Ch.331Epilogue – The Throne of the Triumvirate

“To begin with, it might have been too grand a task for gang bosses to handle. Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing… or if I’m doing it well.”

El Pastor’s sigh opens the conversation at the Triumvirate’s meeting. The steel-bodied saint bursts into laughter at the words of the archbishop, who has a red mint flower tattoo on his bald head.

“I want to call it weak talk, but I agree. It’s not even the three of us doing the work—Fitts & Morrison sends all the staff while we just set the direction, yet it still feels like my head’s about to explode.”

“Exactly. Whenever I try to launch something big, I worry that if this plan from my talentless brain fails, we might squander the legacy El Sueño created.”

The Triumvirate’s meetings always began with such complaints. The Triumvirate itself was merely an authority bestowed by El Sueño, and the three were just two former gang bosses and one former Strip gang hunter.

Of course, saying this to people wouldn’t help at all. People told them to look for El Sueño’s intention in choosing, nurturing, and making them into talents capable of running this city.

“Still, the current situation… El Sueño wouldn’t scold us, right? Family customers have increased, and I’ve heard consumption patterns have changed quite a bit.”

“He always talked about improving our constitution. Yes, instead of people just coming to spend money at the Dollhouse until it opens and then leaving, they now stay for days, touring and spending quite a bit of money.”

Former Strip employees didn’t complain as their working conditions improved and performance bonuses increased. And with all the Strip’s thugs expelled, N Entertainment immediately began their plans.

A Mafia Museum—El Pastor doubted who would be curious about those old gangsters from before the war in a world full of gangs, but the museum was bringing in decent money.

El Pastor, who had been too busy surviving to become familiar with words like “past” and “nostalgia,” didn’t understand well, but when he thought of El Sueño’s avatar, he could sense what nostalgia meant.

A man who left without revealing his name or face. He might have been El Sueño himself, but all evidence to refute this was given by him. What El Pastor held in the Triumvirate was precisely this truth.

What El Sueño gave to Jimena was shaped like a sword but was authority; what he gave to La Roca was in the form of a prosthetic but was mystery; and what he gave to him was not the Sermon on the Mount but a weapon.

More than a simple weapon, it was a self-defense weapon. Usually useless, but when a false El Sueño appears trying to shake the church, the Sermon on the Mount that El Pastor received becomes sharp.

And another remarkable thing was… Fitts & Morrison’s attitude. They didn’t deny that the church’s influence unified the Las Vegas Strip, and they naturally began cooperating with the church.

Almost no one believed in El Sueño, but most memorized his scriptures, and though it seemed like an obligatory show of community membership, they attended every mass.

It was also Fitts & Morrison’s marketing team who suggested positioning El Sueño’s church as an alternative to undertakers. They too needed a place of moral high ground.

Convert the worshippers of the Mother of Death, who kneel before death out of fear, into El Sueño’s followers who know life and joy. Then naturally connect the results to the new Strip. That was the plan.

Of course, undertakers didn’t convert easily. They were fanatics with their own reasons for becoming so. Only a very small number converted, but the marketing team did their job well.

Feeling such thoughts cross his mind, El Pastor quietly asked La Roca. Most church matters were handled by the steel-bodied saint. El Pastor was strictly in charge of the casinos.

El Pastor couldn’t easily decide whether to be glad that La Roca, once such a non-believer, had become someone who could lead the church, or to sympathize with the torture she endured in the name of miracles.

“So, how’s the conversion business going?”

“Better than expected. Even undertakers, except for a few crazy ones, want to quit being treated like gang members and settle down. For those crazy ones, we’ll need to approach them ideologically…”

“Not something Fitts & Morrison can do well.”

El Pastor spoke with conviction. Fitts & Morrison’s approach helped ordinary people for whom religion was just a part of life, but not those for whom religion was central to their existence.

Hearing this response, La Roca looked at El Pastor and asked. It was a question El Pastor had asked himself as soon as he brought it up. It wasn’t easy to answer comfortably.

“Then, are we enough?”

“We probably aren’t enough either. All we can do is set an example. We can’t intoxicate countless people like El Sueño did.”

El Pastor knew that the god they had seen was a performance by one of his apostles, but he clearly possessed divinity. He had seen him enjoying that masquerade like a child.

Even when El Sueño was present, most sermons were given by El Pastor, and El Sueño only stood before people to show them their destination. El Pastor wanted to emulate that.

As the Las Vegas Strip becomes a more enjoyable place, a better place to work, and a more… enjoyable place, people will naturally follow the Strip.

That would be the right way, and that would be the way El Sueño would be pleased with. El Pastor quietly concluded.

Without knowing the truth, one cannot find answers. Without authority, one cannot share answers with everyone. Without evidence, people won’t believe even if answers are shared. All three were needed, but El Pastor was the beginning.

“Still, we need to better publicize what the new Las Vegas Strip is like. Let’s contact the entertainment industry for a documentary or something, so El Sueño can see it wherever he is in the world.”

El Sueño’s church has no restrictions. Do whatever brings joy. Just don’t sacrifice others for your own pleasure. For those who do, the steel-bodied nuns come. The saint herself doesn’t intervene.

The Triumvirate’s meeting, if it could be called that, ended there. The ideas from here would be discussed with Fitts & Morrison’s staff, resulting in plausible plans.

The presence of staff didn’t feel like interference. Just as Fitts & Morrison respected the Triumvirate, the Triumvirate respected Fitts & Morrison… and the presence of experts isn’t a constraint but freedom.

With experts present, they could comfortably generate ideas, not timid “realistic proposals” with hunched shoulders, but raw ideas—a feeling that was incredibly liberating.

El Pastor stepped onto the street in his cassock. Prioritizing street maintenance was also the staff’s idea.

Now Las Vegas’s streets had regained their original wide, clean appearance, and that was enough.

The first step in transforming a place where merely setting foot was a moral flaw into a place where families could vacation was precisely that facade.

Facades create opportunities, and abilities seize those opportunities. While reflecting on ever-present truths, El Pastor’s feet had already stopped before El Sueño’s statue in the middle of the Strip.

It was a statue with radiance splitting into eight branches from the face, holding El Sueño’s sword in one hand and the heads of the old Strip’s owners in the other. Someone was already standing there.

An undertaker. A rather devoted one at that. With a shaved head and a skull with a cross tattoo on the back of his head, it was certain. A faint Mother of Death tattoo was also visible on his forearm.

But he was also young. Early twenties at most. He clearly had a weapon concealed, but El Pastor didn’t bother calling security. He just walked slowly.

If at this moment he could convert this undertaker, whose thoughts were unknown, or… at least prevent him from causing trouble, that would surely be a joyful thing. The undertaker turned around.

He faced El Pastor in his cassock and scanned his head. Before El Pastor changed his body, he had similar tattoos to the undertaker. Since the tattoo locations were the same, he would know too.

He looked at El Pastor with a displeased expression. He was clearly unhappy that El Pastor was looking at El Sueño’s statue as if it were a long-lost relative or family member.

“You seem to feel divinity from this statue?”

He spoke in Mexican. El Pastor had somehow become more accustomed to English than Mexican. While southerners generally knew Mexican, English was more convenient for broader cooperation.

El Pastor looked at the undertaker as if looking in a mirror and spoke. He was now someone who could smile, someone who could embrace such sharp words with tolerance. That fact made him happy and proud.

“Not at all. It’s just a statue far inferior to the real thing, and it doesn’t match how the blood-soaked hands of El Sueño manifest, so it’s essentially just made for marketing. Still, it reminds me.”

When El Pastor calmly denied it, the undertaker momentarily couldn’t find words. For a religious person, seeing the god they worship with their own eyes was the greatest grace.

The undertaker, with his hand moving to his waistband where a gun would be, gritted his teeth and asked. It was truly a laughable question.

“Do I look pathetic to you? With such wordplay…”

“At your current state, I’d say you’re living happily. Your faith is unwavering. Would you like to hear what a mess I was when El Sueño first descended?”

It wasn’t El Sueño but his avatar, but still… El Pastor knew well how deeply he had been used in that moment. It was like manipulating a thirsty child by offering water.

“My faith was shaken, and as the situation spiraled to its worst, when El Sueño arrived, I believed like a dog without doubt or anything. I was pathetic. Terribly pathetic…”

El Pastor was trying to bid a clean farewell to his old god with those words. He didn’t hate him. He didn’t disparage him either. At least the Santa Muerte cult had a history of over a hundred years.

El Sueño’s church had at most five years of history, and it worshipped the story of an unidentified superhuman who appeared in the wasteland. No, not a superhuman. El Pastor denied it.

He was someone who could deceive people with various tricks, enchant people with his mere presence… and rise when others couldn’t, walking without looking back to see who followed.

“But El Sueño just used me. You know it would be hard to kill me even if you drew your gun and shot me here. If you’re not here for martyrdom, I suggest you enjoy this city of pleasure before leaving.”

El Pastor lightly tapped his chest as if to show the bulletproof plate made of Ublack inserted inside to make his cassock look natural. The undertaker looked at El Pastor’s head.

Not a good choice. A steel-bodied nun had already assessed the situation, but El Pastor had connected the communication channel and told her to stand by.

Santa Muerte is fattened by death, but El Sueño is not. El Pastor knew both, but the undertaker before him was too young to learn the number two. Perhaps he grew up too poor.

“What if I did come for martyrdom?”

“Still calling it martyrdom when you’d just die sprawled on the street with brain matter splattered, waiting for the cleaning team? Do you like steak? Not substitute food or cultured meat.”

Alternative meat steaks are generally inedible. Alternative meat needs to be processed to kill its fishy taste to be edible. Cultured meat was decent, but still not as good as real meat.

The quality of alternative meat is deliberately controlled to sell real meat. Thanks to this, Farmers Corp’s dairy and cultured food divisions could coexist, so no one complained.

Obviously, this wasn’t a taste an undertaker who lived in back alleys at the bottom of society would know. The undertaker thought the entire statement was a deception about him and angrily shouted.

“As if I could have tried it, fuck! Treating me like a fucking clueless kid! And if I die for my faith…”

“Death is just a moment, an escape, isn’t it? Living for faith takes longer, is harder, requires enduring people mocking that tattoo on your head, and fighting doubts too. Isn’t that responsibility?”

Worship of death is cowardly, El Pastor recited internally. It makes you believe you can do anything because you’ll just die afterward. It makes you believe you’ll be embraced by god when you die.

As if. Death is just brains, blood, and fuel splattering on the ground. To others, you’re just a corpse covered in tears and snot. Often it’s even more horrific.

To El Pastor, who had long worshipped death, El Sueño’s worship of life seemed better. That’s all.

Moreover, El Pastor knew at least more about the Santa Muerte cult than the young undertaker before him. It was a fight he couldn’t win anyway.

With each additional word, he would feel increasingly defeated, and when that thought crossed a threshold… he would escape in the name of martyrdom. El Pastor knew this very well.

Everything is enchantment and deception. That was the truth El Pastor received from his god. If so, he decided to willingly use that truth as a weapon. A taxi El Pastor called stops before them.

This young undertaker’s world is narrow. All he’s eaten is substitute food, and all he knows of cities and streets are some vile back alleys. That’s why living isn’t joyful for him.

When the world expands, living becomes joyful. El Pastor too found it much more enjoyable being the general manager of Las Vegas Strip’s casinos than being a gang boss. Joy must be shared.

In a world where good things become half when shared and bad things double, someone who can share joy with others can create joy for themselves, so being halved doesn’t matter much.

And if enchantment comes from broadening one’s world and insight… deception must target instinct. Just as El Sueño deceived his nature that yearned for god, he had to deceive with something as basic as appetite.

“Anyway, let’s go cut some steak. You can martyr yourself there too. Would the Mother of Death, who has no interest in life, scold you for filling your stomach before martyrdom?”

With those words, El Pastor drove down the Strip with the young undertaker. Even viewed under the blood-red sunset refracted by smog, the Strip was a beautiful place.

Casinos can push their themes and concepts because their product isn’t gambling but experience. El Pastor chooses a casino with a decent restaurant among those slowly passing by.

Too formal wouldn’t suit the undertaker and might make him think he’s being deceived… ultimately, he decided on The Finest as their destination. It was themed around freelancers and mercenaries.

In a beautiful yet casual space that felt like welcoming an industry legend, the undertaker devoured three plates of real steak with real french fries. He would want to eat more.

He might savor it as long as possible, but senses dull and memories fade. Eventually, there’s no other way but to visit this restaurant again.

Did Santa Muerte ever offer even a plate of steak for martyrdom? This too is clearly deception and temptation… but at least, it was also one reason to live.

The undertaker fled as if his full stomach was a moral flaw, but El Pastor knew. He would return to El Sueño’s statue.

Then they could talk more. Why he wants to martyr himself, what else he might want to eat, just… having lots of such trivial conversations would be the way to draw the undertaker toward life, he believed.