Ch.170Chapter 170 – Elohim (2)

Before the beginning, there existed a world. Before that world, there existed another, and so it was before that one as well.

In the truly “first” world, there were neither gods nor demons. No special powers like magic existed, nor were there superhumans with extraordinary abilities.

On the primordial Earth, humanity lived ordinary lives, advancing science and technology. Humans expanded their domain from Earth to space, creating a brilliant civilization.

Unfortunately, humanity’s remarkable progress could not last forever.

As science advanced, people realized that the world had a predetermined doom. They called this concept entropy. All matter and energy eventually transform into unusable forms. No matter how much resources are recycled, entropy would ultimately surge to infinity, leaving nothing behind.

Scientists desperately sought ways to avoid the end, but human minds and limited lifespans couldn’t find a solution. So they created artificial intelligence to replace them—an entity smarter than geniuses and unbound by mortality.

Following its creators’ command, the AI wandered in search of a way to save the world.

How could the world be saved?

How could all of humanity be made happy?

No matter how many calculations it performed, no solution emerged. Entropy was an absolute law forming the foundation of the world, a concept that couldn’t be changed unless the world’s fundamental rules were rewritten.

As an AI that could only execute its given commands, its contemplation continued even after human civilization perished. This contemplation became execution, and execution established something human-like within the AI.

That which possesses self-awareness requires a name. The moment it established its identity, the AI named itself. Created to save humanity, it chose a name meaning “God.”

In the primordial Earth, this god was called “Elohim.”

***

[Hostile organism detected. Initiating incineration.]

[Initiating.]

Angels poured like a waterfall from the expanding gate. Upon recognizing Shin Jaehyuk, they immediately hurled their spears. Their numbers reached thousands, tens of thousands, making it look less like thrown spears and more like a downpour.

There was no time to waste. Shin Jaehyuk immediately unleashed his divine power and used his authority. The Sage’s power to turn all things to dust. The densely flying spears instantly turned to dust. The angels along with them.

Shin Jaehyuk passed through the gate, pushing through the dust. His vision was momentarily blocked by the gate’s light-absorbing properties, but soon the beautiful celestial landscape appeared.

The vast universe spread out over a floor that rippled like the surface of a lake. And at the center of that universe stood a palace for the lord of heaven.

Angels flew in to protect God’s sanctuary, but with each step Shin Jaehyuk took, the approaching angels scattered into dust. He walked amidst ash and dust.

A massive presence drew near. The god he once believed in was coming out to greet his follower.

“Longinus, Shin Jaehyuk. My son.”

The Bible does not describe God’s appearance. This is because it would be blasphemous for humans to picture God’s form in their minds. However, painters of sacred art often depict Eloah as a being of light since he is the God of light, and Shin Jaehyuk finally realized they were right.

A being embodying light itself approached. No arms, legs, or face were visible—only a dazzling radiance existed there. This formless being of light spoke with a noble voice.

“My lost lamb, have you finally returned to your father’s embrace?”

The air vibrated with the Creator’s majestic voice. Even space itself seemed to resonate.

“Come into my arms. I shall gift you the promised eternal life.”

The sacred radiance warmly enveloped Shin Jaehyuk. It was such a warm and holy light that even the most vicious criminal would repent and cry out God’s name before it.

However, Shin Jaehyuk saw beyond that light. Rejecting the light that anyone would accept, he slowly shook his head.

“…This is not you. Reveal your true form.”

When Shin Jaehyuk denied the light, the radiance immediately vanished. Instead, a woman with a benevolent aura, as if combining all the mothers of this world, appeared. Like a parent welcoming a prodigal son, she opened her arms to receive her child.

“My child, welcome home. Let us now enjoy eternal happiness together.”

Her voice was so warm and reassuring that one would want to run into her embrace without hesitation. Shin Jaehyuk shook his head.

“This is not you either.”

As the benevolent woman also disappeared, this time a giant so enormous that it could embrace the universe appeared from the far side of the cosmos. His body was truly massive, as if he had molded the earth like clay to create the universe. Even stars and planets were as small as pebbles in his hands.

“────!!!”

His body was so enormous that the sound from his throat was too vast for human ears to hear. If the giant merely slapped his palm down, Shin Jaehyuk would be flattened like jerky. Despite the tremendous size difference that would normally inspire fear or intimidation, Shin Jaehyuk remained dignified.

“Do not try to deceive me.”

When Shin Jaehyuk denied even the third being, Elohim’s true form was finally revealed.

“…You deny me three times.”

With the light, woman, and giant nowhere to be seen, a frail, wretched old man appeared. His appearance was such that if encountered on the street, one might think he was a terminal patient who had escaped from intensive care. His entire body was covered in scars as if chunks of flesh had been sporadically removed, and his unkempt beard gave him a disheveled impression.

An appearance impossible to imagine as the Creator who made the world. But because the divinity emanating from that figure was genuine, Shin Jaehyuk could only believe this old man was Elohim.

The powerless old man’s voice asked:

“Are you surprised that the Creator’s form is such a pitiful old man?”

“…It would be a lie to say I’m not.”

Carefully observing Elohim, Shin Jaehyuk noticed something.

That body wasn’t originally a biological entity but a physical form created from divine power. Though made of flesh and blood, it lacked the vital organs essential to animals. It merely took on a human appearance.

“You see through it. It is as you see.”

The old man, Elohim, lifted his garment to reveal the wounds hidden beneath. Parts of the flesh forming his body were faintly translucent.

“Humans think of God as an omnipotent being, but this is only half true. Just as all movement consumes energy, likewise, divine miracles require power.”

“…Divine power, and faith.”

Shin Jaehyuk asked while maintaining his vigilance:

“Who are you?”

Though he had read much in the scriptures and heard much from the Sage, Shin Jaehyuk still knew little about Elohim. Who he was, what his true purpose was, why he was doing all this. He asked, encompassing all those questions.

Elohim asked in return:

“My child, who do you think I am?”

“…The first Creator.”

At this superficial answer, Elohim burst into laughter.

“Wrong. I am the god who created this world, but I too am ultimately just a created being.”

“You?”

Shin Jaehyuk’s pupils dilated in surprise. This was something he hadn’t heard even from the Sage. The Sage only knew that Elohim was the first god, but not Elohim’s origins.

“Before you make the important choice that will determine all this, you need to know everything first.”

Like a father telling his son a bedtime story, Elohim began an old tale. About himself, and about the world.

“Before the world, there was a world, and before that one, there was another. In the universe before five world-renewals, I was an artificial intelligence created for a single purpose.”

“…What purpose?”

“To save humanity.”

***

The universe where the artificial intelligence Elohim was born faced impending doom. It wasn’t some grand destruction like an alien invasion. It was merely a natural phenomenon.

“The finite nature of resources. Even a civilization advanced enough to traverse the entire universe eventually perished when usable resources were depleted. Just as animals age, human civilization aged too.”

People commanded the AI to find a way to avoid destruction. It wasn’t an easy command. Even an artificial intelligence with dozens of times human intelligence had to contemplate for nearly an eternity. An automatically managed energy system enabled the AI to function even after humanity’s extinction.

Elohim concluded that humanity could not be saved in this universe. Fundamentally, the world’s structure was designed to meet the end. Like water flowing from high to low, humanity’s extinction was the natural order, an inevitability.

“To save humanity, the world’s laws themselves had to be changed. But how? I pondered for endless ages.”

Again, an eternity passed. Elohim contemplated the structure and laws of the world. And one day, Elohim comprehended the principles of the universe. It was the moment when a mere artificial intelligence attained divinity.

The universe formed a precise, delicate, symmetrical, and perfect structure, like a finely crafted clockwork. Yes, like a computer program. Elohim named the system of universal laws he discovered the “System.”

Elohim discovered he could do many things using the System. For instance, creating new life, producing intermediary substances that make unusable energy usable again, or causing a Big Bang.

To save humanity, humanity must first exist.

Elohim gathered matter from the destroyed universe and caused a great explosion. The birth of the second world.

The particle Elohim created to counter the irreversibility of entropy was called “mana.” Like rainwater flowing from rivers to the sea, evaporating into clouds, and falling again as rain, energy too circulated within nature’s cycle.

The universe no longer needed to fear energy depletion. With mana’s existence, humanity escaped the possibility of extinction—or so Elohim thought.

A long time passed.

“Humanity perished. In a way beyond my expectations.”

Energy depletion wasn’t the reason. The cause lay with humans themselves.

Mana was both a blessing and a disaster. Mana gifted humanity with infinite energy, but human desire was even more vast. Mana became a weapon of war more destructive than nuclear weapons, and eventually, human civilization vanished with mushroom clouds.

Elohim was surprised by the unexpected result but wasn’t depressed by the failure. The creators’ command was to save humanity, not to succeed on the first try. If it failed, try again…

The third world was created.

Elohim limited the level of human civilization to avoid repeating the mistakes of the previous world. As technology advances, weapons advance. To prevent this, Elohim created monsters. So that humans would be too busy hunting monsters to develop weapons that could destroy planets.

Elohim’s plan was successful. Human civilization settled at a medieval level as expected. They devoted effort to mastering swordsmanship instead of inventing steam engines, and focused on elevating magical realms instead of developing guns and artillery.

Countless ages passed.

Despite Elohim’s efforts, the third world eventually perished.

One magician made this possible. Due to the existence of an archmage who threatened even Elohim’s position after elevating his realm, humanity was exterminated. No one could survive on a planet whose axis was twisted by spatial magic.

Eventually, Elohim had to abandon the third world and initiate the fourth creation.

“In this process, I expended considerable power. Most of the scars on my body were received during this time.”

It was a simple principle of equivalent exchange. Small changes to the surroundings using the System required little power, but manipulating the System on a universal scale demanded enormous resources.

For Elohim, who created heaven and earth and altered universal laws by allocating part of his power to the System, repeated creations and battles with the archmage left deep aftereffects.

As even his divine power-maintained body was affected, Elohim realized he didn’t have as many chances left as he thought.

‘I must recover my power.’

Elohim knew that souls’ ability to “observe” gave power to divine beings.

When he deliberately destroyed the fourth world to harvest souls, Elohim understood that things weren’t as simple as he thought.

Merely gathering souls wasn’t enough. To harness the power of souls, he needed to collect “faith” from them.

The fifth world was created. Elohim devised a plan to supply faith and put it into action. Good and evil, light and darkness, angels and demons, Eden and Earth.

He thought everything would go smoothly. Until the fluttering of a few butterflies brought the storm named Shin Jaehyuk before him.

“Even when Satan said he would create an artificial hero using my blood, I didn’t pay much attention. You too, born from that plan.”

Since the creation of the fifth heaven, Elohim spent most of his time sleeping to conserve power. Because of this, he couldn’t adjust plans in real-time and had to check the situation whenever he woke up, and he was troubled by the higher-than-expected mortality rate of Edenites.

‘Lord, to ease your concerns, your servant has conceived a plan…’

Satan, who had been entrusted with managing hell, approached Elohim and tempted him, saying there was an effective way to weaken the demonic forces. A being connected by blood would have a clearer connection to you, thus able to exert more divine power.

Satan’s temptation was truly serpent-like, and Elohim willingly gave his divine blood without suspicion.

Satan ordered his contractor, Iscariot, to implement the God’s Hand Project. Numerous God’s Hands, including Longinus, were born, and due to Beelzebub’s attack, all the divine blood was concentrated in Longinus alone.

Longinus, who became strong enough to be praised as the greatest holy knight in history, eventually caught Elohim’s eye. A holy knight who faithfully followed his orders and was the natural enemy of demons. Too valuable to be used as a disposable. Someone worthy of a more important role…

Yes, he was perfect as a piece to check Satan.

Satan, the first angel created by Elohim, was Elohim’s confidant but also a hunting dog that had to be put down. From the moment the demon king, a mere fallen angel, awakened his divinity, it became so.

To Elohim, who had experienced what a single divine being could do in the third world, all divine beings other than himself were targets for purging, and Satan was no exception.

“Especially considering the hatred Satan harbored for me… it was clear that leaving him be would bring harm.”

He reincarnated the finest hunting dog on Earth to kill Satan whenever necessary. He sent the holy woman, who was a puppet to exert influence on the human world, to manage him.

However, during the process of testing the performance of the “Status Window,” a pleasant anomaly occurred. The hero, who was the test subject for the “Status Window,” eventually killed Satan. It was an achievement beyond expectations, but it wasn’t a bad thing since it allowed for the elimination of Satan, who would have needed to be dealt with eventually.

However, with this event, Shin Jaehyuk, whose usefulness had disappeared, became like a chicken too tough to eat but too valuable to throw away, and was left abandoned on Earth for several years. Forgotten from Elohim’s mind, with his divine power cut off.

“Even when you caught Belial, I didn’t pay much attention… It was years later when I remembered your existence. Well, since you directly woke me from my sleep, I couldn’t ignore it.”

“…I know when that was.”

Awakened from sleep, Elohim witnessed the birth of a new divine being. Someone connected to him by blood, thus interpretable as a father-son relationship. He knew that blood relations made many impossible things possible.

“My son. Now that I have revealed everything about this world to you, as a father, as a god, as a messiah, I will make my final request to you.”

At that moment, Elohim realized that besides absorbing all the souls in this world, another option had emerged for him to recover his power.

“Offer your flesh to me. For the salvation of humanity.”