Chapter 122 - Utopia (1)

My favorite skill, Rebirth of a Hundred Ghosts, works like this.

[Rebirth of a Hundred Ghosts]

Rank: SSS

Effect: Summons those you have personally killed. The dead do not retain their abilities from life. However, if you wish, the dead retain their memories and appearance from life. If you do not wish it, they are summoned only as monsters.

※However, you can summon them only once per week.

There was an important point here: the part that said, [If I wish, the dead retain their memories and appearance from life].

In other words, if I did not wish it, they would be summoned as mere monsters, inheriting neither their memories nor their appearance.

Just like now.

GROOOOAR!

My shadow spread. White bones rose from the shadow that blanketed the ground. Five thousand skeletons. It had been a while since I last saw them, but I wasn't happy to see them. Weren't they evidence of my deaths?

'But right now, I need them.'

The apostles of [The Immortal Evangelist of Happiness] surged toward us, singing in chorus.

"La. Loola, loo."

"Lala."

Their melody forcibly buried its listeners in happy memories. It was an attack that even martial artists with disciplined minds could scarcely resist. Even the Demonic Cult's followers had dropped like flies at the wedding.

But...

GROOOOAR!

The skeletons roared, perfectly unaffected.

A mere five thousand skeletons charged. They hurled themselves savagely at an army hundreds of thousands, even millions strong. It wasn't because the skeletons were particularly brave, nor because they had strong defenses against mental attacks.

"Aha. I see," the attendant spirit said beside me. "They don't have any 'memories' to begin with, so mental attacks don't work on them."

He was right.

The song sung by the apostles of [The Immortal Evangelist of Happiness] was certainly powerful. But that power worked only on humans who possessed memories. To summoned creatures with no memories whatsoever, it was no different from an ordinary song.

"La..."

SKREE! SKREE!

And an ordinary song had no offensive power.

The skeletons slaughtered the apostles. They stabbed down with daggers, tore into them with their teeth, and clawed them with bony hands. With every attack, apostles were swept away. In terms of physical combat, the apostles were utterly helpless.

"Ghh."

The constellation watching the battle from the air bit its lip. Melodies flooded in from every direction, yet every word it uttered reached my ears. It was probably transmitting its voice directly into my head.

"Such futile resistance...! I shall overwhelm you with sheer numbers anyway!"

I readily conceded the point.

"Yes, that's certainly true."

However little physical offensive power they had, a hundred thousand was a hundred thousand, and a million was a million. Sheer numbers exerted a terrifying violence of their own. That was why [The Immortal Evangelist of Happiness] had ambushed us with such confidence.

"But you've already shown me how to beat you."

"What?"

Had it read my lips? The constellation reacted.

"Numbers are a secondary concern. Every army has a weakness. The moment you revealed that you know no pain and do nothing but spread happiness..."

The skeletons were being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. But they hadn't been subdued yet. They would hold out a little longer—at least another minute or two.

And that brief span was all the time we needed.

"You might as well have laid your weakness bare."

I gripped my holy sword tightly.

"Black Dragon leader."

"Speak up! I can't hear you over the singing!"

"Yes! Please send up your mirrors!"

I amplified my voice with aura. The Black Dragon leader came right up beside me. Hearing my request, she had already spread six mirrors around us.

"Done. But what are you going to do with them?"

"Remember when we fought [The Demon King of Autumn Rain] together? When the Demon King fired beams, you reflected them several times with your mirrors to weaken them. And you strengthened our attacks instead. We're going to launch the same sort of attack."

She understood my intention.

"You're going to fire your aura like a beam? That's fine, but are you confident you can produce the kind of monstrous output [The Demon King of Autumn Rain] did? Unless it's reasonably powerful, there's only so much my mirrors can do, however often I reflect it."

"Don't worry about the output. Just focus on spreading it as widely as possible."

"I don't know what you're thinking... All right. Give it a try."

The mirrors flew into the air. East, west, south, north. Light striking one mirror would immediately reflect toward the others, enough to encompass the open plain.

'This is enough.'

I nodded and channeled aura into the sword's hilt.

FWOOSH!

Blood-red aura blazed up along the blade.

'I may not be able to force my way through with strength like Hungry Ghost, or cleave all beneath heaven through enlightenment like Master.'

But with these apostles as my enemies, and these companions as my allies, I could display truly invincible might.

["What happens if I can swing my sword through hunger alone?"]

Because that was the nature of the martial art I had inherited.

["You can cut down someone who has never gone hungry with a single strike."]

["Thus, half the martial artists of the orthodox factions become foes you can defeat in a single move."]

Apostles who knew nothing but happiness could never be a match for me.

I swung my sword toward a mirror the Black Dragon leader had sent aloft.

Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven.

First Form.

Flowing Sword of Death by Starvation.

The army split apart.

A supreme form of the Demonic Heaven burst forth on the red aura. The mirrors bounced the divine art back. Once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six times. With each reflection, the red aura cleaved the plain in two.

SHAAAAK!

Compared to the Demon King's blow, it was utterly feeble. Compared to Master's, it was laughably weak. Yet despite that, the apostles of happiness vanished at the merest brush of the red aura.

"What...?"

The constellation flinched, looking down at the plain in shock.

Of course it was bewildered. My single strike had literally evaporated thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of apostles. Only moments earlier, they had swarmed across the plain, but the paths scraped by the red aura now lay empty.

"Black Dragon leader! I'll keep going!"

Naturally, I had no intention of being satisfied with a single attack.

"Please keep changing the mirrors' positions, too!"

"My goodness... I see. Your martial art is the absolute antithesis of that constellation's minions!"

Despite her surprise, the Black Dragon leader expertly readjusted the mirrors' positions. She had realized that regardless of my aura's output, my attacks annihilated enemies simply by touching them.

In that case, reflecting the attacks along as many different paths as possible was what mattered.

"Don't worry about me! Just keep attacking, Death King! I'll handle the mirrors!"

The mirrors darted wildly through the air. Once the Black Dragon leader judged what mattered, she immediately put it into action.

SHAAAAK!

Trusting her words, I unleashed another strike. All I did was perform a familiar martial art, yet tens of thousands of enemies were swept away. Rank two and rank three. The Black Dragon leader and I were one-sidedly ravaging the constellation's army with our combined assault.

"Ahaha! Magnificent! What an incredible spectacle!"

The Inquisitor performed his Divine Art, protecting us against the enemies' mental attacks.

"P-please finish as quickly as you can! I've already broken into two of my emergency piggy banks!"

The Count backed up the Inquisitor with an astronomical amount of money.

"Viper! Enemies have slipped through on your side! Deal with them!"

The Paladin surveyed the battlefield, issuing instructions in real time.

"Okay! Damn it, the Demonic Cult gets all the cool scenes!"

Viper dealt with the small fry that slipped past before the skeletons could block them.

'We can do this.'

Only six people.

'If we work together, we're invincible!'

Yet the six of us overwhelmed an army rivaling an entire world.

'Look.'

The Tower's residents would be gathered in the square now, watching our martial prowess. They would broadcast or record this scene and spread it to the outside world, too.

The sight of just six people defeating a million apostles.

'Look!'

Rejoice.

Witness the fact that nothing is impossible in this Tower.

See clearly that it is not the world crushing us, but us blanketing the world.

And embrace hope.

"You..."

The constellation's face twisted.

"You vile, lawless heretics! What right have you to invade the utopia I have built? There is no unhappiness in this world! Not even unhappy memories!"

The constellation swept its hand through the air. A scene unfolded in the sky like a hologram, showing the apostles who lived in this world.

"Lala."

"Loo."

The apostles did not live in houses. They had no need to build cities. Hunger itself was absent from their lives. They had no need to extract resources to sustain themselves. Taking the forms of little children, the apostles sang happily, wherever and whenever they pleased.

"Aaaaaaagh!"

Except that, at the heart of this world, an innocent child lay impaled on a sword.

"Aaaagh! Ugh, aaagh! Aaaaaagh!"

I couldn't tell by what principle an innocent child's screams became [power]. The sword embedded in the child's chest was probably creating some sort of law.

"The world I have built is far gentler than your insignificant garbage heaps!"

With the child's screams behind it, the constellation shouted.

"Do not dare play the hypocrites before me, invaders! I followed Lefanta Aegim and saw countless worlds. In every world, the screams never ceased. Hundreds of thousands! Millions! Tens of millions! Hundreds of millions!"

The sword named Sacrifice howled.

"But in my world, there is one. Only one! By making a single person a scapegoat, my apostles live lives free of pain. If I commit one evil, you turn a blind eye to hundreds of millions of evils. What nerve have trash like you to insult my world!"

I understood.

The constellation had undoubtedly invented that mechanism after a great deal of agonizing and deliberation. And it would have done so with good intentions.

If the road to hell was paved with good intentions, then this was the hell [The Immortal Evangelist of Happiness] had chosen.

'This world is only an extreme example.'

The difficulties I—we—would face while running the Tower were no different. When food grew scarce. When resources ran dry. As the people responsible for the Tower, we would end up sacrificing someone.

"Ha!"

Seeing my silence, the constellation sneered.

"At least you have enough conscience not to spout nonsense. If you cannot answer, begone! I shall never accept the likes of you as my new master!"

"No, I do have an answer."

I took a step forward.

"An answer? Ha. What answer could the likes of you possibly have?"

It was easy to recite the righteous principle, "Even so, sacrifice is wrong."

But righteous principles weren't meant to be spoken. They were meant to be lived. They held true only when you could take responsibility for your words, when you had the ability to make them reality.

I had not forgotten that.

"I will kill all of you."

"What?"

"I will kill all of you and make you part of my hundred ghosts."

"..."

The constellation seemed not to understand my words.

"What are you saying...?"

"Everything killed by my sword is collected among my hundred ghosts. If I wish, I can summon them with all their memories from life intact. I will kill every last one of you, then summon you so you can live in this world again."

I raised my holy sword.

"You want to live in eternal happiness. I will let you. You want lives where you neither experience nor remember pain, where you simply sing as you do now. I will grant you that."

"..."

"My hundred ghosts don't need to eat anything to live, either. I will give you the world you want."

It was simple.

Kill all one million apostles.

Then summon them back into this world.

Give them back their memories from life.

Nothing would change.

"I'm not saying this only to you."

I made my declaration to the residents who would be watching us now, and to the countless people who would watch us in the future.

"There are evil people beyond reform. There are sinners beyond redemption. There are ghosts who want to live again but cannot. From now on, I will carry out their sentences with my own hands."

"Their sentences...?"

"I will kill them and revive them as my hundred ghosts. Exiled into my shadow, they will bear the burden of their deeds forever."

Abruptly, the song echoing across the horizon stopped.

It had resonated through heaven and earth, and so when it ceased, the world fell silent.

The constellation stared at me in disbelief.

"Lies... All the wicked and all the ghosts? A mere mortal could never..."

"Evangelist. The utopia you boast of having built here—I can build exactly the same thing. And my world won't even need an innocent child's screams."

"..."

Before we entered this apocalypse, the Black Dragon leader had asked whether I was prepared to become a king.

"It's simple."

Yes.

If every world was hell, I simply had to become a slightly greater hell.