The Outer God Needs Warmth – Chapter 2

It seems like I should ask here if they want power, but right now everything is too complicated and my head hurts.

Is this strangely stiff body possibly rigor mortis?

If it’s a sacrifice summoning, I wish they would have ended it simply with a card.

Or at least prepared a proper body.

Clank

Something caught me and when I looked, there are iron chains on both wrists and ankles. And below the chains, there are dark blue bruises.

Signs of resistance are visible.

If it’s a sacrifice, shouldn’t they offer their body voluntarily? No, since they ripped out the heart, is damage to the body beyond consideration at that point?

And being naked is rather perverse.

No, with a murder having occurred, perversion isn’t the issue. It’s a crime!

Of course, if they have a culture like the Aztecs, it wouldn’t be a crime.

Or there’s a possibility they could be rich enough to cover up murder.

By the way, this body is quite solid. I don’t mean it’s trained or stiff because it’s a corpse.

I mean it’s different from the lights I’ve touched every time before.

I’m not sure if it will work since the perspective isn’t from the bottom but from a person’s body, but can it contain me?

Creep creep

Dark purple mist rises from the body. It’s strange to describe the sensation, but it feels like zooming in after watching from behind me.

It’s completely different from the sensation of reaching out my hand and pushing myself up until now.

And the more I do it, the clearer the sensations become.

My eyes can see much better, the feeling of the stone I’m sitting on, the sloshing of blood soaking my chest, stomach, and lower body. And the thick smell of blood and the sound of people breathing around me.

Of course there’s pain too, but rather than feeling it as pain, it’s like watching HP being reduced on a monitor – it feels like a part unrelated to me.

I won’t die from this, right?

“Lord Cruxshibal. I am your servant. I am pleased to meet you.”

The large man in front asks me carefully. He has quite a muscular build with a bushy brown face half-covered in tattoos.

The peculiar thing is that his eyes have dull pupils without a speck of light.

These are the eyes of someone endlessly despairing. I often see them in the mirror when I lick lights and peek at memories.

Setting aside the name that sounds like a curse, I wonder in what form they know me.

Recalling the sentence that just introduced me, I can roughly estimate through what route they figured it out, but all the lights I look up at weren’t living in the same world.

Some were in primitive times, some in the Western Middle Ages, some in the Eastern Middle Ages, and many places had completely different cultures.

There were even people who seemed more advanced than modern times.

Back then, I didn’t pay attention because it was enough if I could get warmth, but thinking about it now, they were all different worlds.

In other words, isn’t the possibility of them knowing about me converging to almost zero?

I should look up this name ‘Cruxshibal’ when I get out.

Though I’m not sure if I can get out.

Dark purple mist just keeps flowing from the body but nothing is changing. Is this a special effect that comes out when I’m inside?

Ah. The hair color is purple.

Purple tasted good.

The world is fascinating, but I should try speaking first.

Problem occurred.

I can’t speak.

Ah, right. You can speak by moving the diaphragm to contract the lungs to produce air, which then vibrates as it passes through the vocal cords along with the tongue, right?

The diaphragm seems to be alive, but with a hole in the lungs, there’s no way sound can come out.

Is there no way to restore the hole in the chest?

At least as long as I have power, there should be something I can do.

Oops, mistake.

Blood gushed out of the hole.

If that’s their preference they might be happy, but I don’t see anyone like that. I was worried since this heretical group might not have normal sensibilities, but fortunately it doesn’t seem like they have a liking for corpses.

Judging by the subtle trembling in the air, the man in front of me is doubting me.

Doubt is natural. I wasn’t the one he called for in the first place.

The thread that reached me from that light may have originally been meant to call someone else. I just snatched it.

This is frustrating. It’s the same whether I die this way or that way.

It would be interesting if I die, but if there’s a possibility, I should try it.

Since this body is very solid, I’ll try putting more of myself into it.

* * *

In the underground where not a speck of light enters.

Candles are placed at regular intervals in a circle, dimly illuminating the darkness. Inside the circle, there are tiny writings along with pictures describing the purpose for which this place was built.

Build a temple, offer sacrifices, summon a god, curse the object of resentment.

Pictures full of hatred wishing for the other’s downfall are drawn in different forms on every side. And countless people wearing masks to hide their faces stand in a circle around it.

There are three large circles, and as you go from the outside to the inside, the height decreases from top to bottom.

Although the masks and clothing of the people are similar in color, the clothes are subtly different for each circle.

Those on the inside have much more elaborate patterns drawn on their clothes than those on the outside.

All those people are standing looking at the center.

In the center where all gazes are focused, there is an altar in the shape of a stepped pyramid.

On one side of the pyramid there are stairs going up, and in front of those stairs stand 4 people of different builds.

Left and right of the stairs.

On the way up, torn bodies are placed on each level on both sides.

On the step just below the top level stands a large man.

And at the very top is a stone chair, where a naked girl is chained by her limbs.

But even though she’s naked, the atmosphere is very miserable. Where the girl’s heart should be, there is a large hole.

Blood flowing from that hole runs down her body to the bottom of the pyramid, so it’s impossible for her to be alive.

This is a ritual.

It’s a ritual to summon their god using as a sacrifice someone who would be called a shaman in some worlds.

A pseudo-religion gathered enormous funds and labor through fraud, extortion, threats, multi-level marketing, human exploitation, and various other methods to build a huge temple.

And they achieved what they wanted using all their evil deeds.

Someone said.

A god of revenge that gives powerful strength to those in the worst situations.

A grim reaper that always takes life in return, but gives the most base pleasures to those in deepest despair.

An evil outer god full of malice that comes from outside, not appearing in any other temple.

There’s also a magician who says it’s an explosion caused by the power of the void, which is not nothingness but the opposite of existence, bursting out and annihilating with reality when the hearts of the despairing pierce a hole in the world.

While none of these are quite accurate, at least it was certain that there was someone.

There is someone who does something for people who have fallen to the bottom of life.

And based on that fact, the pseudo-religion spread.

A god who says they can strike a blow for even the lowest person was extremely sweet to the weak. Until now, they could only live being oppressed until they died, but now there was a possibility of revenge before death.

Of course, it was an excellent god, except for the fact that they couldn’t meet the one they wanted if they believed, since belief gives hope.

Even if it was a false hope born out of despair and resignation.

Conversely, for those at the top, it was a thorn in their eye. It meant that people at the bottom could potentially gain the power to kill them.

So in this world, they oppressed this religion. But the more they oppressed it, the more it spread like wildfire through the world.

Originally, there are always more people being exploited than those doing the exploiting.

And very sporadically, events occurred where these prayers were actually fulfilled. An unknown explosion that vaporized an entire city happened.

The investigation revealed that it was an unknown power that shouldn’t exist in this world, and there was nothing that couldn’t be done anymore.

Rather, when word spread that it was an unknown power after investigation, this pseudo-religion swelled even more.

So the pseudo-religion could easily build such a huge altar.

A pseudo-religion seeking salvation from someone.

Even if the name was wrong, it wasn’t strange at all for it to reach the protagonist who was the cause of it.

So as a result, their god descended upon the sacrifice.

The fact that a girl without a heart was moving was already a sufficiently strange phenomenon.

Moreover, the girl’s hair, which was originally blonde, turned purple when she died and woke up, so it was clear that something had entered her.

So verification is needed.

For now, it’s just a dead body moving.

Since there are magics that can move corpses in this world where magic exists, doubt arose among the people around.

And the person most calmly verifying the facts among them was the leader who led this ritual.

His real name is Yasle.

Once the spiritual leader of a religious nation, he lost his country including his family, friends, and neighbors to another country that invaded his nation.

Resenting the god who did nothing for him, he turned away from the god he believed in at the time. And he became the leader of the current pseudo-religion, which was growing in influence at the time but was shaky due to the lack of a proper leader.

Unlike the god who doesn’t answer, this one actually answers.

As he became a religious leader, Yasle knows that the god on this side really answers. A god who gives power to take revenge to the lowest.

It was enough to use.

Though from the perspective of belief, the direction was slightly different.

So he tried mixing methods to summon the evil god coming from outside using various rituals with methods to call the one worshiped by the current pseudo-religion.

And the result was now before his eyes.

Something that simply wakes up and looks around blankly, checking its own body.

When their eyes first met, he was disappointed, thinking it might have failed. Because it looked at Yasle with a face like someone who didn’t know anything and was dragged here.

But soon that thought changed.

Because an endlessly ominous and cold dark purple energy began to flow from the wounds on the body.

The wounds spat out a bizarre polyhedron as if overlapping countless afterimages, then slowly healed.

No, rather than healing, it looked like an incomprehensible phenomenon.

Although the result could be said to be recovery, the entire process in between was bizarre.

The wound on the chest healed, and a loud heartbeat sounded once.

But there were no more heartbeats after that. Instead, there’s a sound of something rotating from there.

The heart should beat, but instead there’s a rotating sound. Yasle was about to analyze the bizarre phenomenon happening in the girl’s body, but soon stopped.

Because it raised its gaze and looked straight at Yasle. And at that moment, he realized that he had succeeded in calling something.

Because the eyes stained with voracious greed and longing for warmth that didn’t match the girl’s face stared directly at him, emitting an eerie purple light from behind.

The eyeball is an organ that receives light. But whatever is wearing the girl’s mask in front of him is emitting light. It’s not just a metaphorical expression of eyes shining as windows to the soul, but physically shining.

An alien sign that feels unpleasant just by looking at it.

Yasle unconsciously bowed his head.