The Church of Judddak (1)
“Please, don't do this.”
The executioner pleaded in an agonized whisper. Executing people was his livelihood, yet for the first time in his career, he wanted nothing more than to refuse the job—even if it cost him his life. The neck currently resting beneath the guillotine's heavy iron blade belonged to none other than Darian: the undisputed Hero of Adrian, and the reigning epicenter of all discussion across the Gallery. If the executioner brought that blade down, his own life would undoubtedly be extinguished by an enraged populace before the day was out.
“What are you waiting for?! Drop the blade at once!” barked one of the high bishops from below the scaffold, his face contorted in vicious impatience.
If the executioner obeyed, he would face social death and certain retaliation. If he refused, he would be struck down on the spot for insubordination. As he stood trembling at the apex of this lethal dilemma, a voice reached his ears, astonishingly calm and serene.
“It is quite alright. Proceed with the execution.”
The words came from Darian himself. It was hardly the sort of composure one expected from a condemned man pinned to a chopping block.
“S-Sir? But…”
“I will not perish. Have faith.”
Faith in what? Judddak? To the executioner’s eyes, Darian was a revered hero, yet unquestionably a religious fanatic. However magnificent Judddak might be, was he not ultimately mortal? The executioner wanted to grab Darian by the shoulders and scream at him to wake up from his delusions.
“Begin already!” the bishop shrieked again, the veins bulging across his flushed neck.
The executioner shut his eyes tight. At the end of the day, he had a family to feed. He, too, was someone’s father.
“Forgive me…”
With a tearful murmur, he pulled the lever. The heavy, razor-sharp iron blade plummeted with terrifying speed. But the instant the steel struck Darian’s neck—
BOOM!
An explosive torrent of radiance burst from Darian’s flesh. The blinding flash instantly vaporized the falling iron blade into harmless motes of dust before piercing straight toward the heavens.
“W-Wh… what…?”
Staring at the impossible spectacle, the executioner’s jaw dropped so wide he collapsed backward onto the wooden floorboards. Gasps and cries erupted across the square. A colossal pillar of pure, incandescent light tore through the clouds, painting the sky in blinding gold. While the crowd stood frozen in stunned disbelief, the pillar of radiance gradually subsided, revealing the silhouette of a man stepping forward through the dissipating sparks.
It was Darian, his hand firmly gripping the radiant Holy Sword.
“H-Hero-nim…”
This was no impostor or mere political figurehead. Anyone with eyes could see it: he was the living incarnation of a true Hero. As the executioner trembled in terror, expecting immediate vengeance, Darian looked down upon him with the very same serene warmth as before.
“I understand why you acted as you did.”
“U-Ugh… *sniff*…”
“Have faith.”
Though the man had just attempted to sever his neck, Darian understood his plight and granted absolute forgiveness. In that moment, the executioner no longer saw a boy blinded by religious zeal. Overcome by the majestic aura of a sacred savior, he dropped to both knees and slammed his forehead against the scaffold.
“I believe…! I believe in you…!”
Down below, the bishop’s shrill, panicked shriek shattered the silence.
“I-Impossible! A Hero? There is no way in hell he is a genuine Hero! This is an illusion! Such nonsense does not exist in our world!”
He was a high bishop of the Cathedral, yet he had never possessed a shred of true belief. He was nothing more than a self-serving opportunist who wore the holy vestments solely for the intoxicating taste of secular authority. Yet here, right before his eyes, stood a radiant paragon of divine wrath.
While the bishop struggled in vain to process the reality unfolding before him, a hand clamped down onto his bare scalp like a vice.
“Heretic. Does your heart remain stubbornly blind even after witnessing the truth with your own eyes?”
Darian’s voice rang cold as ice. In his other hand, the tip of the Holy Sword rested squarely against the bishop’s trembling throat.
“God exists.”
“Ah… a-aaagh…”
The gleaming edge bit lightly into flesh. As tears of primal terror streamed down the bishop's pale cheeks, Darian leaned down and whispered into his ear.
“Place your faith in Lord Judddak.”
Slash!
With a crisp, sickening cleave, the head of one of the Cathedral’s three reigning bishops dropped cleanly to the cobblestones. Darian hoisted the severed head toward the open sky and roared with thunderous conviction.
“Glory to Judddak!”
Each other's locations are now shared.
A portion of the abilities belonging to the Holy Sword, owned by 'Judddak', has been conferred upon the subject.
Pure, unadulterated ecstasy washed over Darian’s face.
[GIF: One of the three bishops getting his head cleanly lopped off]
I will never doubt again lmao;;
Please forgive me, Lord Judddak
Darian had survived, and he had successfully awakened his powers.
“Nice, things worked out!”
I leaned back in my bunker chair, thinking the crisis had resolved itself cleanly. That was, until another string of prompts flashed across my screen.
Each other's locations are now shared.
A portion of the Holy Sword's abilities will be shared with the designated target.
*Only applicable while the target maintains 'Gallery Master' status.
*Abilities can be revoked at any time.
Please select an ability for the current 'Gallery Master'.
“Wait, this isn't nice at all!”
If I had known granting him Gallery Master status would turn on mutual Wi-Fi hotspotting and GPS tracking, I never would have clicked confirm! My subterranean bunker location, which nobody in this entire godforsaken world was supposed to know, had just been laid completely bare. Even if my bunker was impregnable, I had no surface escape routes yet; if someone sealed off the ground above, I’d be trapped down here forever.
“This is seriously getting out of hand.”
The prompt asking me to assign Darian an ability blinked persistently, but I couldn't care less about that right now. To think my coordinates had leaked through such an absurd oversight. Meeting Darian in Kellierton was already risky enough, but now he had real-time navigation pointed straight at my bedroom?
I shot him an urgent message through the direct line. In the livestream gif embedded on the front page, Darian abruptly froze, dropped both knees to the pavement, and pressed his head against the ground.
Seeing Darian's reverent posture, the surrounding imperial soldiers exchanged glances, hastily tossed their weapons aside, and dropped to their knees in unison.
Darian promptly slammed his forehead into the stone once more, raised both hands skyward, and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“How could I dare stand before Your divine presence! Please, speak as freely as You wish!”
Is it truly humanly possible to worship someone with this much psychotic intensity?
“Wait… is this bastard messing with me on purpose?”
Was he trolling me because he had my coordinates? But before my suspicion could fester, Darian seemed to grasp the nature of my anxiety and attached an item to the chat.
A sacred scroll imbued with the life force of the caster.
If this parchment is torn, the caster perishes instantly.
Caster: Darian
“Ugh, my head…”
It was the exact same story during the incident with the Jusamo cult. Do these religious zealots suffer from an incurable allergy to keeping their own lives unless they surrender them to me? I immediately hit the return button on the system inventory and threw the scroll straight back into his inventory before typing again.
“Fine, I get that you believe in me…”
The core problem wasn't interpersonal trust. It was the fact that this wasn't mutual respect between two men—it was a zealot's blind, terrifying faith in an almighty god.
“Wait, over a single can of tuna back then? Seriously?”
Anyone walking past a dying kid collapsed on the roadside would have tossed him a snack. Especially someone like me, sitting on enough canned tuna to build a fortress. How could a simple tin of fish turn a rational human being into a radical fanatic willing to throw his life away?
Evidently, my question stepped on a massive landmine, because Darian began unleashing a passionate manifesto at blinding speed.
“If I talk to this guy for another minute, my brain is going to melt.”
That brief exchange laid it out with absolute clarity: Darian meant every single word. If I typed the command for him to slit his own throat right now, this lunatic wouldn't hesitate for even a fraction of a second. But before I could worry about deprogramming a holy crusader, the situation on the ground escalated. The Cathedral hadn't been fully cleansed yet; their remnants were still active.
Did anyone even know a place like this existed?
The moment the tables turned, they all scuttled downstairs to stage a siege. This is beyond pathetic lololol
Nearly every corrupt authority figure in the Cathedral's hierarchy had been butchered on the spot. However, their roots ran deep. The moment that celestial beacon had illuminated the sky, the surviving clergy gathered their personal guards and fled into the dark recesses beneath the basilica.
“Why bother, though?”
It baffled me. Bunkering down in a basement was a fool's errand. The primary food supply for this world came directly from the system Marketplace. If I pulled the plug on their access, they had no rations, no spare gear, and no legal authority to wage a protracted siege.
The forum shared my skepticism. Then, noticing the absence of any remaining bishops among the retreating forces in the feed, an ominous thought struck me.
“Don't tell me they're trying to escape through a secret passage?”
Whenever an ancient fortress possessed an undisclosed cellar, it was guaranteed to feature a rat-hole for fleeing cowards. To make matters worse, their tactical defense was unexpectedly fierce.
[GIF: Cathedral mages channeling fire magic continuously to stoke a raging wall of flames]
They're going to burn themselves out anyway, what's the point?
They had clearly anticipated this contingency. The entrance leading down into the subterranean complex had been converted into an impassable sea of flame. Choking black smoke and blistering heat kept Darian's knights pinned in place, unable to charge through the bottleneck without being cooked alive inside their iron plate.
“I guess I have to call in an Assistant Moderator.”
Paddaks like Soon-to-Die Vampire or Felici could extinguish or bypass this flame barrier with a snap of their fingers. But given the sheer distance between their domains and Adrian, it would take them too long to arrive. Just as my fingers hovered over the keyboard to page a sub-mod before the heretics managed to slip away—
Before the roaring inferno that threatened to incinerate seasoned knights where they stood, Darian walked forward alone. Completely heedless of the searing heat scorching his skin, he fell to one knee before the blazing archway and gazed up into empty air—straight toward the invisible system interface.
“What is he doing now?”
I stopped typing and leaned toward the monitor. A split second later, a direct notification flashed on my display.
He was offering an impromptu prayer, asking me to bless him with divine power.
“Wait, how am I supposed to do that?!”
I wasn't a god; I was just an ordinary, chronically online gallery addict shut inside a concrete basement. But before my fingers could type out a clarification, Darian finished his prayer and stood back up.
“Wait, don't tell me—!”
A horrifying premonition seized my chest, and in the very next breath, Darian hurled his entire body straight into the raging inferno.