Chapter 352 – Earth (4)
“Oh! Hey, that hurts!”
“I’ll slap you till it hurts, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
I said, striking Hochi in the back.
Even though I beat him, I was still disappointed.
I have to hit harder.
I have to make it more painful.
It was a shame that I couldn’t do more than this.
“Hey, you’re evil! Hey, it really hurts!”
Hochi screaming in pain was consolation.
Hochi is good at lying.
I don’t know what kind of character he is, but he has been like that for a long time.
He hates training and experimentation, so he avoided me with excuses like this.
He also did the same when he scammed powers from all the G.o.ds on the 61st floor.
He always did.
It was not a deliberate, insidious lie designed to trick someone, but rather a lie of a young child who wanted to escape the situation at hand.
So I never pointed them out loudly.
There were many times when I was fooled.
However, this lie couldn’t be dismissed as a mere lie.
The lie that I ended up ‘dead’ by using excessive force to stop a meteorite could collide head-on with my divinity.
My divinity itself is shaken if my death is made true by the believers.
By nature, my divinity can be completely destroyed by a very small shake.
Unless most of the faith I’m gaining comes from the 61st floor believers.
If I had been greatly influenced by the followers of Earth, I would certainly have been weakened.
In fact, I was still wondering why I was fine.
No matter how limited the story is to the members of Earth, it is a situation that can cause some damage.
“If it weren’t for you, I would have pulled something out.”
Kim Min-hyuk, who had been a little farther away, was seen flinching.
He seems to have been fully cooperating with Hochi because he wasn’t stopping him from doing anything strange.
If it weren’t for Hochi, it would have been alright.
I can’t let this naughty boy who has caused me harm go.
It was not my will, but my divine will.
Just because Hochi was my family doesn’t mean that I could overlook his faults.
It was because of Hochi’s characteristics.
“Hey, isn’t this too much!? There is Yong-yong here too!”
“This time uncle was wrong.”
Yong-yong neatly gave up.
Hochi looked at Yong-yong with a shocked face, but Yong-yong gently turned his head and looked away.
It serves you right.
How dare you feel shunned when you get turned away by your nephew?
* * *
“I looked it up.”
“What the h.e.l.l did you find out, you turned me into an undead?”
“Oh, you’re not an undead. Rather, you’re a spirit.”
This kid mixed the increasingly difficult words and made nonsense.
I guess he’s adapted to Earth too quickly.
“The completion of all religions is death.”
“Why did you come to such a conclusion?”
I believe that the essential purpose of religion is for a better life.
“No. At least it wasn’t the purpose of Earth’s religions. What matters is whether you’re born again in the next life or in a nice place after death; that’s the greatest strength of religion here.”
There are other points.
Clearly.
“Think about it. What would people think if the religious window was still visible after you died?”
“Oh, I can see this even though Lee Ho-jae died. So, this is not from Lee Ho-jae’s ability, but from the Tutorial. He wasn’t G.o.d. They will think like this.”
“No. They think you exist after death.”
Does that make sense, you f*ck?
I can’t stop swearing.
“It shows you overcoming the fear of death that people most want to shake off. Obviously, the human body died, but your strength remained. You were even resurrected.”
I didn’t resurrect.
“Now, all you have to do is create a doctrine, show people it, and then disappear again. People will believe in the existence of the afterlife when they see you once and then come back, and they will become believers to overcome death.”
[Oh my G.o.d, you’re smart.]
The G.o.d of Hope, who had been trapped in the collection bin, whispered.
[I better thank you!]
“Shut up, before I pull your wing.”
A short warning blocked the mouth of the G.o.d of Hope.
I was not going to inform the party that I had captured the G.o.d of Hope.
He is the G.o.d of Hope that penetrates even if there is a small gap.
It would be better for everyone in the party to not even recognize the existence of the G.o.d of Hope.
“Think about it. In Earth’s religions, have religious leaders never died? And the death event has never been simple. The revival of religion always took place only after the death of the leader.”
“It’s just those people’s end of life…….”
“Hey! You can’t say that! What if the believers hear it? You have to be careful about your words as well.”
Hochi shouted.
d.a.m.n you… I managed to pull down the sound that had risen to the end of my throat.
Ugh.
What, what can I do?
Now I can’t kick him back to the 60th floor.
[If you’re going to kick him out, how about giving it to me?]
The G.o.d of Hope added more nonsense.
Later, when the party can’t see me, I’ll have to take him out and grab a wing.
“Okay. Well, as you said, my faith has risen dramatically.”
There were certain achievements made, so I decided to skip it without further criticism.
For some reason, there was no damage to my divinity.
Perhaps, as Hochi said, it may be because of the advantage of being known to overcome death rather than being known to be dead.
My believers on Earth, especially those who are fanatical, would believe this.
No matter what, I can’t be defeated or die.
I’m already dead.
And then I came back from that death.
It was interesting.
Can this be connected to my divinity?
The afterlife does not exist.
Death can be avoided by overcoming the limitations of the human body and breaking out of that frame.
However, even the deities who reached the peak could not escape the final death if their divinity collapsed and deviated from the perception of their believers.
In this situation, how does the fact that believers think that their G.o.d will come back even if he dies, work?
Let’s find out more later.
It was worth researching.
I checked the religious window again.
Certainly, the faith received has increased tremendously.
Until before, it was mostly churches that recouped their merit expenses.
Merit value was not directly related to faith because it was a score based on achievements for religion.
Because of this, when calculating the resources and power consumed for compensation, the Lee Ho-jae Faith was always seeing a deficit.
But now, even taking into account the rewards consumed across the planet, they were seeing a surplus.
I was earning faith.
The biggest advantage I got this time wasn’t simply that I was seeing a surplus.
People started to believe in me.
Not the religious system and the rewards of that system pulled by a strong challenger in the Tutorial.
They were devoting their faith to Lee Ho-jae.
Because I heard about the G.o.d of Order from the G.o.d of Hope, I learned that the system was born from faith.
It felt pretty encouraging.
Maybe when the Lee Ho-jae Faith grows up, the Lee Ho-jae system can also gain credibility.
Perhaps the mantis, who plays the role of the mascot of Lee Ho-jae Faith’s Hongcheon main school, will gradually become the deity.
“One more positive thing is that conflicts with existing religions have disappeared.”
Hochi said again.
It was an idea that I couldn’t understand without explanation.
“It happened because I can attach it to the doctrines of other religions. Someone’s reincarnation, somebody’s second coming, the third prophet who came down to Earth…….”
Somehow, if explained in detail, they were words that seemed like a big deal.
“After the Hundred G.o.ds and the Tutorial appeared, the position of religions was shaken, and I was trying to make a change in my own way. It was easy to absorb them. Rather, it made them choose the Lee Ho-jae Faith as the end point of all the paths while maintaining all the frameworks of the existing religions.”
Oh my, I don’t even know anymore.
“Not only the dispute within Lee Ho-jae Faith, but also the disputes between other religions will disappear. At least among the religions who have chosen to be in solidarity with the Lee Ho-jae Faith.”
“What religions are those?”
“I have absorbed most of Earth’s major religions.”
It was a ridiculous speed.
The upright religious community should reform their doctrine and choose to absorb it as the subordinate force of other religions.
They even took the risk of going under one roof with other religions, even those that they swore and quarreled with, calling them pagans.
Even that in just a few days.
Is it possible?
“Of course I did a little trick.”
Yes, I suppose so.
There were countless ways you could do it if you wanted to.
This side can manipulate any number of divine phenomena.
Existing religious circles can simply ignore such a phenomenon.
As long as the believers are not agitated by that fact.
“Not bad, huh?”
Hochi said with a smile.
Obviously, Hochi did well.
Since coming to Earth and starting to do this and that, Hochi has always outperformed my expectations.
It was the same this time.
Even though the expectations had risen quite a bit, it produced surprising results that were unexpected for me.
The problem was that my social death was the opposite.
“You were too lazy to be in front of people anyway.”
“… Yes, well.”
* * *
“I brought sweets, Homen.”
Three days have pa.s.sed since the meteorite was destroyed and I returned to Earth.
But I couldn’t get used to that b.l.o.o.d.y greeting.
“Whose idea was that?”
“Well, since everyone started doing it, no one would say they were first.”
They use the word “Homen” at any time.
They use it when they say h.e.l.lo, they use it when they pray.
If you feel good, use it, and if you feel bad, use it.
They were using it meaninglessly as if saying something in a dialect.
“Isn’t this completely blasphemy?”
“How is that blasphemy?”
“If I’m offended, it’s blasphemy.”
Hochi didn’t answer.
The whole party was gathered in front of the TV.
Today is the day I go back as a mystery.
What kind of nonsense is this?
It is the day when the G.o.d Lee Ho-jae, who died from stopping a meteorite, resurrects and returns after three days, tells his disciples the doctrine to follow, and then returns to the heavenly world.
“Homen.”
Hochi said, opening a bag of cookies.
Do you have to say that before getting a snack?
“Homen.”
Seregia, who had approached, took a snack from Hochi’s hand and said the prayer, then ate the cookie.
“Homen. Haha.”
Yong-yong, who was sitting on my lap, shouted Homen, smiled a little, and picked up a snack.
… Ugh.
On TV, an anchor shedding tears was speaking enthusiastically.
It was overwhelmingly emotional.
The screen returned to downtown Seoul in front of the temple in an anchor’s solo scene.
As if the anchor we saw just before was weak, there were several humans who were crying all over with their whole bodies.
It was clearly distressing.
“Hey, all of those people are filling your faith. You should be thankful.”
Well, that’s true.
But I couldn’t sympathize with how close they were or how sad they were.
As we waited for a while, a bright light began to shoot high from the ceiling of the temple where we were now gathering and eating snacks.
As part of it, I used the same visual effect that I used when the meteorite appeared.
People began to cry more and more at the sight.
The sound of them saying, Homen, Homen, rang up to the inside of the temple.
Riding on a bright pillar of light, a fake image that resembled me began to fly above the sky.
The brightness of the light pole was properly adjusted so that it could be captured on the camera screen.
It was solemn and gracious.
Nevertheless, because I had to maintain the original shape of my face, it was an illusion that I had elaborately created by inviting plastic surgeons to the hospital.
“That, it would have been better if you just did it yourself.”
“I would have died from embarra.s.sment if I did.”
Really.
I may have died of shame on my way up to heaven.
Neither I nor my divinity could have survived that embarra.s.sment.