#044

I decided to take a general tour of the Branch Office.

‘I wonder what order they used to organize the books here.’

Since it wasn’t a closed-stack system—a library operation where books are not freely accessible and are lent out through a specific procedure—it meant the structure allowed visitors to find books without the help of a librarian. If so, there must have been some logic to the order in which the books were shelved.

I pulled out a few books and compared their contents, confirming that they weren’t categorized by subject.

‘But it’s not alphabetical either….’

I frowned.

‘Don’t tell me they just shelved them in the order they were acquired?’

If they were using such a desperate method of sorting, this Branch Office deserved divine punishment. How could such disorder be permitted in a land that serves the God of Order?

‘…Let’s look for an empty shelf.’

If they really just shelved them as they came in, there would be a row of empty shelves somewhere waiting for new books.

As I walked through the Branch Office, checking if the shelves were full, a strange sense of déjà vu washed over me.

‘Why does this place feel familiar?’

Did a place like this appear in Die Heretic!?

A library did appear, but I think that was the Main Hall….

‘Is it a building that changed its purpose, like the clinic?’

Continuing to climb the floors, I stopped at the top floor. Brilliant colors of light, which seemed like they would interfere with reading, covered the interior as if projection mapping were being used.

It was a familiar stained-glass window.

In the game, there was a makeshift altar in front of this stained glass.

‘The Altar of the Afflicted….’

Those infected with the Plague God’s pestilence were not permitted to enter holy chapels. Therefore, they built an altar here to worship the God of Order.

The miserable sound of desperate gasping to catch one more breath, the sobbing moans of enduring pain, the hoarse voices calling out to the Lord….

‘It was a wonderful cinematic introduction that showed the Dark Realm had been ruined by the plague.’

When the service ended, those whose symptoms were less severe would support those who were worse and retreat to the wards. Then, those whose breath had ceased during the service remained in their places.

Athanas, the protagonist of the work, comes to this place to move the corpses.

This is because only those with divine power strong enough to prevent infection can touch the corpses.

Still, I wondered if using a Holy Knight as a corpse carrier wasn’t a waste of manpower….

‘Among them, there was someone who was still breathing.’

A patient who had been staying still, holding their breath because they wanted to die, gets caught being alive when they cough the moment Athanas heaves them up.

As Athanas, who almost took a living person to the crematorium, puts the patient back on the floor, the patient piteously begs him to pretend not to have seen them just once, arguing that their body is already as good as dead.

‘But if you grant this request, your divine power is cut in half.’

Since suicide and assisted suicide are forbidden by doctrine, granting that request is considered a violation of the doctrine, resulting in a decrease in divine power.

Usually, players who make the mistake of granting the request here curse and hit the load button.

Of course, veteran players grant the request on purpose to give themselves a handicap.

In any case, the game story doesn’t start just by moving corpses, so this Altar of the Afflicted is soon closed.

I stared up at the brilliant stained glass for a long time.

‘So it was originally such a radiant color.’

Since it mostly appeared covered in soot in the game, it felt surreal.

‘It stays soot-covered after the Bishop claims he will shoulder all the sins and suffocates all the patients by lighting fires.’

Because so many corpses were created at once back then, the ‘Living Corpses’—Vassals of the [Plague God]—begin to roam this building, and this is the first battle fought in Die Heretic!.

Since it was possible to walk through the wards and receive minor quests or have conversations with the patients before this event occurred, those who diligently completed side quests could find familiar faces among the ‘Living Corpses.’

‘There was a lot of resentment that the ST Games bastards went out of their way to create such side quests, calling them Satans.’

Personally, I thought it was a good piece of direction as it allowed for more empathy with Athanas’s position.

‘I guess one could feel that way when thinking of it all as just a game….’

Once all those corpses are dealt with, the Bishop emerges while coughing. Athanas, not yet knowing the full story, goes to support him thinking he is a survivor, only to recoil in shock upon seeing a black liquid flowing from the Bishop’s body.

The Bishop, muttering, “Lord, I have done the right thing for You…” begins to mumble prayers while clutching his rosary. However, the black liquid only flows more and more. As the rosary snaps, as if corroded by the black liquid, the Bishop immediately screams, twists his body, and transforms into a monster….

That is the first boss of Die Heretic!, Bishop Andrea.

The Bishop spouts nonsense like, “Not killing the sick is the Plague God’s way of wearing us down, so killing them without care is what we must do,” “Someone had to do it,” and “But why do You abandon me, Lord?” As you chip away at his health, the Bishop eventually suffers a mental breakdown and throws himself toward the stained glass.

If you quickly jump after him—stepping on platforms, of course—and reach the ground, you see the Gray Saintess, Adelaide, standing before Andrea, who is reciting prayers in a language that can no longer be understood.

The Gray Saintess, who stops Athanas from striking Andrea’s neck, sends Andrea to the Lord’s side with the ‘Blessing of Condemnation.’

Even if the place he was going was hell, she deliberately overexerted her divine power to grant his wish to go to the hell ruled by the Lord rather than to the side of the Plague God.

Even though she is a half-baked Saintess and coughs up blood when using a Blessing….

Seeing Adelaide coughing up blood, Athanas hurriedly pulls out a handkerchief. But a handkerchief pulled out with blood-stained hands cannot be clean. As Athanas tries to hide the handkerchief, which is not in a state to be handed over, Adelaide smiles faintly, expresses her gratitude, and takes the handkerchief.

Then, using the handkerchief she made clean with a Blessing of Purification, she wipes Athanas’s face before her own….

‘I can truly never forget that scene.’

Adelaide, saying, ‘All of this is blood that should have stained me’….

‘I remember the game’s content so vividly.’

I think I only played Die Heretic! about five times.

Maybe around 200 hours?

Of course, I probably remember it better because the beginning was so intense….

‘So the background for Chapter 1 was originally a library.’

Since not a single book remained, I couldn’t have guessed.

I had speculated that it wasn’t originally a building for worship since it had a temporary altar, but because the Main Hall was so large, I hadn’t thought there would be another library in the Capital Church at the time.

‘Come to think of it, when I did my second playthrough….’

Unlike other bosses, Bishop Andrea is not someone who made a vow to the Plague God—an act of promising something to a god—so there is a dialogue option to persuade him before the tragedy occurs.

If you explain to Andrea that you had a terrible dream and tell him what happened in the first playthrough, Andrea promises to prevent such a tragedy upon hearing those words.

‘And then he burns the entire building down so that Living Corpses don’t appear.’

The ‘tragedy’ Andrea spoke of was only the corpses reviving as Vassals of the Evil God. He still believed that the mass death of the patients by his own hand was the right thing to do.

‘A truly hopeless lunatic….’

The transformed Andrea cannot even be burned to death, so he jumps down while smashing the stained glass. Because he gains two new attack patterns—one where he scatters the fire clinging to his body and another where he sets the surroundings on fire—he becomes more difficult to deal with.

Nothing changes significantly except that the Gray Saintess wipes away soot instead of blood with the handkerchief.

‘No, there’s one more thing.’

While wandering through the building, which is reduced to a skeletal frame by the fire, you discover a hidden space in the basement.

However, since the basement was also consumed by flames, there is no way to know what was inside.

‘Unless you go there before the fire breaks out.’

If you visit that secret space in the next playthrough, you can obtain a very useful Blessing. It’s considered so useful that it’s practically essential, to the point where even those who avoid guides usually visit that secret space from the first playthrough.

And that Blessing is….

‘Quicksave.’

Of course, the actual name of the Blessing isn’t Quicksave.

The Blessing named [Regression] allows one to turn back time by a maximum of one hour at the cost of a temporary decrease in Health.

One might think that the cost for the immense Divine Power of turning back time is merely Health? But considering that every game that supports ‘Loading’ is essentially granting the power to turn back time, it’s more accurate to say that Die Heretic! stubbornly added a penalty even to ‘Loading.’

Of course, loading is possible even without [Regression].

However, you can only return to the past by dying, and save points cannot be arbitrarily designated. The most recent place you slept unconditionally becomes the save point.

‘Dying is processed as having had an ominous dream.’

That’s why in Die Heretic!, you have to take a short nap right before a battle, which led to the meme that Athanas is a guy who tries to sleep at any given moment.

Well, that’s not the important part….

‘Would [Regression] exist here as well?’

The [Regression] that exists in the game is nothing more and nothing less than a ‘Quicksave’ function for users who find it tedious to restart from a save point and prefer to sacrifice some Health to return to the immediate past.

But [Regression] in reality?

‘It would be a total balance-breaker.’

A guy who can save and load by himself.

How on earth could anyone beat such a bastard?

Of course, since there’s a limit to the time that can be turned back with [Regression], if you trap him in a pit that cannot be solved even by turning back an hour, he’ll self-destruct….

‘But that’s a strategy that’s only possible if you know the opponent has Regression.’

If you don’t know about Regression, you can’t even conceive of such a countermeasure.

‘If an Apostle of the Othergod were to possess [Regression]….’

That would be the birth of a boss monster who knows how to save and load.

Just thinking about that possibility made the back of my neck stiffen with despair.

‘…No, the [System] probably removed things like Regression.’

A guy who turns back time alone makes no sense.

There isn’t even a god whose Domain is [Time], so it would be too contrived for such Divine Power to remain in the Dark Realm….

Thinking this, I walked down the stairs.

It was because I wanted to check that secret space myself.

‘Since it’s a door that only opens when the floor is heated to a high temperature, causing the interlocking metal to warp….’

If it had been opened even once, there would definitely be traces. Because it’s a door that cannot be opened without damaging the fitted floor with fire.

Descending further and further, I stopped in front of the stairs leading to the lightless basement.

‘This is damn eerie and ominous….’

45 – #045