Gatekeeper of Salvation (5)
Leaning against the windowsill of the executive office on the third floor of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult, I admired the full moon. A soft night breeze drifted past, carrying moonlight that lit up the darkened city of Incheon — a night that depended on that faint glow alone. If someone photographed the city from overhead right now, it would look like a metropolis swallowed entirely by darkness. And this situation was hardly unique to Incheon. South Korea had lost its lights, and only two places in the whole country still shone: the full moon, and the Sanctuary.
Thanks to the generator humming along smoothly, the ceiling lamp in the executive office was so bright it practically dazzled, and I smiled at it. "Very good indeed." The Heavenly Barrier kept out not just zombies but anything I didn't permit — insects, naturally, were also banned from entering my Sanctuary.
"Ah… I really should get around to Lack Identification and upgrading the statue soon…." Between pouring myself into the SimCity-style development of the Sanctuary, I couldn't remember the last time I'd opened my own status window. My days had been nothing but toggling between the Believer Management and Sanctuary Management tabs. And on top of that, the 'statue upgrade' — itself a piece of that city-building sim — was still stuck at level 2. Considering how the Heavenly Barrier already barred even a single bug, unlocking the authority of statue level 3 was an urgent priority. The Hanmaum Guwon Cult was sailing on smooth waters, after all. Today was no different. Smooth didn't even cover it — it had been a perfect day. A steady supply of new believers through the Gate of Salvation, believers armed with ever-firmer faith, the mythologized first chapter of the Book of Salvation, and a lavish dinner that had left me thoroughly satisfied. All that remained was to fall asleep in Yoon Ayoung's arms waiting on the fourth floor, and the day would be complete — but one important task still waited.
"Name… Kim Cheolsu." I murmured the name written on the intake form. The first survivor to cross the Gate of Salvation. A husband who had held an axe to protect his family. That nonsense he'd spat out while raving at the sight of me kept nagging at the back of my mind.
Knock— knock— knock—
"Pastor, believer Kim Cheolsu has arrived."
"Ah, tell him to come in." I answered Seo Taesan's voice just in time and closed the window. With a long creak, the door opened, and Kim Cheolsu, dressed in white believer's robes, bowed his head respectfully. "Pastor."
"Hahaha, I hope I haven't disturbed your rest," I quipped as I moved from the window back to my seat. At that, Kim Cheolsu bowed even deeper. "Not at all. If the Pastor calls, of course I must come. Please, don't say such things."
"I know. I'm well aware of believer Kim Cheolsu's faith. Now, please, have a seat." At my gesture from the head of the table, he lowered himself into the chair with careful, almost timid movements. I studied his face — freshly scrubbed after a long-overdue shower, no doubt. It was hard to believe this was the same man who'd been screaming like a piece of charcoal, his features now so harmless-looking.
"Seeing believer Kim Cheolsu's face brighten gladdens me as well."
"…I am merely grateful for the Pastor's grace." My words must have pulled a trigger, because Kim Cheolsu's voice grew damp. Seeing a believer choke up, my hand now moved on autopilot. I took his trembling hands in mine and soothed him in the gentlest voice I had. "Everything is fine now. Isn't the Pastor always behind believer Kim Cheolsu?"
"…That's right. That's right, Pastor!" When Kim Cheolsu finally let the tears fall, I handed him the banana sitting on the plate at the center of the table. A snack was exactly the right medicine for a crying child — it always had been.
"F-fruit. It's… it's really been so long since I've seen…." Staring blankly at the banana, he couldn't finish the sentence. I passed it into his hands and asked, casually, "By the way, I see you requested separate living quarters from your wife."
"Ah… yes. Since it's free anyway, she thought… um… I'm sorry." The answer was a stumbling mess, but I understood immediately. "Haha, why would that be anything to apologize for? If anything, you have a very sensible wife." "Hearing you say that puts my mind at ease. Thank you, Pastor."
As Kim Cheolsu bowed his head, sniffling once more, I glanced at the minimap. Two name tags floating in the newly generated Believer's Room showed no movement at all — mother and daughter were presumably fast asleep. Hm… Kim Cheolsu's wife, is it. I recalled her face, trembling as she clutched her daughter. Unremarkable features, colorless and scentless, the sort of looks that at best fell short of average. Completely unresponsive to my goods — I nodded in approval. A fine restaurant was waiting for me on the fourth floor; there was no reason to eat expired convenience-store junk. There was no merit worth shaking Kim Cheolsu's faith over. If anything—
"It's a joyful occasion, so don't torment your poor wife too much. You'll need to save your strength for tomorrow."
"…Th-that's embarrassing, Pastor." It wasn't as though only mutants were expected to lay eggs. The Hanmaum Guwon Cult needed to encourage childbirth too. Children born beneath a loyal believer would be born even more loyal — after all, the world those newborn children would grow up in was the Sanctuary of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult itself. I dropped the hint to Kim Cheolsu and left it at that, steering the conversation elsewhere.
"Oh! Believer Kim Cheolsu, do you have an indoor sport you enjoy?"
"Pardon? Um… table tennis, just a little…"
"Haha, perfect! Believer Jeong Shinwoo will love that."
"Uh……." Watching him blink in bewilderment, I put on a look of exaggerated surprise — so that he would feel the disconnect from the outside world even more sharply, as though such things were simply everyday life here. "Ah, you haven't finished touring the first floor yet, have you! Bright and early tomorrow, believer Jeong Shinwoo will come find you. Don't be too startled. A senior believer guiding a junior believer, explaining everything he wants to know — that is the tradition of our Salvation Cult."
"Ah, what a wonderful tradition…." It was a rule barely days old, hardly worthy of the word 'tradition,' but if I called it tradition, then tradition it was. Tomorrow, guided around by Jeong Shinwoo, Kim Cheolsu would surely be stunned — by how impeccably civilization was preserved inside the Sanctuary.
"Ah, is, is that so." One look at his awkward face and I knew. He was utterly flustered by the atmosphere I was radiating, at a complete loss. And I was in the middle of convincing him that this would be his life from now on.
"I'm… fairly confident at table tennis myself."
"Oh… sounds like we're in for a thrilling match tomorrow. I can hardly wait, hahaha—"
"I'll show you skill worthy of your eyes, Pastor!" Watching Kim Cheolsu, by now fully absorbed into the mood, laughing and chatting along with me, I smiled. The Proof of Faith blossoming from his body was glowing brighter. Faith, it turned out, could be reinforced through the most varied channels.
Having confirmed that Kim Cheolsu was thoroughly loosened up, I turned my tongue to business. Strengthening faith was all well and good, but the real reason I'd summoned him lay elsewhere. I put on a deliberately regretful expression and glanced at the clock on the wall of the executive office. "Oh dear! We've been having such a pleasant chat that look at the time. You should hurry off to bed, and now I feel terrible for keeping you."
"Not at all. It's fine, Pastor." Now came the main event. That remark of Kim Cheolsu's that had kept bothering me. I asked him in a quiet, careful voice. "Do you remember the moment you crossed the Gate of Salvation?"
"Of, of course. I'm sorry, Pastor. At the time, I was just so…"
"Ah, no, it's fine. I'm not trying to scold you. It's something you said back then — it's been weighing on my mind." As I dipped my head slightly, Kim Cheolsu's Adam's apple bobbed along with me. I asked softly, to the visibly tense man, "'Chase me out… chase them out,' you said. When I turn believer Kim Cheolsu's words over in my mind, it feels as though it wasn't the first time." As though he'd faced a religious group like this before.
Thick beads of sweat rolled down Kim Cheolsu's forehead. Watching his eyes whirl in wild panic, I soothed him gently. "Why are you shaking like that? I'm not interrogating you, believer Kim Cheolsu. I'm simply… curious. About this cult that threatened you."
"I-I'm sorry. Just thinking about that time is so terrifying…." Right — I hadn't expected a coherent explanation from a man whose eyes had rolled back as he swung an axe at anything that moved. Tak—! I snapped my fingers lightly and caught his gaze. His eyes followed my finger up to the ceiling. The lamp dispelling the dark, and above it, spread firm and unbroken, the Heavenly Barrier. "Don't confuse yesterday with today. Remember my words. What do you see in your right hand?"
"Aaahh— Pastor—!" Kim Cheolsu opened and closed his right hand with dazed eyes. As though he were truly gripping something. After repeating the motion several times, he looked up at me and broke into a radiant smile. "…I see the Sword of Faith."
"Exactly. With my sword in your grasp, what is there to fear? Speak freely. Very freely." Under my soft guidance, Kim Cheolsu's pupils gradually steadied. Only then, calmed at last, did he begin to slowly recount what had happened to him and his family.
Even after the shelter evacuation order went out, Kim Cheolsu's family hadn't set a single foot outside their apartment. The internet and the news kept saying the shelters were the safe option, but he hadn't believed it. The way the government urged evacuation rather than suppression in the face of an unprecedented catastrophe had instinctively struck him as ominous. So they divided up the food in the refrigerator and whatever was in the house and held out — and in the end, their choice proved the right one. But that was easy to say now; back then, watching the rations shrink and the situation refuse to improve, they had deeply regretted it. That self-reproach peaked the moment the internet and TV went dead and no information reached them at all. Starve to death, or die to the zombies — either way, they died. Might as well have tried the shelter, instead of dying here doing nothing. He'd torn at his hair watching his wife and daughter grow thinner by the day — and then he heard a voice ringing out suddenly across the apartment complex.
"Accept the Cycle! Accept the Cycle!"
A human voice — the first in a very, very long time. Kim Cheolsu bolted out onto the apartment balcony. "Accept the Truth! Accept the Truth!" A woman standing dead center in the roadway of the complex was shouting the two phrases over and over. "Accept the Cycle! Accept the Cycle!" Slowly, gooseflesh crept up Kim Cheolsu's arms at that voice. "Accept the Truth! Accept the Truth!" An emotionless, mineral voice, mechanical as a machine. Behavior devoted purely to the single purpose of speaking, nothing more. "Accept the Cycle! Accept the Cycle!"
"Shhhiiiiiit!" He couldn't just leave the woman out there like that. Kim Cheolsu stamped his feet in frustration, then pressed a finger to his lips at her, hissing for quiet. And at that serpentine hiss, she reacted. The woman who had been staring straight ahead like a doll lifted her head. Her eyes met those of Kim Cheolsu, up on the high floors of the apartment. She smiled. No — she performed the act of smiling. "Accept the Truth! Accept the Truth!" Watching her repeat the same words like a broken radio, Kim Cheolsu began to shake. "H-honey? What's going on?" "N-nothing! Don't come out! Absolutely don't come out!" Even at his worried wife's question from inside, his eyes couldn't leave the woman. The moment he looked away even a little, he was certain she would be standing before him like a ghost. That hollow, emptied gaze would be right up against his own pupils. "Accept the Cycle! Accept the Cycle!"
The woman began to walk. Where? Kim Cheolsu's eyes dropped straight down. She was walking toward the entrance of his own building. Her face stayed fixed on him as she advanced, and the doll-like quality of it raised the hair on his neck. "She's… she's insane…." "Accept the Truth! Accept the Truth!" "D-don't come! I said don't come, you crazy bitch!" As he retreated step by step before her advance, the cry that should have been ringing out finally wailed into the night. "Kiiieeeeeee—!" At that signature throat-scraping howl, Kim Cheolsu's retreating body lurched forward again. Crazy or not, out of her mind or not— "R-run, ruuun!" "Kiiieeeeee—!" His shouts and the howling echoed through the quiet apartment complex. And the woman— "Accept the Cycle! Accept the Cycle!" — silently repeated her actions. Through Kim Cheolsu's eyes he could see the zombies charging furiously toward her. Even so, her head never turned from him. As though she responded only to that first voice she'd heard. "Why… why… d-don't come! Don't cooome!"
She walked toward him. Slowly. The zombies ran toward her. Very fast. He could see with perfect clarity the ones at close range hurling themselves through the air. "Accept the Truth! Accept the Tr—"
"Kiiieeeeee—!" The voice that seemed like it would never cut off was severed. The zombies bowled her over and began their meal. Every time the things shook their heads, red spray scattered through the air. Crunch— crunch— Bones and all, ground between their teeth — at the grotesquerie of it, Kim Cheolsu's mind went numb. The fallen woman's eyes at the apartment entrance stayed fixed on him until the very end. Her mouth, snapping open and shut like something malfunctioning, slowly opened. "Cycle."
Kim Cheolsu hesitated no longer. He rushed into the living room in an instant, locked the balcony door, and drew the curtains. "Honey… what's happening…" "Come here! Quickly!" He crouched down, covering the ears of his wife as she approached, looking at him with fear in her eyes. She naturally covered their daughter's ears in turn. And he prayed for this moment to pass safely. Crunch— crackle— Prayed for the zombies to finish their meal.
"The Cycle. And the Truth." As soon as Kim Cheolsu finished, I turned the key phrases over in my mind. If every word of his account was true, it could not be anything but deeply strange. A woman repeating the same phrases. Eyes hollowed into utter emptiness. Doll-like, creaking movements. ……Hold on. Isn't this brainwashing? As someone whose number-one pick when deliberating over which skill to spend a Skill Creation Ticket on had been brainwashing, that was a hundred percent brainwashing-related, no question about it.
"O-only crazy cult women could do something like that! That woman burned her own life away just to keep parroting nonsense to the very end!" He had a point, admittedly. I nodded along, but the more I thought about it, the deeper my frown grew. Whoever was wielding the brainwashing, they weren't utilizing people — they were consuming them. They'd used her as a disposable megaphone for broadcasting their message.
"Certainly… they're cultists through and through, no redeeming them."
"You're a hundred times right! Every last cult bastard should burn in hell!" For some reason that made me flinch, but I hurriedly rose from my seat. A cult that burned through human beings couldn't be left alone. "What was the address of the apartment you lived in?"
"Pardon? Ah…! D-Daegu Ci—"
"Hold on. …What did you say? Daegu?"
"Y-yes. That's right."
As I sank back into my chair, it dawned on me. Why on earth had I assumed those people were in Incheon? The Gate of Salvation was a gate that opened for those who yearned for salvation — and Kim Cheolsu's home hadn't been Incheon at all, but Daegu. Which meant the brainwashing ability user wasn't in Incheon either, but in Daegu. I gauged the distance from Incheon to Daegu. Gyeonggi Province, then North Gyeongsang. For me, who hadn't even fully secured Incheon yet, marching off to deal with them was a leap of far too many steps — reckless acceleration.
"Thank you for your account. It was an enormous help."
"If anything, my words must have upset your…" "Haha, not at all. Go on in now, and I'll see you again tomorrow with a bright smile." At my farewell, Kim Cheolsu bowed respectfully and left the executive office. Creak— thud— With the sound of the closing door, I walked back to the window where the full moon still hung. Daegu… Daegu, of all places. "Truly, Gotham has Daegu. Can't let hell-on-earth Incheon win, can we?"
It struck me once more: I had not been the only one to hit upon the idea of a religious organization in the apocalypse. From ancient times, whenever darkness fell upon the world, people split into two extremes — those who clung to God, and those who cursed Him. And the number of bastards who exploited those desperately searching for the divine was beyond counting. A business model certified by history itself.
Lost in these stray thoughts, I reached the windowsill and opened the window. Whooooosh— Along with a chill wind that bespoke the depth of the night, I gazed up at the full moon I'd been admiring earlier. Two lights that would illuminate South Korea. The full moon, and the Sanctuary. No — only the Sun of Salvation and the Sanctuary would drive out this darkness. "Stay right where you are. The light of salvation will burn you all." Just wait a little longer. Cultists wailing of the Cycle and the Truth. Working their brainwashing in Daegu…
"Heretics."