Chapter 125 - The Unbeliever II

3

At first, I paid little attention to Mo Gwangseo and the Church of Resurrection.

Even the anecdotes about Mo Gwangseo and his followers’ behavior described in this episode were about fifty percent embellishments from my imagination. I hadn’t witnessed them myself; I had reconstructed them from various people’s testimonies.

Why hadn’t I paid attention?

'I’m busy enough to drop dead. Who has time for some damn cult?'

Frankly, they weren’t worth the trouble.

The equally heretical New Buddha faith was a different matter. Both were similar in that they used anomalies for their faith, but the New Buddha faith’s Udumbara posed a direct threat to human civilization.

The New Buddha faith was even hostile toward awakened people. Urgent action had been necessary.

The Church of Resurrection, on the other hand?

“Awakened? What does that matter now? Jesus has returned!”

“Amen!”

“The end has come, brothers and sisters. Repent now, while you still can, and board the ark of salvation designed by our cult leader.”

“You there! I can tell from your face that you’re a good person who absolutely must be saved!”

Aside from occasionally running into a missionary while walking down the street, they weren’t particularly harmful. And even in pre-apocalyptic South Korea, street evangelism had been little more than a side quest you encountered on your commute.

As a regressor, I had plenty of far more important main quests.

More importantly, Mo Gwangseo’s Church of Resurrection had a main quest of its own.

[“Everyone! I will open a path through the winds and help you ascend to heaven. You, too, must help others.”]

During his lifetime—before he transformed into a “resurrection anomaly”—Mo Gwangseo had aimed for a unique selling point in the Korean Peninsula’s religious marketplace.

[“But where do you think your help is truly needed most desperately?”]

[“Hmm? ... Yeouido?”]

[“No! North Korea!”]

[“What?”]

His doctrine of northward evangelism.

[“Jesus said to go out into the roads and hedgerows and compel people to come in, so that his house might be filled. But why did Jesus say to compel them? Was he telling us to drag the unbaptized into church, even through violence?”]

[“Absolutely not, everyone. There are those who cut off the roads and erect fences to forcibly prevent sheep who would otherwise heed their shepherd’s call from reaching our house. Wicked devils of Satan. These are the antichrists we must defeat, even ‘by force.’”]

[“Our unbaptized brothers and sisters in North Korea are not to blame. The grave sin belongs to the Kim family, who erected iron fences and walls around them. Since the Korean Peninsula was split in two, the ‘roads’ have been severed and the ‘hedgerows’ erected. Jesus is telling you to restore those roads of lamentation and those fences of blood through your own footsteps.”]

[“Ah, brothers and sisters! We volunteer for the most arduous road here where we now stand, not to boast that we are better than others. We merely trust that our other brothers will lead the sheep in more comfortable pastures in our stead, while we walk a somewhat more demanding road of evangelism. This is faith in our brothers and sisters. This is love.”]

[“So let the thunderbolt of faith tear down Satan’s walls as soon as possible, and let our footsteps bring us within reach of their fingertips. Amen.”]

Mo Gwangseo’s doctrine of northward evangelism found a fair amount of support among his congregation. More precisely, only people who responded to it joined his meeting hall.

In truth, northward evangelism was merely another “diplomatic” turn of phrase Mo Gwangseo had devised.

Taking it to mean that they should actually march north to spread the faith would have put both Mo Gwangseo and the JSA security battalion in an awkward position. Like any citizen of a democratic nation, Mo Gwangseo had merely offered his voters a “campaign pledge.”

But as I’ve already said, the root of all evil lay in anomalies that hadn’t installed translators in their brains. In this case, that anomaly was Tenlegs.

“The border fences have fallen!”

Tenlegs had a habit of reacting strongly to gatherings of three hundred or more humans.

Having concluded that South Koreans were reasonably tasty, Tenlegs soon developed an interest in meat of the same breed. To its eyes, North Korea’s barracks, where the distinction between prison and military quarters was growing increasingly blurred, looked like one-Michelin-star fusion restaurants.

“Ah! Chairman Mo Gwangseo’s—no, Jesus’s prophecy has been proven once again!”

“The fist of fire has smashed the hedgerows! Now is the time to spread the gospel!”

“Let us go, brothers! To North Korea!”

The Church of Resurrection really did “march north.”

After absorbing all manner of domestic cults and heretical sects into its congregation and training them, it sent its followers marching into North Korea in an endless stream.

This new crusade kept advancing even as the Republic of Korea Armed Forces were annihilated.

If you’re wondering why crusaders suddenly appeared on the Korean Peninsula instead of in Jerusalem, you either hadn’t studied enough history or were steeped in Occidentalism. Pyongyang had always been the Jerusalem of the East.

“March north!”

“God wills it!”

Kaesong, Kumchon, Pyongsan, Sariwon.

North Korea’s major strongholds were liberated one after another. Clearly, the Korean Peninsula had terrain that granted far more generous buffs to volunteer fighters than to regular armies.

The secret to the crusaders’ success was simple. The Church of Resurrection treated Tenlegs, which had brought down the Military Demarcation Line, as an “apostle of God,” and merely followed on its heels after it devoured every North Korean soldier in its path.

In a sense, the Church of Resurrection’s believers were among the humans best adapted to the apocalypse. Their cult leader was an anomaly. Their vanguard was an anomaly. I can confidently say that few groups ever put anomalies to such thorough use.

And finally.

“Look over there!”

“It’s Pyongyang! We’ve finally arrived!”

“Ah... The Jerusalem of the East is filled with the Lord’s light.”

The liberation of Pyongyang!

The believers trembled with emotion. Since the days of Dangun, had any religious figure other than Gung Ye achieved anything so great?

Of course, there wasn’t much of the Lord’s light in this Oriental Jerusalem. Jangchung Cathedral, Pyongyang’s only Catholic church, had long since collapsed. There weren’t many people, either.

GR҉O҈҈҈҉O҉W҉҈҈GR҈҉OAR!

No, they were disappearing in real time.

The North Korean regime had prepared one final, all-in team fight in a desperate attempt to defend Pyongyang. And as you can probably guess from the fact that this statement was in the past tense, they had been wiped out, souls and all.

There were even some Chinese troops in Pyongyang. The moment the Chinese heard the intelligence report, “People calling themselves a liberation army are advancing north from the south!” their minds abruptly regressed to the 1950s.

That’s right. Though we sometimes forgot it, Pyongyang and Beijing were bound by a blood alliance.

So they shed blood together, too.

GR҉O҉҈҈O҉҉W҉҈҈O҉AR҉!

The mighty Tenlegs roared. Tenlegs was so fucking overpowered that it was the strongest of all anomalies.

Bunkers meant nothing to Tenlegs, whose Cthulhu-like tentacles punched straight through subterranean bedrock.

The North Korean regime’s leadership, its generals, and above all its soldiers and the citizens of Pyongyang all set off together to meet Mr. Marx.

The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army that had come down from Manchuria also began to belatedly realize that it had misinterpreted some of the intelligence. Tenlegs liked East Asians a little too much to be the spearhead of capitalist imperialism.

At that moment.

Just as the North Koreans were dying, the Chinese were despairing, and the South Koreans who had only just reached Pyongyang were screaming.

A footstep.

Mo Gwangseo walked forward.

“Chairman!”

A believer cried out. Those who had followed Mo Gwangseo since before his miracle of the Second Coming liked to casually use his old title—“Chairman”—to flaunt their sense of privilege.

“Jesus!”

The believers who had abandoned their previous faiths more recently cried out as well. Throughout the crusade’s march, Mo Gwangseo had walked at their head. And now such an exalted figure was approaching that terrifying monster! Even if Tenlegs was an apostle of God, they couldn’t help worrying.

“That bastard—who the hell is that little shit?”

The North Koreans shouted, too. The Chinese were much the same. It was a perfectly normal reaction.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—or the Chairman, Jesus, and That Little Shit—Mo Gwangseo walked forward.

SHUNK!

And, naturally, one of Tenlegs’s countless tentacles turned him into a Mo Gwangseo kebab.

“Chairmaaaaan!”

“Oh! Lord! Loooord!”

It was as inevitable as the law of gravity, but the Church of Resurrection’s believers were horrified. How could this be! Tenlegs was indeed an apostle of God, but unfortunately, its name was Judas Iscariot.

This was why you had to check a Servant’s true name before summoning one. The Church of Resurrection’s believers seemed to be paying the price for ignoring that ancient maxim.

As everyone either burst into tears or watched the people crying and wondered, 'What the hell are those bastards doing?'

A flash of light—

Once again, there was light.

GR҉O҉O҈҈҈҉K҉PA҈҉HA҈҈҉K҉!

Light shone brilliantly from Tenlegs’s tentacle. For an instant, the city in the midst of a massacre was enveloped in a pure white radiance.

Tenlegs spat Mo Gwangseo out like a diner who had bitten into a shell while eating a raw oyster.

By the time the light subsided, every human involved in the urban battle could behold Mo Gwangseo’s halo.

“...”

“...”

The battlefield fell silent.

A gentle smile.

With the eyes of tens of thousands fixed exclusively on him, Mo Gwangseo—the resurrection anomaly—merely wore his unchanged, benevolent smile.

GR҈҉U҈҈R҉҉҉R...

And a miracle occurred.

Tenlegs, having chewed on Mo Gwangseo and spat him out, turned its back.

Translated into human language, it probably meant something like, “I wouldn’t come to this tasteless restaurant even if you paid me.” But just as anomalies hadn’t equipped themselves with human translators, humans hadn’t purchased anomaly translators, either.

THUD, THUUD...

Tenlegs’s enormous body receded into the distance. Shock and wonder crept onto the faces of the North Korean soldiers and into the eyes of the Chinese troops, who had been prepared for total annihilation only moments earlier.

What on earth had just happened?

“Hallelujah!”

The Church of Resurrection’s believers filled in the answer to their question for them.

“Jesus has vanquished the apostle of God!”

“Ah, fellow countrymen! Sing his praises! The Lord has endorsed our crusade!”

“It’s a miracle! A miracle!”

The Chinese soldiers couldn’t understand the South Koreans’ ecstatic cries. But the North Koreans could.

A North Korean officer interpreted the Church of Resurrection’s cries for the Chinese as well.

The looks in the eyes of the few remaining soldiers and civilians changed.

As it happened, that day was a Saturday, and the very next day the Church of Resurrection held its special “Mass.” Even the unbelievers who still half-doubted Mo Gwangseo’s miracle attended the live concert in person, determined to see whether these people really were all that awesome.

The Mass ended.

That day, Pyongyang became the Jerusalem of Korea once more.

4

The Holy State of the East.

That was the name of the new country founded in the ruins of Pyongyang.

Though the fledgling nation lacked international recognition, that didn’t make it any less competitive. The previous regime had been much the same, anyway.

Now North Korea was Rome itself. It was a little too far east to be Eastern Rome, but that didn’t matter.

Naturally, its capital was the Holy City of Pyongyang. Its head of state was Mo Gwangseo.

Mo Gwangseo’s official title was neither king, president, prime minister, nor chairman. It wasn’t even pope.

The only office worthy of Mo Gwangseo was Jesus, and so the full name of the Holy State of the East’s head of state was set as “Mo Gwangseo Jesus.”

The comedy written by and starring the Church of Resurrection had finally reached its climax.

“No, fuck. What the hell...?”

Noh Doha’s expression upon hearing the news from the north was a sight to behold.

“Wasn’t that place a den of commies? What’s all this about Jesus? Didn’t Marx define religion as the opium of the people...?”

“Hmm. Wouldn’t an ordinary cult be better than Juche ideology?”

“Fuuuck, better how? It’s the same damn shit. What a fucking mess of a country...”

That’s right. This setting was, in fact, a fantasy. What else could you call a reality with a “Holy Empire” plastered right there on the map?

Anyway, Tenlegs apparently remembered Pyongyang as a “restaurant with filthy hygiene standards,” and roamed around avoiding that one place.

The Holy State of the East’s believers praised this as “the glorious miracle of Mo Gwangseo Jesus Christ.”

Naturally, North Koreans from other regions flocked to Pyongyang as well. It probably had less to do with falling for the Holy State of the East’s propaganda than with not wanting to serve as a meal for that customer from hell, Tenlegs.

As the apocalypse wore on, the government structures of South Korea, Japan, and China collapsed completely, in that order.

Though the three East Asian countries hadn’t been born on the same day at the same hour, they strengthened their brotherly bond with a vow to die together. Yet the Holy State of the East alone steadfastly preserved its statehood. Just what you’d expect from a region where the very concept of cooperation in international diplomacy had been castrated for generations.

As those around it stared with looks that said, “Wait, why hasn’t that thing collapsed? Seriously, why hasn’t it collapsed?”—another resemblance to the previous regime—the Holy State of the East gradually took stock of reality.

'Huh? All our neighbors have fallen?'

'Then wouldn’t it be legal to occupy all that unclaimed land now?'

The Holy State of the East began “marching north” once again.

It wasn’t under some renewed pretext of reclaiming its people’s ancestral lands. That sort of nationalist thinking wasn’t sexy.

The Holy State of the East was the one and only regime directly recognized by the Lord. Therefore, it could formally lay claim to any territory in the world.

And so the Second Crusade was officially proclaimed in the Holy City of Pyongyang.

The crusaders swept like a tsunami across Gando, where Tenlegs had forcibly kept each village’s population down to around three hundred. Liberation. Liberation. More liberation.

“Today, once again, the holy crusaders of the East have liberated three villages and led them into the embrace of our Mo Gwangseo Jesus Christ. Let us pray for the well-being of our brothers and sisters. Amen.”

“Amen!”

This wasn’t some clash between peoples. Still less was it a conflict between nations.

It was simply a bloody struggle between the Church of Resurrection, which had downloaded a hypnosis app, and the pitiful ordinary people resisting it.

Naturally, in battles of this genre, ordinary people were always at a disadvantage. Even someone who had never encountered an adults-only doujinshi in their life could sense the unmistakable menace.

If this had been a world inside a doujinshi, the first person to sense that “menace” would have become its first victim.

“Hmm...”

Fortunately, reality wasn’t a doujinshi.

Unlike hypnosis doujinshi, which would lower humanity’s average intelligence if necessary to adhere rigorously to the genre, real people could exercise sound judgment.

In particular, Noh Doha, commander of the National Road Management Corps, was the sort of person who, if someone had a hypnosis app, would snatch away their phone and turn the tables by expounding on “101 Reasons You Should Kill Yourself Right Now.”

Initially disgusted by the cult circus, Doha gradually developed a different look in those eyes.

“Awakened Undertaker...”

“Yes?”

“I’m only asking out of curiosity. Mo Gwangseo’s Church of Resurrection. Couldn’t we find some way to put it to use...?”

It was a kind of destiny.

The commander of the National Road Management Corps—the ruler of the Korean Peninsula’s “south”—had instinctively begun taking notice of the leader of its “north.”