Recalibration (4)

Recalibration (4) — Hanmaum Guwon Cult, 'Paradise'

Our banter had loosened the tension that had held taut between us for so long. It was late afternoon, evening drawing near, and as if to announce that summer was on its way, I strolled through Paradise with the warm sunlight still soaking into my skin. A few paces behind me, hands clasped behind my back, walked Seong Gaeul; further back trailed four vigilantes. They hadn't merely been playing around in my absence either — the way they handled their rifles showed a practiced ease that hadn't been there before.

The first stop on our walk through Paradise was the Gate of Salvation. The enhanced green jewel had created a two-way gate linking the Sanctuary and Paradise — but its opening to the Sanctuary did not mean anyone could pass through freely. The Sanctuary was the other utopia I had constantly emphasized to my believers, and those permitted to set foot there had to be hand-picked from among them all. That was why at least two vigilantes were always stationed at the Gate of Salvation.

My eyes found the vice captain and awakened one among them, Kim Haeil, and I spoke to Seong Gaeul. "The vice captain setting an example for the others — very good indeed."

"Yes, Cult Leader. He always leads from the front. The believers speak highly of him."

I nodded with satisfaction and kept gazing at the Gate of Salvation. After watching me stare for quite a while, Seong Gaeul asked casually, "Shall I call the saint and the gatekeeper over from the Sanctuary?"

"No. Did I not say I had something to show you? Keep moving." I tilted my head lightly and walked on toward our destination, using the steady footsteps of the vigilantes trailing behind me as a rhythm while I took in our surroundings. Above all, I stared for a long time toward the north — where every building had vanished, leaving the edge of the protective barrier in plain view.

Clunk—.

My steps halted once more, just as they had at the Gate of Salvation. Spread out against the translucent orange barrier was yet another membrane — a pitch-black shroud that wrapped not just Paradise but all of Seoul. I regarded it indifferently, though no matter how indifferent I tried to be, my right eyebrow kept twitching and trembling.

Seong Gaeul gazed with me at Gangseo District, lying along Paradise's northern edge, then asked, "…Does it displease you?"

She had read me exactly right. Having completely conquered Guro District, I had been unable to enter any other zone afterward. When I tried to pass through the black membrane of Gangseo District, the System had printed out a message.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

When I first read it, I'd been angry and irritated — but honestly, I hadn't vented my emotions anywhere near as hard as I might have. For one thing, I doubted a System that spouted nonsense about "balance" even while people were dying would just stand by and let me devour all of Seoul. For another, I didn't think I stood to lose to whatever awakened ruler had claimed another zone three months from now. Those people and I had been on different starting lines from the very beginning. No matter how hard the System strained to tip the scales back, a seesaw already sunk all the way down couldn't be righted.

"It's fine. If anything, I'm grateful — it's giving me time to build my house on solid foundations."

"What happened to the Han Guwon who threw a tantrum and strangled people with telekinesis when something didn't suit his mood?" Sweet floral scent, her whisper right at my ear — and then she withdrew, standing at a respectful distance with an expression of perfect deference. I gave a hollow little laugh. She must have been properly startled.

"…Let's go. The sun will set on us at this rate."

Our continuing footsteps arrived at a walking path that blended beautifully into the surrounding nature — proof that we were drawing near the space Seong Gaeul and the architect had been planning. The vast empty plain we'd been crossing had been, like a mirage, a gorgeous parade of greenery. A path that made you healthier just by walking it; a little further along it, and there it was — a village in white. Buildings that sat in easy harmony with nature without losing their modern edge. The combination of clear blue sky, white buildings, and green landscape so refreshing it cleared the mind made me turn my head to look at Seong Gaeul.

Catching my gaze, she wiped her brow lightly and let out a long, tired breath, and I chuckled softly at the sight.

"The, the Cult Leader has come~!"

"Oooooh! Cult Leader! Cult Leadeeeer!"

The believers who had gathered on the still-unclaimed land for prayer had spotted me. Clouds of them came flocking to me at once, and I asked, "Have you all enjoyed the banquet I gifted you, before going back to your prayers?"

"It was delicious, Cult Leadeeeer!"

"We are grateful for your grace, Cult Leader!"

They pressed their palms together, tears welling in their eyes, and I smiled at them kindly. "Yes. If the sun becomes too hot, go inside and enjoy the air conditioning before you pray. A believer sweating buckets over his prayers is a believer I'd sooner scold. Understood?"

"Oh, we will keep it in mind, Cult Leader!"

The male believer nodded his head vigorously, eyes shining with emotion, his sweatless face glittering in the sunlight. Thanks to the high-grade generator and the water and sewage management facilities that had finally taken root in Paradise, they too had reclaimed the blessings of civilization, just like the believers in the Sanctuary. Freed from the things that grind people down — waste disposal, stench, oppressive heat — this place must have been as much a heaven to them as the Sanctuary itself.

"The Cult Leader has come today to tour the Hanmaum Learning Center. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Believers, please return to your places. There will be another opportunity to welcome the Cult Leader at regular prayer time before long." At Seong Gaeul's proclamation, everyone looked toward me. When I nodded gently, the believers returned to their unclaimed stretch of land.

We walked a little deeper into the village until we reached a building six stories or so tall. "It's awfully big to be called a learning center, no?"

"Nothing you have bestowed, Cult Leader, has ever been small."

This was the destination Seong Gaeul had so confidently led me to — the point of this whole walk. Her voice rang in my head again: her promise to prove that while I was building Paradise, the Sanctuary hadn't merely been idling away. Cradling a fluttering curiosity, I hurried into the elevator waiting in the first-floor lobby.

Ding—!

The elevator rose smoothly and stopped at the fifth floor. The doors slid open and I stepped out quickly, where vigilantes stood waiting for me; together with the vice cult leader, I passed them at pace and raised a hand toward the door ahead. Creeeak—!

Beyond it lay the main lecture hall. A long row of desks; a space lined with black chairs, where people dressed not in believer's robes but plain everyday clothes sat staring straight ahead. Every row except the last was packed to capacity. Apparently the sound of the door opening had been swallowed by the microphone of whoever was lecturing at the front.

"That is precisely the meaning of the Book of Salvation, Chapter 1, Verse 6! Cry out to the Faith's Sword! The Faith's Sword! The Cult Leader did not abandon his children groaning beneath the flood of evil!"

Seo Hyewon was gripping the microphone, tapping the blackboard, shouting with passion. The slightly melodramatic image she'd presented a month ago had been shed entirely, replaced by a delivery that was crisp and crystal clear. Her eyes, just moving on to her next sentence, found me. I waved lightly at her gradually widening gaze, gesturing for her to continue the lecture.

"…Of course, we know that many of our pre-believers here still doubt the Cult Leader! We do not force you to believe in empty fantasy! This footage shows the Cult Leader judging the zombies with the Faith's Sword!"

I took a seat slowly in the very back row, where the cool air from the air conditioning drifted through. As the vice cult leader and vigilantes arranged themselves behind me, the projector began playing the video. On the enormous screen appeared my own figure, floating in midair.

"KYAAAAAAH—!"

Howling zombies, one after another. The pre-believers shifted uneasily in their seats at the hideous shriek of scraping vocal cords, unlike anything they'd heard in their lives.

"……So this is why you asked me to buy a projector?"

"We filmed it with that camcorder Believer Seo Taesan brought with him."

Ah, right — the one Gaeul had used as leverage when courting him and then forgotten about. Weren't there some rather embarrassing scenes recorded on it, though? Who had done the filming, anyway? The moment she read it in my eyes, she leaned in and whispered at my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ear again. "I did the filming. And the files are still safe."

As expected of Seong Gaeul. I nodded in satisfaction and returned to enjoying the footage. It was showing the moment the barrier opened wide, the vigilantes gunning down the zombies that had invaded the Sanctuary. "KYAAAAAH—!" It even captured the zombies collapsing before the vigilantes. Then, just as the screen filled with zombies falling one after another, someone stood up and raised a hand.

"Hold on a second!"

A man seated around the middle of the hall. Hearing his voice, I turned to Seong Gaeul again. "His voice is quite young."

"Many of the pre-believers in this cohort were rescued from universities."

Ah, right — I'd broken the daily quests myself, and it had slipped my mind. Come to think of it, their difficulty progress should be nearly maxed out by now… While Seong Gaeul and I were talking, Seo Hyewon paused the video and turned to the standing man. "Pre-believer Lee Seonghun?"

"No, look — I've held it in and held it in, but this just isn't right. What is that?" The man called Lee Seonghun flapped the paper on his desk as he spoke. "I don't know if this is doctrine or whatever — I'm not a religious man — but that's just wrong, isn't it? You're telling me the world ended because of those things, lurching and screeching, not even knowing whether they're walking or running?"

Seo Hyewon lifted the microphone to argue back, but I waved her down. My eyes said let him keep talking, and she lowered the hand holding the mic. Lee Seonghun raised a finger and pointed at the screen. "Zombies that slow — anyone could kill them. And besides, this 'Cult Leader' person just floats there doing absolutely nothing! The ones actually firing the guns are the students down below!"

In that moment, the slowness of the zombies and the vigilantes cutting them down alike were all happening under my control — but to someone who didn't know that, yes, it certainly looked that way. As I slowly began to rise from my seat at the pre-believer's words, Seong Gaeul pressed a careful hand on my shoulder. Seeing her shake her head, I gave a small smile and stood the rest of the way up anyway. She had surely anticipated this kind of reaction and prepared something. But when there was a faster road, there was no need to take the long way around.

"And the zombies collapsing like that — it's all some cleverly stitched-together movie edi—"

"You have raised two points."

A voice steeped in mana rang through the lecture hall. Lee Seonghun turned his head, found me, and his eyes went wide. "The zombies are far too weak. And I do nothing at all." He straightened the body that had frozen for a beat, then raised his voice again. "Are you the Cult Leader from that video, sir?"

……Sir?

I met the gaze of Lee Seonghun, who was trying to hold himself proud to the very end while a faint tremble bled through anyway. He must be nervous. Then again, stepping forward like that had already taken an enormous amount of courage.

"What, is the real thing better looking?"

Like air escaping a balloon swollen to bursting, a deflating pfffft of laughter rippled shallowly through the hall. Looking at the somewhat flustered man, I said, "So you think that footage is a movie… In that case, I take it you found it a quality quite difficult to fake even with a hidden camera."

The zombies would have to look a bit more real, after all. At my quiet words, a snicker clearer than before echoed through the lecture hall.

"I shall tell you the one and only truth, so listen well."

This was not said to Lee Seonghun alone. "The zombies ran rampant, and the world collapsed." It was said to everyone gathered here. I hardened my expression, which had softened somewhat, and pointed at the screen. In the footage, a zombie whose skull had been punctured by a bullet was frozen mid-collapse, stuffed like a taxidermied specimen.

"Zombies like that, anyone can kill…"

I dragged the words out slowly, locking eyes with Lee Seonghun. A rookie who had known zombies only through movies. "A long time ago, there were young men who thought exactly as you do now. They too presumed to measure a tragedy they had never experienced."

The young men of the First World War. "Foolish boys, drunk on the vain dream of becoming heroes, who leapt into the artillery fire."

"A terrible waste, yes. But to us, here and now, their horror and their tragedy do not strike home. Do you know why?"

My finger was still aimed at the bullet piercing the zombie's head. "Because death came for them faster than a human mind could register it."

Countless bullets and shells rained down on them like a squall, and they were pierced by deaths their eyes could never follow. "Have you ever seen a zombie?"

I asked it as a formality. Watching Lee Seonghun fidget and fail to answer, I nodded. "I thought so. But it doesn't matter if you haven't. To you, who cannot know it with eyes or ears, I shall make it known through the heart."

"Zombies are slower than bullets. If you don't panic yourself into a stupor, then yes, as you say — they can be handled well enough."

I imparted the obvious fact. Zombies are slower than bullets. "They are death that approaches slowly. Even with their legs torn off, even with no hands, even with their chests blown open — they come running."

The ones marked as their targets swallow hard and grip their weapons tight. Then, as if by instinct, they lock eyes with the dead to read them. "There is nothing whatsoever in those eyes. Nothing but a bottomless hunger fixed on the prey before them."

Whatever condition they're in, whatever state their enemy is in — they charge regardless. And you get exactly one chance. "Fail to hold the line, and someone becomes infected."

Yourself — or the one you were meant to protect. "Remember this: slowness is, in truth, a curse."

"The death a zombie brings will wait — through a hundred curses hurled at God and the world, through endless tears — until you break apart from the inside."

"And if the one infected is not you but someone else, it is a far crueler hell."

Imagine it. A father shaking his head at the bite mark on his daughter's forearm. A son staring blankly at the blood running down his mother's leg. A husband drenched in the spray of blood bursting from the throat his wife had clamped her jaws around. "For as long as they curse the world without end, blame themselves, and weep — death does not come."

Only after they have lived through the world tearing at its seams, again and again, only once they have been wrung dry of everything — "death arrives, and it presses the next choice upon them."

A twisted shape slowly rises, joint by joint. Someone they once loved comes charging at them as something. "They must choose. Whether to drive a skewer through the skull of the person they loved."

"Or to be pierced by their teeth."

No one opened their mouth. In the suffocating silence that followed, the only finger that moved pointed once more at the zombie on the screen. "Look here."

I pressed the zoom button on the projector with telekinesis. Every eye in the room turned to the enlarged face of the zombie. "That is death."

A death far slower — and far more agonizing — than any muzzle flash, than any burst of light.

The video began playing again. Zombies fell, and the camcorder swung around toward the vigilantes. "Look at this, too."

I paused the footage once more and zoomed in on the vigilantes' faces. "Behold my knights, standing against death itself."

There was not a shred of fear on their faces. Only joy, and exhilaration. The eyes of everyone watching the smiling vigilantes grew wider, little by little.

I asked them all: "Are they trembling in terror?"

They were not. "And why do you suppose that is?" I asked them all again. No one, led by Lee Seonghun, could find a fitting answer. I gathered their gazes onto my finger — and pointing at myself at the far end of the lecture hall, I said,

"Behind them stands I."

Pointing at my own figure floating in the video, I said, "Above them stands I."

And last of all, piercing Lee Seonghun's chest with telekinesis alone, I said, "And within them stands I."

Lee Seonghun's chest, nudged slightly aside though nothing had touched it, trembled under his own stroking hand. I continued gently, to him. "Do not look at a single facet through stubbornness and pride — look widely. The Paradise I have gifted you is not narrow."

"I believe I have answered your first question sufficiently. And your second — I trust this will do as an answer."

I restarted the video and smiled at Lee Seonghun. "I gave them courage. I gave them victory."

WAAAAAAAH—!

In the video, the vigilantes raised a triumphant roar. And as if to answer them, the believers within the Sanctuary replied in kind. Salvation! Salvation! Salvation! Salvation!

"Hear me, all my children gathered here!"

Salvation! Salvation! Salvation! Salvation!

"Doubt. It is an inevitability of being human, and so it is no sin."

Merely—

"Merely a very small trial that delays your awakening to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠truth."

"However."

I raised my index finger before them all. One. "The Gate of Salvation opens for you only once."

There is no second time. "The moment you leave my embrace, the Gate of Salvation will never open again for the faithless."

I looked at Lee Seonghun and smiled gently. "I understand your doubt. If my answers to your questions do not satisfy you, then leave whenever you wish. No one here has bound you to this place against your will."

Lee Seonghun neither opened his mouth nor moved his body. Watching him keep wrestling with himself, I murmured quietly, "If I were you, I believe I would listen to our words through to the end of the learning center's course before deciding. Wouldn't that, in fact, be the wiser kind of doubt?"

At my question, Lee Seonghun gave a small nod and returned to his seat. A woman who had patted his shoulder lightly spoke up. "It's all right. Probably everyone here has had the exact same doubts. You did us a favor by standing up, Seonghun."

"……Thank you."

The woman smiled warmly at Lee Seonghun as the tension drained from his stiff face — and for some reason, a familiar feeling washed over me, and my eyes narrowed. Soon, she looked my way and bowed her head quietly, and I was startled. One of the female believers I had rescued from Star Light Church was gazing at me in everyday clothes instead of white believer's robes.

The department store, Star Light Church, Kim Cheolsu's wife whom we had saved at the Gate of Salvation — and on and on. Half of the main lecture hall, packed full of pre-believers, was wearing the faces of the believers who had once stayed in the Sanctuary — and bowing their heads toward me.