#130

I think it was a huge mistake to believe I could handle this lunatic.

‘Let’s think calmly.’

Nothing irreversible has happened yet.

What if Nasir realizes the influence of the ‘Distortion’ and reports it to Casimir?

Casimir will come looking for me.

I can come up with some kind of excuse for her.

‘And if this bastard actually does something crazy, I’ll just hand him over to the Saintess.’

Athanasuki doesn’t know that I can summon the Saintess.

So for now, it’s fine. I’m doing well.

As long as I can properly achieve my original goal of ‘information gathering,’ this is a profitable trade.

“Right. There are many things I want to ask you.”

“Ask me anything!”

‘…I should start by verifying the most basic things.’

“Is the Day the Starry Sky Opens indeed the Winter Solstice? I mean, December 25th.”

“That’s right!”

“Does the Tutorial end on the Day the Starry Sky Opens? Is that when you can make a contract with an Othergod?”

“Yes.”

“What about the Astronomical Observatory of Heaven’s Defiance? Is it in the same place as in the game? Is that where the contract takes place?”

“That’s not it.”

“…Not?”

“The location of the Altar of Contract is set differently for each player.”

‘…Well, if the contract were only possible in one location, the method to end the game would be too simple.’

Because the Church of Order could just wipe that place out and catch everyone in one fell swoop.

That makes sense.

‘But isn’t it weird that I’m hearing this from him for the first time?’

This is the most basic information.

Doesn’t the fact that I wasn’t told this mean I was basically told not to play the game?

Even if I hadn’t intended to give up on the game, there would have been no way to proceed.

That bastard Happy God….

‘Did he abandon me because he was intimidated by Mother God?’

Did he think the game was already over because I’d be dragged into Mother God’s camp upon death and resurrection, so he just tossed me aside?

Is that it, Happy God?

‘Even if Happy God hadn’t abandoned me, I probably would have abandoned him, but this is strangely annoying.’

“Then where is your Altar located?”

“I don’t know!”

“…Is it okay that you don’t know?”

“No, the Helper told me, ‘I will absolutely never tell you.’”

‘That’s fair.’

With a guy like this, he’d definitely leak the Altar’s location by mistake and trigger a Game Over.

“They told me that if I commit suicide on Christmas Eve, I’ll automatically resurrect at the Altar. They also said that since the Sacred Relic is stored there, there’s little chance of a Game Over. But they threatened me, saying if I died before Eve, I should expect to stay buried alive until Christmas. Haha.”

‘…And he’s telling me all of this.’

I started to feel that the Distorted One was actually quite impressive.

The fact that they designed the game so that even a guy who spills everything like this wouldn’t trigger a Game Over as a Cult Leader Unit is something.

‘To stab someone in the back, you have to be several steps ahead of your opponent.’

I had a feeling there might be Arrangements that Reyes isn’t even aware of.

“The contract? Do you know how it’s done?”

“You have to achieve specific conditions by the Day the Starry Sky Opens and be at the Altar while possessing a Sacred Relic.”

“Conditions?”

“In my case, it was gathering the ‘disappointment’ of 10,000 people.”

10,000 people?

Since the Dark Realm is set in a medieval era, the population isn’t that large.

Because most people are engaged in agriculture, the population density is also very low.

In such a state, meeting 10,000 people in the Dark Realm was harder than meeting a million people in the modern world.

‘Beyond just meeting them, gathering their disappointment… wouldn’t that be impossible?’

Even a condition like making the name ‘Reyes’ known to 10,000 people seems difficult.

“Is that even achievable? Isn’t that too harsh for a contract condition?”

“I’ve already achieved it!”

“How?”

“Because I’m a Floren!”

‘…Is there some grand incident involving the Floren family?’

Something that could disappoint 10,000 people.

I thought about it, but nothing came to mind.

“What was the Divine Power of the Floren family?”

“The ability to make flowers bloom.”

‘Flowers….’

Now that he mentioned flowers, I remembered.

Floren, the God of Flowers, known as the right hand of Egus, the God of Abundance.

The Floren family is situated in the granary region southeast of the Capital Church.

However, they were basically treated as a subordinate deity to Egus, and since there was rarely any reason to negotiate with Floren independently of Egus, their presence was weak.

‘Even if it’s a granary region, the production volume is only 1/100th compared to Egus’s territory.’

Floren’s Divine Power was even less impactful.

After all, what use is making flowers bloom?

Furthermore, it wasn’t an ability to make flowers pop up out of nowhere in barren land, but rather an ability to accelerate the ‘blooming’ of plants that had already grown to a certain extent.

‘It’s an ability only useful for ornamental plants.’

Because if you force a plant that hasn’t grown enough to bloom, nine times out of ten, it will die without bearing fruit.

Other than making a flower that would have bloomed anyway bloom slightly earlier or later, it only caused great harm to the plant.

Therefore, the actual Floren family made their primary business beekeeping by controlling the blooming period.

‘I remember picking that for the first time when I wrote the “No Divine Power is Useless” series.’

“…Did you perhaps use a scorched-earth tactic in a territorial war?”

“Scorched-earth tactic?”

“I mean, did you forcibly make the flowers in the enemy’s territory bloom?”

If you force flowers to bloom out of season, the plant dies.

A field in full bloom while snow is falling was a herald that all the plants in that land would soon perish.

‘Maybe it’s because I spent time farming until recently… that feels like a truly horrific idea.’

To think that crops painstakingly raised would bloom prematurely and die before I could do anything.

“You know about it! Operation ‘Winter Flower’! I heard that was also in the guide written by those 8 characters. Isn’t it a bit scary?”

‘You’re the last person who should be saying that.’

“…Isn’t it something anyone could have thought of? I think the attempt to use Floren’s Divine Power specifically is what’s unique, but the idea itself is ordinary.”

“If it were just this one, maybe. But those eight characters found dozens of things others couldn’t think of and actually pulled them off. For an ordinary person, that’s impossible.”

Hearing this made me feel a bit embarrassed.

‘Why did I play this game so hard….’

“The War God player said that person is the one closest to the Othergods.”

“What?”

‘That bastard is slandering me like that?’

“He said he’s on very close terms with that 8-character person?”

“He said he’s even met them in person. That they’re like brothers.”

“And yet Insanity was certain that you were those 8 characters?”

“Yes. He said if that brother forgets he was once human, that’s exactly Insanity—that he must have lost his humanity while possessing the game, or something like that.”

‘This is ridiculous.’

Is it normal to see Insanity, who has a different personality from a brother he knows, and conclude, ‘Ah, his personality must have mutated upon coming to the Dark Realm,’ instead of just thinking, ‘Ah, it’s a different person’?

“What else did he say?”

“He said ST Game Company must have released the game to discover such a human, and that we are just extras caught up in it, so we should give up on winning the game early and just dig a bunker.”

‘Bullshit.’

“Don’t believe that. He’s saying that to make other people focus only on Insanity so he can stab them in the back later.”

“…Do you know that player well?”

“Very well. I told you I’m a veteran. If you had looked at guide sites, you would have known exactly what kind of person he is immediately.”

“Are you close?”

“No.”

‘I just cut ties with him in my heart.’

A guy who sells out his own brother just to win a game.

He’s the one who should have been chosen by the Distorted One.

“…I don’t write posts or comments on the internet. I’ve never become close with anyone I met online.”

“Really?”

“If we were close, I would have sent a chat long ago.”

I added this after seeing Reyes’s pupils slit vertically.

“By that logic, aren’t you closer to that guy? You said you chatted with him often.”

“We aren’t close! We blocked each other!”

Reyes jumped in surprise.

“I only have Fabio.”

“…I only have you too.”

As far as players go.

‘For now, anyway.’

As I stroked Reyes’s head, his pupils returned to normal.

“Hehe….”

‘Do creatures resemble their main bodies?’

The way he acts is exactly the same.

“…So you used Operation Winter Flower to devastate the farmland? Who were you at war with?”

“Those who do not serve the God of Abundance.”

“Well, if the land is naturally fertile, people can survive even without the Blessing of Abundance.”

The God of Abundance could withdraw the Blessing of Abundance he had bestowed, but it was impossible for him to artificially cause a crop failure.

‘That was the domain of the God of Deficiency and Famine, the twin of the God of Abundance….’

Loclem killed that one.

“That’s right. The God of Abundance has no Divine Power to punish enemies. That’s why he welcomed Operation Winter Flower. Because now, the God of Abundance, Egus, has a power that others will fear.”

“…Since you had to disappoint 10,000 people, you must have bloomed an incredible number of flowers.”

“Yes! It was very beautiful. I want to show it to Fabio too….”

Reyes grumbled, saying it was a shame he didn’t have a screenshot function.

“The people of that land will now have no choice but to believe in Egus. No matter what seeds they sow, they will bloom prematurely and wither away.”

“So you turned it into a land where nothing can grow without the Blessing of Abundance.”

The Blessing of Abundance can even revive dead plants.

However, the ‘fruit’ those plants bear is fake.

Dead fruit that will not sprout again even if planted.

The people of that land have lost the seeds passed down through generations forever.

‘Come to think of it, I used a similar strategy when playing as the Distorted One.’

Was it the playthrough where I deceived Egus by pretending to be his twin, Nellos, the God of Deficiency and Famine, and swallowed the Dark Realm?

Because Egus actually loved his twin, he immediately rose up when ‘Nellos’ whispered for him to betray the Order that had killed him.

‘He just lacked a means of attack, but his hostility toward Order was immense.’

The means of attack I gave Egus back then was the ‘Terminator Seed.’

The ‘non-replantable’ seed that seed companies allegedly researched so that farmers would be forced to keep buying seeds.

In reality, it was nothing more than an urban legend, but it could be realized in the Dark Realm.

After the Terminator Seeds spread through the Dark Realm, there was no region that could resist Egus.

‘That playthrough ended really quickly.’

Because I started with a large force like the God of Abundance, I could skip the process of expanding the cult’s influence.

The points I got back then, when I finally betrayed Egus by revealing I wasn’t his Nellos, were truly sweet….

“He said that was also an application of a strategy devised by those 8 characters.”

‘As expected.’

He really did get the idea from my playthrough.

‘This is a bit unfair.’

At this point, shouldn’t he pay me royalties?

“Insanity said that if it’s to that extent, the person should be paying him royalties.”

“…….”

‘This impersonating bastard?’

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