Ch.139Fake Socialite

There’s one piece of information that people in this world don’t know about cultists, as most related information is censored.

That is, these cultists are actually far more sloppy and mediocre than one might imagine.

In public discourse, only information about major incidents caused by cultists tends to be circulated, and due to information censorship aimed at reducing cult membership, most common knowledge ends at just that.

In reality, simply knowing about cult-related information increases one’s chances of corruption compared to not knowing, which is why such information is censored….

For now, what’s important is the cultists’ sloppiness, so let’s put these other facts aside for a moment.

Anyway, hidden by this information censorship is the fact that cultists rarely have what could be called a solid organizational structure.

People with proper moral character don’t participate in cult activities to begin with, and most cultists knowingly commit evil acts, which contributes to this phenomenon.

But personally, I prefer the hypothesis that cult organizations, being as ephemeral as flies, lack the history or traditions needed to establish a proper structure.

Most cult organizations are rooted out during the vigilant searches conducted by pantheons and authorities, and even if they somehow survive, their size remains small and their structure limited to cell-based networks.

This is how they continuously survive the oppressive purges through cutting ties and hiding, but naturally, how could organizations operating this way possibly maintain any clear transmission of knowledge?

Yet somehow, in these seemingly insane conditions, they manage to borrow power from transcendent beings like demons or outer gods to sustain themselves and maintain their organizations….

Considering this from another angle, it means that without these outer gods or demons, cult organizations simply couldn’t persist.

Whether it’s demons operating like franchise owners or outer god affiliates running corporate direct stores, they rarely grant their power freely unless it benefits them.

In short, because of these facts, there are plenty of self-proclaimed cultists in this world—amateur troublemakers who want to become cultists but aren’t actually granted any power….

This incident, however, seemed to be heading in a different direction.

Even with amateur self-proclaimed cultists, those outer gods and demons have plenty of ways to manipulate them, and someone with enough initiative to draw magic circles in blood certainly has enough potential to be useful.

To be blunt, demons will forcibly find their symbols in all sorts of places to manifest through them, while outer gods are the type to use humans as vessels (avatars) to scheme on earth.

Yet despite these circumstances, I couldn’t sense any magical traces from this magic circle, and furthermore, according to the black magic knowledge implanted in me, the pattern itself was simply a mess.

Therefore, my hypothesis was that this incident resulted from someone impersonating a cultist.

While it seems unbelievable that anyone would be stupid enough to impersonate a cultist—an offense punishable by death on mere suspicion—there are plenty who would want to frame someone they dislike as a cultist.

“…Did they catch him?”

“Yes, a farmer confessed.”

And indeed, the perpetrator of this incident was not a real cultist but an impersonator—a fake who wanted to frame someone else.

“What was his reason?”

“He said he wanted to get revenge on someone he fought with….”

The culprit was a farmer who, after a dispute with a neighboring farmer that soured their relationship, staged this incident to frame him.

He had actually stolen his neighbor’s knife and left it at the scene in a clumsy attempt to frame him, but this amateurish framing attempt was exposed in less than half a day.

While one might wonder what madness drove him to commit such a dangerous act that could get himself burned at the stake, thinking about it, this isn’t so implausible as to seem completely unrealistic.

This is because such cult impersonation incidents occur quite frequently.

In fact, cult impersonation often leads to accidents where the impersonator actually becomes a cultist, and because there were once so many people abusing this, the punishment for false accusations, when discovered, has become severe.

Some carry around accessories engraved with certain symbols for impersonation purposes, only to gradually become corrupted through those symbols and turn into real cultists.

Sometimes, fake rituals prepared to frame someone coincidentally align perfectly, transforming into real ones that result in summonings from cult forces.

Those guilty of cult impersonation or equivalent crimes typically receive the maximum legal punishment of “burning at the stake,” and in particularly egregious cases, they might even be subjected to preliminary roasting (torture), healing, and then burning again.

Despite such strict punishments, accidents continue to happen for several main reasons.

One is ignorance—people who genuinely don’t understand the severity of what they’re doing. The other is… pure stupidity—idiots who know and do it anyway.

While the people of this world aren’t complete ignoramuses compared to modern people—they merely lack knowledge rather than intelligence—…

Conversely, this means the people of this world are exactly as stupid as modern people.

In social life, you encounter people whose intelligence amazes you, while also easily finding those whose intelligence makes you question whether they’re truly human.

Moreover, intelligence and the wisdom of one’s actions are separate issues—just as intellectuals can fall for pseudo-religions, humans are, as someone from a past life once said, unimaginably stupid and ignorant animals.

Anyway, I was struggling with how to punish this impersonation criminal.

‘…Should I really burn him?’

According to principle, cult impersonators should be treated like the cultists they so desired to be and executed, and those with influence in the village mostly recommend making an example through burning.

Yet I hesitated because, after all, this man wasn’t actually a real cultist.

To be honest, now that I’ve mostly adapted to this era, if he were a real cultist, I wouldn’t hesitate—I’d even take the initiative to erect the stake and burn him myself.

Extreme punishment for serious crimes is quite a spectacle in this era, and as a lord, providing catharsis to the subjects could be considered one of my duties.

But despite facing this situation, I hesitate precisely because of that subtle difference—he isn’t actually a real cultist.

While I wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone guilty of crimes equivalent to soliciting murder, burning at the stake is a horrific execution method that weighs heavily on my mind.

…I tried to kill my modern sensibilities, but it seems I haven’t fully escaped their influence.

An additional problem concerns his family—his wife and children, apart from the perpetrator himself.

While legally they face no punishment since cult impersonation isn’t subject to guilt by association, could they really continue normal social lives in this village?

Children of serious criminals like cult impersonators are highly likely to become targets of vigilante justice by self-righteous idiots (mobs).

If such possibilities are high even in modern times, where theoretical consciousness is at least dozens of times more developed than in this barbaric era, imagine how this principle would operate in today’s violent times.

After much deliberation, the punishment I decided to impose on them was….

“Send the ringleader to my father, and advise the family to settle their assets and relocate.”

“Yes, I will arrange it accordingly.”

The perpetrator himself would be punished according to a practically obsolete but still existing provision by transferring his case to my father, while his family would be “accommodated” to make a fresh start elsewhere.

Though it might be considered a somewhat ambiguous punishment, it was a significant decision I made after much deliberation as a novice ruler, and it could also minimize the aftermath and prevent this incident from causing further internal conflicts.

And after finalizing this punishment, I began to contemplate a slightly different subject.

‘…What measures should we take?’

That subject was developing countermeasures against the emergence of cultists within the village, triggered by this incident.