Day of the Unbelievers (2)
Day of the Unbelievers (2) — Rooftop of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult
"They're claiming to be a rescue team sent by the government. They say they want to speak with whoever's in charge?"
"Whaaat? You've got to be kidding me. The shelters have all collapsed, and they expect anyone to buy…."
Crude handwriting sprawled across a sketchbook held up with total confidence. Whoever had written it, I didn't trust it one bit.
"It's a trap. Best to ignore it—whether it's proselytizing or whatever else."
"Our Vice Cult Leader really is a nervous little thing, isn't she."
She hovered in midair now, her posture long since perfected through practice.
"Seo Taesan, see to it that the believers don't get rattled. Keep the mood steady."
"As you command, Cult Leader!" Seo Taesan bowed at a perfect ninety degrees and disappeared below the rooftop.
"I'll be right back. We'll talk afterward."
Bang! Bang! Two gunshots, as if hurrying me along, and without waiting for her reply I launched myself toward the source.
"Kieeeeeeeek!"
Lightly outpacing the zombies already sprinting toward the noise, I touched down soft as a feather on the rooftop where the men were gathered.
Thud.
"A-ah, pleased to meet you! So you had a flight skill as well!"
The moment my feet hit the ground, the men—looking just slightly flustered—stuck out their hands with bright, easy smiles.
"Yes. Pleasure's all mine."
We exchanged a light handshake while I scanned them. Even as they pumped my arm, I could feel them sizing me up in return.
Nine men. Armed with rifles.
Each of the men ringing me had a matte-black rifle slung over one shoulder.
K2s. But why aren't they wearing uniforms?
For men toting military rifles and claiming to be a government rescue team, their clothes were remarkably free-spirited. One wore a navy plaid shirt; the guy beside him, a gray sweatsuit. The one who'd shaken my hand had on a black tracksuit, top and bottom properly matched.
"Hahaha, magnificent! You held on to that thread of hope even in a moment of absolute despair! You can rest easy now!"
"You're from the government?"
"That's right. You saw civilians carrying guns, didn't you?" The man laughed with immense pride as he patted his rifle.
Well then. At a time like this, the guy fussing over the difference between civilian and military gun ownership seems like the strange one, doesn't he?
"Even from this far away, that barrier skill of yours is holding rock solid. Your skill level must be quite high."
At the barefaced sucker-probing disguised as small talk, I offered an easy laugh. I was willing to play along with their tune for a little while longer.
"That's right. I got lucky."
"There's no such thing as luck in levels—that's all the fruit of your own power, Awakened one. And judging by your attire… could you perhaps be a pastor?"
"You could say I'm something close."
"Ahh, I knew it. Amen—"
"Amen—"
"Kieeeeeeeek!"
The howling of zombies, now pressing close to the very building we stood on, echoed across the rooftop. The only unarmed man among them—the one in the fluorescent-green sweatsuit—flicked a glance at the black tracksuit. The man gave a slight nod, then smiled at me.
"We'll need to have a rather long talk about the newly issued directives and the number of personnel we're rescuing—shall we step inside for a bit?"
"With zombies swarming in like that?"
"Hahaha, no trouble at all. Do you take us for amateurs? We are professionals of rescue. Professionals."
Having said his piece, the man disappeared through the rooftop door into the building. His crew filed in after him, and the men left behind at my back ran their fingers along their rifles, pressing in on me with quiet insistence.
How fun.
Matching myself to their intent, I stepped slowly through the doorway. One floor beneath the rooftop, the officetel door hung open, its frame crushed half to splinters. The fluorescent sweatsuit was lightly dusting off his hands; he looked at me and smirked.
My Lack Identification bored straight through those arrogant eyes.
100% — That bitch I railed yesterday, and the moron standing in front of me.
In all my time since acquiring Lack Identification, I had never once seen a deficiency glisten so thickly with lechery and bloodlust.
Kigigik— as I entered the officetel, the door groaned shut behind me with the screech of forced, buckling metal.
"Now then! We have a great deal to discuss. Please, have a seat."
The fluorescent sweatsuit took up post at the door with one leg cocked, while the black tracksuit ushered me toward the sofa. I sat down obediently, and the man rubbed his palms together with an odd smile on his face.
CRASH—!
The rest of them, black tracksuit and fluorescent sweatsuit excluded, began tearing through the officetel as if ransacking it for demolition. They kicked doors open, hurled anything that looked worthless straight onto the floor, and dug through drawers that no matter how many times emptied, kept yielding drawer after drawer packed with vibrators.
"This Jesus-freak bastard really doesn't know a damn thing about how the world works, does he."
The hearty, confident voice from the rooftop was gone. The black tracksuit spoke now in a low, sinister tone, thumping the butt of his K2 against the floor.
"Look at this. Still believing in god and all that horseshit like a good little sucker, so the moment someone comes to 'save' him, here he comes running with his tongue out like a dog. Goddammit, fuck—what a waste of a skill, you piece of shit!"
Kikikikik— with the mask finally off, the officetel filled with naked, open jeering. The search seemed more or less finished; the black tracksuit spat onto the floor as the men ringed me in a circle.
"You really are professionals, I see. This is hardly your first—or second—time pulling a job like this."
"Look at this fucker playing it cool while his asshole's flapping wide open."
"First of all, there is something very important I would like to say to you all."
I raised a single finger toward the snickering men.
"First: I am not a Jesus freak. I am the Cult Leader of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult."
"Ooooh, he's a Cult Leader, he says! You bastards, applaud!"
Puahaha—
I answered their howling laughter with a benevolent smile.
"What a piece-of-shit cult leader… whoa… Hyung, this fucker's actually laughing?"
At the black tracksuit's words, the fluorescent sweatsuit came swaggering over from the door.
"Ah, I was wondering why they didn't just kill you on the spot—so that was the grand design all along!"
"That's right! Convenient, ain't it—understands on the first try. If our cult-leader friend here had a head like that on his shoulders, maybe he wouldn't have crawled out from behind his little shield in the first place?"
Puahaha—
Hmm. At this point, was there anything left worth squeezing out of them? The moment I rose slowly from my seat, the men broke into their clown act.
"Whoaaa! The Cult Leader is on his feet! He leaps! He springs! What afuckingleap!"
Ah, for fuck's sake! This is exactly why Gag Concert went to shit!
"PUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Their laughter died away, and mine filled the officetel to its corners. Under the weight of the sudden silence, their expressions turned strange. As their faces steadily froze over, killing intent flared in their eyes.
"Hey! Fluorescent!"
"…Huh? Me?"
"Yeah, you, asshole! How many do you have?"
"How many what?"
The man's swaggering legs slowed to a halt. He tilted his head, staring at me—and his mouth clamped shut.
"Does this fucker seriously still not grasp the situation? Hey! You do know that in an enclosed space like this, flight abilities are worth jack shit, right?"
The moment the fluorescent one's face hardened, the black tracksuit—who'd been nervously watching him—barked at me instead.
Ohh. So that's why they invited me inside—to shut down my flight!
Wow, clever! So very clever!
"And what makes you so certain that flight is all I have?"
"Ah, relax, relax. Beat on him a little and he'll come crawling, snot and tears, begging on his own." The fluorescent sweatsuit waved off the black tracksuit and began walking toward me, unhurried.
Someone has designated you as 'Prey'!
As I was reading down the line of an unfamiliar system message, the man—misreading my expression—grinned.
"There we go. Scared now, aren't you? Like I was saying…"
CHIJIJIJIK—
You have executed an Awakened.
You have gained 1,000 Faith Points.
Absorbing the slain Awakened's inventory!
Kung—
"……Huh?"
The fluorescent sweatsuit's head hit the floor, and the rest of his body toppled after it in a fountaining spray of blood. Still not fully grasping what had happened, the others asked their idiotic questions—and all the while I dangled the severed head in front of the black tracksuit, giving it a little waggle.
"The Cult Leader used a skill! The Cult Leader used a skill! See? Why does nobody ever respond to my bits!"
With telekinesis, I stretched the dead man's torn mouth into a long, gruesome grin.
"Would you answer someone who smiles like this?"
"H-hiiiiiiiiiik!"
The black tracksuit crumpled to the floor—and in the same instant, every man who'd been ringing me began pulling his trigger.
Tatatatatatata—
Muzzle flashes tore viciously through the stagnant air, and rounds came streaming at me like shafts of light. I slowly raised my hand. The telekinesis laced through each bullet stripped away every last ounce of its momentum.
"U-uaaaaaaah!"
The bullets hovered in midair, refusing to advance another inch, and the men shrieked like slaughtered pigs at the sight of them.
Kigigigigik—
At a flick of my fingers, the rifle barrels—glowing hot from sustained fire—twisted themselves into corkscrews. Slumping to the floor in blank despair, the men now found themselves staring down their own muzzles.
I was on the verge of quietly tearing every last head from their disarmed bodies when Seong Gaeul's words drifted back to me. Right. Even the most useless, garbage excuses for human beings must have some use.
"From this moment forward, you are the proud prospective believers of our Hanmaum Guwon Cult. Anyone with objections, raise your hand right now! I will personally shove that hand down your own throat for you!"
"U-uuuuuuuh!"
Cult Leader or no Cult Leader, the men shut their eyes, faces screwed up tight, and groaned. These bastards still haven't had the street knocked out of them. Maybe I should stage a little corpse show and let them piss themselves dry.
The instant I lifted the fluorescent one's head from where I'd tossed it, a cluster of blue light flickered at the edge of my vision. A film of blue mana was spreading over the entire bodies of the men still moaning on the floor.
"FUCK!"
I thrust out my arm and rammed telekinesis into their skulls. My plan was to crush them flat, head to toe, in a single motion. But at that very moment the blue mana winked out—and the men vanished without a trace.
A teleportation Awakened?
Fuck—what the hell is going on! There were definitely no Awakened left among those bastards!
I hadn't just let them run their mouths for nothing. Setting the fluorescent one aside, I had checked every man present—there wasn't a single Awakened among them.
Which means, if he wasn't an Awakened, they were carrying some kind of item—or something—capable of enabling teleportation….
I hurriedly rifled through the inventory I'd absorbed from the fluorescent one. Among the miscellaneous food and assorted junk, something unusual caught my hand.
'Star Light Church Tithe Offering'
A church offering envelope. On the grimy, faintly reeking surface, scrawled in permanent marker, was a crude line of writing.
[Seo Hyoju — short bob cut. The mole on her chest is fucking adorable.]
When I tore the envelope open, a pair of red panties—smeared thick with something white—slid out into my hand.
"You absolute, fucking pieces of shit!"
There wasn't just one envelope.
[Kang Hyein — that pussy grips like a fucking vice.]
Every single envelope, scrawled over with the vilest possible writing, contained someone's panties stained with their own dried semen.
"Kieeeeeeeeeek!"
With impeccable timing, the zombies that had chased the gunfire came knocking at the crushed door. And now, at last, I understood their entire plan. First, they summon an Awakened while using the sound of gunfire to lure away every zombie clustered around the barrier. Then, when that Awakened dies and the barrier falls, they devour the defenseless Sanctuary like a slice of cake.
And here lay the plan's single greatest flaw: if I had possessed no flight ability, how exactly would they have made contact with me at all? I remembered how badly rattled they'd been when I dropped out of the sky onto their rooftop.
So that was never the original plan—with an ability like that, they could have moved off to somewhere else entirely, on their own terms.
Everything leading up to this point had been pure improvisation on their part.
'So that's why it all felt a little clumsy.'
Which meant I didn't need to give a single thought to the zombies pouring into this place. An ability that could relocate even non-Awakened somewhere else.
"Isn't that exactly the ability our cult needs right about now?"
There was a very good chance it was tailor-made for spreading the congregation far and wide. Ignoring the zombies flooding through the shattered door into the officetel, I flung open the window and leapt into the air. I read the envelope floating alongside my body one more time.
'Star Light Church Tithe Offering'
There was no reason to waste another second. I had to strike immediately, without giving them so much as a moment to prepare.
"Kieeeeeeeek!"
BOOM—!
Slipping past the hands that shot out toward the window in an instant, I climbed sharply for altitude. Then I caught sight of it—a red cross mounted atop a massive modern building to the southwest of Incheon Metropolitan City Hall.
KWAAANG—!
Telekinesis at full power hauled my body down toward the earth along with gravity itself.
A meteor shower slammed down onto the rooftop of the Star Light Church.