Chapter 77: Apostle

The curse response team sealed away the curse of jealousy cleanly and left.

Thank you for your hard work as always.

If you come visit Slime Land with your child later, I’ll call you up to the event stage.

Aim to be awesome parents.

If you bring your partner into the haunted house, I might just make your heart race for real.

Aim for the wobbly bridge effect.

What if you came alone, without family or a partner?

Well, I’ll just pile on some extra food for you.

The curse has gone far, far away.

The situation where I couldn’t tell if my eyes were eyeballs or jelly shaped like eyeballs has safely passed.

I pulled myself together and looked at the revived land.

I can see the flow of mana. This is no longer land where not even microbes can live and even the trash above won’t rot.

Just in case it was only the surface that changed, I stretched out a tentacle and dug into the ground.

As expected, no problem.

It feels like flipping the breaker back on.

Still, drawing out mana for use could be risky, so let’s stick to self-sufficiency as much as possible.

“Should we all just live here together?”

Is there really any need to send Gongdori and Gongsooni back to the Alchemy Center?

There’s plenty of space to build a workshop.

Right now, I’m only keeping this small form to hide my abilities.

Actually, Gongdori and Gongsooni can grow big like Mother, too.

If the three giant kids start making Slime together, we could produce way more than now.

I thought it wasn’t a bad idea, but Gongdori and Gongsooni protested.

“Don’t try to bring the independent kids back home?”

They’re right, but it’s sad how fast they’ve grown up.

“Still, let’s be together for today. You have to go to work? You’ve been working nonstop for over half a year, so it’d be okay to take a break just for today.”

Even if today’s production volume tanks, the Alchemy Center has a stash of Slime stocked up like a squirrel, so there’s no need to worry.

Even if production stops for a day or two, Slime sales won’t be interrupted.

How do I know?

My Slime has an expiration date written on it. It sells out every day, but sometimes items a few days past the date are sold.

There have been a few complaints about this.

The Alchemy Center explains it as unavoidable delays from safety checks and distribution.

They probably store today’s production in the warehouse and sell previously made ones instead.

If they clear out the stockpile like that, won’t they want my Slime even more desperately?

“Since we’re all gathered, should we have an eating contest?”

My kids’ ears perk up.

Eating is work too, after all.

Such workaholic slimes.

“If we do it as is, it won’t be a fair match, so the three of us will be one team and Mother will be the other. Unfair? Mother, think about your size. Even if you add the three of us together, we’re not even a quarter of you.”

A contest at the waste processing facility to see who can eat trash the fastest.

[It’s not fair to puff up your body!]

[The world of competition is a harsh one, little one.]

[….]

This is what a slime picnic looks like, I guess.

Oh, right. I should check the status window.

Not that there’s anything all that impressive to see.

“Status window.”

[Trait : Slime☆☆☆ Lv. 1

+Courage +Temperance +Faith

Skills:

Decompose Lv. 1.

Absorb Lv. 1.

Analyze Lv. 1.

Divide Lv. 1.

Control Lv. 1.

Transform Lv. 1.

Store Lv. 1.

Convert Lv. 1.

Multiply Lv. 1.

Accelerate Lv. 1.

Link Lv. 1.]

There’s one more star.

If I collect seven stars, will a dragon god pop out and grant me a wish?

And now there’s a [+Faith] buff.

Just because I spat out the curse doesn’t mean that emotion is completely tempered.

Spitting out jealousy and distrust doesn’t mean I’ll trust everyone unconditionally.

That would be a curse in a different sense.

Also, even with that buff, it’s not like it gives overwhelming power.

Even the notifications say it just reactivates suppressed temper.

[The blessing of infinite courage descends, so you will fear nothing.]

It doesn’t say nonsense like that.

It’s just… normal-well, I don’t know if it was normal, but it’s just that I’ve grown from my painful experiences in the past.

That’s a relief.

I want to stay human.

It’s not that I want to become a perfect god.

Those [+Courage] [+Temperance] [+Faith] are like ‘Great Job!’ stamps.

They give you strength when you see them, and maybe you’ll get a prize if you collect enough.

Think of them as fragments of hope.

I was laughing to myself when Gongsooni poked me, telling me not to slack off.

“Sorry, sorry. Oh, right. Kids, how about we head back this time with our bodies four times bigger?”

If you’re bigger, you can do more work.

This time, I guess I can use that stereotype to dramatically increase production.

I should start thinking about what to sell at Slime Land.

It’s a rapid growth, but since I brought them myself, it shouldn’t seem too weird.

Gongdori and Gongsooni happily puffed themselves up.

Workaholics, I tell you.

“Should we pick colors, too?”

Up until now, Gongdori and Gongsooni have been the same color.

So they could swap places in the middle.

But now their personalities are much stronger.

First, Gongdori turned a deep navy blue.

Next, Gongsooni turned pink.

And finally, Mother turned green….

“Hold on, Mother. If you turn green, you’ll show up clearly on the satellites.”

Mother still needs to stick with camouflage.

Gongdori and Gongsooni clung to the sulking Mother to cheer her up.

As Mother perked up and was about to restart the trash-eating contest-

Riiing.

The phone rang.

[SSS-Rank Hunter]

It’s Gisu.

He called at almost this exact time last time too.

As expected, maybe he has some kind of curse-detection skill.

Or maybe when it’s time for me to vomit the curse, some cosmic force descends and something weird happens on the other side of the world?

***

Ribbon (Reborn).

Their faith was unwavering.

The descent ritual they performed in June did not fail.

After swallowing everything and returning it to nothingness.

The great one who would resurrect only the chosen in a more perfect form.

That one certainly descended.

But due to the interference of unbelievers, the descent was incomplete.

The current hardship came because they failed to fulfill their duty.

Even though it is painful now, when that one opens their eyes, everything will be overturned.

If they seek out the one who descended to earth and beg for forgiveness.

This absurd and irrational world will disappear.

And be reborn as an orderly world under that one.

Those chosen by that one would also cast off their lowly human flesh.

And be reborn with a perfect body that never decays.

No matter what sacrifices it took, they had to find that one.

So they offered.

They offered everything.

Even if they fade away now.

That one will resurrect them.

As countless sacrifices were devoured, that one’s Apostle descended.

Grotesque tentacles made of human and animal flesh twisted together, gathering into a form that was human, yet not human. Blood vessels and nerves draped over the body like tattered clothes. Over that, blood as sticky and slimy as jelly writhed.

A blasphemous figure, as if life had been forcibly mashed together and turned inside out.

At the Apostle’s descent, Ribbon’s priest cried out with tears streaming down.

“O Apostle of the One! Please lead us to the One!”

The Apostle turned its eyeless head in some direction.

Tentacles stretched from its back to form wings.

Just as it was about to flap and take off-

The ceiling collapsed and light split the darkness.

A silver-haired Holy Knight appeared, swinging a greatsword.

As soon as he landed, he swung the greatsword horizontally.

He left a mark on the Apostle’s black body.

But the mark vanished as if nothing had happened.

The Apostle extended tentacles tipped with claws and teeth of creatures to kill the intruder.

The silver-haired Holy Knight swung his greatsword and cut them down.

The severed tentacles bounced from the ground and burrowed into his body.

While the Holy Knight’s feet paused, a tentacle extended by the Apostle pierced through his body.

Or so it seemed.

From the Holy Knight’s body, a deep golden aura surged up like flames.

Any tentacle that touched it instantly burned and crumbled.

The tentacles burrowing inside him also burned away in a flash.

Tentacles that could never be destroyed by physical means.

Even if you used special skills or tools, they’d regenerate persistently and torment their opponent.

Yet now, they lost form and disappeared so easily.

“■■■■■■■■■!!!”

The Apostle shrieked, wrapping a mass of tentacles around its right arm.

With the now huge, swollen right arm, it slammed down to crush its foe.

The Holy Knight focused golden energy into his blade and swung back in response.

The result was a draw.

The golden flames burned the tentacled arm to ash.

But the blade the Holy Knight swung cracked all the way through and collapsed.

The Apostle tore off the part touched by the golden aura and extended more tentacles to form a new arm.

The Holy Knight, without hesitation, dropped his broken sword and drew another greatsword from the S-class artifact <Weapon Box>.

A brief silence fell.

The melee began.

The Apostle lashed out with tentacles.

The Holy Knight swung his sword.

Each time, the tentacles burned.

And the sword broke.

The winner of this brutal brawl was the human.

The tentacled monster retreated, leaving a burning mark at its core.

Realizing this wouldn’t work, it gathered all its tentacles into a single, solid spear.

The Holy Knight discarded his crumbling sword and stepped forward.

He drew a sword radiating ominous intent and gathered tremendous energy into it.

Both sides kicked off at the same time.

A spear woven of pain and despair, blood and flesh.

A sword that blazed with hatred, destroying evil.

Their clash ended in silence.

“No. No!”

The priest desperately tried to scrape together the Apostle’s remains as they faded away without even leaving ashes.

But the golden flames relentlessly burned the Apostle, leaving not a trace.

The priest screamed, tears of blood streaming down.

“Why! Why do you keep interfering with us like this! We just want to escape this irrational, absurd world and be reborn as perfect beings!”

The Holy Knight didn’t bother to answer.

Fanatics like that weren’t people you could reason with.

He drew a greatsword and struck the priest’s head from the side.

Leaving the unconscious priest behind, he walked to a corner.

He stabbed a greatsword into a small, red, gelatinous mass trying to quietly escape, and burned it.

Suddenly, he frowned.

Seeing the slime reminded him of his friend who kept making Slimes.

He remembered the curse left by the Elder Lich he had defeated long ago.

He went outside, found the space expansion bag he’d tossed aside, and took out his smartphone.

He returned to the room and checked the direction the red slime had tried to go by looking at the scratch on the ground.

He opened the map app and drew a line in that direction…

It was something happening almost on the other side of the world. Even a one-degree difference would point to a completely different region. There’s no guarantee the line he drew was accurate. The slime might have just been trying to escape, not heading for a specific destination.

But…

[I curse your fate!]

After hesitating for a moment, he made a call.

-It’s not really the Gisu I trust.

“What are you doing?”

-Building an amusement park?

“Amusement park?”

-It might be hard to understand for someone like you who only thinks about killing monsters, but there are places in the world where people go to experience fear on purpose. They even enjoy that fear.

“I know. I’m asking why you’re building one.”

-The reason I started thinking about this is actually written in detail in a paper called [Changes in Family Life and Family Relationships Due to Large-Scale Distribution of Slimes]. Want me to read it to you?

“In one sentence.”

-Families with nowhere to go. The land of dreams, tentacles, hope, and Slime. Welcome to Slime Land!

“That’s three sentences.”

-Summarizing in three lines is the national rule.

“Anything strange happening around you?”

-Didn’t you ask that last time too?

“So, is there or isn’t there?”

-Hmm… You’ll find out anyway, so should I just tell you?

Gisu tensed up.

-I revived the dead land. Isn’t that amazing?

“…What?”

-I said I revived the dead land.

It was a shocking story, but in a completely different direction than expected.

Having fought against countless dungeon breaks, he had seen the dead land many times.

Because he had seen it, he knew.

Just how hopeless a place the dead land was.

“How on earth?”

-I just poured mana into it, and it came back to life.

“I heard that method failed.”

-Maybe the amount of mana used wasn’t enough.

“Exactly how much did you use?”

-A whole lot. You heard that as a Hunter, Sole Alchemy made a barrier that runs on monster by-products, right?

“Yeah.”

-The source of the technology used there is mine. Since it’s the original, it’s much better, so it can convert not just monster by-products but also regular trash into mana. I think I converted about two million tons of trash into mana and poured it in.

Two million tons.

Faced with such an absurd unit of weight, Gisu was at a loss for words.

“What exactly are you doing with your life?”

-I told you, I’m making Slime Land, the land of tentacles and Slime.

“What happened to dreams and hope?”

-They’re probably in the children’s beds.

Hearing that same playful voice, Gisu felt relieved.

As expected, there’s no point in paying attention to a monster’s nonsense.

“How did you end up reviving the dead land anyway?”

-They dumped the landfill built on the dead land on me. Looking at it, I realized I could process all the piled-up trash. It’d be a waste to just leave the land as is, right?

“Don’t tell me you’re building an amusement park on the dead land?”

-Yeah.

[The one you cherish most will flounder, trapped in the swamp of despair-]

A person lost in despair revives the dead land.

There’s no way they’d build a place to give people dreams and hope on top of it.

That’s why.

“Lunatic.”

-It’s clean now, you know? Mana is bubbling up everywhere? It’s not dead land anymore, so as long as we advertise well, people will come.

“I’m saying your actions and ideas are insane.”

The evil god steals his friend’s body.

-And what about you? How normal are your actions?

“I defeated the tentacle monster summoned by the doomsday cult.”

-What are you, the protagonist of a shonen manga?

And ends up killing that friend with his own hands.

That sort of thing-

[-will meet its end by your hand!]

doesn’t happen.

***

After sending the kids back to the Alchemy Center and returning home, I notified the staff that we’d be starting a meeting.

It wasn’t planned,

but that’s the power of being the boss.

Everyone connected to the online meeting room….

I pride myself on my keen eye.

Why?

Because I recognized Gisu’s potential!

If you’ve ever spotted something amazing even once in your life, you have a right to be confident in your instincts.

So what I’m feeling right now is the answer my incredible instincts, which recognized Gisu’s potential, have given me.

Why does Hans still look like an alien plotting multiple schemes?

Why does number one, Lee Doa, look like she’d stab the company in the heart if needed?

Why does number two, Uh Byungwook, look like he’s slyly spreading rumors about the wrongdoing at his previous company?

< 77. Apostle > End