I Became the Apostle of an Evil God Chapter 34

No matter what Van thought, Orma didn’t particularly hold any resentment toward his mother. A pitiful person—that was how he defined her. His mother had cherished and loved Orma. That much no one could deny, and Orma acknowledged it as well.

“My mother was a princess of the kingdom. She passed away because of the rebellion, but even if that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t have lived long anyway. She was a very frail person by nature.”

“….”

Then does that mean Orma was a prince? In the game, there was never any mention of his actions before he became the ‘hero’ of humanity, so he hadn’t known… but it seemed to suit him quite well.

Van thought deeply about the Orma from the game and slowly nodded his head.

“I’ve told you before, but I don’t have any memories of my father. I only heard that he passed away before I was born. Whether that’s actually true or not, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know…?”

“My father was a wandering knight.”

They were plain words, but Van widened his eyes and stared at Orma. A princess and a wandering knight…. Was that even possible? Orma also slowly nodded his head, as if knowing what Van was thinking.

“I don’t know the details very well, but I heard he was the champion of a martial arts tournament. Since they said he was a wandering knight from another continent, he must have been of a meager status.”

“I see…. Ah, then did your father marry your mother, the princess, by virtue of being the champion of the tournament?”

“No, you should look at it as their marriage never practically took place. My father proposed and my mother accepted, but the king couldn’t tolerate the relationship between the two. Right around then, a war broke out due to a dispute with a neighboring country, and they said the king promised to permit the marriage if my father participated in that war and returned victorious.”

However, since Orma had said his father ‘passed away before I was born,’ it seemed his father ultimately failed to return. Even if by some chance he had survived, there must have been circumstances preventing his immediate return. In the end, a rebellion broke out and the kingdom fell, bringing their love to a sorrowful end.

Orma spoke of his parents, who were ‘humans’ during their lifetime, in a very detached manner. While telling that story, he didn’t show a single bad emotion, and he even seemed to miss his mother a little. Van inwardly realized that Orma was thoroughly separating his ‘mother’ from ‘Banan.’

But… if so, was there really a need to avoid Banan to the point of outright hating her?

“…How did you happen to find out that Lady Banan’s mortal excursion was your mother, sir?”

“In the first place, the one who came looking for me first wasn’t Banan.”

“Pardon?”

“Sigh, didn’t Gale tell you that? My father was Muhwi’s mortal excursion.”

“….”

Van rolled his eyes and carefully nodded his head. Actually, Gale had never told him, and he had just roughly figured it out through intuition.

He had become even more certain from that strange reaction Jaena showed when mentioning the story passed down among the beastmen, but whatever the case, hearing it directly from the person’s own mouth would be the most accurate and refreshing.

“When the rebellion broke out, I fled as far away from the royal palace as possible, just as my mother had instructed. That was exactly the point when Muhwi came looking for me.”

“Then did the god Muhwi treat you as a ‘son,’ sir?”

“….”

Without even answering Van’s question, Orma narrowed his eyes and chewed over the events of that day.

Well, he had been too young and distracted back then to really know… but thinking back on it, it seemed that was the case. The one who crossed the ‘line’ first was Muhwi. God and human, dream and reality. Had he run amok, unable to distinguish between them?

Like a human who is merely swept away by the raging waves when a storm hits, he had just awakened from a vivid dream and raaged fiercely, unable to distinguish reality from the dream, caught up in the emotions that surged over him like a tidal wave. Ridiculously, a god had gone and intervened in mere human affairs.

An ominous gaze, grey hair fluttering in the harsh wind, and blood-soaked clothes. That appearance looked utterly wretched, as if embodying the feelings of a certain wandering knight who had faced a burning royal palace on the very day he returned after keeping his promise to win the war.

Yet his eyes were golden, and the armaments in his hands belonged to a god. Muhwi, who had manifested as the god of fire and war, paradoxically only woke up from his dream the moment he faced a young human child who now held no relation to him whatsoever.

Only after staring for a long while at the child who so closely resembled the green eyes he had loved so much in his dream did he speak with empty eyes and a hollow voice.

“…I shall grant you the island closest to the sky. Dwell there.”

Orma instinctively realized that Muhwi was his father—no… a being who had once been his father. However, because he had been far too late, the young child left behind alone after everything was over overcame the supreme and transcendent terror exuded by the god and poured out his resentment.

“Why?”

Orma asked, glaring at Muhwi. But the cold and detached god of war didn’t cut down the insolent young human; instead, he answered in a muttering, helpless voice.

“I dreamt a very beautiful dream, and I simply wish to cherish that dream a little longer for now….”

Leaving only those words behind, Muhwi vanished into thin air like smoke.

And not long after, Orma came to live on the sky island. Fortunately, Muhwi never appeared there, and only Gale and his father, the ancient dragon Linest Khan, lived there guarding the sky island. Orma naturally grew up under Linest’s care and became friends with Gale, but because he himself, as well as Linest and Gale, knew that a human’s lifespan was short, they believed they would soon bid farewell to one another.

“…Anyway, that was the first and last time I saw Muhwi.”

“Then you have never seen him even after drinking the divine liquor, sir?”

“Yeah.”

Thinking about it from Orma’s perspective, it was quite an absurd matter. A god who finished his mortal excursion missed that excursion and sought out the son he had fathered back then, only to realize reality after actually facing him and never appearing again.

Van understood the complex and subtle emotions Orma felt toward Muhwi all at once. Because even if he were Orma, he wouldn’t know how on earth to think of or regard Muhwi.

In particular, Van, who was an orphan in both his past life and his current life, found the concept of parents even more difficult. In truth, even while listening to this story, he didn’t know how to react, so silence mostly prevailed. Fortunately, Orma didn’t mind—in fact, he seemed to have anticipated this kind of reaction from Van.

“Well, the one you asked about wasn’t Muhwi, so let’s stop here with that. Banan… well, she doesn’t like Muhwi very much.”

“Is the relationship between the two gods bad?”

“Hmm… it’s closer to Banan one-sidedly disliking him. Banan was perfectly calm even after her mortal excursion ended. She distinguished reality from dreams very well. But a certain foolish god went so far as to manifest himself, trying to ruin an excursion that had already ended.”

Orma chuckled as he spoke, but he didn’t look amused at all. Van didn’t know much about the bond between parents and children, but he felt he could understand the hardships Orma must have felt between them. …It must have been several times harder than the emotions he himself had felt recently while getting caught between Orma and Banan.

“The sky island originally belongs closer to Banan, too. Since it’s an island created by Banan.”

“Then did the god Muhwi force the god Banan to give you the sky island, sir?”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t really want to know either, but at least it was clear that Banan didn’t want to get involved with me.”

A dream is just a dream. Therefore, an excursion is also just an excursion.

On the day Orma set foot on the sky island, what he saw was not the god of war, but the god of love who resembled his mother but wore a cold expression. Even with her before him, Orma couldn’t easily open his mouth because he didn’t know what to say, but Banan drew a cold line first and spoke.

“I am Banan, the one who governs water, wind, abundance, and love.”

At the words stating she had absolutely no relation to his beloved ‘human’ mother, Orma quietly shut his mouth. He looked up at Banan and stared intently, but at those golden eyes that didn’t grant him the slightest glance, he only then slowly turned his head away.

If they had never met after that, Orma, just like with Muhwi, wouldn’t have thought much about Banan either. Even if Muhwi’s attitude had been ambiguous, he hadn’t appeared since then, nor had he done anything to complicate Orma’s feelings.

So… his mother was his mother, and Banan was Banan. Thinking that way, he would have accepted himself as an orphan with no place to lean on.

“Banan appeared before my eyes again when I was being called a ‘hero.'”

“A hero…. You mean when the calamity first arrived in this world, sir.”

Who would believe it if the world depended on the hands of a mere human hero? But it really did.

Serca spoke of the emergence of a hero who would save the world through a prophecy, and Orma appeared in the world, letting it be known so clearly that no one could deny he was the protagonist of the prophecy.

The primordial original sin, malice…. Those things accumulated and accumulated until they rotted away, beginning to gnaw at the world. A different kind of calamity from the current one encroached upon the world.

Souls like remnants that failed to become gods, commonly referred to as demons, appeared and led the destruction, and only Orma could cut them down and repel them. However, because he too was nothing more than a mere human, his limits were clear, and a crisis arrived. Unable to eliminate the core of the calamity that was clustered deep down, the core was right on the verge of exploding first and trying to pollute the world.

Banan came to find Orma.

“Even in a situation where it wouldn’t be strange if the world went to ruin first thing tomorrow, Banan alone asked me with a joyful look on her face. She asked if I wanted to become a ‘god.'”

Perhaps those words were the beginning of this entire tragedy.