Ch.5454. Love and the Requetio Family

The city at night, where 70 percent of urban crime takes place.

A man jumped from the fourth floor of a cathedral where a red cross was flashing.

Thud.

The man, who seemed to have jumped once at the second floor height and once more at the first floor height, landed lightly on the ground.

After landing safely, Amon sighed and removed his hood.

It had been a month since he planned to infiltrate the cathedral.

As soon as he heard that Seanrai had been completely dismantled, Amon put his plan into action.

Under cover of night, he kicked off the air three times to climb through an unlocked window, and came back down an hour later.

Sonia approached Amon as he finished his investigation.

“How was it?”

Amon shook his head.

“They’re smart. I think it’s in the basement.”

Amon had thought the priest’s quarters might be on the upper floors like in a hospital, but they were located underground.

It was a wise choice.

In this world, unless you were building something dizzyingly tall like 30 floors, it was much wiser to place rooms like an executive office underground.

Because people like Amon who could perform triple jumps, people who could climb walls, or those who could fly without being detected by radar could pop up from anywhere.

At least underground, there was no way in except by tunneling, and tunneling usually got you caught.

This cathedral was no exception.

The priest of this cathedral, which Kathy’s brother Owen attended, had made his room underground.

According to him, it was because a priest shouldn’t look down on his congregation, but Amon and Sonia didn’t believe that.

“So, how are we going to get down there?”

Sonia asked.

Amon shrugged.

“Who am I?”

“Amon.”

“…The person who infiltrated the heart of the Higgjen Group.”

Amon had even breached the security vulnerabilities of Megacorps.

Breaking through the security of a neighborhood cathedral like this was nothing.

Guessing the meaning of his words, Sonia hunched her shoulders.

“Don’t tell me… you’re going to cross-dress again?”

At first glance her expression seemed disgusted, but her eyes were slightly shining.

Interest and disgust.

The two emotions coexisted contradictorily.

But Amon, the person in question, denied it almost convulsively, beyond mere disgust.

“I won’t. Ab.so.lute.ly. Not.”

Once was enough for cross-dressing.

To begin with, the priest of the cathedral wasn’t like the son of the Higgjen Group’s president who had a fondness for women.

Cross-dressing would be meaningless.

What Amon had in mind was something completely different.

“There’s a kind of password to go down. We just say that and go down confidently.”

It was a simple matter of saying he came for confession, then proving he was a member of this cathedral.

It might seem lax, but cults couldn’t be too strict with security or they wouldn’t recruit new believers.

Amon planned to exploit this.

“Really? I’m not good at that kind of thing, so you do it.”

“Leave it to me.”

Amon took Sonia and confidently entered the cathedral.

The cathedral was open to everyone 24 hours a day, but perhaps because it was night, there weren’t many people around.

Amon moved toward the stairs leading underground.

In front of the stairs, two armed giants were glaring.

‘Definitely not a normal cathedral.’

Amon observed the men’s weapons as he approached the stairs.

All of Amon and Sonia’s weapons were wrapped in special cloth and hidden deep in their clothes, so at first glance, the two appeared to be harmless civilians.

But the men at the stairs stopped them.

“What brings you here? The prayer room is on the second floor.”

The men’s tone was polite, as Amon and Sonia might have been believers.

But their fingers were half-poised on their triggers, wary of Amon.

Amon pretended to be slightly intimidated by them, adding a touch of timidity to his act.

“Um… I… I heard that to make a confession, I need to go downstairs…”

“Who referred you?”

“Brother Owen.”

“Ah. So you were evangelized by Brother Owen.”

When Amon used the name of Kathy’s brother, the men’s attitude softened a bit.

But that alone wasn’t enough for them to let Amon pass.

“Then what do you want the priest to do for you?”

This was the password-like thing Amon had mentioned.

If you answered something like ‘listen to my troubles’ or ‘comfort me,’ they wouldn’t let you pass.

Instead, they would direct you to the ‘regular’ confession room on the first floor.

To go underground, you had to answer, ‘I came to receive revelation.’

This was a fact he had discovered by searching through a nun’s personal drawer on the fourth floor.

Amon recalled this fact and moved his lips.

“Rev…”

As that word began to form on Amon’s lips, the tension in the men’s bodies eased.

Ah, this person is indeed one of our believers.

They were already preparing to step aside, their legs relaxing.

That’s when it happened.

Whack!

Amon’s uppercut sent the man’s lower jaw flying.

A clean hit.

The man’s eyes rolled back as he passed out.

Before the remaining man could react, Amon struck his throat and tripped him.

Then he broke the fallen man’s neck, completely neutralizing him.

This entire process took less than two seconds.

“…”

Sonia, who had been watching from behind, gave him a look of disbelief.

“I thought you knew the password?”

“I do. I know it.”

“Then why?”

“I just couldn’t bring myself to utter false faith.”

“Sigh… I should have known.”

“Let’s get rid of these guys. We can throw them in the toilet stalls.”

“Someone might find it strange that people have disappeared.”

“That’s why we came at night when fewer people are around. Still, let’s move quickly.”

“Huff…”

Sonia sighed and helped Amon drag the men to the bathroom.

*

Afterward, the two went underground.

Amon tried to continue pretending to be a cult believer, but he kept losing patience and breaking necks instead.

Still, the cleanup was neat, and since it was night and there weren’t many people around, they weren’t discovered.

Finally, the two arrived at the deepest part of the cathedral.

At the deepest part of the cathedral’s basement was a thick iron door.

<Receiving Revelation! Do Not Disturb.>

Looking at the iron door with the white sign hanging on it with cold eyes, Sonia muttered.

“So that’s where the priest went.”

Before reaching this iron door, they had already visited the priest’s office.

They had picked the locked door and entered, but no one was there.

So they searched the room and found documents about revelations.

And those documents contained facts that simply couldn’t be ignored.

“I guess we’ll have to check this ‘revelation’ thing ourselves?”

“Well, we’ve come this far, so we have no choice.”

Rationally, they should have been satisfied with what they found and gone home.

But the content of the revelation was too horrific for that.

Amon and Sonia weren’t adults, and they certainly weren’t apostles of justice, but they judged that leaving things as they were might put Kathy in danger.

“I’ll break through then.”

At Sonia’s words, Amon stepped back from the iron door.

Sonia placed her hand on the iron door, closed her eyes, and began to concentrate.

“awp dake dleidy doxn si he”

Incomprehensible words flowed from her mouth.

Immediately after, a bright circle appeared on the door.

Amon kicked the circle.

Boom!

A circular piece of iron fell on the other side, creating a large hole in the door.

The hole was big enough for both of them to pass through.

Amon took the lead and said.

“Let’s go.”

She followed behind.

They had long since abandoned prayer concealment.

Having decided to interrupt the revelation, there was no more hiding.

When they entered the room, the attention of everyone inside, including the priest, turned to them.

The priest was wearing priestly garments, but the rest were wearing white lab coats like scientists.

Amon and Sonia each drew their weapons.

Amon took out a crossbow, and Sonia a pistol.

Though these were equipment for covert infiltration and not ideal, they were sufficient to deal with these people.

Amon rushed toward the scientists.

Immediately kicking off the ground and flying over their heads, Amon pulled out his crossbow and shot both knees of the priest who was at the back.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

Despite the underwhelming sound, the crossbow bolts pierced the priest’s knees decisively.

“Huurgh..!”

The pain of destroyed knees was incomparable to any other pain.

It was so terrible that he couldn’t even scream, only gasping for breath.

While Amon prevented the priest’s escape, Sonia took a stable stance and pulled the trigger.

Pop.

The pistol she borrowed from Amon made a sound like opening a bottle cap as it pierced the wrist of a scientist who was reaching for the alarm switch.

The next two shots neutralized the scientist.

Afterward, the two systematically targeted the researchers’ shoulders or knees.

Amon’s crossbow occasionally missed, but Sonia’s shots never did.

Before long, all the scientists were subdued with shattered knees or shoulders.

“Ughh….”

While Sonia briefly stopped the bleeding of the scientists who were making dying sounds, Amon grabbed the priest by the back of the neck and sat him in a chair.

Then, showing him the documents taken from the priest’s room, he said.

“Wet supercomputer. Where is it?”

The priest, whose mind was hazy from pain, was startled by the words from Amon’s mouth.

“How did you… Don’t tell me you’re from Seanrai Intelligence…!”

“No.”

There was no need to correct the misunderstanding, but Amon refused to be associated with such people.

“CIA?”

“No.”

“Then where…”

“Can’t you assess the situation? Just answer my question.”

Anyway, he wouldn’t believe that they had broken in based on personal faith and were causing trouble out of a sense of justice.

With time pressing, Amon urged an answer.

As Amon’s crossbow pointed toward his groin, the priest reluctantly opened his mouth.

“It’s that computer in the center…”

“Wait here for now. I’ll deal with you later.”

Amon left the priest in the chair and headed toward the computer he had pointed out.

The computer’s main unit was very small.

He tore off the cover of the unit.

But the inside looked normal.

“Are you deceiving me?”

“No. Check under the floor.”

Hearing the priest’s words, Amon tore up the floor tiles.

And then

“Ugh… fuck…”

He couldn’t help but curse.

An acrylic floor revealed beneath the tiles.

And under that, computer components and

human brains floating in tanks, connected by numerous wires.

*

Since the creation of supercomputers, countless attempts have been made to predict the future through them.

Many powerful figures, businessmen, and scientists believed that with numerous processing units and AI trained over long periods, it would be possible to simulate the future.

But none succeeded.

Because human emotions were incalculable variables.

At best, they could predict the tendencies of large groups with 75 percent accuracy, but the remaining 25 percent of cases saw the future completely changed by individual instigation or emotion.

If one tried to predict an individual rather than a group, the success rate dropped to 55 percent.

Even the scientists operating the supercomputer or the powerful figures wanting to use it were emotional beings, so practical application was virtually nonexistent.

In other words, the variable of emotion could not be perfectly predicted by AI or CPU.

In this situation, one scientist came up with an idea.

– “What if we incorporate human emotions themselves as components?”

That casual suggestion was accepted by a powerful figure who regarded human life as less than that of a fly, and a wet computer combining human brains, processing units, and AI was completed.

The completed wet supercomputer succeeded in predicting individuals.

Moreover, the more brains formed the network, the more complex human relationships and emotional variables it could calculate.

And that wet computer was operating in the cathedral’s basement in the form of “revelation.”

“The word ‘beast’ is too good for you.”

“Please spare—”

Pop.

Amon pulled the trigger.

The priest’s body slumped down.

The source of these brains was obvious.

In a city rampant with human trafficking and murder, it wasn’t strange if someone disappeared after going to worship at a cathedral.

This wouldn’t even make it onto the list of suspects.

Amon looked down at the tanks with cold eyes.

Then suddenly, he noticed something strange in the priest’s explanation.

Permission from a powerful figure.

That phrase bothered him greatly.

Amon immediately examined the documents again.

He checked the computer’s internal data and administrator information.

In the back of his mind, he recalled the name of Kathy’s father, President Requetio.

But as his investigation continued, the name of President Requetio was long erased from Amon’s mind.

And in its place was the name of Kathy’s mother.

[Mary Elijha]

Amon had thought she was a victim of the cult.

But that wasn’t the case.

[Instructions received from High Priestess Elijha.]

She wasn’t a believer, but the high priestess.

But even more surprising was another fact.

She wasn’t stupid, nor was she delusional.

She had a rational basis for creating this cult.

[The blood of Requetio is blessed by God. They carry the blood of prophets who can lift the veil and glimpse fragments of the future.]

[But God abandoned my son. That child was not granted permission to see the future.]

[I am that child’s mother. Though God, my husband, and the family elders may abandon my son, I cannot abandon my son.]

She wasn’t stupid.

She was just insane.

[Research Journal. XXXX Year X Month X Day]

[The computer is almost complete. The prototype in the cathedral basement will be given to the priest.]

[Because that computer is imperfect.]

[Sadness, joy, anger. The computer could calculate most emotions.]

[But it uniquely could not calculate love.]

[The AI couldn’t understand how far humans would go for love.]

[So I decided to complete the final key and gift it to my son.]

[Owen. My beloved son. I’ve always been sorry for giving birth to you like that.]

[This is the only gift this unworthy mother, I, can give you.]

[Despite being such an inadequate mother, I’m confident that no one can surpass my love for you.]

[As much as I love you, that computer will give you more accurate revelations.]

[Don’t be sad. Mother isn’t dying.]

[Mother will watch over you forever.]

[All of this is for you.]

She was thoroughly, completely insane.