Chapter 124 - The Unbeliever I

1

Can you guess the one promise Koreans will never keep?

“Let's get a meal together sometime.”

That's right.

To Koreans, this statement does not mean a proposal to meet when you're actually hungry and increase your insulin secretion together.

Strictly interpreted, it means something along the lines of:

“We do hereby declare once more, in this place, that although we may not be allies, we are at least not hostile to one another.”

Every country has sophisticated diplomatic expressions like these.

If someone from Kyoto asks, “Would you like some ochazuke?” you mustn't respond with, “Wow! Traditional food! Japanese people really are so nice!”

When North Korea fires a missile, your mental AI translator should automatically render it not as “Die, you South Korean sons of bitches!” but as “P-please look at me! I... e-exist too!”

“Let's get a meal together sometime” is no different.

If you respond to a Korean saying that with “Sure, buddy! When should we meet? Tomorrow? Next week?” the other party has no choice but to seriously question whether this diplomatic relationship is worth maintaining.

And here we have a statement that transcends national borders, universally applicable to diplomacy everywhere.

“The end of the world will soon be upon us! Everyone!”

“Hell is coming! Ah! I can see the landscapes of hell! Board the new ark before hellfire rains down!”

“Who am I? None other than the son of heaven and your savior. Those who believe this truth will be blessed, while unbelievers will face nothing but disaster. That is my message.”

Cult doomsday prophecies, of course.

As any ordinary person who goes through life with their mental translation feature always switched on knows, the proper translation of a cult believer's “Someday, one day, the end will come!” is as follows: “—However, if you make a donation, we may be able to grant you a special extension on the apocalypse's delivery date.”

People unable to understand such basic diplomatic language are a minority in every country. The vulnerable few excluded from international diplomacy inevitably get exploited.

And then the void arrived.

“Wow! The end really is here! Our cult leader's prophecy came true! Leader! What should we do now? Should we kick things off with some good old mass suicide, like you told us last time?”

“Eek.”

Anomalies had no translators installed in their brains. Naturally, they had no way of understanding the subtleties of human diplomacy.

On the very day the void arrived, cult leaders all over the world felt an involuntary urge to greet the anomalies with, “Can't you read the fucking room?”

“No... Well... My dear. What I mean is, just because the end is at hand doesn't necessarily mean we have to kill ourselves...”

“Stop talking nonsense and hurry up and kill yourself, Leader.”

Most cult leaders found the situation reversed: they were the ones being treated as clueless fucks.

But there was no need to feel too sad. Their congregations weren't mean enough to leave their own leaders out. Together, in perfect harmony, they pressed the “Prophecy Fulfilled” achievement button.

-Breaking news. At approximately eleven this morning, evidence was found at a facility in North Chungcheong Province of a group having taken their own lives...

-According to the police investigation, there are believed to be no clear connections between the recent series of collective incidents...

-The terrorists who occupied the Seoul subway have been identified as members of an unnamed cult. Every member, including the cult leader, takes their own life once a day, thereby...

A harsh season had descended upon cult leaders.

Never in recorded history had there been an unemployment crisis like this one. People running cults were required to make more difficult choices.

But wasn't it said that heroes emerge in troubled times?

On the Korean Peninsula, two cult leaders overcame countless invitations to suicide and finally managed to cry, “I want to live! With you!”—

Entry number one.

“All awakened must join the New Buddha faith and escape the sin of taking life as soon as possible! Those who refuse defy the will of Flower Garland! They are enemies of the Buddha, destroying equality among all people and shattering peace among all things!”

“Eternal life without killing! Life of the spirit, splendor of flowers! Peace beneath the heavens for a hundred million li!”

The New Buddha faith.

A certain corrupt monk who happened to have entrenched himself in the central Korean Peninsula attained enlightenment upon witnessing the zombie virus spreading through his city. In other words, Udumbara.

The belief that even anomalies wouldn't kill you if you just put a flower on your head struck a chord with modern people already questioning the performance of their mental AI translators. They gladly replaced those translators with a more environmentally friendly material.

The New Buddha faith expanded at a terrifying speed, displaying its formidable might by sweeping across the entire Korean Peninsula, Japanese archipelago, and Chinese mainland. For a time, South Korea's leading export success story wasn't K-pop, but K-religion.

Of course, once I stepped in and started defeating Udumbara, they were left with jack shit. The corrupt monk joined hands with his believers and bought a one-way ticket to the other shore.

Entry number two.

“Very well! Brothers and sisters! I, your shepherd, shall lead the way!”

“That's our chairman!”

“Mo Gwangseo! Mo Gwangseo!”

Mo Gwangseo.

Like all pioneers who founded new doctrines, Mo Gwangseo had an unusual history.

He was a warrior of excommunication squared: declared a heretic by an organization called Mary's Ark of Salvation, which had itself been blasted with the Catholic Church's heresy-excommunication beam. Truly, a once-in-a-lifetime cultist.

Multiply a negative by another negative, and you get a positive. Equipped with a mathematical brain most uncharacteristic of a cultist, Mo Gwangseo was certain that his circuitous journey was leading him toward the true faith.

He had approximately 210 believers. A small-time operator who didn't even rank among the Korean Peninsula's big-name cults, he nevertheless didn't care. Even Jesus had only twelve direct disciples. (And one of those respected Brutus more than his own teacher.)

Mo Gwangseo's confidence wasn't entirely without foundation.

More precisely, he created that foundation.

“What on earth is that smell? Chairman, what is that?”

“Ether.”

“Pardon?”

“This container is filled with ether in the form of holy water, which will guide me to heaven.”

This cutting-edge chemical Mo Gwangseo had christened ether was also known as gasoline.

Indeed, he proved that he was in a different league from other second-rate cult leaders.

Before his believers could so much as hint, “Hmm, the cult leader next door put on a fiery farewell-to-this-world show. Don't we get any entertainment like that...?” he had taken the initiative and brought gasoline all on his own.

“Brothers and sisters! Since ancient times, fire has been sacred ether! The essence of fire is to purify the earth's wicked energies and bring us closer to heaven! Yet those impure energies are not easily erased. Thus I, as a soul who has penetrated the six great spiritual principles, shall first open a path through the winds and guide you to the kingdom of heaven on high.”

What rock stars and cult leaders had in common was the importance of their onstage performance.

As soon as his speech reached its conclusion, Mo Gwangseo doused himself in oil from head to toe.

The smell of gasoline spread so powerfully that even someone whose sense of smell had been deadened by spring pollen could detect it.

“Everyone! The same goes for you. Each and every one of you must drive through the path I have opened with all your strength, helping the souls still left on earth ascend with ease! Thus, may the whole world be saved through the merciful light of glory and the benediction of love! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen!”

Mo Gwangseo scurried out of the meeting hall. He had completed South Korea's regular compulsory education and knew perfectly well what happened when gasoline caught fire in an enclosed space.

For the record, he had majored in film directing in college.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen!”

“Chairman! Chairman!”

Had those cries moved them?

Several believers shouted “Amen!” and ran after their leader. One particularly talented runner caught him without difficulty and threw their arms around him.

“Chairman! I'll go with you, Chairman! I'll open the path through the winds with you!”

“Uh—uhh!”

Perhaps Mo Gwangseo had intended to keep running and escape.

Perhaps, once out of his believers' sight, he had planned to detonate explosives prepared in advance, staging the scene to look as though their leader had sacrificed his body and ascended to heaven.

Then, if he returned alive and well a few days later, his believers would see him as the Second Coming of Jesus, returned from death. This, surely, would be the very definition of turning a crisis into an opportunity.

What Mo Gwangseo had failed to account for was that his acting was so superb it had moved his believers a little too deeply.

“Let go! Let go! Wait, don't touch that—”

BOOOOOM!

According to the survivors' testimony, an explosion erupted in the parking lot near the meeting hall. However thoroughly Mo Gwangseo had slathered himself in oil sunscreen, simply catching fire could not have caused a massive explosion outdoors.

Two believers who had followed him, and Mo Gwangseo himself, were killed instantly in the blast. His corpse, in particular, was blown to pieces that burned for a long time.

“Our chairman has ascended to heaven!”

“Our chairman has opened the path through the winds!”

“Ah, how holy. Amen...”

Had the story ended here, they would have been no different from the countless other cults that sprang up immediately after the void arrived, then naturally died out.

As always, misfortune came when the curtain failed to fall at the moment the ending should have arrived.

“Huh?”

“What's wrong, Mr. Kim? Don't change your mind. Hurry up and put on the gasoline.”

“N-no! That's not it! That! Look over there, where our chairman ascended! That...!”

“Huh?”

The remaining believers were preparing to burn themselves together in the parking lot when someone pointed.

There was light there.

This wasn't some literary interpretation about light in the Bible actually meaning the Logos. What had appeared in that outdoor parking lot near Okjeong Lake in Okjeong-dong, Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, was literally “light.”

With a footstep, a human shadow emerged from the heart of the radiance.

“Oh, oooh...”

It was Mo Gwangseo.

Backlit by the glow, he looked as though his entire body wore a halo.

The believers dropped to their knees as one.

They wept.

“A-a miracle...”

“Our chairman! Our chairman has risen from the dead!”

A gentle smile.

Mo Gwangseo—or rather, the being the believers never doubted was Mo Gwangseo—did not answer. It merely smiled benevolently.

But that was more than enough for a congregation whose mental brainwashing and conditioning were complete.

Just as light-novel heroines fell for a protagonist's ultimate head-patting technique, the believers washed away their tears with more tears, kissed Mo Gwangseo's forepaws, and swore eternal loyalty.

“The Second Coming! It's the miracle of the Second Coming!”

The believers no longer needed any “path through the winds” to ascend to heaven.

This very place, this earth where the returned Jesus stood, was the holy temple.

No trumpets were heard, nor were any angels visible, but those trivial details didn't matter. Living as a cultist required the courage to ignore life's miscellaneous details. And these two hundred-odd believers were very brave indeed.

“Chairman Mo Gwangseo was the Second Coming of Jesus!”

“Oh! Amen! Amen!”

“I am saved! We are saved!”

Mo Gwangseo had won.

Where? In the religious war.

Here, in the jar of venomous creatures called the Korean Peninsula, where twenty Gods and fifty returned Jesuses waged an eternal crusade, Mo Gwangseo was selected as the last one standing.

His cult was now reborn under the name “Church of Resurrection.”

“Spread this miracle far and wide!”

“We believe in the miracles of holy water and holy fire!”

“Evangelize, and evangelize again! Amen!”

Believers of the Church of Resurrection traveled all over the country with holy water... that is, gasoline, dabbed onto the center of their foreheads.

While the New Buddha faith absorbed believers from Buddhist traditions, the Church of Resurrection ravenously devoured Christians.

Of course, believers from other local cults became the most appetizing prey.

“What? Abandon our faith? How dare you! Our leader received the Eucharist from the pope himself, and it turned into flesh and blood in his mouth! The statue of the Virgin Mary in our church has wept no fewer than five hundred times! We have photographs and evidence of everything!”

“Yeah, so what? Our chairman rose from the dead.”

“What?”

“Our chairman is the Second Coming of Jesus. What are you going to do about it?”

Mo Gwangseo's resurrection was not a one-time event. The first verse was always the hard part; the second, third, and fourth were easy.

Every Sunday, Mo Gwangseo was engulfed in gasoline and burned. And each time, he walked back out, radiating light.

Wearing a smile of boundless mercy.

“Ah, aaah!”

“Do you believe now?”

“I belieeeve! Ameeen!”

All the material “evidence” the other cults boasted of so proudly was rendered worthless by a single resurrection show unfolding vividly before their eyes.

The sin of killing their own leader every Sunday—the person they worshipped as Jesus—could be justified in the name of their mission to spread the faith. As I have repeatedly emphasized, you mustn't expect rational thought from these people.

The infidels who attended Sunday Mass and ditched their old faiths returned to their respective bases and immediately arrested their “false prophets.”

“What! You satanic bastards! Do you think you can do this to me and get away with it?”

“Shut up! You're Satan!”

“W-what?”

Rivals who had been God or Jesus just yesterday turned into Satan overnight.

Reproaching themselves for their foolishness in having been deceived by the Antichrist all this time, the believers poured the holy water they had received from the Church of Resurrection over Satan's head.

“P-please spare me! Please, let me live!”

“May ether purify this wicked soul. Amen.”

“Amen!”

Sacred beacons rose all across the country. Naturally, as I traveled between Seoul and Busan, stories of the Church of Resurrection began reaching my ears too.

'... What the fuck.'

My gaze went cold.

There was nothing particularly special about a cult in itself. The Korean Peninsula had always been overflowing with them.

Ever since Dangun took a perfectly ordinary bear and hypnotized it by saying, “You're not a bear anymore. You're a human now, got it?” hadn't this land been renowned as a mecca for brainwashing stories?

But the Church of Resurrection was a little different.

I was a sensible Korean. Accordingly, the instant I heard Mo Gwangseo's story, the AI translator in my head went into overdrive.

A being that keeps coming back to life even after dying?

But human language doesn't get through to it?

Light flashes every time it resurrects, and all it does is smile without saying a word?

'... No matter how you look at it, that's not a person. It's just a case of a human turning into an anomaly.'

That's right.

As if everything else weren't enough, these cult bastards were no longer satisfied with worshipping humans. Now they had started worshipping an actual “anomaly” as Jesus.