Chapter 27 - The Buddhist I

1

As I’ve already mentioned, countless boss-level monsters appeared around the world besides Tenlegs. There was “Meteor Strike,” for example, which endlessly bombarded us with shooting stars from the night sky while I was running my convenience store.

Actually, the term “monster” was used mostly in the early days. As Meteor Strike demonstrates, plenty of these monsters were closer to phenomena than living organisms. Later on, the awakened began using other terms interchangeably with monster: anomaly, evil spirit, supernatural creature, Lost.

Incidentally, in Japan, they sometimes reserved the term “Angel” for boss-level monsters.

A truly peculiar usage, considering that the West called them the exact opposite: demons. Later, an awakened called the Puppeteer, who had once lived in Japan, told me the term came from some classic Japanese anime.

Gates went through a similar process. Many gates weren’t shaped like doors, so later on, terms such as void, chasm, abyss, and hell came into more frequent use. (In fact, it was difficult to draw a strict distinction between anomalies and voids.)

Today, I’d like to talk about one of the chief culprits behind this full-fledged shift in language—the so-called “New Buddha.”

2

“Huh? Hey, you...”

“Yeah?”

“What’s that on your head?”

This monster wasn’t a living organism.

More precisely, opinions were divided on whether it was alive or not.

“That thing growing next to your ear... Isn’t that a leaf?”

A virus.

For a long time, no one knew where the first case had appeared. Most likely, it was either North or South Korea. Just as the Busan Station waiting hall was the awakened’s Pei County, the Korean Peninsula was a favorite haunt for monsters. I’m telling you, the world definitely had balance patches!

“I-it’s a zombie virus!”

People panicked before they knew anything about it.

After all, wouldn’t an apocalypse story feel incomplete without zombies?

People infected with this virus sprouted leaves, flowers, and the like from their bodies. There were even cases of weeds growing out of bald heads.

Yet people’s response during the early stages of its spread was surprisingly lukewarm. There was a reason for that.

“No! I’m not a zombie!”

“... Huh?”

“Look! I can talk perfectly well. My memory’s fine, and so is my mind! Fuck, having a maple leaf grow out of my armpit feels weird to me too, but I don’t want to die over this!”

The infected were far more normal(?) than anyone had expected.

Naturally, having your body suddenly turn into a flowerpot made you look bizarre. But surprisingly, if you ignored appearances, the virus seemed to have no harmful effects whatsoever.

No—in fact, they discovered an enormous benefit.

“That fucking monster! That bastard killed my mother!”

“Ah...”

“I’ll kill it! Even if I have to die, I’m taking that fucking monster down, no matter what!”

“My son...”

“Mother, watch over me from heaven. Your unworthy son will join you soon.”

“Son!”

“Huh?”

“I’m not dead, you silly boy! How many times do I have to call before you answer?”

“M-Mother? But there’s a hole right through your stomach...”

“I don’t know why, but I’m perfectly fine. Could it be that tonic I took yesterday?”

People infected with the virus generally “did not die.”

As long as their brains weren’t destroyed, they survived severed limbs and damaged internal organs.

Even if their bodies’ vital functions stopped, they could survive the most grievous injuries as long as they basked in sunlight during the day and drank enough water at regular intervals.

And how did ordinary people react, now that the medical system had collapsed?

“God has come to our aid!”

“Me too...! I’m going to get infected too!”

The bizarre spectacle unfolded of people scrambling to deliberately catch a disease.

Awakened with healing abilities were scarce to begin with. And the capable healers had been sent to the front lines, where they were busy supporting other awakened.

In an age when you could die anywhere, at any time, you could get an extra life point for free? Who could resist that? It was like a lifeboat appearing beside the sinking Titanic.

“A zombie virus? No. It’s a blessing of life.”

“Become a plant yourselves! You won’t have to struggle to find food anymore. All you need is sunlight and water, and you can live without a care!”

“This is the majesty of the New Buddha. Believe in the New Buddha, and you will be freed from all worldly afflictions and suffering, granted a body that can live in the new world.”

All manner of cult doctrines even began proliferating.

The zombie virus came to be worshipped as a new Buddha, spawning a faith called “New Buddha.” It was a cult with absolutely no connection to Buddhism, but its slogan struck a chord with people: “Be freed forever from the affliction of taking life to eat meat and grain—eternal life without killing.”

All adherents of the New Buddha faith shaved off their black hair. Unlike actual Buddhists, however, these believers grew new hair on their heads: weeds and flowers.

Apparently, this was a process of shedding their skin as worldly humans and accepting a new god, or some such nonsense.

“Oh my, Yellow Rose. Did you have a peaceful night?”

“Yes. Thanks to your kind concern, White Rose, my body and mind remained pure.”

The New Buddha faithful adopted separate religious names, much like Christian baptismal names. Amusingly, they addressed one another by the names of trees or flowers according to whatever plant grew on their heads.

Calling themselves a gathering of a million varieties of flowers, they named their congregation the “Flowerbed,” and their philosophy the “Flower Garland.” Just the sort of naming sense you’d expect from people walking around with flowers on their heads.

“... Those flower freaks are going to be the death of us.”

Dang Seorin once muttered that. It was probably in my fifth run. As Three Thousand’s Deputy Guild Leader at the time, I shrugged.

“Well, in a world this chaotic, people are bound to seek refuge in a cult. The Yellow Turban Rebellion didn’t happen for no reason.”

“You’re always making Three Kingdoms comparisons, Deputy Guild Leader. They make you sound old, so please rein it in.”

What was wrong with Three Kingdoms? All the kids these days liked Liu Bei. Filial sons liked Cao Cao. As for Sun Quan, uh... the mentally ill liked him.

Seeing my expression, Dang Seorin chuckled.

“Anyway, I understand how people feel too. But it’s practically poison to us.”

She was right.

New Buddha had a drawback.

It had no adverse effects on ordinary people. But approximately two weeks after an awakened became infected with New Buddha, once the flowers were in full bloom, they became completely unable to activate their abilities.

A devastatingly lethal poison.

“You should be careful too, Guild Leader. Say something like that these days and everyone will tear into you for plant hate.”

“But they hate the awakened?”

That, too, was a valid point.

In the early days of the gate crisis, the awakened had enjoyed far better treatment. But a backlash against awakened supremacy gave rise to hatred of the awakened, and New Buddha developed those sentiments into a systematic doctrine.

“The awakened are no different from monsters. This is proven by the fact that their abilities all disappear when they receive the grace of the New Buddha.”

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

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

They really were an incredibly troublesome cult.

Of course, Dang Seorin was a capable guild leader. She hadn’t built a multinational coalition guild in Korea for nothing.

She coolly resolved every problem by making a massive donation of goods to the New Buddha Flowerbed.

“Ho ho ho. Though our fellow seeker Dang Seorin has not received the Buddha’s grace, she devotes herself to saving the mortal world. How could we flowers treat her with anything less than respect?”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“Amitabha, Amitabha...”

Amitabha, my ass. If Shakyamuni had seen him, he would have grabbed a pair of clippers and shaved every tiger lily off that sham monk’s head.

And Korea was relatively tame.

The Korean Peninsula had that peculiar phenomenon called “constellations,” remember? Thanks to them, the awakened kept relatively quiet and restrained, and awakened supremacy never gained much traction. Naturally, ordinary people’s hatred of the awakened was correspondingly low.

But things changed when New Buddha spread to neighboring countries.

Alongside the epidemic—the physical virus—the New Buddha faith was exported as a mental virus, and the world shook under this cult’s influence.

“Everyone! What is our beloved!”

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

“That’s right! Our beloved is nothing more than the name of a flower!”

“Waaaaah!”

In other countries, where no constellations kept watch, awakened supremacy ran rampant. Governments were paralyzed, the law had collapsed, and there wasn’t even anyone watching you. It would have been stranger if the more powerful awakened hadn’t banded together and raised hell.

Naturally, ordinary people who suffered every imaginable kind of abuse at their hands hated the awakened. And the New Buddha faith specialized in legitimizing that very hatred.

A K-cult beloved by people around the world had been born.

Another cult faction was active in North Korea, but its operations were concentrated to the north. When it came to sheer nuisance value, New Buddha was in a league of its own.

“... This is bad. Really bad. The number of volunteers who were supposed to come from Japan has dropped drastically.”

Dang Seorin rubbed the frayed tip of her pointed hat between her fingers. It was an unconscious habit that surfaced whenever she was genuinely at a loss.

You may have forgotten, but in my fifth run, we retreated to Busan instead of immediately confronting Tenlegs.

Hundreds of awakened from Japan had promised to join us, but that number had suddenly shrunk to twenty.

“Twenty is far too few.”

“Apparently, the flower freaks are expanding their influence enormously in Japan. From Kyushu to Kanto, they’ve practically swallowed half the country. Things must be so bad that they can’t risk leaving their bases unattended. From what little I’ve heard, India, Europe, and the Americas are really going off the rails too.”

“Humanity’s future looks bleak.”

Whether the future had become bleak because cults ran rampant, or cults ran rampant because the future was bleak, was merely a chicken-and-egg question.

At least Tenlegs was visible, and stabbing it with a sword offered some prospect of victory. New Buddha was truly hopeless.

How were we supposed to eradicate a virus? A virology lab? Those were busy studying infectious diseases that actually threatened human lives. New Buddha was pushed far down the research priority list.

Its victims varied from run to run. Sometimes Dang Seorin became infected; the Saintess had caught it too.

Getting infected would have been disastrous for me, so whenever I felt something like a leaf beneath my ear, I immediately killed myself without hesitation. Infection stopped awakened abilities from activating, remember? What if something went wrong and even my regression ability disappeared? I had to die quickly.

Well, even in the worst-case scenario, Old Man Scho was around, so there was little chance of a problem... Still, being careful couldn’t hurt.

Ah. Incidentally, here are the kinds of flowers that bloomed on the heads of the people mentioned so far when they caught New Buddha.

Saintess - A blue hydrangea with a few drops of pale lavender paint.

Dang Seorin - A pitch-black violet. The night sky cradled a halo around the moon.

Seo Gyu - Unknown.

Sim Aryeon - White lily of the valley. It trembled, which was amusing.

Lee Juho - A bright yellow sunflower.

Go Yori - Unknown. Presumed to be a daffodil.

Old Man Scho - Unknown. Presumed to be an ordinary clover (not four-leafed).

Oh Dokseo - A red spider lily. Yes, the flower also known as the cluster amaryllis or the flower of the far shore. She was so curious about what flower she would grow that she deliberately infected herself and found out. She wasn’t exactly normal either.

Like Old Man Scho, I didn’t know what flower I would grow. Whenever I thought I’d caught New Buddha, I hurried up and died before it could bloom. I died twice that way.

If I had to guess, perhaps a snow-white lily? It symbolizes purity and chastity, after all. I just have this gut feeling that it would suit me.

Anyway, New Buddha was a greater headache than Tenlegs.

My strategy—leave it alone, since it wasn’t particularly harmful to civilians—wasn’t revised until my seventeenth run.

“Doctor! We’ve got a crisis!”

Old Man Scho flung the door open. I had only just fallen asleep, so I scowled.

“Oh, what is it? Let me get some sleep. Unlike a certain someone, I’m not old, so I still need plenty of it.”

“What? You fucking little... That’s not the point! Outside! Open the window and look outside, you brat!”

“What could possibly make you kick up this much shit in the middle of the night...”

I opened the window.

Looked up at the night sky.

And froze, my hands gripping the window frame.

“... What is that?”

A World Tree.

A single red tree, so enormous there was no other way to describe it, covered the entire night sky.