Faith vs. Conviction (7)
Seraphim poured everything it had into the blow, then folded its wings and vanished.
I looked down at Jeong Myeong-su, whose eyes had gone dead and dull.
His skin had blackened. His hands and feet had dried up and twisted like old roots.
His hair and teeth had all fallen out.
He had forced himself to use black magic and paid for it with a grotesque ruin of a body.
As if eager to cover up the ugliness as quickly as possible, snowflakes settled softly over the corpse, glittering brilliantly in the light.
Someone climbed onto the stage.
It was Simon, her golden hair whipping behind her.
She stopped at a cautious distance from me.
“...You’re Yuda, right?”
She seemed wary, since I was wearing a purple mask.
“I’m the Purple Devil.”
At my flippant answer, Simon snorted a laugh.
“What a ridiculously out-there alter ego. You could’ve warned me.”
Simon turned her gaze away.
She looked at the late Jeong Myeong-su and spoke.
“Thanks. That was supposed to be my job. I owe you one.”
Simon’s older sister had been kidnapped by Cheonyang-ji, and after that, she’d taken her own life.
Simon had become one of the Twelve Apostles, waiting only for a chance to take revenge.
“...It’s finally over, sis.”
Hot tears streamed down Simon’s cheeks.
Something knotted deep in her chest seemed to melt away like fresh snow, leaving her expression lighter, cleaner somehow.
I turned to face her squarely.
“It was what I was going to do anyway. And I didn’t do it alone. We did it together.”
Simon wiped at her tears and smiled.
“You put on a mask and your whole personality changes. You can even say surprisingly kind things.”
We made a little small talk after that, but we couldn’t afford to relax forever.
The audience was silent as a grave.
The cultists sat with blank eyes, their mouths shut tight.
The brainwashing still hasn’t worn off.
Curse-type skills automatically lifted after some time once the caster died.
Mind-control magic, on the other hand, only grew stronger the longer it lingered.
That was when it happened.
Jeong Myeong-su’s corpse twitched.
Simon jumped and drew her sword.
“No way?”
It was a false alarm.
His body, already ruined by the backlash of black magic, shattered apart.
The remains turned to black smoke, gathered in the air, and then took the shape of a huge skull.
The leader of Cheonyang-ji was gone from the face of the earth.
And yet the fierce brainwashing magic he had cast still remained.
“Grrrraaah!!!”
The black skull drifted through the seats, stirring up the cultists as it passed among them.
As if Jeong Myeong-su were wandering the underworld and still barking orders from beyond the grave.
The skull issued a new command.
The cultists all flinched at once.
Then, as though they had rehearsed it in advance, they began shouting themselves hoarse, veins bulging in their necks.
“How dare you! How dare you!!!”
“You killed our leader!”
“You murderers!!!”
The air filled with curses, but not one of them dared step onto the stage to fight.
Simon lowered her sword.
She let out a long breath and lifted her head.
“What are you going to do about them?”
She had gotten what she wanted now that the cult leader was dead.
“How about we just slip out quietly? With their leader gone, Cheonyang-ji’ll collapse on its own, won’t it?”
...Would it, though?
Cheonyang-ji had followers scattered everywhere, not just in this stadium.
And it wasn’t the only cult in South Korea, either.
It was just the largest one.
While I was planning this operation, I’d been thinking about it the whole time.
After Jeong Myeong-su was eliminated, what would I do with the cultists?
Simon went on. “...You’re planning to save them too?”
If I was calling myself a hero, then it was only right to save as many people as possible.
But—
“No. I can’t do that.”
To be exact.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t.
It was that I wouldn’t.
What they wanted was salvation.
The cultists desperately wanted to look away from the pain of reality and escape into a fake world called Cheonyang.
What I could save were...
only the ones who were ready to be saved.
No matter how loudly I declared that Jeong Myeong-su was dead.
No matter how much I told them to abandon the religion and disperse.
They’d only turn their resentment on me.
There wouldn’t be a single person there who truly thanked me.
So I said into the earpiece, “Come in. Final assignment.”
Simon tilted her head.
“Who are you calling?”
The Twelve Apostles were dead. The twenty-four elders were dead. The cult leader was dead.
That left only one person in the stadium.
“Ugh. Cold. What the hell is this, snow all of a sudden?”
It was Jo Jeong-hwan, looking like a mouse so terrified it might faint at any second.
Trash flew toward him.
“What are you, then!”
“Are you with them?”
“Call the cops! Throw those bastards in prison!”
Jo Jeong-hwan dodged the flying garbage with absurdly exaggerated motions.
“Aigoo, would you all keep it down? Why are you so angry?”
He climbed onto the stage, grunting and wheezing the whole way.
“Oh? Lady Simon is here too.”
Jeong-hwan had gotten to know Simon while infiltrating Cheonyang-ji.
“Kyaah, you’re as beautiful as ever today. Haha.”
His cheeks had gone a little pink, so he clearly had a soft spot for her.
Simon, for her part, looked indifferent.
“Hmm?”
Jo Jeong-hwan spotted Jeong Myeong-su lying on the floor.
The smile vanished from his face.
“Is this bastard dead?”
“Yes.”
“...”
Jo Jeong-hwan bit his lip.
Unable to hold back his anger, he clenched both fists so tightly his knuckles whitened.
After everything he’d seen while disguised as the seven-year-old girl Ji-ye inside Cheonyang-ji, that reaction made sense.
His eyes changed.
“What is it? The thing I have to do last?”
Even if Jeong Myeong-su disappeared, Cheonyang-ji wouldn’t.
Someone else would simply take his place.
The cultists would just end up under the thumb of another fake religion.
“You’re going to take over the cult leader’s role.”
Fake religions had existed since the dawn of humanity.
Even heroes couldn’t forcibly change that system itself.
Then wasn’t it better for someone with a decent heart to be the one in charge, rather than some monstrously evil bastard?
“Disguise yourself as Jeong Myeong-su. Can you do it?”
After a long silence, Jo Jeong-hwan said, “Understood.”
He didn’t complain the way he usually did, and he didn’t ask for money, either.
Even with a talent that let him change his appearance at will, becoming someone else for an extended period was exhausting, and in its own way, painful.
And yet Jo Jeong-hwan said nothing.
Just like me, he had his own conviction.
At the crossroads, he chose the thing he believed was right without hesitation.
“Hey, wait a sec.”
Simon cut in.
“I hate to rain on the parade, but do you really think all those people will buy it? Are you sure they won’t remember what happened today?”
She pointed toward the audience, where the cultists were still raging.
Fair point.
I had no way of knowing what kind of orders Jeong Myeong-su had given them, or how thoroughly he had brainwashed them.
“It’s fine. We just erase all their memories and implant new information.”
“You’re serious? There are one hundred thousand of them.”
Simon shook her head.
“Now that the cult leader’s dead, the spell’s gotten stronger. There’s no way to reverse-cast something like that on this many people.”
She wasn’t being overly negative.
It was realistic, actually.
Jeong Myeong-su was an S-class Hunter magician.
To turn his black magic back on itself would require hundreds of skilled magicians.
“You’d need an SS-class to barely pull it off.”
Officially, there wasn’t a single fighter of S-class or higher in Korea right now.
By Simon’s logic, dealing with this situation was impossible.
Unless you had me, the Purple Devil.
I stepped forward.
“Jeong-hwan. Become the cult leader.”
“Yes. Understood.”
He reshaped his face exactly as I ordered.
Bone and flesh twisted, and before long he had become the living image of Jeong Myeong-su as he had been in life.
“Done.”
Jo Jeong-hwan had finished preparing.
Now then.
I hesitated for a moment.
But not for long.
If this was the road a hero had to walk...
Mirror Turn has been activated.
Cost per use: 50 million won.
A substantial sum was deducted.
Awakener's Balance:￦751,014,006
The first digit of my balance, which had once been close to one billion won, changed again.
Seven, huh. Somehow that feels nice.
A massive shape emerged behind my back.
It was the angelic summon I had called earlier, Seraphim.
The seraph spread both of its wings wide.
Mirror Turn reflected the opponent’s magic with even greater force.
No matter how powerful the technique was.
“Let’s begin.”
The moment I spoke, brilliant light erupted from Seraphim’s body and flooded the entire stadium.
The blinding radiance reached Simon and Jo Jeong-hwan as well.
“Th-this is...”
“Oho! It’s warm.”
Both of them held out their hands and felt the warmth in the air.
The skull-spirit wandering the stadium ran straight into Seraphim’s blaze.
It opened its maw wide and struggled like an enraged bull, but it was useless.
The black magician who had summoned it was already gone, and its mana was pitifully insufficient.
The fiend collapsed helplessly under the brilliant light, shrieking as it faded.
“Kyaaaah!”
The black skull scattered like smoke and vanished in an instant.
Jo Jeong-hwan shouted in triumph.
“It worked!”
I closed my eyes.
Now all that’s left is...
I sensed something strange.
It felt as if Seraphim’s spirit was still connected to me.
Like a prayer, I gave it a command.
Listen carefully. What I want is...
Floating in the air like Seraphim itself, I felt as though my whole body had become weightless.
The warm mana was fuller than ever.
How much time passed?
I slowly opened my eyes.
As Seraphim folded its wings, the brilliant light began to fade.
The most powerful summon vanished like a mirage.
The shouts of condemnation also died down.
When the light disappeared completely, murmuring voices rose in its place.
“Huh...?”
“What was I doing?”
“Why is everyone standing around?”
The cultists, who had been staring blankly just moments ago, were coming to their senses.
“Look over there!”
Someone pointed at the stage.
“It’s him!”
“The fake who impersonated our leader!”
“At last, the cult leader has punished the impostor!”
Seraphim’s reverse magic was perfect.
They had fallen completely for the lie.
On the day of the grand Cheonyang gathering, someone had disguised himself as Jeong Myeong-su and carried out a terrorist attack.
Then Jeong Myeong-su had stopped the attack and punished the fake cult leader.
“O leader of Cheonyang!”
“Cult Leader of Cheonyang!”
“My leader!!!”
The cultists were once again swallowed by frenzy.
Not a single one of them suspected Jo Jeong-hwan.
Simon’s mouth fell open.
“...That’s insane. How the hell did you—what even are you?”
Honestly, I was shocked inside too.
I had only been half sure it would work.
There really is no limit to hero skills.
If a manga protagonist could do it, then reality could be forced to reproduce it exactly.
“Jeong-hwan.”
“Yes.”
“If you can’t handle it, say so now. You might have to live as the cult leader for the rest of your life. Can you bear that?”
From here on out, Jo Jeong-hwan would have to carry the weight of a crown and keep moving.
“Honestly, this is a relief. I was sick to death of living life as a fugitive. Guess I’ll just live it up at Paradise Garden from now on! Spend money like water! Fool around with the women of Cheonyang-ji!”
Jo Jeong-hwan seemed to be announcing that he would act exactly like Jeong Myeong-su.
What a villainous act.
But from everything I’d seen so far...
He’s absolutely not the kind of man who could pull that off.
Simon said, “I’ll keep an eye on him from here on out.”
“Oh. Now that’s welcome news. I’m in your care then, Lady Simon. Also, what’s your real name? If you don’t mind, maybe now’s a good time to exchange numbers...”
I gave Jo Jeong-hwan a light smack on the back.
Pushed forward by the nudge, he lifted his head.
The cultists were still chanting for their leader without pause.
Jo Jeong-hwan drew in a breath.
“All right then! Worship me!”
Like the consummate actor he was, he threw up one hand and shouted,
“I am the cult leader of Cheonyang-ji!!!”
A thunderous roar surged up toward the stadium roof.