Prophecy (3)
Prophecy (3) — Lotte Department Store, Incheon, 5th Floor Culture Hall
I took another careful look at the two mannequins standing motionless in front of me.
Come to think of it, I hadn't noticed in the dim orange glow, but under the full light of my flashlight I could see a sickly, yellowish tint mixed into their bodies.
And for some reason, that color looked familiar. Terribly familiar.
"Oh, you son of a biiiitch! You filthy bastard!"
Wait, so that woman from before had been turned into a doll soaked in semen?
Unable to stomach the sudden disgust, I slammed my telekinesis into the mannequin.
Krrrrrk—
With a sound like something boiling, my hand trembled violently as I concentrated the force.
I was briefly surprised by the unexpected durability, but soon enough the mannequin's neck snapped and it crumpled to the floor.
"Mi, Mihee! Nooo!"
"Mihee can go freeze to death! You really were the calamity! A fucking lunatic of a calamity!"
When I smashed the remaining mannequin as well, the rabbit bastard started whimpering with a hollow look on his face.
"Shut up! You semen-soaked rabbit bastard! You're going to tell me everything that's happened here, from beginning to end!"
"Mi, Mihee… Mihee…"
"You little shit!"
Crunch—
"Gyaaaaaaargh!"
"Whimper one more time and what's next is the part of you that you treasure most."
"I-I'll talk! Anything but that!"
Choking back tears, the rabbit bastard began his story.
He'd suddenly blacked out in the department store, and when he came to, he was sealed inside the culture hall.
According to him, the moment the rabbit woke up, the camp's survivors were already deadlocked over what to do with a 'pre-infected' like him.
Eventually they reached a consensus — and it was to throw him out as bait so they could loot for food, their supplies having run completely dry.
Cast out as the winning bait, and with the men unable to endure the hunger, they began leaping up toward the sixth floor — while our rabbit, miraculously, managed to find his way into a bathroom even in the darkness.
"…Why the bathroom of all places?"
"I-I wanted to jerk off once before I died."
"…You're a living legend."
The absolute degenerate churned out his final load in life, and the system, apparently moved by the feat, offered him a job.
And that job was: Semen Mage.
The semen the rabbit bastard splattered everywhere turned into dolls, and he used those dolls to slaughter zombies by the dozen.
Then he swaggered right back into the culture hall like he owned the place.
With the men who'd gone upstairs never returning, he ascended to the position of the camp's ruler.
And after that, naturally, the rabbit bastard unleashed his beastly appetite on the women still left in the hall.
But his ability had one fatal flaw.
Any woman who came into contact with even a drop of his semen would instantly be turned into a semen doll.
And our rabbit discovered this truth at the exact moment he was finishing inside Seong Mihee, the prettiest girl in the camp.
Dolls made from a female medium performed on a whole different level from the others — but no man can have sex with a doll drenched in his own spunk.
He tried invoking the legendary 'Trust me, babe, I'll pull out' — only for every partner to turn into a doll the instant he finished. One catastrophe after another.
I had appeared right after the last woman remaining — that woman from before — had become a doll herself.
"If what you're saying is true, then why are there only two dolls here?"
"Th-they all went down the escalator to guard the lower floors…"
Ah, right. I came down from the upper floors, so I never ran into them.
"Then clearing out the food court — that was you too?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
Now everything finally made sense.
"So there isn't a single useful woman left in this place?"
"…No. Just a bunch of old, useless relics."
I glanced at the crowd still sprawled on the stage, not even rising despite the commotion.
Gaunt, skeletal faces and vacant, hollow stares. Everyone was either old or impossibly young.
"You little bastard — so you and your women ate every last scrap of the remaining food too, huh?"
The woman whining earlier hadn't been exaggerating after all.
When the guy nodded in affirmation, I stomped his head again and he started squealing.
"P-please spare me! You're an Awakened, right? I-I'm an Awakened too! I'll serve you with everything I have! I'll do anything!"
"……"
"It's just a little gross, that's all. My dolls can tear through a zombie like nobody's business! With enough s-semen, I could be a one-man army…"
Splat—
There was nothing more to hear, and no reason to hear it.
With the sound of his head bursting open, my system messages refreshed.
You have executed an Awakened one.
You have gained 1,000 Faith.
You have absorbed the defeated Awakened one's inventory!
I opened the inventory and checked the items the bastard had been carrying.
Stashes of carefully hidden spare food, and a pile of lewd books to help him comfort himself.
Where the hell did this guy even get books like these?
"Everyone, please rise! I have killed the tyrant of this area!"
The bright beam of my flashlight swept across the faces of the group huddled together.
Wincing at the sudden light, they slowly began to stand.
"Wh-who are…"
"Here — have something to eat first, and then we'll talk."
With a benevolent smile, I released some of the food from my inventory.
Gathering slowly around me, they let out little gasps of wonder and began devouring the food like starving dogs.
I studied each of their faces one by one.
A grandfather and grandmother. Two middle-aged women.
And one small child.
It was exactly as the nameless rabbit bastard had said.
The men had all gone up to the sixth floor and been swept away by the zombies, and the women had all been turned into dolls by that idiotic rabbit bastard.
This isn't even scavenger-tier. It's straight-up garbage collection.
If I hadn't been the head of a religion, I would have killed every last one of them without a second thought.
It was obvious they'd be dead weight — useless mouths doing nothing but draining the food supply.
And yet, humans like these were precisely what I needed most.
They were invaluable supply sources, churning out faith points just by believing in me.
"Here, have some more."
"…Th-thank you…"
I beamed as I handed food to the child, who nibbled at it like a wary little squirrel.
When I stroked the head of the kid bowing over and over in thanks, a thick coat of hair grease smeared across my palm — clearly unwashed for a very long time.
Oh, god… gross…
Barely keeping my grimace in check, I waited until they finished their meal.
With their hunger somewhat dulled, the old folks began drifting toward me of their own accord, and I cast Lack Identification on them.
Desperate, utterly abject voids rippled within all of them in common.
And I began to spit those voids back out, one by one.
"How much you have suffered. In this nightmare that struck without warning, you have merely endured each day because you had no other choice."
These people were of a different quality entirely from the relatively sturdy survivors back at the library.
They were weaker. Far more broken. Far more despairing.
"The young men who dismissed you as useless, the monster wielding his twisted powers — how much humiliation did you endure at their hands? Every time that monster devoured another woman, you must have trembled in terror. Just thinking of it breaks my heart."
These souls, too exhausted and rotted to utter a single word of protest, were an easy dish to cook — even for me, with no job skill of my own.
"But it's all right now. I have come for you, in the name of the One Heart Salvation Cult! The Salvation Cult has come to bring you warm meals, a safe bed, and eternal peace!"
For showmanship's sake, I burned through the mana inside my body.
As the mana smoldered and blazed, a radiant light poured out from my whole frame.
"Ahhhhh—"
Amid the small gasps of awe, I cast my telekinesis on the young child who was staring at me, dumbfounded.
As the little one floated gently into the air, I caught them tenderly in my arms and let a merciful smile spread across my face.
The smell of urine and grime stung my nose, but with flawless expression management I extended my free hand forward.
"Come! Let us go together! To our Paradise!"
After lifting all the elderly and children with telekinesis, I began retracing the way I'd come.
Levitating my flashlight and ten-odd elderly passengers at once was my first attempt at such multitasking — but level 20 telekinesis handled it without the slightest strain.
"What's your name, little one?"
"…Sh-Shin Jihoon, sir."
"What a pretty name. And your parents?"
"B-bad people took them. *Sniff*… *sob*…"
"It's all right now. I'm here. The Salvation Cult will save you."
I patted the head of the child who immediately burst into tears, then leapt up onto the rooftop.
"There we go! You're safe! Just hold on a little longer and we'll reach our destination!"
The moment we rose into the open sky, I reassured the terrified elderly passengers and began heading back toward the Sanctuary.
Ugh, this kind of thing really isn't my forte.
The brief moment of subduing the rabbit bastard had been far more entertaining.
This is exactly what I keep a Vice Cult Leader around for — the menial labor.
I needed to get back fast and dump all of this on Seong Gaeul.
The orange dome marking the Sanctuary finally came into view.
I glanced at the zombies still swarming around the Heavenly Barrier and slipped slowly inside.
The moment I entered, an overwhelming sense of omnipotence returned to me as if reclaiming stolen strength, and I alighted softly on the rooftop.
Seong Gaeul was standing there, watching me — as if she'd been waiting.
"There you are."
"What, were you waiting for me? Where's Ayoung?"
"Sleeping in her room. But who are these people behind you?"
I slowly lowered them to the ground and whispered to Seong Gaeul.
"My newly recruited missionary targets. Do make them into loyal believers for me, Vice Cult Leader."
"Where did you suddenly pick up that weird way of talking? Never mind that — did you deal with that White Calamity thing or whatever it was?"
"Ah, of course. Who do you think I am? Just leave it all to this Cult Leader."
White Calamity, my ass. They were just a bunch of white cum-blob freaks.
Freaks who couldn't even come close to the Sanctuary — had the Holy Maiden's prophecy been underestimating me all along?
"The White Calamity in the 'Lotte Mart.' You handled it precisely?"
"Of course I diiiid, …huh?"
Hold on a second.
The space where the rabbit bastard and the elderly had been was, to be precise, the fifth floor of Lotte Department Store.
"…Fuck."
"There was some kind of misunderstanding, right? Tell me there was."
"Right. Anyway, keep things running properly. I'll deal with the leftover stragglers and be back."
To be precise, the place I'd visited was a Shinsegae Department Store that had been renamed to Lotte Department Store.
And that Lotte Department Store had a Lotte Mart inside it.
The 'Lotte Mart' the prophecy spoke of was on the building's first basement floor — and I'd left without ever verifying it.
"Except the White Calamity and a dirty mass of semen matched the imagery perfectly…"
Prophecies are always most dangerous when you think they've gone astray, wasn't that it?
In a world where you had to double-check even an extinguished flame, ambiguity this thick demanded a full reconfirmation.
KWAANG—
With a burst of ground-shattering force I rocketed back into the sky, this time heading for the real 'Lotte Mart.'