City (5)
City (5) — Guro-gu, Seoul; Gocheok Sky Dome
"Cult Leader-nim. All of the believers have gathered."
"Ah, well done. Stand behind me."
"Oh, how could I possibly dare—"
"Hahaha. It is fine. All the faithful know of your labors."
With a hearty chuckle, I waved off Lee Jiwoo's protests and had her take her place behind me.
She had more than earned her enjoyment of today.
The vast stadium of Gocheok Sky Dome spread out below me, a field of grass packed shoulder to shoulder with over a thousand people dressed in white.
Kim Jiho and the earliest converts were busy shouting themselves hoarse, straightening the rows into perfect lines.
Since there was no proper stage to be found, I had waited for them up in the fourth-tier seats.
My condition could not have been more perfect. Thanks to the measured use of my mana yesterday, I wasn't short on reserves either.
The only thing nagging at me was what, exactly, the system had promised in the way of hardship and trial.
I thought back to the hidden piece — the murals.
Every special stronghold I had faced so far had been tied closely to those murals. Having conquered all four, only one remained to me.
'Record 5' of the final City journal.
A man standing atop the fallen. And in that man's hand, a heart pulsing with fierce vitality.
"...A heart," I murmured.
"Yes? Do you need something, Cult Leader-nim?"
"Haha, no, no."
I shook my head at Lee Jiwoo, who had reacted instantly at my back, and picked up the thread of my thoughts again.
The one mural whose meaning I could grasp with certainty had been about the heart. But yesterday, the system had gathered every special stronghold and fused them into one. Did the newly created stronghold fall under the murals' influence as well?
...There was no way to know.
"...Cult Leader-nim. The preparations are complete."
"......Good."
Just before I could chase the thought further, the scattered bustle below had quietly settled into stillness. The believers who filled the stadium were waiting for me.
Believers who were awkward and lacking in every way — in cleanliness, in faith, in the time they had spent with me.
And yet they had put on the robes of the Salvation Cult all the same. In pristine white, they had proven their purity.
Which made them my children, the ones I had to lead.
I poured mana into my low murmur, and that mana — amplified by faith, by love — rolled across the entire stadium.
"You closed your eyes and opened them, and the world had collapsed."
A calm pronouncement opened the sermon.
"That is the only truth."
I delivered to them the fact they would least want to believe — and the one they most desperately needed to understand.
"You closed your eyes and opened them, and the nation had fallen. Society was destroyed. Your beloved family was gone. That is the only truth!"
Following my rising voice, the believers' eyes grew redder and redder at the rims. I could almost hear their hearts pounding, loud and clear, all the way up here.
"You closed your eyes and opened them, and some strange man demanded your faith! Strangers in bizarre white clothes forced belief upon you!"
The strangest situation they had ever known.
"And yet — that is the only truth!"
The crowd sank into my words. They projected themselves onto the story unfolding unbidden in their own memories, and so they wept more easily, and agreed more easily.
"The process doesn't matter. My children who have finally joined as one heart — my sons, my daughters! You have endured well until now!"
I swept my hand down and pointed at the floor of Gocheok Sky Dome. I could feel their heads and shoulders rising and falling with the swell of my voice.
"Here, and right now! The first glorious community of the broken world is born! This alone is the only truth!"
Aaaah—
I flung both arms wide and raised my voice higher still, shouting not to their ears but to their chests.
"Close your eyes and open them, my children! Worship the pure beginning you now witness!"
I pressed YES on the system message and spat out my final words.
"...And its name shall be the Hanmaum Guwon Cult!"
Waaah—!
Light rained down on me and on my exultant believers.
You have entered Guro-gu's final special stronghold, 'The Plaza'.
The theme of 'The Plaza' is 'Mirror Court'.
An awakened one who entered a special stronghold always began wherever the system intended. That had been the iron rule of every stronghold until now.
So — was this where the system intended me to be?
Nothing had changed. The believers kept their tidy order, gazing up at me.
They too were patting at their own bodies, startled by the sudden anomaly.
A platform — not as high as Gocheok's stands, but unmistakably elevated above the believers. Having somehow come to stand upon it, I slowly surveyed my surroundings.
The believers stared blankly up at me, unable to grasp what had happened.
Then, all at once, they clapped hands over their mouths and stared at something in open horror.
Kiiiiing—!
My preheated mana surged up and poured white light across my entire body. Following their line of sight, I went wide-eyed with shock myself.
"Surprise, motherfucker!"
A reckless voice with horrendous English pronunciation. There stood me — wearing the track jacket I'd lived in before the apocalypse — grinning at me.
Kiiiiiing—!
There was no time to deliberate; hesitation was a luxury.
With a low hum of activation, the telekinesis that shot from my right hand clamped onto the bastard's nape. I meant to tear him apart before he could even register the pain.
But the white mana gnawing at his throat slowly sputtered out, like the very same phenomenon I'd faced with Seo Joowon. As I stood there reeling, the bastard looked up at the sky.
"Holy shit! The little bastard's actually using his powers? Are we allowed to do that in a sacred court?"
Acknowledged. Should you use your ability once more, sanctions will be applied.
Wait. Court?
A plaza vast enough to hold a thousand people. Two daises standing tall at its center. On those daises: me — and another me.
The theme the system had named: 'Mirror Court'.
What the system had prepared was neither an army of ants in zombie form nor a crucible designed to strip away my powers.
Everything the bastard had ever mentioned stretched out before me in a long panorama, like a film strip.
The City, and me — our theme was faith.
The system had steadily forced trials and anguish upon me. A saint is built atop trials and hardship. So what are the trials and hardships of a saint?
Just as the system had once built a special stronghold modeled on Christ's temptation in the wilderness, this one would be no different.
Where had the system found its model? In Catholicism, how does one elevate a saint?
Ordinarily, people say saints are made through miracles, or through helping others in great measure.
But that was half right and half wrong. Miracles and good deeds alone aren't enough to make a saint.
A saint is born only at the end of a long, intricate process of review and procedure. And somewhere in that process was the procedure this bastard was so eager to imitate.
And I understood, too, what role the other me would play within it.
[Han Guwon, you may now speak.]
The moment the system finished, the other me seized the microphone set before him.
The devil's advocate.
In the Catholic process of elevating a saint, it is an office created to block canonization — a man who stands on the opposite side from those petitioning for sainthood, to guard against a wrongful elevation.
The other Han Guwon drew in a great breath, then bellowed out as though vomiting something filthy.
"AAAAAH! I just want to FUCK, you hear me?!"
A vast silence descended over the plaza.
He pointed at the believers seated right in front of him and raised his voice even higher.
"You fucking bastards! If you'd run into scum like Seo Joowon, you'd be skulls number one, two, and three in his inventory right now — and here you are, what, exercising free will? Huh?! You wanna die?!"
Thanks to the marathon of profanity, he'd caught his breath. He opened his mouth again.
"I gathered up you animals, fed you like humans, put you to bed like humans — and you should be goddamn grateful. Gimme food, blah blah. I'm scared, blah blah. Show me proof, blah blah. You little shits! Do I really have to perform a five-piece dismemberment show with my own telekinesis before you'll believe me? AAAAH!"
Only the other Han Guwon's voice echoed through the plaza, where the crowd sat frozen as if dead.
"You fly-hearted little fucks! You still haven't grasped reality?! You are not that special, you are not that precious, you bastards! I'll tell you the truth of life, so listen up! Get this one thing through your skulls and you're halfway there! Okay?"
He pressed the microphone close and screamed his final words into it.
"If someone saves your sorry ass, then the men offer their labor and the women offer their virginity, like decent human beings!"
When people are terrified enough, their mouths simply hang open, and no sound comes out at all.
My believers were exactly like that right now.
Apparently inexhaustible, the bastard grabbed the mic once more and stage-whispered.
"P.S.! PS! And any woman who's already been out playing the field — offer your anal virginity instead. Amen!"
And with that, the other Han Guwon's testimony concluded.
I searched his words for something to refute, and found nothing.
Strangely enough, they even left a certain cathartic satisfaction behind.
If I had possessed a Holy Sword of Truth right then, it would have answered "truth" without pause, again and again.
Even so, I barely held my poker face.
"Whew~!"
The other me let out a long, satisfied sigh and looked my way, flashing a bright grin and a thumbs up.
My right eyebrow — the single feature that had betrayed my poker face — twitched and quivered like an earthquake had struck it.
[Pseudo-Cult Leader, you may now speak.]
"......Ha."
A hollow laugh burst out of me at the system's words.
Only now did every mural overlap and blaze into a single image.
So that was why the eyes plastered all over the walls had carried a double meaning. They were the system's — yes. But here, now, in front of me...
I saw the thousands of believers' eyes, waiting for my testimony.
And to them, I showed them my heart.
Ha...
I laid my true heart bare.
Before the greatest hardship and trial the system had prepared for me, the system declared once more.
[Pseudo-Cult Leader, you may now...]
[...speak.]