The Believer's Conditions (5)
After Peter disappeared, Hwang Minsu, the chief elder, smiled at me.
"Congratulations. If you pass the cult leader's final interview, you'll be able to join the Twelve Apostles."
By tomorrow, I would be meeting the head of Cheonyang-ji. I could feel myself inching closer and closer to my destination.
Peter looked down at the people sprawled across the floor.
"Well, now. What a mess."
There were people with their scalps split open, people with mucus blades buried in one eye, and even one poor bastard whose knee joint had shattered so badly he could barely stand.
They were all out of the race for the Twelve Apostles.
"Th-then... the rest of you worked hard too. Go on home, all of you."
Hwang Minsu immediately treated the stragglers like scrap parts.
So this is how Cheonyang-ji treats people once they're no longer useful.
They were criminals. There was no reason to take on the risk of accepting them as believers if they had nothing left to offer.
Well. I guess that makes sense.
The only one among them who could even be called somewhat competent was the drug offender.
He had once been a skilled swordsman instructor, after all.
In the past, his blade must have been sharp.
But he had slackened off in his training, and now his skills were pathetic.
I was a hunter with Dio Guild.
Compared to professionals, these guys were.
Pathetic.
Hwang Minsu set the sack he had been carrying over his shoulder down on the ground.
"All right. I'll leave your belongings here."
He returned the applicants' swords, the ones he had confiscated for the evaluation.
"Then I'll be off."
Hwang Minsu hurried out of the bamboo grove like a man fleeing the scene of a crime.
I picked up Heoksikdo from the ground.
The weight of the heavy sword settled into my hand.
The ex-convicts still hadn't regained their senses, and all I could hear were their groans.
Honestly, it was surprising.
I had trained with Na Sang-min in hell, but.
I didn't think I'd become this strong.
Maybe I had improved so quickly because I'd endured training brutal enough to make me want to vomit?
Of course, that was part of it.
The Blessing of Effort helped a lot too.
Through the chance encounter with the Magical Circle, I had achieved explosive results in a very short time.
I had only trained for two weeks.
But in practical terms, it might as well have been the equivalent of two years.
I should probably thank Na Sang-min.
That was proof enough that his training method had been effective.
I tightened my grip on Heoksikdo and turned around.
That was when it happened.
"You bastard!"
A voice rang out behind me.
The rapist stood up, blood dripping from the top of his head.
The drug offender pulled the mucus blade out of his eye.
The murderer clenched his teeth, clutching his broken fingers.
"Twelve Apostles, my ass!"
"You think you can do this to us and just walk away?"
"You're dead."
They threw off the masks they had been wearing in a rage.
Sching.
Each of their swords pointed at me.
This was a more dangerous situation than before, when they had only had mucus blades, but.
Good.
Instead of fear, I felt relief.
I would've been disappointed if it ended like that.
If it was them, I could swing my sword without hesitation.
"Yeah. You shouldn't leave trash in a bamboo grove."
I taunted them lightly, and their faces twisted.
"Trash?"
"Y-you bastard, take off your mask too! Let me see that face!"
"Forget it. We can just kill him and strip it off."
I didn't take my mask off on purpose.
Not because I was afraid of being identified.
Right now, I was a hero punishing evil.
I didn't draw my sword.
I simply rested my hand on the hilt.
"Come at me."
Na Sang-min had passed down the sword style that had been inherited through his family for generations.
The style was called One Heaven Style.
Its creed was that if you had only one sword, you could become the best.
If the Ganro-ryu used by the Twelve Apostles prioritized defense, then One Heaven Style was almost entirely focused on offense.
It fits Na Sang-min's firecracker personality perfectly.
In fourteen days, I hadn't learned everything there was to know about One Heaven Style.
Na Sang-min had drilled nothing but the basics into me, like the overhead cut, over and over again, until he finally said,
"Hey, Choi Yongki. Sometimes your physical strength jumps to ridiculous levels."
He had said that after seeing Judgment of the Superhuman.
"Whatever the hell that mass times velocity crap is... I don't know. Anyway, if you swing something ridiculously heavy ridiculously fast, it gets ridiculously strong."
Na Sang-min had explained it like complete garbage, but I understood it perfectly.
"For now, use this one as your main move. It's the crown jewel of One Heaven Style."
After that, Na Sang-min taught me just one technique, as if he were trying to beat it into my skull.
Its name was.
First Form: Severing Slash.
I lowered my stance.
The ex-convicts didn't dare rush me blindly anymore.
They only swallowed hard and kept glancing at one another.
"Hey."
At my single word, all of them flinched.
"I'm busy, so come at me all at once."
As if someone had lit a fuse.
At last, the ex-convicts' faces twisted, and they raised their swords.
"Tear that bastard apart and kill him!"
"Y-you're getting buried here!"
"All of you, attack!"
Three of them charged at once.
I hadn't even used Infinite Acceleration, yet they seemed to be moving in slow motion.
That alone proved I was on a level above them.
Like a flash of lightning, a single streak of black light shot forward.
They probably never even saw Heoksikdo properly.
The men who had been rushing at me with their swords raised all froze at once.
And then.
Rustle.
The bamboo behind them all came toppling down together.
The cuts were so clean they looked as if a laser had sliced through them.
"Puhak!"
"Kukheok!"
"Kkh!"
Bright red blood soon soaked through their clothes, and one upper body after another dropped away.
As their entrails spilled onto the dirt, a vile stench rose into the air.
"...U-uh."
The drug offender reached toward me, but the light in his pupils went out before he could say another word.
Killing pieces of human trash like this didn't stir a single emotion in me.
No.
On the contrary.
That feels good.
I flicked the blood off my sword and turned away.
I got home and took a shower.
The faint smell of blood clinging to my body had become almost familiar by now.
I wiped the water from my skin, changed clothes, and stepped onto the veranda to make a call somewhere.
"Karki."
"Boss!"
Bright energy practically burst through the receiver.
"So how'd the culty thing go?"
"All that's left is meeting the cult leader."
"Ohhh. Nice! You did it!"
"I don't think I'll be able to go to the factory for a while."
"Got it, Boss. Don't worry. I'll handle everything!"
I had already informed Dio Guild as well.
I told them I'd be away for a while because of personal matters.
Starting tomorrow, I would be infiltrating Cheonyang-ji as a believer.
"...Boss. Take care of yourself."
Karki sounded genuinely worried about me throwing my life away by jumping into Cheonyang-ji.
"Aren't you weird?"
"Huh? About what?"
"About me. Wearing a purple mask and getting obsessed with playing hero. If you think about it, I sound like a complete lunatic."
I knew it.
I was far too obsessed with heroes.
I had made it my life's purpose to judge those who didn't fit my idea of right and wrong.
Even if that wasn't justice.
Even if I was wrong.
I had decided not to care.
This was the life I had chosen.
And to keep living it, I had to.
Throw everything I had into becoming a hero.
I didn't let other people's opinions shake me, but...
I was at least curious how Karki saw me.
"Nope. To me, Boss is just cool! You've got style."
Karki repeated the same thing he had told me the first time he saw me.
"And if you're a lunatic, so what?"
Moonlight spilled softly through the window.
"What's life, anyway? It's a hundred, a thousand times better than getting dragged around by some other bastard! Just go for it!"
Honestly.
Talking to this guy always put me at ease.
He always supported me and cheered me on without asking for anything in return.
From the living room, Grandmother shouted,
"Yongki! I told you to come eat ages ago, so why the hell aren't you out here yet? Hurry up and crawl your ass out here, you little bastard!"
Grandmother had been waiting for me all this time.
No matter how many times I told her to eat first, it never worked.
If I skipped a meal, she wouldn't even pick up her own spoon.
"I'll call you again later, Karki."
"Yeah, Boss. Eat something good."
The unusually bright moon slipped behind a bank of clouds.
The next morning, I arrived at the Sole Cathedral on time.
In the past, I would have been forced through a strict identity check on the first floor.
But the guard looked at me wearing the Twelve Apostles' mask and let me in without even stopping me.
Even though I was armed and carrying Heoksikdo, no less.
"Candidate Apostle, please proceed to the Grand Cathedral."
The Grand Cathedral of the Sole Temple.
It was where believers gathered to worship.
I had never been inside before.
I followed the corridor and stepped through the entrance.
The moment I opened the enormous arched doors, I was overwhelmed by the grandeur inside.
The towering ceiling was decorated with murals of archangels soaring through the sky.
The intricate patterns engraved into the floor gleamed like polished glass.
Sunlight poured in through the stained glass and scattered into a riot of colors.
All of it deepened the sacred atmosphere.
A gigantic black-and-white skull-patterned cross on the wall immediately caught my eye.
Someone was seated on the golden chair atop the dais.
He was wearing a robe.
Eleven masked swordsmen stood on either side of him.
At last.
I was face-to-face with the leader of Cheonyang-ji and all of his Apostles.
The Eighth Disciple, Peter, stepped forward with a longsword in hand.
"Kneel."
I obediently did as I was told.
Unreal.
It felt as if someone were pressing down on the back of my head.
The mana radiating from the Twelve Apostles was oppressive.
Each and every one of them was.
Strong.
The strongest of them all was the one in the center: the cult leader.
I couldn't be sure of his exact level, since I wasn't a detection type like Lee Yu-seol.
But...
There's something unusual about his presence.
Peter said,
"Raise your head."
Because they were all masked, I couldn't see the Apostles' faces.
In other words, they couldn't see mine either.
A so-called cell structure.
It was a system often used by criminal organizations and terrorist groups, and its main advantage was that it made cutting off loose ends easy.
There was one question, though.
At this rate...
Even the cult leader won't know who I am.
Maybe he had read my thoughts.
The cult leader, who had been silent until then, finally spoke.
"You're a new applicant for the Twelve Apostles. I know a great deal about you."
His voice was thin and peculiar, almost like a child's.
I wanted to learn more about him, but the distance made that impossible.
"Unfortunately, you still haven't reached the level of true fanaticism."
The cult leader laughed beneath his robe and went on.
"You need a trial."
For a moment, I felt the urge to rush at him and tear that robe off myself.
But the pressure was so intense I couldn't even lift my knees off the floor, much less breathe properly.
Besides, if I wanted to get close to the cult leader, I would have to deal with all twelve Apostles standing there first.
If I rushed him right here, could I win?
...No.
I absolutely couldn't afford to leap in recklessly.
One step at a time.
"Whatever the trial is, just give me the order. Should I capture Ha Se-na?"
"No. I've lost interest in her."
I had thrown the cult leader a baited line, but he slipped past it with sickening ease.
Did he already start looking for another woman?
The cult leader lifted one finger.
"Nike has a younger sister. Bring her to me."
His intent was obvious.
He wanted the kidnapped girl as a sex slave.
But then I remembered what Nike had once said to me when he was still an instructor at Dio Guild.
"This is my little sister. She looks a lot like me, doesn't she?"
His sister had only been a little girl, maybe seven years old at most.
A pedophile?!
Before I knew it, I had clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
I was glad I was wearing a mask.
If I hadn't been, I would have failed to hide my expression.
"Why aren't you answering? If you can do it, then swear it."
I raised my head.
Deep black shadows fell beneath the robe.
What a purple hero really had to do was already decided.
"I swear it."
I would kill you.
Cheonyang-ji's cult leader.