinging to life and waiting for the time of corruption.
Eden, with no forces left to keep them in check, was now just a chessboard for the Outer Gods.
The Kappa in the river now considered this place their own front yard. They filled their bellies by cruelly tearing apart the remaining native fish with their long, clawed hands, and enjoyed the desperate scent of Aria and the refugees starving to death above the castle walls as a side dish.
But suddenly, an anomaly occurred in the peaceful and bizarre daily life of those water demons.
Among the group eating fish, one particularly large Kappa suddenly stopped eating and stood stock-still.
A bizarre and strange silence. While its fellow kin looked on with puzzled eyes, it stood stiff as if it had been cursed. Its reptilian eyes, devoid of focus, rolled upward, and it stared blankly at the sky.
It looked as if it had received a chilling oracle from beyond an invisible, unknown dimension.
"Kiririk... Kii-eek..."
A strange, bone-grinding friction sound leaked from its mouth. Soon, red bloodshot veins appeared in its murky pupils, and they were completely dyed in the madness of a beast.
Splash! It threw away the corpse of the fish it had been eating and began to rush toward the castle walls, cutting through the water like a madman.
The outer wall of the castle had been neglected for a long time, full of sharp protrusions and jagged, broken masonry. It was a formidable barrier that no beast with normal intelligence would ever try to climb with its bare body.
But the Kappa, gripped by madness, drove its claws into the wall without hesitation.
Suck! Its green scales peeled off, and its flesh was torn by the sharp stone edges. Dark red blood flowed down the castle wall, but it was like a machine that couldn't feel pain, climbing only upward.
Zzzzt. Crack. Its fingernails broke, and its toenails were pulled out entirely. Even so, it climbed and climbed the wall, flicking its tongue like a madman. The other kin just watched its bizarre, solitary behavior in chilling silence, with only their heads poked out of the water.
Finally, its clawed hand, with all the flesh torn away, hooked onto the very top edge of the castle wall.
On top of the wall. In the front yard of that very infirmary building near the chapel where the nun Aria and the starving children were huddled and sleeping. The Kappa's hideous, blood-stained head began to slowly rise above the castle wall. Greedy saliva dripped from between its teeth, wetting the stone floor.