Cult Leader Maker (1)
Cult Leader Maker (1) — Hanmaum Guwon Cult, 3rd Floor
"So what you're telling me is that this White Calamity was the variants all along?"
Having heard the full account of everything that had happened, Seong Gaeul drummed her fingers lightly against her lips. The fluster I still hadn't managed to shake bled naturally into my voice.
"No, that's exactly what I'm saying! Zombies are supposed to be parasites that use humans as hosts, or some virus-induced disease—there has to be context! What are they, Zerg or something? Since when do they lay eggs?! Does any of this make sense to you?!"
"And what exactly about it doesn't make sense?"
Why wouldn't this woman sympathize with me when she was the Vice Cult Leader and all? All I wanted was a simple I see. That must be so hard for you.
"Regardless, I cannot comprehend this phenomenon! This is a blasphemy against the very concept of a zombie apocalypse!"
"Whew... Oh exalted and venerable~ Cult Leader, please come back to your senses. Zombies were never clearly defined to begin with—they were always a fantasy creature."
"BLAAAARGH! There was an unspoken pact among humankind! If a zombie suddenly breathes fire and takes to the skies, that's Pokémon, not an apocalypse! Fine—say I could somehow accept even that! But laying eggs?! Reproducing on their own?! This world needs to hold on to at least a few of its lines, I'm telling you!"
"With an Awakened one like you in the picture, wasn't the orthodox apocalypse dead on arrival anyway?"
"...You wicked bitch."
Talking back to her superior without a shred of hesitation. This woman really had zero flexibility.
My lips jutted out in a sulk, and Seong Gaeul's brow furrowed deeply.
"Put those filthy lips away."
"...You cold bitch."
"Enough with the 'bitch' this and 'bitch' that—let's start thinking seriously now."
She pointed at the map of Incheon spread across the desk. An orange circle drawn around Incheon Central Library, and a red circle drawn around the Lotte Department Store's Incheon Terminal branch.
"Out of this entire sprawling region, we've secured exactly two zones—well, no. By your own account, the department store wasn't secured so much as half-demolished."
I honestly couldn't say how long a building with a massive hole punched through its interior would hold up. Even in the moment I'd exterminated every last variant egg and swept the place clean of supplies, the crack that had opened beneath the Lotte Mart kept spreading wider and wider.
"It's fine. That place is an empty husk now. We took everything worth taking—people and goods alike."
"...Right. And thanks to that, I get to suffer indignities like this one."
"How is that an indignity?! Are you embarrassed to be seen in office wear?"
Did she have any idea how hard I'd torn through the women's section with my eyes blazing to find that outfit! The white blouse with its lovely curves, the black jacket. The short bob framing her long, deer-like neck, maximizing her fuckability for all it was worth, and that face radiating one hundred percent icy elegance.
I sprang up from my seat and beckoned to her.
"Haa..."
As though resigned to her fate, she slowly walked over.
Click— clack—
The crisp ring of high heels; peach-colored stockings clinging tight to legs that went on forever; and, as the crowning touch, a black skirt tracing one graceful curve after another.
I swept her into my arms the moment she reached me, slipped a hand under her skirt, and kneaded that perkily lifted ass of hers. Whether it was the stockings or not, the added springiness was insanely addictive.
"What? Want me to put glasses on too, so I can really play secretary?"
"No! Absolutely not! Glasses that hide even a sliver of that face would be a waste on a national scale."
"...I try to play along, and this is the shit I get."
I buried my face in the nape of her grumbling neck. Between the scent of her fragrant skin and her body wash, I could feel my "asset" gradually firming up. Seong Gaeul—sensing with ghostly precision the exact moment I was about to escalate things—gave me a light push.
"No. The important conversation comes first."
"Come on! Having to hold myself back while you're dressed like that is basically torture..."
Even if she refused, forcing the issue would have been no problem at all. I was brimming with the urge to bind her with telekinesis on the spot and give her a loving, merciless pounding. But even a hopeless loser like me understood that doing that to her—now that she had finally chosen to cooperate and adapt—would utterly fuck up the mood, and everything that came after.
"Fine. What's so urgent? Spit it out. I'm fully loaded with motivation right now."
"Haa... I realize it all over again. You really are nothing but a pathetic loser with muscle."
Back when she wasn't in my hands, that would have been a flat-out insult; now that Seong Gaeul was the Vice Cult Leader of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult, I had no particular intention of objecting. Even a loser's gotta be sweet to his own woman.
Watching me answer her jab with a laugh, Seong Gaeul returned to her seat and opened her mouth with a grave expression.
"How much do you trust me?"
"...Where's this coming from?"
"That's exactly where it's coming from."
What was this? Was it one of those affection tests women loved to run—if I were drowning, would you save your parents first, or me?
No. Knowing Seong Gaeul's personality as I'd come to know it, she was genuinely asking how much I trusted her.
I studied her with all due seriousness. She bore the kiss marks I'd left on her, ate the food I'd given her, wore the clothes I'd dressed her in.
"You're mine forever. Nobody on earth distrusts their own property."
"Good. Then tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"Everything that happened from the moment you awakened until the day you met me."
The smile that had never once left my lips slowly faded. Only after the two of us had held each other's gaze for a long while did I speak, looking into those star-bright eyes of hers.
"In moments like these, telling the whole story without a word is normally the height of cool—but as you're so fond of pointing out, I'm kind of a loser."
I asked Seong Gaeul, who simply waited in silence.
"For what purpose?"
"For us."
"...All right."
The awakening that began one week after the zombie apocalypse erupted. The growth that started while clearing zombies out of my apartment complex. The euphoria I'd felt disposing of the pseudo-cultist ajumma who'd holed up inside it. The System, responding to that euphoria, had offered me a job—and to play to that job's aptitude, I'd chosen Survivor Group. Kang San, encountered at the perfect moment. The destination, the Library Camp, taken with barely a drop of blood.
Having heard my entire life story in intimate detail, Seong Gaeul drummed her fingers against her lips once more.
"So, first finding: not every Awakened person's goal is founding a religion like you did."
"Exactly. My job just happens to be the special one—Pseudo-Cult Leader."
"And that job was proposed by this System of yours?"
"Well, it isn't random, that much I know. It's probably shaped by the Awakened person's own behavior."
The me who had offered that pseudo-cultist ajumma a deal: abandon your old religion and believe in me instead. The rabbit bastard whose final wish in life had been nothing more than a handjob. The System proposes jobs that fit an Awakened person's desires and actions.
"And you never had some long-held ambition of founding a religion, either."
"Well, if you insist on splitting hairs, no."
How many people in the twenty-first century walk around aspiring to found their own religion? All I'd ever done was think, hard and constantly, about standing above other people. The zombie apocalypse had merely been the seasoning for the delusion that such a world could actually arrive—and once the delusion came true, I'd been too busy running upward toward my original goal to think of anything else. The desire to become a ruler had only crystallized into "Cult Leader" after I met that pseudo-cultist ajumma. That was all it was.
"So a clueless amateur with no training just happened to stumble into a broken job and skills. That's your story?"
"No, that's a bit... I mean, wasn't even making it this far a matter of talent?"
If I'd floundered around uselessly when the awakenings first began, the snowball that started rolling with the Zombie First Kill achievement would never have made it this far.
"Then why not put that talent toward something like 'Zombie Butcher' or 'Zombie Slaughterer'? Why 'Cult Leader' of all things?"
"...Huh?"
That I had genuinely never considered.
"The System never even offered jobs like that in the first place..."
"Being above somebody's head suited you better than hunting zombies did. Admit it."
"I mean... true. If I may offer an excuse that isn't really an excuse..."
"If you'd been a Butcher instead of a Cult Leader, you wouldn't be freely fucking women in this little paradise right now, would you?"
"...That's true."
Even with some other job, riding the lead I'd held from day one, bedding a woman or two would hardly have been difficult. But I never would have built the fun skill set—Liquid of Subordination, Lack Identification—or a safe haven to keep it all in.
"Decide it right here, once and for all. Is the thing you want to become a rapist who plays at being a pseudo-cult leader while living a worthless life, violating women wherever the mood strikes—or a true ruler enthroned atop a religion that everyone believes in blindly and obeys utterly, dominating women's bodies and minds alike?"
"Isn't that comparison a little too openly extreme?"
"Just answer."
"The latter, obviously?"
Where would you even find the dumbass who'd pick the former?
Hearing my answer, Seong Gaeul gave a small nod. "Of course it should be."
Excuse me? If it was obvious, why did you ask?!
Clap— clap—
Seong Gaeul clapped twice, as if to clear the air, and declared: "Then it's settled. Time for the muscle-brained loser to become the actual head of a religion."
"Hold on. You're seriously doing my achievements dirty here. Did you not see Ayoung? I turned her into a perfectly splendid Saintess of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult. I feel awkward saying this so bluntly, but you ended up as our cult's Vice Cult Leader too, didn't you?"
"A few sweet words, drugged spit down the throat, and nothing but endless sex—that's your grand achievement?"
"Hey, any road's a good road, so long as it gets you to Seoul."
"You idiot! Didn't I tell you before? What happens when the day comes that no longer works—are you going to fold and go 'Oh, is that so?' and give up? You told me you wouldn't!"
...She had a point. We'd had this exact conversation not long ago.
"Think about Yoon Ayoung's prophecy. If you'd been planning to live out your days fat and comfortable under this barrier, I doubt that prophecy would ever have come down. The variants you described were never a threat big enough to bring this barrier down—were they?"
The great menace the Saintess had named at the opening of her prophecy. It had never been a warning aimed at me inside the Sanctuary. It meant that the variants—multiplying like an explosion—would become a threat to the cult's expansion. I had no intention, just as Seong Gaeul said, of stopping beneath this barrier. If I had, I'd never have bothered stepping outside it. I'd have simply held Seong Gaeul and Yoon Ayoung like flowers in both hands and lived out my own private heaven.
Seong Gaeul handed me two documents she'd prepared in advance.
Let's Become a Real Cult Leader — Plan 1
Let's Become a Real Cult Leader — Plan 2
Whoa—what is this? When had she even found the time to prepare something like this?
She lightly caught my hand as I moved to open Plan 1.
"Who, exactly, is the Hanmaum Guwon Cult's object of worship? Look at most religions—the founder is somebody's proxy, somebody's descendant, somebody's avatar. Is there some being above you, pouring power down from on high?"
Someone above me? If I truly had to name one, it would be the System—but calling myself the System's proxy felt somehow wrong. No matter how I turned it over in my head, the System was nothing more than a tool to me.
"There isn't one. The ruler of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult is me, and me alone."
"Good. Then throw out Plan 2 and read Plan 1."
The arm that had blocked my hand swept Plan 2 out from beneath Plan 1 and carried it away.
From the very first page of Let's Become a Real Cult Leader — Plan 1, a set of guidelines began in beautifully neat handwriting—the tone of speech to correct, the personality to project, the atmosphere to exude without ever saying a word. As I read slowly through the pages, Seong Gaeul's voice rose like narration.
Always remember.
True subordination is not the sweat that drips from a throat forced down by strength.
It is the tears that flow toward the hand stroking a head bowed of its own will.
And someone who has wept like that will never, ever try to leave your embrace.
Longing and desire simmered in her voice. Struck by an inexplicable déjà vu, I found myself staring at her—and in that radiant smile of hers, I saw myself. The me who had once stood before the pseudo-cultist ajumma.
"Now is the time for you to become a true Cult Leader."