Ch.2323. Living as a Believer in the Punk World

The sight of those powerful guards collapsing one after another was surreally dreamlike.

Amon recalled what the nun had told him while standing in the middle of it all.

– [Only one Divine Power holder can emerge from a single region.]

The reason being that Divine Power and Mystic Power are collective manifestations of belief.

When specific beliefs gather in a region, they form Mystic Power or Divine Power, and when these powers settle somewhere, a Divine Power holder or entity is born.

Divine Power and Mystic Power don’t simply accumulate until they settle somewhere; rather, they settle periodically, which limits them to one per region.

This is why when a Divine Power holder is born, if you draw a circle of a certain radius around them, no other Divine Power holder can be born within that area.

This was a setting Amon was hearing for the first time.

At the same time, Amon was an exception to this rule.

That’s why when he first heard this explanation, he didn’t believe it.

Even the nun who told him seemed confused.

But soon Amon realized why this rule didn’t apply to him.

‘I wasn’t created from people’s collective belief.’

Whatever the Goddess had done, Amon’s Divine Power clearly came from her.

When his thoughts reached this point, he recalled a scene from Punk City 1.

It was roughly a quest about annihilating a steampunk cult, where depending on the player’s choices, the player could be offered as a sacrifice.

Then Divine Power would be extracted by a demonic symbol, resulting in a game over.

However, during that quest, if you received a blessing through a holy relic, you could survive even if your Divine Power was extracted.

The reason this choice existed was that while preventing the demon’s summoning was easier, you couldn’t get the demon’s drop items that way.

So those who needed the demon’s drop items would deliberately receive the blessing, let their Divine Power be extracted once, and then defeat the summoned demon.

By that logic, Amon should be fine even if his Divine Power was extracted.

After all, his Divine Power was directly granted by the Goddess.

“It really is Divine Power. The effect is killer, isn’t it?”

Amon muttered as he watched the employees collapse before his eyes.

However, there were survivors among them.

The President of Higgjen and Dr. Victor.

They were barely surviving amidst this catastrophe.

Amon could guess why.

“Wow. How many implants did you stuff yourselves with?”

Before Amon’s eyes, the president’s consciousness kept fading in and out.

His implants made his heart beat again whenever it stopped, and somehow supplied oxygen to his oxygen-deprived brain.

Repeating death and resurrection, the president was barely clinging to life.

But with each resurrection, the president’s face grew more haggard.

Like the president, Dr. Victor, who was more machine than human, was barely maintaining his life.

‘Not much time left.’

Amon decided not to finish them off.

However, while he wouldn’t finish them, he needed to make sure they died, so he brought a chair in front of them.

Dr. Victor squeezed out his voice toward Amon, who was appreciating their deaths.

“Why…!”

That was the single word he managed to squeeze out.

Even in his flickering consciousness, the mad scientist wanted to understand the situation.

The answer to that question was in Amon’s mind.

All attempts to create Mystic Power by human hands are bound to end like this.

If a saint could be so easily born by concentrating the Mystic Power of a hundred people into one vessel, why isn’t the Vatican doing this now?

The reason is simple.

Because they’ve already tried it.

On a much larger scale than the Higgjen Group.

Beyond a hundred people, they used thousands as sacrifices and an entire city as a summoning circle.

The result was failure, and it was erased from history.

‘Strictly speaking, they succeeded in creating something…’

The problem was that what was created wasn’t a saint, the daughter of God, but the Antichrist.

Logically, how could humanity’s savior be born through the sacrifice of thousands of people?

What’s born that way isn’t a Divine Power generator like a saint, but a Divine Power exchanger—the Antichrist.

The Antichrist wasn’t like a saint who freely creates apostles and Divine Power holders.

It was a demon of destruction that transformed ordinary people into entities.

‘And that was the story of the first game.’

The Vatican accidentally summoning a demon, and the protagonist, a steampunk-era mercenary, cleaning up the mess across Europe and the Middle East.

That was the story of the first game.

Knowing that story, Amon already knew this company’s saint project would fail.

‘Well, they could still power a generator with an entity, so in a way, the company’s wish might be fulfilled in a different direction.’

And this story was a dark history for the Vatican.

Probably only the Pope would know about it.

But for the Pope, there wouldn’t be much to worry about.

Whether the Higgjen Group summoned a saint or the Antichrist.

From the Vatican’s perspective, they had to stop either one.

Rather, telling the priests they needed to stop the Antichrist would mean revealing the dark history too.

Since the end result of opposing the Higgjen Group would be the same, they probably just told the priests they were stopping the creation of an artificial saint.

Amon was confident he could explain all these settings to the doctor.

‘But I have no obligation to explain all these settings.’

But there was no reason to.

‘How do I know he won’t suddenly resurrect later?’

He’s already transferred his body to a machine once.

It wouldn’t be strange to be extra cautious.

Amon kept his mouth shut.

The doctor took his last breath with an unresolved question in his heart.

Then Amon turned his gaze to the president.

The president seemed to be using more expensive equipment, as he clung to life longer than the doctor.

But it didn’t look like he would last much longer.

The president and Amon made eye contact.

The president didn’t seem curious about anything.

He just looked devastated.

“Not being able to… kill you… is my eternal… regret…”

The president impressively strung words together through his flickering consciousness.

But did he know?

That he was repeating that sentence for the sixth time now.

Still, it was impressive that he maintained his consciousness.

‘With this level of mental strength, no wonder he’s a Megacorp president.’

However, regardless of Amon’s impression, there was a fact to correct.

“You’re not dying.”

The president’s eyes widened at Amon’s words.

Seeing is believing, so Amon pointed to a guard who had started transforming.

“Death is not an escape, Mr. President.”

***

Divine punishment always befalls humans who violate God’s taboos.

Humans who ignored the Goddess’s words and fell into corruption were cleansed by the flood.

The Tower of Babel, which challenged the Goddess’s authority, collapsed.

The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which mocked the Goddess’s angels, burned under sulfurous fire.

Then what punishment would befall those who attempted to bring Divine Power into the human realm?

They were deprived of rest.

Sleep, peace, death.

All forms of rest were taken from them.

There are various expressions for such beings.

The Goddess’s abandoned children, beasts walking the abyss, beggars of ashes.

The expressions vary by era, but in modern times, this term might be familiar:

Monsters.

The dungeon’s theme varies depending on which experiment fails.

If genetic experiments fail, monsters or zombies roam; if artificial intelligence fails, robots wander around.

Among these, when Mystic Power experiments fail, they diverge from other dungeons from the very beginning.

At the site of a failed Mystic Power experiment, when the dungeon boss is born, the surrounding beings become twisted.

The space where it was born transforms into a dungeon, and those deprived of rest have their souls bound to the dungeon.

And they become monsters roaming the dungeon.

Even if explorers enter the dungeon and kill them, they resurrect in the form of respawns,

And they roam the dungeon as monsters, retaining only fragments of their human memories, obsessed with their final memories.

This was the divine punishment that befell them.

Amon nodded as he watched the beings around him transform.

‘Ignorance is not a sin.’

They probably never thought they would become monsters.

Originally, Mystic Power experiments rarely fail, and the creation principle of Mystic dungeon monsters hasn’t been revealed.

‘If they had known, they wouldn’t have conducted such experiments inside their headquarters.’

But.

‘Blasphemy is a sin.’

Not believing in God and daring to challenge God’s authority.

This deserved divine punishment.

Therefore, Amon felt no sympathy.

Not for the employees turning into low-level monsters,

Not for the guards becoming elite monsters,

Not for the doctor transforming into something like a strange mimic.

Amon believed this was the divine punishment they deserved.

‘Anyway, those who didn’t participate in this project won’t receive divine punishment.’

Roughly speaking, innocent people would survive.

That was the logic.

It might seem like a dangerous ideology, but in this situation, it was the right thinking.

Even the most oblivious employees would probably leave the company building in this situation, so he wasn’t worried about innocent victims.

For reference, the president became a mid-boss, muttering “Must sell…” at the end.

Judging by his last words, he probably became a gimmick-type boss.

While they were transforming into monsters, the company building also began to change.

It seemed to be taking the form of a dungeon.

To accept challengers, and to protect the boss.

The building slowly changed its structure.

The laboratory where Amon had been became a dungeon boss room,

And the guards and president who had been near Amon were placed elsewhere.

‘Oh. Good.’

It was a happy miscalculation.

He had planned to run like hell to the exit after turning them into monsters, but fortunately, the monsters were cleared away on their own.

‘Wait. Is this good?’

On second thought, it wasn’t good.

The place where he was now was the dungeon boss room.

This was the most dangerous place.

Amon immediately ran for the exit.

But a voice from behind made him stop in his tracks.

“[Apostle of the Goddess.]”

A monotone, youthful voice echoed through the room.

It resonated not through a human throat, but directly in his mind.

The boss was already staring at Amon with blood-red eyes.

At a glance, she was a beautiful woman.

But Amon could never like her.

No, it was ambiguous to even call it “her.”

That being was closer to being genderless, if anything.

The dungeon boss spoke.

“Bow down and worship me. I will give you all this.”

The boss manipulated space with an expressionless face.

Then the view of the entire city unfolded below.

The boss who created this scene said:

“Fear and serve me, kiss my feet. Then I will give you ownership to the ends of this earth, but if you do not, I will destroy you.”

Amon’s expression soured.

This was why he couldn’t like the boss.

The boss quoted Bible verses when it was born, but that didn’t make the boss holy.

Contrary to people’s misconceptions, angels, demons, saints, and the Antichrist—seeing any of them would drive you mad all the same.

Only those who are already mad or have strong faith can withstand it. (Both mean similar things.)

Amon couldn’t bring himself to recite verses praising demons, so he just quoted Bible verses, but the boss was by no means a holy being.

‘A worm impersonating the Goddess’s authority…’

If she were the shell of an innocent victim, or an innocent new life that knew nothing, he might have compromised.

Even if she were a vengeful ghost seeking revenge on those who experimented on her, he would try to reform her somehow.

But what stood here was a demon.

A demon that sacrificed 100 Divine Power holders and insulted the Goddess.

Not innocent, not guiltless. Just a demon whose very existence was evil incarnate.

It was fortunate that, unlike the erased history, the number of sacrifices was small, so it wasn’t a final boss-level Antichrist, but a demon was still a demon.

The fact that it recognized Amon as an apostle as soon as it was born and immediately tried to test him confirmed that its nature was evil.

Amon rejected the demon’s offer.

Instead of answering, Amon raised his middle finger.

“Why should I?”

It was clear that serving such a being would only lead to destruction.

In the first place, the command to bow down and worship was just a fancy way of saying become its servant and transform into an entity or monster.

That being called it a “blessing,” but to Amon, it was a curse.

Amon was extremely wise, so he had no reason to accept the demon’s offer.

He decided not to exchange any more words.

He immediately turned around and headed outside the boss room.

No matter how great the demon was, it was fundamentally a boss.

Once outside the boss room, it couldn’t do anything.

As if reading Amon’s intention, the boss continuously tried to keep him there.

“Why do you fear me? You shall not leave this place until I permit it.”

After giving the boss another middle finger behind his back,

Amon ran for the exit.

Finally, he was able to set foot at the exit.

That’s when it happened.

When an undeniable statement came from behind Amon:

“The Goddess herself is a coward behind the times, so her apostles can only run away.”

Amon’s feet stopped abruptly.

Seeing this, the boss showed emotion for the first time.

The corners of the boss’s mouth turned up slightly.

‘In the end, that faith will be your downfall.’

The boss had no intention of keeping Amon alive anyway.

What she wanted was Amon’s beating heart.

The overflowing spring of Mystic Power inside it.

She had no intention of making him her apostle.

She could only obtain it by killing Amon.

To get this, she could not let Amon escape.

As she expected, when she insulted the Goddess, Amon couldn’t leave the boss room.

Instead, he was gathering his weapons, preparing for a fight.

‘How foolish.’

It was like a moth flying into fire.

The boss looked at Amon with amusement.

She could attack now, but having just been born, she wanted to test her powers.

Arrogance.

Some might call this attitude that, but the boss called it confidence.

Eventually, Amon finished his preparations and turned toward the boss.

With his back to the boss, Amon adjusted the grip on the swords in both hands and said:

“You come to me with sword and sorcery, but I come to you in the name of the Mother of All, the Goddess whom you have insulted—”

The boss looked into Amon’s eyes as he muttered.

The more angry he became, the more he lost his reason.

The easier it would be for the boss to take the spring of Mystic Power.

But the moment she looked into Amon’s eyes,

The boss was terrified.

‘What… is this…’

Madness.

Beyond the dark pupils, only madness lurked.

Eyes gleaming with madness glared at the boss.

Amon crossed the swords in both hands.

Gritting his teeth, his lips, marked with lipstick that made his mouth look torn, moved behind the cross.

“Today the Lord will deliver you into my hands. I swear. I will strike you and cut off your head and give your carcass to the birds. Today all the people of the earth will know the name of the Lord.”

Deus vult. (The Lord wills it.)

Amon muttered quietly,

And the boss stepped back.