Chapter 57

I did undo the poison, in my own way. The Kingdom of Anselus, however, has hardly changed at all. Nothing seems to unfold the way I expect. Then again, if it did, I would be a god.

The one small mercy is that people with purple hair—the Anselus royal family among them—are not being discriminated against. So unless something goes badly wrong, every Harvester in the Kingdom of Anselus will survive. Good. That part went as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I expected. From here on, the longer I can drag this out, the better it is for me.

People who have received my blessing. No—since I am the only one in this line of work anyway, I will simply call them Harvesters. A Harvester holds a biological advantage over an ordinary person. Once they take me in and their light is stained black, the body recovers, of course, and their physical ability is strengthened. They do not merely grow stronger and faster. Their minds sharpen as well. I have no idea why merely parceling myself out should produce an effect like that, but if I can use it, then I ought to.

So when a Harvester rises, they will spread in greater numbers, and farther. The first world in particular has many people who do not begin having already fallen to the bottom, but start from somewhere above the middle. They will spread even farther. Just as Tisha's descendants did. Once the Harvesters' descendants multiply, another chance to climb will come. And maybe then I will be able to catch the witch who deceived me and ran.

But witch-hunting is a side objective. I am genuinely furious that she tricked me and fled, yet if you ask whether I absolutely must catch her in order to achieve my purpose—well. I am not so sure. Yasle's arts are already enough. No. In truth, they are not. The trouble with Yasle's memories is that they are simply too vast. Even so, I cannot use Hyungkesuni's techniques. Even if I cut away only the trap and discard it, there is a good chance that what Hyungkesuni knows still would not be enough to call me.

When I analyze the trap she laid, it goes like this. She casts a fishing line downward, stuffs the monster hauled in on it into a human body, and turns that body into hard stone. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If the intention is to seal me that way, then I would have to enter the body. But the line never fell as far as the bottom where I am.

Ten times. That it never once touched the bottom in all those attempts means the fault is likely not the summoner's, but the technique's. Hyungkesuni's trap was never something I could have been caught in to begin with. Honestly, what is this girl even doing? She seems to have lived quite a long while, and yet there is something half-finished about her. Then again, look up the Witch of Ecstasy and she appears in nothing but trifling folktales and tallies of damage. She never causes a disaster on any great scale. Perhaps that is why she survived.

Anyway, the more I think about this witch the angrier I get, so I will set her aside and think of something else. For now I have turned all the information I place into their heads back into Yasle's knowledge. But this, too, is simply too large. A book, they could more or less take in within three years. Yasle's knowledge takes ten as a baseline. Perhaps because of that, many of them die before the knowledge can be fully delivered. Even if I can regulate the time, that person still has to receive it across a long span. Otherwise the brain melts into mush.

And even if I spend all that time and manage to send it, another problem appears. Hyungkesuni's book had nothing of the sort, but give them Yasle's memories and they begin to use the magic he used. Most troubles are settled well enough by that. And once they are settled? There is no need to call me. So they eat well, live well, bear children well…… If they would at least do that much, a foothold would be laid for me to climb later. Reality is not so obliging.

The magic bound up with the summoning is, by any human measure, wicked, and so a Harvester meets a wretched end. They seem to rise a little, then abruptly board a roller coaster and plunge to the bottom. If this were a stock, every line of it would be plastered in a fresh, bright blue. Red means a gain. Blue means a loss. And because I have attached an option to claim them once it is all finished, I cannot even sell while the line is red.

So when a Harvester's life turns blue—in other words, when that life begins to come apart—I wonder whether they will grow desperate then, and call me. But by the time a life that was rising breaks downward, they are already a criminal on the order of a monstrous murderer. A life on the run. It is difficult to work a summoning that requires dozens of Sacrifices at the very minimum.

Still, as I watch a little longer, something becomes clear. The Sacrifices used to summon me cannot be just anyone. They have to be chosen. The person who becomes my vessel, especially, is an exceedingly rare material. Rebecca Rolf was a Sacrifice Yasle spent a long time searching for. Follow the magic that seeks those Sacrifices, and it leads back to memories of his days in the Yeongrang Theocracy. Either it was never a magic for finding Sacrifices at all, or—more likely—it was a magic for finding people the Theocracy needed. The Yeongrang Theocracy had no custom of offering living sacrifices. I am only inferring this the way one might guess at a foreign film from the images alone, so I cannot be certain, but that means they were probably not sacrifices. And since the people found that way mostly appear in scenes of receiving a higher education within the Theocracy, they are likely people possessed of some spiritual ability. Then Rebecca Rolf would be the same. Someone like a shaman, perhaps?

Perhaps for that reason, even setting the first world aside, there are 281 Harvesters moving at present, and only three of them are making any attempt at all. For reference, those 281 each live in a different world. It is not only worlds that, by the Faded Man's measure, sit somewhere between the medieval and the early modern. There are worlds like a murim realm as well, though they go by entirely different names, not the Nine Great Sects. Of course there are worlds like the present, and worlds like the future. Though I do think it is a bit much, how the farther into the future I go, the more often I see people settling their urges while watching obscene videos.

Anyway, some of them do that in virtual reality, and there is even a humanity being farmed outright by machinery, just like in a certain film. In that latter case, the instant they received my blessing they woke in a vat full of strange fluid. Then a beam fired by the machine that managed them burned them to ash. A malignant mutation, was it? Well, if the tubes and chips driven into the head are flung clear, that is what would happen.

In another future world, something else occurred. There, identity is proven by implants set into the body. The moment a person became a Harvester, the chip in their body shattered and their identity vanished all at once. They were left in the position of an illegal immigrant and dragged off to a camp. Do I simply not suit advanced worlds? That would be a problem. Still, fortunately, there are 281 people across 281 kinds of worlds, and only five of those worlds are futuristic. I can take what I need from the rest.

I watch the worlds flow past, and I confirm my goals.

I can see a future in which that second one might be completed in part. I made Harvesters to gather warmth in my place. When one of them kills a person, the dead person's warmth flows into me. On that foundation I laid a plan to sow Harvesters through countless worlds and take in warmth. But numbers have a limit. Even if I became, quite literally, a cocoon of blessings and did nothing but produce Harvesters, once a population grows past ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a certain point, production cannot keep pace.

Fortunately, this time I discovered that it passes down through the blood. I am not inside them, but the contract is already complete. So I find them, push myself in, and it is finished—no separate contract required. And where such descendants are many, I can go to that world without a special body. Whether this always works, or whether there are conditions, I will have to learn bit by bit. Even if I cannot climb, Harvesters multiply on their own.

Still, that alone leaves me uneasy, so I want an agent who will make Harvesters in my place. In the first world I blessed hundreds of people, and I salvaged exactly one. The yield is the problem. The yield. And yet I still have no sense of how a Blessing Proxy might be made. I need a breakthrough. I am wondering whether, once the method of summoning is somewhat on its rails, I ought to slip in alongside it something like a lecture on founding a cult that even a monkey could follow. For now I have Yasle, so I imagine I could stitch together what he did when he built the Church of Future Hope. Looking at it this way, enduring for so long really was worth it. Yasle's memories are a true hoard of treasure. This is why the witch will not do.

To summarize.

The last of those is more of an if-I-can.

Hm?

I was watching a Harvester who rose for a moment, then plummeted like a ghost, spat their warmth back out, and vanished, when something enormous happened in the first world. A great famine has fallen across the entire continent. I watch through human eyes, so I had no bodily sense of it. Harvesters were simply being murdered here and there, or suddenly killing people who looked like peasants, when the king explains in council that this is already the second year of failed harvests. And that it is the same in every country. They are releasing the stored grain and moving to give relief, but it does not appear to be simple. The noble who became a Harvester is of quite high rank, and even he eats only one meal a day. I cannot tell whether a little ice age has come here as well, or whether a volcano has erupted somewhere, but it is a vicious famine.

I keep watching, hoping this will not thin the Harvesters too badly, when a strange current begins to form. They cry out a word.

Yes. People who believe in me have appeared. I had thought no one would believe in a god who was already dead, but people do not seem to see it that way. Rather, they say this came about because the Church of the Holy God killed our god, and they have dragged up a matter more than four years old by their reckoning, and risen with it.

Ah, that's right. In the first world, about four years have passed since I was struck by the Holy God's beam and evaporated.

Ordinarily a riot like this would turn toward the king in the capital, but this time the arrow is aimed at the Church of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Holy God. Priests of the Church are even being killed. In the Kingdom of Anselus, no less. The logic the new group advances is vicious enough.

"This famine came because the Holy God killed the Outer God."

"If not, does the Holy God mean to kill us?"

"Has God abandoned us?"

Among them were people of the Church of the Holy God trying to stir the crowd with the claim that I had laid a curse as I died, but unfortunately it did not take. Too many people saw the manner of my death. And the fact that I was the god who gave strength to those sunk in despair mattered, truly.

"There is no way our god—the god who took in everyone the Church of the Holy God cast aside—would abandon us."

The first world has a worldview much like that of early modern Europe. Priests were the upper class there. The poor could scarcely dare to look upon them. Which side is the more persuasive needs no saying. I had spoken with the separation of religion and politics in mind, but looking over there, a primitive faith is becoming a religion again.

I turned a little more of my attention toward the first world.