Ch.116116. Human Sacrifice

And so, after the bet ended with my victory.

I was watching the plague god Marus Area walk away with a face like he’d eaten shit, while I gleefully stroked Poppy who had climbed onto my knee.

Poppy, the leader of the Hounds of Vengeance and also called the Avenger Dog, despite his fierce appearance, was quite adorable in his behavior, earning my affection(?).

This was partly because before he took revenge on his master—that is, when he was alive—he was just a pet dog. His naturally affectionate personality was also one of the reasons.

Of course, although in appearance he was basically a giant werewolf over 2.5 meters tall, to me he was just a small, cute puppy with a slightly unique appearance.

[Grrrrrrrr……..]

《Yes, yes, feels good, doesn’t it?》

Anyway, just as I was enjoying this pleasant time scratching Poppy’s belly.

The moment a certain prayer—one I had prioritized to enter my mind—came in. All sorts of vicious thoughts began to rise in my head, and anger started to surge.

《……..How tactless, doing something like this, now?》

And I immediately frowned intensely, freely expressing my rage at having this happy moment disturbed.

《How dare you, how dare you do something I never permitted, interpreting things as you please?》

The reason for my anger was none other than the fact that some goddamn hunting dog’s whore had performed a human sacrifice, claiming it was an offering to me—committing the act I hate most: interpreting situations as they please.

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Human sacrifice.

The act of offering a living person as a sacrifice for religious ceremonies, mainly practiced in primitive/ancient civilizations or cult religions.

This is done because of the belief in primitive religions that offering more precious sacrifices pleases divine beings and brings greater blessings. Usually, the most valuable livestock is offered as sacrifice, and by extension, humans are offered as they are considered more precious than livestock, with the expectation of receiving greater rewards.

Of course, over time, such human sacrifice practices disappeared from most religions, and are now frequently used as material in creative works due to their unique nature.

Dungeon & Adventure followed this trend by introducing human sacrifice as a distinctive feature of evil god cults to differentiate them from other religions.

For example, the plague god Marus Area demands intelligent beings as offerings, then makes them die from plague before taking them as tributes.

The evil god of conspiracy, Magica, provides wisdom needed for conspiracies to believers but demands family members or relatives as payment.

In the case of Panima, the evil god of despair, they are famous for holding torture competitions and accepting the corpses of humans who experienced the greatest despair.

While most evil gods earn substantial faith through such human sacrifices, I strictly regulate human sacrifice despite also being an evil god.

Not only do I personally dislike human sacrifice and find it distasteful… but human sacrifice actually has a negative impact on organizational maintenance.

The immediate anxiety of potentially being sacrificed would be terrible for ordinary believers, and there’s a high possibility of conflict arising within the cult using human sacrifice as an excuse.

Of course, there are ways to expertly exploit such conflicts and discord… but from the beginning, my personal aversion to human sacrifice was the biggest factor.

However, completely abandoning human sacrifice would mean potentially falling behind other evil gods, as its influence in the evil god community is quite significant. As a result, human sacrifice within my cult currently exists in a very unique and restricted form.

First, I limited sacrificial offerings to only red blood.

Of course, in cases of completely voluntary and self-sacrificial human offerings without any external interference, I do accept them out of respect for their sincerity and devotion…..

However, such acts, while praised as “sacrifices,” are significantly undervalued from the perspective of sacrificial rituals.

The biggest factor behind this phenomenon is the doctrine I introduced to control human sacrifice practices—the so-called “Blood Cult” ideology.

This ideology, simply put, involves worshipping red blood as sacred.

Within the Vengeance Cult, red blood is regarded as the sacred source of life containing divine power, believed to have the ability to purify impurities and heal wounds.

This actually originated from a misunderstanding where followers believed blood had healing powers after seeing my exclusive magic “Blood of Life”….

Under my judgment that this ideology would be useful in various ways, it was actively promoted and eventually established as another doctrine of the Vengeance Cult.

It provides a logical reason for commanding them to offer only blood, while simultaneously reducing the hatred toward vampires, a type of undead despised in society.

Additionally, since it’s practical for various religious symbols and rituals, the Blood Cult doctrine naturally became quite a major doctrine within the cult.

Anyway, using the now well-established Blood Cult ideology as justification, I ordered that no intelligent beings be offered except for blood.

Furthermore, I limited the blood that could be offered to only volunteers, oneself, or targets of vengeance, striving to eliminate the disadvantages of human sacrifice while emphasizing its advantages.

And did these concentrated efforts actually produce results? Most believers were faithfully following my orders.

……..However, not everyone was so faithful to my commands.

The most representative example is like the members of the Holy Assault Team before—cases where people, out of ignorance, commit acts thinking they’re working for the cult.

Of course, in such cases, many are seized by guilt upon learning the truth and voluntarily join the Holy Assault Team to atone for their sins.

But this is only a portion. There are far too many people in the world who deliberately do exactly what they’re told not to do.

From lunatics who hear rumors about the cult and use it as an excuse to run wild, to those who perceive the world as they please and ignore my words.

And then there are those who view gods as nothing—the most foolish type in this world.

Among these types of heretics, whom I don’t even want to call believers, there are those who perform forbidden human sacrifices without being instructed to do so.

If it were an internal cult matter, I could just send inquisitors to clean it up, or if it were an organization, I could raid and wipe them out, but….

The problem is that most of these people are lone actors moving on their own.

These bastards who drag my reputation through the mud, including this one who has dragged my good mood to rock bottom, are simply people I want to kill.

In his own mind, he heard I was called the “Bleeding God of Vengeance” and misinterpreted this to mean that offering blood would grant him power.

And just when I was petting our Poppy, this worm-like bastard killed children he had kidnapped in my name and offered them as sacrifices.

《……..》

I’d like nothing more than to send Poppy to tear him limb from limb right now, but I endured with transcendent patience.

Not because I wanted to forgive him—such nonsense is out of the question—but precisely because I wanted to give him an even more terrible end.

《Very well, a blessing. I’ll grant it. Go ahead, receive it to your heart’s content.》

Since he so desperately wanted power, selling my name and killing innocents, I decided to give him the power he so desired—a very “special blessing.”

“Ha, hahahahahahaha!!! Success, I’ve succeeded!!!”

As I began to infuse power, the man who felt it burst into laughter, apparently overjoyed.

Yes, he was intoxicated with the belief that he had tricked a god he didn’t even believe in into giving him power just for sacrificing a few children.

But the true pleasure was just beginning.

“W-what?!! No, no, this can’t be happening!!!]

As I forcefully poured in the blessing, his body, unable to withstand it, began to transform grotesquely. As I continued to inject more of my power-infused mana, the result was horrific.

The abominations I normally create are actually controlled during the production process so that, although twisted, they can roughly maintain a humanoid form….

But since I deliberately intended to distort his form, he transformed into something so grotesque it barely qualified as a living being, his soul shattered.

Two crimson flesh masses extended outward, entangled with several tentacles and connected as one, with protrusions all over that were once traces of his body.

The skull and head separated was just the beginning—arms ended in heads, and tentacles and fleshy legs growing from the body supported it almost like a table.

Despite becoming such a monstrosity, his consciousness remained due to his completely shattered soul, but he had become a stupid lump of meat that couldn’t do anything despite gaining the power he so desired.

Thinking about how this fellow would serve as excellent “fuel” in the future, I felt refreshed, my gloomy mood lifting.