An Unavoidable Chilling Prophecy
An Unavoidable Chilling Prophecy
Cold sweat soaked my entire body.
My most secret secret...
It was obvious.
The miracles I performed were not actually miracles at all, but just those incredibly vulgar eroge skills.
On top of that, hadn't the prophecy just declared that the abilities I held were filthy and lowly?
There was nothing else that could be called my most secret secret.
And after it was revealed, I would die at the hands of those who loved me?
"Saint! I'm all better thanks to you! Thank you!"
"The Saint is the living incarnation of grace! Because of you, I can see tomorrow!"
"Thank you... thank you. Without you, truly..."
The faces of people who had smiled at me flashed before my eyes.
The images of the slum dwellers and the people of the Lilia Order bowing to me with deep respect came to mind.
They were the people who loved me more than anyone else.
I couldn't think of anyone else.
And those very people...
Would kill me.
I couldn't breathe properly.
It felt as if my whole body was convulsing in terror.
I seemed to be hyperventilating. The pace of my breathing was maddeningly fast.
But the prophecy directed at me had not ended.
[Yet death will not be the end. For she who sows grace shall seize your soul after death. She shall send your soul to a place befitting your deeds. There you shall suffer what you do not wish, and so shall you live.]
"Ugh... ugh!!"
I collapsed onto the floor.
Even death was not the end.
The one who sowed grace.
Obviously, that was Lilia.
After I died.
It meant Lilia would capture my soul. And I would be sent to a place befitting my deeds, where I would suffer what I did not wish?
What place would befit my deeds?
Hell.
Hell!!
It meant I would suffer for eternity in hell!!
Now I understood why the goddess hadn't struck me down with divine punishment, even though I had been impersonating a saint for over half a year.
Lilia wasn't looking the other way because I was doing a good job!!
That had been my delusion!
She had intended to punish me all along.
It was just that her method wasn't something as simple as striking my head with lightning!
After my secret was laid bare.
After I was miserably cast out by everyone, after I was executed by the hands of the Order of Grace's faithful and the slum dwellers on charges of impersonating a saint--then she planned to pluck out my soul and cast it into hell!!
In short, the all-powerful goddess herself, no one less, had declared she would personally destroy me.
What was the point of being acknowledged by the emperor?
What was the point of receiving gifts and being happy about it?
If my soul got thrown into hell, everything would be over.
The hyperventilation grew worse.
[Yet you shall suffer alone, and through this, Grace shall sow her will upon the world, and seeing you, people shall truly realize that she who sows grace is alive.]
The will of Grace.
What was it?
Impersonating a saint led to ruin.
No matter how many people I saved, she would not overlook a guy who had filthy and lowly skills without any faith impersonating the goddess's apostle!
She meant to make an example out of me, to show what happened when you impersonated a saint!
Seeing that, people would come to realize that the goddess Lilia was alive!
Fuck...
My breath...
I couldn't breathe.
Everything before my eyes turned pitch-black.
***
"O Healing Saint!!"
When I opened my eyes, High Priest Jerba of the Prophecy Order was looking down at me with a bewildered face.
"Wh-what on earth did Lord Lupiel say to you? What sort of future did he show you?"
I didn't answer that question.
My clothes were completely drenched in cold sweat.
Shivering with chills, I asked Jerba for a favor.
"High Priest. Please bring High Priest Yodel of the Lilia Order to me."
"Im-Immediately, O Saint!"
Jerba darted out like a bullet, and soon returned with Old Man Yodel in tow.
I looked at Yodel.
"High Priest Yodel."
"O Saint! Good heavens! What in the world has happened?"
"There is one thing I wish to ask you."
I was too terrified to tell him the truth.
How could I say that I would be found out as a fraud, that I would end up brutally murdered, and that even after I died, I would be burned in hell for all eternity?
"What must those who have wronged the goddess Lilia do to receive her forgiveness?"
First, I needed to ask about the way to receive the goddess's forgiveness.
"Why do you suddenly ask such a question, O Saint?"
"Please answer me. This is something I absolutely must hear."
Yodel looked at me with worry for a moment, and then began to explain.
"This goes without saying, but you must not repeat the wrong you have committed."
In other words, I had to stop impersonating a saint any further.
"You must distance yourself from that wrong."
I had to run.
I had been strategizing wrong. Elixir was gushing out now, so why was I waiting around for the Order to go bankrupt and leave me? Fuck. On top of that, if I bankrupted the Order, Lilia, who was already fucking furious, might get even angrier!
You fucking idiot!
I should have just run, no matter what!
"There must be endless self-denial."
I would have to insist much more strongly that I was not the saint! Every chance I got, I would have to deny it!
"And you must accumulate good deeds and draw closer to the goddess."
Since I had already been doing that, wasn't this enough now? I had already healed enough people!
I didn't need to run around acting like a saint anymore!
But I felt that this alone was somehow lacking.
These were just too basic and theoretical!
The wrong I had committed wasn't just some ordinary big deal!
The Goddess of Grace had personally declared she would snatch me up the moment I croaked and throw me into hell! She wasn't just ordinarily pissed off!
Something...
Something was still missing.
I needed an additional contingency plan, in case quitting being the saint failed.
"Is there a way for a soul stained with a sin that the goddess herself has declared unforgivable to avoid going to hell?"
"O Saint, what in the world... what kind of prophecy did you hear?"
Jerba asked me in bewilderment.
As if I'd tell him?
"I cannot answer that, High Priest Yodel. Tell me, please. Is there a way for a soul that the goddess herself has declared she will personally punish to avoid going to hell?"
"If one escapes the state of being stained with sin through the miracle of a saint, they can avoid going to hell."
Well, that was a method I couldn't use.
I had never heard that there was another saint besides me.
Which meant that there was no real saint, aside from a fraud like me.
So if everything failed, getting saved by another saint's miracle was impossible.
"Is there another way?"
"It is a rather unorthodox method, but if the soul is destroyed by an extremely powerful curse, one cannot completely prevent going to hell, but it can be postponed."
What did that mean?
"Please explain in detail."
"It is exactly as it sounds. How can you punish a soul that has already been shattered into pieces? Naturally, it cannot even go to hell. In the past, there are records of evil black magicians using this method to attempt to avoid suffering in the afterlife."
Those records were tailor-made for my current situation!!
How? How could I stop it?
"Souls are extremely difficult to destroy, but even if destroyed, the entity itself does not vanish. Although it takes time, if there is remaining lifespan, it will eventually be restored to its original form, then spend the remainder of its lifespan before disappearing."
"How does that allow one to avoid going to hell?"
"They would deliberately destroy their own soul, one that still had remaining lifespan, with a powerful curse, and then artificially control the soul's restoration speed so that it would regenerate after a very long time. That way, the people who remembered their evil deeds would all be gone, and they prayed that the gods would forget their sins as well. It was an act close to a desperate flailing to avoid hell, but ultimately, it didn't work."
"Why was that?"
"A soul, once created, is an entity bound to that dimensional plane. The moment it is destroyed, it returns to the place of its birth and slowly regenerates there. Through this, the gods could easily ascertain whose soul was regenerating. In the end, the black magicians whose souls regenerated after a long time were also eventually dragged to hell to suffer."
There it was!!
A perfect plan!
So if I got hit by a powerful curse and my soul was destroyed, that was it, right?
The black magicians may have failed, but I wouldn't fail!
Why was that?
Because my soul did not belong to this dimensional plane!
Didn't that mean that if my soul was destroyed by a curse, it would regenerate in the dimensional plane it was bound to: Korea!
If I fled to another dimensional plane, how could Lilia punish me?
Get hit by a curse, my soul destroyed, and I'd skip hell!
A rebirth in Korea!
If I went back to Korea, I'd just be a no-name local college graduate, but it was better than hell!
No, it was a thousand times better!
"Thank you, High Priest Yodel. I am weary. Would both of you please withdraw?"
High Priest Jerba and Old Man Yodel looked at me with worry, but soon bowed politely and left me to myself.
Well, then.
The plan was established.
For my escape, there were three things that were essential.
First, I had to find a way to evade the tracking miracle, because if they chased after me again after I had finally run away, it would be a problem.
Second, I had to secretly siphon off enough money to live on wherever I fled to.
Third, I needed to find a way to handle Time Stop, the skill most essential for my escape, more efficiently.
The moment these three conditions were met, I would bolt immediately!
And then I'd change my face with Body Modification and live like a mouse playing dead.
Of course, this method was quite standard, but it had a high probability of failure.
The support that the Lilia Order and the slum dwellers had for me surpassed the level of fanaticism.
No matter how careful I was, the chances were high they would somehow find me.
So, in preparation for the possibility of failure, I also had to simultaneously search for a powerful curse that could serve as a cheat key to skip my trip to hell in one shot.
The problem was that such a powerful curse wasn't exactly something commonly lying around on the streets.
In short, while the standard method had a low chance of success, it could be attempted at any time.
And while the method using the cheat key couldn't be attempted just anytime, if it succeeded, skipping hell was 100% guaranteed.
What else could I do?
Normally, I'd proceed with the standard method, and if I happened to discover a powerful curse, I'd have to immediately try getting hit by that curse to avoid hell.
That was roughly the long and short of it.
They said that even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
First, I needed to sleep.
After hearing that brutal prophecy, my entire body felt utterly exhausted.
Feeling a heavy weight pressing down on my eyelids, I lay down on the bed.
And before long, I fell asleep.
***
Humans twisted into hideous shapes that one might only see in nightmares were screaming.
Those hideous shapes were even contagious.
The twisted humans shrieked as they hunted the living.
To make them just like themselves.
Gunshots, magic, and miracles were poured upon them, pushing the twisted beings back, but they did not stop.
The castle walls crumbled, the cities crumbled.
Mankind crumbled.
Undead, who could have been zombies or ghouls, encroached upon all of human territory and tore at the bodies of the living, and before long, those corpses became the same twisted beings, rising from where they lay to roam the earth.
And at the center of it all were two women.
One woman, brutally hacked apart, lay dead on the ground, bleeding, while beside her, another woman with the exact same face wailed in anguish.
Wings had sprouted from the back of the wailing woman.
Those wings were dyed pitch-black, and the dark, evil aura emanating from them was the root cause that created all these twisted beings.
"No! No!!"
The woman with the pitch-black wings screamed.
"I just...! I just wanted to be loved!"
But there was no longer anyone to be seen who would love her.
She, who bore wings like a fallen angel, cried and cried in sorrow.
But around her there were only the twisted ones.
Someone to love her...
Was nowhere to be seen.
***
I jolted upright from the bed in a cold sweat.
Again!
The same experience once again!
It was a prophecy of an unhappy future!
But...
I was no longer terrified or afraid.
The evil aura emanating from that woman's wings in my dream!
That!
That was a curse!
If I got hit by that and died, my soul would be destroyed and I'd skip hell!
Wasn't that a rebirth in Korea?
Perfect!!
This was it!
To think the cheat key would come to me this quickly!
Now I just needed to find the black-winged woman who had spread that curse!
And once I got hit by the curse and my soul was destroyed, it would all be over!
I was right in the middle of rejoicing at that thought.
"O Saint. Are you awake?"
Old man Yodel's voice came from outside.
As for me, I had gone to bed, had a nightmare, and woken up in the middle of the night, but why was he awake at this early hour?
"Yes. I am awake. What is the matter?"
When I opened the door, the expression on the old man standing outside the door was grave.
What was it? What was going on?
"His Imperial Majesty secretly wishes to meet with you."